Another call for Dragon's end Meta adjustment

[Yoshitsune.8537]

Everything have been said on that topic, but I'm just sharing my experience so that it may be a small drop helping for Anet to realize how much this meta is frustrating... 

 

Ok so I've tried it a few times by just jumping on a map, and of course we failed. And that's good! It's nice to have some content that needs an organized group to clear, even in Open World. 

 

But then I tried to do it with an organized group (=prime time, commander knowing the meta perfectly and giving clear instructions, map full 1 hours before starting, indications to everyone to get max buffs including jade offensive and defensive, etc) . 

And it was quite fun I have to say! The pre events are fun, the escorts too, the different phases of the boss too, I really enjoyed it! 

But the timer went of when the boss was at 4%, and we were in the last burning phase... 

And absolutely no reward, nothing. 

 

If there were good enough rewards even without clearing, I would love to do it again and again until completion! Or if it was not so long. 

 

But both no rewards + need to spend at least 2 hours of gametime on it means I am probably never going to try again, knowing that even with a prep group you still have a good chance to fail. 

 

Just for Anet to know my profile when considering the type of players that got upset with the meta and won't do it again: 

Casual player (frac T4 and strikes are not a problem, but I don't do raids), usually playing an hour a day in short 20 mins sessions during week, and have a 2 to 3 hours session once or twice per week. 

Which means trying to do this meta usually means I am spending my only chance of a good session of fun, and have to wait for the next week to have a chance to do something similar. 

[danickar.3495]

So just so I understand, you think there should be rewards even if the event fails? 

[DerAlteSack.3572]

This is pretty much what I also think. The difficulty is fine. And no, there don't have to be rewards from this specific event when it fails, but the distribution of the rewards across the entire meta can be changed. Give the preparation phase a participation tracker like in Drizzlewood and add some chests after each event of the pre-events, also like in Drizzlewood (north).

This way you also get rewarded for your time spent even if the event fails. Spending ~2h on a meta and getting nothing return is just bad design and badly hurts it's replayability.

[Zzik.5873]

The time is a bit too tide for open world meta. I try it countless time. Commanding, explaining making sure everyone is prep and ready, squad full all side at high everyone following instriction... And still failed, because prople dont know how to do a DPS build with good gear. Or they wipe to simple mechanic due to the lack of tutoriel in the game 😛

 

locking side mission behind is kind of sad... I cant finish Marjory side quest becauses I need to kill the deep sea dragon, wich I did once (I have my turtle). My victory rate to date is a sad sad... 1/20

 

[danickar.3495]

I am 2 for 2 with an organized group. I have not been successful with any kind of randomness.

I am ok with the way the meta is right now and do not think it needs any nerfing.

I think adding a participation tracker to give a little more reward along the way wouldn't be a bad idea though.

[SinisterSlay.6973]

11 minutes ago, Makuragee.3058 said:

The time is a bit too tide for open world meta. I try it countless time. Commanding, explaining making sure everyone is prep and ready, squad full all side at high everyone following instriction... And still failed, because prople dont know how to do a DPS build with good gear. Or they wipe to simple mechanic due to the lack of tutoriel in the game 😛

 

locking side mission behind is kind of sad... I cant finish Marjory side quest becauses I need to kill the deep sea dragon, wich I did once (I have my turtle). My victory rate to date is a sad sad... 1/20

 

I discovered that Marjory thing is truely evil.  When you trigger the last one, it auto jumps you into an instance, losing your completed map so you can't use your other 14 minutes to complete other things.

So be careful, do the last Marjory last, like when you have 30 seconds left on the map and you've done everything else.  If it matters, I did the one in the South east corner last, which is where the instance takes place. So maybe that's why it happened.

Edited March 29, 2022 by SinisterSlay.6973

[DerAlteSack.3572]

5 minutes ago, Makuragee.3058 said:

The time is a bit too tide for open world meta. I try it countless time. Commanding, explaining making sure everyone is prep and ready, squad full all side at high everyone following instriction... And still failed, because prople dont know how to do a DPS build with good gear. Or they wipe to simple mechanic due to the lack of tutoriel in the game 😛

 

locking side mission behind is kind of sad... I cant finish Marjory side quest becauses I need to kill the deep sea dragon, wich I did once (I have my turtle). My victory rate to date is a sad sad... 1/20

 

I think the wipe to "simple" mechanics is the problem. Though there have been plenty tutorials in the EoD Story. There was even an entire mission (That I still wish I could have skipped) that was just a tutorial on CC damage, blocking and evading. So I wouldn't really say that there is a lack of a tutorial in the game. 

My Successrate is I think 6/9 (5/6 after the nerf) with mostly random people.

[Zzik.5873]

1 minute ago, SinisterSlay.6973 said:

I discovered that Marjory thing is truely evil.  When you trigger the last one, it auto jumps you into an instance, losing your completed map so you can't use your other 14 minutes to complete other things.

So be careful, do the last Marjory last, like when you have 30 seconds left on the map and you've done everything else.

kitten thank for the tip!!!

What a kitten move to tp you out of youre rare victory map

[SinisterSlay.6973]

How about this. Make the contributor buff permanent when you win. Like every win is 1% account bound added until the max 10. That way after you've done the meta 10 times successfully, you just start at max and don't need to redo everything.

 

Also reward track. That would be nice. Except for people fishing. Not sure how to stop them getting the reward track for taking up space on the map.

Edited March 29, 2022 by SinisterSlay.6973

[Zzik.5873]

1 minute ago, SinisterSlay.6973 said:

How about this. Make the contributor buff permanent when you win. Like every win is 1% account bound added until the max 10. That way after you've done the event 10 times successfully, you just start at max and don't need to redo everything.

 

Also reward track. That would be nice. Except for people fishing. Not sure how to stop them getting the reward track for taking up space on the map.

The event should still be winnable with people fishing on the map since they deaign the map to be played witbout doing the meta. I still belive that the timer is too tight

[DerAlteSack.3572]

1 minute ago, SinisterSlay.6973 said:

How about this. Make the contributor buff permanent when you win. Like every win is 1% account bound added until the max 10. That way after you've done the event 10 times successfully, you just start at max and don't need to redo everything.

 

Also reward track. That would be nice. Except for people fishing. Not sure how to stop them getting the reward track for taking up space on the map.

Usually how the reward track works, is that you only get participation by doing events and loose it again over time if you don't do them. The idea would be to get rid of the buff and couple it to the reward track. Something else that might help would be to immediatly start the escorts as soon as all three regions reach "high", so there is no need to "wait around" until the meta truly starts.

[blp.3489]

5 minutes ago, DerAlteSack.3572 said:

Usually how the reward track works, is that you only get participation by doing events and loose it again over time if you don't do them. The idea would be to get rid of the buff and couple it to the reward track. Something else that might help would be to immediately start the escorts as soon as all three regions reach "high", so there is no need to "wait around" until the meta truly starts.

I really like the idea that if you do the pre-events and escorts quickly you can get into the later events sooner, preferably but not necessarily with more time on the timer to defeat Soo-won.

[hardy.7469]

Just shows that if this was an instanced raid, the people that are good at it would be enjoying it a lot more, but as a meta map...

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

15 minutes ago, hardy.7469 said:

Just shows that if this was an instanced raid, the people that are good at it would be enjoying it a lot more, but as a meta map...

If it only it was actually Raid difficulty...

[Yoshitsune.8537]

10 hours ago, danickar.3495 said:

So just so I understand, you think there should be rewards even if the event fails? 

 

Either having better rewards along the progression of the meta, or making sure an organized group will succeed even if you have really low DPS in the squad.

It's just very unfair that even if you are a decent level player and do everything right, you can still loose due to the fact that there were afk/auto1 players in the group that you didn't know of. 

 

So yes, better rewards OR easier event OR shorter event, anything would be fine, but LONG event, NO rewards when failing, and RANDOMNESS (=success will depend on your group composition) is asking too much in my opinion.

[Veprovina.4876]

11 hours ago, danickar.3495 said:

So just so I understand, you think there should be rewards even if the event fails? 

You can do drizzlewood and yet out of the map before the boss starts and you'll have tons of rewards successful boss or no.

Dragon stand rewards your participation every so often and there's chests and pods to open with loot across the map as you progress.

In Dragons End, there's no such thing, and for "the hardest meta that lasts 3 hours" if they want to keep it hard and long, it needs to also be rewarding along the way.

 

I think they missed the point of the people complaints entirely with this update, but whatever...

[TigStripe.2379]

I just get so tired of not being able to attack Soo-Won.

The spear charge phase takes too long, period, end of discussion. 

There's no way to damage her during crystal/spirit phase.

Tail interrupting any kind of flow to the fight, and let's not even mention how it seems that there's always a CC bar on Soo during tail phases.

Charge attack taking about twice as long as it needs to for her to become targetable again. It's okay to put a hitbox on the platform before her hand touches it.

I'm all for this fight. I like the attacks. The mechanics. The threshold phases. I like it all. But when half the time I'm just waiting for an opportunity to attack the boss, it's no wonder I've only ever been in two attempts where we actually managed to hit her post 3-boss split.

[ugrakarma.9416]

I have on sucessfull runs past week(100%, every day) the key to this meta is almost about stack extras buff's(jades ones + map participation). this make meta doable even with high rate mechanic fails(i mean 30% players dying).....

The elitist toxic culture blinded from a simple solution. Instead of "force" squad stack buff, they focu to much on turning each player into a raid player, "meta build", "rotations".

Edited March 30, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[ugrakarma.9416]

13 minutes ago, TigStripe.2379 said:

I just get so tired of not being able to attack Soo-Won.

The spear charge phase takes too long, period, end of discussion. 

There's no way to damage her during crystal/spirit phase.

Tail interrupting any kind of flow to the fight, and let's not even mention how it seems that there's always a CC bar on Soo during tail phases.

Charge attack taking about twice as long as it needs to for her to become targetable again. It's okay to put a hitbox on the platform before her hand touches it.

I'm all for this fight. I like the attacks. The mechanics. The threshold phases. I like it all. But when half the time I'm just waiting for an opportunity to attack the boss, it's no wonder I've only ever been in two attempts where we actually managed to hit her post 3-boss split.

This mess started with freaky DRM's design.

All DRM's bosses have a "invencible phase" at each 25% or 30% hp loss. its a cheap, uncreative solution to make them appear less hp spounge.

Edited March 30, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[TigStripe.2379]

5 minutes ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

i have on sucessfull runs past week(100%) the key to this meta is almost about stack extres buff's(jades ones + map participation). this make meta doable even with high rate mechanic fails(i mean 30% players dying).....

Clearly not, as I've been part of several runs with organized groups with buff sharing and constant reminders regarding the jade buffs and EMPs, and I've yet to see the boss fall below 25% more than once (and that was on a pug map, of all things). The fight's flow is too random. People aren't responding well to managing positions with various attacks/phases.

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

3 minutes ago, TigStripe.2379 said:

Clearly not, as I've been part of several runs with organized groups with buff sharing and constant reminders regarding the jade buffs and EMPs, and I've yet to see the boss fall below 25% more than once (and that was on a pug map, of all things). The fight's flow is too random. People aren't responding well to managing positions with various attacks/phases.

 

I agreed, i was on discord which reduce mechanic fail rate.

I think requiring discord is too much for OW metas. i was "professional wvw'er" years ago into organized squad and all that stuff, i just get enough. i don't jump on Open World to get into over-organized stuff.

Edited March 30, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Hollowhisper.1093]

Same conclusion here. You can do Marionette and Dragonstorm in public or private. All your ideas about event reward progress are valid, too, with rewards being handed out for each successful step of the meta.

Also, Soo-Won needs a "guild event" trigger just like Karka Queen and Tequatl, because right now it's nearly impossible for Guilds to do the meta as "their" event. That's a shame, really, and I wonder why all these design ideas weren't on the table when ANet cooked this meta up or if they indeed were, why they got shelved.

Whatever the reasons, I sometimes think ANet makes design decisions on the fly and when the gaming community makes proposals for adjustments they do it in a piecemeal fashion as if they wanted to say "Oh yeah, we didn't think of this. But it's a sound idea, let's do it. Thanks for your feedback."

Examples?

- Turtle detached from successful EoD meta completion
- Rewards upped (a bit) for a 2 hour game event
- Marjory's "Looking Back" being detached from successful EoD meta completion
- Specialisation items being detached from story completion
- Tier 3 bot modules now buyable from a vendor
- Rest bonus in Arborstone: First none, then in the inn and now a week later in all of Arborstone
- see above, but NOT in starting cities across the world (why?!)
- WvW loot disintegration (why?!) - I bet they will reverse on this again.

I bet you will find more than these...

For me these are not mere oversights, these are fundamental misjudgements in a design process and their subsequent U-turns. You could also say they don't know kitten what they want and what their gamers want.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Hollowhisper.1093

[Leesaa.5418]

On 3/29/2022 at 10:38 AM, Makuragee.3058 said:

locking side mission behind is kind of sad... I cant finish Marjory side quest becauses I need to kill the deep sea dragon, wich I did once (I have my turtle). My victory rate to date is a sad sad... 1/20

 

Marjory is now available in all Dragons End locations when the meta is NOT active.  I completed looking back today when the meta was not active. 

Edited March 31, 2022 by Leesaa.5418

[Maria Murtor.7253]

What should be changed immediately are the two first CC phases. It seems they are accruing at the very same time when there's a splitt phase with the tail. So, you either remove the buff by fighting the tail and miss the exposed bonus in the process or you CC the boss and do little damage because the tail buff is still active. I don't think it's supposed to be this way.