I feel excluded from EoD because Soo Won meta event is too hard

[Daniyyel.3428]

I have a friend who commands the event 3-4 times a week. There is a group of 15-25 who run pretty regularly. He used to command the event more than once a day everyday but that was getting to be to much. It's not a guild. Just a group of us who really enjoy this meta. He commands the event, the rest of us are all from different guilds. So far the win ratio is 41 wins and 1 lose. He does not require any type of kill proof or running a specific build. He recommends to run whatever you do your best on and to have fun. He does require a person to use discord so they can hear the call outs. He highly recommends everyone have 10 contribution. The start time is 8:45PM CST so he can get everyone on the same map. The run starts about 15 min before prep stage. So this may be more time than some are willing to put in. If you feel this is for you please contact me ingame. We welcome everyone. It's about bringing the community together and having fun.  I've personally been in a lot of failed runs.  That's his win rate.  I've only ran the meta with him 20+ times and all have been wins, most with 2-4 min left on timer.  The commander is all about having fun as a community.  Have never heard him put anyone down. He is very chill and easy to get along with.  Just an all around great person leading such a large group of people.  I would post his ign but have read this is not allowed. 

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by danielrjones.8759

[Razadune.9260]

On 4/4/2022 at 5:55 PM, Sobx.1758 said:

How is this an arbitrary difficulty? You think you can't learn during the actual event because... what exactly? No, people that see they're failing are challenged to do better.

    

No, they aren't. There is no way at all to tell if your individual contribution is making any real difference or not with 50 people there, and there's no feedback for 50 different people to extrapolate that the reason the event is failing was because of poor positioning, a failure to CC a breakbar at the right time, that they're attacking the wrong spot for too long, that they didn't bounce up the orbs fast enough, that they should have helped rez someone at a certain time rather than pouring DPS, that they aren't doing enough DPS, that too many people went to the same platform, or some other factor.    

     

There's a dozen different ways to fail on the event and no real sense of which it is that you'd ever need to personally improve on in order to have a successful run. You could have done everything perfectly, and failed because 10 others didn't... You could have done everything wrong, and succeeded because no one else did. In either case, the only thing you know is that you failed or didn't, so how are you challenged to do better?

[Sobx.1758]

27 minutes ago, tclark.8956 said:

No, they aren't. There is no way at all to tell if your individual contribution is making any real difference or not with 50 people there, and there's no feedback for 50 different people to extrapolate that the reason the event is failing was because of poor positioning, a failure to CC a breakbar at the right time, that they're attacking the wrong spot for too long, that they didn't bounce up the orbs fast enough, that they should have helped rez someone at a certain time rather than pouring DPS, that they aren't doing enough DPS, that too many people went to the same platform, or some other factor.   

If your positioning is poor, you keep getting hit/downed/killed/stunned and so on. If you fail to CC the breakbar... usually it's self-explenatory by the way the breakbar isn't going down. If they're attacking the wrong spot for too long, then they're not reading what commies write, because they do navigate the squad/s -so the even if you don't get explicit orders from the game, other players can -and do- help you learn. If they didn't bounce up the orbs fast enough... I think they just die, so again seems like a pretty clear indicator that they didn't do it fast enough? If in 3rd expansion they still don't understand why your party/squad/team members aren't better off downed on the ground, then... uh... What kind of information about that do you exactly need? Back to the previous content, where you've tried to skip the whole learning process in order to rush for the latest stuff, I guess? If too many people go to the same platform, you can bet your kitten there's always someone specifically talking about it in squad/map chat. Always. Every single time. And if that's not enough, they fail and the platforms reset -that's not even a new mechanic in the game, nor is it DE-specific btw and the event starts counting down after the first one dies and informs you that's the countdown until they regenerate. Does this still somehow not count as feedback? Sure.

The game doesn't give you a list of steps you need to do one-after-another and that's good, because it's a game and not a grocery list. Learning the new events/activity/content is a process, not a flick of a switch and if you still prefer to have "a grocery list" instead, you're free to google it and read the instructions or watch a video. It's your choice. Either way there is plenty of feedback and information for players that want to try and learn something.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[medivh.4725]

Last I heard after she kept swopping sides, every time she does that it removes all conditions on her? If so the devs have just made it harder isn't it. I went back for some soonwon revenge, didn't manage to kill it but didn't know what we done wrong either. 
Maybe its just the wrong crowd. I am left scratching my head wondering

Edited April 6, 2022 by medivh.4725

[Sab.6409]

1 hour ago, danielrjones.8759 said:

I have a friend who commands the event 3-4 times a week. There is a group of 15-25 who run pretty regularly. He used to command the event more than once a day everyday but that was getting to be to much. It's not a guild. Just a group of us who really enjoy this meta. He commands the event, the rest of us are all from different guilds. So far the win ratio is 41 wins and 1 lose. He does not require any type of kill proof or running a specific build. He recommends to run whatever you do your best on and to have fun. He does require a person to use discord so they can hear the call outs. He highly recommends everyone have 10 contribution. The start time is 8:45PM CST so he can get everyone on the same map. The run starts about 45 min before prep stage. So this may be more time than some are willing to put in. If you feel this is for you please contact me ingame. We welcome everyone. It's about bringing the community together and having fun.  I've personally been in a lot of failed runs.  That's his win rate.  I've only ran the meta with him 20+ times and all have been wins, most with 2-4 min left on timer.  The commander is all about having fun as a community.  Have never heard him put anyone down. He is very chill and easy to get along with.  Just an all around great person leading such a large group of people.  I would post his ign but have read this is not allowed. 

 

I am the friend Mr Dan here is referring to. I've run over 40 runs with a 98% success rate. If you'd like to have fun and enjoy this meta (and win!) please feel free to contact either one of us (myself or Dan).

I look forward to seeing you all on the battlefield!

[Alcatraznc.3869]

A good indicator of whether or not you can expect a group to succeed is in how much CC your group does, followed up by how much damage it does. I tend to check how goes the first few champion we face during the meta and if there's no CC; I just leave. People have no idea how important CC are to both survive and deal damage. 

[The Boz.2038]

14 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

How is this responding to anything I wrote? (maybe it does, but I just can't see it, need explanation about how you went from what I wrote to this particular response)

The story teaches you things, and if you follow it, you literally learn how to do the fight. This, much like how the non-strikes and the other three metas, fully prepares you for all of the mechanics in the DE meta, and destroys the "game doesn't teach you anything" argument. Thus, in order to not be proven wrong, the story must be flawed and bad, and any possible weakness must be exalted for all to see. So, "story is bad, so it can't be relied on to teach you anything".

[Ashantara.8731]

On 4/5/2022 at 12:30 AM, Erise.5614 said:

Just do it faster isn't teaching.

I think you are missing the point completely. "Doing faster" is not what is necessary for success, it's "doing better": equipment, builds and the understanding of skill synergies are leading to higher DPS, an understanding of CC leads to much faster melting of breakbars. So efficiency is the point here, which - of course - leads to finishing this meta with more minutes left on the timer.

The same efficiency is required for all endgame content, of which most does not run on a timer. So the timer here is a measurement of the squad's efficiency rather than a race of "Do it faster!" Faster is not the actual point here.

[Genesis.8572]

I know that this meta has been tweaked as far as difficulty goes, but after all the horror stories about this meta, I was pleasantly surprised when I did the meta. I initially toured the map solely for map completion and specialization weapon collection purposes. I had no intention of doing the DE meta. I was in a map full of PUGs and roamers. When it came time for the Battle of the Jade Sea Meta, the PUG commander barely gave any instructions apart from escorting the three groups, CC, and the occasional "spread out." We succeeded at the boss with about 8 minutes left. So I got a turtle egg on my first try. I have since done it a few more times with only one loss so far. 

 

There are definitely a lot of ways the meta can turn south: e.g., CC, not burning sub-bosses at the same time, the randomized back-and-forth, etc. But there are also a lot of ways that it's pretty forgiving: hello, airship WP. 

 

2 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I think you are missing the point completely. "Doing faster" is not what is necessary for success, it's "doing better": equipment, builds and the understanding of skill synergies are leading to higher DPS, an understanding of CC leads to much faster melting of breakbars. So efficiency is the point here, which - of course - leads to finishing this meta with more minutes left on the timer.

The same efficiency is required for all endgame content, of which most does not run on a timer. So the timer here is a measurement of the squad's efficiency rather than a race of "Do it faster!" Faster is not the actual point here.

Agreed. I don't think everyone needs the optimal gear or learn the optimal builds from websites and what not. There will be those who are. These people tend to be the "specialists" anyway (e.g., support, alac, heal, etc.). However, the meta does assume that you know (a) how to play your profession, (b) how to apply CC pressure, and (c) the basic boss encounter mechanics. This meta is less a matter of "gitgud" and more a matter of "gitdecent." 

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

The story teaches you things, and if you follow it, you literally learn how to do the fight. This, much like how the non-strikes and the other three metas, fully prepares you for all of the mechanics in the DE meta, and destroys the "game doesn't teach you anything" argument. Thus, in order to not be proven wrong, the story must be flawed and bad, and any possible weakness must be exalted for all to see. So, "story is bad, so it can't be relied on to teach you anything".

Yup, that's exactly what it looked like to me, but I thought I'll ask, just in case I've missed something crucial there.

🔸The event needs to teach you!

🔹But the story and previous content leading to this meta teaches you, so why does the event need to do the same every time it's replayed just because some people try to rush to the end?

🔸Well, the story is unskippable and it's a bad design!

??

Edited April 6, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[blp.3489]

I did a run yesterday and everything seemed to go well, the breakbars were quickly broken, the side bosses were defeated together, there weren't a lot of people being downed, people were in the right place.  The only reason I can think of that it failed was lack of sufficient DPS.  There's no way for me to know whether the rest of the squad had bad builds, were auto-attacking, although the quick CCs of the breakbar suggests people were paying attention and putting in effort.  I can't honestly recall how much RNG movement there was, it didn't stand out to me that there was a lot.  As one fiftieth of the squad, what am I to learn from this?  Probably that when I saw myself in the top 10 DPS during the escort I should have just quit because we were doomed.

[Xaxxus.6719]

As someone who does not do fractals, or raids (Not that I don't want to, but I just don't have consistent time to dedicate to a raiding schedule), I actually don't find the dragons end meta all that difficult from a fight perspective. Every time I've actually made it to the fight, the group has been mostly successful.

 

Rather I've found the most difficult part is getting a group together. If you happen to join the big meta train in LFG too late, you are pretty much stuck unable to join the server.

 

For the fight itself, the only major issue I've seen is sometimes soo-won goes into a frenzy and spams her bite attack over and over. That is a huge chunk of time where nobody can DPS.

 

These issues can be fixed in a few ways:

1. address the full map issue
2. fix soo-won's attack RNG

Full Map Issue

I think the full map problem is the biggest issue. I generally have no issues joining other meta events so long as I get there within 10 min before the event start time.

 

But with dragons end, the event from start to finish takes a very long time. Not only do you have the main event which takes ~45 min, but you also have the prep phase which is required to get the full loot from the main event. As such, meta groups start up much sooner, and the servers fill up much earlier. So unless you have a 2 hours or so to dedicate to this event, you may not get into a public group.

 

Secondly, joining  these full servers is a huge pain in the kitten. If you join a public group thats on another server, you should be put into a queue to move to that server, rather than having to spam the "join user in dragons end" button over and over.

 

So how do we fix this problem?

1. We need to encourage more groups, rather than one giant meta train. Maybe give commanders/party leaders a sizeable bonus for a successful meta event completion. That way you will see more groups in LFG rather than just 1.
2. add a queue to join full maps so that you don't have to spam the join button over and over. So if there is still only one group going, it gives you a less annoying method of attempting to get in.
3. in order to make #2 above work, encourage non-participants of meta events to leave full servers (similar to the popup you see when you are in an empty server). Also add an afk timer to move afk players off of full servers so that people can get in.
4. rather than basing the awards on meta prep participation, award keys from meta prep participation. Use the keys to open the chests at the end. This means that if you don't have time to do the full meta, you can still get some keys for participating in the prep to use at a later date. It also encourages groups to form closer to the time of the meta, giving people more time to join before the server is full.

Soo-won attack rng

 

So far I've been successful almost every time I've fought soo-won. But there have been a few times where I have had a group that was more than powerful enough to win, but we still lost due to weird behaviour on soo-wons part.

 

Last night for example, she went into a frenzy and started spamming her bite attack over and over. This happened a few times during the fight. As a result this took a massive chunk of DPS uptime away from us and despite having over 52 people we still lost. Our DPS wasn't bad at all. We just couldn't do any DPS because she was constantly doing that attack.

 

This should not happen. Certain boss abilities should have some sort of cooldown preventing them from being spammed like that. The fight was literally impossible to win at this point because we just couldn't do any damage to her.

 

•  

 

[Sobx.1758]

16 minutes ago, Xaxxus.6719 said:

Full Map Issue

I think the full map problem is the biggest issue. I generally have no issues joining other meta events so long as I get there within 10 min before the event start time.

 

But with dragons end, the event from start to finish takes a very long time. Not only do you have the main event which takes ~45 min, but you also have the prep phase which is required to get the full loot from the main event. As such, meta groups start up much sooner, and the servers fill up much earlier. So unless you have a 2 hours or so to dedicate to this event, you may not get into a public group.

As you rightfully noticed, this is less of a "full map issue" with low number of squads available, but more of the "meta length" issue, where the actual event chain is the prep+meta. I think they've partially adressed it by making it easier'/faster to get the dmg % bonus within shorter time. It's not that other meta events don't have these full squads you're unable to join -it's that you're trying to join DE late (which, in itself, isn't exactly understandable, since full 2h from the start of the prep events was definitely too long 😄)

 

Secondly, pretty sure this idea...

Quote

Secondly, joining  these full servers is a huge pain in the kitten. If you join a public group thats on another server, you should be put into a queue to move to that server, rather than having to spam the "join user in dragons end" button over and over.

...actively works against this goal:

16 minutes ago, Xaxxus.6719 said:

We need to encourage more groups, rather than one giant meta train.

If you make queing available then people will have even less of a reason to start new groups. Always said these "join instance queues" would be unproductive and I'm still pretty sure that would be the case here.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[medivh.4725]

I am honestly tired of losing this meta soon-won fight over and over. And I am not so looking forward to another soonwon fight already. Fatigued. 

The harvest temple strike is as bad as well. Zero wins so far.

Maybe the whole harvest temple strike and end boss meta got to be relooked at. Why is this meta is harder then a raid? Most players just casual not die hard try 5 times a day you know. 

Anet you listen?

Edited April 7, 2022 by medivh.4725

[The Boz.2038]

5 hours ago, medivh.4725 said:

Why is this meta is harder then a raid?

Because it's not.
Don't worry. You'll soon win.

Edited April 7, 2022 by The Boz.2038

[Minjin.8259]

On 4/5/2022 at 6:52 PM, Soxy.4792 said:

I am the friend Mr Dan here is referring to. I've run over 40 runs with a 98% success rate. If you'd like to have fun and enjoy this meta (and win!) please feel free to contact either one of us (myself or Dan).

I look forward to seeing you all on the battlefield!

You have the right attitude!  I just did the meta with a commander that spent 8 minutes after it was over telling us how disappointed he was and how annoyed he was, and that we were the worst group he ever had.  But here is the thing, he told us that after we beat it with a couple minutes to spare, and he was serious!  🤦‍♀️

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

8 hours ago, medivh.4725 said:

 Why is this meta is harder then a raid? 

If it's harder than a Raid why don't you try one to prove yourself wrong?

Surely the meta with less than 10k required DPS, heavily telegraphed attacks in an environment where people can revive themselves,  get +25% damage from doing events alone and a bunch of extra stats from Jade Buffs is harder than a Raid that requires specific roles, HEALERS and more than 10k DPS.

[The Boz.2038]

3 hours ago, Minjin.8259 said:

You have the right attitude!  I just did the meta with a commander that spent 8 minutes after it was over telling us how disappointed he was and how annoyed he was, and that we were the worst group he ever had.  But here is the thing, he told us that after we beat it with a couple minutes to spare, and he was serious!  🤦‍♀️

That sounds sad, tbh.

[Gibson.4036]

It definitely feels like I am seeing more disatisfaction in game than I am used to seeing.

There's always been the occassional person who grumps about how a commander is leading, or how other players aren't doing a meta right, but I'm seeing regular complaining, not just in DE, but in all the zones.

[xenon.3264]

On 4/5/2022 at 11:05 PM, chronometria.3708 said:

Was just in arborstone and someone pointed out an LFG group requiring 1500LI.

this is getting out of hand.

 

 

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It definitely feels like I am seeing more disatisfaction in game than I am used to seeing.

There's always been the occassional person who grumps about how a commander is leading, or how other players aren't doing a meta right, but I'm seeing regular complaining, not just in DE, but in all the zones.

So DE meta event somehow changed all the zones by its mere existance?

Previous content and events also had disgruntled players in map chats, if you didn't see it before then maybe you're just paying more attention to it now.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Cuks.8241]

4 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It definitely feels like I am seeing more disatisfaction in game than I am used to seeing.

There's always been the occassional person who grumps about how a commander is leading, or how other players aren't doing a meta right, but I'm seeing regular complaining, not just in DE, but in all the zones.

Well I noticed this before the meta. Its anecdotal but ok. I think new expansion brings a lot of people that are here only for a short time, want to complete things fast and move one. Maybe this type of gaming also brings more complaints because its in their nature to complete fast (not judging, if it suits them, thats fine).

If I'm here to stay I dont really care if I fail a few times before I learn. Will have plenty of time in the future so content that distracts me by having to learn it, is better than a fast rush anyway.

Just speculation on my end.

[maxwelgm.4315]

This topic has so many on-point complaints past the OP's post and none of them have been remotely addressed or even acknowledged by Anet, which is a bit worrisome. The DE meta is definitely subpar in comparison to their vision for it (the "ultimate" open world battle), and we actually have an example of what a good ultimate battle would look like in Dragon's Stand, making it baffling that they can't pull it off after more than a month of adjusting. To name a few things from this topic alone:

 

- the player cap heavily incentivizes joining much earlier than you could in order to get participation and actually contribute to the meta. There is no window for exploring either because of this: you will have people yelling at you to leave the map if you are not there for the meta even if the meta is not close, because they need to fill up and top up on participation to have a better chance of completing it and not wasting their time. If you DON'T join a map working towards meta right after reset, you will be clicking "join instance" a lot more than it is reasonable just for a shot at doing the meta.

 

- the structure of the meta also makes it difficult for overflow maps to form. It's not a full compromise like Dragon's Stand but it's not like a "plug and play" experience such as Dragonstorm either - you have this strange limbo of organization where starting too late means you're doomed to not have enough people with enough boons/participation but starting too early means you will all be capped up on what you need and getting almost no reward/no progression on the meta itself for several minutes while you just wait around. I suppose this waiting around time is what Anet intended to be the exploration window for players to do goofing around but all you get instead are people telling everyone not focused on meta to leave and most of the other achievements being ignored by groups.

 

- The waypoint unlocks are counterintuitive and even though it's clearly a full map meta, the map itself does not commit to being a meta. What I mean basically is that I can reach up to the place of the last battle as soon as I join map, which is in contrast to something like Dragonfall or Dragon's Stand where access to parts of the map are intrinsically tied to the meta progressing - an excellent choice to make it clear to players: they are there to play the meta, exploring is secondary and comes after that is done.

 

- Tied to the above point, the rewards are abysmal before you get the actual hero's choice chest. Dragon's Stand has a massive sense of progression but also feels extremely rewarding because you amass so many chests also while you progress and not only after you're nearly done. The preparation phase feels lackluster and disjointed to the meta, and it should be far better rewarded.

 

- Finally, there is too little time to explore after the fight is done, especially with all the above points meaning that everyone should be working towards the meta all the time. There are several achievements that have to be done post meta and while it's OK that you can't do all of them in a single run, it's ludicrous at the moment that it requires several runs if you know exactly what you're looking for.

 

As for the fight itself, in my experience it remains that she can suddenly start doing several dives into the arena and switch positions so often we lose several seconds of DPS. I personally don't mind the tight timer but losing because she decided to fly several times in a row on the last % is really bad. I think guilds and organized groups are going to optimize the strategies as well as Anet is surely going to do extra crunching on this, so it's not a major problem IMO. The real issue at the moment is that even if the fight becomes easier to win over time, it's a "full map meta where the map doesn't quite want to be a meta map", in the sense that the entire preparation phase is lackluster in both rewards and feeling of progression, and the final phase is cumbersome to organize and even difficult to join if you haven't been there since preparation.

[Tachenon.5270]

I wonder if maybe Soo Won's consistently inconsistent frenzied fight or flight reaction is not as random as it seems. Maybe there's something we're doing that triggers it. Like, I dunno, some specific type of CC or damage that, like, tickles. Or something.

Be funny if doing too much damage too quickly caused it.

[Gibson.4036]

2 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Well I noticed this before the meta. Its anecdotal but ok. I think new expansion brings a lot of people that are here only for a short time, want to complete things fast and move one. Maybe this type of gaming also brings more complaints because its in their nature to complete fast (not judging, if it suits them, thats fine).

If I'm here to stay I dont really care if I fail a few times before I learn. Will have plenty of time in the future so content that distracts me by having to learn it, is better than a fast rush anyway.

Just speculation on my end.

My observation was definitely anecdotal and completely subjective.

The thing that stood out to me recently that it was more than just the DE meta that I've seen people grumping about in chat.

Even beyond GW2, there is the general sense that people are more on edge in the world at large than in past times, so who knows?