Preparation phase in DE

[blp.3489]

Is there some player experience advantage to the long preparation stage in Dragon's End?  I understand that you get the buffs during that stage but the buffs endure through map changes, i.e. they will still be there unless I play that character on another map for a couple of hours.  Once you have the buffs there is no real point to the preparation phase, but you still need to hit high readiness in the three zones.  Actually, I don't know what happens if you don't hit high preparedness, other than not getting the 5% damage bonus.

It seems kind of strange to me that I'll be on a map, we will hit high readiness in all three zones, and it will say that the attack starts in 27 minutes.  How does having such a long time before the start of the attack contribute to player enjoyment?

As far as I can see the only effect of the preparation phase is to make the meta take two hours instead of one and force players to loiter around on the map for long periods.  Would the meta be less of an experience for players if you cut out the preparation phase and scaled the health pools of the opponents back by the amount of the buffs?

[Farohna.6247]

It allows for players to be able to acquire the full 10 stacks of bonus.  That being said, I could see it being shortened as it's very very long.  Much like the Drizzlewood meta originally was two hours and they cut it in half because it is very time consuming.  

[Gibson.4036]

So far I only have success finding a good group 60-75 minutes before the escorts start. Even at 50 minutes the maps are full and there’s a good chance of getting a map unable to see the meta through all the way.

That means showing up at 75 minutes till, getting full stacks and high readiness within a half hour, then hanging out for another half hour to forty five minutes.

I used that time to light lamps yesterday.

But it’s kind of odd to have that half hour of dead time in the middle of the meta.

[Hollowhisper.1093]

The prep phase was excellent for levelling the new (and mostly useless) masteries but after that the entire meta is just an unnecessary time sink. Yes, you will receive the maximum of +10 chests for the prep bonus but only if you overcome Randomius The Great and actually beat Soo Won. I find it all pretty useless and I have more fun doing Chak Gerent -> Octovine -> Augury Rock/Doppleganger and then whatever comes next: Junundu, Pinata, Serpent's Ire or Maws of Torment. You get more loot, meet cooler people without the demand for LI and in general makes me think I actually accomplished something.

[AliamRationem.5172]

It's just a waste of time.  Why they thought it was a good idea is beyond me.

[Veprovina.4876]

13 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's just a waste of time.  Why they thought it was a good idea is beyond me.

Wouldn't be if you got rewarded along the way for participation like on Drizzlewood and Dragon Stand.

But all you get is writs, some luck and maybe a blue unidentified  gear. 

 

So worth it! 🙄

 

Agree, waste of time.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Veprovina.4876

[Farohna.6247]

41 minutes ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Wouldn't be if you got rewarded along the way for participation like on Drizzlewood and Dragon Stand.

But all you get is writs, some luck and maybe a blue unidentified  gear. 

 

So worth it! 🙄

 

Agree, waste of time.

Good examples for extra reward incentives.  If I'm going to push a meta I'd like to have more reason.  I like the map, but it takes the entire time I have to play to do just this meta...mostly for achievements or dailies.  Cut the time in half, improve and increase the rewards. 

[blp.3489]

So, other people agree that the preparation phase doesn't seem to have any benefit, is there anyone who can come up with a rationalization for why Anet might have thought it should be this way?  The only reason I can think of for having a half hour lull in the middle of the meta is to make it an even two hours so the event would always start on the hour.  But that seems like an incredibly bad justification for wasting a half hour of the player's time, and that's not even touching on the no reward if you fail and not great rewards if you succeed.

Maybe they thought they should give commanders a half hour to organize their squad into subsquads and instruct the participants?

When EoD first launched I didn't mind the lull as much because it gave me time to run around harvesting the jadeite nodes, which refreshed with each new map, but then they "fixed" that.

[maxwelgm.4315]

I think Anet straight up didn't test DE or had a lot of trouble testing it before going live (and they wanted it to be the "ultimate" open world PvE meta...). Soo Won's glaringly unintended patterns of several bite attacks still remain, and some areas of the map are completely devoid of events and quite lackluster.

 

My guess is they somehow expected players to want to do the meta probably for the antique stones and that the success rate would be much higher than it was on release (probably it's still quite low because the bad design remains). This would offset the fact that the rest of the meta has no rewards and still mean players would have to work towards the boss itself by grinding extra stats for the battle. The only reason I can see for them to do this is because it's different from other maps, which would be awful if it's indeed what their line of thought was. It's different indeed, in that it is one of the worst designed full map metas they could have come up with. After Dragonstorm, Dragonfall and Dragon's Stand it's practically rejecting their previous hard work.

 

Some other signs that the DE map was not properly tested: the Jade Maw event becomes unplayable if people come to help you. Name any other event in the game where you actually want people to stay away and not come help you otherwise it will scale beyond what both of you can work with. There is also a chain of events for the Xunlai Jade right on the first WP and the players afk there actually scale it up to oblivion most of the time, making it yet another event they probably didn't expect to turn out like it did.

 

The event in Emerald Bluff with the researchers is also prone to bad scaling but it's so isolated that I don't know if the scaling or the fact that no one will help you do it to begin with is what is wrong with it. The very first time the map spawns there's also a bunch of events way down there next to the Harvest tower, and I feel this is really strange that they didn't add any kind of pacing to the map and just have things popping randomly starting from the opposite end of the map you first come from. Finally, the rewards are downright offensive during the prep phase and as soon as I have the map meta achievement I'm going back to Dragonfall where you are actually rewarded for being there the whole meta.

[Veprovina.4876]

1 hour ago, blp.3489 said:

is there anyone who can come up with a rationalization for why Anet might have thought it should be this way? 

The people working now are not as good as people who left? 🤷‍♂️

 

I honestly can't think of anything really except that the people who designed this have no idea what they're doing. Or were extremely cut for time and human resources and just scrapped this event together for completion's sake without too much thought into how it would affect the larger picture. 

Especially if there weren't enough people on the project. A few people can't think of everything. You need a bigger team for such big projects.

 

The worst part is - the preparation event is more or less mandatory if you want a chance to finish the meta. 

They made it so that 5 stacks of the buff can be obtained during the preevent, but another 5 you still need to get during the preparation.

 

Then you get worst RNG during Soo-Won fight, tail phases overlapping with 5 other mechancis and you fail.

 

Three hours of time spent totally worth it! 👏

 

So you have a 3 hour meta that rewards like, 10-20 writs (depending on how bothered you are by preevents), RNG mechanics and the absolute worst boss design ever, and all you get if you win is an antique summoning stone (or maybe amalgamated gemstone) and some useless items. And if you fail - you get nothing for your trouble. Some trash luck, maybe blue unindentified gear and XP. Idk about everyone else, but after 3 hours of intense beetle racing from event to event, i expect 3 hours worth of loot! T5-T6 mats, rares, exotics, larger quantities of EoD currency than on other maps in the same time, not just some writs, luck and maybe a 10g item that'll be worth 50 silver in a month.

 

And i'm sorry if someone put their heart and soul into the event just for me to call it badly designed and the people working on it bad at their jobs, but with such a huge oversight after oversight culminating in what has got to be the most baffling end result in the history of this game - you just have to say it for what it is. Badly designed. Whether this was indeed someone bad at their job, or any other number of things (time constraints most likely) that could have happened i don't know. 

 

Everyone makes mistakes, and i hope the designers can see past their own pride on this one, and listen to the overwhelming amount of criticism, and re-do the event. 

I sincerely doubt Anet had time to test this event, and think of the larger implications of it - so consider this a test run, a beta - and beta failed, there's tons of feedback on what's not good, now you can do it right.

 

It's not fun, it's not rewarding, it's obtrusive to people on the map that are **not** interested in the meta (because someone thought it cool to require a full squad from start to finish, then put fishing spots on the map for casual fun), and they in turn are obtrusive to the people that are there for the event. It's starting to become an out of control toxic environment because it puts elitist crowd (that were til now contained within instanced content) against more casual crowd with less time to commit that play open world how they like. One side blames the other for lack of DPS, while DPS was never the cause of why this event keeps failing, plus, this event goes against the age old GW2 design principle that you should never feel bad about meeting another player in the open world. 

 

There are no excuses for this levels of bad, no matter how it came to this and why, it's time for a redesign.

This event can still be saved and fun, just bring it in line with what open world meta events are. Not this.

And give elitists their CMs so they can stop being toxic in open world events that are supposed to be for everyone of any skill level.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Veprovina.4876

[Fueki.4753]

Outside of it being events to fill the bar for one of the last story steps, I don't see any value in the pre events. Actually, I don't see any value in having that bar at all.

Arenanet could easily just cull the pre-events, rebalance Soo-Won without 10 stacks and boon coverage and remove that meaningless bar from the story.

This would make Dragon's End an overall better experience and the meta event might even see higher completion rates.

Without the pre-events, Arenanet could also put the meta on a fixed timer, so that people can better plan their time.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[DarcShriek.5829]

Prep phase is too long.  Most instances get the rating to high in 15 minutes.  Then most of the players just sit around for 45 minutes.  It needs to be shortened.

[Veprovina.4876]

14 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Outside of it being events to fill the bar for one of the last story steps, I don't see any value in the pre events. Actually, I don't see any value in having that bar at all.

If that bar gives me loot each few minutes of participation, fine. Let there be bar! 😉

 

14 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Arenanet could easily just cull the pre-events, rebalance Soo-Won without 10 stacks and boon coverage and remove that meaningless bar from the story.

If you mean, preparation phase, yes, that entire part should be separate from Soo-Won meta. Because after preparation **then** come pre-events, and then boss fight. 

They can easily remove the stack requirement, and leave the prep phase for fishers, XP farmers, map completionists and achievement hunters to do. There's literally no reason why you couldn' have the meta without the stacks. 

Imagine having to do entire Pylon phase in Auric basin in order to even try doing Octovine. And all you get for Pylon events are some luck and map currency (without the keys and loot you get to open in chests that spawn along the way). I bet Octovine would be a lot less popular.

14 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

This would make Dragon's End an overall better experience and the meta event might even see higher completion rates.

Without the pre-events, Arenanet could also put the meta on a fixed timer, so that people can better plan their time.

The only thing that will see higher completion rates is if they re-design the boss fight to remove the RNG mechanics. 

You can do 40k dps the entire fight, but if you get hit by bad RNG, phases overlapping, losing time on clearing those phases, then losing time in Soo-Won being unable to be damaged when she thrashes about, and you'll lose. 

That entire map needs a redesign in terms of event/meta/reward structure.

Just one thing won't do cause they already tried it, they made it so you can get some stacks from pre-events. 

But that didn't change how maps open and close, meaning squads still have to go to the map when it's starting - otherwise they won't get their entire squad in. So, needing to do prep phase didn't change, you're still a burden if you're on a meta map and you're just there to do map completion. 

Theese 2 things are not compatible!

Either make this an instance like Dragonstorm, meaning, everyone there is there for the exact same reason, or make the meta doable without needing raid compositions and freaking LUCK to do. 

Cause everyone loves RNG, i mean, brilliant move devs!

[ens.9854]

Prep phase length is to make the meta cycle 2 hours... why does it matter if it completes early? Just don't show up halfway into the PREVIOUS cycle and complain you need to wait 90 minutes. Just show up 30 before to get your 5 stacks if you are going to tempt fate with random maps.

People already do Soo-Won without prep or with late prep on a regular basis - it's way more time efficient. Some commanders even list on LFG and have very good success rates.

 

However I agree the +5%  map bonus with +20% personal is backwards, and should be reversed. A casual player who spent 90 minutes on the map grinding out the preparation is not really contributing that much to the success rate because their DPS is casual level and that +20% on top isn't too meaningful. These players should be able to contribute by doing the long prep phase and providing a large bonus to OTHER players, not themselves. There should be no complaints since good squads already have no trouble with 0 prep anyway.

[Hollowhisper.1093]

16 hours ago, blp.3489 said:

So, other people agree that the preparation phase doesn't seem to have any benefit, is there anyone who can come up with a rationalization for why Anet might have thought it should be this way?  The only reason I can think of for having a half hour lull in the middle of the meta is to make it an even two hours so the event would always start on the hour.  But that seems like an incredibly bad justification for wasting a half hour of the player's time, and that's not even touching on the no reward if you fail and not great rewards if you succeed.

Maybe they thought they should give commanders a half hour to organize their squad into subsquads and instruct the participants?

When EoD first launched I didn't mind the lull as much because it gave me time to run around harvesting the jadeite nodes, which refreshed with each new map, but then they "fixed" that.

Short answer: They seem to think that length = epic; which is a total fallacy. "The Rise Of Skywalker" is 2:22 hours and it's everything you DON'T put into a movie and hence it's the epitome of "un-epicness".

[Silent.6137]

The whole meta, prep phase to the final fights, can be completed in just over an hour. Not the 2 or 3 hours, as mentioned by some. Half hour to get all areas in high readiness and about 40 minutes to complete the escorts and fights.

The problem is with getting on a populated map. And waiting for others who are there just to farm to finish and leave. So we waste a half hour or more to make sure we get on a map to ensure a successful meta.

Solutions?

1.  Make the meta into an instanced meta, which is not ideal.
2. Close and re-open the map to start the prep phase (Just like Dragon's Stand). When maps re-open, the timer will start at xx:30 (or maybe a little more) to escort.
3. Commanders, after tagging up, move to a less populated map, instead of expecting everyone to keep spamming "Join".

Personally, I would not want the reward system to change too much. Participate to get full rewards. However, successfully completing each phases of the final battle should give better rewards, i.e. successes after 1st wisps, 1st splits, 2nd wisps and 2nd splits. If meta fails, these rewards will be auto-looted just before map closes. But the rewards will also be conditional upon amount of Dragon's End Contributor.

On a related note, all meta should require full participations to get full rewards. Dragonstorm's situation was addressed but other meta like Drakkar, you still see a handful each time staying out of the fight until the last moment.

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Gibson.4036]

33 minutes ago, ens.9854 said:

Prep phase length is to make the meta cycle 2 hours... why does it matter if it completes early? Just don't show up halfway into the PREVIOUS cycle and complain you need to wait 90 minutes. Just show up 30 before to get your 5 stacks if you are going to tempt fate with random maps.

People already do Soo-Won without prep or with late prep on a regular basis - it's way more time efficient. Some commanders even list on LFG and have very good success rates.

 

This, in my experience so far, is the best way to end up with a failed meta.

Getting there stupid early is the best way to find a good group.

[Hollowhisper.1093]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Outside of it being events to fill the bar for one of the last story steps, I don't see any value in the pre events. Actually, I don't see any value in having that bar at all.

Arenanet could easily just cull the pre-events, rebalance Soo-Won without 10 stacks and boon coverage and remove that meaningless bar from the story.

This would make Dragon's End an overall better experience and the meta event might even see higher completion rates.

Without the pre-events, Arenanet could also put the meta on a fixed timer, so that people can better plan their time.

This is a good idea and while we're at it, ANet should offer a Guild World Event flag just like Tequatl, Karka Queen, Triple Trouble and whatnot so that guilds can do this event with their own crew and put it in their event schedules. You know, after all, this is called "Guild" Wars, no?

[ens.9854]

27 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Getting there stupid early is the best way to find a good group.

It is most certainly not the best way to get a good group. You could join a certain open-to-all community discord and have a 100% success rate instantly. Or use LFG a lot and find the guilds that are good and run often, and usually form a bit before the 30 minute warning. Personally I check during 30 minute countdown phase and only bother with the meta if I find a squad in LFG.

 

If you are hoping to land into a map full of random players that ends up clearing, then yes, you will have better success arriving a bit early. More players will be heavily invested in completion and there will be time for a commander to step up. But it is still going to be a die roll. Good Experienced players are self-sorting themselves out of these maps by using LFG or discord to get better success.

Edited April 14, 2022 by ens.9854

[Gibson.4036]

7 hours ago, ens.9854 said:

It is most certainly not the best way to get a good group. You could join a certain open-to-all community discord and have a 100% success rate instantly. Or use LFG a lot and find the guilds that are good and run often, and usually form a bit before the 30 minute warning. Personally I check during 30 minute countdown phase and only bother with the meta if I find a squad in LFG.

 

If you are hoping to land into a map full of random players that ends up clearing, then yes, you will have better success arriving a bit early. More players will be heavily invested in completion and there will be time for a commander to step up. But it is still going to be a die roll. Good Experienced players are self-sorting themselves out of these maps by using LFG or discord to get better success.

I was referring to using the lfg. So far I’ve found good groups in lfg an hour or earlier before escorts. Closer to the meta they are in full instances, have strict requirements listed to join, or are writ farming without intention of completing the fight.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Veprovina.4876]

Did anyone read the blog thing?

 

They're adding a super rare infusion to dragons end.

 

More RNG! That's what everyone was hoping for!

 

I swear it's like they never read any of the criticism or are too proud to listen to the community.

 

I'd say they missed the point but they never even saw the point in the first place.

 

Congratulations Anet, facepalm of the year!

More rng garbage is just what this meta needed!

That's it, I give up on this meta ever being good when Anet just won't even try to listen.

[Khisanth.2948]

On 4/13/2022 at 8:05 PM, maxwelgm.4315 said:

Name any other event in the game where you actually want people to stay away and not come help you otherwise it will scale beyond what both of you can work with.

Verdant Brink rally point defense event

Verdant Brink Patriarch

On 4/13/2022 at 8:05 PM, maxwelgm.4315 said:

There is also a chain of events for the Xunlai Jade right on the first WP and the players afk there actually scale it up to oblivion most of the time, making it yet another event they probably didn't expect to turn out like it did.

Events around the chantry of secrets around that map's release had the same issue

10 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Outside of it being events to fill the bar for one of the last story steps, I don't see any value in the pre events. Actually, I don't see any value in having that bar at all.

That was terrible the previous times they did that and it is still terrible here.

 

9 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Because after preparation **then** come pre-events, and then boss fight. 

Preparing to prepare seems very ArenaNet though. Like starting the first step to begin laying the foundations for the rework of a class.

9 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

This, in my experience so far, is the best way to end up with a failed meta.

Getting there stupid early is the best way to find a good group.

Maybe this is the real answer. Someone on the dev team really misses the "good old days" of Teq when you had to arrive ~30 minutes ahead to have a chance of completing it.

[Silent.6137]

2 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Maybe this is the real answer. Someone on the dev team really misses the "good old days" of Teq when you had to arrive ~30 minutes ahead to have a chance of completing it.

Almost all metas, people are there at least 15 to 30 mins early just to ensure they are on a meta map. Even ley-line anomaly which takes 2 mins to kill.

Many metas failed for a period of time until people started learning and getting used to the fights. Dragon's Stand, Dragonfall, Triple Trouble, Drakkar, etc., etc., etc. Six months from now, failing this meta will be a rare occurence except on non-meta maps. And people won't be going there as early.

[Veprovina.4876]

7 hours ago, Silent.6137 said:

Many metas failed for a period of time until people started learning and getting used to the fights. Dragon's Stand, Dragonfall, Triple Trouble, Drakkar, etc., etc., etc. Six months from now, failing this meta will be a rare occurence except on non-meta maps. And people won't be going there as early.

And none of those have an hour long mandatory "waste your time" part with no rewards in order to complete them. You can just try again next time it shows up. You can even organize Dragonfall and be done with the pre's faster than you have to wait for Dragon's End pre-pre-event. 

 

Also, thank you for pointing out that you can learn those meta events. 

You can't learn DE because it's filled with RNG. So you don't get to perfect your movement, organization, skills, you're at the mercy of "will i get this event to overlap with another" and "when will she kittening stay put for 2 seconds so we can DPS her. 😉

 

RNG mechanics are bad, and now they added more RNG and think they somehow made a difference.

 

I'm beginning to think this was no time constraint issue.

The people working on this are just that incompentent, and unwilling to listen to feedback. 

Because if they had, they could just copy Drizzlewood's reward structure, some big chest for every level of readyness and i'd probably shut up about it saying "eh, fine, they at least get the complaints". 

 

It seems ego won.

[Hollowhisper.1093]

Well, ANet pretty much said the event is nearly where they want to have it so their side of the coin is pretty clear now. They will eliminate a "bug" that lets Soo Won bite more often than intended (I personally don't think it's a bug, it was just kitten design) and dish out the Void thing. I reckon that'll be it then.