Need more clarity around 60% success rate in DE meta

[Ashantara.8731]

On 4/16/2022 at 12:53 AM, Taclism.2406 said:

Its not badly made per say, but if you don't know at leasts the basics of T3+/strikes movement, boons & rotation/gear, and solely play story / other open world metas, you most likely dont belong there.

If you're gonna ask this much of the average player, improve the learning experience first. Otherwise, lower the dps requierement so that it can still be somewhat carried in pugs ...

1. per se*
2. How would you suggest they "improved" the learning process other than the meta itself encouraging players to stop letting themselves being carried by other? We already have the Training Golem in LA and a tutorial area in Seitung.

[Ledi.9742]

1 hour ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

1. per se*
2. How would you suggest they "improved" the learning process other than the meta itself encouraging players to stop letting themselves being carried by other? We already have the Training Golem in LA and a tutorial area in Seitung.

no offence, but this take is extremely detached from regular player experience, and ignores the whole metric ton of experience and unsaid knowledge there is to this.
the tutorial area only teaches very basic fighting mechanics for player, and pretty much only players who get anything out of the golem are the ones who already know what they are doing. just expecting people to jump in middle of the chaotic battle field, and magically figure out the meta only with that is plain unrealistic. they are far more likely to just get discouraged and give up, rather than trying again and again and inspecting every detail until they somehow figure out what is going wrong. its like expecting someone to become competitive swimmer by showing them diagram about how to do front crawl, and tell them that they can measure their swimming speed with timer, and then kick them into deep end of the pool.

[Hesione.9412]

13 minutes ago, Mutisija.5017 said:

no offence, but this take is extremely detached from regular player experience, and ignores the whole metric ton of experience and unsaid knowledge there is to this.
the tutorial area only teaches very basic fighting mechanics for player, and pretty much only players who get anything out of the golem are the ones who already know what they are doing. just expecting people to jump in middle of the chaotic battle field, and magically figure out the meta only with that is plain unrealistic. they are far more likely to just get discouraged and give up, rather than trying again and again and inspecting every detail until they somehow figure out what is going wrong. its like expecting someone to become competitive swimmer by showing them diagram about how to do front crawl, and tell them that they can measure their swimming speed with timer, and then kick them into deep end of the pool.

Yep. And the whole attitude of "carrying other players" needs to die. It's a game, not a competitive workplace. Players are supposed to be having fun in the OW, not "carrying" or "being carried". Anything involving needing people to do high dps, or play proper support builds, belongs in instanced content. There are so many ways this meta could have been engineered, and Anet chose to create a DPS-against-the-clock event with mechanics significantly more difficult than any other OW event. 

 

Does Anet want us to have the expectation that this event should routinely fail? That only commanders experienced in splitting up squads plus organising alacrity and quickness, in particular, across subsquads should be the groups that succeed? Which kills this map for anything other than squads led by specific people or groups.

[Orthonen.9470]

On 4/14/2022 at 2:56 PM, Firebeard.1746 said:

but I still saw plenty of complaints after the last set of nerfs

I didn't, and I have succeeded in pretty much all save for 2 groups who failed at 2-3% HP left on Soo-Won. It really isn't that hard. What I will agree with on the community is that it's unrewarding as hell for something you have to spend 2 hours on.

[Naxos.2503]

Coming back to it after getting my turtle, I -did- appreciate the red circles on the meta boss to indicate where you could hit.

 

Meta still failed, but that was due to people -not dodging- the big orangey one shot attack with the waves. And Anet cannot be faulted for not trying to teach you to pay attention to ground indicators and dodge mechanics. I'm quite sure anyone who's made it till that part has atleast seen some of those area hit markers before. They just dont dodge it on purpose because they think they can tank it (as they tanked previous ones).

Edited April 30, 2022 by Naxos.2503
I feel like folks believe the players cant be faulted for not dodging : I meant Anet had dropped sufficient hints along the way.

[Nico.9361]

9 minutes ago, Naxos.2503 said:

Meta still failed, but that was due to people -not dodging- the big orangey one shot attack with the waves. And they cannot be faulted for not trying to teach you to pay attention to ground indicators and dodge mechanics. I'm quite sure anyone who's made it till that part has atleast seen some of those area hit markers before. They just dont dodge it on purpose because they think they can tank it (as they tanked previous ones).

Being able to survive most of the AoEs seems like a big problem. Imagine if ppl were punished for facetanking attacks before EoD.
Sadly I've also seen some ppl in instanced content that think "well, we have healers, they'll heal me" instead of avoiding taking dmg.

Dear Anet, we have nice dodge/block/evade abilities, please force us to use them.

[Naxos.2503]

32 minutes ago, NotTooFoolish.7412 said:

Sadly I've also seen some ppl in instanced content that think "well, we have healers, they'll heal me" instead of avoiding taking dmg.

Dear Anet, we have nice dodge/block/evade abilities, please force us to use them.

Agreed, I think there is both sides at play there. Although typically people who do instanced content generally take the clue after the first hit wipes them out and they start dodging. I got the feeling people are seeing this attack as the same as tequatl, which generally just does a big pushback and knock you into AoE that actually do damage, but little else.

One dreads to think what would happen if they changed the Tequatl version to be the same as the DE version...

[Erise.5614]

Just to point that out. There's still bugs around indicators. It's probably not responsible for the majority of people getting hit. 

But just in the last week I've had missing indicators on AB, DE, Harvest Temple and Aetherblade Strike CM (which was especially egregious as I was going for the not getting hit by anything achievement). Though being significantly more common to me when a lot of people are there. Aka on OW. 

Again. Probably a minority of deaths that happen because of these bugs. But if ANet is dialing up how important those are they should fix those bugs first. To make sure it's actually the players fault and not leaving room for excuses and superstition. If someone can just tell themselves "the indicator probably didn't show up", that just slows down how fast they will learn.

So these bugs, even if they don't happen often, are very bad for the perception around that content.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Hesione.9412]

1 hour ago, Erise.5614 said:

Just to point that out. There's still bugs around indicators. It's probably not responsible for the majority of people getting hit. 

But just in the last week I've had missing indicators on AB, DE, Harvest Temple and Aetherblade Strike CM (which was especially egregious as I was going for the not getting hit by anything achievement). Though being significantly more common to me when a lot of people are there. Aka on OW. 

Again. Probably a minority of deaths that happen because of these bugs. But if ANet is dialing up how important those are they should fix those bugs first. To make sure it's actually the players fault and not leaving room for excuses and superstition. If someone can just tell themselves "the indicator probably didn't show up", that just slows down how fast they will learn.

So these bugs, even if they don't happen often, are very bad for the perception around that content.

And, it's helpful to see the indicators. I know I'm supposed to help kill thornhearts. It would be easier if I could see them. Crystals, other mobs, AoEs from those other mobs, other players, particle effects, ...

[Nico.9361]

35 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

And, it's helpful to see the indicators. I know I'm supposed to help kill thornhearts. It would be easier if I could see them. Crystals, other mobs, AoEs from those other mobs, other players, particle effects, ...

If you cannot see thornhearts it might be character limit thing.
I tend to play this event with at least Medium and enemy names visible at all times.
It might take some practice to spot a specific one in that mess of a fight, but it certainly helps.

[Erise.5614]

1 hour ago, NotTooFoolish.7412 said:

If you cannot see thornhearts it might be character limit thing.
I tend to play this event with at least Medium and enemy names visible at all times.
It might take some practice to spot a specific one in that mess of a fight, but it certainly helps.

It is possible to see them and to react to them. No one is denying that. But there are design mistakes by ANet around the fight that make it worse at teaching players and harder to play well.

Performance of the fight is pretty bad. Even on a high end machine I can hardly keep 20-25fps on lowest settings. Increasing the the point where thornhearts get rendered cuts it down to somewhere around 5fps. My PC is built for 3D work so not perfect specs for gaming but still. (e.g. my CPU has a base clock of 2.9GHz which is lower than high end gaming CPUs and the game doesn't benefit from it being 64 cores). 

I'm pretty sure some of the indicator bugs are related to the performance setting. But that doesn't make it ok. If it's important it's gotta be visible.

Putting blame on players that somewhere in the options there could have been something that maybe have made it possible to see won't result in this situation improving. Not in DE and not in future events. 
Pushing difficulty, pushing players to improve means the fight has to be fair. If players can't pull their weight because they selected a wrong game option then it's a design mistake by ANet. Even more so if some of those options you need are wrong by default. 

And just by the fact that it can be the reason means even people who were less affected by these problems have easier excuses and will improve more slowly. 

Edited April 30, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Hesione.9412]

20 hours ago, NotTooFoolish.7412 said:

If you cannot see thornhearts it might be character limit thing.
I tend to play this event with at least Medium and enemy names visible at all times.
It might take some practice to spot a specific one in that mess of a fight, but it certainly helps.

I said it was due to the morass of particular effects and objects in the way. 

[yoni.7015]

5 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

I said it was due to the morass of particular effects and objects in the way. 

Thornhearts are quite big, not really difficult to see. 

Edited May 1, 2022 by yoni.7015

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Well, if we are going allowing observations, here is what I have observed:

 

I have been doing this meta daily for the last few weeks. I have only used the ingame lfg tool (join when the 30 mins of prep time start), no discord or intricate map jumping from Arborstone tactics. Every one of those days, I had a succesful kill, with anywhere between 3 to 8 minutes to spare on the final fight. The commander usually assigns groups, but mostly for splitphases on both escort and the final fight, rarely for squad boons like quickness or alacrity. As far as I have seen, it is not the same people either. Pretty much every day I see a commander with an accountname I do not recognise, as well as the majority of people in the squad I have not seen before. Yet we clear. I have also noticed that, what I think may have been Anets intention, is happening: Groups are actually improving in the DPS department. You still have a big difference between what are obviously raiders/fractal players and others, but the amount of people hitting below 10k is substantially lower than it used to be. And with substantially I mean that where I was used to seeing 20-30 people hitting below that number, right now it usually hovers around 10-13, at times even lower than that. People have improved to the minimum level needed for the most part, and also seem to listen better to what the commander explains.  So my observation is that ingame people are improving, and the ones that don't have been left behind to complain on the forums, like in this thread.

 

People think it is raid level to expect 7k DPS, listening to your commander and doing CC. Yet that is what is happening.  

Aside from bugs and bite&swoop RNG fixing, the fight really seems to be in a good spot where it currently is. 

 

What more do people really want? 

Do people want this fight to be like pretty much any other meta, where showing up 5 minutes beforehand and just pressing random buttons while watching Netflix is enough?  That will never happen. 

I'd say the time investment itself is also fine currently for the entire chain ( ~30 mins prep time, then you get ~ 40 or so minutes I believe for the escorts, and Soo Won is like 20? I have not seen a group yet needing the full 90 minutes, It's usually an hour or a bit over an hour total for me. I would say that Dragon's Stand takes more time. Only thing they might consider is making the reward structure a bit more like Dragon's Stand, where progressing to certain parts of the meta chain spawns some reward chests). 

 

The entire expansion has tried to prepare you for the mechanics in this final meta. 

The basic training heart in Seitung shows you breakbars, dodging, CC and telegraphs. 

Every other meta event in EoD also involves CC, breakbars, telegraphs and the need for dodging (and the Kaineng one also shows a splitting mechanic, even if you can also zerg it). 

You get the Jade Bot, which (depending on core) gives you 1-3k free health, and its masteries provide you with 1x a free portal (basically cheating death once) and 1x free res from the bot, giving you 2 additional get-out-of-jail cards. 

Then you get a roughly 30% damage boost ( 20% from 10 stacks of DE contributor, 5% from having all areas prepped, and another minimum of 5% from the Offensive/Defensive buffs). 

Next up is that this expansion gave you some of the most broken and easy to play elite specs in terms of both DPS and support. 

And then, for IBS owners, the fact that pretty much every commander will bring a Legion WayStation for an EMP, meaning you do not have to change one thing about your build but can still bring CC.

 

It is up to you to get yourself to the minimum skill-level needed for the DE meta, like pretty much everyone I have met ingame over the last few weeks. 

Do not expect the DE meta to get nerfed just to cater to you (I know, spamming 'confused' on this post is easier than challenging your own narrative of being the victim of an 'unreasonable' meta, but it will not get you anywhere. Try to step up your game a bit. Trust me, it is less of an investment than you think it is!).

People who refuse to change or step up their game might be in the minority at this point without realising it.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Wielder Of Magic.3950

[ProtoGunner.4953]

Lol reading through this comment section feels sooo detached from what I experience in the game: usually it's successful, sometimes with 4-5 minutes left. People really improved. The one issue is that you don't really get cool stuff from it.

[Cuks.8241]

1 hour ago, ProtoGunner.4953 said:

Lol reading through this comment section feels sooo detached from what I experience in the game: usually it's successful, sometimes with 4-5 minutes left. People really improved. The one issue is that you don't really get cool stuff from it.

Yeah that is my exp also. First weeks I was picky about the groups I joined. Lately I joined a few random groups and it was always easy clear with plenty of time left.

Also there are plenty groups out there, the map is far from dead. More than for other metas. But they do fill early and fast. 

The players got much better. They still get down but they mostly move properly, kill thornhearths. At the start they were all over the place. 

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder to keep it civil and avoid attacking each other. I've removed some recent posts.
Regards.

[ArchonWing.9480]

6 hours ago, ProtoGunner.4953 said:

Lol reading through this comment section feels sooo detached from what I experience in the game: usually it's successful, sometimes with 4-5 minutes left. People really improved. The one issue is that you don't really get cool stuff from it.

I personally wouldn't mind high failure rates if the reward matches the risk. But if another event gives me more rewards 100% of the time, and this gives me less rewards and 40% of the time it gives me 0, then that's going to be  a huge turn off.

And because this is an event of this scope, even gitting gud has its limits, as you have little control over how other people play.

Like I keep saying, partial rewards would help a lot. I think a lot of people just don't want to leave empty handed after putting effort when they could have just facerolled elsewhere.

Why does difficult content not reward well, for the time spent?

Edited May 2, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Luthan.5236]

At weeks ago when I did it (I think 1-2 months after EoD release) ... I managed to complete it with 2 chars once. We were left with 2 minutes af ther the second split (3 mini bosses) and focused on the Soo-Won (ignoring tail) fully.

Nowadays ... seems it got a bit harder. My guess is that most pros farming this moved to organized guilds and for new players still needing this for achievements ... it will get harder - with only randoms popping up in lfg desparately trying to organize. Even saw groups trying to organize "too much" failing - most of the time it looks good at the beginning but lots of deaths (losing time) near the end.

A good start is to ask people to get the offensive/defensive buff - some still seem to not take that one. Then food, waystation (waystation seems the only thing that regularly gets spammed in chat to remind people). And the personal waypoint - can help once.

What I do not understand is why squads make like 10 sub groups. (Do they want this so buffs only spread to the 5 people in sub-group?) Can lead to confusion/more scrolling - I bet in the random groups lot of people just ignore it and would split better/more equally if you only made 3 or 4 groups. (For the splits to the 2/3 mini bosses.)

My guess is the 60 percent success rate is calculated by taking the amount of events that start at the top of the harvest temple - after completing the pre. (Not taking that one into account.) Thus we get a lof of successful guilds completing it with organized runs trying to fill maps up early to get their people in. (Not posting in lfg.)

While of the total randoms there might be maps where it even fails the pre (pre I consider up until to the point where you have to fill up the 5 crystals at the same time). This then isn't taken into account with the 60 percent. The ones that make it there ... sometimes finish it. Most of the time will fail it - lowering the almost 100 percent of the organized groups a bit.

(If the pre event was take in into account as well this would be lower than 60 percent.)

1 month ago or so ... I guess there were better chances with public groups. At least there are not too many interesting achievements for completing it left for me - got the turtle egg (that you now even can buy directly) and the other interesting stuff. I think only the conversation between Aurene and Soo-Won - I have a few steps left. Otherwise trying to ignore this meta ... or maybe only trying it once every few weeks.

It still is exhausting and  my computer is too old - working fine for other content. (For only this one they increased the sys requirements though - for EoD. :D) Also not used to that many people at the same time. Then some youngsters complain about people not dodging/jumping - when I have no problem with 5 players 1 boss and lots of mechanics ... like in the Sunqua fractal. Strikes with 10 players also can be okay. But 50 players and tons of mobs at one place ... please ... this is not what I'd consider "fun mechanics".

And I do not need/want it to be nerfed. (Probably would not even play it if it was nerfed. Until it totally was changed to not have 50 players at the same time. This works only with bosses where you just can zerg and auto attack. If mechancis are required than maybe 20 people or so like triple trouple - at 3 places same time. Not 50 at one place. Just not fun.) The only interesting thing I think is the (still worth 9g) summoning stone. But I do not focus on legendaries that much and the ones from weekly vendor are enough for me I guess.

Edit: Actually not nerfing it will keep the prices up - for the stones that people can also buy from the vendor and then sell for a good amount of gold. Unless with a nerf they would get removed as reward from the mta.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Silent.6137]

Tbh, I'm fairly surprised at the number of unsuccessful DE meta attempts still. I do the meta almost daily and the next win will be my 70th. And this is done with various LFG groups, and even on the rare occasions with a few squads I find on maps. Although I will priotize joining groups I'd run with before if I know they are better organized. I won't join a tag that pops up on a map less than 30 mins before start of event (for obvious reasons such as sufficient time to acquire map buffs, etc).

Perhaps more successful groups are formed at certain time of the day. With quite a few listed on LFG after reset.

1 hour ago, Luthan.5236 said:

What I do not understand is why squads make like 10 sub groups. (Do they want this so buffs only spread to the 5 people in sub-group?) Can lead to confusion/more scrolling - I bet in the random groups lot of people just ignore it and would split better/more equally if you only made 3 or 4 groups. (For the splits to the 2/3 mini bosses.)

You do not need 10 separate subgroups but it helps in organizing boon distributions, as well as splitting for lanes (3), Voids Phase (4), Prismatic Crytals Phase (5 + middle) and the Champion Phase (2 & 3). But if the commander can assign all the splits beforehand, then it's easy to know where you should go for any of the phases. Not completing the kills (or filling the prismatic crystals) at roughly the same time will mean re-doing and thus losing lots of valuable time.

1 hour ago, Luthan.5236 said:

My guess is the 60 percent success rate is calculated by taking the amount of events that start at the top of the harvest temple - after completing the pre. (Not taking that one into account.) Thus we get a lof of successful guilds completing it with organized runs trying to fill maps up early to get their people in. (Not posting in lfg.)

While of the total randoms there might be maps where it even fails the pre (pre I consider up until to the point where you have to fill up the 5 crystals at the same time). This then isn't taken into account with the 60 percent. The ones that make it there ... sometimes finish it. Most of the time will fail it - lowering the almost 100 percent of the organized groups a bit.

(If the pre event was take in into account as well this would be lower than 60 percent.)

The success rate is probably only for Harvest Temple fights. Pre-events are pretty straight-forward and will fail if there's not enough people doing them, or are so disorganized (all on 1 side and/or ignoring same-time completion requirements).

Edited May 15, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Luthan.5236]

Well ... the pre-events with the 3 lanes and the 5 crystals that need to be filled up basically never fails (I often saw more than 10 minutes at the timer left) - if someone tagged up. Unless the map is sooo empty that someone only started to tag  up in the middle of the event. But still ... only tagging up a few mins before it starts - should be a safe completion for those pre-events.

I think failing the lanes can only happen if there is completely no communication. Being in 1 squad - means you can split equally only by looking at the map. (Soon we will have the festival of the four winds where this also is an advandage in the Boss Blitz - having 1 squad instead of 5 can help cause you can see everyone else as blue dots on the map. Easier to split even without talking a lot.)

The 5 crystals seem to have been nerfed? Never saw them failing. But it sometimes gets close - someone finishing early but then if a 2nd one finishes this pushes the timer a bit for the other 3. (Every time one is filled up the timer gets a few more seconds I think.)

I thought 4 sub-groups would be ideal. Main fight vs. Soo-Won seems the only  thing where it is tight - time-wise.

For example if you have 46/50 players in squad make groups with 15/8/8/15 players (4 groups). Assign split 15/8 and 8/15 on the first split phase (2 bossses).

For the 2nd phase with the 3 bosses you have the 15 and 8/8 (they are the other 15-16 then) and 15. That is how I'd do it I guess. Pre events by just looking on the map and calling for people to support somewhere else if needed.

I think prime-time I had my best successes. 21:00 or so in German time. Earlier one today I tried 2 hours earlier. But then again I only joined when I did the daily events for EoD - then looking for a squad 10 minutes before it started. Yes the organized groups might arrive way more early. Which means you need to a) like the map - playing other events until meta starts. (The preparations.) Or b) willing to just wait and go there early.

(My limit for this was Triple Trouble the 15 mins being early to get into a good squad for the achievements. Where usually 3 squads are up and where I like that it is not that many people at one place.)

Edited May 15, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Nico.9361]

9 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

 

I thought 4 sub-groups would be ideal. Main fight vs. Soo-Won seems the only  thing where it is tight - time-wise.

For example if you have 46/50 players in squad make groups with 15/8/8/15 players (4 groups). Assign split 15/8 and 8/15 on the first split phase (2 bossses).

I do 10 subgroups for 50 ppl in squad.  First boss split is 50/50, second split is 30/30/40 with more ppl going south. South used to have some problems with Destroyer cuz it moves a lot. Nowadays, I see Icebrood dying last, I guess ppl forget to hug him close to avoid his jumps.
With 5 target boons like stability, quickness and alacrity less subgroups makes absolutely no sense. Trust me, each subgroup is going to need stability.

[Luthan.5236]

I wonder if it works that perfectly though - at least with random groups people might be away from the guy giving boons. (Unless the range covers the whole platform.) If some people are ranged, others melee - doing the damage. And then running around trying to rez others that are somewhere away. (Or some go to tail some stay at the head - not splitting according to sub-groups but randomly.)

I yet could not find a setting in the options to give my health bar icon (usually they are green) a different color in the squad UI ... + giving the people in th own sub-group differently colored name plates. (Only found old threads where people requested this.) Would help a lot I guess. Instead we have the chat per squad and another one for the subgroup (no one usest that one at all lol).

I guess all you can do is staying near the main group/commander - hoping that the boon distribution works as intended. (I know they is the priority - subgroup first.) Or of not ... that the randomness and enough boon givers just make it happen that everyone gets enough boons. Then again as someone focusing on damage only I maybe should not worry about it too much.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

I wonder if it works that perfectly though - at least with random groups people might be away from the guy giving boons.

Subsquads are only used for priority. Support will still be giving out boons to 5 people even if all their subsquad members are somewhere else. Still, having the whole squad divided into neat "packages" helps a bit with more even boon spread. And in this fight every little bit helps.

[Gorem.8104]

EoD came out Feb 28th. 2 and a half months later and I see once again Soo Won in the patch notes. 

 

Can Anet finally come out already and admit failure? It'd be great to see them communicate just how this meta experiment test has failed :). Failed rather successfully. It was a spectacular fail as it split the player base in half and created the most active threads I have ever seen. 

Just admit this was a failure, do the nerf/fix to the zone that should have come out 2 months ago and lets move on. Give rewards for progression or remove the pre entirely but still give more rewards for escorts. and of course, nerf Soo Won correctly so we can still do the mechanics and complete it. Instead of do the mechanics and fail 100% of the time outside of an organised group that has a 60% chance to win.