Need more clarity around 60% success rate in DE meta

[Silent.6137]

3 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

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. 

No codes are perfect. It's virtually impossible to account for every single permutations. You tweak them to improve, or to account for something unforeseen.

Or are you suggesting that anything that has been out a while, and still see tweaks and fixes are a failure? If that's the case, then the whole game is a failure. Any OS, apps, etc.  you use with your PC "failed rather successfully" and is a "spectacular fail".

Good organized groups have close to 100% win & totally unorganized groups have close to 0% win. It's the average groups that get 60% win-rate.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Erise.5614]

3 hours ago, Silent.6137 said:

No codes are perfect. It's virtually impossible to account for every single permutations. You tweak them to improve, or to account for something unforeseen.

Or are you suggesting that anything that has been out a while, and still see tweaks and fixes are a failure? If that's the case, then the whole game is a failure. Any OS, apps, etc.  you use with your PC "failed rather successfully" and is a "spectacular fail".

Good organized groups have close to 100% win & totally unorganized groups have close to 0% win. It's the average groups that get 60% win-rate.

Honestly, I think the win rate has increased further as I'm seeing far fewer groups than even a month ago and there's been a bit less bite shenanigans.

The comment you respond to is hyperbole and a bit over the top in a few ways. However, they did mess up Soo Won pretty bad in several ways. Yes, tweaking is normal. But they've "fixed a bug with bite" 4 times in a row now. 

And several side factors are not ideal either. Some mechanics. Like certain animations moving the hit marker so far away you can't see it anymore or attack indicators sometimes not showing up on low scalability settings. Though also the fundamental design philosophy behind the fight. I really don't get why ANet tried a DPS check for a meta event at all. It's literally impossible to balance and they knew that years ago. Just this weekend I've been on a map around 5pm CEST. Full subgroups with quick / alac. 1h before it starts. Everything on high. The whole shabam. Failed at ~10%. I was top DPS with ~23k average throughout the entire fight.

The day after, 1AM (so 32 hours later). Squad formed ~30 mins before start. Everything high. Some have full stacks. I was 10th in the squad in terms of DPS with ~26k. We finished with over 10 minutes to spare. Ignoring tail was a squad rule. We never had a single bite and only one or two attacks per phase because of how quickly we burned through the DPS phase.

Meta events like Soo Won can not go for a DPS check. Because no matter the balance, it is necessarily simultaneously a joke to groups experienced players while also being failure prone if the same players randomly tag up. The fight is simultaneously too easy to be any challenge at all. It's a literal joke in certain squads. And too hard at the same time. It's still too inconvenient to just hop in or tag up yourself. Meta event DPS checks can not be balanced to be fun. Squad composition is too important. It's too many people, too little control and too much a departure from other meta events. So why go for DPS checks rather than testing coordination, reaction speed (e.g. dodging or squads splitting up), usage of utility skills (e.g. reflect) and other things that are important in instanced content combat too but aren't directly tied to raw DPS. 

I disagree with how it was phrased by the comment you responded too. There were several positive aspects to the expansion. For example, I'm very positive on Strikes. They too are flawed but they are only flawed in minor details. That can easily be tweaked / fixed or frankly just left in. Overall, all 4 are the best combat encounters in the game in my opinion. And CMs are a worthy step up while being just as good in terms of quality.

But I do hope they draw a lot of lessons from Soo Won and do not try something remotely similar again. If it's a at all substantial DPS check it's gotta be designed around one squad and it's gotta be an instance.

I'd be very positive about meta CMs. It's not about being petty and wanting to deny people who like that kind of challenge. But it's just not suited for the regular open world. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Erise.5614

[SimonSays.6059]

I joined on the EoD late and I have tried the meta about 10 times now, 0% success rate. First try she was least at 10%, woo. Then some barely at 20%, a lot of them at 40%.
 

Time just runs out, so much downtime from dps since she keeps charging back and forward. Give 10-20min more time… So much time wasted on escort kitten and then hard part.

 

I guess ingame LFG is useless kitten nowadays, and best way to farm legendary mats is to afk at arborage and buy weekly?

[Silent.6137]

1 hour ago, SimonSays.6059 said:

I joined on the EoD late and I have tried the meta about 10 times now, 0% success rate. First try she was least at 10%, woo. Then some barely at 20%, a lot of them at 40%.
 

Time just runs out, so much downtime from dps since she keeps charging back and forward. Give 10-20min more time… So much time wasted on escort kitten and then hard part.

 

I guess ingame LFG is useless kitten nowadays, and best way to farm legendary mats is to afk at arborage and buy weekly?

Read through the threads. Plenty of suggestions to improve your chances of a successful meta. If the types of groups you joined constantly proved to be unsuccessful, stop joining them and save yourself tons of frustrations.

LFG is very useful for finding squads to join but it'll depend a lot on time of the day when most people run metas, eg. Monday morning, you'll probably find few or any decent meta squads.

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Still people complaining about the DE meta, some going as far as claiming it is a failure, it is dead, etc. 

Meanwhile I have done the meta daily almost every day for weeks now, just joining a lfg squad, no discord, often not even called out roles, and...just get a comfy win. 

People on these forums are clearly not even close to a representation of any of the people in the open world squads I have participated in daily over the last few weeks.

People on the forums are worse. way worse. 

Glad to see people ingame are actually choosing learning over complaining.

[Raizel.8175]

4 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Meta events like Soo Won can not go for a DPS check. Because no matter the balance, it is necessarily simultaneously a joke to groups experienced players while also being failure prone if the same players randomly tag up. The fight is simultaneously too easy to be any challenge at all. It's a literal joke in certain squads. And too hard at the same time. It's still too inconvenient to just hop in or tag up yourself. Meta event DPS checks can not be balanced to be fun. Squad composition is too important. It's too many people, too little control and too much a departure from other meta events. So why go for DPS checks rather than testing coordination, reaction speed (e.g. dodging or squads splitting up), usage of utility skills (e.g. reflect) and other things that are important in instanced content combat too but aren't directly tied to raw DPS. 

I disagree with how it was phrased by the comment you responded too. There were several positive aspects to the expansion. For example, I'm very positive on Strikes. They too are flawed but they are only flawed in minor details. That can easily be tweaked / fixed or frankly just left in. Overall, all 4 are the best combat encounters in the game in my opinion. And CMs are a worthy step up while being just as good in terms of quality.

But I do hope they draw a lot of lessons from Soo Won and do not try something remotely similar again. If it's a at all substantial DPS check it's gotta be designed around one squad and it's gotta be an instance.

I'd be very positive about meta CMs. It's not about being petty and wanting to deny people who like that kind of challenge. But it's just not suited for the regular open world. 

Sorry, but just nope. You can just use full DPS squads and still win with ~5 minutes left. 7k DPS on average isn't a lot with jade bot buffs and DE event buffs. The way Arena Net changed the event is perfectly fine. I'd rather have them fine-tune instead of - and they often displayed that behaviour - overcorrecting and thus nerfing the event into oblivion. DE in its current iteration is perfectly fine.

35 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Glad to see people ingame are actually choosing learning over complaining.

This. Sometimes, people should just play the game.

[Silent.6137]

15 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Sorry, but just nope. You can just use full DPS squads and still win with ~5 minutes left.

Haven't tried myself but heard of full Warrior and also full Virtuoso squads getting comfortable wins. Saw a LFG for full Thieves the other day but not sure how it went. I'm sure there are others planning to or already did a pure class meta squad.

[Erise.5614]

31 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Sorry, but just nope. You can just use full DPS squads and still win with ~5 minutes left. 7k DPS on average isn't a lot with jade bot buffs and DE event buffs. The way Arena Net changed the event is perfectly fine. I'd rather have them fine-tune instead of - and they often displayed that behaviour - overcorrecting and thus nerfing the event into oblivion. DE in its current iteration is perfectly fine.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. The point isn't that the balance is off. I would agree that they can't do much to improve the balance of the encounter as it is right now.

My critique is that they chose a DPS check as format in the first place. Not that the balance is off. Because it is the thing with the widest gap among the player base. Having up to an order of magnitude difference between players. There is no balance that supports the usual OW experience while also having any chance of failure at all. 

Because it's OW built around a DPS check, it's never gonna be quick and easy to group up. You can not reasonably succeed without LFG. The chance to stumble into a successful map by accident is tiny. It's still too difficult for the kind of ad hoc cooperation we see in other metas.

So why is it open world? If you essentially need to organize an instance via LFG and actually solid commanding. Not just taxing. Then why isn't it instanced content? You aren't walking around an open world. We just recently had a thread by someone who's been trying for days and failed over and over, not even knowing about LFG. It's good they learned about it now but it's not good it's required for open world. Especially without explicit tutorial. But honestly, personally, I believe it shouldn't be necessary at all in OW. It can make it easier. But it shouldn't be absolutely necessary. 

OW ad hoc cooperation is one of the things that really makes GW2 special compared to so many other MMOs. The more it moves away from that and towards this style of lobby browser "join -> ok -> join -> ok -> join -> ok" gameplay cycle. 

The more it strays from what makes GW2s OW so special. 

Jumping between groups to find a meta map is less enjoyable than dealing with LFG for instanced content. And I question whether ANet should put further focus on that kind of experience.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Ultramex.1506]

7 hours ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Still people complaining about the DE meta, some going as far as claiming it is a failure, it is dead, etc. 

Meanwhile I have done the meta daily almost every day for weeks now, just joining a lfg squad, no discord, often not even called out roles, and...just get a comfy win. 

People on these forums are clearly not even close to a representation of any of the people in the open world squads I have participated in daily over the last few weeks.

People on the forums are worse. way worse. 

Glad to see people ingame are actually choosing learning over complaining.

Tread lightly, brave warrior! Last time i said the same thing about DE is easy now due to patches and people just need to listen and learn

12 people disagreed!! *gaps*

Edited May 17, 2022 by Ultramex.1506

[Raizel.8175]

7 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

You misunderstand what I'm saying. The point isn't that the balance is off. I would agree that they can't do much to improve the balance of the encounter as it is right now.

I'm not and it's still a nope from me.

7 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

My critique is that they chose a DPS check as format in the first place. Not that the balance is off. Because it is the thing with the widest gap among the player base. Having up to an order of magnitude difference between players. There is no balance that supports the usual OW experience while also having any chance of failure at all. 

Calling 7k DPS on average - a number which is probably even lower after the adjustments Arena Net made - a DPS check is quite a stretch.

7 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Because it's OW built around a DPS check, it's never gonna be quick and easy to group up. You can not reasonably succeed without LFG. The chance to stumble into a successful map by accident is tiny. It's still too difficult for the kind of ad hoc cooperation we see in other metas.

So why is it open world? If you essentially need to organize an instance via LFG and actually solid commanding. Not just taxing. Then why isn't it instanced content? You aren't walking around an open world. We just recently had a thread by someone who's been trying for days and failed over and over, not even knowing about LFG. It's good they learned about it now but it's not good it's required for open world. Especially without explicit tutorial. But honestly, personally, I believe it shouldn't be necessary at all in OW. It can make it easier. But it shouldn't be absolutely necessary. 

kitten? DE is basically the same as DS back in its prime. You weren't able to get into a decent map if you weren't there early and used LFG. What's wrong with using LFG in a MMORPG? If you don't even want to put that much effort into teaming up with other players, then maybe you shouldn't play a MMORPG.

7 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Jumping between groups to find a meta map is less enjoyable than dealing with LFG for instanced content. And I question whether ANet should put further focus on that kind of experience.

Yeah, they should.

[Ultramex.1506]

7 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

 

Because it's OW built around a DPS check, it's never gonna be quick and easy to group up. You can not reasonably succeed without LFG. The chance to stumble into a successful map by accident is tiny. It's still too difficult for the kind of ad hoc cooperation we see in other metas.

So why is it open world? If you essentially need to organize an instance via LFG and actually solid commanding. Not just taxing. Then why isn't it instanced content? You aren't walking around an open world. We just recently had a thread by someone who's been trying for days and failed over and over, not even knowing about LFG. It's good they learned about it now but it's not good it's required for open world. Especially without explicit tutorial. But honestly, personally, I believe it shouldn't be necessary at all in OW. It can make it easier. But it shouldn't be absolutely necessary. 

This confused me, you act as if DE it some small scale event that can be completed by random, its a map wide meta just like many meta before. Dragonstand can screw up if that map lack number or people dont kill mender fast enough to prevent boss coming back alive

And same for HoT metas, you need to use LFG to look for populated map, and if you are too late, better spam that click join and hope you're lucky or tough luck! Better hope the map you're on is also popualted otherwise wait for next meta

LFG has alway been there since the beginning if you want to do any meta from Silverwaste all the way to DE, so why now you complaints perplexed me

[Fueki.4753]

2 hours ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

LFG has alway been there since the beginning

This isn't true.

I don't remember when Arenanet implemented it, but it didn't come with the launch of the game.

I distinctly remember me and other people using an external internet site to find people for dungeons.

[Erise.5614]

3 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Calling 7k DPS on average - a number which is probably even lower after the adjustments Arena Net made - a DPS check is quite a stretch.

So, two points. First of all. The skill that's being tested by the fight is still primarily dealing DPS. There's some mechanics that lower or increase DPS if done right. But at it's core it's not testing anything but DPS. Different to, for example, Octovine or Dragonstand. Which are possible with pretty much any amount of DPS so long as you do the mechanics right. Split up right and react to what's happening. No one would think to talk about or look up DPS numbers there. That's the difference between a fight that's focused on DPS. A DPS check. Versus an encounter that tests secondary mechanics. And when I say secondary mechanics here, I mean subsections of the combat system  as well. E.g. CC, dodging, etc.

And secondly. The 7k DPS is actually a misunderstanding. Used as argument for how little DPS players need to have to still succeed. While the number itself doesn't represent the output players have at one time but the output throughout the entire fight, including all downtime. Which is how you get people like that HS meme Soo Won commander running an all necro squad saying stuff like "we only dealt 5k DPS"... which is true! 

BUT, it's overlooking the important bit. They did manage 10k-15k average DPS throughout the squad during burn phases.

And that's the important part. How quickly can you get Soo Wons HP bar down? Neither 5k dps nor 7k dps average during a burn phase are anywhere close to enough.

I'm pretty sure if I take my 9:20 minute run and stretch all DPS we dealt to 20 minutes I'd end up with a number of like 5k-7k average DPS as well. But that's a made up number. Because it's just extrapolating from extremely successful runs. Neglecting that the slower you are at burning through the HP bar, the more time you have to spend on secondary mechanics. The less time you have to burn Soo Won's HP directly. The more often you'll get tail mid burn phase. The more you have to do them and deal the few million extra damage necessary to deal with the mechanic. The more bites you get. The more tails you get. Again, my quick run last weekend had 0 tails reducing necessary damage dealt significantly because we bursted through individual burn phases in literally ~30 seconds. There was no time for tail to come up. While the day before, we had 3 tails we couldn't ignore. 

That's why I call it a DPS check. Because it's all about how high your average DPS is during burn phases. Because the encounter changes drastically depending on how high or how low your average map DPS is during burn phases.

3 hours ago, Raizel.8175 said:

kitten? DE is basically the same as DS back in its prime. You weren't able to get into a decent map if you weren't there early and used LFG. What's wrong with using LFG in a MMORPG? If you don't even want to put that much effort into teaming up with other players, then maybe you shouldn't play a MMORPG.

Nothing is wrong with LFG in an MMORPG.

But it is be possible to do DS if you were simply early enough. It is possible to do almost any meta by simply being there a while before it starts. LFG is making it more reliable to jump in late. To optimize playtime further. But it's not necessary.

Unless we get a bunch of extra power creep or further nerfs, I don't see that happening for DE maps. And again, I'm not saying that would make DE as a meta event better. It's designed fundamentally to be this kind of challenge. But it's not going to get much better for DE maps. They fill up faster due to the smaller map cap and most players have already learned to be there 45-60 minutes early. We have advice here on the forums to straight up ignore squads that show up a mere 30 minutes before the start of escorts. Experienced players expect certain things of their commanders or won't join at all. Decreasing chances of those squads further. Combined it means getting into a successful map is more dependent on LFG than ever. And not just any LFG. The right LFG posts. As it needs not just a taxi but an organized map with a commander who knows what they are doing. Requiring more attempts to join full maps than ever before. And it's less likely than ever to stumble into a map with any chance of success. 

I wasn't even suggesting this kind of collaboration shouldn't exist. But to make a clear distinction between two types of gameplay. One focused on gimmick mechanics, novelty and planned for repetition. The other focused on the combat system, performance, structure and organization. With a clear path from one to the other that one can opt in as convenient. Rather than simply introducing one into the other. 

Also, and this is just a side note. But most MMOs nowadays consider LFG to be a matchmaking system. Not a lobby browser. Lobby browsers like GW2s LFG have mostly disappeared from modern games. I know it's more complicated in GW2 and because of several of the strengths of the game it's less possible to do automatic matchmaking. I'm just sharing the observation that the type of LFG GW2 uses has become very rare as games in general moved away from it intentionally.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Ultramex.1506]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

This isn't true.

I don't remember when Arenanet implemented it, but it didn't come with the launch of the game.

I distinctly remember me and other people using an external internet site to find people for dungeons.

Ah so i checked wiki, it was added on Sep 17, 2013 update and became available for everyone on Sep 23! A year after the game release

My point still stand that people alway look for organized group to get thing done, with or without lfg backthen

[Rasimir.6239]

25 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

So, two points. First of all. The skill that's being tested by the fight is still primarily dealing DPS. There's some mechanics that lower or increase DPS if done right. But at it's core it's not testing anything but DPS. Different to, for example, Octovine or Dragonstand.

This is a statement I'd like to contest.

 

From what I've seen (and I've spent time in a fair amount of failed instances due to not enjoying lfg-hopping and simply jumping in when I'm there and feel like it, mostly just to practice mechanics or introduce friends to the fight), dps really is the least of the problems in this fight.

 

All of the failed instances I participated in (maybe around 20 in total) mainly didn't make it because people ignored mechanics, even if they were explained in chat (both what and why). People would die by the dozends to Soo Won's aoe attacks, people would die from thornharts uncontestedly playing pinball with everybody, people would spend long stretches of time tickling the boss while ignoring the break bar and/or the tail, people would waste time by killing the split bosses out of sync.

 

That said I've also noticed a definite improvement over time. The number or people aware of and trying to execute the mechanics seems to steadily go up. There's still situations like some know-it-alls with insufficient understanding arguing in map chat about ignoring the tail in situations where it's not applicaple (e.g. ignoring the tail at 6+% boss health in a roughly organised map because they once did that at 2% in a tightly organised lfg squad with a strong damage core), but you'll always have a few people that think they know better than they really do.

 

To those that don't like to go to lfg for the event for whatever reason, there's definitely possibilites to do it without, although that of course isn't a guarantee. Of the three kills I've been part of (did I mention that I really hate world bosses and meta events and almost never actively seek them out? 😉 ), two happened because I was in a map and noticed organisation happening. The last one seemed to have a squad with an invisible tag and no map chat communication at all. I just happened to be in a map for daily events, and noticed a suspicious amount of seemingly organised groups zooming in on events all over the map. Checking several players by right-clicking them found most of them to be in a squad (the context menu had "join squad" instead of "invite to party"), so I stayed on, and sure enough the full meta went smoothly with people splitting evenly and doing mechanics, despite there being really no direct indicator of a squad on the map.

[Erise.5614]

1 hour ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

Ah so i checked wiki, it was added on Sep 17, 2013 update and became available for everyone on Sep 23! A year after the game release

My point still stand that people alway look for organized group to get thing done, with or without lfg backthen

Always is a bit of an exaggeration. There's a surprising amount of players who rarely use LFG. And a smaller but still surprisingly large amount of players who don't even know it exists or how to use it. 

There's a reason most games support organization and structure but offer systems to get you playing and having fun without needing to do any of it. OW is that for GW2.

34 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

From what I've seen (and I've spent time in a fair amount of failed instances due to not enjoying lfg-hopping and simply jumping in when I'm there and feel like it, mostly just to practice mechanics or introduce friends to the fight), dps really is the least of the problems in this fight.

 

All of the failed instances I participated in (maybe around 20 in total) mainly didn't make it because people ignored mechanics, even if they were explained in chat (both what and why). People would die by the dozends to Soo Won's aoe attacks, people would die from thornharts uncontestedly playing pinball with everybody, people would spend long stretches of time tickling the boss while ignoring the break bar and/or the tail, people would waste time by killing the split bosses out of sync.

I mean, yes but no. All that you do is getting damage buffs or getting rid of debuffs. Direct (tail, green buff) or indirect (thornhearts decreasing DPS by knocking players around).

It is entirely built around keeping the DPS to Soo Won's HP bar high enough throughout the event. Everything in the fight is directly tied to DPS. Everything that lowers the DPS speed decreases success chance. Everything that increases DPS increases success chance.

But this necessarily means that the base conditions. The base DPS the players on the map can deal affects the fight to a huge degree. Which is why you can skip a whole bunch of mechanics with high enough DPS. If you just push phases fast enough, you can avoid tail and a lot of bites from ever happening. it is less likely to kill mini bosses out of sync because they all after ~30-40 seconds of spawning anyway. Any timer ANet might put up, any mechanic they add is borderline irrelevant while maps with lower DPS as baseline are punished for that lower DPS by having to deal more damage in general and having less time to do so. Raw DPS is rewarded exponentially. It snowballs in both directions. High raw DPS and it gets more more easier. Low raw DPS and it gets more harder than just taking a bit longer. 

So yes. If everyone would have done the mechanics well it would likely have succeeded. But people could also be worse at mechanics and still succeed if they had more DPS focused builds. Which creates a lot of design challenges. Some of which are literally impossible to solve to something even remotely to everyones satisfaction. I wonder why ANet feels the need to try this instead of creating a system for people to self select into content, assume a higher baseline of skill and being able to design a tighter encounter to that more specific target audience.

 

Any form of DPS check inevitably leads to this problem. It can not be balanced for the general playerbase.

Like, even if tail comes up the difference is extreme. The difference between an unknowledgeable and inexperienced player and a very knowledgeable and experienced player is up to x10. 1000%. 

No matter how the fight is balanced, this can not work out. If we assume two groups on both these extremes, that means the experienced group still deals about as much damage during tail as the other without tail and while they have the green buff and while Soo Won is exposed.

How can this possibly ever end up balanced and as enjoyable experience for everyone? It's an impossible task.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Erise.5614

[The Boz.2038]

Hey news flash: ~Everything in the game dies to damage. If there is a chance to fail it, it is ~always a DPS check of this or that type.
To single that out as some sort of unique issue of this meta is... reductive? Irrelevant? Meaningless? Dishonest? Something like that.

[Gibson.4036]

21 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Hey news flash: ~Everything in the game dies to damage. If there is a chance to fail it, it is ~always a DPS check of this or that type.

Only if there is a time limit.

Yes, you have to do damage to everything in order to defeat it. But you only have to do a threshold of DPS if there there are a fixed number of seconds to do that damage.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Erise.5614]

54 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Hey news flash: ~Everything in the game dies to damage. If there is a chance to fail it, it is ~always a DPS check of this or that type.
To single that out as some sort of unique issue of this meta is... reductive? Irrelevant? Meaningless? Dishonest? Something like that.

That's not entirely true. The question whether it's a DPS check or not depends on whether you can reasonably fail dealing enough damage within the time limit.

This is not the case for most meta events. Most metas require too few people on the map to fail due to lack of DPS.

There are, however, meta events that can fail regardless of how much or how little DPS you deal. AB is an example. A map can fail to do 4 different mechanics that are unrelated to DPS. Made harder by enemies that you can not kill. The primary challenge is simultaneous death of 4 sides. Made harder by putting all sides out of sync. They do not reach DPS phases at the same or even just a similar time if played regularly. So it actually requires mindfulness of other groups. 

DE has the split up, kill close to one another mechanic. But it merely requires to distribute DPS semi evenly. There's no barriers or secondary challenge to it of any kind. You can jump to other sides if you notice a discrepancy. And at sufficiently high DPS you can burn all down from 100-0 within the time frame you are given to synchronize. This is not testing other mechanics and is an extremely mild form of this group collaboration. Because the meta is not focused on such mechanics. It's focused on being a DPS check.

[The Boz.2038]

Ah. So the DE meta is even easier, then?
Huh. never thought about it that way. You're right!

[Erise.5614]

3 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Ah. So the DE meta is even easier, then?
Huh. never thought about it that way. You're right!

This is actually correct. The mechanics of DE are easier than quite a bunch of meta events. 

With the difference that ANet still wants it to be challenging. Still wants it to fail. The only way to do that is to increase the DPS requirements drastically.

Hence, me calling it a DPS check.

If it was balanced for similar DPS as Octo it would need to cut down all HP bars by somewhere around 50%-75%. At which point it'd be unlikely to ever fail even on a half populated map. Because the mechanics aren't actually difficult. It's made difficult primarily by requiring higher than usual for open world DPS.

And I'm saying I'd much prefer mechanics challenge that comes from the mechanics while having an easy time with the map wide DPS requirement. I'd like more challenge that doesn't come from raw DPS. Challenge that can't be skipped with raw DPS.

Open world is not the right place to have satisfying DPS checks. The DPS difference between players is too large. It's impossible to balance it in a way where it's an enjoyable, satisfying challenge to most players. Being either way too easy or too steep depending on who you play with. 

[Rasimir.6239]

1 hour ago, Erise.5614 said:

Any form of DPS check inevitably leads to this problem. It can not be balanced for the general playerbase.

Am I understanding this correctly? You definition of "dps check" is any fight that has a time limit, however loose or tight said limit is? So something like Dragon's Stand, that has a time limit (90 minutes in case of that meta if I remember it correctly) is also a dps check in your book?

If so, then our definition of "dps check" is very different from mine. I'd still argue that the Dragon's End is not a dps check but rather a mechanics check, because if you do the mechanics you'll likely succeed even on a map doing below-average damage (as long as they do damage at all).

 

It rememinds me of the early days of the Queen's Pavilion, when people were complaining that it took two hours doing a single round of bosses for bronze rewards, while the more coordinated maps that took care of the mechanics took a few minutes and gained gold rewards for it.

Are you proposing the DE meta should be like the early days pavilion, dragging out for potentially hours for minimal rewards on those maps that don't take care of mechanics? What about Dragon's Stand, the Silverwastes bosses and Vinewrath events, the Verdant Brink night bosses, the multitude of other boss and meta events all over the game that have a time limit that you run into if you ignore (most of) the mechanics?

 

Or does your definition of "dps check" mean "content that lets you ignore mechanics if you bring high enough dps"? Because that is the case with roughly 99% of all events in game. Going all the way back to dungeons and personal story in 2012, there are plenty of encounters in this game that allow players with considerably above average damage output to ignore mechanics. Have you ever played the crystal mechanic in the final boss fight of Citadel of Flame path 1? Is that a dps check because you can burn through the boss while ignoring the mechanics if you bring enough damage (even easier now, but still very doable back at launch)? How about the bone wall at Tequatl? The crystal thingies in the fight with Old Tom in the Uncategorized Fractal?

 

I still fail to see how DE is different from how the game has worked since the beginning. All over the game there are events and mechanics that need to be done, and in most places strong dps makes it easier to (partly) ignore mechanics, but the fight is very much doable even with mediocre and below-average damage output if people play with the mechanics.

[Rasimir.6239]

7 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Because the mechanics aren't actually difficult. It's made difficult primarily by requiring higher than usual for open world DPS.

You'd have a point if most maps that fail would be doing the mechanics but fail anyway. I can only contribute anecdotal evidence here, but from what I've seen (as outlined in one of my posts above) all of the maps I've been on have failed have heavily messed up or even ignored the mechanics that likely would've enabled them to win the fight.

[Silent.6137]

42 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

And I'm saying I'd much prefer mechanics challenge that comes from the mechanics while having an easy time with the map wide DPS requirement. I'd like more challenge that doesn't come from raw DPS. Challenge that can't be skipped with raw DPS.

Open world is not the right place to have satisfying DPS checks. The DPS difference between players is too large. It's impossible to balance it in a way where it's an enjoyable, satisfying challenge to most players. Being either way too easy or too steep depending on who you play with. 

Simple solution to your preferences. Get rid of the time limit. That will reduce DPS requirements. Get Soo-Won to dance around lots more with more bites. And Thornhearts everywhere. That will ensure everyone needs to do the mechanics. Only problem is the fight may take several hours. Maybe have Soo-Won call a washroom break after every 2 hours.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Silent.6137

[ProtoGunner.4953]

It's easy as a gamer if you know single player games like Zelda etc. But there are a shitton of non-gamers or casuals who can't do a thing. Anyway, this map was never an issue in my experience so no idea what they are complaining here.