Need more clarity around 60% success rate in DE meta

[Malus.2184]

12 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Oh... no, never tried to be dishonest, I just never wanted a discussion with you in the first place anyway.

If you never wanted one then what was the reason to engage? If I was wrong then I would just be wrong and objective reality would show that without you neding to ever interfere.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Malus.2184

[Raizel.8175]

39 minutes ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I think multiple difficulties for raids with scaling loot would be fantastic, [...]

Sounds nice on paper, but would be devastating for the cohesion of the raiding community in general. The community is already very fragmented and by no means as cohesive as some people think it is. On one hand, you have people who are - for whatever reason (work, family, no static, etc.) - desperately trying to get their clears and are happy if they at least manage to get W1 till W4 done. On the other hand, you have people who are doing their monday full clear while also clearing five CMs for the Weekly Raids Achievement. Just as people differ, their skill levels also differ vastly: You have people who are happy to clear bosses like Deimos in 6~7 minutes while you also have people who clear the same boss in below 2 minutes. Raids are already tiered: You have the easy W1 till W4 raids, then the more difficult W5 till W7 raids and then CMs. Tiering raids further would be detrimental to the already fragmented community.

52 minutes ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

There should be an instanced version of the battle with Soo-Won tuned for challenge and an open world fight that is comparable to other open world metas.

Basically the same as the above. The GW2 community is already severely fragmented. Having difficulty variety and progression in open world is a way to fix this. The only problem is that people are used to "autopilot mode" since open world has been far too easy for the last ~10 years. Dragon's End isn't asking for the impossible. Dragon's End is asking for the bare minimum of gameplay knowledge people should have after playing the game even for a few weeks.

You also have to look into the future: Do you really believe that pushing out more and more "autopilot mode" content is healthy for the game? On one hand, it would severely limit what the developers could do in open world as they would constantly have to make content and mechanic as easy as possible. On the other, you'd continue to fragment the overall open world population up to an unhealthy point. PoF maps are already almost dead - just like others are. Maybe new maps would even be dead on arrival. Having difficulty variety and progression could be a way to solve that problem.

[AgentMoore.9453]

1 minute ago, Raizel.8175 said:

The GW2 community is already severely fragmented.

I mean yeah, it's fragmented, but not necessarily in the ways you describe. I'd say the current split is more 'people who do the content' and 'people who don't do the content'. I really don't think adding tiers to raids would evaporate the population that currently plays them - especially not if their preferred level of difficulty still offered the best rewards. What it would do, however, is bring some of the people who currently aren't raiding into raids, even if only for the introductory experience. Raiders aren't a monolith, it's true - but they absolutely are a minority right now, and increasing the general player interest in raids seems like a great way to get ArenaNet to keep producing them.

7 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Dragon's End isn't asking for the impossible

Yet it is asking for the unpopular.

In my experience, most folks will not beat their head against a wall when there are other paths they can take (ie: playing things other than GW2 or simply engaging with other metas/maps/expansions). Some people may look at a fight like Soo-Won's and say 'I'm gonna work at this until I can punch her snout off her face', but the feedback I'm seeing from so many people is 'I lost interest' 'It's not like the PvE I have enjoyed up until now' or 'It takes too long and doesn't reward enough'. These are the realities of putting something tougher than expected in front of a population that largely does not seek out tough experiences. What you end up with is a bunch of people who don't want to be there, a bunch of coordinated players who are then stuck carrying them or trying to force open new maps to avoid them, and a third segment of players who have simply left and not returned. I can't imagine that was the goal ArenaNet had in mind when designing the 10-year finale of their Elder Dragon story.

14 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Do you really believe that pushing out more and more "autopilot mode" content is healthy for the game?

I believe giving the majority of players content similar to the things that they've expressed enjoyment of and willingly paid money for access to is very healthy for the game. Dunno if I'd call it 'autopilot' though. Even Core Tyrian world bosses require some level of attention, coordination, or carrying to guarantee a success. Some of us have played this game for so long that they seem insanely easy or old hat, but I saw the Shadow Behemoth fail this week and it wasn't because everyone was AFK or pressing 1.

What would be unhealthy for the game is to try and tell the players what they want despite evidence to the contrary or accidentally spurn their supporters by pushing hard on content only a minority of players engages with.

[Erise.5614]

42 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Sounds nice on paper, but would be devastating for the cohesion of the raiding community in general. The community is already very fragmented and by no means as cohesive as some people think it is. On one hand, you have people who are - for whatever reason (work, family, no static, etc.) - desperately trying to get their clears and are happy if they at least manage to get W1 till W4 done. On the other hand, you have people who are doing their monday full clear while also clearing five CMs for the Weekly Raids Achievement. Just as people differ, their skill levels also differ vastly: You have people who are happy to clear bosses like Deimos in 6~7 minutes while you also have people who clear the same boss in below 2 minutes. Raids are already tiered: You have the easy W1 till W4 raids, then the more difficult W5 till W7 raids and then CMs. Tiering raids further would be detrimental to the already fragmented community.

I agree with everything you said here. But not with the conclusion.

As you said. The community is already fragmented. But one side has a very easy time, the other has an enjoyable amount of challenge and a third one is feeling too intimidated to even try. Difficulties aren't adding fractures. They just give already different groups a way to enjoy their time with the content while advancing at their own pace into more challenge. Basically, exactly what you said in your next point, just the other way around.

42 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Basically the same as the above. The GW2 community is already severely fragmented. Having difficulty variety and progression in open world is a way to fix this. The only problem is that people are used to "autopilot mode" since open world has been far too easy for the last ~10 years. Dragon's End isn't asking for the impossible. Dragon's End is asking for the bare minimum of gameplay knowledge people should have after playing the game even for a few weeks.

Unfortunately, the gameplay knowledge you expect is not learned after a few weeks. That's very objectively not happening. 

I agree that there is room for harder open world events. Though they took some risks with DE which put a lot of pressure on them and did not play out well. In my opinion, the introduction should be less prominent and ramping up rewards even slower. So communities can form around it, figure out the fight and only then having it adopted by the general player base slowly over time. Giving ANet time to perfect the event to their goals and giving people who struggle with it less reason to feel antagonized. 

DE was too prominent and too buggy / too many issues with it upon release, creating a lot of negativity as result.

42 minutes ago, Raizel.8175 said:

You also have to look into the future: Do you really believe that pushing out more and more "autopilot mode" content is healthy for the game?

It really depends on the implementation. Just increasing challenge isn't, by itself, more healthy. 

And not all kinds of challenges are equal. 

PoF metas are mostly dead because of the reward structure and the fact that they are not particularly engaging. 

HoT metas aren't serious combat challenges either. Yet they are extremely alive. Even without all that great rewards in terms of liquid gold. Because they are engaging and provide a large variety of secondary rewards. Of account bound stuff that you can progress. And have an extremely pleasant atmosphere as result. 

Challenge for OW can be both, combat checks and interesting environment mechanics that require participation by most players. Only a mix of content is going to be healthy.

A steady increase in combat challenge with correspondingly increased rewards would, before soon, result in "easier" metas being played much less often. Creating a raid situation. Gatekeeping, inconvenient introductions and fracturing of the community. With a lot of toxicity as result. Both from and against players who enjoy the challenging content.

That has serious potential to harm the game. 

Considering current OW farms are the most popular content in the game. It is, objectively speaking, healthy to support those. 

My main concern going forward is how those are balanced. It's about how many introduction / tutorial style metas we get, how many are challenging in regards to environment mechanics and how many are challenging in terms of combat performance.

The balance between those three properties, hybrids between the three and how players are lead into more challenge of any kind is, in my humble opinion, the deciding factor of whether or not the overall direction is successful or not. 

Edited April 18, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Listen to your commander.  Hit blue bars with CC. Do 7k DPS or more. If you can do that you can clear DE meta.

I do that. And i stay alive in addition to the above. I'm yet to see a succesful run however, so obviously your method is lacking somehow.

 

 

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

17 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I do that. And i stay alive in addition to the above. I'm yet to see a succesful run however, so obviously your method is lacking somehow.

 

 

 

Hence what I said in an earlier post: You did what was needed. Unfortunately there were not enough of you in the squad to carry those that don't do those things. Same would go for me, I listen to my commander, hit EMP + personal CC on blue bars and kitten out 30-40k DPS regularly, but if enough people in the squad don't listen, don't CC and do sub 7k DPS, there comes a point where people like me cannot carry people like that towards success anymore and the event fails.

 

If everyone did the minimum, there would be no issues. 

Don't blame the event, don't blame the minimal effort, but realise just how low the bar for personal succes is, and the fact that it does not happen for you shows how many others in your squad fail to pass it. I mean Anet basically gives people a boost worth +30% damage for free before the fight even starts ( + 20% from 10 stacks of DE contributor of which 5 stacks can be gotten during escort, + 5% from prepping all areas, and another ~ 5% from a Jade Offensive Buff. And then there are temporary DPS boosts you get from doing the mechanics ( +10/20% from exposed thanks to succesful CC on the boss, + 50% or so from doing greens succesfully), there comes a point where people have to actually start showing a tiny bit of effort.

 

Edited April 18, 2022 by Wielder Of Magic.3950

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Raizel.8175 said:

Sounds nice on paper, but would be devastating for the cohesion of the raiding community in general. The community is already very fragmented and by no means as cohesive as some people think it is. On one hand, you have people who are - for whatever reason (work, family, no static, etc.) - desperately trying to get their clears and are happy if they at least manage to get W1 till W4 done. On the other hand, you have people who are doing their monday full clear while also clearing five CMs for the Weekly Raids Achievement. Just as people differ, their skill levels also differ vastly: You have people who are happy to clear bosses like Deimos in 6~7 minutes while you also have people who clear the same boss in below 2 minutes. Raids are already tiered: You have the easy W1 till W4 raids, then the more difficult W5 till W7 raids and then CMs. Tiering raids further would be detrimental to the already fragmented community.

Basically the same as the above. The GW2 community is already severely fragmented. Having difficulty variety and progression in open world is a way to fix this. The only problem is that people are used to "autopilot mode" since open world has been far too easy for the last ~10 years. Dragon's End isn't asking for the impossible. Dragon's End is asking for the bare minimum of gameplay knowledge people should have after playing the game even for a few weeks.

You also have to look into the future: Do you really believe that pushing out more and more "autopilot mode" content is healthy for the game? On one hand, it would severely limit what the developers could do in open world as they would constantly have to make content and mechanic as easy as possible. On the other, you'd continue to fragment the overall open world population up to an unhealthy point. PoF maps are already almost dead - just like others are. Maybe new maps would even be dead on arrival. Having difficulty variety and progression could be a way to solve that problem.

It's okay.  I don't participate in that jungle worm meta either for the same reasons.  It's not that I'm not capable.  I'm just not interested in putting in the time and doing things like finding the right guild/discord to have a good chance of getting an event done when I could just show up for an easier meta. 

You ask if we really need more easy metas.  No, we don't.  Neither do we need more abandoned metas that only get done by certain guilds who have a thing for them.  If you ask me which I'd rather have as the capstone for the latest expansion, I think I'd err on the side of something with higher than a 60% completion rate.

But that's okay.  I'm back to spending my open world time in maps I enjoy and feel have good replay value (mostly HoT).  If I get bored with that and the game overall, I have other games I can spend my time on.  No big deal.  We'll see which long-term strategy works out for them.

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

I cannot speak for all non-casuals, but I will happily admit that I am tired of having to carry people who contribute nothing to the squad ( I don't expect people to push out 30-40k DPS like me, I don't. I like pushing my limits but understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. But there is a middleground between that and seeing my contribution being weighed down because my DPS numbers have to compensate for 20-30 people hitting 3k or even less) and then proceed to be very vocal about Dragon's End needing to be nerfed ( because it doesn't).

 

Anet hands you a 30% boost to your damage for free, which should make it easy to hit the minimal req of 7k even of all you do is spam your skills off CD or even if all you do is use auto attack,  so all that is left are basics: Listen to your commander (basic communication.....) and use CC on blue bars, which basically everything in the game up until now has been trying to teach you.

 

Yet people still fail (because apparently everything that asks more of you than hitting your 1 key qualifies as hardcore raid content nowadays). 

If that is you, then yes, you are holding back the entire squad.
How does that make you feel?

Edited April 18, 2022 by Wielder Of Magic.3950

[Randulf.7614]

5 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It's okay.  I don't participate in that jungle worm meta either for the same reasons.  It's not that I'm not capable.  I'm just not interested in putting in the time and doing things like finding the right guild/discord to have a good chance of getting an event done when I could just show up for an easier meta. 

You ask if we really need more easy metas.  No, we don't.  Neither do we need more abandoned metas that only get done by certain guilds who have a thing for them.  If you ask me which I'd rather have as the capstone for the latest expansion, I think I'd err on the side of something with higher than a 60% completion rate.

But that's okay.  I'm back to spending my open world time in maps I enjoy and feel have good replay value (mostly HoT).  If I get bored with that and the game overall, I have other games I can spend my time on.  No big deal.  We'll see which long-term strategy works out for them.

Agreed. Right now more players will prob lean towards positive gameplay rather than investing time in something which has a strong fail rate. The more something succeeds, the more players will invest their time and have fun. There are ways to make mechanics and high success rates and that should be the focus imo.

If people spend say half hour or more and something fails too often, it’s just going to push them away to other content or even other games. If Drakkar is up, I won’t bother unless I see that enough people are there to do it and win. I have no wish to waste time these days and fail

[Malus.2184]

The issue, to compare to the general vibe of Dark Souls, is that the event is unfair instead of difficult. The difficulty of the fight comes from a set of circumstances that can differ wildly from instance to instance. Examples would be

- When does she gain Defiance Bars? There's a huge difference in the flow of the fight if she gains them at 61% and 41% compared to if she gains them at 59% and 39%.

-How many times does she do the Bite? Each bite takes 14 seconds to finish. If one group only gets four and another gets seven the difference in lost DPS is 42-sec which on a timed fight is huge.

- How many Tails does she spawn?

That there's an RNG effect is good, however, the RNG as it's implemented is extremely unfair. Put limits to how many times she can do each  type of RNG, put limits on WHEN she can do each type of RNG so you, for example, never get the Defiance Bar shortly before she would phase. Things like that would do a lot to make the encounter difficult and fair, because right now it's difficult and unfair.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Malus.2184

[Luci.7018]

Just now, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

I cannot speak for all non-casuals, but I will happily admit that I am tired of having to carry people who contribute nothing to the squad ( I don't expect people to push out 30-40k DPS like me, I don't. I like pushing my limits but understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. But there is a middleground between that and seeing my contribution being weighed down because my DPS numbers have to compensate for 20-30 people hitting 3k or even less) and then proceed to be very vocal about Dragon's End needing to be nerfed ( because it doesn't).

 

Anet hands you a 30% boost to your damage for free, which should make it easy to hit the minimal req of 7k even of all you do is spam your skills off CD or even if all you do is use auto attack,  so all that is left are basics: Listen to your commander (basic communication.....) and use CC on blue bars, which basically everything in the game up until now has been trying to teach you.

 

Yet people still fail (because apparently everything that asks more of you than hitting your 1 key qualifies as hardcore raid content nowadays). 

If that is you, then yes, you are holding back the entire squad.
How does that make you feel?

Because we can't up to your standard , the company can  simply "soft-start-over" , and someday / some expansion we  will catch up to you . Until then you can have Soo-Won , like Triple Trouble

[Tachenon.5270]

11 hours ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

What if Anet want a challenging OW content ? You know something that isnt like 99.9% of the game where people can mindlessly spam 1.

We've seen that people 'mindlessly spamming 1' can do pretty good DPS, like in that video with the Engi bomber doing the deep knee bend 20k+ DPS -- 'Look, Ma! No hands!' -- so I don't think it's right or fair to, ya know, denounce the 'mindless 1-spammers' anymore. Seems they were on the right track after all. I think from here on out that's what I'm going to do. Sure will save wear and tear on that left mouse button. Eeyup.

[AliamRationem.5172]

17 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

I cannot speak for all non-casuals, but I will happily admit that I am tired of having to carry people who contribute nothing to the squad ( I don't expect people to push out 30-40k DPS like me, I don't. I like pushing my limits but understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. But there is a middleground between that and seeing my contribution being weighed down because my DPS numbers have to compensate for 20-30 people hitting 3k or even less) and then proceed to be very vocal about Dragon's End needing to be nerfed ( because it doesn't).

 

Anet hands you a 30% boost to your damage for free, which should make it easy to hit the minimal req of 7k even of all you do is spam your skills off CD or even if all you do is use auto attack,  so all that is left are basics: Listen to your commander (basic communication.....) and use CC on blue bars, which basically everything in the game up until now has been trying to teach you.

 

Yet people still fail (because apparently everything that asks more of you than hitting your 1 key qualifies as hardcore raid content nowadays). 

If that is you, then yes, you are holding back the entire squad.
How does that make you feel?

If you don't like carrying people, what are you arguing against?  I don't like carrying people either.  I also don't like wasting up to 2 hours on an open world event and coming up empty-handed 40% of the time due to things that are either beyond my control or require some form of gatekeeping.  Why?  Because it's open world.  Save that for instanced content, where gatekeeping is totally appropriate.

Or don't and either enough people will learn to carry (e.g. Tequatl - although I think that's more about power creep, honestly) or it'll be a dead meta that only certain guilds organize for (e.g. jungle wurm).  I think there's an argument to be made that we don't have a lot of difficult metas that require organization.  But for me personally, I don't see myself going out of my way to participate in events like that.  If I want more organization and challenge in my Soo-Won fight I can just go do the Harvest Tower strike instead.  It takes a lot less time and it's more fun!

[Ariane Barnes.6483]

As a mathematician I am extremely curious what the numerator and denominator of that 60% statistic is.  I have to assume the numerator is successfully defeating the meta to its completion.  But what is the denominator?  Most non-organized meta's I have seen is we do the pre-events at a pretty leisurely rate, finish the crystals thing, and there is like one minute to defeat Soo-Wan, which we don't bother to do.  Is that counted?  I'm guessing no, even though it should if we are being real.

I also see that only 43% of players that started EoD on GW2 Efficiency have successfully completed the meta at least once.  Last time I checked 43% is not 60%.  The truth is there are a small number of organized groups doing the meta over and over again, and a large number (at least 3 times as big) of players who have given up on the DE Meta completely, considering it a lost cause.  That is where the 60% is coming from, but I guarantee the participation denominator in that fraction is way smaller than the participation in the other three metas.

I'm pretty much one of those "lost cause" player at this point.  I do the other 3 metas every time they come up and the only thing we need to succeed is enough people participating. No hour prep time, no meta builds or organized groups to worry about, just 20 to 25 minutes of GW2 fun.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Ariane Barnes.6483

[Dante.1508]

Adding raid content to the open world is a mistake anet will feel in the future if they continue down this path.. Their populations will die again like southsun and living story 1..

Edited April 18, 2022 by Dante.1508

[Malus.2184]

11 minutes ago, Ariane Barnes.6483 said:

As a mathematician I am extremely curious what the numerator and denominator of that 60% statistic is. 

As someone who's educated in how to read graphs alarms always goes off in my head when I see statistics without context.

[kharmin.7683]

4 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

As someone who's educated in how to read graphs alarms always goes off in my head when I see statistics without context.

And using unreliable resources like gw2efficiency to support a premise.

[Erise.5614]

47 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Anet hands you a 30% boost to your damage for free, which should make it easy to hit the minimal req of 7k

Just to point that out. The buff just makes the difference in experience significantly larger.

Considering that buff and boon subgroups both being multiplicative, it means that high performing players benefit exponentially more. Turning the entire encounter into a literal joke. While lower performing players are helped less.

So this design makes it less entertaining to experienced groups while not helping groups who can not perform as well. 

If the intention was to help and reduce the performance gap on this map it should have focused on using flat bonuses like the offensive boost.

[Malus.2184]

7 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

And using unreliable resources like gw2efficiency to support a premise.

If that's the only data source available it's better than nothing, however, it has to come with a huge caveat as GW2eefficiancy is a self-selecting source since only people who opt in have the data shown and as such has a natural bias. It's an aggregate of how many of the members of GW2 has a defeat of her in their API. Something that can be withheld as well as the API key have selectors for what information it includes.

Your post, while you subjectively think that it's a critique, is objectively an expression that you fail to understand how sources work while thinking that you do.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Malus.2184

[kharmin.7683]

13 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

 

Your post, while you subjectively think that it's a critique, is objectively an expression that you fail to understand how sources work while thinking that you do.

No, I have a pretty solid understanding.  Using an inherently biased source for supporting an argument is fallacy.

[Malus.2184]

43 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

No, I have a pretty solid understanding.  Using an inherently biased source for supporting an argument is fallacy.

If you did then you'd know that it was okay to use it as your only source if you include the bias in the bias section. Their only mistake was never reporting the bias of the source.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Malus.2184

[Raizel.8175]

2 hours ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I mean yeah, it's fragmented, but not necessarily in the ways you describe. I'd say the current split is more 'people who do the content' and 'people who don't do the content'. I really don't think adding tiers to raids would evaporate the population that currently plays them - especially not if their preferred level of difficulty still offered the best rewards. What it would do, however, is bring some of the people who currently aren't raiding into raids, even if only for the introductory experience. Raiders aren't a monolith, it's true - but they absolutely are a minority right now, and increasing the general player interest in raids seems like a great way to get ArenaNet to keep producing them.

The current "soft tiering" is healthier for the game than the "hard tiering" you propose. Soft tiering allows for a certain degree of permeability which is healthy for the game. The problem with getting people into raids isn't the difficulty of raids - W1-W4 are fairly accessible when it comes to difficulty -, it's socialization. That results into a whole different problem though: For people to socialize, you need to have basic rules. These rules in raids are knowing roles, boons and certain key mechanics - that won't change even if you add "easy mode" raids. Those rules even exist to a certain degree in open world - even if people may not realize them. Now here's the problem: GW2s community has a very distinct snowflake-culture-problem. People instantly feel offended even if you politely try to offer some advice - that's even true for parts of the raiding community. So... How is socialization supposed to work that way? Right. It doesn't. That's why people disappear into gated communities which is another problem in and of itself.

3 hours ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

Yet it is asking for the unpopular.

Is it? Population is still very healthy in EU with several squads in LFG alone on every iteration of DE.

3 hours ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

In my experience, most folks will not beat their head against a wall when there are other paths they can take (ie: playing things other than GW2 or simply engaging with other metas/maps/expansions).

Like other people already said: That wall is paper-thin. Just use any halfway decent build, don't stand in the bad and maybe use CC once her defiance bar pops up. Those are all basic game mechanics the game used during the last ~10 years. All ANet added was a very low DPS requirement. You can literally beat that requirement with 1-Button-Builds like Mukluks 1-Button-Mechanist. Playing the game isn't the problem - the mindset of certain people is.

3 hours ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I believe giving the majority of players content similar to the things that they've expressed enjoyment of and willingly paid money for access to is very healthy for the game. Dunno if I'd call it 'autopilot' though. Even Core Tyrian world bosses require some level of attention, coordination, or carrying to guarantee a success. Some of us have played this game for so long that they seem insanely easy or old hat, but I saw the Shadow Behemoth fail this week and it wasn't because everyone was AFK or pressing 1.

What would be unhealthy for the game is to try and tell the players what they want despite evidence to the contrary or accidentally spurn their supporters by pushing hard on content only a minority of players engages with.

Pushing out autopilot content leads to the problem several living world episodes suffer from though: Once people got their achievements, they just won't bother with the map anymore. Grothmar is basically dead since the map currency is useless. Bjora Marches are done because you can exchange the map currency and you can get a cosmetic infusion from Drakkar. Drizzlewood is alive because the gold-gain there is ridiculously high. If those "ifs" wouldn't exist, these maps would be dead too.

...and coming back to the point of difficulty variety and progression in open world: Open world is played by the whole community - and not just casuals and the hardcore low-effort community. Having some kind of difficulty progression and variety leads to a certain degree of permeability so different parts of the community stay in touch and mingle with each other. That's healthy for the game.

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Unfortunately, the gameplay knowledge you expect is not learned after a few weeks. That's very objectively not happening. 

You can learn basic gameplay knowledge during your road to level 80 if you just bother to read your skills and traits. That's basic interaction with the game you're playing and something the developer of a game should be able to expect from the people playing the game.

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

PoF metas are mostly dead because of the reward structure and the fact that they are not particularly engaging. 

HoT metas aren't serious combat challenges either. Yet they are extremely alive. Even without all that great rewards in terms of liquid gold. Because they are engaging and provide a large variety of secondary rewards. Of account bound stuff that you can progress. And have an extremely pleasant atmosphere as result. 

PoF metas are dead because people were too used to HoT metas and are - in general - inert when it comes to new challenges. There aren't really any differences between HoT and PoF - even the rewards are basically the same - besides that PoF metas generally expect people to be attentive for a longer period of time. Octovine and Chak (those are the HoT metas you mean) are a matter of 2~3 minutes, PoF metas take a little more time. Does that speak against the meta or rather against the player?

3 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

A steady increase in combat challenge with correspondingly increased rewards would, before soon, result in "easier" metas being played much less often. Creating a raid situation. Gatekeeping, inconvenient introductions and fracturing of the community. With a lot of toxicity as result. Both from and against players who enjoy the challenging content.

That has serious potential to harm the game. 

We have a daily reward system. People will still play easier metas even if more difficult metas are more rewarding. Not that that's actually the case though: Stuff like Drizzlewood is more rewarding than DE - it's even more rewarding than raids or fractals. Which raid situation are you talking about by the way? There simply wouldn't be gatekeeping in the first place if the average player had a minimum skill level to begin with. The craze about LI/KP gatekeeping is something very distinct to GW2 and quite a rarity in the general MMORPG landscape. The reason for that being the lack of a minimum skill level and the lack of overall socialization in GW2. I'm certain that difficulty variety/progression wouldn't harm the game in the grand scheme of things.

3 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Considering current OW farms are the most popular content in the game. It is, objectively speaking, healthy to support those. 

You invalidate content with constantly adding new farming maps though? Prime example would be Silverwastes which isn't all that great anymore since other farming maps are even more overrewarding.

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

But that's okay.  I'm back to spending my open world time in maps I enjoy and feel have good replay value (mostly HoT).  If I get bored with that and the game overall, I have other games I can spend my time on.  No big deal.  We'll see which long-term strategy works out for them.

Going by sales numbers and population, disappointingly for you, their EoD game design is apparently the way to go. We've already seen during certain living world episodes that just rushing out new maps isn't viable. Having a few more smaller releases like Strike Missions or more challenging meta events seems to be the way to go - even if some parts of the community won't like that approach.

1 hour ago, Luci.7018 said:

If this how Raiders feel , then the company should not buff the rewards any more . So casuals won't be enticed to come and mess your instance .

Here's the funny thing: "Difficult" content like raids, fractals, strike missions (especially EoD strike missions), etc. are far, far less rewarding that grinding maps like Drizzlewood.

1 hour ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

We've seen that people 'mindlessly spamming 1' can do pretty good DPS, like in that video with the Engi bomber doing the deep knee bend 20k+ DPS -- 'Look, Ma! No hands!' -- so I don't think it's right or fair to, ya know, denounce the 'mindless 1-spammers' anymore.

That's a halfway decent build at least and to be honest: with most halfway decent builds, you already fulfill the 7k DPS requirement by merely auto attacking. People aren't decouncing low intensity builds, they're denouncing builds that just don't work at all.

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Why?  Because it's open world.  Save that for instanced content, where gatekeeping is totally appropriate.

There ain't no gatekeeping though? Most squads in EU simply expect the bare minimum and that's it. No weird LI/KP requirements, no Discord/TS requirements, just basic game knowledge and expecting some people to play some hybrid roles. That really ain't gatekeeping.

1 hour ago, Dante.1508 said:

Adding raid content to the open world is a mistake anet will feel in the future if they continue down this path.

That argument... again... DE is nowhere near raid content. You'd fail every single raid with just 7k DPS. DE isn't asking for the impossible. It's only asking for the bare minimum of gameplay knowledge that people should have if they've reached that point of content.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

 

Hence what I said in an earlier post: You did what was needed. Unfortunately there were not enough of you in the squad to carry those that don't do those things. Same would go for me, I listen to my commander, hit EMP + personal CC on blue bars and kitten out 30-40k DPS regularly, but if enough people in the squad don't listen, don't CC and do sub 7k DPS, there comes a point where people like me cannot carry people like that towards success anymore and the event fails.

 

If everyone did the minimum, there would be no issues.

But not everyone does that, so there are issues. And the people will not, generally, improve. After 10 years of this game's history we already know that. As such, designing the event around assumption that they somehow this time will is nothing more than an excercise in futility.

I mean, a great man once said something about repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results...

1 hour ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

Don't blame the event, don't blame the minimal effort, but realise just how low the bar for personal succes is, and the fact that it does not happen for you shows how many others in your squad fail to pass it. I mean Anet basically gives people a boost worth +30% damage for free before the fight even starts ( + 20% from 10 stacks of DE contributor of which 5 stacks can be gotten during escort, + 5% from prepping all areas, and another ~ 5% from a Jade Offensive Buff. And then there are temporary DPS boosts you get from doing the mechanics ( +10/20% from exposed thanks to succesful CC on the boss, + 50% or so from doing greens succesfully),

a +30-50% damage boost is not enough when the event is calibrated around 200-300% of average player's damage. Preferably even better, if you want to minimize the RNG impact that can fail you even then.

1 hour ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

there comes a point where people have to actually start showing a tiny bit of effort.

And that's the point: we already know how people will react and how much of an effort they will show. We've had 10 years to realize that. Expecting this time to be somehow magically different is not reasonable. And the answer is that people do show a lot of effort. Just not the kind of effort you or Anet want them to show. Specifically, you all want players to suddenly understand complexities of the build system, without any additional input from the game - when they were unable to understand it in 10 years. That's just not going to happen. And definitely not as a result of increasing requirements, without the game actually teaching people about it first.

Basically, this event is an example of Anet pushing requirements on a group of players they already know are not up the task.And without doing anything about the reasonw why those players are not up to the task.

That (again) is not a player problem - it's a design issue.

[Raizel.8175]

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And that's the point: we already know how people will react and how much of an effort they will show. We've had 10 years to realize that. [...] And the answer is that people do show a lot of effort. [...] Specifically, you all want players to suddenly understand complexities of the build system, without any additional input from the game - when they were unable to understand it in 10 years. [...] That (again) is not a player problem - it's a design issue.

You're wrong. If a player who has played the game for years still hasn't bothered to interact with the rather basic build system GW2 offers - even if that interaction is merely reading traits - then that's on the player because that player was lazy and didn't want his gaming experience to be smoother by choosing different traits. The game also doesn't have to play the kindergarten teacher all the time. The game is already teaching about combo fields, defiance bars, movement, etc. The people playing this game are all adult people. Expecting some kind of independent gameplay is perfectly fine.

[yann.1946]

23 hours ago, civokenes.3284 said:

So it still can't be done reliably in open world trailblazer gear. Will check back in a week or two 🙂

It can though.