New Meta being ruined

[Silent.6137]

22 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

Yes but teq meta was i presume designed when more competent people open to suggestions were employed at Anet. Those left.

 

But Anet is nothing if not consistent as they won't back out on what they made because massive ego, and god forbid they admit they were not in their best element when doing something, they're going to force the DE meta as it is until Anet is "right" whether we like it or not.

 

They'll sooner see all expansion content die than redesign it.

There was lots of tweaks done to Tequatl over a period of time.

You sound really bitter. Just because they don't immediately change it to suit your liking, Anet has less "competent" people, "massive ego" and "rather see all expansion content die"?

Every changes they do, they'll need to consider the ramifications, how it'll affect everything else. Even if they want to redesign it, do you really think it'll take just a week or two? They can't just wave a magic wand. It requires re-coding, test amd more test. If it's as easy as you seem to think, we'll have a new expansion every two months.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Rogue.8235]

36 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I'm doubtful the current Anet team even knows what GW2's original philosophies were. Which is not meant to be a dig at them as people, but more like a sad acknowledgment of the consequences of layoffs and changing staff over time.

 

Changes in corporate culture is a thing, and I have know way of knowing the depth of such an issue with ArenaNet.  The way to counter it is to have things in writing that can be picked up by newcomers.  Things such as turnover binders and lessons learned documentation.  It's reasonable to assume ArenaNet has these things.  The extent to which they day-to-day operations adhere to such things is an unknown.

As for knowing the original core philosophies of game design, I know they know it.  How mindful employees are of them as they conduct day-to-day operations is another matter.  As well, mistakes happen.  Small mistakes can result in massive consequences.  Something as simple as forgetting to double check that a subsystem in the game, such as new events, are fully compliant with all mission statements can lead to a situation raised in this thread.  A design team that simply forgot to check one thing one night doesn't mean the whole company is completely disconnected with the player base.  Hyperbole isn't going to help foster discourse with the design team.

Saying, hey you guys really need to make sure that there is adherence to the concept of every player likes seeing other players is adhered to.  There should be some emphasis on diligently ensuring all new content is compliant with this.

That is helpful feedback.

 

[Labjax.2465]

2 minutes ago, Rogue.8235 said:

 

Changes in corporate culture is a thing, and I have know way of knowing the depth of such an issue with ArenaNet.  The way to counter it is to have things in writing that can be picked up by newcomers.  Things such as turnover binders and lessons learned documentation.  It's reasonable to assume ArenaNet has these things.  The extent to which they day-to-day operations adhere to such things is an unknown.

As for knowing the original core philosophies of game design, I know they know it.  How mindful employees are of them as they conduct day-to-day operations is another matter.  As well, mistakes happen.  Small mistakes can result in massive consequences.  Something as simple as forgetting to double check that a subsystem in the game, such as new events, are fully compliant with all mission statements can lead to a situation raised in this thread.  A design team that simply forgot to check one thing one night doesn't mean the whole company is completely disconnected with the player base.  Hyperbole isn't going to help foster discourse with the design team.

Saying, hey you guys really need to make sure that there is adherence to the concept of every player likes seeing other players is adhered to.  There should be some emphasis on diligently ensuring all new content is compliant with this.

That is helpful feedback.

 

I can see where you're coming from, but I have been burned by video games too many times and put way too much time into good faith feedback over the years (in multiple games) to be needing a sermon on what helpful feedback looks like. I am dismissive and bleak sometimes because of how chronically video games studios are dismissive and tone deaf about the people who play their games. I don't expect them to roll out the red carpet for every little thing, I don't expect all updates to be without mistakes, missteps, issues, or just less than stellar design every time. I do expect a certain degree of responsiveness and back and forth; for the studio-player dynamic to be treated like a relationship, rather than something where the studio puts stuff out, hides, and then peeks their head out to put out fires if it's bad enough out there. A little communication goes a long way, but many studios act like a little communication is a high expectation and not unlike a person in a toxic relationship, only shows up thoughtfully when there is a real threat of the other person leaving to convince them to stay. At a certain point, I have to just accept it for what it is or move on, knowing I'm not going to change them and if that means being a little gray cloud about it sometimes, then so be it.

I respect your effort to be understanding of where they're coming from. Labor does not produce quality work by magic. But I can't do it anymore. Not unless they consistently indicate they want to know where we're coming from first.

[jamesg.7128]

If there's one thing that will spur Anet to making changes, it will be the Steam release. They can't afford to have thousands of new players hitting this meta and experiencing something like this. It won't end well.

They've already started but have a long way to go.

[Hotride.2187]

The meta was ruined on release due to not being an instance fight, e.g. like dragonstorm. Where you can enter as a squad in a private instance at any point.

Eventually no1 will be in the map, like dragonstand, and you can join the LFG tags (without the map being full when half the squad is not even in). What the success rate will be is a different topic.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Mungrul.9358]

Let's have some fun!

Let's compare end maps from each phase of GW2:

 

Cursed Shore: A bit heavy on the undead theme (although somewhat understandably), but still has great event chains and profitable nodes dotted about the place, so much so that I still enjoy playing on the map to this day.

It also has great wandering mobs that are fun to fight.

 

Dragon's Stand: A map dedicated to the meta, I play this less often than a lot of maps, but it's very fun whenever I stumble across an active map. And the downtime after the meta to allow people to explore the map is appreciated.

 

Domain of Vabbi: To be honest, I keep forgetting that this was the final map of PoF, as the season 4 maps blend so well with the previous campaign. But even so, a return to the final map being a normal, standalone map with lots of interesting event chains was welcome, and a third of the map being hazardous to navigate on foot gives it flavour.

 

Dragon's End: Smaller than any of the previous final maps, bogged down by a toxic relationship between players who want to play the map and those who want to play the meta, and featuring a Cantha-wide mechanic I despise as being completely pointless (the Jade Battery system), like much of the rest of Cantha, I actively avoid playing on this map.

 

If I'm going to invest a large amount of time in a meta, it's going to be Dragon's Stand, Drizzlewood Coast, or any number of the shorter, more rewarding metas on offer in numerous other places in the world (Bjora being a favourite of mine).

 

If they split the final battle off into its own instance and got rid of the gods-awful Jade Battery system, I'd happily return to Dragon's End (and Cantha as a whole).

It would be on a par with Cursed Shore at that point for me.

 

The players didn't ruin the Dragon's End meta. ANet did that all themselves.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Mungrul.9358
Punctuation and run-on sentences

[Hotride.2187]

18 minutes ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

If I'm going to invest a large amount of time in a meta, it's going to be Dragon's Stand, Drizzlewood Coast, or any number of the shorter, more rewarding metas on offer in numerous other places in the world (Bjora being a favourite of mine).

Now that you mention it, its kinda weird dragonstand is (way) shorter. It hadn't occurred to me.

[Emberfoot.6847]

24 minutes ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Let's have some fun!

Let's compare end maps from each phase of GW2:

 

Cursed Shore: A bit heavy on the undead theme (although somewhat understandably), but still has great event chains and profitable nodes dotted about the place, so much so that I still enjoy playing on the map to this day.

It also has great wandering mobs that are fun to fight.

 

Dragon's Stand: A map dedicated to the meta, I play this less often than a lot of maps, but it's very fun whenever I stumble across an active map. And the downtime after the meta to allow people to explore the map is appreciated.

 

Domain of Vabbi: To be honest, I keep forgetting that this was the final map of PoF, as the season 4 maps blend so well with the previous campaign. But even so, a return to the final map being a normal, standalone map with lots of interesting event chains was welcome, and a third of the map being hazardous to navigate on foot gives it flavour.

 

Dragon's End: Smaller than any of the previous final maps, bogged down by a toxic relationship between players who want to play the map and those who want to play the meta, and featuring a Cantha-wide mechanic I despise as being completely pointless (the Jade Battery system), like much of the rest of Cantha, I actively avoid playing on this map.

 

If I'm going to invest a large amount of time in a meta, it's going to be Dragon's Stand, Drizzlewood Coast, or any number of the shorter, more rewarding metas on offer in numerous other places in the world (Bjora being a favourite of mine).

 

If they split the final battle off into its own instance and got rid of the gods-awful Jade Battery system, I'd happily return to Dragon's End (and Cantha as a whole).

It would be on a par with Cursed Shore at that point for me.

 

The players didn't ruin the Dragon's End meta. ANet did that all themselves.

I think part of my problem with the Dragons End meta is that I am far more interested in completing maps than doing the meta. At the same time, I don't want to be leeching off other people's spaces in a good map, but I have no easy way to shift to a different one. The meta area of the map may be small, but there are one heck of a lot of PoIs etc, and all of that is before you consider achievements too. I think either they need to give a lot more downtime after the event with everything unlocked, or make the fight itself an instance. 

Edited June 20, 2022 by Emberfoot.6847

[Zera.9435]

Man, I'm glad I never bothered with that meta ever again after I got my first and only win after about 30 consecutive failed attempts.

[Dante.1508]

Dude stop ruining their fishing thats just nasty.. 😂 That explains so well how bad EoD and the metas are lol.

[Tukaram.8256]

It makes no sense to blame other players when A-Net messed up the implementation of an event. If team & timing are that important to the event - it should have been instanced.

That is open world play. Everyone can do their own thing.  Sounds like the fishers were there first and you tried to ruin their gameplay.  Why didn't you go to another map?   😎

[hellsqueen.3045]

On 6/20/2022 at 3:48 AM, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Lol, I really wish people heard you earlier, if you had expressed it at that time. I hadn't done the event until a few days ago but I already put it together that a combination of low rewards and player conflict are a bad combo. It's good they no longer locked the mount behind the event but as you imagine there's not much incentive to do the fight and it's pretty tragic. I actually enjoyed the fight and despite Twilightzone's meme up there I actually did compare it a little to Dragon's Stand because of the floating platforms and stuff.

A common retort to this was "git gud", and I say that a lot myself, but I understand it with the context of achieving a goal. If the result of gitting gud are not rewarding, then most casual players are simply not going to git gud. Why would you expect people to practice on getting better on something that rewards poorly and has a higher chance to fail?

It's also somewhat dubious how gud can you git too. There's so much downtime in parts that you cannot really speed it up by that much and there is no way in hell you are going to get pugs to expend even more effort to save 20-30 seconds. Granted atm the goal is just to finish but you know how it goes as people even mald in easy dungeons and fractals.

Now personally, I know I could have done better. I don't have a raid engineer build and was just using the LI flamethrower build, but modified for more support. If I had actually thought, I would have switched to either grenade or bomb instead of that. But i guess I was support? And are most going to even consider something like that because they are probably dead because Su-won ran them over like a train for the 5th time?

(Btw folks, staying alive is much more important than anything. Toss that dps check nonsense out the window. As expected, most people do not know how to interpret numbers. Why are people's DPS low? Well running back from a WP is 0 dps for a long while.)

 

At this point, I would say they could keep  either enhance the rewards by giving checkpoint rewards like they should to incentivize players to try no matter what or maybe make the timer an enrage instead of a hard fail. I guess you could move it to an instance, but that might be kinda sad. Maybe have a slightly easier one in the world and put in a harder instanced version?

I mean honestly the meta is not that hard (definitely not on the level of any raid, or CM fractal, or even the harder dungeons) but I'm going to first and foremost say that I am not a casual player and just expecting your average player to perform well out of the blue will not work.

 

If you want these players to tackle this that you really need more carrots. Like a truckload.

 

Honestly, some of the easy raid bosses are easier than this boss but I don't think it has to do with the mechanics directly.

You are dealing with A LOT of visual clutter on this fight. Organizing really well 50 people with all the name tags everywhere, having all their abilities, the enemies abilities everywhere. There is a lot that can result you in missing some queues you need to see.

 

Not to mention the build variety we love so much makes it so much harder to put groups together, which means you need so much time to prepare a group compared to something like FFXIV which you are the role that you always are. Then there is just the time factor of this whole meta, it's long as hell. I can't jump in spontaneously as I do with most other metas, which means I no longer really do it because I don't have the time to do it midweek and when I get to the weekend, I go seek out the "hard" content I want to do.

 

Some people need to learn by doing and therefore need to get smacked around a lot but can get there, except this boss doesn't have enough time for those kinds of people to also get good rewards until they do "git gud". I am that kind of person in a lot of cases, learning a raid each ability has to smack me around a few times until I learn and it starts to effect me less and less. But there is a much easier way to try again in a raid, you fail? Try again. With a meta, it's try again in 2 hours time to maybe fail again. That just makes it so tough.

 

Overall, the moment I started doing it both before and after where we are at now, this meta felt like it went against the very thing I love about open world. Exploring and getting to do stuff spontaneously in my free time and bonding with everyone in the community.

Edited June 21, 2022 by hellsqueen.3045

[ArchonWing.9480]

2 hours ago, hellsqueen.3045 said:

You are dealing with A LOT of visual clutter on this fight. Organizing really well 50 people with all the name tags everywhere, having all their abilities, the enemies abilities everywhere.

There's a feature in WvW that allows you to hide name tags and just show a colored dot and a guild tag. I think PvE needs it too. And some people's computers can't just take it.

But yea, I turn off a lot of stuff, and set stuff like player models at low.

Also I have used the tried and true trick of clicking the boss's health bar (will target the boss)  under the event description on the right but results are mixed.

2 hours ago, hellsqueen.3045 said:

Some people need to learn by doing and therefore need to get smacked around a lot but can get there, except this boss doesn't have enough time for those kinds of people to also get good rewards until they do "git gud".

Yea I brought that up as well in this thread. that a lot of the content in this game lets you do this and naturally you will get better if you just keep trying.

This is a very important distinction to make. I don't mind people that are trying to learn vs people that aren't and just want the shiny (granted, the actual shininess of the shiny this is dubious atm). I think the first will almost always pass the second eventually, even if they start out less skilled than the later.

Edited June 21, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Astralporing.1957]

On 6/19/2022 at 6:57 PM, SoulBlaze.3059 said:

Was with a meta running group in dragons end, we tried to join an instance and found that there was a large fishing group that refused to leave due to losing stacks. We told them they would lose stacks when the meta is failed anyways, and they still refused. We also found a botting group on the south side of the map of about 7 necros. We really need a way to allow fishing stacks to save temporarily for people leaving meta maps because these things are ruining meta runs. We also really need a way to boot botters. Its just dumb.

It's not fishers that ruin the meta. It's the meta design that requires participation of a large number of players of certain skill level (one that is a bit above of what average OW player can do, i might add), coupled with the low map cap that is the issue. If the meta scaled well, you would not be running into that problem.

[Baseleader.4128]

I see a lot of people requesting this be instanced, but I feel like you lose quite a lot of sense of awe if you do so. Doing DE is quite exciting to me because of a sense of build up and "everyone is coming together". A sense i never ever have doing Dragonstorm which is just unbelievably boring frankly. I greatly prefer the HoT metas to DS as well. Making it instanced just doesnt change much unless you also gut the difficulty and make it scale. Killing Soo-Won with 10 players just doesnt sound interesting at all to me, like DS is also uninteresting with 10 players, it's a raid in which the boss doesn't actually fight back.

If you dont gut the difficulty, don't you just risk the issue of people starting to ask for LI or some sort of KP to be able to participate? Sounds like a split in the playerbase that I don't think is healthy. 

Edited June 21, 2022 by Baseleader.4128

[Linken.6345]

23 minutes ago, Baseleader.4128 said:

I see a lot of people requesting this be instanced, but I feel like you lose quite a lot of sense of awe if you do so. Doing DE is quite exciting to me because of a sense of build up and "everyone is coming together". A sense i never ever have doing Dragonstorm which is just unbelievably boring frankly. I greatly prefer the HoT metas to DS as well. Making it instanced just doesnt change much unless you also gut the difficulty and make it scale. Killing Soo-Won with 10 players just doesnt sound interesting at all to me, like DS is also uninteresting with 10 players, it's a raid in which the boss doesn't actually fight back.

If you dont gut the difficulty, don't you just risk the issue of people starting to ask for LI or some sort of KP to be able to participate? Sounds like a split in the playerbase that I don't think is healthy. 

You do know we can be up to 50 in a single instance right?

So where is this 10 player nonsence coming from?

[ArchonWing.9480]

14 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

You do know we can be up to 50 in a single instance right?

 

It's entirely possible they don't. Which is its own problem.

I would imagine a lot of people, especially those that don't always follow the game, may not even know that about the marionette if they don't have much reason to go to Eye of the North. Same thing goes for Dragonstorm. So visibility can be an issue.

Furthermore they do have a point about the inevitable gatekeeping issues, since as of now people cannot remove you from the fight.

Open World vs Instance both have their pros and cons. I think any instanced version should be a hard mode so people who want a challenge can go out and find it. But for more casual onlookers like myself, we should be able to pick it up if we're in the area and feel like doing so.

 

Edited June 21, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Baseleader.4128]

Because you can do DS with 10 people and that's the most efficient way of clearing it. I'm wondering whether the people who want this fight instanced also want it to scale to the number of players or made easier? Because if you dont make it easier, how do you actually fix any of the problems people have by making it instanced?

 

Won't people just ask for LI or sth to increase their chances of beating the meta? But besides that the success rate will not increase at all?

Does this in fact not make it easier for "raiders" to clear the meta, but much harder for "casual players" who will now potentially have to try and clear this meta without the help of hardcore players who will simply make their own groups that are entirely failproof?

Edited June 21, 2022 by Baseleader.4128

[Linken.6345]

1 minute ago, Baseleader.4128 said:

Because you can do DS with 10 people and that's the most efficient way of clearing it. I'm wondering whether the people who want this fight instanced also want it to scale to the number of players or made easier? Because if you dont make it easier, how do you actually fix any of the problems people have by making it instanced?

 

Won't people just ask for LI or sth to increase their chances of beating the meta? But besides that the success rate will not increase at all?

You keep the open world fight aswell and make it easier with less rewards the instanced one is 50 players same difficulty as now with the rewards it have.

[Emberfoot.6847]

12 minutes ago, Baseleader.4128 said:

Because you can do DS with 10 people and that's the most efficient way of clearing it. I'm wondering whether the people who want this fight instanced also want it to scale to the number of players or made easier? Because if you dont make it easier, how do you actually fix any of the problems people have by making it instanced?

 

Won't people just ask for LI or sth to increase their chances of beating the meta? But besides that the success rate will not increase at all?

Does this in fact not make it easier for "raiders" to clear the meta, but much harder for "casual players" who will now potentially have to try and clear this meta without the help of hardcore players who will simply make their own groups that are entirely failproof?

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere but are you and the person you are responding to talking about DS as Dragon STAND or DragonSTORM? Because there is a huge gulf between the two in difficulty and number of players required. 

[Baseleader.4128]

Are you just entirely removing the pre events then for the instanced version? And then also scaling down the boss' difficulty by the amount the jade buff system+ map buff system accounts for?

 

I guess if the OW version didn't give Antique Summoning Stones but just some rares like all the other meta's, sure. Seems like a shame though.

[Baseleader.4128]

Just now, Emberfoot.6847 said:

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere but are you and the person you are responding to talking about DS as Dragon STAND or DragonSTORM? Because there is a huge gulf between the two in difficulty and number of players required. 

Sorry, I meant DragonStorm. Silly of me not to make that more clear.

[Linken.6345]

25 minutes ago, Baseleader.4128 said:

Are you just entirely removing the pre events then for the instanced version? And then also scaling down the boss' difficulty by the amount the jade buff system+ map buff system accounts for?

 

I guess if the OW version didn't give Antique Summoning Stones but just some rares like all the other meta's, sure. Seems like a shame though.

Well you can always put in a offensive and defensive pylon with enough batteries to fill both to 30 mins + give 10 stacks in the instance so the difficulty dont need to change.

And yes the instance would be just the boss fight not the pre events.

Edit

Pretty sure the 10 stacks aint needed tho.

Edited June 21, 2022 by Linken.6345

[Tukaram.8256]

4 hours ago, Baseleader.4128 said:

I see a lot of people requesting this be instanced, but I feel like you lose quite a lot of sense of awe if you do so. Doing DE is quite exciting to me because of a sense of build up and "everyone is coming together". A sense i never ever have doing Dragonstorm which is just unbelievably boring frankly. I greatly prefer the HoT metas to DS as well. Making it instanced just doesnt change much unless you also gut the difficulty and make it scale. Killing Soo-Won with 10 players just doesnt sound interesting at all to me, like DS is also uninteresting with 10 players, it's a raid in which the boss doesn't actually fight back.

If you dont gut the difficulty, don't you just risk the issue of people starting to ask for LI or some sort of KP to be able to participate? Sounds like a split in the playerbase that I don't think is healthy. 

I do not care if it is instanced or not.  But... If I am on the map, it is for my own reasons. I am not there for the event.  Sometimes I do a little of the prep events, if I feel like it, and it pops up nearby. But I have no interest in the event, and am amused with the players trying to treat it like an instance.  I am not on your team, and it is not my fault how A-Net set up the event/server. 

[Zephire.8049]

5 hours ago, Baseleader.4128 said:

I see a lot of people requesting this be instanced, but I feel like you lose quite a lot of sense of awe if you do so. Doing DE is quite exciting to me because of a sense of build up and "everyone is coming together". A sense i never ever have doing Dragonstorm which is just unbelievably boring frankly. I greatly prefer the HoT metas to DS as well. Making it instanced just doesnt change much unless you also gut the difficulty and make it scale. Killing Soo-Won with 10 players just doesnt sound interesting at all to me, like DS is also uninteresting with 10 players, it's a raid in which the boss doesn't actually fight back.

If you dont gut the difficulty, don't you just risk the issue of people starting to ask for LI or some sort of KP to be able to participate? Sounds like a split in the playerbase that I don't think is healthy. 

Split it then. Have it be a map meta but tone things down to where it's reasonable for unorganized pugs to have a shot at it (if not, it will be unplayed content unless an organized group runs it and that's not healthy or fun for either group) but also have an instanced version that's the same difficulty as it is now. Have it in Arborstone and Aurene or someone gives you the option to replay your fight against Soo-Won.

Pugs can still experience the open world awe while also have a fighting shot at not wasting ~2 hours of their playtime on a failed event and people who want a hard fight and the option to organize ahead of time and cut out the prep time can do so as well.

There was zero reason why this couldn't have been done from the start and if the desire is to have X amount of players doing it, the tech for that has existed since at least Dragon Stand where each lane needs 5+ people in a zone to start a lane.

It doesn't split the playerbase in a negative sense, it simply gives both sides options instead of forcing them into conflict under the misguided assumption that any interaction is good interaction. And if one side or the other sees a drop in activity, hey, that's information and can be addressed through re-balancing and guide future content into being something that has a better shot of having life after the novelty wears off.