Dragon's End is still massively overtuned and random

[Hauwlyn.8051]

Plenty of people pretended that Dragon's End failing so much was a matter of not having developped foolproof strategies, taking Dragon's Stand as an example. All those who claimed they would rise to the challenge that is teaching random full maps how to clear it have been since proven wrong. Nobody clears it with random full maps.

 

Anet, you released an article after some tweaks to it months ago saying you were on the right track because completion rate was going up. This is an utterly insane metric to use as feedback by itself, since the map has been mostly abandonned and only premade squads clear it consistently. If you have the frequency at which the meta was attempted on top of completion rate, I would wager anything that it says "this meta has been deserted".

I can clear and lead raids just fine, but why should we have to be selective for open world content? In comparison, anyone can clear TT by just listening to instructions beforehand, but not everyone will figure out how to double their dps in the span of 30 minutes. Make no mistake, premade squads for TT welcome everyone as long as they're early enough to hear the explanation. premade squads for Dragon's End don't even show up in LFG. This is saturday evening and there wasn't one up in LFG EU side the whole time waiting being almost the full hour early for map events.

Add to that that she can still just switch sides 5 times a phase if she decides to and you get very far from having a shot at it. Didn't even reach the 20% phase, so even the complete absence of mechanics mistake and faster crystal phases would not have salvaged it by a long shot. Why would you require people to improve their dps when you have no official in game meter?

I expect the people who do clear it in premades or with a popular streamer will still come here and say it's fine as it is. Do you want us to depend on such people for open world content of all things, rather than make do with the people we find there?

[Cyninja.2954]

The 2nd last run I had, it was a 1% fail, which brings my total success/failure to around 20/5.

 

I can without a doubt say that the failure was well deserved and while tragic, just shows that you need everyone to pay attention until the very end (as well as in the beginning).

 

Things that went wrong in that attempt or indicators of lacking experience within the squad:

1. the commander wasn't willing to create alacrity/quickness groups. No problem, members from the squad took over and eventually people self moved themselves

 

2. cc phases where completed but in some cases pretty close. Not something you want to see tbh, especially with EMP stations around

 

3. her first wipe, always a great indicator of how experienced the players are, wiped out half to 2/3 of the squad. That's a really bad sign

 

4. dps was okay overall, 20% phase was reached with 6 minutes left over and thanks to map chat communication the add phases where fine. Which likely just lead to a lot of players feeling safe and confident that this was a secure kill

 

5. cc during the last 20% phase was failed 4 times (again, 6 minutes on the clock meant a LOT of spare time to actually finish the fight). This lead to a lot of lost time, her eventually moving back and forth, a lot of players getting caught in bubbles eventually (and most players not ccing them out of there) and general chaos ensued.

 

The fight is fine and squads where players pay attention and are directed properly will succeed. Unfortunately there is still a large element of randomness in regards to squad makeup of experienced and inexperienced players which can sway the fight. I have seen my share of random well lead maps succeed and the fight above is in my experience the exception. If your squad can't even make it to 20%, the failures or short comings would have been evident far earlier and leaving the map would have been prudent. The main failure is not a lack of dps, but failing to mechanics which reduce squad dps. The required dps is achieved by mostly auto attacks with full boons and buffs.

 

There is another phenomenon yes: more experienced players are moving to private discords or private groups which will advertise less or not at all in the LFG.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Hotride.2187]

I've been doing DE daily for the last 3 weeks (I skipped 3 days cause of personal issues), I've not had a meta fail. I'm joining organized groups only (quick+alac+comm calls splits for phases), we finish the meta with 2-3 min to spare at least.

The meta is nowhere near what it was at launch, the boss is not even remotely as bad as it was before. It can spin a few times yes, but even with tail up you burn through it fast. Its not, pray for a CC bar each phase or RIP run.

That being said... needing an organized group with 10 alac and 10 quickness for an open world meta event... that is extremely weird. Some evenings (when I do my daily run) the 6 PM slot no comm shows up, so I had to wait for the 8 PM slot (to all the players that will go "but make your own group", no, I won't make my own group). The meta is pretty long too, usually takes me over an hour with doing some pre-events, waiting on a squad to show up and so on. Its definitely overtuned for open world; but nowhere near what it was at launch.

[Cernow.3974]

I've completed this once in about a dozen attempts (pug). Having completed it once and got my achievement, I have no intention of going back, unless there's changes, because the failure rate is simply too high and the chance of getting literally nothing out of a big chunk of invested time isn't worth the bother.
I don't think the problem is lack of player knowledge or skill, it's just that success (outside of a premade) is way too dependant on  factors such as number of players (time of day etc), huge amount of time needed compared to a lot of other metas and the extremely strict timer.
One simple change that could be made is to relax the timer. By all means reduce the rewards if the target time isn't reached, but don't give players absolutely nothing if they fail at 5% or even 1%, that's just huge disrespectful of player time investment.
There's not much point in people posting into a thread like this by saying "but I completed it in an organised group". Well of course you did. All content can be completed by an organised group. The frustration is that a general pug, often even with commander tags and healthy numbers, will fail far more times than it will succeed. And that's poor content tuning.

[Cuks.8241]

DE meta will never be consistently cleared with completely random maps. Its how its designed and it seems to be intentional. And I like it, some might not.

Yes joining an organised group is by far the most consistent way to clear this. But none of these groups have any requirements. You just need to join them. I've been joining some meta trains without any requirements and the event is being cleared with 8+ min of spare time. 

I've noticed that people in ow are actually doing a lot more dmg as they did before EOD. Yeah its anecdotal, I could be wrong, its not a huge sample and I dont run arc all the time. But I have a feeling all the effort with educating players, opening up more LI builds and more boon support options and  actually providing OW encounter where performance is somewhat important lead to more players playing better. And this is great. And also strike LFG has never been livelier so maybe their plan to bring OW and instance players closer together actually worked.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Cuks.8241
typos

[AliamRationem.5172]

44 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

Plenty of people pretended that Dragon's End failing so much was a matter of not having developped foolproof strategies, taking Dragon's Stand as an example. All those who claimed they would rise to the challenge that is teaching random full maps how to clear it have been since proven wrong. Nobody clears it with random full maps.

 

Anet, you released an article after some tweaks to it months ago saying you were on the right track because completion rate was going up. This is an utterly insane metric to use as feedback by itself, since the map has been mostly abandonned and only premade squads clear it consistently. If you have the frequency at which the meta was attempted on top of completion rate, I would wager anything that it says "this meta has been deserted".

I can clear and lead raids just fine, but why should we have to be selective for open world content? In comparison, anyone can clear TT by just listening to instructions beforehand, but not everyone will figure out how to double their dps in the span of 30 minutes. Make no mistake, premade squads for TT welcome everyone as long as they're early enough to hear the explanation. premade squads for Dragon's End don't even show up in LFG. This is saturday evening and there wasn't one up in LFG EU side the whole time waiting being almost the full hour early for map events.

Add to that that she can still just switch sides 5 times a phase if she decides to and you get very far from having a shot at it. Didn't even reach the 20% phase, so even the complete absence of mechanics mistake and faster crystal phases would not have salvaged it by a long shot. Why would you require people to improve their dps when you have no official in game meter?

I expect the people who do clear it in premades or with a popular streamer will still come here and say it's fine as it is. Do you want us to depend on such people for open world content of all things, rather than make do with the people we find there?

I will come here and refute what you're saying because I've never been a part of any popular streamer's group or "premade" unless your definition of premade is "a random squad listed in LFG".  The only thing I can figure is that you're showing up late to groups that don't do the prep phase so they don't have the buffs they're supposed to have.  That's really the only way I can see this event consistently fail.

Now if you want to say that's a stupid design, then I'm with you!  I hate the fact that you have to show up so far in advance of the actual fight.  I would prefer if it were simply tuned so that you don't need a prep phase with mega buffs to consistently win.

If you're saying you are consistently joining groups that are doing the prep phase as they're supposed to and still failing, I don't know what to tell you.  That is not consistent with my experience and, like I said, I don't know any streamers or premades to join.  I just use LFG like any random player.

[AliamRationem.5172]

16 minutes ago, Cernow.3974 said:

I've completed this once in about a dozen attempts (pug). Having completed it once and got my achievement, I have no intention of going back, unless there's changes, because the failure rate is simply too high and the chance of getting literally nothing out of a big chunk of invested time isn't worth the bother.
I don't think the problem is lack of player knowledge or skill, it's just that success (outside of a premade) is way too dependant on  factors such as number of players (time of day etc), huge amount of time needed compared to a lot of other metas and the extremely strict timer.
One simple change that could be made is to relax the timer. By all means reduce the rewards if the target time isn't reached, but don't give players absolutely nothing if they fail at 5% or even 1%, that's just huge disrespectful of player time investment.
There's not much point in people posting into a thread like this by saying "but I completed it in an organised group". Well of course you did. All content can be completed by an organised group. The frustration is that a general pug, often even with commander tags and healthy numbers, will fail far more times than it will succeed. And that's poor content tuning.

I'm not opposed to the idea of tiered rewards based on completion time with a more forgiving failure condition.  I'd appreciate even more if it weren't designed the way it is.  I love the Soo-Won fight.  It's a really fun and interesting fight.  I just don't care to participate in it often because I don't want to spend an hour just getting there! 

However, I don't expect they'll completely rework the map at this point, so tiered rewards and a longer timer is something they could do to ensure players don't waste a ton of time just to come up empty handed.  Another thing I think they should consider is increasing the rewards again.  It was fine when antique summoning stones were worth a lot more than they are now, but given the time investment this meta has absolutely horrible rewards.  As much as I enjoy the fight and would show up just to do it if I could, it's simply not rewarding enough to bother with at this point.

[Hauwlyn.8051]

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 The main failure is not a lack of dps, but failing to mechanics which reduce squad dps. The required dps is achieved by mostly auto attacks with full boons and buffs.

 

The famous full boons and buffs you get when you have a completely random squad, yes of course.

 

35 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

DE meta will never be consistently cleared with completely random maps. Its how its designed and it seems to be intentional. And I like it, some might not.

 

 

Is it how it was designed? There is a sizeable amount of content on this map that has nothing to do with the meta, unlike Dragon's stand which is pretty much made for the meta, and whatever content there is in Dragon's stand to do apart from the meta will not take valuable DPS away from your clear since the DPS needed is negligeable. I know events scale with the number of players, but the more players there are, the smaller the part everyone has to do, it doesn't scale linearly.  Therefore, if there's so much content distracting you from the meta, including content not tied to events that give you the stacking buff, then the map is not designed solely to optimize for the meta.
 

31 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I will come here and refute what you're saying because I've never been a part of any popular streamer's group or "premade" unless your definition of premade is "a random squad listed in LFG".  The only thing I can figure is that you're showing up late to groups that don't do the prep phase so they don't have the buffs they're supposed to have.  That's really the only way I can see this event consistently fail.

Now if you want to say that's a stupid design, then I'm with you!  I hate the fact that you have to show up so far in advance of the actual fight.  I would prefer if it were simply tuned so that you don't need a prep phase with mega buffs to consistently win.

If you're saying you are consistently joining groups that are doing the prep phase as they're supposed to and still failing, I don't know what to tell you.  That is not consistent with my experience and, like I said, I don't know any streamers or premades to join.  I just use LFG like any random player.

 

If I oppose "premade" to "random full maps", then yes, having to look for it in lfg makes it a premade in that context. Also etymology means "made in advance". I have never heard of such a group going in LFG way too late since a month after it was released, so yes, random full maps are gonna have people who didn't stack the buff fully. Here's the list of meta events that often fail in those random maps: This one and TT. And TT is purely a matter of failed mechanics. The only other meta that can occasionally fail on a full random map is Chak if Nuhoch lane is full of newbies who scale up the event without doing their part. This is massive disparity and it's silly that OW players would be expected to perform that much better in DPS for a single meta, even if said meta actually had great rewards.

[Cyninja.2954]

7 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

 

The famous full boons and buffs you get when you have a completely random squad, yes of course.

That's why even decent pug random squads have the commander ask for quickness and alacrity providers up front, so he can sort those into subgroups. Most players able to provide the boons usually accommodate this.

I'm sorry but if you have been present in runs where not even this bare minimum was the standard, then there is no reason for further discussion. Learn to spot decent and bad groups.

Again, even complete pug groups with a decent commander and some decent players are already doing this, so this is by far NOT something unusual.

That's without even mentioning how the jade tech offensive and defensive upgrades already provide all offensive boons for around 20 of the 60 seconds.

7 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

If I oppose "premade" to "random full maps", then yes, having to look for it in lfg makes it a premade in that context. Also etymology means "made in advance". I have never heard of such a group going in LFG way too late since a month after it was released, so yes, random full maps are gonna have people who didn't stack the buff fully. Here's the list of meta events that often fail in those random maps: This one and TT. And TT is purely a matter of failed mechanics. The only other meta that can occasionally fail on a full random map is Chak if Nuhoch lane is full of newbies who scale up the event without doing their part. This is massive disparity and it's silly that OW players would be expected to perform that much better in DPS for a single meta, even if said meta actually had great rewards.

The meta has been cleared with 8-10 and even 12 minutes to spare on the timer. All the other metas you are mentioning are severely under-tuned and can usually be cleared by 1-2 people knowing what they are doing. That is hardly something worth praising.

Yes, this meta is "over-tuned" for the bottom of the barrel performance players. That's by design. It's supposed to challenge players and make them actually put in some effort. Lucky enough, that effort is very minimal but it does require it be put in by a majority of the players.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Hauwlyn.8051]

13 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

That's why even decent pug random squads have the commander ask for quickness and alacrity providers up front, so he can sort those into subgroups. Most players able to provide the boons usually accommodate this.

You seem to have trouble discerning the concept of "happening to be in a full map when the meta happens" which is different from that of "pug". Yes, if you keep willfully ignoring the basic premise of my argument, you can make points, congratulations.

 

13 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I'm sorry but if you have been present in runs where not even this bare minimum was the standard, then there is no reason for further discussion. Learn to spot decent and bad groups.

Do you have to "learn to spot decent and bad groups" when  you do any other meta event in this game? I do it when I pug raids, thank you very much. As far actually succeeding at that, despite giving it my all I didn't believe for a single second that the map would clear it, but I went through it nonetheless to get a more recent picture of how bad it still was. Particularly when it came to the RNG the fight still had. Turns out there's other mindsets than "get what I want short term or get out". I did get the clear the cycle after by joining a pug, with massive margin of course.

 

13 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The meta has been cleared with 8-10 and even 12 minutes to spare on the timer. All the other metas you are mentioning are severely under-tuned and can usually be cleared by 1-2 people knowing what they are doing. That is hardly something worth praising.

 

I am well aware of the massive skill disparity between players in this game, but you seem to think open world meta events are "undertuned" because most people need them this way. I see you want people randomly exploring the maps and doing what shows up to be gatekept. That would make the vast majority of the playerbase leave this game if generalized and therefore sink this game. Sounds counterproductive to your need to flex what the best players can do.

 

13 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Yes, this meta is "over-tuned" for the bottom of the barrel performance players. That's by design. It's supposed to challenge players and make them actually put in some effort. Lucky enough, that effort is very minimal but it does require it be put in by a majority of the players.

 

You say that's by design, I say it was completely randomly tuned and they pretend it was intended to be that much harder once a certain vocal minority was suddenly emboldened by its very existence. Not like there's plenty of evidence of absolutely horrid balance tuning surrounding the period of time it was developped.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Hauwlyn.8051

[Silent.6137]

2 hours ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

premade squads for Dragon's End don't even show up in LFG. This is saturday evening and there wasn't one up in LFG EU side the whole time waiting being almost the full hour early for map events.
Add to that that she can still just switch sides 5 times a phase if she decides to and you get very far from having a shot at it.
I expect the people who do clear it in premades or with a popular streamer will still come here and say it's fine as it is. Do you want us to depend on such people for open world content of all things, rather than make do with the people we find there?

• This has been mentioned often in other similar threads - LFG squads usually form 1 hour10 mins to 1 hour 15 mins before the Escort Phase.
• The swapping of sides during the Bite attacks always happen in multiples of two. She starts on the South and if she switch sides to North, she always has to go back South. So, 2, 4, 6, etc.
• I've completed 250+ straight winning metas with LFG squads that's always PUG since the updates months ago. Some had been very tight fights but always ends up with at least 3+ mins to spare (usually atound 7 mins). There's always a handful of familiar faces but 80%+ of any squad I joined I've never seen before. So, it's never pre-made.

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'm not opposed to the idea of tiered rewards based on completion time with a more forgiving failure condition.  I'd appreciate even more if it weren't designed the way it is.  I love the Soo-Won fight.  It's a really fun and interesting fight.  I just don't care to participate in it often because I don't want to spend an hour just getting there! 

However, I don't expect they'll completely rework the map at this point, so tiered rewards and a longer timer is something they could do to ensure players don't waste a ton of time just to come up empty handed.  Another thing I think they should consider is increasing the rewards again.  It was fine when antique summoning stones were worth a lot more than they are now, but given the time investment this meta has absolutely horrible rewards.  As much as I enjoy the fight and would show up just to do it if I could, it's simply not rewarding enough to bother with at this point.

It's my favorite meta but I don't expect everyone to like it. And is still a great map to farm for loots even without the meta. But definitely agree that they should make the rewards better considering the time investments. And they should re-worked the rewards system.

It shouldn't be a winner-takes-all and losers go home empty-handed scenario. Have the number of outer minor chests spawn according to the % remaining on Soo-Won:

• 0% remaining = 20 Minor chests (the number right now); 5% = 10; 10%  = 5. (No Major chests or Hero's Choice on fails)
• Change Dragon's End Contributor . Can still get the 10% from map events for the buffs but they will not count towards receiving the 10 Major chests. Escorts events required to receive them (5 events @ 2/event) and get 2% Dragon's End Contributor from each event. This will negate the necessity to do map events unless squad wishes to get the map readiness to High (takes about 25 mins from 0% to High readiness for the +5% Damage vs Dragonvoid).  And also prevent AFKers who gets the 10%, afk and just join during the last instances of the Temple top fights. This way, squads can just form for the main event only (takes about 40 mins total from Escort to final fights)

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by Silent.6137

[Cyninja.2954]

13 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

You seem to have trouble discerning the concept of "happening to be in a full map when the meta happens" which is different from that of "pug". Yes, if you keep willfully ignoring the basic premise of my argument, you can make points, congratulations.

 

Do you have to "learn to spot decent and bad groups" when  you do any other meta event in this game? I do it when I pug raids, thank you very much. As far actually succeeding at that, despite giving it my all I didn't believe for a single second that the map would clear it, but I went through it nonetheless to get a more recent picture of how bad it still was. Particularly when it came to the RNG the fight still had.

Yes, you do. Have you joined a Chack map where 1 lane is empty when the meta starts yet expect it to succeed? I doubt it. Have you done TT without 3 lanes being preorganized? Organization pre event is very common in this game.

This meta is more demanding and as such some organization helps. Is it needed? Absolutely not! This meta can be completed with decent players getting to the final platform, without boons, food or preparation. It will be a LOT harder though, which is why preparation actually helps to get everyone up to speed when in a pug or random groups.

Meanwhile this extra preparation phase might eventually result in a lot of players gaining more understanding of this games fundamentals. If you join squad for this meta over and over, you might eventually start wondering WHY commanders are asking for quickness, alacrity, cc, drop food, etc. and MAYBE take away some learning experience hopefully having a better chance of success the next time in case it fails.

13 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

I am well aware of the massive skill disparity between players in this game, but you seem to think open world meta events are "undertuned" because most people need them this way. I see you want people randomly exploring the maps and doing what shows up to be gatekept. That would make the vast majority of the playerbase leave this game if generalized and therefore sink this game. Sounds counterproductive to your need to flex what the best players can do.

Everyone gets to have their own definition and desire where content difficulty should be at. I've accepted that most open world content is brain dead easy.

I do question this though because if a basic understanding of very simplistic game mechanics is already to much (and that's all this is tbh), then there is an issue with scaling. The fact that the general community is fine with this approach, as to offer a more relaxed and chill atmosphere does not mean that this content is suddenly well balanced.

It's terribly balanced and this is very evident the moment where random bs doesn't result in success. The entire open world content in this game is TERRIBLY balanced when compared to how far builds and performance can go and the only reason it's kept in that state is to appease a specific demographic of this games player-base.

13 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

You say that's by design, I say it was completely randomly tuned and they pretend it was intended to be that much harder once a certain vocal minority was suddenly emboldened by its very existence. Not like there's plenty of evidence of absolutely horrid balance tuning surrounding the period of time it was developped.

 

The meta was tuned with some basic concepts which were again hammered home with EoD, break bars, dodging, boons once again. It was also designed as intentionally aspirational content for open world players, aka it was supposed to be challenging. If players are unable or unwilling to actually improve to this extent, that's a them issue.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[AliamRationem.5172]

20 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

 

The famous full boons and buffs you get when you have a completely random squad, yes of course.

 

 

Is it how it was designed? There is a sizeable amount of content on this map that has nothing to do with the meta, unlike Dragon's stand which is pretty much made for the meta, and whatever content there is in Dragon's stand to do apart from the meta will not take valuable DPS away from your clear since the DPS needed is negligeable. I know events scale with the number of players, but the more players there are, the smaller the part everyone has to do, it doesn't scale linearly.  Therefore, if there's so much content distracting you from the meta, including content not tied to events that give you the stacking buff, then the map is not designed solely to optimize for the meta.
 

 

If I oppose "premade" to "random full maps", then yes, having to look for it in lfg makes it a premade in that context. Also etymology means "made in advance". I have never heard of such a group going in LFG way too late since a month after it was released, so yes, random full maps are gonna have people who didn't stack the buff fully. Here's the list of meta events that often fail in those random maps: This one and TT. And TT is purely a matter of failed mechanics. The only other meta that can occasionally fail on a full random map is Chak if Nuhoch lane is full of newbies who scale up the event without doing their part. This is massive disparity and it's silly that OW players would be expected to perform that much better in DPS for a single meta, even if said meta actually had great rewards.

I see.  Well, you're not wrong.  The map is designed in such a way that you're supposed to fill the map and complete the preparation phase before you start.  My issue with that is that it makes the event cycle extremely long and boring before you even get to battling Soo-Won.  The failure rate seems fine if you do it the way it's designed to be done.  I just question that design.

Maybe they should consider getting rid of the preparation buff and the 30 minute timer and simply making it like Dragon's Stand, where you simply gather the minimum number of players required to start the approach?  They could keep everything else exactly the way it is now, but retune the fight to take into account the removal of the preparation buffs.

That would keep the fight at the same level of difficulty, but remove the preparation requirement and shorten the time required to successfully complete the meta.

[Hauwlyn.8051]

2 minutes ago, Silent.6137 said:

This has been mentioned often in other similar threads - LFG squads usually form 10-15 mins before the Escort Phase.

It didn't when I checked constantly 5 to 4 hours ago, hence Saturday late afternoon.  it did the cycle after. Compare to how easy it is to get successful full maps in popular metas.

 

3 minutes ago, Silent.6137 said:

I've completed 250+ straight winning metas with LFG squads that's always PUG since the updates months ago. Some had been very tight fights but always ends up with 3+ mins to spare. There's always a handful of familiar faces but 80%+ of any squad I joined I've never seen before. So, it's never pre-made.

Once again: pre means anterior, premade means made in advance. I agree it's not the same concept of "premade" that you would see in match based online games, so mea culpa for that ambiguity, I should have chosen a better word.

 

6 minutes ago, Silent.6137 said:

It's my favorite meta but I don't expect everyone to like it.

That's the problem though, a lot of people who typically farm metas all the time hate it. When raids got emboldened, I found it laughable that the "hardcore endgame" got such a thing after they made plenty of easy strikes in the first place, but at least emboldened is one wing a week and doesn't affect CMs. Dragon's end doesn't have an emboldened mode, and therefore it's utterly insane that people who have cleared some raid bosses thanks to emboldened aren't even good enough to carry their own weight in an open world meta event.

 

8 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Yes, you do. Have you joined a Chack map where 1 lane is empty when the meta starts yet expect it to succeed? I doubt it.

 

I've never seen a full chak map not fill every lane. Once again willfully ignoring part of the premise.

10 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

This meta is more demanding and as such some organization helps. Is it needed? Absolutely not! This meta can be completed with decent players getting to the final platform, without boons, food or preparation. It will be a LOT harder though, which is why preparation actually helps.

 

A true but off topic statement since a map that filled randomly will not have remotely enough "decent players".

 

12 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

I do question this though because if a basic understanding of very simplistic game mechanics is already to much (and that's all this is tbh), then there is an issue with scaling. The fact that the general community is fine with this approach, as to offer a more relaxed and chill atmosphere does not mean that this content is suddenly well balanced.

It's terribly balanced and this is very evident the moment where random bs doesn't result in success. The entire open world content in this game is TERRIBLY balanced when compared to how far builds and performance can go.

 

My point remains. You can't have such a drastic difference in DPS needs from the most demanding meta to the second most demanding meta. That's ludicrous. If they wanted open world players to get good, they should have taken a gradual approach. Which is also another reason why I think anet just doesn't realize how massive the dps requirement difference is.
Because as it turns out, I remember how well a random group of open world farmers would perform back when this was released, I remember the many octovines where the 3rd highest dps was 5k. I remember the most extreme case where I did 40% of the dps in a 30 players squad. And as it turns out, the average player DID improve substantially. That same map wouldn't have remotely reached the 40% phase back when it was released, maybe not even 60%; and the subsequent nerfs aren't enough to explain the difference by themselves.

18 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The meta was tuned with some basic concepts which were again hammered home with EoD, break bars, dodging, boons once again. It was also designed as intentionally aspirational content for open world players, aka it was supposed to be challenging. If players are unable or unwilling to actually improve to this extent, that's a them issue.

Do you expect an MMO to remain healthy while alienating vast parts of your playerbase everytime the devs suddenly change their vision, if it truly is a matter of vision and not happenstance from them being in the dark thanks to their high turnover?

[Cyninja.2954]

7 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

Do you expect an MMO to remain healthy while alienating vast parts of your playerbase everytime the devs suddenly change their vision, if it truly is a matter of vision and not happenstance from them being in the dark thanks to their high turnover?

I don't see this meta alienating vast parts of the player base just as I don't subscribe to the notion that caving and compromising game design to appease players with free loot is a good idea. Those that do leave over this or are unwilling to improve in case they do chose to overcome the challenge would have been dead weight either way. I don't expect the developers will make every future meta this difficult, but I see no issue with having this one where it is at given it is the culmination of 10 years of the games story.

The devs have been consistent with their vision ever since EoD so far and that has been in the making for multiple years by now. That vision has been to some extent to provide scaled content for different able players both to offer a wider variety of challenge as well as reduce work on content from a development standpoint.

This goes hand in hand with trying to teach and improve general player understanding via story and open world content. The entire EoD story was wrapped in a tutorial just for that purpose.

So far this approach seems to work well and has resulted in higher player numbers and revenue compared to the last time only simplistic open world content was served, post PoF, which resulted in a continuous decline of this games revenue.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Silent.6137]

5 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

It didn't when I checked constantly 5 to 4 hours ago, hence Saturday late afternoon.  it did the cycle after. Compare to how easy it is to get successful full maps in popular metas.

That was a typo on my part. I'd edited it but you probably quoted me before I did that. LFG listings usually appear 1 hour+ before Escorts. Within the 1 hour time-frame, they'll all be full and disappear from LFG. There are some groups that do advertise within that time-frame if they are not too worried about the map enhancements. If you check 45 mins or less before Escorts, chances of finding any is virtually zero.

[Hauwlyn.8051]

15 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I don't see this meta alienating vast parts of the player base

That's not what the massive amount of negative feedback once it was released says. Sure, most of them gave up on it and won't ever see this thread, but a relevant metric would be how many players actually engage with that specific example of that type of content, and while there's other reasons why metas get mostly abandoned, feedback told us long ago what the reason is for this one.

 

15 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I don't subscribe to the notion that caving and compromising game design to appease players with free loot is a good idea

I'm not really reward minded either when it comes to enjoying games, but I can't deny plenty of people are.

 

15 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Those that do leave over this or are unwilling to improve in case they do chose to overcome the challenge would have been dead weight either way.

The whole point of casual play is that they don't want to put effort into improving, and they're far from dead weight, they're keeping the game afloat. This game has a massive reputation as a casual MMO and the devs willingness to change it won't change the fact that they need them to pay their bills.

 

15 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

So far this approach seems to work well and has resulted in higher player numbers and revenue compared to the last time only simplistic open world content was served, post PoF, which resulted in a continuous decline of this games revenue.

I don't agree that this approach is the main or even a major cause for the improved revenue, nor with why PoF and what followed comparatively failed, but that's too detailed a topic to go on there and I don't think we'd reach any decent conclusion any time soon on that. Still, while the hardcore community is needed in most MMOs' ecosystem including this one, if that was their vision I can't explain the massive downgrade in difficulty from HT CM to OLC CM. I think they're just doing a balancing act trying to alternatively please part of the community then the other, hence why they occasionally throw hardcores a bone without staying consistent

Edited December 17, 2022 by Hauwlyn.8051

[ArchonWing.9480]

2 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I've never been a part of any popular streamer's group or "premade" unless your definition of premade is "a random squad listed in LFG". 

Lol, do most people even play with streamers , or even care about them?

I cannot for the life of me name more than a few. And it's not like being a streamer makes you any good.

Though so-so rewards and a higher than normal failure rate probably do discourage people.

Edited December 17, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Hauwlyn.8051]

Just now, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Lol, do most people even play with streamers , or even care about them?

I cannot for the life of me name more than a few. And it's not like being a streamer makes you any good.

I mean I just happened to be on a popular streamer's instance of Dragon's End the other day.

They don't need to be good if they're popular though, they'll attract plenty of people with inflated egos that will carry them

[Ellon.4316]

This topic again...

Once i logged in and was randomly in dragons end, commander on the map and escort event already started with around 40-ish people in the squad. Zero subgroups or organization, what I did was ask for lieutenant, organized subgroups just based on icons and what classes can do and shouted splits during the fight. Finished with about minute left and less then 40 people (some left because we were going to "fail"). The fight was scrappy at best but it was one of the best meta runs I've done.

That is it, the meta is puggable you just need someone to take the lead, motivate everyone to get at least some DPS numbers and explain a mechanic or two.

Remember that the ask for this meta of players is that they do about 25% DPS of what their class is capable of, reading chat, and press "F" to get protocols and food buffs. For the big finally of a 10 year story arc that seems pretty reasonable.

[Debesyla.7102]

Not every meta has to be 100% success.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Debesyla.7102

[Hauwlyn.8051]

58 minutes ago, Debesyla.7102 said:

Not every meta has to be 100% success.

Therefore a typical open world squad that just cleared any other meta should very much fail this 100% of the time, because it's fine to only think in extremes and oppose any semblance of rational thought! Why didn't I see this sooner!

[Cernow.3974]

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The meta has been cleared with 8-10 and even 12 minutes to spare on the timer.

 

Then the issue has a lot to do with scaling. A 10 personal premade will usually have everyone playing their role to the full, knowing the mechanics etc. You're usually not going to get that with a map full of 30-40+ randoms. But it seems even if you do have a well-organised 40+ (but not premade) it can still fail all too easily.
I was involved in one failure at sub 5% when all the preparation stages went smoothly and an experienced commander explained the final fight clearly. Good buffs, balanced group composition under sub commanders, you name it. Everyone played well, no wipes, few if any deserters (because it seemed to be going so well), all the phases cleared properly as intended. And yet we still came up short because the tuning seemed to scale it beyond the dps check it had decided was appropriate for our numbers. We did everything correct (or so it felt) and still had all our time poured down the drain. That's poor tuning.
You have to bear in mind that this isn't raid content, it's open world. Yes it's the conclusion of an expansion pack story, so players expect something epic. But a fight can be epic without being ridiculously grindy or punishing (which is something I feel this game tends to lose sight of in certain places).
A good comparison would be Drizzlewood Coast, which is another meta with a big time investment but a much higher chance of success (don't think I've witnessed this one fail if it gets as far as Claw Of Jormag stage). I think they got Drizzlewood just about right and Dragon's End wrong, especially considering DE caps out a story arc that most players are going to want to complete, so you can't just make it about meta farming.

 

 

[mandala.8507]

I did a Dragon's End meta earlier this week and I was going to come here and make a similar, albeit more precise entreaty for the devs to make the fight easier to clear.

Ironically, the only actual difficult part of the fight is the timer. There really aren't strong fail states other than not completing the encounter within the time limit.

Just the other day, I was doing map exploration and happened to see a group forming on the lfg about 40 minutes prior to the start of the meta. We filled at least 30 minutes before the start of the meta. We got organized in subgroups with boon supports and dps players sorted. We had really good explanations and callouts from the commander. Excellent resource access with food provided and waystations placed in optimal locations. We hit all the cc checks and did a great job managing bubble, whirlpool and side swapping mechanics.

Even during the split phases, I was impressed by how fast the side-bosses were being defeated. Again, all of this with excellent shot-calling and direction for where each subgroup should go. At every point in the fight I was delighted by how well the group was doing.

Still, with all these things we did right, we only had about a 90 second window of spare time after we finished the meta. It was one of the better groups I'd been in in terms of organization, and it was still that close.

I don't think this is good for the game, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the rewards for doing this meta have already decreased drastically in value. And with this decreased incentive to do the fight, it becomes harder to get the more experienced players that are practically required for a successful clear. As the game grows into the future, we'll see this meta get cleared less and less until it becomes a complete relic; something only guilds and streaming communities do when they're bored and want something more involved to tackle.

Secondly and perhaps most importantly, this meta gatekeeps a HUGE amount of collections that are, in my opinion, some of the best in the game, including "The Last of Their Kind", "A Guardian Once More", "Albax, the Unlucky", and "Looking Back". All of these either have huge implications for future story or are massively significant moments for many of the most beloved characters in the game. 

It is SO important that we not continue to sabotage the writers (and to be honest in this case the voice actors, a lot of the artists, and plenty of other departments involved in these collections and storylines) by locking this content behind arbitrary difficulty thresholds (in this case an overly ambitious event timer) that impresses only a small handful of misguided players that just want the game to be harder at any cost.

And lastly, the arbitrary difficulty creates a really nasty and toxic culture around this meta that I don't see anywhere else in the open world. Snobbish players will rage in map chat 2 minutes into the final fight about how we are doomed to fail and ditch the squad halfway through to help fulfill their malicious prophecy. Players who aren't familiar with all the intricacies of group formation will get booted by less-than-friendly commanders who care more about getting themselves the kill than how their actions and words affect others and the game. Players will get called out for things like "low dps" and "bad boons", which for open world should not be a requirement.

I personally have only done the fight a few handfuls of times (I did it like, 20 times on release, and this is the first time since probably April I have done it since) despite it being one of my favorites in the game because it's MAD depressing to deal with all the negativity around this encounter. Again, all to protect the idea of the content being difficult, which is (sorry to be so blunt) worthless. The fight isn't any better because 80% of the casual pick-up maps fail it miserably. In fact, that's the main detracting feature of the fight, is it is very likely to fail.

It would hurt absolutely no one to add a few minutes to the timer. This would allow new players to get through the meta at least within the first 2 or 3 times they attempt it instead of having to figure out that this fight is different and they need to do everything differently in order to get into a successful group all of a sudden (if they don't just give up, and then they'll be the people upvoting threads about how the lore doesn't make any sense because they missed literally half of it that was hidden behind completing this event).

Please - this game is always at it's best when the content is approachable and incentivizes cooperation and inclusion. Even some of the most impressive fights in this game that, in my opinion, make most other MMO franchises' look utterly amateurish in comparison, mean nothing if too few people ever see them through to completion.

[Silent.6137]

43 minutes ago, Cernow.3974 said:

Then the issue has a lot to do with scaling. A 10 personal premade will usually have everyone playing their role to the full, knowing the mechanics etc. You're usually not going to get that with a map full of 30-40+ randoms. But it seems even if you do have a well-organised 40+ (but not premade) it can still fail all too easily.

Usually the problem with large squads is that a certain number will try to leech off others. Not just at DE meta but at every single meta. The scaling is not an important factor if everyone or majority contributes. I'm not even talking about any raid rotations - just simple attacks as they would any other time or any events. From personal observations, most events do scale very well.

A few things that may cause failures for organized large squads: Not listening to commander, too many dead and not trying to get back asap but expecting to be rezzed, too many leechers ( often hiding on airship), too many not paying attention to AoEs to avoid them, not breaking the defiance bars, not killing sub-bosses at the same time (Too often players will run to another sub-boss to try and help out from a fast-killing group and in the process leaving the first sub-boss severely short-handed. Be always aware of how many left that group so it's not almost abandoned if you go), etc.

Not sure what the minimum size squad will have to be but I doubt a group of 10 will have an easy time because of all the splits - Escorts and main fights. Probably at least 20 in the eventuality some may be downed.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Silent.6137