Dragon's End is still massively overtuned and random

[Stadsport.8714]

Every world/meta event can expect to have a hodgepodge of players with random builds, and some with better optimized (let's say "raid") builds and DE is no exception. It can and is regularly beaten with such a hodgepodge of player composition.

What DE does need is good preparation and direction. You only have to join a few PUGs early and watch how they evolve to see what the difference is. I'll give a few examples of my experience with PUGs:
-I've been in a few maps where people are running events, but without a commander. Sometimes a commander tags up at the last minute, but isn't able (or doesn't have time) to properly establish roles, mechanics, grouping, etc. Usually improvised meta groups like these fail.

-I had one commander who REFUSED to organize people into subgroups even after squad members were practically begging for it. They just planted their feet and said "it doesn't matter" even though it's a known fact that it absolutely does matter for boon distribution, and certainly helps with establishing roles & locations. A few people attempted to self-organize but it was too little, too late. Event failed. 

-Commander tagged up and rushed around the map doing stuff, but never spoke a single word of instruction during the fight. Event failed, commander complained a lot in map chat after and got roasted for not actually commanding.

 

Some of the things that help the event succeed are:

-Grouping up early on LFG, NOT at the last minute. Running pre-events to get your buffs help, but is not required.

-Advertising on LFG helps ensure you're getting people who are there specifically to do the event and not just wandering into it.  Some groups/guilds (like Hardstuck) will often organize in Echovald way in advance, then move over to Dragon's End to force a new map instance to make sure they can get as many squad members in as possible. Frankly, if you just want to beat the meta and get your turtle, join the Hardstuck discord and just do a run with them. They do it regularly with practically a 100% success rate at this point.

-Having a commander organize people into subgroups of 5, and distribute boon-providing roles among those subgroups (it helps to have a solid understanding of which classes can provide which boons to speed this process up a lot).

-Explaining the mechanics in advance, and ideally during the fight. Setting up Waystations and emphasizing the CC phases helps a lot, especially.

-Establishing who (by subgroup, typically) will go where during the split phase in advance, and again during the fight will get the pre-events done quicker, which especially helps with the crystals. It helps with the pillar split a lot, too.

 

This isn't to say you need to do ALL of the above to succeed, but those things help a lot. I recently joined a  group where the commander split people up into 3 subs, which was enough to help define who goes where during the split phases of pre-events and the primary fight, but doesn't help so much with boon distribution. The commander was giving people verbal direction on how to organize themselves instead of doing it themselves, so I think they were a bit new. On the 2nd pillar split during the fight, we had to re-do because one pillar didn't kill in time. Lost a little over a minute and the map was still successful, despite having some problems with the setup.

 

So yes, DE Meta is easily the most challenging open world event in the game, but ANet has made it crystal clear that's how they want it to be, and I'm perfectly fine with it. Discussion about requiring highly optimized meta builds is irrelevant because it is regularly beaten by groups who take anyone who joins. It is challenging but can be beaten with simple but effective commanding and players participating. 

 

[idpersona.3810]

4 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

It’s not. It’s a great meta event, the community came together, communicated and organized themselves. It created communities that run the meta regularly. 
Of course there are players that didn’t came back to the map after they failed, but a lot of players came back after they failed at the beginning and now they found communities to run the meta together, they never fail. 

I see what your saying now.
I think the word "community" though is highly subjective. From what I saw, the overall GW2 community tore themselves in 2 in the beginning (first couple on months). I think that was terrible for the game.
What you seem to be referring to as "community" now though, is just the people who stuck around and pushed through and continue to do the meta to this day. Your version of "community" doesn't include the vast number of players who walked away after many, many negative experiences with this meta.
By that logic, the meta is a success since it doesn't generally fail anymore. But the community in question is by definition a much smaller subset of the overall GW2 community.

[Cuks.8241]

9 minutes ago, idpersona.3810 said:

I see what your saying now.
I think the word "community" though is highly subjective. From what I saw, the overall GW2 community tore themselves in 2 in the beginning (first couple on months). I think that was terrible for the game.
What you seem to be referring to as "community" now though, is just the people who stuck around and pushed through and continue to do the meta to this day. Your version of "community" doesn't include the vast number of players who walked away after many, many negative experiences with this meta.
By that logic, the meta is a success since it doesn't generally fail anymore. But the community in question is by definition a much smaller subset of the overall GW2 community.

Well you could also say that the only who really tore themselves are the regular forum complainers. Here the sky was falling while in game it was a few angry comments after a fail and that was pretty much it as far as noticed.

Also the only metric we came up with up to now (price and market of EOD meta statuettes) show that the meta is completed more often than Echovald and Kaineng meta (and by a huge margin compared to the later) so I guess its not such a small and niche subset.

 

edit: I would say all these forum doom sayers are doing harm to the meta and player base for whatever personal reason. All this nonsense about high fail rate, low rewards and raid compositions only discourages players. In reality, in game there is 0 gate keeping for this meta, anyone can join, its long but fun event and I havent failed it in months.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Cuks.8241

[idpersona.3810]

2 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Well you could also say that the only who really tore themselves are the regular forum complainers. Here the sky was falling while in game it was a few angry comments after a fail and that was pretty much it as far as noticed.

It wasn't just forum complainers. I saw people fighting on here sure. But also on streams and in game. Blame was being thrown everywhere. Many people blocked each other over issues around this meta. It was terrible. I think it was a bad experience for lots involved. 
 

5 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Also the only metric we came up with up to now (price and market of EOD meta statuettes) show that the meta is completed more often than Echovald and Kaineng meta (and by a huge margin compared to the later) so I guess its not such a small and niche subset.

Oh, I don't think that's the case at all. I think it shows that DE and Seitung are far more popular than Echovald or Kaineng sure.  That likely has to do with the rewards for each. This doesn't tell us how popular DE is in general. Only compared to other EoD maps.

I don't think there's any way to tell, but I'd be curious to see what player participation numbers are in the various metas in game comparatively. I know (and have seen on forums) many people who finished EoD and just don't return to the maps.

[vares.8457]

7 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Well you could also say that the only who really tore themselves are the regular forum complainers. Here the sky was falling while in game it was a few angry comments after a fail and that was pretty much it as far as noticed.

Also the only metric we came up with up to now (price and market of EOD meta statuettes) show that the meta is completed more often than Echovald and Kaineng meta (and by a huge margin compared to the later) so I guess its not such a small and niche subset.

 

edit: I would say all these forum doom sayers are doing harm to the meta and player base for whatever personal reason. All this nonsense about high fail rate, low rewards and raid compositions only discourages players. In reality, in game there is 0 gate keeping for this meta, anyone can join, its long but fun event and I havent failed it in months.

Absolutely. The situation in game is very different from what some portray here. Most of the people who are complaining here aren’t even doing the meta regularly. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

49 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Noone can support such claim, even anet probably cant reliably. 

But I also believe the gap between instanced pve crowd and purely ow crowd has narrowed and DE meta is a part of it. 

Why I feel that is so? Just my general observation of arc in ow, lots of activity in strikes and raids, and chat. 

It would be very easy to falsify. Just try doing in a group that ignores all of these parameters.

That wouldn't actually prove anything, of course.  But it may be reasonable to say that these are the baseline things for success, so if someone does succeed, they would know more.

What I do know is I don't have to write an entire essay's worth to justify my own  inability to do such content, either way.  I don't care what all this theory comes down to, because I win anyways. YMMV.

Edited December 20, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Cuks.8241]

2 minutes ago, idpersona.3810 said:

I don't think there's any way to tell, but I'd be curious to see what player participation numbers are in the various metas in game comparatively. I know (and have seen on forums) many people who finished EoD and just don't return to the maps.

This I would agree. The problem is not even that EOD metas are bad or anything. I find Seitung and DE one of the best out there. 

Its this strange map cap of barely over 50 players. This is such a fail on Anet's part. First of all maps just feel empty and are constantly closing. And meta maps fill very fast, maybe there will be a second one but than you're running out of commanders willing to LFG.

And funnily I think metas are to blame here. Maybe I am completely off but I think they balanced these metas for 1 full squad and dont to have much more players around. On the other hand if we would have more players on the HT platform everyone's comp would fry and everyone would go blind.

[idpersona.3810]

3 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

This I would agree. The problem is not even that EOD metas are bad or anything. I find Seitung and DE one of the best out there. 

Its this strange map cap of barely over 50 players. This is such a fail on Anet's part. First of all maps just feel empty and are constantly closing. And meta maps fill very fast, maybe there will be a second one but than you're running out of commanders willing to LFG.

And funnily I think metas are to blame here. Maybe I am completely off but I think they balanced these metas for 1 full squad and dont to have much more players around. On the other hand if we would have more players on the HT platform everyone's comp would fry and everyone would go blind.

Fair. The map cap is weird. And the map jumping system is odd as well. Jumping over to a more populated map shouldn't generally result in a worse chance at completing the meta (which was my experience more than once). Early on, trolls were being paid to leave the map for a better chance at success. There's fishing on the map so people do it, but then don't join the meta fight.

 

I think the fight itself balances around the number of people on the platform itself. But it still makes for a jarring experience.
 

[mandala.8507]

2 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Well you could also say that the only who really tore themselves are the regular forum complainers. Here the sky was falling while in game it was a few angry comments after a fail and that was pretty much it as far as noticed.

Also the only metric we came up with up to now (price and market of EOD meta statuettes) show that the meta is completed more often than Echovald and Kaineng meta (and by a huge margin compared to the later) so I guess its not such a small and niche subset.

So much wrong here.

Firstly, I could link probably 20 different videos from prominent creators showcasing that pretty much everyone had a strong opinion one way or the other on the meta on release for a long while. It's incorrect to say it was not affecting the in-game discussions around that map.

Secondly, the price of statuettes isn't a reliable indicator of the overall popularity of the meta for a couple of reasons.

Demand in a free market like the in-game trading post has both magnitude and direction. The question we have to ask ourselves before we make any claims based off of the pricing is who wants the statuettes and who has them, as well as why.

Well, it's pretty fair to say that the people who want the statuettes are the people cashing them in to buy the weekly rewards from Myung-Hee. Who are these players? Pretty much exclusively those trying to be optimal in their farm each week.

Okay, now who are the people that are getting the Jade Dragon Statuettes from completing the DE meta? These are also the people who are trying to be optimal in their farm because DE is one of the best farms to do in the game (or was until the price of the antique summoning stones crashed hard in the past several weeks) if you do it once a day, meaning people who are farming each week will have up to 7 of these lying around a week.

Seitung is also a very good farm.

New Kaineng and Echovald are much worse. Players trying to optimize their farming might avoid these metas altogether because they are so much less profitable to do than the other 2.

Echovald, though, is quite a fun meta that people enjoy. New Kaineng is a very long and poorly paced meta that has weird fail states and conflicts with other very popular and more lucrative metas (I still like it a lot, though).

So hopefully you can see now that the people who want the Jade Dragon Statuettes are the people that already have them in spades and the people who want the Jade Gate Statuettes are much less likely to have them.

Bottom line is, this is a REALLY bad indicator of whether the meta is popular. You could conclude it is popular among people who are going to Myung every week and that New Kaineng is not popular among people who are going to Myung every week, but extrapolating beyond that is foolish.

You're not the only one doing it as I've seen this point made elsewhere in this thread and in other forums of discussion, but the deductions made using that trading post data are highly illogical.

[Cuks.8241]

7 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

So much wrong here.

...

You got some point there. But...

Echovald is not far behind in gph to DE.

The farm trains I know actually do New Kaineng, Echovald, DE. They skip Seitung because it is at the same time as DBS (infusion) and Pala (very profitable). Maybe others do it differently but the ones I know do it like this.

You need all 4 statuettes to cash in. 

[Silent.6137]

2 hours ago, Stadsport.8714 said:

-Explaining the mechanics in advance, and ideally during the fight. Setting up Waystations and emphasizing the CC phases helps a lot, especially.

Although I do agree with this, commanders have to keep it very brief. Seen a few commanders try to explain the whole process as if they were writing an essay. Majority will just ignore it if it's a wall of text.

2 hours ago, idpersona.3810 said:

By that logic, the meta is a success since it doesn't generally fail anymore. But the community in question is by definition a much smaller subset of the overall GW2 community.

Every single "community" is a very small subset. Those who raid, or do TD meta, or Dragonfall meta, or etc.

2 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Its this strange map cap of barely over 50 players.

I do believe the cap is at 60, judging from the number indicated on the UI on Temple Top. Seen it only once at 59 but usually just above 50 but lower number probably indicates out of squad players who had not or will not be at the fights.

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

Okay, now who are the people that are getting the Jade Dragon Statuettes from completing the DE meta? These are also the people who are trying to be optimal in their farm because DE is one of the best farms to do in the game (or was until the price of the antique summoning stones crashed hard in the past several weeks) if you do it once a day, meaning people who are farming each week will have up to 7 of these lying around a week.

You can only receive 1 statuette per week from each EoD map. Regardless of the price of the Summoning Stones, it is still one of the best map to farm even without the meta. Fast chain events all over the map that are extremely easy to get to with mounts, especially roller beetles. Add in the 60 daily pure jade, tech and shrine guardian chests, the easy mini dungeon (especially with contributor %), the farming nodes and fishing, it is a highly profitable map relatively.

[zakkles.4158]

https://pastebin.com/Dm7495tX

read my newbie guide yall 🥰

[Mistwraithe.3106]

10 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Its this strange map cap of barely over 50 players. This is such a fail on Anet's part. First of all maps just feel empty and are constantly closing. And meta maps fill very fast, maybe there will be a second one but than you're running out of commanders willing to LFG.

Sorry, slight change of topic, but is there really meant to be a map cap of around 50 players? Because that doesn't seem right to me. I did Triple Trouble once (lots of fun, would do again) and there were three teams of which I'm pretty sure ours was the smallest. I counted and our team had over 30 people in it. So that means closer to 100 players on the map we were on. Is there something special about Triple Trouble?

Edited December 21, 2022 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Cyninja.2954]

24 minutes ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Sorry, slight change of topic, but is there really meant to be a map cap of around 50 players? Because that doesn't seem right to me. I did Triple Trouble once (lots of fun, would do again) and there were three teams of which I'm pretty sure ours was the smallest. I counted and our team had over 30 people in it. So that means closer to 100 players on the map we were on. Is there something special about Triple Trouble?

 

Player caps can differ per map. EoD maps seem to have smaller player caps overall. This was very evident on release until the developers increased the amounts allowed. It was also one of the reasons why players felt the maps where "empty" on launch.

There might be a relationship between map size, complexity, total events, etc. and thus allowed player cap.

The maximum capacity is set by the developers according to what theyseem to believe is ideal for decent performance.

Core and interestingly HoT maps seem to be closer to 90-100 players per map. WvW maps for example are aproximately 70-75 players per border per side (total around 210-225 when accounting for all 3 sides).

Edited December 21, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Razadune.9260]

11 hours ago, Stadsport.8714 said:

So yes, DE Meta is easily the most challenging open world event in the game, but ANet has made it crystal clear that's how they want it to be, and I'm perfectly fine with it.

Well, okay. But there's a lot of people that aren't, and for good reason.    

Virtually requiring LFG, group assignments for boon distribution, explaining mechanics, long preparation phases, and pretty much everything else you mentioned are the antithesis of the rest of the game's open world design. You just do not need to do those things in pretty much any other open world meta event in the game. Dragon's End is designed like a raid instance with a lot of the same requirements, and if that's what they want...fine, I guess. Make it an instanced raid and nobody would even complain; it seems like the only reason it's not one is because it would have fractured the story.    

But out in the open world, as an open world event, you cannot and will never have total control over who is there or how they participate. You can't kick the five people from the map who are just fishing while you run three people behind the timer on DPS, or the other four just grabbing hero points, but the encounter is designed like everyone on the map is there doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing at the exact time they're supposed to be doing it, and it fails if they aren't. I think there's a lot of people (especially the ones talking about DE's success rate) that don't seem to get that EoD's maps feel completely empty 90%+ of the time because the only people still doing the metas are the ones treating them like instanced group content. Everyone else pretty much gave up on them otherwise months ago.    

Dragon's End isn't an issue because it's "challenging". It's an issue because it's a raid instance that's just tossed into the open world because they didn't want to isolate the story; and unless you approach it like it is a raid instance, you're almost certainly going to fail it.     

 

[Stadsport.8714]

3 hours ago, Razadune.9260 said:

Well, okay. But there's a lot of people that aren't, and for good reason.    

Virtually requiring LFG, group assignments for boon distribution, explaining mechanics, long preparation phases, and pretty much everything else you mentioned are the antithesis of the rest of the game's open world design. You just do not need to do those things in pretty much any other open world meta event in the game. Dragon's End is designed like a raid instance with a lot of the same requirements, and if that's what they want...fine, I guess. Make it an instanced raid and nobody would even complain; it seems like the only reason it's not one is because it would have fractured the story.    

But out in the open world, as an open world event, you cannot and will never have total control over who is there or how they participate. You can't kick the five people from the map who are just fishing while you run three people behind the timer on DPS, or the other four just grabbing hero points, but the encounter is designed like everyone on the map is there doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing at the exact time they're supposed to be doing it, and it fails if they aren't. I think there's a lot of people (especially the ones talking about DE's success rate) that don't seem to get that EoD's maps feel completely empty 90%+ of the time because the only people still doing the metas are the ones treating them like instanced group content. Everyone else pretty much gave up on them otherwise months ago.    

Dragon's End isn't an issue because it's "challenging". It's an issue because it's a raid instance that's just tossed into the open world because they didn't want to isolate the story; and unless you approach it like it is a raid instance, you're almost certainly going to fail it.     

 

 

It definitely is harder than other open world events, but to say it's the antithesis of the rest of the game's open world is just not true. There are plenty of other open world meta events that require participation on a large scale. For example, Octovine has a way higher success rate, but does still fail. Same with Chak Gerent, and even "newbie" maps have this with events like Triple Trouble, which is arguably harder to coordinate as it requires three commanders who are directing new players, and in Triple Trouble, you absolutely have to organize in advance, explain mechanics up front and along the way, etc.

 

Like DE, those metas are more likely to fail without proper organization and coordination. DE isn't the antithesis of this, it's perfectly in line with other metas. Its just increased in difficulty. Again, no one of those things I mentioned are *requirements,* they just increase your chances of success. The same is true in all meta events.

 

The comparison to raids is also just not true. Having organization for boon distribution helps DE a lot, but isn't a sole requirement for it. In a raid, it IS a requirement. The stakes are higher, and one player can often cause the entire group to wipe for multitude of reasons. Raids require much tighter coordination, more rigidly defined roles, and careful participation of ALL squad members. None of these are true of DE. 

 

Your argument about not being able to control what people do in a map (and therefore needing to kick players for not participating in the meta) is also irrelevant because, as I said in my last post, there are simple steps squad commanders can take organize early, or to ensure they get a fresh map instance full of active participants, and it works. Yes, map size scaling in EoD maps is bad, but it doesn't preclude this event from succeeding. I actually do agree that it could work as an instance, and I think if it were set up as a Promoted Event like Dragonstorm it would make a lot of sense and probably have an increased success rate. But ANet wants it to be a map meta, and time spent making exaggerated complaints on the forums is time that could be spent just completing the event.

 

As we've established, DE is certainly more challenging than other metas overall. But it also represents the very last fight, in the very last map of the very last of expansion. It's the conclusion to the 10-year long dragon cycle. So yes, it's fitting for it to be more challenging than prior open world content. It is one of three OPTIONAL modes of the literal final boss to the entire game. Having it require more preparation and coordination than prior events is not only fair, it would be irresponsible game design for it not to, and it's still not NEARLY as hard as raids introduced years ago.

 

I'm not even sure why there are still long complaints on the forum about DE being too hard or unfair, 10 months later, while it's cleared several times a day, every day now. Just go join a squad and get your turtle.

[Silent.6137]

11 hours ago, Razadune.9260 said:

Virtually requiring LFG, group assignments for boon distribution, explaining mechanics, long preparation phases, and pretty much everything else you mentioned are the antithesis of the rest of the game's open world design.

All meta requires LFG to get those doing them on the same map. If the population cap is not so tight at DE, it'll be no different than any other meta: hop on the map at any time and just click join. Only reason squads form earlier than at other meta is to make sure those who are doing the meta can get on the map.

Boon distributions? Not required but it helps. Some squads will have only a few subs with quick and alacrity

Explaining mechanics? Some commanders do but most do not except give the very basic instructions that are no different than at anywhere else.

Long preparation phase? Not required and some squads don't even bother. Just get 5 stacks before Escorts which will take 10 minutes. It takes about 25 minutes to get the map to full readiness, if the squad do it. Doing events there are no different from farming any events for loots on any other maps, be it at Drizzlewood, Dragonfall or whatever. If the drops are very bad comparatively to other maps you farmed at, then that might be a reason against it. But it's not.

11 hours ago, Razadune.9260 said:

Dragon's End is designed like a raid instance with a lot of the same requirements, and if that's what they want...fine, I guess.

What same requirements? Asking for quick and alac, if available? Most squads do not have full complements. And just proceed with whatever is there. Would you do Raids if you don't have what you asked for? Raids successes require familiarity through training for all. DE meta only requires a few who knows the fights to lead.

11 hours ago, Razadune.9260 said:

I think there's a lot of people (especially the ones talking about DE's success rate) that don't seem to get that EoD's maps feel completely empty 90%+ of the time because the only people still doing the metas are the ones treating them like instanced group content. Everyone else pretty much gave up on them otherwise months ago.   

Most maps that are non-meta maps will feel empty 90%+ of the time. Find me any map that you can just map into which has no major events and will be very busy.

Again, if you gave up on it months ago, what basis do you have for comparison? And who is everyone? I see full DE maps everytime I go there for the metas. Same as at other maps. Mostly empty if no metas. Again, the same as everywhere else.

[LONGA.1652]

Dragon end is putting easy strike at the end of the 60 minute map with some gear/buff check. Which make the experience very random.

What I see on failed map are either AFK that don't farm the event's before escort or don't  equip jade bot core to get protocol buffs.

Then there are issue when people getting to Soo-won semi AFK or even a Multibox leeching.

In success map when there are 30 people in squad with all the box checked the run will usually be done with 5 minute left.

[Silent.6137]

For all those who thinks this meta is too complex, too restricting, too hard, too long, too raid-like (whatever that means), etc., what do you propose the solution should be?

Extend the fight timer? But isn't one of the complains that it's already too long?

Make the meta Instanced? What would that changed if you want to do it? You will still be subjected to the same conditions as it is now.

And then what about the openworld? Have a nerfed boss fights without needing any map buffs? Surely you do not expect to receive the same rewards then, right? Just regular world boss loots but the ability to get the turtle egg upon completions.

Would you choose to participate in the OW version as opposed to Instanced knowing that the loots you receive will be very poor in comparison? It can't be the same if the OW vs Instanced are so different in terms of time/difficulties.

Or are the objections merely so you can get the same rewards by basically simply attending the meta?

[Ausar.9542]

1 hour ago, Silent.6137 said:

For all those who thinks this meta is too complex, too restricting, too hard, too long, too raid-like (whatever that means), etc., what do you propose the solution should be?

Extend the fight timer? But isn't one of the complains that it's already too long?

Make the meta Instanced? What would that changed if you want to do it? You will still be subjected to the same conditions as it is now.

And then what about the openworld? Have a nerfed boss fights without needing any map buffs? Surely you do not expect to receive the same rewards then, right? Just regular world boss loots but the ability to get the turtle egg upon completions.

Would you choose to participate in the OW version as opposed to Instanced knowing that the loots you receive will be very poor in comparison? It can't be the same if the OW vs Instanced are so different in terms of time/difficulties.

Or are the objections merely so you can get the same rewards by basically simply attending the meta?

 make the map more rewarding and meaningful for non Meta stuff. 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Ausar.9542

[The Boz.2038]

29 minutes ago, Ausar.9542 said:

 make the map more rewarding and meaningful for non Meta stuff. 

...how would that solve any of the problems people keep complaining about?

[idpersona.3810]

9 hours ago, Silent.6137 said:

For all those who thinks this meta is too complex, too restricting, too hard, too long, too raid-like (whatever that means), etc., what do you propose the solution should be?

Extend the fight timer? But isn't one of the complains that it's already too long?

Make the meta Instanced? What would that changed if you want to do it? You will still be subjected to the same conditions as it is now.

And then what about the openworld? Have a nerfed boss fights without needing any map buffs? Surely you do not expect to receive the same rewards then, right? Just regular world boss loots but the ability to get the turtle egg upon completions.

Would you choose to participate in the OW version as opposed to Instanced knowing that the loots you receive will be very poor in comparison? It can't be the same if the OW vs Instanced are so different in terms of time/difficulties.

Or are the objections merely so you can get the same rewards by basically simply attending the meta?

This topic has come up a lot and I think lots of good idea have been thrown around.

The instance idea likely would have worked at the start. The whole event would run like Dragonstorm where it's all instanced but with Private and Public options. But they didn't do that, and so I think that ship has sailed.

 

Loosening the time but also offering increased reward for quicker kills could easily work and I think would satisfy most groups. And I think that sort of format encourages more players to stick around rather than just walk away (which plenty in this thread seem fine with).

 

For me, the fight itself isn't even the issue (as much as any of this really is). The time sink with the possibility of little reward is. I think the HoT metas had the better format. Give participation rewards on a sliding scale the whole way through the events leading up to the fight. Don't load so much of the rewards purely on the back end. That way, even if the big fight fails you don't have players who feel like they wasted an hour and a half of their time for basically nothing.
 

[Astralporing.1957]

On 12/21/2022 at 8:29 AM, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Sorry, slight change of topic, but is there really meant to be a map cap of around 50 players? Because that doesn't seem right to me. I did Triple Trouble once (lots of fun, would do again) and there were three teams of which I'm pretty sure ours was the smallest. I counted and our team had over 30 people in it. So that means closer to 100 players on the map we were on. Is there something special about Triple Trouble?

Yes. It's in old, core maps, which have a cap of around 150 players. EoD map caps are less than half that number (around 60 or 65 people).

[mandala.8507]

11 hours ago, Silent.6137 said:

Extend the fight timer? But isn't one of the complains that it's already too long?

Who's gonna tell 'em?

Extending the timer doesn't extend the length of the meta any longer than the extra time you'd actually need not to fail it completely. No one who just failed the meta is saying, "well, at least the event wasn't 2 minutes longer." They'd gladly give up 2 extra minutes for the successful pull. And anyone who doesn't need the 2 extra minutes wouldn't have to stay any longer.

11 hours ago, Silent.6137 said:

Or are the objections merely so you can get the same rewards by basically simply attending the meta?

And we can stop arguing that people just want easier loot. I personally don't care at all about the loot. Get rid of all of it but make the event an actually enjoyable and equitable experience for mixed-skill and mixed-knowledge groups and I'll run it every day. Heck, I'll lead it every day.

Maybe if I frame my argument in a more elitist way, y'all will get it?

I'm tired of carrying people through this meta and don't want to have to put my best foot forward on a meta build every time I have the urge to do DE or risk not being the difference-maker in a pull that fails, but could have succeeded if I were fully sweating. I'm tired of caring that a bunch of noobs who don't know what they're doing are in my map. I'm tired of having to sort all the plebs who joined from the lfg into subgroups. I'm tired of having to look for an emptier map to get my full group into it, otherwise some of them have no shot of doing the meta in the same cycle as me. I'd like everyone to just show up and do their thing more organically, and the best way to accomplish this would be to loosen up the boss timer.

If we DID want to talk about loot we COULD come up with more creative rewards solutions that incentivize map activity in DE during a medium-length window of time that ramps up to the start of the meta so that players would be there doing events and getting stacks anyway, but that would be an actual level-headed and constructive critique of the map design and incentivization structures. They've gotten similar concepts right in the past with maps like Drizzlewood South, Dry Top, and Verdant Brink that reward consistent and active participation ultimately culminating in a more involved final event sequence, but in DE the balance wasn't struck very well between the worth of the build up versus the final battle. You're actually incentivized to spend as little build up time on the map as you can without missing out on stacks.

We could even take our constructive criticism a few steps further and offer changes to the meta structure of the entire expansion to help enable the final map. Instead of a 2 hour cycle through the map metas with one occurring every 30 minutes, we could extend the cycle to 3 hours. We would give an extra 15 minutes each to New Kaineng and Echovald and a whole 30 minutes extra to DE. That way, players could cycle through all the meta maps consistently, which when you release a new expansion is a nice way to keep activity and interest in all the metas high by having the new content not overlap so much.

Additionally, this 3-hour cadence would allow the metas to alternate their conflicting line-ups with other metas on the 2-hour schedule like Auric Basin and Dragonstorm.

What End of Dragons could have looked like is the Seitung Province meta starting at reset, New Kaineng starting 30 minutes after reset, Echovald starting an hour and 15 minutes after reset, and the Dragon's End meta starting the actual lane escorts 2 hours and 15 minutes after reset with the assumption you'll finish Echovald early and come to DE to farm stacks and maybe get timed map-wide loot similar to drizzlewood so that players don't procrastinate getting over there to prep. Then, if your group did a good job at clearing the DE meta quickly, you could jump right back into the loop at Seitung 3 hours after reset.

On top of this, we could apply the ramping reward structure of the weekly EoD strike missions to the Jade Statuettes. The way that system worked before they added Old Lion's Court into there and ruined it was that completing a full set of strikes once a week was very worthwhile and the best rewards came from doing all of them. What this did was effectively make the strike you wanted to do the least the most valuable, since once you had done the other 3, doing just 1 more got you a ton of extra rewards.

Already, I've started doing Harvest Temple way less than usual because I can do OLC instead, whereas before I'd muster up the patience to do it every week since it was so valuable.

And, of course, giving a couple extra minutes to the boss timer in DE so people don't have to be so picky about who they play with and how.

But I guess it is far simpler to accuse everyone of being leeches and just tell them to get good.

[Silent.6137]

29 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

They'd gladly give up 2 extra minutes for the successful pull. And anyone who doesn't need the 2 extra minutes wouldn't have to stay any longer.

2 minutes? You'll still get the exact same complains. I suggested 5 and 10 minutes in one of my previous post but you obviously missed it from your tone: Maybe if I frame my argument in a more elitist way, y'all will get it?

 

On 12/17/2022 at 1:47 PM, Silent.6137 said:

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)

 

 

29 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

Additionally, this 3-hour cadence would allow the metas to alternate their conflicting line-ups with other metas on the 2-hour schedule like Auric Basin and Dragonstorm.

Agree with this. Disregarding metas in other zones, it is impossible to do all 4 EoD comsecutively without missing portions of it.

29 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

But I guess it is far simpler to accuse everyone of being leeches and just tell them to get good.

You just assume that's everyone's mindset if they so much as disagree. Try reading the rest of their comments. They may disagree with certain points but that doesn't mean they don't have issues with parts of the meta itself.

Edited December 22, 2022 by Silent.6137