Gyala Delves Feedback [Merged]

[Essence Snow.3194]

Map will be dead fairly soon as loot is not as good and there are extra hoops to jump through compared to other maps.

[Bast.7253]

1 minute ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

I think, and this is just a theory, that they're upgrades for your existing filters, so you can get up to 60 charges instead of the initial 30.

I bought all 3 and all it did was knock me back down to 10/20. I think one has magic find or something attached to it?

Felt like a... we want to haze to be in the map.. what can we do to make it more than an environmental effect!

In reality they probably WANTED to make it a mastery or something but they just didn't have the resources/time/money/whateveritisthistime to make it a mastery so they created this mess of a system to interact with. 

[Tails.9372]

I like the visual design of the underground part of this map about as much as I dislike the haze mechanic and pretty much everything else about it, which is to say: a lot.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Tails.9372

[Gehenna.3625]

7 minutes ago, Bast.7253 said:

I bought all 3 and all it did was knock me back down to 10/20. I think one has magic find or something attached to it?

Felt like a... we want to haze to be in the map.. what can we do to make it more than an environmental effect!

In reality they probably WANTED to make it a mastery or something but they just didn't have the resources/time/money/whateveritisthistime to make it a mastery so they created this mess of a system to interact with. 

well, I'm all out of ideas then

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I think a reasonable compromise on the difficulty of the final meta event is to make it so all three bosses swap their mechanics periodically and also have to be defeated at the same time or they revive. I know this is a bit brutal but maybe even add the winds mechanic from Siren's Reef to the platforms.

 

As for the loot, this continues to perplex me as ArenaNet got the formula perfect for Silverwastes, Auric Basin and Tangled Depths, and did an okay job with Drizzlewood. Yet with each new map, they seem to keep trying to do something different with the loot chests, despite having the metrics to show that getting keys from events and getting good loot from the chests keeps players coming back to the map indefinitely.

 

The End of Dragons maps, including this one, are actually pretty decent. Its the Path of Fire maps that are really bad but none of them really live up to LWS2 or HoT maps loot-wise. Silverwastes RIBA is still run 24/7 after nearly a decade and it should be easy to see why this system works.

 

We don't have to re-invent the wheel every few years, some things should just work.

Edited March 1, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Valfar.3761]

Design wise, the new map feels lackluster. There is only one layer. It's not multilayered like Tangled Depths or Draconis Mons was, which had far more playable space packed into the same area. It feels more like a flat map with a ceiling rather than a vast cave network. Once you've been down the three lanes, you've seen most of the map. After the boss battle, 5 other arenas open up where you have a Dragonfall-esque victory lap against minibosses, but that's it. Maybe it's because I'm using the griffon and roller beetle to get around, but it feels small. Also, your ability to explore the map is limited by meta event progression and the map closes 15 minutes after the end boss fight, and thus far I have had no luck opening up LFG and trying to join other squads are in an instance that is further along so I can explore more. After beating my first meta and then getting kicked out 15 minutes later, I had to join a fresh instance and then wait half an hour for it to progress far enough that I could grab screenshots.

 

The meta event finale is rather lackluster too. It culminates in three boss fights on the three platforms, but the bosses are just slightly tall humanoids. I was expecting a huge monster. The spectacle of giant boss fights is what GW2 shines at.

 

Each of the three lanes has two gates that can only be destroyed by Siege Turtles. A nice way to make them relevant, though stomping on a gate for two minutes isn't very fun.

[Redfeather.6401]

2 hours ago, Essence Snow.3194 said:

Map will be dead fairly soon as loot is not as good and there are extra hoops to jump through compared to other maps.

I can see it already. Nobody in my guilds were in the new map today. They had their fill.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

This more like Bjroa marches which was okay at launch and had a date already for the second part.

What players want more of is Grathmar Valley and Sandswep Isles in terms of content.

[soulknight.9620]

4 hours ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

This more like Bjroa marches which was okay at launch and had a date already for the second part.

Nope, its not. 

First half of the Bjora had: 

1) One giant meta and some nice sidequests like Boneskinner.

2) Loads of collections (weapons, minis etc)

3) Masteries

4) Light puzzles

5) Loads of hidden chests that could be farmed on daily basis

6) Raven sanctum

7) Strike missions (3 of them)

Edited March 2, 2023 by soulknight.9620

[Astralporing.1957]

14 hours ago, Einsof.1457 said:

Players won't get better unless they are challenged. There is no other way. 

The group of players that get better when challenged is already getting better. They are also a minority. Most players when faced with a challenge that is greater than their capability just give up. So, of you want average players to learn mechanics, the game needs to do a good job at teaching them how to deal with those.

Notice, that GW2 does it badly. For the most part it just throws increased difficulty at players, and expects them to somehow learn how to deal with it on their own. Which works for some, but not for most.

In case of breakbars, considering how widely used the mechanic is, for those to work the game should:

1. Introduce it early in a story in an easy to understand way (say, by presenting a series of enemies that to be defeated need to be broken, but are otherwise easy).

2. Ensure that by that point every single player is guaranteed to have a CC skill

3. Balance the breakbars around those guaranteed CC skills (with every additional one just making it easier), not around full CC capacity of players specced for it, and definitely not around additional mechanics like EMP)

4. make sure the breakbars all over the game are generally standarized as far as breakbar size, time to break, recharge rate etc go. After all, if you want someone to learn a mechanic, there's no worse thing that you can do than to make it extremely inconsistent all over the game.

Notice, how GW2 does not follow any of those. So, most players still being completely lost when faced with breakbar mechanic is nothing surprising.

In short: increasing requirements by itself is not teaching

[vares.8457]

16 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The group of players that get better when challenged is already getting better. They are also a minority. Most players when faced with a challenge that is greater than their capability just give up. So, of you want average players to learn mechanics, the game needs to do a good job at teaching them how to deal with those.

Notice, that GW2 does it badly. For the most part it just throws increased difficulty at players, and expects them to somehow learn how to deal with it on their own. Which works for some, but not for most.

In case of breakbars, considering how widely used the mechanic is, for those to work the game should:

1. Introduce it early in a story in an easy to understand way (say, by presenting a series of enemies that to be defeated need to be broken, but are otherwise easy).

2. Ensure that by that point every single player is guaranteed to have a CC skill

3. Balance the breakbars around those guaranteed CC skills (with every additional one just making it easier), not around full CC capacity of players specced for it, and definitely not around additional mechanics like EMP)

4. make sure the breakbars all over the game are generally standarized as far as breakbar size, time to break, recharge rate etc go. After all, if you want someone to learn a mechanic, there's no worse thing that you can do than to make it extremely inconsistent all over the game.

Notice, how GW2 does not follow any of those. So, most players still being completely lost when faced with breakbar mechanic is nothing surprising.

In short: increasing requirements by itself is not teaching

Breakbar is really not a difficult mechanic or a challenge. Every skill shows in the tooltip if can be used to break it “Defiance break”

There is nothing that needs to be taught. Just thinking helps. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by vares.8457

[Astralporing.1957]

5 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

Breakbar is really not a difficult mechanic or a challenge. Every skill shows in the tooltip if can be used to break it “Defiance break”

There is nothing that needs to be teached. Just thinking helps. 

When your theory does not match reality, it does not mean the reality is wrong. It means your theory is. And it so happens that your way of thinking does not match the reality. If it did, we would not be having this conversation, after all.

[vares.8457]

7 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

When your theory does not match reality, it does not mean the reality is wrong. It means your theory is. And it so happens that your way of thinking does not match the reality. If it did, we would not be having this conversation, after all.

Players are not overwhelmed with the breakbar mechanic, they are just lazy or don’t care. In instanced content I usually don’t have a problem with breakbar in my groups, it’s the open world players that just don’t want to do mechanics. 
All they have to do is read the tooltips of their skills, you want to teach them how to read? 

Edited March 2, 2023 by vares.8457

[Derktarlms.6213]

I would like to see if the map will continue to live in the future, it is sad not to see a single point of mastery in the achievements

[Zok.4956]

12 hours ago, Obfuscate.6430 said:

I am not a raider, I don't do strikes or high level fractals - I'm just a casual and probably one of the very few to comment here but - I thought the new meta was perfectly balanced between being approachable and difficult.  What people here seem to be asking for is something so much more difficult and I don't understand why you would want that on an open world map that is designed for everyone. 

It is not about making the fight harder (at least not for me) but to make it more interesting. More harder (or more annoying mechanics) does not always make a fight more interesting.

I believe OW metas should be accessible for all types of players and should succeed without pre-formed groups if at least 50% (or 2/3 or maybe 3/4) of ad-hoc players participating in the fight know and execute the fight mechanics and also do decent damage. 

But the actual fight feels boring as if the devs planned interesting mechanics for the strike and then just removed some of them and dumbed some down for the OW fight instead of thinking about mechanics that would work better in OW.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

Players are not overwhelmed with the breakbar mechanic, they are just lazy or don’t care. In instanced content I usually don’t have a problem with breakbar in my groups, it’s the open world players that just don’t want to do mechanics. 

No, you just happen to play alongside the very minority i have mentioned earlier that is capable of learning on their own, which skews your perception on how hard self-learning actually is for most others. And while a lot of OW players might indeed be lazy, it does not change the fact that way too many of them still have no idea how to deal with breakbars. Or, rather, how to deal with them in efficient way - meaning, they might be using cc skills they will have available, but they are unlikely to pick weapons and utility skills with cc in mind, and will likely have no idea which skills are really good for that purpose and which aren't. And the problem is that most of the breakbars in recent content are balanced around a much higher cc use (and often balanced around an assumption of EMP being available to players as well).

If CC/breabar was indeed so easy to learn, OW players would have learned it by now.

[vares.8457]

26 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No, you just happen to play alongside the very minority i have mentioned earlier that is capable of learning on their own, which skews your perception on how hard self-learning actually is for most others. And while a lot of OW players might indeed be lazy, it does not change the fact that way too many of them still have no idea how to deal with breakbars. Or, rather, how to deal with them in efficient way - meaning, they might be using cc skills they will have available, but they are unlikely to pick weapons and utility skills with cc in mind, and will likely have no idea which skills are really good for that purpose and which aren't. And the problem is that most of the breakbars in recent content are balanced around a much higher cc use (and often balanced around an assumption of EMP being available to players as well).

If CC/breabar was indeed so easy to learn, OW players would have learned it by now.

This is just nonsense, CC and breakbar is really not difficult. Open World players struggle with it because most auto attack skills don’t do CC. This is not a learning issue. All you have to do is read the tooltip to know which skills you have to use. It’s not Anet’s job to teach players how to read. 
Another problem is that most of the time in open world it doesn’t matter if you break the defiance bar or not. In some strike missions and raid bosses it is vital to do it. So maybe they should make failing the mechanic in open world more punishing. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by vares.8457

[HotDelirium.7984]

15 hours ago, Nine Inch Snails.7963 said:

If this is what we can expect in the future with the mini expansions and free forever stories in between then I'm not looking forward to the future.  Really it's a bad look given the recent announcement of how content will be delivered down the line then this disappointing release is dropped soon after.  Maybe they are not related but it doesn't give me a lot of confidence.  Like a lot of IBS and EoD,  What Lies Beneath seems rushed, uninspired and distanced from the great game I knew for years.   Hopefully all the valuable feedback many have given in this thread and others will help ANet make better choices going forward. 

I may be wrong but what I deduce is that we will get this release now, the 2nd part June, the new expansion sept-dec. If this is the case I think the community will be just fine and needs to calm down. If this is NOT IT, we will be highly disappointed.

[Efar.8153]

not another run and kill meta map and die if you play alone...

[HotDelirium.7984]

13 hours ago, Jokuc.3478 said:

The story was underwhelming.

Party at the start was fun for a minute, but the amount of time the party + gathering quest at the start took up in comparison to the rest of the story was too much. Or rather, the rest of the story had way too little fun content. I don't really feel like it managed to build up any tension at all for the dangerous creatures that lives in the depths. What happened to the top tier mood build-ups that we had in LW4? It's completely gone here. They go "aaah there's a scary monster" and that's it. I'm also disappointed by the lack of mechancis on the final boss, but more on that later.

 

The design of Gyala Delves is fantastic.

The music on it is nice, but I would have liked something slightly more creepy-sounding. I really like the looks of the map, the layout and effects. I like how they captured the sense of going deeper, although I would have wished for it to be slightly larger with some different layers, you know secret caves and stuff like you'd see in HoT and LW3 maps. Great idea with the turtle thing to break the walls. The Filters are ..meh, I don't mind the idea, but the frequency at which you need to refresh them just makes it annoying and it feels like I can't take the time that I want to explore the map.

 

The meta event sucks.

Most of it isn't even that unfun or anything, it was actually quite fine for most of its duration. Maybe a tiny bit repetitive, but I'm giving the first zones a pass. My issue with it is that the final event or final boss you've been waiting to reach is an utter disappointment. A complete let-down. To begin with, the boss has no mechanics to speak of at all, he just stands there and hits people while random mobs spawn. The fight does not really change at all as you progress it, it's just more of the same and nothing really happens. The fight is split into 3 islands similar to Dragon Stand.. but players aren't required or incentivized to work together between each platform, the encounter design does not make use of this opportunity to make something interesting. Then there's also the fact that I'm not sold on the idea of having more maps being completely based around a closing meta event such as Dragon Stand and Dragon's End. I'd rather have an open map where I can explore or do whatever I want with other interesting events like we see in HoT maps. At least those other two maps managed to make the fight interesting enough where it's worth to actually visit just for the epicness, this one does not.

That is quite disappointing. They should have had some sort of coordinated mechanics, CC to get a different effect like the watchnights, using turtle during the fight....or something, like cmon.

[Vavume.8065]

The limit on keycards has made this map not worth playing, even without a limit I doubt I would play it as the gold per hour is not worth my time.

[HotDelirium.7984]

Just now, Vavume.8065 said:

The limit on keycards has made this map not worth playing, even without a limit I doubt I would play it as the gold per hour is not worth my time.

Is there a justification for wanting many hardcore competitive farmable maps? Genuine question. For variation or to make it so the players go to many different maps since they'll probably get the same amount of gold per hour?

[Zok.4956]

15 hours ago, Moradorin.6217 said:

Right. Personally, I don't mind but I dont totally get the point of the new way this content is being proposed to work. That is, people are saying it will help them get more people to buy cause lw used to be free but lw is only free with the accompanying expac so in that sense the lw is payed for when you buy the expac. Even more so people buy the expac expecting the lw content and pre-pay in good faith without any promis.

How Anet is selling/marketing their content is one way of seeing it. In the past Living world was only free if you were online during the active release of that episode, else you had to pay for it (or wait for special discount / free campains). So players "paid" LWS initially with their online-time (and Anet could sell players more gemstore stuff, like a F2P game works). And if you did not pay with your online-time during the episode release period, you had to pay with gems.

The game is part B2P (you buy expansions) and also part F2P (the gemstore is a big revenue stream that pays for dev costs, like LWS).

Hot+LWS3 and PoF+LWS4 is each a lot of content.

Now Anet is telling us that there will be no more  LW-seasons content in the future. It will be only be the content of an expansion where one half (which will be a lot smaller than the content of previous expacs)  is released at the expac release date and the other half is released later on in several small parts.

So they announced indirectly, the overall content amount will be smaller in the future. And it seems the actual episode is foreshadowing this.

And the content of the future expacs will be purely B2P (you have to pay for all of it with money). Will the players be able to earn all new skins etc. of that B2P content in game, or will they still be sold at the F2P gemstore?  (rhetorical question 😉 )

 

[Nakasz.5471]

20 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Yes it is so poorly implemented that I did not even notice it when it was gone so go without it and you do you

Oh yes, ofc! I just hope you dont get a dc, for example. If that happens, good luck trying to get on your old instance again, since you already start with a bunch of conditions 🤣 10/10 implementation

And yes, my first Gyala Delves meta i did without filter cuz i was playing ham 🤣, usually i play scrapper (spec i use for story), but then i saw melee players dying so fast and i switched to heal alac mech

Edited March 2, 2023 by Nakasz.5471

[Essence Snow.3194]

1 hour ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

Is there a justification for wanting many hardcore competitive farmable maps? Genuine question. For variation or to make it so the players go to many different maps since they'll probably get the same amount of gold per hour?

It's a meta map that requires population to succeed.  Without desirable reward structure it won't be able to maintain enough population for the metas, which self fulfills the death of the map.

So poor rewards lead to less population. Less population leads to meta failure, which again leads to less rewards. That will discourage players from populating the map.

Unfortunately, this was very obvious and I question why the devs didn't consider it