Tone down Gyala Delve

[phandaria.4891]

IMO, both bosses take too long to defeat and can be quite arduous now that the crowd has died down.

Please allow other opportunities to get the achievement involving the bases (Touching Base and Shots Fired), even after the bases meta event has passed.

Possible to shorten the turtle event? As it is getting tedious. Thanks.

[Lucy.3728]

The map is awful. They should change it to make it interesting, then people will come back to play it because it's fun.

[SourceOfTrippy.4207]

I think its a great meta one of very few in the game that are longer and require teamwork. 

[Manpag.6421]

It’s an interesting question though: where does the perfect balance between enjoyable content and profitable content lie? You can get some pretty valuable drops in Gyala Delve, especially with the treasure hunter filter, but to what degree will people play a fun and less profitable meta over one with good rewards but bad gameplay?

[kharmin.7683]

16 minutes ago, Manpag.6421 said:

It’s an interesting question though: where does the perfect balance between enjoyable content and profitable content lie? You can get some pretty valuable drops in Gyala Delve, especially with the treasure hunter filter, but to what degree will people play a fun and less profitable meta over one with good rewards but bad gameplay?

Depends on the definition of "rewarding" I'd guess.  I'd rather spend my limited time playing maps that I enjoy rather than slogging through one I don't for a few more drops.

[Gibson.4036]

Is it all low population, or is it players who do weird things like stay on their turtles for the whole last fight? Or don't use their CC skills and ignore the piles of portable waystations people are practically dropping on their heads?

From my most recent experience, it wasn't a lack of players, it was that players are treating it in an oddly lazy way now.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[CadeRG.4508]

7 hours ago, SourceOfTrippy.4207 said:

I think its a great meta one of very few in the game that are longer and require teamwork. 

the siege turtle section is miserable 

[Solvar.7953]

The problem with long metas is that one has to have the time to do it.  If a meta takes 30 minutes, it is easier to fit in than a meta that takes an hour - if that hour long meta is starting 20 minutes before I plan to quit playing, I'm not going to do it, but for a 30 minute meta, may be willing to go 10 minutes late.

But one complaint I have about Gylala Delves is that it also seems very repetitive - basically do the same time over and over again, without there being any real difference.  It just seems padded out - if there were different mechanics or something going on to make it less repetitive, a long meta might be more interesting.  But if they removed all the duplicate tasks, this meta would probably be about 30 minutes and I'd find it much more interesting.

 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

its a bit overscaled, but only just a bit. i'd say bringing the health of the bosses down to 75-80% of what they are now would be good.

[tanpopo.9102]

There are like... multiple problems with this, I think.

1. Maybe a minor problem, but it's not on a world timer, especially given that the size of the event is comparable to more "epic" world events like Mordy-Mouth. This alone probably puts it out of most peoples' minds, and as such, it's easier to forget.

2. It seems to be tuned to expect a full 50-person group. The event usually ran fine when it was a weekly, but after that, not so much.

2b. It doesn't help that the enemies in this zone seem to be tuned for post-EOD power-creep, where even vets and elites are pointless health sponges. And has since been the case since GW1, when in doubt, just spawn more enemies. I'm also not really a fan of how enemy "challenge" is handled. Oni pretty much just slash non-stop and stack bleeds like crazy. If you're not being carried by zerg condition cleanse, I don't see what "strategy" is actually applicable here. Same with the void hearts that pulse deadly PBAOE -- I'm not sure if this is just default behavior or if something triggers this, but the only counters seem to either be A) again, being carried by overwhelming zerg force, or B) switching to ranged options, making a slog even slower.

3. And yes, it's a slog. From north to south, to north again, it's like what, at least two hours? I try not to watch the clock during this event. I think the southern boss fights are fine, even if enemies like the Oni are pretty lazy design. Getting there is a different story though. I really wish this game had less lengthy NPC escorts and point defenses more than 5 minutes long. This zone makes me feel like I was rude to give feedback about the length of other events like Kaineng Blackout.

The north meta is what is more painful, I think. I might be able to tolerate the slow turtle segments if the boss itself was bearable, but it's so painful to play. I'm not quite sure what exactly makes it like this, but I'll share some observations:

 

First, the north meta splits up the squad into two parts, snipers and behemoth, which makes things even worse considering the tendency for low population, "spawn more health sponges" encounter design, and the fact that the meta is less popular, and as such, people probably have a tendency to not really understand how to optimally play this.

Behemoth side: What does the behemoth actually do? More often than not, I see people avoid this side because the enemy spawns here tend to seem overwhelming, and I want to point out that if you have an event that heavily requires the use of turtles, you will see people be lazy (or perhaps safe) and choose not to dismount, which probably has a decent impact on the overall damage output of the squad.

Snipers: This seems to be the more popular side, although some things still make it painful. Enemy spawns on this side seem manageable, at least. A problem here is that a lot of players just won't put down their sniper rifles, which is both a player and design problem... doesn't everyone like powerful rifles? But just like we're forced to put down the rifles once the void hearts spawn, we should be forced to put down the rifles once the energy is depleted. This would force people to either clear the mobs or MOUNT A TURTLE and actually help collect energy. I also wish players were smart enough to notice the very obvious tracers and target marks from the jade mech snipers, but I think those are actually okay, even if it's sometimes very difficult to notice these things given the chaos of enemy spawns, and the fact that mounted turtle players keep blocking my view.

It just takes so long to collect energy, and the giant's defiance bar seems so beefy, and even the kitten void hearts are super tanky. How is it that a full squad of people can consistently fail to take down all three hearts?

 

tldr: either drastically reduce the time needed to complete the entire zone, or drastically reduce the difficulty so at least coming to this zone isn't a huge risk of wasting time. I'd prefer a bit of both approaches, actually. Is there even a chance anyone will actually go back and adjust this? Given that we're basically live-beta testing Weaponmaster, any chance we can just have someone drop the numbers by like 30% and let us see how it is?

[Urud.4925]

I gave up on the Luxon achievement, and it's a pity because is the only achiev left in my Story tab. It's like for Drakkar in the end: when the reward that you need for the achiev has such a low drop rate, it's not worth to spend 40 minutes for that small chance. The meta itself it's not even that bad. But simply not worthy the time.

[enigmatic.3576]

On 8/22/2023 at 1:27 AM, Lucy.3728 said:

The map is awful. They should change it to make it interesting, then people will come back to play it because it's fun.

They won't unless there's some carrot to follow.  It's no different from every other meta event without one; throwaway content meant to only keep people busy until the next release.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I would rather do 20 Chak G. or Dragon Stands than 1 Gyala Delve.

Because the first two are fun. Gyala is a boring, tedious  mess.

[Solvar.7953]

Rewards certainly draw players in.  But time it takes to do the meta is also a big consideration.  EoD (and Gyala Delve as an extension) added some long metas.  The problem with long metas is that no players that want to do them need to make sure they have that much time blocked off.  If a person only has 1 hour to play a day, and the meta starts 30 minutes in to that play time and runs an hour, that is a meta that person can not do.

The other problem is that there are just so many metas and world bosses out there that players have other (better) choices.  Not everyone chases maximum loot - a lot of players are doing it for the enjoyment, and there are other more enjoyable metas out there.

 

[enigmatic.3576]

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Rewards certainly draw players in.  But time it takes to do the meta is also a big consideration.  EoD (and Gyala Delve as an extension) added some long metas.  The problem with long metas is that no players that want to do them need to make sure they have that much time blocked off.  If a person only has 1 hour to play a day, and the meta starts 30 minutes in to that play time and runs an hour, that is a meta that person can not do.

The other problem is that there are just so many metas and world bosses out there that players have other (better) choices.  Not everyone chases maximum loot - a lot of players are doing it for the enjoyment, and there are other more enjoyable metas out there.

 

Like how so many people praised the Marionette battle from LS1 for how fun it was and wanted it back.  It got added but how many people still do it?  Something being fun only last for so long. 

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

well, the Marionette is prone to failure while success isn't even rewarding. If you are unlucky you get a bunch of recipes everybody and their dog already has.

Serpent's Ire is also a dead meta. It is prone to failure. Time needed is reasonable but loot is meh. I honestly can not remember one 'real' POF meta that was actually good and healthy.

And the EOD metas became even worse.

Icebrood saga? Better not even mention it. 

Dragon Stand on the other hand, not a boring moment. If one lane falters, the others can help and lots and lots of actually usable loot. Verbant Brink? Awesome. Chak? Great. Tarir? Plain fun.

What happened to the people that came up with HoT metas? And where they banned from touching pof, eod, ibs metas?

[Lucy.3728]

On 11/6/2023 at 3:13 AM, enigmatic.3576 said:

They won't unless there's some carrot to follow.  It's no different from every other meta event without one; throwaway content meant to only keep people busy until the next release.

It probably needs maps like that when they want to release new content yearly. Before the community thins even more, or loses interest entirely because even decent maps aren't visited anymore, it seems a not so bad tactic to release unimportant maps to neglect.

The ppl that cant live if they dont get to see a shiny new toy every year are satisfied and the people that don't play crap or play slowly and don't new new content so fast, just can skip it.

I like to play dragon stand and silver wastes meta every now and then just for the fun. There isn't anything interesting for me to get there anyway. No carrot but fun.

[Jaken.6801]

The map is fine, but the bosses are not really fun and take way too long. Even more so with less population now.

The bosses don't really need much from you, though you can die easily and barely feel like you are making a dent. The pendulum swings both ways here and it's more annoying than challenging.

Which is weird, because they made some fun bosses beforehand in EoD and this one is just an AoE fest

[Infinity.2876]

part of the reason I don't do this meta more often is because there never seems to be enough keys and you have to pay hard earned crafting mats to get them without farming all of the side events which takes way too long

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

Its way too long and boring, and I cant FEEL the rewards as well as I do some other metas, like Drizzlewood causing a Diablo-esque explosion in your inventory.

[BlueJin.4127]

I joined Gyala Delve meta near the end while going through the EoD story. It's so repetitive that it got boring on my first run.

Gathering ley lines with the siege turtle event is not a particularly exciting event. Yet, it's repeated like 4 times in a row. It's so lazy copying and pasting the exact same event multiple times in a row with no variation.

The boss battle wasn't any better. The mechanics themselves weren't badly designed... except that, again, we had to repeat the exact same simple pattern like 5+ times. It's just too repetitive.

GW2 team has gotten really lazy since HoT metas. HoT metas have a lot of unique mechanics/designs, even between different lanes of the same meta, and you rarely have to repeat the exact same thing more than 2~3 times. Outside of Soo-Won fight, almost every meta since HoT is extremely simple, boring, and repetitive, making the player spend too much time mindlessly AOE-ing trash enemies and/or repeating the same braindead mechanics like 5+ times for a long duration.

Edited December 7, 2023 by BlueJin.4127

[Okhu.7948]

Gyala was rewarding once when the fishing pools gave guaranteed purple fish. But Anet fixed that. Also the required breakable walls are horrible and anti-fun.

[corwin.3495]

Gyala has been overtuned since release. The scaling is bad, cap the area takes too long, health sponge enemies. 500 phases bosses with tons of HP.  I mean people have written about this before me, but I just feel like bumping the post. 

Edited April 1 by corwin.3495