Meta needs to be a part of the last soto story or highly suggested to be done beforehand.

[Raseus.2543]

Without the meta the last story missions feels like you missed a big story part. Characters run around there that you don't know how or when they got there. You are in a place you don't know how you got in there so easily.

I understand you don't want to force people to do a open world meta event to experience the story (even if that sometimes the case especially with Tower of Nightmares, please fix that) but tell the people at least that they should do the meta, just like you did in Dragons End or in Skywatch. Move the "do x event" step after defending Paitha from the Assassins and let it be completed by doing the meta or doing events. 

[Bealis.6023]

Bump. This is what actually partly ruined my SoTO finale. Meta event has a key element of the story but but it's not mentioned anywhere as important. Not to mention you don't even need to enter the last section of the map since the entrance to the instance is in the Coliseum!😦. This will be even worse experience for new players who'll get to Inner Nayos much later, who will start to get bombarded with 3 metas and a bunch of yet another new characters at once. It's a mess.

I get a feeling there is a similar template as in HoT with Dragon's Stand, but that one did it MUCH better. For one, you could complete that meta after the story instance if you wanted to without breaking the immersion, it actually added to it while standing with the survivors and players while Maguuma Overture played along. And story connected one way or another since at minimum you needed to enter the area for a rescue mission prior final instance while others were fighting somewhere else.

[Futeko.9405]

Same. I did the full story before even venturing into the new area because I was expecting a step to just be "do the meta" or "do events around the Citadel".
Since there was a "filler" step anyway (do x events), I don't understand why it was about doing the new adventures (completely unrelated to the story) instead of about the new meta (which ties the story together).

[Raseus.2543]

I was lucky doing the meta before because instead of doing x events I stumbled into the meta. It was still out of chronological order but waay better than not doing it at all. 

[Randulf.7614]

It needed to be an optional task before the finale. It didn’t flow at all well

[rotheche.2964]

Where is it actually supposed to fit?  I've done the final chapters of the story, gotten myself thoroughly confused as to who on earth some of these characters are and why this general gets optional dialogue as part of the Talk of the Tower achievement at the end. I'm assuming after Desperate Measures, before The Eleventh Hour?

[Randulf.7614]

2 hours ago, rotheche.2964 said:

Where is it actually supposed to fit?  I've done the final chapters of the story, gotten myself thoroughly confused as to who on earth some of these characters are and why this general gets optional dialogue as part of the Talk of the Tower achievement at the end. I'm assuming after Desperate Measures, before The Eleventh Hour?

Before you start eleventh hour. That instance starts after the meta as it’s due to the after effect of having chased Eparch from the bottom of the tower and weakened him

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

The inconsistency is kinda baffling not gonna lie.

They gave an achi prior to the finale of EoD to do the meta before the story instance, but then they forgot about it with Soto? And here I was expecting this to become the norm after dragon's end. /sarcasm.

[Pifil.5193]

So long as it's listed as an optional task then sure, good idea, that would give an indication of where the meta happens during the story.

Requiring group events for the story isn't a good idea as, if nothing else, it would make it very difficult to go through the story in the future once the players have moved on to other expansions. 

Edited May 24 by Pifil.5193

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

I literally only did the meta first because I happened to be going to the story entry point as a meta was actively doing the coliseum step, or I would have entered without seeing the story bits in the meta. I think I would have actively left the story instance assuming something had bugged if I hadn't just done the meta.

[Edge.1653]

I can understand them not forcing us to do the meta to unlock the final fight, that might be frustrating (especially completion...I've failed both my attempts because of people remaining dead the whole damned fight).

But like...this is a problem they've solved before and I'm not sure why they forgot that it's easy? They did this in EoD - an achievement to kill the final meta before doing the final story step, including the buff icon letting you know you're eligible for it.

I looked for that specifically in the achievements before starting this update assuming there might be something and didn't see anything, so I assumed there wasn't anything missing.

Boy howdy does Chapter 18 suck and make zero sense if you haven't done the meta, because I was deeply confused and disappointed. And then annoyed when I did the meta after and discovered how much NECESSARY PLOT AND STORY is included there to make Chapter 18 make sense.

Except for one bit that makes less sense this way - 

Spoiler

The shock when you enter the room where the thousands of kryptis are supposed to be. How are we surprised that Eparch ate them all when we just saw GIGANTIC CRABSPIDER EPARCH who was clearly far more powerful than we'd seen before and must have consumed a whole lot of kryptis to gain that power. Peitha is shocked and like, sis, when did you become so frighteningly stupid and oblivious? Just the last chapter of the story to present a "shocking moment" that was hilariously telegraphed?

I just don't get why they're forgetting good, functional, simple solutions.

[Raseus.2543]

2 hours ago, KindredPhoenyx.8976 said:

The inconsistency is kinda baffling not gonna lie.

They gave an achi prior to the finale of EoD to do the meta before the story instance, but then they forgot about it with Soto? And here I was expecting this to become the norm after dragon's end. /sarcasm.

They didn't forget it for soto, soto has a story task to finish the skywatch meta or do events, so they forgot it with nayos. 

[Omega.6801]

Yes but not in the current buggy state.

[Edge.1653]

nevermind

Edited May 24 by Edge.1653

[Raseus.2543]

13 minutes ago, Omega.6801 said:

Yes but not in the current buggy state.

Even when it works it should be optional..telling people about it in general is the important bit. 

[QueenKeriti.5176]

^ was my response the day the update came out, and, yeah, if a huge chunk of story was behind the meta event (which I couldn't even do at the time I did the story because the meta(s) were bugged), it makes sense that I had 0 context. 😂I checked for achievements or anything like EoD had before going to the final story mission, too. 😭

[anninke.7469]

IMO having important story parts gated behind meta is no good at all. HoT was fine, the meta was adding to the story nicely and you didn't lose any major context if you missed it. But having important parts of what's actually going on told in the main meta sucks. Even if I do it, I don't have time to watch story stuff - I'm trying to stay up and contribute 😥

[Raseus.2543]

 

2 hours ago, anninke.7469 said:

IMO having important story parts gated behind meta is no good at all. HoT was fine, the meta was adding to the story nicely and you didn't lose any major context if you missed it. But having important parts of what's actually going on told in the main meta sucks. Even if I do it, I don't have time to watch story stuff - I'm trying to stay up and contribute 😥

That is true, the ideal case is that the meta is 100% otpional for story, but its sadly not the case with this one so a hint that someone should do the meta is needed. 

[Manasa Devi.7958]

I worked my way through the story first. I always do.The ending felt disjointed, but I attributed that to me being a bit inattentive during some of the earlier voice acted infodumps.

The next day I did the meta. Wait, what? Eparch is a weird spider thing now?

Didn't flow for me at all. Expecting better.

[Thandaer.8105]

I feel like most of the times the last storystep, where we beat the Big Bad, was tied to last map.

Zhaitan, Mordy, Kralk, SooWon

I don't think we *need* any warning, IMO it's obvious - meta is part of the story.

And I also think that this approach is the lesser evil.  Some people might get mad because their story is out of order (by one "step" mind you, it's not like you're having computers in medieval times kind of jump), but the other way around? That'd pissoff way more people. Especially, if the meta is unbeatable first few days (looking at you, SooWon)

Or OR make the META-stotystep as it was during Scarlet invasion - the final instance was locked behind meta but there was a point of access that let you in, after you did *something* (I think that one particular instance was tied to obtaining spinal backpack)

[Danikat.8537]

On 5/24/2024 at 1:10 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

Before you start eleventh hour. That instance starts after the meta as it’s due to the after effect of having chased Eparch from the bottom of the tower and weakened him

Oh wow I got lucky with this. I finally had time to do the story over the last couple of days and I stopped just before Eleventh Hour because I remembered seeing this topic and wanted to check where the meta fit in. I'll make sure to do that next. 🙂

I agree it would be helpful to have an optional story step to complete the meta at the appropriate point in the story. I know the events in a map always tie into the story steps that take place in that map, but sometimes only in a general sense. When it's this relevant (or like the Dragon's End meta) I think it would be helpful for the game to let you know that in advance.