The new meta just feels not fun

[Mirta.5029]

The vibe that I get is that this will eventually be Soo Won 2.0, so as community organizes itself the meta will feel better, but now having tried 5 times and failed 5 times, points that make it not fun:

- this meta is not on a timer so it is harder to join a map, you have to actively drop in and hope that organization will just happen.

- this meta requires the map to do the other two metas. Very rarely is there an organized effort to do them both at the same time, so effectively the "pre-event" is very long. I felt very tired by the time we even got to the last meta.

- you need people to be good at DPS, good at CC and to have at least two parties (of 5 people) running rifts. This means that you need it to be organized. Some of my runs went at the right pace for the first 5 minutes, then people died off, or rifts started lagging and it just collapsed.

- unlike at Soo Won the rez waypoint is miles away. Even more fun when the portals bug and despawn. So you're now expecting people to either a) not die at all, b) have EoD and a personal waypoint, c) have layline riding + the portals stay up without bugging, or d) you're hoping that they brought a teleport to friend.

It feels like there's too many issues that stack one on top of another - if the meta was easier, it wouldn't matter as much that the meta is not on a timer or that you need to do full two metas as pre-events. If the meta was hard, but there was a better waypoint/ it was on a timer allowing the whole squad to organize well enough well in advance (like people do with Soo Won) it would once again feel balanced.

Honestly, when I'm in the open world one thing that I don't enjoy is feeling tired. You can go and do Amnytas on like 10 people. The first two metas at Inner Nyos also felt better as they were very pug friendly and you only needed to catch one of them.

This one just makes me feel disheartened and want to throw in the towel.

And rewards are nice and all, so I guess time will tell - this could become Soo Won 2.0, in which case whenever you join an organized squad and do the very long pre of doing two other metas you'll expect that success is guaranteed, so you'll be able to drop into the game on your spare several hours, do this one event and log off, but at the same time it could also go the other way of this meta is just too much bother to get to, in which case it will simply slowly die off.

For now, I just got to say that without any tweaks my enthusiasm level completely exhausted itself in one too long day.

[flyingplanet.6912]

31 minutes ago, Mirta.5029 said:

this will eventually be Soo Won 2.0,

I joined Soo Won meta after nerf. I ONLY PRESSED 1 and meta was successful.  I almost fell asleep multiple times during the meta. And guess what. I never did soowon afterwards, partly because reward was also nerfed to oblivion along with difficulty.
If you feel tired because it's too hard, know that there is too much powercreep in pve nowadays so players can facetank other 99% meta without using any brain. 
If the meta is too hard maybe learn how to do more damage or play other metas that doesn't require much skill?
 

Edited May 24 by flyingplanet.6912

[Mic.1897]

If you're not having fun then do something else? lol

[Mirta.5029]

1 minute ago, flyingplanet.6912 said:

I joined Soo Won meta after nerf. I ONLY PRESSED 1 and meta was successful.  I almost fell asleep multiple times during the meta. And guess what. I never did soowon afterwards, partly because reward was also nerfed to oblivion along with difficulty.
If you feel tired because it's too hard, know that there is too much powercreep in pve nowadays so players can facetank other 99% meta without using any brain. 
If the meta is too hard maybe learn how to do more damage or play other metas that doesn't require much skill?
 

Err, I've been doing Soo Won for the past few years at least weekly and you need a com with a whole squad that knows what they're doing or else it falls apart. It tends to be a highly structured 50 minute event. It can be quite fun to join on morning crowd, but I've even seen it fail.

 

Just now, Mic.1897 said:

If you're not having fun then do something else? lol

I will! I just felt a bit disappointed, especially considering that other folks in map chat were encountering the same difficulty too. I don't actually know how I'm going to get that relic for the collection now, but I don't know if it is worth struggling on for it.

[Gendalfs.7521]

I was lucky yesterday finished story and right afterwards there was a nice organized meta so I did everything on first try. Last boss felt a bit hard. Ofc that was a pug group and I think many as myself didnt know about mechanics and stuff. But omg all those aoes was like for the sake of aoes. I guess they should tone them down a bit. Leave this fight as it is for fractal but dont force it on everyone.

[Rallicus.8367]

2 minutes ago, flyingplanet.6912 said:

I joined Soo Won meta after nerf. I ONLY PRESSED 1 and meta was successful.  I almost fell asleep multiple times during the meta. And guess what. I never did soowon afterwards, partly because reward was also nerfed to oblivion along with difficulty.

Soo Won pre nerf was probably the most fun and challenged I ever felt in this game. Beating it was almost surreal. But world meta events have no business ever being that hard and RNG reliant... it absolutely needed nerfed. Meta events are meant for casuals and once you start getting into raid-difficulty territory, you potentially put yourself in a situation where you're catering to a small portion of the game population and will push the majority away.

That being said, I don't think this meta needs nerfed. Now granted I'm not expert, I've literally done it once and beaten it once thus far, but at no point did I ever feel the stress or panic or challenge that I felt with Soo Won pre-nerf. I could see the aspects that could potentially be difficult, but overall I feel it's a fair meta. I'd be okay with a closer one time use TP or something for those who don't have jade bot waypoints, but other than the waypoint issue I'd be pretty dissapointed if they nerfed it.

[Zohane.7208]

35 minutes ago, Mirta.5029 said:

The vibe that I get is that this will eventually be Soo Won 2.0, so as community organizes itself the meta will feel better, but now having tried 5 times and failed 5 times, points that make it not fun:

- this meta is not on a timer so it is harder to join a map, you have to actively drop in and hope that organization will just happen.

- this meta requires the map to do the other two metas. Very rarely is there an organized effort to do them both at the same time, so effectively the "pre-event" is very long. I felt very tired by the time we even got to the last meta.

- you need people to be good at DPS, good at CC and to have at least two parties (of 5 people) running rifts. This means that you need it to be organized. Some of my runs went at the right pace for the first 5 minutes, then people died off, or rifts started lagging and it just collapsed.

- unlike at Soo Won the rez waypoint is miles away. Even more fun when the portals bug and despawn. So you're now expecting people to either a) not die at all, b) have EoD and a personal waypoint, c) have layline riding + the portals stay up without bugging, or d) you're hoping that they brought a teleport to friend.

It feels like there's too many issues that stack one on top of another - if the meta was easier, it wouldn't matter as much that the meta is not on a timer or that you need to do full two metas as pre-events. If the meta was hard, but there was a better waypoint/ it was on a timer allowing the whole squad to organize well enough well in advance (like people do with Soo Won) it would once again feel balanced.

Honestly, when I'm in the open world one thing that I don't enjoy is feeling tired. You can go and do Amnytas on like 10 people. The first two metas at Inner Nyos also felt better as they were very pug friendly and you only needed to catch one of them.

This one just makes me feel disheartened and want to throw in the towel.

And rewards are nice and all, so I guess time will tell - this could become Soo Won 2.0, in which case whenever you join an organized squad and do the very long pre of doing two other metas you'll expect that success is guaranteed, so you'll be able to drop into the game on your spare several hours, do this one event and log off, but at the same time it could also go the other way of this meta is just too much bother to get to, in which case it will simply slowly die off.

For now, I just got to say that without any tweaks my enthusiasm level completely exhausted itself in one too long day.

So far I've participated in 4 metas, all of them successful. most of them haven't even been organized, just a commander put up an lfg to gather people.
Some specific comments:
I like that it's not on a timer so people actually might have to work through it instead of hopping on a map to leech off of others' work.
I agree that the pact WP is too far away; it should at the very least be on the last big platform. From there the leyline is pretty fast. The portals despawning is probably a bug which will hopefully be fixed soon.

Overall, this feels to me like the type of comment we've seen more or less every single time Anet dares put out something that's a bit challenging. I seriously hope Anet won't hit this with the nerf hammer, at least not for a few months until people have gotten used to it. Since it already doesn't take organization to get done it's nowhere near the SooWon meta...
 

[Mirta.5029]

Just now, Zohane.7208 said:

So far I've participated in 4 metas, all of them successful. most of them haven't even been organized, just a commander put up an lfg to gather people.
Some specific comments:
I like that it's not on a timer so people actually might have to work through it instead of hopping on a map to leech off of others' work.
I agree that the pact WP is too far away; it should at the very least be on the last big platform. From there the leyline is pretty fast. The portals despawning is probably a bug which will hopefully be fixed soon.

Overall, this feels to me like the type of comment we've seen more or less every single time Anet dares put out something that's a bit challenging. I seriously hope Anet won't hit this with the nerf hammer, at least not for a few months until people have gotten used to it. Since it already doesn't take organization to get done it's nowhere near the SooWon meta...
 

After each failed attempt there was a good 1 hour + of work to try again. I will try to leave it completely for a week, see if by that point it will get better, but honestly I just really wanted those relics for the collection 😞 I don't have much time to play, so wasting my week's worth of game time on something that was just frustrating felt sad. I understand that most content is not catered to me, but this is why I tend to do open world the most - it is the content that I can actually participate in. 

If this becomes the new norm, I don't know, buying more expansions seems like not the right pathway to go for me as I'm not really guaranteed content that I can do on the regular.

[Myror.7521]

Actually maybe im lucky but i tryed the new Meta once and got it done xp

[Futa.4375]

This meta is a one and done for me, same as pretty much all the content released since EoD, that's how unfun the game has become.
I'm basically forcing myself to "play" the metas in SotO to get the daily currency, as soon as I'll have enough for the legendaries I will forget about them completely, the same way I never go back to EoD.

Honestly, most people are still here because the base game, HoT and PoF and the combat system are quite good, that's pretty much it. Content has been particularly bad since the second part of IBS and is getting worse with each expansion. I don't see how their team can create a good new MMORPG, I don't think they have what it takes.

[Sen.7530]

Don't worry friend, it will get better in no time. People still learning. I can already feel it gets easier by the day. I already run a few successful boss with random pugs myself. Good luck on your next try.

[voltaicbore.8012]

I think it's fine, given the current state of player population/skill on Nayos. Failed on my first attempt, and cleared the next two tries.

Organization certainly helps, but all 3 of my attempts were pugs. On that first (failed) attempt, the issue was that the group was too focused on closing the rifts. It wasn't until someone spoke up and said "hey guys, the timer is low, maybe we shoul, you know.... hit the boss?" At that point we saw that we needed far fewer people on rifts, and it was only because we realized it too late that we failed. The other two times the tag only called out when needed (if the rifts were not getting enough attention) and it worked out fine.

I agree it doesn't feel particularly fun, for reasons I haven't cared to fully investigate for myself. After that third clear, I probably won't do the final meta again unless the extra mastery reward turns out super lucrative, or it's in the weekly.

[Blade Syphon.4325]

It's been three days - why are we already calling for nerfs for a Meta Event that isn't difficult to begin with? Eparch doesn't require anywhere near the coordination that Soo-Wan did, nor is he anywhere near as difficult or complex of an encounter.

The fight is against a stationary boss that barely does any damage to you, and the only threat comes from players having the awareness to move from the big red puddle on the ground. That's it. The portals that spawn can be closed within seconds by a handful of players that aren't pressing 1, as the Champion that's tied to it is paper thin, and the four eyeball adds that come out of the portal can be AoEd down by a single DPS character. If I can survive the entire fight without being downed as a pure Berserker Warrior by simply not standing in the bad puddles, then there's no excuse you can't.

Eparch requires the bare minimum of a player's ability, that's it. Start the fight, grab either a DPS or Healing pool depending on your role, DPS Eparch while helping to close portals if you don't have a group that's dedicated a party to it, and if you get consumed, kill the add inside, then run to one of the red pools on the outside of the arena to cleanse your debuff, pick up your buff again, and return to killing the boss/adds when they spawn.

That's it. That's the entire fight. I've done the fight five times now, and I've only failed two of them - and of my three kills, only one of them had any semblance of a commander who knew what they were doing, and that fight was closer to the buzzer on killing Eparch then the group that had a commander that simply told the raid what I just typed in the previous paragraph, and didn't bother with group organization or the like.

Eparch is, again, just another example of a the game asking for players to have a functional build, and know their rotation, rather than showing up and hitting auto-attack to win, and that seems to be all too much for the majority of people playing this game, it seems.

Edited May 24 by Blade Syphon.4325

[Mirta.5029]

Just now, Blade Syphon.4325 said:

It's been three days - why are we already calling for nerfs for a Meta Event that isn't difficult to begin with? Eparch doesn't require anywhere near the coordination that Soo-Wan did, nor is he anywhere near as difficult.

The fight is against a stationary boss that barely does any damage to you, and the only threat comes from players having the awareness to move from the big red puddle on the ground. That's it. The portals that spawn can be closed within seconds by a handful of players that aren't pressing 1, as the Champion that's tied to it is paper thin, and the four eyeball adds that come out of the portal can be AoEd down by a single DPS character.

Eparch requires the bare minimum of a player's ability, that's it. Start the fight, grab either a DPS or Healing pool depending on your roll, DPS Eparch while helping to close adds if you don't have a group that's dedicated a party to it, and if you get consumed, kill the add inside, then run to one of the red pools on the outside of the arena to cleanse your debuff, pick up your buff again, and return to killing the boss/adds when they spawn.

That's it. That's the entire fight. I've done the fight five times now, and I've only failed two of them - and of my three kills, only one of them had any semblance of a commander who knew what they were doing, and that fight was closer to the buzzer on killing Eparch then the group that had a commander that simply told the raid what I just typed in the previous paragraph, and didn't bother with group organization or the like.

Eparch is, again, just another example of a the game asking for players to have a functional build, and know their rotation, rather than showing up and hitting auto-attack to win, and that seems to be all too much for the majority of people playing this game, it seems.

What's your class, build, server and who are you playing with? 

In all of the attempts today with 10-15 players on portals, we still struggled to keep them at 1 open at a time, so whenever it would get disregulated even a little, there were easily 2-3 portals and boss started collecting buffs. 

In the parties that I tried it in, nobody could even go for DPS puddles due to the amount of AoEs and difficulty staying alive, so life-steal was in and recommended on map chat often in order to combat the mass deaths. 

NOBODY is out there just auto-attacking. People are hitting their skills, they are dodging, they are moving. But this is not a raid. So no-one shows up to a meta map with a raid set up. You'll have people on exotics, you likely won't really have healers around, you'll have people on builds that are not on snowcrows or hardstruck, because it is open world PVE content meant for the casual player.

[yoni.7015]

The meta is fine, no need to change anything. Not every meta has to be successful right from the beginning. Give players some time to learn the mechanics. 

Edited May 24 by yoni.7015

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

People who are coming in here spitting the contrarian tryhard "it sounds like a you problem" attitude are the ones getting lucky. Some of us aren't. I've done this at least 5 times and every single time its failed. I recognise the issues, (being that people are still learning; it's only week 1) but everyone's experiences are different. Soo-won had this same problem and now its easier once everyone got a hang of what to do.

Edited May 24 by KindredPhoenyx.8976

[quake.9023]

terrible last boss fight. just boring auto att huge unnecessary hp. i like the color theme n darkness, spot on design for demonic. however the terrible fps drop jus ruins everything. pls optimise

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, Mic.1897 said:

If you're not having fun then do something else? lol

You and others are completely missing the point of criticism here. Completely.

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, flyingplanet.6912 said:

If the meta is too hard maybe learn how to do more damage or play other metas that doesn't require much skill?

🤦‍♀️ This was never the OP's point.

Also, back to your comment, no one can control their teammates' player skill level nor their level of experience with new content.

Edited May 24 by Ashantara.8731

[Maria Murtor.7253]

The boss encounter itself is okay – neither really good or really bad. Compared to Soo Won it's easier. You have way more certainty on what's happening (no heavy RNG like Soo Won changing positions). Have a couple of people closing rifts and the rest do their DPS while you have at least a couple of supports in your squad is enough.
I agree on the CC bar being way too hard to break. And to be fair: The boss is a bit boring. Even though there's a lot going on, but the boss doesn't have some really exciting mechanics/doesn't swap mechanics. New attacks are rolling in after a while. But that's basically it. 

[Edge.1653]

Like 70% of the problems would be solved with a closer waypoint so that half your damned map doesn't die and just stay dead, waiting for revives that never come.

It's a mess of a fight where literally nothing is explained. It's good, but it's just so poorly communicated to an open world group of randoms that it results in a ton of frustrating failures. It feels like they got the core mechanics and everything in it down and we're doing the live-testing on actual playability. 

[Farohna.6247]

After running it four times (one successful, one bugged, two fail), the biggest issues I'm seeing, subjectively...

People can't see the portals.  There's the puddles you stand in for buffs, which were not clearly explained and people are confused, but the portals are almost hidden by the floor mess.  

Are the portal spawns random or in any sort of rotation?  Can't tell, but it's messy to find the enemies popping out with so much going on.  

The waypoint.  Maybe we just are spoiled but people are extra lazy or unwilling to go to the nearest one.  They are worried they'll miss out, even though there seems to be plenty of time to return.  How about two waypoints in the rooms just prior to the final fight?  

The confusion and chaos at the moment very much reminds me of the Soo-Won meta when it was introduced.  People need to actually put forth effort, not just stand and hit one, and unfortunately that's an ongoing issue that is up to the individual.  

I'm sure this will probably get nerfed a bit, and hopefully it will improve.  

Edit:  completed the meta successfully again, had a very organized commander making sure that there were groups, much like the Soo-Won meta with buffs properly distributed.  Assigned groups to just DPS boss and other groups for portals only.  Made it to much smoother.  

Edited May 24 by Farohna.6247

[RoseofGilead.8907]

20 minutes ago, Edge.1653 said:

Like 70% of the problems would be solved with a closer waypoint so that half your damned map doesn't die and just stay dead, waiting for revives that never come.

To be fair, the stay deads do that even when the nearest WP is 5 seconds away.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Mirta.5029 said:

The vibe that I get is that this will eventually be Soo Won 2.0, so as community organizes itself the meta will feel better

You mean, it will get better when most players will stop bothering with it? Because that's what happened to Soo Won.

[Randulf.7614]

3 wins and 2 losses so far (and 1 broken). I don't think it needs nerfing, but perhaps some clarity. The boss says it eats emotional essences so does that mean taking the emotional buffs empowers it? Or does it eat them if people don't? Or it is related to people standing where they shouldn't? Or is it the rifts? There's confusion over mechanics which is getting in the way of leading the fight.

Is there also any point in breaking the defiance bar? Doing so requires people to have the malice buff colelctively, but you can't overwrite buffs. So it's not going to be coordinated. Plus it's not necs to be broken to win.

There's a lot of visual noise and mess to make it hard to see things (boss aside who is super cool) and it's difficult to see which buff you've picked up because the buff bar doesn't keep things static for you to have time to read things. 

Narratively I also think it should flow east - west. At the moment, east and central need to be done in any order, but from a narrative pov, we wouldn't be at the bivouac without beating Heitor's Gate. 

To be fair, I actually enjoy the event. I can see a lot of people seem to hate it in chat and it has much lower rewards than say Soo Wan or Drizzlewood has, but overall I like the 3 main boss fights, I like the variation the torches and extraction events bring and it has the right overall flavour. I just think it could do with tidying up a bit around the edges.