Who is open world content made for?

[Skub.8240]

I'm not asking this sarcastically, but genuinely: who is the target audience of open world content? Because if you asked me this years ago I would have said "everyone who's in the zone at the time." From random events to open world bosses, things were almost always doable with nearly any number of players and it was relatively rare that you would even have a shortage of people for the harder events as they cropped up. Even now, when it comes to world bosses and events, I can't think of too many people who actively disparage things like the jungle wurm or similar; there's nearly always a group to do the old stuff every time it pops up, with that likelihood dropping off the bigger and more complex the fight becomes. And then you get things like triple trouble, which are rarely done outside of planned commander led runs, because their mechanics are complex and difficult for more casual players to pick up and roll with.

But it's not just old content that has that kind of dichotomy, because across the expansions there are a good few metas that people do near constantly, like Tarir, and a ton of events that are frequently and consistently run even by random people just doing it because they're easy to grasp and the demands on the player aren't unfeasible. And there are just as many, if not more, that aren't, or fail often as much as they're even attempted. In HoT alone it seems like a gamble whether or not rata and nuoch lanes will fail the chak gerant meta, and dragon's stand's success seems to depend solely on whether or not a group can balance running in a circle vs attacking a boss in triplicate. Yet both these things can be done, frequently, without an organized commander; just less commonly.

But as the expansions go on I feel that the devs have been making things more complicated, more tedious, and more difficult to do for the average player. Whether it's the very, very, long build up to the soo-won fight which takes so long that the game is constantly threatening you with the end of your map instance and has, in more than one past instance ended an instance before the fight was even over, or the newest eparch fight which feels like a watered down raid encounter thrown unceremoniously into the open world. It's no surprise to me that the biggest complaints about these fights tend to be similar - that they're too long, that they're overtuned and overly complicated even while people continually say they're fine because their groups did it without issue and that you just need to learn X or Y mechanic and it's easy. The problem with them, is that they don't feel like content designed for an open world, public, environment. The eparch fights should be swapped, in my opinion, with the one from the fractal where he spews out orbs and you beat the buffs out of him being the meta fight, while the one with the more complex puddle, pool and rift mechanics being the one you do in the more controlled environment.

This doesn't mean I think every meta  or boss event should just be a group of people standing around and beating a guy who does nothing but attack; but the mechanics, and arenas, should really fit the audience participating in them, and it doesn't look like they are anymore. So instead of everyone having a good time and getting loot, a lot of people are getting frustrated they don't understand the fight and can't meaningfully contribute, and then other players are getting frustrated that those players are causing it to scale up harder while not contributing. I guess that's my feedback about GW2's open world content, the people designing it should really keep in mind the audience they're making it for and remember that there's a reason why a lot of casual players don't do things like raids.

[asket.5674]

Me

[Danikat.8537]

This isn't new. The first time I did the Silverwastes meta we scraped through with multiple carriers lost and at least 1 failed boss fight and a lot of people on the map were surprised and happy to see it succeed at all, apparently I got lucky that my first attempt was a success. All the HoT metas (especially Dragon's Stand) used to be huge time sinks, requiring you to show up at least 30 minutes in advance to get an organised map (and without a full, organised map you'd fail) and then taking a couple of hours to complete. The difference is that over time players learned the mechanics and got better at completing them and power creep made it easier to do, especially with fewer people.

Soo-won is already going that way, I've seen more attempts succeed than fail in the past few months and I doubt that it's just me getting lucky with it. I've not done the Eparch fight yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up going that way too.

Occasionally there's a meta like Serpent's Ire which most players just don't want to do, but those are rare.

[Skub.8240]

2 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

This isn't new. The first time I did the Silverwastes meta we scraped through with multiple carriers lost and at least 1 failed boss fight and a lot of people on the map were surprised and happy to see it succeed at all, apparently I got lucky that my first attempt was a success. All the HoT metas (especially Dragon's Stand) used to be huge time sinks, requiring you to show up at least 30 minutes in advance to get an organised map (and without a full, organised map you'd fail) and then taking a couple of hours to complete. The difference is that over time players learned the mechanics and got better at completing them and power creep made it easier to do, especially with fewer people.

Soo-won is already going that way, I've seen more attempts succeed than fail in the past few months and I doubt that it's just me getting lucky with it. I've not done the Eparch fight yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up going that way too.

Occasionally there's a meta like Serpent's Ire which most players just don't want to do, but those are rare.

Silverwastes is still frequently dead unless someone tags up - at least in my experience - and I've still only seen single digit numbers of soo-won completions, and most attempts don't even make it to the fight.

[yoni.7015]

Variety in open world content is good. There should be easy meta events and meta events that are more challenging and need coordination. So that there are events for everyone. Some like more challenging open world content, some like to play in organized groups even in open world.  If you don’t want that you still have the majority of meta events in every expansion, they don’t need organization and are fairly easy.

There is nothing wrong with a bit diversity in open world content, the community is not a monolithic bloc. 
For me personally the Soo Won meta is still by far the best event in the game. 

Edited May 27 by yoni.7015

[Cyninja.2954]

This is what you get when a vocal "open world minority" group of players complain that instanced content is to difficult, demanding all resources be used to cater to their content while at the same time the game can't sustain its self with the more hardcore players leaving.

Now there have always been occasional challenging open world encounters, in fact some of the very first real meta bosses were some of THE most difficult encounters the game has seen (respectively if one considers balance, state of knowledge the player base possessed, etc.). Encounters like Tequatle or Twisted Marionette or Karka Queen, introduced as far back as Season 1.

Then came years of catering to the brain-dead crowd in all regards, in part as reaction to the short term poorly received Heart of Thorns expansion (which by many is considered some of the best content released now) while offering challenging content in instances (higher tier fractals which after being made easier got CMs introduced, raids).

Then came catering to the brain-dead crowd in instanced content because rewards should be handed out to every player no matter if they understand this game or not.

We have now gone full circle, the only issue being: we now have veteran players of many years which have never actually learned how to play this game. Why would they, it worked in the past for them did it not?

I actually agree here, open world content should NOT be to demanding. You have limited ability to affect who you get paired with and even then this can lead to exclusion or gate keeping (which is hilariously misplaced for open world content). Keep the difficult and challenging content to instanced content and let players either rise to the challenge, or kitten off.

Edited May 27 by Cyninja.2954

[DanAlcedo.3281]

It's extremely difficult to balance Openworld Metas, because everyone from 5k to 45k dps can participate. 

Just look at convergences when they launched. 

45/50 people do 5k or less dps while the top 5 do 40k+. 

About 50% of the total dps in done by these 5 players. 

The moment the 5 players are not there, the boss will fail most likely. 

You basically have to balance around the fact that 90% of the players at this meta barely know what they are doing. 

The moments even the bare minimum is required. Like bringing boons and decent gear, the chance of failure starts to skyrocket. 

Just look at Eparch. That fight is actually a joke. But given that most Openworld players simply can't perform enough, it can still fail. 

It's a problem Gw2 had for many years. 

[Randulf.7614]

3 hours ago, Skub.8240 said:

Silverwastes is still frequently dead unless someone tags up - at least in my experience - and I've still only seen single digit numbers of soo-won completions, and most attempts don't even make it to the fight.

I have never seen a dead Silverwastes map and I do it regularly. Usually there is no tag until vinewrath

The issue you are running into is not new.
 

- The Orr Priests like Balathazar, Melandru and above all Grenth (the hardest core boss in 2012) were all at least as hard as Eparch for their time until power creep tribialised them

- Dragon Stand used to take almost the entire time limit due to wipes on the three towers. This conversation came up then.

- Verdant Brink used to require people doing the day meta before the night bosses.

- Serpents Ire is a hard and long meta (and the outlier being near un completable)

- Soo Wan completes on almost every organised run now. I’ve run it maybe 100 times and failed twice. It requires a full map though with organisation, but this conversation came up then.

- Tequatl was changed to need organisation. Power creep and the condition limit change eventually trivialised it, but it used to fail and that was 11 years ago . This conversation came up then.

- Drizzlewood is a good hours commitment and is lauded as the best meta in the game and nowadays needs few people and little organisation. Everyone can do it easily enough. But This conversation came up then.

- Drakkar was a fight that took ages to be farmable and only elite groups could do it. People got better and now it’s straight forward, but this conversation came up then.

Open world is made for everyone, but in order to make engaging fights where people work together, Anet made a tiny number harder. I used to disagree with it, but actually it’s made the game more interesting and players got better. But the claim it’s a new trend is false. Open world needs variety of content to succeed and a little bit of challenge and a little bit of time investment is healthy

What I do agree with is that sometimes the designers go overboard with stacking mechanics and it visually becomes too hard to follow. Eparch is hard, but very doable by pugs, but people struggle to see the mechanics because they fire off at once. Umbriel, Halberd of House Aurkus has brilliant mechanics, ruined because the designers can’t hold back themselves back and throw everything into an un viewable mess.

Edited May 27 by Randulf.7614
added in the Orr bosses

[Mirta.5029]

2 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

I have never seen a dead Silverwastes map and I do it regularly. Usually there is no tag until vinewrath

The issue you are running into is not new.
 

- Dragon Stand used to take almost the entire time limit due to wipes on the three towers.

- Verdant Brink used to require people doing the day meta before the night bosses.

- Serpents Ire is a hard and long meta (and the outlier being near un completable)

- Soo Wan completes on almost every organised run now. I’ve run it maybe 100 times and failed twice. It requires a full map though with organisation. 

- Tequatl was changed to need organisation. Power creep and the condition limit change eventually trivialised it, but it used to fail and that was 11 years ago 

- Drizzlewood is a good hours commitment and is lauded as the best meta in the game and nowadays needs few people and little organisation. Everyone can do it easily enough

- Drakkar was a fight that took ages to be farmable and only elite groups could do it. People got better and now it’s straight forward 

Open world is made for everyone, but in order to make engaging fights where people work together, Anet made a tiny number harder. I used to disagree with it, but actually it’s made the game more interesting and players got better. But the claim it’s a new trend is false. Open world needs variety of content to succeed and a little bit of challenge and a little bit of time investment is healthy

What I do agree with is that sometimes the designers go overboard with stacking mechanics and it visually becomes too hard to follow. Eparch is hard, but very doable by pugs, but people struggle to see the mechanics because they fire off at once. Umbriel, Halberd of House Aurkus has brilliant mechanics, ruined because the designers can’t hold back themselves back and throw everything into an un viewable mess.

I feel like there's a huge difference between the audiences that Tequatl released and that Eparch released to. Tequatl used to be something that you would attempt if you had time. It had cool loot, but it was not something that you would necessarily really really need. There were other ways of getting everything non cosmetic. 

Eparch released to a world where last rune bonuses were no longer on rune sets and where even having the legendary relic won't save you from needing to collect the relics in order to unlock them. They put 3 relics in there. 

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Skub.8240 said:

I'm not asking this sarcastically, but genuinely: who is the target audience of open world content?

That always depends on who is in charge at Anet and who is the game director.

Most of the open world content in the game is for players who are currently on the map and who coordinate and play together ad-hoc in group events. Epic boss fights in open world are usually not epic because of a particularly high level of difficulty (compared to a raid they are way easier), but because of the graphic/bombastic visual design. Due to the very inhomogeneous player composition in the open world, which you cannot influence, you cannot set the level of difficulty (or the duration of the event) too high.

Some events require a little more coordination between different groups, but they can still be accomplished well with self-sustained open world builds. However, there are also a few events that would have been better moved from the open world to larger instances in order to be able to get a more homogeneous group with more homogeneous builds.

Edited May 27 by Zok.4956

[Manpag.6421]

1 hour ago, Mirta.5029 said:

Eparch released to a world where last rune bonuses were no longer on rune sets and where even having the legendary relic won't save you from needing to collect the relics in order to unlock them. They put 3 relics in there.

I've done Eparch 3 times so far; all 3 succeeded, and only one of those was actually organised beyond "some people do rifts!". As long as there's continued pressure on the boss, people taking out adds, and people actually WP back, it'll succeed, and will get smoother and smoother. I expect it'll get there even faster than other metas thanks to it not being on a timer, which can doom unpopular metas (Gyala Delve) or make them wildly popular (Dragonfall, Drizzlewood Coast) depending on the rewards.

I'm not an infusion-lottery meta player, which is the carrot that makes a lot of the older ones remain active, but even for me the offer of a daily chest with a chance to drop basically any of those infusions or invisible slippers has meant I will try and do this meta every day where I can. The appeal of the rewards and added familiarity with the mechanics will make sure it happens multiple times a day and succeeds more often than not for years to come.

[Parasite.5389]

People have been asking for harder open-world content for years, I think Soto has a nice balance of managable casual meta events, and more mechanic heavy content; with Inner Nayos specifically, I ran Road to Heitor yesterday, un-commanded with 6 people while the main group on the map was tackling Fangs, it was no more of less challenging than running it with a full squad.

nothing is forcing you to do every meta in the game, nor is there a rule or reason for every meta to be aimed at Casual players or Hardcore players specifically.

heres a list of all the meta events in the game (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Meta_event) there is more than enough content in the game to satisfy every type of player, if you're not happy with Spider's lair, theres bound to be something there that can be handled by a handful of casual players.

Edited May 27 by Parasite.5389

[bq pd.2148]

2 hours ago, Mirta.5029 said:

Eparch released to a world where last rune bonuses were no longer on rune sets and where even having the legendary relic won't save you from needing to collect the relics in order to unlock them. They put 3 relics in there. 

i am certain that these relics are in the legendary one without unlocking them.
the next expansion is supposed to have relics that wont unlock automatically, yet i imagine it will only cost a minor amount of WvW currency /reward track completion, to skip the pve content for it.
 

2 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

45/50 people do 5k or less dps while the top 5 do 40k+. 

About 50% of the total dps in done by these 5 players. 

The moment the 5 players are not there, the boss will fail most likely.

and that is why jade protocols should not have been nerfed in open world pve so that these 5 people can always actually play DPS and dont need 1-2 of them to play support as that is also non existent.

[Parasite.5389]

2 hours ago, Mirta.5029 said:

having the legendary relic won't save you from needing to collect the relics in order to unlock them. They put 3 relics in there. 

all SotO relics are available with the legendary Relic without needing to unlock them from from their respective acheivements.

[Randulf.7614]

18 minutes ago, bq pd.2148 said:

i am certain that these relics are in the legendary one without unlocking them.

You are correct (as is the reply below yours). I've just checked mine and the locked ones are selectable

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Eventually the people with mismatched green and blue gears will stop having a fun time constantly failing the meta and give up so people doing more than 5 k dps can take their spot. This is now metas that require more than 2 brain cells work, the unwashed masses rush into it, clogging the queues, taking up spots of people who know what their doing. 

Honestly they really need is some way that if your dps is too low, you do no healing, you provide no boons or rezes, and you sit full dead under the boss refusing to waypoint, you are ejected from the map so someone else can take your spot.

They game really needs a way to tell player that they suck, not allow them to do 2k dps with no support and get "gold" 200% participation. This give them the tools ingame to help them get better, possibly post encounter stats like the dps golem with a gear inspect for people in your squad. That why they can see who is doing the lifting and be able to see what gear they need to reach that potential.

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 hours ago, Skub.8240 said:

I'm not asking this sarcastically, but genuinely: who is the target audience of open world content? Because if you asked me this years ago I would have said "everyone who's in the zone at the time." From random events to open world bosses, things were almost always doable with nearly any number of players and it was relatively rare that you would even have a shortage of people for the harder events as they cropped up. Even now, when it comes to world bosses and events, I can't think of too many people who actively disparage things like the jungle wurm or similar; there's nearly always a group to do the old stuff every time it pops up, with that likelihood dropping off the bigger and more complex the fight becomes. And then you get things like triple trouble, which are rarely done outside of planned commander led runs, because their mechanics are complex and difficult for more casual players to pick up and roll with.

But it's not just old content that has that kind of dichotomy, because across the expansions there are a good few metas that people do near constantly, like Tarir, and a ton of events that are frequently and consistently run even by random people just doing it because they're easy to grasp and the demands on the player aren't unfeasible. And there are just as many, if not more, that aren't, or fail often as much as they're even attempted. In HoT alone it seems like a gamble whether or not rata and nuoch lanes will fail the chak gerant meta, and dragon's stand's success seems to depend solely on whether or not a group can balance running in a circle vs attacking a boss in triplicate. Yet both these things can be done, frequently, without an organized commander; just less commonly.

But as the expansions go on I feel that the devs have been making things more complicated, more tedious, and more difficult to do for the average player. Whether it's the very, very, long build up to the soo-won fight which takes so long that the game is constantly threatening you with the end of your map instance and has, in more than one past instance ended an instance before the fight was even over, or the newest eparch fight which feels like a watered down raid encounter thrown unceremoniously into the open world. It's no surprise to me that the biggest complaints about these fights tend to be similar - that they're too long, that they're overtuned and overly complicated even while people continually say they're fine because their groups did it without issue and that you just need to learn X or Y mechanic and it's easy. The problem with them, is that they don't feel like content designed for an open world, public, environment. The eparch fights should be swapped, in my opinion, with the one from the fractal where he spews out orbs and you beat the buffs out of him being the meta fight, while the one with the more complex puddle, pool and rift mechanics being the one you do in the more controlled environment.

This doesn't mean I think every meta  or boss event should just be a group of people standing around and beating a guy who does nothing but attack; but the mechanics, and arenas, should really fit the audience participating in them, and it doesn't look like they are anymore. So instead of everyone having a good time and getting loot, a lot of people are getting frustrated they don't understand the fight and can't meaningfully contribute, and then other players are getting frustrated that those players are causing it to scale up harder while not contributing. I guess that's my feedback about GW2's open world content, the people designing it should really keep in mind the audience they're making it for and remember that there's a reason why a lot of casual players don't do things like raids.

Maybe give it a bit more time before you decide new content is too complicated or difficult.  If you look at Tarir, for example, the mechanics are arguably more complicated than most open world events and they rely on a small number of players knowing them and actively performing those roles.  I think once more of the player base is familiar with the mechanics, this will get easier.

[Zeperio.4853]

20 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Eventually the people with mismatched green and blue gears will stop having a fun time constantly failing the meta and give up so people doing more than 5 k dps can take their spot. This is now metas that require more than 2 brain cells work, the unwashed masses rush into it, clogging the queues, taking up spots of people who know what their doing. 

Honestly they really need is some way that if your dps is too low, you do no healing, you provide no boons or rezes, and you sit full dead under the boss refusing to waypoint, you are ejected from the map so someone else can take your spot.

They game really needs a way to tell player that they suck, not allow them to do 2k dps with no support and get "gold" 200% participation. This give them the tools ingame to help them get better, possibly post encounter stats like the dps golem with a gear inspect for people in your squad. That why they can see who is doing the lifting and be able to see what gear they need to reach that potential.

One of the biggest reasons I bought this game is because I experienced a meta in queensdale that I was able to join a group of people despite me being a low level player without a "proper" gear and not knowing how to play it, and that is what caught my interest in the game. I have never experienced that in any other MMO I've played, and that experience alone convinced me that this game is worth spending my money on. If you want to disregard new players like that and gatekeep OPENWORLD meta events just so you can have a bit of a challenge, I'm afraid you are playing the wrong game.

[Obnoxa.6702]

42 minutes ago, bq pd.2148 said:

the next expansion is supposed to have relics that wont unlock automatically, yet i imagine it will only cost a minor amount of WvW currency /reward track completion, to skip the pve content for it.

Why would you be certain of that? Soto didn't have that - the wvw vendor greyed out the relics my account didn't have unlocked yet... and while sometimes in life I feel a little singled out, I'm pretty sure Jesus doesn't hate me that much.

[yoni.7015]

3 minutes ago, Zeperio.4853 said:

One of the biggest reasons I bought this game is because I experienced a meta in queensdale that I was able to join a group of people despite me being a low level player without a "proper" gear and not knowing how to play it, and that is what caught my interest in the game. I have never experienced that in any other MMO I've played, and that experience alone convinced me that this game is worth spending my money on. If you want to disregard new players like that and gatekeep OPENWORLD meta events just so you can have a bit of a challenge, I'm afraid you are playing the wrong game.

There is a huge difference between an event in a starting zone like Queensdale or the meta event of the latest map of the latest expansion. 

[Zeperio.4853]

Just now, yoni.7015 said:

There is a huge difference between an event in a starting zone like Queensdale or the meta event of the latest map of the latest expansion. 

what is the huge difference? both are open world events that literally anyone who has access to the map can join

[Obnoxa.6702]

3 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

/snip

ALL of what Randulf.7614 said.
All of it. /thumbs up

[Randulf.7614]

10 minutes ago, Zeperio.4853 said:

One of the biggest reasons I bought this game is because I experienced a meta in queensdale that I was able to join a group of people despite me being a low level player without a "proper" gear and not knowing how to play it, and that is what caught my interest in the game. I have never experienced that in any other MMO I've played, and that experience alone convinced me that this game is worth spending my money on. If you want to disregard new players like that and gatekeep OPENWORLD meta events just so you can have a bit of a challenge, I'm afraid you are playing the wrong game.

The game has "gatekept" openworld behind challenge since day one. I fully remember the sheer volume of failures at Priests of Balathazar, Priests of Melandru and perhaps the hardest of all the core fights - Priest of Grenth. Back in the day, those were as hard as Eparch is now, if not harder.

Power creep has changed that and they are trivial now, but lets not pretend GW2 never had challenging open world content that was difficult for the average player

I'm supportive of open world being accessible to as many people as possible, but we need to stop rewriting history or claiming this is a new trend. It's existed since the very beginning. Nothing has changed here, it's just that people have got used to power creep undermining older content

Edited May 27 by Randulf.7614

[yoni.7015]

Just now, Zeperio.4853 said:

what is the huge difference? both are open world events that literally anyone who has access to the map can join

One map is a map for new players that just started the game, the other is the latest endgame map for players lvl 80. There has to be different difficulties in open world, otherwise it’s boring and not appealing.
You want easy? Stay in Queensdale. 

[Zeperio.4853]

1 minute ago, Randulf.7614 said:

The game has "gatekept" openworld behind challenge since day one. I fully remember the sheer volume of failures at Priests of Balathazar, Priests of Melandru and perhaps the hnarest of all the core fights - Priest of Grenth. Back in the day, those were as hard as Eparch is now, if not harder.

Power creep has changed that and they are trivial now, but lets not pretend GW2 never had challenging open world content that was difficult for the average player

And I did not state that the current openworld events were never challenging. Also if you want challenging PvE content, that is what Fractals/Raids/Strikes/Convergences CM are for. Leave the openworld for the enjoyment of the majority of us who enjoys relaxing explorable content.

 

Also I was replying to the other gay that said:

Quote

They game really needs a way to tell player that they suck, not allow them to do 2k dps with no support and get "gold" 200% participation.