I want to personally thank ArenaNet for today's patch

[LichOverlord.6329]

Today's patch was honestly one of the best patches we've gotten in a while - I always tend to dread balance patches, as I feel that lately they've made a lot of changes I feel create or further play into unhealthy metas and threaten to homogenize the classes or strip them of their identity, but today's patch was a breath of fresh air, and especially as a mesmer I'm happy with the changes

However what I really felt the need to highlight was what was added outside the balance: in addition to class changes, today's patch brought a whole host of great changes, some of which I've personally seen forum posts asking for, and so seeing these changes made felt like Anet really listens and cares for their community, and this is such a nice feeling to have and I really need to speak out in thanks when I see it, as it feels like it's been happening more and more lately (which is great!)

Give praise where its due, and Anet certainly deserves some praise for some of these changes, especially the following:

The new sunken treasures are awesome, and I personally will be hosting little beach parties in Siren's Reef now that those pesky piranhas will be gone!

The further nerfs to Eparch's ridiculously bloated health in The Lonely Tower fractal is sooo nice to see, as I've seen a lot of posts by players asking for a health reduction there (myself included!), and seeing changes to make the non-CM version just a little more friendly to new players and daily runners is very much appreciated - next time I see Lonely Tower as my daily or recommended, I won't be tempted to just skip it!

Lastly, I especially wanted to thank you all for better integrating the meta event into the story - I think Eparch, the Consumed King is a super cool-looking boss, and the meta does a lot for his character to really show how powerful and all-consuming he is. Peitha and the rest constantly refer to him as a "spider", and that he's this super-oppressive hungry being that eats everything, and it wasn't until I saw him in that form that I had an "'oh kitten' moment" and realized just what it was that they meant! Furthermore, I feel like players easily miss the meta (which is a really cool meta) and then get confused when they start the next story step. Meta events are one of the core backbones of Guild Wars 2 and are one of the coolest content types, so missing such a big and important meta would be such a shame! Seeing you all add an achievement and notification like you did for Soo-Won in Dragon's End is great, and I hope you continue this trend going forward for meta-events in future expansions. I've seen tons of posts asking for better meta integration like this, and its great to see happen!

I could keep going, but I think I've said enough - thank you so much, ArenaNet, for a solid balance and quality-of-life patch! I hope to see more patches like this in the future! Looking forward to Thursday~!

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Not a fan of thanking anet for releasing bad content and having the community tell them how to fix it. Lonely tower should have never been released in its original form. Bad story telling is bad story telling, you should not have to have a breaking the 4th wall prompt to figure out where the meta fits in the narrative. Look at dragon stand, dragon fall, cursed shore, they did not need a true ending achievment to beat the player over their heads one when it started and ended.

Add in probably the most preditory monetization, where you used to get an entire armor sets for 800 gems, they are selling each piece for 500 each bundled together in a 1000 and 2000 gem packages. Do not forget a 2800 package which is more $ than IoJ. 

[LichOverlord.6329]

3 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

lonely tower should have never been released in its original form. Bad story telling is bad story telling, you should not have to have a breaking the 4th wall prompt to figure out where the meta fits in the narrative. Look at dragon stand, dragon fall, cursed shore, they did not need a true ending achievment to beat the player over their heads one when it started and ended.

Agree with your first point - but releasing something broken and fixing it later is better than never fixing it at all, and Anet at least deserves some credit for that. If we don't recognize and appreciate that it was fixed, then why should we expect it to happen again?

As for the metas, yes, I feel that personally, it was always apparent where the metas fit into the story, and I always did them. But I have personally seen several forum posts claiming that it wasn't clear to them, and that they wanted an achievement and indicator. Adding an achievement for those people is not "bad storytelling" - it's keeping your playerbase's wants and needs in mind. Not everyone plays games like you do, so let's try to understand how it might be easy to miss for other people, alright?

[Doggie.3184]

"When the aquabreather is hidden and the player's equipped head armor is not hidden, the head armor will be shown when underwater."

Finally, my doge ears won't be violently amputated every time I enter the water.

[LichOverlord.6329]

10 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

"When the aquabreather is hidden and the player's equipped head armor is not hidden, the head armor will be shown when underwater."

Finally, my doge ears won't be violently amputated every time I enter the water.

Those must have been hard to grow back every time you wanted to go swimming... I'm so sorry for your loss 😂

Thankfully, you won't have to worry about that anymore!

[Ashantara.8731]

14 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

"When the aquabreather is hidden and the player's equipped head armor is not hidden, the head armor will be shown when underwater."

Finally, my doge ears won't be violently amputated every time I enter the water.

Now, if only they would fix the expensive effect infusions so they will stack properly again, I wouldn't feel like a fashion victim after today's patch. 🤨

[Doggie.3184]

27 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Now, if only they would fix the expensive effect infusions so they will stack properly again, I wouldn't feel like a fashion victim after today's patch. 🤨

I did feel like I had less baubles earlier (3x SAB infusions) but didn't really look closer. I'll have to double check later if that was actually a thing.

Edit: Yeah; only 1 blue bauble is showing up atm :o

Edited June 25 by Doggie.3184

[Shadowmoon.7986]

1 hour ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

Agree with your first point - but releasing something broken and fixing it later is better than never fixing it at all, and Anet at least deserves some credit for that. If we don't recognize and appreciate that it was fixed, then why should we expect it to happen again?

As for the metas, yes, I feel that personally, it was always apparent where the metas fit into the story, and I always did them. But I have personally seen several forum posts claiming that it wasn't clear to them, and that they wanted an achievement and indicator. Adding an achievement for those people is not "bad storytelling" - it's keeping your playerbase's wants and needs in mind. Not everyone plays games like you do, so let's try to understand how it might be easy to miss for other people, alright?

Playing defence for anet for making two extremely bugged encounters in a row is just going to lead them continuing bad behaviors. Ceres cm was impossible at released, required a server side change so his 80% was consistent so sc and hs would stop gg every attempt that they lost the 50/50 coin flip. Still is riddle with phasing bugs where if you phase two early you lose.  People are apologist to this encounter because it is one of the few that offered any challenge, even though I would say it is still a bad encounter. 

Eparch was unforgivable. No one defended that encounter at launch. 

Compare this to HT, Dhuum, or demos cm, all felt well crafted and require light bug fixes, not reduce the boss health by 20% and another 20% for normal cm.

[LichOverlord.6329]

35 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Playing defence for anet for making two extremely bugged encounters in a row is just going to lead them continuing bad behaviors. Ceres cm was impossible at released, required a server side change so his 80% was consistent so sc and hs would stop gg every attempt that they lost the 50/50 coin flip. Still is riddle with phasing bugs where if you phase two early you lose.  People are apologist to this encounter because it is one of the few that offered any challenge, even though I would say it is still a bad encounter. 

Eparch was unforgivable. No one defended that encounter at launch. 

Compare this to HT, Dhuum, or demos cm, all felt well crafted and require light bug fixes, not reduce the boss health by 20% and another 20% for normal cm.

I'm not "playing defense" for Anet - I'm giving credit where its due.

Eparch was awful at launch, and I was very outspoken about the state of his encounter at launch across several forum topics, including the official posts.

Trust me, I'm painfully aware how bad it was - I made that very well known to the team on several occasions, and I did the same with Kanaxai.

I got some flak for that one, too (even though the responses were more in agreement than not), but I still gave criticism because it needed to be criticized. In addition, I've been critical about about several balance patches, to the point where I'm surprised I didn't get reprimanded by @Rubi Bayer.8493 for how harsh I was when speaking about some of those updates.

Trust me, I know ArenaNet has made unpopular decisions and poor updates that were not well recieved by the community, and I've been very liberal with my criticism... but that's not because I hold any ill-will towards ArenaNet or anyone on their team.

I'm critical for the same reason I'm appreciative - because I'm passionate. Because even though it's not perfect, I love Guild Wars 2. I want to see the game succeed, just as you (hopefully) do. But to see something succeed, you have to be outspoken - both for the good and the bad.

Eparch's encounter was a disastrous, unfair, messy, poorly telegraphed, bloated health sponge of an encounter at launch. No one's arguing that it was anything but a mess - you know it, I know it, everybody knows it. Most importantly, ArenaNet knows it - they know it because we made it very clear to them.

Thats the entire point of criticism: to let developers know there's an issue, so that they can make the game better.

But if we only criticize the bad without praising the good, it will never actually get better.

If we just continue to bash on them, even when they actively work to improve the game better, then we're doing both them and ourselves a huge disservice.

Today is June 25th. Yesterday was June 24th. Today, the game is in a better state than it was yesterday. So today, I gave them praise. Today, I made a post showing I appreciate the improvement.

I will continue to be critical where I feel criticism is warranted, and I will continue to show appreciation where I feel appreciation is warranted.

Call it "running defense" if you wish - I call that "giving fair feedback".

And giving fair feedback is the entire reason this forum exists in the first place.

 

[Heinel.6548]

7 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

Agree with your first point - but releasing something broken and fixing it later is better than never fixing it at all, and Anet at least deserves some credit for that. If we don't recognize and appreciate that it was fixed, then why should we expect it to happen again?

As for the metas, yes, I feel that personally, it was always apparent where the metas fit into the story, and I always did them. But I have personally seen several forum posts claiming that it wasn't clear to them, and that they wanted an achievement and indicator. Adding an achievement for those people is not "bad storytelling" - it's keeping your playerbase's wants and needs in mind. Not everyone plays games like you do, so let's try to understand how it might be easy to miss for other people, alright?

Am I remembering it wrong? But I'm pretty sure for DS, DF, and DE in their respective story episode, in game dialogues explicitly state that there will be multiple teams simultaneously assaulting the dragon, and the player character is to join one of the efforts. In DF, you even hear progress updates from the meta team from Taimi. But if there's something like this in Soto's dialogues somewhere, I definitely missed it.

[LichOverlord.6329]

1 hour ago, Heinel.6548 said:

Am I remembering it wrong? But I'm pretty sure for DS, DF, and DE in their respective story episode, in game dialogues explicitly state that there will be multiple teams simultaneously assaulting the dragon, and the player character is to join one of the efforts. In DF, you even hear progress updates from the meta team from Taimi. But if there's something like this in Soto's dialogues somewhere, I definitely missed it.

Dragon's stand is the only one that follows that logic

In DF the meta is a bit more dubious, as its not specifically confirmed whether or not the meta happens first - Kralkatorrik's body crystallizes at the end of the meta, so it could very well be that the attack led by Almorra referenced in the dialogue is the pact hammering away at his shell and beating his body into submission or it could be the events of the meta where you kill his champions

With Dragon's End, however, its much more clear: the meta happens before the final battle. (EoD main story spoilers follow)

Spoiler

The reason that Soo-Won is basically at death's door by the time you use the extractor on her in EoD is because during the meta you basically beat her within an inch of her life - that's also why you don't fight Soo-Won in a story instance, and just fight the dragonvoid itself instead, whereas during the meta you fight a dragonvoid-infused Soo-Won. Additionally, the pillars and roof of Harvest Temple are blasted off by Canach and Logan's airships during the meta, and that's why during the story instance the roof of the temple has already been blasted off, since the meta canonically happens first.

Eparch is the same way - the meta canonically happens first, with you attacking Eparch's castle, and (SotO spoilers follow)

Spoiler

fighting Eparch at his full strength. By the end of the meta you'll have taken down the shields with Dagda, Arina, Frode, Ramses, and Peitha, stormed his towers, breached his inner sanctum, and then beat him back, weakening him greatly and forcing him to retreat. This is why the story instance then starts within the room that the meta ends, with Eparch having retreated into his throne room, and why Dagda and Frode are there in the room with you, despite the former not having appeared in Nayos at all up until that point, and why Peitha claims we have a ton of wounded that Frode and the others need to evactuate, despite no battle happening within the story instance (they're referring to the aftermath of the meta). This is also why Eparch does not assume his "spider form" during the story instance, as by this point he's too weak to do so again, instead facing you in his "humanoid form".

So yes, while Dragon's Stand happens simultaneously and Dragonfall can be inferred to be either simultaneously or before, Dragon's End and Zakiros are both explicitly before the story instance, chronologically. It's something they started doing more in IBS (the first section of Drizzlewood Coast's meta canonically happens before the final story instance of "No Quarter", which is why (IBS spoilers follow)

Spoiler

Smodur taunts Cinder that the rest of Ryland's Steel Warband is dead, since you kill Vishen, Destroy Ranoah within her tank, and blow up Nicabar's copter during the battle right before the bridge at the end of the first half of the meta, and why when after Smodur kills Cinder and you chase after Ryland, all Dominion forces up to the bridge have been routed, and Varinia and her frost legion only just hold the bridge to the northern section (hence the severe lack of dominion forces in the story instance).

Ever since this point they've started doing more and more metas directly tied within the story, rather than just "happening simultaneously" (i.e. the Mabon and Lhyr meta happen right before you enter the tower, chronologically), and why we'll definitely see this basically become the norm. I personally really like this trend, as it encourages more and more people to get into metas during the course of their story, as they're great casual-friendly group events. But yes, I understand why you were confused - it wasn't until the more recent years that the metas being directly tied into the story as their own chronological event became "the norm".

Hopefully that cleared up your confusion?

[gothicaplaymate.5076]

On 6/25/2024 at 1:50 PM, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Not a fan of thanking anet for releasing bad content and having the community tell them how to fix it. Lonely tower should have never been released in its original form. Bad story telling is bad story telling, you should not have to have a breaking the 4th wall prompt to figure out where the meta fits in the narrative. Look at dragon stand, dragon fall, cursed shore, they did not need a true ending achievment to beat the player over their heads one when it started and ended.

Add in probably the most preditory monetization, where you used to get an entire armor sets for 800 gems, they are selling each piece for 500 each bundled together in a 1000 and 2000 gem packages. Do not forget a 2800 package which is more $ than IoJ. 

It's negative opinions as these counteracting Anet's good intentions and positive player atmosphere. I'm getting happier each time there's some sort of glitch, because lazy ranters have been egging.

[Heinel.6548]

17 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

Hopefully that cleared up your confusion?

Well, you did clear up me mis-remembering the chronology of DE, and yeah they are all easy to put together after the fact, but didn't address my point. In the dragon story, the story beats specifically tell you the meta is part of it. Such is not the case for the soto story until the most recent patch, and they done so by breaking the fourth wall also.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

20 minutes ago, Heinel.6548 said:

Well, you did clear up me mis-remembering the chronology of DE, and yeah they are all easy to put together after the fact, but didn't address my point. In the dragon story, the story beats specifically tell you the meta is part of it. Such is not the case for the soto story until the most recent patch, and they done so by breaking the fourth wall also.

Another example of Arenanet forgetting their good ideas and their lessons from the expansion they just did before making SotO.

[LichOverlord.6329]

10 hours ago, Heinel.6548 said:

Well, you did clear up me mis-remembering the chronology of DE, and yeah they are all easy to put together after the fact, but didn't address my point. In the dragon story, the story beats specifically tell you the meta is part of it. Such is not the case for the soto story until the most recent patch, and they done so by breaking the fourth wall also.

I must admit, I have yet to replay the eleventh hour - my understanding is that they added the "true ending" achievement in the same way that they did with Dragon's End, and tbh I didn't find the achievement to be "fourth wall breaking", but if they did something else as well I'll take your word for it

Edit: I see in the patch notes they said:

• Additional messaging has been added to chapter 18, The Eleventh Hour, to recommend completion of the Into the Spider's Lair meta-event in Inner Nayos before proceeding into the story instance.

I assume this has to be what you're referring to? If it's out of place and "fourth wall breaking" as you say, then that would be unfortunate - like I said, though, I'd have to replay the step to see for myself, but I'll take your word for it

Edited Thursday at 10:05 AM by LichOverlord.6329

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

On 6/25/2024 at 1:10 PM, LichOverlord.6329 said:

Today's patch was honestly one of the best patches we've gotten in a while - I always tend to dread balance patches, as I feel that lately they've made a lot of changes I feel create or further play into unhealthy metas and threaten to homogenize the classes or strip them of their identity, but today's patch was a breath of fresh air, and especially as a mesmer I'm happy with the changes

This is a little belated, but in my defense it's been a REALLY BUSY WEEK 😄 
Thank you for this! As I've mentioned in the past, I share feedback--both criticism and praise--with the rest of the studio on a regular basis. It always feels great to be able to pass on a post about a recent update where someone is calling out all the things they love. Thanks for making our week even better with this!

[LichOverlord.6329]

On 6/28/2024 at 11:56 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

This is a little belated, but in my defense it's been a REALLY BUSY WEEK 😄 
Thank you for this! As I've mentioned in the past, I share feedback--both criticism and praise--with the rest of the studio on a regular basis. It always feels great to be able to pass on a post about a recent update where someone is calling out all the things they love. Thanks for making our week even better with this!

Thank you all for all the work you do! It seems like your team has learned a lot from this new endeavor we all embarked on together with Secrets of the Obscure, and I can't wait to see those lessons - like the ones good ol' Grouch talked about in your retrospective - put into practice this upcoming expansion! It's certainly shaping up to be an exciting summer~! Hopefully your team gets their much-deserved vacation time in, because I have no doubt you guys are busy! 😆