Dragon's End Meta failing

[lummuss.6850]

I bought End of the Dragons months ago and only today did I feel motivated and want to go after the Siege Turtle to help the new guys. Then you spend 2 hours on the map waiting for the Meta Event, you do your best to heal and buff people, the commander organizes and explains all the mechanics of the Meta Event, and in the end the event fails because it is absurdly difficult and has too many alt accounts and offline players. This is just a report of my frustration.

[Parasite.5389]

6 minutes ago, lummuss.6850 said:

I bought End of the Dragons months ago and only today did I feel motivated and want to go after the Siege Turtle to help the new guys. Then you spend 2 hours on the map waiting for the Meta Event, you do your best to heal and buff people, the commander organizes and explains all the mechanics of the Meta Event, and in the end the event fails because it is absurdly difficult and has too many alt accounts and offline players. This is just a report of my frustration.

just to help with any further frustrations, you can buy the turtle egg from The Peddler in Dragon's end, and later in the collection the Thruster Control Unit from The Requisitions Specialist in Gyala Delve

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

It helps to git gud.  I don't mean that as an insult.  The average player does 1/10 the damage of what a profession can realistically benchmark.  In a zerg of 50 players, 10 of them are carrying half the damage.  If you want success, it helps to be one of those 10.  

[Tiamat.8254]

Did this with a non full squad last week with nearly 5 minutes to spare. If people know the mechanics it should be fine. The main reason I usually see it fail is because people don't break soo won in time or didn't dodge insta-death attack. 

[Randulf.7614]

I understand the frustration given the time investment, but these days DE is rare to fail with a squad. I’ve seen it once in this last 18 months not succeed and some of them have been last minute pugs. Keep at it and you will get it

[disForm.2837]

Maybe he plays off prime time hours. I've been part of several failed attempts outside NA primetime, even with a squad up (not full, tho). Usually, lack of CC.

And no, OP, DE is not absurdly difficult, just harder than your normal OW meta.

[Farohna.6247]

The two hour wait largely deters me from DE.  I really just don't want to wait in a squad for an hour or more to ensure a place in the meta. 

The fight itself is easier than it was upon release, but yes it still fails (I'd argue they may not be a bad thing in the sense that it is challenging for more casual players ..and the afk'ers 😑).  Makes the entire thing feel like a huge waste of time when it does.  Players need to realize, yes you really do need to CC, yes you really do need to hit more than 1 1 1 1.  

I understand your frustration, OP.   I don't even have the satisfaction of lots of loot along the way.  

[Danikat.8537]

I suspect Dragon's End isn't as popular as normal this week because it was one of the Wizard's Vault objectives last week, so a lot of people will have done it then and won't be looking to do it again so soon.

But as always the best way to complete a meta-event is to use the LFG tool to find an organised group/map and if you don't see one start a group to taxi people into your copy of the map and ask if anyone can tag up for it.

5 hours ago, Farohna.6247 said:

The two hour wait largely deters me from DE.  I really just don't want to wait in a squad for an hour or more to ensure a place in the meta. 

The fight itself is easier than it was upon release, but yes it still fails (I'd argue they may not be a bad thing in the sense that it is challenging for more casual players ..and the afk'ers 😑).  Makes the entire thing feel like a huge waste of time when it does.  Players need to realize, yes you really do need to CC, yes you really do need to hit more than 1 1 1 1.  

I understand your frustration, OP.   I don't even have the satisfaction of lots of loot along the way.  

You couldn't wait for 2 hours because that's the total time from the start of one meta to the start of another so it'd be active for at least some of that time. Even in the worst case scenario where a group finishes it very quickly then you get into the map just as it ends you'd have at most about an hour and a bit to wait for it to start again. (And if you do load in and see it's just finished the sensible thing to do is ask when it'll start next so you know you can log out and do something else in between.)

More importantly even when it was new and very popular you only needed to get to the map about 10-15 minutes before it started to get into a group, and the meta itself cannot take longer than an hour because it's on a timer. There are 'preperation' events which can be completed by people in the map in between but they don't all need to be done and individual players definitely don't need to do them to join the meta so if you don't have time for that you can skip it.

[Randulf.7614]

5 hours ago, Farohna.6247 said:

The two hour wait largely deters me from DE.  I really just don't want to wait in a squad for an hour or more to ensure a place in the meta. 

The fight itself is easier than it was upon release, but yes it still fails (I'd argue they may not be a bad thing in the sense that it is challenging for more casual players ..and the afk'ers 😑).  Makes the entire thing feel like a huge waste of time when it does.  Players need to realize, yes you really do need to CC, yes you really do need to hit more than 1 1 1 1.  

I understand your frustration, OP.   I don't even have the satisfaction of lots of loot along the way.  

You can usually get into a successful squad 10-20 mins beforehand. But half hour is better to maximise event participation for end loot. You don’t need to wait an hour. In fact few squads assemble now that early.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

19 hours ago, lummuss.6850 said:

it is absurdly difficult

No, it isn't, problem is some wise guys just do next to nothing because why bother and they get their loot so more people are copying them.

I've made the suggestion before, bottom 10% of players in DPS/Boons/Heal during a group event should not get any loot, that's the only way you'll get some people to do more than press 1 occasionally during the events.

[Farohna.6247]

2 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I suspect Dragon's End isn't as popular as normal this week because it was one of the Wizard's Vault objectives last week, so a lot of people will have done it then and won't be looking to do it again so soon.

But as always the best way to complete a meta-event is to use the LFG tool to find an organised group/map and if you don't see one start a group to taxi people into your copy of the map and ask if anyone can tag up for it.

You couldn't wait for 2 hours because that's the total time from the start of one meta to the start of another so it'd be active for at least some of that time. Even in the worst case scenario where a group finishes it very quickly then you get into the map just as it ends you'd have at most about an hour and a bit to wait for it to start again. (And if you do load in and see it's just finished the sensible thing to do is ask when it'll start next so you know you can log out and do something else in between.)

More importantly even when it was new and very popular you only needed to get to the map about 10-15 minutes before it started to get into a group, and the meta itself cannot take longer than an hour because it's on a timer. There are 'preperation' events which can be completed by people in the map in between but they don't all need to be done and individual players definitely don't need to do them to join the meta so if you don't have time for that you can skip it.

I must have been just very unfortunate then, because I would have to join easily an hour ahead.   I have had an easier time more recently.  Still it feels very slow.  

2 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

You can usually get into a successful squad 10-20 mins beforehand. But half hour is better to maximise event participation for end loot. You don’t need to wait an hour. In fact few squads assemble now that early.

I guess I just need to visit more often lol.  Time to make some more weapon variants.  

[Chyro.1462]

1 hour ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

No, it isn't, problem is some wise guys just do next to nothing because why bother and they get their loot so more people are copying them.

I've made the suggestion before, bottom 10% of players in DPS/Boons/Heal during a group event should not get any loot, that's the only way you'll get some people to do more than press 1 occasionally during the events.

Kinda bad suggestion. Means even if everyone tries their best, the bottom 10% would receive nothing. Best thing they could do is fine tune their afk detection and disable rewards for anyone not properly participating - or to detect multibox and botting participants and automatically kick them out.

[Sobx.1758]

Yup, the "10% doesnt get loot no matter what" idea is just bad. Improving participation/afk detection systems should be the goal here.

[Smol.7985]

9 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

 

bottom 10% of players in DPS/Boons/Heal during a group event should not get any loot

😂 

[Danikat.8537]

Another game I've played used to have a system where a maximum of 12 people could get credit (and therefore loot, achievements, quest progress etc.) for killing an enemy, and it was the 12 who did the most damage. The result of that was no one wanted to heal, support or revive during the fight because it would reduce their own participation and often if they suspected they weren't going to be one of the lucky 12 they'd just leave. I think that's what the developers wanted (that game wasn't really set up for big groups in open world areas), but it still wasn't great for players.

I doubt Anet would want to discourage players from participating if they're worried their DPS is too low, so I agree that if inactive players are a problem they should adjust the inactivity restrictions (either for that map or in general) to stop that while still allowing people who are fighting and just aren't as good to get credit.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

9 hours ago, Chyro.1462 said:

Kinda bad suggestion. Means even if everyone tries their best, the bottom 10% would receive nothing.

To quote The Postman, "last man in line is not hungry enough to eat."

Get good, if bottom 10% is your best, your best won't do.

[nobleboivin.4102]

Best advice I can give is wait for when it's a weekly in the WF.  Best time for events to be completed without fail is when theyr'e a weekly

[Chyro.1462]

1 hour ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

To quote The Postman, "last man in line is not hungry enough to eat."

Get good, if bottom 10% is your best, your best won't do.

It's just a really bad argument. The game welcomes and encourages casual players to join in any open world activites. All this would do is discourage people from participating at all. Why even join if you may end up getting nothing just because everyone else is better or more experienced? People are allowed to be bad, to learn and improve over time. Punishing low performers isn't healthy for the game. And again, even if everyone on the map performed great on their class, your method would still deny a portion of the players their reward even if they did well.

[willow.8209]

ive been on maps that fail because of too few people. In such a case you might have to wait some time to get even 5 at the escort quests. Then the game disappears some of the NPCs to escort so you think it's scaling for the size and you'll be able to finish, but in the end you run out of time. All 3 escorts still have to get done and there may be no tag to follow.
At some times it's almost as bad as a TD map meta. (Which you can wait around and have it not start due to too few players on the map, as it's considered unpopular since it's extra long and yet thought to have less reward than the other HoT maps) 

[Cuks.8241]

I recommend looking at LFG 30 mins before start. This way you usually avoid queue and do the events for the buff with some spare.

I havent seen this fail in a long time (eu). I did it last week and we killed it with 7 mins on timer and the comm didnt trouble himself at all - no subgroups, splits...

But yeah it helps if you can perform. Looking at arc, most of the work is done by 20% of the players (~10 players). If you do 20k+ dps and provide boons youre probably carrying 4 players on your back. And no these are not some crazy numbers nowadays.

[SnackParty.3178]

You don't really need heals in that fight. Almost anything will one shot players if they get hit. If not, there's plenty of time for them to self sustain before another big hit. If they do go down, there's a launch pad that takes them right back in a few seconds.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

7 hours ago, Chyro.1462 said:

It's just a really bad argument. The game welcomes and encourages casual players to join in any open world activites. All this would do is discourage people from participating at all. Why even join if you may end up getting nothing just because everyone else is better or more experienced? People are allowed to be bad, to learn and improve over time. Punishing low performers isn't healthy for the game. And again, even if everyone on the map performed great on their class, your method would still deny a portion of the players their reward even if they did well.

Do I need to tap the sign again?

9 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

"last man in line is not hungry enough to eat."

No participation trophies 🎖

[Sobx.1758]

44 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Do I need to tap the sign again?

No participation trophies 🎖

It's not even about participation trophies, with your idea people can perform perfectly and 10% of them will still not get the rewards because the rest of the squad was basically just as good. Not to mention support players.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

5 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Not to mention support players.

Read it again, I got that covered.

21 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

bottom 10% of players in DPS/Boons/Heal during a group event

 

[Sobx.1758]

3 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Read it again, I got that covered.

Ok, can you now cover the rest of my post and how you compare dps/boons/heals against each other?

Edited August 16 by Sobx.1758