Marionette as an example of well balanced content in terms of difficulty

[Gehenna.3625]

1 hour ago, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

I think HoT showed you something else than it did with the others 😂.

 

Even after releasing lws3,lws4, PoF a complete expansion which has more farmable maps and profitable means to spend time on content like palawadan and now icebrood saga with its eternal ice volatile magic trophy farming and drizzlewood material farming, and old trusty silverwaste riba farming, the HoT meta with chance of infusion drops are still crowded and busy most of the times... If you don't believe me, try joining a lfg squad among 10 of those after a minute of meta timing in event timer... And still if HoT shows you something else, then idk it must have preferential treatment with just you alone 🥴

When HoT released many people thought it too hard and actually left the game. Sales revenue dropped considerably to new lows in the history of the game till then. I think that's what he's referring to.

 

I also hated those maps but over time I learned to enjoy them...well all of them except Tangled Depths. So it's an acquired taste if you will and that's not good for a game that needs to make money. So it's not really about players today doing the meta's. In fact AB had the meta cut in half so you only had to do the last part. It's total easy mode. When it released you had to do the whole meta or there would not be rewards.

 

Now, I have no idea what Anet is intending to do with this Marionette thing. If they feel more people need to do that content then it will be nerfed. Casuals will be casuals. They also tried to "bridge the gap" with Strike Missions so more people would do raids. I don't think that was very successful. I don't think they should nerf this fight, but it probably will. I suspect Anet are not willing to give up on this idea to bring more people into the structured group content in PvE. It just seems to me that they're going about it the wrong way. /shrug.

[MokahTGS.7850]

Scaling has always been Anets problem.  Nothing scales correctly because the game design has too many moving parts.  That leaves Anet in a bad position of having to cater to the lowest common denominator, which is casual players.

 

All content that is released with a requirement of a group working together will get nerfed or changed after a while because organized groups will o longer be playing it...only random pugs will be left.

 

Enjoy your difficult content while you can, it will get nerfed.  They gave you raids, that is your stable hard content.  This is not that.

[Will.9785]

It needs to be nerfed for the simple fact that if 1-2 people are bad it ruins the whole event.  And good luck completing the achievements after this week when the public option goes away... because the private squad leaves little or no room for error.

 

It's difficult for all the wrong reasons.  The fights themselves aren't challenging for decent players.  The challenge comes from finding 50 decent players and putting them in a squad.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Will.9785

[Peanutz.3129]

29 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Exactly. And let's be real here, GW2 is a very casual game, making content that is really easy to fail isn't respectful of the time invested for people who don't have much time to keep pounding their head against a wall.

What is this bs about respecting peoples time by making every content mindless 1 spamming and afking?

This has nothing to do with not respecting time, this is a joke.

[Gehenna.3625]

14 minutes ago, MokahTGS.7850 said:

Scaling has always been Anets problem.  Nothing scales correctly because the game design has too many moving parts.  That leaves Anet in a bad position of having to cater to the lowest common denominator, which is casual players.

 

All content that is released with a requirement of a group working together will get nerfed or changed after a while because organized groups will o longer be playing it...only random pugs will be left.

 

Enjoy your difficult content while you can, it will get nerfed.  They gave you raids, that is your stable hard content.  This is not that.

The thing is that they've set themselves up to fail in that regard. What I mean is that the DPS output of an average casual, isn't even in the same ball park is the DPS of an average raider. Same with WvW and PvP for that matter. 

 

Of course there is a point in rewarding people who really get into it, but because the difference is so enormous, there will never be a good average for content and the more casual players will never want to improve to do content because they are discouraged by this gap and how to close it. I would think that they aren't interested in fact in closing that gap. If you want to have that then you need to look at the combat system itself. 

 

So for me it would make sense to make separate content for each group but Anet seems to want to throw them together with all their might. And so content gets nerfed directly after release. At least that's how I see it.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Gehenna.3625

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The point you're missing is that the people that were willing to improve themselves already did that long ago. Most people don't do that - they just stop playing.

The point you're missing is that there are also new players comming to the game, so just because "some improved and some didn't want to" (even if it was correct) doesn't make it a complete set of data that can be used to claim what you just did.

Also the reason that some people don't try to improve might easly be that they find it easier to cry on the forum every now and then in order to try and squeeze more rewards for less gameplay, which is exactly what they're doing. Trying to base the content around people that just want to get everything for playing through barely anything by far isn't how you achieve any longevity in mmorpg and isn't even close to the valid argument when opposing content variety. And that IS what some people try to do, with literally saying that it's a cool event but should be a world boss. Why? Easy -because they want new rewards for the same 1-holding accompanied with semi afking. Those people can spam a fresh world boss every 10-15 minutes, there's absolutely no reason to add more of the same old passive non-content.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Ayrilana.1396]

7 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

The thing is that they've set themselves up to fail in that regard. What I mean is that the DPS output of an average casual, isn't even in the same ball park is the DPS of an average raider. Same with WvW and PvP for that matter. 

 

Of course there is a point in rewarding people who really get into it, but because the difference is so enormous, there will never be a good average for content and the more casual players will never want to improve to do content because they are discouraged by this gap and how to close it. I would think that they aren't interested in fact in closing that gap. If you want to have that then you need to look at the combat system itself. 

 

So for me it would make sense to make separate content for each group but Anet seems to want to throw them together with all their might. And so content gets nerfed directly after release. At least that's how I see it.

While there is a large variance in DPS between player population segments, it’s not the issue here as the DPS check is fairly low due to the boss for each lane having moderate HP values and the timer being very generous. 
 

There are several things causing the failures. One is that players are not CCing the champs during the lane defense causing them to go into the portal. This increases the bar by a fixed percentage each time. 
 

Another cause is that players are failing mechanics. I was in a group last night where every platform but one had finished their boss with over a minute left and we all watched a group of four players struggle to kill their boss because they couldn’t do the mechanic properly and attack it from behind.  
 

The other cause is that players just sit there and eat damage. 

[Gehenna.3625]

2 minutes ago, Ayrilana.1396 said:

While there is a large variance in DPS between player population segments, it’s not the issue here as the DPS check is fairly low due to the boss for each lane having moderate HP values and the timer being very generous. 
 

There are several things causing the failures. One is that players are not CCing the champs during the lane defense causing them to go into the portal. This increases the bar by a fixed percentage each time. 
 

Another cause is that players are failing mechanics. I was in a group last night where every platform but one had finished their boss with over a minute left and we all watched a group of four players struggle to kill their boss because they couldn’t do the mechanic properly and attack it from behind.  
 

The other cause is that players just sit there and eat damage. 

Well, casual players aren't interested in learning about fight specifics. Try as they might, Anet will never get a lot of people to come on board. They just want to pew pew and win. So there's that.

 

What I mean with the large difference in DPS, is that Anet is trying to corral more players into content that has boss mechanics and such, but they've set themselves up to fail in that regard. Raids will never be their interest nor do mechanics like dodging out of circles and cc'ing. That may seem silly to a lot of players but it's not quite as straightforward as it seems. First of all dodging has limited uses before it needs to recharge and there's like a bazillion red circles in a boss fight. Also cc is tricky for a lot of casuals because they have no idea what "cc" means even and if they do they have no idea which of their skills are considered cc to begin with.

 

So what I'm saying is that either Anet needs to simplify the combat system or accept that some groups will not mesh and have separate content for them. But they're trying to bring them together with things like this and the strike missions etc. and I'm just not sure why they are even trying to do this.

 

I daresay that a lot of casual players take no interest in the combat system at all. They just don't and when they see the difference between them and a skilled player, they are discouraged rather than encouraged or interested in doing better. I mean when they see somebody kill a mob in literally one second and they take 10 seconds or more, even if you look at your gear and specializations, a casual player will not know where to begin. Now that might be unfathomable to a skilled player but for a casual player it often comes down to either of two things: Either they really don't care about the combat system or they take a peek and give up because they have no idea what they're looking at.

[Dante.1763]

5 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Well, casual players aren't interested in learning about fight specifics. Try as they might, Anet will never get a lot of people to come on board. They just want to pew pew and win. So there's that.

 

What I mean with the large difference in DPS, is that Anet is trying to corral more players into content that has boss mechanics and such, but they've set themselves up to fail in that regard. Raids will never be their interest nor do mechanics like dodging out of circles and cc'ing. That may seem silly to a lot of players but it's not quite as straightforward as it seems. First of all dodging has limited uses before it needs to recharge and there's like a bazillion red circles in a boss fight. Also cc is tricky for a lot of casuals because they have no idea what "cc" means even and if they do they have no idea which of their skills are considered cc to begin with.

 

So what I'm saying is that either Anet needs to simplify the combat system or accept that some groups will not mesh and have separate content for them. But they're trying to bring them together with things like this and the strike missions etc. and I'm just not sure why they are even trying to do this.

 

I daresay that a lot of casual players take no interest in the combat system at all. They just don't and when they see the difference between them and a skilled player, they are discouraged rather than encouraged or interested in doing better. I mean when they see somebody kill a mob in literally one second and they take 10 seconds or more, even if you look at your gear and specializations, a casual player will not know where to begin. Now that might be unfathomable to a skilled player but for a casual player it often comes down to either of two things: Either they really don't care about the combat system or they take a peek and give up because they have no idea what they're looking at.

another thing is the CC bar scales badly..usually my thief with her pve build can break a CC bar in one go, and thanks to abusing the Deadeye recharge on initiative i can spam CC faster..i couldnt even get the bar broken on one of the champions. It did a quarter of its bar before i was out of initiative(including the regained stuff). The ranger and i was finally broke it, but the other player on our platform didnt help at all with it, thankfully they had DPS, but still..They need to have visible CC numbers, in blue, so players can see that it affects the blue bar.

[Cuks.8241]

I've been in successful groups today, flawless victories. It only required a patient commander and a simple player check of an ability to read the chat.

[Astralporing.1957]

57 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

The point you're missing is that there are also new players comming to the game, so just because "some improved and some didn't want to" (even if it was correct) doesn't make it a complete set of data that can be used to claim what you just did.

The new players won't be improving any better than the old ones. Those that are willing to improve will do so even without adding new content that is going to "help" them with that. Those that won;t improve with the current content though won;t improve either, even if you keep throwing new harder content at them from left and right.

 

Quote

Also the reason that some people don't try to improve might easly be that they find it easier to cry on the forum every now and then in order to try and squeeze more rewards for less gameplay, which is exactly what they're doing.

No. they don't improve because they don't find it fun. I know it's shocking to you, but not everyone finds fun in the same things you do.

 

Generally, trying to push people into doing things they do not find fun works exactly as well as you can expect - eventually they just leave in order to find things that are fun to them.

 

I mean, we've had this discussion before in the very same situation ("we" as a community, because the individual people were different then, of course). It happened during the original Marionette, years ago. And guess what? Even though there's now way more content designed to push players upward, the overall situation did not change even a little bit.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Dante.1763]

1 hour ago, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

idk what went wrong with these ppl... dont u guys find doing triple trouble event a bit different and fun and engaging? and this event is not that much demanding in terms of coordination when compared to triple trouble.... and kills are possible as u are well aware of it.... and it just need 50 ppl .. whereas TT 3 squad tags 150 ppl and more anyone can screwup the total event by either killing the abomination at wrong time and trigger the cobalt gunpowder reset timer at wrong time or.. fillup the 3rd phytotoxin extractor without being in sync with the other squads... and yet.. here we are complaining and trying our best to prevent anet from making some fun content like this and content that might help improve ppl to get ready for next level content in gw2... 

 

Am I looking at it the wrong perspective or u guys just outright reject it? or am I rejecting it?if i am rejecting something, what is it? 🤔🥴

I dont actually enjoy TT, I did it enough for the achievements due to the wyrm guild running it and i stopped. If the ascended items dropped more commonly id probably do it more, i do want the Wyrm helmet, BUT for the time investment not being able to get a decent reward sucks, especially with the risk of failure. Lemme get wyrm tokens for my time, its a fun event, but the drop rate is awful. The rewards need to equal the time invested for me to do content over and over and over.

 

Marionette only has the rewards to equal the time invested while the bonus event is up, once thats gone, and the public event is gone, its gonna die off again.

 

And you are missing something: Not everyone finds challenging content engaging or fun, and thats why the public version needs to stay for good, as a regular world boss, its above tequatl in difficulty but below TT, not to hard, not to easy, and while theres a risk of it failing its alot less of a risk than TT. The rewards are lackluster though, a problem that TT also has i said above.

 

Keeping both forever would allow the folks who want to run the harder squad version continue to have their hard content, and allow those who dont like difficult content the ability to get the rewards and the experience of the encounter too. Squads get the advantage of it not being on a timer, and everyone else has to wait for the event to go live.

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The new players won't be improving any better than the old ones. Those that are willing to improve will do so even without adding new content that is going to "help" them with that. Those that won;t improve with the current content though won;t improve either, even if you keep throwing new harder content at them from left and right.

But it means there are always newer players that want and do improve and that enjoy content of that type. It's not a process of "improve and then go back to pressing 1, because you have no alternative as astralporing said players don't want that", what are you failing to understand here? Your solution to content is just repeatedly releasing same autoattack zerg worldboss encounters that reward literal afking more than anything else?

 

Quote

No. they don't improve because they don't find it fun.

So they can keep pressing 1 in a whole lot of current (but also constantly released) content if diversity of gameplay is not what they look for, pretty easy. I see it's hard to understand for you, but I never said "stop releasing any easy content", but on the offchance we have something harder released, it's suddenly "omg what are you doing anet, we can't have it because players totally don't improve".

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Ayrilana.1396]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Well, casual players aren't interested in learning about fight specifics. Try as they might, Anet will never get a lot of people to come on board. They just want to pew pew and win. So there's that.

 

What I mean with the large difference in DPS, is that Anet is trying to corral more players into content that has boss mechanics and such, but they've set themselves up to fail in that regard. Raids will never be their interest nor do mechanics like dodging out of circles and cc'ing. That may seem silly to a lot of players but it's not quite as straightforward as it seems. First of all dodging has limited uses before it needs to recharge and there's like a bazillion red circles in a boss fight. Also cc is tricky for a lot of casuals because they have no idea what "cc" means even and if they do they have no idea which of their skills are considered cc to begin with.

 

So what I'm saying is that either Anet needs to simplify the combat system or accept that some groups will not mesh and have separate content for them. But they're trying to bring them together with things like this and the strike missions etc. and I'm just not sure why they are even trying to do this.

 

I daresay that a lot of casual players take no interest in the combat system at all. They just don't and when they see the difference between them and a skilled player, they are discouraged rather than encouraged or interested in doing better. I mean when they see somebody kill a mob in literally one second and they take 10 seconds or more, even if you look at your gear and specializations, a casual player will not know where to begin. Now that might be unfathomable to a skilled player but for a casual player it often comes down to either of two things: Either they really don't care about the combat system or they take a peek and give up because they have no idea what they're looking at.

Content should not be designed towards those who do not want to try.  There will be some content in the game which does require some effort with this being one of them. The vast majority of open world content requires little to no effort.

 

The mechanics of this meta are very simple and not comparable to raids and certainly do not require someone to have that caliber of skill to pull off. The meta completion rate when it first released increased substantially over the course of its release to the point that it succeeded the majority of the time. The same will likely occur here and especially if they make the public version permanent. 
 

Players just need time to learn the meta and I’d be very helpful for fellow players who know what to do to offer tips in map chat. I’ve been in so many instances where not a peep was made about the mechanics as if everyone assumed everyone already knew what to do. 

[HotDelirium.7984]

18 hours ago, Zephire.8049 said:

 

 

That's not fun and few will do it after the public option is removed once the novelty wears off. Especially since you could down 2-3 raid bosses in the same amount of time.

 

They updated the drop rates of the eye infusions finally but months later? It's cool if you want to go back but I won't be; I already farmed it for months.

This is why it's crucial to get it right the FIRST time. First impressions are everything! Where was the playtesting? If they couldn't even get 50 ANET employees to playtest one encounter real fast even just one time (kitten, schedule it out LEADS so everyone can make it) then that's very unfortunate.

Edited July 15, 2021 by HotDelirium.7984

[Mieka.2583]

I am truly not sure what you mean by Balanced Content unless you are talking about how balanced some servers are very packed and drop down so they can fight low pop servers yeah that’s truly balanced. I have attempted doing this event 5 times thus far and have had it fail every time, if this is something that is there simply for the novelty of seeing who is interested in this type of content well I as well as many others I am sure would be much more interested if this was a winnable meta event.

Considering the first 3 times I was with squads of 50 and were very well-organized private squads and failed and then with 2 public and failed.

This is what I submitted in the form of a trouble ticket and maybe I am just whining about not being able to complete…

This is not a problem for me personally however for the whole community, I would simply like to know Why the Hell you would bring something back that is not completable even with a full 50 player squad that is semi organized, Is this a sign that everyone needs to have Raid Meta Builds in order to survive and get these achievements? That is completely ridiculous that you would bring this back for a very short period and expect players that want these achievements to be able to accomplish them, I do not expect it to be easy however being able to complete would be Freaking Awesome. However, Since the game is steadily going downhill I suppose I shouldn't expect much

[Vancho.8750]

4 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Well, casual players aren't interested in learning about fight specifics. Try as they might, Anet will never get a lot of people to come on board. They just want to pew pew and win. So there's that.

 

What I mean with the large difference in DPS, is that Anet is trying to corral more players into content that has boss mechanics and such, but they've set themselves up to fail in that regard. Raids will never be their interest nor do mechanics like dodging out of circles and cc'ing. That may seem silly to a lot of players but it's not quite as straightforward as it seems. First of all dodging has limited uses before it needs to recharge and there's like a bazillion red circles in a boss fight. Also cc is tricky for a lot of casuals because they have no idea what "cc" means even and if they do they have no idea which of their skills are considered cc to begin with.

 

So what I'm saying is that either Anet needs to simplify the combat system or accept that some groups will not mesh and have separate content for them. But they're trying to bring them together with things like this and the strike missions etc. and I'm just not sure why they are even trying to do this.

 

I daresay that a lot of casual players take no interest in the combat system at all. They just don't and when they see the difference between them and a skilled player, they are discouraged rather than encouraged or interested in doing better. I mean when they see somebody kill a mob in literally one second and they take 10 seconds or more, even if you look at your gear and specializations, a casual player will not know where to begin. Now that might be unfathomable to a skilled player but for a casual player it often comes down to either of two things: Either they really don't care about the combat system or they take a peek and give up because they have no idea what they're looking at.

That is the problem these people have not been pushed to do basic stuff in 80 levels, they don't know that they are terrible at the game, they have not been given an incentive to be average at the game. Arenanet has decided to pander to them and at some point they leave since they are bored of the game, and the those that stayed and became long term players get boring content and at some point they will leave too since Arenanet tries to cater to a demographic that does not care for the game. May flies are not sustainable, at some point they will run out of them and the shrinking long term population will not promote the game, there is already a large population on the internet trashing the game for being boring or not supported or the most common dead.

All Arenanet had to do is root the problem in the bud and force people to learn the game gradually in the 80 levels of the core game, the simple "Do this or you will not progress" is fine if the task is simple, even a crash course in the booster area would do wonders to bridge the gap between players, and if people are too stubborn to not learn and leave, they most probably would not have been a benefit to the game and would not have stayed for long anyway.      

      

[firedragon.8953]

Just did the marionette for the first time (didn't have the chance during LWS1).

It was a lot of fun! Didn't find it too hard (public instance). Much easier than Triple Trouble in my opinion. Everything seemed to go smoothly (commander tags on each lane) and decent understanding of break bars, etc. Maybe I was just lucky, but not sure this could be considered "too hard". Hope to run it a few more times during the week, and hopefully it becomes a regular organized squad event like Triple Trouble, etc., since I hope to do each lane at least once.

I could see where RNG could split groups up poorly on the platforms which could cause the instance to fail though. It may be nice to be able to teleport/jump to help other platforms after clearing your own, since I can imagine it being annoying to wipe because of poor random team distribution.

Overall, just wanted to say thanks to the devs for bringing back some LWS1 content. I hope the trend continues and we get the LWS1 story episodes moved up to the correct place in the Journal and a few more story episodes to create continuity, and maybe even a Battle for Lion's Arch group instance. Would love to play them. I think the idea of "mist reality manifestation" is a great way to reintroduce LWS1 content with a slight spin and finally connect the core story to all preceding content. New players who weren't around during the live LWS1 are just suffering from a little bit of "rift reality confusion" maybe, and the echos in the mists may collapse our current reality, so "go correct it" kinda thing? 

[ugrakarma.9416]

6 hours ago, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

idk what went wrong with these ppl... dont u guys find doing triple trouble event a bit different and fun and engaging? and this event is not that much demanding in terms of coordination when compared to triple trouble....

Triple Trouble dont have a "fail everything" in hands of few ppl, i.e. dont requires a "perfect group". even if 5~10 players afk.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

2 minutes ago, firedragon.8953 said:

Just did the marionette for the first time (didn't have the chance during LWS1).

It was a lot of fun! Didn't find it too hard (public instance). Much easier than Triple Trouble in my opinion. Everything seemed to go smoothly (commander tags on each lane) and decent understanding of break bars, etc. Maybe I was just lucky, but not sure this could be considered "too hard". Hope to run it a few more times during the week, and hopefully it becomes a regular organized squad event like Triple Trouble, etc., since I hope to do each lane at least once.

I could see where RNG could split groups up poorly on the platforms which could cause the instance to fail though. It may be nice to be able to teleport/jump to help other platforms after clearing your own, since I can imagine it being annoying to wipe because of poor random team distribution.

Overall, just wanted to say thanks to the devs for bringing back some LWS1 content. I hope the trend continues and we get the LWS1 story episodes moved up to the correct place in the Journal and a few more story episodes to create continuity, and maybe even a Battle for Lion's Arch group instance. Would love to play them. I think the idea of "mist reality manifestation" is a great way to reintroduce LWS1 content with a slight spin and finally connect the core story to all preceding content. New players who weren't around during the live LWS1 are just suffering from a little bit of "rift reality confusion" maybe, and the echos in the mists may collapse our current reality, so "go correct it" kinda thing? 

This was my experience today too running it for the first time.  I was a little nervous not knowing what to expect and not wanting to be the cause of a failure.  A few people gave some tips in the chat while we were waiting and made sure there were enough people at all the numbered spots.  I'm glad I got to experience this!  I hope to run it a few more times this week.

[Image.8630]

2 hours delay between event is ridiculous.    I play limited time in the evening and 10pm is too late for me. I got to the Eye, no info on where to find the marionette then NO you have to sit here and wait for an hour and 1/2.  Seriously!  Why every 2 hours Anet?   🤬

[Obtena.7952]

Ah, look at all the issues being brought up related to the non-casual friendly nature of the content and it's implementation ... someone want to tell me again how that's not a problem?

[xianvar.6075]

15 hours ago, Crystal Paladin.3871 said:

what will happen if we keep on asking anet to give baby bottles ? would the future gw2 players all would get a fixed mindset that anything thats more than skill#1  shd be deemed unworthy?

 

I believe its a right time anet try to introduce ppl to new and lil bit of hard content to get them ready for indulging in all kind of content gw2 has in store for them

I said this earlier but wanted to reiterate on this: I stayed because the game was accessible. So without the "baby bottle" content, I'd probably have gotten discouraged -- I played a bit of League years ago (oof), but mostly stuck to single player stuff/turn-based strategy with my gaming (think Civilization Series, Oxygen Not Included, Dishonored I). But I came to GW2 after having tried ESO (which was very uninviting and I couldn't figure out, and it wasn't fun enough to make me put in the time) and it just clicked. The content was accessible, it was rewarding right from the start, and it made me motivated to keep at it and improve myself because I didn't have to be a "whiz" to get into it.

It probably also helped that I didn't start out alone (have been playing with the bf) so even the more difficult HoT content remained (mostly) fun. But had I been alone? Not sure if the frustration of just repeatedly dying would have made me leave quickly (it's much easier to "get better" and "improve" if you're not alone but have someone else who can help in the moment so you don't get overwhelmed and can spot you bc some things are more apparent from the outside than the inside if you're flailing around trying not to die xD).

I would claim that I have improved myself. And I had fun doing so. But forcing people to improve usually just makes them leave the game entirely. You want them to want to improve. And you don't achieve that by telling them to "git gud". That's why I'm a big proponent of the "choose your own difficulty" content. Like for example fractals. Super nice. You have easy ones to get into and they slowly scale you up until you look back and go "how could I ever find scale 1 difficult??" (but I did when I was very new and still just trying to figure out my rotation). Use rewards, not punishment.

 

I think this is why most people who think the squad-based content is too difficult are not for nerfs (at least I have seen very few people asking for outright nerfs). All I've seen is people wanting to retain the Marionette in the public version as it is right now. Maybe increase the rewards a little bit (make the chance to drop the infusions that can be dropped from the bonus chests a permanent tiny chance), but keep the public squad difficulty the same. Don't nerf. The difficulty is fine; the margin of error in the private squad is not.

[AliamRationem.5172]

The marionette is okay, but the design feels a bit dated.  My biggest complaint is the Vinewrath-style wait-your-turn mechanics in a fight featuring 5 separate lanes and nothing but the same repeat filler while you're waiting.  The other issue I have is the pass/fail aspect of the split phase, wherein a single platform can cause the event to fail.  This is especially problematic for the private version, where a very small number of players can cause the entire event to fail.

 

If I could redesign this event, I think I would prefer it if all groups performed the split simultaneously and failed platforms only served to fill a failure bar while successful platforms contribute to success (not 100% pass or fail as it is now).  In addition, severing a chain would advance the "filler" phase to something different, not just more of the endless stream of the same enemies.

[Macilien.3078]

Talking purely about private instances, the problem is not that it's too hard but that it is too volatile. Having only groups of 2 on each platform means only 3 of those has to "mess up" to have the event fail and with 2 people usually 1 person is enough to drag the group down. Mess up in this context may also be a technical or RL issue.

 

So the one thing that needs a fix in some way is volatility, if they fix this I don't mind them making the rest harder.