Guild Wars 2

Maybe I’m very wrong here, but on every overflow I have played on, in my experience…

During Knight events there is at least a group of 20-25 players who were farming while knight events took place, not participating.

Everyone initially stacked on blue or red, because those were usually downed and so their loot chests are awarded (even I feel encouraged to do the same). Because you do not know who is getting the buff until the event is underway, no one moves.

It seemed the fact that there were clearly a number of people without the appropriate buff not inflicting damage, either didn’t understand the mechanics, or simply ignored them / couldnt be bothered to move to a different knight.

Green was always left to last, and because of the above, had 20 players at most attacking it until red and blue were downed (all too often red went down first.. and then they moved to blue..then to green..)

The events seems to NEED 50 on each knight, so a full map needs to commit to the event. This all gates access to the end of the living story, I have done my meta, but if someone started playing this content today I wouldn’t like their chances of getting in.

I have been on for most of the day, and haven’t got through to holograms once. I started on green all day and so received no loot, except the first run of the morning, when I started on red.

Perhaps the event needs to be tweaked to allow for people who dont understand, cant be bothered, or are in LA doing other things like heirloom / champ farming. At the very least, allow players to claim a buff before the event starts, so we can identify who isnt going to inflict damage, and encourage them directly to move elsewhere.

Maguuma hasn’t beat it a single time since the patch, guild member can’t even see the end of the story. We’re splitting up too it’s just scaled or balanced for the top few servers or something, now hardly anyone is zoning in. The ones that do just kill one knight, get the chest and leave.

This is certainly true. I may have been unlucky so far, but after 4 days of playing this ‘grand finale’ I haven’t seen the knights cleared even once, and thus, I am permanently locked out of the content that there allegedly is.

It is not just bad design, but something that actively discourages continuing to play the game, when a major feature, built up for an entire year, is botched like this.

Yup, same problem here. I just wanna defeat Scarlet already!

Failed the event five times in the row after the patch. Can’t get to Scarlet anymore.

Justin.7163:

Yup, same problem here. I just wanna defeat Scarlet already!

If all you want to do is get the ending and kill scarlet there is a backdoor entrance on the Diverse Ledges. You need to build the back piece up fine quality (which isn’t too costly) ¹ and that should set you on your way to killing Scarlet.

¹ – If you need help here are the permanent rich iron ore node locations

Edited to correct information.

Yes, but as you say, it can be costly – and skips the hologram event

SirMoogie.9263:

Justin.7163:

Yup, same problem here. I just wanna defeat Scarlet already!

If all you want to do is get the ending and kill scarlet there is a backdoor entrance on the Diverse Ledges. You need to build the back piece up to exotic quality (which can be costly if you don’t have a lot of iron ore around ¹), but that should set you on your way to killing Scarlet.

¹ – Permanent rich iron ore node locations

Pretty sure all you need is the blue lvl 20 tier to enter the backdoor.

Same problem here, we had 40 people at blue and 20 and 20 at the others. At 3 minutes left blue was still at 75% health.

ANet, do you guys play this game? I’m serious, I’m not trying to be smarmy even though this is extremely disappointing, but do you guys actually play this game with the patches you make before you release them?

It. Is. Impossible. To bring down any of the knights right now. You guys must’ve not tested this, because if you did you’d have seen this is impossible! You literally fixed a problem that didn’t exist. Everyone had it down, blue – green – red. The ONLY problem you guys made last time was there was no loot, but at least you fixed the holo bug out. NOW ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVEN GET THERE TO BEGIN WITH.

OH MY GOD

GOOOOOOOOD JOB

Seras.5702:

SirMoogie.9263:

Justin.7163:

Yup, same problem here. I just wanna defeat Scarlet already!

If all you want to do is get the ending and kill scarlet there is a backdoor entrance on the Diverse Ledges. You need to build the back piece up to exotic quality (which can be costly if you don’t have a lot of iron ore around ¹), but that should set you on your way to killing Scarlet.

¹ – Permanent rich iron ore node locations

Pretty sure all you need is the blue lvl 20 tier to enter the backdoor.

Yep, the blue one is enough.

As for myself, i am once again blocked by an achievement that absolutely doesn’t rely on my personnal skill/experience/build/whatever…
How are we supposed to get Six minutes to knightfall, if even Desolation’s main can’t get under 8 minutes on prime time a friday night?

Just put more burn phases already, like every 10% of life or so…

Pinchy.1784:

Same problem here, we had 40 people at blue and 20 and 20 at the others. At 3 minutes left blue was still at 75% health.

ANet, do you guys play this game? I’m serious, I’m not trying to be smarmy even though this is extremely disappointing, but do you guys actually play this game with the patches you make before you release them?

It. Is. Impossible. To bring down any of the knights right now. You guys must’ve not tested this, because if you did you’d have seen this is impossible! You literally fixed a problem that didn’t exist. Everyone had it down, blue – green – red. The ONLY problem you guys made last time was there was no loot, but at least you fixed the holo bug out. NOW ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVEN GET THERE TO BEGIN WITH.

OH MY GOD

GOOOOOOOOD JOB

Clearly the event wasn’t intended to be zerged blue>green>red, or it wouldn’t have been updated. Also, it was probably an attempt to fix a more systematic bug in that too many players tagging the same mob didn’t always receive loot from the knights.

You guys do know there is a portal that (if you have the spinal back piece) will take you directly to scarlet to finish her off… You might miss out on… oh I’d say not even 1% of the story doing so but hey you can finish.

SnicerTenu.4321:

You guys do know there is a portal that (if you have the spinal back piece) will take you directly to scarlet to finish her off… You might miss out on… oh I’d say not even 1% of the story doing so but hey you can finish.

I made it through the portal with my ele who does not have a spinal back piece. I do have an exotic version on my warrior however. It may just be a requirement that you have one on your account?

Basically, we figured out how to beat it, so they made it harder. Since we couldn’t get the 6 minute mark on my server we settled for downing all three knights so everyone could get in and take out Scarlet. And if it wasn’t meant to be zerged then they shouldn’t have made the knights so tough in the first place. Then the players would have naturally split up and tried to down them in the 6 minute time frame because they’d be doable with smaller groups.

I can see making you get attuned to damage the knights, but why limit the number of people who can become attuned? Just make it more like the Holo fight and it would have been fine. Instead, they’ve made LA into a ghost town with barely anyone(in other words, not enough people) participating.

“Break up the zerg! It’s ruining the game!!!”

“Gah! Let us zerg! What happened to ‘play how we want???’”

I don’t understand why Arena.net “doesn’t listen to their fans.” It’s not like the player base wants different things or anything.

Increasing the Knight’s toughness so all our attacks only do 50% of our damage pre-patch isn’t helping matters either; nor is the bug where Menders heal the Blue Knight back to full if they manage to reach it.

Pinchy.1784:

Same problem here, we had 40 people at blue and 20 and 20 at the others. At 3 minutes left blue was still at 75% health.

ANet, do you guys play this game? I’m serious, I’m not trying to be smarmy even though this is extremely disappointing, but do you guys actually play this game with the patches you make before you release them?

It. Is. Impossible. To bring down any of the knights right now. You guys must’ve not tested this, because if you did you’d have seen this is impossible! You literally fixed a problem that didn’t exist. Everyone had it down, blue – green – red. The ONLY problem you guys made last time was there was no loot, but at least you fixed the holo bug out. NOW ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO EVEN GET THERE TO BEGIN WITH.

OH MY GOD

GOOOOOOOOD JOB

PREACH!!!

chemiclord.3978:

“Break up the zerg! It’s ruining the game!!!”

“Gah! Let us zerg! What happened to ‘play how we want???’”

I don’t understand why Arena.net “doesn’t listen to their fans.” It’s not like the player base wants different things or anything.

Does the fact that different people have different and opposite opinions surprise you?

No one was calling ANet to break up the zerg on the knights. The incentive to not zerg was for an optional achievement, which is something reasonable. What isn’t reasonable and is currently ruining the game is to prevent a large portion of players from entering the hologram fight.

Personally, the hologram is the most fun part of this week’s LS update. I am not taking this kindly when the most important factor of winning the encounter is to be on the right server/overflow where the entire map of players must be present on fighting the knights when they spawn (not going to happen), and they are lv80 in zerk gear and have decent build (also not realistic to expect).

I hear Shatterer calling. As well as a lot of other neglected bosses.

Just completed it with no problem in an Overflow.

Sounds like we’ve got a lot of PEBKAC errors here.

Glad you could get an overflow. Not happening for a while on my server. This change favors big servers yet again.

EU, SFR here. Haven’t been able to complete the event either. It’s the same story as with the marionette, played it about 20 times, but my server (whether main or overflow) simply kept failing. It’s so annoying not to be able to complete content through no fault of your own.

I have to agree, the event was fun the way it was, now it is not, now its just a major mess… please change it back..

chemiclord.3978:

Just completed it with no problem in an Overflow.

Sounds like we’ve got a lot of PEBKAC errors here.

Let’s see the stream where you were personally responsible for that victory.

chemiclord.3978:

“Break up the zerg! It’s ruining the game!!!”

“Gah! Let us zerg! What happened to ‘play how we want???’”

I don’t understand why Arena.net “doesn’t listen to their fans.” It’s not like the player base wants different things or anything.

Except it hasn’t really broken up the zerg.. all that happens now is you get 3 smaller zergs.. and that’s if your lucky enuff to be on a server/overflow with enuff to form the other 2 zergs.
Add to that players are being forced into playing outside of their chosen builds because anets way to slow progression of the event is to make condi builds an enemy of the state.
I am no fan of zerg content but this patch has only made many servers turn away from completing it.. instead players just take the 1 chest and go kill a few random champs and achievement champs until the next knights spawn then rinse repeat. Why? cos unless your able to play in that narrow prime time slot the events is all but out of reach… scaling is good for a reason and this event just sucks donkey if your server/overflow is shortmanned most of the time imo.

SirMoogie.9263:

Justin.7163:

Yup, same problem here. I just wanna defeat Scarlet already!

If all you want to do is get the ending and kill scarlet there is a backdoor entrance on the Diverse Ledges. You need to build the back piece up fine quality (which isn’t too costly) ¹ and that should set you on your way to killing Scarlet.

¹ – If you need help here are the permanent rich iron ore node locations

Edited to correct information.

Thanks for the info but this is an absolutely last resort option for me. Only my warrior has the back piece but I would largely prefer for my main character (my Mesmer) to complete the Scarlet arc since he’s been the one with whom I’ve been completing every story instance/event. And as others have said, this option will have me miss some (even if it’s miniscule) of the final confrontation.

Ok harsh comments are out of my system. The new content is really cool, but after the most recent patch, I’m not going to get to see any of it except for the stuff I’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks.

Please switch it back to the previous version.

Anet managed to suck all the fun out of a previously fun event by designing it around TTS. Catering to a single guild is not a good idea. Most open world events especially overflows are massive unorganized PuGs with no voice communication.

This kind of DPS race and coordination requirement belongs in instanced dungeons. Not open world events.

It’s simply scaled badly. They should realise about 70% (random figures wooo) of the pve player base are terrible players and you can’t expect them to do coordinated things. Can’t expect the 30% to carry the other 70% to do events.

Devildoc.6721:

Anet managed to suck all the fun out of a previously fun event by designing it around TTS. Catering to a single guild is not a good idea. Most open world events especially overflows are massive unorganized PuGs with no voice communication.

This kind of DPS race and coordination requirement belongs in instanced dungeons. Not open world events.

I’ve succeeded plenty of times on overflows. People just need to learn to dodge. So often on servers that fail it’s because over 75% of the players consistently get pulled every time.

Ayrilana.1396:

Devildoc.6721:

Anet managed to suck all the fun out of a previously fun event by designing it around TTS. Catering to a single guild is not a good idea. Most open world events especially overflows are massive unorganized PuGs with no voice communication.

This kind of DPS race and coordination requirement belongs in instanced dungeons. Not open world events.

I’ve succeeded plenty of times on overflows. People just need to learn to dodge. So often on servers that fail it’s because over 75% of the players consistently get pulled every time.

Problem is most people don’t visit these forums, and they wont learn how to do anything, they’ll just stop doing it, and we’ll end up in a position where the main servers have enough to be capped, but the OFs end up being underpopulated.

The last two overflows I’ve done have failed, on the first one that failed I started targeting the people that were left, and saw very few of them had any sort of food or potion buffs. Though, on the second overflow most people had buffs, and we were able to down green easily, but ended up failing because blue reset.

There are always people in chat telling people to make sure to use potions, and when to dodge, but some just flat out don’t do it, and they’re not going to change.

You can use the portal to reach Scarlet as long as one of your characters have the backpiece equipped. It doesn’t have to be the one that enters the portal.

I don’t know if you have to do it first with the character who has the backpiece. But you could enter the portal with that one and just log off.

I think a lot of mains are failing too. I’m on AG which is a pretty active server, but I’ve not seen max players at any of the knights when I’ve been in the event. I can’t imagine doing this event on a less active server.

I’m kinda annoyed that the potions that drop can only be used by lvl 80. I’m not lvl 80 yet. And everyone is yelling to use them. I can’t!

Devildoc.6721:

Anet managed to suck all the fun out of a previously fun event by designing it around TTS. Catering to a single guild is not a good idea. Most open world events especially overflows are massive unorganized PuGs with no voice communication.

This kind of DPS race and coordination requirement belongs in instanced dungeons. Not open world events.

How have they designed it around TTS? TTS was zerging the knights down, one by one, before the change.

And yeah, for the record, CD main failed every time I was around for it today. One random overflow succeeded, as did a TTS run. But yeah, many mains are having issues.

Can they scale these or something now that they capped them? Its difficult to even have a chance get into the rest of the content even at prime time on my server and pretty much impossible during any other time.

If this is how living story is gonna be with all that build up and then heavy gating at the end then I don’t think I will be staying around for much longer. If you want to make large scale challenging content then put in instance raids already and stop making living story feel like a waste of time after the first 2 days assuming of release to anyone still trying to do it.

I have tried the event 4 times on two different servers since the patch, and I have seen it failed for the same reason each time. 20+ people at each knight don’t notice they are doing 0 damage for 15 minutes of attacking, and if you try to tell them that the buff is the only way to harm the knights, you get a ‘I play my way’ speech.

Uplevel scepter mesmers can’t be carried if your server is already struggling to carry the level 80 peeps who don’t understand the buff. The sheer number of players dropping skills that ONLY apply a condition…

I’m still curious why ArenaNet creates these large events – with their main promotion of ‘bringing communities together’ – and yet they don’t supply the one thing we need to make this work. Integrated voice.

It’s possible to have this as a free option (Vivox in SL), or even paid (Vivox in Eve). Even offering better integration with the ‘independent’ Vivox system (C3) would work too, but not optimal.

Now I have no issues with using an external voice server (this is still very common, even with Eve), but that becomes a weak point if it becomes a direct or (usually) indirect attack point by a bored cracker. Integrated voice allows a backup method in a pinch.

Natomi.9427:

SnicerTenu.4321:

You guys do know there is a portal that (if you have the spinal back piece) will take you directly to scarlet to finish her off… You might miss out on… oh I’d say not even 1% of the story doing so but hey you can finish.

I made it through the portal with my ele who does not have a spinal back piece. I do have an exotic version on my warrior however. It may just be a requirement that you have one on your account?

If you have gotten he achieve for equip spinal exotic, you only need it on the account. If not, as far as I know, it needs to be on the character.

On Tuesday I managed one out of three attempts, but we were still learning to use the successful “rotating zerg” technique.

On Wednesday I managed two out of three attempts.

On Thursday I managed one out of three.

On Friday I managed zero out of three, so, mission accomplished ANet, I suppose. Get yourselves a banner.

Koven Acris.5236:

The events seems to NEED 50 on each knight, so a full map needs to commit to the event. This all gates access to the end of the living story, I have done my meta, but if someone started playing this content today I wouldn’t like their chances of getting in.

I have been on for most of the day, and haven’t got through to holograms once. I started on green all day and so received no loot, except the first run of the morning, when I started on red.

This is the same fail with Wurm world boss. GG Anet Professionists!

It’s not a matter of integrated voice, actually you cannot cohordinate 150 people all together, there are problems of hierarchy, discipline, leadership. It would be a kittenting chaos.

This is not army, you have to keep in consideration the casualplayers.

kitten

What people are going to do now is to get the Backpack and kitten off the Knights.
Is this a smart way to fix problems?

Before 6/3 patch – not having a buff = 50% of damage, having a buff = 100% of damage
After 6/3 patch – not having a buff = 0% of damage, having a buff = 50% of damage.

It doesn’t help that developers forget to divide one number by 2 when changing the mechanics of the fight. I’m wondering if they are aware of that fact.

There’s nothing hard about the knights. With the 50 limiter visible on the UI, no coordination is needed either, assuming people understand it.

The problem with the knights is that it’s another spotlight on the zerker issue. You only need maybe 30 zerkers that know how to play to kill one. Add in 20 bad players or players with low DPS however and it becomes much harder due to scaling, because now those zerkers have to carry 20 additional people. Back when you could simply zerg them, this was less of an issue because scaling isn’t on a 1 to 1 ratio.

In a real scenario, I doubt you’d be able to get a random team of mostly decent DPS, so you end up either barely making the timer or not at all. ArenaNet simply has higher expectations when they balance these encounters.

If the failure rate is still high after a couple days, they’ll surely get nerfed.

Well I have same problem but after trying it twice and third time getting to the holograms I was so excited to finally kill her then I saw like at least 10 players staying on one side where they cannot get hit and do nothing. Then due to their lack of participation we failed. So it is like so close and then fail due to leeches which is very unfair to people who actually want to participate.

I suggest that if you get to finally kill the holograms that if you are afk for a min you get chucked out. No use to killing anything if you do not do any dmg to anything.

[quote=3735662;Healix.5819:ArenaNet simply has higher expectations[/quote]

I’d point out to any Dev that Zerker isn’t a higher form of playing. Nor is Zerker a harder or more skillful form of playing. Especially when bosses can one shot you! Such high damage Boss attacks make every gear stat have virtually the same survivability.

Meanwhile, with the Zerker nerf incoming, why would anyone wish to buy more of it???

The recent updates did not improve the events at all. If anything, it was as step in the wrong direction. Because now those of us in Zerker are just getting annoyed that the events are still failing.

Oh, it’s definitely beatable on overflow…If you don’t have to deal with trolls >_>

My overflow managed just fine yesterday – until some idiots pulled the blue knight into a group of menders, who insta-healed him by ca. 70%, 4 minutes before the timer was over… (We’d have needed maybe 2 more minutes to kill him).

The DPS check coupled with the extra punishment for Conditionbuilds is nuts though, particularly in open world content. Congrats on AGAIN telling people that they would be stupid for choosing anything other than zerker gear -_-

Almost see it fail every time now.. so no chance for doing 6min or any of the holo achievements… great fun.

I think of one of the problems is that people still don’t pay attention to how the encounter works. Before the 50 man limit was put in, when you stepped into one of the circles you were given the buff with a one minute duration. Yet most of the population seemed to think you need to stay within the circle. Then they all got pulled into the knight, when they could have stepped into the circle, then stepped closer to the knight to avoid the pull.

Now with the 50 man limit, when you step into the circle the buff has a fifteen minute duration. It lasts the entire flippin’ fight! You step into a circle once and never have to again. But what do people do? They just run to and stand in the circles every time they pop and end up getting pulled.

But even with half of the people getting pulled every time on Maguuma last night, we pulled it off. I haven’t tried it since the last build late last night, but even with people being idiots it was doable. I don’t see myself ever getting that six minute achievement, but oh well, it’s just a few points.

It is perfectly beatable in overflows but to get an achievement without abusing summons? Killing knights in 10-11 minutes is equal to beating them below 6 minutes mark pre 6/3 patch.

Ayrilana.1396:

Devildoc.6721:

Anet managed to suck all the fun out of a previously fun event by designing it around TTS. Catering to a single guild is not a good idea. Most open world events especially overflows are massive unorganized PuGs with no voice communication.

This kind of DPS race and coordination requirement belongs in instanced dungeons. Not open world events.

I’ve succeeded plenty of times on overflows. People just need to learn to dodge. So often on servers that fail it’s because over 75% of the players consistently get pulled every time.

We’re still talking about a massive PuG. I’m dodging almost every pull (I’ve gotten pulled a few times thanks to getting stuck in a channeled animation) but I see a lot of people get sucked in, yes. I can’t dodge for all those other people too.

What really killed the fun of this fight is the ridiculous damage resistance they gave the knights. Even with the attunement buff I’m doing 1/3 of the damage I do to normal mobs. Prior to the patch I was doing about 1.5x the damage I do to normal mobs when I had the attunement buff.

Meteor shower in berserker’s gear with tornado up hitting for only 3000 a tick? That’s pathetic damage. The same skill combination the other day was doing 10000 damage a tick, heck, the lightning bolts thrown out by tornado were doing 3000. Now they do 1000.

It was too many changes to the fight all at the same time. All because ONE GUILD did the previous fight in 3 minutes.

Anet you want to make challenging stuff for TTS? Put it in an instanced Raid Dungeon.