Guild Wars 2

well the problem now is that since they changed how it was, there’s no point at all to helping out with the other knights since: i still go so i can sometimes heal people still fighting them.. it’s all i can do.

(if) it’s maxed out you can’t do damage to it at all, so there’s no point in being there.
(if) there’s room and you can do damage to it, you won’t receive extra loot.
(or) not enough players interested in the event now because of the change/ no extra loot gained.

they should have left it like it was, though since everyone was complaining about it. now it’s even worse. ~ who complains about extra loot… really? – though the thread was there. soo… changed.

DeWolfe.2174:

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.[/quote]

Zerkers will still do more damage than any other stat combination.

This just slows all damage in the game down, it does not make any other combinations better, because like you said, all sets have virtually the same survivability because Anet wants to reinforce active damage mitigation instead of passive damage mitigation. So what do you do? You go max damage.

Difficultly definitely feels off. Before the event SEEMED fairly well balanced with an achievement for some extra effort so TTS had something to work for (even though it was bugged) but a fairly low skill ceiling for the pugs so they could still experience the event. Just the loot was buggy.

Now sometimes in TTS’s low pop downtime we struggle with the event (mostly still get it though), pugs sounds like they’re struggling with the pre-event and we still can’t get the achievement because it’s bugged.

It’s a shame these bugs and rushed fixes are ruining the update because the rest of the patch is pretty well put together. Hopefully they fix things eventually and extend the time this living story is out to compensate for this issues in the first week.

Honestly; I think what Anet needs to do is simply include more concise on screen instructions. The mechanics of the knight battle isn’t that hard, nor is their hitpoints that high if you have enough people and they distribute themselves properly.

The PROBLEM is that your average PUG has the IQ of a wet paper towel, and is about as survivable. You can scream instructions at them til you’re blue in the face, and they are going to sit there smearing their face all over the bosses hammer even though there is 80 of them on the same boss (and only say, 8 people on the other).

Players have gotten into the idea of being force-fed instructions; so unless anet plans to make real raid instances out of this, they need to either:
a) keep it simple
b) force-feed instructions

You can bring a PUG to battle but you cannot make him think.

I think an indication of how the patch has affected things is reflected in the TP price for the rifle skins. 2 days ago 60 Gold. Today 130 Gold and has been rising all day.

I guess a lot of players cannot get passed the knights to have a chance at the drop so supply is bottle necked.

I Hope this gets a review soon. 4/6 fails for me me today.

It is BS that I need to join a TTS run to beat a knight down. Running with 40 or so on Sea of Sorrows at the blue knight to get to 60% in about 5 minutes to have one mender heal her back up to 95% (apparently, I never saw it – might have been graphics rendering – just know that is the only thing that increases her health). We bailed on blue and went to join red to at least get one knight down. 9 Minutes of 50 or so beating on her and only went to 50%. That has been pretty much the story since the patch every time I have joined knights outside a guild run.

TTS is a pretty geared and organized group: Guesting from multiple servers; Mortar & ele consumables; sharpening stones, food, banners, etc… all readied; people on Teamspeak for organization; pre-raid party organization and splits. I can see needing that to complete some of the optional metas (like maybe the 6 min one which currently does not award).

However, for just a chance at completion it is complete BS that a group of 50 people should not be able to finish a gating event with little trouble. These types of events should only fail completely with a proper number of people – even complete newbs with blue quality gearing – in rare circumstances.

The knights need to be scaled down dramatically.

The event all around just has design flaws. The placement of the knights was poor, with red being nearest a waypoint of course that would get zerged hard. Blue which is still relatively easy to get to via waypoint but would have been better placed up where the forge used to be. The green is off in no mans land and as such gets the least amount of people because it is a trek to get there from any waypoint. It should have been placed on the east side somewhere. This would have made splitting the zerg much more natural when the knights are easy to get to, people go the path of least resistance and you need to design around that.

The 50 player limit is just flat out bad in it’s current form. As the bosses die you should be able to help kill the remaining boss. I killed blue and green had died so we all went to red but we can do zero damage. The best we could do is give out some buffs and twiddle our thumbs. Obviously ArenaNet did not learn from Marionette that not being able to assist others that blockade your progress is a bad thing.

The condition reflection can only be described as incompetence. PvE condition specs were already in a horrible place, a place they certainly shouldn’t be a year and a half after release. When you design a game you want to not completely destroy mechanics that you’ve put in. If you offer 2 major damage dealing types you don’t want to design content that one of them cannot do. If you put in combo fields that a player cannot control whether they want the combo or not then you can’t make them a negative. Right now people laying down fire/poison/etheral fields are causing people to reflect combo conditions on themselves. Innocent players shouldn’t be negatively impacted by others. Even if you reflected the conditions back to the combo field layer, some classes don’t really have a choice in laying them, which goes back to not destroying mechanics you put in. The better choice would have been to make 1 knight reflect conditions and then give the other knights different abilities. Things like corrupting boons, reflecting projectiles, draining endurance, or self applied boons that need removed. Things that have counter play. Heck you can go one step further and make conditions among the 3 shared, so even though one reflects if the others are maxed out they spill over to the reflecting one.

The toughness hike was in no way needed. The knights were already tough enough but not so tough they required everyone in berserkers to down in a speedy fashion. Sure 100+ man guilds could destroy them quickly but this isn’t supposed to be hardcore content.

Scaling on these is completely absent from what I can tell. The original idea behind this game is things scaled and I feel ArenaNet gave up on that because it was more work. All the major story events should scale from 5 players to 150. You can’t just make content that can only be done by the more populated servers, if you want to do that then just merge the servers into one.

One thing I can say for sure right now is that the event was better off on day 1 with all the bugs than it currently is.

I don’t understand what the problem is. Scarlet has been giving hell to tyria for a whole year and you want to defeat her running around like headless chicken and clicking autoattack?

Aenesthesia.1697:

I don’t understand what the problem is. Scarlet has been giving hell to tyria for a whole year and you want to defeat her running around like headless chicken and clicking autoattack?

Kind of what we do now….Just minus the running part.

But yes, a lot of people were having fun before the changes, now, not so much.

it’s the weekend, and we can’t even put YB LA map into overflow.

I would like to ask ANet to release a comparison of the number of successful completion of knight event before and after the loot bug and the subsequent anti-zerg change.

Agreed knights are too tough for pugs now. If guild level organization is the problem, make a separate version as a guild mission. 10 attempts, only 1 attempt did we down 2/3.
Usually if its not around 3 pm (aest) there is just not enough people interested in doing it .Possibly fix include after 20 people scale it to number of people. afks and non participations dont help.

…I’ve killed the holo everyday since its release…I think people are too used to running WBT.

The knights really aren’t hard at all. People need to split up the zerg, dodge the huge AOE, and pay attention to what phase the knights are in. Its that simply.

I prefer the “new” knights. Didn’t make much sense having a giant zerg killing one at a time and they died way too fast.

I have mixed feelings about the Knights. On the one hand, I’m just too lazy to bother helping the server succeed, help motivating people and making an effort to help organise groups because I only care about my loot.

On the other hand, I think it’s such a shame that such a beautiful opportunity to rally server support and build up the server community has basically devolved into a zerg fest.

Guild Wars 2 was marketed to me as being so much more than just another empty game to grind for loot and achievements, and I think both ANet and the people on our server are at fault for the current situation.

I know this might be an unpopular suggestion, but to encourage players to finish the story, I think bosses or key characters (like the 1200 citizens) should randomly drop key trinkets that, only when collected as a set, can be pieced together to become a key to unlock coveted chests (lots of gold and snazzy memorabilia are always a draw). Heirlooms for the Selfless/Thoughtless potions could be dropped by the citizens for example, so people have the incentive to grind for citizens (as is their wont) thereby helping all players participating in the event to see the story’s end.

RoseofGilead.8907:

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

Because they assume that every main and overflow has similar numbers and organization to what TTS can pull off. This is like designing content for casuals, but using the top 1% as a balancing point.

PacoXI.7690:

The knights really aren’t hard at all. People need to split up the zerg, dodge the huge AOE, and pay attention to what phase the knights are in. Its that simply.

You also need to be on a server that has about 120 ppl doing the event. There’s a hint for you – by now, most people aren’t.

Luke.4562:

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.

I’m sorry, but that’s bull. 150 players is nothing – have you seen the kind of fleets that happen in EVE? And I’m not talking big corps, but incursion fleets, basically made up of great big PUGs (at least they were, bet they’re mostly specialized corps now, but not the point)

The point is that it should not be hard to coordinate 150 people enough to take down the three knights.

It certainly shouldn’t be beyond the capabilities of anyone who has actually managed to install and play the game to dodge when the big red AOE thing disappears and to waypoint when they’re properly dead and stop wasting people’s time.

Haven’t had much luck in Yak’s Bend since they changed the toughness on the Knights. Guested into BG and ran it three times, once in main, twice in an overflow. First and second go we downed the knights but always at the last second. Third attempt we only dropped 2. So it’s still possible to do, but certainly not in under 6 minutes.

What irks me the most is that there are 2 new rifles exclusive to the hologram fight and the prices are going to remain high due to few people getting into the fight in the first place. Rewards from this event are based on a couple fights that have been so buggy as to make attaining those rewards very difficult.

Jaggedrain.6923:

The point is that it should not be hard to coordinate 150 people enough to take down the three knights.

That would be a relevant point if it was at all feasible to get 150 motivated people in one map in the first place.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Jaggedrain.6923:

The point is that it should not be hard to coordinate 150 people enough to take down the three knights.

That would be a relevant point if it was at all feasible to get 150 motivated people in one map in the first place.

I dunno, I’ve usually been on maps where there are 30+ per knight, and we don’t get it done because of idiots getting dragged and dead people waiting to be rezzed instead of waypointing (although I’ve been guilty of that myself on the green knight, for the love of God why is it so far from every waypoint?).
The other culprit is the blue knight’s little mender minions, of course. They’re a pain.

But mostly it’s down to stupidity and an inability to dodge.

Just curious though, what do you guys think is a good way to motivate people to participate in future releases?

Heibi.4251:

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

Because guesting to one of the big servers might actually require an effort on your part. Oh my God, not an effort :’(

OmaiGodman.2098:

Heibi.4251:

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

Because guesting to one of the big servers might actually require an effort on your part. Oh my God, not an effort :’(

The problem is that even the “big servers” still have a 150 population cap. I guested to Blackgate last night and could only get into main once out of 3 event attempts. You’re more than likely going to get stuck in overflow anyway.

Whenever I try to guest to Blackgate, I end up in an overflow with a lot of other people who attempted to do the same thing. I’ve beaten both the Marionette and the Knights/Hologram several times in overflows I entered while guesting on BG.

Dear ArenaNet: for future reference, Living Story items should scale to the current map population (or in the case of the Knights, scale based on number attuned), not on the maximum possible population.

I tried it a few times over the weekend and my server’s best attempt was 30 people at blue and 0 at red and green. At least we can kill the Spider Queen…

Astralporing.1957:

Because they assume that every main and overflow has similar numbers and organization to what TTS can pull off. This is like designing content for casuals, but using the top 1% as a balancing point.

Why is the assumption that these knights are “content for casuals?”

Reikou.7068:

Astralporing.1957:

Because they assume that every main and overflow has similar numbers and organization to what TTS can pull off. This is like designing content for casuals, but using the top 1% as a balancing point.

Why is the assumption that these knights are “content for casuals?”

Probably because this game has about 200 non-casual players across all servers?

Reikou.7068:

Why is the assumption that these knights are “content for casuals?”

Because they’re the gatekeeper for the scarlet holo fight which is the final boss for the living story as a whole. That’s a really important detail. This isn’t some optional hard-mode boss event.

I don’t normally complain about such things (and i was a lucky one to have gotten through this event a few times before the zerg was even the meta for the knights), but i do have to say that over all, this event has been made WAY harder to do making it near impossible for people coming to it in this week to actually get to the holo fights, etc. My Guard in full zerk still does silly low amounts of damage to these things and really, teaching people that the overall meta should be zerk and condi, then make a boss the punishes you for one of those metas and facerolls you if you happen to miss one of your stability or dodge checks is kinda lame. I’ve yet to see more than one knight taken down, and usually that happens with 3 minutes to “spare” while the other 2 knights are at 40-50% health. That just can’t be right.

After trying unsuccessfully on my own server 10 times since the change, I finally guested to a high pop server over the weekend and succeeded 5 out of 5 times….4 of which were in over-flows and one on the main server (where some idiot was screaming about “leechers” making it impossible to win the fight and calling it a “fail attempt” when we still had 4 minutes to go…we DID succeed despite his negativity)

So, I think the high-pop servers should thank all of the “leechers” without whom you wouldn’t be succeeding on this fight either any more…

I had to laugh on one of my last attempts while guesting, I ended up in overflow…we won, we beat the holograms, and then when I left scarlet I ended up in the main server where the same guy from earlier was screaming about how they only beat 2 out of 3 because the leechers ruin everything….This leecher succeeded the last time he was on your main…(I even led green with my commander tag prepping prior to the battle with the commanders at red and blue to get numbers even…leading my holo after that.) ….maybe leechers are not your problem.

PacoXI.7690:

…I’ve killed the holo everyday since its release…I think people are too used to running WBT.

The knights really aren’t hard at all. People need to split up the zerg, dodge the huge AOE, and pay attention to what phase the knights are in. Its that simply.

I prefer the “new” knights. Didn’t make much sense having a giant zerg killing one at a time and they died way too fast.

The thing that needs to change is the reduction in damage they take by 2/3 even if you have the buff.

Basing the amount of might stacks and such based on what TTS does with voice communication is not the norm. Most people are only going in with might they can give to themselves, and are not coordinating fire fields and blast finishers.