Guild Wars 2

I’m not against tough content—I thought Tequatl was one of the best patches of the game. But this particular piece of tough content locks me out of other content I very much enjoy: the Hologram fight. I really enjoy that fight, yet I can’t play it because I haven’t been able to kill the knights in days. Some people just have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re bringing the group as a whole down.

I know I’m not alone on this. We don’t want you to make it care-bear easy, just doable to the layperson.

It is care-bear easy already, especially for ranged classes.

Pipra.7580:

It is care-bear easy already, especially for ranged classes.

No it isn’t. The knight’s huge health pool, damage resistance, and time limit artificially increase the difficulty to the point that many servers can no longer complete the event.

I think it’s no more difficult than the marionette, but does require people to show up and organize for it; which is a problem for several reasons:

- There are competing events going on at the same time
- People have suffered a string of losses and give up
- Waning interest as people complete the meta
- Some players have anti-log out scripts going to farm the events. Not many, but in a fight where these players increase the difficulty by being present it just adds to the previous problems.

Some suggestions to fix the situation:

- Have the fight scale down further. It doesn’t require 50 per knight as others are claiming (maybe for the achievement) as I’ve done it with groups as small as 35. Though group composition probably makes this vary substantially.
- Decrease the time it spends invulnerable to conditions or introduce a mechanic that condition players can work on to remove the shield early. As it is now many condition players are avoiding doing damage or doing their small amounts of direct damage with lots of condition removal utilities/traits.
- Add a report function for inactive players

As for player interest, I generally don’t like carrots and prefer letting people do what they find fun. As such just adjusting the scaling would allow those of us who find it fun to do the event without needing roughly 90-120 interested people.

In general, other popular MMOs have realized it’s hard to organize even 40 people to do raid content (it can be like herding cats) and only fraction of the player base was enjoying the content they were creating. Open world raid content should be doable by small groups and scale appropriately. Even Tequatl could be reworked to require 20 people. Instead of having six turrets, have a number of turrets that can be built/repaired based on scaling of the encounter. Have Tequatl build stacks based on scaling. Have his health and timer adjust based on scaling. Adjust rewards for smaller groups as it is easier to organize smaller groups than larger groups. As a bonus, keep track of sever success at the world events and make them easier for servers that fail more and harder for servers that succeed more. Scale awards based on difficulty. This way no server is ever in a state where they consistently fail at Tequatl, the Wurms, or the Living Story events; and there is incentive to rerun encounters and improve your skills on them. Early on most servers seem to muster the numbers, but after a string of failures it becomes difficult to get people interested in the encounters again.

“As a bonus, keep track of sever success at the world events and make them easier for servers that fail more and harder for servers that succeed more. Scale awards based on difficulty. "

This really seems like a good idea. But not sure how it’d work out.

Would farmers go to the servers that are failing, knowing it would get easier?

What about overflow servers. They’re a mix of all, so they cant really be adjusted like that.
_
In this LS, Anet should have scaled the knights down, to say a minimum of 50 or 60 in total.

So the event would be doable at a 15/15/15 split maybe. but not 5/5/5, and it would scale up than to a MAX of 50. Some people seem to feel that the knights scale over that despite any players over the 50 mark not doing damage. (if this is so, it could be one of the reasons this event fails. Red dies, people swarm to blue, overscale blue, and it doesn’t get beaten in time..)

Scaling can’t be THAT hard. Knights at “x” health for 15 players, for every 1 extra player Knight is at “x +1000”. Or whatever number is suitable. I don’t think it scales like this, if it did though, it’d be much easier.
Wish Anet would explain they’re scaling system and IF knights scale.

Taygus.4571:

"
Would farmers go to the servers that are failing, knowing it would get easier?

I’m not sure farmer behavior can be predicted easily. If I were loot motivated and cared nothing for my own server’s success I would probably go to where I could get the best loot without upsetting the success of the server that currently has the best loot (because they’ve been the most successful and thus have a harder, but more rewarding encounter).

What about overflow servers. They’re a mix of all, so they cant really be adjusted like that.

Average success/failures across all servers to generate an approximate difficulty.

I stopped reading after you said Teq was one of the best patches. Best? It effectively killed that zone. Hope that was sarcasm. I’d rather have Carebear easy than zones that are deader than the Dallas reboot.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I stopped reading after you said Teq was one of the best patches. Best? It effectively killed that zone. Hope that was sarcasm. I’d rather have Carebear easy than zones that are deader than the Dallas reboot.

What do you mean it ‘killed the zone’? I see people there all the time, and all the events still work. Are you on a low-population server?

SirMoogie.9263:

I think it’s no more difficult than the marionette, but does require people to show up and organize for it; which is a problem for several reasons:

- There are competing events going on at the same time
- People have suffered a string of losses and give up
- Waning interest as people complete the meta
- Some players have anti-log out scripts going to farm the events. Not many, but in a fight where these players increase the difficulty by being present it just adds to the previous problems.

Some suggestions to fix the situation:

- Have the fight scale down further. It doesn’t require 50 per knight as others are claiming (maybe for the achievement) as I’ve done it with groups as small as 35. Though group composition probably makes this vary substantially.
- Decrease the time it spends invulnerable to conditions or introduce a mechanic that condition players can work on to remove the shield early. As it is now many condition players are avoiding doing damage or doing their small amounts of direct damage with lots of condition removal utilities/traits.
- Add a report function for inactive players

As for player interest, I generally don’t like carrots and prefer letting people do what they find fun. As such just adjusting the scaling would allow those of us who find it fun to do the event without needing roughly 90-120 interested people.

In general, other popular MMOs have realized it’s hard to organize even 40 people to do raid content (it can be like herding cats) and only fraction of the player base was enjoying the content they were creating. Open world raid content should be doable by small groups and scale appropriately. Even Tequatl could be reworked to require 20 people. Instead of having six turrets, have a number of turrets that can be built/repaired based on scaling of the encounter. Have Tequatl build stacks based on scaling. Have his health and timer adjust based on scaling. Adjust rewards for smaller groups as it is easier to organize smaller groups than larger groups. As a bonus, keep track of sever success at the world events and make them easier for servers that fail more and harder for servers that succeed more. Scale awards based on difficulty. This way no server is ever in a state where they consistently fail at Tequatl, the Wurms, or the Living Story events; and there is incentive to rerun encounters and improve your skills on them. Early on most servers seem to muster the numbers, but after a string of failures it becomes difficult to get people interested in the encounters again.

Wow. You know your kitten. Maybe Anet should hire you.

It is care-bear easy already, especially for ranged classes.

Depends on the definition of “easy.” It is definitely easy in that “the amount of player skill required is minimal.” It is also very hard in the sense that “it fails CONSTANTLY because not enough DPS gets done to kill it in time.”

I would not object if they made it require more player skill, but I definitely want it to require less DPS so that it doesn’t fail as often.