Guild Wars 2

Let me start by saying: This new content is NOT difficult (please bear with me here).

Now I know most of you are sitting there saying “WHAT are you crazy?”, after attempting it numerous times yesterday and failing only to get nothing for your effort(except for a One-shot kill); you may be frustrated, unfulfilled and ready to rage quit and hey, I can’t blame ya.

Commanders and Cannon Fodder: Let’s put it in perspective, it is not difficult, it only requires a few good commanders and a mass of mindless flesh, doing a specific task at a specific time from a specific location. That is strategic coordination which has nothing to do with the difficulty of the encounter.

For example: Let’s take the best 100 ‘Skilled’ players in this game but who have no clue of the event mechanics, where to stand and at what time to stand there to show their Mad Skilz, what would be the result… Event Failed.

Now though, let’s take 100 ‘Average’ players who know exactly where to stand and when to put out their best effort; what would be that result… Event Success.

Comparative example: Tequatl the Sunless, the biggest of the scary monsters… Our server kills him successfully 1 – 2 times daily. How is that done you ask:

• People load up the map an hour and a half before he pops, to avoid Hard Cap
• A phenomenal coordination of the Commanders: stack on me, zerg to laser(don’t run through the turrets) , zerg back to stack, if defeated WP and swim back up the side…
• Teq goes down, 5 minutes to spare, get lots of presents and all you have to do is spam #1 skill
• Sure that is drastic simplification but hey I’m sure you get the picture… coordination

Proposal: We are presumed to be Heroes not Drones, instead of the continuation of the Cannon Fodder mentality, let’s move these encounters to less Coordination and more Difficulty. I will continue to use Tequatl as an example

1. End the Zerg: Don’t force us to stack up in the DPS zerg hive toe attack. Make his breath weapon an AoE cone attack targeting the highest concentration of bunched up players and hose that area down with massive DPS and lingering condition damage. The result: “Spread out, for the Six Gods sake, don’t stack on ME!”
2. More varried attacks: see a previous post of 9 months ago
   https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mega-Boss-scaling/page/2#post1901188
3. Stop the 1 1/2 hour lead time to beat Hard Cap
   I went to Bloodtide Coast yesterday afternoon a half hour before the New event was scheduled to start and got pushed into overflow, so I left and went to do my dailys instead; I didn’t return to either event.

In Conclusion: Maybe this content is fun for the Commanders but speaking as one of the Fodder…
I continue to remain, ever hopeful that the CDI’s will make a difference at the end of the Scarlett LS.

I don’t know, the endless amount of mobs spawning on the wurms make the fight actually quite difficult, even with coordination oO

(Could we please get regular veterans? That actually die quickly enough when you hit them properly hard?)

Agreed. Coordination, not skill.

And the biggest problem is that you can’t force PUGs to do what is needed and what you tell them to. They will do what they want and if you’re really lucky, they want to do what you tell them to. As opposed to instances, you can’t kick griefers and people that refuse to listen. That is why this type of content should not be forced PUGging.
Especially since it has an artificial timer on it.

Liadri was a skilled fight for skillful players.

Teq is for Skilled commanders and for leaders to be known for accomplishing things.

There are alot of players asking for harder content, but honestly most players dont want to do events they know have a VERY HIGH failure rate.

I personally would LOVE 10man Dungeon style content with Bosses like those in the Arena with some Gambit having a Boss like Liadri in it. Something that you need to plan and think about, but at the same time, you need REAL skill.

That would be a dream come true.

Agreed

The challenge is in the coordination, not the gameplay. If I could pick whom I did the encounter with, it would be amazing. But since I have to do it with random people who choose not to participate, it’s poor.

End the Zerg: Don’t force us to stack up in the DPS zerg hive toe attack. Make his breath weapon an AoE cone attack targeting the highest concentration of bunched up players and hose that area down with massive DPS and lingering condition damage. The result: “Spread out, for the Six Gods sake, don’t stack on ME!”

As long as the best sources of group boons are found as point blank AOEs, never mind the whole revival speed of multiple people hitting F the moment someone downs, this will never happen.

If ANet wants us to spread out more, give us line and bounce attacks that hurt mobs and support fellow characters just as well as standing right smack on top of them.

Peetee.9406:

Agreed

The challenge is in the coordination, not the gameplay. If I could pick whom I did the encounter with, it would be amazing. But since I have to do it with random people who choose not to participate, it’s poor.

I would love 20-30 man instances for guilds

Actually difficulty is directly associated to coordination. The mechanics are easy, but the fact that the coordination is difficult and is a main factor in determining success, results in the event being more difficult.

OP, you are correct.

However, the game does not facilitate large-scale coordination, making coordination difficult.

Walking is not difficult, but what if, in order to move forward in GW2 you needed to press 18 unique keys in a particular sequence? Would you say that walking was difficult or the coordination required to walk is difficult?

It’s simply disappointing that ANet wants to employ these large scale fights in the game without any of the tools that allow you to facilitate the coordination and execution of such a fight.

The difficulty with the wurm boss fight, is seeing what is going on. Visibility is a huge issue.

Good points all.

PattyCakeChamp – No I don’t dispute the coordination is difficult for a “Commander” but for the rest of us worker bees…not so much.

As I was getting long winded in my original post allow me to include a supplemental thought here.

Include more variance in role requirement
So as some of you know, I am an Ele main. Though I am set up to provide multiple different rolls in a figtht(i.e. Support, DPS, AoE, Healing, Condition etc.), really all that is required from me is to make Icebows, Fireswords and lay down a boatload of damage. This is quite simple for us Elementalists in these type of fights but simple is just not interesting.

Strategy vs. Tactics
I did Teq for the first time in many weeks just last weekend; yeah I dealt a ton of damage, yeah I gave him a sore toe, yeah I stacked on my Commander, yeah, I got the maximum chests but what I would have rather, would have been to…

Drop a Meteor Storm on his Tail, dodge off to the side, Lightning Surge his front toe, backpedal and Cripple his rear leg, strafe to the side drop Healing Rain on my injured comrades in arms, add to that some burning that is not already maxed, then run away for 5 seconds in fear (don’t forget that fear). But once I am back from running halfway across the map I may just mix it up and try some other tactics.

In my opinion it should be more about Tactics and less about Strategy

might as well make this a guild only instanced fight then.why should i have to get in ts or vent just to do a boss

Faux.1937:

Peetee.9406:

Agreed

The challenge is in the coordination, not the gameplay. If I could pick whom I did the encounter with, it would be amazing. But since I have to do it with random people who choose not to participate, it’s poor.

I would love 20-30 man instances for guilds

guild missions

Exactly, urtv. I don’t want to use TS, as I find it a high inconvenience when I need to be listening to things and people in my home. I can watch the screen, but there’s not much help there. No one, not commanders, no one, was able to tell me what I needed to be doing in the fray. Add to that, that you can’t see kitten with effects, lag and a hundred or so mobs/players running all over, and what do you get? Angry. That’s it, and that’s all. That’s not fun.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Add to that, that you can’t see kitten with effects, lag and a hundred or so mobs/players running all over, and what do you get? Angry. That’s it, and that’s all. That’s not fun.

That is my experience as well in a nutshell. It doesn’t seem like the GW2 engine was designed for this sort of content. You can’t see what is going on, and it doesn’t seem to cope well with everything that is going on.

Performance matters when you design boss fights.

Fafnir.5124:

Faux.1937:

Peetee.9406:

Agreed

The challenge is in the coordination, not the gameplay. If I could pick whom I did the encounter with, it would be amazing. But since I have to do it with random people who choose not to participate, it’s poor.

I would love 20-30 man instances for guilds

guild missions

Yes the Puzzles and Challenges are very good, But still any person can join and mess them up. We have Pugs randomly come in and mess things up time to time, Pulling Curtains, pressing buttons when not ready.. etc…

Again I would love there to be Instances for this type of stuff.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Add to that, that you can’t see kitten with effects, lag and a hundred or so mobs/players running all over, and what do you get? Angry. That’s it, and that’s all. That’s not fun.

That is my experience as well in a nutshell. It doesn’t seem like the GW2 engine was designed for this sort of content. You can’t see what is going on, and it doesn’t seem to cope well with everything that is going on.

Performance matters when you design boss fights.

We cant have more than 25 stacks of bleeds on a boss b.c of Anets “bandwidth” problems… The whole game has performance problems.

Faux.1937:

We cant have more than 25 stacks of bleeds on a boss b.c of Anets “bandwidth” problems… The whole game has performance problems.

True. Or at least, that is the reason we were given for the condition cap.

But you can design around that. The Wurm Queen in the tower of Madness worked fine, because you had just a few minions in fixed locations, adequately spaced out. It had clear mechanics, and you could see what was happening, and dodge the attacks. They don’t need to spam so many wurms on top of each other, and they can improve the targeting. In fact, better targeting is looooong overdue.

It’s so true. This content is definitely more for skilled commanders/coordination and not so much player skill.

This kind of content seems like it would be more enjoyable scaled down a lot and slapped into a dungeon. Even organized it’s rather chaotic. In the wurm fight we were doing great with the Cobalt wurm when a couple mesmers—trying to be helpful no doubt—started setting up portals for people to use to speed up the time back to the drop-off site with bombs. I think if it hadn’t been for that, we’d have gotten him down to 25% or less as the bombs disappeared on people who took the portals.

The problem with this sort of content is every time you do it there is going to be at least 10 new players who have NO idea what kind of mania they’re in for. Even if I personally do not find the content hard, that doesn’t mean the 75 others feel the same way. I can’t control how well 74 other players play.

I know there is going to be servers who finish this, mostly riding on the backs of some giant guild that has prepped their people way ahead of time and can make sure they don’t afk at an inopportune moment, or whatever. They’ll impress us all, except we’re not being impressed for the right reason. It’s less skill, more coordination. If we wanted a game that has us coordinating 74 other people I doubt we’d all have chosen a fantasy-based MMO. I think this is being wasted on the wrong crowd.

Yeah, the first server to take down the wurm is likely using 3 channels of TS and teams specifically tasked for each head, with every one in the team knowing beforehand their exact task for the whole run. And i am willing to bet it will be one of the T1 WVW servers, as they already have the people and coordination to get it done.

@digiowl you’ll be surprised