The new bosses are great, certain flaws exist but I think there are ways to ameliorate the situation.
1. A lot of players are upset that their success depends on other people, and that when severing chains, we’re only as strong as our weakest link. A way to get players better prepared for the boss encounter would be to have a personal pre-event story.
Similar to the Tower of Nightmares, players will receive a mail from the NPCs telling them to go to Lornar’s Pass. Upon entering the area, the player will enter a solo instance where he will meet up with Marjory, Kasmeer, Rox, Braham and Taimi. Storyline conversation and exposition of the events can be carried out here, as the player and the NPCs make their way to the new waypoint for the Marionette event.
Along the way, the player can be made to meet each of the five champions that will be encountered on the Marionette platforms (albeit scaled-down to solo level ones). The player will have to defeat them with only the assistance of the NPCs, and can learn each of their mechanics before actually attempting the world boss encounter.
Upon defeating all of the champions and reaching the staging area, the player will then unlock an achievement, get a bag of cypher fragments as reward, and exit the solo pre-event story instance. Completion of this and the achievement is account-wide and the player can use any character to proceed to the actual boss fight.
2. It is strange that since Marjory & co are expecting Scarlet to recall her minions, why didn’t they already block off the five lanes beforehand. My suggestion here is to make the 5 lanes inaccessible by players until they have completed the pre-event story (from above). After completion of the story leading to the event, the players can then talk to one of the five NPCs guarding each lane to enter the lane. Entering a specific lane will add a count which can be shown at the side of the screen, so everyone in the area can see the number of players who have entered each lane.
The timeframe in which players can talk to the NPCs to enter can be 30 or 10 or even the 5 minutes (as it is now) before the fight. This can prevent players from afking in the lane and perhaps scaling the event unnecessarily. Talking to the NPCs too early can have them tell the player that they are not ready and to come back in X minutes. This X can serve as the countdown to tell players when the event starts. To players who did not complete the storyline instance, the NPCs will say that they are not prepared and need to go check their mail again.
So in the end, the flow would be:
Log in—-> Get mail—-> Get directed to Lornar’s Pass—-> Go to Lornar’s Pass—-> Enter Storyline Instance—-> Meet NPCs—-> Travel to new location——> Fight champions along the way—-> Reach location and receive completion rewards—-> Exit Instance—-> Talk to any of the NPCs guarding the lanes—-> Enter the lane and get counted—-> Participate in the fight with the knowledge of how to defeat the champions—-> Win!
I know a lot of players are lost with each new patch, so the storyline instance can help with that. Also it can be a way to test the player to prepare them for their battle with the boss, instead of frustrating themselves and each other. The NPC lockout at each lane ensures players are ready, minimise afk, give an idea to players when the event will occur, and simplify logistics.