Guild Wars 2

Qaelyn.7612:

Tom Gore.4035:

In my experience the events fail because people have trouble 5-manning a champion.

And part of the failure falls to ANet for allowing lvl 35s in greens and blues to take part in the event.

It’s in a level 35 zone in open world. I think what you really mean is that the failure is creating an event in a place like that where level 35s in greens and blues are a liability.

Well yes. That’s effectively what it comes to, but it would also be boring to put all future instances in lvl 80 zones or instances.

Plenty of folks have attempted this once or twice a day and are now running into double digit numbers of attempts without an event-wide win, myself included. Frustration is going to be the natural outcome of this. I have yet to even face bosses 4 & 5 because it is constant 4/5 generator fail on boss 2. Before EVERY attempt there was someone who succinctly and politely explained the mechanics of all 5 wardens. Commanders take the time to organize the numbers in each lane. During the countdown someone always says – in the next 5 minutes you can read up on the fight quick on dulfy.net and ask questions if you don’t know what to do. I’ve seen commanders ask people to /whisper them if you still have questions. Before going into the portal, commander says “ok, if this is your first time doing this you will need to (describes warden mechanic)”. Everyone asks ppl to bring the rez skills to help out.

IT IS NOT a problem of people failing to be helpful. Or even polite.

After all of that explanation, the time spend organizing lane numbers, even the “GJ lane 1” when the first chain gets severed, what always happens? I’m standing next to the broken regulator on my platform, we’re 4/5 with 40 seconds left and Naruto Ninjakillstab keeps getting downed because he insists on heartseekering into the minelayer warden II while he is still spinning. His buddy Legolas Bearfriend makes sure to kite in a nice wide circle around the platform to make sure that the warden never hits the mines, all the while plinking away to Invuln. Invuln. Invuln. Face, meet palm.

Then these folks go “oh it’s just a game, I don’t have so much time to play” but are happy to waste the limited playtime failing? Moreover, they think that it is ok to waste the time of the people who kindly explained the mechanics in the beginning? That is just flat out rude to the organizers/commanders.

What would be an improvement for the event? Let the finished platforms help the other ones. Even if we can’t go over to them to fight, add something like a small, ground targeted skill that can be thrown into the adjacent platforms:

Throw Power Generator Chunk – Toss a piece of highly charged debris from the broken generator. The discharge when it lands will shock allies, slowly reviving downed and defeated allies over N seconds. If the electrical discharge hits a warden it is briefly stunned for 1 second.

It’s been out for nearly a week, if you have yet to figure out how to do it, don’t do it. What OP was saying how it’s demoralizing to belittle people who don’t understand the event was a legit complaint during the first couple days.

Like I posted in a similar thread, been having fun trying to coordinate some of the overflows I’ve done this in and either we’ve succeeded or come very close.

Mostly we’ve failed due to:

- lack of skill to take down a warden and you cannot fault that
- lack of knowledge to take down a warden → BAD at this point in a 2-week event and we’re halfway thru. You should know by now + I always type out every warden’s strat up front and it’s quite straight-forward really
- lack of interest of taking part → being countered with “i’m here just to have fun not work” or players without map chat enabled at world boss events… here I am busting my kitten off trying to coordinate it through map chat which is all you got since voice comms on a open world pug is not possible, and people either

• a) don’t want to get involved… ok, newsflash, your idea of having fun might fail the event and ruin the fun for 100+ others!
• b) not having map chat enabled (if you DON’T know the event already of course)… well, you’re trying to do a massive coordinated event but have shut yourself off from comms. You obviously don’t know the strat… go somewhere else to press 1111111, at this event you’re probably going to ruin it even if it’s not your intention due to lack of knowledge of the tactics and implicit refusal to learn in order to do your part.

Bottom-line though, it’s a massive pug event, bound to fail and as long as people put in a real effort and the failure comes from bad luck, it’s fun. Ignorance though gets me a bit more heated!

It doesn’t fail because it’s a PUG event. It fails because it’s a PUG event not balanced for PUGs.

They could have easily avoided this entire mess, and I hope they will next time they do something like this.

Pipra.7580:

Neumonics.4603:

Rule 1 for this event – Dont be a kitten.

What does this mean? I keep seeing ‘kitten’ used in a wide variety of contexts across these forums and it seems so odd.

It’s the swear filter. Bad word(s) = kitten(s).

I’ve personally written kitten straight up before now, instead of something inappropriate, and it’s beginning to creep into my everyday vocabulary. :/

My cat is becoming concerned.

…

Anyway, my experience of this event is the same as pretty much any event I’ve had in this game where grouping up in numbers is required:

Sometimes people are kittens, sometimes they’re cool cats.

Earlier in the week, when I was experiencing bad lag, I did have a go to test my lag, and oddly managed the event before a disconnect after our lane’s platform moment. I have no idea what happened, as I logged back in on a different map version.

Second attempt was a fail. There was lack of communication, and our lane’s commander appeared to be AWOL when it came to discussing tactics. It would be unreasonable to put blame solely on this commander for the fail, but it really didn’t feel solid without communication. I don’t think all commanders should be chatty happy souls, but if they’re going to be flying the tag, they should at least make an attempt to gather the rabble in their lane together. There was still lag at this point for me, but there were enough players about. There was hate on the map chat after that. I left the map because it wasn’t constructive.The commander said something which was not particularly helpful after the event (only time he said anything). I actually stopped playing for the remainder of the week, but that was because of the lag, not the event. If I had no lag, I would’ve been back in there as soon as the waiting time allowed.

Yesterday, the lag dissipated, and I tried again. My lane did not have a commander this time, but it wasn’t necessary. There were a few people calling the shots, and there was the instruction to “go read Dulfy,” which I duly did, as there’s not a lot else to do whilst waiting. I can’t say it made me any better at playing (I did have some shameful noob moments which I can only attribute to the last week spent playing Skyrim… my excuse and I’m sticking to it), but it probably was better than not reading it.

Personally, I found orienting the camera on the platform to be the most horrible experience, over any player throwing toys out of the pram. I’d love to know what you guys think is the optimal set-up for decent play on the platform, with reference to not getting stuck in static in a false first person mode.

Anyway, I’m in the category of understanding frustration at fails, but I don’t ever excuse bad, childish behaviour where other players are insulted and picked on. At the same time, I think players owe it to themselves to at least attempt to become familiar with a few strategies, or listen up when someone’s advising how to beat something. It still doesn’t mean immunity to failure, but it’s a lot better than being unprepared.

Pipra.7580:

Neumonics.4603:

Rule 1 for this event – Dont be a kitten.

What does this mean? I keep seeing ‘kitten’ used in a wide variety of contexts across these forums and it seems so odd.

It’s the forums swear word filter. It can be a bit oversensitive at times.

And some people have taken to insert the word themselves in various contexts…

ViralVarda.2739:

It’s been out for nearly a week, if you have yet to figure out how to do it, don’t do it. What OP was saying how it’s demoralizing to belittle people who don’t understand the event was a legit complaint during the first couple days.

Pretty much. I get what to do and try to help others get it.

Some dont think about people who work and/or families that cant start the living story on release day. They start later when theres either 1)people done it and moved on or 2)no one wants to explain anymore.

Some think all the players are available 8-10 hours daily with no kids/school/job/life.

Players gotta remain calm and contructively speak on how the event is too difficult for what isnt a world boss.

Wurm boss is in the boss panel of achievements so we are ok to understand its magnitude of coordination like a tequatl advanced event.

If people are asking what to do, then I have no problem explaining what to do. Even if people haven’t had time to try the event, you need to do a little homework and see what is going on with these events. By now there are plenty of videos and guides on how to do it. Log in, get your spot on your server and look for these. It is like showing up for finals but missing 1/2 the classes and then asking the Professor, what do I do?

The best you are going to get out of map chat text wall of explanation from multiple sources. If you can comprehend what is being said OR read the description of the champions from under their name, then good for you. If that doesn’t suffice for you, read the guides that are out there.

Donari.5237:

I’ve seen only a smidgen of that. Most people have been plenty nice even on fails. So it’s luck of the draw whether you get nice or nasty companions in your marionette fight.

One helpful thing is to patiently explain things in map before the fight begins every time someone asks. For instance, even though it’s plenty obvious by now that the five minute timer will start on the hour, there are still people that don’t know and ask “how long until it starts?” One could deride them … or simply explain the timing. If someone says they’re new to it, offer to /w them the fight explanation. I just did this on Wurm with a new person and we partied up and had a blast at Cobalt.

In any case, one can hardly tell ANet “Hey, your MMO? It’s too massive, you need to prevent large groups from congregating because man, people get nasty to each other when they get crowded.” The cure lies in players doing social engineering, not ANet reducing event size.

Things were getting a bit heated a bit in one overflow but then I started pointing out that even a failure as long as you get a chain or two actually is pretty good rewards once you unlock scarlets lair. I led some people around the portal things to get them power core bits and once they figured that out and got into scarlets and saw what their efforts on the event were getting them most were a LOT happier. Really after you have one success for the day the difference between a 4 chain fail and a 5 chain succeed is not a whole lot.

If I had one change to make would be allowing people to help a bit more once they complete their part of the arena. Maybe have their walls drop once their arena is finished so they can assist with ranged attacks vs the arena to either side of them. Given the time limits there would still be plenty of fails but it would help mitigate some of the RNG screwing of getting a bunch of uplevels or non really dps speced people in the same arena causing that chain to fail even though the other 4 platforms cleared their stuff.

Pipra.7580:

Neumonics.4603:

Rule 1 for this event – Dont be a kitten.

What does this mean? I keep seeing ‘kitten’ used in a wide variety of contexts across these forums and it seems so odd.

Someone explained already.

That reminds me i should just put back on the language filter in game. Then im not affected by what i see. Ya most of us are adults but keeping a map chat clean is apporopriate.

Side note kitten is a cute way to filter XD. Imagine the amount of kittens that would be in the chat of a hard dungeon run lol. “Mother kitten i got one shot. Aint that some kittens. Kitten rez me!” (Worded on purpose no vad words used)

jessiejay.3625:

Not quite sure why we went from power or rally I.E. Other world bosses that just need people to show up; into server bragging rights and left for the coordinated. It’s a new tier of bosses but not labeled so.

Because those boss fights are more interesting?
Most “Pugs” acutally like fights which offer more than zerging the boss down by pressing 1. Another maguuma Jungle worm mechanism would hardly get people excited.

I’ve experienced a lot of positive interactions around this event, and also some negative ones. Most of the positive ones have been on my native server, and most of the negative ones on overflows. What it boils down to, I think, is that people are more willing to forgive/be pleasant to those on their own server, but feel little connection to the random people they end up in overflows with, leading to shorter tempers and raging.

This has much more to do with the overflow system than the event itself. To address this, overflows need to somehow do a better job of promoting community. My suggestion is a kind of hierarchy system for creating new overflows. When a native server map fills up and an overflow is needed, first create an overflow for a pre-defined group of three or four servers, and direct all additional players from those servers to that overflow. Next to the word “overflow” on the minimap, list which servers that overflow is serving so that people can see who they are playing with.

Only once these smaller community overflows get filled up should players be sent to one with a totally random group of strangers. The idea is to increase the chances that you’ll play with some of the same people repeatedly, reducing the feeling of “I’ll never see you people again so there are no consequences to being rude.”

@VincentDW hah i guess its gottabe the stranger danger that leads to loose tongues. That is legit i didnt think about.

Now if only i can fit into my non overflow for friendly people

I love this Marionette fight, but I hope ArenaNet looks into doing a split version of events like this going forward.

I’d like to see an instanced, hard version of this challenge, similar to a Guild Mission. This version would give increased rewards and allow the people like myself who enjoy harder content to do so.

For the open world PvE version, scale down the difficulty substantially, allowing everyone to come together and enjoy the fight.

Currently, only main servers seem to be completing this marionette fight with any regularity. This is forcing people to afk in main servers for up to 45 minutes before the fight to have an increased chance of success. That’s not fun… it’s boring, or it’s a bunch of auto-running into a wall to not get booted while you do something else. To make it worse, you’ve really got to be in main server during peak times to have the best chance at that! I’ve done this fight probably 10 times now and still not seen boss 5 because I’m either in main during off-time or on an overfail.

Failure fatigue in the game is very real right now. People are tired of doing their part over and over and having no recognition for that. Why not increase rewards for people who clear their platform? I love open world content, but this is grueling and abusive, which is why the map chat becomes toxic.

The trouble isn’t on home servers. They are generally nice. It’s overflows where we are playing with people we really don’t give a rats kitten about. There is where the hatred at ineptitude shows itself. Especially from people who are on home servers that routinely defeat the marionette.

One crappy internet hiccup and BAM you are stuck with people you don’t know, nor care about and see nothing but failure around you.

Like this morning I was dumped into an overflow where there was a warrior a couple platforms over that had warden 1’s agro and was spinning around like a top.

People like that warrior ruin it for the rest simply because they can’t be kitten d to take 2 seconds to read the text under the target, or read a guide, or listen to people shouting at him to STOP MOVING!

So everyone in the overflow yell at him for being a kitten kitten kitten and tell him to uninstall. Why? Because they will never see them again and they don’t care.

Overflows are the issue here. Anet is to blame.

Ceridwen.6703:

Pipra.7580:

Neumonics.4603:

Rule 1 for this event – Dont be a kitten.

What does this mean? I keep seeing ‘kitten’ used in a wide variety of contexts across these forums and it seems so odd.

It’s the swear filter. Bad word(s) = kitten(s).

digiowl.9620:

Pipra.7580:

Neumonics.4603:

Rule 1 for this event – Dont be a kitten.

What does this mean? I keep seeing ‘kitten’ used in a wide variety of contexts across these forums and it seems so odd.

It’s the forums swear word filter. It can be a bit oversensitive at times.

And some people have taken to insert the word themselves in various contexts…

Thanks! That makes so much more sense.

Considering this event was supposed to be for casuals it’s just poorly balanced/designed.

1. It is yet another DPS > all event. From killing the champions that race up the lane to killing wardens it’s all about DPS. This leaves any support or survivability build out in the cold. The easiest way to make those other builds viable is to remove the hard timers. That way the support/survivable builds could slowly kill their champs and still beat it, it also gives people a better chance to learn the encounters without having to rush into it.

2. Not breaking a chain is punishing. The easy way to do this would have been to just make more and more mobs spawn in lane defense so the ultimate failure can rest of lane defense. This gives the server as many tries to break chains as their defense allows.

3. No way to help teammates on other platforms. This should not have been released if this was not possible. There are plenty of mechanics in place in the game that would have worked to allow this to be possible. The easiest would have just been to have a bridge between the adjoining platforms and when the champion is beat the walls go down allowing you to cross it. Tequatl jumpers would have been fine too, teleporters, just not making the walls obstruct, etc.

Anyone of these getting fixed would have made the event much more casual friendly. I’m not looking for “easy” encounter or loot, but you need to make it so it’s at least a 75% success rate. On most overflows I’d bet it’s closer to 20% and IMO it’s actually getting worse. A lot of the more experienced/equiped players are now focusing their attention on the wurms leaving mostly casuals to marionette and the results are going from 3-5 chains to 1-2. I had an overflow lane last night with 25 people that could barely kill 2 of the lane champs, heck sometimes we didn’t.

An alternative to Distate’s #2 could be to make the cannon charge proportional to the number of platforms completed. Right now it jumps about 25% on a failure, no matter how many platforms of the 5 was completed. It could instead jump by 5% for each incompleted platform. This would give more lanes a chance at the various champs, and also that a almost win is not as punishing as a complete wipe.

I’d suggest making a new thread to suggest that digiowl. It’s a good idea, and if they can’t add it for this event. They can at least see it and take it to heart for the future. That’s a great idea.