Guild Wars 2

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

You are joking right ?

How can you be making those events for hardcore groups when our hardcore groups hits OVERFLOW and the main channel of our server is full always ?

When you will finally address this MAJOR issue or you will keep ignoring it forever and still say you make stuff for hardcore groups in future ?

Luna.9640:

When you will finally address this MAJOR issue or you will keep ignoring it forever and still say you make stuff for hardcore groups in future ?

How do you propose they address the issue?

SirMoogie.9263:

Luna.9640:

When you will finally address this MAJOR issue or you will keep ignoring it forever and still say you make stuff for hardcore groups in future ?

How do you propose they address the issue?

Making main server channel not allowed for guest is a start.

Main channel should be only for the native players of this server while if i and my friend from another server want to meet and play together any of the conted we should be send both to overflow channels.

Next is server and event optimization to the level where large events like this can maintain whole server in 1 single channel or the numbers required for large events adjusted properly to not divide 1 server to 300 overflow channels causing dis-organization and crippling any attempt to hardcore gaming.

I’ll say it again those are just a start for many adjustments before they can call provided contend aimed for hardcore groups.

i agree the balance of Marienette is good. and i would honestly rather make THIS fight the new perma boss instead of the wurm fight.

i still say that the ultra hardcore fights should be instanced (they’re basically raid bosses anyway)
a) to allow for better organization of groups by allowing them to enter the instance together
b) so everyone ELSE is not inconvenienced by the myriad of overflows that constantly pop up preventing us from playing on our own server.
c) open world bosses should never require more than half the population limit of the server for the zone, because of b). perhaps the servers containing the regions of the ultra hardcore world bosses (so far teq and triple trouble) should be upgraded to allow for double population. WvWvW maps can handle what, 4x the number of players as a PvE map? convert that tech for the PvE zones with ultra hardcore bosses
d) there would be a second version of the ultra hardcore boss watered down for the open world event… basically, so the hardcore version would need to be triggered by a commander. (see below)

perhaps a new feature should be added to commander tags… the ability to start an overflow instance, and then squad members can join that overflow instance. the commander would also have to be able to invite more commanders to the instance. however, additional programming would be needed to make it non-owned overflow. so that if the commander who started it D/Cs everyone else doesn’t get kicked from the instanced overflow shutting down. this could solve part a)

I think we should have a means of selecting overflows properly. Because when boss fights are so dependent on the number of players participating, then afk players become a real problem once you hit the zone limit. And all this taxi’ing is kind of silly.

Either provide us with better ways to organize ourselves in a zone, or simply make boss fights not hinge on such huge amounts of players. Make it scale for lower numbers.

SirMoogie.9263:

digiowl.9620:

Meaning that the success or failure of the event depends on the performance of the players, not some timer ticking down in the background.

I sympathize with removing the timers, but I would go so far as to say timers don’t depend on player performance. They are both skill and DPS indicator. For Tequatl you need to have the skills to avoid the waves and other hazards to DPS him and beat the timer. For the wurms you have to have the skills to deliver bombs and phytotoxin to DPS him. I support removing the timers for more interesting failure conditions that make sense (does Tequatl have an appointment to make?)

If skill is involved, why does there need to be DPS? Unless the person is out to troll by stalling progress, winning should be more than enough indication off skill as long as there is no way to 100% insulate the character from damage via passive measures.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

Josh,

Thank you for your response. Makes me quite happy to see your name on the forums again.

Once the more tactical groups master this fight, do you see yourselves scaling this fight down so us average Joes can do it? Or is this present difficulty going to be permanent?

Thanks again, even if you don’t respond.

I really like the Marionette as well. It’s really some of the most interesting content I’ve done in ages. It’s fun to cheer people on and try your best as a lane/group, most fun I’ve had since I chanced upon a Wintersday community event on my server, Aurora’s Glade, a while back (thanks again, my Queen)

Ah, I really wanted to join my server in beating Scarlet’s puppet. But unfortunately, some kitten roadworker hit the fiberglass cable and now I can’t do anything besides browse the forums on my phone. I can only hope the line gets restored some time early next week.

I have a question for someone from Anet. I’ve read that this event will last 2+ weeks, does that mean that we get more time to finish the Living Story achievements for this part as well?

Edit: Whoops, mustn’t forget to thank Daniel Frozenwind as well. Thank you, snowman-king.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think we should have a means of selecting overflows properly. Because when boss fights are so dependent on the number of players participating, then afk players become a real problem once you hit the zone limit. And all this taxi’ing is kind of silly.

Either provide us with better ways to organize ourselves in a zone, or simply make boss fights not hinge on such huge amounts of players. Make it scale for lower numbers.

Well like you, I think a proper way would be a district system like in GW1 where you could choose the district. It would make coordination much easier if you can say. " Meet on Overflow#32 for epic Wurm kill ", than just having this taxi BS.

World Bosses don’t need to be put on an extra instance, we just need the ability to choose the overflows.

Just pitching in – I love the big dolly and I spend all days doing it almost.

Ok, that came out wrong, but you know what I mean.

It’s a very enjoyable event, with just enough challenge to feel satisfaction when victorious, chest or no chest, yet not difficuilt enough to require long training to defeat.

I plan to continue dancing with the Big Lady untill she is removed, or when I move on to wurm and find it just as enjoyable!

Please, more encounters like that, best so far, big kudos, please don’t ban me for the joke in first sentence! Thanks!

digiowl.9620:

If skill is involved, why does there need to be DPS? Unless the person is out to troll by stalling progress, winning should be more than enough indication off skill as long as there is no way to 100% insulate the character from damage via passive measures.

I’m kind of puzzled by your question. I think you might have meant, “why does there have to be time constrained DPS for victory?” To that I agree that there doesn’t have to be. I wasn’t defending its inclusion, to the contrary I think they should drop the timers (as explained further up thread). All I was saying is that it isn’t true that the timers aren’t a skill check as one has to be alive to damage the boss, and to be alive one must learn the boss mechanics that cause death or prohibit damage from being done.

If you were suggesting they remove the doing damage aspect entirely, that would mean many of our skills are essentially useless for the fight and players would rightly wonder why give us weapons or skills at all if they aren’t relevant to the battles we are having. Even the Marionette Phase 1 requires that we do damage in a limited amount of time. We have to do damage to the minions to prevent them from reaching the end of the lane, and not doing enough of it will fail the event. The difference between this and timers is that you can extend the time you have to burn down the mobs through some abilities, in particular control abilities that slow down the minions extending the window you have to kill them.

SirMoogie.9263:

digiowl.9620:

If skill is involved, why does there need to be DPS? Unless the person is out to troll by stalling progress, winning should be more than enough indication off skill as long as there is no way to 100% insulate the character from damage via passive measures.

I’m kind of puzzled by your question. I think you might have meant, “why does there have to be time constrained DPS for victory?” To that I agree that there doesn’t have to be. I wasn’t defending its inclusion, to the contrary I think they should drop the timers (as explained further up thread). All I was saying is that it isn’t true that the timers aren’t a skill check as one has to be alive to damage the boss, and to be alive one must learn the boss mechanics that cause death or prohibit damage from being done.

If you were suggesting they remove the doing damage aspect entirely, that would mean many of our skills are essentially useless for the fight and players would rightly wonder why give us weapons or skills at all if they aren’t relevant to the battles we are having. Even the Marionette Phase 1 requires that we do damage in a limited amount of time. We have to do damage to the minions to prevent them from reaching the end of the lane, and not doing enough of it will fail the event. The difference between this and timers is that you can extend the time you have to burn down the mobs through some abilities, in particular control abilities that slow down the minions extending the window you have to kill them.

Nah, i think we were talking past each other. Removing damage would be just silly. But right now it seems that skill is tilted a bit much towards the offensive. This in large part by fights being timed.

In fact, I really hope that the development team considers this for future encounters. Create situations that let players voluntarily take on extra risks and responsibilities commensurate with their skill level, without forcing new/less confident players into situations where they fear they will let down the team.

The problem here is that if they do allow players to do this, then the risk needs to be entirely on the part of the player who does this, not on the part of the group. By which I highlight the Teq cannons, in which six players hold a role that can be make-or-break for the entire event. If ANet provides opportunity for “skilled” players to take on a tougher role, then if “unskilled” players choose to take up this role instead, it shouldn’t negatively impact all the other players. Also, taking on a tougher role should not be necessary for gaining achievements, or for gaining the best rewards, those should all be available to the hoi poloi.

digiowl.9620:

I reminded myself that if i ignore the platforms for a moment the event is as i have suggested Tequatl should be worked.

Meaning that the success or failure of the event depends on the performance of the players, not some timer ticking down in the background…(snipped)

…Tequatl could have been reworked to something similar related to the cannon on the beach. And i am sure that other world bosses could be reworked in some similar fashion, thus removing the need for the arbitrary time limit.

I agree whole-heartedly that Tequatl and other world bosses should never be designed with Timers…When a timer fails, you just want to yell at ANET. When WE fail, we think of how we could have done better.

I love the idea that Tequatl could be changed in a simple way to make the fight more doable… get rid of the timer, and instead add HP to the cannon in the middle. If Tequatl or his minions do enough damage to the cannon, he leaves having been satisfied that they destroyed something that we created to hurt him. As long as we defend the cannon, the event gives us more time to hurt Tequatl. I think that alone would change the whole battle for the better.

Him leaving because of a timer just doesnt make sense. Does he have a dinner to go to? Wife waiting at home? Was he just hopping out for a bite to eat? Timer’s REALLY destroy the perception that this is a living world.

One more comment on the WURM: Is it so hard to create an instance doorway (perhaps to an underground labyrinth) that has a 15 minute timer on it?…anyone that joins during that 5-10-15 minute timer (similar to how you did the Scarlett invasions) goes into the INSTANCE with the super hard / Wurm event…this would immediately get rid of AFK’rs (if you’re AFK you cant JOIN the instance), it immediately allows for large groups to do this themselves (everyone line up where the doorway forms and all run in), it free’s up server resources (the instances can be hosted anywhere…even on a low-pop server if it has more capacity to handle the event). I see nothing but positives to this kind of “open world” yet “instanced” content for those that want HARD content.

It doesnt even automatically exclude anyone, since anyone can join during that timer of the open doorway…until the instance is full, then it starts another one (overflow for the one instance).

Errannar.8263:

I really like the Marionette as well. It’s really some of the most interesting content I’ve done in ages. It’s fun to cheer people on and try your best as a lane/group, most fun I’ve had since I chanced upon a Wintersday community event on my server, Aurora’s Glade, a while back (thanks again, my Queen)

It was a pleasure. I hope to host many more such events on Aurora Glade in the near future.

Errannar.8263:

Edit: Whoops, mustn’t forget to thank Daniel Frozenwind as well. Thank you, snowman-king.

I’ll pass it along to the snowman king.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I think I was with you in that overflow. Boss #3 can be challenging due to the fact that he hits like a brick, and has some decent HP on him. I had to solo him in an attempt yesterday with 20 seconds left to spare, managed to kill him and break the chain at the last second. If I were to declare the hardest wardens of the place, #3 and #2 are the hardest. #2 due to the fact that whoever is tanking the boss can screw up easily and not get a single bomb in, and #3 just because of his damage output.

Found 2 and 3 to be about the same. Not sure about 4. All I remember from that was AoE spam and two of the other people seem to enjoy standing in the cone attack.

I guess from the lack of mention 5 is easy?

Divus.3175:

And the randomness is pretty annoying – you never know which fight you’ll have to take. Make it a bit less random, just so people can compensate with they’re communication – for example commanders should be able to send everyone from their party to different boss.

People get angry not on you, but on these poor little guys, who don’t really know, what’s going on.

Don’t get me wrong here either – I’m only stating that if people might get angry it’s better if they’re angry on devs, than on the other players.

Hope my post was constructive enough.

Which randomness are you referring to? The only random part of the marionette fight is the distribution of people across platforms.

You know exactly which champ you will fight based on the x/5 chains severed.

Ohoni.6057:

In fact, I really hope that the development team considers this for future encounters. Create situations that let players voluntarily take on extra risks and responsibilities commensurate with their skill level, without forcing new/less confident players into situations where they fear they will let down the team.

The problem here is that if they do allow players to do this, then the risk needs to be entirely on the part of the player who does this, not on the part of the group. By which I highlight the Teq cannons, in which six players hold a role that can be make-or-break for the entire event. If ANet provides opportunity for “skilled” players to take on a tougher role, then if “unskilled” players choose to take up this role instead, it shouldn’t negatively impact all the other players. Also, taking on a tougher role should not be necessary for gaining achievements, or for gaining the best rewards, those should all be available to the hoi poloi.

I agree, these are all valid concerns. Careful thought would be necessary to make sure everyone’s incentives were aligned. A very basic example of the extra risks I’m imagining would be giving players two ways to attack a target – a “normal” way, such as using your weapons, and a high-risk, high-reward way, like carrying a bomb. If you get hit even once while carrying the bomb, you (and only you) blow up and die, but if you make it to the objective untouched, you make significant progress for the group. Any player could choose either option, or alternate if they felt like it, and unlike with the Tequatl cannons, nobody gets locked out of any role. A setup like this would provide an opportunity to show off your skills for the greater good, while still giving those with a smaller appetite for risk the opportunity to pitch in in a meaningful way.

SirMoogie.9263:

The difference between this and timers is that you can extend the time you have to burn down the mobs through some abilities, in particular control abilities that slow down the minions extending the window you have to kill them.

All I ever get is Immune Immune Immune Immune Immune.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I had a super epic encounter last night where everyone in my champion ring died except for me almost immediately (we were fighting the shrieker). Then, I went on to solo the boss, killing it with 20 seconds to spare, and managed to finish off the power regulator with less than a half-second remaining on the clock. All of this was happening to the cheers in /say chat from the viewers, stunned that a Necromancer of all things soloed the boss and ultimately broke the chain. We went on to win the whole thing because of that success (we had no failures allowed left before bar filled), and it made me swell with pride to think that not only had I achieved something truly great and not only had I benefited about 100 other people, but that a group of them watched it in disbelief and cheered me on. It was nerve-wracking and absolutely unforgettably amazing.

It’s moments like these that I remember forever, and for that, I thank ANet for making such an amazing and awesome fight where I could show off my personal skill and make a difference for everyone.

While that is certainly great the problem is that the typical scenario is the exact opposite. 4/5 platforms done and then you look over and wonder why the 5th platform is empty.

Walhalla.5473:

Well like you, I think a proper way would be a district system like in GW1 where you could choose the district. It would make coordination much easier if you can say. " Meet on Overflow#32 for epic Wurm kill ", than just having this taxi BS.

World Bosses don’t need to be put on an extra instance, we just need the ability to choose the overflows.

The problem will always persist, regardless of overflow mechanics chosen, as long as those encounters will be designed with the assumption that the whole zone will be doing it.
Basically, if the event is designed around the numbers close to the zone cap, there’s no way of avoiding the problem of people not getting in (or people who have no idea what’s going on/with poor skills/doing something completely different in the same zone taking valuable player slots and thus decreasing the chance of winning).
And no, Josh – Marionette event does not scale down well in the game, even if in theory it was supposed to (and Wurm event is much much worse, with it’s hard requirements of 20 people here, 20 there, time restrictions and champion/elite/uber veteran spawn hordes).

I agree, these are all valid concerns. Careful thought would be necessary to make sure everyone’s incentives were aligned. A very basic example of the extra risks I’m imagining would be giving players two ways to attack a target – a “normal” way, such as using your weapons, and a high-risk, high-reward way, like carrying a bomb. If you get hit even once while carrying the bomb, you (and only you) blow up and die, but if you make it to the objective untouched, you make significant progress for the group. Any player could choose either option, or alternate if they felt like it, and unlike with the Tequatl cannons, nobody gets locked out of any role. A setup like this would provide an opportunity to show off your skills for the greater good, while still giving those with a smaller appetite for risk the opportunity to pitch in in a meaningful way.

Yeah, I could see something like that. The tricky thing though is balance. How many of these should you NEED? Like say the max number of players that could participate is 100. Would it be possible for all 100 to take the easy route and still complete it without too much chance of failure? If so, what’s the point of the hard route? And if so, then what if 50+ players were good enough to do the hard route, wouldn’t that trivialize the encounter, because they would end up doing way more damage?

It would certainly be a huge improvement over Teq cannons, and having more options is always nice, but I don’t know if it would satisfy the Roguelike crowd.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

The current design for the wurm boss is intolerable. You’re forcing people to wait around for hours just to attempt to fight a boss in a game. Do you NOT see the problem with this? Seriously?

There are no reasons these fights shouldn’t be instanced. Making people wait around for hours is absurd. We all have real lives.

I really like how the fight split up the players into 5 paths. It help reduce the graphic lag in these events.

And yes I welcome the removal of time limited events.

I look forward to the final version of the Marionette. I bet it would be a great fight, like this maybe. ^^

Don’t forget the epic music that starts playing when you enter the champ room.

Mixed feelings here, while I like the design this is yet another event that requires a full map to be completed, that is not good.

I too like this event. I like it a lot more than the worm one. The worm one seems silly and for the life of me why do we have skills if we just have to run around with silly colored hearts over heads and fill gas cannons. And the reward for loosing is 73 copper and my armor costs more to repair.

But the Puppet is more straight forward and a better battle. The best I have done was 4 chains but I find it easy to want to return and try again. I have a good opportunity to obtain cyphers and can keep them to open chests and that’s always fun. The worm one not so much where nothing drops much.

I wish in these big battles there wasn’t such a big sense that you are probably leaving a lot of loot on the ground because your moving too fast to find it. Also, I wish the load in to the inner rings was better. I am a bit of a slow loader and find I’m almost dead before I get there.

I like that you can count on the battle starting at the hour every 2 hours and can schedule your play time around it. It would be nice if some of the other events were better timed.

People have been pretty good about spreading out to do each of the 5 lanes.

I find it a better battle than Tequatl and think if it stays around a while I would do it like I used to do Teq and still do SB and Claw and some of the others.

So, throwing my 2 cents in.

First, this is a great fight! I enjoy it immencely. If you could release something like this, plus the story, plus an equal sized piece of permanent content every 2 weeks? the Living story would be A-OK in my book.

I really only have minor complaints, and more than complain I wanted to offer constructive ideas.

First, the platform poker deal-out problem. This could be hugely solved by allowing the first group who succeeded to be distributed among the rest based on players left, and/or the boss’ health. So, the (theoretically) most skilled players are then divvied up among the rest, but they are only given a helping hand, as opposed to a domino-effect zerg.

Second, I would like to point out to people that 5 out of 25 people failing isn’t that different from Tequatl; the players who failed just are anonymous. Moreover, if individual player skill isn’t relied on, you really won’t feel like your efforts mattered. I think just slightly more player backup could be useful here, but this is a minor issue, IMO. You feel important because you are right now. shrugs Too much ability for other players to intervene would mean it matters less if you do your job right.

Third, and most importantly, overflows. These are a problem. The above are minor complaints and suggestions, but I would take many of those over this. I have limitted time to play. I am on my server because I like it, and I like my guild. Telling me that I have to do without my guild/server if I don’t wait 40 minutes+ makes me feel like my time isn’t respected. There are many suggestions for how to handle this; selectable overflow/shards, raid-like instances, etc. But lets stop for a moment and consider Anet’s intentions for these events, and the problems.
Anet wants:
-Lots of people involved
-Player skill to matter
-Player coordination to matter
-The world feels the impact of success or failure
-Anyone who wants to participate to be able to
-Fun! (and rewarding succeed or fail)
-Not infinite players on a map (server upgrades alone can only go so far)

(probably in reverse order)

Selectable overflows will still fill up on patch day, and the amount of mass exodus all at once that will happen constantly will probably wreak havoc on their servers. Plus, they are dynamically generated, and server-unrelated. Managing this would be very hard, and moreover, it would let players farm nodes when they are not supposed to. This requires a lot of work to implement, problems, and generally makes it hard for random people to join. This would band-aid the situation, IMO, not fix it.

Classic instances bar the general populace from joining, AND prevent this from impacting the overall world, so that’s a no-go.

I have a 3rd suggestion; what about what they have now, plus ‘public guild instances’. A public instance would be an instance created by, say, a maxed-out guild, maybe costing them resources to make, maybe not. The instance must be started by the guild more than 10 minutes before the event, and each guild can do this once per day max. Until 5 minutes before the event starts, ONLY the guild is allowed in, but after that, anyone can get in. This way, friends can get in together, guaranteed! The main-map event still happens, and has it’s effects. Maybe too many main map failures prevent the guild instances, so that people have a reason to care about it. Or some other penalty. Anyone can join, but friends get priority.

What do people think? If you don’t think this idea would work, why is that, and what might you do to fulfill all of Anet’s requirements?

I’m upset right now because i’ve had to devote most of my time trying to kill the Wurm and thus having to complete ignore the Marionette

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics.

The more I think about it, the more I realize the biggest problem I have with Wurm is not it’s hardcore difficulty. The biggest problem I have is that it harms everyone who isn’t in one of those hardcore groups. There is already a world boss in Bloodtide Coast:
Taidha Covington. What happens when someone wants to fight this boss during a major wurm attempt? Overflowed and effectively locked away from it. Hopefully someone from wurms won’t killsteal it while that person is locked away. But if they do anyway? Too bad.

Tequatl has this issue too. I’ve had Tequatl spawn on top of me as I was doing map completion. No one around, and I promptly had to get out or get slaughtered. It happened again when I tried to use the nearby waypoint to explore other areas.

“Hardcore” content? Sure, I don’t care. I just don’t want anyone else hurt in the process.

Astralporing.1957:

The problem will always persist, regardless of overflow mechanics chosen, as long as those encounters will be designed with the assumption that the whole zone will be doing it.
Basically, if the event is designed around the numbers close to the zone cap, there’s no way of avoiding the problem of people not getting in (or people who have no idea what’s going on/with poor skills/doing something completely different in the same zone taking valuable player slots and thus decreasing the chance of winning).
. . . Marionette event does not scale down well in the game, even if in theory it was supposed to (and Wurm event is much much worse, with it’s hard requirements of 20 people here, 20 there, time restrictions and champion/elite/uber veteran spawn hordes).

My biggest criticism of the new stuff is that most-if not all- of the new bosses, Spider champ in Kessex Hills, and new maps, except the Labyrinthine Cliffs during the Bazaar of Four Winds, do not scale down at all- at least they seem that way. I can no longer count how many times I’ve attempted the newer bosses, and maps with less than 20 people. We failed every time, and could not proceed further in the zones. During the tower of Nightmares, I parked my main toon at the top for a couple weeks just so that I could complete the final boss several times.

One of the game’s best systems is its dynamic event system that scales the difficulty of events based on the number of people near the events. Most importantly, scaling these events based on present population can solve many of the problems with them. This could potentially get more people to complete them more often

The marionette has so much more roles, subtasks and interesting mechanics than the wurm does. That’s basically an auto-attack spamfest with 1 ‘mechanic’.

I know that the marionette cannot be kept, but it’s leagues better than any world boss currently available.

I have to admit I was quite pleased with how Marionette was done. Hard but not hard enough it feels like hitting a brick wall. It requires a level of leadership and team work. and the fight gives quite a bit of variety for boss fights.

I’m most of all pleased with the very bright and clear danger zones. None of that thin line I some times miss in the heat of battle no this is impossible not notice (unless your color blind).

If I did have to fault this it be that it does seem a bit heavy is player requirements at times and the time to fight bosses is a bit to short. Not everyone is a zerker, I’ve lost a few boss fights because we ran out of time instead of dieing.

I absolutely love this event. I really hope we get more of this level of boss fight in the future.

The Marionette has been probably the best made open world boss thus far. It is very well received, except from the majority of fails, people are still finding the fight itself really enjoyable, including myself.

However, there is ONE huge flaw in my opinion and it’s the one aspect that is making people ANGRY. The majority of the chain fails come from one ring, most of the fails end with 4 of the 5 rings being successful and spending their remaining time watching a ring fail with no way to help out. It’s infuriating at times and makes you angry at the people for letting you down, and all the other lanes then hate YOUR lane even though the majority of the people did their “jobs.” It really goes against playing as a team.

I think it would have been far better designed, and it could easily be patched to such, but as soon as a ring disables their power regulator, it should create a bridge to their adjacent rings so they can help out a struggling ring. It would be much more of a team effort, and it would result in more successes, while not making it overly easy.

I’d love a way to help out other rings, and think it would go a long way to improving the event and quelling a lot of the complaints.

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

I wish in these big battles there wasn’t such a big sense that you are probably leaving a lot of loot on the ground because your moving too fast to find it. Also, I wish the load in to the inner rings was better. I am a bit of a slow loader and find I’m almost dead before I get there.

Set a keybind for AoE loot. It will loot everything within 900 range. You could probably loot a third of the lane from the midpoint.

The AOE indicators are a massive improvement over the thin lines that get missed easily in a fight that tends to have a lot of pretty effects spammed all over.

The event pop timer is better, and using a meter that fills based on how well/poor your zone is doing is an improvement over a pure dps check.

Any chance the NPC’s could shout out more tips during the fights though? Getting people to self educate ahead of time is almost impossible and in something as fast paced as this game trying to tell people what they need to know is even more impossible mid-fight.

I also like the Marionette. Not too hard, not to easy, and as tyhe OP says – it brings ppl together and we all have different but meaningful roles that all makes a difference right there as it takes Place! That whole boss event is very well thought trough and balanced when it comes to every single bit of it actually! Well thats my opinion at least

I like it and me and my guildies are having great fun participating in tearing it down!
The sad thing I have seen is the ranger hate it brings out… Yesterday it was just awful after a failed attempt… I have written about this ina separate thread.

Well I do certainly believe this is a great improvement over the last living story events, it does need quite a bit of improvement. Since my own actions seem to have little to do with the success or failure of scenario now that I have the meta done(indeed the achievements were my primary reason for doing it more than once.) There is little incentive to return now(Last 4 times I was in the overflow we hit the 5th boss and then failed each time to end the event). Indeed the rng elements to the platform part LS will have me avoiding Lornars pass all together for the remainder of this fortnight to avoid random death, lag, and overflows. I have never been able to do this event with my guild mates or even my party. Another example of ‘Guild’ wars being a misnomer.

I love the event, great gameplay etc, but i’m worried people stop doing the event after a few days…

Marco.8209:

I love the event, great gameplay etc, but i’m worried people stop doing the event after a few days…

Or show up for daily and just farm the keys fragments. YB went from 5/5 nearly every time in prime time to now 2/5 3/5 whatever -there has to some reason…….

Liston.9708:

Marco.8209:

I love the event, great gameplay etc, but i’m worried people stop doing the event after a few days…

Or show up for daily and just farm the keys fragments. YB went from 5/5 nearly every time in prime time to now 2/5 3/5 whatever -there has to some reason…….

Exactly, the event is nice the way it is, people are just acting lame when they got all the achievements and are just there for LOOT.

Perhaps the next time create in game timers for these events. Would be a nice addition I think.

I would love to see the data on how many overflow servers have beaten the event compared to main servers.
I still haven’t beaten it yet since I am constantly stuck in a low pop overflow. Perhaps tweaking the balance for overflows when the lanes get to go to the platforms?
Overall it is a fun event and best of all, it is fun. Anet has been doing a good job lately of stopping massive zergs and making the players form smaller groups to achieve a goal. Well done so far.
I still wish that Wurms was instanced though, or perhaps a better system for overflows

The main problem i have with this is that, as a level 46 mez, it feels like this content was made for level 80’s downleveled to level 35’s. Other then that i like it.

I like to think of the Marionette as a “pug friendly hardcore raid”. Which is awesome imo. And triple threat is definitely for the coordinated super hardcore audience. Which is also good for the game.

With that said, I really hope when Anet starts to look at the other major world bosses we currently have, that they revamp some of them to be in the style and difficulty of the Marionette. But not all of them of course. I think at least the other dragons should be just like teq & the wurm.

This system would definitely cater to a whole variety of players imo. It’s a good balance I think.