Guild Wars 2

Blade Syphon.4325:

I’m sorry, but did I read the Anet dev’s post correct in that they intended to make it so that groups could help others out, but it didn’t make it into the release due to technical restraints?

So..the fight was designed with that in mind, but due to this ridiculous two week release schedule, the development team didn’t have time to fine tune the encounter and iron out the kinks to make sure this feature went live?

If this was intended to make us feel better, I would say it’s done the opposite. No we more or less know that content is rushed out, finished or not, to meet this ridiculous 2-week schedule.

Stop it. Just. Stop. It. If this is the result of the two week release cycle, it needs to end.

The LS was rotating content releases. So if that’s the case, they would have had about 6 weeks.. plus the 5 weeks between the last two patches. Sounds like it was just more trouble than it was worth?

The event CAN be completed. There just are some rarities.

KOPPER.1458:

Over Flow is an issue. AN knows it, they are looking into solutions.

Overflow has been an issue since Tequatl. They needed to either

• Fix overflow before releasing content where overflow is expected to happen, or
• Don’t release content where overflow will negatively affect play.

Instead, we get the usual “we’re looking into fixing it.”

Well it is Prime time on Friday night and JQ can’t even fill blood tide main for wurm. Looks like our server has officially given up.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well it is Prime time on Friday night and JQ can’t even fill blood tide main for wurm. Looks like our server has officially given up.

Among countless others.

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization. And I’m happy to see that in the aggregate, they ARE learning. I’m sure as this process continues we will find better ways to accommodate the communication structures that will emerge.

I don’t believe this is true. Some groups manage this just fine, but when it comes to Teq and Wurms and Marionettes, it just doesn’t happen in aggregate. It happens on a FEW servers, at a FEW times of day, mostly with a FEW well orgnized guilds. If those situations don’t align, then you’re SOL. If you don’t do the run right after reset, or on the most populous servers, then you aren’t likely to get anywhere, and that’s just a design flaw. Teq is a ghost town most of the time, and the Wurms will be even worse after the event weeks.

Secondly, from both a technical and player-experience perspective, it’s best to break up zergs as much as possible. Thematically keeping everyone feeling like they are contributing to a common cause from multiple locations, and still feel heroic is an interesting challenge to balance. Always looking for new ideas on this issue!

This is true, but when you split up the zergs, you need to give good tools to automatically balance them. Players should be able to tell at a glance which areas need more players and which are overloaded, they shouldn’t need commanders or teamspeak to coordinate these things.

We tried really hard to get this in. Every solution we came up with had technical constraints.

Why not just make the forcefields around the stages one way (no exit, free entry), and then make it so that the fields drop around cleared stages, so that players on cleared stages can leave and hop into whichever other ones they want (put a catwalk around it if elevated).

The timers and mob HP were balanced and rebalanced several times in an attempt to find a sweet spot that would ensure people couldn’t faceroll the event, but wasn’t so difficult that no one could do it. Everyone’s mileage will vary. And as with any group activity, virtual or real life, there is luck inherent in that. Some people hate that dynamic and some love it. If someone has an idea about how to ameliorate the inherent luck factor in group events, please speak up!

Remove the timers, let challenge-freaks competed over “best times” and things like that, but let people that just want to clear the event ALWAYS clear the event if they stick with it. Don’t punish the standard player to make the Roguelike crowd happy.

It scales quite a bit. The more people there are in a lane will change the number of vets and champs that spawn, and the platform boss’s HP scales based on how many end up on the platform.

It may scale up from a certain level, but it doesn’t scale down nearly well enough.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The timers and mob HP were balanced and rebalanced several times in an attempt to find a sweet spot that would ensure people couldn’t faceroll the event, but wasn’t so difficult that no one could do it. Everyone’s mileage will vary. And as with any group activity, virtual or real life, there is luck inherent in that. Some people hate that dynamic and some love it. If someone has an idea about how to ameliorate the inherent luck factor in group events, please speak up!

I’d suggest a morale boost on beating each platform, so it becomes less and less likely for the last platform or two to get wiped – GW1 had something similar for many missions but with a slightly different intent.

Another possibility would be requiring only four out of five to win. You generally have to be unlucky to get wiped or run out of time on any given platform, but it only takes one.

I personally prefer a morale boost – whether it’s just a temporary stat increase, rallying downed, or anything else – because it actually does mean you’re helping everyone else when you beat your platform, without giving anyone a free ride.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well it is Prime time on Friday night and JQ can’t even fill blood tide main for wurm. Looks like our server has officially given up.

We were 5 pple yesterday at Wurm, so yes, it’s died already on RoF…

Qaelyn.7612:

Some nice snippy little responses there, which may make you feel smug and clever, but don’t actually address the bottom line. And that is that, even though I usually enjoy most of the LW releases, I don’t enjoy this one. I’m not alone in that.

Yes, that’s fine, but there are people who didn’t enjoy most of the LW that do enjoy this one. I participated in the previous LW releases and enjoyed them to a certain degree – but they were not captivating. This release captivates me. I’m not alone in that.

If you don’t like this one wait until another.

Vol.7601:

- Too much waiting around.
-> So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?

I would recommend to add a long chain of events that restarts the marionette. It would be way more easier to gather people and waiting would be more bearable.

Vol.7601:

- Too much annoyance trying to get a party into an OF that actually has a decent number of players in it.
-> Overflows exist for a reason. It’s an inconvenience you will have to deal with

It seems you didn’t understand that point as you should…

Vol.7601:

- Too much failure.
-> If you fail to utilize strategy and coordination, you will fail. There are other easy bosses in the world if you are not skilled or too lazy enough to commit

But it isn’t about me or him! It’s about people that you participate with. There are hundreds of people that leech or don’t care. And that makes those events IMPOSSIBLE! There needs to be some control about who is participating in the event.

Vol.7601:

- Too little reward when you fail.
-> You obviously didn’t reach the threshold that gave you loot, which is killing one of the wurms’ body.

He strictly said that rewards suck when you fail. And killing one of the wurms is some kind of success. And also he is talking about the marionette encounter.

Yes, that’s fine, but there are people who didn’t enjoy most of the LW that do enjoy this one. I participated in the previous LW releases and enjoyed them to a certain degree – but they were not captivating. This release captivates me. I’m not alone in that.

If you don’t like this one wait until another.

Well, the problem is the worry that the ones to come will be more like this. I can’t say that I loved a lot of the LW content before this, most of what I enjoyed were the permanent events that had been in since launch, but I’m concerned about this shift to timers and “challenge” over “fun and casual cooperation.” I’m afraid that the WoW raiders have finally infected the design team.

I don’t mind if future LW updates involve similar mechanics as the post-Teq bosses, but I do mind if they employ the same times and fail conditions that put you in a “sorry, you just wasted twenty minutes you could have spent doing something else” position.

Take the Teq fight, remove the timer OR reduce his HP to about the same level as the Shatterer, so that he takes about the same amount of time for the same amount of people to DPS him down.

Take the Wurm fight. Remove the “kill all at once” mechanic, and remove the timers, OR make it so that killing one makes the other two vulnerable so that you don’t have to keep them all balanced out.

Take the Marrionette fight. Remove the cannon attack entirely. Let teams take as many attempts as it takes them to clear all five cables. Ideally you’d knock it out 1-2-3-4-5, but if you have to do it 1-2-2-2-2-3-3-3-3-3-4-4-4-4-4-5, then so be it, it’d take an hour or so, but it’d happen.

Maybe keep the cannon in, but remove the bonus charges for failing a round, so that the only thing that could fail the encounter is if the lanes fail to clear. Maybe even make it so that completing a chain actually reduces the cannon charge, so that you can knock it back down.

Maybe instead of having mobs that go through the portal raise the cannon charge, make it so that the enemies on the stag, by default, are a bit weaker than they currently are, but that they scale up based on the number of mobs that make it through during the previous round, potentially making them a bit stronger. This puts pressure on the lanes to defend themselves, but without needing to create a fail condition if they don’t, it would just slow down clearing the round if the mobs were made very strong.

Basically failure should only occur when the players CHOOSE to surrender. It should never be forced on players that are still willing to fight.

I’m aware that they aren’t likely to make any changes to the actual Marionette event given its short term nature, but I hope they consider these sorts of changes when designing future encounters.

Vol.7601:

Qaelyn.7612:

Some nice snippy little responses there, which may make you feel smug and clever, but don’t actually address the bottom line.

And that is that, even though I usually enjoy most of the LW releases, I don’t enjoy this one. I’m not alone in that.

I have a few hours a day to play GW2, at most, and I don’t want to spend them standing around, constantly trying to switch overflows. And the times I’ve participated in trying to kill the marionette we have coordinated and planned.. and then failed usually because of issues such as 1 or 2 people being put on a platform.

But by all means, please pretend it is my fault for not somehow single-handedly controlling the behavior and ability of 100 strangers, while also having to fight against some very poor game design that often makes success as much about luck as it is about skill.

You want them to address it? Then add some constructive criticism and suggestions. Otherwise this post is a one-sided complaint, and Anet can’t do anything about those.

My little ‘snippets’ show that your comments just scratch the surface and weren’t thought through at all.

Nothing against you. As a creative professional, I have an issue with this suggestion. First off, Qaelyn’s post isn’t one-sided. It’s okay to say that something doesn’t work. It is true that the Marionette event, while interesting, does have its set of problems. It also isn’t for people with a short amount of time or kids who are looking for quick thrills. On the first day of the event, I had to comfort some kids who weren’t prepared for “failed event” scenario.

As for suggestions to fix the stuff, I wouldn’t go as far as making detailed diagrams of game scenarios and animatics. Ideas cost money, and many of us need money to survive. If a person has really awesome game ideas, he/she would be better served by creating an original game then fixing someone else’s project. The only time I recommend that anyone give a video game company ideas for their projects is when that person is working for said company and getting paid for their ideas. Giving ideas away to Anet means that you’re allowing Anet to make money off your ideas without getting a paycheck for the work. It’s like being Trahearne’s “right hand man” all over again: Your PC does all the work, while the weakling Fern Boy gets the magical sword and all the credit.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Qaelyn.7612:

distribute players by parceling them out one platform at a time like a poker dealer rather than selecting platforms for them randomly? Really? As a programmer myself I was astonished when I found out that it was possible to have 5 on one platform and 1 on another. I mean, this is really basic stuff!

Having 5 on one platform and 1 on another could only be a very edge case requiring several people to drop out at the right moment. Our script does exactly what you said, poker dealer style.

I’m afraid to say, this isn’t very “edge-case” at all. It’s happened numerous times on my server, and more than once in a single attempt. Just now we failed an attempt because every platform had 5-8 players except one which had one lonely player, then the very next chain, same thing.

Failing because people mess up is one thing, but because RNG decides to screw you is a totally different ball game…

PainShot.7154:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having 5 on one platform and 1 on another could only be a very edge case requiring several people to drop out at the right moment. Our script does exactly what you said, poker dealer style.

Very edge case? Players complain on chat about that “very edge case” almost every time im doing that event.

Fix it. Period…

I’ve done the event only 4 times. Once I was the only person on the platform. And two other times there was a platform I wasn’t on that had only one or two players.

Nouvel.2375:

For the platform – if you finish your platform, couldn’t a mini tron machine appear that you can talk to that gives options to port to any of the platforms? It only appears on the platform that’s finished. Something similar to that asura lava jumping puzzle.

Or a couple of jump pads like those around Tequatl, that would send you to the next platforms over.

phys.7689:

UnDeadFun.5824:

Josh Foreman.8250:

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization. And I’m happy to see that in the aggregate, they ARE learning. I’m sure as this process continues we will find better ways to accommodate the communication structures that will emerge.

If we are moving to world events that require us to be organized, then why are we restricted to a party/ group of 5 ?

like i said before, he isnt talking about 5 man organization, hes talking broadly in terms of hey you 20 guys protect this while these other 40 guys attacks this, and these 6 guys defend this while these 10 guys use this item.

It might be nice if they gave commanders more functionality like, being able to write a mission parameter (might need larger squads) and draw arrows etc on the map of people with them, but we arent talking about small group type organization here.

One thing that may help would be if commanders could do mass invites simply by proximity. Meaning they could hit a button and everyone within range that was not already in a squad would get a invite.

Right now the commander have to invite each individually, or they have to join by selecting the commander.

Another option would be if commanders could have a persistent message above their head, or a selection of persistent icons beyond their tag, that would offer some indication about what to do.

As for drawing on the map, you already can. Shift+left mouse will do that. Not sure how long the shapes stay tho, and the size of the minimap do not really make it that useful.

I also see on the wiki that commanders can put special icons on the map for anyone in the squad to see. I can’t find any examples of what those icons look like tho.

Marionette event is brilliantly done, the wurm event is just bad. Waisting resources on something only a few in the game can do, and then even only a few servers. No please stop doing this awefull so called hardcore boss events and stick to the good ones.

Players that finish early on their platform should get an option to help other platforms that might be struggling. Technical limitations may deny physical interaction between platforms, but why can’t we do things in the form of moral buffs? Example: Platform A finishes but Platform B next to it has several downed, so those on Platform A do a pray emote/action to buff the stats of the allies on Platform B (a moral boost that functions like a food buff or somesuch) or activate the broken generator to jerryrig it to debuff the regulator next door. Or even rez people in the platform next door once. Something helpful and worthwhile. There are far too many times when it is just one group that fails their platform due to the random grouping.

It’s been…what? Four days since release. Marionette has been beaten a number of times. It is doable. It’s been done. Many times.

And I like wurm. People are absolutely raging mad there is something they can’t do within a day. I love the challenge. I have been on Teamspeak for hours with others trying to figure it out with others and making plans. We’ve been trying out strategies and working together. We may be a minority, but this is absolutely lovely. We know it can be done, but we have to do it just right.

I am so tired of people wanting easier content when they have an entire world of easier content. There are easy world bosses Shadow Behemoth, Fire Elemental, Frozen Maw ect. There are easy events. There are dungeons. There are tons of other ways for easy loot and success.

A decent number of us love the challenge wurm gives us. We are watching other player’s videos. Talking to other guilds. Bringing in other worlds for help and advice. This is just one boss for us, the people who love the hard work. Seriously. You all have an entire game of content you can do on different skill levels. Let us have wurm.

Where are the large number of people praising it? Too busy being in game and on teamspeak trying to beat these bosses and find the most efficient ways. It makes me sad people have gotten so coddled that they need every boss to be easy and doable within a single run. The majority of these people complaining haven’t even tried planning or talking to others to organize. Some, maybe, but most, no. It’s an MMORPG and this is something that depends on that.

Josh Foreman.8250:

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization.

Thats cool and all but you know what would make that a whole lot easier? Built in team speak so we didn’t have to go to a dam 3rd party program to TALK to each other as it is so much faster and better than typing.

HownDoog.8529:

It’s been…what? Four days since release. Marionette has been beaten a number of times. It is doable. It’s been done. Many times.

And I like wurm. People are absolutely raging mad there is something they can’t do within a day. I love the challenge. I have been on Teamspeak for hours with others trying to figure it out with others and making plans. We’ve been trying out strategies and working together. We may be a minority, but this is absolutely lovely. We know it can be done, but we have to do it just right.

I am so tired of people wanting easier content when they have an entire world of easier content.

This is not about easy or hard, this is about the sense of helplessness and frustration when you clear your platform early and see the next one down having one guy barely holding his own, knowing that if he fails your effort was a waste.

The issue is basically that there is no proportionality to the platforms, either they all succeed or its a complete failiure. And you do not know where the weakest link will be, nor have any ability to reinforce it, until the very last moment.

It would be much better if the charge rate would be lower on a failure, meaning that if a lane manages 4/5, it is not a complete loss. Right now 4/5 or 0/5 produce the same 25% jump. But if it didn’t there would be more chances for the other lanes to recover.

Maybe you think that is carebear-mode (there is a wurm for you down in bloodtide i think), i see it as being more community friendly.

My only issue is the luck of the draw with the platforms on Marionette. It doesn’t really test anyone’s skill or preparation when you are arbitrarily outnumbered and the fate of the ‘every 2 hours’ event rests on your shoulders. The rest is good, in my opinion. They require coordination and planning and a level of effectiveness. Clean up that platform mechanic and I think both events are pretty good. And this coming from a player that hasn’t beaten either. I’m good with losing a fair fight. That’s what keeps me coming back. Randomness, not so much.

It’s in essence, a PvE/WvW situation, where the whole success rate depends fully on everyone else’s actions and NOT yourself and the few select handful of people in the group.

It’s one thing to make people play together to achieve a common goal, it’s quite another to lay the success of that goal on others and NOT the individual or the individuals group.

Why oh why, should we continue to fail, because of other players failures…. That’s not right – All that effort we put in, for organization, timing, skill… etc, and you get the others who don’t do that and wash away all we worked for.

Make these kind of “world events” instanced based.
(The dragons are bad enough without this adding to the failure)

timmyf.1490:

It’s tough for me. I love this game. I’ve logged 1350 hours and just made my legendary Monday night (Moot!!!!) after a grind-free farm-free process. (I hate grinding. I hate farming. Getting a legendary, then, was quite the process!)

I want to do these events. I want to coordinate and organize and gather people and beat them. I love that concept!

But guess what? Yelling at people on mapchat and hoping they listen to you is not a fun or compelling game mode. No matter how many commanders or how much explaining we do, there will still be people who ignore it. As far as I can tell, this event is pretty unforgiving, especially when dealing with the portal/champ fights.

There were some issues with the Tequatl fight and I hoped that would prompt some re-evaluation, but this fight seems to have all the same issues.

(That said, the execution of this flawed idea was tremendous. The fight is really cool, the design is great, the music is great, etc. So props for that.)

Go to a site that has recipes for legendarys and look for what it takes to create moot. Now, since you are an engineer and can do the math. I’d like you to address the odds of any given players playstyle, use yours, without farming or grinding, result in all the ingredients to produce moot in 1350hrs of play? That’s what would be necessary to create a legendary without grinding or farming. I don’t have to do the math. It’s up there with getting struck by lightning 3 times in one day.

What actually happened is you studied the recipe and played in such a way that you would acquire the necessary ingredients. There is no way on earth that you can craft a legendary without the purposive activity that is called grinding or farming. The idea that you can is not unique to you, but it is wholly false. The legedary grind is a legendary grind. It should be. And, if you crafted a legendary, you did the grind.

Okay the Arenanet tag on this thread caused it to explode beyond my imagining and I can’t reply to it all. But I did want to respond to Josh.

Josh Foreman.8250:

In the never ending quest to improve our design and find ways to please as many people as possible we’re always digging into constructive criticism. We have not perfected the recipe for an open world boss event, probably because we’re pioneering new territory here.

And I think that’s great. Honestly. I really like the premise here, and the fight itself is cool.

Josh Foreman.8250:

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization. And I’m happy to see that in the aggregate, they ARE learning. I’m sure as this process continues we will find better ways to accommodate the communication structures that will emerge.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Secondly, from both a technical and player-experience perspective, it’s best to break up zergs as much as possible. Thematically keeping everyone feeling like they are contributing to a common cause from multiple locations, and still feel heroic is an interesting challenge to balance. Always looking for new ideas on this issue!

I think you’re close, but this is still too difficult. I’ve now done it a total of 15 times or so, and succeeded once. That one time was because I played hookey from my work (I’m self-employed so no raspberries) and did it at 9 am on a weekday and was able to get into TC main. People with jobs and school can’t do that.

And even getting into main is now guarantee. Tried it again just now and we failed.. miserably.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having 5 on one platform and 1 on another could only be a very edge case requiring several people to drop out at the right moment. Our script does exactly what you said, poker dealer style.

I’m glad to hear that, but with respect, I think you guys really need to get out on the servers and see what’s going on. Because at least 50% of the time I do this, I hear someone complain about mismatches in numbers on the platforms. I’m sure some of them are mistakes or exaggerations, but some are legitimate and I’ve seen it once or twice myself.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We tried really hard to get this in. Every solution we came up with had technical constraints.

Okay, I can understand that happening.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The timers and mob HP were balanced and rebalanced several times in an attempt to find a sweet spot that would ensure people couldn’t faceroll the event, but wasn’t so difficult that no one could do it. Everyone’s mileage will vary. And as with any group activity, virtual or real life, there is luck inherent in that. Some people hate that dynamic and some love it. If someone has an idea about how to ameliorate the inherent luck factor in group events, please speak up!

I still think the difficulty is too high, and that’s exacerbated by the OF problem. If I try to do this during prime time, I’m pretty much guaranteed a fail unless I can get a taxi to a full map. That’s really pretty awful.

Challenge is good, but it’s important to remember that this is a game. For most of us, real life is itself a challenge, and we play a game to have fun. Losing is not fun. Winning by a LOT is not fun either, but really, most people I have talked to have had experiences similar to mine: mostly fails. And it’s been the better part of a week on something that only lasts 2 weeks.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I know there are people working on various solutions to this problem.

Glad to hear it, but that sounds months off. You guys need to take into account the OF chaos when you design these events. This one is too dependent on having a full map for success in a system where the average player has limited control over that.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It scales quite a bit. The more people there are in a lane will change the number of vets and champs that spawn, and the platform boss’s HP scales based on how many end up on the platform.

It’s not scaling enough, IMO. Because there are still too many failures, especially in maps that aren’t cram-packed, and that’s the real test.

Again I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my concerns/complaints/suggestions.

Raine.1394:

timmyf.1490:

It’s tough for me. I love this game. I’ve logged 1350 hours and just made my legendary Monday night (Moot!!!!) after a grind-free farm-free process. (I hate grinding. I hate farming. Getting a legendary, then, was quite the process!)

I want to do these events. I want to coordinate and organize and gather people and beat them. I love that concept!

But guess what? Yelling at people on mapchat and hoping they listen to you is not a fun or compelling game mode. No matter how many commanders or how much explaining we do, there will still be people who ignore it. As far as I can tell, this event is pretty unforgiving, especially when dealing with the portal/champ fights.

There were some issues with the Tequatl fight and I hoped that would prompt some re-evaluation, but this fight seems to have all the same issues.

(That said, the execution of this flawed idea was tremendous. The fight is really cool, the design is great, the music is great, etc. So props for that.)

Go to a site that has recipes for legendarys and look for what it takes to create moot. Now, since you are an engineer and can do the math. I’d like you to address the odds of any given players playstyle, use yours, without farming or grinding, result in all the ingredients to produce moot in 1350hrs of play? That’s what would be necessary to create a legendary without grinding or farming. I don’t have to do the math. It’s up there with getting struck by lightning 3 times in one day.

What actually happened is you studied the recipe and played in such a way that you would acquire the necessary ingredients. There is no way on earth that you can craft a legendary without the purposive activity that is called grinding or farming. The idea that you can is not unique to you, but it is wholly false. The legedary grind is a legendary grind. It should be. And, if you crafted a legendary, you did the grind.

actually its possible, if you get the precursor as a random drop
heres what you need
250 of every teir 6 mat, this will come over time, and you can convert teir 5 mats to teir 6
globs of ectoplasm comes over time by getting rares, many activities give rares
obsidian shards comes from karma and fractals, can get if you play over time

gift of mastery, basically beating the game, at this point achievements alone can make it so you dont have to wvw

i mean you can try to play in ways to acheive these more efficiently, but if you play regularly, and dont spend a ton of money, or sell items you need, you will basically have the vast majority of things you need for a legendary/money to buy what ever you are missing in that time frame, except for the precursor, which you must either farm for or gamble for.

Qaelyn.7612:

snip

firstly, which event are you talking about here? worm, or marrionette.
secondly, what you want is to win. Making the content so that your going to win, essentially means making it easy. Keep in mind its still new, and not everyone has mastered/understands it
I will agree that if people are getting left to two man platforms often, that is a problem.

But the point im really getting at, is i think there is a fundamental difference in ideaology here.
You think, all content should be made to be beaten by 90% of players, 70% of the time they attempt it even with little forknowledge coordination

I think anet wanted to make some content that 90% of players CAN beat, 70% of the time, if they attempt it with a lot of forknowledge and coordination.`

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having 5 on one platform and 1 on another could only be a very edge case requiring several people to drop out at the right moment. Our script does exactly what you said, poker dealer style.

I don’t this this functionality is working correctly. During off hours play it is common to simply stack lane 1 and go for a bag. Even with 30-40 people in one lane we routinely see some platforms with 5 and others with 15.

phys.7689:

firstly, which event are you talking about here? worm, or marrionette.

Marionette. The wurm is so ridiculous and buggy I have no interest in even trying it until it is fixed and adjusted.

phys.7689:

secondly, what you want is to win. Making the content so that your going to win, essentially means making it easy.

That’s not what I want. I said that ideally it should be challenging but doable a decent percentage of the time.

I am currently at under 10%. Which means over 90% failure. Others have done a bit better but overall, it just sucks to fail all the time. It’s not what I play a game for.

phys.7689:

You think, all content should be made to be beaten by 90% of players, 70% of the time they attempt it even with little forknowledge coordination

Again, stop putting words in people’s mouths. It’s unconstructive and ticks them off.

Though I do think casual players paid the same money for the game that you do and should also be able to benefit from living world content. The wurm is supposed to be for the “hard core”, so why should this be a fail most of the time for everyone else?

I think a good goal to shoot for is 50%, and this event isn’t there.

And now that it’s the weekend, things are actually getting worse on my server, because people who only play weekends are on and so the whole learning curve has to be traversed again.

I was just in a hardcapped main event and we got 1/5 chains done.. so now I have to idle in LP for another 2 hours to have another chance. That’s bad design.

I’ll say my piece here.
The events themselves I’m not doing. I’m not against them or the LS. Such large scale things are not for me, but that’s not the issue.
My gripe is the zone-wide death upon failure, and the subsequent armour damage.
To me, that seems a little unfair.
Example: I was further north doing a dynamic event against grawl. I was doing well as I know this one. Suddenly the big LS one fails, a green beam shoots from the sky and kills me. Why?
I was not in the immediate area and was not participating. To me it seems unfair to be punished for something I had no involvement in.
I hope ANet changes that. As a roleplayer who was doing that grawl event in-character, it was fairly immersion breaking.

Shadowcat.6752:

I’ll say my piece here.
The events themselves I’m not doing. I’m not against them or the LS. Such large scale things are not for me, but that’s not the issue.
My gripe is the zone-wide death upon failure, and the subsequent armour damage.
To me, that seems a little unfair.
Example: I was further north doing a dynamic event against grawl. I was doing well as I know this one. Suddenly the big LS one fails, a green beam shoots from the sky and kills me. Why?
I was not in the immediate area and was not participating. To me it seems unfair to be punished for something I had no involvement in.
I hope ANet changes that. As a roleplayer who was doing that grawl event in-character, it was fairly immersion breaking.

How’s it it immersion breaking for a role player? It’s a huge marionette that is suppose to kill everything the area of the map. You were in the map and died. Just because you role played to ignore it doesn’t mean it role plays to ignore you

timidobserver.7925:

Vol.7601:

-> So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?

2 hours is a bit much given that you’ll want to be there 30 to 45 minutes early or even more if you are running with a popular group like TTS.

Using overflows and massive respawn timers makes doing the World Bosses way too time consuming, which is why very few even bother with Teq anymore.

All that said, I love the Wurm. I just wish that it wasn’t so time consuming.

No timer. It should be triggered by actions of the players. If you fail, the wurms keeps attacking until you do something about it. If you succeed, its dormant for a while until its able to be triggered again. Simple. The world should reflect what players do in it, not timers and scripts.

Fluffball.8307:

The only problem with the wurm being so hard is that Bob the level 37 ele thinks it was made for him. Perhaps a warning similar to ski slopes “EXPERTS ONLY” would have helped mitigate all this criticism of it.

I’ve spent way too many enjoyable hours on the wurm. The people it wasn’t made for hate it for mistaking it for general content.

I understand the complaint here, but I’m not sure it’s really a fair one. If you put the boss in an area that Bob can get to, is it really fair for him to be expected not to want to participate? Putting red flags all over the content and saying “No, you stay away!” are band-aids to a design decision that was questionable in the first place. It just ends up irritating both the “new” players who can’t participate in an event that’s happening right in front of them and the “old” players who are at the appropriate level for the content.

Anet please just make this type of content instanced(aKa Raids) and take the 2hours CD of the game that is just stupid, and that is killing our world first trys.

For “Summon” the wurm we should be doing an attunement and not waiting 2h on a overflow and pray that you get in the server and dont get dc like most of the times happends, we have over 200members that want to do this and only 80-100 can because the server(overflow) is full of pugs .

Thank you

Josh Foreman.8250:

In the never ending quest to improve our design and find ways to please as many people as possible we’re always digging into constructive criticism. We have not perfected the recipe for an open world boss event, probably because we’re pioneering new territory here.

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization. And I’m happy to see that in the aggregate, they ARE learning. I’m sure as this process continues we will find better ways to accommodate the communication structures that will emerge.

Secondly, from both a technical and player-experience perspective, it’s best to break up zergs as much as possible. Thematically keeping everyone feeling like they are contributing to a common cause from multiple locations, and still feel heroic is an interesting challenge to balance. Always looking for new ideas on this issue!

I think part of the problem is that there seems to be an instant assumption of both competence and interest. When you’re designing content for as large a group as possible, you can’t assume either. If you create an encounter that is clearly designed as elite content and lock it away in an instance, you put up some fairly standard velvet ropes. The players who want to do it will do it, and will likely be interested in the learning process (or will wait and make use of the teachings from the first ones to do it). The players who aren’t into that sort of content won’t do it. Things right now, however, are in a place where you’re throwing everyone into the deep end of the pool and just expecting that A.) they know how to swim or B.) if they don’t they want to learn.

It appears to me that a large portion of the GW2 player base (myself included) aren’t really interested in L2P. We like challenges and being tested, but we don’t like being shoved face first into a brick wall repeatedly with the intent that at one point we’ll “learn” the right angle to tilt our head so that we don’t break something. This is made even worse when you’ve got a huge mixed group with different expectations and levels of communication surrounding the face bashing.

I suppose what it boils down to with me is a question of why the content needs to be an elite level challenge in the first place. Would it really be all that bad if an average group of players could win? Would it really be that bad if a very small group of elite players could beat the content all on their own? Would it not make for a better learning experience if you started at grade 1 instead of throwing all players regardless of interest and intent straight into university?

Think of the experience with Super Adventure Box for a moment. Players are introduced to things with Zone 1-1 in normal mode, they aren’t thrown into 2-3 on Tribulation with 1 life and just expected to learn.

DeathWraith.6341:

How’s it it immersion breaking for a role player? It’s a huge marionette that is suppose to kill everything the area of the map. You were in the map and died. Just because you role played to ignore it doesn’t mean it role plays to ignore you

For your average RPer, perhaps so. But that character is part of a closed group in which the LS isn’t happening.
Saying that, I do see your point and it’s a good one.

Qaelyn.7612:

phys.7689:

firstly, which event are you talking about here? worm, or marrionette.

Marionette. The wurm is so ridiculous and buggy I have no interest in even trying it until it is fixed and adjusted.

phys.7689:

secondly, what you want is to win. Making the content so that your going to win, essentially means making it easy.

That’s not what I want. I said that ideally it should be challenging but doable a decent percentage of the time.

I am currently at under 10%. Which means over 90% failure. Others have done a bit better but overall, it just sucks to fail all the time. It’s not what I play a game for.

phys.7689:

You think, all content should be made to be beaten by 90% of players, 70% of the time they attempt it even with little forknowledge coordination

Again, stop putting words in people’s mouths. It’s unconstructive and ticks them off.

Though I do think casual players paid the same money for the game that you do and should also be able to benefit from living world content. The wurm is supposed to be for the “hard core”, so why should this be a fail most of the time for everyone else?

I think a good goal to shoot for is 50%, and this event isn’t there.

And now that it’s the weekend, things are actually getting worse on my server, because people who only play weekends are on and so the whole learning curve has to be traversed again.

I was just in a hardcapped main event and we got 1/5 chains done.. so now I have to idle in LP for another 2 hours to have another chance. That’s bad design.

my numbers are wrong for you, but what im saying is you think the event should be winnable 50% of the time by random people who arent familiar correct?

this means it would have to be fairly easy. Even grenth used to fail like 80% of the time it was attempted, and i think we can agree its not even really that hard.

Now, perhaps there is something wrong with marrionette, but from what i have seen, it primarily fails due to people not being able to beat the bosses. I just did one event where the 3rd warden wasnt able to be beat by all 5 paths. You dont lose the event because 1 time 1 path had one guy. You dont lose because the people on one path failed. Really people got to own up to it, the bosses are actually the ones causing failure. When people learn, and can beat the bosses more often, people will beat this event often. Perhaps they need to distribute players better here, or let players distribute themselves some how. 2 skilled players can beat most these bosses, but perhaps out of 5 platforms, there usually ends up being 1 group who just isnt good enough/not built to take on the warden

As far as the waiting to re attempt, your not really supposed to be waiting around, the idea is to show up like 5-10 minutes before the event spawns. This is probably what anet most needs to work on. It also seems to have the most problems.

StriderShinryu.6923:

Josh Foreman.8250:

In the never ending quest to improve our design and find ways to please as many people as possible we’re always digging into constructive criticism. We have not perfected the recipe for an open world boss event, probably because we’re pioneering new territory here.

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization. And I’m happy to see that in the aggregate, they ARE learning. I’m sure as this process continues we will find better ways to accommodate the communication structures that will emerge.

Secondly, from both a technical and player-experience perspective, it’s best to break up zergs as much as possible. Thematically keeping everyone feeling like they are contributing to a common cause from multiple locations, and still feel heroic is an interesting challenge to balance. Always looking for new ideas on this issue!

I think part of the problem is that there seems to be an instant assumption of both competence and interest. When you’re designing content for as large a group as possible, you can’t assume either. If you create an encounter that is clearly designed as elite content and lock it away in an instance, you put up some fairly standard velvet ropes. The players who want to do it will do it, and will likely be interested in the learning process (or will wait and make use of the teachings from the first ones to do it). The players who aren’t into that sort of content won’t do it. Things right now, however, are in a place where you’re throwing everyone into the deep end of the pool and just expecting that A.) they know how to swim or B.) if they don’t they want to learn.

It appears to me that a large portion of the GW2 player base (myself included) aren’t really interested in L2P. We like challenges and being tested, but we don’t like being shoved face first into a brick wall repeatedly with the intent that at one point we’ll “learn” the right angle to tilt our head so that we don’t break something. This is made even worse when you’ve got a huge mixed group with different expectations and levels of communication surrounding the face bashing.

I suppose what it boils down to with me is a question of why the content needs to be an elite level challenge in the first place. Would it really be all that bad if an average group of players could win? Would it really be that bad if a very small group of elite players could beat the content all on their own? Would it not make for a better learning experience if you started at grade 1 instead of throwing all players regardless of interest and intent straight into university?

Think of the experience with Super Adventure Box for a moment. Players are introduced to things with Zone 1-1 in normal mode, they aren’t thrown into 2-3 on Tribulation with 1 life and just expected to learn.

but the thing is, you werent just thrown in the deep end here, most of the game has taught us what we need to beat these bosses. The tower defense aspect is pretty similar to what we ve been doing everywhere else in the game, and the wardens really come down to a champion fight. I guess the biggest difference is its a champion fight with a small group, and its an unfamiliar champion.

phys.7689:

I think anet wanted to make some content that 90% of players CAN beat, 70% of the time, if they attempt it with a lot of forknowledge and coordination.`

That would be a good content. Neither Tequatl, nor Worm, or even Marionette does come even close to those values however. It’s still a content that most of the players cannot beat 99% of the time, and is really iffy for the rest for reasons that are completely beyond their ability to influence.

Just one question.

If the current system of overflows is known to be an issue that needs to be fixed in some way – Why keep designing and releasing events that are so large that they are inevitably going to cause these issues?

Would it not make more sense to ‘fix’ the horse before building lots of carts?

Astralporing.1957:

phys.7689:

I think anet wanted to make some content that 90% of players CAN beat, 70% of the time, if they attempt it with a lot of forknowledge and coordination.`

That would be a good content. Neither Tequatl, nor Worm, or even Marionette does come even close to those values however. It’s still a content that most of the players cannot beat 99% of the time, and is really iffy for the rest for reasons that are completely beyond their ability to influence.

tequatl is really about having the numbers, and organization. even a new player can contribute to winning pretty easily. In fact i would say tequatl requires(minimum not saying no one is skilled) very small personal skill, and mostly a lot of coordination. so i would say 90% of players have the ability to successfully contribute to teq.
when you are playing with people who either know the event or ar coordinated you will win 70% of the time.

Now what stops people from being able to beat tequatl?
1st knowledge, but this can be obtained fairly easily, its not super complex
2nd, and this is the big one, numbers you need at least 80 to have a shot, and probably more for it to be likely.

However if you have the people, and know the event, and are coordinated, you will win most the time. I have beat teq a number of times, and im not that hard core, I will even admit i dont play teq very skilled. I just go where i need to go, do what needs to be done, warp back when its a good idea to warp back. I have probably attempted tequatl… hmm 15-20 times? i have probably won half of those, most failures were in the first two weeks. Overall its not something i like doing a lot, feels a bit like being a soldier in an army, but i think its good content for others.

now marionette is interesting because its actually failing on a more personal skill level.

20 people defend their lane, this part most people are good enough at
but now the part where five 3-5 man groups have to beat a champion is where its failing. It actually takes slightly more personal skill, and this is where people fall down.

but regardless, i think that these types events are good to have in small doses. Tequatl is good because it gives a goal for large groups of players who want to work together, its all about massive multiplayer coordination.
Marionete is good because it takes a large group of people and breaks the event down to more personal chunks. It feels a lot more personal even with a lot of people.

I havent attempted wurm yet, hear its a bit buggy.

I think its good to have options as a player. And i think that overall the game needs more challenging content. Note, that i dont think ALL of that challenging content should be aimed at super large groups. They should definately create some more new and epic events that start scaling at 20 people and 40 people. even some that start scaling at 10 men. And more open world dungeons doable by even small groups.

See im not saying that everything needs to be a mapwide endeavor for endgame, but im not saying none of it should be either.

Raine.1394:

timmyf.1490:

It’s tough for me. I love this game. I’ve logged 1350 hours and just made my legendary Monday night (Moot!!!!) after a grind-free farm-free process. (I hate grinding. I hate farming. Getting a legendary, then, was quite the process!)

Go to a site that has recipes for legendarys and look for what it takes to create moot. Now, since you are an engineer and can do the math. I’d like you to address the odds of any given players playstyle, use yours, without farming or grinding, result in all the ingredients to produce moot in 1350hrs of play? That’s what would be necessary to create a legendary without grinding or farming. I don’t have to do the math. It’s up there with getting struck by lightning 3 times in one day.

What actually happened is you studied the recipe and played in such a way that you would acquire the necessary ingredients. There is no way on earth that you can craft a legendary without the purposive activity that is called grinding or farming. The idea that you can is not unique to you, but it is wholly false. The legedary grind is a legendary grind. It should be. And, if you crafted a legendary, you did the grind.

Hey man, this is a bit off topic for the thread, but I played a lot of world bosses for rares -> ecto, an activity that I enjoy. I had lots of karma from before the daily nerf. Did my dailies and monthlies for over a year (I started playing August 25th) and bought hundreds of T6 mat bags. I also had about 400g which I used to buy my precursor (163g) and the rest of the mats I needed.

For a couple months, I’d do AC 1 and 3 every day. I didn’t consider that farming or grinding either.

So I suppose, if you’d like to call those things farming or grinding, I farmed/grinded.

Edit: I forgot the important point: there are lots of fun once a day things that really help. My 1350 hours was over something like 450-460 days of play. 1350 hours over 250 days would require a pretty crazy grind.

phys.7689:

Now what stops people from being able to beat tequatl?
1st knowledge, but this can be obtained fairly easily, its not super complex
2nd, and this is the big one, numbers you need at least 80 to have a shot, and probably more for it to be likely.

Yes. Exactly. Most of the time the second component is missing, big way, and that makes the event a failure with no chance to do anything about it.

Yes, theoretically anyone can show up in Desolation and leech a win. No amount of foreknowledge and coordination is going to help a 10-15 man group that showed up for a Teq event in a low pop server however. And those attempts count as well. So still, basically many of the Teq attempts (and i mean attempts – those times when people actually showed up for it) are an almost certain failure even if everyone present has good skills and knowledge of the event.
Because they were on a wrong server. Or they bounced into overflow.

For those complaining about overflow, remember that overflow was hailed with cheers when they introduced it. No more queuing up to play the game! This was in beta. Also in beta we had serious issues with playing with our friends because the Join feature wasn’t there yet, and they added that to let parties gather.

While it would be nice to find a more elegant way to get everyone doing the content organized to one overflow, I shudder to think of how much worse it would be if you had to queue up for a chance to get in and play at all.

Donari.5237:

For those complaining about overflow, remember that overflow was hailed with cheers when they introduced it. No more queuing up to play the game! This was in beta. Also in beta we had serious issues with playing with our friends because the Join feature wasn’t there yet, and they added that to let parties gather.

While it would be nice to find a more elegant way to get everyone doing the content organized to one overflow, I shudder to think of how much worse it would be if you had to queue up for a chance to get in and play at all.

But there was a perfectly useable solution implemented in GW1. Instances or Overflows are numbered and players can select which to go to prior to the event.

A decent number of us love the challenge wurm gives us. We are watching other player’s videos. Talking to other guilds. Bringing in other worlds for help and advice. This is just one boss for us, the people who love the hard work. Seriously. You all have an entire game of content you can do on different skill levels. Let us have wurm.

Ok, fair enough, just remove the specific reward chests from the event, give it standard reward chests identical to the one you can get from the Caledon Wurm, and you can have your event. I’d just prefer in future that they spend their time creating content that is fun for everyone, rather than just the “hardcore.”

This event is by far my least favorite and has really turned me off to the game. Not sure what Anet was thinking. If there technical issues that prevented it from being played the way they wanted us to, then consider not doing the event at all.

I want to do the achievements, but it’s just not possible. My platform always completes, but all it takes is one to fail and cost us the achievement. No way to help them.

This entire event is DPS based, so I die a little for every bear/bow ranger I see there. And there are so many.

The only good part of this event is that I’m catching up on my reading. I expect to finish a few novels while waiting for the event to repeat.

Ohoni.6057:

A decent number of us love the challenge wurm gives us. We are watching other player’s videos. Talking to other guilds. Bringing in other worlds for help and advice. This is just one boss for us, the people who love the hard work. Seriously. You all have an entire game of content you can do on different skill levels. Let us have wurm.

Ok, fair enough, just remove the specific reward chests from the event, give it standard reward chests identical to the one you can get from the Caledon Wurm, and you can have your event. I’d just prefer in future that they spend their time creating content that is fun for everyone, rather than just the “hardcore.”

there is little in the specific chests you cant get from other events, or just killing mobs in this event.

As far as content that is fun for everyone, that does not exist, and it never will, the best you can hope for is that they create a lot of content, and a decent amount of it is fun for you.

Ohoni.6057:

A decent number of us love the challenge wurm gives us. We are watching other player’s videos. Talking to other guilds. Bringing in other worlds for help and advice. This is just one boss for us, the people who love the hard work. Seriously. You all have an entire game of content you can do on different skill levels. Let us have wurm.

Ok, fair enough, just remove the specific reward chests from the event, give it standard reward chests identical to the one you can get from the Caledon Wurm, and you can have your event. I’d just prefer in future that they spend their time creating content that is fun for everyone, rather than just the “hardcore.”

Actually here I do have to put in a good word for Arenanet. You do get lots of cypher pieces just from the lane defense portion, so you can still use the chests in the secret lair and have a chance at getting the rare drops even if you fail the event.

DaShi.1368:

This event is by far my least favorite and has really turned me off to the game. Not sure what Anet was thinking. If there technical issues that prevented it from being played the way they wanted us to, then consider not doing the event at all.

I want to do the achievements, but it’s just not possible. My platform always completes, but all it takes is one to fail and cost us the achievement. No way to help them.

This entire event is DPS based, so I die a little for every bear/bow ranger I see there. And there are so many.

The only good part of this event is that I’m catching up on my reading. I expect to finish a few novels while waiting for the event to repeat.

the entire event is not really dps based, dont know where you get that idea. The timer on the fight is very generous, if the timer fails, its because a bunch of people on the other platform died. It also generally takes 5 times to fail the event, so its not like one platform lost the whole event.

Also i dont know why people are waiting around for the event, if this is the only thing in the game holding your attention, then maybe something about it you like? you really can just log in 10 minutes before the event and usually get a team with a shot to win

phys.7689:

DaShi.1368:

This event is by far my least favorite and has really turned me off to the game. Not sure what Anet was thinking. If there technical issues that prevented it from being played the way they wanted us to, then consider not doing the event at all.

I want to do the achievements, but it’s just not possible. My platform always completes, but all it takes is one to fail and cost us the achievement. No way to help them.

This entire event is DPS based, so I die a little for every bear/bow ranger I see there. And there are so many.

The only good part of this event is that I’m catching up on my reading. I expect to finish a few novels while waiting for the event to repeat.

the entire event is not really dps based, dont know where you get that idea. The timer on the fight is very generous, if the timer fails, its because a bunch of people on the other platform died. It also generally takes 5 times to fail the event, so its not like one platform lost the whole event.

I’ve seen tons of groups unable to kill the wardens within the time limit. Yes, those are groups with rangers, but it is still dps-based.

Also i dont know why people are waiting around for the event, if this is the only thing in the game holding your attention, then maybe something about it you like? you really can just log in 10 minutes before the event and usually get a team with a shot to win

It would help if you read people’s posts before replying. I, like many others, want to complete the achievements. Obviously you have not played this event, because getting a team of 100+ players who can win it is extremely unlikely. The only advantage a home server has over an overflow is that it can get 100 players to fill each lane. The overflows I’ve been in usually have 2 or 3 lanes with 10 to 15 players in them.