Guild Wars 2

Bosses like these belong in raid dungeons, but seeing as this game does not have raids they plop it in overworld and we get issues like are brought up here. Strip these bosses out of the world and put them in special instances where groups of organized players can group up and do them whenever they want.

I am fine with hard content, but if you want to make content that requires a bunch of organized people working together then stop beating around the bush and just add raids. If you don’t want to add raiding then stop making this content.

Can even leave watered down versions of these bosses that are on level with the zone they are in that can be completed like most other world bosses and make special instances with the lvl 80 high cooperation versions with the option to join them as a single party and get grouped up with other parties like regular dungeons or with a full organized group.

Finaldeath.1059:

…snip
Can even leave watered down versions of these bosses that are on level with the zone they are in that can be completed like most other world bosses and make special instances with the lvl 80 high cooperation versions with the option to join them as a single party and get grouped up with other parties like regular dungeons or with a full organized group.

I would be fine with just the watered down versions being bosses in the open world without having to segregate them (and players) into instances. The original iteration of these bosses were indeed way way to easy where most players could afk the battle and collect loot. The balance team still needs to make adjustments though as making the players become better is not the way to make these events fun IMO.

Moshari.8570:

Part of the problem with Teq and the Wurm is the utter lack of progress if you are not doing well. People who know the battle know that the majority of Teq’s HP’s come off really quickly after you get rid of the 1st 1/4. It is the same with the wurm, once those first bombs (or debuffs) go down, it goes down quickly….but until you get that part done right, it is frustratingly slow…which discourages people.

People with both of those events pointed out that after a week, they can still only get it down to about 95% or 85% of health even after multiple tries…and they called the events “impossible”

For future events like these I think the devs should reverse how they look at damage. Make the first 50% go fast, and then let the baddy develop resistances as the battle goes on so that the fight gets harder and harder, rather than easier and easier…this provides the psychological effect of positive re-enforcement for the fight.

People would have a sense that they are accomplishing something….“We got him down to 50% on our first try!” which would make them try harder the next try “We’ll get him next time.”

Rather than “we barely scratched him after 15 minutes” and the inevitable “this is impossible since we barely hurt him”.

Psychologically, people are more open to trying again if they see actual progress.

In education we call that ensuring early success, and its a good way to get people to keep going.

So far with my experiences with the bosses there seems to be one big issue: No matter HOW much you organize with people, unless you’re in a single guild that can fill an entire overflow, you have too many who are, in general, unwilling to (or afk) organize. For the marionette, even a few people who instantly wipe because they don’t dodge the AoEs can make hours of coordination useless.

I’m all for difficult content, I really love it. However, I ended up getting bored and mostly frustrated with trying to do the wurm in my server’s main. Even though we’d have 3 tags, lots of coordination and organization between there, there are just too many people in the game who don’t care about that and want to try to “tag along” to get the loot with little effort. Even something as simple as telling people to stop auto attacking a mob, you continue to see many still do it.

Content stops being fun when players spend 2 hours only to fail, not because of anything they did or a lack of planning, but because a few people who just don’t care about trying ruin it all (or are just trolling…). Open world bosses need to be scaled to the average coordination and skill of the players (not assuming they’ll all magically want to try hard and do well and all players on map will perfectly coordinate). I somehow feel like the wurm will be JUST like tequatly. Mostly a DEADZONE besides a few specialize guilds that continue to do it on overflows…

The more fails I see of the chain two warden, the more I’m convinced that it’s bad design for an open world event like this. The warden itself is not a bad design, on the contrary, I think it’s a good one.. but for controlled groups. It’s simply not a good idea to have an event where one player on each platform could possibly fail it for everyone by not knowing the kiting techniques and there being absolutely no way to control who the mob chooses to follow. Other games have mechanics like this but they also have tanks, who have the ability to grab and keep aggro.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We have an idea of where the average player is skill-wise, and placed the bar where we hoped would just a tad above that, in the hopes that they would have to stretch a bit.

Sadly it from my experiences it would seem the bar was set too high. .. which is a pity as I think the marionette fight is largely quite good. I think those of us who game a fair bit consistently misjudge what ‘average’ is regarding gamers because our little game world may possibly be that different. For us, switching utilities, understanding stats, paying attention to event text or map chat etc is very normal and expected. But I’m starting to think this isn’t the norm at all. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a very casual style of gaming, but I think when you start shoving that together with those who like challenge and pushing themselves, it’s going to create a fair amount of bad feelings from both sides. This is why I can’t help but feel GW2 needs some instanced content so that it caters to gamers at both ends of the spectrum.

Lothirieth.3408:

Josh Foreman.8250:

We have an idea of where the average player is skill-wise, and placed the bar where we hoped would just a tad above that, in the hopes that they would have to stretch a bit.

Sadly it from my experiences it would seem the bar was set too high.

No, actually the bar was set at good height. An average player can indeed clear the skill bar with only some effort. Problem is, in this event lot of players are below average. And even one of those can fail the chain.

Basically, if the event design checks for the weakest link, then the skill barrier should not be balanced around average participant, but also around the least skilled one.

There’s also the problem of the numbers requirement, but that’s a completely separate design flaw.

The bar was definitely set to high, at least if you’re requiring 5/5 platforms to succeed. I’m not sure how many times I’ve done the marionette, but I’ve never seen it defeated and I’ve never seen more than 3/5 lanes sever a chain. Zerging and instawinning is boring, but so is completing 4/5 platforms and then having 1 platform torpedo everyone’s efforts because of ineptitude. I really feel like having 4/5 platforms succeed should sever a chain to allow for a little, but not too much, carrying.

The above comment got me thinking. What if the number of successful platforms altered how much the power level got increased? Currently, a failure means the bar shoots up 20%, regardless of whether it was a 4/5 near miss or a 0/5 uber wipe.

My suggestion – the bar increases by 4% for each platform that failed to destroy their Regulator. This means that if each attempt only missed it by the slimmest of margins (and if the lanes are good about stopping all Watchworks from getting through), they effectively have 20+ attempts to destroy the Marionette. This gives players more breathing room, and also serves as a way to spur on greater effort if they can see that they’re only missing out by a hair’s breadth.

Zaxares.5419:

The above comment got me thinking. What if the number of successful platforms altered how much the power level got increased? Currently, a failure means the bar shoots up 20%, regardless of whether it was a 4/5 near miss or a 0/5 uber wipe.

My suggestion – the bar increases by 4% for each platform that failed to destroy their Regulator. This means that if each attempt only missed it by the slimmest of margins (and if the lanes are good about stopping all Watchworks from getting through), they effectively have 20+ attempts to destroy the Marionette. This gives players more breathing room, and also serves as a way to spur on greater effort if they can see that they’re only missing out by a hair’s breadth.

That’s actually a great idea. Best one so far i’ve seen.

Mario fight can be done without a problem in each server and each overflow (as long as overflow has enough players of course). Why are you even trying to make it more easier? The boss fights are goods. Players need to evolve from “spam 1” type to “use skill” type.

Because when event faile rate is 80-90% with correct number of players you know the requirement bar was set too high for the general population.

Overflowed players killed Mario. I was in that overflow and players weren’t organized by some guild beforehand. 5 commanders took the lead, explained the tactics, answered the questions. and we killed Mario easily.

Problem is not any game mechanics, problem is the community itself. You can kill every single boss in this game by just spamming your “1” button. And it is true for Teqila too. People should start adapting themselves to new mechanics instead of asking nerf.

Noone is asking for a nerf. People just want to minimise the impact lowest end players currently have on the success of the event. Last time we had 4/5 severed chains and 4/5 groups in the lane finished. One group wiped and cost 100+ players a win. That’s just wrong for temporary open world content that’s suppoed to be more casual friendly.

It’s not asking for a nerf, it’s asking to eliminate the possibility of a handful of “bad”, clueless or even trolling players to prevent the rest from winning.
I, personally, think it’s rather easy. But I’ve invested a lot of time in this game to get to know my characters and the ways they work (and don’t work). Others play rather casually, but would still like to enjoy the Living Story content, even though they do not have the time to watch a half-hour tutorial for every Warden and another one for the lanes. And even that doesn’t help if it always ends with one kitten platform being too late, or getting wiped, or whatever.
As it is, such a high failure rate and the subsequent “requirement” to try again and again and again to even have a chance at participating in a win prevent casual players from getting much enjoyment out of this (though some might beg to differ; I haven’t won a single event yet, and I’ve been there about… thirty times? I’m not particularly frustrated because if this).

It’s about making the event more flexible. This way, there’d have to be a lot of bad and/or trolling players in order to actively ruin the event for everyone.

EDIT: I’d also like to point out that there’s nothing wrong with the scaling, that doesn’t really need to be touched. It’s the “all or nothing” mechanic that depends on so few participants that’s bugging us.

- Re: Marionette:

I’m happy with the Marionette event fight, as it’s a genuine MMO encounter that allows no free riders. I’ve won the bulk of my platform fights, including a few nailbiters, but suffered a few tough losses, too.

Whether it’s a low dps or low survivability group, the groups that failed were quite varied. This is what I expect in an MMO. Challenge is a good thing. Open world, community-building fights are the hallmark of a great MMO. GW2 has plenty of instanced content for groups already, so events like this are welcome.

I know some are hung up on winning the achievements, but I think they need to face that in an MMO, some achievements simply must rely on the cooperation of others. That’s what a community game is all about. Besides, the meta achievement is ultimately achievable without the help of others, anyway.

- Re: Bloodtide wurms:

This really seems to be geared only to very large guilds. Getting 120+ disciplined players together at one time to pace three separate kills appropriately is not going to happen with a pickup zerg.

If 120+ person guilds were the only target audience, fine, but devoting further resources to that audience should be done rarely. The Marionette event was a much better way to fully engage that number of people with some coordination required. Also, temporary events are your only way of ensuring that you can get a random gathering of that size.

zMajc.4659:

Noone is asking for a nerf. People just want to minimise the impact lowest end players currently have on the success of the event. Last time we had 4/5 severed chains and 4/5 groups in the lane finished. One group wiped and cost 100+ players a win. That’s just wrong for temporary open world content that’s suppoed to be more casual friendly.

you didnt lose because 1 group wiped, you lost because 5 groups wiped, or your lanes allowed too many enemies through.
Everyone wants to blame the last group in the last platform, but really 1 group failing cannot lose the event on its own.
It takes 5 failures for chain if you play good defense, this means 5 platform groups failed, if these platforms had 4 people that means 20 people failed. 20% of people failing is not a small amount.

Also, it seems like either people are getting better at the event, or less people who dont know the event are playing. I have had more victories lately, less preparation time, and people getting farther even on fails.

Father Grimm.8467:

- Re: Marionette:

I’m happy with the Marionette event fight, as it’s a genuine MMO encounter that allows no free riders. I’ve won the bulk of my platform fights, including a few nailbiters, but suffered a few tough losses, too.

Whether it’s a low dps or low survivability group, the groups that failed were quite varied. This is what I expect in an MMO. Challenge is a good thing. Open world, community-building fights are the hallmark of a great MMO. GW2 has plenty of instanced content for groups already, so events like this are welcome.

I know some are hung up on winning the achievements, but I think they need to face that in an MMO, some achievements simply must rely on the cooperation of others. That’s what a community game is all about. Besides, the meta achievement is ultimately achievable without the help of others, anyway.

- Re: Bloodtide wurms:

This really seems to be geared only to very large guilds. Getting 120+ disciplined players together at one time to pace three separate kills appropriately is not going to happen with a pickup zerg.

If 120+ person guilds were the only target audience, fine, but devoting further resources to that audience should be done rarely. The Marionette event was a much better way to fully engage that number of people with some coordination required. Also, temporary events are your only way of ensuring that you can get a random gathering of that size.

People will learn the events, even wurm, but right now it has some bugs, and probably needs some tweaks. It also needs to be more rewarding in general, and better paced rewards/feelings of accomplishment even for losses.

If they keep making good open world content, thats interesting/rewarding, people will begin to figure ways to coordinate better, like using the lfg tool to gather people for events, forums, or shouting in various places.
I do think that even large scale events should be doable by say 60-70 people. If the scaling only begins at 90-100 you basically ensure it can only be handled via the overflow system, because promoting events and what not is inexact. And how many people randomly choose to go, or are already on the map is unknown. this means if the event reccomends 100, you will probably half the time get too many. which creates overflow issues, to which i dont think anyone has any great solutions for. As is having them is way better than not having them

It’s not an issue of “we lost because ONE GROUP blablabla”. It’s just a bit unfair that one group losing the fight against their warden negates the other four groups’ victories completely – because it doesn’t matter if 4/5 or 1/5 groups failed, the cannon charges the same 20%. Now, if it’s changed so that a chain needs four successful platforms to be severed, but at the same time charges 5% for the platform that lost, I don’t think that’d be making things too easy. And failing two or more platforms doesn’t sever the chain and charges the cannon, if all platforms fail even more than before. That’d mean it’s simultaneously harder, in a way.

It’s a simple matter of showing people their progress, showing them that the victory they achieved did indeed matter, even though the lane as a whole lost, because they kept the charge of the cannon as low as possible.
If at the same time the drop rate for the fragments is lowered so the reward from the event chest is, relatively speaking, now better, then that’s even more motivation to get it right.

EDIT: Also, remember the Marionette is a temporary event, not permanent like the Wurm is – the latter can be practiced and learned over the course of weeks or months, but with the Marionette, we don’t have that kind of time. Another reason to not make it as hard as permanent bosses, so the Living Story is still accessible to casual players who don’t have the time to fight the Marionette five times a day.

one of the marionette’s biggest issue I’ve found is “Load wiping”, was doing the event yesterday and by the time I loaded into the platform two people were down (and I’m running win 8 on a solid state harddrive so my load times are pretty decent). Managed to get them up and actually take down the champion… however I can easily see loading in to a TPK (total party kill).

….not sure how to fix it though. :-\

edit.. perhaps make the champ invulnerable and the timer on the kill doesn’t start until the platform is fully populated (no clue how hard that would be to code for, I was an art major for a reason….)

That can be fixes by going through the field all at once. The bombs and whatnot don’t go off for a couple seconds (I was first on my platform several times now, the Warden’s invulnerable, but doesn’t move, either), so if everyone gathers at the field when the timer is still ticking and then goes through as soon as they can, that should do the trick.

Red Queen.7915:

That can be fixes by going through the field all at once. The bombs and whatnot don’t go off for a couple seconds (I was first on my platform several times now, the Warden’s invulnerable, but doesn’t move, either), so if everyone gathers at the field when the timer is still ticking and then goes through as soon as they can, that should do the trick.

is that possible though? the back field defenders are closer to the portal than the front liners, they’ll always be able to begin their zone in first. Since it plays Russian roulette with the platform assignments you don’t know if you’re getting a back liner on yours or someone that ran up from the front (which happens to me a lot as I tend to play front line)

I don’t use speed boosting utility skills cause they’re useless in combat and kill a slot that could be for better things, typically I run a venom thief for these (dual dagger for the line, dual pistol for the platform) so more often than not I’m one of the last to reach a portal.

I suppose back-liners could wait… eh.. most people don’t have that kind of patience or coordination. >_>

Father Grimm.8467:

I know some are hung up on winning the achievements, but I think they need to face that in an MMO, some achievements simply must rely on the cooperation of others. That’s what a community game is all about. Besides, the meta achievement is ultimately achievable without the help of others, anyway.

To some getting everything is necessary. I don’t hold this “collector” mentality myself, but I can understand it. The game helps to foster it now that AP is a type of reward and recognition. As such many players look for every opportunity to collect it. When they are prevented from doing so they get frustrated, and lash out at the game for being unfair or their fellow players for being “noobs”. I really don’t think most players are incapable of learning these encounters, so I’d rather place the blame on myself when they fail. I could be doing more to secure a win; such as nabbing a commander’s tag (I did) and organizing my server into a fighting force (I’m trying, but my game time is limited on weekdays).

- Re: Bloodtide wurms:

This really seems to be geared only to very large guilds. Getting 120+ disciplined players together at one time to pace three separate kills appropriately is not going to happen with a pickup zerg.

Oh? I wasn’t at the two desolation kills, but I imagine this wasn’t a pure effort from one guild, but multiple people from a variety of guilds coming together for the events. I surmise this as it wasn’t done in overflow (AFAIK), so the huge lines of people trying to get into main (especially on the second attempt) would prevent any large guild from getting all their members into the main attempt. Pick up zergs have been organizing successfully since this game launched… in WvW.

These events don’t need large guilds, they do need a player base genuinely interested in success. A player base interested in success will be interested in making multiple attempts and willing to accept failure as people learning the encounter or not having the right tactics, instead of blaming others or the encounter for being too hard. It will have a handful of people (not necessarily the same people each time), willing to strap on a commander tag and going through the process of organizing people into groups instead of letting them sort themselves; and then after doing so organizing people on site of the wurms into appropriate roles for the event. This organization need not be done through voice comm asthe game gives ample time before the wurms to do it.¹ It will require people to listen and sometimes accept that they are better suited for other tasks (e.g., if you lack toughness/vit/heal gear you’re better suited outside the wurm’s belly preventing husks/wurms from destroying people with the Wurm Attractant buff).

¹ – Tequatl desperately needs more events/time before his arrival.

Shadow Blade.1324:

Im not really sure why people are complaining about difficulty, none of the mechanics are inherently difficult or complex.

The problem is organization. Anet has decided to implement open world raids and taken the annoying part and made it worse

If you wipe in a raid you retry when everyone is alive again not wait 2h

If you have the people for a raid you can start it whenever you want not when Anet says or the servers align to magically provide the 100 people during peak and no other time

In a raid you can choose who goes and are sure you are all ready before starting

In a raid you are sure everyone is the right level and is interested in the activity

Given the above you can also get rid of anyone who is deliberately failing to troll others

if u wipe here or die you can waypoint and keep trying usually takes multiple deaths and failures to cause an event failure

ghostwriter.5826:

I think one point some people may underestimate is the probability of failure to severe a chain in the Marionette event. In chat there are often people who just can’t fathom how a lane could have messed up but it’s usually only one or two platforms that lose. Assuming each platform has a 90% chance of beating their champ then the probability of all five platforms succeeding is only 59%. For a 80% base chance (which in itself still looks fairly easy) this would drop to about 32%. Of course, it’s not as simple as that and for the event as a whole the math gets more complex since you can repeat the chain events several times. But my point is that failure to severe a chain is not that unlikely even though the chances for an individual platform to succeed are fairly good.

Of all the suggestions that have been brought up I really like the idea of making it so the amount the meter increases after a failed chain event depends on how many platforms have been cleared. This way your performance still matters even if others lose.

Having said all that I want to point out that aside from the growing frustration of being ever so close and still always losing out badly I really love the general idea and the mechanics of this battle. Otherwise I wouldn’t keep trying after 10+ attempts without ever getting beyond 3/5.

You didn’t take into account that u are able to fail 4 times in your calculation? and made calculations based on rate of success instead of rate of failure.

for 90% success 10% rate of failure on path u do (0.1)^4=0.0001 chance of failure essentially zero.

50% failure = 0.5^4 =60% rate of failure

So you have to be really bad with paths to actually fail this event.

There is probably a binomial probability formula to take into account both these effect on the event but im lazy.

Arkanaloth.3059:

one of the marionette’s biggest issue I’ve found is “Load wiping”, was doing the event yesterday and by the time I loaded into the platform two people were down (and I’m running win 8 on a solid state harddrive so my load times are pretty decent). Managed to get them up and actually take down the champion… however I can easily see loading in to a TPK (total party kill).

….not sure how to fix it though. :-\

edit.. perhaps make the champ invulnerable and the timer on the kill doesn’t start until the platform is fully populated (no clue how hard that would be to code for, I was an art major for a reason….)

This. It happened to me yesterday. Was very frustrating. Since it’s temporary, I don’t think they’ll do anything about it. But if Anet considers making it permanent somehow then PLEASE fix this issue.

I absolutely adore this fight. It is my favorite in the game at the moment, but this one platform loading insta-downed thing is the one thing that I’ve found irritating.

Thanks for reiterating the fact that not all content is made for everyone. It’s kind of disturbing how some people want to totally shut others out from the entire game. There’s already a lot of casual content, there’s nothing wrong with having a bit more challenging content in game.

Im sorry, but the problem isnt one of difficulty – its one of numbers.

The difference in numbers between the most populated and the least populated servers means that when you design for one, the other is adversely affected. Currently, strong players on less populated servers do not have easy access to the same game that those on higher populated do without guesting or transferring (which makes population disparities even worse).

So please stop saying that is simply about different players looking for different things. Something needs to be done to even out the experience and give all players the same access, regardless of the server you play on.

Either balance servers through merges, implement some kind of smarter “underflow” system or design fights with EVERY server in mind (not just the one or two with the most players).

Josh, just to reiterate, please make sure future events directly deal with the ability gating issue.

In the marionette you have created an event where 90 smart, skilled and hard-working players can be thwarted most of the time by 10 who are not good at the game, don’t care to put forth an effort, or even deliberately want the event to fail. In fact, I can think of a way for the marionette to be nearly impossible to suceed if even 5 people want to sabotage it.

PLEASE, if you are going to make open world content that requires 100 or more players, do not design them so that they live or die based on the behavior and abilities of the bottom quartile of participants. It is leading to extreme frustration and setting people against each other.

Hey Josh, I don’t know if this is the right thread, but I hope you see this anyways and might make a comment about it:

Wurm loot is way too bad. Have you seen the other thread? Here’s a link:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/madness/WURM-vs-TEQUATL-Loot-Comparison/first#post3568889
Compared to something like Tequatl (which does require less coordination imo) it’s just really, really bad. It’s worse than the loot from the Marionette-Event (imo)

I’d love to hear a statement if this is known and if there’ll be change

Hey Josh,

I’d like to discuss a few things for you. Just some things I’ve thought about.

First is that a long time ago, dont remember when, I remember seeing Anet talking about how only 10% of the playerbase in WoW didn’t see endgame content. It seemed like you were saying this because of the gear grind and it often took a lot of dedication. Another thing to note is that the number was also because some people were simply bad at the game. The increase in skill required to do content often caused better groups to form. Someone at fractal level 1 for the first time is probably going to be a lot worse than someone at fractal level 50. WIth the new content you’re allowing any player to do it. This is awesome, but you have to consider player interactions. You have to ask yourself is it good. With no ways for players to really decide who is in the map with them, you have to think about how much a event can fail based on a personal players skill level. Marionette is an example where you guys messed up on this. I see a lot of people talk about the people who fail platforms are bad, newbs, champion train farmers, thinking the game was easy, etc.

The second thing i think we need to consider is the the new content effect. When games recieve new content, the entire playerbase is going to want to play it. Even if it doesnt directly cater to their playstyle, they’re going to want to play it and they’re going to want it to be catering to their playstyle. Thats where you see PvErs saying enough with the PvP content. Where you see WvWers saying enough with the PvE and PvP content, etc. That was one of the big things with expansions is that they usually contain content for all types so this kind of outcome isn’t as large. The point of me saying this to you guys is you may want to try to find some way to fit PvP, PvE, and WvW changes into these patches you do.

Marionette is great and really does not need any change (well, beyond the insta-death platform issue). However, you might want to implement what someone brought up in another thread…..an equivalent of the X-men’s “danger room” where people can practice on bosses. That way people who don’t get the fights can at least train up before hand.

I think part of the problem is also people are able to guest onto a different server and piggyback on their server for these events instead of re-examine their strategies and builds. There is really no incentive to successfully completing these kind of events as a main server.

Is there any way you can comment on the “raid” aspect of these events? I think Wurm and Tequatl fit more of the example.

The fact is, these events require a highly organized and skilled group of players. Knowing this, they reach an inevitable point after launch: Players in the open world don’t attempt to do them because it can’t be done with the level of coordination that zergs have. The only people with access to these events are groups like TTS. Even on my server, TC, which is highly populous, there is almost nobody at Tequatl. If you want to do him, you have to join one of these groups, be able to participate at a specific spawn time, and have the group invite you to an overflow server. That’s essentially the opposite of open-world content.

I’d -LIKE- to do Tequatl and the Wurm, but I know I can’t without trying to join these groups. This begs the question of why these events are still open-world and not instanced. I know the world needs to be alive, but I think the fact remains that these events are simply too difficult for open-world completion and end up barren after the hype passes, which makes me sad because I actually want to do them.

lnguy.5127:

I think part of the problem is also people are able to guest onto a different server and piggyback on their server for these events instead of re-examine their strategies and builds. There is really no incentive to successfully completing these kind of events as a main server.

This ^^. Personally, I don’t think people should be able to guest to a map if there is a big LS event. Why should I get locked out of my home server map because of others guesting? If someone is guesting, they should automatically go to an overflow.

lnguy.5127:

I think part of the problem is also people are able to guest onto a different server and piggyback on their server for these events instead of re-examine their strategies and builds. There is really no incentive to successfully completing these kind of events as a main server.

Yes, this. Right now a lot of servers suffer from this problem. Everybody is guesting to Deso to do it there instead, leaving the main server desolated (no pun intended). I would really like to beat it at my main server (FoW), just to put in the effort with all my fellow guildies/server buddies, to learn and combine our efforts to beat this challenge. But so far, the main reaction is “why? just guest to Deso, we have beaten it X-times today there already…” Leaving the FoW home map occupied with new players and random guests, since all the experienced players are guesting to a “better” server. No wonder we still struggle.

Lothirieth.3408:

The more fails I see of the chain two warden, the more I’m convinced that it’s bad design for an open world event like this. The warden itself is not a bad design, on the contrary, I think it’s a good one.. but for controlled groups. It’s simply not a good idea to have an event where one player on each platform could possibly fail it for everyone by not knowing the kiting techniques and there being absolutely no way to control who the mob chooses to follow. Other games have mechanics like this but they also have tanks, who have the ability to grab and keep aggro.

GW2 has this too. The ooze lure in TA aetherpath but it isn’t used here.

I don’t like missing out things because of things I have absolutely no control over.

Only once, ONCE, I got to the platforms without getting a loading screen and getting stomped while loading, just to lose because just one platform ignored everyone yelling them “attack from behind”, while they just autoattacked from the front. They didn’t get the enemy below 90%!! People reported them for griefing!

At least let me get to that platform so I can finish it if they can’t, for Grenth’s sake.

And why isn’t there some sort of immunity while people are loading? Or a pre-platform in which players are immune and while they load and then jump to another platform? And why am I getting that screen for 10 seconds every time I use an energy field when I made sure to walk around the other lanes to ‘preload’ as many characters and terrain as possible, set video settings to the minimum so it would not load character customizations, and have more than enough ram and video memory?

I don’t see how that kind of frustration can be fun to anyone. This is not a challenge to overcome. This is waiting until the planets align.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I don’t have time for more replies, but I’ll keep reading. Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Unfortunatly i stumbled over this topic way too late so I hope you will still read this.
A lot has been said about the marionette event, so I just like to give a quick summary of what I see are the main issues with it:

1) Overflow system. Though I see why this system is there, but some kind of “select your overflow” system (thinking about the way you could select districts in Gw1) would be great. The way it is, ppl either have to log on hours (!) before, hoping they can join their home world somewhen (and plz, no “come on, you just have to join 30 mins before the event starts” answers- this is simply not true), promoting heavy afk’ing (no fun at all to see dozens of afk players standing at a waypoint / autorunning against a wall when the event starts).

2) I can see how you want big zergs to be split and i really welcome this change of mind. I also appreciate you try to enforce the community to actually communicate and coordinate- but tbh, that never really was the problem in every attempt i took on the marionette. Wether there were commanders or not, ppl talked to each other, gave feedback about their lane status, etc. BUT (and that’s by far the biggest issue of all):

3) Making the whole event dependent on things players can not influence themselves (talking about how others platforms perform) is just a no-go. Yeah, adjacent platforms get buffed with boons when another one succeds, but unfortunatly they do not buff the players sitting at their PCs themselves.
Though the fights themselves aren’t hard at all (heck, is there any hard fight at all with dulfy&co. spoiling walkthroughs for everything within a day?), being unable to help others, forcing you to stop and stare and watch 1 platform fail is just ultra-frustrating. E.g. you could have made somekind of portal pop up after destroying the generator, letting players choose on what platform they want to help.

Actually I am at 5 or 6 attempts, having always succeded on my platform, with 0 wins at all. Just frustrating.

Overall though, I think these types of events are a bad idea. @Josh, you mention seeing people cheer others on. Yes, that happens until the server starts failing. These types of events only work if people are on a similar skill level. This is never going to be the case. We’ve found that a ton of people still do not know how to dodge (i don’t get how it is possible to be killed on the platforms). One goes down, others try to res. They go down and then the platform fails.

It is just not a good experience. If you want to make it better for the community, allow people to jump between platforms as needed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood around for 45 seconds waiting for others to try to complete their platforms. Let people help each other.

Arkanaloth.3059:

one of the marionette’s biggest issue I’ve found is “Load wiping”, was doing the event yesterday and by the time I loaded into the platform two people were down (and I’m running win 8 on a solid state harddrive so my load times are pretty decent). Managed to get them up and actually take down the champion… however I can easily see loading in to a TPK (total party kill).

….not sure how to fix it though. :-\

edit.. perhaps make the champ invulnerable and the timer on the kill doesn’t start until the platform is fully populated (no clue how hard that would be to code for, I was an art major for a reason….)

That would only make things worse. You’ll just end up with a new group of people just blows all cooldowns on an invulnerable champion. On top of that being invulnerable doesn’t stop a mob from taking actions. If people are dying to the champions now do you really think they will do better against one that is invulnerable?

Putting a 30s(or whatever) delay between when the teleportation field becomes active and when the champions get spawned might do it. Although that will still force people to waste dodges on the marionette’s attacks.

I’d like to comment on the “practice” factor that could improve success on this event.

Given that the event runs every 2 hours, and for the most part any one player is only going to get 1 appearance on a platform against 1 particular boss, there’s a very limited opportunity to experience each bosses’ mechanics and practice successful strategies against them. So to the extent that practical experience with each boss type would increase the individual success rate of some players and thus the overall success rate of the event, the event’s design works against itself.

One solution could be to have each lane occasionally spawn veteran-level versions of the lane’s regulator so people can get a preview of the mechanics they’ll be up against. Or maybe weave the five regulators into the LS as a “build-up” to the Marionette.

Josh Foreman.8250:

There is no trend to exclude any particular kind of player.

Except for GW1 players. Screw those guys.

/wrists

HappyPrimes.3904:

Josh Foreman.8250:

There is no trend to exclude any particular kind of player.

Except for GW1 players. Screw those guys.

/wrists

Exactly how are GW1 veterans excluded? oO That thought never even occurred to me, and I’ve been playing since 2006. Is this an “everything used to be better” thing I’m not getting? Or do people think the game has changed so much it isn’t Guild Wars anymore?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Zylonite.5913:

I play the game to have fun, not to become better at something….If something tries to change me then it means it does’t accept me as a player??? so is the GW2 player base not accepted within ANet’s walls that now we have to change?

Some people only have fun WHEN they are learning and displaying mastery of skill. If you are not like that, cool. No problem. We love and accept you just as you are. We made most of our game content for you! Don’t ever change. Seriously, there’s room for all of us here.

This makes me sad. What is life without challenge? Absolutely boring.

Khisanth.2948:

Arkanaloth.3059:

one of the marionette’s biggest issue I’ve found is “Load wiping”, was doing the event yesterday and by the time I loaded into the platform two people were down (and I’m running win 8 on a solid state harddrive so my load times are pretty decent). Managed to get them up and actually take down the champion… however I can easily see loading in to a TPK (total party kill).

….not sure how to fix it though. :-\

edit.. perhaps make the champ invulnerable and the timer on the kill doesn’t start until the platform is fully populated (no clue how hard that would be to code for, I was an art major for a reason….)

That would only make things worse. You’ll just end up with a new group of people just blows all cooldowns on an invulnerable champion. On top of that being invulnerable doesn’t stop a mob from taking actions. If people are dying to the champions now do you really think they will do better against one that is invulnerable?

Putting a 30s(or whatever) delay between when the teleportation field becomes active and when the champions get spawned might do it. Although that will still force people to waste dodges on the marionette’s attacks.

good point… :-\

There is a HUGE population gap between the servers and its really been a factor in the completion of these events. Having started on Kaineng and still there, I know we were never able to take down the updated tequatl event, and I’m not sure on our odds against the new bosses. And when the world selection view is open, the population still states “high” but I havent seen a single que in the highest notable population areas in months, including reset nights in WvW. Players on low pop servers will simply guest to higher ones to get the events done instead of trying to rally enough people up for an attempt or two.

Yeah, they should just make it so the boss is inactive (not attackable and not able to attack) for a small period of time to give people time to load in. Oh and the puppet should also NOT be attacking during this time either.

First time posting.

I do love the event.. and despite the never-ending failures of my server, I feel closer to the community of my server than I ever have. We’re trying hard, we really are. However, I share in the opinion of some of the posts in this thread. I believe a tweak is in order to nudge it back from a depressing barricade. We completed the event once, when the major WvW guild was heavily invested in its success, but not since. Individuals who weren’t there for that one win are losing hope. There are some pretty interesting suggestions in this thread. Brighter minds than mine could find a solution.

I just wanted to say that I’m seeing a lot of “keep in mind for the future”, “designs will influence events” and “if I could go back in time”.

I can understand not wanting to change released content, due to affecting the perception of the achievement for those who have completed it vs. those who have not at this point. Or.. an unknowable plethora of other factors that would affect not wanting to change the event that can only be viewed from a development perspective.

I’d like to know if the developer opinion is if it’s too late to retool the event after these improvement observations have been made in hindsight?

Will the event continue as is for the duration of its lifespan?