Guild Wars 2

somewhatsavage.9753:

So anet makes an absolutely beautiful and intricate mmo with NEW and FREE content every two weeks and you scrubs complain about it being too difficult!?

Yes. At least on the too difficult part, as my opinion of the game is not so one-sided as yours.

somewhatsavage.9753:

I can’t even comprehend how you could come onto their forums and complain about this when you obviously haven’t played half of the content the game has to offer.

Oh, please, don’t assume things when you have no knowledge of them at all.

somewhatsavage.9753:

If you had even tried wvw pvp or even dungeons more than once you would easily have the skill level to play the marionette.

I have. What does it have to do with the event being a bit too hard? It’s not like this difficulty comes from personal skill requirements after all.

somewhatsavage.9753:

At the very least be respectful. If you can’t take the time to learn how to actually build a character and learn how to play the game anet put SO much work into then you don’t have the right to say that the game is anything besides breathtaking.

Well, since i have done that, i guess i now have your permission to say what i think, right? (not that i need it).

somewhatsavage.9753:

If this game feels like work to you, how hasn’t Darwinism killed you off yet?

It’s called civilization. And it’s really amazing.

somewhatsavage.9753:

Edit: if you put so much work into something, would you rather tailor it to people who can’t figure out how traits work or the people who know the game inside and out?

I’d make it so as many people as possible would appreciate it – so i would not tailor it for only a few servers.

El Diablo.1483:

If you play a game that just lets you win without requiring skill or getting better at the game then what is the point of playing a game?

The story? The shinies? The overall experience? The characters? The world? The ability to just run around and smash a baddie on the head? To just relax and enjoy yourself rather than worry about the next timed event or next challenge?

Moshari.8570:

Risingashes.8694:

Josh: Love the Marri- despite the frustration caused by watching a group of baddies fail.

Can I suggest a more focused training program for the individual for a future patch?

You’d need to make it essentially mandatory, either by rewards or locking Legendaries, level 80 or something behind it.

Have something that specifically teaches dodges, something that specifically requires trait swapping, something that specifically teaches positioning.

I’d love some harder content, and if the only way to get it is ensuring the playerbase is competent then it’s really up to you guys to actively push it forwards systematically and not just hope people pick things up while being carried by others.

Its called Fractals. Thats where I learned the importance of dodging / trait swapping (and skill swapping for each boss), positioning, even weapon swapping for different abilities vs different foes, and at higher levels it is harder content.

However, because it’s hard and requires things like the above, most people don’t do it. I have a friend who is adamant that he does not need to change skills / armor / weapons/ etc no matter what he does in the game …some will never learn….I honestly hate doing dungeons or anything with him since typically he spends more time getting healed than doing damage to our opponent…those people will always exist in the game…and will always still try to do this content…and get frustrated when they fail. I’ve talked until I was blue to him about dodging and swapping skills and etc…he doesn’t care, his attitude is that he shouldn’t have to do that (“think” to play the game) so he wont.

I have no problem swapping skills, as that can easily be done in the field (tho the weapon skills are a bit more iffy than the utility ones).

Traits are a different matter as that means either a gem store consumable or a round trip to a trainer (if it needs more than flipping over some majors).

swapping armor/trinkets is pretty much a no go because of the expense, in particular if there is ascended gear involved (never mind the inventory space required to lug around multiple armor sets).

Honestly, the only skills you can really swap at will are the boon dispensing ones as they are virtually unaffected by stats. All the others really needs a matching stats set to be anything other than mediocre.

somewhatsavage.9753:

If this game feels like work to you, how hasn’t Darwinism killed you off yet?

Because being willing to work in a game and being willing to work in real life are two entirely separate things.

It seems a number of gamers are completely unable to grasp such a concept.

somewhatsavage.9753:

TL;DR: if gw2 is too hard go play simon says.

If GW2 isn’t challenging enough, go play EVE Online.

Soren.9316:

Thyrm.8352:

Now draw a picture of Average Joe.
Would you want him at your side?

I would take an average Joe all the time

Right, but then in theory Average Joe is a middle class player. So there’s 50% of players that are way below Average Joe. And possibility of getting Joe and rest that are above him only is quite slim. What about all those Not-So-Average Joes that are taking part in it? Because most of the Above-Average-Joes are already done with the content and are back in WvW, Dungeons or wandering around Bloodtide Coast waiting for the next Wurm to spawn.

I don’t understand why you only want things YOUR way and no other way. You can have both casual content for the average player AND harder content. There is no need to limit things. Luckily Anet has seen the light and is not just sticking with easy-mode, ZZZZ go to sleep, press 1-fest shatterer-like content.

xarallei.4279:

I don’t understand why you only want things YOUR way and no other way. You can have both casual content for the average player AND harder content. There is no need to limit things. Luckily Anet has seen the light and is not just sticking with easy-mode, ZZZZ go to sleep, press 1-fest shatterer-like content.

Rather than that they designed contents where as being accessible to all skill levels, players are now responsible to teach people that don’t know how to play their characters, rather than designing some way to teach them through playing the game. And how is that possible with people that are a)Ignorant stating you can’t tell them how to play this game b)Have map chat turned off because they spent too much time in Queensdale Champ Train? The fact that teamwork of every player on the map is required is very frustrating.

Ah but that is where yoiu as a map of Pugs, or randoms need to step up and offer support to those players that simply stumble onto the map at any given time. More often than not the reason servers are failing marointte is becasue no one is offering encouragement to those who might be considered weaker players.

No.

Most of the failed Marionette runs I’ve been a part of have included extensive training sessions for the newbs, very supportive Commanders in each lane. We failed because those who didn’t know what they were doing were unwilling or incapable of learning, not because nobody was willing to teach.

No one is excluded, people like you are just giving up because you can’t spam buttons and succeed first try. Do you honestly believe unsuccessful encounters mean players are being excluded? Time, and gear gating is excluding, and there’s none of that. Even overflows full of randoms and no commanders are beating marionette, so stop this nonsense. You’ve had a year of easy gaming, and one difficult boss after all this time is unacceptable?

Numerous people in this thread have pointed out that they are frustrated because even though we clear our platforms, other platforms fail and the event collapses. That is not people complaining that they aren’t allowed to “just spam 1.” Please check your prejudices at the door and actually read before posting.

The second reason is easiest to fix. Don’t start a 100 person event unless theres 100 people to do it. Get rid of stupid timers, and only trigger an event when conditions demand it. That could be 5 people pushing seperate buttons at the same time to indicate readiness, for example.

The problem there is that the timers are the only thing that keep the events populated. People know that if they want to do the Marionette, they show up every other hour. If the event could just start whenever, but required 100 people, it would almost never get started. For reference, see the Karka Queen, Temple of Balthazar, or the Risen Priestess phase in the Dwayna chain. These events frequently get stalled for lack of critical mass.

If they did remove the hourly timer and make a “when it’s done” phase, then they would have to add, both to the game and to the track APIs, some pre chains, allowing a few people to start up the event, and have about 5-10 minutes to start drawing in other players, and then only once critical mass has been achieved would the event begin in earnest.

I think though that the better solution is just to instance them, take them off server, and allow people to join them as they fill, similar to overflow servers. You wouldn’t have to deliberately guest servers to get into a good group, you would just automatically be placed into the next overflow in line.

I don’t understand why you only want things YOUR way and no other way. You can have both casual content for the average player AND harder content. There is no need to limit things. Luckily Anet has seen the light and is not just sticking with easy-mode, ZZZZ go to sleep, press 1-fest shatterer-like content.

They can have both, but ONLY so long as the reward mechanisms don’t encourage players to force themselves into harder content than they’d prefer. As I’ve said before, if they removed the boss-related achievements and boss-specific chests then they can make them as difficult as they like, but so long as players have an interest in the rewards for completing the event, they need to scale it to the lowest common denominator.

Romo.3709:

Soren.9316:

Thyrm.8352:

Now draw a picture of Average Joe.
Would you want him at your side?

I would take an average Joe all the time

Right, but then in theory Average Joe is a middle class player. So there’s 50% of players that are way below Average Joe. And possibility of getting Joe and rest that are above him only is quite slim. What about all those Not-So-Average Joes that are taking part in it? Because most of the Above-Average-Joes are already done with the content and are back in WvW, Dungeons or wandering around Bloodtide Coast waiting for the next Wurm to spawn.

I honestly don’t get the hate toward average or sub average players. They have every right to participate in the content if they choose to. It’s up to the more advance players to get out of there bubbles and help them out. If you aren’t willing to work with them then the player base isn’t going to get any better. Quite franky I have more fun playing with the average joe, pugs, lowbies, newbies, etc than the guys that are always screaming in your face about something not going right, or people that are only there for the first day and then never come back….

>The other question that I hope is answered in the positive is this: Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this?

I like to see this happen. Instead of “forcing” player to improve, a much better way is to “motivate” them; meaning you use “shiny” as reward. It works in the real world, it will work in a MMO. My 2 cents.

Like many others in this thread I had written up a long post explaining my view point on this fight. I can sum it up quite quickly though 1-16 win/loss yet I think the encounter is one of the best I have been a part of in game. I have only ever failed to clear my platform once, that was at my first attempt on this encounter.
Since then I took it upon myself to ask those in /map what to expect and also look up a few guides. Having done that I now consistently kill my warden with whomever is on my platform and then watch either the next platform fail or the next lanes fail, shrug.

I find this fight very fun and extremely frustrating. The main point of contention for me can be summed up in two words…..TEMPORARY CONTENT. If this fight were to be here in its current format as a permanent fixture the toxic attitude in /map after repeated fails would be no where near the level it is right now. However this is not permanent and there are achievements tied to it that are dependent on the competence of players that you absolutely can not help when you see things start to go south, that is a mix for some very negative atmosphere.

Please keep the fight mechanics as they are, design more encounters to mimic this formula, but FOR THE LOVE OF THE TRIBUNE make these encounters PERMANENT so that we can actually sit back and enjoy them win or lose. I have not been back to the marionette since I got my one kill, and since I am leaving the country for a month I will never get another chance to try to kill it.

I would add, please do not just look into making events like this be temporary and then later bring them out as a Fractal. I like fractals but new outdoor content is some of the most fun I have in this game, and I want more of it, permanently.

Romo.3709:

At the same time, I have to thank you for creating the reward system that actually benefits players overall regardless if they beat the boss or not. This is much more satisfying than the Wurm or Teq reward content at this point.

They do the same to a much lesser degree less %reward for partial completion. Teq though is pretty decent. My opinion is wurm rewards truly suck and mini is only thing worth anything at this point and time which is worth the effort 3kg =20g per person per one that drops.

What is wrong with having scaling content from the very easy to the impossible so groups of people can test there true ability. You do not have to complete event to be rewarded so even partial completion is a mark of your groups ability.

Every server has the people. Every player has the mechanics written and read to them before and during the fight. Every build has advantages but when you have kill this boss in this much time only dps matters aka berserkers. one elit + 1 casual= 1 average player so this content is completely doable with 50% of each. only difference between the two is one who reads up on content before the fight vs. one who joins just for completion. The only only only difference between the two is which one spent the 5mins to read up on boss mechanics and strategies on how to defeat the boss. No build changes necessary.

Soren.9316:

Romo.3709:

Soren.9316:

Thyrm.8352:

Now draw a picture of Average Joe.
Would you want him at your side?

I would take an average Joe all the time

Right, but then in theory Average Joe is a middle class player. So there’s 50% of players that are way below Average Joe. And possibility of getting Joe and rest that are above him only is quite slim. What about all those Not-So-Average Joes that are taking part in it? Because most of the Above-Average-Joes are already done with the content and are back in WvW, Dungeons or wandering around Bloodtide Coast waiting for the next Wurm to spawn.

I honestly don’t get the hate toward average or sub average players. They have every right to participate in the content if they choose to. It’s up to the more advance players to get out of there bubbles and help them out. If you aren’t willing to work with them then the player base isn’t going to get any better. Quite franky I have more fun playing with the average joe, pugs, lowbies, newbies, etc than the guys that are always screaming in your face about something not going right, or people that are only there for the first day and then never come back….

Were you involved in the overflow win a little over 12 hours ago (time as of me typing)? The sort of relaxed attitude we had leading up to the start really helps in the success of the event. I don’t know how many TTS regulars were stacked through the lanes but there plenty of “average joes” there as well.

Soren.9316:

Romo.3709:

Soren.9316:

Thyrm.8352:

Now draw a picture of Average Joe.
Would you want him at your side?

I would take an average Joe all the time

Right, but then in theory Average Joe is a middle class player. So there’s 50% of players that are way below Average Joe. And possibility of getting Joe and rest that are above him only is quite slim. What about all those Not-So-Average Joes that are taking part in it? Because most of the Above-Average-Joes are already done with the content and are back in WvW, Dungeons or wandering around Bloodtide Coast waiting for the next Wurm to spawn.

I honestly don’t get the hate toward average or sub average players. They have every right to participate in the content if they choose to. It’s up to the more advance players to get out of there bubbles and help them out. If you aren’t willing to work with them then the player base isn’t going to get any better. Quite franky I have more fun playing with the average joe, pugs, lowbies, newbies, etc than the guys that are always screaming in your face about something not going right, or people that are only there for the first day and then never come back….

I have no hate towards new players, hell, I teach new guildies fractals and dungeons every day around the class and build they choose to play. I’m not an elitist that tells you that you have to play this way or you’re not playing right. My problem is directed towards the dependency of achievements on a group of people that you have no control nor influence on. People that are cursing you out when u trying to explain them something or ones that completely ignore you, following the failure of the entire line are a problem. And Anet putting that dependency toward those people when you’re trying to complete your achievements and get some goodies and shinies along the way is down right unfair on their part.
My problem is directed towards the dependency of all the platforms succeeding while you just stand there watching them fail, even if you did everything right towards your personal achievements (Dodging while fighting wardens). I prefer average Joes and lowbies on my dungeons / fractal runs, because it’s more fun and they’re actually learning their way, but then again those are controlled environments. You can’t teach people that are not willing to listen nor are listening at all, especially when a whole map is involved.

zenleto.6179:

Were you involved in the overflow win a little over 12 hours ago (time as of me typing)? The sort of relaxed attitude we had leading up to the start really helps in the success of the event. I don’t know how many TTS regulars were stacked through the lanes but there plenty of “average joes” there as well.

Yes I was, and it was a fantastic run. everyon on that OF was rocking the good vibes XD

Romo.3709:

I have no hate towards new players, hell, I teach new guildies fractals and dungeons every day around the class and build they choose to play. I’m not an elitist that tells you that you have to play this way or you’re not playing right. My problem is directed towards the dependency of achievements on a group of people that you have no control nor influence on. People that are cursing you out when u trying to explain them something or ones that completely ignore you, following the failure of the entire line are a problem.

Sorry about that Rom, never meant to imply that you were elitist in anyway. I guess I’m just getting fed up with all the qq on the forums all the time. So many negative vibes…

Soren.9316:

zenleto.6179:

Soren.9316:

Romo.3709:

Soren.9316:

Thyrm.8352:

Now draw a picture of Average Joe.
Would you want him at your side?

I would take an average Joe all the time

Right, but then in theory Average Joe is a middle class player. So there’s 50% of players that are way below Average Joe. And possibility of getting Joe and rest that are above him only is quite slim. What about all those Not-So-Average Joes that are taking part in it? Because most of the Above-Average-Joes are already done with the content and are back in WvW, Dungeons or wandering around Bloodtide Coast waiting for the next Wurm to spawn.

I honestly don’t get the hate toward average or sub average players. They have every right to participate in the content if they choose to. It’s up to the more advance players to get out of there bubbles and help them out. If you aren’t willing to work with them then the player base isn’t going to get any better. Quite franky I have more fun playing with the average joe, pugs, lowbies, newbies, etc than the guys that are always screaming in your face about something not going right, or people that are only there for the first day and then never come back….

Were you involved in the overflow win a little over 12 hours ago (time as of me typing)? The sort of relaxed attitude we had leading up to the start really helps in the success of the event. I don’t know how many TTS regulars were stacked through the lanes but there plenty of “average joes” there as well.

Yes I was, and it was a fantastic run. everyon on that OF was rocking the good vibes XD

Romo.3709:

I have no hate towards new players, hell, I teach new guildies fractals and dungeons every day around the class and build they choose to play. I’m not an elitist that tells you that you have to play this way or you’re not playing right. My problem is directed towards the dependency of achievements on a group of people that you have no control nor influence on. People that are cursing you out when u trying to explain them something or ones that completely ignore you, following the failure of the entire line are a problem.

Sorry about that Rom, never meant to imply that you were elitist in anyway. I guess I’m just getting fed up with all the qq on the forums all the time. So many negative vibes…

It was fantastic. Smooth as silk. I was lucky to find that overflow. Plus I think you guys were actually “commandering”. I don’t know though since I’ve never paid much attention to it in open world pve. All part off the learning and growing I’ve done player-wise with this update. More of that in last week than the whole year I’ve been playing.

And I really do think that for many players who have never challenged themselves in the game this event is a breath of fresh air. Anyone who has had a few serious goes at this event would have learnt whether they know it or not.

Josh Foreman.8250:

P.S. Because several people brought up the idea of buffing the other platforms when one succeeds, I thought I ought to let you all know that this has always been the case. When one platform’s power regulator is destroyed the players on the platforms adjacent get Electrify Aura which gives 60 seconds of protection, swiftness, regeneration, fury, might, vigor and retaliation.

- I’ve noticed the buffs on myself but never on the people on other platforms. Without your post I doubt I would have ever noticed. That kind of thing needs to be conveyed in game. After being sent back to the lane I was actually wondering why I had these pointless boons on me.
- These boons do not seem to have any impacts on the fights.

laokoko.7403:

Can’t you just go to dragon timer and view the success rate? you don’t need to speculate.

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

As of this writing, 2:55pm mountain time, the success rate according to that site is 21.5% (11/51). That’s not good. Keep in mind, it only appears to show the last run’s results.

Khisanth.2948:

- These boons do not seem to have any impacts on the fights.

I have noticed those buffs, but I can’t say they’ve done much to improve the situation. At best, maybe offset either my death by a hit or shave only a few seconds off of the boss.

Josh Foreman.8250:

The other question that I hope is answered in the positive is this: Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this? We know that X% of players don’t know about traits. We know Y% never swap out their 7-0 skills to accommodate specific challenges. And there are probably dozens of other systems that go unused by some portion of the player-base. If even 10% of that group hits a challenge like the Marionette and the subsequent tension causes them to look into these systems and they learn a new depth to the game they otherwise never would have, I think that’s a win for everybody. The average skill level rises, and in turn, we devs can make more interesting events that utilize the depth of the systems we have.

I think that it is a really great design philosophy. And there are many ways that the Marionette event succeeds at this. For example, in the lane defense phases players can really see where they stack up against others in regards to stopping the Clockwork, and what others do to handle the situation. Similarly, if someone is fighting the Wasp platform boss incorrectly they will end up seeing that they are no use to the group, and can then work to correct that while hampering but not crippling the group’s attempt.

But I think that the thing that frustrates a lot of players is more the situations where one person not pulling their weight causes a failure. For example, if an inexperienced player gets agro on the second platform boss, the one that lays the mines and needs to be kited over them, the player can keep running away from the boss and attacking it at range. This causes them to continue holding the agro, while keeping the entire group from being able to damage the boss. One person at the deep bottom end of the pool is able to cause the attempt to fail for 24 other players, and seriously reduce the chances for 124 others.

Fenrina.2954:

laokoko.7403:

Can’t you just go to dragon timer and view the success rate? you don’t need to speculate.

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

As of this writing, 2:55pm mountain time, the success rate according to that site is 21.5% (11/51). That’s not good. Keep in mind, it only appears to show the last run’s results.

Khisanth.2948:

- These boons do not seem to have any impacts on the fights.

I have noticed those buffs, but I can’t say they’ve done much to improve the situation. At best, maybe offset either my death by a hit or shave only a few seconds off of the boss.

The data from that is unusable since it is being pulled from the API. That means it knows nothing about what happens on overflows.

I honestly don’t get the hate toward average or sub average players. They have every right to participate in the content if they choose to

In principle? Yes, definitely true. In practice? That is not how the game was designed. This game was designed to punish EVERYONE if they allow newbs into their midst. That’s hardly ideal, and it’d be nice if the game were designed differently, but the game is what the game is, and that means that a handful of newbs can completely ruin this event for everyone else, and there’s nothing everyone else can do about it.

You can argue that the newbs should be “embraced” and trained to be better, but that usually isn’t an option, the newbs don’t want to learn, or by the time they do learn it’s too late and the run is destroyed. I have nothing personally against newbs, but Areananet has designed a game in which I cannot tolerate them either. That is not my fault, it is not the newbs’ fault, it is Arenanet’s fault, and they are the ones responsible for fixing it.

I’ve suggested the simplest fix to this specific situation above, rather than having them be “all or nothing,” change phase two to be “best two out of three.” With that simple change, newbs could participate, get some experience, but even if they faceplant it’s unlikely to kill the entire event for everyone else. If they end up face down, they know they did something wrong, and that’s all that matters, they don’t need to punish everyone for their incompetence.

Public instance content should accommodate the general playerbase. My only problem with the marionette is the forced reliance on a colossal PUG (composing of a vary large number of people), to complete the event, and the fact that it is the gatekeeper to the gift of sprockets (for example, if the meta awarded a title instaid, i would have no problem)

That aside, i think that the marionette is a vary tasteful boss, and look forward to seeing a scaled down version with mechanics intact in the fractals or guild challenge.

Khisanth.2948:

The data from that is unusable since it is being pulled from the API. That means it knows nothing about what happens on overflows.

Fair enough, but it’s all I have. Got a better source?

The problem with trying to use PvE to raise the skill level of players is that a PvE encounter is not a challenge to be overcome, but a puzzle to be solved. Completing a PvE encounter does not help a player become better at the game just as completing a jigsaw puzzle does not help a person be better at puzzles in general. If a player goes from performing badly at this event to performing well, they haven’t become better at the game, they’ve merely learned the solution to this specific encounter.

Ohoni.6057:

In principle? Yes, definitely true. In practice? That is not how the game was designed. This game was designed to punish EVERYONE if they allow newbs into their midst. That’s hardly ideal, and it’d be nice if the game were designed differently, but the game is what the game is, and that means that a handful of newbs can completely ruin this event for everyone else, and there’s nothing everyone else can do about it.

You can argue that the newbs should be “embraced” and trained to be better, but that usually isn’t an option, the newbs don’t want to learn, or by the time they do learn it’s too late and the run is destroyed. I have nothing personally against newbs, but Areananet has designed a game in which I cannot tolerate them either. That is not my fault, it is not the newbs’ fault, it is Arenanet’s fault, and they are the ones responsible for fixing it.

I’ve suggested the simplest fix to this specific situation above, rather than having them be “all or nothing,” change phase two to be “best two out of three.” With that simple change, newbs could participate, get some experience, but even if they faceplant it’s unlikely to kill the entire event for everyone else. If they end up face down, they know they did something wrong, and that’s all that matters, they don’t need to punish everyone for their incompetence.

I agree. Not being able to get the daily chest for three days due to other players’ failing is quite annoying, i would personally add.

As long as Anet is unwilling to put voice chat in the game these events that require a100+ people to coordinate is a horrible design. If people could hear what was going on it would go a lot smoother.

Tharen.6087:

As long as Anet is unwilling to put voice chat in the game these events that require a100+ people to coordinate is a horrible design. If people could hear what was going on it would go a lot smoother.

People keep saying voice chat is the answer every time difficult content comes up, but it’s not. As the event stands, it benefits very little to not at all from voice chat. The wardens have tooltips that say how to beat them, people say in chat over and over again how to beat them, guides are up everywhere that tell you how to beat them. But people still get warden 1’s back to a wall, they still take warden 2 all the way around the platform instead of into the mines, etc. Its not that these people don’t have the resources to succeed, it’s that they choose not to. 100 people screaming over each other on voice chat isn’t going to fix that.

bwillb.2165:

Tharen.6087:

As long as Anet is unwilling to put voice chat in the game these events that require a100+ people to coordinate is a horrible design. If people could hear what was going on it would go a lot smoother.

People keep saying voice chat is the answer every time difficult content comes up, but it’s not. As the event stands, it benefits very little to not at all from voice chat. The wardens have tooltips that say how to beat them, people say in chat over and over again how to beat them, guides are up everywhere that tell you how to beat them. But people still get warden 1’s back to a wall, they still take warden 2 all the way around the platform instead of into the mines, etc. Its not that these people don’t have the resources to succeed, it’s that they choose not to. 100 people screaming over each other on voice chat isn’t going to fix that.

And this as well. It isn’t a matter of voice chat; just people not willing to put any effort in the fight making it fail for everyone else.

Okay, so I have been at a marionette event yesterday and Lane 2 failed to kill Warden 2. I still need the dodging achievement for Warden 4, so I moved from Lane 4 to 5. Lane 3 failed to kill Warden 2.. I wasn’t amused. Lane 4 failed, Lane 5 finally did it. Lane 1 killed Warden 3, Lane 2 Warden 4, Lane 3 Warden 5. We won. The end.
So, who is to blame? Warden 2 is the easiest opponent to me and Lane 2 was called “Lame 2” after their faillure. So I think it’s mostly down to luck not really about how skilled someone is as the “Fail lanes” did the more difficult wardens without missing a beat. And I am aware of people moving lanes, but that can’t be the only reason.
And I once portalled into a champ arena and was immediately hit and downed by AoE and rather angry at the char standing right on top of me for not rezzing me, it was Rox, so I had bad luck portalling right into an AoE, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
So, I think a lot of you need to step back from the “all other players are bad, they are stealing my victory” as that is most likely untrue and as most of us don’t want to watch youtube and read wiki for hours just to be accepted to do something with all the other “perfect” players.
I like the marionette and I like the feeling of a team, especially after a win.

Oh, and all those who think they can’t dodge more than twice: Nobody can, but there is food to make you regenerate agility faster. One of the things one thinks is rather unimportant, like changing skills and traits, but it does help a lot.

Fenrina.2954:

As of this writing, 2:55pm mountain time, the success rate according to that site is 21.5% (11/51). That’s not good. Keep in mind, it only appears to show the last run’s results.

Ok, just added in the next set of numbers. 15/51 this time. Of note, most of the successes seem to be coming out of non-english servers. Combined that’s 25.4% success rate out of 102 tries.

I’m not going to be making a post for each and every update after this. I’ll continue to keep track, but I won’t be listing the success rate unless asked or alot of time has passed.

Edit

And I once portalled into a champ arena and was immediately hit and downed by AoE and rather angry at the char standing right on top of me for not rezzing me, it was Rox, so I had bad luck portalling right into an AoE, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Now that you mention it, I’ve been teleported into the marionette’s stomp attack before. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s possible to die before the loading screen finishes.

Fenrina.2954:

Now that you mention it, I’ve been teleported into the marionette’s stomp attack before. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s possible to die before the loading screen finishes.

Yes it is possible. Especially if you have a slow hard drive. It seems it is also possible to get disconnected on load, hence the situations where you end up with one platform with 2 people on it while all the others have 5.

Josh Foreman.8250:

…The other question that I hope is answered in the positive is this: Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this? We know that X% of players don’t know about traits. We know Y% never swap out their 7-0 skills to accommodate specific challenges. And there are probably dozens of other systems that go unused by some portion of the player-base. If even 10% of that group hits a challenge like the Marionette and the subsequent tension causes them to look into these systems and they learn a new depth to the game they otherwise never would have, I think that’s a win for everybody. The average skill level rises, and in turn, we devs can make more interesting events that utilize the depth of the systems we have.

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult. On the other hand, we don’t know how long it takes for the aggregate skill level of the player-base to grow. I don’t know how long it takes for information about traits and builds to disseminate to those who had previously never looked into them. As with all our content, we are closely watching and noting these things so that every future project can learn from it…

i see where you’re coming from as far as trying to get people to look more at their traits. but in all honesty, i think that sort of design direction should take into consideration the difficulties in swapping skills/ builds on the fly.

first… many people choose the weapon, then they choose their utility / elite skills, then they choose their traits to buff their weapon and utility / elite skills. (granted, as you mention, many other don’t even know about traits.) basicly, what i’m saying is, swapping out several utilities / elite generally means that the current trait setup ALSO needs to be altered, and sometimes that means simply swapping out II and swapping in IV, but sometimes that means switching from 30/30/10/0/0 to 0/20/0/20/30 (for example). that can be a problem for certain large scale fights with population issues (like teq, triple trouble, marionette).

currently, swapping a single trait requires opening the trait panel, and swapping II for IV. but swapping builds requires going back to town, oftentimes leaving the zone, which is problematic with the current number of participants in triple trouble, tequatl, and the marionette. and then porting back to the zone to find out you’re in a different overflow than you started in, and in some cases, impossible to get back into the home server to be able to play with your friends, guild, or organized group event. (such as AARM or TTS Teq runs)

a partial fix for this issue, is simply add in class trainers near these large scale mega events, to allow us to switch builds more easily. (i say “partial” in hopes that “trait sets” will eventually be added into the game, and i’m looking forward to that CDI topic, even if it’s part of a broader CDI topic thread)

secondly… please be careful of falling into the rock-paper-scissors trap. to clarify my metaphor: designing a world boss so that certain skills trivialize the content, while LACK of those certain skills makes the content nigh impossible. that design totally removes the challenge by essentially programming a required exploit. we don’t want design like that. we want it to be challenging because it FEELS challenging, not because its a puzzle we have to learn, and then once we figure out the puzzle, we simply change all our skills and it becomes EZ mode.

that’s part of why the marionette feels so well designed. is that there is no required “i win” skills to trivialize the fight. it would be nice if it scaled downward a little bit though, say, for example, that 3 platforms would be required per lane to sever a chain if only 75 players showed up for the fight, (15 per lane, would still split up 5 people per platform) while it still would need 4 platforms for 100, and 5 platforms for 125 participants. maybe there could be another algorithm to split participants up evenly into the lanes. (a thought for future encounters derived from the marionette design)

Risingashes.8694:

If you want rewards, doing Marri pales compared to running 3 dungeons which you could easily do in that time. If you want story, there is none. If you want achievements then you can get the meta simply by participating. If you want to ‘win’ then making things easier doesn’t do that, it simply hands you a meaningless victory.

What’s frustrating about this isn’t failure — it’s the way it forces players to educate other players … but without any way to see direct benefits from that education.

This morning, I journeyed to a random OF before the event, got into line, and did my part. After we finished killing our regulator (40-50s left, we were 1st or 2nd), I looked over onto the next platform and saw someone kiting the champ in a big circle, so it would never hit the mines. Several people said what to do, but the person just kept at it … since they had aggro, no one in their circle could do any damage.

I sent a whisper to them (too late for it to do any good), explaining this — and based on their response, I’m willing to believe that person will do a better job next time. But the rest of us wasted our time (our lane failed to cut a chain) for this one person’s education … and next time it’ll be someone else. You only need a failure rate of 10-20% per platform to make the whole event fail.

Other than waiting, there’s no way to try again (as there was with the Karka Queen), so you can be sure it’ll be a different group next time — there’s no way to choose the people you do it with. (I’m told my server has success around reset, but I can’t play then due to family and work; if I go when I can play, it’s already doomed to failure, since there too few people.)

So I’m stuck with random overflows. If I was willing to camp out longer, there’s a better chance I’d be in a full (or nearly full) overflow … but I play the game to have fun, and sitting around in a map waiting for an event is not what I consider fun.

I like the mechanics — but the event requires too many people; and while the mechanics should be within reach of most players, it’s frustrating to educate them a few at a time, and then rinse and repeat again 2h later.

Fenrina.2954:

Khisanth.2948:

The data from that is unusable since it is being pulled from the API. That means it knows nothing about what happens on overflows.

Fair enough, but it’s all I have. Got a better source?

Breaking and entering into the ANet office? :P

Oh and just did another run and yeah …. those boons had 0 impact as far as helping the next platform succeed. Still got 4/5 dead vs the first warden.

So, who is to blame? Warden 2 is the easiest opponent to me and Lane 2 was called “Lame 2” after their faillure. So I think it’s mostly down to luck not really about how skilled someone is as the “Fail lanes” did the more difficult wardens without missing a beat. And I am aware of people moving lanes, but that can’t be the only reason.

Well the thing is, in most of the phase 2 where my team’s lost, it was 3-4 stages cleared it, and only 1-2 dropped the ball. I had a lane fail earlier tonight in which on Warden 5 we downed the boss in about haf the required time and just sat back the rest, and I think all four outer stages cleared it, but the one in the middle just couldn’t get it right and fail. Now I’m not even saying that everyone on that stage was horrible, they could have had 2-3 really solid players on there, but at least a coupe people on that stage were making a mess of things, and because of them, because of nothing that was within the power of any of the other players, we failed that phase, I didn’t get my dodge achievement, etc. I don’t blame those players, I’m sure they tried, but I do blame ANet for putting so much responsibility on their shoulders.

Force players to play as group and try to lvl up general ‘skill’ maybe a good idea, but it’s becoming way too much time consuming imo. Hardcore gamers (like the ap farmer, solo dongeon …) already spend a lot of time on game, they prolly don’t have much time to teach ppl out of guild
As i’ve already said elsewhere anet need to listen a little bit more :
→ add some real content, not just get 25 X, do Y time event Z … (always do same things is boring)
→ instance hard content (all can grp and learn)
→ reduce daily (ap farmer will have more time to teach/play with other since atm you need more than 5h to do all daily)

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

Gene Archer.8560:

Gilgalas.7860:

Server population too low to succeed on the Marionnette fight ? Don’t make me laugh, I don’t think there are server with less than 150 active people at a given time of the day. And even if there were some, ANet included server guesting. .

Server guesting is a bandaid at best with its own problems. As for not making you laugh?

Come on over to Devona’s Rest and then tell me that the server population is just fine. In fact, every single player that thinks server populations are just fine, please. Come to Devona’s Rest. Maybe then the server will have the numbers it needs.

This. I don’t know if we just have a typically low population on our server or if there is a major talent drain going on as people try to flood a place like Blackgate, but I’ve been doing the boss nightly and it isn’t uncommon to be standing there on the server reset and have only 5 – 10 people in lanes 3-5. Seriously, if you folks are sick and tired of overflows, come guesting to DR, because I can guarantee that we have plenty of room.

Most of the failed Marionette runs I’ve been a part of have included extensive training sessions for the newbs, very supportive Commanders in each lane. We failed because those who didn’t know what they were doing were unwilling or incapable of learning, not because nobody was willing to teach.

This as well. It gets frustrating when you watch someone stand there and blast away directly at Warden 1’s shield, or when someone stops to rez a dead player instead of breaking the generator as the last few seconds tick away. And that’s not getting into the endless little things that go unmentioned, like the targeting priorities the bosses have. I know going in that as a tanky warrior that Wardens 1 and 2 are going to love me in a way that would violate forum rules to describe, so its up to me to call the dance tune and make sure they are supposed to go where they need to. I also know I need to do it at range to keep them from smacking me to death. But its hard to pass that on to the few players who need to know this in the middle of explaining the shields and mines.

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.

I suggest that you guys, firstly teach the commynity about team work and then about self organization. Guild Wars 2 is a sort of single-player MMO in which the team work is rarely required other then dungeons and casual zergs.

So, teaching them first the self organization is like put in the wrong order.

It should go like this:

1. Redesign group events in open world so they require team work and not only zerg on the boss
2. Keep up team working, so ppl learn to play together and find same goal
3. ppl learn to play in a team and should start to trust each others
4. Make an event that requires self organization, and it works

example:
People want to kill the Troll in Queensdale
Boss mechanic:
After the Troll spawn and people zerg it, he will vanish and all entrances in the cave will have more trolls coming to flank to players. So they will be ambushed, if players kill these waves of trolls, the troll will respawn and stomp on the players, killing instantly various of them. Then he will rush out the cave being immune to hits thru a random exit of the cave. People would need to follow him thru other foes “bears”, “cows”, “spiders” until they reach it’s location. In here players can kill the Troll to 20 % of life. So at this point the Troll will jump large distances in specific spots and players need to kill it in 1 minute. This requires players to split up, in all the spawn points, to succeed the event.

I have very missed views on this content.

On one hand, it is wonderful and some of the most creative content I have seen patched in the game yet. It is a lot of fun. . . but some things about the execution are just not fun.

1) You have to wait around a long time or you get thrown into overflow. Typically, overflow loses more than it wins, so you show up too early and wait too long. I don’t think you meant to have people waiting for the event as long as you wait to ride Dumbo at Disney World. That needs to be corrected in the future.

2) Stretch goals are great, but at what point does a stretch goal become a “break me” goal? Ask me the first time we fail versus the last time we do the event in 2 weeks and you will get different answers. How do you know? Difficulty is subjective. What is the feedback loop for getting how we felt about the difficulty versus how we did objectively in winning or losing?

3) The trouble with this stretch goal is that the price of a single failure is a 2 hour wait. If you fail a couple of times, that is functionally a night. So you are magnifying the frustration. You also reduce the “fun upfront” of figuring it out as you really don’t get many shots to get it right.

4) It would be ideal if you could tone down the difficulty of LS content about a week in if it appears that people are losing too often.

5) It would be great for you to have a cross section permanent focus group to bounce these ideas off of. Too often as forum posters and developers, we tend to be outliers in terms of expectations or sentiment. I’m guessing our evaluation of “stretching skills” is far different than the those segments that are in the middle of the bell curve.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult.

Josh I agree with most of what you wrote, but in response to this part, I would say that the difficulty may not have been too bad if there were some way for better players to jump in and pick up the slack for teams that can not handle their champion.

I enjoyed the bosses but the fact that one struggling team can doom the whole overflow is too much liability. It is a similar problem with TQ where 1 or 2 poor turret operators can doom an event.

Ilmatar.6709:

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.

I suggest that you guys, firstly teach the commynity about team work and then about self organization. Guild Wars 2 is a sort of single-player MMO in which the team work is rarely required other then dungeons and casual zergs.

So, teaching them first the self organization is like put in the wrong order.

It should go like this:

1. Redesign group events in open world so they require team work and not only zerg on the boss
2. Keep up team working, so ppl learn to play together and find same goal
3. ppl learn to play in a team and should start to trust each others
4. Make an event that requires self organization, and it works

example:
People want to kill the Troll in Queensdale
Boss mechanic:
After the Troll spawn and people zerg it, he will vanish and all entrances in the cave will have more trolls coming to flank to players. So they will be ambushed, if players kill these waves of trolls, the troll will respawn and stomp on the players, killing instantly various of them. Then he will rush out the cave being immune to hits thru a random exit of the cave. People would need to follow him thru other foes “bears”, “cows”, “spiders” until they reach it’s location. In here players can kill the Troll to 20 % of life. So at this point the Troll will jump large distances in specific spots and players need to kill it in 1 minute. This requires players to split up, in all the spawn points, to succeed the event.

I like this suggestion but probably not for the same reason as you.

On the other hand this would probably disturb my grub massacre.

I’m not expert on videogame mechanics, but I’ve seen some work on “mechanics” directed to build and manage communities, and one effect of the Marionette event, that I can’t decide yet if is intended or not, is to divide the community using bullying methods.

In this case, the bullying starts when the event success is linked to the weakest member of the event. When the overall event fails because a player, or a very small group of players (1-5) cannot beat their champion, making sure everyone else is there watching them, and without any possibility of intervention.

Basically, the event put a big red signal in that small group of 1-5 players, and mark them as pariah or social outcast, “those who ruined your event”, “you could have been successful, because you’re good and excellent, but those other players, only those, have prevented you to success, so you must hate them quite a lot now”.

I’m sure this creates a community, but I’m not sure yet if this is the kind of community ANet wants to create. A competitive community that is put in a place to hate specific individuals for within this community. The noobs, the casuals, “the ones that deserve to uninstall and quit”.

I’ve been in the event twice. I want to help the others where they are in trouble in their platforms. I don’t want to see myself alone in a platform and not being able to defeat the champion, and ruin the event and the last 2 hours of waiting+game for 100-200 players.

I had enough of this back in school and confronted to bullyers and their supporters, and if ANet wants to create a community that encourages bullying, players need to be informed.

The problem is: if in the event one place cant fail the event and/or dont need any skill, 80% of pug is here. That is the reality. And you cant raise average skill if you dont punish for that.

Just look at jormag, many many many time you can see a big useless zerg wait at the right in p2, just cause is too difficult to learn what to do, and you can afk and just go burst for the chest.

Frustating, but needed in that way. And i’m sure if, for exemple, lan 4 & 5 cant fail and/or you can zerg those, then its totaly impossible to get more than 10guy in 1 2 & 3. So the whole event fail…

Well executed but a dreadful idea. It seems all MMO’s go this way when the developers get desperate at falling activity and starting pandering to the forum hardcore. And thus you get hardcore content (which GW2’s classes and public zones, plus previous flavor don’t suit) and class balance dominated by elite PvP concerns so it’s bland and zergy.

Here’s a hint for the hardcare (that will be ignored), most people who play GW2 don’t read the forum, they play a game to relax, gather some resources for crafting, explore a bit, earn some new skins to play dressups. They didn’t sign up for a raid game, and if they wanted one they’d be playing the dominant raid game (which is not this one). Their ego is not attached to their in-game skill so “working hard and failing often to get better” in a game is just a confusing misunderstanding of what games are for to them.

Have raid content, if you must, but off on the sidelines not as part of your prime feature which is the living world. Make dead content like Wurm (so funny seeing 3 people show up for it in Aussie prime-time) but off to the side with a “for raiding guilds on high pop servers only” signpost.

The sheer arrogance of “we’re training our players…” wow, what happened to you guys? The original GW2 design was a game about exploring, naturally wanting to jump into dynamic events that seque’d into stories. It was interesting and different. Trying to be another raiding MMO, which you will never win at, is a tragic misallocation of effort. Come up with a better solution, something that suits the original design and isn’t competing directly with all the other raid oriented MMO’s.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult. On the other hand, we don’t know how long it takes for the aggregate skill level of the player-base to grow. I don’t know how long it takes for information about traits and builds to disseminate to those who had previously never looked into them. As with all our content, we are closely watching and noting these things so that every future project can learn from it.

Well it’s been a week and I see no improvement in the success rate. If anything it’s getting lower as more people decide they’ve gotten their achievements or otherwise have had enough. Even on my server’s main instance we are averaging well below 50%. In the typical overflow successes are rare gems in a sea of sludge, 1/10 would be generous.

And while I appreciate the idea of “stretching” the community, Josh, I don’t think you guys have chosen a good way to do it. Anyone who’s a parent knows that you want your kids to expand their boundaries but to do it in a way that maximizes the chances of success. You don’t take a kid who doesn’t know how to swim and toss him into the deep end, because if you do you just increase the chance that he’ll never enter a swimming pool again. Many players feel like that’s what you’ve done here, and some will just avoid any similar events in the future.

You should be erring on the side of caution until you get the balance right, not setting up a situation where failure is far more common than success and people end up at each other’s throats over it. That’s not why I play GW2, and in fact, it’s one of the reasons I left my last MMO.

And if you really want to stretch players, that is accomplished through gradual progression with the help of tutorials. Not brute force.

Kageru.9124:

Here’s a hint for the hardcare (that will be ignored), most people who play GW2 don’t read the forum, they play a game to relax, gather some resources for crafting, explore a bit, earn some new skins to play dressups. They didn’t sign up for a raid game, and if they wanted one they’d be playing the dominant raid game (which is not this one). Their ego is not attached to their in-game skill so “working hard and failing often to get better” in a game is just a confusing misunderstanding of what games are for to them.
…
The sheer arrogance of “we’re training our players…” wow, what happened to you guys? The original GW2 design was a game about exploring, naturally wanting to jump into dynamic events that seque’d into stories. It was interesting and different. Trying to be another raiding MMO, which you will never win at, is a tragic misallocation of effort. Come up with a better solution, something that suits the original design and isn’t competing directly with all the other raid oriented MMO’s.

All of that too. Nicely said.

The devs need to decide what they want this game to be. It cannot be all things to all people, and if they really want to try to do that, at least keep the different types of players away from each other.

xarallei.4279:

Astralporing.1957:

Basically – the fact that you are on a high pop server doesn’t mean that everyone is, or that event is easy.

It is easy. The event is a great event. The problem here is NOT the event. The problem is that small servers need to be merged desperately.

Careful with that suggestion. Merging servers is often the kiss of death in the gaming community. The gaming press hears about it and spins it as “ZOMG game XYZ can’t even keep enough players in some servers, it must be dying.” The rumors spread like wildfire.

Then prospective new players hear the rumors and, even if they were interested in trying game XYZ, don’t bother. Because who wants to start a new MMO if it’s rumored to be “dying”. And established players start looking for a new game because there’s a rumor the game they’re playing is “dying”.

Perception becomes reality.

So while merging low pop servers may be for reasons other than a game is dying. It’s almost universally taken as a bad sign for the game.

Josh Foreman.8250:

StriderShinryu.6923:

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?

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult. On the other hand, we don’t know how long it takes for the aggregate skill level of the player-base to grow. I don’t know how long it takes for information about traits and builds to disseminate to those who had previously never looked into them. As with all our content, we are closely watching and noting these things so that every future project can learn from it.

I hope you aren’t looking at nerfing this event already — yesterday I played the Marionette three times and succeeded on 2 of them. In the failed instance it was chain 5 that beat us — the one that people have seen the very least often. Give us a little longer, let us grow to it.

This is a spectacular fight, and we’ll get it.

Kageru.9124:

Well executed but a dreadful idea. It seems all MMO’s go this way when the developers get desperate at falling activity and starting pandering to the forum hardcore. And thus you get hardcore content (which GW2’s classes and public zones, plus previous flavor don’t suit) and class balance dominated by elite PvP concerns so it’s bland and zergy.

Here’s a hint for the hardcare (that will be ignored), most people who play GW2 don’t read the forum, they play a game to relax, gather some resources for crafting, explore a bit, earn some new skins to play dressups. They didn’t sign up for a raid game, and if they wanted one they’d be playing the dominant raid game (which is not this one). Their ego is not attached to their in-game skill so “working hard and failing often to get better” in a game is just a confusing misunderstanding of what games are for to them.

Have raid content, if you must, but off on the sidelines not as part of your prime feature which is the living world. Make dead content like Wurm (so funny seeing 3 people show up for it in Aussie prime-time) but off to the side with a “for raiding guilds on high pop servers only” signpost.

The sheer arrogance of “we’re training our players…” wow, what happened to you guys? The original GW2 design was a game about exploring, naturally wanting to jump into dynamic events that seque’d into stories. It was interesting and different. Trying to be another raiding MMO, which you will never win at, is a tragic misallocation of effort. Come up with a better solution, something that suits the original design and isn’t competing directly with all the other raid oriented MMO’s.

I think you’re wrong. The guildies that I play with on a regular basis are far from hardcore, they seldom visit the forums, but you should have heard them cheer when the Marionette they were fighting against went down. Everyone, whether they’re hardcore or not, enjoys a difficult win. People who enjoy the challenge will continue to play until they are able to rise to the occasion, and they’ll become more skilled while they do it. People who don’t enjoy the challenge will roam away and harvest chili peppers.

The relaxing content is all over the game and players definitely know where and how to find it. Putting some difficult or challenging play in the game makes the game, and many of the players, better.

Aye.8392:

I think you’re wrong. The guildies that I play with on a regular basis are far from hardcore, they seldom visit the forums, but you should have heard them cheer when the Marionette they were fighting against went down. Everyone, whether they’re hardcore or not, enjoys a difficult win.

Yes. Almost everyone enjoys a difficult win. Easy loss however is almost never enjoyed. People want to believe that they succeeded against all odds. What they don’t want is the difficulty that is high enough to make them lose too often.

What players really want is not the difficulty itself, but an illusion of it.