Guild Wars 2

As most of you know, a certain dungeon developer has been hyping up the Karka Queen meta-event as the true boss of this living story sequence. So I’m curious.

Do you think it lived up to the hype with unique, interesting mechanics?

Do you think the boss is actually challenging? (Do you think it’s more difficult than Temple of Grenth, for example?)

Do you think the rewards are adequate?

No, kinda (more because of random mobs spawns and stupid people standing in melee/stacking spit pools), yes for how generic it was.

I think the meta-event that leads up to the karka queen is well made, however, the boss itself left me disappointed considering how I loved Robert’s AC changes, but this boss is essentially the same thing as a champion karka (both model and mechanics wise) except you need to throw eggs at it.

Im afraid it doesn’t. It is just a standard champion Karka fight. Took our (admittedly lerge) zerg maybe 3-4 misn to kill, with no mechanics that we were discernable (if they existed they were trivial enough to ignore – apparentely someone was to throw eggs – didn’t see it tho)

It might be better judged when the crowds die down and less ppl are at it, but it was underwhelming – susprising considering the overwhelming community feedback for interesting and challenging bosses

Had no issue with the rewards tho , but there was no work invloved to get them

In general, it seems like ArenaNet is using bundles, such as the eggs in the Karka Queen event or the mine sweepers in Canach’s Lair, too often. Bosses should be interesting on better grounds.

If this portion of the living story is what they put their “best” dungeon team on for a month or so, yikes. They should have used the Molten Facility team instead.

Disappointed. VERY disappointed! Where are the tentacles and Sclerite stuff they hyped so much!?

First impression of the Legendary Karka Queen is terribad. After it appeared, I got downed in 5 seconds by the Crazed Reef Riders and died – I wasn’t even near the Karka Queen’s range. No one would resurrect so I had to waypoint and run to the Karka Queen area again.

Apparently the Reef Riders are invulnerable and attacked me from behind.

So yeah, if you died, waypoint immediately and don’t bother waiting for a rez.

I have yet to hear one person give positive feedback on the actual fight. The most positive response was from people happy that they got two rares or exotics at the end. Most people aren’t even calling it challenging; it’s more a zerg of mobs than genuinely difficult mechanics.

I know I keep saying it, but they really should get some of the Molten Facility people in whatever team(s) worked on the Southsun living story content and dungeons in general. I don’t mean to insult Robert Hrouda and his crew, but after receiving feedback about the two bosses in Canach’s Lair and Karka Queen, it should be clear that something has to change.

Does Karka Queen live up to the hype?

No.

Next question.

I was really expecting that it might be a retread of the original Karka Queen battle back when Southsun first launched. Chasing her through multiple stages, all the way up into the hive and then blasting her with explosives. I’m a bit disappointed that it was much more simple.

That said, I think the real climax of the event was the fight with Canach and NULL. All of this was the falling action and conclusion.

Lopez.7369:

If this portion of the living story is what they put their “best” dungeon team on for a month or so, yikes. They should have used the Molten Facility team instead.

There was only one dev on this and on a restrained amount of time. (The two ’’dungeons’’ that is)

I predict an exodus from the cove now that the event is over. The time it takes to activate the queen event and kill it is just not worth the effort.

There was hype?

As for the thing, same as the first ever karka events.
Mobs popping in & out of existence due to culling, getting almost or actually insta-killed by things you can`t see, only to have to run all the way back
I`d thought they`d maybe of put this into the new API timers, but no joy, or sites haven`t added them.

Lootwise, I heard loads didn`t get much monetary wise, neither did I & the loot itself definitely wasn`t worth the repair bill, let alone the time waiting for the rng queen to appear.

Pizz.3698:

There was only one dev on this and on a restrained amount of time. (The two ’’dungeons’’ that is)

This is partially inaccurate. The developers definitely had to deal with time constraints like any project in any industry does, but there was a whole team dedicated to the efforts.

From what we’ve heard, the same team involved with the efforts is also the main dungeon team — or at least includes the main dungeon developers. That should trouble anyone who wants a bright future for Guild Wars 2 because it shows the quality of boss design isn’t improving much, if at all, within the dungeon team.

On the bright side, the quality of boss design seems to be improving elsewhere. So maybe the leads for those teams should be brought over to the dungeon team.

I thought they show off with this battle what they will and can do to the existing meta-events in terms of challenging rewarding content. I like the pre-events and the coordination involved very much… but the battle itself:

• the same model as the champion-karka… very disappointed
• no interesting mechanic at all… not even quite a bit. Throwing eggs… come on, is this the best you can do? Is it really the time-restrictions

…if it’s the time-restrictions, for the love of god please Anet, spend more time in making content and make it real good. This is just another auto-attack Meta-Event, and because of the lackluster presentation (no unique boss-monster) one of the worst imho. Despite the very good build-up.

I haven’t done it yet, I’ve been working.
Hopefully it’ll be pretty cool. I’m so psyched about Dragon Bash though that if it’s not super amazing I really don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

One thing worth emphasizing that’s kind of been left out of this thread is the boss is extremely easy. It’s just another auto-attack boss. It has practically no mechanics worth mentioning — not even the eggs. I’m not sure how the developers involved in designing this fight or meta-event thought it would require an organized group or guild.

In fact, this isn’t even the hardest event in the game. Most of the temple events are much more difficult. Why don’t those give two rares or exotics as well?

I was definately disappointed to find that the Queen is just another Karka who happens to be Legendary difficulty. They could have tried to throw something on there.

The randomly unique mechanic isn’t that impressive either. The Karka queen has multiple stacks of armor that you have to throw karka eggs at to drop off. The eggs spawn seemingly randomly, but concidering the zerg, all it’s doing is giving everyone in the zone enough time to reach her before she’s crushed.

It isn’t a special mechanic like Null who spawns air elementals and eventually starts stacking what is effectively agony with a different name. Or the Berzerker who threw out shockwaves you could actually jump over rather than dodging. Those are good unique mechanics. But whatever, two rare+ drops guaranteed is fine by me.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

…if it’s the time-restrictions, for the love of god please Anet, spend more time in making content and make it real good. This is just another auto-attack Meta-Event, and because of the lackluster presentation (no unique boss-monster) one of the worst imho. Despite the very good build-up.

See this right here is where Super Adventure Box ruined it for everyone. Eight guys built an entire three zone event with entirely unique everything. They didn’t have close to the resources available to the live team, yet they put together gold while these guys are doing what? Scripted some events, wrote some lines and got it voiced, and made a single very small instance. Oh, and made three unique assets in the two back items and sickle. Other than that everything was stuff that was already there. No new mobs. No special powers. None of that stuff.

After the zerg killed her, give or take three minutes, I was the only one to say anything. And that was, “Woot.” A minute later, a person said, “All I got was a freakin’ blue horn.”

If that tells you anything.

Coldin.2840:

I was really expecting that it might be a retread of the original Karka Queen battle back when Southsun first launched. Chasing her through multiple stages, all the way up into the hive and then blasting her with explosives. I’m a bit disappointed that it was much more simple.

That said, I think the real climax of the event was the fight with Canach and NULL. All of this was the falling action and conclusion.

That’s what i was expecting. Something on that level. I’m surprised they didn’t something like that. The only major complaint about it was the lag and culling.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

After the zerg killed her, give or take three minutes, I was the only one to say anything. And that was, “Woot.” A minute later, a person said, “All I got was a freakin’ blue horn.”

If that tells you anything.

That does say it all. When I first did Molten Facility and the temple event revamps, people were like, “That was awesome!” No one said that with the Karka Queen.

Nothing like the first event, that one was epic. I expect next to no one is going to bother SS if the 200% MF buff goes away. Way to much work to get this thing to spawn and the rewards are (in my case) always a buncha greens.

I am disappointed that I did not get to have more time to try to do the Canach/Noll events, five days is too short. I usually have disconnect and massive lag at world bosses so I am not even gonna bother w/this.

Any hype to this was completely unjustified. The lead up to secure the camps is nice enough, but after this living story is done Southsun will be deserted again as it is not worth doing the events for the Karka Queen fight which is just plain boring and annoying.

I expected a big bad kitten karka that would jump around the map. Like jormags champions. Wat we got was a champion karma that isnt even that much bigger then a veteran karka. Probaly nothing wrong with all this content but the person responsive for the outgoing communication towards the customers isnt properly functioning. Also the content varies to much. Flame and frost was good but the entire southsun was so overhyped to me. Wat caused that where those nice patch pages and the unneccesary waiting time between days.

This is what comes from throwing out non-stop content after content after content (and the subsequent bugs patches that ensue for the following weeks)

Surely at some point they need to think that people are no longer being distracted by shiny crap and actually sort out the basic problems in game instead? still too many exploits, skills that are broken or useless, traits that need re-thinking… the list goes on but instead they throw non-stop content at the playerbase in the hope of distraction (ofc they also restock the gem store with more and more useless crap too for the IRL money grindfest)

The other problem with this new content is that it is steamrolled in a few hours and then people say “that’s it???”

There doesn’t seem to be much thought going into the new content other than the umbrella of “living story” that (and let’s be honest) no one gives a crap about, hell people don’t even give a toss about personal story as it is pointless cut-scene waffle with little reward vs huge time invested and there is NO sense of lore behind it really, no sense of achievement at the end or that you “understand” your character any better.

imho the only thing that is really really needed to be said at present is…

Stop the content for a while and FIX THE GAME!

Not really, its ok and all, but its nothing special.

I dont mind the reuse of models, as art takes a long time to produce, but the fight is pretty lame.

This is the issue with really fast content, its really shallow. I would not mind waiting longer for better content. I’ve yet to really be impressed by living story, it jsut seams to utterly trivial. Nothing makes me feel like its epic events my character is influencing, it all feels like an RP’ers nerdfest, refugees, holiday destinations….wtf? And here was me thinking we had elder dragons to fight….

It’s copy-pasted champion karka. Exactly the same model, zero effort put into it. Same attacks as well. Only difference is egg throwing.

If you call something a LEGENDARY Karka Queen, then make it LEGENDARY, rather than copy pasting already existing models.

I haven’t had the chance to even make it to her since the freaking camp was infested in the defense event with karka and have subsequently been slain every single time making the run back causing me to miss the fight. I don;t mind a challenge but to wade through one shot bs from a multitude of level 84 enemies is not my idea of fun remotelty.

I miss the time for boss mechanism where you needed to use your brain or cooperation with others. I believe the whole game is way too easy, just insta kill everyone when they are not dodging from a red circle, let a monster attack and that you need to run and jump.. combine lvls with death pits and jumping and a boss!

But for now, no too easy for me.

I was hoping the queen would introduce the “mysterious biological properties” we see on the back piece, but instead we have a standard looking Champion karka indiscernible from the others rampaging around the area. The mechanics are alright, but didn’t Researcher Levvi develop weapons already for getting through their shells? If there was going to be a required environmental weapon, I would have thought it would be the acid guns, not the karka’s own eggs. A multiple staged battle with changing tactics would have been preferre.

On the positive side it’s nice that it isn’t a stationary boss, which many have complained about and that it requires some coordination to summon, though not defeat.

it was not stationary but during the event I played it it barely moved 5 meters.

psy.5437:

I haven’t had the chance to even make it to her since the freaking camp was infested in the defense event with karka and have subsequently been slain every single time making the run back causing me to miss the fight. I don;t mind a challenge but to wade through one shot bs from a multitude of level 84 enemies is not my idea of fun remotelty.

Exactly this…a whole load of mobs spawned directly on top of all of us who were inside the camp and we died. We rezzed at Kiel’s, ran back and half of us died and then we pretty much all died again. Finally there seemed to be enough space and I squeezed through the 30ish mobs that were left and ran out just in time to get enough of hits in on the Queen to get credit for the event.

There at least needs to be a visible timer when you hold all 4 camps so you know when she’ll spawn. Also there should not be a billion mob spawns in the camp for no reason whatsoever. Two rares, a blue and a half dozen karka shells were not enough of a reward for doing this frustrating event.

Magnetron.5823:

I miss the time for boss mechanism where you needed to use your brain or cooperation with others. I believe the whole game is way too easy, just insta kill everyone when they are not dodging from a red circle, let a monster attack and that you need to run and jump.. combine lvls with death pits and jumping and a boss!

But for now, no too easy for me.

Stand inside the camp at Steamboat Springs when she spawns and tell me how easy it is to beat the dozens of karka and reef riders that spawn directly on top of you.

Went there yesterday when it was bugged, boring encounter. Just stood there auto-attacking until it was down. Thought that might have been because of the amount of people around on overflow. Had to go there today again because the achievement was bugged, did it this morning, just a few people there: exactly as boring. Just a copypasta champ karka (plus some eggs). Yay. It couldn’t be less legendary.

rizzo.1079:

Exactly this…a whole load of mobs spawned directly on top of all of us who were inside the camp and we died.

I agree, that’s just stupid. Stood in the camp, looked away for a second because my gf asked me something, bam, killed by a plethora of mobs appearing from out of nowhere. You’d think they improve on game design over the months, but nope.

So all of my friends are hugely disappointed after hearing some developers hype this event up.

Anyway, I don’t really buy the excuse that the event was zerged. If that’s the case, ArenaNet needs to improve scaling. But the temple bosses, particularly the Priest of Grenth, are actually more difficult with more people, so I doubt that’s the issue. The bare mechanics of the boss just seem dull.

Comparing this to the Temple of Melandru fight

Diffculty
When comparing the difficulty to the the above, I would have to say no, this was not as difficult. The Karka queen went down in roughly 5 minutes and received greens/blues from the chest (I did receive the two golds as attended).

Mechanics
The mechanics were both easily determined in both events, however, with the temple boss having a regen period; this made the fight more difficult and challenging to complete. The egg concept was simple and with enough people, the boss goes down quick anyways.

Conclusion
I would say the Legendary Karka fight was fun for the short time she was up, but the events to secure the 4 camps gave larger chances for better loot (which I received a Southsun Crate, and an Exotic ring). Given the chance, I will probably be down there again to see the challenge once majority of people have come and gone, but I prefer the challenges in Cursed Shore versus Southsun.

I wouldn’t consider this “end game” content either. If all players are scaled to the appropriate level, then that area shouldn’t be considered “end-game”. I hope to see areas in the future that are designed for the true level 80s (Like Frostgorge, Cursed Shore).

I can say that I preferred this fight to the Ancient Karka event in November. If I’m forced to call anything a “fail” dealing with Southsun then that battle takes the prize easily.
I’m completely fine with the Karka Queen not taking three hours to defeat.

Once you manage to reach her, she’s a pure ‘spank’ fight. Not even tank/spank – just spank.

Stand at range and let auto-attack take her out. Now and then pools form and you can disable run so you’re only in walk mode – because you have that much time to avoid them…

Oh and like any major karka, you have to take her out twice.

Otherwise… just a pure health sink boss.

Lots of adds spawn, but the auto-attack filler AoE spill off of many people is enough to take them out – they feel more like pollen allergy in a summer day: you sneeze at them while focusing on the baseball game. I didn’t even know they were there the first time, and on the second only saw them because I had to approach from the west and saw them moving around the edges before culling kicked in when I got too close: after that I noticed the ones right on me, but also that I seemed near immune to them.

Oh and yes – throw eggs. I did this twice on the second time I went. Not sure why, or if it had any effect. They spawned near me, so I grabbed them and hit the 1-key.

Lopez.7369:

This is partially inaccurate. The developers definitely had to deal with time constraints like any project in any industry does, but there was a whole team dedicated to the efforts.

From what we’ve heard, the same team involved with the efforts is also the main dungeon team — or at least includes the main dungeon developers. That should trouble anyone who wants a bright future for Guild Wars 2 because it shows the quality of boss design isn’t improving much, if at all, within the dungeon team.

On the bright side, the quality of boss design seems to be improving elsewhere. So maybe the leads for those teams should be brought over to the dungeon team.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Iruwen.3164:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

Hm, all you’re currently releasing is living world content as far as I’m aware of, and most of it doesn’t seem to require a lot of work except the Molten Weapons Facility. How can he not have had enough time to work on this, and why did he have to do it alone? Makes you wonder how many designers there are to begin with.

There are multiple living world teams, each with assets from all departments. The initial scope for Canach’s instance was as it is now – we had a shorter time table to build things, so we just wanted to plan for a story boss fight (easier) and a multiplayer boss fight (harder). The designer accomplished what we planned to do with it, but we never really considered it a dungeon – that was just a bit of a marketing mistake that set unrealistic expectations as a result of calling it a dungeon on the heels of MF.
He did it alone (or as alone as we all develop things as a team) because it was only a couple bosses in a small area – he didn’t and shouldn’t have needed any assistance with it, and it was finished within the scope of our initial plan.
I can’t give estimates on how long our team was developing this content, but it was an accelerated dev cycle for our team. Thankfully due to the schedule of our release, our team was staffed with some of the fastest iterative folks from the company to get something good out in a short time.
Our next schedule is much more relaxed than this one is though, so I’m very eager to see what we can do with it.

Inferior performance (I didn’t think it could get any worse than in WvW, but Southsun just managed to do so) and PvE culling just completely ruin it.

I didnt even realize that there was a hype arounf the Krka Queen event.

Or maybe its because I “de-hyped” myself as a result of my whole living story chain experience.

Except from the Molten Facility which blew me away in comparison and litterally

But I wasnt expecting much tho secretly hoping I could be suprised again. Maybe inside the Karka Hive (which offers the perfect scenario for a showdown whereas by now its almost empty except that Ori node to lure at least some up there) instead of a simple event somewhere on the island.

Now the Queen just poof spawns….Unlike that excellent Ogres (iirc) meta event near in SE Ascalon. There you have mutiple event steps leading up to the throne room wich opens at the final event and the big-boss appears. I like!
Not using the Karka-Hive is a missed opportunity big time.

And instead of throwing eggs (ok funny..but also underwhelming) maybe a more indirect mechanic.
Like not having the players do the damage to the Queen, but three Charr cannons maybe which need to be defended and resupplied and maybe some supply camps at the coast where crafters need to produce cannonballs or magic powder from supplies accumulating over time there similar like it is in WvW (you could have some NPCs unloading supplies from a ship too^^)
Then those cannonballs need to be carried to the cannons and the runners need protection and you need some femal dancers to motivate the crafters and Quaggans to tell jokes and so on ;-)

That would be more of an epic fight and requires collaboration which is fun and gives tension.

And when the Queen then dies…man I can imagine people celebrating and dancing.

Oh oooh I nearly forgot…that 10 minutes timer “mechanic” is -sorry- just cheap.

If timer, then just to have a mechanic to end the final event at least somwetime, like “ok, if you didnt make it in one hour the queen will collapse te cave” and the event fails and everyone in the cave dies.

And then make it possible to retry that meta after say 15minutes. Place a huge account daily (or weekly) chest at the end with an random excotic weapon with a small chance for those new skins and watch happy players.

Now, the current leading up events are a good step I’d say.

Eggs too cough but Anet should trust the GW2 community being able to solve more difficult tasks than that

There was no built up hype here…

You after take those events as they come, they can be great, average, rubbish…that’s the lessons I have learn’t from doing the living story…

The Karaka queen is average to slightly above average, in my opinion…

As long as you avoid being near the huge spawning mobs, when they spawn its a fairly easy event…if you are unlucky enough to be near the spawn site…its a wp and a run for you…

However, that’s with hordes/zergs of PvE players that are currently on Southsun, in a couple of months when numbers doing it are reduced could a very hard event…not a walk over like all the other world events…

The Legendary Ancient Karka had an awesome fight with different phases, expect the waves of 30 mins of endless karkas thrown at you. But then again, having to do it every day if you want that chest can become tiresome, at least not over half the players can Akitten fight.

If you could do three other events with each giving you a chest instead of killing that karka, people really wouldn’t do it, one more rare simply isn’t worth it. But they could have surely come up with something better and more original than what Dafomen just said - poof and it’s spawned.

NO IT DOES NOT. the karka queen is the same size, colour and has no extra animations (that I am aware of) its completely the same as other veteran karka’s roaming the island.

They could of least given it something to stand out. A new skin would of been nice.

Another lame event. Most people don’t even get the chance to fight it because of the ton of other mobs that one shot kill you.

So they nerfed the events that were happening there, that were actually fun, and replaced it with this.

I find it kind of sad that the general consensus seems to be that keeping the instigator events would be better — not just in terms of entertainment, but also for keeping people in Southsun.

I stood there and auto-attacked until it died.

Like. Every. Single. Other. World. Boss.

World bosses are broken as all hell. All you do is auto attack in a zerg so big it breaks the event. I don’t know why the Dragon Bash is going on about loot piñatas… we have plenty of those already.