Guild Wars 2

Hullo all and especially ArenaNet, whom I hope will read this post. I understand you guys are receiving mass posts over this new encounter of Tequatl. I also understand that you are doing something far beyond what other games have done in bringing out continual content every two weeks. We like to forget that you guys are working around the clock on minimal staff doing things that other games haven’t considered with more staff to back them. That being said, I want to firstly thank you for the time you do put forth and have put forth into this game which I have loved the last year. I love the challenge and effort to revamp and stay true to the Manifesto by keeping a dynamic event failure showing rather than the boss just disappearing or staying until a rag tag group of adventurerers can kill him. I also love the new fight. I do not want to see it nerfed and feel that it brings about a level of coordination equal to a raiding environment but with a higher scale level than most other games out there.

Now, with this all being said, I do have a few thoughts on this encounter stemming from what others have said and what I’ve gathered so far of the event myself. As others have stated part of the reason is these achievements are why folk flock to servers not their own -to get a title etc. They are a core reason as to why folk AFK and wait in a main server to get a kill or an achievement they cannot get in an Overflow. Further they are a core reason as to why Overflows mostly fail because folk are not taking the encounter as serious or try to coordinate a win for just loading in to do an achievement and then leaving. Overflows are considered to be the place to farm the achievements, which should not be at all.

So my humble suggestion, a lowly one at that, is to not eliminate the achievements but replace the two that are not crucial to the fight. These two being: “I Found It” and “Tail Flail”. Coordination is in, distractions are out! Now, these are just a simple replacement ideas of mine, but perhaps something like “The Fingerless” for killing a certain amount of Tequatl’s fingers that pop up could replace one of those two. This meaning that they would be helping -not hurting- the fight by working on an achievement. Secondly, (Now this one is way off the wall) “Beyond the Barrier” to help prevent the Akitteng of folk at the event. Numerous times slight dps could have killed the boss had the first couple of minutes folk not been away. I won’t get into the implications of how waiting on the encounter can be boring and semi against the whole “Not waiting around to have fun,” other than saying such. However, “Beyond the Barrier” could be something Rox calls out in some form of heroic aspect “Go forth heroes -defend these shores -” and a barrier forms up (Preferably in an area that folk can’t just akitten) that would only last about ten seconds. This meaning folk would want to be ready for the start of the fight and less likely away. And the barrier would give a sprint buff to folk to make sure they can guard turrets in time or what not. I realize this would not solve all Akitteng issues, but its a smaller step and it would replace an achievement that is forcing players to choose between helping kill a boss or get their own achievements.Perhaps randomizing where the barrier could spawn up would prevent more Akitteng.

Now they aren’t a major step, and for servers that have low populations this fight is a nightmare and my only thought on that is to scale the fight somewhat. Though, if that is done it can alter the drive for most folk to show up and make the encounter feel less epic. Right now tuned it needs a good eighty plus it seems to down him sufficiently. But, with those 80 people come massive lag issues as well. Now do I think any encounter needs to be a push over? No, but if folk could do it on their own server (whether it be small) that would cut down on the servers whom have downed it getting so many guesting over-creating more overflow issues. It’s almost like a domino effect.

I am hardly a game designer nor do I see the whole picture. As a player of the GW2 community and and a lover of GW2 and its branching out of molds to create new ones, I want to see the game grow and be loved. With the time and effort ArenaNet has put forth I cannot express how much I appreciate the attention to details and care to make a great game. I just hope from this experience something can be learned and possibly enhanced for the future events, because as it stands its an amazing endeavor and with a few tweaks it can be more than anyone ever dreamed.

In closing, thank you ArenaNet and NCSoft. Thank you for listening to player concerns and bringing out content consistently despite time constraints and I’m sure a load of stress on the developers.

Thank you all for reading.

~Loony

As a note, Akitteng should be Away From Keyboard >.> Don’t know what I did there <.<

I think A-kitteng [Edit: There it is! You know what I mean.] gets autocensored, which is a little silly, but it’s not hard to see why. ;P

To be honest, most of the failures I see are because the zerg doesn’t get critical mass, the zerg fails to stack on a commander for cleansing, the turrets get overwhelmed (too many AFK, not getting back in time after stun phase, too many pooled in one spot and calling up champions,) or the turrets don’t do their job bringing down the wall or cleansing themselves/the zerg.

Geeze, that was supposed to be a short list. Everytime I describe this fight, I suddenly remember that oh my goodness this is a complicated fight and there’s a lot to remember. That’s not me being sarcastic; there are really just a ton of moving parts that have to come together.

With those two issues, however, I don’t think there’s enough impact to disrupt a group that would otherwise win. The sunken treasure takes practically no time to grab once you’re down there, and I rarely see more than two, at most three, people goofing around by the tail. When you’re dealing with a centuria of characters, that distraction is pretty minimal. And, hopefully, they’re attacking fingers and participating at battery/stun phases anyway.

I’m totally with you on AFK being an issue, though, which is why most (but not all) of my Tequatl kills come from groups (guild or just a big, mutant PUG,) piling into a mostly-empty overflow, one that isn’t full of idlers. I don’t know what the best solution from a development perspective would be, but when gaming overflow is more ideal than even finding a low-population server to guest on, it’s a bit of an issue.

Regarding lag: Best I can say is to make sure your graphics settings are down low. Hopefully it’s not just a slow internet connection, since there’s not much you can do about that. I’ve had battles that were going well disconnect or crash on me, especially at the beginning of Boss Week, but most of the time, it’s been buttery smooth at full graphics settings. (On a good gaming machine, that is. I’d definitely tear down those settings on my laptop. That’s just the nature of high-intensity content like this.)