Guild Wars 2

This is mostly intended for future similar content, as I doubt Teq’s will be changed significantly any time soon, but I think it’s important to address. The turrets in Tequatl’s fight are bad. They are bad for numerous reasons, but the most obvious and important is that they put too much power in the hands of six people for an event involving dozens, in which if even one of them completely fails, the whole thing can become impossible. So here’s how I would have done the Tequatl Turrets differently:

1. They would be NPC controlled. No players on turrets. The player’s job is not to fire turrets, the player’s job is to defend turrets and keep them in good repair. This means that for the most part, all but six players in the event would be doing exactly the same tasks they would currently. As a sub-issue here, while turret NPCs could die, they should be faster to rez than normal, basically at the rate of a Downed player.

2. There should be two types of turrets. One would be the “offense” turrets, which would fire “2” as often as possible and “1” on cooldown, and there would be the “support” turrets, which would spam 4 and 5 on pre-set locations (one on each side targeting Teq’s feet, one on each side targeting the “ranged zerg” point frequently used). The encounter would of course be balanced based on these new rates of fire. I believe both these tasks would be ones where the NPC AI would not screw it up, trying to get the AI to be quite as good on standard turrets as a human player would probably be difficult).

3. Poison clearing would not be a turret thing. Instead, it would be a “grenade” thing. Similar to in the Claw fight, there would be crates of “Cleanse Grenades” in barrels near the Turrets. Picking one up would give you, say, five casts of “cleansing grenades,” after which you’d need to grab more. It could even be as few as one cast per pick-up if you wanted to up the difficulty. The grenades themselves would have a range and effect similar to Turret 3.

This means that you’d want 2-4 players actively using these grenades to keep the zerg and the turrets cleared, but the advantage of this over the current system is that if any of these players are dropping the ball, someone else can hop right in, the entire zerg could be using them if they wanted to (not that this would be useful), rather than having them being monopolized by a six specific players until such time as they choose to give it up.

Again, I doubt that they will actually be using these suggestions on the Teq fight itself, but I hope that this would perhaps inform their thinking about how to update other challenges (like Shatterer or Claw) without making what I feel are the same mistakes. The simple lesson should be that any tasks they put to players in the encounter, they should be wide open, playable by one or one hundred players as the situation calls for it, and never have them be tasks where only a set number of people can monopolize them.

So you want Anet to take away part of the challenge because it makes the event too hard?

My problem with the turrets is that they’re basically there to replace the dedicated healer role; the zerg just stand in place and waits for the turrets to “cleanse” them. The same as it would be with a dedicated healer sitting back and healing people. It ’s a boring role and no one wants to do it (and very few do it well).

So you want Anet to take away part of the challenge because it makes the event too hard?

Nope.

What I want them to diversify the challenge so that it’s more based on the contributions of ALL the players, rather than being a six-man job. I hope you can understand the distinction there.

For all but six of the players involved, the challenge would be equal to, if not harder than the existing version, it would only be for those six players that they would have to find some other task to be doing, maybe using Cleansing Grenades, which might be easier for them.

Sorry to bring this up, but Tequatl already does require more than just 6 people on Turrets. You can have the best 6-man team, and you can still fail.

So if I go along with your thought process, I could say that all the attackers up front should be NPCs. Anet put a lot of emphasis on the 50 people up front, that if they fail, the entire event fails.

See what I did there? It works both ways. That’s why this is a group event. BOTH parts need to work well, or you fail. Simple as that. You can’t just nerf one part of the event because the groups you’ve been in have failed in the “Turret area”. There are groups who have epic Turret gunners and defenders, but the attack group can’t get enough DPS to get Teq to 75% until the timer is way down.

Sorry to bring this up, but Tequatl already does require more than just 6 people on Turrets. You can have the best 6-man team, and you can still fail.

Sure, but you can also have the best 114 man team and if those six are terrible then you also still fail, and there’s not much the other 114 can do about it. That’s the problem.

I’m not saying that the turret role is the only challenging element, I’m saying that it’s a problem that they can be taken over by any six players, who may or may not be good at it. I think it’s better to not have roles that can be taken by a single player, but instead to have roles that perhaps ideally would only require six players to accomplish them (like using Cleansing Grenades), but that if those six doing it are not doing a great job, then any number of additional players could peal off to take on the role too, and there would be nothing preventing them from doing so.

So if I go along with your thought process, I could say that all the attackers up front should be NPCs. Anet put a lot of emphasis on the 50 people up front, that if they fail, the entire event fails.

. . . No. . . that doesn’t go along with my thought processes at all. I’m not really sure who’s thought processes that goes along with.

See what I did there? It works both ways. That’s why this is a group event. BOTH parts need to work well, or you fail. Simple as that. You can’t just nerf one part of the event because the groups you’ve been in have failed in the “Turret area”. There are groups who have epic Turret gunners and defenders, but the attack group can’t get enough DPS to get Teq to 75% until the timer is way down.

You would still need to have a good “turret team” based on my suggestion (you did read the whole thing, right?) If you currently have 20-odd people defending turrets, you’d still need at least that many defending the turrets, you just wouldn’t have those six players actually operating the things, and instead they would be working to keep the NPCs rezzed, the turrets in repair, clearing the mobs attacking the turrets, and using the Cleanse grenades on the turrets and zergs.

For 95% of the players in the event, nothing would change for the worse, it would only be that remaining 5% that would need to do a slightly different task.

But… using Turrets properly is part of the challenge. Defending Turrets is part of the challenge. Getting Teq’s HP down to each quarter health is part of the challenge. Defending the batteries is part of the challenge. Burning Teq down after he’s weakened by the Megalaser is part of the challenge.

Each part of the fight requires different all players to work together. Each has his or her role to play. I’ve read your suggestion, and all I hear from it is “Turrets are too important, nerf them.” To which I gave you examples of how this event can fail even with good players on Turrets.

Ultimately, if you’re having a hard time, I would suggest guesting to BG or TC. Or even joining the Teq Killer guild. This fight isn’t impossible to do. There’s no need for any nerfs. People will win and people will fail. There’s no need to offer any type of easy mode, since that’s what Teq was before the update. All I would ask is that Anet fix the bug that gives people unlimited time to kill him.

But… using Turrets properly is part of the challenge. Defending Turrets is part of the challenge. Getting Teq’s HP down to each quarter health is part of the challenge. Defending the batteries is part of the challenge. Burning Teq down after he’s weakened by the Megalaser is part of the challenge.

And all of those things would be retained. Except for the very first bit, which is only a challenge for exactly SIX of the players, and zero challenge for the remaining 114. I’m saying that there should be no challenges that are designed for only a fixed number of players and that no other players can participate in. Every challenge should involve a fluid number of players. However many you put on any single task, they will need to do their job well, and you could certainly have too many or too few on a given task, but you should be able to reorganize them at will.

Each part of the fight requires different all players to work together. Each has his or her role to play. I’ve read your suggestion, and all I hear from it is “Turrets are too important, nerf them.” To which I gave you examples of how this event can fail even with good players on Turrets.

I’m not suggesting they nerf them, I’m suggesting they broaden the focus, to make them something that everyone participates in equally, rather than something that oly a few players participate in.

As it stands, you can have 114 players all doing their job, and then suddenly the bone wall comes up. Why did that bone wall come up? Was that your fault? No, probably not. Assuming the defense team did their jobs, then it was because one or more of the six players on the turrets dropped the ball. There was literally nothing you, or any other of the 114 could have done about that.

In my proposal though, or something similar, then if that wall comes up, it was at least partially your fault. If that wall comes up it means that the enemies took out one or more of the turret NPCs for some amount of time, which means that the defense team dropped the ball, and even if you weren’t on the defense team at the time, you could have been, there was no hard-lockout preventing you, like there is on manning a turret that is already occupied. It means that each player is responsible for the outcome, for making sure that every possible role is adequately staffed.

The current turret mechanics don’t allow that.

Ultimately, if you’re having a hard time, I would suggest guesting to BG or TC. Or even joining the Teq Killer guild. This fight isn’t impossible to do. There’s no need for any nerfs.

I’m not arguing that it is, I’m not suggesting nerfs at all, if you’d actually read my proposal, I’m just suggesting a way to make this, and similar events less focused on individual achievement, and more on the performance of the entire group.

The way I see, and this is probably were we differ, is that Turret gunners are a part of the group. You have North and South gunners, with someone usually in charge of the area. If one Turret is broken, someone is there to fix it. If a finger AOEs the Turret with poison, the call goes out for a Cleanse (i.e. North Middle needs a Cleanse!). The total sum of the individuals involved in the fight account for the overall victory. Failures in ANY part of the fight can lead to a loss.

By making Turrets NPC controlled, you are essentially “nerfing” the event, since then the computer will know exactly what needs to be done, when it needs to be done. There’s no strategic thinking involved, save for the need to actually defend the Turrets. “Do I Cleanse the group up front, or bring down Scale stacks?” “Do I buff the group with Quickness while they AOE, or do I heal my fellow Turret gunners?” The computer will decide what’s important, even if it’s not a priority to what the group truly needs.

The way I see, and this is probably were we differ, is that Turret gunners are a part of the group. You have North and South gunners, with someone usually in charge of the area. If one Turret is broken, someone is there to fix it. If a finger AOEs the Turret with poison, the call goes out for a Cleanse (i.e. North Middle needs a Cleanse!). The total sum of the individuals involved in the fight account for the overall victory. Failures in ANY part of the fight can lead to a loss.

What if one of the turret gunners is AFK? Or what if some yahoo got on there and won’t get off? The group can do absolutely nothing to recover from that. Six individual players shouldn’t wield that amount of impact over the outcome of the battle. Yes, you need more than just the turrets to win, but you NEED all the turrets to win. Each of those six players is worth a dozen other players, if not two dozen, and there’s no justification for that.

For the rest of the group, the goal is the same. You’ll still want to keep the turrets cleansed and repaired, you’ll still want to keep the NPCs firing them alive, and you’ll still need to have players actively cleansing the Zerg as well, you just won’t have six fixed roles that only SIX players, no more, and no less, are responsible for that wield such an overwhelming impact on the outcome.

By making Turrets NPC controlled, you are essentially “nerfing” the event, since then the computer will know exactly what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

It only makes the encounter easier for SIX players out of 120. If that is nerfing" it then so be it, call it that if you insist, but really an event where removing SIX player out of 120 completely changes the game, that just seems like a poorly designed scenario to me. ANY player in ANY role should be replaceable at ANY time if they aren’t living up to the task.

There’s no strategic thinking involved, save for the need to actually defend the Turrets. “Do I Cleanse the group up front, or bring down Scale stacks?” “Do I buff the group with Quickness while they AOE, or do I heal my fellow Turret gunners?”

There’s VERY little tactical skill involved there. If 2 is up, you USE IT. If 2 is not up, but 3 is, you USE IT. If neither 2 nor 3 is up, you use 4 or 5, if none of those are up, maybe use 1. In any case, it’s a role only performed by six out of the 120 players, so we can do without it. This is a massively multiplayer game, it should be about the massively multiplayer, not “six players and the Zerg.”

The computer will decide what’s important, even if it’s not a priority to what the group truly needs.

That’s why I recommended splitting the turret roles (assuming you read my original post, which I just can’t shake the feeling that you did not). You’d have 2-4 of the turrets as “Offense only,” that would only be firing 2 as often as possible, 1 when not, and then the remaining ones would be buff only, alternating between buffs at set intervals, and players using grenades would have to decide where and when to apply cleanses.

Do you keep all six turrets alive, or do you focus on the offense ones and let the Buff ones die? You could do that, which would free up defenders, but then you wouldn’t be getting those buffs. Do you have only 2-3 people on Cleanse grenades, and only prioritize targets, or do you try and get more players on there so that no poison is left unattended? Of course then they would not be contributing to any other aspect.

I think there’s a ton of strategic potential there, just a different sort than the current one, more about effectively using the numerous players available than about the individual skills of whichever six happen to be on the guns.

One thing I just thought of, is what if they then added an “overclock” item, like a wrench or something? The idea would be that if you used it on a turret, it would give the turret faster cooldowns, but the cooldown on the item itself means that each player would only be able to overclock one turret every thirty seconds or so. Do you overclock the Offense turret so that it can recover from a few missed shots and burn down the Scales faster? Do you overclock the buffs to make everyone super buffy? Do you assign a bunch of people to keeping the turrets all overlocked all the time, or do you only assign a couple people to the task, or none at all? Again, a lot of different ways to play that.

OP, I don’t think any of these guys actually read your post. They just thought of it as another “QQ, event is too hard”. If they would spend the time to read, they’d see that you’re asking for a work around potential griefers/afkers.

On topic, I like the idea of those changes. In theory, nothing really changes other than eliminating the possibility of someone incompetent hopping on a turret. Being on a turret isn’t hard or challenging; it’s just that people don’t want to work or take the time to learn.

Assigning an NPC to a turret isn’t nerfing it. Being on a turret is the easiest thing. Is 2 off CD? Then I better use it. Oh no, a giant red circle of poison and death. Better use 3. Is 4/5 off CD? Better use it. In fact, it makes it harder, because you can’t tell the NPCs where/when to cleanse/buff.

Ohoni.6057:

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Again, I’ve read it, and you keep thinking that the whole fight is centered on 6 people. Let me explain some of the strategy involved.

Turret gunners: Yes you need 6 competent people manning the Turrets at all times. Cleanse is important, and Scale stack removal is important. These are part of the main mechanics of the fight.
Turret defenders: You need around 10 people on each side to defend. So that brings the total people to 26 in the back who are vital to the fight, not just 6.
Teq attackers: You need as much competent people up front as possible. You need Warriors with banner rez. You need Guardians with reflect. You need Eles to drop Icy Bow and Fire Greatsword for DSP. You need Mesmers for Timewarps. You need players who understand when you jump the wave, and when to dodge through the wave.
Finger hunters: You need dedicated group to take out Fingers quickly. The less Fingers, the less poison circles. The less poison circles, the less Cleanse you need.

Everything is connected. If any one of the groups above fail, you all fail. That’s what’s this event is all about. It’s not just about the few people who man the Turrets.

As proof, I’ll offer you this. I’ll join your server for a Teq run. Get all the guildies or smartest players possible, and put them on Turrets. Get the best Commanders to lead the fray. But what will I do? I’ll drag the most funnest Champion that can spawn, the Corrputed Grub, and put him in the middle of your main zerg.

If I were to do that, I assure you that Turrets are the least of your worries. You can’t Cleanse the poison AOE that the grub spits at you. You can only try to pull him away, as killing him takes away DPS from the main group.

Note – Of course I would never do that in a run. This is a hypothetical scenario to explain to you that with what only you think is important, there are many other factors that determine a win or fail.

Turret gunners: Yes you need 6 competent people manning the Turrets at all times. Cleanse is important, and Scale stack removal is important. These are part of the main mechanics of the fight.
Turret defenders: You need around 10 people on each side to defend. So that brings the total people to 26 in the back who are vital to the fight, not just 6.
Teq attackers: You need as much competent people up front as possible. You need Warriors with banner rez. You need Guardians with reflect. You need Eles to drop Icy Bow and Fire Greatsword for DSP. You need Mesmers for Timewarps. You need players who understand when you jump the wave, and when to dodge through the wave.
Finger hunters: You need dedicated group to take out Fingers quickly. The less Fingers, the less poison circles. The less poison circles, the less Cleanse you need.

I’m aware of all of that. I’m not discounting the importance of any of that. But here’s the thing, let’s say you do ALL of that. And ONE turret guy kinda sucks, but won’t leave. How well will that group do?

I’m not saying remove any of that. All that stuff would stay in. You’d still need to do ALL that stuff right. All I’m saying, is remove the turret guys. The turrets would remain, their roles would remain, the players would have to work just as hard to keep the turrets functional, it would just remove the element that even one turret guy can screw things up for the entire rest of the event.

One guy out of 120 should not have that much impact over the outcome. One guy out of 120 people should only have less than 1% impact on the outcome, he should make the difference between beating the event with 2 minutes to go or just beating it with a paltry 1min51sec to go. The only time one player should make a difference in a 120 player event is when everyone else does so bad that you come within 9 seconds of failure.

You’re right that it’s not just about the turrets, but it is at minimum about the turrets. If the turrets fail then everyone fails, and you’re right that if any of those other components fail then everyone also fails, the difference is, and this is VERY important, the other elements are fluid. If the defense team is failing, you can pull players from elsewhere to shore them up. If the Tez attackers are failing you can shift some people from Defense. Maybe you don’t have enough players to spare, but you at least have options. If the turret gunners are failing, and they choose not to correct their own behavior or leave gracefully, then you have ZERO options for correcting it.

Note – Of course I would never do that in a run. This is a hypothetical scenario to explain to you that with what only you think is important, there are many other factors that determine a win or fail.

So you’re saying that there are other ways to troll a run? True enough, but by far the easiest way to troll a run is to just get on one of the turrets and then go make a sandwich.

Seriously though, why are you really fighting this one? Let’s say you are not one of the six players that’s on a turret. How would your experience of the event be significantly different under my proposal than if you just had a good group of people working the turrets? All I’m talking about doing is subbing out 5% of the players in the encounter, why is that such a travesty to you?

Ohoni.6057:

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The reason why I’m so adamantly against this idea is that Turret gunners are part of the mechanics of this fight. You take away those duties, and leave them to NPCs, you basically nerfed the fight. It takes no skill to just defend NPCs that shoot Teq. They auto aim at poison pools. They auto attack to take off Scale stacks. Then this turns into a basic zerg Teq up front, only with a side quest to defend the Turrets. Sure you can add some portable poison pool removers, but you still took a key part of the fight, and watered it so low, that the fight is no longer as challenging. It would be like asking for the Liadri fight to have a solid ground so you can see all the red circles, and no exploding clones that track you.

I want people to win this fight, but not at the expense of mechanics. You win this with talented players who organize before the fight. Not by lowering the difficulty scale or by bugged timers that freeze.

By the way, with competent people on Turrets, if you lose one or two, you’re not in so much trouble. But for the sake of your troll gunner scenario, if someone is effectively camping on one, just let that Turret break. Don’t heal, don’t Cleanse, don’t defend. Once it breaks, you can have a guy stand by while you repair. Then have them jump back on. Takes only a second to rebuild it, not like WvW where you need to charge up a build.

The only problem with these turrets is that they are key to victory, yet they can be controlled by anyone, which means many may fail because of a few.

They should consider replacing 6 turrents with rifles. Like against Jormag’s Claw.

The reason why I’m so adamantly against this idea is that Turret gunners are part of the mechanics of this fight. You take away those duties, and leave them to NPCs, you basically nerfed the fight.

So you are semantically against the possibility of a nerf to any single element of the current encounter, even if it adds difficulty elsewhere and overall makes for a more enjoyable fight for everyone involved? Sorry, I just think that’s petty and don’t understand why anyone should care what you think under those circumstances.

. It takes no skill to just defend NPCs that shoot Teq. They auto aim at poison pools. They auto attack to take off Scale stacks.

Look, I know you’ve claimed again and again that you read my original post, but I’m really having a hard time believing that when you then say that “they auto target the poison pools,” when I specifically pointed out that poison cleansing would be entirely the duty of the people using cleansing grenades. NO NPC turrets would be cleansing poison.

Now yes, they auto-attack scales, but ideally that’s what the turret players would be doing anyways, so for the 114 other players nothing would change there. The rest of the players would still need to defend that turret, because if it falls, it’s not cleansing scales, and the encounter would be balanced around that fact.

By the way, with competent people on Turrets, if you lose one or two, you’re not in so much trouble. But for the sake of your troll gunner scenario, if someone is effectively camping on one, just let that Turret break. Don’t heal, don’t Cleanse, don’t defend.

How do you know, in the heat of combat, which turret is the problem? He can certainly put on a good show of doing his job, but NEVER fire a #2 shot directly at Teq, or do anything else actually useful. I defy you to pick out which specific turret gunners are doing a good job or a bad one, and if you can then clearly you aren’t doing your own job with the rest of the members of the group. The only way to tell that someone isn’t doing their job is for the scale stack to keep climbing, but there’s no more way to tell which gunner that is than it is to tell whether a player in the zerg is running Zerker gear.

They should consider replacing 6 turrents with rifles. Like against Jormag’s Claw.

That would be another solution, but if they went that route then it would remove the entire defense element, you’d just have people running around with rifles largely ignoring the mobs. The good thing about the NPC turrets is that it maintains the entire defense element of the current encounter design.

Ohoni.6057:

How do you know, in the heat of combat, which turret is the problem? He can certainly put on a good show of doing his job, but NEVER fire a #2 shot directly at Teq, or do anything else actually useful. I defy you to pick out which specific turret gunners are doing a good job or a bad one, and if you can then clearly you aren’t doing your own job with the rest of the members of the group. The only way to tell that someone isn’t doing their job is for the scale stack to keep climbing, but there’s no more way to tell which gunner that is than it is to tell whether a player in the zerg is running Zerker gear.

So at this point, you’re complaining for the sake of complaining? If the Bone Wall comes up, that means a majority of the Turrets failed, not just one person. Your suggested nerf would be on the assumption that if you made the Turrets NPC controlled, that solved your problems?

It doesn’t matter if you have people running around with Cleanse backpacks, or NPC controlled Scale removal. What you’re doing is asking that the fight become easier. So as you want the fight to be easier, I will defend the mechanics, because people are successful when they band together and play the fight correctly.

Turret gunners need to multitask far more than the people DPSing Tequatl up front. That is part of the challenge at hand. If you want NPCs to be in charge of Scale removal, might as well as Anet to take that part of the challenge away. What you need to do is find good players, and put them on Turrets. But if you fail the fight without a single Bone Wall coming up, then you know where the problem is then.

So at this point, you’re complaining for the sake of complaining? If the Bone Wall comes up, that means a majority of the Turrets failed, not just one person. Your suggested nerf would be on the assumption that if you made the Turrets NPC controlled, that solved your problems?

No, I’m trying to explain why this change would be pure up-side. If we made the turrets NPC controlled, then so long as the players were able to keep the turrets in good repair and the gunners alive, they would do a good job, you would not have “human error” on the turret role. In the current version, there’s too much responsibility on too few players, and too little responsibility on the rest. The change would spread the responsibility of keeping the walls down and the poison cleared to ALL the players, rather than just the ones on the guns.

It doesn’t matter if you have people running around with Cleanse backpacks, or NPC controlled Scale removal. What you’re doing is asking that the fight become easier.

No, I’m not, I’m asking for it to be different, yes, but not easier, at least not for 95% of the people playing, and the remaining 5% would have plenty of difficult tasks to do. Overall the contents of the event should be the same difficulty level.

So as you want the fight to be easier, I will defend the mechanics, because people are successful when they band together and play the fight correctly.

My suggestion still forces the players to band together and play the fight just as correctly as the current version, it just spreads the responsibility more evenly, fully in the hands of all 120 players, not just 114 and 6.

Turret gunners need to multitask far more than the people DPSing Tequatl up front. That is part of the challenge at hand. If you want NPCs to be in charge of Scale removal, might as well as Anet to take that part of the challenge away.

They could, but it still has value in my model, because broken turrets don’t fire, and dead gunners don’t fire. The players still have to prevent both of those things, just as they do now. If they removed the scale element, then nobody would bother to defend the turrets and it would just become a standard “DPS grind” against the boss. The changes I suggested would make it so that 95% of the people playing the encounter would be playing it EXACTLY like they do today, the exact same roles and responsibilities. The only ones who would have to find some other task would be the six currently manning the turrets, and they could just switch to Grenade running and have much the same job.

What you need to do is find good players, and put them on Turrets.

Ok, could you explain to me how I would be able to “put” people on turrets? My understanding is that people put themselves on turrets, and when they do there’s no way to get them off against their will. How do you assign the various turret gunners to your own personal whims 100% of the time? I kind of want to join your server now, just so I can get in there a few hours before you show up and camp a gun for the rest of the night.