Guild Wars 2

I hope that the OP realises that his statement about his first try being successful says more about the other people working on it than him. Once everyone else is doing the right thing it just works, he could be running in circles and it’ll work anyway. Unless he’s on a turret I suppose.

ilr.9675:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I sometimes think that posters like the OP get a charge out of posting that they don’t find supposedly hard content to be hard — stroking the ego, as it were. Other times I think that those with superlative twitch reflexes will never find _*PvE*_content hard after they learn the mechanics of the game and encounter. That makes me wonder why they are looking for challenge in PvE, instead of looking where it can actually be found, in PvP.

I tried PvP here b/c in Shooters & every other genre that supports it, it’s all I ever do….
But I found it to be even more disappointing than Gw1’s PvP which I couldn’t stand in larger doses either. (it’s still all gimmicks and terrible matchups until you got into the the t100 HA/GvG ranks). But FYI…. there actually WERE some genuine PvE challenges and better AI in that game than we’re seeing here so far….

Oh, agreed.

GW was not quite as twitch-based as GW2. Sure, if you were protting, were the infuser or were running interrupts — timing had to right on those, and on spikes. PvE challenge came from a combination of hard hits and attrition, and was managed by protection, healing, line of sighting and a variety of tactics (some unique to particular encounters). Many areas in hard mode were made easily manageable by he use of Discordway, for instance. Yes, the GW AI was better. However, it could be and was exploited (one example was Slaver’s Exile VoR Voltaic Spear farming, killing mobs from behind a wall they couldn’t attack through).

The devs designed GW2 PvE combat to showcase the mechanics they used to replace the “healer.” “Challenge” comes primarily from big hits, with mobs attacking slowly. That fits with the evasion/invulnerability frames mechanics. What happens, though, is that once a player knows the tells, he can avoid damage entirely, so how big the damage is, is irrelevant. This is mechanically different, but otherwise the same as players “learning” to trivialize the PvE content — especially open world PvE content — in other MMO’s.

Tequatl himself isnt that difficult. Killing him with 20 players af()king, 20 players lying dead on the ground yelling for rezz, 30 players respawning and kiting mobs through turret stations, 30 berserker noobs dieing to every wave, 3 turret noobs wanting to get achievements, 1 grief player kicking bloated creepers in zerg/turrets…

THAT’s the challenge ;p

IndigoSundown.5419:

Oh, agreed.

GW was not quite as twitch-based as GW2. Sure, if you were protting, were the infuser or were running interrupts — timing had to right on those, and on spikes. PvE challenge came from a combination of hard hits and attrition, and was managed by protection, healing, line of sighting and a variety of tactics (some unique to particular encounters). Many areas in hard mode were made easily manageable by he use of Discordway, for instance. Yes, the GW AI was better. However, it could be and was exploited (one example was Slaver’s Exile VoR Voltaic Spear farming, killing mobs from behind a wall they couldn’t attack through).

The devs designed GW2 PvE combat to showcase the mechanics they used to replace the “healer.” “Challenge” comes primarily from big hits, with mobs attacking slowly. That fits with the evasion/invulnerability frames mechanics. What happens, though, is that once a player knows the tells, he can avoid damage entirely, so how big the damage is, is irrelevant. This is mechanically different, but otherwise the same as players “learning” to trivialize the PvE content — especially open world PvE content — in other MMO’s.

Speaking as the Monk Infuser for the HoH teams that I’ve been apart of, things like reflex dodging to evade an attack in GW2 will never be comparable. With monsters in GW2, there are at least tells that an attack is incoming. Then it’s just a matter of learning the timing to avoid it. Being an Infuser or Prot in GW1 HoH, the only tell was when your teammate’s HP disappeared. I had to play with 110% focus on both positioning and the party menu, with my cheeks squeezed because I was so tense. Then we’d have to deal with the fallout on Vent or TS if we failed, and the enemy Ghost caps the alter….

GW2 mechanics are a godsend for PvE and PvP.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

They played it for years because they were the only places to obtain shards and ecto, which were necessary for FoW armor, and sold really well. The same could be said of DoA…people were after the gems to get the armbraces to get the weapons, all of which could be sold lucratively. The Deep and Urgoz were ‘elite’ content, but until the revamps, were essentially dead, and even after, still didn’t see the traffic the other 3 places did. Why? The rewards sold for little to nothing.

Deep and Urgoz were still played often by medium/large sized alliances. For a long while(many months), until the market was was saturated with celestials and NF had come out, there were even people pugging it. Later it was dead for pugs but guilds still did it, all the way up to GW2’s release. I know our alliance did.

But Deep/Urgoz only needed 12 people. This was somewhat reasonable, but still hard. Other dungeons needed 8. More reasonable, but still somewhat hard.

Now along comes TQ with its 200 player req to blow everything away from a logistical standpoint. It’s blowing away the time-to-deadness record too. No surprise.

The main reason they went with 5 man instances and base 5 scaling for metas in GW2, years ago, was because 5 works for more guilds. At first it outraged a few GW1 players on the forums but others, including myself, saw it as a smart move.

That was years ago though and the Anet of back then was not the Anet of today.

The Tequatl revamp shows Anet’s bias attitude towards the 10% elite gamer and away from the other forgotten 90%.

Like Karka Queen, Tequatl is impossible outside of zerg-hours. I could be a real skilled player or a complete noob (probably the latter) and it will make no difference.

Since my presence changes nothing and all I end up doing is paying for armor repair, then why go there? I don’t.

I think Anet claimed to make content for all kinds of players before the game came out. Difficult multi-group content has been seriously lacking so far (still is, you have like 2-3 temples and Tequatl).

Should Anet stop trying to please several interest groups and focus on one kind of player? If they actually decide to do that I would appreciate a blog post by them detailing which player types are no longer welcome, to know if I should quit.

So far I’d say both PvP system are neglected, dungeoneers as well (last content addition was fractals, with two 2-week dungeons since then).

Guilds had some nice additions, solo players got alot of stuff through living story, and achievement

I think guild tools overall are still very lacking, so I’d say solo players gained the most throughout the first year. I think it is time the other groups get some of the love. Yay for a new dungeon path coming soon, its a step in the right direction (if it is good).

Smooth Penguin.5294:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Oh, agreed.

GW was not quite as twitch-based as GW2. Sure, if you were protting, were the infuser or were running interrupts — timing had to right on those, and on spikes. PvE challenge came from a combination of hard hits and attrition, and was managed by protection, healing, line of sighting and a variety of tactics (some unique to particular encounters). Many areas in hard mode were made easily manageable by he use of Discordway, for instance. Yes, the GW AI was better. However, it could be and was exploited (one example was Slaver’s Exile VoR Voltaic Spear farming, killing mobs from behind a wall they couldn’t attack through).

The devs designed GW2 PvE combat to showcase the mechanics they used to replace the “healer.” “Challenge” comes primarily from big hits, with mobs attacking slowly. That fits with the evasion/invulnerability frames mechanics. What happens, though, is that once a player knows the tells, he can avoid damage entirely, so how big the damage is, is irrelevant. This is mechanically different, but otherwise the same as players “learning” to trivialize the PvE content — especially open world PvE content — in other MMO’s.

Speaking as the Monk Infuser for the HoH teams that I’ve been apart of, things like reflex dodging to evade an attack in GW2 will never be comparable. With monsters in GW2, there are at least tells that an attack is incoming. Then it’s just a matter of learning the timing to avoid it. Being an Infuser or Prot in GW1 HoH, the only tell was when your teammate’s HP disappeared. I had to play with 110% focus on both positioning and the party menu, with my cheeks squeezed because I was so tense. Then we’d have to deal with the fallout on Vent or TS if we failed, and the enemy Ghost caps the alter….

GW2 mechanics are a godsend for PvE and PvP.

Yeah, I’ve felt that pain. In GW PvE, with some exception (e.g., elementalist bosses, Aataxes) mob damage was more attrition than spike. It was common to pre-prot when facing what PvE spike their was, so the twitch load (as it were) was nowhere near what it was in HoH, or in GW2.

Nick.6972:

I’ve defeated him 3 times out of 4. That one loss was because of random wave at less than 25%.

You did not. The map you were in did.

Your luck is not coming from “combat luck” like being lucky on where the AoEs hit or being targeted by enemies or not.

Your luck came from :

• Not being disconnected.
• Getting in a map with enough people.
• Getting in a map in which there wasn’t potatoes controlling the turrets.
• Getting in a map with enough people that knows what to do.

So yeah. You were lucky. 3 times. That’s statistically plausible. You could have been lucky all 4 times.

That doesn’t change that you were lucky.

He isn’t hard. If this was an instanced raid, he would actually be on the easy side of things.

The problem is getting 100 people of various levels, skill and gear quality who you don’t know to spontaneously co-operate together. Just doesn’t happen in a game designed for casuals.

I hope they revamp the Claw to be harder than this but make it a 40-man instanced raid.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Nick.6972:

I’ve defeated him 3 times out of 4. That one loss was because of random wave at less than 25%.

You did not. The map you were in did.

Your luck is not coming from “combat luck” like being lucky on where the AoEs hit or being targeted by enemies or not.

Your luck came from :

• Not being disconnected.
• Getting in a map with enough people.
• Getting in a map in which there wasn’t potatoes controlling the turrets.
• Getting in a map with enough people that knows what to do.

So yeah. You were lucky. 3 times. That’s statistically plausible. You could have been lucky all 4 times.

That doesn’t change that you were lucky.

How is organization and coordination luck?
Please elaborate.

100 random people didn’t just gather with no coordination whatsoever and facerolled their keys hoping for a win.

Nick.6972:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Nick.6972:

I’ve defeated him 3 times out of 4. That one loss was because of random wave at less than 25%.

You did not. The map you were in did.

Your luck is not coming from “combat luck” like being lucky on where the AoEs hit or being targeted by enemies or not.

Your luck came from :

• Not being disconnected.
• Getting in a map with enough people.
• Getting in a map in which there wasn’t potatoes controlling the turrets.
• Getting in a map with enough people that knows what to do.

So yeah. You were lucky. 3 times. That’s statistically plausible. You could have been lucky all 4 times.

That doesn’t change that you were lucky.

How is organization and coordination luck?
Please elaborate.

100 random people didn’t just gather with no coordination whatsoever and facerolled their keys hoping for a win.

Luck was in having the people that could be organized, of sufficient ability for that content, and in sufficient quantity. Some servers have to deal with lack of all three requirements at the same time.

so far i have never seen teq actually taken down. i would like to be part of a organized guild or team that will take down teq.. please pm me in world if you have info on this. the lowest i have ever seen teq at was less then half health about 25% before his timer went out.. please help ?

I am Particlar and from Desolation.
Together with a few other commanders (no guild organization) we have been able to organize Desolations now 60 kills. (Of course this is not a few men’s achievement, but I’d like to think we’ve helped)
I have personally been with and commanding/organizing more than 40 of those, so I think it’s safe to say my successful runs were not just luck.

In my opinion the tea kettle fight is alright how it is. For once there is some content that is not mindlessly zergable. These last two weeks have been the most fun I’ve had in game and I’ve met more people than ever before.

I never wait more than 30min to get into a main. My advice for you who have not yet done teq is following;

• Find an active server doing teq (blackgate, desolation or jq as example)
• Get into their organized team speak and thereby get a taxi
• Get in main (try right after a kill if it’s really difficult)
• Listen and do your job

the problem with Teq is overflow… i spent more time trying to get into right map where organized group was than actually fighting him…

I agree, Tequatl is too easy. My server succeeds him almost every time during day time hours.

Stooperdale.3560:

The primary obstacle to most players completing this fight is the access as they join disorganized overflows or find insufficient people in the home server zone. If the developer’s intent was to restrict completion of this event to well led guilds with the organization to control a zone (or overflow) then access should have been been primarily designed with that intent as well.

Being in a “disorganized overflow” is purely the player’s fault. Not their fault they’re in an overflow, but the fault in being disorganized. I have never understood why overflow means instant stupidity. Why can’t players get they acts together and organize themselves? Sounds like too many moochers. It can be done in overflows, I’ve done it.

As for the servers with much lower turn out, I don’t see why you should be punished because most of your server decides to play the game how they want and not bother with a boss fight.

What I wouldn’t mind seeing is them adding a second timer to the fight. From 100-80 (ish) % is one timer, then from 80-0% is another. The first timer could be longer and used to determine scaling or, better yet, time to allow for people to show up and get organized. If the timer is used for scaling, I’d say to have the zone hard cap the population to whatever is there on map when the timer ends. This way you can avoid the people trying to rig an easier fight by only having a few people there until the first timer runs out, then flood the map to mooch easier kills. For a prep timer they could even add a pre-event to the announcement of Tequatl attacking, even if it’s just “Tequatl will arrive in X minutes”. The minute or so we have now isn’t nearly enough.

^thats because the moment people see that it’s an overflow, the mentality is ’we’re screwed, time to die and AFK for the daily.’

Which isn’t wrong though, if you get overflowed, the chances are that you’ll screw up because it’s hard to spontaneously organise 80 people.

Dingle.2743:

Tequatl’s difficulty comes for the wrong reasons. He requires more organisation than you can expect from a random group of players, but the only way to gather specific players is to camp out a server or overflow until only players that are worth having around are there.

That’s exactly the problem here. The game doesn’t have the communication tools / server capacity for an event this scale and with this kind of required organization.

I tried to kill it again yesterday (against better judgement), and spent most my afternoon just trying to get on the main the server. When I finally managed to, it was after the third organised try of our big PVE guild (MOCO on Jade Sea), and 2 failed attempts for 1 victory.

I had to wait on the map for almost two hours just to get a fair chance of success, not counting the time I spent trying and failing to join the map (one hour before the event, I was already put on an overflow).

We failed at 25% life. I should be happy to have come this far, but I feel like I’ve once again wasted my time.

I have no problem with some difficulty in GW2, such as the Queen Gauntlet or even the Scarlett Invasion (it wasn’t a guaranteed win, but was reasonably doable on overflows).

Dingle.2743:

What the fight needs is some way to properly organise it, like a researchable guild mission that creates a personal instance which is invite only, with the fight able to start on demand. So instead of waiting for up to 2 hours for the dragon to spawn, the players go to sparkfly, join the guild instance and just… fight him as soon as everybody’s ready.

Sounds like a reasonable idea. I’ll take anything that doesn’t require me to wait for 2 hours on the map.

That, or, you know, nerf the kittening dragon and put hard content in its right place i.e. instanced solo, party, or guild stuff, not the open world.

Xae Isareth.1364:

^thats because the moment people see that it’s an overflow, the mentality is ’we’re screwed, time to die and AFK for the daily.’

Which isn’t wrong though, if you get overflowed, the chances are that you’ll screw up because it’s hard to spontaneously organise 80 people.

I’m glad the daily entries for Boss week go away on tuesday. I’m sure that brings in alot of people that just want the daily entry and dont even try to take part in the event and dont care if they inactivity causes more difficulty for the people trying to win.