The Segregation of Players
1) Elite servers like BG, who has had such high success rates. When you are on BG you see many people with the Sunbringer title, guests or natives, while others will find it almost difficult to get it on another server. We hear how its not so hard if you’re on the right server. Why or how was it even possible when other servers may have just as many people/wvw commanders/coordination? And then on the other hand, there are servers with less experience or coordination or even player population. Rather than criticizing BG, it just so happens BG is the example, their popularity is making everyone guest to BG. BG is singled out as an elite server everyone wants a part of, causing problems for other servers, and their own natives. Further more, you have BG who will make rotations to other servers, which is good and helps but also means certain number of server natives won’t get in on the action, and then when BG leaves, they are back to square one.
2) We have guilds forming just for teq and so on. It’s cool, but once again, we see the same pattern of people fighting for spots and getting a chunk of the “elites”
3) We have people with bad attitudes in chat sometimes, calling others out, for under levelled, lack of gear, unwanted classes, etc
4) Most importantly, we have a segregation of people who are “hardcore” about this spending full days sitting in maps or queues waiting for teq, or who flock and wait to guest to other servers, not caring about doing it on their own server, while there are people who have school, work, or not a lot of time to sit around waiting for teq, and then only to have it fail again if they are not on a select server, people who were excited about a new patch and more challenging content only to realize they aren’t good enough/frustrated at getting nothing much from it after spending so much time/people hostile towards them, then the more casual or laid back or people who want to do this for fun or maybe they just want the title or the wings etc, will begin to lose hope and give up on their own server, Teq, or gw2 in general.
5) theres probably more examples, or more that will come up
While it’s still only been a few days as everyone would say, however, from a game design standpoint, is this what should really happen? The content should be challenging and encourage amazing player coordination and cooperation of course, but a positive game environment and server culture… not a segregation of hardcore vs casual or people with hours of time to wait vs busy people or all other servers vs one or two servers. not to mention, players not doing other content in the game, because they spend most of their time waiting on teq and hanging on to a little percentage of hope to succeed.
I don’t intend to be another QQ’er. Nor do I have trouble staying alive or knowing what to do etc. But from a game design perspective we need to look at this and go, maybe this isn’t the best.
A month or two into it, when most players have their Sunbringer title or whatever else they want, when it’s this difficult, how many players will continue to do this, will there be enough for a coordinated force to take it down? Will it become a ghost town not worth the attempt? Why was the design for this not more carefully thought out, imo?
Hard and challenging is good, but ridiculous and unreasonable design that has a negative impact on the servers, communities and discourages players is not
Tequatl is a good case study for when player expectations don’t match reality. This camp seems to have been expecting the same difficulty, but with more “coolness” attached to it. I honestly can’t give much more feedback than that because having done things like raids and such for the better part of a decade, the fun is in the challenge and that feeling you get the first time you kill it. When you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something.
Clearly it is doable, as more and more servers have got the job done as time progresses. The only obstacle to making headway is the stubbornness of players who can’t differentiate between a challenge and a nuisance.
The encounter isn’t bad. It’s a lot of fun with an well oiled and coordinated group. But for anyone who doesn’t have the time to reserved himself a spot in the main map, it’s a fairly frustrating experience.
I wouldn’t call it “unreasonable design”, but for overflows and PuG’s it is indeed rather impossible to do at the moment. I think you are right that one big problem is the lack of a timer. A lot of people go to the main map to reserve a spot for themselves and then go idle without realising that Tequatl has already spawned, a lot of times this results in a slow start while the first few minutes are so very important.
The event also doesn’t scale too well. You really need a massive zerg to complete it. Also, the stages of the fight are usually fairly imbalanced. The first 25% usually takes over 10 minutes and on the servers where people haven’t done this before, people get demotivated because they think they are doing badly.
This last complaint is something which will hopefully change when people learn how to do the encounter.
Tequatl is a good case study for when player expectations don’t match reality. This camp seems to have been expecting the same difficulty, but with more “coolness” attached to it. I honestly can’t give much more feedback than that because having done things like raids and such for the better part of a decade, the fun is in the challenge and that feeling you get the first time you kill it. When you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something.
Clearly it is doable, as more and more servers have got the job done as time progresses. The only obstacle to making headway is the stubbornness of players who can’t differentiate between a challenge and a nuisance.
While I completely agree with challenging content and the exhiliration and feeling of accomplishment, we also have to think about the different varieties of players in the game.
For example someone who works and only has two hours at night or something, they hop on to try Tequatl maybe even waits for like an hour and it fails (we can argue it will get smoother later, but at the same time the difficulty level has a high level of failure). At the moment, someone like that might care a lot about getting the achievements or whatever making use of their time as much as possible. It’s discouraging regardless of how much they’d love a challenge and victory.
Then with the current situation, while we’re sure things will change later on, the current situation has things that should be improved, so it should be looked at as well: if someone wants to succeed, they simply try to get in with the main original BG force (or similar server), and this is common knowledge said all the time, get on the right server. So is that feeling of victory really that good, when people just flock to another server to bandwagon with people who can do it? Is victory easily attainable, as people say, on the right server, and just unreasonably kitten other servers? What then? Was it a good challenge or just a result of circumstance.
Then you’ll have dedicated and loyal players to their server with their limited amount of players who have a lot of time and decided not to guest attempting tequatl over and over, after so many times of repetition, is it easy to consider it a challenge or a nuisance?
Tequatl is a good case study for when player expectations don’t match reality. This camp seems to have been expecting the same difficulty, but with more “coolness” attached to it. I honestly can’t give much more feedback than that because having done things like raids and such for the better part of a decade, the fun is in the challenge and that feeling you get the first time you kill it. When you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something.
Clearly it is doable, as more and more servers have got the job done as time progresses. The only obstacle to making headway is the stubbornness of players who can’t differentiate between a challenge and a nuisance.
I have raided in very good guilds in both WoW and swtor. I have also managed to finish this event 3 times now. Yet I can easily pinpoint and acknowledge glaring problems without making the mistake of thinking that every person struggling with this content is afraid of a challenge and should really “l2p”.
That’s really not the issue here. The reason I’m voicing my opinion so loudly is because, eventhough I already got it, I feel rather bad for all those people constantly stuck in overflows or who have to do the event with atleast 30-40 people being idle. There is no raidcheck here unless you have a coordinated group who are all on TS, which is only the case on the fullest, most organized servers.
I don’t intend to be another QQ’er.
But you do QQ.
Believe it or not, but ability to coordinate in a larger group is a player skill too.
If you (and every other player present) can’t do that, you might be not as skilled you think you are.
Play some WvW, for perspective. Dodging hugely telegraphed attacks while putting out maximum DPS like you do in every other piece of PVE content is not the only measure of a player’s skill level.
The achievements aren’t going anywhere, Boss Week ones will, but they can be completed without actually killing Teq.
As for the rest, the servers doing well at it so far have a few things in common. One is obviously population and you can’t fix all of that right away, but I’m dubious as to a server’s inability to muster even 100 people to do a fight. To me, it’s just apathy causing that. The other thing these servers have in common is the type of people in there, they’re typically the top performing WvW servers, which suggests to me that a) they listen to directions well from Commanders and such, b) they are going into it with the right gear for that kind of fight. What exactly is stopping everyone else from doing A or B? Simple, ego and stubbornness.
I have raided in very good guilds in both WoW and swtor. I have also managed to finish this event 3 times now. Yet I can easily pinpoint and acknowledge glaring problems without making the mistake of thinking that every person struggling with this content is afraid of a challenge and should really “l2p”.
That’s really not the issue here. The reason I’m voicing my opinion so loudly is because, eventhough I already got it, I feel rather bad for all those people constantly stuck in overflows or who have to do the event with atleast 30-40 people being idle. There is no raidcheck here unless you have a coordinated group who are all on TS, which is only the case on the fullest, most organized servers.
Not sure why you’re quoting me, since none of that is remotely close to what I’m talking about. Fear of a challenge isn’t what’s causing people to lose, but unwillingness to recognize and acclimate to the requirements needed to overcome it. It’s not fear, it’s stubbornness.
Overflow has a disadvantage surely, but it’s only been 2 days. Having any kind of expectations for overflow to do the job is self-defeating. Expectations don’t match reality.
(edited by Tradewind.6913)
Tequatl is a good case study for when player expectations don’t match reality. This camp seems to have been expecting the same difficulty, but with more “coolness” attached to it. I honestly can’t give much more feedback than that because having done things like raids and such for the better part of a decade, the fun is in the challenge and that feeling you get the first time you kill it. When you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something.
Clearly it is doable, as more and more servers have got the job done as time progresses. The only obstacle to making headway is the stubbornness of players who can’t differentiate between a challenge and a nuisance.
I have raided in very good guilds in both WoW and swtor. I have also managed to finish this event 3 times now. Yet I can easily pinpoint and acknowledge glaring problems without making the mistake of thinking that every person struggling with this content is afraid of a challenge and should really “l2p”.
That’s really not the issue here. The reason I’m voicing my opinion so loudly is because, eventhough I already got it, I feel rather bad for all those people constantly stuck in overflows or who have to do the event with atleast 30-40 people being idle. There is no raidcheck here unless you have a coordinated group who are all on TS, which is only the case on the fullest, most organized servers.
Exactly this. We need to remember that the game as already set a standard for world events and associated difficulty. Now im all for harder content, and sure, the world bosses should be buffed some. But the coordination required for this goes beyond “pugging”.
If they want to go down this path, great. Just put it as a guild challenge in an instance. Let’s call them “raids” ….
One is obviously population and you can’t fix all of that right away, but I’m dubious as to a server’s inability to muster even 100 people to do a fight. To me, it’s just apathy causing that.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, the number of people that actually like this kind of content is that small?
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Exactly this. We need to remember that the game as already set a standard for world events and associated difficulty. Now im all for harder content, and sure, the world bosses should be buffed some. But the coordination required for this goes beyond “pugging”.
If they want to go down this path, great. Just put it as a guild challenge in an instance. Let’s call them “raids” ….
If by standard you mean, mind numbingly boring zerg fest where you can literally just stand there and finish the job with almost no liability or risk? If anything, that’s a standard that should be eliminated.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, the number of people that actually like this kind of content is that small?
Then don’t do it. Nobody’s holding a gun to their head. The fact people are complaining about being constantly put into Overflow would seem to contradict that argument though.
I don’t intend to be another QQ’er.
But you do QQ.
Believe it or not, but ability to coordinate in a larger group is a player skill too.
If you (and every other player present) can’t do that, you might be not as skilled you think you are.
Play some WvW, for perspective. Dodging hugely telegraphed attacks while putting out maximum DPS like you do in every other piece of PVE content is not the only measure of a player’s skill level.
I am a WvW’er . LOL. i’ve been in very amazing zerg busting guilds, and wiped outnumbering forces. The amount of coordination in those encounters are amazing. Tequatl, is COMPLETELY different. it is not the same game. it is near impossible to have everyone coordinated, and those that are, like BG, is a small percentage (at the moment), there are many afk’ers reserving spaces, there are under levelled, under geared, people who don’t WP back or just don’t listen for whatever reason, the segments depend largely on the skill of 6 people on turrets etc etc. Some servers have it better, some servers can’t get people on TS, some servers just have everyone leaving bc of one or two success cases etc. There are too many people or not enough people, it is not one tight knit guild who are there in WvW for a guild raid or pugs in WvW willing to follow a commander. It is a different ball game. WvW is not the same. We have WvW commanders on teq maps, but you’ll see that the commanders behave very differently. You don’t move the zerg around and veil and portal and roll the frontline through, static fields and aoe heals (well u do heals here too), you don’t have anybody on arrow carts and spam them on opposing zergs hitting your doors, because anyone is capable of doing that… instead you have eles spamming conjured weapons to DPS and stand still and try to tank for turret buffs, you have people on turrets whom you hope they know what they’re doing and can only tell them when they need more cleanse or theres too many stacks of scales etc. but still depending on the 6 people on turrets….it’s a different game. It’s almost like in WvW you can micro-manage and micro-coordinate or people have a general idea what to do and it doesnt depend that much on doing everything exactly right, like grab supplies, and you hope everyone will get supplies and itll be enough usually, and if its really not enough you run back for supplies… it’s not THAT critical. it’s not life or death sometimes, and other times it is life and death but you have an option for micro-managing commanding. If you get wiped, run back from WP. you don’t have to wait for an hour until you can do it again and hope you have the same players who are willing to be coordinated. Getting people organized is important, but a large of the problem for organization is due to a large variety of issues, most especially seen in overflows
(edited by takatsu.9416)
Exactly this. We need to remember that the game as already set a standard for world events and associated difficulty. Now im all for harder content, and sure, the world bosses should be buffed some. But the coordination required for this goes beyond “pugging”.
If they want to go down this path, great. Just put it as a guild challenge in an instance. Let’s call them “raids” ….
If by standard you mean, mind numbingly boring zerg fest where you can literally just stand there and finish the job with almost no liability or risk? If anything, that’s a standard that should be eliminated.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, the number of people that actually like this kind of content is that small?
Then don’t do it. Nobody’s holding a gun to their head. The fact people are complaining about being constantly put into Overflow would seem to contradict that argument though.
Boring for some, great for others. You need to remember this is a highly subjective issue.
I even acknowledged that the bosses could be buffed, but there are limits.
I’m not too sure how you misinterpreted what i said, but this isn’t about me being lazy and not wanting there to be challenges (im all for it). This is purely too much for uncoordinated groups and servers. This isn’t really in the spirit of the game historically, and i don’t think that going down this path is the right direction.
I know people want a challenge, and i think they should get it. World bosses are NOT where is should be though. These are public events, and whilst some strategy should be employed, it shouldn’t be required by over 100 players dancing a well choreographed dance routine. It might be hard to believe, but some of us truly don’t have the time. Now you can argue that i don’t need to do the content, and sure you are probably right. But think about it for a second, why shouldnt i be able to do the content, its a world boss, not an instanced raid encounter.
Call a spade a spade …. make it hard when its a guild challenge or an instance. Let us casual noobs have the open world stuff too …
Realistically, this is ANET rehashing old content because of 2 reasons – firstly the original iteration was bad, and secondly its much easier for them to “fix” existing content and label it new (as opposed to developing new things).
What in the Tequatl fight, amounts to a “well choreographed routine?” That’s the part that confuses me, you’re not building a nuclear reactor people…you have 6 people on some turrets…who’s only real job is to bust scales and clean up poison. Then people defending the turrets and people dps’ing Teq and fingers, people who have to dodge a telegraphed wall of water every…20-30 seconds and don’t stand in poison. Then you defend batteries and a laser a few times. Rinse and repeat.
I don’t intend to be another QQ’er.
But you do QQ.
Believe it or not, but ability to coordinate in a larger group is a player skill too.
If you (and every other player present) can’t do that, you might be not as skilled you think you are.
Play some WvW, for perspective. Dodging hugely telegraphed attacks while putting out maximum DPS like you do in every other piece of PVE content is not the only measure of a player’s skill level.
My problem is that it’s a “player skill” that isn’t supported at all by GW2’s UI mechanics right now. If this is what they are actually trying to foster, they’re basically putting you behind the wheel of a spaceship and going “you figure it out. The team who built it tried and couldn’t, but we’re sure you guys can. Oh and you’ll probably need a third party program to communicate with the rest of your crew.” There’s no in-game team speak system, no way for a commander to go into a head’s up squad organization overlay and have clear lines of communications with squads. How do you account for new players? Or servers without their own TS channel? Or lone wolf players who are completely unaware that such things exist? Your whole server is brought down by these people who have every right to play that way (as newbs, lone wolfs) in PvE – but an event like this causes a lot of tension and discord in an MMO that is otherwise pretty good at encouraging cooperative play. How can you read a mapchat that has five people giving instructions scrolling eachother off the page in the middle of a battle?
I love the mechanics they implemented for Teq, I just feel like it needs some tweaking to be realistic and sustainable in the future once people get their title and stop playing it. Right now the game doesn’t really have the infrastructure to support the level of coordination they’re asking for.
I’m just not sure why they were bragging that their own in house testing teams hadn’t been able to complete the content. People who are (I assume) in the same building/room couldn’t even manage it. How… how is that a selling point to a PvE event where you know the player base will be even less organized/informed? shrug
I’m excited to keep trying it, until I have my title. But the two hours of GW2 I can manage at MAX on weeknights is not worth that. My personal cost/benefit analysis doesn’t look so great for Teq. I’ll happily eat my popcorn and keep an eye on this, though; I’d love to be wrong. I think with some minor tweaks they can make it challenging but still reasonable. Unless they don’t want to, and that’s fine, they’ve just made content I’d previously liked playing unplayable. Whee.
(edited by kimeekat.2548)
I think there is a difference between people QQ’ing it’s too hard nerf nerf and people pointing out the flaws in the current mechanics that seem to stymy so many attempts.
The former is stuff like it has too much HP, the tidal waves hit too hard etc etc. All that stuff is directly avoidable by the player. You get hit by a tidal wave, learn to dodge, you take the wrong build well next time take the right one.
I think the issue with this fight is that the tolerances for success is set to the levels of an instanced raid, but it doesn’t take into account its actually an open world boss. I.e stuff that is outside of a single players or even groups control.
Stuff like:
AFK players scewing the scaling
Overflow separating pre-organised groups, adding lag and generally messing coordination up
In EU areas, language differences
There is no way to enforce who goes where and does what and when
The low pop server issues with scaling
These are not LTP issues. they are failures of the inherent game mechanics and should be addressed first.
I love that Anet are trying to do Raid encounters open world, but if there was to be a change it wouldn’t be to reduce the HP or stuff like that it would be make greater allowances for stuff a player cannot change or cannot LTP. It does seem immensely frustrating to hear or failure after failure not because the players didnt know what to do, or were not good enough but that the whims of fate condemned the attempt right at the start through no fault of their own.
(edited by Shanaeri Rynale.6897)