Guild Wars 2

Do you remember? Back in the day, there was always something exciting to do in large groups, in the open world. Where hundreds of players gathered together, and fought against a huge raid boss, sometimes even failing! It was a challenging fight, maybe too hard in some instances, and it had cool rewards as well, with maybe a bit too low drop chance, but still, they were pretty darn cool.

These rare events were once called hardcore world bosses, and there’s only two of them in the game:

• Tequatl the Sunless (September 17, 2013)
• Triple Trouble (January 21, 2014)

I miss the experiences around them badly, so let’s talk about to make them work:

Why they failed

The first thing that comes to mind is, why haven’t we gotten more hardcore world bosses? We can assume that, somehow, they failed as content, and ArenaNet stopped production.

Yes, we’ve gotten new world bosses since then, but they weren’t hardcore. They were easy, or moderate at most. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t fun, I love them too, and I think they have their own defined space, which is working fine, and shouldn’t be touched.

So, why do I think hardcore world bosses failed?

• Problems gathering the hardcore world boss players together in the same map instance. Maybe let commanders create empty map instances, giving priority to squad members, at least when they activate the boss with their own guild consumable? You should be fighting the boss, not other players.
• High difficulty. Yeah, that’s the point, they’re hardcore, but in some cases, they’re too hard. Specially, because they are very punishing, and small mistakes can ruin the whole thing. There’s no middle term, you either fail spectacularly, or beat it with no problems. They need to be balanced so that you can comeback after a big mistake. Each hardcore world boss should allow a fixed number of wipes without failing, let’s say four. Veterans should kill them with no wipes, and normal players should get a wipe or two.
• Rewards. Yeah, they have some unique stuff (which could be better), but the RNG is awful. The best alternative is to assign tokens to them, like dungeons and raids. Raid rewards can be really bad, but you get magnetites so you can buy cool stuff once in a while. That’s the right model, and hardcore world bosses should follow it too.
• Individuals ruining the event for everyone. Either new players or trolls, the bosses need to be designed to minimize chances of this happening.

I think these small changes would make hardcore world bosses much more accessible and attractive for all players. A good population is necessary if we want them to be viable game content.

Additional hardcore world bosses

So, if we are to bring hardcore world bosses back, we need some new bosses as well, at least one, and not just updates for the existing two. Few of the classic world bosses would be good material for a revamp into hardcore world bosses, specially if they’re large and have a good location for the fight:

• Claw of Jormag
• The Shatterer (It made me sad its revamp didn’t turn him into hardcore)
• Megadestroyer (Could be updated with a new destroyer model, maybe similar to the Great Destroyer from GW1)
• Shadow Behemoth (I don’t like he’s in a low level zone, but he’s still a good candidate)

The raid team has done a fantastic job, and I’m sure some of their magic could be applied into hardcore world bosses as well, making the new ones much more exciting than the two we have now.

Continues below

Continued from above

The role of guilds

Guilds need to be involved much more with hardcore world bosses, and be rewarded accordingly. Some ideas:

• Reward guilds for completing hardcore world bosses each week.
• Allow the usage of certain WvW guild elements in PvE as well, during hardcore world boss fights, or introduce new guild upgrades specifically designed to be used in PvE fights.
• Make it easier for guilds to gather together in the same map instance before a hardcore world boss fight. Already stated above, but worth repeating.
• Let activating guilds control all elements of the fight easily, like siege weapons.

Bonus: Living World season 1 world bosses

The first season of the Living World had some pretty good world bosses as well. They were kinda hard, not as hard as hardcore world bosses, but still challenging on their own way. This could be a great opportunity to bring them back. But, how? Their zones no longer exist, and putting them back into their original locations would be a mess.

The answer is simple: Portals. Either at Lion’s Arch by the memorial, or nearby their original spawning locations. These portals would transport you to a new zone, a copy of how it was back when the boss still roamed it. These special zones would only be open during the boss schedule, and have no waypoints.

• Ancient Karka, at Southsun Cove before it was colonized.
• Ascent of the Tower of Nightmares, at Toxic Kessex Hills.
• Twisted Marionette, at the invaded Lornar’s Pass.
• Battle on the Breachmaker, during Battle for Lion’s Arch.

Now, some of these are part of long meta-events, and could feel better as normal world bosses, but I still think it could be interesting to experiment with them. And if there’s any problems, since they’re on their own instances through a portal, maybe we could get separate normal and hard modes.

So that’s it. I just want to see challenging content back in the open world, with its own space outside the larger meta-events and the normal world bosses. Not asking for future world bosses to be hardcore, I think that would be a mistake. Normal world bosses have their own place. Hardcores need their own space, outside the normal flow of the zones, and outside the general metaevents.

I do think that making world bosses ‘hardcore’ is a good idea, but I think that you run into the same problem where either you throw more and more people at is who just press 1 until the damage overwhelms the boss, or it scales to be hard enough to be impossible, and impossible content is fun for no one.

A potential alternate idea: Guilds can already use an ability to activate a specific world boss, and we have been wanting more Guild Missions for awhile. Why not create an instanced version of the harder world bosses for guilds, and tweak it to add an extra layer of difficulty to make it more hardcore with Mission-specific rewards?

This would add the incentive for guilds to do the content together, add more guild missions, add rewards for guilds to reach for as a whole that are unavailable to the regular world events, and add some hardcore content that isn’t locked in raids for those who don’t want to raid.

EDIT: I’d love to see the LS1 bosses make a comeback, but I think they are most likely to return in the form of Fractals rather than anything else. The upcoming Nightmare Fractal is a perfect example of how that’s going to work.

UnbentMars.9126:

A potential alternate idea: Guilds can already use an ability to activate a specific world boss, and we have been wanting more Guild Missions for awhile. Why not create an instanced version of the harder world bosses for guilds, and tweak it to add an extra layer of difficulty to make it more hardcore with Mission-specific rewards?

This would be an interesting concept, indeed. Might be worth it. Pure open world is, imho, a horrible idea. Either it’s faceroll easy or you need proper organisation for it anyway, and then it can be instanced as well.

Was hoping Twisted Marionette would become a Boss Fractal, obviously scaled down to 5 players… Maybe one per lane.

Firstly they absolutely haven’t failed. Wurm is a daily success and Tequatl is defeintely one of their more successful overhauls.

They did say a while ago why not all were getting the treatment;

- Resources. Shatterer when he was updated was squeezed in between schedules. Right now, I don;t think such a gap for working on the core worlds exist.

- They’ve stated they are happy with the current state of the core maps.

- Many of the bosses don’t need overhauls for their respective maps. eg starter map bosses are specifically designed not to be difficult as it should be.

- Raids are where they want the hardcore pve content to be.

Don#t forget we have had coordinated bosses since Teq and Wurm. Whether they are hardcore is debatable, but the do require coordination.
- Gerent
- Vinewrath
- Dragons Stand
- T4 Verdant Brink

Having said all that, I don’t think we’ve 100% seen the last overhaul. Karka feels prime for an update. Taidha and Modniir need new mechanics for what they are and Claw of Jormag may receive some tweaking when the storyline becomes relevant to do so. Either that or new Claws will be added in the forthcoming maps.

It saddens me every time I do the champ Karka in Ember Bay that the encounter is a bit tougher and longer than the Karka Queen for which the real difficulty is to run fast enough so that she is still alive when I reach her…..

I too miss hardcore world bosses. I really wish there were more events that required coordination of a large number of players, similar to triple trouble

• Event mechanics – not just hp – scale based on number of players. So for example, on TT you don’t need 20 harpoons if there aren’t 20 players. This would make these world bosses doable even with smaller numbers of players. Of course, this also means that bosses might simply be unable to be completed if a large number of players stand around and do nothing. I don’t think this is an issue though – you see people do that on karka and teq but not TT because there is no loot to be gained from doing it at TT.
• Guilds can spawn a “hard mode” of hardcore world bosses. I don’t think there is any need for these to be instanced.

I’m not under any illusion that any of these things will happen to existing world bosses, but I really hope that going forward anet will make more open world content that both requires a large number of players and has challenging mechanics and coordination requirements.

Ranael.6423:

It saddens me every time I do the champ Karka in Ember Bay that the encounter is a bit tougher and longer than the Karka Queen for which the real difficulty is to run fast enough so that she is still alive when I reach her…..

I too remember being horribly disappointed by the karka queen boss fight. “Hardcore” huh?

UnbentMars.9126:

I do think that making world bosses ‘hardcore’ is a good idea, but I think that you run into the same problem where either you throw more and more people at is who just press 1 until the damage overwhelms the boss, or it scales to be hard enough to be impossible, and impossible content is fun for no one.

The problem with Tequatl and TT isn’t that they are too hard, it’s that there’s no margin for error.

So, in a raid, when you wipe, you just walk back. In a hardcore world boss you can’t do that. We need comeback mechanics so that the fight doesn’t stop after the first failure, and you can keep on trying for a few more times.

The easiest way to fix this is to make the timers last longer, though there’s other alternatives, like secondary targets that the boss destroys once in a while if you fail to defend them, with you losing if you lose all targets.

Dead players could stay dead for some minutes, and then be forced to respawn. Lazies and walking from the waypoint are lame.

UnbentMars.9126:

EDIT: I’d love to see the LS1 bosses make a comeback, but I think they are most likely to return in the form of Fractals rather than anything else. The upcoming Nightmare Fractal is a perfect example of how that’s going to work.

The problem with that is that people loved LW1 for the metaevents, not the landscapes. It should return as what it was, events with hundreds of players, not fractals.

I don’t want marionette as a fractal. What made marionette awesome was being part of a big zerg, and fighting together.

Randulf.7614:

Firstly they absolutely haven’t failed. Wurm is a daily success and Tequatl is defeintely one of their more successful overhauls.

Nearly 4 years since the last hardcore world boss was released. Open your eyes, they’re as dead as dungeons.

Randulf.7614:

Don#t forget we have had coordinated bosses since Teq and Wurm. Whether they are hardcore is debatable, but the do require coordination.
- Gerent
- Vinewrath
- Dragons Stand
- T4 Verdant Brink

Having said all that, I don’t think we’ve 100% seen the last overhaul. Karka feels prime for an update. Taidha and Modniir need new mechanics for what they are and Claw of Jormag may receive some tweaking when the storyline becomes relevant to do so. Either that or new Claws will be added in the forthcoming maps.

Those aren’t hardcore. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, and I don’t want them to be harder, but those aren’t hardcore.

By the way, hardcore world bosses shouldn’t be part of the main flow of a map. They should be their own things, separate from what’s going on in the rest of the map. Players shouldn’t feel forced to get into them for any reason.

Dinosaurs.8674:

I too miss hardcore world bosses. I really wish there were more events that required coordination of a large number of players, similar to triple trouble

• Event mechanics – not just hp – scale based on number of players. So for example, on TT you don’t need 20 harpoons if there aren’t 20 players. This would make these world bosses doable even with smaller numbers of players. Of course, this also means that bosses might simply be unable to be completed if a large number of players stand around and do nothing. I don’t think this is an issue though – you see people do that on karka and teq but not TT because there is no loot to be gained from doing it at TT.
• Guilds can spawn a “hard mode” of hardcore world bosses. I don’t think there is any need for these to be instanced.

I’m not under any illusion that any of these things will happen to existing world bosses, but I really hope that going forward anet will make more open world content that both requires a large number of players and has challenging mechanics and coordination requirements.

I think most of the problems come from the design, rather than the scaling. For example, the harpoon thing, is useless and stupid. They could make that you just have to break the gland, and then the shield goes down on its own.

Another alternative is opening the unused wurm tunnels nearby, and have players travel across them, smashing different glands.

Also, scaling should never be present at hardcore world bosses. They should be tuned to be fought with the maximum available players, and not less.

They upgraded guild missions to work in instances, can’t see why the same can’t be done for hardcore world bosses.

I made a suggestion some years ago about making hardcore world boss guild events. A mix of instanced content/dungeons, open world PVE, guilds and randoms working together. I used the example of the Twisted Marionette encounter.

The main problem with the Marionette were the platforms. But it was also the best thing at the same time. It was bad because players on the platforms needed to know what to do as some of the bosses were tricky enough. It was good because it make the encounter feel all the more better overall as someone’s individual skill and ability could win the encounter (or cause a failure).

My proposal goes like this: take the good things of an encounter like the Marionette and remove the bad things. How? Make the event an open world encounter like it always was, however, only players of a guild that start it can go on the platforms, everyone else will play the lane defense part. With this “change” you make sure people who know what to do are on the platforms (the guild members should be prepared), while it’s an event that everyone can participate in, in the open world instead of being hidden inside an instance like a Raid.

For another example, let’s take the Amber Wurm of Triple Trouble. It would work basically the same way it does now, but it would only eat Guild members. Then they’d have to fight a champion boss inside the wurm to give the wurm the debuff so then everyone can go back attacking it.

Rewards will be the same for everyone (individually) but of course the guild will get extra rewards like trophies and guild mission progress, maybe an extra guild mission chest etc that won’t be available to the random people participating. They can also make it so multiple guilds can participate, say the event begins at 18:00 and 3-4 guilds register for the event, so when it starts the members of those guilds will do the specific event activities, while everyone else will focus on the open world aspect.

Noone here remember how the fire elemental in metrica province used to burn zergs to death before it got nerfed into oblivion?

Linken.6345:

Noone here remember how the fire elemental in metrica province used to burn zergs to death before it got nerfed into oblivion?

Ahh all the dead People on the Bridge trying to get to the Fire Elemental.

I’d also enjoy more of them. But if you read forum, it seems harder content is the dead of gw2. No more raids, no more T4 fracs, no more hard anything. Since hard = toxic = gw2 will die… or something.. not sure how it works. Since I am busy doing raids and T4’s every day

ANet doubled down on hard core world bosses with HoT: 5 night time bosses in VB, the four octovines in AB, the Chak Ghrents x4 of TD, and of course, Mr Potato Head’s body Mordremoth in DS.

Further, many of the original bosses have been upgraded besides the two mentioned by the OP. Even if they aren’t as epic, several fights are no longer as easy, e.g. Maelstrom’s Golem.

Finally, the OP pretends as if the Shatterererererererer isn’t “hardcore,” which is odd given how many complaints about that fight remain.

While I’d be very happy if ANet accelerates the rate at which they update all of the world bosses to fit the mechanics of the current game, I also think they’ve done a good job to date of balancing the available content to be fun for as many of us as possible.

Tequatl is not even hardcore, it was stealth nerfed multiple times
None of the HoT metas qualify as hardcore anymore. Chak Gerent before its nerf might have qualified

Malediktus.9250:

Tequatl is not even hardcore, it was stealth nerfed multiple times
None of the HoT metas qualify as hardcore anymore. Chak Gerent before its nerf might have qualified

Well, “hardcore” is a terrible word to use in a thread like this, because it doesn’t have a clear meaning; everyone interprets it in their own way.

And that aside, some people see ‘hardcore’ as a good thing, some as a bad thing — sometimes even before they’re even sure what someone is asking for.

It would probably be better to make a list of principles that we think makes for a good World Boss experience — I think we’ll all be surprised at the variety of opinions.

BTW: I don’t Tequatl was stealth-nerfed much — well before HoT, our builds are getting better (due to power creep, more experienced people participating, HoT elite specs, and better theory crafting). Even just allowing conditions to stack made that fight easier. ANet would have to actively retune each boss to keep up with the changes from the community, i.e. all the fights become easier over time.

Don’t forget the complete ballbuster that launch Chak Gerent was.

Hardcore world bosses were a terrible idea. Tequatl was abandoned on most servers before the megaserver made killing it regularly possible, and literally everyone except for the specialized guild dedicated to killing the triple wurm abandoned that dumpster fire of a fight within a week.

Malediktus.9250:

Tequatl is not even hardcore, it was stealth nerfed multiple times

Tequatl has never been nerfed, players were buffed (removing condition stacks in particular hit world bosses hard and most of them got HP buffs to compensate).

Linken.6345:

Noone here remember how the fire elemental in metrica province used to burn zergs to death before it got nerfed into oblivion?

^this

Tequatl don’t even use his wall anymore, but it was the thing that made the fight harder and more pressure on turrets. This is because there is too much damage that he doesn’t have the time to use it anymore.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Tequatl has never been nerfed, players were buffed (removing condition stacks in particular hit world bosses hard and most of them got HP buffs to compensate).

As far as I know, the HP Buff came when World Bosses became also crittable, giving them double the HP they had.

For the Stealth Nerfs, well I would like to know what stelth Nerfs Teq got. People are quick to talk about Stealth Nerf. Had one example in a Raid at Xera. The second Bloodstone Shard was protected by a Shield and Players had to stand on 3 Platforms ( each giving them a debuff, downing them at 10 Stacks ).
You could either rotate or just use Rebound to not get downed. And after a successful Rebound one Player was complaining that the Encounter got a Stealth Nerf where the debuff just chips of 80% instead of downing. Everyone else was saying otherwise and in another Try i even tested it. Got down even while having max HP and telling him. His answer " you were not full HP" despite the Fact that I had full HP. It took quite a while, a few early Rebounds and him getting downed with full HP before he accepted that the Encounter didn’t got a Stealth Nerf.

Khyan.7039:

Tequatl don’t even use his wall anymore, but it was the thing that made the fight harder and more pressure on turrets. This is because there is too much damage that he doesn’t have the time to use it anymore.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hardened_Scales

The Wall appears when his hardened scales buff reaches 20 stacks. The turrets remove his stacks with their skill 2. Damage or nerfs have nothing to do with it.

Linken.6345:

Noone here remember how the fire elemental in metrica province used to burn zergs to death before it got nerfed into oblivion?

That was due to a bug in the event scaling. At the same time it still could have been killed in seconds by 2-3 people that were prepared for it right when the event started and before too many embers spawned.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Malediktus.9250:

Tequatl is not even hardcore, it was stealth nerfed multiple times

Tequatl has never been nerfed

That’s not true. For one, the megalaser has been made to do significant damage (5% of max hps, i believe) each shot without which back-to-back chaining of defense and burn phases was extremely hard to pull in less organized maps. There were also some other small tweaks on it, like scaling adjustments on the main event and subevents. Remember, initially each subevent/defence position like cannons and batteries was scaling based on an area that included other subevents (cannons partially included Teq dps groups, batteries overlapped with the megalaser, etc). I’m pretty sure his hps were decreased at least once in the pre-megaserver times as well. His scaling was also adjusted with a lower baseline number of minimum participants, which was an indirect nerf on maps which had more than those minimums.

All those resulted in direct or indirect nerfs of the content.

Walhalla.5473:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Tequatl has never been nerfed, players were buffed (removing condition stacks in particular hit world bosses hard and most of them got HP buffs to compensate).

As far as I know, the HP Buff came when World Bosses became also crittable, giving them double the HP they had.

Nah, it’s the opposite. The HPs were buffed due to condi damage changes, but that turned out to be overtuned, so Anet decided to make them also critable to compensate. Which in the end was a net nerf.

I looked back and well, Crit and HP Buff came at the same Time, it was just that critting the World Bosses was bugged and only possible in small locations which got fixed quite quickly.

Walhalla.5473:

I looked back and well, Crit and HP Buff came at the same Time, it was just that critting the World Bosses was bugged and only possible in small locations which got fixed quite quickly.

Actually, crit in the spawn spot was a bug that was then made a feature after people started using it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

ANet doubled down on hard core world bosses with HoT: 5 night time bosses in VB, the four octovines in AB, the Chak Ghrents x4 of TD, and of course, Mr Potato Head’s body Mordremoth in DS.

Further, many of the original bosses have been upgraded besides the two mentioned by the OP. Even if they aren’t as epic, several fights are no longer as easy, e.g. Maelstrom’s Golem.

Finally, the OP pretends as if the Shatterererererererer isn’t “hardcore,” which is odd given how many complaints about that fight remain.

While I’d be very happy if ANet accelerates the rate at which they update all of the world bosses to fit the mechanics of the current game, I also think they’ve done a good job to date of balancing the available content to be fun for as many of us as possible.

Those aren’t hardcore world bosses, they’re normal world bosses. Don’t get me wrong, I love them as they are, and I don’t want them to be harder. Hardcore world bosses shouldn’t be part of key meta events for map progression, they should be independent and have their own separate timer.

Only Tequatl and Tripe Trouble are really hardcore. The rest of the bosses are easy, require barely any organization, and don’t have “wipe” moments (Except gerent).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Hardcore world bosses were a terrible idea. Tequatl was abandoned on most servers before the megaserver made killing it regularly possible, and literally everyone except for the specialized guild dedicated to killing the triple wurm abandoned that dumpster fire of a fight within a week.

Because the fights are too punishing (A small mistake leads to a wipe, and you can’t retry easily), guilds don’t have the proper means to organize, and rewards are kinda bad. If these were fixed, we would see much more activity around them.

Dinosaurs.8674:

I too miss hardcore world bosses. I really wish there were more events that required coordination of a large number of players, similar to triple trouble

• Event mechanics – not just hp – scale based on number of players. So for example, on TT you don’t need 20 harpoons if there aren’t 20 players. This would make these world bosses doable even with smaller numbers of players. Of course, this also means that bosses might simply be unable to be completed if a large number of players stand around and do nothing. I don’t think this is an issue though – you see people do that on karka and teq but not TT because there is no loot to be gained from doing it at TT.
• Guilds can spawn a “hard mode” of hardcore world bosses. I don’t think there is any need for these to be instanced.

I’m not under any illusion that any of these things will happen to existing world bosses, but I really hope that going forward anet will make more open world content that both requires a large number of players and has challenging mechanics and coordination requirements.

Ranael.6423:

It saddens me every time I do the champ Karka in Ember Bay that the encounter is a bit tougher and longer than the Karka Queen for which the real difficulty is to run fast enough so that she is still alive when I reach her…..

I too remember being horribly disappointed by the karka queen boss fight. “Hardcore” huh?

This times 1000.

And if they could incorporate the guild mission system – with commensurate rewards for the guild hall – that would be even better.

- Marionette (open world)
- Breachmaker (would need to be instanced, most likely but with a portal in existing LA)
- Ancient Karka (open world)
- Scarlett Watchwork Zone Invasions (open world)

It could even work with things like Dragon Stand/Chak Gerant/Tarir Invasion/Orrian Temples/ All world bosses/ the events added to old maps between LS Season 3 releases (the anomalies, the bandit bounties, etc), select large scale DEs (such as the ones added during LS Season 2 – even all the way down to simple centaur defense event chains as “easy” missions) – if an organized guild showed up during off times and wanted to start up a map.

There is a pretty big gap in the game design right now in terms of content for organized groups larger than 10 people. Guild missions used to fill it nicely, but the last one of those we saw was more than 3 years ago.

This is, by far, my biggest disappointment with the game today. After 3+ years, guild missions could have been so much more than they currently are.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Hardcore world bosses were a terrible idea. Tequatl was abandoned on most servers before the megaserver made killing it regularly possible, and literally everyone except for the specialized guild dedicated to killing the triple wurm abandoned that dumpster fire of a fight within a week.

Malediktus.9250:

Tequatl is not even hardcore, it was stealth nerfed multiple times

Tequatl has never been nerfed, players were buffed (removing condition stacks in particular hit world bosses hard and most of them got HP buffs to compensate).

You are kidding yourself if you think Tequatl was never nerfed. I remember when he was new and the whole map was on teamspeak. There were no afk leechers. The double damage spots were already known and people used consumeables like the fire elemental. There was a melee zerg back then.
Yet there were only 2-3 minutes left on the clock despite having a highly organised group of players who were briefed what to do.

Then one day random unorganized pug maps which barely filled 5min before spawn finished with 8-10min time remaining, 10+ afk slackers and no consumeables. And most people just pewpew with ranged attacks from far away not making use of double damage spots.
This was before HoT and crit damage mind you. So at the minimum Anet halfed Tequatls total health to explain this.
At the same time Anet reduced the drop rates of Tequatls hoard. I used to see several hoards posted per kill, now I feel lucky if one person reports a drop.

I generally agree with the OP. I like the idea of reward tokens rather than pure RNG, and I enjoy engaging fights, but not so much “hardcore” fights. I like fights where there are lots of unique mechanics to do, but where the balance is that the best teams can complete it quickly, while the bad teams can take 15-30 minutes more, but the only teams that fail completely are those that pay zero attention to what’s going on.

A couple years back I wanted to see them take a second pass at Tequatl. Remove the cannons and replace them with an infinite crate of bazookas with the same effect. You could theoretically have everyone using them, but the damage would be very low, so nobody would. The benefit though is that instead of relying on having one reliable player on each cannon, other players could pick up the slack if the minimal three artillery guys fell short.

Maybe the crate of bazookas would need to be guarded like the cannons are, and you’ve have to grab a new one after a few shots, just to keep people on their toes.

But overall, yes, I do like the idea of rewarding players for playing smart, for engaging the content.

For those talking about hardcore vs easy, keep in mind that guild missions come in three flavors – easy, medium and hard. While that is solely defined by timers right now, it could be much more – mechanics, adds, timers again, etc. The infrastructure is in place to offer this kind of content for guilds that are looking for more to do in organized groups of more than 10 people (or more than 5 depending on your guild size).

It is an audience that Anet desperately needs to pay attention to again.

Cheers to those who want hardcore world bosses / guild missions, but I find they’re usually an exercise in organization, not skill.

Absurdo.8309:

Cheers to those who want hardcore world bosses / guild missions, but I find they’re usually an exercise in organization, not skill.

That is true of pretty much any organized group content in MMOs, from dungeons to raids on through to these events. Organization/coordination is always the hardest part of the game.

But it is beside the point. Organized guilds need more to do in larger groups. Guild missions were an amazing addition to the game – one that brought people together to have fun, regardless of the difficulty or group size. With the last guild mission added more than 3 years ago, that has been woefully missing from GW2.

Blaeys.3102:

Absurdo.8309:

Cheers to those who want hardcore world bosses / guild missions, but I find they’re usually an exercise in organization, not skill.

That is true of pretty much any organized group content in MMOs, from dungeons to raids on through to these events. Organization/coordination is always the hardest part of the game.

But it is beside the point. Organized guilds need more to do in larger groups. Guild missions were an amazing addition to the game – one that brought people together to have fun, regardless of the difficulty or group size. With the last guild mission added more than 3 years ago, that has been woefully missing from GW2.

It’s fair to ask for it. Perhaps they could add some missions to the HOT maps.

I just think that the hardcore world bosses — that is, triple trouble and pre-nerf gerent — were a failure because the large organization required became prohibitive for most groups.

Absurdo.8309:

Blaeys.3102:

Absurdo.8309:

Cheers to those who want hardcore world bosses / guild missions, but I find they’re usually an exercise in organization, not skill.

That is true of pretty much any organized group content in MMOs, from dungeons to raids on through to these events. Organization/coordination is always the hardest part of the game.

But it is beside the point. Organized guilds need more to do in larger groups. Guild missions were an amazing addition to the game – one that brought people together to have fun, regardless of the difficulty or group size. With the last guild mission added more than 3 years ago, that has been woefully missing from GW2.

It’s fair to ask for it. Perhaps they could add some missions to the HOT maps.

I just think that the hardcore world bosses — that is, triple trouble and pre-nerf gerent — were a failure because the large organization required became prohibitive for most groups.

I agree with this assessment – and even remember Colin responding to a question on a live broadcast just before launch saying he looked forward to what the guild missions team could do on the new HOT maps (to be fair, it was easy to remember since I was the one that asked the question ).

Somewhere between then and now, unfortunately, they have let guild missions fall between the cracks, despite the new infrastructure and system they built specifically to make it easier to add new ones. That is very disappointing.

I definitely agree that world bosses should feel epic and tough and everyone gathers up to try to beat this challenge, and I think one or two more world bosses that right now have absolutely no mechanic should be a similar treatment to tequatl or atleast the shatterer.

I really like the idea of bosses starting to be guild missions too, to add more diversity and a bit more combat to guild missions. However, I don’t think the guild should have the world boss instanced. If it will NOT be instanced, you will constantly have guilds activate world bosses around the world map and it’ll feel more alive and random new players could find guilds more easily.

I like most of your suggestions though and I hope this gets attention!

Malediktus.9250:

You are kidding yourself if you think Tequatl was never nerfed. I remember when he was new and the whole map was on teamspeak. There were no afk leechers. The double damage spots were already known and people used consumeables like the fire elemental. There was a melee zerg back then.
Yet there were only 2-3 minutes left on the clock despite having a highly organised group of players who were briefed what to do.

Then one day random unorganized pug maps which barely filled 5min before spawn finished with 8-10min time remaining, 10+ afk slackers and no consumeables. And most people just pewpew with ranged attacks from far away not making use of double damage spots.
This was before HoT and crit damage mind you. So at the minimum Anet halfed Tequatls total health to explain this.
At the same time Anet reduced the drop rates of Tequatls hoard. I used to see several hoards posted per kill, now I feel lucky if one person reports a drop.

Again, players were buffed. The exact same thing happened in the Silverwastes, where all the bosses became significantly easier (and stayed that way, because Anet overlooked them when they buffed the health of everything else) and the meta hardly ever failed after that.

It was the trait revamp and the change in stacking conditions that did it, long before HoT.

Again, players were buffed.

Actually it was both. The players are much stronger today than they were when Teq was first overhauled, so obviously it would be a lot easier today than back then, but also, in addition to that, they did straight up nerf it a bit within weeks of the first overhaul. Nobody magically got stronger in that time, they just made it a bit easier.

I don’t really miss it :p I prefer smaller scale encounter. Having said that it doesn’t mean I discourage the update of world bosses or new world boss xD any new update is fun

with jormag and primordus getting a buff there is NO reason not to remake the Megadestroyer and the Claw of Jormag into proper challenges like tequatl and shatterer.

The important thing to keep in mind is the difference between “challenge” and “engagement.” I’d love to see Claw and Megadestroyer made more engaging, by having more tasks you can do and a wider variety of gameplay options, but I hope they don’t shift to the “you need a good map to even bother with it,” because they still haven’t yet created the tools to easily form “good maps.” It should be designed so that there are lots of different things players can do to progress it, but that the difference between a great map and a terrible map is that the terrible map takes longer to clear it (but still clears it).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Malediktus.9250:

You are kidding yourself if you think Tequatl was never nerfed. I remember when he was new and the whole map was on teamspeak. There were no afk leechers. The double damage spots were already known and people used consumeables like the fire elemental. There was a melee zerg back then.
Yet there were only 2-3 minutes left on the clock despite having a highly organised group of players who were briefed what to do.

Then one day random unorganized pug maps which barely filled 5min before spawn finished with 8-10min time remaining, 10+ afk slackers and no consumeables. And most people just pewpew with ranged attacks from far away not making use of double damage spots.
This was before HoT and crit damage mind you. So at the minimum Anet halfed Tequatls total health to explain this.
At the same time Anet reduced the drop rates of Tequatls hoard. I used to see several hoards posted per kill, now I feel lucky if one person reports a drop.

Again, players were buffed. The exact same thing happened in the Silverwastes, where all the bosses became significantly easier (and stayed that way, because Anet overlooked them when they buffed the health of everything else) and the meta hardly ever failed after that.

It was the trait revamp and the change in stacking conditions that did it, long before HoT.

No, random pug maps already had high success rate before Tequatl could receive crit damage or elite specs existed. Players definitely did not get buffed by 50%+.
The early team speak runs actually had access to more damage because that was before FGS and ice bow were nerfed and as I said also made huge use of all the consumeables such as the fire elemental powder (which got nerfed to have huge cooldowns sometime later also).

The most important nerf, in my opinion, was when they changed megalaser to cause damage. It may be only 5% of total hp per shot (so only 15% hp in all), but that significantly cut down on the out-of-burn dps requirements. Compared to that, other ones (hp decrease, and scaling chances), while also helping, were just an icing on the cake.

What about Chak gerent?

Or is that not difficult enough? Or are we talking just a revamp of vanilla bosses?

I don’t think we need to have instances for world bosses, as map population limit serves the same purpose on a larger scale. What we need is increased difficulty (Triple Wurm is balanced enough), increased rewards, decreased cost for guild spawn and decreased spawn cooldown. These changes should encourage people to put more effort to secure a kill while decrease the penalty for failing it.

I don’t think we need to have instances for world bosses, as map population limit serves the same purpose on a larger scale.

Well, the problem which has existed since launch is that if a world boss is challenging enough to require a well organized and skilled map to clear it, then forming that map, with not too many randos that don’t know what they’re doing and can thus fail the event for everyone, can be difficult.

If they make an effort to increase the challenge level of world bosses, then to prevent average player frustration, it would need to come with systems that would make it easier for players to fill maps with agreed upon participants, rather than whomever shows up.

Ohoni.6057:

The important thing to keep in mind is the difference between “challenge” and “engagement.” I’d love to see Claw and Megadestroyer made more engaging, by having more tasks you can do and a wider variety of gameplay options, but I hope they don’t shift to the “you need a good map to even bother with it,” because they still haven’t yet created the tools to easily form “good maps.” It should be designed so that there are lots of different things players can do to progress it, but that the difference between a great map and a terrible map is that the terrible map takes longer to clear it (but still clears it).

If I am pretty much guarenteed to clear content it is not engaging to me sorry. Regardless I am against challenging bosses in open world unless they revamp the way player grouping works. And honestly I don’t think they will add a challenging open world boss to the game.

If I am pretty much guarenteed to clear content it is not engaging to me sorry.

I can understand that when it is your efforts that make the difference between success and failure, but personally I HATE when I try as hard as I can, do about as best as could be expected of me, and the event still fails because a few dozen other people were barely trying.

I think that with these mass player events, they need to be designed so that either A. other players can’t ruin the event by their ineptitude, or B. players can be more selective about who gets into the event, so that everyone involved is at least on the same page.

Personally, I favor option A, but with various tasks that “alpha dog” players can do that are difficult, can fail, and while failure of them won’t ruin the event, it would reduce that player’s personal reward (and slow down or set back the progress of the main event). That way, players who like a serious risk of failure would have a role within the event that should fill that role for themselves, without having a high chance that nobody gets anything.

A chain is only as good as its weakest link.

This will always be the problem/solution with open world bosses.

It’s pot luck who will be on that map at that time.

Ohoni.6057:

or B. players can be more selective about who gets into the event, so that everyone involved is at least on the same page.

Elitism in open world confirmed

Coconut.7082:

Ohoni.6057:

or B. players can be more selective about who gets into the event, so that everyone involved is at least on the same page.

Elitism in open world confirmed

It can work if it’s a guild mission.

First, if it’s a guild mission, the guilds will start them when THEY want, and not when it’s time for it, therefore they can make sure their team is ready for the missions and their people are there before they start it, so they CAN select who will be there and who won’t.

Second, remember how when the Blightwater Shatterstrike challenge mission was in the open world, only guild members could use the Charrzookas to damage the crystals, so basically the guilds there could be selective about who can participate in the more vital parts of an event. For example only guild members could use the Turrets at Tequatl or something similar.

It can work in the open world without making the events too easy but it will take some extra work from the devs

maddoctor.2738:

Coconut.7082:

Ohoni.6057:

or B. players can be more selective about who gets into the event, so that everyone involved is at least on the same page.

Elitism in open world confirmed

It can work if it’s a guild mission.

First, if it’s a guild mission, the guilds will start them when THEY want, and not when it’s time for it, therefore they can make sure their team is ready for the missions and their people are there before they start it, so they CAN select who will be there and who won’t.

Second, remember how when the Blightwater Shatterstrike challenge mission was in the open world, only guild members could use the Charrzookas to damage the crystals, so basically the guilds there could be selective about who can participate in the more vital parts of an event. For example only guild members could use the Turrets at Tequatl or something similar.

It can work in the open world without making the events too easy but it will take some extra work from the devs

Stop enforcing the strict guild mission meta elitism on other game modes like open world!
We all payed for this game and we can all be as much clueless as we want, in any game mode, with any group!