Guild Wars 2

Well, this is my first post, and I want to really highlight some of my concerns with the entire dynamic event system, especially concerning the Elder Dragons and bosses in general. Nice to meet you all.

I want to start off by saying that Guild Wars 2 was a surprise for me. I wasn’t a huge fan of the first game – Although I did play it extensively – It just didn’t catch on for me due to the disjointed nature of it not being a true MMO. Jumping into Guild Wars 2 and seeing this whole system of not really having to create groups but being able to participate in larger scale world events, even including incentive to work as a team outside of groups… Well, it’s an amazing idea and has been executed with a lot of care and love. I also loved the Gamescom booth, it was beautiful.

However, I come with a criticism today. I finally got to my first Elder Dragon fight, which was the Shatterer, a boss fight shown off on many occasions at press events. I was really hoping for something epic, but was left with an empty feeling in my gut. When the Shatterer, well, shattered, I thought to myself “Is this it? Is this what the hype was about? THAT WAS A MAJOR VILLAIN?!?”.

Something isn’t working. The fight didn’t require much involvement at all and I find myself with a silver or gold each time I fight it. As a warrior, all I’m doing is wailing on the bosses hand. Depending on the amount of people, we may not even see the crystal phase. This is such a huge shame. There is a LOT of potential for these fights to be something more. When I was told by others that they don’t get much better, it really disheartened me.

I was to propose going back and looking at these major boss fights in the world and finding ways to get people more involved. More dodging, more movement, more phases and generally longer battles would really add a lot to these supposedly huge and epic fights. Forcing everybody into full focus and having a threat of death actually there would stop the fight from being a simple DPS race, and that’s all it is, people attacking as much as possible to get a higher % of damage for loot. I can’t describe my disappointment with it, so I’ll use instances as an example.

Instances in Guild Wars 2 have been excellent. Shifting focus from tank, healer and DPS and putting everybody in charge of their ownkitten really keeps you on your toes and rewards good play and teamwork. If it can be done for instances, it can be done on a larger scale.

I’d like to see a show of hands if you will. Was anybody else hugely disappointed by the mega events and Elder Dragons? They look fantastic, the music is great, it’s set up to be such a good thing but it’s let down by the most important factor which is the actual gameplay surrounding it. That’s my opinion on the matter anyway.

Will be nice to see what people think.

First off the Shatterer isn’t an Elder dragon so it’s not supposed to be Kralkatorik (or even close to his size) It’s a champion and I thought it was sufficiently cool looking for that.

But I do agree that people arent getting credit for the kill when they should be.. either getting silver bronze or nothing at all because they play more supportive roles or rezzing more.
I don’t know that I would want super long fights of just spam but maybe more Siege machinery or environmental weapons to use, after all whats shooting a crystal dragon with an arrow going to do really?

I actually enjoyed the shatterer fight, I thought the dragon looked great but yeah maybe some more strategy should have gone into the actual battle

Well, I’m really enjoying Guild Wars 2, but the events without not really bringing any challenge to the table in 95 percent of the time, mostly being no-brainers… Beside lags and other smaller issues, this event problem kind of annoys me!

I had the same feeling with the Shatterer and similar feeling with for example Jormag… The presentation is nice, but the mechanics and challenge isn’t there or just don’t work as it should… I stood at the foot of the Shatterer for 15 minutes, spamming skill 1 and 2 of the greatsword (Warrior as well) – as far as lag let me use them -, doing nothing else and got exactly 0 damage till the end! I was shocked!

Events in general need certainly better scaling with more players. It’s nice if some events are just easy to handle for everybody, but currently every event I experienced till 80 was kind of a no-brainer with a lot of players around…

The Shatterer isn’t an Elder Dragon, just a Lieutenant to one, who hasn’t actually shown up yet in the game.

‘Potatoes potatoes’ (I’d hope people will understand this), Elder Dragon or Lieutenant, his criticism still holds true – I was expecting Shadow of the Colossus style ‘clamber on your foe’ fight, using your wits and the environment around you, instead of waiting for him to become locked into his 30 second vulnerable animation.

Hmm..

The laggerer was a big disappointment. So many people farming this event that unless your lvl80 with max gear you won’t even get a bronze for participating. Not even a chest. From now on I’ll avoid high lvl zergfest DEs until my gear is all maxed out.

You see, you have everyone on the map doing those events, so it always become a zergfest. I think no matter which event you do, a zerg will always make it too boring and easy. Devs can’t go too far to adjust the difficulty or it might end up like the fire elemental which one shot everyone.

I’m sure dragons like Tequtal(sp?), Jormag’s claw would become a really tough fight if there were only 20~10 people.

One huge problem is that these events seems to be precisely timed. So tons of players arrive just for the time when the dragon appears, cash in their loot and leave.

I just call him Tequila.

Personally, if I had to fight Shatterer or Tequila, I’d do it exactly the way it happens in game… with a small army and tons of artillery. I don’t particularly wanna go climbing all over it.

As far as an interesting fight goes… if you take for granted that so many people are going to show up for the fight, which adds some degree of lag and confusion, would you really want to have to climb all over it to get to it’s weak point or dodge massive attacks, etc? For some of the smaller dynamic event bosses (I’m thinking the fire elemental in Metrica and the Ice Elemental in Wayfairer hills), there are lots of huge attacks and you generally have to keep on your toes the whole fight. But there are also a whole lot less people there, meaning you CAN focus on what you are doing and dodging over just trying to tell what is going on through all the spells flying.

I also feel like a lack of an interesting fight or involvement is a different issue from high levels are all there locking me out of higher rankings, though they are linked as I mentioned (lots of people make dodging stuff hard, lots of people show up for those fights).

The Shatterer, as others have stated, is not an elder dragon – AND on top of that, one of the first REAL threat bosses you see in the game. It makes sense that it would be doable. If you’ve fought the Claw of Jormag yet, you’ll see how interactive boss fights can be.

It doesn’t matter if the Shatterer is the boss or the henchman, the point is that all encounters in GW2, even the dungeons, are simplistic and shallow. Take a look in the Suggestions forum, topic “We need outward scaling, not just upward”, it explains pretty much the core of it’s problem.

Nice to see some mixed responses. I wasn’t sure if Shatterer was an Elder Dragon or not, but thanks for clarifying.

Regardless, I have been told that other dragons lack involvement in the same way. I don’t particularly expect to be climbing all over the dragon or anything, I just want to see some battle progression. Maybe even give the dragons a target, if they destroy the target before you kill it, you fail the event. It seems like they’re just an excuse for eye-candy and loot currently. A good example of what I mean is Lao Shan Lung from Monster Hunter. It’s a simple fight – Hit him until he dies or retreats, but he has a target and you have to stop him before he attains that target. What does that mean? You have to be on a constant offensive, making sure to dodge his huge strides and swinging tail.

That’s just one example. There are a LOT of possibilities for something like this, and it would be awesome you know? It gets everybody involved in what would usually be a raid-only thing. If the fight lasted longer, people wouldn’t have to sit around waiting and they could join in while the fight rages. You can’t tell me you enjoy the fact that the battle lasts about 2 minutes in total? The pre-event for Shatterer is longer than the fight against him. That’s not good. As one of the above said, it’s a shallow battle, and that’s really sad.

What I want to see is more of what I’ve explained in future battles, especially bigger and more threatening dragons. I want to see them have a target, maybe even a consequence to failing to kill them, for instance, a town will be taken out if you fail the event. That gives people a big incentive to join in, and causes a big “World changing” factor, even if it is only temporary. I could go on and on with ideas. There is potential here.

I’m with you. I don’t know if you can actually fail any of the world boss events at the last stage, but in practise you never do, because there is a ton of people there which ensures victory sooner or later.

Would help if the events weren’t happening on fixed intervals.

The only criticism I have with the Shatterer event I can see is that it seems to run on a very specific schedule. So when everyones alarms go off they know the Shatterer is due in 10 minutes and flood into the zone. Zerg the boss, kill it in 30 seconds, loot and then the place is deserted for hours until their alarms go off again. That is the problem, not the difficulty of the boss itself.

I’ve been in Blazeridge for the last few days and the most annoying thing of all is between each fight, is all you hear in zone chat is ‘how long till dragon’. That’s not the problem, the problem is the fact that people can give very specific answers. ‘45 minutes till dragon’. Then you get those who waypointed in only to fight him to find he was defeated seconds earlier. That happens after every fight, every single fight. That’s ridiculous.

This is the underlying problem. If ArenaNet changed the spawn timer of the event chain for this boss from the current fixed gap. To lets say, anywhere between 6-12 hours. That would mean that the Shatterer would appear 2-4 times a day. (He would still appear on average once a day for those in different time zones. But with the varying spawn time it would be different every evening. But the most important thing. No one would know ‘exactly’ when the event chain would begin. This would reduce the ‘huge’ influx of zerg boss campers from Lion’s Arch and other cities. It won’t remove them, but would put less emphasis on zergs. It would prolong the fight more and make it more enjoyable. Also, people who do take part will do more damage and therefore have more chance at getting loot.

I agree with Avywolf. The insertkittenhere dragon is more punctual than my train. It makes a so-called “dynamic event” VERY static. What’s dynamic about an event that can be predicted to the second?

they schould add different moves to the creature itself , i fought it and felt the same as fighting any other mob only 10 times as big , give him a breath attack , claw strikes , crystal arrows even something that does alot of damage and makes the fight harder , i’m not talking about on hit kills but more like let the thing do something instead of just stand there. cause the way we kill him now you dont feel like a hero.
same isue for warriors , they only get to fight a foot or maybe sometimes the head with luck let them atleast climb on him or been blown away when he flies up give it more skills so players need more skill to kill it.

If you guys are getting silvers/bronzes and no chest for full participation you must be doing something wrong. I’ve been to about 6 Shatterer events since level 46-80 and I’ve gotten a gold and chest from each one. Not sure if it’s because I like to stick to ranged weapons but that’s just me.

I do feel the fight could have been executed better though. I noticed you can’t really get behind the guy and strike him from there, just his head and forefeet. Would love to see the guy have his tail lopped off mid fight or something.

From the first time a shadow crossed the ground the build up to The Shatterer was awesome. The shadow that you can’t quite catch. The roar that has you looking the right way, then the glimpse of the shape in the clouds. When he eventually landed and didn’t fit on my screen was a “wow!” moment. I think this was all excellently done.
Old “Tequila” doesn’t have quite the same build up, but still a great moment if you are in the right place to see him land on that hill then jump down into the fight.
I like the regularity as it ensures everyone gets a chance to experiene the event once they find them, rather than missing out due to simple bad luck of not being around.

The fights may become repetitive if you repeat them many times, but surely that is not avoidable if you repeat them often (done both about half dozen times meself). And the issue with folks not seeing any reward must be frustrating (always been lucky enough to get them myself – for these events anyway).

So while I’ll always welcome improvement I didn’t want this thread to pass without some well earned positive feedback too.

DE’s and dragon bosses are way below expectations for me, even though the REST of the game is hugely enjoyable and above expectations. they need to do a huge once-over for all the DE’s and boss fights to make them challenging and to improve scaling.

I’m fine with the dragons being impossible to fail. You really don’t want to wait 3 more hours for another attempt if you fail.

But the mechanics for the fight are insultingly simple. A lot of the time when I fight the Shatterer, I can just sit at a claw, attack and occasionally lose half my health in a hit, and regenerate it back. When I have died, his attacks are so infrequent that I could sit there and come back on my own without ever being hit again, while being right beside him.

Just because its a zerg doesn’t mean that a fight can’t have any scripting. It just means it can’t have any strict, do this or wipe scripting that depends on everybody doing it.

Like, how about Slabhide heroic in WoW? He rains stalagmites when he flies that kill you if you are under them, then he lands and does a zone-wide AoE that you have to LoS with those said stalagmites.

The Shatterer could rain those giant crystals down, then roar and explode them 15 seconds after he lands or something, where you have to kill a crystal and stand where it used to be or be downed by the explosion.

I wrote this once on this forum already i will write it again:

I would expect A LOT MORE from fighting a fricking DRAGON ! Right now for me it is like – i came i conquered and i leave. There is really nothing between came and conquered ! Nothing to avoid, no need to use rolls, no need for cross profession combos. Oh boy, i bet we will be super fine even without those mortars/lasers “helping”.
Dragons right now are completly missed mechanic, too easy. Big wasted potential.

I find the event way to easy, too predictable, very much not like I thought it would be.

I expected:
- a TOUGH and STRONG dragon
- a fight that is long and not easy
- an event that happens randomly, unexpectedly, “I was running around and suddenly Shatterer landed on me!” – type of reaction.
- lots of objectives that needed to be done during the fight in order to defeat the dragon.

Instead, what we got is:

- a weak, shy kitty, unable to deal any damage, and dying so fast that when I turn around to hit an add, the dragon is almost dead by the time I turn back to him.
- he arrives more precisely than an atom clock, there is no surprise, you know when and where he will come and land. This leads to constant and annoying map chat “When will Shatterer land?”, “Is the dragon down?”, “Is Shatterer up?”
- a fight that lasts few short minutes, all you have to do is stand in front of him and shoot him in the face with autoattack. He won’t harm you, he’s too kind.
- there are no significant objectives that need to be done, just shoot him down. Unless you count the crystal wave that gets crushed in under 3 seconds? Last time I had no time to hit one.

What needs to be done:
- random timer on the dragon, its 3 hours now, make it between 1 and 5 hours. This should stop people from camping him or asking for the time.
- buff the dragon, make him a menace, tough to kill, add Accumulated Damage to some of his attacks. It means, the more people close together, the harder they will be hit by the attack. For example, his breath could do 2k damage to a single player, but if 5 people stood next to each other, they would be hit for 5×2 = 10k damage EACH. It could be scaled in more fancy ways, but you get the picture. It would instantly add an element of strategy to the fight – positioning would be key.
- make the dragon tough. I mean tough, it is a BIG dragon. He should not die within 10 minutes.
- create dynamic events that can happen during the long fight, making it more interesting and not a carbon copy of the last one. If say too many players have arrived and the dragons health is dropping too fast, a new event may start, the dragon may roar sending a blastwave pushing everyone against the ruins behind, crushing some to death by fall, crippling others. Then he would go after the canons, destroying some of them. How many would be dependant on how strong the player zerg is, so in some cases all canons would be destroyed simply because the players do enough damage as it is. There could be so many events that could happen.
- remove the canons from fixed positions. Add one or two more spots where Shatterer may appear. It will be up to some of the players to build canons in predefined spots, the trick would be limited supply of parts, so only a few of them could be constructed. The building would be done in the same way as siege machine building in WvW. Go to a NPC, take 10 parts, go to canon slot, and build. Now this is what I call an objective that needs to be done in order to have a chance to win against a dragon. Now, the pre event where you gather the parts would still be in, BUT, the more parts you got in after the bar was filled, the more parts you would have during the fight. The gathering event could happen often, and the accumulated parts would then be available during the dragon event – since this time we have no fixed timer.

I could go on but don’t know if the devs are interested in changing anything at this point.

I’ve noticed something that I think is particularly relevant to these type of events:
I enjoy them most when I play in the morning before work.

It doesn’t matter what the DE is, there are fewer players on in the morning which genuinely makes the bosses a challenge, and therefore a lot more fun. An example is the final centaur boss in the Harathi Hinterlands, about 8 of us did it this morning and we scraped it with a second to go on the timer and people being rezzed constantly, that made the fight interesting for the first time, despite having done it 5 times and the only time ive managed to get a gold.

The bosses do not have enough skills that effect enough players to counter that many people, and very few interesting objectives (although some have a timer) to occupy people not being attacked.

It sounds like the shatterer has a similar problem, so I think the way forward is to play it way off peak time currently until a solution is devised.

Jam, you make a good point. I’ve also noticed that early hours of the morning yield a much more fun and challenging battle due to a lesser amount of people being there. It’s in the right direction of what I think the fight should be, something longer and more desperate.

I’m surprised the boss health doesn’t scale with the amount of people.

Well you have to understand that ‘dynamic’ is also referring to the amount of players. Because it’s a group quest essentially, it will be different depending on how many players you have and who they are. I’ve done some of the events in Orr with a few people that zergs usually do and, while taking longer, are more challenging and fun, actually having to pay attention to mechanics and what not.

I just compare DEs to quests or dailies. Quests/dailies in other games are usually either done once and alone and that’s it; for dailies, same thing every day with hardly and deviation or variation. DEs really shine relatively, because you choose which ones you want to do and how many people there are effects your experience. Now obviously there needs to be some kind of incentive to not zerg/rotate on events, or they need to be fixed; however, that’s another issue.

If an event is up too long, just make it give a boatload of exp/karma/whatever, or even add extra rewards. Like…say a Champion Ogre has been up for 8 hours…(it’s happened, haha)…add something like anyone who participates and gets silver/gold gets a chance at a mini pet. Something like this gives a huge, huge, huge incentive for people to either do an event or, in the worst case, wait 8 hours. In which case, to fix it, you make the wait time dynamic, and do it for many events, so it’s really hard to track. As with mobs giving more experience, it continues to encourage exploration and diversity.

I have just beat the shatterer about an hour ago.
It was 10 am on a weekday. We were about 20-30 people against it and it was purely awesome.

I was reading this thread just before entering the fight, now I got thinking that it would be boring but no, not at all! It started we were only about 5 people untill more came and joined, the crystal phase felt right, the length felt right, everything did.

I’m sure the real problem is when you get 100+ players trying to get in on the kill…

Most of the events are better when you do them with less people as your role is much bigger in the grand scheme of things. You feel more important, when you organize people to get it done it feels like a bigger win.

The dragons feel a bit static as they just wait for there demise in most cases. Im not sure how you handle that in a game where there is no trinity but im hoping that they get more involved at some point.

There’s a method to the Dragon minions. I know we want to call them Dragons, because they look, sound and act like them. And they may be Dragons by those classifications and by that lore. But you can see (when you do Arah, and fight Zhaitan) what ANet has planned for the real dragons as far as looks, and there’s a difference. No other Dragon of any MMO comes close to just the mutated right hand of Zhaitan.

The Shatterer is the first Minion we encounter (if we level that zone), simple mechanics, intro to World Minions. Those mechanics are carried over to the second Minion, Tequatl where more things are needed to succeed, like bone walls and adds. Then the third minion the Claw of Jormag has 2 phases and multiple mechanics. The walls, the road blocks to clear for the bomb golems…and more without giving away spoilers. Now I’ve had these events bug due to lag with 50+ players (want to say 100) involved and the minions never properly cycle their abilities and the fight is a speed bump and that’s a shame.

All I can say is there’s a missed perception on what’s a boss and what is not in GW2 compared to others. We assume the Dragon Minions are Bosses and thus should be rated as any MMO Boss because we’ve been trained to fight dragon raid bosses over the years, by playing one MMO in particular. This game has a lot of new changes to that thinking and even myself have a hard time adjusting to the new mechanics and flow of things. But this is what I tell myself and others, “If you don’t like it. Cancel your Subscription!”

I have not done any dragons yet just watched the vids but from what I have seen and other boss fights they are way too scripted and just not that fun. The champion fights are the way that the boss fights should go. The champions move around and chase people using attacks that kill and roam around. I’ve heard other people suggest there be a way to down the dragon and allow for melee to run in and attack it in that point etc but I think all of that is simply more script instead of a truly unpredictable and dangerous encounter.

Why should the players win every time? I for one would think it was awesome if that dragon killed all the players and took over an entire zone and new events and situations arose as a consequence of it. Isn’t that the point of a dynamic world? It’s not very dynamic when nothing different ever happens and when you know you will always win. When I see something like a dragon or world boss I want to feel scared and intimidated and I want have get a sense of a real need to rally all of the players in the zone etc to fight this thing before it takes over or kills everyone. Instead it’s just stand back and shoot the thing while it stands in place and try and be one of the people who get gold contribution. Lame

Want to motivate players to actually play the game more, work together, and strive for something. Add in dynamic world bosses and really difficult events that actually have a negative impact on the world around us if we fail. It provide a huge uniting factor and gives us purpose although it will actually make things challenging vs what we have now.

^^ if they actually made these things like I want them to be though everyone would say but but but the world bosses are too hard. I don’t have time to try and kill this thing. I want to experience the content but I can’t blah blah blah…….

Kinda wish we could blow his wings off like the ice champ dragon….and then proceed to kill him completely.

These are champions based on elemental properties, it makes since if they disappear and the ‘elder’ dragon remakes them. The undead one, meh…….he can fly off and it makes since.

I agree with pretty much everything the OP said. The 3 major dragon lieutenant fights I’ve encountered, the Shatterer, Tequatl and the Claw of Jormag, were certainly visually stunning. The moments definitely felt dramatic and epic. But then you get to the gameplay and find out that they’re the biggest pushovers ever. Not only is it impossible to lose to any of them, but it’s also impossible to mess up any of the smaller mechanics within the fight such as knocking out a wall, clearing adds, destroying ice crystals. When I can alt+tab for 40% of the fight to chat on facebook knowing we’re going to win, I won’t die and I will still get gold, the whole encounter’s “kittenness” becomes greatly diminished. It just doesn’t feel fun.

I’ve resorted to hiding the UI with ctrl+shift+h during these fights and just playing the role of virtual photographer, documenting the “epic” struggle for the Tyrian archives.

Going back a way here, but Ragnarok Online had a fun way of handling world bosses (called MVPs there for reasons that are unlikely to become clear at the moment). RO’s MVPs spawn on a timer, but at a random location on the map. They deal massive damage to single players AND groups, and they move all over the place. Just because it spawned didn’t mean you could just run in and find it, you had to search the whole map for the thing and be READY for it.

Now RO is a terrible MMO in many respects, but this is one thing they got right. Playing on maps where an MVP lived was always a little bit tense, because there was always that HOLY CRAP moment where you ran into the MVP by accident and had to run away screaming.

I realize why the Shatterer always spawns in the same place; he’s so large, he can’t really move around the terrain freely without clipping horribly, etc. But it would be awesome to have multiple landing points for him and have him move between them every now and again. Randomly running into the Shatterer on the map would be a blast, and adding some movement to his event, even if it’s just between 2-3 locations, would make it feel a lot more “real”.

tl;dr Potatoes are tasty.

First off, for the people complaining about their being to many people killing the boss. Switch to a low population server and then go and do it. There will only be a few people there and the fight will last sometime. I have been there at like 1AM and there was not a single person fighting the thing on a low population server.

Here is the problem with the fight:
The major problem is the Shatterer does not move. This is a very big problem for a number of reasons. First off, the Shatterer cannot always hit you. He can only hit in a certain area and if you simply move out of that area when you are low on health, you can simply heal up and then come back and continue shooting him. Second off, him not being able to move creates areas of where you can hit him and he cannot hit you. This allows for people to just mind numbingly sit there and shoot him until he dies which creates a very boring fight. Third off, this creates him dependent on his minions to kill you instead of him killing you. Thus, the battle becomes killing the minions and then shooting a “thing” for a time until they spawn again, instead of “having an epic battle with a dragon.”

Thus, they need to do something about it. Maybe, have an arena or separate area where the only thing you do there is battle him and he will be able to move around and chase you down. This will prevent “safe” areas and being able to just simply run away and heal up. You will find more people dying to him and the amount people being able to easily zerg him will need to increase dramatically. If he can move around and kill you within two hits, then people cannot just mindlessly spam him while he cannot hit back.

Claw of Jornag is much the same way. In phase 1, there is a “safe spot” where you can shoot his shield and he can never hit you (minus his fear, but that doesn’t kill you, only inconvenience you a little). This spot is even worse than the Shatterer spot because at least with the Shatterer you have to worry about his mobs. Claw doesnt have mobs to worry about. I find myself just afk auto attacking in that area until his shield goes down. Even if this “safe spot” was removed, he does not do enough damage to you that dodging his attacks is actually worth doing. Phase 2 also has its problem, but that stems from the fact that the champion mobs that spawn there have more health than the dragon does. -______________-

Havent fought Tequila yet. Need to get on that.

I agree with many of your points and have been advocating for dynamic events that scale in difficulty based on how a particular server is doing at them. Meaning if a server succeeds at an event, it gets its difficulty ramped up and this continues until the server fails, and then it drops down in difficulty. I discuss my ideas here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Scale-Dynamic-Event-Difficulty-on-Success/first#post101866

Other than that, encounters should be a bit more multifaceted requiring players to take on different roles for them. For example, during the shatterer the siege weaponry should be necessary and players should feel obligated to protect it. This way warriors/guardians/thieves aren’t attacking the shatterer’s toes, but doing something more relevant, like fending off minion waves and manning the siege.

The problem for me (and my horrible ancient computer) is that I’m stuck between wanting a more involving, epic fight and having good performance. I know a lot of gamers can afford nice machines, but I’m stuck with what I got. It would be nice to actually have to do something in these events but the drop in framerate sometimes makes it unplayable.

If this were a personal problem I wouldn’t have brought it up, but I usually hear several complaints during each fight from players who seem to be having similar problems. It’s hard to balance, but right now I’m happy that I can stand somewhere auto-attacking, scrape by with a silver (or maybe even gold depending), and actually get something for my time. Just my two cents.

yeah. i like the entrance and the feel of the shatterer but the huge boss fights are a little too…easy. i did this as a 50-something defensive-spec guardian (my silver reward character…got spoiled on my dps-spec ranger) however i got gold (not sure about the complaint there) and felt like there was little-to-no threat of death/failure.

bro looked awesome but felt like a slightly-less intimidating version of a wvw gate. say what you will about vindictus; there’s a game that does some decent large-enemy fights.

Im gunna sound of on here too, im disappointed and the lack of epicosity.

All of the dragons and screamed and yelped, but pretty much stood there and just died. They are big enough to squash us if they stood on us, why do they just sit in the same place and occasionally do something that tickles me?

I do see what Arc is saying about older computers, but really if your game cant handle lots of stuff going on, then you really shouldnt be there or you need a new computer.
Fights like this shouldnt be about “oh hey lets make this playable for everyone”, it should be “holy kitten a dragon is coming to destroy everything!!! Man the battlestations, get everyone here before we’re all killed!!”

There are some great suggestions in here, and ill throw my own in too.

• I think general attacks need to be less effective, somewhere in the range of 50-75% less effective. Make the turrets and bombs and megalazers matter!!

• Give every fight another secondary damaging mechanic, something like bombs you run to plant at their feet, or another lazer to defend or a hero who you have to safely get in range of the dragon who leaps onto him and stabs his eye.

• Give it more distinct phases and attacks. Right now they feel boring the whole time. Definitive attacks and phases with iconic animations and awesome effects are important.

• GIVE THEM MORE DAMAGE!! Punish people for making mistakes. Yes lag, yes FPS rates, but this is a dragons lieutenant. I get hit for more damage by a risen chicken for gods sake.

• Make the meta events leading up to him matter. Stop people from just running in when he spawns and getting gold. Make the whole event preparing for him count towards the overall rank you get. This will include the setup of turrets. If you dont set up enough, you could fail. Carry supplies or bring an NPC, it doesnt matter. More events happening directly before hand.

• Have the respawn timer random between 6-12 hours. Rather than my clock letting me know when an epic dragon is coming, have NPCs around the zone shudder at an ominous feeling they get running down their spine. Have the first of the meta-events kick off.

• Make the loot better. With the above changes, getting 6-8 blues is pretty silly. 1 Guarenteed Rare for your time and effort if you get a gold (remembering you need to do the metas beforehand to get gold), and more karma. You killed a dragon, your karma should now be epic.

Cheers for reading.

Alyon: Fights like this shouldnt be about “oh hey lets make this playable for everyone”, it should be “holy kitten a dragon is coming to destroy everything!!! Man the battlestations, get everyone here before we’re all killed!!”

^
The whole game should be designed this way. That’s what I’m yapping about all along.

Lots of good suggestion here. But, and there’s a but, here is the thing :

How do you intend to put some strategy in a boss fight, when all the players are just brainless nukers who attack everything they can ?

I mean seriously, I was told that the centaur boss in Harathi Highlands gave much better rewards if you didn’t touch him during the first phase. All right. So you have 10 people for like 15 minutes who spam on the chat “Don’t attack him at the beginning, let him do his summoning stuff”. All right !
But when the boss appeared….. every last of the brainless zombies that are called “players” just spammed the hell outta him. And this happens every time. And so even though I’ve done this event countless times, I still don’t know if this boss gives better rewards when you don’t kill his summons in first phase.

So, my question : How do you intend for players to notice any amount of “strategy” at all, when there’s not 10% of them that know of the word “strategy”, and that read the chat ?

I haven’t gotten to the Shatterer yet, but all the other epic world-boss style DE’s (Shadow Behemoth, Shaman Chief, Jungle Wurm…) I’ve been involved in were fun, but did have the issues related to lack of strategy – zergfests if you will. Now, they were still reasonably enjoyable (likely due to just the sheer scope and awesomeness of the event, not necessarily the depth of gameplay).

I can imagine it’s a huge challenge to make DE’s that scale to potentially 50+ players without dumbing it down, especially given that most of them are not communicating. Any complex mechanics would likely be lost by the majority of the zerg swarm…

With that said, there should be some middle ground. Another game I played (forgot which, trying to remember…) had an interesting system that might work in this game. Enemies would gain more powerful spells as they scaled up (it seems in GW2 they just get more hp, maybe attack power too?). So if 15 people attack the boss, they might not be exposed to an uber-skill the dragon has. But if 70 people are zerging the boss, it might use some awesome skill and knock a lot of the people out, causing a little more tension at least. Right now there is often a guarantee of success due to sheer player counts involved in the events.

These bosses are supposed to be fun, not difficult.

Honestly, my only complaint is that Melee can be a little messy visually. I have a hard time figuring out where to attack and when at times. I love immersion when I must attack a red circle than its foot itself.

There is a flaw in that argument Kain. A lot of people find difficulty, and the challenge to overcome difficulty, fun. I find mindless button bashing boring and repetitive personally. As human beings, our basic instincts tell us to challenge and better ourselves. This especially applies to something like this that we actually attain rewards for participating and excelling in.

I think the problem with the Shatterer is the amount of engagement required (i.e., not much).

You can either melee his foot or shoot him in the head with ranged, or (if you’re lucky and get there early) get on one of the mortars. Besides that, nothing much happens.

That said I kind of liked the Shatterer fight just because of how visually impressive it was :P

I definitely think it needs more going on. Perhaps some sort of minions (huge branded stuff would be good) that switch it up mid-fight or something. I also agree that the precise timed nature of the events contributes to the zerg/spamfest nature of the fight.

I’d prefer that it wasn’t on so exact a timer and/or had a few events required to start the Shatterer event.

Haven’t fought Tequila the Sunless yet so I can’t comment on that fight.

Johnson.3874:

Lots of good suggestion here. But, and there’s a but, here is the thing :

How do you intend to put some strategy in a boss fight, when all the players are just brainless nukers who attack everything they can ?

I mean seriously, I was told that the centaur boss in Harathi Highlands gave much better rewards if you didn’t touch him during the first phase. All right. So you have 10 people for like 15 minutes who spam on the chat “Don’t attack him at the beginning, let him do his summoning stuff”. All right !
But when the boss appeared….. every last of the brainless zombies that are called “players” just spammed the hell outta him. And this happens every time. And so even though I’ve done this event countless times, I still don’t know if this boss gives better rewards when you don’t kill his summons in first phase.

So, my question : How do you intend for players to notice any amount of “strategy” at all, when there’s not 10% of them that know of the word “strategy”, and that read the chat ?

You create self-intuitive scripts for bosses, you play around with them on test servers and see what people can and can’t reasonably handle.

Case in point, Dragon Soul LFR in WoW. It started off being exactly the same as normal, but with lower values. Overtime, the mechanics were simplified and removed until the only ones left were the ones that a 25 man PUG could cope with.

Obviously putting flame wreath(Fire circle appears around random people, everybody dies if those people move) in a 100 man PUG is a recipe for disaster, but there are things inbetween boss auto-attacking and that.

So I just killed the Shatterer twice yesterday for the first time, and I must say: WOW. Is THAT a stupid DE. Seriously? It feels like an unfinished tutorial, in best case. It’s so sad, is this really the best you could have come up with?

If I was 4 years old, and if this wasn’t 2012. (almost 2013.) but instead 1992., I’d buy it, somehow. But THIS!?

I was aware that GW2 had it’s flaws and I participated here, on the forums, trying to point them out. But THIS!?

This game needs to be started all over again, tbh. Like, from the ground up. I want my money back.

Johnson.3874:

Lots of good suggestion here. But, and there’s a but, here is the thing :

How do you intend to put some strategy in a boss fight, when all the players are just brainless nukers who attack everything they can ?

I mean seriously, I was told that the centaur boss in Harathi Highlands gave much better rewards if you didn’t touch him during the first phase. All right. So you have 10 people for like 15 minutes who spam on the chat “Don’t attack him at the beginning, let him do his summoning stuff”. All right !
But when the boss appeared….. every last of the brainless zombies that are called “players” just spammed the hell outta him. And this happens every time. And so even though I’ve done this event countless times, I still don’t know if this boss gives better rewards when you don’t kill his summons in first phase.

So, my question : How do you intend for players to notice any amount of “strategy” at all, when there’s not 10% of them that know of the word “strategy”, and that read the chat ?

You force them by making strategic play the only way to complete the DE. Mindless zombies, as you called them, should never succeed at anything. They should be left dry with no rewards, no fun, no experience, no items, nothing.

Many many people moaned duing the BWE’s: “The game is too hard, the game is too hard. We will never develop any personal skill, so please make it easier”. Now it is easy, very easy, and we are all left with an empty feeling inside.

Honestly I think the dragons spawn too often for what they are. It’s so silly to have the dragon magically re-appear 20 minutes after he dies flying over your head to die exactly 3 hours later. They should only spawn 2-4 times a day and that’s it.

That and the whole ‘Hai I’m a dragon and I’m gonna stand here and roar over and over and do the same 3 things over and over and over and be absolutely no threat to anyone since scripting me so I can actually move around is a lot harder then repeating the same 3 lines of code ad nauseam.’ That or at least make the 3 attacks actually deadly such as make it so they can at least turn to do the breath attacks so they actually are something you care about. The dragon champions should be events where there actually is a fear of actually dying instead of just sitting there at ranged spamming your auto attack while afk on the dragon that can’t move, turn around, or do anything outside 3 attacks. Of course maybe they can be fun if the current versions of the dragons scaled much much better with the amount of players.

Shatterer did suck, was boring as h.

But the other dragons are alot more fun and rewarding

Dragons are a disappointment in this game. Not only are they laggy as hell and don’t reward contribution properly, they are boring and impossible to fail.

It’s sad when the fire elemental in the asura zone is a better boss than the signature events like the shattered or tequatl.