Guild Wars 2

Now that I’ve seen GW2 evolve with some new features through Living World, it made me think how they could put some of the new ideas into the Zhaitan fight to make it better. The Story Journal really puts the icing on the cake for replayability as well.

The whole dungeon feels incredibly cinematic and gives off the proper vibe of “Well team, we’re heading to the Elder Dragon himself.”. The one thing I’d change that doesn’t relate to the actual current fight would be adding some kind of draconic battery or cannon onto The Humble or The Glory of Tyria. Everything remains unchanged all the way through to the fireworks battle. The idea for the battery would be for Zhaitan to knock it off during one of his flybys (such as when he destroys the front of The Glory of Tyria, it could have had the battery attached to it). Zhaitan will fall from his perch via fireworks display, and the pillar falls with him, and everyone celebrates success exactly like it is now.
One of the NPCs would then run up to Destiny’s Edge and exclaim that Zhaitan is trying to crawl towards the wrecked battery from earlier and consume its magic to regain strength. The Glory of Tyria would then descend to a survivable drop-down distance from the ground and you join Destiny’s Edge in putting a stop to this. From this point on, a meta event starts with a bar (specifically NOT a numerical timer) that slowly fills up over time (10 minutes long at most) which shows the distance between the battery and Zhaitan.
Waves of Risen will start heading towards the battery which you need to help Destiny’s Edge clear, after the bar reaches about 25% one of them would say something cliche like “We can’t keep focus on the minions, we have to stop Zhaitan”. Logan will use his over-powered Guardian skills to channel a huge Line of Warding separating the party of Heroes with Destiny’s Edge and the Risen.
After a short jog towards the battery, you’d come to 5 pressure switches that would need to be pressed together, upon doing so would open 5 passages each with their own unique flavor to them. One passage could be a lite Jumping Puzzle, another could be a straight path with a couple simple mobs, another could be an underwater path; pretty much 5 different roads that each encompass a simple version of different GW2 gameplay. The paths would be limited to 1 player each, such as giving each player a different buff (named with what flavor the path is) while on the switches when they’re all pressed, and that buff would let you into the path. The goal is to get to the end of your path and channel a console, unlike in CoE explorable where it’s timed, but a simple UI event like “Consoles Charged: X/5”).
Blocking each console would be an weak Legendary mob “Head of Zhaitan”, which is just one of his severed little mouth-dragons trying to kill you. This entire section would be a fail-state like the Bomb Room in CoF path 2, where if the bar reaches the end, everyone dies and the event restarts from the beginning. After the 5 Consoles are triggered, a cutscene would pan out above the consoles and show that all 5 blocked consoles were connected to the battery, and the 5 of you overcharged it, shooting a massive beam of energy straight down through Zhaitan the long way. Then the dungeon ends here, with just the 5 of you separated at the ends the paths. No NPC would even come up to you, and all you see is Zhaitan in the near distance with a massive gaping hole all the way through him completely still.

I feel like this idea would give each player the weight of worth. It’s not something that you can get carried through, and it becomes a matter of personally not letting down your other party members (ya know, the HEROES) for failing. Much like the Marionette battle, even though the bosses were easy, it felt beyond satisfying breaking your tower and cheering on your lane-mates. Using the AoE buff concept from the Assault Knights and Marionette fight portals, it would solve the problem of limiting 1 player per path. Every player would have a unique experience through the end due to the different gameplay of the paths and fighting one of the five Zhaitan’s heads. Delivering the death blow as a 5-man party seems way more personal than helping the Pact shoot fireworks at him too, if the heads weren’t enough. This also wouldn’t add too long of a section (I’d estimate 8 minutes as an average clear time from the start of the meta event, with a 10 minute long bar-timer), or try to bite off more than they could chew making an epic Elder Dragon fight with weapons (because it’s probably going to be an HP sponge that way). With the introduction of the Story Journal, this opens up replayability by unlocking an achievement for doing each path at the end, which means more players will be running Arah Story, which means it will constantly be easier to get players for Victory or Death.

I killed him 3-4 times until now,2 was with my lvl 80…It’s enough for a lifetime that boring 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 fight…

Amnariel.3659:

I killed him 3-4 times until now,2 was with my lvl 80…It’s enough for a lifetime that boring 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 fight…

What would you do to change it? Would you just change that phase or add extra ones?

Xalugami.2096:

Amnariel.3659:

I killed him 3-4 times until now,2 was with my lvl 80…It’s enough for a lifetime that boring 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 fight…

What would you do to change it? Would you just change that phase or add extra ones?

Let Zhaitan attack the ship,hang on it,close quarter combat there’s many options much better than the actual fight.Until that 1-1-1-1-1-1 fight it’s well made.

The airship cannons severely damage Zhaitan, perhaps wrecking one of his wings, but he drags the airship down with him as he falls into the city below. Your party survives the crash and you see Zhaitan retreating into his lair in the centre of the city.

You meet up with a bunch of Order characters (maybe the other airships land nearby) and fight your way through to finish off the much weakened but still formidable Zhaitan. Proceed with epic final boss fight, and much rejoicing once the beast is slain.

Event procedes as normal during the “Defend Zojja while she powers the megalaser” phase, only the enemies are tuned up so that it’s more challenging, as currently your party can run off to the side and let the NPCs take care of them.

Cutscene of the megalaser cutting his tail off, he destroys the megalaser.

Event where you have to charge up five harpoon cannons a la dredge fractal, only less annoying. Each cannon takes about 10-15 seconds of not being hit to charge up, group can defend the guy charging or they can try to charge all five at once and hope to not get hit.

Once charged, harpoons go off, latch onto Zhaitan, and pull the airship up alongside him. One of his mini-heads curls around and bombs the deck with AEs, players have to fight and kill it world-boss style.

Once it’s dead, zhaitan pulls away and it cuts to the current cutscene of the harpoons ripping pieces of him off as he limps to his tower. Event proceeeds as it currently is during the aproach to the tower.

During the current “22222” phase, it’s NPCs who instead man the cannons to shoot at him, not the players. AEs and enemies continue to spawn, players must keep the NPCs alive. They can be rezzed if they die, but the more that are down, the slower they kill him, similiar to Claw of Jormag P1.

Once done, Zhaitan instead of falling down dead, leaps from the tower, onto the airship, crashing it to the ground. Party wakes up, burning destruction everywhere, Zhaitan pinned down under the rubble but still alive. A megalaser from another crashed airship is intact, Zojja needs time to fix it. Players charge Zhaitan head on and actually fight him. After either a timer or a health bar, laser gets fixed, blasts Zhaitan in the face, kills him.

I’d completely redesign the whole Instance.
Instead of making the instance more or less a big airship only thing mostly, I’d make out of that instance an epic multi stage quest in which matters how your personal story decisions have been made up, to which order your character belongs to, which sub race your character has made up an alliance with, whose NPC’s your character had met on his personal journey and so on, which class you play as the group leader and and and… to make this instance each time you do it as unique and different, as possible.
The battle against Zhaitan should be full of action, strategetic changes, melodramatic story sequences, challenging and fun and nur just only an 1111111-fiasco of pure boredom and bad battle design where the most epic thigns are just only shown to you as a borign scene, rather than lettign you the player deal the hits against zhaitan actively.
Zhaitan should be remade into a Solo Instance also, its YOUR PERSONAL STORY END, so only you as the player should deal with Zhaitan alone and the help of your pact army that you build up. Also the Edge of Destiny should play here an helpful role

3 Orders, 5 Members of EoD, that should mean each Order should have 5 different tactics for the battle against Zhaitan, based on which’s character’s plan you like the most.
Each Destiny’s Edge Character therefore stands for a different plan variation:

Logan = prefers more protective tactics dealing more sustaining damage over time
Rytlock = prefers reckless tactics going in with all the powers aggressively, whatever it may cost.
Eir = prefers heroic risky trap tactics to lure Zhaitan into a deadly trap
Caithe = prefers group tactics to split up and do several things at the same time
Zojja = prefers easy tactics with the highest calculated chance of success

Just some examples to show you into which kind of direction I’m heading with that suggestion

In regard of either the Ogres, Quaggan, Skritt, Grawls ect. helping you, each race will help you differently by giving you in the Zhaitan Instance different unique Buff Effects and nice Side Effects.

However, regardless, of whom you have chosen, regardless of which Destiny’s Edge member’s plan you have chosen, they all will help alongside you and the battle agaisnt Zhaitan, doing independently their own thing and it can also happen randomly, that you need to help them and their troops they are leading.

the whole fight agaist Zhaitan needs to feel, like you are fighting on a huge battlefield against him and his tons of thousands of undead minions through which you hack and slash you through to get to Zhaitan. Everyone alongside YOU giving you their helping hands to ensure, that YOU make it through, even if it means to die for you, having the faith in you, that you will beat Zhaitan and save Tyria .
The battle against Zhaitan needs to become very emotional, if a final battle is emotional, then its an epic battle.

Easy example:

Anime Naruto: Naruto vs. Pain

Why do people think, that this is one of the most epic battles in the whole series of Naruto??? Because its the absolute most emotional battle of the whole Anime, where emotions like hatred, love or revenge and betrayal play a huge role in it on both sides.
Theres no more epic moment, where Pain nearly kills Hinata in front of Naruto’s eyes direct before him lieing on the ground, total helplessly, after she confessed her true love to him and Naruto then ticking out like mad ans smashes the heck out of Pain.

Why? Because that scene is so full of immersion and emotion, you can feel it, it touches your heart,, it makes you think about yourself, how you would react in such a situation and feel the same emotion.

Simplest fix, leave most of it as it is. Once we’ve shot Zhaitan down from the tower (which is basically the end of the current dungeon) they add another section were we fight Zhaitan on foot. Since Zhaitan is a dragon made up of other dragons, pieces of him can break lose and we can fight them (I’m sure there can be all sorts of interesting and cinematic ways to do this other than a standard stand and fight type encounter), until Zhaitan is at a more manageable size for us to finally kill.
Also the confetti part could be changed, rather have us fight another dragon champion or something rather than 1-1-1-1-1

Make the last story instance soloable. Nobody I know want’s to do it because of the length of time and the boring factor.