Megaserver issue: HP train vs Meta
Hero challenges should have simply never been group content. They tried to justify it by saying they were worth 10 points, but the real reason they’re 10 points is simply vertical bloat. After they screwed up, they’ll need to bloat it again if they want to fix the problem, which I guess will need to be raids.
As for the metas, you only need 20-40 people, which is less than half the map (~100 max). You can’t casually zerg it however when playing at the normal scales. If the situation is that the majority is unwilling to participate, chances are there’s another instance, otherwise you weren’t going to have enough either way.
ArenaNet will likely take the simplest route and just nerf the metas so that only 1-2 per lane are required instead of 5~10. That’s what they did to the Silverwastes.
Healix is more or less right. Requiring groups for hero points was a very poor decision. They should have had the bulk of the points solo-able and a few, like Golem and Guano in Verdant Brink as group content. This way players that can’t get a group or don’t like having to zerg around in a train can get their elite spec if they go through all the maps and have a lot of core GW2 hero points under their belt.
The metas would be fun if they rewarded the effort in way that made players want to do the content. Currently the only rewards for doing metas is map currency that gets you rare gear. Big woop, you can buy better with karma, then cruise control the content for the skins. The way to fix metas is to make playing as a group rewarding. Add in a bonus at the end of the map event if you’re in a group/squad. This way players will be encouraged to group and communicate.
The 200% participation bonus is a joke. I stopped doing HoT maps simply because one person can alternate between AFK’ing and auto attacking, get better loot while myself and other players actually bother to put in effort, hit the 200% mark, and get a rare… that might not even salvage into an ecto.
I don’t understand why they didn’t just make them Elites instead of Champs. Elites seem to be a nice middle ground between face roll vets and group required champs.
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I don’t understand why they didn’t just make them Elites instead of Champs. Elites seem to be a nice middle ground between face roll vets and group required champs.
That depends on scaling. A lv84 elite is probably worse than a lv80 champion.
Hero challenges should have simply never been group content. They tried to justify it by saying they were worth 10 points, but the real reason they’re 10 points is simply vertical bloat. After they screwed up, they’ll need to bloat it again if they want to fix the problem, which I guess will need to be raids.
As for the metas, you only need 20-40 people, which is less than half the map (~100 max). You can’t casually zerg it however when playing at the normal scales. If the situation is that the majority is unwilling to participate, chances are there’s another instance, otherwise you weren’t going to have enough either way.
ArenaNet will likely take the simplest route and just nerf the metas so that only 1-2 per lane are required instead of 5~10. That’s what they did to the Silverwastes.
What is your definition of a group? 2 or 3 people should be enough for nearly all of them except any that might be gated behind meta event progress like the ones in DS.
(edited by Khisanth.2948)
You don’t need the entire map to succeed in the TD meta. With experienced players, 3 of the lanes need around 6-10 people; one might need 10-15. With four experienced commanders who communicate well, you can even have inexperienced people in only slightly larger numbers. That is: the meta can be completed by a single squad or slightly more.
People get fixated on HP-train vs meta and they don’t have to: it’s easy for HP-trainers to swap maps; it’s less easy for the meta commanders to swap together. There are always at least 2-3 maps.
The problem is that people all want to stay in their current map, rather than moving to a new one to ensure success. Often, there are enough in the crowded map to populate two successful metas.
tl;dr don’t argue about meta-vs-hp: if you are a commander of HP, go to a different map. If you are a meta commander and the HP trainers won’t move, then move your own squad and use LFG. As long as you start “soon enough,” your meta will succeed. (Just don’t leave it for the last minute.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
HoT HP are required to get a toon its elite spec and trains may be the easiest way. Fast and no need to think too much about it.
Maps meta are required for… meh… ? Entertainement ? Farming skins or reciepes ?
To be honest, I love HoT maps (ok, not TD so much) and I spent hours leading in AB. I’m sad to see that they’re now mostly empty, that LFG doesn’t give that many options to run a nice meta. And I’m even sadder to think about new players trying to make their way in HoT and probably won’t enjoy the maps as much as I did at launch.
It’s all a matter of incentive. As long as content won’t be a thing to redo, either because of rewards, or because if its inherent qualities ; as long as the need to farm HP quick and smooth will be the dominant feeling, then that issue will shine again.
People get fixated on HP-train vs meta and they don’t have to: it’s easy for HP-trainers to swap maps; it’s less easy for the meta commanders to swap together. There are always at least 2-3 maps.
People also get fixated on having a blob around when a lot of times scaling actually makes it worse.
Also on an active TD instance all the event chains should be done about 1 hour before the Gerent which is plenty of time to get all the HPs …
(edited by Khisanth.2948)
Really?
From my experience, everyone usually just drops what they’re doing and spends the 10-15 minutes or whatever to do the meta and then everyone who wants to stay can do the HP train afterwards (even if you get the HP already, it still can give you a chest if it involves a kill). You can also bring an alt over if you want. The advantage this is that everyone is in one spot, and it’s harder for people to get lost when they follow the tail.
This isn’t like DS where it takes a long effort to do it.
It’s not really much time spent if everyone cooperates and by now if people are organized enough I’m sure a few of them know how to check timers.
I’ve only encountered a few instances where there was actual conflict and it seemed to be people just so stubborn that they’d rather work to the detriment of each other in order to be right.
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for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(edited by ArchonWing.9480)
HoT metas could have been awesome instanced raids. They just are not appealing/approachable as open world maps.
HoT metas could have been awesome instanced raids. They just are not appealing/approachable as open world maps.
This is a wonderful idea. This would eliminate much, if not all of the trouble. Coordinated maps would be all over the place. HP trainers on one map, players that want eyes on another and chest farmers going nuts over all the loot. This should be done for all of the HoT maps and others from now on.
I’ve only encountered a few instances where there was actual conflict and it seemed to be people just so stubborn that they’d rather work to the detriment of each other in order to be right.
Agreed. This problem seems to be pretty rare. I do TD meta most days and haven’t had this problem in a while. It was worse when Flax farming was more common and people camped the great tree nodes.
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I don’t understand why they didn’t just make them Elites instead of Champs. Elites seem to be a nice middle ground between face roll vets and group required champs.
Just removing the Defiance bar from most of the HPs would make them reasonably soloable. Champs almost universally come with it, where Elites still take CC normally.
While I’m glad that ANet figured out a better way to handle CC against monolithic enemies, it’s been over-used throughout HoT. Some classes not being able to blind/stun an enemy removes a good chunk of their survivability.
Sorry for the sorta-tangent, but it might help solve the problem by not making hero challenges “group” content. No need for HP trains means players can focus on meta events.
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it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632
What is your definition of a group?
3 is the minimum scaling. Most are rather basic, such as the spider, troll or vinetooth, which can easily be done solo because of their slower/directional attacks. Some simply need a decoy, like how the bladedancer is anti-melee. A few however are far more challenging in comparison, where you’ll probably opt for 3+, such as the queen. For the more casual players however, you can get away with 2+ for the easier ones, but for the harder ones you’ll want a zerg/10+.
The fact that people need to schedule trains is already telling, and it’s only going to get worse as the population continues to decline. As group events, they only serve to discourage players and block map completion, meaning playing less. The original idea behind events was that they acted as beacons, drawing solo players together. That doesn’t work here, especially not when they’re out of the way.
Hero challenges should have been just that, hero challenges. They need less zerging and more content that actually teaches people stuff, like how they tried to ramp it up with the Queen’s Gauntlet. They should be like adventures, where you can easily retry, and they should offer more than just killing, such as puzzles or challenges like dodging everything. If they’re just going to be dumb events, they should have just been events.
I don’t understand why they didn’t just make them Elites instead of Champs. Elites seem to be a nice middle ground between face roll vets and group required champs.
That depends on scaling. A lv84 elite is probably worse than a lv80 champion.
So then just make them lvl 80 elites? I can’t remember what lvl the hp champions are, but it’s obvious that the champs now are too hard to solo…so just move down a step. The jump from champ to vet seems too large for HP, so that’s why i said an elite.
Wu Táng Financial [Táng] – YB
TD’s meta is the hardest to accomplish. Not because it’s difficult but because there isn’t much value in doing it. Therefore, most people that are there are busy doing things like HP trains. There’s also all the AFK folks. It makes it hard to organize for the meta.
HoT metas could have been awesome instanced raids. They just are not appealing/approachable as open world maps.
This is a wonderful idea. This would eliminate much, if not all of the trouble. Coordinated maps would be all over the place. HP trainers on one map, players that want eyes on another and chest farmers going nuts over all the loot. This should be done for all of the HoT maps and others from now on.
It’s a terrible idea in my opinion: it’s a lot of work to implement a restrictive solution to a problem that isn’t a problem for most people on most maps. Dragon’s Stand already uses an instanced approach and it’s annoying to even get into the same map as your friends sometimes.
None of the metas, including DS and TD, require that everyone on the map participate. They can all be completed by smaller groups. Similarly, nearly all hero challenges can be done by two people who know what they are doing or one who knows with 3 who are willing to follow their lead.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I like what’s been posted. Yeah, I’m unsure what the norm is, but I was thinking that an HP train refusing to move was kinda rare. The guy was a jerk, but ideally stuff like this should not happen.
I think it’s safe to say that HoT maps are deteriorating and conflict like this will only increase. Hopefully the devs won’t just let the maps go out quietly in the night. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of life in them, but they will be needing some fine tuning to adjust for the declining server populations. If they don’t, they’ll just be pointless.
One other thing, I completely realize you don’t need big zergs to do the meta, but convincing players of that is entirely different. Seems like most players enter zombie mode during metas., they just follow mindlessly without the realization of efficiency. So while it doesn’t take many players to actually finish the meta, breaking that mindset will be most difficult.
And to echo another thought on this post. New players are the most affected and that is most unfortunate. They need the HP for their elite specs, masteries, story and metas. As the maps mature, those players will be the most affected unless there’s some tweaking done with the maps.
(edited by Kythan Myr.4719)
I think it’s safe to say that HoT maps are deteriorating and conflict like this will only increase.
That’s not been my experience.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
To be honest, I’ve seen that kind of “you move -no ! YOU move !” argument countless times in AB and TD. Less in VB, but I think HP there are more straightforward.
HoT maps are deteriorating. There’s a normal predictable factor in it : people usually get bored of it. It’s the same for lots of core maps. World bosses are a way to keep some activity in some places of some maps. Metas are a good thing, in my opinion.
Another idea is what they did in living world season 1 : make things happen in core maps (lion’s arch, tower of nightmare in kessex, marionette in Lornar, toxic events in some others). I really liked that idea, and I feel like it put more people in those maps. Some events could be revamped to HoT meta’s quality : I’m thinking of Ulgoth the Modniir in Hinterlands, or Komissar in Dredgehaunt cliffs. Some cleaning and dusting could make them really good metas that’d bring people.
Now for another issue you raise in your topic : players playing casual zombies joining a zerg to win. It’s been an issue for a long time in GW2, in PvE as in WvW. It has sometimes be adressed (champion train in Queensdale e.g.) but the safest way to avoid it is avoid the “just smash it” design. Unfortunately, ANet has been sticking to that design for ages. Avoiding it requires more elaborate mechanic, and I can empathize with players not wanting to learn them because it’d be too tiresome.
Yet, twisted marionette is one of my fondest memory.
(edit = typo)
(edited by ThomasC.1056)
Dragon’s Stand already uses an instanced approach
As it stands now, DS is a map like any other on the megaserver, so it is not instanced in the way that a raid or dungeon is instanced.
and it’s annoying to even get into the same map as your friends sometimes.
A problem that would be eliminated if the HoT metas were raids, which was my original point.
To be honest, I’ve seen that kind of “you move -no ! YOU move !” argument countless times in AB and TD. Less in VB, but I think HP there are more straightforward.
HoT maps are deteriorating. There’s a normal predictable factor in it : people usually get bored of it. It’s the same for lots of core maps. World bosses are a way to keep some activity in _some_places of some maps. Metas are a good thing, in my opinion.
Another idea is what they did in living world season 1 : make things happen in core maps (lion’s arch, tower of nightmare in kessex, marionette in Lornar, toxic events in some others). I really liked that idea, and I feel like it put more people in those maps. Some events could be revamped to HoT meta’s quality : I’m thinking of Ulgoth the Modniir in Hinterlands, or Komissar in Dredgehaunt cliffs. Some cleaning and dusting could make them really good metas that’d bring people.
Now for another issue you raise in your topic : players playing casual zombies joining a zerg to win. It’s been an issue for a long time in GW2, in PvE as in WvW. It has sometimes be adressed (champion train in Queensdale e.g.) but the safest way to avoid it is avoid the “just smash it” design. Unfortunately, ANet has been sticking to that design for ages. Avoiding it requires more elaborate mechanic, and I can empathize with players not wanting to learn them because it’d be too tiresome.
Yet, twisted marionette is one of my fondest memory.
Bottom line:
This is how Anet makes games, deal with it. Nothing will be changing anytime soon unless there’s enough grumbling in the community.
Think it’s safe to say that the reality of things.
And I agree, the marionette is one of my fondest memories too, course I’d say SW and any HoT map would be too if it was limited content.