Guild Wars 2

World Bosses and Their Effect on Guild Wars 2

So the purpose of this thread would be to give some of my reasons as to why world bosses of the larger / harder variety would be great for the general player base and the game as a whole. I warn you … it’s a long thread … so I hope you’ve got 10 minutes.

What Kind of World Boss Are We Talking About?

A world boss, for the rest of this thread, should be seen as something that needs the following or at least some variant of it:
1) A large amount of people 50-150 ish
2) A decent amount of player interaction.
3) A decent amount of player communication
4) A decent reason to play the content (this is a minor point, but loot should be fairly decent to keep players coming back)
5) An ability to have variants in how people play. Including roles and player capabilities.
From the above pre conditions only two current bosses in GW2 function at a level which I consider to be a world boss. Tequatl and Triple Trouble Wurm. Gerent did fall into this section but nerfs happened.

Why Are World Bosses Like This A Benefit To The Game?

Put simply, they quickly become a source for the GW2 community to rally behind. It could be argued that Raids have been seen as something of the same. Due to their difficulty, enjoyment, upkeep, loot and community surrounding it they make players come back again and again. The raid community has become something of a staple for GW2. World bosses used to be somewhat the same. They’ve died out as of late for the most part due to their lack of the requirements listed above. Difficulty and upkeep being the two main areas they are now failing in.

You may notice I’ve compared World Bosses to raids even though they are nothing alike. Raids are hated by many of the community as a whole for their difficulty. This in as (for many) they fail at one of the important points which make World Bosses essential in my opinion; variants of play styles and their ability to incorporate new and learning players. Raids, to an extent, require players to already be good at the game … World Bosses never needed this … even on their release. Sure they were hard, but the few could “carry” the many. Stopping one of the areas raids fail down in. Splitting the community based on player ability.
As World Bosses can be killed by large amounts of people … individual player ability is less of a requirement, encouraging new players to find their place.
In short, World Bosses fit a key role in the game; they allow everyone to find a role and enjoy challenging content.
Furthermore, World Bosses can still be seen as “large” raids; Allowing for communities of far greater size to form. I mentioned the raid community earlier, suggesting it was one of the strengths of raids. This IS true … but, for the most part, this is a community of people who do not really know each other. Both Triple Trouble Wurm and Tequatl both saw huge communities made around them. Speaking only for the EU server here, we’ve seen communities like GW2Community, arguably the largest community in this game, and PSDH expand and focus purely from these events, going on to even host events such as Pink Day in LA.

I’d ask most of the people reading this, that have played for many years in PvE, if they’ve heard or played with one of those communities? If the answer is no, you’re likely a solo player with map chat off
To conclude the point, without these kinda bosses, the biggest communities of people would have likely never formed.

Where Did It All Go Wrong?
Well for start, upkeep. I think we can all agree that the game has had some serious power creep. ArenaNet tried to combat this with the world bosses via doubling their HP (a flat double). This was the ONLY increase in the events difficulty ArenaNet tried to do on them. In reality, this didn’t even put them back to their state BEFORE this happened; Doubling their HP didn’t allow for the fact that a CRIT in GW2 isn’t X2 damage. (Ferocity on most builds makes it much more).
Therefore, upkeep of the events, or lack thereof, caused the events to slowly get easier and easier. The Guild Wars 2 community has shown, via raids, that they like a challenge. This “nerf” removed any challenge these bosses once had. Tequatl became close to nearly all other world bosses in the game … a zerg fest, while Triple Trouble Wurm struggled to hold onto the title of being “challenging”. As long as people know how to spam their auto attack and do the event’s specific mechanics it’s very easy these days.
As a side note, when the Heart of Thorns World Boss Chak Gerent came out … it seemed to put a bit of life into this area of the game. It was hard … very hard. Sadly, while to many this was a great new challenge … an event that wasn’t “go here press 1”, ArenaNet nerfed it shortly after its release. Now, this was indeed a fairly buggy fight … but the difficulty was a nice refreshment and it could have easily been the Heart of Thorns World Boss that tied this community over until ArenaNet had time to look at making something truly worthy to replace the likes of the Triple Trouble Wurm.

Why Is This A Problem?
At this point I think it would be a good idea to clarify. I’m not some super elitist player sitting on my pedestal saying “all GW2 events are easy”. I love raids for what they are, challenging small group content for the more “able” of the GW2 community. I see the normal world bosses for what they are, farmable content for those with less time on their hands to commit to any gear or player improvement grinds that harder content requires.
Having said this, can you truly say you’re happy that 99% of the content in the open world is a zerg fest? “Press 1 on this … it will die”. I don’t see the issue with having specific events being harder than the norm. Even if ArenaNet feel they need to put a little Asura shouting: “Hey, this area isn’t safe! Turn back or be prepared to face a deadly challenge” for the area in which the bosses / events occur.

What Can ArenaNet Do To Combat This Issue?
The answer to this is fairly obvious … make new, challenging world bosses. The brilliant area of the new expansions maps that I can see is that they have massive amounts of space. This means they could easily create areas in a map designed for the purpose of a world boss or meta of the same sort. Unlike the older maps, these events wouldn’t need to be the focus of the map … they could simply be there for those who really want to get stuck in.

AreaNet have shown that they can create fun raid bosses … would it truly be hard to have a similar team creating encounters that are fairly like the bosses we see in raids? Sure not has hard, more geared to how Triple Trouble was designed; how I explained before. Hard enough to be a challenge, need community and some coordination … but not so hard that there is a barrier to entry.
Bounties are a perfect explain of how this could also be added. Are you telling me this: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/2/2c/Path_of_Fire_screenshot_10.jpg isn’t able to be scaled up to a huge size and made into a challenging boss? This way only players who want in would need to sign up for the event and go off to kill it.

Food For Thought.
I can see one of the many arguments against what I’ve said above being simple … raids are the hard content … most of the player base don’t want hard events popping out in the open world. My answer to this is simple, have the events BE easy on the open world … then allow them to be opened up by guilds or alike into a bounty specific instance of the map or area. Something like the following:
1) Guild creates a world spawning tool.
2) Guild uses this tool.
3) Instance is created.
4) Guild selects difficulty (yep think big)
5) The guild calls for people to join them, be it from their guild / community or an lfg system.
6) They fight the event on the level of difficulty selected (basically fractal / raid challenge mode).
7) Assuming they succeed, they get the normal loot + some kind of tiered bonus loot on difficulty.
This would create a much needed boost to what guilds in Guild Wars 2 actually do and fix many of the current issues for the world boss argument. Including that communities struggle to fill their maps with their own community people (as there isn’t a way to get everyone in one map easily) and it stops noobies coming into an area and going “wttthhhhhhh I just got 1 shot”.

Conclusion
Wo … you read all this? kitten . Thanks for taking the time. Please leave your opinion / suggestions to what I’ve said. Naturally, I’m going to have missed bits of the argument; both for and against challenging world bosses. Let me know if you agree with what I’ve debated. Most importantly, do you see this as being something that ArenaNet should seriously invest their time in. Do you agree it would be a great selling point of the game?

I think it’s fine that some world bosses are more “farmable”, if we just had more difficult ones like Triple Trouble. There are numerous, BIG and active communities built around this event. These communities have since grown to include other events in and out of GW2, but the fact that one event could found and motivate these communities is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. The amount of players that come together, every day, and come on teamspeak to do Triple Trouble together is enough to demand a new world boss. A world boss with same, or gladly harder, difficulty as Triple Trouble, that cannot just be killed by 50 silent players pressing 1 at the foot.

They will have world bosses in this new extension: During the trailer, don’t remember which one it was, you see a fight against Balthazar with a king of two gigantic canons spliting fire, don’t know if it’s an meta event or a real World Boss. But if they take the same model as HoT, one of the map have a meta event like Tarir and another a gigantic fight like mordremoth head fight.

hugo.4705:

don’t know if it’s an meta event or a real World Boss. But if they take the same model as HoT, one of the map have a meta event like Tarir and another a gigantic fight like mordremoth head fight.

But that was the point, “we” want new world bosses like TT or Teq(back when it was hard), not JUST another HoT META event map, they are good there is nothing wrong with them, but there is something about good old world bosses from vanilla GW2 (if they are challenging ofc) which spawns at certain time and you go and kill them

Cattastrophy.2874:

A world boss with same, or gladly harder, difficulty as Triple Trouble, that cannot just be killed by 50 silent players pressing 1 at the foot.

Triple Trouble is not hard. The only “hard” thing about Triple Trouble is the coordination of this event.

And it is not a good example of “open world” bosses, because a lot of work in organizing Triple Trouble is in finding an exclusive map for all the players without “randoms”, so the whole map is more like an instanced map and not an open world map.

Open world bosses/raids will always have to take into acount that there will be “randoms” and unskilled players on the map, so they can never really be true “challenging content” (for better players). There will always be players that are just pressing 1.

Thats why A-Net created instanced raids as the challenging PvE-content in this game.

So, maybe you want 20-player and 50-player instanced raids, that are easier than the actual 10-player raids?

I think world bosses are fine in their current state. The lower teirs are designed for players of lesser levels, traits, specs, experience, and gear. So they do need to be somewhat less than the end all be all. So for comparison I’ve seen wipes on world bosses when populations were way low even with HoT. Most require about ten or more players and that’s not terribly too far off, and they scale up as more players enter the fight so they aren’t too weak either. I’ve seen quite a few wipes on Teq even with 20-30 players. So as the level increases so does their difficulty, if anything I would like to see at least one per map this would allow players to face a short time world event instead of long drawn out meta that can consume a lot of time.

hugo.4705:

They will have world bosses in this new extension: During the trailer, don’t remember which one it was, you see a fight against Balthazar with a king of two gigantic canons spliting fire, don’t know if it’s an meta event or a real World Boss. But if they take the same model as HoT, one of the map have a meta event like Tarir and another a gigantic fight like mordremoth head fight.

They mentioned bosses. Might as well talkinga bout the bounty bosses. I for one wonan see a junundu and a hydra boss at least. And a margonite boss would be neat.