Guild Wars 2

Marionette and challenging are contradictory. But judging by people’s post here I say it’s probably a reason we won’t have anything to challenge better players than your average zerger.

maddoctor.2738:

Windsagio.1340:

You can see their experiments in fixing the ‘other platform loses’ issue with vinewrath, where it rotates down if you lose, but is on a timer.

That’s an interesting proof of concept at the very least.

“That’s why those portions of the fights should be doable only by pre-made guild teams.” is absolutely not going to happen for multiple reasons, let’s just get that out of our heads right now.

Why isn’t it going to happen? Just how the Guild Challenge Blightwater Shatterstrike works and only allows guild members to use the bazookas, guilds could have a “Guild Boss” or similar mission that makes the World Bosses behave differently for them. Random players can still join in and play the fight as usual, but Guild Members will need to do something extra. I already posted examples of how to tweak current fights to work with this system.

Can you explain why this isn’t going to work? What are those “multiple reasons”?

On a public boss it certainly wont’ happen, it’s against their design as expressed in the game.

On a public event:
It’s inherently and visibly exclusive
It’s logistically nightmarish, possibly impossible

both of these can be split into a few bullet points if you want, I’m being broad strokes here.

~~~~

The only way it could work is the way you described, which is essentially a publicly visible raid, but with much greater development investment. It would essentially be a raid instance, and I think arenanet’s been pretty clear on that.

rotten.9753:

Marionette and challenging are contradictory. But judging by people’s post here I say it’s probably a reason we won’t have anything to challenge better players than your average zerger.

To repeat; the trick with marionette is that it was only up for a few weeks. If it had been ongoing it would be below-farm status by now.

People remmeber it being hard because most of the time it was up it was not yet learned.

Windsagio.1340:

To repeat; the trick with marionette is that it was only up for a few weeks. If it had been ongoing it would be below-farm status by now.

To be fair that is true for every single bit of content ever released ever in any game.

Sooner or later even something that is supermegaultra challenging will become a farm, when people learn exactly how to do it.

Windsagio.1340:

maddoctor.2738:

Windsagio.1340:

You can see their experiments in fixing the ‘other platform loses’ issue with vinewrath, where it rotates down if you lose, but is on a timer.

That’s an interesting proof of concept at the very least.

“That’s why those portions of the fights should be doable only by pre-made guild teams.” is absolutely not going to happen for multiple reasons, let’s just get that out of our heads right now.

Why isn’t it going to happen? Just how the Guild Challenge Blightwater Shatterstrike works and only allows guild members to use the bazookas, guilds could have a “Guild Boss” or similar mission that makes the World Bosses behave differently for them. Random players can still join in and play the fight as usual, but Guild Members will need to do something extra. I already posted examples of how to tweak current fights to work with this system.

Can you explain why this isn’t going to work? What are those “multiple reasons”?

On a public boss it certainly wont’ happen, it’s against their design as expressed in the game.

On a public event:
It’s inherently and visibly exclusive
It’s logistically nightmarish, possibly impossible

both of these can be split into a few bullet points if you want, I’m being broad strokes here.

~~~~

The only way it could work is the way you described, which is essentially a publicly visible raid, but with much greater development investment. It would essentially be a raid instance, and I think arenanet’s been pretty clear on that.

It can’t work for regular bosses for sure because there is no way to identify who qualifies for the “harder” part and who is not. However doing them like guild missions is already being done, doable by everyone but only guild mates have access to certain parts of the content.

Arenanet hired a raid designer, so if we assume that they do not want in any way or form instanced raids (which is very possible) my “solution” could work much better than adding new open world content. It doesn’t matter at all what mechanics it will have and how it will be designed, if it’s free for all it won’t be challenging.

“Open world” and “challenge” do not mix well, so if they refuse to do instanced raids, what’s their other option to bring challenging content to the game?

Csele.1647:

1 new class (no dps class useless?)

They haven’t finished revealing all the parts of the Revenant yet.

The rest I’m not going to comment on since we don’t fully know what it all entails.

Csele.1647:

1. no fractals
2. no pvp maps
3. no “real challenging stuff”
4. no dungeons

1. Source? I’d be surprised if we didn’t get any new Fractals, since there’s a Fractal Mastery track.

2. Stronghold was a PvP map the last time I looked.

3 + 4. Source?

TheDaiBish.9735:

Csele.1647:

1 new class (no dps class useless?)

They haven’t finished revealing all the parts of the Revenant yet.

The rest I’m not going to comment on since we don’t fully know what it all entails.

Csele.1647:

1. no fractals
2. no pvp maps
3. no “real challenging stuff”
4. no dungeons

1. Source? I’d be surprised if we didn’t get any new Fractals, since there’s a Fractal Mastery track.

2. Stronghold was a PvP map the last time I looked.

3 + 4. Source?

oops i moved my post

I’m sure they will release more fractals , but not with the expansion apparently
about stronghold yea you are right my bad there still wont make any difference.

3-4 as i said “it looks like” isnt confirmed.. but what are the odds they release dungeons or real challenging stuff (not open world bosses) that isn’t challenging stuff , unless you are 3 or 4 years old

Csele.1647:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Csele.1647:

1 new class (no dps class useless?)

They haven’t finished revealing all the parts of the Revenant yet.

The rest I’m not going to comment on since we don’t fully know what it all entails.

Csele.1647:

1. no fractals
2. no pvp maps
3. no “real challenging stuff”
4. no dungeons

1. Source? I’d be surprised if we didn’t get any new Fractals, since there’s a Fractal Mastery track.

2. Stronghold was a PvP map the last time I looked.

3 + 4. Source?

oops i moved my post

I’m sure they will release more fractals , but not with the expansion apparently
about stronghold yea you are right my bad there still wont make any difference.

3-4 as i said “it looks like” isnt confirmed.. but what are the odds they release dungeons or real challenging stuff (not open world bosses) that isn’t challenging stuff , unless you are 3 or 4 years old

Again, why is it ‘apparent’ that they won’t release Fractals with the expac? Where’s your source for this?

And at no point in your post did you make out it was speculation, which is why I was asking for sources (There have been a few times where I’ve missed bits of information, which is why I tend to ask for sources for things I haven’t heard about).

As for ‘challenging’, challenging is a wholly subjective thing.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Again, why is it ‘apparent’ that they won’t release Fractals with the expac? Where’s your source for this?

Because they haven’t mentioned them. If there were any new fractals they would mentioned them.

rotten.9753:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Again, why is it ‘apparent’ that they won’t release Fractals with the expac? Where’s your source for this?

Because they haven’t mentioned them. If there were any new fractals they would mentioned them.

They’ve also said that they haven’t discussed any of the ‘challenging group content’ yet – Whyvern doesn’t count, apparently.

TheDaiBish.9735:

They’ve also said that they haven’t discussed any of the ‘challenging group content’ yet – Whyvern doesn’t count, apparently.

Discussing new content vs saying “yes, there will be new fractals”.

rotten.9753:

TheDaiBish.9735:

They’ve also said that they haven’t discussed any of the ‘challenging group content’ yet – Whyvern doesn’t count, apparently.

Discussing new content vs saying “yes, there will be new fractals”.

Your point?

Last time I looked, Fractals were ‘group content’.

The point is if you choose to assume the worst on every possible point of ambiguity on what the expansion will entail, yeah it looks pretty bad.

TheDraco.3965:

phys.7689:

TheDraco.3965:

This talk about the marionette is a perfect example of the point I made in the original post. You cannot have meaningful group content in the open world if your success is dependent on people you cant even reasonably communicate with.

yes you can, you just are going to have to have people accept that they are a group, and that means if a enough people play poorly, they will lose.

i lost a lot of marrionettes, and i won some.
The difference was that people played better, thats a good reason to succeed imo.

people will not learn how to read chat/communicate/learn the game, if they never have to.

I played games where world bosses would wipe people who didnt play right, i dont know why thats such a crazy concept in this game.

You are outlining the problem here and propping it up like its a good thing. When you have an abundance of players who never have to communicate with you and you fail solely because of those people that’s BAD design.

When you have a small number of people that you can actually talk too, strategize, improve play with, where the victory is more within your control rather than blindly on random people that’s GOOD design.

They have world bossed which required like 40-60 people, that’s not to different than organizing 80-100.

It can be done, tequatl and wurm, while not personally interesting, have people doing it who learned how to play it.

People will learn to play when there is an incentive to do so. Even large groups, it happens here, and in every other game.

The difference between marrionette and teq/wurm is that it is more entertaining while learning, with more personal skill and less simulation level organiZation.

phys.7689:

TheDraco.3965:

phys.7689:

TheDraco.3965:

This talk about the marionette is a perfect example of the point I made in the original post. You cannot have meaningful group content in the open world if your success is dependent on people you cant even reasonably communicate with.

yes you can, you just are going to have to have people accept that they are a group, and that means if a enough people play poorly, they will lose.

i lost a lot of marrionettes, and i won some.
The difference was that people played better, thats a good reason to succeed imo.

people will not learn how to read chat/communicate/learn the game, if they never have to.

I played games where world bosses would wipe people who didnt play right, i dont know why thats such a crazy concept in this game.

You are outlining the problem here and propping it up like its a good thing. When you have an abundance of players who never have to communicate with you and you fail solely because of those people that’s BAD design.

When you have a small number of people that you can actually talk too, strategize, improve play with, where the victory is more within your control rather than blindly on random people that’s GOOD design.

They have world bossed which required like 40-60 people, that’s not to different than organizing 80-100.

It can be done, tequatl and wurm, while not personally interesting, have people doing it who learned how to play it.

People will learn to play when there is an incentive to do so. Even large groups, it happens here, and in every other game.

The difference between marrionette and teq/wurm is that it is more entertaining while learning, with more personal skill and less simulation level organiZation.

Other games have proven this wrong. Ill use the textbook example of WoW 40 man raids. The content was very challenging and had a very very low percent of success based solely on the fact that getting 40 people on the same page is too much. The 40 man raid was abandoned very quickly because they acknowledged this is terribly toxic design for the people who look for challenging content.

What a lot of people want (my guild especially [Att]) is something challenging they can do together as a cohesive community. We want to feel like a team when we take down a boss. It doesn’t have to be open world, but if it is, then we want to be able to engage that boss as a coordinated group, not a random congregation of random people from the megaserver.

And this isn’t about excluding outsiders. Anyone can join [Att] to take down the wurm with us, as long as they get on teamspeak and listen to commanders.

On top of that we want more challenge to validate the effort it takes to coordinate 100+ people for one event. Wurm is great, but the next best thing (Tequatl) is too easy and we only do it right after wurm as a habit. Nothing else in the game is worth organizing for besides guild missions which are a completely different experience.

The wyvern honestly doesn’t look like something that would fit this bill. The platform is kind of small, and it’s been demonstrated with only smaller groups fighting it. It looks great as an open world boss, but not as the challenging raid content we want.

Xenon.4537:

What a lot of people want (my guild especially [Att]) is something challenging they can do together as a cohesive community. We want to feel like a team when we take down a boss. It doesn’t have to be open world, but if it is, then we want to be able to engage that boss as a coordinated group, not a random congregation of random people from the megaserver.

And this isn’t about excluding outsiders. Anyone can join [Att] to take down the wurm with us, as long as they get on teamspeak and listen to commanders.

On top of that we want more challenge to validate the effort it takes to coordinate 100+ people for one event. Wurm is great, but the next best thing (Tequatl) is too easy and we only do it right after wurm as a habit. Nothing else in the game is worth organizing for besides guild missions which are a completely different experience.

The wyvern honestly doesn’t look like something that would fit this bill. The platform is kind of small, and it’s been demonstrated with only smaller groups fighting it. It looks great as an open world boss, but not as the challenging raid content we want.

If you don’t want outsiders, you don’t want open world.
This discussion is about open world, not saying they shouldn’t discuss instanced content, but that’s a dif discussion

phys.7689:

Xenon.4537:

What a lot of people want (my guild especially [Att]) is something challenging they can do together as a cohesive community. We want to feel like a team when we take down a boss. It doesn’t have to be open world, but if it is, then we want to be able to engage that boss as a coordinated group, not a random congregation of random people from the megaserver.

And this isn’t about excluding outsiders. Anyone can join [Att] to take down the wurm with us, as long as they get on teamspeak and listen to commanders.

On top of that we want more challenge to validate the effort it takes to coordinate 100+ people for one event. Wurm is great, but the next best thing (Tequatl) is too easy and we only do it right after wurm as a habit. Nothing else in the game is worth organizing for besides guild missions which are a completely different experience.

The wyvern honestly doesn’t look like something that would fit this bill. The platform is kind of small, and it’s been demonstrated with only smaller groups fighting it. It looks great as an open world boss, but not as the challenging raid content we want.

If you don’t want outsiders, you don’t want open world.
This discussion is about open world, not saying they shouldn’t discuss instanced content, but that’s a dif discussion

Hey, I said it right there in my post lol. We don’t exclude outsiders and we aren’t trying to be this elitist cult of a guild who wants exclusive raiding. We just want some challenging pve content we can form a community around, and the only thing in the game so far that satisfies this is triple wurm. And from what we can tell about the wyvern, it’s not the type of boss we are looking for.

TheDraco.3965:

Its not reasonable to expect accountability from dozens of players that don’t have the same investment as you.

You’re playing an MMO, not a members-only private server dungeon romp. The focus of new content should be geared towards the masses with challenging group content to mirror Vinewraith, Marionette etc.

Tequatl should also be looked at as a great example of map-wide coordination done right to achieve a lofty reward. I’d love to see an event or two like this in HoT.

Even world bosses like tequatl or the wurm are not exactly hard or challenging. The only “challenge” being organisation and to find a few people for the specific key roles in both encounters (turreteers on tequatl for example). Everybody else is literally just a dps-monkey. Sorry, but that’s just how it is.
The encounters themselves are not – by any stretch of imagination – hard or challenging.

It just takes some time (less for tequatl, more for the wurm) to organise the necessary groups. That’s not good open world game design. Not to mention the dumb “jump” mechanics employed by the wurm slaying TS communities or guilds.

Open world should remain what it is, a playground for semi-afk dragonslayer heroes and challenging content should move to instances. It won’t because anet has their own ideas but it should.

I’ll say this of VW and Teq: the strats are out there for both, yet both still fail. I’ve actually only been in on one fail Teq, an zero actual VW fails, but both happen, VW more often because of the smaller cap limit for players in the area. Part of it is that VW adds, elites, and champs are all at level 80 and there’s more accountability.

If a few players pop all the bubbles on silver and gold when the champs aren’t on them and there aren’t enough people down there to make up for the loss, it fails. If there aren’t enough reflects in mid or people don’t pop pustules, if people don’t use the flowers, etc, then failure can still be rampant. The level 80 areas see the biggest influxes of new players, with no over-leveled players in abundance to carry them the way it can be done in some other locations.

The funny thing is that a lot of players complain about content being too easy, then scream there heads off when new players make it more challenging. The only time that I feel like I’m really doing something other than rote playing is when I’m having to make up for other players who aren’t picking up on what needs to be done.

As to those who say content can’t remain challenging over time, that’s not entirely true. EAWare screwed up a LOT of things in SWTOR, but Hard Mode and Nightmare encounters such as Operator IX, Nightmare Brontes, Bestia, Tyrans, and the Dread Council—look them up if you like—are well designed in that it does not matter how over-geared you are, there are mechanics that will one-shot you or make the bosses unable to be killed if conditions are not met. I’m honestly not sure how the initial damage will hold up as they coded it so that once you’re a certain number of levels above NPCs they can’t break your armor class, but the mechanics are still one-shots that ignore your gear, total health pool, etc.

That said, I’m not sure where the line should be for an MMO like this when it comes to making open-world events. I do know that I see few to no posts in most threads asking for Fractal-level difficulty, where one-shots can result from improper play or missing a dodge. It really comes down to the fact that outside of the possibility of having your face taken off from one wrong move in the fight, all encounters will eventually get to the point that they’re borderline guaranteed successes for experienced players once they’ve been out long enough.

spoj.9672:

I just remembered the one where you lured it into the mines. Thats the only one you might have a point on.

Yeah, that’s the one i had primarily in mind.

spoj.9672:

However the damage requirement to kill it was really low. So even when a total idiot was kiting it was still possible to succeed and carry the platform.

only if someone led it into mines at least accidentally, instead of, for example, just running in circles in front of the boss until the timer went down. I have seen that happen. Just as i have seen the first champ being facetanked and pushed to the platform wall, where it was all but impossible to hit him from behind. Just as i have seen champion 5 (the one that divided into smaller versions after being killed) getting feared over and over, scattering the mobs all over platform (where you had to kill them seperately, most likely running out of time before finishing). The last one could be managed somehow, with good pulls and high dps of other players, but the first two ones usually couldn’t, as the mobs were not so eager to change aggro.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Your point?

Last time I looked, Fractals were ‘group content’.

My point is that they are expected to discuss this mysterious challenging group content and a new set of fractals doesn’t need a discussion. Hence, there will be no new fractals but rather a content localised in the jungle. Maybe something to do with guild halls?

Vix.6730:

You’re playing an MMO, not a members-only private server dungeon romp. The focus of new content should be geared towards the masses with challenging group content to mirror Vinewraith, Marionette etc.

Tequatl should also be looked at as a great example of map-wide coordination done right to achieve a lofty reward. I’d love to see an event or two like this in HoT.

Ever heard of Gaussian distribution? Of course the average players make up the highest amount of players but that doesn’t mean anyone better than average should be abandoned. That would only results in those players leaving your game and the distribution to change which consequentially would lead to a new content being even easier.

Marionette was one of the only PvE things I’ve done in this game since playing at week one. And I really enjoyed it. It was fun getting on TeamSpeak and actually trying with people and failing sometimes. I would play more PvE content like that instead of waypointing around collecting chests.

Vix.6730:

TheDraco.3965:

Its not reasonable to expect accountability from dozens of players that don’t have the same investment as you.

You’re playing an MMO, not a members-only private server dungeon romp. The focus of new content should be geared towards the masses with challenging group content to mirror Vinewraith, Marionette etc.

Tequatl should also be looked at as a great example of map-wide coordination done right to achieve a lofty reward. I’d love to see an event or two like this in HoT.

Open world events simply fail to engage all participating players. For this reason alone open world will never be challenging., it’s only a matter of numbers, having just enough good players to defeat the content, and players following competent commanders.

A good challenge comes only if the content is challenging for everyone and a small amount of players (or even one?) underperforming can lead to a defeat, while a few players playing above and beyond “good” can lead to a victory. Those both can’t be applied to full open world, anyone can join at any time, content.