Guild Wars 2

EDIT:
This is meant to be feedback, I think I could’ve made that clearer in the title.

Onwards:
I love Dragon’s Stand. I spend a lot of time in this zone merely playing the game and not even bothering with the loot, on a bad day I can just drop everything I am doing and zone out for a bit, and enjoy myself some Dragon’s Stand. I get three flavors of events and bosses to choose from, and occasionally I mix the three for good measure.

There’s a lot I like about this event. Could things be better? Definitely, but it’s still good… Aside from one glaring encounter: The Mouth of Mordremoth.

Holy… This encounter, is so monotonous and boring I cannot even… Everything leading up to it is a series of rough encounters and somewhat interesting events, but then the Mordremoth fight itself happens, and then people are left doing jack for most of it.

At that point you have 9 islands to defend, but you are encouraged to spread out among the islands to ensure none of the islands get destroyed by the various hazards that MAY or MAY NOT show up on a given island, so if the island you have decided to protect isn’t the chosen one, you are left twiddling your thumbs while waiting for a luck-of-the-draw visit from Mordremoth or some other hazard, and hopefully he’ll be bashing his head against the surface of the island so that people actually wake up.. If he’s just going to barf or yell at you, people aren’t likely to be any more awake than they were before.

No wonder people AFK at this event, there’s nothing to do for most of it. You sit there on your island, watching Mordremoth bash his head against the rock-surface or yelling at people at some far off island in the distance, even if you wanted to go over there and bash his face in, chances are he’ll be gone by the time you get there. Then the bomb phase happens and you get that bar down, afterwards you repeat the boredom.

Who in their right mind thought defending 9 islands where only 2 of those islands get attacked at one time was a good idea? If you’re going to have a bunch of islands for people to defend, ensure that they always have something to prevent them from falling asleep.

I hope they learned from this fight, and utilize that knowledge to create a more interesting dragon encounter in the next expansion, because the Mouth of Mordremoth is about as intimidating and exciting as a drawn out yaaaaawn.

I usually take 3 islands and bounce back and forth between them. I never just stay on one island, so I’m almost always doing something.

Standing on one island is a waste. If you have a small circle of islands you can easily get back to an island to do stuff when it’s up.

If the aim of this event was to defend each island then the players would be teleported to each island which would be its own small instance and do events and boss fights.The fact that theres a tone of leylines as well as updrafts scatered around the place implies something.

Also i havent done it in a while but i dont recall a change to it, from what i remember there were kind of always small events going on on each island with flowers that need to be killed or adds.

Me, by the time I get to the islands, I appreciate a few quiet moments to clear inventory, chat with guildies, etc. Not that I afk a lot, I do bounce around my preferred trio of islands, help explain things in Map if new folks have questions, join the bombing run(s), and such like. But the decompression time between the constant motion of the blighting towers and the mad rush to mushrooms and noxious pods is valuable to me.

Also, I don’t feel bored. Even now that I know what’s going on and how to track where I need to be, to me the fight still feels big and epic. Not immersively dangerous, no, but still fun to participate in.

@Donari

It’s not supposed to be a downtime moment for you to explain things and manage your inventory, it’s supposed to be a dangerous and hectic encounter with a dragon that has caused the entire world trouble for months.

You are supposed to be on edge for the entirety of it, fighting against the threat of Mordremoth for REAL, and you’re really just proving my point. He’s not a threat for most of it, not when players are given time to make camp, manage through inventory and discuss todays weather.

It’s ridiculous. People are bored out of their minds during these events.

It takes maybe 20 seconds to get to any island from one of the waypoints. If people need to AFK, they can do so at a waypoint and then join the fight when they’re ready.

Oh, it was plenty hectic at the start. I had to learn the rhythms and get ley gliding and settle on my Reaper as my HoT map alt before it got to the point of giving me a break like it does now. And when I say I manage inventory, I mean occasionally I have 30 free seconds to do a bit of that. If there’s any action on an island in my group, I go help. I also run to aid people knocked down by wyvern fire.

But after the long time zerging around the blighting tree pit, my hands can be pretty sore, my neck aching despite my ergonomic set up. And that in turn is after the long push to escort the Pact. Often I’m a north lane commander, so I have to pay extra attention and type information during all the action.

I really appreciate a breather that still offers plenty of things to do to help the map succeed.

Numbering the islands in something resembling a coherent order would be nice as well. And putting those numbers on the minimap.

Hmmm, I kinda of see what the op is getting at, there are a lot of moments where a lot of people are just having to wait around. But that said when the map actually works together I quite like the fight, as having each lane stick to their set of islands sort of gives a feeling that a whole army is coming together to take down Mordremoth.

In the parts where you’re waiting around (say your on south islands & Mordremoth is attacking top), I think maybe Anet were intending that to create a tense feeling while your wait (if not on running bombs) , as you watch the fight on the horizon hoping that squad does their job right, while being ready to defend your set of islands when the action switches to your area.

But you are right, it does seem most people seem to end up standing around going AFK, which annoys the hell out me! I get sometimes people might have to AFK for a short time for a reason, but the amount of people that doing in DS seem to be doing it because they can’t be bothered and don’t give a kitten. At the very least they could go AFK at a WP so people know how many in the arena are active on each island. And so randoms don’t waste time reviving them (but that’s a whole other issue, why people res dead people there to start with).

Maybe the islands not in action do need something more to try and stop that happening / liven things up to engage people more, perhaps small waves of enemies dropping in or something.

Or, actually maybe they could add a ‘tail’ section to Mordremoth which appears on one set of islands at the same time that the head is attacking. So that way all sets of islands would be involved, so for example head attacks top set, top islands attack head, bombs appear on mid, mid run bombs, tail piece appears on bot, bot can attack tail to help with dps.

The mechanics and rest of the battle could work as they do now, but the extra ‘tail’ part could just be an additional way to damage Mordremoth. Mordremoth’s health would probably need adjusting or balancing for it, but I’m sure something like this could work.

TwiceDead.1963:

EDIT:
This is meant to be feedback, I think I could’ve made that clearer in the title.
Onwards:
I love Dragon’s Stand. I spend a lot of time in this zone merely playing the game and not even bothering with the loot, on a bad day I can just drop everything I am doing and zone out for a bit, and enjoy myself some Dragon’s Stand. I get three flavors of events and bosses to choose from, and occasionally I mix the three for good measure.

Dragon Stand is a state-of-the-art map in terms of aesthetics and “atmosphere”. I’m an old guy, and I’ve never seen such an engaging map. The first time I was there, the music, the colors and the shapes gave me shivers.