Guild Wars 2

The new content teased today looks amazing and I cannot wait.

My biggest concern, however, is that the new encounter will follow the Tequatl model in requiring 80+ semi-coordinated players to down. The problem is, not everyone plays on the same server – and many servers just dont have the continual flow of people at these events.

This forces players to guest or join secondary guilds that ensure huge numbers of players on overflows. Both of these options take us away from the players we want to play alongside (most notably our guildmates). Additionally, it creates overflow issues on larger servers, meaning they cant play alongside their guildmates either.

I like the level of coordination required in these large fights, but would like to see it done in fights that can still be done by 20+ players (still requiring coordination).

They could still make them challenging and require communication/coordination. Its the number requirement that makes them unenjoyable on smaller servers. Not everyone plays on Blackgate.

(Tequatl should also scale down for smaller groups to alleviate this issue, imo)

I don’t see requiring allot of people to complete the event as something bad tbh. I’m on High server (I believe all NA servers have bigger pop, and most of the EU as well) and even we down him every couple of days. Some servers start fighting Teq before noon and continue doing it for the entire day.
However, I do hate the spawn window. I’m not a patient player and afk-ing for 1h is not worth it for me.

I feel the need to support this topic.

Playing on a “lower population” server basically means the content is not obtainable. There’s still to this day, servers who have never defeated Teq under their own strength.

Not being able to queue a map to full capacity shouldn’t be the defining limit on defeating a world boss. The vast majority of these players on the servers will just guest to one of the “big guy” servers furthering the over crowding on those servers. I know this to be fact, cause it is what I, and my friends do. Sometimes enduring mind numbing hour long “zone camping” to ensure a shot at a boss before the zone overflows.

I’m optimistic some lessons have been learned since Teq was introduced, but the fact Teq still hasn’t been rebalanced to be achievable by a reasonable force even after all this time… meh.

Well, I’m sure I can accomplish my goals by guesting again, so sorry to anyone on Blackgate that can’t even get into the zone on your home server.

Freeelancer.2860:

Some servers start fighting Teq before noon and continue doing it for the entire day.

Do they? Which ones? My server never seems to try and the slayer guild that I joined stopped trying to organise it about a week or two after we killed him the first time.

Prediction for 80+ player content, if in fact that’s what this will be:

1. The mechanics will not involve turrets that are susceptible to AFK griefing
2. The overflow problems from the Teq debut will still be present
3. The first couple of days, every server will be all over it
4. Some will say, “Too hard.” while others say, “Too easy.” but there will be few if any comments of “Just right.”
5. Once the Achievements have been … achieved, people will complain the rewards aren’t good enough
6. Attendance will fall off
7. Those who come late to the party on most servers will be kool (kitten out of luck)
8. Active Teq alliances in EU and NA will add this to their routine, and say that everything’s fine because “We’re doing it in overflows.”
9. People on the big pop servers will complain that too many people are guesting
10. If the content is permanent, those in favor will exaggerate the numbers doing it, while those opposed will insist no one does it

Disclaimer: apologies in advance, I had a helping of cynical for breakfast

IndigoSundown.5419:

I had a helping of cynical for breakfast

To be honest, I think someone switched your “Cynical Flakes” for a big bowl of “Realistix”

If you look at the actual mechanics of Tequatl, they shouldn’t really require large numbers. Six people on turrets, a few defending and the rest hitting the boss. The number requirement is based around two things – the boss’s health pool and the number of adds attacking turrets, both of which should be easy to scale down.

I don’t see why the event cannot scale down for smaller groups – say 30 (six on turrets, 3 defending each turret and the rest dpsing the boss). The 80+ requirement is arbitrary (primarily based on boss health pool and number of adds attacking turrets) to make the fight artificially feel more epic.

Scaling from 30 up instead of 80 up (but still require coordination) would alleviate concerns, allow guilds to more easily organize (making for a great guild “raid” event) and, potentially, stop everyone from bandwagoning/relying on overflows to down these kind of fights. The fight would still feel the same with those huge groups, but now the content would be more accesible (yet still challenging) for guild raid sized groups.

I understand this isn’t an issue on higher populated servers – that is part of the problem. There shouldn’t be such a huge disparity based on the server you choose. Just as importantly, requiring such large numbers almost guarantees overflows, meaning that guilds are probably not going to be able to play together for these events. Additionally, scaling lower would give the events a longer lifecycle on every server.

The idea and intent with Tequatl was good – and definitely a step in the right direction. It needs to be polished though – with a mind toward ALL players – not just those on T1 servers.

I really hope these are things the devs thought about in designing the new encounter.

I agree completely with Blaeys.

Blaeys.3102:

If you look at the actual mechanics of Tequatl, they shouldn’t really require large numbers. Six people on turrets, a few defending and the rest hitting the boss. The number requirement is based around two things – the boss’s health pool and the number of adds attacking turrets, both of which should be easy to scale down.

This is actually part of the weirdness in the fight and why a lot of servers fail. The turret events do scale and become unmanageable quickly. Successful raids will limit the number of players near the turrets to keep the scaling low enough to ensure the gunners don’t get spammed with insta-death AoE from scaled up grubs.

I can’t fathom all of the limits of the game engine, but when I see mechanics like that, where players need to “game the system” to have success, I think there’s some very concerning issues with any events of this type.

Scaling mechanics in general still seen off in many areas of the game. I’m not sure how much work adjusting the values would take on a core game mechanic like event scaling, but it seems like it deserves a bit of review again.

Pifil.5193:

Do they? Which ones? My server never seems to try and the slayer guild that I joined stopped trying to organise it about a week or two after we killed him the first time.

I think Baruch Bay and Desolation maybe ? I’m not that big into PvE, so sorry for not providing more info.
I do however know that there’s a Teq kill squad on NA numbering around 10 full guilds and a similar alliance on EU servers with several guilds as well. AFAIK you can join NA alliance through forums and EU from reddit.

I hope it’s hard, maybe not Tequatl hard but much more difficult than the current world events (Belth. might be the exception but it’s only a challenge because of a few bugs). There are many mechanics that can be changed to make the event more enjoyable and less of a hassle but I don’t see how you could make a balanced Open World boss that can be downed with only 20 people.

Some of the temples might be difficult with 20 or less people. But even on low pop servers I see them getting zerged, especially around prime time. In fact I can pretty much AFK all World Boss events and only have to TAB back for Lysaa, the Fire Elemental, and Flame Legion boss. On the high pop servers I can do this almost all the time.

This is an amazingly accurate prediction

IndigoSundown.5419:

Prediction for 80+ player content, if in fact that’s what this will be:

1. The mechanics will not involve turrets that are susceptible to AFK griefing
2. The overflow problems from the Teq debut will still be present
3. The first couple of days, every server will be all over it
4. Some will say, “Too hard.” while others say, “Too easy.” but there will be few if any comments of “Just right.”
5. Once the Achievements have been … achieved, people will complain the rewards aren’t good enough
6. Attendance will fall off
7. Those who come late to the party on most servers will be kool (kitten out of luck)
8. Active Teq alliances in EU and NA will add this to their routine, and say that everything’s fine because “We’re doing it in overflows.”
9. People on the big pop servers will complain that too many people are guesting
10. If the content is permanent, those in favor will exaggerate the numbers doing it, while those opposed will insist no one does it

Disclaimer: apologies in advance, I had a helping of cynical for breakfast

Freeelancer.2860:

I don’t see requiring allot of people to complete the event as something bad tbh. I’m on High server (I believe all NA servers have bigger pop, and most of the EU as well) and even we down him every couple of days. Some servers start fighting Teq before noon and continue doing it for the entire day.
However, I do hate the spawn window. I’m not a patient player and afk-ing for 1h is not worth it for me.

Go guest to Anvil Rock. The maps are usually close to deserted. Even LA at reset was almost empty. I always go there when trying to do something where people are getting in my way.

Well, I went from my example where it’s “doable” on a server that’s probably in the bottom third population wise. But as someone said, mechanics wise the required number could be reduced to give a bit more incentive for lower pop servers to do it.

However, if LA is empty on reset I doubt that even doubling down on required personnel would do much good to AR.

I know from guild activities and temple/karka queen runs that my server (in the lower 1/3) can get 30+ organized (or at least semi-organized) people together often enough to make it possible/fun.

Eighty is definitely beyond our reach 99 out of 100 nights, though.

This is something that desperately needs to be addressed before they add any new fights using the current Tequatl model (in terms of scale/number requirements) into the game. I worry that design decisions for these fights are being made solely using numbers from the top tier servers – and that guesting is used as the reason for disregarding the rest.

Earlywood.7438:

This is an amazingly accurate prediction

IndigoSundown.5419:

Prediction for 80+ player content, if in fact that’s what this will be:

1. The mechanics will not involve turrets that are susceptible to AFK griefing
2. The overflow problems from the Teq debut will still be present
3. The first couple of days, every server will be all over it
4. Some will say, “Too hard.” while others say, “Too easy.” but there will be few if any comments of “Just right.”
5. Once the Achievements have been … achieved, people will complain the rewards aren’t good enough
6. Attendance will fall off
7. Those who come late to the party on most servers will be kool (kitten out of luck)
8. Active Teq alliances in EU and NA will add this to their routine, and say that everything’s fine because “We’re doing it in overflows.”
9. People on the big pop servers will complain that too many people are guesting
10. If the content is permanent, those in favor will exaggerate the numbers doing it, while those opposed will insist no one does it

Disclaimer: apologies in advance, I had a helping of cynical for breakfast

Yea an amazing post.

I actually enjoyed New Tequatl. Felt more engaging than other world bosses like maw where you just stand there and auto attack it to death, or worse (pre-update) you blink and it dies.

Though I wish there was somehow a more epic consequence of failing or not attempting to down the dragon besides loss waypoint, champion spawning, certain events popping up.

That massive wave tequatl does was awesome when i saw it (once and only once), truly makes it a great consequence, but it seems hard enough to even get to since you have to get to the battery phase and fail the battery phase.

Maybe we’ll get an April Fool’s joke where something EPIC is supposed to spawn, a giant killer rabbit (arenanet seems to like rabbits). and everyone needs to participate or it’ll just wipe everyone on the map. XD

- no complaints about rewards. 25-40 dragonite ores, 1g, 4 chests, random crap to sell, it’s all good to me. and i fight him twice a day (at 3pm pst and 5pm pst), have two different characters at sparkfly so i change between them every otherday for maximum reward.