Guild Wars 2

Its a broken scaling system for sure. Fortunately it rarely becomes an issue, since a few extra minutes doesn’t really matter in your average event (and most events don’t quite seem to scale as severely as the pavilion bosses either). Unfortunately, a strictly-timed event like this brings all the problems with the scaling right into the spotlight.

And it doesn’t create a very friendly environment either, that’s for sure. I was in a server that was working on Gold runs earlier and luckily I was there from the start so I already had a group and a boss to fight, but I can imagine how disheartening it may have been for a newcomer to come in and see “All bosses full, no more people please” in map chat.

In that case: Come to any boss hit him 20 sec and go afk to waipoint or go to arena

This is not an example of bad design. It’s an example of a mechanic that isn’t as fine tuned as it could be.

Torsailr.8456:

It’s an example of a mechanic that isn’t as fine tuned as it could be.

That is pretty much the definition of bad games design in this context :P.

But yeah it’s not great. I thought that ANet would know that this sort of mass cooperation just doesn’t work. They’ve tried it multiple times now and it’s gone down badly every time; marionette, battle for LA, clockwork chaos.
It’s a shame because the content could work but with such high numbers of people unwilling or unsure of how to cooperate it’s always going to just be frustrating for those that want to engage with the mechanics.

One of the great things about GW2 is that when you see somebody in a fight you are very rarely unwelcome. The game has been very well tuned to make cooperation welcome in open world. This event breaks that principle, which is unfortunate.

A lot of what they are trying to do here is fine, and it’s an OK event on an organised map, especially if you are looking for a farm. It is just a badly flawed design as it has been implemented. I think putting up gates would be a far better mechanic than unnatural, counterintuitive upscaling. YMMV.

Problem is the scaling system. They don’t take into account that the more people there are, the more underlevels/semi-afk/afk people there are as well. So with 5 completely useful dedicated people it is a lot easier than with a zerg. That is fine, but the scaling should really take all those other factors in the consideration. Sadly, it doesn’t, and that leads to broken events like this one.

It’s like that to discourage zergs, just have to listen to map chat and find out which bosses need people; in all of the gold blitzes I’ve been in, there are always, always bosses that need more people, but there are people who just wander to whichever boss they’re comfortable with and ignore everything else.

Case in point:

Anton.1769:

In that case: Come to any boss hit him 20 sec and go afk to waipoint or go to arena

In the rare (and unlikely) case that all bosses are full, go to Pyroxis. When there’s a team of guardians and mesmers on him he always burns down too quickly, so he can actually take some extra upscaling.

The scaling really needs to be looked at. With a group of 5 players I’ve damaged these bosses faster than a group of 30+ can, and it only gets worse the more people show up.

Players shouldn’t be discouraged from joining in on a fight because it might take longer to kill the boss. That’s just messed up.

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

Who’s saying that events that mean “stop zerging” is bad design?

People are just saying that this particular event is bad design. And it is.

If you can play it for hours and never find out that you need to “stop zerging” unless you accidentally end up in a small group, because there is no guidance or even a clue that these bosses ‘overscale’ into the realm of the absurd, instead of just scaling like every boss we’ve ever seen since launch, something is simply wrong with the design. No two ways about it.

No one complained about the anti-zerg design of the marionette. That encounter had an intuitive flow to it, that the Boss Blitz is sorely missing.

Anyone that have given this event a try should be fully aware that when everyone blobs up it becomes more or less impossible.
And then most people should also be able to make the connection that breaking up into smaller groups makes it much easier and as such zerging is not the way to go.

Not to mention the fact that there is at least a few people in every single map that is fully aware about how non-zerging is the way to go and informs people about it in chat.

The issue isn’t the event, the issue is that people are unable to listen to simple instructions.

Scaling have been in the game since release, it is not something suddenly added to this specific event, so people should be at least somewhat aware of its existence.

Edit for edit:
Oh, there were loads of people complaining about the anti-zerg design of the marionette as well. Using the same arguments as you are using: “There were no guidance”.

If there are six bosses and a timer, how can people not understand that attacking the six bosses at the same time is the way to go?

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

You are thinking in black and white, as if there is no sweet spot. Every game developer should be capable of finding the sweet spot, especially in an mmo where a small mistake can make a big impact. There are no “bad designs”, only bad executions. To me it seems like this boss blitz mechanic does not provide enough to give a fair understanding of what has to to be done. If success in any kind of quest relies on the chat window, the game is not doing its job correctly. There are different ways to transport an information, for example when you look at liadri, it gets clear very fast, that those white undertows in the arena do not contribute anything witouth the interactions of you as a player – so you know YOU have to do something with it.
Boss blitz doesn’t explain anything. Even when you finally understand, that the scaling forces you to split, you don’t know how to react correctly. Which team should you support instead? Also there is no healthbar that shows you how low on health each boss is – so you HAVE to use the chat. So the problem is the lack of expression in this event and not the community.

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

Half of the playerbase like zerging. The other half hate it.
It’s hard to please both sides at the same time.

My bet? Just create raids like in that other game. Just don’t make it mandatory.

lordkrall.7241:

Anyone that have given this event a try should be fully aware that when everyone blobs up it becomes more or less impossible.

Scaling has always worked to keep the challenge equal regardless of the number of participants. That’s not happening here. Having played this game and being aware of how scaling works, there’s no reason to assume that fewer people will do better.

lordkrall.7241:

And then most people should also be able to make the connection that breaking up into smaller groups makes it much easier and as such zerging is not the way to go.

Sure, and if even one group gets a little too big, the whole thing fails. That’s rubbish.

lordkrall.7241:

Not to mention the fact that there is at least a few people in every single map that is fully aware about how non-zerging is the way to go and informs people about it in chat.

Indeed, better not mention it, because it’s not true.

lordkrall.7241:

Scaling have been in the game since release, it is not something suddenly added to this specific event, so people should be at least somewhat aware of its existence.

Not this kind of scaling.

If there are six bosses and a timer, how can people not understand that attacking the six bosses at the same time is the way to go? [/quote]Sure. But why doesn’t it just take a little too long when people zerg the bosses one by one? Why does it have to move into such a ridiculously state of scaling that each and every boss takes significantly longer than the time allowed for gold? With proper, fair scaling, a boss should take a few minutes regardless of the number of players participating, above a certain minimum. That should be enough to discourage zerging. Instead, the numbers get absurdly blown up, and everyone participating just hates it. Having mechanisms in place that cause the whole event take upward of an hour to complete isn’t necessary. Counterproductive even.

I’m all for anti zerg mechanics, but this seems like the wrong way to go about it.

While I did not have a personal problem, after having done the meta I do not plan to return. I found this by far worse than the so called hostile Queensdale chat. Not that people mean bad, but the design just leads in general to frustration. Especially in a game that has been telling us “the more the merrier” for the longest time. GTFO pretty much sums up the atmosphere.

Some events need a zerg, some events doesn’t need one, and some other events discourage zergs. This event belongs to the third type.

We are too accustomed to equip a berserk armor and weapon, spect a berserk build, and just run on a zerg, melting everything on our path. And when we find something we can’t defeat this way, then we start crying “bad design”.

Take this as what it is: another difficulty on our path to being a hero. Addressing the crowds and convincing them of gtfo of the fight is just another difficulty of the encounter, as could be another mob, or more hp on our enemies, or an insta-kill attack. Learn how to deal with it.

This is, after all, a massive multiplayer game, and things like this is what differences it from single-player games. Learn the mechanics, and talk to the other players. I, for one, am gratefull that not all events are one and the same.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Who’s saying that events that mean “stop zerging” is bad design?

People are just saying that this particular event is bad design. And it is.

If you can play it for hours and never find out that you need to “stop zerging” unless you accidentally end up in a small group, because there is no guidance or even a clue that these bosses ‘overscale’ into the realm of the absurd, instead of just scaling like every boss we’ve ever seen since launch, something is simply wrong with the design. No two ways about it.

No one complained about the anti-zerg design of the marionette. That encounter had an intuitive flow to it, that the Boss Blitz is sorely missing.

I’ve to disagree.
The right strategy for Boss Blitz might be obscure the first time you step into the Pavillion, specially if you had played the original Queen Jubilee, but it becomes pretty clear after playing it just once.

The first bossfight should be enough to realize that there’s scaling involved.
I could be wrong, but I don’t really think there’s an “overscaling” issue. In fact, I would say that Boss Blitz bosses are the best scaling ones in the whole GW2 history.
I’ve seen huge blobs zerging a single boss right after activation and downing it on Gold Reward time. I’ve also done many bosses myself with both small (5-10) and quite large (20+) groups without noticing huge time diffrences.
The scaling feels really linear (as it should be) and that means that 6 smaller groups, each one fighting a different boss, should finish the event 6 times faster than a single giant zerg, which seems completely desirable just by looking at the timed reward categories.

On top of this, individual bosses don’t reward loot at all, so zerging them one by one and taking part on every boss kill doesn’t provide any meaningful additional reward.
This should remain the origial Watchwork Knights, which used to grant 6 champ boxes each and were killed sequentially for everyone to get 18 boxes. Since it wasn’t the intended strategy, individual rewards were nerfed and moved to event completion.
If the whole reward is obtained from an event completion chest and it depends on how fast you finish the event, the convenience of splitting becomes obvious.

Finally, every defeated boss pass one ability to the remaining ones, making them harder to beat, which makes pretty clear that they should be defeated as close to each other as possible.

There are so many clues pointing to a zerg split that gets really hard to figure how any veteran player (the scaling mechanic could be unfamiliar to new players) could miss it.

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

The problem here is this:

It is entirely reasonable to have things scale so that it’s more efficient to split up and take on bosses separately. (Although this does create a bit of conflict with achievement-hunters, since someone looking to get the achievements would prefer a big zerg that kills each boss one by one rather than splitting up)

The problem is that in this case, it seems to be punishing the players simply by having a larger volume of participants rather than using the wrong tactics.

From the assault knight events, it seems that the cap on players in an open world instance is around 150. From what people have said earlier in this thread, it seems that the optimal number of players per boss is around 15. But if you have a full district, then the district can split up pretty close to perfectly and still have 20-30 players on each boss. As a result, a district of 90 players – which would hit the sweet spot of each boss – is actually at an advantage compared to a full district unless nearly half of the players in the full district just sit out. That’s a problem.

Additionally, while it’s great to encourage players to split up in the initial phase, the current design punishes players who happen to finish their boss early if they go and help with another boss. Instead, they’re encouraged to sit on their thumbs and wait for the event to complete.

There’s no objection here to taking steps to prevent the content from being ‘solved’ simply by starting at the top left section and proceeding clockwise. However, it does seem that the scaling is quite a bit too punishing. A regime where adding an additional player of the same skill as the average of the players already present doesn’t change the expected lifespan of the boss is still one where attempting to complete the event with one zerg attacking the bosses sequentially will result in the event taking six time longer than a good split would.

Heck, you could even make it so that on average each new player decreases the expected lifespan of the boss but with diminishing returns, and still have the single zerg expect to take three or four times as long as a good split (and thus never see gold).

As one of the earlier posters said – there’s a sweet spot. ArenaNet seems to have gone too far in the ‘anti-zerg’ direction this time. This isn’t ArenaNet-bashing (although the thread title is a little sensationalistic…) but feedback – next time they can dial it back a bit and at some stage they’ll reach a sweet spot.

That said, for some people who don’t like zergs, even a 15-30 player platoon is still a zerg when they’re all beating on a single boss. That’s a big concentration of players anywhere outside of big metaevents or champion trains, after all, and large enough that it does reach the point where individual contributions start to feel meaningless. Six smaller zergs in different locations as opposed to one big zerg is still zerg play, after all. Such players would probably prefer instanced content – and to be fair, there was a decent amount of that in the second half of last year, and we’ll probably see more kitten picks up.

Perhaps they should have locked the areas after the start just like in the marionette fight. Chose which boss to fight, afterwards you can only return to the middle and not enter a second fight.

@ Marbridae – sorry, I am sure you mean good, but I can’t agree with you. It’s in every ones best interest that the design itself does not lead to frustration directed at other players. At least in PvE, PvP is a different ball game.

Still leads to a ‘twiddle your thumbs while depending on other players for your reward level’ mechanic.

draxynnic.3719:

Still leads to a ‘twiddle your thumbs while depending on other players for your reward level’ mechanic.

Yeah. Tighter timer? Optional events around the “bosses”? I have no idea at the moment.

Rouven.7409:

draxynnic.3719:

Still leads to a ‘twiddle your thumbs while depending on other players for your reward level’ mechanic.

Yeah. Tighter timer? Optional events around the “bosses”? I have no idea at the moment.

Make it so all the bosses have to be beaten at the same time (lets say a 30 second window).

This will force people to split up.

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

Stopping zerging isn’t the problem it’s the way they try to stop zerging that’s the problem here. So, it’s the actual design that’s bad, not the intention behind that design. Got it?

They’ve gone to such lengths to create a game where people are encouraged to jump in to help people out and now they’ve completely turned that on its head so that you’re supposed to stay away from fights? Any design where they want us to AFK in the middle of the arena because otherwise the boss will scale up to a ridiculous level is completely counter intuitive; more players and more damage should not mean longer fights.

Basically the real “boss” here is the wonky, nonsensical scaling mechanics. That should never be the case.

draxynnic.3719:

The problem is that in this case, it seems to be punishing the players simply by having a larger volume of participants rather than using the wrong tactics.

From the assault knight events, it seems that the cap on players in an open world instance is around 150. From what people have said earlier in this thread, it seems that the optimal number of players per boss is around 15. But if you have a full district, then the district can split up pretty close to perfectly and still have 20-30 players on each boss. As a result, a district of 90 players – which would hit the sweet spot of each boss – is actually at an advantage compared to a full district unless nearly half of the players in the full district just sit out. That’s a problem.

Even if there are several benefits for smaller groups (condition cap, better combo management and less clutter), 5-10 more players at each boss won’t make a big difference as long as there aren’t several condi specs involved (which should be avoided for this kind of content anyways).

draxynnic.3719:

Additionally, while it’s great to encourage players to split up in the initial phase, the current design punishes players who happen to finish their boss early if they go and help with another boss. Instead, they’re encouraged to sit on their thumbs and wait for the event to complete.

Actually, groups shouldn’t finsih their boss early since that would buff the reamining ones. They should hold it at low health until a low HP call is made for every boss.

Apart from that, I strongly beleive that the “helping other groups mid fight is bad” idea is completely flawed.
If you move to a different boss it will scale up, yes, but there will also be an additional player to take it down. As long as your damage output is quite above average, the reinforcement is probably possitive.
People are just afraid of a giant zerg forming out of nowhere.

@Rouven: Possibly have additional events that spawn at the boss’s location? Possibly waves of enemies that turn back the clock a little bit when defeated, buying more time for other groups to take their bosses down?

@Windu: That just shifts the problem around – requiring synchronised killing without allowing people to reasonably easily shift targets just means the hand-sitting occurs before the boss dies rather than after, apart from dodging enemy attacks… which means you don’t even have the benefit of being able to browse forums or whatever while waiting for other groups to hurry up.

@Vargamoth: The problem is that apparently, in the Pavilion once the group is larger than a certain size, the bosses durability scales up substantially faster than the expected damage output of a single additional player.

Personally, I haven’t taken many observations of this – I fairly quickly identified the current iteration of the Pavilion as ‘unfun’ and eschewed it. (To be fair, though, I didn’t especially enjoy it last year either – it was a loot-fest, but wasn’t really all that fun. Now there’s almost no loot and even less fun.)

draxynnic.3719:

@Rouven: Possibly have additional events that spawn at the boss’s location? Possibly waves of enemies that turn back the clock a little bit when defeated, buying more time for other groups to take their bosses down?
(…)

I like the buying time idea – as an incentive to stay in the “gold” rewards zone? Might not want to allow for additional rewards as it should not become more rewarding to not complete the event in time.

What if not all bosses are manned? Or in other words, would those additional events only spawn as a scaling measure?

The problems with scaling aren’t as bad as the bad judgment used by many of the players present.

This morning Wiggins was consistently messed up by numerous staff Guardians and rifle Warriors perched on the ledge (or a tree) near the the ramp to his segment. So there were 6 to 8 players fighting out of range most of the time. Added to that was aggro pulled by people who failed to pay attention to their surroundings bringing more enemies back to the 6 to 8 people on the ground fighting Wiggins. You can blame game design if you want but really, people need to start reading and paying attention to what’s going on.

The group at Wiggins was also consistently handicapped by numerous up-leveled characters. Most were perched on the ledge with the staff guardians and rifle warriors. Again, bad design or poor judgement?

Poor design. An event entered from the single most prominent place where starting characters hang out, has to account for significant numbers of those starting characters taking part.

These kind of events always require playing musical chairs with server instances to be able to get anywhere with them. That got old several events ago and shouldn’t happen anymore.

RoxBuryNine.4210:

The problems with scaling aren’t as bad as the bad judgment used by many of the players present.

This morning Wiggins was consistently messed up by numerous staff Guardians and rifle Warriors perched on the ledge (or a tree) near the the ramp to his segment. So there were 6 to 8 players fighting out of range most of the time. Added to that was aggro pulled by people who failed to pay attention to their surroundings bringing more enemies back to the 6 to 8 people on the ground fighting Wiggins. You can blame game design if you want but really, people need to start reading and paying attention to what’s going on.

The group at Wiggins was also consistently handicapped by numerous up-leveled characters. Most were perched on the ledge with the staff guardians and rifle warriors. Again, bad design or poor judgement?

I think any system like this, which is basically “PUG” based raid idea, should take this into consideration. So either make the system factor these things in by not counting them and more intelligently scale not by only who is there, but by who is contributing.

Or lock the whole thing behind a group instance, so the members of the group/raid can take care of that themselves. Which is, as far as my understanding, not the direction Anet wants to go.

I’ve also seen someone afk right next to a boss. Intentional or bad timing? No idea.

draxynnic.3719:

The problem is that apparently, in the Pavilion once the group is larger than a certain size, the bosses durability scales up substantially faster than the expected damage output of a single additional player.

As I said before, I could be wrong, but this is probably a myth.
I’ve seen huge blobs defeating a boss on gold reward time right after activation, which shouldn’t happen if the events oversclaed that much.

There’s probably, however, a quite negative psychological effect related to a zerg where, even if a perfectly linear scaling requires the same average damage output per character for any amount of people, a player can easily feel less relevant for success and undeperform (playing safe just spamming ranged autoattacks, laying on the floor fully dead, …).

By the way, what’s wrong with using an up-scaled character in the event?
If the game upscale you, you’re supposed to be there.
If anet wanted that we use only lvl 80 then the game should not upscale you and let die you at the same moment that you set one foot in the place.

But, the place upscale you, so you’re supposed to be there.

Not sure how “aware” the game can be about each individual Boss in terms of scaling or strength, but if it is possible for the game to determine those factors, maybe the announcer should suggest where help is needed (rather than make generally unhelpful “hurry up” comments).

Trust me, there are players that have never even opened a chat window, much less set it up to provide any useful information. They are totally oblivious to CHAT SCREAM!!!! (or even polite requests)….they simply do not see them.

Torsailr.8456:

This is not an example of bad design. It’s an example of a mechanic that isn’t as fine tuned as it could be.

Agreed – I saw a very similar comment made during Teq last night. Difference there was there’s a place for the GTFO’s to get… the commander said “get off that turret or it will overscale – go to the main zerg.”

Worked well.

This event just needs some alternative role for the excess.

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

Nonsense, this particular pavillion design is completely counter intuitive in relation to GW2 and MMO.

Zerg mentality.. No comments for you.

Zerg mentality is just a sign of non-abilty player. The boss blitz is completly fina, keep up the good job anet.

Anti-zerg events aren’t inherently bad design – in fact, I think they’re a lot more satisfying to play – but as plenty of other good posts on the topic have stated, the in-game facilities for organising an entire map are just not good enough to pick up that slack yet. Selectable instances, better commander tools, visibility of multiple boss event progress etc. all needs beefing up, and then events like this will run a whole lot smoother and be a lot more accessible.

And scaling could definitely do with being a bit more intelligent. Encouraging people to spread out is a slightly different issue to having lots of people engaged in a fight and the scaling should take that into account for complex multi-event fights.

This not an example of a bad design.

This is simple a conflict between different types of players. The players that hate zergy content to the players that like zergy content.

For most of zerg wars 2, the players that enjoy zergy content have been rewarded and trained to keep that mentality. To the point where the overrall skill level of the guild wars 2 players probably dropped as the result of playing this game.

Now Arenanet is now changing things up and removing the overreliance of the zerg mentality to achieve suggest.

The ONLY real flaw with this festival is the fact that it doesn’t show everybody on the map the current status of each boss such as HP AND the number of players attacking said boss. Arenanet in the future, if this is the path they want to take should do what they did with the bosses in LA and provide buffs that act as a way to indicate the number of player attacking a boss. This will remove the dependence on commanders and reduce the amount of communication required to defeat anti zerg content. Players need to be retrain and the best way is to slowing take off the training wheels not just drop them and let them sink.

MikaHR.1978:

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

Nonsense, this particular pavillion design is completely counter intuitive in relation to GW2 and MMO.

Requiring teamwork and communication is counter intuitive to MMOs? hmm. And scaling… is that new to GW2? It’s been around as long as I’ve played /shrug.

MMO+Mega_Server != ‘Small Groups’ LOL

Scaling is not that unheard of or difficult to work with. IF we know what the parameters are. Having to stumble around blindly is not very compelling. They used a Instanced mechanic in the open world. EPIC FAIL! Bring back overflow, only allow max number of players before opening a new instance. Problem solved.

Scaling should mean that the boss can be fighted in the same conditions with a group of 6 and with a group of 30. More or less.
If having more people makes it more difficult or lenghty (in an event that’s timed!) the scaling is not good.

Anyways, discussing this is futile. As some people already said this is a confrontation between two kind of playerbase.
The hardcore and the casual.

Anet should make it clear. This is a casual or hardcore game? And should cater that segment.
Or make raids for the hardcore and open world content for the casuals.

Why is it so hard to understand that the issue here isn’t teamwork or communication, the issue is that this is open world content that requires anyone who knows the content to discourage people from going to the fights? Marionette was great design, and it totally required teamwork and communication. What it did NOT require was people to stand idle and beg other people not to go to the bosses. It did NOT have an infinite timer, either. If you lost, you did it in a relatively short amount of time, and then the event started up again.

There’s nothing good about the design, here. It is poor implementation all around.

They put in a little for everyone. Why are there always greedy people who think that all content should be designed for them?

Cliffs:
Open Events for nice casual play.
Sky Crystals for Puzzle jumpers
Aspect Arena for PVPers

Crown Pavilion:
Gauntlet for those that like a real challenge.
Boss Blitz for those that like dynamic large scale events.

Now, is Zergling a new playstyle that has to be figured in? Maybe, but I think they did quite a good job of trying to cover everything so there is something for everyone. I thoroughly enjoy all that CP has to offer, But, you’re right Rincewind, we’ll just have to agree to disagree, because to me this entire living story event has been quite nice, not perfect, but overall very fun to me. 2 changes I’d make is let everyone see the health of every boss in the blitz, and speed up the time between events (or add another?) to the cliffs.

Guhracie.3419:

Why is it so hard to understand that the issue here isn’t teamwork or communication, the issue is that this is open world content that requires anyone who knows the content to discourage people from going to the fights? Marionette was great design, and it totally required teamwork and communication. What it did NOT require was people to stand idle and beg other people not to go to the bosses. It did NOT have an infinite timer, either. If you lost, you did it in a relatively short amount of time, and then the event started up again.

There’s nothing good about the design, here. It is poor implementation all around.

Actually, NO.

The difference between this boss and Marrionette was that Marrionette made it blind-fully obvious you needed to split up and not ignore certain lanes or risk almost immediate failure. People still had to split up before and most of the successful ones require players to move around before the start of the battle. The successful ones, actually forced players to move around, you just probably did no care to remember.

The biggest issue with this boss is that we don’t know what is going on with the other 5 bosses, such as HP and players attacking. all of these are things that can be easily be improved on from now on. But don’t fool yourself, Marrionette was not different from the boss blitz.

Jerus.4350:

MikaHR.1978:

lordkrall.7241:

Events that means zerging: Bad design.
Events that means stop zerging: Bad design.

Will anything ever not be bad design?

Nonsense, this particular pavillion design is completely counter intuitive in relation to GW2 and MMO.

Requiring teamwork and communication is counter intuitive to MMOs? hmm. And scaling… is that new to GW2? It’s been around as long as I’ve played /shrug.

Really?

So would you be so kind to name where more players mean failure. More UNAWARE players, since there is absolutely NOTHING that indicates this GTFO mentality.

In MMO and GW2.

Vargamonth.2047:

draxynnic.3719:

The problem is that apparently, in the Pavilion once the group is larger than a certain size, the bosses durability scales up substantially faster than the expected damage output of a single additional player.

As I said before, I could be wrong, but this is probably a myth.
I’ve seen huge blobs defeating a boss on gold reward time right after activation, which shouldn’t happen if the events oversclaed that much.

…

It’s not a myth.

Yes, you can see a blob beat a boss within the gold timer. A good small group can kill most of the bosses in 2 minutes. You can still take 3 times as long and make the gold timer.

Here’s the reason it isn’t a myth; boss leveling. As the number of players increase past certain thresholds, the level of the boss increases as well. This means an increase in glancing hits. If a player comes and causes a 2% decrease in damage to everyone while scaling the boss, there is no way they’ll make it up.

Boom-boom makes this really obvious. If you see that turret hit level 84, you know it’s going to take forever. By then, the boss has scaled up enough to reduce everyone’s damage by 6% in addition to the normal scaling. That hurts. It’s not a myth. The scaling is such that an additional player can hurt more than help.

silvermember.8941:

Guhracie.3419:

Why is it so hard to understand that the issue here isn’t teamwork or communication, the issue is that this is open world content that requires anyone who knows the content to discourage people from going to the fights? Marionette was great design, and it totally required teamwork and communication. What it did NOT require was people to stand idle and beg other people not to go to the bosses. It did NOT have an infinite timer, either. If you lost, you did it in a relatively short amount of time, and then the event started up again.

There’s nothing good about the design, here. It is poor implementation all around.

Actually, NO.

The difference between this boss and Marrionette was that Marrionette made it blind-fully obvious you needed to split up and not ignore certain lanes or risk almost immediate failure. People still had to split up before and most of the successful ones require players to move around before the start of the battle. The successful ones, actually forced players to move around, you just probably did no care to remember.

The biggest issue with this boss is that we don’t know what is going on with the other 5 bosses, such as HP and players attacking. all of these are things that can be easily be improved on from now on. But don’t fool yourself, Marrionette was not different from the boss blitz.

You clearly didn’t read what I wrote.

Marionette was indeed different from Boss Blitz. Nowhere do I state that it didn’t require coordination or people moving around. But it did not require people to leave the fight in order to win. It certainly didn’t require idling for up to an hour.

When you put temporary content into an MMO, you have to assume that the vast majority of the playerbase will flock to that content and want to participate. Having a design that is basically “You can help the group by going away” is not conducive to that gameplay, and I can’t believe anyone here is trying to defend this design.

Dosvidaniya.3260:

Vargamonth.2047:

draxynnic.3719:

The problem is that apparently, in the Pavilion once the group is larger than a certain size, the bosses durability scales up substantially faster than the expected damage output of a single additional player.

As I said before, I could be wrong, but this is probably a myth.
I’ve seen huge blobs defeating a boss on gold reward time right after activation, which shouldn’t happen if the events oversclaed that much.

…

It’s not a myth.

Yes, you can see a blob beat a boss within the gold timer. A good small group can kill most of the bosses in 2 minutes. You can still take 3 times as long and make the gold timer.

Here’s the reason it isn’t a myth; boss leveling. As the number of players increase past certain thresholds, the level of the boss increases as well. This means an increase in glancing hits. If a player comes and causes a 2% decrease in damage to everyone while scaling the boss, there is no way they’ll make it up.

Boom-boom makes this really obvious. If you see that turret hit level 84, you know it’s going to take forever. By then, the boss has scaled up enough to reduce everyone’s damage by 6% in addition to the normal scaling. That hurts. It’s not a myth. The scaling is such that an additional player can hurt more than help.

You might be right about the level. We can’t know if the regular scaling already takes it into account though.

About a good party being able to take a boss in less than 2 minutes, while true, you can’t expect the giant zerg to be using the same specs that party would use.
A zerg-like 5 man party would be something like a berserker DPS spec, a support/healer Guardian/Ele, a condi user (it could work on a single group, but the zerg will waste almost all of them), a PVT WvW build and an upscaled character. That won’t defeat a boss in less than 2 minutes; it might be faster than the whole zerg, but not by a huge margin.

I actually like the this is set up, now it isn’t monster blob everything and spam 1 till it dies., then cycle through the Pavillion, like last year. Last year was terrible tbh for the people up on the second floor of the pavillion trying to do Liadri. Now it’s more spread and a little bit more coordination based. If you want 1 spam wars go to WvW for that or one of the world bosses not Teq or Wurm.