Guild Wars 2

I like this idea a lot. Not because it’s too hard as it is (I haven’t won yet, though I intend to), but because this change really does make it feel more like teamwork.

So much yes! I said this before, and I’ll say it again: Just let us do something! I know the event is only up for two weeks, and I know people have already beaten it, even in overflow, and we few in Devona’s Rest even got 4/5 chains down at one point, but…it’s not fun for the people who, like you said, don’t know the tricks, or aren’t built for damage, or don’t have the best gear who are just trying to enjoy the game. People are already becoming discouraged with the event and have stopped trying (maybe poor judgment on their part, but that’s not what this is about).

Please just make it a tad more balanced? I love this event—I think it’s the best LS produced since Bazaar of the Four Winds, and certainly the only one I’ve felt the desire to play actively since I really got into the mechanics of the game. I regret missing Flame and Frost and the beginning of the Molten Alliance, and I regret not delving more into Four Winds, and I really, really want to see this LS arc work!

Yep, I agree entirely with this suggestion. It would make it much more casual friendly, and reinforce that feeling of teamwork.

The suggestion aside, the essence of this post has been raised on dozens and dozens of other threads.

After Teq was released the same flood of posts disapproving of having to ‘stand by’ and rely on others came pouring in – yet several months later 2 new ‘world events’ have just been released that are designed in exactly the same way.

Other issues such as the problem of overflows have not been addressed in the meantime so one can only assume that team responsible for these decisions strongly believe that they are ‘good for the game’ and we can expect to see a whole lot more of these type of events in the future.

Sounds like terrible design, relying on rng and relying on everyone being able potentially to solo a champ, in whatever gear they happen to be wearing.

Anet seem to be going out of their way to get players to leave the game with this sort of ham fisted mechanic that so many have already told them sucks- just look at how many people regularly try Teq on their own server… Is that sort of wasteland really good for the game?

Any reviewer of gw2 would go to teq having heard so much about it- then find it a wasteland with no one bothering- ask in chat, find out no one has even tried to organise a group to kill it in weeks/months, and that would form a large part of their report about the game to potential new players.

If your solution is too difficult to implement, technically, another possible answer is just breaking the 25% fail meter into five independent 5% chunks, so that losing one champ/node doesn’t screw things up as much.

Gandara had 5 successful runs today. In one run we had 3 different times where a person was alone on a platform. By accident or design, it really sucks for them. I agree, let us jump in and help another platform.

Excellent idea. Or perhaps even if there are less than say 4 or 5 people on a platform, spawn a Veteran instead of a Champion.

lesliejb.3615:

Or perhaps even if there are less than say 4 or 5 people on a platform, spawn a Veteran instead of a Champion.

This is a great idea.

I’ve done this event 6 times now, and only TWICE has my platform had 5 players on it (successful both times, of course, since this is how many players are meant to populate the platform and kill the champ in the allocated time). Any less than four, it becomes a bit tricksy, even moreso if someone gets downed…

I honestly find nothing wrong with this event other than the glitchyness of the “evasion” achievements. i’ve dodged numerous instances of her attacks and never got the achievement, even if we beat our warden, even if we completely succeeded in killing the marionette.

Yes please.
Let people who are done with the platform help the others, who are struggling with their champion. Many of us don’t like to be unable to help the other lane mates who are struggling or dying to their champion…

I totally hate the RNG for the platform, and also the barrier from one platform to the others.

This is the way it should have been from the beginning, people saying they are glad they finally added some hard content have it all wrong. There is nothing hard about watching another group fail to kill their warden as you stand around for a minute dodging the marionette after killing yours. The proposed solution doesn’t actually make it any easier for the people who can already do the content, but it allows them to carry those who can’t and therefore give everyone a chance to finish this boss.

Agreed. I really wish they’d do a patch asap to make it more teamwork and casual friendly.

The biggest lesson I think Anet needs to take away from this is this. Having a event which requires teamwork, yet a situation can arise when one player can feel absolutely helpless in helping another player that he is playing with is a very bad thing.

It’s a great concept, until you realize that it will effectively trivialize the whole thing. Lets say there is a non-ideal setup of 20 people in the lane. That should be five groups of 4, but because it seems to use some nonsensical measure it makes three groups of five, one group of four and a group of one. The guy in the one is screwed, obviously.

One of the groups is beast though, and they trash their warden easy. Now they pop into the other groups. It was one of the five groups, and now there are two groups of six, a group of five, and the loner is up to three, cause it worked out this time. The two groups of six finish their wardens soon after. Now we have a group of 9 and a group of 11, both for fights expecting about five. One of the groups happens to destroy their warden a little faster than the other and the last warden, the one that had been the loner is looking at twenty guys.

As each warden falls the following wardens become more and more trivial. The only way to make this a reasonable measure is to use ninja rules. As each warden falls the remaining wardens have to increase in difficulty, until the last warden can actually be a challenge for 20-30 people. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily fun either, since we are still looking at a timer.

I tend to assume this is why they let it go the way they did. It happens every other hour on the hour so there are plenty of opportunities to finish. It’s going to fall short for some, but ultimately it probably works out.

Kal Spiro.9745:

It’s a great concept, until you realize that it will effectively trivialize the whole thing. Lets say there is a non-ideal setup of 20 people in the lane. That should be five groups of 4, but because it seems to use some nonsensical measure it makes three groups of five, one group of four and a group of one. The guy in the one is screwed, obviously.

One of the groups is beast though, and they trash their warden easy. Now they pop into the other groups. It was one of the five groups, and now there are two groups of six, a group of five, and the loner is up to three, cause it worked out this time. The two groups of six finish their wardens soon after. Now we have a group of 9 and a group of 11, both for fights expecting about five. One of the groups happens to destroy their warden a little faster than the other and the last warden, the one that had been the loner is looking at twenty guys.

As each warden falls the following wardens become more and more trivial. The only way to make this a reasonable measure is to use ninja rules. As each warden falls the remaining wardens have to increase in difficulty, until the last warden can actually be a challenge for 20-30 people. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily fun either, since we are still looking at a timer.

I tend to assume this is why they let it go the way they did. It happens every other hour on the hour so there are plenty of opportunities to finish. It’s going to fall short for some, but ultimately it probably works out.

So its better that everyone fails because some poor sap gets stuck on a platform alone and is pretty much guaranteed to fail and therefore cause everyone to fail? There are some uplevelled characters and poorly geared players doing this event and even with the platform hopping it won’t guarantee a win every time.

RottenRagamuffin.3159:

lesliejb.3615:

Or perhaps even if there are less than say 4 or 5 people on a platform, spawn a Veteran instead of a Champion.

This is a great idea.

I’ve done this event 6 times now, and only TWICE has my platform had 5 players on it (successful both times, of course, since this is how many players are meant to populate the platform and kill the champ in the allocated time). Any less than four, it becomes a bit tricksy, even moreso if someone gets downed…

“moreso if someone gets downed”

woe is me when i’m hacking at the champion, and i notice a speech bubble saying “rez”. i look to the side and my puny thief is the only person standing up. realizing i couldn’t take it down on my own, i tried to resurrect the downed players… and failed. though i doubt i’d have managed to kill the champion if i had manged to rez everyone, considering how much time it would take for that…

Kal Spiro.9745:

It’s a great concept, until you realize that it will effectively trivialize the whole thing. Lets say there is a non-ideal setup of 20 people in the lane. That should be five groups of 4, but because it seems to use some nonsensical measure it makes three groups of five, one group of four and a group of one. The guy in the one is screwed, obviously.

One of the groups is beast though, and they trash their warden easy. Now they pop into the other groups. It was one of the five groups, and now there are two groups of six, a group of five, and the loner is up to three, cause it worked out this time. The two groups of six finish their wardens soon after. Now we have a group of 9 and a group of 11, both for fights expecting about five. One of the groups happens to destroy their warden a little faster than the other and the last warden, the one that had been the loner is looking at twenty guys.

As each warden falls the following wardens become more and more trivial. The only way to make this a reasonable measure is to use ninja rules. As each warden falls the remaining wardens have to increase in difficulty, until the last warden can actually be a challenge for 20-30 people. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily fun either, since we are still looking at a timer.

I tend to assume this is why they let it go the way they did. It happens every other hour on the hour so there are plenty of opportunities to finish. It’s going to fall short for some, but ultimately it probably works out.

Assumptions aside; they would still need to beat the time limit, so overall it’s probably the most reasonable and effective way to fix this.

In my opinion people helping other platforms in need after vanquishing their own adversary should have been done in the first place. Implementing a RandomFailGenerator is not how you should design a Living Story event that is supposed to function as an enjoyable experience for everyone.

Besides, it’s rather unfortunate that we have this great ‘Hold The Line’ community event which can then suddenly transform into a ‘Deal With It’ solo experience if your community gets rotten luck dealt to them by bad design with four platforms having 5-6 people and the last platform has only 1.

Just my personal opinion on the matter.

The real proper way to fix it is just to make sure the system automatically distributes people evenly. It’s not hard. If there are 15 people in path there should be 3 on each platform, period. There should never be more than 1 person difference between any two platforms. It’s a roulette. First person in the portal always goes to platform 1. Second to 2 and so on. Sixth to 1 again. It shouldn’t be a random distribution, because it still will be random.

That’s how you fix the problem. Now it’s just a question of skill and a little bit of gear. But in that case, too bad and good. This is challenging and you can still be screwed by really bad luck, but it’s fair bad luck, not random bullkitten bad luck.

Completely agree with Kamui.

Just finished doing this event for the umpteenth time (always in an overflow, and lately with barely enough people) and I still haven’t been a part of a successful event. This is becoming incredibly IRKSOME.

The lack of even distribution of players on platforms is resulting in too many fails. Whenever I have had the good luck to be on a platform with the requisite five players, it’s been fine- BUT… more often than not, myself and two other players are on the platform, with the same time limit as five players, trying to take down the champ.

My latest attempt had me teleport onto a platform with one already dead player, one other player who was being trained by the champ who, not surprisingly got downed right as I arrived. I revived them, but they were still pulling all the aggro and went down again shortly after. Then, well it was my turn. Not really a lot I could do… and fail… again.

In order for me to get my achievement, Anet, do you consider it a reasonable expectation that I park my toon AFK for two hours in Lornar’s Pass just so that I can get into a map that isn’t an overflow (and thereby increase my chances of being a part of a successful run)? If you do, I do not consider this to be an acceptable use of my limited game time.

And, please fix the player distribution once the champ fights begin. This afternoon’s overflow attempt had map chat streaming with abuse at the lanes who failed to sever a chain. (Guess I’m not the only frustrated one… )

Agree with what the original poster has said. I have attempted this four times since the patch, and never gotten more than 2 chains down. Every time, the failure was due to a platform with 2-3 people one of whom was downed immediately upon teleporting. At that point it is almost impossible for the remaining 1-2 players to defeat the champion in time.

Unfortunately in another post a developer admitted that the possibility of transporting people off a completed platform to another was looked at extensively and was technically impossible or something to that extent. So, its not going to be fixed, I am sure my server will never complete it, at least all the times I have tried we have not even been close, and it will be gone in 2 weeks anyway. I was told we beat it once, but I am not sure I believe it.

It was a nice concept, I enjoy the battles, but I can already see people giving up on it after repeated attempts fail to even get halfway. I am sure if it doesn’t happen this weekend, its never going to.

Agree, totally needs to be changed.

Totally disagree. The beauty and genius of this event is it starts with a massive zerg, and slowly breaks it apart piece by piece until it literally comes down to a small group of individuals. You cannot ride the wave of this event, if you want to succeed, you yourself must improve your gameplay.

Phase 2 does not have the numbers problem if the lanes coordinate in advance to ensure 25 people get through the portal. I’ve never seen an issue with a platform having a significantly fewer number of players at it unless the had some DCs.

Love this event, I wish it was permanent! I’d love to see more stuff like this in the future!

Just give the boss one extra attack mechanic for every platform that fails.

have to disagree too. if they changed it to what you suggest the event will never fail.

While I like this event, and have finished it myself, I have failed it far more then completed. I am OK with that, content that can fail more often then be completed is fun and gives you a sense of accomplishment when you do finally complete it. I would rather see more of the world bosses tweaked like this. Make them hard enough to fail more often than not, but give better rewards when they do complete. Teq and he wurms are just WAY over board. Most players I know gave up on teq long ago and have no intention on even trying to finish the wurms, just get as many of the achievements as possible then let it fall to the wayside like teq.

My only real issue with the marionette is it does not really “bring the community together”. The event usually starts very well with advice being given and the event explained. When it’s a win, yes, everyone is “GJ”, “thanks”, “we all rock”. When it’s a loss, it’s a different story. The foul language directed at other players can really get out of hand very quickly. Players get upset when they do what they are supposed to, do it very well, then still lose because of someone else’s failure. I have no idea how to correct that, or even if it’s possible human nature being what it is.

Your suggestions will effectively trivialize the whole encounter and bring everything back to zerg-it-all mentality, while right now the beauty of phase 2 is in the personal input, impact of players in the battle, it encourages skillful play, for once skill really matters, or lack of :P, and not just mindless #1 bashing in a zerg. Big no from me. Imo, this event is sort of brilliant and certainly the best casual open world event in the game, so far.

One compromise could be to have the charge advancement be based on the number of platforms that succeed. Meaning that if phase 2 gets 4/5 it will barely move, but if it gets 0/5 you get the current 25% jump.

I would have to say that the event as it stands is one of the best world boss type events I’ve ever seen in a MMO. It’s a masterpiece of design and I’m very impressed with the people who put this together.

The event has someone turned your average MMO player into actual human beings who support their fellow players, shout out encouragement and advice and work together towards a common goal. There is a bare minimum of sniping at other players and that in itself is an achievement.

Loot is achieved no matter how badly you do (and the worst I have seen is 2 chains killed) and everyone keep turning up every 2 hours to get involved. The actual difference between killing the boss and killing 1 chain is 1 deluxe gear chest and 4 key bags and of course the daily kill chest. That might seem like a lot, but when you get down to it, it isn’t, and you can always open addition chests in Scarlet’s lair if you get enough code thingies (and you’ll always get 1-2 no matter how bad you go).

Should it stick around permanently? Probably not because eventually people would get bored with it and stop turning up and it would no longer be possible to do. Remember the event requires 100+ players to complete so eventually they will stop turning up and it will stop happening. But I would like to see similar events added in the future as I believe this has been a resounding success.

Sokal.7345:

have to disagree too. if they changed it to what you suggest the event will never fail.

I don’t think so… there is still this portal defense, which can go very bad too, but that isn’t cause by random, so it’s ok.

Lasica.5068:

Loot is achieved no matter how badly you do.

LOL, you can do badly enough to get no loot at all, I saw it happen just this morning.
I think it also had to have been a record for how fast it failed.

I think there’s probably a happy medium to be found between avoiding that helpless feeling while you watch others fail, and trivializing individual contribution. I can imagine a couple options – create a scaling difficulty by allowing players on other platforms to help more during the early chain phases, but less or not at all during the later ones. Or make it so that the players on each platform get a scaling buff depending on whether the champions on the adjacent platforms have already been defeated. I don’t see these mechanics being added to this encounter in particular because it is so temporary, but it is something to consider for future ones.

Imo, there is a problem with the event and it’s just as ShiningSquirrel indicated.

When you have a design that allows a few unlucky or bad players to fail the event for everyone, you have a recipe for player abuse. It seems in game that very few ppl realize fails may be due to bad luck or poor design and usually heap abuse on an entire lane (many of whom did everything perfectly). I don’t know how people can think its fun to be constantly insulted when they may or may not have done anything wrong. Would be nice if the community would be like “oh well, it’s okay, let’s try better next time,” but it’s just human nature to blame others for failures in team events, so I don’t think that would ever happen. Better to let the few on the finished platforms carry the unlucky or bad.

However, my main problem with the event is that I get disconnected in the middle of the marionette fight 1 out of 2 times that I do it xD.

I agree in concept with your complaints. However I have seen on more than one occasion, where a platform has 5 people all wipe, and yet the platform next to it with only 3 people manage to get their job done. On several other occasions I have been standing on a completed platform, cheering for that one soul survivor on the platform next to me. It adds an extra element of excitement, and an extra element of joy to see the odds overcome. The trick to the platforms is not the build, or the number of players, but understanding the basic mechanics and having experience with each warden. Our server has had a few perfect victories now , with no platforms failing, all chains being succeded first try, and I can tell you cause I was there not all platforms had 5 players.
Tips to winning..get there 1/2hr to 45 mins early to avoid OF. Get your map in TS, get newcomers to read up on what needs to be done. On the platforms, get the downed up fast, but ignore the dead. Communicate. Stack might and buffs at portal entrances. Some aoe’s and attacks can affect the next platform over.
When that’s all done have your /cheer rdy to go fast, and then get rdy to celebrate ") Good luck!! Post edit.. we have being putting some more experienced players in lane one and two, and after having completed their chains, 5 or so players, break off to help other lanes, the portal sickness will wear of in time for them to help with warden 5.

digiowl.9620:

One compromise could be to have the charge advancement be based on the number of platforms that succeed. Meaning that if phase 2 gets 4/5 it will barely move, but if it gets 0/5 you get the current 25% jump.

This is an amazing suggestion, I definitely agree that would be a great compromise. Then one person couldn’t make as much of a serious impact on the whole event as is currently the case. And would allow the rest of the lane to be able to partially make up for that failure.

Kal Spiro.9745:

It’s a great concept, until you realize that it will effectively trivialize the whole thing. Lets say there is a non-ideal setup of 20 people in the lane. That should be five groups of 4, but because it seems to use some nonsensical measure it makes three groups of five, one group of four and a group of one. The guy in the one is screwed, obviously.

One of the groups is beast though, and they trash their warden easy. Now they pop into the other groups. It was one of the five groups, and now there are two groups of six, a group of five, and the loner is up to three, cause it worked out this time. The two groups of six finish their wardens soon after. Now we have a group of 9 and a group of 11, both for fights expecting about five. One of the groups happens to destroy their warden a little faster than the other and the last warden, the one that had been the loner is looking at twenty guys.

As each warden falls the following wardens become more and more trivial. The only way to make this a reasonable measure is to use ninja rules. As each warden falls the remaining wardens have to increase in difficulty, until the last warden can actually be a challenge for 20-30 people. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily fun either, since we are still looking at a timer.

I tend to assume this is why they let it go the way they did. It happens every other hour on the hour so there are plenty of opportunities to finish. It’s going to fall short for some, but ultimately it probably works out.

You forgot to mention one point that makes your arguments completely irrelevant.

The clock continues ticking.

Yes. With each defeated champions all other platforms would have it easier – but it would not increase time left. Even if they continued to clear platform after platform, and stacked up on the last one making in theoretically completely trivial, it would still take time. And remember, the time for the whole stage is designed for a single platform fight. Not five.

So, basically, this design change would only benefit the really good and skilled players – those that would be able to kill their champs with a lot of time to spare. I really, really don’t think that offering incentives for skill is such a bad thing.

Read please

Apparently they tried very hard to make ways for completed platforms to help others, but there were technical issues. Agreed that a fix here would greatly improve the fight. However, I also agree that I’ve seen a single player complete a platform on my left while a whole group of five wipes immediately on my right. Platform champs’ HP scales with # of players, so platform completion really has nothing to do with how many are there and everything to do with player skill.

And you know what? When you’re the only platform that wipes out of a lane, it’s really shameful. Happened in my lane last night and all five of them felt terrible about it. And you know what that does? It pushes them to do better.

We also get moment like two nights ago, where we were on the final chain and every platform was done except for one, where everyone had wiped except for my brother. He pulled through and took out the generator with one second to spare. Nothing quite like that feeling

Kalarchis.8635:

And you know what? When you’re the only platform that wipes out of a lane, it’s really shameful. Happened in my lane last night and all five of them felt terrible about it. And you know what that does? It pushes them to do better.

Or pack up and do something else, if they are done with the meta and are not achievement completionists.

Done -> teleport to other platforms.

Wrote it before, seconding here. Yet another day (not even an evening) of trying, not a single win (and not a single home server map).

I really think, if they were having issue wiht helping other platforms, the sensible thing to do would be to make majority rules, 3 out of 5 bosses needed to beaten.

At that point, you could actually make the bosses a bit harder, and make it less about the random chance of getting a bad party on one platform and more about, yknow, actual skill.

Astralporing.1957:

You forgot to mention one point that makes your arguments completely irrelevant.

The clock continues ticking.

Having watched the Ulgoth defeated in litterally 5 seconds because of the zerg. No, I did not forget about the time. In my example two minutes is not even a consideration that needs to be acknowledged.

If you don’t have a lane switching strategy you are doing it wrong. If you are flooding the rng so that u got 10 in each. Champ fight are weighted more then defense.

She is much easier then teq by the way. And mechanics for champs are in the bubles under there life totals no real excuses.

digiowl.9620:

One compromise could be to have the charge advancement be based on the number of platforms that succeed. Meaning that if phase 2 gets 4/5 it will barely move, but if it gets 0/5 you get the current 25% jump.

^ This a great suggestion.

RottenRagamuffin.3159:

digiowl.9620:

One compromise could be to have the charge advancement be based on the number of platforms that succeed. Meaning that if phase 2 gets 4/5 it will barely move, but if it gets 0/5 you get the current 25% jump.

^ This a great suggestion.

4 tries is pretty decent though means 80% failed also if you are shifting any more tries would probably result in failure. power level barly ticks for mobs you let through most of weight are on champ fights