Guild Wars 2

I really dislike this mentality that ‘one player’ causes everyone to fail; it simply isn’t true. It takes 3 failed chains and poor lane defense, or 4 fails with good lane defense. That’s pretty forgiving for a boss meant to be pretty difficult, and definitely more than can be pinned on the shoulders of one person.

Rather than give grief to people for wanting to play the game they paid for(and offensive as the thought might be, it really isn’t ‘content made for well-geared 80’s only), maybe it’s time to think about maximizing effectiveness; even an appropriately leveled for the area warrior can be a banner machine, and plenty of other classes can provide buffs and other benefits even without being super geared for devastating dps. See if you can’t pull a higher concentration of non-80’s to the easier fight on lane one, then reinforce them with a party of you uber elites from lane two for the next chain round if it comes to it. And for goodness sake, help people out! Very very few who show up to the party are apathetic about the outcome, and if you’re so hung up on victory or bust isn’t a little bit of typing effort in the coordination phase worth it to make your chances better? Even just calling out a quick rundown of champ tactics and tips can help. Put that skill and knowledge to good use, instead of blaming a few for what really is a whole group effort both on and off the platforms.

You really don’t need 125 people. Just get 25 in lanes 1, 2, and 3, and enough in lanes 4 and 5 to have successful defenses. Send players from lanes 1 and 2 over to lanes 4 and 5 to support their runs, and if you need any more attempts, all players off portal cooldown should flood the attacking lane.

Aww yeah two days of no wins because of single players being forced to fight champions.

“Well Designed”

Looks like I can just file this event along with Tequatl under “Things my server will never get done.”

RoF has the non overflow and one overflow full all the time, and RoF is a low pop server.. Think you need to choose a better moment or spam LA chat that you want to kill it

And, I was pleasantly suprised by this boss, was expecting a shatterer-like (not that thats no fun, but its certainly easier and requires less tactic) fight, especially with the wurm release at the same time, but you guys managed to build a fun and completely challenging boss that is extremely well balanced and tweaked. It got me yelling at my computer when I was in a ring killing the last champ at the last chance with not much time, totally worth it.

Love this update! Keep it up

Yea, im really suprised by chat cheering, that “Keep it up”, “you can do it” or “dont give up!!” when you are fighting at the arena and the timer is counting down, it can really pump up your will to fight, it show you that people are counting on you, and it really makes it feels like a true Last Stand situation especialy with that epic music in the background.

Yes, sometimes people calling names showsup you cant do much about them other than just block them, but if your server is full of people like that i think you should just transfer, i cant say that my server, Aurora Glade, is free of people like that but i can assure you that they are minority, to the point that you can barely notice them.
Tbh, till now i only blocked 3 people from my server that were too vulgar about failed attepts, and i was in almost all of the win/failed attempts at this event.

The only bad thing i could say about this fight is that marionette attack more ofen looks just like some aoe on the ground, you cant really see it attacking the arena directly.
An example, sword attack instead of being just short straight line aoe, could be an actual giant sword slaming in to the arena and staying ther for like 5s spliting arena on 2 sides, just imagine how players would feel when a giant sword would cut in directly between them and the boss with loud crashing noise.

p.s. Aurora Glade scored 8 wins in a row, and few of them was only with 1 or 2 commanders, but its not a numbers of commanders that determine the victory, its how much people want to cooperate that determines it, and i dont mean TS even map chat is enough to organize people.

Yeah, the community cheering each other on is a nice feeling. Sure, you get the poor sports who deride other players when they fail to break a chain, but for the most part, failure just results in the next lane going, “Alright, Lane X, it’s up to us! Let’s do this!”

I don’t like open world content, there’s too many uncontrollable factors you can’t control to push the win.

I show up in my zerker gear and zerker dps and always complete my platform and I just watch in anger when it says 4/5 and the 5th one is wiped. I try to do in the 2nd gate because it seems to be the common one to fail, but I should also aim for the 3rd cause it seems to be equally daunting for some players.

Raiding in WoW was easy cause you hand picked 24 other people to do the hardcore content. I don’t understand how anet thinks controlling 125 people in open world is in anyway valid.

The fight, yes. But the dodge achievements? No.

I have mixed feelings on this fight…yes, it is pretty epic and fun…..for perhaps the first 6/8 failures and getting no further than 3/5 on Aurora Glade, mostly due to the problem of platforms randomly only getting about 2 people on it.

I had spent all of Tuesday evening in Lornar’s Pass, and most of Wednesday on TS on our server all trying to work together. But then real life got in the way and I had to pop off and do some work, but I stay logged in to avoid overflow.

What I hadn’t realised was that most of the rest of our server had gone to try Wurm this time, so couldn’t get back into the server proper for mario, so they setup in an overflow I couldn’t get into and completed it this time.

I was gutted, all that work we had put in, and the first coordinated fight I was forced to miss due to overflows happened to be the one that succeeded. Apparently they have now completed 8 on the trot, but I wouldn’t know, I’ve been unable to get out of overflows since, even after waiting 2 hours in overflow on one occasion.

All in all, I’ve tried this fight about 12 times now, and my platform has only failed once due to only 3 of us being on it and 2 of those being dead on entry it seemed…the abuse that came after that was…..well, I’m done with this fight now I think…

I’ll just do one platform in lane 1 each morning for the daily for the meta and that’ll be it. What could have been an awesome experience was ruined by RNG and Overflows

Charak.9761:

I try to do in the 2nd gate because it seems to be the common one to fail, but I should also aim for the 3rd cause it seems to be equally daunting for some players.

I’m happy to hear that you do this, and this is exactly what everyone should aspire to do in a group setting – play to your strengths for the benefit of the group. Not everyone can pull off that clutch dodge every time, and those who can should lead by example and tackle the challenges that others struggle with.

In fact, I really hope that the development team considers this for future encounters. Create situations that let players voluntarily take on extra risks and responsibilities commensurate with their skill level, without forcing new/less confident players into situations where they fear they will let down the team.

I think this is an awesome and fun fight.

It is also simply not true that you need a bunch on elite uber geared 80’s.

What you DON’T need is a bunch of elite uber 80’s saying my success depends on a bunch of random under geared players and then casting blame for each mistake.

This is a fight designed in open-world in a mid level zone- to exclude players because they are not 80 is ridiculous.
They have as much right to be there as you do

All that is needed to win is a bit of organisation before hand to explain, to read map chat and to follow the objectives.

If you have done the fight before take a minute to explain and rally the troops
Be supportive and try your best.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

Intending to do something and having it turn out as intended does not mean that it was the right thing so do. The more recent bosses seem to be “Content for people who hate GW2 and would rather play something else.” If you like the features that make GW2 great, like being able to just drop into the content and play your role, and to not be able to ruin other players’ day or have them ruin yours, the new Teq and Wurm fights, and even the Marionette, fail miserably at this.

I also love the majority of the Marionette fight. The tower defense works, and getting players to divvy up their forces for maximum effectiveness is a great idea. The only issue, as I’ve said, is the random allocation of players to platforms for the arena aspect of the boss. If we could get teleported to another platform after our regulator is down, this would likely be my favourite boss battle of all time.

I fought Maria (Marionette) 8 times, once on my home server (Desolation), 7 times in overflow. The attempts were successful 6 times. The last one I did was at 5 am CET in an European overflow with mixed server population, and it was one of the successful ones. In two instances my guild was heavily invested in the fight and we used teamspeak; one attempt was successful, one not (and I am ashamed to admit that our guild wasn’t innocent).

This very small and non-representative data pool leads me to the conclusion that the boss fight is very much doable even with mixed groups. I think also that a success rate of 3 out of 4 is decent. No failure means no tension, no excitement.

And now, that I know Josh Foreman was involved, I have also an explanation why this fight is so much more awesome than other open world bosses (note: I have no opinion about the new triple wurm yet, because we haven’t figured out to do this right).

Big thumbs up on this boss fight, is very fun, varied and rewarding. Please arenanet, figure out a way to leave it permanently. don’t let marionette be the queens gauntlet #2, quality events above the rest that leave us too soon.

I like the Marionette fight and its nifty mechanics overall, but I think there are several (common) problems with it which could have been addressed with some tweaks.

I’ve done this boss 5 or 6 times, and every time it was in an overflow (even if I wped straight after the wurm fight), and every time we weren’t even close to succeeding. And the reason was the RNG in arena party grouping. There’s been several times when we finished our circle with 30 seconds to go while the other circles were all dead people. Some of you write of cheering words in the chat – but I’ve seen quite the contrary in the chat, with people accusing noobs [of failing the work others had done]. I never write such things, but still it’s right what I think at the moment. The fix? I see several fixes out there:

1. A sandbox, like for 10-15 seconds, where players are put before the fight, and then evenly sorted among the platforms according to their player levels, played time and/or achievement points. AP may not be an ideal representation of player skills, but at least it ensures that we don’t get a group of 5 veterans on one circle and a group of 5 passer-bys on the other which will result in a chain fail.
2. A portal/an automatic teleport/energy field paths to other platforms which appear once a platform has succeeded. This highly encourages team play, as you know that the faster you kill your boss the more chances you’ll have to help other platforms which weren’t that lucky. And on the other hand, it relieves that uneasy feeling of standing on an empty platform and looking at the last dead body dropping on the next platform and knowing that they’ve failed it.

So, I think that putting pure luck as a core component of an open-world raid content was not a good design choice. Taking all the overflow problems into consideration, I’m pretty sure that many players won’t even kill the marionette once because they’ll either be turning up in overflows or come later when most skilled players will get their achievements and forget that boss (like with the Tower of Nightmares which got unzergable at the end). “Fix” to this? It’s camping and afking the map, forcing other players to fill the overflows. I really feel bad about doing it, but I’ll be doing it soon as otherwise nothing will change. Unless, of course, the devs tweak the platform mechanics in the above way;)

A couple more notes on the boss:

• “Go through the gate” thing and the actual invisible teleport are logically misleading. I’ve done it myself at the first run and I’ve seen many people doing it: just running through the gate and facing a stone wall, and then again and again. Firstly, in such a pandemonium it’s easy to overlook the teleport thingie, and secondly, this thing looks exactly like a gate which you should run THROUGH. Putting a mesmer’s portal or another type of ground portal and removing the green (passable!) curtain would’ve worked so much better.
• The marionette’s face. Yeah, it’s certainly a trifle, but the expression is dumb Some mischievousness and technology in it would’ve made it so much cooler

Overall, thanks for a fun boss to do. I hope one day I’ll manage to get onto my home server and finish it.

The crazy thing about the gates is that ANet already have automatic teleports in game. You don’t have to interact with an asura gate to travel via it…

CherryChiicake.1378:

Absolutely agreed; this is my favorite boss fight in the game yet. It’s got just the right balance of teamwork and difficulty— you definitely need coordination, yet it is something that can be accomplished without the use of teamspeak; it’s hard, but not unforgiving. The NPCs are integrated into the scene in a useful and engaging way. The event is on a timer such that you can plan ahead in order to get your guild in for it. There are enough things to do that the whole thing isn’t a mindless zerg like the Pavilion (which I actually liked, but this is better). I wish the marionette was staying instead of the wurms!

I know that by virtue of preferences not everyone will enjoy this particular fight, but I absolutely do.

I agree, wish this was staying as a boss event. Love it.

digiowl.9620:

The crazy thing about the gates is that ANet already have automatic teleports in game. You don’t have to interact with an asura gate to travel via it…

I thought it being not automatic was an intended behaviour. Don’t know what the intention exactly was though. Probably it was designed that way to let people stack at the place and teleport all at once (so that there won’t be people soloing bosses until others come). Not that it can’t be done with an asura gate…

sheepZA.7054:

I agree, wish this was staying as a boss event. Love it.

I like it too, but as soon as the release ends, nobody (except TTS) will ever gather enough people to take it down. Everybody will go for Frozen Maw and Inquest Golem and Fire Ele to get the easy rares.

Distaste.4801:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Yes, it is hard (perhaps harder than it needed to be), but perfectly doable by casual, unprepared players.

And that could come down to pure dumb luck.

Nope, I went on to the map after Mad Queen Malafide who was leaving after the 2nd consecutive kill for the server; and did organizing in map chat with only 20-30 people on TS: we went on to bag a 2 more consecutive kills. I’m not sure if that kill streak was extended after I left to fractals – I am sure it was.

A 4 kill streak is not luck.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Wurm … We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics.

I’m probably the one player who is okay with this (who isn’t part of one of the organised groups). I was in TKS during their first Tequatl kill (even though I am no longer) so my opinion might be biased – but you guys did say up-front before the patch dropped that Wurm was going to be hard and approachable [at first] only by organised groups. You explicitly stated that this content wouldn’t be puggable from the get-go. When I do feel like completing it I will join/set up an organised group and bag a kill and I know the failures will be as much fun as the victory. You really need to look at a systems that helps these groups set up overflows though, I know how annoying it was during TKS-Tequatl fights as I did overflow scouting and I am sure it’s still as frustrating.

I’m really looking forward to more patches like this.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

zamalek.2154:

As Mad Queen Malafide said in the linked thread: pity one of the best (if not the best) boss fights is only here for 2 weeks. Although I wonder if the content would get old – still it’s great for now: would recommend to anyone.

I wish this boss fight stayed, and the Wurms were temporary. I think the Marionette is way better designed as a boss fight.

And it really is great hearing all these war stories. On Aurora Glade I’ve managed to lead our server to victory twice now, and it felt epic. It made me as a commander feel like a sort of hero. And it was great to sweep everyone into a battle frenzy with a rousing speech. I would tell people:

“Lets break Scarlet’s dolly and send her running crying back to her lair!”

or

“Let their mechanical screams of anguish be the anthem to our victory!”

And everyone would cheer, and yell out: “To battle!”, “For Victory!”, “For Aurora Glade!”.

Aurora Glade rocks, and so do you my Queen Followed you into battle last night, and was part of the flawless victory. Look forward to another round

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

And that is what happens at WSR too. People cheering, all the (cheerful) yelling in TS, map chat spammed with “gl lane 2” – “we are the best lane ever!” – “alright guys, time to show what we got!” – is just awesome.

On a sidenote….

Josh! JOSH! JOSH!!!! Do you have an estimate on when the Syou Aknow Bwhat is returning? I’m all excited about it’s next episode

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

Any chance for some review on the possibility of leaving the Marionette in the game permanently? I mean, I’m all for hard core raid content full of organization and strategy and tactics, but it would be nice to have big boss events that don’t need 150+ people all on voice chat screaming at each other to do various things. You know, things the rest of us can do too.

I absolutely LOVE the Marionette fight! Did it only three times but enjoyed every moment of it. Waiting in your lane to jump in, nerves on edge, waiting for the other groups to finish their engagements, and then BAM, into the portal and unload all that expectation onto those champs… AWESOME!

More like this, please!

I usually hate the LS updates and was sure this event would be kitten too but I was surprised to see that this event was indeed pretty good.
I like this idea of reasonnable coordination with tower defend phase and attack one.

Only 2 negative points for me :
- often a bad distribution of players on the 5 ojbectives up there, often leading to 2-3 players on one, which makes it almost impossible.
- too much HP for the champions, relies too much on DPS while so many players have pretty bad DPS (bearbows powa ….)

So I think it could be good to tweak the distribution of players, reducing a bit the HP of the champions and also allow players who have completed their objective up there to help others.
After all, if they’re very good, they should be able to help instead of idling. If they’re just average as often, they won’t have enough time to help the others.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I had a super epic encounter last night where everyone in my champion ring died except for me almost immediately (we were fighting the shrieker). Then, I went on to solo the boss, killing it with 20 seconds to spare, and managed to finish off the power regulator with less than a half-second remaining on the clock. All of this was happening to the cheers in /say chat from the viewers, stunned that a Necromancer of all things soloed the boss and ultimately broke the chain. We went on to win the whole thing because of that success (we had no failures allowed left before bar filled), and it made me swell with pride to think that not only had I achieved something truly great and not only had I benefited about 100 other people, but that a group of them watched it in disbelief and cheered me on. It was nerve-wracking and absolutely unforgettably amazing.

It’s moments like these that I remember forever, and for that, I thank ANet for making such an amazing and awesome fight where I could show off my personal skill and make a difference for everyone.

I had something really similar happen to me as well! No more failures allowed, everyone else on my platform was down, and I managed to kill the boss (as a squishy mesmer) with freaking 8 health remaining. We went on to win.

Best moment of GW2 for me.

Marionette is the best fight in the whole game so far. It’s combination of group and individual skill, both are needed for success. Rewards are good, it doesn’t take too long. And most importantly, it promotes very positive atmosphere.

Tequatl is ok because you don’t need to be too organised and servers can do it with the right numbers, don’t need specific guilds.

Wurm.. I don’t know, it depends on what the “puzzle” is. It might be really easy once peple learn it but it also might be impossibly hard and only the infamous TTS will be able to do it. Designing the content in that way is wrong. Normal servers should be able to do it without the need for special overflow. As long as they have enough people of course, just like tequatl.

I just wanted to stop by and join the praise. The Marionette is really nicely done. I specially liked how you managed to split one zerg into smaller groups. And even though it sometimes feels that your success depends on some individuals and you can´t contribute, another time the success of others depends on you, so I think it´s in the balance I really liked this encounter and wish we could keep it. Or at least, that something similar will come one day and stay permanent Now every uneven hour I think of as a Marionette-time

Again, I have no issues with Wurm being meant as a hardcore challenge, but if the good world boss event is only permanent and all we’re left with is “hardcore only” Wurm (and if all future encounters are like that) it’s not a good thing. Put encounters for all type of players to enjoy in the game PERMANENTLY.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

I’m ‘so’ glad the content that everyone likes will get removed, whereas the content that’s just for hard core players will be removed. Keep up the ‘good’ work.

So here´s my voice, too!
Great encounter!!

I like everything about the marionette except the achievement criteria. Nothing sux more than 4 of 5 groups finishing their champ and having to look on helplessly at the 5th chamber group fail it for everyone. The chain you are on isn’t severed, you won’t get your achievement for killing that warden and/or avoiding those marionette attacks and you have one less attempt to complete all wardens. Too high a price in my opinion.

Have done this event about 10 times so far, 3 times have been successful. I have enjoyed it every time. Even more when there is a win.

The only problem I have seen is afk’ers, imo if someone isn’t helping with the event they should not get any loot from the event. When its over.

Marionette should be permanent. Wurm is not liked by many.

Ok so I tried it for the first time on my Home server. Much fun, and wow that marrionette is awesome looking. I am always pretty harsh on bad designed content but I felt like this is 100 steps in the right direction for boss fights. My compliments.

Usually, I am the first to complain about poor design.
But this boos encounter is really awesome.
Briefing troops before the fight, organizing the lines, foresee reinforcements, encouraging guys that are fighting, and finally win altogether. This is awesome.
Yes, everyone can bring something important to this event, so I think this is a great success.
I wish this event stays and your elitist Wurm thing just vanish in the Mist.

Again, I think most people agree that the event itself is well-designed, including me. But some of us would just like to see some of the glaring flaws fixed — like the flatly ridiculous way people are assigned to platforms — so that the success rate is higher.

We’re having another go at this tonight (24-1 at 8:00 PM CET). Join us on Aurora Glade, if you haven’t beaten it already (but be there an hour early).

More at: http://www.auroraglade.eu

And to Josh and his team, join us for one of these attempts if you find the time. Aurora Glade shall bring the Twisted Marionette down once more!

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

It’s extremely sad to consider that the Marionette will in fact go away and is just temporary…
Hopefully you guys add some world bosses of its calibre later rather than always as demanding as Tequatl/Jungle Wurm; actually ones that a well-coordinated pug group can overcome.

I agree that it stinks that this will be going away. I understand the appeal of temporary content and it wouldn’t be as fun if it were permanent, but it seems a shame to lose it.

Tonight is the last time I have to do Marionette to get my meta achievement, and I will never go near it again. Frustrating event.

Josh Foreman.8250:

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

I like the challenging open world bosses, but I wish you’d borrow more from the marionette fight when designing them in the future. I have not completed the marionette or the wurm, and have only beat Tequatl once by guesting to a more popular server. I think why I like the marionette better is the event feels like it is more in our control as players to succeed, and less to do with beating some arbitrary timer.

I understand timers are a check against skill and DPS; as one must deliver the barrels, phytotoxins, etc. with skill in order to DPS wurm; but it stills feels different when you fail because a timer elapsed. Thoughts like, “We removed so many of the wurm’s protective shields, yet only got it down to 75%, there isn’t enough time!” are routine after a failed wurm event; instead of thoughts like, “We need to practice more of the mechanics to succeed”. I think the reason why is the mechanics are easy enough to pick up. The wurm has shield and the shield needs to go to damage the wurm, but failures still occur. Since timers cause failure they are the immediate thing to blame; not one’s skill. The marionette on the other hand has feedback through the event that your using your skills poorly. Is the charge meter filling too fast? It’s your defense that is lacking. Are you failing to cut chains? It’s your offense.

Apart from these mechanics issues, I don’t like timers as they are immersion breaking. I like my open world to make sense within the confines of Tyria’s lore. It just doesn’t make sense for the wurm or Tequatl to leave after 10 minutes. Is Tequatl late for a pedicure? More events that chain into each other and affect the world based on player participation, and less of this predictable world where everything runs on a timer would improve immersion.

Kurr.4179:

Tonight is the last time I have to do Marionette to get my meta achievement, and I will never go near it again. Frustrating event.

Join us on Aurora Glade if you want it. If you are on an EU server that is. We’ll be forming an army around 7 PM CET.

One little thing that has been repeated many times but it doesnt seem to sink in. One hit kills are not fun, I know you want to promote the dodging in the game but things like that are just very easy to design things. It’s hard to find a boos who does enough damage without the instagib kills.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I had a super epic encounter last night where everyone in my champion ring died except for me almost immediately (we were fighting the shrieker). Then, I went on to solo the boss, killing it with 20 seconds to spare, and managed to finish off the power regulator with less than a half-second remaining on the clock. All of this was happening to the cheers in /say chat from the viewers, stunned that a Necromancer of all things soloed the boss and ultimately broke the chain. We went on to win the whole thing because of that success (we had no failures allowed left before bar filled), and it made me swell with pride to think that not only had I achieved something truly great and not only had I benefited about 100 other people, but that a group of them watched it in disbelief and cheered me on. It was nerve-wracking and absolutely unforgettably amazing.

It’s moments like these that I remember forever, and for that, I thank ANet for making such an amazing and awesome fight where I could show off my personal skill and make a difference for everyone.

I was in the ring next to you and my guildies got to watch that greatness. Clutch performance!

I’m really enjoying the divisions (lanes) and subdivisions (circles). While it is indeed frustrating when a single lane or circle fails miserably, failing the chain severing event, there is a cool satisfaction that is experienced when you’re in a finished circle cheering on the players adjacent to you.

It would be really cool to have some kind of world boss (or maybe open world guild mission) that plays similar to this event that is permanent. I think it was a successful design and the coordination aspect would suit a guild mission format quite well. (Tier of mission dictates number of lanes/circle equivalents open.) Even if the Merit/Influence Reward wasn’t too special, my small guild would play it to enjoy the mission style.

The tower defense style lanes including the siege and barriers was a nice implementation!

Josh Foreman.8250:

Hey, thanks everyone! We spent a lot of time tweaking the balance on this, and I’m glad that so many people appreciate our efforts. We REALLY like hearing that people are making memories and cheering each other on. Those are the kinds of experiences we make MMOs for.

I’m not surprised that the Wurm is not liked by as many people. We were making that specifically for the hard core groups that are all about the organization and figuring out the strategy and tactics. It’s really cool watching the community grapple with this puzzle and innovate as they get closer and closer to finding a winning strategy.

Out of curiosity, why put the wurm in the open world and not in an instance then? If this is meant to be hard-core content for a more limited-group of players, putting it in the world-map seems like a Bad Idea: you force players to spend hours sitting in the map waiting for spawns so they don’t get locked out of the Main Server/Overflow for that map, and the hardcore players on the map have to contend with random pugs who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t want to cooperate with strategy or get on voice comms.

In the future can the design team seriously consider putting difficult, larg-scale (read 40+ player) content into instances so that players can truly control when + who is participating with them?

After playing even more of this event and continuing to enjoy it, I’d add another point to my original observations:

7) Player performance affects the tasks other players need to do. The mental calculation of, “If lane x fails, we need to prepare for (this), but if lane y succeeds, we need to prepare for (that)” adds a level of interest and investment that is not present in events that always progress in a linear fashion. Tequatl, for example, always progresses through the same phases in the same order, and you either deal enough damage to kill it or you don’t. The Marionette gives the opportunity for adjustment and redistribution of resources during the event based on what has happened so far – if lane x is in a win-or-die situation, send your most experienced players with that particular encounter there. If lane y is leaking champions, send a floating squad of defenders there. It creates some very refreshing variety.

I reminded myself that if i ignore the platforms for a moment the event is as i have suggested Tequatl should be worked.

Meaning that the success or failure of the event depends on the performance of the players, not some timer ticking down in the background.

This because failing to stop clockwork mobs, or failing the platforms, advance the cannon charge.

Tequatl could have been reworked to something similar related to the cannon on the beach. And i am sure that other world bosses could be reworked in some similar fashion, thus removing the need for the arbitrary time limit.

Still, some of the platform champions could use some scrutiny.

First is the one that plonk down bombs around the edge of the platform ever so often. Those bombs are the very same that the “squids” loves to spread during the invasions. And in both cases the problem is that they do not have any AOE markers. This makes it harder than usual to ensure you are outside of the blast area when they go off.

Second is the confusion&torment spewing one. Both of those conditions are insanely insidious. Confusion hurts based on character actions. As such, the humble auto-attack quickly becomes a liability. And torment hurts based on movement, something you want to do to stay out of the AOE circles. Both can be countered by condition removal or conversion, but not every class have that in ample supply.

Zaxares.5419:

Yeah, the community cheering each other on is a nice feeling. Sure, you get the poor sports who deride other players when they fail to break a chain, but for the most part, failure just results in the next lane going, “Alright, Lane X, it’s up to us! Let’s do this!”

Agreed, I’d rather have an inclusive server that supports people and tries to figure these events out rather than groups of people who hide in an instance and avoid contact with each other.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues to solve. There is very bad leadership communication tools at the moment which makes communicating much harder than it needs to be. This really needs to be fixed (and hopefully some changes come from the Commander CDI). But overall, I like where the game is headed as far as boss encounters.

digiowl.9620:

Meaning that the success or failure of the event depends on the performance of the players, not some timer ticking down in the background.

I sympathize with removing the timers, but I would go so far as to say timers don’t depend on player performance. They are both skill and DPS indicator. For Tequatl you need to have the skills to avoid the waves and other hazards to DPS him and beat the timer. For the wurms you have to have the skills to deliver bombs and phytotoxin to DPS him. I support removing the timers for more interesting failure conditions that make sense (does Tequatl have an appointment to make?)