Guild Wars 2

Gene Archer.8560:

No, they aren’t right. That’s what a lot of you don’t seem to be getting.

You can’t force someone to get better. You just can’t.

Furthermore, saying that completely ignores that everyone has a set skill level, and furthermore, skill cap. A lot of you call it being bad, or lazy. But players can put in all the hard work they can and still not break through to the next level. People have limits and thresholds.

See you have the exact defeatist attitude that I don’t understand. People can get better, and while it’s true that you can’t force them, you can nudge them in that direction. People have limits and thresholds that they can break. Everyone can improve with practice and a little help. But if you give up outright on principle you won’t get anywhere.

ANet is spot on the money. PvE has been far too easy for far too long and it’s spoiled players into thinking that anything that requires effort = too much effort. Yes, Marionette requires planning and coordination. If that feels like a “job” to you, well, that’s all in your attitude. Personally I find those aspects quite enjoyable, and I willingly take up a leadership role during the event.

Lose the negativity! Believe in yourself! You’ll be happier

Not at all. The Marionette was not designed to be beaten only by “elite” players. We have an idea of where the average player is skill-wise, and placed the bar where we hoped would just a tad above that, in the hopes that they would have to stretch a bit. That stretching creates tension, which is the sweet spot in event-type content as far as I’m concerned. (as opposed to the abnegation style smooth sailing content that most of an MMO needs to be.) Without the tension new things get boring faster. Too much tension, (as seems to be your case) and people give up and the content is wasted on them. That seems to be your argument about this event.

Would it be possible to double-balance events like this? Balance it out how you like it, and then also make a build that is balanced out to be slightly less demanding of the players, ready to hot-swap in if players are finding it too frustrating?

Or maybe include BOTH versions. Let the “hardcore” players do the “hardcore” version, and let the “I just want to enjoy myself” players play a slightly easier version. So long as the rewards between the two are identical I don’t see what the problem would be in letting the “hardcore” players enjoy the game the way they like it. Most single player games have a “Hard” mode, but they also have “normal” modes for “normal” people.

Because the player base is a diverse lot, ANY amount of tension will frustrate SOME amount, causing them to be turned off. So fundamentally we have to ask ourselves if we want to ever ask the player to stretch, or keep them all in a happy abnegated state of chillaxing. Does the benefit to those who want some tension from time to time outweigh the frustration of those who don’t?

No, the answer is no, it does not.

The other question that I hope is answered in the positive is this: Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this?

Yes, to a point, but not to the point that the server, as a whole, is able to actually complete the challenge on a regular basis, which means it is not working. If players are not using Traits or whatever, then TELL THEM TO, put in elements that specifically handhold them through those systems so that they are using them right, don’t just kick them into shark-filled waters and assume that some of them will figure out how to swim before they’re eaten.

Nothing about the new content teaches players how to play better, it just requires that they DO play better, and if they don’t play better, then they get frustrated and give up, without understanding in the least why they are not being successful.

Furthermore, they drag down dozens of other players when they do so, frustrating those players through no fault of their own. I’ve been part of about 12+ Marionette runs since it’s launched, a few on my home server, many on overflows because my home was full. Of all the times I’ve made it to Phase two, my own platform has only failed ONCE to defeat the warden there (on lane 3), yet I have never once been a part of an overall effort that has gotten past two strings cut, and have never been part of a lane 2 fight in which the other platforms have all succeeded, so I’ve never picked up that achievement, even though I’ve played plenty of rounds in which I have killed my Warden and I have avoided the Marionette, but if someone else screws up, I get no achievement.

On a measure of personal skill, I’ve proven myself “good enough” for the Marionette, at least so far, but I have not cleared the entire thing yet, because of the way it’s designed to punish everyone for the results of a few failing players. How is that fair? Do you think it would be a good idea for an entire class in school to be failed if only a handful of students receive poor test scores? The latest run I did, we had to redo Lane 3 three times, and in each case, 3-4 platforms would succeed fairly effortlessly, and 1-2 would fail it, and the others could do nothing about that. How is that supposed to be considered a balanced situation?

But back to being constructive, here are the three simple solutions to each of the annoying events in the game:

Marionette:
Instead of requiring all five platforms to succeed, make it best three out of five. If three succeed and two completely wipe, you win, next Warden. There can be some kind of extra buff if you manage to get all five, but it’s not necessary for completing the stage.

Done

Tequatl:
Either remove the timer or scale his HP to Shatterer levels. A decent sized group can kill Shatterer in 15 minutes, they should be able to do exactly as well against Teq, so long as they can deal with his other effects. Ideally you could also put four of the six turrets under NPC control, so that poor players could not screw that element up. Players would still need to defend and repair the turrets, but they would fire reliably while up.

Done.

Triple Wurms:
Remove the secondary timer when you kill one of them, allowing you to kill each in turn rather than having to try and kill all at once. If you want to have some last minute drama, make it so that as soon as you lop off a head, it burrows, and when you lop off the third head, the other two both spawn at that location, and you have to fight all three heads at once to finish it off. Make sure the event scales properly to the number of players in the zone, if the zone is less than packed, then the tactics and DPS-test involved should be scaled lower to compensate (ie less barrels needed, less bait players needed, less gasses needed, etc.).

Done.

It’s also important that if you put content in a level 50 area, that the content not be balanced against a level 80 player with full ascended, but rather against a level 50 player in full greens. Either that or prevent such players from entering the zone until the event is over.

Josh Foreman.8250:

P.S. Because several people brought up the idea of buffing the other platforms when one succeeds, I thought I ought to let you all know that this has always been the case. When one platform’s power regulator is destroyed the players on the platforms adjacent get Electrify Aura which gives 60 seconds of protection, swiftness, regeneration, fury, might, vigor and retaliation.

Out of curiosity, if I’m on platform 5, and platform 4 finished first and hands me (and platform 3) the buff, when platform 5 finishes up is our buff wasted (4 being done already) or does it wrap around and help those folks still struggling over on platform 1?

Josh Foreman.8250:

The average skill level rises, and in turn, we devs can make more interesting events that utilize the depth of the systems we have.

Gene Archer.8560:

I truly wish devs and players alike would stop trying to force other players to “get better at the game”.

If the average players wants to improve their skills, they will improve their skills. What you’re trying to do is force people to improve their skills. And yes, it is forcing because if they don’t get better, then they don’t get to take part in the content and take part in the rewards.

1.) Elite/moderately skilled players are punished by the casuals who fail, consequently preventing them from being rewarded for their efforts.

2.) Less skilled players not only do they not enjoy or take part in content but they also become the scapegoats for the frustration had by the many players who were doing their jobs, indirectly supporting stress and bullying between players. And before someone drops the PR response about reporting harassment through a ticket to support, YOU did this. YOU created an unhealthy situation and negative playing experience for many players, and you want to raise the bar even higher?!

3.) You, as developers, need your players to play better?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Because the player base is a diverse lot, ANY amount of tension will frustrate SOME amount, causing them to be turned off. So fundamentally we have to ask ourselves if we want to ever ask the player to stretch, or keep them all in a happy abnegated state of chillaxing. Does the benefit to those who want some tension from time to time outweigh the frustration of those who don’t?

The other question that I hope is answered in the positive is this: Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this? We know that X% of players don’t know about traits. We know Y% never swap out their 7-0 skills to accommodate specific challenges. And there are probably dozens of other systems that go unused by some portion of the player-base. If even 10% of that group hits a challenge like the Marionette and the subsequent tension causes them to look into these systems and they learn a new depth to the game they otherwise never would have, I think that’s a win for everybody. The average skill level rises, and in turn, we devs can make more interesting events that utilize the depth of the systems we have.

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult. On the other hand, we don’t know how long it takes for the aggregate skill level of the player-base to grow. I don’t know how long it takes for information about traits and builds to disseminate to those who had previously never looked into them. As with all our content, we are closely watching and noting these things so that every future project can learn from it.

P.S. Because several people brought up the idea of buffing the other platforms when one succeeds, I thought I ought to let you all know that this has always been the case. When one platform’s power regulator is destroyed the players on the platforms adjacent get Electrify Aura which gives 60 seconds of protection, swiftness, regeneration, fury, might, vigor and retaliation.

A resounding yes! Please keep making content that makes the player have/want to stretch in order to overcome new challenges. This is fun!

I’d say the Marionette is pretty close to perfect in difficulty, first week only a few did it and now that more and more people know how to do it, you get more and more successful events in pugs in overflows – provided of course people bother to coordinate in map chat, etc. If people don’t bother, it’s not the event’s fault.

Just out of curiosity, do you guys (Anet) have figures of s of how many out of the player base actually defeated Liadri back during Queen’s Gauntlet, and could you also keep us updated and let us know after this LS update is done, how large a percentage of the player base defeated the marionette?
You say you tune events on the basis of this, but it’d be interesting to those of us who managed, just how difficult it was to overcome. I’d feel pretty good about myself if only 10 took out a boss, compared to a world boss that 99% (and their grand mothers) can do.

Kalarchis.8635:

ANet is spot on the money. PvE has been far too easy for far too long and it’s spoiled players into thinking that anything that requires effort = too much effort.

No, it’s been easy to you. I still have plenty of problems soloing around in the overworld from time to time. And I’ve done my research, I’ve chosen the skills and traits and weapons that best fit my abilities and playstyle and I’ve done the practicing that comes with it.

I know my limits. And things like Marionette go well beyond that, even though I have managed to help take down chains here and there and do my best to not be a burden. But I still know where my limit is, and if this trend continues, I will be excluded from the new content, very soon. My computer, my reaction time, my knowledge, my skill, and my server are all at their limits, already.

You call it being defeatist, I call it not overtaxing what is already on the threshold. And frankly, I like easy. And I think that’s where we’re going to ultimately disagree, and never come to a consensus. Because I like easy and you don’t.

And at the end of the day, I’m just going to keep saying it:

Quit forcing people to improve. It’s not fun. If that kind of content really must be in the game, instance it. But don’t do that with the Open World, and definitely don’t do it with the Living Story.

The Living Story is the new content. It should always be completable by even the lowest common denominator. Every time.

I think in addition to group rewards there should be rewards for individual contribution. Like players who beat their regulator should get an extra loot box each time they win even if other platforms fail, defenders in lanes should get loot for not letting any champion through.

Squee Squashington.5189:

3.) You, as developers, need your players to play better? Did I just read that?

No, they want people to learn about the game so that the game remains interesting. If someone doesn’t know about traits, they can’t really test new builds. If someone never changes their skills, they definitely aren’t testing new builds. Which means fights start becoming predictable, and the predictable becomes boring. Boring means you stop playing the game.

By introducing content that encourages players to develop both their skills and knowledge of the game, ANet can keep the game from becoming the cookie cutter “Stand here and press autoattack” that many people decry PvE as. This, in turn, encourages people to play the game more to experience these challenges, which extends the lifetime of the game, especially as players go back to face things they couldn’t face before. And if that seems circular, well, that’s because its supposed to.

The consequence, of course, is that some players either can’t, or won’t put in the effort to develop. Some will drop the game, while others will stick to their safely determined routines. I would wager that ANet is entirely aware of this, however, and considers it acceptable so long as they don’t do something that epically screws things up and alienates the entire base. Since even Tequatl didn’t -quite- do that, and they seemed to have learned from some of the mistakes made there, just as they will from the ones made with the marionette, then by all metrics they are doing their jobs well.

Gene Archer.8560:

I like easy.

Then this content is not for you. Difficult content is sorely needed, it’s about time, it’s not always about you, and there already is and has been a plethora of easy content.

Just sit this one out, it’s blatantly obvious this is not for you, so realise this and stop forcing your opinion onto others that play to challenge and improve themselves.

If you want a relaxing experience there’s plenty of other options for you. Like singleplayers.

20 random players should be able to defeat the bosses? lol, no. 20 SKILLED players should be able to beat the bosses….but you shouldn’t be able to faceroll keyboard completely unaware of your own abilities and beat all the content…..not saying don’t make content for them….but I am saying don’t nerf deliberating challenging content because the lesser skilled players are QQ’ing.

The notion of scaling it smaller though would be awesome, but people could grief easier in open world, ergo….instances.

I still wonder why i can t have more than 1 chest as the other world bosses -.-

I mean its not even rewarding as content if you succeed, and yet you don t take the small chest….

At least give me the dragonite in the big chest …

Without it the event is probably going to fail the later you attend it since people succeeding won t reattend it.

P.S. yet the moa is awesome.

Gene Archer.8560:

Zanthrax.6538:

What a joke, you should all strive to improve, should olympians stop striving to improve at their sport? Should drug attics stop trying to better themselves as a person?

Quit using examples of the real world for a game that’s about entertainment and nothing else. Stop trying to force people to improve.

Just. Stop.

If I want to become a better person, I will do so in real life, where being a better person matters. All I want from a video game is a relaxing, entertaining ride.

Then go play the relaxing entertaining content? Why should all content a game makes be focused to you? Many people complain god stop making content for X people, they have already stated this content aka the Wurm etc not normal world bosses were designed for very co-ordinated players, wait for the more skilled players to complete it and then we’ll more than happily help you in turn get your achievements etc….see TTS whose entire point of creation was to help EVERYONE get tequatl down.

Mank.2183:

Then this content is not for you.

This entire game was never for you. It was supposed to be easier and more casual. Not another WoW Raidfest.

Mank.2183:

Difficult content is sorely needed,

No, it’s not.

Mank.2183:

Just sit this one out, it’s blatantly obvious this is not for you, so realise this and stop forcing your opinion onto others that play to challenge and improve themselves.

If you want a relaxing experience there’s plenty of other options for you. Like singleplayers.

If you want challenge, there is literally every other mmo out there. There’s even Korean Grinders for you to gnash your teeth at. I shouldn’t be relegated to singleplayer games just because I want something easy.

Furthermore, do challenge seekers sit out the easy content? No, they do it in two hours and then complain that it wasn’t challenging. Why should I have to sit out content while they get to do easy content, complain about it, and then also get hard content that excludes people?

You have a lot of nerve to tell me not to force my opinion on others only to then force your opinion on me.

I’ll say this much on that: At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude anyone from experiencing the content or the rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

But back to being constructive, here are the three simple solutions to each of the annoying events in the game:

Marionette:
Instead of requiring all five platforms to succeed, make it best three out of five. If three succeed and two completely wipe, you win, next Warden. There can be some kind of extra buff if you manage to get all five, but it’s not necessary for completing the stage.

Done

Tequatl:
Either remove the timer or scale his HP to Shatterer levels. A decent sized group can kill Shatterer in 15 minutes, they should be able to do exactly as well against Teq, so long as they can deal with his other effects. Ideally you could also put four of the six turrets under NPC control, so that poor players could not screw that element up. Players would still need to defend and repair the turrets, but they would fire reliably while up.

Done.

Triple Wurms:
Remove the secondary timer when you kill one of them, allowing you to kill each in turn rather than having to try and kill all at once. If you want to have some last minute drama, make it so that as soon as you lop off a head, it burrows, and when you lop off the third head, the other two both spawn at that location, and you have to fight all three heads at once to finish it off. Make sure the event scales properly to the number of players in the zone, if the zone is less than packed, then the tactics and DPS-test involved should be scaled lower to compensate (ie less barrels needed, less bait players needed, less gasses needed, etc.).

Done.

It’s also important that if you put content in a level 50 area, that the content not be balanced against a level 80 player with full ascended, but rather against a level 50 player in full greens. Either that or prevent such players from entering the zone until the event is over.

Your Wurm and Tequatl idea’s are terrible in my opinion whats wrong with having some content that has this real sense of challenge to it? Theres always so much excitement surrounding new bosses that are hard to kill world firsts n all that. Hell even the devs were watching in. There is room in this game for difficult challenging content, it has started with tequatl marionette could be easier I’m happy with your suggestion there because its living story content ( yes I’m aware tequatl was too but it was more so just generic excuse to try out new encounter types, at least imo ) but for the permanently in game content of this calibre, nerfing it just ruins it.

Valor Singus.7049:

The consequence, of course, is that some players either can’t, or won’t put in the effort to develop. Some will drop the game, while others will stick to their safely determined routines. I would wager that ANet is entirely aware of this, however, and considers it acceptable so long as they don’t do something that epically screws things up and alienates the entire base. Since even Tequatl didn’t -quite- do that, and they seemed to have learned from some of the mistakes made there, just as they will from the ones made with the marionette, then by all metrics they are doing their jobs well.

Rift, SWtoR, and WoW: Cataclysm lost a lot of players to time and difficult, annoying, and/or unengaging endgame. Since we’ve already started down this road, what’s the X and Y% on players that will leave with ESO, WoW:WoD, Rift 3.0, or various other non-MMO titles on the horizon.

Gene Archer.8560:

Mank.2183:

Then this content is not for you.

This entire game was never for you. It was supposed to be easier and more casual. Not another WoW Raidfest.

Mank.2183:

Difficult content is sorely needed,

No, it’s not.

Mank.2183:

Just sit this one out, it’s blatantly obvious this is not for you, so realise this and stop forcing your opinion onto others that play to challenge and improve themselves.

If you want a relaxing experience there’s plenty of other options for you. Like singleplayers.

If you want challenge, there is literally every other mmo out there. There’s even Korean Grinders for you to gnash your teeth at. I shouldn’t be relegated to singleplayer games just because I want something easy.

Furthermore, do challenge seekers sit out the easy content? No, they do it in two hours and then complain that it wasn’t challenging. Why should I have to sit out content while they get to do easy content, complain about it, and then also get hard content that excludes people?

You have a lot of nerve to tell me not to force my opinion on others only to then force your opinion on me.

I’ll say this much on that: At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude anyone from experiencing the content or the rewards.

" The entire game was never for you ", so why did arenanet say this content requires highly co-ordinated players and encourages people to critique their builds etc, when clearly casual players don’t do that. Perhaps there IS room for both casual easy content and hard content in a game. Also you said " At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude people from rewards or content " You still experience the content, you will never down it unless you improve but you can experience it while still getting the rewards. See living story meta achievement. Obtainable with dailies. The only thing you don’t get? Purely cosmetic skins. How does that not seem fair?

Josh Foreman.8250:

StriderShinryu.6923:

I suppose what it boils down to with me is a question of why the content needs to be an elite level challenge in the first place. Would it really be all that bad if an average group of players could win?

Not at all. The Marionette was not designed to be beaten only by “elite” players. We have an idea of where the average player is skill-wise, and placed the bar where we hoped would just a tad above that, in the hopes that they would have to stretch a bit.

[…]

Because the player base is a diverse lot, ANY amount of tension will frustrate SOME amount, causing them to be turned off.

The problem is that here you don’t get just the new/unexperienced player frustrated, but also the old/competent one. I can be as good as I want, help with my boons and debuffs my whole platform, ress the other players in difficulty at the right moment, be happy of the team work we had… then I turn around, and just stay to watch the last platform fail their encounter. I can’t do anything about it. Five players, or even worse, just a couple of them, will nullify all my efforts, and I have no way of improving the situation. Arguably, this is not the best design for an encounter where you have no control over the people participating.

Tequatl is quite better in this regard, in contrast. A cannon defense is weak? I can move there to help by jumping through platforms (here I can’t). The only place inexperienced players could be and ruin the game for the others, was at turrets, and even there it was pretty difficult (two lines of explanation, and you know how to use them). Here every single inexperienced player can bring failure.

I’m all for pushing players toward improving themselves. But not to frustrate good players and make them impotent toward failure. Ask good players the impossible, rather than making them stuck watching.

(apart from this my critique, you have my compliments for the mechanics and visuals of the fight: both are very well done)

Zanthrax.6538:

Then go play the relaxing entertaining content?

I have? I’d like to take part in the new content as well…you know, cause it’s new and such? Cause the Living Story is what Anet is selling as the game at the moment?

Zanthrax.6538:

Why should all content a game makes be focused to you?

Not all content, but certainly Living Story, since Living Story is the main content and needs to be accessible by the lowest common denominator, since it’s become the point of the game.

Zanthrax.6538:

they have already stated this content aka the Wurm etc not normal world bosses were designed for very co-ordinated players,

And they’ve also stated their intent to bring the other world bosses up to the levels of Teq and Wurm.

Guess who loses out on content once they do that?

Zanthrax.6538:

" The entire game was never for you ", so why did arenanet say this content requires highly co-ordinated players and encourages people to critique their builds etc, when clearly casual players don’t do that. Perhaps there IS room for both casual easy content and hard content in a game. Also you said " At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude people from rewards or content " You still experience the content, you will never down it unless you improve but you can experience it while still getting the rewards. See living story meta achievement. Obtainable with dailies. The only thing you don’t get? Purely cosmetic skins. How does that not seem fair?

The current state of the game compared to the “vanilla” incarnation differ so immensely they might as well be considered different titles.

I don’t mind having some sort of endgame with moderate challenge regarding difficulty or time requirements, but I feel the powers that be have forgotten that a substantial portion of their player based comes from games that they left because they not longer wanted to play a game that felt like a job. Drudging through content isn’t fun for everyone.

They barely run/succeed at Teq, Wurm Trio, or Marionette on my server any more. I don’t know what further math you’d need to see that there’s a problem.

Zanthrax.6538:

" The entire game was never for you ", so why did arenanet say this content requires highly co-ordinated players and encourages people to critique their builds etc, when clearly casual players don’t do that.

Because ever since Ascended, Anet has been continually caving to the hardcores and the challenge seekers. And it’s created a muddled game.

Zanthrax.6538:

Perhaps there IS room for both casual easy content and hard content in a game.

I don’t disagree. But then, as I’ve said: Hard content should be instanced. It can’t be placed in the Overworld. It doesn’t work, there.

But if they’re just going to keep putting the hard content in the overworld, and not actually section if off, if they’re going to keep making the hard content the Living Story, and not separate properly, like they mostly did with the Queen’s Gauntlet, then I’d rather the hard content just not exist at all.

Better that the content not exist than exist in the way it currently does and just exclude and frustrate players.

Zanthrax.6538:

Also you said " At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude people from rewards or content " You still experience the content, you will never down it unless you improve but you can experience it while still getting the rewards.

If I don’t down wurm or marionette, how do I still get the rewards specific to them? There’s more to the rewards than just the meta.

Zanthrax.6538:

The only thing you don’t get? Purely cosmetic skins. How does that not seem fair?

Because the “purely cosmetic skins” are content, they’re the main pull of the game. You know, this was a game based on cosmetics, after all. So I’m being excluded from content.

But of course, you’ll disagree.

The idea of bringing players together and teach them organization is cool, but it needs a lot more than a world boss to achieve that in a MMO.

Adding a new world event that is insanely hard to do and requires 100% coordination will only separate players and cause more frustration.

If you are expecting every player to go and watch youtube walkthrough and read dulfy then you are simply living on the moon….

Step down on earth and accept your current player base and don’t try to create things to change how we play….

I play the game to have fun, not to become better at something….If something tries to change me then it means it does’t accept me as a player??? so is the GW2 player base not accepted within ANet’s walls that now we have to change?

nice attempt but a fail in my books….

Elbegast.6970:

@Josh Foreman
Three attempts are my limit. If I can’t kill a new boss in three attempts, I turn my focus to preventing others from completing the content. A single player with a proper strategy can shut down an entire group on Tequatl, Marionette and Wurm. Going by your example I could simply state that I am forcing those players to become better by making their event far more difficult than need be. It’s a win for everyone, right?

Wow.

This just made every statement in every forum you ever made invalid.

You are just plainly: a horrible person.

Well, I think I should give my feedback after playing for a week. In all the idea behind the marionette is good and functions well enough but several things hold it back.

Firstly it is not immediately apparent that the event is in any way rewarding, it takes a while to get the power core and killing endless mobs without a drop is frustrating. Yes Scarlets boxes are very rewarding in the end, but removing drops entirely is not a good approach. I would have rather had less mobs with normal loot with an end chest and only one Scarlet lair chest. It would have satisfied the here and now as well as felt rewarding for completion. What I did quite like was that the end loot bag scales to performance.

Next, when we have a large event with a hundred people, not should suffer due to just a handful being unable to hold their own, it is unfair to the majority. If we are all forced to play together then the conditions should be more lenient and one group should not hold back the rest. The very premise of this creates a feeling on animosity to fellow players rather than supportive group playing, which is essentially Guild Wars 2 core value. We should be actively helping each other, not forcibly placed in a situation to potentially hold each other back. What I did like was being split up to work in smaller groups, less lag and more tactical, I like that.

Time gated content, yes I understand we can not have the marionette attack all the time, but time gated content is no fun to wait for. What we really need is something do to with the living story while we wait. Yes we have the Wurm, but that is elite content and I am speaking as a casual player. Not much is needed, just something small to keep us occupied for an while in the same zone. Could have been a champion train with Scarlets minions attacking, some sort of mini game, who knows. But it would have been great to have something to occupy us.

Lastly instant kills, instant killing is not casual friendly. If you want to take everyone down that is fine, but it should always be to a downed state, not death. No matter the game be it traps, hits or any mechanics that instantly kill is fundamentally bad. Such tactics remove a sense of control from the player and lowers the skill required. I essentially see insta kills as a trollish device used by game developers to unfairly punish or artificially raise difficulty, Super Adventure box world 2 normal mode had an abundance of these and if memory serves they were not received well then either. I would not be shocked to learn that it was the same team that made this, regardless please at least rethink doing this in the future.

After a few days I started to like many aspects about the update, but these handful of things really do hold it back from being a truly great update in my opinion.

Bubi.7942:

Elbegast.6970:

@Josh Foreman
Three attempts are my limit. If I can’t kill a new boss in three attempts, I turn my focus to preventing others from completing the content. A single player with a proper strategy can shut down an entire group on Tequatl, Marionette and Wurm. Going by your example I could simply state that I am forcing those players to become better by making their event far more difficult than need be. It’s a win for everyone, right?

Wow.

This just made every statement in every forum you ever made invalid.

You are just plainly: a horrible person.

I take it you missed the entire reason I posted this on the public forums for everyone to see? I am trying to get ArenaNet to look long and hard at their exploitable mechanics so that they do not repeat the same mistakes in the future. An event should never be designed so that one person can completely ruin it for hundreds of others.

And for the record, I’m actually a very nice person once you get to know me. I don’t like seeing others suffer, needlessly, to preventable causes. The griefing on Marionette could have been prevented had the developers simply looked at the mechanics from a griefer’s point of view…..a point of view which I am attempting to provide them through my forum posts.

Aedelric.1287:

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No matter the game be it traps, hits or any mechanics that instantly kill is fundamentally bad.
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I essentially see insta kills as a trollish device used by game developers to unfairly punish or artificially raise difficulty
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I have come to peace with myself that ANet has a troll kitty…..

Bombs on Warden III only hit for 95% hp, even when triggered by other players.

>.>

20 random players should be able to defeat the bosses? lol, no. 20 SKILLED players should be able to beat the bosses….but you shouldn’t be able to faceroll keyboard completely unaware of your own abilities and beat all the content…..not saying don’t make content for them….but I am saying don’t nerf deliberating challenging content because the lesser skilled players are QQ’ing.

There is a middle ground though.

1. the content should scale to the number of players available. If 20 skilled players and 80 unskilled players combined can defeat an encounter, then 2 skilled and 8 unskilled should be able to do the same. No content should require ALL skilled players, because the content of the available party is out of anyone’s hands, and it’s unfair to skilled players to punish them for the existence of unskilled ones.

2. While group content should not be based on “facerolling,” it shouldn’t require absolute flawless performance either, and what precision is required should only require a fraction of the total participants, and the players get to choose who fills those rolls, it should not be random, and nobody gets dibs. By that I mean that there should be more things like Claw bazookas, which infinite players can equip, rather than Teq turrets, which only six people can use, and if some of those six suck, everyone pays for it and there’s nothing they can do about it. I also mean that instead of having five stages, any one of which can lead to defeat but which players play no role in balancing, there instead needs to be a way for stronger players that are more than capable of handling their own stages, to better support the weaker stages and ensure success.

Basically it’s ok to require strong players, but you also have to assume a certain percentage of weaker ones, and make sure that the stronger ones are capable of carrying the weaker ones, rather than insisting that the weaker ones keep up on their own or else everybody suffers for it.

This entire game was never for you. It was supposed to be easier and more casual. Not another WoW Raidfest.

Yes, this. GW2 is great BECAUSE it’s not a raidfest. The new content is content for people who hate GW2, and I think GW2 would be better focusing on the millions of players who like GW2, rather than trying to court players who don’t like GW2 at the current players’ expense.

Your Wurm and Tequatl idea’s are terrible in my opinion whats wrong with having some content that has this real sense of challenge to it?

I don;t mind challenge, I just dislike failure. That’s the problem with the current events, the challenge level is fine, the failure rate is bullkitten. Removing the timer on Teq, for example, wouldn’t reduce the challenge even a little bit. You’d still have to do all the same stuff to win, you’d just be less likely to fail it because you’d have more time to work on it. The timer doesn’t add any challenge to the encounter, it just gives it a DPS-check. Bring enough DPS, you’ll do fine, don’t bring enough DPS, and it’s impossible, and since you can only account for at most around 2% of the DPS necessary to win, your own control over that outcome is minimal.

Theres always so much excitement surrounding new bosses that are hard to kill world firsts n all that. Hell even the devs were watching in.

If they want to make content hard for a week or two and then scale it back then that’s fine by me. Let the world-firsters do their thing and the rest of us can sit it out, knowing that we’ll have our shot in a week or two, but for that to work all the relevant achievements and rewards and stuff need to be intact by then, and we need advanced warning that this is how things will go, so that we don’t feel pressured to participate until it’s our turn.

Besides, once all the world firsts are out of the way, that’s no longer an issue, from that point it’s all about things like speed runs, and even if they removed the Tew timer entirely, all that would do is help out people who couldn’t even manage it in 15 minutes, people who speedrun it down to half that or less would be completely unaffected.

The only thing you don’t get? Purely cosmetic skins. How does that not seem fair?

Because you don’t get the purely cosmetic skins. In this game, that’s not nothing.

Gene Archer.8560:

Zanthrax.6538:

" The entire game was never for you ", so why did arenanet say this content requires highly co-ordinated players and encourages people to critique their builds etc, when clearly casual players don’t do that.

Because ever since Ascended, Anet has been continually caving to the hardcores and the challenge seekers. And it’s created a muddled game.

Zanthrax.6538:

Perhaps there IS room for both casual easy content and hard content in a game.

I don’t disagree. But then, as I’ve said: Hard content should be instanced. It can’t be placed in the Overworld. It doesn’t work, there.

But if they’re just going to keep putting the hard content in the overworld, and not actually section if off, if they’re going to keep making the hard content the Living Story, and not separate properly, like they mostly did with the Queen’s Gauntlet, then I’d rather the hard content just not exist at all.

Better that the content not exist than exist in the way it currently does and just exclude and frustrate players.

Zanthrax.6538:

Also you said " At least when I want an easy game, it doesn’t exclude people from rewards or content " You still experience the content, you will never down it unless you improve but you can experience it while still getting the rewards.

If I don’t down wurm or marionette, how do I still get the rewards specific to them? There’s more to the rewards than just the meta.

Zanthrax.6538:

The only thing you don’t get? Purely cosmetic skins. How does that not seem fair?

Because the “purely cosmetic skins” are content, they’re the main pull of the game. You know, this was a game based on cosmetics, after all. So I’m being excluded from content.

But of course, you’ll disagree.

I agree about instances, I agree about open world content should be easier, again thats why I made the proposal to compromise with open world easier versions and instanced harder versions of these bosses with varying cosmetic rewards, I have made that suggestion on many threads now.

What I do disagree with now is your cosmetic reasoning. I truly believe that if all content was easy and you just keep plotting your way through it all soaking up the skins no problemo then EVERYONE will have ALL the skins and I PROMISE you will get bored. Cosmetics do nothing in the way of enjoyment of content, I see no problem with differentiating what content you do by what cosmetic items you got.

Look at previous living story updates, it was easy plod along content with skins that EVERYONE was able to get, and they STILL don’t use them, I barely see anyone using cosmetics that have dropped via easy going plod along living story content, see backpacks and shoulder skins etc that plague everyones bank space.

And they’ve also stated their intent to bring the other world bosses up to the levels of Teq and Wurm.

Guess who loses out on content once they do that?

Also true. I used to run Teq every night before the update, and Sparkfly was a great zone to hang out and to level from 60+, but since a little bit after the Teq update I haven’t been back there once. It’s always a complete ghost town now. If they ruined other bosses like Shatterer or Claw like that then I would be sickened. Now that’s not to say that I don’t feel they should touch them, I wouldn’t mind if they added mechanics improvements like they did to Teq, but they need to remove things like timers so that they can always be completed. I’ve already seen both fail due to timer overruns on low pop nights, and that’s before they do anything drastic with the mechanics. Whatever changes they make should be about giving players more things to DO, not creating more ways for them to FAIL.

What I do disagree with now is your cosmetic reasoning. I truly believe that if all content was easy and you just keep plotting your way through it all soaking up the skins no problemo then EVERYONE will have ALL the skins and I PROMISE you will get bored. Cosmetics do nothing in the way of enjoyment of content, I see no problem with differentiating what content you do by what cosmetic items you got.

Look at previous living story updates, it was easy plod along content with skins that EVERYONE was able to get, and they STILL don’t use them, I barely see anyone using cosmetics that have dropped via easy going plod along living story content, see backpacks and shoulder skins etc that plague everyones bank space.

And that’s their choice. I have a ton of cosmetics that I don’t use, but I also have ones that I do, and if those had been nigh-impossible for me to get then I would have been very upset by it. It’s better for everyone to have relatively easy access to the skins that they want, and end up with plenty that they don’t need, than for the one that they want to be very hard to get.

Squee Squashington.5189:

Valor Singus.7049:

The consequence, of course, is that some players either can’t, or won’t put in the effort to develop. Some will drop the game, while others will stick to their safely determined routines. I would wager that ANet is entirely aware of this, however, and considers it acceptable so long as they don’t do something that epically screws things up and alienates the entire base. Since even Tequatl didn’t -quite- do that, and they seemed to have learned from some of the mistakes made there, just as they will from the ones made with the marionette, then by all metrics they are doing their jobs well.

Rift, SWtoR, and WoW: Cataclysm lost a lot of players to time and difficult, annoying, and/or unengaging endgame. Since we’ve already started down this road, what’s the X and Y% on players that will leave with ESO, WoW:WoD, Rift 3.0, or various other non-MMO titles on the horizon.

Yup. And that needs to be compared to the number of players who would have quit the game without the new challenges, how many will be content with old stuff, how many would move on simply for the shiny factor of the new games, and how many will end up playing in multiple worlds, and so on.

The simple fact is that not all players value the same experiences. For example, while I found Tequatl to be frustrating because of the population issues, I thought the mechanics were pretty interesting, just like I think the Marionette mechanics are interesting. My fiancee, on the other hand, hated the entire Tequatl experience. She’s in it much more for the aesthetics of the game such as decorating her characters and the vista shots. Standing there whacking a dragon till its bar went away was boring, especially with the wait. For her, things like the initial Invasion and the Queen’s Jubilee have been her favorite events, because of rapid, epic scaled combat and large amount of loot, despite the content being considered “a mindless zerg”. Right now we’re both enjoying the Marionette, me for the mechanics and her for the lane defense and stacks of loot at the end.

Personally, I think ANet really just needs to interweave the two. Some LS content should have us hacking our way through endless mobs of bad guys every fifteen minutes, while other times we gear up and tackle a single Big Bad. SAB makes for a good breather episode, though I would try and avoid things like the Fractal update. (Then again, there are folks who love Fractals, but probably would skip the mindless zerg bits. Just goes to show, though.) This is going to end up turning into a large review post though, so I’ll end this here and start a new thread once I have the info dump ready.

Yup. And that needs to be compared to the number of players who would have quit the game without the new challenges,

Most players that came to this game looking for raids left over a year ago, and are quite loud about it on other boards about how terrible GW2 is, has been, and always will be. They won’t be coming back for a few new bosses, either.

This game made a choice early on to not cater to the raid crowd, and there’s no turning back now. All they can do now is lose players who liked the way the game was originally designed, not gain new players that want to raid.

Zanthrax.6538:

Look at previous living story updates, it was easy plod along content with skins that EVERYONE was able to get, and they STILL don’t use them,

I barely see anyone using cosmetics that have dropped via easy going plod along living story content, see backpacks and shoulder skins etc that plague everyones bank space.

This is one thing where I truly can only speak on my own behalf, but, well, most of those skins? They weren’t very aesthetically pleasing. That injector thing from the tower of nightmares? I run a freaking Asura and I still couldn’t get that thing to match up with my gear and look cool. And it was a tech backpack!

But well, most of those easy skins don’t look cool to me at least. And that’s all I ever go off of, if a skin looks cool to me, I’ll want it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a piddly common or the king of rares, it just has to look cool. Well, cool to me, at any rate.

Elbegast.6970:

Bubi.7942:

Elbegast.6970:

@Josh Foreman
Three attempts are my limit. If I can’t kill a new boss in three attempts, I turn my focus to preventing others from completing the content. A single player with a proper strategy can shut down an entire group on Tequatl, Marionette and Wurm. Going by your example I could simply state that I am forcing those players to become better by making their event far more difficult than need be. It’s a win for everyone, right?

Wow.

This just made every statement in every forum you ever made invalid.

You are just plainly: a horrible person.

I take it you missed the entire reason I posted this on the public forums for everyone to see? I am trying to get ArenaNet to look long and hard at their exploitable mechanics so that they do not repeat the same mistakes in the future. An event should never be designed so that one person can completely ruin it for hundreds of others.

And for the record, I’m actually a very nice person once you get to know me. I don’t like seeing others suffer, needlessly, to preventable causes. The griefing on Marionette could have been prevented had the developers simply looked at the mechanics from a griefer’s point of view…..a point of view which I am attempting to provide them through my forum posts.

I won’t even bother. Such sorryassness is too much for me to comprihend.

I truly and honestly wish you find something meaningful in life. Good luck on your journey!

This sucks, unless your home server is blackgate or you’re a member of tts, theres no way you can seriously ever attempt to down the wurm.

Josh Foreman.8250:

P.S. Because several people brought up the idea of buffing the other platforms when one succeeds, I thought I ought to let you all know that this has always been the case. When one platform’s power regulator is destroyed the players on the platforms adjacent get Electrify Aura which gives 60 seconds of protection, swiftness, regeneration, fury, might, vigor and retaliation.

This is a pretty neat idea, but unfortunately it didn’t take into account a pretty big problem: most of the platforms struggling with this are dead long before the adjacent platforms ever get to a regulator. All of those buffs won’t help the platform who wiped 60 seconds ago.

This isn’t to say that many platforms fail; on the contrary, most of ours on Ehmry fail with 4/5 regulators downed and we fail the lane due to a single room who were downed like 30 seconds in.

There’s several reasons for that. One is that players are learning. I think forcing that is an admirable goal and you’re doing a pretty good job of it. This event was great on the whole. But one is also issues with the design.

To use an example, Ehmry fails on Warden #3 more than any other warden. By FAR. This is just my theory, but I think it’s for two reasons.

1) No AOE circles on the bombs makes players (or at least inexperienced players) very unsure where the safe zones actually are. Are they out of a bomb’s range? Are they dodge rolling a safe distance from a bomb? There’s no way for them to find out but trial and error. Trial and error that makes the room go down and the entire lane fail. Good players can deal with this. Learning players can’t even see the problem they’re making without an onscreen indicator what they stepped into. If you can’t see where you messed up, you can’t learn. You only get punished.

2) Not all players enter the room at the same time. If you arrive to the teleporter behind the earliest entrants, or if you take longer to load, know what happens? Sometimes you spawn into a room who have already been fighting Warden 3 with just two players and they already died. Good luck. Sometimes you spawn with an AOE circle already on top of you because they fought while you were loading. Prepare to die instantly upon arrival. A very small amount of the time the shuffler only gives them 1-2 allies. They’ll lose that one too.

Individually, these don’t happen often. But combined, at least one happens often enough for one room out of five to fail pretty darned often. We aren’t, on the whole, struggling with the content – we’re rallying really well, learning the content and having fun working together to overcome the challenge, then having one problem (sometimes user, but sometimes mechanical) in one room fail the lane. And the next. And the next. Please don’t get me wrong; this level of challenge is wonderful, so long as it isn’t dependent on both perfect performance by all platforms and RNG luck of the draw.

This is just a suggestion, but next time, could you work in some kind of system to start the event once all players have entered the room? Something like either a waiting room that opens after 10 seconds have passed (giving all players a fair chance to arrive/load before “game time” and the timer starts ticking or just a delay for the warden to arrive and the fight to begin that accomplishes the same thing.

I literally cannot tell you how many of my problems with this event that would have fixed. Let your team have a moment to acquaint themselves before they’re expected to be a team. Don’t throw players #4 and #5 into a fight that #1 and #2 already started and failed.

Hisuichan makes a good point, the few Warden fights where my back has been against the wall, it’s because they strike hard and fast in the first few seconds, and I zone into the platform with bomblets all around me or something.

As he notes, one QoL fix that could help this encounter a bit would be to have a ten, maybe even fifteen second “truce” period at the beginning of phase two, in which the Warden is inside a two-way force field, incapable of attacking or of being attacked, and the Marionette is inactive. Then after that grace period the battle starts proper. This gives even players with slow loading time plenty of time to get their barrings before being attacked, and even allows these ad hoc teams to organize themselves a little bit before the fight starts.

Gene Archer.8560:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this?

I truly wish devs and players alike would stop trying to force other players to “get better at the game”.

If the average players wants to improve their skills, they will improve their skills. What you’re trying to do is force people to improve their skills. And yes, it is forcing because if they don’t get better, then they don’t get to take part in the content and take part in the rewards.

High failure isn’t fun. Tension isn’t fun. Feeling hopelessness and dread because your server can never muster the numbers to have a shot at success isn’t fun. Feeling like you’re being forced to get better isn’t fun.

There are still so many issues like server population that you guys just aren’t taking into account, and yet you’re still trying to make these gigantic events that require more and more skill each time. Eventually, you’re going to be excluding too many players all in the name of “challenge” and “skill”.

I completely dissagree with you and I cannot stress how important it is for the developers to create content that FORCES you to improve your freaking skill.
Feeling tension, challenge and even hopelessness is a good thing, because once you manage to overcome that challenge it freaking feels so good, even if the rewards are like 3 greens and a rare.
Players should consntantly be forced to improve their skills and I even believe it should go as far as to not let less skilled players even SEE some content, like flat out, if you cannot defeat challenge 1 you cannot access challenge 2.
Non challenging content promotes a whiny and skill-less community that is of no benefit to anyone. That type of community leads to developers having to stupify content, it limits the fun that can be had and leads the actually skillful players to be frustrated because they’re surrounded by people who just want to cruise through the game like it’s a slide show on windows media player.

As for not dealing with issues like server population, give them some time, they know the problem is there. We will probably be seeing underflows or something like that in the future. Take into consideration that solving these problems is difficult not only from a technical standpoint but also because of the way the game is structured (gameplay wise).

Ohoni.6057:

Yup. And that needs to be compared to the number of players who would have quit the game without the new challenges,

Most players that came to this game looking for raids left over a year ago, and are quite loud about it on other boards about how terrible GW2 is, has been, and always will be. They won’t be coming back for a few new bosses, either.

This game made a choice early on to not cater to the raid crowd, and there’s no turning back now. All they can do now is lose players who liked the way the game was originally designed, not gain new players that want to raid.

I’m not talking about raids, I’m talking about material that uses the game mechanics and requires something other than standing there pressing 1. As I’ve said before and will say again, I think things like Tequatl on their own are a bad idea. A major boss fight like Teq should be used as a capstone to LS content, not just dropped into the world to add a random difficulty spike to a zone. In that regards something like the Marionette is good, as it provides a temporary, community based challenge. The new Wurms, by contrast, are not. They don’t add to the story, and the only end result will be a new target for TTS and Blackgate to hit up after reset while the smaller servers avoid the area like the plague.

What I’m talking about is taking things like the Wardens and mixing them into something like the Invasion battles. Instead of just whomping on a larger Champ version of a stock minion using slightly more powerful skills, imagine one of the 3rd Chain Wardens popping up in the open map, or a 1st Chain Warden backed by control elements, or a 2nd Chain Warden that needs to be pushed and pulled into its mines. Introduce them in something like the current event, so there is a small area for players to learn and test reactions, then unleash them on the wild. That would accomplish what Josh is looking for in getting players to learn and develop their abilities with the various game mechanics.

Its fine in my opinion to add challenging contents that may rise people skills. but lest consider different player base variety.
recently new events required more intensive time to complete it.
and I wonder how many people like to spend their time just reading guides and searching for solution than playing the game or finding their way through. Most people blaming others for not learning the event.
Aren’t players like to change their normal day activity from reading school books and doing boring work stuffs by playing games?

~ sorry for my bad english.

Celeras.4980:

As someone who has beaten Marionette maybe 5 times thus far, I think I can honestly say that the success rate is far above 1/10. 50/50 seems about right with in my personal experience, and I think that is fine for this kind of content.

Can’t you just go to dragon timer and view the success rate? you don’t need to speculate.

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

Ohoni.6057:

Hisuichan makes a good point, the few Warden fights where my back has been against the wall, it’s because they strike hard and fast in the first few seconds, and I zone into the platform with bomblets all around me or something.

As he notes, one QoL fix that could help this encounter a bit would be to have a ten, maybe even fifteen second “truce” period at the beginning of phase two, in which the Warden is inside a two-way force field, incapable of attacking or of being attacked, and the Marionette is inactive. Then after that grace period the battle starts proper. This gives even players with slow loading time plenty of time to get their barrings before being attacked, and even allows these ad hoc teams to organize themselves a little bit before the fight starts.

This is a good idea. Everybody’s load time seems to be very different. I’ve ported in the first few and been almost the last on my platform, and I’ve ported near the back of the pack and zoned quickly to be almost first on the platform. A settling down time would be nice.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Because the player base is a diverse lot, ANY amount of tension will frustrate SOME amount, causing them to be turned off. So fundamentally we have to ask ourselves if we want to ever ask the player to stretch, or keep them all in a happy abnegated state of chillaxing. Does the benefit to those who want some tension from time to time outweigh the frustration of those who don’t?

In this situation it definitely doesn’t – because the tension is caused mostly by things beyond your control. The fact that a single platform is struggling and the time is running out creates a tension for not only those that are fighting, but for other platforms and other lanes as well. It is a tension, however, that doesn’t lead to anything positive – you are failing even if you, personally, have done well.

The other question that I hope is answered in the positive is this: Can the average player skill be raised by challenging content like this? We know that X% of players don’t know about traits. We know Y% never swap out their 7-0 skills to accommodate specific challenges. And there are probably dozens of other systems that go unused by some portion of the player-base. If even 10% of that group hits a challenge like the Marionette and the subsequent tension causes them to look into these systems and they learn a new depth to the game they otherwise never would have, I think that’s a win for everybody. The average skill level rises, and in turn, we devs can make more interesting events that utilize the depth of the systems we have.

The problem – the average level may rise, but it doesn’t mean the median will. It’s just that already good players will improve even more. And as far as traits and skill changing goes…
If the first warden fails, its because someone didn’t notice that he cannot be damaged from the front. That is rare, but it happens.
If the second one fails, it is always because people do not pull him into mines.
Third one? Not enough dodging, or people getting blown up by not seeing the bombs (which is partly camera’s fault, by the way).
Fourth? Confusion + autoattack
Fifth? allowing the next stage wardens to scatter.
All can also fail due to uneven distribution of people (the infamous lone platform assaulter case)

None of those have anything to do with skills and traits. I certainly didn’t need to touch mine at all. And, of course, when i fail, it is usually because one of the above happened on some other platform. Which again has nothing to do with my skill at all.

And i can see that lot of people failing those other platforms have no intention to improve (or they are already playing at their best, and it was simply not enough), but they aren’t going to stop participating.

If i am to fail due to other people, it not only won’t press me to improve – it encourages me to take it easy, because the end result it’s still out of my hands.

(continued into next post)

(continued)

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult.

Again, the main problem is not the difficulty. It’s the population requirement for the fight. Some servers already have 0 chance to win it. The same with most overflows – i haven’t seen a succesful overflow fight since the second day of the event. Yes, some servers can win the fight consistently on the hours when they can get enough people. If this was a permanent content, having such numbers should not be something i’d count on though.

Josh Foreman.8250:

On the other hand, we don’t know how long it takes for the aggregate skill level of the player-base to grow. I don’t know how long it takes for information about traits and builds to disseminate to those who had previously never looked into them.

Generally, never. The average skill level at this events is rising (on my server, which is doing good – on many it’s not rising at all, quite the opposite) simply because some of those that weren’t “good enough” gave up on it entirely.

According to my experience, people that already played for some time, but do not look into their traits and skills, won’t suddenly start to do that. At best they will look for a different build on a net, change what they have (without really understanding, or caring why one works for this and one doesn’t), and forget about it till next time. Those that will improve are those that were already interested in improving.

And there will always new players that will start from scratch – unless of course you do not plan on having any new players.

So, if you’ll continue to push the player skill level requirements up with these events, the second group will go along with it, but both the first group, and the new players will eventually find themselves below the curve.

Josh Foreman.8250:

As with all our content, we are closely watching and noting these things so that every future project can learn from it.

While Marionette (as compared to Teq) would suggest you are learning, even the most cursory look at the 3H Wurm puts that into doubt.

Celeras.4980:

Celeras.4980:

As someone who has beaten Marionette maybe 5 times thus far, I think I can honestly say that the success rate is far above 1/10. 50/50 seems about right with in my personal experience, and I think that is fine for this kind of content.

Can’t you just go to dragon timer and view the success rate? you don’t need to speculate.

http://guildwarstemple.com/dragontimer/

It should be mentioned here, that web timers success rate (does dragontimer even have that? Unless it’s hidden some place i didn’t think to look in) is way up compared to the real one, because it ignores the overflows.

I looove the trend Anet is heading with the new encounters. Now, if I was to change something, Id make the rewards more immediate. People often concentrate on their own performance.

Guild Wars 2 is by all means a complex game, especially for the average Living Story player. My suggestion would be, if you keep on splitting the challenge into little pieces, make those pieces feel epic. Like, if you accomplish to win one of these fragments you are the hero of your server or overflow for a moment. Give them buff that is visible to others “Champion of Melandru” + 1000 vitality with a green glow around them and footprints. Bam! Legendary status – even if its just for 5 minutes. Or immediate tokens to trade in for epic Living World loot later on or unique RNG chests or something that says “This time I saved my server from defeat”.

If a server succeeds, reward it, that brings a whole different motivation and dynamic to the game – organizing 100 Players and work around the lfg tool and the overflow system is an achievement of itself. Just dont forget reward the individual players achievement – MMO’s are about the small stories and victories. Support them and make them memorable. And keep up the good work.

If ANET continues to release LS content that alienates most of its players, I think they need to change how it’s implemented in their own interest not to kitten off the whole community, bads as well as those affected by them. Almost every LS coming out is nothing more than a AP checklist, this one took it to another dull level with its 2h waiting, mindless repetition and failing. Where’s the fun factor, this is a game right?

In MMOs with hard raid content you have a static group of players doing tries until you succeed and the beaten encounter is put on farm. Here you are thrown with randoms every time, in EU OF with different languages, and expect them to cooperate toward a goal that a RNG percent every time inevitably don’t give a kitten about.

Make the Boss spawn on its own zone/instance if it requires the whole map doing it. Put in some instanced pre-quest that has to be done solo and learn the player about the main encounter. If he/she isn’t able to finish on his/her own, no access allowed! If the devs intentions with increased boss difficulty is to improve the skills of the playerbase, personal punishment is the fastest way to make it happen.

Yep, elitism at its worst, but if someone isn’t interested in learning how to gear and trait their character, how to dodge etc., this content isn’t for them. Either that, or make the LS content more forgiving for those players and leave the “hard” content to other things like Teq and the Wurm.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Having said all that, if after a week the Marionette is still only being beaten 1 out of 10 times, then I would say we may have tuned it a bit too difficult.

Don’t think that, it just means it has long-term appeal and won’t get boring too soon. Oh wait, it’s a temporary throwaway LS so scratch that. I’m not being cynical, I legitimately just realized that while trying to make the first (very positive) statement.
Still it applies to the permanent content you put out.

Gene Archer.8560:

Better that the content not exist than exist in the way it currently does and just exclude and frustrate players.

I don’t find hard content “excluding” and “frustrating” at all. In fact, I enjoy it much more than I would have if you can accomplish it braindead on the very first try, thus instantly becoming boring. I enjoy the content for it’s gameplay, not for some abstract shinies.

StriderShinryu.6923:

Would it really be all that bad if an average group of players could win?

They can sort of. At some point the pioneers (Deso, TTS, etc.) will nail down super-reliable strategies and then an organised group plus (I hear Tequatl is doable with a group of 50 on TS helping the rest of the map – a far cry from the 180 that TKS had on TS3 for the first kill) averages can get it down.

Josh Foreman.8250:

[…] good stuff […]

Although I am not involved in the Wurm efforts (I do feel like doing it at some point, it’s not bad content), I completely agree with how you approached this patch. The marionette is there for easy kills (seems like Auroraglade have stretched in the way you have described) and then go fail for fun with the pugs at the worm.

I will probably get round to Wurm some time (heck, I was in the first TKS Tequatl kill ) but right I feel like having more casual fun in the game: having two bosses to choose from allows me to enjoy the game no matter what mood I am in. High-end content like the Wurm isn’t what I want to do right now, but if I did feel like high-end content I would be at a loss were it not for the Wurm.

I have to admit that Tequatl was a bit unfair [for the anti-social] – new content that casuals would invariably fail, without other options, isn’t the best. This patch is exactly what you need to keep doing – just make sure to never give high-end players a stats bonus over casuals (exclusive recipe drops etc.).

Maybe I am the only one who realises that nobody is forcing me to play EVERY part of your game.

Love the new big boss content! Keep it up! Listen to the constructive critisism here but forget the qq’ers who don’t want to understand the purpose of this content, and that all content is not for everyone… And thank you Josh for taking the time to respond :-)

THIS ! I think Deified hit the nail on the head.

Deified.7520:

Josh Foreman.8250:

StriderShinryu.6923:

I suppose what it boils down to with me is a question of why the content needs to be an elite level challenge in the first place. Would it really be all that bad if an average group of players could win?

snip

Josh, I think a lot of people are confused about where the frustration is coming from.

Let me make something clear, Mechanic wise these events are AMAZING for this game. You guys did a great job designing them and the mechanics are great. There are 3 major flaws that I think you guys are slowly getting better at, though need to find a way to solve them. I call it the three Ws. The Who, the What, and the When

Who: Who you play with. It is very hard for people to play with who they want unless they get there super early. Blackgate is an example on this. I went in there and there was an hour + que on the main in lornars pass. If you want a lot of players to work together, they need to be able to choose Who they play with. That is why raids in other games are so successful in promoting guilds. They require coordination amongst a lot of people. Since it wasn’t based on overflows or random chance they will get into the same server they can plan times and build their freetime around that.

What: The thing about this game is that most Vanilla content is able to be easily completed by most “meta” builds right now. I’ve mostly played Necromancer and Engineer, but I found that my builds can easily do all types of content. Most vanilla content is really easy to adapt too. I haven’t done dungeons/fractals in a while, but most of the time I found myself just casting a ton of offensive skills while dodging the occasional attack from an enemy. I never felt like I needed to adapt on the fly and quickly. Most of the newer content you’ve been releasing is almost the exact opposite of this. So I kind of think you’re giving players a bit of a “combat shock” in which you’re placing them in situations way different from what their use too.

When: The big one. Everything before this can be reduced in the effect it has on the population by a TON if this problem is solved. Timed spawns are the devil for this hardcore content. The great thing about queen’s jubilee that if a player wanted too, he could get into the gauntlent over and over again. It was very easy for them to learn by trail and error. I remember seeing people die in the arena and get pushed out. I rez them and talk to them about strategies for a bit. Skills they could be using. They agree, immediately replace those skills and jump back in to the fight. You cant’ do that with things like Wurm or Marionette. Once you fail you have a long time to wait. Most of the players will leave the zone. The ones I just bonded with through battle will most likely not be there next round. Allowing players to learn by trial and error is a HUGE requirement for games. Darksouls, Raids in MMOs, etc. They all allowed players to immediately try again after dying, not waiting 1 hour or more. I’m not saying make these events farmable, but the current system is putting a ton of strees on the community’s overall enjoyment.

tl;dr Allow players to have more control over who they play with and when a boss spawns along with adding in more smaller content that represents these more advance styles of play and you’ll see a lot of the frustrations and overall anger toned down.