An Honest Evaluation

An Honest Evaluation

in Tequatl Rising

Posted by: Valor Singus.7049

Valor Singus.7049

To open, no, I have not killed Tequatl. My home server is Divinity`s Reach, and as far as I can tell its pretty much been a ghost town in Sparkfly Fen once people got their wings. Those of us still showing up appear to be a mix of those waiting for their wings and a few die hard hopefuls, wishing, praying that we might eventually have the bodies to succeed. Otherwise, I am a level 80 War with maxed exotic gear. This is not intended as a complaint or whine, but as honest feedback on the event, what I feel was done well, what was done poorly, and what could be improved for next time.

TEQUATL: The big man himself, the star of the show and…he was perfect! He had a good mix of abilities to test a player`s skills and builds. The wave mechanic especially stands out, as it meant players had to pay attention to more than just timing their skills, but also be aware of other game mechanics in order to fully participate. There does appear to be a bit of a hardware issue with the graphics on it, but that is in a consequence of another problem with the event and is at least partially remedied by the NPCs calling the time on those attacks.

FINGERS: The Fingers are another positive in my book. They are good method for keeping the battlefield mobile, were not too difficult to remove by savvy players, and the use of poison was a good choice. The said, there was one problem with them. The fact that they flung their poison field meant that it often became difficult to track the dangerous spots when other environmental factors, such as water, came into play, as well as making it difficult to determine exactly which Finger was causing problems for the individual player. For the next time I suggest centering the poison field on the Fingers themselves, and either increasing their spawn rate, the radius of the field, or both to compensate.

TURRETS: The Turrets were another positive, creating a symbiotic battlefield that required players to work together. My experience with them is that their abilities are well balanced, and do not quite require perfect play in order to be used. That said, there were far too few of them for this event. It is my understanding that the event was designed for 80 people, and yet there are turrets for less than 10% of the players. That makes them an easy source of failure before the event either begins, either through deliberate trolls or players forced AFK. Trolls/AFKers should automatically be factored into any design, as they are a simple reality of the community. You cannot prevent griefers any more than you can prevent the hazards of real life from interfering with the game. In my opinion there should have been at least 8 – 16 turrets, based on the math of 5 man squads, with the ideal number being around ten. (For those wondering, assume the minimum of 80 players for the event. Split them in half, forty going for the dragon and forty sticking by the turrets. Forty broken down into 5 man squads is 8, +2 to compensate for trolls/afk.)

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Posted by: Valor Singus.7049

Valor Singus.7049

MOBS: The Mobs are, in my opinion, the second worst portion of this event. They fail on both a functional and flavor level. Tequatl IS the event. It is his face plastered on the loading screen, the front page of the wiki, and the front page of the opening news screen. He is the one with his own bar on the achievement tab, the one with the new mini, the one with the new weapons skins. And yet the Mobs supporting him were designed to PREVENT the player from fighting him.The majority of spawns were Risen Nimross, Risen Brutes, and Risen Abominations, with a few Damoss and Hypnoss. The majority of their abilities were lumped in Pulls, Knockbacks, and Immobilizes, often locking the player out of the battle either through a `pinball` effect, where the character would be yanked around by multiple attacks, or by just pinning them to the ground.

These abilities by themselves are not bad, and should not be denied to the monsters of the game, but they should not be the primary tactics for the mobs in an event like this solely because they are designed to prevent the player from participating. Compare to the majority of the spawns in the Invasion events, where the monsters engage and fight the player, rather than try to control them. Worse, this draws attention away from Tequatl who is the headliner of the show. Who has time for the dragon when a bunch of undead asura are playing you like a game of Whack-a-Mole?

There are two paths to correct this, depending on what is expected to be achieved of the event. The Abominations should be left in, as they are perfect shock troops for breaking up clusters of players or hitting unprepared positions. If the idea is to go for a more wave style approach, replace the Krait with Risen Servants, Thralls, Undead Hyleks, and Undead Quaggan that focus their attention on applying conditions to players. If the idea is to use more aggressive opponents, consider using Risen Pirates, Risen Jesters, Plaguebearers, Nobles, and so on. This will maintain the sense of engagement that I feel is currently lacking.

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Posted by: Valor Singus.7049

Valor Singus.7049

Finally, TIME: Both the Timer and the Timing. First the Timing, since that is the most easily addressed. Frankly, Tequatl did not spawn nearly enough for a Living Story event. The best bit about the Invasion story line was that even if you missed one event you did not have to wait long for the next one. With Tequatl, chat was often the frequent host of that long car ride cliche, `Is he here yet?` No.` `Is he here yet?` `No.` `Is he here yet?` `No, and if you don`t stop asking we are all going to feed you to him when he does get here!` If something is going to be a major promotional event, then it needs to be something a player can jump into with a minimum amount of fuss.

Second, the Timer. If a player is unable to interact with the timer, then it becomes a punishment mechanic, pure and simple. It is one thing to use them for endurance purposes, i.e. `Can you survive for this length of time?`, and another to use them as an arbitrary means of ending a fight. Mechanically it serves to prevent player participation. The nearest waypoint to the fight is roughly a 1:00 to 1:30 travel time. Two deaths on a 15:00 timer means you have now missed 20% of the fight simply running to get there, not counting whatever loading time. Anyone not there when the fighting begins is also not contributing for that amount of travel time, further hampering the player efforts. This was not so much a problem with the Invasion events because they were timed not to end but to cycle. The two hour wait for Tequatl negates that difference.

Also, like the issue with the mobs, it kills flavor. Why is the big hulking dragon leaving after only 15 minutes? Is he bored? Is he jealous that we are too preoccupied with the mobs to give him the attention he deserves? Is Breaking Bad starting soon and he forgot to program his DVR?

Failure should be tied to either the death of the dragon, or the accomplishment of the dragon`s goals. In that regards, the dragon either needs a target (such as the laser) that it intends to destroy, or the players should have some way of extending the timer by accomplishing goals implying they have prevented the dragon from achieving his.

As it stands, the changes to Tequatl have effectively removed content from the game for some players. Why? Because rather than start from a point that could be scaled up to epic proportions, it started from a point of artificial difficulty. Once it was demonstrated that that difficult could be overcome, those who could afford to flocked to those who had demonstrated the ability, dooming their home servers while complicating things for those native to the ones that had initial success. Players then learn to avoid this event, and others like it, because they have seen that either they will be stranded in an overflow server or left to face an impossible task with insufficient numbers. This is not to say that difficult content should not be added to the game; we WANT a challenge, we WANT to experience glorious and epic events. Unfortunately, Tequatl has not yet reached that point.

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Posted by: Smooth Penguin.5294

Smooth Penguin.5294

Both the mobs and the timer are part of the challenge. Working as intended I’m afraid. That’s why you need defenders to focus on defending the Turrets, so there won’t be CCs that pull you off. And with the 15 minute timer in place, you no longer have unlimited time to just spam “1” all day until Teq’s dead.

Also, dying and having to WP is part of the challenge too. That’s why they blocked the nearest WP in the back. It forces you to either play well and not die, or spend a minute running back from the other WP.

I prefer this Tequatl to the one before. Spamming “1” for 5 minutes just to get a guaranteed Rare loot isn’t fun. The fact that a portion of the player base is avoiding this fight is a good thing. The intent of this fight was to be an Elite challenge.

In GW2, Trading Post plays you!

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Posted by: Matok.1836

Matok.1836

The timer is a problem. The way it is, it doesn’t add difficulty, it just makes you wait to try again when your group doesn’t stack and dps him hard enough. There’s nothing difficult about that, and it’s just an easy way they can force a fail out of the fight that was otherwise going fine.

They could have done something far more interesting, as Valor said. Have Teq pushing to achieve goals of some sort, and you have to quickly switch tactics to keep him from achieving his goals for as long as possible to buy enough time to kill him, because if he succeeds his goals then he wins, instead of him just going ‘LOL times up kittenes!’ and running off. Protecting the laser is the closest that the event comes to doing this part right, but with the overall timer overriding your success or failure on the laser defense then it doesn’t really matter.

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Posted by: Coldtart.4785

Coldtart.4785

Spamming “1” for 5 minutes just to get a guaranteed Rare loot isn’t fun.

Neither is waiting an hour, playing flawlessly and getting absolutely nothing because half your team is made of noobs. Pulling your weight in this fight is not elite. Succeeding at any pveasy content is not and will never be elite. Having your reward for your effort being able to be denied by a small number of people being useless is male bovine excrement.

The only enemies in this fight are your own teammates, and given one of the platforms GW2 was sold on was ‘no griefing ever’, that should never happen. You should not have to hijack overflows with your premade guild team just to be sure that you won’t have victory stolen from you either.

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Posted by: Smooth Penguin.5294

Smooth Penguin.5294

Spamming “1” for 5 minutes just to get a guaranteed Rare loot isn’t fun.

Neither is waiting an hour, playing flawlessly and getting absolutely nothing because half your team is made of noobs. Pulling your weight in this fight is not elite. Succeeding at any pveasy content is not and will never be elite. Having your reward for your effort being able to be denied by a small number of people being useless is male bovine excrement.

The only enemies in this fight are your own teammates, and given one of the platforms GW2 was sold on was ‘no griefing ever’, that should never happen. You should not have to hijack overflows with your premade guild team just to be sure that you won’t have victory stolen from you either.

This is a group fight, not an individual one. If you have skills, that helps the group. If someone doesn’t know what to do, it hurts the group. In that case, you need to make sure you have enough good players to offset the bad ones.

I’ve been griefed by the game with DCs near the end of the fight. That’s worse than anyone one player camping on a Turret can do.

There is no “i” in team. Either you win together, or you fail together. So yes, pulling your own weight is Elite, since it helps the group win.

In GW2, Trading Post plays you!

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Posted by: Coldtart.4785

Coldtart.4785

The whole point is you can’t make sure you have enough not-terrible players to offset the noobs without exploiting the overflow system. No amount of carrying can make up for people not waypointing or turret gunners that don’t use 2.

Having been in a Teq win now it’s painfully clear that as long as the people present aren’t going to just sit there and hope to be carried you can just faceroll it.

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Posted by: Hamfast.8719

Hamfast.8719

I agree completely with everything the OP said.

I watched the video of the first win. It was organized, yes. But it was also people clustered in one spot, spamming whatever skill they were designated to use for protection of the group or damaging Tequatl.

Not fun.

My server never organized, and so we have never come close to winning. This means lots of people scattered all over the place, but we are moving around using all our skills just to stay alive long enough to get within range of Tequatl. And you know what? It’s fun as heck! I love this battle, with all the variety of ways you can be attacked and from every direction!

We could win, too, if there were no time limit.

My suggestion to ANet: take out the time limit, and base the time between Tequatl appearances upon how quickly the server kills her. On servers where they kill her in less than 15 minutes, have her come back more often. Those folks will be rewarded for their ability to organize. On servers where it takes an hour to drop her, make her come back less often. But at least give everyone a chance, casuals and elites alike.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm all day.
Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm the rest of his life.
– Unknown Fire Elementalist

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Posted by: Yid.3024

Yid.3024

Very nice write up! I think your points are really well thought out and agreeable.
Here’s my view on this update

I keep thinking that Tequatl and the format it was put in does not exactly match. While I really think something as massive and epic as tequatl being in open world is… well, epic, it could have been made more appropriate for the nature of the format.

Dynamic events are good for certain contents. However, encounters that require certain number of people to gather up, organize, plan ahead and be ready is not one imho.(and yes, I believe you can definitely make it not be a yawn-fest or a ‘stack here and press 1’) Or, make something truly challenging and put it in an instance which works with the new LFG tool, cuz frankly, if tequatl were an instanced raid it would have been really easy.

As of right now, it feels like just an inconvenienced raid more than an appropriate challenge.

Also, things that lowers success rate and a proper challenge(a good challenge that adds to the fun) is not always the same thing. I’m sure million other people repeated this.

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Posted by: chefdiablo.6791

chefdiablo.6791

I like the suggestions of the OP and I agree with the point of view.

Having the event hi-jacked by people that want to torment and grief others is an issue and it is a big enough one that has led to the organized groups compensating for it.

On my server the organized groups take over an overflow server and essentially only invite the known “good” players with decent gear, etc. I don’t blame them really seeing as the investment of time and effort is so easily wasted but this is going to leave large portions of the player base out in the cold.

It seems the fight is largely centered around the turrets but given the number and how easily they can be used to grief the players in the area I see as one of the design flaws.

The first few times I went to the fight I was surrounded by people that were not even actively participating, they were just trying to jump the waves or the tail and so on.

I do not enjoy content that relies so much on the actions of everyone present to be playing at their best. This one of the fundamental reasons why I like this game so much and it is one of the reasons I will continue to stay away from the Teq event for now. I don’t expect or demand any changes in order to suit my tastes, but if ever the fight finds a middle ground of being a challenge as well as schadenfreude free I will invest the time and effort to complete it. For now there are too few hours in the day to camp one event on one map for such a small return on the investment.

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Posted by: Valor Singus.7049

Valor Singus.7049

Both the mobs and the timer are part of the challenge. Working as intended I’m afraid. That’s why you need defenders to focus on defending the Turrets, so there won’t be CCs that pull you off. And with the 15 minute timer in place, you no longer have unlimited time to just spam “1” all day until Teq’s dead.

My problem with the mobs is not that they are challenging, but that they are the wrong kind of challenge. The mobs on the Tequatl event are a control style mob, which doesn’t fit a sprawling, aggression oriented event on a wide open plain. They are better suited for a dungeon or similar encounter where they player has to battle on their terms, most likely around or for a terrain feature to provide options for cover or the like. Honestly, as they are now they’re not even really a challenge but a random frustration if the spawns choose to focus on you. An event like Tequatl should have more combat oriented support, such as what was seen in the mobs for the Invasion events. His followers should be dropping AoE bombs, stacking on condition damage, and engaging the players, not merely getting in their way.

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Posted by: snsdmarryme.3721

snsdmarryme.3721

My only negative feedback on this event is this : “ArenaNet, please stop wasting players’ time!!!” You should have scaled the dragon and its timer properly according to the number of players hitting it. Congratulations that you have wasted 17 hours of my time on these events. FYI, I am just a regular player, and therefore I don’t know how many more hours of hardcore players’ time that you have wasted so far.

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Posted by: Mastruq.2463

Mastruq.2463

I think the encounter timer is good as it is as far as the actual difficulty goes. Perception matters though and the fact that the timer will be suspended throughout the fight is not apparent unless you already know alot about the encounter. That creates this “at 80% and only 10 minutes left thats impossible” impression in people which leads to some giving up or not giving their all, and the encounter fail-cascades.

They should probably design future encounters differently (I dont know why they didnt simply roll the battery defense timers into the main timer and let it run throughout).

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Posted by: Valor Singus.7049

Valor Singus.7049

I think the encounter timer is good as it is as far as the actual difficulty goes. Perception matters though and the fact that the timer will be suspended throughout the fight is not apparent unless you already know alot about the encounter. That creates this “at 80% and only 10 minutes left thats impossible” impression in people which leads to some giving up or not giving their all, and the encounter fail-cascades.

They should probably design future encounters differently (I dont know why they didnt simply roll the battery defense timers into the main timer and let it run throughout).

That was one of the reasons I suggested adding on some form of “bonus time” achievements to the events. If the players could interact with it, even in some small way, it goes from being an invulnerable enemy to something that lends a sense of accomplishment to player actions.

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Posted by: Smooth Penguin.5294

Smooth Penguin.5294

No. Timer is valid as is. Anet has even said that they were surprised that people found a way to beat Teq so quickly. It was supposed to take a week or two weeks for groups to figure out a way to get him down.

But now that we know the secrets to winning, the 15 minute timer is actually generous. Groups are competing to see who can win the fastest. Having 5 or 6 minutes to spare on the timer (without event bugging) isn’t uncommon.

Here’s a little secret that I’d like to share with you: If you have enough DPS when Teq gets hit by the Mega Laser, you can take off another 25% of his HP and the timer doesn’t restart. He goes from one Defense event to another.

In GW2, Trading Post plays you!

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Posted by: rizzo.1079

rizzo.1079

Both the mobs and the timer are part of the challenge.

Except it’s not so much challenging as boring and frustrating.

No. Timer is valid as is. Anet has even said that they were surprised that people found a way to beat Teq so quickly. It was supposed to take a week or two weeks for groups to figure out a way to get him down.

But now that we know the secrets to winning, the 15 minute timer is actually generous. Groups are competing to see who can win the fastest. Having 5 or 6 minutes to spare on the timer (without event bugging) isn’t uncommon.

Here’s a little secret that I’d like to share with you: If you have enough DPS when Teq gets hit by the Mega Laser, you can take off another 25% of his HP and the timer doesn’t restart. He goes from one Defense event to another.

Unfortunately, I’ve never seen him go under 90%, so I have no idea what any of that is. Glad you seem to be willing to jump through non gameplay related hoops to go somewhere to beat him though:)

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Posted by: Holy Whirlwind.2067

Holy Whirlwind.2067

(For those wondering, assume the minimum of 80 players for the event. Split them in half, forty going for the dragon and forty sticking by the turrets. Forty broken down into 5 man squads is 8, +2 to compensate for trolls/afk.)

Just a quick comment on your above comment about turrets and mobs. This is way too many for turret defense. Normally you want about 10-15 people on turret defense tops…usually 10 on the north side (3 turrets) and 10 defending the south side (3 turrets). By having too many people there you make the mobs worse. Now you have the potential to spawn champs. By lowering the amount defending turrets, you lower the mobs, and free up more players to attack Teq directly.

I do however, agree that there should be about 8 turrets not 6, or make it so that turrets cannot be filled until you here “There’s something in the water”…at which time the turrets open up. This prevents afkers and gives some leeway to noob gunners. However with a good turret group, you can keep his armor buff down to around around 4 the whole time. No risk of him ever getting to 20 I’ve been able to take Teq down 9 out of 11 times since joining an organized group and there are only 2 die hard basics to success:

1.) Good turret gunners. Keep teq’s armor down, cleanse the mobs, and spam skill 1 during the stun phase.
2.) People who can actually dodge into waves or jump onto them as needed! This is more important than the armor type/runes you have. You can actually sit there and melee the whole time if you know what to look for with his wave attack and realize that he always does 2 back to back.

(edited by Holy Whirlwind.2067)

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Posted by: Morbridae.8607

Morbridae.8607

My suggestion to ANet: take out the time limit, and base the time between Tequatl appearances upon how quickly the server kills her. On servers where they kill her in less than 15 minutes, have her come back more often. Those folks will be rewarded for their ability to organize. On servers where it takes an hour to drop her, make her come back less often. But at least give everyone a chance, casuals and elites alike.

There’s not enough “+1” on this forum to express how much I agree with you.

And, please please please, use the same method you use to warn about the ongoing invasions to warn when Teq is about to start. Or something like that (maybe an ingame starting events chart?).

Morbridae (Norn Necromancer)
@ Sorrow’s Furnace (VE)

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Posted by: Smooth Penguin.5294

Smooth Penguin.5294

My suggestion to ANet: take out the time limit, and base the time between Tequatl appearances upon how quickly the server kills her. On servers where they kill her in less than 15 minutes, have her come back more often. Those folks will be rewarded for their ability to organize. On servers where it takes an hour to drop her, make her come back less often. But at least give everyone a chance, casuals and elites alike.

There’s not enough “+1” on this forum to express how much I agree with you.

And, please please please, use the same method you use to warn about the ongoing invasions to warn when Teq is about to start. Or something like that (maybe an ingame starting events chart?).

But that doesn’t make sense, as if you make it easier for one server to do, people will just guest to that server. That ruins the balance. And I think everyone will agree that Tequatl shouldn’t be Easy Mode anywhere.

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Posted by: Valor Singus.7049

Valor Singus.7049

But that doesn’t make sense, as if you make it easier for one server to do, people will just guest to that server. That ruins the balance. And I think everyone will agree that Tequatl shouldn’t be Easy Mode anywhere.

Except people are already doing that; as you yourself pointed out, people are now racing to see who can kill him fastest, and at this point there are three sorts of servers: Ghost towns, Overflow Hells, and Guild Raids. The first is being caused by people flocking to the other two, leaving behind those who have stronger reasons to remain on their home servers, thus denying the content to both them and those who get stranded in overflows. There needs to be some form of enticement to end the talent drain that has occurred. We don`t want the content to be easier, we want the content to be more accessible.

The difference is subtle, but important. There are too many frustrations currently built into the event, mostly due to time and social issues. We want to see those issues ironed out, so that it is still fun even if you get beaten like a dead horse. In the Invasion events, even when you failed there was still a sense of fun and accomplishment to it that Tequatl lacks. Part of that was the Monty Haul nature of the event, yes, but the majority of it was you were actually in a large scale battle against enemies that wanted to fight you, rather than just standing there taking lumps or forcing you into awkward control fights.

Hmmm. There’s an idea. What if Tequatl had limited mobility, and could actually move around the Fen?

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Posted by: Syril.1479

Syril.1479

I completely agree with you about the timing. Scarlet’s invasions being every hour on the hour was a really smart decision. With Tequatl’s fights being strictly timed just like her invasions, I can’t think of any reason they wouldn’t have been able to do it again. There’s only so much time in the evening to play games, and all the waiting to have a chance at the big promoted event was a huge turn-off for me.

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Posted by: Shadey Dancer.2907

Shadey Dancer.2907

Valor Singus, they should employ you. Your critique has condensed what are the current problems with Teqqy at the moment to my mind. Having said that, just left a medium and high level server to check on its status as it was due——and the beaches were empty. Not a single person there. R.I.P. Teqqy event.>>

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Posted by: Smooth Penguin.5294

Smooth Penguin.5294

But that doesn’t make sense, as if you make it easier for one server to do, people will just guest to that server. That ruins the balance. And I think everyone will agree that Tequatl shouldn’t be Easy Mode anywhere.

Except people are already doing that; as you yourself pointed out, people are now racing to see who can kill him fastest, and at this point there are three sorts of servers: Ghost towns, Overflow Hells, and Guild Raids. The first is being caused by people flocking to the other two, leaving behind those who have stronger reasons to remain on their home servers, thus denying the content to both them and those who get stranded in overflows. There needs to be some form of enticement to end the talent drain that has occurred. We don`t want the content to be easier, we want the content to be more accessible.

The difference is subtle, but important. There are too many frustrations currently built into the event, mostly due to time and social issues. We want to see those issues ironed out, so that it is still fun even if you get beaten like a dead horse. In the Invasion events, even when you failed there was still a sense of fun and accomplishment to it that Tequatl lacks. Part of that was the Monty Haul nature of the event, yes, but the majority of it was you were actually in a large scale battle against enemies that wanted to fight you, rather than just standing there taking lumps or forcing you into awkward control fights.

Hmmm. There’s an idea. What if Tequatl had limited mobility, and could actually move around the Fen?

The content is accessible. Tequatl is in the Open World, free from instances, so anyone can participate. No one can prevent you from going to Spark Fly, and no one can kick you out. He also spawns regularly.

Now if you want to win, that’s a different story. The content forces players to band together and plan tactics. If you’re unable to coordinate, that’s not a problem on Anet’s side. That’s something players are in full control of, as proof with all these Teq Killing guilds show.

So basically, all the frustrations with this event start and end with the players. All the solutions to those frustrations also come from the players. Make an effort to lead (as certain people on this forum have done) and you end up with four or five full guilds of new friends, all with the goal of beating Tequatl.

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