Guild Wars 2

A wise man once said: ‘I am altering the deal, pray i don’t alter it any further’.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Thanks for all the comments. I know there’s nothing I’m going to say that will make you feel better, but I’ll share some final thoughts for the night.

I said three weeks ago I’d focus on sustainability and quality. I want to reiterate the part about sustainability. Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but how about the recent drought of content? That kind of thing happens when we spread ourselves too thin, and when we let the content development pipeline empty out so we can fight fires. What I think we actually owe you is sustainable, predictable, high-quality content. I’m making a decision that’s painful in the short-term so we can position ourselves to deliver that.

Akuni.8604:

Consider this… HoT currently has: 3 new maps (which are still buggy looking at DS) which are grindy as hell, Elite Specs which are heavy powercreep (pay to win in PvP…), a Story which is short but at least good (if you ignore the myriad of bugs f.e. in the Mordi battle), Guild halls, 2 Raids with 5 1/2 bosses, a new PvP map (which is quite unbalanced) and now only 4 legy weaps (3/4 being rarely used thanks to being underpowered or buggy)… That’s it?

I previously addressed the “half an expansion” thing, and I can point you to pages like this one and this one (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns), but that doesn’t matter because it’s just arguing. My job is to entertain you, not to argue with you.

I strongly believe that we will in fact entertain you. We’re a team of people who love the game that you love, and are working on things we’re confident you’ll love. But I’m not here to convince you of that, and I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. You can make that judgment in April, and each subsequent time we ship. I will work to make you happy, and I’ll do it by making you happy with what we ship, not with what we promise to ship.

Mo

And no mention about the fact that they have people already working on a future expansion and people working on gliders and weapon skins that are released almost weekly.

I would agree with what he’s saying but when the facts show that you spread your resources too thin and the first thing you do is cutting down the promises you made instead of cutting down the things you will SELL us in the future, then I just can’t really respect you much.

I already paid you money based on the promises that you made about the content you would deliver me for the money I paid you.

Deliver your promises first and then sell me new stuff. Not the other way around.

I was promised both when I paid 50 for the expansion so I want both, I won’t make compromises. That’s not how businesses work, you cant make promises then take my money, hold it hostage and tell me: you know all that I promised you? well i won’t deliver so choose which one you prefer and I’ll only give you that.

Vephar.8475:

ezhcim.3075:

Vephar.8475:

I’m so glad you decided to do this, AN. Living worlds were the most fun I’ve ever had in this game, having the world constantly changing around you and it just felt like things were happening in the world. You guys managed to push out a new LS every 2 weeks and they were amazing. It was great quantity AND quality.

I know a lot of people enjoy legendaries and I do too, but I would much rather have an amazing story and fun content to play and progress than to have a shiny weapon and I’m sure the majority of the player-base would agree. Most players play for the story and content and it’s legendary weapon hunters who are in the minority, sorry guys.

I’m looking forward to creating amazing memories and having fun progressing in the living worlds again.

Most people actually agree that false advertisement is not a good way to do business, and regardless of whether you like PvE content or Legendaries it is very scary to see a company completely disregard what they had promised to deliver while asking you to suck it up and be happy with what you have and some more story content they might put out at a later date.

That is very true, but I do believe they TRIED. I don’t think they had planned it out to cancel them when they released HoT. This was most likely, as Mike already stated, a difficult decision. I guess my excitement for Living Worlds is overriding my displeasure for their failed promise.

Don’t get me wrong I would LOVE more and quality content and story. But I paid these guys money for an expansion, and mind you I also paid full pre-order deluxe digital edition core game, and when money is involved there is no ‘trying’. If you sell me something telling me it’ll include A to Z but you deliver X,Y,Z you either have to compensate me for what you didn’t deliver or you reimburse my money. If they would have sold an expansion only promising the content that was actually delivered there wouldn’t be an issue here.

Vephar.8475:

I’m so glad you decided to do this, AN. Living worlds were the most fun I’ve ever had in this game, having the world constantly changing around you and it just felt like things were happening in the world. You guys managed to push out a new LS every 2 weeks and they were amazing. It was great quantity AND quality.

I know a lot of people enjoy legendaries and I do too, but I would much rather have an amazing story and fun content to play and progress than to have a shiny weapon and I’m sure the majority of the player-base would agree. Most players play for the story and content and it’s legendary weapon hunters who are in the minority, sorry guys.

I’m looking forward to creating amazing memories and having fun progressing in the living worlds again.

Most people actually agree that false advertisement is not a good way to do business, and regardless of whether you like PvE content or Legendaries it is very scary to see a company completely disregard what they had promised to deliver while asking you to suck it up and be happy with what you have and some more story content they might put out at a later date.

Galen Grey.4709:

ezhcim.3075:

It is content when you use the fact that you will be able to get 16 new legendaries as a leverage point for getting people to drop 50 buck on your expansion.

No that’s called advertisement not content.

It’s called promised content, that’s what games are you know? content.

Imagine if I promoted a game and promised that in my game you are going to have an kitten nal of 30 weapons. Then the game comes out, many people buy my game, but they can only play with 1 gun.

Then you come out trying to defend me telling people: what are you complaining about? you can still play the full game don’t you?

Well I call that being silly, a liar, a scammer, and false advertisement.

You lie to your customers and promise content and features that you don’t deliver.

Galen Grey.4709:

Witte.3160:

Legendaries == content

The story/collection/grind is all content.

its equal to

PvP
WvWvW
PvE
Raids
Dungeons/Fractals

Legendaries might not appeal to some, but that is equally the case for all the other types of content.

If you don’t care for legendaries, so what?
There are people that don’t care for Living story.

Just think if they would scrap Living story, because they want to work on gemstore skins more.

How can you agree to them scrapping out promised content?

I just tried BDO and bought it.
Sorry Anet, I’m out,

Kappa

Please… Legendaries are Rewards not content. All the stuff you get to play (content) with the new legendaries is already there and will stay there.

It is content when you use the fact that you will be able to get 16 new legendaries as a leverage point for getting people to drop 50 buck on your expansion.

I imagine Mike in his office reading this post with Dido playing in the background: ‘I will go down with this ship, and I won’t put my arms up and surrender, there will be no white flag above my door…’

Isiene.8093:

Tl;dr: Thank you for being so blunt and honest, Mo. I really appreciate it. Although I was looking forward to more legendary weapons, I’m looking forward to seeing what you and team have to deliver. Keep your head up!

Long version: I am so sick and tired of hearing about “half an expansion.” I’m not 100% certain what was promised shortly before HoT’s release. I wasn’t around when the marketing hype was happening, since I had been inactive for years.

What I am 100% certain of is that I’ve gotten 100+ hours of enjoyment since I’ve returned post-HoT launch. For $50, I’ve gotten FAR, FAR more out of my money than I ever expected. That amounts to $0.50 per hour.

Would I like more raids, legendaries, and living season episodes? Of course! Do I expect them as part and parcel of the original $50 that I paid? No. Don’t be ridiculous. $50 is the price of 3-4 movies, up to a measly ~9 hours of entertainment. It’s the price of one or two people’s meal and drinks on a night out with friends.

Compare that to the last 100 hours I spent gliding about happily in vertical maps that I’ve never seen the like of before. The awe I encountered while fighting Mordy in Dragon’s Stand for the first time. It was well worth the $50. I have no regrets. None at all.

That said, if all of these purported features were promised before HoT, please, please have a gentle but firm talk with the teams responsible for publicly promising them. Urge them to not promise features that are more than 1, 2 months from release. Best to not promise any features that are not ready. I have the benefit of age, but most of our friends and companions in the game are younger. 10 or 15 years ago, I might have expected the world for my $50 — whether it’s reasonable or not.

In any case, here’s one voice in the sea of many. ArenaNet: you had given me the happiest days of my gaming life with GW1. You’re giving me hundreds of hours of enjoyment now with GW2, whether or not I agree with some of your previous and current decisions. But I support you, and I especially support your openness, Mo.

And now, I will go in game and support it with a purchase. Have some money to back up my words.

Keep your chin up. But maybe remember to make less promises in the future.

I don’t care about your math equations, if you promise to deliver something and then you just don’t then you lied to your customer base, did false advertisement, and practically stole money from me. While you might have bought the game for the 100 hours of gameplay you got, some other people might have bought it specifically for the legendaries.

To give you an example a GW1 expansion included a whole new continent, a whole new story, several new armor sets, several new weapon sets, several new features, etc. And those were cheaper than the 50 bucks we paid for HOT. While some might argue that GW2 is a whole lot more complex (and I agree) it still doesn’t make it right for a company to advertise X and Y content and then not deliver it.

saalle.4623:

Great move,finally devs are asking us (community) what we want for this game.We want GW2 to have as much as content as possible,things to do and makes you play this game. Legendaries are useless and only % of people care about them at all.We need as much as PVE is possible as well as WvW fix.Thanks Mike

I’m a PvE player and have no Legendaries, and have no interest in getting a Legendary. Does that make it OK for a company to lie to me, or anyone else for that matter, regarding the content that I will be buying with my money? NO

You might be a PvE player, you might not like Legendaries, but other people out there bought the expansion specifically for those weapons and they have every right to be kittened. Even if you don’t care about this weapons you should be concerned about the fact that a company can so easily change what they have promised to deliver and basically tell you: too bad you won’t be getting what we said you would get for paying 50 to us.

If we don’t stand our ground then the next time this happens it might be about something YOU care.

Where’s the orchestra playing as the ship sinks?

I have supported this game since the time Guild Wars Prophecies came out. After the first game I pretty much bought every expansion on release date. I pre-ordered GW2 several months before release as soon as pre-orders were announced and I pre-ordered HOT.

I have several thousands of hours played in GW1 and at least 1800 hours played in GW2.

As of right now I haven’t played the game for the past 2 months. Before that I had stopped playing for about a year until HOT came out.

The game is truly just a big disappointment at this point, and with team members abandoning the ship and things like this being announced I just continue to lose hope about this ever changing. I understand that you want to focus on the playable content core game first, however at this point it almost feels like damage control when you have to sacrifice other long time promised content, content that was used to market your expansion, and that you never delivered.

The point here is that HOT promised many things and to this day many of the promises still remain as just promises and not facts. We were sold an expansion with all this content, and we only got a small fraction of it. There are many complaints about this, but I’ll just name the most silly one: the Mistward Weapons. These were usable in the Beta and used to market the game, even going as far as displaying them in the box art of HOT, and to this day those weapons still remain to be release. As of right now I even doubt they will ever be released, and we are not talking about anything special here but content that already exists and has already been used by players.

I really REALLY want GW2 to be the game we were promised, I really want HOT to be the expansion we bought and not a fraction of it. I hope this is for the best, but I just can’t believe you until I start seeing actual objective improvements. I have let many things pass, I have held my hopes up for too long and things only seem to be getting worse.

This game was promising and exciting at one point.

Have these weapons skins been completely ditched? are we ever going to get them? Specially for people like me who play Revenants having these weapons would be really appreciated, specially in a game where ‘fashion’ is so important and not everyone likes to miss and match gear.

Is there any ETA on when these will arrive? we had them in the beta and they are even in the physical box art for HOT.

Thanks!

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/gw2-mistbreaker-revenant-axe.jpg

http://41.media.tumblr.com/b6cfc68761d455a15e9324e42dbe278e/tumblr_inline_nuj4ydmnZa1rt7pra_400.jpg

‘let those of us who liked him honor his memory in peace’ oh lord please this was just cringe-worthy

pfft much rather have scythes, like as an actual weapon with its own skills and play style

actual content. Something more in line with the GW1 expansions, instead of what we got. An actual new map, either Cantha or Elona, several new armors, several new weapons in the expansion and not the gem store, a solid story too.

Basaltface.2786:

Aomine.5012:

skullmount.1758:

Basaltface.2786:

10 gold that they just gonna sell em on the gemstore…like everything else since the 50 bucks expansion…

This.

If they were already in game then they’d be visible in the wardrobe (which iirc they aren’t). Which means if they get around to finishing the set, they’ll add it as a BL set instead of letting us get them as rewards through gameplay.

HoT feel so unrewarding because the new skins never dropped, and the amount of new skins are so minimal, and all pushed toward gemstore. This is very sad.

also every glider skin, even the exalted one that should be map meta rewards also even raid related items.. like the raid boss mini, ghost glider and stuff like that…but thats a different theme. Im personally at the edge atm with the game, not gonna lie.

yah the shift from earning gear to just plain and simply buying it from the gem store when I just dropped 50 bucks on an expansion is quite sour.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Agrotera.1254:

Go to the wiki and check the rewards for Bitter Harvest. Among other things you choose a box of Viper’s gear, Minstrel’s gear or Trailblazer’s gear.

Does this look familiar
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Box_of_Viper%27s_Gear

It’s not those. The thread is talking about the Mistcleaver, Mistrender and Mistbreaker weapons that the Revenant had during the betas.

Good lord these weapons are so sweet

I completely agree with this video, while it might have been a financial success I feel like the general feeling in the community was that HOT was pretty bad.

The first few weeks I was loving it but it didn’t take me long to start to see how empty and shallow everything is.

Don’t get me wrong there are some great new things like the Revenant profession and maybe the Raid (haven’t tried it yet). I also liked the Adventures as some new kind of content to pursue, the new and more complex maps, and the idea behind masteries (although I do agree that most of them are just fillers).

The game becomes too repetitive too soon, the story was too short and as bad as it was in the core game, Dungeons have been killed, there’s also a shift from earning gear to buying gear from the Gem Store. It’s very sad to see that there are nearly no new armor sets or weapons in the expansion when back in the day the original Guild Wars expansions included so much more new gear. Everything now seems to be on a timer running from map to map just to do the meta but then abandoning the map.

There’s too much wrong or lackluster things to mention, just go watch the video.

I really hope ANet and the Devs are able to see past the financial success and realize the community is mostly disappointed.

skullmount.1758:

Basaltface.2786:

10 gold that they just gonna sell em on the gemstore…like everything else since the 50 bucks expansion…

This.

If they were already in game then they’d be visible in the wardrobe (which iirc they aren’t). Which means if they get around to finishing the set, they’ll add it as a BL set instead of letting us get them as rewards through gameplay.

Yeah I’m it has been this way for a while now which is kinda sad taking into account we just bought an expansion which was very lacking in the new gear department, why pay for skins when we just bought an expansion? it would be more rewarding to be able to get them by playing.

I agree with everything this guy is saying, HOT looked great and I was really excited the first week trying all of the new stuff, then I saw how shallow everything was and how much we were missing from what was advertised and what the core game was that I completely lost interest and haven’t really been playing much at all.

These weapons were available during the Beta and were also used in advertisement pictures before the release of the game, they are even displayed in some of the pictures on the back of the box of the game. However they were never released as far as I’m concerned.

Does anyone know when are we going to get them? has there been any new information released about these? am I the only one eagerly waiting for them?

Yeah this ‘weakness’ thing is just dumb and pointless. It makes no sense specially since we already took down a dragon without using any particular weakness whatsoever. What’s even worse is that Zhaitan was so much harder to defeat that Mordremoth but the story continues to push this idea of him being so much more powerful than Z when he clearly isnt.

What’s even worse in my opinion is the fact that at this pace we will never have a full Elona or Cantha map. We might visit Elona and/or Cantha in future expansions as part of the story but we will definitely not get a full Cantha or Elona story and continent to explore.

I’m really eager to get the Mistward Weapon set, where have these awesome skins gone?

When are we going to get them?

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/182789/image.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/U4WPcCr.png

yah I know, I hope that they would just increase XP accross the board. 18k XP for just 1 event means that you need to do around 140 events to get 1 mastery level when you are around lvl 30 in masteries. There are only so many events you can do, and that’s just for 1 level so I bet we could calculate how many events you need to do in HOT to get max HOT mastery lvl.

Snarftastic.6709:

I would not mind the XP rewards being raised on the events that take 10x longer to complete in HoT zones compared to short quick ones.

That said… I don’t want the XP nerfed on the shorter events. So maybe if they just leave it as is…

Yah I do agree with that, when you are trying to get 2 million + XP to level up a mastery farming the same events over and over to get 18K from each is kinda boring.

I know it’s a complicated area since you do not want to have them too much XP and then have masteries be super easy to achieve.

Maybe the raid will have good XP rewards and will eliminate the need to farm events.

I do not know if there is any system like this already implemented, but if it is then it’s pretty insignificant. Just to put an example, in the new HOT expansion there’s an event that asks you to kill certain creatures in specific areas. This takes quite a bit of time and if there are other players around it can scale up and become harder. This event gives 18k XP.

But you also have another event that asks you to vote for who you want to follow in another different event, it only takes 1 minute and gives you the same XP.

I think it makes no sense and while killing creatures does grant additional XP I still feel it would be more fair to have the XP rewards for longer and more complicated events be higher.

Sthenith.5196:

The reason “drops” have been reduced from some instances is twofold :

1. in order to get people to play the ‘entire’ content and not stick to just one or two parts of the game, it makes more sense to reduce the rewards for the frequently done instances like dungeons and fractals.

2. Players will have to do the entire content, all over Tyria and into HoT, over fractals and raids, in order to get the so-called “best” items ingame : namely the legendary weapons and armors.

I believe, and this is just my opinion mind you, that the devs wanted to “push” people into the open world of the game, including things they normally don’t do (some don’t like WvW/PvP/Dungeons/Fracs…etc) in order to get them more ‘involved’ as you wish into the whole gameplay.

It’s not really limiting the game experience, but rather a gentle push towards what they intend for us to play, the way they see it.

Just look at what is required to make the new legendaries and soon armors. Only someone blind to the obvious wouldn’t realize that they’re trying to ‘guide’ us into the direction they want, and that for one reason only : keep playing for as long as possible in order for us to spend more money.

Logic at work.

I just don’t like how most game content now has the ‘meta’ goal of building a legendary, as if everyone wanted a legendary. I have never had any interest in having or crafting a legendary and I would appreciate if A Net realized that other kind of rewards are sometimes more valuable for some players.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Zabrios.6079:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Ended up paying about 20g this morning just to avoid hours of more frustration. Our minds don’t all process information the same way. For some of us these jungle maze maps are fun, but very challenging. When you add in impassable mobs we fall into and target location markers (green stars) that do not have depth/z-location well defined, you remove all the fun and just induce rage. This is horrible design. The maps themselves are phenomenally good, it’s the other teams that I feel dropped the ball.

Paid 20g for what?

Two story missions. Well honestly, not EVEN the missions, but just location runs though the jungle to get to target location to invoke instance. If that sounds insane to you here is my rational. It’s actually simple economic principles

Running though jungle solo I’m being forced into the same traps and mobs for hours. By paying others a nominal amount I’m able to greatly reduce this to about 20 minutes at the cost of $1.80 (1g = $0.09 in gems according to gw2spidy). My incentives to do this. If this content were fun to me or a core part of the play experience I wouldn’t do it, but it isn’t. I’m paying other players to help over come the rotten design to get to the good stuff.

It’s good for me because it

• Eliminates potentially hours of repetitive, frustrating content I’m having to endure in the Tangled Depps due to low population. Own a business so every minute counts. Why spend 3 hours in game trying to push though what amounts to broken, frustrating content? It’s actually much more cost effective for me to spend $1.80 even up to perhaps $10 per hour if it’s gong to help me get rid of a time sink.

• This is a time sink we are dealing with. I pay people to get me though the aspects of game play that are time sinks to me. Aspects that I don’t find the fun in that are more annoying than challenging. Instead of “rage quitting” I’d rather pay real money in gems to gold to other players to get me though the unpleasantness and onto the fun and challenging aspects. It enables us to give no respect to the parts of the game that are broken and to keep moving (the meta events which are part of the story delivery are alive and well and need no one to be paid in order to enjoy and progress).

This is about paying for progression and I believe this is the new norm. Similar to how pay for runs became a thing in GW1. It is essentially the same thing.

I don’t have to do this. I’m secure with my skill at the game, I don’t need any validation that I can get though the ridiculous maps (which would be fun if mobs didn’t force me to start over at a way point 20 minutes away from target) and I care zero about what the player taking the money thinks of my skill. I realize most younger people don’t value time the same way I do and some may even have a prestige prob;em with asking for this sort of help or may even judge me for it (the later I find especially amusing).

Pretty much any system can be manipulated to server your needs on your terms. The trick is to find out how to do that within the confines of the law that governs the system. In this case, the “law that governs” would be ArenaNet policy and they don’t have a problem with it.

Look I really hate whenever I make a post and people show up to criticize me about what I have to say but honestly I did the whole story of HOT by myself including the last mission with no issues at all. I do agree that the maps are empty right now. Even the main maps like AB and VB are just empty most of the times except when the meta is about to happen and even then the player base efforts are not directed towards HP or exploration anymore.

I agree with you there. I just don’t agree with the claim that you can’t get through the story by yourself. I’m not that good of a player either honestly, I’m somewhat casual and don’t work with any guild.

KWman.3012:

Just out of curious, people who have won TD Meta, would they do it again? and again?

I finished it and it was such a pain in the butt that I try to help maps out now, but at the same time theres such a small player cap in the map that I feel like im taking a spot from someone who might actually need it. I haven’t really done it much after I beat it specially cos I dont feel like parking my toon in TD for 2 hours.

I think you just killed the gerent but didnt finish the Meta event. The event probably failed, the Mistward helm is in the giant chest you get fo rbeating the whole event.

I got to beat this event after a whole week of trying. It was very rewarding to beat it but the process was very frustrating. It is very frustrating because there are many restrictions that make it hard for you to beat the event that completely escape your control as a player. It requires mostly everyone in the map to be at the event, and everyone needs to collaborate actively, which is just ridiculous because there will always be new people, people doing other things or even leechers.
While it felt awesome to beat it, and I can say it’s doable, I still think it needs to be adjusted just a little bit by either reducing the HP of the bosses, or making the break bars actually work in your favor, or by increasing the map player cap.
This event forced me to get into a guild and actively follow the guild schedule so as to work with them and beat the event. Even then there was always more than a few guildies that wouldn’t be able to get into the map due to it being full.
While guilds are a positive thing to have, participation in a guild to be able to complete things shouldn’t be mandatory.

Burtnik.5218:

holodoc.5748:

This event will see more successful runs on average when the population learns what it needs to do and how to contribute. The same thing happened with Tarir. In the beginning there were very little people which knew how to properly contribute, a lot of them were wasting armors etc. But in the last couple of days it is almost impossible to fail the event if there is enough people on the map and I’ve seen more and more people which know what to do.

So, just give it time.

You know these two came out in same time right? VB, AB, DS. THey all getting beated and raided all day long. 3 out of maps. Are you trying to tell me TD is so hard that people doesnt know what to do by now? Keeping in mind DS that is supposed to be endgame map theres something going on.

I agree with you and I hate to see elitist people that the only thing they do is try to dismiss the concerns of the player base that is not happy about the current state of this event.

Inverse.2967:

Inverse.2967:

So the DPS-check here isn’t so tight at.

Also a note on the currently rising to be popular “no-stun” meta fashion.

I’ve seen Gerent go almost down on end of phase two no matter whether he was all-stunned or not stunned at all.
In fact both work just as well there is no benefit except for making the fight work a bit more the one or the other way matching your groups individual preference.

The “no-stun” fashion is simply the result of organizing strategist still being
so used to mindlessly searching for “break boss mechanics” strategies that were so prevalently en-vogue on previous old content.
And yes triple trouble whose head decap part actually is a mindless zerker-gear-dps check has also done its part in numbing everying into thinking inside the box still.

Let’s see if raids can shake this up, at least i hope. At least I would not see the point in making just another game go the mind-numbing “deeps deeps deeps-check” route instead of the “more interesting challenge” route. But that is to be judged when it comes out.
And Chak Gerent is an interesting piece to see as it is hard yet does NOT check for super dps up to the last second.

If your guild has beaten it several time then please invite me because I need to do this urgently, I have already done it more than 20 times and it’s getting old. Ill dance the macarena for you if you lead me to victory

I would be ok with making the chak gerents easier but having a final bigger boss spawn at the center. That would make this event a lot more interesting and epic.

If they do not want to go through that trouble a temporary easy fix would be increasing the player cap for the map, with just 5 to 10 more ppl per lane this event would be in the realm of realistically doable.

There are several issue with this event, and solving just one of them could make this a lot more doable.

When I say doable I do not mean easier, I’m not asking for anyone to give me things for free or make the game extremely casual.

However if you are going to allow everyone into the map then you need to make sure the event is doable with PUGs and as of right now I have yet to see a PUG group beat this.

The main issue is that the map does not allow enough people in before it gets filled up. The player cap does not properly consider the fact that because of this being an open map there will always be a portion of people afk, leeching, or doing other events.

At the same time dividing the player base into 4 lanes complicates things even further because it’s literally impossible to beat a lane with anything less than 15 people. Some lanes even need more than that just to be able to not fail the burrowed gerent phases.

So the issue are the following:

1- Map has a player cap too low, which means that there’s a big margin for failure due to lack of people doing the event which is something that escapes the player control and skill level.

2- Bosses are gigantic damage sponges with enormous health pools so each lane requires too many people all DPS their lives away.

3- The event’s timers are very tight and do not allow any margin for error, killing a chak gerent does not extend the time for the remaining lanes.

I think that reducing the health of the bosses or increasing the timers would be making the event easier in the way that it would require less skill and less organization.

On the other hand just increasing the player cap for the map would keep the difficulty of the event the same, it would still require planning, organization, skill, knowing the bosses, while eliminating an artificial constrain that the player has no control over.

tl;dr By just increasing the player cap for the map we would preserve the current difficulty of the event while giving PUG groups a better chance at beating this event.

Sir I completely agree with you, I was surprised that I was able to beat the mouth of Mordremoth in my first attempt without any excitement but the TD meta has proved to be impossible to beat even after 20+ tries. I know some really organized guilds have completed it but its such a small fraction of the game population, and even then why is this event harder than the boss that should actually be the last boss in the game?

fellyn.5083:

ezhcim.3075:

Completed the event 3 more times today with no success will try again tomorrow night with a guild and report my results

If you did not have any success then you did not complete it.

I think you meant to say that you tried it 3 more times..

Whatever you want to call it man, that’s not the point here. You can complete something and fail, completion doesn’t mean success.

For example you can complete a game of chess but you can either be the winner or the loser.

Completed the event 3 more times today with no success will try again tomorrow night with a guild and report my results

I believe that if you salvage the item it unlocks the skin and then you can apply the skin to any other piece of armor, can you salvage those exotic pieces?

If you do one full run of world Meta events (Fire Ele+Shatterer+Teq+Golem+Centaur+Shadow Behemoth+Wurm+Jormag+Karka Queen+Mega Destroyer+Covington) You can make around 5 gold per day by selling the rare items you get in the bags. If you also salvage all of the green items and sell the materials you can make even more money, and even more money if you get some of the exotic items as loot.

Misguided.5139:

The thing I find strange about Tangled Depths (maybe I’m missing something, please enlighten me) is that there are simply gobs of empty time. Why is the event cycle two hours long? It seems like all the prep events can be done in what, 30-45 minutes? Then you are left waiting around for ages doing an event here or there for next phase to begin. Am I missing something?

I genuinely want to understand this map better because I need ley-line sparks.

To be honest I do not know much about the pre- events. As of right now I’m so desperate to beat this event that I just do this all night long. I go to an empty map before the event, taxi ppl in, and after the meta I just stay at the ley-line wp for 2 hours waiting for the next meta event to begin.

zengara.8301:

ehmmm, I might just have been lucky. But have done the event with randoms more times than I have lost the event.

The only times I have lost, is if the players contributing are lazy, and only go north because waypoint is closer or something that doesnt make sense.

I like that it isnt as lazy as the old world bosses, but still not hard so only guilds can do it.

Killing one gerent does not count as beating the event and getting the final chest. I do not know where or how you have beaten this event more times than failed it because I have only heard of this being beaten (4 lanes killed at the same time) just a couple of times. I have done the event around 20 times this last week and never seen it succeed even when I have been in full organized maps for at least 90% of those attempts.

Misguided.5139:

How can you be sure the map cap is too low vs people on the map that aren’t helping?

That’s exactly the point, if you are going to have a challenging meta event and the map player cap is not high enough to compensate for the normal/average amount of players in the map doing other things, or being afk, or leeching then the event is impossible not because people are not trying hard enough but because of an external straining condition that we do not have any control over.

What I can tell you is that I have done this consistently 3 times each day for the past week, I have never won the event and I have always been in full maps. Even then we don’t have enough people for some of the lanes. At least 1 lane always ends up playing with around 10 players.

I’m going to start by saying that I consider myself more of a casual player than anything else. I work every day and only have time to play the game at night, I do not actively participate in any Guild because it’s not the type of game activity that I enjoy. I like exploring and doing events in the maps, sometimes even going into Fractals or Dungeons.

Having said that I also want to clarify that I do not want the game and it’s events to be all easy and doable without any effort.

However, I have lately been trying to beat the Tangled Depths meta event consistently for the past week, trying about 3 times during the evening and I believe that this event needs some urgent adjustments. I have never seen this event succeed and have never seen any chak in any lane being killed.

While I’ve heard of some organized Guilds being able to beat it after several tries it is my belief that this event is not hard due to lack of skill or organization from the players but because of external factors that we don’t have any control over and thus make this event more frustrating than anything else.

This event requires people to divide into 4 groups/lanes. Each group has to protect 1 of 4 lanes from a legendary Chak gerenet and need to kill it before it reaches the cannon at the end of the lane. If any of the Chak gerents is not killed and reaches a cannon the event is an automatic fail for everyone.

The issue is that you need to have 15+ people per lane to at least have a chance at beating the event and the map only allows so many people at one time.

Several of us have been going into TD map way before the event starts and taxi people in hoping to have as many people as we can before the event starts, but no matter how much we try there will always be people in the map doing other events or even sitting around and trying to leech from those who are actively trying to beat the event. Because of this we end up with a full map and still not enough people to effectively protect the lanes from the Chak gerents.

I’m not asking for this event to be made easier (even when I have reservations about the fact that these bosses are just another instance of damage sponges with gigantic health pools that encourage the zerker meta) but to just increase the player cap on the map so as to allow PUG groups of more casual players like me to have a chance at beating the event.

If only we could have at least 20 people per lane this event would be a lot more doable, while still requiring the same level of coordination and skill as it does now, and this can only be achieved by increasing the map player cap.

I believe this would be a nice fix that would encourage people to visit TD more often and participate in it’s events, specially the meta.

P.D: Thank you Gaile Gray for being awesome!

Can anyone from A-Net comment on whether the event is working as intended or not? are we, the players, missing anything that would make beating this event easier on us?

I’ve personally never beaten this event and have only heard of just a couple of instances in which it was beaten. Even highly organized guilds working on TS and filling up the map are having issues with this and can’t get to beat it.

At the same time A-Net had mentioned before that they were trying to break away from the zerker dominance but the only thing this event does, if this is all there is to it, is just consolidate the zerker meta.

Can someone from the team comment on it? is it working as intended? is there anything we haven’t realized yet out how this event works?

As it is right now the shield lacks synergy with everything else the guardian has, and ironically the aegis works better as a shield than the actual shield.

While there are people who love shields or find a specific skill (the bubble) to be useful (with it’s push back) in very specific situations I feel that no one can deny that Shields are meant to be used in the front line of battle with a sword or a mace.

Think how much more awesome guardians would look if we could go to battle with a sword and shield looking all majestic as kittens.

Should shields be completely re-dessigned from scratch so as to work more like a shield should and less like a magical trinket to use with a scepter from far away?

I don’t think that reducing the cool-downs is enough to make it relevant, or even the added toughness, it’s more about the skills.

Im not even going to go into how unfair and broken the overflow system is (at least in my opinion).

However it would be of a lot of help for the overflows if the Queue system worked correctly. Im just tired (and I think many others are) of getting the invitation to travel to the main world just to get put into another even less populated overflow.

The thing is that for events that need many people like the 2 recently added when you are placed in an overflow that has few people as soon as you get invited to travel to the main world you just go. Even when you know you’ll end up in another overflow there is a small chance that you get put in an overflow with a tad more people.

This in the end is very hurtful because people keep jumping from overflow to overflow and they rarely ever get to have enough people to complete the events successfully specially in less populated servers.

On the other hand it is very unfair to wait and be invited to the main world just to get put into a less populated overflow. If you get the invitation you should be guaranteed that you will go to the main world. And what is even more infuriating is when you get the invitation and you click to travel and you get a weird random NETWORK ERROR that locks you into the overflow you are in and kicks you out of the queue altogether.

Hopefully put this way they might actually understand we DO NOT LIKE HER simple short words