Is this really such a difficult solution to provide that would keep everyone happy?
Obviously since it would make the self-professed hardcores feel less special to see a bunch of plebs walking around with the title.
On a serious note though, I like your suggestions. Getting done with the first phase can be a huge challenge for an overflow as is so it’s not as if would render the fight a cakewalk. It would also make players motivated to keep on fighting to the bitter end instead of giving up after the first five minutes. Plus, failing on the batteries would still result in a failure.
…I hadn’t heard about this. I can’t think of a way to mitigate this, though, other than have in-game GM assistance that can ban these guys. :\ Obviously scammy, since you can’t guarantee someone will get a spot…
They just party up with the other player and have him spam join until he gets in for a small fee. As things work right now join overrides the normal queue. This is why it’s impossible to get into the main instance normally. But yeah, it’s pretty scummy since these individuals prevent legitimate players from ever getting in.
Hopefully this will be the end of Scarlet.
That said, after the open world disaster known as Tequatl I do appreciate me some proper instanced content. Let’s hope it isn’t a total cakewalk. But more importantly, let’s hope it’s creative enough to show that the encounter design has progressed.
Maps have a population cap. People doing their own thing count toward the population cap. Someone across the map from Tequatl gathering herbs is taking up a spot that someone in an overflow could be trying to get.
That’s what that has to do with this.
That isn’t even the worst of it. Apparently squatters have taken up residence on several of the high population servers and sell slots to players wanting to participate. This update has brought out the very worst in the community.
He should have been a raid instance.. so obviously the solution to all this.
I don’t even like raiding anymore and I’m a hundred percent behind this. Tequatl is so poorly implemented that he actually makes me long for the instanced raids back in that game which shall not be mentioned. At least then I wouldn’t have to deal with trolls, lag, overflows and all the other bullkitten. I’d still have to cope with the broken stat system and the fact that ArenaNet hasn’t been bothered to fix condition caps a year after launch but sometimes you have to look at the bright side even if you are a huge pessimist.
There is no problem with him being what he is.
Right. Which is why we have a gazillion posts on it.
The idea might have been decent but the implementation sucks.
You can’t program mechanics into a game that prevents bad human nature from ruining it. If someone refuses to play correctly on a Turret, and you find he’s doing it on purpose, report him. Just remember that the Devs said they need solid proof the person is griefing, rather than just being someone who really doesn’t understand what to do.
Also, Overflows exists because servers have a maximum capacity. This is actually a great game design, rather than having a queue timer to get into a map you want. (note – WvW is a different beast)
As for your idea of bad game design based on having the proper gear, are you saying that everyone should have only one type of weapon and armor set? That by removing any type of progression, you fix all these problems?
And finally, Condition Necros are still useful in helping overall. There’s more than a Champion Dragon to fight in this event.
Of course you can design events to minimize the grief potential. I recall somebody in another thread suggesting to have kits which players could pick up and use to buff and cleanse in addition to the turrets albeit less potently and that players would then have to find the perfect balance between that and doing DPS in order to succeed the event. That way some bored troll couldn’t just hog a turret and proceed to kitten it up for everyone else.
And no, sitting in an overflow for hour after hour hoping your main instance will pop isn’t great design. It’s no different from the server queues of old. In fact, I actually prefer the older system since it guarantees me a slot eventually. People couldn’t abuse some join function to buy slots from squatters and steal mine. You can sing praises about this broken system all you want but the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is mighty kitten ed.
My suggestion is simple. Go back to the way Guild Wars did things and remove stats entirely. Remove gear progression and place the emphasis on skill and ingenuity. The hardcore progression crowd is the most self-destructive crowd I know of and I know them very intimately from my own days of raiding. They complain about the existing content posing no challenge while at the same time demanding new tiers of weapons and armors which directly reduces challenge. Listening to them will bring nothing but disaster to this game and once all is said and done they will simply move on the next big thing and continue doing the same thing they always do. It’s a vicious cycle and it’s about time somebody broke it. Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be that game.
So you justify this ridiculous design by saying that all the zerkers and condition classes need to go play at the back of the bus? You confident you have enough dps with (let’s just say) 30% of the players all defending turrets?
How bout we just force Anet to get their act together instead?
No, they justify it by pointing to the gear treadmill and telling you to get on it or get the kitten out. You know, the gear treadmill which wasn’t even supposed to exist in the first place but was shoehorned in since they got hubris and decided they could compete with you know what after all.
Living World is content made for anyone to enjoy.
And Tequatl currently isn’t enjoyable for a large portion of the playerbase due to a host of issues ranging from overflows to trolls, timers and the always popular gear treadmill. All this bad design compounds and critically enrages the community.
You can’t bring certain builds since condition damage is useless because technical limitations, you’ve got to be geared properly, you probably should have a VoIP server ready unless somebody else is willing to provide and so on and on.
Whether you enjoy this event or not it’s undeniable that it has irrevocably damaged this community. Continuing to produce events like this without addressing all the aforementioned issues would be the absolute height of foolishness.
I tend to take a balanced perspective on things like any rational human being. While I do appreciate challenging content I do not appreciate being stuck in an overflow for ten hours straight, separated from the people I typically play the game with. I also do not appreciate broken gameplay mechanics in general nor lazy solutions like turning bosses into timed bullet sponges. I loathe false promises.
The most fun I had in Guild Wars 2 was when I was stuck in my shoddy equipment leveling up. Parts of the world actually felt somewhat dangerous and I was indeed grateful whenever I saw a bunch of players tacking an area. This was when Guild Wars 2’s design worked for me. That all stopped being the case once I hit eighty and got myself properly geared. I could clear out any area alone within seconds rocking my exotics and just about everything ceased to be a challenge.
And this my friends is why ArenaNet should have stayed away from gear progression. The world is now dead, boring and uneventful because nothing poses a threat as a direct consequence of the gear treadmill. Once we’re decked out in ascended they will have no choice but to further up the health of bosses while leaving the rest of the world an even greater joke.
Maybe stats just need to go the way of the dodo. We certainly didn’t need them in Guild Wars where everything scaled based on attribute points.
Seems like it was impossible for the a.net livestream anyhow…
I’ve seen a lot of ANet staffers hang out in the overflows observing the efforts and occasionally lending a hand. Needless to say, every single observed attempt has ended in catastrophic failure. A bunch of randoms just don’t have the resources necessary. You can plan all you want but without somebody shelling out the dosh for a VoIP server capable of holding over a hundred people you’re not going to be able to adapt during the encounter.
So much to the chagrin of the anti-nerf crowd I’m pretty confident that a nerf will happen as it’s simply necessary for the future health of the event. The question is what kind of nerf it will be and that’s where I believe it’s important to speak out. I don’t think anybody here wants him to be reduced to a loot pinata like so many other world bosses. Still, smaller servers and overflows must be given a fair shot at taking him down. Otherwise the guesting issue is just going to get worse and worse.
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but the voice chat is not required. I say this as someone that defeated Tequatl without using voice chat myself. All organization and information required was organized well enough beforehand, AND people didnt abandon those instructions. The latter part is where the usual overflow fails.
You didn’t use it but your zerg certainly did. I didn’t use VoIP for downing him on TC or CD but I know for a fact that the commanders and the zerg did. Most players require being lead by the nose and the game currently doesn’t offer the option so we have to resort to third party software.
Face it, you’re just being disingenuous at this point. We both know that this event will never be completed on a random overflow.
Had TS =/= needed TS.
I’ve played all roles (turret defender, turret-manner and dps zerg), been on TS the time we killed him and I can tell you that the amount of useful information being told there was close to zero. Almost everything was obvious things one should know after attempting Tequila a couple of times.
That is not to say TS didn’t help, but that with decent players willing to organize, map chat and lfg tool you can down him ezpz.
The problem is that most of the people there need constant directions or they just stand around. Yes, some players don’t require this crutch and are fully capable of pulling their own weight but some players can’t really make much of a difference here.
If these encounters are going to become commonplace they need to bake VoIP in. You shouldn’t have to buy a server just to be able to organize.
It has yet to be done on a truly random overflow. As the encounter also requires VoIP it’s impossible to do with the tools provided by the game. The fact that you need third party software to do it just proves how broken it is. If ArenaNet is going to continue to design content which necessitates the use of VoIP they need to put it in the game.
They are trying to bring “life” into the zones, and not just shove everything into an instance within an instance — especially for a WORLD event. If it wasn’t a world-event, then an instanced “raid” style could have more pros than cons, but that simple isn’t the case.
And yet that’s exactly what they’re doing with overflows. Once the world can actually house all the players wanting to participate I’ll go ahead and concede that it might be a good idea. But given the technological limitations of the game instancing this kind of content is the only reasonable choice.
Yep, it should have been a 40-man instanced raid. We need more instanced content in general. The open world is neat and all but what made Guild Wars so good was getting a great party together and fighting your way through extremely hard instances and then getting great rewards at the end. I miss that experience here.
Hopefully we’ll see more instanced stuff when the LFG finder comes out.
They should also add support for gear-checks and dps-meters, to, you know, guarantee that “better” experience. If it’s limited to, say, 40 players, then you don’t want anyone that can’t afford the time or money to equip the very best gear, or run their profession’s most “efficient” build. You’re lucky magic-find is gone from gear, or that would be an instant kick.
I disagree with a DPS meter since it puts too much emphasis on… well, DPS. A lot of the people who enable us to do this encounter are support oriented characters and they should get some credit too.
I would however love to see a contribution board like in Warhammer Online in which players are given a rating based on healing done, damage done and so on. The higher you are on the board, the greater your chances to score better loot.
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It needs to scale better so it’s doable by smaller servers and overflows. The requirements aren’t sustainable and once the hype wears off and everybody has their achievements the event will die as everybody returns to the far more profitable champion trains.
No. ArenaNet has specified that they do NOT want raid dungeons or content multiple times. 5 man dungeons are what we’re stuck with. Raid content is saved for World Bosses, and is much more entertaining anyways.
Just like how they didn’t want a gear grind, right?
While I can’t see into the future it wouldn’t surprise me if they went down this path. They’ve sold out on just about every single promise.
Actually, considering that guesting works the way it does.. he does have the right. Don’t like it? Blame A-Net.
You can’t blame players for just trying to do what it takes to down him.
You’re absolutely correct. Until the fight gets tuned so it’s doable by smaller servers smaller servers will continue to guest on bigger servers to down him. It’s the nature of the beast and you really can’t blame the players here. Are they really supposed to not do the content just because they’re on a server which can’t do it?
Trust me, I know how frustrating this is having been locked out of my main instance for days now but blaming the players is the wrong way to go about it unless they’re scumbags buying slots from squatters and abusing join to deprive queued players of slots.
This isn’t about “BG pros”. If BG can do it with a massive amount of time left and skip an entire phase, that is a LOT of leeway for other groups.
You know that’s nonsense. When you’re stuck in a random overflow half the raid could be rolling around with condition specs unaware of the fact that conditions do nothing to the boss. You really can’t compare that to a coordinated group on VoIP all rocking proper specs for the fight. I’ve yet to see a truly random overflow go past 80%.
Funny how they conveniently forget to mention that all those overflows were filled by organized guilds looking to combat the guest problem. Yes, I do believe hubris is the word and we all know what that leads to.
Tequatl has never been completed in a random overflow. Is it really that hard to admit that you didn’t tune the fight properly?
I agree to this 100%, because ET (one of the lowest populated US servers) were able to kill it lol, big gratz to them. Unless everyone on t1 went there and killed it xD
ET didn’t kill him. BG went to ET and killed him to get away from all the unwelcome guests.
So that people can speed run AC, CoF, and SE in order to get Arah armor.
Or do Shadow Behemoth, Fire Elemental, and Great Jungle Wurm to get Tequatl stuff.
Makes. Perfect. Sense.
It does if the bosses themselves carry unique skins and rewards making them all desirable to do. Only the tokens would be universal.
And I should have probably specified that I was talking about bosses comparable to Tequatl of which there are none yet. They are however working on that.
The thought of yet another currency system really makes me cringe at this point.
Which is why they need to universalize dungeon tokens and then add world boss tokens which would drop from fights like Tequatl.
I think they’re just intimidated by all the vitriol and I honestly can’t blame them.
But just because we’re on here critiquing your work doesn’t mean we want to bite your heads off. We, like you, just want a better game. And some things aren’t working out at the moment.
If I wanted content that wasn’t intended for everyone, I could have stayed with wow.
Ironically enough WoW is probably better suited for you now since none of its raids require these ridiculous numbers. They are also all far better tuned overall.
Funny how that turned out.
Spamming 1 with ele weapons? No it wasn’t… I take it you didn’t listen to people in mumble telling you what to do?
Watch the video and try to tell me that the vast majority of the zergball wasn’t doing just that. The only real players of importance in this fight would be the guardians keeping up hallowed ground and reflect, the people on the turrets and the commander controlling the ball of monkeys.
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By guesting on high population servers.
And all the overflow kills were done by entire guilds swarming to one overflow.
Nice try though.
Just three? I waited for eight and that at the off hours. I know some people who waited the entire night hoping for a slot and never got in. The entire system is broken and exploited by joiners.
If your queue pops and you’re still not allowed to go that means somebody effectively stole your spot through the use of join.
I agree with scaling the event down to a more reasonable number so that overflows and smaller servers have a shot at doing him. The huge servers will still get their one hundred man plus epic raids only they won’t have to deal with a bunch of guests stealing all the slots. Everybody gets to have fun and everybody wins or at least gets a fair shot at winning. Surely nobody can object to this reasonable suggestion.
Let me try to lay some of most poignant issues out here and more importantly prove why ArenaNet isn’t on the right track at all.
Conditions are still capped so condition users are left useless in a fight which is all about fast DPS. Better go babysit turrets because that’s all you’re good for here.
Some of the attacks aren’t even visible and AoE circles will frequently go under the water. This has been an issue with a lot of the bosses and the fact that it remains to be one is sad.
Weird instant deaths out of nowhere. This happens rarely but I’ve observed it once or twice myself. Not that big of an issue when it only happens to one person but still annoying.
Broken scaling. You need way over the recommended eighty players to stand a chance.
Overflows. Yeah, you’ll never see your main instance if you’re on a popular server due to all the guesting going on. Entire guilds are leaving and trying to find their own overflows due to this.
Main instance queue can be bypassed by spamming join. So even if you spend ten hours sitting in a queue waiting for your turn your spot is just going to get nabbed by somebody with a buddy on the other side.
Rewards are garbage and completely RNG based.
And I think that about sums it up.
Okay, I’ll take your word for it. ^^
You don’t have to. Look at BG’s or TC’s kill videos and pay attention the ball rocking elementalist weapons with guardians rotating hallowed ground and reflect wall. That’s the way to win the DPS race. Also notice how many people are in the instance. Then maybe you’ll understand why this just isn’t feasible in the average overflow.
LOL, he’s from TC!
Yes? As am I. Difference is that I was there whereas he obviously wasn’t unless he’s just senile because that’s exactly what we did in the attack group.
Learning is bad? o_O
Pretty sure he was referring to the ad hominem. Lots of those flying about as a result of this event.
^If you’re doing this you’re doing it wrong.
I take it you weren’t there for the first downing on TC, then? Because that’s exactly how it was done.
Funny because the entire strategy for beating him is to go up and press one. Preferably while wielding summoned weapons. Unless you’re a guardian or mesmer in which case you’ll have to do a bit of buffing. It’s a pure DPS race and most overflows and small servers will never be capable of doing it unless they scale him down.
You’re right, a token system should be implemented for the truly difficult world bosses.
Will it be? Probably not. ANet loves their RNG.
I think what he is saying is this is permanent content. It just came out and as such is going to be super busy during peak hours. If you can’t get into it right now just chill out and do something else and try to get in the next time it pops. You only need to get in once for the achievement so it’s no rush really. You can do things while in the overflow like farm resources needed for new crafting to 500 or go do jumping puzzles in the zone for the same reason. You don’t have to just stand around and twiddle your thumbs and gripe on the forums while you wait in overflow.
So we’re supposed to accept that new content is going to be impossible to do for a large portion of the playerbase until the locust swarm has moved on to something else?
Sorry but I don’t buy into that. It’s time to start designing the content better. One of the core pillars of this game was that players should be able to get right into it without waiting around for hours. That pillar is now shattered much like the no gear grind pillar.
Except that organized guilds tell zerkers to stay with the turrets……….
Because you can’t crit Teq. The fight is all about raw power and raw weapon damage. This is why elemental weapons are so effective.
Either way, its broken and needs fixing.
I won’t argue with that. I’ve made a thread on the topic before and I’ve posted about it quite a few times. The best option right now would be to simply disable join until a more permanent fix can be concocted.
There are many other things you can do in game that doesn’t require a zerg and give you good rewards for your time. Seriously, why do you even play?
Just sayin.
So your solution to the problem is to not do the content? The content you’re on here praising?
Wow, I don’t even know how to respond to that.
Now it’s instead a sit in the overflow for ten hours and pray that your main instance will finally pop kind of game. Much better.
I really don’t see anyone here giving solutions… just complaining.
How could they have made Tequatl better? Someone please answer that for me.
By making him scale better. He needs to be tuned so that smaller serves have a chance of doing him so they don’t all end up guesting on bigger servers and driving the native population out.
The queue system does work. It’s just that people who mash join are allowed to go ahead of you and, yes, even steal your slot as it pops.
Everybody understands the fight by now. Protect the turrets, ball up, have turrets support and deal damage to the big gorilla. The issue is getting enough people with the right specs and the right damage dealing capabilities. The fight is a DPS race and a bunch of randoms in blues will make it impossible. This is why random overflows will never complete it.
Well I think I won’t have a chance to clear my achievements then. Oh well.
I can only say this event is not fun for me.
I feel you. Best advice I can give is to just go do something else until the guest swarm has moved on. Unless you’re willing to pay gold for a slot, which I’ve observed some people doing, you’re not getting in. AFK campers are in there 24/7.
Yeah, join needs to be disabled until a more permanent solution can be patched in. It’s absolutely ridiculous that somebody can sit there waiting for seven hours straight for his home instance to pop while somebody with a buddy in the instance can go right away even if he’s guesting on the server. Disgusting.
Worse yet, they effectively steal the slot. I’m sure everybody has experienced the join window popping and accepting only to be booted back into overflow. Yep, that was a joiner pushing ahead of you.
You’re never going to get in unless you have somebody on the other side. People are currently abusing join to skip the queue.
How dare you expect actual progression!
Seriously though, I agree. I’m tired of this lottery bullkitten and would like to see some real rewards.