Guild Wars 2

Funny thing about all the conspiracy theorists on deso tanking on purpose is how they promptly ignore all the facts which would completely discredit their pet idea, like how harder and quicker falls have happened in the past or how if Deso was a real gold-coverage server this matchup would have been decided by Monday morning at the very least.

Go on the mos website and check the scores. The two silver leagues (US and EU) are by far the two most balanced ones. If Deso had the coverage to be gold league and the strict organization required to tank on purpose despite that, this would have never been the case and we would have crushed Gandara by 100k points after the weekend.

Today is the last day for this topic.
There has been zero developer replies.

What’s the point?

One of the thing which is supposed to happen is analyze what went wrong. Well here’s one for you straight here: how are we supposed to give useful suggestions if we don’t even know any of the constraints and the communication is exclusively one way?
For that matter, how is a “collaborative development” topic, in which no dev ever bothers to reply, at all different from any other forum topic?

In case anyone is still wondering, here’s the proof:

http://imageshack.us/a/img692/8033/hw4a.png

One of its skeletons one-shotting me for 59.274 hp with life siphon.

Change the potential tick on any given map based on population ratios on that map.
There is no need for the curve to be linear or a function of only one parameter.

Make the ticks much more frequent to avoid map hopping shenanigans.

Implement a minimum lower cap to avoid undermanned server to try and completely empty a map to deny points to the enemy.

AtomicDan.9253:

As a Deso player myself, I have to agree. There is no way we should be in silver, after seeing the amount of players we can throw at this. Next league I fully expect us to be in gold, whether we like it or not.

Really now. And where were all those innumerable legions when we were getting creamed by every other server in gold league?

You’re conveniently ignoring the colossal boost given to our numbers by the WvW achievements which have drawn the server’s massive PvE population into the queues. Not to mention, as usual, the fairweathers reappering as soon as we’re on the winning side again.

Let’s wait a couple more weeks, after most of the AP hunters have gotten all their achievements done, before declaring that Deso’s WvW population can once again stand against the massive coverage of gold league servers…

mordran.4750:

Come on EXG do you really need other guilds handholding you when you face guild groups of your size ?

If you want even numbers ask for a GvG, I’m pretty sure there will be no problems setting up one.
Running tagless is not always possible, seldom desirable (especially with so many newcomers to WvW), and it almost never works anyway.

Prowie.7460:

EXG what is up with the hate towards our members ? You guys drop everything you are doing just to gank 1 guy and drop siege on him… This has been going on for a week now and it has to stop. Upset that you lost the GvG ? You guys are prbly mad that we made you ragequit the border after wiping your entire guild twice in open field with half the numbers. BTW we are still waiting for you guys to accept the score on the official GvG page,

Ah, the unassailable logic of trolling people in the same post in which you ask them to stop hating you.

1. Weekly matchups being decided exclusively by coverage differences with no impact whatsoever from player skill
2. Skill lag
3. Way too many game features favoring zerg play and brute-forcing your way to victory simply by outnumbering the enemy

Lord Jim.3971:

I have to say that any Gandarans who thinks Desolation are hiding some kind of force which will magically appear over the next 7 weeks are kidding themselves. When we last fought Deso there was a 40 man blob every morning karma training all the maps, this week we’ve hardly ever been outmanned at that time in the morning, even on Deso BL.

Oh, but we WILL have a sudden huge influx of people in WvW once the league starts… for the first 2-3 days.

After that, 99% of them will have already completed getting their precious APs (our PvE players can be scarily efficient, just check the total Tequatl kills so far) and we will go back to business as usual.

Let’s hope the first week is against you and Abaddon, so we will have a chance at beating you :P

Obscure One.4357:

The best way to fix the problem isn’t for the devs to build balanced mechanics, but for everyone who plays the game to stop caring about them.

I used to think like you, but the truth is not that simple unfortunately.

With all the snowballing effects built into the system (of which the bloodlust buff is only the last example), the probability of having nice fights sharply decreases the more unbalanced the matchup is. You have less and less people bothering to show up at all on the losing servers, with most of them ending up queueing for the 1-2 maps on which you have a presence so it’s either “face a queue or get steamrolled on empty maps” (at primetime), or just “get steamrolled on all maps period” during off peak.
Also, bloodlust is implemented in such a way as to make even the single fight imbalanced by a global variable.

In the end, we face the usual MMO PvP curse of having to play 10 hours just to find those precious 10 minutes of fun in which you get a good, balanced fight, while the remaining 9h 50 are utterly ridiculous, totally unbalanced crap.

Oren.1736:

How convenient, sadly seems like this is going to be a reality. Once Deso reach silver its safe to presume their farm community will blossom once again in wvw and will take over the tier.
Desolation guilds – Far Shiverpeaks are recruiting, don’t Easy Mode silver league, balance it out.

There is nothing convenient about it but if the dev WvW team keeps stubbornly avoiding the elephant in the room i.e. the matchup balance issue, and instead keeps adding stuff which makes it even worse, this will keep happening until WvW as a game mode permanently dies.

And fairweathers only showing up when the server wins are certainly not a Desolation exclusive, it’s just that Deso being the biggest PvE server in EU amplifies the consequences. We had 170+ players in TS for killing Tequatl at 1AM, guess what happens whenever you can convince them to show up in WvW. But with how things are right now, you can only move them away from the Frostgorge farm if you can entice them with a karma farm, since anything else in WvW is pretty much useless as far as rewards go.

Dranul.2094:

Ye I’m looking at you Desolation

You’re aiming at the wrong target. Desolation lost a significant part of its WvW guilds (again), and as usual, the casuals disappear as soon as we’re losing. The current ranking is an accurate reflection of Desolation’s current WvW population.

We will rebuild, as always. The server’s playerbase is huge meaning that one way or the other the WvW numbers will rise again in the next weeks.

Zack.7863:

Let me say this:

If you are not in NA tier one, by metrics, you just don’t count.

Your point of view would have some merit if Arenanet could satisfy two preconditions:

A) the entire game’s WvW population can be hosted on 3 servers without ill effects on the game experience
B) transfers to those 3 servers are free and permanently available

As it is, we’re not even remotely close to it, so your “dream” of Arenanet catering exclusively to NA T1 means the death of WvW, simple as that.

Right now NA T1 is an overwhelming MINORITY of the game’s WvW population. If and when enough people get fed up to make it the majority, then you’ll have your wish came true. Not sure I’d be glad about it, though.

Repuran.1859:

So Desolation being the #1 PvE server EU works as a double negative for recruitment within WvW rather than a positive.

That is only true for external recruitment. I was talking about internal one.

It doesn’t matter how many guilds you lose, until the overall playerbase is that big, you will always be able to push WvW participation levels back up again, at least to the “average participation level” of the other servers. Meaning, if on average e.g. 10% of a server’s “general” population dabbles in WvW, that 10% is going to result in greater numbers on Desolation.

You won’t be able to reach the WvW density of servers explicitly stacking WvW guilds but whether that’s a disadvantage in the long run is yet to be seen. Considering the way WvW is headed right now, I’d much rather take my chances on a server which is healthy all around instead of one focusing on a single aspect of the game whose devs are showing… dubious wisdom, to say the least.

Also, should those devs finally manage to have a good idea and make playing in WvW actually rewarding… which server do you think would suddenly find itself with 4 maps capped on a 24/7 basis?

The smart bet for the long term is on Desolation. People just lack patience.

Imperatora.7654:

There is no other activity even remotely as economically risky as plying the TP, so there should be no other activity as rewarding.

I disagree. Unless you’re braindead, it’s impossible to lose money on the TP in the long run. You might do some bad calls and lose money every now and then but the general long term trend will always be an increase in wealth which completely outclasses any other in game venue for obtaining gold by several orders of magnitude.

Columbo.5924:

I don’t really like to see the matchup thread filled with posts of guilds leaving or breaking up. Had this last week as well, with a dying far shiverpeaks server and guilds stopping to play on aurora glade.

Deso will rebound again, don’t worry. It’s still the best all-around international EU server due to its massive PvE population which will always work as a potentially huge recruitment pool. I think guilds which keep server-hopping are doing themselves a disservice in the long run since they won’t ever be able to become part of a greater community, which is crucial in every MMO and even more so in a subsystem like WvW, but time will tell I guess.

This encounter will remain totally unpuggable and as soon as the novelty wears off it will become a ghost town unless heavily nerfed.

For all those that “give it 2 weeks every pug group will be farming it”, just look at the failure rate of Grenth several months after it has been introduced, and remember that event is dozens of times easier than Teq.

Azraelle.1683:

I love how people always can find some blatant excuses. Like “oh no, it’s not our fault, its high transfer cost QQ.” Transfer to sfr is not free too and if somebody’s really interested in transferring in good www then he’ll find 1000 or 1800 crystals. And if you you need a break from strong opponents then qq and transfer to some medium populated server. We did fine in past few months, some of our commanders did very good job. I personally enjoyed(everything but lags lags) fighting viz/piken.

Are you stupid?

For several months (up until they raised the server cap recently) it was all but impossible for even a medium sized guild to transfer to Desolation. The server was listed as “full” on a nearly permanent basis, meaning any WvW guild considering transferring to Deso would be discouraged by the very concrete danger of finding itself with half the members managing to luck out a transfer by trying at 4AM and the other half “stranded” on the source server.
This made it impossible to do on Deso the “let’s build a superpower WvW server by merging 3-4 different WvW communities in one single place” operation that birthed Blacktide first, and SFR later. If it never happened on Deso it’s not because the community was “bad” or guild leaders never tried. It’s because it was a practical impossibility. And now it’s unrealistic because with the league incoming the bandwagoners want to join the likely winners.

And don’t make me laugh with your tough guy impersonation. I’ve been playing on Deso since prerelease. I’ve seen it all, and it takes more than an SFR bandwagon effect to push me out of the server. I was just replying to the usual clueless “we attract more players because we’re better” drivel that becomes common from (poor) forum warriors playing on the bandwagon server of the day.

Azraelle.1683:

Deso and sfr are both international servers and nothing prevented deso from making strong and big www community like sfr has now.

You mean, apart from being “very high” or “full” on a 24/7 basis and having a ridiculously high cost for transfers making it impossible to become one of the “genetically engineered” WvW servers like Blacktide first and SFR second?
And apart from never getting a “lucky break” (if you can even call it that) during the several months Deso was the highest ranked international server like SFR just did now with the league announcement and the immediate mass transfers?

I love how people totally ignore all the external factors at work…

nielscase.6258:

@MagnusLL.8473 @Overkillengine.6084

I feel like Anet is pretty set on a stat bonus, of some kind, at this time.

I’m pretty set too, except I’m giving it to the weaker side.
You know, to actually decrease structural imbalance, rather than increasing it (and before any genius comes here whining about “WvW is meant to be unbalanced”: learn the difference between situational and structural imbalance, then we’ll talk again).

For preserving GvG as a viable option, all they’d need to do is to create a fixed area (the usual one with the mill behind the supply camp) where the buff doesn’t apply. There’s absolutely NOTHING there, so having a dedicated zone where groups can still engage in GvG on an equal footing would be quite simple to implement and would have essentially no repercussion on anything significant on those maps.

Keep everything as it is except drop the stat bonuses from Bloodlust.

Give the stat bonuses to the undermanned servers on a per map basis but instead of having 4 discrete states (0/ +50/ +100/ +150) make the bonus follow a math curve, function of both absolute numbers of players on map for each server and ratio between players of each server.
It wouldn’t solve the WvW balance problem, but it sure as hell would be a step in the right direction.

Which is why we won’t ever see it.

To be more precise, a Desolation-populated overflow instance killed Tequatl. Think it’s the first overflow which manages it.

Virtute.8251:

Professor Forum: Under ideal imagined circumstances, my theory holds true! Under real circumstances that can be fairly guaranteed to happen to everyone, my theory is not fact. In defense of my theory, it does not respect facts!

Thank you for your thoughts.

Are you for real? The only reason commanders are mishandling the ruins right now is because it’s the shiny new thing and conventional wisdom has not yet established at which point in the “defender’s priority list” the ruins should settle. My personal bet is it will be below any kind of keep, below fully upgraded T3 towers, possibly higher than an unupgraded tower, but even this is doubtful especially at off peak because the stomping buff is weaker during those times since you don’t have enemies to stomp in the first place.

Regardless of the final place this will settle in, you can be pretty much sure that once it has been established no one will ever lose a keep (or the ruin buff if it turns out to be more important) again in such a way. Well, almost no one, I guess nabs will always be there…

Bloodlust gives the server which has more people during off peak (or whenever) another additional huge advantage which extends on all maps to boot.

You can strategize all you want, simple fact of the matter is, if the other server has 50 people on the map and you’ve 10, you’re not going to hold the buff for that map nor are you going to be able to remove theirs, except maybe for very short periods of time.

The balance problem in this game has never been at peak hours or during the periods when the forces are similar. The problem has always been the huge amount of points the server with more off peak presence can rack up whenever the opponents are not around to fight. Bloodlust exacerbates the problem; now if you’re on the losing side not only you’re forced to leave one or more maps deserted due to lack of people, but on the maps where you can still afford a presence you’ll be forced to fight at a huge disadvantage.

And please don’t even mention stuff like “but you can have a 5 man group on your empty map trying to take back the buff”. Yes you can; the other guys can have them too, and in fact they can have more people, more easily, since hey… they’ve more people to start with in the first place. And it doesn’t take any huge amount of “strategizing” to manage the new stuff; it’s just a bunch of additional points to keep scouted. Also, losing the buff for a few minutes isn’t going to faze the winning server; the zone-hopping night blob can easily focus on saving the T3 keep under attack, then jump on the other map and recap the closest 3 points to get the buff back. In the end it’s not the minute-to-minute ownership which is going to make a difference, but whoever can have it up for more time in the long run.

Squidlips.3817:

I think I’m going to wait more than 10 minutes after the patch to see how it pans out before I start raging on the forums and posting screenshots of unbalanced scores, which never happened before bloodlust, right?

Anybody else with me?

You probably missed the memo, but one of the worse things about this patch is that you don’t even need 10 seconds to understand what it does. In fact, anyone with half a brain could foresee the results before it ever got live.

And no, things won’t change. The capture points are all close together so you’re still much better off having a single zerg of 30 wiping the smaller enemy groups in rapid succession rather than 3 different groups of 10 getting wiped one by one. At most, you keep a couple people to scout and stop an immediate neutralization while the zerg comes back to wipe the enemy.

Funniest thing is, SFR is now basically impossible to play against, +150 to all stats on all their players… as if the massive bandwagoning going on wasn’t enough XDXD

What annoys me the most is Devon will come and say “we couldn’t possibly have predicted this would happen” or something to this effect.

Timpsu.9324:

Well, SFR is a dedicated W3-server, where as Desolation has been more PvX. It’s natural that people with a serious interest in W3 will seek likeminded people on a dedicated server.

Actually it’s worse than that. It’s all the PvE bandwagoners that jump ship to get the new snazzy rewards, even before knowing what they will be, on the off chance that they might turn out to be useful…

By fighting for months a hopeless fight against Vizunah, then losing 3/4 of its WvW guilds in one go.

Also note that Deso’s WvW population was on the rise again, then Arenanet announced the league.

Puggers are joining SFR because it’s the highest ranked english speaking EU server and thus the best shot at winning the league. It has jack squat to do with the communities on other servers. Once again, please try to connect with the actual reality before posting on this forum.

You can thank Devon and his “let’s create a league with rewards before doing anything to balance matchups” brilliant idea for this.

LOL. This thread is hilarious.

Thanks again, Devon.

I won’t comment on the single fights, but I’ll only say this: SFR in its current state and with its current numbers accusing other servers of “blobbing” is beyond ridiculous.

Seriously guys, get a grip on reality.

Guess you can thank Devon and his brilliant “let’s create a WvW league with substantial rewards without having done anything about balance first” idea for the transfers

Probably every english-speaking EU player who’s assuming those rewards will be important has completed the transfer to SFR by now :P

Would be fun, were it not for the fact that SFR probably now has even bigger numbers than Vizunah :P

DevonCarver.5370:

insanemaniac.2456:

why we wont see a useful outnumbered buff:

scenario — player enters map where his server has outnumbered. server loses outnumbered. other players harass him to leave so server can be stronger.

Correct. The idea behind the buff is to incentivize you to show up even if you are outnumbered by pulling out some of the disincentive for losing a lot, but if we put anything too good on it, it will cause serious problems between players. We don’t want it to be something that people fight over, harass each other over, or generally cause a worse play experience because someone takes away the buff because it is our goal for the maps to be full and for no one to have the buff.

Devon, here’s a simple truth for you.

Getting steamrolled 50 VS 10 with absolutely zero chance of being able to do anything at all is infinitely worse, for the play experience of EVERY WVW PLAYER on a server, that whatever grief might happen TO A FEW PLAYERS in your scenario.

You don’t even have to believe me. Just login and play on any server which is getting heavily outnumbered on any map. In fact, the current standard behavior for weaker servers is to simply concentrate forces on 1-2 maps to at least have a chance of being able to actually play the game, leaving the other maps completely deserted. Which, btw, will make your new orb implementation every bit as devastating to the weaker side as the old orbs were.

ThiBash.5634:

I’ll admit I felt the same way for a long time. However, your answers to this post have been adequate to me. Sorry for my own snippy comments too. They may have been a bit too harsh.

Maybe. Maybe not. I still feel the same

Let’s make a totally hypothetical example.
A game company, let’s call it ColiseumNet, creates a new MMO called “Build Wars 2” about who can build the best houses.
During the game’s early life they release frequent patches with which they trial new types of content. One of them, called Super Atomic Bombers, is a tribute to 8-bit shoot ‘em ups.
That particular patch happens to be the most popular by far, with lots of people playing it a lot and heaping praise on it.
ColiseumNet’s higher ups duly take notice. Since the game works on a microtransaction’s business model, they obviously start to think about how to monetize Super Atomic Bombers.

Evil executive A has a brilliant idea: “let’s crank the difficulty of the next installment to eleven and release a cash shop item which brings it back to normal.”
Evil executive B raises an objection: “wouldn’t that cause a strong negative reaction? We could lose too many customers to it”.
Evil executive A prompty replies: "ah but you see, we already profiled similar items from other games in the past. 99% of the purchases of such items are impulse purchases due to frustration and happen in the first 7 days after the introduction of the content, after which the income reduces to an insignificant trifle. So we can simply ask our brilliant coders to have 2 versions ready, the first one with the difficulty cranked up, and the second one with what’s supposed to be the “normal” difficulty level, ready to be patched in after a few days. So we get the money, AND we look like good guys who listen to our customers and make adjustments where needed".

Tinfoil hat conspiracy? might be.

But ask yourself this: do you really, honestly believe, that the guys who decided to introduce the infinite continue coin in the shop, never had a talk about it with the guys who code SAB?
Because if you do, I have a bridge to sell…

The coin is LITERALLY a pay to win item. You purchase the coin to have a much better chance at winning SAB.

Besides which, I really do not understand this desperate need of white knighting Arenanet with semantic tricks. Even if it’s not defined as “pay to win”, the bottom line here is that they designed content which was specifically built to be frustrating if you don’t pay, fun if you pay. How is that not a pathetic money grab?

Congrats on designing one of the most blatantly obvious (but still devious) money grabs I’ve ever seen implemented in an MMO cash shop.

Cranking the difficulty all the way up to “insane” for world 2 NORMAL mode, implementing an hard mode based on trial and error, reducing lives from 5 to 1, brutally reducing the amount of baubles with which you used to be able to buy continue coins, AND introducing the infinite continue coin which can only be purchased from the shop.

I’m assuming you already have the “real” world 2 normal mode ready to go live as soon as the bean counters think they’ve gotten enough money off all of this.

You’re brilliant, Josh. In a different way from what most of the people here are meaning it, but still brilliant

Vol.5241:

The concept of a “grindless” MMO, I presume, is an MMO where you can do one activity and never have to do it again. Have you taken a step back and realized how absurd that is? MMO’s cost money and development costs time. There will never be an MMO where grinding is NOT an option. You WILL have to do things several times over and over because that’s the realistic nature of games.

I will skip the petty personal insults [quite pointless in my case btw, I have >800g on my account plus a few hundred more in investments, I could craft a Twilight in the next 2 days if I so wanted], and just focus on this last part.

MMOs are nothing new in the videogame department. They are, almost point for point, a 3d graphic version of the old textual MUDs.
Basically just about every current MMO is based on Dikumuds – a family of muds based on combat, statistics, and D&D-derivative systems.

The difference between MUDs and MMOs is that MUDs evolved quite quickly in a lot of different directions – Dikus were certainly among the most popular but you also had stuff like Tinymuds, LPmuds etc. which were quite divergent from Dikus. Hell, even between Dikus themselves you could find a much broader variation of what you can find between MMOs.

MMOs are much more stagnant simply because there’s lots of money involved, and that makes people nervous of trying to go off the beaten path. But, albeit at a much slower pace, they will evolve, too.

Up until a few years ago, you’d be brutally penalized for dying in the (then current) MMOs. It was a point of design which was considered obvious and non-negotiable; after all, if death’s penalty is minimal, what’s the point of even playing at all? No risk, no adrenaline rush, right?
Then MMOs started taking an hint from some of their textual predecessors (which saw a similar evolution) and nowadays most of the triple-A titles wouldn’t even DREAM of making you lose all your gear AND set you in the hole for millions of XPs whenever you die.

The “grind is non negotiable in MMO” tenet will end up the same way. It might take several more years, but it WILL happen. The fact you cannot fathom how such a game can work, doesn’t mean it’s not possible; not only it’s perfectly possible, it has already been done (albeit in non graphical form) DECADES ago.

Vol.5241:

Why play a game if everything is handed to you the moment you install the game and log-in? You want a legendary in your mail?

First of all, there’s more than the binary state between “handed immediately” and “requiring 100 years to get”.

Second, we weren’t talking about time to get reward but how this game mirrors the (incredibly lousy IMO) real life situation of people having more money being able to get more stuff.

Besides that… in my specific case, yeah, I’d actually love an MMO which instantly gives me completely maxxed out characters with the click of a button (sorta like what happens in PvP here). My enjoyment of the game mostly stems from checking out how the various combinations of race/class/build/gear work at max level both against the mobs and against other players. This implies that to me any time spent reaching that point is wasted time.

I hoped GW2 could be this kind of game (the manifesto and all that) but it clearly changed the design fundamentals along the way. What annoys me the most is that this just makes it like the other 63248032800592843 grind-based MMOs out there, while I can’t for the life of me find ONE MMO designed the way I’d like it. And if you just look at the amount of complaints about grinds, I’m pretty sure there IS a market out there for players like me…

Vol.5241:

Gasoline.2570:

If he was a clever man the precursors wouldn’t be 1000 gold.

Luxury items aren’t meant for poor people in real life

Just as luxury items in a game aren’t meant for poor players

Yeah, as a rule most people log into a videogame to get fed the exact same crap they get in real life.

Oh wait…

axe.5621:

Its not about the points, its about accurate measuring of servers performance. Desolation isn’t playing any worse than it played last week against 1st and 2nd place servers, but it will drop to place 6th from 3rd place just because of bad roll. So wtf? I would like to know more accurate where my server stands compared to other servers.

Why are you complaining? We need to lose another 120 ranking points to drop to position #10 and win the league for servers 10-18 to get the best rewards :P

For all the super hardcores all giddy about “finally difficult open world content”, just remember one small, “insignificant”, little detail: you cannot control the skill level of all the players around you during the fight, but their number will STILL make the event scale up.

Have fun with permafailure which is completely out of your control.

Keep in mind the new system also means after a while pretty much every player with a decent amount of hours played will be sitting on a permanent account wide 300% magic find. It remains to be seen how this will affect prices in the long run.

warriorjrd.8695:

Yeah but I bet if you asked most of DVG they wouldn’t now who RUIN was. If you don’t your history, you’re doomed to repeat it.

Including you apparently, since DVG has nothing whatsoever to do with RUIN.

RUIN was a (not even that big) NA-based guild which came to Desolation to karma-train thanks to PvDooring during their prime time which was late night for EU, stayed on Deso all of 2 weeks, then jumped ship on Blacktide then left the game for good. Whatever problems RUIN brought, had nothing to do with their size or with “recruiting all pugs” and everything to do with them being a very special breed of bandwagoners which almost redefines the term.

As for DVG, Jesus but I would like nothing better than them “recruiting all pugs”. With the PvE population Desolation has, it would mean perma-cap all 4 maps FOREVER AND EVER. No one would be able to come remotely close to us ever again.

warriorjrd.8695:

Wemil.7052:

sure its open house but will you be really liked if your coming with upscaled only running with zone blob?

Don’t confuse the entirety of deso off of one guild in particular.

Meanwhile, Vizunah has been running #1 in the past 12 months with “upscaled only running with zone blob”.

Just saying…

Reading this thread is hilarious.

Server wins in points = “witness our l33t skillz”
Server loses in points = “we’re outnumbered and we don’t play for points anyway”

Heads up for anyone who might have forgotten this: weekly score is a direct function of total man hours spent by a server in WvW. Simple as that.
“Skill” never EVER enters the equation. As you yourself well know, but only remember when you’re losing.
Otherwise, please realize that you’re stating that Vizunah is the server with the highest skill.

Castaliea.3156:

Yes, all bosses should sling wet noodles at you, or should I say the exact same spot on the ground, over and over again that way if players can’t pick up on not so subtle patterns and sill manage to get themselves hit it won’t hurt too badly. It’d be terrible if we designed a game around observations and practice.
+1 for this thread for sure.

Just like nearly everything else in the magical world of coding, designing hard boss fights has lots and lots of possible implementations, 99.9% of which are terribad and a handful of which are good or better.

Putting constant one shots which force the player to move in a specific pattern and then providing the boss with a constant stream of cripples to stop him/her from following that pattern is the epitome of cheapness, and most certainly belongs in the 99.9% of terribad choices.

The Liadri fight (especially the harder version for the achievement) is “unlearnable” in the sense that while there obviously is a pattern to it, the way it’s structured and the number of elements you are forced to take into account requires a precision of execution which is virtually impossible to achieve. You don’t see people repeating the exact same movements in Liadri phase 2, time and time again, until they know them so well that they can finally beat the fight. For example, all it takes is one of the shadows being a millimeter more to the left instead of to the right and you get a different shadow to be killed, making it impossible to develop a specific sequence. Rather, it takes a combination of perfect twitch execution and a bit of luck to finally manage to do it. It’s one of the (innumerable) design mistakes in that fight.

Liadri needs a complete redesign, but then again, every time they want to add “challenge” the only idea they’ve got is “let’s toss a trillion AoE one shots at the players so they run out of endurance to dodge and we get them”; cfr. Giganticus Lupicus and Subject Alpha. Liadri just takes the cake because they added multiple simultaneous one-shot sources, massive non-one-shot damage, multiple CC sources, and a strict time limit.

Oh and of course having to fight the UI, to run back, to spend tickets, and to wait in a queue after getting killed. Now these ones are pure strokes of genius.

Punch Out…. wow… now that brings back memories. On my now ancient Commodore 128D in C64 emulation, if memory serves.

I’ve played lots of games in the last few decades. Few of them were as bad as Liadri, though :p

Someone should study Miyamoto…