After a week and a half, a few wins, and many losses – here are my thoughts.
The actual fight is awesome. The mechanics are great,and I don’t want to see any significant changes to them. With an organized group with enough people, this is fun.
That being said, there are problems that need to be resolved before more become discouraged. I think most of the problems all stem from the abandonment of a core game concept – dynamic scaling. Scaling has been a key feature of world events, and I can’t understand why this has been intentionally abandoned. I understand that on major events there is a minimum number of players you need to be successful. I’m of the personal opinion that there should be nothing in game that a properly organized group of 20 shouldn’t be able to accomplish. I’d even understand requiring 40 or 50 for this type of content. But requiring more than 100 seems crazy to me – especially when that is at or near the population cap on the map.
Overflows and population caps. Not being able to play with your friends sucks. Spending an hour (or two, or three) trying to get into the same map is not fun. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but we need a solution. If the scaling remains as is, we need the proper tools to be able to organize the number of people required. We’ve been begging for better tools for larger groups for WvW, now we need them for PvE too.
Waiting around is a drag. Remember that there’s so many other great things to do in the game. No matter how awesome one event is, if we can do 10 other things that are almost as fun or rewarding in the time it takes to wait around before that one awesome thing, many are going to choose the 10. Having a firm 15-minute timer (shown on the API for event tracker sites) before the actual start of the event would be a big plus and keep people coming back to Tequatl when the novelty of it runs out. As is, no pre-event timer and the overflow issues encourage people to AFK.
AFKs. Obviously another thing that needs to be addressed. Since the event requires everyone on the map to participate, even a few AFKs can ruin it for everyone else. Especially if they’re in the wrong spot and scaling up the krait attacking the turrets. And here’s where I’m thoroughly confused – you get the scaling right for the turrets and battery defense events (assuming no AFKs), but not the boss as a whole. Again, if scaling remains as is, we need aggressive AFK timers.
Loot. If this was an event we could jump into with no more than a few minutes notice every day, the loot would be fine (if marginally low). With 5 wins, I’ve never gotten anything but blues and greens (except the daily boss chest). Needing to wait hours for blues and greens is discouraging.
Suggestions:
-Aggressive AFK timer for active maps. No one cares if you’re Akitten Lion’s Arch (as long as the karka don’t invade again), but when you’re taking up a spot in an event, it leads to anger/fear/hate/thedarkside.
-Better loot, or less standing around waiting for a chance at bad loot.
-Better tools for organizing large groups. 5-man party for dungis is great. Squad system needs major work. Maybe districts or similar. Numbered overflows. Something.
-One immediate thing you could do even without making any changes is to better explain how overflows work. Why is it that I spent an hour trying to get into the main map, yet someone who had only been waiting 10 minutes got in ahead of me? Was I moving myself to the end of the queue every time I risked carpal tunnel clicking to join the party member that was there? Was the map waiting for 4 open spots for my whole party, and thus preferentially letting in singles? More detail on how overflows are supposed to work, and how they work in practice would be greatly appreciated.
-Knowing what position I am in the queue would be nice.
Again – the actual fight and the mechanics are great. Its all the things not directly involved in the fight that makes me sad panda.
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