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Guild Wars 2 |OT3| Two Week Updates, One Box, Zero Subscriptions
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Grats man, now we no longer have to hear DAMMIT I CAN'T SEE MY MODEL YET.
AFollowerNotALeader
Member
Yesterday I beat Tequatl with a bunch of our WvWvW folks (and some PvEers from their guilds) using our server's WvWvW TeamSpeak in an overflow (the only way to make sure we didn't have random muppets running about), with about 1 minute 40 seconds left on the clock. Because of the no-crits and the continuing condition damage nonsense, I went in with my full PVT (i.e. WvWvW geared) Mesmer.
So that's that encounter over forever (I didn't get *all* the achievements but I can't be bothered getting them).
Some thoughts.
Overflows still utterly break world PvE. I shouldn't need to know which overflow I'm on to play with my friends. Having to taxi people into the same overflow with you is broken design. Most of my frustration with this event was due to overflows.
The event itself is:
DPS race, with brief periods of defence and six people get to play turrets.
Sure, the completely static dragon-shaped turret hits you with some annoying ground targeted AoEs, some really annoying fears and a knockback which doesn't line up with the graphics on some/all people's screens (I can't even see it when I'm in the DPS group as there are so many spells going off - I'm relying on our scouts shouting "wave" in TS).
But that's all it is.
So why is it like this? Well because of the lack of inter-role synergies, ArenaNet has to band-aid solutions into their fights. The turrets are literally six new support class players parachuted in to help with a situation where ArenaNet's previous content and design philosophy has discouraged/made impossible a support play-style. The only role they can expect to show up is DPS.
But it gets worse. Because most of their PvEers are running about in Berserker and they need to balance out the DPS race (because you might get unlucky and have other damage builds), these are band-aided into line by making Tequatl not take crit damage (almost certainly because they don't want videos of 100 greatsword warriors doing the event in five minutes).
Crowd control? Well it's an immune dragon-shaped turret. Good luck.
If you are unlucky enough to have a condition DPS build, you are incredibly screwed by the 25 stack condition limit. If they are going to band-aid so much, they could at least have fixed that. All damage doers are effectively normalised down to base damage + power (I hope you have power gear in your bags!). All variety is ironed out of the classes.
At the end of course, some people got loot. And like 99% of the people there I had to face the fact that I waited around for an hour to get two other people free ascended weapons. It's like the worst bits of WoW uneasily shoe-horned into Guildwars 2.
There are three results to boss fights: A sense of achievement, enjoyment of fun mechanics and loot. I've beaten it so I've got the former. The last is vanishingly unlikely, and the middle one we've covered already. So why repeat it?
It's just a bad encounter.
The thing is, those role synergies that aren't meant to be there? They exist - they are just more random and well hidden than in a trinity-based game. I see a lot of criticism of WvWvW that it's just "mindless zerging" but to say that betrays a lack of understanding of what is happening in the battles, probably caused by a refusal to join your server's voice comms of choice. I play quite a lot of WvWvW, as all eight classes and I promise you, SFR use those synergies to allow smaller zergs to destroy much larger ones. And we are not alone - other servers do too because we can see them doing it. You need to know which fields to put down and where, when to blast them, how to move. I have seen groups of 20 wipe the best part of an entire server. Then bully and harass them until the entire enemy zerg runs at the sight of more than a few of us. I've been on the receiving end of one German guild's terrifying and infamous melee front line as it carved through us like a hot knife through butter as we were hopelessly marooned by well-co-ordinated stuns and static.
This game has glorious team play, and they need to make that work in PvE, rather than trying to ape WoW's boring encounters.
So that's that encounter over forever (I didn't get *all* the achievements but I can't be bothered getting them).
Some thoughts.
Overflows still utterly break world PvE. I shouldn't need to know which overflow I'm on to play with my friends. Having to taxi people into the same overflow with you is broken design. Most of my frustration with this event was due to overflows.
The event itself is:
DPS race, with brief periods of defence and six people get to play turrets.
Sure, the completely static dragon-shaped turret hits you with some annoying ground targeted AoEs, some really annoying fears and a knockback which doesn't line up with the graphics on some/all people's screens (I can't even see it when I'm in the DPS group as there are so many spells going off - I'm relying on our scouts shouting "wave" in TS).
But that's all it is.
So why is it like this? Well because of the lack of inter-role synergies, ArenaNet has to band-aid solutions into their fights. The turrets are literally six new support class players parachuted in to help with a situation where ArenaNet's previous content and design philosophy has discouraged/made impossible a support play-style. The only role they can expect to show up is DPS.
(As an aside, I personally really hate content that make irrelevant all the time you've spent learning your class, hence most of my dislike of SAB, and hello, here it is again with turrets!)
But it gets worse. Because most of their PvEers are running about in Berserker and they need to balance out the DPS race (because you might get unlucky and have other damage builds), these are band-aided into line by making Tequatl not take crit damage (almost certainly because they don't want videos of 100 greatsword warriors doing the event in five minutes).
Crowd control? Well it's an immune dragon-shaped turret. Good luck.
If you are unlucky enough to have a condition DPS build, you are incredibly screwed by the 25 stack condition limit. If they are going to band-aid so much, they could at least have fixed that. All damage doers are effectively normalised down to base damage + power (I hope you have power gear in your bags!). All variety is ironed out of the classes.
At the end of course, some people got loot. And like 99% of the people there I had to face the fact that I waited around for an hour to get two other people free ascended weapons. It's like the worst bits of WoW uneasily shoe-horned into Guildwars 2.
There are three results to boss fights: A sense of achievement, enjoyment of fun mechanics and loot. I've beaten it so I've got the former. The last is vanishingly unlikely, and the middle one we've covered already. So why repeat it?
It's just a bad encounter.
The thing is, those role synergies that aren't meant to be there? They exist - they are just more random and well hidden than in a trinity-based game. I see a lot of criticism of WvWvW that it's just "mindless zerging" but to say that betrays a lack of understanding of what is happening in the battles, probably caused by a refusal to join your server's voice comms of choice. I play quite a lot of WvWvW, as all eight classes and I promise you, SFR use those synergies to allow smaller zergs to destroy much larger ones. And we are not alone - other servers do too because we can see them doing it. You need to know which fields to put down and where, when to blast them, how to move. I have seen groups of 20 wipe the best part of an entire server. Then bully and harass them until the entire enemy zerg runs at the sight of more than a few of us. I've been on the receiving end of one German guild's terrifying and infamous melee front line as it carved through us like a hot knife through butter as we were hopelessly marooned by well-co-ordinated stuns and static.
This game has glorious team play, and they need to make that work in PvE, rather than trying to ape WoW's boring encounters.
hmm, naw. SSD doesnt seem to help loading times much. LA still takes like 20 seconds.
Kos Luftar
Member
Go for a Radeon HD7950, and i5 3500k.
Good post.
The new Taco is another example of ArenaNet developing a content platform that stands apart from the regular PvE game. This is not "the new way of doing things," it's a different kind of content for different kinds of players.
Dungeons, regular PvE, Fractals, guild missions, SAB, mini-dungeons, jumping puzzles... They all vary wildly to the point where the game could almost come off as schizophrenic... and that's just some of the PvE stuff off the top of my head, ignoring WvW, PvP, activities, etc.
That's not me saying "You must like GW2, because I'm PRetro and I say so!," either. Some people like the new Taco, some people don't. For those who do, this was probably a type of raid-like content they wanted to see for a while, and will want to see again. The platform of "big, hard open-world fights" is now a thing and we can expect more later from Shatner and Claw.
For those who found they don't enjoy this new platform, guess what? You're only 8 days away from something new and different. And if you don't care for that, you only have to wait 2 more weeks. In the meantime, there's no subscription fee making you feel obligated to play content you don't enjoy. You can take a break if you don't care for a particular slice of the game. Other MMOs deliver a new dungeon and a new raid every 3-6 months, if you're lucky. Most hold back new content platforms (if they add any) for paid expansions.
I'm not saying you have to like the new Taco. Just realize there's some people who do, and maybe this just isn't your update. A new one is never far away, that's the beauty of the two week update cycle. It doesn't make this one bad OR good, just different, and because content is delivered so fast you don't really get stuck with something you don't like for very long.
Next week, the people who enjoy dungeons get their platform worked on, 2 weeks later, who knows what's next?
Dungeons, regular PvE, Fractals, guild missions, SAB, mini-dungeons, jumping puzzles... They all vary wildly to the point where the game could almost come off as schizophrenic... and that's just some of the PvE stuff off the top of my head, ignoring WvW, PvP, activities, etc.
That's not me saying "You must like GW2, because I'm PRetro and I say so!," either. Some people like the new Taco, some people don't. For those who do, this was probably a type of raid-like content they wanted to see for a while, and will want to see again. The platform of "big, hard open-world fights" is now a thing and we can expect more later from Shatner and Claw.
For those who found they don't enjoy this new platform, guess what? You're only 8 days away from something new and different. And if you don't care for that, you only have to wait 2 more weeks. In the meantime, there's no subscription fee making you feel obligated to play content you don't enjoy. You can take a break if you don't care for a particular slice of the game. Other MMOs deliver a new dungeon and a new raid every 3-6 months, if you're lucky. Most hold back new content platforms (if they add any) for paid expansions.
I'm not saying you have to like the new Taco. Just realize there's some people who do, and maybe this just isn't your update. A new one is never far away, that's the beauty of the two week update cycle. It doesn't make this one bad OR good, just different, and because content is delivered so fast you don't really get stuck with something you don't like for very long.
Next week, the people who enjoy dungeons get their platform worked on, 2 weeks later, who knows what's next?
A bad encounter for who? I'd say people on the whole are enjoying Teq quite a bit given the reception, and that is what ANet was aiming for. This is their first real attempt at a large-raid like encounter, and it seems to have gone over surprisingly well. It might end up as another Karka queen in a month or two, but for now most people are having fun with it.
Looking for balls-out challenge in a mmo isn't going to work. These types of games cost too much to spend time and resources on content that only a small percentage of your customers would bother with. But I think ANet has actually struck up a pretty good balance all around. In WvW/PvE, you have the option to go with a elite, specific setups where all the little intrinsic roles can play out, or you can just zerk/zerg it up. On the flipside, there's PvP where everything is equalized and player skill can really stand out.
AFollowerNotALeader
Member
Bad is the wrong word and I should probably have chosen better. Tedious I think fits it better. I'm not denying that it was difficult, but most of the challenge was in getting a group of players into the event that actually follow and react to instructions. Things can be difficult and boring at the same time. The rest is just stand in the right place (and dodge/jump) and DPS as hard as you can. The primary difficulty in the event is the overflow mechanic.
I disagree that it's impossible to build challenging content in MMOs. I think some options for challenging large scale PvE content are explicitly difficult with this MMO which is not the same thing, and that ArenaNet have tried a bunch of work-arounds in this event which are fairly bad.
Please don't take this as me hating GW2. Much earlier in this or a previous version of this thread I wrote a sort of love letter to it. And as I've said, before, it's a bit much to expect to like all the LS updates.
Edit It's actually interesting and slightly encouraging that October's balance update has the goal of improving support skills:
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview
Maybe we'll see some content that uses them in future...
I have an i5 2500K and 550TI. Just started overclocking the CPU to 4.0ghz yesterday and tested it without any upgraded cooling to make sure it wouldn't overheat. Waiting on the new cooler to come in before I test going any higher. I'm sure even the overclocked CPU will still bottleneck me in any large content like Taco and 3 way SM fights but the 550 performs just fine outside of those situations. Well, besides the blackhole of framerates that is Black Citadel.
Also might delete the dat file and do an -image to load everything fresh.
Depending on how much OCing does to improve frame rates, I might look at a new video card soon. I pieced this together last summer as my first build and didn't want to drop too much on a video card.
Also might delete the dat file and do an -image to load everything fresh.
Depending on how much OCing does to improve frame rates, I might look at a new video card soon. I pieced this together last summer as my first build and didn't want to drop too much on a video card.
Look, I can understand the frustration people feel because of getting put in an overflow and not being able to join your main server. But I've become kind of impatient with this complaint... overflows are a solution to high concurrency filling up popular maps. The alternative to overflows isn't everyone getting into a capable version of the encounter with their friends, it's seeing "Sparkfly Fen is full. Would you like to queue up for it?" Every posited fix I've seen for this issue neglects the fact that overflows are generated dynamically based on need and pop out of existence as frequently as they are created. Automatically putting you in the most recently created one with your party members would be a great touch, but all it's saving you is the inconvenience of ferrying into the same one. It wouldn't solve the problem of not being able to get into your server main and having to spam the Join In button, nor the issue of overflows suffering from less coordination unless commandeered by a group intentionally.
It's just that it's become really easy to take what is actually a pretty great feature- the ability to go to any map and do anything regardless of how many people are playing- completely for granted and label it "broken design."
Might sound like I'm cracking wise, but the most effective resolution to the prevalence of this issue would be getting fewer people to play, at least on your server.
Graphical glitches you're having aside, if this complaint can be boiled down to "for a difficult encounter, this is a pretty simple difficult encounter" then I agree with you. But this is the first thing like this they've done, and ramping up the complexity too fast would be even more jarring to the majority of the player base, so unused to a true degree of challenge in the open world, than this fight already has been. The fact that this boss has fostered intense cooperation within groups of over 100 players who might not ordinarily be predisposed to take part in "raids," or whatever, is by far the most significant accomplishment of this release and you've run right past it. It's kind of a miracle that it works at all. You're free to believe that this fight was easy to design and test for groups of this size, but I find it objectively impressive.
At the same time, making it any harder without making it any more complex would probably have scared another group away, one that is integral to leading their server communities to victory in these scenarios. All in all it strikes me as pretty well-tuned.
Happy to disagree completely here. Support specs are actually incredibly beneficial in the zerg. Anything that buffs, heals, reflections, condition cleanses, or gives people an extra second on their feet or gets them up quickly is just as valuable as pure damage in the big group and other specs are viable for turret defense. Having a good understanding of synergies and what your class can bring to the table are important aspects of it, not something it ignores by default.
Tequatl cannot be crit alongside any other massive non-"mob" boss. It is not a quality specific to him, and nothing was shoehorned into the base damage mechanics of this fight that didn't apply to the old Tequatl too. There was simply no reason to care because the prospect of "gearing up" for the old tequatl was laughable.
Crowd control is actually pretty valuable during the laser defense phases.
.
First off, Berserker's gear is Power gear. So I'd be pretty hard-pressed to claim that the majority of the PvE crowds don't have it already. The extra stats of Soldier's are merely increasing survivability in a fight where such an increase comes in handy. If what you're saying is "Shaman's and Rabid gear is particularly ineffective here" then I suppose you're right, but for one of only a tiny handful of occasions Berserker's is not the right answer. Furthermore condition builds (especially AoE) are completely viable and useful as turret defense especially if you can bring some CC to the fight as well.
I'm not sure if I agree at all about variety being "ironed out of the classes," either. The abilities I bring the the fight as a thief are pretty distinct and I know that when I'm using dagger storm to spread buffs and stability through waves, or shooting around the map with my 5 arrow, another class would be handling these things differently, and I'd spec differently within my class if doing turret defense instead. I've had 3 victories on my thief and haven't tried it yet on another class, and I certainly don't feel as confident in my ability to contribute with the classes I haven't become good at it with yet. I can't imagine that would be the case if everything about the classes was homogenized for this fight. Even when the whole group is using the same ice bow skill in unison, they're doing so because of an ability limited to a single class.
Ah. Well, it's certainly easy to understand your disappointment if this was a large part of what was motivating you. I personally feel like the 1g is enough of an extrinsic reward on top of the chances for rare shinies to make it worth the time, but I can't claim the majority is anywhere close to agreement with me on that.
Then again, I would want to do the fight even if it were literally guaranteed to drop no loot, and obviously the majority isn't in agreement with me on that. I guess I just hope that the people who desire to keep participating in the fight over time trend toward not particularly caring about this aspect.
No reason--don't.
Much of your criticism has been cogent, but no, it's not an objectively "bad encounter." You don't like it, and that's fine, in fact necessary to the success of this MMO (Retro just covered this). But some people think it's actually pretty great. Asd202 called it a "good fight" before replying "good post" to your claim that it's a "bad encounter" so I'm not really even seeing any kind of internal consensus among those that don't like it. I will say that, for your claim that it's channeling all the worst aspects of WoW somehow: as someone who never touched WoW from a hundred yards away, none of the aspects of similar encounters in that game that originally intimidated me, required arbitrary vertical progression, or fostered elitism or exclusivity really apply.
It sounds a bit like what you really want is for the strategic conceits and class interplay of WvW to be present in a large-scale PvE encounter. While this sounds amazing, it's also a tall order because computer-controlled enemies will never be as wily or unpredictable as human beings.
For now, I'm just enjoying the fact that a real challenge has essentially been added to large-scale PvE for the first time. I hope more complex encounters that encourage more specialization and separate groups are coming. but this felt like a damn solid first attempt.
I think that both this and your other post made extremely valid points. Tequatl actually causes a lot of issues with the game's current set up to become apparent, such as the lack of diversity in builds and the lack of classes making a big enough impact. I also agree with you on turrets, although as long as turrets are only one phase (they're too heavily used here) I don't think it's too much of an issue.
However, like most living story updates, I think Tequatl acts as a herald for things to come. Sure, DPS was king in the battle, but all of a sudden zerk gear wouldn't cut it. People had to start moving to other builds just to stay up. It also forced people to keep moving and avoid area effects, and also pay attention to what teammates were doing. No longer could you just target, auto attack, and then go make yourself a sandwich.
I think Anet is probably just as disappointed in a lot of those issues as we are, hence why they released Tequatl as a first step. They couldn't just go out of their way to make this huge event that's super class specific and requires a ton of build variety to defeat, not under the current system, that's for sure. They're bringing in support updates, and slowly changing the way people look at the game. And most importantly, after an event like this, they now have tons of data. They know what stats and classes people were running, they know how many conditions were used, they know what the bottlenecks and weak parts of the event were.
Tequatl is far from perfect, but it's just an absolutely needed step in the right direction. I'm excited to see what Anet cooks up for the next dragon encounter, as well as how the Tequatl encounter changes as builds start to diversify.
Interesting post, Follower. Some things I agree with and some things I don't.
I have to agree to a small degree here. I wouldn't say they utterly "break" world pve since 99% of the time you won't even see them. You'll see them at Teq, at Queensdale during SB, and potentially in Orr maps during a server temple event, but otherwise I'm not even thinking about them. It would be cool if the overflow zones were a little more..designated? Small steps to answer the questions "which overflow am I in and who else (server wise) is here? I don't really have a solution, but right now it boils down to "Oh, I am in an overflow, and judging by my party members' silhouettes they must be in a different one." Some clarity would be nice, though I am unsure what is possible on that front..
"All it is"? I dunno. Seems intricate enough to me. You have tells for shockwaves to jump or dodge, or a slightly different one for a roar to prepare a stability. Fingers that spread the aoe, and then the vortex to avoid. Are you saying the fight would be better with a greater array of attacks to watch out for? Fewer? No timer?
I actually agree with this, sort of. I greatly dislike having to leave my class and play something with a bundle mechanic. It's why I never run AC 2 and I exaggeratingly joke about how I'm going to hate new TA with all the bundle mechanics they're going to add. But I'm not forced to do it here. 150 people aren't. If 6 people are happy to stretch a little and try something different and man a turret, is that so bad? You could argue that having the whole event success or failure depend on a handful of turret operators is potentially bad, or maybe more appropriately, unfair design, but I can see the allure of being one of the guys who does well in that event specific role, and potentially being recognized for it.
And hawkian touched on it, but there is plenty of room for support in the dps group. I'm parking elite ranger spirits behind the zerg, activating their res when I see downed, using signet of renewal to pull conditions to my pets and swapping them out, laying water fields that pulse away conditions every 3 seconds, and I'm doing that as a Ranger, one of the worst support classes in the game. An elementalist, a healing engi, a staff guardian, etc, all of those are huge to have in the group.
Objects have never been crit-able. Would the fight be better if he was, but had more health? Any fight that doesn't benefit from zerking it down as fast as possible is an interesting fight to me. A nice change up from most every dungeon path, etc.
Are you saying hammer heavies should be able to smack his toes and..stun him or something? I'm unsure how that is balanced for 100+ people. CC is still useful at battery or turret defense. \
I don't run any condition builds regularly so I can't extensively comment, but it would be nice to see a fix for this. I would think some sort of flattening curve would be doable where each stack of bleed for instance adds to the stack but to an increasingly lesser effect. Or something.
Some encounters will encourage different stat arrays. I didn't have a Soldiers set (previously used Knights for a defensive set) but I gladly grabbed one for this fight.
Seems like an extreme exaggeration. Class variety is gone because most dps people are running a common armor array?
The loot is a draw, yes, but I just enjoy the unique ways the event can unfold. We had a run yesterday where the megalaser ended up with 1% hp before a stun phase, and there was another run where they won with 0 seconds left, or another (the first sbi victory) where the whole south battery got overrun (to the worst degree I've seen yet with the event) and a large handful of people selflessly supported them to salvage the event and still win. I much prefer this to the unengaging pinata-fest of dragons we had before, even if for 95% of everyone, they still get maybe an exo but mostly rares and below.
A portion of the wvw gvg/zvz mechanics do come into play here when it comes to keeping the main group upright, but you just can't draw a one-to-one comparison from a 15 -60 vs 15-60 of individual players in groups to a mob of people attacking a single target. Lots of wvw fight mechanics involve limiting the enemy groups movements and maxmizing your own. Fighting real people is always going to be more engaging than monster enemies. Especially one enemy with three target points that doesn't move. That's why I have been playing wvw near nightly for months after ignoring it for the first half of the game's life. But, for a pve encounter incorporating 100 plus people without any hard boundaries for class or gear composition, the new Teq fight is the most engaging in the game thus far.
I have to agree to a small degree here. I wouldn't say they utterly "break" world pve since 99% of the time you won't even see them. You'll see them at Teq, at Queensdale during SB, and potentially in Orr maps during a server temple event, but otherwise I'm not even thinking about them. It would be cool if the overflow zones were a little more..designated? Small steps to answer the questions "which overflow am I in and who else (server wise) is here? I don't really have a solution, but right now it boils down to "Oh, I am in an overflow, and judging by my party members' silhouettes they must be in a different one." Some clarity would be nice, though I am unsure what is possible on that front..
"All it is"? I dunno. Seems intricate enough to me. You have tells for shockwaves to jump or dodge, or a slightly different one for a roar to prepare a stability. Fingers that spread the aoe, and then the vortex to avoid. Are you saying the fight would be better with a greater array of attacks to watch out for? Fewer? No timer?
I actually agree with this, sort of. I greatly dislike having to leave my class and play something with a bundle mechanic. It's why I never run AC 2 and I exaggeratingly joke about how I'm going to hate new TA with all the bundle mechanics they're going to add. But I'm not forced to do it here. 150 people aren't. If 6 people are happy to stretch a little and try something different and man a turret, is that so bad? You could argue that having the whole event success or failure depend on a handful of turret operators is potentially bad, or maybe more appropriately, unfair design, but I can see the allure of being one of the guys who does well in that event specific role, and potentially being recognized for it.
And hawkian touched on it, but there is plenty of room for support in the dps group. I'm parking elite ranger spirits behind the zerg, activating their res when I see downed, using signet of renewal to pull conditions to my pets and swapping them out, laying water fields that pulse away conditions every 3 seconds, and I'm doing that as a Ranger, one of the worst support classes in the game. An elementalist, a healing engi, a staff guardian, etc, all of those are huge to have in the group.
Objects have never been crit-able. Would the fight be better if he was, but had more health? Any fight that doesn't benefit from zerking it down as fast as possible is an interesting fight to me. A nice change up from most every dungeon path, etc.
Are you saying hammer heavies should be able to smack his toes and..stun him or something? I'm unsure how that is balanced for 100+ people. CC is still useful at battery or turret defense. \
I don't run any condition builds regularly so I can't extensively comment, but it would be nice to see a fix for this. I would think some sort of flattening curve would be doable where each stack of bleed for instance adds to the stack but to an increasingly lesser effect. Or something.
Some encounters will encourage different stat arrays. I didn't have a Soldiers set (previously used Knights for a defensive set) but I gladly grabbed one for this fight.
Seems like an extreme exaggeration. Class variety is gone because most dps people are running a common armor array?
The loot is a draw, yes, but I just enjoy the unique ways the event can unfold. We had a run yesterday where the megalaser ended up with 1% hp before a stun phase, and there was another run where they won with 0 seconds left, or another (the first sbi victory) where the whole south battery got overrun (to the worst degree I've seen yet with the event) and a large handful of people selflessly supported them to salvage the event and still win. I much prefer this to the unengaging pinata-fest of dragons we had before, even if for 95% of everyone, they still get maybe an exo but mostly rares and below.
A portion of the wvw gvg/zvz mechanics do come into play here when it comes to keeping the main group upright, but you just can't draw a one-to-one comparison from a 15 -60 vs 15-60 of individual players in groups to a mob of people attacking a single target. Lots of wvw fight mechanics involve limiting the enemy groups movements and maxmizing your own. Fighting real people is always going to be more engaging than monster enemies. Especially one enemy with three target points that doesn't move. That's why I have been playing wvw near nightly for months after ignoring it for the first half of the game's life. But, for a pve encounter incorporating 100 plus people without any hard boundaries for class or gear composition, the new Teq fight is the most engaging in the game thus far.
AFollowerNotALeader
Member
You've both made fair points. In this case I'm certainly tainted by enjoying keeping a large group up as a healing class with dispels and mass heals in PvE in other titles.
I'm on a medium population server so I'm afraid I've already got the fewer people playing, sorry Hawkian
Sort of this, basically.
I don't think we can hope to have the AI be anything close to human opponents. But what we could have is mechanics that require the abilities built into classes and the boons they can give. We do have a bunch of mechanics that could work together. In WvWvW we are used to blasting water fields to give area heals and fire fields to give might and so on. I'd much rather have encounters that used that sort of thing. It's not the AI, so much as the scripted event needing more complicated and co-operative play.
For example you could have bosses with phases where they are vulnerable to the results of a combo field (fire arrows?), or particular debuffs that need to be removed.
I agree that there's a bit of this built into Tequatl already with the reflection mechanics. I don't mean to say that support classes are useless in this encounter, the issue is more that ArenaNet aren't able to rely on them being present, so added the turrets (if that makes sense).
I guess my problem with this encounter is that you could add it to Call of Duty with relatively few changes.
I hope this is true, particularly given the upcoming balance changes.
I'm on a medium population server so I'm afraid I've already got the fewer people playing, sorry Hawkian
Sort of this, basically.
I don't think we can hope to have the AI be anything close to human opponents. But what we could have is mechanics that require the abilities built into classes and the boons they can give. We do have a bunch of mechanics that could work together. In WvWvW we are used to blasting water fields to give area heals and fire fields to give might and so on. I'd much rather have encounters that used that sort of thing. It's not the AI, so much as the scripted event needing more complicated and co-operative play.
For example you could have bosses with phases where they are vulnerable to the results of a combo field (fire arrows?), or particular debuffs that need to be removed.
I agree that there's a bit of this built into Tequatl already with the reflection mechanics. I don't mean to say that support classes are useless in this encounter, the issue is more that ArenaNet aren't able to rely on them being present, so added the turrets (if that makes sense).
I guess my problem with this encounter is that you could add it to Call of Duty with relatively few changes.
I hope this is true, particularly given the upcoming balance changes.
Jest Chillin
Member
The only bit I can add is that Combo Field usage is incredibly potent in the fight and most other fights in the game. The problem is that so much of the PvE content leading up to this one has been able to be completed without it that a large amount of the PvE playerbase has never bothered to learn them extensively.
I can tell you that as Shortbow using Thieves both Hawkian and I blast fields regularly. I've seen him do it and I know I do it myself.
I can tell you that as Shortbow using Thieves both Hawkian and I blast fields regularly. I've seen him do it and I know I do it myself.
AFollowerNotALeader
Member
I agree. A lot of the issue is the way the player base has been taught to behave with content up to this point. If using combo fields and playing support/control had been rewarded up until now in PvE ArenaNet would be able to produce much more interesting encounters.
On some level there's no point me crying about this now, it's already happened!
On a totally unrelated note, I've created a second engineer, explicitly to play with the skills I've ignored up until now (and in no way because I love Sylvari). WHY DID NO-ONE TELL ME BOMB KITS WERE THIS FUN?
shysaursoft
Member
I ran level 10 Fractals recently with a PuG, and there was a Mesmer with an Ascended weapon, 7k+ AP, and to their credit, was excellent at all the Fractals we did. Knew the fights, knew how to survive, knew how to dish otu damage.
I kept blast-finishing in the Mesmer's fields, giving the party Chaos Shield (Bubbles!) because I adore the effect and how useful it is. After a while, the Mesmer asked "How are you doing that?"
The Mesmer not only didn't understand fields, but didn't know about blast finishers.
I've been an Engineer since launch, pretty much exclusively, and yet I still can't quite get the love for bomb kits. Big Bomb is useful for getting stuff off you, and as a delayed (slightly useless) blast finisher, and #2 is good for giving might if you explode your water turret or shield in it, and I get that #3 does confusion.. but I've never quite gotten the deal with Bomb Kit. A lot of engies swear by it, but then I see them use 'nades in almost all fights.
I must say, my good man, that if it ends up as "another Karka queen," at any point, personally I'd be thrilled. As anyone playing in GAFGuild for the last two weeks can attest, she is certainly not being ignored.
That I can totally understand. While I don't like the "red bar whack-a-mole" of traditional MMO healing classes, I do love the idea of healing and protection focused classes in general and I can get missing them since they're not required. I do hope that the support buffs in the Oct. 15th patch make bring a full healing spec to a party a more rewarding and viable experience (i'm certainly going to try).
Haha, it wasn't a real suggestion to how to solve the issue. It's just that overflows like a lot of other issues that have been deemed flaws of the game's design are actually just symptoms of so many people playing.I'm on a medium population server so I'm afraid I've already got the fewer people playing, sorry Hawkian
That you have so much trouble getting locked out even on a Medium pop server is just crazy to me, and further indicative of this "problem." The good news is that with permanent content, as it becomes less popular and the distribution shifts back toward baseline, it improves over time. Not that this helps you in this case since you don't like the fight. See now that all sounds awesome, and I definitely agree with the last part (pretend there were no turrets in this fight and what you needed was Light Fields and Whirl Finishers to remove Teq's scales- would it still be possible? Of course. Less likely to coordinate as the first difficult boss we've seen? Oh yeah.)
Basically in addition to being a fun boss fight (which I really believe it is, but I can totally understand disagreeing on that just like any other content), it was a proof of content. "Can we actually get 100 disjointed players to pay attention, work together and overcome something challenging in PvE?" You don't have to read very far to see how many players simply assume the answer to this to be no, even after so many servers have already succeeded. There's also a significant contingent of players that only cares about effort v. reward, maxing gold per hour as it were. It's a challenge enough to create an event that isn't totally irreconcilable between disparate groups of gamers, let alone make that event require specific class synergies or elemental vulnerabilities. I certainly hope it's not ruled out for the future, though!
Once people get their feet wet with Tequatl, I know lots of them will, like I am, be looking forward to the next encounter and hoping it demands even more of us. But you also still have people claiming that this is too tough to coordinate and needs to be nerfed. It's a tightrope.
Shortbow is so unbelievably perfect for the Teq fight it blows my mind. I should look into Dagger/Dagger as my other set for the stuns and havoc turret defense, but so far I've basically stayed locked into SB the whole time in the victories so far. It's kind of rekindled my love for the weapon set in the rest of PvE as well.
Engineer has been the most surprisingly fun of any class to me. As someone who basically resolved to not use grenades and see what else I could do, the number of options is still just overwhelming. I love that you can switch spec in a few seconds and almost be playing a completely different class.
I saw a funny reddit post today with newbie questions, one of them was like "I did this Ranger skill inside this field and it made something different happen, what was this I NEED AN ADULT"
Guild Wars 2 desperately needs 10 minutes of introduction to the most basic and fairly unique mechanics the combat system offers to new players, and currently it has zero. Skill range and effects, combos, positioning (lots of pugs I have grouped with do not understand how hits are calculated in this game), downed state and rally, even dodging. It really stands out how practical the little tutorial about rezzing, stomping, siege and so forth in the Mists is in comparison to what you get with a new character in PvE.
Hopefully the additions being worked on for the China launch will help.
Soldier + Berserker would be balanced, but Knight + Berserker doesn't make much sense to me. The first combo has a strong power base, whereas the second can take hits but provides mediocre damage.
I see warrior as a profession that benefits from extreme rather than balanced stats. Either kill your foe first and rely on the warrior's innate survivability (Berserker/Rampager/Assassin), or go tanky and help your party (Soldier/Cleric/Sentinel/Dire/Knight+Cavalier). Once a path is chosen, weapon choice should determine the actual gear composition.
Note: I violate these principles in PvP, where one has access to the amazing PvP Valkyrie medallion/amulet (power primary; toughness, critical damage, and healing power secondary).
AFollowerNotALeader
Member
If I'm completely honest, then looking at the post I made this morning, there's also an element of:
AFollowerNotALeader finds big large scale PvE boss fights in other games tedious and repetitive
AFollowerNotALeader moves to GW2 for fun combat and WvWvW
ArenaNet adds a big PvE boss fight
AFollowerNotALeader finds this fight tedious and repetitive
AFollowerNotALeader is shocked that he doesn't like a form of content he already knows he doesn't like and whinges on NeoGAF
With the bomb kits it's less that I think they are "powerful" and more that I like running though Caledon forest cackling madly to myself and scattering bombs left right and centre. I'm sure it'll wear off. Maybe.
AFollowerNotALeader finds big large scale PvE boss fights in other games tedious and repetitive
AFollowerNotALeader moves to GW2 for fun combat and WvWvW
ArenaNet adds a big PvE boss fight
AFollowerNotALeader finds this fight tedious and repetitive
AFollowerNotALeader is shocked that he doesn't like a form of content he already knows he doesn't like and whinges on NeoGAF
With the bomb kits it's less that I think they are "powerful" and more that I like running though Caledon forest cackling madly to myself and scattering bombs left right and centre. I'm sure it'll wear off. Maybe.
BeekleMatter
Member
You mean 3750k? Is there even a 3500k?
I have the i5 3750k and RHD7850 and love it.
He must've meant that, 3500 is basically the series and there being only one K within it = 3750k. A fine microprocessor to be sure.
My PC's finally starting to feel its age. I'll shove in an SSD and get another cool year out of it, though.
My biggest concern regarding Teq remains the same... How will its spawn timer be handled in the future?
Right now it appears that the timer starts when the last server to finish, finishes? As such all of Teq's spawns are basically time to start across all worlds, unlike any other World Boss. So my question is will it simply continue like this into the future?
I mean, by having the 15 minute time limit, this type of spawning actually works since the event is guaranteed to end regardless, but it's just a thought I've had.
Right now it appears that the timer starts when the last server to finish, finishes? As such all of Teq's spawns are basically time to start across all worlds, unlike any other World Boss. So my question is will it simply continue like this into the future?
I mean, by having the 15 minute time limit, this type of spawning actually works since the event is guaranteed to end regardless, but it's just a thought I've had.
Hmm. I figure they'll make him spawn on a similar but less frequent timer after the 1st. What are you concerns with it?
I'll honestly be disappointed if they just have him spawn at set times like he did before. I'd rather see them take a Karka Queen approach; have a series of events within Sparkfly Fen that need to be completed before he'll spawn.
The reason that's the optimal approach (in my opinion, of course) is that if a group organizes to trigger him, they're all already in the main server when he spawns. GAF never has to worry about getting into the right server of Southsun because GAF is the one who's on the ground triggering the Karka Queen more often than not.
Objectives could be existing events too. Maybe Taco only shows up if Risen invasions along the coast are driven back. If the initial wave fails, the heavy artillery shows up to wreck things, so to speak.
shysaursoft
Member
I would have liked to do Minus, but when I try to create an account, it wants me to download and do it through an Android or iOS app, which isn't really my idea of a good time. Abload.de is an option, but the presentation is fugly.
^This right here. That is how I would prefer Tequatl spawn to function, as opposed to watching the clock and idling in Sparkfly.
That way guilds could conspire to work together for a run at it.
If they went the karka queen route, the one thing I hope is that they eventually scale teq. Allow a 40 man guild to actually organize hitting it and killing it without having to gather 60 more people who likely will show up anyway when the event pop ups on their timers. But it would be better to allow off hour guilds to do it as well when they simply can't fill a map that late.
Honestly, I think tumblr would be something perfect. Basically make a blog out of it to post new shots every week instead of mass upload to a host whenever you make a new batch.
Honestly, I think tumblr would be something perfect. Basically make a blog out of it to post new shots every week instead of mass upload to a host whenever you make a new batch.
shysaursoft
Member
I may end up doing that. Again. I used to have a Tumblr with shots, but ended up deleting it after a year because I didn't think it was really a productive outlet.
Was reading reddit today. Someone suggested switching the blood lust and out-manned buffs around so you'd get stat boosts if you were out-manned and experience and gold boosts if you held the points in the ruins.
The current winners benefit from more gold and drops and whatever, and the guys with no coverage get some stats to compensate for no one wanting to be on the map.
Isn't that genius?
The current winners benefit from more gold and drops and whatever, and the guys with no coverage get some stats to compensate for no one wanting to be on the map.
Isn't that genius?
It could work. Though it might throw duels and other stuff off even more than Bloodlust does now. Right now people try to do fights when there's a fair stack of bloodlust. If you're attempting to duel or do small mans, where do you go to avoid outmanned by either side? EB? Its hard to find a spot where there aren't NPCs spawning and you won't get run over by a zerg in the middle of it. And then you'll have a lot of QQing with people claiming the other had the buff since you can't see it. Anet won't turn it back on since it was removed more for tactical reasons since it gave us a great notice to go hit something of theirs or to give either EB or our BL a heads up that they might be having a lot visitors if a zerg suddenly disappears from a map.
Of course, they added Bloodlust in the first place so we know Anet isn't worried about the groups that want to duel and GvG.
You just described all "challenging" content in every MMO ever. It's not a gameplay challenge in the sense that a fighting game or FPS requires a lot of skill to be insanely good, it's a matter of herding nerds around and hoping the other players do their job at the same time you do yours. It always has been about the organization and coordination of many players, the individual gameplay challenge is non-existent as far as I'm concerned. The Queen's Gauntlet was a good example of a true challenge because it was completely reliant on YOUR individual skill at the game. As soon as you start putting people together and having them execute the same gameplay mechanics, individual game mechanic challenge is thrown out the window.
Holy shit, I just realized how awesome that is
Queen's Gauntlet = Individual challenge added to game
Tequatl Rising = Over a hundred players coordination challenge added.
I didn't even see that until just now.
when sir
You have my sword
Pumpkin King
Member
GAF leads SBI to victory once again!
Complistic
Member
turret commander is crazy fun.
Pumpkin King
Member
I love putting down frost bows in the DPS group, putting down water fields and seeing all the green numbers, then repeat.
Noisy Ninj4
Member
Swirling winds ele team is pretty fun. Just have to remember to use bow/GS when we need big deeps.
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