Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Maarius]

wow, so disappointed about the new meta-event boss battle, even though I loved the pre-event mechanic.

[Valeron]

The actual battle with the queen is a bit of a let down but I thought the build up to it is great. You have to split up the zerg or you'll never get all four camps at the same time.

[Rhywolver]

Wait until the Karka-Queen isn't roflstomped by 150 players at once. With less people, it could be a pretty exciting encounter.
Think of 5-maning Temple of Lyssa with the three seals. This is what four settlements and the Karka-Queen reminds me of.

[draykorinee]

Sounds like poor design to create a fight that's only fun when no one is interested in it anymore, but then thats pretty much what GW2 world bosses are, pretty constrained by there own design philosophy. (Although in the case of the fire shaman that isn't fun even when no ones interested in it)

[Gray_Matter]

Sounds like poor design to create a fight that's only fun when no one is interested in it anymore, but then thats pretty much what GW2 world bosses are, pretty constrained by there own design philosophy. (Although in the case of the fire shaman that isn't fun even when no ones interested in it)

Their hands are a bit tied. Whenever you have 100 people doing an event it's close to impossible to get anyone to follow tactics properly so the events will ultimately fail every time. IMHO, they are too easy but too long. I would prefer to have them tougher but shorter. 25 minutes to kill Jormag doesn't make the fight interesting, just boring.

They should try and balance it a bit better for the large groups though.

[draykorinee]

Yup agreed, there is little they can do with the way they have designed the game. Very little you can do with no threat table, no true healing roles etc. Having 100 people on screen doesn't help but it didn't stop other games making interesting world bosses (see oondasta). I'm not saying the design philosophy is wrong or bad btw just that thats the route they took and so we are unlikely to ever see meaningful large scale content imo.

[Karizee]

It has nothing to do with tanks/healers/trinity and everything to do with minimal gear progression. You cannot tune a world boss to get easier as people get better gear in this game. It's the same reason why standard raids won't work.

However, there are a number of world boss events that are fairly difficult. Fire Shaman in Iron Marches and the Corrupted God Temples in Orr for instance. Even still, an experienced, organized group can take them down but pugs do struggle and often fail them.

[draykorinee]

Couldn't disagree more in regards to gear, gear doesn't influence how hard a boss can be in GW2, theres only one gear level to tune for which makes it simple. Not having a trinity is only one reason why large scale world events won't work, they are just too hectic and damage is so erratic and quite often without any indicator as to whats hitting you or when a big hit is incoming. They need to work harder on indicators of damage/aggro to make meaningful encounters and also removing 'sweet spots' the shatterer is pretty much hitting his foot for 10 minutes which has nothing to do with gear.

The claw of jormag is a drab fight with constant champion spawns whose only effect is to run around dying very very slowly while people fire rockets from the sweet spot at jormag. Gear doesnt have any influence here either.

[Maarius]

Yup agreed, there is little they can do with the way they have designed the game. Very little you can do with no threat table, no true healing roles etc. Having 100 people on screen doesn't help but it didn't stop other games making interesting world bosses (see oondasta). I'm not saying the design philosophy is wrong or bad btw just that thats the route they took and so we are unlikely to ever see meaningful large scale content imo.

that is absolutely not true, the best boss encounters in other games work without the trinity and for tons of people. Look for Heigan the Unclean for a wonderful example. This battle could be done with 1000 of players without losing it's great mechanics. People have to learn the rhythm or they die, as easy as that.

[Karizee]

Think about it dray. If the boss is tuned for the current gear level, if there is no more gear to get, the experienced raider types that can figure out the mechanics quickly will take it down almost as fast as it's put in the game.

It's like if in WoW if the last boss of a heroic raid could be beat with entry level gear, it would be taken down almost immediately by the top guilds. The only thing that keeps them raiding is earning gear to beat the next boss.

Fractals offer the only gear progression right now, not through stats but through agony resist gear. I imagine they will do something with other infusions.

[draykorinee]

that is absolutely not true, the best boss encounters in other games work without the trinity and for tons of people. Look for Heigan the Unclean for a wonderful example. This battle could be done with 1000 of players without losing it's great mechanics. People have to learn the rhythm or they die, as easy as that.

Thats a 10/25 man boss fight in a constrained raid, not what I'm discussing. I think trinity is not needed in small scale pve, but to achieve an interesting world boss, with 100s of randoms, right now it looks impossible..I'm not 100% sure im right though, if anyone is going to do it it wont be the current design team :S

[draykorinee]

Think about it dray. If the boss is tuned for the current gear level, if there is no more gear to get, the experienced raider types that can figure out the mechanics quickly will take it down almost as fast as it's put in the game.

Again, I'm not sure how relevant that is for world bosses, in small scale/instanced pve maybe.

---------- Post added 2013-06-05 at 01:24 PM ----------

1) Someone just called Heigan a wonderful design example.....

2) You still needed a tank and healers (and a dispeller) for Heigan. Wasn't JUST the dance for 10 minutes.

Eek I had no intention of bringing wow in to this thread, but yes the tank phase was quite important, I had to tank it and I hated it. I could imagine having 100 odd people trying to do the dance

think it would look like that :P

[Meledelion]

1) Someone just called Heigan a wonderful design example.....

2) You still needed a tank and healers (and a dispeller) for Heigan. Wasn't JUST the dance for 10 minutes.

It was a basic tank and spank encounter aside form the dance which means that the dance is the core mechanic...

[draykorinee]

It was a basic tank and spank encounter aside form the dance which means that the dance is the core mechanic...

You had to kite him off the platform and avoid the fires, was a total pita, people always got clipped by the fire, more people died through that phase than the dance when everyone just followed one person in a big group.

[Karizee]

I've seen enough Temple fails to know that as a general rule, zone pugs that just show up to the party cannot do them yet if a guild organizes Temple runs they can take them down.

I agree on the low level meta boss events, but I think it has more to do with downscaling not being tight enough than the mechanics of the fight being interesting or not. I remember the Jungle Wurm event back when the game launched - it was pretty damn epic! Now the summoned husks don't even get to the boss to heal it.

[Meledelion]

You had to kite him off the platform and avoid the fires, was a total pita, people always got clipped by the fire, more people died through that phase than the dance when everyone just followed one person in a big group.

that was the only "mechanic" to him no? he then ported back to the platform => repeat

[Maarius]

guys it's the dance I'm talking about as a mechanic, not the tank/spank part of this battle. It was an example of how a fun mechanic could look like in GW2, which would absolutely be possible for more than 20 people. I don't understand why you think this battle has to be instanced and for a fixed raid size to be possible

Is there a tank-phase in this battle? Yes! Can a battle with one aspect of this fight (the dance) be designed? Absolutely!

[Meledelion]

I know maarius, that's what I'm trying to say too.

[Krolikn]

I wanted to try the game out without throwing money at it blindly. Any free weekends or trials up for grabs at the moment?

[draykorinee]

guys it's the dance I'm talking about as a mechanic, not the tank/spank part of this battle. It was an example of how a fun mechanic could look like in GW2, which would absolutely be possible for more than 20 people. I don't understand why you think this battle has to be instanced and for a fixed raid size to be possible

Is there a tank-phase in this battle? Yes! Can a battle with one aspect of this fight (the dance) be designed? Absolutely!

Not to be possible, just to be achievable, I guess Im a pessemist at heart, I guess if you toned down the fire to not one shot people ala heigan you could have a mechanic that would be fun, think its just a bit hopeful to say well here's a fight that it worked on in one game so it has to work in another. That fight killed people all the time on a small instanced raid, hate to see what would happen with 100 puggers, but ok, its doable, so one part of the fight is fun, what do you do to make the rest of the fight engaging? Cos right now that other part amounts to finding the sweet spot and dpsing.
On a side note, saying heigan was one of the best fights in wow is stretching it :P