Problem with Serpent's Ire meta events and branded area of Vabbi.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > @"Turkeyspit.3965" said:

> > > I'm all for an organized (read: instanced) events where you build a group, decide on a strategy and execute it for fame and loot, but I don't think the same requirements should apply to open world / meta events, at least not to that level. Octovine, DS, TT, and even Shatterer all have mechanics that separate it from your run of the mill open world Champion fight, but aren't so punishingly complex as to make it impossible for any random player to participate with the expectation of success.

> >

> > How’s having players using CC punishingly complex?

> >

>

> Doing it well requires an understanding of what good CCPS is, as well as what good DPS is. In general, the population of the world cannot grasp the concept of rates. Also, apparently the concept of shapes and colors is hard.

 

You just have people dedicated to breaking the other bosses while the zerg start on the first one and works their way across. It doesn’t require nearly as much effort as people are making it out to be.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

>

> You just have people dedicated to breaking the other bosses while the zerg start on the first one and works their way across. It doesn’t require nearly as much effort as people are making it out to be.

 

The overview is simple. The problem is this: how do you sort out and deal with people who are incompetent? Undergeared? How do you get those people out of the event, and get competent people in?

 

That's the real difficulty. If I get a squad full of 25 scourges, mirages, and tempests, then I'm going to fail. If I get a squad where nobody follows directions or responds _even when I directly whisper them_ (not kidding), then I'm going to fail. It doesn't seem like "go to the brightly colored mark and do CC" would be a difficult concept, but anywhere from 10-40% of the squad is going to fail at that concept.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> >

> > You just have people dedicated to breaking the other bosses while the zerg start on the first one and works their way across. It doesn’t require nearly as much effort as people are making it out to be.

>

> The overview is simple. The problem is this: how do you sort out and deal with people who are incompetent? Undergeared? How do you get those people out of the event, and get competent people in?

 

You don’t as it’s largely unnecessary to do so. Or at least no more necessary as Teq, TT, or anything else that requires some effort.

 

> That's the real difficulty. If I get a squad full of 25 scourges, mirages, and tempests, then I'm going to fail. If I get a squad where nobody follows directions or responds _even when I directly whisper them_ (not kidding), then I'm going to fail. It doesn't seem like "go to the brightly colored mark and do CC" would be a difficult concept, but anywhere from 10-40% of the squad is going to fail at that concept.

 

It’s unlikely that you’ll get a squad like that. All of the other large metas will fail if nobody follows directions. This meta isn’t unique to that.

 

CC has been in the game since launch and is a concept used in many games. It’s use as a mechanic has been present in the game for about 2.5 years. It’s on the players to learn what CC is, what skills they have available provides that, and to follow directions by those willing to lead.

 

I’ve seen arguments from players who dislike having to learn about CC from outside of the game. If they have no issues about going to Dulfy to find out how to do things then I don’t see why they’d have issues going to the wiki.

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"Turkeyspit.3965" said:

> > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > **Important notes**

> > This is not a "play how I want" event. CC is poorly balanced across classes, so you'll specifically need classes that have good CC in order to do the event, and they'll have to be in power builds.

> >

> > Personally I think this event should be nerfed. Fact is, commanding a map of random players is like herding cats. There's a reason why EVOS takes over an hour to set up Triple Trouble, and essentially only allows their own guild to do it. The shields that each zealot buffs out should be reduced from a 33% damage reduction to a 20% damage reduction. That would make the event a whole lot more fair, especially to condi builds that are otherwise useless.

>

> Those are some great insights, and thank you for trying to lead this open world event on a regular basis.

>

> The first sentence I quoted is particularly poignant. I've killed pretty much every world boss, and have done most of the meta events, and while for some activities you would be wise to switch out some of your utility skills for improved performance, in none of those cases was the event at risk of failure if you decided not to.

>

> I'm all for an organized (read: instanced) events where you build a group, decide on a strategy and execute it for fame and loot, but I don't think the same requirements should apply to open world / meta events, at least not to that level. Octovine, DS, TT, and even Shatterer all have mechanics that separate it from your run of the mill open world Champion fight, but aren't so punishingly complex as to make it impossible for any random player to participate with the expectation of success.

>

> I completed my first TT about 2 weeks after starting the game - I had no idea what was going on, but I listened to the Commander, I ran the colors I was told to, ez peazy. My first Octovine event was a head scratcher, as I didn't know what I was supposed to do - but the event was successful, and I quickly learned the requirements for each lane - but I never had to deviate from my existing build to make it work.

>

> Hopefully this is something ANET is open to adjusting, although they may be more focused on new content vs. revamping existing content.

>

 

Funny you should mention Octovine ... it used to fail quite often too. Now you can drop into nearly any random AB and it should be fine and this is on top of north being partially broken most of the time. There were some adjustments made to it(I don't remember the details) but ABML also got many people to become very familiar with how the event works. SI needs something like that to happen to it. It is not a difficult event but it needs knowledgeable people.

 

TT and Teq both used to fail easily too but there is both familiarity and power creep. TT and Teq also had a decent amount of hype pushing people to it.

 

Serpent's Ire has had nothing but some one time achievements.

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:

> The other part is that most of the HoT metas make you work harder for your rewards. Not, and I mean explicitly *NOT* in the sense that the content is harder, but rather ... many of the PoF metas just give you the reward on kill. Hit the boss, it dies, you get some rewards, and off you go. This is the core World Boss model of rewards, and it's ... OK. I mean, you get nice stuff, great, fine.

>

> HoT, on the other hand, you spend a non-trivial amount of time running around to get your reward: pick up keys from a vendor and events, run through the reward areas opening container after container, curse when someone drops an aviator box under a chest, spend time in it. The same is true of the Bitterfrost chests, too: work to interact, get many small rewards.

>

> That extra effort, even though it is literally just running from place to place and clicking "interact", means people have a greater sense of reward from the whole thing. The Istan meta raid on the city is in a similar boat: lots of things to kill, involved, and then you run around all over the shop collecting those chests for rewards. It **feels** more rewarding than, for example, Serpent's Ire did to me when I ran through it. That just felt like "Tequatl with some boring dynamic events" to me. There wasn't much more complexity. (...and I'm pretty into treating the game like a fancy version of solitaire: I don't need it to be unique, or have huge rewards. just playing is soothing and fun, getting into the rhythm, that sort of thing.)

 

That makes it sound like the PoF metas give the same amount of stuff as the HoT metas except with less running around. That is far from the truth.

 

SI takes as much time as Teq used to(back in the day you had to arrive 30 minutes ahead, sometimes even sooner) SI's reward is still below Teq. Teq gives 2g(non-repeatable) plus stuff.

 

SI gives ...


 

Missing from the image is 10 Eye of Kormir and 2 rolls of Elegy Mosaic and probably some Trade Contracts.

 

That reward is equal or less than core world bosses.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

>

> You don’t as it’s largely unnecessary to do so. Or at least no more necessary as Teq, TT, or anything else that requires some effort.

 

You do. I've seen this event fail at least a dozen times, precisely because of the problems I listed. Over and over again. No matter how much I explain what CC is, no matter how many times I list builds and skills to use for every class, no matter how many times I explain where to stand and what to do, no matter how much I advertise, no matter if I manually organize or demand volunteers, **it fails from the exact same problem.** If you say it doesn't, then it just means you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

>

> It’s unlikely that you’ll get a squad like that. All of the other large metas will fail if nobody follows directions. This meta isn’t unique to that.

>

> CC has been in the game since launch and is a concept used in many games. It’s use as a mechanic has been present in the game for about 2.5 years. It’s on the players to learn what CC is, what skills they have available provides that, and to follow directions by those willing to lead.

>

> I’ve seen arguments from players who dislike having to learn about CC from outside of the game. If they have no issues about going to Dulfy to find out how to do things then I don’t see why they’d have issues going to the wiki.

 

That's the squad I get every other day when trying this. It's actually really common to get a bad group, because this event suffers from Brain Drain. The other big meta events aren't as difficult as this, not out of a matter of complexity but because of the wide margin for error.

 

Tequatl:. Really, you only need about 15 people who know what they are doing, and only for the first part of the event. The turrets and the boat squads. After that, the DPS is high enough to never encounter tequalt mechanics again. Each of the charging stations is easy enough that "run around randomly and kill things" is an effective strategy. Then the event completes with several minutes on the clock and no realistic chance of failure.

 

King of the Jungle: This event **requires 4 commanders** to complete, and even then it still fails on a regular basis. But, the health of the Gerent is low enough that if one or two lanes are doing terrible, the other lanes that complete it faster can rush in to help. For most of the lanes, the strategy of "run around randomly killing things" is sufficient enough to get the job done, at least so the few players who know what they're doing can get the job done. The only exception is Nuhoch, AKA the lane responsible for most of the failures.

 

Dragon's Stand: This one is a clusterkitten, with one lane getting everybody and then having to reluctantly share out its members when the other two lanes stall indefinitely on the boss. Again, the strategy of "run around randomly killing things" is sufficient enough for everything but the boss portion, in which case a map usually has _well over an hour to sort their problems._ If a lane fails to kill the boss, it just restarts. If Dragon's Stand were like Serpent's Ire, the entire map would close the moment a lane either crashed, or didn't do good enough DPS on the boss... Again this event requires 3 commanders (believe me, I've tried it with less).

 

Triple Trouble: This one is so hard that there is a few very famous guilds (Luck, TTS, Evos) dedicated just to running these events, and it still fails quite often. These guilds have a lot of dedicated players that self-sort out the incompetent ones, and also they have a lot of pull, so when their tag shows up all of the good players know it is going to be successful and show up... creating a positive feedback loop of sorts.

 

Auric Basin: Again, this event requires very few competent players. You only need about 4 or 5 in each lane that actually know what they are doing. Everyone else can just run around randomly killing things while the few good players are knocking around the bomb or transforming into fungi. The event has a 15 minutes organizing period, and a 15 minute event period, even though it only takes about 5 minutes to complete the event.

 

 

The most common question I get when forming serpent's ire is "What is serpent's ire?" The event isn't nearly famous enough for how hard it is, and being a solo player I do not have the gravity to yank other people from across the world just to help out. I have a terribly short amount of time to sort people, and everybody has to be in place and 100% committed by the time phase 2 starts, or phase 2 fails. I don't have the convenient time to lollygag like I can with every other event in the game. I don't have 4 other commanders to form separate CC groups while I man the zerg. Likewise, none of the events listed above require a CC check, and this is the only event in the game where sustained high CCPS is required.