I would say in my experience part of the problem GW2 has is that leveling dungeons are mostly dead. And at least in my experience when you do manage to get a group they're filled with experienced players who want to tear through the instance and don't treat new players well. I have horror stories that have left me not wanting to run any dungeon in GW2 at all. So without those leveling dungeons that help new players get a taste of group content and all the mechanics you've mentioned the place where players can get that experience is gone.
And this is really, really sad. I've ran all available dungeons for the 8/8 achiev (I ran one and said "might as well finish it, can't let this achiev be 1/8 forever). Do they drop LUCRATIVE EPIC REWARDS? No, not really. But they drop currencies for decent armor/wardrobe, currencies for Runes (needed Ascalonian Tears for my QHFB Runes) and the story is there as well, which most players pretty much miss out on. They never find out how Destiny's Edge comes back together for example, it's a real shame and a total shitshow from a storytelling perspective on Anet's part and the community's part as well. Up the rewards. Up them hard, make these dungeons lucrative (Anet). Players - don't be dicks, we don't need a 6min speedrun of Citadel of Flame and we sure as hell don't need epic fucking cheese to get through Honor of the Waves in .1sec just because you can't be bothered to not stand in the red circles. It highlights just how lazy and mechanically inept the sweaty nerd tryhards are, the moment they have to do mechanics they instantly die (I run a heal build, I've witnessed their "skill").
@@spirog1732 It boggles my mind how a community that in my experience is so helpful and generous in most Open World content can turn so viciously toxic the moment they step through a portal. It really is like Jekyll & Hide.
By the time I quit in 2014 (the slow motion event of season one just killed it for me, I thought season two was going to be the same), dungeon groups were advertising, especially Arah, Berserker or GTFO, and asking for mesmers so they could skip portions for faster runs. So when I came back to the game in 2018 during season 4 I naturally thought, I have to gear up all of my characters in Berserker or I wont be welcome in any group.
I thought the mini-bosses in the story were pretty good stepping stones. I never thought I could do Raids in this game but after EoD story I gave them a try and passed them on my 2nd or 3rd try
Seconded. Encountering a trail version through the story mode givesd you more confidence to try the real thing, since you won't be going completely blind, and some mechanics carry over.
Though, some of these harder fights in story missions are why my wife and thus shortly afterwards me gave up this game. She really was into the story of the base game. When we started out, the worst fights got nerfed already, so she was able to pull through. But when reaching the living story, the experience was very binary: one evening the story was all over an area, run here, run there, kill stuff here, kill stuff there... and nothing ever was really challenging. So in the area where you could get support, everything had very basic mechanics, no challenge, etc. Then the next evening we got into one of the instanced parts of the story. And after playing there for an hour, the end of the instance had a boss. With multiple mechanics which we had to figure out. Where a casual player like my wife just spend most of the time dead on the floor, which is not exactly fun gameplay. Each time this happened, the "now i need a few days of break from the game" of my wife got longer. Till we gave it up completely. As there are options out there, which do it much better. We by now are in Elder Scrolls Online. Where any of the story is beatable with reasonable effort. Yes, the bosses at the end of a story might also have two or three extra mechanics to pay attention to, it always is designed to lead you to know the mechanics in advance and is built that even a weak player can pull through in a few tries. The same is true for group content, anything can be done by a group of rather casual players in normal difficulty... but you can also do it in veteran difficulty, which really ramps up the challenge a lot. That's just much better design: all of the games story content can easily be done by casual players, while all the really challenging content is very optional. While GW2 just drops some "you may not pass" boss fights into the story of a casual player. It's a reliable way to drive away casual players who merely want to enjoy the story.
essentially they took it from FF14 who does it since ARR. there ARE raids that are VERY easy BUT also part of the main story. and you team up do them and see "WOA its not that bad." then you challenge yourself because you want this shiny new glamor item and you see you can do that next level, but it takes a bit to long but instead of buying it with money the community invites you to try the harder difficulties AND BAM people are suddenly doing ultimate and savage difficulty gettin their glamor in 2 weeks
Raids get easier with each expansion bcs anet busts especs while bosses remain the same. If you did raids in hot era, you would know the difficulty of them.
I think ALOT of problems chould be fixed with a LFG rework. Asking 50 randoms to make a organized group with the current lfg system is asking to much for the avrage player from anet. Imo. Want to make a organized 50-man squad? Use this lfg tool. Just want to make a quick 50-man squad use that lfg tool. Also make it so u can "make a new map instance" and reserve spots for squad members. Then they can make hard metas. Or just make it so the faster u beat the meta the better the reward.
LFG *seriously* needs a total re-work. It's so disheartening as a solo pve player to see like 20 maps running meta, and every. single. one. is full. Even if squad slots are only like 8/50 full. I know an easy solution would be to just organise the meta on your own map, but LFG and squads need to be improved ASAP.
True, i even think a old school style drop down menu with all map instances for people to chose would help, something more sufisticated would be very welcome also, LFG and map instance selection is very important on mmo for many reasons.
I would be hesitant about allowing people to make their own instances as that could cause some gate keeping that we already see in raids with LI requirements and KP. Also it goes against what open world events are supposed to be which is you go in which you teamup with strangers to achieve a goal. Also I can imagine it would be a technical nightmare to allow everyone to just make their own 50 player instance. The current LFG shouldnt show groups were the current commanders instance is full.
@@wiblet imo it would help a lot that a squad, that is on a full map, gets removed from the LFG tool. Would save all of the randoms a lot of time getting into organised maps so they can learn how the meta works instead of getting left in the cold because all maps are full. Typing "might be full" doesn't help a lot (and I haven't made sense of that either tbh)
As a semi-casual who occasionally likes to push himself into harder content, i have an appreciation for both sides of the argument. I never got angry at players who beat this event, rather its the opposite, when i see such videos I think, this CAN be done. I haven't gotten into the right map yet, but over time the winning strategies will pass from player to player, and probably ANet will make a few adjustments, and eventually the 'right maps' will increase in number, and by extension, my chances of finding one will increase. I truly appreciate pioneers like you who discover how it can be done, and then share it with others. Because THAT is how we beat this. A lot of people may not remember, but it was the same when Tequatl was first revamped, for like the first week players were really struggling, there was a tone of toxicity, and an entire guild was created just to beat it and teach others. Players learned how to beat it, then ANet did a few nerfs, and now its easy, but it was once a nightmare, and we overcame it. We can do the same here.
@Neen Alladeem it not only can be done, it has been done. What i was saying is that it will get easier over time due to players teaching other players how to beat it and probably a few mechanic tweeks if not a nerf. Its not a contradiction because both can work in tangent. If Anet improves the structure, and players improve their strategy, its a win-win where we meet in the middle.
Something I think is a really good addition in EoD is the Heart that has players use Field Combos, Bar Break mechanics, and meaningful Dodges. I think Anet recognizes they haven't done a good job instructing players on core game mechanics and perhaps expected every player to go outside of the game to learn about them. Now they just need to figure out a way to do it sooner than EoD which is a hard ask as it would mean going back to Core Tyria.
Understanding core mechanics is only part of the problem. The actual mechanics during the meta are sometimes actually very hard to see coming when there is a full area. VFXs and framerate and visual/audio noise to just too much to a large group to handle on a regular basis. You can understand the mechanics, but still fail because everyone has to understand AND execute those mechanics well. For an open map, that's too much to ask. That's the problem with open world content.
@@mokahtgs I haven't played EoD more then the starrt of story to get some new Elite skills unlocked on two characters, but from my experience with larger meta in this game it is really hard to see what is going on with all those VFX and as fast there is larger group of players FPS will also take a dip which make large scale battle less about executing right action on the right time. There is also the problem with communication as one have to use third party apps like Discord and know what commander is using for getting group to know what command that is given and to who in your group. This type of game play sound more to fit MightyTeaPots way of playing as one that does RAIDS and such things, but it doesn't work with players that want to do content that offer flexibility like Bounty Hunting did for PoF. Random player could work together and actually do stuff which also lead to more interaction then forced gameplay in groups which also demands high level of coordination and knowledge of game mechanic (position, boss mech etc).
This was a wake up call to me and how I’ve slacked throughout much of the game due to how easy a lot of the events were, but when I started end of dragons I realized I need to go back to the basics, and most of all start spending time learning rotations for my reaper and firebrand…
My PC really has issues at the Dragons End events. Everything else in the game works fine for me, but that event and the massive amount of players in it make it almost impossible for my PC to handle.
Teapot, I'm just a random that occasionally shows up in your videos, but I wanted to extend to you my sympathies for the unfortunate scenario that you find yourself now. What followsbelow, is the body of an open letter I wrote to Sneb on his video addressing the toxicity. And , I wanted to at least share my isnights: I won't speak of any of the mechanics that I would like to see or some other changes that could be useful for that particular meta, that's really not even the point of this whole issue - it's just the inciting incident around the greater turmoil of the community ripping itself appart. Just like you, I'm an old veteran from Guild Wars 1 who passed onto guildwars2 since bettas even. I've been along for the ride since 2012. Slowly over the course of the games lifetime I've witnessed some significant departures within the community as sub-communities have been established around each game mode. Specifically, WvW, PVP, and PVE as the larger groups. For the sake of this writing, I will just focus on PVE. I believe that the main culprit behind all of this is that familiar word that you used in your video: expectation. The overwhelming majority of people who play Overworld content, that is to say any Dynamic and meta events across non instanced locations, do so at their leisure. And really, "leisure" is the key word here. People at the start of the game who played dungeons departed from that more leisurely activity, and entered into something more structured, something that demanded more than their non-dungeon skills. This community then went on to raids and fractals to continue feeling that rush. The rest of the community had different levels of Engagement with the many metas that have arrived since core. At the introduction of living world, I would say that that is where some more difficult fights began. Finally, enter Heart of Thorns. The divisions prop up immediately. The expansion is immediately vilified for having an immense jump in difficulty that did not have any real series of trampolines to lead up to it. Now, I'm one of those people who enjoyed the challenge. I was familiar with combat, I knew my classes and my skills. I, like you, did a lot of work in those early days to help other members of the community and my guild get through content. In an effort to not alienate the overwhelming majority of the player base, arenanet decided that it was best to reduce the difficulty of those expansion mobs and events. Dragon's Stand used to only pass by the skin of its teeth if it ever passed it all. Now, people might get a little annoyed that they can't do a single burn, but people ultimately know that it will succeed - perhaps 8-9 times out of 10 [Gerent too]. And let's be frank, Heart Of Thorns is still more difficult now, even after the Nerf compared to core Tyria. PoF has some significant metas too, the most challenging being Serpent's Ire - which, as far as I'm aware, is dead content. I'm pointing this out only because there have been attempts made by arenanet to show that some more difficult content can be put into the game. What I have only begun to observe on this moment of reflection is that it's usually rejected by the majority community. Just like you, I think that this meta is a masterpiece on multiple levels - but somewhere along the line arenanet failed to play the part of the shepherd for their community and lead them to doing more "stepping stone" content. As far as the community is concerned I circled back to my earlier comments regarding the splits that have happened within each subgroup. PVE players still complain, vociferously even, that they have to go to World versus World for their gifts of battle. World versus World players, rightfully complained that there is a disparity in terms of loot compared to what PVE players can Farm. PVP players complained that their game mode has been left in a similar state of stasis as World versus World, though they are more financially compensated for their engagement with the system due to the ranked chests. And now, after years of slow-burn resentment, this tension has come to a head. I can't tell you the number of times I have mulled over in my head the desire to turn my little personal Guild into a sort of Teaching Guild - one that people join because they're either new or returning players. It would focus on learning how to read the language of Guild Wars 2: Stats/attribute overviews, damage types, dodge evasion, profession mechanics, the infamous CC bars, and more. I thought this because I had the sneaking suspicion that the game did not do enough by itself to introduce a basic knowledge of its own systems to its community. The people who are naturally curious, the people who naturally want to find these systems don't need an Guild Banner Ad in map chat for this - they're already taking the initiative. The problem begins there as well - those people leave the orbit of the "casual" citizen of GW2 and I must sadly report, appear to be holding a measure of disdain for these players who now, after 9 years of playing excellent quality, /yet still liesurely/ content, have to be churned and burned by this monolith of an open world event. The shock of this sudden Cliff of difficulty is too much for the general Community to bear, and I just hope that some sort of Anet community address will come soon. Don't want to make it seem like I'm explaining this to you as if you don't know those things. But, sometimes it's important to have that obvious retrospective laid out so we can see how we got here. -------- Thank you for what you do, and I appreciate the time you might take to read this random YT comment-turned essay. My best, FrigginPaco
Wholeheartedly. I played as an openworld pve player running around and had the expectation that that was the game. The game fails to communicate the difference on several levels. I joined a guild that ran daily fractals and played with them. They never judged but eventually showed me that I wasnt understanding fractals and needed coaching. Its hard to communicate the personal growth Ive had in GW2 because it came in phases of picking up information that I didn't have before and trying it out. I still play more casual to the point that Icebrood Saga really burned me out of the game between strikes, story and rewards. I felt the rewards/mastery tracks lackluster, the story was a weird jump in difficulty between mobs and bosses rather than consistent and strikes were not something i was interested in playing with randoms over the few times my guild ran them. EoD I am holding back judgment until I finish the story but it has felt leagues better than IBS. *I do personally love the Dragons End meta event for the challenge it provides.
The core of this issue imo come from the lack of control you have in the players that can and will participate in this meta, it doesn't matter how good communities or guides and videos are if you get a lot of people that don't watch or participate in them , you can't expect or demand players to have certain knowledge of an open world event when they could be just passing by and happen to participate in it, specially in a game where "playing alone together" is so common, this happens in all mmos and that is why in most of them this "higher" knowledge is only required in closed instance where you can control who gets to do it. I see both Teapot and Muks content so in some way I can see where both sides are coming from and I think a good mid term can be achieved by Anet on this but players need to give good and constructive criticism on it.
@MightyTeapot I feel like you are still missing one of the biggest issues with this whole thing: You can’t have high end challenging content in an open world environment where RandomNoob3821 is just tinkering around the map and not really contributing in any way. Things like this need to go into their own instances where the people that join the instance are there to do that exact content. Putting something like the Dragon’s End meta event into a zone where people are trying to do map completion, gathering resources, story steps, or others just simply trolling is NEVER good game design. Other MMOs learned this years ago and I had thought Anet did too. Apparently not. Competent devs do not take the high end difficult content and put it into the lowest tier content available in the game (aka, open world). That is simply a recipe for disaster, just as we are seeing it now.
This is a good point. Some of us seem to want to make this about hardcore vs. casual, when part of the problem is simply poor design. The marionette is a great example of purely awful design. 5 lanes, each having to wait for the preceding lane before having their turn. Then it splits so that the entire event can fail if just a tiny portion of the raid fails. In the process, the event requires even more waiting around only to fail and leave everyone empty-handed. Even though the event itself is pretty cool and has definite merit, the design completely ruins it. The Dragon's End meta also suffers from poor design. The event itself is good, especially now that they addressed the RNG "bug". But the fact that it is designed to require an extreme amount of prep (pre events, stacking buff, 30 minute organization timer) on an open world map is the problem. They should have realized that this wouldn't work and that it isn't conducive to replay. It simply requires too much time and organization of people who are there for different reasons. This should have been instanced content to cut down on time wasted and ensure that the people who are there are there because they want to participate in this event.
@@HardcoreCasualGW2 exactly. They are basically relying on the fact that anyone that’s present in the zone is there specifically to do the event and nothing else. In addition to the fact that they expect everyone in the zone to know exactly what to do from start to finish…..
Other players not being on the map is not actually a big deal because the event scales! I've done it with less than 50 people because as you say some players are just going around doing other things but the scaling tech made it work out for us in the end (although the low map cap is a bit scuffed lol) And open world can be tuned so you can have a mixture of experience levels and still get the job done as long as the group is decently coordinated overall which I think is good, it provides some accessibility to more challenging content and introduces players to collaborative concepts!
That's why scaling exists, the individuals not participating in the meta event do not effect it in the slightest. The largest issue with GW2 is that even the hardest CM content is average-slightly above average in mechanical difficulty in every other MMORPG so saying some people cant do a "hard meta" like this is just people refusing to learn, not a single group of mine has failed when in comms, in subgroups and no one 111 rotating or AFK. Its a hard ideology for GW2 players to grasp but I'm glad the conversation has started and people are waking up
It's interesting to see someone advertise not only their own fundamental misunderstanding of how things work, but do it in a tone that implies they think they're better than "RandomNoobs". You are literally showcasing the real problem; it's people like you, blathering misinformation, to inflate your ego, and detract from other players. /facepalm. I feel kinda sorry for you.
Thank you for teaching this meta and rallying the community. I, as a casual player, love that TripleTrouble, Dragons Stand/End, Tequatl, Marionette exist. I don't always do them but it's so fun to take on that challenge when I wish too. Tough fights existing are good for the game. I'd personally rather see difficulty settings and instanced stuff (challenge modes), however outside content can certainly be stepped up. Fights actually having a chance to fail and not being garenteed loot pinatas can instill a sense of accomplishment. These harder fights should have better rewards for the time and challenge invested. Dragon's End may be too much for a few reason. 1)Meta only Maps take away some of the exploration. While doing the story and completing the map I felt bad I am taking a spot of someone who would actually be participating. 2) Personal accountability. In a map where you can't choose who you party with having one person be able to throw the fight for 49 other people is awful. Either on purpose or just by being new people can ruin this event. It sucks either way and makes people not want to do the event. 3) Rewards. Personally I don't care about the turtle. However 100% of the rewards being after the final fight sucks. All or nothing makes a tough event feel unrewarding. The best stuff should be at the end but like Dragon's Stand rewards are spread out over the map. Each lane gets pods/chests at each checkpoint. Something like that should be for Dragon's End. Big chest and vendors or whatever at the end is fine but don't leave people with nothing that clear the pre events. Those are my biggest issues with it. They already partially adjusted the 1 person troll thing with the green circle change and are looking into rewards. I look forward to seeing what they change and take this event on again and having a satisfyingly tough but rewarding fight.
I REALLY hope dragons end becomes the most profitable thing to do in this game. Because then everyone will be VERY committed to learning it. That's where the money is, it's hard, it's fun, good to commit and learn.
I agree if th gph is good then 2 hours is a good investment and people will want to learn, there will be plenty of people who still don't care but they can get their turtle the other way when the next patch comes out
YES YES YES. That's the ONLY thing that's missing here. Good rewards. It's the only thing that drives people to do mindless metas like octovine,chak gerent and drizzlewood
i hope it is profitable for another reason. that reason being after the current surge of new players wanting to get the mount events like these usually die out somewhat. making it take even longer for those who get it after 6 months to a year the event has already been out. this is how i felt in WvW not playing when the warclaw mount came out and several months after i got back into the game. everyone zerging had the warclaw and left me in the dust because i didnt get it when everybody else did.
My biggest issue was "Ping LI" and being insulted in UNranked pvp. We just did it with a nice group for the first time, it was so great to finaly did it, the open world game need thoses «HELL YEAH» moments. Meta event just need to be well balanced
Hei Teapot, sorry to hear about your experience with the community. I’m a casual player (not because I don’t care or don’t understand mechanics, but because of the limited time I can put into playing) I watched your video explaining the meta, found a squad on your Discord and beat it on the second (organized) try, I had a really good time and looking forward to doing it again. Thank you for your patience and a huge thanks to all the people who put time and effort into organizing groups and teaching ppl. There’s value in that which goes beyond maximizing enjoyment of one’s gaming experience.
This is weird, because for GW2 communities, it is a big “clash” and a big deal, but for other MMOs, it’s like the standard everyday ambiance… actually, it’s even worse than this, for some.
The meta seemed to have learned from Dragon Stand, but forgot everything that made it great. Dragon Stand had events and skill application related to the finale lane push and Mordremoth himself. Dragons End taught you nothing that you need to be familiar with the final part to win.
I'm not getting into the conversation again because holy cow people have been so nasty about it, but just wanted to say thank you for putting in work trying to smooth this out as much as possible and I'm sorry to see how people have treated you, Muk, Sneb, etc. That new expansion energy quickly turned into a knife fight over a turtle, it has been really nuts lol I'm having fun though and have high hopes for the future!
Muk? He’s openly stated numerous times that he respects and appreciates Teapots opinions and never intended for any attack on teapot. I think you misread Muk quite a bit
Idk what they changed but the Dragon’s End meta is really fun, especially with a commander who knows how to do it. It felt like an MMO with a Zerg of players taking down a giant world ending Dragon that was actually difficult but fun and I only started about 3 weeks ago
In my opinion, core problem is ignoring regular dungeon content by Anet to make practice players game dynamics and being a team in terms of GW2 for end game content
Thank you. I really like that you care about and want more community-oriented play! I want the same! It's why I play MMOs! Your commentary about toxicity brought up some thoughts I'd like to share and, of course, hear any kind of feedback on! Quick sidetrack: I love that you mentioned encouraging individuals to try to "understand where the other is coming from"!!! That is my definition of empathy! I actually wrote a book called Practical Empathy, heh. Back to the point: Some prefer to change the speaker instead of the listener's choice in how they receive toxicity. I am with them at least in terms of: it can feel bad and cause stress to any community when people are "toxic". General warning: At the same time, the more we attempt to sanitize and control at a systemic level (see RUclips censorship as one example), the more authenticity we lose, as well as allowing people the opportunity to handle being verbally attacked. A spreading disease of emotional fragility: "You hurt my feelings" which places responsibility on the speaker and removes power from the listener. I like to ask people: Do you enjoy giving your power over others to manipulate your emotions? Here's an alternative: "That person said a thing that was pretty mean and I feel hurt by it. Hmmm why am I hurt? What underlying needs are not being met? I suppose my needs for respect, consideration, and understanding?" AND more powerful: "I wonder what needs they are getting met by saying that or what unmet needs they have?" But that would require willingness to experience discomfort in order to grow their self-awareness. Brainstorming: I'd like to explore systemic changes around encouraging friendly behavior rather than discouraging toxic via censorship, reporting, etc. Example: some kind of easy systemic way (like a button) to "report/thank" a person for some way they helped you or something kind they said. It would show up in public chat. And maybe you get "social points" for expressing gratitude. You would know better than I fair ways those points could be used, if at all. I lean toward some sort of badge so all can see how "generous" you are, heh. I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on any of this! LOOKING FOR GUILD for casual play, friendly but playful (even sarcasm is great), PvP, WvW, and chill exploration & consumption of PvE content. I feel like a newb, heh, but I do have a level 80 support-type character. Just created a human tank-type guy that is like level 8. I've not done any PvP or WvW yet in GW2 and really want to start soon. On NA server. SmilingMonkey.5812
@@AprilBodner Thanks! YT won't allow me to put a link or even mention the site where I publish the chapters for free reading, even when I intentionally mis-spell! Private msg me?
Hey Teapot, thank you for all the hard work you put into your content. I really enjoy watching your streams and videos. I usually don't comment on stuff but I wanted to thank you on that one and especially for addressing such an important topic to the community! Much love
One thing GW does well for new players, is there are quests where you gotta rez people. So when I see other people down -- I know I should rez them. I know what the icon looks like, and I'm always trying to rez people. But literally none of that other stuff is explained. In games like Warcraft or FFXIV, we knew of buffs like Protect or Fortitude. You'd cast it on a stranger as you passby, and then go about your business. I still have no idea how boons work. How do I cast them on people. How do they cast them on me?
by pressing abilitys that have boons in their descriptions and if its for more than just 1 Target ^^(sry if i missed the example even if you know how, just here to help)
You… you what? You don’t know how boons work when the skill descriptions give you the description of the boon, how long it lasts and/or how many stacks it applies, and how many targets it applies to? How is that the game’s problem? Just press the skill, see what happens, now you know.
@@borkguy Most players dont read even if they have no idea what to do. The game teaches almost everything via texts so its not surprising that these players get lost.
@@ciraxa i was lost and had to watch an 1.40 h video on my class's skills and stuff.. Before i watched it i thought that i understood some mechanics but after watching it i realised that there is a lot to learn
You can't use the siege turtle in raids or fractals or WvW, therefore it was created for the casual player. And yet, they locked the siege turtle behind a raid-like meta event that the casual player has no skill or desire to complete. That's why it's toxic. It's forcing people to participate in an event that requires a high level of skill and coordination to receive a reward that can only be used by people that don't have those skills.
This. A thousand times, this. It was created specifically for the casual player but locked behind a raid-like meta event and strike mission. Both of which are content that casual players like myself have zero interest in, either due to lack of time to invest, lack of desire or interest, lack of skill, or straight-up lack of *ability* to complete them. Myself and my gamer parents are a pretty good representation of the many different groups affected by this approach by Anet and all three of us have quit playing due to EoD. I work 12+ hour work days and around 70-75 hours per week. I lack the time and emotional investment to play content that feels like a second job. My mother, a competent gamer and far from lacking the skill to do these events, is even more casual than I am and just wants to have easy fun. My father, also a skilled gamer who has beaten Dark Souls and Bloodborne is losing his sight and *physically* cannot accomplish tasks that so many mock, sneer, and laugh at and call "so easy, why don't you just X,Y,Z bro??" My father was gutted he lacks the ability to play Elden Ring due to his sight and since their release(s) GW1/GW2 were accessible games that allowed the three of us to hop online together, have some fun, and relax. Guild Wars 2 has turned into a grindy, toxic hellhole we've all lost interest in returning to. If Anet does not realize that forcing players out of their playstyle creates division, this game is about to hemorrhage players. Build bridges to other content, but do not force your playerbase to take them.
@@ShadowKain666 I'm sorry, but you're being toxic. You expect everything to accommodate to you and yours. Unfortunately, something was put in the game, and if you don't have the time/skill/desire to get it... guess what??? You don't get it. It's like that in life. And this is just a game. Either play the game, and do the things YOU can do, or find something else you can do. I have sympathy for your situation and your families, but I don't think they should bend over backwards to make accommodations for you, or people like you. Honestly, if you're an adult, working that many hours, and gaming is your hobby, then enjoy the time you do have to unwind, and not worry about the things you can't get.
@@lifeb4game You'd have a point if this was the style of GW2 to begin with. Which is why you will never see me saying anything even remotely similar about Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc. These games are focused on and cater to a specific type of player and that's a good thing. Every type of player should have some kind of content to enjoy and it's a good thing that games like the aforementioned exist for the high skill-ceiling players that enjoy extremely difficult content. Guild Wars 2, however, was never this kind of game and I would argue that it *still* isn't. Up until recently, GW2 has made an effort to create different types of content for different playerbases. Is their approach perfect? No, not at all but it is a game that at least has such a wide range of content for players to enjoy. The first, and largest portion of that content *is* the casual open world. *Full stop.* *I'll say it again:* The largest portion of that content, with the largest portion of the playerbase, is the casual open world. Adding in this kind of "git gud" content, and this kind of grindy gaiting to the *open world* in GW2 is *exactly* the same kind of decision that Dark Souls has avoided making - *to their games benefit* . There will never be a Dark Souls easy mode, and *there never should be* . The developers behind those games recognize their core playerbase and have taken the hardline stance to ensure that the core gameplay experience is not undermined by changing their game to appease a minority. The casual gamer is not the minority in GW2. it isn't even **A** minority in GW2. The casual gamer is the *core audience* and unlike in a game like Dark Souls, most of the community you'll find is perfectly accepting of other types of content being present *within* GW2. It's a fairly diverse game and you'll find most of us are pretty okay with that. You've got your hardcore PvP'ers, you've got your WvW'ers, you've got your PvE commanders, your big-event guilds, your RP'ers, your Guild Hall decoraters and your trading post excel-spreadsheet crowd and more often than not we're able to coexist fairly peacefully. Until Anet forces us into each other's domains, disrupting the natural flow of our respective environments. Anet's actions are creating toxicity, and while I respect your right to your opinion (and appreciate you sharing it) I do not even remotely agree that I'm being toxic and I think that you have fundamentally misunderstood Guild Wars 2 and its core identity. A mistake those in Anet currently holding the reins are making to all of our and - more importantly - the *game's* detriment.
I know it's been a rough time for many. Kinda why I'm glad I've avoided the forums and social media a lot. I just want to say I appreciate your efforts Teapot.
Toxicity can’t beat us. We will continue to push the mission of community and bringing people in. This is a MMORPG not a RPG. We’re here to help people. We just failed to find the right way to deliver that message and mission recently.
Cept, the elitist people are the toxic ones? This is like saying anyone who wants the game to be a better game and have this meta nerfed are toxic, and the people who want the game to die, the raiders and elitist people who don't want the extremely bad meta nerfed, are not the toxic ones? Seriously, gw2 was a better game before EoD released, and untill this meta is nerfed into the ground, EoD is going down as the worst expansion to the majority of people who are sane.
@@Goremize there is actually lots of toxicity from casual open-world players too and that is important to recognize, and its evident especially in these times. Labeling all of us raiders as toxic elitist is what proves my point and what sadly many of u insist on without actually giving yourself a chance to improve and have open mind to learning. Not every meta needs to be easy, and trust me on this, *anyone* can learn basics of this game, which is the only thing this meta requires. Let one meta be a big, challenging content without asking for nerfs and insulting skillfull players out of whom many are willing to actually help.
the problem is the game, not the players, if you people saw others who play differently as the problem, and demand them to be fixed? then you're also part of the problem. so yeah toxicity cant beat you guys because you guys are causing it in the first place.
@@wishwisky8319 dude c'mon. We ALL sucked once(I still do hehe). And metas are a TEAM EFFORT in a "Role Playing Game". So of course roles are needed. Just do it at your own pace. Don't do the Meta right now. Come back to it once people got the hang of it and once voice comms become obsolete. Only simple instructions in map chat will be the way like doing Triple Trouble. I've been playing casually for 4 years and barely scratched the surface. It's fun to learn stuff at your own pace so don't force yourself to get a win RIGHT NOW when people still don't know how things work. Soon even us yellow and oragee runners can get this to a 100% win rate everytime. And Anet is listening so don't lose hope.
@@Goremize One thing I agree with Teapot here is that toxicity lies in all of us. When a player from a different game mode starts to have even the slightest interaction with a different type of player it automatically devolves into toxicity. Be it a raider or a casual. Nobody is simply willing to hear out the other without some kind of verbal abuse which is a sad fact of this community. People think learning is dumb, being good at the game is dumb but also being a casual is dumb. Don't you guys see the problem here? It's our pride
Funny how it reminds me of HoT and the end Meta in Dragons Stand when that first released. Players learned how to do it and Anet adjusted that meta. Back then the end game was the dungeons and players were not used to having to work together on such a large scale. The base game world Boss fights did not prepare players for map wide meta events that Hot brought us.
The main problem is agency. You have agency in a dungeon/raid/strike group. If you don't like the people in it you can kick them or not invite them. You don't have the option to do that for open world metas. It simply feels bad to fail and waste dozens of hours of time over no fault of your own and be able to do nothing about it except quit and wait for the next 2 hour cycle. This is why open world metas should never be scaled to be "challenging" or require "coordination".
Why does everyone feel the need of a world boss to have 100% succes rates? The best time of the game was 2012-2014 when there was no megaserver, no fixed time when bosses spawns but large spawn windows, and no lfg system so people had to do world bosses/temples with the people that were actually present in the map. Or they had to ask their guildies/people on friends list or ask someone to shout in map chat from LA. It brought players together because they had a reason to be together, everyone just helped eachother out when they could because otherwise, it failed, and when you would need help for something, you could do the same. And still, Orr temples were very prone to failure, especially Balth and Grenth. Now people are all used to login to a map with 100 players when a boss is about to spawn, autoattack without caring about any attack pattern from world bosses (or even leech with 5+ alts), collect the loot and move on to the next one. Metas or world bosses are called a meta and a world boss for a reason, people should not be so entitled to whine about failing something and "missing out" on loot. There used to be a time when things weren't about the loot, but about the experience and cooperation to try and get something done. Failures were just part of what made the next succesfull attempt that much sweeter. But if you give people the choice to stay dumb, afk, or spam 1, they will, it's people's nature. That's why Dragon's End is the best meta since the teq rework, triple trouble and chak before all of those got trivialised by increased damage from new elite specs and condi overhauls. And honestly, Dragon's End is fine if people just get their 20% damage buff from doing 10 events and use CC. One of my guildies was whining after her first try as well but she had no clue about the damage buff from events, the offensive and defensive enhancements or any boss mechanic. Like.. what do you expect? 2 days later when she properly knew everything, it was "the best meta ever". Like.. just put in some effort to know what you are trying to do and everything will be fine. If they are not going to adjust anything, in 2 months from now it will be completely the same as how chak meta used to be and will be perfectly doable with a small margin on a full map if people aren't leeching. But 2 months from now, they'll probably have increased the map cap and nerfed the boss down a bit so every single map will succeed. And what will we have accomplished then? Another map where people can afk or multibox for their free loot? Hooray for that.. -.-'
@@belgianht I think this describes the fundamental difference between the two generally opposed types of players Teapot is talking about here. The point of friction, as it were. You want exactly what they don't want. "Just get your 20% damage buff from doing 10 events" you say. Meanwhile the other side is thinking "You want me to spend 2 hours on an event and you also like the idea of a relatively high rate of failure? What's the matter with you!?" I get what you're saying. More difficult content with greater time investment can bring players together to cooperate towards a common goal as opposed to simply showing up and getting loot. But is that the average GW2 player? Is that really what they want? I don't think it is and I'm not sure there's any way to reconcile those differences as they are fundamentally different outlooks on what the game should be.
@@HardcoreCasualGW2 this is the one right here. Not every conflict has a “centrist” compromise, and the idea that it’s a “win” if both sides are unhappy with any change is so stupid.
I've been saying for the longest time that gw2 is made to attract the casual player with there gear system but there other systems such as combat and traits are definitely not casual friendly
A few points to highlight: I) Time consuming of the Dragons End... totally agree, too much time spend. II) Reward: turtle is really not a good idea but a cool infusion will be a excellent reward for the event and more chests/gold (like 5 gold/day finishing). III) Organization: today, the rate try/conclude is low, but it remind me the days when ANET implemented the new mechanics of Tequatl when NA players need to enter TTS to complete the event and now, any group of pugs can do it with no organization in a map. I believe in time, ppl will learn how to do the End of Dragons event and it will be more casual than Tequatl (now). Actions like the Teapot videos and others teaching us step by step how to complete the event is very usefull. Thank you man for it. Be cool ^^
What you say about "no community" is SO TRUE. Many veterans of the game either scoff or make excuses for GW2's weak points, inconsistencies, and lack of UI QoL features. When new players such as myself critique these things, I get bombarded with excuses or condescending reasons why I should just accept the game's flaws. I would not be surprised if many GW2 veterans have scared away new players who have valid concerns about the game. It's almost like they take critiques of the game personally because they've played for so long... My experience with seasoned players has been mostly toxic AF.
I'm sorry you have had toxic encounters with any GW2 players, but have to ask, was the toxicity you experienced within the game, or on Reddit, or the official forums, or comments to a YT video, or Twitch stream? The reason I ask is because I've been playing GW2 for over 9 years, and I've experienced very little toxic behavior while playing the game, and I mostly ignore any toxicity in social media, because there is always going to be those types everywhere on the Internet. It's a sickness of our times that too many people suffer from. People type things on a keyboard from the anonymous safety of their home or apartment, that they would never say in person (or at least I hope that most of them would have better manners in person).
I’m a veteran of the game, but I feel like if people let their loyalty to the game make them biased and unable to criticize bad points...that’s yikes. I love the game but still find many things wrong with it that should be changed.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 I've mostly experienced this when expressing my concerns on the official forums and Discord. That being said, it has happened in Map chat too, though particularly in Crystal desert when I made a comment about the Bounty system having no real tutorial or in-game explanation after accidentally triggering the Corrupted Facet to spawn when I got too close. I expressed that it was unacceptable to NEED out-of-game resources (the Wiki) to understand systems because the game itself does a bad job at it. I was met with excuses that the Dev team is too small and noobs like me have no place to expect such QoL features... to just accept it, AND was also told that I should *always* check the Wiki every time the game introduces a system that I'm unfamiliar with. It's that kind of mentality that will push away new players.. "just accept these glaring flaws like a good little boy, we veterans live with it just fine." I've been met with similar-in-nature responses when expressing my frustration that there is no colorblind modes (which yes, I am red/green colorblind...) and also when pointing out inconsistencies or missing information from tooltips.
@@etchieSketchie thanks for your feedback and sharing your experiences. I’m sorry that you have encountered some bad players in gw2, but I hope that you’re finding enough helpful players to make up for the bad ones and you are still enjoying the game.
The toxicity part really resonate a lot with me personally, it's basically why I just... don't bother with Fractals and Raids. I love both concepts and would love to do them more often, but every time I try to PUG for it, there's always those elistist-ass people who'll be unpleasant as all hell with you if you don't run Meta stuff... To give you an idea, my main is a Spellbreaker, and I run most of the content with Soldier Gear, I use a 1H axe with shield along with a Greatsword. And I can't tell you how many times I got shit for running a "Tanky" gearset and a "defensive" playstyle, legit would get told that I was going to be a detriment to my team because I wouldn't do enough DPS... Meanwhile, in the same fractal, all 4 of my teammates are down, eating dirt off the ground while I'm the only one still standing, trying to revive them countless times because they would go down at every single sneeze the enemy would throw at them. Like... I get it, people don't want others dragging the entire team down, nobody really wants that, but there are limits to the gatekeeping, especially when it's to the point where any builds that is somewhat off meta is being frowned upon by those "Hardcore" players who chose to be meta slaves. which is fine btw, you do you, but don't jump at people's throat because they don't run what YOU want them to run, let them play what they want and as long as they pull their weight, it's all good.
There are raid bosses where tanking is toughness based. Running Soldier gear means you´ll be the tank on those fights, while doing your other assigned roles (e.g. banners+dps). If you can tank well it shouldnt be an issue, but if you dont you´ll basically make someone else play a worse version of their own build just to accomodate you. This might lead to other players having to adjust their build too, ending up with a pretty bad comp and everyone being unhappy with their gameplay. Please consider making your own groups and clearly stating that you´re running off-meta builds to avoid conflicts. Beserker gear is super cheap, highly recommend getting some pieces to lower your toughness if needed.
I recently came back to GW2 after about a year's break and it seems to me that the "teamwork" culture that I liked before about the game has suffered greatly. I had someone vote to kick me from a fractal after the first time I messed up a mechanic. Thing is, it was the first time I had ever done that fractal and wasn't aware of the mechanic. Their first instinct was just to kick someone instead of trying to help them. That was the first time I had ever encountered that kind of attitude in the game. I've seen other examples of this kind of "intolerance" for lack of a better word since I came back but that's the biggest one that sticks out and I've seen similar attitudes when talking about Dragon's End. Commanders just automatically assume that people know the mechanic and if they aren't doing it then obviously its because they are idiots. The first time I beat Dragon's End was with a commander who actually took the time to explain and reexplain the important mechanics, and continue to call commands throughout the battle. I'm not sure why that's changed, but it makes me sad to see such a fun community to be taken over by toxic attitudes
You must have been really unlucky with the group if you joined a lower than T4 group. The low tiers are actually pretty toxic also, I've sometimes caught new players with 2k AP in T2 mouthing off yelling at people while they die 5 sec into the boss. At the end of the day it's all just people. And we tend to remember the awful experiences more vividly. And Dragon's End really brings out the worst in people. It's not even Casuals vs Elitists. A lot of the times it's not even veterans that are shouting profanities in map chat. A lot of vets also don't really explain, because we get flamed quite often. When I join a low fractal run, I ask if people want mechanics explained and it's always a slippery slope. Some want to know the mechanics but are too shy to ask or feel they will get kicked for it or something. Some will straight up call you toxic and attempt to kick you. So when I go into those tiers to help people, I really have to spare my own mental. That's why a lot of us want to do it through guilds so there is at least some level of social accountability. Just because we play the game more, doesn't make us less human. That said, vets are also quite toxic, although not everyone is as hardline as insta kicking. A lot of LFG adverts are really meant for experienced groups. If you do something on the last tier or challenge mode or join a group with killproof. Those are people that maybe have an hour to play and don't have time to deal with lost lambs. A big part of it is because those groups can spend 20 minutes filtering these lost people and explaining what killproof is. They are in a sense casuals themselves, because they cannot commit to a static group and use the exact reason of 'limited play time' for their behavior.
Weig has it right. You also get into situations with players who simply buy the commander tag because it's a shiny thing to stick over your head, but they have no idea what it really means to be a commander. Whenever we form a group in LFG, we are specific in the description so that people know if it's a training mission or a practice or whatever. We always ask if anyone is unfamiliar with the mechanics or has never done anything of this type before and we make sure to have fun and explain it to them and if we go in and people blow it the first few times, we stay patient and try to help them learn as well as have fun and to have the end goal of being successful. In the end, you get out of something what you put into it. These toxic yahoos boohooing about DE or mouthing off or try to kick you in fractals etc seem to be generally miserable people anyway and just want everybody else to be as miserable as them lol. To be clear, I am not referring to casual players here at all. Folks just want to have fun. Most folks, anyway.
@@ZeDrakeful NAH NAH NAH, you are lying. The lower Tiers are where the teamwork culture hasn't been completely eroded. The high Tiers are where people go stupid mode. And, because the silent majority of GW2 players are spineless, lilly livered cowards who cant' stand up for themselves, the Veteren's always take advantage of that and bully them, kick them when they make a mistake, insult them, start singling them out, etc. I always argue with other veteren players consistently, over and over again. I have never seen any new or low tier player who wasn't willing to learn from me. I always take my time out to teach them the mechanics if they don't know. I will always say, Guides and Metabattle are stupid. If i have to leave your game to learn how to play it, then your game has failed. Those guides and builds were written by other players, so what gives them this divine knowledge? It's about learning and experimenting. SO the Veteren's get to enjoy themselves and learn while the newer players who want to learn the mechanics and what to do have to know it all already "Cuz there is a dumbass Guide" or get kicked cuz they wanted to play the game like a normal person. Also if the people in LFG don't have a lot of time to play, They should handle their responsibilities. Your lack of time shouldnt' be any players headache
Very well said, thank you for making this video! I've only put about five or six hours total into Dragons End -- and the way players on the map + lfg have been treating each other has really just made it difficult to continue attempting as someone who enjoys the game on a more casual level.
This is very disappointing. I've always known the GW2 community to be friendly and supportive, more so than most other mainstream MMOs. I think the standard and expectations that were created over the years are the reason now why it hurts to see the derision and toxicity it devolved into, and why it feels worse than the toxicity in other games. It's like being slapped and insulted by the person who has always been nice nice to you, versus one that always treated you poorly. The latter you've come to expect it but the former... its like betrayal, unexpected. Drawing up parallels with society, this is the risk we run into when we highlight individualism to the extreme, to the point we forget how to live in a community, and forego communication and compromises. Don't get me wrong, playing solo is actually one of the reasons why I like GW2, but when I join in to do group content, I want to do my part and help everyone achieve success. I don't do Discord (already in too many servers) but just tell me what to do and I'll do it to the best of my abilities. Directions, although boring to write, are always nice because it helps newbies know what to do and refreshes things for those who came back after a long period of absence.
Nice video! I only finished the story for the expansion a couple of days ago. I haven't attempted the meta yet. I used be a hardcore player in the past. But with GW2, I decided to be a casual one. I didn't really engage in the systems and build craft of the game until Wooden Potatoes put out his series on Open World builds. So I made an effort to get the recommended gear, and use those specs. I'm not 100% of the way there, maybe 90% (gear-wise). I saw Muk's video about the meta recently. This made me actually download the DPS meters. I haven't tried them out yet. But I intend to in the near future to make sure I'm at least pulling my weight when I attempt it.
I will agree to a certain extent about toxic communities, however I just can't take you seriously on 22:24 about needing to communicate better. After seeing your response to me when I specifically stated that within your last video, you didn't actually address the issue with design of the Meta itself, you turned an absolute blind eye to the actual problem of the meta itself and simply claimed that the playerbase is the "baseline problem". I've also seen your response to someone on this video - and yet again - you didn't provide an actual "compromised" response, because when someone pointed out the flaws in your argument, you just said you disagree because "you didn't say this, that or the other" when to your audience, you clearly did. That's not how you "compromise". I listened to your arguments on certain elements of the game, I agree with them to some extent (I would even agree that GW2 is hard to a certain level, but not in the same level you think it is), but yet again what you are doing in this video (for the grand majority of it) is attacking the community. Seriously, I would recommend you actually watch this entire video of the things that you've just said and really listen to what you're saying. I've enjoyed your content since they really helped me get through things in GW2. However with what's happening regarding the Dragon's End Meta event right now and how much of a debacle it is, I just can't see eye to eye with you because you're continuously avoiding genuine mistakes by Arena Net and not giving an objective response (if that's because you're sponsored, maybe don't make videos on the topic?). Instead you once again focused on attacking the community, which is ironic in a sense because at 30:50, you say that the community is busy attacking each other, yet that's exactly what you've done here. Sorry once again, but I just cannot see your perspective on this subject matter compared to every other topics you've covered because this is the one topic you intentionally avoid the problems the developers caused.
I directly attack all of the issues made by the devs in this video but also constantly on stream. And yes ultimately the fact that players have a hard time understanding the game IS the baseline problem. You can remove every single bad design element from the meta and people will STILL struggle with it because of that, I can't put it simpler than that tbh. 'I've also seen your response to someone on this video - and yet again - you didn't provide an actual "compromised" response, because when someone pointed out the flaws in your argument, you just said you disagree because "you didn't say this, that or the other" when to your audience, you clearly did.' I don't have to let people misrepresent me and take me out of context, I say that I didn't say something because I didn't say it. I'm not going to compromise with someone who is twisting and distorting my positions. I am critiquing (not attacking) here because there is a problem, a grave problem that's been going on for a very long time that has caused huge toxicity and will continue to do so unless it's addressed. Sometimes the only way to get something done is to actually criticise the players, sometimes we are at fault. 'That's not how you "compromise". I listened to your arguments on certain elements of the game, I agree with them to some extent (I would even agree that GW2 is hard to a certain level, but not in the same level you think it is),' The average player does less than 10% of the damage of an experienced player, in wow the difference is about 50%, that's 50% vs 1000% yeah that's a pretty tough game compared to the competition. 'I just can't see eye to eye with you because you're continuously avoiding genuine mistakes by Arena Net and not giving an objective response' Except when I do exactly that in this exact video. '(if that's because you're sponsored, maybe don't make videos on the topic?). ' Really slimy accusation, and absurdly dishonest considering that I'm almost certainly the most critical arenanet partner BY FAR (except maybe jawgeous and brazil lol) 'Instead you once again focused on attacking the community, which is ironic in a sense because at 30:50, you say that the community is busy attacking each other, yet that's exactly what you've done here.' I'm not attacking the community, I'm breaking down what I think is causing problems and critiquing what I think is going wrong. Critique is not attack.
I want to send you encouragement. Your analysis on the importance of community is correct. Your content is well presented and thought out. As a player, your gold tutorials have been instrumental in being able to understand how to get more out of the game and the gem store. This from an old Guild Leader that has been around since the beginning of GW2 and GW1. Thank you. ~Dalomar Grimm (Guild of Mercenaries and Free Companions [MFC]).
Just FYI, the catgirl game does have world events, and what they did in Bozja and Zadnor should probably be a model for GW2 metas going forward. The bosses that spawn there aren't zergable and have all kinds of mechanics and attack patterns that will wreck you until you learn them. However, you're incentivized both socially and by the game not to be bad because there's a death penalty and you need to party up, so ask your party if you can't figure a boss on your own. Hardcore players aren't left out either because if you do very well you might be picked up for a brutally hard solo event while others players can come and watch you fight it, and if you win everyone gets a buff and you get a unique mount. It was really fun and social world content. To be clear: Anet has a much better game engine for world content, probably 100x more of it, and events that can scale over an entire map. But I've come to think Square might surprisingly understand better than Anet how to make good world content in an MMORPG, even if it's not the focus of their game. You can have innovative mounts with physics, gliding, jumping puzzles and rewarding map exploration in your open world and it's all very fun and cool, but that's not why you play an MMORPG is it? Breath of the Wild probably does all of that better...
Great video regarding the underlying issues. It's been a long time coming indeed. If there was a difficulty ladder of sorts or players being made aware that content will be challenging when it drops. The problem with DE is rewards: I don't mind a mount being locked behind an event or challenging content, but make it known before hand maybe. Glad they are looking at the rewards and making adjustments for the players to get the mount in another way.
honestly... as much as it flies against the concept of a big community, there should have been a public and private version of the final meta. Much like the EoD strikes, where the story mode version is easier and lays down the foundation of what to expect from the strike version or Dragon Storm public / private modes. A Public mode with easier mechanics and a private mode with harder mechanics. Now, I get what you're saying. The positivity that people CAN do this, is never bad, I firmly believe that about a lot of games but it's ramming headlong into frustration bolstered by *multiple* failed attempts. Positivity starting from a neutral point works better but this is positivity attempting to start from a heavy negative point. lastly the turtle should have *never* been in that meta... and I'm glad to hear that they are putting in a second method of getting the egg, there's still the strike to do but 10 people is a bit, ok a lot, more manageable than 50 or so. As for how to fix the community divisions, man I don't know.. odds are I've been gaming longer than most people watching this video (been gaming since PONG, and not the Atari version... the *ORIGINAL* PONG) and I've seen these divisions exist in each and every game that I've ever experienced where there is a community of players around it. Every. Last. One. I don't know if fixing these division *CAN* be done, but I respect you for trying.
I'm always pretty torn. I miss the dungeons being relevant, but i LOVE the open world stuff. Always being there and not needing to be in guilds and know everyone to get something done is great. Some of the meta events may as well be instanced or the map cap raised during them. Last night we got screwed by the map cap and got booted a minute before the battle for the jade sea.
I battled most of my anger at this meta by forming Training groups specifically stating they were intended to fail, but would carry new players as far as possible against the Boss. No one bickered, complained, and everyone adjusted and learned. They did the Green when they were too intimidated to do it because of their past experiences and we practiced. They were so overjoyed when they made it through their Greens. We still failed, but it was quite good despite it being made of fresh players with no raiding or meta experience. The meta is doable, and cutting down on the Tail Swap while giving dedicated CC were the only two changes I had personally called for. Everything else is considered training for bigger things.
You, have done a great service to the players you might not even realise. I've seen so many (not majority, but a lot) of people complaining about how players "cant do this and cant do that and how this game is dead" (paraphrasing), without doing anything to try and change it. It's an effort and it shows character when someone actually does grab the chair, sits down, and explains stuff. I hope the players you helped with the meta are more enjoying of the game and are able to spread the good you did for them. I think only through that we can try to bring back th emore lenient and friendly vibes the game had in the earlier years.
Was a terrible idea to put the mount in with event, it divided everyone most people including myself once I finally get it I'll never go back. They ruined the end game content by doing this.
I don't feel confident on doing "hardcore stuff" even with my guild: the pressure on "know your rotation" "use x or y build" is just not for me, I just engaging with PvE content without needing to do stress over on how to be xtreme precise on how I press my buttons. I like hard stuff on PvE, I just don't like the vibe "you need this this and that to have fun"
Led this meta about 14 times with 10 wins. I don’t ask for builds, boons or dps. Only asking for for Discord as it is easier. Most of the players in my groups are casual players but we all have fun and kill that dragon. I guess I’m lucky and have not had any toxicity in my groups.
I have led this meta about 9 times and only 2 successful runs. You are just lucky you got lots of people who are doing their role or part in this event. When I organised I had a heal and at least another support for some subgroups. The rest were people who claimed they were dps. I had 50 people in my squad and another tag running with the remainder. From this I can say that I should have around at least 25+ people doing dps and the rest on support. Sadly no I only have like 12 people doing decent dps or better with the top dps being a huge gap away from the decent dps players and a huge gap from the decent dps with people who claim that they are dps but don’t do dps. We passed all mechanics and very little people died. Problem here was that so many of my dps were dealing around 2-4K dps that it became a joke. So out of my 25+ dps players lesser than 50% were actually doing dps. Why else would the event fail? Simple reason we lack dps. Just doing mechanics and being organised is not enough people have to also put in effort. Nothing in this world is free. If you want something then work towards it. Devs making the event easier does not encourage players to improve. It just makes them quit putting in effort because there is an easy way out and that is what is wrong about the game. People not putting in effort and the devs just making life easier for others making the game not fun at all. Nothing wrong about toxic people as what some of them say are true(like lack of dps) I was hesitant about them at first as I would tell them some people just want to go casual. But looking at the statistics, I will have to say they are right and people have to change. There are times where you go casual and times where you put in effort if you want to achieve something(like completing the event)
Hardstuck and Teapot's streams have been an integral part of me understanding the game better and improving my skill and enjoyment of GW2. That's all there is to it.
There are 4 groups of people, 1.those who know what to do and do it and are willing to help others to get it, 2.those who don’t really know but want to learn and are prepared to put in the work, 3.those who don’t want to learn but still want to do it, 4.those who don’t want to learn and don’t do it. IMO its the 3rd group that is detrimental to the game.
And maybe the third group is just doing what all that they can already and just wants to play and relax after work and instead gets oneshot by expansion enemies. Trying content again and again and again and learning by failing requires lots of time and energy (to stay chill) which some people don't have. Especially nowadays will current world issues that affect people.
@@rinart73 it’s a world BOSS, it’s not supposed to be relaxing :-) its supposed to get you hyped and challenge you. If you want to relax then there’s 90% of the games other content to go and do lol. The 3rd group seems to be spending more times on the forums/reddit/comment sections asking for it to be nerfed when its been proven to be easily beaten when the group pulls together and does what is necessary. (Where necessary means the basics of the game)
@@CERWINVEGAredRING I wouldn't call rotations basics of the game. As for oneshotting I was talking about not just EoD meta boss but various expansion story and openworld bosses/mini-bosses/groups of enemies. In ANY case oneshotting is stupid in any battle. It's too punishing and tilting. And 90% other games is kinda trash. GW2 seems to be the best MMORPG atm.
@@rinart73 you don’t need to know any rotations just press your skills… you don’t need to be benchmarking lmao. Punishing mechanics are necessary for ‘challenging’ content. If you don’t get one shot then you’re healed back up in 3 seconds and then its not challenging, as you can just stand there and press 1. Its also not tilting or punishing once you learn to MOVE out of the BIG YELLOW/RED floor xD It’s almost as if the game is telling you what to do without even learning :-) I also said 90% of THIS games content.. not other games. You’re basically saying 100% of this games content should be EASY and RELAXING because theres a number of players only ever want to do that level of content?
@@CERWINVEGAredRING "If you don’t get one shot then you’re healed back up in 3 seconds and then its not challenging, as you can just stand there and press 1" - This really depends on team composition. Plus wasn't Anet nerfing healing and self-healing recently? "MOVE out of the BIG YELLOW/RED" - Considering that bosses love to spray paint the floor in aoes there is no way to actually stay out of all of them, no matter how much you move and/or dodge. Additionally there is no indication which aoes are more harmful, so it's a guess game. Enemies and players visual effect clutter don't make identifying attacks and aoes any easier. I understand that community has greatly varying opinions on what's easy, challenging and super-hard. But in my opinion Anet needs to provide a bit more options in terms of difficulty setting and improve their scaling algorithms. I feel like they balance the game for people that play from the start and are fans of Dark Souls sometimes. Which is kinda wrong imo. I understand raids being hard. But openworld content (metas) shouldn't be super hard.
I really wish there was an easier way to switch build/stats and experiment with different builds and playstyles. I know legendaries exist, but getting them is painful. People craft their ascended zerker gear and leave it at that.
People need to be more open to just using exotic gear. The stat drop from ascended to exotic is 2% with armor, 4% with trinkets, and 6% with weapons. It's overall almost nothing, I raid constantly in exotic gear, and nobody says a word. And you can get very easy exotic stat swappable gear all over the place. EoD introduced a couple new forms as well.
Gotta agree with Ryan here. If you can't afford multiple ascended set use exotic sets. And also not just playing a dps class. We have been nerfed to 5 man targets which means the demand for support players is higher than it's ever been. Although if your a raid/fractal player this is less of a problem in general.
Hard disagree with the two people that replied to you. 6% is not almost nothing, especially with Zerker gear. 6% more power, 6% more precision, and 6% more critical damage stacks up to much more than a 6% increase in overall damage. Also, blanket statements along the lines of "I use exotics and never had problem" is part of the problem. For every person who says "No Ascended? No problem", there's ten more who say "No Ascended? No Service!"
@@chrispy_091 6% is just the loss on weapons. And I pretty much always have ascended weapons. 4% is trinkets, and ascended those are usually easier to get than exotics. And 2% is armor, which is the hardest to get, so I generally just tell people get exotics of those. So its not 6% across the board, its just 6% on the weapons, which doesnt result in anything close to a 6% drop in DPS. Teapot has also said that he wanted to start farming VB to give people easier access to stat-selectable exotic armor. People telling people they have to run ascended gear are just overly gate-keepy. Unless you are doing fractals or trying to speed clear a raid, you DO NOT need ascended. My suggestion, try to get ascended trinkets and weapons, they are easier to get, and give the biggest bonus. Go with exotic armor though, its a tiny bump relatively and exotics are MUCH easier to get.
@@ryan2415 Oh, so it's actually a 12% loss on stats? And you say that's almost nothing? You just made your case worse bro (pretty sure overall it's more like 5 or 6% total difference in stats and depending on build, a larger difference in damage, but hey, you say 12% if you really want to). As someone who has played since 2012 and had to live through the "zerker gear or kick" phase of GW2, and has to click through post after post on the forums of players whining about the power difference between exotic and ascended since it was introduced, you're full of it.
I don't think you mean to be toxic, and I know you aren't saying "get gud" what you are saying is "get organized." As a raider, I don't want to save meta events for raid night, and I don't want to have to hope that enough people are going to listen and engage in the meta to be successful. Players that are just playing through the story and play to do metas, don't want to organize beyond 'what dragon we doing next yo?' so you punish them cause they fail without organizing, and you punish us cause we end up in maps with people who won't do the meta. Content that requires coordination has a place... raids. If you want a hard version of this, you just make it a raid. Outdoor content shouldn't test your ability to get people to listen to you in chat, it just leads to the content having terrible clear times and getting nerfed. Challenge individual players and reward them accordingly. In some ways this is sort of an outdoor map wide dps check, but no one is specifically told how little damage they did to the right targets.
Indeed. If Open World content can be ruined by a small percentage of players, that's a flaw in the game. You can't expect people to learn all that stuff without being allowed to actually participate in it. They just want the turtle, not study for weeks and possibly pay gold to be allowed into an experienced group. And then there's a lot of people who are simply not able to organize into big groups. It's one thing for raids and instanced action. It's quite another to do that in Open World content. I'd say, if the group sucks at an event, not making enough damage, failing key elements in the fight, the game should nerf the boss dynamically, and then maybe also nerf the loot, and making it clear to them that this happened. But don't let them fail over and over again, forcing pros to split off and organize privately in discords.
So you want gw2 to be like every other mmo with something to do in the open world, boring, mind-numbingly easy, and relegate the hard content to raids or some equivalent content? No. This is what leads to a lack of compromise.
@@borkguy there is a difference between mind numbingly easy and raid level difficulty. lmao. it's cool and all when some coordination is required. when pretty much everyone is yelling at players to leave the map, it's too much. it's still a game in the open world. elitism will just create toxic environments. specially an event that locks an entire mount behind its success. that's just ridiculous. a legendary, okay. only a few people go after those. but mounts? everyone and their mother will continue to play that event.
@@borkguy I never said it should be easy. Getting lucky with a map of people paying attention and listening enough to potentially carry you if you do a terrible job is not a test of your skills. Like I said... outdoor content should test your personal skill.
Just as an aside: I have a lot of respect for you personally MightyTeapot, and Mukluk (and many other content creators that do the following), for what you do to bring people together, and show them how to play together, and communicate with each other. That's my own personal principle as well: talk to each not AT, and work together.
As a solo player, I'm probably the problem. There's a lot of content I won't be able to access, and my quest for my first legendary is arduous in the extreme. However, that's a problem of me, not the game.
The reason 'you can do this, we believe in you, do this, this and this' doesn't land at all because you're telling people to abandon what they view as their playstyle. It's a small step from there to thinking you really mean 'get gud'. To communicate effectively you first need to speak their language. Organising and prepping isn't a solution for these people for any number of reasons; an attachment to an underperforming build, lack of playtime, anxiety in groups and or on VOIP, what they consider fun, preconceived notions of how the game should be played, skill levels, etc etc.
Minor critique of my personal experience with your channel: Critique: I like how in this you DO preface with your misgivings of the issues, and agree with a number of the points you make in this video about sub-community friction, but I also understand a lot of the friction that you personally are experiencing. In your DE guide, you start with A LOT of prep talk that comes off as naïve, Commanding metas will often work like herding cats, and many people playing through first time on metas and in open world won't HAVE a build to fulfill squad roles. Some of your word choice and pacing FEELS like someone accustomed to running CM Raids not understanding why the plebs don't get with it. Stating that it's possible because YOUR guild has a high success rate FEELS like glad-handing (Insert I'm Jerry Smith meme here), rubbing it in the faces of people who almost exclusively run pugs, and makes your entire guild feel like a bunch of CM Raid vets not understanding why the plebs don't get with it. If you are thinking that people aren't engaging with the play, don't put yourself/your guild on a pedestal. DE is HARD for a standard player, it needs empathy to coax folks into it. Telling a player that has tried for 8-10 hours to get their turtle that they are just PLAYING wrong you should play like my GUILD here (which is how it TL:DRs to a lot of people listening to your videos) is a sure way to start a fight. Guild Wars 2 has a reputation for being one of the most welcoming communities for new players, but it seems like when they try to move up into higher levels people start requiring specific play methods and bashing people who don't conform, and a lot of that 'last kid to be picked for baseball' sensation starts happening. Consider: DE presents a great opportunity for a review of classes and specializations, make some buildcrafting videos, point out how stats are important to different builds (Like how no necro should ever be low on Vitality), and how a basic rotation would work for each squad role. As an example: Muk has a great starter Support Necro build in his (iirc) 'I didn't give you permission to DIE' video that does a great job explaining the positives and negatives of the build. Mind your scripts a little more, acknowledge what struggle might befall each map (Even just a portion of the DE Guide stating "The RNG of the attacks can SUCK so be ready for any opportunity to break that bar with the acid breath" would have been a great aside) or build (This build is SOLID for DPS but you will MELT without a healer in open world). Acknowledge PERSONAL issues with playing, toxic positivity is a THING and it can be important to confirm that EVERYONE gets frustrated playing. Guild Wars 2 allows for a PLAY YOUR WAY attitude but high level is so meta-focused it's exclusionary, so figure out how you can make ANY build work in a squad. Conclusion: I like a lot of your points, but your engagement and positivity comes off pedantic most of the time. I watched Potatoes a Bunch before some of his toxic nitpicking of the community turned me off from his channel. You are one of the few Guild Wars 2 content creators whose voice I can stand so I'd love to keep listening/watching.
About Dragon's end meta, there is only 1 thing everyone need to do: chill. Its been only a little more than a week since the launch of the expansion, there is no rush, the meta wont disappear next week, let the devs do their work on fixing bugs and balance the fight, and also let other players test the terrain, enjoy the map and events, learn the mechanics of the meta, there is no need to get mad at people in a GAME, chill out, relax, its just a game.
@MightyTeapot -- I'd like you to think about something because perhaps you're off target; how does a player learn?, what is that process?, how easy is it to learn?, is it cost prohibitive to just experiment with max level gear? -- you'll come up with your own solutions to these questions, mine is from GW1 we got better because it was common to sit down with a new or old player, and say it would be better you did this or that way with your build here is the why and the gear to do it, sure superior runes where sometimes cost prohibitive but they normally got those once you moved them in the right direction, GW2 you need legendary armor to flip stats around and that's a ridiculous situation.
I have killed the dragon 3 times this week and failed 3 times last week. All with pugs. I can tell you this week, commanders and players are playing much better than last week. So basically, people are improving, and that is good. I like the meta a lot.
It is possible that less casual players are trying out the map. We would need to know if the active population decreased over time or remained the same to know whether people are improving. Anyway it's great you beat it 3 times!
I am casual player myself. I only play WvW for about 15h a week, an nothing else, until now. I think that people missundarstand word "casual". It does not mean "bad player", at all...
I think about the players who have played the Dragons Stand meta for the first time after years now of learning and improving strategies. Its a smooth run compared to what it was. Things will improve as more of the community engages with the event and practices it.
Teapot, I think you have a good point that things are better if people are talking. However, I think there was a real big perception issue in the days following Dragon's End blowing up as a issue, where it was seen that the 'hardcore' gamers were doubling down on the gatekeeping of the turtle mount by aggressively defending the difficulty of the meta. This in turn just exacerbated things further. I think it would definitely go a long way if influential community members such as yourself were quicker to signal boost concerns like "hey, people can't get their turtle!" Like you said, few had a issue with the meta itself, and had the turtle been accessible from day one in a different manner we would be having a very different conversation right now - showing people you're on their side on the matters they care the most about will go a long way, i think.
The problem is these 2 parts of the community don't really want to mix. Casual players want to spend like an hour a day in open world and have fun. For me return to dragon achievements were a blast. I can spend like an hour-two a day on my own pace doing different stuff and got legendary amulet in the end (was my first legendary btw, crafted Aurora and Vision right after). Was really hyped to continue in EoD and got hit with this meta. I need it to get turtle, seems like I need it to get right flow of the story (at least there is an achieve for this). Now my schedule: Login, do quick daily. Fail meta (although I learned mechanics at this time, but I'm online during off hours for major guilds, so pugs only). Logout because I don't have more time. I didn't ask for this. I specifically don't play raids because of my strict schedule. If now I will have such issues in open world I will be done with GW2. I'm willing to pay to relax, for work I expect to be paid.
In my experience as a player, there's two things that cause a heavy amount of added toxicity to a game: 1.Having to rely on your team-mates. This means that the ability to win or lose is in no small part controlled by them. 2.Having content that scales in difficulty or is just genuinely hard at baseline. This is most easily seen in pvp contexts, such as LoL, DotA or Apex, but it's just as true in MMOs such as WoW. Trying to get good at raiding and/or M+ or whatever similar content produces the same issues, some of which are actually exacerbated by the MMO "jump from solo player to hard content" moment. But the thing is, the problem is more fundamental and has nothing to do with MMO-specific issues at it's roots.
So you talk about "toxicity" when you enter a map that 2 commanders have been preparing and state "I like this I will tag up", then, since you are streaming and people want to "show up" every structure, organization, parties, groups etc fall apart as peopel join your tag 5 minutes into the meta... Then people from your squad pretty much curse other people that don't want to join your discord out the map (like you complained other streamer did to you, funny)... So tell how this is ever so toxic to you... please... Oh and then the event fails because no one has a clue what is happening...
The community is toxic because no one is satisfied with the content they have. PvErs want more, PvPers and WvWers want more.The way Anet designs and builds content means that when one groups gets content, the others get nothing. Evey resource Anet puts on WvW alliances, is a resource that isn't developing new Strike Missions or story content. This incentivizes communities within the game to complain the loudest and, at the expense of the other communities, get the content they want. The squeakiest wheel gets the oil and all that. We have three distinct gamemodes each attracts different types of players, some of those groups overlap, many do not. I'm a realistic person. Its obvious to me Anet lacks, and has never had, the resources to support three distinct game modes in their buy to play MMO. Maybe they need a sub fee, or a battle pass, or maybe NCSoft is a greedy publisher keeping Anet on a shoestring budget. Regardless this studio has never met a content cadence that has kept all the different communities in this game satisfied at the same time. The ball is in Anet's court, games with enough content for their playerbases do not have these types of issues.
I feel somewhere in the middle of casual and dedicated/skilled. I’m good at games and figuring out mechanics. Enough to the point where I can play the game effectively. I am not a hardcore player though. If I was a numbers guy I’d be an accountant. I’m not interested getting into the minutia of everything. It feels like homework at that point and I hate homework. I wish less things were sponge mechanics and actually had interesting things to do.
They should include a group mentorship program where people who have a high number of completions can gain a Mentor role for activities like these, so people know who to turn to in-game for direction.
The reason hardcore players get flamed by casuals over things that only affect high level play is because hardcore players constantly flame and kick casual players from groups for messing up one mechanic one time, even when they've never seen it before. It doesn't make it right, but the toxicity of people that think they're good at this game is overwhelming for the average or casual player. It's disgusting behavior, and breeds total intolerance and division as you pointed out. This is something that is FAR too common.
wow alot of backpeddeling here but i do agree with your point... one of the biggest problems with your other videos was that you NEVER addressed the problems and if you did you just discarded it as a "players are bad" thing...
I know discord exists but I think a great addition to the game would be voice chat. Not always active voice chat because Anet does try to avoid toxic encounters, but for example if you rock up in a fractal or a strike, maybe you can request voice chat and bam, you and another player are working together more seamlessly than you ever could with text. For open world, party chat could always be a possible thing, and for squads, the Commander could select specific people to be in contact with. This would especially help for when squads need to split up and coordinate. The Commander could allocate leaders for smaller groups, and have a voice channel up with for example 5 of them, and those five would also have a voice channel up with 5 players they are working with. This also means Anet could more confidently increase open world difficulty. I understand the main problem is toxicity. It takes more effort to be an arsehole to write it out than to just say it, and in writing Anet can censor people's words to prevent profanity and other harassment. If we were somehow able to ensure toxicity would be effectively handled, I think some form of rudimentary voice chat would really help the game. Sure, discord is better and high hardcore guilds can communicate effectively outside the game for a better voice chat experience. But nothing beats the magic of just running into someone in a huge game like this and within 2 clicks saying, "Oh hey, want to explore this place together?"
Honestly, the best compromise is nerf open world to the ground so people can chill and play it how we're used to it and make it give competitive rewards with other metas. Then make another version which has no nerfs and bigger rewards but make it a guild mission. Once Anet put it in place, they can get free content by reversing the nerfed open world content for hardcore players. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Open world is easy and unless Anet really want to just tell them to "Get gud" which I doubt they would. MMORPGs are becoming more and more easy, more so with group content, look at the recent content patch for WoW and how well that went down. For myself, I would rather wait until much later as if it I will require it to be as tough as it is, I would rather get good gear then do it so I don't screw up the meta for everyone else.
This may seem a little rambling, I'm typing my thoughts about the video as I hear them: This issue with "if you don't agree with me 100% then you're against me." This mentality is so poisonous to open dialogue and good faith conversations and is so pervasive, especially online and in social media. People don't want to acknowledge the fact that you AGREE with them that stuff like the RNG needed to be addressed. The fact that you even propose ways to get past those elements doesn't invalidate that you agree with them on fixing those issues, but to those bad actors it does. "We have to find compromise." A lot of people don't want compromise, they just want it their way. This goes back to the point right above this one. "The community has always been divided, the two groups just never interact with each other." NAILED IT. "...Some players don't want to engage with that." This is a huge issue that I think a lot of people conflate with a lack of tutorialization. Tutorials can't make you care about dodging. Tutorials can't make you care to know or find out what a breakbar is. There are some people who play this game who just...don't have that spark of curiosity in them to want to care about what everything is in the game, and to seek outside sources if needed to bridge that gap in knowledge. Every time at the beginning of the DE meta that it starts with the big orange circle slap with the Tsunami wave, inevitably there's 5-8 people who stand in the circle and get downed. WHY? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? What thought process is happening with that person that makes them note move?! "If one group is advocating for something, that doesn't mean they absolutely hate you and they want your playstyle to be deleted from the game." Unfortunately I think this also falls back on people's all or nothing attitude. :( "Pandering to my audience is not one of them." This made me laugh out loud, but your ability to always dissect conversations from almost any angle is always refreshing when you are talking to chat. "Policing your own side." SO IMPORTANT. Don't let fucking memers dilute good conversations with bad faith or straw man arguments and shifting goal posts. Not much else to say, other than maybe this is the catalyst for something greater. Maybe 2022 won't be the year of Guild Wars 2 because of content or the expansion, but when we finally start bridging some of these gaps within the community.
Just finished the intro so far but I gotta say. You should always stay true to yourself and your opinions. I’m just a RUclips watcher of your content but I keep tuning in because of a few reasons. I resonate with your passion for the game, you are entertaining with your delivery, and you speak your mind. Well thought out and articulated video so far.
The issue as I see it, from the casual perspective, as I am a casual from the last few years (life am i right) The people who were complaining about the Meta would not accept anything in conversation other than that one agree with them and their measures. And their in game actions were not the best form, to say the least. I have guildies who are waiting for the 15th because maps were sabotaged, and good maps were full. I am happy that they are changing the turtle attachment, but I feel that if they do not do anything about the rewards anyone wanting to do the meta come end of the month are going to have a hard time getting a successful cap. You are asking a lot from people to have integrity, and in my experience, it is a frustrating position. You have done great work, and I appreciate it. Hell you trained me for the strike mission for the Turtle, and capped that in one run.
In my opinion, the great failure of GW2 in asking casual players to step up their game in PvE content is that they offer no support or guidance as to how. One of the great things about GW2 is the amazing build diversity. The problem with that is it allows a vast array of really sub-optimal, or tightly niche builds. In other MMOs that require or support team integration have /very clear/ roles completely baked into the classes, specs and gear. So a casual player is given a set of tools, with some small variation, that they can try to figure out how to apply to the PvE content. The vast majority of players in GW2 don't even known what they don't know. I'm a filthy casual, but just by knowing you exist puts me /way/ ahead of most folks. If ANet are designing encounters around some kind of meta, around boons or skills or stack, then they /need/ to surface their expectations very clearly and in a place where people who do not haunt RUclips or Reddit or the forums can see it. Build templates? Training instances? More to the point, it should not be on you and your guild to teach ANets entire community how to play their damn game. For what it's worth, while I don't always agree with you, I've always found you to be a reasonable guy.
Well I think working as a community to help others is a great social experience and a good way to personalize the help some people need. But in my experience during the meta, when trying to offer help and suggestions to casuals players, they responded with hostility..I wasn’t saying it in a mean way either. I was saying things like, make sure you stack de offen/def boons, get the contributors 10% guys :D, if you can I’d recommend boon support builds to make it easier for everyone...stuff like that and people were getting mad and yelling at me in chat. So it’s honestly feels like those players DONT want help. I agree anet should’ve taught them somehow long ago, but the community helping isn’t a bad thing if players would stop refusing it...
The problem here is not about the game teaching casual players. It’s that even if they were to teach, casual players choose not to put in the effort to improve when it’s not even that hard. They choose to remain stubborn and call anyone who try to change them an elitist. Most casuals just want the easy way out (free items or an easy way out of content that is hard for them). They don’t even look for the option to improve first. They will go straight to criticism and blame the devs and experienced players when there are tons of guides out there online meaning you don’t even need the devs to reach you stuff just like a simple google search. To sum up, they give up easily so why not question them and say since you give up so easily why not give up on the item you are aiming for? Just forget about the turtle since you don’t need it.
@@androlitas you’re so right too..that’s why I gave up on trying to help and give suggestions. I do raids, I do fracs. I consider myself to be pretty decent at the game. Not a god but not a causal either XD but I thought saying small little helpful suggestions was okay, but it was not. But when there’s people autoattacking that can hit 20k vs people autoattacking or doing a “rotation” hitting >1k i think there’s a need for instruction a bit XD. And anet giving away items for nothing just cements in the fact that they’ll never need to learn ever. Imo. Why get better when they’ll give you every item..I’m not talking about people who are physically incapable of doing better, I’m talking about the type who outright refuse and turn hostile at any suggestion XD
@@ardynnstaywoke2717 None of the gear is for free, no matter how bad the player is. They are putting in the time to get it. They are grinding the same maps you are. They are playing the game too. There is no virtue in hitting buttons in the right order.
@@dahobdahob I mean yes and no? Ascended gear does take time, but with gold farming in other maps, it’s not a outrageous goal like legendaries. Even exotics can hit high and exotics can be gotten in hots for map currency and a few gold...knowing how to play your class does make a difference..it’s the difference between a slow burn and a fast one..if you had a map of 50 who don’t know their class with bad builds, you’d see the difference if you got in a raid guild map. I don’t try to force players to do anything, I just try to suggest things to help. It’s hard to take complaints seriously when people won’t try AT ALL..I can understand effort and complaining but not trying is on them..and ruins it for everyone else..that’s all
in trying to defuse a map chat argument in DE, i stepped into the convo and tried to show that different kinds of players don't have to be a) so mean to each other b) explain my PoV on things as a sort of bridge person, I regularly do end game stuff, and i highly enjoy that, but i still do casual things, events, because it's a time to chill out while still enjoying the game. Both the casual and hardcore gamers have valid points, and have more common ground than they think, but because of the toxicity polarising people, they don't see it. There's no need for that toxicity, it's just ugh, please stop. I quite agree with what you said about GW2 being a "playing by yourself with others". It very much is. I can see that mentality in action. Someone's downed right near them, and they don't rez them is an immediate example (and it's safe for them to rez that person). TLDR: i tried to show that we have more in common than we think, and a team effort is the only way you'll beat it. I got into a PUG squad for DE last night, and it was very disorganised, and unsurprisingly, it failed. Everyone was running around with their heads cut off, downed people by the dozen, hardly any boon or healing support. I was going to bring heal scourge, and was told bring DPS. DPS doesn't work well when a) you're dead b) having to rez people who aren't used to mechanics every 30 seconds because they don't dodge, or move out of deadly AoEs. This previous statement shows the lack of understanding many people have about the game's mechanics. My main guild, we do a lot of raid trainings, and have gotten a lot of previously casual players to become more expert. We're a chill and fun guild, too (I'm a senior officer in it). Main point being: stop being toxic, and talk to each other, not ABOUT each other please.
This is such an inspiring viewpoint. My guild's focus is on player-created-content and we have been on a mission to find a game to call home. We've been thinking of dropping into GW2 but the themepark design and playstyle-diversity has definitely been a barrier for us. Our guild's progression in the game doesn't feel rewarding but this video inspires me to offer our organizing skills in tackling this content. One of our guild mottos is "PvE is a PvP objective," so this perspective you offer might just give us the push we need to drop into and build up our GW2 community.
I like yours and Muks take on this problem: "it shouldnt be players vs players it should be players vs the problem" and i think thats what the silent majority thinks too, its just that i think the toxic minority really blown this way out of proportion just cause. Anet somewhat listened to you, since they gave another method of acquiring the turtle and not hard locking it into the meta, and somehow nerfed the tail RNG. Edit: spelling
But the problem isn't "anet designed too hard of a meta" the problem is "the meta is hard". If you focus your energy on actually trying to beat the meta, players might get somewhere. But a lot of players are focusing their time on blaming anet for making too difficult a meta, or teapot for "defending" it.
@@ryan2415 i mean that didnt really have to do with OPs comment, they just mentioned the turtle unlock thru the meta. regardless, your comment is really one-sided, not considering the opposite perspective whatsoever. if you want actual discourse, you need to actually try to see the other perspective rather than just completely dismissing it.
@@ryan2415 from the salty people's perspective i completely understand why they're mad, you spend 2 hours 5+ times a day to get to the boss only for it to fail, it isn't a nice feeling
@@ryan2415 the fail attempts cost around 2 hours, and the reward is something entitled to players because anet show that its a feature they would receive if they buy the expansion not beat the meta. yeah, i wonder why people are mad at anet? not to mention we have some elitists who lash out and say git-gut instead of having some rational thinking and looking at the real problem.. but hey! told other suck is easier than trying to ask anet to fixed the problem, right?
I think think a massive part of the problem here is the game doesn't provide any feedback to players on how they're performing. A huge amount of the player base doesn't run meters of any kind to see how they're doing on DPS or heals or boon uptime or anything else. So they take the feedback they do get, a.k.a. did the event succeed, did I die, did the group wipe and if that's all good - conclude that they must be doing well. That's not their fault - that's on the game for not providing any metrics at all. So when someone who is running those things gives them some feedback they didn't ask for and that totally contradicts the evidence they've seen... they obviously don't like it... How many people in the more 'hardcore' part of the community were horrified by how bad their performance was when they finally started tracking it? I know I was, and it very quickly changed after that. People are massively motivated by making numbers get higher right? If ANET want people to improve, they have to provide a way for them to see their progress.
Sorry for my English but I like to speak. First - this video change my opinion about you and your guide. That’s was actually first video I fully watch. Thanks for your work. Second is about my experience as a casual player. When I started my legendary armor, I was convinced that GW2 have one of the friendliest community in MMO games, which I played. However, it was shock to me when I realize how end-game players toxic. That was the most painful months I ever played to complete achievement and then farm LI to create my legendary armor. Now I have changed. I am not that casual player that I was when start my legendry way. I play all end-game content and all worries I have now is how to make some jokes and have a fun playtime. And all this because I met some people who took a time and explain me some mechanics, class specifics. Again thanks for your work. I thinks I will follow your channel to see how all of this will end.
Super true btw. The most toxic discourse is the mob trying to tear down specific individuals for even engaging in discussing this stuff. Very "you're with us or you're the problem"
Teapot, you are without a doubt one of the best creators on RUclips. That said, I think most people feel conflicted about most of your views on the game as they are delivered with a fiery passion for the game. When I look at most of the discussions, with or without other creators, I do tend to think that you represent a smaller minority of the playerbase. There is nothing wrong with that. It does however make other people make look at you as elitist. I think I even said that at some point -- to I think the discussion about raids, where my opinion hasn't changed yet. Hearing about people going out their way to say nasty stuff to and about you is low. I do think though that it comes with the territory sadly. It does not change the fact that it's sad that people actually do this. It is quite unthinkable to me to do this, surely they could think of better things to do... That said, and to add to the discussion, I think there are lots of small communities within the game. They are guild-based focus groups like a WvW, PvP, Raid or even some Meta or Mentor guilds. I do think that sometimes reaching these guilds could be improved. You generally find these guilds by participating in the events. When not knowing the event the negative responds from 'experienced players'; as this is a very broad term; is alienating other players from further engaging in these events. Masteries are a matter of time. In EoD's case I think it isn't all that hard to get what you want. If you focus on the turtle -- and take it the slow casual way -- you can easily get it within 1-2 weeks. I don't think that is 'to hard' to get. That being said, to improve discourse, even though i've seen you make arguments with your chat... is it to give it a fair and proper hearing. I've watched your stream many times that end in toxic discussions where I just left the stream because I don't wanna have to deal with that. I've also seen a pretty strong steering of conversation. If you want to have a conversation then I think it is good to not want to control the narritive as much. That's my 2cents anyway.
Here is your problem Teapot: "Yes, you *can* beat this! You just need to organize your groups! Get on voice chat!" Etc. etc. etc.. You see this as reasonable and in general it is, but you fail to see the world through the eyes of the people you want to reach. You say you understand the viewpoints of the people that criticise this, but I don't get the impression that you actually do despite how you feel. Let me tell you a little story about my experience with EoD. I'm a pharmacist by day. My *shortest* day at work is 12+ hours of non-stop work to such a degree that I rarely get a restroom break let alone lunch or any time to unwind during that time. I play GW2 to chill and unwind. I primarily play open world, but I also occasionally WvW and PvP when I have time off and can dedicate time to these modes and there is the clincher. The sheer level of difficulty, the strict adherence to twitch-reaction mechanics and meta builds for higher level content makes things like raids, strike missions, and as of recently - the EoD content (especially the meta) feel like a second job, not a fun game. I will never play something like Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, etc. Not because I lack the ability to learn how to play and enjoy these games, but because I don't have the time to invest in them and I lack the emotional energy to care. I unwind and recharge by being able to chill, relax, pewpew, barbie and RP in Guild Wars 2. Anet forcing these gameplay mechanics on everyone is a problem. Full stop. It's a problem, and it has caused myself and both of my elderly gamer parents to quit this game likely for good this time because Anet shows no signs of returning to form. This new direction is going to kill this game because the devs are just ignoring these issues. My mother can still kick my nephew's ass in Mortal Kombat and isn't even remotely lacking in reaction time, but most of her time is spent playing The Sims, where she enjoys the peace and quiet to unwind and relax like I do. My father beat both Dark Souls *and* Bloodborne but over these past two years, his sight has begun failing and he is having a harder and harder time playing. When we got "off the boat" as it were and into EoD, the "training arena" mission was obscene. The only way to complete these training activities is to literally force players to swap builds, swap weapons and play in ways they do not want to or in my father's case *CANNOT DO* . We all understand the mechanics of these arenas, but we're locked out of further content unless we git gud and play the way Anet tells us to. Both of my parents refunded then and there. I've continued playing and unlocked my turtle mount thanks to a commander I shall not name, but was *EXTREMELY* helpful and casual-friendly and understood the players under her wing on a psychological level and organized people along those lines to *perfect* success. Without her, I would have never completed the meta because I don't have the time to invest in a several-hour unrewarding SLOG. Without her, I would not have completed the strike mission because I lack the interest in turning the game into a second data-crunching APM job. I'm far from unskilled but I play the characters and builds *I* want to play, the way *I* want to play them. I will coordinate with a group, but when that coordination requires forcibly uprooting myself and players out of our comfort zones either partially or completely, the game has failed at its most important task: *TO BE FUN* You'll probably never read this rant and even if you do it likely won't achieve anything anyway but I felt a need to say something, to add a voice to the dialogue. I'm done with Guild Wars 2, and it's because of exactly what you described - these microcosms within the game are clashing and rather than balance them such that no group is forced to do anything they don't want to do, Anet has moved on to *forcing* these groups to blend together, failing to realize that the larger majority of each group simply *does not want to* and that should be respected first and foremost. I don't want the PvP'ers being forced to do anything in the Open World, or forced to do content that doesn't appeal to their gameplay interests. What sense would that make? Likewise, stop forcing the casual open world to "git gud" or be permanently locked out of desireable content. Each one of our little groups should be able to enjoy our content in peace and meet each other in the middle on our own terms when and where we want to.
If they lessen the RNG of the fight the fight will be pretty great. I was in a fully organized raid group last night. We failed the meta at 2% because the boss would just not stop moving. Every time she had increased damage from breakbar she would move, every time tail came up as soon as we got to tail she would move. Problem is she moves too much, or when she does move its at the worst possible time.
Even with a significantly RNG-based fight, it would have been pretty trivial to give a burn phase timer after breaking her bar or bashing down the tail... Not sure why Soo-Won was ever allowed to just keep phasing constantly. Weirdchamp gaming tbh
Really good video, made me think and empathize with other view points. Just really thoughtful, and I hope I keep the points you made in mind, next time I'm taking with someone in the other player groups. All in all, I think GW2 has the tools to bring everyone together. It's one of the few games where another player means help and resses instead of loot and kill stealing. And I've experienced astounding amounts of kindness and perseverance in it. I hope many people watch this and focus on uniting instead of dividing.
Very eloquently said. I totally agree with you. I feel like both the hardcore and casual players (I also hate using these terms) are so heavily entrenched in their positions, that they refuse to even compromise and listen to one another and instead scream over each other instead of talking about the issues. I said this in one of Mukluk's videos, but we are all fans of Guild Wars 2, we should respect each other and work together to solve issues, not attacking each other.
Yeah I agree with you so much. I think for me personally it just got so bad after being yelled at by so many “Casual” players while doing the meta when I was just trying to help and give suggestions and explain boons and subgroups...that eventually I started to feel like I was tilting too and sometimes wanted to be a dick back. It’s not that I wasn’t trying to understand their side, it’s just that after being yelled at like that meta after meta, it really demoralized me and made me think that all the causal players are like that and don’t want help genuinely. So I got fed up with them as a whole (which is my bad tbh.) but I’m a really slow burn person. You can imagine the build up of 25+ metas having getting yelled at like that what it does XD
I feel like "we are all fans of Guild Wars 2" really obfuscates the reality that the game one side plays and the game the other side plays are radically different games, and Arenanet really always encouraged different playerbases to segregate from each other and this breeds resentment because whenever the devs do something for x group, y, z and q group feel like they're getting the short end of the stick. It is in fact the design of the game that has encouraged these toxic subdivisions.
@@ardynnstaywoke2717 I think it's great to hear from your perspective, so thank you for sharing. I'm more of a "casual" player, though I work to find ways to improve my build and play so that I'm contributing viably to groups I join. Still, I tend to be more relaxed about it and avoid min-maxing for the most part so long as I'm having fun with my rotation. I've only attempted DE twice. The first was just a mess because no one knew what the mechanics were and we were learning, but the second was an organized attempt with commanders to help. Unfortunately, one of the commanders began yelling in caps at the map half an hour before the meta itself started that we were going to fail and it was a map of "casual tw*ts", all because they were annoyed with the performance of someone following their tag. We failed it, but I think our chances would have been much better had they focused on trying to give the callouts we needed rather than dragging everyone down with negativity. The toxicity coming from that leader colored my opinion of this whole thing, I'll be honest, and watching videos where other commanders were making fun of "casuals" sort of cemented it in my mind. I feel badly that it did, especially after hearing from both @MightyTeapot and you. It's clear there are problems on both sides, and I hope we can find a way to overcome the impulse to place blame and throw around insults. All the best to you, truly.
@@LadyRhi_ yeah...the game kind of pits the two types of players against eachother I’m it’s current state. I’d like to blame the fact that turtle was locked to this meta, so both players HAD to do it. But also there’s not enough hard content to keep the other half busy, there is a lot of open world stuff..raids are only fun so many times..eventually you finish your legends armor and it becomes dull because they’ve seemed to abandon raids :(
@@ardynnstaywoke2717 It's really unfortunate that EOD hasn't brought more raids. As a casual player its easy to look at the situation and say, "There are raids for the hardcore stuff!" However, I can imagine how boring it would be to do the same fights over and over for years, especially now that there's no promise of more wings to come that I've heard. I'm genuinely sorry for that. I know CM strikes are coming, but that still doesn't fit the bill when there are only a handful of them. There is so much more behind the frustration than I'd originally considered, and I get now why some players have been so passionate about preventing nerfs to the DE meta. It's sad that Anet's choice to seemingly abandon a form of content that so many loved has led to the community fighting over the open world.
Wanted not to comment but here it is... I've joined SimSoul's 2nd public open call on twitch to do DE. After the organization of subgroups we all got the map where we did events, boosted our participation. Got batteries and protocols, 2 more buffs. Finished events in area and got 4th buff. It all helped in final battle and all of this where layers of damage and protection needed for the final. The mechanics of the fight where definitely more challenging than other PVE but it was still dodging, special action key and cc bar. That said - I'm not a professional raider. I don't clear raids, but I read what my skills do. What my build does. I read the mapchat or listen to commander on twitch/voice. And we had a successful run where we all learned, had fun and got the rewards. Yes, it takes a long time, and the meta could be better updated like Drizzelwood with rewards... that all said, HardStuck was always here to help EvErYoNe even the filthy casuals like myself, to other the pro players. So what is telling you about the ones who attack the teachers, the ones who just want all the best, all the knowledge, for the community...?
Very well spoken. It is certainly a complex issue to fix right? How do we bridge that gap between relaxed "Anything goes" open world, to "Hey, you gotta step up and know your stuff". Unfortunately the core game isn't really going to change. So I don't think we can realistically expect a full rework of difficulty scaling. From my own experience at teaching new players, the biggest hurdle is getting them to read and understand skills/traits. With easy content, it's way too easy for a new player to fall into that classic 'Bearbow Ranger' setup and never deviate from it. One of the things in EoD that really caught my attention was the little tutorial heart in the beginning, and my first thought was that this needs to be expanded upon and taken into each of the starter zones of the core game. Having something in game that explicitly tells you how certain mechanics work could be a good step in the right direction. Especially if it can happen early in the base game. It would have to be refined a bit for early play since you won't have full access to class skills. Maybe give kits that just let you do things to try out mechanics. For instance, the combo fields trainer can give the player a training sword that lets you do each of the finishers. He'll occasionally put out a light field for you to try each one. Maybe give a hint about different fields doing different things, so go try stuff by yourself or with friends! Make one for support stuff too, if there isn't already one! "Take this banner. Position yourself and use the skills on it to give as many ally target dummies aegis or stability to block an attack or fight through a knockback". Stuff like this would not only show the player that these things exist, but also call attention to those details in tooltips. So as a player I can be like, "Woah! Support buffs are cool! What skills do that for me?" Then suddenly you're reading tooltips and getting into that mentality of build craft during the leveling process rather than being smacked in the face with it when challenging content actually comes up.
do you remember when some months back i hopped in ur chat, i think the topic was finding out what casual players want or need and how to help them. I mentioned that another problem is being able to even reach those that aren't on reddit, youtube twitch or the forums in the first place. Is this them reaching out? I have a very hard time understanding where these people were before.
In my opinion the problem is by large measure the way maps are populated in gw2. If you have a meta that demands the vast majority of the map's total population to clear it, there is going to be issues every time, only somewhat mitigated by time. It's not even down to the players primarily, though that also weighs in ofc. Even Dragon Stand was really, really bad in the beginning, and that's as close as an instance they've done for open world. I think if they want to keep this model they have to make use of the buff system in the dragon's end meta, but NOT have it be an hour before the event to get it. That's too much of a deterrent for people to stay, they are there for the meta. It's very clear that the balance of the event is done with this buff in mind at least by a % of the players, so if that isn't met you have another rng factor. I don't think you really need an lfg as such, but I would like it if there was a checkbox you could select very prominently, that you prefer to zone into a meta map over just 'exploration mode'.
Problems: Gem store has all the coolest cosmetics Turn into a subscription based game and spread those gem store cosmetic throughout the game, focusing on raids. (No wonder they're dead, no incentive to do them at all) More incentive to do raids = more players raiding -> more raids coming out. Simple. And of course spread some of those cosmetic to fractals. More incentive to do fractals = more players doing fractals -> new fractals coming out due to demand (4 years and the fractals are still the same with no changes, unbelievable) More focus on the RP section of the game (Example: Emotes, player housing, etc...) No place for you to play mini-games and just take it easy (Golden saucer from FFXIV is a good example of it, look it up.) If I am missing something just reply to me and I'll add it.
Appreciate your continual efforts to support the community. I have learned much from your input. There are a fews ways to bridge the gap. like you say, need to have better communication so as to bridge the gap for noob players like me to able to slowly try out harder content. this method is good if people aren't so hard-up to clear stuff in the shortest possible way. I had been kick out of fractals (normal days, not 98,99,100 or matrin) for failing to hit the arcdps. There are always expectations. that time the one that kick me died multiple times despite being a reaper. I was a paper cdps renegade that last till the end. I dont really understand the rationale of being dps means not watching red telegraphs, dodging damage because there is a hb. Well, since I was kicked I dont have the communication opportunity I guess. There was one time that I was the only one who died because the whole team was "self-sustain builds" (meaning no shared healing). sometimes ppl failed to communicate because they already assume that each member verified by arcdps, and failure of which always boot lowest dps, follow by number of times died. The mismatch of expectation is one of the culprits. Some ppl just want to clear dailies. Others want to clear in the fastest way and demand everyone only respect their time. The LFGs isnt that useful as some will only complain and kick without prior advertising speedruns or chill. 1) One way I think is viable is to alter the reward system based on duration spent in fractals or raids much like pips system in wvw. Ultimately even when failed at least it is not a fustrating experience. There should be 2 modes of raid. One is with timer, one without. The one without will still award kps in full based on duration of the pips earn but does not award achievement. The one without will earn up to rare rewards, the other up to exotic and ascended rewards. The timer can still be shown so that players know where they stand but it is not a determining factor for failure. Finally the kps can be used to purchase stuffs or buy achievements (it can be an astronomical number) 2) This idea come from VLDL. Disable all lifebars, telegraph red, ban usage of arcdps and external 3rd party software. I think the over usage of them has made people over sensitive. Without life bars and cc bars, players have to rely on communication and visual cues to kill and cc. Since people dont really know the aoe of the damage, they will be force to learn side steps and dodges. Yes it will be FUSTRATING. this method forces players to learn rather than only press 1111. They will learn to equip break stuns, ccs, healing based on their own skill than to rely on specific builds. Beside It doesnt affect pvps as people just 4v1. 3) Break the meta. Every game has a meta but GW2 has snowcrows and every other builds are obsolete if they are not listed. How to do it? Change the AI to random but most of the time attack DPS and lowest health first; Disable and debuff healers and boon givers. Leave torment, poison and burning to tankers. Without a specific attack mode, every player has a danger of dying. That alone will already reduce dps. We dont need fancy footwork. The "luck" factor will encourage players to put in their best to polish their personal skills. At least die lesser times. My point is people need to feel that their time is well spent - be it by rewards or excitement of meeting an achievement. But if the game leaves players empty handed because of failure, they becomes uptight elitist. Once everyone is happy, communication ensues.
The word "Challenging" is a problem. It is something that means different things to different people. Requiring open world players to adopt raid players mindsets and abilities isn't fair to either side.
David Goggin's is a good example for how overcoming struggle, makes you a better person. The problem in gw2, is that most of the game has coddled players so much, that when confronted with challenge, the divide between the two communities has separated it so hard. It should be hardcore players, helping newcomers overcome challenge...if the hardcore players are tucked away in the corner of the game they never interact with the people that need it! That's always been the problem with the interaction between everyone in the game but casuals have ALWAYS denied changing the way the game works that might actually facilitate group based gameplay.
@@NightmareCourtPictures i only bought it for the casual part. i have no desire to do any kind of hardcore content. if i want to play harder content, i will do it in a game, where it actually matters. doing it here is a waste of time.
@@kimrasmussen7188 When you are confronted with a challenging PVE Scenario, then it’s hardcore players that get you through it and then you pass on that knowledge to the next generation of new players. That’s the issue with your mindset right…”me me me nobody else matters.” Yet here you are playing an MMO.
Biggest issue in meta Dragons's End, is the time limit of final boss fight. I beated boss with group of players, with 6min time rest until failure and without typing any word from anyone into the chat, but I m still losing with group of players with/wtihout commander what type ppl tips, what must do for succesful finish the event _(and no toxic ppl, writing in the good way)_ . The boss fight is great, I love it, its hard, it have great music, it have great mechanincs, great tether with story, I m glad for the event even if I lose, but time limit is awful - honeslty, it is laziest version of setting difficulty on any content, because you make from fight pure dps check, with no space for correct from player mistakes. Losing battle _(with no reward)_ , when boss have 20%hp just based on time, is so bad, when you take in consider milion pre-events before you even start with final boss fight.
this basically forced all the supercasual players into the meta. no one wanted them there. the good and average players didn't want them, because they didn't deal any damage (at least 5k dps with the 25% buff is nothing) and the casuals didn't want to even be there. so yeah. bad idea.
I feel like people who are defending dragons end, are partially doing so because they want anet to keep making this kind of higher difficulty content. That they (myself included) feel that the community needs this kind of content and said content could be a gateway into strikes/fractals/raids. I want them to keep making this kind of content but the way it was introduced to the wider more causal player base, with very little build up and preparation for that wider player base is where the biggest miss step was. Anet needed to have the previous metas ramping up in difficulty and complexity so it's not such a jolt when people try dragons end. They also need to do a better job of teaching the principles of the game and upcoming meta mechanics in areas where players can not avoid learning them. Why not have the wisp phase in a story step? That way most of the players will have at least experienced it and have a basic understanding of what to do.
Anet does not need to ‘teach’ people. You are telling me that it’s 2022 and people still don’t know how to google or RUclips? There are tons of guides out there which may be better than the ones that the devs are going to make. Casual players are just not putting in the effort to improve. Instead most of them just want free stuff or easier ways to get the items they want. Nothing in this world is free. If you want something then work for it and that is what most casual players lack. It also reflects how they are in real life. Just a bunch of lazy and stubborn people who keeps complaining and not wanting to do anything to improve. It’s not that hard with online platforms these days just a simple google search can be a huge difference to improve. It’s like learning a new skill set in real life. Effort has to be there else it will be the same.
@@androlitas Really? You're going to lump every casual player in the game as "Just a bunch of lazy and stubborn people who keeps complaining and not wanting to do anything to improve"? That's sooooo enlightened and productive to solve the division between the two parts of the GW2 community (NOT). Hey Mighty Teapot, here is your first person to qualify for your permanent ban from all of your social media accounts.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 just like how casual players generalised most experienced players as elitist it’s the same concept here. I led at DE multiple times and most of them failed. I have 50 people in my squad with around 20 heals and boons. The rest are Dps meaning I have around 25++ dps peeps. Everyone is proficient in the mechanics as we passed almost every mechanics and very little people died and we still failed so what was the problem? It was dps. Lots of people messaged me to tell the squad to play legit builds as that was the problem. I was hesitant at first but I’m then I did what they said. I’m the kind of person where you can play any build you want but do your role e.g dps do decent dps. Sadly out of the many runs I commanded if have only about an average of 12 ppl doing decent dps or better and the gaps between dps are huge where majority of the people do 2-4K dps meaning I have lesser than 50% of my dps doing dps. I told them to change their builds because it was not working out and many of them just called me an elitist. Point proven here. They just don’t want to change even when simple advice are given.There is already proof here. People in the comment sections asking the event to be needed. Then question them. Is the event not doable? Have people cleared it? Devs nerfing the event only gives people the easy way out therefore there is no reason to improve. Same concept in real life. If you want something work for it if not just give up on ur dreams. It’s that simple. The fact is that lots of casual players ARE lazy and refuse to take advice that is why for so long many metas still remain hard even after many years e.g dragon stand . If people want this event to succeed do your part and don’t leech off from groups. It’s not that hard to improve with the amount of things you can search online. Sadly I am the kind of person you need to keep the game alive. You give people the easy way out and they just play the game for a few weeks and stop playing after that because they achieved their goal quickly. That is one of the mistakes the devs made. It’s like negotiating with terrorist where they keep asking for more. Like I said if you don’t want to put in the effort then just forget about the turtle. Simple like how it is in real life too. How is that bad? For the part where most people are lazy and stubborn you can already see the proof in the comment section. If you choose to be blind go ahead.
@@traveling.down.the.road56we commanders are just trying to help people to complete the event and when we tell people to change they just call us toxic and elitist. Teapot is already a victim. So many people called him an elitist. So many that he has to make this video. Point is proven that most casuals just don’t want to improve and just leech off. The ratio for experienced players to causal players are so big that no matter what we do the division will always be there. That is why we give advice for people to get better and they can do it on their own too by searching online but they chose to be stubborn. As long as they don’t want to put in the effort it will remain the same forever. We experienced players are trying to fix the division by giving advice and helping others but the ones who are actually trying to divide us more are people like you. Sadly you failed to see this and just ranted without thinking so a piece of advice for you. See the bigger picture and think before you talk.
@@androlitas neither of your two replies to my post have anything to do with what I wrote. You are right about one thing though, one of is blind to the real problem.
They shouldn't have changed the Guild Wars 1 multi-guilds system, that was a ball drop. Guilds with different interests and personalities being united under a larger loose guild, it was easy to stay on friendly social terms with different types of players, and easy to get help and tips if you were trying to get into new aspects of the game.
I enjoy the fight as a whole, the only thing I dislike is soo-won being able to spam swap/tail and if she does it so many times, you fail (even if you do everything perfect). If they add cooldowns or less priority (like they're planning with tail on the upcoming update) should help
I play mostly solo, those who invest 100's or thosands of hours tend to be toxic, new player growth should be encouraged, this means having a thorough in game guide, manual on how things work or are interrelated. For most MMO's you learn by asking veteran players questions and most are responsive, but not when there is alot of questions. Guild Wars 2 strength is its solo play, many cannot commit to long group, raids, dungeons, etc. I play for the adventure, scenery, the wow effect of landscapes. A games survivability is in number of players, not complaing hard core players. There is often a mad rush to level up in MMO's at expense of the journey and being considerate of others in dungeon runs etc. Believe me as a tank in ESO 1700 hrs, I've had many bad experiences, it's a game, but for some it is their life valuation. I like running into events in GW2 and spountaneous team play, helping each other without expectation of perfect play. I love Guild Wars 2, but beginner things need to be expained more. A newbie will stay with the game if he is helped in learning the game, and I don't mean how to move , here is inventory, needs to go beyond a 10 minute tutorial. Thanks , its a great game.
I would say in my experience part of the problem GW2 has is that leveling dungeons are mostly dead. And at least in my experience when you do manage to get a group they're filled with experienced players who want to tear through the instance and don't treat new players well. I have horror stories that have left me not wanting to run any dungeon in GW2 at all. So without those leveling dungeons that help new players get a taste of group content and all the mechanics you've mentioned the place where players can get that experience is gone.
Here here. I'll never run Orr, AC, or CoF. I'd rather jump on a sharpened stake then deal with the people that tend to frequent those places.
And this is really, really sad. I've ran all available dungeons for the 8/8 achiev (I ran one and said "might as well finish it, can't let this achiev be 1/8 forever). Do they drop LUCRATIVE EPIC REWARDS? No, not really. But they drop currencies for decent armor/wardrobe, currencies for Runes (needed Ascalonian Tears for my QHFB Runes) and the story is there as well, which most players pretty much miss out on. They never find out how Destiny's Edge comes back together for example, it's a real shame and a total shitshow from a storytelling perspective on Anet's part and the community's part as well.
Up the rewards. Up them hard, make these dungeons lucrative (Anet). Players - don't be dicks, we don't need a 6min speedrun of Citadel of Flame and we sure as hell don't need epic fucking cheese to get through Honor of the Waves in .1sec just because you can't be bothered to not stand in the red circles. It highlights just how lazy and mechanically inept the sweaty nerd tryhards are, the moment they have to do mechanics they instantly die (I run a heal build, I've witnessed their "skill").
@@spirog1732 It boggles my mind how a community that in my experience is so helpful and generous in most Open World content can turn so viciously toxic the moment they step through a portal. It really is like Jekyll & Hide.
By the time I quit in 2014 (the slow motion event of season one just killed it for me, I thought season two was going to be the same), dungeon groups were advertising, especially Arah, Berserker or GTFO, and asking for mesmers so they could skip portions for faster runs. So when I came back to the game in 2018 during season 4 I naturally thought, I have to gear up all of my characters in Berserker or I wont be welcome in any group.
@@Shadamehr100 That's the trick, they moved on to full Viper.
I thought the mini-bosses in the story were pretty good stepping stones. I never thought I could do Raids in this game but after EoD story I gave them a try and passed them on my 2nd or 3rd try
Seconded. Encountering a trail version through the story mode givesd you more confidence to try the real thing, since you won't be going completely blind, and some mechanics carry over.
I would really like to talk to teapot about the average GW player perspective. Please reach out if you'd like.
Though, some of these harder fights in story missions are why my wife and thus shortly afterwards me gave up this game.
She really was into the story of the base game. When we started out, the worst fights got nerfed already, so she was able to pull through. But when reaching the living story, the experience was very binary: one evening the story was all over an area, run here, run there, kill stuff here, kill stuff there... and nothing ever was really challenging. So in the area where you could get support, everything had very basic mechanics, no challenge, etc.
Then the next evening we got into one of the instanced parts of the story. And after playing there for an hour, the end of the instance had a boss. With multiple mechanics which we had to figure out. Where a casual player like my wife just spend most of the time dead on the floor, which is not exactly fun gameplay.
Each time this happened, the "now i need a few days of break from the game" of my wife got longer. Till we gave it up completely. As there are options out there, which do it much better. We by now are in Elder Scrolls Online. Where any of the story is beatable with reasonable effort.
Yes, the bosses at the end of a story might also have two or three extra mechanics to pay attention to, it always is designed to lead you to know the mechanics in advance and is built that even a weak player can pull through in a few tries. The same is true for group content, anything can be done by a group of rather casual players in normal difficulty... but you can also do it in veteran difficulty, which really ramps up the challenge a lot.
That's just much better design: all of the games story content can easily be done by casual players, while all the really challenging content is very optional. While GW2 just drops some "you may not pass" boss fights into the story of a casual player. It's a reliable way to drive away casual players who merely want to enjoy the story.
essentially they took it from FF14 who does it since ARR. there ARE raids that are VERY easy BUT also part of the main story. and you team up do them and see "WOA its not that bad." then you challenge yourself because you want this shiny new glamor item and you see you can do that next level, but it takes a bit to long but instead of buying it with money the community invites you to try the harder difficulties AND BAM people are suddenly doing ultimate and savage difficulty gettin their glamor in 2 weeks
Raids get easier with each expansion bcs anet busts especs while bosses remain the same. If you did raids in hot era, you would know the difficulty of them.
I think ALOT of problems chould be fixed with a LFG rework. Asking 50 randoms to make a organized group with the current lfg system is asking to much for the avrage player from anet. Imo. Want to make a organized 50-man squad? Use this lfg tool. Just want to make a quick 50-man squad use that lfg tool. Also make it so u can "make a new map instance" and reserve spots for squad members. Then they can make hard metas. Or just make it so the faster u beat the meta the better the reward.
LFG *seriously* needs a total re-work. It's so disheartening as a solo pve player to see like 20 maps running meta, and every. single. one. is full. Even if squad slots are only like 8/50 full. I know an easy solution would be to just organise the meta on your own map, but LFG and squads need to be improved ASAP.
True, i even think a old school style drop down menu with all map instances for people to chose would help, something more sufisticated would be very welcome also, LFG and map instance selection is very important on mmo for many reasons.
I would be hesitant about allowing people to make their own instances as that could cause some gate keeping that we already see in raids with LI requirements and KP. Also it goes against what open world events are supposed to be which is you go in which you teamup with strangers to achieve a goal. Also I can imagine it would be a technical nightmare to allow everyone to just make their own 50 player instance.
The current LFG shouldnt show groups were the current commanders instance is full.
@@wiblet imo it would help a lot that a squad, that is on a full map, gets removed from the LFG tool. Would save all of the randoms a lot of time getting into organised maps so they can learn how the meta works instead of getting left in the cold because all maps are full. Typing "might be full" doesn't help a lot (and I haven't made sense of that either tbh)
As a semi-casual who occasionally likes to push himself into harder content, i have an appreciation for both sides of the argument. I never got angry at players who beat this event, rather its the opposite, when i see such videos I think, this CAN be done. I haven't gotten into the right map yet, but over time the winning strategies will pass from player to player, and probably ANet will make a few adjustments, and eventually the 'right maps' will increase in number, and by extension, my chances of finding one will increase. I truly appreciate pioneers like you who discover how it can be done, and then share it with others. Because THAT is how we beat this.
A lot of people may not remember, but it was the same when Tequatl was first revamped, for like the first week players were really struggling, there was a tone of toxicity, and an entire guild was created just to beat it and teach others. Players learned how to beat it, then ANet did a few nerfs, and now its easy, but it was once a nightmare, and we overcame it. We can do the same here.
@Neen Alladeem it not only can be done, it has been done. What i was saying is that it will get easier over time due to players teaching other players how to beat it and probably a few mechanic tweeks if not a nerf. Its not a contradiction because both can work in tangent. If Anet improves the structure, and players improve their strategy, its a win-win where we meet in the middle.
Something I think is a really good addition in EoD is the Heart that has players use Field Combos, Bar Break mechanics, and meaningful Dodges. I think Anet recognizes they haven't done a good job instructing players on core game mechanics and perhaps expected every player to go outside of the game to learn about them. Now they just need to figure out a way to do it sooner than EoD which is a hard ask as it would mean going back to Core Tyria.
Understanding core mechanics is only part of the problem. The actual mechanics during the meta are sometimes actually very hard to see coming when there is a full area. VFXs and framerate and visual/audio noise to just too much to a large group to handle on a regular basis. You can understand the mechanics, but still fail because everyone has to understand AND execute those mechanics well. For an open map, that's too much to ask. That's the problem with open world content.
@@mokahtgs I haven't played EoD more then the starrt of story to get some new Elite skills unlocked on two characters, but from my experience with larger meta in this game it is really hard to see what is going on with all those VFX and as fast there is larger group of players FPS will also take a dip which make large scale battle less about executing right action on the right time.
There is also the problem with communication as one have to use third party apps like Discord and know what commander is using for getting group to know what command that is given and to who in your group.
This type of game play sound more to fit MightyTeaPots way of playing as one that does RAIDS and such things, but it doesn't work with players that want to do content that offer flexibility like Bounty Hunting did for PoF. Random player could work together and actually do stuff which also lead to more interaction then forced gameplay in groups which also demands high level of coordination and knowledge of game mechanic (position, boss mech etc).
This was a wake up call to me and how I’ve slacked throughout much of the game due to how easy a lot of the events were, but when I started end of dragons I realized I need to go back to the basics, and most of all start spending time learning rotations for my reaper and firebrand…
My PC really has issues at the Dragons End events. Everything else in the game works fine for me, but that event and the massive amount of players in it make it almost impossible for my PC to handle.
fun fact: My girlfriend and me thought those mechanics were new in EoD because they were introduced there.
Teapot,
I'm just a random that occasionally shows up in your videos, but I wanted to extend to you my sympathies for the unfortunate scenario that you find yourself now. What followsbelow, is the body of an open letter I wrote to Sneb on his video addressing the toxicity. And , I wanted to at least share my isnights:
I won't speak of any of the mechanics that I would like to see or some other changes that could be useful for that particular meta, that's really not even the point of this whole issue - it's just the inciting incident around the greater turmoil of the community ripping itself appart.
Just like you, I'm an old veteran from Guild Wars 1 who passed onto guildwars2 since bettas even. I've been along for the ride since 2012. Slowly over the course of the games lifetime I've witnessed some significant departures within the community as sub-communities have been established around each game mode. Specifically, WvW, PVP, and PVE as the larger groups. For the sake of this writing, I will just focus on PVE.
I believe that the main culprit behind all of this is that familiar word that you used in your video: expectation. The overwhelming majority of people who play Overworld content, that is to say any Dynamic and meta events across non instanced locations, do so at their leisure. And really, "leisure" is the key word here. People at the start of the game who played dungeons departed from that more leisurely activity, and entered into something more structured, something that demanded more than their non-dungeon skills. This community then went on to raids and fractals to continue feeling that rush. The rest of the community had different levels of Engagement with the many metas that have arrived since core. At the introduction of living world, I would say that that is where some more difficult fights began.
Finally, enter Heart of Thorns. The divisions prop up immediately. The expansion is immediately vilified for having an immense jump in difficulty that did not have any real series of trampolines to lead up to it. Now, I'm one of those people who enjoyed the challenge. I was familiar with combat, I knew my classes and my skills. I, like you, did a lot of work in those early days to help other members of the community and my guild get through content. In an effort to not alienate the overwhelming majority of the player base, arenanet decided that it was best to reduce the difficulty of those expansion mobs and events.
Dragon's Stand used to only pass by the skin of its teeth if it ever passed it all. Now, people might get a little annoyed that they can't do a single burn, but people ultimately know that it will succeed - perhaps 8-9 times out of 10 [Gerent too].
And let's be frank, Heart Of Thorns is still more difficult now, even after the Nerf compared to core Tyria. PoF has some significant metas too, the most challenging being Serpent's Ire - which, as far as I'm aware, is dead content.
I'm pointing this out only because there have been attempts made by arenanet to show that some more difficult content can be put into the game. What I have only begun to observe on this moment of reflection is that it's usually rejected by the majority community.
Just like you, I think that this meta is a masterpiece on multiple levels - but somewhere along the line arenanet failed to play the part of the shepherd for their community and lead them to doing more "stepping stone" content.
As far as the community is concerned I circled back to my earlier comments regarding the splits that have happened within each subgroup. PVE players still complain, vociferously even, that they have to go to World versus World for their gifts of battle. World versus World players, rightfully complained that there is a disparity in terms of loot compared to what PVE players can Farm. PVP players complained that their game mode has been left in a similar state of stasis as World versus World, though they are more financially compensated for their engagement with the system due to the ranked chests. And now, after years of slow-burn resentment, this tension has come to a head.
I can't tell you the number of times I have mulled over in my head the desire to turn my little personal Guild into a sort of Teaching Guild - one that people join because they're either new or returning players. It would focus on learning how to read the language of Guild Wars 2: Stats/attribute overviews, damage types, dodge evasion, profession mechanics, the infamous CC bars, and more. I thought this because I had the sneaking suspicion that the game did not do enough by itself to introduce a basic knowledge of its own systems to its community. The people who are naturally curious, the people who naturally want to find these systems don't need an Guild Banner Ad in map chat for this - they're already taking the initiative. The problem begins there as well - those people leave the orbit of the "casual" citizen of GW2 and I must sadly report, appear to be holding a measure of disdain for these players who now, after 9 years of playing excellent quality, /yet still liesurely/ content, have to be churned and burned by this monolith of an open world event. The shock of this sudden Cliff of difficulty is too much for the general Community to bear, and I just hope that some sort of Anet community address will come soon.
Don't want to make it seem like I'm explaining this to you as if you don't know those things. But, sometimes it's important to have that obvious retrospective laid out so we can see how we got here.
--------
Thank you for what you do, and I appreciate the time you might take to read this random YT comment-turned essay.
My best,
FrigginPaco
Wholeheartedly. I played as an openworld pve player running around and had the expectation that that was the game. The game fails to communicate the difference on several levels. I joined a guild that ran daily fractals and played with them. They never judged but eventually showed me that I wasnt understanding fractals and needed coaching. Its hard to communicate the personal growth Ive had in GW2 because it came in phases of picking up information that I didn't have before and trying it out.
I still play more casual to the point that Icebrood Saga really burned me out of the game between strikes, story and rewards. I felt the rewards/mastery tracks lackluster, the story was a weird jump in difficulty between mobs and bosses rather than consistent and strikes were not something i was interested in playing with randoms over the few times my guild ran them. EoD I am holding back judgment until I finish the story but it has felt leagues better than IBS.
*I do personally love the Dragons End meta event for the challenge it provides.
The core of this issue imo come from the lack of control you have in the players that can and will participate in this meta, it doesn't matter how good communities or guides and videos are if you get a lot of people that don't watch or participate in them , you can't expect or demand players to have certain knowledge of an open world event when they could be just passing by and happen to participate in it, specially in a game where "playing alone together" is so common, this happens in all mmos and that is why in most of them this "higher" knowledge is only required in closed instance where you can control who gets to do it.
I see both Teapot and Muks content so in some way I can see where both sides are coming from and I think a good mid term can be achieved by Anet on this but players need to give good and constructive criticism on it.
@MightyTeapot I feel like you are still missing one of the biggest issues with this whole thing:
You can’t have high end challenging content in an open world environment where RandomNoob3821 is just tinkering around the map and not really contributing in any way. Things like this need to go into their own instances where the people that join the instance are there to do that exact content.
Putting something like the Dragon’s End meta event into a zone where people are trying to do map completion, gathering resources, story steps, or others just simply trolling is NEVER good game design. Other MMOs learned this years ago and I had thought Anet did too. Apparently not.
Competent devs do not take the high end difficult content and put it into the lowest tier content available in the game (aka, open world). That is simply a recipe for disaster, just as we are seeing it now.
This is a good point. Some of us seem to want to make this about hardcore vs. casual, when part of the problem is simply poor design. The marionette is a great example of purely awful design. 5 lanes, each having to wait for the preceding lane before having their turn. Then it splits so that the entire event can fail if just a tiny portion of the raid fails. In the process, the event requires even more waiting around only to fail and leave everyone empty-handed. Even though the event itself is pretty cool and has definite merit, the design completely ruins it.
The Dragon's End meta also suffers from poor design. The event itself is good, especially now that they addressed the RNG "bug". But the fact that it is designed to require an extreme amount of prep (pre events, stacking buff, 30 minute organization timer) on an open world map is the problem. They should have realized that this wouldn't work and that it isn't conducive to replay. It simply requires too much time and organization of people who are there for different reasons. This should have been instanced content to cut down on time wasted and ensure that the people who are there are there because they want to participate in this event.
@@HardcoreCasualGW2 exactly. They are basically relying on the fact that anyone that’s present in the zone is there specifically to do the event and nothing else. In addition to the fact that they expect everyone in the zone to know exactly what to do from start to finish…..
Other players not being on the map is not actually a big deal because the event scales! I've done it with less than 50 people because as you say some players are just going around doing other things but the scaling tech made it work out for us in the end (although the low map cap is a bit scuffed lol)
And open world can be tuned so you can have a mixture of experience levels and still get the job done as long as the group is decently coordinated overall which I think is good, it provides some accessibility to more challenging content and introduces players to collaborative concepts!
That's why scaling exists, the individuals not participating in the meta event do not effect it in the slightest. The largest issue with GW2 is that even the hardest CM content is average-slightly above average in mechanical difficulty in every other MMORPG so saying some people cant do a "hard meta" like this is just people refusing to learn, not a single group of mine has failed when in comms, in subgroups and no one 111 rotating or AFK. Its a hard ideology for GW2 players to grasp but I'm glad the conversation has started and people are waking up
It's interesting to see someone advertise not only their own fundamental misunderstanding of how things work, but do it in a tone that implies they think they're better than "RandomNoobs". You are literally showcasing the real problem; it's people like you, blathering misinformation, to inflate your ego, and detract from other players. /facepalm. I feel kinda sorry for you.
Thank you for teaching this meta and rallying the community. I, as a casual player, love that TripleTrouble, Dragons Stand/End, Tequatl, Marionette exist. I don't always do them but it's so fun to take on that challenge when I wish too. Tough fights existing are good for the game. I'd personally rather see difficulty settings and instanced stuff (challenge modes), however outside content can certainly be stepped up. Fights actually having a chance to fail and not being garenteed loot pinatas can instill a sense of accomplishment. These harder fights should have better rewards for the time and challenge invested. Dragon's End may be too much for a few reason. 1)Meta only Maps take away some of the exploration. While doing the story and completing the map I felt bad I am taking a spot of someone who would actually be participating. 2) Personal accountability. In a map where you can't choose who you party with having one person be able to throw the fight for 49 other people is awful. Either on purpose or just by being new people can ruin this event. It sucks either way and makes people not want to do the event. 3) Rewards. Personally I don't care about the turtle. However 100% of the rewards being after the final fight sucks. All or nothing makes a tough event feel unrewarding. The best stuff should be at the end but like Dragon's Stand rewards are spread out over the map. Each lane gets pods/chests at each checkpoint. Something like that should be for Dragon's End. Big chest and vendors or whatever at the end is fine but don't leave people with nothing that clear the pre events.
Those are my biggest issues with it. They already partially adjusted the 1 person troll thing with the green circle change and are looking into rewards. I look forward to seeing what they change and take this event on again and having a satisfyingly tough but rewarding fight.
I REALLY hope dragons end becomes the most profitable thing to do in this game. Because then everyone will be VERY committed to learning it. That's where the money is, it's hard, it's fun, good to commit and learn.
I agree if th gph is good then 2 hours is a good investment and people will want to learn, there will be plenty of people who still don't care but they can get their turtle the other way when the next patch comes out
Also it's a good event to push players to learn certain game mechanics.
YES YES YES. That's the ONLY thing that's missing here. Good rewards. It's the only thing that drives people to do mindless metas like octovine,chak gerent and drizzlewood
Guild Wars 2 was always shit at rewarding the players vs time & skill invested. Drops is GW2 just suck absolute ass in general
i hope it is profitable for another reason. that reason being after the current surge of new players wanting to get the mount events like these usually die out somewhat. making it take even longer for those who get it after 6 months to a year the event has already been out. this is how i felt in WvW not playing when the warclaw mount came out and several months after i got back into the game. everyone zerging had the warclaw and left me in the dust because i didnt get it when everybody else did.
My biggest issue was "Ping LI"
and being insulted in UNranked pvp.
We just did it with a nice group for the first time, it was so great to finaly did it, the open world game need thoses «HELL YEAH» moments. Meta event just need to be well balanced
you mean people asking for LI for dragons end specifically?
@@ZeeDrakon yes
@@ryderrr08 for all those Kp/LI people i have my trusty chat tool :)
What Li? I see it pretty often
Hei Teapot, sorry to hear about your experience with the community. I’m a casual player (not because I don’t care or don’t understand mechanics, but because of the limited time I can put into playing) I watched your video explaining the meta, found a squad on your Discord and beat it on the second (organized) try, I had a really good time and looking forward to doing it again. Thank you for your patience and a huge thanks to all the people who put time and effort into organizing groups and teaching ppl. There’s value in that which goes beyond maximizing enjoyment of one’s gaming experience.
This is weird, because for GW2 communities, it is a big “clash” and a big deal, but for other MMOs, it’s like the standard everyday ambiance… actually, it’s even worse than this, for some.
The meta seemed to have learned from Dragon Stand, but forgot everything that made it great. Dragon Stand had events and skill application related to the finale lane push and Mordremoth himself. Dragons End taught you nothing that you need to be familiar with the final part to win.
I'm not getting into the conversation again because holy cow people have been so nasty about it, but just wanted to say thank you for putting in work trying to smooth this out as much as possible and I'm sorry to see how people have treated you, Muk, Sneb, etc. That new expansion energy quickly turned into a knife fight over a turtle, it has been really nuts lol I'm having fun though and have high hopes for the future!
Muk? He’s openly stated numerous times that he respects and appreciates Teapots opinions and never intended for any attack on teapot. I think you misread Muk quite a bit
@@CRWeaventure I think he was saying people treated [you, Muk, and Sneb] poorly; just a bad grammar parse :)
@@FellshardYT ohh I think you’re right 😬
@@CRWeaventure Happens to the best of us, and thankfully the interpretation's more charitable in this case.
Idk what they changed but the Dragon’s End meta is really fun, especially with a commander who knows how to do it. It felt like an MMO with a Zerg of players taking down a giant world ending Dragon that was actually difficult but fun and I only started about 3 weeks ago
In my opinion, core problem is ignoring regular dungeon content by Anet to make practice players game dynamics and being a team in terms of GW2 for end game content
Not everyone wants to play "end game content". Implying that people HAVE to do dungeons/fractals/strikes/raids is just silly.
@@petrikillos where exactly did you see him imply that everyone would HAVE to do this? goofy ass
@@jermu8706 i think its implied when he says Anet should use it to develop player synergy and group dynamics
Strikes are ANet's solution to this, and they're more accessible than dungeons.
Abandoning dungeons remains one of the worst executive decisions made by Anet in the history of the game and needs to be backpedaled.
Thank you. I really like that you care about and want more community-oriented play! I want the same! It's why I play MMOs! Your commentary about toxicity brought up some thoughts I'd like to share and, of course, hear any kind of feedback on!
Quick sidetrack: I love that you mentioned encouraging individuals to try to "understand where the other is coming from"!!! That is my definition of empathy! I actually wrote a book called Practical Empathy, heh.
Back to the point: Some prefer to change the speaker instead of the listener's choice in how they receive toxicity. I am with them at least in terms of: it can feel bad and cause stress to any community when people are "toxic".
General warning: At the same time, the more we attempt to sanitize and control at a systemic level (see RUclips censorship as one example), the more authenticity we lose, as well as allowing people the opportunity to handle being verbally attacked.
A spreading disease of emotional fragility: "You hurt my feelings" which places responsibility on the speaker and removes power from the listener. I like to ask people: Do you enjoy giving your power over others to manipulate your emotions? Here's an alternative: "That person said a thing that was pretty mean and I feel hurt by it. Hmmm why am I hurt? What underlying needs are not being met? I suppose my needs for respect, consideration, and understanding?" AND more powerful: "I wonder what needs they are getting met by saying that or what unmet needs they have?" But that would require willingness to experience discomfort in order to grow their self-awareness.
Brainstorming: I'd like to explore systemic changes around encouraging friendly behavior rather than discouraging toxic via censorship, reporting, etc. Example: some kind of easy systemic way (like a button) to "report/thank" a person for some way they helped you or something kind they said. It would show up in public chat. And maybe you get "social points" for expressing gratitude. You would know better than I fair ways those points could be used, if at all. I lean toward some sort of badge so all can see how "generous" you are, heh. I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on any of this!
LOOKING FOR GUILD for casual play, friendly but playful (even sarcasm is great), PvP, WvW, and chill exploration & consumption of PvE content. I feel like a newb, heh, but I do have a level 80 support-type character. Just created a human tank-type guy that is like level 8. I've not done any PvP or WvW yet in GW2 and really want to start soon. On NA server. SmilingMonkey.5812
Thank you for articulating what I've been thinking!!! How/where do I find your book?
Hey man if you create a guild, I want in. I'll message you in-game. I'm central time in texas
@@kylehoward2400 Thanks, Kyle! I'll respond to your in-game message. Maybe we can create a guild together that has the kind of values we want!
@@AprilBodner Thanks! YT won't allow me to put a link or even mention the site where I publish the chapters for free reading, even when I intentionally mis-spell! Private msg me?
@@scotter Yeah I think they don't want people leaving this site :( I'll message you.
Teapots really do have an unusual shape.
Well what’s magical is they can have different shapes but they’re all effective in their own way
Hey Teapot,
thank you for all the hard work you put into your content. I really enjoy watching your streams and videos. I usually don't comment on stuff but I wanted to thank you on that one and especially for addressing such an important topic to the community!
Much love
One thing GW does well for new players, is there are quests where you gotta rez people. So when I see other people down -- I know I should rez them. I know what the icon looks like, and I'm always trying to rez people.
But literally none of that other stuff is explained. In games like Warcraft or FFXIV, we knew of buffs like Protect or Fortitude. You'd cast it on a stranger as you passby, and then go about your business. I still have no idea how boons work. How do I cast them on people. How do they cast them on me?
by pressing abilitys that have boons in their descriptions and if its for more than just 1 Target ^^(sry if i missed the example even if you know how, just here to help)
You… you what? You don’t know how boons work when the skill descriptions give you the description of the boon, how long it lasts and/or how many stacks it applies, and how many targets it applies to? How is that the game’s problem? Just press the skill, see what happens, now you know.
@@borkguy Most players dont read even if they have no idea what to do. The game teaches almost everything via texts so its not surprising that these players get lost.
@@ciraxa i was lost and had to watch an 1.40 h video on my class's skills and stuff.. Before i watched it i thought that i understood some mechanics but after watching it i realised that there is a lot to learn
You can't use the siege turtle in raids or fractals or WvW, therefore it was created for the casual player. And yet, they locked the siege turtle behind a raid-like meta event that the casual player has no skill or desire to complete. That's why it's toxic. It's forcing people to participate in an event that requires a high level of skill and coordination to receive a reward that can only be used by people that don't have those skills.
Or it's gently encouraging people out of their comfort zones to attempt some slightly more challenging content?
@@MattAlbie Basically no.
This.
A thousand times, this.
It was created specifically for the casual player but locked behind a raid-like meta event and strike mission.
Both of which are content that casual players like myself have zero interest in, either due to lack of time to invest, lack of desire or interest, lack of skill, or straight-up lack of *ability* to complete them.
Myself and my gamer parents are a pretty good representation of the many different groups affected by this approach by Anet and all three of us have quit playing due to EoD.
I work 12+ hour work days and around 70-75 hours per week. I lack the time and emotional investment to play content that feels like a second job.
My mother, a competent gamer and far from lacking the skill to do these events, is even more casual than I am and just wants to have easy fun.
My father, also a skilled gamer who has beaten Dark Souls and Bloodborne is losing his sight and *physically* cannot accomplish tasks that so many mock, sneer, and laugh at and call "so easy, why don't you just X,Y,Z bro??"
My father was gutted he lacks the ability to play Elden Ring due to his sight and since their release(s) GW1/GW2 were accessible games that allowed the three of us to hop online together, have some fun, and relax.
Guild Wars 2 has turned into a grindy, toxic hellhole we've all lost interest in returning to.
If Anet does not realize that forcing players out of their playstyle creates division, this game is about to hemorrhage players.
Build bridges to other content, but do not force your playerbase to take them.
@@ShadowKain666 I'm sorry, but you're being toxic. You expect everything to accommodate to you and yours. Unfortunately, something was put in the game, and if you don't have the time/skill/desire to get it... guess what??? You don't get it. It's like that in life. And this is just a game. Either play the game, and do the things YOU can do, or find something else you can do.
I have sympathy for your situation and your families, but I don't think they should bend over backwards to make accommodations for you, or people like you. Honestly, if you're an adult, working that many hours, and gaming is your hobby, then enjoy the time you do have to unwind, and not worry about the things you can't get.
@@lifeb4game You'd have a point if this was the style of GW2 to begin with. Which is why you will never see me saying anything even remotely similar about Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc.
These games are focused on and cater to a specific type of player and that's a good thing. Every type of player should have some kind of content to enjoy and it's a good thing that games like the aforementioned exist for the high skill-ceiling players that enjoy extremely difficult content.
Guild Wars 2, however, was never this kind of game and I would argue that it *still* isn't. Up until recently, GW2 has made an effort to create different types of content for different playerbases. Is their approach perfect? No, not at all but it is a game that at least has such a wide range of content for players to enjoy. The first, and largest portion of that content *is* the casual open world.
*Full stop.*
*I'll say it again:* The largest portion of that content, with the largest portion of the playerbase, is the casual open world.
Adding in this kind of "git gud" content, and this kind of grindy gaiting to the *open world* in GW2 is *exactly* the same kind of decision that Dark Souls has avoided making - *to their games benefit* .
There will never be a Dark Souls easy mode, and *there never should be* .
The developers behind those games recognize their core playerbase and have taken the hardline stance to ensure that the core gameplay experience is not undermined by changing their game to appease a minority.
The casual gamer is not the minority in GW2. it isn't even **A** minority in GW2. The casual gamer is the *core audience* and unlike in a game like Dark Souls, most of the community you'll find is perfectly accepting of other types of content being present *within* GW2. It's a fairly diverse game and you'll find most of us are pretty okay with that. You've got your hardcore PvP'ers, you've got your WvW'ers, you've got your PvE commanders, your big-event guilds, your RP'ers, your Guild Hall decoraters and your trading post excel-spreadsheet crowd and more often than not we're able to coexist fairly peacefully.
Until Anet forces us into each other's domains, disrupting the natural flow of our respective environments. Anet's actions are creating toxicity, and while I respect your right to your opinion (and appreciate you sharing it) I do not even remotely agree that I'm being toxic and I think that you have fundamentally misunderstood Guild Wars 2 and its core identity.
A mistake those in Anet currently holding the reins are making to all of our and - more importantly - the *game's* detriment.
I know it's been a rough time for many. Kinda why I'm glad I've avoided the forums and social media a lot. I just want to say I appreciate your efforts Teapot.
Toxicity can’t beat us. We will continue to push the mission of community and bringing people in. This is a MMORPG not a RPG. We’re here to help people. We just failed to find the right way to deliver that message and mission recently.
Cept, the elitist people are the toxic ones? This is like saying anyone who wants the game to be a better game and have this meta nerfed are toxic, and the people who want the game to die, the raiders and elitist people who don't want the extremely bad meta nerfed, are not the toxic ones? Seriously, gw2 was a better game before EoD released, and untill this meta is nerfed into the ground, EoD is going down as the worst expansion to the majority of people who are sane.
@@Goremize there is actually lots of toxicity from casual open-world players too and that is important to recognize, and its evident especially in these times. Labeling all of us raiders as toxic elitist is what proves my point and what sadly many of u insist on without actually giving yourself a chance to improve and have open mind to learning. Not every meta needs to be easy, and trust me on this, *anyone* can learn basics of this game, which is the only thing this meta requires. Let one meta be a big, challenging content without asking for nerfs and insulting skillfull players out of whom many are willing to actually help.
the problem is the game, not the players, if you people saw others who play differently as the problem, and demand them to be fixed? then you're also part of the problem. so yeah toxicity cant beat you guys because you guys are causing it in the first place.
@@wishwisky8319 dude c'mon. We ALL sucked once(I still do hehe). And metas are a TEAM EFFORT in a "Role Playing Game". So of course roles are needed. Just do it at your own pace. Don't do the Meta right now. Come back to it once people got the hang of it and once voice comms become obsolete. Only simple instructions in map chat will be the way like doing Triple Trouble. I've been playing casually for 4 years and barely scratched the surface. It's fun to learn stuff at your own pace so don't force yourself to get a win RIGHT NOW when people still don't know how things work. Soon even us yellow and oragee runners can get this to a 100% win rate everytime. And Anet is listening so don't lose hope.
@@Goremize One thing I agree with Teapot here is that toxicity lies in all of us. When a player from a different game mode starts to have even the slightest interaction with a different type of player it automatically devolves into toxicity. Be it a raider or a casual. Nobody is simply willing to hear out the other without some kind of verbal abuse which is a sad fact of this community. People think learning is dumb, being good at the game is dumb but also being a casual is dumb. Don't you guys see the problem here? It's our pride
Funny how it reminds me of HoT and the end Meta in Dragons Stand when that first released. Players learned how to do it and Anet adjusted that meta. Back then the end game was the dungeons and players were not used to having to work together on such a large scale. The base game world Boss fights did not prepare players for map wide meta events that Hot brought us.
The main problem is agency. You have agency in a dungeon/raid/strike group. If you don't like the people in it you can kick them or not invite them. You don't have the option to do that for open world metas. It simply feels bad to fail and waste dozens of hours of time over no fault of your own and be able to do nothing about it except quit and wait for the next 2 hour cycle. This is why open world metas should never be scaled to be "challenging" or require "coordination".
Why does everyone feel the need of a world boss to have 100% succes rates? The best time of the game was 2012-2014 when there was no megaserver, no fixed time when bosses spawns but large spawn windows, and no lfg system so people had to do world bosses/temples with the people that were actually present in the map. Or they had to ask their guildies/people on friends list or ask someone to shout in map chat from LA. It brought players together because they had a reason to be together, everyone just helped eachother out when they could because otherwise, it failed, and when you would need help for something, you could do the same. And still, Orr temples were very prone to failure, especially Balth and Grenth.
Now people are all used to login to a map with 100 players when a boss is about to spawn, autoattack without caring about any attack pattern from world bosses (or even leech with 5+ alts), collect the loot and move on to the next one. Metas or world bosses are called a meta and a world boss for a reason, people should not be so entitled to whine about failing something and "missing out" on loot. There used to be a time when things weren't about the loot, but about the experience and cooperation to try and get something done. Failures were just part of what made the next succesfull attempt that much sweeter. But if you give people the choice to stay dumb, afk, or spam 1, they will, it's people's nature. That's why Dragon's End is the best meta since the teq rework, triple trouble and chak before all of those got trivialised by increased damage from new elite specs and condi overhauls.
And honestly, Dragon's End is fine if people just get their 20% damage buff from doing 10 events and use CC. One of my guildies was whining after her first try as well but she had no clue about the damage buff from events, the offensive and defensive enhancements or any boss mechanic. Like.. what do you expect? 2 days later when she properly knew everything, it was "the best meta ever". Like.. just put in some effort to know what you are trying to do and everything will be fine. If they are not going to adjust anything, in 2 months from now it will be completely the same as how chak meta used to be and will be perfectly doable with a small margin on a full map if people aren't leeching. But 2 months from now, they'll probably have increased the map cap and nerfed the boss down a bit so every single map will succeed. And what will we have accomplished then? Another map where people can afk or multibox for their free loot? Hooray for that.. -.-'
@@TeleologicalConsistency i feel the preevents take too long.
@@belgianht I think this describes the fundamental difference between the two generally opposed types of players Teapot is talking about here. The point of friction, as it were. You want exactly what they don't want. "Just get your 20% damage buff from doing 10 events" you say. Meanwhile the other side is thinking "You want me to spend 2 hours on an event and you also like the idea of a relatively high rate of failure? What's the matter with you!?"
I get what you're saying. More difficult content with greater time investment can bring players together to cooperate towards a common goal as opposed to simply showing up and getting loot. But is that the average GW2 player? Is that really what they want? I don't think it is and I'm not sure there's any way to reconcile those differences as they are fundamentally different outlooks on what the game should be.
@@HardcoreCasualGW2 this is the one right here. Not every conflict has a “centrist” compromise, and the idea that it’s a “win” if both sides are unhappy with any change is so stupid.
I've been saying for the longest time that gw2 is made to attract the casual player with there gear system but there other systems such as combat and traits are definitely not casual friendly
A few points to highlight: I) Time consuming of the Dragons End... totally agree, too much time spend. II) Reward: turtle is really not a good idea but a cool infusion will be a excellent reward for the event and more chests/gold (like 5 gold/day finishing). III) Organization: today, the rate try/conclude is low, but it remind me the days when ANET implemented the new mechanics of Tequatl when NA players need to enter TTS to complete the event and now, any group of pugs can do it with no organization in a map. I believe in time, ppl will learn how to do the End of Dragons event and it will be more casual than Tequatl (now). Actions like the Teapot videos and others teaching us step by step how to complete the event is very usefull. Thank you man for it. Be cool ^^
IIRC, they nerfed the new Tequatl after some time, hence why it takes no coordination to beat him now.
What you say about "no community" is SO TRUE. Many veterans of the game either scoff or make excuses for GW2's weak points, inconsistencies, and lack of UI QoL features. When new players such as myself critique these things, I get bombarded with excuses or condescending reasons why I should just accept the game's flaws.
I would not be surprised if many GW2 veterans have scared away new players who have valid concerns about the game. It's almost like they take critiques of the game personally because they've played for so long... My experience with seasoned players has been mostly toxic AF.
I'm sorry you have had toxic encounters with any GW2 players, but have to ask, was the toxicity you experienced within the game, or on Reddit, or the official forums, or comments to a YT video, or Twitch stream? The reason I ask is because I've been playing GW2 for over 9 years, and I've experienced very little toxic behavior while playing the game, and I mostly ignore any toxicity in social media, because there is always going to be those types everywhere on the Internet. It's a sickness of our times that too many people suffer from. People type things on a keyboard from the anonymous safety of their home or apartment, that they would never say in person (or at least I hope that most of them would have better manners in person).
I’m a veteran of the game, but I feel like if people let their loyalty to the game make them biased and unable to criticize bad points...that’s yikes. I love the game but still find many things wrong with it that should be changed.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 I've mostly experienced this when expressing my concerns on the official forums and Discord. That being said, it has happened in Map chat too, though particularly in Crystal desert when I made a comment about the Bounty system having no real tutorial or in-game explanation after accidentally triggering the Corrupted Facet to spawn when I got too close. I expressed that it was unacceptable to NEED out-of-game resources (the Wiki) to understand systems because the game itself does a bad job at it.
I was met with excuses that the Dev team is too small and noobs like me have no place to expect such QoL features... to just accept it, AND was also told that I should *always* check the Wiki every time the game introduces a system that I'm unfamiliar with.
It's that kind of mentality that will push away new players.. "just accept these glaring flaws like a good little boy, we veterans live with it just fine."
I've been met with similar-in-nature responses when expressing my frustration that there is no colorblind modes (which yes, I am red/green colorblind...) and also when pointing out inconsistencies or missing information from tooltips.
@@etchieSketchie thanks for your feedback and sharing your experiences. I’m sorry that you have encountered some bad players in gw2, but I hope that you’re finding enough helpful players to make up for the bad ones and you are still enjoying the game.
I will honestly never do a raid, fractal or dungeon in GW2. I just do solo and world content.
The toxicity part really resonate a lot with me personally, it's basically why I just... don't bother with Fractals and Raids.
I love both concepts and would love to do them more often, but every time I try to PUG for it, there's always those elistist-ass people who'll be unpleasant as all hell with you if you don't run Meta stuff...
To give you an idea, my main is a Spellbreaker, and I run most of the content with Soldier Gear, I use a 1H axe with shield along with a Greatsword. And I can't tell you how many times I got shit for running a "Tanky" gearset and a "defensive" playstyle, legit would get told that I was going to be a detriment to my team because I wouldn't do enough DPS... Meanwhile, in the same fractal, all 4 of my teammates are down, eating dirt off the ground while I'm the only one still standing, trying to revive them countless times because they would go down at every single sneeze the enemy would throw at them.
Like... I get it, people don't want others dragging the entire team down, nobody really wants that, but there are limits to the gatekeeping, especially when it's to the point where any builds that is somewhat off meta is being frowned upon by those "Hardcore" players who chose to be meta slaves. which is fine btw, you do you, but don't jump at people's throat because they don't run what YOU want them to run, let them play what they want and as long as they pull their weight, it's all good.
Pugging in this game is a health hazard I swear
There are raid bosses where tanking is toughness based.
Running Soldier gear means you´ll be the tank on those fights, while doing your other assigned roles (e.g. banners+dps).
If you can tank well it shouldnt be an issue, but if you dont you´ll basically make someone else play a worse version of their own build just to accomodate you.
This might lead to other players having to adjust their build too, ending up with a pretty bad comp and everyone being unhappy with their gameplay.
Please consider making your own groups and clearly stating that you´re running off-meta builds to avoid conflicts.
Beserker gear is super cheap, highly recommend getting some pieces to lower your toughness if needed.
Exacty all that dmg doesn’t mean anything if ur constantly down
thanks for calling this out. as a filthy casual only starting to step into endgame content, I also really want us all to unite.
I recently came back to GW2 after about a year's break and it seems to me that the "teamwork" culture that I liked before about the game has suffered greatly. I had someone vote to kick me from a fractal after the first time I messed up a mechanic. Thing is, it was the first time I had ever done that fractal and wasn't aware of the mechanic. Their first instinct was just to kick someone instead of trying to help them. That was the first time I had ever encountered that kind of attitude in the game. I've seen other examples of this kind of "intolerance" for lack of a better word since I came back but that's the biggest one that sticks out and I've seen similar attitudes when talking about Dragon's End. Commanders just automatically assume that people know the mechanic and if they aren't doing it then obviously its because they are idiots. The first time I beat Dragon's End was with a commander who actually took the time to explain and reexplain the important mechanics, and continue to call commands throughout the battle. I'm not sure why that's changed, but it makes me sad to see such a fun community to be taken over by toxic attitudes
You must have been really unlucky with the group if you joined a lower than T4 group. The low tiers are actually pretty toxic also, I've sometimes caught new players with 2k AP in T2 mouthing off yelling at people while they die 5 sec into the boss.
At the end of the day it's all just people. And we tend to remember the awful experiences more vividly. And Dragon's End really brings out the worst in people. It's not even Casuals vs Elitists. A lot of the times it's not even veterans that are shouting profanities in map chat.
A lot of vets also don't really explain, because we get flamed quite often. When I join a low fractal run, I ask if people want mechanics explained and it's always a slippery slope. Some want to know the mechanics but are too shy to ask or feel they will get kicked for it or something. Some will straight up call you toxic and attempt to kick you. So when I go into those tiers to help people, I really have to spare my own mental. That's why a lot of us want to do it through guilds so there is at least some level of social accountability.
Just because we play the game more, doesn't make us less human.
That said, vets are also quite toxic, although not everyone is as hardline as insta kicking. A lot of LFG adverts are really meant for experienced groups. If you do something on the last tier or challenge mode or join a group with killproof. Those are people that maybe have an hour to play and don't have time to deal with lost lambs. A big part of it is because those groups can spend 20 minutes filtering these lost people and explaining what killproof is. They are in a sense casuals themselves, because they cannot commit to a static group and use the exact reason of 'limited play time' for their behavior.
Weig has it right. You also get into situations with players who simply buy the commander tag because it's a shiny thing to stick over your head, but they have no idea what it really means to be a commander. Whenever we form a group in LFG, we are specific in the description so that people know if it's a training mission or a practice or whatever. We always ask if anyone is unfamiliar with the mechanics or has never done anything of this type before and we make sure to have fun and explain it to them and if we go in and people blow it the first few times, we stay patient and try to help them learn as well as have fun and to have the end goal of being successful. In the end, you get out of something what you put into it. These toxic yahoos boohooing about DE or mouthing off or try to kick you in fractals etc seem to be generally miserable people anyway and just want everybody else to be as miserable as them lol. To be clear, I am not referring to casual players here at all. Folks just want to have fun. Most folks, anyway.
try to mess up mythic+ in wow and see what real intolerance feels like :D
@@ZeDrakeful NAH NAH NAH, you are lying. The lower Tiers are where the teamwork culture hasn't been completely eroded. The high Tiers are where people go stupid mode. And, because the silent majority of GW2 players are spineless, lilly livered cowards who cant' stand up for themselves, the Veteren's always take advantage of that and bully them, kick them when they make a mistake, insult them, start singling them out, etc. I always argue with other veteren players consistently, over and over again. I have never seen any new or low tier player who wasn't willing to learn from me. I always take my time out to teach them the mechanics if they don't know. I will always say, Guides and Metabattle are stupid. If i have to leave your game to learn how to play it, then your game has failed. Those guides and builds were written by other players, so what gives them this divine knowledge? It's about learning and experimenting. SO the Veteren's get to enjoy themselves and learn while the newer players who want to learn the mechanics and what to do have to know it all already "Cuz there is a dumbass Guide" or get kicked cuz they wanted to play the game like a normal person. Also if the people in LFG don't have a lot of time to play, They should handle their responsibilities. Your lack of time shouldnt' be any players headache
Very well said, thank you for making this video! I've only put about five or six hours total into Dragons End -- and the way players on the map + lfg have been treating each other has really just made it difficult to continue attempting as someone who enjoys the game on a more casual level.
This is very disappointing. I've always known the GW2 community to be friendly and supportive, more so than most other mainstream MMOs.
I think the standard and expectations that were created over the years are the reason now why it hurts to see the derision and toxicity it devolved into, and why it feels worse than the toxicity in other games. It's like being slapped and insulted by the person who has always been nice nice to you, versus one that always treated you poorly. The latter you've come to expect it but the former... its like betrayal, unexpected.
Drawing up parallels with society, this is the risk we run into when we highlight individualism to the extreme, to the point we forget how to live in a community, and forego communication and compromises. Don't get me wrong, playing solo is actually one of the reasons why I like GW2, but when I join in to do group content, I want to do my part and help everyone achieve success. I don't do Discord (already in too many servers) but just tell me what to do and I'll do it to the best of my abilities. Directions, although boring to write, are always nice because it helps newbies know what to do and refreshes things for those who came back after a long period of absence.
Nice video! I only finished the story for the expansion a couple of days ago. I haven't attempted the meta yet. I used be a hardcore player in the past. But with GW2, I decided to be a casual one.
I didn't really engage in the systems and build craft of the game until Wooden Potatoes put out his series on Open World builds. So I made an effort to get the recommended gear, and use those specs. I'm not 100% of the way there, maybe 90% (gear-wise).
I saw Muk's video about the meta recently. This made me actually download the DPS meters. I haven't tried them out yet. But I intend to in the near future to make sure I'm at least pulling my weight when I attempt it.
I will agree to a certain extent about toxic communities, however I just can't take you seriously on 22:24 about needing to communicate better. After seeing your response to me when I specifically stated that within your last video, you didn't actually address the issue with design of the Meta itself, you turned an absolute blind eye to the actual problem of the meta itself and simply claimed that the playerbase is the "baseline problem".
I've also seen your response to someone on this video - and yet again - you didn't provide an actual "compromised" response, because when someone pointed out the flaws in your argument, you just said you disagree because "you didn't say this, that or the other" when to your audience, you clearly did.
That's not how you "compromise". I listened to your arguments on certain elements of the game, I agree with them to some extent (I would even agree that GW2 is hard to a certain level, but not in the same level you think it is), but yet again what you are doing in this video (for the grand majority of it) is attacking the community. Seriously, I would recommend you actually watch this entire video of the things that you've just said and really listen to what you're saying. I've enjoyed your content since they really helped me get through things in GW2. However with what's happening regarding the Dragon's End Meta event right now and how much of a debacle it is, I just can't see eye to eye with you because you're continuously avoiding genuine mistakes by Arena Net and not giving an objective response (if that's because you're sponsored, maybe don't make videos on the topic?). Instead you once again focused on attacking the community, which is ironic in a sense because at 30:50, you say that the community is busy attacking each other, yet that's exactly what you've done here. Sorry once again, but I just cannot see your perspective on this subject matter compared to every other topics you've covered because this is the one topic you intentionally avoid the problems the developers caused.
I directly attack all of the issues made by the devs in this video but also constantly on stream. And yes ultimately the fact that players have a hard time understanding the game IS the baseline problem. You can remove every single bad design element from the meta and people will STILL struggle with it because of that, I can't put it simpler than that tbh.
'I've also seen your response to someone on this video - and yet again - you didn't provide an actual "compromised" response, because when someone pointed out the flaws in your argument, you just said you disagree because "you didn't say this, that or the other" when to your audience, you clearly did.'
I don't have to let people misrepresent me and take me out of context, I say that I didn't say something because I didn't say it. I'm not going to compromise with someone who is twisting and distorting my positions.
I am critiquing (not attacking) here because there is a problem, a grave problem that's been going on for a very long time that has caused huge toxicity and will continue to do so unless it's addressed. Sometimes the only way to get something done is to actually criticise the players, sometimes we are at fault.
'That's not how you "compromise". I listened to your arguments on certain elements of the game, I agree with them to some extent (I would even agree that GW2 is hard to a certain level, but not in the same level you think it is),'
The average player does less than 10% of the damage of an experienced player, in wow the difference is about 50%, that's 50% vs 1000% yeah that's a pretty tough game compared to the competition.
'I just can't see eye to eye with you because you're continuously avoiding genuine mistakes by Arena Net and not giving an objective response'
Except when I do exactly that in this exact video.
'(if that's because you're sponsored, maybe don't make videos on the topic?). '
Really slimy accusation, and absurdly dishonest considering that I'm almost certainly the most critical arenanet partner BY FAR (except maybe jawgeous and brazil lol)
'Instead you once again focused on attacking the community, which is ironic in a sense because at 30:50, you say that the community is busy attacking each other, yet that's exactly what you've done here.'
I'm not attacking the community, I'm breaking down what I think is causing problems and critiquing what I think is going wrong. Critique is not attack.
I want to send you encouragement. Your analysis on the importance of community is correct. Your content is well presented and thought out. As a player, your gold tutorials have been instrumental in being able to understand how to get more out of the game and the gem store. This from an old Guild Leader that has been around since the beginning of GW2 and GW1. Thank you.
~Dalomar Grimm (Guild of Mercenaries and Free Companions [MFC]).
Just FYI, the catgirl game does have world events, and what they did in Bozja and Zadnor should probably be a model for GW2 metas going forward. The bosses that spawn there aren't zergable and have all kinds of mechanics and attack patterns that will wreck you until you learn them. However, you're incentivized both socially and by the game not to be bad because there's a death penalty and you need to party up, so ask your party if you can't figure a boss on your own. Hardcore players aren't left out either because if you do very well you might be picked up for a brutally hard solo event while others players can come and watch you fight it, and if you win everyone gets a buff and you get a unique mount. It was really fun and social world content.
To be clear: Anet has a much better game engine for world content, probably 100x more of it, and events that can scale over an entire map. But I've come to think Square might surprisingly understand better than Anet how to make good world content in an MMORPG, even if it's not the focus of their game. You can have innovative mounts with physics, gliding, jumping puzzles and rewarding map exploration in your open world and it's all very fun and cool, but that's not why you play an MMORPG is it? Breath of the Wild probably does all of that better...
And that "Catgirl-Game" does actually a really good job teaching it's players to recognize markers and what to do with them.
DCUO has dynamic events. STO. WOW. i think even SWTOR has one too, im not sure about that though
Great video regarding the underlying issues. It's been a long time coming indeed. If there was a difficulty ladder of sorts or players being made aware that content will be challenging when it drops. The problem with DE is rewards: I don't mind a mount being locked behind an event or challenging content, but make it known before hand maybe. Glad they are looking at the rewards and making adjustments for the players to get the mount in another way.
honestly... as much as it flies against the concept of a big community, there should have been a public and private version of the final meta. Much like the EoD strikes, where the story mode version is easier and lays down the foundation of what to expect from the strike version or Dragon Storm public / private modes. A Public mode with easier mechanics and a private mode with harder mechanics.
Now, I get what you're saying. The positivity that people CAN do this, is never bad, I firmly believe that about a lot of games but it's ramming headlong into frustration bolstered by *multiple* failed attempts. Positivity starting from a neutral point works better but this is positivity attempting to start from a heavy negative point.
lastly the turtle should have *never* been in that meta... and I'm glad to hear that they are putting in a second method of getting the egg, there's still the strike to do but 10 people is a bit, ok a lot, more manageable than 50 or so.
As for how to fix the community divisions, man I don't know.. odds are I've been gaming longer than most people watching this video (been gaming since PONG, and not the Atari version... the *ORIGINAL* PONG) and I've seen these divisions exist in each and every game that I've ever experienced where there is a community of players around it. Every. Last. One. I don't know if fixing these division *CAN* be done, but I respect you for trying.
You mean simply pub instance and private instance like Dragon storm, I mean that would work, right?
I'm always pretty torn. I miss the dungeons being relevant, but i LOVE the open world stuff. Always being there and not needing to be in guilds and know everyone to get something done is great.
Some of the meta events may as well be instanced or the map cap raised during them.
Last night we got screwed by the map cap and got booted a minute before the battle for the jade sea.
There's no reason to be torn. The game needs both. It has plenty of one and not enough of the other.
@@keinlanz yeah. I'm glad they're both there for sure.
I battled most of my anger at this meta by forming Training groups specifically stating they were intended to fail, but would carry new players as far as possible against the Boss. No one bickered, complained, and everyone adjusted and learned. They did the Green when they were too intimidated to do it because of their past experiences and we practiced. They were so overjoyed when they made it through their Greens. We still failed, but it was quite good despite it being made of fresh players with no raiding or meta experience.
The meta is doable, and cutting down on the Tail Swap while giving dedicated CC were the only two changes I had personally called for. Everything else is considered training for bigger things.
You, have done a great service to the players you might not even realise. I've seen so many (not majority, but a lot) of people complaining about how players "cant do this and cant do that and how this game is dead" (paraphrasing), without doing anything to try and change it. It's an effort and it shows character when someone actually does grab the chair, sits down, and explains stuff. I hope the players you helped with the meta are more enjoying of the game and are able to spread the good you did for them. I think only through that we can try to bring back th emore lenient and friendly vibes the game had in the earlier years.
bro you are the modern day Erwin Smith
Was a terrible idea to put the mount in with event, it divided everyone most people including myself once I finally get it I'll never go back. They ruined the end game content by doing this.
I don't feel confident on doing "hardcore stuff" even with my guild: the pressure on "know your rotation" "use x or y build" is just not for me, I just engaging with PvE content without needing to do stress over on how to be xtreme precise on how I press my buttons. I like hard stuff on PvE, I just don't like the vibe "you need this this and that to have fun"
Led this meta about 14 times with 10 wins. I don’t ask for builds, boons or dps. Only asking for for Discord as it is easier. Most of the players in my groups are casual players but we all have fun and kill that dragon. I guess I’m lucky and have not had any toxicity in my groups.
I have led this meta about 9 times and only 2 successful runs. You are just lucky you got lots of people who are doing their role or part in this event. When I organised I had a heal and at least another support for some subgroups. The rest were people who claimed they were dps. I had 50 people in my squad and another tag running with the remainder. From this I can say that I should have around at least 25+ people doing dps and the rest on support. Sadly no I only have like 12 people doing decent dps or better with the top dps being a huge gap away from the decent dps players and a huge gap from the decent dps with people who claim that they are dps but don’t do dps. We passed all mechanics and very little people died. Problem here was that so many of my dps were dealing around 2-4K dps that it became a joke. So out of my 25+ dps players lesser than 50% were actually doing dps. Why else would the event fail? Simple reason we lack dps. Just doing mechanics and being organised is not enough people have to also put in effort. Nothing in this world is free. If you want something then work towards it. Devs making the event easier does not encourage players to improve. It just makes them quit putting in effort because there is an easy way out and that is what is wrong about the game. People not putting in effort and the devs just making life easier for others making the game not fun at all. Nothing wrong about toxic people as what some of them say are true(like lack of dps) I was hesitant about them at first as I would tell them some people just want to go casual. But looking at the statistics, I will have to say they are right and people have to change. There are times where you go casual and times where you put in effort if you want to achieve something(like completing the event)
Hardstuck and Teapot's streams have been an integral part of me understanding the game better and improving my skill and enjoyment of GW2. That's all there is to it.
Same here. Ever since i joined their discord it feels like everything in DE became much simpler. I don't even need voice comms anymore
There are 4 groups of people, 1.those who know what to do and do it and are willing to help others to get it, 2.those who don’t really know but want to learn and are prepared to put in the work, 3.those who don’t want to learn but still want to do it, 4.those who don’t want to learn and don’t do it. IMO its the 3rd group that is detrimental to the game.
And maybe the third group is just doing what all that they can already and just wants to play and relax after work and instead gets oneshot by expansion enemies. Trying content again and again and again and learning by failing requires lots of time and energy (to stay chill) which some people don't have. Especially nowadays will current world issues that affect people.
@@rinart73 it’s a world BOSS, it’s not supposed to be relaxing :-) its supposed to get you hyped and challenge you. If you want to relax then there’s 90% of the games other content to go and do lol. The 3rd group seems to be spending more times on the forums/reddit/comment sections asking for it to be nerfed when its been proven to be easily beaten when the group pulls together and does what is necessary. (Where necessary means the basics of the game)
@@CERWINVEGAredRING I wouldn't call rotations basics of the game. As for oneshotting I was talking about not just EoD meta boss but various expansion story and openworld bosses/mini-bosses/groups of enemies. In ANY case oneshotting is stupid in any battle. It's too punishing and tilting. And 90% other games is kinda trash. GW2 seems to be the best MMORPG atm.
@@rinart73 you don’t need to know any rotations just press your skills… you don’t need to be benchmarking lmao. Punishing mechanics are necessary for ‘challenging’ content. If you don’t get one shot then you’re healed back up in 3 seconds and then its not challenging, as you can just stand there and press 1. Its also not tilting or punishing once you learn to MOVE out of the BIG YELLOW/RED floor xD It’s almost as if the game is telling you what to do without even learning :-) I also said 90% of THIS games content.. not other games. You’re basically saying 100% of this games content should be EASY and RELAXING because theres a number of players only ever want to do that level of content?
@@CERWINVEGAredRING "If you don’t get one shot then you’re healed back up in 3 seconds and then its not challenging, as you can just stand there and press 1" - This really depends on team composition. Plus wasn't Anet nerfing healing and self-healing recently? "MOVE out of the BIG YELLOW/RED" - Considering that bosses love to spray paint the floor in aoes there is no way to actually stay out of all of them, no matter how much you move and/or dodge. Additionally there is no indication which aoes are more harmful, so it's a guess game. Enemies and players visual effect clutter don't make identifying attacks and aoes any easier. I understand that community has greatly varying opinions on what's easy, challenging and super-hard. But in my opinion Anet needs to provide a bit more options in terms of difficulty setting and improve their scaling algorithms. I feel like they balance the game for people that play from the start and are fans of Dark Souls sometimes. Which is kinda wrong imo. I understand raids being hard. But openworld content (metas) shouldn't be super hard.
I really wish there was an easier way to switch build/stats and experiment with different builds and playstyles. I know legendaries exist, but getting them is painful. People craft their ascended zerker gear and leave it at that.
People need to be more open to just using exotic gear. The stat drop from ascended to exotic is 2% with armor, 4% with trinkets, and 6% with weapons. It's overall almost nothing, I raid constantly in exotic gear, and nobody says a word.
And you can get very easy exotic stat swappable gear all over the place. EoD introduced a couple new forms as well.
Gotta agree with Ryan here.
If you can't afford multiple ascended set use exotic sets. And also not just playing a dps class. We have been nerfed to 5 man targets which means the demand for support players is higher than it's ever been.
Although if your a raid/fractal player this is less of a problem in general.
Hard disagree with the two people that replied to you. 6% is not almost nothing, especially with Zerker gear. 6% more power, 6% more precision, and 6% more critical damage stacks up to much more than a 6% increase in overall damage.
Also, blanket statements along the lines of "I use exotics and never had problem" is part of the problem. For every person who says "No Ascended? No problem", there's ten more who say "No Ascended? No Service!"
@@chrispy_091 6% is just the loss on weapons. And I pretty much always have ascended weapons. 4% is trinkets, and ascended those are usually easier to get than exotics. And 2% is armor, which is the hardest to get, so I generally just tell people get exotics of those. So its not 6% across the board, its just 6% on the weapons, which doesnt result in anything close to a 6% drop in DPS. Teapot has also said that he wanted to start farming VB to give people easier access to stat-selectable exotic armor.
People telling people they have to run ascended gear are just overly gate-keepy. Unless you are doing fractals or trying to speed clear a raid, you DO NOT need ascended. My suggestion, try to get ascended trinkets and weapons, they are easier to get, and give the biggest bonus. Go with exotic armor though, its a tiny bump relatively and exotics are MUCH easier to get.
@@ryan2415 Oh, so it's actually a 12% loss on stats? And you say that's almost nothing? You just made your case worse bro (pretty sure overall it's more like 5 or 6% total difference in stats and depending on build, a larger difference in damage, but hey, you say 12% if you really want to).
As someone who has played since 2012 and had to live through the "zerker gear or kick" phase of GW2, and has to click through post after post on the forums of players whining about the power difference between exotic and ascended since it was introduced, you're full of it.
I don't think you mean to be toxic, and I know you aren't saying "get gud" what you are saying is "get organized." As a raider, I don't want to save meta events for raid night, and I don't want to have to hope that enough people are going to listen and engage in the meta to be successful. Players that are just playing through the story and play to do metas, don't want to organize beyond 'what dragon we doing next yo?' so you punish them cause they fail without organizing, and you punish us cause we end up in maps with people who won't do the meta. Content that requires coordination has a place... raids. If you want a hard version of this, you just make it a raid. Outdoor content shouldn't test your ability to get people to listen to you in chat, it just leads to the content having terrible clear times and getting nerfed. Challenge individual players and reward them accordingly. In some ways this is sort of an outdoor map wide dps check, but no one is specifically told how little damage they did to the right targets.
Indeed. If Open World content can be ruined by a small percentage of players, that's a flaw in the game. You can't expect people to learn all that stuff without being allowed to actually participate in it. They just want the turtle, not study for weeks and possibly pay gold to be allowed into an experienced group. And then there's a lot of people who are simply not able to organize into big groups.
It's one thing for raids and instanced action. It's quite another to do that in Open World content.
I'd say, if the group sucks at an event, not making enough damage, failing key elements in the fight, the game should nerf the boss dynamically, and then maybe also nerf the loot, and making it clear to them that this happened.
But don't let them fail over and over again, forcing pros to split off and organize privately in discords.
So you want gw2 to be like every other mmo with something to do in the open world, boring, mind-numbingly easy, and relegate the hard content to raids or some equivalent content? No. This is what leads to a lack of compromise.
@@borkguy there is a difference between mind numbingly easy and raid level difficulty. lmao. it's cool and all when some coordination is required. when pretty much everyone is yelling at players to leave the map, it's too much. it's still a game in the open world. elitism will just create toxic environments.
specially an event that locks an entire mount behind its success. that's just ridiculous. a legendary, okay. only a few people go after those. but mounts? everyone and their mother will continue to play that event.
@@borkguy I never said it should be easy. Getting lucky with a map of people paying attention and listening enough to potentially carry you if you do a terrible job is not a test of your skills. Like I said... outdoor content should test your personal skill.
I’m going on the same 😊😮
Just as an aside: I have a lot of respect for you personally MightyTeapot, and Mukluk (and many other content creators that do the following), for what you do to bring people together, and show them how to play together, and communicate with each other. That's my own personal principle as well: talk to each not AT, and work together.
As a solo player, I'm probably the problem. There's a lot of content I won't be able to access, and my quest for my first legendary is arduous in the extreme. However, that's a problem of me, not the game.
The reason 'you can do this, we believe in you, do this, this and this' doesn't land at all because you're telling people to abandon what they view as their playstyle. It's a small step from there to thinking you really mean 'get gud'. To communicate effectively you first need to speak their language. Organising and prepping isn't a solution for these people for any number of reasons; an attachment to an underperforming build, lack of playtime, anxiety in groups and or on VOIP, what they consider fun, preconceived notions of how the game should be played, skill levels, etc etc.
Minor critique of my personal experience with your channel:
Critique:
I like how in this you DO preface with your misgivings of the issues, and agree with a number of the points you make in this video about sub-community friction, but I also understand a lot of the friction that you personally are experiencing. In your DE guide, you start with A LOT of prep talk that comes off as naïve, Commanding metas will often work like herding cats, and many people playing through first time on metas and in open world won't HAVE a build to fulfill squad roles. Some of your word choice and pacing FEELS like someone accustomed to running CM Raids not understanding why the plebs don't get with it. Stating that it's possible because YOUR guild has a high success rate FEELS like glad-handing (Insert I'm Jerry Smith meme here), rubbing it in the faces of people who almost exclusively run pugs, and makes your entire guild feel like a bunch of CM Raid vets not understanding why the plebs don't get with it.
If you are thinking that people aren't engaging with the play, don't put yourself/your guild on a pedestal. DE is HARD for a standard player, it needs empathy to coax folks into it. Telling a player that has tried for 8-10 hours to get their turtle that they are just PLAYING wrong you should play like my GUILD here (which is how it TL:DRs to a lot of people listening to your videos) is a sure way to start a fight. Guild Wars 2 has a reputation for being one of the most welcoming communities for new players, but it seems like when they try to move up into higher levels people start requiring specific play methods and bashing people who don't conform, and a lot of that 'last kid to be picked for baseball' sensation starts happening.
Consider:
DE presents a great opportunity for a review of classes and specializations, make some buildcrafting videos, point out how stats are important to different builds (Like how no necro should ever be low on Vitality), and how a basic rotation would work for each squad role. As an example: Muk has a great starter Support Necro build in his (iirc) 'I didn't give you permission to DIE' video that does a great job explaining the positives and negatives of the build.
Mind your scripts a little more, acknowledge what struggle might befall each map (Even just a portion of the DE Guide stating "The RNG of the attacks can SUCK so be ready for any opportunity to break that bar with the acid breath" would have been a great aside) or build (This build is SOLID for DPS but you will MELT without a healer in open world). Acknowledge PERSONAL issues with playing, toxic positivity is a THING and it can be important to confirm that EVERYONE gets frustrated playing. Guild Wars 2 allows for a PLAY YOUR WAY attitude but high level is so meta-focused it's exclusionary, so figure out how you can make ANY build work in a squad.
Conclusion:
I like a lot of your points, but your engagement and positivity comes off pedantic most of the time. I watched Potatoes a Bunch before some of his toxic nitpicking of the community turned me off from his channel. You are one of the few Guild Wars 2 content creators whose voice I can stand so I'd love to keep listening/watching.
About Dragon's end meta, there is only 1 thing everyone need to do: chill. Its been only a little more than a week since the launch of the expansion, there is no rush, the meta wont disappear next week, let the devs do their work on fixing bugs and balance the fight, and also let other players test the terrain, enjoy the map and events, learn the mechanics of the meta, there is no need to get mad at people in a GAME, chill out, relax, its just a game.
@MightyTeapot -- I'd like you to think about something because perhaps you're off target; how does a player learn?, what is that process?, how easy is it to learn?, is it cost prohibitive to just experiment with max level gear? -- you'll come up with your own solutions to these questions, mine is from GW1 we got better because it was common to sit down with a new or old player, and say it would be better you did this or that way with your build here is the why and the gear to do it, sure superior runes where sometimes cost prohibitive but they normally got those once you moved them in the right direction, GW2 you need legendary armor to flip stats around and that's a ridiculous situation.
I have killed the dragon 3 times this week and failed 3 times last week. All with pugs. I can tell you this week, commanders and players are playing much better than last week. So basically, people are improving, and that is good. I like the meta a lot.
It is possible that less casual players are trying out the map. We would need to know if the active population decreased over time or remained the same to know whether people are improving.
Anyway it's great you beat it 3 times!
I am casual player myself. I only play WvW for about 15h a week, an nothing else, until now. I think that people missundarstand word "casual". It does not mean "bad player", at all...
I think about the players who have played the Dragons Stand meta for the first time after years now of learning and improving strategies. Its a smooth run compared to what it was. Things will improve as more of the community engages with the event and practices it.
Teapot,
I think you have a good point that things are better if people are talking. However, I think there was a real big perception issue in the days following Dragon's End blowing up as a issue, where it was seen that the 'hardcore' gamers were doubling down on the gatekeeping of the turtle mount by aggressively defending the difficulty of the meta. This in turn just exacerbated things further. I think it would definitely go a long way if influential community members such as yourself were quicker to signal boost concerns like "hey, people can't get their turtle!" Like you said, few had a issue with the meta itself, and had the turtle been accessible from day one in a different manner we would be having a very different conversation right now - showing people you're on their side on the matters they care the most about will go a long way, i think.
Amazing take. Agree 100% 👍
The problem is these 2 parts of the community don't really want to mix. Casual players want to spend like an hour a day in open world and have fun. For me return to dragon achievements were a blast. I can spend like an hour-two a day on my own pace doing different stuff and got legendary amulet in the end (was my first legendary btw, crafted Aurora and Vision right after). Was really hyped to continue in EoD and got hit with this meta. I need it to get turtle, seems like I need it to get right flow of the story (at least there is an achieve for this).
Now my schedule:
Login, do quick daily.
Fail meta (although I learned mechanics at this time, but I'm online during off hours for major guilds, so pugs only).
Logout because I don't have more time.
I didn't ask for this. I specifically don't play raids because of my strict schedule. If now I will have such issues in open world I will be done with GW2. I'm willing to pay to relax, for work I expect to be paid.
In my experience as a player, there's two things that cause a heavy amount of added toxicity to a game:
1.Having to rely on your team-mates. This means that the ability to win or lose is in no small part controlled by them.
2.Having content that scales in difficulty or is just genuinely hard at baseline.
This is most easily seen in pvp contexts, such as LoL, DotA or Apex, but it's just as true in MMOs such as WoW. Trying to get good at raiding and/or M+ or whatever similar content produces the same issues, some of which are actually exacerbated by the MMO "jump from solo player to hard content" moment. But the thing is, the problem is more fundamental and has nothing to do with MMO-specific issues at it's roots.
Bro, you’re GOATED. Keep up the good work, don’t let the haters bring you down.
So you talk about "toxicity" when you enter a map that 2 commanders have been preparing and state "I like this I will tag up", then, since you are streaming and people want to "show up" every structure, organization, parties, groups etc fall apart as peopel join your tag 5 minutes into the meta... Then people from your squad pretty much curse other people that don't want to join your discord out the map (like you complained other streamer did to you, funny)... So tell how this is ever so toxic to you... please... Oh and then the event fails because no one has a clue what is happening...
or his guildies bait players to dead maps, to have the event-map for their own. Apparently that Commander is gone from the guild... but yeah...
The community is toxic because no one is satisfied with the content they have. PvErs want more, PvPers and WvWers want more.The way Anet designs and builds content means that when one groups gets content, the others get nothing. Evey resource Anet puts on WvW alliances, is a resource that isn't developing new Strike Missions or story content. This incentivizes communities within the game to complain the loudest and, at the expense of the other communities, get the content they want. The squeakiest wheel gets the oil and all that. We have three distinct gamemodes each attracts different types of players, some of those groups overlap, many do not.
I'm a realistic person. Its obvious to me Anet lacks, and has never had, the resources to support three distinct game modes in their buy to play MMO. Maybe they need a sub fee, or a battle pass, or maybe NCSoft is a greedy publisher keeping Anet on a shoestring budget. Regardless this studio has never met a content cadence that has kept all the different communities in this game satisfied at the same time.
The ball is in Anet's court, games with enough content for their playerbases do not have these types of issues.
I feel somewhere in the middle of casual and dedicated/skilled. I’m good at games and figuring out mechanics. Enough to the point where I can play the game effectively. I am not a hardcore player though. If I was a numbers guy I’d be an accountant. I’m not interested getting into the minutia of everything. It feels like homework at that point and I hate homework.
I wish less things were sponge mechanics and actually had interesting things to do.
They should include a group mentorship program where people who have a high number of completions can gain a Mentor role for activities like these, so people know who to turn to in-game for direction.
The reason hardcore players get flamed by casuals over things that only affect high level play is because hardcore players constantly flame and kick casual players from groups for messing up one mechanic one time, even when they've never seen it before. It doesn't make it right, but the toxicity of people that think they're good at this game is overwhelming for the average or casual player. It's disgusting behavior, and breeds total intolerance and division as you pointed out. This is something that is FAR too common.
wow alot of backpeddeling here but i do agree with your point... one of the biggest problems with your other videos was that you NEVER addressed the problems and if you did you just discarded it as a "players are bad" thing...
maybe its the first time you listened ?
I know discord exists but I think a great addition to the game would be voice chat. Not always active voice chat because Anet does try to avoid toxic encounters, but for example if you rock up in a fractal or a strike, maybe you can request voice chat and bam, you and another player are working together more seamlessly than you ever could with text. For open world, party chat could always be a possible thing, and for squads, the Commander could select specific people to be in contact with. This would especially help for when squads need to split up and coordinate. The Commander could allocate leaders for smaller groups, and have a voice channel up with for example 5 of them, and those five would also have a voice channel up with 5 players they are working with. This also means Anet could more confidently increase open world difficulty.
I understand the main problem is toxicity. It takes more effort to be an arsehole to write it out than to just say it, and in writing Anet can censor people's words to prevent profanity and other harassment. If we were somehow able to ensure toxicity would be effectively handled, I think some form of rudimentary voice chat would really help the game. Sure, discord is better and high hardcore guilds can communicate effectively outside the game for a better voice chat experience. But nothing beats the magic of just running into someone in a huge game like this and within 2 clicks saying, "Oh hey, want to explore this place together?"
Honestly, the best compromise is nerf open world to the ground so people can chill and play it how we're used to it and make it give competitive rewards with other metas. Then make another version which has no nerfs and bigger rewards but make it a guild mission. Once Anet put it in place, they can get free content by reversing the nerfed open world content for hardcore players.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Open world is easy and unless Anet really want to just tell them to "Get gud" which I doubt they would. MMORPGs are becoming more and more easy, more so with group content, look at the recent content patch for WoW and how well that went down.
For myself, I would rather wait until much later as if it I will require it to be as tough as it is, I would rather get good gear then do it so I don't screw up the meta for everyone else.
This may seem a little rambling, I'm typing my thoughts about the video as I hear them:
This issue with "if you don't agree with me 100% then you're against me." This mentality is so poisonous to open dialogue and good faith conversations and is so pervasive, especially online and in social media. People don't want to acknowledge the fact that you AGREE with them that stuff like the RNG needed to be addressed. The fact that you even propose ways to get past those elements doesn't invalidate that you agree with them on fixing those issues, but to those bad actors it does.
"We have to find compromise." A lot of people don't want compromise, they just want it their way. This goes back to the point right above this one.
"The community has always been divided, the two groups just never interact with each other." NAILED IT.
"...Some players don't want to engage with that." This is a huge issue that I think a lot of people conflate with a lack of tutorialization. Tutorials can't make you care about dodging. Tutorials can't make you care to know or find out what a breakbar is. There are some people who play this game who just...don't have that spark of curiosity in them to want to care about what everything is in the game, and to seek outside sources if needed to bridge that gap in knowledge. Every time at the beginning of the DE meta that it starts with the big orange circle slap with the Tsunami wave, inevitably there's 5-8 people who stand in the circle and get downed. WHY? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? What thought process is happening with that person that makes them note move?!
"If one group is advocating for something, that doesn't mean they absolutely hate you and they want your playstyle to be deleted from the game." Unfortunately I think this also falls back on people's all or nothing attitude. :(
"Pandering to my audience is not one of them." This made me laugh out loud, but your ability to always dissect conversations from almost any angle is always refreshing when you are talking to chat.
"Policing your own side." SO IMPORTANT. Don't let fucking memers dilute good conversations with bad faith or straw man arguments and shifting goal posts.
Not much else to say, other than maybe this is the catalyst for something greater. Maybe 2022 won't be the year of Guild Wars 2 because of content or the expansion, but when we finally start bridging some of these gaps within the community.
that gap exists, because the groups like the OPPOSITE things. you might as well try to make a fish sing.
Just finished the intro so far but I gotta say. You should always stay true to yourself and your opinions. I’m just a RUclips watcher of your content but I keep tuning in because of a few reasons. I resonate with your passion for the game, you are entertaining with your delivery, and you speak your mind. Well thought out and articulated video so far.
The issue as I see it, from the casual perspective, as I am a casual from the last few years (life am i right)
The people who were complaining about the Meta would not accept anything in conversation other than that one agree with them and their measures. And their in game actions were not the best form, to say the least. I have guildies who are waiting for the 15th because maps were sabotaged, and good maps were full. I am happy that they are changing the turtle attachment, but I feel that if they do not do anything about the rewards anyone wanting to do the meta come end of the month are going to have a hard time getting a successful cap.
You are asking a lot from people to have integrity, and in my experience, it is a frustrating position.
You have done great work, and I appreciate it. Hell you trained me for the strike mission for the Turtle, and capped that in one run.
In my opinion, the great failure of GW2 in asking casual players to step up their game in PvE content is that they offer no support or guidance as to how. One of the great things about GW2 is the amazing build diversity. The problem with that is it allows a vast array of really sub-optimal, or tightly niche builds. In other MMOs that require or support team integration have /very clear/ roles completely baked into the classes, specs and gear. So a casual player is given a set of tools, with some small variation, that they can try to figure out how to apply to the PvE content.
The vast majority of players in GW2 don't even known what they don't know. I'm a filthy casual, but just by knowing you exist puts me /way/ ahead of most folks. If ANet are designing encounters around some kind of meta, around boons or skills or stack, then they /need/ to surface their expectations very clearly and in a place where people who do not haunt RUclips or Reddit or the forums can see it. Build templates? Training instances?
More to the point, it should not be on you and your guild to teach ANets entire community how to play their damn game. For what it's worth, while I don't always agree with you, I've always found you to be a reasonable guy.
Well I think working as a community to help others is a great social experience and a good way to personalize the help some people need. But in my experience during the meta, when trying to offer help and suggestions to casuals players, they responded with hostility..I wasn’t saying it in a mean way either. I was saying things like, make sure you stack de offen/def boons, get the contributors 10% guys :D, if you can I’d recommend boon support builds to make it easier for everyone...stuff like that and people were getting mad and yelling at me in chat. So it’s honestly feels like those players DONT want help. I agree anet should’ve taught them somehow long ago, but the community helping isn’t a bad thing if players would stop refusing it...
The problem here is not about the game teaching casual players. It’s that even if they were to teach, casual players choose not to put in the effort to improve when it’s not even that hard. They choose to remain stubborn and call anyone who try to change them an elitist. Most casuals just want the easy way out (free items or an easy way out of content that is hard for them). They don’t even look for the option to improve first. They will go straight to criticism and blame the devs and experienced players when there are tons of guides out there online meaning you don’t even need the devs to reach you stuff just like a simple google search. To sum up, they give up easily so why not question them and say since you give up so easily why not give up on the item you are aiming for? Just forget about the turtle since you don’t need it.
@@androlitas you’re so right too..that’s why I gave up on trying to help and give suggestions. I do raids, I do fracs. I consider myself to be pretty decent at the game. Not a god but not a causal either XD but I thought saying small little helpful suggestions was okay, but it was not. But when there’s people autoattacking that can hit 20k vs people autoattacking or doing a “rotation” hitting >1k i think there’s a need for instruction a bit XD. And anet giving away items for nothing just cements in the fact that they’ll never need to learn ever. Imo. Why get better when they’ll give you every item..I’m not talking about people who are physically incapable of doing better, I’m talking about the type who outright refuse and turn hostile at any suggestion XD
@@ardynnstaywoke2717 None of the gear is for free, no matter how bad the player is. They are putting in the time to get it. They are grinding the same maps you are. They are playing the game too.
There is no virtue in hitting buttons in the right order.
@@dahobdahob I mean yes and no? Ascended gear does take time, but with gold farming in other maps, it’s not a outrageous goal like legendaries. Even exotics can hit high and exotics can be gotten in hots for map currency and a few gold...knowing how to play your class does make a difference..it’s the difference between a slow burn and a fast one..if you had a map of 50 who don’t know their class with bad builds, you’d see the difference if you got in a raid guild map. I don’t try to force players to do anything, I just try to suggest things to help. It’s hard to take complaints seriously when people won’t try AT ALL..I can understand effort and complaining but not trying is on them..and ruins it for everyone else..that’s all
in trying to defuse a map chat argument in DE, i stepped into the convo and tried to show that different kinds of players don't have to be a) so mean to each other b) explain my PoV on things as a sort of bridge person, I regularly do end game stuff, and i highly enjoy that, but i still do casual things, events, because it's a time to chill out while still enjoying the game. Both the casual and hardcore gamers have valid points, and have more common ground than they think, but because of the toxicity polarising people, they don't see it. There's no need for that toxicity, it's just ugh, please stop. I quite agree with what you said about GW2 being a "playing by yourself with others". It very much is. I can see that mentality in action. Someone's downed right near them, and they don't rez them is an immediate example (and it's safe for them to rez that person).
TLDR: i tried to show that we have more in common than we think, and a team effort is the only way you'll beat it.
I got into a PUG squad for DE last night, and it was very disorganised, and unsurprisingly, it failed. Everyone was running around with their heads cut off, downed people by the dozen, hardly any boon or healing support. I was going to bring heal scourge, and was told bring DPS. DPS doesn't work well when a) you're dead b) having to rez people who aren't used to mechanics every 30 seconds because they don't dodge, or move out of deadly AoEs. This previous statement shows the lack of understanding many people have about the game's mechanics. My main guild, we do a lot of raid trainings, and have gotten a lot of previously casual players to become more expert. We're a chill and fun guild, too (I'm a senior officer in it).
Main point being: stop being toxic, and talk to each other, not ABOUT each other please.
"Area Net have finally sorted out alot of their problems now it's time for us to do the same as a community"
He's coming with points.
This is such an inspiring viewpoint.
My guild's focus is on player-created-content and we have been on a mission to find a game to call home.
We've been thinking of dropping into GW2 but the themepark design and playstyle-diversity has definitely been a barrier for us. Our guild's progression in the game doesn't feel rewarding but this video inspires me to offer our organizing skills in tackling this content. One of our guild mottos is "PvE is a PvP objective," so this perspective you offer might just give us the push we need to drop into and build up our GW2 community.
I like yours and Muks take on this problem: "it shouldnt be players vs players it should be players vs the problem" and i think thats what the silent majority thinks too, its just that i think the toxic minority really blown this way out of proportion just cause.
Anet somewhat listened to you, since they gave another method of acquiring the turtle and not hard locking it into the meta, and somehow nerfed the tail RNG.
Edit: spelling
But the problem isn't "anet designed too hard of a meta" the problem is "the meta is hard". If you focus your energy on actually trying to beat the meta, players might get somewhere.
But a lot of players are focusing their time on blaming anet for making too difficult a meta, or teapot for "defending" it.
@@ryan2415 i mean that didnt really have to do with OPs comment, they just mentioned the turtle unlock thru the meta. regardless, your comment is really one-sided, not considering the opposite perspective whatsoever. if you want actual discourse, you need to actually try to see the other perspective rather than just completely dismissing it.
@@ryan2415 from the salty people's perspective i completely understand why they're mad, you spend 2 hours 5+ times a day to get to the boss only for it to fail, it isn't a nice feeling
@@ryan2415 the fail attempts cost around 2 hours, and the reward is something entitled to players because anet show that its a feature they would receive if they buy the expansion not beat the meta. yeah, i wonder why people are mad at anet? not to mention we have some elitists who lash out and say git-gut instead of having some rational thinking and looking at the real problem.. but hey! told other suck is easier than trying to ask anet to fixed the problem, right?
I think think a massive part of the problem here is the game doesn't provide any feedback to players on how they're performing. A huge amount of the player base doesn't run meters of any kind to see how they're doing on DPS or heals or boon uptime or anything else. So they take the feedback they do get, a.k.a. did the event succeed, did I die, did the group wipe and if that's all good - conclude that they must be doing well. That's not their fault - that's on the game for not providing any metrics at all. So when someone who is running those things gives them some feedback they didn't ask for and that totally contradicts the evidence they've seen... they obviously don't like it...
How many people in the more 'hardcore' part of the community were horrified by how bad their performance was when they finally started tracking it? I know I was, and it very quickly changed after that. People are massively motivated by making numbers get higher right?
If ANET want people to improve, they have to provide a way for them to see their progress.
Sorry for my English but I like to speak. First - this video change my opinion about you and your guide. That’s was actually first video I fully watch. Thanks for your work.
Second is about my experience as a casual player. When I started my legendary armor, I was convinced that GW2 have one of the friendliest community in MMO games, which I played. However, it was shock to me when I realize how end-game players toxic. That was the most painful months I ever played to complete achievement and then farm LI to create my legendary armor.
Now I have changed. I am not that casual player that I was when start my legendry way. I play all end-game content and all worries I have now is how to make some jokes and have a fun playtime. And all this because I met some people who took a time and explain me some mechanics, class specifics.
Again thanks for your work. I thinks I will follow your channel to see how all of this will end.
my strat is to actively troll mesmer portals but always respond in a thoughtful manner to keep the conversation inclusive and SPICY!
if someone gets super mad i don't escalate, or do I?
The irony is many of those calling out toxic elitists were very toxic themselves
Super true btw. The most toxic discourse is the mob trying to tear down specific individuals for even engaging in discussing this stuff. Very "you're with us or you're the problem"
Teapot, you are without a doubt one of the best creators on RUclips. That said, I think most people feel conflicted about most of your views on the game as they are delivered with a fiery passion for the game. When I look at most of the discussions, with or without other creators, I do tend to think that you represent a smaller minority of the playerbase. There is nothing wrong with that. It does however make other people make look at you as elitist. I think I even said that at some point -- to I think the discussion about raids, where my opinion hasn't changed yet.
Hearing about people going out their way to say nasty stuff to and about you is low. I do think though that it comes with the territory sadly. It does not change the fact that it's sad that people actually do this. It is quite unthinkable to me to do this, surely they could think of better things to do...
That said, and to add to the discussion, I think there are lots of small communities within the game. They are guild-based focus groups like a WvW, PvP, Raid or even some Meta or Mentor guilds. I do think that sometimes reaching these guilds could be improved. You generally find these guilds by participating in the events. When not knowing the event the negative responds from 'experienced players'; as this is a very broad term; is alienating other players from further engaging in these events.
Masteries are a matter of time. In EoD's case I think it isn't all that hard to get what you want. If you focus on the turtle -- and take it the slow casual way -- you can easily get it within 1-2 weeks. I don't think that is 'to hard' to get.
That being said, to improve discourse, even though i've seen you make arguments with your chat... is it to give it a fair and proper hearing. I've watched your stream many times that end in toxic discussions where I just left the stream because I don't wanna have to deal with that. I've also seen a pretty strong steering of conversation. If you want to have a conversation then I think it is good to not want to control the narritive as much.
That's my 2cents anyway.
Here is your problem Teapot:
"Yes, you *can* beat this! You just need to organize your groups! Get on voice chat!" Etc. etc. etc..
You see this as reasonable and in general it is, but you fail to see the world through the eyes of the people you want to reach. You say you understand the viewpoints of the people that criticise this, but I don't get the impression that you actually do despite how you feel.
Let me tell you a little story about my experience with EoD.
I'm a pharmacist by day. My *shortest* day at work is 12+ hours of non-stop work to such a degree that I rarely get a restroom break let alone lunch or any time to unwind during that time. I play GW2 to chill and unwind. I primarily play open world, but I also occasionally WvW and PvP when I have time off and can dedicate time to these modes and there is the clincher. The sheer level of difficulty, the strict adherence to twitch-reaction mechanics and meta builds for higher level content makes things like raids, strike missions, and as of recently - the EoD content (especially the meta) feel like a second job, not a fun game.
I will never play something like Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, etc.
Not because I lack the ability to learn how to play and enjoy these games, but because I don't have the time to invest in them and I lack the emotional energy to care. I unwind and recharge by being able to chill, relax, pewpew, barbie and RP in Guild Wars 2. Anet forcing these gameplay mechanics on everyone is a problem. Full stop. It's a problem, and it has caused myself and both of my elderly gamer parents to quit this game likely for good this time because Anet shows no signs of returning to form. This new direction is going to kill this game because the devs are just ignoring these issues.
My mother can still kick my nephew's ass in Mortal Kombat and isn't even remotely lacking in reaction time, but most of her time is spent playing The Sims, where she enjoys the peace and quiet to unwind and relax like I do.
My father beat both Dark Souls *and* Bloodborne but over these past two years, his sight has begun failing and he is having a harder and harder time playing.
When we got "off the boat" as it were and into EoD, the "training arena" mission was obscene. The only way to complete these training activities is to literally force players to swap builds, swap weapons and play in ways they do not want to or in my father's case *CANNOT DO* . We all understand the mechanics of these arenas, but we're locked out of further content unless we git gud and play the way Anet tells us to. Both of my parents refunded then and there.
I've continued playing and unlocked my turtle mount thanks to a commander I shall not name, but was *EXTREMELY* helpful and casual-friendly and understood the players under her wing on a psychological level and organized people along those lines to *perfect* success. Without her, I would have never completed the meta because I don't have the time to invest in a several-hour unrewarding SLOG. Without her, I would not have completed the strike mission because I lack the interest in turning the game into a second data-crunching APM job. I'm far from unskilled but I play the characters and builds *I* want to play, the way *I* want to play them. I will coordinate with a group, but when that coordination requires forcibly uprooting myself and players out of our comfort zones either partially or completely, the game has failed at its most important task: *TO BE FUN*
You'll probably never read this rant and even if you do it likely won't achieve anything anyway but I felt a need to say something, to add a voice to the dialogue.
I'm done with Guild Wars 2, and it's because of exactly what you described - these microcosms within the game are clashing and rather than balance them such that no group is forced to do anything they don't want to do, Anet has moved on to *forcing* these groups to blend together, failing to realize that the larger majority of each group simply *does not want to* and that should be respected first and foremost.
I don't want the PvP'ers being forced to do anything in the Open World, or forced to do content that doesn't appeal to their gameplay interests. What sense would that make? Likewise, stop forcing the casual open world to "git gud" or be permanently locked out of desireable content.
Each one of our little groups should be able to enjoy our content in peace and meet each other in the middle on our own terms when and where we want to.
yep, i cant get about ½ my toons past that either. i wont even try anymore. found another game instead.
If they lessen the RNG of the fight the fight will be pretty great. I was in a fully organized raid group last night. We failed the meta at 2% because the boss would just not stop moving. Every time she had increased damage from breakbar she would move, every time tail came up as soon as we got to tail she would move. Problem is she moves too much, or when she does move its at the worst possible time.
Even with a significantly RNG-based fight, it would have been pretty trivial to give a burn phase timer after breaking her bar or bashing down the tail... Not sure why Soo-Won was ever allowed to just keep phasing constantly. Weirdchamp gaming tbh
Really good video, made me think and empathize with other view points. Just really thoughtful, and I hope I keep the points you made in mind, next time I'm taking with someone in the other player groups. All in all, I think GW2 has the tools to bring everyone together. It's one of the few games where another player means help and resses instead of loot and kill stealing. And I've experienced astounding amounts of kindness and perseverance in it. I hope many people watch this and focus on uniting instead of dividing.
Very eloquently said. I totally agree with you. I feel like both the hardcore and casual players (I also hate using these terms) are so heavily entrenched in their positions, that they refuse to even compromise and listen to one another and instead scream over each other instead of talking about the issues. I said this in one of Mukluk's videos, but we are all fans of Guild Wars 2, we should respect each other and work together to solve issues, not attacking each other.
Yeah I agree with you so much. I think for me personally it just got so bad after being yelled at by so many “Casual” players while doing the meta when I was just trying to help and give suggestions and explain boons and subgroups...that eventually I started to feel like I was tilting too and sometimes wanted to be a dick back. It’s not that I wasn’t trying to understand their side, it’s just that after being yelled at like that meta after meta, it really demoralized me and made me think that all the causal players are like that and don’t want help genuinely. So I got fed up with them as a whole (which is my bad tbh.) but I’m a really slow burn person. You can imagine the build up of 25+ metas having getting yelled at like that what it does XD
I feel like "we are all fans of Guild Wars 2" really obfuscates the reality that the game one side plays and the game the other side plays are radically different games, and Arenanet really always encouraged different playerbases to segregate from each other and this breeds resentment because whenever the devs do something for x group, y, z and q group feel like they're getting the short end of the stick. It is in fact the design of the game that has encouraged these toxic subdivisions.
@@ardynnstaywoke2717 I think it's great to hear from your perspective, so thank you for sharing. I'm more of a "casual" player, though I work to find ways to improve my build and play so that I'm contributing viably to groups I join. Still, I tend to be more relaxed about it and avoid min-maxing for the most part so long as I'm having fun with my rotation. I've only attempted DE twice. The first was just a mess because no one knew what the mechanics were and we were learning, but the second was an organized attempt with commanders to help. Unfortunately, one of the commanders began yelling in caps at the map half an hour before the meta itself started that we were going to fail and it was a map of "casual tw*ts", all because they were annoyed with the performance of someone following their tag. We failed it, but I think our chances would have been much better had they focused on trying to give the callouts we needed rather than dragging everyone down with negativity. The toxicity coming from that leader colored my opinion of this whole thing, I'll be honest, and watching videos where other commanders were making fun of "casuals" sort of cemented it in my mind. I feel badly that it did, especially after hearing from both @MightyTeapot and you. It's clear there are problems on both sides, and I hope we can find a way to overcome the impulse to place blame and throw around insults. All the best to you, truly.
@@LadyRhi_ yeah...the game kind of pits the two types of players against eachother I’m it’s current state. I’d like to blame the fact that turtle was locked to this meta, so both players HAD to do it. But also there’s not enough hard content to keep the other half busy, there is a lot of open world stuff..raids are only fun so many times..eventually you finish your legends armor and it becomes dull because they’ve seemed to abandon raids :(
@@ardynnstaywoke2717 It's really unfortunate that EOD hasn't brought more raids. As a casual player its easy to look at the situation and say, "There are raids for the hardcore stuff!" However, I can imagine how boring it would be to do the same fights over and over for years, especially now that there's no promise of more wings to come that I've heard. I'm genuinely sorry for that. I know CM strikes are coming, but that still doesn't fit the bill when there are only a handful of them. There is so much more behind the frustration than I'd originally considered, and I get now why some players have been so passionate about preventing nerfs to the DE meta. It's sad that Anet's choice to seemingly abandon a form of content that so many loved has led to the community fighting over the open world.
Wanted not to comment but here it is... I've joined SimSoul's 2nd public open call on twitch to do DE. After the organization of subgroups we all got the map where we did events, boosted our participation. Got batteries and protocols, 2 more buffs. Finished events in area and got 4th buff. It all helped in final battle and all of this where layers of damage and protection needed for the final. The mechanics of the fight where definitely more challenging than other PVE but it was still dodging, special action key and cc bar. That said - I'm not a professional raider. I don't clear raids, but I read what my skills do. What my build does. I read the mapchat or listen to commander on twitch/voice. And we had a successful run where we all learned, had fun and got the rewards. Yes, it takes a long time, and the meta could be better updated like Drizzelwood with rewards... that all said, HardStuck was always here to help EvErYoNe even the filthy casuals like myself, to other the pro players. So what is telling you about the ones who attack the teachers, the ones who just want all the best, all the knowledge, for the community...?
Speaking as somebody ostensibly leaning more in the casual camp, MT's guide was FANTASTIC. To the point. Clear. Accessible. Suggest it in map chat.
Very well spoken. It is certainly a complex issue to fix right? How do we bridge that gap between relaxed "Anything goes" open world, to "Hey, you gotta step up and know your stuff". Unfortunately the core game isn't really going to change. So I don't think we can realistically expect a full rework of difficulty scaling. From my own experience at teaching new players, the biggest hurdle is getting them to read and understand skills/traits. With easy content, it's way too easy for a new player to fall into that classic 'Bearbow Ranger' setup and never deviate from it.
One of the things in EoD that really caught my attention was the little tutorial heart in the beginning, and my first thought was that this needs to be expanded upon and taken into each of the starter zones of the core game. Having something in game that explicitly tells you how certain mechanics work could be a good step in the right direction. Especially if it can happen early in the base game. It would have to be refined a bit for early play since you won't have full access to class skills. Maybe give kits that just let you do things to try out mechanics. For instance, the combo fields trainer can give the player a training sword that lets you do each of the finishers. He'll occasionally put out a light field for you to try each one. Maybe give a hint about different fields doing different things, so go try stuff by yourself or with friends!
Make one for support stuff too, if there isn't already one! "Take this banner. Position yourself and use the skills on it to give as many ally target dummies aegis or stability to block an attack or fight through a knockback". Stuff like this would not only show the player that these things exist, but also call attention to those details in tooltips. So as a player I can be like, "Woah! Support buffs are cool! What skills do that for me?" Then suddenly you're reading tooltips and getting into that mentality of build craft during the leveling process rather than being smacked in the face with it when challenging content actually comes up.
do you remember when some months back i hopped in ur chat, i think the topic was finding out what casual players want or need and how to help them. I mentioned that another problem is being able to even reach those that aren't on reddit, youtube twitch or the forums in the first place. Is this them reaching out? I have a very hard time understanding where these people were before.
In my opinion the problem is by large measure the way maps are populated in gw2. If you have a meta that demands the vast majority of the map's total population to clear it, there is going to be issues every time, only somewhat mitigated by time. It's not even down to the players primarily, though that also weighs in ofc. Even Dragon Stand was really, really bad in the beginning, and that's as close as an instance they've done for open world.
I think if they want to keep this model they have to make use of the buff system in the dragon's end meta, but NOT have it be an hour before the event to get it. That's too much of a deterrent for people to stay, they are there for the meta. It's very clear that the balance of the event is done with this buff in mind at least by a % of the players, so if that isn't met you have another rng factor.
I don't think you really need an lfg as such, but I would like it if there was a checkbox you could select very prominently, that you prefer to zone into a meta map over just 'exploration mode'.
++Mount collection can be started relatively easily from getting the scrolls that you can buy the egg with.
Problems:
Gem store has all the coolest cosmetics
Turn into a subscription based game and spread those gem store cosmetic throughout the game, focusing on raids. (No wonder they're dead, no incentive to do them at all)
More incentive to do raids = more players raiding -> more raids coming out. Simple.
And of course spread some of those cosmetic to fractals. More incentive to do fractals = more players doing fractals -> new fractals coming out due to demand
(4 years and the fractals are still the same with no changes, unbelievable)
More focus on the RP section of the game (Example: Emotes, player housing, etc...)
No place for you to play mini-games and just take it easy (Golden saucer from FFXIV is a good example of it, look it up.)
If I am missing something just reply to me and I'll add it.
Appreciate your continual efforts to support the community. I have learned much from your input. There are a fews ways to bridge the gap. like you say, need to have better communication so as to bridge the gap for noob players like me to able to slowly try out harder content. this method is good if people aren't so hard-up to clear stuff in the shortest possible way. I had been kick out of fractals (normal days, not 98,99,100 or matrin) for failing to hit the arcdps. There are always expectations. that time the one that kick me died multiple times despite being a reaper. I was a paper cdps renegade that last till the end. I dont really understand the rationale of being dps means not watching red telegraphs, dodging damage because there is a hb. Well, since I was kicked I dont have the communication opportunity I guess. There was one time that I was the only one who died because the whole team was "self-sustain builds" (meaning no shared healing). sometimes ppl failed to communicate because they already assume that each member verified by arcdps, and failure of which always boot lowest dps, follow by number of times died. The mismatch of expectation is one of the culprits. Some ppl just want to clear dailies. Others want to clear in the fastest way and demand everyone only respect their time. The LFGs isnt that useful as some will only complain and kick without prior advertising speedruns or chill.
1) One way I think is viable is to alter the reward system based on duration spent in fractals or raids much like pips system in wvw. Ultimately even when failed at least it is not a fustrating experience. There should be 2 modes of raid. One is with timer, one without. The one without will still award kps in full based on duration of the pips earn but does not award achievement. The one without will earn up to rare rewards, the other up to exotic and ascended rewards. The timer can still be shown so that players know where they stand but it is not a determining factor for failure. Finally the kps can be used to purchase stuffs or buy achievements (it can be an astronomical number)
2) This idea come from VLDL. Disable all lifebars, telegraph red, ban usage of arcdps and external 3rd party software. I think the over usage of them has made people over sensitive. Without life bars and cc bars, players have to rely on communication and visual cues to kill and cc. Since people dont really know the aoe of the damage, they will be force to learn side steps and dodges. Yes it will be FUSTRATING. this method forces players to learn rather than only press 1111. They will learn to equip break stuns, ccs, healing based on their own skill than to rely on specific builds. Beside It doesnt affect pvps as people just 4v1.
3) Break the meta. Every game has a meta but GW2 has snowcrows and every other builds are obsolete if they are not listed. How to do it? Change the AI to random but most of the time attack DPS and lowest health first; Disable and debuff healers and boon givers. Leave torment, poison and burning to tankers. Without a specific attack mode, every player has a danger of dying. That alone will already reduce dps. We dont need fancy footwork. The "luck" factor will encourage players to put in their best to polish their personal skills. At least die lesser times.
My point is people need to feel that their time is well spent - be it by rewards or excitement of meeting an achievement. But if the game leaves players empty handed because of failure, they becomes uptight elitist. Once everyone is happy, communication ensues.
The word "Challenging" is a problem. It is something that means different things to different people. Requiring open world players to adopt raid players mindsets and abilities isn't fair to either side.
David Goggin's is a good example for how overcoming struggle, makes you a better person. The problem in gw2, is that most of the game has coddled players so much, that when confronted with challenge, the divide between the two communities has separated it so hard. It should be hardcore players, helping newcomers overcome challenge...if the hardcore players are tucked away in the corner of the game they never interact with the people that need it! That's always been the problem with the interaction between everyone in the game but casuals have ALWAYS denied changing the way the game works that might actually facilitate group based gameplay.
@@NightmareCourtPictures i only bought it for the casual part. i have no desire to do any kind of hardcore content.
if i want to play harder content, i will do it in a game, where it actually matters. doing it here is a waste of time.
@@kimrasmussen7188 When you are confronted with a challenging PVE Scenario, then it’s hardcore players that get you through it and then you pass on that knowledge to the next generation of new players.
That’s the issue with your mindset right…”me me me nobody else matters.” Yet here you are playing an MMO.
Biggest issue in meta Dragons's End, is the time limit of final boss fight.
I beated boss with group of players, with 6min time rest until failure and without typing any word from anyone into the chat, but I m still losing with group of players with/wtihout commander what type ppl tips, what must do for succesful finish the event _(and no toxic ppl, writing in the good way)_ .
The boss fight is great, I love it, its hard, it have great music, it have great mechanincs, great tether with story, I m glad for the event even if I lose, but time limit is awful - honeslty, it is laziest version of setting difficulty on any content, because you make from fight pure dps check, with no space for correct from player mistakes.
Losing battle _(with no reward)_ , when boss have 20%hp just based on time, is so bad, when you take in consider milion pre-events before you even start with final boss fight.
The meta was fine,I just think the turtle shouldn't have been attached to it from the beginning.
this basically forced all the supercasual players into the meta. no one wanted them there. the good and average players didn't want them, because they didn't deal any damage (at least 5k dps with the 25% buff is nothing) and the casuals didn't want to even be there. so yeah. bad idea.
I feel like people who are defending dragons end, are partially doing so because they want anet to keep making this kind of higher difficulty content. That they (myself included) feel that the community needs this kind of content and said content could be a gateway into strikes/fractals/raids. I want them to keep making this kind of content but the way it was introduced to the wider more causal player base, with very little build up and preparation for that wider player base is where the biggest miss step was. Anet needed to have the previous metas ramping up in difficulty and complexity so it's not such a jolt when people try dragons end. They also need to do a better job of teaching the principles of the game and upcoming meta mechanics in areas where players can not avoid learning them. Why not have the wisp phase in a story step? That way most of the players will have at least experienced it and have a basic understanding of what to do.
Anet does not need to ‘teach’ people. You are telling me that it’s 2022 and people still don’t know how to google or RUclips? There are tons of guides out there which may be better than the ones that the devs are going to make. Casual players are just not putting in the effort to improve. Instead most of them just want free stuff or easier ways to get the items they want. Nothing in this world is free. If you want something then work for it and that is what most casual players lack. It also reflects how they are in real life. Just a bunch of lazy and stubborn people who keeps complaining and not wanting to do anything to improve. It’s not that hard with online platforms these days just a simple google search can be a huge difference to improve. It’s like learning a new skill set in real life. Effort has to be there else it will be the same.
@@androlitas Really? You're going to lump every casual player in the game as "Just a bunch of lazy and stubborn people who keeps complaining and not wanting to do anything to improve"? That's sooooo enlightened and productive to solve the division between the two parts of the GW2 community (NOT).
Hey Mighty Teapot, here is your first person to qualify for your permanent ban from all of your social media accounts.
@@traveling.down.the.road56 just like how casual players generalised most experienced players as elitist it’s the same concept here. I led at DE multiple times and most of them failed. I have 50 people in my squad with around 20 heals and boons. The rest are Dps meaning I have around 25++ dps peeps. Everyone is proficient in the mechanics as we passed almost every mechanics and very little people died and we still failed so what was the problem? It was dps. Lots of people messaged me to tell the squad to play legit builds as that was the problem. I was hesitant at first but I’m then I did what they said. I’m the kind of person where you can play any build you want but do your role e.g dps do decent dps. Sadly out of the many runs I commanded if have only about an average of 12 ppl doing decent dps or better and the gaps between dps are huge where majority of the people do 2-4K dps meaning I have lesser than 50% of my dps doing dps. I told them to change their builds because it was not working out and many of them just called me an elitist. Point proven here. They just don’t want to change even when simple advice are given.There is already proof here. People in the comment sections asking the event to be needed. Then question them. Is the event not doable? Have people cleared it? Devs nerfing the event only gives people the easy way out therefore there is no reason to improve. Same concept in real life. If you want something work for it if not just give up on ur dreams. It’s that simple. The fact is that lots of casual players ARE lazy and refuse to take advice that is why for so long many metas still remain hard even after many years e.g dragon stand . If people want this event to succeed do your part and don’t leech off from groups. It’s not that hard to improve with the amount of things you can search online. Sadly I am the kind of person you need to keep the game alive. You give people the easy way out and they just play the game for a few weeks and stop playing after that because they achieved their goal quickly. That is one of the mistakes the devs made. It’s like negotiating with terrorist where they keep asking for more. Like I said if you don’t want to put in the effort then just forget about the turtle. Simple like how it is in real life too. How is that bad? For the part where most people are lazy and stubborn you can already see the proof in the comment section. If you choose to be blind go ahead.
@@traveling.down.the.road56we commanders are just trying to help people to complete the event and when we tell people to change they just call us toxic and elitist. Teapot is already a victim. So many people called him an elitist. So many that he has to make this video. Point is proven that most casuals just don’t want to improve and just leech off. The ratio for experienced players to causal players are so big that no matter what we do the division will always be there. That is why we give advice for people to get better and they can do it on their own too by searching online but they chose to be stubborn. As long as they don’t want to put in the effort it will remain the same forever. We experienced players are trying to fix the division by giving advice and helping others but the ones who are actually trying to divide us more are people like you. Sadly you failed to see this and just ranted without thinking so a piece of advice for you. See the bigger picture and think before you talk.
@@androlitas neither of your two replies to my post have anything to do with what I wrote. You are right about one thing though, one of is blind to the real problem.
They shouldn't have changed the Guild Wars 1 multi-guilds system, that was a ball drop. Guilds with different interests and personalities being united under a larger loose guild, it was easy to stay on friendly social terms with different types of players, and easy to get help and tips if you were trying to get into new aspects of the game.
I enjoy the fight as a whole, the only thing I dislike is soo-won being able to spam swap/tail and if she does it so many times, you fail (even if you do everything perfect). If they add cooldowns or less priority (like they're planning with tail on the upcoming update) should help
I play mostly solo, those who invest 100's or thosands of hours tend to be toxic, new player growth should be encouraged, this means having a thorough in game guide, manual on how things work or are interrelated. For most MMO's you learn by asking veteran players questions and most are responsive, but not when there is alot of questions. Guild Wars 2 strength is its solo play, many cannot commit to long group, raids, dungeons, etc. I play for the adventure, scenery, the wow effect of landscapes. A games survivability is in number of players, not complaing hard core players. There is often a mad rush to level up in MMO's at expense of the journey and being considerate of others in dungeon runs etc. Believe me as a tank in ESO 1700 hrs, I've had many bad experiences, it's a game, but for some it is their life valuation. I like running into events in GW2 and spountaneous team play, helping each other without expectation of perfect play. I love Guild Wars 2, but beginner things need to be expained more. A newbie will stay with the game if he is helped in learning the game, and I don't mean how to move , here is inventory, needs to go beyond a 10 minute tutorial. Thanks , its a great game.