Guild Wars 2

So I’m in a team with two other people. We’ve gotten pretty good at beating the Grenth events just by ourselves. Killing Grenth has become pretty easy, but the event afterwards is what’s been giving us trouble lately. Usually we like to keep the event scaled down so Grenth doesn’t produce as many shades, then shout-out to the map when he’s about to die, so that we have more people for the final event.

However, we’ve run into the same problem three times today. It seems Jonez is a Spider magnet. Ya know, the Champion Risen Spider that spawns about two-minutes into the event? Yeah, well it loves him. Loves him so much in fact, that it completely bypasses 10 other players to go straight for him. With all our AoE heals and whatnot, he can only stay alive for 4-5 hits. What I don’t understand, is why this freakin’ thing is ignoring all the players and going straight for him. Even more annoying is that it doesn’t do it right away. It waits a little while, fighting other people, then it just randomly decides to kill Jonez. You can literally what the watch the expression on it’s face change as it turns around and thinks, “Hmm. I really don’t like that guy.”

I’ve watched Jonez, and he doesn’t really seem to do anything to warrant this kind of aggro, or at least nothing different than he’s usually doing. Another thing that’s annoying is how no amount of damage or CC can stop the Spider from completing it’s objective. There is literally nothing you can do, except try and heal him with AoE and then cry when you fail.

I really don’t agree with this for one main reason: It makes events like this feel that being lucky is better than having actual skill. You could take 10 of the best players in the game, and put them in that situation, and there wouldn’t be anything they could do when the Spider decides it hates Jonez. You just have to keep hitting it hard and pray that it doesn’t go for him. This doesn’t seem right to me. Anybody else agree?

I see two issues here. One is aggro and they need to fix it game-wide. Aggro is something we understand in our gut and it’s not just gaming experience here, rather it follows IRL experience. Aggro doesn’t feel right. It’s mysterious and triggers a visceral response that screams that something is wrong here.

The other issue is with how events scale and who they are addressed to. You shouldn’t need to avoid other players because they will likely fail an event. That’s just an indicator that the event is not well-designed for open world PvE. I’m not saying the events need to be designed with an absolute beginner in mind, simply that they should be designed with open world PvE in mind.

The cleansing event (spiders repeatedly kittening Jonez) should be removed in my opinion, we already have a lengthy quest chain to get to the temple and killing Grenth’s priest isn’t exactly easy.

Eh, I kinda like the fact that you need a team of players that know what they’re doing to get it done. Makes it feel like more of a skill-needed challenge, and not another mindless event where there’s 20 players using their auto-attack. And they should definitely keep in the final cleansing event, because when it goes right it’s a heckuva lotta fun, and it gives more drops than the rest of the chain combined.

My wish is that they’d fixed the boss aggro to where they wouldn’t target Jonez unless all other players were downed or dead. That way they wouldn’t have to nerf or buff the bosses, how the event scales, or the amount of mobs thrown at you. It would still be challenging, (Those bosses can almost one-shot when it’s scaled up) but it would also make it more fair. This way players would have a chance to beat the event based on their own skill, (they would have to stay alive before Jonez would get aggro) and the game’s mechanics wouldn’t just decide when to have it fail.

Lucas.9162:

Eh, I kinda like the fact that you need a team of players that know what they’re doing to get it done. Makes it feel like more of a skill-needed challenge, and not another mindless event where there’s 20 players using their auto-attack. And they should definitely keep in the final cleansing event, because when it goes right it’s a heckuva lotta fun, and it gives more drops than the rest of the chain combined.

There are very few areas in the game where play is both complex enough to be entertaining and also rewarding. These boil down to some explorable dungeon paths and the temple events. Explorable dungeons are already aimed at coordinated teams of skilled players.

If temple events go that route, then what’s left for people with marginal systems or who lack the timing of cutting-edge players? Meta events (not entertaining — except Jormag if you don’t have that many there); story dungeons (not rewarding), and normal DE’s (not rewarding). The temple events prior to April 30 were fun. They weren’t just mindless events. Lots of people were downed in them, but none of them complained because the events were fair to all players. Now, these events are tedious, likely to be frustrating and — most importantly — they are not fair to a sizable portion of the player-base.

Lucas.9162:

My wish is that they’d fixed the boss aggro to where they wouldn’t target Jonez unless all other players were downed or dead. That way they wouldn’t have to nerf or buff the bosses, how the event scales, or the amount of mobs thrown at you. It would still be challenging, (Those bosses can almost one-shot when it’s scaled up) but it would also make it more fair. This way players would have a chance to beat the event based on their own skill, (they would have to stay alive before Jonez would get aggro) and the game’s mechanics wouldn’t just decide when to have it fail.

Mob aggro in the closing protect x events worked this way before. Jonez and the thingamajig in the Melandru temple almost never took damage, even when the mobs spawned right on top of them. This was because the mobs would immediately aggro onto players as soon as they took damage. Now, the only way to keep them off the NPC/device is to kill them quickly. Since mob aggro in these events was changed, we can assume this is “as intended.”

I wasn’t talking about all Temples though. It’d be nice for at least one to require a lot of planning and skill.

Lucas.9162:

I wasn’t talking about all Temples though. It’d be nice for at least one to require a lot of planning and skill.

I suppose everyone has a different definition of “a lot.” I have no problems with “skill required.” I do have a problem with:

• Make-or-break mob mechanics that require interrupts on a Defiant-bearing Champion in an open-world, anyone-can-join situation
• Veteran summons who outnumber the players 2 or 3 to 1
• Giving mobs a lot of AoE in events that require protecting NPC’s or devices that have tissue paper defense and which stay in one place
• Massive hits out of culling and/or particle blur

My biggest issue is with the last one. No amount of skill matters if players cannot see the mobs they’re supposed to dodge, interrupt, etc.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Lucas.9162:

I wasn’t talking about all Temples though. It’d be nice for at least one to require a lot of planning and skill.

I suppose everyone has a different definition of “a lot.” I have no problems with “skill required.” I do have a problem with:

• Make-or-break mob mechanics that require interrupts on a Defiant-bearing Champion in an open-world, anyone-can-join situation
• Veteran summons who outnumber the players 2 or 3 to 1
• Giving mobs a lot of AoE in events that require protecting NPC’s or devices that have tissue paper defense and which stay in one place
• Massive hits out of culling and/or particle blur

My biggest issue is with the last one. No amount of skill matters if players cannot see the mobs they’re supposed to dodge, interrupt, etc.

Well stated. Your last bullet, in fact, removes the skill factor entirely. The current encounters are actually not technically challenging at all. You can fail simply through the “error” of being in combat.

Lucas.9162:

It makes events like this feel that being lucky is better than having actual skill.

Unfortunately, that describes a lot of encounters in the game. Without a real aggro or heal mechanic, sometimes thinks are just “lucky”.

Also, to those of you who say temples need to be hard and challenging for skilled players, etc….you really need to think about the difference between dungeons and temples. Temples were meant to be done in open world PVE with the people in the zone and maybe a group of guildies or friends. The problem is the amount of coordination and luck required to finish these things is somewhat absurd for the environment. Even then, the rewards aren’t worth the effort put in.

I wish we could tell Jones to stay the kitten in the camp and sleep while we actually try to accomplish something.

Try to take mobs and that spider further from Jonez. Aggro depends on the distance too, so with the longer distance from Jonez there should be lesser chance that Spider will switch his target on him. Also healing is greatly attracting aggro, so try to put more supportive skills on your skillbars rather than pure damage.

I’d be happy if Champion Risen Spider has a max limit on how many Veteran Risen Spider Hatchlings it can spawn at a time. Having 15 attacking a group of 8 people is not fun.

I hope this is fixed on the next update, and not 2 months — which was how long it took to fix the ice shield during Claw of Jormag events.

Speaking of jormag, it seems the ice spikes (during phase 2) spawn on top of people or there’s added icy prison now that I don’t recall happening until recently.

DarkSider.1079:

Speaking of jormag, it seems the ice spikes (during phase 2) spawn on top of people or there’s added icy prison now that I don’t recall happening until recently.

I thought the Veteran Elementals standing on the ledges did that? Every time I’ve been encased I had aggro from at least one of them. Whichever, it’s been going on since I got to Frostgorge on my main last September.

They may, but it’s never happened to me until the past week. Maybe with the increased scaling they’re doing more of it whereby more of us are being affected by it?