Guild Wars 2

I got to say after completing all the bosses in the gauntlet, I loved it all the way up to the last one. Laidri was the most lazy boss every created. I appreciate that you are trying to insert challenging content into the game, but if this could be used as an example of what you are trying to do with living story content please stop.

Laidri has caused alot of anxiety and has drained the will to play of the casual base. If you have to defend your living story content, content that is supposed to appeal to a broad base with “its not everyone’s cup of tea”, that is absolutely horrifying. But, I am sure you already know this given the out pour of negative feedback only met by people that have no other means to defend it other than “I can do it you can too, not everything needs to be easy”

Lets take a look at this boss. Laidri herself is not hard to kill, its the one hit pattern style mechanics that you are fighting. She does not cast these skills, nor can anything be done to these skills its just a obstacle added for the sake of making people try multiple times.

This is not the same thing as difficult. You can take the same mechanic throw it on any other boss and have the same level of “difficulty”. This was really lazy on the developers part to simply make something not all players would be able to do, which effectively grief the casual living story base, and I have had alot of people in my guild leave for other games because of it. The only people you will hear call this fun are the people that need a accomplishment like this to make themselves feel superior. It is never good for the population of a game to cater your main content to this small percentage.

One hit mechanics are fine to use, but they should not be the only basis of “difficulty” which what this boss what. It was simple repetition until you got lucky enough not to make a minor mistake that cost you the game, no critical thinking required.

Real difficulty requires critical thinking, it requires strategy, it requires learning, and thinking outside the box. This can not be said about this boss. It was a simple micro skills, which would be okay if, every player was on equal ground. Not every player has the time to level and fund characters just to have the best chance of success. Especially in a 2-4 week time. Since it is time limited it is a very high source of anxiety because one, you can’t feel like you can take a break, do something else, and come back because it could be gone. Then players feel like they have missed out and quit all together because games are supposed to be fun.

Overall, please do better testing of your content, many game mechanic flaws have already been pointed out. Also please consider how fluid and easy the content is to retry, wait times are often longer than play time. And consider making high failure rate content and achievements permanent. People have a families and a full time jobs. People don’t like being rushed to grind out something that is time limited instead of something they rather be doing just because they don’t want to miss out on completing the content.

Over the past month this game has not been fun for me and has been filled with anxiety mad dash to do post nurf 5-gambit and 8-orb, and no it was not satisfying to beat because it could all start up again after adventure box. If only 8% of tests could complete it, it should at-least be able to be done on the player’s time table. This boss certainly was challenging but never forget this does not mean the same thing as fun.

I have been playing guild wars for nearly a decade because I felt it had always upheld the principle that I won’t be missing out because I don’t have every day to play. And I feel this is a principle increasingly lost especially the past few months. Please make living story content casual again, it should not have something in it that you could try for many many hours and still fail not having any progress completed. I am not saying “do not make stuff like this”, but people should be allowed to step away and return to content like this. I think you are stressing out a-lot of your base putting a high failure rate content and telling people they only have so much time to do it, people don’t feel like they can step away without missing it so they just stop playing, which I have given some consideration. I think making things like this permanent would go a long way into the issues people have about how “hard” this boss is.

LLook dude I’m sorry if you don’t have the time or availability to complete ALL of the living story content because, ONCE IN FOREVER Anet decides to toss something that comes CLOSE to an actual challange into the game and it’s tied to the LS patch. Is the Liadri fight flawed with rushed decisions and gimmicks? Yes, the shape of the arena adds artificial difficulty because of the camera going batkitten insane, the MASSIVE fps drop from low end computers, the undeniable annoyance of having to hoof ALL the way up back to the gauntlet because of the lack of players around.

But it’s not impossible, and it was Anet’s DESIGN decision to make it so that not everyone was able to complete. But HOH, since something OPTIONAL is difficult to achieve because of real life factors and the fact that I’m more of a casual playe we have to light up our torches and sharppen our pitch forks and criticise Anet for not making EVERYTHING available for the casual section of the community!

KITTENWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASTES.

Buddy don’t take this the wrong way. I understand people have their real lives to attend to and all. But stating that “the X content has to be casual” has got to be the most selfish and KITTEN agonizing factor that plagues modern day game developers from being able to fully express their competence in game development.

AND GUESS WHAT? JUST BECAUSE YOU WAN’T SOMETHING IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS GET IT.

I managed to beat Liadri with my favorite class, the Engineer. It took me about 200 tries, when it came to me: “This build and strategy isn’t working”, then I’ve started noticing patterns in her behavious and mechacnics. From there came the real feeling of accomplishment. “Yes, you did it. Have this mini now so that you can always remember that you did that.”

I had to change build 3 times to find the one that fitted the fight best.
You know that if she get’s close to you, she’ll apply conditions that hinder your movement and damage. What’s the solution to that? Condition removal and discovering the pattern of her AOE’s so that you can create a rotation that envolves kiting, managing your dodges and when to remove the conditions applied to you.

Critical thinking and adapting to the situation torwards your the goal laid in front of you.

That’s what Liadri is about.

And also, if you’re not being able to beat it because it doesn’t fit the casual standarts of your gameplay and like you’ve said, it’s causing anxiety issues.

Don’t try to fight her.

Hell Anet’s releasing new content every 2 weeks. It’s not like you’re gonna miss MUCH, and lose up a bit of that completionist pride dude. Ti’s not like it’s gonna kill you.

You might read this as a personal attack just because you’re a casual and that you have to rightfully take care of your real life above completing the game. But I don’t agree with a lot of the points you tried to make within this thread.

Take care.

It was fully intended that not everyone would be able to complete the gauntlet. During their preview of it, they basically said that Liadri’s mini was a way to show off – when you see it, you know they’re good.

The gauntlet was not the main content (content designed to be completable by everyone) for this living story. It was just a side activity introduced through it. Content like this, especially when it’s solo, is very rarely made since it doesn’t cater to the majority.

If you have a problem with hard achievements, I highly suggest you don’t look at the next SAB achievements. Its hard mode is basically designed for the 1%. It is full of cheap deaths that you can only avoid by knowing where they are.

Better to not waste time fighting Liadri. Not worth the effort.

I consider myself very much a casual player (I haven’t even finish my Personal Story yet, or gotten any ascended gear), I haven’t beaten Liadri yet but I’ve really enjoyed trying. (I still am actually.)

Mireles Lore.5942:

Laidri has caused alot of anxiety and has drained the will to play of the casual base. If you have to defend your living story content, content that is supposed to appeal to a broad base with “its not everyone’s cup of tea”, that is absolutely horrifying. But, I am sure you already know this given the out pour of negative feedback only met by people that have no other means to defend it other than “I can do it you can too, not everything needs to be easy”

Obviously I can’t speak for all casual players but this is not true at all for me. I knew, even before I started, that I’m not the best player in the game. Far from it actually. If I could do everything in the game without trying dozens of times it’d be a very boring game. This way I have things to work towards. If I don’t do it this time I look forward to coming back to the Gauntlet next time and seeing how much easier it is once I’m better at the game.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Lets take a look at this boss. Laidri herself is not hard to kill, its the one hit pattern style mechanics that you are fighting. She does not cast these skills, nor can anything be done to these skills its just a obstacle added for the sake of making people try multiple times.

This is not the same thing as difficult. You can take the same mechanic throw it on any other boss and have the same level of “difficulty”.

I don’t understand this logic. Isn’t the same true of every mechanic in the game? You could put Kholer’s Pull on to any enemy, or have them spawn locusts and grubs like Lupi and it’d be just as difficult as it is during their fights. And you could say the same about any enemy or attack in the game. It’s a computer program, if they wanted to they could make us start with all the gear and all the achievements completed. Any enemies or tasks or challenges they put in are obstacles, but essentially any game is a series of obstacles to overcome. Without that there’s nothing to do.

Mireles Lore.5942:

This was really lazy on the developers part to simply make something not all players would be able to do, which effectively grief the casual living story base, and I have had alot of people in my guild leave for other games because of it. The only people you will hear call this fun are the people that need a accomplishment like this to make themselves feel superior. It is never good for the population of a game to cater your main content to this small percentage.

This is essentially a repeat of what you said above. See my first comment for the response.

Mireles Lore.5942:

One hit mechanics are fine to use, but they should not be the only basis of “difficulty” which what this boss what. It was simple repetition until you got lucky enough not to make a minor mistake that cost you the game, no critical thinking required.

Real difficulty requires critical thinking, it requires strategy, it requires learning, and thinking outside the box. This can not be said about this boss. It was a simple micro skills, which would be okay if, every player was on equal ground. Not every player has the time to level and fund characters just to have the best chance of success. Especially in a 2-4 week time.

I agree that you need to repeat it until you don’t make a mistake, but I’m not sure I’d call it lucky. Every time I’ve died it’s because I’ve done something wrong – I’ve walked into AoE or a Vision, or I haven’t destroyed a rift or I’ve mistimed a dodge. When I get it right it won’t be because I got lucky – it will be because I got it right – I learned the fight and didn’t make a mistake.

This fight definitely requires learning, I’m not sure I’d call it strategy exactly but there is a definite pattern that can be learned and then used to your advantage. I know Phase 1 off by heart now, which means I also know exactly where I’ll be when Phase 2 starts. I’m making progress with learning Phase 2 but it’s proving hard to keep track of where the Visions spawn when I’m kiting.

I agree that you probably need a high level character for the Gauntlet, so new players are effectively excluded but from what I’ve seen most new players aren’t ready to worry about the Living Story anyway.

I don’t agree that you need expensive gear, and it’s exactly because of the ‘flaws’ you mentioned. The boss is relatively weak so you don’t need to be doing a huge amount of damage to kill her and you’re defending against 1-shot mechanics so you don’t need great gear to survive. You just need to position yourself and time your dodges and attacks successfully.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Over the past month this game has not been fun for me and has been filled with anxiety mad dash to do post nurf 5-gambit and 8-orb, and no it was not satisfying to beat because it could all start up again after adventure box. If only 8% of tests could complete it, it should at-least be able to be done on the player’s time table. This boss certainly was challenging but never forget this does not mean the same thing as fun.

This is your opinion on your personal experience, I’m not going to comment on it. Just bear in mind that other peoples experiences and opinions can be very different.

Mireles Lore.5942:

I have been playing guild wars for nearly a decade because I felt it had always upheld the principle that I won’t be missing out because I don’t have every day to play. And I feel this is a principle increasingly lost especially the past few months. Please make living story content casual again, it should not have something in it that you could try for many many hours and still fail not having any progress completed. I am not saying “do not make stuff like this”, but people should be allowed to step away and return to content like this. I think you are stressing out a-lot of your base putting a high failure rate content and telling people they only have so much time to do it, people don’t feel like they can step away without missing it so they just stop playing, which I have given some consideration. I think making things like this permanent would go a long way into the issues people have about how “hard” this boss is.

Again I agree with about 1/2 of what you said. I think a lot of people are feeling rushed by the Living Story and they need to tone it down a bit. But that’s more to do with the speed of releases and the amount of content than how hard it is.

For one thing hard is subjective, what one player finds hard is easy for another. Even within the Gauntlet you can see this. I beat Windcaller Kiela on my first or second try and when I saw other people talking about how hard she was I started thinking I must have not even fought her or I’d remember it. Then I got stuck on Salazan who apparently some people beat on their first or second try.