Guild Wars 2

Liadri — Questions, Concerns, Comments, Discussion, Suggestions.

First of all, before I start on this post, I want to say that quite a lot of this post will contain my opinions and observations from the Liadri fight, however the vast majority will focus specifically on the “Light Up The Darkness” achievement.

There will be a TL;DR at the bottom.

o—-

Let me first start by saying that the addition of the Queen’s Gauntlet has been a mix of fun, challenges, horrors, and frequent frustration. Never once have I had this much difficulty or frustration in GW2 by anything before, and even the previously hard stuff pales in comparison. These gauntlet fights have given way to some of the most challenging things I have faced in an MMO, though if I had to point one out in specific, it would be my attempts to get the “Light Up The Darkness” achievement.

Liadri herself is an interesting fight, and while difficult, is by no means impossible for the average gamer — or even the casual one, so long as you put in some practice. Getting through Phase 1 is by far fairly easy so long as you recognize the pattern of where the shadowfall will land, and where the white swirls are going to appear. So long as you know where everything is positioned, where it starts from, and where you need to go, it’s relatively simple to get to phase two — the only “random” part about phase one is where the orb will spawn, and it will only ever spawn in one of four specific locations.

Phase 2, however, is a whole other beast. The amount of shadowfall doubles, making it much more difficult to move around the dome without running into any of the potential one-shot effects. This can be countered though good timing of evades, knowing where you can stand, use of condition removal, ranged weapons, and other such things to keep Liadri at bay while wrecking her face.

To me, the Liadri fight for just killing her is actually easy now. I could probably do it 9/10 times after I figured out the pattern, avoiding most of her damage all the while on either my mesmer or guardian. Killing her is no-longer the issue for me, and really, it’s not as hard as many people make it out to be.

Instead, now it’s getting the Light Up The Darkness achievement. This achievement throws all concept of hard out the window into the territory of “Dark Souls” difficulty. Hell, I think I raged less on Dark Souls than I have on trying to get this achievement.

To those who haven’t got that far, or to those who haven’t defeated Liadri and think she is hard for just her basic fight, think about it this way: It’s 2.5x the difficulty. Instead of 3 orbs, you have to throw 8. This means not only do you have to manage killing her in a timely manner, you must also combine everything you do in phase 1 with everything you do in phase 2. This includes positioning yourself, positioning the visions, getting the lights without getting hit by visions and shadowfall, throwing the lights without getting hit by visions and shadowfall, trying your best not to die to Liadri herself or be crippled by her attacks, dealing with orbs, and even more pressing than the rest of it all — doing it under a time limit. The same time limit as the normal fight.

Trying to get “Light Up The Darkness” is insanity. When I say it’s insanity, I mean it — doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Now, I bet at this point, you’re expecting me to say “Anet should nerf this fight!” or “This fight is too hard and should be toned down!”, but that’s not what I intend to say. Instead, I want to focus on four things: 1. Why this fight is difficult, but not impossible, 2. What makes this fight so frustratingly hard, 3. What needs to be done to make this fair for players, and 4. What are your opinions and experiences with this fight, and what are your suggestions (as the reader) for helping make this fight more accessible to the larger community of GW2.

As far as number 1 and 2 are concerned, I think most of what I said above explains it, but I’ll put a more concise list. Again, I would remind you that this is more discussing the “Light Up The Darkness” achievement, not just killing her.

-The fight is not impossible because a few players have already proved it has been done, and is capable of being done.
-Phase 1 is very mechanical, and can be done with ease after practice.
-Phase 2 makes it more difficult, becoming filled managing not only your skills and cool downs, but dodge, positioning of your character, and positioning of everything else in the fights.

The list above is why the fight is doable with effort, however, the list that follows is the frustrations that come with it:

-During Phase 2, you are no-longer just managing your character and skills, but you are also managing and manipulating the positioning, characteristics, and movements of the enemies following you.
-During Phase 2, there are a set number of things you cannot control, such as spawn locations of the orbs, the shadowfall locations, and the locations of the white swirls. This can be overcome with proper positioning and dodges somewhat.
-The timer on Lights after they spawn. Because of the short amount of time with how long they last on the field in conjunction with the time limit of the fight, players are forced to take risky, often suicidal moves to obtain the lights to throw them in time.
-The time it takes to pick up the lights, along with the time it takes to throw them. I am not sure the exact time it takes for either, however when faced with so many one-shot effects where even a second of movement can make the difference between dying, having the light despawn, or succeeding at your thrown orb, this makes the above even more challenging.
-The time limit on the fight. This once again makes it hard to calculate every move and calls for players to make often deadly and suicidal actions.
-The Dome. The camera angles can make the fight seem dizzying, constantly zooming in and out, making it hard to see effects on the floor.
- The mix between predictability and unpredictability with the enemy AI. Sometimes she stands in the proper place, sometimes she lunges, sometimes she runs up and cripples — while her motions can be controlled somewhat though methods of crowd control and conditions, she is ultimately a wild-card in an otherwise mechanical fight. This again leads people to do suicidal moves in order to evade her.

I’m sure there’s quite a few I missed, not including bugs that happen (getting downed by fights that take place beforehand, etc). However, bugs are their own problem, and while they may have an impact on the fight, it is clearly an unintentional one. The list above mostly contains intentional parts of the fight that make it difficult and extremely frustrating.

This brings me to my third point, which is how can this fight be changed to make it fair to all players?

In my honest opinion, despite everything I said above, the problem with the fight is not its mechanics and the frustrations that come with it. The true problem of this time. I am not speaking of the time limit for the actual fight, what I am speaking of is the fact this is, unfortunately, temporary content.

The Gauntlet and all it’s fights, especially in attempts to get Light Up The Darkness, has shown that Anet has listened to its more hard-core player base in order to make challenging content for us to play — and this is a good thing. Harder content should be included in this game, and I hope more arrives in the future for us to work on.

However, there is the main problem why I have trouble with this being temporary content — the term “Work On”. By putting this time-limited fight under a time-limited availability to actually attempt it, it makes it all the more frustrating for players who wish to take the time and understand the fight, progress forward on it, and take breaks when they have become too frustrated to continue on. By having this time limit on the event, it creates a sense of worry and frustration for players, and also creates and urgency that has them coming back and banging their heads against a wall until they finally throw up their hand and give up.

The nice thing about hard and permanent content is that it allows players to take a break, take a breather, and come back to it later in time since it will still be there. However, because it is temporary content, this urgency can drive players (such as myself) to burn out on the game from utter frustration and never wish to play again. It drives players away, and when the content is removed, it serves as a reminder of the failures of that person since they will never get a chance at it again, which can seriously hinder their enjoyment and desire to play the game again.

Now, some of you might say this is an over-reaction to content. “You don’t have to play it, you can always do something else.” is the main reaction I hear from people who don’t think that having hard content as temporary content is a bad thing. To some extent, people who say that are correct — It’s a game. You don’t have to play.

However, to others, it’s about watching their work and efforts fall to pieces before their eyes. For me, personally, what keeps me coming back to this game is my desire to complete every single special-event and temporary achievement in game, which I have successfully done up to this point. To some, the meta achievement is what is listed in the living story area, no more, no less. To me, my personal meta achievement is to have all those achievements done, and to not have one not only breaks my streak, but makes me feel like all my attempts and efforts over the last year have been ruined for me.

Additionally, I would like to point out something I stated above: When people who get burned out on content can come back to the same content they left at, then finish that content, they feel more obliged and interested in returning to the game. More players who return makes a larger player base. Having hard content at temporary content can burn out players who, because they can no-longer achieve what they failed at before, will most likely feel a heavy hesitance to return due to those failures, whether by their own fault or fault of the game.

So, back to the point, how does the Liadri fight — particularly Light Up The Darkness — get fixed?

In my own opinion, I feel the best course of action for the Liadri fight would be not to mess with the fight at all, but would be to make the content itself permanent so people can revisit it as much as they like, make progress, and not burn out as hard from having to complete it on a limited amount of time for the event.

However, if making this content permanent is not an option, then the difficulty of it needs to be lowered somewhat, or at least parts of what make it frustrating that can be more easily dealt with — camera angles, in particular — need to be modified to reflect that this is temporary content, and should not be of a difficulty that stresses players beyond their breaking point of wanting to play the game.

This is a “causal” MMO, and while I personally love the challenge of something difficult in it, difficulty needs to be scaled better to the amount of time it’ll be available for — for temporary content, hard but not so frustratingly so, since you want your player base to be able to succeed at it with some challenge, but not a feeling of impossibility. For Permanent content, feel free to make it as difficult as you wish, since people can come and choose as the please, but it will always be there.

Now, onto the questions and discussion:

-Do you agree/disagree with the points made? If so, why?
-Do you have any suggestions of your own that are different on how to fix the fight? If so, what are they, and explain in detail — think it out before you answer.
-Do you have any personal experience/stories to share about the gauntlet? Any troubles or difficulties that plague you? Any suggestions for other players that are helpful? (No, telling people to move on or that they suck isn’t helpful.)
-Have anything else you’d like to say? Feel free to say it to start a discussion, but be civil please.

o—-

TL;DR

First of all, shame on you. Go read it, lazy bums. :P

Points made:
1. Liadri is a very frustrating fight, especially when attempting “Light Up the Darkness.”
2. Too many things going on at once along with managing the fight for your character, the enemy AI, and the effects inside the dome make it extremely difficult.
3. The fight is doable, but managing everything is insane. It’s like playing 5 games of chess against masters all at once, and trying to determine every move you’ll make and every move they’ll make at the same time.
4. The main issue about the Liadri fight in my opinion is not the difficulty of the fight, but the fact the gauntlet is temporary content. This creates a terrible sense of urgency and can burn players out easily.

Solutions given:
1. Make the Gauntlet Permanent content so the the worries that plague players about having to get it done in a certain amount of time go away. This allows players to work on it over time and come and go as they please.
2. If the Gauntlet cannot become permanent content, then something about the Liadri fight must be tuned to make it either easier/more accessible to players. My first suggestion would be the camera angles and removing the dome, but there are other options.

Discussion questions are listed above the TL;DR. Let me know what you think.

whole liadra fight is total kitten if you have tallest norn male or charr male you dont have any vision cause of kitten dome around you arena net HAS TO FIX THIS i spend nearly 100 tickets to kill her with my warrior but cause of the size of my characters my vision is sucks arena should stop doing achivments and jumping puzzles for smaller characters or doing achivments like this for puller pusher or teleporting ones