Guild Wars 2

I concurr on everything.

Most intelligent post I’ve seen on these forums, CrazyLegsMurfy.

You should work at Arena, but they don’t deserve you. This game and this community doesn’t deserve you.

Manoa.5897:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) If you want to beat it, you need to retrait if you’re set up incorrectly. Trail and error. Anet’s not gonna tell each player how to play within their skill range. If you do better as a pure Zerker rather than PVT, trail accordingly. Same with armor setups. This challenge wasn’t meant for everyone anyway, so you gotta do what you gotta do in order to win. If that means paying 100 Gold to respec, that’s your choice.

Why does the hardcore zerker crowd always assume if someone is struggling with challenging content, that person must be wearing PVT? For the record, I don’t run PVT on my gauntlet character (and never have).

But with one-shot mechanics, there’s simply no point in players specing for defense whatsoever. Not complaining about the one-shot mechanics, but there’s no denying this content heavily favors glass cannons. After the big hubabbaloo about the devs wanting to encourage build diversity with the big rebalance patch, it’s no surprise that players are frustrated that ANet put in content that favors full zerker builds so heavily. This is Guild Wars 2, not Zerker Wars 2.

As evidenced by sPvP, gear does not equal skill. An event about challenging skilled players should be about skill and knowledge of your profession, not the gear you’re wearing. I wholeheartedly feel that the gauntlet would have been far better implemented in sPvP.

Glass Cannons have a downside – there’s more of a chance for them to die. That’s the trade off. High damage with less defense. If you can play well with a Zerker (i.e. good at evading), then spec for it and aim for the challenge. If you do well with a PVT, spec for it and aim for the challenge. You’re not required to pick from either. You can spec however your play style dictates.

That’s why this challenge is so good. It’s hard, and the only clues as to how to beat it is trail and error. Not doing enough damage? Zerker it up. If you need more HP, go with PVT. The only things that I agree with, out of all the reason for this thread, are bug fixes and the top floor instanced separate from the farming below. Other than that, Anet did a great job.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) If you want to beat it, you need to retrait if you’re set up incorrectly. Trail and error. Anet’s not gonna tell each player how to play within their skill range. If you do better as a pure Zerker rather than PVT, trail accordingly. Same with armor setups. This challenge wasn’t meant for everyone anyway, so you gotta do what you gotta do in order to win. If that means paying 100 Gold to respec, that’s your choice.

I’m not entirely sure what you’re arguing against here? I never said that spending money wasn’t an option, nor did I state that we shouldn’t “do what we gotta do” to win. My argument was that because many of the boss fights are unforgiving, and the cost of losing (time and money) is so high, it can be frustrating to not even have the time/understanding to figure out what changes to make.

I’m not complaining about the difficulty, I’m saying that it would be nice to be able to either have some place to test out these mechanics, or not have the penalty for experimentation be so unforgiving.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

2) If no one gives you a rez when you die, you Waypoint and run back. Pretty simple concept. If you don’t like that, be sure you win next time you go in.

It’s not a difficult task, or a hard concept to grasp, Smooth. The issue is that it is a needless waste of time. And I am sure you’re aware of how ridiculous your next statement is.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

As for the queue, I see no problem. The fights are fast enough, and it gives other players the opportunity to watch and learn.

Watching someone fight the first boss, and the third, and the fourth….when you’ve already beat them, from a fairly far distance, really isn’t all that informative. And while I agree they have the potential to go by relatively quickly, when you add up all the rest of the time it takes to get tickets, WP, run up, choose fight/gambits, repair, etc….it can add up.

Awesome post. Read it from start to finish and have to agree with 100% of it.

I’m glad you pointed out the time constraints that most people have that preclude them from even participating.

Manoa.5897:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Anet fully understands that the players are frustrated. But the challenge is designed to push the best players. If people want an easier fight, there’s the Shadow Behemoth, Fire Ele, Shatterer, Jungle Wurm, etc etc. Hard content is hard. Challenging content is challenging. If you can’t do it, or don’t have fun doing it, find another enemy boss to kill.

Guess you missed this part…

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Notice I didn’t say anything about the difficulty? I am not here to slam how difficult or challenging it is. Other than the limited time available to learn and beat the fight (remember how we complained about the last dungeon, or the Trials ANet?), it is pretty ok.

The problem is when you add in all these other factors, what could potentially be an amazing activity becomes a long, drawn out, expensive, and frustrating experience for many players.

I was going to say the same thing, thank you.

Manoa.5897:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Challenging content is challenging. You take away the challenge, then it becomes a freebie giveaway for a mini and Achievement points.

Making players pay for new gear, retraiting, armor repair, waypointing, and entry tickets is not a challenge. That’s a goldsink.

Making players run a long distance from the waypoint or grind for entry tickets is not a challenge. That’s a timesink.

Making players deal with a confusing registration system and significant FPS drops due to the zerg below is not a challenge. That’s poor planning.

Making players deal with camera glitches and domes not clearing out between matches is not a challenge. Those are game bugs.

Nobody in this thread is calling for scaling the difficulty of the encounters down. Folks in this thread who posted their feedback want the same level of challenge with more polish and less annoyance. The encounters would STILL challenging even if every single one of Crazylegsmurphy’s ideas were implemented.

And thank you for this as well, it highlights very very well what the problem is.

Last night I fought the “flame ring” boss 14 times. I lost every time.

I was able to get him down to half health once, but most times I would be dead in moments.

I am positive I could beat this boss, but due to the camera, lack of effects loading, no circles showing on the floor, enemy not loading, FPS drops, and time wasted setting up the fight again, I can’t justify trying anymore.

I was fighting the game more than the boss and for me that isn’t fun. Again, the challenge to totally cool, but when you factor in the extra and often random issues as I stated in my original posts, it becomes much too frustrating.

I have decided to no longer attempt this content until they address some of the issues.

I am positive I could beat this boss, but due to the camera, lack of effects loading, no circles showing on the floor, enemy not loading, FPS drops, and time wasted setting up the fight again, I can’t justify trying anymore.

There are no “AE Circles” on Salazan. Really, he just puts a ring around you and sends ground-fireballs at you.

Bovinity.8610:

I am positive I could beat this boss, but due to the camera, lack of effects loading, no circles showing on the floor, enemy not loading, FPS drops, and time wasted setting up the fight again, I can’t justify trying anymore.

There are no “AE Circles” on Salazan. Really, he just puts a ring around you and sends ground-fireballs at you.

I just did it a few more times for “fun” and there seem to be AoE circles, but they seem to blend in with the floor. Doesn’t really matter either way, I can’t last long enough to beat him past the first round.

I just did it a few more times for “fun” and there seem to be AoE circles, but they seem to blend in with the floor. Doesn’t really matter either way, I can’t last long enough to beat him past the first round.

Lies, you can do eet! (Motivational Tony Little image goes here.)

Bovinity.8610:

I just did it a few more times for “fun” and there seem to be AoE circles, but they seem to blend in with the floor. Doesn’t really matter either way, I can’t last long enough to beat him past the first round.

Lies, you can do eet! (Motivational Tony Little image goes here.)

I can’t. I just used up my 20th ticket on him.

I think I’ll stand a better chance playing Megaman 1 with one hand, and covering the TV screen with silly string.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

snip

What it comes down to is that these inconveniences are a type of gate that was put there intentionally. Needed a ticket to get in. Having to wait in a queue. These things slow down your retry attempts. WPing and running back if no one is around, or willing to rez you. My guess is that the last one I mentioned is a penalty, in a way, to motivate you to not fail the next time. As spending lots of money to re-equip your character, that’s just part of the process of finding the right strategy and setup to succeed.

Salazan has me stopped, no matter the class, he one shots me. No time to move, run etc. I gave up. Seems those that have gotten past him have claimed “Dumb luck”. I googled and they say stay in ring and avoid cone. I also looked up the final reward for gauntlet. A mini pet? Seriously?

I guess this type of content is wildy popular, although most times the gauntlet is a ghost town. When I ask for tips in open chat they say “screw that come farm destroyers..” and I do. Money is great, risk to reward is fine and I don’t leave in a bad mood.

Do people really find such difficult bosses a rewarding challenge? Honestly, I am curious.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

What it comes down to is that these inconveniences are a type of gate that was put there intentionally. Needed a ticket to get in. Having to wait in a queue. These things slow down your retry attempts. WPing and running back if no one is around, or willing to rez you. My guess is that the last one I mentioned is a penalty, in a way, to motivate you to not fail the next time. As spending lots of money to re-equip your character, that’s just part of the process of finding the right strategy and setup to succeed.

I’m not sure I would agree.

I am motivated enough without having to fight the game. I want to experience the content and it’s awesome that it is difficult, but I am finding some of these bosses difficult not because of the mechanics, but because of everything surrounding them.

I know how to beat this boss, I’ve tried 20 times now, and almost every time I am faced with a different set of game issues that cause me to die. If I can’t beat him because the fire doesn’t load, the enemy doesn’t load, the FPS is too low, the game lags, the camera zooms, or the AoE circles are too hidden in the floor, then I would call it unfair, or at least poorly designed.

Limiting my ability to replay the fight fast, is just one more factor that makes this a horrible experience.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Do people really find such difficult bosses a rewarding challenge? Honestly, I am curious.

I actually do!

What I don’t find rewarding is fighting the game in addition to fighting the boss.

1) Yes this fight should have been separated from the same area that the zergs below are farming in.

2) The grate like floor appears to be designed to make the circles harder to see. It’s not solid like past hard fights. That in itself increases the difficulty.

3) They probably didn’t want players to have an unlimited amount of tries, thus having tickets drop as a rare item, or making them cost a lot of money is a gate to the fight.

Need tickets, try doing the balloon towers (they were mostly bugged for me) after getting it done, I had about 250 to 300 tickets lol

This fight has no skill involved at all, it’s all about reaction time, reaction time being a function of the following: Internet Lag, frames per second and actual reaction times.

Since my internet and computer are mediocre at best and given the non-instanced nonsense I get to add at least 0.3-0.4 secs to my reaction times …. ooops too late buddy.

I generally think in most content the manifiesto is simply not taken seriously, but someone had to be attently looking at it to design the gauntlet, since geting the exact oposite of the manifesto can’t be based just in pure chance.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

What I don’t find rewarding is fighting the game in addition to fighting the boss.

THIS ^

Most of these fights involve fighting the camera and the atrocious targeting system. Almost all my deaths at Liadri involved the game mechanics, and not the actual fight.

The game has a serious design flaw. On the one hand there are attacks that force you to run around the arena, and face away from the boss. But on the other hand, there is a time limit, and targeting the boss and attacking him/her are important. So you have to be doing both. Now throw in the inability of the game to properly target something if the camera is facing the other way, and you’ve got a serious design flaw. It means the player is constantly fighting the camera and the targeting.

I’d also like to add:

Recharge our skills!

After a victory or loss, I don’t want to wait for 2 minutes waiting for my elite to recharge. That waiting time is absurd. And I’m going to need that elite again at the next fight.

Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with everything (and I’ve beaten Liadri), I must say, it’s refreshing to see a constructive post instead of “wahhh QQ” all the time.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

…dumb!

This made me laugh cause I was about to post my own thread and say the samething! I thought it was going to be really cool, I was looking foward to it even being a lowbie, but its a big let down pretty much with most things that people list minus it being hard. I love thakittens hard.

The other thing I will add is that some of these bosses are pretty much burn them or have a really tough fight or just flat out die. I rather a longer time limit on this and have an actual fight with the champ then pew pew as hard as I can.

I absolutely agree that fighting the camera and oddly-colored floor make some of these fights much more annoying than they should be.

However, I flatly reject the idea that any of the fights are “luck based”. They all have extremely predictable, consistent mechanics that are countered by knowledge of the fight.

Bovinity.8610:

I absolutely agree that fighting the camera and oddly-colored floor make some of these fights much more annoying than they should be.

However, I flatly reject the idea that any of the fights are “luck based”. They all have extremely predictable, consistent mechanics that are countered by knowledge of the fight.

For me, the “luck” has always come in the form of getting good FPS, having the camera behave, having the boss / effects load, having targeting work, having my skills work, and getting a good start to a one shot kill.

I’ve spent 30+ tickets on the fire boss (Salsa, or whatever his name is), and only twice has everything aligned and I was able to get him down to a sliver of energy (I haven’t beat him yet).

This has also been the case in the other fights as well. Whenever the game behaves, the boss fights become quite doable, but add in the extra “challenge” and it is a very, very, frustrating experience.

For me, the “luck” has always come in the form of getting good FPS, having the camera behave, having the boss / effects load, having targeting work, having my skills work, and getting a good start to a one shot kill.

Yeah, if you’re having technical/computer issues that does suck.

I agree with most of your points. The only one I disagree with is #5, and it’s really a personal preference. I’ve been having a lot of fun hanging out with (sometimes commiserating with) other players in the queue area. I’ve met many players I most likely would never have seen for more than a few seconds in passing. Today I’m just hanging out there handing out rezzes.

Personally, the only fight that I feel involves luck is that bumb Strugar and his Cujo…