Guild Wars 2

I agree. The new dungeon was really well done. Cool mechanics and awesome look.

I love the dungeon but hate pugs now

I enjoy hard and challenging content, but I also like item acquisition and aesthetic character progression to be a part of my gameplay experience. When long and difficult dungeons that have high chances or failure don’t have appropriate rewards to compensate (I’m not talking about RNG rolls, actual solid rewards you know you will get after a reasonable amount of effort, like dungeon tokens and their sets) then the increase in difficulty becomes very annoying and the failure rate and challenge becomes discouraging.

It becomes hard to balance how much you enjoy content when it begins to compete with item acquisition and aesthetic progression. Most item acquisition boils down to gold, which is universally acquirable in GW2. This means the most efficient methods of acquiring gold become the primary way to play the game for people who highly value item acquisition and aesthetic progression, and challenging and difficult content quickly falls behind in the value of completing it. This is why the Arah dungeon set is much more valuable than the CoF dungeon set.

I’d be happier to see more challenging content if it was being rewarded properly, to do this they need to create rewards which don’t compete with the gold efficiency of common farms.

Agreed, the game needed more difficult content and this was pretty good.

While I do enjoy difficult challenges now and then, I feel as if Anet doesn’t quite understand difficulty scale.

Usually things are too easy in the game… but then things become ridiculously hard to the point where a lot of people can’t complete the dungeon and thus they can’t complete the story.

The Aetherblade Dungeon is the best example of this.

The normal enemies are tough to kill! That’s great! I’ve seen people die to them a lot and I feel that’s nice! Good to have tough mobs.
Then you have Frizz, who’s ridiculously hard because the golems have too much kitten going on.
Then you have the final boss, which is way too easy, just long.

So far, the one thing I think Anet had made that showed “Challenging difficulty but can be conquered once you figured it out”, was honestly… the jump puzzle during Halloween.
It took me 4 hours of trying just to get it done, and then after I finally pegged it, I was able to beat it 20 times in a row easily. Same with others, and in the end it was doable. Hard but doable.

For Frizz… it’s like. So we go from Very Easy, to Hair Pulling Hard… where’s the middle man? Where’s the ween into difficulty to show people they need to start getting prepared for this sort of thing? Why did they decide instead of taking the training wheels off with a screwdriver, to smack em off with a sledgehammer and set the biker on fire?!

The golems have pull, knockback and stun attacks on top of confuse and their invulnerability shield that likes to last just as long until the next beam passes through them.
You can still target Frizz with ranged even while hes in the shield… not sure why, you can’t hurt it but the game chooses to auto-target him.

I want to know what Anet thought about Frizz.
They made him, and they obviously had a method of beating him. I would love for them to show me the correct pattern.
Managed to beat him once with my first party, haven’t been able to since and quite frankly I don’t see any reason to even do the dungeon again.

No. It’s too hard. Hard is good, absolutely. But this is way too hard. Please adjust it just a bit so it’s still hard, but not impossible.

It’s not “hard”, it’s “challenging”! Once you grasp the concept, you can do it without dying. Though some players would die on lasers or last boss’s cannons (mostly), we never failed or wiped.

I did it 2 times with my guildies and it is so fun! I love this dungeon and would welcome it in any form of permanent content (fractal or new permanent dungeon).

Almost all of GW2’s dungeons I put on the “too hard” side of the difficulty. There’s just no scaling here. I can’t select an easy mode, or a hard mode. It’s all hard mode. I guess they want people out doing events for easier activities, but so much of the story is told through dungeons, so it’s kind of strange.

I wouldn’t mind so much if this dungeon was sticking around for a while. But it’s kind of mean of ArenaNet to make a temporary dungeon and then make it difficult that the average PUG has issues completing it.

I don’t think the dungeon is too hard. I’m far from being the most skilled player in the world, but the PUG I was in defeated the last boss in my first try.

I don’t like the cannon mechanic in the last boss, though. ArenaNet relies on dodging way too much – we have way too many bosses in which the main strategy is “dodge attacks and hit the guy”. I wish ArenaNet would make a dungeon in which endurance regeneration is negative, so dodging is impossible, and people would need other kinds of defense.

And this last boss is why Bowls of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew are Tyria’s best friend!

Enjoyluck.2618:

I love the dungeon but hate pugs now

Hah!

4 tries:

1. - with guildies – failed hard
2. - complete pug – success
3. - with guildies and some pug – failed
4. - complete pug – success

Guess my guild is somewhat incompetent:)

Love the instance, its so much fun!

I must say, it took me nearly 3 hours to complete it, this dungeon is tricky, is not THAT hard, but tricky and very fun (those golems and their pulling to the wall as a real pain in the butt) but really., I enjoyed every single minute of it!

Did it in 2 hours last night.

do it again?

No, thanks.

Dit it in 1 hour last night.

do it again?

Yes, thanks.

Very good dungeon.
It’s so rare to find a dungeon designed to not be trivialized by zerkers team.

I absolutley LOVE this place. It’s kicked my kitten a few times but that’s just fine! Each try you get better and learn more. I REALLY can’t understand thoese saying the golem boss is harder then the final one. Once you learn the tricks to the beams it’s easy.
The regular mobs encourge ample use of control and support and I tend to adjust my utilities skills throughout the dungeon.
And the Risk Vs. Reward is there too. A guarenteed 1 gold cash just for compelting it, and some really great drops as well.
Just throwing it out there: If every dungeon in GW2 was like this I’d do them all the time!

I think that having hard or challenging content is good – even required – for an MMO but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a hard dungeon that only lasts two weeks. I think that splitting it into a “hard mode” for groups with better rewards and “easy/story mode” for people with limited time is the best idea.

Ultimately only ArenaNet know if it’s too hard (i.e. if a significant number of people are struggling to get through it).

I’ll admit that it was impossibly frustrating at times… but I enjoyed it.

The dungeon is pretty easy and can be done in less than 15 minutes.
I think that 1 guaranteed gold is enough.

KrisHQ.4719:

The dungeon is pretty easy and can be done in less than 15 minutes.
I think that 1 guaranteed gold is enough.

What party configuration did you have? For trying it out we went with a lot of bunker builds and it took quite a while lol

I also enjoyed ANets dungeon, but they should stop adding ridiculously hard achievements to temporary content. I got my achievements mind you, played 5 years of wow and the achieves in raids over there were all skill based, ANets only seem grindy or random (crabtacular anyone ?!).

Haven’t done it yet but, I can already say that I do not like grueling content. Which to me is having to start it over, again and again. Wasting so much time on content I’ve already experienced and know. There better be a way to skip to where we failed…..

As a necromancer, I noticed that Spectral Wall is a very helpful defense in all of the tight corridors that this dungeon has. It also is a good way to get the golems off your tail when you’re running away from the lasers.

Aluano.1826:

Agreed, the game needed more difficult content and this was pretty good.

The game has really difficult content in it already. You can access it from anywhere by clicking on the icon right next to Hints at the top of the screen. It looks like crossed swords. There is also slightly less challenging content available (depending on server) by pressing B and selecting which level of challenge you want.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Aluano.1826:

Agreed, the game needed more difficult content and this was pretty good.

The game has really difficult content in it already. You can access it from anywhere by clicking on the icon right next to Hints at the top of the screen. It looks like crossed swords. There is also slightly less challenging content available (depending on server) by pressing B and selecting which level of challenge you want.

Gw2 has PvE and PvP content, both should be challenging and fun. We here are praising ANet for a fantastic addition to PvE difficulty. I’m sure people are aware that PvP is a challenging experience .

I quite like the new dungeon for its new and interesting mechanics. But I do agree with people who say that it’s a bit on the hard side, and I think there’s two main reasons for that.

One is that the dungeon is quite unforgiving, especially when facing Frizz or Mai. If anyone in your party has a lapse in concentration, chances are they’ll get knocked down in one hit with little to no chance to recover. Often, at least in the pugs that I’ve been in, that also means your entire party ends up wiping too because now the fight is off balance.

The other is that there is little introduction to these new mechanics before you’re put into a massive fight, so the only way you get to learn about these mechanics is when you’re already under a lot of duress, and that usually means you usually fail several times before you start to grasp it.

Avelos.6798:

KrisHQ.4719:

The dungeon is pretty easy and can be done in less than 15 minutes.
I think that 1 guaranteed gold is enough.

What party configuration did you have? For trying it out we went with a lot of bunker builds and it took quite a while lol

We didnt complete it under 15 minutes, but there is an achievement for that.
Our setup was:
Engi, Ele, Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer and we wiped once at the last boss until we figured out the mechanic.

This is just right difficulty wise, loved it!

Love the new dungeon. it is quite hard, but very well made. Nice to have harder content too. I wouldnt want all dungeons to be as hard as this one, but some need to be.
And its made right, fights have interesting mechanics, loot is pretty good, none of the bosses have insane amounts of health, no part of the dungeon feels like a drag, dont think i would skip any fights even if given the opportunity. Brilliant design in my opinion. Played it twice now and will certainly do it again.

Completed the dungeon at last but my opinion remains the same , it is not an enjoyable dungeon at all. Just because something is hard does NOT make it good.

I give it 5/10

I really enjoyed this dungeon and I was also able to complete it with a PUG. We had 2 rangers (one was me) a warrior, mesmer and a guardian. Everyone tried their best and we did fail multiple on the laser room. I’ll admit, that 3rd stage is almost too hard, almost. We just had to keep fixing our strategy and try it again. I want to give props to the whole team for sticking through it, we did finally beat it! I also want to give special props to the guardian that was with us, there were a few times that only he and I were left standing and he did a great job at kiting while I got the other folks up and then we would switch depending on the aggro.

Anet, I really liked this dungeon. I haven’t had this much fun (and frustration!) since the first time I faced off against Lupicus. While it was hard, it really felt great to beat it. My only complaint is the temporary length of it. I know a lot of folks that will miss it as it will only be around 2 weeks, and while I understand the Living Story side of things, I just wish this was here for maybe a month at most, to give more people a chance.

I am not really sure what I think about this returning as a fractal though unless there were some significant changes. It would be way too much work for just ONE fractal, followed by 2-3 more. Gah, not sure I could survive all that.

I really like the mechanics of this dungeon. The pacing is my criticism. I think the bombing sections last a tad too long. I think the fight with the waves of enemies after the electric shield walls runs a tad long as well. Other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this dungeon. Thank you ArenaNet!

I’ll add to the list of people saying this dungeon is a lot of fun. Thanks once again ArenaNet!

However, with everyone talking up it’s difficulty, I expected a challenge.

I have done this with 3 pug groups, and 1 guild group. The 2 boss encounters were fun, but not overly difficult. I for one, would like to see something where there was actually a challenge. Give us something really challenging!

Didn’t find it hard at all. Just time consuming, and with platformer game elements instead of RPG. To me it wasn’t a real dungeon.

I did hate the artificial difficulty though: my screen was too foggy so it blurred red circles, the camera was cramped and moved back and forth so I got nauseous and hardly had any field of view to the left and right, there were other things but I haven’t been in game since then, don’t remember.

Not only that, but expecting players to play the game engine instead of playing their character (!) Anet ate you insane? Do you consider your own game so horrible that you gave up on it?

Anyway, I wish we got more real RPG dungeons instead of a crash bandicoot game. I still own that game, and as a platformer is a lot better than guild wars, and I’m shocked I’m expected to play that as main content. Shocked would be putting it lightly. More like wanting to put a complaint on BBB, but instead I just go play another game or go goof-off outdoors because Anet doesn’t care anyway.

Not a bad dungeon overall, just not what I wanted a dungeon to be like in gw2. Won’t play it again, even with the 1 gold reward. If I want a platformer there are lots of better games.

I want an actual challenging dungeon.

not hard enough tbh

I agree I love this dungeon its a challenge rather than just being hard, hopefully ANET doesn’t nerf this (we all know its coming though).

Absolutely agree with you OP. I’m glad these dungeons are progressing in the same way as the Molten Facility, challenging and fun. Thanks for putting the effort in Anet!

I think my only bugbear about the last fight was how hard it is to see the red circles during the cannon sequence and how long the old circles linger while the new ones appear over the top. Makes it very hard to know which one to dodge.

Tip for dodging Mai’s teleport: just stay within 400 or so of her and she won’t use it on you – she only uses it on party members who are 600ish or further away.

Maybe they should copy the dungeon and scale it down and call the current version explorable

AR isn’t hard, it’s just annoying.

I really enjoyed running this with my guildies tonight, even if it took longer than we were originally expecting A vast improvement on previous living story dungeons, if you ask me!

It’s also empty – hard might be good but if a very small percentage of the player base is going to be put off because they feel they won’t be able to complete it, it is a waste of time and resources and turns more people off than on.

Agree with OP…………love this dungeon (especially Frizz fight).

Keep going in this direction. Please. fun and unique mechanics FTW
And ignore those asking for a nerf…..
while it might be tough for PUGS, there are already dungeons for them.

Once you grasp the concept, you can do it without dying

That is simply false.

We figured out the concept and the mechanics after our first complete wipe. After that, we always got to the final phase (both walls and laser beam), and we knew exactly how they worked and exactly what we were supposed to do — and we wiped 12 more times over the course of 45 minutes. We always got to the final phase, and we never got remotely close to getting through that phase. All natural 80s (no uplevels), all in full exotic gear/food/buffs/etc.

This is all about pure luck and/or having a class that can run permastability. We didn’t have that, and we were constantly dying as soon as our temp stability ran out and the golems pulled us into their wall and wailed on us while we were stunned. 12 times, every single member.

That isn’t fun, there was nothing new to learn or adapt to, it was just a matter of not having the right class there or the luck to not always be targeted while stability was up. That was just utter frustration, and I will never attempt this dungeon again. I would rather spend 2 hours rolling through razor blades and plunging into jalapeno juice.

I tried this with guildmates tonight. We were all pretty excited, but gave up after about six attempts on Frizz. We got to the last laser field part every time, and every time members of the group would get the pull-confuse-laser field combo. Pulls would be fine if the golems couldn’t be invulnerable. Invulnerability would be fine if they couldn’t pull. With both of those, having to dodge lasers, pay attention to conditions, and try to rescue fallen party members, it is a bit of a sensory overload.

It’s good to have some not easy to achieve things in GW2.It’s a fresh air to have something on par with MKCT level.I like the new dungeon too

Shathron.5790:

Just wanted to express my gratitude for this new direction towards living story content that is actually HARD.

I just finished the new dungeon today, ran it with pug groups and it took like 10-15 tries across 3-4 groups. Funny thing is, I’m enjoying failing in this dungeon more then i enjoy completing most other dungeons. Why? Because every failure makes me learn something new about my class, my tactics or the mechanics of the game. It brings in a form of progression i guess, a good kind of progression, a progression of skill. If i could steamroll this (like most other content) it just feels like a hollow waste of time.

Bottomline: if it aint hard, there’s no incentive to improve and no reason to. And that is what makes things boring.

Btw, here’s a couple of tips for other Mesmers running AR:

- Golem boss beams and walls can be passed through with blink, portal and shatter invuln. You can also be the teams savior by ressing people through the beam since you can invuln yourself during the res cast. Or portal the team to the same side of the wall so the golems wont run back and forth (portal entre, blink, portal exeunt).

- You can block the final boss teleport shot by dodging directly away from her if you have the clone on dodge trait. This way she’ll waste her big attack on the clone.

Here’s the thing. If it’s hard, I get tired and bored of it and I stop doing it.

If it’s easy, It’s fun to me and i can repeatedly do it for hours, days, months(like cofp1 farm).

i do like this dungeon also although its not that hard enough its like a knive through butter
although the dungeon isnt made for zerkers when u have 2 a 3 zerkers in your party its gonna fail u
some mobs just one shot you,
but when u have a decent balanced group u can just walk through it
i love my first run since u didnt know what to expect our first run took about 40 a 45 min i do think its pretty decent for this dungeon
my regards to Anet and keep it up bring more of this action

Shpongle.6025:

Here’s the thing. If it’s hard, I get tired and bored of it and I stop doing it.

If it’s easy, It’s fun to me and i can repeatedly do it for hours, days, months(like cofp1 farm).

I guess we’re just 2 different people, and i believe there’s just as much people in my camp as there is in yours. Problem is that the content currently in the game caters a whole lot to the people that like things easy, i think they should try to balance that out more. This dungeon is a step in that direction.

The best solution would of course be a global difficulty setting, I’ve suggested implementing it as an extra-downscaling slider since downscaling is already in the game (hence should be fairly easy to implement). If people must have extra rewards for extra difficulty (I’m personally seeing the challenge as a reward in itself, but i know some people aren’t satisfied with that), then i guess a category of achievements with some titles would be ok. As long as it’s not rewarded with gear or aesthetics because then people will feel forced to do it.

A difficulty setting has been in games since the very beginning of gaming, and it has almost never granted any additional rewards, i don’t understand why MMOs frown upon the idea so much.

Love the difficulty of this dungeon and its pretty fun too.. keeps you very focused. Hope there will be more like it in the future.