Guild Wars 2

Mungrul.9358:

One thing that cannot be argued:
The laser barrier room does NOT promote teamplay.
Having more players and having to res them actually makes it harder, where having all players alive is of no benefit other than providing more DPS.
This isn’t team content.

In the laser room your team wipes only if brainless, unprepared or terrible bad luck.
If you fail once or twice i can go with bad luck, the golem pulls tend to at least get 1 or 2 person killed when caugh off guard, but to even consider rezzing you’re pretty much asking for wipes.

In the case you’re dead before last phase i’m sorry but that an L2P issue, for the last part just:
-mark a golem and take it down
-have skills that bring downed people asap, for the unlucky case someone gets pulled (warr banner, necro and ele signets, can’t remember anything else)
-a stun breaker does wonders
-don’t stay too long on crates. jump to them and then over the beam
-use crates to block view
-don’t kill yourself with confusion

If you take too long, by the time the rest of the team dies you should only have 2 severely hurt golems or 1 at around 25-40% hp and those scenarios are easily doable solo.

Laser room.

We all piled on top of a box tower to start with, one guy died because (he said) he couldnt see the box tower. We all used ranged weapons.

After that we had 2 guys downed but rezzed in the first slow moving laser part. I got hit with several pulls and countless lasers but never downed. The lasers moved slow enough that 3 of us managed to gang rez the dead dude and all was good.

It wasn’t that hard. The hardest part was walking backwards trying to not get slowed by the box towers. If you walk closest to the inside of the arena, you can dodge the lasers MUCH more easily.

Incidentally the dude that died was also a mesmer with GS, so I guess its best to have ranged weapons which you can use on the move.

They moan there is no challenging content, now they moan that there is!

I’m sorry but I’m so sick of all the moaning (yes I am aware I am moaning about the moaning. )

Many players have left GW2 because the dungeons are too easy and game is to casual. This dungeon is a big step towards what we need.

I must be going crazy but a dungeon that needs skill, timing and team work?!?!?! What were they thinking?!…

Sorry for sarcasm but come on.

Flameseeker.1563:

snip

You didn’t understand my point. I suppose I should be used to people failing to comprehend simple things on this board by now…
The point is: The laser room does not promote teamplay.
Having one person there or 5, dead or alive is almost completely inconsequential.
It is not taking advantage of the game being multiplayer.

It doesnt really even need skill or teamwork, just a very basic understanding of the game mechanics and the location of the V button.

After hearing about how its ohh so hard, I was blown away by how easy it was, really.

its not hard.
Its unbalanced.

I was the only one alive Yesterday at boss… i could still ress everyone and finish :|
Thats because i had a bunker with appropriate number of invul and reflect skills…..

I tried once with the “wrong” profession and its a pain.
And again 0 teamwork or tactic required.

the hardest part of the dungeon is choosing the build as happens in every single dungeon of GW2.

For PUGs it is a hard dungeon. I’ve only done it once with a mostly guild PUG and we had a hell of a time. It was frustrating and fun. And it doesn’t need a nerf. It just needs some time for people to learn & get used to the fights. Every time we wiped we learned something new, changed our skills, and did better the next time. Took us 3-4 tries to beat Frizz. And it felt great. And then Mai Trin. Took us a while to figure out how to keep her in the circles without getting Ginsu’d, but we did.

Once you learn the fights, they get easier.
Adapt your build for each fight.
Be dogged.
And if you have to, read dulfy for a guide.

I woul disagree with the folk who say its not about teamwork, if the team moves as a single unit anticlockwise ahead of the robots, they robots chase you and they themselves stay ahead of the lasers, result = dead robots very fast.

Or you can do what most people do and just think about numero uno and just focus on purely dodging, etc, staying alive.

Working as a team doesn’t have to be complicated to make it teamwork, a guardian dropping stability buffs can protect team from pull, etc, so this need to hide behind boxes n stuff isn’t necesary if u work as a team.

Mungrul.9358:

You didn’t understand my point. I suppose I should be used to people failing to comprehend simple things on this board by now…
The point is: The laser room does not promote teamplay.
Having one person there or 5, dead or alive is almost completely inconsequential.
It is not taking advantage of the game being multiplayer.

How is the laser room not a team play?

You need to kill things asap to diminish the chances of failure and that can only be done if all 5 players spike the same golem down.
Monsters have an horrid agro so to make things easier you should move as a group instead of being scattered around the room. Also by staying close you can help each other removing conditions and applying boons.
Again rezzing in this fight is bad, but it doesn’t mean you should just leave your teammates downed to die. Skills to bring people back to the fight can be used in that situation.

If you’re going to try “faster than speed of light” i can agree that you’ll probably be put in a situation where you either run to get to a safe spot or risk the achieve to help the party. I’ve been there and lots of other players probably felt the same, but if you all work together the chances of that happening are reduced.
Anyway a bit of selfishness is to be expected anyway when the party agrees to be hunting for the achieves. On those parties the players have done the dungeon way to many times and feel confident to be able to hold with 1 or 2 dead players.
When i was in that kind of teams it was common that we would leave the guy to die given that we still weren’t hit by the lasers. The 5 of us weren’t playing solo, we just had an agreement that none of us would screw the others and we actually played pretty well together for a pug.

Again, before starting the fight make your team aware how things should be done and if got skills to help each other out. Being prepared for the fight is the key to success.

I finally ran this dungeon for the first time in a mostly PUG group. I’m a mesmer and made the mistake of wearing zerk gear (Like I do for all PvE content) and not knowing what utilities to bring. I, like many of you, brought projectile refelcts which were all for nothing.

I thorougly enjoyed the dungeon, even after wiping one or twice on each boss. Both boss encounters needed an understanding of the mechanic and a decent amount of planning. My one complaint is that the mia fight was tedious. The first 1/4 was fine, but should have changed after that. Different phases would have been nice, with different techniques, and if you wipe then you restart the phase, not the whole boss.

However, overall, I think it was well done.

Now stop making kitten temp content and give us some permanent stuff.

Make the dungeon a fractal, make the achievements perma.

This is pretty much the only dungeon in the game that I want to keep doing. I don’t feel drained or bored at the end of the dungeon like I do at the end of other dungeons.

The only thing I would think to nerf is the time that cannons fire for, maybe just knock off a few seconds.

Btw, I don’t have all the achievements for this dungeon and the few that I did get, I actually felt like I earned them.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Achievement:
noun
1. A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.
2. The process or fact of achieving something.

I already +1 this, but I thought I’d quote it too just in case some of you missed it. It’s possibly the best argument to the OP

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/when-difficult-is-fun

Arena Net needs to watch this. You can literally do nothing wrong in this dungeon they set up and get killed for it. most of the stuff you have to avoid is cheep and memorization, not actual visual ques. Watch this and tell me how much arena net gets this so wrong with this dungeon and so right with molten facility.

Caradryan.1795:

I think this dungeon has a high degree of frustration intolerance.

As people wipe on dungeons, their abilities to play becomes somewhat diminished. Folks who are spending three or four hours and stuck at one thing might be better served to take a break and come back tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes – I don’t think it’s a lack of skill, but rather, if even one person in your group becomes vastly frustrated, I think it’s much harder to concentrate and do well as a whole.

I keep asking myself, why can’t we have a locked dungeon to the point we complete so we can come back in and go the next round? In GW2 none of the dungeon content stays locked if you want to stop midway due to time constraints and missed RL deadlines, and come back the next day to finish up.

I remember other games having this type of setup. Same dungeon group having that particular instance locked to them in order to come back in at the stop point and continue on to finish.

I add this wish to my other wish that there would be dungeon options: easy, medium, hard, nightmare modes. Not to mention raids…… but I won’t go there. It has been stated clearly that this is not going to happen in GW2.

Lily.1935:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/when-difficult-is-fun

Arena Net needs to watch this. You can literally do nothing wrong in this dungeon they set up and get killed for it. most of the stuff you have to avoid is cheep and memorization, not actual visual ques. Watch this and tell me how much arena net gets this so wrong with this dungeon and so right with molten facility.

Great video. Classic options that seem to be somewhat missing in GW2.

Lily.1935:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/when-difficult-is-fun

Arena Net needs to watch this. You can literally do nothing wrong in this dungeon they set up and get killed for it. most of the stuff you have to avoid is cheep and memorization, not actual visual ques. Watch this and tell me how much arena net gets this so wrong with this dungeon and so right with molten facility.

That deserves a post all on it’s own and REALLY shows exactly what is wrong with GW2. Why isn’t the learning curve gone over in the leveling process?

Markadis.9012:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Achievement:
noun
1. A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.
2. The process or fact of achieving something.

I already +1 this, but I thought I’d quote it too just in case some of you missed it. It’s possibly the best argument to the OP

It is sort of weird to see the majority of players in this thread agree with that definition, but not in the other thread about jumping puzzle achievements and portals.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Markadis.9012:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Achievement:
noun
1. A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.
2. The process or fact of achieving something.

I already +1 this, but I thought I’d quote it too just in case some of you missed it. It’s possibly the best argument to the OP

It is sort of weird to see the majority of players in this thread agree with that definition, but not in the other thread about jumping puzzle achievements and portals.

Just to clarify, completing something with a portal fits that definition. “A thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage or skill.” The word typically implies that it is not exclusive to those 3 things. Therefore, completing a jumping puzzle by hopping a portal is completing something successfully, and therefore an achievement (technically).

I also want to add that achievements in games are quite often not gained by effort, courage or skill. Achievements are often handed out for completing simple and/or mundane tasks. For example, talk to a NPC. Another example from hundreds of other games, complete the tutorial.

OP: “This dungeon is hard, these achievements are impossible for me to get.”
Community: “If you want the achievements, learn to achieve!”

… you were saying? :\

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

OP: “This dungeon is hard, these achievements are impossible for me to get.”
Community: “If you want the achievements, learn to achieve!”

… you were saying? :\

I am confused, are you arguing against my post? If so, what is your argument?

Had five goes at this dungeon so far, twice cleared it, once made it to the end fight but got wiped, and twice didn’t get past the golems. All with different pugs, different players, different classes, even had a lvl 13 in one group, and with that group we finished the dungeon!

Overall I would say that it is an enjoyable challenge. It’s not very pug friendly as a lot of people don’t know the mechanics, and while I (or others) are happy to try and explain it to them, some people just don’t seem to want to listen and keep getting hit by lasers or aoe cannon fire because they’re not even trying to move out of the way. But if you manage to get a group that can adapt to the mechanics of the fight it becomes a lot less frustrating and a lot more fun.

However…
The achievements on the other hand are really starting to give me a headache. I just think that some of them are way too hard in a dungeon that’s only up for 2 weeks, in fact I think this living story event is the first that I’m not going to be able to finish everything. I keep trying but one slip up and I’m pulled into a laser = fail. Or our groups not quite strong enough to kill the end bosses in the time limit = fail. Or I loose track of which aoe barrage I need to avoid at all costs and I clip a pool of fire = fail. Argh! I’m going to keep doing runs but once the events over these achievements are gone forever (probably) and THAT is what’s annoying the hell out of me.

I think this dungeon is some what challenging, but sometimes unfairly so. Especially the final battle has some unfair aspects to it. And a lot of this can be traced back to problems with GW2’s combat system in general. Unbalances in the trinity, unequal access to stability for the classes, the defiant issue, insta-kills, and the red ring of death spam that a lot of bosses abuse like crazy. The rules some times feel a bit inconsistent in GW2, and that feels unfair.

I just duo’d this dungeon last night with a friend. Neither of us had done it before or knew anything of the mechanics prior to going in.

set up was tanky necro + condition/heals engi.

That said, I think the difficulty is fine for 5 people lol. I know we had a blast and found it challenging.

I am forced to do this dungeon or jumping puzzles. Many love running these things over & over. Run them until you collapse for all I care. 11 out of 12 in sky pirates. All but the last achievement for flame & frost, missed the four or five day offering. I’m having so much fun. Can I get a refund A-net?

The only thing i really hate is the laser part and the golem pulls.
There stability is basically required – it isn’t like you can evade on top of the crates or while you aren’t facing them.
And not all the classes have got good access to stability. Like, engineers. Only one skill gives it reliably…and for a single second.
It would be like doing a boss that is based on you using CC on him. Nice for the people who have got them, frustrating for all the others.

My only complaint, as a “solo artist?” (yeah, there ARE other terms you can use) is that this dungeon is too too————too many “gimmicks”, too much “cute”, too much “banzai Kiel”, too much “layered” difficulty (what, Golems aren’t enough——add in a rotating lightning bar that “keel you” and “powerup” the foes—————-still not enough, add another rotating bar)—————-I’m surprised they let both bars rotate in the same direction!!!

Playing in a casual group just won’t cut it————UNLESS they group is “hand-picked” for class and skills—————-“squishies” alone just provide work for Fizz’s cleanup crew!! Not good for a “Life Story” episode——————fine for a fractal, or a perm dungeon, not for a temp “event” that REQUIRES this for the achievement!!

Fox Mulder.6907:

I am forced to do this dungeon or jumping puzzles.

Nope. You’re not.

Fox Mulder.6907:

Many love running these things over & over. Run them until you collapse for all I care.

Okay.

Fox Mulder.6907:

11 out of 12 in sky pirates.

Then you’re fine.

Fox Mulder.6907:

Can I get a refund A-net?

No.

I don’t post very often, and will certainly be ridiculed by the expert players on this forums, but I had to get it off my chest anyway.

I do not understand. Everything has been said about what is difficult in this dungeon (can’ get past the 2 walls phase personaly, apparently last boss is hard too …) so I wont say too much about this. I won’t delve to much on my personal sad story too (I just will say that, after the fantastic experience of the Flame and Frost dungeon, I tried to use this one, without reading beforehand about what it was about, to get some friends that left the game months ago to go back and see the awesomeness of the “new” guild wars. Yep, that was a botch :p ). So I’ll stop the whining here :p

But I just wanted to say, that there is a severe lack of management of expectations here.

To this point, seasonal/living story dungeons have been both relaxed and fun. The flame and frost dungeon was absolutely pitch perfect, with a great story, fun encounter and all. To this point, we have always considered temporary, story content to be something that a majority of people can enjoy, and everyone, whatever their level, can feel part of the story. Because the story is the point, the focus.

I am perfectly fine with difficulty, especially as permanent, repeatable contant, as long as it is clearly marked, and not divisive for the community. Fractals were a great example : a progression for experienced players, and low level fractals for everyone to enjoy. Some explorable dungeons are hard, but story mode is always doable, so anyone can enjoy the content.

Soul crushing difficulty on a temporary, well advertised event, without alternative (no story mode vs explo mode) just feels wrong.

Like the philosopher says, 50% of the players are below average by definition (*). When content that caters to the most advanced part of the playerbase is created, without any alternative, that content mechanically excludes everyone else. Is that really the direction you want to follow ?

(*) well, it’s not exactly the definition of average, but I like the quote so ;p

The main problem is that there is zero purpose of having to clear the whole/partial instance just to retry an achievement. It is not easy compared to other stuff in the game first off. Second the reclearing just drags it on and does not show the skill you try to accquire to complete. The skill is in the actual fight, not reclearing the same stuff over and over again. So we have a instance with very limited time, that is difficult compared to others, same with the achievements and we also must waste time trying to even attempt it. Who thought this was a good idea?

I like teaming up with random people. But countless times I do this dungeon, and at the end everyone around me, except myself, gets wiped. Several die during the barrage phase, others die due to Mai’s insta-kill charge attack. And I often find myself being the last one alive. With no hope of resurrecting anyone (because she instantly charges you if you do), the only thing left to do is suicide, and then retry. And you may be able to help some players up by having multiple players revive the same person, but you will take hits from Mai trying to do this, and I can’t keep reviving people through out the whole battle. Players are dropping like flies, and I can’t keep them all up.

After several tries, I often apologize to the group, and then leave to find a better group. I hate having to do this, it makes other players angry, and it makes me angry. But I realize that I should not be the one to pay for them to learn how to do this encounter. And that is my biggest gripe with this final battle. It is trial and error. It poorly communicates the goal to the players (tiny icon underneath her health bar, really?). And it kills players without telling them what they did wrong. So the players will die multiple times in a row, and get frustrated with the fight. And worst of all, being the last one standing I have no other option than to give up. After several wipes it’s painfully clear that my party needs to practice this dungeon more, but not with me!

There’s nothing wrong with a dungeon that is hard, or a battle that demands practice. But the challenge should be fair, and should not rely on trial and error.