Guild Wars 2

The golem pull did make this fight a real pain a few times. The time when my team finally succeeded, we got to the third laser wall phase and my stability was still on recharge. I got pulled as soon as the golems became enemies. Golem A pulled me off of crates and into Golem B’s spinning attack, which knocked me back into the crates and continued doing so. As soon as B stopped smashing me into the crates with it’s spinning attack, it pulled me into A’s spinning attack which had just started, and A smashed me into the crates several times. I had no control of my character for at least 10 seconds, and died when both laser walls hit me at the end of A’s spin attack.

Dying because you didn’t jump on the crates or didn’t avoid the laser wall is one thing, but watching as your character is tossed around helplessly for a relatively long time and then killed instantly is extremely disappointing.

Yep, that has happened to me as well. 10 seconds of being unable to control your character or defend yourself, resulting in instant death. That is bad design.

I like the idea of the battle, but the chain pulls are cheap and unfair.

I enjoyed the whole instance, the two boss encounters were well done and entertaining. I got all the achievements thanks for having a guildies that do alot of dungeon runs, so this isnt a whine about not getting them, but:

I think temporary content and achievements of such difficulty dont go well together. Even less so when the difficult, temporary content also requires grouping. I hope Anet takes that into consideration in future.

Safer Saviour.9685:

I disagree wholeheartedly. The clash in Frizz’s lab is one of my favourite encounters in the entire game. The first time I entered into the fight, I was overwhelmed with everything I needed to pay attention to and wasn’t sure how I could actually acomplish such a fight. Pressing forward, I eventually managed to get better and better, as did the people I group with. Almost all of us now have the Faster than Light achievement.

From your post it sounds as if you were able to succeed in this fight because you had the time to repeatedly do it (inferred by you saying ‘get better and better’) All PvE content is the same way, the real challenge is whether or not you have the time and tolerance to constantly repeat the content until you have practiced it enough to do it.

Now as I have previously said, I have no problem with this kind of challenge intended for gear or achievement rewards. Even it is restricted to a temporary window of opportunity to do it, people who want that kind of challenge should be offered it in the game if the goal is gear or achievements.

But blocking storyline and lore behind this kind of mechanic is like a publisher slapping the book out of the hands of a reader when they reach the last chapter and telling them they have to start again from the beginning because they were not turning the pages right.

It is a horrible method of conveying storylines and lore and ruins any sense of drama or impact of the story (What would Star Wars have been like if Luke had to do the Death Star run 10-20 times?)

Even worse, this storyline was introduced via solo content yet the only way to see the conclusion is by difficult grouped content. ArenaNet needs to be consistent, if a storyline ends with grouped content then it should start with grouped content.

And as others have pointed out this is further exacerbated by being content that is only available for a limited time. It further blocks players who can’t log in repeatedly during a temporary window.

My friends and I will never see Mai Trin defeated, we’ll never see the conclusion of the Aetherblade plotline. I don’t care about the monocle or any of the other achievements, all I wanted to see was the conclusion to what had been an interesting story.

If that’s too much to ask, if ArenaNet does not think the stories created by their writers should be shared with all their customers, casual and hardcore alike, then I guess I shouldn’t bother following the stories at all.

The thing is that we have seen how GW2 offers a Story Mode for its other dungeons. Why the AR dungeon was made with a “Story Mode” as that was as bad any Explorer Mode dungeon in difficulty to purposely block casual players from ever seeing the story is simply perplexing.