Guild Wars 2

So I’m noticing what seems to be a recurring problem in GW2 design. It’s where challenges are presented that are a matter of stubbornness and/or luck, as opposed to skill or learning strategies.
A prime example is something like the Chaos Crystal Cavern jumping puzzle. A player’s success on that puzzle is purely a matter of luck—what debuffs they’re given, and what mobs have been spawned in below. Griffonhook Run has a similar problem, you can’t get that much better at doing it, you just have to hope you can get lucky and the griffons don’t choose to attack you in certain ways to avoid dropping the bomb.

You see the problem in some boss design too, like, say Kudu’s second golem in SE story. It’s attacks cause burning, and they’re almost all ranged AoE. So you can’t really get that much better at it. It’s really just a matter of hoping you have healing/condition removal or are otherwise lucky in how player’s have their skills set up.

And I think these kind of design choices are part of the reason why people are so intent on finding ways to circumvent parts of dungeons and other events. They look at these challenges, and realize on some level that it’s not something they can really improve at, it’s just a matter of beating their heads against a wall (so to speak) until something gives. So they try to find ways around the walls instead (and sometimes they do, literally).

JUMPING PUZZLES

I disagree on some parts, on what you said about the jumping puzzles. Griffonrook Run took me hours of practice, but it most definitely does not rely on luck. There is a pattern you can learn to not get hit by any griffons. The problem however, is that the “in-combat” detection often causes players to slow down, making it impossible to make certain jumps. This mechanic should be disabled for this jumping puzzle… in fact, I wouldn’t mind if the artificial slow down during combat was completely removed. There is also an issue with the hit detection of the griffons. It is almost as if an actual hit by the griffons isn’t always required, so that even a griffon that misses, still causes you to drop your bomb. In fact, when practicing the run, me and a friend discovered that avoiding certain zones made it far less likely for griffons to score an automatic hit. It is simply a matter of which walkzones you touch. Maybe the griffons have invisible trigger zones that instantly score an unfair hit. I’m not exactly sure. But skill is required.

Regarding the Chaos Crystal Cavern, though the effects are random, you can see what effect is on you and wait till it wears off. The best strategy is to simply figure out which effects make jumping too hard for you, and not jump when you get that effect. It also helps to have an extra friend clearing monsters down below. It still is a frustrating jumping puzzle, but not as random as you claim.

BOSSES

Regarding the boss design, I agree that it is bad. There are too many attacks that instantly down a player. And the recovery mechanic is made useless by the fact that bosses continue to attack the downed player till he is really dead. This makes GW2’s boss design less forgiving than Demons Souls, which is considered to be a really hard action RPG with insta-kill bosses. In reality, it is far more fair than GW2’s boss design.

There are also too many attacks on GW2’s bosses that require deflection or blocking. An option not available to all classes. In some dungeons, it really does seem that classes such as the guardian are preferred over others. You have only two dodges available to you, and bosses often launch more than one insta-kill attack, which sometimes even leaves areas of effect which also instantly down a player. Danger zones are often poorly indicated, and attacks are poorly telegraphed. The worst aspect about it is, it is trial and error game play. There is no learning curve as you fight most bosses. They simply hit you, you are dead, you have to respawn. At least with a game like Demons Souls you can learn patterns as you fight a boss, and survive more than one hit. In GW2, you are not able to learn a boss as you fight him, you constantly have to respawn and retry, while also dealing with annoying aspects such as armor repair bills.

It is this poor design that has left the dungeons so empty. No one wants to play them, because they are unfair and unfun. A radical redesign of the bosses and dungeons is needed.

I recently ran the Sorrow’s Embrace dungeon, and during part 1 we ran into the 3 golem encounter. Pulling these 3 bosses apart is really dodgy, it doesn’t always work very reliably. And fighting all three at once is instant death, you stand no chance against the condition spam and various simultaneous homing instant-death attacks. But even after separating them, just fighting a single golem was hard. We had to go to great lengths to pull it into some side tunnel (after two failed attempts, which resulted in a full party wipe) in order to have some form of cover. Dodging the attacks was unreliable. Players would sometimes dodge in a direction different from what they pressed, or they would roll straight into some area of effect that was off screen. And this would of course result in instant death. The amount of conditions being thrown around also exceeded by far what an average character is able to remove with just his skills. It was absurd, and not much fun. And this was one of the easier encounters. Not at all as difficult as say, Lupis.

The jumping puzzle and boss examples are merely that, examples. The point I’m trying to make is just that ANet seems to have had moments where they based challenges on stubbornness, luck, or as you pointed out, near exploitative behavior, rather than on something like skill or strategy.
ETA: Even if you know the path to take on Griffonhook, the griffons can still screw you up if they choose not to do their wind-up attack first. And on CCC, the portal have the ability to cause you to miss jumps by triggering AS you jump.

The sad part is that the bosses that do require some form of strategy are often exploited through as well. The Shatterer or The Claw of Jormag for example, could be so much more intense, and much more group-oriented, if they weren’t capable of being exploited as most people currently do.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult for GW2 to implement strategy either. I remember a blog post from some time ago (before release) where the devs talked about roles, and the game still possessed a trinity of sorts, just under a different name (or at least it was supposed to . . .)

The dragons don’t require much strategy to begin with. I was unaware there were ways to exploit them, since they are already so easy. They really could do with a bit more strategy. Right now they are just massive zerg fests… fun, but a bit too easy.

But the lack of strategy with bosses is a real problem in the game right now. I’m sure some players will argue that with the right strategy even the hardest bosses can be done, but the kind of coordination that is currently used in dungeons is not the kind of strategy that I’m thinking of. No, when I think of strategy, I’m thinking of actual behaviors that allow you to predict where a boss will move next, and what he will do. Boss battles can be like small puzzles, where each team member decides on a role during the battle. Right now the boss battles are simply a matter of, don’t die! And dying happens a lot, it happens way too easily. That is artificial difficulty. You can cheat around that by various cheap tactics and odd builds that weren’t really intended by the devs at all. But that is not the same as actual strategy.

There are a few bosses that attempt some form of strategy, such as the Ice Golem boss in the Dredge Fractal, that needs to be lured underneath buckets of molten metal. Or the Sons of Svanir boss that needs to run into pillars to stun him. Those are the kind of strategies that make a boss battle interesting. But too many bosses, such as the dreaded fire golem, or many of the bosses in Caudecus Manor, are simple matters of instant death spam.

Not every class can deflect projectiles, and not every class has easy access to stability. So why are so many bosses designed with these abilities in mind?