From a lore perspective, the story of Twilight Arbor repeatable is a lot like a “what if?” situation. Who gets to the Nightmare Tree first? Scarlet is now present in the arbor, and that presence has a very tangible effect on how the Nightmare Court can pull off their race to the tree. Because of that presence, the possibilities are narrowed, and Fyonna will not be able to make it to the tree in time.
From a design standpoint, we want the Living World updates to change and have an impact on the world. Earlier in the year, Colin gave the example of blowing up a dungeon and replacing it. This is very much that example in action. Because the explorable paths of Twilight Arbor were very similar from a content perspective, we made the decision to create a new path to revitalize one of the existing ones. Forward Up was one of the least played dungeon paths in the game, and was the best candidate for doing something like this.
Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.
—- Michael Scott
Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.
—- Michael Scott
Yeah, it was one of the least played dungeon paths because the final boss was insane (impossible) if you were thinking of taking it on regularly, and they never bothered to fix that… That’s just lame-sauce.
because the final boss was insane (impossible) if you were thinking of taking it on regularly
Did I click Guild Wars 2 Discussion by accident?
To be fair though back then (and somewhat today) groups really couldn’t push a ton of DPS out. Zerker meta is much more common now then back then and I’m sure even now pugs still couldn’t do it. Sigh, prestacking might + max vul is too hard for the average group.
The boss couldn’t be crit. So unless your party was filled with condition users, it was more about supportive stuff (absorb, reflect, buffing) and even people clad in PVT could kill it in a reasonable time frame. The zerker meta has no blame to take in this part as crit damage is useless for that particular boss.
Because the explorable paths of Twilight Arbor were very similar from a content perspective,
Similar? TA F/U had the better encounters. Bring back Vevina!
Of all the paths, the one that should’ve been nuked, if nuking a path was seen as necessary, should have been forward. That thing is a snoozefest. Almost as much as doing AC P3.
- “No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”
This decision was largely reviled and had very little support. It shouldn’t b rocket science that people aren’t interested in seeing content being taken out of the game. Not sure why it was ever considered revolutionary.
The zerker meta has no blame to take in this part as crit damage is useless for that particular boss.
Maybe if players weren’t so used to corner stacking then criticing everything to death, TA F/U may not have been considered so bad? Measured against most other boss fights, TA F/U was crazy hard, but generally speaking it was doable.
Most players want a boss they can stack and auto-attack to death with minimal mechanics or dodging. This is the result of running the same dungeons for over two years – you just want to finish it quickly for gold. Any hiccups or speed bumps makes a path less likely to be run (I suspect TA Aether is ironically run less than TA F/U was).
The saddest thing about TA F/U is that there was a patch that changed the final boss and the spider spawns to become significantly harder than it originally was. Auto-attacking at max range in complete safety was bad, but the fix literally killed the entire path. It’s sad, because F/A had one of the harder sylvari fights of the three paths (Vevina) and the water spouts were a truly unique dungeon challenge.
TAFU was before corner stacking went majorly public (in fact i believe it was when people were still mostly stacking warriors and fgs wasnt widely used although it was known about). TAFU was back when most groups did not care for efficiency. It was only hard because it got bugged and became unforgiving if you failed the first attempt. And anet never chose to fix it. People had no problem afk ranging it before they changed the aggro. It was never a hard encounter it just required a bit more knowledge than the others (reflects AND blinds). It was just unforgiving if you wiped because the spiders never despawned.
If criticizing was the reason it got taken out, then all of GW2 would have to thrown into the trashcan. Or at the very least, all dungeons that are not AC and CoF1. Yes even living story “hard” bosses!
Just another awful design decision by Anet. Instead of adding new content on top of what we already have, they delete 1 path then add another, so in reality we have the same amount of content we always have, it’s just different.
I never understood ti’ll this day as to why the final boss was so hard for so many people. All you literally had to do was pop swiftness, dodge the immo, kite the spiders in a circle and AA the boss down if you wanted to.
