I’m alone, thankfully. I say this because I have a reasonable sized Hawaiian pizza and somewhat of an appetite today since I spent the afternoon shifting a few tonnes of turf. I would not appreciate if people were contesting my right to eat pizza.
Anyway, I happened to stumble upon a very nice chap who had never completed a single dungeon in the game. He was a warrior, a casual player, learning as best he could, level 80 with karma exotics.
So, we talked a while and I suggested he join me for a CoF run to get acclimated to dungeon play. We duly went to the nearest WP as CoF was contested, formed a group and my new friend was happy at the prospect.
2 hours later, despite having a group for almost all of that time, we never did enter CoF, not once.
The reason, it is contested. Constantly.
Before I get told to stop QQ, can I point out that some people, perhaps not many, but some people, are casual players who work long hours and perhaps come online at midnight. This leads to a bit of difficulty.
Whilst i myself am “reasonably” free to run a dungeon each day (I set my own working hours), my newly found friend is not. Due to work he is only able to log on at midnight UK time for maybe 2-3 hours. Sadly for him, nobody is available to help clear the events needed to access CoF.
Therein lies the problem. This chap has paid the same for the game as everyone else, yet is unable to access content due to the times he plays. CoF was simply inaccessible tonight. We tried guesting but with the same result on all servers.
Despite having understanding group members prepared to guest for his benefit, my newly found friend still did not get to experience a dungeon.
My question is simply, to Anet staffers, is this an acceptable situation?
Im aware that some people farm dungeons (particuarly CoF P1) to excess, I’m aware that there are diminishing returns on certain rewards within dungeons. It just seems highly unfair that a casual gamer is unable to access a regular area of content at all due to restrictions designed to impede progress of the “hardcore gamer” element.
We are not talking about him gaining a legendary (he realises it requires too much commitment), certainly dedicated players do deserve rewards which set them apart, that is par for the course, but in situations like this, is it fair to effectively exclude players from certain content due to personal circumstances?
In my view, no.
I could be wrong, but CoF has been showing as contested far more frequently as of late. The NPC text being out of sync is a dead giveaway to the apparent “entry nerf”.
The question is, can anything be done to address the above. For those of us who play outside peak times, its essential. A dungeon is regular end-game content, it should be accessible to all unless part of a chain of progression, but that is not the focus of this text as CoF is a standard level 80 dungeon.
I hope Anet can help here.
