Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Numenor.3280

Numenor.3280

I have only done AC explorer mode path 1 and I am beginning to doubt I even want to play this game anymore.

I know the goal of revamping dungeons is to make them more challenging but seriously they are not at all more fun or reasonable changes for enjoyment. I really can’t imagine a group of level 35s with greens or blues doing AC anymore, much more any pre level 80s trying to do AC, TA, CM

The spider and graveling hatchlings hp shouldn’t of been upped… they are way to tanky, especially since in a group they spam way to many attacks.

The Spider queen’s AoE circles are ridiculously large not to mention they seem to last about about 20 seconds so it makes it almost impossible not to walk into. Its dodge one just to roll into another one. Not to mention the crazy immobilize now.

Condition removal is almost pointless because you break out or the immobilize or remove the poison just to get stacked up with some more poison or immobilize immediately right after.

Sure the Spider Queen is squishier than before so its easier to kill, but the amount of times you go down makes it harder than it should be. Not to mention its pretty much suicidal to try to mainly melee the Queen because of the AoE circles which kinda defeats the purpose of being Warrior.

Like I did AC yesterday and all the times before I could actually effectively melee the Spider Queen with a good bit of kiting. Today I couldn’t do anything but stand in one tiny spot in between giant AoE poison circles and range the Spider Queen.

Then the Champion Stalker after Queen was super lame and not at all more fun to fight. If it goes invisible fine, but invulnerable!!!? It doesn’t make it anymore challenging or fun, its just annoying like the Champion Dredge that stacks bleeds on you in SE and wastes time.

Kholer I really have nothing to comment about him, nothing is really different about him other than he spawns 2 lame adds that just waste like 5 seconds to kill. Which of course makes it a bit more difficult to kill him since they waste your dps and maybe some of your health. But as always lame and all it did was waste a bit more time.

The Howling King was extremely lame. Just a bunch of stupid adds with knock backs, and the scavenger with the kitten perma knock down that is guaranteed to down you is kitten Sure it makes it more challenging, but fun or rewarding? Not at all. Again just a waste of time and in game gold for repairs.

Honestly how do you expect someone to successful dodge those? They have pbaoe, and if you manage to dodge like 2-4 of those pounces in a dodge the other like 4 will get you. And by some miracle you manage to actually successfully dodge twice the pounces are like a machine gun, they just keep coming and coming and you’re screwed because your endurance is recharging. And the poor person trying to revive you has to worry about the same thing.

So unless you’re planning to make rolling infinite with like a 1 second cool down path 1 is not possible to successfully play through the path without dying or going down a few times even if you are a decent or good kiter unless you are really lucky. Which completely baffles me about the entire no zerg respawn concept. Is your goal that we don’t die and come back 1 by 1 like 5 times each but have us all die and come back like 15 times as a group?

Seriously if you want to make the game more fun, get rid of the lame oh I am just gonna give these npcs a ton of armor and hp and bump up their damage. Give them some interesting attacks and make them have more random attack patterns. Or make the monster npcs weaker, and more of them, and actually have them be able to fight like the guards do in WvW. Also maybe make the npcs that stand around and do nothing like the ones in CoF actually help you out.

(edited by Numenor.3280)

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Posted by: Erebus.3897

Erebus.3897

meh… people will get used to it…. just as we all got used to no wp rushing…. although AC is NOT a lvl 40 Dungeon anymore… if u manage to PuG it in a lvl 40 PuG, put a star on your forehead, and PM me… I’ll send you a beer.

Commander Gladius Deum [ART]
Gate of Madness

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Numenor.3280

Numenor.3280

The point is not whether people get use to it or not. The point is this game lacks interesting features to keep people interested and changes like the ones made to AC makes it less enjoyable and overly long.

I am pretty sure people wanna see something along the lines of:

Short, fun and challenging.
Long, fun, challenging and rewarding.

Not hard, boring, and long.

Cause this equals bored kitten off people who sit get and get aggravated for an unnecessary extended amount of time.

This game lacks things to do, basically its jps, dungeons, farm grind, map completion and wvw.

Map completion and farm grind is basically the same thing, so is dungeoning at the moment. wvw and jps are eh.

This game lacks the most important things MMORPGs need to have, the role playing and social aspect. Like there are hardly any emotes in this game, when you eat and drink stuff the animation is basically your character touches their mouth.

wvw is always the same and its boring, farming is the same on every game but the question is would I rather farm on a game that I can have fun roleplaying and doing other things or farm for a game that has nothing to offer.

Dungeons are repetitive and boring and most people only do them for the tokens or easy guaranteed 70 silvers – 1.1 gold, but now they are repetitive, boring, long, and hard which completely takes away the purpose of doing them other than for the skins.

And the new stuff they keep releasing is a difference without a difference. Seriously bored of Grinding Dungeons!? Well here is something new for you, its called FotM and its another dungeon that is 3 dungeons at once that is randomized! Oh bored of doing that? Well here have a Christmas dungeon!

If the answer to being bored of dungeons is more dungeons, then at least make the dungeons interesting not just regurgitated stuff that has a different cosmetic appearance.

(edited by Numenor.3280)

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

Sounds like I won’t be able to solo it anymore, good.

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Thundolfe.9302

Thundolfe.9302

Robert,

First, simple question. With AC difficulty the way it is, how is it expected new players will learn dungeoning? I am not criticizing what you did, but I think that trying to determine the direction this is going is a fair question. Colin said that you were looking for ways to better introduce the game to players.. I think this is a step backwards. Looking for your input here.

AC itself: I don’t mind the new AC mechanics, but your testing system, whatever that is, needs to get much better.

  • This patch seems to have introduced some severe graphical lag, very evident at the P1 burrow event, or the P2 detha spikes/gravelings event. This lag is throughout the world now, please have this looked at.
  • The new scavenger mechanic of them burrowing underground seems to be broken. They tend to just sit above ground invulnerable (maybe I am missing something).
  • P2 Ghost boss can bug making him uncompletable.
  • P3 Colossus drops his stones far too often, and kills the protector way too easily, and his knockback (which pushes you out of the circle) is silly.
  • Knockbacks/knockdowns are out of control in AC now, it makes melee a real pain. I’m OK with some CC, but the level it is currently at is crazy.

I feel like changing AC was kind of an experiment, but by doing so you kind of trashed a really good training ground for new players. Again, thoughts on how new/inexperienced players should learn dungeon mechanics would be interesting to hear.

Thanks

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Paradox.1380

Paradox.1380

The point is not whether people get use to it or not. The point is this game lacks interesting features to keep people interested and changes like the ones made to AC makes it less enjoyable and overly long.

I am pretty sure people wanna see something along the lines of:

Short, fun and challenging.
Long, fun, challenging and rewarding.

Not hard, boring, and long.

Cause this equals bored kitten off people who sit get and get aggravated for an unnecessary extended amount of time.

This game lacks things to do, basically its jps, dungeons, farm grind, map completion and wvw.

Map completion and farm grind is basically the same thing, so is dungeoning at the moment. wvw and jps are eh.

This game lacks the most important things MMORPGs need to have, the role playing and social aspect. Like there are hardly any emotes in this game, when you eat and drink stuff the animation is basically your character touches their mouth.

wvw is always the same and its boring, farming is the same on every game but the question is would I rather farm on a game that I can have fun roleplaying and doing other things or farm for a game that has nothing to offer.

Dungeons are repetitive and boring and most people only do them for the tokens or easy guaranteed 70 silvers – 1.1 gold, but now they are repetitive, boring, long, and hard which completely takes away the purpose of doing them other than for the skins.

And the new stuff they keep releasing is a difference without a difference. Seriously bored of Grinding Dungeons!? Well here is something new for you, its called FotM and its another dungeon that is 3 dungeons at once that is randomized! Oh bored of doing that? Well here have a Christmas dungeon!

If the answer to being bored of dungeons is more dungeons, then at least make the dungeons interesting not just regurgitated stuff that has a different cosmetic appearance.

I think you are only speaking for yourself. I don’t find the new AC much harder at all. The mechanics are different not harder. All it is going to take is for people to learn and get used to them. I like having actual purpose for things like the Scepters you help Hodgins build, the Traps for Detha, and finding Warmaster Grant to help take out the problems in AC. It’s awesome. To me it was rather fun once we figured it out and begin frankly honest, once we did, the run went so much quicker then it normally does since all the bosses and mobs have lower health then they did before.

-It’s Lady Paradox- Sweet Adrenaline
“What Part Of Living Says You Gotta Die?
I Plan On Burnin Through Another 9 Lives”

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Posted by: Thundolfe.9302

Thundolfe.9302

I do think getting the NPCs involved in that way is pretty cool. They should have some purpose other than to die while we run past mobs, haha.

I just hope the bugs that can make it a little frustrating don’t take a whole update cycle (a month) to fix.

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Numenor.3280

Numenor.3280

I think you are only speaking for yourself. I don’t find the new AC much harder at all. The mechanics are different not harder. All it is going to take is for people to learn and get used to them. I like having actual purpose for things like the Scepters you help Hodgins build, the Traps for Detha, and finding Warmaster Grant to help take out the problems in AC. It’s awesome. To me it was rather fun once we figured it out and begin frankly honest, once we did, the run went so much quicker then it normally does since all the bosses and mobs have lower health then they did before.

The mechanics didn’t make it harder, the mechanics made it take longer and takes it completely out of the control of players. For instance the champion scavenger, it literally just sits their invulnerable for about 10 seconds and it does nothing but wastes time. Before the only thing that really affected the time factor was your dps and how well you kite which you can decide. Now its that and then a pointless time handicap.

The invulnerably doesn’t have any purpose unless something bugged, all it does is waste time unnecessarily.

The Spider Hatchlings are harder than the Spider Queen. They are tanky, there a lot of them so you can’t really their attacks dodge. Both parties I was in today, my party and I died more times to the 3-4 waves of Spider Hatchlings than the Spider Queen. My the groups I was in wiped about 3 times each to the Hatchling, the Spider Queen like I said is boring cause all I had to do and could do was stand around and shoot it with my bow. Which defeats the goal stated in the patch notes, which was to make the dungeons more challenging and fun. Standing around and auto attacking a boss with my bow is neither challenging or fun.

The Gravelings at the Howling King, are just more annoying than challenging. Like I said before the Scavenger’s perma knock down is bs. Whats the point of being knocked down and hopelessly watch graveling gnaw your butt until you’re down? Even with the trait that activates endure pure as a warrior that allows you to take no damage for 5 seconds doesn’t save you from that perma down.

The Howling King had a problem before… he was to easy, he still has that problem. He is even easier now, but his adds are ridiculous with the number of knock downs and this is what I am complaining about. People shouldn’t be stuck helplessly in a knock down position and have gravelings dribble you around the room like a basket ball till you die.

Its just like situation with the Risen Purifers in Orr, getting killed by a mob of npcs is fine, but being pulled or knocked around the battle field helplessly where you can’t attack back is stupid. I personally don’t enjoy that and I pretty sure most people don’t.

To me it just seems that AC is geared towards Elementalist or Necros with AoEs.

Like Spiders Hatchlings… 3 Elementalist… pop AoE then hide behind the Wall next to stairs. Spider Queen… AoE the boss then just sand in between the circles. Part with Hodgins and the burrows, 2 ice bows each, and the AoE meteor shower thing and that would be done without much trouble. Howling King, AoE mobs, and ice bow again and gg.

If you play as a warrior like I do, and try to melee you’re gonna have a bad time. You stand around and range with a bow you’re gonna be pretty bored and you might as well of made a ranger.

(edited by Numenor.3280)

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Posted by: bluzz d wild.9120

bluzz d wild.9120

just did path 1…. 5 players, all 80 with exotic gears, never finished it. i dont know how lv 35 players would be even able to survive the spider queen. that was alot of fun doin that dungeon before, now its long , boring, really too hard and not worth it. hope that was just an experiment….

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Strifey.7215

Strifey.7215

I ended up doing AC tonight, for Path 3 I was extremely disappointed that the essence collector defend event is still as long and boring as ever. It continues to rank as my 2nd least favorite named dungeon event behind Grenth in Arah 4, mainly because they are both long and extremely boring.

Also Path 3 ended up bugging after the 4 burrow event which has never happened to me ever which includes many many path 3 runs. After killing the 4 burrows, we waypointed to the next waypoint like we always have and we saw that the npc was dead outside. So we went back to the previous WP, rezzed him, and he never opened the door to let us advance.

Guard/War/Mesmer and Dungeon Guides:
https://www.youtube.com/user/strife025

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Posted by: Kyon.9735

Kyon.9735

What is the new internal cooldown to life stealing foods? This change affects many builds that rely on it and it would be nice to know a # instead of just a mystery number you guys like to give out, thanks.

There are builds that rely on food?

Yes, there are. Many of the glass cannon builds rely on the food buffs for lifesteal that is greater than healing. I added a 1 second cooldown after each proc to stop abuse using certain skills that could heal a character from near death to full health due purely to critting with a food item.

Was sad to see no mention of any spy kit nerfs in the patch notes, I suppose the stealth changes mentioned could be there to address this…would be a bit silly to break the crystals from caledon forest but leave spy kits.

Great catch – I did in fact do something to spy kits (both OOW and Ash Legion) that got dropped out of the patch notes by accident (Stealth stealth nerf!). I’ll go make sure they are properly put into the patch notes.

So you mean you nerfed it completely without even adding a buff on it? May I know if the nerf was completely of your own discretion or you had some other devs look into it or even had other people who use and who don’t use omnom pies/ghosts discuss it with you?

IMO Devs should never nerf something 100% without giving it a little upside. You could have at least made it lifesteal 1.5x or 2x more than the older one. You see, the price of omnom pies went from around 5s yesterday down to 2s today and will continue to go down the drain. Obviously, most people see this food completely useless now. So congratulations to those unlucky people who hoarded this item only to see them get nerfed today.

(edited by Kyon.9735)

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Faide.6492

Faide.6492

I have to concur in that there is NO way a group of lvl 40 players in greens is going to be able to take on these changes. For this reason alone, this dungeon patch was an utter failure.

Ive not had a chance to run the content with a full 5 man of lvl 80’s but I suspect that it will be doable. Still, this change should have been added as a ‘Hard Mode’ with enhanced loot for level 80 groups that wanted the challenge.

The only thing this change does is tell new level 35 players that they must wait until they hit max level to run an exploration mode dungeon.

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Paradox.1380

Paradox.1380

The mechanics didn’t make it harder, the mechanics made it take longer and takes it completely out of the control of players. For instance the champion scavenger, it literally just sits their invulnerable for about 10 seconds and it does nothing but wastes time. Before the only thing that really affected the time factor was your dps and how well you kite which you can decide. Now its that and then a pointless time handicap.

The invulnerably doesn’t have any purpose unless something bugged, all it does is waste time unnecessarily.

I didn’t notice this. May possibly be a bug? I never seen it go invulnerable liek that, and we melted its HP in less them then normal.

The Spider Hatchlings are harder than the Spider Queen. They are tanky, there a lot of them so you can’t really their attacks dodge. Both parties I was in today, my party and I died more times to the 3-4 waves of Spider Hatchlings than the Spider Queen. My the groups I was in wiped about 3 times each to the Hatchling, the Spider Queen like I said is boring cause all I had to do and could do was stand around and shoot it with my bow. Which defeats the goal stated in the patch notes, which was to make the dungeons more challenging and fun. Standing around and auto attacking a boss with my bow is neither challenging or fun.

Hmm, Had NO trouble at all with the spiderlings, have you tried killing them a different way? I mean I’ve seen people barrel in that fight and spawn the boss right away, that is dangerous as it spawns more then may be handlable. Try killing the spiderlings already there first. Have someone in your party use a projectile block or reflect skill. There are several of them on various professions. Being careful is key here. On my guardian I used Wall of Reflection and the ele in our group was using Magnetic Aura.

The Gravelings at the Howling King, are just more annoying than challenging. Like I said before the Scavenger’s perma knock down is bs. Whats the point of being knocked down and hopelessly watch graveling gnaw your butt until you’re down? Even with the trait that activates endure pure as a warrior that allows you to take no damage for 5 seconds doesn’t save you from that perma down.

The Howling King had a problem before… he was to easy, he still has that problem. He is even easier now, but his adds are ridiculous with the number of knock downs and this is what I am complaining about. People shouldn’t be stuck helplessly in a knock down position and have gravelings dribble you around the room like a basket ball till you die.

Pull the silver mobs (kite them with the boss) into the rings of fire on the floor they die immediately (Robert said there may be some sort of bug with it though and he would look into it), I noticed no such bug, it worked every time without fail for my group. having a break stun skill or a Stability (normally these also break stuns) will help if you do get knocked. Also the leaps have a telegraph, if you see it you can evade it. They jump in groups.

Its just like situation with the Risen Purifers in Orr, getting killed by a mob of npcs is fine, but being pulled or knocked around the battle field helplessly where you can’t attack back is stupid. I personally don’t enjoy that and I pretty sure most people don’t.

To me it just seems that AC is geared towards Elementalist or Necros with AoEs.

Like Spiders Hatchlings… 3 Elementalist… pop AoE then hide behind the Wall next to stairs. Spider Queen… AoE the boss then just sand in between the circles. Part with Hodgins and the burrows, 2 ice bows each, and the AoE meteor shower thing and that would be done without much trouble. Howling King, AoE mobs, and ice bow again and gg.

If you play as a warrior like I do, and try to melee you’re gonna have a bad time. You stand around and range with a bow you’re gonna be pretty bored and you might as well of made a ranger.

I play 5 professions at 80, melee guardian and warrior are among them. Tonight I did not run AC on my warrior, but I was on my guardian and I had no trouble being up in bosses or mobs face at all. Well-timed dodges and execution of my skills coupled with the ability to trust in my group made this so fast and easy we were clearing it in 10 minutes flat. (our group comp: 1 guardian, 1 Warrior, 1 Engi, 1 Ele, 1 Ranger)

Like I said in your original post I quoted, your opinion is fine to be had, but you are speaking for yourself, not everyone hates these changes. To me, they are welcome and refreshing.

-It’s Lady Paradox- Sweet Adrenaline
“What Part Of Living Says You Gotta Die?
I Plan On Burnin Through Another 9 Lives”

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Posted by: Faide.6492

Faide.6492

Like I said in your original post I quoted, your opinion is fine to be had, but you are speaking for yourself, not everyone hates these changes. To me, they are welcome and refreshing.

To me, these changes are unwelcome and annoying. It makes no sense to make a lvl 40 dungeon off limits to level 40 players

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

What is the new internal cooldown to life stealing foods? This change affects many builds that rely on it and it would be nice to know a # instead of just a mystery number you guys like to give out, thanks.

There are builds that rely on food?

Yes, there are. Many of the glass cannon builds rely on the food buffs for lifesteal that is greater than healing. I added a 1 second cooldown after each proc to stop abuse using certain skills that could heal a character from near death to full health due purely to critting with a food item.

Was sad to see no mention of any spy kit nerfs in the patch notes, I suppose the stealth changes mentioned could be there to address this…would be a bit silly to break the crystals from caledon forest but leave spy kits.

Great catch – I did in fact do something to spy kits (both OOW and Ash Legion) that got dropped out of the patch notes by accident (Stealth stealth nerf!). I’ll go make sure they are properly put into the patch notes.

So you mean you nerfed it completely without even adding a buff on it? May I know if the nerf was completely of your discretion or you had some other devs look into it or even had other people who use and who *don’t use *omnom pies/ghosts discuss it with you?

IMO Devs should never nerf something 100% without giving it a little upside. You could have at least made it lifesteal 1.5x or 2x more than the older one. You see, the price of omnom pies went from around 5s yesterday down to 2s today and will continue to go down the drain. Obviously, most people see this food completely useless now. So congratulations to those unlucky people who hoarded this item only to see them get nerfed today.

That’s the point of nerfing, make it worse. It’s price alone showed how powerful it is. It is still very good food.

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Iehova.9518

Iehova.9518

Ran AC, still a joke, -1/10.

Someone please confirm/deny feedback still works on Lupus projectiles.

(edited by Iehova.9518)

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: Kyon.9735

Kyon.9735

What is the new internal cooldown to life stealing foods? This change affects many builds that rely on it and it would be nice to know a # instead of just a mystery number you guys like to give out, thanks.

There are builds that rely on food?

Yes, there are. Many of the glass cannon builds rely on the food buffs for lifesteal that is greater than healing. I added a 1 second cooldown after each proc to stop abuse using certain skills that could heal a character from near death to full health due purely to critting with a food item.

Was sad to see no mention of any spy kit nerfs in the patch notes, I suppose the stealth changes mentioned could be there to address this…would be a bit silly to break the crystals from caledon forest but leave spy kits.

Great catch – I did in fact do something to spy kits (both OOW and Ash Legion) that got dropped out of the patch notes by accident (Stealth stealth nerf!). I’ll go make sure they are properly put into the patch notes.

So you mean you nerfed it completely without even adding a buff on it? May I know if the nerf was completely of your discretion or you had some other devs look into it or even had other people who use and who *don’t use *omnom pies/ghosts discuss it with you?

IMO Devs should never nerf something 100% without giving it a little upside. You could have at least made it lifesteal 1.5x or 2x more than the older one. You see, the price of omnom pies went from around 5s yesterday down to 2s today and will continue to go down the drain. Obviously, most people see this food completely useless now. So congratulations to those unlucky people who hoarded this item only to see them get nerfed today.

That’s the point of nerfing, make it worse. It’s price alone showed how powerful it is. It is still very good food.

I don’t think you got my point. I know nerfing means making it worse, but not completely useless. It was nerfed completely without an upside. From useful to almost useless. Its price itself shows how people find this food useless all of a sudden. Well at least I still find it better than Mango Pies.

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

They wanted to tone it down and it needed to be toned down. Pre-patch it was the best offensive AND defensive food. It should be “weak” because it does both.

It is still very strong food, just not ridiculously overpowered.

(edited by Wethospu.6437)

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Posted by: Icewielder.4195

Icewielder.4195

My guilds opinion after running path 1 and 2 of AC.

Spider Queen:
Not a huge deal, biggest complaint is that the Gargoyle heads at the top still can’t really be hit by melee, which is relatively frustrating if you don’t have a strong ranged class.
The boss isn’t a huge problem, but the duration of the poison fields makes reviving people difficult.

Kohler: Meh. This fight is far easier than before… its not even remotely challenging. He was easy before..now its just boring. His ads do so little damage we just ignored them entirely (and we got the elemenatalist and necro in our fight). His attacks also seem significantly less scary, so he pulls you, walk out of the spin, at least before it was a bad thing to get pulled.

Detha chains. HOLY LAG. 3 of our group were at 15 FPS. This is with high end machines. As in Crysis 3 max graphics machines. Admittedly, this made it a bit harder as gravelings don’t actually seem to render at 15 fps.

Ghost Eater: Really? Great Idea..terrible bugs. Bug 1: Ghost Eater decides to glitch, have to CC him for 5 minutes to unglitch him so he will actually do something. Two of our traps glitched at “fully powered”, but didn’t actually work. Third did, but frustrating.

As for the idea, if the bugs were actually fixed it would probably be decent. Only complaint, his attacks really seem unimpressive. Its basically a glowing spider queen that spits at you. Admittedly these hurt when he occasionally hits you (not as bad as the spider). Seemed to be no variety here tho.

Hodges: Burrow Room (Lag Location #2). Basically the same. Problem we had though, must every graveling pounce be AOE? Either we had invisible gravelings attacking Hodges, or the ones jumping 15 feet away manage to knock him down (far end of the table). Knock them away and he gets back up. Didn’t mess us up but was relatively annoying trying to figure out what he was laying face down in the dirt for.

Howling King: Why in the world would you give him a laser beam? Its dumb and doesn’t fit the boss in the slightest. Not really sure what it did either, we tend to avoid lasers. The more annoying part here is the massive lag combined with knockdowns. Knockdowns to kingdom come are bad enough, invisible lagging gravelings that knockdown are worse. That fight is just frankly annoying…thousands of graveling hatchlings or something would be fine, but I do not appreciate being a pinball. Our 30k hp well necro generally does fine, but when it flies through the air for 30 seconds its a problem. Not all classes get 20 seconds of stability easily… Luckily the fire kills these ads off, but its entirely annoying to revive anyone when they are bouncing around the room…Trying to reserve judgement until the lag that renders half of the gravelings in the room invisible is fixed as that may be the main source of our bouncyball necro issues.

We didn’t get to path 3 as between the lag and bugs we were in no mood to go back for more.

We will reconsider this dungeon once the lag is fixed..until then we can’t play it.
Also, does swapping characters now boot the entire party from the dungeon? As we were all booted when one of our members DC’ed and logged back in on another character.

Worst Necro NA [XARA]

(edited by Icewielder.4195)

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Posted by: codpin.6542

codpin.6542

Also, does swapping characters now boot the entire party from the dungeon? As we were all booted when one of our members DC’ed and logged back in on another character.

Maybe he was the one that started the dungeon? Because if the person who started the dungeon dc/s you dont get kicked. Only if his char gets out of the instance (just like swapping).

Faith of Astora - Guardian | Faith Mess - Mesmer | Faith War - Warrior
Member of ASq Guild – Gandara [EU]

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

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Posted by: XRTDiablo.9321

XRTDiablo.9321

Overall kinda liked the old AC better.
For stuff in all paths:
First complaint is the mega fps drops anytime there were burrows or a few breeders together was just slideshow. Normally get about 40fps minimum in p2 baiting for the traps, I dropped to 9 at one point since patch. furthermore I seemed to notice quite abit of culling where prior to the patch I can’t say i’ve ever seen that in instances.

Second complaint, knockdowns knockdowns and more knockdowns. I don’t mind when boss mobs have CC because it’s easy to see and dodge for the most part or pop stability, when trash has it is much more of an annoyance since its hard to spot one mob telegraphing a skill in a clump of 10 others. Doesn’t make the trash much harder just more annoying.

Spider queen is abit harder. Our pug’s lone wipe during a full clear was on her. adds could do with abit less health and damage in general seemed abit high but not game breaking and wipe was more to do with learning whats new I think.

Kholer changes that don’t really change anything. Was trivial before, and still so. Adds can either be ignored unless you get like necros, or blown up

Troll changes made him easier imo, his aoe seems to happen abit faster but once you adjust its not a problem.

P1: first bit with hodgins and the burrows between people getting knocked down from the gravelings and the fps drop/culling I mentioned earlier was abit annoying, ended up taking 3 tries cuz hodgy kept dying.
last boss was annoying just cuz of the CC from adds, fire circles to kill them is a nice plan but often times the rings were gone before the adds made it to them.

P2: basically the same as old p2 except the last boss which was buggy and felt kinda gimmicky. Issues with traps charging and the boss itself bugged couple times, ended up having to remove defiant and use a pull/knockback to get him back from his braindead state.

P3: probably easiest path now imo, like p2 same as old version cept last boss which is basically just stand under bubble when he does his roof shake or w/e if I had a complaint at all about this path its just the knockback he has since as a melee player such things annoy me lol.

Also sad to see spy kits and especially omnoms nerfed know they were both op but omnoms made several build viable that now won’t be. Hopefully yall can actually balance the classes now to what it should be without food tho.

(edited by XRTDiablo.9321)

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

Spider was still easy to solo. Not that I can do burrows anymore with stronger hatchlings.

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Posted by: mosspit.8936

mosspit.8936

When i fought Troll earlier, there were times i got stuck to the ground and cant move. No i wasnt under daze, knockdown or fear. My condition bar was clear. I could only resume movement after i use a positional change skill like blink. Is this intended?

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Posted by: Numenor.3280

Numenor.3280

Also I forgot to mention, but there is a bug in AC EM Path 1 thats been there since the last patch. The part where you defend Hodgins and you’re suppose to kill the burrows. If you stand behind Hodgins you see that there is a little chair that has been knocked over on the left of Hodgins. Whenever a Graveling stacks on the chair it becomes invulnerable and starts attacking Hodgins, and its really hard to get it to agro a different person and causes a major problem since you can’t kill it while it slowly eats Hodgin’s health.

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Posted by: Juice McJuicey.3098

Juice McJuicey.3098

All you did to AC exp is make it harder for newer players. No more money for you from me.

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Posted by: Anasyn.6782

Anasyn.6782

I’m not going to repost what most of the players have typed above but I’d like to add that the amount of changes made are terrible. Espicially for lower level players like my friends that just hit the level where you would take him through the explorable option in AC. He hated it and it will be very hard to get him to go into another zone again. The rest of the group was three level 80’s with exotic gear and a level 56 guardian. The new player would die in around half a minute fully while the next three people would usually die in a matter of a few minutes. All of these player have played multiple MMOs. They aren’t the best players in the world but they do understand how to play online games. This will just drive more players away from the game and make it more difficult to find successfull groups. Please fix the trash mobs back to the way they were before the patch or make this a hard version of AC for those that have a solid group of players who want a challenge.

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

Thrash packs were really easy. Frenzy + HB = 50% health down.

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Posted by: Dradiin.8935

Dradiin.8935

Can we please get an update about the huge FPS hit all of are taking in AC now ?

I don’t mind the changes but its is extremely obvious something changed int he dungeon that is affecting Frames Per Second.

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk – I don’t really want to pick apart your post, but your examples on the Dredge fractal is proof of why I think Spy Kits were harmful for the game, because it shows that you have never had to deal with the events properly.

1. The mobs on the left door only spawn at certain door-health percentages (Nuke door -> clean up mobs -> nuke door -> clean up mobs).
2. The cage event requires someone to aggro the veteran away from the panel guy, as well as having the other party members not on a button controlling the adds.

The bonfire event in Snowblind is the only difficult part of that fractal if done without spy kits, so I don’t care that it is very dangerous at high levels.

Then, on top of that, you generally have to play well enough to not constantly die, because your party can no longer res you with impunity under almost all conditions. I don’t call it “skilled play” when your party is dying.

With spy kits mostly out of the picture, it will be clear what the truly poorly designed mechanics are (the ones that you can’t get better at with practice). Then, from that, the designers can learn from them and hopefully fix them / never make the same mistake twice, and the dungeons will be better for it.

I understand the mechanics in question here, and performed it just like that in earlier levels because it was tolerable. As it stands, since the patch, you can do the entirety of CoF 1, 2, and 3 without skipping a single mob faster than you can do the Dredge fractal. The notion that we need to attack the door, clear the entire room, and then attack the door more (and repeat this ~5 times) is absurd. This fractal at high levels should not be about mindlessly killing 500-600 level 82 Dredge that are immune to blind and spam perma-protection and regeneration. This fractal is heavily overtuned, and my only argument in my last post was that the developers nerfed Spy Kits (which is fine), but didn’t for an instant consider why spy kits were used in the first place and adjust accordingly. That shows a severe lack of insight, and I am very disappointed by it.

I agree that Spy Kits were harmful to the game in their previous form, but I think that the handling of it has been very poor. I also think that nerfing them as hard as they did makes them so useless that I can’t even justify using them in the absolute worst cases. Players, right now, are better served by destroying their stacks and getting inventory space back than saving them for the most extreme cases where they might be valuable. That’s poor design.

Hopefully this analogy will make sense to Rob as an ANet employee, but you guys totally 25/90’d Spy Kits here. You should be beyond that.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!

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Posted by: RakaNishoo.6071

RakaNishoo.6071

The point is not whether people get use to it or not. The point is this game lacks interesting features to keep people interested and changes like the ones made to AC makes it less enjoyable and overly long.

I am pretty sure people wanna see something along the lines of:

Short, fun and challenging.
Long, fun, challenging and rewarding.

Not hard, boring, and long.

How on earth a content can be hard and boring at the same time???
For me hard = fun and interesting.

Looking forward to trying this out on my lvl 35 warrior

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Posted by: Icewielder.4195

Icewielder.4195

Also, does swapping characters now boot the entire party from the dungeon? As we were all booted when one of our members DC’ed and logged back in on another character.

Maybe he was the one that started the dungeon? Because if the person who started the dungeon dc/s you dont get kicked. Only if his char gets out of the instance (just like swapping).

Thanks, we are aware of that though, the problem was we were very careful to make sure I started the dungeon. The person that DC’ed wasn’t the person that created the instance. I suspect it might have been just a random crash that affected all of us, just hit them first. (The person that DC’ed never dropped connection from our TS server). Just wondering

Worst Necro NA [XARA]

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Posted by: Pinch.4273

Pinch.4273

@Rising Dusk
Don’t get me wrong, I hate Dredge fractal just as much as the next person for the same reasons, and the scaling on it is not that good at all.

I don’t consider the effective removal of Spy Kits to be anything like nerfing SB, though. SB was a player ability. Spy Kits are an external item that can make unique abilities of a profession completely redundant. SB was just ludicrously powerful in PvP for being a normal skill, but Spy Kits can break PvE for being a spammable consumable obtainable by everyone.

(edited by Pinch.4273)

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

Well, it’s a figure of speech and not actually a comparison of SB to ALSKs. The point of the analogy is the design process involved, not what the design process was applied to.

To 25/90 something is to make it utterly unusable because the development team cannot discern a better approach. In that case, Izzy decided it was better to not allow the skill at all than to properly balance the skill (or even change the mechanics of the skill, which had been done with many skills prior). In this case, Rob decided that he didn’t like ALSKs and that they were a detriment to the game, and instead of trying to find a healthy balance rendered them useless. In both cases, the end result is that the target of the developers was made valueless because they didn’t think through the balancing process and didn’t want to.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!

(edited by Rising Dusk.2408)

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Posted by: RakaNishoo.6071

RakaNishoo.6071

All you did to AC exp is make it harder for newer players. No more money for you from me.


It shouldn’t be harder, it should be undoable for new players!
First: Learn to play (Story Mode), then do explorable mode dungeons.

Don’t let the current bugs/poor AI/poor design leading to a lot of exploits in other explorable modes fool you. It is meant to be hard, it was advertised as hard for experienced players and a lot (I hope) of players, me & my guild including are waiting for it to be HARD…

What else do you do in the game where you completed every explorable dungeon? Grind it and fast run it for gear that you don’t really need? Eh…

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Posted by: Robert Hrouda.1327

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Robert Hrouda.1327

Content Designer

Next

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

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Posted by: Amodin.1092

Amodin.1092

AC Path 2 (Detha):

Spider Queen: The new one shot wonder. The fight was already fun and challenging, I don’t understand why you want to make this even more difficult. Lower levels (below 50 or so?) are going to just ache with frustration at this event. Last night we tried this boss, got past her after the second attempt. First attempt, she one shot the entire group. How is that fun again exactly? Very noticeable that she has a lower health pool.

Kholer fight: Not bad changes here, it is going to be a lot worse on lower levels than 80s because of the additional mobs that spawn during the fight. At least he isn’t spinning so much and so many times which made people skip him almost every time. We still continue to fight Kholer in every path. Thank you for this change. He was a terrible fight for most people in the game.

Fighting the gravelings and breeder at the spikes. Coming down into the water and having the three pulling chains part.
As soon as this event starts, everyone takes a MASSIVE video lag hit for the duration of the fight. Terrible! You have to face away from the spawn area in front of you to stop this lag, but trying to fight this way = bad. Please fix this.

Never saw the troll pop up, so I can’t comment on that yet. Maybe today.

Ghost Eater: I almost feel like going back to Arah Path 4 and fighting Simin for an easier fight. Like the Sparks, you have a terrible mechanic taking place. I like the idea of how to do this, but your mechanic is broken half of this fight. Sometimes you can’t even lift and drag an ooze. Sometimes you can drag, but not lift. Sometimes you can lift and never drag, thus having to reset the mob and start all over.

Detha fighting Ghost Eater… If Detha dies, he resets to full health even if you are wailing on him just to keep him in combat. I think this is a terrible design.

Overall I like the changes, you just need to fix and tweak the changes so they either work, or don’t one shot you.

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Posted by: Strifey.7215

Strifey.7215

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

As someone who used spy kits and omnom ghosts I agree, it was nice while it lasted though.

Now how about all those bugs that got introduced with the new AC :x

Guard/War/Mesmer and Dungeon Guides:
https://www.youtube.com/user/strife025

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Posted by: Pinch.4273

Pinch.4273

and instead of trying to find a healthy balance rendered them useless.

I don’t think easy access to stealth on any profession through a consumable can be balanced in any situation.

My 2c.

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Posted by: Sina.9208

Sina.9208

For those upset about the changes I made to Food items that life steal on crit, and the spy kit, here’s some words:
Spy Kits: permanent stealth at the cost of karma isn’t good. It’s practically exploitative since it’s a pay-karma-to-win scenario, and it needed to change. We test all of our dungeon content without the use of external items to make sure it is all capable of being completed. This has led though, to a recent surge in players using items from the open world in dungeons to trivialize content or outright break bosses designed to present a specific challenge to a five man group.

Food item life steal on crit Cooldown: The best heal in the game can’t be 100 blades or other similar attacks. If you want to play a glass cannon, there should be danger involved, and the food buff mitigated the danger and allowed glass cannons to stand and trade blows without having to utilize their own heals or dodge rolls. They could just stand still and win – and that’s not the type of dynamic combat we want for our game. We test our content without the food buffs to ensure they are capable to players without access to them, and make sure the balance is good enough for players who don’t have those buffs. There are a lot of other viable food buffs in the game, and this one food buff meant a core few items were dominating all the others.

For those also thinking I went rogue and did this, I went through all the checks and balances, and discussed the changes with leads. While I do have the power to change dungeons, things that affect the world outside of dungeons is handled through meetings to make sure everyone is on board with a proposed solution.

I’m upset about the spy kit nerf, not because it was a good mechanic, but because it was the only way to make the dredge fractal bearable, is it still doable ofc, but it’s just way too kitTen long, it’s longer than Arah p3. It’s anything but fun.

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Posted by: Robert Hrouda.1327

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Robert Hrouda.1327

Content Designer

Next

Yeah, there’s a few bugs I was grappling with that we thought got fixed – there something weird with the FPS that seems to have to do with shaders (investigating), but aside from that the only issues I’m seeing are with Detha and the Ghost Eater. We were seeing some of the same problems with the traps, and I was fixing them as much as I could – but it seems I didn’t fix them up good enough. her getting stuck and the traps sometimes not firing are known things – try leading GE out of the trap and then back into it – that might help for the time being.
And… well… Detha is Detha, lol. I’ve been at it trying to fix her, but the issue where she doesn’t start rebuilding the traps isn’t 100%, and we’ve not been able to get a solid repro.

As for things players feel the spy kits were necessarily to get through, we’re watching the feedback and will make sure to give them some extra QA attention to ensure they are in line with what we want players to experience.

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Posted by: RakaNishoo.6071

RakaNishoo.6071

Well, it’s a figure of speech and not actually a comparison of SB to ALSKs. The point of the analogy is the design process involved, not what the design process was applied to.

To 25/90 something is to make it utterly unusable because the development team cannot discern a better approach. In that case, Izzy decided it was better to not allow the skill at all than to properly balance the skill (or even change the mechanics of the skill, which had been done with many skills prior). In this case, Rob decided that he didn’t like ALSKs and that they were a detriment to the game, and instead of trying to find a healthy balance rendered them useless. In both cases, the end result is that the target of the developers was made valueless because they didn’t think through the balancing process and didn’t want to.

Actually that item (and similar ones) should have never existed in dungeons. Removing them completely is a valid option, but was probably harder to accomplish than just increasing cd. These items role is to have a fancy cool feature in open world pve not necessarily increasing your power/performance and should not make it easier to run a dungeon. That’s my opinion and I hope and expect that ANET will eventually ban all of these in explorable mode dungeons.

Don’t want more dissapointments, don’t use them?
I mean there is even no interface to use consumables like these during an encounters. I doubt it was desired functionality and I would even go as far as considering bringing any of those into a dungeon an exploit.

Anyway I’m happy that this item is removed.

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Posted by: Thundolfe.9302

Thundolfe.9302

Yeah, there’s a few bugs I was grappling with that we thought got fixed – there something weird with the FPS that seems to have to do with shaders (investigating), but aside from that the only issues I’m seeing are with Detha and the Ghost Eater. We were seeing some of the same problems with the traps, and I was fixing them as much as I could – but it seems I didn’t fix them up good enough. her getting stuck and the traps sometimes not firing are known things – try leading GE out of the trap and then back into it – that might help for the time being.
And… well… Detha is Detha, lol. I’ve been at it trying to fix her, but the issue where she doesn’t start rebuilding the traps isn’t 100%, and we’ve not been able to get a solid repro.

As for things players feel the spy kits were necessarily to get through, we’re watching the feedback and will make sure to give them some extra QA attention to ensure they are in line with what we want players to experience.

I appreciate your response especially about the FPS issues but those are not the only bugs. can you comment on the invulnerable scavengers that burrow and then just sit there above ground? The P3 boss (Colossus) shield doesn’t work well and he also likes to rush in when he has 0 health. In addition I would like to hear your opinion on the knockback/knockdowns which are prevalent in this zone now.. occasional CC is fine, but constantly losing control of your character, not so much..

Thanks for your responses.

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Posted by: RoyHarmon.5398

RoyHarmon.5398

Has anyone else had a much more difficult time dodging through the spike traps throughout Path 1? Were they intentionally changed to trigger when dodging through them? I apologize if this has been asked before, but it’s hard to search the forum for “AC traps” and not end up with a flood of “Path 2” and “Detha.”

Also, have the Spider Queen’s poison circles always been undodgeable as well? Maybe I just didn’t notice it before, but our group wiped on the queen several times last night when she was the only enemy around. A couple of times, she actually followed us back up the stairs (we were attempting retreat, not luring) and into the spike traps there, and these two issues combined were enough to wipe us all over again.

We never actually made it to the Howling King. It was disheartening, as we were not as inexperienced a group as this post would make us seem.

“It is the stupidest children who are the most childish
and the stupidest grown-ups who are the most grown-up.”
- C. S. Lewis

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

As for things players feel the spy kits were necessarily to get through, we’re watching the feedback and will make sure to give them some extra QA attention to ensure they are in line with what we want players to experience.

That’s good. As it stands, the Dredge fractal is the most mindnumbingly painful experience in the game, and not because it is hard, but because it takes so bloody long to do the “intended” way. The only reason people didn’t complain about it beforehand was because Spy Kits made them tolerable.

By the way, it would be awesome if we could get refunded our karma for these spy kits. You might say pay-karma-to-win is bad, and I’d agree, but surely you can agree that pay-for-functionality-and-no-longer-be-able-to-use-it is equally bad. People have hundreds of thousands of karma invested in these items across multiple characters and currently all that karma is a waste. If you’re not going to fix the issue you’ve created, you should at least not screw over everyone affected by it.

Actually that item (and similar ones) should have never existed in dungeons. Removing them completely is a valid option, but was probably harder to accomplish than just increasing cd. These items role is to have a fancy cool feature in open world pve not necessarily increasing your power/performance and should not make it easier to run a dungeon. That’s my opinion and I hope and expect that ANET will eventually ban all of these in explorable mode dungeons.

Don’t want more dissapointments, don’t use them?
I mean there is even no interface to use consumables like these during an encounters. I doubt it was desired functionality and I would even go as far as considering bringing any of those into a dungeon an exploit.

You want to know my opinion on that? I would have loved it if they never changed Spy Kits, but like WvW, simply banned them from dungeons and fractals. Let me use my useful open-world PvE item in PvE, don’t ruin the item everywhere. This change would be like if the WvW team, instead of disabling consumables in WvW, changed every consumable everyone used so that no one would want to use them anymore. Fortunately the WvW team is better in-tune with how best to handle these situations and doesn’t do that. Unfortunately for us, Rob did not consider that.

Please, please just ban the blasted items from dungeons. That addresses the issue completely and perfectly, and at least maintains the items being useful in open world PvE. I used these things to save people dying from random mobs in the open world, and there is no exploit in that.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!

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Posted by: foxyroxy.9521

foxyroxy.9521

So, another game ruined for the casual player with only a few hours a week to play. Some of us don’t have the time to work with builds and items but we would still like to do dungeons without dying a hundred times. Taking away rez during combat had already taken most of the fun out of them for me since I die too easy, then have to lay there and wait for a wipe. And who wants such a squishy player in their group?

Games for me are strictly for fun—I don’t need stress for character build, stats, or accomplishments. I already have a job and don’t need another time sink, just a place to escape a few hours for FUN. I guess I should give up on the good online games and resign myself to Facebook crap. Thanks a lot A-Net.

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Posted by: UrieltheFlameofGod.8643

UrieltheFlameofGod.8643

I was under the impression that “phase 2” of dungeon changes was supposed to make dungeons more enjoyable and less grindy. Are we are still in “phase 1”? Because the changes to AC – one of the only dungeons that was in decent shape before the patch – made it even less fun and more grindy. And if this WAS your attempt at making the dungeon more fun, how is it that in a month, the only dungeon you guys could make changes to was AC?

Set up a PTR, throw all your changes to dungeons on it at once, and try listening. There are literally thousands of people who are all making the exact same suggestions to your team and giving you the same criticisms – your design philosophy seems to be “more hp, more damage, more adds, more CC” and while I don’t know if most people are unhappy with that I do know that a lot are.

Every month since November I have been checking patch notes to see when you would make good on your promises of making dungeons more fun. Every month since November I have gone away disappointed.

I don’t believe I will be wasting my time reading patch notes anymore.

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Posted by: Thundolfe.9302

Thundolfe.9302

So, another game ruined for the casual player with only a few hours a week to play. Some of us don’t have the time to work with builds and items but we would still like to do dungeons without dying a hundred times. Taking away rez during combat had already taken most of the fun out of them for me since I die too easy, then have to lay there and wait for a wipe. And who wants such a squishy player in their group?

I don’t mean to belittle your concerns. But if you are admitting that you “die too easy”, there are many things you could do to improve that. I don’t understand what you mean by not enough time to “work with builds and items”, using items and your build is a core part of GW2.

Creating, improving and playing with your build is part of the game. I completely understand about only having a few hours a week to play, but why can’t those who DO have that time have an activity that they can work hard at?

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Posted by: svtdragon.6948

svtdragon.6948

First, the on-topic part: I feel like instead of detuning the ways that players have adapted to situations, you should encourage and reward creativity. Give us a big sandbox to play in, instead of a maze to run which has One Right Way.

Now, an off-the-wall idea, and a non-sequitur:

You know what would make dungeons more fun, challenging, and accessible? Multiple equally-valid ways to complete them. You might even consider varying the end-of-run loot based on the approach taken. Let players be creative and reward that creativity, and channel the energy that goes into finding exploits into finding creative solutions that are in-bounds.

Maybe it’s just the fact that I started playing GW2 just after putting down Skyrim, but everything I’ve encountered so far is very linear. Everything from dynamic events to dungeons is predictable, and ends the same way every time (but I understand that in many cases this is how it has to be to keep a live, sensible world). However, I think your instanced areas could benefit from a sense of actions with consequences, and since they are instanced, there’s no long-lasting effect on the world to account for. If users want to stealth their way through an encounter, let them try. (An aside: dredge are blind, right? So why does becoming invisible even work?) Maybe a team of 5 thieves can stealth their way to the final boss, but when he gets angry, all the mobs they skipped come rushing in. Maybe elementalists can melt ice impediments, or freeze water into an ice bridge (a la Bioshock); warriors can bust down heavy doors or intimidate enemies; thieves can sneak around enemies to turn said enemies’ traps around on them; mesmers can play mind tricks and turn enemies against one another; rangers can turn surrounding animals against their enemies. I know this concept isn’t really baked into GW2 as-is, but it’s worth considering.

Rob, you said you’d do QA on all of your changes to make sure that players are having the experience you want them to have. I wonder if you are equally concerned about providing the experience that players want to have.

I think the best way to keep players engaged is to give their actions consequences, a la the Elder Scrolls or Fallout or Fable (but on a much smaller, instance-level scale). Dungeons would provide an enclosed area in which to try out that concept. Instead of giving players a series of tasks to complete, give them a goal and let them try to do it on their terms.

(P.S.: As a rough indicator of how much of the content I’ve experienced myself, I have 4 lv80s, one of whom has 100% map complete, and a /age of just under 800 hours. My max fractal level is 20.)

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Pinch.4273

Pinch.4273

Set up a PTR, throw all your changes to dungeons on it at once, and try listening. There are literally thousands of people who are all making the exact same suggestions to your team and giving you the same criticisms – your design philosophy seems to be “more hp, more damage, more adds, more CC” and while I don’t know if most people are unhappy with that I do know that a lot are.

Bolded for emphasis.

AC was made easier. It’s different, so you might wipe, but it is overall easier. Mob health went down across the board. I don’t think you’ve actually been inside it yet.

Dungeon Patch Discussion 2/26

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Kuishen.6140

Kuishen.6140

“I feel as though the people saying these changes to AC are good are those who are only planning on running the paths once in a while and want a unique boss battle to remember.”

That is the sentiment of a friend I agree with on the matter. I’m going to explain in very clear detail why the changes made to AC today are misguided, especially for people like my little 3-man static that run AC almost every night.

I’m going to start out by saying that I do not think the ideas behind the changes to the 3 main boss battles were bad to begin with, but as almost everything that is wrong with this game, it’s the implementation that is the problem.

The mechanics behind the 3 Graveling boss battles are unique and could even be fun, but they were implemented poorly and because of this, what could have been an engaging and fun experience was made to be exasperating and a chore.

Let’s start from the top though with the boss battles and then work our way down into the minor changes that were made that were/are completely unnecessary.

Howling King:

The lasers were a nice touch and had everybody on vent laughing maniacally. However that laughter was soon replace with expletives and utter bewilderment at what was taking place on screen. We had read beforehand that you need to kite the adds into the fiery circles to kill them. As we looked around frantically for the fiery circles we finally spotted one and quickly ran to it, only for it to disappear immediately. All the while our team was being knocked around like rag dolls and all of us were experiencing painful FPS drops due to the sheer amount of mobs on screen.

To put it simply:

-The fiery circles didn’t appear frequently enough, they weren’t in useful locations, and they disappeared far too quickly to be of any use.

-The amount of knockback/knockdown is absolutely ridiculous, there is no amount of stability or stun breakers that can prepare you for this and makes actually getting rid of the adds, much less damaging the boss a chore.

-The increased HP on the hatchlings makes it impossible to self-ressurect yourself by killing one of them for a rally, you simply can’t do it anymore, which means when you do go down you are useless to your team and they now have to risk their lives trying to save you.

The two latter points make it so that certain classes are far more beneficial than others and that goes against Anet’s philosophy of content that anybody can do reasonably.

How this could be fixed:

-Lower adds hp and spawn rate so that the fiery circles aren’t necessary if you have skilled players.
-Have the adds target one person and that person can be in charge of kiting them into the circles.
-Have the rings of fire last significantly longer and have some actual pattern to them instead of being randomly placed and only lasting a short amount of time.

Ghost Eater:

The concept behind this battle is genius… the implementation leaves something to be desired. After we figured out how to go about beating this boss we had trouble because it is wrought with glitches and un-intuitive design.

-Ghost Eater himself glitched out several times during the battle, sitting there doing nothing. This was a problem because…

-The traps would randomly stop working. If this was intended there is no visual or audio cue as to why the trap wasn’t going off and if we were supposed to move to the next one. We also couldn’t do anything for a while because of the above point and couldn’t get Ghost Eater to move to another trap.

-Pet classes actually harm you in this fight. We had a minion master necro who wouldn’t listen and his minions would continually attack Ghost Eater and spawn way more Ectoplasms then was necessary and ended up getting a few of us killed because of the stacks of vulnerability they put on you.

This fight deliberately discriminates against certain classes because classes with Pets can’t properly control them. If you are going to make a fight where you can’t progress if you do not meet certain conditions then you need to make sure that those conditions aren’t going to glitch out. I don’t expect perfection Anet, but I do expect you to to be as sure as possible that those glitches aren’t going to happen to something that can potentially ruin a run.

How this could be fixed:

-Change the turrets back to manual and have it so it takes a few hits to take down Ghost Eater’s shield.
-Failing above, change it so that one person can lift AND pull the ectoplasms.
-Make the traps charge after one ectoplasm is absorbed.

(Post 1 of 3)

(edited by Kuishen.6140)