Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

You seriously can’t tell me that the devs meant for people to stack on berserker and auto/afk attack him?

You are driving me nuts. If you’re trolling, you win. Of course I seriously can! There’s a pile of other bosses where you’re meant to do this exact thing! Moreover you are taking damage from him because as someone pointed else he’s still doing melee flurries at you. And no, just because I’m underneath the boss when he lands is not a good reason for anyone to think it’s an exploit. GW2 is a game where you can be on fire while underwater. You can chill ice elementals. Your logic doesn’t compute.

Until Ayrilana finally stops avoiding the multitude of specific examples I provided and explains why those aren’t exploits, why the berserker stack was, and how players are supposed to know the difference, it’s safe to assume they are just trolling.

I dunno if I agree on that. Dungeons give decent gold in my experience and it doesn’t tkae that many runs to make up what I want. What I would maybe like is a system to exchange tokens between players. I don’t know how it would work but I have a friend who really likes Caudecus even though I hate it and have no use for its tokens. None of my pals run Arah and someone else is the only one who really wants HotW etc. It’d be nice to be able to exchange tokens with friends so we’re motivated to run them with each other irrespective of gear choices.

Ayrilana.1396:

No. I just don’t see a point since I’m constantly repeating the same argument over and over. You cut out the part of my quote where they mentioned that its the debs fault for the programming mistake and it’s not wrong to take advantage of it. Kind of sounds like they’re endorsing it.

I quoted the exact part I meant to, in which you accuse us all of liking exploits because we disagreed with your definition of them.

Broadicea.8294:

Until Ayrilana finally stops avoiding the multitude of specific examples I provided and explains why those aren’t exploits, why the berserker stack was, and how players are supposed to know the difference, it’s safe to assume they are just trolling.

I didn’t ignore your examples. I answered them in a simple statement since you misrepresented “my logic” and stated them as being exploits to me when they had nothing to do what I was talking about. Check the third post from the bottom of the first page. I’m sorry that you felt like I was ignoring your post. I should’ve been more clear about it so that you could not have missed it. I’ll address each of your examples specifically even though the answers will be pretty much the same for each one.

AC, any path: skirting around the outside of Kohler’s platform to avoid the boss fight

This is called skipping. It’s already been addressed by the devs as not an exploit. You’re not using terrain or going through walls like in Arah to avoid the boss fight. There is a clear path that you can use to avoid him.

SE path 1: pulling the 3 golems individually into the large tunnel to avoid fighting them together. Later on, pulling Tezza into the main room so you can fight her without fighting the Champion beside her.

This is a common tactic in a lot of games. It is not an exploit. You’re picking and choosing your targets.

SE path 3: walking up the pipe after the first barricade, bypassing the group of bombers (so totally unnecessary but a lot of PUGs do it).

It’s call cutting a corner. It’s no different than for the AC example. You’re not glitching anywhere to get out of the map. You’re not using anything to get somewhere that you’re not supposed to be. There’s just an open gap next to the bridge that allows you to scale the wall and drop down.

TA F/U path: using invuln skills to walk into the bubbles where the Archers are, so you don’t have to deal with the glitchy teleporter

You mean the F/F path. After thinking about it, I would consider this an exploit. You are not meant to go through the bubbles but use the portals instead. I’ve never had issues with the portals. Just use the symbol on your mini-map to determine which portal to use.

TA Up: utilizing the poison damage multiplier to kill Malrona in seconds. Later, pulling Fyonna into the hallway so you don’t hatch any of the eggs.

This is likely something the devs purposely programmed similar to the fight on Arah Path 1 with the 9 champion mobs with the light. It’s a cost/benefit situation. You deal more damage yet you’re taking more damage. Not an exploit.

You’re fighting her in an area that does not have the eggs. She’s within her leash range. Not an exploit.

CoF Path 1: utilizing the safe spots in the Acolyte room to drop aggro from the enemies

You’re just running out of range so they leash. Not a big deal.

As you can see, with the exception of the one I missed, your examples were all nothing close to being exploits. You twisted what you considered “my logic” and made random examples. I’ve explained several times why the Berserker attack was an exploit yet you ignored all of them.

Ruruuiye.8912:

You are driving me nuts. If you’re trolling, you win. Of course I seriously can! There’s a pile of other bosses where you’re meant to do this exact thing! Moreover you are taking damage from him because as someone pointed else he’s still doing melee flurries at you. And no, just because I’m underneath the boss when he lands is not a good reason for anyone to think it’s an exploit. GW2 is a game where you can be on fire while underwater. You can chill ice elementals. Your logic doesn’t compute.

Defending one’s position is not trolling. Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean they’re trolling.

Yes there are some bosses where it’s best to stack on them. The difference is that they don’t do the attack. Subject Alpha does not do his dragon tooth attack when you stack on him. This is because he only does that to ranged targets. The earth spike attack (3 rings of circles) does less damage the closer you get to him. However, stacking inside him to avoid damage is an exploit. THIS was what my example was that was being missed in this thread and by you.

Doing an action that negates an attack that would otherwise damage you is an exploit. Standing on some terrain where a boss can’t attack you yet you can attack them is an exploit. Stacking inside a boss so that their attack does not damage you is an exploit.

You committed a logic fallacy. Yes it’s strange that you can be on fire while underwater or chill ice elementals. This does not mean anything else that does not make since is excusable and right. When the Berserker slammed down players were supposed to take damage if they were standing on the ground. The devs mentioned that the trap boss/sequence/whatever (which was another thing players exploited) was meant to teach you the mechanics for the final boss. You were supposed to jump over the shockwaves that were on the ground level but not jump at the ones that were chest level. The devs intended you to do the fight this way, not stack inside the boss to negate his attack. It doesn’t matter that you can still get attacked by his auto-attack.

Aer.3970:

I quoted the exact part I meant to, in which you accuse us all of liking exploits because we disagreed with your definition of them.

Yeah you quoted the exact part that you meant to. You did not include the rest of what I stated that added on to it. I, in fact, did not accuse everyone of liking exploits. If you had read all of the posts you would have seen that this was only directed at you and Broadicea; nobody else.

Ruruuiye stated: If they don’t want us exploiting then patch carefully. Broadicea stated: And if the devs had programmed the fight correctly, you would take damage. But they didn’t, so we didn’t. Hardly our fault. This is what led me to the conclusion that they felt that there was nothing wrong with exploits. They both shifted the blame to the devs.

I posted a link to the rules of conduct that everyone had to accept either in the March or February update. Number 17 stated:

• You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars 2 and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars 2.

While it is vague, you have to use your best judgment and past examples to interpret what is an exploit.

Diva.4706:

So I already did Molten Weapon Facility with my guild, and to be honest it was fun till the end fight, where I was dead for about 80% of the time.

But I digress. Tonight I asked a few friends, who have not finished it, if they wanted to go run it and the response was unanimous : no its too hard, and not fun. This got me thinking, because these same people would run dungeons in our previous MMO all the time, and sometimes even raid. That was an MMO with trinity.

So my question is, are dungeons not for casual “fun” play in Guild Wars 2, and is it because of the no trinity system.

No.

Trinity system would make things far more difficult and less “casual”.

No Cleric? You’re hosed.
No Tank? You’re hosed.
No DPS? It’ll take forever.

Ayrilana.1396:

snip

Thanks for finally addressing some concrete examples, but all of your distinctions between exploit/non exploit seem rather arbitrary, which is my point. How can you honestly say that using an invuln skill to walk through the TA bubbles is an exploit, meaning a bannable offense? Especially considering how glitchy that part is when you use the portals (sometimes getting downed anyway, even though you did it the “right” way), how could you not think it’s a normal progression of thought to say “hmm, if I get close to those bubbles I get downed. I wonder if I can use Renewed Focus to get through? [pops RF, walks through] Ah hah!” I mean, what about using invuln skills to escape the bubbles in Lupicus phase 3? It’s the exact same principle, should everyone who’s ever used invuln for the bubbles be banned? Ridiculous.

Broadicea.8294:

Thanks for finally addressing some concrete examples

I had before. You just missed it. As I had stated, the examples were random which is why I felt no need to address one individually. I only did so above because you made such a big deal about it as you are still doing.

Broadicea.8294:

but all of your distinctions between exploit/non exploit seem rather arbitrary, which is my point.

That’s your opinion. They only came off as arbitrary because the examples given were. You threw out some random examples which had nothing to do with what I was discussing. Of course you’re going to get answers like that. Just because you disagree with them does not make them arbitrary either.

Broadicea.8294:

How can you honestly say that using an invuln skill to walk through the TA bubbles is an exploit, meaning a bannable offense? Especially considering how glitchy that part is when you use the portals (sometimes getting downed anyway, even though you did it the “right” way), how could you not think it’s a normal progression of thought to say “hmm, if I get close to those bubbles I get downed. I wonder if I can use Renewed Focus to get through? [pops RF, walks through] Ah hah!” I mean, what about using invuln skills to escape the bubbles in Lupicus phase 3? It’s the exact same principle, should everyone who’s ever used invuln for the bubbles be banned? Ridiculous.

How can you honestly say it’s not? How can you honestly say going outside the map is not an exploit? How can you honestly say stacking inside a boss to take no damage from his attack isn’t an exploit. How can you honestly say porting all over the map isn’t an exploit? I can do random, arbitrary examples too.

Going through the bubble was not the intended mechanic of the fight. This is different from the Lupi fight. There you used stability to prevent the knockdown when you touched the edge of the bubble. These are completely different. I doubt the devs intended you to just sit in the bubble, eat the damage, and likely get downed. Once again, the bubble attack from Lupi and the bubble shield in TA are two totally different things.

In TA, you get into the bubbles via the portals. You can justify exploiting it because it’s buggy all you want. It still doesn’t change the fact that its an exploit. You can circumvent things just because they don’t work out the way you feel they should.

tigirius.9014:

Diva.4706:

So I already did Molten Weapon Facility with my guild, and to be honest it was fun till the end fight, where I was dead for about 80% of the time.

But I digress. Tonight I asked a few friends, who have not finished it, if they wanted to go run it and the response was unanimous : no its too hard, and not fun. This got me thinking, because these same people would run dungeons in our previous MMO all the time, and sometimes even raid. That was an MMO with trinity.

So my question is, are dungeons not for casual “fun” play in Guild Wars 2, and is it because of the no trinity system.

I think that’s definitely a part of it, but it’s also the mechanics of the game.

See the healing in this game is nowhere near where it should be. We have AOE heals that don’t take away the AOE’s of bosses in the same area when they are placed so we have bosses throwing AOE’s that do tons of damage and the tiny regens of the AOE heals don’t compensate or prevent conditions. (like the flying boss in the living story dungeon). Which causes players to dodge out of our healing zones.Then the rest of the abilities only heal hundreds at a time instead of thousands. And when I say hundreds I mean hundreds. The highest heal from a bomb explosions on engineers I’ve seen was about 300 per tick. That’s tiny. serisously and this was in all exotic gear with all healing bonuses. There’s something seriously wrong with this.

So the chance for misses on essential heals is way too high, the chance for heals to be nowhere near what the bosses do is way to high and the desire of the hard core gamers who run dungeons constantly to want nothing but zerker builds in their party is high, which makes for a very poor dungeon experience.

I also noticed that maneuvers that bosses would do in this dungeon kept you stuck in place as well as unable to dodge.

It amazes me that more people aren’t outraged by that. They give us a utility to reduce damage tell us it’s absolutely essential and then keep us from using it.

Neverwinter is a great example of how this is done properly. we can dodge boss attacks, we can CC bosses, we can DoT bosses to death without wasting DoTs exactly opposite of what GW2 does in their dungeons. And it’s not using a trinity it’s trinity lite which means you don’t have to have a trinity to run dungeons, but it helps slightly.

As someone who enjoys filling the tank role, I would be ecstatic if a dedicated healer build were made possible.

Kichwas.7152:

Oh and dungeons are -NOT- designed to kill you over and over again until you learn the ropes, for the most part.

People who think the lack of a trinity is why it is hard clearly did not play MMOs before 2008 or so. Back in 2007 – WoW was not yet in EZ-Mode. It was still like the other ‘trinity games’ and the non-trinity MMOs.

Actually, the only ‘EZ Mode’ MMO back then had no trinity: City of Heroes.

The Trinity is a crutch of the modern MMO player, but its the wrong target.

Back in and before 2007, the way you did any MMO dungeon (other than City of Heroes), including in WoW – WAS to wipe over and over again, sometimes for weeks per boss, until you learned it.

That was under a trinity system.

You people simply lack any sense of history.

I have been playing MMOs since the early days of UO, so I have a fairly good grasp on history.

First, CoX most certainly did have a trinity, it just wasn’t absolutely mandatory to complete content. But then, due to very screwy mechanics a lot of content meant for groups was soloable by certain builds (hello /regen and /invuln scrappers). Second, you cannot compare CoX to GW2 mechanics and say “see? It didn’t have them either and it worked out fine”. They are completely different games and have completely different mechanics. There is no equivalent to /rad or /grav controllers. Debuffs/CC/Tankiness were king.

Kichwas.7152:

GW2 dungeons harken back to 2007 and before ‘in part’. But only in that they cannot be AFK facerolled or coached through with an in-play-paint-by-numbers-guide (Deadly Boss Mods).

You don’t need to wipe over and over in them, if you bring good play.

I also raided for years and years so I am quite familiar with progression raids and farm status raids. Very few of those (if they are well designed) are nearly as simple/facerolly as you suggest. Some were, sure, but they were also universally derided for it (lol…lootreaver!). Players still had to mind the environment (don’t stand in green/red/black kitten) and player status (cleans the debuffs/diseases/poisons), mind their DPS (and understand aggro mechanics), know boss phases and be mindful of transitions, and a host of other skills/knowledge. You either didn’t raid much or weren’t very good at it if you think raiding in other games relied on a “trinity crutch”.

Kichwas.7152:

Good play is a balanced build across the whole team, all the players pulling their weight, being mobile, dodging, kiting, using boons and conditions, adding and removing, team healing, and sharing aggro.

So, other than the last item, exactly like raiding in other MMOs?

Kichwas.7152:

- It is not all that hard to come upon an encounter you have never seen before and beat it. You just need active engaged good play.

Not zerker builds and glitching guides – these work where they work because they have been prepped per encounter in advance, and one misstep fouls them up for a whole group. They also only work in limited places: where people boringly farm for gold to prepare for that raid that doesn’t exist…

Balance is key, balance in your playskill to learn how to adapt on the fly, and balance in your build to be able to withstand changing situations in mid-pull.

That’s how MMO gaming was before WoW became the Walmart of the video game world with 10+ million players and had to prep everything for the coupon folks in aisle 5…
- Most games never copied the WoW EZ-mode format, and I don’t see why GW2 should either.

It has nothing to do with trinitys…

Did you raid in WoW (edit: thinking one thing while my hands are typing another…)? I’m guessing not…

GW2 decided to go with a mechanic the requires damage to be off the charts. It’s based entirely on avoidance, and it’s a crappy mechanic. It guarantees that the “standard” (meaning used by the greatest number of people) method for completing content is glitching bosses and avoiding mobs. Can it be done the other way? Sure, it can. Will that ever be considered “normal”. No, it will not. Why? Lack of a trinity. Lacking a trinity is not special, it is not “cutting edge”, or the future of MMOs. It was an attempt by ANet to set itself apart from the competition. Well good for them, they succeeded. It doesn’t change the fact that it created a system where “exploitation” is the name of the game.

It should also be pointed out that wiping for weeks on one raid boss was acceptable because the potential rewards were worth it. In GW2 the rewards are, practically, non-existent. Once you are in exotics, there are no upgrades (or ascended if you are doing fractals). As far as earning gold goes, while CoF P1 is profitable, just doing each world boss for chests daily is also very profitable and far less annoying.

Phaedryn.3698:

I also raided for years and years so I am quite familiar with progression raids and farm status raids. Very few of those (if they are well designed) are nearly as simple/facerolly as you suggest. Some were, sure, but they were also universally derided for it (lol…lootreaver!). Players still had to mind the environment (don’t stand in green/red/black kitten) and player status (cleans the debuffs/diseases/poisons), mind their DPS (and understand aggro mechanics), know boss phases and be mindful of transitions, and a host of other skills/knowledge. You either didn’t raid much or weren’t very good at it if you think raiding in other games relied on a “trinity crutch”.

While all of that is true, do you deny that the true fun in raids was figuring all of that out? Executing the mechanics on farm was a poor second, imo, which quickly became boring.

Phaedryn.3698:

GW2 decided to go with a mechanic that requires damage to be off the charts. It’s based entirely on avoidance, and it’s a crappy mechanic.

The 100% avoidance of dodge, block, and reflect also means something beyond exploitation. It means that if you have good reflexes and a decent system, you completely evade the damage, Thus, the only way to actually make the content harder is to use pressure tactics, lots of little attacks and attrition through conditions. Big hits can’t get any harder than a one-shot kill. This is why we simultaneously have posts saying dungeons are too easy alongside other posts saying they’re crazy hard.

Phaedryn.3698:

It should also be pointed out that wiping for weeks on one raid boss was acceptable because the potential rewards were worth it.

Worth it inherently or worth it because you couldn’t progress without it? Given that I found very few armor skins in WoW that I liked the look of, I’d say the latter, though ommv.

The main problem is that they’re not facerollable like most open world PvE is, so there’s a huge gap in difficulty. The other problem is that a good chunk of people finds them too hard, while another sizeable chunk too easy.

I belong to the 2nd group and believe that medium-skilled players with decent (rare or superior, not glass-cannony) gear can complete them without too much hassle once they get acquainted to them. After all I’m no pro player and I’ve pugged every dungeon in the game and fractals up to level 42, and almost never aborted the run due to wipes.

P.s. I really approve of your implication that people “raiding” in other games aren’t all that great.

Phaedryn.3698:

Agreed, but I do not find it significantly different in GW2. In fact, I find many bosses much easier than many of the WoW 5-man (hard mode) bosses.

I find GW2 dungeons to be a strange animal in that regard. Some of the bosses are much easier than some of the trash mobs.

Phaedryn.3698:

I emphasized part of this paragraph since it brings up a question.

Do you consider a design consideration that places emphasis on “good reflexes and a decent system” to be a good design choice?

I’m of two minds, really. The move-while-fighting and dodge mechanics make for much more interesting game-play in the open world, where the consequences of missing a dodge or block don’t often mean you’re downed.

While there was a potential for this to also be true in dungeons, I’d have to say that with the current implementation, they’ve failed. Why? Because players who struggle due to reflex issues or systemic latency find the mechanics too hard, and thus not fun. Also, players with the reflexes and system to handle it, or who can negate damage through proactive skill use find the content too easy, and thus not fun.

This means that the sweet spot, i.e., the players who do find the content fun, is smaller than it might have been. The relative fewer numbers of posts on GW2lfg looking for the harder paths suggests that the players doing the harder dungeons for fun is small, not just “smaller.”

Phaedryn.3698:

Both. You didn’t really need the gear if your raid was solid. There was a Chinese guild that went from BC release to downing Illidan in less than 2 months. This was when it was still required to be attuned for raid instances. They had people, in Black Temple, in T3 gear…gear allows progression but it isn’t an absolute hard cap on preogression. As for gear appearances, I have to agree. As a Prot Paladin I absolutely HATED T6 (in fact, I avoided wearing it, outside of raids, preferring the T5-ish gear from ZG instead). For me the biggest reward was 1) first kill on a boss you have been struggling on for two+ weeks and 2) seeing what came next.

Oddly, I joined WoW about when you were leaving, so my first raids were in Wrath. It makes me wonder whether they made gear stats matter more in Wrath raids. I remembering doing an Ulduar dual boss on a Holy Paly and not being able to keep the off-tank up despite pulling out all the stops (using everything available, never not casting). Later, after getting some drops from earlier Ulduar bosses, the fight was comparatively easy.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Phaedryn.3698:

Agreed, but I do not find it significantly different in GW2. In fact, I find many bosses much easier than many of the WoW 5-man (hard mode) bosses.

I find GW2 dungeons to be a strange animal in that regard. Some of the bosses are much easier than some of the trash mobs.

Phaedryn.3698:

I emphasized part of this paragraph since it brings up a question.

Do you consider a design consideration that places emphasis on “good reflexes and a decent system” to be a good design choice?

I’m of two minds, really. The move-while-fighting and dodge mechanics make for much more interesting game-play in the open world, where the consequences of missing a dodge or block don’t often mean you’re downed.

While there was a potential for this to also be true in dungeons, I’d have to say that with the current implementation, they’ve failed. Why? Because players who struggle due to reflex issues or systemic latency find the mechanics too hard, and thus not fun. Also, players with the reflexes and system to handle it, or who can negate damage through proactive skill use find the content too easy, and thus not fun.

This means that the sweet spot, i.e., the players who do find the content fun, is smaller than it might have been. The relative fewer numbers of posts on GW2lfg looking for the harder paths suggests that the players doing the harder dungeons for fun is small, not just “smaller.”

Phaedryn.3698:

Both. You didn’t really need the gear if your raid was solid. There was a Chinese guild that went from BC release to downing Illidan in less than 2 months. This was when it was still required to be attuned for raid instances. They had people, in Black Temple, in T3 gear…gear allows progression but it isn’t an absolute hard cap on preogression. As for gear appearances, I have to agree. As a Prot Paladin I absolutely HATED T6 (in fact, I avoided wearing it, outside of raids, preferring the T5-ish gear from ZG instead). For me the biggest reward was 1) first kill on a boss you have been struggling on for two+ weeks and 2) seeing what came next.

Oddly, I joined WoW about when you were leaving, so my first raids were in Wrath. It makes me wonder whether they made gear stats matter more in Wrath raids. I remembering doing an Ulduar dual boss on a Holy Paly and not being able to keep the off-tank up despite pulling out all the stops (using everything available, never not casting). Later, after getting some drops from earlier Ulduar bosses, the fight was comparatively easy.

Wrath raids were very different things than early BC raids (or even late BC raids). You could PUG Wrath raids…that alone is indicative of the difference. People did PUG Kara, but not until people who were way over geared for it were joining. You could PUG Gruul, and Mag (post nerf) as well, but that was it. Nobody was PUGing SSC, TK or BT (it’s possible to PUG the first half of Hyjal, barely). And people PUGed for trash in Sunwell (one of the best polearms for Hunters, Shivering Felspine, dropped off trash). So, most of T4 could be pugged but only with help from people far over geared for the content helping. Come Wrath and it seemed most raid content was puggable.