Guild Wars 2

Unbugging, please wait…

J Eberle.9312:

But the pretty back piece! You have to >:(

What is it? :O Swifty, Y U no tell such things earlier! x3

Last night I was doing full AC teaching run for a friend of mine. Strategy was simple since we had the ele in our party – ice bow the SQ and fgs it down. You’d decide that such things are fairly easy to do when you’ve done them so many times, but sigh

Path 1 – My guildie forgot to bring back his pet – SQ AoE’d us from the door, gg;
Path 2 – SQ pulled properly this time, I was ready with Ice Bow 5 but mini spiders were still alive, gg;
Path 3 – SQ pulled properly, mini spiders dead, I was late on the freeze. Kitten this, kitten that, seriously.

FEAST YOUR EYES http://dulfy.net/2014/07/29/gw2-mysterious-vine-backpiece-guide/

You forgot to mention the incompetent noob guardian you decided to bring along for that run :p . By the time I had decided what skills and utilities looked helpful for the fight, pretty much all fights were over (and not a few of them because of wipe ). I should’ve brought the mesmer …

Thanks, Swifty

Still not as pretty as Light of Dwayna though. Maybe will get it in one of those days when I’m bored of dungeons and fractals.

Rasimir.6239:

You forgot to mention the incompetent noob guardian you decided to bring along for that run :p . By the time I had decided what skills and utilities looked helpful for the fight, pretty much all fights were over (and not a few of them because of wipe ). I should’ve brought the mesmer …

Rasi, don’t be silly, you did great as guardian I have the feeling that Spider Queen fgs rush is kinda like the fire balls in CoF pt1 – if you mess it up the first time, you will keep messing it up for at least 10 more attempts.

But.. It will evolve over the next couple living stories or something and become MORE pretty O_O

Almost convinced me there, Swifty, too bad I’m lazy and I prefer to have cake and coffee all day long o:

stuffs guardian’s pockets full of cake and coffee

There, see that lone tiny asura sitting in Brisban, waiting for an escort to brave the journey into Dry Top and beyond? You could even have a picknick every few steps, and I’m sure all that sand blowing around won’t be (much of) a problem . And before you know it, the pretty backpiece is in your grasp (or possibly a few trips around the world away, judging from that explanation at Dulfy’s).

Iris Ng.9845:

I would say Dub’s or Zelyhn’s voice is the sexiest EU accent, though. Hit all the right notes. But Colesy’s sense of humor is unsurpassed.

Can’t compete with Sander.

Aww yiss.

So, nowadays me and a guildie do practice runs in Arah constantly. Yesterday, I joined him a bit after he started. I arrived at the Abomination to see this.

I see your friend has his priorities set right. He is loaded. Eh, eh, did you see what I did there? oh okay, I will stop now.

J Eberle.9312:

But.. It will evolve over the next couple living stories or something and become MORE pretty O_O

Until it evolves so much that it takes control over your character.

winterchillz.2564:

So, nowadays me and a guildie do practice runs in Arah constantly. Yesterday, I joined him a bit after he started. I arrived at the Abomination to see this.

a Mesmer doesn’t even need to stack guns for abom

winterchillz.2564:

So, nowadays me and a guildie do practice runs in Arah constantly. Yesterday, I joined him a bit after he started. I arrived at the Abomination to see this.

lol mesmer dps

Our plan was to kill him using rifles only. #op

I did a couple fractals yesterday… an EU level 2 with people who didn’t understand rolling for swamp and a 49 with a bunch of forumers and a DnT folk.

The EU level 2 was surprisingly fun. I had to teach them what to do, even in Maw. They didn’t know to pick up crystals! Also, they did everything weirdly in molten, but it actually made it pretty fun. Like fighting those mobs after the tunnel, it was like one person took on one or 2 of the molten alliance Charr and beat up their own group. It was interesting!

We didn’t have a Guardian so we lacked some stability, but when we got Cliffside, I can only imagine we did the arm seals how “it was meant to be done”? Because we all just ran back and forth. On a level 2, it was doable and actually easier that way.

In the level 49, things were good until Mai Trin. We wiped multiple times. And the only reason we completed was with the log out trick. It was odd to experience these two tiers in quick succession, but fun. I got to do underwater for the first time in a long time and made it through the dolphins phase on my own (which may have been a first!).

All in all… things were fun. I think I’m taking a break for a while though. So hopefully when I get back… things will be fixed.

So, I’m gonna post this here, because I don’t trust anyone outside this subforum for PvE stuff:

I was watching Nike and Goku’s excellent off wall lupi solos the other day and noticed them camping greatsword, even though they were both on 65003 builds. This got me to thinking: What AA is better? GS or Axe? I know that 100b is baws, wwa is an awesome dodge skill, bladetrail hits twice, and if you can position it right, rush hits like a tank, but wouldn’t it be a better choice to do the dps rotations for axe/sword+gs vs camp gs?

Please don’t think that I’m in any way disrespecting these two players, and I’m not criticizing their solos in the slightest. I’m just curious as to their methods.

Why should this question be disrespectful? I think it’s rather interesting and I’d like to know too. From what I know there’s even a point in the axe AA-chain where you can dodge without interrupting (or resetting?) it, but I doubt you could really rely on that when fighting Lupi.

Forceful Greatsword is what makes GS stronger when soloing.

Even more so than Axe?

IvanTheGrey.2941:

So, I’m gonna post this here, because I don’t trust anyone outside this subforum for PvE stuff:

I was watching Nike and Goku’s excellent off wall lupi solos the other day and noticed them camping greatsword, even though they were both on 65003 builds. This got me to thinking: What AA is better? GS or Axe? I know that 100b is baws, wwa is an awesome dodge skill, bladetrail hits twice, and if you can position it right, rush hits like a tank, but wouldn’t it be a better choice to do the dps rotations for axe/sword+gs vs camp gs?

Please don’t think that I’m in any way disrespecting these two players, and I’m not criticizing their solos in the slightest. I’m just curious as to their methods.

Think of it like this – you either sit on 20 stacks of might or you sit on 8 stacks if you sit on axe. Every single Greatsword skill is a dps increase over auto attack and they have such low cooldowns you can just spam them over and over again. It hardly even matters if you have to cancel a hundred blades because you just do it again 6 seconds later. It also means you have permanent access to the energy sigil proc and block from axe sword if you sit on gs.

gs auto gives vuln and might aswell.

maha.7902:

IvanTheGrey.2941:

So, I’m gonna post this here, because I don’t trust anyone outside this subforum for PvE stuff:

I was watching Nike and Goku’s excellent off wall lupi solos the other day and noticed them camping greatsword, even though they were both on 65003 builds. This got me to thinking: What AA is better? GS or Axe? I know that 100b is baws, wwa is an awesome dodge skill, bladetrail hits twice, and if you can position it right, rush hits like a tank, but wouldn’t it be a better choice to do the dps rotations for axe/sword+gs vs camp gs?

Please don’t think that I’m in any way disrespecting these two players, and I’m not criticizing their solos in the slightest. I’m just curious as to their methods.

Think of it like this – you either sit on 20 stacks of might or you sit on 8 stacks if you sit on axe. Every single Greatsword skill is a dps increase over auto attack and they have such low cooldowns you can just spam them over and over again. It hardly even matters if you have to cancel a hundred blades because you just do it again 6 seconds later. It also means you have permanent access to the energy sigil proc and block from axe sword if you sit on gs.

Aahhhhhh….. I see. Thanks for clearing that up all. I appreciate it.

After soloing Arah p2, I realize that dungeon path is how solo Instanced content SHOULD’VE been like.

I wrote up a 3000+ word post on the matter, but I decided to save it to my computer and polish it.

In short, ArenaNet is falling in the same trap as Call of Duty. Here’s what “modern” game design did to Doom, and compare it with GW2 instances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw

In many ways, the original Doom was a lot like GW1 in that you didn’t wait on “doors” to open very much, or NPCs to finish talking. You had a lot of non-linearity regarding how you approaches mobs, and you were punished for failing to use tactics.

As opposed to GW2 which, like in the video, uses needless “interactable” objects, gimmicks, NPCs holding your hand, and “leaving the mission area”. Even the monster encounters are designed in the same way (as opposed to having a vast canyon full of enemies to clear, like in GW1, they only pop up during story events in GW2 and that video.)

I don’t even know to click at the video and I know which one it is and I totally agree.

Kain Francois.4328:

After soloing Arah p2, I realize that dungeon path is how solo Instanced content SHOULD’VE been like.

I wrote up a 3000+ word post on the matter, but I decided to save it to my computer and polish it.

In short, ArenaNet is falling in the same trap as Call of Duty. Here’s what “modern” game design did to Doom, and compare it with GW2 instances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw

In many ways, the original Doom was a lot like GW1 in that you didn’t wait on “doors” to open very much, or NPCs to finish talking. You had a lot of non-linearity regarding how you approaches mobs, and you were punished for failing to use tactics.

As opposed to GW2 which, like in the video, uses needless “interactable” objects, gimmicks, NPCs holding your hand, and “leaving the mission area”. Even the monster encounters are designed in the same way (as opposed to having a vast canyon full of enemies to clear, like in GW1, they only pop up during story events in GW2 and that video.)

Interesting. Looking forward to reading it. Tell me the gist of it in game.

The bulk of my argument: The personal story did a horrible job at conditioning players to play difficult content.

Any time there were any complex mechanics, scripted events and dialogue or green stars would always hand-carry us through things, and not let the player figure anything out for themselves. That’s assuming the VERY few encounters we did not clear just spamming autoattack in the 1-30 missions.

To be fair, I DO remember during the beta stress testers that the hammer boss in the Carnival storyline did require us to dodge his attacks. I don’t know whether or not he was nerfed since then, but we should’ve had more fights like that to train us for fights like the Berserker Abomination in Arah p2.

However, besides that one mission, they missed perfect opportunities. For example, the Sylvari personal story where we were using Caladbold, would’ve been a very great opportunity to teach the player about range and crowd-control effects by using skills #2-5 on Caladbold in order to solve puzzles and difficult encounters. For example, we should’ve had to use a Crowd Control skill to interrupt a powerful boss attack, but instead we were able to faceroll through everything by spamming the autoattack…

We were able to see the direct results of this failed design when players complained about Ascalonian Catacombs Story Mode. If Personal Story served as a tutorial, it failed at that. I don’t mean to ridicule the devs, but that’s the truth.

Later on, we were also able to see the impact of the failed Personal Story design when players claimed Estate of Decay was “Impossible”. Now what the heck was so difficult about hiding behind a pillar, picking up a rock, and throwing it at the spinning things around the Mouth of Zhaitan? No, seriously, players were complaining about THAT? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY!? It was the ONE satisfying boss fight in the entire personal story, and players were complaining about that!?

To this day, players still cannot complete the Ghost of Barradin in the new Living Story because they were not taught something as simple as using a condition removal inside a solo setting… SERIOUSLY?!

Some players can’t even figure out how to damage the boss Ghost of Barradin… When the NPCs even spell it out for you in dialogue…

However, this is not because of the players themselves. Everything is about game design, and if a gamer from my old high school with Down Syndrome was able to complete Final Fantasy 7 and Portal, those games obviously did something RIGHT which Guild Wars 2 falls completely flat on.

Seriously, I am comparing a 14 year old kid with down syndrome beating a super complex game like Final Fantasy 7, compared to GW2 players who complained about Estate of Decay. kittenation is not an important factor when determining whether or not someone can clear content, because I’ve seen a down-syndrome kid take down Sephiroth. And the key there lies in game design teaching players.

My theory is that GW2 players being “unskilled” is all a result of players not being punished when they fail at understanding boss mechanics.

Older game designers were really brilliant how they designed content: If you fail, you restart the level. You are forced to learn the mechanics or you cannot progress to further levels where advanced use of these techniques are necessary. However, the twist is that these mechanics are NOT told to the player. They are experienced by the player, where they must figure it out themselves. Even the most unskilled player can learn through gameplay, and this is what games like Portal do to teach players how to “fling-jump”. Seriously, portal is a master at teaching players mechanics!

This is not the case in GW2, where we can infinitely respawn and brute force our way through everything… If a player screws up, all they’re given is a pat on the back… And so begins the cycles of bad players.

Bad players are created by game design. (At least, in most cases…)

To devs: Sorry if I sound harsh, but it is not my intention to undermine any of the hard work that went into this game. I love Guild Wars 2, and that’s why I criticize it so much. I want devs to understand what went wrong, so that future content to be even better.

C’mon, don’t get the wrong idea. For anyone to write a super long post analyzing and theory-crafting possible reasons the design impacts the community, has to have a serious dedication to this game, anyways.

Interesting read, but the problem is those things have been said countless times and nothing has been done about it.
Wanna know why?
They don’t really care about teaching players and your [our] opinion on the matter.
You don’t need to know how to play to buy a quaggan backpack.

Am I harsh? Maybe. All I know is this, though. All I can see in them is this.

Very interesting read Kain. I remember being high as a kite on vicodan after wrist surgery and playing with one hand through the 2nd and 3rd disc. You’re absolutely right, and Gab’s right too. Sad, but true.

The only thing that matter is this: In the words of Brazil: “This week, on sale in the gem store for the low, low price of 400 gems….”

deSade.9437:

Interesting read, but the problem is those things have been said countless times and nothing has been done about it.
Wanna know why?
They don’t really care about teaching players and your [our] opinion on the matter.
You don’t need to know how to play to buy a quaggan backpack.

Am I harsh? Maybe. All I know is this, though. All I can see in them is this.

Except that the monetization and living story teams are separate.

I think the devs are a lot more honest than some of the gemstore-pessimists tend to think.

Problem is, they’ve fallen into a trap that plagues too many modern games by trying to please everyone.

They’ve also fallen into a trap of trying too hard to tell a story. They want to make sure every action taken by the player somehow relates to the plot, such as the Steam Ogre security system part of the Entangled instance, indirectly showing what Scarlet was like and her backstory. The results were a 10-second, mind-numbing, boring mounted combat, simply not moving and mashing 1 and 2 to kill inquest, with absolutely no test of skill whatsoever… yawn.

More importantly, they’re too generous with difficulty, and that is the biggest trap. Instead of teaching players to clear difficult content, they are trying too hard to accommodate them, and the results are a mind-numbingly boring difficulty we could simply spam autoattack to win. Mobs are also few and far between.

Their design direction right now is the result of a modern game design trap, and unless something is done about it, the cycle feeds itself, and deteriorates the game like rotting flesh.

I know it sounds like I am exaggerating, but it really is a vicious cycle, and I am speaking as a fellow developer. This vicious cycle is addictive to developers because it makes content easy to produce, the masses eat it up without being bothered too much, and the effects aren’t seen until long-term. But we can see the long-term effects already taking place on GW2, and the most notable being Trahearne-hate (this is a weird connection, but I’ll explain in future posts. People hate Trahearne for the gameplay, NOT the story!)

I have to admit I’m very torn on the subject of basic game difficulty and game “teaching” how to deal with it.

On the one hand, I do enjoy a challenge, and have learned a lot of things in this game that I didn’t think I could possibly learn, and there is still a lot of stuff I intend to learn eventually. It’s one thing I like about these kinds of game, that there is always more to learn, more to improve, another challenge to face.

On the other hand I see some of my older friends and guildies, people in their 50s or even (in rare cases) 60s, and know that many of them would simply quit the game before they would let it “teach them”. Sure, they are not many people compared to those in their 20s and 30s, but not so few as you may think either, and to me personally it would be a great loss to see all those people leave the game.

Some days, when there’s too much work at the office, and too much family drama at home, I’m personally glad that this game offers a lot of activity that I actually can do without having to think about it. There’s a reason why I’ve got four completed personal stories (with two more waiting for Arah story mode) and three 100% world explorations (with the 4th at 93% and several more past 50%) .

The game can only really teach you if you are eager to learn. If you are not, any attempt at teaching you will only lead to frustration. And I see many players around (especially among the older players) that simply want to enjoy the virtual world and aren’t interested in learning any new tricks. If the game were less forgiving, they wouldn’t learn how to deal with it, they simply would find another game that suits their needs.

I actually don’t think the game is all that bad at teaching either. My daughters (11 and 8 years old) occasionally are allowed to play a bit, and they’ve figured out a lot of game mechanics easily. In fact, they already know more about how this game works than one of my favourite guildies, a guy in the early 60s who’s been playing since beta and just wants to enjoy the world without dealing with nuisances.

Bottom line: I think the difficulty of open world and personal/living story is set where it is on purpose. I’m not 100% sure it’s at the right spot, as I do see arguments on both sides, but fortunately that’s not a decision for me to make anyway. This game’s audience is very wide-spread, and there is a sizable number of players that a “teach them to do difficult stuff” policy simply will not reach but just alienate.

The leaning curve and design of personal story seems to be pretty much beyond repairs. I just don’t see them doing an entire overhaul.

However, I do hope ArenaNet considers the idea of harder FUTURE instances, and less green-star handholding. Perhaps “Hard Mode” instances of the living story? Perhaps solo-dungeon paths?

I’m not calling for Liadri-hard content, balthazar no! But since the Living Story is level 80 endgame anyways, if they could just turn up the difficulty scale a little bit, and add a hardmode, I’m sure many people would appreciate it.

That said, let’s not confuse engaging content with challenging content. Super Mario Galaxy makes a wonderful use of its level gimmicks, yet the gimmicks are built specifically for the levels, and they’re fun. Like the Blue Pull Stars of Space Junk Galaxy, or the Bee Suit of the Bee Galaxy.

Compare with the tanks in a later Vigil personal story mission, which is basically shooting at a red blob of foes for 5 minutes straight and pretty much nothing else. That is not engaging.

I’d like to add, one of the biggest problem with GW2 is that players do not have any incentives to get better. People who follow Zerg and spam auto attack all day on guardian since release can easily have 5-6 Legendaries by now.

The skill vs rewards in GW2 is unbalanced. You can get 6-7 gold and hour running around pressing one while eating and watching a movie or you can find a good group, concentrate and do dungeon speedclear for 3-4 hours and get 8-10 gold and hour. And if your group isn’t good enough this number drop below the 6-7 gold you could be getting.

I also think that a decent custom tutorial in personal story is needed depending on class. Thing as simple as :

“this boss shoot deadly projectile, use Wall of Reflection to protect yourself”
“When this boss charge up his attack, use a knock down or knock back to interrupt him”

Guildie wanted to go higher in fractals last night so we did level 19 for him. We had one spot so we decided to pug it. Some warrior got in and we greeted him, only to receive silence in return. Fair enough.

Fractal number 1: Swamp, we were already at Bloomy, he arrived wielding axe/axe and a longbow. Hm, whatever, I’m fine with you ranging Bloomy most of the time.

Fractal number 2: Cliffside, our fella took ages to get to the chest seal, once we got there, he had to pick up the hammer. He stood in front of the seal, just staring at it and pressed auto-attack a couple of times, sigh. Anyway, somehow we managed to get to Archie where our fella got instantly nuked down by the agony attack … I was already starting to doubt of whether this guy has been in fractals before.

Fractal number 3: Dredge, hurrah … not. Got into serious argument of how to guard the console because this guy strongly believed he should just run around the room while someone else is supposed to keep the spawning behind the console dredges. Wipe. And a second one. I finally told him to get on the kitten plate and let me guard the console since he seems to be having no idea of how to do it. I was called a noob and was invited to do a level 50 fractals with his group so I can see some srs skilllz … well, at this point I was on the verge of kicking him from the party but I decided to hold back and rather let him stay until the end. We wiped again at Ice elemental and I’m pretty much done with pugz of any kind.

Now to get some more coffee, ugh.

Or spend a year trying to understand the Trading Post and never fear being poor again :/
But yeah people should be taught by the game, or someone could do a GW2 101 series of videos :p

Enaretos.8079:

But yeah people should be taught by the game, or someone could do a GW2 101 series of videos :p

How to gw2.

See that red circle? do not stand in it, do something called dodge it (weird, I know)
See all those mobs between us and the boss? run pass them, they drop no good loot. What’s that? you don’t think skipping was meant to be apart of the game? complain about it on the forums as we LOVE seeing it posted here and it rarely gets posted.
Stack. What’s that? you don’t think stacking was intended to be apart of the game? please complain about it on the forums. We LOVE hearing about it, as it never pops up that much here.
Melee > Range. What’s that? you want to range because you want to play how you want, please leave my group, go create your own group on lfg and never enter another of my CLEARLY STATED melee only lfgs

:) there, a basic guide for you

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queen_Spider

Looks familiar. :P

And uuh

While we’re at it, something related to your discussion up there (which was very enjoyable to read and made me remember what TotalBiscuit said about the regression of FPS and tbh, I can feel the same thing in GW2 at times… kind of scary.)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/Possessed-Statue/first

//@Wethospu: Oh god that Ranique guy.

Because someone in the forum reported it, it’s now in fangen. But check out my Ode to casual!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/fangen/Ode-2-Casual/

Wethospu.6437:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queen_Spider

Looks familiar. :P

And uuh

You know what they say about imitation and flattery —

Imitation with better uptime is the most sincere form of flattery

Or something ;-)

Just messing with you, gw2dungeons is great, but it’s usually not up when I need it T_T

lol @ go play with dolls. Some people, smh.

Wethospu.6437:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queen_Spider

Looks familiar. :P

And uuh

But, but…

frifox.5283:

Wethospu.6437:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queen_Spider

Looks familiar. :P

And uuh

But, but…

God I love those things. Pretty much the only reason I like my mesmer so much in some situations though.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

what TotalBiscuit said about the regression of FPS and tbh, I can feel the same thing in GW2 at times… kind of scary.)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/s2/Possessed-Statue/first

Link FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6UQ2QlRH0

Keep in mind GW2 is an action-rpg and not an FPS with resource management. However, GW1 missions do have similarities to a classic-FPS in that they start you in the middle of the action, and a player must slowly work their way through a very dangerous maze.

Even the more linear missions in GW1 gave the player a sense of strategy and control because they did not use scripted events. And when they did use scripted events, they did not disrupt the pacing of the gameplay like the long NPC conversations in GW2.

Check out Gate of Madness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_g5lhDSg6M

First, skip to 0:35. Only 15 SECONDS into the mission, and the player is already fighting mobs. No stupid NPCs explaining why they’ve appeared there, no making them invulnerable until a bunch of needless exposition, no stupid gimmicks where they infinitely respawn unless you use a turret, just simple enemies standing at the door of this mission who want you DEAD. And you want to kill them as well! ;)

Then skip to 1:24. Just 12 seconds after killing the previous mob, you fight the next one, and you risk dual-agroing foes without proper pulling and preparation. Again, no bullkitten NPCs explaining “omfgwtfbqq margonites we must killem Z0MG!”, no dialogue, no waiting until a stupid speech we don’t care about, no bullkitten, no bullkitten, and no bullkitten, just plain, simple, enemies waiting for you to come there, so that they can kill you.

Now skip to 1:51. Just 2 seconds after fighting those margonites, the player takes a wrong turn and activates an ambush of demons. Again, again, AGAIN, there is no needless dialogue explaining “ha ha ha ha you fell in my trap OMG!”, there is no invulnerability until a mentally challenged NPC explains “OMG we must kill them, Z0000M!”, there is no door blocking your way with any NPCs saying “Mr. Scruffy will open it for us” (Is this supposed to make me care about the NPC?). Just plain, simple popups.

Through mechanics, the game simply says to you: “You’ve taken the wrong turn, now you and your AI companions must cope with it. DEAL WITH IT.”

Go to 2:28, what happens? You kill 2 seemingly weak foes and they MULTIPLY. What happens then? They multiply even more, and they start slamming blind, disabling your entire team! There are no Marjorys telling us “Careful, they multiply when killed!”. Again, the game simply tells you: “You’ve reached a difficult situation, now DEAL WITH IT.” In other words, the player is actually forced to PAY ATTENTION to the game and its environment, to LEARN what the enemies use, and adapt. At this point, an unprepared player is recommended to retreat and take a condi-removal, and there is nothing wrong with that. It gets the player to think about their encounter and immerses them in its world.

And that “DEAL WITH IT.” attitude was possibly the best part of GW1. Again, the NPCs didn’t hold your hand. Players had to adapt, whether it was a change of tactics, a different location to pull, placement of spirits, or a different LoS location.

To be fair, GW2 has a lot of potential for great instance design. The ability to swap skills on the fly, cut away a lot of the setup time from GW1, and it really opened up potential for a more steady pace of action. GW2 has so much potential with its mechanics, but it never attempts to pressure the player. Everything is so… scripted -.-

Now skip allll the way up to 9:50. Witness the first scripted event in the entire mission. How long have they been inside the instance for? 8 minutes. Not 30-seconds, not 2 minutes, not 10 seconds, 5 seconds, or 2 seconds like in GW2, but 8 minutes and that is the first scripted event of the entire mission! Not only that, but it is the ONLY scripted event besides the final boss fight of the instance.

Even from a storytelling standpoint, there were no Dunkoros saying “Hold on… I’ll open this door…” Or Taimi saying “Scruffy will open this…” and making us wait while he blasts the door. Instead, it was a simple Wham!-plot twist that Shiro is alive, and he wasn’t greeting us with much dialogue, but instead greeting us with monsters. Simple, efficient, and greatly executed plot twist. Again, again-again-again-again-again-AGAIN-AGAIN (how much must I stress this?) there were no stupid NPC dialogue or exposition. Just the villain re-introducing himself, and sending monsters after us. That’s it, and it worked beautifully, while still able to tell the narrative right.

Kain Francois.4328:

Except that the monetization and living story teams are separate.

YES, because the chances of them not communicating are incredibly high. Pretty sure they all are kept in chains in separate rooms and can’t talk to each other. Also pretty sure that the heads of the project dont’ decide together what’s the purpose of the game and relative strategies. Like, they can’t possibly ask the ls team to do certain things in a way to add some other grind or some pointless gemstore crap.
Right.

Look, I don’t care. I’m honestly sick and tired of sterile discussions about things anet doesn’t care about. It doesn’t concern them and therefore it doesn’t concern me. Look at this forum, seriously…. “After a long day I just want easy things to do! – anet is mean because they cater to hardcore farmers, they don’t care about us anymore [because they did liadri]!” Yeah, the game is 99,999% about you, but HEAVEN FORBID it might be a 90-10% with a just few hard instances in the personal story or in dungeons, then people would quit because of frustration!
I hate the “it’s a game for casuals” argument so much. As much as the “everyone would quit if…” one.

Then they go on the forum and demand us to teach them, because it’s obviously our duty to devote our free time to you because you can’t figure out how combo fields work or can’t get past the first élite mobs in arah p3. Then we’re mean if we don’t.
Just wallow in your own filth, I don’t care. I’m sick of it.

Okies, time for a break from my negative nancy ranting:

The boss fights in LS2 are absolutely a step in the right direction for solo instances and bosses. The Barradin fight was absolutely well done; perfect, I might say.

It forces players to learn the encounter and think critically about their utility skills and weapon choices. I like that, and I want to see more of it.

QQers can go rot in the Realm of Torment for all I care. The fight is fine, and very well done!

deSade.9437:

Kain Francois.4328:

Except that the monetization and living story teams are separate.

YES, because the chances of them not communicating are incredibly high. Pretty sure they all are kept in chains in separate rooms and can’t talk to each other. Also pretty sure that the heads of the project dont’ decide together what’s the purpose of the game and relative strategies. Like, they can’t possibly ask the ls team to do certain things in a way to add some other grind or some pointless gemstore crap.
Right.

Look, I don’t care. I’m honestly sick and tired of sterile discussions about things anet doesn’t care about. It doesn’t concern them and therefore it doesn’t concern me. Look at this forum, seriously…. “After a long day I just want easy things to do! – anet is mean because they cater to hardcore farmers, they don’t care about us anymore [because they did liadri]!” Yeah, the game is 99,999% about you, but HEAVEN FORBID it might be a 90-10% with a just few hard instances in the personal story or in dungeons, then people would quit because of frustration!
I hate the “it’s a game for casuals” argument so much. As much as the “everyone would quit if…” one.

Then they go on the forum and demand us to teach them, because it’s obviously our duty to devote our free time to you because you can’t figure out how combo fields work or can’t get past the first élite mobs in arah p3. Then we’re mean if we don’t.
Just wallow in your own filth, I don’t care. I’m sick of it.

O___o

What I did against Barradin… S/P.. BP, AA in a 3 hit spot… oh, 0 dmg x 3… better move out. keep blinding him…victory. I think I am cheating as a thief…WHY CAN WE BLIND A STATUE!?

So many lurking BHBs…. I was looking for the new dungeon tourney thread and someone moved it into that b.s. subforum “in-game events”. ANet REALLY doesn’t like us. Cutting us down at every turn.

Time to sit back and see where this goes.

frifox.5283:

Wethospu.6437:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queen_Spider

Looks familiar. :P

And uuh

But, but…

Now reflect it!

But at least I know which reddit topic to link when people call elitists toxic.

Well I tell you the truth, you have an evil character!

But your so full of yourself, you don’t even want to see the possibility that I am right (and yes I am!).

Kain Francois.4328:

I’m not calling for Liadri-hard content, balthazar no! But since the Living Story is level 80 endgame anyways, if they could just turn up the difficulty scale a little bit, and add a hardmode, I’m sure many people would appreciate it.

I actually wouldn’t even mind Liadri-hard content, I found that one very well done (although unfortunately real life kept me from practicing enough to beat her … I did come close a few times ). And it was in the perfect place, easily accessible for anyone that enjoys challenging content, but not blocking any part of the story from people who are more into stories than challenges.

The same goes for dungeons. I very much enjoy paths like the Aetherblade path in TA or the Arah paths, even though I’m not good at them for lack of practice, and the same goes for higher-level fractals whenever I get the chance to play them, but I also appreciate the fact that there are dungeons in this game easy enough to 2- or 3-man them if you are half-way decent, since it offers the opportunity to take friends along to see the dungeons (and stories inside) that they otherwise would never experience.

That’s the point where I think the current personal and living stories actually strike a good balance: it is accessible to everyone, if not solo then you can always ask a couple of friends to help you out. Everyone can experience the story, even those that are slow to learn or simply are no longer interested to learn. While I personally enjoy content like Liadri or the harder parts of the SAB, I’m glad that said content isn’t a roadblock for people who prefer to play this game for the world and stories.

I still stand by the point of my previous post: The game can’t teach mechanics to people that do not want to be taught. And even if there are “weirdos” like me among the older players who immensely enjoy learning new things (even if it takes longer the older I get ), there are many who have gotten to the point in life where learning new tricks isn’t what they are primarily looking for in their recreational activities. Raising the challenge bar across the board will alienate a considerable part of what so far has been the target audience of this game.

More optional challenging content: yes! Challenge and “game teaching” as road blocks in main story lines: no.