Guild Wars 2

Instead of bosses throwing out one big red circle of aoe for everyone to avoid, the boss will throw out 5 seperate aoe at each players seperately, so a total of 5 red circles. Let’s say that each aoe does 30% damage when it hits you. So when a group is stacking, then everyone is standing on top of 5 aoe circles, so you would then receive 5 aoe damage which is 150% damage = instant group wipe. So spreading out and attacking the boss from different angles would benefit the group more. Standing next to each other risk taking more damage from multiple attacks.

CoE subject alpha sort of does this – puts an aoe circle where each player stands, but people overcome this and stack and dodge together when the aoe occurs. Some dungeon bosses overcome stacking by putting a debuff on each player and damages them if they stand close to each other e.g. fractal asura

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

Yes, wanting to be efficient and stack is evil. We should all make our dungeon runs take as long as possible to enhance the dungeon crawling experience.

CoE subject alpha, SE path one final boss. Both use this technique. Both are ineffetive because you can dodge all of them with one dodge.

After all, if you die at alpha, l2dodge is the reply.

As for stacking, in SE 3 there is a midboss champion that pretty much trains players to stack. Puts fire rings on each member, you only get burnt if you cross somebodies ring, but take no damage if you all stand on the same spot, or spread out and range. Since range is terrible dps and horid boon support, stacking is the answer.

Q: How to eliminate stacking?
A: Enable Allied Until Collision

Stacking – (Working as intended)

Doon.2364:

Instead of bosses throwing out one big red circle of aoe for everyone to avoid, the boss will throw out 5 seperate aoe at each players seperately, so a total of 5 red circles. Let’s say that each aoe does 30% damage when it hits you. So when a group is stacking, then everyone is standing on top of 5 aoe circles, so you would then receive 5 aoe damage which is 150% damage = instant group wipe. So spreading out and attacking the boss from different angles would benefit the group more. Standing next to each other risk taking more damage from multiple attacks.

It won’t work. The dodge button was invented for a reason.

Tachii.3506:

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

This won’t change anything. Most organized groups rarely need to heal because stuff dies so fast. It may make a slight difference in fractals but not enough to stop the sheer efficiency of stacking.

Nouvel.2375:

CoE subject alpha sort of does this – puts an aoe circle where each player stands, but people overcome this and stack and dodge together when the aoe occurs. Some dungeon bosses overcome stacking by putting a debuff on each player and damages them if they stand close to each other e.g. fractal asura

perhaps make all the aoe have different timing attacks so that they don’t occur all simultaneously where one dodge can avoid them all? Something is bound to land, and boss will have his other attacks directing at the group so when it all adds up, people will go down. For example, say a Golem shoots 5 rockets at the group, one launch after another at a rapid rate but not simultaneously. If you stack, you basically standing in a spot that will see a succession of attacks which is basically unavoidable. And vary the rate of these attacks so that the spot essentially becomes a death trap. only way to avoid creating a death trap is to spread out.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1

I honestly think the only reason this has started, and become the meta topic, is because of that awful video that said stacking is ruining the game. The several people who saw it are now telling everybody that it’s happening, and since people are sheeple they have to go along with the bandwagon.

I honestly don’t remember there being this much before that video. And every time one of them says it’s ruining the game I wonder if everyone is just a puppet.

Clumsy.6257:

It won’t work. The dodge button was invented for a reason.

Not if you vary the aoe attacks at different pace, not all at once. Then basically there is no way to keep dodging, you will run out of dodge because these attacks will keep coming at everyone at different times but fast enough that if everyone stand in same spot, then basically you are standing in a spot that get hit with a magor attack every 2 second. You can’t dodge them all, you have to move, and everyone will have to spread out to avoid concentrating all the attacks in one area, there isn’t enough dodge to avoid a constant barrage of deadly attacks as a result of stacking.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1 we get a new one of these every week.

MastaNeenja.1537:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1 we get a new one of these every week.

I haven’t done one yet, that’s why I feel obligated. Have to continue the tradition.

Doon.2364:

MastaNeenja.1537:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1 we get a new one of these every week.

I haven’t done one yet, that’s why I feel obligated. Have to continue the tradition.

Yeah but we already have a stacking thread that’s most recent post isn’t even a day old, so that’s pretty active.

Clumsy.6257:

Tachii.3506:

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

This won’t change anything. Most organized groups rarely need to heal because stuff dies so fast. It may make a slight difference in fractals but not enough to stop the sheer efficiency of stacking.

Spider Queen (AC), Greater Nightmare Vine (TA), Legendary Destroyer (SE) and some of the other bosses that hit hard would make it more difficult. Won’t change anything is a bit of an exaggeration. I will guarantee there will be many, many complaints as it was seen in Fractals with this mistlock.

Tachii.3506:

Clumsy.6257:

Tachii.3506:

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

This won’t change anything. Most organized groups rarely need to heal because stuff dies so fast. It may make a slight difference in fractals but not enough to stop the sheer efficiency of stacking.

Spider Queen (AC), Greater Nightmare Vine (TA), Legendary Destroyer (SE) and some of the other bosses that hit hard would make it more difficult. Won’t change anything is a bit of an exaggeration. I will guarantee there will be many, many complaints as it was seen in Fractals with this mistlock.

Both the spider queen and nightmare vine die so fast that healing isn’t useful. One guardian or the ability to dodge negates the legendary destroyers damage.

Better question than the one presented in the thread title would be ‘why should stacking be eliminated’.

Doon.2364:

MastaNeenja.1537:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1 we get a new one of these every week.

I haven’t done one yet, that’s why I feel obligated. Have to continue the tradition.

pls no more, my sanity..it’s almost tipped over the edge T_T

The best this could do is eliminate stacking on a single boss. Unless they intend to make this a regular mechanic for every dungeon boss, in which case a good chunk of the dungeon community may just stop playing for good.

There certainly are numerous way how to enforce players NOT to stack.

But why would you want that? If you personaly dislike stacking, just find some friends who feel the same and do the dungeons any way you prefer.

What you really suggest is: “please devs force other players to do it as I like”.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1

Tachii.3506:

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

This is already supported in most single player games. No cooperation needed, and you are guaranteed to win solo all boss fights.

Why make a game mechanic, that makes team work result in less efficiency?

I am tired of the people that wants to ruin your dungeon run by aggroing/killing every mob, not reading chat, not being able to read english on a european server, ignoring lfg description, leeching in dungoens on their low level toon, not stacking, etc etc.

Their mantra is ‘I want to be as ineffective as I can, I don’t want to teamplay in teams, I want deny that I ruin aggro management if told what to do, etc’.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

It’s fine as it is. If people wanna stack in one spot in front of a boss that’s their business. Most attacks will hit anyone in the arc anyway so it’s like its a case of only one person getting hit while everyone else gets a free ride

Fext.3614:

Tachii.3506:

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

This is already supported in most single player games. No cooperation needed, and you are guaranteed to win solo all boss fights.

Well, stacking isn’t really cooperative play. The range for this should be very limited, like maybe 100, specifically to eliminate stacking. Supportive combo fields and skills would still be effective.

So basically what you want is every boss having a necrid barrage (Lupicus phase 2 attack) and we know how much pugs struggle to fight this boss even on range mode. Experienced groups can melee him without stacking and without reflects so mostly you are going to make casual players and random bad pugs very sad.

Just make a group stating ‘no stacking noobs’ and leave us be.

dutchiez.7502:

Just make a group stating ‘no stacking noobs’ and leave us be.

Not possible, must make millions of threads complaining in a forum that no one reads.

#logic

Fext.3614:

What you really suggest is: “please devs force other players to do it as I like”.

Thats what 99% of the suggestions threads are. That is why the suggestion forum got archived because somebody realized this and ended the pain.

So some phrases seems to keep coming up. Especially in the dungeon forums:

Something along the lines of:

• ‘You just want the game to be so that it benefits your playstyle more.’

This is really no good argument. Because don’t we all? When someone says this in the stacking context for example, it would simply suggest that you just want the game to be the way it is because it fits your playstyle more.

And then there is this argument:

• ‘You can just open an LFG with the words: Play how you want.’

Which completely misses the point. This suggests that we only have a problem with being forced to stack in pugs. This is but a minor part of the problem. The bigger issue is that it is in nearly all cases the best thing to do. And if one thing is the best thing to do throughout nearly all of the game, that makes the game rather dull. If we are simply worse off for doing something else than the norm for the entire game it hurts creativity and variety. This is the real issue and it isn’t solved by creating our own subpar teams.

• ‘Why do you want to slow us down to 3 hour dungeon runs?’

These tend to come with hyperbole so I added some in. The issue here is the variety of combat. Stacking is so effective that it makes fights end before they start. This doesn’t really allow for the mechanics of the fight to come in. Without these mechanics fights are typically all the same thing. To show this variety, speedclears would need to be slowed down a bit. This does not mean that you cannot clear dungeons faster than that cleric pug. The new speedclears may just turn out to be a bit more diverse. Insisting on speedclears that are clearly faster than the developers intended sounds more like an argument born out of luxury. (People don’t like to lose what they have, even though it is not rational for them to have it in the first place.)

• ‘There are already a million threads out there.’

And the problem is still there. Most go the same way as this thread, which is to say… not many ideas spawned and not many arguments given. It is not hard to see why new threads are being started. The old ones tend to get filled with the usual: ‘Never gonna happen’ ‘Go play your own way’ comments. It is an important issue for many people, and it is about time it gets a proper thread. The reason why there are so many is because the dungeon forum community seems to be unable to make it work in one thread. (They should do a CDI on this topic) Go and argue with proper arguments. Polish rough ideas and get creative. Make a thread work and you may not see new ones pop up every day.

• ‘This is the way it is. Learn to play.’

Yes, this is the way it is, and clearly not the way the poster wants it to be. The idea here is to change the game into something better. It is not like we don’t know how to stack or whatever it is the thread is about. We see how some systems greatly limit the amount of viable strategies.

I’ll just finish with a question:

Where does your fun in dungeons come from?

Some possible answers:

• The people I play with.
• Speedclearing. (Seeing efficiency at work)
• Trolling pugs.
• Intense action based combat.
• Coming up with new strategies. (And builds)
• Increasing my gold/hour ratio.
• Helping others.
• Stacking (I don’t know, maybe you just like to get close with your friends?)
• The lore.
• The atmosphere of the dungeon.
• Meeting strangers.

As far as I can tell, the only things that would get hurt by reducing the viability of stacking would be: Increasing my gold and stacking. While the factors that have a lot to gain by reducing the viability of stacking are: action based combat, helping others (more to teach) and coming up with new strategies. There would not be much of a change for speedclearers, because they would still be able to do so with different strategies.

Now when implementing a fix for stacking, it is unlikely that all stacking would be removed. So there would still be quite a bit of stacking going on in some places for those that like to stack. But yeah it would be likely to reduce the amount of gold you make per hour. If gold means a lot to you, then I can see that as a valid argument in favor of stacking. But it is about the only valid argument I can find for not looking for solutions to stacking.

Personally I find the most fun in coming up with strategies, helping others and playing with friends. And regarding the first two, stacking is detrimental to my game-experience.

For people who don’t like stacking, I (once again) suggest taking a longer look at fractals. Trash mobs might sometimes be dealt with by stacking (looking at you, aquatic and cliffside), but most bosses are simply not stackable.

I find it very, very unlikely that Anet is going to, at this stage, change the AI and boss mechanics of all dungeon bosses to be more similar to fractals. That battle is not just lost, it’s lost before it started. Instead of complaining (over and over again), I suggest playing the content which maximizes your enjoyment by removing this mechanic as much as possible.

You’ll notice the same people on this forum who are experts in stacking are also fractal experts. You do what the content requires.

if you dont like stacking in dungeons and you liked the movie 300 then you need to pick one and be done with it.

stacking against a superior foe or a large number of enemies is a legitimate military strategy. look at the aforementioned spartans. look at Thermopylae. The alamo? There are countless other famous examples..

There is a reason this only works in PvE. The AI. The only way to “remove” stacking would be to update the AI to a level where it thinks like a player. Show a way to do this and our strategies will adapt.

Remove walls. Both fgs and stacking exploits fixed.

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘You just want the game to be so that it benefits your playstyle more.’

This is really no good argument. Because don’t we all? When someone says this in the stacking context for example, it would simply suggest that you just want the game to be the way it is because it fits your playstyle more.

stacking came about because of how the game was designed, this isn’t the play style this a response that the system has produced. It is one response, a widely agreed upon response but there are more than one. You can call it a play style but players who know why stacking works will argue that it is the most efficient answer to a given situation. Play style is more akin to how you present yourself, or choices you make during combat based on what you want to do rather than what works best.

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘You can just open an LFG with the words: Play how you want.’

—Snip

Why not create your own team and play the way you want? As it stands right now you can choose to either stack or not. You can be as creative as you like in combat no one is forcing you to join random parties and stack with them because they want to. Making your own party and playing with like minded individuals lets everyone enjoy the game. Suggesting that stacking is bad and should be removed from the game is one side telling the other side how to play. They have no more right to do so than the other side suggesting that stacking must always be done. Proponents of stacking have always said if you do not wish to stack please make your own party, while opponents of stacking have always suggested the game needs to be changed so that stacking is no longer an option.

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘Why do you want to slow us down to 3 hour dungeon runs?’

Snip

Stacking doesn’t allow for mechanics to happen? Well you are saying this in hyperbole but again it makes me wonder if players who oppose stacking really know why stacking happens to begin with. What are the advantages of stacking and what mechanics are we actually utilizing that seemingly go unseen. Again, players who want to stack and clear the dungeon in the fastest time possible have just as much right to do so as players who do not wish to stack and fight in a less disciplined fashion that they may refer to as their own play style. You wish to take your time in a dungeon and play it at your own pace please do so, just make your own party for it. Under the current model stackers and nonstackers can play in a manner that makes both sides happy.

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘There are already a million threads out there.’

Snip
.

It’s only a problem if you perceive it as one, proponents of stacking don’t see it as a problem. Secondly there is no dungeon team until that problem is resolved nothing will change. Lastly, I think it would be nice if all the stacking threads were merged into one but I cannot make that call, and that’s just my opinion.

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘This is the way it is. Learn to play.’

Snip

… or what ever the thread is about? Did you not read it? Secondly the poster bought the game they can play it how they want within the rules of the game, if they don’t like it then they bought the wrong game or are playing the wrong game mode. Dungeons are not meant for all players. It’s not a closed instance of 5 man PVE like Personal Story or LW it’s supposed to be challenging, but dungeons have largely remained unchanged for over a year so what was once challenging has become run of the mill for who people have ran the same paths hundreds of times. A dungeon team might be able to breathe new life into dungeons or better yet make some brand new ones, so we can have a mix of old a new dungeons.

This is a two parter

The Lost Witch.7601:

I’ll just finish with a question:

Where does your fun in dungeons come from?

Snip

Everyone will give different answers based on personal opinions. Your personal opinion that stacking is detrimental to your game experience is unfortunate but, I think you are trapping yourself in your own box. Stacking is a valid strategy, but it is not the only strategy that can be applied in dungeons. Stacking is a refinement of older tried and true strategy that people don’t seem to complain about, Pulling, grabbing one or a smaller number of mobs from a larger force and fighting them on your own terms rather than rushing in gung-ho and getting wiped. Both are efficient ways of dealing with mobs, and it is in human nature to be efficient that’s part of what got us to where we are today as a species.

Lastly everyone that says stacking is bad doesn’t really give reasons as to why they think it’s bad or really give ideas on how to fix it, they just say it’s bad. Perhaps if someone said we wouldn’t need to stack if trash didn’t have huge health pools that’d be a good start. But it doesn’t matter because we don’t have a dungeon team. So the first step in all of this is to start making threads about why we don’t’ have a dungeon team rather than why stacking is bad.

“But it doesn’t matter because we don’t have a dungeon team”

That’s another one that gets tossed around alot.
Transparency from a company is nice, but it’s cases like this that show why it’s not always such a good thing. That doesn’t mean “nobody’s paying attention to dungeons!”, that means “a specialized team dedicated to making new dungeon content isn’t necessary”.

And it isn’t.
This isn’t WoW, they don’t spit out a new dungeon every few months, they don’t have to because it’s not a part of their progression model. They spit out new dungeon and dungeon-like content when it makes sense in their evolving world story, so assigning the duties of a Dungeon Team to the Living Story Teams makes perfect sense.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t somebody’s responsibility to take care of Dungeons. QA still handles the Bugs, System’s Designer still balances the skills vs the mobs, Leads and Directors still make sure everything is in working order and executes top-down changes. It’s just that New Content is by the Living Story teams.

And we should already know this is the case. Dungeons got sweeping rewards changes without having a Dungeon Team on staff because revamping the Reward Structure fell under their Economist’s umbrella.

Vox Hollow.2736:

“But it doesn’t matter because we don’t have a dungeon team”

That’s another one that gets tossed around alot.
Transparency from a company is nice, but it’s cases like this that show why it’s not always such a good thing. That doesn’t mean “nobody’s paying attention to dungeons!”, that means “a specialized team dedicated to making new dungeon content isn’t necessary”.

No. It literally means nobody from Arenanet is even slightly aware of whats going on in dungeons. There are videos all over youtube of people using shadowstep/blink/LF through walls and floors. There are even fully detailed guides on how to do every skip in Arah. These have been on youtube and been general knowledge to the dungeon community for months now. Glitches that have been in dungeons and fractals for over a year still haven’t been fixed. Either Arenanet has completely given up on dungeons or they just don’t care enough to pay attention.

I think it’s alright if you feel as though the pace QA handles exploits and bugs isn’t fast enough. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing anything.

I can remember a ton of things they’ve done. Remember when you used to be able to hop over gates to get from the beginning to the end of a certain dungeon? When you could complete all 3 paths of a dungeon in a single run? Howabout way back when you could use a certain item from an NPC and basically trivialize the whole thing?

Those are just a handful of the fixes I know about, nevermind the endless misdemeanors that never make their way to forums and fixes they opt not to mention because describing the inner workings of their system isn’t using an ounce of prevention to avoid a pound of cure.

Sounds to me like the stacking opponents want to complain to the stacking proponents that stacking is bad but doesn’t want to actually say how it’s bad or how it can be fixed which is not constructive criticism. When logical reasons are presented by proponents as to why the system is the way it is, it’s dismissed as an excuse by the opponents of it of stacking the arguments seems to fall apart. At least we remain consistent, and we don’t mind if you don’t want to stack.

So on to why a dungeon team is needed, and is not an excuse.

First off as Clumsy has said there are far worse, actual exploits in dungeons. Some of these occasionally get fixed or altered but it is a rarity. I know they changed part of SE P3, and they also did work on Arah P2, but I’m not sure how moving a WP was a fix, almost makes me think the designers grabbed an older stack of code and accidentally removed a WP but without design notes from the patch release to tell us we’ll never know 100%.

How is the LW team is supposed to fix dungeons or add a whole new dungeon not a few paths that caused stirs of mixed reactions at best when they are too busy creating new LW content and have deadlines to meet? I think those people have enough on their plates already.

Also you don’t need a dungeon building team to figure out the rewards portion of the dungeon the economists can work that out on their own. I’m sure they have a formula of hours spent to gold earned. Dungeon teams would make and improve dungeons I’d imagine they don’t get much say when it comes to rewards. They’d collaborate with the economists at best.

How many weeks has it been since the forum was rearranged? Has anyone seen a dev post in this forum yet? Wasn’t that one of the reasons why the forum was rearranged to get better communication going? I’m not asking that a dev post here I’m just making a point that there’s still no dev traffic. When they announced the forum changes I got optimistic that we may get some feed back on here from them. Maybe we will in a month or so but then again it could be business as usual on here with no developers posting. Hey it’d be a daunting job, so we should all play nice if one shows up.

In the mean time as I said before if you want better dungeons then Anet needs to know that people still care about them enough to ask for a dungeon team. You have to get someone allocated before work can begin.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

You know, for once I agree with you ^^

P.s Totally given into scale venom QQ

Also, to add to the discussion about bugs; the Fractured update introduced as many bugs as it fixed, and there’s been no comment/indication by devs that they’ll ever be fixed.

They should make a destack dungeon mode for all the non-stacking tanks and healer spec players to be in. In this dungeon mode it takes 80% energy to evade (since its mostly useless anyways) and all the bosses and maybe a few mobs will doing relatively fast interval-medium to small aoe Damage instead of doing singluar-heavy AoE/cleave damage on a long interval. This way there isn’t enough block/dodge/blinds to keep the party safe and you are forced to play the trinity style game play so that all the serker players can be left alone and there is a clear distinction so that the tanks/healers don’t have to deal with elitist jerks. Then everyone can just play WoW in GW2.

MastaNeenja.1537:

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘You just want the game to be so that it benefits your playstyle more.’

This is really no good argument. Because don’t we all? When someone says this in the stacking context for example, it would simply suggest that you just want the game to be the way it is because it fits your playstyle more.

stacking came about because of how the game was designed, this isn’t the play style this a response that the system has produced. It is one response, a widely agreed upon response but there are more than one. You can call it a play style but players who know why stacking works will argue that it is the most efficient answer to a given situation. Play style is more akin to how you present yourself, or choices you make during combat based on what you want to do rather than what works best.

Allright, I can see why the term playstyle may not be the best term to use here. What I am trying to say is that those who do not like stacking may very well wish to clear content fast. I will stack often enough, because it is the most efficient thing to do. But I don’t like that it so often is the most efficient thing to do. My playstyle could be considered ‘strategist’. Perhaps your playstyle could be considered ‘speedclearer.’ (I don’t know this, just guessing) To me diversity in the mechanics of combat is most important, to you perhaps the speed at which you can get your gains? I wish the game to be more like the way I want it. (With more diversity in the optimal approach to encounters) While you want the game to be more like the way you want it. (Which is with stacking as the primary approach to encounters)

All I am trying to say here is that someone wanting something is not a valid reason to dismiss the argument. (Which many people seem to do, you may not be one of those, but it is an often recurring response to any proposed change.)

MastaNeenja.1537:

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘You can just open an LFG with the words: Play how you want.’

—Snip

Why not create your own team and play the way you want? As it stands right now you can choose to either stack or not. You can be as creative as you like in combat no one is forcing you to join random parties and stack with them because they want to. Making your own party and playing with like minded individuals lets everyone enjoy the game. Suggesting that stacking is bad and should be removed from the game is one side telling the other side how to play. They have no more right to do so than the other side suggesting that stacking must always be done. Proponents of stacking have always said if you do not wish to stack please make your own party, while opponents of stacking have always suggested the game needs to be changed so that stacking is no longer an option.

I am quite sure that I have explained why it does not work, but I’ll give it another shot:

I want to think about an encounter and come up with the best way to do it. I want to consider builds, the teammembers available, the size and shape of the terrain, the foes we’re facing and any other options available. In most cases, it comes down to finding a corner and stacking. Now I could go with a group that doesn’t want to stack and I would be able to try and find another strategy that could work that is not stacking. I am now deliberately handicapping my abilities. This means that I would have to find a team that would like to strategize about the encounter and agrees not to use the most effective result.

I would like it to be so that a careful analysis does not always show stacking (in a corner) to be the best approach. I want to use strategic thinking to come up with the best approach, not the 2nd best. It is kind of silly to go with a plan that is not as good as the straightforward one. You seem to think it is silly aswell.

MastaNeenja.1537:

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘Why do you want to slow us down to 3 hour dungeon runs?’

Snip

Stacking doesn’t allow for mechanics to happen? Well you are saying this in hyperbole but again it makes me wonder if players who oppose stacking really know why stacking happens to begin with. What are the advantages of stacking and what mechanics are we actually utilizing that seemingly go unseen. Again, players who want to stack and clear the dungeon in the fastest time possible have just as much right to do so as players who do not wish to stack and fight in a less disciplined fashion that they may refer to as their own play style. You wish to take your time in a dungeon and play it at your own pace please do so, just make your own party for it. Under the current model stackers and nonstackers can play in a manner that makes both sides happy.

I do not wish to take my time and play it at my own pace. I wish for the optimal method to be more interesting than the same old same old. Foes tend to have different attacks, but they don’t get to be seen because they get destroyed in seconds. If stacking weren’t a possibility and foes wouldn’t die that fast, the differences between the mobs may start to show and the ideal approach to each encounter would have more variation.

MastaNeenja.1537:

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘There are already a million threads out there.’

Snip
.

It’s only a problem if you perceive it as one, proponents of stacking don’t see it as a problem. Secondly there is no dungeon team until that problem is resolved nothing will change. Lastly, I think it would be nice if all the stacking threads were merged into one but I cannot make that call, and that’s just my opinion.

The multitude of threads seem to indicate that it is atleast a problem to many players. The arguments brought up in favor of stacking are apparently not enough to convince the posters of new threads. Merging all the stacking threads would merely clean up the mess they are at the moment. But the real change that would need to happen is a more mature discussion. The lack of a dungeon team is problematic, but if we don’t bring up the problems it is unlikely that a dungeon team will be made right?

MastaNeenja.1537:

The Lost Witch.7601:

• ‘This is the way it is. Learn to play.’

Snip

… or what ever the thread is about? Did you not read it? Secondly the poster bought the game they can play it how they want within the rules of the game, if they don’t like it then they bought the wrong game or are playing the wrong game mode. Dungeons are not meant for all players. It’s not a closed instance of 5 man PVE like Personal Story or LW it’s supposed to be challenging, but dungeons have largely remained unchanged for over a year so what was once challenging has become run of the mill for who people have ran the same paths hundreds of times. A dungeon team might be able to breathe new life into dungeons or better yet make some brand new ones, so we can have a mix of old a new dungeons.

I did read the thread, this response is not just limited to the responses that I see on this thread though. I see the same kind of responses pop up on similar threads. ‘or whatever the thread is about’ refers to the same problem popping up on other topics. For example people saying that players should ‘start wearing berserker gear and learn to play’, which comes up in topics concerning the dungeon meta for example. – It is not that we don’t know how to equip berserker gear, or don’t know how to play.

As for buying the game and the rules of the game… the game can change, and it has been changing. (Although not always in the direction I would like, but hey, we can’t have everything) These posts (like the OP) are often made with the idea that things can be changed and often detail how they could be changed in order to make it better. (From the viewpoint of the OP ofcourse) It is then up to other people to discuss this, add to the idea, or argue against it. ‘This is the way it is, deal with it.’ is just stating the current situation, not providing an argument about why the suggested change is wrong. Yet the posters of this statement often seem to believe it is an argument.

And I agree, things have become run of the mill and new dungeons with new types of encounters are in order.

MastaNeenja.1537:

The Lost Witch.7601:

I’ll just finish with a question:

Where does your fun in dungeons come from?

Snip

Everyone will give different answers based on personal opinions. Your personal opinion that stacking is detrimental to your game experience is unfortunate but, I think you are trapping yourself in your own box. Stacking is a valid strategy, but it is not the only strategy that can be applied in dungeons. Stacking is a refinement of older tried and true strategy that people don’t seem to complain about, Pulling, grabbing one or a smaller number of mobs from a larger force and fighting them on your own terms rather than rushing in gung-ho and getting wiped. Both are efficient ways of dealing with mobs, and it is in human nature to be efficient that’s part of what got us to where we are today as a species.

Lastly everyone that says stacking is bad doesn’t really give reasons as to why they think it’s bad or really give ideas on how to fix it, they just say it’s bad. Perhaps if someone said we wouldn’t need to stack if trash didn’t have huge health pools that’d be a good start. But it doesn’t matter because we don’t have a dungeon team. So the first step in all of this is to start making threads about why we don’t’ have a dungeon team rather than why stacking is bad.

Stacking is a valid strategy, not the only strategy, but usually the best. As you say: it is a refinement of older strategies. So if I go back to the older strategies, I’m just going for a lesser strategy. Which is exactly the problem I have with the ‘Open an LFG for non-stackers’ argument.

And if players don’t give a reason to say why stacking is bad, ask them for it. Otherwise they’ll expect you to know why they think it is bad. (The complaint isn’t really that stacking itself is bad. It’s just the dominance of this strategy throughout the dungeons that is unwanted)

It is better for all sides of the argument to have a clear view on the topic.
I do not think that all stacking should or could ever be gone from this game. I just desire more variety in optimal approaches to encounters.

Changes to the way encounters are made can already be seen in fractals, the TA aetherpath and Tequatl. There may not be a dungeon team, but there are people working on instanced content. I think it is likely that they will at some point do more dungeon revamps. And most certainly come up with new dungeons in the future.

Pointing out the flaws in the current encounter design and offering ways to counter these problems is rather important. Otherwise the devs may just assume that things are ok, or that a fix is out of reach.

Personally I find the dungeon forums a very harsh place. Replies are often mean or clever one-liners without substance. This doesn’t really work as a healthy environment for good ideas to rise. Why would the devs respond here then?

I have written these posts because I wish to improve the quality of the dungeon section of these forums. So that they may be worth visiting for players and devs alike.

I just want to say that the dungeon forum used to be, and still is, at times, a very very constructive place. It’s when the entire sub forum gets flooded with posts complaining about this and that (generally repeat posts, that are on the first page and require little to no reading), and we answer those questions. The issue then arises that, as humans, we get sick of saying the same thing over and over, so we go to saying something “one liner” or snarky, or linking to a post that was posted like, an hour previous, and we get verbally attacked and accused.

The issue is that no one listens. The developers aren’t coming because they don’t care about this. Not because they dislike our attitudes.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I just want to say that the dungeon forum used to be, and still is, at times, a very very constructive place. It’s when the entire sub forum gets flooded with posts complaining about this and that (generally repeat posts, that are on the first page and require little to no reading), and we answer those questions. The issue then arises that, as humans, we get sick of saying the same thing over and over, so we go to saying something “one liner” or snarky, or linking to a post that was posted like, an hour previous, and we get verbally attacked and accused.

The issue is that no one listens. The developers aren’t coming because they don’t care about this. Not because they dislike our attitudes.

I know that there are at times constructive posts. And I do understand that the same issues tend to come up again and again. And how tiresome it can be to say the same thing over and over.

The thing is, we should not give in to the snarky responses or ill-founded one-liners.

Because one issue was presented ages ago, new threads are all bound to be repeats. Should they therefor not get proper attention?

While it can be silly to make a post that poses the same problem that another thread on page one already does, it is easy to see why it happens. The thread in which the issue was brought up can be considered ‘toxic’. As in… by the time anyone gets to your refinement of the issue, they would need to have had the patience to read through a large number of ill-founded arguments.

It still isn’t the right thing to do, but in the same way that repeats may make the dungeon forum veterans go…‘oh here we go again’ this is the response of those that want to get their message out. Not good, but understandable.

Also, I do not think that the devs do not care about this. I think that they’re severely understaffed and when they’re jumping in for community interaction they do so where it is most fruitful. But you are right in that the lack of forum interaction is an issue. It is an issue across the board but especially here.

But even regardless of that:

No dev interaction is no reason for forum participants to treat these issues the way they do. It’s like a classroom full of teenagers that start bullying some classmates and making a mess of the classroom because the teacher isn’t there.

The lack of dev interaction doesn’t justify ill-founded arguments and snide remarks in a place that is all about discussion.

It may inspire pessimistic thoughts which result in frustrated comments, but they will lead to no good. They may instill a smile upon the face of a fellow pessimist and that’s it. It is a negative spiral that needs to stop somewhere. Otherwise the only people left reading this forum are those that can enjoy the one-liners. This is not only bad for us, who care about dungeons, but also for the game. When players come to the dungeon forum with their issues and see that their issues are greeted like this… that can be a big turnoff.

I believe that there are real consequences to the atmosphere in this forum section. And while dev interaction would certainly help, there is a lot that we can already do as players.

K.

I’m not going to argue with you. I see no reason to. You obviously know everything there is to know about this sub forum.

I’ll go back to writing up FAQ and guides and teaching newbies because obviously nothing we say here is going to be constructive.