Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Ahlen.7591

Ahlen.7591

Unlike most MMO’s instancing is definitely my least favorite part of GW2.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Drew.1865

Drew.1865

My main is an elementalist level 58 and I have had no luck trying to do AC SM. It feels like the difficulty is really high and that combined with most of the people running them and being new to the GW2 combat it’s just a fail. Any help you guys can provide me as far as what classes should form a party to run it would be great. I think sm should definitely be nerfed for the first dungeon just so people can get used to them.

Is GW2 a game or a virtual casino?

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tijo.9857

Tijo.9857

[quote=58453;Jolf.7481:]

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Nafers.7396

Nafers.7396

Here is the bottom-line:

1.) The dungeons difficulties are fine (hell if this is gonna be our pve endgame make em even harder). However some of them need to be tweaked for sure in terms of burst damage and mechanics. Sometimes you’ll be dpsing and go to downed state without a single mechanic warning. Some trash/bosses are waypoint spammers which obviously shouldn’t be intended. The overall difficulty feels awesome though, its intense and at times very hard…. but basically its not very balanced throughout ALL dungeons and even all areas of the same dungeon.

2) The reward system is terrible. I honestly don’t even know what specifically they could do to salvage it. Maybe make the tokens from all dungeons be the same type? Nobody wants to run the same dungeon 65 times for 1300 tokens. You said you wanted fun and exploration ArenaNet…prove it. Nobody wants junky blues as a reward for completing a dungeon either.

3.) This one is a bit more general but I had to get this off my chest. All of you people yelling “GW2 isn’t a gear grind! It’s gonna be this whole new type of game! Horizontal progression!”. People like progression. People like advancing. ArenaNet is living in a fantasy world if they think people will be content to play a game for a long period of time if they don’t have that proverbial carrot on a stick. If I wanted to play a game for purely fun I wouldn’t play an mmorpg I’d play a console game on xbox or some FPS on PC. MMOs niche in the market is to of gaming is progression. Without progressing your character meaningfully (and I say meaningfully because if its just some slightly cooler looking armorset with 0 better stats it isn’t meaningful) the mmo no longer serves its purpose. It isn’t fun enough to be a stand alone game. No mmos are. This model will not work once everyone hits 80 and realizes there is nothing to do worth doing.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Clownshoes.5463

Clownshoes.5463

I really don’t mind the hard part but it is obvious that some boss mechanics do not work as well as they should or have enough of a tell that something is about to one shot you.

The reward though as OP said is not nearly enough for the effort you must put into these dungeons. If I wanted to get a full set of armor two daggers, two pistols and a short bow and I do want that, I will have to run the same dungeon 99 times. At least in the gear treadmill of other MMO’s I have never had to do one instance more than about 30 times max. Even if i was so hardcore that I went in and cleared the same raid every week for a year it would still only be 52 times. Sure there will always be a next tier of gear to get but at least its something new.

Coming into this game I thought I would be farming for many sets of gear that I like but now I’m not sure I could handle farming one set. I mean really 99 times? I don’t even want to know how many times I would have to run the same dungeon to get all of the weapons I could use.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: biggs.4702

biggs.4702

My main is an elementalist level 58 and I have had no luck trying to do AC SM. It feels like the difficulty is really high and that combined with most of the people running them and being new to the GW2 combat it’s just a fail. Any help you guys can provide me as far as what classes should form a party to run it would be great. I think sm should definitely be nerfed for the first dungeon just so people can get used to them.

Read this entire thread.

No, seriously. Good stuff buried in here. Do the work and read it and learn from it.

The obstacle is the path.

(edited by biggs.4702)

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Altas.9064

Altas.9064

The only problem I have with dungeons is 60+ runs same dungeon/path for tokens. Sure, I’ll get 1000+ tokens for armors/weapon from one dungeon, but will never ever look into another one.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Syrellaris.9125

Syrellaris.9125

@hellhound

I am not going to quote your entire message, just to annoying in this tiny forum postal area. Anyway ill just number em like you did.

Also, no it is not a learn to play issue. As I said before, I am not inexperienced in mmo’s and I never claimed wow mechanics worked here. I mentioned the dungeons in wow were too easy. Hence the reason I enjoy the harder challenge in this game.

1) The gargoyles were a priority to remove and they were removed. The fire still happens. It is in one of the 3-5 red rings she casts in such away they are nearly undodgeable. Again, this fire happens regardless. It is rather weak but it is there.

2) Yes i know my class has abilities that remove conditions, hell one of them even turns conditions into random boons. I know which ones they are. The problem is they have such a long cooldown and she casts poison so often, removing is pointless. btw I am a ranged class, moving to melee is not a good idea for me considering I do not have the vitality or toughness to sustain that long enough. But i shall try it with a different build later on.

as for commander Kohlen goes, It could be a bug but he does it quite often, even when your running up the stairs, not near him or in sight.

Regardless sure I was frustrated, I hate dieing and wiping. However I also know that dungeons and such are a constant tuning process. they are not magically finished in the first few weeks of release and I do believe these dungeons require tuning.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: HellHound.5480

HellHound.5480

@hellhound

I am not going to quote your entire message, just to annoying in this tiny forum postal area. Anyway ill just number em like you did.

Also, no it is not a learn to play issue. As I said before, I am not inexperienced in mmo’s and I never claimed wow mechanics worked here. I mentioned the dungeons in wow were too easy. Hence the reason I enjoy the harder challenge in this game…..

….Regardless sure I was frustrated, I hate dieing and wiping. However I also know that dungeons and such are a constant tuning process. they are not magically finished in the first few weeks of release and I do believe these dungeons require tuning.

And yet… myself and my guild can do the fight completely fine without a single death (a couple downed maybe). Other players here also have mention they have no problems with the instances.

When you have players who can complete the dungeon, consistently each time, then its not the dungeon, mobs, or the game, its the player.

Look, as I mentioned before, I was perhaps a bit harsh earlier, but, and I am saying this not to be mean or anything, is that you can succeed at them easily.

There is nothing wrong with the fight at all. These fights are not a problem provided you learn them, either through trial and error or through guides, or someone showing you how.

My guild is running the last path in AC explore tonight to get our achievement. If your not going to understand or argue with me, I guess I will have to show you then.

Let me take you on AC explore, and I will explain and show you why these are difficult, and yet how you can beat the encounter with no deaths.

1) The gargoyles were a priority to remove and they were removed. The fire still happens. It is in one of the 3-5 red rings she casts in such away they are nearly undodgeable. Again, this fire happens regardless. It is rather weak but it is there.

She doesnt put a fire effect that I have seen. Now if your talking about the poison wells (which she throws 3-5 of), not only will they put a long lasting potent poison condition on you, they do about 70 damage every 1/4th second while your in the well itself.

2) Yes i know my class has abilities that remove conditions, hell one of them even turns conditions into random boons. I know which ones they are. The problem is they have such a long cooldown and she casts poison so often, removing is pointless. btw I am a ranged class, moving to melee is not a good idea for me considering I do not have the vitality or toughness to sustain that long enough. But i shall try it with a different build later on.

Try to wait till your out of the AoEs before removing. If you just remove the condition while your still in the wells, it will just re-apply. I actually do this sometime, hence why I now bring 2 condition removals

as for commander Kohlen goes, It could be a bug but he does it quite often, even when your running up the stairs, not near him or in sight.

This I would report then. I dont really know what to say. It hasnt happened to my group as of yet, and thats all I can go off of

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Thorn.7963

Thorn.7963

Did Caudecus Manor Butler Route.

Incredibly Hard, incredibly frustrating, and pathetic rewards.

They really need to tweak the dungeons big time.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Nemui.6753

Nemui.6753

imho the difficulty’s fine in most cases. it’s just that the vast majority of people have no clue how to play this game yet.

also, kitten everyone who’s crying for more/better rewards. first you cry for raiding, and then you basically get it, just without the artifical week-long lockout. and now you still complain.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Hellkaiser.6025

Hellkaiser.6025

raiding: An instanced dungeon of a higher difficulty and thus requiring extra players and tactics to deal with mechanics such as a tank swap etc. failing these mechanics can result in complete failures or “wipes” but these mechanics all have clear indicators either via the ingame UI, or via an addon in cases such as wow and thus barring things like lag spikes and rubberbanding etc, avoiding these is merely a matter of resonable reactions, knowing your class, and being geared enough for the instance

Dungeons in GW2 in particular explorable mode:
Horribly tuned, to the point where the “corpse conga” occurs, wherein a cheese mechanic badly telegraphed often from off screen or in conjunction with another skill will one shot a player without warning due to low hp pools and high burst damage from bosses due to an over-reliance on the dodge/evasion mechanic

skill wise, for even regular difficulty many dungeons are reduced to a “spam ranged and combo fields” for upwards of 10 minutes at a time per boss, causing many players to question why “difficulty and challange” was misinterpreted as “cheese 1 shot mechanics, and insane hp pools”

Irony…. xD

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: ZtriDer.9573

ZtriDer.9573

Agreed. Getting rid of the holy trinity is perfectly fine, but not if dungeon mobs do the insane damage as they do in older MMOs.

The trinity is alive, it is not gone. You still need a “tank”, someone that can soke up the damage, you still need players that can heal. That ist he trinity.
Going glass cannon is useless because you just die all the time, so you have to go vitality/healing on all your gear.
So in other word, you have 1 tank and 4 support. That is your trinity.

But when people are leveling up, they are not picking vitality/healing, they are picking damage. No one is telling them that damage is useless on gear in an isntance because you are then to queesy.

Lost where no man has been lost before!

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: proxy.3297

proxy.3297

i think the difficulty is fine. a lot of people are willing to learn but not when repairing your armor costs 5 silver each time. money is hard to come by as is.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vanisher.9216

Vanisher.9216

Difficulty is fine , rewards could be better though.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Samortho.4761

Samortho.4761

Seriously, I remember when they were like, this is a casual game! Play it how you want, it’s all about you! Then you go into a dungeon and you’re required to change your spec to survive ridiculous damage, constantly run around in circles to avoid damage that will eventually hit you… I think some people enjoy extreme difficulties, but I think the majority of people just want to play. I don’t need this 2nd job crap and if it’s going to be a 2nd job, it’s gonna have to pay me and it doesn’t even do that. I had to pay them to get the game. Sorry, that just doesn’t work for me.

It’ll change, no doubt. Otherwise the majority is leaving.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Torrance.8012

Torrance.8012

wow. While I agree rewards leave much to be desired as far as random drops, and thay they can be challenging… that’s what I like about them?

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vanisher.9216

Vanisher.9216

Seriously, I remember when they were like, this is a casual game! Play it how you want, it’s all about you! Then you go into a dungeon and you’re required to change your spec to survive ridiculous damage, constantly run around in circles to avoid damage that will eventually hit you… I think some people enjoy extreme difficulties, but I think the majority of people just want to play. I don’t need this 2nd job crap and if it’s going to be a 2nd job, it’s gonna have to pay me and it doesn’t even do that. I had to pay them to get the game. Sorry, that just doesn’t work for me.

It’ll change, no doubt. Otherwise the majority is leaving.

You are not requiered to change your build unless it’s bad.
Story modes aren’t extremly difficult by any mean. Toughness and vitality are there for a reason. And if you want to play glass cannon you can, you just have to play more carefully.

Though AC is pretty stupid for being the first dungeon , most people are undergeared and bad when they get there and they aren’t used to use dodge properly. Once you understand you actually need to pay some atention story modes aren’t hard.

(edited by Vanisher.9216)

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: cherrie.8907

cherrie.8907

Difficulty is not bad, in most cases, however I do think the Lovers in AC should be toned down since it’s the first dungeon and a story mode, too. Some other minor tweaks here and there would be nice, too.

But rewards are a total disgrace.
Honestly, if they were PURELY cosmetic, I wouldn’t mind. but they are not, and “other ways of getting equipment” have been “adjusted” price-wise recently as well.

I don’t really care about hardcore players who can’t enjoy a game if they can’t display an kitten, however I am perfectly fine with them being pleased with some sort of PURELY cosmetic items they’d get after running the dungeons 100 times. But not items casual players could have use of (no stat items), too.
GW1 did a perfect job at this. Want to show off? Wear your full obsi with chaos gloves and tormented weapon set, dye it black and stand in LA or kamadan. A casual player could still do FoW, UW or DoA for fun, hardcores could spend a week straight there and boast. But at the same time you’re not even a 1% stronger than a person in 1k armour and default weapons. PLEASE bring this back.

Please Developers, realise – and make your Asian overlords realise too – that one of the reasons many people in the west don’t want to have anything to do with NCsoft games like Aion or L2 is the grind and the kittening. On the other hand, one of the selling points of GW2 was “casual friendly, no grind, just fun!”.

Well, dungeons are definietly not following this promise.
Making the dugneons appealing only to hardcore players, you take your whole end game away from casual players, which are probably most of your player base.

“Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games.”
-Mike Obrien
“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills” -Colin Johanson

(edited by cherrie.8907)

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Novalight.7568

Novalight.7568

And yet… myself and my guild can do the fight completely fine without a single death (a couple downed maybe). Other players here also have mention they have no problems with the instances.

When you have players who can complete the dungeon, consistently each time, then its not the dungeon, mobs, or the game, its the player.

Well the group I was running with can do the instances also with no zerging, couple of downs and that’s it. But we still hate them. They’re badly designed, too much trash mobs with too much HP. Bosses in most cases are easier than the random mobs (like last boss in COF path 2…tank pulls it and goes AFK (yes, literally afk) while the rest of us kill the crystal).

Events before you can even enter the instance suck balls. Suck balls big time, if you’re on a lower pop server.

5 random ppl with 5 random builds usually can’t complete them or have a very hard time completing them imo which also goes against “all classes and builds are viable” nonsense the devs spoke about. If my clothie with defensive build gets randomly 1 shotted through protection yeah…good design…if there is 1 mob (usually boss) to contend with it’s no problem, but when you have a lot of mobs with 1 shot capabilities (or nearly so) then you sometimes can’t dodge everything (2 consecutive dodges vs 1 min chain of pain coming from mobs).

So after a few runs the whole thing becomes a tedious boring repetitive task to open instances, power through them to get the few tokens (and sprinkle that with RNG again what those chests give you). And the stuff that I want (lodestones) well, I have a whole 2 lodestones after idk how many runs… so add RNG again to the mix and well, the whole thing can look ridiculous. And not to mention that mobs start to drop nothing coz of the anti-bot system. OH JOY, instances, why u so fun?

“GW2 takes everything you love about GW1” – M. O’Brien
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2” – C. Johanson
“The most important thing in any game should be the player” – R. Soesbee

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Ziuus.4621

Ziuus.4621

Please keep the Dungeons hard and Increase the rewards to Master and Rare lvls.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vithaar.8637

Vithaar.8637

Although I did complete a bunch, I do agree that rewards do not match the difficulty. Don’t nerf dungeons, just make them worth while, imo

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: MadMossy.8715

MadMossy.8715

masterwork/rare with a very small chance of exotic (dungeon set) from chest would make it more rewarding to do dungeons.

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Yukuai.3691

Yukuai.3691

Please keep the Dungeons hard and Increase the rewards to Master and Rare lvls.

this.

The difficult it’s ok, the problem is the reward: make it better.
No more white or blue …

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Teppic.2539

Teppic.2539

I personally love the removal of the holy trinty.

I love the dodging ,moving and tactics which means that gear doesn’t really matter just skill.
Loving it so far!

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Efaicia.3672

Efaicia.3672

1. If you are playing your class in a group instance with no group benefit abilities (heals), personal defense abilities, or cc’s like blinds, knock backs, slows. you are doing it wrong. The classes all have access to at least some if not all of those abilities in some way for a reason. Do not build a glass cannon, you will be a detriment to your group.

2. There is no “tank” or even “tanky” classes. If you are taking all “tank like” defense and no offense or utility or aoe heals, you are doing it wrong. You are a warrior/guardian who wears plate = you are forgiven if you get hit 1-3 times, if you get hit more than that you may as well be a cloth wearer. There is no difference, no matter how many “defensive” traits you take. As an Elementalist, I have often found myself tanking mobs (successfully i might add) because the warrior or gaurdian I was with tried to stand face to face with the mob blindly mashing buttons and ended up dying. Get “I am TANKSMASH!” out of your head, for the love of god.

3. There are no dedicated healers in this game. Every class has access to healing abilities. Every class. Every class can play off every other classes heals to add EVEN MORE healing, Cures, Lifesteal (omg) and HoT’s. If you don’t know how to do this, or are not actively playing the combos, you are doing it wrong.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/editorials/combo-fields-and-finishers

4. This games dungeons are not about DPS. EVER. The mobs will die eventually if you all stay alive, stay alive however you can and pick away at the mobs health. If you die you are not only useless but are also losing the rewards you are trying to attain.

5. If you are not happy rez zerging for a “win” then stop doing it and play right. you have no one to blame but yourself. NO ONE.

6. Myself and many, many, many others LOVE the dungeons and the elimination of the trinity. Quit asking the devs to conform to wow style play. I am here because I am bored with that style of play and ready for something new, or rather, a revert to the older (and more entertaining) style of play.

P.S. There is a “How to Play GW2” link on the patcher.

(edited by Efaicia.3672)

Incredibly hard, incredibly unrewarding

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: MiloSaysRelax.1597

MiloSaysRelax.1597

I would like nothing more than to “Learn To Play”. But it would help me, and EVERYONE who is having troubles, if the game made more of an effort to teach us how to play properly. The only tip given by the game covering ANYTHING that we should apparently know for these dungeons to work for us is “Combos are things that happen when you do a finisher through a field”, and that’s it.

No mention of “maybe you should be level 60 or so before trying this”. No mention of “it is advised that you adjust your spec in favour of survival before entering”. No mention of anything like that. Maybe we do need to learn to play, but don’t yell at us for going into a dungeon, getting owned, and complaining about the difficulty. You can yell “It’s a different set of rules in dungeons” all thekittenday, and that’s fine, but do remember that NOTHING IN-GAME TOLD US THESE BLOODY NEW RULES.

Like I said before, a tutorial dungeon before AC which teaches newbies the finer points of team and combo play would be the best way to solve this. That way first time dungeoneers have at least a CHANCE to survive past the first lot of trash in AC.

What mmo tells you how to play it? Sure, tooltips in this game need to be way more clear, but no game walks you through anything holding your hand. No good game anyways. Its common sense to want to be survivable. Give this game a month or two, and guides will start popping up like they do for every other game. Then you can have your hand held.

I’m not saying I want it to hold my hand, I just wanted a bit of warning about some things that are different in this MMO than, say, other MMOs. I play DPS in game like WoW and there, survivability is NOT the main thing you want, you obviously want damage, and that’s how I built my Thief right here in GW2. Top two trees for Precision and Power, full glass cannon build go.

I realise now that this is the wrong approach, but I would rather have learned that through a quick tutorial than getting facerolled in AC.

Like I said before, this system is new to a vast majority of the populace, so ANet should’ve put a bit more effort into giving us a bit more guidance, ESPECIALLY when lots of people (including myself) have a lot of older MMO knowledge on muscle memory that needs to be unlearned. My point was never that the dungeons were too hard, my point is that there are other options that ANet has to just give us a bit of extra knowledge other than letting a lot of us learn by getting ourkitten kicked.

Tutorials are a big part of a lot of video games these days, and I don’t see why MMOs think that they can skip them just because “Oh, the community will write guides so it’s all cool”. That’s not good game design.

And just to repeat and/or clarify: I don’t think the dungeons are too hard, I think that there is just a bit of ignorance about how they should be done, and it would do nothing but help the community if more tutorial like things were put in for newcomers, and since it wouldn’t affect the difficulty of the existing dungeons, I can’t see why the pro-dungeoneers would have a problem.