Guild Wars 2

/clap

The encounters were fresh and enjoyable, the trash was adequate—which is about as much as you can expect from trash, in my opinion. We need more of this. But harder.

I come from a vast raiding background, but that isn’t what I want this to turn into. That said, I wouldn’t mind 8-man groups for future contenta la GW1, but I’m getting off-topic. As an experienced WoW-style raider and a big fan of mechanic-based fights, I found the encounters in the MF very refreshing in comparison to many of the other “boss” encounters found in this game. They were interesting, to say the least.

The first “boss” encounter was very exciting for me; not because it was overly interesting by itself, but because it made me realize that progress is being made. We’re on the right track towards more complex, interesting encounters in the future. It shows us what this game is capable of in terms of generating interesting PvE content that could potentially attract even the most hardcore of PvE players. Maybe that isn’t exactly what you want, but it’s still something. It’s still a big deal for those of us that still waiting for more complex and challenging bosses (read: not gimmicky) to crop up.

I’m not saying that WoW (and similar games) have/had more interesting boss encounters than Guild Wars 2. What I’m saying is that many of them were certainly more complex and difficult by design. Well, okay. Maybe I am saying that many of the raid-based MMOs’ encounters are more interesting, but this is a start in the right direction. There are definitely some challenging encounters in this game, but it is my opinion that they lack depth and complexity when it comes to mechanics. I think the most interesting fight in the game currently—barring the MF encounters—is Lupicus.

So, what can we learn from this dungeon? What can you, ArenaNet’s dungeon devs, take away from this content to expand upon and improve for later (hopefully more permanent) content? Well, here’s my short list of ideas:

1. Don’t be afraid to challenge your players. If people are wiping, they’re learning (usually). If everyone and their mother is one-shotting everything with zero issues consistently, it isn’t a challenging or enjoyable game; it’s child’s play. I’m not saying it should start hard and then get nerfed. I’m saying it should be just challenging enough to maybe cause some issues for less experienced players. I certainly wouldn’t say no to a Hard Mode or more difficult paths like in Arah, though.
2. Layering different challenges and mechanics is a good thing. That first MF encounter? Genius. The only thing missing was an active boss in the middle of it all as opposed to simply DPSing an inanimate core between phases. The last phase was interesting, but could have been a bit longer. That said, the last boss was very well done but could have been a tad more difficult as well. I only did it twice with a guild group, so perhaps that’s why it felt a little too “easy,” but I was very pleased with the way the bosses’ abilities meshed to make it a truly interesting (and from what I hear, pretty challenging for many players) encounter.
3. The trash was interesting and difficult, but not too difficult. There weren’t any one-shot trash mobs like in Arah, and they weren’t very easy to group up and walk all over. The Protectors and Gunners did a good job of making players really work for it without making them work too hard for trash.
4. The interim challenges and mini-bosses like the trolls and the freezer machine + effigy were a nice touch. More of those.
5. This isn’t exactly relevant to dungeon design, but I’m very glad that we’re moving back towards the GW1-type cut scenes. Please continue in that direction.

Just my 2 cents. Thank you for doing such a good job on this dungeon. I just wish it was staying a little longer.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

We need more of this. But harder.

Maybe if they released an explorable mode. Remember, this dungeon is just “story”.

I’ll be doing this for the first time tonight, hopefully. After reading this, I am looking forward to it.

I took long for more interesting, engaging, thought provoking, semi-difficult fights. Not one shot abilities, not just 50 adds or just 50 areas of badfloor. Get creative with it.

Problem is, however, once this is put into explorable…people will find the easiest path and run that into the ground…it’ll be one-shot wonders all over the place, like a CoF path 1 or something. So you may like the more difficult encounters, but once this is in explorable and we have a choice, the majority of players and pugs you might group with will prefer speed over diversity. Which stinks…

I’ve already done this with the speed vs diversity method, main problem is with the way combat is, it is hard for them to balance fights for general pop. that an organized group can’t just burst through because of the lack of trinity and more emphasis on personal skill rather then tank/healer/dps allowing people to full spec dps and still survive.

That’s basically the main issue with the game atm.

In a game like WoW, you pretty much need a tank and healer for hard content, there is no dodge, no twitch style combat, no ability to complete something only on skill. Basically it’s much more gear and spell oriented like most traditional MMOs, and it’s easier to balance things when you know you’re going to have a tank/healer/3 dps to have a much smaller spectrum of what is easy/hard for a range of players.

In GW2, you don’t need a tank or healer. Things like healing and survivability stats help players who aren’t as good or can’t avoid all attacks, but they aren’t necessary once people learn a boss’ attacks, what strategies help mitigate damage through utilities/tactics that don’t hurt your dps, etc. So what you get is content that is trying to be balanced against the general PuG population that could be anything from 5 hybrids, 2 support/3 dps, 5 support, etc., which can easily be burst through by organized experienced players who don’t need much “survivability” other then the utilities/traits a class already brings.

This brings you to the current meta, taking classes which offer the best utility/survivability for dungeons through their skills while not hurting their dps potential, avoiding large damage through proper dodges, and maximizing dps to quickly burst down content that is balanced for a PuG group which isn’t running an ideal comp. or isn’t as skilled. Because of the inherent nature of the current game, this isn’t going to change unless they change mechanics so that dps isn’t the only thing that matters for clearing content, or they add a hard mode that is balanced more towards the more experienced organized group.

That being said, there are some interesting things in MF. While the protectors aren’t any harder then any other trash, they do require interrupts to quickly burst them down which is introducing a new tactic other then straight dps. The weapon test is a more interactive timed event (if you fixed the bugs that let you afk in the corner) then things like boring Grenth in Arah 4 or burrows in AC3 and it introduces jumping avoidance which is cool, and while the last boss is unique, the boss suffers from the earlier point, a high dps group can ignore tactics and burst them down ignoring the stacks, etc.

Overall it is a good direction for dungeons over what is currently in place. There are also very few bugs for a new dungeon compared to some of the bugs that get released and stay around forever in current dungeons.

This game definitely has its own variety of problems when it comes to this stuff. Like Strifey said, it’s difficult to balance between the general pop and organized groups. That’s where explorable paths make sense: some of them are harder, some of them are fairly easy.

Of course, there’s a problem with that as well. Like cesmode said, many groups (even the organized ones) will seek to take the path of least resistance, i.e. the easier paths, for the sake of faster loot and dungeon tokens and what-not.

In light of the slight disappointment that was ABR (at least in my opinion), I’d like to bring this thread up. This post was about an older dungeon (the Molten Facility), but I feel that all of the points still apply. Now, I’m not trying to say that ABR was an “easy” or “bad” dungeon, just that it wasn’t quite as interesting on challenging.

The final boss was actually pretty decent, but I’d be lying if I said my first group hadn’t figure out all of the telegraphs within the first minute and proceeded to faceroll the entire thing by simply blocking/dodging the captain’s lightning teleport and simply stand-and-shuffling the cannon barrages.

That said, I don’t think any of us are expecting “hard” Living Story dungeons. I just hope that some of these points are taken into consideration when developing new, permanent dungeons—hopefully something that’s already being done, haha.