Guild Wars 2

Why are dungeons in this game so brutal to people who lack eye-hand coordination and motor skills?

Why is “skill” in this game measured more in how well you dodge and time your skills, and less in how well you strategize in terms of equipping utilies, planning your gear, setting up traits, and so on?

It seems that you can win any encounter in this game if you can time dodges perfectly, but no matter how well geared, well thought out your traits are, you get instadowned if you don’t dodge at the right time, or hit that skill at the right time, or interrupt at the right time, etc etc.

Based on the forum posts here, all I see are people complaining about how “easy” the dungeons are and how “bored” they are with it. This leads me to wonder if all the elitist kittens from WoW who kept complaining because that game became “too casual” just upped and left to play GW2.

I did do AC and CoF grind to the point where I can complete Kholer without ever getting hit by his spinning-harpooning-all-debuffs-on-you thing, or getting across that corridor with the flaming things rolling around in CoF P1 without ever dying (and without a mesmer).

Even then, I never felt any more “skillfull” than my other party mates who kept getting downed by Kholer or getting instakilled by the flaming balls of death corridor. It just makes me really sad, and frustrated for them, and frustrated AT them for not getting it after a million times, because I know how it feels like to be on the other side – to be that noob who can’t command his fingers to move fast enough to run across the kittening corridor of death. There was no “oh yes, what an achievement! I made it!” feeling. All it was was “Uggh, glad that BS gimmick is over.”

PUGging then becomes a horrible frustrating experience because, unlike strategy, motor skills is something you can’t teach random strangers. Instead of dungeons becoming a fun experience where you teach and learn strategy from other people, you just end up resenting partymates who keep getting blown off by the wind at the Cliffside fractal. To be honest, I’ve stopped doing dungeons and just went back to farming DE’s because of how frustrating the difficulty level of dungeons are.

I’d like to see a dungeon that’s less about dodging and timing. I’d like more cerebral, rather than motor-skills based encounters. Surely, I must not be the only person who had thoughts like this amongst the hundreds of thousands of GW2 players.

It is supposed to be an action MMO where you simply can’t facetank stuff. I agree some traits have very lacking effect but some open up different possibilities.
I think one of their goal was to not make it depend too much on gear. Utility skills still play quite important role (especially anti-projectile).
But I don’t understand how you can’t consider yourself more skillful if they keep dying and you won’t. I have very good hand-eye coordination but on new fights I suck badly because I don’t know what to look for and what to expect.

Twitch skill is part of the equation.

The other part is know how to cover your lack of twitch skills with your build. You can dodge twice, beyond that no amount of twitch will save you. During a fight you need to know what abilities you can use to do exactly what they do, make predictions and adjust to anything from downed member to fail.

Take the cliffside wind in fractals as an example. You can either dodge, time your way through, or know which abilities in your class grants you block, teleport, or stability. There is not a single class without a way to go through the wind.

While the game mechanic supports a fairly high level of twitch, most encounters are tuned to be very easily doable. While it’s not a game for someone with physical disabilities, it’s hardly a twitch game in the same vein of a shooter. Almost every attack has a tell. Inexperienced players are probably more nervous and feel guilty that it affects their performance.

Instead of getting frustrated at new players who are inexperienced, explain the tells and use group abilities that gives block, stability, or evade to help them. Dungeons ARE very easy in terms of skill requirement. They are tedious because of filler contents and design. Calling people with experience elitist is no different than belittling those that are competent at their job. It speaks volume more about you than them.

Your underlying assumption is that this game is about twitch skills, which as you hopefully know now, is not quite the case. As for your frustration, you can either help the new players get better by give them pointers, carry them, or kick them. Speak up, don’t be passive aggressive. When people screw up, let them know. If their expectations on an encounter is wrong, correct them.

Your entire post tells me you really want to play WoW. That is exactly what you should do. GW 2’s combat mechanics allows for collision and aiming. I would not be surprised as players are more used to the combat system, more free aim abilities and encounters will be designed. If you prefer more scripted and managed PvE environment, I seriously recommend you stick with WoW or DCUO. Both games are mechanically sound and offer PvE content that would be more to your liking.

Because you’re playing a video game, not Risk.

DancingPenguins.9875:

Your entire post tells me you really want to play WoW. That is exactly what you should do. GW 2’s combat mechanics allows for collision and aiming. I would not be surprised as players are more used to the combat system, more free aim abilities and encounters will be designed. If you prefer more scripted and managed PvE environment, I seriously recommend you stick with WoW or DCUO. Both games are mechanically sound and offer PvE content that would be more to your liking.

Thank you for raising a very good point (amongst other good points in your post). Playing GW2 dungeons has made me miss how smoothly and well-designed encounters are in WoW heroics, and how much less stressful PUGs there are.

On the one hand, you are right in the fact that I should go back to WoW. On the other hand, I think the concept of playable pandas are a joke (plus the monthly fee), and I like the implementation of most of everything else in GW2 apart from dungeons and WvW.

I was hoping to offer a dissenting view on the design goals and direction of dungeons in this game because some of the dungeons got it right in terms of the mix (for example, the Uncategorized fractal – where you fight the kitty creations of the Raving Asura – was one of the best dungeon experiences I’ve had in the game, as well as Solid Ocean fractal which was just gorgeous) while others are just pure hell (e.g. phase 1 of urban battleground fractal, and all of underground facility fractal, not to mention most of the explorable modes of the older dungeons).

But anyway, thanks for the constructive input. I’ll probably stick to GW2 in the meantime and just grind DE’s until they revamp WoW’s business model or some other MMO with similar quality comes along. It’s really just too bad that most of the dungeons here are not as fun as they are in WoW (for me, at least).

pyronix.4081:

DancingPenguins.9875:

Your entire post tells me you really want to play WoW. That is exactly what you should do. GW 2’s combat mechanics allows for collision and aiming. I would not be surprised as players are more used to the combat system, more free aim abilities and encounters will be designed. If you prefer more scripted and managed PvE environment, I seriously recommend you stick with WoW or DCUO. Both games are mechanically sound and offer PvE content that would be more to your liking.

Thank you for raising a very good point (amongst other good points in your post). Playing GW2 dungeons has made me miss how smoothly and well-designed encounters are in WoW heroics, and how much less stressful PUGs there are.

On the one hand, you are right in the fact that I should go back to WoW. On the other hand, I think the concept of playable pandas are a joke (plus the monthly fee), and I like the implementation of most of everything else in GW2 apart from dungeons and WvW.

I was hoping to offer a dissenting view on the design goals and direction of dungeons in this game because some of the dungeons got it right in terms of the mix (for example, the Uncategorized fractal – where you fight the kitty creations of the Raving Asura – was one of the best dungeon experiences I’ve had in the game, as well as Solid Ocean fractal which was just gorgeous) while others are just pure hell (e.g. phase 1 of urban battleground fractal, and all of underground facility fractal, not to mention most of the explorable modes of the older dungeons).

But anyway, thanks for the constructive input. I’ll probably stick to GW2 in the meantime and just grind DE’s until they revamp WoW’s business model or some other MMO with similar quality comes along. It’s really just too bad that most of the dungeons here are not as fun as they are in WoW (for me, at least).

I think what you want to say is that GW2 has great artistic direction with dungeons. Technical execution of their ideas are poor. By all indications, GW2’s dungeons are the result of project management issues. Crunch time comes and the PMPs start to look for things to cut on their WBS to make the release schedule. First to go is always the QA, since it’s a case of “if the customers are complaining that means the QA isn’t effective, let’s cut it to save money; if the customers aren’t complaining, we don’t need QA, let’s cut it to save money.”

The devs have made it clear about a week after release the huge HP pools on dungeon bosses are a placeholder for more varied and “dynamic” mechanics. This game can be very twitch based, the way it’s built, it can be played almost entirely without tab targetting. As the game matures, this is the direction it will go.

WoW PvE is like GW1, the outcome of your adventure is entirely decided the moment you leave town. Your build will nearly completely dictate the outcome of your PvE experience, any exception would typically be failure in execution. This is also one reason why PvPers in WoW tend to look down on PvE players as that type of gameplay is almost like a board game, merits of success came entirely out of the collective knowledge of the playerbase and less to do with the execution and tactical improvisation.

For the record, while it started as a joke, canon Pandas have been around WoW longer than space goats.

pyronix.4081:

Why are dungeons in this game so brutal to people who lack eye-hand coordination and motor skills?

How are dungeons brutal for those lacking those skills ?

Leaving Fractals out of this (because I didn’t get high enough), the only encounter that can arguably brutally punish players for lack of reflexes is the fight with Giganticus during phase 2.
Nothing else is hard for players that have horrible reflexes. It’s a matter of observation.

Kohler gives you 2 seconds to dodge, the Scanvenger boss in P2 and P3 has a long enough animation when he is about the scream. The boulders in CoF P1 is a matter of observation. Even the jumping part in CoE isn’t dependent on how good your reflexes are.
And even if your reflexes are beyond horrible, there are alternatives. When fighting Kohler take stability or anti projectiles (or ask your teammates to bring some), for everything else, range the boss if you can’t dodge his attacks, or try to melee and with time you might get better.
Nearly every encounter in this game doesn’t lie on having godly reflexes but on how well you can observe what is happening around you (and getting help from your teammates).

Burnout.5603:

Because you’re playing a video game, not Risk.

Pretty much,

most video-games are essentially about hand eye-coordination. And why would you expect anything else?

It’s like complaining about movies being a visual medium.

that’s the point of this game. Go play Final Fantasy XIV or even SWTOR if you don’t like the combat mechanics.

This game is advertised as an action MMO, there’s a reason they have a relatively flat power level for gear in the first place and put in the dodge mechanic in the first place…

Most games have some sort of hand eye coordination, not every mmo is about standing there and hitting a bunch of macros without actually having to move much… this isn’t one of those games.

If you wanted a turn-based RPG, you should have looked elsewhere.

I agree 100% with the OP. I think that any game I play should let me win no matter how I like to play. Game developers should think of me and only my play style when they design a game.

Mithos.9572:

I agree 100% with the OP. I think that any game I play should let me win no matter how I like to play. Game developers should think of me and only my play style when they design a game.

Seconded. Don’t let my name fool you, I’m being 100% sincere.

Trying to bring this back on topic…

I think the OP is trying to say that when a person is unable to utilize “expected” twitch response their character directly suffers, and that he / she doesn’t agree that a player should be penalized for their lack of response.

The OP recognizes the very integral part that twitch response plays in GW2 and that it is not optimal for some gamers.

Take GW1 for example, twich response was not needed for 6/8 of a balanced party, where as your prot, heal, or int would use twitch to do their jobs. Twitch in GW1 was relegated to damage mitigation, of which up to 2-3 players would require Twitch.

Back to GW2, without the healer / prot part of the trinity (or a weak role) EVERYONE needs to do twitch in order to participate in damage mitigation. This is what the OP is saying, that not all players are good at Twitch thus those players are penalized.

There will be a ton of people who say “learn2play” but simply put some people are not reactionary and want to skill spam. To require all players to participate in the information overload, micromanaging, and reflex testing game-play which is twitch response is not optimal according to the OP.

I agree with the OP to an extent, and that simply too much twitch response game-play drains my mental energy (I play mostly spamming classes, but I have played Mesmer and Prot / Heal monk EXTENSIVELY in GW1 as damage mitigation). I’d much rather puzzle based game-play such as JP integration seen in Fractals rather than have to go on information overload. I realize that without a healing trinity using a universal twitch response method is very desirable for damage mitigation.

I disagree that dungeons need to change to accommodate players who arn’t good at twitch.

Instead I recommend that there be an auto dodge button to press to completely avoid a certain affect yet stay in the same place (so you don’t fall off the cliff ect.) and not have to worry to much about clicking in an obscure place or doing a double tap. Simply put make the twitch response easier to achieve by players who have trouble with twitch response game-play.

I think lag plays a lot into it also. In the cof ball room I used just not participate because I was so bad it let the young ones do it. Now after much practice I can do it. Though I mostly just take my mesmer and blink across and portal my party. I was also that noob that kept getting blown off cliffside fractals, hit boxes in this game are server side and it really doesnt matter if your successful on your own screen.

I take my warrior or gurdian to fractals and stability solves any issues with cliffside.

those stupid lasers in asura fractals can be reflected on my warrior I shield block near the top, guardian I keep popping aegis.

I guess I’m trying to say there are skills in the game to help with most things, and if someones having trouble be helpful to your team mates, portal them, give them stability, aegis and speed buffs etc, throw down a reflect wall on your way up the laser stairs.

Don’t be that kitten that just runs to the end and uses no team abilities to help everyone else.

This is a video game and challenging people’s hand-eye coordination is AWESOME, more awesome than a 48 HOUR gaming SPREE off FREE ENERGY DRINKs

Just thought I’d post here, even though I’ve barely played since about six weeks after launch, flame away at me all you like, I have excellent hand/eye co-ordination but I had to say goodbye to GW2.

Frankly I play with my friends and three of the five are older less skilled players whom usually the two more experienced players can help carry through dungeons. We’ve played all MMO’s and we’ve raided the hardest content with Raid Groups consisting of both types of players, it has always been fun and challenging but never has it demoralised our friends into quitting the game completely.

GW2 Dungeons put up a brick wall if some of the players struggle in fast paced twitch gaming. No amount of coaching, practice and encouragement will help a group with below average skill players through GW2 dungeons.

So we stopped playing, shame really since I really like 99% of the game, I even like the way the dungeons look but the twitch gaming is brutal on low skill players.

I was really looking forward to seeing how a game could function without the Holy Trinity, the answer is it becomes a fast paced medley of zerg/tactics which in itself is interesting and fun but unfortunately not accessible to everyone.

Tactics, practice and perseverance can carry you through dungeons in most MMO’s, GW2 has an added player skill requirement.

I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.

Hopefully not.

Morkath.9702:

GW2 Dungeons put up a brick wall if some of the players struggle in fast paced twitch gaming. No amount of coaching, practice and encouragement will help a group with below average skill players through GW2 dungeons.

I doubt you hit a “brick wall” because the fights were fast paced.
Nearly everyone can learn how to do every encounter because there aren’t that many things that happen randomly : Kohler will always strike a rather long pose because pulling you in (which can be reflected or you can use stability), the graveling boss in P1 and P3 will always do the same animation before screaming, leaving you enough time to either move to the side or behind him.
I could talk about the other dungeons, but I don’t know if that would be relevant since most players use AC as their example.

You didn’t hit a brick wall because you didn’t have “twitchy” reflexes but because you probably weren’t correctly geared (at least with gear of your level), you were probably not using skills that could have help in certain situations, and you didn’t really know how to correctly do the encounters. Which is normal because it was your first times.

RedStar.4218:

Morkath.9702:

GW2 Dungeons put up a brick wall if some of the players struggle in fast paced twitch gaming. No amount of coaching, practice and encouragement will help a group with below average skill players through GW2 dungeons.

I doubt you hit a “brick wall” because the fights were fast paced.
Nearly everyone can learn how to do every encounter because there aren’t that many things that happen randomly : Kohler will always strike a rather long pose because pulling you in (which can be reflected or you can use stability), the graveling boss in P1 and P3 will always do the same animation before screaming, leaving you enough time to either move to the side or behind him.
I could talk about the other dungeons, but I don’t know if that would be relevant since most players use AC as their example.

You didn’t hit a brick wall because you didn’t have “twitchy” reflexes but because you probably weren’t correctly geared (at least with gear of your level), you were probably not using skills that could have help in certain situations, and you didn’t really know how to correctly do the encounters. Which is normal because it was your first times.

Well, my other friend and I (the two more experienced gamers) were level 80, one wearing random level 80 blues and I was wearing full T3 culture armour, the other three friends were level appropriate and wearing a mix of green/blue I think.

Ascalonian Catacombs didn’t phase us, in fact we found it quite enjoyable, though my friend and I managed to duo much of it as a test first.

I had to research and re-learn how to play my Guardian to support the group but post nerf it wasn’t enough on its own.

Caudecus’s Manor was a different story, that just seemed like one major zerg fest of mobs and even following what people considered the correct tactics at the time ( I highly doubt they were) it just wasn’t fun, in fact difficulty aside I found the whole dungeon seemed thrown together.

Anyway, our three other friends were so disenchanted with the experience they quit the game, sadly we are a close knit group of real life friends and when they left so did our will to run dungeons.

It takes some practice and there is some stuff that I can rarely dodge. AC story the first room gatekeeper I can rarely dodge his stomp. CE story when Kudo leaves his suit and uses his pistol that does 28,000 damage per shot I find that very hard to dodge. Was playing voice with someone on their first run againts Kholer so when it was time to dodge I’d say “dodge” and that made it alot easier for him.

Personally I think Anet did a poor job with easing people into the dungeons, they should start off extremely easy with obvious visual cues and simplistic tactics and steadily work up to the harder more subtle, challenging content could always be available with harder modes like explorable or hardcore.

The GW2 dungeon gameplay style is alien to MMO gamers who are used to the trinity style and as someone else stated here the rest of the game does absolutely nothing to prepare you for the dungeon experience.

Many people took to the different gameplay style with relative ease, then again like it or not a lot of people just couldn’t figure out how to adjust.

I fell somewhere in between, as a vet MMO gamer I loved duo’ing AC, then again I found it difficult to try and teach my struggling casual friends how to handle large groups of mobs (as with the basement in CM story or the end boss encounter).

I was struggling to figure out how to handle them myself with no aggro, crowd control or healing…there isn’t an obvious solution.

Which leads me back to my original point, Anet’s dungeon philosophy seems to have been adapt or quit in frustration, either way it’s up to the player to figure it out. Which I think is a shame, the more the merrier is something you should embrace when working towards MMO success.

Morkath.9702:

the other three friends were level appropriate and wearing a mix of green/blue I think.

I had to research and re-learn how to play my Guardian to support the group but post nerf it wasn’t enough on its own.

Caudecus’s Manor was a different story, that just seemed like one major zerg fest of mobs and even following what people considered the correct tactics at the time ( I highly doubt they were) it just wasn’t fun, in fact difficulty aside I found the whole dungeon seemed thrown together.

That is the problem. Your mind set is using guardian in supporting role. Despite what people say, support role is mostly useless. What people actually mean with support is actually Control and counter-control (mitigate). You are survivable, with large amount of reflects and crowd control at your disposal in addition to position reset abilities. You need to be in the front and dictate which mobs are hitting whom and when.

The correct tactics assume people know some basic game mechanics. New players tend to underestimate the disparity between the level of skill needed in PvE and in Dungeons. CM is by no mean hard. Most people in the game go through it just fine. In other dungeons, bosses will kill many players in 1 or 2 hits, dodging does make them trivial, but many people that turn with their keyboards and click skills can still do them very successfully when armed with the right utilities and weapons. It’s a definite learning curve.

DancingPenguins.9875:

Morkath.9702:

the other three friends were level appropriate and wearing a mix of green/blue I think.

I had to research and re-learn how to play my Guardian to support the group but post nerf it wasn’t enough on its own.

Caudecus’s Manor was a different story, that just seemed like one major zerg fest of mobs and even following what people considered the correct tactics at the time ( I highly doubt they were) it just wasn’t fun, in fact difficulty aside I found the whole dungeon seemed thrown together.

That is the problem. Your mind set is using guardian in supporting role. Despite what people say, support role is mostly useless. What people actually mean with support is actually Control and counter-control (mitigate). You are survivable, with large amount of reflects and crowd control at your disposal in addition to position reset abilities. You need to be in the front and dictate which mobs are hitting whom and when.

The correct tactics assume people know some basic game mechanics. New players tend to underestimate the disparity between the level of skill needed in PvE and in Dungeons. CM is by no mean hard. Most people in the game go through it just fine. In other dungeons, bosses will kill many players in 1 or 2 hits, dodging does make them trivial, but many people that turn with their keyboards and click skills can still do them very successfully when armed with the right utilities and weapons. It’s a definite learning curve.

So it’s likely keyboard turners and clickers that struggle though the late-game deungeon stuff? If some of the ‘wind-up’ animations are 2 seconds long, then it shouldn’t be a problem. Pretty sure Smough and Ornstein as well as The Four Kings are infinitely more unforgiving than anything GW2 could toss at me.

sorry if you cant Alt+Tab like you do in other games when you are doing dungeons

lekyii.9856:

sorry if you cant Alt+Tab like you do in other games when you are doing dungeons

I’m used to Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls bosses, using healing items/spells/consumables of any kind carries the risk of instant or near-instant death. Bosses at the end of dungeons can kill me in a few hits or outright with a telegraphed attack and they have a lot of hp and I need to make use of dodging? Right up my alley! If I die I likely have to go through the whole area again? Again, only the repair-bills should make me cringe if I screw up big time.

pyronix.4081:

Even then, I never felt any more “skillfull” than my other party mates who kept getting downed by Kholer or getting instakilled by the flaming balls of death corridor. It just makes me really sad, and frustrated for them, and frustrated AT them for not getting it after a million times, because I know how it feels like to be on the other side – to be that noob who can’t command his fingers to move fast enough to run across the kittening corridor of death. There was no “oh yes, what an achievement! I made it!” feeling. All it was was "Uggh, glad that BS gimmick is over.

It’s a “learn to play” issue. If you were really skillfull at the game, you would be able to prevent your friends from being downed by Kholer, through any skill in the game suited for this (anything that gives Aegis or Stability in an area around you, anything that reflects or destroys projectiles, and so on).

GW2 has been designed with the goal of being “easy to learn, hard to master”. Whenever I see someone claiming the game has been designed around dodge, it’s easy to find out who is someone who has just learned the game, yet thinks he’s a master.

CM is just a not fun dungeon, the mobs do stupid damage even to tank builds, some bits seem blatantly designed around requiring thief refuge and that’s the most fun path. The manor itself is nice looking, some of the bosses are OK. CM sadly falls into the do this once for your title/achievements then move onto one of the more fun dungeons category.

Maybe a turn-based game is more your style?

I’m not trying to be snarky (ok, maybe a little); I’ve been loving and playing turn-based RPGs since probably before you were born, but if you think about it, complaining about an action-MMORPG requiring reflexes is kind of silly, to say the least.

Morkath.9702:

GW2 Dungeons put up a brick wall if some of the players struggle in fast paced twitch gaming. No amount of coaching, practice and encouragement will help a group with below average skill players through GW2 dungeons…

… Since I managed to pull a bunch of dungeon nooblets of fairly subpar skill through a dungeon by simply telling them the strategy, do I count as some sort of dungeon Jesus… or perhaps dungeon Moses? I mean, they died a lot but they were also in very high spirits…

Morkath.9702:

Caudecus’s Manor was a different story, that just seemed like one major zerg fest of mobs and even following what people considered the correct tactics at the time ( I highly doubt they were) it just wasn’t fun, in fact difficulty aside I found the whole dungeon seemed thrown together.

CM is the perfect example of a dungeon where taking the right skills make the whole thing easier. As a Guardian you should take reflect or adsorb projectiles kills (Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary, Shield of the Avenger), as a Mesmer feedback and null field, etc…

RedStar.4218:

Morkath.9702:

Caudecus’s Manor was a different story, that just seemed like one major zerg fest of mobs and even following what people considered the correct tactics at the time ( I highly doubt they were) it just wasn’t fun, in fact difficulty aside I found the whole dungeon seemed thrown together.

CM is the perfect example of a dungeon where taking the right skills make the whole thing easier. As a Guardian you should take reflect or adsorb projectiles kills (Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary, Shield of the Avenger), as a Mesmer feedback and null field, etc…

People should be glad that ANet has left zerging to victory as an option for so long. In WoW, the wrong skill/class composition would’ve meant a raid wipe. Almost every class here has certain types of skills for every encounter, some more than others.

Projectile reflection/destruction and proper condition removal really takes the bite out of the majority of the enemies in CM.