Regarding livestream and changes to dungeons
I really wish they wouldn’t nerf lupi, but it might be the case. As if dungeons weren’t easy enough.
Regarding waypointing, why not make a compromise system where if a waypoint has enemies within a certain radius, it becomes contested and unusable. This brings waypoints in dungeons more in line with open world behavior and strikes a decent balance between rez rushing and no waypointing at all by enforcing a minimum travel time back to any encounter. Any encounter that devs consider prone to rez rushing can disable the nearest waypoint while still leaving farther ones available. This would also give groups an additional risk/reward consideration whether to clear trash mobs that might patrol into the waypoint area.
I agree that rez rushing should not be used to trivialize encounters such as by pulling mobs or bosses to a waypoint, making a full wipe near impossible and requiring little to no strategy at all. CoF path 2 is a borderline case in my opinion, where it provides an alternative strategy that does not fully trivialize the encounter and has a decent risk/reward (it still requires strategy and skill because lack of group coordination can result in failure) but I’d leave it up to ANet to determine whether they want to allow rez rushing in that case or not.
However, waypointing in combat was one thing that made this game stand out for me. Benefits include:
1) Not requiring any person to sit out combat for extended durations with nothing to do
2) Making limited use of rez rushing an additional strategy if the group is skilled enough (eg. assuming half a group dies, if the two remaining players can survive a dungeon boss for the minute or two required for the rest of the group to make it back, I think that does demonstrate some level of skill that should be rewarded)
3) Making many dungeons less frustrating for newcomers, precisely for the above two reasons. As someone who remembers doing AC exp with a full group of level 35s during the first month of the game, being able to waypoint during combat made the difference between spending 3 rather frustrating hours trying to beat the dungeon and quitting in complete frustration. True, you could say exp mode is meant to be hard, get to 80 and learn to play, but more skilled players who don’t die are rewarded with faster dungeon completion and less armor repair costs already, and someone new to the game or to MMOs trying to do a dungeon at a recommended level shouldn’t leave feeling completely crushed. At the time, as a newer player on the fence about whether I wanted to continue doing dungeons or not, waypointing was a massive relief valve that really made me appreciate the game compared to the one other MMO I had tried. It meant that we could make a few mistakes and come back, not make a few mistakes and have to start over from scratch, over and over again with no progress to show for it. And these days, I can run most dungeons without wiping, and I know the strategy for most of the paths I’ve run.
And to repeat, waypointing can and already is, in most cases, balanced by:
1) Armor repair costs for repeated deaths
2) Travel time back to encounter leaving the rest of the group more prone to wiping and allowing the boss to reset
If the above are not considered sufficient discouragement for rez rushing, add an additional waypoint fee if any members of the group are in combat.
TL;DR: This player thinks waypointing during combat in dungeons is a standout feature in this game and rez rushing can be mitigated by disabling only some waypoints to prevent mindless zerging while still leaving some leniency in the system.
I personally would rather have more way points with respawn timers.
First death – 30 sec
Second death – 60 sec
Third death – 90 sec
and so on and so on
Every 5 min one death gets removed from your total.
I just hate having to run back ….
| 80 (Mesmer) Brook Envision | 80 (Thief) Kuro Rin |