Guild Wars 2

Absolutely worst dungeon experience I’ve had. I love running GW2 dungeons, it is my favorite part of the game. But, running those wisps back and having 2 ppl make it and one fall 2 seconds behind for an hour made me not want to go back into FOTM.

The main problem are the wall’s in my opinion, I just did it, and some time ppl got inside the “new” wall’s, unable to leave the wall …

The rest its just to test your patient, but i have to agree this one, its the dgn that i have the less fun that’s for sure

I don’t understand the logic behind the shutting walls. Sometimes they close, sometimes they don’t, and we’ve tested loads of different ways of doing it. It’s unbelievably stupid.

Agreed. This needs tweaking. The random walls take the element of skill out and just make it a frustrating experience for everyone involved.

My group gave up on this one earlier. I had better luck than most but I couldn’t get to an open segment of the wall… it might be the last segment you reach that is left open, which means coordinating running from both sides towards the center… but even then I doubt we would have had enough time to make it with the champion drake constantly getting in the way and the norn popping out of nowhere to 1-shot people.

I think the moss man is the best feature of this map, but the puzzle is a bit tedious.

I like the concept of the swamp fractal. But it is not executed well.

both groups i’ve done have quit after several tries here. Even with good communication and strategy we can at best get 2 in with one far behind.

I disagree when a game designer puts us through something punishing for challenge. One of the rules of GW2 from that dev blog was to respect the player & their time. We spend our free time doing this to relax and enjoy. Punishment makes it feel like work, and the randomness of the walls is an automatic loss of time and momentum.

you can climb over the walls. by each wall that pops up is a knotted branch that if you take a second to look at, you can jump up. Most of the walls have this. My guild parties can do it fairly quickly at this point. usually only 2-3 tries and we have it finished. Quickest and easiest of the first tier fractals

The problem with this particular fractal is that without the wisp portion the dungeon is too short, but with it, it’s too frustrating.

Well the wisp part basically IS the dungeon. All that’s left is a leisurely swim and mossman afterwards. I agree however that the walls were such a pain. If you can jump over them I guess it might be ok. I’ll have to check that out next time I go.

Took me quite a while to jump over one when the timer wasn’t on. I don’ tknow how effective that would be while the heat is on.

i married Moss Man!

You do know you can jump over the wall right..?

Drarorm.8723:

You do know you can jump over the wall right..?

For the top: Middle of the wall next to where a wall spawns theres a 3x jump to get over. Head to your right (the way your facing when you get over) and all the way over will be an opening to your left which leads directly to the statues. If your good on your jumps you’ll make it with roughly 3-5 seconds to spare. As always start the wisp runs with the northern most runner. Even with these tips it takes WAY too kitten long to get it down for 3 people and its annoying.

Two Mesmers with portal.. you can even skip mobs, takes 2min aprox.

/kitten

I agree. The swamp fractal is a lesson in how to make bad gameplay and I hope whatever idiot made it is sitting in a corner far away from competent devs right now.

Yes, I do use the word idiot, because it’s simple game design 101 – When making any challenge in a game, especially involving time, you NEVER make the success of it dependant on random luck. And if you decide to involve random factors, which is fairly common in larger boss fights, you give the players a way to deal with it, rather than have it be “bad luck, you lose.”

The traps are fine, having to figure out the paths is fine, having varied things based on the location, such as the spiders, is fine because players can learn of them being there and learn to adapt and overcome them.

What is NOT fine are the walls, and to a far lesser degree the mossman. The walls would work if it was possible to take them into account, but since they are on random timers, and their activation is not connected to anything else (trust me, I had to spend 2 hours watching walls due to always running on the same wisp on that one go, so I noticed.) that means that they are the equivalent of rolling a d100 and most of the time simply going “oh sorry, bad luck, you lose.” and shutting off the path to the players, while on a timer that makes alternative routes near impossible for the northern points. If the timer allowed you to accomodate for it, fine, it is something you have the ability to adapt for. Or if there was always an alternative, also fine. However it is not uncommon for the kitten walls to close off an entire section of the area, making the run impossible even if you had 10 seconds more time. The mossman is just annoying and pointless, but the walls make this easily one of the most unfun experiences I have ever had in an mmo, which is a real shame because the vast majority of the other fractals are completely fine, most are in fact outright great, but you get this one fractal in your run and you may as well cancel it and start all over or risk spending 2-3 hour hoping the game will RANDOMLY allow the walls to allign so you can make it in time!

Thanks for ruining an otherwise good dungeon, whoever made this.

i have done the swamp with clan mates on ts and with pugs with no ts and different language and we got not special problem…Personally i didnt have any special problem here even with first timers, and im just an average player
Remove conditions/quickness/invisibility/teleport, etc lot of skills which make it quite easier

im a necro, i would say the slowest profession in game and i always make it in time, even going for the further one. (of course using spectral walk)

About walls i just usually go around and use other path if closed

Its really not that hard once you figure it out, I have done it 4 times now. The first run took my team 2 hours and every run after only 10 minutes. There is a few tricks such as teleports, jumping over the walls (there are very specific spots that you can jump over the walls when they close on you, and speed boosts/stability.

Thuran.7624:

snip of ridiculously huge rant

Get a load of this guy.

You know, you can just jump over the walls and still turn the wisps in before time runs out, right?

I know my post is purely subjective. However, if ANet uses whether or not something is “fun” as its benchmark, then the swamp fractal (imo) did not meet that standard. It seems to be more of a lesson in sadism. The other fractals are fun and enjoyable, but the swamp is aggravation, at best. There are too many factors involved. It seems that someone went overboard with the mechanics of this particular fractal. There are:

(1) Traps: there are far too many, and the trigger boxes are too large. Additionally, some are impossible to see. That may only effect those of us who are colorblind though.

(2) Mobs: there are far too many who spawn when a person grabs the wisp (spiders, mosquitos, etc.)

(3) Timer: if there weren’t so many other things in the way, the timer might not be an issue, but with the current setup, the timer is far, far too short.

(4) Spontaneous walls: while they may be able to be jumped over, when taken with everything else, these are just annoying. They serve no purpose other than as a final, “HAHA! Gotcha!” mechanic.

(5) Bosses: bosses that cannot be permanently killed, and the Mossman who randomly spawns to one-shot a person is nuts.

While any two or three of these mechanics taken together are not bad, the combination of all five leave me thinking, “why bother?” on this particular fractal. Scale back the number of threats, or increase the timer significantly on the wisps.

If it could be skipped without hurting progress, then I would not have an issue with it. However, who’s to say a group gets the first two fractals done, then the swamp is the third. The group cannot get the swamp fractal after trying many different strategies, etc. How is that fun for that group?

Again, I know the above is my personal opinion, and what is “fun” for one person is not going to be “fun” for another. To me, the swamp is definitely not fun.

Worse boss is the lava boss, he heals way to much way to quick.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/swampland/first#post764015

Aka practice jumping and looking for ‘jumpable’ spots in the game.

I like a lot of things of this map tbh. It just needs some tweaking!

The gates can be annoying indeed but not having something like that would make it too easy tho. Right now we have found about 4 gates that can be jumped over with a little bit of practice and using a mesmer to drop a portal in the middle of the map makes it extremely easy.

The swamp is perfectly fine. Just avoid the traps and have one condition removal and you can do it. The hardest part is picking up all three of them at the same time.

I did this one today. It was easy. We failed with the wisps twice, third time we were good. Oh, and I was one of the Runners and didn’t have any serious problem with walls.

By far the Swamp was the easiest fractal I’ve done. (I’ll admit, I’ve only successfully completed 4 different ones. Asura, Collossus, Swamp and Fire Grawl)

It does help to know at least aproximatly what you need to do either going in, or if some one could tell you as you go along.

It depends on having competent teammates though. You can expect at least 1 person in a group will have trouble with this. If you have 3 very talented players with good sight & reflexes, it’s easy. But the fact that already I’m seeing “LF1M fractals must be good” means it’s hard to get a group with enough people good enough to do this.

It should be at the difficulty of “average group of 5 skill”. Especially at lv 1, it should be much easier. Practice helps a lot here but people won’t even try it if it “seems” impossible for the average newcomer.

Playing thief with remove cripple on evade, shadow step, invis, rollbacks and such so I probably have easier time than most classes. And still sometimes I get into situation, when I just don’t think it’s possible. So yeah, I think this one could use a bit of a tweaking otherwise people are going to keep skipping it.

The swamp? Its the easiest and fastest fractal.But I guess I’ve been realy lucky not to be stuck doing it whit completly cluelesss people.The traps are obvious and you can jump over the walls and even if you’re not able its what? a 1 min step back?Common now..

Need more circles/lines to indicate all the traps. I’m not playing I spy for bear traps and trip wires.

I thought dungeons are about timing, cooperation, skill and intelligence, not trolling people with random walls.
I doubt jumping over the walls is the intended way to do it, and if it is, whoever came up with it needs to get their head checked.

And of course, as with everything that’s not super easy, there is a QQ thread for this.

I personally do not see a problem, had more fun while failing and trying this swamp running than doing anything else. Finally something that takes practice and coordination. Yes walls can spawn “randomly”, but most of the times there is a way around, so that if you didn’t lose too much time already you can still make it. The key to beating this thing is movement, like condition removal, stun breakers, stability and charges. Once you got that set up right, and know which people will support which runners, you should always be able to get it within a few tries. At least my groups were.

It is about timing ,cooperation, skill and all that.Its also about your ability to think and act fast.The random walls are a neat feature.Not everything should be predictible , its how you perform under those circumstances that makes it great.If you can’t handle it then the dungeon is not for you.Go do other dungeons that don’t pose too much of a challenge for you.Why should all dungeons be boring because you can’t handdle it, or the usual case, because you don’t care enough to engage in.
And haha..what an attitude.The trap is right there ! You know it is.Its right there ! you can see it ! but lol ..wut? I want big red circles whit indicator signs that say don’t stand there in that spot.

Our guild gave up after over an hour of retrying this fractal. It’s not a dungeon of skill, it’s a dungeon of luck. It’s a great concept, but wasn’t made well.

It involves skill, just of type not used before – of reacting quickly, looking on the ground and avoiding traps, and looking for jumpable parts of the spawned walls, as each of them can be jumped through from both sides.

I’m pretty lucky then..I’ve done this fractal quite a lot .I think we do it in like less than 5 mins.

NightyNight.1823:

It is about timing ,cooperation, skill and all that.Its also about your ability to think and act fast.The random walls are a neat feature.Not everything should be predictible , its how you perform under those circumstances that makes it great.If you can’t handle it then the dungeon is not for you.Go do other dungeons that don’t pose too much of a challenge for you.Why should all dungeons be boring because you can’t handdle it, or the usual case, because you don’t care enough to engage in.
And haha..what an attitude.The trap is right there ! You know it is.Its right there ! you can see it ! but lol ..wut? I want big red circles whit indicator signs that say don’t stand there in that spot.

Really? You can see brown circles on a brown floor?

The developer responsible for this map is an kitten.

Actually thought this fractal was fine, traps are a bit numerous but manageable. We did it last nite for first time. Pick a path and know your path, do some trial runs and reset to your known path. Done

32 seconds is way too short on the low levels. I think 45 seconds for the timer would be the sweet spot. Reduce the timer as the higher levels.

Never had problems with the lower levels. People get into positions and when everyone is ready, we all start at the same time. It’s easy, if you don’t face the boss…

Now,now don’t whine so much.It has bee out from a few days.The comunity said exactly the same thing for the 8 explorable dungeons when they came and look what happend after 2 months.They became more than easy.Here won’t be any different after a few months.
The path hasn’t been out more than 2 days and you ask for nerfs.Come on give it some time.
My experience with it is not so bad.Pugs may struggle with it but with enough comunication and cordination you do it.

So everyone has to make it with the wisps at the same time? Just wondering. My group tried it for a bit then just went… nope screw this and exited. Hell, even being turned into a dolphin to swim through krait was more fun (and no, that wasn’t really fun either – but very funny. :P).

moiraine.2753:

Now,now don’t whine so much.It has bee out from a few days.The comunity said exactly the same thing for the 8 explorable dungeons when they came and look what happend after 2 months.They became more than easy.Here won’t be any different after a few months.
The path hasn’t been out more than 2 days and you ask for nerfs.Come on give it some time.
My experience with it is not so bad.Pugs may struggle with it but with enough comunication and cordination you do it.

They’ve also worked on the dungeons over time, modified player abilities, introduced more powerful equipment… … … …

Today I had around 3 or 4 swamps one after another and actually enjoyed them!

Easiest dungeon in the game hand down. I have yet to have my static need more than 2 trys to get them in. Hell my warrior runs a wisp in with the boss spamming his axe and agony the whole way and I still make it.

I’ll give you a tip so so I don’t get an infraction for being “rude and dismissive”.

Have your highest mobility player on the farthest one. This can be a thief or mesmer or warrior. Second highest mobility on second farthest etc. Count to 3 grab wisps. Run them in. Its as simple as that.

Again my warrior with shake it off and swiftness runs a wisp in with most times the boss is hitting me as well as any mobs and agony to boot and we still complete it.

The dungeon and mechanic isnt broken. Your just not doing it right. Psst know where the trees can spawn and plan ahead the route you will take if it does.

Definitely the easiest and the shortest one. We did it 3 times the other day and 2 times we got the wisps in from the first try, and one time it was from 2nd try. I really don’t see any problems with it. Just learn to run…
Also, those were all pug teams.

As a mesmer I am curious as to how this works with portals. I could not seem to be able to enter my portal when carrying a wisp?

The entire team is not needed, as you see there are 3 pieces to be runned. Other player’s role is activate traps for runners,s o they can complete the task easily and fast. No exploit , particular skills or cheat needed. Just a matter of teamwork

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

The entire team is not needed, as you see there are 3 pieces to be runned. Other player’s role is activate traps for runners,s o they can complete the task easily and fast. No exploit , particular skills or cheat needed. Just a matter of teamwork

Correct, you don’t even need all 5, you can do it with 3 runners alone, while you have other 2 people going for the achievement. If runners know what they’re doing they’ll do it easily, from the first try.
You can also keep resetting wisps until you get them in good position.

Once you know the routes, it won’t be that hard. The best is to stick to a path until you know all the traps and wall and how to make it in time. Then do an other path. Its very frustrating at the beginning but after a while it’s easy. Its the only part that is hard from the beginning and i still haven’t saw it scale at lv11. So this is the good and the bad.