Guild Wars 2

So Anet has been talking about how they’ve made changes to the Tequatl event to make it more interesting, challenging, and fun.

So why am I mentioning this in the dungeon area?

Because I did Arah Story mode last night for the first time in several months, and was once more disappointed over how boring the final few events are. Especially since it was changed from the last time, as before during the Golden Shower phase these dragon heads would spawn you had to kill, and now not even that. Just ten minutes of 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2.

While I can appreciate ANet sending people in to revamp events to make them more interesting, why oh why Arah Storymode not first on the list? The entire storyline of the game is building up to this one climactic battle, and it’s completely ruined by its soul crushing laziness and boredom.

Please tell me that this event is somewhere on the list of events to revamp and make fun.

Let’s hope so. They said they’re only working on the dungeons if it makes sense for the story (not like how AC got revamped out of the blue, though it’s a lot more awesome now). I hope it’s sooner than later though.

I know I’ve heard from multiple sources that the devs were rushed and ultimately unhappy with the arah story mode dungeon. And yet, it seems like they’re not quite sure how to fix it, or if such a big fix (and it would require a pretty serious overhall) would be worth the time it would take. —

“we did analyze internal and player feedback a few months after launch to address the question, ‘Does it make sense for us to redo portions of the personal story as it shipped?’ I’m not sure it would be the best use of our resources, to be honest. There are plenty of people who enjoy the personal story in its present form. For those who don’t, they still have a breadth of content to experience elsewhere in the game.” (Bobby Stein)

“Due to the nature of the personal story and how it ties into the content of Orr as it currently stands (and its moment in the timeline) it’s going to be really complicated for us to try and find a graceful solution to pushing Orr forward in the timeline via Living World releases. There are some ways we could do it, but it’d involve creating two versions of Orr, which would fracture our player base in a way I’m not sure is healthy for our game, or it’d involve something more akin to the Fractals that I think is more likely.”(Colin Johanson)

I don’t hold out much hope that it will get fixed any time soon.

I’m not saying the personal story would have to be redone. Just the Arah story mode dungeon, and just the part of the final fight after you jump onto the big airship and actually start the fight with Zhaitan face to face.
The rest of the personal storyline up to that point I’m fine with, it’s just the final fight that needs some serious love. And as mentioned, making noticable changes to dungeon events does have precedent.

Although it is a dungeon, arah story mode is part of the personal story. In the context of the article he was talking about player feedback and I think arguably the zhaitan fight has been one of the most complained about parts of the living story – so it’s reasonable to assume its one of the things he’s referring to in that quote.

They’ve also said they want to make dungeon changes tie into the living story, which is relevant to the second quote. If their strategy going forward is changing a dungeon to advance the plot of the living story, changing the arah story mode dungeon may not fit well into that model, for the reasons Colin listed.

I fully agree with you, that dungeon should be priority number one – it’s not just one of the many dungeons, it’s the big finally to the main story arc of the game – and it’s a horrendous, buggy mess. It seems, though, that the devs have other priorities – primarily forcing all new content updates to fit within their living story strategy.

If they smart… they WON’T touch Arah’s Story mode again until they’ve actually got a guaranteed hit and new tech to pull it off. Yeah maybe it’s been considered the biggest disappointment in the game… but look at other stuff that was overhauled lately and ask yourself if you really wanna take the risk that it could be made even worse??

Take Kohler for example… total speedbump for minmaxxed teams. We literally stacked right on him like Subject Alpha and killed him in like 50 seconds. Zero kittens were given about his stupid Spin to Win. Yet he’s totally beyond reason now for a lot of Pugs b/c he just keeps resummoning Elite allies until a Necro+Ranger show up and everyone in the pug dies from having no where safe to stand. (this thread is now about TA F/U)

In open world for the most part, most things can be beaten by just simply throwing more bodies at it. Hence why Anet supposedly couldn’t beat it themselves, they didn’t have 80 people to Zerg it with. (Try that with the new Vet Subjugators on Balthazar escort though…. instant fail when the Zerg is full of bads). In dungeons though, it’s usually up to exploits on whether anyone bothers with the Revised content or not.

Maybe some day they’ll get a better system for revising this stuff. But if they tried to make this encounter more Epic with their current track record, it’d just be a crapshoot.

ilr.9675:

Take Kohler for example… total speedbump for minmaxxed teams. We literally stacked right on him like Subject Alpha and killed him in like 50 seconds. Zero kittens were given about his stupid Spin to Win. Yet he’s totally beyond reason now for a lot of Pugs b/c he just keeps resummoning Elite allies until a Necro+Ranger show up and everyone in the pug dies from having no where safe to stand. (this thread is now about TA F/U)

I don’t like FGS’ing Kholer, he’s a fun fight, and I’ve seen it go wrong one time too many where we didn’t burn him quite fast enough, and he did his spinny move…

Not to mention, Alpha in 50 seconds is hella slow. I’ve seen that ugly kittener die in 15 seconds. Anything slower than 25s is disgraceful.

But on topic, Kholer legit > FGS.

Rather than revamping a story mode only a handful of people play more than once I’d rather them have some kind of corny plot twist that makes it so Zhaitan isn’t really dead. Then make him either an incredibly difficult world boss that utilizes the whole map (much harder than Tequatl 2.0, and is beaten incredibly rarely), or make him the final boss in some sort of raid-esque content.

Of course, if he was a world boss they would need to make you get rewards based what % you got Zhaitan to such that people are actually willing to fight him even though they know they will lose (and in the off chance you do kill him you get some amazing rewards).

if i had to guess, its coming “soon”.

Bright.9160:

Kholer legit > FGS.

If you don’t give him stacks of Defiance you can use Wall of Reflection and he will interrupt himself with his own pull. Buys you a bit more time ^-^

There are so many things you could do to fix Zhatain. Like, instead of hurp durping around he actually destroys the gunship you’re on and swallows everybody. Using gypsi magic to survive you wake up inside and then proceed to wade through more trash and some miscellaneous unimportant events until you reach…



Wait for it…




‘The Heart of Zhaitan’ Dun dun duuuuuun!
Epic final boss battle ensues in which you kill Zhaitan from the inside.
Don’t lie to me it would be epic and you know it

It would probably end up being a structure that doesn’t move or takes critical damage that spawns endless mobs like TAFU and people will come complain on the forums about the HoZ.

And the we’ll end up having to liberate the frontpage from all the HoZ.

Cause dem HoZ be cray.

Bright.9160:

It would probably end up being a structure that doesn’t move or takes critical damage that spawns endless mobs like TAFU and people will come complain on the forums about the HoZ.

And the we’ll end up having to liberate the frontpage from all the HoZ.

Cause dem HoZ be cray.

Dolan.3071:

There are so many things you could do to fix Zhatain. Like, instead of hurp durping around he actually destroys the gunship you’re on and swallows everybody. Using gypsi magic to survive you wake up inside and then proceed to wade through more trash and some miscellaneous unimportant events until you reach…

Wait for it…

‘The Heart of Zhaitan’ Dun dun duuuuuun!
Epic final boss battle ensues in which you kill Zhaitan from the inside.
Don’t lie to me it would be epic and you know it

I was thinking something more like, after the megalaser hits him, there’s currently a cutscene where five smaller lasers latch on and rip smaller chunks of him off before he flies to the tower. How bout, the players have to charge up those five lasers kinda like the door switch in the dredge fractal, those lasers pull Zhaitan in up against the airship and we get a chance to hack and slakitten some of those mini-heads before he pulls back and it cuts to the aforementioned cutscene. The deck of the airship is certainly big enough for some sort of world boss fight.

Or after the golden shower, instead of falling off the tower dead, he jumps off, grabs onto the airship and pulls it down to the ground. Everyone survives, but the airship is wrecked and Zhaitan’s broken and grounded, but still alive, and the players have to either charge in to kill him directly, or distract him long enough for another megalaser to power up and blast him in the face.

All sorts of things that can be done to make the event more exciting and engaging, and above all, give the players a chance to actually attack him with weapons, spells, and skills like other world bosses.

Lets face it, getting unexplainably turned into giants and party-boying Zhaitan to death would be better than what we’ve got.