The CoF Buff: My opinions

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: frOst.2198

frOst.2198

Changing a number from 100 to 200 and changes the mob spawn by a bit seems like lazy design tweak to me, sorry. If the solution is made within 5 minutes or so after gauging the event, I can’t say much since all designers do it, but if the number change is a deliberate decision, then there are some attention to detail that you are not paying.

Whats easier? Thinking creatively and doing something fun that requires going back to the drawing board and developing actual content?

Or going into the ‘code’ and changing a single value?

Hmmm…GREAT DEV there…GREAT DEV.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vanisher.9216

Vanisher.9216

In short CoF was fine the way it was and instead of buffing CoF you should have tuned the other dungeons down to match what CoF was.

So an explorable mode that can be made by a group of 5 random people in blues without even talking to themselves was fine?

CoF second path was easy as kitten.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Rajani Isa.6294

Rajani Isa.6294

This is an excellent post Crucifer. What i don’t get was it wasn’t broken why fix it? Players were happy no one was complaining. Imho they brought this upon themselves. I expected and hoped for better with anet. Hope they do something to fix this.

Well, apparently Anet thought it was broken.

And as far as not announcing the changes ahead of time, sounds like there was a exploit with a NPC escort where you could have one person blitz to a spot, and get the NPC to follow then? Considering all the other NPC escorts tend not to work that way, that section alone would sound bugged to me.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tora.8610

Tora.8610

That is my mistake Synthetics.6709. I meant to say Prestige armor. Which is what the dungeon sets equate to. They have high costs because they look amazing. They look is justified by the cost. I didn’t see anyone complaining about the high cost of Obsidian armor back in GW1. Everyone was like “OMG It’s so cool! I can’t wait to save up to get that armor”.

Also,

Thank you Robert for your explanation. I’m glad to see that you’re upholding your dungeon design and not caving to the mass hysteria.

The reason why people didn’t complain in gw1 is because no matter what they do, no matter how they do it, they’ll eventually get to that goal. Heck they can play their alts, do other content if they want. THEY DON’T NEED TO GRIND UW/FoW for that armor.

Here? Not only are the tokens specific to each dungeon, they’re also soulbound… not to mention after the latest update you’ll probably be losing money more so than gaining each time you do the dungeon… and seriously? Reduced rewards for consecutive runs of the same dungeon, when you need to do it 80~100 times or so for full armor+weapons (definitely not 40 times, as you need just shy of about 1800 tokens, which /20 per run is 90 runs, + another about 20 runs if you need two one-handed weapons) is just silly. Aside for the odd few people (who already have the set) most people aren’t going to finish this up any time soon anyway, even when the dungeon was easy.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Kogasa Tatara.1409

Kogasa Tatara.1409

Changing a number from 100 to 200 and changes the mob spawn by a bit seems like lazy design tweak to me, sorry. If the solution is made within 5 minutes or so after gauging the event, I can’t say much since all designers do it, but if the number change is a deliberate decision, then there are some attention to detail that you are not paying.

Whats easier? Thinking creatively and doing something fun that requires going back to the drawing board and developing actual content?

Or going into the ‘code’ and changing a single value?

Hmmm…GREAT DEV there…GREAT DEV.

Too expensive. If you were the one funding this, you wouldn’t pay for a redesign, you wouldn’t be giving your designers time to redesign because it’s a majorly exploitable bug. You wouldn’t be giving your designers a chance at it. They’d have to go “kitten, what should I do STAB” and make a decision and implement it.

I doubt Mr. Hrouda had time to test it precisely because of that. Unless he did, in which case I… Have nothing good to say, so I won’t say anything. It’s honestly ok, as an emergency fix. If it’s exploitable, first make it non-exploitable. You can fix it thereafter. That’s totally ok. As long as you fix it after you plug the hole.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: WARBOSS.4385

WARBOSS.4385

We payed one time for the game. Good idea.

The game design now is focused on $$$$$$$$$MONEY PROFIT!

If people don’t like the game, they might be more interested in trying out BLADE AND SOUL!

New game by same publisher, to maximize profit.

Good thinking on their end.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: importune.7120

importune.7120

3. I made the fireballs hurt more. Not greatly more – they’ll do about 3-4k damage to a DPS focused player, but you should have anywhere between 15k-25k HP, so there’s a bit of wiggle room for error.

Heya,

Just wanted to tune in here and say that while I don’t mind the damage increase, I can’t even imagine having 15-25k HP as an elementalist. Even with a heavy water/earth build, 15k is pushing it. I’m currently at 13k with a support build (focus on boons and conditions), and 13k is just over HALF the HP that was mentioned. Meaning, relative to the others, this does double damage to me. Additionally, because I am an elementalist, I have light armor. Which means that the fireball will do additional damage. 4.5k damage out of my 13k puts me at 2.5 fireballs and I’m dead. Take into account burning from a past ball, and/or random mobs, and I’m dead.

….Regardless, I still very much enjoy the challenge. I do have to ask, though, are there any elementalists that could give me some insight on this HP figure? Have I lost my mind?

EDIT: I would like to mention that all of the changes you made are perfectly reasonable and the dungeon is still fairly simple- people were just used to mindlessly walking through it. I especially want to thank you for having the testies to post on this forum full of passionate GW2 players. I really love seeing insight directly from the person/people that created the game I am playing!

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Leaf.3156

Leaf.3156

I just think it’s funny how they can “fix” stuff like this within a few days, yet Orr is still completely broken, Necro’s are still plagued by bugs, engineers lose yet another blast finisher, and Mesmer traits are still a total mess.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tearmatt.5410

Tearmatt.5410

I’m ok with the changes they made except for the Door bombing part, just increase the token reward from 1st 30 to 50 then the rest 20 to 35. and make the silver reward to 20 or something. Challenging yet rewarding.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: WARBOSS.4385

WARBOSS.4385

I just think it’s funny how they can “fix” stuff like this within a few days, yet Orr is still completely broken, Necro’s are still plagued by bugs, engineers lose yet another blast finisher, and Mesmer traits are still a total mess.

Those are not bugs, those are features.

Quote that if you ever want a job in game design at arenanet.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: tonny.7580

tonny.7580

searly have u guys try it abut 3hs ago everyone try it in moring it totdaly diffrend from the moring

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Insanitybg.4217

Insanitybg.4217

as Robert said (and somehow me not being able to quote)

“I took away their super profitable low risk, fast, token grind. "Notice the keyword here: grind, so in reallity they didn’t fix anything just made the timer longer, the lava field near-impossible (he rushes in the magma directly after being ressurected and when it’s out he attacks mobs).Now that would all be good if something was done to the rewards (not the silver the tokens).I don’t see how you are expecting us to have “fun” doing a 1-5hr dungeon for 25 tokens when it takes 69 runs to get the armor.No need to make it a 10min dungeon , make it 5 hrs if you have to but give real rewards because most people can’t spare all that time especially if they work/have school.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Asmodeus.8042

Asmodeus.8042

Sorry, but I doubt you actually tested the Magg Kaboomium event. Seriously. There’s no way I can comprehend someone thinking you can fight through that.

Take off your devlar and try this fight from a fair angle and tell me it’s functioning as intended.

Did you just want to make it into a mediocre gear gate dps race? Because that’s what it’s become, rather than a fun, quirky event with a great deal of difficulty.

You -cannot- kill the mobs fast enough. I have no idea how you got this. With even five glass cannons high-geared DPS builds we couldn’t kill a single mob before wave two, which soon became wave three which spelled doom. You can’t tell me you expect players in groups of five to fight off seven elite mobs at once with more on their way for 2 1/2 minutes.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Lue.6538

Lue.6538

“4 – Now you have set apart the community…those people who ran their 100 runs through CoF before this change who are now fully geared out and can run other non-buffed instances. And those people who can not farm the same gear to keep up with the other players in the game because they can’t complete CoF…let alone in a timely manner.

You should of just put a lockout timer on CoF / all dungeons…5 runs a day or something normal. Not worried about making the dungeon impossible for fresh 80s / PUGs.

Now you have geared groups of people spam running other dungeons and fresh 80s at a loss for what they are supposed to be doing to keep up with those people with pre-buffed CoF gear who don’t have lockouts in other instances to stop them from keep getting further ahead of the curve.

This is going to be a major source for a lot of fresh 80 players quitting this game. Esp. in a non-guild environment."

Not everyone wants the CoF gear; sure it is nice to obtain a fairly quick exotic rank 80 set, but honestly the stats on the set is not one I’m interested in, I did however run it a couple of times in an effort to level up guildmembers from 75-80 in an hours time…

What you’re either intentionally ignoring, or failing to realise, is that it does not quite function as other MMOs with gear here, you can easily do anything in the game with any ragtag gear you come across while leveling.. but if you feel that you want to look good while doing those things, well then you need to farm. People obtained tons of gold by repeatedly running the same path in the same dungeon while leaving the remaining dungeons virtually untouched because they were either more difficult or slower to complete.

Anyone who didn’t expect this ‘nerf’ as you call it, was simply oblivious to the obvious.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tear.9471

Tear.9471

I just want to say, that I love you Robert for what you did.
Everyone complains about difficulty, but when devs lower it, the new type of whine appears. That the game is for small kids now, that it’s too easy, that it used to be better. This happened in awful lot of older MMOs and people are still the same.
I thank you for this, because that speed run was ruining the dungeon runs for whole guilds. People were there all the time and we couldn’t form a group for anything else.
You saved my evenings with GW2.
Once again thanks. <3

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Erikon.6495

Erikon.6495

Yeha i want to see him get hiskitten blown to ashes doing that place now

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: afflaq.3947

afflaq.3947

Did you even test this fix yourself? I would love to see a video of the dev’s completing this part of CoF without suicide training.. If someone has completed this by actually killing the mobs please say so, I’d love to see just how many can pull it off as it’s “intended”

I just pugged CoF without suicide training, so please stop acting like because you can’t do it it’s impossible. After having done CoF (among others, I’m not some professional player but I have plenty of prior ‘raiding’ background and I’ve done most paths of explorables in this game working towards the dungeon master achievement) pretty extensively with a ‘best’ run of around 12 minutes, I wanted to experience the changes so started looking for a group. My experience/comments from the perspective of a dagger/dagger shadow arts treed thief:

Until the lava field portion the place feels completely unchanged, so I’ll start there…

  • Escort Magg across the lava fields
    I honestly don’t have any issues with the ‘intended’ changes — in practice, however, Magg’s AI makes him feel really stupid, as he repeatedly walked into the lava or just aggroed random mobs, causing whoever he was “following” to have to run forward/back, forward/back to get him to advance properly. Outside of that, I’m fine with the change. My original thought was that the proper way to do it would be to have one person with a fire extinguisher then everyone else killing mobs as we escorted magg along, but we honestly just couldn’t get him to follow us well enough for this strategy to work. If it’s at all possible, I personally think that would make the encounter a bit more engaging and feel more fluid. No expectations though!
  • Protect Magg while he sets the bomb
    I’m honestly not sure where all the whining is coming from here. I have run some very high dps groups, and I have never thought the proper way to do this was to actually kill all of the mobs, I’ve always assumed that the intention was to kill high dps output/low HP mobs (stalkers and potentially shadowblades come to mind) and ignore shadowlords and just properly avoid their damage, while interrupting the flamethrower cast on the other mob. As I said, I am specced into shadow arts pretty heavily so I’ve historically just ran into packs cloak and daggering to blind everything and keep mobs at bay.
  • Baelfire Encounter
    Since I’m capable of looking at the ground, seeing a big red circle, and moving out of it, I noticed absolutely no changes to this encounter. Not to sound (too)condescending, but perhaps if people are dying to this, they should look into an eye exam.
Darkwing [hug], Charr Thief | Charred [hug] – Charr Elementalist | Crystal Desert

(edited by afflaq.3947)

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Strill.2591

Strill.2591

The main thing I am seeing, is that people are upset that I took away their super profitable low risk, fast, token grind.

That’s not why I’m upset. I’m upset because the token system means you get nothing until you complete the same dungeon at least 7 times. Without CoF as a reliable token grind area, it’s that much harder to find four other people who all want to do any specific dungeon 7-50 times no matter which one it is. I could have 500 dungeon tokens and they’d be useless to me unless they were all from the same dungeon. That is a very frustrating system.

(edited by Strill.2591)

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Insanitybg.4217

Insanitybg.4217

I just want to say, that I love you Robert for what you did.
Everyone complains about difficulty, but when devs lower it, the new type of whine appears. That the game is for small kids now, that it’s too easy, that it used to be better. This happened in awful lot of older MMOs and people are still the same.
I thank you for this, because that speed run was ruining the dungeon runs for whole guilds. People were there all the time and we couldn’t form a group for anything else.
You saved my evenings with GW2.
Once again thanks. <3

oh please, ruined the dungeon for guilds ? If all you wannabe “pros” and"looking for a challange hurr durr" weren’t trying to look cool here you would have only done path 1 and 3 and leave 2 for the pugs…jeez it’s 1 path out of 3 lvl 80 dungeons which means 1/16 is easy (CM doesn’t count that thing is for 45 and the gear is for 70 people used it to lvl up).

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Aphix.9846

Aphix.9846

Hello Robert,

PLEASE listen to what I got to say and I hope many people agree with me.

For me, it’s not even about the changes that much, I know they were bug fixes or whatever. It takes a bit more coordination and skill to finish, takes about 10 minutes longer than before max. That’s fine. The dungeon itself is fine and good job on that.
The problem is that the dungeons even before this patch weren’t rewarding enough, now it just got worse.

But as I said and I completely Agree with ChairGraveyard, is that there is no reason, at all, for me to do CoF or any other dungeon. My character looks really good and I got the set pieces and weapons from dungeons which I wanted. At this point in time my necromancer is ‘perfect’. Endgame gear, weapons, 100% map etc. And PvE wise I got nothing left to do since dungeon are not worth finishing. They give tokens which I do not want, out of the chests I receive stupid amount of blue and green items. I gain about 10 silver per dungeon run. That’s it.

There should be a big reward for finishing explorable mode paths, for example me and my mates go in and finish all 4 paths in 1 go and in the end we get a chest containing some rare items like mini pets, rare dyes and those cool skin weapons which you get out of the Mystic Forge. Each dungeon would be different, so people would do all of them. Need that reward, not just tokens. Need that thrill of the loot. Where you never know what you’re gonna get.
For example those corrupted weapons and those weapons that glow in the dark or whatever, I don’t even know if they’re acquirable, but adding those kind of weapons or items as rewards for dungeons would be perfect and all I ask for.

Me and my 2 friends who all started to play GW2 since headstart are at a point where we put all our 20g into the Mystic Forge because we simply did not care anymore.
We literally have nothing left to do besides reroll or sPvP. That’s it. I have not played this game since this patch neither have my friends, we ran around Lion’s Arch for 2 hours this morning and after that we all closed the game.

Sorry for my english…

(edited by Aphix.9846)

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: XGhoul.7426

XGhoul.7426

I don’t think people are mad with the buffs to the dungeon, people are mad (and have been mad) of the bloated token amounts you need for 1 armor piece, reducing rewards → more grind. The problem you made when creating these paths is that not all paths for a dungeon are created equal, if 1 path takes you 30 mins and another takes 1-2hrs, obviously you are going to pick the shorter time, so dungeons have never been balanced when you released the game. Make a path 1-2hrs, but at least compensate my efforts for an increased token amount/xp/silver or I’m just wasting my time.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: hellokittyonline.7532

hellokittyonline.7532

You guys really need to change magg’s ai

he has down-syndrome..

and he is bugged, when you fail the event.

He would repeatedly run into lava without anyone doing anything.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: tonny.7580

tonny.7580

i one see u run this run agen
afflaq.3947 just to it now and it 75dungs

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Insanitybg.4217

Insanitybg.4217

Did you even test this fix yourself? I would love to see a video of the dev’s completing this part of CoF without suicide training.. If someone has completed this by actually killing the mobs please say so, I’d love to see just how many can pull it off as it’s “intended”

I just pugged CoF without suicide training, so please stop acting like because you can’t do it it’s impossible. After having done CoF (among others, I’m not some professional player but I have plenty of prior ‘raiding’ background and I’ve done most paths of explorables in this game working towards the dungeon master achievement) pretty extensively with a ‘best’ run of around 12 minutes, I wanted to experience the changes so started looking for a group. My experience/comments from the perspective of a dagger/dagger shadow arts treed thief:

Until the lava field portion the place feels completely unchanged, so I’ll start there…

  • Escort Magg across the lava fields
    I honestly don’t have any issues with the ‘intended’ changes — in practice, however, Magg’s AI makes him feel really stupid, as he repeatedly walked into the lava or just aggroed random mobs, causing whoever he was “following” to have to run forward/back, forward/back to get him to advance properly. Outside of that, I’m fine with the change. My original thought was that the proper way to do it would be to have one person with a fire extinguisher then everyone else killing mobs as we escorted magg along, but we honestly just couldn’t get him to follow us well enough for this strategy to work. If it’s at all possible, I personally think that would make the encounter a bit more engaging and feel more fluid. No expectations though!
  • Protect Magg while he sets the bomb
    I’m honestly not sure where all the whining is coming from here. I have run some very high dps groups, and I have never thought the proper way to do this was to actually kill all of the mobs, I’ve always assumed that the intention was to kill high dps output/low HP mobs (stalkers and potentially shadowblades come to mind) and ignore shadowlords and just properly avoid their damage, while interrupting the flamethrower cast on the other mob. As I said, I am specced into shadow arts pretty heavily so I’ve historically just ran into packs cloak and daggering to blind everything and keep mobs at bay.
  • Baelfire Encounter
    Since I’m capable of looking at the ground, seeing a big red circle, and moving out of it, I noticed absolutely no changes to this encounter. Not to sound (too)condescending, but perhaps if people are dying to this, they should look into an eye exam.

video or wannabe pro.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Takiwaki.5948

Takiwaki.5948

Rob, I am glad for the changes in difficulty but I believe what is causing “most” people to shy away, is that the token system does not really reward people for pushing through to the end of a dungeon path.

Finishing a path should yield something substantial that cannot be gained by doing a couple bosses for chests. I think an incentive to complete should be giving more that just an extra couple tokens.

xp and gold doesnt not really count as this is not something exclusive.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tearmatt.5410

Tearmatt.5410

I’m fine with the change of Lava/Magma Field but the door bombing part is abit frustrating specially for a party with no heavy armored class in it. we could clear it if the mobs that would spawn were not silver elites (i suggest to make them normal mobs) then just reverse the silver reward to what it was and increase token reward for first run to 50 then the rest of the other runs after the 1st to 30. problem solved.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: tonny.7580

tonny.7580

it now just spesiv class run class like engi, mess are f on thad path

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Isabella.5796

Isabella.5796

Did you even test this fix yourself? I would love to see a video of the dev’s completing this part of CoF without suicide training.. If someone has completed this by actually killing the mobs please say so, I’d love to see just how many can pull it off as it’s “intended”

I just pugged CoF without suicide training, so please stop acting like because you can’t do it it’s impossible. After having done CoF (among others, I’m not some professional player but I have plenty of prior ‘raiding’ background and I’ve done most paths of explorables in this game working towards the dungeon master achievement) pretty extensively with a ‘best’ run of around 12 minutes, I wanted to experience the changes so started looking for a group.

Cool story bro, first person I’ve heard to pull it off. So please share your wisdom if you think its so easy.. Do you not see countless others complaining? Or are you just too oblivious to see because its all ok for you? Have you seen the thousands of posts on this forum? I never complain ever, I love GW2 I really do. But this is the first time I’ve felt let down by poor mechanics in the game. So tell me exactly how you can pull off killing 20 elites in 2.5 minutes with 5 people. Video or it didn’t happen.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Sojou.2067

Sojou.2067

1. I made it so that Magg has to get to the other side of the Magma field and close to the magmacyte – not just a player. Magg not taking aggro from nearby enemies was a big reason for this issue to be resolved. By giving him aggro, and forcing you to escort him to the ending, I fixed what I considered to be a bug/exploit that I introduced through poor planning.

This is a terrible part of the dungeon to begin with. It’s not fun, it’s not enjoyable, nor it is interesting to participate in. Forcing the players to deal with exceptionally poor dungeon design by making them deal with the mechanics on an even increasingly high level of irritation is an even worse design philosophy.

2. I extended the time from 100 seconds to 200 seconds at the Door Buster event. I intended for you to fight those guys, not circle strafe them and aggro leash chain them. I also added 1 additional mob to the encounter at the very middle (a bow dude) to account for you now having twice the time to defeat the waves that come in.

Another terrible idea. All you’re doing is forcing wipe/run back mechanics on players instead of making the encounters challenging but entertaining.

I made this path hard, because it was easy. It’s an explorable dungeon path, and they should be hard. Wearing the flame legion armor set should be a symbol of what you went through to obtain something. It should mean something. Right now it means you did 40 speedruns in 2 days.

So now having a full suit means “I no-lifed the dungeons before they ruined them so I’m awesome and you’re SOL.”

Thanks.

I hope this helps a bit, but I understand you’re upset. For all it’s worth I’m sorry, and I hope we can move past this.

Move past it by ignoring this terrible explorable path? Brilliant choice in design there.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: tonny.7580

tonny.7580

and tearmatt is right becous there silver mobs on bomb part is to hard to kill them

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Nebilim.5127

Nebilim.5127

Thanks for posting robert, but the problem with magg bomb part is that you are just spawning 10 silver tier monsters out of thin air that 2 shot us. It is already hard and long enough to kill one, but you want us to kill 10 at once on a tight spot? haha. I would like to see such a video of someone achieving this.

Oh and there is a problem with AC as well. In ghost eater, sometimes an extra 5 ascalonian ghosts will respawn together with the other 4 making impossible to finish the mission. They all walk together and we have to deal with 2 sometimes even 4 Elementalists that 2 AOE shot us. And we were a group of level 80 people that knew what we were doing. It doesn’t happen all the time so i assume it is a bug.

The world is teeming with unnecessary people.
It is God’s decision that i fight.
As knight of honor, as protector of the sin. I sacrifice myself, for the blood of criminals.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Lyralei.5920

Lyralei.5920

Hey folks, I’ve been reading this thread for a bit and figured I’d come weigh in on things. I built this dungeon, and fixed the problem, so I’m going to come at you from the designer perspective on things to try and illuminate why I did what I did, and what exactly I did. It wasn’t made clear, and I apologize for that.
The main thing I am seeing, is that people are upset that I took away their super profitable low risk, fast, token grind. I did not go into this thinking everyone would be happy with my changes – I knew I would be upsetting people because I was taking away a super easy speed-run money printer.
I took it away for a few reasons – chief among them being what I feel is taking advantage of a couple bugs found in the same chain, and our leashing/aggro system. I played with groups who did this, and watched you-tube clips of what was going on. The problems I identified with the speed run aspect of this are as follows:
1. You just need 1 person to get to the magmacyte across the magma field. This will cause an invulnerable Magg to run across the entire field through mobs and progress the dungeon. Then this person teleports back.
2. Instead of fighting the enemies in a timed event at he door buster, you just circle strafe them or leash aggro them to “kill the clock” since it was only a 100 second timer on the event.
3. Final Boss encounter isn’t threatening.
So what did I do?
1. I made it so that Magg has to get to the other side of the Magma field and close to the magmacyte – not just a player. Magg not taking aggro from nearby enemies was a big reason for this issue to be resolved. By giving him aggro, and forcing you to escort him to the ending, I fixed what I considered to be a bug/exploit that I introduced through poor planning.
2. I extended the time from 100 seconds to 200 seconds at the Door Buster event. I intended for you to fight those guys, not circle strafe them and aggro leash chain them. I also added 1 additional mob to the encounter at the very middle (a bow dude) to account for you now having twice the time to defeat the waves that come in.
3. I made the fireballs hurt more. Not greatly more – they’ll do about 3-4k damage to a DPS focused player, but you should have anywhere between 15k-25k HP, so there’s a bit of wiggle room for error.

I made this path hard, because it was easy. It’s an explorable dungeon path, and they should be hard. Wearing the flame legion armor set should be a symbol of what you went through to obtain something. It should mean something. Right now it means you did 40 speedruns in 2 days.
I hope this helps a bit, but I understand you’re upset. For all it’s worth I’m sorry, and I hope we can move past this.

Having tested the run more recently, I can confirm that the Magg option is currently at the appropriate difficulty tier. My group and I completed the run with minimal issues and minimal deaths. The Door Buster event is completely doable, even with kiting so long as the smokelords are killed first.

It is worth noting that however, we are fully geared to the teeth (and are very very experienced with CoF) and the smoke lords are still overtuned in terms of damage. I am fine with their current damage, but their attacks either need to be slower and/or telegraphed better.

As usual, the Devourer Room and the Bomb Timer Room are of no issue. Clearing the Magmacyte room requires some form of aggro diversion (via summons possibly) or very fast DPS. We chose to utilize aggro diversion or draw aggro ourselves while maintaining steady damage mitigation as we went across using 1 extinguisher and 4 players to control mobs.

The Door Buster room is simply a matter of controlling the mobs during the first 50%. In this specific order do the mobs need to be taken out: Smokelord -> Rangers -> Elementalist (Firestorm/Fanatics). Shadowblades are a waste of time and should be crippled. When you hit 85%, the remaining fight will just be a matter of damage mitigation and surviving.

Boss fight is no more different than how I did it pre-patch. Any decent squad will take down the flame in two rotations of acolytes.

That’s all I have to say on the matter. At first, I thought that the changes were quite ridiculous, but after having done it (twice, with no failure), I don’t really see a problem with the changes. I would however propose increasing the reward gain so as to incentivize running the dungeons, moreso if all three options are chosen as currently it really penalizes some of the more unfortunate players.

P.S: Does this mean the waves spawn in longer intervals now? NO WONDER it felt easier just killing them..

(edited by Lyralei.5920)

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tron.2189

Tron.2189

Thank you for this explanation Robert Hrouda, which you really didn’t needed to do. Ignore the QQ’ers.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Tear.9471

Tear.9471

oh please, ruined the dungeon for guilds ? If all you wannabe “pros” and"looking for a challange hurr durr" weren’t trying to look cool here you would have only done path 1 and 3 and leave 2 for the pugs…jeez it’s 1 path out of 3 lvl 80 dungeons which means 1/16 is easy (CM doesn’t count that thing is for 45 and the gear is for 70 people used it to lvl up).

Oh I’m so big wannabe pro. Look at my char, my char is amazing.

Anyway all you grinders and farmers are just running CoF, hence guildies from these ranks did the same. And me and few of other guild mates couldn’t find party for anything else. This is a relief.
Also I could care less about PUGs, when it’s ruining guild runs.
If you don’t want a challenge and you lack skill, then think about playing something easier.

Jeez all these whiners ruining one game after another.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: afflaq.3947

afflaq.3947

Did you even test this fix yourself? I would love to see a video of the dev’s completing this part of CoF without suicide training.. If someone has completed this by actually killing the mobs please say so, I’d love to see just how many can pull it off as it’s “intended”

I just pugged CoF without suicide training, so please stop acting like because you can’t do it it’s impossible. After having done CoF (among others, I’m not some professional player but I have plenty of prior ‘raiding’ background and I’ve done most paths of explorables in this game working towards the dungeon master achievement) pretty extensively with a ‘best’ run of around 12 minutes, I wanted to experience the changes so started looking for a group.

Cool story bro, first person I’ve heard to pull it off. So please share your wisdom if you think its so easy.. Do you not see countless others complaining? Or are you just too oblivious to see because its all ok for you? Have you seen the thousands of posts on this forum? I never complain ever, I love GW2 I really do. But this is the first time I’ve felt let down by poor mechanics in the game. So tell me exactly how you can pull off killing 20 elites in 2.5 minutes with 5 people. Video or it didn’t happen.

yes I’m the FIRST person out of the hundreds of thousands of playing to pull it off, I’m sure (edit: this is sarcasm before you actually take that seriously and think I’m talking about how amazing I am. To clarify, I’m not saying I’m great, I’m saying that I’m average and you are either a) whining because you can’t have free loot anymore, b) trolling, c) less than average). Countless others complaining happens anytime there’s a buff to difficulty or you take away something that’s ridiculously easy from people. I said before that I never thought the intention was to kill the elites – I also said that even with high dps groups we’ve never been able to keep up with the spawnrates so my assumption was that you were SUPPOSED to kite. Maybe the fact that you can’t read and comprehend what I typed is part of the reason you can’t finish CoF now.

Darkwing [hug], Charr Thief | Charred [hug] – Charr Elementalist | Crystal Desert

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: KSops.2846

KSops.2846

I haven’t touched the dungeon yet, so I can’t really comment much on the changes made to it. However, I think something that should be considered is the lack of constructive criticism and the excessive amount of discontent there is. If you’ve played GW1 for any amount of time, you’ll know that they have a strong iterative design process and they continue to re-assess and fix things they feel are wrong. ANet reads through the forum and flooding this with anything but constructive criticism delays the process. Likely, since the original problem is effectively damaging the quality of the game, the fix that was made should likely be viewed as an emergency patch to prevent token farming. As with any live product, there’s priority and emergency calls that have to be made. I highly doubt Robert’s design justifications are anything close to the final state of the dungeon, but more of a temporary fix until the content can become meaningful.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: importune.7120

importune.7120

Yeah, bottom line is they’re doing a great job. We’re all just so needy.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Insanitybg.4217

Insanitybg.4217

And me and few of other guild mates couldn’t find party for anything else. This is a relief.
Also I could care less about PUGs, when it’s ruining guild runs.
If you don’t want a challenge and you lack skill, then think about playing something easier.

Jeez all these whiners ruining one game after another.

So you’re saying that ALL of your guildies are less than 5 people then.If you don’t want pugs don’t join em, do your guild runs with yourkittenguild on the harder paths, we had ONE easy path and they removed it,since all the chat recruits were going this route it shows how many people want it easy, you are the minority here.

(edited by Insanitybg.4217)

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: dardor.9508

dardor.9508

Robert’s post just makes it sound like a disgruntled developer “fixed” his code so that players could no longer play his content.

The issue with CoF (if there was any at all…to be honest, CoF was the most enjoyable dungeon I’ve run) was never the bomb planting event. Like Robert said, it was the escorting Magg through the lava fields part along with ease of fighting the four acolytes and Gaheron at the end.

Buffing the bomb planting event only feels like a vindictive jab at the players who already didn’t have the damage output to cope with the extremely high number of elites spawning, which forced them to kite in the first place.

And finally, if you want to fix Magg not following players through the lava field, at least make it so that he routes through in a semi-intelligent manner. Last run we had a part where he ran INTO the lava, promptly died, and res’ing him was impossible (due to the ridiculous amount of damage he was taking from the lava) without the use of TWO guardians’ Signets of Mercy. I seriously doubt that this is an example of a dungeon that can be run by a casual group of players.

Finally, reducing the amount of rewards to the pittance that they are now is just punishing players for even doing dungeons at all. If anything I would have reduced the exp reward, not the amount of money given.

Game day is 12:00 AM GMT to 11:59 PM GMT. Nothing resets in between those times!

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Kogasa Tatara.1409

Kogasa Tatara.1409

This is quickly going downhill into a mess of arguments between players, one party saying it’s too hard so they kite/ignore/bug out the guys while the other party say it’s doable as long as you kill a bunch of squishy DPSes and kite the rest because the rest is a waste of time and effort to fight.

Can we not just all agree that you can’t fight them head to head and need kiting regardless? Just that one solution is to take down DPSes so that kiting becomes easier/managable.

(It still feels a bit silly to me, though. In Sorrow’s Furnance back in GW1, those guys would be using Signet of Resurrection on their allies and showing you the best trollface in game.)

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: uller.6528

uller.6528

Robert this is for you:
Interesting Duengon fun instance. I have never done any other path. Why you ask I could do many things with 2hours of my time. People told me it was speed the other paths take to long. Your ideas are out dated with the GW2.

The reason is this there is no dedicated tank or healer this game is different. Making some classes forced to heal or forced agro pulling is just not what I though GW2 was. Your explanations leave a lot to think of. The fact that Magg now agro even more than he was and the mobs don’t despawn harsh with a fast respawn rate just silly(add healer you pass). With the bomb room it was hard to live as you made it for a tank healer combo in that room not for say 2 rangers 1 necro and 2 thiefs. Making he trimmer longer and adding more mobs is not a fix it’s a I screwed up and don’t know what to change. Why not slow them to attack Magg more lose agro on players easier if you want us to fight them. The kite stragity was done simply because the amount of damage is harsh. The last boss I can’t complain.

You should rethink How your limitations on instance money making will affect the non early start players and casual crowd. There are was to make money but this is a mmo with few was to get tier armor if not crafted. Your making this fun for some and harsh for some. I like some changes not all nerf to money ok but a better option can be found.

Your a dev thanks for posting to the forum here but there really needs to be a formal explanation as to what’s going on with this. I don’t like the carrot stick method you chose for how the instance was changed or how you reported it to population. Your method was more shotgun and chick pea.

We can move past this when a better way of explaining why if a change was needed and a heads up so people can digest the news. We are human and change is hard to take at times.

Ol Crusty Gamer :P

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: TemperHoof.6438

TemperHoof.6438

More Dungeons need to be like how Citadel of Flame was before the buff, not the other way around.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Insanitybg.4217

Insanitybg.4217

Nearly everybody was doing path 2 because it was fast and easy, we always had the option of doing 1 and 3, it goes to show that people didn’t want harder content so why go against the majority of the players?The real problem is still here: the repetitive grind.
Instead of making the rewards better you made this require way more effort for the same reward, bad solution (if it even counts as one).

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Wayfinder.8452

Wayfinder.8452

Thanks Robert !

The man who can wield the power of this sword can summon to him an army
more deadly than any that walks this earth. Put aside the Ranger.
Become who you were born to be. I give hope to men. I keep none for myself.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: fortytwo.3485

fortytwo.3485

I’m sorry Robert i don’t see your point at all.

I Agree with Vorpal.4683 and Crucifer.2831 posts.

I think you can make gear something hard to get, or make it a grind to get. However you can’t make it a grind and D3 Inferno hard.

Fine make all explorable mode dungeons 1 hour along , Then atleast put in RnG to drop exotic gear. That way we only use tokens to gear our missing slots.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Truearrow.3527

Truearrow.3527

You all are wasting your time QQing about this, you’ve already given them your $60 you think Anet cares about anything else? It was like this in the first game.

Embrace the Evil [TIE][PYRO] Maguuma

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Dr Ritter.1327

Dr Ritter.1327

Reduce the token cost of armor slightly and add in a gold cost so the grind isn’t so annoying with this dungeon run cap

The Paragon
[KICK] You’re out of the Guild
#beastgate

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Zay.6357

Zay.6357

Nearly everybody was doing path 2 because it was fast and easy, we always had the option of doing 1 and 3, it goes to show that people didn’t want harder content so why go against the majority of the players?The real problem is still here: the repetitive grind.
Instead of making the rewards better you made this require way more effort for the same reward, bad solution (if it even counts as one).

Actually I tried to do path 1 once. The final boss on it is so absolutely hilariously overtuned. He spawns 25 Searing Crystals that have like 5k or so health, and each one gives him a stack of regen. He respawns them at LEAST every 15 seconds. And they also land on you and knock you back, with less than a seconds worth of time to dodge. Fun!

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Suddle D.9412

Suddle D.9412

So why not increase the rewards for making it through a “harder” dungeon instead of nerfing them? Seems to me like we should get more tokens and silver as reward for finishing now, and not less. That means less grinding, but still rewarding for the gear you will eventually be able to afford.

The CoF Buff: My opinions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: frOst.2198

frOst.2198

Reduce the token cost of armor slightly and add in a gold cost so the grind isn’t so annoying with this dungeon run cap

I think the majority agree that the old ‘time required’ to grind the exotic set was about right.

It was roughly 62 (averaged 5 runs a day with +10 bonus added in) runs that ranged from 20-30 minutes a piece.

Assuming each run was essentially flawless, it would take roughly 26 hours of actually being INSIDE the dungeon playing (discounting forming groups, disbanding, finding replacement players).

This is a SERIOUS time commitment no matter how you swing it.

So, if it takes twice as long to complete the dungeon, the tokens required should be cut by half to compensate.

26 hours of running the SAME dungeon (whether its 1,2,or3 part), is the limit players are willing to repeat the same dungeon.

As a DEV, you need to understand that.