Guild Wars 2

From a design aspect, I can understand what was done. No one likes to do the other dungeons because they are much harder and less cost effective (and honestly not that much fun). However, realistically, it was not the proper action to be taken. CoF Magg was being done because it was one of the runs that was doable considering GW2 does not emphasize the need for roles in PvE content (I.E. Tank Healer and DPS). Without a real clear threat system most of the PvE content is based around the players ability to deal damage, avoid taking damage, and work with the mechanics that are presented for each pull. Unless ANet intends to do away with that method and require groups to have certain class combinations to complete them, the content will almost always have to be easier otherwise you will unavoidably have to force players into certain roles and specs to maximize their potential with that class.

I personally enjoyed being able to do an instance that was both thematically cool and relatively challenging until you learned the mechanics without ever having to worry about what classes I brought with me. As far as I can tell with these changes, Magg runs are almost not doable unless you have a very skilled and geared group who use specific classes and builds to maximize damage and survivability.

@ Robert

Just want to say, apart from any critiques in favor or against your changes, I really appreciate the feedback. It is really awesome to get that sort of detailed analysis and I hope that the rude players don’t discourage you (it is a gaming forum after all) from continuing to do so in the future.

I’m really enjoying this game. I’m a serious casual / casually serious player and the game is 9/10 for me and I’ll be playing it for a while. Love the attention to detail and feedback like this so PLEASE keep it up! (Don’t blow it like Blizzard).

@ Zerrok: I’m also bilingual, and I can guarantee you that if I were writing in my non-native language that I wouldn’t be spouting off like an kitten. You might have valid points (maybe) but kitten like this:

“Upload a video of you and a random group, running through the dungeon WITHOUT any exotic gear, first then will u have my permission to talk back.”

is just unacceptable.

Who the kitten do you think you are? Seriously? Seriously….

Grow up.

Kitten kittens man….

*Btw: loving the kitten filter

frOst.2198:

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.

QFT.

I have a fairly long post complaining about Anet inconsistencies on another thread. To be fair everything you have said here is true and I fully agree with you (op).

I am already behind my friends and was trying to catch-up this is now a near impossible task and I border-line hate the company for making it so.

Does this developer even know that you get downgraded to level 75 for this dungeon?

What a joke. 15k-25k hp? Not even close. As an elementalist with 5/6 of the level 80 exotic gear FROM THE DUNGEON, I am at ~12k. That’s a pretty major difference for balance, and one that a developer shouldkittenwell know when altering the balance of a zone.

I could care less about the silver that came from completing the zone, but the time investment for obtaining a full set of dungeon gear is severely out of line with other exotics.

Surprising and disappointing that a developer would not know these things.

Deleted…logical fallacy in my argument. Doh.

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

Have you even read the thread?? Or do you have your head so far up Anet’s backside that you have no idea whats happening, people are complaining about the lack of rewards for clearing dungeons within a respectable amount of time and consequently being good at the game, their also complaining about how it takes 90+ runs to get a full gear set in an MMO that was sold on “were getting rid of the grind” and has more grind than most Japanese MMO’s, challenging dungeons are fine, no one is disputing that, but the fact they can take upto 2 hours a run for little to no reward and be that hard is ridiculous.

Their also complaining about the patch that “fixed” these speedruns have done nothing but make the route nigh on impossible to do, including that it’s added a ton of bugs to that route as well.

Also @Robert where in the blue hell did you get 15k-25k health?!?! I’m in full exotics as an Ele and I’m barely scraping 13k in dungeons, let alone being put down to 75 for CoF, do your research dude.

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

My problem isn’t with fixing the issues with CoF #2. It’s that now ALL DUNGEONS are worthless to do. They gave you poor loot and money before, and now the only one that was even semi-worth running is also not worth it any more.

These changes will just serve to make people avoid dungeons. And with the anti-farming system making in-world play basically pointless for more than 10 minute chunks, there is very little left to do in the game.

This, a thousand times.

I have no troubles going back to Guild Wars(or even wow) again if GW2 goes to sh-it, which it is actually converging to, faster and faster every day. Get your sh-it together.

I work in software development and we employ a common practice called ‘Acceptance Testing’.

During acceptance testing we ask our testers and designers quite a few questions, most importantly:

1. Are the features/changes implemented working as intended?

and

2. Does this feature/change make our product better?

The resounding answer to both questions from your customer base (your most important testers) has been NO. This not only leaves me in doubt about your execution principles, but more importantly leaves me in doubt about whether or not Arena Net is going to deliver a product that I want to continue to use (which I’ve already paid for).

nickzed.6380:

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun.

Actually, I find earning awesome gear by fighting monsters to be fun. Just like how when I go to work I sometimes want to shoot myself, but I find “working” to be a very rewarding feeling overall. If people lose that, we’re done for.

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

You fail to see the point. They were having fun in the dungeons. Their fun has been ruined.

The events in the high-level areas are almost all bugged to complete brokenness at the moment. There is almost NO fun to be had in the LVL 80 area. Hardly any events at all (and the ones that do happen are mostly completely broken or hung at the moment), skillpoints are bugged to heck and back (I still can’t complete 75-80, and lvl 80 zones), and everyone just standing around farming random mobs. It’s idiocy, and it’s completely boring.

I don’t care what world you live in…that is NOT fun.

So AN kills off one aspect of the game that everyone found fun….and they’re left with what? TOR? I sure hope not.

conquista :O.

Maybe it’s just me, But I don’t think “working” for something that sucks is good design, sorry.

Buff the dungeon sets and then maybe you’d have good reasoning

I’m sitting on full zerks, exotic trinket set, guild backpack, mystic rifle, and alot of crit damage/power/ precision enchants.

I would never wan’t to grind a dungeon set if I don’t particularly like the look or if the stats weren’t even that good.

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

Late breaking news: Your idea of fun is in the minority. The rest of us want a real challenge, dynamic content, something that doesn’t need to be repeated 70 times.

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

While I agree with your post, it should also be noted that simply “having fun” is not what a game is always all about. In a single player game? Maybe. In a MMO? Not so much.

Certain things some may consider shallow, such as prestige and looks, contribute towards an idividual’s notion of fun. Not to mention, your performance. Esp. in this game, where you have WvW. Your gear and your performance play a huge part in WvW, seeing as the better your server does, the more benefits you get for everyone, helping them as they have fun.

Props to the devs on this one.

I wish more people played the original GW so they know exactly the philosophy of Anet. Elite gear was always just for show, it was there for people to get who were more than just casual passersby.

I understand people are used to playing other MMOs with a different mindset and style but GW2 is totally different in the approach.

Also being rewarded for a job well done, is part of the fun in any game. doing content for no apparent gain will never work in any mmo, especially if it is supposed to be the most challenging thing in the game, then its supposed to be the most rewarding.

Even in GW1 getting through a dungeon to the end meant “for example” unlocking the craft npc in order to gain FoE armor. The challenge is great but when there is no apparent reason to push to the end like I have been saying before. It really means nothing.

We can do the dungeons for fun for sure, but what happens when we are able to complete it? do it again for fun? makes no sense at all. The issue is the reward system in place its directly contradicting the entire premise of a dungeon supposedly being done for fun and a challenge.

I played GW1 for years upon years, and to me this is totally contradictory to what it represented.

Robert & Devs…

You are wrong.

This buff does not make wearing flame legion armor… “mean something. Right now it means you did 40 speedruns in 2 days”.

This buff means… you got to 80 faster than 50% of the population, you farmed CoF the easy way for exotic gear, and now you get to laugh at everyone just hitting 80 that didn’t get to.

I was happy when you fixed exploits and banned people for using them. So if these were exploits ban everyone who farmed them, or un-nerf this and let the folks that didn’t rush have the same opportunity.

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

Yet the problem people are facing is that now they must ‘work’ to be able to enjoy themselves. I run a business, I then come home cook my and my partners dinner, often play a game. I should not have to ‘work’ in my ‘personal time in game’ just to be able to afford to enjoy myself. I worked to buy the game in real life!

And don’t use the argument that I can do other things to fund myself, I enjoy doing certain things so I do them. Besides many other ways to earn money are broken in this game.

I also play the most popular online game in the world (League of Legends) they let me spend my real money when I really want to and not when I don’t.

As they say in the Matrix “the problem is choice”.

Mulitplex.2017:

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

Late breaking news: Your idea of fun is in the minority. The rest of us want a real challenge, dynamic content, something that doesn’t need to be repeated 70 times.

Late breaking news: “Majority” and “Minority” are not terms used here. That’s WoW speak you’re talking. You know what I’m talking about? How the “Majority” of players completely destroyed an A+ game?

Takiwaki.5948:

Also being rewarded for a job well done, is part of the fun in any game. doing content for no apparent gain will never work in any mmo, especially if it is supposed to be the most challenging thing in the game, then its supposed to be the most rewarding.

Even in GW1 getting through a dungeon to the end meant “for example” unlocking the craft npc in order to gain FoE armor. The challenge is great but when there is no apparent reason to push to the end like I have been saying before. It really means nothing.

We can do the dungeons for fun for sure, but what happens when we are able to complete it? do it again for fun? makes no sense at all.

except it’s not. You could farm in orr and make hella more profits than you can in a dungeon.

Dungeon pay out (and chests in general) are pathetic with their rewards.

and if you like the look of a certain set (which is entirely subjective because I hate the look of all of them) You need a transmutaion stone which you either have to luck out on, or buy from the cash shop to combine it with items with better stats.

Why not make your gear based on looks achievable through better means.

Like for example, I worked my behind off at the WvW Puzzle and I didn’t get much of kitten for completing it. Why not give me a title like “Obsidian conqueror” Or armor like the Guild items where I can transmute my stuff without using transmutation stones

Borked.6824:

Late breaking news: “Majority” and “Minority” are not terms used here. That’s WoW speak you’re talking. You know what I’m talking about? How the “Majority” of players completely destroyed an A+ game?

I just used that term here and it was properly applied as well.

I don’t know anything about WoW my friend, I’ve never played it. I’ve spent my time from EQ1 onward playing MMOs and I can tell you that only a minority of players agree with the poster I quoted.

Any other bits of my vernacular that you’d like to pointlessly attack? Maybe you could join a few other posters here and tell us how “hard” CoF is and how much “skill” it takes?

Tigger.8035:

Takiwaki.5948:

Also being rewarded for a job well done, is part of the fun in any game. doing content for no apparent gain will never work in any mmo, especially if it is supposed to be the most challenging thing in the game, then its supposed to be the most rewarding.

Even in GW1 getting through a dungeon to the end meant “for example” unlocking the craft npc in order to gain FoE armor. The challenge is great but when there is no apparent reason to push to the end like I have been saying before. It really means nothing.

We can do the dungeons for fun for sure, but what happens when we are able to complete it? do it again for fun? makes no sense at all.

except it’s not. You could farm in orr and make hella more profits than you can in a dungeon.

and if you like the look of a certain set (which is entirely subjective because I hate the look of all of them) You need a transmutaion stone which you either have to luck out on, or buy from the cash shop to combine it with items with better stats.

Again rewarding is subjective some people mean gold some mean equipment skins, and you are right its not the most rewarding thats the point. The effort put in does not match the reward. To me farming gold and profit does not mean reward, thats something we earn and not really a challenge

Robert Hrouda.1327:

-snipped to meet maximum post size-

Most of this sounds great, but it just doesn’t work out as well in some cases as you intended.

Here’s my experience running this dungeon as an Elementalist right after the patch.

1. Didn’t know that, my whole party just ran across, event went fine, I really don’t see a reason to complain about this.

2. Yeah well, we still just circle kite them, only it’s crazy hard and long now. I’d love to see the timer reduced to like, 160 seconds or make the mob waves easier to kill. My party wiped on this repeatedly trying to kill the mobs before we gave up on that kitten and realized it was far easier to just run in a circle for 200 seconds.

3. Dude, I have barely 16k(12-13k in CoF if I remember correctly) HP as a full defense spec (30 earth, 30 water) Elementalist with all tank armor(our server has a +8% HP buff atm too). I have 6/6 knights feathered green quality armor, with the +20vit/etc/etc shaman things on each piece. The fireballs are still absolutely brutal and will completely destroy me if I’m not on my toes about dodging them, which I don’t have a huge problem with, but this is up from them just insta popping me before, and with all this defense so that I can reasonably survive this dungeon, it makes it really hard to deal any damage.

Now this may be more of a class balance issue than an issue with your dungeon, but I just want to point out that you aren’t entirely correct in assuming these won’t melt the face off of a dps focused character. If I was built full glass cannon I would melt like an icicle in a vat of lava when faced with those fireballs.

Last boss fight still feels like the least threatening part, but it was really really fun, so I’ll give you props there.

Things I like from the dungeon:
-High Damage keeps you on your toes
-Pretty cool boss fight design
-Good variance in play strategies needed for different fights.

Things I dislike in the dungeon:
-Getting insta killed by overlapping AoEs.
-Dying due to some variety of stunlock/root (inb4 stunbreakers— abilities have cooldowns, and you have to make some sacrificies somewhere. I play with mist form and can cleanse out of things by swapping to water, but you still just get kitten over with no options for escape sometimes).
-Slow progression due to extremely high mob HP.
-Lack of reward.

Overall, it gave me a good impression of how dungeons are done in guild wars, but I won’t be doing any more of them any time soon because I don’t fancy grinding out a huge number of dungeon runs on a really slow dungeon where I just get stuck with dying a fair amount regardless of how well I play it, especially when my only reward is cosmetics for my armor.

Some of these issues need some general game patches to fix, but I think you could improve the dungeon experience itself a good bit.

Mulitplex.2017:

Borked.6824:

Late breaking news: “Majority” and “Minority” are not terms used here. That’s WoW speak you’re talking. You know what I’m talking about? How the “Majority” of players completely destroyed an A+ game?

I just used that term here and it was properly applied as well.

I don’t know anything about WoW my friend, I’ve never played it. I’ve spent my time from EQ1 onward playing MMOs and I can tell you that only a minority of players agree with the poster I quoted.

Any other bits of my vernacular that you’d like to pointlessly attack? Maybe you could join a few other posters here and tell us how “hard” CoF is and how much “skill” it takes?

It’s not our job or out obligation to say what the majority and the minority are supposed to do. I’m just getting tired of everyone evaluating MMOs as if they were the owners of the company or something. The developers will decide for themselves who they want to listen to. If they want to listen to the minority of their players, so sure as hell have the right to.

Borked.6824:

It’s not our job or out obligation to say what the majority and the minority are supposed to do. I’m just getting tired of everyone evaluating MMOs as if they were the owners of the company or something. The developers will decide for themselves who they want to listen to. If they want to listen to the minority of their players, so sure as hell have the right to.

The developers usually do whatever turns a profit and profit for GW2 at this point is keeping player interest (and generally happyiness) high for future content and buying gems.

They definitely made a wrong turn here.

The model they’re using is severely outdated.

In truth, the masses don’t wan’t difficulty. They just want substance/content

Mulitplex.2017:

Borked.6824:

It’s not our job or out obligation to say what the majority and the minority are supposed to do. I’m just getting tired of everyone evaluating MMOs as if they were the owners of the company or something. The developers will decide for themselves who they want to listen to. If they want to listen to the minority of their players, so sure as hell have the right to.

The developers usually do whatever turns a profit and profit for GW2 at this point is keeping player interest (and generally happyiness) high for future content and buying gems.

They definitely made a wrong turn here.

My biggest worry here is that GW2 has a questionable “endgame” to keep players interested as it stands. Killing the enjoy-ability of the little bit that it DID have, is probably a bad idea…

Borked.6824:

Mulitplex.2017:

Borked.6824:

Late breaking news: “Majority” and “Minority” are not terms used here. That’s WoW speak you’re talking. You know what I’m talking about? How the “Majority” of players completely destroyed an A+ game?

I just used that term here and it was properly applied as well.

I don’t know anything about WoW my friend, I’ve never played it. I’ve spent my time from EQ1 onward playing MMOs and I can tell you that only a minority of players agree with the poster I quoted.

Any other bits of my vernacular that you’d like to pointlessly attack? Maybe you could join a few other posters here and tell us how “hard” CoF is and how much “skill” it takes?

It’s not our job or out obligation to say what the majority and the minority are supposed to do. I’m just getting tired of everyone evaluating MMOs as if they were the owners of the company or something. The developers will decide for themselves who they want to listen to. If they want to listen to the minority of their players, so sure as hell have the right to.

sure they have the right to listen to them. But where does it get them? In the same boat as SWtOR. This will get them nowhere. They are digging a hole for themselves. Listen to the majority. All the people on this forum want the game to succeed. Otherwise they wouldn’t be taking time out of their day to comment on the forums to begin with. Listen to the people speaking the truth. Swallow your pride Anet, and own up to your mistakes. You can not release untested content patches. That is first grade stuff. Do not wrongfully punish your community, and then delete comments that call you out on it.

The problem is, most of these dungeons are over tuned in general. Bad aggro/pathfinding/healing mechanics make alot of encounters feel hella random too, like you have very little control over the outcome.

This is a real turn-off to non-hardcore players. Grinding these dungeons for tokens, which you need a TON of kind of sucks already, but grinding dungeons that take a long time to complete is significantly worse.

The defend mag room buff was handled poorly. You should test wheither or not you can kill these mobs with a legitimate group (you can’t). Its a kiting event due to the sheer amount of hp you have to cut through and the damage you will take, sorry. This isn’t the only kiting event in the game, AC expo route 3 has a similar one, and if you said you were supposed to kill all those burrows and defend the 2 points from being attacked i would question your sanity. Its ok to have a kiting event, but having one where your designed to die, and “zombie rush” it to stall is poor design. If you want people to kill those mobs that spawn then you need to 1.) fix healing system in this game 2.) fix damage reduction methods in this game 3.) lower hp of the elites that spawn. 4.) fix aggro system in this game.

It was the only dungeon I enjoyed. Everything else is mind numbingly frustrating.

I hope you are still reading this thread, Robert, because I have some good feedback for the changes in the new dungeon from what I’ve currently tried to achieve.

I only made it as far as the lava walk portion of this dungeon line due to the frustration of trying to walk an AI across a lavafield that he prefers to stand in more than walk on the rocks with the people who are supposed to be assisting him.

The AI of Magg during this portion of the event does not fit correctly to the task at hand. You are trying to get across this portion of lava as fast as possible judging by the speed at which the mobs respawn, and the fire patches re-igniting. You simply cannot stand still long or you will be fighting over the same hot fire for eternity. So one would assume you would just need to be sure to clear the mobs in the path quickly and move forward as safely and as quickly as possible. This is an impossibility with the AI currently coded into him. Magg has an aggro radius of a dragon and will shoot mobs way beyond the mob aggro radius. He need to be configured to fire only when fired upon and nothing else.

On to suggestion two: Previous bugs in this area prevent a correction upon a simple mistake (more than likely caused by point 1 in my rant). If you die to one of the fire patches, the fire continues to damage your ‘Health bar’/‘Rez bar’ even when dead. Magg died in a fire patch and the only 2 people with extinguishers died. I survived long enough to get a warrior back up but Magg is stuck now in the middle of a fire patch. Even if we could survive 1 at a time long enough to rez him, it is an impossibility due to his health burning faster than we can apply resurrection. The only way to get around this is to walk way back to the start to have him revive himself (half the time you hear his death cry constantly because he cannot break free from his own dumb AI to teleport back and reset.

We’ve gotten him to the magmacite, beyond all mobs aggro to have him die. We ressurect him to get him on his feet and he aggros the two slimes at the start of the lava field.

Problem 3: When you die, the nearest waypoint at this point is the start of the zone. The waypoint above the ‘bomb maze’ from the previous phase should activate, not after the lava field.

It is ridiculous at this point to even think that the next part of this dungeon is an impossible survival. Rather than upping the duration of the phase for planting the bomb, it merely should have been configured so it is possible to run the intended way. If, and a big if here, we were originally intended to kill these waves upon waves of mobs with thousands of HP. How are we intended to do the same impossible feat with twice the duration, and twice the mobs? You don’t solve a problem of people running mobs around forever and bypassing your combat, you perform a change that forces them to fight. “Well, Steve, they just run around the mobs until the event ends…” “We’ll just multiply it all! Two times the mobs and two times the duration!” To me that makes me want to attempt to kite 2x as long not try and fight my assailants.

Another part of the game that reminds me of this impossible feat is on the flying boat during Arah story. There is a limit to on the DPS a group can put out, especially if you want to build survival to live through a hit.

Anyway….Besides the problems with the dungeon and bugs, I figured I would suggest something that should have been done in the first place in my opinion and that is each dungeon path should be rated on difficulty. Path 1 should be easy, path 2 should be medium, and 3 should be difficult. Throw in path 4 for insane for good measure. Each path should reward based on difficulty. 1 nets 10 marks, 2 nets 15, 3 gives 20, and 4 gives 30 if you can manage it. Make chests have chances to drop dyes only available in that respective story arc, gear with models only found in that chest from that mob. The possibilities you have at your disposal is pretty high up there.

edit: I wanted to emphasize the point that increasing difficulty should not necessarily increase the frustration caused by the zone. Adding more bugs does not increase difficulty, it merely adds frustration and leads to less fun for the player. Difficulty can be overcome with skill and practice, There is no practice for bugs and impossibility.

I understand the Dev’s had to make a change fast because it was pretty game breaking, but halting the process in its tracks and making things impossible is the wrong step to take.

I hope this post finds its way to the right people and I hope they give some good feedback.

Thank you for your time and I await your feedback.

—Doomfael

I’m fine with dungeons being hard. But, people want to farm for gear even if its just for looks. You can’t make things take forever to get so that it requires farming and then put in anti-farming code.

Just like you can’t make dungeons really hard but still make it take 7 to 8 runs to get ONE piece of gear and then punish people for running it multiple times in a row. What sense does that make? Like i said, make dungeons hard, but make it take 4 runs to get one piece of gear and don’t punish me for running it more than once in a row.

It’s common sense people(Anet)

i like how they dev’s dont want you to grind but make everything cost so much thats all you can do. mm 2-4 silver just to port somewhere on the same map, over 1k tokens to get the set i want yet u tell me i shouldn’t be speed running a dungeon (CoF), while other dungeons have appalling looking armors.. repairs that cost a ton. crafting that costs a ton…lol no. you get about 20 tokens in 1 run and need 330 for a shirt. it already was not fun grinding, now its just lol….. oh btw the 26S u got from completing CoF was not a revolutionary gold farm considering it cost like 15 silver to repair your armor. which i had to do every single run.

now we all know that cof was going to get nerfed , i even told my friend to start doing some runs before they nerf it , and i gave you guys a week before it happened. it happened in 4 days from when i said . this obviously brings cof back into line with the rest of the dungeons. any exp player should have seen it coming so you guys shouldnt really be whining about it.

with that being said other then one run of arah (dreadful) and one of the lvl 35 dungeon i forget the name (also bad exp) — cof was the only dungeon i did, and its because it didnt take you a ridiculous amount of time to do for basically no reward, i could do a cpl runs and get some tokens , 6 useless blues, and a little silver , and enjoy the game for 1-2 hours at night,

i have a lvl 80 engineer and at this point have nothing to do with him, i would wvw (but of course the que is equal to the 2 hours i get to play each night), i have 2 lvl 400 crafters, killed claw numerous times, and gotten most of the maps in orr , im sorry but i feel that the dungeons are a waste of my time (which i hold very valuable)

im not complaining about endgame, money,gear or anything , what i am saying as a hardcore casual player, whats the point of dungeons if players feel they are not being rewarded for their effort, i understand do them or dont do them its my choice. but pretty soon you are going to only have a few hardcore people doing them, and thats not how you sustain a game for years

my 2 cents

I understand that CoF was very easy, specially for an explorable and how much money and carvings it was giving, based that it’s an MMORPG that is trying to go for long term, making things easy is not the right way to do it.

But the changes were made in the wrong places. The lava room where we have to escort Magg to the ore with the slimes and the imps is extremely hard due to the numbers of enemies attacking at the same time not to mention the constant stunning (We really need a CC reduction/immunity after so many CC in a row).

The room where Magg places the bomb, we kited around not to avoid a fight, but because it’s almost impossible to do with the speed that the npc’s spawn, specially the godforged ones that pull you and bathe you in flames practically killing you or leaving you almost dead for one of the other 7 npc’s to kill you. Making the fight longer will just make that fight not doable, at all. If the npc spawn rate was slower then yeah it could be doable.

Was sitting in the living room with my wife trying to explain how they “fixed” the dungeon, only to come up with the following example for my wife to understand (she knows nothing of games, or computers in general)

The following is what I told her:

Baby your sitting in the Dining Room, i’m in the Living room (holding a coke in my hand) i told her to pretend she wanted the coke REALLY bad! I told her to walk to me and she could have it.

Then i said “thats how it was.. easy no fuss..” told her to go sit back down.

Next round i poured out half the coke (into my glass) and pulled all the furniture to the center of the house (blocking the passage between us) and said, Now come here and get HALF this coke… She started walking and i said, by the way .. the floor is on fire…

Asked her if the half coke was worth the extra struggle.. She said no.. ill go get one from the fridge. Well we dont have anymore cokes only Dr. Pepper. (Flame Legion armor as opposed to Arah armor)

Well i want me somekittenflame legion armor! give me my coke without walking across a fire infested floor!

As it stands now, you need an extremely durable, yet, extremely high DPS group to ‘fight’ the Door Buster event… which isnt practical at all.

I suggest INCREASING the Arming Timer for Magg, and DECREASING the amount of damage the Flame Legion mobs do….

How do you expect people to fight 3-5 mobs that each do 4-5k damage at the same time and expect to kill them at the spawn rate you have set?

Sigil of Energy?

No enrage timers please, they are a terrible idea and encourage DPS-only strategies.

Something needed to be done to nerf the gold rate that was CoF. I was making 5-10g per day off CoF speed runs + a piece of exotic gear a day. Thats $50 worth of gems converted to gold per day. I knew the majority of the player base was not doing this or capable of these speed runs so I was getting way ahead of everyone else.

However, you definately over nerfed the dungeon rewards. A speed run (15mins) should give like 12silver for completion reward while the full 30min run should give ~18silver. You’re overly punishing people for playing well… 6silver is a joke

I used the gold I had eared to buy t3 cultural armor and gems to transmute the dungeon set into exotic cultural armor. So I did not inflate the economy and got the look I wanted. And now I’m broke lol. Only could afford 2 pieces of t3 cultural.

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

How can be dungeons fun ? Alright I do the story mode and explorable mode each once. That’s the 1st time tho.
But what happens after that ? HOW can you find running the same dungeons over and over again FUN ? with no REWARD ?

See that’s just weird imo, running a dungeon for 50 times, no reward, just ‘fun’ ?

And no I have never played WoW. It’s just common sense to have a reward for finishing a dungeon. Otherwise what’s the point ? Dieing 10 times, takes hours etc, and when finally you kill the end boss and what it tells you is ‘here you go take ur 5 tokens and 3 blues and gtfo’. (you need 1380 for whole set)

I need to feel like I’m constantly progressing (rewards for dungeon+cash+getting dyes,minipets,achievements from dungeons w.e). I need to feel like I’m working towards something (big reward for finishing dungeon). But atm I get -NOTHING- from dungeons, they’re worthless. if I want fun I’ll go PvP, but I also want to progress PvE wise, which Anet fails to deliver through dungeons.

Should I be REALLY EXCITED AND HAPPY if I kill the dungeon end boss for the 50th time and still get nothing ? Should I be satisfied ? Nah.

Personally, I’m glad these changes were made, because I really wanted to get that CoF set, but after seeing 500+ people get it doing speed runs, I no longer want it anymore as everyone has the set. I hope this will diversify where people will go for dungeons, as CoF was packed as heck, yet other dungeons were barren beyond belief.

Pandemonium.6453:

Goomba.6248:

Really? I have completed CoF with a group with 0 wipes, in this new patch, what did we do, we fought. A very organized fight. everyone knew what they had to kill and what they had to do. it’s really not that hard, just time consuming. You obviously don’t understand how the game mechanics work, and you’re obviously not utilizing combo fields and mass healing. I really hate it how you people come in here and cry all day about useless topics, Yes the dungeon system has problems. Is this a problem? NO, its not.

So what you are trying to say is that dungeons are now only exclusive to those who are very organized (alienating the casual yet skilled players) and probably belong to established guilds and/or with communications software to properly coordinate actions?

If they intended CoF or any dungeon to be hard why do this now? Now not 3 weeks earlier.. Also there are several other glaring bugs that needs to be fixed as compared to “buffing” the dungeon.

CoF is not the only dungeon but its where the masses gather, Honor of Waves is actually a better dungeon and way easier than CoF with an organized group and earns you more money/loot per run at a speed of 20mins, why is that dugeon not “buffed” why did they only change CM and CoF?

Talk is cheap if you are able to beat CoF with your claims ( 0 wipes, not kiting the event before the boss fight and a well organized run ) then please post a video so you can be a solution to this problem, dont be a part of the problem as you already are presenting your self to be.

The devs stated so many times that Explorables were meant for organized groups. As such, it should be treated. Get your facts straight, it was said so many times in reddit posts and even twitch tv broadcasts.

More and more I doubt that the devs are playing the same game we are….

organised: aka specific groups, with specific traits, with specific professions

YEAH, keeping in line with the design etho’s of bring who you want not a specific role….. your arguments only furtherkittenthem

Also, plug the holes, don’t nerf and tune the professions and dungeons to the point where payment beyond your initial 60quid becomes “unofficially” mandatory, that’s one surefire way to kill this game and become universally hated and branded pay2win
my hopes for gw2 are going downhill and all because of this garbage

Serin.3917:

so increase the rewards for completing it. what aren’t you understanding?

no one wants to work for 3 days player hitting their head on walls with horrible game breaking bugs to get armor they dont really need.

nickzed.6380:

Holy crud. Reading this thread has made me so ashamed of the current generation of game players. The entire point of playing video games has been lost on everyone, most likely thanks to World of Warcraft. I guarantee everyone complaining about these changes has at one time played and enjoyed a game like WoW, or similar to it (I.E. everquest/Rift) in the way there are gear treadmills.

The point of playing a video game, is to have FUN. Doing these dungeons should be fun, if you don’t find them fun, don’t do it. You guys are forcing yourselves to do something because you want a reward, but you don’t find it fun. It’s insanity, nearly. I personally find these dungeons to be a blast, which is why I run them. The fact that I will eventually get gear I like from them, is just a bonus. I want them to be difficult, that makes it more fun.

If you guys are seriously running these dungeons for any reason besides finding them fun, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

Can we get a fix in Arah aswell, to stop these “shard farms”? People kinda have this mentality that the game should be skipped through as fast and easy as possible, and I don’t see why. It should take a long time, and be difficult to get these armor skins.

This post is entirely on target. Like the other changes ANet has introduced, they don’t seem to have thought it through before implementing it. The argument that “it should be harder so you have to run different paths” doesn’t hold any water. The game was always advertised as having choice of alternatives. If someone wants to farm a certain run over and over, it is their prerogative to do so because it is fun for them. If gear grinding makes someone happy, let them do it and be happy. WvW makes others happy, crafting makes others happy, questing, exploring, etc etc. Forcing alternatives is not a choice, and it doesn’t improve game quality.

I can’t disagree with making some changes from the original form of the dungeon, but these changes hardly seem tested or considerate of the problem. I logged in and tried to run the exp mode just once and couldn’t finish because the NPC bugged in multiple locations preventing progression. We tried 4 different resets of the dungeon (which is a hassle in itself since there’s no instance-clearing feature in the game interface). Now, as I understand it, you can skip the defense stage entirely using a method that I can’t possibly believe is intended. Why is that even an option? If it is intended, it’s another example of a poor design. If there was a real-money farming issue with CoF, then pull the entire Magg path or dungeon until a tested redesign can be deployed, but don’t halfkitten a fix and try to pass it off as an improvement.

During beta I was extremely impressed with how much ANet listened to the community, but the lack of communication on their part that, coupled with poorly-implemented changes in the game, is really starting to make me doubt their ability to keep this game a preference to the player base that will make it last.

So, the huge change to the dungeons. Complaints will never end, until fixed, and for good reason.

Now, did you ever think, instead of completely altering the dungeon…lower the xp and money, add a lockout timer, and keep the dungeon the same (without bugs obviously)? Limit the time between entering dungeons to once per hour? No, instead you do what ANet have always done, drastic changes too frequently! I’m so happy I pre ordered riders of rohan for lotro…come on Oct 15th!!!