Guild Wars 2

First off, if I don’t quote a specific part of the blogpost that means that I totally agree with you and that I am actually happy with your changes. However, there are some points where I certainly went “No. No no no. Stop. Right. There.” And therefore I felt like it was necessary to open up this topic considering my (and maybe others) concerns.

Don’t go through with your changes outlined in the blogpost, please! FotM players spent the last few years asking for better fractals and they even gave you a bunch of ideas which came from brainstorming all over the place. Please don’t ignore all those players! Give us a high end dungeon which is actually challenging!
For examples I’ll stick to one fractal (Snowblind, that’s the one with the Ice elemental and the Svanir boss fyi) for now, that makes it easier to keep this post trimmed down and easier to read.

First off, specifically citing this part:

To start with, we’re raising the maximum fractal scale from 50 to 100. In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness. The combination of these changes will increase the viability of different builds and give players more to think about when attempting to overcome a particular scale.

Adding toughness and precision does nothing to change the difficulty. It just adds a higher chance to wipe at certain chokepoints were you have to deal with lots of mobs at once. One example if the bonfire part of the snowblind fractal:
At lower levels the mobs are easy enough to kill them when they rush in to kill the players lighting the bonfire. This part is usually done by a group because it’s easier to deal with them.
On higher levels however that strategy changes: Since the mobs scale so high with vitality, power and sheer spawn number it is usually impossible to kill the mobs without dying and wiping as a group except if you’re a really well trained group. Most of the time this part is done by a single player like a thief or a Mesmer which has ways to light the bonfire and then jump out of the action (stealth, blinks etc) while the others wait.
Adding toughness and precision will not change this. It will even enforce the current way this part is played.
A more challenging way would be to add different mobs to the spawn, in example frost shamans – Those could cast an AoE, similar to the guardians ring of warding around players with aggro (In style of an ice wall to keep it thematically fit) which can be destroyed by teammates. Suddenly running around the bonfire is just possible for so long as a solo player. Instead a group would have to coordinate this part of the fractal to ensure success. It would add another form of challenge which is not only “can I survive the damage times X”…

Additionally, for players who want just a little more help, a member of Dessa’s krewe is concocting some new consumables to aid your adventures in the fractals. These items will provide benefits that will stack with your other consumables to give you the boost you’re looking for to defeat a troublesome encounter. Visit her in Dessa’s Observatory after the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns to see what she has available.

This seems like a nice idea on paper but I fear it’ll just end up to be a necessary item to overcome to massive amount of health if they just give you x% damage against a certain type of enemy. I hope you’re going the route of adding utility effects via consumables that help you with a certain playstyle (Effects on dodge or block/reflect for example) instead of + damage.

Additionally, we’ve simplified the current system of daily reward chests into a system of new daily fractal achievements that have been separated into three distinct difficulty ranges: 1–20, 21–50, and 51 and above. Completing these dailies will give players a chance at the fractal weapon skins, ascended equipment, infused rings, and more. There also will be a new daily recommended fractal achievement that will rotate to different scales each day, giving you a focal scale to find other players looking to organize for a group.

Can we please expect the same amount of pristine fractal relics + normal fractal relics from those tiers and activities? Currently you can get up to 345 relics from the daily tier chests + the fractal end chests you’re opening. With that amount it still takes a while to get enough relics for something like the fully upgraded fractal backpiece (You’re sinking hours into doing all daily tiers for several days). Please don’t nerf the droprates to make saving up for something like the backpiece even worse.
This will be even more frustrating if it actually plays a role in saving up for the new legendary backpiece (Most likely).

And yes, I’m perfectly aware of how much work it is to add new mechanics and encounters to make content actually challenging. But it is actually necessary – Adding stats and making mobs effectively meat punchingbacks with razors on them is super boring.

Thank you for taking your time to read this.

Cheers
Akuni

You really only need to kill one ice elemental. Just run far away from them, you’ll loss agro, go back, kill one, and you are all set.

But it’s not reliable in pug. And for premade, they some time dont’ bother to waste the time to run far away.

IMO high end fractal is suppose to be hard. Hard enough that people that only do pug like me will probably never see. That’s a good thing.

laokoko.7403:

You really only need to kill one ice elemental. Just run far away from them, you’ll loss agro, go back, kill one, and you are all set.

But it’s not reliable in pug. And for premade, they some time dont’ bother to waste the time to run far away.

IMO high end fractal is suppose to be hard. Hard enough that people that only do pug like me will probably never see. That’s a good thing.

Thing is: They are not hard. From 1 to 50 the mechanics are exactly the same with really really small differences (Like chanters disappearing below lv10 in cliffside if you hit the seal). They should add new mechanics and mob types instead of just making the existing mobs bigger statsticks, that was my point.

And I’m not talking about the ice elemental boss but the part before it where you melt the ice wall with the bonfire. I thought I made that more than clear, will check if I mistyped anything up there.

King’s fractal guide actually have a guardian just kiting those sanvir.

But I think your original question is, mobs and hp. My opinion, that is needed, because right now, bosses die too fast. There is absolutely no strategy involved, and people dont’ need to learn the fight mechanic.

For example Molten Duo, everyone just pop up reflect, and maybe ice bow and try to melt it. Many of the players I meet dont’ even know what dodge or jump is. People won’t need to learn any boss mechanic if the only strategy is kill the boss before they do any damage.

And in organized group, the fight is really easy, not because the players are mechanically better, but because people can do simple task like stack might and press 4 on icebow.

And I think they are doing some thing about mistlock stability. I remember the days doing those in pug. So they are actually changing the mechanics around. Some of the instability really does make the fight much harder.

laokoko.7403:

King’s fractal guide actually have a guardian just kiting those sanvir.

But I think your original question is, mobs and hp. My opinion, that is needed, because right now, bosses die too fast. There is absolutely no strategy involved, and people dont’ need to learn the fight mechanic.

For example Molten Duo, everyone just pop up reflect, and maybe ice bow and try to melt it. Many of the players I meet dont’ even know what dodge or jump is. People won’t need to learn any boss mechanic if the only strategy is kill the boss before they do any damage.

And in organized group, the fight is really easy, not because the players are mechanically better, but because people can do simple task like stack might and press 4 on icebow.

And I think they are doing some thing about mistlock stability. I remember the days doing those in pug. So they are actually changing the mechanics around. Some of the instability really does make the fight much harder.

But they’ll still never learn new tricks. Like how about berserker learning a shockwave that’s like the reverse tempest WH pushing forward while pushing all enemies aside which the wave hits? Anti stacking mechanics on the firestorm as in a firy AoE around him? I bet you can make the fight harder without making the bosses giant hp packed marshmallows which get a crusty caramel icing after the patch. Make em steel wool marshmallows to stay with the analogy. And I mean… We have new skill tech and stuff for the specs ingame or at least we will get it. It’s only fair for bosses to get some goodies too. Imagine a boss with slowness pbAoE to counter melee burst stacking for example~ Good stuff!

Akuni.8604:

I bet you can make the fight harder without making the bosses giant hp packed marshmallows which get a crusty caramel icing after the patch. Make em steel wool marshmallows to stay with the analogy. And I mean… We have new skill tech and stuff for the specs ingame or at least we will get it. It’s only fair for bosses to get some goodies too. Imagine a boss with slowness pbAoE to counter melee burst stacking for example~ Good stuff!

To me it looks like you are a bit dishonest with yourself. Adding more abilities to a boss to increase it’s difficulty I understand, but if you don’t improve the HP bar with that bosses will still melt to 25 might/icebow 4 which makes all the extra abilities useless. A hard bossfight should atleast last over 1.5 minutes and that just won’t happen if the HP bar is made for starters.

And what the hell is up with people and their sick mindset of locking out entire playstyles for their own fantasys. To counter melee burst… pff, now you’re just embarrasing yourself. If anything, there should be more counters to playing ranged right now.

I dislike the daily changes. I personally enjoy running 50,40,30,20 daily. It gives me something to look forward to doing and limiting that is silly.

I also dislike opening up the barrier to entry on fractals by making it a 1 and done deal. That to me will only encourage the wrong kinds of players to enter in to what anet has called end game dungeons.

There’s casual dungeons out there like AC / SE / COF etc… Fractals does not need to become that experience.

Hopefully they reconsider it.

Setz.9675:

To me it looks like you are a bit dishonest with yourself. Adding more abilities to a boss to increase it’s difficulty I understand, but if you don’t improve the HP bar with that bosses will still melt to 25 might/icebow 4 which makes all the extra abilities useless. A hard bossfight should atleast last over 1.5 minutes and that just won’t happen if the HP bar is made for starters.

At the same time it’s not much use just sticking more stats on an enemy. Look at the Orr Aborminations: They have a decent amount of vit/toughness and pack quite a punch in the power department. At the same time they are super slow with highly telegraphed attacks. If they had no skills whatsoever and the only thing they could do is walk after you and try hitting you those would be the easiest mobs ever. You’d simply kite them to death. Now comes a buff to the challenge, namely adding more vit and toughness + precision. Throw in some healing power maybe – They usually don’t heal, but more stats make it harder, eh? In fact the whole encounter would stay exactly the same it would just take longer. Now, let’s give them a skill, their iconic charge. Suddenly players have to watch out, use dodges or blocks. Up the challenge even more by making the charge more reliable with a shorter windup and let’s say an AoE explosion at the end. Push it even further and the charge pulls in enemies within a certain range. With every change you change the dynamic of the fight. It might not last 5 minutes but you’d have to plan ahead (Can I stack here or will it just annihilate our group with the AoE now? Do we need range to overcoe a new mechanic? Is a certain playstyle less effective now?). This is stuff you can never ever achieve with sticking stats on a mob.
And please note that I think (Personally) that this game is super imbalanced right now. The feature patch brought so much powercreep that adjustments are definitly needed. Sticking more stats there like vit might push the time up to 2min boss fights again but it doesn’t add challenge – And that’s what the blogpost is about. It’s not about rebalancing the patch aftermath, it’s about the new, challenging FotM.
So please stop viewing the FotM update as a balance fix! The game should be balanced beforehand.

Setz.9675:

And what the hell is up with people and their sick mindset of locking out entire playstyles for their own fantasys. To counter melee burst… pff, now you’re just embarrasing yourself. If anything, there should be more counters to playing ranged right now.

It’s called an example. That’s usually one idea among many others that’s pointed out to express ones opinion. You want more? Reflective aura around enemy to prevent range playstyle. Pulsing out conditions applied to them in an AoE to counter condition bombing. Getting regeneration or another effect whenever critically hit. Mirroring sigil procs back to the players. Encasing players while tagging the others with a delayed AoE which can break the encasing (And only that AoE can – This mechanic is actually a thing in the FF XIV Ramuh raid. If you don’t pull the lightning strikes to the stunned mates you’ll end up defenseless against all his attacks). And much much more. I even stated that I’d try and keep the post short by not writing out every idea I had. But I guess you didn’t read up until that point. Instead you slang a snarky comment at me without much reason. Way to go. I would punch you If you’d do that face to face, bless the internet for aking us all annonymous – Except there are still human beings sitting behind every screen. Way. To. Go. You.

If you’d like to contribute to the discussion now, please go ahead. I love brainstoring with others as that’s where the really good ideas come up. However, up until now I haven’t actually seen a good reason that goes for raising hp/tough except longer fights (Which should be a balance concern and not a challenge concern, but I’ll still count it here).
I really think Anet is going the wrong way here, so we should pull together and ask them to change it. If you (the reader) disagrees there, please add your input to the discussion.

I think it’s your opinion fractal isn’t hard enough.

For me it is quite hard already. I have a very hard time dodging attacks, I’m not sure if it is my slow reaction time or my latency. Eventhough I know a few people with higher latency but have no problem with dodging.

I think the main problem with group content is it is too lenient. The penalty of getting downed or dying is too small. All Anet need to do is remove downstate and the ability to rez people in combat.

And of course boss hp is related to challenge. Right now boss dies in 10 second in organized group, you dont’ even need to do anything. If you want to know why it makes it more challenging, try to solo it. Because instead of needing to dodge once or twice, you need to make sure you dodge 20 times with no mistake. That’s why it is harder. Maybe your some uber player that can solo all fractal boss already with no problem, that’s why you want more mechanic change, but at least for me it is hard already.

Akuni.8604:

At the same time it’s not much use just sticking more stats on an enemy. Look at the Orr Aborminations: They have a decent amount of vit/toughness and pack quite a punch in the power department. At the same time they are super slow with highly telegraphed attacks. If they had no skills whatsoever and the only thing they could do is walk after you and try hitting you those would be the easiest mobs ever. You’d simply kite them to death. Now comes a buff to the challenge, namely adding more vit and toughness + precision. Throw in some healing power maybe – They usually don’t heal, but more stats make it harder, eh? In fact the whole encounter would stay exactly the same it would just take longer.

From what I understand is the fights are “easy” because you can burn down the enemy quickly, which prevents them using many of their really deadly skills. Which is why Beserker is meta. You can dodge powerful attacks and kill them before they can use the super strong ones. So if thats the case, making the fight longer would actually make the fight harder, as the enemies now have a greater chance of using skills that are rarely seen.

Akuni.8604:

Now, let’s give them a skill, their iconic charge. Suddenly players have to watch out, use dodges or blocks. Up the challenge even more by making the charge more reliable with a shorter windup and let’s say an AoE explosion at the end. Push it even further and the charge pulls in enemies within a certain range. With every change you change the dynamic of the fight. It might not last 5 minutes but you’d have to plan ahead (Can I stack here or will it just annihilate our group with the AoE now? Do we need range to overcoe a new mechanic? Is a certain playstyle less effective now?). This is stuff you can never ever achieve with sticking stats on a mob.

How do we know that some of the new Mystlock instabilities don’t do that exact thing? They are reworking old ones, and adding in new ones. It seems very likely that some of these will do just that. Add new and harder abilities to enemies, effectively changing the dynamics of a fight without having to rewrite the entire boss to do so.

So what happens when a boss has dramatically increased toughness to render most physical damage useless, yet with stacking instabilities that reduce the damage of conditions or convert them to boons or send back to the player, and unblockable/unreflectable projectiles, as well as a much higher health pool, and a 100% crit rate, with say, crits cause stun for 2 secs?

How would you defeat it? Especially since the fight time has been increased by say 3 minutes due to the added stats? (Granted I am just throwing out random instability effects that may not even exist to illustrate a point. We don’t know what the instability effects are going to be yet.)

laokoko.7403:

I think it’s your opinion fractal isn’t hard enough.

For me it is quite hard already. I have a very hard time dodging attacks, I’m not sure if it is my slow reaction time or my latency. Eventhough I know a few people with higher latency but have no problem with dodging.

I think the main problem with group content is it is too lenient. The penalty of getting downed or dying is too small. All Anet need to do is remove downstate and the ability to rez people in combat.

And of course boss hp is related to challenge. Right now boss dies in 10 second in organized group, you dont’ even need to do anything. If you want to know why it makes it more challenging, try to solo it. Because instead of needing to dodge once or twice, you need to make sure you dodge 20 times with no mistake. That’s why it is harder. Maybe your some uber player that can solo all fractal boss already with no problem, that’s why you want more mechanic change, but at least for me it is hard already.

Can’t you guys discuss anything without slinging snarky comments? Really? I said (Just right above you there) that hp adjustments are needed thanks to the balance patch. This is however no FotM issue but a general gameplay issue with powercreep.
If something has a known pattern you’ll know how to avoid it in no time. I mean currently fights are: Can you burst it? If yes, burst and continue. If no run in circles around the boss and kite it. Just adding stats there will only gut burst (Which is not 100% good btw. Because now you only have 1 way of playstyle left) and leave the ‘ring around the rosie’ tactic.
Look at Grawl shaman as a boss, his pattern is to bubble every 25% of his hp. That is the only ‘phase’ he has. Aside from that you’re constantly sidestepping his arrows while maybe dodging out of his firestorm. It frankly doesn’t matter if you can burst 25% currently in a few secs – You still have to deal with his bubble. Now, at lvl 100 we might need 15mins to get him that low (random numbers), do you really think he’s more challenging now? Because I’d just fall asleep while my muscle memory would continue to beat the boss. Nothing changes there. If he’s no challenge on lvl 1 he won’t be at 100 at least with the current system of instabilities. And as long as they just keep adding stuff like passive effects and not new patterns that won’t work any better.
That’s still no real reason for just keeping the statstick mentality.

pdavis.8031:

From what I understand is the fights are “easy” because you can burn down the enemy quickly, which prevents them using many of their really deadly skills. Which is why Beserker is meta. You can dodge powerful attacks and kill them before they can use the super strong ones. So if thats the case, making the fight longer would actually make the fight harder, as the enemies now have a greater chance of using skills that are rarely seen.

This is still a balance issue and not linked to the FotM challenge system comming with HoT. Also please don’t rip an argument apart to twist the intention. Aborminations start the fight with their skill. It’s not a rmaping effect that takes time and which you can skip with burst.

How do we know that some of the new Mystlock instabilities don’t do that exact thing? They are reworking old ones, and adding in new ones. It seems very likely that some of these will do just that. Add new and harder abilities to enemies, effectively changing the dynamics of a fight without having to rewrite the entire boss to do so.

Mistlock abilities affect all mobs in the instance so while you can say ‘every mob has new tricks!’ it’s basically no rewrite of their patterns. They will still run after you if you LoS them instead of just dropping hard AoE there or throwing you out of the corner by let say summoning an ice block there. You play the same except some areas will be handicapped – This is still the current system. The only new fuzz will be higher toughness/precision…

So what happens when a boss has dramatically increased toughness to render most physical damage useless, yet with stacking instabilities that reduce the damage of conditions or convert them to boons or send back to the player, and unblockable/unreflectable projectiles, as well as a much higher health pool, and a 100% crit rate, with say, crits cause stun for 2 secs?

How would you defeat it? Especially since the fight time has been increased by say 3 minutes due to the added stats? (Granted I am just throwing out random instability effects that may not even exist to illustrate a point. We don’t know what the instability effects are going to be yet.)

We’re talking about a boss which attacks are pretty much a guaranteed downstate? We already have that one. He’s called Kudu and is part of CoE story :p Therefore same strategy: damage him and rezz asap you see someone downed. Or sidestep his attacks. All the other effects make him just harder to kill. They don’t really change the flow of the battle.
In the end it doesn’t matter if you spend 5min or 30min on a boss if you’re just repeating one rotation over and over. That’s not really challenging.

TexZero.7910:

I dislike the daily changes. I personally enjoy running 50,40,30,20 daily. It gives me something to look forward to doing and limiting that is silly.

I also dislike opening up the barrier to entry on fractals by making it a 1 and done deal. That to me will only encourage the wrong kinds of players to enter in to what anet has called end game dungeons.

There’s casual dungeons out there like AC / SE / COF etc… Fractals does not need to become that experience.

Hopefully they reconsider it.

This ^

Its getting really disgusting how they are noobing everything down in the game. There is nothing interesting about making fractal mobs into hp/toughness stat sticks and increasing the one shot probabilities of every random mob’s auto attack.

They are being dishonest with us about their intentions…or either they don’t understand their own changes. They aren’t increasing the viability of any profession/build by doing these things. Condi builds were already viable…they just were not preferred as they take take longer to kill mobs due to having to wait for condi ticks. So now you make everything take longer with adding more toughness…so because one build style is slow…make everyone slow…that leaves a bad after taste in my opinion. You just decreased the enjoyment of one group to give a placebo to another. Where’s the compensation for berserker builds in this change? Condi builds get more survivability by default because they only rely on one damage stat…so these changes just swap the meta…accomplishing nothing worthwhile…you still have a group that is not preferred. Way to waste development resources. Not only that, but you are putting berserker in a worse position than condi was previously…now berserker is going to face a double penalty….slower killing speed (the entire point of berserker) with significantly increased chance of getting one shot…by any random fractal mob (precision scaling). Add to that the bright idea to make reflects just flat out not work on some instabilities?!? That is just another blatant nerf to berserker builds, as gear with defensive stats can pretty much just face tank some of the projectile madness.

These stat scaling changes don’t increase viability of any gear…they just make defensive stats and condi required…at the expense of all players who bought into your game design for fractals and invested in berserker gear. Prior to this, all gear was “viable”. All players could clear the content, without having to change out their gear. Depending on the level of fractal mob stat scaling…this is a really bad and poorly thought out change…likely just ripped straight from exaggerated and uneducated forum crying.

Fractals were touted as the high end content in this game…meaning the exact opposite of casual. It was advertised as being the content for skilled play. How exactly does changing it to requiring face tank / heal spam / condi endurance marathons make this high end skilled play?

I definitely understand the appeal from a developer stand point of getting the maximum amount of players into the content…to justify development resources…but you are completely missing the point of why you added this content to begin with. I definitely don’t agree with these changes. Depending on how bad this is, I may not even be able to find a justification to log in anymore. I can only stomach so much open world 1 spam zerging. I’m not really interested in any pvp modes in a game that doesn’t actually balance professions. Pretty much the only content that remotely interests me is high end, skilled, coordinated group play. Now you are possibly reducing that to face tank, heal spam, condi endurance ordeals.

On top of that, now you are also going to take the randomization out of fractals?!? That’s one of the few things that made fractals not boring…not knowing which fractals you would get. Granted, I despise the underwater combat in this game, so I always rolled swamp for the first fractal…but even that had randomization on which swamp boss you would get. That is more of an issue with hating that one fractal…than not liking randomization.

Its sad that you guys managed to pull the worst possible things from forum feedback to implement…and are likely dead set to implement this kitten no matter what we say at this point.

Akuni.8604:

Also please don’t rip an argument apart to twist the intention.

What is the intention? That bosses are too easy, and that a stat increase won’t change that? That mistlock instabilities won’t change it? I countered with a very reasonable argument, and that argument happened to rip apart your first argument. I still contend, that adding increased stats, and new abilities with instabilities will make the fight harder, without having to re-code the boss for each level of fractal difficulty. That would be 100 versions of each boss.

In the end, a longer drawn out fight increases the likelihood of failure. Which is why beserker is the meta. The idea is to take down the boss before he can take down you. I believe that with the new instabilities, as well as the increased stats, these same fights will become more difficult. When they launch I guarantee that you’ll begin to see a bunch of QQ about how the bosses became too hard and need a nerf. Just like the Spider Queen in AC. The fight was fixed to not allow stacking on the stairs, and that same day the QQs starting rolling in.

pdavis.8031:

Akuni.8604:

Also please don’t rip an argument apart to twist the intention.

What is the intention? That bosses are too easy, and that a stat increase won’t change that? That mistlock instabilities won’t change it? I countered with a very reasonable argument, and that argument happened to rip apart your first argument. I still contend, that adding increased stats, and new abilities with instabilities will make the fight harder, without having to re-code the boss for each level of fractal difficulty. That would be 100 versions of each boss.

In the end, a longer drawn out fight increases the likelihood of failure. Which is why beserker is the meta. The idea is to take down the boss before he can take down you. I believe that with the new instabilities, as well as the increased stats, these same fights will become more difficult. When they launch I guarantee that you’ll begin to see a bunch of QQ about how the bosses became too hard and need a nerf. Just like the Spider Queen in AC. The fight was fixed to not allow stacking on the stairs, and that same day the QQs starting rolling in.

If I only answer half of the argument while ignoring the other part which is instrumental that’s not really a good basis for discussions. No one is against adjusting boss hp and whatnot but that has to happen asap since we’re so powercreeped every part of the gw2 content is too easy. That leaves FotM being only adjusted above balanced values to make it “harder”, which is frankly no really a thing as stats stay the same.
I also don’t think that mistlock abilities add something because the only thing they add right now is taking some tools out of the players hands – One of the best examples here is reflect not working which invalidates 1 class fully and another one about half. They should rather add things to the mobs, bosses and enviroment.
Also I just want to make clear that you don’t need 100 boss variations. Simply because the new “rotations” seems to be like a dead set idea for Anet by now (Judging from other Dev posts etc). That leaves us with about 7 different versions of fractals if you really overwrite everything with a new mechanic for each variation. And that’s for the fractals atm – I’m still hoping they’ll at least give us the Abbadon fractal soon if not more which would further lower the variants. That said it’s perfectly fine to adjust every 2nd occurance maybe + low level fractals are actually better without any variations as those are usually played by players who still need to learn the bas mechanics.

Yes, that’s still a lot of work. No, that’s not even half as horrible as you paint it to be. It can be done and it would be a good way to add a system which can be expanded upon in the future. FotM is supposed to be the endgame for this game when it comes to dungeons, they need to put some work in to keep it the top difficulty in the game if they don’t give us something like 20 man raids which require tactic soon TM. You’re doing the same stuff over and over again. After their update you’ll do the same and you’ll need longer for it. I can see many reasons why people would quit over that. Not because “content’s too hard” but because Anet refuses to listen to the wishes of their players when it comes to challenging content.
Stop belitteling thos people. They spent almost 3 years doing the work of creative designers because Anet didn’t want to do it. That’s a huge amount of work done and something you should recognize.