Guild Wars 2

Seriously. Thank you for injecting some challenge and thrill into your latest content. The possibility of Failure adds tension and excitement that was desperately lacking in GW2. Now success is soooo much the sweeter because of this. Scarlet’s Invasion, Tequatl and now the Twilight Assault Aether path in Twilight Arbor have awakened my guild back into buzzing excitement over GW2. Fail at Tequatl? You get nothing, good day sir!

Instead of a slow-drip anesthetic experience where victory and the inevitable loot chest were assured, now we can FAIL. Now we actually discuss our group Trait build synergy. Now we actually discuss strategy a bit. We laugh and moan at the Failure and cheer the greater when we succeed – instead of the hum-drum “so what did you get in the chest?”. Last night we failed 7 times on Legendary Clockheart (which is my new favorite fight!) before achieving victory!!! Yes, “achieve” feels like the right word there, i can honestly say it felt like we worked for it. Love it.

You’ve always done fluffy fun events very well. But thank you for some of these more challenging and exciting lore filled events. I still think there is room to improve and I’d like to see the penalty for failure hurt even more but my guild is still very pleased. And as the guild leader I am personally indebted to you because honestly our guild activity was nearly dead until this new trend of content. Our players would log in for dailies and then silently leave the game. Now players are chatting, now theyre jumping on voice chat, trading with each other, helping each other, discussing the game, making plans for existing and new characters.

Thanks.

Wholeheartedly agree! Id like to see more challenging content put into the game.

Only criticism? I think the new content shows the need for improvements in key parts of the game. The ability to choose overflow, for instance, would ignite guild play even further as guilds themselves try to take down Tequatl without having to worry whether everyone is on the same map.

I agree entirely.

Challenging content with risk of failure is fantastic. Of course there’s a very fine line between good difficulty and bad difficulty. Good difficulty being the Clockheart and bad being Liadri.

Clockheart gives you a chance to learn, gives you room to mess up so you can learn from your mistakes. The fact you can actually fail that fight but learn from it and improve is fantastic.

Liadri on the other hand didn’t have any of that, it had cheap and simplistic difficulty. It didn’t give people any chance to learn, you either read a guide on how to beat her or had to bash your head against a wall of trial and error hundreds of times.

As far as having penalty for failing, I agree. However if there’s gonna be consequences for when you fail, there needs to be a worthy and equally balanced reward for succeeding, otherwise no one will want to do it after they did it once.

Bad difficulty: Liadri, some dungeons (Arah, SE, the older TA, AC p2), Harpies in fractals

Good difficulty: Kholer, Lupicus, Subject Alpha and some other bosses, etc.

how is ac p2 and harpies any difficult? LOL

LastK.6158:

how is ac p2 and harpies any difficult? LOL

Harpies aren’t difficult, they’re just a pain in the kitten . “stability/reflects or gtfo” is not fun. You don’t even die, it’s just a kitten time sink.

Thereon.3495:

Wholeheartedly agree! Id like to see more challenging content put into the game.

Only criticism? I think the new content shows the need for improvements in key parts of the game. The ability to choose overflow, for instance, would ignite guild play even further as guilds themselves try to take down Tequatl without having to worry whether everyone is on the same map.

that is an excellent idea!

And now I understand what one of my guildmates was saying on voice the other night.. i couldnt understnad why he was saying we should want to be on an overflow, but he was making your exact point, and I agree that would definitely “ignite guild play”.

^but wouldn’t that make Teq instanced content?

Last boss is nice but I don’t like the fact that we have to count on AI mechanics to beat it.

Xae Isareth.1364:

^but wouldn’t that make Teq instanced content?

how is it instanced if there are random other players from multiple random servers?

Aden Celeste.3650:

Bad difficulty: Liadri, some dungeons (Arah, SE, the older TA, AC p2), Harpies in fractals

Good difficulty: Kholer, Lupicus, Subject Alpha and some other bosses, etc.

Please explain how Liadri was bad difficulty, because I thought it was an amazing challenge.

Arguments I could agree with: Lag, terrible camera.

Yeah harpies are so freaking stupid, ANet thinks annoying = challenging or fun, seriously they are oblivious.

I think it’s too easy. It was fun to figure out the first time, but will only become boring.

We need something that has changing mechanics.

I also though Liadri was a fantastic fight. It was very difficult, but made you learn from your mistakes. I think stupid difficulty is tribulation mode. You still have to learn from your mistakes, but you’re FORCED into making those mistakes.

Ethics.4519:

I think it’s too easy. It was fun to figure out the first time, but will only become boring.

We need something that has changing mechanics.

I also though Liadri was a fantastic fight. It was very difficult, but made you learn from your mistakes. I think stupid difficulty is tribulation mode. You still have to learn from your mistakes, but you’re FORCED into making those mistakes.

I think that’s the point of tribulation mode. It’s supposed to be like Cat Mario where you laugh when you die or the game tricks you.

Of course, when you’re paying Continue Coins, you’re not laughing very hard or for very long.

Would it be better if we could shoot Tequatl or Dragons with harpoons (chains attached to the end of the projectile) to explain why the beasts are immobilized when we fight them?

Aden Celeste.3650:

Bad difficulty: Liadri, some dungeons (Arah, SE, the older TA, AC p2), Harpies in fractals

Good difficulty: Kholer, Lupicus, Subject Alpha and some other bosses, etc.

Sorry to say but this sounds like anything too hard for you is bad difficulty to you. I’m not even sure what is hard about Arah, TA, AC or harpies… Especially AC… I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain about how hard AC is. And subject alpha? Huh? 1) Stack up. 2) dodge the most telegraphed move ever. 3) Resbomb anyone who forgot step 2. 4) Attack the boss that stands in one spot. There is a reason we farm CoE. It’s actually one of the easiest dungeons.

I realize Liadri was hard for some people but I personally thought it was fun.

Perhaps we should realize what is fun for some doesn’t mean fun for all? Heck I don’t even know what the OP is talking about… Scarlet invasion? Who ever failed that but for the masses of people who were intentionally failing it to get more farm… that isn’t difficult. Most of us just got on our best AOE spammers and hit 1 a bunch. and TA… It that new path supposed to be hard? It’s been what 3 days? and we are already farming it since it takes about 25-35 min and so DRs don’t kick in and extra rewards.

Sure we aren’t going to farm it once the rewards are back in line with other dungeons but its not hard. Really none of the dungeons are hard. Some just have bad risk/reward ratio. Its not that Arah is hard, It’s just that you can do 5 CoF runs in the same amount of time and Arah isn’t 5 times more rewarding.

I loved liadri ;3

And yes, I do like difficult content, especially when there is easy content mixed in.

harpies isn’t that hard if you have a coordinated group, arah is also pretty easy, AC is good too and TA isn’t a problem, and SE is hard??? really?

Agreed!

It was about time for some content that doesn’t smile at your failures but punishes you for it.

The timers on the world bosses are cheap failure as they are not rooted in the event itself (except for the big destroyer, but then it was always designed that way).

The failures should be based on player action or inaction, not just the boss going “oh, look at the time! gotta go!”.

For Tequatl, go straight for the cannon charging and make the destruction of such the failure trigger. And find similar failure triggers for the other world boss events.

That way the failure makes sense in-world.

It may be jarring at first, but if they can stay consistent with it, I think this will be better for the game in the end.

I remember when I was used to facerolling in WoW then went back to play Vanguard (that was more like Everquest difficulty) I was getting so irritated just in the tutorial alone til I got better again and it wasn’t a big deal.

This game has been so faceroll/easy for a whole year, people are just too used to it. A few more months of actual difficulty and people will get used to it I think.

I just really hope they add more things like the Mad King dungeon/instance.

No BS. Just go in with your group, do an awesome boss fight, get good rewards, and you can farm it as much as you like (no daily only BS). It’s absolutely amazing.

I hope they do a lot more of those TBH, Fractal is kinda sorta close.

Liadri was ok… I think the design of the boss was nice. However, the camera issues in the arena, and the ground aoe visibility being so ambiguous is really the only thing that made it difficult and frustrating, that’s not a good example of difficulty, that’s just punishing.

You can make stuff clear and intuitive and still very difficult/fun and fights should be.

I was dedicated to Liadri, I beat her on the first night. I remember failing to her countless times the first night and giving up. I went to sleep that night but woke up 3 hours later thinking about Liadri and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t sleep – I needed to finish that.

That night I stayed fighting her for 2 hours straight trying to beat her, many times I got to a sliver of her health and failed.

Eventually I managed to finally beat her and when I did I literally tossed myself on the floor from my chair, heart racing, eyes wide open. I was trembling like a mad man and my breath was so fast I had to lay down and take a moment – it was great!

Needless to say, Liadri is still bad difficulty.

The feeling of failure being constantly thrown at your face with few glimpses of hope here and there with a final realization of yourself in victory is the best feeling ever!

Because of that I approve and appreciate more difficult and challenging content.

The way they did Liadri however was bad difficulty, it was impossible to last long enough to learn anything from the fight. You either did your research online or most likely would have never succeeded that fight, not without exterior assistance of some sort.

In the first phase, everything would instantly kill you other than her auto attack, you had no hints or clues about this going into the fight. If you didn’t use some sort of exterior information source you’d be lucky to understand the simple basic mechanics of that fight such as luring the shadows into the area to kill them and transform them into orbs to throw at Liadri.

The whole concept of the battle was almost entirely hidden, to top it all off the fight gave you literally no room for mistakes at any point. It had cheap kills, complicated mechanics that weren’t introduced prior to that in any way, no room for self growth and learning, and the list goes on.

That’s not even mentioning the technical limitations and malfunctions to the fight such as bad camera.

A good challenge should introduce the unique mechanics of a fight one at a time giving you a chance to learn and understand them individually before grouping it all together in one where the real challenge comes in.

The issue wasn’t that Liadri had various one hit kills, the issue was how they handled the entire fight, it was bad. A good challenge needs to teach their players and give them the tools they need to overcome it.

If you want to climb a mountain you’ll need the proper tools, food, sleeping equipment and so on to overcome that challenge. You’ll feel great when you finally reach the top but especially if you managed to overcome it mostly by yourself.

What Liadri does is put you at the base of the mountain almost entirely naked with some avalanches along the way with no warning – bad design.

Delryn.7235:

I was dedicated to Liadri, I beat her on the first night. I remember failing to her countless times the first night and giving up. I went to sleep that night but woke up 3 hours later thinking about Liadri and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t sleep – I needed to finish that.

That night I stayed fighting her for 2 hours straight trying to beat her, many times I got to a sliver of her health and failed.

Eventually I managed to finally beat her and when I did I literally tossed myself on the floor from my chair, heart racing, eyes wide open. I was trembling like a mad man and my breath was so fast I had to lay down and take a moment – it was great!

I’m no expert, but, I would seriously think to get yourself checked. Just saying.

digiowl.9620:

The timers on the world bosses are cheap failure as they are not rooted in the event itself (except for the big destroyer, but then it was always designed that way).

The failures should be based on player action or inaction, not just the boss going “oh, look at the time! gotta go!”.

For Tequatl, go straight for the cannon charging and make the destruction of such the failure trigger. And find similar failure triggers for the other world boss events.

That way the failure makes sense in-world.

I’m also not fond of the timers, especially with boss health seemingly requiring some minimum number of players.

Yesterday, there was a call-out to come to the Hydra Queen event on FC. There were more than 20 players there, less than 30, so say 25. I’ve no idea what gear and builds players were using, but I didn’t see any poor play (auto-attack only, people reviving the downed, the one deader ported and returned). We got to the phase where she disappeared (had ~35-45% of her health left), but the timer ran out before we could get there. In other words, we were not even close.

I’m sure in every random group of 25, there are going to be some non-zerkers, maybe some at-level people. Maybe larger pop servers can muster enough people to make the timer on this event trivial. However, 25 for a non-starter zone boss is a pretty good turn-out for FC, and maybe for some other servers. I’d like to know if scaling accounts for servers who cannot muster that many for such events, or are only the higher pop servers supposed to succeed?

+1 Op.
I cannot tell you how glad I am that failure is now possible and with consequences.
The whole "no-one left behind, have a cookie- mentality just irked me to no end.