Guild Wars 2

We got so hyped up over how these ancient powerful beings awakening lost continents and causing great devastation, but it really, REALLY does not show…

Somehow I doubt Zhaitan caused the damage we see, the Arah battle proves that, it just does not add up….he doesn’t have what it takes, hopefully the dragons we fight in the future are actually a threat, and don’t just cling to a tower and yell at you to stop pelting them with rockets.

I saw the trailer for the FFXIV server shut down (they needed to destroy the world because they were shutting the servers down, so they did it in trailer format)

Bahamut puts Zhaitan to shame in terms of threat / kittenery / and just overall fear and emotion that would be attached to a creature that could cause something like this.

Please make us fear the dragons at least a little bit, our current format is too cliche, sometimes it is better not to be the nerves of steel, afraid of nothing, type of hero.

Also…2h Axes for warrior plox

[moderator edit]: content removed

Yes the zhitan fight was awful, I would have rather seen him downed not killed and later fought in an epic boss battle on the ground in the explore modes

Dragons are too easy, i can kill them with a stick or my finger. boring content imo, jsut easymode.

Zhaitan has to be the worst fight in the game.
I don’t know what anet was smoking when making that fight, but ride a cannon and spam 2 is NOT a good bossfight, especially not for the last boss of the game (before the content updates)

Maybe they can remake the dungeon in the future, and hopefully the entrance of the next dragon isn’t done the same way….at all

I honestly just saw this thread title and thought “Profanity filter”, and so I entered without much interest on the actual subject at hand. But more to the point, though I haven’t gotten that far in the game yet, I agree that Zhaitan shoud always be stronger than he is; to the point that he still remains beatable without people feeling like they should smack their heads against concrete.

Zietlogik.6208:

Bahamut puts Zhaitan to shame in terms of threat / kittenery / and just overall fear and emotion that would be attached to a creature that could cause something like this.

http://youtu.be/39j5v8jlndM?hd=1

Please make us fear the dragons at least a little bit, our current format is too cliche, sometimes it is better not to be the nerves of steel, afraid of nothing, type of hero.

To be fair the Elder Dragons in GW2 are more like natural disasters. Bahamut in Final Fantasy has a history of being an near instant “end of the world button.” While civilization stands to be destroyed by the Elder Dragons they where never billed as powerful enough to one-shot all life on Tyria in a matter of minutes.

Would be cool if the last boss was more dynamic like the events where you don’t really beat him but drive him and his minions back each time you “defeat” him and every now and then he gathers power to steamroll over players and villages to randomized points where you have to set up defenses with more events for a last stand kind of battle before it resets so players have to drive him back again.

THEN, just before a content/lore/expansion/whatever update there’s an epic instanced (so all players can experience it) last battle.

OMFG that was a kitten way SE, destroyed that world………can’t pick my jaw up off the ground……..

What the heck anet lol, i agree the next elder dragon better be somewhere along the lines of that destructive, or we shall have problems.

Well after seeing that video, it doesn’t seem Zhaitan is comparable to Bahamut at all.

Here’s the thing – crafting an awesome looking cinematic is one thing, and nobody has ever seriously disputed Square Enix’s mastery of that. For many Final Fantasy players, you put up with the rest of the game to earn the reward of scenes like that.

An awesome cinematic is not an actual Combat Encounter though. Pointing to a company that historically has fights resolve with two lines of dudes facing each other waiting for inputs doesn’t actually help suggest how to make Zhaitan and the other EDs more interesting.

Boss fights that are challenging without being overwhelming are hard enough to do. Making boss fights with BIG monsters that don’t boil down to picking a target and spamming attacks is even harder. I definitely agree that Zhaitan deserved a better showing to match his reputation, and wouldn’t be displeased if his encounter were reworked late ron. Maybe some constructive feedback would be useful here? Some actual suggestions of HOW you would change the Zhaitan fight?

“Boss fights that are challenging without being overwhelming are hard enough to do. Making boss fights with BIG monsters that don’t boil down to picking a target and spamming attacks is even harder. I definitely agree that Zhaitan deserved a better showing to match his reputation, and wouldn’t be displeased if his encounter were reworked late ron. Maybe some constructive feedback would be useful here? Some actual suggestions of HOW you would change the Zhaitan fight?”

In regards to this, I really had expected the Zhaitan fight to be more along the lines of FFX’s Sin airship fight, physically destroying parts of the dragon in mini events before taking it head on in a more traditional battle along the lines of Claw of Jormag. Instead we get 4 min of playing gun jockey.

In any event, Sovereign Eye was a more dramatic end boss.

Its true that is a cinematic, but game have found ways, and will continue to find ways, to add some emotion, fear, care and doubt into people’s minds when they start a boss battle, and when the battle is over, you feel relieved and accomplished in the task you completed…

Zhaitan’s fight….leaves you with absolutely nothing except slight disappointment, and during the fight…boredom, these are not the types of feelings a boos battle should be invoking.

Suggestions usually fall upon deaf ears around here though, but there is alot of previous examples in many other games they could draw inspiration from.

I would go as far as translating a turn-based battle into a dynamic one.

Having items that spawn around the “arena” that could be used to do different things, items that cure conditions, or heal an ally, or stun enemies (like a more fleshed out version of the “rocks” you find lying around dungeons, “rocks” that do various different things)

And instead of a singular boss, have the boss split into pieces (arm, leg, torso, etc.) that you can target and destroy individually (like a fleshed out version of the current meta dragon fights)

Destroy the bosses wing, makes it unable to fly and use airborne attacks or wing attacks (prevents a boss “stage” from occurring), destroy its arm (left and right) to prevent it from casting certain skills (maybe left arm casts heavy damage skills, right arm consumes enemies to heal), destroy its head to finish the boss faster, but leaves its damage and healing capabilities…..so risk/reward type of boss battles

And for the record the ONLY boss battles in GW2 so far I have found interesting are the ice corrupted from the CoE sub path, and the Eye fight from near the end of the story…

blah blah blah, stuff stuff stuff

I kinda felt bad for Zhaitan. Poor thing just sat there holding onto that tower for dear life as we slowly and painfully killed him with fireworks. Like we were celebrating at the same time as we were killing him, as if we already knew he wouldn’t win (it was obvious).

“All I can do is teleport a bunch of minions around and that didn’t work oh no what do I do now?!?!?!”

~~Pew, pew pew~~

“Nooooo stop it please!”

~~Pew, pew pew pew pew~~

“Go cute little Dragon worm snake thingies! You’re my last hope!”

~~Pew, pew pew pew pew~~

“That didn’t do kitten! NOOOO!!!!!!”

Destiny’s Edge : “WE DID IT, sorry for being dead the whole time”

Yeah as a boss it was pretty bad. Actually, as a dungeon I found the whole SM to be pretty lacking…even CM was harder.

Am I the only one who doesn’t think Zhaitan is actually dead? Just seems a little early for them to just kill off what is suppose to be our main foe in the game.

Well he did just kind of “fall”, but still, doesn’t excuse the fight before his fall, or even how uneventful the fall was :/

Zhaitan is the worst endgame boss I have ever fought….I was really disapointed

My idea isn’t very original, but this is how I would’ve done it.

The pact has developed five grounded super cannons. The priory asuras think they can one-shot Zhaitan if they hit him, and of course they need time to charge.

A huge amount of risen are converging at the cannons’ location, and the players need to take them out. In the distance we see Zhaitan fighting off a mass of pact airships and tanks as it slowly moves towards us.

After I hard fought battle against every type of risen, Zhaitan is in our faces and is about to eat us. Then Logan crashes his airship into Zhaitan, stunning it for a moment. The cannons finally finish charging, all five party members jump on them, and Zhaitan is blasted to pieces in a cool in-game cinematic.

It’s not over though. Since Zhaitan is made up of other dragons he can pull himself back together if the pieces aren’t destroyed. Destiny’s Edge and other NPC groups go off to kill different body pieces, while the player party goes on to fight Zhaitan’s heart. In the middle of the fight we hear that the other body parts won’t die until Zhaitan’s heart is dead, so “it’s up to us!” Pew pew, hard fought battle, Zhaitan dies, everyone’s happy.

The “fight” with Zhaitan was probably one of the most (if not the most) anti-climatic moments I’ve ever experienced in a game. It truly wasn’t even a fight, but an execution. how Before I entered the dungeon, I really thought the encounter would be epic, seeing how both the game and A.net hyped the powers of Zhaitan so much. Zhaitan, the Destroyer of Worlds and the Lord of Orr and the Risen, was ultimately gunned down by merely five cannons on a single airship. What a shame.

I wish they would change the way we confront Zhaitan some time in the future. At the current state, Zhaitan has nothing on any major dragon bosses that I’ve seen, let alone Bahamut. Even Zhaitan’s servants put up a better fight.

None of the dungeon boss battles are particularly well designed.

I’d imagine that even if we had a “ground battle” with Zhaitan, he’s one-hit everyone (like many of the bosses) and you’d spend most of the match trying to rally your downed party members. All while slowly whittling away at his health bar.

Compared with Deathwing and the Dragon’s Soul raid in WoW, I’m vastly disappointed by GW2. The DS raid took people a while to get used to, but once everyone knew the mechanics… It’s a fun, interesting series of boss battles.

With all other GW2 boss battles, I didn’t see anything that convinced me ArenaNet could pull off anything close to that.

Like everybody said, that’s just a cinematic , as fantastic as it is (beeing cinematics SE top skill) making a boss fight equally as epic in a mmorpg is much harder (but then again WoW seems to do it just fine) and Gw2 just started, although that’s not really an excuse let’s hope they learn from this HUGE mistake (and many others) and make amends in future content

I’d like to see the good folks at ANet take a page out of Shadow of the Colossus’ book for fights like the elder dragons. I think it would be epic for future fights to have the party moving along the dragon taking parts out in stages (akin to maneuvering the bodies of the bosses and destroying weak points in Shadow). Heck, it even fits nicely with the devs’ love for jumping puzzles.

The elder dragons are massive forces of nature. Treat them as such. Make their fights almost like an instance in and of itself.

EDIT: Also, related; compare the FFXIV cinematic to the actual quality of the fights in that game. Most bosses in FFXIV are dreadfully boring, as is the combat. Who knows how it’ll shape up after the revamp, but currently it falls very short of the epic feel in the cinematic. FFXIV is currently prolly one of the last games you want to look at when talking about actual combat design or fight mechanics.

Wriith.6581:

EDIT: Also, related; compare the FFXIV cinematic to the actual quality of the fights in that game. Most bosses in FFXIV are dreadfully boring, as is the combat. Who knows how it’ll shape up after the revamp, but currently it falls very short of the epic feel in the cinematic. FFXIV is currently prolly one of the last games you want to look at when talking about actual combat design or fight mechanics.

Which is why I didn’t pull up a gameplay combat video, I also didn’t use it as an encounter example, I used it as a contrast to our own dragon Zhaitan.

Regardless of which way you look at it, Zhaitan is pitiful in so many ways, even compared to the concept art imaging of him in the beginning of the GW2 trailer.

I am excited for Jormag. Jormag is one of the bigger dragons so I am eager to see what that one looks like.

I personally think the Zhaitan fight was as lackluster as it was due to time constraints. Now that the game is released, I think the next dragon fights will be a lot more memorable.

Zhaitan was probably one of the weaker dragons.

Errbody knows Primordius is the grand pooba of dragons.

Hmm this makes me think… sometime… when it becomes time for GW1 servers to shut down (hopefully in a long time from now still) Anet should make a little video to mark that too… ofc. not a complete the end of the world thing (the world is still there in GW2 afterall). But something cool to say this ends here. Still long long time from now is what that should be.

And yeah I was expecting a bit more from Zhaitan too… was not completely disapointed and it was not a complete failure. But it was missing something and just not the epic fight I had expected (and feared)

When you just shoot at Zhaitan from a distance, you don’t really get a sense of how huge and powerful he is. Closer encounters would give players a stronger feeling of danger and awe. I get that firin’-my-lazor-cannons seems more plausible to the GW2 world, but from what a lot of people have said, it wasn’t really all that fun. That’s why we like games where we can pick up a digital dagger, axe or sword. Because you can fight mythic monsters face to face, honestly it’s kind of like the make-believe games you play as a kid.

The build up to the Elder Dragon’s has been great, so you can’t half-kitten their fights.

I recall some NPC or bit of lore somewhere saying something along the lines of "You think the dragons have attacked? Ha, no, not even close. They haven’t attacked yet, they just woke up, when they attack, you’ll know it."

Maybe that’s why Zaitan is so anticlimactic, we jumped him before he had his morning coffee, and he’s going to come back pissed.

Greiger.7092:

I recall some NPC or bit of lore somewhere saying something along the lines of “You think the dragons have attacked? Ha, no, not even close. They haven’t attacked yet, they just woke up, when they attack, you’ll know it.”

Maybe that’s why Zaitan is so anticlimactic, we jumped him before he had his morning coffee, and he’s going to come back pissed.

That basically it for Zhaitan’s battle.

We are basically attacking a starving weakened morning bird.
-We cut off his food supply of magic
-We cut off his corruption to Orr
-All the Elder Dragons still haven’t even consumed enough magic to be at 50% of their true power.

Zhaitan is weak yes still his battle could have been more dynamic but that the point of fighting the first Elder Dragon in Chapter 1 of the Storyline. The first one will always be the weakest but once the weakest is gone guess what happens once the other Elder Dragons discover this.

“The Shatterer encounter in Blazeridge Steppes has been updated.”

I hope they made him harder!

I try to surpress memories of the zhaitan non-fight. Thanks for bringing it up again.

I believe they said there’s something wrong with Zhaitan and he’s currently bugged. Not sure when they will have it fixed though but he’s not suppose to just stand there and let you shoot him for 10 minutes.

Zoid.2568:

“The Shatterer encounter in Blazeridge Steppes has been updated.”

I hope they made him harder!

I’m curious about this as well, but he hasn’t popped yet on my server though many inquisitive players are gathered.

EDIT: You got your wish, Zoid, he’s tougher, with a new attack, and a much longer reach.

Just did the updated Shatterer fight. Most fun Ive had on a dragon champion in a while. It was the middle of the day, so we had fewer people (probably about 12). It was tough – people (including me) died multiple times and the mechanics actually mattered (including the mortars).

I know some of it was the smaller group size, but the fight felt much more epic. Would love to see more fights like this in the game (and Im sure we will).

Great job to whoever at Anet tweaked this fight.

So they made one of the lieutenants a bit stronger? its a step in the right direction, still hoping for an update for Zhaitan, and a nice surprise when it comes time to fight the rest of the dragons.

Really, blame it on the combat and skill system though. With the lack of roles, homogenized specialization of builds, traits, skill…what could you expect but a boss with LoZ fight mechanics….? Kill adds, pick up item, throw item at boss. It’s braindead and the direct result of them gutting trinity and the depth of GW1 combat completely out of the game. It’s the fundamental game design that is the problem. You’ve got boring, shallow combat…how can you make an engaging fight?

Ya I have to agree Zhaitan was pathetic everyone felt sorry for him in my party when I first did the mission. Hes like a pathetic sad King Kong.

Y’see, that was awesome. Why couldn’t Arenanet do something like that for a trailer instead of some creeper in white paint?

But still, as some have said, cinematics and advertisement does not a great game make. I am hopeful but wary, Enix has a terrible habit of holding on to their worst game mechanics for years and years, while simultaneously one-shotting great NEW mechanics then removing them forever.

lothefallen.7081:

Really, blame it on the combat and skill system though. With the lack of roles, homogenized specialization of builds, traits, skill…what could you expect but a boss with LoZ fight mechanics….? Kill adds, pick up item, throw item at boss. It’s braindead and the direct result of them gutting trinity and the depth of GW1 combat completely out of the game. It’s the fundamental game design that is the problem. You’ve got boring, shallow combat…how can you make an engaging fight?

This post… is so laughable… I can’t even think of how to respond. XD

lothefallen.7081:

Really, blame it on the combat and skill system though. With the lack of roles, homogenized specialization of builds, traits, skill…what could you expect but a boss with LoZ fight mechanics….?

Actually, a lack of trinity should make the combat better, because being a healer, and standing in the corner pressing 4,4,4,4,5,4,4,4,4,5,4,4,4,5,6,4,4… is sooo exciting.

This game has roles, also each profession should represent it’s own role. Pigeonholing your class into one of three roles really makes for limiting and uninspired play. What GW2 should focus on is pushing the professions to be unique and add to the party in their own way. For instance, a warrior’s banner or a guardian’s spirit weapons should represent GW2’s “roles” to an extent. Having a profession use their profession trademarks should be what makes party combat insanely unique and enticing.