Guild Wars 2

So, now that the Sky Pirates chapter is over, and I’ve had some time to think about the AR dungeon, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts. Re-reading various forum threads about both the AR and the MF, the feedback can be summarised as such: while there were both players that voiced their love for AR and players that voiced their hate for MF. overall the Molten Facility wasa lot more popular than Aetherblade Retreat.
My friend put it this way: “When we lost the MF, we grieved. When we lost the AR, we rejoiced.”

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of some aspects of both dungeons; my hope is that this can help ANet developers to create temporary dungeons in the future that are are inclusive and popular as the Molten Facility.

• Length (distance)
  MF was longer in distance. It also had more, and in my opinion more difficult to defeat, trash mobs.
• Length (duration)
  However, the average completion time of the MF was far lower than the average completion time of AR. This is due to longer boss fights in the AR.
• Difficulty (closing)
  On average, players failed to complete the AR dungeon a lot more than MF. In MF, some groups failed at the final boss(es). In AR, groups failed at both the mid-boss and the end-boss encounter.
• Diversity of encounters
  The MF had more diverse encounters – 5 different types of animal mobs, then the MF guys themselves. The AR had sky pirates and inquest, but all trash mobes felt the same.
• Story
  The MF had cinematics and dialogue (some of which was ratehr funy – test chamber), as well as three “letters” (karma items) – the AR had two short establishing shots.
• Mid-boss fight
  The test chamber was a fun encounter and trained players up for the end boss fight. It was also pretty much impossible to wipe here. The Frizz encounter was more difficult so groups experienced many wipes, and had nothing to do with the end boss fight. (I personally was quite fond of the lasers mechanic though.)
• End-boss fight
  The MF boss fight had 2 distinctly different phases, and phase 2 came in 2 variants. After wiping, you would restart at the beginning of the current phase. The AR boss fight had 4 phases of the same, and when wiping, you would restart in phase 1.
• Achievements
  The MF didn’t have any skill achievements
• Rewards
  It is consensus that the rewards of MF were better – the jetpack is more expensive than the monocles even though the monocles are much rarer (I personally don’t know why that is, I like the monocle just fine) but also the MF mini, the sentinel stuff, azurite and the recipes made it more worthwhile.

All in all, MF was easier, and also felt more diverse in terms of mobs, boss fight and rewards.

I firmly believe that very few minor adjustments would have made the AR as popular as the MF:

• When failing in the Frizz fight or end boss fight, restart at the beginning of the current phase instead of restarting with phase 1 —> shorter boss fights, less frustration with wiping, better success rate for players (while still doing all the content).
  (Alternatively, going a little easier on both the golem pulls and Mai Trinn’s “armour” and shadowstep would have helped. But the above solution would have made it easier while keeping all mechanics in place for players to master.)
• If there had to be an unforgiving achievement that required restarting the dungeon after wiping, it should have been in the mid-boss fight, not the end-boss fight.

I also believe that these further changes would have made the AR a legend long talked about among the playerbase:

• A little more variation in trash mobs. There could have been bats in the dead-ends, more inquest technology in mobs…
• More story: more cinematics (maybe a little bit of humour even), and something akin to the MF “letters” for players to find.
• More popular rewards. The monocle is nice, but players would have played the puppy out of the Aetherblade Retreat for a chance at an Aetherblade weapon ticket or (better!) Aetherblade weapon tokens.
• The airship achievement should have been much easier, so that more players could have encountered the awesomeness of it by pushing that button themselves.

Did I forget anything? What do you think?

Please refrain from “The AR was easy! You noosb suck” posts, as there are other places for them. We already know that some players loved the puppy out of the AR. This thread is for analysis and constructive criticism, in the hope that the next temporary dungeons we see will be as inclusive, immersive, entertaining and widely popular as the Molten Facility.

I’d like to see both instances back in the game (as well as SAB and similar). Just reward everyone with 60 tokens of a random other dungeon (not choose one, but randomize it each time you finish it).
I liked them both. AR surely was more difficult. MF was rather a “run through” instance without obstacle but the final boss(es).

I felt AR had just as good a mix of mobs than MF. They all supported each other really well, and there were a good variety of different roles amongst the Pirates, Strikers for heavy DPS and Vulnerability, Thugs for AoE Melee and team buffs, Taskmasters for confusion. Whereas you look at the MF mobs, Shield Mob, Ranged Mob, Bruiser Mob, normal mobs.

There was definitely more internal support in the AR mobs. Also they put down much more pressure which I felt was a good thing. the 2 big mobs in MR both had slow to recharge high damage attacks, which could be dodged. The AR mobs in general needed constant cleansing and healing to survive through which I feel mixes things up a bit and make standard Zerker tactics less useful.

I also disagree about the 15min achievement should have been easier. I want at least 1 or 2 achievements each Living Story which actually take some perseverance. Though I wouldn’t have minded so much it resetting on wipe, as long as the fight from start to finish had to be done in a certain time.

I like both but Molten had that epic boss fight at end with the cool cutscene. =)))
I loved that intro cutscene a lot!
AR was harder but I thought the laser boss fight was a really nice design, although getting the achievement was soooo difficult till people would a way to break it, lol.

I’m all for hard achievements but it sux when they’re only available for limited time.

I really enjoyed SAB, Molten, and AR dungeon. They really shouldn’t take them out. It was nice to have something different to run.

I thought that overall the better dungeon was AR for several reasons:

- There was better mob variety in packs. Although MF had more interesting mechanics for their mobs, many of the packs were the exact same. For example, there was never any 3 brawler groups but there were a ton of 1 brawler, 1 rifleman, 1 shaman groups.

- Dungeon layout was better. MF had a boring phase that was just saving prisoners (lack of pack variety contributed to this) whereas AR had quirky things in the middle to make it more interesting (laser grid, cannons, lightning, jumping pads).

- Aesthetics were better. Although this isn’t to say that MF looked bad aesthetically, when I explored AR after the dungeon run I was surprised about how much work went into simply making it look cool.

- Rewards were somewhat better. Although the jetpack is considered much more awesome than the monocle (which I agree with), I do like the idea of getting a guaranteed gold per run.

- Bosses could go either way. I thought that Frizz was one of the best fights in the game, involving high situational awareness and skills other than high damage. Weapon Testing was also a lot of fun, but the difficulty was far to easy. However, when comparing Mai to Firestorm/Berserker, the MF final bosses were much better (though I think this could be solved by making Mai less long-winded and repetitive). The biggest problem I saw with this dungeon was Mai, other than that I thought AR was better than MF.

As for the difficulty aspect, how about making two difficulties for each dungeon? An easy mode and a hard mode. The difficulty level of AR was one of my favourite things about it. Also making every achievement easy to get completely defeats the purpose of “achievement”.

AR had some amazing art work in it, but mechanic-wise MF was superior except for the 1st boss fight. MF had one of the best trash packs design I’ve ever seen in any MMO, distinct and interesting mechanics, none-zergable, you had to pull mobs, pick some of them and burn them down or CC, watch out for their abilities and your position. AR trash while tough didn’t really have any tactic to it, just dodge, survive and nuke, nuke, nuke, besides visually mobs were less distinct. And last boss fight, MF just hands down better in every way. AR still a decent dungeon, it’s just MF was the great one.

Lol what? AR had fairly diverse trash mobs. The difference between a thug and a striker was like night and day. Meanwhile, MF had a lot of the same old flame legion or dredge archtypes. Only the Brawler, Gunner and Protector were really unique in that encounter. Fun mobs yes, but they weren’t nearly as diverse in my opinion because we seen/fought half of them before, just with less fiery FX on them.

Brawler, Gunner and Protector also were the only ones that really mattered, well shamans as well, sometimes. And here? … I dunno, they all looked like a bunch of those sky pirates to me, you just nuke the whole bunch and move on, you needed to jump out of static fields, watch out for confusion and that’s about it. Thug, striker…. never even paid attention to their names, because it didn’t matter. Just to make things clear, i’am talking about mechanics, not appearance.

I found MF much more enjoyable. Talking strictly boss fights…because regardless of diversity, trash mobs were exactly that…trash mobs…but I would have to say the trash mobs in MF were more of a challenge.

Only did AR once…two of my party members just could not stay alive in the final boss fight…we called it without finishing it…but I never felt the need to go back, it was just not that appealing to me…though I would gladly go back to MF.

I liked them both. Both had good mechanics, and the boss fights were not a cake walk.