Guild Wars 2

Just to add to this, ANet’s designers really need to reevaluate their definition of “entertaining.” Numbers alone are not entertaining. It’s really the problem solving elements that are inherent to any competent game that are entertainment and everything that follows- theme, telegraphing (so players can react to the problem. Fricckity frack is this game terrible at telegraphing), number of solutions and then numbers.

I stopped doing that event before the update if i was ever waiting for Tequatl. Now if the event pops up i actually go and join the ‘fun’. I find it way better much more enjoyable. Seems to scale to the more people the more kitten they get, the other day there wa 3 champs coming from one direction and 2 from the other. Please keep it the way it is, way less boring and way more challenging now.

“Fun” is digging too deep. Or magma.

I still think it’s fun, but then again I’m using a Mesmer at the moment…if I had any kind of a tanky class I’d be kitten at the one shot move they do now.

The lousy part is I feel like I’m getting less loot now than I used to because I can’t tag as many mobs.

What I expected them to do was to increase the health of trash mobs so they don’t die instantly, which made tagging them for loot cumbersome. And maybe add in a few veterans/champions from time to time that have more health and some additional abilities of course, but not this oneshot crap. I was just running by that event, the zerg was a bit behind me and a new champion spawned just left of the entrance. Guess what happened, I almost instantly went to downed state. In full exotic rabid equip, so I even have a lot of toughness and some vitality on top. And culling definitely doesn’t help, as well as the fact that enemies start aggroing and attacking instantly before they’re even visible.

Yes l made a post about this too including screenshot yet now cannot find it due to it being moved.
After Jourmag a few days ago people were dying everywhere from the change. The AOE is insane. I didn’t read anything about changes to event in patch notes though may have missed it.
Did it again though yesterday and didn’t seem as bad though it’s worth considering that at certain times of night it is impossible to complete many events as there are not enough players online particularly in Orr.

it aint damoss, its hypnoss

definitely overbuffed, but the aoe is static. stay mobile.

Its funny how the krait event at tequatl spawn is more challenging than killing tequatl. Shows some good judgement..not :p

I think part of the issue is that when it’s crowded enough to spawn champs, it’s crowded enough that you can’t see the mobs through the players. This means that it’s really difficult to see if they are telegraphing any mega attacks. Another part of the problem is that the shallow water around the lab can obscure ground effects.

I did this event a couple times last night and, honestly, I had a lot of fun. Yeah I got 1-shot by the AoE a couple times, along with many other people, but it’s usually a minority of the crowd and the people who are alive (i.e. the ranged) will rez you up pretty fast.

Having said that, I do empathize with the players who feel frustrated at this mob behavior. 1-shot mechanics should come with fair warning. The top thing that I would LOVE to see added to the game is Target Cast Bar (well Target-of-Target is a close second). This would solve a lot of issues with crowded fights when spell effects flying around and all the people swarmed around the boss obscure pretty much every animation the boss is doing. When I fight the Shaman at the Frozen Maw, I’m pretty much doing that fight blind because there are like 20 AEs stacked on top of him (Time Warp being the most noticeable), so I’ve taken to just equipping a ranged weapon and staying out of stomp range because I can’t see when he’s winding it up.

learn to dodge

its what the combat is about; mobility and dodging. avoiding attacks, interrupting them, aegis them.

thats how you play the game.
its not final fantasy.

but a lot of people play it this way..
anyway, i remember i was a “not so good player” but after 400h i can say i quite rock with my guardian!

Avatar.1923:

learn to dodge

its what the combat is about; mobility and dodging. avoiding attacks, interrupting them, aegis them.

thats how you play the game.
its not final fantasy.

but a lot of people play it this way..
anyway, i remember i was a “not so good player” but after 400h i can say i quite rock with my guardian!

Not sure how you can dodge something that you can’t see coming or aoe fields that don’t actually render, but hey, l2p fixes everything I guess!

Avatar.1923:

learn to dodge

its what the combat is about; mobility and dodging. avoiding attacks, interrupting them, aegis them.

thats how you play the game.
its not final fantasy.

but a lot of people play it this way..
anyway, i remember i was a “not so good player” but after 400h i can say i quite rock with my guardian!

Sorry, but guarian is not the only class in the game and not every class has Aegis or “Hallowend Ground” or “Hold you Ground”.

While i find the Krait event more challenging ( i like how the event scale if more people doing it) there are some other places where the changes are quite exaggerated.

Like the one of the pre events of Dwyna, where you will be ported! into a red circle and instantly knock down. You have no chance to dodge you can do excalty nothing except examining the ground and get the damage if you do not have stability running at that moment.
Same with the Acolytes, three of them and you will stay “as the pillar of strength” and die because there is no such amount of skills in the game as you would need to get out of all those immobility buffs you got.
It is the same old problem we had since a long time: many of the same typ of mobs doing the same skills at the same time and you have no chance to get out of that.

While the update to the krait skillset for more interesting fights are all well and good.. what’s not, is WPing into Splintered Coast Waypoint and then realising you’re down 1/2hp when the map has loaded when the event at the lab is active. The area slowly but surely becomes a littered wasteland of corpses! as the spawns are near the general direction of the waypoint.

Though I wasn’t participating in the event, it was a challenge to revive people as they waypointed and were caught unaware, as well as keeping myself alive from the AOEs.

Dropped an entire lvl 80 group……….just wasnt expecting damage like that from anywhere lol

I find interesting to note that most folks who’ve commented on the “new” krait have only mentioned their effect on events. Events that might be expected to attract groups.

The “new” krait are also irritating for folks like me: solo roamer/explorers who also have to contend with the “death by respawn” mechanics caused by ludicrous respawn rates in various places throughout the game.

They are yet another example of “cheap shot” mechanics serving as a means to artificially increase the level of “challenge” in gameplay while appearing to be poorly thought out. I can only hope this is some sort of experiment on the dev’s part and not a vision of things to come.

Yeah, they can put such events in a corner where nobody runs into them accidentially, but not in such a highly frequented area. I can easily avoid the event/damage when I know what’s up, but that’s a level 67 area with a lot of people passing by. Maybe you see a red ring before you’re dead, or you’re just dead. Even the veterans hit like a truck.

Avatar.1923:

learn to dodge

its what the combat is about; mobility and dodging. avoiding attacks, interrupting them, aegis them.

thats how you play the game.
its not final fantasy.

but a lot of people play it this way..
anyway, i remember i was a “not so good player” but after 400h i can say i quite rock with my guardian!

L2P noob doesnt help when you go from full health to 0 and while your looking at your corpse wondering what the kitten the champs that tossed the AOE’s render.

100 people waiting for tea kettle 20 run over to the event and it scales up it appears for all 100, half way through the fight bang a field of corpses

Its fairly safe to assume that some of the 20 newly dead know how to play.

Honestly, I don’t understand why the Krait were changed at all. They all had a variety of different abilities already.

Why the Krait now have buffs that you can’t remove I don’t understand and reported as a possible bug. 15 stacks of might all the time, then also get fury on top, lol.

“Strange sense of entertainment.”

Yup, you DEVs really have it.

on the bright side they are still weaker than thieves.

I’m loving the replies today.

This is exactly how the stupid Orrians were underwater until they finally fixed the silly instakill spin attack. It’s literally the one sole reason I never entered water again after trying to face just one, yes one mob underwater there.. this was a while back. Anyway, far and beyond unintelligent to add this back into the game.

If it’s the attack I’m thinking of, it’s instant and almost non dodgeable because there is no tell that they are going to use it, it just happens. If you are melee, prepare your anus. I just don’t get the logic behind ANet devs nowadays. Instakill this, instagib that.

Is that really all their tiny pea brains can think of? How about some real fun, not frustration. Again, it’s FRUSTRATION, not FUN ANet… you have the two bass akwards.

the krait at tthat event always start their attack in a pattern, and its really noticable if you hit that event solo/with a low # of players …

really shouldnt be much of an issue after the first couple of times you see it lol

done it multiple times on my primarily glass cannon toons … but maybe ill have to check it out again to see what the rage is all about haha

They have quite a high aggro range and can chain-immobilize you. Even if there’s no champion among them (then it gets dirty), you’re doomed if you’re unlucky and just run by. And this is not a level 80 zone, I’m in full exo with 20k health (when not downscaled) and tons of toughness, still they hit pretty hard.

Siliconmana.3816:

Yes l made a post about this too including screenshot yet now cannot find it due to it being moved.
After Jourmag a few days ago people were dying everywhere from the change. The AOE is insane. I didn’t read anything about changes to event in patch notes though may have missed it.
Did it again though yesterday and didn’t seem as bad though it’s worth considering that at certain times of night it is impossible to complete many events as there are not enough players online particularly in Orr.

This is the thread I believe:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Krait-event-in-Sparkfly-overbuffed/first#post1564175

FYI: You can view your post history by clicking your username in the top right and following the top link on that page

Mobs getting more and more damaging abilities is not fun. In my experience people are more likely to grind happily if they destroy large amount of mobs with relative ease. Hell, I’d take “kill 20 mobs every 10 sec” over “fight 1-2 challenging normal crap mobs that can one shot you every 30-60 sec”. Challenging should be reserved for bosses and unique mobs (and not by adding stupid amounts of HP).

And if level 80s have problems with lower level mobs…how will the new players feel in random blues/greens. CoreKrewe, I am disappoint.

Novalight.7568:

Mobs getting more and more damaging abilities is not fun. In my experience people are more likely to grind happily if they destroy large amount of mobs with relative ease. Hell, I’d take “kill 20 mobs every 10 sec” over “fight 1-2 challenging normal crap mobs that can one shot you every 30-60 sec”. Challenging should be reserved for bosses and unique mobs (and not by adding stupid amounts of HP).

Likely because trashing hordes of mobs quickly is boring, it is not as mentally fatiguing as trying to keep up with mobs that can one shot you for the same duration.

See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-Krait-Damoss-Explode-very-overpowered/first#post1590257, that’s what I expected them to change, those instagib events were ridiculous. What we have now is even more ridiculous though.

/e: my other post was deleted because it was all caps, so I’ll try again:
http://i.imgur.com/KVOdXXk.jpg
So much fun.

The new Krait buff has made the Story quests much more difficult as well.

Avatar.1923:

learn to dodge

its what the combat is about; mobility and dodging. avoiding attacks, interrupting them, aegis them.

thats how you play the game.
its not final fantasy.

but a lot of people play it this way..
anyway, i remember i was a “not so good player” but after 400h i can say i quite rock with my guardian!

Has nothing to do with dodging you spawn in at the way point you’re dead instantly, twice now i’ve spawned into sparkfly and been instantly killed with 6 plus other dead people on the same way point, there is nothing entertaining with those changes..

On another note i’ve stopped going to orr again because its become too “entertaining” apparently with similar changes..was fine after the clean patch too…

Yeah, the Sparkfly Fen Arcanist Lab DE is probably the hardest content in the game right now when it’s upscaled -.-

I was wondering what “you were hit for 23,000 by Unknown using Explode” was about. It might be more strategic if I even had any idea what hit me and how to counter it next time. As it is now, it’s just a random 1-shot.

Yeah the Arcanist Lab DE is insane right now. Something is wrong with the scaling, like the NPCs are being treated as players or something. One time we had 3 Champion krait at once to deal with. Needless to say it was a massive wipe.

,you know every time i have done this event (that i keep doing to see if the QQing is justified). I have vary little trouble with it. And im a meli user that rush’s into fights O_o

You people do relize that A-net wants some content to be hard enough that you cant always win right???

Thats why you get rewards even if you fail AND why some event paths only trigger when an event in the chain is failed???

Working as intended

Game developers making an enemy harder to kill?

HOW COULD THEY?

Get the torches and pitchforks.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

You people do relize that A-net wants some content to be hard enough that you cant always win right???

Thats why you get rewards even if you fail AND why some event paths only trigger when an event in the chain is failed???

Working as intended

^This.

I have done this event in small groups and large, It is always over quickly and only fails if no one at all is there so it can not be so tough. The only problem I have with it is the pathing of the krait coming from the east, as mentioned above they go up and through the wp instead of a direct line to the lab. Coming into one of these events can be quite a handful.

There is a fine line between hard and dropping tactical nukes at the slightest provocation.

Also, at least the lab event seems to have been a unforeseen consequence of seemingly unrelated changes.

Change 1, general buffing of krait.

This change also most various late game story missions virtually impossible to complete for non-bust builds and professions. This because they had a krait boss with a summon ability.

Change 2, changes to event scaling to include more difficult mobs rather than just pile on more and more trash mobs.

This resulted in veterans and eventually champions spawning. Thing is that we do not know exactly how the event scaling works so we can’t say how it decides that someone is taking part in the event or not. And the lab area is a dragon fight staging ground and so leads to masses of people gathering.

These two changes, on the surface seemingly unrelated, come together in this single event to create a situation, where you quickly find yourself facing down multiple buffed krait in champion form.

I hate Krait in general. They are simply annoying, coming always in packs. Even if I manage to take three of them down at once, I survive with a few HP and then the next is coming. They stand too close to each other.

Just noticing a couple of themes here….

Rukia.4802 “How about some real fun, not frustration. Again, it’s FRUSTRATION, not FUN ANet… you have the two bass akwards.”

digiowl.9620 “Likely because trashing hordes of mobs quickly is boring, it is not as mentally fatiguing as trying to keep up with mobs that can one shot you for the same duration.”

See the two mindset’s? One seeks fun by feeling uplifted. The other by feeling frustrated and fatigued. One once a more peaceful laid back approach to fun. The other wants intense struggle. For the Arenanet dev’s, I believe they think we all want an adrenaline filled rage fest fueled by frustration and struggle. Which is not a healthy state to be in for any extended duration or high frequency. Which GW2 players seem to do both. I hope they hire some new developers to balance gameplay. Here’s to hoping we get some more social activities and customization. Many of us will have more fun then!

For the Krait themselves, they also are more difficult in WvW. Soloing them used to be challenging. The first time I tried after the patch I went, Whoa… WTH??? So I can understand it might have been a bit of a shock to others.

I too find the change more frustrating than ‘entertaining’ or ‘interesting’. Challenge is an interesting concept in games. One distinction I’ve learned to make is true challenge and artificial challenge. Of course, I’m using ‘true’ here in terms of what represents challenge to me. I find in good challenging games like, say, Dark Souls, the challenge is seldom questioned. Why? Because, if you do a postmortem of the fight, you can usually understand where you went wrong and what you need to do to avoid a similar outcome in the future. I find GW2 provides more of the artificial variety than any true challenge. That is, one minute you are alive fighting and one second later you are dead and you don’t have the slightest clue as to why. You look at the combat log and see that some mob hit you with two quick shots that took half your health each, but there was no real reaction called for in the combat itself. You know, you see the attack coming and you evade? This happens often enough that it characterizes GW2 combat. It’s not satisfying. At least not in the sense that Dark Souls is satisfying.

So, this is another take on the frustration and challenge. I’m ok with challenge. I don’t think the MMO is about crushing challenge in open world PvE though, or in entry level dungeons for that matter. I think the current frustration with the 2/26 changes is more about developer inexperience than anything to do with the player base, one way or the other.

Raine.1394:

I too find the change more frustrating than ‘entertaining’ or ‘interesting’. Challenge is an interesting concept in games. One distinction I’ve learned to make is true challenge and artificial challenge. Of course, I’m using ‘true’ here in terms of what represents challenge to me. I find in good challenging games like, say, Dark Souls, the challenge is seldom questioned. Why? Because, if you do a postmortem of the fight, you can usually understand where you went wrong and what you need to do to avoid a similar outcome in the future. I find GW2 provides more of the artificial variety than any true challenge. That is, one minute you are alive fighting and one second later you are dead and you don’t have the slightest clue as to why. You look at the combat log and see that some mob hit you with two quick shots that took half your health each, but there was no real reaction called for in the combat itself. You know, you see the attack coming and you evade? This happens often enough that it characterizes GW2 combat. It’s not satisfying. At least not in the sense that Dark Souls is satisfying.

So, this is another take on the frustration and challenge. I’m ok with challenge. I don’t think the MMO is about crushing challenge in open world PvE though, or in entry level dungeons for that matter. I think the current frustration with the 2/26 changes is more about developer inexperience than anything to do with the player base, one way or the other.

I’m beginning to ponder some interesting questions for myself. I’m a long time computer user but only very recently began playing computer games for the first time. Part of the reason is that prior to retiring due to disability I was never able to take these games seriously or develop an interest in them.

To some degree I had and still have a prejudice towards regarding anything in a passive entertainment medium as a “real” challenge. The end result is that I end up seeing the “challenge” in these games as artificial and purely a source of irritation/frustration.

The life experience that “feels” most analogous to this vs. other players experience of “challenge” is culture shock.

Becoming a computer game player late in life is certainly proving to be an eye-opening experience in many regards, particularly when I see how my generation has negatively potrayed this new art form in the media and whatnot. Lots of food for thought.

LOL got 1 shotted for 15k last night by a Krait on Sparkfly. What exactly is the AOE suppose to look like btw? I didn’t see it.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

You people do relize that A-net wants some content to be hard enough that you cant always win right???

Thats why you get rewards even if you fail AND why some event paths only trigger when an event in the chain is failed???

Working as intended

The issue becomes why bother doing them when you know you wont win, very few people enjoy to lose 24/7 so they move and ignore the content..

So no not working as intended..

Selebrity.7469:

Its funny how the krait event at tequatl spawn is more challenging than killing tequatl. Shows some good judgement..not :p

This.

Whether or not the Krait problem is a real issue or a l2play issue, the above statement is painfully accurate. While I enjoy GW2 a lot, it has always seemed bizarre to me that the “big boss” events were so simple compared to a solid champion fight.
It’s like the loot from Teq and others is a reward for not falling asleep during the battle.
If we got loot according to fight intensity and required skill/game-knowledge, the boss fights would probably not break the top ten.

digiowl.9620:

Novalight.7568:

Mobs getting more and more damaging abilities is not fun. In my experience people are more likely to grind happily if they destroy large amount of mobs with relative ease. Hell, I’d take “kill 20 mobs every 10 sec” over “fight 1-2 challenging normal crap mobs that can one shot you every 30-60 sec”. Challenging should be reserved for bosses and unique mobs (and not by adding stupid amounts of HP).

Likely because trashing hordes of mobs quickly is boring, it is not as mentally fatiguing as trying to keep up with mobs that can one shot you for the same duration.

Nothing for me is less fun than killing a mob that was randomly assigned way more stats than my character who can one shot me but I cannot one shot it in return. (Ie every boss and elite mob in any mmo).

These mobs are joe nobody mobs that should be way weaker than my character and not way stronger. The artificial stat inflation given to these mobs ruins the game for me.

I also have the most fun when I am wading through hordes of mobs by myself and having the least fun when spending 30 minutes autoattacking a mob with 40 other people that is capable of one shotting us at any moment.

If the story says I should be powerful then I should be powerful.

Aridia.3042:

LOL got 1 shotted for 15k last night by a Krait on Sparkfly. What exactly is the AOE suppose to look like btw? I didn’t see it.

A red circle on the ground. Sadly the shallow water pools around the swampy areas obscure them. Never mind that the circle and the attack seems to come at the same time, meaning they are virtually impossible to dodge. This especially when the attacker is covered in particle effects or perhaps “signaling” the attack with a tail twitch.

There is a serious flaw with “watch the game, not the UI” when each enemy has so different an anatomy and attack animations. By this i mean that the only way to learn how to react is to fight the same enemy ad nauseam until you can dodge their attacks on rote.

With the varied fauna of this game, that means focusing you efforts on a single area, or even subsection of said area unless you happen to be one of the lucky few with photographic memory…

digiowl.9620:

Aridia.3042:

LOL got 1 shotted for 15k last night by a Krait on Sparkfly. What exactly is the AOE suppose to look like btw? I didn’t see it.

A red circle on the ground. Sadly the shallow water pools around the swampy areas obscure them. Never mind that the circle and the attack seems to come at the same time, meaning they are virtually impossible to dodge. This especially when the attacker is covered in particle effects or perhaps “signaling” the attack with a tail twitch.

There is a serious flaw with “watch the game, not the UI” when each enemy has so different an anatomy and attack animations. By this i mean that the only way to learn how to react is to fight the same enemy ad nauseam until you can dodge their attacks on rote.

With the varied fauna of this game, that means focusing you efforts on a single area, or even subsection of said area unless you happen to be one of the lucky few with photographic memory…

There’s some truth to this. The only times I’ve dodged the new Krait AoE I was on the move when they noticed me. If I wait to pick up a tell, it’s too late. If I wait to see he circle it’s too late. If there’s more than two of them and they all focus on me, it’s too late.

The same is true for the new Vet/Champion Risen Noble teleport/pull/symbol move. The Champion seems to spam it about every 12-15 seconds. On top of that, it can pull more than one victim, which is fine for a champion — but it can make for an “interesting” fight to see 4 of the 7 people fighting it downed at once.

Regular krait something-or-others (they’re the females) bring my downscaled GC exotics thief to <50% in the first tick of their barely-visible flashing-off circle.

Vets bring my full-bunker exotics guardian to <50% in the first tick and one-shot my thief.

I’d complain about their fellow krait immobilizing you right when the AoE lands, but then again I only survive long enough for it to matter when playing a full bunker, which gets downed if I can’t dodge out fast enough.

I like krait and they really should be annoying (the constant immobs/pulls accomplish that very well), but honestly, they’d still be a real challenge if that AoE damage was halved. As it is, taking on a pack of them is dependent on your luck of not getting immob + AoEed and playing survivalist besides.

Scumbag Mawile.6384:

Regular krait something-or-others (they’re the females) bring my downscaled GC exotics thief to <50% in the first tick of their barely-visible flashing-off circle.

Vets bring my full-bunker exotics guardian to <50% in the first tick and one-shot my thief.

I’d complain about their fellow krait immobilizing you right when the AoE lands, but then again I only survive long enough for it to matter when playing a full bunker, which gets downed if I can’t dodge out fast enough.

I like krait and they really should be annoying (the constant immobs/pulls accomplish that very well), but honestly, they’d still be a real challenge if that AoE damage was halved. As it is, taking on a back of them is dependent on your luck of not getting immob + AoEed and playing survivalist besides.

Yeah, I will agree that the new krait AoE damage is overtuned. This is not the case with Vet Risen Nobles. With them the AoE damage seemed about right. The annoyance with them is event waves that consist of all of one type of Risen (Wren, for example). Multiple Vet Nobles in a wave can mean it’s character ping-pong time.