Guild Wars 2

Swift.1930:

Fengzhou.9853:

You CAN design a map and give the aura of danger and challenge without going overkill on the cheese. One shot mechanics aren’t skill testers, it’s lazy design.

This was something that confused me as well. I tried blocking, dodging, blinding, flying away with a glider… nothing worked. Am I missing something? What kind of attack should completely down random people from full health?

Actually, evade/invulnerability does help against the axemaster’s insta-down, but it’s very tricky to time with the axemaster. I’ve managed on my mesmer with both sword 2 (blurred frenzy – evade) and shatter 4 (distortion – invul), but you need to keep a close eye on the timer in your buff bar and pull whatever defence you have the exact second the buff runs out.

Back to the main topic: I guess I’m one of the “has too much rl but still enjoys challenging content” kind of casuals. Mid-40s with kids, husband, and fulltime job, I often only get to play for short stretches of time or have to leave in the middle of the action (the high point was healing an end-level challenge mode raid in another game with a crying toddler on my lap in the later part of the fight because my youngest had woken from a bad dream … incidentally that was the first time we ever succeeded in that raid ).

I’ve adjusted my playstyle and expectations to fit my life. This being an MMO, not a single player game, I know that I can’t just log in and say “I’ll do a-b-c today”, since a) a lot of things can’t easily be soloed, especially with my time constraints, and I don’t know if there’ll be people around the precise moment I want them to, and b) the living, evolving world means that the world is not at every moment in the place I want it to be.

Instead, I try to go into the game with an open mindset. I know the things I’d like to do and just see what’s available/possible, and go with that. For example, yesterday I logged onto my ranger, with plans of maybe going into wvw to try to get one of the easy (soloable) dailies done, when I noticed mapchat in Verdant Brink calling out for people to help with the bottom left hero point. Since he didn’t have that yet I jumped over, and right after joined another group for the golem hp, too.

Some days, I get stuff done I didn’t prepare to tackle just yet (my ranger already has his elite spec filled, so map exploration of the new zones is a long-term goal for him), other days I don’t because the stars don’t align with my playing times and the mega servers I find myself in. Some days I log into VB and find myself in an early morning low population map with nothing much to do, so I go to another map and/or another character. Other days I log in right into a Tarir defense (I’ve actually gotten five successful defenses by now, and only one of them was on a weekend where I had enough game time to play a whole meta cycle).

If you don’t have a lot and/or stable game times, don’t set your mind on some narrow, specific tasks you want to do. Go with the flow, be flexible, change your plans depending on what (and who) you find in game. You won’t always find your playtime packed to the rim with exciting, reward-heavy stuff, but you’ll get towards your goals step by step. I’ve been playing this way for three years now, enjoying my time and “working” towards my goals on the side, and I’ve gotten a surprising amount of stuff done, while still having fun.

And I love the new maps, because they do challenge me to think about what I’m doing in-game. I’ve been in the HoT maps on four characters for now (zerker ranger, rabid/sinister mesmer, zerker ele, celestial ele), and while some of my characters have a sharp spike in their deaths count (especially the ranger who was the first into the new maps), I really enjoy the feeling of progression, learning the maps, learning the types of enemies, and feeling progressively “better” against the new content.

Don’t hate on the new maps because you don’t rule them straight out of the entrance portal. Take your time to learn the new maps and enemies (something that may well take you days, I know I’m still learning and I’ve spent a lot of my game time in HoT since release), then find a set of small goals, explore a bit of a map, join a couple of events, and who knows, you’ll find your bigger goals suddenly right in front of you without the frustration of always only looking at that bigger goal.

Swift.1930:

I’d like to think that you’re right, but so far I’ve found that most of the challenge is being unexpectedly insta-downed (Axemaster) or kiting in a circle with auto-attack on for a couple of hours while a legendary or a a HC champion’s health pools crawl steadily downwards. Mordrem enemies are interesting, but are also not as common as the others.

The axemaster…

You need Nuhoch lore mastery at 4 to be able to see him when he does the insta down vine attack.

A boss that’s required to gain maximum rewards in the dreadful meta-cycle of the very first map, requires 4 levels in a mastery you can’t even unlock until you reach the 3rd map, before you can effectively contribute to cancelling his mass insta-down attack.

When I first met the guy, I needed 5.8 million more experience and I couldn’t even start earning it at that point. And then there was half a dozen people ranting and raging at two dozen clueless people that we needed to use CC on him.

If there’s a yearly prize ceremony for bad game design, this should surely get a nomination.

ferdi.1452:

I think the difficulty is ok once you get used to it. The only problem I have is that if I want to play a decent HoT map I have to spend 10-20 minutes in the LFG.

This must be a megaserver issue, and I strongly recommend ANet revises them for HoT ASAP. One should NOT require taxi-ing to find a populated map-only extremely organized ones. The megaserver was designed so that should NOT happen as a rule, but most people can only get to “good maps” only thorugh taxi-ing, and that’s not only a shame, but bad for the game’s image.

A queue system with options to distinguish between “I want to explore” vs. “I want to complete map metas” would help. (Actually queuing up for a specific instance should’ve been in the game since megaserver release, but whatever right?)

If you have this differentiation of map types you could imagine putting stricter requirements in place, like gettin kicked out into an ‘Explore’-instance if you are not participating in the metas.

Edit: Also what about giving people a real interface to organise maps?

Fengzhou.9853:

. Many. Mobs… you can’t STOP and rest, you afk to use the toilet, you die.. It royally sucks when most of the way points cycle through contested events, so even pausing at one of those can pretty much guarantee death.

Nods, a thing that irks me as well.

Solution: Ask in map chat for a party member for a anti-dc group (one party member will do) and when you have to go afk hit “b”, enter your WvW home world, do whatever you must do (unless it takes too long and you get auto kicked). When back again hit “b” again and “exit the mists” and you will be right where you were and on the same map.

Also a great way of emptying your inventory should it get full …

Swift.1930:

Fengzhou.9853:

You CAN design a map and give the aura of danger and challenge without going overkill on the cheese. One shot mechanics aren’t skill testers, it’s lazy design.

This was something that confused me as well. I tried blocking, dodging, blinding, flying away with a glider… nothing worked. Am I missing something? What kind of attack should completely down random people from full health?

Talking the axe champ here?

There is a trick, indeed. If you cannot see it (or do it) there is the alternate way of sticking together to power rez those downed and continue hacking at the bad guy.

As for my feeble pun … once you can see those invisible mushrooms (some mastery) you’ll also see the axemaster and how he is powering up his attack. Break his bar and the deadly attack won’t happen …. problem is, though, that you need A LOT of guys who can see him to break his bar. Failing that … power rez. You can only fail this one, actually, if you have less than 10 people on him or if people are spread too far to power rez the downed.

Manasa Devi.7958:

A boss that’s required to gain maximum rewards in the dreadful meta-cycle of the very first map, requires 4 levels in a mastery you can’t even unlock until you reach the 3rd map, before you can effectively contribute to cancelling his mass insta-down attack.

When I first met the guy, I needed 5.8 million more experience and I couldn’t even start earning it at that point. And then there was half a dozen people ranting and raging at two dozen clueless people that we needed to use CC on him.

If there’s a yearly prize ceremony for bad game design, this should surely get a nomination.

Won’t make it to 1st place, though. 1st place will go to the treasure mushroom. Especially the one in VB as it sits in one of the most unhealthy places in GW 2 I have encountered so far + it has the “Defend Soldier” event that spawns in additional enemies. It’s conveniently located close to a waypoint and a get-together-or-die HP but as most players cannot see the group event from where they are (waypoint, HP) and even if they do they cannot see the mushroom … bleh!

Oh yeah, the VB treasure mushroom, I totally forgot about that. Someone called that on map chat, and I, still blissfully unaware of such rubbish at that time, went there, as did a lot of other players who didn’t have a clue what was going on.

I really want to know who thought of all that, so I can follow this person’s career and avoid what other games they work on like the plague.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Oh yeah, the VB treasure mushroom, I totally forgot about that. Someone called that on map chat, and I, still blissfully unaware of such rubbish at that time, went there, as did a lot of other players who didn’t have a clue what was going on.

I really want to know who thought of all that, so I can follow this person’s career and avoid what other games they work on like the plague.

Giggles – I imagine a lot of players gliding in to a player who called for help and all they see is a guy who’s seemingly attacking air and who’s running around a lot … hillarious.

Now, it might have been OK if the treasure mushroom would become visible to other players once he has been attacked and brought down to, say, 75% life …

Your intention regarding the one(s) who thought this out is too narrow, though. Things like these are implemented by one or two developers but there’s usually a board that decides on the concept and also a board or a QA team that checks the final implementation and it ran past those people … you might want to include those in your “people to watch” list.

You’re right. Games are made by committee nowadays. I need to keep track of all those responsible. Maybe make a watchlist people can subscribe to. The awareness needs to spread, so aberrations like this can be exposed before people spend money on them.