Guild Wars 2

There is a similar topic, but could not add my 2 cents as it was over 7 days old. I will not feel bad if this post is moved.

WHICH HoT adventures should be recalibrated/fixed? I ran for Gold in all the HoT adventure runs – the results are from an Old Dude’s (65-year old) opinion with a rating of hardness from 1 – 10 (hardest)

Verdant Brink

Salvage Pit – Run in a logical way, without crossing back over your own path. 2

Flying Circus – Mechanic driven run. 4

Tendril Torchers – This is all about learning a pattern and running it flawlessly. 7

Bugs in the Branches – Master flying abilities and develop a logical pattern. 7

Shooting Gallery – (1) It is not in an instance, so Frogs slow and stop progress with you. (2)The dot is very hard to see – should have a circle around it – crutch for an old dude…. (3) Severely limited time to access. (4) Unlike the other adventures – grass, trees, huts, fences, and other environmental items are there as obstacles. (5) I believe you need to shoot BEFORE the target materializes. In 23 years of shooting expert in the Marine Corps, not once did I ever shoot into a cloud hoping I hit the target. Yes, I am STILL WORKING ON ACHEIVING GOLD IN THE ADVENTURE – I finished all the others. 12

Auric Basin

On Wings of Gold – Master flying abilities and look for obvious drops. 5

A Fungus Among Us – this is a mechanics drill – learn to use the 2-phase jump accurately and a fair amount of Jumping Puzzle experience. 7

Sanctum Scrabble – Learn all the skills well and develop your own rotation to maximize your speed going thru the JP – then run a flawless run. 8.5

The Floor is Lava – This is all about control and patterns – but your pattern needs to include full use of speed mushrooms – then run at the very edge of losing control. 9

Fallen Masks – Expertise in “controlled falling” and being able to observe and remember patterns – add in a little guessing and run it at the very edge of losing control. 9.5

Tangled Depths

Beetle Feast – Learn the skills, have minor Jumping Puzzle Skills, and start running. 2

Drone Race – Learn the skills, have minor Jumping Puzzle Skills, and start rolling. 2

The Ley-Line Run – Learn the skills and practice until you hit it. 5

Haywire Punch-O-Matic – This is just learning and controlling the skills – lots of ways to do it, but an almost flawless run needed. 8.5

Scrap Rifle – RNG has been applied to the chak and you only KNOW general spawn points. I believe there are about 3 sensible patterns to run – find one, then run on the very edge of losing control. After hundreds and hundreds of runs and a half-dozen scores of 149/150 kills, I finally made the kill when my scrap rifle overheated with about 4 seconds to go and I threw it in the right spot. 12

In short – I believe that shooting gallery and scrap rifle adventures are looking for elite players, leaving 99.99% of the rest of us just staring at the mastery point. The only reason I personally completed gold on scrap rifle, I hit that perfect, flawless run – even a blind squirrel finds a nut. :-)

At a minimum, I think that they should move the mastery points down to bronze and silver, then add titles and guaranteed daily rares for gold. Gating masteries behind mini-games that no players ever asked for was a bad call on their part.

Crustydog.9825:

I believe you need to shoot BEFORE the target materializes.

Ignore the body. You want to aim for + where the sticks meet.

This adventure used to be locked until the camp was secure. Now it’s always open during the day unless the camp is being defended. The nearby enemies are the consequence of not securing the camp.

Bolded items need to be re-tooled/re-made/scrapped:

Salvage Pit – Easy gold
Flying Circus – Waaay too long per attempt, and it pretty much requires advanced gliding mastery to pull off.
Tendril Torchers – I find that my main problem with this one is that not all of the tendrils show up at once, or the flames don’t catch them appropriately. It forces me to waste way too much time repeating the same sections.
Bugs in the Branches – Either just a few more seconds or adding a few extra orbs would do this one fine. I’m usually 2-3 away from gold, but the actual pathing is a mess.
Shooting Gallery – I did pretty well to get Silver, but the targets just spawn too randomly, enemies spawn nearby, and terrain is an issue that blocks LOS/shots.
On Wings of Gold – Easy gold
Fungus Among Us – Prone to skill lag and terrain glitches that block progress. The gold time requires getting a special jump just right.
Sanctum Scramble – Utterly obnoxious, and worse than Flying Circus for time-to-failure ratio. And much like Fungus, there are random niches in the terrain that can snag a toe and fail a run. Sadly, it’s one of those “could have been fun” adventures that falls flat due to numerous execution failings.
Floor is Lava – Also prone to skill lag, and the pathing for it is just too erractic to be sensible. Came close to gold for it, but the timer stops me just a few short.
Fallen Masks – Entirely too random.
Beetle Feast – Can’t remember if I got gold or not. I can’t remember having fun with it, either.
Drone Race – Kinda-sorta aced it on the first go. Remember to have Poison Mastery (yay, the one time it’s useful!)
Ley-Line Run – The failing on this one is less the run itself and more that the jumps are utterly obnoxious due to poor collision detection, forcing a lot of restarts.
Punch-O-Matic – Mash #2 to win. Took a few tries to get gold, but that’s mostly because the chak stopped approaching. Cheesy but not fun.
Scrap Rifle – The heat management and other features might have been decent, except it was way too easy to catch an egg patch in the line of fire and chak don’t actually approach. I mean, seriously, I could have taken an egg, shoved it down a chak-mom’s throat, and kicked it, and they still wouldn’t come after me. It made for a very boring, frustrating chore instead of a wild extermination ride.

So, we once again realize that Adventures might have been okay in concept, but something in their rushed execution left them ailing and unpolished. :\

Ley line run is at around the same level of difficulty as drone race with poison mastery. It is just a matter of using 1 and 3. Why does the 2 skill exist at all?

For tendril torches and shooting gallery I had to reconfigure the way I play to get gold on TT and a chance at gold on SG.

My fingers are too short and too inaccurate to blindly hit F1-F12, so long ago I learned to control weapons and skills using the right side number pad and control movement with A,S,W.

For these 2 adventures though, number pad was OUT, I simply couldn’t position and fire in a timely accurate manner.

There are several mice with programmable controls on them, and I use this method just for those 2 adventures. I’ve gotten gold on TT and made it to within 6 dummies of gold on SG (I gave up on SG after that).

Still, I feel when you have to bang your head against a screen for hours/days/months on end or drastically alter the way you play to achieve a goal, then the goal is too unrealistic.

TT for me borders on realistic, but SG is not realistic. The unturnoffable action camera doesn’t help either. That adventure is just plain evil!

TT is a bit weird for me. There have been times when getting to gold was a breeze but other times just getting to silver is a struggle.

I definitely think that RNG needs to be removed from adventures period. Fallen Masks and Shooting Gallery in particular should have a set rotation, so you can learn which ones are coming up next.

As for the rest, I think that most of them are fine. I certainly wouldn’t mind if a few of them got easier to hit gold. My biggest gripe with them is that the achievements aren’t hidden, so if you aren’t good at adventures it will be there hauting that tab in your achievement panel.

I guess the real question – what percent of the playing population does ANet want to be able to get gold? I would love to know of the people playing, how many have actually achieved bronze, silver, and gold. As a game designer, it would seem logical that the metrics to accurately measure attainment of the desired target would be the completion rate….

The forums DO work – sometimes in the strangest ways.

I just had a player whisper me to adjust my “field of view” to the minimum – making it first person as much as possible and MAGNIFYING the targets by a substantial amount.

It is making a big difference on the adventure. Whether it is enough, time will tell….

Crustydog.9825:

The forums DO work – sometimes in the strangest ways.

I just had a player whisper me to adjust my “field of view” to the minimum – making it first person as much as possible and MAGNIFYING the targets by a substantial amount.

It is making a big difference on the adventure. Whether it is enough, time will tell….

For Shooting Gallery?

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

This would just cause players to find the quickest way to fail rather than doing the actual adventure.

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

I would’ve gotten it for Sanctum Scramble and Fungus! There were so many false starts due to terrain hitches, I had to abort the run and start over. So many…

Rauderi.8706:

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

I would’ve gotten it for Sanctum Scramble and Fungus! There were so many false starts due to terrain hitches, I had to abort the run and start over. So many…

If this were to be implemented I would hope it was for genuine fails, as in you actually were making progress and just ran out of time as opposed to someone just aborting it 100 times in a row.

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

This would just cause players to find the quickest way to fail rather than doing the actual adventure.

And? “We” are not talking about ascendent/legendary gear as a reward, but freaking simple mastery points. People who WANT and/or ENJOY doing the adventures will do them the proper way and/or doing it regulary to improve their time. Don’t provide another case of “I’m fine with it, so should everyone else!”

“If this were to be implemented I would hope it was for genuine fails, as in you actually were making progress and just ran out of time as opposed to someone just aborting it 100 times in a row.”

While failing 100 times continously sounds extremly tedious and mind-crushing, the logic of failing in a “legit” way, instead of simply aborting holds its mertits.

Mahou.3924:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

This would just cause players to find the quickest way to fail rather than doing the actual adventure.

And? “We” are not talking about ascendent/legendary gear as a reward, but freaking simple mastery points. People who WANT and/or ENJOY doing the adventures will do them the proper way and/or doing it regulary to improve their time. Don’t provide another case of “I’m fine with it, so should everyone else!”

“If this were to be implemented I would hope it was for genuine fails, as in you actually were making progress and just ran out of time as opposed to someone just aborting it 100 times in a row.”

While failing 100 times continously sounds extremly tedious and mind-crushing, the logic of failing in a “legit” way, instead of simply aborting holds its mertits.

Sorry but no. If you want the reward from something then you have to earn it. Failing repeatedly is not.

Imagine how gutted you would be if you accidentally succeeded on attempt #99.

The mastery points for adventures should be awarded for bronze and silver (leaving gold to the people who actually enjoy the adventure). Collection items should just require you to get bronze (I thought they did this, but getting bronze in scrap rifle didn’t count towards the Hivemaster collection so maybe it was just for the elite spec weapon collections?).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

The mastery points for adventures should be awarded for bronze and silver (leaving gold to the people who actually enjoy the adventure). Collection items should just require you to get bronze (I thought they did this, but getting bronze in scrap rifle didn’t count towards the Hivemaster collection so maybe it was just for the elite spec weapon collections?).

The change was for specialization weapons, I think.

Ayrilana.1396:

Sorry but no. If you want the reward from something then you have to earn it. Failing repeatedly is not.

This is why challenging solo content is extremely rare to see. If you can’t handle it, there’s no alternative except for breaking the rules. Meanwhile, you can AFK your way through challenging group content.

Ayrilana.1396:

Mahou.3924:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

This would just cause players to find the quickest way to fail rather than doing the actual adventure.

And? “We” are not talking about ascendent/legendary gear as a reward, but freaking simple mastery points. People who WANT and/or ENJOY doing the adventures will do them the proper way and/or doing it regulary to improve their time. Don’t provide another case of “I’m fine with it, so should everyone else!”

“If this were to be implemented I would hope it was for genuine fails, as in you actually were making progress and just ran out of time as opposed to someone just aborting it 100 times in a row.”

While failing 100 times continously sounds extremly tedious and mind-crushing, the logic of failing in a “legit” way, instead of simply aborting holds its mertits.

Sorry but no. If you want the reward from something then you have to earn it. Failing repeatedly is not.

Yet here we are, where you can fail events and still get minimal rewards for it (even within the same bronze/silver/gold category as with successful events) or it’s encouraged in the rare achievement requirement. And the masochist “leave it to me” achievement, where you basically have to die until you defeated the Veteran Mordrem Wolf, but to be fair this specific case appears to be rather developed around this “play style.” The only “earned it” part is in being persistent enough. Your original argument was that people would abuse it for the one-time only mastery point due to it being the easiest hypothetical way. The path of least resistance will always be there. See meta builds, optimal class composition wanted outside of the realms of speed clears etc. If they never played the specific adventures afterwards, they would likely neither do so in a legit way.
Besides, the dying x times was just one example. I think most of “us” would be happy for some legit adjustments if one were bothered with achieving gold at all costs.

Mahou.3924:

Ayrilana.1396:

Mahou.3924:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

All of the adventures should reward futile perseverance and hand over the Mastery Points to anyone who fails, say, 100 times in a row.

This would just cause players to find the quickest way to fail rather than doing the actual adventure.

And? “We” are not talking about ascendent/legendary gear as a reward, but freaking simple mastery points. People who WANT and/or ENJOY doing the adventures will do them the proper way and/or doing it regulary to improve their time. Don’t provide another case of “I’m fine with it, so should everyone else!”

“If this were to be implemented I would hope it was for genuine fails, as in you actually were making progress and just ran out of time as opposed to someone just aborting it 100 times in a row.”

While failing 100 times continously sounds extremly tedious and mind-crushing, the logic of failing in a “legit” way, instead of simply aborting holds its mertits.

Sorry but no. If you want the reward from something then you have to earn it. Failing repeatedly is not.

Yet here we are, where you can fail events and still get minimal rewards for it (even within the same bronze/silver/gold category as with successful events) or it’s encouraged in the rare achievement requirement. And the masochist “leave it to me” achievement, where you basically have to die until you defeated the Veteran Mordrem Wolf, but to be fair this specific case appears to be rather developed around this “play style.” The only “earned it” part is in being persistent enough. Your original argument was that people would abuse it for the one-time only mastery point due to it being the easiest hypothetical way. The path of least resistance will always be there. See meta builds, optimal class composition wanted outside of the realms of speed clears etc. If they never played the specific adventures afterwards, they would likely neither do so in a legit way.
Besides, the dying x times was just one example. I think most of “us” would be happy for some legit adjustments if one were bothered with achieving gold at all costs.

Just because players want to put in the least effort possible does not mean that adjustments need to be made. There are more than enough mastery points available that they can skip getting gold in adventures. They can even skip getting mastery points from adventures altogether.

The “leave it to me” achievement can be done with minimal deaths. It’s just that since its life doesn’t reset, and that you can lure it to the spawn, players have decided to brute force their way past it. They’re not really earning the achievement.

Not everything in the game has to be at the level where you show up and you get a gold star, or in this case, a mastery point/achievement completion.

I think gold must be gold: only the best of the best should have the achievement.
Mastery points, in the other hand, are resources needed to make your characters grow, and their primary objective is to lead people into try different contents. Since getting bronze enough times proves the content has been tryed and played, further gating the MP doesn’t make sense.

So: Gold adventures should get you AP and related rewards, maybe even exclusive titles. Mastery points should NEVER be linked to gold adventures.

I can agree with giving out titles for hitting gold on adventures. And since a lot of people do have trouble with them, I can support moving mastery points away from hitting gold.

Fungus Among Us makes me rage because of the uneven terrain that could prevent you from using skills and the lack of targeting mark for estimating skill 2’s jump. And there’s the usual terrain garbage like seemingly walkable hills being unwalkable.

Ayrilana.1396:

Not everything in the game has to be at the level where you show up and you get a gold star, or in this case, a mastery point/achievement completion.

Certainly. But the idea of Ardid sounds fair enough to me. Don’t get me wrong, tough, I’m perfectly fine with ignoring the parts of content I have no interest in (I’ve yet to participate in any form of DS’ meta event, not done any Core Tyria mastery point rewarding world boss à la Triple Trouble etc) and while I’d like the mastery points, it was my own decision to not do that content. And I earned enough Mastery Points to to unlock the for me “most” important stepstones (Ley-Line Gliding, Stealth Detection, Poison Mastery, Exalted Existence + the complete LS3 track).

Ardid.7203:

I think gold must be gold: only the best of the best should have the achievement.
Mastery points, in the other hand, are resources needed to make your characters grow, and their primary objective is to lead people into try different contents. Since getting bronze enough times proves the content has been tryed and played, further gating the MP doesn’t make sense.

So: Gold adventures should get you AP and related rewards, maybe even exclusive titles. Mastery points should NEVER be linked to gold adventures.

Yes, I think this would be the best of two worlds if one is interested in maxing all mastery sections.

Been to long I’d say

Just move the Mastery Points down one tier to Bronze and Silver so new players have an easier time getting the HoT masteries filled. Eiether that or nerf them into the ground for the same results.

Then never bring back adventures ever again in any future content updates.

HoT gave us three maps with DS which I just count as the final boss and LS3 gave us four maps and none of the LS3 have adventures. Currently their event testing basket brawl though it gives no rewards so peeps don’t care but new activities on the daily rotation instead of useless adventures is the way forward.

Actually, I posted the topic to talk about recalibration of a few adventures – not making a major shift in the game dynamics. (where ARE the moderators…?)

I recommended that scrap rifle and shooting gallery at this time are basically just for the elite – and a few other adventures just shy of that….

The adventures are part of the regular game play that everyone enjoys. We have tournament PVP, Raids, and high level Fractals to stretch our capabilities – but the maps and story (and adventures) are for EVERYONE.

HIGHLY REQUEST a moderator do a database search and report back the percentage of how many people have completed gold on each of the adventures. It would be good to know if I am full of hot air or actually have a reasonable point.

Hopefully, before you get back to us, Crustydog will have completed Shooting Gallery and completed all the adventures. :-)

Crustydog.9825:

Actually, I posted the topic to talk about recalibration of a few adventures – not making a major shift in the game dynamics. (where ARE the moderators…?)

I recommended that scrap rifle and shooting gallery at this time are basically just for the elite – and a few other adventures just shy of that….

The adventures are part of the regular game play that everyone enjoys. We have tournament PVP, Raids, and high level Fractals to stretch our capabilities – but the maps and story (and adventures) are for EVERYONE.

HIGHLY REQUEST a moderator do a database search and report back the percentage of how many people have completed gold on each of the adventures. It would be good to know if I am full of hot air or actually have a reasonable point.

Hopefully, before you get back to us, Crustydog will have completed Shooting Gallery and completed all the adventures. :-)

One could potentially do this by looking at the all-time scores and comparing those with the cut offs. Are these available in the API to make this easier?

Ayrilana.1396:

Crustydog.9825:

Actually, I posted the topic to talk about recalibration of a few adventures – not making a major shift in the game dynamics. (where ARE the moderators…?)

I recommended that scrap rifle and shooting gallery at this time are basically just for the elite – and a few other adventures just shy of that….

The adventures are part of the regular game play that everyone enjoys. We have tournament PVP, Raids, and high level Fractals to stretch our capabilities – but the maps and story (and adventures) are for EVERYONE.

HIGHLY REQUEST a moderator do a database search and report back the percentage of how many people have completed gold on each of the adventures. It would be good to know if I am full of hot air or actually have a reasonable point.

Hopefully, before you get back to us, Crustydog will have completed Shooting Gallery and completed all the adventures. :-)

One could potentially do this by looking at the all-time scores and comparing those with the cut offs. Are these available in the API to make this easier?

Even if they aren’t in the API, Anet will have the data somewhere. Its really just a matter of whether Anet thinks that adventures need to be recalibrated again. I don’t think its a priority for them, but I still wouldn’t mind seeing RNG completely removed from all adventures.

There are only a handful that don’t need a rework. Occasionally I find one that is at least playable. But, not often.

The biggest problem is that they play to different skillsets. Some people will do better at one while doing worse at another. But, nearly all of them are required in order to get the highest masteries. It’s really grossly unfair, especially to older people (like myself). I simply cannot compete well enough to reach the highest tier in most adventures. Thus, it is impossible for me to ever fill out my masteries.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike HoT, and only a couple of reasons to like it. Adventures aren’t at the top of the list of bad things, but they’re close.

They’re actually not nearly as necessary for masteries as they used to be with LS3 providing new mastery points with every episode, for what it’s worth.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

They’re actually not nearly as necessary for masteries as they used to be with LS3 providing new mastery points with every episode, for what it’s worth.

That will probably change. The last ancient magicks mastery required 5 points, so the next one will require at least 5, but potentially 8 (and the one after that is likely to be at least 8 mastery points, since it will be the 6th one in the track). 8 is also about the upper limit of new mastery points awarded in each LWS3 episode.

Crustydog.9825:

In short – I believe that shooting gallery and scrap rifle adventures are looking for elite players, leaving 99.99% of the rest of us just staring at the mastery point. The only reason I personally completed gold on scrap rifle, I hit that perfect, flawless run – even a blind squirrel finds a nut. :-)

Pretty much this. I gave up on both adventures, way too annoying.

BTW I’d rate Sanctum Scramble way lower, at about 5. It is longer to learn, simply because it is a long run. But it’s fairly simple, at least if you have any experience with JP.

Well, here is a new wrinkle. In Shooting Gallery when you reach the 30’s (40 hits is gold) the "blue mushroom caps’ (icon showing where a dummy is spawning on the crossed sticks) show up in numerous locations at same time. However, more than once a blue mushroom cap remained after shooting it with just crossed sticks showing. I do not know if it is I hit the materializing dummy quickly and it disappeared before I could see it, or if the dummy just never shows at all on the crossed sticks – but the blue mushroom cap stays signifying a target ready to shoot.

Is that by design or a glitch ANet?

In Scrap Rifle, I hit 149/150 more than a half dozen times before I finally hit 150/150. Shooting Gallery is following in the same footsteps with at least 4, 39/40 hits.

Well, I completed all the adventures in the HoT maps. I am NOT going to say now that “aw, it is easy” or “if an old man can do it….” There are definitely a few of the adventures that remain scaled extremely hard.

I am not an elite player, but with over a decade of serious playing and being retired – I was able to spend wayyyy to much time on completion. Some may call it tenacity, others stubbornness, and still others stupidity – I tend to think my efforts on testing the adventures were the latter.

I stand by my assertion that a couple of the adventure’s level of play to achieve the gold achievement needs to be scaled back. The adventures are for the general PVE crowd and should be fun. Those who want to poke themselves in the eye can tourney PVP, Raid on hard-mode, or run high level fractals with four people.

This is Crustydog, signing off. Semper Fidelis

Crustydog.9825:

Well, I completed all the adventures in the HoT maps. I am NOT going to say now that “aw, it is easy” or “if an old man can do it….” There are definitely a few of the adventures that remain scaled extremely hard.

I am not an elite player, but with over a decade of serious playing and being retired – I was able to spend wayyyy to much time on completion. Some may call it tenacity, others stubbornness, and still others stupidity – I tend to think my efforts on testing the adventures were the latter.

I stand by my assertion that a couple of the adventure’s level of play to achieve the gold achievement needs to be scaled back. The adventures are for the general PVE crowd and should be fun. Those who want to poke themselves in the eye can tourney PVP, Raid on hard-mode, or run high level fractals with four people.

This is Crustydog, signing off. Semper Fidelis

I’m not a Marine, but I applaud your service, and thank you for it!

But, if you’re older, and yet still succeeded, perhaps “impossible” doesn’t completely apply to me (I’m just shy of 59). I think I’ll try some of them again. I’ll start with silvers as my target.

Thanks for the nudge!

The problem is the really hard ones are hard due to elements outside skill.

Something requiring great skill is ok by me, I can accept some challenges are over my skill level (And if I want to surpass them, I have to get better) I can admire and respect people with great skill.

When something require skill and dumb luck, then I can’t feel ok about it. I still admire Crustydog for completing all the adventures, but I applause his tenacity and patience over all, because we both know quite a few of the adventures are more “chancy” than “hard”.

SO. Amazing work, Crustydog.
Please improve adventures, Anet.