Guild Wars 2

Do I have to go outside the game to find out how to succeed at the LS content?
There is no “story” to follow here. The content is clearly designed not for guilds but for groups of guilds. In game chat is full of “learn to play” or rude degrading incomplete or incorrect shouted partial instructions. The mail we received is nothing but a direction pointer.

I have no problem going outside the game. Duffys is great. This time I wanted to try and play as if I was an occasional player so I did none of the content the first day and didn’t do any looking for hints or tips. Everyone should try this once. If you do, you will see how bad it can be trying to figure out how to succeed. Is this the difficulty we were asking for?

I’m not sure what you’re complaint is, I’ve never needed to go to dulfy once to figure out how the content works and know quite a lot of people who are the same. I’ve always found it pretty self explanatory as to how to defeat anything in the game so far. None of the content is that severely complicated.

…except, maybe, for the Wurm fights

I’m with Tumult on this one. Maybe I’m a tad spoiled by other games and their transparency (WoW being the most refined of them).

It’s actually a bit of a slap in the face to have the game constantly hold back for the devs to have the “I’m so clever. Don’t you think I’m clever?” moments. And the level of coordination required is beyond all but the most organized of guilds. Sadly, they take one or two successes by high-pop guilds or Blackgate as a standard, when that kind of performance is FAR beyond the capabilities of the normal player base.

I hope Dulfy and other 3rd party sites are getting a stipend from Arenanet. After all, they’re doing the job of explaining the game for them…

I have never really understood “issues” like these.
I have yet to use dulfy or other sites a single time, and yet I have completed the meta events for every single Living Story, so clearly it is fully possible to do so.

The main issue is that todays gamers seems to be under the illusion that they should guided through every single step of the way rather than figure it out themselves.

Back in the days before the internet (or at least before it was not widespread) people still managed to complete games (which were often much harder than todays games for that matter) without having someone tell them exactly what to do.

lordkrall.7241:

Back in the days before the internet (or at least before it was not widespread) people still managed to complete games (which were often much harder than todays games for that matter) without having someone tell them exactly what to do.

I remember those days. And in those days, games were packed with manuals that explained how to play it.

PeterThomas.7243:

I remember those days. And in those days, games were packed with manuals that explained how to play it.

Basic tips how to play yes, but they didn’t explain every single encounter. The explained how to move more or less, and the rest you had to figure out yourself.

People today seems to want to be given exact instructions how to do something which makes me question why they play games at all rather than just watch a movie or letting someone else play.

If todays gamer was given Everquest (The first one) they would kill themselves trying to find quests…

Kumu Honua.2751:

If todays gamer was given Everquest (The first one) they would kill themselves trying to find quests…

Hey, remember how the Fiery Avenger quest was always in the game, but nobody ever found it? Only once we “found it” it turned out to require travel to a zone which hadn’t existed at launch? Or how about quests which mysteriously stopped working at a certain point because the wrong phrase was highlighted for a trigger or was not marked at all?

It’s worth noting there are no problems with what I’ve seen of the marionette fight not explaining things adequately. There’s even a glowing orange “I’m facing THIS way” for the one Warden you need to hit from behind or flanks, “stunned by mines” on the one which you need to kite through mines . . .

As for the wurm fight, that’s kind of a lot of trial and error and people communicating the different things required to their “teams”.

I’m sorry, but OP is just spoiled with the new generation of achievement-hoarding games, forgetting even that an “Achivement” by definition was supposed to be a feat to begin with. The release’s mechanics are really easy to learn and understand (Second try was sufficient to figure out what did what, without visiting any outside sites or sources.)

I’d invite you to play older games, including older Mmorpgs like Everquest and Daoc, without the hand holding fairy that is the internet.

I think the problem is that every average players expect that all the content is done for them, while it isn’t. There is some content made for more hardcore players and there’s nothing wrong with that, a game shouldn’t have to ONLY be made for casual players.

lordkrall.7241:

I have never really understood “issues” like these.
I have yet to use dulfy or other sites a single time, and yet I have completed the meta events for every single Living Story, so clearly it is fully possible to do so.

The main issue is that todays gamers seems to be under the illusion that they should guided through every single step of the way rather than figure it out themselves.

Back in the days before the internet (or at least before it was not widespread) people still managed to complete games (which were often much harder than todays games for that matter) without having someone tell them exactly what to do.

I’m all for exploring and putting the clues together yourself. I never go to 3rd party websites for anything. I despise them.

That being said, this type of ‘trial-and-error’ exploration does not mesh well with the fleeting, temporary content of the living story. You may have no trouble finding the time to figure things out but not everyone can be so fortunate.

Agreed. The in-game direction could be improved.

The Living Story UI should have a “show me” button (like the dungeon notification mails do) to point the player to the new Mari waypoint and the starting spot for the three wurm escort pre-events.

Then, at each of those spots, you need something that can give the player a basic understanding of how the event functions.

With Mari, each of the five lanes has an NPC guarding it. If the player interacts with Rox, for example, she should have a dialogue option: “What can you tell me about the Wardens?” that leads to a very basic overview of what each Warden’s abilities are. Then, when the event starts, the player has an idea of how to win, if they took the time to read.

The wurm event handles communication better, because there is global text right across the screen with instructions like “That’s enough bombs. Prepare to attack the wurm!” That works really well, and made the fight intuitive even the first time I played it.

Vick.6805:

Agreed. The in-game direction could be improved.

The Living Story UI should have a “show me” button (like the dungeon notification mails do) to point the player to the new Mari waypoint and the starting spot for the three wurm escort pre-events.

They did. If you clicked the two events in the living story it showed you right where they are.

They do that until you advance to scarlets lair. Which you can’t do till you know where those events are.

lordkrall.7241:

PeterThomas.7243:

I remember those days. And in those days, games were packed with manuals that explained how to play it.

Basic tips how to play yes, but they didn’t explain every single encounter. The explained how to move more or less, and the rest you had to figure out yourself.

People today seems to want to be given exact instructions how to do something which makes me question why they play games at all rather than just watch a movie or letting someone else play.

So much in agreement with LordKrall that it’s not even funny. I remember the days of playing RPG’s and having NO idea where to go at times. Eventually you found the way with enough exploring.

I used to use gamefaqs.com for the longest time to help me go through games that may have given too much trouble. Game Genie/Game Shark and Walkthroughs helped make Gamers lazy…. it’s sad.

I use Dulfy now, but only to make getting the achievements done easier for the tips. I don’t need Dulfy to know what’s going on in the story or where to go next. That stuff is in game. As another said, the UI shows you where to go and tells you the basics of what you need to do.

Elesh.6192:

I’m sorry, but OP is just spoiled with the new generation of achievement-hoarding games, forgetting even that an “Achivement” by definition was supposed to be a feat to begin with. The release’s mechanics are really easy to learn and understand (Second try was sufficient to figure out what did what, without visiting any outside sites or sources.)

It’s a bit different when the achievements are time-gated. Only have two weeks or a month to figure it out changes the situation entirely.

Some players may not have the time to spend during that time period to get all the achievements done, even if they wanted to.

lordkrall.7241:

I have never really understood “issues” like these.
I have yet to use dulfy or other sites a single time, and yet I have completed the meta events for every single Living Story, so clearly it is fully possible to do so.

If you have completed the meta events for every LS, then I would guess that you play a lot, and you probably start when the events are first released. When the events are new, everyone is learning, and people are very helpful. When the events are a week old, and a new player comes and tries to learn on the spot, they’re likely to receive a lot more hostility — because their mistakes (while learning) will slow everyone else down or make the event fail, and because the people who know the mechanics are sick of explaining.

If the events didn’t have short timers whose expiration causes failure (partial or complete, depending on the context), this wouldn’t be so bad; similarly if retries were possible after failure.

I’ve done the Marionette 5-10 times. I like the fight, and now can generally manage my part of breaking the chain so long as there’s at least one other clueful person to help DPS the champ. All the attempts I’ve been on have failed, though I knew most would fail before I started due to numbers, and just did them for the daily.

lordkrall.7241:

The main issue is that todays gamers seems to be under the illusion that they should guided through every single step of the way rather than figure it out themselves.

Back in the days before the internet (or at least before it was not widespread) people still managed to complete games (which were often much harder than todays games for that matter) without having someone tell them exactly what to do.

Those games didn’t impose a delay of 2h between attempts(!), and your failures while learning didn’t slow others down. I know everyone likes to talk about how things were better in the day, but you’re comparing apples and oranges, and have created a strawman; the issue isn’t that it requires us to learn new things, is that the game itself doesn’t have a good mechanism for figuring out what those things are; instead, the developers are leaning on the community, with mixed results.

Anyway — I wouldn’t mind some failures to learn new skills. But the timer approach is lame, and the 2h delay is lamer. It’s sad, ‘cause I like think the Marionette event is fun, but I’ll get sick of it if it always fails for reasons outside of my control (I refuse to camp out in a map for an hour before it to be sure of having a space). And it’ll be gone soon anyway; I won’t participate in gear-check events like the new wurm boss, so … <sigh> <shrug>

Tumult.2578:

Do I have to go outside the game to find out how to succeed at the LS content?
There is no “story” to follow here. The content is clearly designed not for guilds but for groups of guilds. In game chat is full of “learn to play” or rude degrading incomplete or incorrect shouted partial instructions. The mail we received is nothing but a direction pointer.

I have no problem going outside the game. Duffys is great. This time I wanted to try and play as if I was an occasional player so I did none of the content the first day and didn’t do any looking for hints or tips. Everyone should try this once. If you do, you will see how bad it can be trying to figure out how to succeed. Is this the difficulty we were asking for?

I did the same thing and had no problem with the content. There are tips and guides in game if you pay attention to them. I just followed the LS star on my UI and got all the info I needed. This update was well designed and implemented, and I liked it a lot.

And yet if it was so intuitive, you wouldn’t feel challenged and would say the content is too easy.

Kids these days.

So the OP wishes that 20 minutes before he fights the wurm, you get a mail saying there is a wurm event with the exact location. When he travels to the said location, he finds an npc which explains everytime about the wurm. How much HP, its attack range, its damage output, its mechanics, the do’s and don’ts etc.

Like everyone already said, gamers today are way too spoiled with games in general. When I was a kid I defeated Ultima & Omega Weapon in FF8, got every Esper in FF3, got a 102% completion on Diddy Kongs Quest, completed the original legend of Zelda with (I think) every heart there is to find, I could go on for a long time.

Games like Demon/Dark Souls are games like how they used to be. Challenging, mysterious and lots to explore.

Mugiwara Luffy.1087:

So the OP wishes that 20 minutes before he fights the wurm, you get a mail saying there is a wurm event with the exact location. When he travels to the said location, he finds an npc which explains everytime about the wurm. How much HP, its attack range, its damage output, its mechanics, the do’s and don’ts etc.

Like everyone already said, gamers today are way too spoiled with games in general. When I was a kid I defeated Ultima & Omega Weapon in FF8, got every Esper in FF3, got a 102% completion on Diddy Kongs Quest, completed the original legend of Zelda with (I think) every heart there is to find, I could go on for a long time.

Games like Demon/Dark Souls are games like how they used to be. Challenging, mysterious and lots to explore.

The problem isn’t the need to learn. The problem is that each person learns at a different point, and their learning hobbles others just trying to complete the event.

I can do my part fine in the Marionette event now; so I do, then I try to teach others. But they mostly won’t be part of the event for me next time (my server can’t do the event when I want to play — not enough people still interested); and fundamentally it feels frustrating and inefficient.

The problem isn’t one where a dialog which you’d have to read would help — most players wouldn’t. The problem is that learning the mechanics may cause the event to fail for everyone, and then everyone is stuck waiting for 2h… rinse and repeat.