Guild Wars 2

The NPCs in the personal story missions are so useless… it’s like taking a ball of wet fur into battle.

They just keep dying and dying, and i rez and they die again… not sure why it was designed like this.

Or how about its the fact that, when it says recommended lvl whatever and you are that level and thing you have to fight is 2 levels higher and a elite. Really!? Doesn’t matter what class I am, they are 3 shotting me and if I do fight to survive, then they one shot me. So what in the world are you guys thinking? Story is what I play mmo’s for, and grouping with people I usually save for the end, but if this game is nothing but grouping at low levels, then I wasted 60 bucks….

Lichbane.3952:

Or how about its the fact that, when it says recommended lvl whatever and you are that level and thing you have to fight is 2 levels higher and a elite. Really!? Doesn’t matter what class I am, they are 3 shotting me and if I do fight to survive, then they one shot me. So what in the world are you guys thinking? Story is what I play mmo’s for, and grouping with people I usually save for the end, but if this game is nothing but grouping at low levels, then I wasted 60 bucks….

I think you meant story is what you play RPG’s for. One comment on all of this though, if you want a personalized story, and an amazing multiplayer as the one on here is, you’re looking about 10 years away. Look at Fable or Dragon Age, the multiplayer is undeniably questionable, but the story is amazing, catering to your character in such a way you feel as if you are actually there. Expecting an MMORPG to have all these same features is like asking to have cars that use gas, but don’t pollute the atmosphere. You want to keep the great feature (multiplayer) and add something else that is incredibly complex for all involved (catered storytelling). /End rant

The more i ponder it the more it seems that things are balanced towards action play. Grab a melee or ranged weapon with a pierce or cleave, put the primary attack on left mouse button, turn off auto target and promote target, play the game like a third person action game by performing the attacks directly.

The RPG like controls of mob targeting and auto-attack are a distraction, unless you happen to be on the back row of a massive group encounter.

As a thief, the story missions were brutal in some cases. Bercilak was nearly impossible, the ONLY reason I beat him was because when he defeated me, he had half health and I spawned in a spot he didnt have time to run back and recover. The other mission i needed help on was the one where you use that sylvari sword to kill the lich. Lots of undead around him and the sword did no damage to them. The undead were relentless. What added insult to injury was that I knew i could take them on with regular daggers, but i was forced to use the sword. Those were the only two missions that got me angry, I reiterate, as a thief.

In future story missions I want more Boons from NPCs while I fight. I want to see Trahearne throw down a bloodwell or 2. Sword and shield soldiers to prvide prtections once in a while.

If the NPCs are not going to do any real damage, then let them support our character so we can take an onslaught of 4 or 5 minions at once, all spamming abilities.

I personally don’t mind the difficulty of the story missions. Once I found out my friends could join in, then I didn’t mind how hard they were. It is an MMO after all.

I disagree with you.
I’ve got a ranger using a Greatsword, and yeah, I died, but not an excessive amount.
I was always able to complete my storyline easily.
The only one I had to call friends in to help me was to defeat Zhaitan.

i did claw islan again on alt a few weeks a go and found it too easy, some things have been removed like lightening more than one lights, i do agree that the profession matters but this is also true in normal pve ele is much more fragile than some other professions

I’ve pretty much come to this conclusion on the personal story. I’ve become Trahearne’s minion and don’t realize it, I’m a Necro pet, that’s puts the whole thing into perspective.

Which is why I’ve only completed my personal story on one character, the rest stopped at Source of Orr.

Well, it’s good to know I’m not alone I guess. I’ve been enjoying the game a lot up until this point. The immersion has been great; but, yeah… the constant death – raise – death thing finally go to me.

I’m a warrior — one of the classes I see people on here saying can outlast on a lot of missions.

I’m on Defense Contract, which is set for level 53. I’m level 57, and I have tried every solo strategy I can imagine to beat Exaerix Infernus, with no luck. Trahearne seems to do almost no damage. Snarl and his group don’t seem to do much damage either and pretty quickly die. If I get anywhere near the boss or stop moving, I’m dead in about 3 hits.

I’m 4 levels above for this mission. I’ve just upgraded my gear; there’s not much better I can get. I’ve tried melee and ranged (ranged lasts a little longer, but it’s hard to even slow the boss down at all).

Also, if I return to the checkpoint and start running back, he meets me before I can come back around the hill. There’s nowhere to kite him there.

I want a game that is challenging, and I do appreciate that the penalty for dying isn’t very bad. But there is a difference between challenging and just stupidly difficult for no reason.

As for immersion:

This is one boss. Just one. I could at least understand the difficulty of Claw Island.

With an exotic’d out 80, I don’t do any of those without getting naked and just not caring about having to respawn and run and repeat. Otherwise it’s like there’s a mandatory tax on personal story stuff.

Yeah it’s the ineffective NPC ‘help’ and dogpiling of mobs that always cause the issue. Hey sure let’s send eight Risen with knockdowns at the player at once. They won’t wind up locked out using their skills for the whole fight and then dying… will they?

Maybe they should actually play what they implement… shocking idea.

Lichbane.3952:

Or how about its the fact that, when it says recommended lvl whatever and you are that level and thing you have to fight is 2 levels higher and a elite.

And then the reward is an item 2 levels below the recommended level.

I just came back to the game recently and I am sorry to see that this post is still relevant. Just tried Claw Island with an Elementalist at level, and was unhappy to see that NPCs are still totally useless (especially Trehearne. STILL.) I only died once, but that was because I sort of knew what to expect. Needless to say, that was not the only “personal” story quest where I ran into bugs and poor design choices.

I see some people suggesting that you group for personal stories, or that it’s OK to die in them because in older games you might have had to do a corpse run. Let me refute each argument in turn.

The first one is easy. This is your PERSONAL story. It is about you. You, not your friends, not your guild, not Destiny’s Edge, and definitely NOT Trehearne. :P (btw: is it me, or does “Destiny’s Edge” sound like the name of some awful 90s boy band?). If you want to force people to group for the personal story, change the name and the advertising and we’re good. If not, then one of the other posters said it best, “the Personal Story should be soloable on the first try by a player exercising reasonable caution and care”.

As for the corpse run argument, well, first off, most earlier games did not have quests that were touted as being part of “your personal saga, your own legend within the world”. I would rather my “legend” not be about Ybrahim the Constantly Resurrected, or Ybrahim the Groundkisser, not even about Ybrahim, Friend of the Respawn Point. Not heroic. Not personal. Quest design should not assume player death, and it certainly should not encourage it, at least not when this is supposed to be your very own little epic story. In older games, those quests were set up in non-instanced worlds, so there was no “guarantee of personalization” if you will.

The sad thing is, there are lots of fixes that could be done right now with minimal work because these fixes already exist in game. The monsters have no trouble attacking me or NPCs, so why not use that code for the NPCS on my side too? That way they won’t stand around playing with their hair (Mira) while I am the victim of an Abomination blanket party. After all, if I have to take second place to the NPCs in GW2, at least make them effective. Also, If I defeat a mob, don’t immediately revive him at full health FOR ANY REASON EVAR. :P If you decide you just have to do it, put it on a timer and/or refresh every one of my timers.

Don’t let mobs beat on me while I am trying to read the stuff I am supposed to be reading. Don’t respawn mobs in a personal story unless there is a valid reason for it. If you do, do not spawn them right on top of me. I have to move from point a to point b, so should they. In Claw Island, for instance, the undead are attacking from the sea. How about having them come from the shore instead of magically appearing in a puff of logic on my head?

Now, I’m not a mighty coder or pro game designer, but these all seem pretty reasonable to me, I wrote stuff like this for Neverwinter Nights years ago and I didn’t have millions of dollars and corporate backing, so I’m guessing this kind of thing would be kid stuff for you guys. I am not asking for Monty Haul mode here, I just thin the personal story should be, first and foremost, about me.

Thanks,
Matt

Im really surprised to see these kind of threads – I thought everybody complained about the game being too easy. But I guess im just not that well informed.

Seeing this, I can understand the dilemma A-net is in when trying to balance the personal story.

I have leveled up a Mesmer, elementalist and Guardian. I can’t remember ever dying in the personal story (maybe 1 or 2 times while talking to friends while playing).

The only big difference between my leveling experiences is that I can let my 6 year old nephew play the guardian without problems. I just tell him to hit some buttons, mainly the autoattack, and things die. In fact i can go full kitten into a battle 5 levels above my own level and its still a faceroll. To me, this is a problem, and not that the other professions are “weaker”.

So there you go, I think theres a lot of casual players like me who find the personal story very easy. And there’s players like in this thread who find it difficult.

Thats a challenge to balance

(By the way: I can understand the general problem of balancing a game for all players. But is it necessary to have a profession, like the guardian, where you can autoattack all the way from lvl 1 to 80? It kind of destroys the whole purpose of progres and learning to play)

You guys Seriously need to tone down the difficulty of some personal story mobs I mean seriously at level 11 I cannot continue my PS because I have to Solo a Level 10 veteran MOB (doc Howler in waiting to get revenge on two blade Pete) who hits you no matter how much you dodge and causes bleeding that lasts forever holy crap unless you play Guardian she takes your lfe down in a Matter of seconds at least make her a non veteran or have Thackery help you out because this basically made me delete my engineer in frustration which makes the game totally unfun

jobah.7241:

Im really surprised to see these kind of threads – I thought everybody complained about the game being too easy. But I guess im just not that well informed.

It really is that the quests and mobs and mob density and timing are identical for all professions.

I have two humans, a Warrior and a Necro – my Warrior had zero issue in Story Mode… my Necro… well. Cast times and placement of ‘Mark’ times are killing me in places my War sailed through by spamming autoattack and standing in place. They’re both durable, stacked Rabid gear on my Necro – it’s just he’s still in light armor, can’t handle small spaces where you can’t kite, and multiple knockdown/pull/interrupt mobs, without blowing through all the most powerful skills… which are then on cooldown for the next wave or waves…

Yes, there’s Necro builds that handle the problem stuff better than mine(and there’s Warrior builds that wouldn’t have handled the tougher SM moments as well), but you can’t retrain in an SM instance.

It’s the inconsistency created by a consistent design (story mode) put up against an incredibly customizable element (the character). So there’s really insanely frustrating moments that eventually a lot of players will run head on into…

Luthien.7938:

I’m on Defense Contract, which is set for level 53. I’m level 57, and I have tried every solo strategy I can imagine to beat Exaerix Infernus, with no luck. Trahearne seems to do almost no damage. Snarl and his group don’t seem to do much damage either and pretty quickly die. If I get anywhere near the boss or stop moving, I’m dead in about 3 hits.

I have done this one twice. The first time was on my guardian and the second time was on my elementalist. Obviously, a guardian is a harder nut to crack and is better at keeping allies alive, but does less overall damage.

What I found was the second time I downed once, but was never defeated, and I kept my allies alive longer. This is NOT because the elementalist is better at this than a guardian. In fact, this is exactly the type of mission where a guardian excels with his strong, omnipresent AoE support for all the NPCs. I just became better at playing and dodging and kiting. I learned better when to stand and when to retreat.

I found the personal story brutish the first time through. Every time it has gotten easier, almost regardless of profession (it took me longer to figure out thief than the others). Up to about level 20, I still get beaten down a lot because every profession is different and I am still learning to play it.

BTW, if you play a lower damage, attrition-type character like a guardian, Trahearne and the Snarl boys’ damage is much more noticeable. The elementalist far outdamaged them, but that is the ele’s schtick.

Also, I am not trying to pick on anyone. This was just a specific example of a later-stage personal story I did on more than one character (because I could not see a Vigil character going to recruit one Norn when he could recruit two entire warbands instead).

I really don’t understand this thread at all.

Done human on both guardian and thief without issues. Granted it was easier on guardian, i mean what isn’t, but everything went pretty smooth on thief as well.

Players need to change their playstyle, build, and/or gear if they’re having issues.

I am not sure about the dying part, I skipped most of my story until I was 80 as it was imo quite boring. I started doing the story again yesterday as I thought it might be more entertaining going through it at once as a story….its not really.

I am up to the part where I have to use a tank to stop the risen. While that one was super buggy for me I still have not had an issue with dying in them.

P.S. to the company that mission I mentioned, super buggy to the point I was about to just call it quits when it finally moved on.

Ald.9418:

I really don’t understand this thread at all.

Done human on both guardian and thief without issues. Granted it was easier on guardian, i mean what isn’t, but everything went pretty smooth on thief as well.

Players need to change their playstyle, build, and/or gear if they’re having issues.

This times 100.

I tried “An Early Parole” which is lvl 53 using an lvl 50 character, lvl 45-46 weapons. Failed twice. Brought my weapons up to lvl 50, walked it.

Then played A Light In The Darkness (lvl 55) using an all lvl 50 character and lvl 50 rare weapons. Walked it.

This thread makes me wonder how bloody awful some of these players must be, seriously. If you have the motor skills and intelligence to post a coherant sentence in this thread, you really shouldn’t have issues with the PS.

Main elementalist here, just finished the entire story mode.

I would have posted complaints for personal quests being too hard, and they /are/ hard – don’t get me wrong, but I think most of them did their job to prepare me for the WvW/PvP, which is something no other part of the game will do, I think. A lot of the story instances required me piping down, standing back, studying the environment, position of the mobs and the accompanying NPCs to get across. Especially on Orr missions, even if I was already level 80 with 4 pieces of Karma gear. I know classes differ, but it’s also how you play it, how you choose the abilities. I went from full-power staff dps build to the d/d close range and you’d think I’d go down like a house of cards now, but I can tank veterans, and most of the time even champions with both glyphs out. I would never have learned how to evade, how to take into consideration casting times of certain abilities, how to know just how to trigger the glyphs to attack for me or to flip attunements according to what I need most at the moment – if the story mode was too easy.

The part of the story that I had most trouble with, even with this build, was the recovering of the Map one, in Orr:

Arah was ridiculously easy, though. Even if 4 people in my party had never done it before. Got downed once or twice, I think, mostly due to too many things happening and me not even seeing the red circles under my feet, but the rest was a piece of cake compared to 90% of the instances. And I think it’s in grand part thanks to that, that I’ve gotten very aware of all elementalist abilities and I would not have the difficulty changed at all, looking back. Some classes are more straight-forward, some require more tactics, tactics which need to be learned, so. Yeah. I see nothing wrong with instances being as hard as they are. If it doesn’t work, try a different approach, chances are it’s an approach that will come in handy later.

PolarApe.9351:

jobah.7241:

Im really surprised to see these kind of threads – I thought everybody complained about the game being too easy. But I guess im just not that well informed.

It really is that the quests and mobs and mob density and timing are identical for all professions.

I have two humans, a Warrior and a Necro – my Warrior had zero issue in Story Mode… my Necro… well. Cast times and placement of ‘Mark’ times are killing me in places my War sailed through by spamming autoattack and standing in place. They’re both durable, stacked Rabid gear on my Necro – it’s just he’s still in light armor, can’t handle small spaces where you can’t kite, and multiple knockdown/pull/interrupt mobs, without blowing through all the most powerful skills… which are then on cooldown for the next wave or waves…

Yes, there’s Necro builds that handle the problem stuff better than mine(and there’s Warrior builds that wouldn’t have handled the tougher SM moments as well), but you can’t retrain in an SM instance.

It’s the inconsistency created by a consistent design (story mode) put up against an incredibly customizable element (the character). So there’s really insanely frustrating moments that eventually a lot of players will run head on into…

Precisely. Story mode content needed to be designed around the player who needed to design their build around the situation they are going to encounter during the majority of their gameplay which also takes into account their preferences for how they want to play. Since story mode usually places the player in situations they would never or rarely find themselves during normal play (ie Claw Island I, Claw Island II, Breaking the Blade), it isn’t right to require or even expect that players would or should have to change their entire build simply to complete a 20 minute personal story sequence when their build was already fully functional outside of this single 20 minute experience.

I am not sure what the proper solution is, but I am quite sure that requiring players to change and then change right isn’t it.

jobah.7241:

(By the way: I can understand the general problem of balancing a game for all players. But is it necessary to have a profession, like the guardian, where you can autoattack all the way from lvl 1 to 80? It kind of destroys the whole purpose of progres and learning to play)

That is pure opinion right here of which I hold the opposite view.

These mobs are joenobodies whereas my character is the hero of [random fantasy themed place name]. It doesn’t make sense for an existance to easily beaten by an inexistance unless the existance really puts a lot of effort into whereas the inexistance can get by by doing what we would effectively call facerolling if done by the existance. That is also why champions should not have higher stats than player characters, it just doesn’t make any sense.

i just had to gy zerg my last three missions, these dredge suits/dredge transporters that summon up to 5 dredge, who knockdown on top of that. my thief is up less than 5 seconds cant do anything cuz shes getting knocked down so fast and is dead. on top of that you put 2-3 of these summoning mobs right next to each other. im at dredge assult right now and honestly after upgrading my gear and trying this twice now only to leave with the mission unfinished and naked from broken gear, i think im gonna wait until the personal storys get a major overhaul.

theres a differance between challenging, and making it only possiable with one playsytle.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Which step are you on? Waiting for a “major overhaul” isn’t going to happen without more information. As I’ve mentioned before, I play all of the story steps with an equal level character (not downscaled) and haven’t run into any consistent issues, but if there are specific steps that are too difficult, I can look at adjusting them.

as my original post says, the summoning mobs seem to summon to many and/or are so close together that they all pull at once, ending in me getting slaughtered. i had one dredge suit that had 7 dredge summoned in that mission (dredge assult, in the norn personal story) i can normaly dodge 1 or 2 of them but the rest just knock me down. and garrentee that i get no hits in before im downed.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I tried it with an engineer.

This means any class can do it btw.

I didn’t have any problems with the norn story on my war or ele.

Awesome.6120:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I tried it with an engineer.

This means any class can do it btw.
..

That is not important at all. Important is: Can you beat it while having fun at the same time?

I’ll beat all the PS at some point that I am sure of, but I know that I won’t enjoy them because of their ridiculous difficulty.

I didn’t stumble across any ridiculous difficulty during my personal story. Not saying there are no problems with other classes or in other story steps I didn’t experience, but as Jeffrey said, thinking for a second instead of just running in sometimes helps. And everytime there are NPCs with you – try to keep them alive and rezz them if possible. They often die quickly and they don’t do much damage, but they take aggro and give you time.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Quizotic.2815:

as my original post says, the summoning mobs seem to summon to many and/or are so close together that they all pull at once, ending in me getting slaughtered. i had one dredge suit that had 7 dredge summoned in that mission (dredge assult, in the norn personal story) i can normaly dodge 1 or 2 of them but the rest just knock me down. and garrentee that i get no hits in before im downed.

Thanks, that’s extremely useful info. The dredge suits can summon up to 5 minions, but you also have a half-dozen Vigil soldiers with you. If you’re running in and aggroing all 5 minions and the suit, you probably need to slow down. I just completed this without getting hit at all during the suit attack by letting the Vigil wade in, then I picked off the suits at a distance. (I tried it with an engineer.) Most of the NPCs did get killed during the fight, but they can rezz each other, so the entire group was back up for the cave exploration step.

This goes to one of my gripes about the fundamentals of the game. I came across this story step playing a Norn warrior, with my “alignment” hovering towards the more barbaric set (in-game terms are slipping my mind). I’m aligned with the vigil. Everything is driving me towards an epic “lead the charge into battle and slaughter the enemy close enough to smell their breath” conclusion. Yeah, that didn’t work so well. This story marked the first time that I became aware of how penalized a melee build would be. After this I switched to a rifle/longbow mix for my war, and I haven’t really looked back. But I mention this here, because even Jeffrey recognized instinctively that the best way to play was by hanging back and hitting from range. I guess I hope that the designers sit back and scratch their head a bit on this and decide if that’s the way they want to go.

Are you really complaining that you cannot simply charge into a mass of enemies and take them out all on your own when there’s a bunch of NPCs around to help? Melee warriors are already very strong in PvE. Being a barbarian doesn’t mean that you don’t have to use your brain, looking from the game’s perspective. Not even in Diablo III. You can lead the army, but not take on all enemies at the same time. I’m sure you know how to avoid damage and lose aggro after having played so far. That’s not a fundamental game problem, but a problem with players acting fundamentally unwise.

Iruwen.3164:

Are you really complaining that you cannot simply charge into a mass of enemies and take them out all on your own when there’s a bunch of NPCs around to help? Melee warriors are already very strong in PvE. Being a barbarian doesn’t mean that you don’t have to use your brain, looking from the game’s perspective. Not even in Diablo III. You can lead the army, but not take on all enemies at the same time. I’m sure you know how to avoid damage and lose aggro after having played so far. That’s not a fundamental game problem, but a problem with players acting fundamentally unwise.

Nope. I’m complaining that I cannot charge into a mass of enemies and take them out with the help of the bunch of NPCs… At least, that was my experience at the time. I’ve always found it interesting that people state “Melee warriors are very strong in PvE.” Perhaps I don’t run the right cookie cutter build, but it’s not been my experience, at all. I found my rifle/longbow to be much stronger. Honestly, I find that at any given group event, the only characters getting constantly picked up are melee. shrug. I’m sure I’m a baddie, l2p, etc… All I can say is that my experience was significantly different.

Iruwen.3164:

Are you really complaining that you cannot simply charge into a mass of enemies and take them out all on your own when there’s a bunch of NPCs around to help? Melee warriors are already very strong in PvE. Being a barbarian doesn’t mean that you don’t have to use your brain, looking from the game’s perspective. Not even in Diablo III. You can lead the army, but not take on all enemies at the same time. I’m sure you know how to avoid damage and lose aggro after having played so far. That’s not a fundamental game problem, but a problem with players acting fundamentally unwise.

But Guardians can take on all the mobs and come out just peachy. Seems a little unfair that it is ok for one class, but not ok for another class for some inadequately explained reason other than simply stating up front that the mobs are unrealistically strong and your character unrealistically weak.

These are undead we are talking about. Undead have extremely weak bodies because they are undergoing decay. A shamble is probably more than an undead should be able to handle, never mind swinging a sword that would cause the undead’s arms to fall off.

Ellisande.5218:

But Guardians can take on all the mobs and come out just peachy. Seems a little unfair that it is ok for one class, but not ok for another class for some inadequately explained reason other than simply stating up front that the mobs are unrealistically strong and your character unrealistically weak.

These are undead we are talking about. Undead have extremely weak bodies because they are undergoing decay. A shamble is probably more than an undead should be able to handle, never mind swinging a sword that would cause the undead’s arms to fall off.

Well since they were all sunk in saltwater for some time, most of them would be little more than scattered bones but… dragon magic glue. Don’t even ask where Zhaitan’s dragon magic glue comes from…

Ellisande.5218:

But Guardians can take on all the mobs and come out just peachy. Seems a little unfair that it is ok for one class, but not ok for another class for some inadequately explained reason other than simply stating up front that the mobs are unrealistically strong and your character unrealistically weak.

Every profession has a different play style. Guardians stand their ground extremely well.* Warriors not as much and have to retreat more often, but warriors hit much harder and have better ranged attack options. Mesmers can distract with clones and phasms, thieves can lay caltrops and keep melee enemies continuously blinded, rangers can send in their pet to take aggro, etc. Every profession plays differently, and they often have multiple, different play styles.
*Note: you cannot always take on all of them at once. 5 dredge and a mining suit would force a retreat very quickly.

Nothing about GW2 is realistic. You would not like it if you were surprised and spent the entire fight hiding behind a barrel with an arrow in your leg while your companions fought and the enemy retreated after one of them was cut off from his formation, surrounded and cut down.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

Every profession has a different play style. Guardians stand their ground extremely well.* Warriors not as much and have to retreat more often, but warriors hit much harder and have better ranged attack options.

Quickly coming to the realization that this is the difference I haven’t picked up on well. I’ve had no problems with guardian, mesmer, or ranger, so far, but warrior gave me fits.

Kashrlyyk.5364:

That is not important at all. Important is: Can you beat it while having fun at the same time?

I’ll beat all the PS at some point that I am sure of, but I know that I won’t enjoy them because of their ridiculous difficulty.

I have actually enjoyed most of the racial and order stories I’ve done. I really only stop having fun at claw island and that’s just because of the direction they chose to go, not the difficulty. The norn “blacked out” story is completely awesome if you want to try one that is really fun.

Make sure all your equipment and weapons are at your current level, I’ve found to be a vital consideration. If you’ve leveled beyond the level of the storyline event, it’s easy to think that the event will be easy, but you’ll get downgraded when you enter the instance, and so will your armour – and you’ll die. If they are consistent then chances are you won’t, at least not once you’ve worked out the best strategy. I’m not a particularly good fighter, but since I’ve made sure my equipment is up to scratch I’ve had little trouble with any of the storyline events.

I didn’t have any problems with my personal story on my thief, completed that a long time ago and the only things that annoyed me were a couple of bugs. Mostly done while I was around the same level I believe. Dual daggers, if ranged or melee matters.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I was intentionally hanging back a bit, I didn’t mean to imply that the only way to win is to stay at a distance. I also play the story steps as a d/p thief who melees everything, but I tried engineer since it’s considered one of the weaker/lighter classes. The simple truth is that we can’t take every single class/build/play style into account when we build the story steps, so they do require some flexibility. They’re also intended to be challenging, so charging directly into fights (especially when you have a handful of NPCs with you) is generally not the best route. It’s a tricky balancing act, since we can’t make the NPCs powerful enough to complete the story step with no player intervention, but in general they should act as enough of a speed bump for you to deal with the enemy. We don’t always get it right, though, which is why I’m always asking for specific information on troublesome story steps so I can give them a try and see if they should be adjusted.

Jeffrey, I really don’t think the allied NPC’s help enough. I am stuck on “The Queen’s Justice” with my elementalist because the NPC’s cannot handle the all of the agro of the Risen, plus the ELITE BOSS you dropped in there. Either the Elite kills me because my Allied NPC are dealing with the normal Risen, or they DIE and I can’t res them because I’m now running for my life from 5-10 Risen and an ELITE BOSS.

The Captain of the Seraph is pretty lame. He stands around most of the time not doing anything and when he does get involved he usually dies. His AI needs some work for sure, because he rarely is buffing me or anyone in the party. If he is a true guardian he should act like one.

Another thing a friend of mine mentioned was that you’ve built a game that is very much based on dodging and evading damage, but your NPC’s do not do this. This causes them to take a lot more damage than they should. If they were to avoid attacks they would be much more help with agro control without boosting any damage they do.

I’ll agree the AI needs a bit of work, but something people need to realize is that The lighter classes should be dieing more if you’re not playing them well. The whole concept is that the lower your armor class, the harder you have to play.

I personally find Mesmers and Ele’s OP, but I know that they have to be played pretty hard to do well and aren’t easy to play (Don’t think that justifies them being able to 1v3 a lot of the time in PVP though).

There’s a few quest I’ll agree are ridiculous, such as the Human’s defense of the Queen quest when you use the Vigil since the NPCs die super fast, but for the most part, death is your own fault for picking a class and not working to play to its fullest. The story side of things is often there to teach you mechanics for the rest of the game. You need to learn to fight mobs that swarm you or survive in harsh situations, because you’ll do that in dungeons and in PVP.

Copain.1926:

I’ll agree the AI needs a bit of work, but something people need to realize is that The lighter classes should be dieing more if you’re not playing them well. The whole concept is that the lower your armor class, the harder you have to play.

I personally find Mesmers and Ele’s OP, but I know that they have to be played pretty hard to do well and aren’t easy to play (Don’t think that justifies them being able to 1v3 a lot of the time in PVP though).

There’s a few quest I’ll agree are ridiculous, such as the Human’s defense of the Queen quest when you use the Vigil since the NPCs die super fast, but for the most part, death is your own fault for picking a class and not working to play to its fullest. The story side of things is often there to teach you mechanics for the rest of the game. You need to learn to fight mobs that swarm you or survive in harsh situations, because you’ll do that in dungeons and in PVP.

I disagree with you. You should not have to WORK harder to play a ranged damage class. The classes should be dying the same amount of times, whether you are an ele or a guardian. The idea is that a mob has x hp, you can stand up close and absorb a lot of damage and slowly kill it or you can stay at range and do a lot of damage, but you cannot absorb as much damage. It has always been that more armor means more defense/less damage and more damage means/less defense.

This has nothing to do with complexity. If a class is so complex it is hard to do well with it is broken. All classes need to be playable( I’m not saying OP, I’m saying playable) for the average player to do PVE without getting frustrated. If a class is so complex it cannot be learned by someone who doesn’t read the forums and Spams google for builds it is not well designed. I’m sorry.

The problem here is that the NPC they provide as COVER are not covering the player. I had another mission in this quest line where Captain Thackery was supposed to be helping and all he did was stand around while a turncoat Seraph ran around shooting me. He never helped grab agro or buff me. Just stood there, like a mindless AI he is. It was not HARD to beat the guy, but like someone else in this thread mentioned, it wasn’t fun. I had to run around a well over and over to block his line of sight while my heal regened. When I finally was able to heal I’d blast him a bit and rinse/repeat. It was very BORING.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Quizotic.2815:

as my original post says, the summoning mobs seem to summon to many and/or are so close together that they all pull at once, ending in me getting slaughtered. i had one dredge suit that had 7 dredge summoned in that mission (dredge assult, in the norn personal story) i can normaly dodge 1 or 2 of them but the rest just knock me down. and garrentee that i get no hits in before im downed.

Thanks, that’s extremely useful info. The dredge suits can summon up to 5 minions, but you also have a half-dozen Vigil soldiers with you. If you’re running in and aggroing all 5 minions and the suit, you probably need to slow down. I just completed this without getting hit at all during the suit attack by letting the Vigil wade in, then I picked off the suits at a distance. (I tried it with an engineer.) Most of the NPCs did get killed during the fight, but they can rezz each other, so the entire group was back up for the cave exploration step.

yeah my entire group of NPC’s got killed with the first group of dredge and always did, but i finaly beat it after upgrading ALL of my gear to vit gear just so i could live long enough to actualy hit something. and yes when i say all i mean every single Piece. also i skipped the suits. stealth ftw.

Majority of the personal story is bad, simply because most of the missions are terrible.

Apperently, throwing hordes of enemies at the player is both fun and challenging. Like many have stated, allies during missions are pointless, because they don’t do much, so this just leaves the player fighting through waves of enemies.

GuzziHero.2467:

even ask where Zhaitan’s dragon magic glue comes from…

Horse hooves.

Copain.1926:

I’ll agree the AI needs a bit of work, but something people need to realize is that The lighter classes should be dieing more if you’re not playing them well. The whole concept is that the lower your armor class, the harder you have to play.

No that isn’t the idea at all. The idea is that the lower your armor is the more damage you are supposed to be doing under the theory that the more damage you are doing then the faster the mobs are dying so you will be exposed to fewer hits.

Only an idiot would give up armor in order to get nothing or less than nothing in return.

I would also like to know why the AI doesn’t help me get up from being downed…. I’m down, all the mobs are dead, and my Ally is standing there doing jack. Is it too hard to program AI that will help heal you if you are down and a fight is over?

Mission was “Dredging up the past.” My dumb ally was Sieran, but I assume all NPC are this dumb as well. Also, She does nothing but use her basic attack. I guess it’s too hard to have her use all of her powers, right?