Guild Wars 2

Been here since before launch. All classes but Engineer at level 80 and in full exotics or better. Sorry Anet, but if living story episodes are going to be as overtuned as this one was, I’m out. I know others will disagree, but here’s one person’s negative feedback.

Uh?
Overtuned? As in, too difficult?

I’d criticize the two bosses where you needed to use fragility for being needlessly long (could have required 3 hits instead of, but they are never dangerous, are they? The NPCs reliably rezz you in the last fight, too, making it about impossible to wipe.

And even if, the boss does not go out of combat, so you don’t lose any progress…

I’ve played since launch and I run a lot of dungeons so this kind of content is within my skill set and play style to complete it first try, but I’m also aware a lot of players aren’t like me and will struggle to complete them.

Personally I think it’s great to have slightly challenging content in the instances, it makes them less tedious and boring for me. I also think the achievements are the ideal tool for adding challenge for skilled players while allowing more casual players to opt out but still finish the story. I believe every player should be able to complete the story without being put into a position which makes the content unenjoyable for them.

Personally I think Carighan is right about them being needlessly long. Even skilled players don’t want to repeat those mechanics as many times as was needed in this instance, this situation is significantly worse for players struggling with the mechanics, especially if they don’t have berserker gear and their DPS isn’t optimal.

Most of my toons don’t have zerker gear, and I find the new content absurdly hard, when I play with them.

…and bugged.

Caithe’s recon squad… if I mine the corpses, I don’t get any credit. If i don’t mine the corpses, I don’t get any credit.

…and I see no way to repeat only this part. I have to start all over from the beginning of the series of quests.

I’m beyond frustrated.

Carighan.6758:

being needlessly long

Yeah those bosses take a stupid amount of time. Not a gem of a mechanic but it could’ve been a whole lot worse. The mechanic was fun and new, it just could’ve taken less time so the entire lair didn’t take like 50 minutes.

Ezeriel.9574:

Most of my toons don’t have zerker gear, and I find the new content absurdly hard, when I play with them.

…and bugged.

Caithe’s recon squad… if I mine the corpses, I don’t get any credit. If i don’t mine the corpses, I don’t get any credit.

…and I see no way to repeat only this part. I have to start all over from the beginning of the series of quests.

I’m beyond frustrated.

you need to complete the whole story to unlock achievements. once you do, they will appear where your buffs/condis do until you complete or fail them. you can also go to any section of the story at any time after the first time and redo it as many times as you need to for the achievements.

Ezeriel.9574:

Most of my toons don’t have zerker gear, and I find the new content absurdly hard, when I play with them.

…and bugged.

Caithe’s recon squad… if I mine the corpses, I don’t get any credit. If i don’t mine the corpses, I don’t get any credit.

…and I see no way to repeat only this part. I have to start all over from the beginning of the series of quests.

I’m beyond frustrated.

You are aware, that to get the achievements you need to first finish the ls, and then do the achievements on the second run? When you get to that point, you will be able to repeat missions (or in case of the last mission, individual bosses) without reseting whole chain.

I guess my main problem with this particular segment of the living story is that the over-tuned mechanics that are typical for dungeon/fractal content ala GW2 design are being FORCED on players who don’t like and don’t participate in GW2’s dungeon/fractal design.

Also, IMO it’s lazy design to make an encounter “challenging” by basically increasing TTK with a metric crap-ton of interrupt mechanics. By that I mean AI that attacks right when you try a long cast skill such as Necro’s #2 dagger or #2 axe or #4 deathshroud, PLUS also using a crap-ton of fast-paced area denial AOE. The end result is that an encounter with SIMPLE mechanics to understand turns into dodge, run, run more, dodge again, cast ohkitten defensive skill, attack, dodge, run, run, run, run, attack, run dodge run dodge, etc. ad nauseum for way too long.

Which is exactly what is wrong with most dungeon/fractal content too, IMO.

I realize that some people really dig “challenge” like this. And it’s perfectly fine to give it to them. But it’s NOT fine to force everyone who just wants to enjoy the story and feel like they’re part of a living world to go through this. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea.

Mainline content (aka, the living story, which is the only new content being developed ever again by Anet), should be tuned for casual players. Not for hardcore dungeon twitch players. It’s that simple, IMO.

They stated that, starting season 2, living story would be end-game content (ie harder than lower level content). While this is indeed way more challenging, if you want it to be, than other open world stuff, it is not anywhere near Arah difficulty. If you would like easy mode, they have sort of provided that in the ability to sit on roofs and use the arrow carts (mobs may still come after you if there are no tastier targets near them, but usually only 1 at a time). Personally, I feel we need more challenging enemies like this in open world. Also, it helps to learn the mechanics of the different enemies – the spinning plant thing can be immobilized or CCed to allow you to maintain damage, the plant things that spawn vines under your feet should be CCed to interrupt their vine spawning, back into a corner when fighting wolves to prevent them from getting behind you or blind them, etc.

edit: also, its not being forced on you. you can ignore the rest of the area if you just want the story, or can choose to do other open world stuff instead. they haven’t released a dungeon in a long time, so it is nice to get a better middle ground on content difficulty (harder than other open world, but easier than dungeons) while we wait on a new dungeon (which they said they are not currently working on).

You say “mainline content” its not, its the only content – they need to make it engaging for a lot of people. If you find it hard you need to just spend a moment thinking about the fight. These bosses don’t have any time limits or dps checks its completable by everyone and they are pretty fast if you work out the mechanics (also if you can’t/don’t want to think google knows all).

The design shows real effort to make a puzzle like encounter that doesn’t restrict people to BiS gear and setup – its far from lazy.

Asmodeus.5782:

And even if, the boss does not go out of combat, so you don’t lose any progress…

Just don’t fall out of the map grumble…

The fact that you have people finding these bosses so difficult just shows how much damage things like champ trains did to the average player skill level. Plus, the last two bosses you’re only doing damage to by shattering vortexes that die to 1 damage, so the gear you use is irrelevant.

How are they “overtuned?” This content is literally designed to be non-DPS content. It’s nothing like dungeon content as you claim. This content is nearly 100% mechanic fights. Dramen hit it right on the head. If you’re dying it’s not your gear….it’s you. It’s you.

I have to agree with most of the thread. The Grove attack dragon? That ate me alive on my thief, an hour or so in which all my armor broke for the first time ever in this game. I was raging (in a good way), it was epic. I’ve never beaten the Clocktower. So that’s my level of skill. (Note I have gotten Fractal 20 or so, and Dungeon Master, I’m not totally inept at PvE).

The only reason I didn’t ace the final boss first try on my thief was that a new build dropped one crystal shatter away from victory.

This is not overtuned.

Classic boss battle design usually doesn’t involve just upping damage output and health. Its a boss because it does something or is something different from you normal foes.
You get eased into the fact you can’t simply DPS all these things down. You stratagize and switch up your game plan if need be. I was horrid at it the first time with a Warrior, fair at it with a Mesmer, and nailed it with my Ranger.
I learned a little in each run that made it more rewarding and fun. No guides, walkthroughs or builds. Just some trial and error.

This isn’t just this game. It goes back to the 8-bit classics.
As for being “forced” into playing dungeon and fractal content. Living Story has been introducing all sorts of playstyles for us to play around with. We are currently doing WvW siege in Silverwastes, and for some its like a welcome home. For others, its just a busy map with a lot of events and treasure chest.

You play the way you want, but Living Story is where new threats are cropping up all the time. It is going to get more complicated as this arch plays out, so we can’t expect it to stay in everyone’s comfort zone.

Well dont wear beserker , never done a fractal hold no interest for me .only ever done 1 dungeon found it also uninspiring (personal view ) generally reside in WvW only .
Did the LS on my mesmer one run completed didnt find it particularly a challenge at all .So unsure how overtuned this LS is didnt seem to be too bad, long long ago I found the Fort defence in LS part 1 much more annoying .

I didn’t think it was possible to die on this, unless you goofed and got hit by the boss while you had the 1hp buff. How could it possibly be overtuned?

Oh my god, I couldn’t just stand at the boss’ feet and spam 1 over and over while watching TV? NERF PLS.

You thought these bossfights were hard? The boss-mechanics are simple in GW2, but time-consuming imo- especially in this episode. As a Mesmer it was a bit frustrating that I couldn’t use my phantasms at the Light-boss, it wasn’t hard- it just took a lot longer than it should have. I very much appreciate content like this in the story, fighting mobs with more advanced AI than “run at player” is so much more fun.

All content in a game doesn’t have to suit everyone. A casual who plays 2h a week shouldn’t be able to get a legendary, imo. It takes away the reward for other players because you wouldn’t have to work for it (the Legendary weapon would no longer be legendary). But, for example, crafting a legendary is a free choice. You don’t have to have a legendary to play the game. People who suck at “more challangeing” combat in this game can’t enjoy the story because they’re stuck at a bossfight, and I can see how that would be frustrating if you’re a lore-nerd like me.

I’m not a big fan of LS2. I made all of them only with my main guardian and usually just only once for story. But this one was finally different and I made it with guardian, ranger, mesmer and thief just to find who would be better for achievements run. I had a little problems only during first run until I found that the last fight is a combination of mechanics used to kill previous bosses and that taking fragile debuff inside the aoe damage circle is not a good idea. Doing it with alts was easy after that (just 3rd boss fight with mesmer was slightly longer). This is the first part of LS2 I really like. It is annoying when you don’t know what to do, but it is rather easy when you found the way.

P.S.: Thief was great choice for Hidden Arcana achievements.

These boss fights mix two concepts:
1. Damaging the boss at the appropriate time.
2. Figuring out the mechanic by which you trigger the appropriate time.

They are no more difficult than the boss fights in any Zelda game, and those were designed to be played by children 10-20 years ago. They are also no less enjoyable than the boss fights in any Zelda game, which is why I’m enjoying them so much.

I couldn’t disagree more with the OP.

Overtuned? OP you are out of your mind. The fight was easy and quite interesting. One shotted it on my first playthrough with a buddy and solo redux first try last night. It’s literally 2 attacks with massive tells and simply "Pick up shield, break crystal.

I’m not much into these kind of challenges and this were a bit boring, but “too hard” absolutely no.

The only one I repeated a few times was the first one (got unlucky a couple of time getting pulled on the last damage rotation).

2nd is just really long, 3rd is trivial for staff guardian, 4th was a bit time consuming as I had to burn my aegis all the time (plus all the armor I use have some kind of “x% of <boon> on hit”)

what?, too difficult.. really?

sorry OP but i really cant see how, as Dawntree above, the 2nd fight was long winded, 3rd not a problem with sceptre and 4th was simply once i realised what was expected, the only slight issue i had was that my norn guardian is slower than a tortoise with limp, but the whole story was very soloable.

Perhaps its time to find out what your toon can actually do, as i keep telling th eguys in my quild, you only need to type /wiki when in game instead of constantly asking the same thing over and over, yes will help them but its not difficult to actually help themselves.. sorry went off track a bit there

shaktiboi.5194:

Been here since before launch. All classes but Engineer at level 80 and in full exotics or better. Sorry Anet, but if living story episodes are going to be as overtuned as this one was, I’m out. I know others will disagree, but here’s one person’s negative feedback.

I thought they were mindnumbing easy. Maybe its a learn to play issue. Did you use tomes of knowledge and crafting to lvl your chars?

BammBamm.6719:

as a non speedrun, non solorun, non lvl50 fraktal player i have to say, you must be really braindead to experience this content as hard.

I wouldnt have used an insult (a la, braindead), however, as a non-solo, non-speedrun, non lvl 50 fractal player myself who has a glasscannon full zerker engineer in just exotic armor, I found this last patch enjoyable, decently but not absurdly difficult, and a good length.

What glints lair did for people was make them think outside the pew-pew-pew-dodge-pew-pew-pew box. To me, that was a good thing.

mtpelion.4562:

These boss fights mix two concepts:
1. Damaging the boss at the appropriate time.
2. Figuring out the mechanic by which you trigger the appropriate time.

They are no more difficult than the boss fights in any Zelda game, and those were designed to be played by children 10-20 years ago. They are also no less enjoyable than the boss fights in any Zelda game, which is why I’m enjoying them so much.

Ha, Im not the only one who was reminded of the good old games of the, well, last century. You know, when the real ’boss" fights were more puzzles not just run and shoot

The first 3 bosses were interesting enough, you can tell the devs were trying to make bosses that arent about spamming 1 in full zerk gear to kill it in 10 seconds. The fourth one seems like they ran out of ideas so they just regurgitated the mechanics of the previous two and gave it a ton of hp. But 3 enjoyable and 1 mediocre/boring bosses isnt bad.

If theyre really too difficult then join a group in lfg, as long as the content is new you see plenty of groups, none of the achievements/rewards require you to be solo.

Sizer.5632:

The first 3 bosses were interesting enough, you can tell the devs were trying to make bosses that arent about spamming 1 in full zerk gear to kill it in 10 seconds. The fourth one seems like they ran out of ideas so they just regurgitated the mechanics of the previous two and gave it a ton of hp. But 3 enjoyable and 1 mediocre/boring bosses isnt bad.

If theyre really too difficult then join a group in lfg, as long as the content is new you see plenty of groups, none of the achievements/rewards require you to be solo.

I think they were more taking a queue from older (SNES old) console games. use multiple mechanics individually and then combine them all together at the end.

I am not saying old is a bad thing. In fact, i find them interesting in that, like you said its about figuring something out rather then just mow something down.

I absolutely loved the hidden arcana instance and, especially, Glint’s lair. I truly needed to re-orient myself as I did not expect how much character that environment had. Masterful artwork indeed.

That said, the instance and the achievements can be done solo.

I disagree with the overtuned comment. I played it the night it came out, and while maybe a few were a tad long, it was very doable and figure out-able.

And even the ones that seemed kinda long the first time were a complete breeze and completable in a reasonable amount of time when I redid the story for the rewards.

You should have played Glints lair in GW1. Even on normal mode it was a lot more challenging than this.

ok now someone has to jump in and defend him..

always keep in mind that he might be a new player and really did hit 80 mostly by crafting and / or wvw karma train in eotm
because someone told him its the best/fastest whatever way…

and since you unlock the living story steps just like this on 80…

this design thing is what i think will be a problem in the future if anet decides to ramp up the difficulty
(more) newer players will start to struggle more once they unlock their first living world chapter
and because of .. omfg waayy too hard they dont even buy the episodes of the past

that would…
not be good..

ofc be4 anet will be faced with this problem they have to increase the difficulty…
which is still (WAAAYYY TOO) easy if u ask me at least if this is pve endgame content..

the difficult achievements anet wanted to give us..
im still looking for them
jumping on top of the rock in one of the first dry top missions was kinda nice but nothing combat related…
and after this one…
not really many hard to get achievements in the living story besides bugged ones for a few days (im looking at you concordia)

I loved the Hidden Arcana mission and I hope more content like this will be made.
It reminded of mechanics you’d see in games like Guild Wars.

Dragon’s reach 1 and 2 were pretty good too. I loved 1st more than the 2nd but mostly because there wasn’t almost 15 minutes of talking before getting to the fight when you wanted to replay.

What’s overtuned?

The bosses don’t care about your gear too much (except the first one). The last one you don’t even attack him. I did it all with zerker, and then all the achievements on the first try. The achievements were wayyyyy easier than I thought upon first reading them. I killed boss 1 before my stability ran out.

Fights were a little too long IMO, but they were OK.
Please fix mesmers though so their clones get attuned. The one boss is quite tedious for mesmers.

Malediktus.9250:

You should have played Glints lair in GW1. Even on normal mode it was a lot more challenging than this.

Don’t bother. Players have gotten spoiled with the “difficulty” level of GW2.

It caters to younger players, and those of impaired intelligence. I bet if you make everybody who plays gw2 play a gw1 mission on hard mode, 90% would ragequit after the first mob.

Mental Paradox.3845:

Malediktus.9250:

You should have played Glints lair in GW1. Even on normal mode it was a lot more challenging than this.

Don’t bother. Players have gotten spoiled with the “difficulty” level of GW2.

It caters to younger players, and those of impaired intelligence. I bet if you make everybody who plays gw2 play a gw1 mission on hard mode, 90% would ragequit after the first mob.

Well, with a good setup of heroes, you could do that mission by C, space, C, space, C, space…

Mental Paradox.3845:

Malediktus.9250:

You should have played Glints lair in GW1. Even on normal mode it was a lot more challenging than this.

Don’t bother. Players have gotten spoiled with the “difficulty” level of GW2.

It caters to younger players, and those of impaired intelligence. I bet if you make everybody who plays gw2 play a gw1 mission on hard mode, 90% would ragequit after the first mob.

Hero AI wasn’t an free pass solo win. I am still having issue with Jennur’s Horde in Nightfall because it requires a lot of coordination that is easier to do with players than AI.

Hidden Arcana walked you through all you needed to know carefully. There is a lot of content in GW2 that can make it confusing for new players, but I have learned if it is meant to be a boss fight, it isn’t meant to be easy or predictable. Before running in, look at what’s available in the environment. Chances are, its there for a reason.

Plus Marjory with spirit infused greatsword doesn't hurt your odds either.

I don’t see how anyone can complain that anything with this update is too hard. It’s not. Learn the mechanics, be patient and for one of the fights, hope rng is on your side. Aside from that.. the only thing anyone might complain about is being impatient, or lazy.

Please don’t give anet anymore reasons to dumb down the content.

The fights weren’t overtuned, it was a lot of fun. Once you figured out the mechanics, it was a matter of patiently executing the necessary steps. A lot of it boiled down to timing in the last boss fight since the colour and fragile buffs could run out. There were a lot of instances where I had the colour buff, but had to wait for fragile to appear, and vice versa.

I read this whole thing and still don’t understand what you mean with overtuned. When you said you forced the idea of dungeons/fractals onto players, though, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s just a small instanced area. The personal story had a lot of them before.

The mechanics of Glint’s Lair are brilliant, taught first in a build up as you progress through each facet until you meet the end boss and utilise all three mechanics to defeat it. Brilliant piece of game content, Anet, you should feel proud!

It’s not all high DPS / zerg-mind content either, you need to think through your strategy. I had a fun time taking on Exposed Weakness: Redux achievement since I main a guardian since launch and have made myself complete all ‘hard’ achievements on that character (like 8-orbs Liadri too). Transfering only the ‘fragile’ “boon” to the vortex crystal as a guardian who is by nature a buff monster… lol, I had to retrait myself to a stupid build and pay close attention to my passive aegis so I never debuffed the vortex crystal when that came up.

I’m nearly as happy managing that achievement yesterday as killing Liadri with 8 orbs; challenging content that gives you a good buzz!

More like this, Anet, and I will be giving you more standing ovations.

And please please please, no nerfing! It’s time people are required to improve and hone their skills a bit, there’s already enough 1-spamming zerg content.

Hidden Arcana is very twitch. If you’re good at twitch, you’ll have no issues. If you can’t, e.g. due to a physical disability, you’re up the creek without a paddle. Personally, I do not like all the dodging, and if I do it too often, it causes me physical pain. So yeah, bit of a failure there from my point of view. This should be a story, not a way to show how hardcore you are.

And incidentally: Hidden Arcana needs bugfixing. During the final encounter, one of the vortexes got stuck up a wall (not ground floor even, up), with no way to make it fragile and therefore no way of killing it. Since no new one spawns before the existing one is killed, that’s pretty much a game breaker.

Broom.2561:

Hidden Arcana is very twitch. If you’re good at twitch, you’ll have no issues. If you can’t, e.g. due to a physical disability, you’re up the creek without a paddle. Personally, I do not like all the dodging, and if I do it too often, it causes me physical pain. So yeah, bit of a failure there from my point of view. This should be a story, not a way to show how hardcore you are.

And incidentally: Hidden Arcana needs bugfixing. During the final encounter, one of the vortexes got stuck up a wall (not ground floor even, up), with no way to make it fragile and therefore no way of killing it. Since no new one spawns before the existing one is killed, that’s pretty much a game breaker.

hidden arcana isnt twitch at all. osu and ddr and slapjack are twitch. you have all the time in the world to do everything you need to do to get through each section. but i guess if you decide you dont feel like reading tooltips or mob descriptions then you might randomly pick up fragiles, get 1 shot several times, and decide its twitch because you werent dodging big, fat, highly telegraphed, and slow ground aoes. its as much a puzzle and a tutorial as it is a fight. it certainly isnt twitch.

I would love to give everyone debating difficulty in this game some kind of standardized reaction time test.

digiowl.9620:

I would love to give everyone debating difficulty in this game some kind of standardized reaction time test.

when difficulty relies upon figuring out what is going on and not how quickly you can do it, it isnt twitch. thats whats hard about this instance.

the first time i went through it, i was with 2 other people. one of us (not me) randomly picked up fragile. we all saw the red name over the vortex crystal and immediately started attacking it. it healed. i turned away and 10 seconds later the crystal was dead and i asked my friends “wtf just happened?”

the crystal minefield between the fragile buff and the vortex crystal didnt even enter our thoughts, because the crystals do like 200 damage, which is unnoticeable to a normal player, and nonlethal to a fragile player. if the crystals 1 shot you, then it would qualify as twitch, because they spawn randomly and pop kinda quickly. theyre there to force you to notice you have a small amount of hp when fragile, because if you later cannot recognize 1 second cast times that you need to dodge (and its valid to assume a player knows how to dodge), then you will get killed. no one who is able to access this content will take a reaction time test and sit at over 1 second. its a reasonable assumption on the part of the devs. pay attention to the game and play it instead of watching 2 animes while you play.

With slower reaction time, what should not be twitch becomes twitch. And once that becomes twitch, one has less time available to do things like take in the scenery or read gray text on a multicolor background.

This chapter, and Glint’s Lair in particular, reminded me a lot of dungeons in Zelda games.

If you go in expecting to just spam whatever attacks you want until the boss is dead it’s going to be extremely difficult, if not completely impossible. If you actually use the tools given to you during the fight and work with the bosses mechanics it’s extremely easy.

I had a far from optimal build for this – I was using a condi/crit ranger in rabid gear. A lot of the time (especially against the final boss) conditions did nothing so I was instantly losing 1/2 my damage. But even so the only trouble I had was when the vortex spawned on top of the light pillar and I couldn’t dump the shield on them because I didn’t have the light attunement so the pillar kept pushing me away.

It’s hardly the first time something like this has been added to GW2, or even the Living Story. The Gauntlet, the Marionette fight, the Knights and Holograms during the Battle for Lion’s Arch, the Aetherblade Dungeons (both the one that became a Fractal and the TA path) and many others have all required you to use special mechanics instead of just blindly attacking.