Guild Wars 2

Because Arenanet is for whatever reason, so hard against an LFG in game for dungeons, someone made a website and it has become rather successful for LFG. The website is gw2lfg.com and for my group has produced great results for finding a member or two if we are short.

If you are doing Alpha the ‘right’ way, the crystal should not even be an issue. Stack on Alpha (everyone) and stay within melee range. Time your evades on the earth spell he casts and keep him in a corner. Pull him with everyone out of LOS if you can to bring him to your stacked group. The crystal should go down so fast, it’s sickening.

In the first encounter in the big room with him, you just keep him close to that item that you interact with at the far door where he stands. You don’t have to keep him slammed into a wall in this room, as he will only travel out and about if someone is running around like their hair is on fire and looking for water.

Jamais vu.5284:

I’m a casual player and I love the new difficulty. The notion that casual = averse to difficulty or unskilled needs to die.

Also keep in mind explorables were supposed to be the “elite” content. Story mode, with all it’s issues and feel of being kinda neglected, was to be the beginner difficulty for dungeons, even at the lower levels.

A lot of the problem I see with Arenanet and these lower level dungeons, is the feel of these (CM especially) are more and more geared towards level 80, geared players. CM and AC are “supposed” to be designed at lower levels to be more towards lower level players, to identify how dungeons work and progress from there. At their current point in this game, they have gone from pretty good and challenging to downright annoying, more difficult (but doable) and not FUN. The Howlers that burrow underground, pop up and then go invincible – not fun. It’s lame, annoying, and just drags on the already painful experience of a dungeon that makes me just cry for the lower level players that go through this place.
CM is just… so terrible at this point, there really is no reason to ever run this as your first dungeon.

You (Anet) could have gone about these so many different ways to make them fun and challenging enough for all levels, but for some reason, you chose to think that stupid, annoying, ridiculous, one-shot wonders is a challenge and fun.

In AC, the new Cave Troll event is a prime example of stupid. I used to love to get this guy up in a group. Now, I avoid it like the plague and encourage everyone else to do the same. It was fine the way it was – fun, challenging, and not a one shot hit. It still took skill, knowing how to play your character and knowing what the mob will do so you could avoid (or try to avoid) being hit. Now, he just fears you off the ledges, or literally one-shots you (and I am nowhere near being a glass cannon type player).

Please – re-think your strategy of what you think is fun, because it isn’t a clear definition of the word.

Now don’t get me wrong – other dungeons are actually fun, and I run them more than I ever will the lower level ones. Arah for example – it’s a great dungeon and I never thought that I would ever run that place. Now (before the changes were made) I got my Dungeon Master title, we run it all the time, and even go with players that have never been there before on almost a daily basis. We feel really bad though for those going through CM and AC – they are trash. They were really fun and we had a good time before they got all jacked up. It’s like you are almost punishing players for playing the game and that is really and truly sad.

A suggestion we were thinking about tonight was after watching our guildies changing colors with every dungeon we ran, why not allow us to set up profiles so we can keep our favorites instead of having to manually change it all the time?

Just set up your profile, name it whatever you want, save it and then you can change to that color scheme in the Hero panel every time you feel like wearing those different colors. Make like 10 profiles or so?

skullmount.1758:

Iehova.9518:

Malediktus.9250:

Anything that makes the game more challanging is welcome by me. It is too easy still.

Spiderlings having 9 gorillion toughness does not ‘challange’ make.
Ghost eater phase 1 will get kittening boring the 2nd time you do it.

I’m with this guy. Ghost eater is definitely a problem. Its not anywhere near being fun. I get it requires cooperation between two pairs of the players (to do lift and then drag), but it doesn’t tell you what to do with them. It was not intuitive, my group couldn’t figure out how to remove the shield from him.

I would prefer them to change it back. I dislike the new changes. Couldn’t even try path1 boss due to rage quits.
Most casuals/PUGs can now barely even get near the end of the dungeons, way to go Anet >:(. I hate to think what they’re gonna do to the higher level dungeons…

I believe the patch notes even stated something about this path. The clue is there to know what to do with the oozes. I think the harder part was figuring out how to move oozes, and that wasn’t difficult, just took a minute or two. It’s a Ghostbuster knockoff, which when the mechanic works, it’s a good fight. However, there are bugs with this path (it has to be – it’s Detha, been bugged since release) that make it a currently crappy fight. We managed to get a good shot on him as soon as the shield dropped, we time-warped and just annihilated him.

I’ve only done Path 2 in here, and I can definitely see the changes. Some very good, some were… not really bad, but the mechanic is broken a bit and needs tweaking. Might do Paths 1 and 3 today if we get some time. Path 2 has a very bad video lag hit on pulling chains. All of the lag seems to be related to gravelings. Noticed it very quickly.

AC Path 2 (Detha):

Spider Queen: The new one shot wonder. The fight was already fun and challenging, I don’t understand why you want to make this even more difficult. Lower levels (below 50 or so?) are going to just ache with frustration at this event. Last night we tried this boss, got past her after the second attempt. First attempt, she one shot the entire group. How is that fun again exactly? Very noticeable that she has a lower health pool.

Kholer fight: Not bad changes here, it is going to be a lot worse on lower levels than 80s because of the additional mobs that spawn during the fight. At least he isn’t spinning so much and so many times which made people skip him almost every time. We still continue to fight Kholer in every path. Thank you for this change. He was a terrible fight for most people in the game.

Fighting the gravelings and breeder at the spikes. Coming down into the water and having the three pulling chains part.
As soon as this event starts, everyone takes a MASSIVE video lag hit for the duration of the fight. Terrible! You have to face away from the spawn area in front of you to stop this lag, but trying to fight this way = bad. Please fix this.

Never saw the troll pop up, so I can’t comment on that yet. Maybe today.

Ghost Eater: I almost feel like going back to Arah Path 4 and fighting Simin for an easier fight. Like the Sparks, you have a terrible mechanic taking place. I like the idea of how to do this, but your mechanic is broken half of this fight. Sometimes you can’t even lift and drag an ooze. Sometimes you can drag, but not lift. Sometimes you can lift and never drag, thus having to reset the mob and start all over.

Detha fighting Ghost Eater… If Detha dies, he resets to full health even if you are wailing on him just to keep him in combat. I think this is a terrible design.

Overall I like the changes, you just need to fix and tweak the changes so they either work, or don’t one shot you.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Writetyper.1985:

I think this was needed but kitten there’s got to be better ways to fix a boss than just number tweaking.

There is, but it takes time and resources that we allocated to Catacombs to work on those bosses.
I have ideas for Simin… like the one as follows if we keep the stealth mechanic and don’t change her much:
When she stealths, players have X seconds to get the 5 sparks to their slots around the statue. If she gets knocked out of stealth before that, she regains no health. If players fail the mechanic, she heals to full. The cooldown on the skill can be adjusted based on failure/success, and other things like a PBAOE petrification can be used to punish players for not suceeding with the mechanic. Just spitballing here, but yeah, there’s more than can be done. Just didn’t have the time to tinker with it.

If you plan on this method of ‘mechanic’ to defeat this boss, then you have to re-work the behavior do a better job of Spark behavior. After your behavior modification patch you posted about before, herding those Sparks is still like herding cats, is an extremely clunky way this part of the boss fight works and is just downright ‘not fun at all’. I’m all for challenge, but I’m not all for fighting broken mechanics if your proposition posted above moves forward. Even after the gatherers collect Sparks, they will randomly go out of their way to hit someone who wasn’t even near them in the first place. The placement of the Sparks is the clunkiest part of this entire instance, and frankly, if you change this again to the mechanic above, you are going to have some very irritated folks coming here to bash on this instance. Please re-think this collection of Sparks. You guys need to stop thinking of how to screw the players and instead make it challenging AND fun. Anet gives me the impression that they have no idea that challenging and fun can exist in the same place.

Some of you are arguing the ability to be able to down the boss – that is not the argument here. The mechanics are broken, as I listed above – that is the issue. Please don’t get hung up on the fight itself, its the mechanics that aren’t working. Some of you are trying to hang, draw and quarter my issues because I think the boss is hard. DPS check suck, yes indeed. I don’t like that aspect of it, as this follows the same principles of why people left the game and got a refund – bait and switch on what you need to be able to further progress (old argument about Anet saying that this isn’t what this game is about, yet we have to progress by running FoTM). But, it’s in the game, you have to get past it.

I like the fight, I love the challenge.

The sparks not following how they are supposed to, not ‘DE-activating’ when they are sitting in the spots you drag them to, being petrified when you clearly aren’t having it displayed as a debuff on you, not being cleared of petrification when you see the tear land directly onto the petrified person (several times) – that is what breaks this god awful fight. Not the challenge.

So I tried this awful boss for the first time tonight. I am running with all guildmates on Mumble, so we can coordinate very well. We have the DPS with two warriors, mesmer, guardian, and necro who is handling the tears. Guardian and mesmer handling sparks.

Here are the utter failures that I have noticed:

- Being petrified, when you have no petrification debuff on you.
- Using tear on said petrified person, to have it not work.
- Being out of agro range (reset), even at the beginning of the instance at the waypoint, to have the petrification continue endlessly. You ahve to log out of the game and come back in just to recover.
- I don’t know if this is a mechanic issue or if this is the way it is, but Stability use (signet, banner, whatever) does not remove the precursor debuff, and of course, the debuff itself.
- Sparks – OH MY GOD the sparks. They do not have a very good following behavior at all. Two people can go and hit them, bring them to the tree, then one will just come at you when you are 50 yards off and start attacking you when you did NOTHING to it.
- Spark placement – this has got to to be some of the most … I don’t know what kind of thing, but it fails on a massive level to try and get these things placed.

Pure disappointment and frustration out of this last path – but I guess that is the mentality of the developers – to only develop what 5% of the game population can pass, right? Mad King jumping puzzle was designed this way – why not this?

Kojiden.8405:

PopeUrban.2578:

Also, it’s complete BS that I have personal and biological obligations that prevent me from attending the Claw of Jormag event every time it occurs. It is patently UNFAIR that I am not given a fair chance at the drop rolls of this chest because I was unable to attend. In fact, any looting system based on a random number generator is profoundly unfair. I’ve often gone as long as a day of playing without so much as seeing an exotic item.

I once heard about a guy that looted a spark off of a normal risen trash mob, but I have killed hundreds of these mobs in my time in game, yet I still don’t have my precursor.

I guess arenanet is such a kitten company that it doesn’t understand that the most valuable items in the game should be mailed to every character on creation, so that EVERYONE has an equal chance at obtaining the most difficult items in the game with very little effort or luck.

KITTEN this game. I’m done!

Honestly people. Grow up.

Are… are you comparing the claw of jormag chest with the ancient karka chest? Ummm…. what? Also, the claw of jormag spawns like every 3 hours. This event is OVER. FOREVER.

He is being sarcastic without even reading the post. He thinks people are complaining they didn’t get what they want. They are really complaining about being kicked off the server more than once in the middle of an event, to come back to nothing to show for their efforts (to sum it up) while others who got to stay connected were pulling out a lot of great things from those chests.

Mada.5319:

The price of precursors have significantly dropped. Everybody wins. Some more than others but still……..

Again, completely missing the point as to why people are upset.

We aren’t participating to lower the cost – we are participating to better our characters, to have a good time and for this instance, yes, have a fair shot at something that most of us can’t afford.

For me, I just wanted to have some fun and I never ever would expect a pre-cursor to just fall from the sky and into my bag space.

The point was, lot of people got cheated out of even having a chance at completion, a chance at a pre-cursor, a chance at some gold. The technical limitations of Arenanet cheated out a lot of people out of all of it – the build update in the middle of the kittening raids, invisible mobs (you calling that content now, Anet?) the poor implementations, and the fact that this is not the first time. They spent hours of their time to come in and play, not be a testing ground, like we have been for 3 months. In return, they (we) got insane repair costs, no chest to loot, kicked from the game and had no fun in the process.

I don’t know why you log in – but I log in to enjoy myself. When I got booted, that was the end of the fun for me. The whole point was utter, epic failure.

Then they say they are going to compensate us for it. Mark my words – it will be nothing like the chance at what we had earlier today. The only thing it will be missing, will be everything that we were trying to accomplish and retrieve from that long, drawn out crab fight. It will be salvage.

No, they repeated the event, and even then it was a total failure.

All I can say anymore is: garbage.

I feel more sorry for us that got booted out more than once tonight and didn’t get squat.

<sarcasm>
Thanks for the one time epic event, Arenanet! It was the best fricking thing I’ve ever done in a game. It was truly epic to be dropped, get nothing to show for 2+ hours on our server, get killed repeatedly by mobs you couldn’t see, hundreds wiped in one steamroll of crabs… I mean really, I love to pay repair bills for nothing.
</sarcasm>

!http://i1249.photobucket.com/albums/hh516/Greyhawk01/gw001.jpg!

It’s time to put down the content idea book and start fixing the bugs. I just logged in here to make a post about this very thing – glad I don’t have to make another post about it.

We are done with the dungeons where we cannot complete them because they bug out, time and again.

We are done with trying to figure out new content, to only have MORE bugs introduced.

We are done with classes bugged so badly, it makes you want to delete every time you log in. I already play a very garbage class, and I have to deal with illusions and players in my way while I’m casting my fire, air, water or earth spells only to have them obstructed over half the fight.

This is no longer beta – please stop treating us as the guinea pigs for your testing. I bought a game to play on a production server, not a beta one.

Ele levels at the lowest levels are super easy – just like every other class. When you hit about 40, you start feeling the toll of how absolutely crappy our class is – even with Toughness and Vitality traits. It is the lowest HP and lowest armor class in the game. It remains that way even at 80. You are either a glass cannon with no survivability and sub-par damage compared to every other class. If you like it, continue playing it. If you want to play the “real” elementalist class, roll a thief.

This video is really sad, but very true.

This dungeon and its bugs have gotten out of control. There has not be a time yet where I have not experienced this thing bugging out in some sort of fashion. I’ve lost so many AC tokens because we cannot finish it, I won’t even bother going back, even if I do need the gear out of it.

You are actually screwing yourself if you were to ever have your account information stolen (hacked as people call it) by not using a non-functional e-mail address.

This is how ArenaNet is telling you that someone is attempting to log in, or has logged into your account from another IP address and is waiting on your verification (I call that a clue that your account is compromised and you need to take action).

You seem to think that if they hack your provider’s email database, that you are safe because you are using a bogus e-mail address.

I have news for you – it’s not your provider’s database that you need to worry about – it’s your own butt and computer that you need to worry about. Yes, those guys have had security breaches – but nowhere near the potential of you getting yourself ‘hacked’. Those providers aren’t surfing the internet off the e-mail or database servers and infecting their own internal computers/servers.

Well,
Beings they already have your password, you need to secure your computer first hand.

Check around for programs that can detect and eliminate keyloggers. Google works well for this. Once you have throughly figured that and applied it, then start checking your anti-virus program to make sure you are not infected. Some viruses will disable abilitites of AV in order to work, re-write the hosts file so that when you update, it points back to the local machine, things of that nature.

Then work on changing your passwords – and I mean all of them. Every password you use, change it to something completely different. Make them very hard, keep notes of what you changed to what password.

Now you can start messing with this account problem. First off, don’t go to any gold sites, p0rn sites, or ‘fan sites’ that may have the potential to upload programs to your computer (gw hq dot com was thrown around here yesterday as a hacking site).

Get a new e-mail address – there are tons that are free out there that work with online gaming and verification. I personally use an e-mail address that I never send anything from, or use anything for except my games, and I have multiple e-mail accounts depending on the game. For those that want to complain about management of e-mail addresses, I say this – stop being lazy and manage your stuff. Use an e-mail client program such as outlook to manage it, it’s not hard at all.

I’ve been a victim of a hacked account in another game, and I am a fanatic when it comes to computer security. No one could believe that it happened to me of all people, but it did. I was lucky enough to have caught them, by someone telling me someone just logged into my account, when they knew I wasn’t going to be on. So, things were changed from a different computer, and that POS was booted fast. I was lucky enough that the company restored my account (unlike this company – WTF Anet, seriously doesn’t?) and I have since become that much more paranoid – as everyone literally should be when it comes to this stuff.

While there is no official word that I have seen about it, I would personally consider this a macro use. You are running a program that tells your computer to do something in the game that does not force you to do it yourself – that’s a macro. An automated keybind, mouse click, key combination, etc that you are not performing.

That said – they ban bots. Bots are run by programs that… automate keybinds, mouse clicks, key combinations, etc….

The moral of the story is: If you have to ask, then you probably should not use it.

And this B.S. right here:

“But a lot would argue it doesn’t give advantage and anyone can get it if they please.”

That is a pathetic excuse to use a macro, and quite frankly stupid.

You don’t remember clicking on the link to verify your account in the client once you made it?

Do you have something in the client window after you log in nagging you to verify it?

Kingslayer.1784:

A lot of people got rolled back and booted last night.

It’s not just last night – this is a common problem on my server (Dragonbrand). I’ve repeated the same content on my necro three times already, because I am booted out so much with their ‘client connection’ error. I haven’t had that problem yet on my highest characters, but it’s gotten out of hand. People are not happy with it, and not happy with getting some resolution from Anet.

A common problem which they are not addressing, unfortunately. My wife on her mesmer (level 75) was rolled back over several hours of progress. She is back at it this morning, repeating the same garbage she did just yesterday/last night.

And, she is NOT amused.

I would start checking to see if you have a keylogger. You can Google it and come up with a couple of separate, keylog checkers aside from an anti-virus program which in most cases does NOT find keylogging.

Wreckage.1586:

I got hacked about a week ago, according to arena net it is my fault, which is probably the case. I put in a support ticket and the response was

“Please do not use the same password that you used previously, because the person who changed your account name knows the previous password and that knowledge poses a security risk. For added security, please change the password on your e-mail account as well. Please note that your email account password should NOT be the same as your Guild Wars 2 password. Also, please be aware that the Support Team is unable to restore any missing Characters or Items.”

OK, so? What’s the question?

Oh, no they have a system that rolls back characters. It’s after you have completed an area, you log out to only log in the next day after you were booted from these servers andfind you have to do what you just did all over again because of their ‘random feature roll back’ system. You don’t know when exactly it will happen, but rest assured, it does and will. I’ve had two guild mates complain about it (one also being my wife this morning of several hours lost because of this) and nothing will be done to correct it.

Fail company is fail.

You can do the catacombs at level 30 outside black citadel (Charr lands). Why run this garbage, I don’t know.

At 35 you can do the same dungeon in hard (explore mode). Why run this garbage, I don’t know.

At 40, you can run the manor in Beetltun (Queensdale zone). Why run this garbage, I don’t know.

At 45, you can run the hard mode of it. You would honestly have more fun using a wooden spoon to remove both of your eyes at this point.

Borked.6824:

I didn’t ask you to critique what I said. I asked if there is anyone else? If you’re part of the carrot-chasing crowd, then move on.

If you don’t want to hear other peoples’ opinion on a forum for a video game, then perhaps not post? You’ve been here all day countering what (obviously) a lot of people don’t like. You don’t get it, you will never get it.

It’s not about ‘chasing a carrot’ – what a tool remark.

It’s about how it was implemented. It’s about risk versus reward. It’s not about the phat lewt and coin at the end of the dungeon being nerfed into a slap in the face. Hell, I ran CM this morning, got nothing but white gear out of the chests, 6k experience and 3 silver.

People are not going into dungeons at 30 for the first time in game to fulfill your pathetic list above. They are there to better the character they play. Period. That is no longer the option when running a dungeon until you hit 80, and even then you don’t have to do that to build your end game gear (thank god). You want to run things for your list? Great, do that at later levels, even 80 – knock yourself out.

Some of the players just starting and coming into this mess of CM and AC and being totally stun-locked into dungeon submission, walking out with 10 silver repair costs, white gear that isn’t even close to upgrading, and no reward versus the risk of running these things is not a fun way to spend time.

Knockback after knockback, fear after fear, sniper shots taking you out even when you aren’t in line of sight… even while you interrupt mobs, they are so bugged that they ignore the little crowd control we have, and rip you a new one.

That’s what this mass exodus is about.

I would seriously like to know and understand exactly what the developers were thinking when they changed CM to the way it is now.

I would also like know what they were smoking – whether it was crack, weed, or either one laced with PCP, because I can say this – dungeons are a terrible, terrible thing now.

I can understand addressing the experience and the money at the end of it being too much – I completely get that.

What I don’t get is how the living HELL you do what you did to it.

- I pulled white armor, yes whites from the chests with one blue.
– The mobs have been exponentially buffed to the point of unplayable – there is so much knockback, AoE fearing, chain stunning, and one-shotting of players, that you literally cannot play and enjoy this utter failure.
– The experience and money has been nerfed to worthless – much like the testing that I guarantee didn’t take place before this went live. Honestly, if I just got done going through that C-R-A-P that I just ran for that little experience, loot and coin… What is the point of even going in there?

You had a knee-jerk reaction to solve a problem of people running this to death. You know what you could have done? Simple – just nerf experience and money at the end.

No, instead, you nerfed everything beneficial and increased the worst possible. There is no balance, there was no thought, there was no point in what you (Arenanet) did other than to make players disgruntled to the point of not running a dungeon for some kind of benefit, even if it was a little one.

I would seriously like to know and understand exactly what the developers were thinking when they changed CM to the way it is now.

I would also like know what they were smoking – whether it was crack, weed, or either one laced with PCP, because I can say this – dungeons are a terrible, terrible thing now.

I can understand addressing the experience and the money at the end of it being too much – I completely get that.

What I don’t get is how the living HELL you do what you did to it.

- I pulled white armor, yes whites from the chests with one blue.
- The mobs have been exponentially buffed to the point of unplayable – there is so much knockback, AoE fearing, chain stunning, and one-shotting of players, that you literally cannot play and enjoy this utter failure.
- The experience and money has been nerfed to worthless – much like the testing that I guarantee didn’t take place before this went live. Honestly, if I just got done going through that C-R-A-P that I just ran for that little experience, loot and coin… What is the point of even going in there?

You had a knee-jerk reaction to solve a problem of people running this to death. You know what you could have done? Simple – just nerf experience and money at the end.

No, instead, you nerfed everything beneficial and increased the worst possible. There is no balance, there was no thought, there was no point in what you (Arenanet) did other than to make players disgruntled to the point of not running a dungeon for some kind of benefit, even if it was a little one.