Guild Wars 2

Stooperdale.3560:

A lot of players have had their butts kicked in AC story, their first dungeon, but then have realized just how much more they can get out of their character. I’m guessing you’ll do the same.

A lot of players got their butts kicked in AC story. And in other story-mode dungeons. But then they realized that the dungeons were just not fun. And there was no way they would enjoy dungeons in GW2. And then left the game. I’ll guess the OP will do the same.

I played GW2 at launch. With 3 friends. Nice game. Beautiful graphics. Some of the exploring was fun. Then we tried some dungeons. I was appalled how terrible they were. Then 2-3 weeks after launch, these forums opened. Many many many many players were disappointed in the dungeons too. Lots of threads pointing out what the flaws were. Why the whole pve experience in dungeons was wrong.

Then the main pve guy posted on this forum. “Dungeons in GW1 were even harder. Nobody could finish them ! Our design goal in GW2 is that you’ll like the dungeons even less. And that they are impossible to be finished by an even larger part of our customers”.

I hit level-80. And then stopped playing. So did one of my friends. The other 2 didn’t even get to 80. And from what I’ve seen, lots and lots of other pve players left the game too. I guess for many other reasons too. But the fact that the dungeons are so bad must be a significant reason for many people.

I haven’t played since September. Once a month or so, when I am really really bored, I read these forums. Just for laughs. To see how the pve design team actually made a negative contribution to the overall game, and they are still clueless to what they did.

Of course there are people who keep playing. And there will be a constant influx of new players. (The PayOnce model is attractive to a certain group of players). But I don’t see anywhere on the web people discussing how great a game GW2 is. Because it isn’t. Big thanks to the pve design team.

My response to common spoken concerns in GW2:

Stopped playing a few days after I hit level-80.
Haven’t played in weeks (months even).
I will never buy any gems or invest real money into anything ArenaNet creates.
I will never buy an expansion pack.
I will never recommend the game to anyone else.

There, that fixed my problems with GW2.
(I’m only checking the forums here once in a while, when I’m a bit bored).
(Oh, and my common concerns with GW2 have been mentioned a lot on these forums: basically the pve gameplay designers are clueless how to make a game fun. You won’t read much about it anymore, because the majority of players have left long ago (to never return), and only people with low standards are left here).

Zzulu.5489:

In my opinion GW2 is the best MMO launch since WoW. It has more content than WoW had at launch too. People coming in here and calling it “Rushed” needs to gain some perspective because clearly they have none

The world is beautiful. I fully agree.

But when you look at the gameplay-mechanics, I think were are a lot of decisions in it, that I consider broken. Or dumb. Or clueless.

I think the decision that all dungeons have to be super-hard is a dumb decision.
I think that the traveling system (waypoints) is bad.
The decision that money is gonna be made via the cashshop, and thus that in-game gold has to be in short supply, is a decision that has a huge negative aspect on so many parts of the game.
No gear grind ? Everything else has turned into a grind in stead.
Lack of gear progression removes something that many players found fun.
No trinity ? It simplifies team-play into some kind of zerg where everyone plays for themselves. Another solution would have been better, like allowing all classes to spec into tanking and healing.
Give all classes melee and ranged abilities ? And then make ranged gameplay so much easier, that almost everyone is forced/tempted/encouraged to play ranged mostly. Makes gameplay less fun.

So many little design-decisions like this.
The game could have been a lot funner.
It’s a shame for the art-designers and level-designers, the modellers, the texture-artists. They did a great job. And then they have it spat on my the PvE-gameplay designers. I can’t understand how upper management lets this happen.

Jestunhi.7429:

Some people seem to think the process of fixing a bug is changing a single line of code.

Party-leader logs out, or crashes, or logs on an alt -> dungeon instance disappears.

A developer comes here and talks that bug, and says “the magic that the programmers do”.
Heck, fixing that bug is minor work. Indeed a few lines of coding, at most 1 page of code. Heck, it is a disgrace that the system even worked like that in the first place ! When writing the code, you should immediately realize that making the party property of a single character is asking for problems. It is as if some of the developers (programmers, but mostly gameplay-designers) have never played an MMO before.

I completely agree.

It is yet another example that shows that the “PvE-architect(s)” of this game are pretty clueless. So many things in PvE are broken when looking at it from a system’s perspective.

Dungeons only meant to be played by the 10% best players. Nothing to do for the rest.
Gold being kept scarce, to encourage cashshop. Has impact on everything.
No gear grind, but grind for everything else.
Transportation system not fun.
Etc.
The concept of Magic Find fits right in. Kittycatted if you do, kittycatted if you don’t.

I paid 41 euros.
GW2 delivered enough content and enjoyment for me.

However, it was not a bargain. It did not give me more than I paid for. I finished leveling to 80 this afternoon. I might finish world completion. But I will not start an alt. I will not do PvP. And the developers of the dungeons have told me (on this forum) that I am not worthy to play the content they developed. I feel I am done with the game.

It was sometimes fun. Sometimes it was very bland. I could explain in detail why, but nobody is interested (and certainly Arenanet is not interested). I have fond memories of playing my first year of WoW. I have fond memories of TBC. I played a zillion hours of UT (over a decade ago), and I will never forget that game. Morrowind stole my heart. Thief 1&2 and System Shock are amongst my favorite games. Maybe I can name a few more. But Guild Wars definitely doesn’t belong in that list. The game world was beautiful, the jump puzzles are fun. But the PvE-game-mechanics are just not good. GW2 is not a classic for me. I will not buy any expansion-packs.

There is a very important reason for the leveling system.

I would guess that most of the budget for creating the game is in the development of the world. A huge world. Art-people and designers must have put a lot of time in building the world. I bet more than half the budget. Maybe 70-80% of the budget went into the world, the monsters, the models, textures, etc. Therefor you want the players to see the world, and play in the world.

The leveling system is a tool to guide people to move through the world. Or if you want to look at it from a negative side, force you to move through the world.

If the fastest method to attain something would be to stand in one spot, and farm the same mobs over and over again, a lot of players would do that. They would miss out a lot of what Tyria has to offer. They wouldn’t like the game. They would get bored quickly. They would give bad mouth-to-mouth advertising. A developer wants his product to be enjoyed in a proper way. And thus he wants his customers to move through the whole world. The “100% world completion” is not there just for us, but also for Arenanet.

The leveling system is used to make you move and experience the whole world. I think it works well for this purpose. Whether Arenanet (or other companies) can improve details of the system, that’s another discussion.

Some people don’t like leveling. Some people don’t like questing. Some people don’t like nothing. Some people just don’t like MMOs. I wish companies would stop catering their games to people who don’t like their game. Put something in your game for the hardcore, something for the casuals. Something for the good players, something for the bad players. Something for the role-players. For the pvp-ers. Something for the achievers, the explorers, the social players, etc. MMOs are huge games. You can put in something for everybody. But please, don’t take out stuff, just because a few people don’t like MMOs in general …..

If you do some quick searches here, you will find posts of the developers of the dungeons themselves ! They basically told us (you and me, and 95% of the other customers of Arenanet) that we are not worthy of playing the content (the dungeons) they developed. The dungeons are only targeted for the best of the best of the best.

You and me, we can go roll an alt.

The fanboys will come in your thread now, and they will tell us that that is good. Less content for us, is good. We should go roll an alt. Or two alts.

There will be no raids too.
The fanboys will come in you thread now, and they will tell us that that is good too. Less options is always good.

For the rest, I agree with you. WvWvW is a zerg. Public events are zergs. Exploring is fun once (because you’ve seen it all after the first time). I hit level80 an hour ago. I might stick around a bit to help friends if they want to do a dungeon. But tbh, I feel like I can’t be bothered with that either.

In two weeks Dishonoured will come out. I’ll certainly be playing that. I will not buy GW expansion-packs. Will not buy gems. Because I am not worthy to play this game. And my opinion doesn’t matter. Probably because I already paid my 41 euros. The artists who made the game-world have done a fantastic job. Awesome world, awesome cities. Awesome models, textures, screenshots, map art, etc. The handful of people responsible for the pve-gameplay did a terrible job. I can’t understand nobody with a clue has kicked their arses long time ago.

Btw, it’s not because you play a warrior. I play a Thief, and I feel completely useless in dungeons. I’ve learned to stay alive (thanks to my shortbow). But my damage is pathetic. My combofield (poison) is worse than useless (because it might overwrite more important combofields). Maybe it’s because we both picked a melee-class, and ended up playing ranged mostly. Pve-gameplay imho is just terrible. I hope the pvp-folks like it.

No idea how much toughness you need.
But here is a thread on another forum that discusses Damage reduction, toughness and vitality.
Hope it helps.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/

Vash.1852:

The best AA currently available is super sampling AA, but that has a massive performance impact.

I am sure we agree here. (You want SMAA after all too, just like me).
But SSAA is the “best looking” form of AA. That doesn’t mean it is the best overall. Considering the performance penalties and other aspects, I think SMAA is the best form of AA at the moment. (Especially in games that do deferred rendering, and where only FXAA, TXAA, MLAA and SMAA work properly).

The SMAA injector is a third party program and I believe they stated that almost all third party programs are not allowed. I’m just hoping that they don’t mind this one.

It depends on what you call a “third party program”.
If all pieces of software that are not GW2 are illegal, than nobody can play. Because we all use an OS. We all use drivers. We all use APIs like DirectX. What is a “program” ? Something in the form of an .exe ? Well, SMAA injector is safe then (it’s a DLL, not an .exe). Utilities like Logitech’s SetPoint is an .exe.

I think the rule is simple. Don’t use any tools that allow you to cheat in the game. No bots. No wallhacks. No teleports. No changing models/skins into bright colors. Etcetera. Note the use of the word: etcetera.
But trying to enhance the visuals of the game is not cheating. Nobody would consider SMAA cheating. That’s why I wrote my first line “if someone considers SMAA cheating, then he is a <bleep>”.

Don’t expect ArenaNet to give you an answer. They won’t. Because the more explicit they are about what is allowed, and what is not allowed, the more they are digging a hole for themselves. If they are vague, it is much easier to ban “smartasses” that come up with new stuff to cheat. If they list 10 or a 100 or a 1000 different things that are forbidden, then someone will come with cheat nr 1001. And point out that it wasn’t mentioned that it was forbidden, and thus allowed.

Go install SMAA_Injector, and enjoy your visuals !

I have been playing games with a joystick for 13 years now.

I use the joystick in combination with a trackball.
The trackball works like a normal mouse. To look around. Like MouseLook in FPS games. And the trackball-buttons work like mouse-buttons on a regular mouse. You could use a mouse in stead of a trackball, that wouldn’t make much difference for operating the joystick.

Indeed I use the axis on the joystick for WASD movement. You don’t need turning on the joystick. The trackball/mouse gives much better aim.

I use to play Unreal Tournament with a joystick/trackball combination. I could even dodge properly (which is really important in UT). I think movement with a joystick is pretty good, sometimes even easier than with a keyboard. I can use abilities while moving, not everybody can do that with a keyboard setup (you need fingers for WASD). The problem with movement with a joystick is mostly in standing still. I sometimes move unintentionally, when I move the stick slightly out of the center. But I’ve done all jumping puzzles I came across so far.

Imho it is very important what kind/brand/type of joystick you use. You need one with many buttons. Especially when playing an MMO. I use a joystick with 20 (twenty!) buttons. Although most are in the form of a 4-way hatswitch. I use my pinky-button as a shift-button. So I can use 38 abilities when playing, just by pressing 1 (or 2) joystick buttons.

Another problem is the fact that most joysticks are righthanded. That means you need a left-handed trackball or mouse. That is why I use a Logitech MarbleMouse trackball. It is symmetrical. I like it a lot. It is very precise, easy to clean, circle-strafing is very easy, and not tiring on the wrist/arm/shoulder. The only problem is: with my left-hand my aim is slightly worse than with my right-hand. But in MMOs, that doesn’t matter much.

The joystick I use: CH Products USB Fighterstick:
http://www.chproducts.com/Fighterstick-v13-d-722.html

The trackball I use: Logitech MarbleMouse:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/mice-pointers/trackballs/trackman-marble

Let me know if you have more questions.

The idea that SMAA_Injector could get you banned is ridiculous. If ArenaNet would do that, they can have my account. Wouldn’t wanna play a game made by <beep>.

I’ve been using SMAA Injector with GW2 for the last 3 weeks or so. Definitely an improvement. Not only is it less blurry than FXAA, it also improves the image-quality when moving the camera. FXAA (and MSAA too) can cause “pixel crawl”. Basically the outlines of moving objects can start flickering. Movement can be an NPC walking across your screen, but also you moving your camera. With SMAA, that pixel crawl is significantly less.

Imho SMAA is the best form of AA at the moment. GW2 is the first game where I am using it. I tried it in Skyrim too, and it’s a huge improvment there too. I plan to use it in all my future games, until something better comes along. (And no, I don’t think TXAA will be better).

It was not my intention to derail this thread.
So let me explain what I mean if I say: “the problems with gems/gold are caused by bad system design”.

All the little mechanisms in a game are tied together.
Together they form a system.
If you make little changes here or there, they can have big impacts on other parts of the system.
Therefor, you need to think ahead. And come up with a good system, in which all those little details can fit. Without contradicting each other.

Example:
There is no monthly contribution.
Therefor, besides box-sales, Arenanet needs to make money in other ways.
They chose a system in which they sell gems for real money.
The idea is that gems can be traded for in-game gold.
Problem: if everybody has enough gold to do what they want, nobody will buy gems. And ArenaNet will lose part of their income.
Therefor, ArenaNet must make sure that players can not farm gold easily.

We know that now. It has a huge impact on all other design decisions ! There are so many ways to make gold in an MMO. And now they all have to be tweaked so that none of them can give “too much” gold easily. Good luck doing that. Maybe it can be done. But right now, it looks like it can not be done without upsetting your customers. You think you design a system to make real money, in a different way than subscriptions. But you end up with a system that alienates your customers. Not good.

Another example: Diablo 3. It seems the whole game was designed around the idea of the RMAH. We’ve seen how that worked out. Crappy game, according to almost everyone who played it. Who came up with the design decisions ? Jay Wilson ? Just one guy ? I’m sure Blizzard is happy with the 8 million boxes sold. But are they also happy with the few dimes they got from the RMAH ? While the RMAH almost destroyed a whole brandname ?

I’ve seen many more of those “systems” that weren’t thought out properly in advance. E.g. Vanguard was terrible in this respect. I just don’t understand how a whole industry can be so sloppy at such an important aspect.

DusK.3849:

So a game company that developed and sold over 4 million copies of a well-received game “doesn’t know their stuff”?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of those extra customers (e.g. not the old GW1-players) came to the game because of the screenshots of the world, the stories about the exploration and the jump puzzles, etc. I know I did. After 4 weeks, only 30% of players has queued up for PvP. They must be here for PvE first.

That’s all about the outside world and leveling your character. That part of the game is great. Awesome even (although it still has some flaws).

Gameplay at level-80 I just don’t understand. I don’t see how it can retain the majority of those 4 million players, and make sure they buy stuff in the cash-shop, or buy future expansions.

I was talking about MMOs in general. Seen Tera ? Beautiful world. The leveling was good, although a bit repetitive. Great dungeons too. But endgame was completely messed up. Not fun. More a lottery than a game (esp enchanting). Droves of players left. How is that possible ? Were the people in charge at Enmasse so blind ? So stupid ? You could see it coming from afar. I know for sure I would have come up with a better system for endgame than they did, make more customers happy, and get more subscription-money. But they couldn’t. I was flabbergasted.

Next you’re gonna tell me how great Diablo 3 is ? That game sold lots of copies. Maybe ArenaNet should hire Jay Wilson ? Jay is a veteran. And a huge name in the industry. GW2 customers will be ecstatic for sure ! “Kitten that kitten” !

When someone is a vet, it doesn’t mean he knows his stuff. It also doesn’t mean he can come up with new ideas. All it means that: 1) he never moved on in his life doing something new, and 2) he can tell great stories about “the good old days”. If you hire a bunch of EQ1-vets to design your new MMO, you might get a great new game. But you could just as well get a crappy new EQ-game.

I used to work at the very small top of a very big industry. That top was full of veterans. Half of them were useless. (Well, that’s exaggerated. But they were certainly not anything special).

Maybe ArenaNet should hire John Romero to design their games for them. He’s a veteran. “Can’t go wrong with veterans” !

The problem is simple:

For some weird reason, game companies seem to allow the design of the “systems” in their games to be done by utter amateurs.

This includes the system on how to make a profit for your company. There is the old subscription-paradigm, which kinda worked well. But everything else I see, seems weird, inefficient, unattractive to large amounts of customers, etc. GW tries something else, but tbh, I don’t understand the details of the plan. Because I don’t see how the B2P paradigm is gonna bring in extra money. But even if B2P can bring in extra money, I don’t how the way ArenaNet does it, is optimal.

The same is true with many other “systems” in MMOs.

• E.g. how are going to do itemization while leveling ? (AoC and Vanguard really messed that up. I think many more MMOs did).
• How are you going to keep people excited with new gear while leveling (tip: buying all your gear on the TP/AH is not exciting).
• How are you gonna make PvP fair ? (tip: giving the best players negative handicap doesn’t make sense (handicap as in golf handicap)). GW does better than average here.
• How are you gonna keep your PvE-players happy after they ding max-level ? (tip: making all your dungeons one difficulty-level, and make them all super-hard, isn’t gonna make your average PvE-customer keep playing).
• How are you gonna keep the best players from finishing all content in a week ? (WoW has the wrong mechanisms. GW is even worse, imho).
• How are you gonna keep players excited about their own progress ? (Removing progress, like GW2, isn’t gonna win you extra customers. Making all content trivial, giving away gear “for free”, and only making the heroic mode of the newest raid challenging is going to upset the middle majority of your customer-base).
• Same with this gem/gold/cash-shop discussion. No system, on consistency, nothing smart at all.

So many “systems” I see that are the same in all MMOs. And in so many games, I so many bad designs and implementations for those systems.

The game worlds in MMOs become more and more beautiful. There are more talented and experienced artists in the industry every day, it seems. I think the majority of the budgets for games (including MMOs) must go to the artists who develop the world, the characters, the animations, the textures, etc, etc.

But why can’t a MMO developer hire a smart guy, with a background in gaming, and a maybe a background in accountancy or economy, to do this stuff ?

Why do they hire some freaky nerdy 35y-old kid, who probably played EQ1, and never grew up, to design the overall system of PvE gameplay at level-80 ? And let whole hordes of customers walk away from your beautiful game ? $50M or $100M budgets, and they let some joe-average design critical parts of their business plan.

It blows my mind.

I might take you up on that offer, Inci.
Unfortunately, I’m away from home until next Monday. So it might take a while.

I’m playing with 3 friends. More than a week ago, we did AC SM, at level 35. With only the 4 of us. I had a glass-cannon spec. I didn’t know what to expect. I got slaughtered. One of my friends is very good, one is a bit less experienced. We didn’t stand a chance. We’re planning to try dungeons again, but as I said, it might not be before next week. I’m Gryzemuis on EU-Gandara. Got TeamSpeak3 ? Got Ventrillo ? If you don’t hear from me next week, then we found another way to do the dungeons. And you can spend your time to help other people. In any case, thanks for your offer.

So Ruien, if I understood correctly, then:

• you’ve been playing MMOs for 12 years now
• you run with a static group. in which undoubtedly all your buddies also have 12 years of experience.
• you power-leveled to 80 in 3 days. which proves you are the achiever-type. and you’re good, fast, and don’t care at all about the RPG element in RPGs.

And how are your thoughts on the game of any importance to ArenaNet ? You are so far away from the average ArenaNet customer, it can not be any further. If ArenaNet wants to make sure that the reputation of GW2’s PvE at level-80 will get the reputation that it is fun to play for the majority of their (potential) customers, they better not listen to you.

As I explained in that other thread in which you posted, ArenaNet should start by making Story Mode as easy as required, so that 70-80% of the playerbase can finish it.

And then they need to start working on Exploration Modes. Not to make them easier, or nerf them. But so that players can gradually adapt to the difficulty level. So that unfun elements (like WayPoint zerging) can be removed. So that people will feel a bit better rewarded for running a dungeon. So that there is an incentive to run all paths. So that it is more clear what the game-mechanics of the mobs are, so that people don’t feel blind, but actually can see what’s going on. (I realize there are ways to figure out stuff, but they are not obvious). And I can go on and on.

I don’t want to take away the fun for you, or other players who are very good. But fact is, the majority of PvE-players are not enjoying the dungeons. Not even the Story Mode dungeons. They will play to 80 in the outdoor world. And then stop playing GW2. How can that be good for you, for me, for them, for all the other players, and for Arenanet ?

Ruien.9506:

BTW and addressing the part where I sound like an elitist. There are elitist in every section of humanity. Its ONLY those who can not achieve something that will make excuses to why they cant. As a good friend once told me, “Being called an elitist just means you achieved something the other person could not”.

Bullocks.

I used to work in an industry with much smarter people than the average gamer. My company was more successful and made more money than any gaming company. Simple programmers made loads of money (through stock options). The technology we made was more complex, and more world-changing than any gaming company did. And still, almost all the top people in my company were the friendliest people you could ever meet. They would never belittle someone who didn’t get it, or who wasn’t enlightened yet. There are different ways to approach life.

Our customers were smart, but at the same time also stupid. Or they did stupid things. Or ever worse, they wanted stupid things. In stead of ridiculing our customers, we had a different approach. We educated them. We taught them the philosophy on how to approach these problems. We did hand-holding. Was that bad ? No, those people were the people who paid our salaries. Education improves life for everyone. For us, for our customers, and for their customers too.
There is a different between “an elite player” and an elitist. Elitists are just jerks who are good at some minor thingy, but use that as the right to exclaim they are better than everyone else.

In-game education. This is one of the ways where ArenaNet fails. Fails miserably.
Nobody wants to read guides before they start to play. Nobody wants to make a detailed study of the descriptions of all of their abilities. Maybe some want to do that after they ran into a problem. But AC Story Mode is not just a problem for the average gamer. It is like a sledgehammer slamming on your face. I’ve spend countless hours on Elitists Jerks (duh!) or other forums, reading about my class, strategies, etc. But that was after I was playing for a while. Not while leveling my first character. A good game has this approach: “easy to learn, hard to master”. GW2 Story Modes require you to start with the “hard to master” at level 30 on your first character. Not good.

Let me talk about what needs to change in Story Mode first.
The Story Mode dungeons should be easy. That should be no problem, because you’re supposed to do them only once, or a few times at most. Imho 70-80% of gamers should be able to finish every SM dungeon. If it means the SM dungeons need to be nerfed to hell, so be it.
There should be an increasing difficulty. AC SM should be a walk in the park. Arah SM in the end could be a little harder. Because it is the lvl80 dungeon, people should have learned by now. People could try it a few times before succeeding.
Game mechanics should be taught while playing.
Game mechanics should be taught in a slowly increasing way. E.g. one by one, not all at the same time.
Then when a player has done all SM dungeons while leveling, he should have seen enough to know how to do the EM dungeons. Of course that doesn’t mean he will (or should) succeed in EM. He has to learn how to execute his strategies. He has learned which building blocks there are to come up with a strategy. But right now, it seems most players learned nothing, besides WP-zerging.
Oh, and WayPoint-zerging has to go. When WP-zerging is possible, then the developers need to take it into account when designing dungeons, and setting the difficulty-level. It might not be a problem anymore once you can do dungeons to perfection. But until then, WP-zerging is just a very bad game-element. I hope even you can see that.

See this YT-movie ? Just watching the first 30 seconds is enough. This is a game. Some people consider this fun. You need skills to beat this game. Some people can do it, others will need to raise their skill-level to beat it. But know what, to me that game doesn’t look like fun at all. And I bet that for 80-90% of the GW-players, that game doesn’t look like fun. And imho, dungeons in GW2 look too much like that game.

ArenaNet better comes up with a solution, or GW2’s reputation as a PvE-game will suffer.

As a developer, you want your customers to see the content you developed for them. If you develop content, and want very few people to see and do it. Otherwise you could just as well throw money down the sewer.

You also want some challenge in the game. Content that is a bit harder. There should be something to do for everybody. Therefor there is Story Mode and Exploration Mode. EM is hard, you should do it at 80, prepare yourself, etc.

But Story Mode should be easy. You want at least 80% of your customers to see it. There it should be easy. Tough luck for the elite-players. They can play EM as much as they want, get the big rewards and the prestige. And the different paths through the dungeon.

But the simple version, the Story Mode, the dungeon without all the extra paths, that should be accessible to the average gamer, and a bit below. So your product actually reaches the customers.

Is that so hard to understand ?
Anet is throwing money away by intentionally not letting the average player play and finish Story Modes.
On top of that, they are creating a bad rep for themselves too. Just because of the insane Story Mode dungeons.

I’m really surprised that ArenaNet upper management (and the board, and the investors) let a few nerdy PvE developers take such a huge risk.

I see lots of players in the world, wherever I go.

Only after 3:00 AM servertime, then the world-areas become a bit empty.

However, the OP has a point. Although he might not realize it.
World population is not an issue right now. And it probably won’t be an issue for the next 1-2 months.

But what after that ?
At some point, the amount of players leveling up new characters is gonna slow down. Of course there will be “altoholics”. Maybe more than in other games (as there is no PvE progression-content for the average player). But the amount of new characters will decrease dramatically. And then you will hardly see anyone in the low-level areas. And Public Events will get ignored. And the world will feel empty even more. It will happen. Just not now yet.

A “revolutionary MMO” should come up with a solution for this problem. After all, all MMOs will suffer this faith. Imho one viable solution would be to have 1 “leveling-server” after 2-3 months, where all players level up their character. And once they hit max-level, they go to their real-server. Maybe you can make it so that when a low-level charcater steps into a city, he enters his “home-server”. But all the questing should be done on a shared “leveling-server”. That way leveling will always feel crowded and fun. It’s just an idea, I’m sure there will be better ideas. But some studio has to be the first to tackle this problem.

Oh, and you should check out this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test
The Bartle Test.

It is a theory that divides players into 4 categories.

• Achievers
• Explorers
• Socializers
• Killers

I am an Explorer type myself.
I think a huge amount of gamers are Achievers. I don’t understand why. If you wanna achieve something, go to University, get a degree, become a surgeon, do research and cure cancer, or go study math. Those are things that you can call real achievements.

The weird thing is: MMO worlds are huge, and I think most development money is spent there. But the world is only used for leveling (in almost all games). So most of the development-budget is misspent. MMO-developers should come up with new ways to make gameplay in their game-world viable. GW2 tries, by downscaling you when you enter the world. I think that is the wrong way around. You need to create a parallel world, where every zone is a lvl80 zone. Maybe even a few lvl81-83 zones. With hard monsters, dangerous areas, and proper rewards. Maybe allow all players to completely redo all quests again, but now at lvl80 with lvl80 mobs.

You call yourself hardcore ? Go do the Exploration Mode dungeons. They are made especially for you. Average players (and sub-average players) are not allowed to do them. Heck, ArenaNet rather has us not even trying the StoryMode dungeons.

Go do dungeons. If you, the hardcore, won’t do them, then nobody won’t !

SHM.7628:

What I learned about this game by leveling my first toon to 80 is that level really isn’t the key. Karma is.

It looks like the karma-rewards increase with level. That means that once you are 80, you get karma so fast, it hardly matters how much karma you have saved up at the lower levels.

If you want to keep your gear up-to-date, it is much easier to buy green gear at the TP. Most green gear is sold for vendor-price + 1 copper. Some items are a bit more expensive, like vendor-price + half a silver. Do you realize what that means ? It means you can buy a full set of green gear every level for X silver. And when you upgrade them, you can sell them for X – a few copper ! The green leveling gear in this game is almost free ! I’m buying full new sets almost every 5-8 levels. Putting decent gems in them is more expensive than the gear itself. I wish I would get usable gear from Story Quests, but those rewards are all useless blue junk.

WoW had a well-thought out system of slowly upgrading your gear while questing. That gives you incentive to do quests, and the joy of the feeling that you are progressing your character constantly. And that you deserve it. It seems almost no other MMO has managed to do this right. Buying stuff from the TP is never as much fun as questing for it yourself, or crafting it yourself.

My best time in an MMO ever was the leveling in WoW. I started playing (my rogue) when the European servers opened. We played with 4 friends (from UT). It took us 3 months to get to 60. I had 25 days /played. It was awesome. Then we spend 2-3 months doing 5-man dungeons to get our blue gear, fire resistance gear, etc. That was also a good time. I’ve had fun times after that, but those first months were the best.

In GW2, I don’t think there is any longlivity for me. I am purely a PvE player. I’m better than average, I think. But I’m not an elite player. I’m too old for that, probably. But it seems the Exploration Modes are too hard for me (and my friends). Heck, I didn’t even enjoy AC StoryMode.

So what is there to do for a player like myself, in GW2 ?
Only the leveling.

So I’m taking it slow. Looking around. Trying to explore the whole map. Maybe not as detailed as I sometimes want. But I am always going into caves, checking out the borders of areas, climbing on mountains, etc. Done a bunch of jump puzzles, doing 100% completion of each map, etc. The world is nice. It’s very good looking. The leveling game in GW2 is pretty good ! Much better than any MMO I played before (except maybe those original 3 months in WoW). Currently I am lvl62. Taking about 2 hours per level-up.

But I know that I am the exception.
Most players want to get to max-level asap. Then they want the best gear asap. I have no idea why. For me: the longer I player, the more value you get out of the game. Why rush ? You’ll get there eventually.

jibs.8463:

so you have to figure out the way to beat it like Paragon does.

You just said that all players, average players, bad players, casual players, players new to the game, players new to their profession, you just said that all players that want to enjoy StoryMode, have to play and think like Paragon. Paragon, the top guild in the largest MMO, who are all very very good gamers, very hardcore, and can’t be beaten by anyone else.

Story Mode ? Way to go ! That’s how you keep customers playing your game. Awesome idea !

Use a shortbow.
Your nr1 ability hits 3 targets at the same time.
Your nr4 ability is a cripple on the target (only 1 target), and you leap backwards.
Combine this with your 2 regular dodges.
Now you can kite multiple mobs forever.
Your nr5 ability is a teleport that can get you out of hairy situations quickly

I used to die in Personal Story quests, with daggers.
I could not kill veteran mobs with my daggers.
With my shortbow, I don’t die anymore.

This way of playing (during leveling, personal stories, public events, etc) is sooo much easier. Your dps is low, but your survivability is 10-100x better. In groups (public events, etc) you can try to put down a poison field (ability nr4). Or use your awesome AoE (ability nr2).

But I rolled a Thief to play melee.
I ended up playing a friggin hunter.
I’m not a happy kittycat.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

I take it you’ve done like 2 dungeons?

I used to level my Thief with 2x daggers. I tried the other weapon combinations. I would have preferred sword+dagger, mostly for the looks. But I ended up playing 2x daggers. For my first dungeon, I had the plan to go ranged. I gotten myself 2 pistols, practiced a bit outside. And used pistols in AC SM. I got stomped on.

Then I read I should have used a shortbow. The last 20 levels I’ve been leveling with a shortbow. So much easier. I just kite everything. The shortbow hits 3 targets, so I can kite whole groups forever. The dps is lower, it takes a little longer to kill stuff. But the risk is almost none. I can now kill veterans without a problem. Even higher level than me. I bet I can solo Champions too. I struggled in some Personal Story quests before, but with my shortbow, everything is easy, I never die. I can only go daggers when I know I can burst mobs down in short fights.
I haven’t stepped in a dungeon again (my mates are a bit less enthousiastic after our first AC attempt). But it is clear to me that ranged and kiting is the preferred way.

Awesome.
I thought I had rolled a character to play melee.
It turns out I rolled a friggin hunter.
I am not a happy kitty.

All they have to do is make Story Mode….“Story Mode”!!!

This would be a good start.
What they do with Exploration Modes is a total different story.

Story Mode should be doable by 70%-80% of the playerbase. Even if that means you have to nerf them to hell. If ArenaNet does not want the better players to mis-use StoryMode for farming gold and loot, then make the rewards diminishing. You can come up with a simple formula. E.g. something like:
Rewards for finishing a SM dungeon = ((dungeon level) / 2) * (1 / amount of times you finished this dungeon) * 1 silver).
Result:
AC first run = reward = 15s, second run = 7.5s, third run = 5s, etc.
CM first run = reward = 20s, second run = 10s, third run = 6.66s, etc
Arah first un = reward = 40s, second run = 20s, third run = 12.33s, etc.
Tweak as necessary. Now ArenaNet doesn’t have to be afraid lvl80s will farm StoryModes.

I am not in favor of the attitude “everybody has the right to see all content”.
However, in a leveling-game, I do think everybody has the right to see the dungeons during leveling. In GW2 you can not wait 10-20 levels to out-level and out-gear dungeons, so you can go back and see lower-level content. Therefor there must be another solution for players to see the leveling dungeons. And by ArenaNet’s own design, it means the SM dungeons must be made a lot easier.

I’m not arguing to nerf Exploration Modes.
Exploration Modes are a different story (no pun intended). But that doesn’t mean EM doesn’t need a big overhaul. For the majority of players, they are not fun. Even if you know you can get better, they are still not fun. EM needs tweaks like more acceptable damage, less spike damage, no unavoidable deaths, mobs signalling their special abilities in a more clear way, etc. And make them more rewarding or less grindy. And more incentives to run all different paths. (There was a good suggestion here yesterday. The thread got deleted. Someone suggested that you have to finish each path of a dungeon once, to get an item. That means: if a dungeon has 4 paths, and the set had 6 items, you need to run the dungeon 6×4=24 times to get the full set. You can tweak it, like requiring to run each path twice for an item. But the idea is very good).

It was StoryMode only. Imho, StoryMode should be doable by everybody except the utter worst. And even then, 4 decent (average) players should be able to carry a real bad player through StoryMode.

You ran with all guildies. Probably experienced MMO-ers. Probably used to working together. And you did have TeamSpeak. And although you can always type in partychat, people usually don’t type as much as they speak. And certainly not during combat.

You knew you had to spec defensively. I didn’t know that when I walked into AC.

But the thing I am most curious about. How good a MMO player are you, and your guildies ?
Did you play WoW ? Most people did, therefor WoW is a good reference.
Did you raid ? In Cata, TBC or vanilla ? How far did you get ? Did you beat bosses in Dragon Soul heroic mode ? Did you play in Sunwell Plateau at 70 ? Did you play in BWL, AQ40 or Naxx40 in vanilla ? I am really curious.

You might play this game for a long time.
You can do the leveling only once (per character).
You can do the Story-Quests only once per character.
Once you’ve done it, it is over. Gone. Past.

So enjoy the Story Quests.
Especially on your first character. When everything is fresh and new.
Who cares if it takes a few more minutes.
If leveling-speed is all you care about, go join the zerg is some Public Event. Good xp per hour, and a lot less running.

I enjoy the Story Quests.

All the heart-quests are easy-peasy, quick, don’t require you to think or even read anything. I’m not a fan of the heart-quest paradigm. I prefer the old fashioned quests. They give more flexibility and variety, imho. One type of quests you will never see with heart-quests is the “courier quest” or “express quest”. I miss those. If the world is nice, it’s fun to travel through it.

Thomasqk.8209:

Take a look at this awesome guide made by a user named Kirin. It really helped me in dungeons with my Thief.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Kirin-s-Guide-for-Aspiring-PVE-Support-Thieves

OK, I finally read the guide.
A few things I knew, a few things that I hadn’t thought of myself.
Definitely worth reading.

However, as I had thought: we do not have:
1) more ways to heal ourselves besides our nr6 healing ability.
2) no ways to heal party members.
3) no way to remove conditions from ourself (except using a inferior healing ability)
4) no ways to remove conditions from party members.

I feel very vulnerable as a Thief. Combined with the unbelievable damage we take, this is not fun, imho. I don’t mind rocks being thrown at me. As long as I have tools to deal with it. But without any tools, I just feel like a sitting duck.

Thanks for posting that.

The really sad thing is: the guy on the left is Colin Johanson. That is the same guy who came to this forum, proudly telling us that most of us are not worthy to play his dungeons ! (And btw, we should have expected that, because his elite areas and dungeons in GW1 were only playable for the top 1% too).

He also says (13:19): “The better the game does, the bigger the live-team is that is supporting that stuff”. You would almost think he gets it. But he doesn’t.

The other guy (Eric Flannum (14:50)): "You never fall into a “oh yeah, I expected that”".
Exactly, that describes precisely what I thought after doing my first AC StoryMode dungeon with a few friends ….

Lokai.7850:

Then i am at a loss as to how people manage to do dungeons when <snip> ….
So to all those can do dungeons peachy congrats… to other 75% of the player base… we are still struggling to understand wtf we are doing wrong.

We had someone here explain why the dungeons are hard, but not too hard. He liked that. Then he continued to tell us about how his guild struggled on Heroic Ragnaros in Cataclysms. Pre-nerf. Heroic Ragnaros is hard. Pre-nerf it was really hard. Hard in the sense that only 37 guilds killed him in 25-man mode, and 21 guilds did it in 10-man mode. World wide.

That means out of 10 million WoW-players, only about 1000-1500 had beaten that fight. About 0.01% of the players. That’s the type of players who come here and tell us the dungeons are fine.

And the sad thing is, the developers of the dungeons think that’s OK.

Gryzemuis’s rules for PvE endgame.

1) The largest chunk of your customers are gonna be the average players. You certainly need to make sure there is enough content for them.
2) The elite players will never be satisfied. Even if you make very hard content, some of them will still think it needs to be harder. However, you need to make (some) content for them too. If only so that the average players have something to work and look forward too.
3) There are players who are just not good at gaming. Or just slow. But they need some content too. The challenge here is to make sure their content is fun, easy, but doesn’t make them look like they are pariahs. They need some nice rewards too.

4) Forcing your players to wait, or spread out their playing hours, is not a bad thing. Gated content. Being able to do a dungeon only once a day. This will increase the longlevity of your content. It will prevent people from burning out. It might help some people to get their school diplomas.

5) In an RPG, the strength of the character should be more important than the strength of the player behind the character. That is the nature of the game of RPGs. This helps players to progress through the game. If results completely depend on the “skills” of the player, then he will run into a plateau. That will be “game over”. But when a player can improve his character, he can keep progressing through the game. ArenaNet’s design philosophy goes completely against that. I think that is a handicap to design a path for all players through PvE game-content.

6) Objectives should be hard to obtain when the content is released. At first, the elite players will come play the content. It being hard means they will spend a lot of time. It’ll keep them busy. But after a while (weeks, months) the content can be made easier. Not by just nerfing it. Nerfing is not fun for the elite players who done it the old way. But also it is not fun for new players, who want to be able to say: “they beat that content too”. You need to help slower players with better gear, better abilities, etc to prepare them for the harder content.

7) New content should not only be hard, but also require a lot of playing time. But when the content is not new anymore, the playing time should be radically reduced. Example: suppose you have T1 and T2 endgame content. The average players play T1. The elite is already in T2. T2 should be hard. It should take 8 or 12 weeks to get all the gear (on average). Now after 12 weeks, T3 content is released. The elite players move forward. Now the average players need to move forward to T2. Don’t do this by nerfing T2. It would be better if average players would get full T1-gear, to help them do T2 content. So what is needed: increase drop-rates or decrease token-cost, so that average players can get a full set of T1-gear in a week, and a full set of T2-gear in 2-3 weeks. Result: the elite is still ahead playing in T3-content, the average players are getting more loot, while still they have to beat the content. They get T1&T2 gear fast, so that helps them progress faster.
In GW2, gear doesn’t work this way, I know. I am curious to see what kind of solution ArenaNet has thought of to allow players to progress through all PvE content.

I could go on an on.
Maybe I’ll edit this post later with more points.
Although it’s not like it’s gonna make a difference.

Skyrant, you are right. Your suggestion would be a good improvement.

There are many ways you can improve the overall architecture of PvE gameplay. I was always irritated by the imaginationless way in which Blizzard designed their overall endgame PvE gameplay. But to be honest, other companies seem to do even worse. E.g. in Tera, endgame consisted of 1) buying the highend (T12/T13) gear with gold, 2) be lucky when enchanting your gear. Other MMOs didn’t even have a system at max-level. I can’t understand that when a company invests $50-100M into an MMO, they can’t hire some people who really understand how to design PvE endgame.

It’s a system. You need to approach it from a systemic point of view. There are goals. There are mechanisms. You just need to put it all together in a smart way. I can’t see why it can’t be done. Your suggestion is already a huge improvement. There will always be whiners. There will always be people who look only at their own interest. But as a game-designer you can make something that is cool and fun for all your customers.

It will stop in 1-2 months.

When all PvE-players have left the game.

There have been 3 posts by ArenaNet people here. They made it very clear: Exploration Mode is supposed to be so hard, that only the fast, quickest, most dedicated players can finish them. That’s less than 10% (my estimate). Probably even a lot less than 10%. Exploration Mode is supposed to be prestigious. It’s not supposed to be fun. The goal is to get an item-set with different looks, and make just enough gold to cover your repairs (if you’re good). They don’t even care about Story Mode dungeons, the only thing they care about is that even the good players can’t make any gold/hour out of Story Mode dungeons. There is no learning curve. There is gradually increasing difficulty. Dungeons are just a brick wall. Only the people with the hardest heads will be able to continue.

All non-elite PvE-players are supposed to zerg dragons and Public Events. Zerg all day, zerg all night. Oh, and don’t forget to buy some gold at the cash-shop.

The world of GW2 is beautiful. The art-designers, level-designers, the engine-programmers, all made a wonderful world. But the guys in charge of PvE (dungeons, endgame PvE) are pretty clueless. ArenaNet had the opportunity to capture a large part of the MMO-community (and find smart ways to make a profit out of that). But they let a few ex-EQ1/old-school/super-hardcore nerds in their development-team ruin the PvE-side of things.

OK, so we got some good utility tools. I hadn’t thought of Scorpion Wire.

But so far, it seems we have no other self-healing besides out Signet.
We have no way to remove conditions (when we use a suboptimal trinket we can remove one every 30 sec, I knew that).
We can’t heal others. (I don’t take the leap through a water field very serious. You end up at the mob, the “healing area” will be at the mob, while most party-member stand at range).
We can’t remove conditions from others.

Still looks like we are very vulnerable. Still looks like we don’t add much to the survivability of the group.

Thanks, Thomasqk, I’ll read that guide tomorrow.

Thanks for that list xabre. But indeed, it seems a bit unorganized. We have a lot of “stuff” we can do. But I don’t see any coherency there how we can be of real value for the party. Or improve overall survivability. I still feel like a Thief is a “pure dps” class. I remember standing on the roof of the bank in Orgrimmar in 2005, LFG, but nobody wants yet another useless rogue in their 5-man party.

Durzlla.6295:

So hard PVE endgame content makes a game a pvp game? Wow this is news to me…

No, of course not.

MMO games incorporate different types of games inside one big game.
There is the “leveling game”. In GW2 that part of the game is pretty good. I love the world, I love the size of the world, I like the graphics, the artwork, etc.
Then there are two more large parts of the game. The PvE-game at level 80, and the PvP-game at level 80.

The PvE-game at level 80 isn’t very good. The dungeons are tedious and unrewarding. The Public Events are mostly zerg. So imho (and that of many others on this forum), the “architecture” of the PvE-game isn’t very good. I don’t know why, the only thing I can think of is that the majority of the design effort of the game-architecture-team has gone in PvP.

I hope PvP is fun, at least.
I was assuming PvP is fun. That’s why I called it a PvP-game.

If PvP at level 80 isn’t fun either, then this game has little future. The only fun part left will be the leveling. And you can do that only so many times.

—
And btw, the problem is not the fact that endgame dungeons are hard. One problem is that StoryMode dungeons (that you run while leveling, and learning the game and your profession) are way over the top. And that dungeons at lvl80 aren’t rewarding enough. And the biggest gripe seems to be that the mechanisms of the fights aren’t fun at all (one-shotting, waypoint-rushing, tedious trash, prof-combination-requirements, spec-requirements, no signaling of incoming abilities, mobs focus-firing a player, etc, etc). That’s the problem according to many who pay money to play this game. But according to ANet-employees, everything is fine and dandy.

You will probably be back when new expansions come, anyways that’s how Anet earns their $.

No, I won’t.
Doing dungeons, reading other player’s experience on this forum, seeing today’s patch, and then seeing 2 Anet employees comment “it’s fine, this is intended”, makes it very clear what this game is. And how PvE content will be at level 80. Very clear. Not fun.

I bought this game to level at 80, see the world, and then have a little fun at 80. Right now I am sure I will stop playing at 80. That means I don’t feel I got my full money’s worth. I got some value. But it’s not like I am singing about how great the game is, and how good a deal it is to buy a game from Anet.

In fact, I am pretty sure this is the last product I will ever buy from Anet. Just like I will never buy another product from Blizzard again. Maybe I am a conscious customer. But “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”.

The Anet staff was clear. This is a PvP game. Not a PvE game. They care about us buying the game. They don’t care about us playing the game.

I got the message.

My conclusion from 2 posts by ANet people in this forum:

“We want PvE-players to buy this game.
We don’t want PvE-players to play this game”.

Makes sense for a game with no subscriptions.

Obviously I am a noob, and not worthy to run any dungeons. Not even StoryMode. I am clearly doing everything wrong. So fellow Thieves, please help me understand how I should spec and gear for dungeons. I do PvE only. (I never cared about PvP). I would say I’m a “slightly above average” player. With decent reflexes, a low ping, lots of time, and half a brain.

So far I have learned.
1) You can’t be glass cannon in dungeons.
You will die. So I spec first Toughness/Healing. Secondly Vitality+BoonDuration (so I can get VigorOnHealing). Thirdly Precision+CritDamage. My gear has as much +healing and toughness as I can find, and secondly a mix of precision/power and vitality.

2) You can’t be melee in dungeons.
You’ll die a lot more in melee than when ranged. Of course some players have such large schkitties that they can do anything they want. But for most players, ranged is the preferred way to go. I use shortbows now.

3) You need synergy.
And that is where my questions are.
What traits can I get to help my party ? What combo fields should I use ?

• The only one I can find is: Lotus Poison (weakens the target when you poison him -> target will do 50% less damage to you and your party). Do you need a special “poison build” to maximize the amount of time you apply poisons (and weaken the target) ? Do I need special weapons to maximize poisoning ? Daggers and shortbow have poison in their nr-1-ability. Pistols don’t apply poison at all. I don’t know about the other weapons.
  So, is Lotus Poison any good ? What is the best way to use it ?

• What is the best way to heal ourselves ? So far, I think the Signet of Malice (which heals us every time we do damage) is by far the most healing/minute. The passive healing is so good, that using the active ability is almost a form of suicide. Do we have any other ways to heal ourself ?

• Do we have any way to heal our party ?

• Do we have any way to remove conditions on our party-members ? If so, how ? Can we do it intentionally ? Or is it something that procs by luck ?

• How can I remove conditions on myself ? I think Signet of Malice is the only viable healing-skill for us (constant healing when doing constant damage). But the other 2 healing skills can remove (some) conditions (but not all). Or I can go daggers, go stealth (C&D/5) and use the trait “Shadow’s Embrace -> remove 1 condition while in stealth”. Too bad C&D only seems to get you in stealth when you are actually in melee-range. (And see lesson nr 2: you need to play ranged).

• Does anyone know anything about aggro ? I think to most players it feels like magic. Lucky for us, we can’t have a glass cannon build. So our dps will be low anyway, and there’s less chance we’ll draw aggro. Is there anything we can do to lower aggro ? Or drop aggro alltogether ? (Don’t think so, but please enlighten me).

• What fields can I, or should I, use in dungeons ? The “Choking Gass” ability (nr 2) with shortbow seems useful. But it is purely an offensive ability. Do we have defensive field abilities ?

• If I use “black powder” with pistols, do I need to stand with my party, or stand close to the mob(s) ? I think I need to stand close to the mobs, with is counter-intuitive with ranged gameplay. I am confused.

• I was told that in GW2, we are not limited by profession. You can play any profession you want, any spec, any weapon, any role. There is not trinity. But now we find out there is control & support. Maybe even tanking. Can Thieves play any of those roles ? Or are we limited to “just do dps” ? Is there any other way for us to be useful in a dungeon ?

I am sure I will come up with more questions later.
I am too dumb to even know what questions to ask now.
All answers are appreciated.
All helpful information on how to play a Thief in a dungeon is appreciated.
We might even be able to make a guide for Thieves out of this thread.

If you read Colin Johanson’s post, you will know exactly what to expect.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it. It helped me understand that GW2 is a PvP game. Not a PvE game. There is some PvE content. But it has been designed by people (maybe just one guy ?) who does not understand how PvE works.

He thinks that putting in Tetris-HardMode in his dungeons will make them harder. He does not understand what makes games fun. He does not understand the concept “teach your players while they play the game”. He does not understand the concept of “gradual learning curve”. He does not understand the phrase “easy to learn, hard to master”. He doesn’t understand what the average player will think when he reads the words “Story Mode”.

The new form of “heart quests” for quests is a step back for MMO players, imho. It limits the variety of quests. It limits the story-telling of quests. Public Dynamic Events are usually a zerg. Fun sometimes, but a bit simplistic. The whole design and architecture behind the dungeons is just “kittied in the head”. This all makes me believe that the PvE-designers are trying, but just don’t get it.

And then Colin makes a post that it is all “working as intended”. And then they make changes in the opposite direction of what was needed.

It is clear. This game is not for me. It’s not a PvE game (too bad for the art-designers who made a beautiful world). It’s not for bad players, it’s not for average players, it’s not even for players who are slightly above average (as I consider myself). The PvE-content is only for the creme-de-la-creme (the very best).

Let’s make a game that costs $100m. Let’s make it so beautiful that it sells 4m boxes, so we can barely make back our initial money. Then make the PvE-content so hard, and so limited, that the masses will stop play soon. And we’ll never make any profit.
Brilliant business plan !

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

if you dont like how hard the dungeons are… why are you doing them.
I think there is a solution here.

Ah, so you are telling me to stop playing and go away ?

Nice solution.
Maybe you should tell more of ArenaNet’s customers to go away. I bet ArenaNet will love it if only players like yourself will buy the next expansionpack.

Cyferwolf.1089:

Gryz, if your glass cannon build doesn’t work for you, then you need to change your build. I think even an average player that doesn’t do much in MMOs is going to be able to figure that out.

Yep, I know that now.
But I had rather learned it while playing. Not by reading forums or guides on the Internet. E.g. by doing increasingly harder dungeons in Story Mode. That give you time to learn and adjust before you hit level-80 and start doing the harder dungeons. Not by being hit by a big truck immediately the moment I step out of my front door.

Btw, I’ve read more suggestions on these forums. Just speccing health, toughness and healing isn’t enough. You need traits/abilities that remove conditions. You need traits that give vigor (to recharge your dodging quicker). Dps should go ranged, you can’t do melee. I was also told you need different sets of gear while leveling, to be successful in doing dungeons (before being lvl80).
You seem to need lots of specific stuff in your build, or else you’re an idiot for not having the right spec.

Gezus, I think Mercurial agrees with you.
He was just wondering when the fanboys would come in, that would defend the current dungeon design. That indicates to me (by using the word fanboys), that he agrees with you.

So do I.
I only did AC on StoryMode. If that is the first dungeon in the game, and it’s only StoryMode, then I’m not sure I’ll bother with any more PvE dungeons. I don’t mind hard content. I do mind being 1-shotted randomly by stuff I couldn’t avoid. And after the fact I still don’t know what hit me. And I don’t like respawn-zergs to finish my dungeons either.

You played in the betas. You are not the average gamer.
You rushed to 30 to do AC. You are the “achiever-type”. You are not the average gamer.
You went into StoryMode with friends. Not a pug, as the average gamer might.
You had done AC before. New players come to AC StoryMode without any knowledge.

The StoryMode AC was ridiculously hard for a story-mode dungeon. And ridiculously hard for the first dungeon in a new game. It’s just not fun. It’s not good macro game-design.

greg.3792:

The last time with a random pug but with an experienced leader who did the pulls we breezed through it.

Then please explain how we should do the pulls. (I assume you are talking about the trash packs). Because we never succeeded in pulling just 1 mob. Always the whole group (2 or 3 mobs) came after us.

Cavalier.9064:

I think my main question is this… are those advocating for dungeon difficulty nerfs in this thread talking about Explorable Modes, or are they talking about Story Modes?

Story mode of course.

The ability you steal depends on the profession of the target.
And I think in PvE, all mobs have a particular profession.

So the solution is easy: learn the profession of each mob in the game by heart !

A pig is a warrior.
A harpie is a ranger.
An elemental is an elementalist.
Etc.

Back to school.
Learn your homework.
This game is fun !