Guild Wars 2

Instance combat is inherently flawed. This is a problem for the devs to address, not the players.
As a general rule, players will NEVER willingly let an exploit be fixed.

The problem is; if the devs DO fix it, then the lazy elitists will cry rivers of bile.
The devs are stuck trying to please everybody, and only really paying attention to the loudest complainers. I feel sorry for Anet, but they really need to decide what they want their game to be. They can’t please everyone, so they needs to finally decide who their game will appeal to. It’s a tough decision, and I honestly feel sorry for their having to do it.
But otherwise they will fall to mediocrity.

Exploiting isn’t skill, it’s cheating. And it needs to be treated as such.

I am having trouble grasping the structure of Instance gameplay. In almost every Instance I have entered, I have been unable to keep up with the party due to the fact that the party is in constant motion— they don’t even stop to fight anything but the mini-bosses required to progress the instance to its conclusion.
I have some skill in the game’s combat, but I lack the ability to dodge and weave through several rooms full of enemies without dying. I don’t know how most instances are played at all, because I get kicked from the party every time I mention this. When I question others on why they refuse to fight anything but select minibosses, I always get the same answer;

Because they don’t have to.

Most players will simply ignore the instance and everything in it in order to dash to the largest fights with the largest rewards. They will then exit and reenter the instance to repeat the process.

Players don’t actually PLAY any of the Instances in this game.

I find this incredibly frustrating as a player. There is literally no point in entering an instance other than to farm it for loot. And every time I have ever questioned this practice I find myself kicked.
I would like to request changes in the Instance structure to the game which discourage such laziness.

I feel the best course of action is to make some tweaks to enemy behavior within instances. You could increase the chase range (and give a minor boost to movement speed) for all creatures within instances. If the critters never give up the chase, then the players will HAVE to actually face them. However, also make sure to carefully monitor then enemy spawn rates ( or eliminate enemy respawning); if you make carving a path a viable strategy, then that’s what parties will do.
Also, if a specific enemy or object has it’s own independent lifebar pop up on the side of the screen,

Lock the exits from the room its in until its beaten!! Do you want the players to fight it or not?

I can understand and respect the cleverness in avoiding an enemy to bypass it, but no game should encourage players to skip an entire Instance.

It’s just not fun to go to any Instances with the game in this state.

If it is not possible to succeed unless you are using a very specific set of skills/gear/weapons, then the game is poorly designed.

If you refuse to respect others because they don’t use the “best” skills/gear/weapons, then you are a bad player. And a jerk.

Understanding the difference between flaws on the part of the devs and flaws on the part of the players is the key to improving any game.

That said, you have a very good idea here;

Encouraging players to actually help each other can only improve a game.

Complaining about how stupid people don’t deserve or accept your help can only prove how arrogant and unhelpful you are.

I’ve seen many game destroyed becasue the devs can’t tell the difference between their flaws and the flaws of the players.

While your basic descriptions here are very astute, ultimately this is a matter more for the devs than for the players.

The ones who DESIGN the dungeons are supposed to have a grasp of the different playstyles, and more importantly what is expected of the players, to beat them.

I am most certainly a romanticist in regards to your definitions here. I can respect the skill required to slip past an enemy in order to avoid them. But if the point of a dungeon is just to get to the end as fast as possible for loot, then you’re not really PLAYING the game at all.

You can argue this case a thousand different ways, but ultimately the devs have to decide what they want dungeon runs to be, and how many different choices we can potentially make.

I am really having a hard time grasping what is expected of players in the new Living Story dungeons.
I can’t figure out what we are supposed to do and how.

Too many instances end in characters getting downed with one or two “visible” hits; I hate seeing my health bar instantly disappear when I have no debuffs and no visible enemy anywhere near me.

The Aetherblade Retreat instance features a fight where you have to run in circles while targeting specific enemies and dodging a mobile wall that appears able to insta-gib a player.

Please STOP including so many mechanics, abilities, and attacks that instantly disable a player! That is not implementing strategy, and it is not adding difficulty. It is just a cheap punishment for making a poorly defined mistake. All too often I honestly wonder if a character who was stripped down to their underwear would last just as long as a fully-armored one. It also renders Reviving a downed player an exercise in futility. If you intend to make a scenario where it is not possible to Revive a player, then you MUST make it possible for less than a full party to complete it. Otherwise it is NOT possible to complete a scenario if a player is downed.

The revive mechanic is already a little spotty as it is. It has decent functionality in map and even instance exploration (with a few exceptions for specific classes), but in encounters or bossfights it is far too cumbersome and renders others in the party far too vulnerable— at least in practice. I know that some classes have abilities which can ease this burden and some gear can help as well, but they are not defined very clearly or are confusing to use in their own right.

I am told that we can avoid much in this specific instance by platform jumping across boxes, but the platform jumping in this game is actually very poor;
Your characters feet have no effect on where you are “standing”, you have no real way of controlling the height of your jumps or where you land, the physics/collision detection/ clipping errors in game make jumps spotty at best, and the artwork and scenery (while beautiful) has no real effect on what areas of the terrain can and can’t support a character’s weight.

The platform jumping in this game is actually one of it’s poorest qualities. Basing survival in a combat scenario on it is just frustrating.

I have no doubt that these scenarios CAN be completed. But I just plain don’t WANT to anymore. Wrestling with awkward controls and ill-defined objectives is not a measure of skill.
I don’t care what the reward is, this isn’t fun.

I honestly don’t understand the point of crafting.
You level so fast in this game that in order to craft gear for yourself to use, you’d have to go back and farm materials in low-level areas for far too long (You’d only end up leveling yourself to the point where you can’t USE what you’ve crafted).
Add to that the fact that the quest rewards and dropped items found in combat are just as good as what can be crafted and you have very little reason to craft anything for yourself or others.

Using the Auction House to sell (or buy) gear is a moot point for most of the same reasons.

Cooking may be considered a useful skill due to the wide variety of buffs it can give, but the temporary nature and excessive AMOUNT of eatables out there makes finding the right bite to eat a cumbersome prospect. That, and the fact that only one type of meal can be in effect at a time kind of makes the wide variety available to us a little pointless.

Would you consider a change where foods had their buffs greatly reduced, but you could have several in effect at once? This could give players the ability to choose their own “Meal” before heading out into the fray, as well as giving chefs more reason to create and use/sell a wider variety of of their goods.
You could try breaking foods into more basic categories: Appetizer/snack, Main course, Dessert, and Drink. You then have the players able to have one of each type active at once.

This could also be used to deepen the cultural diversity of the various peoples; different races have different styles and even eating habits (The Charr have different recipes for steak which are considered to be Snacks, Meals and Desserts).

The consumables for each craft are a reasonably good idea for making crafting viable, but unless you start making some materials, gear, and otherwise useful items obtainable ONLY through crafting, then crafting will never really be very useful to players.

I personally wouldn’t mind having many of the recipes available in each craft to require ingredients made by OTHER crafts. That would encourage players to work together more, and would make crafting more viable for the players.
It would also bolster every individuals ability to contribute to the Auction House.
This would especially be the case if the required materials were NOT equated by crafting level— I’d love to see an exotic, high-end crafting recipe require a few basic tidbits from the low-end spectrum of another crafting class.

As it is now, there is no real incentive to get into crafting— it’s not even that fun.