Guild Wars 2

Confirmed for broken as of this last patch. Just did it twice with the same result. The two higher ships appear to have been reassigned to inert objects that you can’t EMP.

I’ve now experienced this issue as well.

So, I was kind of excited when I read they’d put out the new Aetherized weapons.

I looked at the pistol, and it’s the same skin as the pirates use.

Then I looked at the sword….no dice.

Will we ever get that wonderful thin sword as a skin?

Or will they leave after Sky Pirates is over? A dev response would be nice.

Mercurio.4970:

Whether ANET does it, or a third party, UI customization needs to be done. It is an essential aspect of MMOs. Not doing this is bush league, pure and simple; and gives the impression of a cheap F2P game. Wait…..I’m starting to come to the realization that that’s what this game is.
It’s literally the 1st thing I do in a new MMO – fiddling with the UI. I would guess a lot of players are the same way. It’s funny, too. Some people I know didn’t even give the game a chance because in their words “it felt cheap”. This is one of those reasons for that. Although a lot of corners were cut by the devs in general in terms of designing features for an MMO, at least I know that GW1 had a great flexible UI, so this gives me hope.

The problem is that the devs don’t want you meddling with their precious painterly UI which, by the way, has been ruined by the BIG RED BUTTON of a health bar in the center of your skill bar (Diablo II much?).

Sometimes, I feel like the developers try too hard to be artsy and don’t focus enough on the practicalities of a situation.

TLDR to the devs: You tried to make your game super pretty but in the process removed practical functionality of your UI and have reduced what actually happens in the game to an incandescent bloom-riddled display of particle effects.

I understand you wanted to make your game abit prettier than the default GW1 skill-cast effects, but this might have been taking it abit too far.

marnick.4305:

In WoW I spent more time trying to customize the UI than actually playing the game. That proves something’s wrong with the game inherently, otherwise that would not have been necessary.

Allowing addons is an excuse for designers to release shoddy games.

It’s at least better than having to settle for whatever UI that the developers settle on, which I guarantee you, will be unsatisfactory to at least one person playing the game somewhere. It just makes more sense to support addons just so people can have the UI look the way they want it. Because while person A might dislike trying to pick out conditions/boons through particle effects on the character model, person B might have no problem with it.

Krosslite.1950:

got this from an article

“Allowing players to play the game rather than the UI is the third rule. This rule is responsible for the lovely and minimalistic UI, which is meant to convey as much information as necessary while staying more or less out of the way. Important combat information isn’t necessarily going to be relayed through the UI so much as through the game world. Taking risks, ArenaNet’s fourth guiding rule, allows devs to iterate and try new designs without being terrified of failure. Not all ideas work out, but learning why they didn’t work out is key to growth.”

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/03/arenanet-explains-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2/

The problem with this is that the indicators for each condition/boon are not uniquely identifiable enough in the complete particle spam that this game is made up of. There’s no way you’re going to identify that you have several terrible conditions on you if you’re taking shelter in the middle of an Elementalist’s Geyser, or Lava Font to lure mobs into it.

So Anet here has 2 options: Increase the visibility and distinctiveness for boons/conditions on screen on the player model (especially for small ones like Asura) or improve the size/appearance of the icons in the UI.

I’d really like to get a dev response to this, because I’ve had a lot of feedback from people that the UI is what keeps them from enjoying GW2 fully.

I’m going to necro this because a friend and I were discussing this today.

Guild Wars 1 could use its included modifiable UI as justification for disallowing mods. Guild Wars 2 provides no such justification, and in fact, several things about the UI are inherently flawed.

For example, Conditions and Boons. The game has WAY too many particle effects to keep track of conditions on your actual character model (not to mention small ones like Asura). This means that Conditions and Boons need to be VISIBLE and EASILY IDENTIFIABLE. Having all conditions be red-backed and all boons be gold-backed was a good start, but having to identify the boon/condition by the shape of the icon is just forcing the player to look more at the UI, which is what the Devs stated they didn’t want in the first place. The icons are also at the moment WAY too small.

You also cannot separate the Boon/Condition bars like you could the Condition/Hex/Enchantment bars in Guild Wars 1.

Basically, the developers are maintaining their no-mod stance without retaining any of the inherent mutability that their first game had. And that just makes no sense at all, from any standpoint.

For those of you talking about how mods give people certain advantages…There is no reason you can’t go out and get those mods yourself, you know. It is YOUR choice not to use them.

Just wondering if Crab Toss and its associated Achievements will become permanent like Keg Brawl, or whether I have to do it now to get the achievements. Thanks!

Geotherma.2395:

Here’s what it looked like to me today.

Yeah, it still doesn’t look the same as the screenshot on the Wiki. I dunno if this is just something they did to the dyes themselves or what.

Ryuujin.8236:

The environment map (reflection) is both dependant on your settings (I think you need at least medium shaders/shadows), and the locality your are in; plate armour are especially shiney in Diessa Platue I’ve noticed for example

In most cases the environment map is not an ACTUAL reflection, but a pre-set texture that the map designer felt was reflective (See what I did there?) of the environment.

Yes. But since it’s a stationary NPC, what her armor looks like should not have changed unless they fiddled with the settings on dyes.

Oh, I also just sat through a day/night cycle to see if the appearance would change at all. No dice. Something very DEFINITELY changed about her palette, or there’s something in the game settings I’m missing. Maybe the “Shiny” button.

Recycle.5493:

Looks fairly reflective to me, you just need to find the right time, the right lighting, right dyes, and the right angle for these screenshots.

Point being that the same Outfitter (assuming they didn’t change her dye palette) is now showing up with a different/lower quality texture.

Nappychappy.7046:

This is old, another thread floating around here somewhere with an answer.

Do you remember where it was?

Karizee.8076:

Your graphics are set very low by the look of the bricks and other textures.

They’re set to highest possible, unless there are command-line things I can use to up the resolution?

So I was hanging out by the Dungeon Vendors in Lion’s Arch today and was also browsing the Wiki.

I noticed something:

I’ve got graphics turned up to Max, pretty much (except Shadows on High and turning them to Ultra didn’t change this, also had High-Res Character Textures Enabled)

On the Wiki, Seraph Outfitter Eva’s armor looks abit more…metallic and aesthetically appealing than it currently looks in-game. Am I missing a setting to turn this on, or was this a change at some point?

Comparison image attached, left is In Game, right is From Wiki.

DanH.5879:

i do not think the AC paths were tested with lvl 35, no TS/vent etc. and all stuff in blue/green
THEN you can tell me it is ok

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/AC-Ex-35-Run-Video-and-Impressions

Here’s your testing with lvl 35s.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Maestro.5376:

IndigoSundown.5419:

A lot of people do dungeons in other MMO’s and those dungeons are in every case I’ve seen not as hard as even old AC was. The learning curve was not as punishing. It was easier to pin down problems (tank isn’t holding aggro, healer isn’t keeping tank up, DPS is targeting wrong mob and drawing aggro, people are standing in fire). Add in some of the questionable design choices in GW2 dungeons like, “Why are trash mobs a harder fight than a lot of bosses?” At least some of these people are probably looking for a similar experience — not a handout — and GW2 does not provide it.

Let’s look at a standard for dungeon design (WoW), because as much as I’d like to bash on this certain game for its subscription model and long time-commitment, there’s no denying that its team does incredibly good dungeon design.

Myrkkin.7921:

As an aside… people who think WoW is easier than GW2 mystify me… did you not play during Vanilla, BC, or WotLK when many of the fights required absolute perfection for 15 solid minutes or you were going to be restarting? Nothing in GW2 required the kind of effort that WoW raid instances, or heroic dungeons did. I have no idea how it is now, I got tired of playing a game that required 30+ hours a week just to be competitive with other players.

So I’m not really sure where all the complaints that the dungeons in this game are massively harder than those in other games are coming from. It sounds like it comes from either players who have had little/no MMO dungeoning experience, or from players who have fallen back on cheap knockoffs made by companies rushing to get on the MMO WoW profit bandwagon and as a result implemented extremely shoddy excuses for “dungeons” that provided little to no challenge to players. I would know, I’ve played some of those games XD.

I did play WoW during late BC and Wrath. I can’t say I did all of the dungeons, as I only played the game for a little over a year. I did quite a few, though, including heroics. Maybe it was just me or the people I was playing with, but the dungeons didn’t seem hard once I made the adjustment from the short cast times of heals in GW1 to the longer ones in WoW. While leveling, we 3-manned many of the earlier vanilla ones.

Absolute perfection for 15 minutes? Maybe in raids before gear progression made them obsolete. The end boss in Naxxramas was a competence check on the healers while the DPS just had to, well, dps, and not get too close to each other.

I’ll give you that dungeons in WoW were harder than the few I saw in Rift and ToR, the two biggest recent knock-offs.

Can’t talk about gear progression, since we’re talking on-level here. Level 80s scaled down to 35 don’t get as much gear progression as lvl 85s in WoW going back to do a lvl 60 raid, remember. So you’d have to talk about doing dungeons in WoW at the level they were meant to be done, or any experience you have is irrelevant.

Morpheus.6401:

For casual players I meant those who can’t or just don’t want to spend 6-8 hours a day playing this game. They can be excellent players that just don’t play as much a hard core because of many reasons. Maybe he is not kids and have to work a lot, or maybe he plays other games too, or his girlfriend is a kitten. Who knows.

The thing is that some people think they are better than others and that really upsets me. Especially when they don’t any clue of who they are talking about.

You’re also starting to lose me here. I consider myself a casual, since I don’t play this game all that obsessively as when it first came out. But I’m not really seeing where your argument is going here.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Maybe you’re right about armor. I just know that very time I look at the stuff that’s available it all looks like the same old same old. Outside of dungeons, skins seem to get repeated a lot.

Even WITH dungeon skins, I see the same sets repeated over and over. My Asura Mesmer currently wears a mix of CoE and Heritage armor. Over my entirety of time playing this game, I’ve only met 1 or 2 other players who wear even parts of the CoE set. CoF dungeon armor seems like the most prevalent.

Regarding Ascended, I am sure that this shift will not be away from cosmetic once armor/weapon becomes released. Trinkets weren’t cosmetic anyways, so it would make sense that they would be released first.

IndigoSundown.5419:

A lot of people do dungeons in other MMO’s and those dungeons are in every case I’ve seen not as hard as even old AC was. The learning curve was not as punishing. It was easier to pin down problems (tank isn’t holding aggro, healer isn’t keeping tank up, DPS is targeting wrong mob and drawing aggro, people are standing in fire). Add in some of the questionable design choices in GW2 dungeons like, “Why are trash mobs a harder fight than a lot of bosses?” At least some of these people are probably looking for a similar experience — not a handout — and GW2 does not provide it.

Let’s look at a standard for dungeon design (WoW), because as much as I’d like to bash on this certain game for its subscription model and long time-commitment, there’s no denying that its team does incredibly good dungeon design.

Myrkkin.7921:

As an aside… people who think WoW is easier than GW2 mystify me… did you not play during Vanilla, BC, or WotLK when many of the fights required absolute perfection for 15 solid minutes or you were going to be restarting? Nothing in GW2 required the kind of effort that WoW raid instances, or heroic dungeons did. I have no idea how it is now, I got tired of playing a game that required 30+ hours a week just to be competitive with other players.

So I’m not really sure where all the complaints that the dungeons in this game are massively harder than those in other games are coming from. It sounds like it comes from either players who have had little/no MMO dungeoning experience, or from players who have fallen back on cheap knockoffs made by companies rushing to get on the MMO WoW profit bandwagon and as a result implemented extremely shoddy excuses for “dungeons” that provided little to no challenge to players. I would know, I’ve played some of those games XD.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I think this touches on one of the problems. The armor options for people who are not going to dungeon are decidedly lacking. There are some PvE skins that everyone has access to (crafted, leveling, drops, karma, cultural and order), and exclusive sets (dungeon). Exotic Karma armor uses the same skin across 5 temples and the Arah vendor. Many pre-exotic Karma armors use crafting skins, or are repeats of dropped armor skins. Exotic named armors (e.g., Rurik’s Legplates) all use the same skin (which I believe is shared with crafted). There really is not a ton of variety, and dungeon sets represent more variety.

That might have been fine pre-Ascended. The “prestige” of a look was supposed to represent end-game rewards. Ascended seems to be a shift away from cosmetic endgame, however.

I think the presumption was that more non-endgame looks might be coming. They have not. If ANet were to get on their armor-designing horse and put out some armor styles that people will like, and make them obtainable through something other than dungeon tokens, the pressure to make dungeons easier might loosen some. It wouldn’t eliminate it, but some people might think, “Oh, I don’t have to do content I dislike to get a look I like.”

If you examine how many options there are for non-dungeon sets, though, it isn’t actually as lacking as you think. So there are 8 dungeons in the game currently that have their own unique set.

For each armor class, you have:
5 tiers of crafted blues that all look different
1 Recipe vendor (Shadow set, etc) at least that sells a unique crafted skin
1 Temple set
1 Exotic Drop (which is different from the crafted set btw)
1 Exotic Crafted set
1 Rare Crafted set (Masquerade, etc)
4 Non-rare karma/drop sets at LEAST (Cabalist, Country, Swindler, etc.)
3 Cultural sets
3 Order sets

There are probably more that I haven’t thought of, but the number here alone trumps the number of dungeon sets. In fact, my Sylvari Necromancer wears the Shadow Set because I don’t like any of the dungeon skins for necros.

I don’t think armor diversity is the problem here. I think it’s just that most people prefer to get rewarded for doing little to no work, and any change from that status quo is going to create an outrage.

Hey, I just met you,
And this is crazy,
But here’s an invite,
So AC maybe?

DeathPanel.8362:

Serkev.5736:

yes i did kitten 1 out of 4 guys off but does that warrant a kick especially after running the entire dungeon with them. the kick system clearly needs to be fixed it should require 4 votes instead of 1 and after a certain point in the dungeon kicking should not be possible at all. you know i’m right

The moral of the story is treat teammates with respect and this will most likely not happen.

If even 2 people in the group are “together” (whether part of the same Guild, on each others’ friends list, etc) you have the potential to be kicked at the final boss to let their other friend/guildmate/etc. join and reap the benefits of killing the final boss. This is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Did I start a conspiracy theory in this thread? O_o.

In all seriousness, Liquid’s accusations should be made towards Arenanet instead. It was always their intent that not all parties would be able to complete explorable mode dungeons. Maybe you disagree with their philosophy, but personally I’m fine with it. It’s not necessary content, it doesn’t really contribute much to the lore of the world or the main storyline, it’s just there for people who like skins and/or a challenge.

As for Morpheus…I actually consider myself a casual now. I used to play pretty hardcore when the game came out, but now I just log on to do my dailies every day and that’s pretty much it. Maybe run a dungeon if my friends ask or something like what we planned on the forums happened. There’s no fundamental difference in skill level between a casual player and a hardcore player; I’ve met hardcore players that were terrible, and I’ve met casual players that were prodigies. It really just depends on how much effort a player is willing to put into their class to make it work.

Morpheus.6401:

Seriously, this looks like more a paid advertisement LOL.

Oh it was great, oh it went so smooth, oh I made new friends.

The fact is, even though I still like to run AC it is immensely harder to find a group now.

No matter how many posts there are here saying how good the new AC is gw2lfg.com proves the opposite.

The decrease in LFG entries is not a demonstration of quality of the new AC, but more a demonstration of how resistant people are to change, especially a slight increase in difficulty.

Distaste.4801:

The problem is how do players obtain that skill level. The problem with AC now is that there are so many mechanics that are not forgiving in the slightest. It makes learning the skills needed for dungeons a huge exercise in frustration. Didn’t know the traps after spider queen 2 hit you? dead! Didn’t know spider queens poison kills you in a few seconds? dead. Didn’t know about the burrows spawning tons of gravelings? dead. Didn’t know flamethrowers kill you super quick? dead. Didn’t know the boss stacks confusion on you? dead. Didn’t know you couldn’t avoid the rockfalls? dead. The list goes on and on.

Everyone is approaching it with prior knowledge and experience. This video does answer the question of if a level 35 group is able to complete the dungeon(although they did it in all masterworks if I read correctly which any new 35 is unlikely to have), but it does not answer if a group of new level 35’s can reasonably complete the dungeon. People forget when the game released the truckload of deaths that came with learning the original AC, even then it was overtuned for new lvl 35’s and that’s why most didn’t run it and those that did came back with horror stories. It took people learning the dungeon teaching others to do it and those in turn teaching more. Only then did AC become easy, but learning it certainly took more than a few deaths.

If they want to make dungeons difficult that’s fine, but you need a learning curve so it doesn’t feel like you’re smashing your head against the wall. They also need to figure out their risk vs reward because I know I certainly don’t do dungeons because of the time it takes to get a decent reward.

So let me address your issues in point. Dungeon mechanics are often very do-or-die. The reason for this is because it’s very difficult to build mechanics in with a learning curve, but still punishing for veteran players if they make mistakes. The constraint is simply too limiting, and it takes away a lot of what you can do, which reduces variety and flavor of the dungeon you’re designing.

With the release of every single new dungeon, there will always be the world firsts, the group of players that venture fearlessly into unknown territory without knowing what comes next. And I will guarantee you that those players likely died over and over and over again before they learned what the dungeon mechanics were and could complete it successfully. AC was the same way when it came out, same with CoE before people learned how to deal with Subject Alpha, same with every other dungeon. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there regarding each of the dungeons and their pitfalls, and really, at this point, if you want to experience a dungeon “fresh” without preknowledge, fine, but don’t complain if the traps/red circles/boss mechanics get you because you were asking for it by not doing your homework. People learn by doing. If you failed once, then you go back with the knowledge you gained and do it again.

If you want an example of a dungeon that was extremely difficult even with people that knew ALL the mechanics, look at AC Ex before release, where the Spider Queen’s poison pools did around 3k per tick.

If you don’t want to put in the work to learning a new dungeon when it comes out, I’m sure by a month later the wiki will have all the information on the traps and pitfalls.

Mattrim.2617:

I suggest you take some time … make party with lvl 35-50-60 and enter in this ins ….hope you have fun …than imagine is random party with people who have a few hours at day to make something in this game …… all AC become something like COF path 3 no one wanna do it….is this the point- the game to become unplayable?

I would strongly suggest you check out the video done in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/AC-Ex-35-Run-Video-and-Impressions/page/3#post1622163

Levistis.8356:

Maestro.5376:

Mourningcry.9428:

Mourningcry.9428:

…
We have nothing to gain, and only a lot to lose. If we don’t clear without wiping, even when we complete it, there will be people pointing that out and using that as ammo.

Just re-read this, and want to clarify. It’s not about my ego about being able to clear w/o a wipe. By “nothing to gain” I mean we can’t “prove” that AC is any more doable by level 35s.

By “lose”, I mean any failure on our part will likely not be used to highlight our shortcoming, but rather to be used by the naysayers as ammo against ANET to further their claims that AC needs to be changed – which is not the case.

Just wanted to clarify.

Since there’s all this kittening and whining about having a Guardian in our group, I might as well ask you to switch out for your Necro next time.

Dude…but without a guardian, as you saw in the video, we will stand no chance.

We’ll lose to the first Breeder and call it a day!

Mourningcry.9428:

Mourningcry.9428:

…
We have nothing to gain, and only a lot to lose. If we don’t clear without wiping, even when we complete it, there will be people pointing that out and using that as ammo.

Just re-read this, and want to clarify. It’s not about my ego about being able to clear w/o a wipe. By “nothing to gain” I mean we can’t “prove” that AC is any more doable by level 35s.

By “lose”, I mean any failure on our part will likely not be used to highlight our shortcoming, but rather to be used by the naysayers as ammo against ANET to further their claims that AC needs to be changed – which is not the case.

Just wanted to clarify.

Since there’s all this kittening and whining about having a Guardian in our group, I might as well ask you to switch out for your Necro next time.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Maestro.5376:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I’ve already done this test with experienced players, and not all were 35, it was me a 35, the rest ranging from 40-48 and it was still not do-able at all. 5 hours of testing, rethinking tactics, trying different paths, and not a single path completion. I reported my findings in the AC thread already. If you really insist on smashing your head against a wall for the sake of more tests, be my guest I’ll go. I already outleveled it on the alt I was doing it on just by running CM story and expl a few times so I’ll have to make another alt or something.

For this, I’d direct you over to our video thread. Perhaps the video will reveal some insight on successful ways to complete the instance.

I noticed you mostly ran with the dream team, now try it without a mesmer, ele, or guardian. It’s easy to claim these instances are so do-able when everyone is playing them with the dream team setup that the instances were obviously deigned around. Try doing it on necro, engi, or thief. I’m willing to bet your results will be different. I’d also like to add these are perfectly balanced for lvl 80’s. I can do path 2 in half the time of old AC path 2 now as a lvl 80, even with the bugged boss. Which reinforces my position that these dungeons are not designed for at-level and they need to advertise them as such.

Hate to burst your bubble, but Pre-40 Mesmer is one of the weakest classes in the game. Mesmers are late bloomers, and before they hit 40 their main utility is Time Warp, which was not used during the video.

We also did stat comparisons, and discovered that scaled down, level 80s in exotics did not have significantly higher stats than comparable level 35s in masterwork gear. But yeah, sure, we’ll swap out the Guardian for a Necro or Thief when we do Path 2 or Path 3 since one of our members has one at about the right level.

This. This this this.

I am ALWAYS willing to help people who ask for it, but I’m getting really tired of people posting complaints on the forums without actually asking for help first. I haven’t even seen a “How do I…” thread in the Dungeon subforum in a very long time.

Lerysh.8173:

I don’t get all the people complaining about no bubble from Grast. All that does is make the fight the same as before, but with Rumblus having less HP. Just don’t get hit in the head. If the bubble does go up, use it, otherwise, stay out of red circles.

The red circles form a blanket across the entire floor, often overlapping with each other. The chances of you finding somewhere safe to stand (other than that one ledge where no circles ever form) are extremely slim.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Lipin.7529:

Mourningcry.9428:

Lipin.7529:

I’ve watched the video, thank you for taking the effort to put this up.

The sad fact is: The elementalist doesnt know how to play her class. Alot of DPS was wasted, elite skills not used, auto attacking, not switching stance.

Alot of the parts of the dungeons were ran with sub-effective strategies.

The video was a pain to watch because your party waits forever before you do anything.

The pros: The party cleared it and while they ran it under sub-effective conditions, it further proofs AC can be ran by ANYBODY.

Thanks

However, in all fairness, we really tried to run it as if we knew no strategies… just clear everything (with the exception of the burrow order, kholer evades, and gathering the scepter pieces). Sorry the chat was covered up. I’m sure it would have added to the entertainment factor.

Also, these were all alts we put together in a couple of days Most of us didn’t even know when to optimally activate skills, etc.

But it was fun. Thanks for watching.

Hey, I’m so sorry, I tend to be harsh, but your explanation kinda explains it. I’ve always been wanting to let the community know they just have to understand the game to appreciate the dungeons. So, much appreciation for the video and posting it on the forums. Cheers!

I quite literally did not know how to play an Elementalist. I had leveled her all the way up from 2-35 with crafting just before we went into the dungeon. That’s why if you see at the beginning of the video I’m unlocking my skills before I head in.
But if anything, it further proves that if you know how to play in general, it doesn’t matter how bad you are at a class.

>Say we’re starting.
>First 5 minutes of the video consist of the Elementalist getting her staff skills.
>MVP right here. XD

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I’ve already done this test with experienced players, and not all were 35, it was me a 35, the rest ranging from 40-48 and it was still not do-able at all. 5 hours of testing, rethinking tactics, trying different paths, and not a single path completion. I reported my findings in the AC thread already. If you really insist on smashing your head against a wall for the sake of more tests, be my guest I’ll go. I already outleveled it on the alt I was doing it on just by running CM story and expl a few times so I’ll have to make another alt or something.

For this, I’d direct you over to our video thread. Perhaps the video will reveal some insight on successful ways to complete the instance.

carabidus.6214:

Otherwise, they need to consider removing the leveling system and make all dungeons end-game content.

I think a lot of people are still stuck in the old mindset of “Higher level = significantly more character power.” I think Anet has made it sufficiently clear that that isn’t the case. In fact, in this game more than all others, I feel like Level is kind of just a placeholder. It’s just a way to logically gate content so players do not have access to the entire world all at once and get lost.

They had said again and again that they don’t want “endgame.” They want the entire game to play the same, from start to finish. Thus, it’d be logical that dungeons would be scattered throughout the level gaps. These level gaps aren’t difficulty checks. That’s the reason why not all the dungeons are end-game. All the dungeons were meant to feel unique with their own challenges and obstacles. A level 80 explorable is supposed to challenge level 80s the same amount that a level 35 explorable challenges level 35s.

carabidus.6214:

I never thought I would see so many people so vehemently against keeping at least ONE dungeon moderately challenging for brand new players. Now EVERYTHING has to be “leet or gtfo”. Very disappointing…

I’m not sure the old AC Ex was even “moderately challenging” for new players. Considering the Spider Queen’s AoEs did basically no damage, and her only threat was from melee, you could skip Kohler, run through the Scepter Picking, use the same tactics that are used now on the burrows, just circle strafe the Howling King, and completely ignore everything the Ghost Eater did, the only threats in AC Ex pre-patch were Kohler’s pulls and the large-cone howl of the Colossus Rumblus. I guess it depends on your definition, though.

Lipin.7529:

I’ve watched the video, thank you for taking the effort to put this up.

The sad fact is: The elementalist doesnt know how to play her class. Alot of DPS was wasted, elite skills not used, auto attacking, not switching stance.

Alot of the parts of the dungeons were ran with sub-effective strategies.

The video was a pain to watch because your party waits forever before you do anything.

The pros: The party cleared it and while they ran it under sub-effective conditions, it further proofs AC can be ran by ANYBODY.

Yeah, none of us knew how to play our classes. That was part of the point of the video.

Leo G.4501:

Levistis.8356:

I am down for P3, I’m sure our group could complete it. Let’s try to do it this weekend, how would the others fair on that?

I’d enjoy that. Probably wouldn’t have a bunch of people (well, there never was a bunch) watching to see if we succeed, but P3 is presumed harder than 1 and I think P2 is now the ‘hardest’ so yeah, I’d be down for running the other paths. Shouldn’t take very long

Yeah, we should do either P2 or P3 with the same gear this weekend.

carabidus.6214:

Kanako Davis.5364:

Furthermore explorable dungeons are “end game” content.

Not all of them (ostensibly). We have 5 out of 9 dungeons that are sub-80. If this is really the direction that the game is going, then the developers need to remove dynamic leveling from all dungeons and make them all suitable for level 80 like HotW, CoE, arah and fractals. You will never convince me and countless others that AC is “end game content”, not while it has a level 35 label.

They’ve already stated that they don’t want you to play one game while leveling, and then hit endgame and play another game. Thus, what you find at low levels is also what you’d expect to find at 80. Seems to me like AC Ex supports this, since it’s a dungeon that can be done at 35 but offers the same types of challenges as a level 80 explorable.

Regarding the comments on Story Mode tokens, this is what Robert Hrouda had to say on the issue:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We had them in story before launch, but what we found is that we couldn’t strike a balance between the amount we give for completing story mode, and the difficult difference. Our feedback was that rather than face the challenge of Explorable dungeons, high skill groups would just afk faceroll the much easier story mode content for the guaranteed smaller token amount. We tried several things, but couldn’t strike the balance, so we removed tokens from story mode as a reward and put them into explorable mode only as a reward.

I think a better solution would be to implement Rare Armor distribution from the Rare Armor Token set directly, and stop when the entire set had been awarded. This prevents people from spamming story mode for tokens, but also gives tangible rewards to players who enjoy Story Mode.

Liquid Storm.8097:

With skype/TS open….?

Anyway, all I’m saying is GW2 is going down the same road as GW1 when people started forming parties for UW and FoW. If Anet continues to make dungeons harder, people will stop picking up random players and begin forming groups. This is happening right now at AC and this will happen to other dungeons as well if/when they change them. I remember when playing GW1, your world had to hold the Favour of the Gods to have access to UW/FoW. The problem here was that the Favour of the Gods was always held by either the JP or NA worlds and when EU finally DID hold the favour (which happened like once a month?), there was no freaking way you could get into those instances and not get wiped by the first couple of mobs due to being inexperienced. Hence people got fed up and started forming private groups and that’s something I don’t want to see with GW2’s dungeons, especially not a level 35 one.

We had elitists in GW1 too with the same mentality as you guys here do. The game therefore became boring after a while for me as a casual player – all you could do was PvE, you had no chance of getting into a decent PvP group and you couldn’t even get into a dungeon group. At some point you could finally get rares by participating in a Barrage group (forgot the name of the instance) and even then they just had to patch that up.

I thought GW2 was supposed to be different. It started off very well, the PvE experience is great, people helping each other out, etc. But as far as dungeons go, apparently it’s gonna be the same freakishly irritating story as with its predecessor – only skype-organized, high-l33t m4d skillZ allowed. Probably the last title I’ve ever bought from Anet, apparently I’m not their target audience.

On a humorous note, I’d like to point out that the entirety of the run consisted of me yelling in panic in TS since I was really the only one that talked a lot (3 of the members didn’t have mics and the 4th was somewhat quiet). It was just 42 minutes of “whoooooah” “nnnnnehhhhh” and “oshioshioshibackupbackupbackup.” I don’t really think it contributed anything to our success except lighten the mood XD.

Regarding your other comments; perhaps the problem is not with the difficulty of the dungeons themselves but perhaps the lack of overall content. I believe a lot of the “casual” crowd (even though back then I don’t really think MMOs attracted that demographic) had troubles with WoW when it first started, simply because there wasn’t enough content geared towards their preferences. 8 years later, WoW has a massive casual following and lots of content geared towards that kind of player. But it took them most of that 8 years to do it.

Perhaps in a few years Anet will be able to deliver more casual-friendly content, but I think at the moment they’re just trying to bring their current world up to a good casual:hardcore ratio, and the dungeons are where they’re starting.

Liquid Storm.8097:

Maestro.5376:

Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant that the decrease in AC Exp population does not MAINLY stem from new 35’s being driven away by what they deem an impossible dungeon, but mainly stems from players who farm gold being led towards more profitable runs like CoF P1.

Exactly, so what’s the point of AC then…..? It’s too hard for new players, not worth the trouble for gold farmers, not essential for players wanting to level up….

So I’d like to talk about content here for a second. A lot of people seem to expect that everything in this game has a purpose, that it’s designed to fulfill the needs of a very specific audience. But what I find beautiful about GW2 is that the game designers have put things in the world that aren’t necessarily rewarding intrinsically, but are still excellent elements within the game. A good example of this would be Jump Puzzles. The chests at the end of Jump Puzzles rarely award anything good, and Achievement Points aren’t really used for anything, so why do people do them?

Because it’s there. Some players just like experiencing content just because it’s content, and will go to any lengths and effort to get there. I never really expected the Explorable Mode dungeons to be very core elements of the game; that’s why none of the main story occurs in Ex dungeons and happens only with story. That’s why none of the rewards gotten from ex mode dungeons can ONLY be obtained through ex mode.

Liquid Storm.8097:

Maestro.5376:

And if you watched the video, we basically just proved that it WASN’T challenging for level 35 players. We were by no means familiar with our classes, and we’re not the best players in the game. We hadn’t even played together prior to this run. It was just a group of people who decided to get together and run AC Ex. Sure, we had some pre-knowledge of the dungeon, but the majority of it isn’t hard to figure out, and the rest depends on how well players are able to stay out of red circles, dodge properly, etc.

This was the title of your topic:
Calling Experienced Players with lvl ~35 Alts

Having said that, you have proved nothing.

Actually, we proved that level 35s are not nearly as hampered by the “stat limitations” everyone complains about low levels having, further cementing the hypothesis that a group of players, whether 35 in greens or 80 in exotics, is going to have a hard time if they don’t know what the kitten they’re doing.

Shiren.9532:

-Snip-

While I do agree with your comments on Grast (And I believe Robert has stated that changes to him are incoming), I would like to politely direct you to the video posted in my other thread showcasing us doing AC Ex P1 at lvl 35 with Masterwork gear. I don’t believe our DPS is subpar, and we were using all Vigorous gear (Power/Vitality). With a few comparisons that Leo G did, we found out that statwise, we weren’t all that much different from downscaled lvl 80s. I hope our video gives some clarification to the issue.

I believe dungeons are suppose to be unforgiving when you’re learning them. That’s what makes the feeling so rewarding when you complete a task in there. A lot of other MMOs also utilize this “punishment-for-sense-of-achievement” system; many dungeons will have weeks, even months, before the first world clear of it happens.

NotOneToRidicule.2340:

Maestro.5376:

danbuter.2314:

Levistis.8356:

Once again, watch our video and tell us that we are elite players.

---

oh dangit. You can’t hear us.

Wow, you are so amazing you don’t even realize how l33t you are! Not to mention condescending. Do you really expect people to go to YouTube to watch a video of you playing a game?

If you’ll actually take a look at the video, you’ll see that we actually had pretty relaxed form through the entire dungeon. There is nothing “1337” required to run AC Ex. In fact, the entire time we were joking about how we were “MVP” because half the time we didn’t know what any of our skills did. We ran the dungeon in that video with fresh lvl 35 alts that we really didn’t know how to play extensively, and only had theoretical knowledge of.

Well, gotta say that we had more adds on our path for some reason. Perhaps a glitch? Dunno…maybe i can talk my guildies into another run. They’re all pretty kitten with Anet atm tho. A few have vowed to take a break.

If you’re talking about issues with the Spider Queen, I believe there are certain mobs that you kill that will trigger more and more spider spawns. You’ll notice that the spiders are a mix of low-level and high-level ones that take different amounts of damage. I BELIEVE killing all the low-level ones will trigger additional spider spawns, but don’t quote me on that.

Liquid Storm.8097:

Maestro.5376:

Also, regarding the dropoff in AC Exp runs, most of this can be attributed to the fact that AC Exp is no longer an easy, fast source of gold for players who don’t know what they’re doing. All the farming has basically moved over to CoF P1. So I don’t think the decrease in AC Exp population is entirely due to the increase in difficulty of the dungeon.

So you’re saying people fled AC due to not being easy anymore, yet in the very next sentence you state that you don’t think it has anything to do with difficulty. Make up your mind.

And as stated before, pre-patch AC was fine. It was “easy”, yes, cause it’s a friggin 35 dungeon for christ sake! What don’t you get?! Although I agree with the changes of P2 boss Ghost Eater (the traps at least DO something now), but making everything else harder is bollocks.

And if they want ALL dungeons to be uber hardcore challenging in explorer mode, why BSing people with the level 35 then? Make the story mode 30/50/70/whatever with decent drops and every explo mode 80 with a higher chance of decent drops. Problem?

Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant that the decrease in AC Exp population does not MAINLY stem from new 35’s being driven away by what they deem an impossible dungeon, but mainly stems from players who farm gold being led towards more profitable runs like CoF P1.

And if you watched the video, we basically just proved that it WASN’T challenging for level 35 players. We were by no means familiar with our classes, and we’re not the best players in the game. We hadn’t even played together prior to this run. It was just a group of people who decided to get together and run AC Ex. Sure, we had some pre-knowledge of the dungeon, but the majority of it isn’t hard to figure out, and the rest depends on how well players are able to stay out of red circles, dodge properly, etc.

Oranisagu.3706:

Maestro.5376:

Except, it’s not a perfect argument, because in the end, everything is dictated by Arenanet and what their vision for dungeons is. You seem to interpret our actions as a call for Arenanet to make dungeons harder. It is not. It is a statement that their current level of difficulty for AC Ex is consistent with their vision and intent.

good to know you agree your way of arguing isn’t useful. now you would just have to stop doing it anyway.
I don’t interpret your action actually (well, I kinda do, I think it was childish, but thats beside the point). ac got changed, some people think it’s for the worse. you think its for the better. you claim to know their vision and intent, I just know how the changes affect newer players (most people in my guild are <1k AP and have maybe played 2-3 weeks. most won’t try any dungeons ever again after we tried ac). I guess there’s nothing more to say, I can’t argue against faith.

Maestro.5376:

The Defiant interruption is, like Robert said, a temporary bandaid until they fix Grast. There is currently no boss in the game that relies on stripping Defiance and interrupting them in order to beat them/not wipe. I would appreciate this if you stopped bringing it up as part of the new AC EX’s difficulty since it’s currently not working as intended. The path should be considered broken in its current state.

sorry, I must have missed the official statement. I only saw the patchnotes claiming interruption works as intended now (which it doesn’t always, but that, again, is besides the point), which implied interruption is the way to go. but I could’ve just missed hroudas post. and yet, it hasn’t been fixed (even temporary, like making him invuln, take the attack away and give him stability).

Maestro.5376:

Besides, I already don’t bother to do a lot of the easier dungeon content. We’re not pushing Anet to change anything from what they’ve done to the dungeons in the game already, and will do to dungeons in the future. YOU’RE the one pushing for them to change something, so here’s a thought. Why don’t YOU go make a video and show them how difficult AC Ex is for a group of newly-turned level 35 players?

no, you very loudly tell them everything is fine and they should go on with their plans of making dungeons harder. I offer a counterpoint of telling how these kind of changes affect the playerbase, especially new players. but of course, since you post 10x as much as I, you must be correct and I’m wrong.
a video would make absolutely no difference, just as yours didn’t.

but I give up, arguing with you doesn’t seem very productive, I never could handle discussions based on blind faith. you win, ac is perfect, yay.

It’s not faith, I’d really rather you keep faith out of it, thanks. It’s the fact that Anet has stated again and again that ALL Ex dungeons would be for groups of players that were coordinated and had good synergy with each other. It was on the website before the revamp that removed a lot of the clutter-like information, and it’s been on several interviews where they talk about dungeons. It doesn’t matter if you’re 35 or 80, you’re going to need to be coordinated, you’re going to need to know your class.

Whether you feel like this is good design philosophy is another thing entirely. What we’ve shown is that AC Ex in its current incarnation is sound and matches their stated philosophy.

I also love how you say that I think AC Ex is perfect when I’ve started a thread that consolidates all the issues/bugs that currently happen, mostly with P3. :P

Liquid Storm.8097:

Maestro, the sudden huge decrease in AC exp dungeons speaks for itself, don’t you think? You can go on and on about being fair and whatnot, AC is a prime example how (starter) dungeons should NOT look like. And an MMO without at least one (ONE, UNO!) fairly easy dungeon-like area for people to play in and get to know the ins and outs of the gameplay mechanics of a dungeon is doomed to failure. It’s just a matter of time.

Thus your comment about not playing dungeons if I’m not “skilled” enough is an arrogant and quite ignorant response of an elitist. But I’m not gonna argue further with you here, you’ve got your own opinion and I’ve got mine. With AC as it is now, especially path 1 AND numerous bugs PLUS being a level 35 dungeon (hence why it’s called ‘starter’), I predict a medium to huge decline in GW2’s playerbase in the next 2 to 3 months.

The story mode dungeons already provide that dungeon-like environment for players to play with. I don’t really know what you’re asking for? To make the Ex modes as easy as the story modes? That would kind of defeat the purpose, no?

Also, regarding the dropoff in AC Exp runs, most of this can be attributed to the fact that AC Exp is no longer an easy, fast source of gold for players who don’t know what they’re doing. All the farming has basically moved over to CoF P1. So I don’t think the decrease in AC Exp population is entirely due to the increase in difficulty of the dungeon.

Also, it’s not like there aren’t easier dungeons to do. Word travels fast, as you can probably see. People probably already know that there are easier EX dungeons to do for your first time in one, and will gravitate towards those. I honestly don’t see a dropoff in population in the future, but I do forsee a shift in population to dungeons that might not have been as popular before.

Oranisagu.3706:

@Maestro: if you don’t like easier dungeons, just don’t do them. wow, see what I did there? a perfect argument, isn’t it? why do you always use arguments like this one instead of something more productive?
the game has various degrees of difficulty in pve, most of it is casual friendly, you’re right. yet you’re completely ignoring the lack of difficulty progression. there’s nothing that prepares you for constant knockdowns etc or having to interrupt a mob with defiant every 10 seconds. it’s good there is harder content. but there needs to be something in between. right now, if they’d change cof to lvl 35 and ac to 75, we’d have that kind of progression. if they want ac to be the easiest dungeon (revamping all other dungeons to be at least as hard or harder, as you suggest they will), then we’ll have a huge gap. ideally, players of every skilllevel will have some content they find hard but doable to challenge them. if every dungeon gets revamped like ac, there will be loads of players not good enough for dungeons but still finding general pve to easy.

Except, it’s not a perfect argument, because in the end, everything is dictated by Arenanet and what their vision for dungeons is. You seem to interpret our actions as a call for Arenanet to make dungeons harder. It is not. It is a statement that their current level of difficulty for AC Ex is consistent with their vision and intent.

The Defiant interruption is, like Robert said, a temporary bandaid until they fix Grast. There is currently no boss in the game that relies on stripping Defiance and interrupting them in order to beat them/not wipe. I would appreciate this if you stopped bringing it up as part of the new AC EX’s difficulty since it’s currently not working as intended. The path should be considered broken in its current state.

Besides, I already don’t bother to do a lot of the easier dungeon content. We’re not pushing Anet to change anything from what they’ve done to the dungeons in the game already, and will do to dungeons in the future. YOU’RE the one pushing for them to change something, so here’s a thought. Why don’t YOU go make a video and show them how difficult AC Ex is for a group of newly-turned level 35 players?

On another note, I was wondering when all the nay-sayers would turn up. It’s been disturbingly quiet up until now.

MeateaW.3519:

Sadly liquid storm; the response you are going to get is:

“The story modes are the easy modes do those instead of explore mode!!”

Because these elitists think that useless rewards are what everyone should get. (Why don’t they add even a small number of tokens to story mode – say 15 (with repeats yielding none)? it would at-least net you a piece of gear after 2 runs (from the non-level 80 tab) and it would actually fulfil the role of “easy dungeon” that people think should exist.

But no; “play your way” means; you don’t get to play dungeons unless you can find a group of semi-competent players. Forget helping your less-than capable guildies, it isn’t worth the repeated wipes. (ps. I love the detha path boss fight; about the only nice thing I can say about the whole dungeon since the change).

Actually, several of us agree that the Story Mode dungeon should reward rare gear until the entire set is obtained, thus gearing out adventurers for EX. That actually would make sense, since each run of AC Story gives you about a level in experience. At 30, if you run AC Ex 6 times, you’re already probably 36 and have a full set of rare armor.

You also seem to be getting “play your way” confused with “go anywhere.” “Play your way” means you play the way you want to play, and if the dungeon playstyle doesn’t jive with the way you want to play, you’re not obligated to do it, there are no rewards that can be obtained from dungeons that, stat-wise, cannot be obtained anywhere else.