Guild Wars 2

Alright. Scenario time.

You’re dead, which is kind of a bummer, but it’s not as as bad as you thought it would be. Un-life is treating you well, you’re never hungry or tired, there are plenty of villagers to stalk… and speaking of villagers, it’s been quite some time since you last-

“What was that?”

You hear a noise to your left. There’s nothing there… or is there? You take a closer look…

“Could it be?”

It is! It’s another frightened villager! He was waiting for you to pass, but a loose stone beneath his boot betrayed his location. Your semi-transparent mouth widens into a menacing grin, your eyes alight with bloodlust. You grip your spectral cleaver and propel yourself toward him as swiftly as possible.

Now certain he’s been spotted, he makes a break for it. You know he’s just slightly faster than you, but you don’t concern yourself with such things. After all, half of the fun is in the chase, and you’re fully aware that while fleshbags tire easily, you can run for days, years, eons without needing to stop. It’s simply a matter of time, and when your time comes, you will take great pleasure in cutting him to pieces.

“Come back, fleshling, so I CAN MURDER YOOOOUUUUU!” you shout, your voice reverberating eerily off the walls. You can already hear his ragged gasps for air, and the half-screams escaping with every breath. His terror only serves to fuel your malicious intent, but you are losing ground. You won’t be able to catch him if your only tactic is mindless pursuit.

He’s sticking close to the inner walls, running counter-clockwise. It’s as if he’s unfamiliar with the maze you call your home, which plays rather well to your advantage. As he rounds the corner ahead of you and out of sight, you about-face and dash toward the nearest teleporter. With but the mental image of the southern pad in your mind, you are instantaneously transported. Such convenience!

As you arrive, the rapid, desperate footfalls begin to echo around the corner, followed closely by the wheezing breath of the quarry whose neck you long to caress WITH THE JAGGED BLADE OF YOUR GHOSTLY CLEAVER.

“You’re mine, little meatbag…”

You charge forward, wide-eyed, with teeth gritted together behind the smile of a madman. You are prepared to unleash your wrath on the unsuspecting villager. His shadow flickers against the wall mere paces away.

You hear a voice – not the villager, and certainly not you – cry out “Now! Do it now!”

“No, you’ve worked too hard for this! Don’t let the others take what belongs to you!” orders the voice in the back of your mind.

You’re in full view of your prey now. He’s being chased by two ghastly figures, whom you recognize from countless prior hunts. Their presence has interfered with your trap, and now the villager has fled down a different path from the one you expected. You give chase, following closely behind your two allies. They might kill this villager before you get so much as a single slice if you don’t act swiftly. You’re too far away to strike him directly, but you come well-prepared for such cases.

You manifest a terrifying scarecrow into being, planting it directly in front of the villager. He turns sharply, fleeing in mindless terror, and crashes directly into a pile of rubble.

“Fleshling, this is your end. Farewell…”

While your fellow undead begin chopping away at their victim, you summon the power of the Mad King himself and place a compulsion spell on the villager. Even if he should manage to escape the clutches of your blood-crazed allies, any chance of survival has now been stripped away.

“You will bend to the Mad King’s will or be crushed beneath it!” taunts one of the pursuers, cackling madly.

The gravely injured villager runs for several seconds before realizing his fate was sealed with your curse. In a final act of defiance, he turns slowly to face his end. His eyes are drawn not to the violent beings readying their weapons to carve his flesh, but to you. You are the reason for his demise. Your actions are what caused his life to be snuffed out in an instant.

His eyes accuse you, “You monster. This is all your fault.”

You stand on the gentle slope, staring down at the gruesome scene where two ghastly specters delight themselves in the massacre an unarmed villager, spreading blood and gore across the cobbled pathway. Life fades quickly from his body, but his hatred for you hangs in the air like the fog which perpetually cloaks your domain in gray.

You’ve won… but you remain unfulfilled, as if something is missing…

And then you notice…

YOU DIDN’T GET A SINGLE POINT ON THE SCOREBOARD FOR THAT ASSIST.

TL;DR – Apparently fear and Mad King skills don’t count for kill participation – only damage. What gives?

QueenHysteria.1084:

I’m so tired of people saying “You don’t need mounts”. Who are you to tell someone what they “Need” and don’t “Need”.

Unless having a mount in Guild Wars 2 is a biological imperative, I think it’s safe to say that you don’t need it.

I find that diffusing negative situations in dungeons is easily accomplished with humor. In those rare occasions when someone simply insists on taking the drama llama out for a spin in party chat, a kick, ignore, and replace takes all of 30 seconds and can get you back on track for a successful run.

Daecollo.9578:

It needs nerfed in so many ways if your going to add this to a rotation, it is way to hard risk vs reward and needs toned down in a lot of small ways.

Otherwise, people will do it once and never come back again.

People said this exact thing a year ago when they were first starting to get into explorable modes and were getting trounced because they didn’t know the mechanics.

My favorite part was when, rather than nerfing things, ANet fixed the exploits to force players to do dungeons the correct way, thus making the dungeon more challenging, not less.

Requesting

Synth opening to Dark Tranquillity – Misery’s Crown [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKjzDU7V7es ]
Sheet music: [ http://www.jellynote.com/en/sheet-music-tabs/dark-tranquillity/miserys-crown/5076c6ead2235a7374cda995#tabs:%23score_A ]

and

The Grizzly Hills music [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpyInx0ldfo ]

milton.1796:

WVW players know what to do on this boss its the pve players who don’t know what to do.

People who only do WvW know what RED CIRCLES mean but pvers just seem to stand in it and then sit there until they die and then beg for ressurections whilst wvw players run back to the boss.

WvW players also know the dodge ability as well I never see pvers using it.

I love how it’s always “That One Guy Who PvPs” who feels the need to bring up the horribly misinformed opinion that the people who primarily enjoy PvE don’t know what they’re doing on a boss fight simply by virtue of them being the ones who prefer PvE.

Fact: PvE players know what happens when they stand in bad stuff, and I’ll tell you why, but you should probably be sitting for this mind-blowing revelation…

You sitting? Okay, here it comes.

PvE has red circles too.

“Balthazar’s balls!” you might be inclined to exclaim, having never realized that those red circles you’ve been seeing in WvW exist elsewhere. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it is indeed the truth. We lowly PvE players, filthy casuals that we are, still manage to identify threats when they are presented to us in the form of a poo puddle surrounded by a brightly-colored ring of light.

You learn something new every day.

Those charts pretty accurately summarize the backlash from this event. There’s no way ANet didn’t predict turret trolls and AFKers ruining this for everyone, so I have to assume that these are all concerns that were brought up by the developers during the production of Teakettle 2.0 which had to be pushed aside for the sake of time constraints.

Since the Sunbringer title and all the various goodies associated with a kill aren’t going anywhere any time soon, I’ll wait til ANet gets around to addressing the glaring flaws with this event. Maybe by that time, I’ll actually get to see my home server again, instead of living in an overflow for 8+ hours, only to receive an invitation to a different overflow.

I would have purchased the skins from the store without a second thought, as evidenced by my purchase of the MKT set and the Phantom Hood.

Instead, I bought 5 keys, foolishly thinking that I might get something out of it, but as always, I got nothing – not even so much as an extra key to try again.

Good to know “RNG screwing players” is still around, spitting right in the face of your manifesto video.

The phrase “Can’t see @#&%, Cap’n!” has become common on my voice server. Just a running joke for whenever we get slammed by an attack we never saw coming as a result of these over the top spell effects that have been a problem since the press beta.

RoRo.8270:

BlackDevil.9268:

RoRo.8270:

BlackDevil.9268:

RoRo.8270:

Lol the gorilla is stupidly easy you just kite him at the start where no gorillas are and fight him there and he can’t ress any gorillas cause there are no corpses. Last boss is a joke and you want his health reduced? That tar boss isn’t hard either seems you just want everything easy like everyone else you can do this path in 1hr-1hr30mins. Only problem with path 1 is there is a broken waypoint and they need to fix giganticus so he resets properly. You must be doing something terribly wrong if you got a party of friends who are full exotics and cant clear this in less than 2hrs

Easy when he’s pulling out 8 gorilla’s eventhough we’ve lured him? Believe me, I’m sure the people we play with do actually got more skill in pve and pvp than you do, since you are saying that path is as short as the 3rd path, which is 1h and 20mins to 2h.

Okay, I’ve learned something new with the burn part at the Crub boss. Sure it’s easy then.

Then again @ Kevin: What’s the fun of skipping trash mobs? Better to not have them there anyway if you’re able to skip them…

No I don’t want everything easy. I only want things to be improved to make it fun, not frustrating as it is now for a lot people. I actually do got 3/4 arah without exploiting the arah shard farm.

Lol you keep boasting how good your team is yet you cant handle simple tasks. Show me this so called skill your super team has i’m clearly not seeing it especially when it takes your organized team 3hrs to clear path 1 and 1hr30mins to clear path 3.

Like I said the gorilla boss can pulled to the entrance of the structure he is in where there are no corpses do you even know how his ress works? Clearly not because you said he is still ressing 8 gorillas which means you aren’t doing it the way I stated. There is no point of killing trash mobs they drop nothing interesting people do dungeons for tokens not to get drops once you’ve done a path once theres no point to keep killing the same trash everytime you’ve done it

Like I said, he was summoning gorilla’s without any corpses being there.
First time he wasn’t doing that so I suppose it’s BUGGED. Just like your brain. No point running past every single mob if you want to do the dungeon for fun. They should make like 30 gates to stop people from skipping 90% of the dungeon just to gain their armor as fast as possible…
I’m doing dungeons for fun, not to gain armors.

Not everyones definition of fun=do the same dungeon with the same mob mechanics over 20x

What are you talking about? Everyone loves repeating mind-numbing tasks for minimal rewards. You’re just weird.

Fuz.5621:

The token system is fine.

Claims the token system is fine. Provides nothing to support this claim.

By the way, the sky isn’t blue, it’s neon green and always has been. I don’t feel the need to back up my statement with any facts.

Not a fan of Subject Alpha either. Very tedious fight.

- He has a large health pool, further exacerbated by his abilities, which seriously cut into DPS time
- His AoEs sometimes hit the imprisoned player (pretty much a guaranteed trip to the floor, and then to the nearest waypoint)
- Having to fight him three times feels like really weak dungeon design

Josh Foreman.8250:

Sent you a PM. I need more info to fix this, thanks!

Don’t you ruin this for us! Part of the fun of exploring in any MMO is finding these weird little leftovers!

I’m a little surprised to hear about anyone having issues with this. It’s unusual, to say the least. Even in the worst group I’ve ever had, we manged to one-shot her.

Could be a bug, though I would be willing to bet not everyone was hitting her.

I’ve learned to enjoy the laser hall. Wait for the timing, hop in, and bounce my way across. I don’t even worry about stripping for it anymore, because I can usually make it through on the first try.

Then again, I did run it every day for a week. I’ve had practice.

Zenyatoo.4059:

@ nethelli

which is why all the high DPS groups that do serious speed runs and burst down DPS check bosses in a matter of seconds run with rangers right?

OH WAIT. My mistake. That doesnt happen at all. They run warriors and guardians, and thieves. Not rangers. Because your DPS is poor comparatively. Especially against clusters of monsters because you have no AoE.

I mean lets see here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f95nN93dQs (3x warrior, guardian, ele)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RM-jwwCO1c (Boon, who are known for this sort of thing: guardian, mesmer, 2x thief, warrior. This was pre-nerf BTW. As in, when your DPS actually mattered during the fight.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6_MTW_ia2o (2 guardians, necro, warrior, ele)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ighs-IakvoU (mesmers, 3 warrior, guardian)

So want to tell me again how rangers are totally used over the other classes for their DPS? Because its certainly not true. I’ve played a ranger. I still play my ranger. But I can assure you the DPS is nothing to write home about. If anything, you’ve proved my point about your lack of utility in any sector that isnt DPS, which any good player has seen and realized is lower than a warrior of equal gear and skill.

And all you’ve done is prove that you’re really good at arguing against statements no one made. I welcome you to point to where I said anything about speed runs or Rangers being taken over other professions (neither is really relevant anyway, since the rest of the thread is speaking generally and you’re talking about a much more specific activity)

For your benefit, just so you don’t have to scroll up, I’ll reiterate:
“Rangers bring virtually nothing to the table EXCEPT dps and some moderate offensive utility.”

As someone fond of discovering hidden meanings within statements, I’m sure there’s a dozen different things you could infer from that, but I feel like ruining the fun for you, so I’ll just say it. A Ranger in the right hands is dangerous and bursty. A Ranger in incompetent hands is nearly worthless.

Play with better Rangers. I know they’re hard to find, but they do exist.

Zenyatoo.4059:

low tier:
ranger – lackluster DPS

It’s a miracle your brain didn’t self-destruct when you typed this. Rangers bring virtually nothing to the table EXCEPT dps and some moderate offensive utility.

Don’t believe the people that tell you profession doesn’t matter. In fairness, it doesn’t matter AS MUCH as the player, but only someone completely oblivious to reality believes that all professions are equal.

Guardians, Elementalists, and Engineers all bring an incredible amount of offensive and defensive utility without sacrificing much for it. What really makes them stand out is their ability to heal allies outside of their 6th ability. This means people stay on their feet longer, which means a better chance of winning.

Engi!

SO much utility packed into one little person. It’s fun!

aleiro.8521:

Sorry but I am not elite or whatever. This is implied in the fact that I have only pugged…. I hardly play 2 hours a day. If I can finish dungeons so can you.
The problem here is lazyness, lazyness to learn new mechanics, to understand such mechanics and to adapt. You just want easy loot and that’s no good. Exotic loot in the game is real easy to obtain, you can craft, you can get karma or you can run dungeons. Any of those will do. For me finishing dungeons is in itself a reward, especially if they are hard. The loot is collateral. I like playing the game most of all, doing all boss fights, no skips or exploits. I like that it is not overly easy, it just makes me feel that much better when I finally finish the dungeon. If you want a certain skin then you have to run dungeons.
I do believe that they need to increase loot rewards, maybe increase rare chance even more, but I think tokens need to stay as they are. Why would you be able to obtain a dungeon set without ever completing said dungeon?
I do think they need to implement a system where you can “save progress” in the dungeons, so that if you have been in the dungeon too long and are tired, you can start where you left off the day before with your mates. Then you can learn mechanics and in the end, when you finally finish you still get your reward.
Tokens for not finishing are just like giving dogs a steak for pissing in your carpet…

If a group goes in, kills 5 out of 6 bosses, and then can’t finish the last boss for whatever reason, you really think it’s okay to have them walk away with nothing but a few silver in blue vendor trash? I completely disagree with that mentality, and ArenaNet has made it clear that they do as well.

Your idea of “fair” is to hold people hostage for tokens, and that is a painfully short-sighted approach to designing a reward system. If player X can’t finish the run due to real life obligations, they get absolutely nothing? What if they can’t finish because they’re the only one capable of staying alive against the boss while everyone else decides not to use their dodge button? What if the instance bugs out and prevents you from completing the dungeon? (this one in particular has killed two AC runs for me so far). With a system in which the player obtains a small number of tokens per boss, they at least didn’t completely waste 90 minutes for no reward at all.

The idea is to reward people appropriately for their efforts, not to screw them over for things beyond their control, which is exactly what the current system (which you seem to believe in wholeheartedly) does.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Hey there, thought I’d come weigh in on this.

First, sorry you’ve had such a rough time with Arah. It’s a long and tough cookie to crack, but it can be done. RoRo has good advice: step back and reassess the situation. Define a leader. Build a strategy, and execute.

Now, you brought up a great concept for the DR system rewarding unique boss deaths. While I certainly don’t like to jump the gun on making claims, our next patch SHOULD include a newly developed reward system for people who couldn’t make it to the end that should alleviate a bit of this “walking away with nothing” feeling you have.
Personally, I love that my content kills players and challenges them. I feel pretty kitteny though when my content beats someone into the ground and takes their lunch money. I at least want you to walk away with something more than a repair bill and some random blues, and folks here are working on that very thing.
That being said, our next patch SHOULD contain some revamped loot drops from bosses that have the chance of giving small token rewards (among other things), which should help alleviate that.

Everyone take a shot every time you see the word “should” in that quote, then go run a dungeon. You might find it difficult to play, but at least it’ll be painless.

aleiro.8521:

You are supposed to adapt to this game, the game is not supposed to adapt to you.

This type of hard-line attitude destroys games.

If the devs always bow to the wants of the player base, it’s just spineless pandering. If the devs outright refuse to change anything for the players, it turns into a mess that is doomed to failure. Compromise is the magic word.

ANet needs to be looking at their systems all the time to discover things that can be done better. If the current dungeon reward system is poorly-implemented (it is) then it’s up to the developer to find a balance between incentive to run dungeons and ensuring that players don’t feel it necessary to spam run one or two bosses before resetting.

Right now, many of the people wearing full sets of Arah/CoF gear obtained it through exploits and/or speed running bosses. That was not okay, but the current system is equally terrible because you get NOTHING for running 99% of a dungeon, yet being unable to deal with the final boss for whatever reason.

If your post is any indicator, you believe this system is fine and should be kept to punish the lazy and inept. Elitism for its own sake if I’ve ever seen it – backing a flawed system out of disdain for people who aren’t as “l33t” as you are.

I can say for certain right now that running with Guradians (and to a lesser extent Elementalists/Engineers) will make life much easier simply because of how they operate. All can bring extensive healing and support capability to the group without sacrificing much offense. They are force multipliers, increasing the effective health pools of everyone around them to push the odds of success in favor of the party.

Tupi.2967:

Stop thinking GW2 shares the same design of others MMOs. After u get your loot you would think everything shallow anyway.

Just because ANet tried to take the gameplay in a different direction for GW2, that means they can’t borrow from other games? If something works, you’d be a fool to dismiss it without first looking at why it works, and then trying to adapt it to work better.

I really can’t see any reasoning for your post, other than “I don’t want my game to be like that game.”

rickets.1386:

You are able to kill almost all the mobs, there are many threads on this already some with videos posted. We usually kill all but the last 2 packs, sometimes we do better sometimes worse. You are right however, it does depend a lot on comp. Our Guardian/necro/war/ranger/mesmer group works pretty good but honestly the more warriors you have the easier this encounter is.

The problem is that this is one of the least interesting encounters in any dungeon, and ANet has done everything in their power to make sure that it remains unskippable, frustrating, and worst of all, painfully-frickin’-long. It’s as if there was a meeting held at the ANet office with the sole intent of coming up with ways to do the exact opposite of what they talked about in their manifesto video. Frankly, a lot of things have been giving me that impression lately.

I just see CoF2 as a giant middle finger to the player base, with a cute little post-it stuck to the finger states “You MUST complete this boring crap before you’re allowed to get your tokens.”

No thanks, I’ll just stay out of CoF until things stop being terrible.

wookie slayer.4259:

I’d like to see more challenging end game whether it be hard modes or raids. The repeatability is ZERO right now and the first time playability is questionable. Real end game content needs to be added soon.

This. So very much this.

I’ve become so bored with the idea of slogging through these dungeons. It’s hard to get excited about something you’ve already done a dozen times before. Honestly, it feels like the only “endgame” is PvP.

Chronald.3512:

Problem with this goes back to just running 1/2 bosses in the dungeon and then resetting to avoid the DR nerfs.

People would never waste their time to complete the hardest boss in the dungeon if you can just speed run the first 1 or 2 over and over.

Example: Arah bosses 1 and 2 in Path 3(I believe). Just hug walls, kill first 2 bosses, reset dungeon. Crazy fast tokens that has very very little risk as the first two bosses are very very easy tank and spanks.

Two options.

#1: Bosses reward increasing amounts of tokens based on their order within the dungeon, with the final total being 30 (or possibly as much as 40 if it’s a particularly long path?), and then you get the standard bonus 30 at the end.

#2: All bosses reward 5 tokens, with appropriate bonus tokens at the end to make it worthwhile to complete the path, but boss tokens are subject to DR as much as the bonus tokens. If you kill Subject Alpha (1) in Path X of CoE, you get five tokens. Do it again on the same path, you get one less token each time. The one big concern I have with this is that ANet would screw it up and all paths would be subject to DR after the first run because it’s the same boss in all paths. This would affect AC, Arah, CoE, and so forth and probably persist for a week before the next patch addressed it.

Personally, I consider option 2 to be the best. It has DR to mitigate the rewards from speed runs, but it’s not such a hard system that it makes running the same path twice in a day not worth the effort.

gibby.9328:

holy smokes! what a god kitten genius you are! no one has thought of that!! pets on passive?! wow!

… hmmmm, only if pets didn’t go off passive once you use their F2 skill. or! only if they didn’t targeted by boss AoEs. OR! if they didn’t get one shotted by basically everything in a dungeon!!

you, however, are the only exception. kudos!

when the developer who plays a ranger admits to the problem, it means there is a problem. most of us wait patiently until it gets resolved. during the mean time, go try out CoE and tell me about that “passive” button .. or the life span of that pet when you return.

Ouch. Apply cold water to burned area.

Honestly, if I had the ability to do so, I would perma-stow my pet in all but the most dire of encounters. The thing just bothers me, gets in the way, takes too long to carry out F2 orders, and has a bad habit of running 4-500 units out in front of me after I’ve already stopped moving, which often pulls things early.

Can we make pets optional? I would trade in my entire menagerie of fur, fangs, and failure for traps to become our passive F1-F4. They’re more reliable, controllable, and I don’t have to yell at them to get off my couch.

Kevin.2176:

Xetelian.9278:

The health pools are outrageous.

I’m an 80 Guardian and I do use stability.

Boss fights only taking 5 minutes? Seriously Kevin? What ever you’re smoking I’ll take some.

What encounter takes longer than ~5-8 minutes if done correctly?

The timeframe is virtually irrelevant. The fact that bosses have burned all their easily avoidable and uninteresting mechanics in the first thirty seconds so the rest of the 5-8 minute fight is just plain boring? That’s not okay.

One of the most common solutions to this is to have fights with several phases to serve as an anti-boredom measure. I would welcome a change of that nature, so I actually have something to do on most of these fights.

Of course, there are still a few encounters that are supposed to be more interesting than their current incarnation, but are not really working as intended (Effigy says hi) and have become unfun zergs as a result. Those need fixing too.

I support this, as long as there’s a nice intuitive GUI where I can really micromanage the crap out of my pet’s behavior.

Maybe with a little trial and error, I can keep this stupid animal alive through a fight.

Noticing this too. Just got three-shot by a Breeder. What the heck happened here?

Dead.7385:

Lemme rephrase the OP:

“I did a dungeon and wiped. I didn’t have a healer to toss bandages at me to insta heal me back to full for my mistake. The game focuses less on players providing crutches for others and personal skill. Plz fix this devs.”

I’m actually curious why you think group content should be focused on individual skill, rather than players watching out for each other. I’m not saying Trinity > GW2 method, nor am I saying the opposite, I just find it odd that someone would take that stance. Usually group content is designed to encourage all party members to give each other support.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Nerva, change your trait. We have a system in place that allows you to swap out traits with no punishment and little inconvenience. In the open world it’s a much more feasible thing to keep 1 pet out for a long time and rack up a stack of bonuses, but dungeons encourage you to change your tactics up and adjust to new and different challenges.

From my experience, not all traits are useful in all situations and areas. Finding the right ones that work well in respected areas is key to adaptation.

Any suggestions for fights like Subject Alpha where your pet gets 1-2 shot by spammed AoEs? I wouldn’t hate my prof so much if part of my utility didn’t get taken out of the fight three seconds after I summon it.

I’ve lost track of how many times someone has come into Frostgorge or Sparkfly and asked when the dragon is going to spawn, and several people piped up with “well, he died at X so he’ll be back around Y”

It’s as if these events are on fairly reliable static timers and people have learned what those timers are. Weird, right?

Gohlar.3671:

ukraniangrl.2897:

So basically:

fluff fluff fluff…theme park theme park…fluff fluff…broken horrible dungeons, no rewards in World Vs World …. and explore things?

Wow, that sounds…..great?

What I have a hard time believing is that Anet honestly thought this was a good idea.

Did they have to hurry release? “The Endgame Reimagined” is still the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen a dev have the audacity to say (besides Jay Wilson comments).

2012 has been a crappy year for mmos.

The first two weeks of this game were wonderful. I had a blast leveling, I got to enjoy myself for hours on end each day, and all around, I thought this game was pretty great.

Now, here we are just over a month in and I have run out of things to do.

• World completion? You can easily knock out 3-4 zones a day, so that disappears rapidly.
• World versus World? More like Player vs Wall. It’s fun for an hour or two, but then it gets boring.
• sPvP? Four maps, one game mode. Thrilling. The novelty wears off within a couple of days.
• Mini Games? Cute, for a little while, but has no real value. Pointless time sink within a time sink (cue Xzibit meme)
• Dungeons? Both the designers and testers have failed at this facet of an MMO. Trash harder than bosses? Progress-blocking bugs? Bosses whose mechanics can be completely ignored while the group zergs blindly? What a mess. Not many people are willing to put up with this for very long. Usually just long enough to get the gear they want, and then they never go back.
• Gear? Once you have an exotic with the stats you want (easily obtained in a matter of hours), you’re done. You no longer need to worry about that slot. In a single week, you can obtain a full set of exotic gear with relative ease, or in a few minutes, if you have the cash. It’s simply too easy to cap out your stats.
• Achievements? Yes, let me spend weeks of my time going above and beyond to collect virtual points for no reward at all. I realize it’s a game, but achievements are really just a chore list and I’m not buying into it. It’s simply not viable as a method to retain customers.
• Crafting? Well, it’s nice if you want legendaries, but since the market is an absolute train wreck and getting worse all the time, it’s extremely hard to make any profit with this. Why spend the time and money leveling when it’s cheaper to just buy whatever you wanted from the profession and sell the raw materials you’ve collected? Total write-off.
• Easter Egg Hunting? Well now you’re just getting desperate, though I’ll admit that the chickens in Ebonhawke made me laugh while I fled for my little life. Still, not viable for customer retention.
• Guilds? Well, the rewards you get are minimal at best, but what really irks me is that the system encourages zerg guilds who invite everyone. Yet another grind that can be completed quickly (based on guild size) and thus isn’t going to keep people coming back.
• Collections? Personally, I’m not interested in spending time collecting minis to flood my bags, and I doubt this would hold anyone’s attention for very long anyhow. You could expand into tonics and other collectibles, but the problem is still the same – it’s impossible to keep people interested with something so minor.

I know some of these can be chalked up to my own cynicism (really, I consider achievements to be video game cancer and I will never actively participate in obtaining them simply for the sake of having more) but a lot of these are legitimate issues. I just don’t see this game having any longevity because there’s so little to occupy players at level 80. The whole “everything is endgame” paradigm sounded good in theory, but seems to flop in practice.

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s harder than anything else. I’d rather deal with these torches than Magg and his stupid bomb.

You’re not alone. This happened to my group as well, and by the time you get to this point, you’ve already invested enough time in the run that no one wants to reset.

Just another reason why putting the token rewards at the end was a poor design choice. At least the group could have walked out of there with a few tokens for their trouble, rather than absolutely nothing.

Svarty.8019:

They’ve taken away all the tanks & healers and replaced them with control/support that can’t control/support because the bosses still have the “immune to/mitigates control” buff.

“We didn’t want to use the holy trinity because it’s not dynamic. Instead, we want everyone to be DPS and use control abilities to stay alive, except we’re not going to let you use them (reliably) on the hardest content in the game; we gave bosses a soft counter to control, which is a giant middle finger to the very idea of our control/support system.”

I’m sure it all made sense at some point.

I had a system nearly identical to Porian’s that worked well for my PuG. We had one coordinator standing on the rock where the NPCs ignored her, so she could concentrate on making sure everything ran smoothly. Other than her not having to kill anything, it worked just the same.

This is also relevant to your post, Lumines

Lumines.3916:

The only somewhat difficult boss would be Colossus Rumblus, his howl is worse than the “Howling King” ironic isn’t it? The cone is not just a cone, it comes out of his side too, just standing behind his belly won’t always save you, the best bet is to just stay the fuuck away. Also the scream can go through walls..

Incidentally, I found a baby Colossus Rumblus

I’d gladly go to Arah almost any time, but most groups simply assume everyone that hasn’t been there already is a drooling idiot with no concept of how to do dungeons. Thanks to that insulting mindset, I’ve been rejected from four groups this week.

There would be a lot more people running this place if more players would grow a pair, take a PuG inside, and teach them. Makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than demanding full exotic geared players that have already cleared all the paths.

Bloodtau.4672:

Kromica.2831:

No trinity is one of the best things this game has.

False.

Wrong.

Such a statement is subject to opinion/preference and therefore cannot be true or false.

As a Ranger, here’s my experience with the lack of a trinity.

If I’m using longbow, I can stand back at 1500 and do nothing for most of the fight. Pet management is the most excitement I get, because I outrange most abilities, and the ones that I don’t take so long to get to me that they’re easy to dodge/LOS. My utility is completely out the window because of how few of my abilities are functional at this range, but it’s not like the rest of the group is going to suffer as a result, right? Oh wait…

If I’m using shortbow, the NPCs decide that I am the tank – NO EXCEPTIONS. Last night, I did a HotW run. The ice troll had aggro on me from 90% hp to dead while the rest of the party chased it around in a circle. This is not hyperbole – I was the thing’s sole focus for the majority of the fight, and that kind of thing happens to me all too often.

It used to be amusing, then I started to build for it to benefit my group, then it got stale, and now I don’t even want to play a Ranger anymore because I know how every fight is going to go down. I’ll be running for my life while the rest of the party has to chase whatever monster has decided that it wants to violently destroy me.

So yeah. Enjoyable? Not so much. Beneficial to the group? I suppose. I don’t really want the trinity, but I would like NPCs to realize after a certain length of time that there’s no catching a properly-built Ranger and move on to something they might actually be capable of hurting.

OP, I beg of you… Arah guide.

I’ve been hesitant to go after seeing those who have already been. They just lie on the ground in Lion’s Arch muttering something about “Lupicus” over and over and then they start sobbing.

Allow me a moment to offer some background on myself. I was there when WoW launched Cataclysm. I stayed up all night and well into the afternoon powering my way through levels to score realm first 85 Priest. I am a powergamer, that’s the sort of thing that I like to do (an Anet developer might say that I’m “playing my way”).

I chose to progress slowly when I started this game. I spent about 10 days going from 1 to 80, starting off by burning down Wayfarer Foothills, then casually working my way through the levels until I hit Straits of Devastation, where I then ramped up again. I took my time with crafting, eventually capping my cooking and leatherworking.

I opted not to rush into explorables, instead choosing to go out and enjoy a dozen or so zones, picking up all kinds of rewards for zone completion.

I tried out WvW and found it enjoyable, and I often tell the story of how myself and a guildmate managed to succeed against much stronger players by using the landscape to misdirect and confuse the enemy while chipping away at their health. I find that it helps sway the undecided players toward at least trying WvW.

So, I’ve hit 80, and I’ve sampled much of the game. Jumping puzzles, map completion, zone events, WvW, explorables, working the trading post to make a nice pile of cash for myself, and even a bit of RP here and there, I’ve done it all. I now find myself wondering what’s left for me to do.

I’m developing an extremely negative opinion of dungeon design, thanks to the numerous bugs that can completely ruin a run, I’ve grown bored with the Player vs. Wall-ness of WvW, I’ve already seen every zone, the novelty of dynamic events has worn off, and I’m honestly getting tired of the game as whole, even when I try to look at it with new eyes as a different profession/race.

I really want to justify the $160 I spent on this game, but I’m finding it extremely difficult. There doesn’t seem to be anything left for me to do that isn’t simply more of the same. I don’t want to believe I’ve got terminal Geartreadmillitis, but it sure looks that way, so I challenge this thread to recommend something to me that is new, unique and can keep me entertained.

I liked the part where everyone was just waiting for the first dungeon nerf to jump up and whine about how the casuals are ruining everything.

The Effigy boss has been broken from the very beginning. In fact, he was broken so badly that the widely accepted way to kill him was to ignore all mechanics and zerg him down. That means that any argument anyone might make about his difficulty being reduced is immediately moot.

Now, for those that are getting all chicken little over CoE, please keep in mind that those bosses had a crapton of health. They were the kind of bosses that you already knew you were going to beat by the time they were at 90%, because you had seen all their moves and dodged them effortlessly. The problem is that it takes 10 boring minutes to whittle away their health pool. I don’t know why some people think that the length of a fight is synonymous with difficulty, but that kind of thought process confuses me deeply, as it has no basis in reality.

Difficulty has not changed, only unnecessary time investment has. Arenanet making minor quality of life changes is not the same as passing out free dungeon tokens to anyone that knows how to push 1 and AFK (although that is how I usually finish TA).

Relax.

My group just did this dungeon. Cleared everything out, had absolutely no trouble with it, killed the Howling King with ease. Unfortunately the server decided not to register that kill.

All of the xp, cash, and tokens just disappeared into the void for five people. Real nice. I’d rather go back to only getting screwed out of half my dungeon rewards instead of all of them.

Anyone else encountering things like this as of today’s patch?

Sebulon.7683:

@Nethelli

Did you kill any crystals or just ignored them?

Completely ignored them, and the pink knockdown crap, and the purple fire orb thing, and everything else. Just tunnel vision on the boss.

Stobor.8041:

They’ve already said blatant “speed runs” of like 15 minutes are gunna punish you.

The kitten is that , if i can run in 15 min why shouldn’t I ?

There once was a kindergarten teacher beloved by her class. One day, she gave her students paper and crayons and told them to draw whatever they wanted. The children were thrilled, and set to work drawing, and it was pretty great.

A short time later, while most of the children were still hard at work drawing their lopsided houses and stick figure families, the teacher noticed a few children wandering around the classroom looking bored. She asked them why they weren’t at their desks, and the children replied, “We finished our drawings”.

The teacher looked over the childrens’ artwork. It was as good as anyone else’s, but she couldn’t accept that the children were able to accomplish the task she set for them in such a short amount of time, so she sent them to time out.

The children didn’t understand why they were being punished for doing what they had been told, and they grew to resent the teacher for a punishment that they considered unfair.

And then the rest of the half-baked metaphor goes here.