Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

another topic by me. I didn’t see something similar yet, so I decided to post constructive criticism on the HotW dungeon set.

I won’t say it looks bad, that’s up to everyone to decide for themselves, but I guess I can allow myself to say that it doesnt look like I would expect a set from said dungeon to look. In other words, it looks underwhelming.

Agreed, the CoF set looks very special due to the particle effects, but after seeing all the Icebrood and Sons of Svanir, especially the bosses in HotW, I am kinda curious about why the HotW set doesn’t resemble their appearance in the slightest. Let me give you some examples on how the HotW armor could (/should :|) be improved:

1. let it emmit some icy mist, like a blue counterpart to the CoF set; or
2. add chunks of ice to the armor in all variations. The weapons look totally different from the armor, I’d like the armor look more like the weapons; or
3. make the armor change parts of the characters body. The bosses show body features that have been partially changed into blue ice instead of flesh. This looks incredibly cool (haha) on the mobs, why can’t the players look cool as well?

This would, in addition, solve more issues I personally see in HotW. The dungeon is pretty straight forward without any extremely exciting mechanics and to make things worse, the bosses have very high HP and you most often find Glacial Cores and LoNestones (yeah that spelling mistake hasn’t been fixed yet) and I don’t think many exciting or at least wanted weapons, be it legendary or something else from the Mystic Forge, need Glacial LoNestones. If on top of that the gear isn’t in any way like one would expect it, considering the looks of all the mobs inside, it doesn’t take a genius to explain why it is hard to find a group for that particular dungeon.

Changing the armor rewards to an awesome collection wouldn’t fix the issues I have with the dungeon itself, but it would make it much more worth completing.

Thank you for the insight. So I actually have to decide whether to use Wrath or Icebrood Slaying in HotW.

Question remains in CoE. There is not a single Asura to be fought, therefore my question, if the golems count towards Inquest or not?

When talking about creative, the biggest “problem” for creating challenging dungeons is the downed state. People are not punished for mistakes by instant death, and can be revived by others, which is – again – very easy if the group is hugging (don’t get me wrong, some bosses in multiple dungeons have very effective anti-grouping capabilities ;P). A good example for nice and “theoretically challenging” mechanics is the brazier room in CoF path 1. Everyone has to fight and hold his ground for a specific time on his own. If someone dies, the step can’t be completed, and noone can actively help downed players without risking the whole thing. Coordination mechanics are the most challenging at the moment, especially in random groups.

What I would like to see more often are mechanics that require the single player to be good. I don’t want solo dungeons, I just want to make dungeons more difficult regarding micro management instead of communication with randoms. Let me give an example from Runes of Magic. A specific boss had different stages the changed periodically. During one of them 2 small tube like areas spawned at 2 of 5 possible locations in the room. Running into them applied a buff to the player. Some seconds after the areas spawned, the boss would use an infinite range AoE that dealt 110% of the maximum player’s health as damage and was unblockable. Which means, if you didnt get into the small area in time, you were dead. And you were really dead, not just downed. The other phases of the boss required the group to move, so it was always very challenging to react fast enough.

Another example. In the same dungeon, in addition to some other skills that had to be dealt with, a boss applied a debuff on the player that had the aggro (the tank cough). One of the other members had to run to a specific location, pick something up and run to the affected player. If that didnt happen fast enough, the tank would be dead in an instant.

This would require a small amount of coordination, but a huge amount of personal skill, depending on the players experience. With the current system of being able to die up to 7 times without any actual influence on the game some dungeons are kinda zergable, respawn and attack, die, respawn, repeat. Of course, the better the players, the less they die. That’s a normal development. I understand that Anet wants a bigger amount of players to enjoy dungeons than only a handful of hardcore gamers and that is ok. But why couldn’t there be some more challenging dungeons?

Another thing. The Halloween event had a very interesting jumping puzzle to offer, the clock tower. I would like to see a boss fight one day on moving platforms. Or with minor jumping requirements. Maybe even with a time limit. I mean, why not? In no other game trial and error was so forgiving like it is in GW2, so why don’t raise the skill bar?

Coming to the original point of this topic, I want more creative boss fight mechanics. Funnily enough, the more fun mechanics can be found in the story modes of the dungeons, for example CoE or CoF. This hurts the long term motivation, slightly. I want the fights to evolve beyond the current “nuke, dodge, nuke, dodge, nuke” in some cases or “nuke, kill adds, nuke, kills adds, nuke” in other cases. I want more focus on the skill of single players, not all at once, but at least one at a time.

I know that it is already a challenge for many people to time dodges right. Or to even realize when to dodge. But I am not talking about making everything much harder. maybe that will be a negative side effect, but I just want everything to be more creative, fun and offer new and exciting challenges that people simply can’t “hug” away.

Hello, sorry for the long post. Please read the whole thing.

I finally decided to post my thoughts in here. I want to talk about the dungeons in GW2. I want to avoid discussions about difficulty, because that’s a very subjective topic and I don’t want to waste this thread on talking about stuff that is already being fought over in numerous other places.

The dungeons are still fun for me, but the more I play them, the more flaws appear in the mechanics of the dungeons in general and of the boss fights in particular. An example for good and interesting mechanics can be found in CoF path 3 or in CoE (I didn’t go into Arah explorable yet, because the gear doesn’t bother me, I can only talk about the other dungeons). After 2 month I am pretty used to move around, but of course this is still something much better than other MMOs have to offer. But now that I am used to it, I want Anet to utilize it even more. Some examples.

Subject Alpha was considered a pretty hard enemy and the reason for that is the number of different things one has to care about. The Graveling boss in AC path 1 has an interesting combination of spawning ads and a huge AoE. So far so good. How does one fight them in the most efficient way? Hug them. Means, all players stand where the boss stands, heal each other, kill every add with multiple overlapping AoEs and simply dodge harmful AoEs periodically. Suddenly hard bosses become a hugfest and pretty simple. One could say that this is just a strategy that evolved because players started to learn and I am ok with that. But it raises questions on more creative ways to make things happen.

The dungeons that are not “huggable” are e. g. CM, TA and CoF, partially and that is good. That the “tree boss” fights in TA are too easy for a “final” boss compared to the stuff before is another topic. Now, a more creative approach for AC would be to let the adds spawn around the boss, not basically under it. Every hugging team would simply kill the adds in 1 second and damage the boss in addition. Making the adds spawn around the boss would make the encounter more challenging without adding totally new requirements to the dungeon group.

I recently stumbled across the fact, that the dungeon weapons’ sigils have rather specific description regarding the group of mobs they let you do more damage against. Several questions arose, for example about the Sigil of Seeking (% more damage against Inquest), because technically there is not a single Inquest to be fought in CoE, only golems, Subject Alpha, Husks, an Icebrood boss and a destroyer boss etc. I looked up the achievement section “Slayer” to see what kinds of enemies are listed there. Let’s just sum up the most important questions.

1. Gravelings in AC count towards ghosts and are therefore affected by the AC sigil, is that correct?
2. Does that mean that the sigils in dungeon weapons are useful for every single enemy in the respective dungeon? E. g. is the Sigil of Seeking working against the destroyer boss in CoE and the golems as well?

And 3. disregarding the first two questions, what is the difference between Sigil of Wrath (% more damage against Sons of Svanir) in the HotW weapons and the Sigil of Icebrood Slaying (which you can craft)? Since there are only Icebrood in HotW, does that mean the Sigil of Wrath is completely useless in the dungeon? The “slayer” achievement section only lists Svanir’s Bane, not specifically Icebrood. So, why are there 2 different sigils for probably the same stuff?

Answers would be much appreciated.

I can confirm inconsistent respawns of Orichalcum ore at least for Malchor’s Leap. Ring of Fire here. At least one Orichalcum ore has already respawned although I farmed it after the internal server refresh. Other Orichalcum nodes on the same map didn’t respawn yet.

It is one thing to up the spawn time to 24 – which is definitely good and bad at the same time (good since it should be a rare material and bad because people who got to level 80 later than others have a big disadvantage now) – but having the nodes respawn inconsistently is a completely different thing. I can’t stand that situation. Especially since I am farming them with multiple characters and start to lose track about when I farmed one with which char this way.

Hey,

I just had the idea how awesome it would be to be able to be a Risen for a day, a weekend or just an event.

It would essentially mean that one could play a Risen for a while in Straights of Devastation, Malchor’s Leap or Cursed Shore. One would look like the usual mob and have the same abilities the mobs normally use, like pulling ppl to them as the Putrifier does or immobilize ppl like the Acolyte is capable of. At entering one would be placed at a random point in the map, amongst other Risen that would also normally be there, but this time they would be allies. There could even be other players, only those who chose to be a Risen could of course see if a Risen is actually controlled by a player or just a mere NPC. There could be objectives ppl would fight over or it would just be for the lulz of having a temporarily and totally imbalanced WvW experience in the PvE zones. Of course, the Risen controlled by players would also just have the normal HP and damage output, hence be inferior to the normal players, but could team up to prove an unpredictable and dangerous foe.

This would serve several purposes. First, it could be an incredibly funny experience, maybe even for both side. The parameters at which this happens need to be worked out by Anet first of course, like the maximum number of players able to switch into a Risen and such. Second, it could prove to be a decent alternation to the zones people have gotten quite accustomed to in the meantime. Third, it would probably make traveling the zones difficult, but this time it’s not (only) the number of enemies lurking around, but also the potential property of being controlled by a skilled player. I have seen complaints about the zones being to “easy”, since fighting the enemies would just prove tedious due to their numbers, not dangerous like some people would like them to be. Last but not least, it would show people how it feels like to be Risen confronted by the overwhelming power that is a player, which could help those who complain about the difficulty being to “high” to see how powerful they actually are when fighting the Risen mobs.

This is only a suggestion for adding a temporary WvW like element to one or more high level zones, it shouldnt be permanent. But I really like that idea. I would really like to haunt some people who think they can just run past me, hehehehe.

Let me know what you think of that idea.

Reducing the number of enemies would just make it even easier to run straight past them. Orr is meant as an area where you eventually have to fight if you want to get to something specific. What running past everything leads to can be seen in the dungeons, where people are unable to dodge the most obvious AoEs or even to using their few abilities they have.

There is some learning involved in this game and if you want the Orichalcum, you will have to be able to fight an enemy or two.

kitsuneshoujo.5734:

My problem with Anets handling of the mobs isnt so much the numbers, but the fact that they all seem to be melee, with a smattering of… rangers here and there. I cant remember having ever encountered a mesmer or a elementalist mob.

So when you get into a fight with say, 4 bandits, they ALL have thief skills, so they chain Steal. Which is extremely frustrating. Or Risen Brutes that all use 2h mauls and just pound away on you with stuns.

There was no thought put into the mobs at all by my estimation. “Melee mobs for all! lol”

Wow. This is exactly what I meant. There is something called running and dodging. The brutes need at least 2 seconds to channel their knockdown. If you cant dodge that I have an advice for you regarding getting better. There are enough enemies out there that make you vulnerable, blind you and may even apply confusion. And Acolytes, Wizards and multiple others are ranged.

I honestly don’t know how people are playing that have problems with their gold amount, but I played 3 chars to 80 so far by PvEing only and have no idea what you are talking about.

As for my second and third chars, I salvaged everything light and medium and sold everything else. Metal is something I don’t need to get by salvaging, I can easily farm it and I don’t need all the different weapons. By the time I got to level 60 I had aprox. 5 gold. AFTER I purchased the second trait book. So you can as well count it as 6 gold. By the time I got 80 I bought some stuff already, but would have naturally been at 5 gold at least.

Doing events and/or killing stuff while gathering gives you enough items to easily balance out any waypoint fees and repair costs. Another hint at this point would be, stop dying so much and stop porting unnecessarily when you could easily walk (both are part of l2p, fyi).

I would be interested in how much money you expect to have at “least” at level 80 and why do you think that everyone having enough money for everything would even remotely be a sane approach to maintain a stable economy in this game. You can’t even make crafting profitable without gathering stuff yourself – which is ok, but it reflects the already far too low prices in the Trading Post for exotic gear.

Furthermore, there is so much to find that you can sell for money. Dyes, doubloons, you can salvage rare stuff for Globs you either use yourself or sell. Gather orichalcum and ancient wood and sell it. Mystic weapons require a laughably small amount of materials to obtain. Every second char I see has exotic gear already. Please tell me why there should be even more money for you.

And one last comment on the gem-gold-exchange. It was primarily built in to provide people, who don’t want to spend money on this game after launch a possibility to get some gemstore stuff after acquiring some gold through playing. The other way around can’t be that far away in terms of exchange rate or everything would get ridiculous. And ArenaNet needs some money made by the gem store. If one would get 8 gold for 10 bucks this game would definitely be a game where you buy 50 bucks for your full gear instead of playing the game.

issacTheMarker.8530:

1.) your income does not scale up as you level sadly. Cost of way points and repairs does scale up.

…

3) If i were so bold i think at 80 minimum you should be earning 50s to 1g per DE. Flat rate for way points like others have mentioned. Repair system should be adjusted as well.

This is a hot button issue that needs to be addressed soon.

1.) It scales up as well. You get 1,5 silver for every single DE beyond level 70. In addition to the items you find and sell while doing them. Do a random event chain with 5 events within 30 minutes and you have enough money to port everywhere on Tyria, repair your full set of armor and still get aways with some profit. Stop lying pls.

3.) Absolutely ridiculous. 50 silver for spending 5 minutes zerging some spider hatchlings? Are you kidding me? 1 gold per DE? Do you even play the game beyond worrying about waypoint fees and repair costs? There is a quadrizillion other stuff you need money for at level 80, much more money than 1,5 silver waypoint fee. Acquiring exotic gear is already easy. Stop making it even easier. There should be some value in having it you know.

Oh and btw, the stuff I just talked about would just go up in price. The sword that sells for 200 gold right now would then cost 2k gold. Good job.

And can anyone explain to me why I got 1 (in words: one) mithril each out of three rich mithril veins in Malchor’s Leap before they were exhausted?

If the respawn timers go up it’s ok. Rare stuff should stay rare. Prices go up, so that will balance itself out. But why do I get 1 mithril out of a rich vein?

I am playing this game since launch and since my last MMORPG experience is quite old, I just let the game show me how it thinks stuff is supposed to be. Therefore there are many things that don’t really annoy me directly, but if I spend some time thinking about it, I have to agree with myself that something could actually be done.

This time it is about my inventory and the icons in the game. Whenever I did some events and such, my inventory gets to a point where it is almost full, and even if not, I always tend to carry stuff around that I COULD need eventually, but then I dont. The problem I have with all of that is, that since several icons are shared between different items, I would like to have an option to see what is white, blue, green, yellow or orange in my inventory without having to find an NPC where I get a nice list after clicking on “sell”.

My idea would be something I saw in other games already – colored borders for icon. They would obviously have the same color as the rarity they have, e. g. yellow for rares. This way I could instantly recognize what is actually in my inventory, especially since I only spam F during events without looking. It would as well help seeing what items I actually equipped and maybe even underline how awesome I am, since visual details are the most obvious ones and I like having exotics all over the hero window.

It may not be a big issue for some people, but on the other hand it shouldn’t really be that hard to implement as well and would give me at least something to cheer about.

I attached a modified ingame screenshot to explain what I am talking about. Maybe one could even add an option to sort the inventory by rarity. But that’s only a suggestion. If this has already been suggested I apoligize, but since it still isn’t implemented, I guess a reminder can’t hurt. :P