Guild Wars 2

Intigo.1653:

The Clocktower was amazing. Anyone complaining about it is clearly not aware that they don’t need to finish every single thing in the game.

It also wasn’t that hard.

I still don’t think people were complaining about difficulty on the clocktower, just that having 10 other people in the instance made it irritating.

For me personally, here’s my feedback on this event.

1. Clocktower – I thought this was a neat puzzle. It took me a while to get through it, but that was partly because when I stopped having fun, I would go murder things in the Labyrinth for a while. A lot of people insisted it had to be difficult due to the rewards, but the rewards were some exotics with sub-par stats, and they didn’t have a unique skin either. I also don’t really think a timer in the form of the mist was necessary. Most people weren’t failing due to being too slow but because of a mistimed jump. I think capping the number of people a little lower, maybe 5, would have reduced a lot of the issues people seemed to have.
2. Pumpkin Carving – This probably felt like the most grindy aspect of the event, and it wasn’t particularly fun. I found this to be a missed opportunity where Master Carver NPCs could be hidden around the world, and carving each of their pumpkins would reward the title. Would’ve gotten people out more instead of having them chugging through overflow servers with alts just to get the 150.
3. PVP stuff – I absolutely loved Reaper Rumble and Lunatic Inquisition so more of these in the future please!
4. Weapon Skins – This is probably the one thing in this event I was ultimately displeased with. I dumped some cash at the start of the event into gems to buy keys for the billion Black Lion chests I’ve had sitting around for two months. I bought 15 keys and got lucky enough to get 3 spares out of chests for a total of 18 keys. Zero skins. So later there’s the post about using boosters to make chests. Out of another 15 Mad King chests, no skins. That doesn’t really entice me to spend more money on gems for keys when after spending $20 and every spare mat in my bank nets me no rewards. If these are ultra rare, that’s fine, but in that case, why not just set them as an ultra-rare out of Personalized Trick or Treat Bags? More opportunities to get them without handing them out in a simple way means less people will be salty after spending money on keys.
5. Exotic Weapons – I thought these were cool but making them require what is essentially legendary-equivalent mats seems a little off to me. For a mini event, I guess I’d have expected them not be such a huge pain to craft. I think it’s cool they were available later off the chest in Ascent to Madness, but that was somewhat of a short-lived portion to the event.

Overall, I thought it was a well-done first effort by Arena Net. I think that a few minor changes in the future will make the upcoming holiday events even better!

SpectacularYak.6518:

Roctod.7290:

This is a really really really bad attitude to take. Sorry, but, uh, yeah, everything should be able to be completed by 100% of the playerbase. If you cater to a small crowd of blowhards who insist everything must be difficult and can only be achieved through hours of grinding, a huge majority of players become disillusioned with the game.

If they don’t find the game fun, they stop playing. When they stop playing, they aren’t supporting the game through expansion purchases or gem store goods. And what should be more relaxed and fun than a simple holiday event?

I mean, I haven’t tried Reaper Rumble yet (couldn’t get into it for some reason), but Lunatic Inquisition is pretty much one of the most fun things I’ve done in this game.

Normally I favor the “casual” argument in video game, because I hate gamer elitism with every fiber of my being. Not only is it obnoxious to listen to, but it makes the community look like idiots. Who brags about games? Idiots do.

But your paragraph 2 is appalling. Am I to understand that if these hypothetical casual gamers come across a single jumping puzzle in a holiday event that lasts a week and change that is too difficult, or too fussy, or too glitchy for them to fully enjoy, that they will UP AND QUIT THE GAME? And not buy any expansions, or return at any juncture? Because of this one puzzle? That, if the forums are any indication, plenty of people actually like?

I guess I probably don’t need to tell you what I think about that.

Don’t get me wrong, I think people saying “I can’t do this therefore I’ll quit!” is a little extreme. Using the extremes is somewhat disingenuous to the point at hand when the majority of people are just saying “I don’t enjoy the clock tower stuff for [reason].”

Like I’ve said, I personally don’t really have much of a problem with the clock tower, beyond not really seeing the purpose of the mist.

Erika.8256:

Roctod.7290:

Rainfall.4017:

Then the simple, blunt answer is that you just won’t be able to complete it. All content does not come with a pre requisite that it must be able to be done by anyone no matter what. As others have noted in this thread, it’s very doable. Nerfing it would make it trivial. This is a learning process, but if after 5 hours you aren’t nearly completing it, or progressing, then it just isn’t for you.

This is a really really really bad attitude to take. Sorry, but, uh, yeah, everything should be able to be completed by 100% of the playerbase. If you cater to a small crowd of blowhards who insist everything must be difficult and can only be achieved through hours of grinding, a huge majority of players become disillusioned with the game.

If they don’t find the game fun, they stop playing. When they stop playing, they aren’t supporting the game through expansion purchases or gem store goods. And what should be more relaxed and fun than a simple holiday event?

I mean, I haven’t tried Reaper Rumble yet (couldn’t get into it for some reason), but Lunatic Inquisition is pretty much one of the most fun things I’ve done in this game.

I guess you’ve never played any real games, have you now? Just your statement that everything should be completed by everyone is pure genius.
Kind of the same as the OP of this thread.

Let’s put it this way, if Player Y lost all his fingers except 1, every gaming company MUST nerf the content so it can be played with only 1 finger right?

I mean let’s face it, he is one of the gamers playing the game.

And for the love of god, stop talking in the name of others. Who are you to dictate who wants what?

Now to end the sarcasm caused by one of the most wrong statements ever said, let’s move on to why i actually bothered posting here in the first place.

I loved this jumping puzzle. It was exciting, frustrating, fun, addictive. After learning where and how to jump, i didn’t give a kitten about norns, charrs or anything else.

It was a great experience, to actually work for something. One of the few things you actually need to work (not grind) for. I advise everyone to try it – it’s not as hard as it looks, it just requires you to remember where you jumped and how.

hm

Roctod.7290:

Nobody here is interested in hearing you lord your video game achievements over other people.

Mezgejas.2670:

Unhappy/frustrated always sound louder, simple as that. And they spend more time raging on forums then actually trying to think how can they improve doing whatever.

Disparaging legitimate concerns with the game doesn’t improve anything either.

Wisdomandlore.6031:

I did it on my Asura. It is definitely difficult. It reminded me of playing Donkey Kong Country Returns. However, I do not see the problem with the event. It is designed to be difficult. The word “achievement” has connotations that have unfortunately been water down. It is part of an optional event. The Clock Tower does not prevent people from experience any part of the game or the Halloween event except for the Clock Tower.

I understand that not everyone is good at platforming, but every part of the game does not need to be accessible to every type of gamer. I don’t care for the PvP, so I will most likely never get the PvP achievements, or even the monthly achievements since they have PvP components. But this doesn’t bother me, because there are many other areas of the game that are accessible to me and that I enjoy. This type of complaining will only serve to water down the game and make it a generic experience.

But the difference is you can still access the PvP and get those parts if you want. People who are having latency/character blocking/platforming problems can’t get these parts right now. And it doesn’t feel like an achievement; it feels like a chore.

Honestly I think if the number of characters per instance was cut down, the latency and platforming problems would resolve themselves pretty quickly. Beyond that, I don’t understand why the mist timer is on it in the first place. Most people aren’t getting beaten by the timer, they’re screwing up the jumps they would normally anyway.

When a lot of people are saying “hi we don’t think this is fun,” then I feel pretty confident saying that it isn’t fun and probably not optimally designed.

SolarNova.1052:

Roctod.7290:

Rainfall.4017:

Then the simple, blunt answer is that you just won’t be able to complete it. All content does not come with a pre requisite that it must be able to be done by anyone no matter what. As others have noted in this thread, it’s very doable. Nerfing it would make it trivial. This is a learning process, but if after 5 hours you aren’t nearly completing it, or progressing, then it just isn’t for you.

This is a really really really bad attitude to take. Sorry, but, uh, yeah, everything should be able to be completed by 100% of the playerbase. If you cater to a small crowd of blowhards who insist everything must be difficult and can only be achieved through hours of grinding, a huge majority of players become disillusioned with the game.

If they don’t find the game fun, they stop playing. When they stop playing, they aren’t supporting the game through expansion purchases or gem store goods. And what should be more relaxed and fun than a simple holiday event?

I mean, I haven’t tried Reaper Rumble yet (couldn’t get into it for some reason), but Lunatic Inquisition is pretty much one of the most fun things I’ve done in this game.

Actally Roctod

Your view point is the bad one. Its your type of view that has caused games to become as easy as they are today compared to how they used to be. And unfortunatly its been that way for so long now that anyone who got into gaming in the past 13 or so years now thinks these easy games (which they consider normal) are how thigns should be.. and that anything remotly harder. .is wrong. There must be somthing in the distance ot strive for difficulty wise. .otherwise its all just trivial and jus t thereo t waste time..whch as it stands. .most games are like.
This 1 JP puts back in somthing to strive for ..somthing to get mad about and annoy you ..till finaly ..you manage to reach it and the heavens sing as you feel great that you’ve achieved somthing that for you was incredibly hard. Do you really not want to feel that fealing ? ..if you dont wanna feel it ..you have no clue what yor missing and i feel sorry for u.

It’s not a feeling of “yes I did it!” for a lot of people. It’s a feeling of “ugh that’s finally over.” This is not how you want a lot of people to feel.

Nobody is complaining because the jumping puzzle is hard, they are complaining because it isn’t fun. Personally, I know that the majority of the time that I fail this clocktower, it’s because I mistimed a jump. But there’s also been cases where I botched a jump because six other players are on a 10-pixel-wide platform, and I misjudged where the edge was. I’ve also gotten hung up on doodads because I play a bulkier char.

When I stop having fun, I just go off and do something else for a bit then come back. I’m not asking for this game to be Babby’s First MMO Lite, I’m just sticking up for the people who aren’t enjoying this and explaining their positions, so you can take your die-hard elitism and misdirected rage at “casuals” elsewhere. Nobody here is interested in hearing you lord your video game achievements over other people.

I don’t mind the timer so much, as I feel like I can get ahead of it quite a bit in the second leg now that I have the path down pretty good for some of it. I’d like to see the player limit capped to maybe 5 or something if they won’t make it a solo instance though.

Rainfall.4017:

Then the simple, blunt answer is that you just won’t be able to complete it. All content does not come with a pre requisite that it must be able to be done by anyone no matter what. As others have noted in this thread, it’s very doable. Nerfing it would make it trivial. This is a learning process, but if after 5 hours you aren’t nearly completing it, or progressing, then it just isn’t for you.

This is a really really really bad attitude to take. Sorry, but, uh, yeah, everything should be able to be completed by 100% of the playerbase. If you cater to a small crowd of blowhards who insist everything must be difficult and can only be achieved through hours of grinding, a huge majority of players become disillusioned with the game.

If they don’t find the game fun, they stop playing. When they stop playing, they aren’t supporting the game through expansion purchases or gem store goods. And what should be more relaxed and fun than a simple holiday event?

I mean, I haven’t tried Reaper Rumble yet (couldn’t get into it for some reason), but Lunatic Inquisition is pretty much one of the most fun things I’ve done in this game.

Reevac.1748:

Haven’t run TA post patch. Im more curious as to the worms range. They already had ridiculous range to begin with.

The range is kind of silly. When I ran it last night, the vine furthest back was still able to hit people who were standing near the entrance of the arena. It also felt to me like they respawned a bit quicker. We had to kinda readjust since in the past, I’ve always just killed all 5 vines then killed the boss, and you have maybe two vines up when the boss is about to die.

Last night we had all 5 respawn before the boss was at half health.

NinjaKnight.1340:

There are parts of the event that are fun. But unfortunately the Chest fiasco has many PAYING customers very angry.

I had though about buying some keys but when I saw the threads with the ridiculously low drop rates… well.

I did end up buying a Witch outfit. That was great but I fear the value of the brawl will diminish due to lack of awards, not even anything tiny, for using up Tonics etc.

I have experience with marketing and when this many customers are unhappy it isn’t a good thing. For every single unsatified customer will tell at least 10 friends (industry stats). Maybe more due to the ease with which info spreads now.

Yeah, I mean. To clarify, I did like the phase one event with the memoir. It got me out into parts of the world I had never been to, and I had fun trying to puzzle out the clues, although I had to look up one because I am unfamiliar with the lore of the game.

The abysmal drop rates from the chests are a little grating though.

Sahriah.3792:

This is the problem right here. Instead of being a responsible adult and waiting to buy keys to see what the drop would be like, they rushed in going GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME.

“Heh you assumed this event would be fun and interesting, way to expect everything on a silver platter” is pretty much how I would interpret this.

Is there some reason that feeling left out of some neat cosmetic items is considered “entitlement,” “whining,” or “immature?”

Last I checked, I spent money on the CE of this game like the rest of you. Spending $20 on the gem store for keys to a bunch of Black Lion chests to try and join in the fun, only to get absolutely nothing neat out of it doesn’t exactly endear me to the idea of spending more money to get another 40 mystery tonics. Even after using all those tonics and some boosters that were collecting dust on Mad King chests, I didn’t get anything but another 100 candy corn and some mummy/skeleton tonics.

I don’t really understand why everyone insists these things must absolutely be a grind other than to lord the fact they got really lucky over other people. Other games have holiday events that everyone gets a chance to get into and have fun and get some guaranteed goodies. But if I want the chance to get those things without having to dump a fortune into the gem store or pray to the RNG gods, I’m a whining, immature player with entitlement issues?

It’s possible that maybe the upcoming events will have the things I want, and that’d be great. But I’d also like a couple skins without having to dump my entire bank, real or virtual, into it. I don’t think that’s a whining or entitled statement; it’s just me saying “hey, Arena net, I also paid for the game and want to have fun.”

They are probably keeping mum because if they start talking about changes that aren’t implemented because they can’t make it work or decide to go in a different direction, people will erupt with anger over “broken” promises.

Besides, a lot of the reasons people don’t find the dungeons fun or interesting have to do with core mechanics, and taking a second look at those is intense work.

Personally, I run mace/shield for dungeons. Originally, I was very meh about the shield for not having much of a tank-oriented blocking skill. Once I started playing with the idea of being support instead of a traditional tank, I found the shield to be very useful. The 4 skill can significantly reduce damage people will take on trash or bosses. I’d rather this be a general AoE than conical front wave, but as it stands, getting the Protection boon on melee players really helps. The 5 skill is really, really useful to soak a couple ranged shots then pop it for a not-insignificant heal.

I don’t think swapping these abilities with the Focus will do much. It’ll just make people complain about the Focus.

I like this skill a lot, personally, but you’re right in that it should probably be reworked to only affect player characters. It’s kind of annoying to be within range of my party in a dungeon, see someone get low, hit Merciful Intervention and…I teleport to the NPC that still has 50% health.

I think enough people will probably still be trying to grind out gear. I’m not entirely sure people will want to repeatedly farm 1000 tokens for all their alts, though. More incentives may be required, or perhaps old dungeons retuned as new dungeons are released.

Remember too that Selfless Daring scales 1:1 with Healing Power.

Silentstorm.7531:

I’m surprised no one really is interested in making a all defense build. I thought about it did it in a calculator and said nah lol.

I think ultimately this would be fairly useless. Since the game doesn’t have a traditional tank mechanic, you’d have little to offer in terms of helpful damage or improved utility.

LameFox.6349:

Seriously though… why, from a lore viewpoint, would any class have more or less innate ‘health’? I’m pretty sure the idea of stats is altogether external to lore.

If you want a hand-wavey explanation, it’s probably because the guardian is more akin to a spiritual fighter and less a brute force, physically-powerful warrior. But I mean, it’s kind of a silly question. Why do bears in Blazeridge have more health than bears in Gendarran? It’s not like the bears are more powerfully trained in Blazeridge or something, it’s just a narrative and mechanical convention used to advance the game.

For the hundred millionth time, we don’t need an HP buff. We have a large array of defensive utility skills, this is why we aren’t chugging along with the same HP a warrior has.

But…this class doesn’t have an overwhelming population according to actual, empirical data. Maybe your server has an over-abundance of them or something, but there’s no need to get fussy and defensive when people say “Well…you probably just notice them cuz of confirmation bias, we’re actually a low-population profession.”

I think it’s still spotty. I’m assuming it’s got to do with how the server checks client positioning info, and you can goof it in a couple ways. You can somewhat see it to when occasionally Symbol of Swiftness won’t register you as having passed through it, presumably due to client/server latency.

That…is such an awful attitude to have about the game because it pretty much will end up with people saying “the game isn’t fun” and not playing anymore. People who aren’t playing aren’t buying gems or expansions, and people who get stonewalled in their first dungeon will say “gosh these dungeons just aren’t fun,” and then they don’t do the dungeons.

When they don’t do the dungeons, and there’s nothing really for them to do at 80 if they have explored and don’t like PVP, why will they stay in the game? Why throw around this kind of caustic and abrasive mindset? It doesn’t help you, it doesn’t help the other player, and it certainly isn’t helping Arena Net.

imbalancedhero.3968:

Dungeons are not meant to be easy the first time (especially if you dont have an experienced dungeon runner) but they will get easier as you do them over and over again. I remember when I first runned AC story with my buddies it took about 4 hours to the point of having to send each other money for repairs because some of us were running out. Nowadays when we do the dungeon again (usually to help out a new guildie) we joke around a lot and it doesnt seem hard at all. We’re at the point that when someone goes down we will emote the /laugh @ at them before rezzing at the last second.

My point is that even a dungeon that is hard for you has probably been done by somebody way more experienced who considers it way too easy. The whole idea of a dungeon is to “challenge yourself” anyway and if you can cruise through them on the first try then it would just be a mindless grindfest for chests and tokens.

I think the problem here is they’ve already become mindless grindfests, which is why there’s now a diminishing return for tokens in explorables.

I mean, sure, the things someone considers hard is a thing another person will consider easy, but I think we can look at a lot of overall dissatisfaction with the dungeon design and say “Something is amiss.”

I personally haven’t done CM explorables but I think that CM story, AC story, and a fair portion of Twilight Arbor story and explorable are pretty well-balanced. I’d like to see more of this kind of dungeoneering, and less of the “hope you set aside an entire evening to bash your head against the wall” design.

I’m actually running kind of a variant of that, built around mace/shield and hammer. It’s 10 Radiance with Healer’s Retribution, 30 Valor with Retributive Armor/Glacial Heart/Monk’s Focus, and 30 Honor with Writ of Exaltation/Writ of the Merciful/Battle Presence.

The mace symbol does double healing with Writ of the Merciful, and with Exaltation/Merciful, getting three swings off with the hammer is a huge bonus to melee players. Mace/shield provide nice defensive options while the hammer lets me get in to provide some offensive support.

I tend to juggle my utility skills but since I have Monk’s Focus, I do my best to keep at least two Meditation skills at a time. Usually it’s Merciful Intervention and Smite Condition. For elite, I tend to run Tome of Courage for emergency situations or pull out the charrzooka if some ranged damage works better.

For as much as I dislike the current dungeon design, I actually think the story mode for Caudecus Manor is one of the more interesting and well-designed dungeons. Assuming it is story mode you have issues with, I can give you the tips that helped my guildmates and I burn it in around 50 minutes or so.

• For the bomber pack in the basement, drag them back up to the area where you fight the door guard. This makes the kegs more readily apparent and thus easier to dodge.

• Chain-control the snipers either via Blind, Weakness, or Reflects.

• Be wary of the two dog packs which have 5 second fear on short cooldowns

• Pull the next group of dudes around the tree to force LOS issues with the snipers

I don’t think I’d be quite so bothered by the loot or the token requirements if the dungeons didn’t feel like such a chore. I mean, in other games you’d have to get a billion tokens or points to get armor, but the process had the right mix of time, challenge, and enjoyment.

As far as dungeon gear having the same stats, I don’t really think that’s quite a problem. The idea here is to provide unique skins, not extra stats. The reward here is cosmetic, not practical. So I’m ok with this, but again, the trip there feels like a grind, which is not how timesinks should feel because it discourages play.

For example, the WvW exotics don’t really have the greatest stats, but they look unique. And the grind for tokens doesn’t feel like a grind since you can have fun getting into big fights if that’s your thing, or you can play in a small, tactical group as well. So it never really feels boring because you’re always actively advancing towards your goal in an enjoyable manner.
MMOs will always be built upon a foundation of grinding, but the trick is to disguise the grind in a way that feels refreshing and interesting. In just about every other aspect, I feel Guild Wars 2 nails that metric perfectly. The dungeons just come along and feel lack luster or even like a chore that you “have” to do.

I actually don’t really mind the waypoint jogs, and at any rate, it’s better than how WoW used to be where if you died in a dungeon you had to respawn outside the instance, run all the way back (sometimes from across the zone), re-zone, and then back through the instance.

That being said, I got the impression they wanted dungeons to be balanced around the downed state and waypoint use so in that context, the waypoints are a little far off in some cases. The downed state is also kind of annoying because if someone gets wrecked and goes down, you’re more likely to get iced yourself when trying to rally that person. The mobs have pretty good AI and will try to target you while reviving (this is fine and makes reviving someone kind of a thrill) but the damage on AoEs and other abilities is so high you take a lot of damage quickly or the person just dies anyway (this is not fine).

Myst.9182:

As for the Greatsword nerf, Anet has messed around with something and the reason they gave for the nerf makes no sense. ie The problem: Retaliation, Answer: Move all the GS abilities around and increase the CDs of said abilities. Its all very confusing and frustrating for a lot of players.

It actually makes a lot of sense because it was pretty easy (and still is, really) to keep a high uptime on Retaliation. ANet apparently envisioned Retaliation as more of a short-term defensive buff instead of a constant offensive buff. The sword abilities were changed slightly to reflect that, mostly that Symbol of Wrath had its cooldown increased (probably to encourage weapon swapping instead of standing around with the Greatsword 100% of the time). The abilities are reordered to reflect cooldown length, like all other weapons in the game.

Torvarren.6295:

I don’t understand what you expect. Just saying do it better or do it different doesn’t cut it. What is your idea of what is boring? I’m not sure what you expect in the manner of mechanics. There is so much stuff going on here. I’ve seen people on the forums complain about “why do I need to know raid tactics to finish this?” and others saying “Why is this so easy?” I can name multiple boss mechanics already at play in this game, and this is just the starting phase.

I think, in some cases, the mechanics just…aren’t interesting really, and they are hidden behind a lack of information. For example, the second champion in Twilight Arbor summons the spiders that turn into poison clouds. The mechanic that they lose health naturally then explode has no real information to it nor an easy way to identify it. It took my group a few tries to realize it, and then upon that realization the fight becomes “run in circles for 10 minutes.”

Now, the lovers in Ascalonian Catacombs have an interesting mechanic that requires the group to coordinate and pay attention. It’s a challenging fight, and you can understand your mistakes. You can address what you did wrong and see that make a difference. Personally, I’d like more fights like this or perhaps the last encounter in Twilight Arbor story.

Polle.6908:

The mmo community is fragile. Look at any other mmo message board and I can guarantee you reading through some of the threads will be enough to make you go bald.

These forums are pretty much already at that point, I’m afraid. Not the guardian forum specifically (although there’s some posts that make me go “what”). But you don’t really have to look far to see the age-old monster of “hardcore vs casual” has already surfaced.

Which is kind of a shame, I like this game, but it’s a little irritating to give constructive criticism that is met with people stamping their feet and throwing tantrums or people demanding overpowering buffs to their own class.

It’ll heal you as well. I think it also pushes enemies back if they are on top of you when it’s activated.

I actually found that second champion to be really tedious. He does pretty much no damage so once we figured out “oh, the spiders are dying due to a mechanic, not aoe attacks” the fight became less hectic and turned into 10 minutes of running in circles whittling away his HP.

I may have found the last encounter a little more interesting if I wasn’t fed up with the dungeon(s) in general when we got to it. I think we got it on the second try and went with the order of Eir -> Zojja -> Rytlock -> Logan

I just started messing around with a mace/shield and hammer build that is mostly about getting up into melee range and dropping symbols everywhere to heal allies.

The staff works as a nice extra weapon to keep in the bags for the ranged Symbol of Swiftness as well. Still messing around, trying to decide if it’s worth stacking enough Precision/Toughness to make Glacial Heart useful. Also trying to hammer (heh heh puns) out if 30 points in Valor is worth it and focusing on Meditation skills, or if popping 10 out of Valor to put in Virtues and go for a more Consecration-focused build.

I really started to do this because I found I didn’t have much in the way of offensive power in my older support/heal build, and I get a little too happy when Banish knocks some joker off a cliff.

Agent Noun.7350:

Not everything in every MMO is meant for every player.

I’m sorry, but if everyone could reasonably accomplish everything in GW2 within a couple of months, it would have no long-term appeal for anyone but the most casual of players. That’s not okay, not for ArenaNet’s bottom line, and not for the games long-term health. In a game where everything is about cosmetics, players need to be allowed to feel special. If everyone has something, then nobody gets to feel special, and all that motivation is gone.

If legendaries had better stats than exotics, then I think you’d have a point. It wouldn’t be fair if people who sunk exponentially more hours into the game than you did could more easily defeat you in WvW (or do better in PvE) by virtue of simply having a more powerful weapon than you could ever hope to get your hands on. But they’re not. In fact, the stats on legendary weapons are kind of underwhelming—not everyone’s going to want power, vitality, and toughness on their weapon, and if they do, there are much easier ways to get those.

The motivation to get a legendary is only because they’re “special.”

I want to reiterate: if ArenaNet can come up with another way to get the legendary precursors that doesn’t rely on the Mystic Forge but keeps them just as rare and hard to get as they are now, I’m all for it. I can’t think of anything myself—the only ideas I have to keep them rare rely on RNG—but I’m not a game developer. But, as someone who doesn’t have a legendary precursor and might never have one, I am vehemently opposed to making them more common.

I guess it’s a catch-22 then because engineering the game to only “hardcore” players has the identical effect, which is that “casual” players leave the game anyway because they don’t want to spend a year farming gold or whatever.

The net effect on ANet’s bottom line is identical.

Not every item should be an option for most players. Anet got this one right. Regardless of whatever sensibilities people have to the label ‘legendary’ and how to obtaining, It’s hard to get for people that want a way to differentiate themselves but it’s not improving your performance compared to the ‘regular’ people that will use exotics. There isn’t an issue here.

It’s called a legendary for a reason. Only the most elite top level total nerds should be getting them. This isn’t world of warcraft where a legendary is something one person in every guild gets during a raid and before you know it everyone has one. Leave it as it is, it’s perfect. It gives the game an older MMORPG feel back when things actually took time to get and felt like accomplishments when you finally got them

While I don’t disagree that crafting the legendaries should be difficult and time-consuming, having this kind of attitude really isn’t helpful or useful to the game’s overall success. Pandering exclusively to a small portion of the population is a really easy way to burn out a much larger section of the playerbase.

Xhaine.4120:

stuff

The problem is that there are players who feel the time investment for these dungeons is not good. It’s not about blaming the game, and the thing I consistently see ignored by the “nope dungeons are totally ok, it’s all your fault” camp is when the people who have issues with the dungeons readily admit the dungeons become much simpler upon completion.

So the issue isn’t that the dungeons require strategizing, coordination, teamwork, or quick thinking. Players are ok with these. What isn’t ok is that, for what appears to be a significant pool of players, is the time it takes to get all these variables under control is not consistent with dungeon rewards nor does it provide an enjoyable atmosphere. Look at the thread about Arah, and people saying “yup took us 6 hours to complete Dwayna path.”

Six hours? Are you kidding me? That is absurd, and it’s not the first place I’ve seen the comment that Arah is insanely long. It would be different if this were, say, a raid instance like WoW or Rift that you complete over several days. Six hours, for me, is literally my entire evening after work. Assuming I don’t get up to eat or do some chores, I would have to dedicate the entire night to a single dungeon.

When I talk about players being “locked out” of content, this is what I mean. I simply don’t have the time to spend that much of a day inside a single instance. Nor do I want to. Now you couple the length with the fact that the trash monsters cause the dungeons to drag. Then consider that the mechanics are not immediately obvious to players who don’t have entire nights to dedicate to this stuff.

For my money, here’s what I think the best route to addressing the dungeons is:

• Cut the health and damage of trash packs.
• Make the modifiers clearer. For example, in AC Ghosteater, the graveling scavengers have the modifier “Leap” which is the same modifier that other monsters out in the world have. Except that the scavenger leap is actually an attack that pins someone to the ground and deals a massive chunk of damage. Or the summoned spiders by the second champion in Twilight Arbor, they have a “Poison” tag, but they don’t apply poison on melee hit like every other monster in the game with a Poison modifier. (Poor wording is an issue across the game, though, and you can see it in things like traits.)
• Take one of the boss mechanics a boss uses and attach a watered-down version to trash monsters, maybe two or three tops, before that boss. In this way, players can still learn strategies and coordination and mechanics, but it becomes more intuitive. A lot of these mechanics or abilities are seen nowhere else in the game, and the game doesn’t do much to teach them to you.
• Scale up the trash models by maybe 50% of player models, and scale boss models up by maybe 100%. Not everything needs to be the size of the first golem boss in CM Story, but some of the trash/boss models are so small that the animation tells get easily lost behind the player effects, monster effects, particle effects, melee characters, other monsters in the pack, or general things going on in the environment like enemy necromancer wells. Minor scaling modifications will help these be more visible, which will alleviate a lot of the (incorrect) concerns that bosses or trash monsters can one-shot people.

I’m all for letting these dungeons be challenging, but they have some Dark Souls caliber tuning issues right now. To me, the difficulty feels artificially jacked up instead of an honest challenge.

Ender.3508:

I understood perfectly what he meant. Still no one is locked out, his entire argument is based on the fallacy that dungeons take people 4 hours to do. Bullrabbit. It’s one thing to not do dungeons because you, yourself, are incompetent, and are unwilling to find a group and learn the encounters, its another to make up blatant rabbiting lies about the average run times of the average person. No one is locked out because everyone is capable of learning how to play, those who are unwilling deserve no pandering to by the devs.

Nobody is asking for pandering. You guys flipping out over how dungeons are totally ok are too busy being smug and condescending to realize that the average player is not enjoying these dungeons. You won’t stop to acknowledge the valid criticisms these players have, and you jolt immediately to insults. You call people incompetent, tell them they just need to learn to play, and make the implications they should just return to WoW or something.

I don’t want the dungeons to just turn into cakewalks. I want them to be honestly challenging. They are not honestly challenging in their current incarnation. The difficulty is hidden behind obtuse mechanics the player has never seen before, and coupled with the more robust aggro system, it leads to chaos. The dungeons are slogs, gauntlets of trash monsters that have too much health doing too much damage. It leads to pretty much either forming a permanent dungeon team that never does groups outside their group, or never doing dungeons at all because pugs will never survive. I won’t deny the dungeons, on a whole, become much simpler once you manage to get through them and figure out the tricks, but the stark reality is the huge brick wall players are hitting in these dungeons does not encourage repetition to learn from mistakes. It breeds frustration and discouragement, the opposite of what creates a fun atmosphere for the game.

This, in turn, leads to the game having an insular clique of The Goods who have the time to spend 3-4 hours learning a new dungeons (or less because apparently you’re all super geniuses who can deduce mechanics intuitively) lording their achievements over people they deem The Bads. The latter group stops enjoying the game, and let me assure you: this is the group that is paying lion’s share of the bills. When these players stop playing, and they will if they are not enjoying the game, the devs will have a lot less funding coming in.

These dungeons are not fun for a very apparent portion of the player base, and it is not a small portion. They did not buy this game to get stonewalled by abrupt jumps in difficulty. They did not buy this game so a group of people on the forums who mine Wikipedia entries and Youtube videos can claim supremacy over them. They bought it to play through and enjoy all aspects of the game. So before you decide to climb on your high horse about how easy the game is for you, remember that you alone were not the only person this game was sold to.

afflaq.3947:

average pug isn’t the intended demographic or the metric that 45 minute mark is designed for. Organized groups can do pretty much any of them well within that 45 minute mark, if not under.

Hate to break it to you, but the “average” player doesn’t want to spend four hours in a dungeon. And locking a huge majority of players out of content is something that just about every other MMO has figured out is a Bad Thing as it ultimately drives a huge portion of the playerbase out of the game.

I said this in another thread that got buried, but I want to like these dungeons. I really do, especially since I love the rest of the game. In fact, I think the move away from the holy trinity is a really interesting concept, and it works pretty well overall, I feel.

Unfortunately, these dungeons just ramp up the difficulty in a completely artificial way. They aren’t genuinely challenging, they are only hard because the monsters have unbelievable health pools coupled with abilities that can wipe you out in a couple of seconds. On top of that, the mechanics for the bosses are completely out of left field as the game makes no real attempts to teach you the mechanics otherwise.

For my money, I think the easiest solution would be to slash the health and damage of trash mobs. Then have the packs reflect the mechanics the bosses will use. Scaling up the models will also help see the animation tells that you’re supposed to be looking for. Some of the boss models are just small player models, and it makes catching the tells behind melee characters, player effects, monster effects, and particle effects incredibly tough.

I can’t think of a time that I’ve been legitimately one-shotted. That is true. However, I have been in situations where my health has dropped significantly. Last night while trying to help in AC Ghosteater, I pulled some ghosts during the mortar event. Knowing there was a ranger, I dropped my Wall of Reflection and pulled using the staff’s medium range orb (as a Guardian). The result?

I reflected the ranger but both necromancers dropped wells on me, and the elementalist firestormed me. Between the conditions the wells reapplied after Contemplation of Purity and fire storm, I lost so much health that when the reflection wall dropped, a trap shot from the ranger downed me.

Like I said in another thread, I really just think the trash needs its health/damage lowered a bit, and the modifiers need to either be clearer OR reflect boss mechanics. This will keep things challenging but it also means the mechanics aren’t hidden behind layers of “what did we do or should I have done?”

Well I think Arena Net is a private company, not a publikittenraded one so the stockholder thing is kind of a moot point.

There’s absolutely no reason for the dungeons to be as punishing as they are to large portions of the player base in their current forms.

Like I said, these dungeons do get easier once you figure out the patterns. The first time we tried CM, we got stomped. We went back a day later, without anybody having really changed much in terms of gear or traits, and pretty much steamrolled it.

But a lot of people are going to get discouraged. Many of my guildmates are real life friends, and we have all tried several ways to complete some of the dungeons to absolutely no success. This is discouraging. People who get discouraged don’t want to put more effort into something they are disillusioned with.

And it is really easy for people to get discouraged when trying several approaches over an entire evening, and their reward was paying for trait respecs and repair bills. People won’t return to that kind of environment.

If you want to consider them raids, then up the amount of players you can take into the instance?

There are legitimate issues with these dungeons, and they are not enjoyable for a huge portion of the player base. They are tedious and brutal if you make even a minor mistake.

Yes, they get much easier once you figure it out, but if people are getting stuck having to spend an entire evening just to learn one dungeon, they will stop running dungeons.

If they stop running dungeons, maybe they go out and explore the whole world over the course of a month. They hit 80, they don’t enjoy dungeons and maybe they don’t like PVP. Now they’ve explored the world map, but don’t really feel like leveling an alt. Where will they go?

Other games. That is not good for the continued success of GW2. This outright dismissal of people’s complaints by using WoW as an insult is not helpful to anyone.

It’s just weird timing, probably. I played through Mount Maelstrom in an evening, working to 100% the zone and only bumped into maybe two or three events. When I wandered over to Bloodtide Coast to start on that zone’s achievement, I’d sometimes have several NPCs calling me over at once to inform me about events all over the zone.

Cappy.2786:

“I won’t quit the game if every now and then I have to rethink my strategy.”

Problem is,most of casuals (even “hardcore”) will.Only people that care about the game and see their mistake will retry.While all the WoW kids will be like “this is stoopid,i payed for the game,i want everything!!!111”

I really think using a broad brush and painting people who have rational, legitimate complaints about the game as “WoW kids” is counter-productive. Like I said in the dungeon forum, if you tell someone to just “go back to WoW!” they probably will, and that is not good if you want GW2 to succeed.

As a note, I’m ok with some things taking forever to achieve, like a legendary weapon. These are still attainable even if you can only play for an hour a night, it’ll just take forever.

As for the game being challenging, that is fine as long as the challenge is real. Mega Man games were challenging because it relied on figuring out very set patterns. Zelda games were challenging because you had to think about puzzles. Demon’s Souls was challenging because you had to really pay attention and learn from your mistakes.

Dark Souls was challenging, but for entirely different reasons. The game was poorly optimized, causing frame rate stutters in certain areas. Many of the enemies had grapples and instant kills with wonky hitboxes. The bosses would often have really cheesy mechanics that made the encounters an exercise in frustration because even after you isolated their patterns, you’d do so little damage that a single, minor mistake would destroy you.

The former type of difficulty is excellent, the latter not so much. And the latter is where I personally feel the dungeons in the game are currently, an opinion many other people seem to share. I don’t want the game to just be a complete pushover, but these dungeons are not fun. I think I’d rather see them retuned to provide a good mix of enjoyment and challenge instead of playing with guildmates as we slog through a dungeon for 3 hours before deciding to stop because we aren’t enjoying it and walk out with practically no rewards for what time we did spend.

After trying more dungeon exploring tonight with guildmates, I’m going to reiterate my stance that these dungeons still need a serious tune-up, and frankly, I can’t see myself really bothering with anymore of them if they continue to exist as they are. After 3.5 hours of getting one-shot by trash mobs with special animations you can’t see with player effects going, getting punished by events that spawn too many monsters, and not finishing because we were frustrated, I walked out with about four items (a couple of blues and greens) and ultimately will have had to pay about 20 silver for the pleasure of doing the dungeon (7 silver for trait respecs and 13 silver in repair bills).

That’s not fun. That is not enjoyable, and it is not good game design in a game meant to appeal to thousands and thousands of people. I don’t want to spend 3.5 hours struggling through a dungeon full of obtuse mechanics and cheesy deaths.

The rewards and time investments are not acceptable here. I’m sure that a bunch of people, in their rush to be the first to declare themselves internet superstars, will tell me I’m bad and should just go back to WoW. Here’s the deal: that is not the attitude you should take if you want this game to succeed. Because people will go back to WoW if they aren’t enjoying this game, and you should want them to enjoy it because it means the continued success of this game.

I’m not asking for Arena Net to make these instances braindead, but they are not fun. I didn’t pick up this game because I wanted to get stuck trudging through a dungeon that takes all night. These are painful slogs that irritate a great number of players.

Booler.6598:

@roctod I just get kittened off because everything you elude to is that you want bosses to scream i’m going to destroy you now, i understand your post but if you look at wow as i mentioned the first time raids were done this is exactly what the people would be thinking one little slip up and bam entire team wiped with an extremely small window to do anything with UNTIL someone developed deadly boss mobs making everyone more lazy and less creative then becomes the dungeon standard to have this finger feeding program installed. Gw wont allow such programs and hence all of these things you claim you learn after 2 or 3 attempts will always take you 2 or 3 attempts there are no shortcuts to this, and i am glad there isn’t. Fun shouldn’t be determined by conquering simple mechanics but by achieving something difficult. an underlying reason people get no fun from these dungeons is the small rewards you just don’t want to do it again because you don’t really get anything from it especially an extremely rare drop. repair bills are fine no pain no gain. the thing i was trying to say is that if you do use out of the box tactics you can control aggro for small periods of time mostly long enough to make a difference if the weaker people in your group start taking damage walk right out of the room and return. i wont give you every out for every situation but that’s how we completed many of these and we all had fun. gl

No, I don’t want bosses to scream “I’m attacking you now” then give 5 seconds to get away. What I want is for the mechanics to be less obtuse and more easily accessible. The people who enjoy brutal learning curves with little to no margin of error and are willing to spend 4 hours learning a dungeon are a small minority. This is a game, not a second job. If I have to work late or run errands on a week night, should I just not be able to try a new dungeon since I can’t stay up til midnight just to slog my way through a dungeon of mechanics that have never been introduced before?

Nobody is asking for a DBM equivalent either, but do you know why DBM was created for WoW? It’s because the mechanics in vanilla were obtuse. Look at old Naxx40. That raid is, what, seven or eight years old at this point, and people STILL argue over how Patchwerk’s Hateful Strike mechanic functioned.

Look at AC story, and the lovers. Sure, the mechanic here is very obvious: split them apart. But you have no idea that’s the case until you get there, and you may not have realized you can use the heck out of boulders. Instead of having more generic, overpowered trash before them, why not set up a couple pulls of ghosts that provide buffs to each other when nearby? This gives the group the chance to learn mechanic, figure out a strategy, and coordinate better. Instead, you get stuffed by a chaotic fight wherein you can get completely wiped out by Ralena’s lightning storm before you even hit the dodge key while trying to deal with Vassar’s illusory mages while trying to keep them apart.

Or the second champion in Twilight Arbor who summons all the spiders. It took us a couple runs to figure out “oh, you’re supposed to kite the spiders” because the monster tag is “poisons” and that’s really unclear. I assumed they poisoned on melee strike. You know, like every other mob that has “Poisons” as a tag. Except nope, these are poison bombs that slowly lose health, which you also might not realize because the difference between “lose health naturally” and “lose health because I’m putting down damaging spells” is not noticeable. There’s no prep for this to be a kiting fight, and melee especially gets completely wrecked.

Again, if they stuck in a couple pulls with necromancers that summon spiders that detonate into poison AoEs, the mechanic would come out a little clearer. You see it, you learn it, and you do it without having your hand held or needing a mod. And even through all this, the creatures all still have too much HP. Once you figure out that champion, everyone can stay alive but it’s a 10 minute slog of people running around autoattacking with a ranged weapon while occasionally dropping a weapon or utility skill on him.

I like this game, and I enjoy a challenge. But I want the challenge to be a real challenge; I don’t want it to be artificially inflated due to cheesy mechanics and overtuned health pools.

Jack Angelfoot.2697:

You guys are right, our utilities are a lot better than our elites, since they don’t completely interrupt our gameplay as Guardians.
Right now, our elites interrupt gameplay to:

1. Sit on the sidelines, taking and giving no damage (we literally watch the game around us) so we can spend time recharging our virtues a little quicker.
2. Replace a bar we like with skills that are overpowered, over-recharged, and internally imbalanced. Like the tomes or hate the tomes, you have to agree that they are very disruptive. Sure, they can change the game, but it is in a bizarre, almost silly, way. One moment you are the front lines hack-and-slasher, the next you are an over powered monk, straight out of GW1, or a glass-cannon elementalist.

If I may be so bold, I think all three elites should be reworked. The point should be to make Renewed Focus better – it just has to be better, I would opt for any utility over this, as I tend to prefer the Virtue passives. And the Tomes should enhance gameplay rather than change it into something completely different.

Suggestions:
Renewed Focus – The Guardian sharpens his focus applying the Chilled effect to all burning enemies within AoE 10 seconds, and applying 5 seconds of Quickness to all allies. In the end, this is not quite as good for your team as the Mesmer elite, Time Warp, but the Chilled Effect – making use of the Guardian’s burning ability – would make up for the shorter duration.

Tomes – in my opinion – should accentuate, rather than replace the Guardian’s gameplay style. Thus, rather than replace all skills, perhaps they should be charged/channeled skills.

Tome of Wrath – Guardian reads from the Tome of Wrath for 3 seconds. After which nearby enemies take XX damage. The Guardian gains 5 stacks of Might, Fury, Swiftness and Vigor for 15 seconds. Allies gain 2 stacks of Might and Fury for 10 seconds. This is simply a much better version of buffing and AoE damage, something Guardians already do. The Channel time, makes the Guardian cautious about just spamming it on recharge.

Tome of Courage – Guardian reads from the Tome of Courage for 5 seconds. After which he is healed completely, and gains Protection, Retaliation, Regeneration, and Stability for 20 seconds. Allies are healed XX and gain Protection and Stability for 15 seconds. The full/group heal makes this better than any other allied buff the Guardian currently has available. Yet, it is not outside of his typical utility. Again, the channel time offsets the obviously powerful benefits.

If ArenaNet made these changes, the Guardian would be better. Not because his elites would be more powerful – many people probably would feel the current tomes pack more punch. But rather, he would be more himself. You wouldn’t have to try to revamp your play style each time you use the elites. They would become part of your playing style.

Please let me know if you like/dislike, or want to modify the ideas. I just want to give ArenaNet the best ideas possible.

How can you complain that the elites interrupt the flow of the guardian’s battle then suggest changing the tomes to something else that also interrupt the flow?

Renewed Focus applying Chill is nearly worthless to us. Having it grant you invulnerability while recharging the virtues means that you can get into the fray, use your Virtues and if you get into a pinch, you pop RF. You are now completely immune to damage for 3 seconds (5 if you take a trait) and all your virtues recharge which means you can now apply an AoE blind, heal yourself and grant regeneration, and gain protection and stability along with a block.

The Tome of Wrath is better as it is instead of giving a few stacks of buffs. The spammable burn on 1 is brutal against gate zergs, and you can already provide two buffs with it. You can also debuff allies. The 5 skill is more or less impossible to pull off against a group, sure, but it deals high damage coupled with a knockdown.

Having Tome of Courage channel for a few seconds into a full heal then going onto a long cooldown is worse as well. And granting 20 seconds of Stability can you not see how that is ridiculous for a few seconds of channeling? ToC in its current iteration grants you a spammable heavy heal, an enemy blind/ally condition removal, group buff, AoE stun and a full heal.

Our elites are pretty good the way they are, they just don’t accentuate literally every playstyle perfectly.

Dead.7385:

Words

Yeah, I’m sure the explorables aren’t quite as rough (in general). These dungeons just leave a bad taste because, in my opinion, they bleed over into “heartbreakingly difficult” due to seeing many of these mechanics for the first time in dungeons.

Sure, the Shadow Behemoth teaches you the GW2 equivalent of WoW’s old adage: Fire = Bad. And the giant at Nageling Point in Diessa teaches you to look for enemy animations to dodge. But the animations in dungeons are really really difficult to catch because they are often woefully short animations hidden behind players, player effects, ground effects, and particle effects. Take the rangers in Ascalonian Catacombs. Their “hey get away from this!” animation is the white smoke trailing behind their trap shot. I ran the story mode with guildmates several times before I actually realized “oh THAT’S how you dodge this stuff” because there was just so much going on.

I don’t much mind if the dungeons are going to be difficult, but right now, it strikes me as an artificial difficulty. The dungeons are only hard because: 1) The monsters have boatloads of HP; 2) they can all nearly one-shot everything in the game if you miss the animation tells; 3) The mechanics are usually something you’re seeing for the first time. Once you figure out how to deal with 2 and 3, the encounters then just become a slogfest due to 1.

The aggro mechanics strike me as obtuse, as well. The game’s done away with a holy trinity, which is fine with me. I enjoy it. But the result is that maintaining all the monsters or trying to keep them off less-armored players is an exercise in futility. Look at the end of Twilight Arbor’s story mode. It is painfully simple for people to get wiped out through no fault of their own because Logan decides to bleed one person who is at low health while Rytlock knocks someone else down as Zojja and Eir smoke them from afar. There’s no easy way to control the encounter, especially since most of the control abilities the classes have are short durations on cooldowns long enough that makes effective rotation require flawless coordination.

These all combine to make runs kind of a frustration. Personally, I think if the HP and damage of trash creatures was reduced while giving them abilities that reflect boss mechanics would go a long way to solving the problem. I also think giving boss monsters slightly larger models (like how Rift or WoW did), it would eliminate the “can’t see boss animation cues” problem significantly.

Booler.6598:

@ roctod – Then go back to wow dude go back to what is safe and has been done 4 trillion times you know your role you know what to expect no suprises put your brain into autopilot. The rest of us will devise ways to make our runs work get creative and squeeze fun out of them just like we did in gw1.

Did you actually read anything I said, or did you just decide you wanted to trip over yourself to be the first to make a disparaging comment about WoW?