Guild Wars 2

Asia Skyly.7198:

This is not about making it easier. As it stands this fractal is NOT HARD, it is just tedious and time consuming to an alarming degree.

The issue is a question of design. The length of the fractal is incongruous with the rest of the fractals. Therefore the question is being made: Why it is designed this way?

Thank you, Asia Skyly. That is exactly what I was trying to get at. The Fractal isn’t hard in a sense that it requires a lot of finesse to get through it decently enough – this being a great sense of difficulty vs. reward; it’s hard in the sense that everything is unnecessarily long and unnecessarily tedious.

I wish people wouldn’t look at this as an attempt to make the game easier. I’m actually all for making things more difficult, including challenge-mode-like dungeons, but what I’m not fond of is challenge through what I perceive to be flawed game design.

Increasing a mob’s health does not equal challenging and fun. Increasing a mob’s damage alone doesn’t ALWAYS equal challenging and fun. What does fulfill these things, however, is variety in the mob’s mechanics and the damage these mechanics do.

I’d much rather fight a boss with low health and 4 ways to one-shot down a player that has a high chance of party-wiping instead of a boss with high health and only two attacks that it repeats over and over again for 5 minutes.

What I’m looking for is answers to why ANet went the direction of health and quantity over minimal health and quality for this fractal. In particular, I’m looking for an encounter that’s both fun and challenging, not long and tedious when the other fractals are completely fine in comparison.

I’m very curious whether or not the “difficulty” of it (or frustrating factors, as we players think) was intended or not. And the same thing goes for the small bugs like the invulnerability. I hope someone from the ANet team responds.

Anyhow, I’m extremely curious of the design decision that went into this fractal and why certain choices have been made, and why some glitches (or what us players view as glitches, at least) still exist when any method to make this dungeon more manageable have been abruptly taken away, even if they were exploits that shouldn’t exist.

Any response would be great, as this is extremely frustrating as a daily FotM runner. Honestly, the issues (or these perceived issues, anyway) are draining and make me question how much involvement I should really have with it.

Thanks for your time,

Concerned FotM Frequenter

So my question is directed at the team behind the dredge fractal and the design choices/bugs that exist in the current version of this fractal. The beginning might sound a bit rant-heavy, but I promise there’s positive motives behind it as you read on.

Okay, so, I just finished one of my many daily runs through a lv. 38 FotM, and I just had one of the worst experiences in this game thanks to the Dredge fractal.

1. Removed Exploits
Okay, ANet, I totally get it; you needed to fix the exploits that people were abusing to make the path easier. While this is completely valid and I applaud the steps toward correction, as exploits should not be used, has anyone on the staff stopped to think about WHY people are using these exploits in the first place? In comparison to every other fractal, this one takes the longest, features the most trash mobs, and probably has the most bugs that are easily noticeable.

2. Fun Factor
This fractal is not fun. In fact, it is the COMPLETE opposite of fun. There is a reason most players and groups doing higher level FotM attempt to “roll” for specific fractals; the Dredge fractal is disproportionately difficult and takes longer in comparison to the Underwater, Swamp, and other fractals. I have yet to see a player say, “Oh, cool, Dredge!” when receiving this fractal. Most of the time, it is met with hatred and disgust, and most players feel drained after completing it.

3. Number of Mobs
The number of mobs in each section of this fractal and the rate they respawn is absolutely ridiculous.
– In the button pressing section, players expect to die, so many plan which 2 players will sacrifice themselves and die on the button pads to ensure an easier time on the control panel. Yes, most players die multiple times just to complete this section. Why is this? The mobs respawn too quickly and there are too many mobs for a group of players to deal with at a time.
- The bomb-running section is by far the worst part of this dungeon due to respawns. I don’t know whether it’s intentional or not, but there can be upwards of 50 dredge at a time that players have to deal with. It’s understandable wanting to create a difficult scenario for players to overcome, but once again, players usually die multiple times just to get through this section alone, and they expect it.
- The Rabsovich fight spawns an obscene amount of mobs for no reason. It is not difficult, it is just tedious and mindless killing that takes forever to do and drains the player of inspiration and enthusiasm to continue.

4. Invulnerability
Speaking of annoying glitches, during the Rabsovich fight, spawning dredge are invulnerable for approximately 3 seconds after becoming visible. Whether intended or not, this becomes frustrating when the dredge are able to initiate on your group before you can initiate on them, and you are unable to estimate when they will become vulnerable so you can time your moves properly. It’s an extremely frustrating mechanic that doesn’t need to be there. Again, it just makes the encounter and fractal take more time than it needs to and wears out the player unnecessarily.

So what I’m saying is this: the reason players are using exploits in this dungeon that the ANet team needs to patch is because the fractal itself isn’t fun and has too many issues that create a negative experience. This doesn’t have to be this way, though, and there’s very simple changes that can be made to improve the fractal’s experience and keep it in line with the difficulty and length of the other fractals.

1. Lower the dredge amount and slow down the respawn rate of the dredge during the pressure-pad sequence. If each chamber had 2 random veterans and a normal dredge, and the final chamber had 2 veterans and a normal dredge on each side, it would be both challenging and manageable. Make the dredge that spawn have a knockdown ability and force players to manage their control abilities. This has potential to be extremely interesting!

2. Lower the dredge amount in the bomb-run to a manageable level. It’s a cool idea that the dredge pick up the bombs you place to attempt to save the door from destruction, but the mechanic isn’t the focal point when there are anywhere from 30-50 dredge spawned in the room that RESPAWN before you can even kill them all. Lower this number to about 7 normal and 3 veterans and this part can be interesting and fun.

3. During the Rabsovich fight, the trash mob dredge should only spawn so long as Rabsovich is alive. Once Rabsovich is dead, players should be able to proceed.

4. During the final fight versus the Legendary Powersuit or Ice Elemental, certain control mechanics on some professions do not seem to interrupt the boss properly out of its heal when it has the molten debuff on it.

(continued on next post)

There’s still some other context sensitive things that could be added as well, but this would be a very basic addition at the very least.

Hickeroar.9734:

Minimap Enabled: Turn on Minimap display while out of combat.

I would need the option to keep this enabled in combat. In-combat rally waypoints for Dungeons/Fractals (in the Svanir fractal elemental fight for instance) are a must.

I definitely agree! This is why there would be 2 sub menus with the same options. One that toggles all of those features IN combat, and one that toggles them OUT of combat. Some people (like me) might prefer to have the Minimap on at ALL times, but other features (like the combat bar) turned off except when in combat. Good idea to mention that!

Brewergamer.8357:

Spamming 2 second stealths during combat is not “stealthy”, they know you are there. Waiting in stealth until someone is completely unprepared then attacking is “stealthy”. If they won’t change thief they should at the VERY least add the option to be ACTUALLY stealthy.

An argument over what’s stealthy and what isn’t is an argument of semantics. In order to get to the root of the issue, you have to look at each person’s definition of what “stealthy” is.

Stealthy 1: Character stays hidden as long as he/she wants, only appearing when they want to be seen or if they are pulled out of stealth via attack. For name-sake, let’s call this “Rogue Stealth.”

Stealthy 2: Character disrupts the attack pattern of the enemy by jumping in and out of vision repeatedly to cause confusion and disorientation of the enemy. For name-sake, let’s call this “Subterfuge Stealth.”

Both of these are considered “stealth” because they use a mechanic which causes the character to go invisible, but the circumstances in which they are in and out of stealth are what differ.

Back to the point, a Rogue Stealth play style is a luxury, not a necessity. What I mean by this is having permanent stealth is fun to play and an interesting mechanic, but there’s a time and a place for it. The combat mechanic in this game doesn’t really fit around having Rogue Stealth because most features and purpose in this game comes from being seen and how to deal with it.

Let me explain further. There are a few notable game-play “identities” happening to give Guild Wars 2 a sense of balance, fun, and challenge.

The sense of balance comes from all professions having a close-to-equal playing field. This very idea starts with “Players can not be permanently invisible.” Okay, so for a stealth profession, how do you tie that in to this sense of balance? The answer is to give them multiple ways to initiate stealth, but each of these ways has a certain utility. This way, players are not on an uneven playing field because one can stay hidden forever while the other person is always susceptible to attack and prying eyes. Again, that way of thinking is a luxury, not a necessity.

So where’s the fun? The ability to jump in and out of stealth as frequently as a Thief does not exist in another class. The closest would be a Mesmer, but the functionality is very limited (long cooldowns) and used for a different mechanic (escapes – not initiation). You play a Thief in this game because you enjoy being sneaky, stealthy, and slippery. Again, I should bring up Subterfuge vs. Rogue stealth.

How about the challenge? Thieves require know-how on when to use their stealth and when not to. When to initiate and when not to. Due to a limited amount of stealth, Thieves need to use their wits in order to outplay an opponent, not out-brawn. Since you played a Rogue before, you should be very familiar with the Rogue being able to outwit AND out-brawn the opponent thanks to their extremely versatile tool kit. This is something not many other classes had. Usually, for balance, you’re given one or the other, and that’s a mechanic that was not repeated in this game.

Since there really is no way to just alter your mindset to have you enjoy the class with just a flick of a switch, I’ll leave you with this:

While Guild Wars 2 offers a variety of play styles with their 8 (very different) professions, and it offers even more variety within each profession itself, it is extremely difficult to cater to everyone’s wishes and desires. With the style of combat and the way exploring and coping with the game world behaves in this game, it is unlikely and unnecessary for a Rogue Stealth feature to exist or be super-imposed on the current Thief model. Unfortunately, this is the way the game and this class is. While there will be minor tweaks to numbers to ensure balance, a change as drastic as what was suggested would simply not happen this early into the game’s life cycle. I’m sorry to say, but if that kind of mechanic is the only thing you want from this game, it might not be the game for you.

However! I do encourage giving the other professions a test run – at least to around level 30. I started this game as a Thief and became disheartened by the features of the Thief I perceived to be as problems at the time. After playing other classes for a while, I found myself with multiple level 80s and as a Guardian main. It’s easy to shut yourself off to trying other things out because you “know” you like a certain way of doing things… but you might surprise yourself.

Either way, this thread was nice to start a discussion and see where people are at in their views of the class.

There are a few issues and a few good points I see here.

1. In a PvP environment, the constant threat of an attack from an enemy is part of the play style. In WvWvW specifically, an unlimited-stealth Thief will not have any threat at just about any point and time unless they are willing to have threat on themselves. This means area capture, map completion, etc would completely favor a Thief.

2. In that same regard, PvE content would be completely uninteresting. Need map completion? What about communing with a heavily guarded Skill Point? With a perma-stealth Thief, the challenge of, well, playing the game… would vanish. In that sense, they would also have an unfair advantage over other classes who have to trudge through hordes of enemies to complete what they need.

3. “Simple” skill changes would not be as simple as you think. From a programming standpoint, that’s a full couple of monthly patches worth of work for the ANet team in order to remove stealth from weapon skills, passive traits and active traits. These would have to be replaced with other skills or modified versions of what already exists, after which they would need extensive balance testing, bug testing, and “fun” testing by QA and the content designer.

Let’s not forget that there’s a whole Utility Skill sub-group specifically made for stealth – [Deception.]. As this is considered a unique Utility feature for thieves, they would need replacing as well. Again, a lot of testing all around.

4. While I’m sure you aren’t the only person with these complaints, many players have already grown accustomed to Thieves how they are in their current state. With the suggested changes, these players would have to adapt to almost an entirely new class and playstyle. Not only would players be confused, many might also feel betrayed and cheated because something they know and love, and dedicated time to playing was taken away from them. Minor changes and balances to skills are fine, but changing most of the mechanics to how a Thief works could make a player hate the profession they were using as their main (or only) profession.

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Let’s talk about the state of Thieves at the moment as well. If asked, many players would say that Thieves dominate the PvP environment as a whole. Their damage output and ability to reset a fight whenever they choose gives them extreme versatility. While this could probably use some toning down, especially to the amount of stealths we see during combat (which can turn into stealth-spam rather than a finesse to managing skills), I would think it’s safe to say Thieves are in a pretty good spot. Overall, they have a niche playstyle, particularly for those who like stealth-heavy combat and the ability to pick and choose which fights they want to start, and which fights they want to finish. Needless to say, it’s an acquired taste, and it feels pretty different compared to many stealth-heavy classes from other MMORPGs, but the Thief in this game has a unique style to it that fits with the style of combat the game is aiming for.

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So what good can come from your suggestion? Having longer stealths while out of combat and shorter stealths while in combat is a great idea. Testing could/should happen to see about extending the amount of time a player is stealthed with each ability when activated OUT of combat, and reducing the time stealthed when activated IN combat. This could ease some of the issues and give Thieves the assassin feel some players might be looking for without sacrificing the “guess where I’m attacking from” gameplay players have come to know.

Also, Steal is a bit heavy on the “randomness” that comes with it, leading to some cool successes, or some pretty bad failures. A replacement or dedicated item to come from Steal could be a nice change to make Thieves feel a little stronger.

From a game mechanic/lore standpoint, random behavior is supposed to come from Mesmers and Engineers, each having their own playstyles focused around random behavior. The Thief, however, is supposed to be a masterful assassin, and a precision striker. The random behavior of Steal just doesn’t feel like it fits, and is something that I believe can be improved on.

Other than that, nice suggestion to start a good brainstorming session. While I don’t think ANet will ever do something this drastic to the Thief, especially so early into the game’s life cycle, it’s always worth discussing to see various points of view.