(edited by onion.8710)
Showing Posts For onion.8710:
Good job, once again. 8 and a half minutes is about as long as it takes for an average pug to kill that guy, too. :P
Now that you’ve more or less mastered the giant undead doggy, what’s next on your agenda?
I never thought about using Avatar of Melandru form for that fight. Thanks for the protip! The group I usually run with usually has at least two fears packed to fear the boss away from the sacrificial subject to give us a lot of time to deal w/ the elemental adds.
Protip for necromancers: If you have at least 10 points in death magic, using the Greater Marks traits will make your marks unblockable, allowing you to fear the boss with your staff 5 ability. This is also handy for other annoying bosses that like to block for an eternity like the charr fractal boss or the midway boss in dredge fractal.
Warriors: the “Fear Me!” ability works pretty well in these situations too!
It would be an injustice if this man didn’t receive some sort of custom reward such as a title or something. That was amazing and inspiring to behold. :O
Dungeon Events
A lot of the events in the dungeons are quite interesting and enjoyable. Events such as bringing the bombs to Magg, taking the glowing sphere to open the doors in Arah, or the spike traps event with Detha in AC are quite fun. However, some of the events, such as having to protect Magg while he places explosives, or the event where you need to place the five explosive barrels next to the door in Cadaceus Manor, makes me stop and wonder if the developers really sat down and play tested these and looked and each other and said, “That was a satisfying and fun experience!”
Please don’t design events that require even the most seasoned players to have to die repeatedly in order to achieve success. That’s not fun. =(
Trash Mobs
I notice that in a lot of pick up groups, most people will skip a lot of monsters and go straight for the bosses or events necessary to progress through the dungeon. I feel that if there were more incentive to killing the trash mobs, most pugs would stop to clear the mobs. You could add a 5% chance for 1 token to drop off of silver elites and a 25% chance off of champions, or whatever chance you feel would be appropriate. The bags of wondrous goods that drop off of bosses was a step in the right direction, I feel.
Bosses
There are quite a few fun and challenging bosses to fight, such as Kholer, Lupicus, and Subject Alpha that I wish we could see more of in dungeons. Bosses that require you to be moving a lot and timing your dodge are very much welcome for me. However, allow most bosses to be reasonable for players who prefer to melee. If they have a lot of close range AoE’s and nukes, let the boss creatures give off a sign or a tell, that way it allows melee players to know when to evade, dodge, or step away for a moment.
Please do away with bosses that only require you to stand around and whittle away at a giant HP bar. I’ve almost fallen asleep at my computer on many different occasions due to fights like that.
Also, give us more environmental tools that allow us to make the boss fights more interesting. Similar to the lava buckets in Dredge fractal or the electric cages in the Aquatic fractal.
Also while we’re on the subject of bosses, I’m sure most players would agree that the final battle with Zhaitan in the story mode of Arah was very unsatisfying. If it’s within your time frame and budget, I would love to see an encounter in one of the explorable Arah paths that takes the players back to the site where Zhaitan fell, only to discover that he wasn’t quite defeated, allowing the players the satisfying battle with the downed Zhaitan to finish him once and for all.
TL;DR:
*Scale each path to be more challenging and rewarding than the last, so players of all skill ranges and equipment level can eventually afford the dungeon rewards they wish to achieve.
*Give players the ability to create ascended equipment with items found in the more challenging content of dungeons, similar to ascended backpack recipes.
*Allow us to buy the rare crafting recipes that drop off of bosses with tokens.
*Get rid of the events that require players to die repeatedly to succeed.
*Give players more incentive to clear trash mobs in dungeons instead of skipping everything.
*Remove damage sponge bosses and give us more boss encounters that require us to think and move and utilize the environment to succeed.
If any of my input is even slightly reflected in future content patches, I will be happy and buy all the gems! =D Please keep up the good work Anet, this game has been one of the most enjoyable MMO experiences I’ve had in a long while.
Just going to reiterate some good ideas I’ve seen browsing the forums and some of my own ideas based on the experiences I’ve had in the current dungeon system.
Before I start, I’ve more or less played all of the paths of every dungeon to death (besides the story modes) and have acquired the dungeon master title, if that adds any weight to my suggestions. =)
Dungeon Difficulty
When I first started doing explorable dungeon paths at the appropriate character levels, it was a very nightmarish experience (looking at you, Cadaceus Manor) and wondered how some of this content was balanced for those players newer to the game. It was very offputting because the rest of the game up until that point was such an amazing and refreshing experience.
Cut to maybe a month or so later once I reach max level, have obtained full exotic gear, and go back to those explorable dungeons: They feel appropriately challenging and I don’t have much difficulty with them (with a few exceptions). I attributed this to learning my class a bit more and having better equipment. I still wondered how lower leveled beginner players were supposed to tackle these dungeons decked out in blue and green quality gear.
I think a good solution to this is to make the different paths (including story mode) go off of a difficulty scale that gives the players an appropriate award based on the path they’ve completed. Story mode would be the easiest, and would give the players a lot of breathing room to learn. It could reward the party with 10-20 dungeon tokens at the end. While that reward may not seem grand to most seasoned players, the feeling of being awarded yellow quality currency that can eventually be turned into level 80 exotics when you’re a newer player is amazing. Explorable paths 1, 2, and 3 could increase in difficulty (and perhaps length) and reward the players appropriately. This would also give players the option of doing the “quick and easy” path if they’re strapped for time or only dedicate a small amount of time to the game per day.
Story Mode: 20 Tokens [Easy path] – For beginners in lower quality equipment
Exp Path 1: 30 Tokens [Normal path] – For average players with mixed levels and equipment
Exp Path 2: 60 Tokens [Hard path] – A challenge for seasoned players
Exp Path 3: 90 Tokens [Nightmare path] An epic adventure for advanced players
For a grand total of 200 tokens if you decided to run all of the paths in one sitting.
Oh also, please remove the diminishing returns for clearing consecutive dungeon paths too quickly. If a player wants to dedicate a session to clearing multiple dungeons in one sitting, please do not punish them for it.
Dungeon Rewards
With the addition of ascended quality gear and it only being available in Fractals, I’ve noticed many players voicing concerns that the dungeons will become obsolete, since you will eventually be able to acquire better equipment in the fractal dungeons.
Perhaps you can introduce ascended quality gear that requires a large amount of dungeon tokens and a special item that can only be acquired in the most difficult path of a dungeon. Maybe include a cost in ectoplasms or other fine materials that need to be combined in the Mystic Forge, similar to the ascended backpack recipe.
Also, I noticed that in a recent patch there were some new jeweler recipes added to the loot tables of certain dungeon bosses. I’ve never seen these drop once for myself or anyone in my groups. It would be nice if players could turn in a number of tokens to gain these recipes from the dungeon vendors. Also, I’m sure most players would agree that including other unique crafting profession recipes would be awesome instead of letting jewelers have all the fun. Even better: include the ability to craft more intricate versions of existing dungeon sets that require the base equipment pieces to create for people to really show off their dedication to a particular dungeon.