A “Library,” perhaps introduced as part of an upcoming Living World release, seems like a lore-friendly means to allow players to experience the “temporary” content. However, a couple of issues (at least) would have to be solved.
Lack of rewards might very well render the implementation moot. Many players have let ANet know in no uncertain terms that they are not interested in content just for “fun.” If there are no rewards, how under-utilized would the new feature be?
Some of the prior content is designed for herd play. These portions would either have to be redesigned to scale all the way down to one player, or left out.
Not the story elements. Those could be completed in at most a single group.
Just the dungeons. I’m all for the ability to replay just the elements that dealt with the living story. The only catch is that people should not be able to get any of the awards or achievements that were a part of it.
If people do not play a particular event that rewards a particular item then oh well. Reward items are to reward the players for supporting the game by playing the game at a certain time and doing the prerequisite achievements. People who play after the living story event completes, or who just flat out chose not to play, are not entitled to these rewards.
With that said, I doubt they’ll do some reward for players that have completed every living story. They got their reward for completing each individual meta and do not need another one for having done all of them.
Okay… and you had to make a thread about it? How about a little more substance such as why? What should be done better next time? Otherwise this is just clutter that should’ve been posted in the feedback thread that is stickied.
I agree that it can be done solo. I’ve finished it with 4 dolyak left. Once you’ve gotten through the first wave, it’s generally no different than if you had a full team. Just don’t do upgrades and place catapults/snowmen where you pick them up. Also don’t just focus in one area for too long.
Well the daily after reset in a couple hours will be the last one that will be available. If you’ve done all of the main achievements then you likely will not be able to finish.
They didn’t compare the Living Story to A Song of Ice and Fire. They said that they want to give with the Living Story the same kind of feel that A Song of Ice and Fire gives to the readers (wanting to speculate). They never said that they accomplished that or that they think that there is any similarity between the two stories.
Note the difference:
“I can cook. Gordon Ramsay can also cook” (No comparison between the abilities)
“I cook just like/better than Gordon Ramsay!” (Arrogance)
You people nowadays are finding any excuse to open an angry thread.
You’ll see this all the time. Reading comprehension tends to be very low when people already have a personal bias against the subject. There’s of course the usual reading too quickly and not fully grasping what it is being discussed as a result. What you’ll now start seeing are people posting in this thread, without having read the article, agreeing with the OP and treating what they stated as fact.
I find that if you open them really quickly, all at the same time, you’ll occasionally get the same reward twice in a row. I was clicking away and ended up with two Light of Dwayna recipes immediately after each other. I sold one and gave one to a friend.
I keep hoping that’ll happen to me with the ho-ho-tron or unbreakable choir bell.
Adding the WvW requires players to PVP… and there is no way to AVOID not PVPing to get discovery in WvW unless ur server is overpowered and stomps everyone.
False. I got all of them on an alt without fighting a single person. Just get what your server possesses and then wait until your server changes color. Unless you have everything else ready to make the legendary (unlikely scenario for most people) then there’s no rush.
I don’t see requiring allot of people to complete the event as something bad tbh. I’m on High server (I believe all NA servers have bigger pop, and most of the EU as well) and even we down him every couple of days. Some servers start fighting Teq before noon and continue doing it for the entire day.
However, I do hate the spawn window. I’m not a patient player and afk-ing for 1h is not worth it for me.
Go guest to Anvil Rock. The maps are usually close to deserted. Even LA at reset was almost empty. I always go there when trying to do something where people are getting in my way.
The article stated that only one zone has been added and nobody visits it regularly. Well that’s partly false considering that karka queen is done numerous times each day and you have the node farmers. They also ignored that the majority of zones are just as empty as well unless there’s some world boss event going on.
I don’t think an expansion will really keep people busy. All of the “hardcore” players that are instantly bored after rushing through every new update will be bored within a month of the expansion’s release.
Fractal progression would lose all meaning other than for rewards. You’d have level 1 players trying to join level 49 runs. It’ll create a mess as people will think they can do higher level fractals when they can’t. There’s a lot that you can faceroll in the earlier levels that you can’t when you get higher.
You can easily get 20 AR which will let you do fractals in the 20’s. If they’re really your friends, they should have no problem running fractals with you. If they’re choosing not to run with you because there’s nothing in it for them then you may want to think about that.
Only drops worth anything are the back recipes and the unbreakable bell. You’d be better off farming the gold and buying the gifts than farming them. There’s still RNG with the loot from gifts so even then it’s likely not worth it.
The door takes 7 bombs to go down. Only the first group of dredge on the stairs (like 5 of them) infinitely respawn. The rest of the dredge spawn after every two bombs explode.
Doing the floor plates should not be that difficult. The first plate only requires you to stand on it for a few seconds. The second plate can take longer as the 1st person needs to run through the entire corridor. You can always open it for them to get past the first gate and reset the enemies before letting everyone into the panel room. All of this should not take more than a couple of minutes.
You don’t sit there and eat damage on the panels. You could before as your dead body still counted as being on the panel. Unfortunately this is how many players were taught to do the fractal, and now that it’s been changed, they struggle as they were never taught the proper way to do it.
Strawman argument. I was referring to just the last boss where pulling the strikers was easier and more pug friendly. You’re also making the assumption that it wouldn’t be announced that one person would pull the strikers.
I was actually having in mind that you announce who would pull strikers, but what happens if something goes wrong? I’ll give you an unexpected scenario.
-Player 1 needs to pull striker. He runs away from boss to do it, then boss inmobilize him at 20 meters with his immobilize skill to buff himself, then a cog drops on the player. He is not fast enough to remove conditions, use stability or dodge the cog, so he dies.
-Player 2 tries to do his job, but now you are slow in the timer and boss gets to tier 30, wich makes the big attack and electrifies a corner of the room, the kittens attack will probably kill 4 of them except you because you know what will happen if he gets to tier 30 and would use endure pain or dodge some of the hits to survive.
Result: Probably a wipe due to unexpected issue. Just because someone didn’t know the boss could immobilize and didn’t equipped a condition removal skill.
P.S. What does it means strawman? i’m honestly lost there, since english is not my native languaje.
Well not having condition removal is poor planning but I have never been immobilized when I pull the striker. I’m pretty sure the range of that attack doesn’t go out far enough for the boss to throw a gear at you.
What if everyone pulls decides to pull the boss. The boss then grabs a player and throw them behind it landing in an electrical field. The boss then immobilizes the other players and casts the gears on them. How about if the players are too far away from the boss when pulling him and then gear gears thrown at them?
There are risks with every strategy. I just found pulling the strikers to be easier as too much coordination is required for everyone to pull him at the same time. If one person isn’t paying attention, the group has the potential of wiping. I also believe the boss moves a little slow compared to strikers so you don’t have much room for error. I usually had up to 3 attempts with the strikers before the boss did its large attack.
A strawman argument is where an argument is exaggerated to make it easier to dispute. This is how I took it when you took my argument that it’s easier to pull the striker as you only rely on one person and then applied it to the entire path. I was just talking about the boss, not the entire path. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t intentional.
And you’re assuming a higher skill level than what you’ll find in most pugs that do that path. If they all had that skill level then they would not be having issues. Just look at what has been stated in this thread. This is why I suggested having one person lure the striker as opposed to luring the boss.
It’s exactly the point on doing the ooze room, it’s a test about teamwork. Don’t do the puzzle all by yourself, never, let the pug players agreed on an strategy and do it. That way you’ll create a bound on communication, that’s the point on TA Aether. If you try to just do it yourself and never tell them how the fights work (for example, clockheart), they will never be able to suceed if there isn’t an experienced player in the group to lead them.
See the difference between your strategies and mines? You lead players to a succesfull run that can be done as long as someone knows how to counter-attack some specific mechanics to avoid the wipe. It requires an experienced player and 4 randoms following. Instead, I build an army of 4 players that knows exactly where to go, why to do any skill or how to succeed in different ways, since they eat up each piece of information about enemy skills. The next time they go there, they can lead it with no problems at all.
After you leave, your groups might not be able to complete the dungeon if there isn’t someone leading them efficiently. Because they don’t know what happens in the unexpected cases (as example, if you don’t tell them, they wouldn’t know that whirlwind always chases the player most far away in the Foreman Spur, and if they 5 try to melee and nobody noticed that you were at range on purpose just to “capture” all whirlwinds and unaffect the group, then they would wipe). My groups would learn how to lead it, each 4 of them, and how to deal with all enemy skills.
Sorry, man, it wasn’t my intention to take you down, but there’s way too many problems about giving players a tour instead of teaching them everything involved in the fight. A partial strategy like yours (as much as it works) it can be useless once something unexpected happens. This is just a personal advice that i’ve been using in MMOs for the last 5 years: Always prepare for the unexpected, specially in pugs.
P.S. Every pug player can become a pro as long as you give him a chance or two and explain them what is wrong. Assuming that they’re not skilled it’s the best way to destroy all teamwork required. Being skilled is not something that you born with it, it’s something that you learn and improve over time, so… help them to improve.
Strawman argument. I was referring to just the last boss where pulling the strikers was easier and more pug friendly. You’re also making the assumption that it wouldn’t be announced that one person would pull the strikers.
But not — and this is the important bit that I think you missed — _at my own pace.
Perhaps you should read the rest of my post that you did not quote.
I read it. It wasn’t necessary to quote your second sentence because it did not change the fact that you were ignoring the “at my own pace” part of my post as hard as you possibly could.
I’m not going to get into a debate with you when your premise is based on the fallacy that we can play every single Living Story release at our own pace when even ANet says that the temporary nature of these releases it is a common complaint and that they are looking into the matter.
You may of course continue to have this conversation with yourself if it will make you feel better.
The story pieces of all living story content can be completed in under an hour easily. The only thing that takes more time are the achievements that try to keep you busy. For most living stories updates, people have been able to complete all of those achievements within a matter of hours.
I stated there was a difference between content that reveals part of the living story versus content that serves as busy work such as going across various parts of the world and activating some object or doing some task for some arbitrary number of times.
And you’re assuming a higher skill level than what you’ll find in most pugs that do that path. If they all had that skill level then they would not be having issues. Just look at what has been stated in this thread. This is why I suggested having one person lure the striker as opposed to luring the boss.
I wouldn’t be worried about doing dungeons. Just join groups that are not speed runs and are open to new players. As long as you’re up front about being new and listen to instructions, quite a lot of people will let you join them.
You don’t need AR in fractals until you’re 10+ and you can technically get away with having none until 20.
Well we normally don’t fight him in a corner. With pug groups, it’s just easier to pull them as it only requires one person to know what they’re doing while the others mash the #1 key. When trying to pull him to a striker, you run the risk of him throwing out those gears that will quickly down someone or he does an attack that causes him to stop moving and wastes time. I think you only have about 15 seconds to explode a striker on him once you see the stacks start increasing.
I wish Elrey was on NA servers because i have tried this dungeon a few times with pugs and have yet to make it through. It is a wall for me that is ensuring that I NEVER get my “Dungeon Master” title or the satisfaction of having completed this dungeon path.
The last attempt I made with a pug group; we did pretty good until the clockwork and then we wiped repeatedly(granted because some party members insisted on dragging strikers to clockwork instead of clockwork to strikers) but after 2+ hours and 12+ wipes at clockwork, i had to leave out of frustration and exhaustion. I tried to be nice about it as i left and told them good luck with the run, but i had reached my limit. I fear that I may never finish this path.
It’s actually better to pull the strikers. If people try to pull the boss the. They’ll likely cause it to use its ranged attack and people will die. You just need one person to hit a striker once and then stack on the boss. The striker will then come within range of the boss.
The majority of players are unable to dodge to avoid agony attacks. You can kitten your way through 20+ fractals until you get the dredge boss or any of the boss fractals. The dredge boss requires two dodges at the proper time to avoid agony and can easily down someone without AR. I’ve been in groups with people who do not have AR and it’s such a hassle to keeping reviving them.
Currently the living story section of the LFG tool only applies to the current server that you’re on. This has had a more recent impact of making it difficult to form Tixx and Toypocalpse groups.
Since future living stories will likely have group content, I feel that the living LFG tool should span across all servers in the same way as the dungeon and FotM categories.
There are YouTube videos and summaries that recap it. Honestly, 95% of past living story content was just achievement hunting. None of those offered much to the story.
[SNIP] …Or would you like future LW releases to cover other topics? Share your thoughts, but please keep it constructive. Thanks.
Honestly, it does not matter what topics are covered in the LW releases; if I cannot play through the content at my own pace, I will not play it at all. It is so frustrating to have my play timeframe constantly dictated by ANet. You folks put a lot of work into this stuff, I know, but my enjoyment of it is completely spoiled by the stress of waiting for the carrot to be yanked away.
Yeah this has always been on my mind. I think the only reason they have the numbers on each of the LS is because we’re forced to do it, if we want the AP or the skin reward for that patch.
Old school games rarely had a backstory or motive. Do you know why Bowser would always try to kidnap Princess Toadstool?
Did we need a reason to go kick the turtle’s butt other than to save a princess? Why else do people always try to kidnap princesses? Look at Ice King in Adventure Time.
And that’s my point. You don’t need a backstory or anything for SAB.
No. The only reason to update it was for the inherent infusion. This has been changed to just a unique slot that is only available by upgrading. People upgraded to the last version for the glowing skin.
[SNIP] …Or would you like future LW releases to cover other topics? Share your thoughts, but please keep it constructive. Thanks.
Honestly, it does not matter what topics are covered in the LW releases; if I cannot play through the content at my own pace, I will not play it at all. It is so frustrating to have my play timeframe constantly dictated by ANet. You folks put a lot of work into this stuff, I know, but my enjoyment of it is completely spoiled by the stress of waiting for the carrot to be yanked away.
All content in every LS could be experienced. The only thing that had time constraints for some were the achievement point hunters.
In regards to SAB, harder content (Tribulation mode was a really great addition!), new World and a nice deep story that links in with the short story that was posted back in September – it would be great if the story didn’t necessarily have achievements but unveiled itself through cutscenes, etc. as you go through a (new?) SAB world – we already have a brilliant platform, princess captured – please expand on what Moto wants, who this ‘dark shadow’ is and his motives, as well as why the Princess was captured in the first place.
Old school games rarely had a backstory or motive. Do you know why Bowser would always try to kidnap Princess Toadstool?
I would like SAB to get much more difficult. Better, accessible rewards is also important as well. Maybe allow bauble bubbles to be exchanged for various items that are not skins (transformation tonics, mini’s, SAB Box o’ Fun, crafting ingredients, knowledge tomes, etc).
That wasn’t an asinine reply. You mentioned that it had the same rewards as other fractals when it doesn’t. That was an acceptable response. No reason to attack it if it goes against your opinion. Better to argue against it using facts.
The probability/statistics discussion was brought in due to the argument made that it wasn’t possible to complete all of the achievements within the two weeks. It only dragged on for almost two pages since there were a few people who had hardly any experience with probability/statistics and a great deal of time was spent explaining concepts repeatedly. Not their fault as this isn’t really covered in the education system.
I have no idea what you meant in your first sentence about exiting. TM was supposed to be time consuming and a pain to do. That was the intent. A lot of the time could be reduced once those of us that finished first started posting guides on how to do them.
I also want to mention that the 30 minutes was in reference to TM completion time which was normally equal or greater than completion times on normal mode.
SAB 2 was about challenge and to increase the challenge it wasn’t the type of puzzle that changed so skills learned from playing Manic Miner or Frogger or Sonic were not going to make much difference after you made it through SAB1. The sequel was more about the timing and accuracy with keyboard and mouse and so nothing to do with basic mechanics and all to do with dexterity, observance, reflex and possibly affected by various types of lag
No. In World 1 you could just run around everything and there was minimal jumping needed. World 2 was very different as you were required to jump more and the enemies required certain mechanics. The ninjas had a mechanic to learn since you end rally could not just ignore them like a lot of people attempted to unsuccessfully. You had puzzles (although basic) that you needed to overcome to proceed further.
I referenced older games because if you had played those, you would have found World 2 to be pretty easy and a breeze. The only timing and accuracy portion was with TM which to be honest was supposed to be a pain to do.
SAB 2 was too hard for me and there was no way I was playing that and Im not even interested in SAB 3 or 4. Its sad because I loved SAB 1.
W2 was fine (after the waterfall fix XD) Main problem was just how insanely long it was, especially with Z3 with no save points and such.
W2 Zone 2 Trib did make me want to murder small kittens tho. Honestly the most enraging thing I ever experienced in a video game. I started seeing random spike traps in my mind even outside of SAB after a while. It was traumatizing. XD
Each zone could easily be done in 30 minutes which is your average dungeon path time. Seems completely reasonable to me. Zone 3 had plenty of checkpoints. I think there were about 5 or so.
SAB World 2 came down to learning basic mechanics you picked up from playing this game and the old school games. World 3 likely will not be released until March or April. I’d assume they want to finish the current living story season first.
