It is a method to force people who want any combination of the things you listed, who would otherwise not play WvW. Just because you don’t feel these things are important does not mean it is not forcing. I personally do not feel that this is necessarily a bad thing, minus my little gripe posted above, but it does force part of the playerbase.
Not forced. No. Option to complete specific content to get specific reward, sure.
The rewards are either very small, or very specific.
Not forced. Not even a tiny bit.
Given that you want specific reward, you are forced to do the content. Whether you have the option not go for that reward does not matter anymore if you decide to go for it. Whether you experience it as being forced or not also does not matter.
Using your logic, you are not forced to buy a game if you want to play it, because you could also have chosen not to play it. I am sure you see this does not make sense. Buying the game is the required action to achieve the goal, which is playing it. Just as completing the map is required to achieve the goal, which is any combination of the rewards you get for that. So the generalisation: If taking a certain action is the only way to reach a goal, then you are forced to do said action to reach the goal. That you can also decide to not reach the goal is irrelevant.
If you want to redefine the meaning of forcing for yourself, that’s your right. I am sure people reading this are capable of seeing who of us define it closer to what it actually means when people speak about “forcing”.
The game was and is advertised as friendly, cooperative and casual, and WvW map completion is nothing more than a forced method of making people go to WvW.
Sigh. No. Just no.
- 1 title and 20 AP, the first time (only 5 AP from actually being in WvW, as it is 5 AP every 25% of world completion. So really, half of one daily).
- A little star you can’t even see yourself.
- 2 Gifts of Exploration, which are only useful for crafting a legendary.Not forced. Not even a tiny bit.
It is a method to force people who want any combination of the things you listed, who would otherwise not play WvW. Just because you don’t feel these things are important does not mean it is not forcing. I personally do not feel that this is necessarily a bad thing, minus my little gripe posted above, but it does force part of the playerbase.
I don’t really have problems with the full map completion. The only part I still find badly executed is that some parts of the WvW map are practically inaccessible unless you have the right colour. This was not a problem for me since I was not in a rush, but it would put me off if I needed the gift and found myself not being the needed colour for 2 months on end (which is how long it took me back in 2012). I still believe something needs to be done to make this less of a problem.
Before anyone brings up that you should just organise the whole server to get that last keep you need, if you can not see how unrealistic this is in almost every scenario, then there is little I can say.
Checking it from the start as the poster above is a good work around, but I still believe the problem should not exist in the first place.
It’s a nice try, but this thread will probably end the same way as the others because the two sides on this one just can not seem to connect. Your post already starts by considering there is a problem, which many people do not agree on. Anyway, my take:
Which content is affected?
Dungeons, all of them.
What is the problem?
People seeing groups on LFG requiring damage builds (called zerkers) and sometimes other things (that vary in degrees of ridiculousness) because they want a fast run. These groups tend to fill slower than groups that welcome everyone. Then three things are likely to happen:
-people create their own party, have 2 minutes of patience, problem solved.
-Instead of trying to make a group, or perhaps trying once for a minute, they wrongly perceive they cannot play the content they want anymore because of these zerkers and feel there is a problem. Then they come to the forum demanding big changes to something that is working as intended, and propose dubious, sometimes outrageous solutions, each time starting a new thread instead of posting on one of the existing billions.
-They try to join a group they know they don’t fit the description of, get told off, then continue as the former option describes.
How does it negatively impact your game experience?
It does not impact mine at all, but the sooner people realise there is no gamebreaking problem related to zerkers, the sooner they can enjoy their game again.
Neither me, nor him wont craft and put in into MF hundreds of rares,
he simply puts his dropped yellows from into MF.I didn’t said i have problem with the current RNG system and I didn’t think it’s broken,
just wanted to point out the thing is happening and exists, as Tom said earlier:“True randomness means there needs to be some extremely “unlucky” streaks, and some extremely “lucky” streaks. If there weren’t, it would not be truly random.”
and I think it would be great to make the RNG like he mentioned:
“Finally, I would like to say true randomness in an MMO probably isn’t the best way of handling progression and loot. A good system would be random, but would also include a so-called “streak-killer” algorithm, that would cut (at least) bad streaks eventually, guaranteeing a “hit” after enough “misses”.
Fair enough, I agree with the need for alternative to pure RNG, that’s why I think the coming precursor collection is a good idea (will need to wait to judge the execution though).
However, if the title of your thread says “Lucky account is a thing” then you imply you don’t believe the RNG is working as it should, so that’s the sentiment I got when coming into this thread.
There’s one guy locked in a meeting room at ArenaNet. He’s been there for a long time. He’s put wigs fashioned from chair stuffing on the potted plants and sat them at the table. A large, bold “25” covers his face in black marker ink. He’s turned the AC off and put the thermostat to max in order to hear the voices better.
Staff passing by the door with the aging sign “Conditions Redesign meeting” blu-tacked on catch glimpses of their wild, marked colleague making furtive glimpses between closed venetian blinds. In the dead of night, a rhythmic drumming can be heard as he bangs his head against the whiteboard. Some say the banging spells out “server load” in morse code.
Between reading this and your short story “Diving Goggles” from the release of the NPE, I feel like subscribing to a mailing list that sends me your posts.
Cheers.
On testing for streaks:
Whether the amount of streaks is too high would depend on many things: the possible results, the chances for those results individually and the size of the streaks come to mind. Reliably testing an RNG algorithm for such low odds as precursors already takes a lot of samples, I believe testing them for being prone to streaks of these would take many times that. Especially if you don’t really test for streaks, but rather for situations (read: individuals) that cause them to happen more/less often than they should. I don’t believe anyone has a high enough number of samples to check this, besides (probably) arenanet.
No, but it would have for example a streak of 5 6s quite frequently, and a streak of 10 6s would still not be a super rare anomaly either.
The fact that we have people that have had absolutely no drops during their 1000 hours of playing, and people who have had 10 drops during the same time tells us that Anets algorithm is truly random and that they do not use any streak-breaking algorithms (but maybe they should).
If a streak of 5 6s occur frequently, wouldnt you say the algorithm is faulty? The question is what is the threshold though.
We were talking about MMOs, so “frequently” could be as few as one in a thousand and it would still stick out like a sore thumb, like this thread is.
Well it is a good question to ask statisticians: If streaks of 5 6s are frequent, whereas 1,2,3,4,5 do not have or have infrequent streaks in an equal distribution in a large sample size, would the RNG or dice roll be considered truly random?
Since we are on the subject, why do some single player non online games with RNG have the same results immediately after loading / save skitten, and different when some additional action or turn is taken?
Some games have simple forms of RNG that can cause this to happen.
I have emulated some console games on computer with programs that had savestates, which save just about every variable (way more than normal saving does) and allow you to save and load anywhere in the game as if you had never stopped. In those cases most PS1 games I tried always gave the same results for the same actions done after loading.
However, I highly doubt any triple A MMO will use such simple systems, and there are no saves or savestates to be abused. If GW2 had such simple systems people would probably have found ways to exploit them by now. I do not recall any single player game released in the last 5 years that showed this behaviour using normal saves either, but granted I don’t play a lot of new games lately.
Edit: edited for citation failure
(edited by Galespark.7835)
Maybe they also do a lot more forges than your other guildies? If they do 100 forges a day on average while other members of you guild do 5-10, then they will get 10-20 times more precursors in the same amount of time (on average). Many people in my guild have had precursor drops while I never had one. However, many of those play at least twice as much a day, which does matter.
My last try was 200 crafted greatswords, but thats only 50 roll in a row, i got 4-5 low cost exos
Yes, and do you do that once every week, 2 weeks, month, year? And how often do those “lucky people” do this? My point still stands. If this year you MF 1000 rares, and they MF 10000, they are very likely to get more precursors than you do.
And then there is the principle that there will be some people getting very lucky and some very unlucky with a system like this, as Tom Gore has explained. In short, these anecdotes carry too little weight to be used as evidence for saying that the RNG is actually not working well.
Of course, that does not mean you have to like the current system, but there are existing threads where you can give your feedback, and the precursor problem will be adressed in some way in the expansion, though we do not know many details yet.
Maybe they also do a lot more forges than your other guildies? If they do 100 forges a day on average while other members of you guild do 5-10, then they will get 10-20 times more precursors in the same amount of time (on average). Many people in my guild have had precursor drops while I never had one. However, many of those play at least twice as much a day, which does matter.
That’s a valid point Carighan. However, the other side of the coin is people coming on here stating as a fact that playing as a berserker is easymode while they clearly don’t have much experience with it, or have run the easiest dungeon paths with it at best.
I can understand why people who know what they are talking about find it hard to take those people serious. Sadly, it is often how these threads start, take this one as an example.
Exactly, the risk goes to almost 0 due to blocks, reflecs, icebow #5 and the fact most stuff just dies before you take any dmg. For some classes your “skillful rotation” is mostly autoatk. Also full of passive playstile like: drop a banner, have signets that you never activate, summon AI (frost spirit), etc…
LOL.
So you mean using…
1. Blocks (active defense)
2. Reflects (using the proper utility skill for the encounter)
3. Crowd control skills to disrupt bosses
4. Proper DPS rotations….is bad? And you want to replace those things with passive defenses that you soak up using 0 skill or coordination? LOL again. And you had the nerve to say that my last post was bad. shame on you.
1)Active block is ok, but block everything is wrong. In spvp blocks are ok because there are builds that atck fast. In pve most the old brainded bosses have very slow high dps atcks instead of several medium dmg hits.
2) If it negates completly the boss it is bad design. They fixed some bosses so you cant reflect anymore but still need to fix much more.
3) “crowd control” if you think the entire game cc should be limited to icebow #5 been viable then it is clear you have no sense about balance.
4) “proper rotation” a simple rotation that for some classes consists in press 1 or 2 skills and go back to autoatck.
You talk to much about “active skill” but almost all meta builds right now have signets, mantras, etc that they slot and hardly ever activate. Warrior never using adrenaline skill is also passive. Frost spirit and banners are as active as a turret engi in spvp, actually less active because turrets have active skills.
I have yet to enter a party that blocks everything, and I play with 2 guardians in my party regularly. Also, while ice bow 5 is powerful, it is certainly not the only CC that is used in pve. On bosses however, Anet’s defiance system encourages you to drop the stacks with inferior skills and use the strongest available CC (ice bow 5) when the boss can be cc’ed. However, when in a pickle I have used other skills to interrupt a dangerous attack.
As for rotations, is that not always the case? You use the skills you need at that moment for more dps, useful boons, evades, whatever, then autoattack until you need one of your other skills again or it comes of cooldown if it is preferable to use it as often as possible. If you are referring to GS warriors that only use gs 1,2,3 and even just if they only use GS, they are obviously not playing well and will need to get carried by better players in more difficult content.
The problems you and many people mention with certain cherry picked meta build skills are due to game/skill design. Their active use is less desirable than their passive buffs due to PvE design. Nerfing zerker or making facetanking easier will not change this. Also, even these classes will use their weapon skills to play actively, if not their utility skills, or they will die quickly.
It is odd how many people actually have qualms with encounter design in PvE but somehow believe making facetanking easier will make this better.
I doubt it. Season 2 was overall well received, so I believe the LS will continue after the expansion, although I have no idea how the two will interact.
You will need to specify further, or you might not get the answers you want. For example, are the boons might and fury provided by the build (traits/skills/runes/sigils) to be included in the calculation?
Also, the answer will depend on the build (traits/skills/runes/sigils/profession). The ranking of armor sets on a thief might be different compared to the ranking on a mesmer, or even on two thiefs running different builds. The easiest way to show this is the precision cap: if a build gets to 100% crit chance, then further precision increase is wasted. As a results, sets with more power than precision will be more favorable with this build compared to other builds that do not max crit chance that easily.
All of LS is perfectly soloable, except for some achievements (some are extremely hard alone, but not impossible). Some fights are quite a step up from open world PvE though, so if you have no experience with other, harder PvE content it might seem a bit harsh at first. However, with some practice all classes can do it, you certainly don’t need a “tank”.
You can only continue to try or wait to see if they add a specific extractor as Dasenthal said.
For you this advice may be a bit late, but for anyone that still has to do this: hang on to the selectable eye/kidney bag from achievements until you need only one more eye/kidney, then select that one. The only way to beat the RNG gods is to reduce the things you need to gamble for.
I do know how the boss works. This change in tactics the OP recommending for bubbles is sure to help some folks adjust. But I think it is you and the other folks spouting its ok to use AoE are the ones don’t understand Coppers basic mechanics. He is a husk. He is resistant to direct damage. He is vulnerable to condition damage. Even the wiki lists direct damage is significantly reduced. Those AoE skills you are touting are wasted on him. You don’t even address how if you are not traited for condition damage you shouldn’t even be there. That full strength DPS could better utilized on Amber and Gold/Silver.
AoE is not the answer!
Why are you suddenly using direct vs condi damage as an argument in a discussion about aoe vs single target damage? It is it different problem entirely.
I (and probably most of the other “folks”) understand that perfectly fine, although I have never seen a run with only 5 people at him focused on conditions. It might be better than an all out attack with 15+, I can not compare. However, this is a fairytale outside of an SW instance populated mostly by a single organized guild. If you require no aoe, you will not mostly get condi users, you will get a high amount of people using long range single target damage auto attacks, which, as you said, do nearly no damage, and some of them probably apply conditions while not traited/geared for it. Good luck telling these people they should not be there.
Mindless aoe might not be the best, but it is probably still better than what happened in most maps before tuesday, since for most classes this means they can use skills that actually do damage, even if it is direct damage. A staff wielding elementalist probably delivers at least 5 (probably closer to 10) times more damage when allowed to use all dps skills instead of just the single target auto-attacks. If a portion of the people present actually know what to do, it gets even better. I have not been at copper lately so I cannot say how it is now, though people seem to report it getting better.
No No No. Do not tell people its ok to AoE at copper. If you tell people its ok to AoE, people are going to AoE at copper. While I am happy to hear there is a better way to do it, and I will certainly change what I do going forward. To tell people its ok to AoE as long as its on bubbles is not the right answer. AoE is not a finely tuned, tight area of burst focus damage. Its a WIDE UNFORGIVING LONG LASTING AREA OF EFFECT. What is in it can change in an instant. If we need to kill those bubbles, then tell folks to go in there and kill them away from the boss, don’t say AoE them. Players are going to see others using AoE and think its ok to do, just spam away on as much red as possible. You cant tell them its only bubbles away from boss. Some players don’t even have map chat on to read any explanation you give them. They are going to work off what they see. And as for the regen, you are right it is negligible and doesn’t heal him much. But what you get is a health bar that doesn’t move or it just creeps in one direction or the other.
If people are actually allowed to do damage (and not just use low damage single target skills, which is all many classes have if not allowed to aoe), the regen will be negligible in comparison, there will be no creeping. Especially if people use boon removal and poison. For bubbles, as long as some people (not all) focus on pushing and destroying them away from boss the few that do heal him will also be inconsequential compared to the damage delivered.
This is what happened when silverwastes was out for a week or so and some people knew how to do it, but the no-aoe mantra had not developed yet. What you propose is (random numbers to clarify the concept) is to reduce damage fourfold by restricting the skills player can use, only so he heals half as much, which still makes it more likely to fail the event than allowing people to damage.
As described by other people above, you only need a few people kiting/cc’ing well to get this to work, so it doesn’t matter if a portion of the players is happily ignoring map chat.
The “no AOE”-sillyness going on at copper made me happily tag copper and then run to indigo on my elementalist for my mordrem parts. If I’m going to get abused for playing right, then I might as well save myself the trouble and leech off of their often doomed attempts.
After every copper fail people blamed it on the aoe, but when I asked if that aoe popped the large (which would heal anyway if not popped fast enough) or the small bubbles (which should be kited away before popping) map chat went silent every time. Clearly those shouting the loudest had no clue about how the encounter works.
At least OP came to realize it and even publicly apologized, you have my respect for that.
Hey yeah! I did change the language ingame! I have to learn French for my job so i changed the audio to French… Mystery solved! Thx!
Ha, tried this as well, but I didn’t have the patience to relearn the name of every item in the game (often I could understand the name in both English and French, but they still would not connect easily due to not being directly translatable). Good luck though, immersion like this is usually a good start to learning a language.
So you’re denying that 90% of the backpiece skins are largely (if not literally) unused? I mean clearly I must have gone and enforced my own taste on (nearly) everyone in the game. I am Abbadon reborn! Bow to me peasant!
You seem to be misunderstanding me. I never made a guess at a figure of backpieces are used, since I do not have access to those numbers. I also never said that new ones should or should not be mate, as I am rather impartial to that. I merely expressed that I personally like some of them, and that people should consider that taste is subjective and realize that their taste is not the only “right” one.
Regarding your godhood, smite me!
/dance
“why not give a reason why there shouldn’t be more esthetically pleasing backpieces in the game?”
Because that’s the nub of it right there; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If that were the case that would render the entire profession of an artist redundant. There is such a thing as “well designed” and the current backpieces simply aren’t.
How so? Artists create things in which certain beholders can find beauty. No redundancy there, since most beholders are not capable of creating (or often thinking of) these things themselves.
I can not say I like many of the backpiece skins, but there are some that I like (fractal capacitor, mawdrey, the quivers or books) on certain of my characters. That said, I could probably make use of a cape-like backpiece, if they can make one that does not suffer from horrid clipping issues.
Artists go to school for sometimes decades to learn about perspective, composition, colour theory, lighting, live drawing, ect ect. You’ll find that even modern day abstract artists are very well versed in traditional arts and can draw a very technical image (ie a portrait) very very well. The reason their pieces are considered art is not because some rich dude likes them, but because they represent a certain aspect of their times, criticize something, express an emotion, or try to push the boundaries of what is possible in the medium of their choice.
Going into a debate about what art and beauty are would be too far off topic.
The point here is that there are people who like the current backpieces, which is why some people don’t feel a need for drastically different ones (which does not necessarily mean they are opposed to it). Some people, including you it seems, then start saying that the existing ones are objectively ugly while clearly they are not as opinions are divided. Define art as you please, but this thread is about if they are aesthetically pleasing or not. Or in the terms of your post a bit higher, this is about hanging a Picasso in your room, and not about recognizing his influence on contemporary art.
I don’t mind that people do not like the skins, and hope some get released they can proudly show off. Just don’t enforce your own taste on other people and say it is the only right one.
“why not give a reason why there shouldn’t be more esthetically pleasing backpieces in the game?”
Because that’s the nub of it right there; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If that were the case that would render the entire profession of an artist redundant. There is such a thing as “well designed” and the current backpieces simply aren’t.
How so? Artists create things in which certain beholders can find beauty. No redundancy there, since most beholders are not capable of creating (or often thinking of) these things themselves.
I can not say I like many of the backpiece skins, but there are some that I like (fractal capacitor, mawdrey, the quivers or books) on certain of my characters. That said, I could probably make use of a cape-like backpiece, if they can make one that does not suffer from horrid clipping issues.
I found the chimeric prism focus the most fitting of all foci skins I know of for my elementalist. You need 20 hall of monument points in Guild Wars 1 for it though.
What’s the exploit?
- That dungeon rewards are not given for completing the dungeon from start to finish, but when the last boss dies or last cutscene is played. Since rewards are scaled based on how difficult the dungeon path is, I believe the reward is intended for full completion.
You are entitled to your definition of exploit, but people have already provided links to dev quotes that show arenanet does not consider it one. Now you can choose to remain annoyed by something you don’t want to happen but can not change, or ignore it because you realise it does not matter for your enjoyment of the game.
How is this different from some other “niche” traits? Traits for weapons you do not use, or traits for utility skills you do not use? If you generalise everything then people would not need to bother to switch traits anymore to be effective, and the whole system becomes uninteresting.
If your problem is that a certain trait line has interesting master or grandmaster traits while not offering interesting adept traits for your specific build, I would try to bring that to attention instead of proposing to change something unrelated. Something that is actually already working well.
While I think OP is overreacting, blaming all lag on the client side is a mistake. I often play with guild mates spread all over Europe (on the European servers), usually dungeons or fractals. It happens regularly we all start lagging at the same time. Nothing really gamebreaking usually, but I doubt we all have unreliable providers that somehow synchronise their bad spells.
The only way to improve your chances is to tag as many different bosses you still need parts for as possible, although people do not always appreciate that as you are effectively leeching while running from a boss that is still up (I confess I have done this myself before). As far as I know, MF has no influence on the extracted parts. If it frustrates you, I suggest waiting for the next release in january and hoping they put in specific extractors for bladder parts (which is what I am doing). Park the parts you already have on an alt that you do not need inventory space on until then.
If you have unopened parts, perhaps you should keep those unopened until the next release since there might be even more parts released then.
If you are wondering, I feel this whole scenario of hanging unto stuff for next update is getting a bit awkward, but what can you do?
One thing I noticed last night which was quite odd with the bells is despite my fps rate not changing, I went from several instances getting a score of 550 to 588, then my last instance I couldn’t hit one correct note.
Not that I care as I completed the achievement long ago, but I found it very odd that suddenly on one instance, it did not matter when the note was struck, it was always a miss.
I found myself in the same situation yesterday, however, just leaving the instance and joining a new one fixed it for me. Maybe this lag is not always only to blame on the clientside.
For all of you saying this isn’t a problem: think back to whichever the piece of content put out by ArenaNet that you least enjoyed doing, whether out of yawn-inducing boredom or teeth-grinding frustration – be that a minigame, a particular game mode, hanging around the south camp of Vandal’s Claim waiting for enough Sinister Triad mooks to spawn to complete the event, or whatever. Now, imagine that the next festival meta requires spending an hour or so doing that, and if you do not, you are locked out of the meta regardless of what else you do. Be honest here, now: How would you feel?
If I feel the reward would justify it, I would do it and not complain. If I feel it does not, I would not do it and also not complain.
Since I value my free time highly, I quickly decide a reward is not worth it if I do not like doing whatever is required for it. Luckily, I do enjoy doing different things so the chances of the second option happening are pretty small in my case.
Perhaps the only way it would bother me hard enough to complain is if the reward was not merely cosmetic but gave the other party gameplay advantages beyond very simple QOL improvement.
That said, I thought the system where there were a bit more options than the amount of tasks required for meta was quite good for those who have stronger and more limited preferences than me. Returning to the format of a strict checklist does seem like a step backwards.
The last point is just your opinion. There is a competative element. Its just not direct.
It also depends on the definition of success. Although I do not do speedruns (hence no real competitive element), I don’t feel very successful after a 2+hour fractal run.
Hmm, I can only tell you some things that help me perform my jumps more reliably. Keep your camera at a high angle so it is easy to tell if you jumped far enough. Aside from the candy bars you have a lot of leeway for over-jumping in this puzzle so make sure you do not under jump. Don’t put the camera all the way to the top though. Some snowflakes are tilted and the highest part might be too high to jump to, and you will not be able to tell high and low parts from each other.
Also try to steer a bit with the a and d keys if you seem to have misaimed (without releasing w), if practiced this allows you to jump before turning your camera in the most optimal position thus gaining you time.
And last but not least, when you get frustrated, quit and return another time (hours/days later). I find that combining last time’s experience with a fresh mind often produces good results.
Maybe other people have some good advice?
I spent 9 hours trying to complete that puzzle, I just suck at it.. I may try another 9 hours to see if I can complete it, but don’t know if I’m feeling up to it yet. I’m just glad you get to have a camera issue to blame it on. I’m just not talented enough to complete it sigh
Out of curiosity have you watched videos of people who have done it?
yes, I have watched the videos. I’ve gotten to the fire a handful of times and made it across those popping presents once. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.
Do you aim your jumps by turning your mouse with the right mouse button pressed in addition to the wasd keys, or do you only use wasd? The former is much much better once you get the hang of it. If this is not the problem, what usually makes you fall? Or are you too slow?
While I can imagine the wait is frustrating, your solution makes me want to “ring how I want”.
and there we go, new patch, look at all those PvE players complaining, demanding, totally impossible to satisfy!
The same could be said about the PvP community after the previous update, and those complaints are still ongoing as well. Regardless of whether the update is generally perceived as good or not, people will complain about it, certainly if old systems are changed (daily system, toypocalypse, PvP matchmaking, etc).
Just say outright that you want arenanet to focus on PvP, it is much simpler than this biased debate which is just a roundabout way to arrive at your message.
I don’t mind the cliffhangers but I do hate the constant breaks.
Oh the cliffhangers in themselves don’t bother me as much as they seem to bother other people on this forum, it’s really the combination with the break that does it for me.
I did not feel any existing thread with complaints about the LS break viewed the topic the way I intend to now, but my apologies if there is already a very similar thread.
I am a bit disappointed with the current break of living story updates. Of course, I would like new content faster, but that’s nothing new. I find it especially frustrating that we get a break after an episode that ended in a cliffhanger. I did not intend to write a post about this until I realised that the last break came at a moment that made a lot more sense. After Dragon’s Reach part 2, the build-up of the story to the summit at the grove was done, so it made sense to take a break after this.
This time however, it feels like we just stopped right in the middle of the action. An analogy would be the Dragon’s Reach episode not ending after the events at the summit, but right when the disturbances start.
Of course, you could argue that a break makes sense since information about how to open the wall needs to be gathered at the priory, but that is clearly just a way to forcefully stop the episode. We might as well have found out how to open it through Caithe’s memories and proceed accordingly.
This ending with a cliffhanger might have been intentional, or due to circumstances. Perhaps the idea is that ending on cliffhangers will make more people come back. I was coming back anyhow, but I can only speak for myself. Perhaps the schedule ended up being too tight do deliver a relatively rounded story in time before the holidays and this was the best compromise. Whatever the case, I would personally really appreciate it if this could be avoided in the future.
If you feel this is reasonable, feel free to give this thread your support. If you do not, feel free to state why. If you happen work for Arenanet and think you can give some more insight in the reasons, feel free to do so. Either way, thanks for reading.
This one was indeed very hard, I ran up my underlevelled mesmer there so I could use portals as a safeguard against falling small distances. The worst part was the rope at the start, it seemed like the area you had to walk on was actually a bit more left (in the direction of going up) than the graphics seemed to suggest. This seemed a bit unfair.
If it was not for that part I would have tried it normally, but it took me like 30 deaths to figure out how exactly to walk that rope, and then still failing regulary because I misguessed, so I did not feel like adding that to learning the rest of the jumps. I think the rest of the puzzle is okay though, not easy but not unfair either.
Might be that it will get easier for me after walking on those ropes for a while, we’ll see.
And here I was hoping the “storm wizard” skritt in the new underground area was actually starting to succeed in his plans.
as for the top right it does not explain to interact with wall panels to distract golems
Wait… what? If this is for the part I’m thinking of, then I failed that part trying to get it to work. I had no idea there was another way to go about it.
This one was not immediately clear to me as I happened to be in a spot where I could not see these panels at all. However, after figuring there was nothing to be done where I was standing I ran around a bit and saw an arrow popping up on my screen somewhere. Then again, I have been playing games long enough to know that usually something seems impossible only because you have missed something and need to look around a bit longer, but I guess people who only played certain genres of games, if any, up to this point might not have this reflex.
I will make one criticism of the design of the puzzle, and that is that there were a lot of points where the goal was unclear. I mean, if you have a straight jumping puzzle, where the goal is you just keep climbing up until you reach the top, then you don’t need this, but in a meandering up and down puzzle like this one, the goal points should have been more obvious.
I think in a well designed JP, you should always be able to see the goal of a given stage from where you start, so you know “ok, I know I have to get from here to there, now how do I achieve that?” Too often in this JP there were points where the field becomes wide open, and there’s no clear indication of whether you should go down, or try to find a way ever more upwards, or wander off to the side, and you can waste a lot of previous effort if you choose incorrectly.
I understand that this might be a negative point for some people, but for me this increased the sense of exploration, I liked it a lot. After all, I usually quickly realised I was going the wrong way because of dead ends. Only in the last part did I waste a lot of time trying to figure out where to go, in the end I skipped a very unclear part with my lightning hammer #2 skill (and helped some others use that skip by providing other lightning hammers).
Obviously I am not against new skills, but I don’t really feel the need for them either. Maybe that’s because I usually play an ele and have more skills available than most classes, but like some others I feel making undesirable existing skills (weapon and utility) more viable seems more important to me. For example, I find elementalists have no elite that is useful in PvE outside of very niche situations, and usually I wish I could use normal utility skills in the elite slot.
Well, the map is fun and all that, but 2000 crests is stretching it. I might get these in time doing SW once in a while, but if it’s the same or a similar grind for the next pieces I will pretend luminescent doesn’t exist. A bit disappointing it took this turn, was looking forward to the scavenge hunt.
I think I fixed it I’m not telling what I did or Anet will nerf that too :p
Somehow it does not seem a good idea to post this on the forums of arenanet’s own game. Anyway, if you are confused to how you are allowed to name the character, you might contact support (see SUPPORT at the top left of this page).
Paying for past episodes doesn’t bother me that much because like some have said, as long as you log in once during the two weeks, you’ll unlock the episode.
BUT! I’m pretty disappointed that they seem to have changed what counts as “the two weeks an episode is live.” Used to be that you could log in at any point up until the next release went live, even if it was just an hour before the next one. But earlier this morning, I logged in for the first time in a long while to make sure I unlocked Echoes of the Past before the update, and there was no clickable icon above my mini map; the LS menu said I’d have to pay 200 gems to unlock it. I guess because the date itself, the 18th, is the date of the new release, I was too late to unlock Echoes of the Past… even though Tangled Paths still isn’t up. That’s frustrating.
Did they say this change was going to happen on the website anywhere? If I missed it, that’s just my fault then, since I haven’t been following that stuff for the months I haven’t played, but otherwise…
If they changed their policy, they did not inform us, I would contact support and see if you can get it unlocked for free because this is their mistake. If this is not on purpose but a kind of bug, I would also contact support to solve it. Either way, I think you should contact support, good luck!
The only thing I really dislike about the boss fights has been the same thing over and over again, having to rely on another group of people who don’t know what their doing for the mission to be successful. 2 years have proved that any sort of mass coordination for those kinda mechanics on a large scale… does…not…work.
This is about the fights in the story instances, I assume you are talking about the Silverwastes bosses? If not, you can always do the story fights solo, none of them are impossible alone (some achievements are a lot harder alone though, but none in this episode).
Barring bugs I think it was a decent fight, only that it takes too many cycles of doing the same thing before it goes down. Which was not a problem at first but during the second and third attempt for achievements (mine and those of other people) got a bit tedious.
More like 99.99% of the time. Almost every single bubble spawned within the AOE when I did it. The few that didn’t were usually on the far side of the room with the boss in between.
On the odd occasion that the fragility bubbles weren’t covered in AOE, the vortex crystal was!
I gave up even trying to kill the vortex crystals and killed the boss the hard way. Its like they set up a mechanically simple fight and then tried their hardest to prevent us using the mechanics.
There are 2 ways you can deal with this.
If you find the bubbles are covered by aoe circles, move a bit to a clear area where there are no circles yet and take the first bubble that pops there. The reason is that it always fires an aoe and a bubbles together, and the latter land just a bit further than the former from my experience. But then the next aoe might cover that bubble, etc if you stay near the same spot for too long.
Or if you feel like making the fight slightly more interesting, look for a bubble that’s covered by only 1 circle, dodge through the aoe and the bubble, and you will get the buff without getting hit. I did the last thing many times and never died because of it. I think at least the first solution is pretty intuitive, probably intended, so I would hardly say they prevent people from using the mechanics.
Is this new content only meant to be played by players in groups or solo players in all Ascended gear? I ask because I’m in all exotic medium gear and I get hit twice and sometimes just once by Mordremoth none boss creatures and die or is that because the damage output on the Mordremoth minons is beyond ridiculous…
I believe you are exaggerating. I go around there using a full zerker elementalist with only 100 extra toughness due to 2 points in the earth trait line (for an offensive major trait), and none of the normal mordrem can kill me in 2 hits if I let them hit me, not even the wolves while flanking. Veterans and higher can be a different matter, of course.
I heard accounts of people levelling other people off of cliffs in WvW, never seen it happen myself though.