Problem is that old AC already taught a lot of players bad habits and now they are angry because they can’t AFK face tank Spider Queen while standing in her AoEs or completely ignore Kholer’s adds by pulling him down the stairs or burn Ghost Eater without any threat of taking damage.
I won’t say that the dungeon is perfect. It’s not. I still think it’s a joke that people run through trash mobs. A lot of the events are bugged. However, most of the complaints here aren’t about bugs (with the exception of a few posts). Most people are complaining that this dungeon isn’t “casual” friendly or isn’t an easy 15 min per path exotic/gold farm.
Dungeons, and dungeon rewards (exotic armor/weapons), are suppose to be a sign of prestige. Where is the prestige in something that any bad pug can obtain from doing one weeks worth of AC runs?
Another thing people are failing to grasp is that ANet has been, from the start, all about playing GW2 the way YOU want to play it. If you want gold/exotics, then there are many ways to get them besides running dungeons. You can craft gear as good as any of the dungeon sets. Want gold? World Events, DE, farming materials to sell on the TP, etc. You aren’t at any point required to run explorable dungeons and the story mode dungeons are easy enough so that you don’t miss out on any crucial lore.
Honestly, any prestige that could come from dungeon armor sets is negligible at this point because anyone with a weeks worth of time could’ve gotten any exotic set they wanted with minimal effort.
What you seem to miss is that Ascalonean Catacombs are designed for level 35 players, or so the in-game email and the door crier would have you believe. Are you suggesting that new players should be excluded from this ‘prestigious’ experience? Can you honestly say to the entire forum, that you would enjoy playing AC as a level 35 character, with only a few unlocked skills and none of your exotic armor and weapons?
Yes, I would enjoy running AC on a 35 character. I draw satisfaction from the fact that I accomplished a challenging feat. Then again I’m also the type of person that thought Demon’s Souls was a fantastic game for just that exact reason. I’m also the type of tank that would chain pull in WoW dungeons to see how much aggro/damage I could sustain and the type of healer that would tell the tanks to do exactly that. Mind you these were LFG dungeons. Some people enjoy being challenged.
Old AC was not satisfying in anyway. You could AFK during some of the boss fights and still win. New AC, while far from perfect, at least requires you to think, coordinate, pay attention and learn.
People learn by being challenged, not by facerolling easy 10 minute paths. Old AC taught the player nothing through it’s mechanics. New AC succeeds in this respect by making it fairly obvious that you shouldn’t stand in red circles or that you should learn to dodge when you see a boss start glowing and doing an obvious charge-up.
I think all the boss fights, bugs aside, are a step in the right direction. The major problem areas I perceive being the P1/P3 graveling mound areas because they are very DPS dependent, which a ~35 lvl group might be lacking on.
Dungeons aren’t for everyone in the same way that WvWvW and sPvP aren’t for everyone. If you are incapable of learning from your mistakes, lack the desire, time or patience to improve your game play, or tend to blame repeated wipes on the incompetence of everyone in the group but yourself then dungeons might not be your thing. And an introductory dungeon is the best place for people to realize this rather than thinking they are superman because they facerolled through old AC.
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Problem is that old AC already taught a lot of players bad habits and now they are angry because they can’t AFK face tank Spider Queen while standing in her AoEs or completely ignore Kholer’s adds by pulling him down the stairs or burn Ghost Eater without any threat of taking damage.
I won’t say that the dungeon is perfect. It’s not. I still think it’s a joke that people run through trash mobs. A lot of the events are bugged. However, most of the complaints here aren’t about bugs (with the exception of a few posts). Most people are complaining that this dungeon isn’t “casual” friendly or isn’t an easy 15 min per path exotic/gold farm.
Dungeons, and dungeon rewards (exotic armor/weapons), are suppose to be a sign of prestige. Where is the prestige in something that any bad pug can obtain from doing one weeks worth of AC runs?
Another thing people are failing to grasp is that ANet has been, from the start, all about playing GW2 the way YOU want to play it. If you want gold/exotics, then there are many ways to get them besides running dungeons. You can craft gear as good as any of the dungeon sets. Want gold? World Events, DE, farming materials to sell on the TP, etc. You aren’t at any point required to run explorable dungeons and the story mode dungeons are easy enough so that you don’t miss out on any crucial lore.
Honestly, any prestige that could come from dungeon armor sets is negligible at this point because anyone with a weeks worth of time could’ve gotten any exotic set they wanted with minimal effort.
“You want the introductory dungeon to be hard for everyone new? That’s a great way to get players to mass exodus the game.”
No. Challenging means that new players go in, face a challenge within their limits, and can find success if they get beyond beginner status.
This is a good point. To expand on this: If the dungeons are a cake walk as AC was before then the player finds no satisfaction in conquering the dungeon; if you make it too difficult then it becomes out of their reach and they give up. Either one of these will cause this mass exodus you speak of.
Challenging dungeons are a good way of making the game enjoyable and keep the players engaged in the content. If you make the introductory dungeon a mindlessly easy gear grind (which is exactly what AC was) then you set the tone that all dungeons will be like this.
It’s rather presumptuous to call AC a failed introductory dungeon right now, as most seem to be claiming. ANet could be setting the stage for a revamp of all dungeons, and AC could be a sign of more complex mechanics for the later dungeons. It really depends on if they plan to have later dungeons build on the basic concepts that they attempt to teach new players in the revamped AC.
I think some people, mainly the one’s that are arguing old AC was fine as it was, are confused on what an introductory dungeon is suppose to accomplish. Introductory dungeons are suppose to teach the basics of working as a team and understanding more complex mechanics than what you would find in an overworld environment. Please explain to me how pre-patch AC accomplished any of this?
Pre-patch AC required absolutely no team work to finish. This is why everyone pug’d it. You could stand in AoEs, face tank bosses, and dodging wasn’t a necessity.
I won’t argue post-patch AC is perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction. Mechanics teach you to not stand in AoEs, to dodge, to kill adds in boss fights, to work as a team (Path 2), interrupting channels (Path 3) and to watch your surroundings for cues on what you should be doing (Path 1 and 3).
Aside from the lag issues that have appeared, I think the main area that needs to be improved upon is hit points on trash and trash leashing. People still speed run passed the trash mobs. If this is working as intended then I wonder why even bother having the mobs there to begin with. I’d say look into lower hit points on the trash and remove leashing so that you can’t just passed every mob. The trash mobs shouldn’t be the huge time commitment of killing as they currently are, but in their current state one must ask why they are even in the dungeon to begin with.
I liked that the original AC boss was one of the few bosses that was fun to melee, avoid the scream or die, now it has become another ranged fight… Path 1, range and run around fire circles… easy. Path 3, go range or the bosses regular hit knocks you back… lame.
That’s my only complaint other than the buggy NPC in path 3 and insta wipe from falling rocks as they’re unavoidable and not enough dodges if NPC doesn’t shield or you can’t wipe the defiant stacks. Very unforgiving.
Stability and protection are your friends. As for the rocks, it’s been mentioned that you can interrupt it.
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I haven’t tried it as a 35 but I plan on doing it to see how doable it is. I agree they need to work on scaling, though I think the changes indirectly helped with this by making the extra stats less important.
I’d love to see your feedback once you run that. I’m guessing if 5 people who are actually spec’d at level 35 equip themselves with no greater than Masterwork gear and similar traits that would be available it’s going to either be a wipe or a very long, frustrating experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I like AC and I can run a path in about 20 minutes even after the update, but I’m full 80 exotic. This dungeon is not a level 35 dungeon. They need to make this particular dungeon easier so that people who actually are level 35 can run a dungeon if they want to. Right now, most would be lost (and hopeless) entering AC @ level 35.
I’ll be sure to post my feedback if it’d be useful to people. If it’s as bad as you say, they either need to weaken 80s scaling or nerf the dungeon a bit or both. After the patch I ran it with my Lvl 80 support spec’d Guardian with Full AC exotic armor… and two level 30 MW rings. We were all 80s, three were pugs (myself included) with the other two in a guild together. We wiped a lot. Wiped on Kholer ~6 times over two paths and skipped him on path 3. Wiped at other various bosses. Maybe 12-15 wipes over all three paths. Our wipes I felt had more to do with failure to learn mechanics and work as a team and less to do with gear/levels.
If changes like these force people to learn things like playing your class properly, ressing teammates, dodging, working as a team, avoiding AoEs, damage mitigation, timing support skills to help allies, and changing utility/weapon skills for different encounters then I see this as a boon to the community. It encourages creativity with your class skills and team work, which from my experience with pre-patch AC is something that is generally lacking in the community.
People are putting way too much importance on level and numbers, especially when level 80s get scaled down into the ground.
It’s worth noting that, even when scaled to the ground, Lv 80s enjoy a significant advantage over Lv 35s – completed trait lines, access to high level gear, more access to skills that can be switched up to fit the situation.
I’ve personally enjoyed the dungeon changes, but I also understand it would be a much different experience for a Lv 35 than for a Lv 80.
I haven’t tried it as a 35 but I plan on doing it to see how doable it is. I agree they need to work on scaling, though I think the changes indirectly helped with this by making the extra stats less important. Exotics aren’t going to save you if you stand in spider queens AoE and mobs are still going to die pretty fast even without exotic weapons and traits.
From reading map chat and forums I get the impression that the people complaining the most about this are the same people that would farm CoF/AC for easy gold/exotics and then complain on the forums that GW2 has no end game content. You can’t ever satisfy them.
Even in WoW not everyone could do the current raids and that’s what made the gear prestigious. It wasn’t just the stats on the gear, it was the prestige that went with having the gear.
The only difference here is that GW2 offers other options for getting exotic-quality stats besides grinding dungeons. If all you are looking for is the stats then do yourself a favor. Make the exotics yourself and run six AC paths for the monk runes (instead of ~24ish for the set). It’s easier than complaining on the forums that you can’t speed run an intro dungeon anymore.
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Honestly … if you’re a brand new player and you want to push to do “end game” (scaled dungeon story/explorer) as soon as you can, I would expect you to make a point to not only learn how to use your skills, but also look online to figure out how to participate in the content. And I would also expect you to invest in having the proper equipment for the situation.
I’ve got nothing against people wanting to do things as soon as possible, I just don’t expect content should be “walk up and face roll it without needing to study, prepare or come properly equipped”.
Join a guild, level up, get some equipment, read about what you want to do before you just jump in.
Where does it say that AC is “end game content”? You get a message at 30/35 to tell you its opened to you. This is what people just dont get. It is most certainly not end game content, its a lvl 35+ dungeon.
If you were talking about Arah and making the same point I would concur with you 100%. However its AC, and it is not end-game content, its an early game intro to dungeons.
Let me repeat that again, because it seems like people keep making the same mistake;
AC is not end-game content.As to a further point made earlier about players not acting as a team; I currently have an ele @45 who was playing AC pre-patch and having fun doing so. Being new to the ele class and wanting to “tune up” my casting skills so that switching became normal I played it a lot with icebow and FGS so that on any mounds the team has the firepower to take them out fast. My play came from using them when needed and backing up the team with AoE fire damage and a bit of water healing. Things worked great, I made friends easily. Hell that ele did AC explore mode path 1 at level 33.
LVL 33! Because I knew the mechanics, I had the skill, and I geared my char I was able to pull my weight in the team and not get spanked every 2 seconds by the mobs and bosses. I had FUN! right up to lvl 45 and the patch hitting.
Same ele, better geared, higher level, with a competant player at the controls (me) with 2 condition removals and a stun breaker utility skills; Post patch = wipe, wipe and wipe again. Not even fun, never mind FUN!
The difficulty has been skewed to far towards experienced and hardened players. Do that for Arah or CoF but doing it in AC is a a terrible idea.
Anet has been seen on many occasions saying that the end game begins at level 1, so I am afraid you are wrong. AC IS end game content. My guess, and hopes, are that all dungeons will be revamped in a manner that AC was so that they feel more satisfying. Let me also point out that End Game =/= Max Level. In WoW it does, but not here. End game means that you are doing difficult content, working toward achievements and gaining prestige in the server. GW2 is trying to make leveling a by-product of doing end game rather than a means to do it. Did you ever wonder why they have massive world events in all the starter zones? Is that not end game?
Old AC was not fun and not satisfying. If you were wiping that much then it was probably because you and your party weren’t working as a team and were instead following that “lone wolf” mentality that old AC and many of the dungeons seem to encourage. Old AC was a joke. The only chance of dying was against Kholer, H. King and Rumblus and all of them had laughably easy skills to dodge. New AC is still fairly easy, albeit more challenging.
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Honestly … if you’re a brand new player and you want to push to do “end game” (scaled dungeon story/explorer) as soon as you can, I would expect you to make a point to not only learn how to use your skills, but also look online to figure out how to participate in the content. And I would also expect you to invest in having the proper equipment for the situation.
I’ve got nothing against people wanting to do things as soon as possible, I just don’t expect content should be “walk up and face roll it without needing to study, prepare or come properly equipped”.
Join a guild, level up, get some equipment, read about what you want to do before you just jump in.
Well put.
To me the whole point of dungeons is the challenge of completing the dungeon and not just the gear you get at the end. The armor isn’t meant to be a tread mill that you work toward for slightly bigger numbers, it’s meant to be a trophy to show off. There is a reason why, statwise, exotics you get from dungeon tokens are identical to the ones you get from crafting and drops. If you find a dungeon too hard then you have plenty of options to get exotics.
Edit: And just to elaborate the point I was making is that a lot of people seem to think AC is suppose to be an easy mode farm fest to get better gear for running other dungeons. In reality dungeons should be a sign of prestige for defeating challenging obstacles rather than a place for putting in a weeks worth of runs and getting your reward at the end.
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I think it’s a significant improvement over old AC for both experienced and inexperienced players. Yes the dungeon is harder, yes it requires coordination, and yes it requires wiping a few times to learn the mechanics. These encourage you to work as a team, the importance of ressing downed teammates, the importance of adjusting weapons/utility skills for different areas, importance of dodging and being aware of your surroundings.
Old Ascalon taught awful habits for an introductory dungeon. It taught you that you could stand in read circles of death and face tank bosses (Spider Queen), it encouraged you to go pure dps builds for faster clears, it taught you that boss fights were nothing but a tank n’ spank with an occasional dodge on a blatantly obvious one-hit wonder (Howling King/Rumblus/Kholer), it taught you that you don’t need to deal with adds at all (Ghost Eater/Kholer), and for the most part it didn’t teach any new or useful mechanics to the player that you couldn’t learn in the over world soloing veterans/champions. But it was easy to farm for pugs.
Honestly I hope other dungeons get revamped and are given mechanics that build on things that previous dungeons taught. And the mechanics in this dungeon aren’t that complicated once you stop and read the abilities that the mob has. A baptism of fire is a very good introduction to dungeons if you plan on people taking them as being challenging content.
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I think I might be missing the point, but isn’t the point of a starter dungeon to be easier than higher dungeons, also farmable so you can acquire the exotics in ORDER to do the higher level dungeons. So you made it much more frustrating and I have never seen more rage quits than I have now from people on gw2lfg.com, a team going in without extremely well off coordination skills is almost a guarantee failure.
Also the huge FPS drop in P1 during burrows is not welcomed, I had other severe lags in other places but I’m way too mad right now to remember where.
I just want a dungeon that doesn’t require lvl 80’s with full exotic and team speak to beat…
And by “beat” I DON’T mean take 1 hour on one path and get wiped 7-8 times, that isn’t beating anything.
This isn’t WoW. The goal of lower level dungeons isn’t to farm the gear treadmill so you can progress to the next dungeon. The whole point of level scaling was so that you could run the dungeons when ever you want and they’d be challenging, though I’ll admit that the scaling still gives decked out 80s an advantage. If all you want is exotics for running higher dungeons then just craft/buy them. It’ll be easier.
That being said, with all the nerfs to HP on bosses it’s become easier for low levels to run. You don’t need exotic weapons to DPS down the hit point bags anymore. I ran all three paths last night without VoiP and the biggest cause of wipes were as follows:
-Standing in Spider AoEs
-Not rezzing downed teammates
-Not dodging Kholers scorpion wire…..
-Not killing Kholers adds
-Learning the mechanics on the boss fights
Still finished all three paths. It is very possible to pug.
this is two issues combining imo. On the one hand AC is essentially an “introduction” dungeon, one that is on theory and on paper designed for characters of 35 and up. THe problem with that is for new players the dungeon itself is needlessly difficult when they dont know whats going on, or only have a thin grasp of it. Once you become season enough “dungeon running” with a group and know wth your actually doing in the place you find it much much easier.
The learning curve is needlessly steep for such an “intro” dungeon.
That leads to player frustrations, team wipes, parties imploding, and generally being “not fun”.
On the other hand, high level characters when downscaled get such a huge advantage over players who are not downscaled that its almost comical. So some players then assume level = competancy and will only party with those of a similar level.
So that means we all lose out as new players are turned off dungeons as “not fun”, others only group with players they assume can handle themselves leaving most without a clear understanding of what or why then are then “blacklisted” from parties.
Fix the learning curve by giving players HINTS on the first run through so then know wth is going on. The address the scaling so that level power is actually equalised relatively to non scaled players and things wont seem so bad at all.
I think they do a decent job of making AC a learning experience. Just look at the charge times of Kholer and Trolls kill abilities. The problem could be attributed more to the fact that these learning areas are often skipped by pugs.
I still think if they just scale ignored the higher level items and replaced them with baseline items for the level range of the dungeon it’d balance a lot of things. Basically a system comparable to Heart of the Mists, but for only gear that is above the level or level range of the dungeon. Technically level 80s could abuse this by just twinking BiS gear for that level dungeon, but that’d be a lot of effort for a pug run and a character at the appropriate level would be able to craft/buy items themselves if they chose to. At the very least this could add value to gear at dungeon explorable levels and potentially narrow the gap between full exotic 80s and blue/green 35s.
When someone asks to bring a lowbie to a lowbie dungeon, I look at the only heuristic this game has allowed me to develop: Achievement Points.
If you have >2k achievement points then I’m pretty confident you’ll do okay. >3k and I’m pretty sure you know what you’re doing. 4k or 5k is essentially a free pass to bring whatever you want.
<2k and I’ll definitely waffle a bit. If it’s not my guildie or personal friend, it is really bothersome to go through the process of making sure all their gear is level appropriate, ask them whether they’ve done the any dungeons before, make sure they haven’t made any other newbie mistakes in gearing or build, and take it on faith that they’ll be a team player and listen to instructions.
I’m usually not too picky when it comes to who is in my group, but are Achievement points are a pretty decent indicator or is it still a leap of faith? I’ve only ever really run AC, but I don’t think I’ve ever had such awful runs that I’d segregate all non-80s from future groups.
Things like Kholer and Troll I always saw as optional and I’d say for the effort required to kill them the reward seem somewhat in the ball park. Considering the amount of time required to kill trash mobs, the quality of drops, and the ease with which they are mitigated it is no shock that they are just skipped. The current state of trash mobs could be replaced with jump puzzles or environmental hazards and would offer as much, if not more, difficulty to the dungeon with comparable rewards.
Whenever I party for AC there is usually at least 1 low level person, if not more in the group unless its one of those special 80 only groups
In all honesty, I’ve run all 3 paths of AC at least a dozen times and don’t recall having a group with all 80s in it. This might be something that’s reared up recently. I will say that as an 80 AC was a lot easier than at 40-50 when I first ran it, but it’s hard to tell if it’s due to the scaled 80>35, dungeon nerfs, or learning to play my profession/dodge/sucking less at the game.
I don’t think they should force people to fight the mobs, I think they should make it worth the time by either a) decreasing the time to burn them, b) reducing dungeon completion rewards and distributing it as chance drops or c) both.
I think option C) would be the best because as of right now the mobs take too long to kill for a dungeon that you are going to run ~30 paths of per character to grind up the exotic armor set and the gift. Even if the mobs had higher drop rates for Rare crafting materials in that level range (slivers/shards/fragments) would make killing the mobs feel a little more worth it.
I just think its a better approach to remedy the reason why people don’t do it rather than forcing them to do it the way you’ve designed it.
Lack of rewards is another big thing in this game. Thanks for bringing that up. I remember when I beat the final boss (huge disappointment on that fight) but the mysterious boxes I got gave me lvl 20-39 blue items.
I really don’t like the concept of trash mobs which is prominent in MMOs. Understand why they exist, but there is just never any point in killing them. Even something as simple as giving them Token drop chances, or not end loading the reward would help a lot. Maybe making them less of a time sink would also help. If all the wanted to do was make a time soak then they could’ve just made a series of jump puzzles leading up to all the AC Exp bosses. It’s probably be more challenging then DPSing gravelings for 15 mins in between each boss or running passed them.
If their goal was to make getting Token gear be time consuming, I’d rather they make the end reward be 10 tokens per path, 5 per mini-boss (both diminishing to 5 and 3 on subsequent runs) and drop chances for 1-3 on mobs (maybe shoot for 30 on average per run diminishing to 5-10) but make the mobs much easier to kill (not necessarily less deadly) and less time consuming. This would encourage full runs to maximize rewards while also making the end items take a fairly decent time to farm up. Just a thought.
I remember when gw2 was going through development and the whole dungeon scaling was discussed. I thought it was a GREAT concept, helping to prevent dungeons from going obsolete and allowing for faster party formations for low and high level characters.
Its really backfired, leading to all dungeons becoming level 80-only playgrounds.
I think this is a perfect example of a good mechanic implimented by a creative development team that ended up being twisted and broken by the player base.
the concept is good, its the scaling thats bad.. its becouse its a % degree’s with a high cap on stats making maxed 80 chars have much better stats then any char at the actual lvl.
i think it would be scaled in the opposite direction so that maxed 80 had at best the same stats as maxed chars at the actual lvl needed.
Scaling for level seems simple enough, but I’m not sure how it works for items. Traits I’m guessing is non-existent. Here are some thought though:
-Traits: Scaled based on the level limitations you’d have for the level rescale. For example, you’d be capped at Adept in Traits for AC because Master level is unlocked at 40. Any points specced passed that would not count in rescaling and any Major/Minor rune passives are disabled. This wouldn’t balance completely because a level 80 could still do a Mario build and have more points/traits than a 35 would, for example in AC a 35 would have 25 traits but a level 80 could spec 20/20/10/10/10 and retain 50 points or spec 30/30/10/0/0 and retain 25.
-Items: Why don’t they just scale down to the average of rarity available at 5 levels below the level of the dungeon. For example, in AC Masterwork is the highest rarity drop you’d get at 30, which is 5 levels below the level of the dungeon, so Fine would be the average rarity. So anyone with items that have a level requirement over 35 would have their items scaled down to an item of Fine rarity and a level requirement of 30. I say scale to average value because if they scale it to the best gear that you could get at that level then you’d still have an advantage over everyone at the required level because you will rarely have all level 35 rares (or even blues) when you go into AC at level 35 unless you pretty much crafted everything right before entering. Doing this would actually mean that a really decked out level 35 could technically out perform a level 80 if his gear was all level 35 rares. This would also give some value to non-80 crafting because if you are in the habit of running lower level dungeons you could twink your character out to be very effective even when scaled down.
Any thoughts?
I have seen players level 40 ish not dying or getting downed in AC and level 80’s just gettting downed all the time. In my opinion if they want level 80’s just post it and be done with it otherwise kicking people without telling anything its very rude (not the best example but its like feeling you work without getting paid). I think that with more people asking level 80’s maybe its better to make all dungeon level requirement lvl 80 because a low level will never get into a group…
Sorry but lvl 38 is too much. I’d kick you too if I were still running that. I don’t care what you claim you’ve seen but a lvl 38 thief is not going to have the survivability, ability set, traits or even the dmg to contribute in any meaningful way to a team.
If level up is what you are after it’s far faster simply just to solo explore the world map doing heart and events.
If tokens are what you are after and you still want that exp boost then just use your lvl 80 and ask for permission to switch to your lvl 38 before boss.
The one thing that’s truly rude and frankly simply not efficient is to show up with a lvl 38 in a team of all 80s and expect them to carry you through the whole dungeon, which let’s not kid ourselves is the only way you’d be able to go through that dungeon with that setup not to mention it would take longer than if you just simply used the 80 and switched to your other char before boss.
Honestly i can almost always outperform most 80s on my lower level alts.
A lot of players still treat dungeons like they were prior to the last big update. While yes there should be an emphasis on DPS, these players do not realize they can’t run back constantly once they die. Players need to rethink there specs now in dungeons a more balanced approach would help considerably.
This snotty bias against players at a lower level is ridiculous and just shows the inherent lack of a dungeon finder does to grping for new players. Alienating and giving a very bad impression of how the game should be played for new players.
Why even set a minumum level if those at the minimum level are never allowed to play in the dungeon…. a dungeon finder could allow for grps of differing level brackets get into and experience these dungeons the way they are setup to be played.
If dungeons were made just for level 80’s then the devs need to tune them accordingly and just not allow access to anyone but a level 80. This is a direct fault on the devs allowing for this to have even been conceived.
Dungeon finder is double-edged. Sure it makes possible to group at low levels but it also removes the social aspect of grouping (if it’s like the WoW DF). Now if they implemented something like gw2LFG but in game, that would be interesting. However, an automatic dungeon queue seems like it would remove more of the social aspect than it would really add in convenience.
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There is nothing they can realistically add that would make you and many others want to party with sub-80s. That is fine. Just let people know ahead of time in the LFG post instead of just kicking those that try to join that are not 80.
I cannot change what people do or think. I can, however, voice my views on what I think would benefit the community.
There are plenty of things they can change to incentivize people to team with lower lvls. You just simply lack the imagination or never bothered to think up of some.
They can make downscaling penalize higher lvls more to bring their stats more in line with a lower lvl.
They can also tone down the difficulty on some of the lower scale dungeons to make them easier for lower lvls to run them, so they are less of a liability on teams.
Those are just the things that came to mind in 10 seconds of actually thinking about it.
Having said that, imo low levels shouldn’t even be in dungeons anyway.(That’s my “should” statement since it’s not what IS) It takes like less than 1 week to lvl to 80 maybe 3 weeks if you are casual.
You can also just switch to your low lvl before boss to get full reward and exp if you must bring a low lvl.
All these concepts have been covered to death in this thread and threads like this but you and people like you just block out any reasonable workaround and rehash your slogans in the face of all logic and common sense.
Switching to a low level character to reap the rewards of a higher level character from a mechanical stand point is dumb (in the case of Dailies and Monthlies I see no work around for it) and I would consider it an exploit.
I don’t think they need to make incentives to group with lower level characters but rather remove the major reason for not grouping with them: it slows down speed runs. The reason people speed run is because they end load all the rewards for a dungeon and naturally people that grind will minimize the time from point A to point B. To make this work they’d need to rework dungeons (which they are doing).
Having better drops on trash or dispersing the tokens as moderate chance drops on trash, thus giving incentive to clear trash, would be better than simply shifting scaling on higher levels to make lower levels more on par. And yes, I realize it seems counter-intuitive to make trash worth killing, but I personally think the concept of trash in dungeons to be a poor design mechanic for MMOs in general. Why design an obstacle that players will, by nature of the obstacle, choose to circumvent rather than confront every time? They may as well just replace all the trash mobs with jumping puzzles for how little they add to the challenge of the dungeon.
Also saying that low levels shouldn’t be allowed in dungeons completely goes against ANets stance on making end game start at level one rather than at max level like in most MMOs. Using the argument that it takes 3 weeks to level to 80 is very subjective considering some people have jobs, families, play other games, or have multiple characters. You are also ignoring that starting dungeons at lower levels in much more relaxed environments (AC, CM) allows people to learn some of the basic concepts that you often don’t learn while leveling, specifically how to work as a team which you don’t necessarily need to do while doing heart quests. Kholer stands out as a perfect example of dodge-or-die mechanics which there really aren’t that many of until you hit champions or DE end bosses in level 80 zones. By easing the dungeon mechanics at low levels when people should be learning their class it allows them to build on this in later dungeons.
And FYI, I’ve seen as many level 80s as sub-50s fail at dodging Kholer’s spin-to-win whirlwind of doom.
(edited by IamDuddits.1692)
<Player Name>: A mine? I thought you wanted to recover the vehicle, not blow it up.
Ballista Geargrind: Quiet, you. This is front line Iron Legion equipment, not asuran crystal-magic rainbow trash. It might get a dent, but the dredge won’t get off that easy.
During the “Roadblock” mission of the Norn Personal Story.
Ballista Geargrind: Quiet, you. This is front line Iron Legion equipment, not asuran crystal-magic rainbow trash. It might get a dent, but the dredge won’t get off that easy.
During the “Roadblock” mission of the Norn Personal Story.
Bad experience both ways.
First off these pugs, if they run into decent premades will get stomped.
Secondly, if these premades run into pugs it will be boring match where they wont learn anything.without a matchmaking system , at least require paids to have a team.
Just to clarify, Paid also has no match making system? It’s just a complete RNG? If that’s the case, I think this is a good idea once that gets released. But to be frank, if it’s a match making problem then a 5-stack could get just as screwed over in that scenario as a group of solos.
I fail to see how this would make Paid less competitive. The fact that it’s paid means there is an inherent barrier to entry and the fact that it adds more people to the Paid pool means it adds to the competition. Free tournament anyone can play in. Paid tournaments are 5 tickets per person which means they are either playing/winning free tournaments, doing lots of dailies, or spending lots of money on tickets. The people that are grinding out dailies and tournaments to get into the Paid tournaments and solo queueing are likely:
A) Decent, but lacking a group
B) Looking for improvement/greater challenges
Having people solo/duo queue in Paid offers people a chance to meet new players that may be looking to form a group but weren’t able to find players. If someone is dedicated enough to grind dailies and free tournaments to meet better players and improve in a paid tournament then they should be able to.
(edited by IamDuddits.1692)
10/10 on both, I like when people embrace the cultural names and can come up with their own original names.
My Charr warrior is named Snarl Trenchteeth. …don’t exactly have a good reason for the last name except I see a warrior as the man/beast in the trenches doing the dirty work and that Charr have a fearsome smile.
Not bad but…two references to the mouth in one name (snarl and teeth) is a little repetitive for me. 7/10. Kitten English major ruins everything, amirite?
I have a lot of charr…and I’ll probably end up making more at some point. What can I say, I like what I like.
Cael Deathrend, lady warrior and champion of the Blood Legion. As long as you respect her, you don’t have to worry about being gutted. Hopefully.
Valkar Spitefang, necromancer. That pretty much sums it up.
Lionguard Krizak, guardian. Decided to leave his warband after promoting a new legionnaire and follow a higher calling. Still holds ties to the Iron Legion but spends most of his time protecting civilian settlements.
Kyessa Flintstrike, engineer. She learned how to use fire for her inventions early on in the fahrar and now puts her abilities to good use for the Iron Legion.
Seva the Beguiling, thief. As the name suggests she’s as charming and witty as she is manipulative. Don’t let the pretty face of this Siamese-coloured Charr fool you.
Marren Glitterpelt, mesmer. Because let’s face it, there’s no real way to take a Charr shooting purple butterflies seriously. That never gets Marren down though!Rate ’em all or choose your favourite!
So many Charr. Let’s go with Marren. 9, I like the first time and I think the surname is well suited for a mesmer.
My charr guardian’s name is Orgo Bloodgorge. I don’t have a good reason for the last name other than he’s Blood Legion and I wanted to give him a name that was a contradictory to his personality (a paladin).