Guild Wars 2

I have not done the missions yet, but I’ve killed plenty of periscopes. Their knock is primarily a problem when solo, doing it with 2 other guild members meant only 1 dodge was needed. That said, ANet seems to use an awful lot of knocks and pulls. I think they need to use less.

Leo G.4501:

Ayrilana.1396:

Would you run story mode again on a character that you have already completed?

Yes.

I believe Ayrilana is really asking, “Would you run story repeatedly absent any reason other than reward?” I would repeat a story dungeon only to help a guild member, or maybe to fill out a group that has been trying to get a fifth for a while. I sure wouldn’t do it for the gold or drops.

Kitedyou.1720:

LOL!

This truned into a reel speel check seshion!! wOOt!! I halv the most grammatrical errurs!!

:P

Sorry, your errors are all spelling, which =/= grammar.

On topic, I fail to understand why grenades are thrown at your target or in the direction you are facing in water, while on land they have to be ground targeted. If they worked on land they way they do in water, I might actually go back to playing an engineer.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Have you done “Orr Kills” for the dailies yet? LOL, I’m just trolling you, there are none!

Nor is it going to happen. I’m pretty sure ANet wants people who are just starting the game to be able to complete the dailies, thus why the kills/events that are regional can be completed in starter zones. Still, you can complete the generic “Daily Kills” in Orr.

The monthly w/ choice was a step forward. The OP wants to take a step back. This month was easy in WvW? So what? people have been complaining since launch that WvW players have been left out in the cold. Seems like a monthly that favored WvW was due.

Xavori.3768:

IamDudditts,

Kholer isn’t a learning curve. He’s a learning brick wall. “Hey, newbie, that Spider Queen is what’s called a boss. It wiped the party because most of you kept trying to dodge out of circles to big to dodge out of that last too long anyway which is why I kept telling you to quit dodging. Now, this guy Kholer, he’s also a boss. If you don’t dodge, you’ll be dead in a couple seconds…”

Again, not a problem for me. (side note, I didn’t learn to dodge by dying. I learned to dodge by practicing in open world until I could make ‘EVADE’ show up almost every time without having to consciously time it anymore.

-snip-

But I’m pretty opposed to Requires Nearly Perfect Gameplay Out of Low Level Players as that’s counter-intuitive. And I’m even more opposed to Requires NPC’s and Luck Rather Than Player Skill because that’s not difficult…that’s luck.

I’m guessing that your method of learning to dodge is the exception rather than the rule. The open world does not punish early dodges very often; even if an early dodge means you still get hit, that hit is seldom going to down you. Most times, dodging early just means you’re out of range and didn’t get hit. In these cases the open world is teaching people that the timing of dodge is not that critical. Kholer is a lesson that, in dungeons at least, timing is important.

The Kholer fight is more of an easy dodge than many heavy hits both in dungeons and the open world. While a group of inexperienced dungeoneers can and will wipe on Kholer, they also can and will wipe in AC story, the “real” intro dungeon, in the Balthazar event, on Melandru, on Dwayna… My take is that AC Exp is not too early to learn to dodge and to watch the screen. We might have to agree to disagree on that.

And yeah, making a boss fight mechanic dependent on AI was not a smooth move. A better mechanic would have been to have Grast give out an item at the start that needs to be activated by a party member, has an appropriate CD, and can be put down and picked up between uses. This puts the onus on the players, not whether the NPC works as intended or has leroyed.

There are no hardcore or casuals. There are people for whom a game is their hobby. Hobbyists put as much of their time into their hobby as they can get away with, making it almost like a job, but one they enjoy. Then there are people playing the game as a pastime. They are more likely to log off to do other things, like saying, “Of course, dear.”

Engineer. This will continue until one of two things happens.

1. ANet lets go of their design philosophy for the class, which states roughly, “Engineers pay for their versatility by giving up the possibility for high damage.”
2. ANet changes the game so that damage does not trump anything else.

IamDuddits.1692:

Xavori.3768:

The reason people skip Kholer is that after you’ve killed him once, maybe twice, you learn the risk/reward is horribly out of balance. He was a high risk low reward fight previously. Now, he’s higher risk with the same low reward. He’s also an absolutely-does-not-belong-in-a-newbie-dungeon kinda fight. If you miss a dodge, you’ll likely die. That’s not what players new to dungeons want to go through. Sure, I have a few toons that can survive being blended, but that’s because as soon as I get yanked, I know I have to throw up my bestest defenses while dodging out. Anything less than that, and even tanks get dead.

It’s a dodge-or-die mechanic, you aren’t suppose to tank it. The point of Kholer is to teach the importance of timing your dodge against powerful, and often highly choreographed abilities. Generally, game designers design later dungeons/levels on the idea that their player has a decent understanding of mechanics from earlier dungeons. If you don’t design an introductory dungeon to hammer in something as basic as dodging (which from my pugging experience is something that people still don’t fully understand) then it makes it difficult to design later dungeons around this concept, as you can’t be sure the player understands dodging yet.

Kholer has quite possibly the most basic boss mechanics in the game, second only to a true tank-n-spank (pre-patch Ghost Eater).

I agree that Kholer is fine in an intro dungeon. His Scorpion Wire is not that hard to dodge if you’re paying attention and know when to dodge. However, Xavori was using tank as a noun, meaning someone specced for T/V, not tank the verb. It is quite possible for a high health/defense character to survive being pulled in if they’re quick getting back out and can dump the conditions.

The adds do complicate the fight a little. Those not used to the fight can and do take their attention off Kholer to deal with the adds. That can be a fatal mistake.

zamalek.2154:

Finally, you should only be salvaging exotics. Everything else is vendor trash (not destroyed, sold).

Rares should be sold on the trading post, not to a vendor. The buy price was anywhere from 18 to 35 silver per, depending on what they are (weapons tend to sell for more than armor, with greatswords usually leading).

There is a command to make a skill an auto-attack. I believe is is CTRL-RMouse but if not there is a tip on the skill that tells you the correct command. If you haven’t already, make sure your water 1 skills are properly set up as auto attacks. If you’ve already made sure of this, then you will probably end up having to bug report your situation.

Wiser with Age.3714:

2) You would want 20 points in the Discipline line for Signet Mastery (which is vital to have by 30th for your Elite) and Heighted Focus.

You will not be able to put 20 trait points into anything by level 30. You’ll have to wait until you can buy and use the Master’s Training Manual at level 40.

I love Orr. I have to laugh thinking how the OP would have reacted to the old Orr, when the mob density was 100% higher.

Elf, the other white meat. I mean, seriously, elves are so done.

• The ambiance in many of the zones, particularly Orr, was done just right.
• Red herrings in jumping puzzles.
• The cave under the JP in the SE of Blazeridge Steppes.
• The underwater passage linking the two large water areas in Snowden Drifts.
• Norn rangers testing the wind with a raised finger.
• Revenge of the ambient critter: chickens in Ebonhawke.

I could go on, but that’s enough for now.

A ST mesmer glass cannon will outdamage a necromancer ST glass cannon under most circumstances. Necromancers have more options for AoE (with PBAoE wells and marks on staff).

Both can offer decent support. For my money, Necromancer healing with Mark of Blood and Well of Blood trumps mesmer mantra healing. However, mesmers general utility with reflection, condition removal, portals, party swiftness and quickness makes their support more versatile imo.

IamDuddits.1692:

-My experience is that Queen Spider causes more wipes than most of the end bosses. I admittedly can’t put my finger on what exactly it is. I’m skeptical of whether it’s the fight itself or poor group comp with too few condition removers or just poor position/experience, so insight here would be good.

I think it’s a combination of the mechanics taking advantage of player habits. The immobilize is not that easy to pick up until you see it and know what to dodge. The time between tell and attack is also shorter than many of the telegraphed attacks people are used to (e.g., Kholer’s long windup). Second, the area poison seems to be most easily avoided with forward or backwards movement. Like the fire spray in SE Story, dodging sideways just leaves you in the next circle over, whereas forward or back may get you out.

People mostly repeat dungeons over and over for loot. Doing the run as fast as possible is desired. If ANet nerfs CoF1 then there will be a new “best farm” path and a new group meta and most everyone will do that. I hate to be cynical, but a nerf of this one path will only move the problem.

Amadan.9451:

it is in a low level area where bunch of newbies get their experience there is nothing bad with easy content, once we are tired of farming it the newbie will be left with some challenging content that no one want to do anymore like every temple in orr.

I have nothing against making the Worm harder, but making it hard for geared 80’s will make it almost as inaccessible to characters on level as it is now, where they are lucky to get silver credit, if any. Perhaps a happy medium on difficulty.

As to Orr temples, they are some of the most fun content in the game. I see them done regularly, at least since the guaranteed rare.

Fror.2163:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Before it was revised it was competing for easiest/quickest, now, not so much.

What? Have you power-played the new AC like we did before the overhaul? It’s still an easy and quick dungeon. I dare even say quicker than previously. People just don’t want to spend the time to learn how to do it quickly like it was before the February patch, but I can still run p1 and p3 in a row under 40 minutes, like I did before the patch. I strongly dislike the new p2 boss mechanics, so I don’t run that one, but p1 and p3? No way they’re harder than previously.

I agree that some people don’t want to relearn the mechanics for a dungeon they already had down. If you’ve gotten it down to run that quickly, congratulations, but you are far from the norm, at least based on what I’ve seen and been hearing.

It isn’t the actuality that influences people, it’s their perceptions. People perceive the RoI to be less than before, and the difficulty to be greater.

It all comes down to events. If I am playing at the “right” time, it seems like I can’t go more than a few paces without tripping over an event. Other times, I can’t find one to save me. There are plenty of ideas in other posts on how to combat this, so I’ll only chime in that my personal favorite is to go to another starter map, go past the lower level areas to find the hearts/events my level or slightly higher and do those.

Rieselle.5079:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Challenging content that remains engaging in an MMO is not going to happen.

Open world: the math behind open world content is going to be forgiving enough to allow players to defeat mobs, sometimes several mobs. Games that didn’t do this, that required people to group to beat one on-level mob in the open world are a thing of the past. Why? Because while some people enjoyed this style of play, a lot more didn’t.

Open world events that scale based on players. Anet is experimenting with that with the Krait and Risen. It won’t ever be hard enough for those who sneer at dungeon difficulty, though.

That leaves instanced content. The problem with instanced content is that, though it can be made hard, it has to be doable. If it’s doable, some players will figure out the best way to get it done, then rinse and repeat until bored. Of course, that whole process took less time than it took to develop the instance in the first place.

These are some of the realities in the current state of MMO’s.

You’re making the mistake that I often find in western gaming. The Do/Die, Win/Lose sort of mentality. Where you either “complete” the content, or you fail and give up, with nothing in between.

Classic arcade games (and many Japanese games even now) had things like High Score tables, various bonuses for specific behaviours (eg. combo bonuses for killing 3 of the same colour in a row in Ikaruga) and Rankings and so forth.

So it’s not about Win/Lose, it’s about how well you perform. Even if open-world content is easy enough so that anyone can kill 10 mobs at once, if the game recognises that you did it without taking any damage in return, then there’s opportunities for Hardcore gameplay there.

Even if Scaling Events scale based on number of players, if the game recognises individual achievements like number of teammates rezzed, number of downs, damage received, amount of damage healed/inflicted, enemy attacks interrupted etc.

And even if instanced content is easy enough to be doable, if people have leaderboards to compete against each other in who can run it the most efficiently, and enough skippable but ranked content to challenge anyone, then it can be a source of a lot of interesting, repeatable, hardcore gameplay.

---

I don’t like some people’s focus on “rewards” though. I think attaching performance to things like item drops or even skins is a big mistake.

Better to offer temporary and fleeting recognition, like every week the top team of the leaderboard will be immortalised in the historical records and receive a shiny cape for the week. Hardcore gameplay is all about repeatable gameplay, and giving out permanent rewards pretty much kills that concept. If you’re playing to get your legendary item for getting #1, then you’ll probably stop after you get it. Whereas without a permanent reward, just competition, you’ll keep going. Human psychology is funny like that sometimes.

That’s an interesting series of thoughts. I can see the idea of leader-boards which changed weekly appealing to some people. However, a lot of players have been conditioned to want gear upgrades. Try selling them on the idea that they only get to keep their better stats for a week or a month, then have to earn them again. Gear rewards may have been a mistake, but if so, it was a mistake made a long time ago — back in the early days of PnP.

Yeah, I’d like to see games focus more on things other than gear rewards, but this might be a hard sell to some people. Just look at all the “GW2 has no endgame, no progression” complaints that prompted Ascended.

Iruwen.3164:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Dafomen.7892:

Well, i am almost 40, played GW1 for 6 years, played GW2 since release almost every day, jumped around in SAB for a few minutes and completely lost interest in GW2.

GW2 turns out to be…not being GW for me anymore.

Its ok thou, I had my moneys worth…

Really? You play a small part of the game you dont like, and immediately you throw the whole game out of the window? I wonder what you would do if your significant other made a small mistake somewhere…

Wanted to say the same. A typical case of ruined forever.

Best line from this:

“Every single patch to an MMO causes players to cry They Changed It, Now It Sucks. Every. Single. Patch.”

The problem with designing dungeons for hard-content junkies is that they will eat it up, master the mechanics, declare it too easy and move on unless it is among the hardest. Players looking to farm are going to look for the easiest and quickest dungeon to run, those looking for challenge look for the hardest. The new AC is neither. Before it was revised it was competing for easiest/quickest, now, not so much.

I suggest that the devs revisit the idea of hard and not-so-hard modes. What’s not working is that the “normal” mode dungeons, story mode, are not being repeated due to lack of reward, and the pastime players are avoiding the explorables they find hard, despite the rewards.

It seems to me that the quickness nerf was primarily inspired by PvP/Dungeon play. A theoretical reflection nerf would be aimed solely at dungeon play. In PvP, anyone who kills himself while reflection is active deserves what he got. There is an obvious counter.

Reflection is a defensive tool that has offensive ramifications. Quickness is an offensive tool that has some utility applications. Defensive tools have short durations and longish cooldowns. Mobs have much shorter CD’s on the attacks that indicate use of those defensive tools. If you remove enough crutches, people will eventually fall on their faces.

ANet does seem to be acting to reduce the effectiveness of skills that are over-used in harder content. Perhaps they are attempting to promote party build diversity. However, doing so by reducing the effectiveness of the classes that are in demand is not going to work. The player base will always find the “best” way to run an encounter and that will become the new on-demand. It would be better to promote diversity by skill design that provides different skills and encounter design that requires them.

Hardcore = Hobby.
Casual = Pastime.

cocolu.7640:

“We don’t let anyone in that stays silent or has broken English.” You would seriously kick someone with ESL? This makes me feel very intimidated as a non native English speaker. I really enjoy the game but I hope the larger community don’t feel the same as you do.

I don’t claim to speak for the community as a whole, but your English looks fine to me and even if it didn’t, I would not kick on that basis. The OP does not represent the best of the community, and hopefully not even the average.

Direngrey.8376:

Near the end, they were kicked … this “experiment” was to test whether not people actually read or not.

Your “experiment” proved they didn’t read when they joined, there was no need to actually do the dungeon and kick them. That part was griefing.

In GW, ANet put in special events for holidays and other noteworthy times. Some of these reappeared annually, sometimes with changes. If this event is well received, I think we’ll see it again. I don’t expect to the Karka invasion of LA again, or anything like it — but I think the Mad King and Tixx will be back, and maybe the Super Box, too.

Vayne.8563:

Chuo.4238:

Jordy.1570:

im 30 and i dont like the new content. was hoping for a “normal” content update. this doenst fit into an fantasy mmo and i dont unterstand why we dont get any good content that stays interesting like fractals. it took time to devolope this stuff and for me its a waste of time. its lacking more and more…

While I appreciate where you’re coming from, I can say that I’m so sick of “normal” that I’ve been beginning to wonder if anyone was willing to stick their neck out for the sake of creativity, and apply something new and intelligent to this genre.

Pure fantasy MMO’s are a dime a dozen. There for awhile, I thought GW2 was going down that path as well, but I’m glad to see they’ve finally, in true GW style, bucked the system and did their own thing.

Maybe it’s because I’m older than you, and have been around the fantasy video game block more, but to be honest, you just seem to be asking for more of what’s already out there.

That’s fine, if that’s what you want – but do keep in mind that some of us are looking for things more creative, intelligent, interesting, and stimulating that the same old same old, rinse and repeat.

This post made me think. When I was younger I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction…and I still enjoy those types of books. Now, however, I read a much wider variety of books. I’m not so attached to one genre anymore. I like cross-genre stuff, mainstream stuff. The last book I read was a historical drama about building a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Good stuff. Now I’m reading a fantasy novel.

The steady diet of fantasy as I get older has worn quite thin. The only thing worse than fantasy to me is fantasy with elves and dwarves. Vampires are in the same boat. They’re over-played and I can do without them.

Sylvari fill the same “ecological niche”, for lack of a better word, as elves…but they’re not elves. Asura, they’re really not gnomes, but they serve much the same purpose. Charr…well they’re just cool. lol

So yeah, I’m sorta glad Anet killed off the dwarves. lol

What is infinitely worse on bookstore fantasy shelves these days is the proliferation of books that feature hard-bitten, supernaturally-tinged, modern-day heroines who all face supernatural threats while inevitably falling in love with someone dangerous. Oh, and almost all are written in the 1st person style. I have no problem with urban fantasy romance as a sub-genre, but why are they all the same?

At least GW2 doesn’t have any of that… at least as official content.

Lightrayne.7829:

I wanted to start a group for CoF story, so that I would have more characters that could host CoF explorable. My ad was posted under CoF story category AND the description said it was CoF story. Four warriors had come and gone to the party asking why there weren’t other warriors in the party and thought it was a p1 farming group…… Now, I don’t have much of a problem with people that want to farm p1, but if every time you see the word CoF, you think p1 farm, then there’s probably something wrong here.

If they’re speed running, maybe their desire to skip everything non-essential extends to skipping every part of the post except the CoF?

The item you loot will be an Audio Log. turn it in to special event collectors. I know of one, just outside the Town of Nolan in Diessa Plateau, though I’m sure there must be one in Wayfarer as well.

Periscope knock is not that bad… Random Super Adventure Box chests in the open world that spawn 8-bit snakes on the other hand… yeah, ANet loves knocks.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ever wonder that maybe, just maybe, that the drop of activities in AC after the patch is just a coincident? That maybe, just maybe, those who runs AC simply exhausted the content and got the items they want?

Aside from the Greatsword and the Shield, the rest of the skins in AC are meh.

Before the changes, people who had no use for tokens ran AC for gold. If that is also dropping off, then the RoI is no longer good enough compared to what else they could be doing.

mobilejunkie.9260:

Snow White.9680:

I also happened to think Bifrost looked pretty cool. ;D

What armor/skin is that?

Looks really nice.

The chest piece is from the CoE explorable tokens, not sure about the rest.

No game will manage to ensure that every feature put into the game will appeal to every player. This does not mean they should not put features into the game. It does mean they should put in as many as possible that will appeal to a broad swath of players, and others that will appeal to the rest, when possible.

GW2 is not aimed at any one demographic. Explorable Dungeons, for instance, are not aimed at the relaxed experience, just want to kill a few things to unwind crowd. Open world PvE is not aimed at those who prefer PvP only. Super Adventure box is not aimed at those who prefer serious game play only. Neither was Tyxx, for that matter.

Many thanks for listening, ANet.

McSlappy.1372:

That right there is pretty much why I can’t take this game seriously. A buddy of mine are going to give it another shot. Already I’m like meh this still sucks. Having to do PvE to get the best PvP gear in the game rather lame.

Since PvE gear does not affect sPvP, I’ll assume you mean Wv3. I will agree that deciding to make mix PvE gear and objectives into Wv3 was a mistake. Wv3 should have been separated from PvE, just like sPvP.

Interesting data. I can see why you normalized it by leaving out other complications. Weapon choice and thus skill damage is also going to factor into things. From a simplistic view it would seem that weapons with higher damage (GS, for instance) and skills with higher damage are going to benefit more from higher CS Damage and Chance (thus, Precision) than weapons (Dagger) and skills with lower damage.

It makes sense that Power is very important in the damage equation. That said, the optimal damage gear choice (Berserker’s) ensures that you don’t really get Power without also getting Precision and Critical Damage percentage. Also, the meta-think about damage seems to focus heavily on critical damage. You never see high damage claims that are not crits, for instance, doubtless because people like bigger numbers. I agree with your assessment that this information will likely be of more benefit to those rocking survival builds, since the dps builds’ gear choice has already been set in stone.

1. I don’t purchase keys for gamble boxes.
2. ANet is not taking advantage of people by including them, since you can choose not to buy keys.
3. The gamble is in whether you get what you want, not in whether you win a prize or get nothing. The latter is true of lotteries and raffles, which are typically the targets of online gambling laws. These boxes are not legally gambling, any more than collectible miniatures or cards. France has an anti-online-gambling law, but you can buy Magic: The Gathering at Amazon France.
4. It’s funny how no one objects to Black Lion Chests until ANet puts something people want in them.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

First there has to be some way for the gods to return to Tyria. Access to the UW was granted by Grenth – and that fellow hasnt been spotted for quite some time.

There are portals from the UW, why not portals that work the other way.

Challenging content that remains engaging in an MMO is not going to happen.

Open world: the math behind open world content is going to be forgiving enough to allow players to defeat mobs, sometimes several mobs. Games that didn’t do this, that required people to group to beat one on-level mob in the open world are a thing of the past. Why? Because while some people enjoyed this style of play, a lot more didn’t.

Open world events that scale based on players. Anet is experimenting with that with the Krait and Risen. It won’t ever be hard enough for those who sneer at dungeon difficulty, though.

That leaves instanced content. The problem with instanced content is that, though it can be made hard, it has to be doable. If it’s doable, some players will figure out the best way to get it done, then rinse and repeat until bored. Of course, that whole process took less time than it took to develop the instance in the first place.

These are some of the realities in the current state of MMO’s.

Chryzo and Ellda have the right of it.

Hicci.8761:

Inexperienced players are also the reason this game doesn’t have any elite/ genuinely hard content because these players will start whining that it’s too hard.

And we have a winner for the Sweeping Generalization of the Month Award.

1. Thieves don’t really summon, just 1 long CD elite skill that is not very useful.
2. Warriors don’t summon.
3. Rangers have a pet, but are only summoning when they change pets, and they can only have one at a time. Pets die a lot in dungeons but don’t have the sense to just lay there. No, they still follow you around. Rangers are the least preferred class in some groups.

1. Elementalists have summons and are somewhat complex to play, but you know that.
2. Guardians can summon, but then you know that.
3. Engineers summon turrets and crates. They are more welcome in parties than rangers, but not by much.
4. Necromancers summon undead or ghost minions that sometimes won’t attack, or better, will attack things over there that you aren’t interested in fighting.
5. Mesmers summon clones which can be useful to interrupt, do damage and keep you alive. They all look like you, which is a dramatic improvement over the way the undead look. However, they vanish when the target they were summoned to deal with dies. Mesmers will sometimes be more welcome in parties than Necromancers (maybe the undead smell bad, or something).

If you were me, you’d pick mesmer, since I won’t use necro minions except in 1 or 2 specific situations.

I have a roommate who is also experiencing the lack of a chest at the Teqatl event. It is clearly a bug that is not affecting everyone. He had been at work all afternoon and evening, and this was the first and only time he’d done Teq since the daily reset. He’s getting gold for the event, getting the one rare in the UI chest, but no in-zone chest. It is not on his screen, and there is nothing for him to interact with. I did the event with im and got both the UI and in-zone chests as expected, so it is only affecting some people.

Not going to participate, too few of the options capture my opinion, especially in the required question. GW2 has revolutionary elements that might change the MMO landscape going forward, but some of the consumers didn’t want a revolution.

Tomb V.6421:

I just want to say AMEN..I really enjoyed AC before the overhaul even though it was a bit easy (it was an interdictory dungeon after all) atm the odds of a PUG group completing AC are slim especially with low lvl’s, new players and only text communication to get through it. It’s really sad the decline of interest in AC now that it has such poor roi. Because it got abused by more experienced players it was outfitted for more of a challenge, but in the wake it destroyed it for casual player, and the pug groups. The funny thing is they catered to all the people who complained about AC being too easy and now those people have lost interest in AC and have move on to easer dungeons with bigger and faster payoffs.

One of the problems developers face with content design is that people stop doing the content at some point unless the loot pinata gets refilled regularly with more, better or different rewards. There’s only so many times a lot of folks will go back to a dungeon “just for fun.” That’s all people, not just the cutting edge players.

Old AC was being run, as you say, because of its RoI. Now that people have to relearn the mechanics to get anywhere close to their old speed, the same old pinata is not as attractive. I saw someone asking for an AC group in Queensdale last night. Seems he needed one more run for his Gift. Unless they PM’d, there were no takers.

Frankly, the game needs both casual and cutting edge dungeon content. Both are in short supply, and it’s not because there are no dungeons. There are just few dungeons that the cutting edge players acknowledge as hard and fun even when you know the mechanics, and few dungeons where a relaxed, fun experience can be had.

krowik.8053:

IndigoSundown.5419:

krowik.8053:

If we are breezing through a dungeon, why do you want to make it easier by stacking and dodge against a pillar or standing where the boss can’t hit you? Makes me sleepy. Just my opinion.

Stacking as a technique is done because buffs, heals, condition removals, etc. that help teammates are usually at no range and are in a relatively small area. To benefit from them, it helps to be close to the team.

As to why people use certain tactics… people tend to repeat things that worked for them in the past. People don’t like to fail, they don’t like their character to die, they don’t even like to do the dungeon slower than they know it can be done. If they know some tactic works, they will use it, over and over and over …

I understand why people stack and use the tactics they use. I’m not saying its a bad idea.

It just seems like those should be saved for speed runs or as a last resort. The “stack here and follow these specific steps not to die” doesn’t seem like it should be the go-to option for dungeon runs. It should be used if the dungeon is too hard for your group.

I’m not the best dungeon runner in the world. I really only just started doing them regularly. I have screwed our groups a couple of times with accidental pulls or standing in the wrong spot. What I’ve found though is a lot of people who are telling everyone in the group what to do and know every step of the dungeon (which I’m not complaining about, I don’t mind having a pro help the group,) if you mess up their plan then they will get worked because they cant seem to adapt. They die or they tell everyone to run out and reset it. Makes me wonder, are people actually good at this dungeon/game…Or are they good at following the guide?

Some people form the tactics based on knowledge of their class, situational awareness and in some cases observing the cause of failure and adapting. Some of those people make the guides. Others follow the guide, or follow what the last (successful) group they were in did. Many will follow the path of least resistance, so they will use the tactic that works best, whether it makes the fight too easy or not.

krowik.8053:

If we are breezing through a dungeon, why do you want to make it easier by stacking and dodge against a pillar or standing where the boss can’t hit you? Makes me sleepy. Just my opinion.

Stacking as a technique is done because buffs, heals, condition removals, etc. that help teammates are usually at no range and are in a relatively small area. To benefit from them, it helps to be close to the team.

As to why people use certain tactics… people tend to repeat things that worked for them in the past. People don’t like to fail, they don’t like their character to die, they don’t even like to do the dungeon slower than they know it can be done. If they know some tactic works, they will use it, over and over and over …

To answer the OP’s question: the dungeons were originally designed with a twofold purpose. One, to provide challenging content that required coordinated teams of skilled players. Two, dungeons were designed as part of the endgame. Theoretically, players could “gradually” earn tokens to gain endgame armor to use with their existing stats or transformed onto other armor with preferred stats to get a distinctive look.

Two things happened. One, the player version of “gradually” was shorter than ANet expected. Two, the major rewards (tokens and coin) are tied to boss kills. Repeating content over and over and over, etc. is not something players prefer to do just for fun. Hence, some groups are doing dungeons solely for the rewards.

Behellagh.1468:

New major patches, like the one we got Tuesday, will always have a number of minor patches to fix problems that didn’t show up until the player base gets their hands on it. This will happen every single time a major patch comes out in every MMO I’ve ever played.

I have no idea why people are surprised by this.

Yeah, we could all migrate to WoW, where major patches extended the “normal” 5-hour downtime, sometimes to double or even triple that amount. The worst I saw personally was 12 hours extra beyond the 5. No, thanks. I’ll stick with minimal to no downtime and hot fixes. I, for one, prefer ANet’s method to the industry standard.