Guild Wars 2

Feanor.2358:

It can’t be a net negative. Nobody’s forcing your own choices. If you choose to play something you dislike to obtain something you like, it means you like the objective more than you dislike the means.

Again, it is a net negative experience. Option A is that I complete the content required, and receive the item I wanted. In this case, I’m happy from having the item, but frustrated by having to have spent hours of my life doing an activity that I don’t enjoy. Option B is that I don’t do the activity required, and don’t get the item. In this case, I don’t have the frustration of having done the content, but I do have the regrets of not having that item that I wanted. In neither scenario can I be truly happy with the outcome. In neither scenario will I be happier than if the reward had simply never existed in the first place.

That’s what I’m looking for, scenarios that are PURE upside for all involved, in which players can earn all the rewards that interest them, while spending minimal if any time dealing with aspects of the game that they know full well they will never enjoy.

I have spent dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours in PvP by this point. I knew for a fact within a few hours that I would never enjoy playing PvP, yet the game keeps giving me reasons to go back in anyway. I would be much happier with the game if they would stop giving me reasons to go back in, and hardcore PvP players should be happy for me that I don’t have to go back in.

Except not. Making an item universally accessible makes it meaningless.

Not remotely true. We’re talking about skins here, and skins have intrinsic value. If they handed every player in the game Legendary Armor as a login reward tomorrow, plenty of people would still equip parts of it. Why would they do this if it had “no value?”

I don’t argue that it wouldn’t reduce the value somewhat, it would no longer carry the value of exclusivity, but my argument is that it does not need that value, and should not have that value in the first place. Items that are valued in exclusivity should be valuable ONLY for their exclusivity. Items that have intrinsic value, that people can want without regard for their exclusivity, should not be exclusive.

Better make it a gemstore item and sell it.

I would prefer that to locking it behind only raids. At least on the gem store it would be equally available to everyone, and each purchase would directly support the game. I would honestly love to buy a lot more armor off the gem store, but lately all they put up is Outfits, and I will NEVER buy an Outfit. If they’d put the Legendary armor on the gem store for like $20 a set, I’d have picked up two of them.

Fatalyz.7168:

Proof that it is a better way? It’s a different way, sure, but it’s not inherently better.

You also don’t know if more people will be happy. You know that it will make you happy and some other people.

I don’t have the data to know with absolute certainty, but I believe it’s the most likely outcome, since it would mean that every player in the game would have more opportunity to get whichever rewards interest them, and have less reason to play game modes that they know they do not enjoy, and I can’t imagine that not leading to higher overall happiness. It’s like asking “do you think most people would prefer to make more money doing their favorite career?” I really doubt that anyone would argue against that.

Feanor.2358:

I already disagreed with this. I’ve given reasons. Now I’ll give you an existing example as well – Ad Infinitum.

And as I said, existing examples of systems that do offer only one method of earning them are not justification for other items to follow suit. Instead, they are other cases in need of fixing too.

These items are meant to be an incentive not just to try a mode, but to become an active player in this mode.

But again, any mechanism that “succeeds” at getting a player to become an active player in a mode which they do not enjoy, may have succeeded at that single task, but it has failed the player in question, and failed the game as a whole, because it has led to a net negative experience.

Nobody should design systems that get players to become active players in modes that they do not enjoy (or have the alternative consequence of leaving them regretting that they never got that item they wanted).

The way these mechanisms should work is that if you want Ad Infinitum, then you have to give Fractals a try, have to spend a little while working at them, but then you’re allowed a fair and open choice, no negative consequences, just flat out, “do you enjoy Fractals, OR not?” If they choose that they enjoy Fractals, then they can keep running Fractals to unlock the rest of the things needed for the backpiece, and that will be the fastest and simplest way. If they choose “no,” the game does not punish them for that, the game allows them to continue earning the backpiece they want through alternate methods, maybe PvP, maybe open PvE, maybe raiding, maybe WvW, maybe all of the above if that’s what the player prefers.

This is better for the player because he doesn’t have to make a Hobson’s choice, he gets to have the item he wants, and enjoy earning it.

This is better for the game because they’ve provided the best experience possible for that player, he has spent hours enjoying their game, rather than spending hours resenting their game, and that makes him a more valuable customer for them.

This is better for all the players that DO love that mode, because it won’t be flooded with people who don’t want to be there, have no interest in “doing it right,” and just want to get in and out ASAP, being carried if necessary because they are annoyed at the world for dragging them kicking and screaming into a mode they want no part of in the first place.

Nobody ends up in a worse state. Everybody wins.

Faaris.8013:

You cannot really mess up the story in this game. You can even leave the PC while you get instructions, come back, and then follow the green star for the next step. You can cancel chapters, restart them, you can die as often as you like and restart, you cannot lose or miss items that are required to proceed in the story.

Ok, just to catch you up to the entire rest of this thread, we’ve been discussing how the bosses in the most recent story encounter are well capable of killing players multiple times over the course of the boss fight. Many players have been reporting this experience, and many others have been telling those players to shut up because they (they second group) did not have that same problems. The first group then replied that this was all well and good, but not particularly relevant to the first group’s concerns.

And now back to the thread, already in progress. . .

Miellyn.6847:

So you would screw over those people only to force your vision onto everyone?

I would screw over no one, everyone would get what they want, unless what they want is for others to have less, in which case, they clearly don’t deserve to have what they want.

Sometimes you have to make decisions and live with the consequences. That’s life.

Yes, but this isn’t life, this is a game, and in a game, the developers CAN do both things at once, and therefore should. The “lesser choice between two evils” should never be an acceptable outcome.

You can’t make everyone happy. This system is not supposed to be ‘balanced’. You can’t balance opinions.

Exactly.

With that argumentation you also need to add every single item to the gemstore for people that don’t want to invest the time to get it in any game mode. That would sure benefit the game.

I wouldn’t be opposed to it. I’m no “whale,” but if whales buying things for massive sums in gems helped to support development of the game, I wouldn’t oppose that, so long as the ingame methods of earning things are fair as well.

But what I’m talking about are ingame methods, and yes, it would be impossible to perfectly balance such a system, in which each method were absolutely equal to any other in all ways, “perfectly balanced” isn’t necessary here (and if you want to argue otherwise, I’ll remind you that the current game isn’t perfectly balanced either, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good).

The target would not be perfect balance, it would be for the “core” method of earning something, the “intended” method to be unquestionably superior to all other methods for those that enjoy it. Basically it would be quicker and easier in that mode by a significant degree, so if that’s the thing that you want, and you enjoy that mode, you’d have no reason not to go that route. The alternatives would be just that, alternatives for those that can’t stomach the core method, and the expectation would be that it would take more time and effort, but that’s at least better than “literally nothing.”

No the game mechanic didn’t force you. You forced yourself into it because you decided you can’t play without that skin. Stop blaming the game for your actions. You are responsible for your decisions, not the game or the developers.

I’m responsible for my decisions, but my decisions are a response to the factors of the game. If they make a set of wings that can only be earned through PvP, and I play the PvP necessary to earn them, you say that is entirely my responsibility because I did not stop. If I stopped and never got the wings, you would say that was entirely my responsibility because I didn’t have to stop. But ANet were the ones that set those rules, when they could have set the rules differently. With the rules they set, REGARDLESS of which choice I made, I could not be completely happy with the outcome. they are the ones responsible for that, when they could easily have chosen otherwise. Yes, I am responsible for my choices, but a Hobson’s choice is no choice at all.

Did you really write this? Yes you claim to speak for the majority.

Three times you claim I speak for the majority and three times I’ve told you I make no such claim. I won’t address this line of illogic further.

Feanor.2358:

You’re talking about the ultimate rewards in this game. Legendaries – all of them, not just the armor – all take lots of time and effort to complete. And that’s fine.

I agree, it’s ok that they take time. My point is, any give reward should EITHER:

1. Take a long time to earn, involving a significant investment of player time and skill.

OR

2. Only be available in a specific portion of the game, which players may or may not enjoy.

Never both at once, because getting players to try new things has value, but getting players to stick with things that they are not enjoying, is a negative play experience and should be avoided whenever possible.

To put this practically, say that you believe that players MUST at least attempt raiding if they want Legendary armor, but we try and reconcile that with the two above points. Obviously I’m not suggesting that players be able to walk into a raid, try it for a few hours, and then walk out with a full set of Legendary armor.

What I am suggesting, is that of all the things that you need for Legendary armor, only one component would be 100% only available from raids, and this one component could be earned within an hour or two, even if you can’t beat a boss. It would require neither a huge time investment, nor significant skill.

Now, all the other ingredients, the other things you would need to make use of that “key,” you would still need to earn, it would still take considerable time and effort. If you do enjoy raiding, then raiding would be the quickest and most straight forward way of earning the remaining parts. There would be no reason for people who enjoy raiding to not raid just as much as they currently do. But if you definitely don’t enjoy raiding, you’ve tried it and it’s something NOT for you, then there would be alternative methods, other ways you could play that would take a little more time and effort, but eventually lead to getting all the remaining materials, which you could combine with the “key” material to get that armor. It would still be a long term goal, just a long term goal that you would ENJOY pursuing.

Again, NOT a shortcut, just an alternative.

Furthermore, few hours aren’t nearly enough to get a proper feel of a game mode. Few hours into raiding get you nowhere. You’ve only seen a glimpse of the potential this mode has. And you likely haven’t appreciated it.

You’re making unreasonable assumptions about what other players do and do not enjoy. If they can’t make a given type of content fun within a few hours of play, then it is not a very fun type of content.

Feanor.2358:

Maybe so. But there’s another simple fact – no game is balanced in the way you’re envisioning. Pretty much all of them are balanced the way I described. Ever wondered why?

Because you’re wrong, and most games aren’t balanced like you discussed. Most games are balanced like I discussed, with story content being pretty difficult to mess up, and only optional difficulty modes being a stronger challenge.

Feanor.2358:

You can believe anything you want, it doesn’t make it true. I personally would never bother doing a challenge for a mission I originally found boring.

Ok, that’s entirely up to you. My expectation would be that players who know that they enjoy a challenge, and that know that they would not find it in the default version, would activate the challenge mote on their first attempt, knowing that this would provide them with the sort of experience that they enjoy. If they don’t, then I respect their decision, but at least they were presented with the option.

And there’s pretty simple logic behind that: If the original content was so easy to be boring, I don’t expect a tweaked-up version to be actually challenging.

That’s faulty reasoning, but the game can’t be held accountable to that flawed logic.

Miellyn.6847:

WvW and people that want to complete their characters. Those are more present than you think.
You can complete raids in green equipment.

Exactly.

The solution is simple, don’t get the exclusive items that take too long in a part of the game you don’t enjoy.

But again, that is not a solution, that is choosing one bad outcome (not getting the item) over another (having to play a mode I don’t enjoy). The actual solution would be a state that avoids BOTH negative outcomes simultaneously (for example "earning the desired reward from some other activity that I enjoy).

You have your own exclusives in your preferred part.

But as I noted above, “separate but equal” can never work, because this is entirely subjective, there can be no such thing as “equal.” If they have fifty sets of armor skins in the game, and all but one of them are earned only through PvE, while only one of them can be earned through PvP, then you might say that’s unfair to the PvPers, because they can’t get 49 of those armor sets through their way. But if that 50th set is a PvE player’s favorite set, then that scenario is distinctly unfair to that player, because he doesn’t care about the other 49, all that matters from his standpoint is that the set he does want is excluded from him.

That’s why it’s completely impossible to balance such a system, and the only way you can have a just system is to allow players to earn anything they want through any fully supported gameplay style.

People won’t quit because they won’t get a particular skin. You are the best proof for this.

But it does make them less satisfied with the game, and unlike with subscription games in which all you need to do is keep people from unsubbing, in a game like this one, they also want players feeling motivated to spend money, which they are less likely to do if they feel that the company is deliberately denying them the things that they want from the game. And there have been plenty of games that I’ve fallen out of because I was dissatisfied with how the reward progression was working out. I’m just not personally there yet on GW2.

Nobody but yourself forced you to do it.

The gameplay mechanisms put in place by ANet forced me to do it, by providing no other alternative method of earning it. Again, “don’t get that thing” is not a solution, it’s just a different negative outcome.

It also doesn’t benefit the game in the long run to reward everything in every part of the game. People quit if they don’t have anymore goals, if they try other parts of the game they may like them and play them more and play the game longer.

But again, you conflate “trying new things” with "spending hundreds of hours in them. The two have nothing to do with each other. We agree that there is merit in rewarding player for “trying new things,” but “trying” is the work of only a few hours, not hundreds. If a player does try a new thing, and definitely does not enjoy it, then the game should respect that choice, and should allow him to return to doing something else, rather than punishing him by permanently withholding the desired reward.

Rewards designed to encourage players to “try” new content should be buried shallowly enough that players can acquire them with minimal time and effort. Rewards that take significant time and effort should be flexible enough to adapt to the widest feasible number of paths.

Again, ANet does not benefit in any way from players being burnt out by content that they don’t enjoy.

You don’t know the interests of the majority, you can’t speak for them. You only speak for yourself.

Again, I don’t claim to speak for the majority, only for their best interests. Whether they understand their best interests or not is irrelevant, they would benefit regardless.

Weli.4568:

There’s a trend that when people don’t like something they are very vocal about it on the forums. When everything is fine the same people don’t come to the forums.

That may be true, but does nothing to invalidate the position they take. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Trust me if this was an issue people would have been here crying about it since Tuesday. Instead people are more concerned about Legendary Armor and the story itself so the boss battle isn’t an issue. Otherwise there would have been multiple threads and they would have been merged.

It’s a quality of life issue. Since you can simply resume from a checkpoint, this is not an issue that is likely to be game breaking for anyone, including myself. As I noted in the OP, I was capable of completing the mission, even though it was an in manner I found frustrating and unsatisfactory. The suggestion is not one intended to fix a game breaking problem with the content, an impassible barrier, but rather to make the journey more fun and convenient, to make the players happier with the experience at the end of it.

And no having bad luck isn’t a reason to nerf something. This is bit exaggerated but having both of those mobs crit you at the same time is like you complaining about not winning the powerball on your first try and wanting better odds.

But if removing that potential results in a better experience even a small amount of the time, then why not do it? Really having mobs crit for massive damage isn’t a good idea in the first place, because random horrible luck should not be the reason for a bad outcome.

So try to give some solid reasons why there should be nerfs otherwise there is no point in this thread.

I’ve given numerous ones in the OP and throughout the thread, you’ll have to be more specific. More importantly, I have no need to justify the thread to you personally, so you’ll need to give me a reason why I should care whether you agree with me or not.

Miellyn.6847:

You’re funny. You say you love this game but are ready to betray one of the fundaments of this game (relative easy aquisition of maximum stats) for your own agenda.

I don’t see the point to it. Getting full Ascended stats is already pretty tricky, and as soon as they moved to that model they completely gave up on “getting to maxed stat is relatively easy,” and moved on to “getting maxed stats is relatively unimportant, since the content is easy enough that you can do it in yellows.” Then they subverted that when they added raids, which are not nearly as easy to complete in yellows. But if you aren’t raiding, you still don’t really need Ascended anyway (or so raiders keep insisting), so what harm would it do it they added yet another tier of pointlessly higher stats?

WvW and sPvP already have an armorset only available in this specific content via reward track and ranked progression. Not everything needs to be available in PvE.

Again, the philosophy that I will always promote is that ALL content exclusive to long amount of times spent certain modes is wrong, because it’s impossible to guarantee that the people who most want that reward will always be the people who most want to play in that mode, therefore any case where this occurs, the odds are that more people will be annoyed at not having access to the item, than will be genuinely pleased at being able to have that particular item. Having one item locked to one mode does not justify having another item locked to another mode, it’s only reason to unlock the first item.

I also know you did the PvP legendary backpiece because you whined in the PvP forum about it. Just do the same for the armor.

Yes, and I hated every minute spent doing it. Getting players to engage in activities that they actively hate, and complaining about it, does nothing to benefit the game. PvP should be for PvPers, not for people wanting a backpiece, and even people on the PvP forums were complaining about filthy casuals messing up their PvP mode because they genuinely didn’t care about the same values that a “real PvPer” would, like competition.

You only care for yourself, stop pretending you speak for the majority.

I don’t claim to speak for the majority, only to speak for their best interests.

CrustyBot.3564:

I like that there are prestige items that are a means of rewarding players for dedication into a particular game type.

And that’s fine, so long as they are not weapon and armor skins that a player might want even if they don’t care about dedication to that particular game type.

Even better, these items provide cosmetic prestige and slight QoL, instead of being a statistical improvement on what the less dedicated could earn and thus, mess with the balance.

I would much prefer they lock up some minor and largely unnecessary stat boosts than that they lock up skins. Raiders will insist to you up and down that it’s possible to clear the hardest content in the game not just in Exotics, but even in greens, so what should I care if they add a level of gear that is marginally more powerful than Ascended and yet can only be earned via raiding? But if Legendary armor skins are locked behind raiding, then it’s impossible to get even 1% of those skins from anywhere else.

I just wish WvW had something similarly rewarding. And although it’s unlikely, I’d love to see a different set of legendary armor being available through more traditional means.

As long as at least one of those methods is general PvE, that’d at least be fair, but I’d still likely want some pieces from all those sets. “Separate but equal” can never apply to cosmetics, because cosmetics can never be “equal.”

Fatalyz.7168:

At the end of the day, all Anet needs to have is more people that enjoy the experience now, than those who don’t.

Which is why I keep pushing for a better way, one in which more people can be happy.

Azoqu.8917:

Actually most MMOs, at least for the important items, do limit them to only when the content is relevant. Case in point: Bear mount and title for beating Kaelthas and Verash from WoW.

To my understanding, any raid armor in WoW becomes instantly trivialized as soon as the next raid becomes available, and by the time the next expansion drops, trash loot found in the new starter areas is superior.

I still wish there was a challenge mode solo instance that you had to complete in order to get any legendary in the game, including weapons.

I don’t mind if there are difficult solo challenges in the game.

I don’t mind if these challenges are attached to PURE prestige rewards, like titles, nametag flairs, other things that have zero intrinsic value.

I just don’t believe that these challenges should deny people items that do have intrinsic value, items that they might want without regard for any sort of challenge associated with them.

I don’t want to devalue anyone’s gameplay efforts, I just don’t believe that anyone’s gameplay efforts have earned them the right to deny anyone the armor or weapon skins that they’d really enjoy having.

apharma.3741:

Same way you can go around being fine that dungeon armour is tied exclusively to specific dungeons but somehow have a massive beef with legendary armour being tied exclusively to raids.

Firstly, if you think I’m “fine with that” then you don’t know me very well. For the record, my stance is that NO item, ANYWHERE in the game, should be locked too deeply behind any single type of content. There should always be options available.

But that aside, there are multiple ways to earn Dungeon armor, and the PvP method is particularly brainless, far easier than anything I’d expect for an alternative Legendary armor method. And beyond that, earning Dungeon armor via dungeons involves WAY less investment of time or level of skill than earning Legendary armor via raiding. I mean, I earned a couple full sets of CoF armors back around launch, it’s really not a comparable experience.

Besides we all know this is about being either incapable of raiding or being too lazy to.

So what if it is? What difference would that make? I would still be a customer of this game, and as deserving of happiness as you are. What I would want take nothing away from you. The only justification for you being unhappy if I got legendary armor is if you enjoy other people’s unhappiness, and I just don’t accept that as a fair justification.

Best part is that it is stat for stat equal to ascended armour which you can stat swap anytime you want to change so there is really very little benefit other than the rune swapping.

None of that is relevant to me, I just want the skin. I would take a blank “assign this skin to an item” version as the alternative if it were available, like with SAB skins.

As much as everyone loves to spout out play how you want, the game was supposed to always have hard content to do and rewards for it. Dungeons were supposed to be hard content and they did have very specific rewards to them. Somewhere along the line the game was fed to the lowest denominator and any challenge was lost and we’re finally getting it added back in.

Well, the game that was apparently a “mistake” was my favorite MMO of all time, after over fifteen years playing them. The reasons I loved it were exactly the things you seem to believe were “mistakes” in need of correction, and I stayed with the game since launch because of those “mistakes.” The further we move away from that game, the less I enjoy the experience. I just question why ANet seems to be ignoring those players that made GW2 the success that it is, in favor of players that apparently feel that the game was “a mistake.”

apharma.3741:

As I and many others have already pointed out you can do the easy parts of raids to get LI’s and then buy the boss kills you need to complete the collections, I believe it would cost about 1.5k gold but the option is there should you want to do it.

Bribing other players to play the game for you should never be the alternative option. There should be other methods for PLAYERS to earn the rewards through their own efforts.

Seriously, how can you guys talk about having “pride” in “earning” Legendary armor out of one side of your mouths, and then suggest players just getting Sherpaed through the content as a valid way of playing out the other side? Either Legendary armor is something that only those “deserving” of it can ever have, or it’s something anyone can get if they’re willing to pay others to do the work for them. If the latter, then how is those players playing some other type of content to actually EARN the armor not an equivalent method? Or are you just selfishly supporting a raider-beneficial economy? I would be willing to pay 1.5K gold for a set of Legendary armor, but I’m not paying it to raiders to support a broken system.

Weli.4568:

You haven’t given any arguments why it should be easier as in what mechanics need fixing in the boss encounter. You just had bad luck with the hounds possibly critting you, doesn’t mean the chance to get critted should be lowered.

Why not? Isn’t “bad luck leads to a negative play experience” a good reason to remove that potential?

If you don’t include the third mode you are gonna alienate the biggest part of players.

Why wouldn’t they be alienated already? And how can you tell that they are ghe “biggest part” if they have been completely silent up to now?

Because either the challenge mode will be clearly too hard for people to complete solo. Or it will be like this current mode which is still easy and not challenging enough for the people who really want to challenge themselves.

Which I haven’t heard anyone terrible critical of, except in opposition to an easier version.

serialkicker.5274:

Have you considered a possibility that you are just…. well… bad at this game?

Possible, but not really relevant to the point being made here. This discussion is not about whether or not I’m bad at the game, the point is what to do with the game relative to the outcome of that.

Fatalyz.7168:

I never claimed that there were more people, you claimed that you would make more people happy, so do you have evidence that you would make more people happy than you would upset?

I didn’t claim it would make more people happy than it would upset. I claimed that it would make more people happy who are currently unhappy, because they would now have access to the things they wanted, where they didn’t before. I have no figures on how many people this would upset, but my hope for humanity says it would be a smaller number, because someone who gets upset at other people being happy is a sad creature indeed.

Everything in life has something that you want and have to work to achieve. Somethings you have to do very specific things to achieve that goal (someone who only ever plays hockey will never win a Lombari trophy, and those are games). If there is something that has to be worked for to achieve, and you don’t want to do it, then you don’t deserve it because you didn’t earn it.

We aren’t talking about life though, we’re talking about a game, and in a game, everything is distributed at the whims of the developer, no more, no less. It’s impossible to “earn” anything or “deserve” anything, you’re just given what the developer chooses to give you for the things you choose to do.

Azoqu.8917:

When the game first came out, I saw Arah armor and decided that I had to have it. Took me a while to farm all of the tokens for a full set but it felt good getting it all done. Nowadays I look at the skins and feel bad because you can just spend 10 minutes a day doing daily rooms for 20 days and get all 6 skins as well as 18 weapons. Considering path 4 took 3+ hours alone to complete when the game first came out, if you completed it at all, is insane that for the same time as one path you’d achieve the work as 100 paths.

Yes, but that’s the inevitably nature of an ongoing games, things that take relatively high amounts of effort to get early on take relatively lower amounts to get later. If that bothers you then MMOs are a poor fit.

Edit: For the people who want the skins without doing the work, do you honestly feel good having something basically given to you and therefore have no pride in the effort?

If the alternative is to never have it, then yes. I like to work towards goals, when that work is something I enjoy doing, as raiders claim to enjoy raiding, but working towards something along a method that I hate does not give me any satisfaction, it just gives me frustration.

I don’t want to be handed anything, I prefer to work for it, I just want the method of that work to be something that I enjoy more than raiding.

apharma.3741:

Yes but there’s always a source of LI’s it is a constantly growing resource. Even if you somehow avoid all the hard weekly boss kills you will still be able to have “all the legendary armours” unlocked by raids.

I think you’ve lost track of the point. The point was that if you don’t want to collect the daily APs, there are plenty of other sources for getting all the APs you need. To compare that back to raids, no matter how much time and effort you spend doing things that aren’t raids, you’ll still end up with ZERO LIs, and ZERO capacity to buy things that are only available for LIs. If raids were merely the best source for LIs, but they (and the related achievement items needed for making Legendary armor) could be earned elsewhere, then we wouldn’t need to be having this conversation.

The comparison between hardcore AP grabbing is the biggest piece of BS I’ve seen in this thread, AP requires a lot more effort to get than completing raids because AP already mandates doing said raids. Go ask Malediktus about it, guy is 2nd in the world and has to do everything especially as AP from new content is a lot less than it used to be.

Perhaps, but there are still alternate ways to progress it. I have 26000 AP, which is better than 90% of players, and don’t have any of the raid-related points. The top player is less than 10K ahead of me, and that only translates to three armor skins and five weapon skins. Also, since you can pick which skins you want, in only 3K more AP I would be at the point where I could potentially be wearing the exact same AP-earned gear as the top player, if I ended up making the same selections he did.

Randulf.7614:

Why should it be beatable on the first try?

Because it’s a story mission, and being able to beat it without dying just feels better than rezrushing it multiple times.

Faaris.8013:

So they should make it easily with your kittenty build and with no clue how to use your skills?

Exactly.

But that would mean that players who actually know what they are doing would fall asleep while fighting bosses. No thank you.

We’ve been over this multiple times. Players that want to experience additional challenge could activate a challenge mote to have a more challenging fight. That’s the entire point of that mechanic. You shouldn’t balance around the strongest players, you should balance around the weakest. Better to have some players bored than to have any frustrated, and ideally you can offer versions for both.

OriOri.8724:

I call kitten. Judging off of what you’ve said in this thread, there’s no way you were able to beat the final instance of HoT story on your first try unless you just sat and let someone else actually do all the fighting.

Nope. Soloed it. On the same character and similar build as I was using this thread.

Both the Eir fight and the Pale Tree fight had more challenging mechanics than this fight did, and you had to do at least one of those.

It was a long time back but I think it was Eir and Canach. And I don’t think that there was anything particularly challenging about this fight, just that the hounds hit very hard and downed me too quickly, before I even got into the mechanics. Once I got one or more of them down, the rest of it was fairly easy. All I’m talking about is reducing their damage output so that they are less likely to down people.

And it was beatable on the first try. No deaths or downs needed. And it was beatable even going in blind.

“in before “I play a Thief and I did fine, git gub”, not useful, thank you”

Weli.4568:

What you are asking for is easy mode. Not the normal mode you think it is. Even if your suggestion went through there would have to be three different modes to satisfy people who just want to press f to kill the final boss, for people who want to do some work with a risk for the reward and for people who currently do the challenge modes.

No, just the two. If you want to have an even harder mode, then you can be the one to argue in favor of it, but it has nothing to do with the argument I’m making here.

Failing is part of playing games, that’s what makes them fun. If you’d only succeed in everything you do in the game that would become boring pretty fast.

Your opinion doesn’t extend to everyone, and again, if you feel that way, that’s what challenge motes are for.

Boss is fine as it is, no solid arguments have been put out to make it easier. Compared to the Caudecus fight where there were solid arguments for making it tad easier.

Entirely subjective.

Astralporing.1957:

Of course it would make sense. It would be one more incentive for people to buy the new expac. And at the moment Anet does need a lot of those incentives if they want for the new expac to be a success.

Players like variety, they will buy the expansion to play the new elite specs, even if they aren’t a linear advancement of the existing ones. Basically, adding the original elite specs was like adding an entirely new tier of gear to the game, Ascended weapons, let’s say. Future expansions are not likely to add a further tier, but rather to just expand the options within that existing tier.

Fatalyz.7168:

You keep bringing in your opinion, so I keep bringing in mine, see how they don’t do anything for the conversation?

Only if you keep repeating positions already in evidence.

It benefits the people who want specific rewards for specific content. Again, those who want it, but don’t have it, have a way to obtain it. They don’t want to do the content, they don’t deserve the reward.

And what’s your evidence that there are more of those people than there are people who just want rewards without caring where they come from? If the reward can be gained anywhere, then players who PvP can get it, and they’re happy, players who raid can get it, and they’re happy, players that PvE can get it, and they’re happy, everyone’s happy except for people who insist that nobody else is allowed to have the rewards from “their” content.

Also, as you said, the sole purpose is to make people happy, and I am positive that they are making more people happy with clear content goals, than they ever were with “just do what you want”.

Source?

Nor can it be said for Ad Infinitum or Ascension, Luminescent armor, there are other examples in game. Not advocating that those acquisition methods be changed either. Again, you don’t want to do the content for the reward, you don’t deserve the reward.

Nobody “deserves” anything, it’s a game. The devs set goals, and the players can pursue them. Those goals can and have changed numerous times. There are plenty of items that used to require collections or event progression, that now can be bought with Laurels. Do the people that acquire them that way not “deserve” them? Of course they do. If ANet sees fit to make Legendary armor (or any of the other items you mentioned) available through other methods, then the players who earn them via those methods “deserve” them just as much as anyone else.

Azoqu.8917:

You will NEVER get the envoy skins from anything but raiding.

That’s the attitude I’m arguing against. Just because someone doesn’t enjoy raiding doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have access to Envoy armor.

Faaris.8013:

OP clearly doesn’t know about the options his thief has to regain health.

OP clearly does know the options he has available, and the ones being discussed were either not part of his build at the time, or were not effective enough. Again, the point is not “tips for beating the fight,” as I said in the OP, I’d already cleared the fight, and therefore needed no additional tips. The point is “the fight should have been beatable on the first try, WITH OR WITHOUT ANY TIPS.”

I’m pretty sure if OP makes himself more familiar with the class he’s playing, he will change his mind.

I hope that was more useful.

Not in the least, because it had nothing to do with the topic of this thread, which was to change the balance of the story boss fights, not to offer tips on how to complete the existing ones. If you are not discussing changing the balance of the story mode boss fights, you are not on topic.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Beta tutorial bosses were AFKable, too. I played then.

Comments like these are why I’m always skeptical when people claim that something is soooooooo easy.

Static.9841:

So the overwhelming majority of people in this thread saying exactly the same thing and telling you that the fight doesn’t need to be dumbed down to levels of never having danger and the slimmest chance to ever be downed isn’t resonating with you then and is simply just my opinion vs yours?

Yes, that’s how it works.

You’re not interested in responses unless they completely agree with your Super-duper-easy-mode vision.

I listen and respond to all the responses, that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with them all.

If you think the content as it is would be ‘challenge mote’ worthy, then I really think it’s a massive lack of skill on your part not just in the fight, but basic mechanics with thief.

Fair enough, but not relevant to the point that I was making.

And your point is what? With SB you have even less chance of being hit by those hounds with their telegraphed leap attack and you can use distance to make it even easier for yourself. You can also pull out thieves guild to make it even more easy for yourself. I don’t know how much easier this needs to be made for you and I feel like Infantile Mode SAB would pose a challenge to you with you wiping the sweat from your brow afterwards from such challenge.

I haven’t beat Tribulation mode, but I have beat normal mode SAB, and the final HoT fight, on the first try, as well as a great deal of other content this game has to offer. I beat this instance too, as I noted in the OP, I just died a lot to get there, and I don’t think that’s a fun experience. Again, if you liked it how it is, great, they can preserve that sort of experience as an optional challenge mode, but it should not be the default experience for players who are not particularly interested in challenge.

This wasn’t what was said to you was it, all you’re doing is dismissing anyone that disagrees with you and actually finds a use for the dodge button.

I’m dismissing anyone who says anything along the lines of “I didn’t have any problems so your problems do not matter/ learn to play better,” because those people clearly did not read the OP, or at the very least didn’t understand it. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with me, but you can disagree while still understanding and accepting the basic premise of the thread.

You won’t even listen to anything being said to you on how you can make the fight easier.

Because that has nothing to do with the point I was making, and I said as much plainly in the OP.

I genuinely don’t understand how you can fail so hard on a boss encounter when you have access to dodge on tap (including signet of agility and SB #3 if required), positioning if you have to range it and actually paying attention to hound leaps.

And you don’t have to understand, just accept that it is the case and move on from there.

You can’t be serious… honestly? Please tell me you’re a troll because I don’t know a single person in this game who ever thought the tutorials were difficult. Been playing since beta and it really was hard to actually die to them. These "tells’ that you have to learn, are you talking about the big red circles they ALL had on the ground to let you know an attack was coming. I don’t even…

Yes, they are VERY easy once you know what you are doing. I mean, compared to later content, they are obviously a cakewalk. But since they are the first gameplay anyone experiences, the fact that if you don’t dodge the attacks that you don’t know you have to dodge, the boss can down you, the fact remains that most of my early characters got downed at least once in the tutorial boss fights. Of course later on I learned to play better and was able to melee Golem MKII to death without getting downed, I’m just talking about first experiences.

They never had this, ever.

Maybe you didn’t get hit by them, but they had them.

I don’t think you really understand how testing works.

I do.

Fatalyz.7168:

I don’t believe that you should earn legendary armor any other way than through raiding.

Ok, that’s your opinion, but we’ve established that my opinion is different.

Again, this is about having clear goals and rewards for specific content in the game. You want the shiny, but you don’t want to do the content, too bad you don’t deserve it, pretty simple.

Except who does that benefit? All that leads to is players who want the shiny, but don’t have it, not being happy. Nobody’s life is improved by that philosophy, so why, in an entertainment product with the SOLE purpose of making people happy, should that be the guiding philosophy?

Again, it makes sense to encourage players to TRY various types of content, and rewards that can be earned shallowly only in specific content are fine, but rewards that take large amounts of time and effort to acquire should be available through as broad a means as possible, so that the largest possible combination of [people who want the thing] and [people who have the thing] can be achieved.

I agree that Legendary armor, as a type of equipment slot, should be available in multiple formats (see Ascension and Ad Infinitum). The problem is that Anet doesn’t want to make another Legendary armor set. I think we would should be pushing for them to create that type earn-able via other methods.

I couldn’t care less about the Legendary armor classification. If they made an alternate set, I might want that set, if it looks cool, but I would still also want the pieces from the existing sets. The two would have nothing to do with each other. The important factor here is access to the SKIN, not to the color of the nametag on the skin.

apharma.3741:

Achievement points award gems every 5k milestone, gold, various boosters and more pertinently to the arguement 2 sets of unique armour and backpiece as well as 2 sets of weapon skins. Yes I have seen people proudly display those pinnacle skins that they had to earn, you cannot earn them just by logging in daily either.

Yes, but there is always a surplus of AP, it is a constantly growing resource. Even if you somehow manage to avoid all daily log-in AP while playing the game hardcore (which seems contradictory, but whatever), you will be able to get enough AP to have “all the things” unlocked via AP. It might take you a bit longer and would certainly require more effort, but you would get there. The same cannot currently be said for earning Legendary armor outside of raiding.

Fatalyz.7168:

And you don’t have to have Legendary armor, any more than they have to have all of the AP.

But that’s a false equivalency. “All the AP” is just a pointless, arbitrary figure. The Legendary armor skins are markedly different from other available skins.

You want Legendary armor just as much as someone may want Achievement Points.

Is this someone made of straw? If you can find me data that there are an equal number of people who care about having the maximum possible amount of AP at all times as there are people who would like to wear Legendary armor, then I’ll concede the point, but I just don’t buy it.

If there are such numbers of people, then rather than saying that they are just out of luck, I would try to find some way for them to earn that AP they want through alternate means. Perhaps have some method by which you can farm away at gaining AP that comes out of the same pool of daily AP, so if you miss some days, you can make it up via farming.

Really though, you’re placing daily log-in on the same tier as raiding, so since you believe the two things are equivalent, why not just give out Legendary armor for daily rewards? Or like maybe a monthly thing?

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t ever remember any of them having those kind of attacks.

May have been before your time. The Asura tutorial boss is basically Golem MKII. If his fist pound would hit you, boom, down.

Randulf.7614:

Anet wouldn’t win for starters, having to design at least 2 difficulty levels for each instance. That will extend the design time, the implementation time, the bug testing time, the wait time for players.

Not significantly. In most cases, including this one, you’d only need to design and test the encounter once, the harder version. Then for the easier version, you’d just reduce enemy damage potential significantly, and at most just test that a few times with an extremely glassy build to make sure the damage is where it’s intended. Once they get used to the process (and really they already should be, by this point), their eyeball measurements should get it right on the first try. It’s much harder to balance something to be juuuuust hard enough that it’s not impossible than it is to take something already balanced like that and make it more casual.

And guaranteed there will be some still unhappy it is either too hard or too easy.

Probably, you can’t please everyone, but the idea would be to please MORE people by providing more options. It’s like a Venn diagram, right now you have a bubble of “all the people” and then a bubble of “people who like the current encounter balance.” This would add a third bubble, “those who would like a less death-filled version of the encounter,” which would sweep up more people from that first bubble.

Feanor.2358:

And the effect is you bore 95% of your players to death and they never bother repeating it. Nonsense.

Source for your data?

What your goal should be is to make it interesting for as large part of your playerbase as possible. Which I think they have.

Source for those numbers as well.

Anyway, I believe that my suggestion would be interesting for as large a part of the playerbase as possible. Those who aren’t looking for a challenge can just go through it normally, and those who do want a challenge can activate the challenge mote and receive one. How is that not everyone winning?

OriOri.8724:

Take your own advice. The experience you want is not what everyone else wants.

Something I’ve never doubted, which is WHY I’ve been suggesting that they should offer different experiences for each type of player.

Ayrilana.1396:

People died during the tutorials? You can AFK at the bosses and never die.

I think they made them easier at some point, but at launch they pretty much all had OHKO attacks, so if you weren’t actively dodging them (and knew that you could do that, and when), they would just drop you like a rock. Usually other players would finish them off before you actually died, but it was a very confusing experience for players who’d never played a game with downing in them.

Miellyn.6847:

They get rewarded in every game mode. You just can’t get every reward in every game mode. It’s like that since release. You are 4.5 years too late.

Everything is subject to improvement, it’s never too late. This game went 4.5 years without Legendary armor at all, now it has it. They can always improve things, and I will always be pushing that they should.

Yes armor skins are a trophy as they are the most noticable part of the character. All RPGs use weapons and armor as trophies.

Not all. In many games all or most of the skins are available either by default or acquired with negligible effort. There’s absolutely nothing that says that GW2’s skins must be used as trophies, and given the rest of the game, it’s my contention that they shouldn’t be, whether you agree with me or not.

There were hard to obtain skins since release. But appearently that wasn’t a problem until legendary armor.

No, it’s always been a problem, and I’ve always campaigned against it. Legendary armor is just the most recent and most egregious instance of the problem.

It might have something to do with the item color and not the skin…

You can color swap them.

Titles have also value beyond prestige. I use titles based on race/class and traits that I associate with them.

Me too, when I have the title, but if a catchy title were locked behind some mind-numbing activity, I’d be far less interested in pursuing it than a cool skin. Are you telling me that there is a title in the game that you would chase after no matter how much you hated the associated activity, nor how many thousands of hours you would have to spend doing it?

Rednik.3809:

They announced next expansion in AMA, and they said that they are not going to change difficulty of old raids. That basically means that old raids will be self-nerfed by new OP elite specs, just like vanilla GW2 was self-nerfed by HoT ones.

I don’t expect the new Elite specs to be a power creep on the old. The HoT elite specs were deliberately a power-creep on the old, because they represent a new tier of advancement, but I believe the plan is for all future elite specs to be balanced against the old. They will bring new options, which might lead to new and easier strategies, but I highly doubt they will make the existing raids that much easier.

apharma.3741:

If the people complaining they don’t want to do raids put even half as much effort into actually doing the raids they’d have the armour by now…

Yes, but they have no interest in doing that, which is why they’re complaining instead. If the people complaining about people complaining they don’t want to do the raids would instead recognize that it’s ok that these people don’t want to do the raids and worked with them to find alternative ways to earn the armor, then people would have shut up about not wanting to do raids MONTHS ago.

Fatalyz.7168:

The 15k limit on Daily achievement points. Yes, you can get achievement points from other areas of the game, but if you never do dailies, you’ll always be missing out on a potential 15k AP.

So? You’ll always be a bit behind the curve, but so long as they keep adding new APs ahead of whatever you need to gain AP-based rewards, you never need to have ALL the APs. That’s not a reasonable counter to a set of armor that you can’t get anything remotely equivalent anywhere else.

Feanor.2358:

What you overlook is “players” are different. You cannot possibly balance a fight so it is interesting for everyone without being challenging to someone.

Exactly, which is why that should never be your goal. You can never make the fight “interesting for everyone,” period. So what you should do is make the default fight completable by everyone, and then for players that wouldn’t find that terribly interesting, you offer optional challenge mote versions that are more challenging.

I completed the encounters on my first try, being downed once and dying 0 times.

“in before “I play a Thief and I did fine, git gub”, not useful, thank you”

flog.3485:

If you are having a hard time playing melee, why not go double-pistols ?

Because I didn’t know I would be fighting dogs until they were mauling me. Again, if this were my second playthrough, I might do it differently. But that’s what challenge motes are for, additional challenge for those that seek it out. The story mode is not something you should have to “prepare for,” it should be “come as you are.”

Static.9841:

Your personal perception and desire that a fight should be an easy win has no bearing on what it actually is or in reality should be. An easy win fight on any end boss would be incredibly boring and come with very little satisfaction at all.

Ironic. It would be boring and unsatisfying for you, you’re the one that is applying your own personal perception onto the situation. So for you, there should be a challenge mote version, and if a difficult fight is necessary for you to enjoy it, then you can play that version instead. That way everyone is happy.

I find it difficult to understand how you were one-shotted on thief by the hounds or had zero time to react, especially if like you say, you were using shortbow and therefore should have had some distance

I was using staff, I weapon swapped after dying a couple times.

I also did this fight on DD thief in full zerk and those lunges from the hounds were not so quick that I couldn’t dodge them every single time.

“in before “I play a Thief and I did fine, git gub”, not useful, thank you”

zealex.9410:

Are you the guy that found the tutorial too hard and struggled with its dificulty?

You didn’t? I haven’t met anyone who played the original tutorials without being downed their first time through. Those bosses hit like a truck if you aren’t used to dodging and their tells.

Exciton.8942:

Yup. I think it is a good thing to give out special reward just for a certain game mode.

We have legendary armor for raids, legendary wings for both fractals and PvP. This actually makes it feel rewarding to dedicate yourself to a certain content.

And I think it’s bad, which is where we have a simple difference of opinion.

I think that the “reward” for “dedicating yourself” to a specific game mode should be that you spend many hours playing that game mode that you enjoy. If that’s not reward enough for you, then you should probably be doing something else.

ANet has an interest in rewarding players for playing SOME part of GW2 a lot, but they really have no interest in rewarding players for playing any one mode over any other. What they should be doing is rewarding players for playing whichever mode they most enjoy, whichever mode will make them WANT to keep playing, and feel good about the game, more loose with the wallet at the gem store.

Let’s not fool ourselves but part of that prestige does come from its limited ways of being obtained.

Yes, but skins should not be for prestige, because skins have value beyond prestige. A trophy has no value other than prestige, there is no point in having a trophy, except to project the idea, true or false, that you have accomplished that thing. Armor skins are not a trophy, you might want an armor skin because it says “I have done a lot of raiding,” but another player can be just as justified in wanting that skin to say nothing more than “I think this skin looks cool on my character.”

I have no problem with ANet adding “prestige” elements to the game like titles, nametag flares, “showoff bundles,” etc., but skins should not be a part of that, because players can want that skin for reasons completely unrelated to the prestige factor.

Exciton.8942:

Ohoni.6057:

And that’s the problem. There are very few people out there who want [the best item from raiding] but that don’t want to [spend a lot of time raiding.] That’s not really a concern. What does exist is people who want a specific item that ANet have chosen to lock behind raiding. All that’s being asked for is that they choose differently, to allow alternate methods to reach the same goal. Players who want “the best item from raiding” can just raid for it. Players that just want bits and pieces of the current legendary skin sets, but have no interest in raiding, should have other methods of earning them. The existing legendary skins have zero to do with raids, aside form an arbitrary choice on ANet’s part to place this armor in the raids.

It is not an arbitrary choice.

Anet made it clear that raid is what they envisioned as the end-game PvE content and decided to make legendary armor as the special prestigious reward for playing and beating the content.

Which is an arbitrary choice. They could just as easily have chosen Adventures as the content they decided to hide Legendary armor behind, or Basketbrawl, or SAB. They decided raids, you seem to like that, fair enough, but I’d like other options, and there’s no reason why not.

Bloodstone Fen – The gliding and gliding skills are just awesome. I don’t really like the “look” of the zone much, it’s not poorly drawn, just too “red and apocalyptic” for my personal tastes, but it’s fun as hell.

Draconis- Hookshot. Also, I do enjoy the verticality of it, the variety of areas, the interesting visual tricks at play, etc.

Ember Bay- Again, not a huge fan of the volcanic stone aesthetic, although I love the look of the verdant cliffs along the SW corner, but the molten tubes, the leyline highway, the variety of well balanced events (in terms of being able to get to them and join in fairly conveniently), it works out well.

Lake Doric- Cool idea for the map’s “story,” and some lovely areas to it, but the heart quests are suuuuuuuper grindy and with event cycles that run longer than they are interesting, and the methods to traverse the map are primitive by S3 standards, requiring way more jogging than I’ve become accustomed to. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise sitting right outside Divinity, but it feels the most like a pre-HoT map of the bunch. It would be a lot better if it had more leyline and updraft routes to cross the map. Or Oakheart Essence nodes (hint hint).

Bitterfrost-The torch mechanic is pretty lame and too situational, I don’t see it being used on other maps, and don’t want to see it on other maps. I liked the Sancuary and the leyline route around it, I liked the molten tuns for getting airborne (though there needed to be more of those around), I liked the old growth forrest, but wish there was more to it, like being able to climb ever higher into the trees and maybe a small encampment up there. The Bitter Cold area was a pain because you couldn’t revisit it without an annoying collection quest for non-depositable materials. That should have been a one-time thing for the story. The hot springs were nifty though. Basically a lot of missteps here.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think the ‘ask’ for alternatives makes sense. This has been discussed ad infinitum already. If the best reason you can give for an alternative method is “because don’t want to do something”, then why would it make sense for Anet to offer another alternative to get it that doesn’t guarantee they won’t get the same reason?

That’s why there should be a broad variety of options, ideally. Bits and pieces that can be mixed and matched to achieve the desired results. Even one additional path would be an improvement, but as you point out, not necessarily the best way to go.

In otherwords, if people simply don’t want to do one specific thing #1 to get an item, why would Anet make that item available with any other specific thing knowing they will get the same complaint?

Agreed, but still if X number of people don’t want to do method #1, and if even a small number of people do want to do method #2, then even if there is still a gap, that’s still more players who are served by the overall system. Ideally they would work with players to devise a method #2 that pleases as many of the remaining players as possible, something that no rational person can claim is true of the “just raid” option.

Fatalyz.7168:

If you want the “best” reward for that game mode, you should have to spend the time in that game mode earning it.

And that’s the problem. There are very few people out there who want [the best item from raiding] but that don’t want to [spend a lot of time raiding.] That’s not really a concern. What does exist is people who want a specific item that ANet have chosen to lock behind raiding. All that’s being asked for is that they choose differently, to allow alternate methods to reach the same goal. Players who want “the best item from raiding” can just raid for it. Players that just want bits and pieces of the current legendary skin sets, but have no interest in raiding, should have other methods of earning them. The existing legendary skins have zero to do with raids, aside form an arbitrary choice on ANet’s part to place this armor in the raids.

Crinn.7864:

Ohoni.6057:

You make a good argument in the first paragraph, then derail it in the second. Raids do lock out players who don’t want to raid.

“don’t want to” isn’t a lock out. It’s a purely voluntary choice. Any player who wants the legendary armor in this game has the power to attain it.

Of course “don’t want to” is a lock out, because players who don’t want to play that mode are locked out of that reward entirely. You were the one that raised the analogy of the Ferrari, and how anyone who was willing to work for it could earn it. I was merely pointing out that people can “work for it and earn it” in any of a thousand different ways, taking all sorts of different time, skill level, and luck to achieve.

That’s all anyone is asking for here, alternative methods, ways that DON’T involve raiding of earning the armor, so that if you don’t want to become a doctor, but still want to get a Ferrari, you could be a lawyer instead, or you could be a plumber, and it might take you longer, but you could still get there.

If the player voluntarily chooses to never leave their safe zone then they should accept the limitations that they self imposed on themselves.

Why? Why shouldn’t they ask for changes that would improve the game for them? Raiding wouldn’t make them happy, so who would benefit from them raiding? Why should that choice be rewarded, or punished?

Leaving comfort zones and trying out new game modes is something that should be incentivized whenever possible.

You are conflating “trying” with “playing for hundreds of hours.” The two have nothing to do with each other. I agree with you that players should be encouraged to TRY things outside their comfort zone, to spend a reasonable amount of time attempting various activities, but if they do try them, and genuinely feel that these activities are not something they enjoy doing, then they should never be punished for not wanting to continue doing them.

Sure, have rewards that require you to TRY specific activities that might be outside of people’s comfort zones, but then respect the choices they make afterwards, and allow them to do something else instead for the same eventually reward if they decide that this new content is not something they enjoy.

You seem to enjoy raiding, and want to continue doing it. Not everyone is the same as you, not everyone will ever enjoy raiding, no matter how much or how little time they spend on it. They deserve to be happy just as much as you do. You continue raiding, allow them to do something else, and don’t insist on withholding things from them just because they don’t enjoy playing the same content you do.

flog.3485:

Really you are comparing this fight to a raid encounter ?

No.

We are playing a game in which all classes to some extent can dodge, block, blind targets, become invulnerable or passively get boons.

Blind is a big part of my character’s defense. The dogs were immune to Blind. My defensive options were dodge, iframes, and run away. It’s also fairly unlikely to rally when downed by those dogs, even if one of them is fairly near death at the time. It’s actually faster to just teleport into a flame patch and retry from checkpoint.

You really believe this boss fight is still too high tuned after all the benefits we can proc as a player ?

Yes, that’s the entire point of this thread. Did you not understand that?

Azoqu.8917:

. Therefore to get the double crit, it will only happen once every 400 pulls. You just got unlucky.

Fair enough, then all they need to do is remove that extremely unlucky chance.

The hardest part of this entire instance was finding the final excess energy. Probably took me 20 minutes just for that last one.

Took me only a few minutes, I must be super awesome. Git gud.

OriOri.8724:

kitten that. There’s zero fun if there is no danger to you. But that is exactly what you are asking for.

That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. If that’s how you feel, then you should activate the challenge mote, and that should provide you with the sort of experience that you want from the game. But the experience that you want is not the same experience that everyone wants, and either of us trying to insist on the other player playing how we want to play would be misguided.

Liewec.2896:

its a problem with your class/build,
it seems that every episode glasscannon thieves come to the forum to say it is too hard,
i do all of my PVE on necro and have never had to retry anything,
not mordremoth, not caudecus, not hounds.

Which is exactly my point. Glass cannon Thieves are a part of this game. It is something that ANet allows players to build, and in fact, in many cases Thieves are chastised if they aren’t Glass Cannons. Try to enter raiding with a PVT Thief, for example. It is frowned upon. So if glass cannon Thieves are a supported element of this game, then for something like story content, ANet needs to design and balance it to accommodate that build. The ONLY way that this would not be necessary is if all players could stat-swap at will, and all a glass cannon Thief would need to do is tap a few menus and swap from a glassy Thief to a tanky Thief, like in PvP, but that is not the current state of the game, and that is not the players’ fault.

i do all of my PVE on necro and have never had to retry anything,
not mordremoth, not caudecus, not hounds.

I’m shocked! You have only two lifebars and a ton of condi-mitigation and haven’t had any problems? Good for you!

if they nerfed the fights then anyone who isn’t a thief would be complaining that it is way too faceroll.

Better that they beat it and complain that it’s too faceroll than that anyone die constantly.

Randulf.7614:

A fight against such a being should absolutely carry the risk of failure, Anet have known since the failure in the Zhaitan instance, that players want more challenging content in story mode where it is appropriate (eg fighting Mordy, fighting this guy etc).

The flaw with Zhaitan wasn’t that it lacked a potential for failure, it was that it was BORING. It lacked interesting things to do. There doesn’t have to be a risk of death or failure to make a fight interesting, there just have to be various encounter situations that don’t wear out their welcome. I would argue that they could have done the Zhaitan fight exactly as they did, but make one really interesting boss fight on the airship deck, and shorten the amount of time spent using the guns so that it wrapped up more quickly, and players would have really enjoyed it (of course there are those other players who would feel shorted with anything less than stabbing Zhaitan to death with their swords).

Video games need to carry some risk of failure and it is not possible to design one encounter for all skills and builds – I don’t think any company could achieve such a lofty ambition given the sheer range of skill levels and builds imaginable.

Then for a story mode, you design it for the lowest possible common denominator, and then the challenge mode is tuned for more ideal conditions.

This particular fight is well tuned mechanically, but where the improvements lie are in the clarity department – Taimi’s instructions are often confusing and the UI instructions are at times conflicting with what she says. The other problem being the targeting reticle is difficult to see amongst the flames. But, as a fight, this worked really well.

I had zero issues with Taimi’s instructions or the airborn segments, it was all an issue with the hellhounds and the damage they could pile up.

The White Mantle were an easy target because they had resources, an established and stable military order, and illicit connections. They were ready to go. He still had to work in the shadows, and they knew where all the best shadows were. If he’d come out openly as Balthazar (in what we assume is a greatly diminished state), then sure, he’d have some immediate converts, some of them wealthy enough, but it would have been civil war, he couldn’t spin up his converts into a functional organization nearly as quickly as he could set the White Mantle to work on phase 1. It was a sound pragmatic choice, especially if he’d intended to let the charade carry on longer than it ended up doing.

OriOri.8724:

That’s not fun for a lot of people. Most people don’t want stupidly easy fights where you just go hitting 1 and you win.

Then they shouldn’t play it that way. If it’s not fun with a lot of people, then don’t bring a lot of people. Story mode is meant to be soloed. If they don’t enjoy not dying, then they should play with a Challenge mote active that would result in a tougher fight, one better suited for multiple players. Going into the story version solo should not be tuned for a group full of skilled players.

And like I said, I’m not talking about a fight where you just go in and hit once and win. NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THAT. The fight would still take time, it would still have mechanics, you would still need to complete those mechanics, the only difference is that you would have a very, very low chance of ever getting downed in the process of completing those mechanics. Think of it like a race. The race may not be easy, and it may take a weaker runner longer to complete than a stronger runner, but the changes of getting killed during the race is fairly low, and that doesn’t mean that the race is effortless or has no meaning.

martin.1653:

Played same build (d/p) thief of Ep4 and Ep5. Ep4 before the fix was unplayable but this fight was pretty easy compared to Ep4 disaster. I’d dare to say i was maybe a bit too easy considering the enemy(ies) we fight this time.

“in before “I play a Thief and I did fine, git gub”, not useful, thank you.”

zealex.9410:

there it is doesnt matter if its a god, a plane, a mursaat or lord Faren himself we should be able to kill it with just 1 finger and no need to ever move lul

If it’s something that’s placed in the single player story campaign, then yes, it should be an encounter for players of all skill levels, classes, and builds. This is not raiding, and should not be held to any sort of standard of challenge.

OriOri.8724:

The dogs hit for the same amount regardless of who is logged in…. You’re acting as if Anet went in and coded this so that dogs would hit you harder than they hit other people.

I’m not presuming to say how they coded it, all I’m telling you is the results, which was that I was downed within seconds of the encounter starting, and with very little opportunity to do anything about it. That is what happened to me, and whether or not it happened to you is irrelevant to the conversation.

You’re over exaggerating on how hard this fight is. Its fine if you have trouble with it, but don’t exaggerate so much man. Try to actually learn the fight and what the dogs do.

That’s exactly my point, that shouldn’t be necessary. You should not have to “learn” this fight, this is a fight that you should be able to beat on the first try, no deaths, regardless of skill level or build type. The only difference skill should make is in how long the fight lasts.

Now if there is a Challenge version, then THAT version can involve “learning the fight,” practicing building towards it, that sort of thing, but that shouldn’t be the role of the basic story version. It should not be there for Dark Soul types to get their “challenge” fix, it should be there to be an interesting encounter to further the story for players of all types, with the more challenging version being purely optional.

OriOri.8724:

Ohoni.6057:

OriOri.8724:

I actually think this fight was pretty well tuned. There was enough space on the platform to move around, no walls messing with the camera, and only 2 enemies, no adds at all to worry about. Yes, the AoEs could stack up, but if you managed your space pretty well it was alright, and if you ever needed to you could always just hop off and glide for a bit, waiting for the AoEs to end.

My first death was literally two seconds into the fight. The two dogs lunged at me and I was dead. Not really any time to react to that. It hadn’t occurred to me to just run away and glide for a bit, but I don’t think that should necessarily be part of the tactics of the fight, at least not on the default level. Again, if that’s a mechanic that they want for the “Challenge” version, great, but the default should not be the Challenge version.

The dogs do not hit hard enough to down you in 1 hit, even if both of them land that hit at once. And even if they did, they didn’t lunge immediately after their models spawned in, you were given a second or two to react to them.

I wasn’t streaming, so I’m unclear how you know what happened in my game. Are you bugging my house? Or are you assuming that what happened in your game happened the same way in mind? Either would be wrong.

Feanor.2358:

Now, for something “useful” consider the game and lore aspects of the fight. You’re facing the final boss in the episode. Which is (albeit weakened) a human god, no less. If it didn’t offer any challenge at all, it would feel utterly disappointing. “A moment, Commander, I heard you have a spare 5 minutes before lunch, do you mind if you kill a god for me”? “Yawn. Sure”. Get serious.

I don’t believe progressing the story should be particularly difficult. It should be an interesting fight, it should have mechanics you have to do to complete the encounter, but surviving the encounter should not be particularly difficult. Again, that’s the role for Challenge modes to play. Basically players should be able to beat the story version first try, regardless of build (aside from straw man builds). If players want a real challenge, one that requires multiple attempts and strategy, then that is why they have challenge motes.

aleron.1438:

I had the complete opposite first experience of the encounter than Ohoni.

I came in on my daredevil with the same exact spec and load out I use everywhere. Staff with pistol pistol. Signet of agility, long range shadow step thingy and signet of precision that refills endurance.

For easier ring of fire achievement I took thief spawn trap and thieves guild elite. They distract the hounds long enough since 4 PP Unloads is enough to down one.

I honestly was surprised to see how squishy they were. And that long dash dodge of daredevil made it a breeze to keep distance.

Having pistols equipped might have helped. I had Shortbow, and it was not doing much to them.

One little exchange that I enjoyed was after the fight in the first mission of this episode. I was playing as an Asura, and if you go find Phlunt in the new lab, he complains about Taimi basically being too big for her britches hiding a lab like this, to which my commander replied something to this this was HER (the commander’s) project, her lab, and that Taimi was acting has her lab assistant, which Phlunt then grumbled about but sort of accepted it.

I was wondering if that was something that only applied to Asura (since all Asura players are canonically genius scientists as well as fighters), or whether like Norn Warriors say stuff like that too.

Well, I can see why they’d want to be a little careful with them. Most open world enemies and areas just aren’t balanced to handle bombing runs from 2500+ range, and Ride the Leyline would trivialize traversal in a lot of areas. It’s just that within the confined space of the final battle stage, I think the bloodstone powers would have been incredibly fun and useful, and the enemies inside could be balanced for that to be fair to both sides. I do hope that either way those abilities will be available from time to time in other parts of the game, even years down the road, but I never expect them to be “normalized” like regular gliding was.

I don’t think she is, but then I was thinking, what if Queen Jenna is actually Kasmeer?

I know in the original Guild Wars you could mix and match any skills you liked, and that one of GW2’s core changes was to consolidate the first five skills to be weapon dependent. I was thinking though, that for a Warrior elite spec, wouldn’t it be cool if you could mix and match any ten weapon skills you want? I’m thinking of it as a “Mist Weapon” elite spec, where each time you use a weapon, you would summon up a specific model of that weapon from the mists, use it, and then it vanishes again. Your actual equipped weapons would stay on your back at all times and act as focii for your abilities.

Outside of combat you could “open up” each 1-5 skill just like utilities, and select any ability from that slot on any weapon the Warrior can use. So just as a quick example (might not work well), you could have GS Arcing Slice, Ham Fierce Blow, LB Arcing Arrow, Rifle Brutal Shot, and Axe Whirling Axe, all on a single bar, and then “weapon swap” and get a completely different set.

Now this might be too effective, being able to chain all these abilities without limitation, and If that’s the case, then I think an easy way to help balance them out a bit would be to take potentially problematic moves and increase the pre-cast/after-cast delay on them, basically the deadliest attacks might take a bit longer to “pull” from the mists, again only if that’s necessary to balance them out.

But what do you think, would this be a cool core mechanic? Would it be too easy to abuse, even if some combinations had added cast-lag to them? Would such cast-lag even be necessary?

OriOri.8724:

I actually think this fight was pretty well tuned. There was enough space on the platform to move around, no walls messing with the camera, and only 2 enemies, no adds at all to worry about. Yes, the AoEs could stack up, but if you managed your space pretty well it was alright, and if you ever needed to you could always just hop off and glide for a bit, waiting for the AoEs to end.

My first death was literally two seconds into the fight. The two dogs lunged at me and I was dead. Not really any time to react to that. It hadn’t occurred to me to just run away and glide for a bit, but I don’t think that should necessarily be part of the tactics of the fight, at least not on the default level. Again, if that’s a mechanic that they want for the “Challenge” version, great, but the default should not be the Challenge version.

Well, the thing is, when you’re dealing with dragons that are, at minimum, the size of a football stadium (and in some cases much, much larger), there is no plausible action that a player character can take under their own strength that will have any sort of impact. You aren’t just going to hack away at its shins with your sword until it dies of boredom.

so yeah, when you’re dealing with Godzilla, the hero is the scientist. Taimi builds the gadget that will save the day. The player’s role is to make sure the gadget gets where it needs to be and goes off without interference, or scouts out the data needed to complete the gadget. You’re the field agent, not Superman.

God, I am so tired of entitled gamers that whine when any NPC has a leadership or technical role that make them feel less than omnipotent.

The Comfy Chair.7265:

If you’re a glassy character, then maybe rethink your build/gear? There’s no such thing as a ‘glassy class’, only ‘glassy setups’. If you’re struggling to survive a fight, then swap out some gear to help, and change some traits

I don’t have Legendary armor and don’t want to carry multiple sets around. And even so, I’ve played a fairly tanky Thief in the past, with mostly PVT gear, and even then I was super glassy compared to a Heavy class.

To draw a direct parallel, this is exactly like the early days of HoT where untrained elementalists wandered into the jungle with their happy-go-lucky zerk staff setup and were roflstomped (even if they were good players!). Glassy setups only work well in semi challenging content if:

a) The content is super duper easy and/or short enough to avoid mechanics (i.e. most open world enemies as a daredevil – seriously, the damage output of daredevil without any external buffing is immense!).
b) You know the content well and/or are simply a really good/experienced player and react well to any new threat and situation

Yes, “a”. Let’s go for “a.” Mechanics should not be about “surviving them,” at least not in basic versions of the content. The mechanics should be things you need to do to advance the content, surviving it should be relatively simple. And as I said, they can always have “challenge mote” versions where survival is much more of an issue, and of course those achievements that are based on avoiding given mechanics. But if all you’re doing is trying to get through the story, survival really shouldn’t be a question.

Crinn.7864:

Ardid.7203:

Prize Novel = Skill.
Ferrari = Exclusivity.
Prize Novel =/= Ferrari

Ferrari’s aren’t exclusive though, they are expensive and therefore hard to get, but there is no exclusive rule that prevents certain people from acquiring them. It’s available to all people with the commitment to acquire the funds.

Raids are the same way, there is no barrier that locks players out, the only barrier is the excuses players make for why they can’t raid.

You make a good argument in the first paragraph, then derail it in the second. Raids do lock out players who don’t want to raid. Ferraris don’t require that you make your money as a doctor or a lawyer, although these are two methods that may be easier to acquire the money to afford a Ferrari. You can earn a Ferrari doing ANY method that you like, so long as eventually you accumulate enough money.

Similarly, there should be methods to earn Legendarys through methods other than raiding for players who don’t want to raid. They will still have to work for it, and likely take more time and effort than players who raid would need, but the method should still exist. They should implement such a method ASAP, with time served.

People were saying that I shouldn’t care about not being able to get the armor until I’d seen it, and I’m shocked to discover that having seen it, my position is exactly the same as I’d assumed it would be, namely that I definitely wouldn’t want to wear an entire set, because most of them have some serious ugly bits, but I also definitely do want at least some of the pieces for some of my characters, and wish that there were a way to earn them for people who don’t want to raid.

I think the Heavy armor is mostly great, the helmet is a bit much in combat mode, I wish you could keep it in non-combat mode all the time, but the rest is slick. If I had it I’d put most of it on my characters, but maybe swap out the helmet.

The Medium armor is trash. I main a thief, but would never wear any of the Medium armor. It’s WAY too covered with bones and teeth and other knobby bits. I actually like the growing trenchcoat element to it, I just wish that the coat were more tastefully designed, just smooth fabric rather than “pineapple-mail,” and probably instead of vanishing completely it should be a short coat in non-combat mode that lengthens to the ankles in full combat. Also I like how the gloves retract, but they should probably stop right before the last step, where all the bones collapse to the elbows, have them stay there, rather than just vanish.

The Light armor is a real mixed bag. I hate the skirt, with the weird tail-axe on all races. They really need to have tail armor that ONLY appears on the races with tails. They rebuild each armor for each race, and the tail armor on these vanishes when out of combat anyway, so it shouldn’t be impossible to have the Char version be slightly different. The giant claws pointing inward on the skirt are also nasty in both versions. The boots are also too chunky, and I’m not a fan of the ninja mask. So if I had this one, I would probably only wear the gloves and shoulders, which I think are pretty cool. Maybe also the chest. They should have gone with skirts and boots more similar to Kaz’s new look, and had “shards” just sort of hanging off to the sides of it, rather than stabbing at their knees.

Ashantara.8731:

The trick in LWS3 E4 is to stay in the air. Also, during the part were you need to break the anomalies, clear a small portion of the surroundings from destroyers.

Good luck.

I beat the episode, I’m not looking for advice, I’m just pointing out that I found the boss fight frustrating because of how quickly the two hellhounds could slaughter me. You can’t attack them from the air.

I will note that this mission would have been WAY more fun, across the board, if we’d had access to Bloodstone gliding powers. I mean if I could dodge roll and drop bombs on the enemies instead of just avoiding and fighting the hounds on foot? That would be a hoot!

zoomborg.9462:

Lol u can solo the last boss with pretty much any class, just change the traits a bit for some condi cleansing. I did it with zerk tempest and thief is super easier to solo everything, just trait invigorating precision and use vault to dodge attacks. Easy af.

Called it.

I don’t expect to get the full story of the Gods’ betrayal any time soon. I imagine that will be the primary plot of the next expansion. We’ll probably at least get some clues in the season finale though. I think it’s a bit silly to expect the full reveal here, this is the penultimate episode. Think back to episodic television. What typically happens in the penultimate episode? The big bad (for that season, at least) is revealed, usually in the last few minutes and without much context, just the menace that they’re there, and they’re trouble. Cut. Then the next episode is the one that attempts some degree of explanation and resolution.

Now, if the next episode does not at least partially resolve Balthazar (probably not dead, but at least better explored), then I might be upset, depending on how they handle it, but for now, I think we got plenty for one episode.

I will also say that the final instance stretched itself out a little much, in that they broke the rule of three (while sort of keeping it), in that they had the three “falling” events, and then the boss fight. I’d have maybe cut one of the shield breaking sequences, just to keep it punchier, but overall the mechanic was sound. The only frustration I’d had was a personal one, in that I’d somehow set ground targeting to auto-lock on targets, which made it very frustrating to target the chains. I had to land and turn that off to complete the last phase.

It was a little glitchy today. I got kicked to login-in once while exploring the new map, and right at the beginning of the final boss fight the game seemed ot lag out (I could move and flail but nothing was actually happening and the enemies were static) and then I died, but respawned without actually logging out of the game entirely. It’s possible these issues were on my end, my wifi can be flakey, but I figured I’d make note of them since others were having issues.

I main a Thief. The last few updates have been very frustrating for me, because I’ve found it impossible to stay alive during the final boss battles. The damage just piles up way too fast with way too few options to clear it, and that’s even with Shadow Refuge on my bar. I imagine my Guardian would have an easier time surviving, he usually does, but all classes should have a reasonable chance at survival. Yeah, you can just reload a checkpoint and continue from where you left off, but rez-rushing boss finghts just isn’t a fun way to play them.

I think that the default boss fights need to be better balanced for solo players, of ALL classes, not just the tankier builds. They should be about following the mechanics of the fight, not about surviving massive burn stacks and two agroed opponents. If you want to do a “challenging” version, that’s fine too, but make it the optional challenge mote version, intended to be done with a full and balanced team, not the default “story mode” version of it.

I think this update was great overall, I just wish that it were better balanced for glassy characters (in before “I play a Thief and I did fine, git gub”, not useful, thank you).