Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Dungeons are the GW2 equivilant of GW1 missions.

Oh? GW1 missions were specificially designed to be completable by a single player with the the assistances of Heroes and/or Henchmen, or multiple players with the additional players taking up Hero/henchman slots in the group. Kindly show me where the GW2 dungeons are soloable that way.
If anything, GW2 dungeons are the equivilent of, well, GW1 dungeons. Additional content designed specifically for multiple PCs only, that should never be required in order to complere a main storyline.

As for why I hate forced grouping so much? I work at a job where I’m constantly having to pick up the slack for losers who are too lazy to do their own jobs, despite us ‘supposedly’ supposed to be working as a ‘team’. I was raised to be self-sufficient and self-reliant—being put in a situation where I’m forced into doing someone else’s job for them, or worse, stuck in a sitation where someone else gets my job dumped on them (often because I’m stuck with a third person’s work) makes my skin crawl. If i can’t stand that at my place of work, why in the world would I want it in my recreation time, especially given that virtually every forced-grouping experience I’ve dealt with across multiple games has ended up with me stuck with the very same kinds of waste of space? There have been exceptions of course, but they’re few and far between. Also, I have other venues for making and talking to friends—I’m here to play the game; casual chatting in passing or when I’m idle is all well and good, especially when it’s about the game, but my primary purpose is to play the game, not socialize.

Along with that—(and Konig, this isn’t directed at you), I’m downright sick of these idiots with their trite little ‘If you don’t like interacting with people, go play a single-player game!. First off, kindly get it through your little heads that there is more to player interaction than just 5-man dungeon squads. In fact, that’s the wonderful thing about the masses of public events found in games like GW2, Rift, and others—you just show up and do them, with no formal grouping required.
And secondly, consider this—when you go to a shopping mall, an amusement park, a theater, or any other venue and demand that everyone split up into 5-person squads to shop, or eat, or ride things, or go to the bathroom (hmmm, actually, I probably don’t want to know the answer to that last one—given the sickos I’ve seen over the years, you probably do)? Conversely, since I know someone will try to throw it up (pun intended), you wouldn’t demand that you be the only person in the mall/park/whatever either, which is what these ‘Go play SP’ people try to claim solo play is. Again, if you can be around and interact with people offline without that kind of grouping, why be forced into it online?

As I haven’t looked at the Zhaitan dungeon, and the only one I’ve seen was a somewhat unsuccesful test (that I had to run around collecting feathers for!), I have to wonder if there’s at some point a Charr with an Austrian-facsimile accent who’s notable line is ‘Get to the choppa!’ ;-)

McSlaughter.1567:

It’s called Living Story for a reason. Other parts of the game need some liveliness brought to them too. If all the content stayed sandwiching on top of each other then all the regions of the game would be “alive” and subsequently dead because the jam for this metaphorical sandwich would be spread too thin.

True enough—on the other hand you have the situation we have now where the ‘Living’ content Is nothing but transient—the world at large is still entirely static, and remains unchanged when the event ends. There needs to be both transient events and permanant additions for things to be ‘Living’.

lordkrall.7241:

So you basically want the living story to not be a living story but simply adding more and more and more and more and more stuff on top of each other?

Actually, yes. A ‘Living’ story implies growth in the overall amount of content. What’s truly needed is a combination of the temporary events, and actual, permanant content related to it.

At the very least, it would be nice to have Rox and Braham continue to exist as wandering NPCs in their home cities. Talking to them would provide the options to a) Get a synopsis of the whole Flame and Frost event, so players new to the game can learn about it long after the event), b) Get sent to a version of the Cragstead or Hatchery instances (with the content edited to show that this is a similar visit, not the initial one from the actual event—the idea is that this is yet another similar attack by leftovers from the event), and c) Get sent to a Molten Factory dungeon instance (again edited somewhat to explain that this is another Factory that had been found).
Given that all the code and assets already exist (the functions I’m thinking of were in the SAB, after all), this would be a great way to keep the content in the game.

Dark Saviour.9410:

That’s a bit different, as each campaign was (originally) a self-contained story (though I will say that Factions’ writing was bad enough that it still managed to feel like boring filler somehow).

This would be more akin to hopping a boat to Cantha and just forgetting about the Mursaat entirely while we go to kill Shiro. Completely moving on would be fine if we’d already killed all the dragons and cleared that whole mess up, but we haven’t. They’re still out there, and (supposedly) are a world-level threat.

Hee…amusingly, that is kinda what I did—I was hopping back and forth between the three storylines (and EotN) as my interest took me, but beating down Shiro was the only one I finished to the end.

choon.6308:

Please do not suggest dungeons to be soloable. I left another MMO because of soloers wanted everything to be soloable and as a result, new expansion comes with 0 dungeon/raids…

If you don’t like grouping, don’t do it. Do you have to do new story missions? No… But please do not touch group content. This is an MMO. I don’t know about others but I bought this game to play with other people.

If you solo only, you won’t improve yourself or make any friends. And the other MMO I left is in such a terrible shape now, it’s not even funny. Thousands of raiders left the game.That’s what happens when people want everything to be soloable.

You are so full of yourself.
Noone wants things to be only soloable—one of the wonderful things with the system GW2 uses is that everything scales, so that if you want to group, then you can group, and things will adjust accordingly. The content that everyone is up in arms about provides no choice whatsoever, the only option at all is a 5-man raid (there’s people complaining about being able to have only 5 in there, too). Which in itself wouldn’t be an issue, but that no-options-dungeon is a roadblock in being allowed to complete content that otherwise requires nothing of the sort.

Why do people keep trying to claim that formal/forced grouping is the only form of ‘player interaction’ that exists at all? I see plenty of player interaction in MMOs in general, not just GW2, that has nothing to do with raid/dungeon groups.

Edit: And I also might point out that conversely, I’ve left MMOs because the high-end content was nothing but forced-grouping, with no solo content to be found. I get a little tired of dealing with co-dependant types who can’t seem to get things done on their own without someone else to carry them.

lordkrall.7241:

ophidic.1279:

Did you ever flag your heros and remaining henchmen strategically? They get WAY better than normal dummy AI.

Yep.
As I said: Do the dungeon before talking about it.

I did try the dungeon—and I am badly missing MOX, Ogden, Gwen, Vexx, and my necro, as the NPCs given to you get flattened in the first room, in positions that get you killed rather than being able to res them. Heck, Togo too.

Ellisande.5218:

Thothkepara.2539:

Honestly, the chief failure here is in the scripting of the “personal story”, creating an expectation that is left unfulfilled. The showdown with Zhaitan should be an optional end, not the primary one.

Written properly, I think players would have been satisfied with knowing they were responsible for taking the fight back to the dragon, pounding on his door and leaving it there on whether they personally finished the job or not. Perhaps summoning other great commanders to their aid? (In other words, four other players to complete Arah?)

I get the feeling this conclusion was implied in the Source of Orr, but wasn’t given a dramatic enough finale/reward to feel like a passable ending to the personal story. There is no sense of accomplishment, and that’s a big problem. It’s fine if you want to have defeating Zhaitan be a special and perhaps difficult achievement, but you have to also leave players who are unable to make that step feeling they accomplished something special by seeing the story through to the end. No one likes seeing a project unfinished.

As it stands, I agree that forcing both a raid to open Arah and then four additional players to complete your “personal story” is unacceptable. It will simply lead to more disillusionment from casual players and soloists who do not have the assumed resources of large guilds and multiple friends to accomplish a goal left in the right corner of all of their screens.

There is no way to write this properly because there is no one who could be satisfied with stopping short of the last storyline quest when the entire storyline up to that point was entirely dedicated to killing Zhaitain.

Cleansing Orr was an unimportant sidequest that would have happened anyways once the player had killed Zhaitain and in fact finishing the quest clearly has no actual effect because everything in Orr is exactly the same after that quest as it was before that quest.

What stopping short? The right way to have ended things is to have a) The last dungeon story ends with Destiny’s Edge leaving wherever they were to head to the battlefield with Zhaitan. And b) the final personal story mission is a solo (or buddy/groupable if you choose, rather than a mandatory group) where you’re at the battlefield, you do some preparatory tasks with the Pact army (taking out defenses, launchers, thinning out the stronger enemies, etc) and then the Edge show up, team up with you much like the Heroes in GW1, and it continues from there.
I fail to see why doing it this way was ever a problem…same as why I fail to see why the only means to gain any sort of reward from the current Living Story is also to do a dungeon.

Kraggy.4169:

Slaskia.8376:

In EQ2 and LotRO, I frequently started up a solo questline,

Except with LOTRO Turbine recognised the importance of the Epic quest line .. totally the equivalent of the Personal Story here .. and changed every quest in the Epic line to have a SOLO OPTION .. perhaps Anet should learn from that, especially as the entire PS is soloable until the very last and critical moment.

Arenanet doesn’t even pay attention to their own past work—in GW1, all of the main storylines were soloable from end to end—you were never forced into grouping unless you specifically did a dungeon—none of which were mandatory to complete the storylines.

lothefallen.7081:

In my opinion, segmenting the little mundane goings-on of Tyria into personal instances with middle school play cinematics, really prematurely developed stories, poorly paced narrative and character progression, boring gimmicks and mechanics, and no real challenge is a waste of resources. No one really seems to WANT to group for these because we all have our own, making it really a sideshow schism in the gameplay.

I realize the game was marketed to console RPG players that were brand new to MMOs, but this content would be better off scrapped in upcoming expansions and all future development in favor of more focused content.

What i propose is that future main-story content is directed into group instances like recent Rox & Brahm story instances. These should scale to group size to account for the aging of the game. This also lets the whiners that don’t wanna play MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) with other people have their way too! The benefits would be such:

-Easier to design more of as it’s focused and not splintered into so many little pieces.

-Allows the mission content to be more challenging, as we see there is a lot more potential for depth in group instances.

-Allows the playerbase to take a more active, personal role in the story of the world when it’s not segregated into largely unrelated sets of instances.

-Rather than the middle school play cutscenes, maybe we see the whole group in the cutscene, so there’s some sense of immersion for teams or guild mates.

-Allows for better quality, more focused, and epic narrative that people experience together, strengthening and engaging the community in a more direct manner than the current personal story.

-Hopefully no Trahearne stealing the spotlight.

-Probably more pros, but can’t think of them at this moment. Maybe more posters can offer their thoughts.

Now this may be against what ArenaNet has already tried to do with the personal story and augmenting it make make the story seem less personal and disjointed given Vanilla GW2 story “tried” to involve the individual to great lengths, but i think it would just be best to commit to a certain level of narrative content. I think the level of the F&F instances is more what i’d like to see moving forward with this game in regards to the main story content.

Thoughts? Additions?

As far as a main, personal story, that’s frankly horrible—the point is personal story. And I don’t many people coming straight in from console RPGS—most of them either come in from GW1 (in which the stories were solo and group friendly from beginning to end—I can’t think of any mission there where you couldn’t swap out one of the Heroes or henchies for a PC if you wanted to…but unlike the problematic story-ending dungeons in GW2, you were never required to have other PCs along fot the main storylines.

OTOH, the Destiny’s Edge side-story has it’s place, especially for those who prefer the 5-man raids. I’d definitely like to see Arenanet do another chained set of story dungeons like that, even though I’d never play them personally—as long as they don’t get stupid and make them mandatory for a solo story-chain, like they have for the Personal and Living stories.

Kemina.7812:

I would like for there to be zero grouping or 5 mans needed to complete a personal story.

Agreed—but on the other hand, I wouldn’t mind seeing another story told in dungeons, made for the people who like that sort of thing—just don’t ever make the dungeons mandatory for the solo story, or vice versa. That’s the primary problem with both the Personal story and the current Living story.

GuzziHero.2467:

Not really a lot on which to base a reputation as a military commander, though.

And what military force chooses a marshal based on “Well you’re the odd one out”, spoken by a rookie who has never commanded any number of soldiers before (unless the Charr storyline includes such a rank).

The same kind that allows their leader to have 50,000 ‘second in commands’, but only allows them in to battle the major menace in groups of no more than 5, instead of fighting it as an army themselves.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

DaMunky.6302:

Having literally JUST played that mission for the first time, infamous cannon fight and all, I think I finally understand it.

The final showdown with Zhaitan ISN’T a fight. People all get disappointed because they’re expecting to fight him, but think about it: when was Zhaitan ever a fighter? All along, he was a chessmaster, using a large and varied stable of minions to put pressure on the heroes. Once you defeat all the pieces, he’s nothing but a helpless King. He can move one space per turn and he loses automatically the second you corner him.

The final mission isn’t a ‘fight’ with Zhaitan. It’s a chase scene.

That said, I am totally expecting we will be ‘fighting’ Primordious in the traditional sense. If that one isn’t a Warrior I don’t know who is. And I SWEAR TO GOD if they give us another “throw rocks at the boss” battle I am going to be super irritated.

This actually makes a lot of sense…but at the same time, it’s very poorly designed to have to sit and spam 2 for the final epic scene. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have been able to put up some sort of a fight to actually make it fun. After all of the great Guild Wars 1 endings, I can’t believe how badly ArenaNet messed this up.

Honestly? It’s poorly designed that the end to your personal story requires dragging along 4 other people. The rest is just things making it worse.

Hmm. People have been commenting on temporary content being used as an attempt to cause short-term excitement to get players to play ‘now’. The problem with this is that there’s a flipside to this as well, especially if Arenanet continues to hand future ‘Living’ content the same way as they did this one—instead of getting people to play, it will cause people to avoid playing, both because a) spammy crowds looking for help with every little findable and thing, and b) knowing from past experience that Arenanet will get pants-on-head-stupid with the very last critical portion, and that unless you’re part of the Chosen Elite Play Type, you might as well not bother with it at all as you won’t get anything from doing the content.

As far as the ‘I was there and you weren’t, so you’ll never ever be able to get one of these nyah-nyah!‘…am I the only one to consider this a bad thing, and yet another way to discourage new players?
I’m repeatedly reminded of my experiences with Myst Uru/Uru Online/Myst Online (as the various attempts to make the thing successful have changed names…). I was in some of the earlier testing, but was pushed out due to the hardware requirements changing (and my system not meeting the new standard). Myst is a very, very lore-based game…and by the time I had the opportunity to join in much later, there had been so much lore built up, and so little actual record of it outside of ‘Lemme tell you about it, because I was there’ veterans that it was a very, uncomfortable experience, and I never did manage to ‘catch up’. Of course, these days the place is running in maintinance mode on a Cyan-run server, with maybe a handful of people actually connecting over the course of a month…

Curo.2483:

The GW2 team wants this game to have a growing experience, where it is different when logging in at different times of the year. They don’t just want to have a content pool that keeps increasing, so people can just jump in and burn through all the content at once, then get bored and come back 2 years later when there is enough content to last them a week of hardcore grinding. I think they do this for 2 main reason: to stand out from the crowd, and to keep people coming back.

To be honest, for incredibly casual gamers that only play a few hours on a weekend or something similar, there is enough content in the game already to keep you going forever. So to the OP: if your time is as limited as you say, worry about the rest of the game before you worry about the things you are missing.

Plus there’s always a possibility that popular old content may be re-released in Fractal format. Also GW1 had a “wintersday in July”, so you may see that content again. Plus we know SAB will most likely return.

Umm…you seem to be contradicting yourself here. A growing experience would mean more and more total content as time goes on. This does exactly the opposite—nothing is added of any lasting value, it’s just a revolving door of throwaway temporary content. Then again, I suppose you could consider letting your hair grow out and cutting it all off as ‘growing’—which is pretty much the same as what this is.

Tawa.3180:

I’m sad that there’s no actual party planning going on in here…

That probably says something about the lack of willingness to be forced into a party against your will just to be allowed to complete an otherwise soloable but scalable storyline.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Vulpis.8063:

So what you’re telling me is that the people designing missions for GW2 are absolutely worthless at it, compared to the ones who did the ones for GW1? In GW1, you could do the story from beginning to end with just the resources you’re given. Blech—no wonder the GW1 players I know who picked up GW2 at launch now absolutely refuse to play it. :-/ And these were the folks they kicked the Paragon crew out for. :-(

What he is saying Dungeon Friendly NPCs are NOT the equivalence of heroes and henchman from Guild Wars 1.

Also, this content is NOT balanced for solo play. But balanced for 5 players. The NPCs do not count towards this.

However compared to previous dungeon NPCs from GW2, Rox and Braham seem to be visually contributing ressing and staying alive while doing so.

(also I logged 10k hours on GW1, and am absolutely enjoying GW2, and our core guild members from GW1 are still playing GW2 every day)

That’s a shame. At least in GW1 I was allowed to complete all the storyline content. Here, I’m not allowed to finish unless I’m a dungeoneer. :-( Whee, One True Way. I thought the big selling point of Guild Wars was not doing that anymore.

Xalugami.2096:

You need to have completed all of the Flame & Frost content.
75 Acts of valor with refugees (lighting campfires, fixing signs, delivering mementos, assisting wounded refugees), 150 Molten Alliance kills, all 6 Lost & Found items turned in (covered objects between the two zones), both of Rox’s pre-dungeon instances, all 3 of Braham’s pre-dungeon instances, the 12 Dead Drop locations (started by the whispers agent in Black Citadel), the Dungeon, and the last instances for Rox & Braham.
That’s about 4-5 hours of playing if you stop & smell the roses.

More accurately, there’s 5 specific achievement pre-requisites you have to complete—though since I don’t have GW2 running, and it’s quite possible one or more of those 5 require everything you’ve listed.

I really wish there was an alternative method to getting to see those last cutscenes, though, in the form of some hard instance or world event, instead of only a 5-man dungeon. :-(

Tachenon.5270:

Azzer.8137:

Oh yeah and please keep it this way, we do NOT want heroes and henchmen again at all, they ruined most of the social aspect of GW1 we want GW2 to be a social game.

Well, I want heroes/henchies back because they made GW1 awesome. With heroes/henchies I didn’t have to wait around on other people to play what I wanted to play when I wanted to play it. And having heroes/henchies didn’t stop me from teaming with friends when they were available.

Bring ’em back, I say. Then I might try some of these dungeons – at my own pace, in my own time, and if I need to go deal with something for several minutes, nobody will be stuck waiting on me.

Yup. And having Heroes and Henchies meant having content geared for a full party that was actually doable, rather than being a complete roadblock to finishing a storyline.
Not to mention the Heroes (many of which you might notice have big statues dedicated to them in various parts of the world. ;-) ) were rather great NPCs in their own rights. I badly miss MOX, and Jora, Gwen, and Ogden…and heck, Vexx is the main reason I went Asura in GW2.
Too bad none of Destiny’s Edge or Rox or Brahwen or anyone else in GW2 seems to live up to their standard. :-/

Bring back MOX, at the very least. A lot of the art for GW2 seemed to indicate that Asuras would be able to get a Golem buddy…and Zojja has Mr Sparkles…but the only ones I get are time-limited elite-skill summons. Or am I just the wrong class to get one, as a thief?

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

OMG, In all my years of playing GW and WoW and GW2, I have seen it all. I’ve seen votes for the worst tank ever. The worst healer. It goes on and on, all by the loudest most offensive player on the team. The healer won’t heal me, well stop standing in the poison idiot. I’ve been on a few good teams but they were few and far between.

I actually did a dungeon with a leader( in WoW you can go in as the leader of the group) who actually called targets and marked them, explained battles before they happened, told everyone their responsibility and helped everyone. But that was once in 15 years of playing. The rest of the time it was a pretty sad state of grouping. Sorry but I’m too old and tired of it. I want the large spontaneous group that happens all by itself. I just did the big centaur battle HH and that was quite fun. I just don’t understand why the end of F & F could not have a dungeon and a finish for everyone else too.

Indeed—one of the reasons I enjoyed Guild Wars 1 was because this kind of thing was never, ever mandatory for any of the main storylines there. Expecting that to hold true for the personal story and such in 2 was one of the reasons I took the risk on it—despite the friends I was expecting to be able to be playing alongside refusing to have anything at all to do with the game thanks to the City of Heroes debacle. :-/ I’m starting to regret not having listened to them—but I’ve paid for my game…shame I’m apparently going to be slapped in the face for expecting to be able to play it to the end myself.

Kain Francois.4328:

What I’m wondering is why so many people hate it? :S

Because a) You can only have it on one character on your entire account, and
b) The only people allowed to get it are the dungeon-runners, since there isn’t any alternative way to get (or at least get credit for) the cutscenes that complete the achievement track.

I haven’t seen much complaint about the gloves otherwise. Kind of a shame really—if they looked horrible, I wouldn’t mind so much being locked out of getting them and having totally wasted my effort and participation for the last couple of months.

Paul Belz.7351:

Just a heads up, the facility entrance in Wayfarer’s Foothills has been explodified, but the Vigil have uncovered another one in Diessa Plateau!

Have fun

Thats nice, if you like dungeons. Is there a way for the rest of us to actually finish the storyline, yet? Being locked out of the final scenes, not to mention any reward whatsoever for the past few months of participation is very aggravating.

Sunju.8310:

Vulpis.8063:

ThiBash.5634:

CrazyAce.3842:

What if we’re not around on May 12th? I have no idea what I might be doing that day. I did all the other story achievements, and I don’t want to miss out on my Fused Weapon Skin just because I might not be able to log in on that day.

It’s available for multiple days right?

Nope, 24 hours only. Good luck!

Actually, it lasts until the 16th. You’re ill informed and pathetically whiny. GW2 is an MMO. Don’t play a purely online game if you want a solo experience. If you’re going to anyways, then don’t bloody well whinge on about being forced to do one epic group event that only takes about an hour if you run with people who don’t suck. One is hindrance enough.

It’s a fun dungeon if you grow up and refuse to act like the entitled, spoiled brat that you’ve led me to believe you are. It just makes you one more reason for misanthropes everywhere to feel justified.

Few sympathize with a fool, so announcing your singularly absurd complaints in the forum will get you little else, but spite and loathing. Knowing that people like you exist is a day ruiner, man. I’d be embarrassed if I accepted that you’re part of the same species as I. As I don’t know what you look like, though, I’ll just choose to believe that you’re a Sasquatch with a decent grasp of English and the workings of modern technology.

The information about the epilogue ending on the 16th is indeed mea culpa—I’m not sure if it was my misreading, or seeing inaccurate info, but I had been under the impression the epilogue started on the 12th and then was to disappear on the following day.

As for the rest…hmm. I’m guessing you’re a WoW player who came into GW2, and never played GW1. The attitude you’re attempting to project onto me very much fits that profile. I’m betting at some point, you’ve complained that Guild Wars has no end-game content, and/or not enough Dungeons.

Yes, Mandatory Dungeons/Raids are an accepted part of any MMO except Guild Wars. One of the hallmarks of Guild Wars 1 was that they did the exact opposite—none of the dungeons were at all required to complete the storyline (though I do seem to recall a couple of missions that used the same maps, but with a different mix of enemies and with some paths cut off). They were bonus content, and that was it. I only finished one of the three main (Four, if you’re counting the Eye of the North) storylines personally (Factions, though I got about halfway through the others as well), and not once was there a mandatory requirement to do a Dungeon run.

By the way, where is this ‘epic group event’ you’re refering to? I’ve seen epic group events in several places in GW2, including the Maw and the Fire Elemental. (Though to be honest, I saw more epic events back on Rift—ever been through an Invasion over there? Unfortunately, the place is subscription-based, unlike either Guild Wars.) All I’m seeing here is a 5-man raid dungeon. A dungeon that serves as a roadblock to actually completing this event, with no alternatives, and no choice, other than to write off the past months of participation as a complete waste of time and effort for no reward.

As for fools—by your criteria there must be a lot of fools playing GW2, then. But I do wonder who’s more the fool? The fool who thinks that only one style of play should be allowed a reward for months of effort, the fool that stands there and lets themselves be slapped in the face, or the ‘fool’ who makes the effort to stand up and say ‘No, this is wrong, and should be fixed so all styles can enjoy and be rewarded.’?

Jemmi.6058:

Vulpis.8063:

Miserymachine.7512:

So much whining about having to group up for this dungeon. How can so many antisocial people be playing this online game? Go play your Wii if you don’t want to play with other people. That’s like going to a steakhouse and then complaining that you had to eat steak.

Nope…it’s more like going to the steakhouse and the only thing at all you’re allowed to eat is steak, despite having been seated right next to the salad bar.
There’s a vast difference between ‘Playing with other people in the world’ and ‘Being forced into a group with them’.

It’s not really like that at all. There is content for both groups and for solo. It’s like going t a restaurant and having a big menu fool of different foods, and there is this one item called a ‘platter’ that is designed to be eaten with other people. It’s really unfair though, because on the menu right above the platter is a single-person appetizer, so it’s really unfair that the Restaurant has made this item that requires a group of people to eat.

Oh? So show me—where is the means to finish the personal storyline, other than having to do a dungeon, rather than a personal mission or an actual event. I have yet to find this option.

Similarly, where is the alternative to the Living Story dungeon, in the form of either a soloable and groupable instance or an actual event? Again, I certainly haven’t seen anything of the sort.

The issue isn’t the dungeon in and of itself—the problem is that it’s the only way to complete the storyline, and that the only people out of the entire player base that are allowed to receive any final reward for the effort put into this Living Story event are the dungeon-raiders. Everyone else gets nothing, not even a secondary reward.

(and part 2…)

Why are you playing this game if you just dislike what arenanet do so much?, i don’t understand it, if a game or anything else was against my beliefs i would just stop playing it.

Simple—because with the exception of these two moronically-placed dungeons with no choice whatsoever, Arenanet has done an excellent job on the rest of the game, balancing it well between individual and group play. Plus, I’m not a coward or an idiot—if your dog takes a dump on the carpet, you don’t run out of the house and leave them and it sitting there, you grab the rolled up newspaper and correct their behavior. Given that Arenanet should have already learned this was a incredibly bad decision due to the reaction to the end of the Personal Story, I’m wishing I had a long enough newspaper to reach to the other coast so I could smack them while rubbing their nose in what they did. It’s very sad to see them do such a great job on 99% of the game…and then get pants-on-head stupid with a rather critical 1%.

Azzer.8137:

Also Arenanet, keep doing awesome content, remember there’s many millions online playing and having fun and the very small minority is jsut here complaining as it is with all official forums, majority = having fun in game, minority = on forums complaining about something they hate anyway.

You’re babbling again. And forgetting the portion that does just take their wallets and leave rather than complain and try to get things improved or force themselves to play when they’re not having fun.

Azzer.8137:

Oh yeah and please keep it this way, we do NOT want heroes and henchmen again at all, they ruined most of the social aspect of GW1 we want GW2 to be a social game.

Funny, people seemed plenty social to me. Of course, this does beg the question—why does being ‘social’ mean being forced into 5-man dungeons, when the various open-world events are doing a far better job at it?

Gah. another one I have to split up.

Azzer.8137:

Why wasn’t people that hate playing solo complaining about living story?, well because it makes sense!

Yes, it makes sense because with solo content, there’s always the option of dragging friends along for the ride. You see, there’s that thing called a ‘choice’. By making the only way to finish the storyline be a 5-man dungeon, there’s no choice at all. Only one play style is allowed to have rewards.

Azzer.8137:

I don’t like PUg’s and i am not much of a dungeon runner i have social anxiety and still i can get this done, i am also quite sick and have to sometimes afk right away and no one has yet to call me out on it because i make sure my group knows it, and Vulpis calling it a WoW raid is so far from this galaxy as he can be this place has nothing to do with a wow raid at all, it’s a challenging dungeon, it’s not hard, it’s not easy it is inbetween, and arenanet have always done it this way, in Prophecies you could not do Tomb of The Primeval King with Heros/henchman alone, in Factions you could not do The Deep or Urgozs with heros/henchmen/alone, in Nightfall you could not do Domain Of Anguish with heros/henchmen/alone, Arenanet have always encouraged people to play together against an enemy/nemesis.

Deep breath and a dose of decaf there, you’re babbling.
This is a 5-man raid, just like any of the many, many, many ones that are used on WoW.
And you’re comparing apples and oranges here. You’re right, you couldn’t do the side dungeons in GW1 with only a single PC—by the same token, you can’t do the Destiny’s Edge side-story dungeons solo. But you know what? That’s completely irrelevant.
You can do the entire Prophesies storyline from beginning to end with just Heroes and henchman.
You can do the entire Nightfall storyline from beginning to end with just Heroes and henchmen.
You can do the entire Factions storyline from beginning to end with just Heroes and Henchmen—and I’ve done this one personally, so kindly don’t try to give me any horse manure that you can’t. Taking down Shiro was how I got the last HoM points I wanted before switching over (not that I’ve bothered to use the Heritage gear much past my early levels. I ended up liking the Pirate amor—not the store town-clothes—styles a lot more).

Azzer.8137:

And those who want to see the story and hate dungeons you have so many ways to actually see it withouth doing the dungeon, you do NOT have to do it at all it is free content for those who are willing to make an effort.

Oh, do tell? Other than watching it from completely outside the game via YouTube, I’d really love to hear you tell me just how I can see the story without doing the dungeon (as the situation stands now), given that you only gain access to Rox and Braham’s events on completion of the dungeon. If there’s some other trigger to gain access to those, I definitely want to hear about it, since those are what fulfill the last requirement to gain a reward for the event, rather than the dungeon itself (especially considering that those achievements are blocked, having the dungeon completion as a prerequisite). If you can do this, I, and the other non-raiders, will be very appreciative….but personally, I think you’re full of it, and can do no such thing.
(continued)

And the second part…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you don’t want player interaction, or if you don’t want activities that require player grouping, then why just WHY are you playing a Massive Multiplayer online game?

I’m honestly befuddled by this aspect of your minds.

It’s not ‘Massive Multiplayer’, it’s ‘Massive, Multiplayer’. The Massive part is why I and a lot of other people play—other than maybe Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls and Fallout lines, there are no games with the scope and territory to match a decent MMO.

And again, you’re failing to understand what’s actually being complained about. People have no problem with player interaction—otherwise, all of those open-world events such as Champion spawns, the Maw, the Fire Elemental, and the like would fail miserably (and it’s pretty evident they’re doing quite the opposite—there’s been more than a few times I’ve been out in the middle of nowhere, not having seen anyone around and triggered a Champion event—and suddenly people are popping out of the woodwork for it). What people are complaining about is being forced into a WoW-type raid dungeon just to see storyline content when all the effort up until that point has been the non-WoW solo or completely informal open-world event grouping. One of the primary draws for both Guild Wars games is that you didn’t have to do dungeon raids just to complete the storyline—everything could be done either solo, or scale to groups running it by choice. There is no choice whatsoever here—you either do the raid, or you get nothing for all your personal work.

You know, there is a question I might ask you in return—if all you want to do is dungeon-raids, why are you here instead of playing WoW or DCUO or the like, who are focused on that kind of gameplay?

Hmm. Not sure if this edited properly. We’ll see. And cutting it due to the system complaining about length.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

To all those who refuse to do dungeon, I have one question for you:
Does this mean that you refuse to complete – or even do – the personal story, which similarly ends in a dungeon (Arah)?

Yes, actually…and ending the Personal Story that way makes even less sense than it does for the Living Story. I mean, right there in the name—Personal. Nothing particularly personal about a 5-man WoW-raid. That’s the other half of the reason I can’t even bother forcing myself to log in at all right now. What’s the point, when the only play style that apparently deserves any sort of reward for their efforts are the raid-runners?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If I wanted to avoid player interaction, I’d just stick to my single-player games. And I do mean this honestly and sincerely: What is the point of playing an MMO if you’re going to avoid everything that requires playing with others?

A lot of people are taunting on this oddity, but it’s a legit absurdity that should be properly answered. I see it brought up a lot, but never answered except “it shouldn’t have to require player interaction” (dumbed down). But why not? It’s the entire purpose of the genre. I would normally hop on the bandwagon that says “if you don’t like it, don’t play it” but at this point it’s just something that makes me facepalm whenever I hear.

Seriously? I’m getting very tired of the ignorance, failure in reading comprehension, or possibly just brain damage that keeps this little fabrication going around and around.
People aren’t complaining about player interaction. What they are complaining about is being forced into 5-man WoW raids, when there’s a list of what, 2 dozen or more different kinds of events that GW2 has already in place, all of them scaling from 1 player to many?

What people are complaining about is what’s basically the Arenanet giving a large portion of the player base the middle finger, and sending the message that the only people that deserve to be rewarded for participating in the multiple months of Living Story content are the WoW-type raiders. In case you didn’t notice, there are no alternate paths to unlock the last segments of story content—and there are no rewards whatsoever other than the gloves that are only obtainable by doing those final story segments, which are themselves only accessible by doing the raid-run. If there was another method to get to see the rest of the story, such as a open-world event or a hard but soloable instance, people wouldn’t be complaining.
I will point out, BTW, that I’m very specifically saying that the dungeon should stay, but there should be additional paths alongside it. Removing the dungeon in favor of another method would be causing exactly the same problem just in another direction. Provide means for all play styles to enjoy the story, not just one.

It’s really sad when Arenanet fails at running an event in comparison to DC Universe Online, of all people—DCUO may be run by nasty, petty, money-grubbing people..but at least their events during the last year have been providing both solo and group activities.
(continued)
Edit: ah, there we go.

Firefly.5982:

Vulpis.8063:

I think the Frost is likely the cold-shoulder reaction a major chunk of the player base is going to give to any future content if their only options are going to be ‘Run a forced-group dungeon or have your entire effort be worthless’. Just before I logged in last night, I was considering buying some more Gems and getting stuff in the store. Not a chance in Hades I’m going to bother doing that now, though.

If you don’t like grouping up, do the dungeon solo? Will take you longer, but it’s absolutely doable. So…go for it?

I tried that, got completely plastered by the 4 Veterans in the first room. It’s not, in it’s current state, soloable.

Phoenix.8640:

Well I am disappointed that it ends in a dungeon I am just doing what I do with any content I don’t like, I just completely ignore it.

If I’d known that this was going to end with a raid dungeon as the only way to finish it, I’d have done the same. Unfortunately, this basically completely invalidates the previous months of participation in the event, which is what’s making people angry about it.

PopeUrban.2578:

I don’t see why people haven’t considered that accomplishments shouldn’t be preordained or handed out freely. The living story isn’t your story, and it’s going to resolve regardless of your input. There are still plenty of people destroying weapons facilities. Adding an “easy mode” in order for lesser able players cheapens the story as a whole. If you’re not up to the challenge of what is, thematically supposed to be a very dangerous place, then you really shouldn’t be there. Those that went, and wiped, and killed bosses, and took their lumps and armor repair and time were the ones that drove it forward in the end.

Just because there is content doesn’t mean you should be able to solo it. You’re not asking for the Orr temples to scale down to a single player, are you? With attitudes like some of you it’s no wonder you have problems in groups. Pugging in GW2 for temporary content has shown me some of the most laid back and helpful pug members it’s ever been my pleasure to play with. We have a great community. The fact is that the finale was narratively and mechanically a logical conclusion to what led up to it.

Every piece of content should not be a hardcore dungeon, or an easy solo instance, or a jumping puzzle, or whatever type of content is your personal favorite. If there’s a type of content you don’t like, don’t do it. Do you complain that you can’t see the SPvP maps without actually playing the game type? That’s content that you’re not getting because you made peace with the fact that you don’t like certain types of play, and thus you won’t play them.

Did you even bother to read back through what you wrote before posting it?
Basically, what you said boils down to ‘If you’re not going to be a WoW-style raider, you should shut up and get nothing whatsoever, despite content presented as playable and completable by all players.’
I don’t have any interest in seeing sPvP, PvP, or WvW maps, becuase I don’t play those modes. And conversely, none of those have any connection or impact on the modes I do play, so that’s all good. I don’t know what ‘Orr Temples’ are offhand, but I’m presuming they’re either one of those or a dungeon. Again, no impact on what I do play. Dungeons are the same story—-with the exception of Arah, which I view with the same lividness as I do this Molten Factory dungeon.
If Living story had been presented as dungeons from beginning to end, similar to how the Destiny’s Edge story, you’d have a valid point.

The problem here is that instead of providing means for multiple play styles to enjoy and complete the content, only one style is being allowed to, while everyone else has basically wasted any time put into it. It’s not a matter of ‘favorite style’, it’s ‘Why am I suddenly being forced to play your, when nothing proceeding it requires it?’

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As for the whole “it’s been posted!” – Let me say this. On May 8th, I’ll be going out of town for 21 days. No ifs ands or buts about it because real life happens – and while out of town, I’ll get no Guild Wars 2 access since my laptop isn’t powerful enough to run it. Now, this means I cannot enjoy the dungeon from the 8th on until its closed – I got lucky, as I’ve already done the dungeon so I got a chance to explore it. However, what if I had to go out of town from April 28th to May 13th? Even if it was announced beforehand, I wouldn’t have a chance of changing when I go out of town, and as such I wouldn’t have a chance to play the dungeon.

I might point out that you’re still going to be shafted, because you’re missing the part that’s only running on the 12th to 16th.

Shifted.6912:

Anet seems to think making stuff time-limited will make people want to play it. I don’t know about others but with SAB the fact that it was time limited actually did the opposite, and I abandoned my idea of farming baubles for the weapons.

I’m not gonna cry about this dungeon being gone (even though the final boss fight is brilliant) but it annoys the skritt out of me that all that development time could’ve been put into something that would stay in the game forever, making it a richer experience.

Instead we get the same situation we’ve had months ago: Other than fractals, there’s not much to do once you got BiS gear.

Yup. For me, it’s done worse than the opposite, actually. April 29, I’m looking forward to the new content and seeing the end of the storyline, and considering plunking down my money for some more cash-store stuff. The 30th…I find that the only way to see the end of the story, or for that matter actually get any final reward for my participation for the previous months, is to run a lousy stinking WoW-raid dungeon (and don’t give me that garbage about it being innovative—with the sole exception of being able to jump, everything in there has already been done in WoW’s boss raids already…not to mention, from the comments I’ve been seeing, even the jumping doesn’t do anything half the time). On top of that, I made the mistake of looking ahead in the wiki and discovering that they did the same thing in the Personal Story, making any progress in that completely worthless.
You know, this is my day off work today. I had been looking forward to having the whole day open to see the end of the story. Even after learning about the dungeon, I still had some mild thoughts of (as someone else had suggested to me) trying to ignore the Stories altogether and just clear zones for exploration. Instead, every time I try to force myself to launch GW2, I have the same feelings as I was trying to force myself to handle rancid feces barehanded.
And these are the people they kicked out Paragon Studios for.

I’m still wondering how in blazes they’re justifying this to their accounting department. Content takes resources, manpower, time, and above all money to make. In any other MMO, this cost is balanced by the fact that these assets will be in place over a long time, both serving as a draw for new players, as well as continuing players repeating the content (and both spending on the game in some fashion).
Arenanet would be achieving identical results if they took 4 months of their design budget, put it in a trash can, and lit the entire thing on fire. And these are the people NCSoft kicked out Paragon for?

Then again, why should they care what the players think? They already have our money, after all, and despite not getting any more of ours, there’s presumably still enough suckers out there who haven’t learned better yet.

Khisanth.2948:

Vulpis.8063:

Honestly? I didn’t see any competance at all. First room, they’re both KOed along with the other NPCs in the room—I couldn’t even go res them, as the Veterans kept lurking right on top of their bodies despite me trying to pull them off. Eventually got tired of having my armor damaged and gave up. They were a lot more useful in the previous pair of instances, really. :-/ Bad enough this is a Dungeon, but you could at least make the Heroes as worth working with as the ones you get in GW1.

GW1 heroes were meant to be substitutes for actual players. These are not. Even henchmen were meant to do more. These are around more for flavor/context/story telling (for example in the beginning sequence with the drill it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for the player character to suddenly have knowledge about how to work dredge machinery). That makes a huge difference in what they should and should not do. Ideally they should not be dead weights. Only part where I would have considered them dead weights was when Rox was shooting arrows into the earth elementals’ reflective shields.

As for doing better in the previous instances, that is to be expected since those didn’t involve any silver mobs.

So what you’re telling me is that the people designing missions for GW2 are absolutely worthless at it, compared to the ones who did the ones for GW1? In GW1, you could do the story from beginning to end with just the resources you’re given. Blech—no wonder the GW1 players I know who picked up GW2 at launch now absolutely refuse to play it. :-/ And these were the folks they kicked the Paragon crew out for. :-(

Honestly? If all they’re going to do is keep throwing in dungeons to end the stories, with no alternative options for the non-raiding types, I’d rather it stayed dead, and not waste my time with events I’m not allowed to get a reward from despite my efforts in all the other segments.

raptor.1064:

I love how we get a decent boss fight for the temp dungeon while the others remain boring forever.

I love how I get shafted out of any chance of a reward because I can’t stand WoW boss-raid forced-grouping, which I bought GW2 for because it didn’t make that mandatory (or so I thought when I paid for it).

…Well, actually, no, I don’t love it at all. If this is the kind of dog excrement they’re going to finish Living Story portions with every time, I’d just as soon they not make any more.

Dr Ritter.1327:

the new dungeon is great, this is the kind of update we need. SAB was the wrong direction to go, making it soloable. this game is an MMO, group play is what these kinds of games are made for. i hope the next living story has more instanced areas like this one

I need a -1 button, here. The entire rest of the storyline is soloable content, at varying levels of difficulty. Instanced areas are nice--but giving you no choice whatsoever but a WoW-raid to progress is definitely a pants-on-head stupid direction to go in. Have the dungeon as one option, but provide some other means for completing the story as well. I certainly don’t appreciate being shafted out of any chance of a reward because of forced-group stupidity. (Sometimes I get annoyed by filters—I certainly understand and agree with the need for them, but on other hand there are times like this one when something is far more easily described with an expletive nondeleted…which here would end up with more kittens than a cat-farm…)

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The thing is: I think this thread is in need of some constructive ideas how to implement such content in the open world for future releases. Some (maybe a lot) people dislike dungeons, the need for grouping, the dependency of other people, group-members who don’t behave like that and leave you behind etc. On the other hand you have the development team which tries hard to create some decent encounters where group-coordination is needed (they managed to do so with the boss battles here), try to come up with great storytelling (love the scripts in there) + they have the experience that previous special events had huge problems (karka-lag for example).

I guess it’s not easy to come up with a solution while working on a tight schedule. Maybe it’s up to us to provide the team with some neat ideas. You know: ask not what your developer can do for you — ask what you can do for your developer

Forums are a great way to come up with ideas, we should do this instead of constant whining “I want a refund”.

Indeed—as I’ve said elsewhere I had the knee-jerk refund reponse…and then immediately realized that the key thing that makes me so ill about this thing is that I’ve enjoyed the other 99.9% of the game greatly, that Arenanet has spent the lifetimes of both GW2 and GW1 setting themselves apart by getting away from exactly this sort of WoW-clone garbage, resulting in these mandatory raids being a major step backwards for them…and on top of that, knowing that unless I choke down the bile and do this raid-dungeon, there is no option whatsoever to gain access to the scenes after it, and that means I’m completely shafted out of getting the reward gloves (rendering all effort put into the previous stages worthless).
My view? If they’re not going to make the dungeon scale properly, at least put in some sort of option that gets you past it and to the actual story-ending scenes.

Heh…you know, before I logged in last night, I had been considering buying some Gems for the store. No chance in Hades of that now, of course—but if I’d done that first and then found out about the raid-dungeon, I’d probably be calling for a refund on that, at least. Which is rather sad, really—this has managed to completely kill any interest I have in either future Living Story or store purchases from here on out. Bad thing, considering that ArenaNet is on thin ice as it is in some quarters, due to City of Heroes.

Mastruq.2463:

Palador.2170:

Rhaps.8540:

rizzo.1079:

I wish I didn’t have to do a dungeon to finish it, before that it was fun:)

Thank god they added a dungeon, before it was boring.

What they needed to do was add the dungeon for the big fight that breaks the power of the enemies, and then have the conclusion be solo-able in a separate mission. That way people that like the big fights and dungeons can have what they want, but everyone still gets to see the ending of it all.

My understanding is that they’ve done just that. The dungeon runs are breaking the power of the MA like you said, and the story conclusion that follows afterwards (May 12th-16th i think) is in the main cities, and probably accessible for everyone.

That’s nice. Of course if you don’t do the forced-grouping WoW raid, then you might as well not bother with the epilogue—all that work on achievements for the past couple of months has been completely worthless, and you’re not getting any reward for particpating—you only get those gloves for doing the raid (or more accurately, seeing the story scenes that you can only get by completing the raid).

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Vulpis.8063:

-snip- lv, thief

well this explains a lot. I’m not sure how good or bad scaling is for low level players in those new missions but you have to know that you get quite powerful once max. level. You don’t even need exotic gear imho to feel that way. Now think about how many players are lv.80 for quite a while now. It shouldn’t surprise you that these people (me included) miss the challenge they got when playing as low level characters. Not everyone wants to constantly reroll to get this feeling back.

Me, as a lv.80 player for a few months now, I can’t find a lot of challenging encounters in the open world anymore. Metaevent-bosses are a joke (spam 1) and this leaves a few very fun and difficult god-temples in Orr.

I tried thief once, it was a quite fun and painful (but fun fun fun) experience. It’s this risk-reward feeling going into the battles, doing a few melee moves and then moving out again. Dual-pistols felt a bit lackluster to me, but maybe I was doing it wrong.

I understand now that you must be frustrated trying that dungeon as a low level thief. I re-read your posts and agree, this could have been a dynamic event – but a lot of things should be considered then:

Just a minor thing, but I’m at cap (though most of my gear is still in the level 70-75 ranges), but am going through the lower-level areas. I’ve only poked my nose into Fort Trinity once (after swimming the long way around the island from the fort north of it…Pride, I think?) for the easy jumping puzzle there. Most of the 60+ zones I haven’t explored yet, though I supposedly have the level for it.

And the pistols—I tend to like ranged fighting rather than melee (Ranger/ele in GW1, Ranger-type in Rift (I forget what the actual class was named there), dual-pistol users in Champions, City Of, and DCUO…), and the bow doesn’t allow for the more-dakka of dual pistols, at least with a thief. Again, I need to practice my melee…though it generally gets my head handed to me again, and I tend to end up using point-blank pistols and then running anyway. Which doesn’t do you much good in a small space with 3-4 Veterans and an elite trying to pound you…

callidus.7085:

I’d love to see this turned into a living story.. and then the final part of it would be to add this as a PERMANENT dungeon. First just introduce the story dungeon and then as time progresses add in explorable paths if they can’t do it all in one shot.

Yay, more uncompletable forced-grouping content. :-/

Firegoth.6427:

Because this is the best way to make SURE you come back every month to check the new changes in the game.

Taking part of the new content and getting exclusive skins will be what makes your characters unique.

They (Anet) actually got a great way to keep people hooked up, you may not like it, but you can’t deny it works.

Also a great way for the NCSoft accountants to drop in and scream ‘You did what with all that money and manpower, only to turn around and throw it all in the trash??’ before going home and suggesting to the Korean parent company that Arenanet needs to go the way of Paragon…I’m starting to wonder if maybe they want to be shuttered.

Eddard.2930:

Vulpis.8063:

OTOH…how about ArenaNet let the races kludge together something that allows players to visit a dreamstate or spirit realm or some such where these events are eternally active? That way new players can see a recreation of the event (and more importantly, get the achievements and loot from it! ;-) ), without having to keep them active world-wide. A Tyrian version of Paragon City’s Ouroboros, if you will..

Neat idea. Or they could make a library in LA. If you take out a specific book about a past event you can read about each event … but instead of “reading” about the event, you could play through the event and get the rewards.

Rather like the books you fill out in GW1 for doing (or re-doing) the various missions (in either normal or hard mode) and turn in for a reward when it’s at least half done? ;-)

All this and no comment on the Charr? The Charr wh have giant Warhammer 40K style tanks hanging from the ceiling? The Charr that have their home city built around what appears to be a steampunk version of Disney’s Epcot?

The Asura and their magi-tech I can deal with (especially since for the most part it’s actually more magic-based than tech, really), but the Charr….oy.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Vulpis.8063:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Vulpis.8063:

the entire rest of the game is wonderful, and then it gets pants-on-head/thumb-up-backside stupid right at the finish line.

an earnest question: are you a player who enjoys a challenge? If yes, where do you find it outside of dungeons?

The rest of the game, particularly when I poke into areas meant for people with more AoE attacks and higher gearing than I possess, or go back to lower level zones and solo some of the events ‘meant’ for groups with my higher-level weapons and armor (you can not do that with a dungeon). Part of why this is so aggravating is that the previous pair of instances with Rox and Braham separately were great, with me getting trounced unless I played them intelligently. For that matter, I very much enjoyed the old GW1 missions which were also at core designed for parties—with Heroes and Henchmen provided to replace the need for other players in their roles (and part of the challenge coming from selecting appropriate ones and managing them properly).

May I ask how long you are playing the game? I got my exotics via crafting a few weeks after creating the character, so either you are new to the game or you aren’t priorizing gearing up – which shouldn’t be a problem if you know where to find exotic gear. (Orr-Events, crafting, WvW badges, trading post; if you don’t like to do dungeons).
STILL I can’t see a big difference between rare and exotic gear to be honest. I just don’t feel the difference during battle.

It’s interesting that you found the previous missions with Rox and Braham difficult when not played intelligently. I probably should have tried those with worse gear, wearing exotics those were pretty straight-forward non strategic tank & spank without the need for any other key than autoattack 1 & some dodges. May I ask what gear you’re wearing?

And which profession you’re playing? I’ve heard that difficulty varies a lot between the professions. I’m playing Mesmer and most of the time I manage to put out enough clones so that enemies are too confused to find the true me. My friend plays a warrior and he can take a lot of beating, a Ele-friend though said that he is quite challenged fighting champions or certain events.

checks I started a little before the end of February.
But yeah—I’ve been playing in a semi-casual mode, more looking at clearing map exploration (mostly working upwards by levels—I’m doing the 45-55 ranges now, mostly, despite having hit cap a couple weeks back) along with slow crafting progression (haven’t hit 200 yet in either one, though I’m focusing more on Leatherworking for the bags) than trying to get exotics. Heck, the rares I have are mostly not even L80, either (did pick up the Cultral Weapons though, as I have lots and lots of Karma from that map-clearing as well as events of various sorts along the way).
As for what I’m playing, I’m running a thief, though not a particularly optimized one as yet (I really need to get around to picking up my Grandmaster book at some point, and re-doing Traits), mainly dual-pistol. I really need to sit down and practice dagger combos, really—there was a nice posting I saw on the forum a while back about a signet-based thief build that went into the combos you can do while switching weapons.
Like I said, the instances were at least something of a play-skill challenge—if I made the mistake of going Leroy Jenkins into middle of the group—intentionally or by accident, I generally get my head handed to me, but if I hang back at the end of pistol range and peel them off one or two at a time, they go down fairly easily.

OTOH, I don’t even get that option in that blasted Dungeon. First encounter, I’m road-kill…the only reason I was able to take one down is because I managed to get my one ‘summon’ (I use the elite skill that summons a pair of thieves) out, and after that, there wasn’t enough room in the place to pull one off without aggroing the rest right on top of me—and trying to dodge around to wait out cooldowns ran me right into the rest as well. :-/ No chance to revive the NPCs, either, as the enemies were standing on them.

Miserymachine.7512:

So much whining about having to group up for this dungeon. How can so many antisocial people be playing this online game? Go play your Wii if you don’t want to play with other people. That’s like going to a steakhouse and then complaining that you had to eat steak.

Nope…it’s more like going to the steakhouse and the only thing at all you’re allowed to eat is steak, despite having been seated right next to the salad bar.
There’s a vast difference between ‘Playing with other people in the world’ and ‘Being forced into a group with them’.

Vewen.8016:

Vulpis.8063:

Kelly.7019:

I think its a well designed dungeon, fun to play, wish it was going to be here permanently. The dungeon does scale you up to 80 (“The Molten Facility is a level-80 single-path dungeon experience where players fight alongside Rox Whetstone and Braham Eirsson. All players who enter are scaled up to level 80”). We ran a pug with four 80’s and one 70 just fine. Final boss fight- (Bosses looked epic btw-gratz to designers) easy to complete. imo. Went in knowing nothing about it, completed it in one run.

In the dev’s defence, from all reports it is a well-designed dungeon (I presume, since I’m not going to see it past the first room). It is not, however, a well-designed ending to a multi-month storyline that has from the beginning to this point been perfectly enjoyable by a group of 1 person.

I’m sorry but… MMO. Massive multiplayer. If you hate playing with other people, why are you still playing this game? But i can understand your point: the big mistake Anet made is not making everything a dungeon requiring 5 people. Other MMO’s do thsi as well: you can play on your own until max level, and then you’ll have to group up for most of the max level PvE content: are you blaming them too? You’re blaming Anet for putting the massive multiplayer into an MMO. That’s a pretty weak attack, no matter how you put it.

I can only say: grow a pair and get together with 4 random people and run through it. It’s fun, and you might just get out of your singleplayer shell.

I don’t hate playing with other people. I hate being forced to play with other people in a formal grouping arrangement, especially with rubber-hose tactics that boil down to ‘PUG with 4 random schlubs, or your entire effort on the storyline for the past few months was a complete waste of time’.

And…reading over the rest of your comment, I can only wonder if you actually know what the term ‘multiplayer’ means. A multiplayer game is one where there are multiple players in the game. That’s it. Nowhere in this is anything that says that they have to be organized into little teams (I can think of a few terms I’d use to describe this behavior, but even if the filters would let it pass, I don’t think the moderators would..) or even be working on the same tasks. It just says that there are more than one person playing in the world-setting.

And no, not all MMOs require grouping for max-level content—as a matter of fact, that tends to be a quality that attract me to playing a given MMO, or at the very least prevents me from finding someplace else once I hit that level. GW1 was wonderful for that factor—hitting cap was just the beginning, and for any of the main storyline content (as opposed to the side-story dungeons), you never had to group. Champions and Star Trek Online have plenty of solo content at cap. City Of…depends on if you were subscribed or f2p—there were additional post-cap levels there that were grouping, but also only for subbers. Heck, even DCUO has been progressively adding solo end-game content as they’ve gone along, despite their nastiness.

As for what I’m blaming Anet for, it’s for sticking a forced-grouping WoW Raid dungeon at the end of a series of content where they’ve consistantly demonstrated the ability to create content suitable for both solo and multiplayer participation. If they must make it multiplayer, there’s plenty of other means than a raid dungeon. Equally, there’s plenty of ways to make an instance playable by solos without taking away the ability of a group to run it. Making this the only way to complete the Living Story (and subsequently receive any rewards whatsoever from it) is what the basic complaint is. Give me a hard (but doable) solo instance any day, over forcing me into a situation where I might end up stuck grouped with someone like, say, you, with no choice in the matter.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Vulpis.8063:

the entire rest of the game is wonderful, and then it gets pants-on-head/thumb-up-backside stupid right at the finish line.

an earnest question: are you a player who enjoys a challenge? If yes, where do you find it outside of dungeons?

The rest of the game, particularly when I poke into areas meant for people with more AoE attacks and higher gearing than I possess, or go back to lower level zones and solo some of the events ‘meant’ for groups with my higher-level weapons and armor (you can not do that with a dungeon). Part of why this is so aggravating is that the previous pair of instances with Rox and Braham separately were great, with me getting trounced unless I played them intelligently. For that matter, I very much enjoyed the old GW1 missions which were also at core designed for parties—with Heroes and Henchmen provided to replace the need for other players in their roles (and part of the challenge coming from selecting appropriate ones and managing them properly).

Jam.4521:

Well I for one love the dungeons, if you don;t like them then don’t do them.

It is an MMO, designed for multiplayer experiences.

If you feel uncomfortable playing with other people why are you not playing a a multiplayer coop game?

If I don’t do them, I get no reward or ending to the Personal or Living Stories.

And I do play a multiplayer coop game—it’s called Guild Wars 2. The great thing is that for 99% of the game, that’s entirely by my choice whether I drop in and help, do it on my own, or keep on going past. Except for these two and only two points in the game where I’m not allowed to progress further whatsoever without being forced into a formal grouping, despite none of the rest of the game requiring (though allowing it as an option).