Expansion pack/Permanent Content
New utility and weapon skills
Dedicated PVE balance team
Orr is just meh, nothing rly interesting there except gathering runs which ppl do not for fun but cuz of need.
If Anet gave some attention to Orr instead of wasting time on that karka island, things would be much better.
All that “living story” and “evolving world” but nothing rly evolved except one dead island they made…
They should start revamping Orr since we defeated the dragon, there is no1 to rise dead bodies anymore, thats what means world evolving.
The existing zones kinda have to stay since they represent orr before zhaitans defeat and are very integrated into the story of the original GW release. The way to represent time passing on orr is probably to make new, post zhaitan zones. I guess Southsun was an attempt to sort of do this, even if it isnt technically orr it represents some sort of opening up of the world as a result of Zhaitans defeat. Shame they dont really see to know how to make it work though.
Thanks for the video, very helpful!
So what you are saying is that essentially COF path 1 and AR are the wrong way around. The COF path 1 style of dungeon would make good temporary content and AR difficulty dungeons would make good permanent content. Agreed.
I never solo’d Lupicus.
My issue with the mechanics is that it relies on pulling aggro and aggro mechanics are sort of a black art in this game. I wish that there was risk/reward associated with the Mai fight for going range. Where the risk is you get 1 shot but the reward is that she loses a stack of Captain’s Defense or whatever it was called. I felt like it was difficult getting a team to effectively pull her through aoe so the team resorts to stacking. Stacking again favors guardians due to aegis on her daggerstorm. So playing a mid range character ends up being difficult and unrewarding.
Maybe I’m idealistic, but in my opinion, good content is not dependent on group composition as strongly as this dungeon is. I hope that helps.
Aha, I see what you mean. A lot like how the dredge fractal final boss sometimes chases the player up the top pulling the levers even though they arent doing any dmg and dont have the highest toughness and aren’t the closest enemy. It would be nice to understand the agro mechanics more, I agree. I noticed in the mai fight she often seems to go for players who are rezzing others, I wonder if anet put that in on purpose to make it harder. The only class I saw range her effectively was mesmer, because they could use clones to escape the shadowstep dodge. It was very impressive to watch.
I think you are right, a decent reward mechanic for staying at range in the fight would be nice, to balance the massive risk it poses against her. I guess the intention was to make her hard to kite but with the teleport and the having to pull her though fields I think they went a bit overboard. I dont dislike the concept though, watching players behaviour in that fight the instinct to stay at max range seems to have become ingrained in a lot of people, even a friend of mine who is a much better player than me, had trouble adjusting to close range (not melee mind you) for it.
I agree that good content should not be depended on group composition (especially in gw2 where every class should be able to do every role to a greater or lesser extent) and I am quite worried that the pvp focus is seriously unbalancing the various classes in pve. It was nice to see necros get a boost and I really hope at some point soon pet ai and how pets work in general gets a good overhaul.
Having said that Im not sure this dungeon is much worse than others (particularly cof speed runs or 30+ fractals where its just guardians and warriors as far as the eye can see) with regard to requiring certain party compositions. A quick look at the wiki shows that for both condition removal and granting stability Guards are definitely well equipped but they are not the only ones, and all classes have at least some access. Im quite interested to try it out in a party without a guardian to see how different it is, I accept that my experience is limited in that respect.
Personally I like content which makes people think and adapt, stuff you have to concentrate on while playing. AR does achieve that, which is why Im happy to overlook thakittens a bit rough around the edges.
PS editing because I only just read your bit about the laser walls. AFAIK even with guard its impossible to have stability up 100%, certainly with my ah build anyway. I can get 20 seconds at best, and thats only if I dont move out of the area affect of one of the skills (a skill with a 90 sec cooldown no less) Its use has to be managed and timed just like the dodge rolls. It makes it easier and safer, certainly, but its not a brainless I win button either.
Agree that lasers shouldnt dmg pets (or at least should do less dmg to pets) though. Theres another issue you raise too which is about living story content. I completely agree that for temporary story content, AR is much too, inflexible is the best word I can think of. It shouldn’t be temporary and doing the basic story and getting the achievements for it should be something that any party with any combination of classes should be able to enjoy doing. It might be doable with any party composition (given skilled players) but I doubt it would be fun unless you’re choosing a pretty optimum group. Simple, it should be permanent. Thats an issue I have with the content delivery though, rather than the content itself.
PPS The other boss fights you mentioned, I do like them all. I did CM exp for the first time quite recently and now not sure what all the fuss is about. Its a quite fun dungeon.
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Im glad we agree that difficulty is not the issue with AR. You misunderstand though, I meant to ask (and was purely choosing random examples, feel free to pick other ones) what your opinion is on the relative quality of the design of the game mechanics of the various dungeons and why you find AR to be so inferior to the examples you mentioned.
Grats on soloing Lupicus btw.
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Sure, Webba, thank you for asking.
- Everyone exploits the first cannon battle by hiding in corner so no one learns the mechanic for the final fight
- The bosses and golems are difficult to see in terms of animations with all of the energy walls, auras, particle effects, and small enemy models
- This dungeon heavily favors professions with access to stability (stability means you don’t have to watch for the animation and dodge at the right time, trivializing the content)
- This dungeon heavily favors slow attacking professions (confusion melts a thief or ranger). Ranger auto is so fast it’s unergonomic to take off the autoattack. For example, Crossfire must be spammed the entire dungeon so it’s either hurt your hand or accept a posssible confusion nuke
- This dungeon puts minion/pet reliant professions at a huge disadvantage by killig pets in laser wall and barrage aoe
I don’t think you can honestly compare this to Arah, Molten Facility, or existing Fractals and consider it good design. You should play more of the game to see what good content looks like. Aetherblades is mildly entertaining and fun for a run or two but it doesn’t deserve it’s own Fractal.
Thanks for the reply Chopps, I must say I was expecting complaints about the final boss fight, your points are much more interesting and relevant.
1. This isn’t really a problem with the design of the dungeon so much as the implementation and or player attitudes. That fight is clearly intended to introduce players to what they will see during the boss fight and you are totally right, it is a shame that it doesn’t do that with the way most groups fight it. Again though, since that particular blind spot was surely not intended it is a bug issue, rather than a design one.
2. This is true, but hardly a unique problem to this dungeon. I would say the over use of particle affects plagues the entirety of the gw2 experience, imho its a relatively minor problem in dugeons because the number of players and mobs is much lower than in wvw or open world boss content, for example. I always call target on one of the golems in that fight so we can focus fire and get through it faster, and people can target a bit easier.
3. I have played a Guardian since before launch, so guilty as charged for not really noticing this. Both stability skills I use in that fight affect the whole group so everyone benefits. If this was a situation where it required the party to be composed all of one class, then I would see it as a failure of design, but Ive done it plenty of times where I am the only guardian (last run was 1 guard, 1 war, 1 thief, 1 engi and 1 ranger) and we got through it fine. I like to think I helped, but I definitely wasn’t carrying the party.
4. Ive gone down to confusion a few times in the dungeon though not so much anymore after properly arranging some condition removal (again group effect so its helping everyone out) I would suggest that gameplay which does not allow for spamming autoattack and or requires quick reaction times to stop attacking, remove conditions, then attack again, is a challenge to player skill levels, rather than poor design. Have not noticed thieves or rangers going down any faster than the rest of us.
5. This one, I definitely agree with you but again, its not a problem with just this dungeon but gw2 pet ai and pve gameplay in general. Its worse here though, and Im not going to defend anet on areas they failed. You are absolutely right.
Like I said, quite interesting that your thoughts weren’t focused on the boss fight since that is undeniably the hardest part (quite easy to wipe if even 1 person isn’t on the ball there) and I think you make some good points. I hope anet is reading.
I still feel it is a very good dungeon though. Maybe not the best they have made but certainly far from the worst. It is challenging but completable and the mechanics require thought, preparation, a degree of skill the willingness to try different things if one idea fails and the ability to adapt. It is very satisfying to have a smooth run through it.
If you would like to discuss Fractals or Arah, and how they compare to it (I missed MF so I cant speak to that one, but I hear it was good) I am very familiar with them and would be quite happy to hear your thoughts on why, for example, Lupicus is better than the cannon barrage, or how to make proper use of pets in the Cliffside and Harpy fractals.
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Just wait for the number of people to thin out a bit and it should be a lot more reliable.
Really? This is arguably the worst dungeon design in the game…
Its also arguably the best. Care to back up your point of view with any actual facts?
Renewed Focus sometimes doesn’t refresh my virtues (+ gets on cooldown) if I’ll do a dodge roll at the end of it. Anyone else got this problem?
I’m not sure if you can watch the video if you don’t have a twitch account..
Thats not a bug, you are interrupting the skill before it ends so it doesn’t refresh your virtues.
Not exactly half the game content, but generally I agree with you. The bar is set quite high for the guild mission content and its led to the death of small guilds in general.
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Way to find the faintest possible whiff of a potential future minor problem and work yourself into a frenzied state over it. Well done, OP.
Goes especially well with focus 4.
Like this. The pet ai is the elephant in the room of Ranger design.
Love an invite to this, see if I can convince my friends to pursue it as well. Happy to help other people get the achievements too!
Boss does not have a particularly large healthpool.
I think you dont give the Living Story detractors enough credit Chewablesleeptablet. A lot of people dont like it not because they dont understand what it is but because it lacks quality, and the bits of it that were good are gone, because they were temporary. I personally think Anet currently lack the resources to bring their vision for it to life. As a concept I really like Living Story, as it is in GW2 up to this point I have been pretty underwhelmed by it.
Might want to wait until the big update coming soon? A fair few changes to Necro from what I hear.
Yeah, thats what I mean. Account bound until use then soulbound. Exactly the same functionality as the tokens now but less easy to mess up with.
or just make it account bound, like the tokens. The same in every practical way and less easy to make mistakes like your one.
Hey Septemptus, thanks for the comments and suggestions. I definitely see this sort of content as something that could work as a reward for playing, and for having played various content, as well as freshen up the various zones.
You are quite right though, people need a reason to go to zones beyond waiting for events to happen. You know i think the waypoint system has kind of backfired there, all that content so frequently bypassed in the name of saving a few minutes.
Something that might work is more events that can be triggered by players talking to npcs. Or you could possibly have hearts that travel around the world (like yakkington back in GW1) and the heart task changes based on what zone they are in. Offer good rewards in return for being quite hard to find.
Link all capital city chat!
That would do very much the opposite of what the OP wants.
Thanks Wulfsbane, Im glad someone does!
Then we get to the crime scene, and lo and behold our cheeseball detective has managed to bring an unusual piece of equipment that happens to be exactly the right thing. Of course, since she explains this amazing bit of foresight on her part by calling it intuition, that’s supposed to make it make sense? No. It makes insulting to the intelligence of the reader.
Not really an issue with the writing, thought it is poor storytelling.
I’m also a big fan of noir and hardboiled fiction, and this is neither. This is a superficial take on a single hardboiled trope that is missing all the cynicism and character depth that define those two genres. Just having a detective narrate a cutscene rendered in black and white doesn’t make it hardboiled. It makes it cheesy.
Have to agree with you, but it is at least an attempt at something interesting and better than the last stuff. Its something that shows there are designers working on GW2 who havent had all the creativity drained from them yet. How well they are able to achieve the things they try to do is another matter, but I wish them well with it.
Now, if they’d gone with cheese, I’d have been, “Okay. Cool,” cuz cheesy riffs on hardboiled can be fun. But nothing in this part of Dragon Bash indicated anything that the fact that the writers are making a serious effort at making a hardboiled crime story and failing spectacularly in the attempt.
Im not entirely sure that this level of cynicism is warranted. For starters, they would have to be nuts to actually seriously try to do a proper hardboiled crime story in a kid friendly, cult of the clean cut hero style game like GW2. I think that honestly they just wanted to try and use a little bit of the trope and the aesthetic and work it into their concept. So if anything, its probably intended to be pretty tongue in cheek for those of us who know better and impressive enough for those who dont.
As it is it already features more interesting characters, a more compelling hook, and better storytelling than all the Southsun stuff. I will always be in favour of steps in the right direction.
To help make the content updates less about (lets be honest, not particularly good) railed storytelling and more about keeping the entirety of Tyria changing and interesting so as to get players back into the zones instead of just queuing up at the latest event.
One of the best ways to do it would be more personalized dynamic events (like the Whispers personal story one) where if people have completed the story content then in certain parts of the world they have a chance to start a unique dynamic event related to that content. Enough of these and zones would genuinely start to be significantly different depending on which players were playing there – Living World.
This sort of DE could be based on literally anything the game tracks about characters. Imagine a DE in Metrica that occurs if a player who has completed COE is present, or some sort of disturbance of the mists DE that could occur anywhere if a player wearing a fractal capacitor is present, or a DE occurs if a player with a certain crafting lvl is present that gives an increased chance of rare recipies dropping or a DE that has an increased chance of dropping a precursor if the nearby player has used the mystic forge a billions times etc etc etc
It seems like the dynamic events system is very under utilized. At the moment the conditions for their occurring are so formulaic as to be indistinguishable from normal quests, but on a cooldown. The key to achieving the potential of the dynamic event content requires 3 things,
1) That the conditions for the event occurring are complex enough to be unpredictable, sensible enough to be rational, and personal enough to be interesting.
2) That the gameplay of the event is enjoyable and engaging (This part is obviously done pretty well already.)
3) That the reward from the event feels worth the effort and actually is worth the time spent when compared with other game activities.
This is just my opinion, but there is so much scope for this system being an incredible experience and it needs more time and effort put into it to make it work better. I hope this post was at least an interesting read for you.
Is it not a permanent new dungeon then?
And proud of it. I take it you’re one of the vocal minority?
Just based on the contents of this thread I would rate you as a pretty hardcore player actually. You have an extensive knowledge of GW1 and 2, and you read up on strategies and tactics to make yourself a better player. And you post a lot on the forums.
In other words, you are like me. I also dont have a lot of time to play but I do all these things and still consider myself a casual player. The problem is that casual and hardcore, as definitions, are neither accurate nor objective enough. Discussion of them invariably devolves into arguing as people misunderstand each others definition of the words and get insulted by imaginary slights. (For example you took offense at Brights comments about casuals, because if they were directed at someone like you or me they would be a bit offensive. He wasn’t talking about casuals like us though, he was talking about another type of casual, one that likely wouldn’t know there was an official forum.)
We really need to come up with a better way of defining players.
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The crime noir and mystery direction is a good one, really liked the effort put into the storyboard cutscene too, very suitable for the theme. Not all of the dialoge is so great, there were a couple of really cringe worthy lines, but it would disingenuous to complain about that when in about 5 minutes you outdid the entirety of the southsun event.
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Its areas leading to LA from the others cities, ie any zone you would pass through if you ran to LA from a starting city. Seems to have confused a lot of people.
sigh The OP is not insisting on group only content, Aedelric. Please read more carefully.
Amusing to watch people confuse the original story instances where friends could come along and help you out with 5 person dungeons.
Anet will come through on the promise. Eventually. Probably quite quickly actually. Patience really is a lost virtue…
Yeah, I get it, they screwed up and its irritating and disappointing. Doubly so because this is far from the first time it has happened. But there really is nothing else to do but wait until they fix it and the constant whining is almost as dispiriting as the original screw up.
Wintermute, I think Wallaces idea is about the best Ive seen for achieving that feeling in GW2. At the moment because it seems like only more utilities, elites and heals could be added the potential for interesting combos is very limited but as soon as you have alternate skills you could individually swap in and out of your weapons you get a system that is much closer to GW1 and allows for the addition of many more skills that does not feel possible in GW2 atm.
And yet 20 of them would have given the same effect. Personally, to achieve the effect you describe (and I had a similar experience) I would rather they not respawn at all, there are a smaller set number of them spread out in interesting places and you have to go out and get them all, once.
Secretly screwing their players over is not in the best interests of Anet. It makes no sense that they would do that intentionally.
Dont forget the gold sunk into porting around the map. Gotta balance that economy yknow…
Yeah, I have no idea why they cant just make fun stuff either. 10 effigies makes sense, 50 is just annoying. Same for so much of the temp content in the last half a year. Bizarre.
Can also swap weapons for the same result, apparently. Given how looong the igniting animation is I wonder if the dev put these in there on purpose because they knew how annoyed players would be at having to wait at each effigy.
Seing as how helping or joining someone for their personal story is a mechanism that was in the game from the start its very strange why these personal instances dont make use of it.
Best looking area of the game and once you know where the keys are it’s cake to get through. None of the JP chests have a good chance of anything good.
Sorry, but what is JP?
IE, what you did to get the chest open. You got an achievement for it too.
I’d love if they added both new weapons for the various professions and more elites (yes I miss my sig of capture too). But what I think would be really great would be to add “extra” skills to each weapon. Force auto attack to stay, but let us pick our 2-3 skills for our main out of a pool of say 8. And give us 5 skills for our off hand to choose from. (or the 2-5 skills for a 2H weapon).
^
This is an extremely good idea. Unlockable (preferably through actually doing content, rather than just spending skill points) extra skills for all the weapons that players could switch out existing skills for. A great shout out to GW1 and extra horizontal progression all round. Hope a dev takes note of your idea!
I think most of today’s GW2 players couldn’t handle the MMOs of old such as EQ1, DAoC, etc, etc.
Sadly, most of today’s GW2 players couldn’t even handle GW1. At least that’s what anet thought, thus the complete loss of the dual profession system and terribad “esports” pvp.
Honestly the dual profession system wasn’t that complicated, though I remember my ranger/assassin very fondly. What made it complicated and wonderful was the massive collection of skills and, oh man, I really miss that. GW2 needs new weapon and utility skills and I would love it if we earned them by going out into the world and completing really difficult pve content*. (I miss my signet of capture)
*And by completing really difficult pve content I mean doing something very hard 3-4 times successfully, not doing something really quite easy 30-40 times.
1st rule for any Group.
You can debate on the strategy…but if you ignore it and or don t read chat you are being a burden and deserve to be booted.
I dont understand how that is relevant to the ops situation? He started to debate strategy, as you say is allowed, and was booted.
There are various ways to get past that level.
The one used by the party is one of the less used so i think they said something before starting.
When they finally started doing the thing he didn t follow what asked if i understood and instead started to argue.
Fractal requires teamplay….so you can argue before a fight but during the fight itself you have to follow what the party wants.
Also you are 1 out of 5 you can t decide by yourself.
Sometimes people ask you to follow some less used tactics, unless its an exploit, you have to follow them if most players decide so…
I dont disagree with your analysis of that fractal, just pointing out that what the OP apparently did is not a reason to kick them (he indicates that there was no discussion with him about the lesser used strategy before the fight, if it is not the case then the situation changes). As far as I can tell it seems there was a lack of communication from both sides that caused a great deal of frustration for someone, obviously. Banning people without warnings is always a no for me though. Its too easy to be rude and selfish in these games as it is anyway.
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1st rule for any Group.
You can debate on the strategy…but if you ignore it and or don t read chat you are being a burden and deserve to be booted.
I dont understand how that is relevant to the ops situation? He started to debate strategy, as you say is allowed, and was booted.
Just start without them xD
I don’t see any problem since there is only one dungeon/fractal where you need more then 1 person at the beginning
This. Theres very little where you cant get it started with 3 or 4 players and make some progress before they join you. Courtesy goes both ways and imho it should extend to giving someone 5 minutes or so to finish up something that is important to them.
I suspect, though I have no evidence for it, that the 20% less CD is by far most useful for the staff. I am not as familiar with the hammer as I should be, if you can get 100% prot uptime without the trait then its probably about the same as the gs.
The trait will give you the ability to proc retaliation off every single symbol of protection. You can using Mighty Blow after every auto attack chain, instead of every 2 chains, so it offers a shade more than the 20% dps increase the trait implies.
2HM actually has absolutely zero effect on hammer DPS. In the worst case, it’s actually negative. Interrupting your auto-attack chain to use Mighty Blow actually causes you to lose substantial amounts of DPS; you should only be using it after completing a full chain. As such, Mighty Blow’s effective cooldown is basically fixed at 7.5 seconds; you can only do it every two auto-attack chains, so it doesn’t matter whether it becomes available after four seconds or five.
The same applies to staff. Orb of Light does not benefit from 2HM because the trait reduces the recharge to 2.4s, which is pointless because you can only do it every three seconds anyway if you want to avoid interrupting your auto-attack and losing DPS. Meanwhile, traiting cooldowns on Symbol of Swiftness and Empower is useless because the cooldowns on those skills are between 10 and 20 seconds, which means they will always be available every time you swap back to the staff anyway. You absolutely should not ever be sitting on staff constantly in a PvE scenario, that’s just dumb.
In fact, the same principle applies to greatswords too, if you are running the standard burst-and-switch rotation; the only skill that benefits from 2HM is Whirling Wrath. Otherwise, traiting Symbol or Binding Blade makes no tangible difference as to your rotation. And before you bring it up, you will get more DPS from unloading your greatsword skills on untraited cooldown then swapping to hammer or sword for ten seconds while they recharge, than you will just sitting on greatsword on traited cooldown.
And again, it’s not 20%, it’s 5% even in the best case. That’s about how much you can expect the greatsword to benefit in terms of overall DPS. It’s only going to be a 20% DPS advantage if ALL your skills have a cooldown and are instant-cast, and that’s never the case.
A very good point about the staff and weapon swapping, I hadn’t considered that. Interesting and useful information, thanks!
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Reading your story carefully in an attempt to understand the behavior of the party it seems like what might have been going on is they had a strategy to pull the boss away from the adds so as to ignore them and finish the fight quicker by focusing on the boss. This would explain why they didn’t want you to attack the elementals.
As you tell it they are still total kitten bags for dropping someone for something as small as that, especially since the difference is probably 1-2 minutes off the length of the fight and its pathetic since 30 seconds of explanation from them would have had you doing what they wanted. On the other hand they may well have planned to drop you from the start and were simply waiting for the first remotely plausible excuse to do so.
My metric for deciding whether or not to go with a particular pug (and I always try and make this choice before entering the dungeon) is whether or not I will enjoy, or at least be able to tolerate, spending the next 20-40 minutes together with these people. Engage them in chat and try to get a feel for their attitude towards running dungeons and current state of mind. I had one pug experience where I joined a group of 2 who knew each other, one of whom seemed to be in the foulest mood I think Ive ever seen. They invited someone to join the group who, from a glance at their achievement points certainly had lvl 80 characters but was currently on a lvl 2 alt. Immediately on seeing the lvl 2 character this player let out a string of abuse for wasting time then requested a boot of the understandably indignant victim. When I pointed out that they were probably in the process of switching to their lvl 80 character right at the moment they were booted and if there was any other reason for kicking them I was told to shut up and stop asking any more stupid questions. At this point I wished them good luck, msged the other guy that I hope his friend was feeling calmer soon, and quit the group asap. I can only imagine how it would have been if I had stuck with them.
TLDR, Find out if its a group of kittens before you start the dungeon, not half way through.
A gear chest which combines the quality of exotic and safe containers would be a pretty good stop gap measure for this.
I suspect, though I have no evidence for it, that the 20% less CD is by far most useful for the staff. I am not as familiar with the hammer as I should be, if you can get 100% prot uptime without the trait then its probably about the same as the gs.
I had the wings drop of a random mob in FGS if thats of any use.