Guild Wars 2

(Different difficulty modes are fine, though, and I like the hard mode suggestion done above.

However, they need to a)be completable without voice chat and b)get their difficulty from actually well thought out mechanics, not from lazy and boring WoW-type design)

Actually, the lack of enrage timers is a good thing. Enrage is one of the things that make WOWs encounters so boring. They stiffle any sort of creativity and limits you to specific, boring DPS builds. That’s not good, that’s bad. It’s the most lazy design possible and works mostly for games like WOW, that are not about skills but about stats.

Interesting fight mechanics should make a fight interesting. Enrage timers are not an interesting mechanic at all, so they deserve to be scrapped.

This makes GW2 better, in fact. There is only one single fight in WoW where an enrage timer actually made the fight more interesting.

That was Vaelestraz back in BWL. And that wasn’t even a real enrage timer. Want a simple game where you aren’t allowed creativity and need enrage timers to limit your group to one set of tactic? Why not go play some of the MMOs that work that way? I can think of several.

I am an average player. As casual as it gets.

Dungeons are fine. None of them are too difficult. All of them require a little practice, which average players can do. The only people failing dungeons are terrible players that do not want to admit that they are terrible, and therefore do not even try to improve.

Dungeons are actually a little easy, and I say that as an average, casual player that only pugs.

There are certain paths in every dungeon(except arah) that is totally doable without pre-made parties.

Arah is entirely puggable. Have done it. SE2 is currently harder than any path in Arah.

No one ‘learns’ lupicus and dies once in their first attempt in a group full of inexperienced casuals

Except I did. And so did the others in the group.
We didn’t know what we were doing, we even had multiple wipes on trash. On deadeyes, for example.

That should show you exactly how much we knew what we were doing. Ie: Little.

If it was that easy, no one would be complaining.

Untrue: People make similar complaints about, say, AC Explorable. People complain all the time the moment they fail at something, because complaining is easier than admitting that you are not very good, and working at improving yourself.

That seems to be the major difference between me and people like you.

Fact is, Lupicus isn’t hard when a group of casuals, including a clicker, can kill him first try while only knowing the basic strategy from the wiki. He just isn’t.

Yes, if you don’t know the boss at all, then you likely won’t do him first try. But that’s just not the case anymore. You know him now. You shouldn’t die.

If you still do, well, then you got something to work on.

As you know, mark II golem insta death stuff is gay.

It seems very heterosexual to me.

And will therefore get nerfed. =)

By the way, it’s not actually instant death. You can dodge through it. Mind, the damage is still too high, the Devs admitted it. I’d just not run it till it’s fixed. I usually warn people if I see them advertizing for this path now.

I’m a casual. I work 40 hours a week, and only play for more than 30 minutes at a time on weekend.

Guess what? I don’t die on Lupicus.

I am not a good player. I click some of my abilities, I sometimes forget what ability is bound on what key, and I’m notorious for getting lost.

Yet I don’t die on Lupicus.

I’m a female gamer, I like exploration, never played a FPS (because they are too fast paced for me).

Yet I don’t die on Lupicus.

This shows that Lupicus is NOT too hard. His difficulty is entirely fine. If a player like me (who does a lot of things that are generally considered n00b/bad) can beat him every time, then maybe the problem isn’t the boss.

The problem is YOU. Learn him. Stop complaining because you’re so utterly terrible that you can’t even get used to the few tricks this boss has. Even a terrible player like me learned how to do this fight the first time I faced him (during which I died exactly once).

PS: And it’s not luck based. He usually targets me more than other players. I STILL don’t die.

Sorry guys. Even casuals think that this boss is fine. Casual does not mean “UTTERLY HORRIBLE AT THE GAME”, you know?

Token system for gear no better than crafted.

As it should be. This is a big plus

Xuro, it’s confirmed a bug that the damage is that high.

See here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Thoughts-on-Sorrow-s-Embrace/first#post526533

Just wait until it’s bugfixed.

It’s technically true, though. Someone with higher DPS that gets downed in the end does contributes less damage to the fight than someone with smaller DPS that doesn’t die.

Not according to this thread ….
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Eng-highest-dps-class/first#post608109

That thread is nonsense akin to “I can’t hit a turtle with an arrow because the turtle moves so it will never be there where the arrow is.”

He basically thinks that one grenade does as much damage as any other weapon, and then assumes that 3 grenades then do 3 times as much. Which is stupid on so many levels, it’s not even funny.

That said, engineers are not bad, are not particularly bugged, are fun to play and useful in every part of the game. Engineer are in a good state overall.

Many people may call us “broken class”, but those people are bad. Factually, there is no evidence for a “engineers are broken” claim. The engineers that rock in every part of the game prove this every day.

Using the 3 grenade build you attain 3x most other weapon dps.

Bad math is bad.

If your point were true, then 1 single grenade would do as much damage as other weapons in total, which is demonstrably false.

It is also false in general with 3 grenades, because other classes can do more damage over time than grenades can (Mesmers, Warriors, Rangers in particular), and can do so entirely independent of moving targets.

Fact: Engineers do not do “3x” the damage of most other classes (nor weapons). Grenades are mostly even with some specs, and are outdamaged by several (for example by a good Mesmer build, which can do about 20% more dps than a grenade spammer with the same stats can put out on a static target)

I find people or groups with low dps are consistently terrible.

I find that people that care for DPS so much that they do bogus math like you tend to be the terrible ones.

DPS does, indeed, not matter all that much. Lupicus P2 is not a DPS race, it’s a survival fight, for example. People that go overboard on this fight are usually the ones that die, whereas the slow people tend to survive. It’s “lol dps” groups that chainwipe on this guy, while smart groups that don’t care much for DPS tend to do him first try.

The only fight where DPS matters right now is the twin-golem fight at the end of a certain Sorrows Embrace path. You know the one, the one that is bugged to do far more damage than it should.

no skill to get

Says the person asking for trinity.
Trinity is the no-skill concept. That’s why you want it: GW2 demands too much of you, so you can’t handle it.

This is why you think it’s “messy”, too. Quite like someone doing a raid without coordination and failing utterly.

Such a person will sound exactly like you The trinity concept is outdated and will die. And that, my friend, is a good thing, because it finally introduces skill back into the game. The less trinity, the better.

Just one facing what is considered a “historic” tropical storm. As called such by the news/weather channel.

Every second day, there is a catastrophy somewhere. Most have FAR more loss of life than Sandy (which is a horrible storm, absolutely true!) and affect the population FAR, FAR more. It’s not even comparable. In some of these disasters, more people died in the first SECOND than during the entire Sandy. Just some perspective. And that’s just disasters. What about wars?

So, if you want this event to be extended for americans, then surely you must agree that if a disaster or any other catastrophic event strikes a different region of the world that has a large population of GW players, an event should also be extended, right?

You do, right?

Keep in mind that disaster is not defined by “is on american Television”.

If you say yes, then most events will be delayed by disasters – especially if you consider where sizeable chunks of the player population lives..
If you say no, then you’re a gargantuan hypocrite.

Choice is yours. If you’re still for yes, then more power to you, you’re actually doing your country credit by being a decent person who doesn’t just say “Me me me me me”.

Me, I’m not affected by Sandy, but I could support extending the event despite that. My only trouble is that I am 90% sure that most american players would not do the same when the disaster is somewhere else. How do I know? Because every single time this comes up, American players slam such requests, usually claiming “entitlement” and all the arguments you’re facing here. They get used for a reason, most people that make them have seen them before.

1)Glass cannon players that don’t know how to dodge
2)“Lets skip this!” person charges ahead, dies
3)“Oh no, we died once on Lupicus/Subject Alpha/Grandmother Naggypants, rage”
4)“Gosh, that player in a different spec sucks because they don’t spec the way I want them to” [Compare to 1) for hilarity ^^].
5)“omg that person isn’t maxlevel/full exotics yet, let me nerdrage for longer than this person can cost us time in the first place”
6)“Hey, guardian/mesmer, you did Y wrong!” Person did Y as well and keeps doing Y

Those, mostly. I don’t mind a wipe, I don’t mind explaining things, I don’t mind adjusting strategies, I don’t even mind 4manning a dungeon after the 5th has a disconnect. I do, however, mind people that rush everything and are a general pain to their fellow players. Dungeons are a group activity.

So please be nice to your fellow members. It will be a nice run, then.

I prefer a run with nice people that I die 3 times on and take 20minutes longer over a run with kittens that keep harassing player X for Y and demand player Z to be kicked for lowlevel/wrong color/being a charr.

Did Arah today after 4 MK runs, got 60 Zhaitan shards.

I did however have a log-out period between those, maybe that’s why I wasn’t affected?

Underleveled people are fine in dungeons, and most people that demand 80s are bads themselves. I know, because I’ve seen a lot of them (as I only run dungeons on my 80). Quite a number really are bad.

That’s why they only want 80s. It’s to compensate for their lack of ability. The stat difference is there, but it’s far smaller than people think. A lv80 guardian and a lv50 guardian have nearly identical survivability, for example.

The only time when a group reasonably wants experienced 80s only is for speedruns. These will be advertized as such, and in these, you have no place.

But a normal dungeon run won’t kick you for being lower level, nor should they. The only times kicks happen in these is when the group leader is terribad and wants to compensate with group members. Why? Well, experience most people won’t bring to begin with, and the stat difference is too small to matter for these runs. Reasonable groups of this kind will take you.

TL, DR:
If you’re tryng to get into a speedrun lowlevel, go away and level up.
If you’re trying to get into a normal group that doesn’t ask for 80 only, and they kick you, then they are the awful ones.

The step-up in difficulty from casual pve to dungeons is just too large

No, it’s really not, unless you only play with the Zerg. If you solo veterans and champions at least sometimes, which you should if you are actually playing the game as opposed to letting the Zerg play the game for you, the difficulty jump isn’t really high at all.

Everything is out in the open world to teach people. The problem is that some people run from anything that is even remotely difficult or doesn’t instantly give them rewards. Arenanet can’t do anything there. If people don’t want to learn, nothing can make them learn.

The community in this game is no better than the one in world of warcraft…

Exactly. The same complaining about everything, the same whining when something does not get defeated instantly, the same threats on the developer if content isn’t simplified, the same complaints about others being rude to you, while you are being INCREDIBLY rude yourself (which somehow is okay?).

Pretty much like WoW was.

And I’m a helpful player (ran Arah Story several times now to help people with it, did mad king for lv2s that didn’t get invited, etc). But this behavior that people keep showing is really grating me, I went to GW2 to get away from people like this.

And yet it’s already filled with unthankful, spiteful, antisocial people.

Why play a MMO – a massive MULTIPLAYER title – when you refuse to group even one single time? Just group this one time. It won’t kill you. You might even like it!

Arah is usually open on my server. If not, it’s under way of being opened.

My suggestion would be to get a group first. One of them will likely know where the event starts. Once you have a group, go there. do the event if required.

Do NOT just hope for the event and recruit then. That won’t work.

i stopped reading when you said that an opinion can be wrong.

“The earth is flat”
“The earth is carried by four elephants”
“Snakes only eat earth”
“Angela Merkel is a lizard”

All four are opinions. Three of these are opinions once held by the majority of the people in a given country. All of them are factually wrong.

Opinions can, in fact, be wrong. It takes a really, really bad education to think that opinions cannot be wrong.

I think dungeons are fun even on repeat.

I don’t die often at all, though. That’s probably why. I imagine that people who die a lot have issues with them.

Some observations that contradict what a few people are saying here about it being a “good fight”:

None of your observations contradict the fact that it is a good fight. All your observation shows is that this boss is a skill issue entirely.

For example, take the AOE bolts. Yup, they hit you outside the aoe areas. That’s because they bounce. If you know this, which you do, then you will never get hit by them. I sure manage to not die to them.

So, here’s a simple strategy to kill lupicus. Super easy.

1)All on one spot. No mesmer clones. 2 people kill swarms, 3 on boss. Grup = everyone focuses on grub.

If a grub manages to get through, skill issue. Focus on your attention skills.

2)Spread out. Nobody close. Nobody who doesn’t know what they are doing resses. I mean that. it’s easier to selfress than to be ressed by a person that doesn’t know what they are doing. The later will kill you.

Move out of the circles – a bit further than the circle itself. Don’t let it look at you. If it turns poison into your direction, dodge. If you get hit by the knockdown, use a anti-knockdown skill and get away.

Simple really. You can autoattack through this phase, and should, if you don’t know what you are doing. Focus on survival.

You die? Skill issue. You either fail at dodging or at moving away when he looks your way. Or your group fails because you lot group together. Or you fail for having no toughness/vitality and dying due to stray hits.

So far every time I did it in a pug, we did him first try with this strategy. Sure, there’s often one player that always dies, but generally it’s not very hard.

I’m going to catch flak for this but there are far too many bad players in this game complaining about bosses that are not needed to be nerfed.

You shouldn’t catch flak for this: It’s true, and this thread shows this very well.

…And keep in mind that I say that as a far-from-perfect player. I CLICK SOME ABILITIES. I’m a clicker! Sometimes I don’t even strafe but move backwards! Yet I manage to survive these encounters just fine.

Tells you a lot about some people that fail consistently, I think.

(Addendum, since I just remembered: Sorrow’s Embrace path 2 is excluded from this, because that boss was bugged. He is indeed ridiculous, and the bug was already admitted to being a bug that will be fixed)

But skipping trash? Why would you, unless you were doing a speedrun? I sure don’t, and neither do most pugs I played with. In pugs, passing mobs usually leads to deaths, while doing them usually is what makes a run smooth

You can have any opinion you want.

And we can tell you that this opinion is wrong. See, an opinion is not immune to criticism. An opinion is also not sacrosanct.

Fact is that most people that do explorable dungeons die at most 2 times per run, and even that is rare. I rarely die even once, and that is with doing all trash, since I HATE skipping trash with a passion.

I have, to date, pugged 21 of the 25 explorable paths in the game.

If I can do dungeons and not die, then it is quite obvious that the problem is not the dungeons. Those do, in fact, have no encounters that automatically kill you.

The problem is your gameplay.

And your problem is that you do not want to admit this, because it’s easier to accuse the game of being wrong than admit that you are not good and should improve. Improving is hard, and so is admitting that you’re bad and need improvement.

I understand that, I really do. Trainees at the company I work for generally tend to have the same problem. But you just have to get over it, you really do. You won’t get far if you keep blaming everything else for your own errors.

You need to own up to your mistakes and work to fix them. This thread gives you plenty of hints where to start. Use them.

This is the most ‘teenage boy’-thread I have seen in quite a while.

Tell a scot his kilt is not manly, I dare you :> You’ll end up getting a tree lobbed at you!

Something is going on.

For example, the swimming final boss in HoTw (not the one with the exploding jellyfish, the one that is alone) pretty much only targeted me. In fact, he only targeted me. Ever. I never lost aggro and ended up swimming in circles over and over again, tapping 1 and throwing grenades over my shoulder.

Never lost aggro. Never did anything else. What was funnier is that I didn’t even attack first, yet he came for me right away. And never left.

Another boss that did the very same thing was the ghost in route 1 of FOE. Just stuck on me right away, never left. It was annoying because I wasn’t supposed to keep it busy, and I never even touched it. Yet it remained on me, and the warrior couldn’t snatch it off. So I just left the room and let it whack me while the warrior went for the acolytes instead.

Or take Arah, Mursaat path. The fourth boss only shot me unless I was downed by the endless barrages. It got a bit silly kiting her for a large part of the fight.

I do not think the cause of this is engineer-specific aggro, however. It may be a combination of factors.
-I wear toughness/vitality gear
-I run a support spec
-I tend to revive people a lot (revive elixir)

Notice that most of the bosses where this happened to me are very late in the run. What if aggro is determined not only specific to the boss, but is also affected by how you played so far? It might simply tally up contribution so far in the run, and add a flat “aggro” value to the boss at the beginning of the fight based on that.

Definitely the best holiday event in any game I ever played. The effort the company put into this is outstanding. It is varied, fun content that you can do.

i rather prefer the more fun-type events in WOW

Actually, WoW used to do events that were far more grindy than this one, which isn’t grindy at all.

Don’t carve 150 pumpkins? Don’t. Just carve all you see, and finish it next year. No issue.

There really is no “racism” or “discrimination” here. These are real world problems, not teenage boys whining because they blame model size for a problem that has nothing to do with the model size in the first place.

Nobody has actually giving me real trouble over it, I haven’t been kicked from dungeons and people in game treat my charr just like my human.

In fact, the entire issue is a real non issue.
There are two ways to jump at that part, and anyone with an issue with large models can either jump blindly, or use the second platform (the small, floating one. Use it to jump on the debris when it appears, but BEFORE it turns a final time).

The game has solutions.

See, these people don’t actually fail due to model size. They just didn’t manage the jump and BLAME model size for it. Arenanet can do nothing here. They’d blame something equally silly if there were no norn or charr.

Here. Engineer, no speedboost whatsoever.

Most of GW2’s dungeons are -objectively- badly designed.

Actually, that argument is a cop-out. -Objectively-, the GW2 dungeons have very good design – the sole exception to this is the destroyer boss in CoE.

The only problem one can objectively attest would be a bug, and those are rare.

Why is this objectively true? Because GW2s boss design is in line with a long tradition of games with similar difficulty. The disconnect is that modern gamers, especially MMO gamers, fail at that kind of difficulty.

And they fail hardcore. They are used to being coddled by games such as WoW, which made dungeons boring sleep-lootfiestas.

Maybe it’s just not the game for you – that’s okay. GW2 isn’t supposed to be a wow-like cakewalk. It’s supposed to be challenging in the dungeons.

You’re like someone going to a Mario game and complains that it lacks twitch gameplay, such as FPS or Starcraft require.

Spoiler: Mario’s developers won’t give a kitten about such an opinion. Neither will Arenanet

Rubbish! If i buy a game i shouldn’t have to go the extra mile to in order to compete on a level playing field.

I agree!

If your server is being outplayed at noon because the other server is better at tactics or has more people, THIS SHOULD BE NERFED! Strategy should now be impossible, because how DARE you have to go the extra mile of makin strategy when you just wanna play! You shouldn’t have to go the extra mile to in order to compete on a level playing field!!!

If your server loses a keep because you kept being distracted by that one player you all chased down like fools, this is NOT OK AND SHOULD BE NERFED! If players attack a keep while the defense is elsewhere, the keep should not be allowed to fall! You shouldn’t have to go the extra mile of being there to defend the keep to in order to compete on a level playing field.!!!!

Bad players always make excuses like that. At the end of the day, there is always an imbalance because one side WILL play better than you, have better strategy than you, and have better logistics than you.

Folks, look. Logistics are a large part of war. And this? Is a logistic issue. Don’t want to deal with logistics?

Then watch your server crash and burn, as it should.

The DPS of grenades at 80 is just absurdly superior to every other option. It isn’t OP, it just makes us useful in dungeons. So grenades don’t need a nerf – other things need a buff.

You are one of the few sane people talking about grenades. Those indeed need no nerf (unless you think Engineers should be less able than any other class, and in this case, what are you doign here?)

Yes, you are right, some of our skills can use buffs, turrets in particular. Pistol needs a buff severly, it was overnerfed to hell. And gun could use some love as well, that’s for sure.

Agree with above posters, one of the best dungeons I’ve run in general, in many MMOs.

You can see this in the comments of the people hating the dungeon, too. This dungeon is one of the few proper ones because it punishes mistakes.

Just look at the people that dislike it. Similar comments you saw in WoW when heroics were difficult. Most of them seem to think Alpha is impossible to dodge or too hard, for example, which is simply untrue. The problem is their WoW-mentality of not moving, not dodging, and not paying attention to the fight.

they like it better but because they have no choice

And here you sound like a crack addict. You realize that you don’t HAVE to play games, right? If they aren’t fun, then don’t.

I sure wouldn’t play WoW if GW2 wasn’t there just because it’s a MMO. I’d only play games that are fun.

That you and your friends are not and instead “have no choice” to play WoW is saying a lot about you and your friends.

Conclusion: Very well desinged dungeon. I hope this one is used as a template for more dungeons. The only changes needed are a change for the Destroyer boss, and slightly harder trash in some parts. Each part should have some unique trash mobs that are advanced in some way. Maybe eben randomly (for example make a pool of 10 abilities, and it randomly picks two of those, including really, really evil ones)

Result would be a literally perfect dungeon.

Health is fine, actually. This punishes glass cannon builds accordingly (as you cannot just burst the boss down, you have to deal with the mechanic) and forces people to actually do the fight instead of cheesing it.

Consistency is important here.

Or you can just chainwipe. Your fault, your choice. Health does not need to be lowered.

…Except for the Destroyer in CoE, who just SUUUUUUUUCKS. Make the shield destroying a mini event, then let the shield go permanently. It’s easy but boring to wait like that.

You criticism should be directed at Arena Net who lied about max-stat gear being easily attainable.

No lie took place. I got half my max stat gear the moment I hit 80, and the other half within the first week.

I only play longer than 1 hour/day at weekends sometimes. So yes, statement is 100% accurate.

And sadly no, explorable dungeons are not like raids cause they are even easyer than heroics in WoW and dungeons in other mmorpgs ive played (I ve played every mmorpg released in past 8 years). I am doing arah daily, path 2,3,4 and its just too easy. I have to pay attention only at lupicus and even there, just a little bit.

Objectively, they are actually harder than raids with very, very few exceptions (such as pre-bugged Cthun, Yogg Sarron with all priests up, maybe pre-nerf sunwell, that FF11 boss that took 11+ hours to kill, and the like). Raids only SEEM to be more difficult because you spend more time managing people.

But the actual things demanded of an individual player are a joke in most raids. And Heroics? The only heroic in WoW that was more hard than even medium explorables was pre-nerf Shadow Lab.

An individual player needs to do far more in these instances here, if you look at it objectively. Sorry

they must nerf it, if anything else we had was that strong, engineers would be beyond stupidly op. i mean grenadier is the strongest dps trait in game with a laughable build requirements

Probably the dumbest “nerf this qq” post on this forum.

The trait buffs grenades a lot, but only up to par with other professions, most of which can do more damage. In other words, if you would nerf grenadier, you’d have to buff grenade base damage by quite a lot.

That’s why they likely will never nerf it. There’s just no need for it. Sure, bad players will QQ about it, but that’s typical.

But then there’s Twilight Arbor. That place is a mess if I ever saw one, jesus christ.

Yep, it’s probably the easiest explorable right now, and definitely needs a buff in difficulty.

First off: The volatile blossoms. These need to be toned down a notch.

No. Actually, their damage should be increased, because it’s too easy to survive them. How you SHOULD do them is clear one part, then wait a bit, then clear the next. This means that you can go to the second part you cleared, kill the blossom on the first part once it spawns and move to it, which makes you save from blossoms entirely.

Blossoms are also very helpful, because you can use them to rally in seconds.

Now couple all this with the fact that they’re very similar to background elements, this makes it almost impossible to avoid them during hectic boss battles.

Do the above, and not only are they almost impossible to die on, they also help you. Clear learn to play issue, you need to adapt to the dungeon here.

As demonstrated, blossoms require no change. Your playstyle requires change.

We wiped a few times on a combination on Volatile blossoms and vine spit, which apparently seems to make more nightmare vines spawn. At one point there were at least 7 of them up

This is major fail on your part. MAJOR fail.
First of all, there can only be seven of them up, tops.
Second, it works like this: The first ones spawn more if you kill one of them. once vine 5 and 6 are up, killing either of them spawns the boss. What you do is damage both of them to near dead, then kill both of them.

You now have a long, free time to wail on the boss. First part where you and your group failed.
Second, if your damage is very low, additional vines will spawn. You need to burn them down. If you cannot burn down a vine before another pops, your damage is WAY too low and you have no business in an explorable to begin with.

If you have “6 +boss”, then failed at killing repopping vines or had terrible damage.

Clear learn to play issue, dungeon does not require a change.

Kill fines → make boss pop → hit boss until new vine → kill new vine → hit boss again. Do this, and this boss is a snoozefest.

PS: Try to melee them. They are nearly helpless in melee range.

I seriously hope this dungeon isn’t considered finished, because everything in there is pretty much over the top.

Seriously. It’s one of the easiest explorables.
It should be considered unfinished mostly because it’s too easy.

It was my first explorable, by the way, and I never had any issues with it because it’s just so easy. Even AC story is harder than it.

How can a party of players at level 80 with full exotic gear have this much difficulty with it when it’s intended for level 55?

Because you need to learn how to do the dungeon. Sorry, but that’s really the reason. You do not try to adjust to mechanics, you do not try to deal properly with the blossoms, you do not try to deal properly with the boss.

And then you die. This is how it should be. Meanwhile, groups that do this properly have zero deaths and do this instance in less than 30 minutes.

I think it’s sad that people immediately cry for nerfs without even consideringt that they themselves might be the problem.

Dinky is just great.

I wish Traherne had been kicked in favor of Dinky.

This game seriously needs more Dinky

I have never seen a MMO community go to such great lengths to avoid mechanics in PvE content like I do in this one.

Then you haven’t ever played a MMO seriously. This always happens.

Dungeons are fun, bad people just fail them and try to find an easy way out. That’s normal and the case in all MMOs. Nothing new to see here.

The problem is that raiders have, so far, failed to say why this game needs raids, when it’s explicitely designed to not have them as a major selling point.

- Casual players do not HAVE to raid, because the difference between a raider and a non raider won’t be that big.

Thanks. This is why there will never be raids. Raiders generally demand items that are superior to non-raider items.

Unfortunately, GW2 will not have better stats if you do X content. The gear plateau will always remain, and you will always get max stats outside of raids. This is why raids will never work in GW2.

See, raiders don’t actually like to raid. They just like to be better than other players even if they have less skill, simply because they can shedule their life around a game.

Proof: Every raiding game that allows people to complete raids with smaller groups for the same rewards has people immediately go for the small groups. See WoW: 25-man raids were dying once rewards became identical and Blizzard actually considered removing them outright due to it. If WoW had 5-man dungeons give all the best raid gear, nobody would do raids.

That’s why. Stats will never be better for raiding instances as this game is not designed to have better stats because you can run X dungeon, therefore barely anyone would do them, and therefore, there is no point to add them to the game.
#

Want large group stuff? Go WvWvW. Simple as that.

Another thing they will, thankfully, not do. To limit it to 5man is a conscious design decision that is a main reason why many people – if not the majority – bought this game.

That it is not a raiding game and has no raiding content is a selling point, guys. Sorry for that, but that’s the way it is.

This game won’t become your WoW killer. This is not the point of it. Wanna raid? Go back there. It’s designed around it. GW2 thankfully is not and never will be, which makes it a better game.

it bugs me to have paid for content I won’t see.

Correction: Content you chose not to see for silly reasons.

Not all industry standards are good, and the dungeon finder is one of these that simply is a bad standard and that should not be included. It’s a good move that Anet didn’t.

It’s progress. You will have to deal with that. The dungeonfinder in WoW was one of the worst changes the game ever experienced. We should learn from mistakes, not repeat them.

(they use exploits and game mechanics that were not intended for the dungeons to clear them)

Contrary to popular belief, “moving out of the AOE” and “using dodge” are not, in fact, exploits.

This is all people that do the dungeons use. Ther exploiters are usually the people that cannot do the dungeons and are so desperate that they resort to them.

PS: Just died 5 times to Subject Alpha (including 3 times of not getting broken out of crystals). So I am hardly a perfect player. And yet manage dungeons fine.

Sometimes, the problem really is you.

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Errr, in most games the average “hardcore” player pays about 10 times as much as the average “casual” player..

No, actually. It’s the other way round.
The average “hardcore” player plays 10 times as much as the average “casual” player, while the average casual player pays 10 times as much.

This means that hardcore players are a LOSS for a company.
-They cause more traffic
-They chew through content faster, increasing development time
-They care more for non-issues, like minor skill imbalances (which are in the game by design, refer to the extra credits episode), requiring additional funds for dealing with this

Casual gamers give more money and cost less. Remember, the entire freemium concept arose of casual games. Casual gamers usually have a job, unlike hardcore gamers (who tend to be students or still in school), which means casuals are more likely to buy conveniences.

The hardcores usually do not bother with them because they give no advantages ingame.

. They never will admit they want the game to be easy

I see more hardcore players whining about difficulty than “casuals”, though.
Less conspiracy theory there.
Only a fool assumes that casual means “wants it easy”.

All casual means is “does not play all day”.

I can only hope that Anet is banking on the fact that there are enough hardcore players out there that have been shunted out of their original MMOs, that they’ll stick with this one and survive the loss of casual players.

You are going to be so disappointed when you read interviews arenanet made. This game is for casuals. Hardcore players are strictly not catered to all that much.

Casuals that like challenge, that is. The problem is mostly complaints from hardcore players that expect a)to bes tronger than other players due to having more time (“lack of rewards”) and b)expect to do dungeons like they did in WoW (“Dungeon is too hard”).

. I consider myself an above average player

This is the problem. Everyone THINKS they are above average. There’s scientific studies about this: The vast majority of people think they are better than the average.

Which, of course, is impossible: Most of them are not.

You are in this group. I don’t mean this badly or to offend you, and it’s not your fault, but you truly are not “above average”, but “below average”. Your problem is not that the dungeon is hard (the mobs sure are not), the problem is that you think you are good, therefore do not work on improving, and therefore have a harder time.

Hi. I’m a female gamer, I work 40 hours a week, and my GW2 time is pretty limited. I am not that good a gamer, my reflexes are objectively rather slow, and I cannot play FPS games because I get confused. I sometimes click abilities, and I constantly forget to use one of my utilities.

Total deaths in dungeons: Less than 10, including me rolling off cliffs in Flame citadel twice by accident.. Story mode dungeons are easy. Their difficulty is in line with what an average skilled casual gamer can handle.

The problem is that below-average skilled people cannot handle it, and since they assume they are above average, they assume the design itself is bad. People usually do not like that the problem is on their end, after all.

I hope Arenanet does not make them easier, because that would make them boring for average skilled casual players like myself. Having a challenge is GOOD.