Guild Wars 2

Roybe.5896:

*Because frankly you cant create epic difficult raids without causing exclusion. Its impossible from a logical standpoint. And with exclusion comes elitism. So I will repeat they are non avoidable issues.

Im not sure what you are trying to achieve by trying so hard to be inclusive to everyone. If you go down that route we wont be getting epic difficult content. We will be getting more bland easy stuff with poor rewards.*

THIS needs to be talked about. Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic rewards is another way to look at this. However, keep those emotions in check. THIS is a very important issue and needs to be focused on. This is my next concern past the issue of rewards.

How do we create inclusive raid material? Is it possible? Our reward discussion has been interesting and shows we can do this. Why is exclusivity so important?

Can you come up with any suggestions? Because ive thought about it a lot. And whatever solution I came up with either doesnt solve the issue or it hurts the content. Which is exactly why I said its impossible to solve and the issues are non avoidable.

Id be curious to see if anyone has any ideas. Because i seriously doubt its something you can find a compromise on.

Just bare in mind my MMO raid experience is pretty much non existant. So i dont have a preconceived notion of what raiding should be. I use logic when deciding on what i think it should be.

So i would suggest re-reading my posts and think about why i have those opinions from a logical standpoint. Its certainly not because of other games. Its what i think the game needs and whats realistic from a game design perspective.

What is stealth supposed to be used for in PvE if not skipping? o.O

Just going through the raid CDI. I literally snorted when i saw this counter arguement to my post.

Blaeys.3102:

I never said move open world bosses into instances. I said keep the living story encounters after they leave the Living Story through instanced raiding.

You talk about excessive entitlement on the part of others and then freely admit exclusion and elitism should be part of the raid model. Im sorry, but that is a little narrowminded. Furthermore, its something GW2 has always strived very hard to avoid – a perspective that has created the amazing community they have in the game today.

…

Finally, just because my opinion differs from yours doesnt make me entitled, any more than your opinion differing from mine makes you so. People need to stop attacking others so much and stay on task.

Firstly i didnt call you entitled. I was referring to the large group of people that want raids to be available to all people. I think thats just narrowminded. Im also shocked that you think I was attacking you. I was merely expressing my opinion in a very polite manner.

Nor did i mean to say you wanted open world bosses in instances (excuse my poor wording in the previous post). I merely mentioned that it is implied with the way you want scaling and large group encounters in instances. That sounds very much like world bosses in instances. Or at least very similar to them. And if that is the case then they will be very simplistic and easy for the hardcore players. So you will essentially be just giving more stuff to the group of people who already have plenty of content suited to them.

Also as a final note. Its not as if adding hardcore raids to the game will suddenly make the rest of the game change and disappear. I think you are overexaggerating with this comment:

I would love to see epic difficult raids, but not at the expense of the game many of us have come to really love.

Because frankly you cant create epic difficult raids without causing exclusion. Its impossible from a logical standpoint. And with exclusion comes elitism. So I will repeat they are non avoidable issues.

Im not sure what you are trying to achieve by trying so hard to be inclusive to everyone. If you go down that route we wont be getting epic difficult content. We will be getting more bland easy stuff with poor rewards.

@Blaeys

It seems to me that you want open world bosses in instances. Whereas the rest of us want actual raids. Open world bosses in instances is kind of just allowing exclusion to content we already have. Having proper raids will obviously create exclusion and it wont be for everyone. But its something the game sorely needs.

I think the game is at the point where anet just needs to ignore the excessive entitlement people feel they deserve and just create something epic in terms of challenge and reward. And to do this they need to forget about problems such as exclusion and elitism. Obviously dont completely forsake them or encourage them but they should be a very minor factor when designing a raid. Those are problems you cant really solve no matter what you do. And if you hold back on development because of those issues you will get nowhere. You cant create something amazing if you are afraid to displease people. Its not possible. If you try to please everyone it will be half baked and wont really satisfy either side of the spectrum.

hybrid.5027:

spoj.9672:

Conski Deshan.2057:

I (like the person in the post a few above this) second the idea that raids should have unique rewards(account bound), I actually believe all content should have unique rewards (account bound) but that’s another story. The rewards for completing a raid are rewards that show you completed the raid, just a direct x time y effort = z gold is unrewarding and still has top players competing against farmers and gem converters.

The problem with account bound rewards is that they are only rewarding the first time you get them. After that they are completely worthless. So no i dont want to see account bound and soulbound rewards.

I somewhat addressed this in my proposal. The “loot” would be a new tier 7 crafting material only available in the raid. This material could be traded and sold. It would be used to craft weapons from a recipes obtainable from bosses and a crafter that only appears at the end of the raid. This way you get the weapon/armor skins as you want them, but once you have all the ones you want you can sell the mats you get on the TP where they would have some decent price, especially since the crafter is locked behind a skill gate so the prestige will remain even if the underlying mats are tradeable.

Thats a good solution to both sides of the arguement. It maintains prestige and provides continuous rewarding loot even when you have already obtained all the end products. I assume this is inspired from gw1’s FoW armour system. But i would also like an increase of quality in trash loot. So increased drops of tier 6 mats and higher chance for random rares and exotics.

And i would still love to see infusion drops in raids. As a very rare drop and with the chance to get infusions which add colour auras as bonus effects. These would definately have to be tradeable or they would have to be very common or purchased with raid mats so you can realistically get a full set of the same colour without completely relying on RNG.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Untradeable account bound rewards are an important part of raids for me, I won’t budge on that. If open world farmer joe who has never set foot in a raid ends up with one of those items then I consider it a failure.
You can make repeated runs of content rewarding without making the rewards tradeable. But you can’t honestly expect the content to be infinitely rewarding, past a certain point it makes sense to play a new type of content. Even dungeons have this point, In about a month maybe two I’ll be completely finished with dungeons and probably won’t step foot in them outside of helping other people runs. Thats ok I got several hundred hours out of it and there will be something else to move on and master.

Well i understand you want some items only available to those who actually complete the raids. For prestige etc. But at the same time. People who raid should be able to profit from doing such challenging content. Thats why i think there should be a mix. But most rewards should be tradeable. Except for prestige items like tonics, mini pets and selected cosmetic rewards. RNG dropped cosmetic stuff and ascended gear drops should be tradeable. But i agree if thats not possible then the vendor price should be much more generous for those items.

Conski Deshan.2057:

I (like the person in the post a few above this) second the idea that raids should have unique rewards(account bound), I actually believe all content should have unique rewards (account bound) but that’s another story. The rewards for completing a raid are rewards that show you completed the raid, just a direct x time y effort = z gold is unrewarding and still has top players competing against farmers and gem converters.

The problem with account bound rewards is that they are only rewarding the first time you get them. After that they are completely worthless. So no i dont want to see account bound and soulbound rewards. I understand people dont want raids to become a vastly superior farm spot. But the whole idea of rewards is to get something rewarding. And for many people that means money to buy other things they want. Uniques skins are nice but if you already have them then you should be able to sell them for a nice profit.

Fractal skins got changed to become transmutations which meant they could no longer be salvaged to get ectos (they were statless exotics before). And when the wardrobe was added having multiple of the same skin was even more useless. Essentially players have nothing to do with supposedly a prestigious fractal reward except for destroying them if they already unlocked the skin before. Also with ascended drops. They are account bound and if you dont need them you cant do anything with them but sell to a vendor. The weapons give a measly 1g and the rings and armour give a few silver. Thats pretty pathetic for endgame gear which costs hundreds of gold and many hours of gameplay to craft.

Ascended gear and fractal skins are supposedly the best rewards you can get from fractals. Except they are actually completely useless if you dont need them. Id prefer it if we didnt have more rewards which follow this pattern of only being rewarding if you get exactly what you want and you havent already recieved it in the past. So please dont make new raid rewards account bound or soulbound. I dont want raids to become the same as fractals (most challenging content but least rewarding part of PvE). The only exception to this that i can accept is a rare mini pet or tonic. But I think even these could be tradeable.

I think it would also be good to allow raid groups to share loot that a player doesnt want. So if you are going to add account bound drops (and i hope you dont) then you can at least choose to donate it to a party member before it gets bound to you. This is something my friends have mentioned countless times upon recieving our fractal rewards. Friend gets a skin I want and I get a skin they want. So frustrating.

Donari.5237:

I’ve seen a couple of comments in the level-requirement discussion about the issue of bringing along underpowered members. I do think that is on the raid organizers, as they get to decide who to invite. What concerns me in it is the sentiment that raids won’t want inexperienced raiders regardless of power levels.

I understand this is a common part of the raiding mindset. I raided for several years in WoW, and my very nice, friendly guild still had a “progression team” that one had to be qualified for by gear, skill, and reliability. But there’s a catch-22 in there, if only experienced applicants are welcome, how exactly do they get that experience?

So I hope there is some way to do this content Tyria-style, in the cooperative, inclusive manner that goes to the core of the game. Some of the posters have posited an sPvP sort of normalizing. I can see the potential in that but would definitely want not only a gear-swap template if we’re talking raid-specific gear but a “holding” section of the hero panel for the alternate set, bag space being at a premium.

Thats an issue up to the guild/group organisers. Pretty sure its out of the scope of what the developers can do. There will always be people who have higher standards and exclude players. And some people will feel they cant ever meet those standards because they arent given the chance. Its up to players to work past those issues by taking the initiative themselves. You cant solve a problem caused by player/organiser attitude. So i feel its a pretty redundant issue and is not worth discussing in this thread.

I had a thought for rewards. You could add infusions to the boss loot tables. These would be tradeable and would range between the regular +4 stat infusions you get from laurel vendors to the highly expensive crafted versatile +5 X stat with +5 agony resist. You could also add new infusions which give a +5 stat bonus and/or a cosmetic glow.

So for example there could be a rare chance for purple infusions to drop. These could have a number of different stats but the key feature would be that they add a purple hue aura to the equipment they are slotted onto. You could have a number of different colours and stat choices.

This would be fitting for endgame rewards as it is both cosmetic and just an alternative method of obtaining your infusions for your ascended gear. And making them tradeable would make them highly expensive rewards. Id expect them to be very rare though and only dropped from the most difficult raids/bosses or obtained from a raid reward track (completing 50 full raid clears etc).

Or you could simply add colour infusions which dont have any stat bonus. These could be a lesser reward and a more common drop.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

spoj.9672:

So they are happy to take a underleveled and undergeared character to get carried through the instance. Which is completely against the philosophies of a raid. Which is working together effectively to complete challenging content. Each individual should matter. People not pulling their weight should make things considerably harder. So please dont give players the incentive to negatively effect each other in this manner.

Based on your sig , it seems you have expirianced with instances .
Atm , when you do the speedruns dungeons , do you inv low lvl characters ?
When they implant raids , will you inv lower lvl characters to your party ?

Other guild will inv lower lvl characters , and they will fail , while your group that consist of 15 × 85 lvl characters and succed .
What is again is the problem ?

I personally have no problem dragging a few low levels along in dungeons. Because i can solo them. When this happens its because i dont care that they arent pulling their weight and im enjoying the increased challenge. But this is supposed to be challenging endgame content we are talking about. We shouldnt be encouraging players to jump in with undergeared underleveled characters and limited experience as it will only negatively effect those players. Players in good dungeon guilds wont have a problem, casual players will.

But if you allow for level scaling etc then you are essentially balancing around the expectation of low level characters. So this will either result in toxicity in the community when forming groups or it will result in a loss of difficulty due to balance. This hurts both types of players. So i dont see any arguement for it being a good idea to allow for low level characters. Im not saying add a requirement of 80 to enter. Im just saying that raids should be designed for lvl 80 (like arah). You can enter at lvl 75 at your own risk but that would be a bad idea because you will be at a disadvantage.

If you allow lower lvl players into raids then you are just inviting the mass of problems we already have with low levels in dungeons. Exclusion due to less efficiency, toxicity and players attemping to raid when they clearly arent ready for it. And thats not even mentioning the problems with upscaling and downscaling players and balancing around lower tier armour.

Most people in this thread seem to agree that raids should be for larger groups to attempt challenging content which requires coordination and experience. So its fairly obvious that raids should be designed for lvl 80 characters and lvl 80 characters alone. If people want to play alts then they should get to 80 and learn that class so they can use it in a raid.

People asking for the ability to use low level characters in raids sound like people who just want to experience the content without really pulling their weight. They dont want to bring efficiency to their group and they dont want to do the best they can to help the group. So they are happy to take a underleveled and undergeared character to get carried through the instance. Which is completely against the philosophies of a raid. Which is working together effectively to complete challenging content. Each individual should matter. People not pulling their weight should make things considerably harder. So please dont give players the incentive to negatively effect each other in this manner.

Awww

Bye winter my love!

I thought id seen everything….

Yeah but mai has condi duration reduction while she has shield stacks. So im not so sure it would be faster. Even considering you remove the stacks pretty fast. Its only 1 stack of bleed per auto. Thats really weak.

Why would you need condi gear for higher lvl?

Necro – Greatsword

Ranger – Hammer (Bunny thumper pls)

Mesmer – Mainhand Pistol

Thief – Rifle/Longbow

Engineer – Hammer/Mace

Guardian – Offhand Sword

Warrior – Offhand Torch

Ele – Sword?

Group Sizes
In terms of group sizes. I think its best to keep the max sized raid as a multiple of 5. So id say raids should be 10 or 15 player raids. This is because our current party system is designed for 5 and buff sharing and the aoe cap is limited to 5. Keeping it like this will allow you to just create a raid group by combining 2-3 parties and each party would be responsible for their own boon sharing for the most part.

This way you can avoid worring about changing boon aoe limit for raids. Which I would also be against simply because if you keep it kitten then it forces groups to organise themselves to get around that limitation. Each party would essentially have to cover their own might and buff stacking. Which i think is an important party of forcing the raid group to coordinate and organise themselves.

On Scaling
I think you should avoid implementing scaling to raids. Its not present in dungeons or fractals and that works. If you attempt something with fewer players it should be more challenging. That makes sense from an instanced perspective. And it adds some extra fun for the experienced players.

But when designing puzzles and encounters you should avoid adding events which require a set number of players. For example currently there are puzzles in game which require 3-4 players to hit a switch at the same time. I think in future if you want to do something like this you should keep the required player count very low. Or you should give some leeway to players so one player can hit 2 switches with clever use of portals for example. But in terms of scaling. The strength and amount of mobs should remain the same. And they should be tailored for the max player count able to enter the raid regardless of how many people enter the raid.

I dont like being forced to have a certain number of players. And if you give players freedom to do the puzzles with less assuming they can handle the higher mobs per player ratio then you allow for interesting strategies. Such as group splits to complete different parts of the raid at the same time.

In summary. Dont scale bosses, mobs or enemy numbers. And keep puzzle player requirements to a minimum.

Carighan.6758:

Well that’s because you’re not supposed to. You can reliably dodge it.
Just not evade or block it via your skills, those are more tricky to use.

Like I said above, I feel it ensures a certain amount of balance with these skills.

No in the case of ranger you cannot dodge it. A regular dodge roll does not interrupt the sword auto. This is a major complaint for the rangers sword. It locks you onto the target so it can throw you off cliffs when mobs suddenly die and you cannot dodge exactly when you want. You have to time dodges inbetween the chain attacks (often requires unbinding auto attack).

Your point is kind of acceptible when considering abilities. Although i still disagree with it being ok that aftercasts often cause excessive delays. But thats not what Sublim was referring to.

Astralporing.1957:

There are actually two alternative sets of guidelines here, that you have contracted together.

First, the common guideline: no better stat gear. Ascended were bad enough, we really don’t need any further gear progression here.

Then we go with two alternatives:
Either “raids” will be inclusive, allowing everyone to do them, not just being limited to “elite” top % of the population,
or
they will offer no better (or unique) rewards than what can be acquired elsewhere.

I’d consider keeping to one of those two alternate guidelines (as well as the no-vertical-progression one) to be an absolute minimum. Breaking both of them at the same time (or, even worse, breaking all three), would cause raids to become the end game content, the only one that would matter, instead of being just one of many options.

Those points are separate arguements. I agree i dont want more stat grind. But I dont understand how people can even come out with the other points. Content needs incentives to make people play it over and over. Best way for that is unique rewards such as exclusive skins. If its endgame content it should be engaging. So it should be challenging and it should require coordination. If it doesnt satisfy those requirements then its pointless to add.

Some people dont like to be challenged, those people will never be satisfied with this type of content. But if they feel so entitled to get exclusive rewards then they should be forced to play that content. I dont like open world but im forced to play it for dragonite. But im not so entitled as to say “dont add more world bosses because they arent what I want”. Please use common sense.

Astralporing.1957:

I don’t want them to stop developing new content. I’d rather that content was something that appeals to me (hint: raids don’t belong to that category). Is this selfish? Yeah, it is. But then you are doing exactly the same.

Raids might not be for you, thats fair enough. Instead of spouting anti raid propaganda maybe you should make suggestions on what would make you want to play raids without ruining its purpose (challenging endgame content with good rewards). Im hardly doing the same thing. I dont like the way a lot of things are in game but ive never once said they should stop adding world bosses and living story.

I think its fair to be slightly selfish in wanting some challenging content. We havent had any for over a year. And adding new challenging content doesnt hurt anyone. Its not like anet will suddenly stop developing all other areas of the game just to make raids.

Also if you think theres a potential problem in raids being the only rewarding content then why dont anet buff the rewards of other content. Weve been asking for fractal and dungeon rewards to match their difficulty and completion time for over a year. But fractals still has the worst rewards despite being the most challenging part of PvE. Whereas dungeons and open world which are easy in comparison reward a hell of a lot more.

IndigoSundown.5419:

spoj.9672:

All i can see in this thread is countless people saying they dont want raids because of selfish reasons. Its disgusting.

Wanting one’s own way is always selfish. This includes wanting raids and wanting raids that have better rewards than those available elsewhere. If selfishness is “disgusting,” then all selfishness is disgusting.

I’m not one saying there should be no raids. However, posts like this are not the way to successfully make your case.

Its disgusting because they dont even give decent justification.

Heres a summary of the anti raid posts:
- no (stronger or not) gear specific to the raid because they’d feel “forced” to raid;
- no highly desirable cosmetic/vanity items in the raid else they’d feel “forced” to raid;
- no content that requires high coordination (guilds), else they wouldn’t be able to raid;
- no content that requires high skillcap, else they wouldn’t be able to raid [duh];
- no content that requires a big team/time in an instance else they wouldn’t…

You cannot create decent endgame content if you follow these absurd guidelines. If they could give actual decent reasons for the stopping of development of new content then I would have no problem with the anti raid crowd. Attitude and being unable to appeal to everyone are not decent reasons. Any designer should understand that and I would of thought any sane person would be able to work that out aswell.

All i can see in this thread is countless people saying they dont want raids because of selfish reasons. Its disgusting.

Its not really a fine line. Its just a matter of not going overboard with the amount you give to the necro. The other classes have problems but major shortages of all aspects of the combat system due to stubborn class design isnt one of them. Anet have stated the only reason they dont give necros these things is because it doesnt fit the theme. Which i think is absurd. Theres plenty of ways to implement some damage avoidance without ruining the theme. And balance and ensuring the class has a place (is popular) should take priority over pre release design philosophies.

Quick summary to put the class in perspective.
- Selfish class
- Below average self buffing
- Below average damage
- No alternative methods of damage avoidance other than base dodges
- No extra mobility
- No special utility
+ Largest health pool but no reliable sustain to synergise with it.

The games combat system is designed in such a way that those things are needed. The fact that necro lacks any alternative damage avoidance is a major oversight. No matter how much you argue against it. Until things are changed necro wont improve. Necro needs a speciality or it needs to get things that every other class has.

I solo’d the horror on my necro when i logged on the other day. Or near enough. Had a few people come and help dps and die. But i had aggro the whole time. Double energy sigils and some soft CC is enough to keep you relatively safe. Plus consume conditions is op.

Gonna play some more this weekend. I want zuzu and enough gold to get the count outfit. :P

Multiple eles is still superior. Theres just a higher skill requirement for it. The safe compositions won the fractal tournement because the multiple ele groups made mistakes. And from what i saw those multi ele groups had eles that dont main that class in fractals.

Its pretty easy to understand why stacking eles is superior if you ignore skill requirement and have everything else covered. Highest damage, highest aoe. Multitude of utility and flexibility. Strong CC’s and boon/condition support. Eles can cover everything defensive wise apart from group stab and aegis. But they can use selfish blocks and invulns for those situations. Conjures plus blinds is enough of a reason to stack multiple eles.

Basically npcs teleport to the closest player when you separate from them. So you need to make sure that when people waypoint, the closest player to Magg is the person at the other side of the lava. Magg wont interrupt his sequenced mining to teleport and will teleport/run to the nearest person right afterwards. So you can get people in position without worry while he is doing that.

But they arent utility. They just increase your defense or offense passively. I want to see completely new functionality traits. For example a trait which turns tainted shackles into an aoe pull control skill. Renewing blast does follow this concept. Unfortunately its just really poor implemention.

His aggro probably resets on phase switch. And whoever hits him first after that will likely have an effect. Some people definately get focused more than others regardless of class but that might be because they are quicker to hit him after invuln wears off.

flow.6043:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

…You really don’t get it, do you?

it’s how life force generation is balanced.

I do get it, and imo you’re wrong. Healing should be allowed in full while lf regen could use a buff as well. Simple as that. And I’m quite shocked to see so many necro players making such a big deal out of it.

This.

If it is really so unbalanced then i would be fine with a further nerf to DS lifeforce pool. The core issues wont get solved unless anet drastically changes the necros options for defence and sustain.

Bhawb.7408:

I like that they are turning DS into a unique defensive mechanic, I’d 100% prefer that we have a strong unique defense. They just need to tighten up some of its issues, and it’d be great; stuff like negating a big hit (such as an Aegis on entry), our mechanics not cancelling each other out, and things like that.

I would love it if we had more traits which customize the utility we get from DS. Aegis is a good example. At the moment we only have very boring traits which effect DS. Unholy sanctuary is a step in the right direction. But things like retal on entry and condition removal on entry are really weak and they arent even in the DS tree. Soul reaping should definately have some more defensive DS utility traits. At the moment it only has foot in the grave.

Meanwhile in Archeage….

All because i ninja’d his fortuna mine. And i thought the GW2 community was full of children.

Lindbur.2537:

ArenaNet

Too many rangers using Longbow

Lol. Is anet really surprised?

If you are not in the kraitkin club you are an inferior human being.

I tend to assume less than optimal conditions when calculating for myself. Because i generally only min max my necro for solos or casual groups. And i really hate missing crits. As i said before the difference is minor. So it doesnt matter too much. My prev group calcs probably show a different result due to slightly different assumptions. If you hate missing crits like me then consider using some assassins pieces. If you dont mind then full berserkers is all good. But either is fine especially as its only a necro.

Although i just remembered when i was theorycrafting for my lupi solo months back. The builds which showed better damage in calculations performed worse than high crit chance builds. So dont trust calculations completely. Especially when you lack consistant critical hits. I think the discussion about this can also be found on the DnT forums.

EU understands the appeal of infinite light because we value looks over price tag.

#InfiniteLightOwnersClub

please format…

deSade.9437:

I’d give up if I were you…

Heh. Im a masochist.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m not against multiple choices. I never said that I was. It’s just that you cannot say that a puzzle is poorly designed because it lacks that. Choices is not the only criteria. Many other games have puzzles that pretty much have only one way to beat them. Are they poorly designed?

Im pretty sure many people would disagree with that. At least when talking about puzzles for replayable content. Most people would say a good puzzle is one which has multiple solutions but is also challenging. Hybrid points it out quite clearly. They are solved so there is nothing to be gained from repeating them. The problem is this is a dungeon which is meant to be replayed so it should be designed with that in mind. It clearly isnt.

Ayrilana.1396:

Is the puzzle that the inexperienced players facing and less of a puzzle because that particular one cannot be completed at a faster pace once you’ve gotten down the mechanics? Is it really that poorly designed if it doesn’t have any fail mechanism any option to complete it faster. I kind of duplicated the first question just now.

Think back to any game that you found challenging. Did you find them any of the challenges to be less challenging the second or third time through.? Probably so as this is the nature of how this progresses. Does this mean those challenges were poorly designed? How about if you had no means of completing them quicker?

You are still misunderstanding us. Just because we use speed to measure variability of a puzzle doesnt mean we are talking about tailoring for speedrunners. Its bad design because there is literally no choice. If you give players multiple choices on how to complete a puzzle, naturally some strategies will be faster and some will be slower and some will be safer while others will be riskier. This is what i was trying to say.

Also using the 3 types of players. Puzzles would benefit more from having multiple choices. Inexperienced groups would be able to find a method which works for them and experienced groups would be able to find a method which suits their goals (favourite, safest or fastest). So once again i dont know why you are disagreeing with us. Are you really against multiple choice? Do you really want completely linear dungeons and puzzles in the future?

Infamous darkness interpreted what i was trying to say perfectly. Can either of you please explain what you dislike about giving players more options to complete a puzzle?

Ergh its like talking to brick walls. You guys clearly cant read. Im done.

Multiple ways of defending the ooze. Only one way to kite them. No way to speed them up. Those strategies are minor variations of the exact same thing. If you could effect the oozes in some way it would open up a whole new range of possibilities. And also allow coordinated groups to dramatically speed up the puzzle.

You missed my point again. Theres only one way to complete those puzzles. Theres no freedom to create interesting tactics to solve the puzzle in new ways. They were designed to be completed in one specific way and thats it. AC burrows are exactly the same and they have even worse design than the aether puzzles (especially lovers crypt burrows). Its lazy design.

Ive also said countless times i could actually really enjoy aetherpath if they fixed the issues and reduced the tedium of the puzzles. The rest of the dungeon is pretty well designed. I have no complaints about that. They havent even made cutscenes skippable. Why? Its such a simple change. I cant ignore the issues sadly and its the same for many others.

Ill repeat my question. Maybe you will answer it this time. Which concept do you think is better for repeatable puzzles? Restricted or free?

Ayrilana.1396:

So any obstacle within a dungeon that doesn’t have combat elements to it is poor design?

The difference between the puzzles hybrid listed and aether puzzles is quite simple. The aether puzzles slow you down and theres no way to really counter that. This is not bad because it hurts speed runners. Its bad because it is forcing extra timegates on people who have already completed it. Excessive timegating causes irritation for most players not just speed runners.

The oozes move a set slow speed which makes kiting very slow and there is no way to be faster than that set time. You cant speed them up in anyway which makes strategy approach for the puzzle static. Its either be slow or even slower if you fail. If we could use cc to push them to the other side then I would actually say thats a huge improvement. You could even give them defiant stacks to make it harder for groups to full cc them across. With the electric room you have to wait for the patterns to move and there is also waiting for each phase and the final switch to activate.

The only limiting factor in many other puzzles is your own characters movement speed. Which can be boosted with the use of skills and coordination. The puzzles are also more open which allows the use of portal tricks etc. The aether puzzles force you to complete them in the exact same set way everytime. Whereas other puzzles are a bit more free. Which concept do you think is better for repeatable puzzles? Restricted or free?

deSade.9437:

Purple Miku.7032:

spoj the champ. Well freakin’ said@@@

Spoj is awsum. I guess I’ll be forced to be more active in archeage if I want to hear his sexy voice again.

I havent really been playing it other than logging in to harvest my farm each day. So you prob wont catch me very easily as i only play for a bit before dinner atm. Kind of weird that i pretty much dont play any games atm. x)

Elrey.5472:

spoj.9672:

I wouldnt mind losing time on those puzzles if they were actually engaging and not tedious and irritating especially when repeated. This is a design problem that anet seem to be running into a lot. The aetherblade fractal and molten facility fractal are no different in this regard.

For you, it’s.
For me it’s a really good design and not the usual “just hit stuff” old pattern.

Is not a design problem, it just doesn’t suit your taste and seems that you are selfish enough to not tolerate other people’s tastes.

I didn’t want to get into that kind of discussion, but Spoj, you Sir are wrong.

Im not wrong. You just have more tolerance for these puzzles than many people. Calling someones opinion wrong is just childish. The puzzles dont have to be radically different to make them bearable for someone like me. I guarantee you would enjoy them more if they were more engaging. So why are you actively defending them and implying they are perfect? You should be encouraging them to improve. Not just for your own enjoyment but also for the overall popularity of the content.

And I know you agree with me on this. Because you actually agreed with my revised suggestions for aetherpath puzzle changes in the TA sticky thread. So maybe you should take a bit more of an objective stance and stop blindly defending the dungeon. Everyone benefits from improvements, noone benefits from a standstill.

Also as a side note. If content is widely unpopular then it stands to reason that the problem is the design. You cant please everyone. But you should aim to please the majority (especially the majority the content is tailored for) and you should certainly avoid irritating large groups of players. Anet missed the mark on aetherpath. Which is shown by its lack of popularity.

I wouldnt mind losing time on those puzzles if they were actually engaging and not tedious and irritating especially when repeated. This is a design problem that anet seem to be running into a lot. The aetherblade fractal and molten facility fractal are no different in this regard.

Path of corruption
Terror
Deathly perception
Tainted Shackles
Spectral walk

Everything else is either bad, boring or buggy. Its not much different for other classes either. They all have a few well designed and interesting elements. But the majority is very uninteresting or just poorly implemented.