Just make story mode give tokens. I really can’t understand why people try to make some irrelevant distinction between “story” and “explorable” paths. A dungeon path is a dungeon path. Separating them is unnecessary, a flawed premise.
For those who don’t know, all that is zerker gear. This guy didn’t have a single point of toughness or vitality which explains his dying. Not only that, but they had no clue about tactics, bosses.
The problem is the latter, not the warrior’s gear. You don’t need any extra toughness or vitality on a warrior, especially not at Fractal 12, but you do need to understand tactics and bosses.
I would say that zerker is actually the optimal build for warrior if you can use it well.
I doubt PVE is capable of providing a challenge that doesn’t wear off.
PVE is fundamentally predictable. Discover the formula, memorize it, repeat it. You can’t play mind games with dumb monsters.
You can throw in all sorts of mechanics like:
- Do X while other people do Y or Z
- Everyone does X in the same time window
- You need this type of skill to pass this area efficiently
- Gimmicks involving items or boss phases
- Use CC on the mobs
- Increased monster damage
- Maintain an effect on a boss/yourself.
But the mere presence of more complicated mechanics doesn’t necessarily add real challenge in my opinion.
All that does is change the formula to be memorized and make you go through a checklist before a run to make sure your team isn’t full of morons, is capable of communicating, and brings the right skills/effects. It will still get repetitive and easy once you know exactly what to do. Strategy is static in PVE.
To have any real, lasting impact on PVE difficulty, a new mechanic would have to increase the amount of twitch gameplay and unpredictability. Content needs to force you to react quickly, decide quickly, and make good decisions, i.e. difficulty comes not from simply requiring strategies but making the required strategies really hard to execute properly.
I’m sure the developers could’ve made the PVE super hard in this sense, but I don’t think that would work out well, many people will just get frustrated and complain. If “hard mode” is added, I think that’s the direction the new mode should emphasize.
Perhaps they could make really smart and dynamic behavior for the monsters, but that’s not easy.
So for challenge, I feel like you’d have to seek out PVP against good players for dynamic strategy/tactics and twitch gameplay,
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In dungeons, I feel like MF should behave something like it did in Diablo 3:
- Magic find on gear is split and shared equally among all members of the party. Consumable MF remains undivided.
- Killing enemies and completing optional events give you bonus MF for the duration of the dungeon path (maybe even extending into subsequent paths without repeats, could be an incentive to run all of the paths). Make MF apply to both boss chests and drops.
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I usually have success finding groups for CoE on LFG, and I’ve done a few runs recently. I think CoE is one of the more entertaining dungeons. The armor looks nice as does the dungeon itself. Getting charged cores is good too.
My biggest complaint would be the destroyer laser part in path 3. Running back and forth between the boss and lasers just feels tedious. I don’t like the “do some fixed action simultaneously to make the boss vulnerable” mechanics. There’s no interesting decision making or timing involved but there’s plenty of idle/running time waiting for people to get in position. It’s like the boring CoF P2 end boss.
I also think it’s a bit bland to have so many Alpha fights in all of the paths. The tactics for P3 and P2 are identical. In P3, I think it would’ve been better to replace the destroyer boss with Alpha and bring Kudu from story mode back in some form as the end boss in P3.
Because I love doing damage in PVE, and warriors are best for that.
Guys, most of the Magic find gear gives you power and precision. The only detrimental thing about this isn’t your DPS (unless you also use conditions).
Well, I agree that if you choose to run MF gear, you’re better off using Explorer’s. Even then. it’s a pretty significant loss of DPS compared to Berserker (no crit dmg, and power is only a secondary stat on Explorer). It’s like you chose to run Knight over Berserker, without the +survival. If you restrict MF to runes/food, then I think that’s acceptable.
I don’t approve of MF primarily because of the team reciprocation issues. Why should you contribute less and get more? If your team isn’t carrying its weight, then fine, they don’t have much basis to complain about MF. But if everyone else is doing well and has optimized their character for clearing content, then you should do the same. Or form an MF-centric run.
By choice you have made your character mediocre at best, so you should stick with mediocre/subpar players.
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This thread isn’t about permission to skip or run, it’s a discussion. If you want to participate in a discussion about skipping or fighting and whether or not something needs to be done about it, looking at why people run dungeons, why people skip content and all the things that are a part of that are essential to having a meaningful discussion. Simply saying “I like skipping” or “I choose to skip” adds very little value to the discussion. Why do you like skipping? Why do you choose to skip?
Here’s the essence of your “discussion”, distilled:
Shiren: “I hate skipping. I wish I never had to skip in any group I joined. Let’s make skipping impossible.” This is all that you are really saying.
Others: “I like skipping. The current system allows us to co-exist by grouping with people with similar preferences. No change is needed.”
Shiren: Brings up various peripheral things to try to complicate, cloud, and distort issues, such as the economy, the nebulous concept of ‘intended experience’ (typically brought up when some poster wants to elevate his personal preferences to a universal standard), various questions based on the dubious premise that there is a “correct” meta and the current meta is undesirable, etc.
You can stop pretending to be some noble individual who’s only looking out for the game, your selfish and inflexible position is obvious.
There can be no worthwhile discussion when the heart of your desire is to needlessly deny other people’s desires.
If ArenaNet wanted to create more content focused around individuals running through mobs to reach the end of an obstacle course, I would have no problem with that. That’s not what a dungeon is and I don’t believe the majority of people who want to do dungeons are looking for that experience.
Consider this:
Currently, people have a choice to skip or not skip. You complain that the majority choose to skip. Clearly they are happier skipping than not skipping. Do you seriously think they really prefer not to skip? They’ve already indicated otherwise through their choice. If people really felt the way you think they do, would you not see more “full clear, no skip” posts?
People want dungeons in MMOs because they are supposed to offer challenging group content, they tell a story about a part of the world, you get to be the hero taking on an evil group and stop their evil plans while being rewarded with some sweet loot.
Some people only care about the sweet loot, and how to get it as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort. They probably hate your suggestions and your ideals.
For others, what you said is the focus of dungeons for the first few runs, and then for many the focus shifts to optimization for sweet loot (e.g. skipping).
But no, actually, what everyone really wants is to play the way Shiren does, because he says so. Please fix skipping in dungeons if you see this Anet.
If you really want to “fix” skipping, don’t propose the stick for the community. That’s in poor taste. Get some carrots.
Also:
(and some of those experiences favour CC over simple DPS, another reason why glass cannons are pushing out the rest of combat – because people skip trash which is most vulnerable to CC whereas bosses are not). It is my belief that a lot of problems will either be solved or alleviated by removing skipping.
More likely, DPS will become even more favored because people want the trash they used to skip to die fast.
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I’d like to see mobs not lose aggro, not because I want to force everyone to play like me, but because I accept that a dungeon is an experience with a variety of content and challenges that should be completed. I like dungeons to be whole experiences, not a series of exploits and skipped content followed by a couple big health pools and a chest at the end. To me, that’s a dungeon experience that’s not worth playing. The reward might be there, but the content is ignored.
Right now, you can define your own dungeon experience. If you form a group with like-minded people, you can experience dungeon content where you fight and clear everything, exactly what you want.
No matter how much you play with words, all your suggestion amounts to is removing choice from people who don’t share your preferences.
The purpose of putting “experienced” on any poster’s part is obviously:
“Know exactly what to do in the situations you will face, we want a smooth and efficient run.”
Even if you consider yourself an “experienced” level 80, if you have never done the dungeon before, you do not meet the obvious requirements and you should have the decency to not join. You obviously lack a big chunk of relevant experience for the dungeon, how could you possibly consider yourself “experienced”?
The poster should not have to be more specific, the intent is perfectly clear already.
MF is useful, but it’s a selfish stat for leeches when used in a team.
I like P3, but the path requires more coordination and a solid team, much more so than P1/P2, so I don’t PUG it often.
- Initial torch room is easier with voice chat, I find it too bothersome to coordinate over text chat.
- Bomb tunnel can take a long time if people can’t cross it successfully
- The ‘defend point against waves’ part requires a stronger team than P1/P2 stuff does
- Boss fight can drag on for a while, because of the periodic invincibility and people getting flung into lava
You have no way to prove swapping attunements will yield higher DPS. In the same light, I have no way of ever proving that staying in Fire full time to DPS will out perform swapping attunements.
Well, since the damage formula, skill damage numbers, skill and attunement swap cooldowns, etc. are known, you could calculate DPS for various sequences of actions…
I think the reward chests are only given on even Fractals, so maybe you’re not eligible for the daily chest until you reach level 2.
Perhaps the developers just wanted to give people a fun surprise in their first HotW run after the patch…
…but I would argue that the example you cite here is inappropriate to your point. It’s not a nerf but a bug/exploit fix. If you think about it, would opening the hole in the wall be a buff to the dungeon? No. It’s just broken.=
Agreed.
Not saying you have to say all welcome and take only bad players. Only saying don’t say (here’s an actual lfg I read a lil while ago) “no noobs, no whiners, no kittenes, no necro, no ranger, no thief, no engi. Link armor before you join”
I think it’s fine if someone makes a post like that, but they had better live up to the post’s standards themselves.
My complaints about Trahearne:
- Given his prominence in the story, he lacks sufficient development. It would have been better if all race stories included a quest with Trahearne, together showing more of his personality/history/abilities/etc.
- The character development that is there makes him seem too straightforward, predictable, one-dimensional, boring. I can’t remember a single time when I felt surprised by the character. He feels like a very generic reluctant commander.
- In the gameplay itself, he feels more like a liability than an asset. He never does anything really strong or cool against mobs, and several times I’ve had to backtrack because I went too far ahead and Trahearne didn’t bother following me.
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Yes I do wish to go through CoE in 15 min. Thats why I always bring my 30k HP/2100 toughness Warrior into dungeons.
So much dps lost when a glass cannon goes down while subject alpha tickles me, sigh.
Well, I suppose you’re doing better than the dead glass cannons, but bringing a defensive build is pretty non-optimal against Alpha:
- Path1: just stand right on top of him and mash buttons, no defense needed at all
- Path2: Defensive stats in this game aren’t strong enough to save you from Alpha’s stacked AOEs, you’ll have to move away, dodge, or use some other form of invincibility, same as you would if you played glass cannon
- Path3: Pull Alpha against a wall and just dodge into him when avoiding AOE so his frontal wave attack never hits, no other defense needed
My views on team composition:
- The only class that should consider support over DPS is Guardian; other classes should focus on DPS for PVE. Don’t gear for a support/tank role, you’ll just be very mediocre at best that way, just pick a few good weapon skills/utilities/traits after building for DPS.
- My ideal all-purpose party would probably be Guardian/Thief/3x DPS Warrior. Thief+Guardian would give you very strong defense against both trash and bosses while still doing decent DPS, then 3 warriors for offensive buffs/killing stuff.
Um, because with a party of mixed levels (40-80), the run wasn’t a problem for any of the members post-patch? Because I have a brain and can extrapolate numbers?
I only run dungeons with fully geared 80s, but I’m inclined to agree with you (level 35 party should be able to do new AC, if they are sufficiently skilled).
However, you can’t expect much of a positive response if you make a bold, confrontational post and leave people with no real supporting evidence; your only argument is “Trust my judgement” and people have no reason to do so.
Also, I don’t think it’s sound to simply extrapolate difficulty linearly, the game/fights can be chaotic, the party having or lacking a chunk of extra HP or damage, not to mention traits and skills, could cause things play out very differently.
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Why not equalize the difficulties of story and explorable mode, and treat story mode like any other path?
Consumables are icing on the cake, not the cake.
Icing is part of the cake as a whole; food is a part of a build, not any different from trinkets, traits, weapons and armor, I don’t see why you make an arbitrary distinction.
As for the topic, I run 20/30/0/0/20 with berserker gear with a few pieces of knight/cavalier, with precision oil and omnomberry pie. I’m not changing anything with my build, but I’ll have to play less aggressively =\.
Being able to get big heals from well-placed multi-hit attacks was fun. I don’t care about what was intended, the game is less fun now. I think it would’ve been fine to nerf it in WvW because it’s a competitive setting, but I don’t see this change improving PVE.
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I didn’t level any of my characters in dungeons, I just went around doing heart quests, events, and story and crafted for the last 20. Leveling was fast and easy without the dungeons. I don’t want to be the weakest link in a team, I’m the kind of person who waits until I’ve fully or almost fully geared my level 80 before going into a dungeon.
So it’s not strange for me to feel that it’s a negative thing when I see sub-80s in a dungeon pug, there’s a tendency to see them as people who don’t care about performing at their full potential, to be on par with potentially stronger teammates. That said, I don’t mind much, it’s not a big deal, since I’m not looking for speedruns, and there are other things like skill, experience, and personality that determine whether you welcome someone’s presence in a PUG.
But there is a clear difference between 80s and sub-80s. The missing traits and weaker stats do matter, that should be acknowledged. You can say that skill is more important than gear, but dungeon slots aren’t unlimited, a good sub80 takes a slot away from a potential equally good 80 with exotics.
I think thief has:
- Strong DPS, probably a bit less than warriors, but comparable.
- Strong damage mitigation with blinds, interrupts, weakness, anti-projectile wall
- Great for cutting down defiant stacks
- Shadow refuge is great for res
- Decent survival with life on hit/life steal, mobility, and plentiful stun breaks
If it were up to me, the current Arah story path would be a solo story mission instead, ending with Zhaitan falling down into Arah, but not dead.
Then replace the Arah story path with a 5th explorable mode path (make it the hardest, most epic dungeon path in the game) that involves going back into Arah to finish off Zhaitan.
That is what mmos are about, bragging rights.
I thought MMOs were mostly about enjoying mechanically fun game content with friends or random strangers online. Titles and loot hierarchies are just there to provide a little structure and a feeling of progression for those who care about them.
I personally have no interest in bragging rights. I don’t think the primary purpose of an MMO is to serve as an exhibition of artificial scarcity.
I really dislike the stealth implementation in GW2. To illustrate what I think is wrong, I’ll compare it with the spy from Team Fortress 2, which I think is implemented well.
- The game fails to provide enough information about the stealthed player. In TF2, shooting a cloaked spy, or even colliding with the spy, will cause the spy to become visible as a silhouette. You can also set the spy on fire, bleed it, or throw milk/urine on the spy to reveal him. In GW2, the stealthed thief can run around with no substantive risk of detection, which turns combat into a guessing game with no meaningful feedback for the thief’s opponent(s).
- Stealth is too powerful as an escape/harassment tool. In TF2, there is an abundance of ranged AOE damage with low cooldowns (the time it takes to reload). The maps have far more chokepoints than GW2, particularly in WvW. The spy has poor mobility unlike the thief and is even squishier than the thief. As a result, the spy has to play far more meticulously than a GW2 thief, because of numerous mechanics that severely punish a spy whose presence is known to the enemy.
- The spy cannot attack when stealthed. The spy must decloak first, which makes a very noticeable sound, giving the enemy a chance to react before they are attacked. Alternatively, the spy must choose a good place to decloak and approach an enemy with a disguise. It’s a more intelligent, brainy style of play.
I don’t really see a clean way to address all of these issues in GW2 without a complete rework of the class. I think it would have been better if the developers just kept the assassin from GW1, a burst+mobility class without stealth.
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Did you code this game? If not then you have no idea of how “easy” it is for a level 30 fractal monster to give level 1 drops to a level 1 player, while still giving level 30 drops to the level 30 player.
No one but the devs can say for sure, but unless the loot system has an insanely bad/inflexible architecture, it’s very unlikely that this would be difficult to implement.
tradeable loot.
But that’s capitalism! Everyone should just farm their own loot.
I mostly run fractals so being the kind soul that i am i just choose to stay behind and solo all the mobs if my party decides to skip – That way if anything goes Pete Tong while i’m doing my solo run someone either has to come back and rezz me, continue with 4, or ( in a few cases) kick me and start over.
None of these bother me to be honest, feels good to know that you have wasted someone’s time who is trying to speed run a dungeon – As stated, people run Dungeons how they want, the way i want is killing mobs – so thats how i do, if the remainder of the party dont agree they know where to go.
My biggest gripe with this is that speed running is now the ‘norm’ – often i will get inside a dungeon and just see my party run past mobs with no forewarning, i then usually recieve a torrent of a abuse for staying and killing the mobs… I’m sorry, but isnt this how they are SUPPOSED to be run? Rather than joining and just assuming that everyone has the patience of a 2 year old child.
If you wanna speed run, do it with other people who want to, if those cant be found thats tough, you run it the proper way or not at all.
As stated, the fact that speed running is now the norm irritates me to the very core, this is why i do my upmost to irritate those ‘skippers’ the best i can.
Immature and petty children like you who don’t know how to be a team player are swiftly kicked from my parties.
If you don’t like skipping, form your own “no skip” group. If you can’t, then the population does not share your views. It’s not your place to dictate how others play; it’s very arrogant for you to believe so.
Why does this bother you? You do not have to participate, it does not constrain you in any way, why do you want to restrict the freedom of others?
Don’t try to impose your vision of “proper gameplay” on everyone else.
They added some stuff without fully testing it. News flash, every software company in the world, IN THE WORLD does this. Now you can play something that 90%, not 50, 90% finished that needs some polish if you want, nobodies forcing you to play this.
If you developed software, you should understand that not all bugs are equal – some are more severe than others – instead of sweeping everything under a blanket statement of “software is never fully tested.”
That’s not even true; saying that reveals your ignorance. There are industries/types of software outside of consumer applications and games where shipping without extremely rigorous testing is absolutely unacceptable.
Remember all that game that was there before fractals that i mentioned earlier. Go do that if the bugs are a “show stopper” to you.
That’s exactly what I did. Don’t make wild assumptions like a pompous and smug fanboy.
Of course I run the chance of disconnecting (which i have, about as fun as jamming needles into my eyes) and lossing my progress.
The real masochist is the one who seeks out experiences where they are likely to find pain.
Non-masochists, like me, simply wait for the upcoming patch.
Also, the substantial probability of users feeling like they have needles jammed into their eyes is exactly why I consider this bug a showstopper.
Some people seem to have an irrational disdain for commerce.
Like those people who whine about legendaries being listed on the TP.
Given how little effort it takes to get to level 80 in this game, I just can’t see this as an important problem. It means your dungeon run with that character is delayed by 2-3 weeks at most?
Build up a good reputation on your server by consistently demonstrating good leadership and a solid understanding of strategy/tactics.
You could try using Ash Legion spy kits
I got to fractal 9 with a group of RL friends; in our last few runs, we experienced several disconnects.
I ended up beating Jade Maw 8 with one other person, because everyone else dropped (we also had to abandon an earlier run as 3 people got disconnected in the third fractal).
All of us lost the will to do any more fractals after that.
I would consider this DC issue a showstopper bug, and I think it was a poor decision to release the dungeon without crash/disconnect resiliency.
If you down a thief outside of a tower, they’re dead unless their teammates save them.
I’m glad you agree that 100% chance to escape is bad.
Against human players, a downed player should not have any expectation of revival unless it was a very lucky, close 1v1 or they have teammates helping them (helping you rally, keeping enemies away, directly reviving you).
When a player is downed, this means they failed. Your dodges, skillbar, and execution were not sufficient to keep you alive; now you are highly vulnerable. Wanted to live? Then you shouldn’t have jumped down into the attackers, should’ve avoided the pull, or you should have used a utility to escape while you were alive, that’s how it is for every other class, squishy or not.
You had your chance to survive and you blew it, the game should force you to accept the consequences, instead of offering you a crutch.
The argument that “eles deserve a 100% escape to tower because they’re squishy” is a terrible argument, it’s like saying “downed thieves should be allowed to use teleport hack if they’re near a tower, since they’re squishy and have less AoE than eles”
Nothing in the game needs a “nerf”. Other classes simply need to be raised to the same level.
Well, suppose you gave every class vapor form as their #2 skill. That would wreck WvW, as any siege would be hugely imbalanced in favor of the defenders; it’s almost like giving defenders the ability to waypoint back to any tower/keep if they die in the vicinity.
I play a thief as my main, and even I don’t like stealth. It’s the only mechanic in the game that creates a huge information imbalance between players in combat.
The stealthing thief does not have to plan/think/react as much as his opponent does, this makes it a lame mechanic.
I can’t understand why people place so much significance on the word “legendary”, a name is just a name.
The legendaries were always a glorified grind for pretty skins, they never made you special for having one. P2W is always an option, if you have money nothing stops you from simply hiring someone to play the game for you.
Many attitudes I’ve seen on this topic remind me of the hipster stereotype that can’t enjoy music if it’s popular.
Just appreciate things for what they are, discard the worthless and distracting social metadata.
Up some of the "visuals" on some of the mystic Forge Weapons
in Suggestions
Posted by: voidwater.2064
I have a Stygian Blade as well, I second your request for some particle effects or animation on that weapon.
But once players realize that when he raises his arms to charges up, they can dodge the attack. Then the fight becomes simple and comes down to just executing what you know over and over again.
So, for experienced players, the fight becomes very trivial and robotic, and there wouldn’t be much of a difference between using a good bot and using an experienced player?
So the AI has to 1. know the attack animation and 2. execute the dodge. How do you balance this? It would be trivial to make an AI that simply dodges Kholer every single time. Then you’d have absolutely no reason to pug the dungeons, because why rely on pubs, when your heroes can dodge bosses with 100% efficiency?
If you go with a design that includes automatic dodging of key attacks, you don’t have to make it 100% dodge chance, the AI doesn’t need to be perfect. You would try to balance it with lots of testing, trial and error.
I would pug the dungeons whenever I felt like playing dungeons with some level of social interaction with random people.
Do you make it so you control your heroes individual dodgerolls/position? How would you control this? Do you need to position your heroes individually? This adds a whole new level of micromanagement which will disproportinately favor players with higher levels of dexterity/multi-tasking ability. “Sure you can solo dungeons, but only if you have 200 APM!”
This sounds perfectly fair to me, I honestly don’t see a problem with this at all.
How would you write “good hero AI that understands dodging?” You trivialize the difficulty in coming up with a design of a good AI, much less implementing it.
Well, I understand implementing the heroes would be far from easy or quick. I’m not trivializing the task, I’m just fine with the potential implications/consequences that you object to.
It’s one thing to say that “perfect heroes would ruin social play” or “heroes reward high APM players too much”, but your original post only suggested that “heroes will not be able to dodge, thus heroes are a bad idea” which I didn’t agree with.
The thing with Heroes/Henchies is, they simply do not belong in GW2’s combat system.
The core of GW2’s combat is damage mitigation through dodging and positioning, things NPCs will have a difficult time doing.
Can you imagine doing a dungeon with 5 Ranger pets? Because that’s what it’s gonna be like. Can you imagine doing a dungeon with these NPCs? Doing Kholer? Colossus Rumblus? Subject Alpha? Lupicus? What are you going to do, when these bosses pull their moves which normal people can avoid with ease but NPCs will have a difficult time avoiding.
It sounds nice at first. But think about GW2’s combat, and think a bit more about if heroes/henchies are a good idea. They’re not, both in theory and practice.
Your points about combat tactics are correct, but that doesn’t say whether heroes are a good or bad idea, it just says that good hero AI/control is not trivial to implement. You can have bad ideas that are easy to implement, good ideas that are hard to implement, the concepts are separate.
If you wanted to discuss good or bad, you would discuss issues like distribution of solo players vs. group players, impact on community, etc.
Suppose they were able to write good hero AI that understands dodging and positioning. Then they could build upon that and make all the monsters in the game more intelligent in combat. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Heroes are the thing I miss most about GW1. They added another playstyle that I really enjoyed, designing team builds and microing the heroes. Instead of playing as a single character, you were some super-entity consisting of 8 avatars, it was great fun.
As for playing with friends, that’s nice sometimes, but so is playing alone without being constrained by other peoples’ schedules, competence, and desires.
Helicopters, tanks, and APCs?