Guild Wars 2

LOL To be fair, complaining about DPS in an MMORPG is like complaining there are gun fights in a first person shooter. You can do things to change things up, but you’re eventually going to have to DPS something.

XD Frankly GW2 does much much more than most MMOs out there at changing up the formula.

That said, the lack of any proper aggro skills doesn’t help too much, it makes tanking a much less viable option, and amkes some gimmick fights (That kitten ooze section of the Aetherpath!) more frustrating that it would be in other games.

I just now thought about Marjory becoming Guild Wars Batman.

Anet, make her into Batman. Er, Batwoman. You know what I mean.

Yknow after their involvement in the leveling story and the dungeons, they sort drop off from the story. I mean, sure sometimes they show up here and there, but they aren’t really major players in current events. With the way they’re built up, you’d think they’d be more involved with Scarlett’s current shenanigans, helping in the investigation. At least Caithe got some involvement, I suppose.

And I’d actually appreciate them more than the NPCs that are currently being used. I didn’t get to participate in event such as the Tower of Madness, so characters such as Majory as just kinda there. I did really like the bar investigation sequence though, little bits of story really help put come context in. Some sort of primer for people new to the story is appreciated.

Why not have a Destiny’s Edge member at the Marrionete? Or at the bar helping look at evidence? There’s a bunch of characters that we’ve grown to know during the forging of characters, and they’re largely inconsequential to current events. USE THEM!

Though if there’s some thing that’s happening lore wise that they’re busy with, it’d be cool to know. XD The wiki basically just says they drop off the face of the earth more or less after, save Caithe I guess.

Classically, these type of patches are precursors to new expansions/major content releases.

I always remember the pre-Wrath of the Lich King WoW patch, where there was basically a zombie outbreak, to build up the hype for taking to fight to the enemy who had been causing so much chaos.

I THINK that’s what the current living story is going for, what with the ominous hint at something going down at the end of the Origins of Madness trailer and the fact that interviews tend to have devs taking about some big, unprecedented thing going down at the end of Living Story.

I really just withhold judgement of the current living story until I see the payoff. It’s just unfortunate that we don’t have an expansion or major patch we know this is building to. It’s just wild guesses that very well could end in disappointment.

That said, getting more backstory to the increasingly eyebrow-raising amount of power and resources she gets, and the plans she somehow gets away with is GREATLY needed. It’s getting more hard for me to defend lol.

I really think, if they were having issue wiht helping other platforms, the sensible thing to do would be to make majority rules, 3 out of 5 bosses needed to beaten.

At that point, you could actually make the bosses a bit harder, and make it less about the random chance of getting a bad party on one platform and more about, yknow, actual skill.

Eh honestly its a cool little bit of dynamic content.

LOL Though they should make it more clear why it happens XD Ive seen come new people clueless on the chat trying to figure out what happened.

A little message on screen would help.

It’s a bit of a problem lately: lack of conveyance.

Really cool to hear responses from Anet! I was a bit afraid, frankly, than you guys were placing some dubious boss ideas out there, but it’s fair to argue that stuff like this is new territory, and will need tweeking.

I’ve gone from a Marrionete hater to a lover. I still think the lane bosses need some tweaking, if only that having all parties fail if one does pretty much breaks the encounter, making actually beating the thing. But evidentaly there wer some techincal issues, and I can sympathise.

I’d vote for making that aspect a 3/5 majority must beat the boss rather than all 5, or maybe making the Aethercannon charge a bit slower so we can recover from losses more easily.Those seem like technically easier fixes than allowing other group to assist.

I REALLY love the Marrionette though, well done! I just hope we can fix it so it’s actually beatable, rather than a coin flip as to whether the 5 bosses can be beaten.

And the idea of progressivly better loot, even if you don’t beat the boss, is great! Feels like I’m progressing, even if we fail. I love getting the keys and opening the chests at the lair, and the secret lair itself makes me geek out at the cool idea of it. I love hidden areas like that.

The axiom that should be learned should be “don’t overestimate the coopeartion of strangers”. This boss actually works because it’s essectially tower defencce and a boos fight, two things that all players should be familair with, even if they simply spam enemies with DPS.

It breaks when we need all players to have the exact same cooperation and skill, hense the good chance at least one group will fail a champion.

It’s why the Wurm is basically unplayable. It’s expecting too much from random strangers.

Plus, there may be some technical issues. I’ve see some arenas only spawn one or two people, or I’ve gotten into a champion battle only to immediately get killed because I spawned onto the marionette’s attack.

Still, I love this fight! I only criticize because I want it to be even better! I just hope it gets patched a bit so we can enjoy it a lot more!

And more fights like this, with people cooperating in simple defense and boss battle roles works really well. Don’t rely on the gimmicks too much, embrace the DPS-heavy auto-attacking nature of MMOs for these large events, save the more complex stuff for instance, more consolidated and organized play.

lordkrall.7241:

yanipheonu.5798:

I actually get extremely concerned when I see these bosses, not because of poor balancing or something, but because, I have no idea how this boss got past the concept stage.

“So we have a boss where 20 people need to do the exact same thing at the same time”
“What if they’re randoms who have never cooperated before, some of which are lagging, cant see past spell effects and dust clouds, and just dont know what to do due to them being new or just not familiar with the event?”
“Nah, that won’t happen. Just do it. And test it on our top-of-the-line machines only without regard for low-end computers that are sure to participate in MMORPGS.”

It’s CONCEPTUALLY bad. And that’s actually real soured me on the whole game unfortunately. There are people releasing content without thinking about whether it’s a good idea or not.

And after the cool ideas of renown hearts, dynamic events and the consolidated combat system, it feels like a completely different team is doing really bad ideas.

So what you want is basically single champs that can be zerged down without thinking?

There is currently a grand total of TWO of these kinds of fights (Tequatl and Wurm), how many of the hit it until it dies type of fights do we have?
50?
100?
200?

Is it really such an big issue that not every single thing in the game will catered to the extremely casual player? The vast majority of the game will still be fully doable by those players, while on the other hand the players that want real challenges have more or less 2 things to choose from.

I’d agree if this wasn’t an event accessible by every player who happens to be around.

Like, if this was an instanced event, like a WoW Raid Boss back when they were far harder, where a party needs to be highly coordinated to win, whatever. It’s like hearing about people taking down really hard bosses in other MMOs, it’s a cool thing not everyone can participate in, but is a cool challenge for a certain niche.

I totally get that.

It’s just, these are RANDOM STRANGERS. Frankly, having a DPS-fest is one of the only ways you could have that work without expecting far too much coordination from 50 people who have never met or talked to each other.

Especially in an MMO, where, let’s be perfectly honest here, usually comes down to DPSing fast enough before dying. It’s a little weird to complain about that, it’s 90% of the game frankly. Why do you think gear and stats matter so much? This is an RPG, not a platformer or an action game.

Complex strategies involving large parties and large cooperation should be saved for instances where they can play unhindered by randoms. Not for massive parties of randoms who happen to show up.

Frankly, a dps-heavy boss where it’s just a matter of having a massive amount of people with the right gear is cool in its own right, and fits Living World much better.

I actually get extremely concerned when I see these bosses, not because of poor balancing or something, but because, I have no idea how this boss got past the concept stage.

“So we have a boss where 20 people need to do the exact same thing at the same time”
“What if they’re randoms who have never cooperated before, some of which are lagging, cant see past spell effects and dust clouds, and just dont know what to do due to them being new or just not familiar with the event?”
“Nah, that won’t happen. Just do it. And test it on our top-of-the-line machines only without regard for low-end computers that are sure to participate in MMORPGS.”

It’s CONCEPTUALLY bad. And that’s actually real soured me on the whole game unfortunately. There are people releasing content without thinking about whether it’s a good idea or not.

And after the cool ideas of renown hearts, dynamic events and the consolidated combat system, it feels like a completely different team is doing really bad ideas.

Yeesh, they expect groups of random strangers to all this? XD

Man, if I could get people to do that, I’d be in politics, not playing a game.

Disappointment. The cool boss touted as a big deal turns out to be too frustrating to really deal with.

I’ve fought it three time, at this point I’ve more or less figured out we have next to no chance to beat the thing. No one will get the chains off in time. The cannon will charge and kill us. No chance.

Don’t get me started on the Wurm.

These bosses needed better testing and tweaking I think.

Yeah, assuming a huge mass of randoms will be able to do all of this stuff at once is pretty outrageous.

The boss needs to have its
- Cannon charge either be A LOT slower, or reset when you take down a chain, which seems fair.
- Make the portal charge faster, or at least make it more clear how fast it is. Is it on a timer? Does the number of enemies we kill matter?
-Yeah, we need a way to help other zones. All sorts of problems could happen
- Make it more clear how the hell we destroy the chains in the first place. I THINK it has something to do with all 5 groups taking out their guardian, but the game doesn’t tell you.
- MORE TESTING. These problems could easily have been seen by placing unfamiliar testers into the environment.

… I’ll be the first to say it. These new bosses, while ambitious, are far too complex for the way they’ve been presented.

I can dig that complexity of having to do specific steps to take down a boss, but this is when you have 5 – 10 people. Hell, in a dungeon, a boss with a tower defence stage followed by a mini-boss that allows you to break off part of the main boss is really cool.

You can’t make that work with 20+ people, people who are strangers, whose only form of communication are the chat log.

Honestly, if you’re making a boss with 20 – potentailly hundreds of people, any idea of cooperation outside of spamming attacks and heals is the most you can expect.

Think of it this way: get 25 people in a room you don’t know, and ask them to perform a task cooperativly. Now, a simple task, like everyone just bash a box open, should be easy enough. But anything more than that will be tricky to do, hard to coordinate, and highly depends on the luck of having people who will be able to do said task.

That’s also not to speak of the lag people are sure to experience with this many people in one fight.

Now, I can dig that, perhaps, if you get a guild with a good number of people altogether, they’ll do a good job with these bosses. But this seems like an affront to the freedom of being a part of dynamic events in the world.

At this point, the Wurm is basically unplayable, since the idea of having to specifically do something to kill said Wurm is supremely difficult to impart to 20+ strangers. And even as informed players learn the trick, inevitably such large groups of players will include beginners, or people just not familiar with the encounter.

These bosses seem either better suited to a raid-style instance for large parties and guilds, or something to be nerfed and made far simpler. I can complain about individual people’s skills, but if you have mass of people, there’s only so much cooperation you can expect.

Right now it’s just frustrating and feels like a dice roll for whether we can get enough cooperation out of strangers.