Showing Posts For svtdragon.6948:
This makes me extraordinarily angry.
I love everything else about this patch, but it took me a day and a stack of tickets to beat her last time, and I’m not looking forward to that again.
I want to tack on one more thing to the good discussion going on here: TTS is more than willing to teach anyone who wants to learn. We are open to guesting to servers to teach native populations how to win, and we are open to anybody from anywhere joining our community (reopening as of 1 Feb). I have personally invited some commanders from a big guild on TC to run with us so they can learn, and they have done so and taken that knowledge to their guild runs.
Do these events with us. Learn the encounters. Share the knowledge. We’re friendly.
Background: I got to personal reward level 40 (41 maybe?) pre-patch and to the best of my recollection I have somewhere between 300 and 400 fractals completed altogether.
I read the first two pages of the thread, and I agree with many of the posts re: the unnecessary length and difficulty, but also cleverness of the puzzles. One thing I don’t see mentioned much but which also contributes to my intense dislike of this fractal (especially at the end of a run!) is the natural properties of dredge as a class of enemies, which are further compounded by their massive numbers in this setting.
Their perma-protection and the seemingly hit-or-miss nature of projectile reflection of their attacks, coupled with their natural immunity to blindness makes certain classes feel all but useless in the opening puzzle. (As a thief not traited for stealth, my primary survival mechanism is AoE blind with occasional projectile dissipation walls, but I understand that engineers also rely heavily on blindness.)
I will also second the notions of 1) chopping off the final boss fight as a boss fractal on its own, 2) reducing the number of dredge in the clown car, and 3) reworking the hallway (especially the bombs) so that they don’t feel so futile.
We did eventually do it. When a party member gave up, we recruited a mesmer as replacement (which made 3 of us on alt mesmers with low AR) and chained blink-port-blink-port-blink-port to get our guardian to the far side, where he finished the room by interacting with both consoles (via quick removal of the immob from the first).
My party is stuck here because we are all of the wrong class, or our alts of the right classes don’t have enough AR to survive even far enough to perform this workaround, and I can’t buy more without going to Dessa’s lab.
Just another ditto here. I got to 11/13 without tracking them at all. At that point, I really felt like I had done them all. I went to Iron Marches (again) and got 12/13. Since then I’ve written down every map I’ve done, and I’m now certain I’ve done all 13, several upwards of 3 times. If I submit a support ticket for this, is it possible to find out which one I haven’t gotten credit for?
+1 for all of the “dredge fractal takes longer than most of the other fractals combined” posts. And no, this is not a request to make them all longer! Up-to-Rabsovich and post-Rabsovich could almost be two separate fractals, if you added in a little filler. (Frame of reference: my reward level is 39, and my /age is over 1100 hrs of almost all PvE.) Note that it takes too long not just on higher difficulty levels, but all the way down on lv10.
I think it’s reasonable for a fractal run to take 1.5 to 2hrs for a competent team, which puts it on par with most of the other dungeon paths, apart from some of the agonizingly long ones that nobody does except for the Dungeon Master title. But if you’re unlucky enough to land in Dredge as your third fractal, it’s almost worth restarting the whole run just to avoid it (and if it’s the first or second, then it’s definitely worth restarting, which I will be doing until this is somehow rectified).
First, the on-topic part: I feel like instead of detuning the ways that players have adapted to situations, you should encourage and reward creativity. Give us a big sandbox to play in, instead of a maze to run which has One Right Way.
Now, an off-the-wall idea, and a non-sequitur:
You know what would make dungeons more fun, challenging, and accessible? Multiple equally-valid ways to complete them. You might even consider varying the end-of-run loot based on the approach taken. Let players be creative and reward that creativity, and channel the energy that goes into finding exploits into finding creative solutions that are in-bounds.
Maybe it’s just the fact that I started playing GW2 just after putting down Skyrim, but everything I’ve encountered so far is very linear. Everything from dynamic events to dungeons is predictable, and ends the same way every time (but I understand that in many cases this is how it has to be to keep a live, sensible world). However, I think your instanced areas could benefit from a sense of actions with consequences, and since they are instanced, there’s no long-lasting effect on the world to account for. If users want to stealth their way through an encounter, let them try. (An aside: dredge are blind, right? So why does becoming invisible even work?) Maybe a team of 5 thieves can stealth their way to the final boss, but when he gets angry, all the mobs they skipped come rushing in. Maybe elementalists can melt ice impediments, or freeze water into an ice bridge (a la Bioshock); warriors can bust down heavy doors or intimidate enemies; thieves can sneak around enemies to turn said enemies’ traps around on them; mesmers can play mind tricks and turn enemies against one another; rangers can turn surrounding animals against their enemies. I know this concept isn’t really baked into GW2 as-is, but it’s worth considering.
Rob, you said you’d do QA on all of your changes to make sure that players are having the experience you want them to have. I wonder if you are equally concerned about providing the experience that players want to have.
I think the best way to keep players engaged is to give their actions consequences, a la the Elder Scrolls or Fallout or Fable (but on a much smaller, instance-level scale). Dungeons would provide an enclosed area in which to try out that concept. Instead of giving players a series of tasks to complete, give them a goal and let them try to do it on their terms.
(P.S.: As a rough indicator of how much of the content I’ve experienced myself, I have 4 lv80s, one of whom has 100% map complete, and a /age of just under 800 hours. My max fractal level is 20.)