Guild Wars 2

Zomaarwat.3912:

Doobroosh is easiest for this I think, get a lot of hp and condition dmg.

It has to be a third tier competitor

So I’m an Engi trying to get this achievement, but I’ve had no luck so far. I’ve tried a coupe different builds and different bosses and different strategies, but I haven’t been able to pull this off. Does anyone have any tips this?

Thanks!

Well, NCSoft IS a South Korean developer…

This is a phenomenal post! Ridiculously well thought-out, excellently written, and incredibly detailed – especially how your ideas could be executed and implemented. Very well done! Indeed, I’m amazed at the amount of rude, blatantly ignorant, and insulting posts responses that have been posted here. This guy obviously spent a lot of time, energy, and thought on this matter, and it deserves to be treated with the proper amount of respect and consideration – otherwise, you should leave this thread and keep your negativity to yourself.

That being said, Mr. OP, your suggestions will never happen, which is truly sad. Changes so fundamental in nature could have possibly occurred back in beta, but at this stage in release, doing so would require an absurd amount of time, energy, and money to design, test, and implement. Not to mention that ANet is highly proud of their work and unlikely to reimagine it based on a few well-thought-out suggestions for a considerable but largely-ignorable problem.

People who play GW2 now are people who have bought the game, which means that aside from gem purchases, all the possible money from them has already been taken. So if a player buys and plays, but then gets bored and goes elsewhere for a bit, that won’t bother ANet as much as it would bother a subscription-based MMO, as the bird is already in the bag with GW2, so to speak. And the game really does perform well as it is – while it’s unfortunate that all dungeons aside from TA Aether involve identical strategies for completion (alternating between stacking and random chaotic running around/dpsing, or a combination thereof), the game is unique enough to draw new people, and then the whole “got your money already” bit kicks in.

And as people have pointed out, the new Aether path really does show that ANet is finally figuring things out and creating content that actually challenges players within their current system. If they keep releasing such content, then the problem of the lack of a trinity should indeed go away slowly over time.

But I really do appreciate your amazing post on this – quite honestly, I think a GW2 system designed from the ground up would be a fantastic gameplay experience – perhaps you should consider working for a game developer someday.

So the Dragons have been slowly awakening for a while, and while they recover from their hibernation and grow in strength, they use their minions to slowly feed them and boost their power, they make random joy flights across the land, and they use Champions to spread misery, death, and slavery in Tyria.

However, they seem to be ignoring their most potent, their most deadly, their most devastating attack available to them – HUGS!!!! Dun dun duhhhh! Confused? Keep reading on – I promise it’ll make more sense.

So in the Battle for Claw Island (SPOILERS APPROACHING, CAPTAIN!), a Tequatl-like dragon minion crashes into the reputably-invincible walls and shatters them.
In the battle against Tequatl the Sunless, Tequatl crashes into a mountain and half obliterates it.
In the battle against The Shatterer, when shot down by good-guy cannons, The Shatterer carooms into the ground and insta-kills anyone unfortunate enough (or rather, if you’re an achievement hunter, change that to “super fortunate enough”) to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the last dungeon, in the battle against Zhaitan, he crashes into the mega Pact airship and blows most of it away without sustaining any damage.

So Dragons and Dragon-like minions/Champions are obviously capable of inflicting incredible amounts of damage simply through hugging hostile objects, so why don’t they just go around loving on the people of Tyria? Like, they could pop down into the midst of The Black Citadel, Lions Arch, Divinity’s Reach, Ebonhawke, etc., roll around like a joyful puppy dog, and in one fell swoop, have annihilated most of an entire Tyrian race. Or, as seen in the last dungeon, there are countless Tequatl-like minions/Champions goofing around in the sky, so why doesn’t Zhaitan just order them to go crashing to the Pact cities and fortresses like living, precision-guided missiles of death?

So what do you think? Poor world-building/plot conception? Just another plot-hole? Or perhaps a deliberate mystery perpetrated by ArenaNet?

Gizmo.9178:

Weapons do scale a lil I think and I make the tallest asura I can all the time. I never cared about weapon size.

Did you make tall Asura just because you prefer it that way? Or due to the concerns I mentioned?

Hello! I have two questions real quick – first of all, while I know armor scales with the player’s model’s height (like, a short Asura vs a tall Asura), but does the same go for weapons? Like, will a taller Asura have a larger greatsword than a shorter Asura?

Secondly, for those who play Asura characters, do you feel it’s best to make your character the biggest it can be? Like, do you feel the weapons/armors are too small if you make your Asura smaller? Or do you feel it’s just fine?

Thanks!
From the concerned owner of two brand new Asura characters…

First of all, I wanna say that I absolutely LOVE SAB and, surprisingly, Trib mode. Yes, I bought an Infinite Continue Coin, but I recognized that I was supporting all of the work that went into this recent release by doing so, and as such, I didn’t really mind dropping the cash for it. Trib mode is fantastic – the insane learning curve means that the weapon skins will almost always be really rare, and I’ve enjoyed soloing it every day since it’s been out so I can add all of the Trib weapon skins to my pvp locker.

As it is, though, there are two things that need improvement with Trib mode. One would be the movable boxes in W2Z2 – they have a very, very picky hit-box for moving them with the hand thingy, and this can make it absurdly difficult for when you’re trying to rush to avoid a Trib Cloud and push boxes around.

Which brings me to my next point – Trib Clouds should be axed from SAB and Trib mode completely. They’re utterly useless, they don’t add any depth to the game, and they serve purely as a luck factor that has made me feel like smashing my keyboard numerous times. They have funky AI that sometimes causes them to pursue me relentlessly, while at other times they barely acknowledge my presence. Most of the time, they spam their op and usually mostly-unavoidable attacks, but again, because of the randomness of their behavior, their influence in Trib mode is almost completely a luck factor. So yeah, they just cause frustration, and they don’t enrich the experience in any way, so I’d cut them out and figure out something else to make their areas difficult.

Also, don’t have it within Trib Cloud programming to get between you and a push box. That’s like a combination of awful, as the hard-to-hit box becomes impossible-to-hit when the Trib Cloud gets in the way, as your push is interpreted as an attack on the Trib Cloud instead of a push toward the box. This is also super frustrating.

But again, I love Trib Mode – I love SAB – please keep up the awesome, outside-the-box thinking work!

Calmwinds.4753:

Would love to see more Liadri and Aetherblade dungeon type achievements! Give us more achievements that people actually need skills to do rather than grind.

I would love to see more Challenging content too! I really hope they keep up this trend – boss fights like Liadri are really difficult in a good way, and I did notice that after I had beaten her, I was a better player for it. I just hope they listen to their playerbase and get rid of all the unnecessary burdens and design flaws and glitches that plagued this release.

Also, what many people fail to understand is that this is a forum dedicated to discussing the Queen’s Jubilee content, and that player feedback is highly critical to the future development of good content. So the whole “you should have given up instead of complaining here” or “it’s your fault for playing” argument really, really is invalid. I played the content – I chose to do so, yes – and now I’m here giving my feedback. I’m illuminating how Queen’s Gauntlet went wrong, and I’d say most of the playerbase on this forum agrees with me. So please, give your opinions on the content, but don’t do the whole “you don’t have to play it” silliness. It’s just bad logic – it really has nothing to do with the purpose of this thread and this forum.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No, I think you and this whole thread is missing the point.

Since I wrote the thread, I don’t think it’s possible for it and me to miss the point I’m making.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) Don’t do it. If the content is too hard for you, move on. Remember, the QG was made specifically so that only the best players would win. You could even say that Anet purposely made it so that a vast majority of players would fail. The content is really hard, because it was made that way

It was too hard. I got better and beat it. Unnecessary Punishment is unnecessary. ’Nuff said.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

2) Don’t fail. If you don’t like to constantly WP and run back, make sure you learn from your mistakes, and from watching others play, and beat the boss(es). If you keep failing, just make sure the next time you play you don’t fail.

Again, I sunk 50g and 45 hours into this. I changed my build over two dozen times, watched dozens of videos, read over a dozen guides, and watched hundreds of players take the Queen’s Gauntlet in general and Liadri in particular (without success with Liadri, by the way – I’ve never seen someone beat her, outside of videos on youtube). Which is why I beat it. But after putting up with the unnecessary Punishments. Which aren’t necessary. Because they’re unnecessary. Which is my point. Comprende?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

So that is the truth? You’re only gauging it in monetary value. You’re telling me that you have not gained anything of value besides money. To me, there’s no way you’d beat Liandri if you did not gain anything of value. Did you just sink that 50g or you have it exchanged for something of equal value?
Are you honestly telling me that the reason why you want something “challenging” is so that you can gain monetary value?
That’s like saying, “I spent $100 for Disneyland ticket and all I got is this lousy T-shirt.” Seriously? Honestly?

You mentioned breaking even – I assumed you meant fiscally. And yes, I did sink that 50g just so I could beat her. I wanted the satisfaction. So yes, in a way, I did gain satisfaction, but this argument you’ve brought up is a straw man fallacy and isn’t getting us anywhere.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You implied it when you stated that it took you 300 tries and 20-30 hours. To a typical casual player, that’s the definition of grinding.
Like I said, you’re not being honest here.

I see where you’re going, but you’re wrong. I wanted the Challenge, and I wanted to beat the Challenge. I didn’t want all the extra padding (or Punishment) in the way that prevented me from attempting the Challenge and getting better.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

A lot of your points are all part of GW2 and not exclusive to QG, thus your points are not being honest because you’re using the problems found in GW2 as a whole to put QG in a different light. If you eliminate the points that is not exclusively related to QG, you’re basically only complaining about ONE thing, that it the ticket cost.

Not really. Read this part again:

But they’ve either A.) Never been such a huge problem as in the game, or B.) Never been part of a minigame before. Again, games such as Belcher’s Bluff, Aspect Arena, Southsun Survival, Keg Brawl, and others never charged you tickets to play them, nor did they require you to be resurrected after defeat, nor did they damage your armor, nor did they tack on waypoint charges, etc.

That is what I’m “complaining” about.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

A) My point is; those are already part of the game and using them to lengthen your list shows that you’re only really complaining about ONE things; the ticket cost.
B) A lot of those mini games are PvP and BB is instanced, neither condition is similar to QG.

A) Not at all. Read what I just quoted above again – I don’t think you understand the nature of what I’m trying to say.
B) But they could have been similar, if ArenaNet had simply chosen to make them similar. All the Punishments I listed weren’t necessary. Queen’s Gauntlet would have been incredibly better without them.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

These are completely different matters that every forum have been complaining about. These are not exclusive to QG.

But they’re illuminated by Queen’s Gauntlet, so I include them in my feedback post.

Calae.1738:

Once the risk is removed the sense of accomplishment is diminished. If it cost nothing to get in the gauntlet and you spawned right next to the ringmaster with full HP after failing; the achievement will feel empty. Just like whacking down trees in the gathering dailies. It’s just an item on your laundry list.

For you, perhaps. For myself and the majority of people on this forum, definitely not. Had I respawned just as you said, and then finally beaten Liadri after 300 attempts, I would have been way more happy and thrilled than when I finally did beat her and realized I was 50g the poorer for it. I would have felt just as accomplished. Because I don’t like stressful, grindy, unnecessary padding that only serves to get between me and the game I wish to play.

Calae.1738:

I find it unfortunate that punishment for failure is so ill received.
We’ve been groomed by developers for over a decade by easy video games. These developers do everything in their power to remove frustration, inconveniences and punishment for failure. They go out of their way to shower their player base with rewards and gifts just for logging in and participating.
It was expected for casual players to react this way. I would have hoped that it would spark an appeal but; trying to reverse 10 years of behavioral conditioning is not going to be easy.

Calae, I think you are substantially missing the point here. The point is not in the difficulty, but in the unnecessary Punishments that weigh it down. The first game I ever played was Civilization 1 – and I beat it at age 7 by memorizing the manual. Did the same for Colonization 1. Went back and bought text-only games and beat those too. From there on, I always played any game I purchased at the toughest difficulty with the toughest bonus objectives. Difficulty is not a problem – indeed, I relish it. Making me spend 50g across 45 hours on a minigame (with 30 of those hours spent on Liadri), though, is ridiculous, and from reading the other threads, many, many other people have spent similar amounts of time on the Queen’s Gauntlet and on Liadri.

While the hours spent fighting don’t count, the hours spent dead and waiting for a rez, or running back from a waypoint, or farming mobs for rare ticket drops and money to keep playing are totally unnecessary. In the case of this game, all of that time could have been spent bettering myself or actually fighting in the Gauntlet. Indeed, adding financial and ticket restricts only serves to pad out the minimal content, which is bad game design. The content itself should be what supports the game – not the miscellaneous and unnecessary Punishment.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The so-called-“punishing” is rather “cumbersome”. I wouldn’t describe it as punishing because if you look closely at the cost/reward, it’s practically even.

Again, I spent over 50g on this, and I made back 1 loot bag per win. That’s not breaking even at all.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

As for the “grind” feel for repeatedly attempting to clear the gauntlet, this is the kind of punishment you impose upon yourself. Like people complaining about bashing 150 dragon pinata, they failed to see that it has to be done throughout the event, not in one day. So the question is, why are you punishing yourself?

I never complained about this, so I don’t know why you’re bringing it up.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I understand where the OP is coming from and I sympathize with him, however, the whole post is somewhat dishonest.
All the OP’s “Challenging IS NOT…” point would not have been made if he had an honest perspective making honest comments and opinion.

I fail to see how the valid points I made are dishonest in any way.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Waypoint cost, waypoint blocked due to events, broken armor, awful camera, queue, positioning, etc. are all part of GW2 where ever you go — why is this any surprise?

But they’ve either A.) Never been such a huge problem as in the game, or B.) Never been part of a minigame before. Again, games such as Belcher’s Bluff, Aspect Arena, Southsun Survival, Keg Brawl, and others never charged you tickets to play them, nor did they require you to be resurrected after defeat, nor did they damage your armor, nor did they tack on waypoint charges, etc.

Besides, just because something has been a problem in the past (aka bad camera) doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable now. If anything, it merely highlights the necessity of changes and questions why ArenaNet has yet to fix problems that have existed for so long.

shimmerless.4560:

I think a lot of people playing GW2 would have an aneurysm if they were raised on SNES/Genesis games where everything was a OHKO and if you didn’t make leaps of faith you’d restart the entire game lol

I grew up in that generation – with the Gauntlet, the problem isn’t with restarting or being forced back to a certain point, it’s with the fees and annoyances that are an unnecessary burden to it.

I ended up beating Liadri today. Over 300 tickets spent, and it turned out to be as simple as purchasing gear with more toughness. All the while, the unnecessary annoyances and punishments just dragged it down. They simply aren’t necessary, and they detract from what could have been an amazing content addition full of great challenges.

Lue, I apologize for sounding irritated toward you. You are entitled to your own opinions and thoughts, and getting upset toward you was incorrect of me. I still believe you’re wrong, but I do appreciate the time you’ve spent responding with your own feedback to this post.

Aye.8392:

You are spot on OP. Like you I want to be challenged. Like you I don’t want to be punished because it takes time for me to rise to the challenge. I want the freedom to try, try again, until I am successful. This setup discourages people who want to rise to the task — the punishment in the forms of TIME (this is huge) and in-game currency outweigh any sense of accomplishment gained.

That’s something I hadn’t mentioned too – for someone like me, it takes time and lots of repeated, continuous attempts to master something like this. When I have to wait, or spend time grinding and farming, or get some money so I can afford tickets, it takes up the available free time I have to enjoy this minigame. Furthermore, it makes it hard for me to learn the skills necessary, as my attention and energy are also being spent on a number of other things. Eliminating the Punishment of the Gauntlet would not only have the effect of making it more fun for most players, but it would also allow for said players to become better at the game. And that is something that ArenaNet also desires.

Lue, I’m going to address your arguments one at a time.

Lue.6538:

First of all: Hes complaining about pretty much everything not being challenging but rather being “punishing”, the fact that GW2 has almost nothing that actually “punishes” you is something hes neglecting entirely.

Um, I actually had a list of Punishments concerning the Queen’s Gauntlet. I’d suggest you go and read them carefully, without your tinted lenses on.

Lue.6538:

Second: He may claim he do, but having seen his comments in this thread, I’m going to say no, he doesn’t want challenging, he wants to reduce the difficulty by removing the penalty of just mindlessly zerging the gauntlet without observing the fights.

Reducing penalty does not equate to diminishing the Challenge. Rather, it provides unobstructed access to to the Challenge without all the gunk in the middle that limits and blocks access.

Lue.6538:

Third: The longest queue I’ve had yet is roughly 1½-2minutes which in my view is perfectly acceptable, the waypoint is a swing and miss however, theres no reason there couldnt have been a waypoint in the center upstairs with connecting bridges to each of the domes.

I’m glad that you’ve had such good luck with queue times – I personally get queue-robbed a bunch. Or, even worse, I wait to queue so that I can resurrect someone, and then the person I resurrected hops up and quickly queues before me. So I’m happy for you, but unfortunately, your consistently good experiences do not match up with mine.

Lue.6538:

Furthermore he is basing his entire claim on that noone finds this content fun, which is flat out false, he also makes up his very own statistics to back up his statements and that provides completely flawed data and as such messes up the actual information that COULD be used as feedback.

The statistic was just a quip, but you’re right, I deleted it – it didn’t add anything to the post. And I never said that nobody found the Gauntlet fun, although I did do a lot of reading on this forum beforehand to I could see if anyone else agreed with me – and finding that the majority of people did at least to some degree was not surprising to me. Instead, I simply said that Punishment isn’t fun, but I would indeed have to take that back, as several players now have come and said that they enjoy Punishment. So then, I would have to maintain instead that Punishment is against the original design mandate of ArenaNet, and it was what first drew me to GW2 back in March 2007.

Lue.6538:

This isn’t feedback, its another “nerf the gauntlet” topic masqueraded as one.

This is entirely untrue, and is very slandering on your part. Actually, my whole point can be summed up by what Wethospu said:

Wethospu.6437:

The point is that you could be in an instance with unlimited tries and no repair costs and it would take exactly same amount of skill to complete as getting your account deleted whenever you lost.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

I never said that either. I said “wider variety” not “all.” But it seems I misunderstood the point you were trying to make and will admit that some of the punishment could be alleviated, but I don’t agree with removing all “punishment.” I don’t find requiring tickets to be a form of punishment. I think the regular costs of defeat in battle should apply to defeat in the arena. I might be inclined to believe waypoint cost should be 0 copper since it is technically still inside a town, and/or there should be a waypoint at each dome.

At any rate, I don’t think that one temporal feature is indicative of the developers turning away from the philosophy of the game as a whole. I think there’s a time and place for punishing mechanics, and an arena setting is one of those.

Those are fair points – I appreciate your feedback and thoughts on this.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

And I’m saying that not ignoring that small portion of players is one of the aims of that philosophy.

They never said that they’d appeal to players who enjoy punishment. For that matter, they never said they’d appeal to every single player group out there (such a claim on their part would be both absurd and impossible to fulfill). Their philosophy was rooted along the lines of minimizing punishment and maximizing the normal player’s perception of fun. There’s plenty of development updates while GW2 was still being created that stated and indicated this. And in this case, while Liadri is getting praise, the glitches and bad designs concerning the Queen’s Gauntlet are not.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

You’re ignoring the fact that a universal concept of fun DOES NOT EXIST. To other players, being punished for failure is only fair, and makes overcoming an especially difficult challenge all the more satisfying. That’s fun to them, not fun to you… I would hope you understand that appealing to a wider variety of tastes is better than isolating a single like-minded audience. Because if ANet did that, we’d either have only PvE or only PvP / WvW, not both.

I’m speaking about ArenaNet’s original design philosophy – you’re talking about the personal preferences of a very small portion of GW2 players.

Calae.1738:

Well as a gamer who enjoys being severely punished for failure I welcome this content. Even if they removed all the rewards and just provided goofy titles I would still do it.

In a game where 99.9% of the content is made for players like yourselves; it feels nice to know that Arenanet acknowledges my presence and designs a little something for players like me.

If you tell me to go play another game and that GW2 is not for me; well you can go do the following… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXdTdaeSr0

You’re right; I don’t enjoy punishment while I do enjoy having fun, which is why I want to enjoy Guild Wars 2, as the developers originally shared my opinions about minimizing punishment and maximizing fun. I also do want challenges, however, which is why I want Liadri to remain unnerfed – I just want all the mistakes and glitches to be fixed.

Calae.1738:

Failure has little meaning when you don’t lose something valuable.

In video games this always translates to time. In most cases you only lose time relative to potential gain. In other more extreme cases; invested and banked time is literally taken away from you.

This gauntlet does a little bit of both.

You have to run back when you die and spend some coin for repairs and tickets. This shouldn’t be a new concept to anyone. World of Warcraft mastered this quite well with raids. Only difference here is that you don’t need 9 other players to do the content.

This is true, but again, it’s against the original ArenaNet/Guild Wars 2 design philosophy. The game was literally built around the concept of fun, and it was stated numerous times during the game’s development that if something wasn’t fun or didn’t add to the fun, it was removed. This is why global cooldowns were eliminated, it’s why spawn camping was done away with, it’s why long-distance travel was reduced to teleports rather than actual time-wasting beasts/mounts (as seen in WOW and SWTOR). It’s how the original concept of dynamic combat came about, it’s the reason why armor damage doesn’t cost much when paid for on occasion, it’s why the auction house was so well done, it’s the reason why energy was removed from the game, it’s the reason why health and energy potions were similarly discarded, and it’s the drive behind a lot more of this game’s specific and unique features. Even more so, it’s why Guild Wars 2, like Guild Wars 1, is Free-To-Play – because requiring continuous payment for entertainment is not enjoyable; rather, it’s stressful.

Simply put, Punishment detracts from fun, and in a lot of instances, Punishment was removed to allow for more fun. In the Queen’s Gauntlet, however, it seems that ArenaNet dropped the ball on their own design philosophy – it seems they’ve forgotten what they originally stood for.

Calae.1738:

Spoken like true casual gamers.

No punishment and no risk means your achievements are empty. Just like the daily gathering achievement. Just another one of those laundry list of boring things to do.

Not at all, because Liadri is still CHALLENGING. The Punishment is just unnecessary, and what’s more is that it’s directly against the design philosophy that ArenaNet preached endlessly during GW2’s development.

Lue.6538:

yearsonehundred.6139:

If I had to wager a made up statistic (yeah, I know how lame those are, but bear with me), I’d say that it’s 25% or less Challenging, and 75% or more Punishing.

This really summed up your post in a fabulous manner.

Also, fun is subjective, you didn’t enjoy it, I did. I didn’t enjoy the zergfest downstairs tho, but maybe you did?

I know you’re not supposed to feed the trolls, but I’m going to indulge anyways.

If I had said that there was more Punishment than Challenges and left it at that, then yes, that quoted line would have been a good summary. But instead, I listed out each and every Punishment, so my points were clear and emphasized.

As for fun, I doubt anyone would say spending vast amounts of money on a minigame when it could easily have been made free-to-play is fun. If you do think it’s fun, you are either A) Seriously messed up, Lying, or C) Way too rich for your own good. If you asked anyone who plays a subscription-based MMO which is more fun; Paying for the game or Playing the game, they would probably give you a weird look and then state that they obviously enjoy playing the game rather than paying for it. Similarly, all the leeching aspects of Queen’s Gauntlet are unnecessary for enjoyment of the game, and indeed hinder the fun instead.

keenlam.4753:

I think the camera is intended by design to give you a feel that you’re in a confined space and thus need to be more aware of the surroundings.

Perhaps, but you could be easily and just as aware of your surroundings by having an open camera. Given that Liadri hits first a quarter of the map, and then, later, half the map every few seconds, combined with her condition-inducing attacks and the walking shadow bombs means that you must be VERY aware of your surroundings just to survive. So, personally, I don’t think the tight camera of the dome is necessary at all.

keenlam.4753:

As for the queue time, i enjoy watching others fight and helping them (or getting helped) while waiting for my turn. I’ve made some good friends through those little chit-chat while waiting.

Yeah, I feel you here, but an easy fix would be to have separate instances, yet allow for a spectator mode for those in your party. This would allow, for example, guilds to cheer on a member going for Light Up The Darkness while still allowing for a lag-free experience.

Wow, this is fantastic. +1 well deserved!

It’s true; I’ve done high-end raids and I’ve played tough single player games, and nothing comes close to the difficulty demanded by Liadri. Am I turned off by that? Not at all. I just wish some of the Punishments associated with her and with Queen’s Gauntlet in general would be removed. But as it is, she is very, very tough – along with the OP, she is the toughest fight I’ve ever done.

Here’s a great example of something being Challenging without being Punishing. I just recently picked up Darksiders 2, and right off the bat, there is a boss that you can tackle at level 2 if you want to, even though he’s meant to be beaten at level 5-7. He’s fast, he has a lot of health (especially if you’re level 2, as you have no dmg to your name whatsoever), and he one-shots you if mess up even slightly. For over two hours, I persisted in trying to beat him simply because I enjoyed the Challenge. I yelled, I grabbed at my hair, I even punched the table occasionally ‘cause it was so difficult or I’d die right at the last moment. I even considered quitting and beating him at the right level, but I persisted BECAUSE it wasn’t Punishing. When I lost, I didn’t lose items, I didn’t lose money, and I respawned right in front of him with full health. So I’d throw myself at him again and again and again and die again and again and again, pushing through the Frustration, until I finally did it. And when I did beat him, I felt great, as I knew that I’d done it through learning and through skill. And I felt great ‘cause there hadn’t been a single ounce of Punishment in that encounter. It was all pure Challenge.

Gambit.8425:

The things you don’t like add to the mental frustration thus making QG “more challenging” for a helluva lot of people by looking at this forum. WP cost 1s? if you dont get a rez. And I at least have plenty of those repair canisters from the AP chests.

I’m glad you’re rich and established in this game. Some of us are new and don’t have the financial reserves and special items you own.

Gambit.8425:

And what was the learning curve in Southsun Survival other then run away early and gather passion fruits, scavenge a remote location and then prey on the hungry? Which of most seemed to be there only to finish the games played achievement. Also without our chosen professions, traits, armor and weapons like all the other previous mini-games.

I’m not entirely getting your point here, especially in the latter half of your post. If you’re saying that you found Southsun Survival to be easy, kudos to you. I, for one, did not, and it took me hours to get used to it and slowly overcome the difficulty curve. Such as what works better in different circumstances, how to refine dodging, utilizing precise timing for various skills, etc. Maybe you had these abilities down pat from the get-go, but I had to learn them through hard work and practice.

Gambit.8425:

I personally skipped the score achievement. Not because I was bad, but I just found it too boring to waste that much time doing it. There’s AP I will never get, but I didn’t come here crying about it. I thought the wait between rounds and the intro in SC survival worse than queue’s in QG. Clearly ANET can’t cater everything for everyone, and what some find fun others don’t.

Again, as I’ve said before, player feedback is vital for the health of a game – and especially so and even more so in an MMO. While I find it interesting that you found the 30 second downtime between rounds in Southsun Survival to be less wasteful than the 2-8 minute (in my personal experiences) wait times between rounds in Queen’s Gauntlet (and that was with me dodging all arenas that had more than 2 people lined up at a time), I feel that this is highly indicative of your own personal preferences and feelings, and not a reflection on the opinions of most of the playerbase (especially if posts in this topic and in the rest of this forum are any indication).

Gambit.8425:

I agree that some mechanics in QG like the constant cripple if you don’t time the dodge right and the jerky camera isn’t much fun, but seriously, the thing is easy to complete. Literally everything has already been done and documented, all you have to do is invest a few minutes in a guide so you can follow it the exact same way. If you are good at SC survival this should be cakewalk. Players>Mechanics, every time.

Again, I’m glad you’re so 1337 that you found it so easy. Personally, I’ve invested upwards of 12 hours trying to beat Liadri alone, and putting in serious effort into half a dozen guides and engineer builds, while trying out another half dozen. I’ve used up 23 gold so far, and that’s because half the times I buy the tickets, and the other half I spend farming and grinding mindlessly for them. And, if you read my post thoroughly, you’d see that I don’t mind the constant cripple – that’s a Challenge thing. The bad camera angles is a Punishment thing, as well as all the other unnecessary bad designs and glitches that drain the fun from this minigame.

Gambit.8425:

The more posts I read here, the more I believe ANET put the bar just right with the gauntlet. It’s not meant to be done by the “casuals” that doesn’t put any effort in finding a suitable build or armor other than with MF. Now that I think of it, all the moaners here are probably the same people everyone dread to have in their dungeon pug. Hopefully some of them will improve after this experience.

Again, the Challenge isn’t the problem. It’s the Punishment that needs to be fixed. If not everyone can complete a Challenge, that’s fine – good, even, as it adds some levels of prestige to aspects of the game. But if game design is overtly and unnecessarily sadistic, then it should be fixed so that players can enjoy (even frustratingly so) the gameplay.

Tenoh.2305:

Yup, with OP on 100% on this!… when you cant even roll out of bosses aoe attacks and it kills you on the spot,thats just anet getting off on punishing ppl.

Honestly, an aoe-insta-kill isn’t a punishment, it’s a challenge. Where the punishment comes about is that you already spent a ticket to get into the match, you waited in queue, and then one aoe comes along and you can’t dodge, which makes you take armor damage, wait for a res or go to a waypoint, and have to pay another ticket and wait in queue to try again. And if you don’t have much time on your hands or don’t have a machine that can run the game 100% lag free, this will severely limit what you physically can and cannot do in the game.

laokoko.7403:

yearsonehundred.6139:

and for goodness sake, put in a title for those amazing, poor souls spend the mindblowing amount of time necessary to get the 8 orb achievement with her, but other than that, make it a free game.

and i’m pretty sure people will complain they can’t get a title.

You really have to remove all the reward or make a easy mode so everyone can get it.

See, I’m totally fine with difficulty, and I’m totally fine with not everyone being able to do everything. Just don’t fill it with needless and infuriating punishment. Other than that, make things as difficult as you want – challenging content is always a good thing.

laokoko.7403:

I think the problem is in the reward. The whole ticket, gambit, economy, farming, Risk vs reward thing.

If the event isn’t so closely tied up to the economy and reward, they’ll probably remove the punishing(investing) factor.

You know, I really wouldn’t mind it if they removed all the fiscal rewards from these bosses. I mean, keep the pet for beating Liadri, and for goodness sake, put in a title for those amazing, poor souls spend the mindblowing amount of time necessary to get the 8 orb achievement with her, but other than that, make it a free game. Make the incentives the satisfaction of beating the various tiers, and remove the risk of farming lesser bosses. This would negate the need, as you said, for tickets, and would make everything a lot more fun. Or, even better, give a one-time fiscal reward for each boss, and then let that be that.

laokoko.7403:

let it go. You are describing what you personally felt.
I find jumping puzzle punishing too. I just don’t do it.

And player feedback is absolutely vital in fixing current problems in content and in creating new, fun content for the future.

laokoko.7403:

Do people realize you don’t even need to do it?

There “are” people who enjoy it. Let them have their fun.

If you are not having fun, don’t do it. I don’t enjoy wvw and jumping puzzle too, I didn’t ask Anet to remove that from the game.

If Anet want a real suggestion, make an easy mode. To appease to the more casual player. Keep the hard mode since there are obviously people who enjoy it by the feedback.

If you thoroughly read my post, you’d see that I have no problem with something that “hard”, “difficult”, or “challenging”. I merely dislike punishing aspects, and I’ve listed out all of the ones I could think of in the OP. These are things like glitches, punishments, and bad designs that should/need to be remedied.