4701

Just wanted to say thanks to all the tips so far. I’ll take them back to the group and we’ll see if things change at all. That’s assuming, of course, that I can get my wife back into a dungeon at all. She’s really been leaning in instant0’s direction, and thinking about bailing on them entirely.

I will say, as design decisions go, that I am frequently surprised that Story mode isn’t easier. I’m not asking for stuff to just hand over loot at the beginning of a dungeon as soon as you walk in, but I would think that, given that the point of Story mode is to, well, tell the story of the place, that it would be a bit more accessible. I could understand the difficulty a bit more in the absence of the Explore modes, but with them I think I would let Explore mode be that thing players do for 5-man challenges, and let Story mode be more forgiving.

Part of the problem is the 5-man dungeons are really the first place most folks will go where they need to start working as a group, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to cut them a little slack in the first tier of difficulty. If you’re not going to make Story mode the introduction mode, then they should have at least made the first few dungeons ramp up in difficulty, so running AC and CM aren’t such a shock.

It looks like there’s 8 dungeons in the game at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 76, 78, and 80. It would not really have hurt the game so much for it to ramp Story mode difficulty up through that range. I’d still argue that the alternative (easier Story mode, challenging Explores) is better so more people can experience the story, but at the least let me get my feet wet so I don’t end up dying 20 times through the course of AC.

I also think intentionally omitting a LFG/dungeon tool in this day and age is particularly ignorant. You can certainly make an argument for it not being cross-server (such a restriction seems silly in a game that’s trying to knock down server barriers), but players have pretty much spoken out through several games now…it’s not fun to stand in [insert common zone] and shout out LFG until someone responds. It’s a huge speed bump that keeps people from doing what they want to do…play the game.

I’d also give the ArenaNet team a pass on this one for now if they’d simply come out and said “we want to do it, but haven’t had time yet.” But instead the last thing I saw was a dev saying that the lack of a proper dungeon LFG tool was an intentionally design decision, and they had no plans to add one.

The concept of the orbs, being an item that each server started with, and was desirable to hold, isn’t bad. It makes certain objectives more attractive, both from an offensive and defensive perspective, and made for some daring, high-tension raids (until the hacking started).

The buff they provided, on the other hand, was very poorly thought out. Making the powerful side more powerful, just ended up in some incredibly lopsided matches. I’m not sure the results of the matches would have changed that much as a lot of this was going on during realm balancing (which itself won’t be done until free transfers are stopped), but it would have at least removed one of the major disincentives of WvW, seeing another team up and holding the three orbs. It shouldn’t be that hard to come up with a different buff (karma/XP/coin) that would still make the orbs attractive targets, without unbalancing the game further. Of course that does nothing to prevent or discourage hacking the orbs.

4702

Gedd, I started to write a response but then I stopped and deleted it. I simply don’t know how to put it nicely without offending anyone. :) The more I tried to explain my point of view, the more offensive it sounded.

So please don’t take any offense in what I say!

In WoW or other MMOs, one could always pick an easier role (dps) or gain some levels/gear to compensate for the level of personal skill one possessed. And even then WoW’s instances went through multiple cycles of balancing. The most common complaint I seem to remember was that instances in WoW are too easy/dumbed down.

It’s even harder to balance GW2 dungeons as they require a great deal of personal skill due to a lot of things - twitchiness of the combat, downscaling, lack of tank/agro/healer mechanic (which means everyone in the group has to be on top of their game, can’t just stand and dps here), etc.

Yes, dungeons could be made easier but, unless they make them completely trivial, there always will be people thinking that they are too hard.

It basically comes down to learn2play and perseverance. :) Nothing else can be done, really - everyone in the group needs to play better.

If you are saying, difficulty should have ramped up from one dungeon to the next, would it make much difference if you’d get stuck in second or third dungeon? Besides, IMO they do rump up, TA is harder than CM, SE is harder than TA, etc. So they do ramp up, just not from the point you would like them to. :)

If you are saying Story mode should be easier than Explore, don’t worry it is in most cases. :)

GW2 dungeons are very different from other MMOs, it can be difficult to adjust but they are certainly doable. Everyone used to complain about difficulty in the beginning, now most people completed all of the dungeons in all modes and a lot of guilds/groups farm dungeons by doing speed runs, etc.

Just keep at it!

As for the LFG tool, it’s a mystery to me. How can any MMO nowadays release without LFG tool is beyond me. How can anyone say that it is a design decision, I don’t know. It’s just stupid.

4703

There is a LFG tool, it’s just hidden (under contacts), never explained, and no one uses it. I also think it’s limited to your current zone.

4704

Not offended at all. We just have a bit of a difference of opinion on the dungeons and how they’re implemented. I know I can become a better GW player because of the challenge, but there are some people that I play with that might give up on dungeons because the learning curve starts high instead of gradually ramping up at the start.

WoW’s dungeon difficulty is a different matter. There have certainly been times in WoW’s history when the 5-mans have been generally been considered easy (WotLK namely), and when they’ve been considered pretty hard (TBC heroics, Cataclysm heroics at release).

LFG is sometimes used interchangeably with Dungeon Matchmaker, namely because that’s what WoW called it. I think, for the most part, we’re all talking about a missing Dungeon Matchmaker, not an LFG tool in the purest sense of the word. The LFG tool in GW2 is really so poorly implemented that it really shouldn’t even be considered a tool at all. I really wonder why they implemented it all as it’s missing even the barest essentials (like what you’re looking for a group for) that would make it useful.

4705

While I am personally okay with there being no LFG tool in GW2, I do believe they should have implemented one simply because everyone expects that these days. I think the main reason they didn’t implement one is that they probably felt it was not needed. There are no set “roles” that have to be filled. You can take any five people of high enough level and run a dungeon. It’s that simple. You can already teleport to the entrance of any dungeon (assuming you’ve tagged the waypoint already) from anywhere in the world. Getting a dungeon group should literally be as easy as saying in chat (in someplace like Lion’s Arch where there are plenty of appropriately leveled people), “Hey, who wants to do a dungeon.”

The reality is that it doesn’t work that way. So, yes, I would like to think that they will add one at some point.

4706

Speaking of dungeons, I’d really like to run some, and the QT3 guild chat is awfully quiet. I think I’m too tired for an expedition tonight, so maybe usurp the usual Tuesday night WvWvW schindig? Anyone willing to play guide?

4707

I am not sure why you are saying it doesn’t work that way. In my experience it works exactly like that. There are at least three problems I see with this though:

  • You have to be in LA, actively chatting, can’t do anything else while waiting for a group to form. If you are not in LA, you won’t be able to initiate or join a group because you simply won’t know about it.
  • You can’t find any people from other servers this way because there is no cross server chat. You can do dungeons with people from other servers if you already know them and communicate using /whisper (I think /whisper works across servers) but you can’t find strangers.
  • There are pretty much 33 dungeons in the game and sometimes there are not enough people currently in LA on your server that want to run the particular one you are after.

I haven’t really had any problems forming any groups so far but it always take at least 5-10 minutes chatting with strangers and reading the stupidest /map chat in LA and that’s something I would gladly avoid.

And it’s going to get worse over time.

My friends and I are usually running dungeons on Mon, Wed and Fri at around 10:30 EST. And I always ask the guild if anyone wants to join (and often guildies do join and we have some awesome runs, usually much better than with some random strangers). So if you are on around those times, youa re more than welcome to join us. I am Hedinn in the game with various characters with names always starting with “Hed” :)

Not sure about today though, there seems to be some special event in World of Tanks and we were thinking about playing that tonight.

4708

Hah, I think I was being too subtle. My point was that it does work that way, it’s just that people don’t want to do it. They just want to click a button and be done. There are probably plenty of people that would like to do dungeons, but will not simply because they can’t just click a button. This makes it slightly harder for the people who are willing to put in the effort since they are drawing from a smaller pool of players.

4709

Dungeons should scale down to one player imo. It’s unfortunate that Arenanet wasn’t daring enough to go this far.

I mean, the whole game is designed as such that you are playing passively together with other players (IF they are available, otherwise the event scales down) but then you have these dungeons where suddenly precise teamplay in fixed groups is required.

And the “but no one will play together anymore” argument is irrelevant because no one is really playing together at the moment anyway. You only go with randoms into dungeons because you MUST and then everyone just rushes through.

If people want to play with friends they could still do that of course.

4710

It is a neat idea, maybe not scale down to one player but maybe down to 2-3, otherwise you are limiting dungeon design too much. I always wanted to be able to go into a dungeon with 3 guildies if we only happened to find 3.

I don’t think it’s feasible though. As we currently see, in a game like this, it is incredibly challenging to balance the dungeons even for static 5-person groups. Dynamic scaling would turn this task into a nightmare. You really need to re-design the entire dungeons five times for each size to create a challenging compelling experience for all group sizes. Too much work IMO.

4711

So, about a week ago, I got a notification that someone had logged into my account from China. I logged in as soon as I got the notification, and changed my password.

But, apparently, it was too late, and they got my billing information, debit card information, and the 3-digit security code. And then, last Monday, someone charged 52.00 to iTunes. I don’t own anything from Apple, and I certainly don’t have an iTunes account.

Apple says to cancel my card, and they’ll honor the chargeback. This is pretty awful. All of my subscription services are tied to that card number. In the interim (until the bank gets its act together), I pushed all of my funds into my savings account, so they can’t charge anything more.

Bastards.

4712

Wow, they got your billing information and debit card information by just stealing your account? That’s frightening. I didn’t know that Arenanet shows this stuff in plain text in your account profile.

4713

How did they get your billing information? I don’t see anywhere on my GW2 account that stores such data. I think you may have an issue larger than GW2. Are you using the same password elsewhere?

4714

I’m not, actually. I have a password calculation that I use that’s unique to whatever product or site I’m using.

The security breach that took place a few months ago (I forget when) was actually through the billing servicing company that Arena.net uses, so I suspect that’s where they got their information.

4715

This seems like it would be extraordinarily difficult to do in practice, given that the more interesting challenges in dungeons typically involve teamwork with different people tasked with handling different things. A one-size-fits all solution that needs to be possible with only 1 player would create a lot of design constraints that, imo, would result in less interesting dungeon designs overall.

I don’t think it’s a matter of being daring as a matter of acknowledging when something isn’t workable and not trying to force it. Even if you do go the extra mile and handcraft all the dungeon encounters for multiple different party sizes, you’ve set yourself up to make future dungeon content take 3-4 times longer to develop and test even though players aren’t going to consider each party size run as “separate content.” It’s pretty lose-lose.

4716

I don’t think it’s that difficult. Remove all champion/veteran status from mobs who have it (this status says basically “you can’t fight it alone” anyway) when there is only one player and scale HP and damage down as needed.

There are what, 8 dungeons in the game? I think this is doable.

I have seen only a few dungeons so far but there was none which couldn’t have worked solo with the changes described above.

4717

There are 33 dungeons in the game.

How are you going to do the Lovers in AC when you are alone? The entire mechanic of the fight would need to change.

Burrows event in AC exp 1 would be impossible.

How are you going to do the Destiny Edge encounter at the end of TA story? Not only it’d be ridiculous from the lore point of view but also it would have to be nerfed into the ground in order for 1 person (any person, any class, mind you) to complete it.

Golems in SE would also be pretty hard to redo without losing the whole point of the encounter.

Then there is reward balancing.

I think there is reason why none of the MMOs ever done this kind of scaling of dungeons to one person. As Reldan mentioned, the devs would have to spend tons of time on a feature with very limited use that wouldn’t be seen as a new worthwhile feature by many anyway.

You have personal story to satisfy your solo dungeoning thirst, why is that not enough? BTW remember how much bitching there was about its difficulty for different classes? They are still fixing it.

4718

I recall DDO scaled dungeons to 3 difficulties, at easiest you could solo them.

4719

How come nobody is going “woo hoo” over the new content and patch arriving this weekend? It’s described here by mmorpg.com, and it sounds pretty interesting.

  1. Invasion of Lion’s Arch
  2. New area that scales you to 80, so everyone can join in
  3. New sPvP map
  4. New mini-dungeons
  5. New crafting recipes and harvesting stuff
  6. Infused armor whatever that is

The invasion is (I believe) what’s going on this weekend (the 16th through the 18th) but I expect the new content will stay for a while longer, if not forever.

Sounds pretty cool.

4720

The new zone will scale you up to 80 only during the 3 days of the event (Fri - Sun). After that it will be a regular lvl 80 zone.

I am not that excited about the new gear tier - Ascended. I am just starting to get Exotics for my alt, not sure if all that gear is going to be become obsolete after this patch. I thought ANet said there will be no gear stat grind, gear progression, tiered content, etc. We’ll see.

On the other hand, it depends on the new items’ stats, looks and accessibility.

Other than that, this update sounds pretty cool.