#gw2 fotm

[lostnameideas-blog]

Daily LFG matter for fractal.

[tostitokid]

The Fractal Reworks Are Amazing!

Okay, you can kill me because I haven’t done Twilight Oasis yet, but I’ve done the new Mai Trin and Molten Boss fractals. They are definetly huge changes/improvements that make them more interesting than just “Hit me!”

Mai Trin:

Horrik now places an indicator on a player (I think it’s the one furthest away from him) that determines what shot he fires at them. If it’s a cannonball icon, it’s his regular shot. If it’s an electric ball, it’s the electro-round that removes Mai’s shield. There’s a few seconds between the icon appearing and him firing. There’s also two different orange circles based on what shot is fired that make them easier to see.

Mai Trin is about the same, but now when she does her teleport-shot, her target she’s aimed at gets a target icon over their head. If the bullet hits, that player becomes fixated. It’s worth trying to coordinate with the other players who are getting electro-rounds aimed at them to try and hold Mai on a spot where she will get hit by them. You can still reflect or destroy the bullet, and block it too I think, but you definitely can’t dodge it!

During the cannon phases, Horrik no longer goes up with Mai, it’s just Mai. The cannons from the Aetherblade fractal, you know, the reworked ones, are now the ones used. Easier to avoid if you’re careful. A bunch of aetherblades do spawn though, and you’ll want to kill them to end the phase faster. Do be warned, the cannons will STILL be firing even after the phase ends, at least for a bit, so don’t stop!

When I did the fractal yesterday, Horrik somehow died. I was expecting him to be revived and Mai to get all of her shield back, but that didn’t happen, strangely. She was below 25% though, so, I’m not sure.

Bring condi-cleanse!

Molten Boss:

Remember the rest of the Molten Facility? You did the first chunk of it in the Molten Facility Fractal and stopped after the weapons testing room. The previous Molten Boss fractal just placed you at the end of the dungeon, right before you get to the Molten Duo. Well that’s gone now (and with it the 40-fractal farm, RIP). Now you start right outside the Frozen Hallways in the dungeon, and from there work your way down to there in the Molten Facility.

There’s a lot more adds than previously (I’ll be honest, I LOVE fighting the Molten Alliance), and some have special abilities and skills they’ll use to fight you. There’s this shaman on a bridge that bombards it with fire from a nearby lava-fall, and I THINK you need to break his bar to stop him, at least for a little bit. You can still run across the bridge, not gonna stop you.

The effigy got an upgrade. A BIG upgrade. There’s a ton of adds with him that I believe respawn during the fight, so try and deal with them first if you can before the effigy, since they do more damage. The only new ability I can remember off the top of my head is him smashing the ground, staying there for a moment, and then releasing a flaming shockwave from the spot. You’ll want to dodge/jump it to avoid it. Other than the tons of adds and the shockwave, the effigy itself is about the same.

They removed that little tower in the big chamber. I dunno why. I mean, I get it was useless but come on! They also darkened the place some for more spooks.

The new boss fight is pretty great! Okay, it’s about the same with a few differences. One, remember that cutscene with the two appearing? That no longer happens. They still do their cool entrances, which you now see first-hand. Players who haven’t done the fractal at all before will now be MORE surprised when they see a huge blue charr smash through a wall! Speaking of him, before the fight starts, he unleashes two shockwaves, a ground one and an air one. My guess is that’s to familiarize the players with the shockwaves. Other than that, about the same as before.

Everyone still kills the Berserker first, that’s mostly a fact, the exception being those who need the achivement. I did notice something new about the second part of the fight, where one of the bad boys power up. During the fight, the Firestorm in this phase by himself summons some dredge mining suits to attack your party, and they have some unique buffs to them. I can assume the same would apply if the Berserker powered up, but with the Brawlers appearing instead.

You know that annoying outer-ring thing Firestorm summons when he powers up? Yeah, it used to knock you back hard off the ledge if you weren’t careful in it. Well worry no more, because they made it more forgiving! Instead of doing hard knockbacks, it now gradually pulls you off of the ledge subtly, slowly, like you’re being slowly pulled on by a magnet, but you can still do everything you could do before, and even run against the pull/push back into the ring if need be! Melee-folk don’t have to worry anymore! I think they took this mechanic from the new enemies in the Crystal Desert, especially those ones who make those huge swirling sandstorms that end with the massive explosion on them.

Okay, that’s about that. I dunno, I just felt like posting and letting Tumblr folk know what’s new in the fractals.

[asurashinies]

undefined

Looks like the hammer was quite heavy Vol II, the thrilling sequel of THIS

feat. my guildies revenant

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Mɪsᴛʟᴏᴄᴋ Oʙsᴇʀᴠᴀᴛᴏʀʏ

[phoenixdirge]

Elder Twin of the Valiant-Knight Winter Livius, Dreamer of the Cycle of Night, Valiant of the Pale Tree, (former) leading Commander of the Pact, and adoptive very doting parent of Aurene.

Severwing “Sevy”/”Summer” They/Them Dearheart of @tsuiraku-o‘s Luxerik.

Previously dressed in an outfit made in their dearheart’s color scheme for most of their time through the personal story, Sevy takes to a more updated look post-HoT, just a few months before Aurene’s hatching! The wings, of course, are courtesy of said hatchling’s blessings. 

And as if I needed more pain in my GW2 life, in an alternate timeline, the little druid is all too willing to do anything to protect their new family. “By my word, no harm will cross their path, I won’t allow it.”

[aquaticcorcodile-blog]

BOOM

[ivi-gw2]

Recycling old content and why must some easy things stay easy

(long post)

In the last post I explained why I think that Guild Wars 2 is in desperate need of “medium” difficulty content. In this post I’ll talk about some ideas that come to my mind.

What would I say is needed? More hard and much, much more medium content to balance things out with large amounts of easy content? More updates? Sure! But let’s go green: I would like to see older content that once was medium or that wilted, revisited and refreshed. There is already enough variety of stuff to do in GW2 - we don’t need so much new stuff, it will just make older stuff more abandoned and maybe the player base too fragmented. Also, not touching old and boring content will make it “bad” and more and more abandoned by players” - the game would benefit a lot if they’d find a way to make it new and interesting.

Also - the best solution would be to make the most change with the least possible work done - to make it economically rational. While - importantly - focusing on making what already exists in the game better. With Colin Johanson as a new (old) leader and more focus shifted at GW2, I once again have hopes that ArenaNet will stop abandoning good content shortly after shipping it. Yes, Colin means experimentation - but the focus part will, I believe, make them think about it for a bit.

So first of all - what change would make a lot of now trivial and too-easy content better and a bit harder? Buffing all mobs and encounters and nerfing all player abilities? Yes, but… it wouldn’t make the game better. Let’s say we have a low-skill player - one that is new to the game or simply hasn’t yet learned some of the game mechanics. And a high-skill player. For the high-skill player most of the game (as it is in the easy category) is braindead. But for the low skill one it is not braindead. It is a probem even ArenaNet is trying to fix; in an interview when Icebrood Saga was coming, Mike Zadorojny said that “The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore.” Just buffing everything and nerfing all player abilities wouldn’t do much because many new players and lower skill players suddenly won’t be able to play content that was intended for everyone. Some guy who just created their first character in Queensdale, running around, would come up to the bandit who would kill him in 3 hits. For many people that would be a good learning lesson, but GW2 is a fundamentally different game (and differently marketed) from MMOs that focus mostly on hard endgame content (FFXIV or WoW, for example) and so it attracts everyone, not just people that want to be super skillful players. Just making the absolute whole of the game much harder because that would make average players’ skill closer to the raids or quality PvP experience would succeed in what it wants. But it would also deter a lot of people and, more importantly, lose a lot of players who found friends and communities, peace or happiness in simple things GW2 offered. Harder content is needed, many of the existing stuff in GW2 has to be notched up just a bit, but a lot of it has to stay in “easy” difficulty. 

Most of core’s open world mobs and events are definitely one of those things - most of them being in lower level maps. Leaving them in the easy difficulty category won’t take anything from raids - yes, ArenaNet hasn’t focused on the raids because a small number of players play them and it would be cool to have more players that play them so we could then have more raids… but harsh up in difficulty for this kind of content isn’t the solution. Making low-skill players better and bringing them closer to playing raids is best done with small step ups in difficulty - something having enough content in all difficulties does - making easy and medium important. Only thing I would add to the open world core mobs is better telegraphs for attacks - red aoe dots on ground, arrows for charges, etc. As for LS, PoF and HoT open world mobs and events - those can stay the same, they are an appropriate level of challenge for many players.

Next up is content I believe was and still is the most played content in the game: world bosses. Huge dragon coming from the sky and hundred brave warriors rush to defeat him, epic music playing… And the dragon is dead in 2 minutes. I’ll say this right away: I love world bosses, even them being this easy. I still play them. Because I love MMO experience and I love to see a lot of other players. World bosses are Guild Wars’ 2 trademark and the defining game characteristic, and something they did the best way possible out of all the other MMOs. And while they are in no way falling in popularity, I believe they should be a bit refreshed so they move into the “medium content”. In my opinion, focus for their rework should be: small changes to make them a bit harder (most of them just a bit, few of them a lot) and teaching players some of the more difficult game mechanics. Making them harder is needed so players would organise more and make the bosses feel as an actual threat. New and low skill players aren't the issue here because most other players can carry them. A good example of teaching some difficult mechanics with a harder boss was adding the Vale Guardian event in Bloodstone Fen.

But no changes to the world bosses means no engaging (or “better”) content for experienced players. Well, then some changes that would affect only the experienced players are needed:

Much harsher dynamic level adjusting for high-level characters in lower level maps.. I already wrote in one of my previous posts: “Make me, while in top gear, have just 15% better stats than a noob in some low-level map, but let me be stronger and more able to help them with my skill creep.” I would say that it would require less work for ArenaNet, than revisiting every mob, event and skill. But I can only guess.

Harsher event scaling for larger amounts of players - currently events are scaled well mostly for single players and small groups, but big metas get too easy. Boss doing more damage and having much more HP than how it scales now could help a bit.

Keeping power-creep in check - constant skill balance changes to keep every top damage number under a certain threshold.

More work needed to get participation, scaled by players level. Low level characters could do less and have more participation while lvl 80 characters should do more to get the same. This would work even for expansion/living story/lvl 80 maps - in those cases, everyone should do just a bit more. And in my opinion that is okay because a lvl 80 player will by default do much, much more than a low-level one. Unless… they are not doing their part.

Add timers to big meta events - as they work in strikes - with more work done, you get a better reward. And make gold really hard to get. Not all world bosses should be absolutely lethal and only killable for players with super skills, but all of them should be a kind of a challenge.

Another thing that should be revisited is the personal story - the story of how we killed Zhaithan. It is the content that can’t be just pushed under a rug like dungeons were. Everybody plays it and all the new players will play it - it will define their first hours of GW2 experience. The focus of its rework should be to make it a big tutorial for many game mechanics and something that should slowly, step by step, up the player’s skill. The pacing, events in it and boss encounters are something I don’t need to say anything about because of how old and easy they feel today. New story stuff is great and shiny and made in a way that’ll take much more time to lose it’s shine. While we’re at the shiny new story - while all of GW2's story should be little by little harder, it should never get too hard. It should stay pretty low in difficulty - maybe just lower-medium difficulty tier. Because it is a showcase for new players what new stuff ArenaNet just added to the game. They shouldn’t need to play hundreds of hours of all the rest of the story before they can try out and be happy playing the new toys that they just got. Adding special achievements, making memorable encounters, special fractals or strikes with CMs is a very good solution ArenaNet made. It makes the story a bit more of a challenge for more experienced players. I would also like to see some core story’s memorable moments be turned into fractals or strikes - killing the Eye and The Claw Island come to my mind. Even HoT, PoF and LS story events could be made repeatable somehow - Mordremoth, Balthazar and Joko fights are some of my favourite ones.

Then there are dungeons, somehow tied with the personal story. With them, a lot of rework is needed. I believe they are the type of old content that can be redone from bottom up and people won’t be mad about it. Some of the stuff I don’t miss is running down iced scaffolding to light a fire or luring skelks away from orbs to get to Mossman. FotM update was a very good decision - boring or needlessly irritating parts were removed and replaced with more meaningful encounters. An art of the deal. If it gets removed and replaced with something better in the same vein - some of the stuff I won’t miss that comes to mind: underwater boss in HotW, many simply irritating mobs in Arah or the fiery tunnel in CoF. Dungeons have an immense potential to span difficulty steps from easy (story path), over medium, up to hard difficulty.

But why should we, the veteran players, go back to this, already played content - even after “the refresh” relatively easy content? More about that in upcoming posts!

Source: Balancing Guild Wars 2 difficulty is tough when top players do “ten times” more damage | PCGamesN https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/difficulty

[thecountjester-blog]

Check out the ramblings & musings with a random pug group in #T2 #Nightmare #Fractals https://youtu.be/zH3HUNo2hiY Spread the love. Like, Share & Subscribe. ~CJ😈

[meowgai]

Only T4 Fractal Players Will Understand This

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Sɴᴏᴡʙʟɪɴᴅ

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Sᴡᴀᴍᴘʟᴀɴᴅ Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟ

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Uɴᴄᴀᴛᴇɢᴏʀɪᴢᴇᴅ Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟ

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Vᴏʟᴄᴀɴɪᴄ

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Uʀʙᴀɴ Bᴀᴛᴛʟᴇɢʀᴏᴜɴᴅ Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟ

[lightofdwayna]

Gᴜɪʟᴅ Wᴀʀs 2 Fʀᴀᴄᴛᴀʟs ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ Mɪsᴛs

Mᴏʟᴛᴇɴ Fᴜʀɴᴀᴄᴇ

[ivi-gw2]

Bell curve of skill and “medium content” in Guild Wars 2

(long post)

So, I want to talk a bit more about the medium content and importance of it.

First off, let’s say something about two other types of content: easy and hard.

Easy content is something everyone can do. It can vary in difficulty, but overall there is not much skill, time investment, knowledge or even other players needed to successfully enjoy it. And it’s very, very needed - as a slow tutorial of basics for teaching players and for any other player who, out of any reason, wants to play it at the moment - because they are tired, burnt out, waiting, don’t have time, just want to chill a bit, want spend some time taking it easy, want to play the game how they feel at the moment or for any reason can’t play content of other difficulties. In Guild Wars 2 there is a lot of content that would fit this category.

Hard content is opposite of easy - it’s not for everyone, nor something everyone can or will be able to do. For playing it there is a need for a fair amount of skill, knowledge, often a lot of time investment and other people on whose skill your own success depends. Said things make it also really stressful. Unfortunately, because of said things, it's the studio's resource investment into something most players won’t be able to experience - and because of that I think it wasn’t a priority at all for ArenaNet. But its existence is needed in GW2 as much as the easy content: it challenges players, gives them a level of skill to strive for, gives immense satisfaction upon beating it and generates some kind of prestige and respect in the community for the most successful players. And GW2 has a very intricate gameplay that shines the most in that content. In GW2 there is a lack of hard content - but I won’t focus on that now.

I love both easy and hard content. Many days I logged into GW2 just to relax a bit, listen to a podcast while just running around the maps doing nothing. I spent days just going around world boss trains or mindlessly farming. I also think most of the main story has to stay in the “easy” content so it would be accessible for everyone who wants to experience it. Many other days I got up early with a mission in my mind: that today’s is the day I finally manage to kill some boss or to simply do my best and win a lot in wvw. 

Now what about medium content? It’s somewhere in-between - easy, but no hand holding, you have to know what you’re doing, you have to concentrate, know how to react in certain situations and pull your own weight. Many times different amounts of player cooperation are needed. Sometimes it is a bit harder and you fail and die a lot and have to try a lot of times, sometimes it’s a bit easier, borderline with easy content - but you still have to do your job and not mash random buttons on the keyboard. Also it can be some kind of content you still don’t know how to do or don’t have skill for but since it is not as punishing as hard content, small amounts of players can be carried by the more experienced. Because of all that it is playable and can be successfully completed by most of the players, but it requires more than just basic knowledge of the game. Many times it is not something you can play completely your own way, but it doesn’t require absolute perfection.

And I think there’s an unhealthy lack of it in Guild Wars 2. I want to be clear: on release there was a lot of medium content. Also when expansions came, with each and with next LS updates, Anet added more medium content. Added medium content - in times when added - was always proportional to community skill and power. But with time, months and years after it was added it became trivial because of the uncontrolled power creep. Medium content wasn’t updated to match new levels of power and skill players had and so it transitioned into “easy” content. And so, today, there is not much of it left. Hollythame said it very well. What’s left are DRMs, strikes, T3 and T4 level fractals, Triple Trouble and now Marionette. I would also put WvW into here because of how many people there are - big zerg players even in hardest fights can be carried. I would also say that newer story missions are kind of in the lower medium content - people have to respect some mechanics and work the skills more.

What’s more of a problem: all of the content requires some level of skill, from 0 to 100. Easy is up to, let’s say 15; hard is from 85 to 100. Last couple of years there was almost no medium content. And most of the players miss the steps needed to bite through from easy to hard content. That would be the purpose of medium content.

I believe in bell curves. A lot of stuff about people is easily displayed by bell curves. They kinda work - we’re all kinda the same, but vary around some golden middle. There are always people left and right of us, but the vast majority is in “the middle”. 2 takes from me:

Guild Wars 2 players, the community - are in a somewhat perfect bell curve by the potential of their skill. That potential is the skill they could develop easily and how quickly they would succeed in a task of certain difficulty.

Guild Wars 2 content - the amount of it, as it is today - when rated by skill needed is definitely not a bell curve. It kind of was when the game was released, but with power creep, advancement of mechanics and gameplay many of it was pushed into “easy” where it is now.

And with that being said, next thing is:

Content added into the game has to be more proportional than it is now to the amount of players with the skill level needed for it. Because then most of the players can engage in a bigger variety of content that will satisfy them. And the vast majority of players are by bell curve - in the middle, so I would assume - most of the content in the game that is “for all kinds of players” should be some kind of “medium difficulty content range”.

(graph above: Guild Wars 2 situation - tumblr lowered the quality... RED - current game content distribution / BLACK - players by skill level potential / CYAN goal game content distribution // x - player skill level potential / content difficulty // y - amount of players / amount of game content)

It’s all about what’s promised and what’s delivered. Hard games like Dark Souls get marketed as such and therefore attract the kind of audience that is willing to invest a lot of time, patience and skill in it. Some more chill games, like The Sims or Animal Crossing get marketed as such and therefore attract an audience that is more concentrated in the “taking it easy” part of the graph. All of said games then deliver on that marketing promise - they have most (or all) of the content in a specific difficulty that corresponds to their players’ “skill potential”. Guild Wars 2 may have made a mistake of attracting a wider range of players. At launch it could sustain that promise, but now has more and more problems.

So there it is, the new forming of medium content in Guild Wars 2 could resolve this issue. Players that can clear a raid will be able to play medium content and it won’t be too braindead for them. Vast majority of players will be able to play it - on start or after trying - and will be pretty happy with the amount of challenge. And it is still not impossible to reach for players that struggle with some levels of easy content, like raids or FotM CMs are.

Important bits about adding more medium content are:

it makes the player learn and improve their skill without much effort

gives the player bigger amounts of satisfaction upon completion because some level of investment was needed 

in many cases - it has a need for player organisation and socialisation - which is always the best thing in MMOs. 

GGs, smiles and cheering in chat at the end of difficult content is why I play MMO games. Both low-skilled player and anti-social player problems - gone (I wrote about them in one of my previous essays).

What would I suggest is needed? More in upcoming posts!