Dragon Story Missions are boring and tedious - [Merged]

[Will.9785]

I'm on condi renegade in case folks are wondering.

[rrusse.7058]

I've said in other threads that DRMs would likely serve a better purpose if they worked as sort of mini-story steps in between big episodes.

Imagine if in between episodes 'A Shadow in the Ice' and 'No Quarter' there was a mini-story mission like a DRM that helped set up the growing threat the Dominion posed to the United Legions? It would have a new daily and players could gather 'Dominion Cat-Tags' as a currency. They could trade those in to the United Legions as proof of their efforts to buy new Charr themed weapon and armor skins just like the ones we got with 'Visions of the Past' update.

That way the slow grindy nature of the missions is more palatable to the playerbase since it's not a true episode anyway, writers have a little more wiggle room and devs hopfully have more breathing room to make and add content to maintain player interest and retention.

[AgentMoore.9453]

No, it's not just you; the grind is real. Some will say 'ah, but it's challenge mode, it should be hard!' which I do agree with. ..but the wiggle room to get the /stretch emote is narrow - at least currently. This narrowness leads one to see the CMs as their only viable path, even if you're technically not "forced" to do them (you can grind out weapon collections instead, so pick your poison).

I don't mind working toward my goals and putting in some brainpower to get there, but I've noticed a steady uptick in grind throughout the game - these missions are just the latest example.

On top of that, DRMs just aren't enjoyable as repeatable content, even on normal mode. I hope things like this are just temporary space fillers (to bide time until EoD) and future instanced content will be created and scaled as well as Forging Steel, which I like heaps better.

[Zephire.8049]

I suspect what happened was that because EoD was decided/announced while IBS wasn't halfway through yet, DRMs mark the point devs were pulled from what was planned with IBS to work on EoD with a small team finishing up IBS (and having the narrative team re-write the second half of IBS...). Since DRMs are so simple and there's no new maps, only dialogue, and there hasn't been any cinematics or custom animation, it's really easy for a small team to make and push out.

That said, it is really boring and grindy and I can't see myself doing DRMs in the future. I think it should have maxed out at 3 for the number of times you have to repeat each one since while that would have been annoying, putting it at 5 means burning out on them. Especially since outside of Snowden, none of them are particularly hard so it really is just grind, not challenge.

Hopefully if my suspicion is correct, that means EoD should be far better. That's what I'm banking on anyway (and I don't blame a small dev team resorting to grind because management hasn't given them the time/resources to put enough content in that doesn't need grind to pad it out) but I've talked to more than a few people who refuse to play GW2 again until EoD because they've heard of how grindy the current story is.

[Dawdler.8521]

@DoctorOverlord.8620 said:I think we're talking about different things. You're talking about gameplay while I'm talking more about essential foundations for the game that should be shared among the community.But thats exactly what I mean! We can do a simple sanity check on it:

If I say that WvW and sPvP is not optional, would you take me seriously?If you say no, then dont expect me to take you seriously when you say PvE is not optional.If you say yes, well then we are in agreement that WvW and sPvP are essential foundations for the game.

But then again in practice, isnt those parts still... optional?

[Luthan.5236]

I'm not yet at the point with the DRMs. (Playing in order of release and still at season 4.) Can someone tell me: How long does it take to complete one DRM? Does it take a lot longer than a fractals?

And how often do you need to do them for permanent achievments? (Excluding maybe grindy weapon collections which I tend to ignore. Example for these collections: The weapons in Drytop and the ones from Istan.)

If it were only for grindy collections it would not be that bad. (Can just skip it and do it later a little bit every now and then.) My guess is: They are using it as easy option to fill the time until the next releases ... while most of the staff is doing other things. (Working on next expansion.)

Once the expansion is released the full staff again can work at the further living world seasons. (And maybe different content.)

[Manasa Devi.7958]

This entire game is optional, and opting in seems less and less like a good choice.

[Will.9785]

1 DRM with all 3 CMs turned on takes about 15-20 minutes to finish. This includes the 4-5 minutes spent during the "pre" events at the start.

They take much longer than fractals.

I've cleared fractal 99 CM in just slightly more time than it takes to do the pre-event for these DRMs, to put things in perspective.

[HotDelirium.7984]

Once again its like people are just left to their own devices and there's no management calling the shots. Advertising is all about "selling it" and they just aren't doing it justice. You can "sell" a grind of weapon skins or even Dragon response missions if you really wanted to and I don't know why they don't want to. Create more content videos about each DRM, a lore story written up, maybe even an announcement that DEVS will be joining DRMS to help out!....literally something and/or anything. WHY do we need these new weapons? Somebody tell us WHY. Make us care...

[HotDelirium.7984]

We are going on several months of the allies still dying quickly in the DRMs (the allies that are supposed to help you and the entire point of this marshaling event) and nobody is doing anything about it which really tells you everything you need to know.

[Fueki.4753]

To me, DRMs are far more mentally exhausting than they are physically.And I'm only doing 3 of them daily doing the community events.

I'm not even going to bother with CMs or grinding the weapon collections.The CM achievements really should have been limited to one time instead of five and the CM Mastery Points should have been tied to that.

[Randulf.7614]

I'm pretending the CMs don't exist. That way I can't be tempted to grind

[Ashantara.8731]

The Drizzlewood meta (the southern part in particular) is way more exhausting (with all the jumping across the map and the treasure spawns at the end^) than any of the DRMs, which are just tedious if anything from having to repeat them daily if you want to do all the collections.

P.S. CM = Challenge Mode = you are being challenged, hence the time limits and mechanics are fine.

^) before it was updated at least

[Manasa Devi.7958]

Ironically, the requirement of 5 CM completions for the achievements has me playing less instead of more. I've only done 2 CM completions, 1 each for 2 different missions. I'd have gladly done the others as well, but upon finding out I needed 5 completions per mission, there's no point. I'm never going to do all of them 5 times, and doing each of them just once is useless.

[Will.9785]

@Ashantara.8731 said:The Drizzlewood meta (the southern part in particular) is way more exhausting (with all the jumping across the map and the treasure spawns at the end^) than any of the DRMs, which are just tedious if anything from having to repeat them daily if you want to do all the collections.

P.S. CM = Challenge Mode = you are being challenged, hence the time limits and mechanics are fine.

^) before it was updated at least

You know, come to think of it Drizzlewood was pretty exhausting as well... especially when the north meta first arrived. Good point.

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

Don’t get in the mindset of having to grind them. I started out trying to train through and do all drms and cms in one sitting and realized that is exhausting. I stopped that and just do a DRM cm just by doing one or two of dailies, and moved on. Some I soloed, some I grouped. I have done the first four achievements leaving the last 3 where I have done 1 or 2. I just finished where I had enough for the stretch emote. No sweat, no grinding.

[Wolfhound.4381]

I tried the first one when it came out. Didn't like it and haven't been back to any of them. People still play these?

[Ra Ra.9423]

I quite like them. However, I think what makes them 'boring' is farming them over and over to get the exorbitant amount of Prismaticite necessary to craft the weapons. (for those that are doing so). I think it's a good thing to have some repeatable content that can be used over the years, and by new players when they get there. I could see future events for DRM's as a bonus thing periodically - like the Boss Rush.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@"HotDelirium.7984" said:Once again its like people are just left to their own devices and there's no management calling the shots. Advertising is all about "selling it" and they just aren't doing it justice. You can "sell" a grind of weapon skins or even Dragon response missions if you really wanted to and I don't know why they don't want to. Create more content videos about each DRM, a lore story written up, maybe even an announcement that DEVS will be joining DRMS to help out!....literally something and/or anything. WHY do we need these new weapons? Somebody tell us WHY. Make us care...

I imagine people would be more interested if more effort were put into the content. You can "sell it" all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that recycling old maps into a handful of story-ish instances and expecting us to repeat them over and over doesn't even come close to the expectation set by previous story releases.

We all know why it's happening, but I don't blame them for not trying to sell this. It would almost be insulting.

[Cuks.8241]

It's just low quality. Much lower than fractals and also many story missions. They are like generic world events. You do those once and move on. Not content you would want to repeat often.I like the idea of story missions that can be played by up to 5 players with challenge motes. Many players were asking for this after Hearts and minds. But make quality missions with the story, interesting mechanics and diverse fights.Look at Forging Steel. It has long pre-events, it's long in general. It's essentially just a long escort mission with a boss. But it's quality and interesting and I repeat it often. I know what's it about and I don't usually follow story much. I hardly distinguish the first 3 DRMs from each other and did play them enough to get all the CM achivs.

[Fueki.4753]

I just wish they had made them a bit less tedious since release, but nothing happened.Their HP is still too big of a sponge.Their CC spam still is to much.Their AoE spam still is too much.They still throw around too many conditions.The bosses have no interesting mechanics.

Arenanet needs to stop doubling down on the things that make encounters bad.

@Wolfhound.4381 said:I tried the first one when it came out. Didn't like it and haven't been back to any of them. People still play these?Yes, people still do them.

[Gildana.8529]

It is more the old PiTA MMORPG trope of trash mobs that serve no purpose but to delay the key encounters.

[Atomos.7593]

Sadly DRMs have affirmed that instanced content in GW2 is not for me. I have found them so boring that I don't think I will ever give any type of instances a go again in this game, despite having enjoyed instances and dungeons in other MMOs.

I am struggling to even complete them all once to get the Champions story chapter done - not because they are difficult, but because they feel like such a mindless slog. The one in Thunderhead Keep is just urgh.

If one of the intentions of DRMs was to get players to play more instanced content, they have certainly failed for me. I think I'll just stick to the open world for PvE.

Edit: What's particularly concerning is that great and extensive feedback has been provided on how DRMs could easily be improved. However, from what I can see, very little has changed.

[Fueki.4753]

@Atomos.7593 said:What's particularly concerning is that great and extensive feedback has been provided on how DRMs could easily be improved. However, from what I can see, very little has changed.I feel like all ten of them had already been developed before Chapter 1 even hit the game and Arenanet is just staggering their release to give an illusion of content release.At such a point, any feedback would be too late to implement.That aside, changing things according to community feedback happens rarely in this game anyway.

[Atomos.7593]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:What's particularly concerning is that great and extensive feedback has been provided on how DRMs could easily be improved. However, from what I can see, very little has changed.I feel like all ten of them had already been developed before Chapter 1 even hit the game and Arenanet is just staggering their release to give an illusion of content release.At such a point, any feedback would be too late to implement.That aside, changing things according to community feedback happens rarely in this game anyway.

Yeah, I was thinking that Anet may be putting the vast majority of development resources into the new expansion and would rather not spend too many resources on the content beforehand anymore. If that's actually the case I won't mind too much if the expansion turns out to be quite good.

In the meantime I guess I can keep myself occupied mostly with other PvE content.

Having played WvW for many years, it was clear that the devs rarely changed things from feedback, at least for that part of the game. I just wasn't expecting this to become the case in PvE too, perhaps a bit naively.