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[Suggestion] Stop making Story Bosses Hard (LS4 Spoilers)


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@battledrone.8315 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:No one said pve bosses should be easy that would defeat the purpose of even having bosses

Yes. But defeating them should be doable. This is a story. Story. Not a raid, Not a frac, not a dungeon, it is a story!!!!!

Stories should be doable for all skill levels.

Arenanet needs to find one of their employee's sainted grannies, the type of granny who bakes cookies and pinches your cheek, seat her in front of the living story and make sure she can complete it.

If she can, it is a wrap.

Lisa-groused about this very thing all the way through the survey

That is all nice but now you make it sound like players has no option whatsoever, other than being shoehorned into using only offensive utilities with offensive skills with offensive weapons, with no knowledge whatsoever of what to do.

And well you know, we have many options.Sadly, so few seem to care about it or even worse, to know about.

shoehorned is what we have now...one size fits all.this is actually harder , than many other mmos end game content..i can raid in dcuo, and get 2-3 gear upgrades with much less effortbut of course i have to pay a sub fee for that privilege

How is it shoehorned though ? All professions can rely on ranged weapons when players are not skilled enough to go melee. All professions have access to different types of gear that can combine damages and sustain and they all have access to evades, invulnerability or heavy sustain ability (that are not always tied to defensive stats) as well as sigils and and food and utilities that improve this sort of sustain.

All you really need to do is not to burn all your cooldowns every time a skill is available. That is straight up a lack of knowledge.

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@"nembool.5981" said:Two points here:- Firstly, the mechanics are often poorly signposted, with illogical invulnerability phases and massive AOE effects. It's not easy to work out what you need to do when you're dodging/healing/kiting.Secondly, DPS isn't everything. If I want to play a build focused on boon-sharing, or healing allies, I should be able to and still have a decent chance of getting through an instance. The fact that I can't implies that the encounter isn't designed fairly. Perhaps that's the flaw in the underlying GW2 mechanics.

The mechanics aren't that complicated. I'll admit there are some things that can be surprising at times, but when most fights don't even reset when you die, it's pretty easy to just say "guess I'd better pay attention to that next time" and off you go.

And if you want to play a build that supports allies, of course you can do that and get through easily, as long as you go in with other players. If you use a build that supports allies when there are no allies to support, then that's a problem with your decision making, not the game mechanics.

And even with that being said, you can STILL get through those instances easily even without allies. It'll just take you ages to kill anything.

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@Cameron.6450 said:

@"nembool.5981" said:Two points here:- Firstly, the mechanics are often poorly signposted, with illogical invulnerability phases and massive AOE effects. It's not easy to work out what you need to do when you're dodging/healing/kiting.Secondly, DPS isn't everything. If I want to play a build focused on boon-sharing, or healing allies, I should be able to and still have a decent chance of getting through an instance. The fact that I can't implies that the encounter isn't designed fairly. Perhaps that's the flaw in the underlying GW2 mechanics.

The mechanics aren't that complicated. I'll admit there are some things that can be surprising at times, but when most fights don't even reset when you die, it's pretty easy to just say "guess I'd better pay attention to that next time" and off you go.

And if you want to play a build that supports allies, of course you can do that and get through easily, as long as you go in with other players. If you use a build that supports allies when there are no allies to support, then that's a problem with your decision making, not the game mechanics.

And even with that being said, you can STILL get through those instances easily even without allies. It'll just take you ages to kill anything.

I happen to think you're wrong here. Signposting is poor, and invulnerability phases simply break immersion and the rules of the game system.

And there should be no reason why I'm forced to play in a particular style to beat an instance. The instance should have multiple options, or paths to victory, that any playstyle is possible.

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@nembool.5981 said:

@nembool.5981 said:Two points here:- Firstly, the mechanics are often poorly signposted, with illogical invulnerability phases and massive AOE effects. It's not easy to work out what you need to do when you're dodging/healing/kiting.Secondly, DPS isn't everything. If I want to play a build focused on boon-sharing, or healing allies, I should be able to and still have a decent chance of getting through an instance. The fact that I can't implies that the encounter isn't designed fairly. Perhaps that's the flaw in the underlying GW2 mechanics.

The mechanics aren't that complicated. I'll admit there are some things that can be surprising at times, but when most fights don't even reset when you die, it's pretty easy to just say "guess I'd better pay attention to that next time" and off you go.

And if you want to play a build that supports allies, of course you can do that and get through easily, as long as you go in with other players. If you use a build that supports allies when there are no allies to support, then that's a problem with your decision making, not the game mechanics.

And even with that being said, you can STILL get through those instances easily even without allies. It'll just take you ages to kill anything.

I happen to think you're wrong here. Signposting is poor, and invulnerability phases simply break immersion and the rules of the game system.

And there should be no reason why I'm forced to play in a particular style to beat an instance. The instance should have multiple options, or paths to victory, that any playstyle is possible.

But... there are already many possible builds you could make for every class: you can build condi or power builds using either especialization or core profession, you can build around meelee or ranged weapons, you can swap around utilities that you like the theme of more because the LW bosses are easy enough to have NO need for optimization. Even pure support builds can solo bosses at a slower pace if you heal/boon yourself enough. (Turai Ossa's gambit from the past Festival of the Four Winds being beaten by a chrono tank face tanking every mechanic comes to mind, even if it isn't strictly LW story)

I'm sorry but it just seems like a lack of basic knowledge of the game.

EDIT: this is the facetank kill I'm talking about:

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@nembool.5981 said:I happen to think you're wrong here. Signposting is poor, and invulnerability phases simply break immersion and the rules of the game system.

True, signposting isn't always that great and invulnerability phases are pretty annoying. There's definitly room for improvent with those things.

@nembool.5981 said:And there should be no reason why I'm forced to play in a particular style to beat an instance. The instance should have multiple options, or paths to victory, that any playstyle is possible.

I disagree. It's part of the game that you think about your build. You said you run a boon-share build, which really only makes sense when you play openworld with players around you, or when you play with a group. otherwise that build is pretty useless and has no point.

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@nembool.5981 said:

@nembool.5981 said:Two points here:- Firstly, the mechanics are often poorly signposted, with illogical invulnerability phases and massive AOE effects. It's not easy to work out what you need to do when you're dodging/healing/kiting.Secondly, DPS isn't everything. If I want to play a build focused on boon-sharing, or healing allies, I should be able to and still have a decent chance of getting through an instance. The fact that I can't implies that the encounter isn't designed fairly. Perhaps that's the flaw in the underlying GW2 mechanics.

The mechanics aren't that complicated. I'll admit there are some things that can be surprising at times, but when most fights don't even reset when you die, it's pretty easy to just say "guess I'd better pay attention to that next time" and off you go.

And if you want to play a build that supports allies, of course you can do that and get through easily, as long as you go in with other players. If you use a build that supports allies when there are no allies to support, then that's a problem with your decision making, not the game mechanics.

And even with that being said, you can STILL get through those instances easily even without allies. It'll just take you ages to kill anything.

I happen to think you're wrong here. Signposting is poor, and invulnerability phases simply break immersion and the rules of the game system.

And there should be no reason why I'm forced to play in a particular style to beat an instance. The instance should have multiple options, or paths to victory, that any playstyle is possible.

Look, first point is difference of opinion, I'll grant that. I don't think that invuln phases are inherently immersion or rule breaking, but it depends. If I bring an enemy to 5% hp in a few seconds, then they suddenly become invuln to deliver a monologue before dying when i sneeze on them afterwards, that's a little irritating. But invuln phases where you need to use certain mechanics to break shields or kill mobs or w/e are part of what makes bosses different and interesting to fight. Plus the player character and npc's all have access to skills with invuln, not sure why it's immersion breaking for enemies in the game world to have similar abilities.

And as I said in my first reply to you, you're not "forced" to play a particular style. I actually said it's just as easy to play a healer or support in a story instance. You are perfectly entitled to play the game however you like, so long as you don't impact on someone else's enjoyment by doing so. What you are NOT entitled to though, is to have the same efficiency as someone who brings the right tool for the job. In most instances, the ultimate goal is to bring an enemy's hp to 0. If I take this into consideration when heading into an instance and bring something with lots of damage, and you just run a healing build that doesn't do any damage, then obviously we're going to have different outcomes. You can still complete the instance, you'll just be slower than I am, but that's the decision you need to make. Likewise, if the instance requires lots of movement, a full dps spec might not complete it as quickly as someone playing thief with all mobility utilities. But I can still finish the instance, just like you can still finish everything on a healer if you want to. It's just slower.

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@"Exclamatory.8351" said:OP has a valid point and I can see some bosses being difficult, if not anger inducing to some players; personally I enjoy the difficulty. However, I do agree that the fights are sometimes too long. There have been numerous times where I'm just like, "omg just get this over with already." I found myself saying this while saving Taimi.

Agreeing with OP and this comment here too. I haven't played most of these bosses with the other jobs but as a thief main with a quick to die build (which I should probably improve), the Taimi boss, and also the Golem story boss from Sandswept isles took me far too long. Not to forget the fact that I kept disconnecting several times from the game (due to bad wifi and slow laptop) right when I was abut 10% health left on these bosses. After spending 30+ mins on them can disconnecting, with endless deaths, it was tiring. With a group boss I understand the difficulty, but with a story boss where I'm most likely playing alone, these two bosses in particular could have less health. (Thank god Taimi's part was not timed, I can never finish anything timed)

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Not really sure how I feel about this topic actually...I didn't find the fights too difficult in most cases, though I can see how they might be to others. Not sure if different difficulty options would be better or have it dynamically scale as you struggle, so it makes the boss easier when you come back.Though dynamic scaling would make some chieves easier...hm...I wouldn't mind difficulty settings I guess. Though that might be something they'd have to code in from scratch cause they only have CMs in the game iirc, no easy, normal, hard options anywhere.

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I empathize with the OP. Some of the story bosses are immersion breaking because of the length or difficulty of the combat. The mechanic based story bosses tend to be more enjoyable (as long as the mechanics are clear), especially compared to the bullet-hell bosses where it is normal for the commander to repeatedly die (especially on rarely used alts). I stopped running all my characters through living story midway through season 3... it just wasn't worth it between the grueling bits and the decreased rewards.

Having said all that... the my biggest issue are the story combat instances that fully reset and a character can't 'soldier through' but rather has to keep retrying from the beginning of the combat/instance. That is just BAD for story, and luckily those have been rare enough that I don't remember which they are. I can deal with repairing armor from the occasional story instance that was a bit too much for me BUT not the instances that I have to keep repeating just to make progress.

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@crowy.1536 said:I disagree. It's part of the game that you think about your build. You said you run a boon-share build, which really only makes sense when you play openworld with players around you, or when you play with a group. otherwise that build is pretty useless and has no point.

Nope, never said that. I *could run one on one of my many characters, and it's my choice to do so. If there are instances where you simply have no choice but to change the way you want to play, it's a poorly designed instance. Choice is everything.

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@"Charon.7825" said:and I think the sick sobs that design these "stories" love to sit back and J.O. to the idea that the vast majority of players come out of them totally nude with completely broken EQ..I find it strange that this toxic comment is allowed to stand, but if someone politely suggests you play better, the poster is called an elitist, the comment is erased and they are given a warning.Most MMORPG players walk away from games/content like this, not because the game itself isn't fun, but because the content is not consistent with a person's play style - or the mechanics are so vastly different from other MMORPGs that it makes many people just lose interest.Please cite your source for these numbers. It must come from some reputable market research, right?They are fashioning their content around the whole 'group/guild' idea, when there's plenty of us who like to solo and just come on for a good time to grind and levelThere is not a single story instance in the game that is not soloable. Not Scruffy 2.0, not Confessor's End, not Hearts and Minds.RPG means the content should be more focused around an actual D&D or AD&D metric system.Why? Even in the PnP world there are far more interesting alternatives.Again, squishy characters - you know what I am talking about. Its all and fine when you are 1-80, and just roaming around and doing core content - but after that, it's like "ok, what now" - even with PoF and HoT content added; it begins to just become senseless once you have all the mounts, have all the glider skills, and find that the ascended equipment, and legendary equipment do not really bolster any significant increase to your core stats; over exotic.This is what the playerbase asked for.

Scruffy 2.0 has no fail state. Regardless of your skill, gear and build you can walk out victorious even if the best you can do is facetanking to a battle of attrition. There's no way you can lose it other closing the game.You have your easy mode already.Can those of us who spent the time and effort to tune our builds, learn a good rotation and put on some decent gear also have something to sink our teeth into?

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@mauried.5608 said:I gave away all the living stories years ago, simply because they arnt fun.Just a mindless keyboard mashing exercise that goes on and on and eventually Ill probably win , but its just a fight of attrition where you slowly wear down some super monster after multiple retries from checkpoints and consuming multiple repair canisters.

Perhaps it is not the challenge that poses the problem but your refusal to improve your gameplay technique (gear, tactics etc)?

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Imagine wanting to win just by showing up. That is what this thread is about. Maybe we should have autoplay feature enabled too?

It is very easy to win every encounter, all you need to have is: alright damage, healing skill, stun break skill, CC skill of a kind to deal with defiance bar. That is all.Can't you optimize your build while doing story mode?

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@"Mikali.9651" said:Imagine wanting to win just by showing up. That is what this thread is about. Maybe we should have autoplay feature enabled too?

It is very easy to win every encounter, all you need to have is: alright damage, healing skill, stun break skill, CC skill of a kind to deal with defiance bar. That is all.Can't you optimize your build while doing story mode?

It really isn't about wanting to win just by being there? With story I absolutely expect it to be challenging. But when a boss, not all of them mind you, we're talking about specifically 1 or 2 bosses here (with Scruffy from LWS4 E1 being our main example), are hair-tearingly tiring and taking well over 30 mins to do, it just doesn't fit the bill of "challenging story boss" anymore. A story boss is usually one that's, while tough, manageable alone and not cutting the flow of the storytelling. A 30 min boss that takes too long and is exhausting destroys the flow of storytelling by drawing our focus away from the plot and into the thought of "oh my god just please die already I don't ever want to do this again." Which honestly is sad for me as I thoroughly enjoy the story and would love to replay it numerous times through on each of my characters but this initial experience I have with such a boss makes me extremely reluctant to even touch the specific story instance again.

And with the optimization, I understand the basic line everyone's going to be spouting here is "get good at building a character" but some, possibly even many, of us don't understand these minute things. Yes, there are templates out there that kind people leave behind but sometimes these templates conflict with our own playstyles/preferences. And in my case at least, I'm highly reluctant to leave behind a build that I"m both used to and fond of. It's a part of what makes my main character my favorite, I rarely change it. Even if this isn't the case, some of us are also newer players tackling the living world story for the first time and in my short time playing, I'd say that some professions are way less tank-like than others, which also shifts the favor of survivability onto our enemy/boss. So the line of "Get Good" just isn't going to cut it.

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I pulled my hair out and smashed keyboards on some of those bosses. But i think that the point is , they are bosses. And bosses should never be killed easy story or not. And i say this as a new player that gets as frustrated as anyone , but mostly if you cant kill them the first round you whittle them down till you can. And if all else fails i ask my guild for help. I just think there needs to be a feeling of, hey maybe we cant be omnipotent and beat everything, when it comes to playing, that there should be bosses that give us pause. I like it now and look at it like a challenge and know that hey i go in there i may not come out in one piece, and thats fine, like i said grab a friend if you really want to beat it easy.

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@Aru.4156 said:

@"Mikali.9651" said:Imagine wanting to win just by showing up. That is what this thread is about. Maybe we should have autoplay feature enabled too?

It is very easy to win every encounter, all you need to have is: alright damage, healing skill, stun break skill, CC skill of a kind to deal with defiance bar. That is all.Can't you optimize your build while doing story mode?

It really isn't about wanting to win just by being there? With story I absolutely expect it to be challenging. But when a boss, not all of them mind you, we're talking about specifically 1 or 2 bosses here (with Scruffy from LWS4 E1 being our main example), are hair-tearingly tiring and taking well over 30 mins to do, it just doesn't fit the bill of "challenging story boss" anymore. A story boss is usually one that's, while tough, manageable alone and not cutting the flow of the storytelling. A 30 min boss that takes too long and is exhausting destroys the flow of storytelling by drawing our focus away from the plot and into the thought of "oh my god just please die already I don't ever want to do this again." Which honestly is sad for me as I thoroughly enjoy the story and would love to replay it numerous times through on each of my characters but this initial experience I have with such a boss makes me extremely reluctant to even touch the specific story instance again.

And with the optimization, I understand the basic line everyone's going to be spouting here is "get good at building a character" but some, possibly even many, of us don't understand these minute things. Yes, there are templates out there that kind people leave behind but sometimes these templates conflict with our own playstyles/preferences. And in my case at least, I'm highly reluctant to leave behind a build that I"m both used to and fond of. It's a part of what makes my main character my favorite, I rarely change it. Even if this isn't the case, some of us are also newer players tackling the living world story for the first time and in my short time playing, I'd say that some professions are way less tank-like than others, which also shifts the favor of survivability onto our enemy/boss. So the line of "Get Good" just isn't going to cut it.

Then group up and do it with +1-4 others mate?

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@Linken.6345 said:Then group up and do it with +1-4 others mate?

Rather hard to do for a surprisingly unsocial person with an irregular schedule for playing dude. Even more so for a person who prefers to be alone, doesn't have guilds, and wants to explore story and experience it without another person. Yes, it's selfish, but I love the story and fully immerse myself into it. Having another player there wandering around as I listen, stare, and just think about the story would destroy my flow and make me highly uncomfortable.

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@Aru.4156 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Then group up and do it with +1-4 others mate?

Rather hard to do for a surprisingly unsocial person with an irregular schedule for playing dude. Even more so for a person who prefers to be alone, doesn't have guilds, and wants to explore story and experience it without another person. Yes, it's selfish, but I love the story and fully immerse myself into it. Having another player there wandering around as I listen, stare, and just think about the story would destroy my flow and make me highly uncomfortable.

I think that is an outlier and mmorpgs were never designed with that outlier in mind. They are social games that work when people play together. I play pretty much solo, but even so i still manage to say hi and chat in guild some. You cant expect them to change gameplay design in a social game for a few people that dont like playing with others. The onus is on you. If you want to play alone in the game , then you need to optimize your character to whatever content you are trying to clear. People can and do solo these stories all the time, so its not impossible. You just have to change your gear and build and rotation if you want to be effective solo at it. Im stubborn too and didnt want to optimize so i called in a guild friend and knocked it out. those are the choices and in an mmorpg thats how it should be.

Kinda on topic here, but this is why build templates are important. So we can swap to better optimize for events like this.

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@Zuldari.3940 said:

@Aru.4156 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Then group up and do it with +1-4 others mate?

Rather hard to do for a surprisingly unsocial person with an irregular schedule for playing dude. Even more so for a person who prefers to be alone, doesn't have guilds, and wants to explore story and experience it without another person. Yes, it's selfish, but I love the story and fully immerse myself into it. Having another player there wandering around as I listen, stare, and just think about the story would destroy my flow and make me highly uncomfortable.

I think that is an outlier and mmorpgs were never designed with that outlier in mind. They are social games that work when people play together. I play pretty much solo, but even so i still manage to say hi and chat in guild some. You cant expect them to change gameplay design in a social game for a few people that dont like playing with others. The onus is on you. If you want to play alone in the game , then you need to optimize your character to whatever content you are trying to clear. People can and do solo these stories all the time, so its not impossible. You just have to change your gear and build and rotation if you want to be effective solo at it. Im stubborn too and didnt want to optimize so i called in a guild friend and knocked it out. those are the choices and in an mmorpg thats how it should be.

Absolutely understood. I definitely see myself as an outlier for an MMORPG : P Not to forget the fact anyone I do play story with is free to play still and more time restricted than I.

That aside, I absolutely get your point, just wanted to mention a few things from the viewpoint of an outlier (which really isn't helpful....) and a casual new player. I'll push through despite my complaints.

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@Aru.4156 said:

@Aru.4156 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Then group up and do it with +1-4 others mate?

Rather hard to do for a surprisingly unsocial person with an irregular schedule for playing dude. Even more so for a person who prefers to be alone, doesn't have guilds, and wants to explore story and experience it without another person. Yes, it's selfish, but I love the story and fully immerse myself into it. Having another player there wandering around as I listen, stare, and just think about the story would destroy my flow and make me highly uncomfortable.

I think that is an outlier and mmorpgs were never designed with that outlier in mind. They are social games that work when people play together. I play pretty much solo, but even so i still manage to say hi and chat in guild some. You cant expect them to change gameplay design in a social game for a few people that dont like playing with others. The onus is on you. If you want to play alone in the game , then you need to optimize your character to whatever content you are trying to clear. People can and do solo these stories all the time, so its not impossible. You just have to change your gear and build and rotation if you want to be effective solo at it. Im stubborn too and didnt want to optimize so i called in a guild friend and knocked it out. those are the choices and in an mmorpg thats how it should be.

Absolutely understood. I definitely see myself as an outlier for an MMORPG : P Not to forget the fact anyone I do play story with is free to play still and more time restricted than I.

That aside, I absolutely get your point, just wanted to mention a few things from the viewpoint of an outlier (which really isn't helpful....) and a casual new player. I'll push through despite my complaints.

And thats fine, but maybe we can give some tips to help through some of these bosses outside of grouping to do them. Metabattle has good builds for doing this, and there are guides that will explain the fights. Also look to see what profession may be better at it, personally i found necro to be best and most forgiving in fights like scruffy for me. If you screw up chances are you can survive and regain. Dont get me wrong in the end i called for help after dying x amount of times, because that fight is a little crazy. But you can do it, you just have to start with the right set up for you. Some people chrono it and have an easier time for them personally. Some people play engi well enough to do it on that. Its about what works for the person. I find not locking my self into a main for everything works best in this game, unlike other games.

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Hard bosses? Sorry, but 95% is faceroll. There are maybe 2-3 encounters which are a bit harder and have some mechanic. But generally it takes about 2 mins to find out and done.

It really seems that more and more 'gamers' don't play games generally. If you are a experienced gamer this is ridiculous and easy. You don't even have to redo the whole fight, since you respawn with bosses already halfway done. How casual can it get? Holy... play Dark Souls or Devil May Cry. That's hard.

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