Epsilon Indi.2031

In fairness, video games are usually both: a challenge to overcome and a power fantasy wrapped around it, to make overcoming a rather pedestrian sort of challenge (don't stand in orange circle) feel satisfyingly momentous in some way (you saved the world, commander!). But both are earned in some fashion, not just given out because you showed up.

Uh, how is LW not casual when it's literally impossible to fail the new metas on the new maps and literally impossible to fail in the story if you pay any amount of attention? not true, it is more casual though. you still have all the previous LWS before that. and i dont care about metas anywayit is also a new form of LW, the reduction in difficulty is prolly the only reason for the name change Look, I was super casual when season 2 came out. (I used a shout heals warrior in full clerics, then a interrupt warrior with hammer/greatsword in cavalier's when unsuspecting foe was still a thing.) I was a bit less casual when season 3 came out (Utilizing meta builds and rotations) and my skill basically plateaued for a while there so it was about the same in Season 4 as I stopped caring about personal improvement. The only time I had any sort of problem with any of the content was going after the achievements and that's mostly because they require you to do very specific things or actually be good at fighting a boss (Kill x in 40 seconds or avoid this attack from this boss). None of the content outside of the achievements has actually been difficult or put up a challenge against the skillset one would develop by doing Fractal/Raid CMs, Raids, Strikes, Fractals, or Dungeons (pre HoT). It's literally impossible to fail any of the personal story. There's no failure state, you retry from checkpoint and go again. so i just have to dump the build, that i know how to use, and grind lots of gold, so i can get new runes for the new build, that i dont know anything about?yea, thats totally casual, i am sure that people will flock to this new and stunning approach. its not like people got attached to their playstyle after only 80 lvls Such straw, very man. No. I didn't have trouble with my shout heals warrior. I didn't have trouble with my interrupt warrior. If all you gleamed from what I said here is "PlAy MeTa" Then you're blind to your own toxicity and are trying, either on purpose or otherwise, to undermine my argument with such things. Now, when I said still a lot of work with a questionable outcome. i tried one of the meta DD builds, and was annihilated. was that because i played it wrong, or because the gear wasnt good enough? either way, no more fun on THAT toon. i would even have to grind, just to get my old build back. not gonna happen. Yes. It's because you played it "wrong". Was that ever really a question, given what you've seen? Daredevil is a great spec for open world. It was my first 80 and I had no trouble with it. So, yes, there are things you could do differently to perform better. too late. not gonna work on something that has so low chance of success. and even if i found a functional build, theres no more content for me anyway.maybe ill play around with some low lvl toons at some point, but thats it. and they wont get many sales from that.Yikes. So you admit to playing something incorrectly, and, instead of adjusting your playstyle to help not die, you decide to just give up. Honestly, if that's the case, go back to those afk mobile games t hat play for you because this is an MMO. This is a video game. It's supposed to have some challenge. Video games are about the reward of overcoming a challenge, not a power trip fantasy that gets boring in 2 hours.

Mh, what makes thief powerful is the WvW maps. Maximum mobility + stealth + huge maps allowing the thief to break combat. Initiative regenerates and the thief can come back to try the burst again. It's more just too much evade and mobility with any amount of stealth on a big map where the thief can just go in any which way (And hitting a stealthed target doesn't show any sort of tell or give any sort of feedback that, yes, you've found them.)

Uh, how is LW not casual when it's literally impossible to fail the new metas on the new maps and literally impossible to fail in the story if you pay any amount of attention? not true, it is more casual though. you still have all the previous LWS before that. and i dont care about metas anywayit is also a new form of LW, the reduction in difficulty is prolly the only reason for the name change Look, I was super casual when season 2 came out. (I used a shout heals warrior in full clerics, then a interrupt warrior with hammer/greatsword in cavalier's when unsuspecting foe was still a thing.) I was a bit less casual when season 3 came out (Utilizing meta builds and rotations) and my skill basically plateaued for a while there so it was about the same in Season 4 as I stopped caring about personal improvement. The only time I had any sort of problem with any of the content was going after the achievements and that's mostly because they require you to do very specific things or actually be good at fighting a boss (Kill x in 40 seconds or avoid this attack from this boss). None of the content outside of the achievements has actually been difficult or put up a challenge against the skillset one would develop by doing Fractal/Raid CMs, Raids, Strikes, Fractals, or Dungeons (pre HoT). It's literally impossible to fail any of the personal story. There's no failure state, you retry from checkpoint and go again. so i just have to dump the build, that i know how to use, and grind lots of gold, so i can get new runes for the new build, that i dont know anything about?yea, thats totally casual, i am sure that people will flock to this new and stunning approach. its not like people got attached to their playstyle after only 80 lvls Such straw, very man. No. I didn't have trouble with my shout heals warrior. I didn't have trouble with my interrupt warrior. If all you gleamed from what I said here is "PlAy MeTa" Then you're blind to your own toxicity and are trying, either on purpose or otherwise, to undermine my argument with such things. Now, when I said still a lot of work with a questionable outcome. i tried one of the meta DD builds, and was annihilated. was that because i played it wrong, or because the gear wasnt good enough? either way, no more fun on THAT toon. i would even have to grind, just to get my old build back. not gonna happen.Uh, all builds have a questionable outcome except for Meta builds because the only builds that have really been extensively tested are Meta builds. What you and a lot of players would benefit from is a deeper understanding of the meta. Having Boons, buffs, and a purpose for each build will perform substantially better than a generalist playstyle. Also gear. You need to make sure your gear is all level 80 and at least rares if you're confident, exotics if you've got ab it extra currency to blow. Being able to stack 25 might, fury, swiftness while having some survivability with extra VIT is better than going full on glass cannon build in open world. You also have to realize that a lot of META builds are META in Group content, which assumes that everyone has a role to fill and is filling that role. Healers/supports cover the sustain and boons, DPS covers damage/cc. This is in general and not always the case as sometimes supports cover CC or there's no healer. You can a djust your build to give more invuln frames, more sustain, or more dodges, stunbreaks, or CC to break the mob. However, most, if not all the time, dying in open world or LW story instances is just a learn to play issue. There are very, very few exceptions (Mostly big open world events where there's so many players you can't see what's going on.) but Solo and small groups, there's almost no reason to die. You have clear visibility of the mob. You can observe what it does and come up with a strategy to either cheese it, avoid it's big damage, or kill it outright before it can do the big damage. You can avoid the big hits by learning what it (the mob) does before it does the attack. This was taught in Arah Explorable with Giganticus Lupicus.

From Core to HoT, yeah. It's not really so much a step up as a leap forwards. It still fairly uses the game mechanics, though, so HoT just forces people to learn, adapt, and overcome. The difficulty between the two current expacs should have been reversed, if I'm honest. PoF is easier than HoT while being more difficult than Core, but if you do Core > Pof > HoT for difficulty, the story gets confused. The mobs actually fight back, they have counterplay (however simple it is now-a-days) and some form of tactics or mechanics that, once you learn, you can use to exploit the mob and kill it even easier. You can bait out snipers to dodge. You can lay down aoes to destroy pocket raptors. Reflect skills shut down a few of the enemies, and the resistance boon stops all of the condition enemies as not many, if any, mobs in HoT have boon rip/corruption. I will agree with you here; Core GW2 doesn't really do anything to prepare the player for HoT.

I just don't see it. I wasn't even healing Sunquah t2 or even on an optimized fractal build. In fact, the 4 other players are pretty inexperienced to the whole thing and we got through it just fine with minimal explanations of what goes on.

I grew up on old games that'd punish you horribly for making stupid mistakes. Going back to htem, even as an adult, they're rather crap with their difficulty. It's an apt comparison when comparing HoT to Dark Souls as both have an evolution of game mechanics and force you to adapt to overcome the series of challenges presented to you. It's also not supposed to be a power fantasy. You had that going after Zhaitan. Here, Mordy was ready, blew up the fleet, and now you, the commander, have to pick up the pieces, learn a few new tricks (Elite specs, masteries), gain new allies (Itzel, Exalted), and reforge old ones with the remaining Pact Members. The story is a bit rushed, but the actual map instances feel great. There's an emphasis on group content and learning what enemies can do, adapting skills and even builds in some cases, to the scenario you face to overcome the challenge. HoT is difficult but fair. Especially when ANet changed the maps a bit to fit a little better with the core of GW2.

Uh, how is LW not casual when it's literally impossible to fail the new metas on the new maps and literally impossible to fail in the story if you pay any amount of attention? not true, it is more casual though. you still have all the previous LWS before that. and i dont care about metas anywayit is also a new form of LW, the reduction in difficulty is prolly the only reason for the name change Look, I was super casual when season 2 came out. (I used a shout heals warrior in full clerics, then a interrupt warrior with hammer/greatsword in cavalier's when unsuspecting foe was still a thing.) I was a bit less casual when season 3 came out (Utilizing meta builds and rotations) and my skill basically plateaued for a while there so it was about the same in Season 4 as I stopped caring about personal improvement. The only time I had any sort of problem with any of the content was going after the achievements and that's mostly because they require you to do very specific things or actually be good at fighting a boss (Kill x in 40 seconds or avoid this attack from this boss). None of the content outside of the achievements has actually been difficult or put up a challenge against the skillset one would develop by doing Fractal/Raid CMs, Raids, Strikes, Fractals, or Dungeons (pre HoT). It's literally impossible to fail any of the personal story. There's no failure state, you retry from checkpoint and go again. so i just have to dump the build, that i know how to use, and grind lots of gold, so i can get new runes for the new build, that i dont know anything about?yea, thats totally casual, i am sure that people will flock to this new and stunning approach. its not like people got attached to their playstyle after only 80 lvlsSuch straw, very man. No. I didn't have trouble with my shout heals warrior. I didn't have trouble with my interrupt warrior. If all you gleamed from what I said here is "PlAy MeTa" Then you're blind to your own toxicity and are trying, either on purpose or otherwise, to undermine my argument with such things. Now, when I said

Uh, how is LW not casual when it's literally impossible to fail the new metas on the new maps and literally impossible to fail in the story if you pay any amount of attention? not true, it is more casual though. you still have all the previous LWS before that. and i dont care about metas anywayit is also a new form of LW, the reduction in difficulty is prolly the only reason for the name changeLook, I was super casual when season 2 came out. (I used a shout heals warrior in full clerics, then a interrupt warrior with hammer/greatsword in cavalier's when unsuspecting foe was still a thing.) I was a bit less casual when season 3 came out (Utilizing meta builds and rotations) and my skill basically plateaued for a while there so it was about the same in Season 4 as I stopped caring about personal improvement. The only time I had any sort of problem with any of the content was going after the achievements and that's mostly because they require you to do very specific things or actually be good at fighting a boss (Kill x in 40 seconds or avoid this attack from this boss). None of the content outside of the achievements has actually been difficult or put up a challenge against the skillset one would develop by doing Fractal/Raid CMs, Raids, Strikes, Fractals, or Dungeons (pre HoT). It's literally impossible to fail any of the personal story. There's no failure state, you retry from checkpoint and go again.

I did it just fine with a group of 4 players who aren't experienced at all in fractals. It's also the final boss of a tier of fractals, it's likely supposed to be difficult.

Uh, how is LW not casual when it's literally impossible to fail the new metas on the new maps and literally impossible to fail in the story if you pay any amount of attention?

It's more that, when you join a group, you should have a team player mindset and not this idea that the group you've joined should bow to your whims (Things such as an inefficient/ineffective off-meta build, lack of experience with the content, and/or unwillingness to learn) . Likewise, when putting up an LFG, the poster should be as specific as they need to be to get the people they want in their group (Build requirements, experience requirements, content being done, etc.). The idea of the LFG is to find people, Like-minded people, to do the content with. Group requirements are a way to filter out people who wouldn't be a good fit for the group. Forcing something the group advertiser doesn't want into their group isn't going to end well and deserves a kick Kicking someone because they don't fit what a group is after is not the equivalent of someone kicking someone else from the group so they don't get their rewards. Those are two very different things.

They weren't wrong, but also weren't specific enough.. Raids, fractals, dungeons, and strikes all have different group compositions depending on the goal. Fractals is even more seperated from the group because potions give extra stats so you can run different builds with more damage, healing, boon support, etc. You don't necessarily need stability to get past every CC, you can interrupt most attacks, block, or just outright evade/dps the mob down before it can use that attack. Also, unless it's No Pain, No Gain, or some other mechanic, the renegade covers stability Power/Condi quickbrand can do the same, it's just tighter timing. Tempest has rebound, auras, and 10 man healing and might. Scourge has the best aoe rez in the game. Healbrand gives the best damage mitigation. Healscrapper cleanses conditions like no one else Healren has the highest single skill use healing in the game while providing perma protection and alacrity with 5 man might (avg. 10 stacks) Mesmer and Warrior are the only two classes without much in the way of a heal spec that's effective.

Anet should really do a full sweep of all of the core tyria maps to adjust all heart tasks so they complete faster or have the relevant events spawn more frequently. Alternatively, for every character on your account that has map completion, heart tasks complete 5% faster up to doubling the speed.

Ah, Anecdotes. This should be interesting. This is quite ironic. Aaaand here it is. This is great, but you're also 3/5 players with lots of experience. So long as you've 2 supports giving good boons, consumables, and one really good DPS you can carry these fractals. Ah, yeah, see, you're not pugging. You're 3/5ths a static carrying 2 more people. This is the placebo you have. If we're going to play anecdotes, today I got a raid group going on the LFG with no real requirements and we one pulled Adina. This was at 6AM CST, outside of NA primetime. Raids are hardly dead, and people want to play with others who have experience and get a smooth clear with complete randoms, not 3/5ths (or in a raid's case, 6/10ths) of a static carrying hard because your average player who raids or does fractals just wants to clear the content as smoothly as possible. This community are exactly what guilds are for. The LFG is for finding temporary groups for content, not judging the community as a whole. Also, anyone can make a group on the LFG. That's the glory o the system, though sometimes you do and groups are up for hours on end because of the time of day. Yeah, sure, if they didn't do half a job of removing KP, it'd have actually worked, but they made it optional to turn it in instead of just converting all essence into the new currency immediately. This made people hang onto it and now there's an exclusive group that anyone who had no essence before can never join, ever, even if they put forth the effort to do so. Odd, they weren't being judged to begin with. Does a job posting that's asking for 2 years experience in a relevant field judge the people who don't have that? No, sane people see that it requires that experience and, if they don't have it, they leave and look for something else or go get that experience. I'm pretty sure even you went out of your way to get experienced at CMs before joining higher requirement groups. More anecdotes. I'll counter with some of my own then; I've joined low Ess groups before and have had people, despite telling them (Hit Solar Blooms Clockwise, skull to anom and stick in bubble, clockwise at Siax, spread for Ensolys 66%/33%) they repeatedly don't do that and cause wipes at worst or die early at best. It's not even a language barrier issue as I demonstrate the strategy visually as well post wipe so they can have the best chance at understanding what I'm asking of them and they still fail. High essence groups are trying to weed out people who refuse to listen, can't listen, or don't want to learn and signify to others that these people know the fight and will have the highest chance at getting a smooth, speedy clear.

From my experience, people with no prior cm knowledge have no idea how to burst, do 1-2k dps and then brag about being the last person alive even if the boss would take 30min with a party full of such players.Most high kp groups do the fractal already without any heal saving 5-6min compared to the average party. How do you filter out people that are not used to play without a dedicated healer? so you saying the guy that did 2k dps stayed alive while your KP players died and it's his fault? O - M - G I think he's more saying that there is no point bragging about being alive if you cannot do your job half descently. if you can't stay alive you are not doing any jobSometimes, and hear me out on this, you need other players to do certain mechanics correctly to do your job correctly. If someone fails to go into the bubble on Shattered Obsersvatory CM when skulled, that's on them. Sure, the skulled person will live, but everyone else will be dead.

Nah, bro, people were saying "Form your own group of like-minded people." This means either join a guild, find some friends or opening the contacts tab, going to the LFG section, selecting the content you wanted to do (Raids, fractals, dungeons, strikes), then with raids and dungeons, selecting the instance you plan on doing or with fractals, selecting the level scale you're doing, clicking "Create Group" and writing your requirements be it "CMs+T4s+Recs | All Roles | 42069 KP", "Chill CMs+T4s", or "All welcome T4s". Protip; the former always t akes longer to fill than t he two latter ones specifically about an hour before reset to an hour after reset. Afterwords, it begins to fall off and all groups take forever to fill about 4-5 hours after reset.

It gives an estimate on someone’s potential skill with whatever awarded that particular KP. and it could always be bought spoofed or carried for. My god this excuse is tiresome. People can boost in any and all game modes. It becomes obvious on the first encounter if they are just one of the boosters and they are easily blocked and removed from the party. It takes about 10 seconds into a boss fight to understand how terrible a player may be. if it's so obvious why do you need kp?It's pretty yikes that I have to explain this to you, but okay. So, having killed a boss 20 times and being capable of proving it means you likely know your skill level and other people can gauge your skill level and experience with a fight, tempering their expectations to your impact to the group's overall performance. Saying you've killed a boss 20 times and not having a method to prove it leaves it up in the air if you're telling the truth or needing to fight he first boss and waste 1-2 minutes failing to kill, likely have an argument spurred on by the person who lied about their experience that wastes yet more time, dealing with them trolling the LFG posting as they're mad that they got removed for being dead weight, and generally causing headaches for everyone involved.

It gives an estimate on someone’s potential skill with whatever awarded that particular KP. and it could always be bought spoofed or carried for.My god this excuse is tiresome. People can boost in any and all game modes. It becomes obvious on the first encounter if they are just one of the boosters and they are easily blocked and removed from the party. It takes about 10 seconds into a boss fight to understand how terrible a player may be.

Yes and here's why: It allows experienced groups to group together and inexperienced groups to group together and learn. It shows progress. This is my suggestion: An achievement that counts your boss kills for fractals and raids with a failsafe protection of trying to fake the achievement either returns an error of (Cannot link from this location) or just shows your achievement anyways. For example, say a player sees a group looking for a role the player has but they want someone who's at least beaten the boss 40 times. The player only has done it 4 times, and tries to fake their achievement. It either doesn't go through, or when they link the chat code (the [&A23461] or whatever it could be) it just returns their achievement with the 4 kills. This technology to stop items being linked already exists and would likely need to be modified. Linking achievements though may be impossible, but it is a dream. Also, imagine being able to compare with guildies/friends how many kills you've got

Accidentally lean against a stove once and get burned, sure, the person who left it on or covered the 'hot surface' indicator light is at fault. Repeatedly leaning against stoves afterwords without checking if it's been on recently only to get burned again, though, that's when it starts to become the user's fault. You have to understand that we only have OP's side of the story and, without any evidence in the form of raw chatlogs or otherwise, we can't confirm OP's story. What more do you want? Them to be permanently banned from the game for kicking someone from their group who then complains about it on the forums/reddit/anywhere else? It's the commander's group, they're allowed to do what they want. If they're a jerk and toxic, block them and you won't see their LFG postings again. Again, you have to understand that we only have OP's side of the story and, without any evidence in the form of raw chatlogs or otherwise, we can't confirm OP's story.

Perhaps after the first kick, you should have blocked the commander and went about your business elsewhere instead of rejoining a group with a commander that doesn't want you in it. Don't rejoin groups that kick you.

Why not just do things that make the content easier for yourself instead of requesting everyone else to make the content harder for themselves?

The glory of fractals is that if you don't like the CMs or certain tiers you can still experience the story and content on an easier level. Here's where the comparison kind of dies though:Raid CMs along with the Forging Steel CM add new mechanics and/or alter existing mechanics along with buffing the stats of the bosses. This is the same idea of Nightmare and Shattered Observatory CMs and divorced from the simple CMs required for Ad Infinitum. Myself, and anyone else who were expecting a whole new CM likely interpreted the line "advanced players will be able to tackle a more brutal version of the final fight in challenge mode." to mean just the final boss of the new fractal and not the whole thing like how the two other fractal CMs added after Ad Infinitum are.

So, Nightmare and Shattered observatory kind of redefined what "Challenge Mode" means. First, you get a big, scary, level 100 dude asking if you're sure. Accepting the challenge, the dude laughs at your party and all the bosses get new mechanics and the fractals themselves give new rewards for those who succeed at conquering the challenge. The Ad Infinitum CMs are one-time, don't add new mechanics (like new moves, new mobs, etc.), and are either a stat buff to the mobs or debuff to the player. Sometimes both. What I presume is that the expectations of the people who were excited about a new CM being introduced to fractals was of the former, not the latter.