Rasimir.6239

LOL...I have no idea what "kp" and "li" even mean."kill proof" - usually some kind of decoration drop unique to the raid/fractal/whatever boss in question"legendary insight" - a crafting material that you get from raid bosses, one per kill

If you open your story journal the game's stories are listed in chronological order. If you want the (almost) full story experience, go through that one top to bottom (almost because season 1 unfortunately is unavailable as that was a series of time-limited events, but there is a short recap available in Lion's Arch). There are however two exceptions: Playing the first chapter of Path of Fire unlocks the (basic) raptor mount, that makes moving through maps a lot easier. Similarly, playing the first chapter of Heart of Thorns unlocks the (basic) gliding mastery, although you will have to play a bit on the Verdant Brink map to gain enough mastery experience to actually be able to use gliding. If you don't much care about the story you can go in any order you like. Check out the masteries and decide which ones you would like to train first, then play in the respective areas (HoT and Season 3 for HoT masteries, PoF and Season 4 for PoF masteries, Season 5/Icebrood Saga for Icebrood Saga masteries, and Core Tyria for core masteries) to gain mastery experience and mastery points. Like most of the rest of the game, it's really up to you where you go and what you do. Having access to mounts and gliding does make moving around a lot easier, but the rest is personal preference. Easiest really is to just play whatever looks fun to you, and go from there. That way mastery experience and points will come naturally while you play and enjoy yourself.

I'm on EU and I won't pretend like there aren't parties for dungeons as there are. However certain dungeons are not frequented as much (the times I've been on and looking this week there have been no HotW parties at all in LFP) and of the parties I have been in only a couple were casual runs for the fun of it.You've got me there. HotW is my least favourite dungeon, so I have no idea how the lfg for that specific one is ;) . If you are still looking for groups though, feel free to whisper me if you see me online, I'll gladly join any dungeon run if I have the time. @"Thereon.3495" said:I don't know exact numbers of course but I'd be willing less of the playerbase plays dungeons compared to Fractals. I'd personally like to see this evened out a little, that's all.I'm not sure that's how things work. There is a sizeable group of players that will only play the (perceived) best kind of content to the exclusion of most everything else. If you do manage to lure those to dungeons, then fractals will "suffer" and deemed not worth it any more. Evening things out "a little" rarely works in this kind of game, simply because the group of those choosing their content by the opinion of their peers rather than individually is too large to allow for that.

What just becouse you have to kill the boss over and over to maybe get 1 skin to drop dont make them skins as in plural. That skin and the other boneskinner weapons is entirely Mystic Forge. Yet again, they release another strike mission with no actual unique rewards. Really? How do you know that? Do you have the recipe? Did you acquire it that way? Did everyone that acquired one get it there?If so, why haven't you updated the Wiki? Why should it be my responsibility to update the wiki especially on an item that I haven't done or gotten myself?That's the thing: updating the wiki is nobody's responsibility. It's totally filled with information players updated out of their own free will. If you don't want to update the wiki that's your (valid) choice, but it would still be nice to know on what information you base your statement that the missions have no unique rewards and the weapons come out of the mystic forge instead.

Lights and mirrors do have a timer. If you take too long, the light stops pulsing and/or mirrors reset. It's been that way from the release of the first episode. I've had to redo several light puzzles both during the first episode and of the new ones released because I lost too much time trying to figure out where the next mirror is. Fortunately if you redo it immediately you're likely to remember where you went wrong last time and can save enough time to get through. At least I haven't been stuck badly enough to even think of needing a guide for this, the light pulses and the sounds the mirrors make (the right orientation has a different sound for each reflected pulse than the wrong orientations have for each blocked light pulse) are easily followed in my experience.

Technically you are right. The vast majority of the playerbase is physically capable of doing strike missions. The problem however is not physical/technical, but rather psychological for many. There is a sizeable playerbase in this game that avoids instanced group content. Many of those players could do that content from a purely technical standpoint, but skip it for social reasons. Not everyone is comfortable with learning/practicing in front of strangers, especially not the more insensitive kind of stranger who might comment on your skill (or rather lack of) in a way that puts you under even more stress than you already are. It's a question of personality more than anything else that keeps a lot of people from joining strikes, and this game has attracted many such people especially because they are able to largely skip instanced group content and still play pretty much the "whole" game. Personally I know that I am able to perform adequately in strikes, even though I'm physically a lot more handicapped than I was five years ago. I've always liked instanced group content, have been an endgame raider in previous games, enjoy this game's dungeons to this day (content I learned before my health took a severe turn to the worse), and have no problem raiding or playing t4 fractals (although I no longer pug those, since I need much more practice to feel comfortable with that). Yet I haven't tried a single of the Bjora Marches strike missions yet, and even feel anxious only thinking of trying them. I know it will take me several runs to get the encounter mechanics down and be able to pull my weight in the mission. I'm old, it unfortunately is a fact that I have to do an encounter a lot before it clicks in my brain and I can react to mechanics without conciously thinking out which skill to use next. The thought of getting stuck with a squad of young men half my age or younger (I'll turn 50 in a few days) that behave and communicate like they always do while having to watch me desperately trying to learn the content is enough to make me stressed out already. Unlike the thread starter I am in the lucky position of being in a guild (and having been a part of it since way back in the good old glory days of dungeon running in this game) full of friends half my age that do instanced group content regularly and that I know well enough and am comfortable enough with to do that kind of content with, so realizing that the new meta achievement requires strike mission achievements might just be the push I need to finally ask them for help to get my feet wet in the new strike missions until I feel comfortable enough to pug them. I don't mind saying that I don't enjoy asking their help and feeling like a useless weight/being carried until my old brain and slow body finally get the encounters down, but it's the best I can do (and in a way I'm also looking forward to being able to do this stuff regularly on my own terms, like I said I do enjoy instanced group content, I'm just not comfortable with the learning phase any more). All that said, I still believe that while technically strike missions and their achievements are doable for most players in this game, but psychologically looking at the sizeable group of players that choose this game precisely because most open world/story content can be solo'ed it's a poor choice to make those strike achievements mandatory for the episode meta achievements. Personally I think it would've been a better choice for everyone to include the strikes in the eligible achievements but putting the total required so you can skip them (at the cost of having to do every single other achievement).

Honestly that sounds like a bug, not a feature. I haven't gotten the tome yet and can confirm that the scroll itself still puts you back at Jora's Keep, just like it used to do from the beginning. Most likely somebody just messed up the destination coordinates when the tome was coded.

Thanks for doing this campaign, ANet!

Another point of contention I have with op's suggestion is the general topic of "unique loot". Dungeons already have a good bit of unique loot, a complete weapon and armor set per dungeon (which these days can be gotten through pvp/wvw, too, but if you enjoy dungeons are much easier to gather that way) as well as unique and moderately rare crafting recipes and (last but not least) legendary gifts. This game's design of "play the content you enjoy to win comparable rewards" doesn't work well with unique loot. The more unique loot put in game that can only be gotten through a narrow set of content, the more the game becomes similar to every other game out there, and moves away from one of the main reasons many of us play this game instead of others. All that aside, I honestly believe that the "problem" op tries to solve isn't one to begin with. Last time we had a "dungeons need moar loot" thread a couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity to pug dungeons more regularly again. I've been playing all kinds of different dungeons and paths over the last few weeks, both through putting up my own lfg and jumping into other people's, and I never once had a problem of a party not filling in a decent timeframe. People do run dungeons to this day, simply because it's enjoyable content to a lot of us. There's no need to pollute the dungeon experience with a ton of "hate this content but want the reward" type of player that often simply ruins other people's experience more than anything else.

Designing every group/meta event so it can be done easily on the day when a new content drop pulls the majority of the playerbase out of every other piece of available content, will turn a lot of the large events laughably easy if not downright boring (or even more so than they are now) when played with a decent number of players, thus taking away one of the characteristic kinds of content this game has offered since the start. Talking about Thunderhead south in particular, if I'm not mistaken each of the defense events is tuned to be a group event in its own right (and should be if full squads turn up to do that content). Doing those events with 4 people per defense (assuming the 12 the op talked about are spread around evenly) sounds like a challenge, although a coordinated group with good damage and understanding of mechanics could probably still pull it off. If on the other hand those 12 didn't know what to expect/do (like pulling the hydra away from the drill ... you don't have to kill it, just make sure it doesn't breathe on the drill all the time) I'm not surprised the event failed. It's probably comparable to tackling Tarir with 12-16 players that only have a hazy idea of the mechanics of the different octovine fights (which I seriously doubt would have a chance either).

I'm still wondering if there are more bugs in the fight that make mechanics not appear or not work correctly, or if it's just a matter of patch day audience being too numerous to judge the true difficulty of the event.

The human mind is "programmed" to find patterns in anything it sees, even if there are no patterns there at all, that's why we quickly notice the outliers in random results and try to see a trend in them, but with a sample size of just 5 or 6 maps you don't have any basis on which to suspect changes in map completion rewards. Your outcome is definitely unlikely, but even the unlikely happens at times.

Have you tried putting up your own lfg instead of looking for other people's? I regularly play all dungeons, with Arah being among the favorites, and I rarely have problems to fill a group.

Easiest way to find out is to just log into your account and check it out yourself. While you can't access the expansion content (maps of course, but more importantly masteries that cover things like mounts and gliding) you can still get reaquainted with classes, combat system, art style etc. and observe the changes to the game from the inside. If you enjoy what you find it's easy to upgrade the account, and if you don't then at least you know why the game is no longer for you. For a lengthy list of what has changed since you last played, the wiki has a list of releases and their key features.

Why anyone would choose to "play" this way is beyond me, but then I'm not an ap hunter, just a lowly casual that only plays the content they find fun at that moment.

What exactly should they put into such a track? Small envelopes? Trash items? Essences of luck? The 1g-envelopes seem over the top compared to the value of stuff like wintersday presents or trick-or-treat bags, and there's not much in the form of account bound rewards that don't have a gold price attached in this event that could work as a final or worse yet intermediate reward track price. Don't get me wrong, I really like seasonal reward tracks, I'm just having a hard time coming up with any event-related loot that would mimic event participation similar to the other festivals without being either underwhelming or way over the top.

@Musha.4025 said:

The token does drop from the end chest. I had one drop on my 3rd (and final) try at the challenge last night (I was at 5 or 6 stacks of the buff at that point). Of course with that low of a sample size (and the variable chances due to buffs ... I only had one stack of the buff on my 2nd try since I came into the instance just as it was wrapping up the last activity) there is no way to tell for me how frequent the drop really is. The chance of getting buff stacks does seem to increase the better your instance is doing. The one I did with 6 stacks had several activities end early due to the instance reaching the limit for said activity, and it did seem to allow for more activities to complete than the first one I was in (where most activities ran out of time before reaching the goal). I'll have to observe the whole thing a few more times to be sure that's how you're getting your buff stacks. It's a new activity. Nobody knows the ins and outs of it yet. Give it a couple of days for people to figure out how to best gather stacks and get a feel for how the stacks affect the loot chance before crying "nerf". Personally, from what I've seen last night this looks to me like a welcome addition for those of us that prefer cooperative to competitive activities.