Unsoloable X years old open world content should be made soloable

[azorean.1850]

Sorry computer says no.

[LSD.4673]

Your issue is tied to the "living world" system of farting out a batch of half-finished maps for each "release". Players are so spread thin, and the maps utterly lack replay value so there's no incentive to be there.

But your issue isn't as clear cut as you make it out to be. Keep watch for LFG groups or coms popping up. Someone always does it. Watering it down is just ridiculous though. If you really were that desperate you'd offer a gold bounty and tag up yourself.

[Sunchaser.9854]

I think it's interesting to observe this fourms, how often when a player will present one idea such as {'This content is old, and i am struggling to beat group content it was designed for'}, another player will take things at face value, and then turn things into a he said you said war where it seems to come off as more important to one up some virtual video game nonsense.

Myself i play a lot of games and i've done a fair bit of optimizing. In WoW i would regularly optimize my builds to the point i would be in a group dealing 40-80k dps while the other players did 5-10k and then do my best to try and keep everyone alive, but if they were salty while i was trying to help them, i'd take a fair chance at trying to help them before giving up or literally leaving them in a pile dead the entire dungeon while timing the mythic +18 key. 

I think what's missed here, is that there can be a variety of success in builds and even as a min maxer, i'll often get people chastise or completely miss the point of subjects. Such as gaps of gear availablity and viability of certain specs, means that the less optimized players might get a build they love and think they're "skilled" at, only to fail to 1-5k dps or blame another.

 

While another class might afk to 20-40k by design with up to 1-4 button presses, while others perform 20 key rotations with stat swaps to easily get 4k-10k if piloted blind despite likely playing at a higher apm. 

 

I think, (to a educated mind), that perhaps less educated or more simpler minds simply see things as a side of war to take. One camp believes the content to be nerfed, because their build isn't able to handle it. Another believes that balancing the content to make it easier makes the game too easy. But often one of the more successful mmorpgs i've seen is to offer tiered yet rewarding scaling, where players can experience the content at 100% or 300% stat difficulty, but be rewarded with stronger rewards in other games.

 

However since gw2 is more of a group game where not all access to affix gear is available and others are fine with it. (some specs having gear literally potentially cheaper than their ascended equivilents, if they do raiding), while others can literally set a piece of gear for 2g. I think one mild concern is that for a new player launch, one of gw2's unique niches as a mmorpg that's fun is each weapon has a unique ability set! And yet. instead of like, buffing the content to embrace the build diversity.

 

They tend to make things highly unequal between certain classes while others are extremely versatile without cost. 

 

I think maybe a developer solution might be needed to fix the underperforming specs or lesser performing abilities and specs that perform at like, 20-40% the capacity of their peers or even worse. Games can thrive on HIGH skill ceilings where people are willing to put 2x the apm for a +5-30% dps increase. Or continue the way they are now. I've mostly had struggles with one champion in core spec, then optimized my abilities and spec. And it's really not uncommon for a elite spec to like double or triple a core spec's dps and then optimizing rotation to vastly increase the dps again. 

 

[ tl;dr
Perhaps if they're planning on making a launch to steam that will likely bring in 100,000s of thousands or millions of new players. They could embrace their unique strengths (fun build diversity) instead of making them crippling?]

 

1. Built in dps meter for easy player access. Even if personal dps only and blurs the teammates's name's out. ) (No toxicity, but allows to see performance at least, like #2, #1 on dps, etc. 

2. Perhaps, buff grossly underperforming abilities/rotations, etc?   (20-33% dps specs/weapons)

3. Have a variety of fun casual friendly and elite friendly content, but focus on making players fight the encounters, not yell pvp or flamefests etc? (gw2 is actually pretty good on this ingame. I've had good experiences, the fourms is iffy)

As far as things go, i do highly recommend a dps meter for more than elitism. A great amount of gw2 dps isn't transparent at all and sometimes pressing more abilities actively lowers dps over a more passive approach. Having a dps meter can inform you when a build is built so weird that pressing abilities actually lowers your dps.. It's super backwards for a mmorpg to have a skill curve include... going afk and auto attacking to higher dps.

But a big part is knowing what parts of your spec are optimal to a dps rotation, and what parts punish you for.. playing the game more actively... .... Only gw2 does this, as far as im aware(?) 

[Short: A dps meter and a gw2 build guide like https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki can actually do tons to improve soloing ability. A dps meter and a rotation practice on the golem even for open world can dramatically increase soloing ability (if needed). Good luck, have fun. ] 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Sunchaser.9854

[jamesg.7128]

14 hours ago, Kori Jenkins.9017 said:

If I sound angry it's because I'm genuinely sick of being in this zone. 

I recently did the Aurora collection. I was in that zone daily for just over 2 weeks. While at some times there were few people around, generally a call out in map chat and putting a tag on had people come to help. 

This last week or so I needed Serpents Ire meta in Vabbi for a collection. Obviously that can never be soloed and can also be considered "old" content. Every day I checked if anyone was around to do it and if not I didn't stress about it and just did something else. Eventually I found some ppl doing it, joined in and we got it done.

Be patient and you will get it done too. Remembering that it's just a game and having a positive attitude helps. 

[SexyMofo.8923]

Hopefully they put it in a vendor. 

[eyelogix.1654]

18 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

If you are in NA, it's not surprising that the map is emptier.  It's the middle of the night. Try during prime time; whichever time that is for the region in which you play. 

 

EU is not that active either, but i still got help with one champion. I did ask for help and one dude came, so we 2-man the kitten out of it. I could probably have done it alone but where is the fun in that. x)
No, but seriously I usually if someone else needs it.

[Cronospere.8143]

Put up your mentor tag. Ask for help in map chat. 3/4 people will come help you out. 

Good luck.

[fractal.7039]

HOT maps are  the most annoying content. 

[Cuks.8241]

My experience is that these champs usually die to fast. If its called in /map many people dont even have the time to come and participate in the kill.

Usually its helpful to call in /map and ping the nearest poi or even better waypoint and perhaps put on a mentor tag. If that is the mushroom I think it is, it is very close to Ancient Hollow waypoint.

[Sunchaser.9854]

I do remember the griffin Legendary bounty on a uncaring server kinda being iffy though. It took like 30 minutes to spawn, and both the first 2 times i assumed it'd just be like most champions you could just swoop in and solo or pug a group when it popped, but i wonder if spawned a bad affix or something. But the first 2 literal times, the first time timed out, the second got some affixes that made it seemingly immune to all damage while spawning 1000s of crystals [There was probably a way around it, but in the 10 minute window it despawned in, and lack of text, nobody figured it out.]

 

The third time, we organized and prepped watching it for 4 hours, asking anyone who could come to be on alert if it spawned, then we told people that if they ever wanted griffon to prep the quest and grab it anyways just in case. Eventually we got 20 people to come in and zerg the thing since it was like a legendary bounty with a harsh dps check i don't think was meant to be soloable at the time by most builds. Much less no ascended starter garbage. But the zerg helped kill it. 

 

I don't think i really find most champions bad on a good build, but if you're on a core or unoptimized build. Many randomly assembled builds, while fun for diversity may perform very weak. We're talking about like.. Builds that max out at like a literal 2-4k junk dps while the benchmarks are 30-40k for snowcrows with raid buffs. But i've gotten a dps meter. I think there's a fair amount of surprising dps and core specs that seem to only do like 1.4k-4k dps if you just spam abilities randomly or auto chain or have wrong stat exotics instead of the specialized builds and glass cannons.

There are builds that afk to 20-30k dps, but they're usually specifically tailored to while being decked out in specific geared ascendeds for the afk build besides mechanist which im not even sure can be built to go lower than 15k dps for afking a sandwich. There are definitely unequal rewards for rotations where someone thinking they're the hot stuff does a 20-40 button rotation to 2-4k and it's a build limitation. Another where they say autoing should always yield 10-30k dps but it turns out their spec is mechanically or gear limited to 2-4k if it's like wrong affix un runed exotics or a bad build.

 

Especially core builds with random weapons. it seems like a lot of core builds do like 2-3x less dps or more than their optimized counterparts. At least well, from the few Non mechanist alts i've tried messing with so far. 

[Khisanth.2948]

2 hours ago, Sunchaser.9854 said:

the second got some affixes that made it seemingly immune to all damage

That sounds like it got the Exploiter buff and your entire group tried to range it while ignoring the description on the buff. None of the other damage immunity buffs can be up 100% of the time.

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 hours ago, Sunchaser.9854 said:

I do remember the griffin Legendary bounty on a uncaring server kinda being iffy though. It took like 30 minutes to spawn, and both the first 2 times i assumed it'd just be like most champions you could just swoop in and solo or pug a group when it popped, but i wonder if spawned a bad affix or something. But the first 2 literal times, the first time timed out, the second got some affixes that made it seemingly immune to all damage while spawning 1000s of crystals [There was probably a way around it, but in the 10 minute window it despawned in, and lack of text, nobody figured it out.]

 

The third time, we organized and prepped watching it for 4 hours, asking anyone who could come to be on alert if it spawned, then we told people that if they ever wanted griffon to prep the quest and grab it anyways just in case. Eventually we got 20 people to come in and zerg the thing since it was like a legendary bounty with a harsh dps check i don't think was meant to be soloable at the time by most builds. Much less no ascended starter garbage. But the zerg helped kill it. 

 

I don't think i really find most champions bad on a good build, but if you're on a core or unoptimized build. Many randomly assembled builds, while fun for diversity may perform very weak. We're talking about like.. Builds that max out at like a literal 2-4k junk dps while the benchmarks are 30-40k for snowcrows with raid buffs. But i've gotten a dps meter. I think there's a fair amount of surprising dps and core specs that seem to only do like 1.4k-4k dps if you just spam abilities randomly or auto chain or have wrong stat exotics instead of the specialized builds and glass cannons.

There are builds that afk to 20-30k dps, but they're usually specifically tailored to while being decked out in specific geared ascendeds for the afk build besides mechanist which im not even sure can be built to go lower than 15k dps for afking a sandwich. There are definitely unequal rewards for rotations where someone thinking they're the hot stuff does a 20-40 button rotation to 2-4k and it's a build limitation. Another where they say autoing should always yield 10-30k dps but it turns out their spec is mechanically or gear limited to 2-4k if it's like wrong affix un runed exotics or a bad build.

 

Especially core builds with random weapons. it seems like a lot of core builds do like 2-3x less dps or more than their optimized counterparts. At least well, from the few Non mechanist alts i've tried messing with so far. 

A little information about bounties for future reference.

Unlike many other open world bosses, bounties do not spawn on their own.  A player must interact with the bounty board and then travel to the marked location in order to spawn it.  Once spawned, the boss remains active until killed or until the 10 minute timer runs out, at which point the bounty is on cooldown and is no longer available to take from the board.  Champion bounties have a cooldown of 15 minutes while legendary bounties have a cooldown of 30 minutes.

The unstable magic (or affixes, as you call them) are shown as blue buff icons when targeting the boss.  You can mouse over them to view a tooltip with a brief description of what each effect does.  Some of these can be very dangerous or prevent you from damaging the boss if you aren't aware of how they work, so make sure you view these buffs before engaging so you understand what to do.  A detailed list of all unstable magic effects and how they work is available on the wiki.

[Kikokuma.9405]

On 7/27/2022 at 1:56 AM, Kori Jenkins.9017 said:

Trying to do a collection from Draconis Mons which came out during Living World Season 3, need to kill a champion for it and it's literally not soloable, or at least after dying 4 times trying to kill it, once at 10% because it reset for no apparent reason, I've given up. I should not have to bust my kitten and perform way above what's expected of me because of content that is way overtuned relative to the active players around to do it. 

 

I don't care if it was originally intended for groups. The original intent is irrelevant and not reflective of the reality today; the zone came out 5 years ago. The collection was designed with this event in mind 5 years ago, when this was literally the deepest zone in the game at the time and probably the most active. Draconis Mons is largely empty now. In none of the 4 deaths did I even see another player in the zone or see chat move. No one responded to me stating the event was up.

 

Being held back and prevented from progressing a collection that exclusively requires open world content because it can't be done alone is absolutely horrid. This isn't the only instance of this happening to me; where I just had to sit on my hands and do something else because old content wasn't recognized for what it is, outdated and deserted by the community at large. The Roller Beetle collection bounty requirements. Straight up zero people in the zone, or if any were around they were just there for the meta. No one willing to help with that one either.

 

No strawman arguments of "well some collections require a Mordremoth kill, can you solo that?" because it's not comparable. An obscure event in an outdated, empty zone is not the same as a daily meta run that is straight up required for gen 2 legendary crafting. It doesn't need to be this way, but zero consideration of zone population is made in collection design. If you don't do them literally when they came out, you're going to suffer way more than anyone else, and that's absolutely flawed. 

 

This is an incredibly easy fix. Just downscale them to veterans when no one is around. 

 

tldr; old content in dead ancient zones should be easier to do alone

 

 

I'm sorry yer having a rough time with it. I can guarantee you it is soloable though, just maybe not by most players. And i know tons of players do not care to even run "meta" builds and are try hards. Which is totally fine, i don't like the "meta" either. People should just play what is fun. Just try asking in map chat for some help. Or feel free to look for me online and ask me in game. I'll come help. 

[giuice.8352]

That's the reason why I still playing Guild Wars 1,  mercenaries and all content is soloable. And I have all gw2 expansions, but unfortunately I can't love like gw1. 

[Tukaram.8256]

7 minutes ago, giuice.8352 said:

That's the reason why I still playing Guild Wars 1,  mercenaries and all content is soloable. And I have all gw2 expansions, but unfortunately I can't love like gw1. 

I am pretty sure it will never happen, but I wish they would add the Heroes to GW2.  At least in instances, like story. 

[Southerncarl.2740]

It's an mmo chat to people and get someone to help they will help. The game is way too easy as it is.