new strikes too difficult

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

2 hours ago, Renegated.4132 said:

There has to be an in-between of those. Spirit Vale it's the perfect example of that, when released the content was hard AF, yet it was doable as long as the players were aware of the mechs. W4 also had a bit of that, but it was easier compared to other wings.

Currently every Strike mission the game has to offer is easier than Raids. EoD Strikes don't even have a time limit with damage pressure being relatively low. The new Soto Strikes can be done with a single healer.

[Efar.8153]

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Edited December 2, 2023 by Efar.8153
pls delete

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Efar.8153 said:

True.

what's the point of having a lot of content if only a few ppl can actually enjoy it?.... or having a lot of nice items (like the everbloom infusion) if it's close to impossible to get for the majority of players...

it's a pretty awful move for ppl that like this game a lot and for different reasons(health, real life) cannot "play" at that level.

the gaming industry probably misses the fact that most players just want to evade the stress and difficulty from real life by enjoying a game. Why introduce stress and annoyances in this world as well?

there was a time when you could get anything in gw2 with just a little patience if u didn't have that thing called "skill". Now, is wow all over again(is a nice game, but very competitive and stressful for some).

It's called aspirational content. It makes up less than 1% of this games content or rewards. It has always been present, you might just not have been interested in the previous rewards (Spvp has a ton of rewards which are/were gated behind pvp rank, jumping puzzles and achievements have items behind certain tasks, fractals have a ton of skins and titles locked behind performance, dungeons used to be pretty difficult for a majority of players).

The everbloom infusion is not gated behind strikes. It's also available via the trading post for a resource which is rewarded the most via open world content (gold).

I'm sorry you feel it's unfair that having a couple of rewards out of multiple thousands being placed behind actually mastering the game is not okay.

The other way of looking at it would be: 99% of this games rewards are handed out without any requirements, leaving players that actually enjoy becoming proficient at the game out to dry, yet some players are still not happy with this amount of handouts.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[zeyeti.8347]

3 hours ago, Efar.8153 said:

True.

what's the point of having a lot of content if only a few ppl can actually enjoy it?.... or having a lot of nice items (like the everbloom infusion) if it's close to impossible to get for the majority of players...

it's a pretty awful move for ppl that like this game a lot and for different reasons(health, real life) cannot "play" at that level.

the gaming industry probably misses the fact that most players just want to evade the stress and difficulty from real life by enjoying a game. Why introduce stress and annoyances in this world as well?

there was a time when you could get anything in gw2 with just a little patience if u didn't have that thing called "skill". Now, is wow all over again(is a nice game, but very competitive and stressful for some).

Icebrood fights are considered golem training (with little movement) if you have a half good healer you can sustain all the damage there , the only good strikes from Ibs are boneskinner and whisper , where there are actual deadly mechanics to avoid ... 

You want the instanced content to be as easy as the open world stuff ? stop plz , you don't like difficulty obviously , that's fine, 90% of the game is for you open world ! But leave the somewhat difficult content alone , some of us like the challenge , like to feel super happy after nights of training and finally downing a hard boss.

The everbloom infusion isn't needed at all , it's cosmetic. What enrage me most is the droprate of infusion like queen bee who is nearly 0,001% chance to drop , thats a d*ck move , to force you to play obnoxious sleepy metas where you already know that even if 3/4 of the squad is afk you still gonna succeed it , where is the thrill ? And the proof that a lot of players think like me is just look at the success all the soulsborne games have , games who don't take you for a little flower who need to be guided by a hand to find his way back to the candyshop he goes everyday.

Harvest temple cm mode was a freaking great addition to the game , proof anet can do amazing challenge content who needs you to aplly everything the game has to offer, and this content made gw 2 very more visible by the hard tryers from others mmo , some raiders from wow did try the game only to fend off that content and the streaming community was thrilled to try it , 1 whole week of training for the first squad to finally drop it , thats some amazing way to say "hey we got challenge for you all , come and dare try it !" . The open world make me feel like a baby riding a rainbow pooping unicorn, every meta has 100% chance to succeed , 95% of mobs dies in 1-2 hits, filling the golden hearts quests is so boring i feel i have taken a whole box of valium.

Game is designed mostly for casuals , so ty to leave the little "hard" content alone. Only thing i agree is Dagda having too much hp, but serus is gonna be very interesting in cm ! Really like to chose what mechanic he can/not improve.

You want to go to hard content , well gotta work for it , you ain't doing it with your lvl 72 exotic soldier stats armor, make a group , ask for support/healers and even with failing mechanics you can go trough it , i always play hscg when i pug to these strikes so can bring back the hobos who thought we are gonna do the fight for them ! 

I want the open world content to be more difficult , cause if it isn't difficult enough i fall asleep...(troll statement as you ...)

Just watch a video of the strikes of soto , i can explain it to you in few sentences, but i am lazy so :

That video is 5 minutes long ... don't tell me you have no time ... , Ty Mukluk. I just tipped "soto strikes mukluk" on youtube and watched it , process took me 6 minutes , and if you tell me you don't have 6 minutes to spend , well sorry to say so sir , but you have a shi**y live. It's more that you don't want to spend the time , have everything coming right in your mouth at the start , i can suggest you some mobile games who plays for themselves ....

Sorry to be salty but it pisses me off reading those kind of messages , there is so little hard content in this freaking great gameplay game and some ppl find the way to still think it should be easier.

Anyway the Op is certainly a troll as not responding and feeding on our answers.

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[Bingus.4236]

The idea of strike modes was put forward as something easier for players to get into instanced content and they have also put challenge modes in for the sweaty players, so it's not altogether wrong to point out if a standard mode is a bit too much. It's not the best that they vary so much from strike to strike how difficult they are.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, Bingus.4236 said:

The idea of strike modes was put forward as something easier for players to get into instanced content and they have also put challenge modes in for the sweaty players, so it's not altogether wrong to point out if a standard mode is a bit too much. It's not the best that they vary so much from strike to strike how difficult they are.

That's why it's a good thing the majority of the Strikes in the game already fit that requirement. 
Since Raids are canned and it's only Strikes going forward it's perfectly fine to have Strikes with varying levels of difficulty. 
Shiverpeaks won't prepare people for instanced content, because it's basically an open world meta boss level of Strike. Going through all IBS Strikes however will help, since it goes higher in difficulty to a point where it's almost Raid level.

[zeyeti.8347]

10 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

That's why it's a good thing the majority of the Strikes in the game already fit that requirement. 
Since Raids are canned and it's only Strikes going forward it's perfectly fine to have Strikes with varying levels of difficulty. 
Shiverpeaks won't prepare people for instanced content, because it's basically an open world meta boss level of Strike. Going through all IBS Strikes however will help, since it goes higher in difficulty to a point where it's almost Raid level.

True , the design of strikes is really well done , first you go the story mode , then normal squad content and then cm mode , thats great difficulty curves design (almost fractals without agony)

The problem with normal strikes is that pugs can get carryed away by supports , i mentionned hscg for carrying , i am not joking , +-25 rez port on dagda ... i mean some ppl don't even try , big red aoe puddle pulsing around them , Zojja screaming " get out ! " and not seing nor hearing it ? then those ppl complaining here strikes are too difficult , invest time in it (6 minutes video) and they will get clues of how to deal with mechs and enjoy even more the game.

I don't get it how it is fun to do a content and failing and failing over and over again and not questionning themsleves what did they do wrong , personnaly it would blow my mind to not understand why i die over and over again after sometime spend on a specific content. Also being a burden for your group is not a pleasant feeling, if you are not in a training session ofc.

 

[Renegated.4132]

On 11/5/2023 at 1:48 PM, zeyeti.8347 said:

True , the design of strikes is really well done , first you go the story mode , then normal squad content and then cm mode , thats great difficulty curves design (almost fractals without agony)

The problem with normal strikes is that pugs can get carryed away by supports , i mentionned hscg for carrying , i am not joking , +-25 rez port on dagda ... i mean some ppl don't even try , big red aoe puddle pulsing around them , Zojja screaming " get out ! " and not seing nor hearing it ? then those ppl complaining here strikes are too difficult , invest time in it (6 minutes video) and they will get clues of how to deal with mechs and enjoy even more the game.

I don't get it how it is fun to do a content and failing and failing over and over again and not questionning themsleves what did they do wrong , personnaly it would blow my mind to not understand why i die over and over again after sometime spend on a specific content. Also being a burden for your group is not a pleasant feeling, if you are not in a training session ofc.

 

As a heal temp I can basically say the same, on most of the strikes it basically consists on "UNGA BUNGA DPS!!!!" while we are ressing the downed, it's not like for example on VG when it got released, that you needed to focus on greens, move the boss to a certain point, CC him before the nukes you... You can go full monke and hit the piñata because you know that in case kitten happens, you will get a guaranteed ress, failing at something has no punish.

A lot of people misses new raids because of that, strikes don't offer a challenge that's in-between fractals and raids, probably the only one that does it's the last one from EoD, because the other 3 are just big piñatas. If they wanted to add a better way to access endgame content the only thing they had to do was adding an easy mode to the raids, for example less health on bosses, reduce the times X mechanic happens (Gorseval's/VG split f.e, Sabetha's Lighter mech...) not add a try of sustitute that can be done just by hitting very hard.

[Shiyo.3578]

It's so funny how Anet fell for the same trap every other modern MMO dev has fallen for.

Two difficulties, one for the 1% of players who are completely incapable of playing the game, and another for the 1% of players who extremely good at the game.

The other 98% of people get nothing!

[maxwelgm.4315]

15 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

It's so funny how Anet fell for the same trap every other modern MMO dev has fallen for.

Two difficulties, one for the 1% of players who are completely incapable of playing the game, and another for the 1% of players who extremely good at the game.

The other 98% of people get nothing!

This is getting a lot of confusion reacts by I guess players who do CMs, but it's kinda true if a tad hyperbolic. I've taken months to get Voidwalker more because of how difficult it is to gather 10 people at a particular time for said several months than it is to actually do pulls on the encounter. Likewise, Cerus CM feels even less aspirational even though it is actually harder, with even less of my previous buddies feeling like tackling it anytime soon. This is not a complaint that I can't form a group, I already have and will complete it - but it's certainly jarring to go straight from whatever they thought Dagda CM was going to be to Febe CM with no warning of how hard it would be, meaning we will probably just disband again once we are done with no other hard encounter realistically in sight.

As usual the C in Anet stands for consistency and the lack of regular updates will probably make a lot of people just finish it once and never touch it again just like the Ankka CM title (aggravating also is that you have to play the encounter "wrong" to get the now middle tier "Embodiment of Sin" title) or even the Voidwalker title, where a small subset now complete it weekly but let's not pretend it's not a small subset compared to everyone who does have the title, or also to regular W1-W7 raiders. Aspirational content is the most aspirational when it doesn't seem completely out of reach compared to the rest of the content. Let me repeat I mean compared to the rest of the content and not compared to your personal skill level as a player. It doesn't only matter how good 100s of people are at the game who were anxiously waiting for this to come out for years, what also matters is how there's 1000s of other people who could have used a better content cadence and would gladly have jumped into this more difficult one if they were regularly fed with a gradient of difficult encounters that progress into the aspirational one (like they did with EoD strikes even but not here wink wink). It's not even that their resources are directed entirely to open world PvE or any other mode - we have recycled wyvern fights and reused repainted models of bosses as SotO metas too - wherever we look we find that things appear to be lacking in steps or gradient from point A to point B, from the story to strike difficulties there's large jumps everywhere with nothing filling gaps that players feel exist.

In sum, I'd say players are really complaining about lack of content when they voice complaints about difficulty of particular encounters. Because there's already so little new things to play to begin with, it becomes frustrating when there's a shiny piece of it you perceive as inaccessible (and kinda correctly, because there's a huge gap in between it and the rest of the game, regardless of your personal skill level). Everyone knows FFXIV has super hard encounters but there are so many encounters to begin with as well as so many gradients in how difficult they can be from normal to ultimate, that it doesn't matter and ultimate content becomes truly aspirational then. Now, I appreciate the counterarguments to all of this, "just stop playing then", "go play some other game then", and yes this is all true and I play other games myself, but let's not defend Anet content cadence putting it on the players' end to enjoy crumbs (no matter how tasty the crumbs are such as Cerus CM).

[mandala.8507]

Unfortunately, the trickle-down encounter design is producing some pretty unsatisfying fights in normal modes and story. The idea was that these fights should be somehow more compelling because they are designed for higher fidelity, but they ended up being watered down throwaway content.

I think the focus on the encounters being hard enough to please the 0.01% and not get annihilated by them on day one is just making the game way less fun for the other 99.99% of players.

And because that content is so frustratingly difficult, it does become a purely logistical/networking check on the playerbase. I don't have 9 people as good as me to play this game with, because it wasn't even necessary for me to have 1 of those people in my circle until the EoD CMs. And even if I did, I sure as heck don't have 9 people whose schedules align often enough for me to attempt a 30-100 hour progression in a game that isn't designed for progression-style content in the first place.

And one of the asks from players is that Arenanet inform us when they're releasing content of this difficulty tier so we know what to expect, but they can't actually do that because their game was never meant for this type of progression race in the first place. They could spend the whole year developing an encounter to be insanely difficult and require over a week of prog, but then they could make a tiny balance error or the community could come up with a strat they hadn't considered that makes the fight 10% easier than they'd planned, and it gets cleared in a few hours on the first day.

And even if they luck out a 3rd time and we get another fight like this again next expansion, how do you convince your bosses to pay you the big bucks to make content designed for the 0.01% at the cost of the content the vast majority of your community plays being worse off for it.

No joke, my strat for instanced content these days is to log in, ignore it, and do the story and other side content for a few hours. And once I'm done doing that, if I load up a stream and see the 0.01% players still progging it, I don't even attempt it. Ever. Because unless you have the privilege of a group of top-shelf players to summon whenever you feel like it, prog content in GW2 is boring. It's just a waiting game of "how many hours do I have to sit here for these 9 other players to figure out and properly execute the mechanics I had locked down in the first 30 minutes".

It's why I still don't have the Silent Surf CM kill, even though that encounter isn't really that hard. I had the fight on lock in 30 minutes, but both my prog groups ran into it for hours and eventually rage quit, and the fight wasn't interesting enough for me to bother with a 3rd attempt. And again, that's with an encounter that actually isn't that hard, but that is trying to be hard instead of trying to be fun, which is the main issue here.

The legendary ToF CM has been in the game for an entire month and has had 7 unique groups clear it (as far as I'm aware).

The nerfed CM that was supposed to make the content accessible to more players has been in the game for a week now and has ZERO clears by groups that didn't do the legendary version.

And the title version of the encounter has yet to be successfully cleared, I'm pretty sure.

The ToF strike mission has 3 versions in the game right now targeted toward 0.01% of the playerbase, and one version so easy I would take literally anyone into it. It just doesn't make any sense.

[Renegated.4132]

On 3/25/2024 at 8:48 PM, mandala.8507 said:

Unfortunately, the trickle-down encounter design is producing some pretty unsatisfying fights in normal modes and story. The idea was that these fights should be somehow more compelling because they are designed for higher fidelity, but they ended up being watered down throwaway content.

I think the focus on the encounters being hard enough to please the 0.01% and not get annihilated by them on day one is just making the game way less fun for the other 99.99% of players.

And because that content is so frustratingly difficult, it does become a purely logistical/networking check on the playerbase. I don't have 9 people as good as me to play this game with, because it wasn't even necessary for me to have 1 of those people in my circle until the EoD CMs. And even if I did, I sure as heck don't have 9 people whose schedules align often enough for me to attempt a 30-100 hour progression in a game that isn't designed for progression-style content in the first place.

And one of the asks from players is that Arenanet inform us when they're releasing content of this difficulty tier so we know what to expect, but they can't actually do that because their game was never meant for this type of progression race in the first place. They could spend the whole year developing an encounter to be insanely difficult and require over a week of prog, but then they could make a tiny balance error or the community could come up with a strat they hadn't considered that makes the fight 10% easier than they'd planned, and it gets cleared in a few hours on the first day.

And even if they luck out a 3rd time and we get another fight like this again next expansion, how do you convince your bosses to pay you the big bucks to make content designed for the 0.01% at the cost of the content the vast majority of your community plays being worse off for it.

No joke, my strat for instanced content these days is to log in, ignore it, and do the story and other side content for a few hours. And once I'm done doing that, if I load up a stream and see the 0.01% players still progging it, I don't even attempt it. Ever. Because unless you have the privilege of a group of top-shelf players to summon whenever you feel like it, prog content in GW2 is boring. It's just a waiting game of "how many hours do I have to sit here for these 9 other players to figure out and properly execute the mechanics I had locked down in the first 30 minutes".

It's why I still don't have the Silent Surf CM kill, even though that encounter isn't really that hard. I had the fight on lock in 30 minutes, but both my prog groups ran into it for hours and eventually rage quit, and the fight wasn't interesting enough for me to bother with a 3rd attempt. And again, that's with an encounter that actually isn't that hard, but that is trying to be hard instead of trying to be fun, which is the main issue here.

The legendary ToF CM has been in the game for an entire month and has had 7 unique groups clear it (as far as I'm aware).

The nerfed CM that was supposed to make the content accessible to more players has been in the game for a week now and has ZERO clears by groups that didn't do the legendary version.

And the title version of the encounter has yet to be successfully cleared, I'm pretty sure.

The ToF strike mission has 3 versions in the game right now targeted toward 0.01% of the playerbase, and one version so easy I would take literally anyone into it. It just doesn't make any sense.

As of now, the best way of acting would be using the fractal system on all content, 3-4 tiers and allow the player what does he want to play or allow him access at a certain point, for example, Wings 1 to 4 as of now are exageratedly easy, you can make Sabetha not spawn minimobs, making it so you can't go for the cannons, but in exchange the platform has more health and cannons do a 33% less damage, it changes mechs forcing the players to find different strats based on the tiers, or on Gorseval you can't break the walls/eggs, you either dps rush his nuke or die, and when it comes to the eggs, you need someone else to rescue you.

They have material enough to play with and say "Ok, we can do this and that to offer a better experience" or things like that, because as of now, aside of the 2 last raids and Sabetha, most of the bosses are huge piñatas. And when it comes to strikes, mostly all of them are.

[Dibit.6259]

11 hours ago, Renegated.4132 said:

As of now, the best way of acting would be using the fractal system on all content, 3-4 tiers and allow the player what does he want to play or allow him access at a certain point, for example, Wings 1 to 4 as of now are exageratedly easy, you can make Sabetha not spawn minimobs, making it so you can't go for the cannons, but in exchange the platform has more health and cannons do a 33% less damage, it changes mechs forcing the players to find different strats based on the tiers, or on Gorseval you can't break the walls/eggs, you either dps rush his nuke or die, and when it comes to the eggs, you need someone else to rescue you.

They have material enough to play with and say "Ok, we can do this and that to offer a better experience" or things like that, because as of now, aside of the 2 last raids and Sabetha, most of the bosses are huge piñatas. And when it comes to strikes, mostly all of them are.

They already implemented emboldened for raids. Also I don't think they can change the raids to that extent. A possible idea for future encounters but current ones tampering with them could cause major bugs and other problems.

You can already slowly progress via difficult tiers by doing easier encounters and slowly working towards harder ones. E.g. Vail Guardian is the go to first raid boss, followed by gorseval, then you move into w4 with Cairn and so forth. These raid bosses are not too complicated or require too much in regards to individual roles outside of squad roles.

The fights are more about self awareness and the individual doing their part to ensure the success of the run. Whether that be doing specific mechanics or making sure they do enough dps to kill the boss in the appropriate time. You can't just zone out and hit the boss because these encounters were meant to challenge the players awareness and reactions. Dumbing down core mechanics will not help people improve and progress.

There are many people and guilds out there willing to help those progress in endgame content such as raids but the player also needs to be willing to put in the effort themselves to go looking for this as well as self improving. You don't need to do pro levels of dps, in fact I find low intensity builds to be more than capable of doing most content. Its takes time and effort so it depends on the person if they think its worth it, but they also shouldn't complain about the difficulty of the content if they decide not to put in the effort and go for it anyway.

[Sobx.1758]

17 hours ago, Renegated.4132 said:

As of now, the best way of acting would be using the fractal system on all content, 3-4 tiers

Strikes already follow story, nm, cm and now with tof "cm+" difficulty curve.

[mandala.8507]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Strikes already follow story, nm, cm and now with tof "cm+" difficulty curve.

Yes, there are 4 versions of the ToF encounter (5 if you consider the title achievement as an alternative difficulty), but that doesn't mean it's hitting a sensible difficulty curve. Like I said above, we have normal and story that are doable by literally anyone. E for everyone content. And then CM and legendary mode which are aimed at (at this point in time) 0.01-0.02% of GW2 players, with maybe a few more 0.01s in there from people who really want to grind it out.

The reality is, the E for everyone version has to be there. There always must be a baseline "easy mode" variant, and the story doesn't really count for that. The replayability of storymode encounters just isn't there. The instance checkpoint placement isn't there. You have to replay the whole story to play it on any other character or class. There's no respectable reward structure for replaying the story mode version. It's a complete farce that story mode counts as a version of these encounters in the conversation of instanced content for GW2. And so, if we're only getting 2 difficulty tiers (normal mode and challenge mode, since this legendary mode hasn't really set a precedent for future strike releases imo), and the normal mode has to exist as it is with a very low difficulty scaling, it just doesn't make sense for the next step up to be so exclusive. How do you get anyone to bridge the skill gap of content when there's no bridge to cross?

And if so few people are even bothering with the ultrahard version of the fight, how do they justify spending time making these fights work for that handful of players in the first place?

It'd be like if WoW raids only had LFR version and Mythic. The community would revolt and raids would be dead for that game in one expansion cycle, if the community didn't burn the whole MMO to the ground in protest first.

Imagine if fractals only had tier 1 versions and then CM title runs.

Imagine if a game like God of War (2018) only had "Give Me a Story" and "Give Me God of War", and no other difficulty tiers between those.

I just don't respect whatever principles are driving them to focus their development of these encounters on such a miniscule and monetarily irrelevant demographic of players. It'd be a different story if this was just for 1 of a plethora of bosses we get for this game over an expansion cycle, but this is one of 3 pieces of coordinated instanced content we'll be getting each expansion. They need to snap out of whatever spell was cast on them, and quickly. There are endless superior alternatives to this structure. Literally just pick one.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

It's a complete farce that story mode counts as a version of these encounters in the conversation of instanced content for GW2.

It's not a farce at all, there's no reason to somehow discount introducing players to complete basics of the encounter as a relevant difficulty level. Not long ago I've replayed relevant EoD encounters first time after playing their cm versions for a while and it's completely clear that they introduced the basic mechanics -even if not all of them, it's still a stepping stone- of their respective group encounters.

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

The replayability of storymode encounters just isn't there. The instance checkpoint placement isn't there. You have to replay the whole story to play it on any other character or class. There's no respectable reward structure for replaying the story mode version.

Because it's role isn't to be "farmed for rewards", it's the basic introduction to the encounter itself. The goal is to start playing -and replaying- actual strike missions, which is SM NM.
At one point you try saying story and NM are "e for everyone and so easy that they shouldn't count", but on the other you're trying to build a point that introduction in story mode doesn't count because... it's not meant to be farmed for rewards? The player goes through the story, gets introduced to basics of the encounter so they don't get a heart attack the moment they see "a scary boss" in 10 player content (while also understanding at least some of the mechanics they encounter, that way they need to learn -lets say- 2 new ones instead of 4) and then they are supposed to play actual strike encounters.

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

And if so few people are even bothering with the ultrahard version of the fight, how do they justify spending time making these fights work for that handful of players in the first place?

Not everything needs to be made for you or majority. Are you seriously trying to suggest that one "ultrahard version" is not ok because you/majority only has... 99,9% of the game to play? Wow.

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

How do you get anyone to bridge the skill gap of content when there's no bridge to cross?

How do you think others did it? 
Probably by getting accustomed with the overall game mechanics and teamplay through multiple levels of difficulty of that particular encounter as well as playing other strike missions (and notably their CMs) that place themselves between the tof nm/cm difficulty levels?

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

Imagine if fractals only had tier 1 versions and then CM title runs.

Why would I image a random situation you made up that has literally nothing to do with the current state of strikes you're trying to discuss? Strikes also aren't "tier 1 and then cm title run", so what does that have to do with anything here?

If there's an issue with the difficulty curve then it's an issue with difficulty curve and not with adding 5 more levels which then will be abandoned 3 (or less!) weeks later.

[mandala.8507]

8 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Not everything needs to be made for you or majority. Are you seriously trying to suggest that one "ultrahard version" is not ok because you/majority only has... 99,9% of the game to play? Wow.

I clearly did not make this argument nor is it the reality of the situation. 1 of 2 strike CMs in SotO is made with 0.01% of the playerbase in mind. Of the 2 strikes with 2 difficulty modes each, 1 of the 4 possible strikes you could do in SotO is for 0.01% of players.

The irony is, if I thought the fight was interesting and cared to do the onerous amount of networking required to find people to clear it, I could. I just don't want to. It doesn't look interesting, just arbitrarily hard (and sorry to flame, but pretty unoriginal too).

My point is that this version would be LAST on my list of priorities if I were a multimillion dollar gaming studio in the modern MMO market, but it's clearly Anet's main focus when it comes to coordinated instanced group content in GW2, which I believe is a mistake. They could cater this fight to so many other difficulty thresholds before they thought about this one.

Here's a question for Arenanet to ask themselves: How many players did the Dagda CM, were expecting to make a try at the Cerus CM, and then saw how hard people were struggling with it and said, "nah, I'm good"?

[Tharan.9085]

On 3/27/2024 at 8:58 PM, mandala.8507 said:

The irony is, if I thought the fight was interesting and cared to do the onerous amount of networking required to find people to clear it, I could. I just don't want to. 

That just sounds like a weak excuse ngl

[mandala.8507]

55 minutes ago, Tharan.9085 said:

That just sounds like a weak excuse ngl

A weak excuse for what exactly? The most difficult part of that fight would be finding a group of 9 other players that aren't significantly worse than me at the game, that have 30+ hours to burn, and who I wouldn't realize 10 hours into the prog are horrible people.

But like...sure, dude. I'm actually just coping and really it's my heart's greatest desire to prog the soulless dps golem with 6 boring recycled mechanics — I'm just not good enough. /s

Like, go play Wing 6 and and then try to tell me this Cerus CM fight is compelling for any other reason than "well, it's hard".

[Renegated.4132]

On 3/30/2024 at 5:19 PM, mandala.8507 said:

A weak excuse for what exactly? The most difficult part of that fight would be finding a group of 9 other players that aren't significantly worse than me at the game, that have 30+ hours to burn, and who I wouldn't realize 10 hours into the prog are horrible people.

But like...sure, dude. I'm actually just coping and really it's my heart's greatest desire to prog the soulless dps golem with 6 boring recycled mechanics — I'm just not good enough. /s

Like, go play Wing 6 and and then try to tell me this Cerus CM fight is compelling for any other reason than "well, it's hard".

The problem as of now it's that the game offers no options, you either have a punchbag or you have to face John Wick at it's peak. Best example it's Cerus CM, they had to nerf it because THE TRYHARD GUILDS such as SC and similars needed an entire month to take it down, bug included. The simple fact of them needing this huge amount of time already tells you that maybe you went too far. And with HT IIRC happens the same, it's so hard that only brave mad people wants to challenge it.

Edited April 2 by Renegated.4132

[mandala.8507]

1 hour ago, Renegated.4132 said:

Best example it's Cerus CM, they had to nerf it because THE TRYHARD GUILDS such as SC and similars needed an entire month to take it down, bug included. The simple fact of them needing this huge amount of time already tells you that maybe you went too far. And with HT IIRC happens the same, it's so hard that only brave mad people wants to challenge it.

In the interest of keeping this discussion truthful, that is not what happened. They released the CM bugged, then pivoted into making the CM harder than intended to maintain the race for first clear that might have ended as soon as they fixed the bug otherwise.

Then, because they knew the fight was a bit too much of a dps check for even pretty skilled groups, they released the CM at its intended HP much later.

SC only took like 9 days(?) to clear it, but it's important to remember that GW2 isn't time-gated by gear progression, so that's a crazy amount of time to clear a single boss in a game where you start the fight day one with the strongest gear and build possible already available to you with zero grind.

For perspective, Amirdrassil Mythic in WoW took Echo around 12 days to kill, and that is a 9 boss raid where much of the time is spent grinding out splits at lower difficulty to acquire higher item levels that make the fights easier.

If you told WoW players there would be a single Mythic boss that, all by itself, would take a top guild 9 days to grind while being automatically gifted max item level characters and no forced logistical downtime between pulls, most everyone would agree that fight was too hard, but that's what we are getting in GW2.

Now, is there a community skill diff angle here? Absolutely. The WoW world first clear teams are way better gamers than the top GW2 guilds racing for the first ToF clear.

But why are we making content that is (relative to community skill) significantly more challenging than an actual esport for one of the most played games ever? And making it instead of making something any meaningful amount of the GW2 playerbase has any interest in attempting?

As I've said in this thread a couple times already: it doesn't make sense.

[Renegated.4132]

On 4/2/2024 at 9:12 PM, mandala.8507 said:

In the interest of keeping this discussion truthful, that is not what happened. They released the CM bugged, then pivoted into making the CM harder than intended to maintain the race for first clear that might have ended as soon as they fixed the bug otherwise.

Then, because they knew the fight was a bit too much of a dps check for even pretty skilled groups, they released the CM at its intended HP much later.

SC only took like 9 days(?) to clear it, but it's important to remember that GW2 isn't time-gated by gear progression, so that's a crazy amount of time to clear a single boss in a game where you start the fight day one with the strongest gear and build possible already available to you with zero grind.

For perspective, Amirdrassil Mythic in WoW took Echo around 12 days to kill, and that is a 9 boss raid where much of the time is spent grinding out splits at lower difficulty to acquire higher item levels that make the fights easier.

If you told WoW players there would be a single Mythic boss that, all by itself, would take a top guild 9 days to grind while being automatically gifted max item level characters and no forced logistical downtime between pulls, most everyone would agree that fight was too hard, but that's what we are getting in GW2.

Now, is there a community skill diff angle here? Absolutely. The WoW world first clear teams are way better gamers than the top GW2 guilds racing for the first ToF clear.

But why are we making content that is (relative to community skill) significantly more challenging than an actual esport for one of the most played games ever? And making it instead of making something any meaningful amount of the GW2 playerbase has any interest in attempting?

As I've said in this thread a couple times already: it doesn't make sense.

My fault by saying they needed a month, mea culpa, I collect wire. But still, the point remains, the sole fact of having a guild whose players know their rotation to the point of being able to do it just by simple muscular memory need an entire week to take it down and not due to mechanics like it happened on HT that they needed  to check specifically how to work on every phase due to how different those are it's already telling you that probably you went a bit too far with the difficulty xD

Also, this kind of difficulty it's what Cerus should present on the normal mode more or less, I mean, when it comes to lore, he is supposedly as strong as Deimos, with the difference that this second one already proved his might, something that Cerus didn't do and wanted to do by taking down the commander. I can understand that the first strike it's somehow a pinhata due to Dagda holding the kryptis turning her mad, but Cerus has no reason at all to not do an all-out from the beginning, more if he wants to show all his might to Eparch.