Night of fires (story mission) - some design issues

[Zaltys.7649]

@Aurelian Omenkind.2470 said:Might have been a bug in my favor or a bug that it’s not working correctly for you....or it may have been changed after one of us did it. They don't usually list minor changes in the patch notes. I'd recommend at least trying the bomb tactic, it might work better now than it did for me.

@Nazghoul.8375 said:I rarely if ever have my Guardian die, and he's constantly getting killed on this storyline.The story battles seem to favor dps. I didn't have any trouble when playing as glass cannons, but more tanky alts got swarmed and worn down quickly. The faster you take out the boss, the less you need to worry about dodging and reinforcements.

(Here's a screencap of one of my first attempts with a guardian: https://i.imgur.com/SytoH3s.jpg. Yep, that's a group of ten forged, charging at the respawn point. There's dozen more behind the hill.)

[Vayne.8563]

I've done this mission five times on five different characters, and never had this problem. Is this problem at the final boss or before?

[Zaltys.7649]

@Vayne.8563 said:I've done this mission five times on five different characters, and never had this problem. Is this problem at the final boss or before?The bastion, at the camp. Final boss of Night of Fires has no reinforcements.

[KiloWolf.9365]

@Zaltys.7649 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I've done this mission five times on five different characters, and never had this problem. Is this problem at the final boss or before?The bastion, at the camp. Final boss of Night of Fires has no reinforcements.

I just got done with this mission and Bastion had over 20 reinforcement around it at all times no matter how many I killed. It got to the point I just stayed dead and let the NPCs deal with it because I was getting swarmed and killed in less then 3 seconds. And it makes it worse when there are 3 or 4 enemies with the ability to stun and pull you just juggling you and making sure you can't do anything before you die.

If the other missions are anything like this then I don't think i'm going to play the story.

[TactualRain.7109]

@lynspottery.6529 said:Getting tired of these not working for some specs while other specs have no problem.

I think this is it.

I tried this on my Mesmer and - while there were a hyoooooge number of ads - managed to deal with the situation without too much issue (Chronomancer at the time).

Went back in with my Weaver, and man, it's a murder bath. There's so many things that dogpile you, and the agro range is obscene. Die, and they will come from the other side of the map to the spawn point and murder you again.

I think there's a later fight in the game against some Eater of Souls dude - and he was hard on the Mesmer due to the way he regens health + Mesmer core mechanic of clones (I don't want to get too spoiler-y in case people aren't there, but). It's possible to do the fight, but mechanically it is harder than it should be. Just like it is possible to do this fight with the robot, it's just painful with some class/spec combos. And expecting players to learn a bunch of new muscle memory for a hard boss fight is unrealistic on the part of the devs; people play a thing they like, and do not necessarily want to play something different because the boss is cheesy.

Regardless of the mechanics, the agro range is terribad. I've managed to pull three of the Vet officers in this fight by what looks like them chain-agro'ing each other. Seriously, needs a fix.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Quarktastic.1027 said:I managed to not die at all in that story instance. Were you trying to melee the boss at the end?

Meleeing it is fine. Just don't do it when the floor is setting you on fire.

Edit: Totally forgot it was not the final boss since the herald is a push over.

The Bastion's reinforcements seems to be an infinite spawn so killing them seems pointless.

[castlemanic.3198]

The first time i played this, I was trying to kill the sentries before they reached the torches, got halfway through the sentries before half the enemies on the map aggroed me, during which, canach was halfway across the playable area, triggered the sentry and then all hell broke loose.

The issues i had weren't with enemy aggro, but with canach and rytlock choosing to fight from the opposite ends of the map from me.

So yes, i'd appreciate it if the encounter was looked at in some form. I may not have had as hard of a time as some on this thread, but i think just even having the devs look at this encounter and see what's happening with a response would be great.

[Astralporing.1957]

It's not the aggro range of enemies, but of Canach and Rytlock. Especially Canach sem to like aggroing enemies for the heck of it. Still, it's not that hard if you have a range build (was a walk in the park for my power ranger).

As for the final fight - trying to kill the spawns is a losing game. You need to concentrate on the boss and dps it down before you get overwhelmed. Here, again, being range (and running in circles) help a lot, as you can continue to dps while running away from all the enemies.

So, basically, as someone mentioned (and as is the case for several other encounters in the story) - the encounter is badly designed which results in the difficulty being extremely uneven depending on your class and build.

[Keitaro Dragonheart.9047]

@Astralporing.1957 said:It's not the aggro range of enemies, but of Canach and Rytlock. Especially Canach sem to like aggroing enemies for the heck of it.

This, it's definitely this. It was like teaming with Rurik in GW1 all over again. I watched as Canach pulled half the garrison by bull rushing a mob that was like, halfway across the map from where Rytlock and I were. I love that Anet added little hints and Easter eggs from GW1 in here, but please for the love of god, Leeroy Jenkins (or Kilroy Stonekin, in this case) warrior AI is not a memory I'd care to revisit.

[baelydon.9604]

Well, I finally did this part of the story late last night on my Warrior/Sellbreaker... I died a good 2+ dozen times, had to WP back to the main town a couple time to repair my armor... as I don't have any repair canisters anymore, or to simply take a break... because I started to get tired of doing this.

Some issues:

1) Canache or Rytlock will simply run off at random mobs, and they run VERY VERY far away. Eventually, usually, they come running back, and with them... half the map.

2) Mobs will aggro from extremely far away. I mean... really far away!

3) Some mobs that aggro from far away become "immune", although they have no boons that make them immune. Sometimes, these mobs 'rubber band' but not in the lag kind of way... they run to me then run away, then run to me, then run away.... back and forth, and each time they run away, they become immune and insta-heal to full.

4) After dying-dying and choosing to start from a checkpoint, no matter how far you get, you start from the beginning, minus all the NPC's you've already killed. Everything else is supposedly 'reset'. Well, I made it to the last area, where you fight all the officers and then ultimately the boss. I died all the way back there and restarted or reset to the checkpoint. As per various times in the past, I'd take this moment to collect myself, use the bathroom...whatever, so I did. I came back not even 2 minutes later and found myself dead, at the checkpoint, with pretty much EVERY npc on top of me.

Ok, reset to checkpoint and DON'T go afk. Within ~10 seconds of respawning, every single mob from the very far back of this instance came running to me, when I'm standing all the way at the very beginning. This happened 3 times in a row, I died so quickly that I felt I had no choice but to exit the story and restart it from scratch, it was the only way to get those mobs to actually fully reset!

5) Near the end, you have to kill all the officers, and >then< the last boss is suppose to spawn. Well, The boss kept spawning about the same time as the 1st, sometimes the 2nd officer died. This left me with a decent sized group of veterans and adds, plus the boss to fight. Yeah nope.... too many. For some reason, as soon as that 1st or 2nd "officer" (veteran) hit the ground, ALL of the remaining mobs ran to the center of that round platform, my character and Ritlock/Npc had their little "what is that thing" moment, and then I got stuck fighting ALL of them combined. Again... yeah nope. I died more times on that part alone than anything else COMBINED. So, after many failed attempts and several FULL resets, as in exiting the instance/story, and then restarting it from scratch... I got lucky... I managed to kill all of the officers, aside from the very last one and 3 adds, before the boss spawned.

**That part right there, I had tried this from different angles, trying to stay as far away from the platform as possible, I tried different skills (have to love warriors for their knock downs and push backs!) to keep mobs anchored so they wouldn't run away... it didn't seem to make any difference, they just like running to that platform before the objective is finished.

I tried pulling mobs with my rifle, didn't matter, the mob I shot somehow grabbed any nearby mobs, even if those mobs were more than 1200.. units? Yards? Meters? Fack inches? lol (whatever the unit of measurement is in this game?) I gave up on trying anything than my normal weapons, because it just didn't make any difference.

I eventually was able to clear this and finish it.... but it seemed like that was pure luck more than skill as the issues happened in a different sequence this last time, and in the right sequence that I only died 4 times but still cleared everything. I recorded the entire last attempt, it took me 30 minutes or so and had 4 deaths... I'm not going to post it however... I tend to swear a lot, and editing is just not worth my time. I'll record it on my next toon, but without a microphone attached! :)

Lastly, if someone claims to not have had any of these issues, awesome! That doesn't mean that those of us that have had issues, are "doing it wrong". That doesn't help.

[castlemanic.3198]

I've had the issues of rytlock and canach pulling half the map (and alerting sentries, which spawns more enemies), that in no way is a learn to play issue.

Neither is having the first officer die and then having the bastion spawn, the bastion is only supposed to spawn after the last officer dies, meaning that is definitely a bug.

I've also had the issue of at least one mob being immune to everything, not running away and on top of that attacking me while regaining all of it's health and being immune to everything. There's definitely some bugs with this instance.

[jmrathbun.7263]

I've had it with AN. This fight is ridiculous. It's not fun to lose again and again and again to such an unfair preponderance of forces. I'm done with GW2 forever!

[Silmar Alech.4305]

I don't want to sound like a troll, but infiltrating the war camp for the first time was one of the most fun missions in whole GW2 for me. I played the most squishy character - a full berserk staff tempest, and I wanted to shout: "more enemies! give me more enemies! kill! kill!" It was great. I did not wipe even once. It reminded me of GW1 where you got so many enemies as well. Careful cleaning the area was always the way to go, not all at once. The bonus where you had to kill the sentries before they set off an alarm reminded me of a GW1 Nightfall mission with the same goal. Great!

I admit that if you didn't run a full offensive damage build, or if you have a weapon that doesn't do much cleave damage, you might probably be in danger of being overrun by enemies in the long run.

[Khisanth.2948]

Clearing all the mobs does work but it's not quite the same as GW1. Killing mobs in GW2 story instances give you nothing. It makes the phrase "clearing trash" a bit too literal.

Canach and Rytlock overaggroing is not helpful either. Apparently they learned nothing from the mistake with Rurik.

@castlemanic.3198 said:I've had the issues of rytlock and canach pulling half the map (and alerting sentries, which spawns more enemies), that in no way is a learn to play issue.

Neither is having the first officer die and then having the bastion spawn, the bastion is only supposed to spawn after the last officer dies, meaning that is definitely a bug.

I've also had the issue of at least one mob being immune to everything, not running away and on top of that attacking me while regaining all of it's health and being immune to everything. There's definitely some bugs with this instance.

The immunity thing is an issue all over PoF. Seems to happen because the AI thinks it needs to reset back to its spawn position even though it is only 3 steps away from and you aren't even trying to disengage. Probably another one of those bugs that will never get fixed.

[Sithis.3564]

Done this mission on 4 chars already. It requires some focus but boy.. never had any real issues here. Either people have some strange bugs or not everyone knows how the sentries work.

The only thing I would tune a bit are the enemies spawning during the boss battle. Annoying very much.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Sithis.3564 said:Done this mission on 4 chars already. It requires some focus but boy.. never had any real issues here. Either people have some strange bugs or not everyone knows how the sentries work.

The only thing I would tune a bit are the enemies spawning during the boss battle. Annoying very much.

Those adds may or may not matter depending on where you happen to be standing at the time. I didn't have to bother with them at all during my most recent run.

[Ryokan.5783]

On 11/20/2017 at 12:03 PM, jmrathbun.7263 said:

I've had it with AN. This fight is ridiculous. It's not fun to lose again and again and again to such an unfair preponderance of forces. I'm done with GW2 forever!

That says it all. Why those in charge in any game would deliberately drive away paying customers by including unrealistically difficult missions is beyond me. The majority of gamers are not "git gud" gods and it is the majority that pays the bills. I have been in GW2 since the beginning, paying the bills, and I have to admit that I have to stop now since I can't beat this mission. This roadblock makes the rest of the game unreachable. It saddens me to know how much good content is out there that I will never be able to experience. As someone at the top of the food chain in my business I would not let this happen under my watch. I can say simply that someone in charge of this project is not doing their job of quality control. 

[mythical.6315]

42 minutes ago, Ryokan.5783 said:

That says it all. Why those in charge in any game would deliberately drive away paying customers by including unrealistically difficult missions is beyond me. The majority of gamers are not "git gud" gods and it is the majority that pays the bills. I have been in GW2 since the beginning, paying the bills, and I have to admit that I have to stop now since I can't beat this mission. This roadblock makes the rest of the game unreachable. It saddens me to know how much good content is out there that I will never be able to experience. As someone at the top of the food chain in my business I would not let this happen under my watch. I can say simply that someone in charge of this project is not doing their job of quality control. 

 

Not all games should be balanced around the lowest denominator.

Was it necessary to bump the thread after like 4.5 years?

Edited May 14, 2022 by mythical.6315