It Feels bad when i can just ress rush Bosses.

[Dreamy Lu.3865]

Don't forget that there are many different types of players in this game, all with different approach to game contents and different objectives. Many are absolutely not interested to consume time at improving self and equipment for a specific story line boss. Others simply don't like doing story line instances and go into instances with objective to get rid of it once and for all, as good as it gets, with zero interest in working out a build set up for that.I am one of the 2nd category. I just want it to go fast and be done with it, not caring at all in what way I do that. If I see that one boss will be a bother, I stop immediately and call friends to get me through the instance. If - unfortunately - this is a boss mandatory solo, what I do hate, the system die-check point-return to fight is the only way for me, crossing fingers that the boss does not rebuild health during the back and forth to check point. I just want the bother to end fast enough.If the system proposed by OP would be implemented, I would put an end to doing story lines and I believe I would not be the only one.

Maybe that a good compromise solution could be that different modes can be selected to do an instance, like for example: Easy (boss does not rebuild health), medium (boss rebuilds health), hard (kicked upon dying or equivalent)? Player like me can then choose the easiest mode and players like OP can then go for the hard version. There are already now instances with challenge motes. So this concept is possible?

[Palador.2170]

@joneirikb.7506 said:At this point, whenever someone talks about the story content, they say it is story so it is supposed to be easy. I'm curious, have ANet ever stated that? I can't remember that they did, but I haven't really followed it that closely.

I do not believe that they have. However, they're relying on the story to keep us coming back. Other MMOs get to fall back on gear progression and level cap raising. ANet can't do that with this game, so the story has to become more of a focus. And if people feel blocked off from finishing the story, GW2 will start losing players when they lose interest in the story.

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@"Blocki.4931" said:I agree, but I also understand that maybe 60% of players wouldn't be able to clear the instances lmao

Its not that diff if you think about it. In the existing system if you are bad and die multiple times your gear break and you get penalty iirc to your stats makimg the fight slower and you squishier.

Point of information: damaged gear does not lose any of its defense or attribute bonuses. Broken gear does. However, gear does not break until all of one's armor and back piece are damaged. So, one loses stats only on the eighth and subsequent defeats.

Opinion: It seems more likely that people would fail to clear the story instance because of inability to whittle a boss down from full health no matter how many times they try than that they would eventually fail due to losing stats. How likely are people in today's gaming culture to not rage quit after seven defeats?

Alot of ppl already rq in the current fight and you can see it in forum threads. Theres the arguement about which would cause more rage but we having seen any proper story instanced be done with a checkpoint and an anvil to ix your gear.

Opinion: While harder instanced content is not aimed at all players, story content is. Given the latter, importing instance "rules" meant for harder content risks alienating less skilled players while offering little benefit to players who like harder instanced content. After all, the mainstays of such content are: group composition; actual challenge; and repetitive play fueled by rewards.

True. Its just my opinion that i believe this wouldnt increase the difficulty for the ppl that would already struggle in the existing format while also making the fight more well regarded due to no major cheese from death rushing.

Oh well.

Just how could anything that resets the fight on death

avoid

making the fight harder for anyone who currently have to resort to death-rushing it?

Current way: The boss kills me, but I wittle it down over time, finally defeating it.Your suggestion: The boss kills me, and the fight resets, wiping away all my progress every time - I fail to defeat the boss.How is that

not

"increased difficulty"?

Your cds and gear are reset. In the existing system if you die multiple times you will start recieving hefty stat penalties makimg the fight even harder. Basically the boss facerolls against you but the hp by that time would also be bellow 30% hopefully so ppl keep at it.

This is applicable to people who almost kill the boss before getting killed. Those aren't "res-rushing", they get the boss after one or two resses currently and are completely unaffected by broken gear - it takes 8 deaths before you see a whiff stat reduction.

Players who haven't succeded within 8 deaths clearly does no more than ~10% damage to the boss each time before they're killed. To think that they could improve enough to kill the boss in one go of a reset fight is absurd.

[Ayakaru.6583]

This topic is why gw2 needs a hard mode.I can tell that there are people here who could never kill a boss if its health resets everytime you die.But there are also people (like me) who can’t take the villains/antagonists seriously because they pose no threat

Since you can’t entertain both groups at once, I think hard mode is the best way to go.Normal mode would be as is now.Hard mode would have fail conditions:Escort is escort, no letting them die,Tasks can have timers,Bosses can permanently kill youEtcEveryone happy

[zealex.9410]

@Dreadshow.9320 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:Nothing is stopping yoy, personally, from leaving the story instance and restarting when you die.

Nothing stops you from watching a youtube playthrough of the fight either.

And theres stuff that do. Like, the weird checkpoints or lack thereof in alot of the fights.

Yes real life is restricting me, family, job, kids, I don't want to do work to be entertained by a game. You can if you want but don't limit others enjoyment of the game because you have control on how you want to approach the game and don't force your approach on others.

Im not telling u to work all that extra. If you are clearing the content already you wont notice any reall difference.

[zealex.9410]

@Palador.2170 said:

@joneirikb.7506 said:At this point, whenever someone talks about the story content, they say it is story so it is supposed to be easy. I'm curious, have ANet ever stated that? I can't remember that they did, but I haven't really followed it that closely.

I do not believe that they have. However, they're relying on the story to keep us coming back. Other MMOs get to fall back on gear progression and level cap raising. ANet can't do that with this game, so the story has to become more of a focus. And if people feel blocked off from finishing the story, GW2 will start losing players when they lose interest in the story.

Gear progression keeps you playing it doesnt bring you back. New content bring you back difficulty and style pf content has little to do with that.

[zealex.9410]

@Irokou.3215 said:I think an interesting solution to this would be to have a normal version of the story and a challenge mode of the story. You would be able to play through the story as normal, or opt to play though the challenge variant, with the same story dialogue, just stronger monsters and altered encounters/death penalty and achievements. Personally I think this game would benefit from having more options with regards to the difficulty of solo play. Another game I play, elder scrolls online, has the maelstrom arena, which is a solo challenge mode/gauntlet essentially. Let both the hardcore and casual soloists have their own enjoyment, I say.

As an aside, yet another mmo (that I no longer play), blade and soul, had a solo challenge tower as content. While it has nothing to do with the presentation of the story, I think it would be interesting to see gw2 make an avenue of content designed as a solo trial/challenge of sorts.

Gw1 basically followed that format.

[zealex.9410]

@Etria.3642 said:I'm not sure you realize. I don't survive to nearly kill the boss so a second try would do it. If alone I die before 75-80%. If it reset each and every time I died I would NEVER kill the boss. I don't feel I should be forced to switch my build to do a STORY instance for heavens sake. Nor should I require an entire team. It isn't a dungeon. It isn't a raid or fractal. It's STORY.

Incidentally I perish far more often in story instances than the other content in general. So please. Leave the challenge for content that is supposed to present a challenge. In fact. If you want a challenge change YOUR build. Take off some armor. Let us poor folk complete it though.

I mean if you want an easier time i could suggest you change your gear. Why does that arguement should apply to me and not you?

[Algreg.3629]

@"Etria.3642" said:I'm not sure you realize. I don't survive to nearly kill the boss so a second try would do it. If alone I die before 75-80%. If it reset each and every time I died I would NEVER kill the boss. I don't feel I should be forced to switch my build to do a STORY instance for heavens sake. Nor should I require an entire team. It isn't a dungeon. It isn't a raid or fractal. It's STORY.

Incidentally I perish far more often in story instances than the other content in general. So please. Leave the challenge for content that is supposed to present a challenge. In fact. If you want a challenge change YOUR build. Take off some armor. Let us poor folk complete it though.

While I agree with a lot of current bosses resetting the fight would be a bad idea (because regardless of skill level, many are random AOE spam that depend heavily on luck), there is no such definition "story missions have to be easy". It is completely arbitrary or based on outside considerations (wanting players to get to new maps quickly e.g.). They could be tough as hell and still represent the story of a game, which a lot of games do. You can even argue making bosses pushovers via corpserushing invalidates the whole story/epic experience.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

This is one of those things that, I'm not sure that the players who hate the idea necessarily know best. I'm going to reference a moment here, where

and is brought to tears over his achievement. I mean, just look at that. I bet most people haven't been this happy in their entire lives.

Beating the bosses in harder games (a la Cuphead) feels great, but it only feels great if there's an actual challenge in beating them. Having a system where players just keep reviving and dying over and over again feels bad, even if that player believes there is no other way to beat the boss. Nobody wants to corpse rush the boss. But, if you have a system where the fight and achievement flags reset while also allowing you to re-challenge the boss quickly, then winning still feels like an accomplishment. It is like this for... all other bosses in the game. Dungeons, Fractals, Raids, all of them reset on failure but make it easy to come back. If the formula works everywhere else, then clearly it will work in story mode, too.

On the subject of unskilled players, failure is an indicator that more information is needed. There's usually one or two tricks that you can use to beat the boss, and these tricks are useful in the rest of the game. The corpse rush system disincentivizes learning, and it leads to players who are both frustrated and bad. Quick re-fights, while also frustrating, incentivizes problem solving and self-improvement. Every player wins from every player getting better, but in the overworld it is too easy to melt into a zerg and go with the flow.

[Gehenna.3625]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Magnus Godrik.5841 said:You do realize that by doing this people will rage on reddit and force anet to nerf the kitten out of it.

Doesnt that happen already?

Yeah and the thing is that an MMO has to cater to casuals and more hardcore players at the same time. This is their solution but it means that neither group is really happy with it. I mean it's pretty clear that this game's style of boss fights has to do with bosses littering the ground with stuff you have to dodge out of and not every player is quite that agile or interested in long fights of constant rolling around. I always like to picture a GW2 movie where you have a main encounter and the hero is just rolling around dodging stuff for 10 minutes and each hit barely seems to scratch the bad guy but then eventually many small hits make a big one and the bad guy dies. I think people would fall asleep and not be excited at the victory but rather relieved it's finally over.

Well, that's how it feels to me in game as well. To me the biggest problem is that the fights take so long because our attacks are puny and in a way it seems very implausible that you killed Dragons and a God while struggling to off some lieutenant. My fight against Balthazar was certainly a lot easier than some of the other fights. So overall, I just don't see the point in how they make the boss fights. I bet that the fights would be a lot more fun if the bosses had half the HP they did. Not because it's easier but because it's not such a drag to go through.

And yeah when you are new in a fight there often is a mechanic or two you have to figure out. I remember this fight in LS4 where the boss had a ton of defense so it wasn't dying a lot. Then I figured out what to do to summon this special add that you could damage and his health percentage will become the boss health %. Now, having raided a lot in other games, I could figure this out I guess. But because you're dancing around a lot and the special ability you got from killing other adds didn't seem to do much, it took me a while to summon that special add the first time. I just noticed that after he disappeared again that the boss had the same health percentage and then I figured it out. But I can imagine that for a lot of casual players this can be really hard to figure out and then this fight becomes an even longer fight.

Someone mentioned having a normal and hard mode version of these fights and I think that's a better solution. The baseline story experience shouldn't take forever and it should be pretty straightforward and then the hard mode is where people looking for a challenge can go. You could say that by killing the boss in story mode, you then unlock the instance for HM that you can go to at any time for the challenge for example.

I think though that people who are pretty good at gaming because they have the ability and experience often underestimate their ability and think everybody can do what they can because they feel it's simple. But speaking from my previous experience of raid leader, teaching players how to do boss fights, I've come to realize that in fact most people really struggle with things that you may think are simple but are actually a sign of your ability.

And I think the truth is that whereas gaming 20 years ago was a more specialized group of people who were up to the challenge, MMOs nowadays mostly attract more casual players who just love to walk around in a beautiful world and feel like a boss. GW2 delivers on the first for most people I'd say, but not so much on the second because a lot of people do struggle with the difficulty or the annoyance factors.

[Sylvari.2953]

u can just respawn and continue auto attacking the boss, die, repeat

I never die or get downed as a Celestial Firebrand and I use all of my skills, not only auto attack, so this sounds pretty lame to me. There are people who actually do this?! O.o

I'm sure many people would find it annoying if they changed the current boss fight system. These changes wouldn't make boss fights more impactful or fun, only more stressful.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Mea.5491 said:

u can just respawn and continue auto attacking the boss, die, repeat

I never die or get downed as a Celestial Firebrand and I use all of my skills, not only auto attack, so this sounds pretty lame to me. There are people who actually do this?! O.o

I'm sure many people would find it annoying if they changed the current boss fight system. These changes wouldn't make boss fights more impactful or fun, only more stressful.

I'm sure that some people do once they figured that out. I know I'm not that experienced in this game so I have died a few times during fights and was surprised I was ressed and could keep going but I still prefer not to die if I can help it. However, these fights are not really designed for casual players and being ressed I guess is Anet's way of throwing casual players a bone. I suspect thought that there are people who can't be bothered and just do the attack, die, ress cycle till the boss is dead. And I can't entirely blame them since my view is that the boss fights are very repetitive and too long. But hey, to each their own.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

...and still some total noobs are complaining the instances are too hard. You see where this goes?

[Aenaos.8160]

No ty.The game is in dire need for more casual content and is still recovering from the flop that was HoT when Anet listened to the tryhards and madethe fights needlessly hard.There are Fractals and Raids for more advanced players.Take into account how chaotic the difference in performance can be from one build to another making the exact same content anything fromface roll easy to extremely hard,and that most people that play through the story are not into changing builds and gear just to finish a LS episode.

[Algreg.3629]

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@"Magnus Godrik.5841" said:You do realize that by doing this people will rage on reddit and force anet to nerf the kitten out of it.

Doesnt that happen already?

Yeah and the thing is that an MMO has to cater to casuals and more hardcore players at the same time. This is their solution but it means that neither group is really happy with it. I mean it's pretty clear that this game's style of boss fights has to do with bosses littering the ground with stuff you have to dodge out of and not every player is quite that agile or interested in long fights of constant rolling around. I always like to picture a GW2 movie where you have a main encounter and the hero is just rolling around dodging stuff for 10 minutes and each hit barely seems to scratch the bad guy but then eventually many small hits make a big one and the bad guy dies. I think people would fall asleep and not be excited at the victory but rather relieved it's finally over.

Well, that's how it feels to me in game as well. To me the biggest problem is that the fights take so long because our attacks are puny and in a way it seems very implausible that you killed Dragons and a God while struggling to off some lieutenant. My fight against Balthazar was certainly a lot easier than some of the other fights. So overall, I just don't see the point in how they make the boss fights. I bet that the fights would be a lot more fun if the bosses had half the HP they did. Not because it's easier but because it's not such a drag to go through.

And yeah when you are new in a fight there often is a mechanic or two you have to figure out. I remember this fight in LS4 where the boss had a ton of defense so it wasn't dying a lot. Then I figured out what to do to summon this special add that you could damage and his health percentage will become the boss health %. Now, having raided a lot in other games, I could figure this out I guess. But because you're dancing around a lot and the special ability you got from killing other adds didn't seem to do much, it took me a while to summon that special add the first time. I just noticed that after he disappeared again that the boss had the same health percentage and then I figured it out. But I can imagine that for a lot of casual players this can be really hard to figure out and then this fight becomes an even longer fight.

Someone mentioned having a normal and hard mode version of these fights and I think that's a better solution. The baseline story experience shouldn't take forever and it should be pretty straightforward and then the hard mode is where people looking for a challenge can go. You could say that by killing the boss in story mode, you then unlock the instance for HM that you can go to at any time for the challenge for example.

I think though that people who are pretty good at gaming because they have the ability and experience often underestimate their ability and think everybody can do what they can because they feel it's simple. But speaking from my previous experience of raid leader, teaching players how to do boss fights, I've come to realize that in fact most people really struggle with things that you may think are simple but are actually a sign of your ability.

And I think the truth is that whereas gaming 20 years ago was a more specialized group of people who were up to the challenge, MMOs nowadays mostly attract more casual players who just love to walk around in a beautiful world and feel like a boss. GW2 delivers on the first for most people I'd say, but not so much on the second because a lot of people do struggle with the difficulty or the annoyance factors.

I agree on most of this, but not on the casual player "typology". If you have a brain and eyes, you can put the pieces together as much as some super raider. I think one of the problems is this game really conditions casual players into mindless activities by measure of rewards. When you see people with really low mastery scores and AP in the Istan farm e.g. asking questions that imply they have absolutely no idea about basic game concepts/mechanics, you know GW2s reward system really does its best to discourage people from improving - the mindless stuff is just too attractive. It seems people jump into the game, level to 80 and off they go to 24/7 mob farming. Queensdale champ train anyone?

[Carighan.6758]

@"Oglaf.1074" said:My point is that I don’t see the point of your complaint. It only affects you and you can artificially punish yourself if you feel like it. There’s no need to impose your will on other players.

That is such a weird, absolute, position to take.

Let me recycle it by changing what it is used on. Luckily your sentence in itself provides no context.

Read your line, followed by this: "Hence, Meteor Shower should stay overpowered because it is fun to use, and you could always not use it or equip less damage gear on your Elementalist if you'd like it to be weaker. Or more Toughness on your characters to take less damage. Balance is just impacting the enjoyment of using overpowered abilities, anyhow."

Sadly, this would make just as much sense. There's no hard yes/no with this. There's no way to say "Oh this, say balance, should apply to everyone universally even if it means it'll reduce your individual enjoyment, while this other thing, respawn capabilities in story, should be unchanged even if you enjoy things less as a result of it not changing."

Now I agree I wouldn't change respawn mechanics in instances. Though frankly I also wouldn't do any of the minutiae balancing ANet tries to do, the game has way bigger balance/design issues which would invalidate any work invested into pushing numbers around, anyhow. But again, that's me. Plenty people enjoy using the current stealth implementatio non thieves, much as I personally would replace it completely with a more DAoC-like stealth.

[Omega.6801]

@Blocki.4931 said:I agree, but I also understand that maybe 60% of players wouldn't be able to clear the instances lmao

Basically this^^ is what keeps the lw bosses the way they are. Also, because instead of improving those 60% of the players would rather take their frustration and entitlement to the forums. I don't mind but I also have no problem with solo'ing the story. If I want the challenge I raid or do Fractals. Sad but true, there can never be challenging content in story releases. Just remember the outcry about the caudecus fight or how HoT needed to be nerfed twice and casual joe/jane is still requesting to tone it down.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Tanner Blackfeather.6509" said:Just how could anything that resets the fight on death avoid making the fight harder for anyone who currently have to resort to death-rushing it?

Current way: The boss kills me, but I wittle it down over time, finally defeating it.Your suggestion: The boss kills me, and the fight resets, wiping away all my progress every time - I fail to defeat the boss.How is that not "increased difficulty"?

Exactly. People need to be willing to invest a bit of time into researching efficient builds for their professions and also learn how to play them (for instance, a thief standing still all the time and trying to tank will always fail; dodging in general is a very important combat mechanic in GW2). It really isn't that hard.

[Omega.6801]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"Tanner Blackfeather.6509" said:Just how could anything that resets the fight on death

avoid

making the fight harder for anyone who currently have to resort to death-rushing it?

Current way: The boss kills me, but I wittle it down over time, finally defeating it.Your suggestion: The boss kills me, and the fight resets, wiping away all my progress every time - I fail to defeat the boss.How is that

not

"increased difficulty"?

Exactly. People need to be willing to invest a bit of time into researching efficient builds for their professions and also learn how to play them (for instance, a thief standing still all the time and trying to tank will always fail; dodging in general is a very important combat mechanic in GW2). It really isn't that hard.

You can't tell ppl to improve or you're a meanie. Story bosses need to be solo'able AA'ing in green cleric gear.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"lokh.2695" said:You can't tell ppl to improve or you're a meanie.

Why am I a "meanie" upon encouraging people to look into things that are fundamental to the game? :o

Sites like MetaBattle or GW2 Wiki exist for a reason. And dodging (or otherwise avoiding an enemy's AoE) is a mechanic that is absolutely fundamental to GW2's combat system.

That's like saying, "I have to learn math in order to pass my math exam?! Nooooo!" - Well, yeah, some things require practice and a bit of dedication. If you are not willing to invest either, then please don't complain about the bad results.

Story bosses need to be solo'able AA'ing in green cleric gear.

Where did I say it was about gear? I said people need to learn some fundamental stuff (builds a.k.a. efficient skill and trait combinations, playstlye and rotations for their current profession etc.) to get better at fights, and that is the truth. Nowhere did I say, "Unless you have end game gear, you are bound to fail." :s

[Algreg.3629]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"lokh.2695" said:You can't tell ppl to improve or you're a meanie.

Why am I a "meanie" upon encouraging people to look into things that are fundamental to the game? :o

Sites like MetaBattle or GW2 Wiki exist for a reason. And dodging (or otherwise avoiding an enemy's AoE) is a mechanic that is absolutely fundamental to GW2's combat system.

That's like saying, "I have to learn math in order to pass my math exam?! Nooooo!" - Well, yeah, some things require practice and a bit of dedication. If you are not willing to invest either, then please don't complain about the bad results.

Story bosses need to be solo'able AA'ing in green cleric gear.

Where did I say it was about

gear

? I said people need to learn some fundamental stuff (builds a.k.a. efficient skill and trait combinations, playstlye and rotations for their current profession etc.) to get better at fights, and that is the truth.

Nowhere

did I say, "Unless you have end game gear, you are bound to fail." :s

welcome to 2018 :) Please be skill positive

[Omega.6801]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"lokh.2695" said:You can't tell ppl to improve or you're a meanie.

Why am I a "meanie" upon encouraging people to look into things that are fundamental to the game? :o

Sites like MetaBattle or GW2 Wiki exist for a reason. And dodging (or otherwise avoiding an enemy's AoE) is a mechanic that is absolutely fundamental to GW2's combat system.

That's like saying, "I have to learn math in order to pass my math exam?! Nooooo!" - Well, yeah, some things require practice and a bit of dedication. If you are not willing to invest either, then please don't complain about the bad results.

Story bosses need to be solo'able AA'ing in green cleric gear.

Where did I say it was about

gear

? I said people need to learn some fundamental stuff (builds a.k.a. efficient skill and trait combinations, playstlye and rotations for their current profession etc.) to get better at fights, and that is the truth.

Nowhere

did I say, "Unless you have end game gear, you are bound to fail." :s

All is well. I know what you are saying and I agree with you. As a person, when I encounter a challenge I think about it, see what can be changed about my setup, check the enemy if there's a boon or debuff or something giving me additional information. If I keep failing, I think about mechanics, is there a warning I'm missing, an attack I should dodge at all cost, stuff like that. But that's me and some others as well, but I've learnt to not expect that from players(these days, yes I'm an old man). It would be great if ppl would actually put in some effort and improve but the trend is more going into the direction where everything needs to be as easy as a mobile game.

I don't think you're a meanie, you sound like a reasonable player. But there are those players in GW2, and there are many of them, that will think you're an elitist when you tell them to dodge a paragraphed attack. Ppl that will demand and request for everything to become easier and easier. It's a sense of entitlement that is new to gaming. Ppl are so used to P2W models and simple single player power fantasy games that they expect to get everything, anytime, for free and without putting in any effort. I was mocking that perception more than I was providing a valuable addition to the discussion. All is well.

[Cyninja.2954]

Because story instanced content matters...

Here is what it boils down to:

The fewer people play the story, the less the general player population gets invested in the game. The latest Living World Episodes are down to a minimum completion wise, that is NOT a good sign.

Offering players challenging content is one thing, making it mandatory only so that some few can flex their e-peen and feel great is another.

There is not enough developer ressources to develope hard modes for story and even if there were, there is enough other content and work which needs addressing first.

If the player base and the subsequent health of the game is of any interest, story should be completable by as many players as possible. Have achievements for the most difficult aspects (as is now).

There is a large enough casual player base in this game to warrant the story to be easy unless you want to turn GW2 into a niche MMO.

[Malediktus.9250]

I agree. One of the many reasons I hate living story episodes