Curse

lyra_song · Dec 04, 2006, 11:07 PM // 23:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by lishi

NEW UPDATE

If a party of AI enter in the area of effect of a GC and a winter they will assign a caster to kill it with one shot of their overpowered wand attack.

Gg =)

thats some bad spirit placement then

Inner Salbat · Dec 04, 2006, 11:12 PM // 23:12

DoA is not my idea of fun either, what I class as fun would be FoW and maybe to a limited extent UW, but I hardly go to either place anymore I've no need for Obsidian Armor and no need for the materials for extra gold either, but this isn't my point, my point is that ArenaNet have known (and if not why not?) that not many people actually do all the quests in either of those areas, because most people just don't have the time for that sort of thing.

I entertained going to DoA for all of 2mins, noted the graphical nature of place was poor, the underhanded cop out tactics that is just endless drivel of environmental effects and left, I have absolutely no desire to play these areas, just as I didn't have any to play the likes of Urgos or The Deep, I would rather PvP which is less of a challenge than these areas, in fact I would rather take on 8v1 with the top 10 guilds than play these areas, sure I'd get rolled and pancaked but at least that would be fun.

I wonder if this area is supposed to force people out of PvE and make them go find other things to do for an end game, like PvP for example or just go back to FoW.

It's not an elite mission, it's a pandering to the elitism that will always exist in the minority in this game, and will continue under ANet quit spoon feeding them with entertainment that only the very few can take part in, and when I shelled out my money I expected to be able play all that my money paid for, rest assured that in future I will not be so foolish.

Kha · Dec 04, 2006, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ozric

Sure I'm serious! How much can those Aataxes hit your Ele for hmm? The Ele's in this place don't hit for that much more, and the meleers for for alot less I think.

Except you forgot one thing... melee is easy to avoid. Spells are not. You can easily get ready to protect a monk or ele when an aatxe gets by and is going to hit for hundreds of points of damage. You can't always know who a caster is going after. It's not easy to prepare for a 300+ damage spell without preparing the WHOLE team for it, hence the MoF build. And the melee in DoA still hit for 150-200 damage, so it really isn't "a lot less" than the aatxe.

So DoA = UW Difficulty? Not even close.

Edited to add:

And don't forget about the rangers. 150+ damage from an aggro bubble and a half away? No thanks. Not my idea of fun. The terrain of the place is designed to give you the disadvantage. Even UW and FoW are not like that.

Theus · Dec 04, 2006, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

I don't care about the holy W/Mo/E trinity or about the mindnumbing predefined roles. TBH, my warrior beat Nightfall with *no* MM and *no* nuker. In most places I was using only one healer. Similarly I was using multiple copies of the new professions. So, I'm more than willing to adapt, and to improve. If you reread my post you'll see it's not yet another "who moved my cheese" post. I have legitimate grudges against the DoA, even if I acknowledge all the players who are spending countless hours grinding for gemstones.

The DoA should be beatable with a consistent mix of all professions, and it should not rely on cheap gimmicks (read: you can't win unless you have skill X+Y+Z, or unless you have role Y filled). That's precisely the main design flaw of the DoA. With such a show of brute monster force, the winning cookie-cutter build will likely use only half the existing professions. Worse, these professions will be confined into specific and boring roles (examples from the past: ranger = barrage or trapper, mesmers unwelcome in SF). As for the others, they picked the wrong profession and they are invited to start over NF with a profession useful in DoA.

I won't even mention the 3 to 5 hours needed to complete a single quest. It's great to see super-long content such as UW domination for the true hardcore players, but it would be even better to have something more accessible for the average player who does not have so much spare time. Reality check: in their current form, the "elite" missions are just a WoW dungeon.

One of the great features of Sorrow's Furnace was that even the dumbest player could enter and explore it and do easy quests. Decent or average players could do all quests (including Final Assault) with a minimum of thinking, and excellent players could farm everything in smaller groups. Whatever your profession, and whatever the role you wanted to play, you could find your way into SF, even if hardcore farmers took a bigger and well-deserved share of the loot with cookie cutter tricks.

With DoA-like elite missions you are drastically limited. Again, it's not a probem of difficulty, it's a problem of options and different game content for different players. That's why I still love SF after all these months, and I think DoA is sloppy game design.

/clap

That my friends,is a perfect analysis of what is wrong with DoA.

natuxatu · Dec 05, 2006, 12:33 AM // 00:33

There is no point in making it this over powered. You need 100 gems to get a gold as it is.. so it would still take a long time even if it was as difficult as UW or FoW (which you can say is not difficult) BUT for people who like a challenge.. you can create you own with less people.. certain build.. playing while drunk..

And frankly even if it was slightly easier I don't think people would be complaining that it was too easy... you'd still be busy collecting gems, getting hero armor, greens, ect... I think without it being as hard as it is there is still enough content to keep one busy before the next expansion or holiday event ect.

The ones who say it's a fun challenge because you have to find the right build.. that wont last long. So then those people will be bored again.. and the people who don't like the over powered mobs are going to give up.

It just makes more sense to me to do a little adjusting to the area. ~

Inner Salbat · Dec 05, 2006, 12:44 AM // 00:44

It should also be obvious to people that if too many find this place too hard, the place will end up like "The Deep" or "Urgo" void of people, and since there are no henchmen down there, no one will play it.

Give it time, right now it's new when it gets old people will realize the obviousness of the truth, the same thing the whole of guild wars falls foul of, max effort for 0 reward, and the ones that do gain rewards will stay the rest will leave miffed, and disheartened.

The only conclusion I can come to is that ArenaNet are trying to kill there game off, to prepare for the next incarnation of rubbish.

Spike · Dec 05, 2006, 12:53 AM // 00:53

So what some people have finished part 1 of a 4 part quest. How long did it take? Was it really worth it. At this rate it will take about a week before someone has finished the quest. Wow 30k xp and a load of crap drops for a weeks playing. Sorry not my idea of fun. But if thats what you like that good for you.

Very well said FrogDevourer A very good posts on whats wrong with the DOA.

Btw when I said that the doa might be worth if there was NEW never before seen weapons. I did'nt mean new skins for old weapons or even new versions of the old weapons. But new weapons TYPES.

It just shows that if someone was bored after geting just 6 gems why would any one bother to get 100.

Inner Salbat · Dec 05, 2006, 12:56 AM // 00:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by darksiege

Seeing you are bored so quickly, ANet has not created a worthwhile expansion. The people who believe DoA is too hard are not satisfied, and that people who are making progress are becoming bored at such a quick rate shows that the expansion is nothing but a tedious task for people to plow through.

It's not really an expansion, it was by all appearances supposed to be there since release, so I wouldn't go down the path of oh ANet are so good to us giving us something free, because there was no end game content what so ever until this unholy pile of garbage was dumped on us, if that add something from this point however I'd consider that something free.

What concerns me is that, someone picking up just nightfall and having never played Guild Wars at all, wouldn't just find this a challenge at all, to be honest I don't know what they'd be thinking, but I'd say it wasn't a positive one.

BTW: Districts from release was 14, this has dropped to 4.

Phaern Majes · Dec 05, 2006, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Heh I'll have to give it a go with my new sin build (damn my guildies for one of them not having a sin there too :S) Seems to me though that there are successful builds out there. Just figure out what works and run it.

Speaking of "run", anyone know how long it takes a quick sort to sort a list of 5000 numbers? I've been waiting for nearly 15 minutes... and I still have a 10000, 50000, and 100000 trial to run. May end up just finding a curve that fits what I have so far and guess from there :S

Mysterial · Dec 05, 2006, 01:05 AM // 01:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eclair

Well, you already have that though. You can do that through all of Nightfall. The torment monsters were fairly difficult, and you can still engage them in all out combat. However, how do you propose to up the difficulty then? You can either make the AI smarter (which is incredibly hard to do), or you can just up the damage. If you can propose a better alternative, I'm sure people are willing to listen.

They could start by giving the monsters 8 skills.

There are also plenty of buffs they could give the monsters that are a lot more strategy inducing and a lot less frustrating. For example, give each monster type an immunity to a certain damage type. Maybe the monks can't be damaged by slashing, the eles not by fire, the necros not by piercing, the mesmers not by holy, etc. Or have monster skills that give them more armor the closer they are to allies, so you want to spread them out (when was the last time you wanted to do anything but get them closer together for easy nukes?) Or give them a skill that lets them copy your skills, so you have to be prepared to counter yourself. Or they could introduce variance. I could go on. Obviously some of them might be tested and determined to still be too easy, frustrating, annoying, etc. I'm just working off the top of my head, after all. But I'm sure there's at least some reasonably implementable ideas that are very challenging in a lot more fun way than "all monsters do so much more damage you have to exploit the AI to keep them from killing you".

Eclair · Dec 05, 2006, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phaern Majes

Speaking of "run", anyone know how long it takes a quick sort to sort a list of 5000 numbers? I've been waiting for nearly 15 minutes... and I still have a 10000, 50000, and 100000 trial to run. May end up just finding a curve that fits what I have so far and guess from there :S

The worst case scenerio for quicksort is n^2 comparisons, so 25,000,000 comparisons. The worse case scenerio for mergesort is n log n. So your quicksort should take around 1351 times longer (worst case scenerio for base quicksort and mergesort). Now, if your mergesort took 1 minute or something, then yeah...you're screwed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mysterial

They could start by giving the monsters 8 skills.

There are also plenty of buffs they could give the monsters that are a lot more strategy inducing and a lot less frustrating. For example, give each monster type an immunity to a certain damage type. Maybe the monks can't be damaged by slashing, the eles not by fire, the necros not by piercing, the mesmers not by holy, etc. Or have monster skills that give them more armor the closer they are to allies, so you want to spread them out (when was the last time you wanted to do anything but get them closer together for easy nukes?) Or give them a skill that lets them copy your skills, so you have to be prepared to counter yourself. Or they could introduce variance. I could go on. Obviously some of them might be tested and determined to still be too easy, frustrating, annoying, etc. I'm just working off the top of my head, after all. But I'm sure there's at least some reasonably implementable ideas that are very challenging in a lot more fun way than "all monsters do so much more damage you have to exploit the AI to keep them from killing you".

Giving monsters more skills to work with and still be effective would also entail giving them better AI to use it. Heroes have okay AI, but often times you have to manually disable their skills because they use them when they're not supposed to. I think immunity is a good idea, and I wouldn't mind them adding it to parts of DoA. More armor while grouping together doesn't really change much, as you'd still want to nuke them when theyr'e grouped together for energy cost reasons, and if they can't hurt you, you can just stand there and nuke them to death anyways. Now, if you made them invincible if they're not moving, that could be interesting. Giving monsters your skills doesn't make any difference, since they won't know how to use it correctly without major AI buffs. A lot of these suggestions definately add more twists to the gameplay, but I think they'll either end up being not hard enough to overcome, can't be implemented without major AI overhauls, or end up similar to what's happening in DoA right now.

Phaern Majes · Dec 05, 2006, 01:58 AM // 01:58

oh God....I think my merge sort for sorting 5000 items 1000 times (don't ask part of the assignment I know its lame) took around 20,000 ms which I guess is about 20 seconds so only a 450 minute wait for this to get done.... which I guess is 7.5 hours....*sleep* Well thanks for answering my question. I'll just end it now and find a curve for my data.

EDIT: So right when I was going to stop it, it finally ended. I must of not of recalled exactly how long the merge sort took at that rate, cause this one only took 6,500,662 ms or about 1.8 hours.... well thanks again

Clone · Dec 05, 2006, 02:09 AM // 02:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inner Salbat

It should also be obvious to people that if too many find this place too hard, the place will end up like "The Deep" or "Urgo" void of people, and since there are no henchmen down there, no one will play it.

While I really don't want to see it happen, I can see all of these things happening. With the thousands of players ArenaNet claims this one has, we really should be seeing some more signs of progress here. While I do think people will eventually succeed here, I have a premonition that very few are going to find these places worth the trouble. I think we have a ghost town in the making.

Eclair · Dec 05, 2006, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phaern Majes

oh God....I think my merge sort for sorting 5000 items 1000 times (don't ask part of the assignment I know its lame) took around 20,000 ms which I guess is about 20 seconds so only a 450 minute wait for this to get done.... which I guess is 7.5 hours....*sleep* Well thanks for answering my question. I'll just end it now and find a curve for my data.

EDIT: So right when I was going to stop it, it finally ended. I must of not of recalled exactly how long the merge sort took at that rate, cause this one only took 6,500,662 ms or about 1.8 hours.... well thanks again

Actually, on average quicksort should have the same performance as mergesort. They're both n log n sort algorithms. Are you using a random list of numbers?

aohige · Dec 05, 2006, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spike

So what some people have finished part 1 of a 4 part quest. How long did it take? Was it really worth it. At this rate it will take about a week before someone has finished the quest.

How is this a problem?

We have six month till the next chapter, there's no rush.
And once it HAS been beaten by someone, the strategies will come around so others can follow, and everything will be fine.

Are you telling me, that I'm writing walkthroughs and strategy guides for absolutely nothing? Have you even bothered to READ my reply to you earlier, and checked out the Elonian Explorer's League section?

Or are you gonna continue to sit there whining, crying, and complaining like a very vocal peddler in middle of a toy store?

Oh, btw, it's 2 of the 4 part that's finished.
You would have learned that, if you actually bothered to read what I replied to you in earlier page.

If you don't have the time, dedication, and fun trying to figure it out yourself, and be the first ones to finish the quest, that's PERFECTLY FINE. Just wait till we, the ones with lots of time on our hands, figure it out, so guys like YOU can use the strategy to do the quest easier. So I would appreciate it if you don't spit at our face, like you are right now.

Zinger314 · Dec 05, 2006, 02:41 AM // 02:41

Well, the amount of districts in GoA is not 3, much lower than the 16 at the initial release. Even when you factor the times...it's evident that the majority of the playerbase is quite frustrated.

Hello Kitty · Dec 05, 2006, 02:46 AM // 02:46

I'm surprised no one has alerted the Waaambulance to this thread's existence yet. <(*-_-)>

I'm dialing...

Eclair · Dec 05, 2006, 02:46 AM // 02:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by aohige

Oh, btw, it's 2 of the 4 part that's finished.
You would have learned that, if you actually bothered to read what I replied to you in earlier page.

I think I've seen a screenshot of someone with 3 parts of the quest finished, all except Foundry I think.

explodemyheart · Dec 05, 2006, 02:46 AM // 02:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

Well, the amount of districts in GoA is not 3, much lower than the 16 at the initial release. Even when you factor the times...it's evident that the majority of the playerbase is quite frustrated.

Or it could be that a long of people that play this game are teenagers that have to go to school. During school hours, it was at 2 districts. After school hours it briefly went up to 5 districts and then settled at 4 for several hours. Now that it's getting on to be later in the evening, I'm sure a lot of teenagers are getting offline to do things like eat supper, do homework, have family time, and go to bed.

When it was released it was a friday evening and a lot of people were excited and had nothing better to do.

aohige · Dec 05, 2006, 02:54 AM // 02:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eclair

I think I've seen a screenshot of someone with 3 parts of the quest finished, all except Foundry I think.

Wow, nice. They must have figured out something about Ravenheart Gloom that we don't know about.
I'm sure fighting 50 incoming torments simunlateously isn't the only way to get past the first part of that quest. Been trying diffrent things to see if there's any event triggers with that glowing item, whispers nearby fighting torments, etc. Haven't had any luck yet, but are trying.

EDIT: ZOMG right after I posted this, I see a new thread on Gloom in EEL.

See, this is what I'm talking about... we butt our heads together, we WILL come up with solution.
Do not whine because you can't find the solution... just wait till others do.