Curse

bilateralrope · Jul 06, 2007, 01:27 PM // 13:27

Almost all the enemies use this stance:
Fingers of Chaos

Quote:

For 5 seconds, your attacks: cannot miss rangers; remove enchantments from monks; cause conditions on warriors; interrupt elementalists; and lose a hex when attacking necros.

This does also trigger of their secondary profession. So its best that everyone is using /me or a non-core secondary, especially if they only use skills of their primary class. I'd suggest /rt for a hard res.

And I did manage to complete all the missions with a guild group last year. Since they are just reskined enemies and portals, I'm not planning to do so again. Well, I might try a dervish tank just to see how well that works.

Neo Nugget · Jul 06, 2007, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Same reward as last year except its tokens i guess, seems just as hard as last year lol.

shadows of hob · Jul 06, 2007, 02:13 PM // 14:13

This mission is really not that hard. We did it with 2 prot monks(no bonders)_ and an assassin+Zhed. Zhed had 60% DP very soon and we didn't even bother ressing him. We did 9/10 of the mission with 3 man. The monks just protected everybody and the assassin killed somebody every 10 seconds.

If you just don't fight more then 5 guys at once, it is easy. If you find yourself fighting more then 5 guys, you have done something wrong and you can have a hard fight, with all those interupts.

Evilsod · Jul 06, 2007, 03:21 PM // 15:21

If the reward is only 50 tokens... i'm not wasting my time.

And tbh i'm sure it could very easily be soloed... Burning Arrow ranger w/ Dash anyone?

frickett · Jul 06, 2007, 03:29 PM // 15:29

I have not been successful, I am stuck at work

TempusReborn · Jul 06, 2007, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Yeah same bug here XD 7/8 Rifts open

Jetdoc · Jul 06, 2007, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Hopefully we don't get the same rash of "OMG TOO HARD!!#!@!@! REWARD SUXOR!#!!@@!" posts as we did last year.

It's basically an elite quest for the simple reward of doing it. Have fun with it, and hopefully an ecto or two drops for you by the time you're done with all four.

Jebus · Jul 06, 2007, 04:17 PM // 16:17

Just did Mission 2 with a guild party, didn't have too many troubles.
No ecto's though xD.

Shanaeri Rynale · Jul 06, 2007, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Just done the second mission, same bug as the first here. Shows as Capped on the map but does'nt count. You need to pull a mob to the portal to uncap it, then recap it to complete the mission.

Cowboy Nastyman · Jul 06, 2007, 04:28 PM // 16:28

finished the first 2 missions with my hero team, morgahn, razah and norgu, with myself running a ton of defense as para as well. save yourselves, there's nothing to fear, and they're on fire all stacked is gg wherever i go.

Jongo River · Jul 06, 2007, 04:33 PM // 16:33

I don't think there's anything really wrong with these missions - I just don't feel they're worth waiting around for and then trying to get right in the tiny half hour windows.

ReiNaruto · Jul 06, 2007, 05:06 PM // 17:06

The 7/8 bug appears if the actors get back to grey some rift and then you recapture it. But, if you just let them recap the rift till the flag is back in red, you can recapture the rift safely. We used this trick to "repair" a mission by luring a popup group of warriors to the closest rift.

I hope it will help someone.

Karia Mirniman · Jul 06, 2007, 05:27 PM // 17:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

Hopefully we don't get the same rash of "OMG TOO HARD!!#!@!@! REWARD SUXOR!#!!@@!" posts as we did last year.

It's basically an elite quest for the simple reward of doing it. Have fun with it, and hopefully an ecto or two drops for you by the time you're done with all four.

You will see people complain and rightfully so. Yes, these are missions for expert players, but they are presented as fun things for all to enjoy. The only reason I'm here reading this board is to see if anyone has managed to do these missions.

Congratulations to you that have, In Shing Jea your as rare as rocky horse *$~#.

For the majority of us; It's same old board walk, same old instant finish quests and same feeling of let down.

Proving it's only for experts is easy:

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadows of hob

This mission is really not that hard. We did it with 2 prot monks(no bonders)_ and an assassin+Zhed. Zhed had 60% DP very soon and we didn't even bother ressing him. We did 9/10 of the mission with 3 man. The monks just protected everybody and the assassin killed somebody every 10 seconds.

Most players of GW will not be able to get that together in guild, alliance or in a pug, let alone in 1/2 hour.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cowboy Nastyman

finished the first 2 missions with my hero team, morgahn, razah and norgu, with myself running a ton of defense as para as well. save yourselves, there's nothing to fear, and they're on fire all stacked is gg wherever i go.

And Cowboy Nastyman proves it's elite with his Razah. lol. I so want a Razah, lol

With a little imagination and thought these missions could have been something to make us forget the recent changes that have annoyed so many players. Opportunity missed.

ps. I have my 250 tokens.

Wyldchild777 · Jul 06, 2007, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Greetings,

Well, I just tried the mission one during it's second occurrence today. My thoughts follow:

This "mission" pits the player with a party of 3 others against level 26-28 enemies, in packs of up to 5 at a time. I have to ask - is this an encounter/challenge geared more for the casual player who logs only a couple of hours per day or is it geared for the hardcore farmer who does DoA in less than 8 man groups, perhaps even soloing it?

My opinion is that it is designed for only the hardcore players. Those who can afford to spend 8 to 10 hours a day, 7 days a week learning all the intricacies and nuances of all mechanics in the game. The casual player just doesn't have time for all that. And, for an open-to-all special event, this level of difficulty is excluding all those who aren't "talented" enough to win in these conditions (read - the casual players who want to experience the content of these missions, and are not just doing it for the victory tokens that they've already gotten from doing the quests).

Now, I place myself just slightly above the casual player, what I would call a "firmcore" player. Not as hardcore as the hardcore players, but with knowledge above that of a casual player. There is no way that ArenaNet should expect the majority of players (read - the over 80%-90% of players that aren't hardcore) to be able to complete these missions as designed. It's like trying to complete a Tombs run with just a party of 4 players. In other words, next to impossible.

I just hope that ArenaNet doesn't view it's playerbase , and as such develop further games, as being a majority of players who can hope to complete these. If they (ANet) do view their playerbase as such, they will be in for some surprising revelations come time to tally the sales figures that exclude all but those 10%-20% of hardcore gamers that are left playing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

It was hard last year with henchies only and PUGs.
Now I got into a decent alliance and heroes make things easier, too.
Hard, but doable - and this is how GW should be!
Everyone now has to carry his own weight, you have to do something, a cookie cutter alone is not going to win the mission, you have to do something yourself, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

Hopefully we don't get the same rash of "OMG TOO HARD!!#!@!@! REWARD SUXOR!#!!@@!" posts as we did last year.
It's basically an elite quest for the simple reward of doing it. Have fun with it, and hopefully an ecto or two drops for you by the time you're done with all four.

Not to pick on these two people specifically, but this shows the attitude of hardcore players in general quite well. They feel that they are not doing anything special and having quite an easy time of it, so there is something wrong with those who cannot perform at their level. All the while not realizing that their ability is not the majority. To comment on Jetdoc's comment specifically, though, when he said that it is an elite quest, he, unwittingly perhaps, perfectly stated the problem with these missions. They are geared to the elite level/difficulty in an event that is come-one-come-all, regardless of skill level. The missions should reflect that.

Well, I've rambled on long enough. To put a closing summary on all this - these missions should have been geared to the casual player base, the majority, instead of geared towards the elite/hardcore players, the minority, and I hope this is not the overall view of ANet that they are taking with their future products.

Merry meet, merry met, merry meet again,
Wyldchild777

aaje vhanli · Jul 06, 2007, 08:57 PM // 20:57

I haven't attempted yet because I'm still at work, but I hardly feel tempted considering the only thing of slight interest this Festival is the Mask; which isn't even very cool looking. aNet should give out Dragon Masks again -_-;;

Keneth · Jul 06, 2007, 09:16 PM // 21:16

You also get 240 victory tokens from just doing the 4 easy quests available all the time, so without some ulterior reward for finishing all the missions, it's rather pointless to do any of them, just do the quests and win some tokens from minigames for the mask if you really need it. At the very least, the actors should have been made succeptible to LB Gaze to push the odds at least remotely in the favor of common players.

My Green Storage · Jul 07, 2007, 05:33 AM // 05:33

Yea, tried it on my Rit, I figured, well hell, a few level 20's and all that, should be doable ..
I get there, I see level 24's/28's and I'm thinking ... a party of 4 versus 3-5 level 24's who spike.
So I jumped on my ele .. hell she should be able to MS / savannah heat the hell outta them ...

Nope.
Mission 2 took place in Jaya Bluffs ... I closed 3 of the 4 visable rifts, my team died, I had no rez.

I went back to shing jea and people said the other 4 are hidden ... WTF?

I'm not even going to bother now, I have about 5-6 level 20's I'll just run the quests to get the 240 tokens with and then see what happens on Sunday with the masks (250 + mask or choice of mask)

I was thinking maybe some sort of fancy weapon (Never know) but to see that the first mission only produced 50 victory tokens .. GG Anet.

**I too had the bug, I'd close 2 and it'd say "1 of 8 rifts closed", close 4 and it'd say "3 of 8 closed"

Toutatis · Jul 07, 2007, 08:27 PM // 20:27

I managed it, although it found it to be extremely challenging and very slow-going. I'm not used to small party sizes against monsters that tough, and I found myself exercising the better part of valor very frequently

KamikazeChicken · Jul 07, 2007, 08:38 PM // 20:38

Fingers of Chaos does not work on Heroes.

The 2 missions today (repeated tomorrow?) give 75 tokens for completion, and they both take ~20 minutes using full heroes. Not worth it for just tokens, but meh.

Zeek Aran · Jul 07, 2007, 09:40 PM // 21:40

I just did the Tsumei Village with me as a tank [with only one defensive skill XD], SF, heal, and prot. It was really easy and I got a 75 token reward.

EDIT: People are calling this hardcore? I've never completed Urgoz, The Deep, DoA, not even Tombs. The only UW I've ever done was last year, I SSed with a 55er, and I've also never been into FoW. These mini missions aren't anything compared to those. I've already got 240 tokens on all my characts, so this is the only way I can get more. It's very worth it, since I get flasks of firewater.

Second EDIT: Just beat Seitung. I failed twice because of bad pulling. If you can pull well, only the tank should be set on fire, blinded, and crippled the whole time. *growls* But besides that, it was still not too hard and worth the 75 tokens in my opinion.