What is up with the Aetherblade Path in Twilight Arbor??

[Shadowmoon.7986]

It is more difficult because it was made at a time that Anet actively was pushing players to get better at the game. This was when Teq 2.0 and Triple Trouble was also released. This was the trend until HoT. Then they gave up when they notice their player base only knew how to press 1, and then made PoF.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> I do not think it is our place to say something is hard or easy. Often it is a matter of learn to play. More important is to explain why this is out of parr (atleast with the other two paths in TA).

>

> There once was a path forward/up. But it was very simular to the other two paths and it was uninteresting and boring.

It wasn't any less interesting than the other two original TA paths. The only reason why it was being run way less than them was that Anet tried to make the last encounter of that path more engaging, and ended up bugging it in a way that made it impassable for a huge majority of dungeon runners. And that the bug persisted for over half a year, until Anet decided that it will be simpler to just remove the path than try to fix it.

 

> @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> It is more difficult because it was made at a time that Anet actively was pushing players to get better at the game. This was when Teq 2.0 and Triple Trouble was also released. This was the trend until HoT. Then they gave up when they notice their player base only knew how to press 1, and then made PoF.

More like it was the time when Anet believed that players _wanted_ more difficult stuff, and that they considered the game to be too easy. It's only after HoT hit when they realized, that it was only something a relatively small, but very vocal group of players wanted, and that they've misread the needs and wants of their community, due to the huge majority of players being silent, and only voting with their feet.

 

[Hannelore.8153]

One thing that would help is to bring the level of the Aetherpath down to the same as the other paths. The need to be level 80 is a historic relic and one reason new players almost never attempt this dungeon path. By the time they're max level, they're already moving on to the multitude of other end-game content that's been added in the many years since, and almost never go back.

 

These days dungeons are for levelling, tokens or collections. They're no longer end-game, and shouldn't be treated as such.

 

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"mercury ranique.2170" said:

> > I do not think it is our place to say something is hard or easy. Often it is a matter of learn to play. More important is to explain why this is out of parr (atleast with the other two paths in TA).

> >

> > There once was a path forward/up. But it was very simular to the other two paths and it was uninteresting and boring.

> It wasn't any less interesting than the other two original TA paths. The only reason why it was being run way less than them was that Anet tried to make the last encounter of that path more engaging, and ended up bugging it in a way that made it impassable for a huge majority of dungeon runners. And that the bug persisted for over half a year, until Anet decided that it will be simpler to just remove the path than try to fix it.

>

> > @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > It is more difficult because it was made at a time that Anet actively was pushing players to get better at the game. This was when Teq 2.0 and Triple Trouble was also released. This was the trend until HoT. Then they gave up when they notice their player base only knew how to press 1, and then made PoF.

> More like it was the time when Anet believed that players _wanted_ more difficult stuff, and that they considered the game to be too easy. It's only after HoT hit when they realized, that it was only something a relatively small, but very vocal group of players wanted, and that they've misread the needs and wants of their community, due to the huge majority of players being silent, and only voting with their feet.

>

What players were actually asking for was for the devs to stop nerfing the content.

 

Ever since release, open-world was nerfed numerous times, especially in places like Orr, dungeons were nerfed, Fractals were nerfed, everything kept being made easier before any expansions even came out. Players asked for this process to be discontinued, yet somehow the devs interpreted it as "add hard content instead" like Aetherpath, HoT open-world, Fractal CMs, raids, etc.

 

Even the very small, vocal group mostly just wanted the game to be the difficulty it was at release. But the combinations of powercreep and nerfing slowly created a huge gap between new players and experienced players, which the devs claim is more than ten times as much difference and while it could've been reversed a long time ago, now all content has to explicitly be designed around it.

 

So we end up with situations like a player going from Personal Story to HoT Story and going "omg I got destroyed why". And we're in a squad against Mouth of Modremoth and someone asks "okay but what is CC anyway?".

 

Its impossible to reverse at this point and we all have to live with it.

[Animism.7530]

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> One thing that would help is to bring the level of the Aetherpath down to the same as the other paths. The need to be level 80 is a historic relic and one reason new players almost never attempt this dungeon path. By the time they're max level, they're already moving on to the multitude of other end-game content that's been added in the many years since, and almost never go back.

>

> These days dungeons are for levelling, tokens or collections. They're no longer end-game, and shouldn't be treated as such.

 

Except they shouldn't be used for levelling unless you're using an already geared character and switching at the end.

 

Aetherpath is the only dungeon which provides any gold through the rewards.

 

In fairness - some parts of Arah P4 are quite difficult. You can solo practically the entirety of Aetherpath with relative ease, only requiring reflects for the Ooze room.

 

[voltaicbore.8012]

> @"ekisJohann.1508" said:

>Somehow I think this post is useless - If they can't fix that bug then how will they change the mechanics of a dungeon, right?? Anyways looking forward to your replies. Peace, Love and Unity <3

 

This post _is_ useless in that regard, because dungeons are officially abandoned content. There seems to be almost zero chance that they will intentionally fiddle with dungeon mechanics ever again, as the hassle of doing that is why they got dropped in the first place.

 

But at least there was some discussion of (1) why it flopped as content, and (2) how to get around the poorly designed mechanics. So the post is not totally useless!

 

 

[Khisanth.2948]

I would put that in the same category as the laser grid in CoE. Doable, can be easy with practice but ultimately not worth the effort.

 

 

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Shadowmoon.7986" said:

> > It is more difficult because it was made at a time that Anet actively was pushing players to get better at the game. This was when Teq 2.0 and Triple Trouble was also released. This was the trend until HoT. Then they gave up when they notice their player base only knew how to press 1, and then made PoF.

> More like it was the time when Anet believed that players _wanted_ more difficult stuff, and that they considered the game to be too easy. It's only after HoT hit when they realized, that it was only something a relatively small, but very vocal group of players wanted, and that they've misread the needs and wants of their community, due to the huge majority of players being silent, and only voting with their feet.

>

 

Challenge can be good or bad, it all depends on the mechanics.

 

The typical example of bad would be escort missions with suicidal NPCs. The VB night time event where you escort the supplies is an example of this in GW2.

 

Muckstalker + phase shift or the random block buff would be another example of bad challenge...bounties in general is a good place for examples of bad challenge depending on combinations of buffs. Phase shift + anything that shadow steps is crappy since it makes the rings disappear. Phase shift + any mob that moves around a lot is also suspect. This is working under the assumption that Phase Shift is meant to force people to pay attention and have to move around instead of simply stacking. That goal is fine but it seems whoever designed this forgot to coordinate with the creature designers. Fractals suffered from the same issue so they had to blacklist some instabilities from certain fractals but it seems this lesson was not learned by other people at ANet. That is probably the worst part of it.