How long is too long? (Instance / Boss fights).

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Solvar.7953" said:

> So in this case, I think some minor refinements would have made it more enjoyable, not less. As I play, I'm finding the stories less enjoyable, and playing through them a second or third time even more so. It's almost to the point where I'd be just as happy for each LS chapter to just give us a new explorable area with no story attached, which to me points to some failing here on Anets part.

>

 

Same here. I liked S2 in that I could fully explore the 2 new zones then do the story at my own pace. This 'you HAVE to do some of the story before you get to see the map we created' is pure trash. I wind up treating the story instance as something I have to do rather than something I want to do and that means I wind up resenting it and not having fun at all.

 

I have no idea why they changed. I have yet to hear of anyone asking for it to be this new way but now I fear they will think this is the standard way things are done.

[Sithis.3564]

I've completed the PoF story on 4 characters so far, on my way with 5th. While I agree that some fights have some crazy kitten AOE ( i.e. Cadecus ) that could be toned down, I find all this drama about instances being to long and hard overblown. There are times when you need to adapt and learn by your mistakes. The dificulty level is definitly not as high as people claim and the missions are no longer then 30. I play my Ele now and as much as I rage each time I get downed ( Cadecus.. ), it's by far not taking me hours and blocking me from pushing forward.

I have an idea. Quit the game. Go play something else and then come back after a while. If you still don't like it, it means GW is not for you. I'm not joking. I did it myself after HoT. I've completed it with 8 classes, did almost all collections and left after Bloodstone Fen. I was tired and quit dissapointed.

 

I've returned just before PoF and seriously.. it got a lot better. At least for me.

[Taygus.4571]

Who said anything about not looking the gane? I love the maps and open world pve.

That's a bit of an over reaction.

 

Disliking the lengths of instances isn't talking amt difficulty either, although I do find them challenging.

[Daddicus.6128]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @Daddicus.6128 said:

> > Mordremoth in the mission? Boring. And, breaks nearly all of my rules (above). Balthazar where he kept beating you down and rezzing you got stale, but there was a point, so I'm OK with that one.

>

> Wait, when was one where he keeps rezzing you? All the times I fought Balthazar he'd only down me at the end of the fight when the story intended me to be downed.

 

I died probably a dozen times in that fight.

[Daddicus.6128]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @Mahou.3924 said:

> > > @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > > > @Daddicus.6128 said:

> > > > Mordremoth in the mission? Boring. And, breaks nearly all of my rules (above). Balthazar where he kept beating you down and rezzing you got stale, but there was a point, so I'm OK with that one.

> > >

> > > Wait, when was one where he keeps rezzing you? All the times I fought Balthazar he'd only down me at the end of the fight when the story intended me to be downed.

> > >

> > >

> >

> > The second fight with Balthazar. If you get downed before you depleted his HP enough, he continues to rezz you with remarks on how the "fun" should continue or something like that.

> >

> > I should know a I'm an expert when it comes to dying against him, haha.

>

> Ah. I just stayed out of the fire, that seemed to work.

>

>

Would have been nice, but it's just not possible for me (at my age) to move my hands and fingers that quickly.

 

[Daddicus.6128]

> @"Simbosan.2863" said:

> I don't have a problem with long instances per se, with checkpoints they can be fine.

>

> What is very wrong, and it stuns me that devs still design things like this after all these years, is to have achievements that are difficult in themselves, attached to very difficult to understand boss fights. This means that you will have to repeat the whole instance multiple times to get those achievements. This incredibly poor and lazy design and shows that the designers have forgotten what the word 'Story' in Story Missions means. Repeating very long very difficult missions because the achieves are at the end is poor, very poor.

 

Actually, even though I'm one of the lower-tier players as skill and reflexes go, I find the achievements tend to help me for later battles. I USUALLY have to consult a guru (like Dulfy), but once you know the "trick", the actual mission goes quite a bit faster (in many cases).

 

My problem comes in when the "trick" is so non-obvious that very few people will figure it out on their own. But, a fix would be almost trivial to implement: after what seems a long enough period of frustration on the part of the player, the game should start giving hints. For example, in that early fight in LSS4, where you have to kill the lieutenants, the game could highlight the pillars a bit, or perhaps throw out some dialogs like, "What's that pillar of light pointing towards?" or "What's that big object at the center of that huge sphere?".

[Daddicus.6128]

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

 

> You should not come out of the first instance in the story with all your armor broken and feeling like you have had more than enough GW2 for the day.

THIS!

 

This is an excellent way to put it. I would add qualifiers (it IS end-game content, after all), but the feelings you state are good ones for ANet to avoid pushing on us.

 

[Daddicus.6128]

> @"Rauderi.8706" said:

> > @pah.4931 said:

> > Length (mostly) doesn't matter. Interesting and fun is all that matters. If it's just lame mechanics, there's no reason for the fight to last more than 3 - 4 minutes. If it's awesome mechanics, 10 minutes or more can be fine.

>

> That's actually a very good point. I would suggest that, if the encounter is designed well, DPS *shouldn't matter* all that much. It would mean that high DPS is extra insurance against the boss mechanics, but the most interesting part should be what's going on outside of some rotation. But once those mechanics are proven to be mastered by surviving them, there's no need to continuing to cycle them.

 

Agreed. While I generally dislike HoT maps, Dragon's stand's meta battle at the end is an example of long, but interesting. It changes up every minute or two, and you really feel like the dragon is having to huff and puff to survive. He changes tactics and targets several times, and players have to be on their toes to keep up.

 

So, even though quite long, it's interesting anyhow.

 

Now, Auric Basin's final meta boss fight is the opposite. It basically doesn't change at all, the mechanics are very simple, and you just have to keep pounding it until it dies. (Rather, all four die within a minute of each other.) That's just boring, but the loot is good enough that it's worth doing anyhow. But, I despise the actual battle.

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"Daddicus.6128" said:

> Agreed. While I generally dislike HoT maps, Dragon's stand's meta battle at the end is an example of long, but interesting. It changes up every minute or two, and you really feel like the dragon is having to huff and puff to survive. He changes tactics and targets several times, and players have to be on their toes to keep up.

>

> So, even though quite long, it's interesting anyhow.

>

> Now, Auric Basin's final meta boss fight is the opposite. It basically doesn't change at all, the mechanics are very simple, and you just have to keep pounding it until it dies. (Rather, all four die within a minute of each other.) That's just boring, but the loot is good enough that it's worth doing anyhow. But, I despise the actual battle.

 

I do like Dragon Stand. I hate trying to get into it, and I hate that it's on a strict timer, but the entire affair is like its own huge raid. Even just the Mouth battle is periods of rest and frantic activity, everyone pitching in to take the dragon down. I want more like it.

 

For Tarir, the Romeo/Juliet thing is overdone and, as an open-world mechanic, is kinda garbage. False difficulty for some "coordination" aspect most single players don't want to have to do. (And thanks to the commanders who _do_ pull maps together without losing your kitten. :+1:)

[Super Hayes.6890]

I hate boss fights that take a long time with no variation. Overall the boss fights in GW2 have variety in the encounters. I hate bosses that have huge health pools and no mechanics. I simply don't repeat those fights. I'm pretty satisfied with the current living story boss encounters. Even the end of daybreak.

[juhani.5361]

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

> As short as possible (a whole story step should be around 5 minutes for a solo average player unless they are doing optional achieves). I actually prefer non-instanced story steps, which seems much more open to me.

>

> You should not come out of the first instance in the story with all your armor broken and feeling like you have had more than enough GW2 for the day.

 

I just finished The Departing, and I can't thumbs-up your post enough. I feel like I've been put through the wringer a thousand times. My head hurts. My soul hurts. None of my armor broke, but after ducking and dodging and falling and downed skill-ing for 20 minutes with Balthazar, then wandering around for 40+ minutes, then dodging and ducking another several minutes, I don't want to log in for at least a week :'(

 

And I didn't even "die" once. The instance length was ridiculous. There was too much noise and visual clutter. Too much everything. If Daybreak is anything like PoF so far, I might never touch it.

[Artaz.3819]

The problem with ANets boss fights is the standard 100/75/50/25 change in boss mechanics (and maybe another tier for enrage). It would be more than fine if boss health mechanical thresholds were mixed up or just lessened in general - especially the living story stuff. OK, cool do it once. Wait, I have to do this again at 50% health and then again at 25% health, sigh...

[Bloodwake.4367]

I just finished attempting the "Into the Volcano" part of season 3. I gave up after what seemed like hours at the Hounds of Balthasar stage. I am not an especially skillful player I admit, but I try. I was tired bored and fed up (and the neighbors were probably sick of my cries of frustration and anger)., I had hit the hounds twice but kept failing on the 3 attempt and I just couldn't stand it anymore. Now I will have to do the whole part again.

 

Challenge, yes it was a challenge. Nailing my feet to the ceiling would be a challenge too, but why would I do it? Some story boss fight are easier, but I have enjoyed none of them. Ever. They are all tedious, frustrating and drawn out. I want an enjoyable challenge not a frustrating one. At least let us choose an easy mode if we have to so we can progress the story.

[Cyrin.1035]

The Mordremoth fight is an example of a way too long fight. However it really depends on how good the fight is set up. A really good one or just a well-done sequence can make a long fight really satisfying.

[Hevoskuuri.3891]

10 minutes is the absolute maximum length for a story boss fight; any longer than that screams poor design to me. I hate bosses that are designed to be simple damage sponges or have frustrating repetitive phases/mechanics that serve no purpose other than to annoy you and delay the fight to make the story feel longer.

 

Unless of course there are some very unique mechanics or a clear reason for the boss lasting longer than that; expansion/last LS chapter final bosses are justified to last more than 10 minutes IMO. But mid-story bosses shouldn't.

[Bloodwake.4367]

I think there is a simple measure to be made here. If the battle seems to take even longer than it actually did, because of tedious exhausting repetition, and you don't really ever want to do it again, it's bad design.

 

If the battle seems to go fast because you are extremely busy and enjoying it, and you want to go get another character and do it again, even if you died 3 or 4 times the first time, then that is a good challenge and good design.

 

The story boss battles just seem all alike, follow the same theme. An invulnerable boss or goal that you have find a way to make invulnerable, then ever so slowly whittle down it's hit points. All the while dodging pools of death and summoned allies. All I want to do is get it over with and move onto the next chapter of the story. No fun at all.

 

[IonoI.3956]

It really depends on how repetitive it feels. If it's a simple boss that you just burn down from 100 to 0, it should be no more than 5 min with a good team.

But if it's a multistage fight with lots of things to do other than a dps rotation than it's ok to take 10-20min

 

I think raids a perfect length, except a few cases where the beginning 40% of the fight gets boring (deimos and dhuum)

[Rennie.6750]

15-20 minutes ideally for an instance and 5 minutes at most for a boss. More than that and it's just fake longevity with excessive filler/hit points. To this day I still have bad memories of the mordremoth fight. That was way too long and the two parts could easily have been split. Both fights were also tedious damage sponges. There was nothing fun about that instance. I think PoF did that too with the beast of war... Way too long and tedious.

[Rennie.6750]

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

> As short as possible (a whole story step should be around 5 minutes for a solo average player unless they are doing optional achieves). I actually prefer non-instanced story steps, which seems much more open to me.

>

> You should not come out of the first instance in the story with all your armor broken and feeling like you have had more than enough GW2 for the day.

 

I don't really enjoy instanced story content either, I don't know why they keep doing that. In open world, if you're bored you can just drop it and come back later at the exact step you were when you stopped.

 

The problem is, GW2's story isn't very good, there are a lot of ridiculous clichés (the genius kid, the jaded character, and so on) to the point even late night cop shows have more interesting stuff to tell. Sad but true. Not everyone is Ragnar Tørnquist but there are surely a lot of imitators.

[DietPepsi.4371]

For me instance length depends on the instance. For an instance consisting mostly of combat (most instances), 15 - 20 mins is what I consider fun, as any longer feels like a drag. Boss fights however, because of their repetitive nature I think should only _ever_ be 5 as long as 5 minutes. A boss fight over 5 minutes is boring; why would I ever want to be pressing the same 5* buttons for say 10-20 mins?

 

*Exaggeration in most cases.

[Kiroshima.8497]

The thing is, I'd expect the player base to have grown over the years and story missions we've had before this. So while the boss times should remain steady, they should definitely get harder as we go. Avoid increasing their health, but definitely add more mechanics and tricks.

 

I mean, you wouldn't expect a Mario game to have the same difficulty in 8-1 as it did in 1-1. You've been playing for a while, you should have grown as a player, and if not, well, RIP.

 

Also, they need to put an Average Instance Time with an assumed stat spread, when the enter instance marker pops up. "Takes about 20 minutes in full Soldiers" means that your damage to durability ratio results in an average time, players can adjust their expectations properly based on their gear spread. A skilled player in zerker could take 8 minutes to clear, while a Nomad's player could take 40. No biggy, we just need an expectation from Anet so we can make relatively informed decisions on our own before entering the instance.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

2 mins is to long ( joke 5 hours is to long i dont mind long instances as long as i have fun and feel like i am doing something i like mechs in fight for kinda makes it more intresting than just hitting stuff

[Obtena.7952]

There is no 'too long' ... depends how bad the team , or the individual is. I would like to think that Anet makes the individual story lines between 10-15 minutes for a solid, 'no death, good damage' run.

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"Daddicus.6128" said:

> > @"Rauderi.8706" said:

> > > @pah.4931 said:

> > > Length (mostly) doesn't matter. Interesting and fun is all that matters. If it's just lame mechanics, there's no reason for the fight to last more than 3 - 4 minutes. If it's awesome mechanics, 10 minutes or more can be fine.

> >

> > That's actually a very good point. I would suggest that, if the encounter is designed well, DPS *shouldn't matter* all that much. It would mean that high DPS is extra insurance against the boss mechanics, but the most interesting part should be what's going on outside of some rotation. But once those mechanics are proven to be mastered by surviving them, there's no need to continuing to cycle them.

>

> Agreed. While I generally dislike HoT maps, Dragon's stand's meta battle at the end is an example of long, but interesting. It changes up every minute or two, and you really feel like the dragon is having to huff and puff to survive. He changes tactics and targets several times, and players have to be on their toes to keep up.

>

> So, even though quite long, it's interesting anyhow.

>

> Now, Auric Basin's final meta boss fight is the opposite. It basically doesn't change at all, the mechanics are very simple, and you just have to keep pounding it until it dies. (Rather, all four die within a minute of each other.) That's just boring, but the loot is good enough that it's worth doing anyhow. But, I despise the actual battle.

 

Dragon's Stand's last fight is a tedious bore. Most portions are there to literally waste time since neither you nor the boss can do much to each other.

 

> @"juhani.5361" said:

> > @"Menadena.7482" said:

> > As short as possible (a whole story step should be around 5 minutes for a solo average player unless they are doing optional achieves). I actually prefer non-instanced story steps, which seems much more open to me.

> >

> > You should not come out of the first instance in the story with all your armor broken and feeling like you have had more than enough GW2 for the day.

>

> I just finished The Departing, and I can't thumbs-up your post enough. I feel like I've been put through the wringer a thousand times. My head hurts. My soul hurts. None of my armor broke, but after ducking and dodging and falling and downed skill-ing for 20 minutes with Balthazar, then wandering around for 40+ minutes, then dodging and ducking another several minutes, I don't want to log in for at least a week :'(

>

> And I didn't even "die" once. The instance length was ridiculous. There was too much noise and visual clutter. Too much everything. If Daybreak is anything like PoF so far, I might never touch it.

 

If it took 20minutes for the Balthazar fight in The Departing you will probably hate the last two bosses in Daybreak. Maybe last three. Also how does "CC that renders stability useless" sound to you? Apparently ANet loves it.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"Daddicus.6128" said:

> > > @"Rauderi.8706" said:

> > > > @pah.4931 said:

> > > > Length (mostly) doesn't matter. Interesting and fun is all that matters. If it's just lame mechanics, there's no reason for the fight to last more than 3 - 4 minutes. If it's awesome mechanics, 10 minutes or more can be fine.

> > >

> > > That's actually a very good point. I would suggest that, if the encounter is designed well, DPS *shouldn't matter* all that much. It would mean that high DPS is extra insurance against the boss mechanics, but the most interesting part should be what's going on outside of some rotation. But once those mechanics are proven to be mastered by surviving them, there's no need to continuing to cycle them.

> >

> > Agreed. While I generally dislike HoT maps, Dragon's stand's meta battle at the end is an example of long, but interesting. It changes up every minute or two, and you really feel like the dragon is having to huff and puff to survive. He changes tactics and targets several times, and players have to be on their toes to keep up.

> >

> > So, even though quite long, it's interesting anyhow.

> >

> > Now, Auric Basin's final meta boss fight is the opposite. It basically doesn't change at all, the mechanics are very simple, and you just have to keep pounding it until it dies. (Rather, all four die within a minute of each other.) That's just boring, but the loot is good enough that it's worth doing anyhow. But, I despise the actual battle.

>

> Dragon's Stand's last fight is a tedious bore. Most portions are there to literally waste time since neither you nor the boss can do much to each other.

>

> > @"juhani.5361" said:

> > > @"Menadena.7482" said:

> > > As short as possible (a whole story step should be around 5 minutes for a solo average player unless they are doing optional achieves). I actually prefer non-instanced story steps, which seems much more open to me.

> > >

> > > You should not come out of the first instance in the story with all your armor broken and feeling like you have had more than enough GW2 for the day.

> >

> > I just finished The Departing, and I can't thumbs-up your post enough. I feel like I've been put through the wringer a thousand times. My head hurts. My soul hurts. None of my armor broke, but after ducking and dodging and falling and downed skill-ing for 20 minutes with Balthazar, then wandering around for 40+ minutes, then dodging and ducking another several minutes, I don't want to log in for at least a week :'(

> >

> > And I didn't even "die" once. The instance length was ridiculous. There was too much noise and visual clutter. Too much everything. If Daybreak is anything like PoF so far, I might never touch it.

>

> If it took 20minutes for the Balthazar fight in The Departing you will probably hate the last two bosses in Daybreak. Maybe last three. Also how does "CC that renders stability useless" sound to you? Apparently ANet loves it.

 

Cc was a fail from day one for most players cant be bothered with it ore dont know how