I think Strike Missions are a good idea

[Ashen.2907]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> I have long thought that too much focus on zerg-style open world content has hurt GW2's development and retention of players mostly because there's no real way to have adequate design control around it and any sense of true strategy or immersion just falls flat. This is why nixing dungeons years ago was a bad idea that the game suffered from.

>

> They might need to iterate on the execution, but I think strike missions can provide an experience that is still pretty casual friendly but holds a degree of design and challenge control - making you feel like you're accomplishing something as a group (immersive) instead of just being in a totally anonymous spam fest with hordes of players at random with particle effects covering the screen (not immersive at all.)

>

> So, keep 'em coming. If they can hammer it out well, I'd actually love to see them retroactively transform some DE encounters into strike missions.

 

Agreed.

[Tulki.1458]

> @"Taygus.4571" said:

> > @"Tulki.1458" said:

> > With the current strike in its current state, I do not see them as a good idea.

> > I hope they prove me wrong, but there's nothing in the Icebrood Construct that couldn't be fulfilled as something else. It's extremely easy, and could have been a world boss. The strike itself could have been a fractal instead. Or it could have been a raid boss as part of a new wing.

> >

> > The weird thing is that it's not hard enough right now to fit in with any of those. World bosses are harder. Event champions are more dangerous. Fractals (even T1) are harder. Raids are harder.

> > I'm not sure who this strike was made for.

>

> Apparently the people in underleveled gear who play the game while watching TV.

>

> The strike should've been Freezie level difficult...but maybe it'll progress well. We can hope.

> (Although to really do so, the game also needs to take time to explain or tell people of potentiol roles. Or the play how you want crowd will never consider adapting their build.

 

Freezie 100% should have been the template for strikes. I was shocked at how perfectly balanced it was as a middle point between the rest of the game and a real raid boss, and the thought of having more of those to ramp people into raids was great. It required no roles, but had randomly-targeted fail-able mechanics. It also had reward skins with a decent enough drop rate that people wanted to do it.

 

Strikes don't necessarily need to stress defense or damage. But they do need to stress mechanical accountability. Maybe they intend to develop Icebrood Construct going towards episode 1 so that it becomes comparable to Freezie, but right now it does nothing to make players better at the game.

 

Players can improve, but you need to challenge them. There has to be a risk of failure. I remember back when Heart of Thorns came out. The open world zones were incredibly deadly, and the meta events were hard. Now, they're not. People got better at the game because it challenged them. Vale Guardian on launch was something insurmountable and intimidating for nearly everyone. People are better now and pug it.

[perilisk.1874]

It would be nice to fight bosses that doesn't so much use gimmicks as they use souped up versions of normal player mechanics.

 

Say, a necro boss

* Overpowered minion summoning skills

* A life-force mechanic powered when it hits with certain skills or when anything dies

* A death-shroud mini-phase when the bar charges, where the boss takes no health damage, and taking damage or using its skills ends the phase

* Lots of boon hate, condis, and health steal, especially via adds

* Powerful corruption abilities that also temporarily make it vulnerable in certain ways

* A core phase where it delivers loads of conditions and spreads them with epidemic

* A reaper phase where it does a lot of cleave and boons and uses shouts that chill the whole arena

* A scourge phase with loads of pulsing red rings of death, and where it grants barrier to the adds and itself

 

General concept is, what if a player had every trait, overpowered skills on short cooldowns, and a giant boss health bar, but it was 10 on 1?

[XatraZaytrax.2601]

The people who keep asking who these mission were made for because "They are too easy," wellthe answer is "not necessarily you." It's for people who have been shut out of raidd because we don't have the right gear and we don't automatically know what we are doing. It was designed to give us a taste, without scaring people off. They can say "oh. I can do this." Other than the slippery jp, which got me very frustrated, it provided that and was fun. When Anet ups the ante in the next installment, I will be glad to do it and since it is short, I can do it over and over again until I am comfortable with it without people kicking me and flinging insults at me. If by the end -- meaning the last level is the strike mission is relessed, I will hopefully have gain to confidence and skill to fo raids and there will be more new-to-raid friendly parties available.

[michelada.2947]

I'm just tired of anet bosses, i can't believe they don't have the IA or technology to make bosses "MOVE", 99% of the bosses in this game are steady at the center spamming aoe around, THEY NEVER MOVE!, this concept feels old and brings no challenge at all.

[Tyncale.1629]

> @"michelada.2947" said:

> I'm just tired of anet bosses, i can't believe they don't have the IA or technology to make bosses "MOVE", 99% of the bosses in this game are steady at the center spamming aoe around, THEY NEVER MOVE!, this concept feels old and brings no challenge at all.

 

There are some bosses in PoF that teleport around. I did not find it to add more fun or challenge, tbh. Just the whole player-mob moving from spot to spot.

 

There are also bosses in the LW episodes that move around and have to be "chained" by one (or sometimes more) players before they can be attacked. I agree that that can add a bit of fun. Do you have any other specific mob-strategies in mind? I do not Raid so there may be stuff happening there that could be ported over to World bosses.

[Katary.7096]

> @"TwilightSoul.9048" said:

> Some ideas would be:

> 1) Boss Heals to full (or a significant amount)

So the boss would be stalling the encounter, which is a temporal setback similar to wiping and starting over. There is probably a conversation to be had about which is generally more fun, but as of now I am not seeing one being inherently superior. (A decent execution of this idea might already be in the game with "Simin, High Priestess of Dwayna")

> 2) Boss switches into some other phase (berserk/rage/bunker/whatever) which increases the pace of the fight in some way or introduces another mechanic to end that phase. Phases could increase the speed at which he executes actions or increase the damage of his non-ohko attacks or decrease the damage he takes by a significant amount or gain lifesteal or absorb damage as healing and so on...

A phase in which the boss is attacking faster than normal sounds like everyone is just going to take more damage in general and the other effects are the boss stalling again.

> 3) Boss does something Bosslike and interacts with the environment to create obstacles which the PC's need to overcome (aka introducing new mechanics into the fight as punishment for failing one)

Please consider the implications of having phases in boss fights that people will only get to play during progression/ training, as playing the encounter particularly well means you will not see these phases anymore.

> 4) Boss goes into hiding and needs to be found/lured out/revealed with some new mechanics or interactions with the environment (maybe some inspiration from games like Dauntless where you actually have to go find the boss)

There is a boss like that in TESO and the hide and seek phase is not especially fun. I wouldn't say that it is impossible to make something comparable into a really enjoyable part of a boss fight, but on the other hand perhaps failing a mechanic should not result in the encounter becoming more fun to play.

> I don't find timers or AoE spam or unforgiving attacks that instagib you for one single mistake in the wrong second difficult in any way since there is no way for me to interact with them as a player.

You are going to have to provide an example, because that statement makes no sense to me.

> VS short timers: the only interaction is to stuff enough dps in your group which limits build diversity. With no interaction from any particular player - just play a top dps build with the required supports.

Assuming the content is supposed to be difficult you have to balance it for groups who bring powerful builds and can play them well. That means weak builds will be filtered out naturally. The intention of difficulty is limiting build diversity. (As long as the gap between the best and worst build for a role is formidable.)

> VS AoE spam: just dodge the significant AoE's , sidestep as much as possible while staying close to your group and let your healers do the rest. Wowee, basically what we do in absolutely every other fight except that nowaday in many fights the amount of AoE's is so insane that sidestepping becomes irrelevant as well as long as you dodge that one AoE that'll ohko you.

> VS OHKO: lul just dodge, mistimed/out of endurance/immobilized/lag/whatever? lul ded l2p kek. There's a reason why almost every combo deck in hearthstone got nerfed at some point - because dying against something that you cannot prevent doesn't offer any interactivity and interactivity is the only difference between a game and a movie.

I think you will agree that there are vast differences between the gameplay of Guild Wars 2 and Hearthstone. I get what you mean, but the comparison is lacking.

> OHKO Attacks aren't generally terrible but they need to offer interactions of some sort and they should be rare.

Would you care to give your opinion on the sacrifice mechanic of the Matthias encounter? How does it compare to what you would like to see? Especially the fact that the targeted player can't do anything about it.

> I don't know if these are "interesting ideas" to you since this is basically my personal preference but I hope I could at least make my point of view clear.

Yes, to some extent.

> PS: I actually enjoy playing combo decks in Hearthstone but I prefer those that have some setup which offers interactions to the opponent - Decks like the current otk pala are incredibly bad for the game since playing against it is basically like fighting a boss on a short timer - if you don't win in time (or gain 50+ armor) you loose.

 

 

[hugo.4705]

Here's my feedback now that I've experienced it, through note, here speaking a guy who never raided, T4 fractal, lvl 100 wvw, just wolf in PvP.

-> I can't complain, for me strike mission public mode is perfect and I thanks Anet for that, the public version, shouldn't be seen as a preparation for raid. It's clearly, and hope it will stay as that, a "raid" that doesn't force you to play meta, anybody can join and the difficulty isn't astronomical, it definitely attract me more than the normal raids and for me it was in the continuity of Frenzie: Icy, a path to arrive to the boss, a boss with cool little mechanics but you aren't doomed for missing something. Whereas I've heard peeps saying it's different than Frenzie, I've heard some saying it's the same.

 

ANET: For the next ones keep the same difficulty for public mode. Or eventually spice it but no unforgivable or lethal mechanics.

 

We shouldn't forget it's the first try, and it's rare as a first try that everything is perfect.

-Currently, it feels like a fractal, without story, without let's say exploration, you only come in, fight an enemy, and leave.

Like a bounty apart you need to enter in an instance. I think one of the issue is that there is 0 foes apart the boss. No events.

The real issue isn't difficulty but emptiness.

[Edelweiss.4261]

Strike missions lean more towards raids/fractals/etc, so I view them as ignoring GW2's strengths, free-form cooperation with strangers. Content similar to raids exist in other MMOs. Content like GW2's open world, however, is unique to GW2. If they truly want to design difficult content, they should design it within the context of the open world. Personally, I place value on the connection between a large group of strangers more than I do on so-called "difficulty".

[Nephalem.8921]

> @"hugo.4705" said:

> ANET: For the next ones keep the same difficulty for public mode. Or eventually spice it but no unforgivable or lethal mechanics.

 

You know that 3 daredevils can autoattack it, tab out of the game and beat it in time limit and with probably even 2 out of 3 chests. Thats how easy it is.

 

[Teratus.2859]

I enjoyed the strike mission but as many said it was really easy.

 

I did it blind with a 10 man group that hadn't done it before and we blitzed through it without any real trouble.

 

I believe the plan is for these missions to gain increased difficulty levels as new episodes come out so by the end of the saga there will probably be a mid tier variant of this mission and eventually a hard mode variant which I expect will be close to or equal to raid like difficulty.

I also heard something about the boss changing forms too with each difficulty upgrade.

 

I think another way Anet could add more difficulty to these strike missions would be by adding an adventure like reward system to them which gives your squad Gold, Silver and Bronze challenge time's to beat for bonus reward chests, achievements and mastery points etc.

That reward system could also be added to raids to provide more challenge for hardcore raiders as well.

 

Throwing some unique titles on some of those Gold times would make them pretty desierable too, far more so than most of the titles we have in game so far.

[Taygus.4571]

> @"hugo.4705" said:

> Here's my feedback now that I've experienced it, through note, here speaking a guy who never raided, T4 fractal, lvl 100 wvw, just wolf in PvP.

> -> I can't complain, for me strike mission public mode is perfect and I thanks Anet for that, the public version, shouldn't be seen as a preparation for raid. It's clearly, and hope it will stay as that, a "raid" that doesn't force you to play meta, anybody can join and the difficulty isn't astronomical, it definitely attract me more than the normal raids and for me it was in the continuity of Frenzie: Icy, a path to arrive to the boss, a boss with cool little mechanics but you aren't doomed for missing something. Whereas I've heard peeps saying it's different than Frenzie, I've heard some saying it's the same.

>

> ANET: For the next ones keep the same difficulty for public mode. Or eventually spice it but no unforgivable or lethal mechanics.

>

> We shouldn't forget it's the first try, and it's rare as a first try that everything is perfect.

> -Currently, it feels like a fractal, without story, without let's say exploration, you only come in, fight an enemy, and leave.

> Like a bounty apart you need to enter in an instance. I think one of the issue is that there is 0 foes apart the boss. No events.

> The real issue isn't difficulty but emptiness.

 

squad mode is exactly the same as public.

 

How long do you think this strike will keep you entertained?

[customhell.2594]

strike mission feedback> @"GWMO.4785" said:

> Based on the first boss. Personally i'd say strike missions are absolute disastrous. It's not even close to something that could be an entry level raiding which was its purpose. I mean look at Cairn that is something i would consider entry level. Ice Construct is just faceroll. However that being said, it does hold potential for something else.

>

> Given its practically solo'ble (to a certain extend), perhaps it would be a nice idea for ANet to make it rewarding repeatable solo endgame content instead. Similar to fracs or raids, but with the purpose of doing it alone. Without having the option where someone else could join/help you. This is something i have been wanting for years. Perhaps tone it down a little or increase the timer slightly, so that more people may have access to completing it. And for those that do seek a challenge, do the opposite with better rewards obviously.

>

> Maybe ANet will increase the difficulty of the upcoming ones. Who knows kinda early to tell. But this is my thoughts on it, based on the first one we have atm.

 

While possibly not intended, I found the strike mission to be a really good solo challenge. After multiple failures, I just managed to kill it with 7 seconds remaining on the timer and it was really satisfying. It's the most fun I've had in the game for a while. I would love to see more challenging solo content like this. The only similar experience I can think of is the Queen's Gauntlet, but that didn't have the same 'raid feel'. It's impressive to watch skilled players solo content like Lupi, Arkk or Cairn, but these are probably a bit extreme, and some dedicated solo content spun off strike missions has potential.