User:Auron/GuildWarsSucksSoMuch/Factions, Hard Mode, and Buggy AI
Since my Mesmer needed to get through most of factions for some armor I wanted, a friend decided that we should do the missions in hard mode. I was down for that - we're experienced and skilled players, definitely ready to create custom builds to get around anything PvE can throw at us.
We do Tahnnakai temple and die to the first mob. I change my bar and give my hero monk some prots, and we breeze through, getting masters reward - I ran pblock, he ran standard dragon slash with SY. Without any further build variation, we clear mobs down to Maatu, get the quest update, and sail through to the Arborstone outpost.
Then we hit snag after snag after snag - all of them due to poor game design. In our first run, we don't get 5 minutes in before we hit a mob with three ritualists. They were spread far enough apart that no two could be caught in the same AoE, because their healing power, cast time and recharge on skills are amplified by Hard Mode's shitty design, we simply couldn't kill those 3 healers. The rits were an unlucky spawn, and even though the triple rit thing was ANet's oversight, we decided to try again with a fresh spawn.
So we breeze through the entire mission, and luckily, we didn't run into any three-healer groups (although why ANet designed luck into the equation is beyond me - they should have been more careful with hard mode and made sure groups didn't have too many healers in any given area). We're slowed down considerably by the age-old "Mission NPC Wasting Everyone's Time By Healing The Minions While They Should Just Fucking Ignore Them" bug, but we don't have any real problems.
We take the left path, clear mob after mob of Oni, clear the little bush plants, the dragon mosses, The Ancient, yadda yadda, until we come to the final room. But wait! Danika isn't with us! Squishy runs back to the entrance of the chapel thing, and as he gets in range of Danika, she gives her dialog that she normally gives when she's about to open the door at the end of the mission. Instead of doing the logical thing and following Squish back to the party, Danika moves toward a separate path, which is packed with monsters.
I'm in disbelief. We've cleared the monsters on the left path, all the way to the end - we even beat the Stone Judge, all with 8 minutes remaining for masters reward. Our path was obviously chosen by then, so why would Danika go up a separate path after explicitly asking us to choose?
So whatever. I'm running back to the entrance, hoping that Danika will follow the urn, but I'm informed that Danika took a separate path and was attempting to get to the end without waiting for any party members. I watch in horror as Danika's health drops lower and lower, and finally, she dies. ALL OF THIS HAPPENS WITHOUT OUR ABILITY TO CHANGE ITS OUTCOME. We performed flawlessly - we kept NPCs alive, we chose a path as directed by Danika, we carried the Urn up said path and cleared the monsters, and beat the boss at the end of the level. I'm not quite sure what the fuck else ArenaNet wants us to do, but that shit was ridiculous.
We're both extremely pissed off at this point, because we've had to restart it twice, and neither loss was due to anything we did wrong. Squish figures third time's a charm, and even though we'd both rather stab some very half-assed developers in the face for their shitty work, we go in again.
This time we cater to the failures and mistakes of ArenaNet's evidently lazy programmers, and babysit Danika, making sure she doesn't leave our sights. We get to the room with the Stone Judge without trouble, proceed to target the monk as usual, and then get the third nasty surprise, courtesy of ANet's insistence that random spawns and luck should have more to do with victory than skill and buildcrafting. Level 30 Oni demons spawn out of NOWHERE, right in the middle of the room. They autoattack for 200-250, they all pack shadow shroud (a bitch to prot against), and there's four of them - on top of all the monsters we were already fighting! I'd never seen onis spawn in that room in the 20+ times I've done that mission!
We try to pull back immediately, but heroes were dropping left and right to the Stone Judge (hitting for 300 damage) and the onis (who were combo-ing for over 600). The heroes manage to get a few resses off and finish off the oni, but it's too late; they've accumulated too much DP from constant dying to overpowered Hard Mode bullshit all thrown together with very little thought put into the mix. Naturally, Danika packs no res and doesn't ever retreat, so Squish and I can only look on, furious, as she gets her face pounded in by the stone judge - 300 damage at a time.
Having failed a third time, we sit in Arborstone and fume. There's nothing we can do to improve at this point - our build is not failing. The three failures all stem partly from ArenaNet's horrendous design failure they call Hard Mode, where all monsters across the map are buffed to insane levels, and partly from ArenaNet's horrendous design failure they call Factions, where NPCs get stuck on inanimate objects or simply forget to follow you, then charge down the wrong path while your entire team is somewhere else.
I sort of understand the basis for hard mode. Monsters that move faster, attack faster, cast faster, hit harder with attacks and spells, and use skills more often are harder, right? Sure. However, you can't just say "OK I'M GOING TO GIVE EVERY SINGLE MONSTER PERMANENT IAS/IMS/HCT/DOUBLE DAMAGE AND CALL IT A DAY," because you're going to run into problems. I can't believe people at ANet didn't forsee it happening - but then again, it is ANet after all, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. As soon as 3 healers appear in one mob, or oni spawn on top of you as you're fighting the stone judge, the permanent IAS/IMS/HCT/double damage stuff becomes simply retarded. Hard Mode has design problems all the way down to prophecies - those grawl mobs with Word of Healing are "hard" on their own, with a powerful hammer warrior frontline beating on you as you try to focus enough damage on the monk to take him out. The problem comes, however, when multiple grawl show up in the same area, or spawn in the same mob; with only 4 players, killing both monks simultaneously is simply a ridiculously and stupidly challenging task - one that most players avoid by simply restarting the mission or re-vanquishing the area and throwing their hours worth of work away in the hopes that they're lucky enough to avoid ANet's terrible design flaws with random mobs in Hard Mode. -Auron 14:27, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
