So over the next 24 hours there is going to be a flood of extremely p*ssed off PvEr’s coming to this forum once they wake up and realize CoF is near impossible to run feasibly.
There is a few large issues I have with how ANET handled this situation:
1 – No advanced notice or Patch Notes informing players of impending buffs.
2 – No PTR or testing of the buffed content to make sure it made sense.
3 – Buffing the wrong content inside the dungeon.
4 – Making massive diversity in player base from this point on.
Lets talk about these issues one by one:
1 – Weeks before you make a PvE change you need to notify the community one is coming so they can adjust and formulate what differences need to be done. You can’t just expect people to reboot walk in and then begin wondering if a zone is glitched or buggy or was it intended – This will be a source of a lot of moderation pain in the next 24 hours when 100s of thousands of players not knowing these changes occurred flood the forums disgruntled.
2 – YOU NEVER EVER release PvE changes without testing them first in a PTR environment. This is just bad practice written all over it. Even fledgling companies in the MMO market know better than to do a live buff on a live environment. This is a major development flaw and should be addressed as a priority one in-house questioning as to why a PTR environment does not exist.
3 – Lets look at CoF specifically – the one part of the entire instance that was already over-tuned (Kiting Event) was a cause of frustration because it was almost forceful repair bills. (This is always a horrible mechanic in any game…forcing death on players who are doing the mechanic correctly should be something no developer should ever hard code)
But to go and make it where you not only are forced to die but now must chain suicide to complete the event is obnoxiously awful. This means the run for geared individuals will cost anywhere from 9-15silver in repairs on top of a nerfed cash return means there will be little to no profit on running the entire instance.
Furthermore you buffed the wrong part of the zone…the problem was the final event and boss were too easy. You need enrage timers to make them somewhat challenging. Being able to reset the 4 flame legion mobs 10-12 times if need be should not be allowed. The room should become fire red circles of death filled and faster pace the longer the final boss stays alive.
The kiting event needed to be nerfed not buffed to the point where you could actually kite and feel like you were doing the mechanic correctly and being rewarded for it. If you wanted to make that event longer then you needed to nerf the damage of the mobs that are being kited…no class has enough cooldowns to take repeated 12K shots to the face by 20 mobs. A PTR environment would of told you this up front.
This was a p*ss poor decision on ANets part without testing / pts environmental results to load a major PvE change into a LIVE game.
4 – Now you have set apart the community…those people who ran their 100 runs through CoF before this change who are now fully geared out and can run other non-buffed instances. And those people who can not farm the same gear to keep up with the other players in the game because they can’t complete CoF…let alone in a timely manner.
You should of just put a lockout timer on CoF / all dungeons…5 runs a day or something normal. Not worried about making the dungeon impossible for fresh 80s / PUGs.
Now you have geared groups of people spam running other dungeons and fresh 80s at a loss for what they are supposed to be doing to keep up with those people with pre-buffed CoF gear who don’t have lockouts in other instances to stop them from keep getting further ahead of the curve.
This is going to be a major source for a lot of fresh 80 players quitting this game. Esp. in a non-guild environment.
