Fix the infusion crap!

Imagine you are playing an RPG, a single player RPG, like Morrowind. You go to do a large scale quest where you are fighting a very new form of enemy. You realize, that these enemies are so strong that you must seek a seer that will help you upgrade your items to assist you in the war against these beings. You travel for a long way, fighting numerous enemies, and eventually you end up on the top of a mountain cave, talking to the seer. He tells you that you must slay a legendary beast of great power, bring to him the essence of the beast, and then bring it back to him. When this is done, he will help you. You do his task, and tells you that he will enchant one of your armor pieces. You agree, but realize that only one piece is not enough. You must do this process again, five times total, to be exact.

Was this what the developers were thinking? Let me get this straight, they actually made a mission where you must RUN through a horde of enemies, 5 times, to infuse every piece of armor you have, just so you could DO the mission? First of all, this makes no sense plotwise. Doing the mission 5 times in a row killing the same creature 5 times just doesn't make sense. Maybe the GW devs don't care about plot.

But does that mean that the devs wanted something to be specifically tedious? They actually wanted you to run to the top of the mountain 5 times (More if you messed up. It took me 8 tries because theres a chance no one makes it or dies.) to infuse your armor? Huh? What kind of a game is this? This makes no frickin sense, as if the devs really were thinking "Hmm what can we do to make this game longer and harder? Oh yeah, lets make people do a lame ass quest that takes half an hour TWICE? NO WAIT! 3 times! THATS NOT ENOUGH! MAKE IT 10! No wait, that's too much, just make it 5, that way people won't be TOO pissed!"

I agree
at least the whole set should be infused once

barring that, have that one piece count for a fully infused armor set. and have the subsequent pieces count for nothing. just have that pretty " infused" slapped on it

Basically they needed an easy way to make the game longer. Someone over at Anet had the brilliant idea of making you run through the same mission 5 times. Just be thankful every mission isn't like that.

From what I read there is another place to get your armor infused not via the mission. I'm going to see if its true tomorrow with Corwin I think, if my loving father doesn't get anal and take the router with him... Long story, not getting into it XD.

Ouch! Adaria, your dad sounds a wee bit like my husband. I got wise very early. I keep *my* stuff put away, including games that I don't want him mucking with.

On topic, I think you were meant only to infuse the one piece of armor that would take the brunt of the damage - chest. Running through 5x for full infusion isn't something I imagine they planned for us to do.

yeah, but you forget, spectral agony is very very efficent at killing so you have to have all 5

had a elem/mo at the ring of fire whom only did 1 piece. she kept dying. after a half hour of her repeated deaths every time we come up against the mursaat, I asked " are you even fully infused?" She said were I supposed to be?" we said yes. after beating the misson, she left to finish infusing her armor.

moral here, 1 isn't enough even if it's the chest piece. I want to have that spectral agony skill and pwn the noninfused pvp players

Infusion has no effect on PvP battles.

I think they originally intended you to actually go through the quest (not run) and just get 1 piece infused, and that's it.

It was until people found out you can get it all infused, and actually dodge the mobs, that it's now called the 'infusion run'.

In a way, it seems exploitive, and unintended. I wonder what the devs thought about the mission when they made it.

well wear ONLY one piece and walk up to the nearest mursaat- see how fast you die

Just infusing one piece, even if its the chest, is like infusing no piece at all. You'll be slaughtered by the Mursaat. I guess it doesn't make that much sense you have to run it 5 times, but really, it doesn't take all that long. 30 minutes for 5 runs generally, give or take 10.

I wholeheartedly agree on this one.

Infusing your armor after you've met a couple of deadly mursaat was a pretty cool idea. However, infusion runs are boring as hell, and especially when the group has a couple of newbies who want to watch the cinematics (which you've already seen 4 times)... There is no point in completing this quest 5 times in a row (running or not by the way). It sure looks like needless grinding.

The obvious solution is to infuse the whole armor on the first run, and to make the seer a lot harder to reach (no running). Add snares from mesmers here and there, a couple of strangle points or doors which require to kill nearby bosses, and you can remove infuse runs entirely.

And please (pleeaase...) infuse the henchmen's armor after this mission. Their raw strength (skills, attributes, hps) is supposed to be equivalent to human player's strength, so they should be infused like a human player.

I agree on all accounts herein, but want to add one.. infuse runs are... fun? I dont know if everyone enjoys them, but i certainly do! It's like a game of Mario Cart hidden inside guild wars
everyone equips their run skills and see who makes it first, thru hordes of monsters who seems to be designed to stop people from just that, running past them.. we have giants with stomp, and shades with knockdown signets... plotwise, yes, sucks... but...

Thread-starter is blowing this way out of proportion.

Maybe the developers are forcing you to become acclimated to the tactic of running through enemies, rather than engaging them, saving precious amounts of time for more worthwhile activities like farming, skill buying, trading, and pvping.

Or maybe they wanted players to learn how to manage difficult people.

Either way, infusion runs are too easy to warrant a thread filled with hatchet-grinding and allegations of the developers' ineptitude.

I have to agree wholeheartedly here! Especially the henchmen part, should be fixed!

I went on some infusion runs last night (ten to be exact, I still have five more to go, as I have three ascended characters now) -- they're actually kind of fun with the right group of people, particular when it becomes a race to see who can reach the Seer first. But it still doesn't make any sense. Sometimes it seems the developers aren't really thinking things through. To fit this amount of grind into the game plot properly, there really should be five different infusion quests. Indeed, if it was five different quests, rather than doing the same damned thing over and over and over again, it might not even be a grind. It would also avoid problems like meeting the Seer and exchanging the same dialog each time as if we've never met before, rather than, "Back again, eh? Let me guess..."

There are times when I play a game and I look at something and say, "This looks like someone had a great idea, but then the product had to ship before they could finish implementing it properly." This would be one of those times. Like Froggy, I think it's a cool idea, but there are serious shortcomings in how it got implemented. (And in the software world, a poorly implemented feature is worse than an unimplemented one. Users are more forgiving of what your software doesn't do than of what it doesn't do right.)

EDIT: Ah, I see someone else agrees they can be fun. Alas, I've never played Mario Cart...

OMG, stop suggesting that we should take even LONGER to infuse, by adding different quests....

*blacks everything on this page out with a sharpie* Stop! Infusion runs aren't that bad, you don't know what you fools are getting yourselves into!!!

Guys, even if it is exploitive or whatever, doing 5 infusion runs isn't difficult by any stretch, you can do it in about 30 minutes. No big deal, I did it with some lousy pickup group offhand, and did it in less than an hour.

Oh no, my heart stopped because it took SO long to get all 5 pieces infused. Pfft.

There are in fact 3 infusion quests, and infusion 4 and 5 add so little benefit that I generally don't bother getting more than 3 done anyway. The issue is that the other 2 infusion quests are a)Are in EAs, so most players generally won't stumble upon them, and b) a hell of a lot harder and longer than Iron Mines. That means that instead of doing 3 quests of similar difficulty, players end up running the easiest one over and over. What's the point of doing the other 2 when you can run Iron Mines 10x as fast? It's actually the fact that infusion runs are so fast and easy that is the problem. Rather ironic really.

So you can either make infusion runs harder, or give more incentive to do the other infusion quests (skills available as part of the quest, skillpoints, etc). Perhaps then people would be less inclined complain about the 20 minutes it takes to do 5 infusion runs.

For someone I know has so much gaming experience, I find this shocking. You are doing yourself a diservice. Find a copy, play it (preferably while drunk with friends), and be merry

Ok, before i get flamed for saying this, it's just a thought on this matter as there are some very valid points here.

I've never done the infusion run yet, as I'm still having fun doing other things with other characters, so i don't know much apart from what I have read so far.

Here are my thoughts. Why not have one Infusion Run to the Seer who I presume is the person that infuses the armor. Instead of him Infusing the armor right there, you have 5 mini puzzles you have to solve in order to infuse each piece of Armor.

You do one major run and have 5 mini puzzles. Sounds like it would be more fun and actually get people thinking for themselves and the puzzles are random, which would make it more challenging and improve longevity.

Because that won't fit into the storyline. You're supposed to kill the boss because it has protection from the mursaat. The item it drops is somehow the key to that protection and the seer infuses that into your armor.

It would be nice if you didn't have to do the infusion run yet again if you buy new armor. It should be applied to the character itself, not the individual armor pieces. How hard can it be?

Thanks for the update. I didn't know that was how it worked.
Maybe they could do a work around in the storyline which could improve on what has already been done?

I think this is another game element meant to send us towards grouping with other players. It is supposed to be a "CORPG", or at least that's how they've billed it.

If you are lucky.

I had to do this over 10 times to get my armour fully infused. Stupid players, bugs, ect. Took a hell of a lot longer than 30 minutes.

Ok, i did about hmm 7 infuse runs to get fully infused. It was fun at the beginnen but i was glad to have all infused. But 8 Days later i bought an new armor.... erg 5 new infuse runs -.-. That sucked.

Just infuse my Mind or Char or whatever but not Armor.

I thought the infusion runs were FUN!! I always imagine it as a marathon race and see who gets to the seer first without dying. Maybe it's just me but I really enjoyed infusion runs.

Me too... it was a nice change of pace after all the Ascension trials. IMO it was best to be not first or last most of the way - I always tried to be in second until I saw the cave entrance then I boosted past whoever I allowed to have 1st up until then hehehe. It was nice being a R/W - had 3 run skills equipped.

Ditto. I LOVED it. I actually just got new armor, and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

I did mursatts with henchmen with only two pieces infused go figure. Only reason I ever even got more pieces is I was getting elite skills and why just go up there for an elite when you can just go alittle futher for an extra piece.

Where the hell did they hide the other two? The far corners of Ice Floe behind those packs of a dozen mursaat? Some nook on the far side of Mineral Springs? I've filled in most of my South Shiverpeaks map and I haven't stumbled across either.

Peace,
-CxE

They are in missions the other one I know for sure is in Ring of Fire.

Boy that would be fun, waiting until the Ring of Fire to get infused.

One thing I don't get - how are people making it through missions with Mursaat with henchies? They die so fast it's kind of amusing actually...

Just make sure you are in the front so the mursatt agony you and hope that your healers don't do something stupid like oh say run to the front and get agony on them. If you lose your healers it is all down hill.

You have NPC healers that don't charge in and aggro everything?!? Where can I get some of those?

I have to admit the infusion run was kind of fun the first 3 or 4 times... after that (and not making it two or three times) it did become dreadfully boring. It was like playing a Warcraft 3 Custom Maze map. I would MUCH rather it be that you can not dodge the whole map and instead you have to fight your way once and get it all infused.

I most certainly do not see the point in this thread.
Complaining about an infusion run is like... well
"Look Developers... i am exploiting that mission over and over again and i don't get fun from exploiting it". Are you really serious about that?

While playing the missions and doing some exploration i stumbled upon 4 different seers and most of them are not even that much remote from your mission objective. The point is...
You do not have to fight the Mursaat for a long time (to speak differently... the first time you HAVE to fight them is when you have 3 legitimate infused pieces of armor). In the other missions... do you really have to fight them?
Caves of Sorrow? Big no... you can either wait for that huge group to pass you and get blasted by siege weapons or can run away in front of them. No need to fight.
Iron Mines of Moladune? Uhm... yet again.. you nearly don't have to fight them, and if so... it is just one or two of them if you are not taking the way straight through their base (anyone noticed you can get to the missions end real easy just after the seer? ).
The next thing is Thunderhead Keep... do you really have to fight those huge amounts? Uhm.. no? Do as your bonus says and lit all of the beacons. Tada, all of a sudden the few mursaat that come your way are very few and before they reach you, you can abuse the catapult each side to hit them twice. So you are evening up the grounds there.

Ember Light Camp.. do you have to fight the Mursaat? No... you can just find a way past them. Ring of Fire? Yes, some of them but you could easily run them off and on top of that there is another seer.

And so on and on and on.
I really think the developers wanted us to be sneaky about the mursaat... to actually avoid fighting with them instead of exploiting a mission again and again. Imagine it from a developers point of view. Do you really want your game to be exploited? No.

___________

"But the game is undoable without full infusion!"
Actually it is... but it is really hard to do. And that is a thing many people allready have complained about. The difficulty as soon as you hit the Desert. Sanctum Cay? EASY Mission. All Missions before? Some tricky, yet still easy. Hit the desert, leave Anmoon for the first time and expect to eat dirt. Probably no party that left Oasis the first time stood alive for long. It just feels like running into a wall. The part in front of Anmoon Oasis is just so awfully hard and unfair that whenever i need to do business in the desert, i am taking different starting locations. Even if that means i do have to walk a much longer way.
The desert missions well... dunno. They lacked. They were hard but lacked. The quests were kinda buggy (some of them). For example there was this quest that requested you to leave a place and go sightseeing. The same quest triggered some kind of semi cutscene that was meant to give you some pointers. Well... when i hit the place i should be going i saw it being spammed with hydras. The Quest NPC had a glowing ! above his head and was under heavy attack. I sprinted there to help him asap... as soon as i got there, the sightseeing quest triggered into complete (been there, saw that...). The Story NPC died without me being able to prevent it so i decided well... try again, more luck next time.
Funny thing was that i was not able to retrigger that sequence and was left absolutely clueless on where to go. That said.. i have a feeling those last areas were not tested for long. Especially in regards to balancing. They are completable... yes, but they are really hard. Same goes to some exploration areas up in the place you go after desert. Some are just so fricking spammed with huge groups of enemies (8-14 ... and it is ONE group) you can't walk past. If you fight them, you are left with no chance due to heavy Giant Stomp Spam.

So i got slightly off topic on this one. But if something needs to be fixed it is balancing here and there... not the infusion run we all are exploiting this mission with.

That's fun right until you find out that you can't get into a decent group with certain classes (necro, ranger and mesmer) barring some glitch on team leaders head. I joined a guild and I'm hoping I could finish Ring of Fire someday with them, henchies don't cut it since I don't have resurrect and trying to use backway with the imps is incredibly silly with long lavapools and fire imps standing on spots that don't light you on fire. Henchies just stand in lava and swallow few Meteor Storms while they're at it.

I wouldn't call it an exploit. If it was an exploit it would have been fixed already. You can run through almost any mission if you try hard enough, maybe the problem isn't the players but the problem being overlooked by ANet.

The whole point is that it's not an exploit, the devs intended you to do it just like that.

I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but in my opinion it was actually pretty fun!

Intended? Or kindly and thoughtfully left it as a last resort or alternate option?

*SPOILER*!!!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT GOT THIS FAR!!


One of the ways you can infuse is go to mineral springs and fight the same monster in the most north eastern segment. There is a shrine you can pay 100gold to remove DP and go fight TONS of Azure Shadows and the beast. Past the beast is the Seer....I still think Infusion runs are faster yet tedious...but they are fun /end spoiler