Guild Wars 2

Here goes my beef…
I don’t mind being dumbed/leveled down for lower level areas when I’m doing World Events and hearts etc.
What I do mind is being leveled down for my personal story. Here’s why I mind…
I died and was not able to complete my personal human street rat (teens level) story until I asked for help. I got the help and still 3 of us struggled (all three of us were leveled down). We did complete it though, but not w/o being in the fallen state several times.
I had leveled up because I though I would have better odds, but that was not the case.
Even if we level up and go back to our personal stories, it doesn’t matter. We will be leveled down.
So, I guess the lesson in all this is to somehow figure out what is the best way to play our characters ‘at level’ and use our ‘skill’ to win.
Even having to say that though, I want to know how this game is good for a noob? They haven’t developed their ‘skills’ in MMO playing yet.
dodging, rolling, etc. comes with practice and playing several games/MMO’s over time.

Thanx for reading my rant…I will get this game figured out by and by.

It’s true I also had a hard time adjusting to the skill level required to play this game (MMO grinds are usually mindless), but with the oversimplified UI and gameplay this game is definitely playable. The low level zones should really sharpen your skills like dodging and timings, so give it time I’m sure you will get the hang of it soon

I abandoned my story for this very reason. The asura quest ‘beta test’. Every now and then as I complete other lands, level crafting, get new gear, etc. i stop by to see if it is any different. The second flying veteran thing one shots me every single time. I am starting to wonder if the leveling mechanism is just going to make things worse and worse as i go along. Someday in the far future when im in a big guild we will treat my personal stuck story as a big raid event and see how huge it will scale.

Being a level 80, I stopped my personal story quest at around 40-45, it just became too much of a hassle to try and complete it.

On several missions I had to resort to ‘Z pathing’, essentially jumping on and off stairs of different height as to make the mobs have to path all the way down the stairs and around, then all the way back, downing them from range. I don’t think I should have to do that to kill some mobs <.<

Although, after crafting my Berserker gear, I will go back and give it another shot, if it’s still this hard, well then ArenaNet will be the first company to make me rage at PvE content since Twin Emps in Vanilla WoW.

Some of the story steps are hosted in zones that make it extremely challenging at best and impossible at worst to succeed in without deaths that number in double figures. One example: my Ranger’s level 39 quest took her into a 50+ zone. Not to just the other side of the portal. Not to the first waypoint. Not even a tiny bit down the road… but right down the road, over a bridge, onto an island and through level 50 mobs.

That was just to access the quest point, never mind the difficulty of the actual quest.

As a level 42ish Melee Norn Necro I was having a hard time with my level 15 Story Quest, solo. It’s almost as if the Story Quests were balanced around the assumption of you playing with friends or being in the party.

I think the main issue is that it seems, no matter what, all the mobs target you being as it’s your story.

I can’t imagine what it’ll be like later on.

it’s also discouraging when in my level 47-48 mission at Lion’s Arch. the Vigil War Master i think is level 70, yet cannot handle 2 level 48s? i cannot possibly do it at the same level or down-leveled, so there isn’t any excuse a programmed AI cannot survive the first encounter with the sewer bats.

also, AI don’t seem to want to resurrect me. they either stand there and take hits until death, or charge the enemy with unsurpassed vigor and determination i don’t see when i am alive.

100% agree! Personal story should be something that you solo. The difficulty is almost always WAY too high due to number and difficulty of mobs.

They’re still sorting out my account settings, so I’m not sure this will tag me as an ArenaNet employee. :P

Anyway, for any difficulty issues, it’s very important that you provide us with the quest name, your current objective, your class/level, and the issue (too many enemies, enemies are too tough, you’re being rooted or CCd for long periods, etc.). Just telling us “That LXX mission is too hard” doesn’t help because it’s likely that there are at least 3 different versions of any given quest.

I’ve just given up on storyline completely. At level 40 I hadn’t done any storyline quests since around level 25, and was looking forward to doing a long run of them.

Then I came up against Rakt.

• As an engineer I rely on turrets to keep my damage in line with other classes. Rakt pretty much one-shots them, leaving me with poor damage output.
• I have hardly any stun/blind/daze/confuse cooldowns that I could chain to reduce incoming damage, and while I do have plenty of slow and immobilise skills, they don’t stop him from damaging me, as he also has a powerful ranged attack.

There are NPCs (who’ve also managed to get control of the golems in the area), but they just stand there the whole fight doing nothing.

Must have died at least 8 times. I’m not willing to completely regear my character, and reset my traits, just to have a marginally greater chance of completing one step of a storyline quest.

For solo content this is just plain stupid. I’ve soloed dynamic events, that while taking some planning, and a bit of hit and run, were much easier.

Without playing your exact builds and stories, i have a hard time imagining what you’ve gone up against. That being said, i had some trouble with my early teens PS, but I’ve been able to complete most of mine with relative ease. I have two other players who help me since around lv 38 or so, but that’s it. No full party, no raid, and sometimes players have to leave or get dropped by the game and i end up soloing the rest of it.

I understand not wanting to reset your traits, that costs coinage, but often when i have trouble with content i just switch my utilities around to get different builds that way, and the Major Traits can be changed for free.

To me it’s realistic to expect different fights to require different tactics. I just see it as part of the game.

What personally irks me is the time it takes to reach the appropriate level for the next chapter in my PS. They put such a sense of urgency at the end of each chapter that i want to rush out and do the next one, only to find its 3+ levels above me.

The “official” benchmark for each level past 30 is supposed to be something like 90 minutes. That’s 270 or more minutes between chapters. Kinda kills the urgency.

It bothered me in beta, and it bothers me now. There’s a guy i played with a while back who says he’s bored now and may be leaving the game because of this very problem. He doesn’t like the grind, and just wants to do his PS, but can’t without grinding, which ANet said there wouldn’t be as much of because “we all agree” that grinding isn’t fun.

Yet that’s exactly what i found myself doing…

Personally, i think PS needs better exp rewards based on a percentage of the requirement for the next level or TWO, making them more worth completing along the way, rather than leaving them and going back to them later.

I’m fine with the level capping on PS, to me it makes it seem realistic, but i agree that some quests do seem ridiculously OP.

Two quests I had issues with:

Human Thief, lvl10, The Rescue. I initially died almost immediately to Crusher Dan, as I had not expected him to hit half as hard as he did. I defeated him with a change of utilities and tactics, but I then had constant issues with the bandits who did the spinning AoE attack. I would be hit and killed by this from way outside the visual area of this attack. Their range seemed to be twice what the visuals reflect. This seemed buggy and causes me multiple deaths.

Norn Elementalist, lvl15, Minotaur Rampant. After dozens of deaths, two complete restarts, I gave up. I came back with a friend whose Necromancer face-rolled the whole quest by himself. My first issue was the balista. It one-shotted me, and hides behind a corner. The first attempt, I was killed before I even knew what hit me. The entire strategy became `dodge the balista, ignoring the ice worms, dogs and Norns’. I could get past this by myself, but the balista definitely needs a damage reduction. When I got to the boss battle, I would be butchered every time. The Dragon constantly would go Invulnerable and heal to full, even if I did not kite it at all. By design, you cannot kill the archer until the dragon dies, but he does absurd damage to an Elementalist. My damage against the two of them was pitiful.

Outside those two, there is no question in my mind that the story missions are significantly more difficult than hearts or dynamic events. I always find them a grind, and tend to put them off as a result. Plenty of them include un-fun bits (eg Source of the Issue has you swimming in a stream, then suddenly ambushed for no apparent reason by guys waiting for you out of the water. You cannot defend yourself and take a pummeling as you move your way to the shore to even begin fighting back).

All of this makes me simply wonder if anyone is doing some basic play testing on these things. I mean, when is the last time a Dev took a vanilla character of the appropriate level and tried to complete the quest? Have there been multiple changes to the game since the last time this happened? Maybe its time for a fresh run.

Surely there are stats being kept out there about how many character deaths are happening in a given instance. Maybe pull some of these high mortality personal story missions, copy one or two of the characters, TURN OFF GOD MODE, and try to play the thing.

I had the same problem last night. Doing the last part of the human story line “Orders of Tyria”, I’m level 33 Elementalist, got scaled down to 28 or so and was given this stupid weapon by the priory. Kept dying so much that all my armour got destroyed. In the end I managed to complete it solo but when the cut-scene came up I was in my boxer shorts talking to Logan. I think there might have been an easier way to do this but, WTH?

Here’s my latest ‘for instance’ from tonight. Quest is “Pastkeepers” its from the Order of Whispers line. Without too much in the way of spoilers I am saddled with a middling effective npc and two quaggan who will at most throw snowballs. This quest is set at level 45 (and so I am limited to 45). Up the hill I must kill 8 level 45 Jotun, then hold the hill against two ‘waves’ of Jotun (3 level 45 Jotun per wave). Then almost immediately I must try to protect the quaggan from at least 2 waves of attacks by ice imps (4 per wave, level 45, with a huge stinking AOE attack that does about 1,500 hit points and cripples… you will be hit…. you will be crippled… you will be hit again and again.) I do not know what happens after that because I went down/dead on the second wave twice. Each time I tried to “start from a checkpoint” but ended getting kicked out of the instance instead.

Frustration level 100%. Turning off the game for the night.

its because isnt supposed to you to only do personal story,. you have to do the world job too, thats why you will lack of level sometimes

Right now, i am stuck @ “Forewarned is Forearmed”

Objective: Investigate the mysterious disappearances. Meet Warmaster Forgal near the sewers in Lion’s Arch.

Problem: first 3 cave bats do too much damage, and the camera work hampers progress, cause i cannot see every thing around me, except bat wings and my hp bar decreasing at insane rates. AI does not cooperate much. Too difficult mobs after just starting on the first group. i am attempting solo, to get the best experience possible.

if i get past the cave bats, the ooze spawn, or the barracudas in the next tunnel will do me in. they share a tunnel with 3 more cave bats (i think 2-3), some jellyfish, and the barracudas respawn after a minute or so, while i am combating the jellyfish. attempts to bypass/run away towards checkpoint are futile.

When scaled down at least scale me down to the level the mob level is. When doing the Norn story i was scaled down to level 8 while trying to fight a lvl 10 boss. D

rgrwng.4072:

the barracudas in the next tunnel will do me in. they share a tunnel with 3 more cave bats (i think 2-3), some jellyfish, and the barracudas respawn after a minute or so, while i am combating the jellyfish. attempts to bypass/run away towards checkpoint are futile.

That part of the game, if I end up in hell I will be playing it. Over and over.

Thing is I want to play the story further but I’m not sure I can face fit.

you won’t learn unless you try. GW2 forces you to learn it and I actually think that’s very cool. It doesn’t take you by the hand, you have to think and work for it. I’ve been able to do all of my personal story quests on my own and most of them I was one of two lvls below the recommended lvl. It’s all about practice and thinking of what you’re class can do. I also sometimes had to stop and think for a minute of what weapon and what utility skills fit this perticular fight best, change to those and then I usually got it. Doing that is a big part of GW2, not just in quests but dungeons too. Change weapons based on the situations, switch your utility skills if needed, makes all the difference in the world.

I like the fact that GW2 forces you to learn an encounter. But sometimes I wish that the learning curve was not that steep. For example, it was only at the end of the battle in the Queens throne room as part of the Durmond Priory quest to safeguard the queen from the undead, with all my armour gone did I finally manage to learn how to use the stupid priory device properly.

Personal Story difficulty is the single thing I am not happy about with GW2. They are simply too difficult and I think this may result in a lot of the more casual, less ‘leet’ players ignoring them or leaving the game altogether. Which would be a shame.

I myself, have stopped doing them until adjustments have been made. I don’t enjoy them and I find myself getting frustrated and switching the game off.

In my opinion, your personal story should be something that can be done alone. It is called your ‘personal’ story after all. I’m not saying they should be facerollingly simple, but the point of following a story is to see it progress – to find out what happens next. If you are after gameplay which is going to test you, head for a hard mode dungeon.

If they just turned off the de-levelling for personal story instances, I think it could be fine. If you do want the challenge – attempt it at or below the recommended level. If you are struggling with it, grab a few more levels and come back later. As they stand, the difficulty is proving to be a roadblock for some people and story should NOT be locked away like that.

The NPCs refer to my character as ‘The Hero of Shaemoor’ or ‘The Slayer of Issormir’. I certainly don’t feel very heroic. I struggle just trying to slay a few bandits…

puffmouse.7189:

I abandoned my story for this very reason. The asura quest ‘beta test’. Every now and then as I complete other lands, level crafting, get new gear, etc. i stop by to see if it is any different. The second flying veteran thing one shots me every single time. I am starting to wonder if the leveling mechanism is just going to make things worse and worse as i go along. Someday in the far future when im in a big guild we will treat my personal stuck story as a big raid event and see how huge it will scale.

I am stuck at the exact same spot in Beta Test. It’s listed at a level 14 quest — at level 20, I cannot complete it. I’ve purchased armor and weapon upgrades, chosen different utility skills, and each time I have no chance of success. Just hit level 21, and I plan to try again with a food buff and potion, we’ll see, but at this point given the number of times I’ve easily died I don’t hold much hope. It’s so bad I’ve started leveling other characters, and have told myself that on my engineer, I just won’t be able to progress in my personal story.

Right now, I’m not in a guild and I don’t know anyone else in game. I assume if I found some people willing to go with me to this quest, we’d be able to finish it — but I strongly feel, for a personal story, I should be able to complete it solo. It’s my personal story, not the story of a group of adventurers! I almost wonder if this is designed to make solo players go out and find guilds or people to group with…

Most of the quests between level 15 and Claw Island were way overtuned for me, as a Thief, going the Order of Whispers route.

I’m not terrible at gaming, or my class, they difficulty overall was just a bit too much to expect from one person.

Of course, I was able to complete them all, but more than once I had to resort to zerging from the entrance to complete them.

I don’t have any specific examples other than the Whispers quest to help the Skritt, where you need to kill about 20 Destroyers and their Queen. I was at level for the quest when I first tried it, and no matter how I tried to approach it, I failed. Eventually I came back about 5 levels later, and still had a lot of problems getting mobbed by the mobs, but I was able to pull it off, even though I still died twice.

This is the only thing that baffles me about this game. The story quest are overturned thru the roof. It’s not a difficulty curve at all, the NPCs hit like Trucks! Everything in the game seems to have been paid very close attention yet the story quest are all out of wack. On my Norn I had a quest that literally summoned 20 or so NPCs that all hit like trucks, and my dodge wasn’t saving me. I eventually beat after I out leveled it by 8 levels but even then I had to LOS mobs and deaggro everything, it was broken.

Anet needs to fix these rather badly IMO.

Guys. really.. please get your self familiar with dodging, kiting and movement. This is not WoW or SWTOR. It’s a different game. You cannot stand there and take the hits. You have to move. I am Claw Island now (Lvl 50+) and the personal quest was epic. I died like 5 times.

But – so what? I just revived and got back to the fights. Your enemies stay dead.

It is not difficult, just challenging. And I am definately no pro gamer, I’m not even close to 80 at the moment.

Falcon Night.4653:

I like the fact that GW2 forces you to learn an encounter. But sometimes I wish that the learning curve was not that steep. For example, it was only at the end of the battle in the Queens throne room as part of the Durmond Priory quest to safeguard the queen from the undead, with all my armour gone did I finally manage to learn how to use the stupid priory device properly.

Mostly, as a necro I’ve been okay with the personal stories and have been able to do them at my level if I’m prepared to change my build. But that story is one of the few where I actually quit for a couple of levels rather than just retry from checkpoint. Partially it’s the new abilities and having to figure out what they do while the enemies are wailing on you in a confined space – I was kiting like mad but that wasn’t quite enough in a small room. But it was also that the friendly NPCs in the room died almost instantly. No wonder the humans are under threat if Thackery and the Seraph are that squishy!

I spent the entire time of those extra couple of levels looking for skill challenges so I could buy Signet of Undeath and do a mass res on them when the inevitable happened. That wasn’t ideal because of the long cooldown but it bought me enough time to use those new abilities to pick them off one by one.

Valhingen.4957:

Guys. really.. please get your self familiar with dodging, kiting and movement. This is not WoW or SWTOR. It’s a different game. You cannot stand there and take the hits. You have to move. I am Claw Island now (Lvl 50+) and the personal quest was epic. I died like 5 times.

But – so what? I just revived and got back to the fights. Your enemies stay dead.

It is not difficult, just challenging. And I am definately no pro gamer, I’m not even close to 80 at the moment.

The npc are overturned, it’s not a difficulty issue. We all know how to dodge and kite, I kite and I’m a warrior. Either way it’s not a “difficulty” issue. It’s something on the tech end, I’m sure has more to do with the varying classes and it’s a balance issue that I’m sure is hard to tune in the first place. They don’t want to make it too easy but at the same time the engagements or encounter vary so much based on not only class, but spec and weapons. You can be hit for 75% your health in one hit, that’s very unforgiving. Are they still doable? Sure, But they still need to be tweaked. .

The broken “redo at checkpoint” doesn’t help. When they teleport me to the beginning, and my NPC allies are up ahead getting killed, and there’s no armor repair to help with the damage I’m taking— it’s real hard. I had to exploit A.I. to get past a mission too.

polarity.8906:

I’ve just given up on storyline completely. At level 40 I hadn’t done any storyline quests since around level 25, and was looking forward to doing a long run of them.

Then I came up against Rakt.

• As an engineer I rely on turrets to keep my damage in line with other classes. Rakt pretty much one-shots them, leaving me with poor damage output.
• I have hardly any stun/blind/daze/confuse cooldowns that I could chain to reduce incoming damage, and while I do have plenty of slow and immobilise skills, they don’t stop him from damaging me, as he also has a powerful ranged attack.

There are NPCs (who’ve also managed to get control of the golems in the area), but they just stand there the whole fight doing nothing.

Must have died at least 8 times. I’m not willing to completely regear my character, and reset my traits, just to have a marginally greater chance of completing one step of a storyline quest.

For solo content this is just plain stupid. I’ve soloed dynamic events, that while taking some planning, and a bit of hit and run, were much easier.

I beat the rakt mission 2 levels lower than the recommended level, I am a turret engineer as well. Learn to kite/dodge, he is easy as kitten.

I haven’t completed all the possible storylines but from what I’ve seen in dungeon pugs and people complaining I’d say a lot of these people just need to learn how to play the game and stop standing still. I am level 62 right now and have done all my story quests up to this point, it only started getting challenging at around level 50 and even then I’ve only died about 3 times total in personal story instances.

I really hope they don’t nerf PS difficulty because some people want easy mode instead of learning how to play, the same goes for the dungeons -_-

Valhingen.4957:

Guys. really.. please get your self familiar with dodging, kiting and movement. This is not WoW or SWTOR. It’s a different game. You cannot stand there and take the hits. You have to move. I am Claw Island now (Lvl 50+) and the personal quest was epic. I died like 5 times.

Play a Norn engineer when you are swarmed by 5 Icebrood Koda that will inflict a burn that does 1/2 your life if anyone hits, and this is a level 26 mission (iirc). You’ll start to see the message “not enough energy” as you try to dodge them.

@irishbrewed

I am playing a warrior, too. You are definately right that the personal story quests are more difficult than the rest of the game but I think it’s still manageable. Especially when compared to Beta (having a hard time back then).

Try and getting an easy PvE level spec. For the Warrior, the means signed spec (+40 Pre per unused sign) and a Great Sword or Dual Axe. Get the healing skill with constant regeneration. Get a ranged weapon on your second skill, it doesn’t matter whether Rifle or Longbow.

Now run circles around your enemies. You can use Rifle skill #2 to slow your enemies constantly. If there is any problem (skill on cooldown) – dodge. And kite your enemy. Melee attacks are only viable if you are much stronger than your enemy, especially when you use 100 blades as you get rooted and take a lot of damage. If you prefer to use axes, switch to them as soon as your adrenaline bar is full and use eviscerate (skill F1).

I totally doubt that you get hit for 75%, this was only the case in the beta in a Dynamic Event with 50+ players. If this happens, you miss something (using a special item etc).

[/quote]

I beat the rakt mission 2 levels lower than the recommended level, I am a turret engineer as well. Learn to kite/dodge, he is easy as kitten.

I haven’t completed all the possible storylines but from what I’ve seen in dungeon pugs and people complaining I’d say a lot of these people just need to learn how to play the game and stop standing still. I am level 62 right now and have done all my story quests up to this point, it only started getting challenging at around level 50 and even then I’ve only died about 3 times total in personal story instances.

I really hope they don’t nerf PS difficulty because some people want easy mode instead of learning how to play, the same goes for the dungeons -_-[/quote]

Once again, it’s not a difficulty issue. Difficulty would be based on game mechanics not on sheer damage output or number of NPCs. It’s not a L2P issue either, we all know how to dodge/ use defensive CDs etc etc… If a dev was to chime in on the issue I’m sure they could bring validity to the claim of a BALANCE issue. The tools at your disposal are very much different then mine. You have a number of ways to approach this encounter as an engineer versus my warrior, your class offers more CC and more boons then maybe mine based on a number of factors. So your expirence could vary greatly based on these mitigating factors. So simply oversimplifying it as a L2P issue is a bit unfair to others. I can remember a couple off the top of my head that were unbeatable at my level, and even then I had to use very unconventional methods such as Los or dropping aggro to complete. Methods that I am sure are exploiting game mechanics and simply not fun. That’s not because it was a “challenge” it’s because it was “broken”.

I have died a total of 30 times as of this post, and I am level 80. I have died 4 times during the course of normal PvE (which is what I primarily do), I have died 3 times in PvP (which I rarely do and from the safety of walls[Ranger]) and I have died 23 times during my personal storyline instances.

I know how to duck, dodge, roll and evade. I have a trait that gives me invisibility if I am ever immobilized so I am really good at avoiding PvE death. However, when there are simply an excessive number of mobs, and mobs that move 3 times faster than I do and are relentlessly focused on just me while ignoring the friendly NPCs with me… I tend to die.

Valhingen.4957:

@irishbrewed

I am playing a warrior, too. You are definately right that the personal story quests are more difficult than the rest of the game but I think it’s still manageable. Especially when compared to Beta (having a hard time back then).

Try and getting an easy PvE level spec. For the Warrior, the means signed spec (+40 Pre per unused sign) and a Great Sword or Dual Axe. Get the healing skill with constant regeneration. Get a ranged weapon on your second skill, it doesn’t matter whether Rifle or Longbow.

Now run circles around your enemies. You can use Rifle skill #2 to slow your enemies constantly. If there is any problem (skill on cooldown) – dodge. And kite your enemy. Melee attacks are only viable if you are much stronger than your enemy, especially when you use 100 blades as you get rooted and take a lot of damage. If you prefer to use axes, switch to them as soon as your adrenaline bar is full and use eviscerate (skill F1).

I totally doubt that you get hit for 75%, this was only the case in the beta in a Dynamic Event with 50+ players. If this happens, you miss something (using a special item etc).

First thx for the advise. I am really carrying this on as if it’s a problem throughout the entire game when it’s not. I can remember just a few instances that it felt broken, I think the name of one was “Rumors of Trouble” or something like that, and tbh sub 30 is where most of the hard hittin ones are. That might be due to lack of abilities but either way it’s something that can be looked into. But no I’m by no means saying its a game killer or anything like that. But I do agree that a lot of melee engagements are “rough” for some reason. My thief can kite for days but I wanna hit stuff in the face on my warrior, sue me I use the current rifle kite quite often now even tho I much rather stick the rifle up a rangers backside then keep it equipped…. ;(

Wow, I really don’t know what to say about all this.

I love the difficulty of the PS quests. So far, across three characters (a level 71 warrior, a level 22 engineer, a level 12 mesmer) I have absolutely never been stumped or forced into abandoning my personal story. There have been hard moments where I’ve had to change tactics, there have been close moments where I’ve been downed, but I’ve NEVER needed the help of another person to finish any personal story mission so far.

I don’t know what you guys are doing, but you’re doing it wrong. Please don’t reduce the PS difficulty. I like things being hard. I’m not trying to be a troll or say that I’m super good.. I’ve heard a lot of complaining about PS difficulty but never to this extent.

On my warrior, I have it specced into a tanky-support build and while it goes slow some times and I have to change my major traits + utilities, I’ve had quite literally 0 trouble, never had to respec or have a guildie come help. Don’t think I’ve been downed ever. On the mesmer and engi, I’ve got downed a few times but it was mostly always because I did something stupid or wasn’t careful enough.

Just thought it was important for the devs to know not everyone is having trouble.

SaintHax.2647:

The broken “redo at checkpoint” doesn’t help. When they teleport me to the beginning, and my NPC allies are up ahead getting killed, and there’s no armor repair to help with the damage I’m taking— it’s real hard. I had to exploit A.I. to get past a mission too.

Yes, another problem with that is when you have a particularly difficult enemy to get past that you’re not supposed to take down alone, and when you retry from checkpoint the enemy is now in between you and your dead allies. I had that with a dredge mining suit that I couldn’t kill quick enough before it summoned more dredge, so I had to keep dealing with adds on my own. And there was my supposed ‘help’ lying on the ground at the other end of a tunnel. It’s yet another case where the combination of terrain plus squishy NPCs sometimes doesn’t help. Sometimes you can use the terrain to your advantage with these stories, but it was a huge detriment there. Overall I’ve done okay with the stories and wouldn’t like to see the difficulty level taken down too low, but nearly all of the exceptions had terrain/confinement problems.

“Learn to Play” is a totally inadequate response. This is about personal story. This is only about personal story. The personal story does not affect anyone else in the entire world. There is no reason for the personal story to set at some arbitrary difficulty level. There is no reason to have a ‘you must be this tall to ride’ sign.

Personal story should be about creating deeper immersion into the game world. Instead, mine has tended to have the opposite effect. Rather than feel “Hey, I am an important figure in major events” I have been led to feel like “Hey, I cannot finish a task that is supposedly appropriate to my class/skill without multiple deaths”.

So, being the masochist I am, I decided to try again with a fresh start.

The first thing I noticed is that the Jotun in the instance have all been upped from the level 42 Jotun that are in the local PvE to level 45. Why? God knows.

Second, after failing again on the second wave of imps (and being kicked out to world despite clicking on ‘retry from a checkpoint’) I tried yet again… and passed the second wave of imps! Only to find that the third wave is another 4 imps PLUS a “veteran ice imp alpha”. Why?

Why? Why? Why?

Not having the option to even go back and try the branch at this point of the story, I guess I am just going to leave the personal story stuck at this point for a while.

This is sad, for many reasons. Most of all because I am an ‘old school’ role playing gamer with the ROLE part emphasized. I was playing pnp long before there were home computers, much less internet games and MMOs. I love the role aspect of the game. It was my thought that this is what GW2 would be bringing back to the mmo, with the concept of personal stories, home instances and so forth, the idea that my character was a CHARACTER, and not a ‘toon’ through which I solved puzzles and zapped things.

Needing to suffer multiple failures and deaths in order to finish a static, linear set of quests is EXACTLY what GW2 was supposed to rescue me from. Now I unrealistically leave this portion of the story hanging. unchanged, even though I have tried and failed multiple times, to no apparent ill effect, to wait for me to return to it, whenever, with all of the characters therein talking of urgent action needed, though I could let it set for a year with no ill effect…. see what I am saying.?

There are systemic problems here that need addressing. My short term answer, however, would be to simply turn off the dynamic scaling in personal stories. Those rah-rah go getters who want to bang their head against them at low level can. Those of us who prefer not to be humiliated over and over in an aspect of the game that is supposed to be about personal character development and fulfillment can know to wait for a few levels before going there.

I’d agree with the consensus. I was enjoying my ranger, and had established my rotations and trait setup. Then around level 45 you start running into hordes of Risen Thralls in story missions, and they zerg you, completely ignoring most NPCs (probably because NPCs do little to no damage, so they have no threat). I did end up finishing my storyline, but I had to completely change how I geared and trait’d so that I could effectively tank the mobs. I can’t imagine doing those missions on a clothie with one third the toughness and no pet to absorb damage.

Yeah I had alot of difficulty getting past the lvl 8 Norn quest as well, when you have to kill the Wolf that has turned to the darkside to get the Wolf Spirits to bless you for an upcoming battle with the Jotan King. The wolf you have to kill is a Lvl 10 boss. I leveled up to lvl 11 thinking it would help, but it still downleveled me to lvl 8. At level 8 you would think the quests would be semi-easy, as it’s a person quest and you are still in the learning your character mode.

Anyways the wolf has an attack that 1 shotted me everytime it attacked ( I was a lvl 11 Guardian with all lvl 10 Heavy armor). You have 2 NPC’s attacking it as well, I would manage to sometimes take it’s HP down to half before it did it’s special attack, then would return to Waypoint outside the cave. It would be regened to full HP in the 10 seconds it took me to get back to it. I think I died about 7-8 times and all my gear was broken. Eventually I gave up and came back to it once I had some lvl 13 Gear and a greatsword. It took alot of dodging, a few deaths and many self heals to finally take him down. I didn’t think a “tank” should have a problem being 1 shotted constantly, I would hate to do that quest as an engineer.

umm. lvl 43 asura. no problems here. had a bit of one in the beginning but since then its been smooth. i just selected my faction and still going strong.
maybe its b.c im an OP warrior

Or maybe you got lucky and your path hasn’t lead you through one of these “Broken” quests. Most of the Personal quests are fairly easy. Some of them I have completed 4 levels below where you need to be. When I find one I can’t complete 4 levels above, I look on the forums and see others are having problems with the same quests. Shouldn’t be a L2P problem, since there is no reason in a solo styled quest that the mobs should be able to 1 shot you. Expecially on mobs that take you 20-30 hits to take them down.

Not lucky, he just picked one of the two heavy armor classes. A warrior with 15 points in Defense and Healing Signet can regen through almost everything while dishing out large amounts of AoE damage. Warriors and Guardians are easier in PvE content, but I don’t think anyone would argue that GW should be balanced around PvE.

I think I must agree with what seems to be the overall consensus……that the PS missions are overtuned. I am not saying that are too hard…..I have no problem having to redo traits, util slots or gear and adjust strategy to match up to a challenge. But when the mobs are simply smacking you for way more than is reasonable given level (you and them), how many of them there are and you are solo there is a design issue.

For my sake and the sake of ANET I think I will just abandon my PS…..As a Lvl 35 Norn Warrior I finally got thru the mission just after choosing an order and being told to goto Iron’s Arche but only after total destruction of my gear and a level of frustration that simply dwarfed any fun and took away any interest I had in seeing how the so called personal story plays out. If I have to do another mission like that I will quit the game which would be a shame considering I really like everything else about the game.

Yeah my human thief would go Double Dagger and hope to damage spike everything before he died. My guardian (with maxed out toughness, power and half way maxed Vit traits at lvl 60) would have a bunch of signets that passively reduced damage and conditions and healed and he could just walk into a mob of 7-8 monsters at the same level and stomp them without too much trouble.

On my main lvl 80 elementalist I’m up to the last mission in my story quest that takes place in the dungeon. I haven’t tried it yet.

I didn’t really have any problem doing my personal story. For the first few stages of the story quests I was actually under leveled for most of them but I never needed help to finish them. Being down leveled never bothered me. I did most of my story quests by myself and the only times I didn’t do it by myself were times that my husband wanted to tag along with me.

There were only two times that I had a problem finishing a story quest my first try and that was because they were bugged. The first time was after I rescued that girl from pirates, I finished the mission but the quest didn’t update so I had to redo it. The second time was the quest "The Source of Orr" the boss bugged out on me and stopped taking damage. I had to retry it a couple of times before it finally worked.

Right now I’m playing a necro and I’m focusing mainly on the story missions. So far I’ve been under leveled for most of the story missions that I have done. Yet I’ve been able to finish them by myself. Currently I’m 29 and my mission is level 42. I haven’t tried it yet but I think that this is probably my limit and I would have to level a bit before I try it.

So i was finally able to finish the Forwarned mission, but not without issue. i had attacked an invulnerable target for several minutes (gw023), and even went into almost first-person view (gw020) in the tunnel section before the Risen boss.

Total time spent doing mission as about 50 minutes, with being level 76 and had way better gear. i still had to restart at the starting checkpoint (at the tunnel entrance) numerous times, but the boss finally glitched to the top area (gw024), where i had a better visual on the boss, and had sufficient room to navigate and defeat it with the NPC aid.

Sure, i am not pro by any standards, and i have never played World of Warcraft or Star Wars The Old Republic, so this new dodge system is new to me, but i can only dodge twice before having to wait for it to recharge, and my mobility as an Elementalist is probably another factor. with the default button setup, i cannot use my Staff #2 fire skill, cause i have to set a location while running and dodging. i used to kite often in Guild Wars 1 with pulling techniques and the use of the terrain, but applying these GW1 skills to this MMO is not possible in some cases.

I would also like to add i had much difficulty with the next lv50 mission “The Battle of Claw Island”. For the Risen, as they are undead, how do they all of the sudden become marathon sprinters? with mountainous (that even a word?) amounts of damage? As El Presador on youtube once said “one on one, you’re done!” it was kind of like that, times 100.

The Battle of Claw Island (gw026.jpg)

Objectives:
Find and Revive Deputy Mira. – Endless spawns of Risen on beach. okay. Their resistance to most damage? very high. it took me 20 minutes to get an open window to revive, and i was still getting poisoned and attacked while doing so. I cannot do enough spike damage to wipe out a small group of Risen, then run in and revive (that was my plan, anyways). the time it took to get a window of opportunity, more Risen were charging on the beach. Not so hard when all the AI help was downed.

Regroup with Commander Talon inside the walls. – this part was maybe the easiest, until the HUGE mass of Risen. aggro control is needed here, because i think in nuking a group on the east side, the other groups zeroed in on me.

Warmonger. - Use the seige weapon on the wall to take out the ship. But you can only use the one closest to it. i sat in the middle one (not the required left one) for a few minutes trying to adjust for range and stuff. after realizing it had to be the left one only, i wish this had some kind of indicator for when you hit the boat (besides the cutscene). I am playing on lowered details, so if i overshoot the Warmonger, i don’t know it. For maybe 20 shots, i thought the boat just had a “boatload” of HP, and the siege weapon was a peashooter. if it falls short, then i see a small splash. this part was confusing for me at first, but yes, my lack of apparent skill and time with siege weapons in other zones probably was my downfall.

i guess i am just nitpicking too much, and probably come off like a sore loser, but if it isn’t fun i should voice my opinion for once, because i normally don’t, and end up buying a new keyboard or mouse (or monitor) instead.

Sangrael.1698:

Not lucky, he just picked one of the two heavy armor classes. A warrior with 15 points in Defense and Healing Signet can regen through almost everything while dishing out large amounts of AoE damage. Warriors and Guardians are easier in PvE content, but I don’t think anyone would argue that GW should be balanced around PvE.

Well still lucky in my eyes. My toon I was having problems with was a Guardian, which I figured should have been more tanky then even a Warrior. You can’t regen through a 1 shot. My Guardian has mostly + Toughness and + Vitality with Lvl 10 heavy armor doing a Lvl 8 quest and getting 1 shotted everytime the Boss managed to hit me.

Wow i thought i was the only one with problems with this. I decided to quit the personal story quest also. I like this game to much to only get really frustrated with doing these quest. I refuse to go back to them until they have the difficulty lowered. My last one was the Free Rein quest that’s lvl 16. Whoever wrote this quest has to be laughing at us trying to do it. In this quest you have a boss and his weather machine and minions. The minions respawn 2 seconds after you kill them. Whats the point in this. I died over and over and just quit the game mad as heck the whole night. What really sucks is i have a limited amount of time to play the game period. I wasted 30 or 40 minutes with the dumb quest.