Guild Wars 2

Yeah, thief might need to be looked at for PVE in general. Even with events I feel underpowered to other classes. Like a guardian I was with for a while one time. He just shrugged off 3 / 4 mobs at once no problem. While I was dying to 2. And he certainly didn’t seem to lack for damage either.

During events I don’t even bother with D/D due to all the AoE stuff. For the most part my thief feels like an underpowered ranger minus the pet. Haha.

We should probably take this to the thief section, though. But, yeah, I’m probably not going to touch my thief’s personal story for a while. But now my whole groove of playing through the story straight the first time with one character is going to be disrupted with alts.

marianitten.1247:

I have no problem with any of the personal quest. And i’m a necromancer, the most bugged/broken class in the game( for some )

Necromancer is one of the most powerful classes in the game, no surprise you can solo them.

Ranger can too.

My thief had some issues, just sorta fragile up close and personal if you miss a mob’s attack animation, but doable.

Of course… this being an MMO, I much prefer to run the storyline with a friend. Its fun, and if your stories are the same, you even get options to continue together after one of you starts a section. Well done really.

Keta.9601:

mulch.2586:

A MMORPG — if something seems too hard for you, try it with a friend.

You shouldn’t have to. If the personal stories are designed to require a party of any size than they need to clearly state that. As it is, they’re set too hard. The fact that most of the missions require you to rez and repeat multiple times is an indication that the difficulty level is too high. I no longer bother with any of them on any character.

All you guys need to do is come back when you are a few levels higher. The storyline missions get easy if you out level them a bit.

I know that’s not necessarily your ideal, but it does work if you are having trouble.

So far I’ve had little trouble doing them on a ranger, some minor issues on a thief.

Most of the time I run with a friend just because I find the solo stuff boring and well… I play an MMO to play with my friends, not run solo.

But if you are stuck, I would add a few levels and then go back. You’ll have better skill and equipment and it makes a big difference.

Shannon.9583:

Keta.9601:

mulch.2586:

A MMORPG — if something seems too hard for you, try it with a friend.

You shouldn’t have to. If the personal stories are designed to require a party of any size than they need to clearly state that. As it is, they’re set too hard. The fact that most of the missions require you to rez and repeat multiple times is an indication that the difficulty level is too high. I no longer bother with any of them on any character.

All you guys need to do is come back when you are a few levels higher. The storyline missions get easy if you out level them a bit.

I know that’s not necessarily your ideal, but it does work if you are having trouble.

So far I’ve had little trouble doing them on a ranger, some minor issues on a thief.

Most of the time I run with a friend just because I find the solo stuff boring and well… I play an MMO to play with my friends, not run solo.

But if you are stuck, I would add a few levels and then go back. You’ll have better skill and equipment and it makes a big difference.

I tried to do a story quest suggested for level 26 at level 45 and still got steamrolled because the sheer density of the enemy spawns. Some of the quests are completely unfair for anyone playing solo.

The difficulty is fine. I’m a semi-casual player and sometimes I do get completely steamrolled. Then I rethink my strategy, retool and have another go.

Sorry, but just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean we should all have our hands held. You’ll want companions back next.

Gaining a few levels makes sense for certain parts of the personal story, when you unlock some new thing by being level <x>. For example, playing a mission recommended for level 39 at level 40 gives you an appreciable advantage because now you have access to spending 20 points in trait lines. That’s definitely a tactic I’ve taken advantage of when I could.

In general, though, downscaling means that levels themselves and even better equipment don’t make a major difference. I’ve done some personal story missions cooperatively with other people purely for fun, and some of us brought along level 80 characters with exotics, etc. The difference between that and people at the expected level is…not that great. Playing poorly still gets you killed quick, and enemies don’t just instantly die to autoattacks. So leveling and better gear will tip you over the top if you’re almost there, but it won’t get you up the mountain on its own. A better general piece of advice is reminding people that unless they’ve been gearing up as they go along, probably over half of their equipment is quite outdated at any one time…unless they are just super lucky with drops. There is, fortunately, no upscaling in the personal story to compensate for poor gear.

I guess that’s a broader GW2 complaint though: even all the way up until 80, gear just isn’t very important to replace while leveling. Unless they’re flat-out naked, any profession can easily complete renown hearts, and dynamics events are still perfectly doable most of the time, just by relying on random drops the game gives you. Let’s not even mention people who level entirely through crafting or WvW – they may still be wearing Starter stuff. When it comes to the instances, though – personal story and dungeons – suddenly it becomes readily apparent that gear is way out of date, and it’s probably a rude awakening to some people. Being a better player can somewhat make up for poor armor, but it can’t make up for your weapons/gear stats which comprise your damage. And as I mentioned in a previous post, you’re the only damage in personal story most of the time.

I don’t think that the personal story should be tuned down to match the very low difficulty of general PvE, but at the same time I think it would be bad to across-the-board increase the difficulty of general PvE to that of the personal story (or even dungeons). It’s really more of a marketing/image/perception problem than anything else. The average player going through the game for the first time is given the impression that the personal story is just another part of general PvE, not requiring any special preparation on their part to complete. Depending on lots of variables, this may turn out to be the case and they have fun or steamroll through it or whatever. But as plenty of people report all the time, for some players the personal story is just an exercise in frustration. I hate to use a cliche phrase twice, but it becomes “Ascalon Catacombs Syndrome”, where people try the personal story once, find it so hard/not fun that they quit, and then they never touch that entire aspect of the game ever again. And that’s really a shame because it’s a good chunk of wasted developer time, not to mention some of the missions are legitimately super fun. (Air Drop – that prototype golem thing was just hilariously powerful.)

So yeah, I don’t really know what to say. Holding the player’s hand and coddling them (e.g. explicit reminders to gear up) makes for a poorer overall playerbase. On the other hand, it’s hard to blame the “bad” players for “whining” when general PvE is so easy overall that you don’t even need to do simple things like gear up to win, not to mention the slightly more difficult things like actually thinking about your traits, stat spread, etc. This is a balancing act that Anet will have to work out one way or another; I just hope they don’t fall too heavily on either extreme, since there are deeply entrenched camps on both sides.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“Mired Deep” 10/1 update notes

Tyvm for the quick response over the issue, really appreciated

I have hit another wall in the Personal Storyline, I am a lvl 80 Elementalist trying to Sink the Bone ship (lvl68 quest). The Giant Risen Shark I have to kill for the quest is pretty much one shotting me and my gear is solid level 80.

Talk about unbalanced, the NPC is useless as well in the quest. The first hit the shark makes takes away 90-95% of my health.

Ridiculous…

Difficulty levels, New Players and Community Attitudes

The Personal Story instances are a focus where all the issues connected with difficulty levels and how new inexperienced players perceive the game come together.

On one hand Anet has tried to make PE’s a challenge for what they think are the average player. Unfortunately I think they have completely overestimated today’s average new player and the efficiency of the social feedback loops that in the past have nurtured new players to get through major game challenges.

The days of when a frustrated new player was offered tips and suggestions on how to beat an instance are gone. There seem to be far fewer players taking the time to put together instance specific guides. Now the frustrated new player is met with derision and insults like ‘learn to play’ or the condescending "WTF, I had no problem with it, I breezed through.’ Anet practices benign neglect as they stand silently by while these types of bloodbaths occur daily in these forums.

This same situation can be seen throughout the game, from Personal Stories to Dungeons to Dynamic Events.

A positive solution is to work at reinforcing positive feedback and education for new players as close to the time of failure as possible. If the game notes that player X has failed a Personal Story 3 times in a row, perhaps the game should provide a hints and feedback on what the person is doing wrong until the person is successful.

Division of the player base between elites and the inexperienced is harmful to the vitality of any game. Look at any game which has chosen one over the other and you usually see overall failure.

Another positive solution is for Anet and the community to return to the mindset of accepting frustrated newbies and gently providing positive tips and strategies. This means engaging the frustrated players constructively, in a give and take to help the new player find out what they are doing wrong and giving helpful information. This community needs to move away from elitism and back towards engaging and educating new players.

““Breaking the Bone Ship” will be adjusted in Monday’s (9/24) update. Zott had no underwater skills, and I toned down the risen sharks.”

Really? I think it was one of the easiest missions ever. Apart from the Kraits in the latter part of the story, all I had to do was to kill ONE enemy, which was loleasy with Staff ele build.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“Breaking the Bone Ship” will be adjusted in Monday’s (9/24) update. Zott had no underwater skills, and I toned down the risen sharks.

Ok Jeffrey.

I am currently attempting the battle of fort trinity after being forced to get help to do the Bone Ship quest… the bone shark took 2/3rds of the health from a well geared warrior on its first hit.

I am at the part where I have to clear the docks in fort trinity, there are huge grps 10-20 of enemy mobs and no way to kill them all, I only have Trahearne for backup am i missing something or is it supposed to be this way (the enemy mobs just stand there and dont attack or do anything almost as if they are bugged or something).

I guess I will have to redo the quest from start again…

Almost every quest I come to seems to either bug out, freeze like Tower Down did the other night or be uncompletable on my own due to mob numbers or ridiculous damage.

What is the point of Personal Storylines when they cant be completed alone.

Did anyone actually test these quests solo at all.

Ele.6318:

““Breaking the Bone Ship” will be adjusted in Monday’s (9/24) update. Zott had no underwater skills, and I toned down the risen sharks.”

Really? I think it was one of the easiest missions ever. Apart from the Kraits in the latter part of the story, all I had to do was to kill ONE enemy, which was loleasy with Staff ele build.

The first hit from the Giant Risen Shark took 90% of my health, I used my self heal and his next bite killed me. Are you trying to tell me thats correct.

Next…

A lot of personal quests have inconsistent difficulties for different professions and builds. I haven’t tried out every branch yet but I do agree it’s going to take immense amount of efforts to ensure each combination can have optimal difficulties.

I appreciate Jeffrey’s swift response to player’s requests, but please don’t overdo it. Adequate difficulty is needed for the story to be fun and feel epic. Major combats like Claw Island and Defending Priory should have proper difficulty and make players think “hmm.. So I can’t hit them face on like that, is there an alternative?”, reward those who think before they act.

So the difficulty is dependent on the class you choose. I kind of expected that. I tried playing a thief because I usually play ranger-type classes and wanted to try something different. Sounds like that was the wrong choice.

Hi Jeffrey finally able to complete Battle of Fort Trinity as this time it didnt bug out on me.

Just tried 3 attempts at Sad Duty with the same result, I enter area and about 20 mobs spawn they gank the 7 or 8 npcs in the area then splat me whether I heal or dps, I then rez and return to the fight only to find all the NPCs are dead and Im left facing 10-15 chained mobs.

Doesnt matter if I heal dps or anything, the numbers of enemy mobs means I cant keep the NPC alive long enough and when I return I am faced with having to kill them all.

I have no problems with reasonable odds but thats stupid, I can only assume its yet another bug and pact forces are meant to spawn to at least make it survivable on my own.

Gimme a break…

Noizy.5897:

So the difficulty is dependent on the class you choose. I kind of expected that. I tried playing a thief because I usually play ranger-type classes and wanted to try something different. Sounds like that was the wrong choice.

HI Noizy.5897

The problem is that most of the personal quest line I have experienced so far has either not been fully tested (bug ridden) or has not been balanced for solo play like it should (it is a Personal questline).

I am an IT Director and if my developers released a product as buggy as this they would be looking for another job.

Romke’s Final Voyage, the part where you kill the risen crew is RIDICULOUS to play as an elementalist. Died 3 times just to kill TWO guys, and I am already killing them one after another and not together!

Mark.8250:

HI Noizy.5897

The problem is that most of the personal quest line I have experienced so far has either not been fully tested (bug ridden) or has not been balanced for solo play like it should (it is a Personal questline).

I am an IT Director and if my developers released a product as buggy as this they would be looking for another job.

I can’t claim that I’ve run into any bugs. And claiming that the reason I’m having problems is because the devs didn’t balance the game properly is an excuse I don’t like using. This is an MMO and some classes are just easier to solo with than others. Happens in every game I’ve ever played. So I’ll just re-roll to a class that’s hopefully easier to play, or at least fits my normal play style.

Personal Story’s are not supposed to be done in groups yet many that I have done feel very off due to insane mob numbers or ridiculous damage, the problem is either one of balancing for different classes or bugs, sometimes both.

Im glad im not the only one that finds it difficult. Now i dont mind a challenge now and then, but it seems im dying all the time in this game. Its simply to much that it has stopped being fun and become just frustrating instead, and frustration is just no fun at all. Some serious adjustments need to be made for me to even start considering returning to GW2. For now i think i’ll go back to another MMO.

I had an exercise in frustration today as a level 80 thief attempting the story mission “Temple of the Forgotten God” (recommended for level 73 iirc).

First of all, the mission mostly takes place underwater. Right there, I was on the verge of going “nah, not going to bother”, since so many thief underwater skills are crippled, but I decided that I wanted to end the story chain at some point. So I went for it.

This mission, in addition to underwater combat being a chore in and of itself for thieves in their current state, brought back all the things I’ve disliked so far about story missions:

Deathtraps
Several times during this mission monsters appeared in groups, all swarming me, defeating me within seconds. And by seconds I mean two seconds:
Second one: mobs appear
Second two: I’m defeated

Unresponsiveness
Several times I had to re-trace my steps just to get the next sequence to trigger. Theres nothing obvious about the path you’re supposed to take, I had to look for clues online.

Unhelpful NPCs
Or in this case just one NPC. Do these companions serve a purpose, other than engaging monsters that are far away so that they immediately target me? Much like Rytlock in “In the Ruins” the NPC here seems to do almost no damage. It managed to get stuck inside a wall once though.

Several times on story missions I’ve had my NPC companions just stand around, because they haven’t been “activated”. As a thief (see lenghty posts above, well said btw) walking up to groups of monsters and smacking the biggest one in the head is a bad strategy, yet its what the game expects you to do. It started with the undead grubs in “Graveyard Ornaments” and happens all the time as the story progresses. Honestly, I’ve been pleasantly surprised every time I’ve actually had a mission where NPCs react like I expect them to, since the opposite is the norm.

General weirdness
Attempting to get to this quest I was defeated twice because there are events spawning on top of the quest area. One minute I’m happily swimming towards my goal, no enemies in sight, the next I’m swarmed by 10-12 krait all spamming stunning abilities at me until I am defeated. Its just weird design, very very random.

I do like the game, for one its absolutely beautiful. But the personal story bit needs some definite work.

I must admit, up until lvl 40 I found the story quests way too easy or cheap (by dying/ respawning repeatedly).

But , after the battle for Lion's Arch I finally have hope!
I really love to do these missions with friends of mine and I always felt the lvl doesn’t scale accordingly. We could zerg everything which pretty much defeats any sense of accomplishment.

And some missions are just dull. Like the human mission where you fight inside a court (was playing as mesmer). The enemies were way too hard (and way too easy when a friend helped me) and I could spawn like a mad Asura to kill it (as there was no other way for me to win, solo).

I really wish Anet not making the story any easier. I soloed all my story missions (except the last Arah one since that’s impossible to solo) and had no problem. I done this before all this story patch came in on my guardian. I had fun since it was challenging and now a bit disappointed when I made a ranger to go though the story again and it’s became a cake walk.

What we need is a difficulty setting. And not just in the personal story but dungeons too. Maybe even in the pve world. You can choose your own challenge level. Everyone’s happy.

@prohax

I also soloed all of my PS with relative ease, also before they started simplifying it for everyone on my Sylvari Mesmer… i agree thieves are squishy but that’s probably partly because a lot of them are “glass cannons”, otherwise all the thieves would be stuck and not the few that are complaining. the PS should be doable for all classes/races.

Athel.2076:

Unresponsiveness
Several times I had to re-trace my steps just to get the next sequence to trigger. Theres nothing obvious about the path you’re supposed to take, I had to look for clues online

I remember that mission, the path was supposed to be slightly obscure to challenge you, if you would like a map and tour guide of every quest, play another hand feeding game, like WoW.

On another note, this quest was easy, i just lured the sharks back to avoid too much agro… and I was using lvl 50ish weapons because the TP was down and couldn’t buy higher level ones for it.

I have been waiting until I’m well over 20 levels above the requirement to do them. I just finished the claw island and had no clue what to do 50% of the time (I actually cheated when it came time to bust up the ship by swimming to it and using my elite whirlpool skill). As soon as I killed 3-4 guys they just appear again and I’ll eventually die if I didn’t move on. I had the warmaster stuck in a mob fighting vigil/lionguard and he got stuck there dead because I could not get him out with the dead fish bombs raining down poison damage AoEs. I had 3 damaged parts after that and its becoming quite costly for me (5 s) as I’m only up to the 40-50 level areas and I’m lv 70. Travel costs are not helping either. The beach after that was easy yet i noticed how weak the vigil was. Having 50+ guys on your side should at least put up a decent fight. I only died once in it and had to use my glyph of rejuvenation in earth to res 3 at a time. That skill in itself needs to be buffed to have a shorter recharge time. Its currently 120 seconds. That skill is more useful for npcs than players can can actually help you in the storyline.

I’m a female human elementalist with my traits set to 30 earth 15 fire and 15 water. I play close range with sceptre/dagger and specialize in conditions (Earthquake/Churning Earth/Dragon Tooth/Phoenix) to wipe out foes around me. Yet the rapid spawn rates are making some storyline and PvE areas impossible to play this way (I know dungeons force you to think outside the box and I’m perfectly fine with that).

The destroyer queen one I had to give up and repair (I wasted two canisters and 8 silver) and get my guild and one pug to do it. I was nearly willing to pay 5 silver a player for the rest of the game to do my story for me because how annoyingly hard it was.

My little Sylvari Thief went through entire personal story solo and often underlvl’d. Didn’t find any of it difficult enough to find.. unacceptable. It was pretty fun all in all. Only issue I had is needing a friend’s help on the Skritt VS Destroyers part cuz that burn damage was brutal.

I ran into a few issues, mechanics wise. Such as dropping the door key in the underwater temple of forgotten gods to fight enemies causing me to have to restart the entire thing cuz it vanished. Trahearne vanishing from existence when bringing him the staff to open the door in a mission soon after I think. And the priory one where you turn into an avatar of balthazar and genocide zombies was annoying because the instructions weren’t very clear at the beginning and the map didn’t show me where to go. If I went in and came back the NPC Ritualist broke. Probably quite a few occasions I didn’t like how the map wasn’t telling me anything but can’t think of any other issues at moment.

Alot of the PS quest’s maybe more difficult at time’s but everyone understand this the Personal Storie’s are designed for you to win all the time no matter how many time’s you die and start from check point you will complete it. and see that’s the main problem of PS there is no conseqence for failer cuz there is none you either win or you….. well win so don’t sweat how diificult it might be because in the end you’ll get to lol fight Zhaitan.

Sinister Syx.9451:

Alot of the PS quest’s maybe more difficult at time’s but everyone understand this the Personal Storie’s are designed for you to win all the time no matter how many time’s you die and start from check point you will complete it. and see that’s the main problem of PS there is no conseqence for failer cuz there is none you either win or you….. well win so don’t sweat how diificult it might be because in the end you’ll get to lol fight Zhaitan.

not necessarily true, after a while you will be down to your boxers, no armor = no win…. luckily none of the PS have posed such a threat to me

I’ve been following this discussion with some interest. One or two thoughts occur.

It’s interesting to see how many of the contributors who claim to have little difficulty are guardians or warriors, who just happen to wear heavy armour! Being mass mobbed is slightly different for them than it is (say) for a squishy cloth armour wearing elementalist.

You CAN win some of these quests by attrition, as it were! Kill a mob or two, die, resurrect, rinse and repeat, gradually whittling down the numbers. But this is, at best, a sort of bodge up. The fact is that for the average player (I’m very average at best!) with some professions it’s virtually impossible to avoid a number of deaths during these quests. Either that, or you wait till you are over level or bring friends along. And, to my mind, this is totally unsatisfactory. There’s absolutely no logic in having to group for what is supposed to be a PERSONAL (ie solo) quest. It’s equally silly to have to be several levels above what the stated level of a quest is in order to complete it! A level 8 quest which needs 90% of people to be level 10 in order to complete it without dying just ain’t a level 8 quest! All it means is that (not to put too fine a point on it) the person who devised the quest has just got the level of difficulty plain wrong.

It’s a real pity! GW2 has many excellent features. But people are going to move elsewhere if their gaming experience is frustrating. And, unfortunately, as this thread shows, a fair number of people are frustrated with the personal storyline aspect.

I’m not asking for things to be made easy, or ‘dumbed down’ significantly. I’ve played both Final Fantasy XI and Vanguard, both of which can be quite demanding in PvE terms. But I’m totally convinced that the designers need to look at these quests, especially the balance of difficulty between the professions. As things stand, a good proportion of people will either ignore them, or take one of the ‘easier’ solutions (group, die and rez or go into them over-levelled) and have a less satisfying experience as a result.

Some of the quests are hard to solo, but it has just made me a more skillful player. That said, I’d only reached level 32 so far. Engineer, Human.

I’ve had the same problem with my necromancer in spite of its huge amount of health. Trying to complete “Forewarned is Forearmed”. It’s in the Lions gate sewer system so it’s under water. My necromancer was levelled down from 55 for this stage of the story.

Through the tunnels there are jellyfish which have a habit of disappearing into the walls. My sidekick follows them and eventually sees them off…hopefully. There’s no way to tell.

The problem is further in when I come across an Undead Scout and a Risen Shark together. They seem to be made of titanium.
Being underwater it’s hard to see properly, there’s no room to manoeuvre in the tunnel and I’m hitting these things for something like 48 points a hit. Meanwhile, each of them is biting me for nearly 500 a time. I couldn’t get one of them down to half health before they’d had me trying to swim for the surface…but, of course, it’s a tunnel – there is no surface!

As far as I’m concerned that’s the end of the story. One of those would be more than sufficient, both together is impossible for me to get past.

I would like to add something here. There seems to be an excessive inconsistency between one story line quest and another. Let’s take two supposedly Level 8 personal story quests for humans, ‘Arson at the Orphanage’ (or its ‘Hospital’ alternative) and ‘The Greater Good’. The latter has already been mentioned as being horribly difficult for more squishy professions; even in its modified form it is still a LOT harder than ‘Arson at the Orphanage’ which is straightforwardly soloable with a modicum of care.

Where’s the sense in that? It makes one’s experience of the personal story lines entirely a matter of chance depending on which story line one has chosen. There really can’t be any good reason for such wild variations between one quest and another at what is supposed to be the same level!

Let me start off with an experience I had. I was doing battle of claw island the 5th time with my lv 62 warrior. (did it before with ranger, guardian, mesmer and helping a guildee before) Reach the part where I need to rez Mira. I fought through a group of undead to reach her spot and discover that the undead are respawning all around her. Worst yet, an undead catapult is bombarding me anytime I stop to rez. So whenever I rez, I get knockdown by the risen brutes and bombarded by the catapult, killing the mobs only spawn more. I didn’t die, rez a few seconds, run away to heal and eventually rez her. But I rage. It shouldn’t be this hard.

This is the 5th time I am doing this mission. I am well prepared, I out level the content. I know that those mobs are unlimited respawn, fighting them will only wear me down. I have stun breaker to deal with the knockdowns. I am on my warrior, the class that can take the most damage and I barely made it without dying.

I must first say that I enjoy the story in the personal storyline very much. The battle of claw island in particular is touching. Well done storyline deign team. Many of the fights in personal stories however, are badly designed.

Here is a list of what I think is wrong with the personal story fights in general

1) Mob’s crowd control skills
I am ok with mobs having rowd control skills. In fact I am happy how useful it make stun breakers. HOWEVER, when a HORDE of such mobs come, it is a completely different matter. I get knockdown, I use my stun breaker… and get knockdown again.. and AGAIN before for I get up and then I died. Losing control of your character in a game is not fun. Losing control and dying is especially enraging. There is a reason why many games have diminishing returns on cc, because losing control and then dying is simply zero fun. Open world fights have similar problem too, but at least there are other players to take the heat.

2) Unlimited char respawns as clutch
The fight design team is probably thinking. Well the players have unlimited respawns, doesn’t matter the difficulty. Eventually they will figure it out or wipe out the mobs (assuming that the mobs are not unlimited respawns). Simply put, dying over and over again to do the same thing is no fun.

3) Small confined space, lots of mobs, weak npcs
Many of the fights take place in small confined space that is very difficult to kite mobs. Further more, the npcs are useless as tanks dying very quickly. Some class, mesmer for example, with little AOE ability struggle to kill the mobs fast enough especially when the mobs are coming in waves. Maybe let the npcs deal less damage, but give them more health making them better tanks. On a side note, in several missions the mob resets after being kite for awhile, which is really annoying.

4) Unlimited respawn mobs that give no exp and loot
I know ArenaNet does not want ppl to farm the personal story for exp and loot, but this make the fights so unsatisfying. In battle of claw island, after rezing Mira, I lit the beacon and was looking down at the courtyard. The whole courtyard is full of unlimited respawn undead with knockdown attacks. There is a serious risk of overpulling. Mission objective was to help defend it. But I was thinking.. whats the point? I get nothing from doing this. This is meaningless, just a waste of my time and I risk dying… for NOTHING. Make the mobs drop crap loot, give a faction of their normal exp or something but getting nothing from kills make things so unsatisfying.

I hasn’t finish the full personal story line, but I do have a lv 80 ranger, lv 80 guardian, lv 60+ warrior and mesmer, lv 45+ necro and lv 20+ engineer, thief and elementalist.

I can actually understand some of the difficulties the fight design team is facing. There is a vast difference in the classes. What one class can handle easily can be very difficult on another class. Even for the same class, different builds can have very different level of power. Maybe keep track of the number of times a player/class die in a personal story. Somehow the difficulty of the champion mobs had been very well tuned though. I have no problem fighting them on any class. More need to be done for the hordes of normal mobs however.

I actually come here to rant after the experience at the start of the post. Its heartening to see devs responding to this issue and tuning the difficulty. Except for some personal story fights and the bugs with event and skill pts this game had been great so far. Fixing the personal story fights will make it much better.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents.

I’m playing an Elementalist, and had no problems with all the story missions up to about L40. Then I suddenly ran into a brick wall with ‘Rat-Tastrophe’, ‘Set To Blow’ and ‘Forewarned is Forearmed’. I had a MUCH tougher time getting through than any of the other story missions so far. Died multiple times and respawned, which took a lot of the fun out of playing. My main issue was the sudden spike in difficulty — the inconsistent experience left me wondering if there wasn’t enough playtesting and/or tuning.

Some issues I had with these quests:
(1) Multiple mobs casting AOE in enclosed areas (‘Rat-Tastrophe’ & ‘Set To Blow’). I just couldn’t find anywhere to run and stay alive.
(2) Fighting mobs underwater seems about 2-3x harder than on land (‘Forewarned is Forearmed’). I don’t know if I haven’t figured out how to play the class properly, but my Elementalist feels seriously kittened when I fight underwater. And when one of the mobs calls for help, it usually ends badly.
(3) Mobs calling for help… who call more mobs for help (‘Forewarned is Forearmed’). I had one experience where 1v1 became 4v1 in about 10 seconds. Not sure if it was a bug, or if there were more mobs around the corner that I didn’t see.

Overall, I think having multiple near-death experiences when playing is fun. But dying multiple times and running back to die again is not fun.

The problem I’m fairly sure is they did balance the quests – but only for the classes everyone picked – the guardian and warrior. These two classes are the best at handling groups of enemies. Everyone else? Not nearly as much.

So play testers probably said the quests were too easy and AreaNet complied.

Honestly…I thought most of the missions were relatively easy. Sure, there’s a tricky underwater mission, and one where you have to fight off enemies by yourself, but most are pretty reasonable. I don’t get why people think they’re too hard.

I think some of the story is unacceptably hard also.

Also the pirate drinking game I found just took too long to complete. I was about ready to just give up. I didn’t enjoy doing it.

Further to my point above. Could a developer please explain why, when the ‘Fall of Falcon Company’ personal story quest subdivides, one branch (Seek Logan’s Aid) is FAR more difficult then the alternative (where you confront Tervelan without involving Logan T at all)? The former involves being set upon by loads of traitor seraphs in a confined area, where dodging ain’t easy, while the latter only really involves taking down an ettin or two which is LOADS easier.

There’s simply no comparison between the two in terms of difficulty. What’s the justification?

I had to ambush some rebels and was getting my kitten kicked but through respawns and stratergy I overcame it and won, im a human elementalist.

Why would you want to be able to go through it without the possibilty of dying? You run around the world solo does that mean you shouldn’t have a chance of dying?

The problem, Paulus, is that for some builds at certain stages of certain stories, it’s not a possibility of defeat that’s being complained about, it’s the impossibility of making further progress without taking half a dozen friends along. As far as I’m concerned, a ‘personal story’ should be soloable for everybody.

ANet really needs to come up with a better way of finding out what needs rebalancing, than just relying on players to say what’s too hard.

What they should be doing is logging data from the fights, so they can see exactly which encounters have problems.

Data including:

• Profession.
• Character level
• Abilities selected for the fight.
• Traits.
• Number of times the encounter has been attempted (deaths).
• Lowest health value during the encounter.

When you’re getting that data from enough players, you can see very clearly which encounters are too hard or too easy, and for which professions, without it being half as subjective as what you’ll get from players on the forums. If specific encounters stand out as being too hard, you could then go as far as watching some of them in progress, to get a better idea of what the problems are.

Then you can set multiplier values for the hostile NPCs, that affect things like their health, damage and cooldowns, that can be modified depending on the profession or possibly the unlocked abilities of the player doing the event.

That way difficulty can be more consistent, regardless of a player’s profession, without there being so many encounters that are just plain too hard, or too easy.

Did the human and half the norn story quests. No significant issues. A few rough spots, but all doable.

Most of them I did when I was underlevel by 1-2.

I’ve been playing a human engineer mainly running with a rifle and using flamethrower, rifle turret, rocket launcher and healing turret for most encounters.

I haven’t had many personal story quests that wouldn’t have been humiliating slaughterfests. I’m currently at least 5 levels overleveled (at level 60) and regularly get steamrolled in every single combat-heavy personal story quest I’ve been doing since.. Level 10? The usual situation is that the amount of mobs spawning is too much (4+ at a time is not uncommon) and they seem to be made of titanium – heavy hitting, low damage intake. I rip through equal level mobs in open world PVE content with ease. but the personal story ones just hand my backside to me relentlessly.

It’s stopped being fun. I had my first ragequit in the destroyer queen quest, now I was doing A Light In The Darkness and ended up with 4 undead bulls and a chicken destroying me in the middle of a road right after I had cleared out one of those ridiculously overpowered spectral guardians. The balance just seems way off and I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong – I keep my gear up to level, I’ve tried different skill configurations but none of it seems to make any difference. My turrets get torn to shreds and I go down seconds later.

I’m going to start ignoring the personal story content until it gets a serious readjusting across the board. Way too much frustration and far too little fun right now.

That’s really befuddling then. :/ I think it’s because mob spawns are more frequent and plentiful in story situations. Taking individual mobs on my engineer is all dandy, but when 4 or more spawn on me and another wave immediately after I barely finish the previous hanging onto remaining shreds of my life, it ends very quickly after that.

So I’d chalk it up to engineers having poor efficiency in situations where multiple mob rounds spawn immediately after one another. The lead-up quests to Destroyer Queen were particularly frustrating as the waves were pretty intense and had a large number of mobs. I died a lot in those.

E: The fact that they’re the same as general PVE mobs is probably the very problem, actually. Like I said above, in average PVE situations you encounter maybe two or three mobs at a time at most, unless it’s a serious oh-crap-panic-button moment. Then there’s time to recover and prepare for the next fight. This doesn’t happen in story situations – the multi-mob waves are a standard and not an exception, there’s no rest time in between and the mob strength isn’t adjusted downwards to make up for the fact that there’s many of them railing at you at once.

That or improve AOE efficiency for the suffering classes. I always run with either the flamethrower or grenades and it just seems like the slowest slog killing anything in story encounters.