I’ve seen some outcry that the newly-balanced dungeon encounters are now “too easy”.
I want to applaud Robert and Anet for making them easier, however. I’d like to remind everyone else, especially the “too easy” folks, that The Secret World has effectively perished because it held on to the notion of catering the vertical progression only for the hardcore “leets” who felt strongly that:
1. The best gear should drop only in the hardest dungeons and therefore be earned only by “deserving” players with enough skill and dedication.
2. Casuals should not have an alternative route to the best possible gear stats. Either buck it up and figure out how to effectively complete Nightmare mode dungeons or get lost.
Well, take a look at where that player desire and design philosophy got Funcom and The Secret World in short order.
My guild (a casual guild), was going strong in TSW from day one until we all collectively hit this “brick wall” for casual players. I maintained one of the most widely-read fansites with detailed mechanics, FAQs, builds, etc. (http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com) (I’m “Yokai”). But we soon learned, like most other casual players, that attaining the equivalent of exotic gear here in GW2 was effectively out of our reach as casual players.
Right about that time GW2 came out. We all saw the potential, and within 3 weeks my entire guild minus one person was over here playing GW2. I warned the 2nd lead designer for TSW (Joel C. Bylos) that my guild was just one example of how Anet understood the need to provide access to maximum vertical progression to casual players, and that if Funcom didn’t change its stance on the issue, they would suffer. He agreed in principle, but nothing substantial changed after that. Casuals still face that same brick wall today, and, well, just look at how bad a shape TSW is in. By contrast, me and my spouse have thrown $100 per month since launch at Anet for this fantastically entertaining game with no serious boundaries thrown in the way of casual players. Except for one. Which is the subject of this post.
Anet did the right thing here by making the standard dungeons a bit easier than before! Why? Because frankly, they were a mess and too hard for typical casual players. I have a guild full of them. I know the yardstick. I hear the reactions and voice chatter. It takes more work than you’d think even for an organized casual guild with voice comms and actually pretty decent players to grind for even AC tokens. I’ve only got like 45 of them at this point, and while that is MOSTLY due to the horrible bugs that stop a team from even completing something like AC path 2 (Detha) 60% of the time (before yesterday), it’s ALSO due to the perceived difficulty of things like the old Detha-traps encounter. Or the 2x graveling scavengers who would routinely wipe my guild team.
“L2P Noob!”, you say? “Detha Traps was dirt easy before!” “Scavengers are easy to beat!”
Ya, I hear you. But you’re wrong. What you’re really saying is “…were dirt easy for ME”. And you’re forgetting that perhaps you’re just a good, or really good, player.
Here’s the problem: There are certain types of gear and gear stats that you can get ONLY from dungeons. For example, you cannot acquire L80 exotic weapons with P/V/T stats any other way than by grinding for AC tokens (and one other dungeon too, IIRC). That’s just one example. The old dungeon difficulty was effectively locking too many casual players out of ever hoping to acquire such weapons.
For example. I’ve been playing since launch. I have five L80 classes now, and a 6th in the works. I have 753 hours played. But I still don’t have one L80 exotic P/V/T staff for my guardian, or a set of such weapons for my mesmer to try a vitality tank build for WvW, and so on. Because with my mostly static group of friends and guildmates who are casual players with limited time windows to play, we just haven’t been able to grind out the dungeon tokens because the runs are too long, too irritating, and too buggy. And we can’t afford to keep slamming at it over and over several times a day like so many of you can.
So I, for one, am looking forward to trying out the new dungeons. And if they’re easier, then finally me and 15-ish other people I know will ONLY NOW have an effective chance to get the gear from those dungeons that we’ve been wanting since launch.
If you want harder dungeons, go do Fractals at Difficulty 50. Why argue to make the old dungeons harder again, thereby kittening the casual players who have been locked away from certain vertical progression options until now?
(edited by shaktiboi.5194)