Guild Wars 2

OP: you don’t sound like you have done very many of the dungeons at all. Go clear every path of arah (without abusing waypoints/exploits) and we’ll see if you still think this game lacks challenge

Sinos…content built around being rewarded is bad? Really? When you go pay $10 for a movie now a day and it sucks and is not a rewarding experience do you say, oh well, or do you say man that movie was a waste of time. I’d love to have fun in dungeons, in fact, i could overlook not really getting anything but a silly skin for it if it was infact, as you put it, fun…which they are not. They are a mess.

Negativity.5801:

Believe it or not, not everyone holds your opinion that difficulty doesn’t equal fun. Some people enjoy a challenge, and that’s been the basis of this thread, and many other threads on the forums.

Yet many ppl fail to see that there is a challenge in this game already. It’s just attuned so that everyone can enjoy / complete them. What you’re all saying on the other hand is that you don’t lack the challenge itself – but the shiny badges for completing those. You need someone to set a goal only few can strive for and then reward you in a way everyone else can see it. The dungeons ppl who confuse being good at with simply beating them (as mentioned before) were not designed to be completed under 30 minutes. Instead they confuse speed running that include avoiding any event in there that’s not necessary, any monster that’s not necessary, with lack of challenge. They get to complete paths of different dungeons others don’t even think of getting near yet that’s not enough cuz the same ppl can get the tokens for that particular armor set from a different path. In the end I find it most propable that the same people that want a ‘challenge’ in dungeons won’t feel satisfied when they’ll get it. Not until it’s designed so that only classes “A” “B” and “C” are viable for this path – and only with builds “D” “E” “F” cuz otherwise you simply won’t be able to complete it under “xx” seconds. You want dungeons that will require having multiple weapon sets with different sigils on them for 25 stacks of Attack Power, Condition Damage, Healing and etc cuz without those you won’t be able to complete that particular path.
As I said at the very beginning there already is a challenge in this game – yet most fail to see it – they find ways to go around it. Lastly – they don’t feel special cuz they don’t get something they can show to others that they’re ‘better’ than them in a game where gear doesn’t count at the end game (and shouldn’t here), in a game where u’re not deem as less usefull just because you picked mace and a horn as weapons while axes are the ones dealing most damage, in a game where I usually don’t die unless I screw up myself compared to total wipes when any of the party members screws up, in a game where no build, no class, no weapon is useless (even the one with warrior using only signets and wearing a shield + sword that was mentioned as a ‘bad one’ gives benefits – it’s gets like +25% crit chance compared to someone using Greatsword. Those crits are then on turned into vulnerability, bleeding and kinda any other effect that’s sigiled into his/her weapon)
This game gives me freedom to do any dungeon without ‘that particular build’ ‘that particular gear’ ‘that particular consumables’ which I love about Guild Wars 2.

Otter.7639:

Sinos…content built around being rewarded is bad? Really? When you go pay $10 for a movie now a day and it sucks and is not a rewarding experience do you say, oh well, or do you say man that movie was a waste of time. I’d love to have fun in dungeons, in fact, i could overlook not really getting anything but a silly skin for it if it was infact, as you put it, fun…which they are not. They are a mess.

I never said it should not be rewarding. Infact im pretty sure that i said the idea of content designed around the whole idea of getting one shiny thats going to give you an edge over another player is bad design. The whole point was if completeing the dungeon the way you want to isent reward enough then why run it? There is no reason you should need some edge to make it worth doing. And thats the point in the GW2 world. You only do it if you want to. They made everyone equal and the raider mob mentality type just cant stand the fact that there not able to outperform the more casual player type because they can spend 10-12 hours a day grinding away. In the end it is skill that sets the players apart here not some inflated stats on gear.

If all you want is a game where everything is obtainable with minimal effort and the only thing to do is go around collecting pretty skins that everyone else has easy access to… I believe Second Life came out years ago and did a better job of doing all that than GW2. The rest of us play MMO’s for the challenge of outperforming others and bettering ourselves. GW2 has a base talent and skill structure to be a dynamic and interesting game that can push players well to their limits… It just fails to do so due to easy content that doesnt require players to actually make use of these dynamic skill sets the game gives them.

Oh and as to whoever it was that wanted me to run the arah paths… I did those a while ago. They were mindless and easy. Lots of mobs that eat aoe and big bosses that telegraph every single attack they perform aren’t exactly challenging unless your name begins with hellen and ends with keller. Especially if your group runs some sort of traditional trinity comp, this game gives you so many tools to accomplish your task that it’s almost impossible to fail… and the “downed but not dead” mechanic combined with the fact that warriors have an aoe battle res on a mere minutes timer (wtf op much?) gives groups a huge margin for error… this not even taking into account the ability to graveyard zerg, which should never be done or spoken of again.

Bottom line is that yes, the game gives you the freedom to play your character in any role you want to. This is good in that players can literally swap gear and talents with minimal effort to fine tune to the needs of a particular encounter, and that well put together builds can cater to a wide variety of encounters and playstyles. Players become extremely versatile. The problem is that lack of challenge also gives players a liscense to be terrible… to create builds that don’t perform to standard and then play the “my game my way” card to defend their horrible playstyle and refusal to learn the game.

The banner has 4 min timer by default. The penalty for getting yourselv downed is clearly visible as well – u’re getting weaker and weaker (and easier to kill) each time you get up after being downed. The graveyard zerg is desperation – ppl put their equipment on the line to complete whatever they’re doing at all cost.
“the downed but not dead” mechanic is there cuz devs took into account that there is no combat res skill – nor there propably aint a ‘healer’ in a party nor there should be a need for him. Every player should depend on his own skills in the first place – on his teammates skills later on – not other way around. You found yourself a way to complete the dungeons with ‘ordinary’ tank + healer + aoe dps standing behind them? Cool – but that’s what you came up with in here – not something that should be a ‘must’. Lastly being skilled in GW2 means u can do stuff better/faster/more efficient than the ordinary pug member – not that you’re able to do it and he won’t.

The revive banner elite’s CD is indeed 240 seconds. It can be reduced to 192 seconds with a trait that requires 10 points in Tactics. This trait also increases the area. I’ve yet to see the smaller, un-traited area be large enough to get more than one person up from the downed state unless the group is stacking.

Craig.7462:

Just gotta accept that they cater to a casual audience. I mean why wouldn’t they? That’s where all the gem sales are.

No, you ahve to accept this is a team based PVP game. Like 99% of the other MMOs being a PvE based game and pvp some kitten step child this game is the reverse. PvE isn’t the focus and therefore recieve less attention. Otherwise they wouldn’t just throw XP to get you to max lvl and geared asap. Sorry to be the one to break it to you. Perhaps the whiners crying about lack of PvE would be happier with the pandas or any of the other numerous PvE centric games that cater to them and their grind.

+1 Totally agree ..

There is no challange in explorable dungeons, Ive done all of them, running Arah daily and its not about challange but about how many times I run it so I get that gear faster.

I would like to see explorables that hard that only the top players can complete them.

While I understand that some players find the dungeons to be too easy, I don’t agree with the approach advocated by the OP. The dungeons might be easy for him, but for many others, they are actually incredibly hard. When they read the title of this thread “pve content devoid of challenge” they’re likely to laugh. They wiped a half dozen times in the last dungeon they played. And this guy wants to make it harder?

Now, a hard mode type thing, I can understand that. But there’s no need to make an entire segment of the pve experience even further away from the ability of players. And while I understand extreme challenge is fun for some, it certainly isn’t for all. Gated boss encounters, enrage timers, specific gear reqs, specific class roles…these things don’t add to the fun of everyone.

And I really don’t think there is anything wrong with having content be accessible to many. GW2 doesn’t have to be the mmo version of Dark Souls to be fun. And there is certainly no need to sneer at players who would like to have fun and adventure in a fantasy world without having their faces melted off by extreme difficulty. People that don’t want to micromanage their stats, parties, and combos should go play Second Life? That’s just as insulting as telling people who want a challenge to shut up and go play a different game.

TL:DR A hard mode of some kind is reasonable, but there is no need to make content for others inaccessible.

Well thing is that players like OP, me and dozens of my friends are waiting for atleast one new MMORPG which is not aimed for casual audience.

Well I guess that is never going to happen so w/e

Dogblaster.6713:

Well thing is that players like OP, me and dozens of my friends are waiting for atleast one new MMORPG which is not aimed for casual audience.

Well I guess that is never going to happen so w/e

The problem is, and not meaning to offend here just being blunt, the crowd your in is a very small minority and honestly a game catered to that play style most likely could not survive.

Dogblaster.6713:

Well thing is that players like OP, me and dozens of my friends are waiting for atleast one new MMORPG which is not aimed for casual audience.

Well I guess that is never going to happen so w/e

Really, I was rather surprised to hear how easy some people thought the dungeons were. I’m betting that Anet might be too, since explorable mode was supposed to be very hard. And many do find it pretty darn hard. But hey, I would totally support hard mode versions of the dungeons. Give some bonus rewards. Maybe some tokens for an extra awesome dungeon set. Just don’t take the current dungeons away from people who are already being suitably challenged.

I’d rather have the massive Final Fight street battles like Vizunah Square in GW1, those were fun, simplistic, but way more fun than anything currently out right now in this game that’s for sure.

Alfrond.5037

Really, I was rather surprised to hear how easy some people thought the dungeons were. I’m betting that Anet might be too, since explorable mode was supposed to be very hard. And many do find it pretty darn hard.

But hard doesn’t always equal fun. Especially not if fights are difficult only because the bosses have insanely high health. And the reason a lot of people find certain boss fights, (e.g. Kohler, who has only one true lethal skill) so hard, is because the rest of the time they can get away with no-braining a DPS rotation.
The dungeon system just needs a bit of balancing between the long, boring fights and the short, intense fights. When trash encounters are more intense than the boss that follows, something ain’t right!

As an example, my favourite boss fight in this game so far is Citadel of Flame story mode’s final boss. A big bad in the distance, with an oldskool platform concept to get to him. Dodge the boulders, crush the walls, throw rocks, destroy him!
Very similar to the Claw of Jormag encounter, but then scaled down for 5man. It took long, but not so long you began to wonder what else there was to do, and even if difficult, it was completely based on player skill rather than gear/profession based.
It was even more fun to see my mute group members suddenly ask if anyone had a swiftness buff or two, and within seconds we were completely in sync as we finished off the kitten.
I really thought it was fun. Just fun. And if it weren’t for the dull lengthy dungeon in front of it, I’d probably frequently visit that fight with friends, to show them how amazing the fight was. The music. The mood. The big opponent. Clear mechanics with plenty challenge. It just seemed proper!
A few more fights like those, to finish your dungeon adventure with a blast would be so darn welcome.

I take the Op’s comment as elitist. ANet has said they want dungeon loot to be available to non-hardcore players and that it’s meant as style rewards. If you want to stand out just for the sake of it, a rarely-used non-dungeon set look is the way to go, along with dyes. If you want a challenging piece of loot, go after one of the legendary treasures.

Note: I’m merely saying this to note that ANet did what they said, and that there are alternatives to hard-to-get loot (plus some REALLY hard-to-get-loot) to sate the Op’s appetite. I understand my comment may seem aggressive but, for all this matters, it is not meant to be.

There is no really hard to get loot. Hours of grinding and farming isn’t a challenge, it just takes time.

I’m actually on the fence on this. While I like that skins are generally pretty easily obtainable which means I can customize my characters to look the way I want them to without affecting stats, I also miss some of the prestigious stuff you could get from accomplishing difficult challenges like in WoW (mounts for meta achievements, heroic gear having different looks if only a different color, titles) and before anyone says anything, I’m not saying bring mounts in GW2. I’m just using it as an example of unique rewards.

Hell, I’m even surprised there isn’t any cool meta achievement for completing all the mini-dungeons and jumping puzzles. I think it’s some of the more unique and interesting content in the game, I just wish the rewards for it were also unique.

I’d love some more hard mode stuff, but even I’m fine if the stuff is somewhat easy. I would say more “Subject Alpha”. First few times you fight him he’s hard. Then once you learn it, it becomes easy.

Where they screwed up with subject alpha is he’s in all 3 paths. It just becomes tedious fighting him every single time (since really not that much changes between paths).

But I also agree that dungeons right now are just not fun to repeat. There are maybe 3 or 4 fights out of the entire set of dungeon bosses that I actually enjoy. Maybe even 2 or 3.

The mechanics are mostly dull, and a lot of it is just kite around and dps. How about entirely new sets of abilities just for one boss fight? And I don’t mean get on a cannon and spam #1 till the boss dies…..

They’ve shown their ability to create abilities when you morph into something, throw that into a boss fight. For instance (although everyone would probably hate this example) the Occulus in WoW. You chose a dragon. Have 5 portals to choose, and everyone chooses a different “hero” or “ability set” and then you fight the boss. Everyone could then swap the next time, and each time you do it you can be a different hero or whatever.

Most of the bosses are hardly dangerous, and you really dont have to pay that much attention. They’re just giant hitpoint sponges that take forever to be dps’d down. Fights need to be intense for like 3-5 minutes at maximum. These 10+ minute fights (often made longer by bugs) where the mechanics are really boring just get old.

The fact that you can grab 4 other random people and clear most explorables is evidence of the lack of difficulty. I would like a challenge that requires coordination and cross class synergies, while requiring awareness and optimization. You can keep the explorable system as is, but perhaps another “Hard Mode” tier would be the solution. The reward could be unique skins, titles, or even Legendary armor, all of course keeping the same stats as Exotic level gear. Also, to take away some of the grind from a Legendary, have Legendary Armor components/gifts/precursor only drop or obtained with tokens from these Hard Mode tiers rather than grinding xxxx amount of Karma and xxx gold for said precursor.

With a Hard Mode tier, you can satisfy the elite crowd and keep the casual crowd content since the only reward from Hard Mode would be prestigious, rightfully earned skins that offer no statistical advantage over other gear.

Just my 2 cents. Of course not everyone may agree, but I hope Arenanet can find the right answer for the game.

Actually, the lack of enrage timers is a good thing. Enrage is one of the things that make WOWs encounters so boring. They stiffle any sort of creativity and limits you to specific, boring DPS builds. That’s not good, that’s bad. It’s the most lazy design possible and works mostly for games like WOW, that are not about skills but about stats.

Interesting fight mechanics should make a fight interesting. Enrage timers are not an interesting mechanic at all, so they deserve to be scrapped.

This makes GW2 better, in fact. There is only one single fight in WoW where an enrage timer actually made the fight more interesting.

That was Vaelestraz back in BWL. And that wasn’t even a real enrage timer. Want a simple game where you aren’t allowed creativity and need enrage timers to limit your group to one set of tactic? Why not go play some of the MMOs that work that way? I can think of several.

(Different difficulty modes are fine, though, and I like the hard mode suggestion done above.

However, they need to a)be completable without voice chat and b)get their difficulty from actually well thought out mechanics, not from lazy and boring WoW-type design)

So, this is my first time ever typing up a post on these forums. Normally, I’m content and totally happy to browse the forums, read people’s opinions and weigh my own silently.

The people like this OP come along, rolling and riding high and mighty on his superior ‘intellect’ and his holier than thou, totally better than you attitude. Everything he has stated over the course of any point he could have possibly had has been diminished by his rude remarks, and generalizations.

The dungeons are Gimmicky! Yes, artificial difficulty from padding and awkwar mini games (dodging lasers in CoE anyone? How about those giant boulders on fire in CoF? What’s that, how about you all activate these consoles across the area at the same time?) These gimmicks aren’t hard as they are time taxing and annoying at first, then trivial. I admit, that sometimes people make mistakes and they DIE. Horrible hilarious deaths! But locking them out and punishing the rest of the party because they died and making them fight the kitten thing alone?

Making dungeon rewards HARDER to acquire over weeks instead of a handful of days at a time? I hate to be one of /those/guys, but I have this marvelous thing called a job, and with that job, I have other responsibilities. I couldn’t put forward the amount of time someone that describes themselves as the OP does to get anywhere.

THat being said, I’m not casual either. 4 lvl 80s, mostly with exotic gear, with viable and fun builds that work in a multitude of situations. I build them how I want to and how they are most effective for my playing style. I switch between them as my party needs as well. I’ll hop into any of them! I don’t care, but they’re all how /I/ want to play them. I get rewards only as fast as I can conquer content and how quickly I can learn a dungeon.

Some dungeons have broken content! Yes, broken and annoying glitches, like escorting Magg across the lava flow. He Aggros everything and gets himself creamed, and the dungeon fix means you have to get him all the way across. That’s hard enough, to actually pull that off takes effort and time. There are issues that need to be fixed. There are adjustments that need to be made.

What people don’t need, and developers included, is ‘higher minded’ people like you that feel entitled to their whims and insult the intelligence of EVERYONE that just try to have a good time. You, OP, are what I don’t want to see in my game. You’re a jerk. That’s right, I’m calling you out. A jerk. Comparing players to Hellen Keller? Inferring that players that cannot complete content as it is now are equivalent to someone who had a tragic life? You should be ashamed.

A topic presented in such a manner is distasteful. Good day to you.

While I sorta agree with some of the points presented, they were done so in such a manner that I was derailed.

Would harder content be nice…..ofc, but that’s not exactly what most clamoring for it want. Most want harder content only if coupled with rewards exclusive to said content. Remove the exclusive rewards from that “harder content” and then it becomes not about the challenge itself, but not being rewarded for the challenge.

There is and always has been the ability for the players themselves to make the content harder. They just choose not to. Why? Because of the lack of incentive. Ah we come round circle to incentive. The challenge alone is not enough or else players wanting it would self impose it. How would one self impose challenge? Running with less than max gear, less than optimal skills/traits, less than max amount of players, etc etc. But, ofc most players will not do this.

It’s ironic how most players that want harder content always…(myself incuded)…strive to make said content as easy as possible to reap the rewards.

But, I digress…..main point here was that the OP could have made (a) valid point/s, but chose to bury them insulting the mass of the player base instead.

Same way as in GW1 where there was Normal Mode DoA and Hard Mode DoA.
Nobody was forced into anything, you simply picked one and everyone was happy.

For the records, this is a very bad example. DoA is the kind of thing ArenaNet should avoid as much as possible.

For those who have never played it, Guild Wars 1 had two modes: normal mode, and Hard Mode. All the “end game content” areas could be done by a common, slightly organized PUG in normal mode. Hard Mode, which gave slightly more than twice the rewards of normal mode, was significantly more challenging, so most PUGs couldn’t do it without some kind of exploit.

However, the community in MMOs often isn’t the smartest thing on the world. More often than not, most people playing in those areas were PUGs trying to play in Hard Mode, with the reasoning that was the most rewarding game mode. Few players truly realized that a victory giving less rewards was better than a loss that could have given more rewards. As a result, many “end game content” areas were simply abandoned, after PUGs gave up on them (like The Deep, Urgoz’s Warren, etc).

GW2 already has a good mechanic in place. Dungeons have three paths, with different paths having different difficulties. Each path has the same reward (which is something vital), but at the same time, doing each path once gives better rewards than doing the same path multiple times. ArenaNet should increase the amount of tokens given by each unique run through a path, decrease the amount of tokens for subsequent runs of the same path, and make the third path harder, to give a challenge to more organized players.

This way:

• More casual players would be able to run the easiest dungeon path and get as many rewards as good players doing it, although they would take longer. We would avoid the issue GW1 had since this would reward people as well as the harder path.

• Meanwhile, more organized players would be able to run all dungeon paths, earning more rewards per day.

Everyone would get a reward, people who want easier content can play in it and be rewarded, people who want harder content can play in it and get a bigger reward. IMO, this is fair to everyone.