Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: First of all I’m merely representing myself, and anyone else that share similar opinions. This is simply about what I desire from GW2 at this point, and my idea of how it will best benefit the game. Secondly, this is not a critique on whether GW2 is a good or bad game, or my cynical view over everyone else’s of what direction the game should take. I do fully respect the developers vision of the game and expect the even possibility of not sharing the same vision. In short, feel free to agree to disagree.

Endgame, Challenge and Reward in a Non-Vertical Progression MMO

I think it’s time we talk about end game, not so we can beat the dead horse all over again, but rather to see if we can bring some life back to it. Whether it be because those people have left and moved on, or the current new contents provides enough of a distraction, people definitely seems to be talking about it less now. I believe we have arrived at a critical point in the game, where:

• We have a good grasp of the overall content of the game.
• The next development stage will define the future of GW2, and so
• For a lot of people, this is the time to decide if this is time to move on or stay for another 2 years.

1) Current State of PvE:

I guess I’ll just get straight to it, for an MMO, GW2 is too easy, beyond belief easy. Please don’t be too quick to flip off your chair and call me an elitist just yet. This has nothing to do with how good at games I am, in fact it’s because of the exact opposite. I don’t consider myself a hardcore or a great gamer. I do however enjoy a little challenge, with perhaps 80% of my attention and effort instead of 150%, play most games on a bit over average difficulty, see games as a form of entertainment, and hate to have a work-like attitude/commitment/dedication to any sort of games.

So it’s rather strange to me, and a few of my friends (3 of them), that we have completed all of the supposedly “face meltingly hard” explorable-mode dungeons within 3 months of release of the game. (Can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure we got our dungeon master title a fair bit before the Lost Shores patch, because by November 2 of them already left the game.)

I think Arenanet has the tendency to assume something will be “too hard” or “hard enough” for the player base. We see this over and over again, release dungeons, FotM etc and etc. For those of you who had been following Diablo 3, you will definitely remember the quote of “we took what the developer thought was hard, and then we doubled it”. I don’t want to give to much credit to Wilson et al, but I do think that is the attitude a developer should take when developing hard content. Mr Colins said some interesting things about dungeons near release of the game. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Do-NOT-nerf-please/first#post126835) This is not to be dis-respectable to any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe there are a lot of people out there that will be far beyond the skills of the alpha testers.

It’s often sad to me to see how GW2 have arguably the best combat system, the most diverse fluent and deep build systems in an MMO, but lacking the true challenging content to fully exploit them. I do find it a little strange that as of now, the only scenario where we are getting into the nitty-gritty of builds are doing speed kill. As of the current meta, it’s not that fundamentally dps is king in GW2, it’s just nothing really called for great support or control roles. For instance, blind is good, daze is good, but in a reality where nothing is that deadly in the first place, there will be no place for them.

2) Rewards Rewards and Rewards

We (as a player and developer) should all embrace the fact that when designing challenging content, it should not be designed for everyone. I do understand Anet’s philosophy of allowing all players to access all contents, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. People complain about this from 2 perspective, either we don’t get to “see” some content because it’s too hard, or some better rewards are available only at those unreachable difficulties. Don’t really want to comment on those mindsets, but if it is of the best interest to cater to those mindsets and circumvent the problems, then have difficulty levels (like in GW1 and FotM) and title/cosmetic rewards associated with them. I know a lot of people get caught up in the so called rewards, either gear or prestige items. To me gears are means to an end, and I don’t care about the so called time/reward ratio, I don’t want money or gear just for the sake of it, I’ll only be after them if I need it to accomplish something else worthy.

Seriously, I think the people who (merely) want challenging content are the easiest to cater to, just make things harder, and then give them something that shows them they’ve been there done that. It doesn’t even have to be something that is better than everyone elses’, a miniature, a different coloured weapon, a piece or strangely glowing rock.. that is it. *Don’t exclude the majority from the shinys gated by difficulty, but do give people a wall to bash their head with if they wanted one. *

3) Designing Challenging Content

This is what I always thing about GW2: the gameplay-wise it has more akin to action games, ie Dark Souls, DmC, Diablo, Torchlight, than the majority of MMO’s out there. fundamentally it’s more about movement/position, it’s more about timing, it’s more about mitigation than socking up damage. GW2 was advertised as an action MMO in it’s initial heydays, we should start looking at the boss designs in this way, instead of merely projectiles and red circles. I really would love to see bosses like Dark Souls and Diablo in GW2.

4) All in all

I’ll have to admit I am a little disheartened by the general direction, at least at the endgame department, that Anet is taking in the past half a year or so. Hats off to all the free content we are greeted with every month. However, to me difficulty is a pillar of a game like GW2, we didn’t have enough of that at launch, and it wasn’t addresses as much in the past half year of updates. If the current way of updates really is the best way to monetize their game and business, then I guess I will have nothing say about it. To be honest, I do agree that from a business perspective, simply making challenging content isn’t as appealing, since it is very hard to translate that directly into profit. Sure, if I’m a business man and a bit on the cynical side, I will want you to move on from content to content and get things associated with it from the store, instead of chewing on the same challenging dungeon for 2 months. Just like they can make your car last for 30 years no problem by they do 10 instead.

Inspired by this video by Dontain, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3F_ZcvR-pg), Watch (Listen?) the video at least, if you don’t aren’t reading the wall of text.

Oh and I really like this vid too, WoW haters avoid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd0-zVIBVo

Fundamentally, some people want to learn and defeat extremely challenging content. Normally, the reward is stronger gear (gear tiers), the prestige of completion (raid-style hard content), and unique skins (like the Obsidian Armor in GW1, and dungeon skins), and these rewards are given somewhat reliably if the skill of the player allows it.

Looking system that is in place for Guild Wars 2, there are a total of 9 challenging group-instanced content in the game.

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The first 8 encompass the original dungeons in the game. They succeed in reliably giving unique skins, but fail in that the content is only moderately challenging and provide no statistical superiority for completion. This leads to a small amount of prestige to the title “Dungeon Master”, but the impact is light because of the ease of the dungeon.

Since all the dungeons provide relatively equal rewards for a full run and no differentiation in prestige, the next best thing is to find the shortest paths to run in the least amount of time, maximizing the reward. This leads to the CoF Path 1 phenomenon.

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The other challenging instance available is Fractals of the Mists. Here, they succeed in reliably giving a negligible power increase to gear (which has since been overshadowed by laurels), while failing in reliably providing unique skins. The prestige gained in fractals ikitten and miss, because early difficulties are very easy, while much higher up require significant cooperation and familiarity with the instance.

While high-level fractals provides arguably the highest prestige for challenging content (which eventually turns into health sponges that hit like Jupiter), there is no interest to do those high levels because the rewards do not meet the difficulty. The skins as a reward are very unreliable, and the increase in power has since been offloaded to other areas as well, leaving no way to claim the prestige for completing the content.

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And from my point of view, that is what leaves us in this awkward location where some can claim no end-game, and other don’t care about it, because no rewarding content is hard enough or worthy of being bragged about, and no content worthy of being bragged about is very rewarding.

And unfortunately, its been this way for 9 months (7 if fractals is considered a release), and each month’s content release has been easy content or fun activities, and none of them have included difficult group or team based play since fractals.

This doesn’t mean the game is un-fun, or boring. But it is definitely not very challenging where it is profitable, and the challenging stuff doesn’t reward you well for having the skill or talent to complete it.

And then there’s the Mad King Clock Tower. I wikitten gave a title, because it was a proper jumping puzzle, instead of the SAB where the mobs provide the challenge and the jumping doesn’t matter.

tl;dr: It’s not very challenging where it is profitable, and the challenging stuff doesn’t reward you well for having the skill or talent to complete it. So basically, no Prestige for high skill content.

@OP Thank you for this post. Pretty much every point you just made is spot on and exactly how I have felt about the game for a few months, and I don’t think I could have worded it better.

One of the other big problems I have seen with PvE endgame which is a problem is class balance. Introducing harder content would only lead to growth in the meta game which unfortunately is a bit all over the place.

I stopped playing a few months back after getting my legendary as I just stopped enjoying content. Pretty much anything worth doing in GW2 can be rolled with a guardian and 4 warriors at much higher efficiency than pretty much any other setup (I am aware there may be other variants since I stopped but the point remains).

I guess in essence, regardless of the fact I more than got my moneys worth in playtime from GW2, I can’t help but come out of it feeling disappointed. As the OP said a game with such a unique combat system, just isn’t being pushed to its potential. So many great features in it are just being overlooked as the game isn’t difficult enough for them to be actively utilised. CC, combos, need to swap traits/utilities actively. They just end up being nice asides as you roll through most combat for empty rewards that feel just given instead of earned.

I try to keep an eye on things and I hope we see a turn around in the PvE end game soon, while I dont doubt there will still be many people still happily playing who this doesn’t really affect, but I do feel more and more PvE players looking for challenge will just end up drifting away and looking elsewhere. Which is a shame for a game with such potential for a really engaging PvE endgame.

Ive played this game far too much now, near 3k hours…, and I can say that not once have I been seriously challenged in PvE.

Ive never had to re-evaluate an encounter multiple times to defeat it; almost all dungeons had the same solution. More damage, maintain protection, group enemies up with line of sight.

The same techniques work time after time; its super easy and effective to pull stuff up into a clump, and AoE it with warrior melee dps. You never have to target anything specifically, you never have to time or save spells for significant moments.

Lupicus is the only exception, a fantastic boss to fight, requires players to be on the ball with evades.

We need more of the final bosses in the Molten Facility. Fun fight, mobility was the key factor, the second part changed depending on who you killed first. That fight was what I expected of GW2 since launch. Iron Forgeman, Duke Barradin, and The Greater Earth Elementals are also good.

Agree with OP, a well thought post..

Posted it in multiple threads, but, Anet hates people that put effort in and rewards the 20-minute-men with guaranteed rares from a world boss chest..

Blues from a dungeon chest though! /unenthusiastic cheer