Guild Wars 2

ALCON,

Before I jump on the whine train, I must say GW2 is the most fun I have had in an MMO in a very long time. Albiet this is only in open world dynamic events, and exploring. I have only a smattering on WvWvW experience at the moment but from what I see it is fun, and engaging.

My Biggest Gripe is with dungeon difficulty:

Let me explain.

Story mode is supposed to be furthering / augmenting a players class quest and lore of the game. It is therefore in my HUMBLE opinion, that story mode should be completable by a small group of 3 at most. Now granted the three should struggle, but it should still be achievable. If you have a good group composition, and have 5 people. You should easily complete the dungeon with maybe 1 or 2 deaths max. The difficulty for story mode is a bit high.

Remember STORY mode is supposed to be furthering lore, and story for a players class quest. So at 35 with in game dropped gear, and a group of 3 people we SHOULD be able to complete the dang dungeon the game steers us towards with minimal knowledge of game mechanics. This should be our introductory dungeon, with long boss telegraphs to their signature move. Lower hitpoint pools, etc.

Then the next dungeon we get steered towards for story mode, should be slightly harder, but still achievable by 3 people. As a matter of fact all story mode dungeons should be achievable by a small group.

Explore mode is insanely difficult, and far to punishing. Risk -vs- Reward is the key here. I grant you explore mode is designed to be difficult and the games RAID mode. But again, it is insanely difficult. We would be better served with a 3 tier difficulty selectiong for explore mode dungeons with scaling rewards.

Example:

Story mode
– 3 people hard difficulty
– 5 people moderate to easy difficulty
– Least rewards, only xp, silver, and some random boss drops.
– learing mode for Explore mode
– At level 80 doing all dungeons in story mode, should gear you up for Explore mode (easy)

Explore mode: (Easy)
– requires full group
– slightly harder than Story mode difficulty
– smallest rewards for dungeon tokens
– Designed to be the introductory to the A$$CI pain that is about to ensue. But greatly forgiving.

Explore mode: (Normal)
– requires full group
– This is the standard difficulty
– Standard rewards
– The difficulty here should require coordination, and the group should be almost on their A game.

Explore mode: (HARD)
– required full group
– This is raid difficulty
– higher than average rewards
– This is unforgiving, metric ton A$$CI pain, and the group better bring their A++ game to the table.

Standardize dungeon tokens to be universal across all dungeons. Lower the cost of dungeon gear to only require at most 5 runs per gear piece at normal difficulty. Easy = 10+ runs, 2-3 runs at Hard mode.

This eliminates the grind, but still requires work. This also allows a player to vary their dungeon experience, and still get the gear set (look) they desire.

As it stands I am not sure I will do any dungeons beyond story mode for myself, and with great reluctance help my guildies, and friends through their story modes.

War and Peace,
GoDOWaR

I disagree. Non of the Explorable modes are insanely difficult. Just gotta get used to the fights. Arah Explorable mode, The Giganticus Lupicus I thought was unbeatable. We took him down just by working as a team. Very satisfying, if he was made easier it would kill the experience. One of the easier Explorables is Twilight Arbor, I suggest this place to build up your soon to be mad skills.

In a couple of months there will be a consensus that all dungeons are too easy. This will be without any actual changes, but the general skill of players increasing over time. The problem lies with players not with the instances in most cases (there are some dungeons that are not well tuned).

Wait, wait… your entire basis for saying story mode is too hard is because you can’t beat it with 3 people?

GoDOWaR.1064:

ALCON,

Before I jump on the whine train, I must say GW2 is the most fun I have had in an MMO in a very long time. Albiet this is only in open world dynamic events, and exploring. I have only a smattering on WvWvW experience at the moment but from what I see it is fun, and engaging.

My Biggest Gripe is with dungeon difficulty:

Let me explain.

Story mode is supposed to be furthering / augmenting a players class quest and lore of the game. It is therefore in my HUMBLE opinion, that story mode should be completable by a small group of 3 at most. Now granted the three should struggle, but it should still be achievable. If you have a good group composition, and have 5 people. You should easily complete the dungeon with maybe 1 or 2 deaths max. The difficulty for story mode is a bit high.

Remember STORY mode is supposed to be furthering lore, and story for a players class quest. So at 35 with in game dropped gear, and a group of 3 people we SHOULD be able to complete the dang dungeon the game steers us towards with minimal knowledge of game mechanics. This should be our introductory dungeon, with long boss telegraphs to their signature move. Lower hitpoint pools, etc.

Then the next dungeon we get steered towards for story mode, should be slightly harder, but still achievable by 3 people. As a matter of fact all story mode dungeons should be achievable by a small group.

Explore mode is insanely difficult, and far to punishing. Risk -vs- Reward is the key here. I grant you explore mode is designed to be difficult and the games RAID mode. But again, it is insanely difficult. We would be better served with a 3 tier difficulty selectiong for explore mode dungeons with scaling rewards.

Example:

Story mode
– 3 people hard difficulty
– 5 people moderate to easy difficulty
– Least rewards, only xp, silver, and some random boss drops.
– learing mode for Explore mode
– At level 80 doing all dungeons in story mode, should gear you up for Explore mode (easy)

Explore mode: (Easy)
– requires full group
– slightly harder than Story mode difficulty
– smallest rewards for dungeon tokens
– Designed to be the introductory to the A$$CI pain that is about to ensue. But greatly forgiving.

Explore mode: (Normal)
– requires full group
– This is the standard difficulty
– Standard rewards
– The difficulty here should require coordination, and the group should be almost on their A game.

Explore mode: (HARD)
– required full group
– This is raid difficulty
– higher than average rewards
– This is unforgiving, metric ton A$$CI pain, and the group better bring their A++ game to the table.

Standardize dungeon tokens to be universal across all dungeons. Lower the cost of dungeon gear to only require at most 5 runs per gear piece at normal difficulty. Easy = 10+ runs, 2-3 runs at Hard mode.

This eliminates the grind, but still requires work. This also allows a player to vary their dungeon experience, and still get the gear set (look) they desire.

As it stands I am not sure I will do any dungeons beyond story mode for myself, and with great reluctance help my guildies, and friends through their story modes.

War and Peace,
GoDOWaR

Yes, this would be amazing!!!

As a developer, you want your customers to see the content you developed for them. If you develop content, and want very few people to see and do it. Otherwise you could just as well throw money down the sewer.

You also want some challenge in the game. Content that is a bit harder. There should be something to do for everybody. Therefor there is Story Mode and Exploration Mode. EM is hard, you should do it at 80, prepare yourself, etc.

But Story Mode should be easy. You want at least 80% of your customers to see it. There it should be easy. Tough luck for the elite-players. They can play EM as much as they want, get the big rewards and the prestige. And the different paths through the dungeon.

But the simple version, the Story Mode, the dungeon without all the extra paths, that should be accessible to the average gamer, and a bit below. So your product actually reaches the customers.

Is that so hard to understand ?
Anet is throwing money away by intentionally not letting the average player play and finish Story Modes.
On top of that, they are creating a bad rep for themselves too. Just because of the insane Story Mode dungeons.

I’m really surprised that ArenaNet upper management (and the board, and the investors) let a few nerdy PvE developers take such a huge risk.

Where’d you get this magic number of 3 people?
Dungeons should be more difficult than normal PvE with a group of 5. It should be a challenge if you dont know your class and the mechanics.
Explorables should be a good bit more Difficult than Dungeons with a group of 5. It should be a challenge even if you do know your class and the mechanics.

we dont need this. the dungeons are fine or even to easy already

Actually we do need this. gw2 elitists can run explorables all day long, but story is made for the average customer and its dificulty should reflect that.