Guild Wars 2

Just sharing my thoughts and feel that more discussion for the idea is warranted. Feel free to share your own. Probably better to watch the video beforehand. YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ MY POSTS, JUST WATCH THE VIDEO AND SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS!

On general opening core beliefs:

1. Dungeons should be harder? Sure. Pretty black and white. Personally feel that running the same content over and over with no variety (in how most players approach battles), no randomness (the mobs are too predictable and everything becomes extremely scripted) and thus very limited strategies (have you gotten kicked from a group that demands you stack, they get 1shotted by an AoE and then blame you for not stacking?). Making dungeons harder isn’t so cut and dry, however. There could be many approaches and I’d actually like they try different means to accomplish this. Also, I remember getting into debates with people complaining about difficulty and runtimes and got shouted down relentlessly for saying dungeons should take much longer than the 10-15min they take now! At least for hardmode content, it shouldn’t be something you just train through but something you prepare for and look forward to starting.

2. Dungeons Riskier? Goes hand in hand with harder. The only issue I’d have is that players would feel justified in demanding much greater rewards. It’s not a baseless expectation but there will be issues ran into regarding loot rolls and loot tables. I think there might be ways to help this by giving the player more control over just what loot they get, so perhaps allowing them a few random rolls with the chance of really great skins, or a cache of specific level materials or tokens for a specific gated reward would all be choices the player has (along with other baseline rewards) at the completion of the content.

3. More distinct roles for players? Hmm, that’s a tough one. I feel, to do that, you wouldn’t just introduce limits on the player but you’d have to fundamentally change the mobs within a dungeon to accomplish this. That said, I feel there should be opportunity for various specialized and generalized roles to shine so that you can complete various content in a variety of different ways without specifically seeking certain party members and roles. It should be viable to complete the content with any combination of roles so long as the party adjusts fire to accommodate said roles.

4. More value to underused mechanics? Agreed. PvE content can get very repetitive since they are so predictable. It doesn’t help variety that so many of the cool mechanics in the game are boarderline useless for practically any purpose outside of PvP. Perhaps modify the strength of these mechanics against NPCs or in dungeons/tough content to make them more essential and usable? Again, I think you’d have to change the mobs to make this work.

5. More use for various gearsets? Hmm, this sounds nice on the outside but gearsets are just stat combos. Rather than look at it as making gearsets more sought after, just look to the utility that the other stats (mainly the defensive stats) offer. Expand on that and you can possibly accomplish this.

6. Skipping trash isn’t necessarily un-fun and hard trinity sux? Agree. Not much to say about that. They could add a bit more incentive to take on trash mobs but not overwhelmingly so. As for the trinity thing, I was never a fan for it but people hear ‘trinity’ and they go into a blind rage. There’s also nothing wrong with a soft trinity and nothing wrong with dedicated roles or approaches. It should boil down to how you want to play not requiring specific approaches or else you’re out.

7. Easy to access? No brainer. Moving on.

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mixed.

9. Any system introduce should reduce complexity? Also agreed. If any complexity is changed, it should be with enemies becoming MORE complex, using more leaps, hiding their tells with stealth, utilizing their own combos. Perhaps less use of one-off unique mechanics, i.e. special abilities or effects that require prior intel to deal with?

10. Easily expandable? I feel this belief mainly ties into WP’s idea of how to introduce the tough content, that the proposition should be something one can apply without too much effort on the content designer’s side. Not to say that they wouldn’t have to put in work to make the content good, just that if it requires so much effort and design that it takes them a year to make 1 version of this tough content, it’s not going to be a good investment of resources. Besides, if it’s easy enough to apply, you can do so to a lot more content than just dungeons, for instance.

11. No fractal health/damage style flat buffs? Totally agree! I can’t stand fractals! Actually, I take that back. I liked fractals when I first started and as more ‘stuff’ started happening in them as you progressed. But as you got higher in levels, that “more ‘stuff’” got more and more generic and boring. I’d say take some ideas from fractals and levels but NOT the flat buffs to HP and damage.

Now onto his suggestion of ‘skulls’.

The baseline changes to mobs I can agree with, making mobs move and attack 1/3 faster. I’d also suggest more punishing regular skills, i.e. some regular damage skills might have more conditions or CC. Moving onto the choosable skull effects…

Bronze skulls – seem to be there to morph the current GW2 combat into something “not easy”. No rally? Less healing out of combat? Foes not clumping in stacks for cleave? Reduce reflect/blind? I like a lot of these options to limit gameplay but others I don’t. Having mobs randomly gaining boons feels cheesy. I think there should just be more varied mob abilities that apply or steal boons, using combos, etc.

Silver skulls – no swapping utilities/traits/skills? That sounds quite interesting! Contested waypoints also pressures the group to keep each other together and alive. As for the Death and Burial skull, I’m not sure I like. Not being able to rez dead members and always contested waypoints feel like they counteract each other. It also limits certain options. Rez utilities are already weak, no one will bother if you’re limited on utilites AND if you miss, there’s no bringing that player back.

Gold skull – pretty much just, if a member dies, the dungeon’s over.

The thought at the beginning I was behind but as we get into the silver and gold skulls, I’m rather apprehensive but then I’m not that great a player and I don’t care about clear speed when doing my dungeon runs so the whole leaderboard thing doesn’t interest me. But that’s okay I suppose. Not everything is targeted toward me.

That all being said, I’d probably suggest an alternate type of application rather than needing “all” the skulls to get to the next tier, but instead some of them or perhaps randomized option that you could use to access the higher tier limits without all of them. Or perhaps unique rewards for each utilized challenge instead of just flat choices. Doing that, you can introduce more unique and niche challenges with unique rewards for those that choose to take them on…like a “Bastion” skull where the strength of the enemies are enhanced greatly but diminish depending on how many and how quickly you defeat the various forces within the instance. Having that option, bosses grow weaker (relatively) by defeating regular mobs and you get a rolling higher loot return on the boss chests if you defeat them in time before they can recover moral. Such an option would likely be hated if all skulls were required to reach the next tier of skulls but if more options existed to customize your encounter and your loot, I feel that would be received much better by the community.

if you’re aiming this as a response to WP, I’d advise visiting his subreddit and posting there

It’s a thread title. Not trying to get a response. I think it’s a good point of discussion and an interesting idea.

Yes please! Hard Mode on dungeons is needed. Boss fights need to be a lot harder and the fights need more mechanics. The only hard thing in GW2 right now is high level fractals.

Wooden Potatoes. Complains that dungeons are too short. Yet proceeds to show himself using unintended exploits to skip almost every mob possible with a well organized group.

Have to love the community. Wooden posts videos and insightful information and suggestions, and he gets snark from people like Azure.

Keep up the good work, Wooden. Watching and listening to the video now.

Edit: #6 in the video, he specifically addresses that point about skipping trash mobs. Just so you know. . . .

Anyway . . . back to the actual topic . . . I was under the impression dungeons had ‘heroic’ modes now. Is that content not hard enough? Also, in majority, most players tend not to like dungeons in Guild Wars 2.

In fact, I remember something of a petition to have the content made easier and soloable overall.

But, I’m sure, someone else will love harder content. Yet, again, every time we see it, especially in Living Story, the forums ignited in flames from complaints.

Just something to consider.

Azure Prower.8701:

Wooden Potatoes. Complains that dungeons are too short. Yet proceeds to show himself using unintended exploits to skip almost every mob possible with a well organized group.

Lots of content to cover but generally, his suggestions would work. Why? Because it’s what many other successful games have implemented for their ‘dungeon content’.

That’s why I don’t think much of it would ever get implemented in this game. This game has many innovative ideas; in fact I think Anet go out of their way to do things different than other games as a selling point. They don’t just do what everyone has done, even if it’s a proven approach. They try new things. Some of those things are less well received or don’t merge well with traditional game content.

I do think that some control over rewards and content difficulty would be in my top lists to add.

I’m absolutely loving how people are either not reading the post, and commenting, or not watching the video . . . and commenting . . . and Wooden actually addresses their comments and concern about that very issue . . . in-depth.

Azure Prower.8701:

Wooden Potatoes. Complains that dungeons are too short. Yet proceeds to show himself using unintended exploits to skip almost every mob possible with a well organized group.

Unintended stealth mechanics?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Azure Prower.8701:

Wooden Potatoes. Complains that dungeons are too short. Yet proceeds to show himself using unintended exploits to skip almost every mob possible with a well organized group.

Unintended stealth mechanics?

Sounds like the greatest exploit ever. Expect a nerf 1 week too slow after the community has taken advantage of it

It’s a nice mechanic for Dungeon hard modes, but I wouldn’t want it to be the entirety of the challenge content, some changes or things he didn’t mention that I’d add is:

-Party members cannot be changed and must remain in the party IN the dungeon for the duration, D/C’s are auto re-entered (I.E they don’t spawn outside the dungeon).

-Each player must be tagged as engaging at least 50% of the mobs the party engages (to prevent gold path buying).

-Completing the gold skull version of a path awards a x dungeon gold token, which can be exchanged for new unique skins for each dungeon and a title. (His version awarded no bragging right that wasn’t tied to a leader-board).

My one concern is tying title rewards to a PvE leaderboard, I’ve played Warframe and the top places on each of them usually go like this:
1. x 1500000000
2. y 1500000000
3. z 1500000000
4. A 30
5. B 28

Because cheaters find ways, While on this example it’s obvious , it may not be obvious in the time scenario and would be a likely occurrence.

Not knowing what you are fighting is the simplest way to add challenge. The reason people are able to farm dungeons in 10min is because they know exactly what to do and what the mobs are going to do. So with that predetermined strategies are used then optimized to be most efficient(zerker).

The way to solve this is to create randomly auto generated dungeons. Where mobs, locations, story, etc are all randomized for each dungeon. Fractals kind of kitten this idea but not to a point where it matters. With things being random you can’t fit to a single mold, you have to be more of a balanced approach not only from a individual standpoint(good mix of armor, HP, DPS, etc) but also as a group.

Azure Prower.8701:

Wooden Potatoes. Complains that dungeons are too short. Yet proceeds to show himself using unintended exploits to skip almost every mob possible with a well organized group.

Unintended exploits.

Lol.

What rock are you hiding under?

BrooksP.4318:

Not knowing what you are fighting is the simplest way to add challenge. The reason people are able to farm dungeons in 10min is because they know exactly what to do and what the mobs are going to do. So with that predetermined strategies are used then optimized to be most efficient(zerker).

The way to solve this is to create randomly auto generated dungeons. Where mobs, locations, story, etc are all randomized for each dungeon. Fractals kind of kitten this idea but not to a point where it matters. With things being random you can’t fit to a single mold, you have to be more of a balanced approach not only from a individual standpoint(good mix of armor, HP, DPS, etc) but also as a group.

A degree of randomness is good, but too much and you end up making the world feel like less of a legitimate place.

Random enemy placement, and ‘evolving’ enemies that can adjust to your setup/tactics would be better though. And wallmasters. Stand in one area while in combat for too long, and they throw you back to an earlier point. >_>

That aside, I’m not a fan of pre-formed group content anyway, so I’d rather they steer in a different direction. Larger, hot-joinable, and scalable instances would be good to me. Instead of just, “Ascalon Catacombs”, you could have an instanced campaign that includes the entirety of “The Desolation”. Start a room, people can talk to the gatekeeper to see what is available and can enter and leave as they please. If you want to restrict it to people you know, rooms can be password-protected. Multiple modes available for the difficulty you prefer, but nothing obnoxiously stupid.

I don’t understand the mindset of dungoneers. I enjoyed the dungeons in this game because they made sense – Story Mode kills the main boss, and the explorable paths saw the player mopping up lieutenants and pretenders to the throne, as it were. I have never, in any game, understood why people enjoy re-running the same dungeon content every single day, endlessly. It makes even less sense when those grinders are unhappy with how boring it gets…

Personally, I’d like this to go in the opposite direction – when a player completes Story Mode and all explorable modes, I’d like to see that unlock the armor and weapon skins for purchase by the dungeon reward npc. The very idea of repeating content multiple times to farm up tokens doesn’t strike me as “earning” the objects they purchase; in my personal opinion it’s just tedious grind, for no reason. It’s rewarding people for playing in a way that actually encourages skipping as many fights as possible, insisting on maximized/optimized builds, and being extremely unforgiving of players new to the experience.

And I agree with several other posters here – too many people complain about dungeons being easy or short, but skip most of the content because they want to get through them as quickly as possible. Fractals’ randomized, more difficult maps were the answer to most of these problems.

I am in one of wooden potatoe’s original beta weekend vids, my character is marra dynahammer (though she has gotten quite the overhaul in looks since then), i went and we looked for the steam champ in the thaumanova reactor doing the whole key puzzle.

was fun, was partly what made me finally start that youtube channel I been wanting to do FOREVER

edit: also, the content is hard enough. Yeah it’s probably easy if you’re min/maxxed out and you run the same thing over and over again. But a casual player that plays in long bursts then takes a multi month break (like me) doesn’t get that kind of easyness to his gameplay, it all stays difficult, all the time.

Nobody likes the repeatedness of dungeons but it does let speed runners like me buy 2 gemstore items per week so…worth it

All I can say is WP has the right idea, I just hope Arena-net actually listens…

Main thing I noticed is harder dungeon, riskier bosses/skipping trash mobs and dungeons only a minority can complete….

First of all, Harder dungeons….I dont know about this, the dungeons seem to be rather hard at the moment, people seem to skip or somehow easely bug dungeons to make them a lot easier, and if I remember right even aetherblade was decently hard, the only reason any dungeon got “easy” was either because bug abuse/skipping or the idea behind knowing every boss/stealthing/skipping through random mobs.
Riskier: There need to be an riskier system? I agree….by ALOT…..Trash mobs are only there to confuse new players at this point……..There need to be a risk behind doing so, bosses as well…

Content only a minority can complete:

I imagine this would be feeling like soloing lupi x3 in the open while it have like 5+ different attacks each phase without any form of 1 shot or massive health reducing attacks, at least 10+ bosses and of course a lot of trash mobs that cant be skipped and all around complete dungeon so maps would be tight/non skippable?

If that is so, I like the idea, I do not know if I would be able to complete such a dungeon, but good to have options or see others complete such a dungeon.

People are skipping for efficiency,
The first time you do a piece of content it’s for the story/experience,almost every time after it’s for rewards/achievements. So doing it as fast as possible and efficient as possible achieves your goal best.
At the same time people want difficulty, but it has to be forced difficulty (with rewards) not optional (or reward less) otherwise it doesn’t make gameplay sense to do it.

ArenaNet seems really loathe to put content in the game that requires planning on the part of the players and a modicum of skill. It’s too bad. I love Fractals and dungeons. I really wish they had kept adding more of them into the game or updated the ones they have. The stuff they added to the Sylvari dungeon was a blast. Same goes for the fractals they added.

WP had some really good ideas on what they could do. ArenaNet sees the metrics though and those metrics seem to point to players wanting to stack and kill open world bosses and get loot chests that Magic Find has no effect on(unless you are in SW of course).

I adore the group content in this game. The only reason I don’t play anymore is because I have done it so many times, it’s lost its appeal. They really dropped the ball by not doing Season #3 before heading into HoT. It also seems that their design direction is more open world boss fights in a map that resembles a Dry Top/Silverwastes hybrid. No thanks.

Dungeons could be harder….but they need to be more rewarding with at least 2,3 exotics per run. My 2 cents.

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mix

Not really. If we want the content to be:

• Challenging for the player (do we want that? Or do we mean challenging to the character?) and
• Risky to undertake

Then by extension we’ll have the majority of players be unable to complete it or the players who are now demanding more difficult things to do will be sitting here again after a handful of runs.

It’s in the nature of the beast. If you want content which is perceived as difficult, then in an MMO you do this via induced elitism. You make it so that only a minority will complete the content. This minority then has bragging rights, they get to feel more skilled / tougher / more dedicated than the rest.
Because essentially you created an aptitude test. And to have any meaningful value of difficulty, X% has to fail the test. X will likely have to be a significant number, so that only a minority gets to feel that the content was difficult but hey, they made it.

This cannot be avoided.

Ragnarox.9601:

Dungeons could be harder….but they need to be more rewarding with at least 2,3 exotics per run. My 2 cents.

Then exotics will be worthless, unless you are saying dungeons should only be able to be completed by the best of the best…then sure.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Ragnarox.9601:

Dungeons could be harder….but they need to be more rewarding with at least 2,3 exotics per run. My 2 cents.

Then exotics will be worthless, unless you are saying dungeons should only be able to be completed by the best of the best…then sure.

Without that 1 gold reward at the end they are already worthless (only blue gear dropping – 1 exotic in 100 dungeon runs).

Carighan.6758:

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mix

Not really. If we want the content to be:

• Challenging for the player (do we want that? Or do we mean challenging to the character?) and
• Risky to undertake

Then by extension we’ll have the majority of players be unable to complete it or the players who are now demanding more difficult things to do will be sitting here again after a handful of runs.

It’s in the nature of the beast. If you want content which is perceived as difficult, then in an MMO you do this via induced elitism. You make it so that only a minority will complete the content. This minority then has bragging rights, they get to feel more skilled / tougher / more dedicated than the rest.
Because essentially you created an aptitude test. And to have any meaningful value of difficulty, X% has to fail the test. X will likely have to be a significant number, so that only a minority gets to feel that the content was difficult but hey, they made it.

This cannot be avoided.

This ^ , I see people saying “I don’t mind difficult/challenging content being in the game but it must be inclusive and every random group of players must be able to complete it”, where the two are for the most part mutually exclusive.

The idea is that the majority aspire to complete it, while only a very small minority actually complete it. In the game world context everyone wants to be the hero but only a very small number will actually be the hero.

Every criticism I’ve read in this thread (granted just skimmed) was addressed in the video. Not a huge WP fan, disagree on some stuff, but this was an excellent breakdown and would be a nice system.

He suggests a system that would likely have most taking it slower, perhaps beefing themselves up a bit with different gear. It incentivizes not skipping with better drops. And, disincentivizes skipping through making it more challenging and increasing the risk and punishment. Stealthing being called an exploit can’t be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t trivialize some content and knocking it down a notch on effectiveness would be solid. I always wanted some of the big stealth skips to have some “revealers” such that you had to pay attention, think dredge fractal or the caithe LS mission. But, his solution seems nice as well.

As far as bringing elitism into it… honestly, I think GW2s easy content is why I find it so much more overbearing here than I’ve seen in other games. Granted I didn’t play much WoW or LoL, but I have played a lot of other games. When you know you’re in for a rough time you don’t freak out about a little screw up. kitten happens. When you expect something fast and easy and someone screws that up, well that’s what causes frustration and frustration leads to that elitist attitude.

I think WP summed up my thoughts on challenging content that’s only played by a minority just fine. It’s something that gives another level. Something to strive for. Even if it’s not played regularly, it’s there as something to push players to improve and break up the monotony of whatever grind they’re used to.

And, the beauty of a Gambit (or skulls) system is that the content, the meat of it, is there for everyone. It’s a choice to bump things up and make them tougher. Can’t do the Gold Skull? Well no problem, just do whatever you can and still do the content if you find it fun. You don’t got to a gym and start telling them they should change their equipment because you can’t do the highest weight on the lat machine. Why do people have that mentality here?

Completely agree with the OP but:

Players play gw2 because game lacks all of that, its easy, they see the red bar go away faster, it creates the impression of being good (its a placebo effect, clever Anet), imagine players that were mediocre or bad at other games also players that never played other mmo’s come to gw2 and they can easily achieve what they cant do in other mmo’s.
IF more mechanics are introduced that make player having more effort to kill, player will not like it because it cuts their reward experiance…

Also…

Imagine a better AI, if mobs could simulate players behaviour (a smarter AI to make game more difficult, instead of increasing health and damage pool), that would make player cry because mobs could clean conditions use prots or blocks to lessen burst effect, and players would see it has a big nerf to their experience, because gw2 players want it easy, the broken game isn’t actually broken because players easily accept anything if it kills fast and feel rewarded by that.

Its a cheap game at the end, atm looks in phase of community segregation:

This is how i see the high damage output in all of the game, Anet DPS ideia of game is play X class with X build to win, aalso its easier to balance(in their ideia of balance) less builds, WP talked about soft trinity/roles behind the dps, well that also will never happen and the recent updates showed precisely that, some classes are (obligated by Anet) to play in certain way to obtain the max damage output making the life easier for the player who play that build, while other who try other path of the class cant do nothing.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Carighan.6758:

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mix

Not really. If we want the content to be:

• Challenging for the player (do we want that? Or do we mean challenging to the character?) and
• Risky to undertake

Then by extension we’ll have the majority of players be unable to complete it or the players who are now demanding more difficult things to do will be sitting here again after a handful of runs.

It’s in the nature of the beast. If you want content which is perceived as difficult, then in an MMO you do this via induced elitism. You make it so that only a minority will complete the content. This minority then has bragging rights, they get to feel more skilled / tougher / more dedicated than the rest.
Because essentially you created an aptitude test. And to have any meaningful value of difficulty, X% has to fail the test. X will likely have to be a significant number, so that only a minority gets to feel that the content was difficult but hey, they made it.

This cannot be avoided.

This ^ , I see people saying “I don’t mind difficult/challenging content being in the game but it must be inclusive and every random group of players must be able to complete it”, where the two are for the most part mutually exclusive.

The idea is that the majority aspire to complete it, while only a very small minority actually complete it. In the game world context everyone wants to be the hero but only a very small number will actually be the hero.

That last statement couldn’t be further from the truth. The Gambit type system allows everyone to be the hero, just some accomplished a higher difficulty than others. You still defeat subject Alpha, but some will have done it in a more deadly setting than others.

Though you kinda have a point in that it’s all a big ego show, people get their feelings hurt when someone is better than them, but that’s nothing but envy. And people talk down to others if they’re better, but that’s just pride. If people could just get over themselves, well, yeah who’re we kidding

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mixed.

This is the most important point right here. Difficult content would be great for people who like it (I know I would), but not for everyone else, and as much as people think 100 posts in a thread is representative of average players, I doubt thats true, since the people who dont want this kind of content are exactly the people who avoid the forums.

Still, id be disappointed if there isnt “some” hard content in HOT, because its clear there are a decent % of people that want it. Not a hard mode for every part of the game (that would be awesome though) since anet is running a business and has to cater to the majority of their players, but at least something more than another fractal and some new rare drops with a .00001% chance to get them.

WP’s ideas are excellent ones and I truly hope Anet listens to such constructive advice. It’d be great if they’d adopt idea and expand upon it. You don’t need increased health to make content more challenging. Like he said make mobs attack more often, give them boons that need to be stripped, increased number of skills they use with increased difficulty etc.

I agree that these things are sorely needed in this game, but sadly:

AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!

I thought the skulls idea was a pretty good one, although I didn’t like all of the ones he suggested, however things like, not being able to rally, dieing if downed and completing the dungeon without a single party member dieing are all great ones. If arenanet kept it to easily understandable mechanics like this then I think it could work well.

My view? His ideas are bad for a couple of reasons:

1. The proposed rewards are pretty bad. Considering the high difficulty he proposes gold rewards are a poor idea. Gold and items – we can already make more of that by playing the TP and once you learn the basics it’s significantly easier than what was proposed.
Exclusive skins could make this worth wile – there should be some prestige associated with such increased difficulty. Something that shows you did something hard and are good at the game.

2. Soft roles ( as he proposes) will very quickly transition into hard class specific roles.
How? Once the best way of running said content is found we will be locked in a “GLF x spec ele, x spec guard, x spec warrior to go”.
The higher the content the more dependent your success will be on the roles you bring and on your party composition.

In our current zerker meta – while we do see some exclusion – generally almost all classes can become part of a “zerker meta” group.

In this new system classes that perform a certain role the best would be forced into that role ( which goes against GW2’s soft role idea) and other classes would not be allowed to replace them in said role.

This is a human issue – but a real one. You would effectively be creating the situation Anet sought to resolve when they removed dedicated healers – the “glf x role to go” situation.

3. With MF bonuses coupled with high-MF and MF boosts – what’s there to stop group repeat-farming trash for potentially good rewards completely circumventing the system altogether.

Think Arah – there are high-level mobs that attack the Pact camp. Load up on “Skulls” and farm those. Quit – repeat – easy loot with 700%+ MF.

As long as there’s no “entry fee” or token that you have to pay for going in there’s no real way of stopping this.

Sizer.5632:

Leo G.4501:

8. Content only a minority can complete? This is in different theoretical territory as now we’re talking about resources. Development time and money can only be allocated finitely so my thoughts on this is mixed.

This is the most important point right here. Difficult content would be great for people who like it (I know I would), but not for everyone else, and as much as people think 100 posts in a thread is representative of average players, I doubt thats true, since the people who dont want this kind of content are exactly the people who avoid the forums.

Still, id be disappointed if there isnt “some” hard content in HOT, because its clear there are a decent % of people that want it. Not a hard mode for every part of the game (that would be awesome though) since anet is running a business and has to cater to the majority of their players, but at least something more than another fractal and some new rare drops with a .00001% chance to get them.

What about hard content that most can do, but for a majority of people it takes them a long time, a couple wipes, and requires them to use defensive setups, traits, gear etc. Hard content that only a minority of players can do in zerk gear and quickly. I think that’s the kind of content we want.

In terms of what WP said some of his ideas were bad. The gambits that slowed things down like always in combat, swiftness debuff, and things like less effective blinds or reflects will just make the dungeon unfun. Gambits should increase difficulty in a way that promotes better play, not something that reduces players skill effects or just increases time for no reason.

In general though I’d rather have hard content designed to be so rather than gambits that artificially increase difficulty. A new dungeon with an insanely hard boss that has complex aoes and melee attacks that forces you to consistently dodge and time blocks and invuln to get off channels like ice bow 4 or meteor shower will always be superior to a poorly designed boring boss (most in the game) with a couple of gambits that just ruin mechanics in the game to make it harder for the player.

Artificial difficulty is not fun. I play gw2 because I love the combat system, a big reason why I didnt enjoy the fractal change. Giving a player a handicap isnt making content difficult its making it tedious. The content should be tough to finish not because they took away my dodge but because the bosses forced me to react and think quickly.

I really dislike his ideas. No one should be punished for pugging(you already have the downside of investing more time). The challenges aren’t difficult for a organized team, over 6 Gold per path are simply too good compared to normal mode.

Pro: Easy and effortless gold for organized teams
Cons: Pugs won’t be able to find experienced players to play with them any more(it’s already difficult as hell to find someone helping at some specific dungeons). This would segregate the community even more and create a lot of hate

Two changes:
1) much more difficult than wp’s suggestions(organized groups could faceroll goldskull on specific paths)
2) no “better” reward(shouldn’t be 1:1 compareable, like more gold) but an alternative way to show of skill, f.e.: You won’t get any gold(normal mode won’t get obsolete), but instead you would have the chance to get untradeable rewards like specific weapondyes, auras, minis, skins,…(depending on the level of difficulty; multiple of an item could also stack intensity). Highscores are a nice idea, but shouldn’t reward gold(maybe instead a unique skin for the time you stay on top?).

If people want hardcore dungeons, fine, but I assure you that in a week they will have ferreted out tons of exploits and begun farming them. Then the cry of “GW2 caters to casuals” and “Why is there no hard content!!!11” begins all over again and that’s frustrating to everyone else.

I agree with WP on the PS – you get a group together and you slaughter everything in PS. Forcing it to be level locked didn’t help at all but then again, if you are on an alt and all min/maxed out for your level.. yeah, you’re going to kill everything. The first time player isn’t. There should be some happy middle ground there instead of what we have now.

Content that only a minority can complete – Don’t we already have this? I distinctly remember a lot of hardcore content that I can’t do or that require a lot of co-ordination and skill being in game – Queen’s gauntlet, SAB tribulation mode, Not so secret, Aetherblade path, Fractals that involve AR, Most of Arah, Skipping stones, Triple Trouble, Marionette etc etc etc ETC. I’m all for more of it but it needs to be optional and without any story attached because I likely will be locked out. Which is fine but don’t punish me by taking away the story of the game. I’m looking at you, Aether path.

Aerlen.5326:

If people want hardcore dungeons, fine, but I assure you that in a week they will have ferreted out tons of exploits and begun farming them. Then the cry of “GW2 caters to casuals” and “Why is there no hard content!!!11” begins all over again and that’s frustrating to everyone else.

I agree with WP on the PS – you get a group together and you slaughter everything in PS. Forcing it to be level locked didn’t help at all but then again, if you are on an alt and all min/maxed out for your level.. yeah, you’re going to kill everything. The first time player isn’t. There should be some happy middle ground there instead of what we have now.

Content that only a minority can complete – Don’t we already have this? I distinctly remember a lot of hardcore content that I can’t do or that require a lot of co-ordination and skill being in game – Queen’s gauntlet, SAB tribulation mode, Not so secret, Aetherblade path, Fractals that involve AR, Most of Arah, Skipping stones, Triple Trouble, Marionette etc etc etc ETC. I’m all for more of it but it needs to be optional and without any story attached because I likely will be locked out. Which is fine but don’t punish me by taking away the story of the game. I’m looking at you, Aether path.

I dont think saying there will be exploits is a good way to say we dont need harder content. Exploits is Anets fault and if they say they are going to make hard content they should be burdened with getting rid of exploits.

Also most of the stuff you said is not that hardcore. Everyone can do all of the content you listed, even in berserker gear. It really doesnt take that much to complete it. Just most people give up after failing once or they don’t want to spend the time to learn the dungeon. But i can guarantee even really bad players have made it through arah and fractals.

But they can never get rid of exploits. People will always find a way to cheese something and if you are cheesing something hard, you’re the one who is ruining the difficulty. That’s on you. I can sit in the corner in Zelda 2 and kill the final boss with no risk to myself or I can try to fight him head on – which do you think is more rewarding?

Don’t get me wrong – I think there should be heroic modes of the dungeons but I’m pretty sure even that wouldn’t be enough for people. If you want them to create something huge and impossible that only ten people in the community can do.. well.. um… no. That’s not happening. This game isn’t centered around exclusion.

Aerlen.5326:

If people want hardcore dungeons, fine, but I assure you that in a week they will have ferreted out tons of exploits and begun farming them. Then the cry of “GW2 caters to casuals” and “Why is there no hard content!!!11” begins all over again and that’s frustrating to everyone else.
(…)

If that happens, that actually depends from what Anet considers “difficult content”, larger health and damage pools aren’t actually hard modes itself, and are easily exploited, if they harden the game npc’s AI mechanics players might cry because they are harder to “exploit” has in take a portionof the effort out, for a faster reward.

Now if Anet rewards well for the effort taken that’s another story and harder game mode would be accepted.

The challenge is supposed to be the reward. I’m not against exclusive titles, minis, or a skin but I’m not for gold and precursors raining from the sky either.

The challenge is never the reward. The challenge is fun to most people because of the reward. If you have nothing to look forward to upon completion, then there is little reason to dedicate so much time to success.

Though titles, minis, skins are fine rewards. But if people are to repeatedly do them, there will need to be gold incentive, as you can only receive a title, the mini or a skin…once.

EDIT: Thanks Forum Mods for merging the threads, even if it makes for worse organization within threads. Anyway Deleted my first half, because it’s in the other first post, but I’ll keep my TL:DR version.

TL:DR- The Halo Skulls remade for GW2, bronze, silver and gold skulls that add something to the dungeon, be it enemy get more boons, cannot rally, or death closes the dungeon. But rewards can lead to almost 7g per path and a leader board system.

This might seem weird about me posting someone else made but I’d like to know the communities opinion on THIS subject in particular. Hard mode dungeons using the SKULLS theory.

I for one think with some tweaks it could work.

We have a thread about this already:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/WoodenPotatoes-Re-Tough-Content/

Mods might want to merge this there.

Could do that, I figured in my opinion there was to much of a wall of text in that one lol

Riku.4821:

Hard mode dungeons using the SKULLS theory.

Couldn’t we call them gambits since we already have an in-game example of this?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gambits

Riku.4821:

Could do that, I figured in my opinion there was to much of a wall of text in that one lol

Is kinda off putting, them walls of text.