Guild Wars 2

I love the friendly guild war 2 community! PLS dont make the next patch of content so hard such that 90% of the player base cant beat!

I lover guild war 2 and I think it is the most beautiful rpg out right now graphic wise! Even though guild war 2 vanilla lacks hard pve content! I still play guild war 2 a lot! I have spend over 200 dollars on guild war 2 buying skins making my character look beautiful! But what really separate guild war 2 from many other games such as world of warcraft is the friendly players and the friendly community! In other MMOs such as wow or tera rising the players are very mean! they dont help new players out, they will boot you for making 1 mistake in dungeons or raids! If you go on the main chat in any of those mmos the players not only will not help you but they will give you wrong answers or tell you lies just to screw with your head!

inconclusion! I want guild war 2 to be what it is beautiful and full of friendly nice people! THANK YOU!

I see where you are coming from but I do 210% disagree.

What has ruined this game from start is any level 80 in zerker armor can beat everything with ease. By making the content 2 or 3 times harder I think this will change the game from easy, to builds. We will start wanting people in knights gear or clerics gear and doing more then just mashing 1 through 5 on keyboard.

I hope this new hard content actually means if you run in with full zerker gear you are going to die and be useless to team.

Sylent.3165:

I see where you are coming from but I do 210% disagree.

What has ruined this game from start is any level 80 in zerker armor can beat everything with ease. By making the content 2 or 3 times harder I think this will change the game from easy, to builds. We will start wanting people in knights gear or clerics gear and doing more then just mashing 1 through 5 on keyboard.

I hope this new hard content actually means if you run in with full zerker gear you are going to die and be useless to team.

Only 210% disagree? Casual much.

But I agree with the point. Berserker has trivialized this game’s content. I don’t care how “hard” people say the endgame (Fractal50, etc.), it can all be done with ultra glassy builds on full berserker, which isn’t right. Im just glad ArenaNet will phase that out, so we are forced to have defensive investment to diversify the buildpool and detoxify the nasty “berserker only, no ranger, no necro” side of the community.

How I do know they “will” phase it out? At EGX and PAX East, we battled against the Wyvern, a legendary grade monster, using pre-made characters. Those pre-made characters were equipped with Celestial armour by default, and a lot of people got wrecked by this Wyvern. You need to be on your toes, and there are times against it where dodging will not save you. Considering people wearing Celestial got wrecked, people wearing Berserker will literally die instantaneously, and after we played, we found out from the devs that they nerfed the Wyvern for the demo so it wasn’t too hard for us. So if Celestial players struggled against a nerfed Wyvern, berserker meta is dead when it goes up against it un-nerfed

Thats just 1 encounter that we’ll meet at the beginning of Verdant Brink. What do you think we’ll find as we get deeper into the jungle, where we’ll meet harder battles?

Ive already got my Soldiers/Knights gear in advance.

All content no matter the difficulty it brought low by time and repetition. When Tequatl was remade it was pretty difficult, now it’s a casual farm. The same for many of the dungeons.
I don’t think the problem is that content is too easy, more that we’re not getting enough new and varied content.

@IAMANDLOVE

Like any social venture, you’ve got to surround yourself with people doing the things you want to do. Sometimes that means finding a new guild. Other times it means going somewhere you want to progress and just start talking to people doing the content. The best way to overcome challenging content is with like-minded people.

until they make defensive stats mean something against world bosses… the zerk meta will persist. as an elementalist, getting one-shot while maintaining 100% Pvt gear means that defensive stats aren’t worth losing damage stats for. i might as well kill things faster, because one slip up on my part means i’m dead on the floor no matter how defensive i build.

I stopped on 90% of playerbase cant beat.

I think that the only content I’ve ever seen into this game tha is not easy to beat by all players, is Liadri. Maybe wurm, but well.. it is a group raid so it is meant to be hard.

I am on the opposite team Anet, please please please, make more challenging and interesting content pleaaaaaaase.

i hope this game doesnt become WOW!

I see two problems regarding difficulty in content.

One problem is that Arenanet does not want to create content that is grindy, or gate content requiring you to grind. The reason why Ascended is only 5% better is because you have to do a massive grind to get to it, Fractals is also very grindy. You can consider them endgame, since overtime your gear improve and your Agony Resistance increases.

Another problem is since how all content is not gated by grinding stats (which consumes a lot of time), you can pretty much pub stomp every PvE encounter pre-80.

However, Arenanet has created some content that is difficult, but at the same time very fun. There is a problem, however. Overtime as the difficult content ages, more and more players familiarize themselves with how the boss works, increasing the chance of their win rate (Triple Trouble is a special exception, since I’ve never had the chance to beat it even through multiple tries)

Let’s take an example, Vinewrath. It’s been about 5 months since this little guy has existed, and I’ve ran plenty of runs throughout the months to examine my experience. Between 1 to 3 months being released, it was fairly common to see the Breach and Vinewrath fail. But when mid April hit, I’ve observed that the win rate is pretty high. As of now, I’d be surprised if I see the Breach fail and really, really surprised to see Vinewrath fail.

You may create the argument “Vinewrath and the Breach is always easy for me!”, sure. However, it’s not the same situation when you have 100-200 people on your side and having enough coordination to beat the boss.

I would absolutely love Arenanet to create these giant, epic bosses and to have them absolutely heart-wrenching difficult. It will harden the players, and overtime will make them more skilled, resulting in smoother dungeon runs, better win rate for Triple Trouble (the Triple Trouble boss is perfect for a true endgame boss), and more engaged gameplay. I believe Arenanet has created a mistake by making things easier. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats. Why? Because they’re Arenanet. I’ve played Guild Wars 1 (not as much as GW2 now), and while the level cap is 20, consider yourself dead if you don’t have the proper skills and the proper team to beat the content.

When I play Heart of Thorns, I want to see players being killed by everything until we’re hardwired to understand the mechanics. The defiance mechanic is amazing, and encourages teamwork instead of zerging bosses until they’re dead. So far from what I’ve seen, Arenanet has stepped their game up in terms of mechanics and difficult (their post-launch bosses are seriously good), and it’s our job to step it up as well.

TLDR: I disagree, OP. Overtime content will become easier as more players learn how HoT content works. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats.

Hard content needs to be introduced because hard content lasts a lot longer than easier content.

If content is easy, you’ll breeze through it the day it’s released, and then what? You’re just doing it over and over again for the next few years.

Hard content? Could take you anywhere from a week to several months to complete, let alone perfect depending on how hard it is and what it actually entails.

You need to accept that this is an MMO, there will always be the possibility that content will be added that not everyone will be able to complete. Millions of people play this game, you can’t cater to all of them.

Guild wars 2 has had easy casual content for 3 years now, the hardest we got was fractals, they were a breeze 2 weeks after launch and people finally knew what to do.

I want something now that’s going to challenge me and can’t be cheesed like Liadri.

I’m looking forward to new more difficult content, at a hopefully far higher than 90% fail rate, you understand that 10% would be 30,000 players of the active player base or 450,000 of the total playerbase depending on which stat you use.

It’s not unreasonable to create a piece of content you only intend 1000 players to beat and I do hope they add some things (not all) like that.
Plus if I was designing an MMO I’d always have a piece of content no one is capable of completing, and if someone does end up finishing it they have to create a new even harder piece, basically raising the bar each time.

Avascar.9237:

You may create the argument “Vinewrath and the Breach is always easy for me!”, sure. However, it’s not the same situation when you have 100-200 people on your side and

I wouldn’t use the VW as an example of hard content because you don’t control the variables. That’s why I’d want the hard content instanced, if I fail it must be because I was not good enough or I made a mistake or a team mate I chose messed up, not because bob the fresh level 80 wandered in first time on the map and messed everything up.

Avascar.9237:

I see two problems regarding difficulty in content.

One problem is that Arenanet does not want to create content that is grindy, or gate content requiring you to grind. The reason why Ascended is only 5% better is because you have to do a massive grind to get to it, Fractals is also very grindy. You can consider them endgame, since overtime your gear improve and your Agony Resistance increases.

Another problem is since how all content is not gated by grinding stats (which consumes a lot of time), you can pretty much pub stomp every PvE encounter pre-80.

However, Arenanet has created some content that is difficult, but at the same time very fun. There is a problem, however. Overtime as the difficult content ages, more and more players familiarize themselves with how the boss works, increasing the chance of their win rate (Triple Trouble is a special exception, since I’ve never had the chance to beat it even through multiple tries)

Let’s take an example, Vinewrath. It’s been about 5 months since this little guy has existed, and I’ve ran plenty of runs throughout the months to examine my experience. Between 1 to 3 months being released, it was fairly common to see the Breach and Vinewrath fail. But when mid April hit, I’ve observed that the win rate is pretty high. As of now, I’d be surprised if I see the Breach fail and really, really surprised to see Vinewrath fail.

You may create the argument “Vinewrath and the Breach is always easy for me!”, sure. However, it’s not the same situation when you have 100-200 people on your side and having enough coordination to beat the boss.

I would absolutely love Arenanet to create these giant, epic bosses and to have them absolutely heart-wrenching difficult. It will harden the players, and overtime will make them more skilled, resulting in smoother dungeon runs, better win rate for Triple Trouble (the Triple Trouble boss is perfect for a true endgame boss), and more engaged gameplay. I believe Arenanet has created a mistake by making things easier. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats. Why? Because they’re Arenanet. I’ve played Guild Wars 1 (not as much as GW2 now), and while the level cap is 20, consider yourself dead if you don’t have the proper skills and the proper team to beat the content.

When I play Heart of Thorns, I want to see players being killed by everything until we’re hardwired to understand the mechanics. The defiance mechanic is amazing, and encourages teamwork instead of zerging bosses until they’re dead. So far from what I’ve seen, Arenanet has stepped their game up in terms of mechanics and difficult (their post-launch bosses are seriously good), and it’s our job to step it up as well.

TLDR: I disagree, OP. Overtime content will become easier as more players learn how HoT content works. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats.

i dont agree! if arena net creat the content that you say! The game will scare off a lot of players who are already playing this game! Beside if people are really looking for such difficult content they would be playing another game such as wow! and if you are going the wow root this game will be dead! Because no game can creat wow better then wow!

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

Avascar.9237:

I see two problems regarding difficulty in content.

One problem is that Arenanet does not want to create content that is grindy, or gate content requiring you to grind. The reason why Ascended is only 5% better is because you have to do a massive grind to get to it, Fractals is also very grindy. You can consider them endgame, since overtime your gear improve and your Agony Resistance increases.

Another problem is since how all content is not gated by grinding stats (which consumes a lot of time), you can pretty much pub stomp every PvE encounter pre-80.

However, Arenanet has created some content that is difficult, but at the same time very fun. There is a problem, however. Overtime as the difficult content ages, more and more players familiarize themselves with how the boss works, increasing the chance of their win rate (Triple Trouble is a special exception, since I’ve never had the chance to beat it even through multiple tries)

Let’s take an example, Vinewrath. It’s been about 5 months since this little guy has existed, and I’ve ran plenty of runs throughout the months to examine my experience. Between 1 to 3 months being released, it was fairly common to see the Breach and Vinewrath fail. But when mid April hit, I’ve observed that the win rate is pretty high. As of now, I’d be surprised if I see the Breach fail and really, really surprised to see Vinewrath fail.

You may create the argument “Vinewrath and the Breach is always easy for me!”, sure. However, it’s not the same situation when you have 100-200 people on your side and having enough coordination to beat the boss.

I would absolutely love Arenanet to create these giant, epic bosses and to have them absolutely heart-wrenching difficult. It will harden the players, and overtime will make them more skilled, resulting in smoother dungeon runs, better win rate for Triple Trouble (the Triple Trouble boss is perfect for a true endgame boss), and more engaged gameplay. I believe Arenanet has created a mistake by making things easier. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats. Why? Because they’re Arenanet. I’ve played Guild Wars 1 (not as much as GW2 now), and while the level cap is 20, consider yourself dead if you don’t have the proper skills and the proper team to beat the content.

When I play Heart of Thorns, I want to see players being killed by everything until we’re hardwired to understand the mechanics. The defiance mechanic is amazing, and encourages teamwork instead of zerging bosses until they’re dead. So far from what I’ve seen, Arenanet has stepped their game up in terms of mechanics and difficult (their post-launch bosses are seriously good), and it’s our job to step it up as well.

TLDR: I disagree, OP. Overtime content will become easier as more players learn how HoT content works. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats.

i dont agree! if arena net creat the content that you say! The game will scare off a lot of players who are already playing this game! Beside if people are really looking for such difficult content they would be playing another game such as wow! and if you are going the wow root this game will be dead! Because no game can creat wow better then wow!

It wouldn’t scare them off at all, there’s tons of things in-game that these “casual” players can still do.

What about those of us that have sunk hundreds or even thousands of hours into the game? We’re not all content running the same easy content day in day out, we like to be challenged.

As it is now, i can’t think of anything in-game but level 50 fractals that actually require me to be alert, everything else i do in-game can pretty much be done auto pilot, i can pay little to no attention and still do well at. It’s a game, i should be focusing and concentrating, not treating it like I’m playing farmville on facebook by mindlessly pushing buttons and clicking away.

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

i dont agree! if arena net creat the content that you say! The game will scare off a lot of players who are already playing this game! Beside if people are really looking for such difficult content they would be playing another game such as wow! and if you are going the wow root this game will be dead! Because no game can creat wow better then wow!

Why are you associating hard content with Wow? other games can have hard content and it can have nothing to do with wow.

Also casual =/= easy, it just means it only requires a low playtime to complete. You still have to be competent to complete it (even a “casual” game is still a game where your personal skills are the main assessment).

FYI
I’m playing Guildwars 2 because:
-No level cap raises ever
-No gear treadmill
-Less non-endgame grind
-Story and love

I did not sign up for all easy content, I want the game to be trying to beat me and I want to be able to be an elite as in any MMO.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

Avascar.9237:

I see two problems regarding difficulty in content.

One problem is that Arenanet does not want to create content that is grindy, or gate content requiring you to grind. The reason why Ascended is only 5% better is because you have to do a massive grind to get to it, Fractals is also very grindy. You can consider them endgame, since overtime your gear improve and your Agony Resistance increases.

Another problem is since how all content is not gated by grinding stats (which consumes a lot of time), you can pretty much pub stomp every PvE encounter pre-80.

However, Arenanet has created some content that is difficult, but at the same time very fun. There is a problem, however. Overtime as the difficult content ages, more and more players familiarize themselves with how the boss works, increasing the chance of their win rate (Triple Trouble is a special exception, since I’ve never had the chance to beat it even through multiple tries)

Let’s take an example, Vinewrath. It’s been about 5 months since this little guy has existed, and I’ve ran plenty of runs throughout the months to examine my experience. Between 1 to 3 months being released, it was fairly common to see the Breach and Vinewrath fail. But when mid April hit, I’ve observed that the win rate is pretty high. As of now, I’d be surprised if I see the Breach fail and really, really surprised to see Vinewrath fail.

You may create the argument “Vinewrath and the Breach is always easy for me!”, sure. However, it’s not the same situation when you have 100-200 people on your side and having enough coordination to beat the boss.

I would absolutely love Arenanet to create these giant, epic bosses and to have them absolutely heart-wrenching difficult. It will harden the players, and overtime will make them more skilled, resulting in smoother dungeon runs, better win rate for Triple Trouble (the Triple Trouble boss is perfect for a true endgame boss), and more engaged gameplay. I believe Arenanet has created a mistake by making things easier. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats. Why? Because they’re Arenanet. I’ve played Guild Wars 1 (not as much as GW2 now), and while the level cap is 20, consider yourself dead if you don’t have the proper skills and the proper team to beat the content.

When I play Heart of Thorns, I want to see players being killed by everything until we’re hardwired to understand the mechanics. The defiance mechanic is amazing, and encourages teamwork instead of zerging bosses until they’re dead. So far from what I’ve seen, Arenanet has stepped their game up in terms of mechanics and difficult (their post-launch bosses are seriously good), and it’s our job to step it up as well.

TLDR: I disagree, OP. Overtime content will become easier as more players learn how HoT content works. Arenanet should gate content by skill and group coordination, not by stats.

i dont agree! if arena net creat the content that you say! The game will scare off a lot of players who are already playing this game! Beside if people are really looking for such difficult content they would be playing another game such as wow! and if you are going the wow root this game will be dead! Because no game can creat wow better then wow!

It wouldn’t scare them off at all, there’s tons of things in-game that these “casual” players can still do.

What about those of us that have sunk hundreds or even thousands of hours into the game? We’re not all content running the same easy content day in day out, we like to be challenged.

As it is now, i can’t think of anything in-game but level 50 fractals that actually require me to be alert, everything else i do in-game can pretty much be done auto pilot, i can pay little to no attention and still do well at. It’s a game, i should be focusing and concentrating, not treating it like I’m playing farmville on facebook by mindlessly pushing buttons and clicking away.

if level 50 fractal is your thing, then go play level 50 fractal! why should a game cater to the 1%? explain that to me!

Conski Deshan.2057:

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

i dont agree! if arena net creat the content that you say! The game will scare off a lot of players who are already playing this game! Beside if people are really looking for such difficult content they would be playing another game such as wow! and if you are going the wow root this game will be dead! Because no game can creat wow better then wow!

Why are you associating hard content with Wow? other games can have hard content and it can have nothing to do with wow.

Also casual =/= easy, it just means it only requires a low playtime to complete. You still have to be competent to complete it (even a “casual” game is still a game where your personal skills are the main assessment).

FYI
I’m playing Guildwars 2 because:
-No level cap raises ever
-No gear treadmill
-Less non-endgame grind
-Story and love

I did not sign up for all easy content, I want the game to be trying to beat me and I want to be able to be an elite as in any MMO.

if you want hard content then go play another MMO!

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

if you want hard content then go play another MMO!

I want some hard content. If you don’t, why don’t YOU go play another MMO? :P That logic is a two-way street.

I don’t believe everything should be difficult, but I want some more challenges to be thrown our way. I miss the big events from living story season 1 where we had large-scale battles that required effort and coordination. And to be frank, everything difficult becomes “easier” overtime as people figure out how to approach them. Tequatl’s revamp threw people in to a tizzy because he was so “insanely difficult”, people wanted him nerfed. Now we have a system and he gets rolled regularly. Do not fear difficulty

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

if you want hard content then go play another MMO!

If you want easy content then go play another MMO?

Seriously, there are alot of variables that make a content challanging. Triple Trouble can be challanging, but not in the same way Stepping Stones(JP) can be challanging. World Compleation is a time challange, WvW and PvP are its own challange.

I have no doubt that there will be all sorts of challanges in the expac, not just hard try-hard 100h+ a week player only, content

And again you don’t have to do what is precisely laid out for you in the game. Challenge yourself to beat a time run in a dungeon or to solo a champion etc. Make your fun.

What would bring back the community aspect of the game would be introducing open world dungeons which require the ability of each and every class to be able to advance.
(like some kind of raid event)

For example :
– ennemies that are invulnerable unless the first attack is a surprise attack (which requires stealthy classes).

-ennemies that only get temporarly vulnerable after getting blocked.

- ennemies that take damage only when burnt, or chilled, or stunnned, etc…

- ennemies that take damage only by Aoes.

-ennemies that take damage only by Aoe heals

-ennemies that take damage only when feared

- energy walls that blocks and hurt you unless you apply reflect Aoe on it

- poisonous areas that can be cleansed only while healing aoe is applied on it.

and so on.
(Basically, gimmicks that make use of the abilities of the classes instead of external mechanisms like most of the “puzzle” contents)

But making it so that everyone can participate and learn, instead of having small parties which tends to bring the elitist mindset.

I’m not going to lie. I struggle with some of the harder content. It took me ages and several different builds to beat Liadri. It took me a while (and a lot of help) to learn dungeon paths. When I first started playing, I sucked the MOST at JQ. There were times when I didn’t enjoy beating my head against a while to struggle through the difficult content.

Having said that, I actually do enjoy learning my professions and coming up against new challenges. I don’t want an uphill battle with every single thing I do, but I like to feel like I am improving. I am hoping that we will have a nice mix of content moving forward.

I agree with you 100%, OP. If ANet builds a release that’s all and only about hard content, it will prevent new players from buying the game, and the game will die.

On the other hand, ANet also must satisfy the desires of the ones who want harder. It’s a difficult road to hoe for them.

In GW1, they came up with hard mode and elite missions. Those worked great, extending the life of the game nearly 5 years. They need to come up with something like those.

Unfortunately, it can’t be a compromise. It must be multi-tracked. I think they’re on the right track by having achievements separated from the basic storyline. But, all the guys challenging your post have probably completed most of those already. I do not envy ANet their task.

I think this is why my love for this game is dying in fact. GW2 caters to players such as the OP, and no offense to the OP.. but what about players who actually like TRYING. Like everything in this game is so kittening easy to obtain now it makes no sense, and sure, grinding is tedious but where is he depth of obtaining an item besides farming the same item over and over only to make something that only will go towards Aesthetics?

Guild Wars is not what it use to be back in the day. And honestly, this saddens me as I used to love the heck out the original series. Everything in this game is so cheesy now. PvE consist of everyone running around with the same stats, stacking on a boss that is always stationary, that starts AND ends the same way EVERY fight, yet this is supposed to be dynamic?

PvP consist of running the same builds that are viable, because low and behold, other traits for said class either suck or just aren’t as good, so everyone is the SAME.. and if anything changes, its probably one of the only 3 utilities you get access to.

And now we have request of more of this same stuff?? Guildwars 2 has become the new social media game where you come to dress up your avatar and do meaningless things. No one cares that you defeated the dragons, no one talks about how you performed in your personal story, dynamic quest repeat them selves EVERY time whether your there or not, and I could go on.

Please……. I think that because of request like this it is why the game is the way it is now.

Casual.. super casual.

Edit: I had to vent, because really I like GW2 and really this game is just diappointing to me now up until this point, but to leave a solution at least, they should either add hard mode for those who want to do it OR… have difficulty settings ranging from BABY EASY.. to medium.. then HARD… then again.. its probably too much work and they will continue doing as they have before.

I [math.supremum(percentage)]% disagree with OP.

GW2 is just either face-rollingly easy, or kittened in most aspects of pve. Enemies often wait five seconds between attacking, bosses too, and you can avoid most damage with blocks. I still don’t see regular enemies using 3 or more skills from a profession with comparable attack speed, aside from maybe some nightmare court enemies.

So yeah, more challenging, active content is what I support

I agree with you. Any time I hear people crying for harder content all I hear is “I want exclusive content only I can do, screw everyone else”

I’m not sure why you guys want hard content in open world, that’s asking for a nightmare of logistic. A bunch of casual will stumble onto open world hard content, wipe the group because the boss will scale and then the casual players will spend the rest of their gaming evening receiving salty insults, death threats or whatever other nonsense angry competitive gamers can do.

WoW has hard content but they put it in raid instances so guilds can deal with people not pulling their weight. But with world events, the hardworking guilds have no control over who gets to do an encounter so this is just going to ruin the community and promote elitism.

I think it’s about time Arenanet kills the “zerk-only” meta and introduces raids to their game so people who want really hard content can get it without ruining the community because an open world event was ruined by a bunch of newbies.

Bearhugger.4326:

I’m not sure why you guys want hard content in open world, that’s asking for a nightmare of logistic. A bunch of casual will stumble onto open world hard content, wipe the group because the boss will scale and then the casual players will spend the rest of their gaming evening receiving salty insults, death threats or whatever other nonsense angry competitive gamers can do.

WoW has hard content but they put it in raid instances so guilds can deal with people not pulling their weight. But with world events, the hardworking guilds have no control over who gets to do an encounter so this is just going to ruin the community and promote elitism.

I think it’s about time Arenanet kills the “zerk-only” meta and introduces raids to their game so people who want really hard content can get it without ruining the community because an open world event was ruined by a bunch of newbies.

Ironically, your mindset is the mindset of elitists.
You just want to seclude hard contents to instances so newbies won’t screw it up. As those instances grow older, they will become less and less accessible to those said newbies.

But look at what happened to Tequatl. People used to screw it up over and over. But they learnt how to do it. And those who know how to do it teach the way to the new ones. And those ones have the opportunity to learn the mechanism and then contribute and teach to other new ones.
But if Tequatl was an instanced event, it would turn into some kind of Arah dungeon where you have just small opportunities to get to learn. Newbies would get the pressure of veteran elitists who’ll just tell them to watch video guides before coming etc etc.

Bearhugger.4326:

I’m not sure why you guys want hard content in open world, that’s asking for a nightmare of logistic. A bunch of casual will stumble onto open world hard content, wipe the group because the boss will scale and then the casual players will spend the rest of their gaming evening receiving salty insults, death threats or whatever other nonsense angry competitive gamers can do.

WoW has hard content but they put it in raid instances so guilds can deal with people not pulling their weight. But with world events, the hardworking guilds have no control over who gets to do an encounter so this is just going to ruin the community and promote elitism.

I think it’s about time Arenanet kills the “zerk-only” meta and introduces raids to their game so people who want really hard content can get it without ruining the community because an open world event was ruined by a bunch of newbies.

Much like Tequatl was when it was first introduced you mean? Now look at it, ive failed it once in the past 4 months, Once. When it was released it failed every single day. The people in this game can learn you know.

Sorry for the HS but:
I saw several post using the “new” tequatl as a proof that players are getting better with every try. But if you really think that this event is easier now (only) because players have become better you didn’t understood what happen to it^^.
END HS

As far as I’m concern I do believe that challenging content is the key to keep players on a game. Of course it’s not the only things that make people stay but when a game, like GW2 in its current state, is so easy that all you have to do is pretty much roll you head on your keyboard to achieve any event it end up loosing its flavour.
You can’t deny that right now it’s hard to see an event fail. I mean, I haven’t see a fail at teq for so long, the only fail on TT the last 3 month was because of a bug and VW… well this one is a joke and I still try to figure out how you can fail an event where you can read ON the mobs how to kill them (a bit drama but close to reality).

I think that a good way to have “everyone” satisfy would be to have a window when you enter a map that ask if you want Hard Mode or Normal Mode (kinda like GW1) and then send you on serv1 or serv2 depending on your choice.

and i would like it so that necromancers were wanted in groups instead of being exiled like they currently are when it comes to dungeons . oh my mistake this game is build wars

GW2 is a skill based game. Instead of relying on gear to create a fake sense of difficulty, they rely on actual player skill. As the difficulty increases, there will come a point where people will find that they’re no longer capable of playing. If you haven’t noticed, every major content release has slightly increased the difficulty, from the Molten Alliance to Mordrem minions.

The difficulty will scare people off; it already has. Some people simply couldn’t handle Orr for example. That’s the downside of all skill based games. I have no doubt that people will complain about the difficulty of HoT in the same way people have complained all along. For example, the solo instances are impossible to solo. If you stand and try to facetank, you’re going to have a bad time.

Sylent.3165:

I hope this new hard content actually means if you run in with full zerker gear you are going to die and be useless to team.

If that were to ever happen, players that currently rely on defense would no longer be able to play and GW2 would have devolved into a stat-based, rather than skill-based game.

Full offense will always be the best option for the top players. GW2 is an action game. You’re not meant to take hits, you’re meant to avoid them by being mobile, or as a last resort, dodging. As the difficulty increases, the only thing that will change is the gap between zerkers and everyone else. It may come to a point that taking a single hit may get you 1 shot, making zerker builds very dangerous, but that’s also a part of the challenge. The zerkers people like to complain about, as in the ones that die, are those that would fall into the gap. The zerkers you never notice, the ones that are carrying everyone else, are the ones that will always be capable of running zerker.

It’s important to note people asking for hard content are not asking for ALL the content to be as hard as possible, they just want some pieces and areas designed to be a higher difficulty or to be super challenging.

Healix.5819:

GW2 is a skill based game. Instead of relying on gear to create a fake sense of difficulty, they rely on actual player skill. As the difficulty increases, there will come a point where people will find that they’re no longer capable of playing. If you haven’t noticed, every major content release has slightly increased the difficulty, from the Molten Alliance to Mordrem minions.

The difficulty will scare people off; it already has. Some people simply couldn’t handle Orr for example. That’s the downside of all skill based games. I have no doubt that people will complain about the difficulty of HoT in the same way people have complained all along. For example, the solo instances are impossible to solo. If you stand and try to facetank, you’re going to have a bad time.

That’s a risk that occurs in any skill based game, I don’t believe it would scare people off though.
Let’s say you play a sport or any hobby really, it can be anything there are several levels in any of them say:
Local level:
County level:
National level:
International level:
Global level:
and then a prestige level like Olympic level or World record level.

Most people never advance past local level and even less people make it to each higher tier but they don’t stop playing just because they’ll never play an international match because they enjoy the base activity. Sure they know the higher they get the nicer stuff they get: Money, medals, better equipment etc. They accept that and continue on and I feel MMO’s follow a similar principal.

Tabootrinket.2631:

What would bring back the community aspect of the game would be introducing open world dungeons which require the ability of each and every class to be able to advance.
(like some kind of raid event)

For example :
– ennemies that are invulnerable unless the first attack is a surprise attack (which requires stealthy classes).

-ennemies that only get temporarly vulnerable after getting blocked.

- ennemies that take damage only when burnt, or chilled, or stunnned, etc…

- ennemies that take damage only by Aoes.

-ennemies that take damage only by Aoe heals

-ennemies that take damage only when feared

- energy walls that blocks and hurt you unless you apply reflect Aoe on it

- poisonous areas that can be cleansed only while healing aoe is applied on it.

and so on.
(Basically, gimmicks that make use of the abilities of the classes instead of external mechanisms like most of the “puzzle” contents)

But making it so that everyone can participate and learn, instead of having small parties which tends to bring the elitist mindset.

This would definitely make things more interesting. It would be nice if it also made using some of the other stat combos for armor/weapons a more common thing.

I heard of another game that spat in the faces of casuals… that went hardcore… that the content was challenging and hard.. that was made for the folks that like “trying”… what was its name… can’t remember… oh yes… Wildstar.

That went well. Let’s all be careful what we wish for here, cause we might just get it. Keep the game casual friendly anet. I love full zones and populated cities.

PorceleinEve.2973:

I heard of another game that spat in the faces of casuals… that went hardcore… that the content was challenging and hard.. that was made for the folks that like “trying”… what was its name… can’t remember… oh yes… Wildstar.

That went well. Let’s all be careful what we wish for here, cause we might just get it. Keep the game casual friendly anet. I love full zones and populated cities.

Wildstar catered ONLY to the hardcore.

We’re not asking for ONLY hardcore content, we just want something that will actually challenge us for a change.

I enjoy playing guild wars 2, but i can only tolerate everything being able to be done on auto pilot mode for so long.

Look at games in the NES days, they were challenging, they were hard, albeit this was in a way to pad out the games, but they were adored and loved, still are to this day.

Games that cater to the casual only alienate a lot of people that are actually gamers.
You can still have content for the casuals while introducing things for those who like a bit of a challenge, things like Liadri. Can’t do it? Get better or don’t do it. It’s a game, I like to be challenged sometimes, If i wanted a casual experience, I’d go play a facebook game.

I’ll put it like this.
WoW stated for WoD, it was going back to the “Glory days of hardcore content.” And yes, it did, but everything was also insanely simplifed in the process, every class, and i mean EVERY class now has a simple 4 button rotation/priority system.

At the start of WoD, wows subs were peaking at just under 12m.
Now? They lost a third of their subs in the first quarter of the year alone because of how casual the game has become.
By making a game too easy, you risk alienating your playerbase and losing customers, you need to introduce content that caters to both sides of the pool.

You can have your casual content, but i want my hard content, if you can’t do my hard content, then either get good or accept the fact that it’s simply something you won’t be able to achieve unless you do.

Argon.1563:

But I agree with the point. Berserker has trivialized this game’s content. I don’t care how “hard” people say the endgame (Fractal50, etc.), it can all be done with ultra glassy builds on full berserker, which isn’t right. Im just glad ArenaNet will phase that out, so we are forced to have defensive investment to diversify the buildpool and detoxify the nasty “berserker only, no ranger, no necro” side of the community.

Ranger and necro are not useless. The majority of people playing ranger and necro are horrible. They don’t use melee, they get their group killed and argue when you tell them to actually help instead of sitting back and doing nothing(LB was insanely buffed for ranger yet people still don’t like rangers, it’s not the class it’s the people). A noob on a warrior is 10x more useful: he will melee, support the team and not die easily. So…rangers aren’t terrible as a class but everyone wants to play bearbow. It’s a bad joke.

Considering people wearing Celestial got wrecked, people wearing Berserker will literally die instantaneously, and after we played, we found out from the devs that they nerfed the Wyvern for the demo so it wasn’t too hard for us. So if Celestial players struggled against a nerfed Wyvern, berserker meta is dead when it goes up against it un-nerfed

Ive already got my Soldiers/Knights gear in advance.

Soldier’s gear has been meta on difficult bosses for…forever. You don’t crit structures.

IAMANDLOVE.3095:

if you want hard content then go play another MMO!

I don’t know if you noticed (were you here first year?) but most already did. And many of those saying the same thing on the way out that they made-remade the content too easy, too casual.

I would imaging that most that still play gw2 already have some other game they mainly play, then just come here when they get a little bored there and then spend money here in the gem shop. The whole retooling to casual play, temporary content, gem store tickets/passes and no expansions for over three years, well this is intentional. They want those wow players, but to just come here, spend some money and then go back to their main game until next time.

I don’t consider this my main mmo, I’m not a casual player, not hard-core either, just a core player for nearly 20 years of mmo’s. My other game is one of the hardest mmo on the market and I’ll prolly still have my sub there in ten+ years…. likely long after gw2 closes down once the fickle casual players find a new fad game to RMT between acceptable wow expansions. So yeah, keep it up there, it’ll eventually be a lonely place for you here at this rate.

edit: though maybe I’m being a bit too critical. I will give them this though, they have made some development changes that may be on the right track. They have shifted from the temp content to an actual expansion.

Tabootrinket.2631:

For example :
– ennemies that are invulnerable unless the first attack is a surprise attack (which requires stealthy classes).

-ennemies that only get temporarly vulnerable after getting blocked.

- ennemies that take damage only when burnt, or chilled, or stunnned, etc…

- ennemies that take damage only by Aoes.

-ennemies that take damage only by Aoe heals

-ennemies that take damage only when feared

- energy walls that blocks and hurt you unless you apply reflect Aoe on it

- poisonous areas that can be cleansed only while healing aoe is applied on it.

Just out of interest, I decided to see which classes could do what.

1: Thief, Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer. Any Norn
2: Mesmer, Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian
3: This one I can’t kitten without a specific condition
4: Every Class
5: Every Class, though if it’s the only way to do any damage, thieves, necromancers, ranger would have a lot of time in which they’re waiting for the cooldown on their one AoE heal to come back up.
6: Every Class

Sylent.3165:

I see where you are coming from but I do 210% disagree.

What has ruined this game from start is any level 80 in zerker armor can beat everything with ease. By making the content 2 or 3 times harder I think this will change the game from easy, to builds. We will start wanting people in knights gear or clerics gear and doing more then just mashing 1 through 5 on keyboard.

I hope this new hard content actually means if you run in with full zerker gear you are going to die and be useless to team.

Agree, the PVE in this game is far too easy, and the AI far too dumb.

Personally, I don’t see why people are saying zerker is making content easy. If players can manage to keep themselves alive in FOTM 50 with zerker, it just means that they have acquired that skill level to do so.

I am sure everyone see some zerker ele get down easily while some don’t. What’s the different between both? One knows what to do and other don’t.

Anyone remember in launch of game NOBODY could beat Arah because it was too hard and so many people complained it got nerfed? Lol its not that GW2 is easy its that a lot of people can’t beat something complain for years and ANET nerfs it just look at the NPE. GW is actually too HARD for people lol. I nice person want be friend?

This is why we need hard mode. Hard mode of everything. Hard open world with hard events, hard dungeons with their own achievements and improved loot. This way players who are comfortable with the current difficulty can keep doing what they’re doing, while the players like me who prefer challenging content over grind get just that.

Eponet.4829:

Tabootrinket.2631:

For example :
– ennemies that are invulnerable unless the first attack is a surprise attack (which requires stealthy classes).

-ennemies that only get temporarly vulnerable after getting blocked.

- ennemies that take damage only when burnt, or chilled, or stunnned, etc…

- ennemies that take damage only by Aoes.

-ennemies that take damage only by Aoe heals

-ennemies that take damage only when feared

- energy walls that blocks and hurt you unless you apply reflect Aoe on it

- poisonous areas that can be cleansed only while healing aoe is applied on it.

Just out of interest, I decided to see which classes could do what.

1: Thief, Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer. Any Norn
2: Mesmer, Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian
3: This one I can’t kitten without a specific condition
4: Every Class
5: Every Class, though if it’s the only way to do any damage, thieves, necromancers, ranger would have a lot of time in which they’re waiting for the cooldown on their one AoE heal to come back up.
6: Every Class

Oh cool, have fun filling all of your trait lines to grandmaster all at once and using all of your utilities at once too. Also let’s stack all the existing runes on the armor set.

Whether people want to admit it or not, they probably want things to be easy. At least to the point that everyone can beat it. If something is too easy, youre more likely to get people begrudgingly grinding it while complaining about “Stupid noobs, this was WAY harder in MY day” whereas if only about 30% or less of people can actually beat it more people will just rage quit and break keyboards.

As for the issue with berserker builds and all, I am 100% happy they’re doing something about that. I don’t think that full zerk gear is the problem. I think the problem is that for most of the game so far, it has been the only reliable solution. I love my condition necro build. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and it absolutely underperforms on any map but Silverwastes when compared to the dime-a-dozen zerk build. I don’t even like glass cannoning. But everything else has been, at best, mediocre.

How about they rework the melee champions which follow you with super obvious attacks. Make them DEADLY like tequatl and lupicus no bull****.
Preferably with multiplie types of attacks.

From this thread I have learned that there are easy games and there are hard games, but there is no in-between or such a thing as a diverse breadth of content.

Elestian.6134:

From this thread I have learned that there are easy games and there are hard games, but there is no in-between or such a thing as a diverse breadth of content.

actually that is correct. here is why…

let’s assume that guild wars 2 added hard content. nobody would play said content if it wasn’t accompanied by .. rewards. Because, no matter how hard the “i want harder content cause i enjoy a challenge” crowd yells, the truth that no reward, no play. So, they add the reward in. Now the crowd who had it easy complains cause there’s no accessibility anymore, we’re not all equals any longer, i joined this game cause it was casual friendly, this is clearly a departure from the game’s original concept and yadda, yadda, yadda.

See the problem?

and let’s be honest, casual crowds keep games alive, you dont want to upset them. meritocracy works in games only when said merit is relatively easy to obtain. if it’s hard, you end up with a split playerbase and that’s never good. especially when the 2 “Bases” have opposing goals…

my 3c anyways

PorceleinEve.2973:

actually that is correct. here is why…

let’s assume that guild wars 2 added hard content. nobody would play said content if it wasn’t accompanied by .. rewards. Because, no matter how hard the “i want harder content cause i enjoy a challenge” crowd yells, the truth that no reward, no play. So, they add the reward in. Now the crowd who had it easy complains cause there’s no accessibility anymore, we’re not all equals any longer, i joined this game cause it was casual friendly, this is clearly a departure from the game’s original concept and yadda, yadda, yadda.

See the problem?

and let’s be honest, casual crowds keep games alive, you dont want to upset them. meritocracy works in games only when said merit is relatively easy to obtain. if it’s hard, you end up with a split playerbase and that’s never good. especially when the 2 “Bases” have opposing goals…
my 3c anyways

They were never equal, the moment anyone starts playing the game or an MMO in general. They’re not equal to the rest of the players. I can look to my right and there is someone worse at the game than me and so they get less. I look to my left there’s someone better at the game than me and they get more.

Every player is on a scale from the top 1%/0.1% to the bottom percent, where you fall on that scale determines what your MMO experience will be. Someone in the bottom 50% , the highlight of their career may be making Bow of dwayna, or successfully completing a path in Arah with friends, realistically they’re never going to get half the rewards anyway.
Someone in the top 1% or higher has different goals, they could make that item in a day, dungeon master was barely a pitstop on their list of goals, they need rewards and content that relative to them is challenging and satisfying.

This isn’t even unique to gaming , this is every aspect of your life, work,education,hobbies and sport all operate on a similar scale.

Going to a different MMO doesn’t work either, lets say the entire top 1% left. In this different MMO they’re now 100% so they’ll naturally divide again and we might even see similar complaints with a higher base standard for what’s hard content.

I believe it’s perfectly possible to cater to both groups of players, This is how other MMO’s have operated, I honestly think the majority of people understand this, but a few vocal players mostly people completely new to MMO’s or who have decided GW2 is their dream game and will conform completely to that vision. Walk into this and complain. I mean even looking at the other topics on page 1 at the moment, some people are complaining that despite not being capable/not having done a fraction of what others have done they should have the AP skins.

Realistically both sides will always complain, if there was nothing harder than doing an AC run people would be complaining that it was too hard compared to the rest of the game, on the flip side the hard side will likely expect an ever raising bar (I know myself that I’d want it to keep rising until there is a piece of content that at my best with full guild support and all the rest I can’t complete.) Neither side is right so both will have to compromise.

PorceleinEve.2973:

See the problem?

No, because wvw on my server has at least one map que in the evening, most maps full or close to it. wvw is far from known as being a loot faucet. Not counting EotM, which many utilize now for leveling, though still not just loot as you claim.

The game was harder/challenging early on, but they remade most stuff easy for easy casual players (risk they took), most of the rest left; really large population decrease though some hang around for things such as wvw and a few content areas of the game. This easy casual formula didn’t work, along with it’s temporary content and no effort for an expansion, obvious to them by the population decrease numbers.

Unfortunately, they simply cant flip a switch and make content more challenging at this point. Some in the industry, at least some and at some point, have learned that you cant just retool your game in mid-stream to target an entirely different type of player without loosing many of your existing players that don’t fit into that demographic you already retained. As many of the other players have already left, you are left with a lot of easy casual players in this instance, and you may want to retain them lest you wind up retaining no one as the others are already gone.

That is the current status though, yet they have ended doing the casual temp content and went to work on an expansion, which is a change in the works, and a point where they can flip that switch. The expansion wasn’t put into the works just to please the casual players, they already have them and are happy in most cases with existing content and quick farming events.

The expansion will likely be aimed primarily at the non-casual players that left, becoming visible to the wayward players with an invitation to come back and try the new and improved content, which will likely be unlike the casual play that already exists in the rest of the game. Otherwise I don’t think they would have bothered with an expansion, as it’s what a lot of the players that left were complaining about not seeing, while only seeing casual temp content month after month with no end in sight.

I would imagine that there will be a “come back to GW2” campaign at or soon after the launch. They may even allow returning players to demo the new content before buying. It’s all about the numbers. Sure there will be new loot there, but likely harder to get at, taking more focus, determination and group coordination. Not entirely hard-mode or nightmare-mode, but quite a bit more than easy casual play which has seemed to fail them.

Daywolf.2630:

My other game is one of the hardest mmo on the market and I’ll prolly still have my sub there in ten+ years….

Amarr Victor?