Guild Wars 2

What’s a ’tweener?

There are players who find the open world content to be somewhat difficult, and those who complain that open world PvE is too easy. We also have players who want “more challenge,” and players who don’t. We have players who are regularly downed in events like Dwayna, the giant in Nageling, and what-have-you, and players whose response to any complaint about difficulty is “learn to dodge” — as if to say they never get downed.

A ’tweener is someone in the middle.

I find myself in that rather uncomfortable position. I find open world to be too easy, except when I try to do certain events solo, or with a friend or three. Then, it’s challenging and enjoyable. I find some dungeons to be tuned just right, others to be more than I care for unless my arthritis is having a good day. Old Teq was too easy, new Teq is unappealing.

At one point, GW2 was a good game for me. However, like any game, you can only save Nageling so many times before looking for something new to do. For a time, GW2 offered a lot of options to enjoy a moderate amount of challenge. However, some events that fit my definition of fun have been revamped by ANet to make them more appealing to players on the challenge end of the spectrum. This started with temple events in Orr.

What’s being added lately seems to be large group events (and by large, I mean lag and/or overflow inducing large). Now that Tequatl has been downed repeatedly, I believe it’s only a matter of time before the other world events go down the same route. If and when this happens, the harder-the-better players will have their content (for as long as they care to do it, anyway). The like-it-as-is people will still have most of open world. I (and anyone who may be like me), may find myself with very little content aimed at me.

I’m not saying this just to complain. If it turns out I’m the only ‘tweener, or if there are too few of us to matter, I’ll just stop playing. However, if it turns out this demographic is more numerous, it might be in ANet’s interest to throw us a bone now and then.

make the nageling giant give better loot.

i’m sure more people will want to save nageling town everyday.

I still haven’t saved Moshpoipoi yet

but not sure if I want to…

^ lul Moshpoipoi.

i think i saved Moshpoipoi at least once.

Moshpoipoi is the village just next to the honor of the waves dungeon right?

It is. I don’t do that one anymore. Once the Icebrood are gone, one of the &&^&% Quaggans says something like, “Quaggans did it! Quaggans defeated the Icebrood!” Ungrateful little sots… reminds me of a certain talking plant.

I think I might be one. Then again, the only times I’ve considered things to be “too easy” were in the case of Zhaitan and some of the world bosses, otherwise I don’t care about it in open world PVE. On the other side of things, there are quite a few things I find to be too hard for the reward you get. Personally, as long as content can be fun to do, it shouldn’t matter how easy or hard it is. Problem is, “hard” tends to be done in a bad way, and usually isn’t fun for me.

Nilkemia.8507:

I think I might be one. Then again, the only times I’ve considered things to be “too easy” were in the case of Zhaitan and some of the world bosses, otherwise I don’t care about it in open world PVE. On the other side of things, there are quite a few things I find to be too hard for the reward you get. Personally, as long as content can be fun to do, it shouldn’t matter how easy or hard it is. Problem is, “hard” tends to be done in a bad way, and usually isn’t fun for me.

I understand the idea that content that is too easy or too hard is not fun. Also, everyone is going to have different thresholds for what easy or hard actually is. For me, if there’s no reason to actually exert any effort to stay alive, then I get bored. However, I don’t expect a high level of challenge out of every single mob, because then facing multiples would be impossible.

I do agree that fun ought to be the determining factor in deciding what content is good and what isn’t. I guess I like the content itself to be enjoyable, being as I’m not big on deferred gratification (i.e., enduring lengthy, boring, tedious play to get a reward). At one point I complained about rewards in GW2, until I figured out how to work the system to get what I wanted. At that point, rewards became unimportant to me. Of course, now they’ve moved the bar, and I’m still adjusting.

I’m a tweener. I’m not bad enough to be a noob, but I’m not good enough to be l33t…or as my mom used to say, too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.

There’s no real way around this sort of thing. The game contains multiple things to do with multiple difficulties for that reason. You guide yourself to the harder stuff.

For example, playing in the open world is easier on some professions than others. A guardian in the open world, or the ranger, they’re sort of easy mode. An ele can be more challenging, as can an engie (at least for certain people).

But yeah, there’s no way they could have the difficulty of everything tuned for everyone, because everyone is at different levels. Fortunately I don’t require challenge to have fun with the guild.

Vayne.8563:

I’m a tweener. I’m not bad enough to be a noob, but I’m not good enough to be l33t…or as my mom used to say, too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.

I’m kinda in that position too. Good enough for most content through accumulated experience in other games, but too much real life to become truly good at the difficult content.

There’s no real way around this sort of thing. The game contains multiple things to do with multiple difficulties for that reason. You guide yourself to the harder stuff.

There’s a couple of things I could do to become better at this game.
- quit my job
- divorce my wife
- quit long distance running

But since that’s not an option (love my job, wife and healthy body) I’m happy GW2 has content along the spectrum so I can focus on what I’d like to do personally. FotM10 is very forgiving, but FotM28 is a bit too hard for me and I can’t be kitten d to train.

marnick.4305:

Vayne.8563:

I’m a tweener. I’m not bad enough to be a noob, but I’m not good enough to be l33t…or as my mom used to say, too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.

I’m kinda in that position too. Good enough for most content through accumulated experience in other games, but too much real life to become truly good at the difficult content.

There’s no real way around this sort of thing. The game contains multiple things to do with multiple difficulties for that reason. You guide yourself to the harder stuff.

There’s a couple of things I could do to become better at this game.
- quit my job
- divorce my wife
- quit long distance running

But since that’s not an option (love my job, wife and healthy body) I’m happy GW2 has content along the spectrum so I can focus on what I’d like to do personally. FotM10 is very forgiving, but FotM28 is a bit too hard for me and I can’t be kitten d to train.

Actually if you were to combine a few of those you could save time. For example, quit your job, kitten your wife off so she chases you with a cleaver, so you could get the divorcing and running in at the same time. Then you’d have time to be uber like me.

I think I might be one.
Mostly I play according to my mood- if i feel like a challenge I find one, if I feel like goofing off I do.
If I just want to explore or wander around, I pick a map that is in the difficulty range that I feel like in that moment. Be it Queensdale, Ascalon, Mt Maelstrom, Dredgehaunt or Orr.

I like harder content but not all the time and it is frustrating if you run into a situation not of your choosing that is needlessly hard.
Like pushing the North invasion in SoD all by myself. -_-

That is one of the reasons why I liked the gauntlet and I like Teq, I could do it if I wanted to, or left it.

For someone like me I guess it is a case of pick your battles and enjoy what you are doing, or just go do something else

I was somewhat heartened tonight while doing the Jungle Worm event. It was way more interesting, harder than before (when there was no difficulty), and way more engaging. If most of the revamps were like that, I’d be a happy ’tweener.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, guys.

I don’t know that I would call myself a “tweener” but…

I am of an age where my fingers don’t work quite the way they used to, and I have trouble with certain encounters because of it. So, yes, I would say there are events that are (ahem) a challenge for me, and others that are a snoozefest.

But the truth of the matter is that I love the content that is suited to me, and I have no problem finding things to do.

Good luck to you.

ANet’s response to the “moar challenge!!!” crowd seems to be to up the mob spikes, up the mob health pools and decrease the reaction window to spikes. Meaning that all they do are increasing the need to reflexes.

There no real alternatives to dodge. Toughness just make you a more appealing chew toy for the mobs, and control do not control anything because of their short effect durations and long recharges.

I wouldn’t use that word, “tweener”, god, that’s awful, but I know what you mean. I suspect that if my computer was good enough, I’d be one of the “L2DODGE!”-types myself, because when I’m solo/duo and 60FPS rock-solid, I do beautiful dodges, solo champs and so on, but when you get 20+ people around, even with my settings down, suddenly I’m at 20-40 FPS, and when it’s 50+, I’m at 10-20 FPS, and suddenly dodging is really hard and my computer isn’t even displaying all the effects and I am not as good as I might be.

I don’t actually think NewTeq is too bad, but I do think making him so reliant on the turrets being manned properly when we have absolutely no control over how they are manned and by who is not, well, ideal design. Last time I did him we had three turrets clearly behaving properly, knowing the strat, and so on, but the other three were drunkenly shooting stuff off in every direction, and thus we got plenty of bonewalls and failed hard. You can politely ask people to do the right thing, but if they don’t care to, there’s no way to kick them off or set up your own turret instead…

digiowl.9620:

ANet’s response to the “moar challenge!!!” crowd seems to be to up the mob spikes, up the mob health pools and decrease the reaction window to spikes. Meaning that all they do are increasing the need to reflexes.

There no real alternatives to dodge. Toughness just make you a more appealing chew toy for the mobs, and control do not control anything because of their short effect durations and long recharges.

Totally agree. What annoys me with dodge, is that you just have 2 charges of it (unless you have a dodge/evade built into an ability) and they take long to recharge – especially with mobs that are on turbo speed (READ: risen). I think 3 charges would help a lot. And CC definitely is a bit short, at least for PvE.

(And once again: risen are dead bodies. Dead bodies have rigor mortis. They’ve no business running that fast. It’s ridiculous. It’s also why zombies everywhere else move slow and stiff.)

Tikky.6231:

digiowl.9620:

ANet’s response to the “moar challenge!!!” crowd seems to be to up the mob spikes, up the mob health pools and decrease the reaction window to spikes. Meaning that all they do are increasing the need to reflexes.

There no real alternatives to dodge. Toughness just make you a more appealing chew toy for the mobs, and control do not control anything because of their short effect durations and long recharges.

Totally agree. What annoys me with dodge, is that you just have 2 charges of it (unless you have a dodge/evade built into an ability) and they take long to recharge – especially with mobs that are on turbo speed (READ: risen). I think 3 charges would help a lot. And CC definitely is a bit short, at least for PvE.

(And once again: risen are dead bodies. Dead bodies have rigor mortis. They’ve no business running that fast. It’s ridiculous. It’s also why zombies everywhere else move slow and stiff.)

On the CC, one thing that came to mind recently is that most other games treat CC differently than GW2 in mechanics as well as concept. While they give them a long effect duration, they also give them a chance to break on damage. Meaning that if you CC something and then attack it, you likely wasted that CC.

ANet could give us something similar for PVE CC. Have the current durations be 100% CC, and then give a longer duration afterwards with a high probability of breakage on damage.

That would be a great “in between” for CC. I like it.

Well, this isn’t really a new problem. The MMO and closely-related genre have faced this problem for years. You really can’t afford to make an MMO anymore that is targeted to hardcore or elite players, or to casuals for that matter, it just doesn’t make any sense financially.

The solution, at least to-date, has been to provide content that meets the desire for challenge and ability of a diverse player base. In the best examples you see the open world designed around the player you find there, with instanced content of tiered difficulty designed for the player who desires more challenge. Anet is taking a novel approach which I don’t believe will work over time. But, their approach does legitimize questions around whether there will be suitable, rewarding content for average MMO players over time. I have been pleasantly surprised with recent changes to world bosses other than Teq as they seem to have threaded lightly and made them more appropriately challenging without making them world emptying failure fests which I believe Teq will become over time. The large open world failure fest is just not good design for open world PvE in an MMO.

I’d consider myself a “Tweener” as well, as far as gaming goes.

I play to have fun. not to do .000000005 % more damage than the next guy. doesn’t mean I’m content to be a total scrub. just means I am willing to sacrifice a miniscule amount of efficiency in the name of enjoying myself, so long as I am capable of completing the content and making meaningful contributions towards doing so.

that said, I am sure that at least half of the so-called “elite” players who claim on forums that every piece of content ever created is “too easy” and is a walk in the park and they always farm it with their eyes closed are lying through their teeth anyway. such is the internet.

Tikky.6231:

(And once again: risen are dead bodies. Dead bodies have rigor mortis. They’ve no business running that fast. It’s ridiculous. It’s also why zombies everywhere else move slow and stiff.)

Rigor mortis wears off relatively quickly, actually. There are films and games with fast zombies and it’s plausible as long as the decomp is not too bad.

FRESH ones might be stiff, but give one a day or so and they’ll be limber again.

But really, ‘but magic!’ is the explanation, aside from rigor mortis wearing off after several hours.

Tikky.6231:

(And once again: risen are dead bodies. Dead bodies have rigor mortis. They’ve no business running that fast. It’s ridiculous. It’s also why zombies everywhere else move slow and stiff.)

Well, rigor mortis wears away sometime after death. Also, you’re arguing logic for magically animated corpses. Last I checked, dead bodies don’t walk, talk, or cast spells.

Besides, would you really prefer, say, Dracula to be a stiff shambling corpse-thing? Mythology and fiction are replete with examples of the undead as creatures who do not shamble. Wargrs, wights, et cetera.

I tend to take a balanced perspective on things like any rational human being. While I do appreciate challenging content I do not appreciate being stuck in an overflow for ten hours straight, separated from the people I typically play the game with. I also do not appreciate broken gameplay mechanics in general nor lazy solutions like turning bosses into timed bullet sponges. I loathe false promises.

The most fun I had in Guild Wars 2 was when I was stuck in my shoddy equipment leveling up. Parts of the world actually felt somewhat dangerous and I was indeed grateful whenever I saw a bunch of players tacking an area. This was when Guild Wars 2’s design worked for me. That all stopped being the case once I hit eighty and got myself properly geared. I could clear out any area alone within seconds rocking my exotics and just about everything ceased to be a challenge.

And this my friends is why ArenaNet should have stayed away from gear progression. The world is now dead, boring and uneventful because nothing poses a threat as a direct consequence of the gear treadmill. Once we’re decked out in ascended they will have no choice but to further up the health of bosses while leaving the rest of the world an even greater joke.

indigo im going to say im a tweener too the other bosses i like better now that they are a little harder and hope they keep them that way. the wurm for one is just right imo for me. im also i like decent reward compared to time spent involved ratio since i tend to be timed constrained in game time that is. i can troll the internet for hours but in game i only get an one to 7 hours a week. thats why youll actually see me here on the forums more then in game which is sad and makes me a sad skritt. i dont want to be a quaggon. i dont mind a bit harder content easy stuff bores me but i have to go with my time versus reward ratio but i try to do new stuff when i can. i did teq but the time versus reward effort just doesnt make it worth it for me so youll never see me there so on that i hope they dont revamp all the bosses leave a few for types like me. maybe wurm jormag or sb(i really like sb) and fire elemental and make the other hard for the elites to be happy

I’ve been thinking a bit about this, and I realized that I had the most fun in GW2 during BWE1. Two friends and I were on level 14 or so characters downleveled to 8 or 9, in Plains of Ashford. We were in the area where the earth elementals DE is. There were about 5-15 players there, the elementals were spawning like crazy, and hurt — a lot. Staying alive and killing them was fun.

The game has offered some comparable moments since. However, it feels like the quality of the experience has gone downhill.

@ everyone who has responded. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions. I may not choose to respond to everyone, but I do appreciate your response.