Guild Wars 2

Hailsa!
I have been slowly but surely recovering from a nasty flu-like virus over the past 48 hours and, during that time, i had a LOT of time to revisit some lore, play the game, and watch some videos posted on YouTube. What i did notice,though, whilst watching and reading and playing, is how much of a distinct difference in difficulty that Core Tyria has to offer versus the Heart of Thorns maps, as well as the newly created Living world maps. Mind you, I understand why this is obvious… Heart of Thorns is considered “endgame” content, while Core Tyria (people call it “vanilla” for some reason) is a combination of slightly challenging content and what i would consider “training”. I also understand that there are, in fact, areas and events that are proven to be quite difficult and sometimes nigh impossible to solo in “core Tyria”, such as the world bosses, Current events, etc., but these moments are Meant for group participation…. in Other words, they are designed so that multiple players will be able to work together to tackle the event.
My question here, however, is that as this game progresses through the years, and while I highly commend the amazingly talented staff at ArenaNet for this beautifully stunning, highly competitive and vast world we are so humbly allowed to play in…
Could Core Tyria Be made to be more challenging?
For example, I remember, way back when, that we had a series of champions to defeat in Queensdale. The content was brilliant in design, even requiring cooperative play amongst people in the zone, and it even had a title: The Queensdale Champ Train.
But the most important part of those events was that they posed a significant threat… we simply had to learn our characters’ abilities, and we had to learn to work as a team.. and we had to look out for each other, and yes, they were quite difficult!
the excitement in those type of challenges should be felt Tyria-wide, however. I’m not saying have a champion-train in every zone. Moments like the invading Centaur army in Gendarren, for example, is an amazing event, that actually puts your skills to the test, (and if you are unfortunately alone in that event, then heavens help you) as well as prepares you for the later moments in the game where you have to face nigh-impossible odds in order to complete an event.
But that’s just it… that is where Core Loses it’s steam. people get used to hitting 111111, and assume that’s all they have to do to survive, other than dodging. Once they hit level 80 and potentially unlock Heart of Thorns, however, it becomes a whole new ballgame, and the player must now rely on their wit and ability to modify and even use all of the skills in their kitten nal to just get through Verdant Brink.

How… then, could we make Core Tyria harder? Could we give some mobs the ability to have the skills of the Revnant? perhaps give them the ability to use combinations the same way we use ours? would it be possible, nay plausible, to have one or two events in each zone scale up such as the Centaur Invasion in Gendarren of even the Hirathi Hinterlands? for example, a Flame legion Invasion in the Plains of Ashford, where the Legion take over an area en mass and set up their own operations? These are just thoughts, mind you, and I am in no way stating that the content is faceroll. I am, however, asking readers to complete the following sentence:
“Core Tyria could be a bit more difficult if…..”

Blessed be!

I’m not sure more challenging content is appropriate for starter zones. These zones should cater to new players. One reason for the removal of Champions (and the train) from Queensdale was the animosity created from L80s over-running the new level-appropriate players there.

Maybe ‘more challenge’ should be left to L30 or L40 and up zones. And don’t forget the scale-up in challenge between higher level Core Tyria zones, The Silverwastes and Dry Top, and then the core expansion zones. The newer maps added post-expansion launch don’t seem as ‘challenging’.

Good luck.

You have very different memories of the Queensdale champion train to me. The only challenge involved was trying to do enough damage to get credit in the time between other players deciding people were permitted to attack the champion and it dying.

And of course putting up with the torrent of abuse if anyone dared to attack a champion “out of order”. (Which is why they were removed – new players introduction to the game was getting abuse from players if they started an event without a zerg present and being told the “end game” was being part of that zerg, which unsurprisingly tended to put them off.)

There already are maps that present greater challenge, those intended for level 80’s. So why would the “level up” maps need to be made more challenging? I imagine everything new at this point will be level 80, so your choices will just keep growing.

Also, as the game expands, the playerbase will naturally get thinned out. At the time of this posting, there is another thread complaining that not enough players are in Southsun. Recently, there was a post about not enough players to do bandit champions. I don’t think we want more challenging content added if the players will be gravitating towards newer, shinier maps.

Tyria can already be more difficult than HoT. The problem is, leveling in GW2 is so casual that you’re almost always unknowingly playing on easy mode. If you’re additionally using consumables and always obtaining the best gear, you’re simply asking for it. Enemies should always be +1 level above you; +5 being more like the pre-nerf difficulty. Easier professions like ranger and necro should go for +10.

I guess people are still dazed or simply too many people have left

The tried harder content it was called HoT and the earnings report right now is so bad thta even Aion is doing better than us and HoT cut their earning in half. At this point people like TC asking for harder content are trying to kill the game right out. Esports and flipping the core design philosophy to a more hardcore one bleed profits like nothing else and yet people are still trying to go for harder content in order to put this poor game out of it’s misery.

You can’t have hardcore content without trinity and this game wasn’t designed with trinity in mind and thus wasn’t designed for hardcore content.

I kinda like it the way it is.

~shrugs~

The problem runs deeper then that….. its not the lack of challenge, but the lack of engaging play options in how Core Tyria mobs behave. They’re basically dumbed down to the point where you just face tank and auto attack, causing players to grow lazy instead of putting a little thought into basic things such as positioning and skill timing. The flat design of the maps don’t really help the situation either.

I’m NOT advocating for “harder” play or more punishing mobs (I’ll explain that more later)… I’m advocating for mob AI design that encourages players to change up tactics, without having to resort to “surprise attacks” that one shot them if their aren’t careful. This is big reason Zerk meta happened in the first place, because most mobs hit like trucks, have stupid amounts of HP, and only attack once every 5 seconds. But their damage is tuned to overwhelm tanks in the long game, thus rendering high defense builds useless, and high DPS preferable to shut them down before you run out of active defenses. The longer the fight goes on, the more likely players are to lose… thus fast TTKs are by far the best defense.

IIRC, the mobs were smarter in early beta, and made efforts to juke the players, and avoid lingering AOE. The Irony is that this is the SAME change they made in GW1 around the time EotN came out, and was met with out crys as mobs were no longer clustering up like good little targets for the hand full of really powerful AOE skills the game had to offer. Since 90% of the skills in GW2 are either AOE or Cleave, this same clustering tactic dominated PvE after they told the AI to stop avoiding them. Complicating this further was the long cool downs on everything worth using, because thats how the balanced PvP…. but those key skills lose a huge amount of their potential on PvE mobs, because they A. Don’t last long enough for their control effects to matter. B. They spawn in too many numbers to use them effectively. and C. failing to shut them down quickly allows them to scale their aggregate damage enough to kill you.

Which brings us to the Mordrem, Karka, and Toxic alliance. The only reason these mobs were considered “hard” is because they were insanely punishing, rapidly outscale player power coefficients, and use very cheesey tactics to catch players off guard or out pace their control skills. The classic core specs were so ill-prepared for this, that ranged builds were the only ones that could engage them relatively safely, but couldn’t bring them down enmass fast enough for them to retaliate. This was completely intentional, because they were trying to break the zerks meta and stacking by turning player tactics against themselves. They’re a cake walk now, because Elite specs power crept players upward, and gave them easy access to traits that actively combine CCs, Range, and damage output; because thats how HOT maps are designed in general.

While the net effect of forcing players to spread out was accomplished…. they had stubbornly denied the root of the problem to be Mobs and AI designs, as if they were afraid that using the dynamic combat design to actually be dynamic would be hated by players. Part of that is true, but part of it is also in the limited, and often stiff ways the skills work, that make engaging multiple targets not at all fun.

THAT I feel is the real root of the problem. Engaging mobs in 1v1 is largely a waste of your better skills, and is more a DPS race then any real engaging skill. And yet engaging groups of mobs is not much different, except you bait them into using an attack, then “leap in” to dump a bunch of DPS before backing out to repeat. With post Zhaitan fights, its the same strategy, except you’re more aware of control skills.

…………..

…………….

GW1 gave a much different experience, because there was an emphasis on single target control to compliment the trinity system in place at the time. I do NOT feel going back to a Trinity is the answer…. but individual mobs need better strategy design, but their group density and group comp have to be carefully setup to push players to understand certain strategies, but not destroy them if they get it wrong. The ability for players to diversify strategy within a single build is what makes combat in this game interesting for most.

To that end, I actually think the Mordrem guard (individually) got this balance right….. but its then utterly lost in the way they’re used as a hoard to offset the massive amount of AOE players have access to. Theres also talk about skillful engagements with classes…. but its been proven in WvW that AOE scales easily, and is thus always the best strategy when available. HOT has also shown that you can’t give all mobs access to hard CCs (I’m looking at you Hylek), because their population density can easily shut down players by way of total attack frequency. The same problem occurs with the Chak’s difficulty curve depending on player party size; because at less then 3 players, Chak are incredibly hard to fight due to focus fire…. but above 3 players, they can’t focus, then easily wiped out by player AOE.

I see an ideal where most battles are spread out over a small area, where each player is in short range of, but not blatantly stacked on each other; each engaged with a few mobs of single or mixed strategy, and players able to engage, disengage, adapt, and support each other on the fly, team up for combos, and/or selectively focus down individual targets while others keep them from focusing back. This rings of PvP combat; and it works because thats how the skills are designed and balanced to work. The difference is that PvE can get away with a lower information flow rate…. which is how Raids are designed from play perspective, but are made punishing by having a wide net of failure conditions.

Overworld mob design can learn from this, because trash mobs that are easily faced rolled are fine….. but there also needs to be something mixed in their ranks that feels more rewarding to beat. Vets should be filling that role; but by simply being the same mob with more HP, they don’t feel like an accomplishment to beat. Champs on the the other hand, with the break bar mechanics, offers a much more immediate difference in strategy that they can be fun to fight…. but them having enough HP to take at least a few minutes to fight makes them way too intense to go after on a regular basis as a solo player.

But the Mordrem guard….. they combine both mechanics, and are in a scale of damage/HP thats fun to fight in single or small groups. That break bar gives them enough general durability that simply bursting them down won’t work… but then has a moment of vulnerability that enables you to wail on them with a satisfying advantage. Fighting 2-3 Mordrem guard provides that mixture of strategy that encourages you to focus them one at a time, changing your strategy as you change targets. Scattering these patrols among the existing trash mobs makes you aware of them (and easy to identify), and giving you the option to go around them (if desired), or spend a few moments in a fight to go through them.

If you don’t believe me, look how the mobs in Bloodstone Fen have break bars for the durability bonus, but are always reinforced. Their a pain to fight, because its like fighting the SW mordrem if they were immune to CCs. This is obviously them experimenting because of complaints about HOT difficulty…. but I do notice that White mantle aren’t densely grouped like Mordrem forces, and that is having an impact on how fighting them feels.

Core Tyria could be harder if you simply remove a few pieces of armor when you fight
and leave it the way it is for the large group of players that like it as it is.

You flew into how to change it and blew right past if it should be changed. There are plenty of other harder games to play, for free. Core Tyria stands as the single best example of successfully designed cooperative PvE in a non sandbox mmorg, in the industry. Why would they mess with it after evaluating HoT’s results?

PvP wants better players. So does WvW and Raids and Fractals and Dungeons, but I believe the area specific skills needed should be learned in those specific areas.
How many players have exactly the same opinion of how the game should be changed? Isn’t the game better off if we keep something for everyone?

blackheartgary.8605:

Could Core Tyria Be made to be more challenging?

Yes, it could. The real question however is, why should it?

blackheartgary.8605:

For example, I remember, way back when, that we had a series of champions to defeat in Queensdale. The content was brilliant in design, even requiring cooperative play amongst people in the zone, and it even had a title: The Queensdale Champ Train.
But the most important part of those events was that they posed a significant threat… we simply had to learn our characters’ abilities, and we had to learn to work as a team.. and we had to look out for each other, and yes, they were quite difficult!

You might be remembering wrong. All of those champs were soloable even then, long before power creep from HoT arrived.

blackheartgary.8605:

How… then, could we make Core Tyria harder?

There are a multitude of ways, from just straight scaling up the stats, through boss/event mechanic reworks, to introducing completely new elements.
It still doesn’t answer the more important question hiding behind it, one that you just assumed you know the answer for. The question of whether we even should make it harder. And seeing the general reaction to HoT, it seems that the answer is, not really.

Now, it might be a good idea to make them more interesting and engaging (which is not the same as "harder). Unfortunately, that is both more difficult and requires way more effort on Anet’s part, so i doubt they will ever do that to already existing areas.

A wild minor dragon event apeared?

More events, where enemies try to control zones?

Core Tyria was once harder. During BWE 1 it was very hard. Of course,

• People had blue gear, green if lucky.
• There were few if any down-leveled 80’s.
• (other than earlier testers) No one knew mob tells, and we were just learning to play.
• Several mob nerfs had not happened.
• The NPE was as yet undreamed of.
• Traits were in their original form.

So, yes, core Tyria could be harder. However, lets say ANet decided to buff core mobs to the point that they were at in BWE 1 in relation to a geared, down-leveled 80. What happens then to the play experience for anyone actually leveling a character from scratch.

Then, there’s the issue of whether it would be better for ANet to spend a lot of dev time making core harder versus making new stuff.

I don’t want Core harder, but I do wish it were as profitable as HoT. I’d love to mess around in the older zones and make some money.

@ starlinvf.1358

Excellent posts, +1 and +1.

I to have always missed a bit more of a challenge in the Core Tyria, and do miss the Champions in maps like Queensdale, even if I certainly do not miss the Champ-Train. Loved trying to handle those champions with as few players as possible, and learn how to solo them etc.

But at the same time I realize and can sympathize with others that would hate this. There are many reasons for such, some just don’t enjoy the combat itself as much as I obviously do, others might find the more action combat hard to get used to or have problems with reacting fast enough for reasons, some just likes to kick back and mindlessly grind some mobs etc.

What I would like to see however is that most zones got some harder content. Could be a couple of specific mobs a bit out of the way, or a couple of events that spawn in a chain etc. For example if you have longer event-chains, perhaps making the last one very hard, so the last push would be difficult, and failing it would kick you back a step on the chain, perhaps the Centaurs rally and starts pushing back again etc.

That way we can have some hard content, without interrupting everyone’s game time. They do some of this already, the sea hag in Kessex for ex, and the Centaur chain in Hinterlands ends in a world boss. But this would also set a more limited scope to what would possibly need to be updated.

I must agree with the posts that the AI scripts alone would help so much, most enemies just feel so … dumb, useless, passive etc. They’re just walking potato sacks of HP, waiting to be beaten up. And I hate the annoying “design” that “more hitpoints = challenge”. I don’t mind that some enemies have high HP, if it is the exception and not the norm.

My personal dream for what I would love to see, is replace most of the AI’s with the “Training Characters” in PVP man heart of mists. One for each profession using class skills etc, I’d like to see those replace most mobs, functioning as Veterans, and give the normal mobs half the hitpoints. Heck make Centaur groups of those walking around in groups, it would be so much fun to fight against.

And I know that if this ever gets implemented, 90% of all PVE players will hunt me down and get me hung. But using the above suggestion, having a group of 4-5 Centaur war-veterans walking around patrolling the map in Hinterlands, using a mix of those PVP AI’s, as a group/hard content, Would be fun.