Guild Wars 2

I see game difficulty is a somewhat heated debated among in-game players so I thought I’d post this.

Now, casual players will complain difficulty (i.e. pre-nerf dungeons) so there is no way to make the game both hard and enjoyable by everyone.
I believe a separated version will be required at some point like GW1 HMs.

In my opinion the best way to create difficulty is not the current oneshot/circles mechanics but simply recreating a simulation of PvP like GW1 endgame PvE.
Instead of pulling 5 windriders who will use the same tactics/skills, a 5 mob pull would be made of 2 HB+Frenzy+EP Warriors, 1 Conditionmancer, 1 disabling Mesmer and 1 Staff Ele – they access the same skillbar a player would have on the same build, and use it according to how a player would play it, while also trying to dodge our attacks.

I don’t think there is a better way to create hard PvE than to replicate player builds and behaviors, so if there is going to be any “hard PvE” at somepoint I sure hope it will be like this.

So would you prefer this system or keep PvE on the plane of “mob-only mechanics” that can be circumvented?

I always treated Magic Find gear as the PvE hard mode. Wearing it will impact your effectiveness but at the same time reward you for taking a handicap. Granted, Magic Find gear will also affect the effectiveness of your team indirectly as well so in a way it’s forcing a “Hard Mode” on any group you’re playing with as well. Whats more is that if you don’t tell your team mates you’re wearing Magic Find gear they won’t know they’re being handicapped through you.

What if, when you are in a town like Lion’s Arch you could get a blessing that would switch you to Hard Mode. This blessing will last forever until you get it removed in Lion’s Arch again. The Hard Mode blessing will give you a significant increase in Magic Find but also a significant decrease in your stats to make the game more challenging. On top of that your character is visually changed to let everyone else know you are in Hard Mode. Let’s say you could have an icon floating over your head or a unique aura, or weapon effect. This would then let other players know that you’re in Hard Mode which would be part bragging rights for the person in Hard Mode and part warning to anyone who wants to team with them knowing they are handicapped.

Just a suggestion, what do you think?

Red Falcon.8257:

I see game difficulty is a somewhat heated debated among in-game players so I thought I’d post this.

Now, casual players will complain difficulty (i.e. pre-nerf dungeons) so there is no way to make the game both hard and enjoyable by everyone.
I believe a separated version will be required at some point like GW1 HMs.

In my opinion the best way to create difficulty is not the current oneshot/circles mechanics but simply recreating a simulation of PvP like GW1 endgame PvE.
Instead of pulling 5 windriders who will use the same tactics/skills, a 5 mob pull would be made of 2 HB+Frenzy+EP Warriors, 1 Conditionmancer, 1 disabling Mesmer and 1 Staff Ele – they access the same skillbar a player would have on the same build, and use it according to how a player would play it, while also trying to dodge our attacks.

I don’t think there is a better way to create hard PvE than to replicate player builds and behaviors, so if there is going to be any “hard PvE” at somepoint I sure hope it will be like this.

So would you prefer this system or keep PvE on the plane of “mob-only mechanics” that can be circumvented?

I absolutely agree. I think that the combat system in GW2 fits much better this kind of fights than the more classic boss encounters.
I keep thinking that, if we keep on mind that is not designed for 80s in exotics, the ghost encounter previous to the final boss on AC path 2 is one of the bests dungeon fights the game actually has. Not one big foe, not a ton of trash, just a small group of different enemies, each one being annoying in its own way.
With a proper balance on the legth/pressure of the fight and few improvements on enemy AI (better management of defensive skills, different aggro behaviour on each foe, …) this could be a really good start point for challenging and interesting content.
Adding the right adds to some bosses (not those ones that rush or directly spawn in the middle of the fight and just die from AoEs or cleave effects) can also work. I can think on the adds on Kholer having a N sec respawn time and joining the fight from a random ranged location.

Problem with magic find is it doesn’t affect chest drops and mob drops in dungeons are so low anyways that 100% of 0.01% is still crap yet you are handicapping yourself, your group and making the run take longer thus limiting your potential to run more dungeons in the same amount of time.

Sauzo.6821:

Problem with magic find is it doesn’t affect chest drops and mob drops in dungeons are so low anyways that 100% of 0.01% is still crap yet you are handicapping yourself, your group and making the run take longer thus limiting your potential to run more dungeons in the same amount of time.

Except when your MF % comes out of a defensive stat budget. Then you are just more glass with the same amount of cannon, placing emphasis on smart play and skill use. The idea that MF is intrinsically selfish and hinders a group is preposterous unless pugging.

OT- I love every idea brought up so far.

magic find should be removed from gear and just be a mode in dungeons/zones

“remove all defensive stats from your gear, replace with 100% mf”

There’s a few “hard PvE” parts of the game they’re just hard to find.

A few explorable dungeon paths are not exactly a cake walk like Arah path 4, Fractals become ridiculous at high levels obviously, and Grenth and Balthazar will crush unprepared pugs although admittedly due to their open nature they don’t beat the instanced stuff.

I think there’s just a problem with how their presented. If you want to find the difficult content, you’re going to have to ask around for it and rarely do you receive rewards higher then normal (except in high level fractals). Arah may be harder and longer then most of it’s counterparts but the token drops per run is the same.

Also event chains like Grenth are the exception simply because not a lot of players want to do them. Grenth is luckily parked outside the karma grind areas meaning if players want a hard break from the monotonous grind they can try and beat him. Even though other then some of the karma vendor stuff, there isn’t a good reason to do him.

So really I think there’s a decent chunk of hard content, Anet simply needs to figure out how to present it better for players who are looking for it, particularly in the open world department and maybe communicating and rewarding the harder dungeons better.

Mackdose.6504:

Sauzo.6821:

Problem with magic find is it doesn’t affect chest drops and mob drops in dungeons are so low anyways that 100% of 0.01% is still crap yet you are handicapping yourself, your group and making the run take longer thus limiting your potential to run more dungeons in the same amount of time.

Except when your MF % comes out of a defensive stat budget. Then you are just more glass with the same amount of cannon, placing emphasis on smart play and skill use. The idea that MF is intrinsically selfish and hinders a group is preposterous unless pugging.

OT- I love every idea brought up so far.

Maybe i’m confused here and misread this but wearing MF gear will hinder a group speedwise cause MF on armor replaces the +crit dmg stat. Couple that with the “more glass cannon” stat on jewelry as well(can’t really remember exactly), you will take a decent hit assuming you are a class which uses crit dmg bonus. Of course this doesn’t apply to cond builds since dots cant crit anyways but then again if you bring 3 or 4 cond build classes, you won’t be doing dungeons fast anyways cause of the cap on bleeds.

guardian.6489:

There’s a few “hard PvE” parts of the game they’re just hard to find.

A few explorable dungeon paths are not exactly a cake walk like Arah path 4, Fractals become ridiculous at high levels obviously, and Grenth and Balthazar will crush unprepared pugs although admittedly due to their open nature they don’t beat the instanced stuff.

I think there’s just a problem with how their presented. If you want to find the difficult content, you’re going to have to ask around for it and rarely do you receive rewards higher then normal (except in high level fractals). Arah may be harder and longer then most of it’s counterparts but the token drops per run is the same.

Also event chains like Grenth are the exception simply because not a lot of players want to do them. Grenth is luckily parked outside the karma grind areas meaning if players want a hard break from the monotonous grind they can try and beat him. Even though other then some of the karma vendor stuff, there isn’t a good reason to do him.

So really I think there’s a decent chunk of hard content, Anet simply needs to figure out how to present it better for players who are looking for it, particularly in the open world department and maybe communicating and rewarding the harder dungeons better.

Nothing in this game is difficult. Arah P4 just needs to be ‘stacked’ to win. That’s just a bad design. Anything else can be run with any combo and is easily doable. Hell you can run dungeons in full blue gear as long as you can dodge and don’t stand in the aoes.

My point of my posts about MF was i was assuming you were wearing it to try and maximize gold/drops per hour/run. In that case, i stand by my point of you are better off not wearing it and going glass cannon to just clear dungeons as fast as possible and hop into the next one/path.

GW2 doesn’t have combat roles or the trinity. This has advantages and disadvantages.

It is my perception that part of the reason why there are few mechanics or tactics needed is because of a lack of roles.

Also the dodge and ress mechanics (downed players) are a big part of any fight, specifically in boss fights.

What this means is a limitation on what they can do in the sense of encounters. As someone noted GW2 is not well suited for the boss fights as we know from other MMOs with all the mechanics etc. These mechanics were possible because people played different roles as per their class type.

In GW2 there is no clear role division. It is possible to do this yourself as a group where some classes can focus their build a certain way, specifically Guardians. But I don’t think this can be expected of the majority of players who just wanna log in and have fun.

Then there is PvP. The reason I bring this up is because skills are balanced around PvP. Elite skills are quite powerful in PvP but very marginal in most PvE content. I often wished I could put a “normal” skill in my elite slot because it would be much better than the elite skills. Because of that PvE suffers from the high defense / high hitpoint boss syndrome. This enables PvP balance and still being able to beat PvE content at the same time, because well, PvE content has been dumbed down to facilitate this PvP balance. One could wonder why they haven’t learned from GW1 that balancing PvP and PvE at the same time just doesn’t work.

So, bottom line is this: The PvE in this game is dumbed down and requires few tactics beyond dodging and ressing to beat. To make it tougher, mobs/bosses are tougher and have more hitpoints (Orr anyone?). Causes for this lie in the PvP balance and the lack of combat roles (trinity).

As much as it’s nice not to have to LF1M Need Tank/Healer, the other side is dumbed down PvE. If that’s ok with you, no problem. If you want your brain to be challenged at all, then this is not the game for you. It simply comes with how this game was built. Whether you like that or not is up to yourselves.

Mackdose.6504:

Sauzo.6821:

Problem with magic find is it doesn’t affect chest drops and mob drops in dungeons are so low anyways that 100% of 0.01% is still crap yet you are handicapping yourself, your group and making the run take longer thus limiting your potential to run more dungeons in the same amount of time.

Except when your MF % comes out of a defensive stat budget. Then you are just more glass with the same amount of cannon, placing emphasis on smart play and skill use. The idea that MF is intrinsically selfish and hinders a group is preposterous unless pugging.

OT- I love every idea brought up so far.

Hardly preposterous, if you are running less defensive than you will take less risk. So you will play it safe and not get that one extra hit in because you know you can’t take one hit yourself. It’s not smarter or more skilled to dodge out early.

I don’t mind harder content but as long as it doesn’t come at the price of segregating the playerbase, ie FotM when it got patched in. So no seperate hardmodes for one. I also hope Anet never looks at what builds the playerbase is using as I don’t want to fight 4 Wars and a Mesmer groups as bosses.

A well designed game will give the player at least 1 if not multiple ways to mitigate damage. While GW2 only has ‘dodge’ other games might give you race traits, profession skills or utilities that could be learned or simply specialized armor.

It is very rare that game designers can or will create game play mechanics that appeal to the top 5-10% of the gaming community as once a solution is learned they will undoubtedly want something else even harder. Creating a never ending black hole of difficulty.

As the ‘naked AC path x’ video shows, its always been easy enough to gimp yourself and your team to make encounters more challenging and there are plenty of professions that are deemed weak or underpowered that can provide limitless challenge to gifted players.

With countless methods to reach a goal there will undoubtedly always be an ‘easy’ way. Complaints of it can’t be cured with a software patch as the underlying problem is on the other side of the keyboard.

Game difficulty is better when stuff is soloable.

Ratching up difficulty only puts pressure on the group dynamic in an MMO. With GW2 design and no real benchmarks for dps, healing or tanking…..difficulty only makes people frustrated.

But when stuff is soloable, like GW1…..cranking up the difficulty is not only great, but it’s preferred. Because this players to think about strategy, optimal builds, etc and not be at the mercy of a bad player. This is why I think Dark Souls was so successful.

I think the ideas around replicating player behavior and builds in PvE are very interesting. I believe this is what TESO is getting at in their promo vids where they talk about smart NPC’s who react based on their skills and the other NPC’s around. One might lay down a combo field for another.

I’m not sure this would make combat necessarily ‘hard’ but it would make it a lot of fun. This is the kind of challenge that will avert boredom and maybe it’s what is missing in current MMO’s.

I’d rather have the thing in GW1 where instances also have bonus objectives and if you could do them, you get some sort of prize. (or I may be mistaken, I quit shortly before Nightfall came out).

Try being a Thief and getting accepted into random parties in dungeons.

That’s Hard Mode right there.

(Worst part is when you, the thief, ends up carrying them)

i think the ai can do it “allright” at some point.

like i the mist, when you can spar against the other classes, cpu controlled. thats cool!!

maybe the problem is the monsters arent not defined and designed as much as character classes, and they lack some “moves”.

Until the trinity is introduced PVE in GW2 will never be “hard.” Just an endless stream of bosses with massive HP pools were the only strategy is “kite and dodge.”

^

the AI can really change that.

gw2 is hard in pvp.

and btw, we did fotm lvl 18 yesterday, the cliffside fractal, where you have to go each side to hit the seals.

thats not “easy” with pugs.

Casual players form a large customer base in every game. Not because of the time they spend in game, but the amount of money they spend. Casual doesn’t always mean they aren’t serious about the game, but they just don’t have the time. So you have a good number of these ‘casual gamers’ spending money.

And this thing called money, is what makes businesses tick.

These days I’d say it’s hard to have any content challenging enough to be worth mentioning. This is my opinion.

Generally, any content hard enough for ‘hardcore’ is too hard for anyone else. You’d hear screams of nerf. Then you’d have the anticipated gear checks, build checks, which would shut out players who didn’t prepare, didn’t have time to prepare, or simply didn’t prepare because they feel that you shouldn’t have to prepare for a game. It’s just a game.

As stupendous as the above sounds, so long as you’re a paying customer, you have every right to play and Anet would have to pander to every demographic.

Hardcore players want challenge. Spend time, sleepless nights, conquer said challenge, and feel that overwhelming release and satisfaction. But the loosely labeled casual players would also want this ‘thing’ hardcore players were able to attain.

Then… that too would take away the satisfaction of conquering said challenge.

The status quo is just as absurd. My head spins from reading my own post. Unless publishers are able to release “Hardcore” and “Casual” versions of games just as they do in different languages, I doubt there’s a solution available to make everyone happy.

Make pve like pvp. Harder AND more interesting

Love to see everyone agree…

Remember GW1 when all pulls were made of a mixture of all player classes i.e. 1 mesmer 1 necro 1 warrior etc with a build also used by players….?
Now that needs to come back imo.
“You immob the Warrior, then we spike the Mesmer, Guardian cleanse conditions from the Necro and someone needs to rupt the Ele’s meteors”.

I miss tactical fights where you counter mobs like you would counter a real PvP team.