Guild Wars 2

I’ve been browsing GW2 forums since headstart and there are things that make me worried. Before I start, I should say that my english is far from being perfect, but I hope it will be understandable for all of you.

Before I started to play GW2, I played another mmo for 3 years. Last 2 years I’ve been part of small organized guild that was top of EU community, in both, pve and pvp. Sure, it’s totally different game compared to GW2, but I want to point out fact that I know what does hardcore playing means. Times changed and now I don’t play more than few hours per week.

Guild Wars 2 is very friendly to players that don’t have much time to play. Much more friendlier than any other mmo. No need to grind hundred of hours to participate in latest content, because gear is available for all and even in so many ways – crafting, karma, dungeons… Now let’s get to the problem. Usually people that don’t have much time to play complain about difficulty of ingame content. What’s worse, there are many of them. That many so am afraid it will make Anet think about making currently easy content even easier.

Guild Wars 2 is meant to be easy to play, but hard to master. What does it mean for all of us? 99% of content if not all should be accessible for everyone, no matter how much time we spend online. Of course you need some time to level up but that’s still nothing compared to any other mmo. I see many so called casuals complain about things that werent doable for them at first try. Example? Go browse Dungeons forum: AC story too hard, Arah too long etc… But for God’s love, having accessible content for everyone doesnt mean that it will be easy! Currently average player needs like 30 minutes to complete AC explo path for example. Monkey would need maybe 3 hours. Both got the same content but monkey needed more time to do it, and that’s it. Just like in real life. Smart people that work hard will always finish they work faster than lazier people.

Did you think about the future, what will happen if Anet actually listen to this kind of people? Sure they will be happily playing and get everything for free, but what will come next? 90% will leave because of boredom. I know what am talking about, this was the reason that killed game I came from. Why? None wants to play just for fun. You need some goal to keep playing for longer period than few days.

Hi OP:

I associate myself with all the remarks you’ve made. Funny enough, I’ve caught wind of some rumours saying that the difficulty was appropiate (challenging but not frustrating) in the Betas, but that they nerfed it due to all the complains by the usual crybabies.

If this is true, I’d say it’s the biggest mistake Anet’s done.

I don’t want to offend anyone when I say “crybabies” but I think this kind of complainers don’t really understand the fatal consequences nerfing can suppose to a game. Basically, everybody loses:

- Decent players feel like they’re immersed in a mind-numbing stroll, as they were in auto-pilot mode. No excitement, no sweaty palms. Eventually, they leave the game and they leave it for good. What is worst: many of the “pro” players are the ones that get more traction to the game – they not only play hard, they usually are the most commited and loyal in terms of community support, guild management, creation of blogs, guides, etc…

- Players that are not so good basically deceive themselves and condemn the rest of the community. And the most important point: they lose any posibility of improving as gamers, which is real, real sad. Even these guys, once they feel that they’ve ended all the content they’re interested in, quit because don’t feel any challenge to aim for.

- Game eventuallly loses support and investors stop supporting it. Game flops.

Conclusion: Easiness/Nerfing/ExtremelyCasual = Lose-Lose Scenario.

Need proof? In the last decade, we’ve seen a pile of WoW clones, all them even easier than their already-easy model. All of them have flopped. So I wonder who is this “casual majority” as many whiners usually put it.

I gonna make another, more general, consideration: every game – being football, poker, monopoly, chess…- requires pain to be sustainable, requires some amount of suffering to fully appreciate the glory of victory: This explains the longevity of the aforementioned games. As Nietzsche put it:

“Without cruelty, there’s not celebration”

And another point. Many of you may think that this is just a game and that I’m taking this a bit too seriously. Nope folks, games must be taken seriously to fully appreciate them. Do you have children? Have you noticed how much they enjoy their games, how immersed they are? You know why? They take gaming seriously!

Trivialization is a killer of games. No trivial game has succeded across human history.

And just to finish: Gaming, even if you do it for one hour a day, impact on your psyche, your behaviour. If you get used to low standards, even in gaming, you’re condemning yourself to mediocrity, losing any posibility of improving, as I have commented. I passionately believe people that prefer low, easy standars on gaming, prefer them in all aspects of their lifes.

Imagine if we agreed with all the whiners and set all of the features of our life (job, education, manners, etc) to easy-mode. We’d be condemning ourselves, all of us, as a society.

Good day to everyone.

EDIT: grammar corrections

I seem to remember that there was a mention of a new PvE mode coming soon.

In GW1 they resolved this issue the OP describes by having a hard mode setting for the game. This way you could clear the same explorable areas with much harder mobs in it. Also the same was done for missions.

I suspect that there will be a hard mode setting coming to GW2 as well. At least for the dungeons I would expect but I am sure they can come up with other things as well.

It doesn’t seem likely that they will simply dumb down the game. If they adjust difficulty down it will most likely be for the normal mode while introducing a hard mode option for people who want more challenge.

Content should be accessible to everyone and relevant for as long as possible. That means player power levels (i.e. levels and gear) should stay the same, while the content becomes more skill-focused for difficulty, rather than simply having higher numbers (gear checks).

Ideally, a player has access to just about everything, but must take the time to increase his or her own skill at the game in order to progress, rather than simply putting on new pants to beat a different color dragon.

5 man content has always been to me the sweet spot in PvE. It lets the player be a part of the team, while still remaining accountable for his or her own role in the fight. I hope that’s how GW2 moves forward.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the epic giant boss fights with dozens of people, but that fight isn’t meant to be a showcase of game mechanics and player skill. That fight is immersive and atmospheric, and no one player is going to make the difference there, nor is any one player meant to.

GW2 has both in place and I hope they will stick to this moving forward. The epic fights at the end of zone events bringing dozens of people together, and the skill-intensive fights for highly-organized 5-man teams can both be there. Both are accessible to the vast majority of players.

I guess my point in all of this is, trying to instance larger-scale content doesn’t add to anything GW2 has to offer. It doesn’t add to the difficulty of the encounter to each individual player, and it begins to restrict which players get to experience the big epic fights. Instanced raiding is archaic and has no place in GW2, which brings to the table everything that instanced raiding has previously, without all the logistical and time-investment frustrations that come along with it. GW2 challenges the players that wish to be challenged, and provides the epic fights for the people who wish to experience those. That’s how it should be, and that would be my “don’t destroy our game”.

I originally come from Lineage 1, where if you even mentioned how hard the game is or that there’s grind, you’d get insulted and called a n00b so many times that you cried and killed yourself.

With that said, GW2 or any MMO released in the past 5 years isn’t hard at all. Which is what makes me very confused as to why people complain about GW2 scale of difficulty or easiness. If it’s too easy, go to the lvl 80 areas alone, say it’s too easy then. If it’s too hard then just go play another MMO – obviously you’re comparing GW2 to another MMO when you say “omg GW2 is too hard, this and that MMO is easier” – if it’s easier to get rewards for your time spent online elsewhere, get them elsewhere.

Personally though I think the perfect balance has been struck when two people argue two opposite points and neither can come up with a hands down winning arguing point for one or the other – kinda like what goes on in the PvP forums, everyone keeps saying “Nerf this class, nerf that class” but the points presented are subjective at best.

So with that said, in my opinion, ArenaNet has done a good job balancing a lot of things in the game – and the PvE story is pretty good too!

You know, I don’t think its the ease of these games that are the problem, its the lax of complexity. I will bring up the ol DAoC here as they themselves likened it to that game. The levels of complexity it in were insane. You needed a special calculator just to make a suit of armor. Games today, this one included, is so uncomplex that it borders on toddler mode.

tarnin.1690:

You know, I don’t think its the ease of these games that are the problem, its the lax of complexity. I will bring up the ol DAoC here as they themselves likened it to that game. The levels of complexity it in were insane. You needed a special calculator just to make a suit of armor. Games today, this one included, is so uncomplex that it borders on toddler mode.

Complexity is good as long as it remains relevant to gameplay. I’m not sure that I’d call my avatar sitting idle while I play a calculator “compelling gameplay”. Same thing dps charts. Don’t wanna play DPS Chart. Wanna play game.

Keiran.1896:

Guys, YOU are the crybabies. Just let the developpers make what they want and stop wasting their time with useless threads.

There will always be people saying “Hey, it’s too easy” and others “Hey it’s too hard” and others “Hey, it’s perfect!”. Who should they believe?…..

We should have Goldilocks play three test builds to decide which one goes live.

Keiran.1896:

Guys, YOU are the crybabies. Just let the developpers make what they want and stop wasting their time with useless threads.

There will always be people saying “Hey, it’s too easy” and others “Hey it’s too hard” and others “Hey, it’s perfect!”. Who should they believe?…..

Perhaps, as in any legal or political process or any debate, they should believe the ones that argue better, make sense, follow logic, present facts based on history and previous cases..You know, human beings were given “logos” because of a reason.

But we are talking the obvious here, right?

Thanks for such an insightful and constructive contribution (lol).

I’d just like to comment about the Beta difficulty thing…

I thought the general consensus was that early zones were far too steep of a difficulty curve for new players, NOT that the game as a whole was too hard. Personally, I remember 1v10ing several times in BWE1 and BWE2. Apparently some people managed to hit Lv80 by the end of BWE2. However, I also recognized how many Lv2s were running around Queensdale stark naked because all their gear broke.

The problem I have is that Anet didn’t actually take that advice. Instead, they nerfed difficulty across the board, so while the issue of the starting zones being too hard was solved, many subsequent zones were rendered a tedious mess. Basically, the challenge of combat was drained, but actual combat time remained the same. For me, this basically resulted in “Hold D while mashing 1” combat 99% of the time.

game was never harder in beta. they actually added dodging to mob ai at one point.

and ofc like bwe2 or 3 when gtoaes acted as a kind of fear/body block against mobs pathing to you, making them instead run away from your or stand out side of the gtaoe.

was never any harder in beta than it is now though. bugged dungeons beign slowly fixed aside.

Corian.4068:

tarnin.1690:

You know, I don’t think its the ease of these games that are the problem, its the lax of complexity. I will bring up the ol DAoC here as they themselves likened it to that game. The levels of complexity it in were insane. You needed a special calculator just to make a suit of armor. Games today, this one included, is so uncomplex that it borders on toddler mode.

Complexity is good as long as it remains relevant to gameplay. I’m not sure that I’d call my avatar sitting idle while I play a calculator “compelling gameplay”. Same thing dps charts. Don’t wanna play DPS Chart. Wanna play game.

Keiran.1896:

Guys, YOU are the crybabies. Just let the developpers make what they want and stop wasting their time with useless threads.

There will always be people saying “Hey, it’s too easy” and others “Hey it’s too hard” and others “Hey, it’s perfect!”. Who should they believe?…..

We should have Goldilocks play three test builds to decide which one goes live.

There were no dps charts really (just hard/soft caps that were known and simple equations to figure out crit over dmg cap). Half the fun of the game though was the meta and suit building. Min/Maxing in competitive end game was fun, not boring. While you might see it as stupid, myself and many others found it’s complexity interesting and kept the game interesting. How complex is WoW, its mass of clones, or even this game? Does that lack of complexity make it more fun?

Here, even the builds are bland. You either go with one of two builds (sometimes one like the ele, bunker or die) and use 10 skills and some off set skills, max of what, 20 if you swap out between fights. There is almost no meta at all in this game.

Aldracity.9463:

I’d just like to comment about the Beta difficulty thing…

I thought the general consensus was that early zones were far too steep of a difficulty curve for new players, NOT that the game as a whole was too hard. Personally, I remember 1v10ing several times in BWE1 and BWE2. Apparently some people managed to hit Lv80 by the end of BWE2. However, I also recognized how many Lv2s were running around Queensdale stark naked because all their gear broke.

The problem I have is that Anet didn’t actually take that advice. Instead, they nerfed difficulty across the board, so while the issue of the starting zones being too hard was solved, many subsequent zones were rendered a tedious mess. Basically, the challenge of combat was drained, but actual combat time remained the same. For me, this basically resulted in “Hold D while mashing 1” combat 99% of the time.

Thanks for shedding light upon this. Big, big mistake in any case. Not sure if it may be too late to fix this…

Another poster, Tarnin, has made a really good point about lack of “complexity”. I understand complexity as freedom of choice in the way you interact with your character, the other characters and the environment.

In this sense, it’s sad how older games like EQ, OU, STW, DAOC were so rich with regards to “complexity” and how we have involuted, through systematic simplification and dumbing-down, in the recent years. Some of us already have say how this is nothing more that mirroring of a society trend – no surprise we’re starting to see now the first consequences of this dumbing-down and social entitlement in the form of the worst recession in the last 80 years…

Mimizu.7340:

Tusuri.3178:

Trivialization is a killer of games. No trivial game has succeded across human history.

Trivial Pursuit, anyone?

Oh rascal, I see what you did there

As I said in first post, I’ve had a chance to be part of hardcore guild where everything had to work like in Swiss watches and now I got to opposite. Opposite… yes, this is the whole point of my idea, people understand the opposite of being hardcore, casual, something underpowered, lame, weak. For me it means I don’t spend many hours ingame anymore, am not playing in so cooperated group anymore, but what’s important, am still hungry for challenges. This is the key that babycriers, as you said, don’t understand. I think that Tusuri nicely said things I forgot to mention. Especially that we need some pain that will keep us trying. None will say it loudly, but I clearly remember how I felt when we killed last boss in new instance for first time. Everyone shouting on teamspeak, feeling satisfaction for all the time we spent trying. I have to say, it was worth it and even if it was only online game, I will never forget that feeling and I wish every mmo player to feel it at least once

i think ANet has good heads making sure everything goes right, i wouldn’t worry much about the game being overnerfed.

that said, it’s always good to voice your opinion to show that you care, and show what you want (or don’t).

Most places are more of annoyance then hard. An annoyed player is an unhappy player.

I don’t care what anybody thinks, but levels 70-80 Risen need to get toned down a lot. Hard? unlikely, but very annoying at most.

Npc beasties in most levels need their Snare, dazz’s, and cripple skills toned down some. How come every single NPC’s beasty needs these skills in the first place? They already Insta spawn on you and mob you quickly. Again this falls in the annoying catagory, not hard.

Getting slowed 90% of the time when trying to navigate from point A to point B in most mob situations becomes very annoying. And throw that in with extremly week NPC soilders, that fold in half almost instantly when mobed. Sure I have skills that can boost my speed, but the cooldown on these skills take to long to refill. Again an annoyance at most.

It’s so easy to remove those slows though. If you tone down the NPC beasties and their slows then condition removal and a whole slew of utility skills become pointless.

Aldracity.9463:

I’d just like to comment about the Beta difficulty thing…

I played first beta, the best way to describe it was getting killed and having no idea why.
If you were in a DE with a large amount of people, things could one hit you.

The Dungeons may or may not have been nerfed since beta – most of us were not in the real beta and will never know. None of the dungeons are currently that difficult, just tedious and unrewarding. If they were nerfed before release, I’d hate to see what they used to be like – what could they of done to nerf them? removed one of the cheap one shot mechanics and reduced the health of bosses from insane to ridiculous?

A lot of dungeons are still buggy – that doesn’t help the “dungeons are too hard” complaints.

As ANET said many times, GW2 is a game that you play for some time, take a break, come back and play some more if you like. That’s the buy to play business model. It is not a pay by hour or month type of game where they need to keep you “at it” with goals/carrots.

And they’re right, it’s a good thing when you can take a break from a game, then come back to enjoy it again.
But they say it like it’s a good thing! Look, there’s two ways to go about it:

• The game is so much fun and challenging than you play for some time and you’re satisfied that you had a good time, you take a break, and some time later you come back to enjoy it again.
• The game is so boring and unchallenging that you play it for some time chasing the fun and the challenge, but you give up and put the game down. Maybe you come back to give it another chance, maybe you don’t.

I’ve played many games that have only 30 – 60 hours of game play, many that I’ve been playing sporadically since the mid 1990s despite not having any new content or carrot-chasing of any sort. Why do I come back to those games when I can finish them in such little time? Each time I play them, I am so happy as if it were the first time I play that game, as if I just discovered this awesome new game. That’s because the game is fun and challenging, and satisfies me. I’ll play it for a month, put it down, and play it again next year. And I’ll have just as much fun as the first time I played it.

But when I put GW2 down, it’s not because I’m satisfied, it’s because I’m tired of chasing the fun and challenge that’s not there.

It’s like eating a delicious juicy/fatty beef and vegetable pot roast, you have a little, you’re satisfied. You won’t have a meal like that for another six hours, and that’s okay, because your body is happy and nourished. You’re not hungry. GW2 is like eating some flavorless sandwich with dry chicken breast and iceberg lettuce, it’s not memorable, and you’ll be grumpy, hungry and unsatisfied in the next hour already because the sandwich didn’t nourish your body.

That’s how I feel with GW2. No matter how many of those sandwiches I eat, I’m still really hungry because they are not nourishing my body.

So no matter how much time I spend in GW2 I feel like haven’t had my fill, I’m still chasing the fun and challenge, hoping to actually find it sometime. I put the game down and come back, try again, but I’m only still chasing.

I don’t have another 60 dollars to buy another game :-| So I kindly request some challenge and fun to nourish my soul. Then I will play and be happy and satisfied, and put the game down as ANet wants us to, not because I give up on it, but because I’m happy and satisfied and know I can come back some time later and have more fun.

<3

Any player can get orange gear. You then have equal stats. Never, however, should we just hand people legendary weapons simply because they believe they have less free time than anyone else and should therefore be rewarded.

It’s simple RPG stuff. If I spend 1000 hours and you spend 10, I should simply be better rewarded. Be happy that the reward in this game is not stats.

I actually… haven’t seen much complaints about dungeons being too difficult lately. So for me… I’m not sure what this fuss is about “don’t listen to the players who wants contents to get nerfed”.

I trust and expect Anet to make the right decision because they are professionals at game developing.

Extremes of any kind cause problems.

Those who insist the game should be open PvP, despite the fact that it was designed around these various races pulling together against a common enemy.

Those who insist everything should just be handed to them.

Those who demand uber-gear for completing what they see as a difficult challenge but is actually just a large time investment.

And so on.

These opinions are niche opinions, but are held by a very vocal minority.

Arenanet did what all development studios do. They tailored the game to tempt what they hope is the largest possible player base to buy the game and keep playing (and buying form the store).

Your assertion that nearly every game has been ruined by making it easier would suggest that the vast majority of people don’t want to have to spend all day working then come back home and log on to a game and have to start working hard all over again.

Don’t like it? Well, tough. It appears that ‘easier’ is what the majority wants and when it comes to paying customers, companies go with the majority or go out of business.

I find many parts of the game too easy, especially when it comes to outdoor content, and twice so when I am in a lower level area (level-adjusted of course). The game felt better during Beta weekend #2 as far as difficulty of PVE is concerned.

I dont think Anet would go back to making outdoor PVE harder across the board, but I hope the concerns are heard and they make new areas (caves, hidden valleys etc) that feature a higher difficulty, denser veteran monster count and a champ here and there for those that want to challenge themselves with 2-3 players outside of the structured environment of a dungeon.

I’m no fan of the trash-trash-trash-Boss-trash-trash-Boss-trash-End_Boss linearity of modern dungeons. Ideally Anet would add some non-instanced dungeons comparable to Guk, Sebillis or the old version of Blackrock Depths+Spire (but not instanced) to the game .

I agree with everything the OP said, I been gaming for years and is very sad how the industry has gone so soft on people. My first real MMo experience was Ragnarok online, unless you can to add the Diablo series as MMos. Back in Ro, you needed to grind just to grind, everything was a pain to the point people started to release private servers with insane rates, yet every time a new boss was released, people would spend weeks even months planning how to tackle it, success was so sweet words couldn’t describe it. The final goal of the game was a competitive GvG war know as the war of emperium, back then people were dedicated to no end, spending weeks farming items for said events, waking up at 3 am to WoE and going back to bed to work the next day, over all both communities and the learning curve were way higher than they are today.

I truly am thankful for having experienced that game as it made me such a much better gamer and believe it or not a way better person as well. When I tackled WoW I kept hearing people say Raids were for the elite, they were hard some kind of incredible content only the true pros could handle. I always played warriors or warrior like characters in every game, this one included, so I was a tank for WoW, my first raid I felt like i was carrying the whole guild on my back, I couldn’t believe how easy this “elite” content was.

From there many games got on my way, such as rift, aion, lineage 2 bla bla bla, yet none ever gave me that challenge. GW2 gave a little bit of a challenging environment, The game on it’s core is simple, but at the same time it got a certain degree of complexity that I really enjoy. I love how building my warrior keeps giving me new possibilities behind the class mechanics, I don’t blame the game itself for the people who say builds I boring, I blame the people themselves, look around, 9 out of 10 guardians are bunkers, 8 out of 10 necros are conditionmancers, 9.9 out of 10 warriors are GS/Rifle stance users who try to one shot you. There are many builds way better than those, but those are simple and successful, which isn’t as bad as WoW where one build ruled them all, even worse…3 trees and only one build for each…one would be good for pve, one for pvp and one for being ignored.

GW2 is young, devs got a lot of bugs to fix, a lot of content to add, personally I say making the World bosses any easier would be the same as saying the dragon would land on his head, break his neck and shoot loot off his kitten Dungeons could use some serious mechanic twiching as they are not challenging they are just walk against the wall and keep trying like. Annoying is a good word for it.

Given that explore dungeons have paths, there really shouldn’t have been any reason why the paths couldn’t vary in difficulty and reward (and state such when choosing the options). Those who aren’t as skilled can go down the easy path (60 tokens and standard drop rates), those who are a little more skilled and bold can go down the medium path (for maybe 80-100 tokens and better drop rates), and those who think they’re the cat’s meow can go down the hard path (120 tokens and even better drop rates)… yeah there are some dungeons with 4 paths, so 2 easy or medium paths then?

The world DEs are almost the same… by levels 70-80 there are only a handful of challenging DEs and the rewards are uniform. People don’t go kill Captain Rotbeard or whatever cause he’s way down there, fairly tough, and offers the same rewards as doing a Pent/Shelt run… same deal with defending the gates of Arah even though it’s a 14 minute encounter (in which time you could do a Plinx run and get 4-5 times more rewards).

Point is, there was opportunity to cater to various levels of skill and instead the game was set to a “uniform” difficulty (though obviously some paths can be trickier than others, but not necessarily intentionally so).

Dalris Thane.6314:

@Tusuri
So, bringing it back to gaming, I have a (for me) hard day, and I want a EASY button I WIN mode. If GW2 isn’t it, so be it.

After reading your post, I can say for certain that a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, a competitive and social game, is not the game for you. An easy-mode as you describe it will kill Guild Wars for reasons stated above by other players. God-mode is available to you in other games than this one.
This post is not meant to be demeaning, I just want to steer you to a happier environment and potentially save my own happy ecosystem (game).

Untouch.2541:

Aldracity.9463:

I’d just like to comment about the Beta difficulty thing…

I played first beta, the best way to describe it was getting killed and having no idea why.
If you were in a DE with a large amount of people, things could one hit you.

I also played the first beta and after about an hour I could confidently solo packs of mobs, even in crowded DEs. Heck, right as I got out the starting block, us Lv2s zerged the “Defend Shaemoor Garrison” event…which is Lv4…and the mobs were scaled to Lv6…and it was BWE1. It was a chaotic mess but I remember doing just fine once I got my bearings.

Again though, I recognize that newcomers were getting absolutely slaughtered by the early game, which is why the consensus was to tone down the learning curve, while still keeping the later difficulty intact.

Lalabu.2097:

Dalris Thane.6314:

@Tusuri
So, bringing it back to gaming, I have a (for me) hard day, and I want a EASY button I WIN mode. If GW2 isn’t it, so be it.

After reading your post, I can say for certain that a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, a competitive and social game, is not the game for you. An easy-mode as you describe it will kill Guild Wars for reasons stated above by other players. God-mode is available to you in other games than this one.
This post is not meant to be demeaning, I just want to steer you to a happier environment and potentially save my own happy ecosystem (game).

Yup.

If I want that kind of gaming I load up Skyrim and toggle on god mode. Then run about with no fear of death, leaving me to enjoy the RPG parts.

But that’s not what I want out of GW2.

Well that’s what I think some folks are getting at… the co-op part. I think harder doesn’t necessarily mean inflate health/dmg, but rather make encounters such that there’s legitimate player working with players rather than players adding damage to the pool with some support tossed in.

CoE, as a whole dungeon, is a great example of team cooperation like the evolved bosses, the hacking the sub-station with the mini golems, the golem boss (kinda) and probably a few other examples. It also has some cases where it’s also tough from the “add dps and don’t die” perspective that’s really the majority of GW2 encounters; those examples in CoE would be the lazer grid (at least doing your part and failing not really affecting the team majorly), Subject Alpha, that Icebrood boss dude, and most of the trash.

It’s not only about being hard or easy, what can be easy for me may not be for someone else. But what’s wrong is the choices left to the players. None.
The same mechanisms as gw1 are here, somewhere ; in every hit, every spell.

But preset.

Some associations are left to us, pre-made (stats on weapons….), or so useless in comparison with others that….
God, we were on “Pokemon” at 8, and there was more strategy than here :/

What was great in gw1 were the unlimited possibilities in terms of builds, and the option to have a real reflexion while playing, or, if lazy, to play it more casual. It’s not as if we were alone behind our windows 95, desperate to find a solution alone… Even if there were hundreds of builds, “casual” could still use google, and get something OP 10s later…
But what can we do with an over-easy game? Nothing.
Even mobs are boring… Do you want more HP? Oh yes, please.

AI? Nope, we can’t say there is one.
Big group to defeat, with healers hiding behind some awful mobs with AoE? Nope.
TRUE hexes, enchantments, and remover?
TRUE interrupting skills (not a funny condition)?
And TRUE conditions, that are not only a line on a skill description, skill you’re spamming anyway…
Players are not playing together. No way. They are hitting the same uggly undead, at the same time. But it’s a really big difference.
Gimme a monk and a way to target people. Gimme mez skills and a way to target foe.
Well never mind. Better to play blinded or like a drunk wizard using his spells “approximately in the direction of what makes the biggest noise”.

There is something most people do not understand when they see us “crying” : we’ve spent 7 years on gw1, playing as hard as we’re doing these first weeks, and getting bored only the few months before gw2. We loved that game and what makes it different from WoW and others MMO. But there’s nothing left.

Gw2 is nice, even good, I must admit it. Great work on the maps and all.
But not "gw"2 that much.

Someone already mentioned that GW1 had a Hard Mode for all PvE content. Different difficulty levels for dungeons, of content in general (thinking of ME3 here), is pretty standard for instanced gaming nowadays. I think there is little danger that ANet will uniformly make dungeons easier for everyone. The trend in MMO is harder versions added over time.

As long as ANet introduces, or I guess retains, a harder version, there is no reason for them not to have an easier version, especially for the story mode. If there is a demand for it, why not satisfy it as long as others have their own options?

On a tangential note, I don’t think the problem is so much with the dungeon’s difficulty as much as the pacing. For a level 30 going from regular PvE to AC, the increase in difficulty—coming from both the need to work with a group and the substantially more challenging foes—is huge. The evidence for the pacing problem is strong; despite being billed as L35, I have been in few AC EM groups that don’t at least complain a bit at <L70 and none that will even contemplate a <L40 member. A big part of the difficulty complaint, as I myself complained at level 30, comes from this pacing cliff. It’s a very reasonable criticism.

I was really curious about this post when reading the title, because I ended up loving this game and I plan to invest a lot of time in it over the next few years. So, as far as I am concerned, it’s my game also. However, while I understant and respect Spiky’s point of view I find out that OUR game can mean a lot of different things.

From what I understand, one of the main issues would appear if ANet made the game easier or, let’s say, more casual-friendly. This seems to be a thing that plagued WoW over the last years, according to the hardcore members of it’s community, but I wouldn’t want to turn this into a comparison between the two.

But for every game, and even more so for MMOs, you have two strong sides of the community: the hardcore players and the casual players. The secret is probably in finding a way to please everybody but that’s quite hard to achieve. From what I’ve seen – though I could be wrong – the hardcore players will always be the more vocal ones. I am not sure if for Guild Wars 2 there are more hardcore players than casual players, and hopefully whenever it comes to arguments there are opinions from both sides.

This being said, I am for the more casual side of things in GW2. I would like for things to be relatively easy to achieve, I don’t want for this game to become a source of stress for me. I don’t want to be frustrated by it after a hard day’s work, I would rather have it challenge me with an amazing story or with it’s lore rather than with tough fights and frustrating mechanics.

The OP seems to be a hardcore player and I am asuming this because of the 700 hours spend in the game. And while it’s cool to be able to play this much, I wonder if after that much time spent in any game one is not getting tired by it. On the other hand, I understant that had he played only 50 hours some other people might’ve jumped at him for not having an informed opinion. Which leads me to my next point.

If a casual player only has 40 hours in the game his opinion should not matter? Because there are a lot of people who aren’t posting on the forums and play maybe even less than that in a month’s time. And they will continue to play. And being on the casual side of things, they will probably want things to be easier and definitely less frustrating.

I, for one, play MMOs to relax. That’s my definition for the genre somehow, a social and easy game where I can achieve something no matter how much time I invest in it. I wouldn’t want that to change, and if there are too difficult spots in the game then I vote for ANet to make them easier so I could continue playing in my own way. Like I said, I’m looking to have fun and relax, life frustrates me enough, I don’t want for a game to start doing this and if it happens I usually drop the game.

Wall of text alert, I guess.

They have already dumbed this game down so much it’s ridiculous.

BWE1? Skill point NPC’s would actually 2-3 shot you if you sucked.
BWE3? Some guy uploads a video where he outheals the same NPC with only passive effects…

Pre release? Arena Net claim that only experienced groups of friends with good coordination will be able to complete explorable mode, and that they will take a “substantial amount of time”.
Post realase? Everyone and their grandmother runs explorable mode dungeons in less than 30 minutes. People even 2-man AC in less than 15 minutes. Some coordination checks were indeed added, such as the torches in CoF path 3, but then again these paths don’t see the light of day ever.

It was a noble idea that Arena Net had but unfortunately they caved in to the baddies, just like any other MMO today.

Tusuri.3178:

No trivial game has succeded across human history.

Furious Avians seems to be doing quite well.

Varmyr.4253:

Lots of text I did read but am not attacking or discussing at this point…

Wall of text alert, I guess.

Alerts are more effective beforehand, than when the damage is done

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Tusuri.3178:

No trivial game has succeded across human history.

Furious Avians seems to be doing quite well.

furious avians isn’t trivial though.

trivial implies it’s so easy you don’t have to put any effort or thought into it. 2 + 2 is a trivial equation, for example.

Satans Chosen.1024:

Someone already mentioned that GW1 had a Hard Mode for all PvE content.

Yes, I think I knew that… thousands of hours spent on gw1… and HM came later.
But there are two things to see, and you (and a lot of people) are seeing only one: is the game “hard” or not?

Yes, I find the game terribly easy ; but the other problem is about “complexity”. Deepness.
Making things work for a casual gamer is a choice, and, to sell a game, I’d say a good choice. Here is the “easy” part.
But we should be able to get better than them thanks to some ability to play the game, understand its mechanisms.
That’s when we can talk about gw1. Interrupting skills, healing skills, a lot of technicity. Interactions between you and your ennemy depending on what each is doing. You don’t find it on gw2.