Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I know a lot of people that don’t care about all the zones with their level 80 characters, especially the ones below 80.

Reason for that are two major concerns, the rewards (a point they are working on, if you take the blog post into account), but also the difficulty when you explore the world. If you don’t play content that is above your level (what isn’t really possible when you hit level 80), everything (or at least 80-90 percent) gets kind of trivial/easy mode. You don’t 1 shot things, but you certainly aren’t very challenged.
For me that is without even having to think about the bigger concern than the actual reward issue.
I’m not doing what I’m doing for the reward primary, I’m there to enjoy the time/way that brings me to any kind of reward… And a reward can also be to win a challenging/interesting/at least not easy fight/event, it hasn’t to be something that you find in your inventory! (Did someone say Dark Souls!)
Yeah, there are a few harder/challenging events, but if the hole world should be endgame, playground, also for level 80 characters, you should consider to improve the challenge/difficulty of the game overall.

Additional to that you could give the players the option to get down-scaled even more for more difficulty. That would effect just that player, so it’s kind of his own choice! That doesn’t make it automatically more interesting (just increasing/decreasing numbers makes a fight harder/easier, but that is nothing related to something being interesting, dynamical or so automatically!), but at least gives the player the option to choose his difficulty to some degree.
Build on that you can improve the rewards when someone takes the challenge to be down-scaled that much!

TL;DR: Rewards are a big point when talking about “Give the player reasons to visit zones of every level”, but if the content in those zones is way to trivial/easy for someone that is level 80, the way to the reward won’t be the reason to visit zones, and shouldn’t the way be the reason to do something?
So, they really should consider to improve this part of the game as well!

For me it isn’t clear if that is part of what they want to do with “evolve the existing world”, but I thought I should make aware of it! Because that is actual my biggest concern at the moment when I explore the world with my level 80 character!

Thanks,
Replect

I agree the difficulty could be tweaked for explorable mode. I imagine the problem is the vast variety of players. With dungeons you at least are getting a “more hardcore” subset of players who know what they are getting into, whereas world exploring players may just be super casual and a trivial fight might challenge them.
Anyway I find this especially noticeable when going from a dungeon to an open map. You can just run whatever build and totally steamroll all foes. But maybe that was the intent of open maps.

The open world in an MMO should not be about crushing challenge. Dark Souls is an open world ARPG and it is at the very challenging end of the ARPG spectrum. Dark Souls is an excellent game but I would not look to it as a model for an MMO in terms of challenge. There needs to be challenging content in an MMO, but I don’t mind realizing the benefit of my heroism a little bit in the open world. The starter zones are faceroll, but the scaling kicks in a little better afterwards and scales from there. I actually think they have done a good job with it as it is implemented. There are tweaks that perhaps need to be made here and there but I wouldn’t want to see any radical departure from how it is currently implemented.

I mentioned Dark Souls not because that is the difficulty level to go, just that the reward of games can be more than the loot at the end!

Sure, the implementation isn’t bad, but the down-scaling system alone has so much more potential…

It’s certainly difficult to make all players happy, obviously there are those that are fine with the difficulty, but all the guys I know that stopped playing for now (actual casual players) did that because of this primary…

While you are complaining about it being too easy, there are a lot of people complaining about the fact that they shouldn’t get downleveld cuz then what’s the point of leveling.

Before you argue that, Id on’t care, because I don’t agree with it either. I think the difficulty is fine as it is. It is easier yes, but you deserve a little break for going full exotic and leveling to 80.

The point of leveling hasn’t to be what it is/was in all the other MMOs out there.
It could (and in this game I think it want to) just be a tool to show your progress of the character overall… No, not that your damage output is going to be increased from 100 to 1000.
I mean with character progress: “Hey, a few more levels and I get my next utility skill slot!”, “3 more and I get my elite!”, “2 more and I have my next major trait unlocked!” or just “This weapon is cool, but it requires me to be lvl 75… 6 more to go!” or whatever comes to your mind. There are steps in your lvl progress which unlock new tools (weapon set, skill slots, skills, traits, gear/weapons) for you to work with, and these tools are still present while you are being down-scaled… And that’s it! There you have a reason for having a level system in this game, at least in my opinion…

Not to forget about that you as a person most likely have gotten better while you leveled your character.

All this results in a open PvE world that doesn’t provide challenging content for lvl 80s, just (if at all) if you stay in the 80 zones. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to just have a relaxed time in the world, but sometimes your options in the open world are sooo tiny if you are looking for a challenge (in the open PvE world, not PvP/WvW or Dungeons!!!).
Put the more interesting encounters, more (really) dynamic events concern beside, already a slider to down-scale you more then it does default would be great. Each player can decide how difficult he wants it to have everywhere/anytime (to some degree at least) without really effecting other players around! Evolve the reward related to that and I think a lot of players complaining about both of these things would be happy overall!

ya but I can be an amazing player, or I can be an lousy player, but my skill won’t matter if I complete the challenging content.

Since the only thing matter is if there is enough people to do the content. And if those say 50 people is good enough to complete the challenging content.

Right now we have group events throughout the mid tier zones that just go undone because of lack of players, or apathy given the minute chance of any drops. Ramping up difficulty for those events would only compound the issue, and I question whether you will attract players back if those champions/events continue to give the rewards they do now.

The problem is the level adjusting in the scaling process.

When you visit low level areas, the level adjustment gets you to +1 (or +2) levels above the monster level needed for that particular area. However with the improvement of skill, gear and traits, that adjustment is insufficient to deliver the same difficulty factor as you had when you were at the right level in that area.

I never understood how the level adjustment on scaling wasn’t based on area to character level difference or solely on character level.

For example:
Visiting a lower level area when you are lvl 1-60 -> +1
Visiting a lower level area when you are lvl 61-79 -> +0
Visiting a lower level area when you are lvl 80 -> -1

A scaling based on the dynamic growth of the character status is needed to provide the same challenge as it once had. Many players have now no trouble in killing 5-10 mobs at a time, thing that was impossible when they were at the same level than that area!

@LHound
I think you are right in general, but giving the player a tool to choose more difficulty (for better rewards) by himself would probably be the best solution. Some players probably enjoy to smash there way through the mobs quite easily from time to time, others are looking for the little challenge at least…
But that is just one point I’m concerned with when talking about difficulty.. Currently, most difficulty isn’t a result of interesting/challenging created encounters, more because of the damage they do with every hit. The challenge shouldn’t be just because of such numbers…

Replect.3407:

@LHound
I think you are right in general, but giving the player a tool to choose more difficulty (for better rewards) by himself would probably be the best solution. Some players probably enjoy to smash there way through the mobs quite easily from time to time, others are looking for the little challenge at least…
But that is just one point I’m concerned with when talking about difficulty.. Currently, most difficulty isn’t a result of interesting/challenging created encounters, more because of the damage they do with every hit. The challenge shouldn’t be just because of such numbers…

I believe they are currently tied.

One thing that was always bad in every MMO till now, was that as soon as you pass a low level area, there was nothing else to do there. This was mainly due to the work you had to give to the environment not being high enough to give proper rewards. However, Guild Wars 2 have a dynamic system that makes the scaling to low level areas, but they aren’t “hard” enough as higher areas for them to be equally rewarding.

Why would a champion at level 10 (that i can easily kill alone) give the same kind rewards as a champion that i can find in Orr? The solutions is either make them have different rewards, making the need to return to low level areas completely worthless, or making them equally challenging, creating the same level battlefield in every zones with equally satisfying rewards!

I believe that this game isn’t the kind that if people want to hit a bear cause it’s low level it shouldn’t be easier than a bear a max level. It’s a bear, and it’s dangerous whatever the mood the player may have. Go kill bunnies that die with 1 hit for the mob slacking.

I agree that this game should have more interesting ways of killing mobs and bosses. Some strategy time to time is a good thing instead of the {Hit, get downed, revive, hit again, repeat}.

This game simply don’t have that “Tank and Spank” type of gameplay that other imbued trinity games have. Gw2 have the new “Down, Rez and Spank” type of killing. Thats bad… There’s no levers, no strategy, no worth…. Simply target and kill!!!

If the world isn’t threatning, it becomes boring. The rewards become grinds. When players are bored, they’re grinding for the rewards and they’ll whine that the game is a boring grind.

If the world is challenging, it becomes frustrating. The rewards become achievements. When players are frustrated, some will whine because they can’t complete the challenge and others will enjoy it because the reward feels like an achievement.

You can’t solve this problem and make everyone happy.

^

yup.

the challenge isnt open world when your maxed gear and level.

challenge is pvp, wvw and dungeons.

I’m convinced every online game needs a dedicated hardcore server.

I don’t want everything I run into to be a challenge. Real life is more “hard mode” than I’ll ever need. When I’m playing a game I want to ridiculously own face, that’s what’s fun for me.

Not anything has to be a challenge, not every event/encounter has to be your end, that’s not what I’m asking/hoping for. I enjoy to have a easy, flow-like tour through Tyria… Sometimes! But if my 80 characters just getting this kind of stuff 90 percent of the time when I’m exploring, wandering through Tyira, that gets boring, no matter how good the reward is in the end. And in the open PvE world my 80s doesn’t has any real choice here.

I want more…

Fun = My current time
“Bonus” Fun = The loot in the end

Reward = Defeated my opponent
“Bonus” Reward = The loot in the end

It’s hard to achieve that goal without risking to make the game to hard for especially those that are in the actual level range, but I’m sure there are ways to handle that.

Beside a slider for down-scaling for manual choice if I want to get down-scaled even more, I can think about that the encounters damage/skills scale depending on the target they are hitting. So, the same attack could hurt a much down-scaled player more than someone with the actual level of that area… Think about a AOE explosion and one lvl80 with 2000 health and a lvl20 with 2000 health, and this one explosion is doing 400 dmg to the lvl80 and 200 dmg to the lvl20… (That’s just random numbers coming to my mind, it’s just an example.)

Anyway, I really hope that they are taking care of this as well, not just the reward (loot)…

I hope that made any sense, that was written between busy stuff!

I toally agree with the OP. I love walking around uncovering things, even if the reward is lackluster (honestly, I couldn’t care less). On the other hand, as a lvl 80 char, everything (unless it’s tagged as group event and sometimes even then) is too easy.

So far, the only way to really get in danger is to either fall off a cliff or aggro like 5 mobs.
I’m not saying the game should turn excruciating difficult, but as it is right now, I can’t enjoy it. The moment I find an awesome quest I kind of already know that I’m going to win anyway. It’s kind of discouraging even before I have started it. /sigh

I was really looking forward to the changes made with down-/ upscaling but it feels the same as before. Especially when I duo with a friend of mine we don’t even bother to heal that much. For an elementalist water attunement is almost pointless in a non-dungeon situation.

On the other hand, I really like the way you can solo/ group up in this game. Just slightly increasing most of the difficulty would do wonders, though.

same for me.

the open world is simply not meant for endgame characters.

that living story is so boring because of that..
i went to diessa plateau for the 1st time..
sure its nice.
but the vistas are ridiculously easy and i spank the skill points. and i can really aggro 5-10 beasts, no problem.

game should have a lot LESS low level zone and a lot MORE high level zones.

I see the difficulty/challenge as the major problem and as the main reason if players quit playing the game. Everyone I’ve talked to has either already stopped playing because of that or thinks that this will be the reason at some point later down the wrote if nothing changes… If you can rofl stomp most of the content with your 80s if you are not playing PvP/WvW, there will sooner or later come the point where you just quit. Having a easy/moderate time (but not all day long) can really be a great thing after a hard workday, but overcoming challenges is overall the more satisfying part of a game…