Guild Wars 2

Polluxo.4967:

I can’t say what is wrong with it or what can be done to properly fix it. A combination of things would probably help pinpoint a fix. From the beginning combat is so easy you only need to use your auto-attack, at level 80 there are repetitive combos that frequently get repeated on tougher enemies. There are different issues at both sides of the spectrum. What can be done to make PvE more exciting?

I can’t really agree with you at all. I have a lvl 80 Mesmer and if I stuck to auto attack I would never have made it past lvl5.

Even at lvl 80 I find that I constantly have to actually pay attention to what I am doing so that I can use my abilities to the best effect. Especially if I am playing solo.

My husband plays a Ranger and he says he doesn’t have to “play piano” with his skills the way I need to, so maybe it is your class?
I love PvE so much that I haven’t even tried PvP and WvWvW yet- I plan to, I just get sidetracked.
As for the combat and skill/ trait system- it is relatively easy to pick up sure but that does not mean that it is simple, the depth is there if you want it.

Just engaging in on going discourse with the public agreeing or disagreeing with things I’ve experienced. Seeing it’s still installed on my desktop and I could log in if i read something i found remotely interesting…does that qualify me to post?

Stark please say it’s ok for me to post.

Alto Zenith.2678:

However, these threads appear all the time, there’s been countless threads about game difficulty, often having polar opposite opinions in them. My point was that it’s just swings and roundabouts. So if there’s a bunch of each, then the game is probably pretty well balanced…?

From all the posts I’ve read, the majority of them have been complaining about the encounters that were artificially difficult. Ie, either mobs have been spawning too quickly or that there are too many of them, or that the bosses either 1shot players or have a ridiculous amount of HP. These are the kinds of challenges that I am opposed to, they don’t appeal to any real strategy in most cases, rather just chaotic gameplay. You really don’t hear anything in the way of DEs being too difficult to complete.

Evil.9061:

It’s almost as if people were saying this nearly a month ago. At the time, those that said ANYTHING remotely negative about this game were told to go back to WoW. Most of us did.

I knew it was only a matter of time before people starting hitting 80, getting exotics and realizing they were done.

Like GW2’s bigger supporters will tell you, as they have told me weeks back " PvP is the endgame." And by Anet’s new post today, it seems thats really all they are focused on.

I’ve been one of those who’ve been knocking on these pipes since beta.

I also hear all the time those who continue to push PvP as being GW2’s exclusive endgame, and the only thing I can respond to that with is “Well then how come there’s so much PvE lore, if they were only going to ditch it at 80?”

Stark.1350:

If PvE is so easy for you, why not make it more challenging for yourself? Don’t follow the zerg of players, try doing things on your own. Try duoing a champion with someone. Take on more mobs at once.

More artificial difficulty… This still does not appeal to any strategy, the same mechanics exist if there is one player or 30.

Stark.1350:

Have you offered feedback or suggestions to ANet, or are you just here to trash a game that you no longer are playing? Which, makes no sense to me whatsoever.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Some-simple-solutions-to-improve-the-overall-PvE-gameplay-experience

Just one thread among the many I’ve participated in offering up suggestions.

Jalliah.7862:

I missed that comment. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. It would have to be a separate area not just to let people know it’s much much more risky but to contain all the yelling and whining in chat. lol

Yeah it was a comment from a while ago actually. I cant find it anymore but its was saying that the DE’s would scale up to hundreds of people while allowing anyone to join in and help. Which it does, its just that its not difficult.

Yeah there would be a seperate area as it would be instanced. A seperate version of the map or the area around the event limited to however many players. The more options for different group sizes the better. 10 / 20 at least.

I like pve as it is, don’t want to bother with team strategy or group composition, instead of spending an hour coordinating and changing builds I can join an event and have fun with random people right away.

WoW style gameplay and trinity doesn’t appeal to me at all, don’t want raids where one player sucking or making a mistake at the wrong time leads to the whole group wiping. The casualness of it is what got me into GW2 to begin with.

Shinzan.2908:

I like pve as it is, don’t want to bother with team strategy or group composition, instead of spending an hour coordinating and changing builds I can join an event and have fun with random people right away.

WoW style gameplay and trinity doesn’t appeal to me at all, don’t want raids where one player sucking or making a mistake at the wrong time leads to the whole group wiping. The casualness of it is what got me into GW2 to begin with.

The point of this is not to take away your playstyle but to add another playstyle to the game. As long as your not forced to do raids to obtain gear then I dont see an issue with them being added. What im saying is that for an MMO to be truly successful then it has to appeal to as large an audience as possible.

Adding more people playing the game will equal more sales and more content. Adding raids could indirectly benefit you. If dealt with propely so as not to be detrimental to the game itself.

Shinzan.2908:

I like pve as it is, don’t want to bother with team strategy or group composition, instead of spending an hour coordinating and changing builds I can join an event and have fun with random people right away.

Good luck having “fun with random people” when doing Balthazar. And I also don’t think you will consider Shatterer & Co much fun.

PvE is never really challenging in any MMO I know. The talk about great “tactics” is nonsense, it is always countering the limited forms of AI, which a rather an assortment of behavior routines. And yes, that also extends to GW1, the tactics in PvE was looking at the areas predominant enemies and combine your skills accordingly, in action it was just the same keys pressed in the same order over and over.

On the other hand, we had enough of complaints like dungeons too hard, cannot do champions with 3 people and the like. You just cannot find a level of difficulty that will satisfy everyone. I don´t consider PvE very challenging, but it feels like fun after years of hitting 1,1,2,3,4,4,1 and the like without having to watch anything on screen but my bars.

Ubung.7423:

Shinzan.2908:

I like pve as it is, don’t want to bother with team strategy or group composition, instead of spending an hour coordinating and changing builds I can join an event and have fun with random people right away.

WoW style gameplay and trinity doesn’t appeal to me at all, don’t want raids where one player sucking or making a mistake at the wrong time leads to the whole group wiping. The casualness of it is what got me into GW2 to begin with.

The point of this is not to take away your playstyle but to add another playstyle to the game. As long as your not forced to do raids to obtain gear then I dont see an issue with them being added. What im saying is that for an MMO to be truly successful then it has to appeal to as large an audience as possible.

Adding more people playing the game will equal more sales and more content. Adding raids could indirectly benefit you. If dealt with propely so as not to be detrimental to the game itself.

Very open-minded response, refreshing to read, thanks.

DE’s need some serious fixing. they do not scale.

I think the DEs could use a touch of work at the higher levels to make them just a tad more than tank n’ spank… I like Balthazaar because it’s tough as it should be since you should be close to 80 if not already there; ideally you’ve learned something about the game by that point.

Dungeons could definitely use some work. Not every boss needs to be super challenging, but there should be enough flavor between encounters so their a little different in their own right. While a tank n’ spank is fine every now and then, there should be a Subject Alpha-type fight where you have to pay attention most of the time; flipside though is that if the fights are single phased, they shouldn’t take forever to whittle away at the boss (3-5 minutes per phase).

Lance Coolee.9480:

Alto Zenith.2678:

However, these threads appear all the time, there’s been countless threads about game difficulty, often having polar opposite opinions in them. My point was that it’s just swings and roundabouts. So if there’s a bunch of each, then the game is probably pretty well balanced…?

From all the posts I’ve read, the majority of them have been complaining about the encounters that were artificially difficult. Ie, either mobs have been spawning too quickly or that there are too many of them, or that the bosses either 1shot players or have a ridiculous amount of HP. These are the kinds of challenges that I am opposed to, they don’t appeal to any real strategy in most cases, rather just chaotic gameplay. You really don’t hear anything in the way of DEs being too difficult to complete.

Evil.9061:

It’s almost as if people were saying this nearly a month ago. At the time, those that said ANYTHING remotely negative about this game were told to go back to WoW. Most of us did.

I knew it was only a matter of time before people starting hitting 80, getting exotics and realizing they were done.

Like GW2’s bigger supporters will tell you, as they have told me weeks back " PvP is the endgame." And by Anet’s new post today, it seems thats really all they are focused on.

I’ve been one of those who’ve been knocking on these pipes since beta.

I also hear all the time those who continue to push PvP as being GW2’s exclusive endgame, and the only thing I can respond to that with is “Well then how come there’s so much PvE lore, if they were only going to ditch it at 80?”

Nah, not hitting it. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter have a tremendous body of lore, as do the DoTA-clones and a million other pvp-games. Would you say the upbringing of Ryu is really a relevant part of the gameplay?

Ubung.7423:

The point of this is not to take away your playstyle but to add another playstyle to the game. As long as your not forced to do raids to obtain gear then I dont see an issue with them being added. What im saying is that for an MMO to be truly successful then it has to appeal to as large an audience as possible.

Adding more people playing the game will equal more sales and more content. Adding raids could indirectly benefit you. If dealt with propely so as not to be detrimental to the game itself.

But then you’ll have a bunch of content people like me won’t see, I disliked this about GW1, stuff like Domain of Anguish, Underworld or the Deep just weren’t doable with pugs, not that they would take a first time player along anyway.

Shinzan.2908:

But then you’ll have a bunch of content people like me won’t see, I disliked this about GW1, stuff like Domain of Anguish, Underworld or the Deep just weren’t doable with pugs, not that they would take a first time player along anyway.

Not only that, but you end up with the “Rift problem” where the designers are forced to add more and more Raid content, leaving little-to-no resources for the design of content for non-raiders.

Many of us chose GW2 because it didn’t have raids, and because all of the developer resources would not be wasted on Raids and progression itemization.

Cortechs.3265:

Not only that, but you end up with the “Rift problem” where the designers are forced to add more and more Raid content, leaving little-to-no resources for the design of content for non-raiders.

Many of us chose GW2 because it didn’t have raids, and because all of the developer resources would not be wasted on Raids and progression itemization.

Same reason why I quit playing Rift. Raids are fun every once in a while, but most people over there only want to run raids over and over. I’d rather have more small group content.

We started 4 manning story-mode dungeons recently, it’s a blast, you can’t just zerg through them.

I think the problem stems fromCRAPPY DUNGEONS, this is where the hard things are supposed to be. To me world pve is find it should not be really hard (although so fun rare mobs/events that are actually hard, not just Hp pool beasts should happen rarely and give cool rare drops.)

There’s a difference between challenging and hard. Challenging is where you have to actively try to do well, putting everything you know to the test. Hard is just the game being unfair. A boss with a rapid fire attack designed to kill you but can be easily dodged and doesn’t occur often is challenging. A boss with a rapid fire attack that hits you no matter where you are and is his main attack is hard. The champion giant in Diessa is challenging. The fire elemental in Metrica is hard.

Hard is not fun. Hard is obnoxious, boring, and almost painful to do. Dungeon mobs are hard and it makes me never want to do dungeons again. Bosses that use cheap tactics that can only be beaten by hundreds of players wailing on it as fast as you can doesn’t strike me as fun. It just proves my point that the only build to ever do is DPS, undermining the whole “be what you want” clause. Just because some people like hard core games and dying hundreds of times to absurdly unfun fights against an enemy who spams knock down attacks so fast you can’t even get up from them doesn’t mean we all do.

Agree with Aramanth and I think that’s the root of the problem. Challenge should be an interesting use of mechanics since you have all skills available. Say what you will about WoW (I only did pre-WotLK), but I learned a lot about my priest through the dungeon challenges. Subject Alpha is the only encounter that made me think about my engineer.

I think guild wars 2 is challenging to some degree and most of the people that might say otherwise except for the gamers that play DMC, Batman AA/AC, GoW etc guild wars 2 wont be challenging because we are used to far worse.

I have a couple of theories on why a lot of people here are claiming guild wars 2 is easy:
1. They are playing an OP class. Try playing guild wars 2 with the current elementalist then come and say guild wars 2 is not challenging. Guild wars 2 right now is ez if you play every class short of the ranger (to a lesser degree) and elementalist. Right now, you can get away as a warrior or guardian and even a memser with tanking mobs even in orr, try playing an elementalist and see just how far that will get you if you don’t actively participate in the fight.

2. They dont know what challenging actually means. A lot of people seem to sadly associate dying with challenging and those are not related. Challenging in a game just means that you have to think about your actions, it doesn’t mean you die a lot. It means if you don’t plan well during the fight you will probably die. Hard like someone correctly said is when the boss cheats kinda like all those 90s arcade bosses especially SNK boss hence the term SNK syndrome.

I think that Arenanet really needs to nerf all class to the level of elementalist or buff all the other classes and bring the mobs to the level of warrior but I doubt that will ever happen.

Just to add a HOLY trinity does not make a game difficult. It just makes you dependent on other players. In most cases when you die, well when I died it was more because someone did not do their job properly and that just frustrated me, it did not make it harder.

The holy trinity is just adds an artificial difficulty to any game. It’s like having a test designed for with a calculator in mind and making people take the test without a calculator, The test really isn’t hard you just did not give them the tools needed to solve the problems as intended.

Shinzan.2908:

But then you’ll have a bunch of content people like me won’t see, I disliked this about GW1, stuff like Domain of Anguish, Underworld or the Deep just weren’t doable with pugs, not that they would take a first time player along anyway.

See this is where the dealt with properly part comes in. Your right you do not want to cut off content to people who dont raid. So what you do is retune some of the content already in the game to make it more difficult and open it up to larger groups.

2 examples;

1) 10 / 20 person versions of the explorable dungeons. Tune it for the extra people. Content is still available in 5 man mode.

2) Instanced meta dynamic events for 10 / 20 people. Make them much harder. Content can still be done in the open world.

Both are rewarded with gear already in the game. Number 1 could offer dungeon tokens. Number 2 could offer karma rewards.

Cortechs.3265:

Not only that, but you end up with the “Rift problem” where the designers are forced to add more and more Raid content, leaving little-to-no resources for the design of content for non-raiders.

Many of us chose GW2 because it didn’t have raids, and because all of the developer resources would not be wasted on Raids and progression itemization.

Now this is something that certainly should be taken into account when adding a raid like experience. In my above examples the content is reused from whats already in the game so you dont really have to worry about the dev time taken. It would take some time to tune the dungeons / instanced meta DE’s for a larger group but not enough to take anything away from the game itself.

To all im just trying to say that raiding itself isnt the evil a lot of people think it is. It was the way certain other games dealt with raiding that was the problem. Making it the whole focus of the game and restricting content and gear was a mistake. One Guild Wars 2 doesnt have to repeat.

@silvermember

I don’t think the issue is a matter of how often I’ve died. I play an ele, and personally I didn’t really feel underpowered while leveling. I die more from jumping puzzles than I do enemies.

Also, regarding class nerfing / boosting – I believe those only apply artificial difficulty (see my earlier post on page 1 of this thread).

For most of the DEs, the only real critical factor in success / failure is how many warm bodies are participating.

@Cortechs

Raids really get a bad rap because of how lacking they are in other games. There are so many implementations of raids that make them terribly restrictive and unable to cater to the “less than perfect” gamer.

That doesn’t mean that they can’t be something better, though. I’m still waiting on the game that promotes raids without the strict “body count”. I would love to see instanced encounters scale based on how many players are participating.

I’ve run sooooo many WoW pugs through every raid instance up to Cata quite successfully. At the time I had pretty good routines; I taught the encounters well enough before hand and promoted a very friendly and engaging atmosphere. Sure, we’ve wiped a lot, but we progressed (in almost new PuG groups every week), and had a lot of fun doing it. One of my biggest pet peeves though, was either that I felt I always had to fill every spot, had to have a particular group composition in order to combat the encounters or had to leave someone out because there wasn’t enough room. We couldn’t just run w/ who we had and let the encounter scale accordingly.

silvermember.8941:

Just to add a HOLY trinity does not make a game difficult. It just makes you dependent on other players. In most cases when you die, well when I died it was more because someone did not do their job properly and that just frustrated me, it did not make it harder.

The holy trinity is just adds an artificial difficulty to any game. It’s like having a test designed for with a calculator in mind and making people take the test without a calculator, The test really isn’t hard you just did not give them the tools needed to solve the problems as intended.

I think you’re inaccurately attributing GW2’s new “trinity” as being solo-centric- which it is not. Regardless if you die in a dungeon encounter with a Tank/Heal/DPS trinity or a Support/Control/DPS trinity, the responsibility still lies with you and the team. Last I checked, dungeon content is not solo-able, so you are certainly still “dependent on other players”

silvermember.8941:

I think guild wars 2 is challenging to some degree and most of the people that might say otherwise except for the gamers that play DMC, Batman AA/AC, GoW etc guild wars 2 wont be challenging because we are used to far worse.

I have a couple of theories on why a lot of people here are claiming guild wars 2 is easy:
1. They are playing an OP class. Try playing guild wars 2 with the current elementalist then come and say guild wars 2 is not challenging. Guild wars 2 right now is ez if you play every class short of the ranger (to a lesser degree) and elementalist. Right now, you can get away as a warrior or guardian and even a memser with tanking mobs even in orr, try playing an elementalist and see just how far that will get you if you don’t actively participate in the fight.

2. They dont know what challenging actually means. A lot of people seem to sadly associate dying with challenging and those are not related. Challenging in a game just means that you have to think about your actions, it doesn’t mean you die a lot. It means if you don’t plan well during the fight you will probably die. Hard like someone correctly said is when the boss cheats kinda like all those 90s arcade bosses especially SNK boss hence the term SNK syndrome.

I think that Arenanet really needs to nerf all class to the level of elementalist or buff all the other classes and bring the mobs to the level of warrior but I doubt that will ever happen.

I had zero problems leveling my Elementalist. You just push more buttons.

It’s kind of the same argument of challenging versus hard.

Elementalist is just “hard” not "challenging, in the sense that you just need to press more buttons than other classes to accomplish the exact same thing. It’s not actually harder, it’s just annoying. And yeah, they’re squishy, but so are Thieves.

Ryth.6518:

People are just use to WoW…but it’s no different really. Besides bosses, all the mobs in WoW dungeons, even in Vanilla were just trash…and basically for zerging, spanking down.

The ‘trinity’ system didn’t even really exists till raiding in WoW. We basically DPS’d our way through all the 5 mans in WoW up till UBRS and even then didn’t have a dedicated tank or healers…just more off tank types and spot healing.

You must not have played Vanilla or BC WoW then because the mob’s were just not easy to spank down. First 2 pulls in MC had many guilds cry. And that is just 2 pulls of like 20 more to go before the first boss. Naxx40 guilds couldn’t even get to the bosses because of trash. BWL, AQ40, Kara, etc. The mobs had some challenge in them. And please don’t say for you guys it was cake because I seriously doubt you even finished Naxx 40 or AQ40.

Sunwells trash as well. So no you couldn’t just zerg it.

Knote.2904:

silvermember.8941:

I think guild wars 2 is challenging to some degree and most of the people that might say otherwise except for the gamers that play DMC, Batman AA/AC, GoW etc guild wars 2 wont be challenging because we are used to far worse.

I have a couple of theories on why a lot of people here are claiming guild wars 2 is easy:
1. They are playing an OP class. Try playing guild wars 2 with the current elementalist then come and say guild wars 2 is not challenging. Guild wars 2 right now is ez if you play every class short of the ranger (to a lesser degree) and elementalist. Right now, you can get away as a warrior or guardian and even a memser with tanking mobs even in orr, try playing an elementalist and see just how far that will get you if you don’t actively participate in the fight.

2. They dont know what challenging actually means. A lot of people seem to sadly associate dying with challenging and those are not related. Challenging in a game just means that you have to think about your actions, it doesn’t mean you die a lot. It means if you don’t plan well during the fight you will probably die. Hard like someone correctly said is when the boss cheats kinda like all those 90s arcade bosses especially SNK boss hence the term SNK syndrome.

I think that Arenanet really needs to nerf all class to the level of elementalist or buff all the other classes and bring the mobs to the level of warrior but I doubt that will ever happen.

I had zero problems leveling my Elementalist. You just push more buttons.

It’s kind of the same argument of challenging versus hard.

Elementalist is just “hard” not "challenging, in the sense that you just need to press more buttons than other classes to accomplish the exact same thing. It’s not actually harder, it’s just annoying. And yeah, they’re squishy, but so are Thieves.

I wasn’t talking about leveling. When I was leveling my character it was pretty easy. actually I was in orr/straits at level 69ish. trying to ram my way to 80. Spend some time in orr fighting at least 2+ mobs not dynamic event mobs mind you because they tend to be on the ultra easy side. I mean regular world mobs.

There is something ‘wrong’ with Dungeons.

And it doesn’t have to do with the Trinity missing.

We did all the WoW dungeons with a Ret Paladin, 2 Rogues, a Mage and Lock. We CC’d our way through with saps, fears, polys, etc. We didn’t have a tank or healer. It was all about CC and positioning and making sure we attacked the right target.

That seems to be the missing from this game. Crowd Control. CC.

Right now, everything feels zergy and no need to really ‘control’ anything.

In early WoW, you had to make sure you didn’t break CC (well before they made the game for kids and CC didn’t break)…otherwise you would get owned…even in dungeons or the world.

Maybe it has to do with the way the monsters are etc, but there isn’t much ‘strat’ to runs or encounters right now.

I’d like to see CC and abilities like that brought into line and lots more of them.

bojangles.6912:

You must not have played Vanilla or BC WoW then because the mob’s were just not easy to spank down. First 2 pulls in MC had many guilds cry. And that is just 2 pulls of like 20 more to go before the first boss. Naxx40 guilds couldn’t even get to the bosses because of trash. BWL, AQ40, Kara, etc. The mobs had some challenge in them. And please don’t say for you guys it was cake because I seriously doubt you even finished Naxx 40 or AQ40.

Oh I played Vanilla WoW…dungeons were never hard and we didnt have a trinity system in our 5 man group. It was all about CC. Only the bosses were challenging back then in 5 mans.

Also you are talking about RAIDS, not DUNGEONS. BIG DIFFERENCE.

If you want RAID type stuff in dungeons, then that is a different conversation.

Lance Coolee.9480:

silvermember.8941:

Just to add a HOLY trinity does not make a game difficult. It just makes you dependent on other players. In most cases when you die, well when I died it was more because someone did not do their job properly and that just frustrated me, it did not make it harder.

The holy trinity is just adds an artificial difficulty to any game. It’s like having a test designed for with a calculator in mind and making people take the test without a calculator, The test really isn’t hard you just did not give them the tools needed to solve the problems as intended.

I think you’re inaccurately attributing GW2’s new “trinity” as being solo-centric- which it is not. Regardless if you die in a dungeon encounter with a Tank/Heal/DPS trinity or a Support/Control/DPS trinity, the responsibility still lies with you and the team. Last I checked, dungeon content is not solo-able, so you are certainly still “dependent on other players”

I never said or implied guild wars 2 is solo centric becaue for dungeons clearly it isn’t. I am saying that, I don’t need player A to only be tank or healer or DPS. Everybody has a chance to play ALL roles. In a trinity game, if my tanks sucks I am screwed until we kick the tank and get a new one, if my healer is bad well same deal. In guild wars 2, if we are dying because we cant stun or blind or whatever the mob, chances are one of my skills will have one of those control.

Guild wars 2 allow for more on the fly adjustments, it actually requires you to put in more thought than any holy trinity game. Guild wars 2 makes each player active participates, while in a holy trinity I don’t worry about anything outside my scope. So if im a dps in a trinity the only thing i really do is blindly spam my preset rotation, same with healing etc. In guild wars 2, I have to at least make more of an effort to do more than one task.

Also the last quote was just my bias against healers. I hate healers, most of them tend to suck anyways.

I don’t see how anything can be challenging when you always have 20 bots around to back you up in your endeavors.

silvermember.8941:

I never said or implied guild wars 2 is solo centric becaue for dungeons clearly it isn’t. I am saying that, I don’t need player A to only be tank or healer or DPS. Everybody has a chance to play ALL roles. In a trinity game, if my tanks sucks I am screwed until we kick the tank and get a new one, if my healer is bad well same deal. In guild wars 2, if we are dying because we cant stun or blind or whatever the mob, chances are one of my skills will have one of those control.

Guild wars 2 allow for more on the fly adjustments, it actually requires you to put in more thought than any holy trinity game. Guild wars 2 makes each player active participates, while in a holy trinity I don’t worry about anything outside my scope. So if im a dps in a trinity the only thing i really do is blindly spam my preset rotation, same with healing etc. In guild wars 2, I have to at least make more of an effort to do more than one task.

Also the last quote was just my bias against healers. I hate healers, most of them tend to suck anyways.

I’d like to hear one of your examples of a GW2 encounter that requires more thought than one in a “holy trinity” game. Bear in mind, I’m not advocating this game be like WoW – so let’s not start that flame war – yet I have played both games and can certainly attest (with examples if need be) that there is a greater level of challenge in WoW content than in GW2 content, even if the button rotations were known before hand.

Regardless of which “trinity” system exists, teamwork is teamwork. WoW had less “flexibility” for error when it came to the key roles (tanks / healers) and its impact on the rest of the team; Although GW2 had a greater room for individual error, it still doesn’t justify one-shot mechanics and incredible amounts of boss HP.

I say people that consider GW2 PvE to be too easy should post a screenshot of their character select screen. That will give more weight to their words. They could always just post a screenshot of them with a legendary though, that would probably carry the same weight.

As for me I’ve found plenty of challenge so far. I’m only at 55% map completion too. I’m sure you guys that are sitting at 100% and working on just farming the rest for your legendaries are right and that it’s easy. For me though there is plenty of challenge.

I’m having a hard time right now finishing up straits, finishing up scavenger’s chasm etc. I guess it’s just me though and that’s fine.

Anyway just thought I would suggest to you guys to show off your completion and how far you’ve gotten so that more people would listen to your arguments.

I’d like to hear one of your examples of a GW2 encounter that requires more thought than one in a “holy trinity” game. Bear in mind, I’m not advocating this game be like WoW – so let’s not start that flame war – yet I have played both games and can certainly attest (with examples if need be) that there is a greater level of challenge in WoW content than in GW2 content, even if the button rotations were known before hand.

Regardless of which “trinity” system exists, teamwork is teamwork. WoW had less “flexibility” for error when it came to the key roles (tanks / healers) and its impact on the rest of the team; Although GW2 had a greater room for individual error, it still doesn’t justify one-shot mechanics and incredible amounts of boss HP.

I was a tank in wow, raided. I played both warrior, and a paladin. Yes I even played during the lolret days when it was join the group buff everyone now gtfo. I played during bc, wotlk, and during cata. I find GW2 far more challenging. That’s just my opinion, but you wanted straight examples of fights I find more thought than raiding in WoW.

First there is the Temple of Balthazar meta event. I thought the entire event was really fun, yes even the priest. It was a cool event. Like most events though I consider this one to be overly punishing for melee. Most of the events are very easy for ranged players, and really difficult for melee. That’s another issue though. Have you completed this event?

I enjoyed several of the temple events actually. I can list more, but first I would like to know if you have even completed any of these events. If not I don’t think you will even know what I’m talking about.

@Ryth Oops you are correct. I misread your thread and thought you said the raid dungeons in there. But still Vanilla in Scholo, DM North, UBRS, LBRS, and some in Strat wasn’t all super easy mobs. Before the nerfs and even when UBRS and Scholo etc. were 10 and 15 man. There were quite a few challenging pulls. But yes now they are all cake and pointless.

I think low level zones are perceived as too easy because downleveling doesn’t work well.

For my own preference I’d like open word pve to be a little harder, but I think an in-game poll for each map would give Anet a better perspective.

While many people are applauding Anet for getting rid of the holy trinity……it does come with a cost that many seem to not acknowledge……..the cost is that mob/Boss design has to be simplistic so that any ‘group’ of ‘be anything you want’ can have any hope at winning. Fortunately for GW2…the game was never designed to be a heavy PVE focused game so its a minor cost well worth having something different in terms of classes.

The challenge in GW2 PVE is how a player manages 10+ skills and use them in sequence. I think the issue people are having with this type of skill play style is that a) it’s spammy, b) core builds execution is very boring, I mean even though it’s fun theory craft/play around with stats, ultimately when it comes down to performing your builds it feels too easy for most players (the challenge is high within the preparation, but low within the execution). That’s why players think PVE is too easy, because the “physical combat” has LOW depth (HIGH depth = being able to succeed and fail based on execution performance, not builds).

EDIT: What I mean by my last comment is that a combat with good depth is a well rounded combat, not just one that’s about putting theory-crafting and builds waayyyy in front of actually how the player executes on the battlefield).

draylore.2837:

Fortunately for GW2…the game was never designed to be a heavy PVE focused game so its a minor cost well worth having something different in terms of classes.

The majority of content in GW2 is PvE so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Here I go again chiming in on PvE difficulty. I agree with the a lot of the sentiment here. I have found the PvE to be hard or easy – neither of which equals challenging. Challenging to me would be requiring me to attack a particular mob differently every time I fight one. If I can spam skills 1,3 and 5 on one weapon, then swap and use skill 2 every single time that isn’t challenging. The only time I have to dodge is when I have two or more mobs on me (I’m a mesmer btw) or am fighting a veteran or my heal has a long CD still. Why can’t mobs have a heal like we do? Why can’t they pick up a boulder and throw it at me knocking me unconscious? I will say this again – I believe the PvE difficulty of BWE1 was the sweat spot for this game. You made a stupid mistake you died. I remember having to use dodge whenever it was off CD. I also get why they lowered the difficulty/challenge of the PvE. There were a lot of complaints things were too hard. Well, now that people have played the game and have gotten used to the mechanics of things, I would suggest that Anet turn the difficulty level back to BWE1.

Morrigan.2809:

Polluxo.4967:

I can’t say what is wrong with it or what can be done to properly fix it. A combination of things would probably help pinpoint a fix. From the beginning combat is so easy you only need to use your auto-attack, at level 80 there are repetitive combos that frequently get repeated on tougher enemies. There are different issues at both sides of the spectrum. What can be done to make PvE more exciting?

I can’t really agree with you at all. I have a lvl 80 Mesmer and if I stuck to auto attack I would never have made it past lvl5.

Even at lvl 80 I find that I constantly have to actually pay attention to what I am doing so that I can use my abilities to the best effect. Especially if I am playing solo.

My husband plays a Ranger and he says he doesn’t have to “play piano” with his skills the way I need to, so maybe it is your class?
I love PvE so much that I haven’t even tried PvP and WvWvW yet- I plan to, I just get sidetracked.
As for the combat and skill/ trait system- it is relatively easy to pick up sure but that does not mean that it is simple, the depth is there if you want it.

During PvE, most of my attention goes into watching for when my highest-damaging/most useful skills come off cool-down while I kite around whatever I am fighting, or healing if I am low on health. It’s honestly not that engaging or fun at all. Granted, Mesmer isn’t the greatest class to PvE with since illusions die with the target, confusion does little dmg with most NPCs attacking so slow, and overall it’s just not on par with how other classes perform in PvE.

Taking a look at GW1, there’s a little bit more to keep our attention than just cooldowns, not to mention the sheer amount of skills to choose from, no two alike. Even after playing GW for so long, it is still difficult to master the profession even with max level. It’s like we sacrificed a very in-depth and engaging system of skills for more mobility and a greater need for positioning. While I do like the mobility, and the fact positioning is key, NPCs in PvE aren’t taking advantage of that. Maybe it’s the menial skills they have, or the fact that they attack so slow.

I would like to know what the developers honestly think of the combat. Are they waiting for us to give them an answer because they have tunnel vision from working on it for so long?

@bojangles.6912

No worries man.

I don’t think that the original 5 mans were that difficult. I don’t remember having many issues running anything other then getting 10-15 people for Strat/UBRS. Sure they were harder…but nothing compared to raid content or say the 45 min runs, etc.

Ixal.7924:

draylore.2837:

Fortunately for GW2…the game was never designed to be a heavy PVE focused game so its a minor cost well worth having something different in terms of classes.

The majority of content in GW2 is PvE so I have no idea what you are talking about.

That may be true in quantity but its pretty clear to me that the focus of GW2 ..especially profession design and mechanics is PvP not PvE. …maybe the name Guild WARS might actually be a clue. =P

>> Mike Rocks said “I think one of the problems is that when soloing, most classes play pretty much exactly alike. You pick a type of damage (Condition, Crit, Power), a survival attribute (Vit, Toughness, Healing), then you find a weapon combination that works best with that combination and use it for the rest of eternity.”<<

Honestly, I think you’re doin’ it wrong. If you’re just picking one way of playing and stickin’ with it for the whole game you’re missing out on the point of being able to change your skills and swap weapons on the fly. If I start gettin’ bored with a weapon and skill loadout I take five or ten minutes and redo my build. For awhile I did Pistol/Pistol as my main, then S/P, then P/D, then S/D, now Dagger/Dagger and I build my utility skill group around that; sometimes I go high movement, high stealth, high poison, high traps …

There are so many ways to change your play style in this game that if you’re getting bored you just need to take a little time and play around with what you’ve got. If you aren’t willing to experiment it isn’t the game’s fault …

draylore.2837:

Ixal.7924:

draylore.2837:

Fortunately for GW2…the game was never designed to be a heavy PVE focused game so its a minor cost well worth having something different in terms of classes.

The majority of content in GW2 is PvE so I have no idea what you are talking about.

That may be true in quantity but its pretty clear to me that the focus of GW2 ..especially profession design and mechanics is PvP not PvE. …maybe the name Guild WARS might actually be a clue. =P

Guild Wars 1 has great PvE, so I can’t relate to what you are saying.

Better customization, build variety.

More challenging DE’s with multiple objectives.

Have mobs really kick your kitten Lol

people are complaining for whatever reason.

as a guardian, if i want to stay alive when the S hit the fan,
i have to use my 5 weapon skills, swap weapon for 5 more, and my utilities and use my virtue (f1 and f3 especially) on time to block attacks.

seriously, what do people want? to play with their toes too?

i cant believe they go thru dungeon by doing the same combos over and over.
totally trolling.

there is as many builds as weapon set combination.
add to that the traits and gears.

thats more than enough for release.
you probably havent mastered only one yet.

MMO PvE is almost never exciting. If it is easy it is dull and if it is hard it is frustrating. This is because PvE is repetitive and predictable. Even the bits you have never done before are predictable because they use the same elements of combat and environment that have been used in the rest of the game.

I would say the goal should not be to make PvE exciting, it should be to make it engaging. How do you do that? Engaging storylines, characters and tasks.

I’d say GW2 has done a good job of that. As good as any MMO I have played, although that’s not saying much because most MMOs are derivitive and lazy (oh look it’s a dwarf who loves gold and drinking and an elf who likes nature – how very original).

^ interesting

thats exactly how i feel people are on the forum!
“too easy, too hard” never happy.

its weird.

Avatar.1923:

^ interesting

thats exactly how i feel people are on the forum!
“too easy, too hard” never happy.

its weird.

exactly that! But concerning OP: Add more unique battles. I liked the “old school” boss fights in SE and COF story. that is certainly an alternative to the traditional moar HP, moar DPS!!! approach.