Guild Wars 2

I want to talk about one thing in this game I’m pretty concerned about: challenges.

As the title already states I think this game pretty much lacks challenge overall.

I’ve done quite a lot of PvE with my friends and yet there was nothing, literally nothing, we needed a second try. Neither the dungeons, be it story or explorable mode, nor one of these DE gave us the slightest bit of a challenge. That said we’ve run through every dungeon and done almost every path.

I kinda miss the feeling I know from other games and even GW1: getting your kitten beaten up due to a lack of strategy. For instance UW after it’s change was giving us a hard time before we finally managed to succeed killing Dhuum. But it’s exactly that moment making it worth playing the game. It’s not another achievement popping up, but you knowing that you as a team have achieved something, after hard work and a lot of coordination. PvE in GW2 simply doesn’t include the chance to fail. It’s nothing more but casual gaming.

But even PvP in this game doesn’t feel like a challenge. WvWvW is all about zergs and requires just some good coordination and what’s more important: enough players on your server willing to defend your stuff at any time. What I’m trying to say is, it again comes down to not skill making much of a difference but a lot of other facts like server activity having the most impact on the weekly WvWvW outcome.

Eventually there’s sPvP which is like the most casual mode in the game. It’s all about joining a random game, on a random team, smashing up some enemies, being switched around on teams and finally losing or winning, which doesn’t really have that much of an influence on your score. This game mode completely lacks seriousness.

The only thing that kinda stands out so far is tPvP. But once you get used to the game and work as a team you’ll most likely crush every single pug. In most of the games with my guild the enemy team ends up having less than 100 points at the end of a game, which eventually became more frustrating for us than for them. Even though I see the most potential in terms of challenge in this game mode.

There have been so many very successful game modes and challenges in GW1 (e.g. HA, GvG, UW, Mallyx and HM). How could they drop every single bit of standard they used to have and make this game so straight forward without any difficulties?

How is you’re experience so far? Is there anything you’d say that’s taken you more than one try to accomplish? Am I missing out on something?

I’ve made a few “suggestions” in the effort to add “challenge” to GW2.

You’re welcome to check them out and offer up your support and/or critiques of the ideas.

Combat, Dynamic Events… what’s the point if they’re easy mode?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Combat-Dynamic-Events-what-s-the-point-if-they-re-easy-mode

GW2, Challenge Mode Dungeons.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/GW2-Challenge-Mode-Edition

Its was a fun game to level up but yes its the easiest MMO I have ever played. Simply trying guarantees splendid success.

Dhuum was an amazing fight, even if half of the epicness is nostalgia. Pure awesome. The lore was great, he looked cool, fought cool, and if you weren’t prepared or on your A-game he would faceroll the hell out of your entire group without so much as a “LOLUMAD?”

I don’t really consider 1shot mechanics as challenge, I’d like to see a lot less of that and more wear and tear on entire groups. Like, more bosses that spread a ton of conditions or stack retaliation or even more unique mechanics than just boons/cons. That stuff gets boring.. let’s see some uber cool mechanics.

Take WoW raid fights (or even dungeons) as an example, they got some awesome ones. This boring zergfest we have right now isn’t much of a challenge more of an annoyance.

AlexanderFaust.4518:

I’ve made a few “suggestions” in the effort to add “challenge” to GW2.

You’re welcome to check them out and offer up your support and/or critiques of the ideas.

Combat, Dynamic Events… what’s the point if they’re easy mode?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Combat-Dynamic-Events-what-s-the-point-if-they-re-easy-mode

GW2, Challenge Mode Dungeons.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/GW2-Challenge-Mode-Edition

Wow, I do not know how I could miss out on your posts. I think you pretty much covered some pretty constructive ideas of what I was trying to say. :-P

Faranox.8012:

AlexanderFaust.4518:

I’ve made a few “suggestions” in the effort to add “challenge” to GW2.

You’re welcome to check them out and offer up your support and/or critiques of the ideas.

Combat, Dynamic Events… what’s the point if they’re easy mode?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Combat-Dynamic-Events-what-s-the-point-if-they-re-easy-mode

GW2, Challenge Mode Dungeons.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/GW2-Challenge-Mode-Edition

Wow, I do not know how I could miss out on your posts. I think you pretty much covered some pretty constructive ideas of what I was trying to say. :-P

lol, thanks ~

Unfortunitely the suggestions forums aren’t visited a lot and even fewer people actually read the suggestions (they only go there to complain bout bots / magic find).

Try the Metrica Province fire elemental world event.

That one is tough. Probably the only challenge I’ve had in this game, plus a few quest in my PS.

@Zuralork

lol, pretty much.. but he’s only hard in the “artificial” sense.
IE: he hard cause he “zergs” the players.

Funny since that’s what players typically do to every event in the game

Honestly, I would recommend anyone wanting to suggest changes to GW2 and even the Devs themselves to watch these vids::

Love it when games are hard cause the game is actually DESIGNED around a solid concept.

IE: Right now, GW2 = Diablo Combat Clone w/o stat gear grind

Basically the mechanics don’t work well with one another.

I feel like ANet have pigeonholed themselves due to the combat system. The idea sounds good on paper: A fluid system that revolves around dodging instead of tanking. But how do you balance such a system? I, personally, have no idea. It’s too chaotic to be subject to normal scrutiny, and as such where do you even start if you want scalable difficulty?

Hmm, not really sure where I’m going with this. I think the concept might be flawed in such a fundamental way, that there is no easy fix at this point. Even though it IS fun at times.

Ghoest.3945:

yes its the easiest MMO I have ever played. Simply trying guarantees splendid success.

Complete and utter nonsense!

WoW = faceroll no challenge what so ever.

GW2 = plenty of challenge.

@Zii The Mad

It’s called Action Combat.. lol, so the only reason it doesn’t really work in GW2 is because the events don’t scale to cater to it.

IE: GW2 is spam focused and the spells don’t have “weight”.

Again, I would recommend checking out my suggestions I posted above on the issue as they would greatly improve the combat/de’s/dungeons and over all fun factor of GW2.

RLD.7439:

Ghoest.3945:

yes its the easiest MMO I have ever played. Simply trying guarantees splendid success.

Complete and utter nonsense!
WoW = faceroll no challenge what so ever.
GW2 = plenty of challenge.

Mind to give any evidence for what you’re saying? And I don’t think it’s the right place to badmouth other games here. This topic solely focuses on GW.

Wow is just dance dance revolution in PvE. Once you know the steps its face roll. You can macro up your rotation and mash one button over and over. The PvE in here isnt terribly difficult but its not one button mash at least.

@RLD.7439

WHAT!!?? WoW had some pretty decent challenges not many people could get through all the raids. GW2 there is nothing in the game that can’t be beat with ease and a half competent pug. Half is even more than needed. I’d like you to tell us one area in which a decent challenge can be had other than pvp.

If you go to Cursed Shore, and hit auto-run with the game minimized, it’s somewhat challenging to stay alive. Far from impossible, though, but I suppose if you did it 1000 times the waypoint costs would be “difficult?” Beyond that it’s a casual cakewalk, sigh.

Wow pve is exactly like a puzzle, it looks confusing at first but once you know where the peices go its not a challenge just a matter of putting them in place.

Gw2 pve is more like a rubik’s cube (not sure of spelling) it can be scrambled up differently each time you get it. But as with a rubiks cube there’s a system to solve it. Once you get that system you can just apply it to any situation.

Need more challenge? Try soloing 3-4 levels above your own. If you simply must have a group, then go for 5-6 levels above the group avg.

Playing at level in any game is guaranteed to be easy since most games are designed to be accessible to all levels of competence at that point.

Raf.1078:

Need more challenge? Try soloing 3-4 levels above your own. If you simply must have a group, then go for 5-6 levels above the group avg.

Playing at level in any game is guaranteed to be easy since most games are designed to be accessible to all levels of competence at that point.

You shouldn’t have to be stupid and handicap yourself by going to levels your not designed to be in. And really the world pve is whatever, it shouldn’t be super hard. Some encounters should be and vets do this ok. Really the dungeons are where the challenge should come from and right now they are meh. Most are pretty easy and boring IMO. A few are over tuned which give them a false sense of hardness or stupid hardness.

Handicap equals challenge. If you refuse to take any responsibility for finding a level of challenge that you can embrace, then stay bored. You deserve no less than the kiddie levels, Wookie.

I won’t quest at level. I habitually solo 3-4 level above my own…and its plenty challenging.

Raf.1078:

Handicap equals challenge. If you refuse to take any responsibility for finding a level of challenge that you can embrace, then stay bored. You deserve no less than the kiddie levels, Wookie.

I won’t quest at level. I habitually solo 3-4 level above my own…and its plenty challenging.

Think ya missed the point of the topic… =/

I’m inclined to agree with the OP.

Originally I had a huge respect for explorable modes. But after doing them at level 80 with a bunch of people who were familiar with their classes they just didn’t seem all that threatening.

I mean mean we’d literally kill every boss with the first try, even if the entire group was there for the first time. This is a PuG, no voice com, nothing.

Sure, bosses have massive amounts of HP, often making the fights tedious and boring, but that doesn’t make them challenging. Neither do various one-shot mechanics that tend to gib you instantly…especially as melee.

Overall it’s the lack of mechanics and encounter complexity that makes things easy. The same reason why the dragon encounters are so incredibly dull.

Raf.1078:

Handicap equals challenge. If you refuse to take any responsibility for finding a level of challenge that you can embrace, then stay bored. You deserve no less than the kiddie levels, Wookie.

I won’t quest at level. I habitually solo 3-4 level above my own…and its plenty challenging.

Mind to troll somewhere else? I’m obviously not referring to leveling at all.

Please take your time, read through the topic again and then try to place some constructive arguments or leave it be. Thank you.

Faranox wrote in the first post:

I’ve done quite a lot of PvE with my friends and yet there was nothing, literally nothing, we needed a second try. Neither the dungeons, be it story or explorable mode, nor one of these DE gave us the slightest bit of a challenge.

I think that says it all. Perhaps you should read what you post. I still maintain that had you attempted your forays in zones above your current level you might find some challenge. Instead of kittening on the entire game.

I’ll continue posting however, as I think its a pertinent point that needs to brought up.

Raf.1078:

Faranox wrote in the first post:

I’ve done quite a lot of PvE with my friends and yet there was nothing, literally nothing, we needed a second try. Neither the dungeons, be it story or explorable mode, nor one of these DE gave us the slightest bit of a challenge.

---

I think that says it all. Perhaps you should read what you post. I still maintain that had you attempted your forays in zones above your current level you might find some challenge. Instead of kittening on the entire game.

I’ll continue posting however, as I think its a pertinent point that needs to brought up.

Again, you’re missing the point.
If the only way to get a “challenge” is by fighting things above your level.. then how do you fight things above your level if you’re lv80?

He’s talking about adding challenge to the ENTIRE game..

He led off with a blanket statement bemoaning the lack of challenge in the entire game. I simply gave an opinion on that statement. Perhaps he needs to work on continuity when writing.

What I find amazing is the apparent absolute refusal to adjust your circumstances in order “find” challenge. If the game won’t automatically adjust to my level of competence..then its a bad game?? How does any game mechanic do that?

Raf.1078:

He led off with a blanket statement bemoaning the lack of challenge in the entire game. I simply gave an opinion on that statement. Perhaps he needs to work on continuity when writing.

What I find amazing is the apparent absolute refusal to adjust your circumstances in order “find” challenge. If the game won’t automatically adjust to my level of competence..then its a bad game?? How does any game mechanic do that?

Have you played Torchlight 2 yet?
If you have, what mode did you play on? and why?

Though I haven’t played it yet, many of my friends SWEAR that if you don’t put it on veteran/hardmode, then the game is simply too easy and boring.

That is pretty much what YOU have been talking about.. “challenge” in the sense of mobs not being instantly blown up, ect… (fight mobs above your level).

And while that’s one way to look at challenge.. for some of us, we want mechanics that are MORE than just “Difficulty = +HP/DMG/Mob Count”.

Raf.1078:

He led off with a blanket statement bemoaning the lack of challenge in the entire game. I simply gave an opinion on that statement. Perhaps he needs to work on continuity when writing.

What I find amazing is the apparent absolute refusal to adjust your circumstances in order “find” challenge. If the game won’t automatically adjust to my level of competence..then its a bad game?? How does any game mechanic do that?

Ok, you got your point there. So basically what you’re saying is, that before level 80 you have to fight monsters that are like 4-5 levels higher than you to actually get a challenge in the entire Game. But that doesn’t really make a challenge in the entire game. I guess it’s not that much about my “continuity when writing”, but more of a refusal to comprehend what the writer actually is saying. And as stated above already “entire Game” implies level 80 as well and even more than that you’ll most likely spend most of your time on that level. Therefore, your argument doesn’t even seem half decent.

And other games pretty much cover the aspect of rising difficulty. Just have a look at GW1. But I really don’t feel like breaking this all down here.

Guild wars 2 is an MMO as such it has to cater to a large audience. A significant amount of the MMORPG audience are not really skilled gamers. The might play MMOs but MMO tend to be easier than their single player counterpart. As a result the open world stuff has to be doable by everybody in the casual players, that is why dungeons exist in theory.

Now, if you find dungeon easy there is nothing much that can be done for you except artificially increase the difficulty for yourself. This is because as stated above they have to appeal to a large number of player not just you.

Personally, I don’t play MMORPG for their difficulty because they will never ever be difficult, hence why I usually play single player game for my difficulty fix. MMORPG are just watered down version of single player games, since unfortunately you have to appeal to a non gaming audience.

i haven’t played WoW before but watching some of the so called difficult raid, they seemed pretty tamed downright easy to what I did in Aion.

To the OP, what Im about to say will probably come off as rude, but please kindly shut up and stop trying to get Aner to make the game harder for everyone else. You and your friends may find the game to be a cakewalk but there are so many others who are either comfortable with the game’s difficulty or would like it toned down a bit (I’m looking at you dungeons). I mean, of even the expl dungeons are too easy for you then perhaps this game is not for you and you should move on. Maybe proudly as you know you’ve accomplished so much on the game.

I’m not sure, but did you ever play GW1? I for myself played it for a few thousands of hours and UW, HM, Mallyx and stuff was anything but easy or designed for “unskilled” MMO-players.

And I’m definitely not arguing that they should increase the difficulty of dungeons. But it’s more like a hint for future updates and changes. All I wanted was to hear your experience so far. According to you guys most of the players seem to be overextended by the current content, so I’ll probably just take my time off for a while until most of the players in this game feel like they can deal with Karma Train DE in Cursed Shore.

^ I’m not 100% sure if this was directed towards me and if it wasn’t then ignore me, but to answer your question, yes, I did play GW1. In fact, I invested over 2000 hours into it and I won’t deny that it had its difficult areas (such as UW, DoA as you pointed out) but that stuff was clearly designated as Elite Areas for those who wanted that extra challenge. The thing is that those areas did not constitute such a big chunk of the games like dungeons or other aspects of GW 2 and were fun to overcome. The difficult stuff in GW 2 is just frustrating and not really warranted. I will say that this game should have Elite level stuff for the skilled players or maybe even a HM for explorable areas/dungeons rather than excluding many players from even being able to experience the environments themselves because they are overly difficult.

The pve is extremely shallow in terms of difficulty for sure. One of the the biggest dissapointments.

I agree, PvE is not challenging in the slightest, especially when compared with GW1. This is unfortunately the direction that MMOs are taking, and have been taking for awhile. PvE in MMOs use to actual pose problems- problems which required teamwork and communication. I find WvW and sPvP to be a challenge though, under certain conditions. For example, running small-man groups in WvW, or a competent group facing a competent group in sPvP (I had a 500-495 match last night, extremely intense). Yet even in games that put a lot of focus on PvP, the majority of the people are still interested in PvE. I am a DAoC vet and even on DAoC there were people who didn’t even touch RvR (when there were a lot more subscribers Gareth was extremely popular as well) so I think PvE is the real backbone of any MMO. Even hardcore PvPers want a break sometimes where they can relax and PvE, but that doesn’t mean PvE shouldn’t be a challenge at all.

So I agree with the OP. Please add more challenges in the game, you don’t even have to make the game harder, just add more encounters or situations where the possibility of failure is real and has consequence, so people who actually like a challenge can have one, and those who aren’t in the mood for a challenge can sit back and hit 1 3 5 3 1 2 4 3 1 2.

Found this for challenge seekers:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/69267-challenge-seekers-a-peasants-quest/
I’d actually thought about it myself but didn’t think it would be doable.

I have an idea, a silly, hilarious, impossible idea that I would toss out there to get flames, lols, and feedback.

I’ve considered trying something called a ‘peasant quest’.

The idea is this:

Pick an adventurer class (I could see ranger being popular for this) and go as far as you possibly can using ONLY ENVIRONMENTAL WEAPONS (after the level 1 instance). Yep. Shovels, hoes, rocks, centaur weapon rack shards, whatever you can find. Any environmental weapons you can buy from a vendor are fair game. You are not allowed to use the trading post to buy stuff. Selling is fine. Spending lots of money kinda defeats the purpose of an impoverished peasant. You cannot use Karma, except to buy environmental weapons.

Honestly, it’s not a surprise that the OP facerolled. Ironically, the gaming community has been getting and better at video games over the years, so the curve needed in order to please the medium core gamers keeps on rising for toughness. Games where simple health/damage don’t really cut it anymore – so it comes to coming up with unique tough mechanics in order to succeed.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Honestly, it’s not a surprise that the OP facerolled. Ironically, the gaming community has been getting and better at video games over the years, so the curve needed in order to please the medium core gamers keeps on rising for toughness. Games where simple health/damage don’t really cut it anymore – so it comes to coming up with unique tough mechanics in order to succeed.

This

Player skill transfers between games, because games are designed with similar mechanics. In Guild Wars 2 if you have an adaptive mindset it’s not difficult to learn and understand what mechanics to utilize and when in the game.

I’m in favor of more challenge. I’d like to see the challenge implemented at a “high level” – meaning new and enhanced models for doing events, such that combat is still prevalent, but thinking strategically is important as well.

For example, we have Big Boss (big bosses should be less static and move around the world a lot more by the way). Big boss has a pretty devestating attack, that requires a couple second charge. To prevent big devastating attack, you have to deal a certain amount of damage to a certain portion of big bosses body OR you have to hit him with X amount of CCs to burn out his defiance to interrupt him OR both could work.

Example 2, we have Mega Monster. Mega Monster, is powered by a couple power sources. In order to deal damage to Mega Monster, you have to destroy said power sources. Said power sources get repaired after a short time, and you must bring them down again to hurt Mega Monster.

Just an example each for offensive and defensive high level battle models. For all I know some of this may exist in EM Dungeons, as I haven’t done them all, but EM Dungeons have been the best challenges in PvE I’ve seen.

I found dungeons quite challenging myself, there wasn’t any my group just breezed though, we went down plenty and even wiped several times. End game content in GW1 sucked because it couldn’t be done without cookie cutter builds or a level of coordination a random pug just doesn’t have, GW2 content with a bunch of random people is challenging but ultimately doable which I like.

Faranox.8012:

I want to talk about one thing in this game I’m pretty concerned about: challenges.

As the title already states I think this game pretty much lacks challenge overall.

I’ve done quite a lot of PvE with my friends and yet there was nothing, literally nothing, we needed a second try. Neither the dungeons, be it story or explorable mode, nor one of these DE gave us the slightest bit of a challenge. That said we’ve run through every dungeon and done almost every path.

I kinda miss the feeling I know from other games and even GW1: getting your kitten beaten up due to a lack of strategy. For instance UW after it’s change was giving us a hard time before we finally managed to succeed killing Dhuum. But it’s exactly that moment making it worth playing the game. It’s not another achievement popping up, but you knowing that you as a team have achieved something, after hard work and a lot of coordination. PvE in GW2 simply doesn’t include the chance to fail. It’s nothing more but casual gaming.

But even PvP in this game doesn’t feel like a challenge. WvWvW is all about zergs and requires just some good coordination and what’s more important: enough players on your server willing to defend your stuff at any time. What I’m trying to say is, it again comes down to not skill making much of a difference but a lot of other facts like server activity having the most impact on the weekly WvWvW outcome.

Eventually there’s sPvP which is like the most casual mode in the game. It’s all about joining a random game, on a random team, smashing up some enemies, being switched around on teams and finally losing or winning, which doesn’t really have that much of an influence on your score. This game mode completely lacks seriousness.

The only thing that kinda stands out so far is tPvP. But once you get used to the game and work as a team you’ll most likely crush every single pug. In most of the games with my guild the enemy team ends up having less than 100 points at the end of a game, which eventually became more frustrating for us than for them. Even though I see the most potential in terms of challenge in this game mode.

There have been so many very successful game modes and challenges in GW1 (e.g. HA, GvG, UW, Mallyx and HM). How could they drop every single bit of standard they used to have and make this game so straight forward without any difficulties?

How is you’re experience so far? Is there anything you’d say that’s taken you more than one try to accomplish? Am I missing out on something?

I completely agree with what you said. And because of the lack of challenge, GW2 feels just… Vague. Not believable. Irrelevant. kitten I can’t find the right word for it.

Ultimately it comes down to this, GW2 shifts the challenge from the whole group to each individual, so if you perform well and everyone else does too you’ll get stuff done.

You really found the dungeons easy? I have only done storymodes thus far and have gotten very, very frustrated by some of them. While I don’t think they are the enjoyable kind of challenge, the mobs hit extremely hard, with very small tells, and in general its either easy or stupidly frustrating, with more pulls leaning on the latter. Perhaps because you have a full group of dedicated players? But still I wouldn’t call them cakewakes…

I just prefer the trinity model better if we’re all being honest. It has its problems but core to the success of it was that everyone had a role and they had to be good/excel at it. A simple concept but very difficult to master. Central to the trinity was that every person has a function; we were all useful in our own way, which is how we all want to feel in life. And basically, it allowed different personalities to excel in different functions.

The removal of the trinity really took that away. Now, no one has a purpose except damage and survival. The mobs/encounters generally follow this pattern as well. It’s simply too basic by itself. People who aren’t particularly good at providing damage will struggle or find it boring and people who want to feel valuable as support will find it limiting and too unfocussed; thus boring.

However, if you’re a “huntard” or “rouge” or a “lolwarior” mentality from WoW, you’ll love it because it boils down to “Alright, gang that mob with everything you got! lawl look at my damage!”

The synergy between players, and their roles was important and it helped to define encounters to test group unity rather than individual performance.

Life is challenging enough, lemme have some fun in a game. This is not an sport no matter what geeks says.

Raf.1078:

I won’t quest at level. I habitually solo 3-4 level above my own…and its plenty challenging.

I agree and I ’ve seen a couple of developers suggest the same approach (one being Eric Flannum during beta). What would be nice though is if this was possible throughout the game including at level 80; currently you often have to do zones backwards etc. so you can get the right level band (and leave lots of residual lower level content) and otherwise restrict yourself, i.e. not too much WvW or crafting if you want to see more than a fraction of the content.

The problem is you do still see people complaining that the content is already hard, so Arenanet can’t just make everything harder as then people just learning their skills, those who find kiting tricky and those who prefer easier gameplay would be unhappy. I think the only type of formal solutions that have a chance of working have to split the two play styles as GW1 started to do with hard mode.