Guild Wars 2

Don’t worry. When the feature patch hits you won’t have your traits below level 30. That should help some.

I always love how people refuse to a: go to zones that are level appropriate, and/or b: complain about how easy low level zones are when they’re wearing full ascended zerker gear. Then they come here and say “MAKE IT HARDER!” and don’t give a dang about the new players starting out, and hit the brick wall of content that’s far too difficult for them, and then they quit. If you want hard content, take off all your gear, and go fight. You can make content harder for yourself, instead of just begging anet to make all content harder for everyone.

Becka Williams.4978:

I always love how people refuse to a: go to zones that are level appropriate, and/or b: complain about how easy low level zones are when they’re wearing full ascended zerker gear. Then they come here and say “MAKE IT HARDER!” and don’t give a dang about the new players starting out, and hit the brick wall of content that’s far too difficult for them, and then they quit. If you want hard content, take off all your gear, and go fight. You can make content harder for yourself, instead of just begging anet to make all content harder for everyone.

+1 and use only weapons of the same level as the map you are non – blue and green only.

Becka Williams.4978:

I always love how people refuse to a: go to zones that are level appropriate, and/or b: complain about how easy low level zones are when they’re wearing full ascended zerker gear. Then they come here and say “MAKE IT HARDER!” and don’t give a dang about the new players starting out, and hit the brick wall of content that’s far too difficult for them, and then they quit. If you want hard content, take off all your gear, and go fight. You can make content harder for yourself, instead of just begging anet to make all content harder for everyone.

Voluntarily weakening yourself isn’t the answer since I know I can just put my gear on. As for “why play low lvl areas”, it’s because Anet has created some beautiful scenery and I want to play in it, I want it to be dangerous, I don’t want to just walk around like Superman.

I can’t fool myself enough to just take my armor off and play.

Anyone who’s played GW1 will know where I’m coming from. There too, the low lvl areas were easy until they created a “Hard Mode” where every area was as tough as the other. That was challenging and allowed me to fully appreciate Anet’s beautiful landscapes.

But unless there’s real danger, it’s not going to mean anything.

Yup, as said, what is required is an improvement to how down scaling works.

Depending on the Map level…

- Drop off the stat bonus on gear to match that of gear for the level you are in. For example, in a place like Queensdale, you may only have the primary stat.

- Reduce how much the stat bonus gives. I know it already does this but does it take into account the difference in quality? What I mean is, the best armor you can get is green (I think). If you compare a lvl 14 white to a lvl 14 green with the same stat bonus, the green provides a better bonus. So when someone in exotic gear becomes down leveled to lvl 14, are they receiving a bonus to their stats that would equate to lvl 14 exotic gear? If so, they shouldn’t. Since the best you can get at 14 is green, the bonus on down leveled exotic should match that of a green. As should the armor provided. Same applies to weapons too.

- I’ve never actually paid close attention to the change to runes and sigils so I may be making an incorrect assumption. Currently the low level runes only have two rune bonuses. The next quality up provides 4 set and then you have the final quality that provide 6 set. I think they are changing it so that you can get 6 set from the start. The difference will stll be the amount of a bonus you get. Eg. minor rune of divinity is +3, major is +5 and superior is +10. As a lvl 14, you’ll only have the +3 but as a down level, you could have a +10. They should change this so that when you are down leveled to 14, your divinity set will only provide +3.

- Traits are getting a pretty big change so this applies to the current system. The maps are already given a level range. We know that there is a minimum level to being able to unlock the next tier of traits. So given the map Queensdale. We know that, depending on where in the map you are, you will at most have access to the first tier. Since the map is 1-15, if you are down leveled to lvl 10 or lower, all the tiers should get greyed out. Points stay invested, but the tier is greyed out so the effects of traits selected within that tier no longer apply. If you move to another part of the map so you are above lvl 10, the first tier is no longer greyed out but the other two are.

That leaves the only one advantage. You’ll have access to all your skills but someone who is new and not down leveled will not.

I like being a flippin’ God in low level areas being level 80.

In City of Heroes just your presence was enough to cause low level critters to flee from you. But they weren’t worth any XP either.

The real problem is that there is absolutely no PvE explorable areas that are made for ascended gear. And besides Fractals and no content is skill-wise challenging (new bosses require coordination but very little skill).

Basically once you hit 80 and gear up the explorable portion of the game becomes a walk in the park on a sunny day.

This is why SAB got so popular, for once we had difficult endgame content. But after receiving the “best dl content of the year” award Anet brilliantly decided to take it out of the game, probably more obsessed about controlling the availability of SAB skins on the store than anything else.

Xillllix.3485:

The real problem is that there is absolutely no PvE explorable areas that are made for ascended gear. And besides Fractals and no content is skill-wise challenging (new bosses require coordination but very little skill).

Basically once you hit 80 and gear up the explorable portion of the game becomes a walk in the park on a sunny day.

This is why SAB got so popular, for once we had difficult endgame content. But after receiving the “best dl content of the year” award Anet brilliantly decided to take it out of the game, probably more obsessed about controlling the availability of SAB skins on the store than anything else.

Ascended gear was made to be able to do higher fractals. Anything else is overkill with ascended gear. A.Net said that there would be on other place where Agony would be present, that is the only place you need that extra slot for Agony Resist.

bhagwad.4281:

Today I was doing my daily in wayfarer foothills with my full berserker gear and ascended GS. I saw two svanir thugs guarding a blockage. One whirlwind attack was enough to kill them both and shatter the blockade!

I like being strong and all, but…come on! Wasn’t one of the promises of GW2 that you would be scaled down in low lvl areas to make content challenging? And I thought a while back they increased the difficulty a bit more. But I don’t see it…

Does anyone else remember “Hard Mode” in GW1 when even low areas became fresh again? Where each hard mode zone was as tough as the other? There is zero reason for me to be careful, to make sure I don’t over aggro…

Come on Anet. Make your stuff challenging!

No, Anet does NOT need to make these areas “more challenging”. It’s a “low level” area for a reason. YOU as the player have the capability of making it challenging by removing your traits, and replacing your level 80 gear with area level gear. If you want level 80 challenges, then go to level 80 areas.

I find these threads… kinda selfish. I call them them “This needs to be allot harder” threads. Take some time an honestly think about what your saying and what the implications are to other players, of what you ask.

I think the difficulty is adequate. These areas aren’t just designed for you. They are also designed for the newer player and the newer characters that are being developed. Asking for lv 1-15 areas to be like lv80 areas or to scaled to be 10x greater, you want lv 1-15 to scale to the equalvilant of lv100+ areas.

The newer player is just getting his weapon skill unlocked, still has to look at the icons to see what each do, before he/her uses them,which can end up in the toon getting killed because of the delay. They are experimenting with skills and traits without understanding what they do yet. The lower level maps, many are using white gear, provided they even have gear in that slot. The more intermediate areas, players have recently unlocked new skills and trying to figuire out what they do, they are also in the process of developing their trait lines. Since they are new, they lack the applicable skill points to totally have access to all skills. Hence thats why the maps are scaled based on lv ranges that would be appropriate.

I dont want every inch of the game to be an epic battle to the death that last hours.

If you want and crave more difficulty, use level 1-5 white weapons and gear. Then avoid using your passives/active skills and leave all your traits blank.

Really? whats next? I wanna wear my uber zerker gear of destruction. Yet I want the ambient creatures not to get 1 shotted when I hit them? Make them tougher!

You want more difficulty, EASY scale yourself down. Really want difficulty? Take that lv1 white weapon into a dungeon and dont wear any armor. I think you will get all the difficulty you desire.

My response isnt totaly directed at the OP. Its for all like minded individuals. So ask yourself why do I want this? simple, its to feed your ego. We all have them and we all need them fed. Some peeps just have bigger ones and they require alot more calories.

There is ample content in the game that has difficulty. What to wear your best gear and have difficulty? Go to a lv40+ fractal. Want to wear your best? and have dungeon difficulty? Use a party of 4 or 3 perhaps. Want open world roaming PvE diffculty? wearing your best? Do Group events solo.

In most cases, you dont want difficulty, you just want your ego fed. Im not saying that as a bad thing. Im just saying, that so you find whats really at the root cause, because it isnt difficulty ranges.

On the issue of “Hard Mode”….It is entirely possible that rolling out the MegaServer project is more than just a way to consolidate the server populations. One of the side effects of this project is that it would make “Hard Mode” open world zones VERY possible. Not sure if they want to spread out the population further (kind of counter productive to their MS goal), but “Hard Mode” zones could be part of the reason as it would effectively double the available open world content with minimal resource investment.

If you want hard mode, use level appropriate gear and strip your traits off.
And those Svanir roadblocks just outside the town are super weak in the first place, they are 2 hit for level appropriate newbies too.

The game during beta was hard to the point, forums were filled with complaints about how punishing it was. If Anet ever adds hard content, it will be exclusive to specific areas or instances. They won’t repeat the mistake of a hard-mode open world cause it isn’t accepted by the majority of the players.

bhagwad.4281:

DeceiverX.8361:

If the starter zones are too hard:

- Take off your armor.
- Reset your traits to nothing.
- Equip a level 0 white weapon.

And there you have it, hard mode.

That’s voluntarily crippling yourself. Players would like to wear all their armor and still face tough content that’s also rewarding. Proper downscaling should go a long way.

Yeah .. and of course they want to have that challenge against level 4 mobs.

Really .. whats your problem ? In other games mobs 10 levels below you are grey and not aggro and you can kill them all easy. And where is the reason of having levels if you don’t have a small edge against lower mobs ? Personally i’m quite happy when i can at least do the underwater daily in Wayfarer Foothills

If you increase it 10x how in the world will low level players be effective at all? At the appropriate level that zone is about as tough as Orr (IIRC, haven’t gone to Orr recently).

Cntrl+Shift+H. There you have it the one and simplest answer to making the game harder (and 100000x more beautiful).

win-win. if it still isn’t hard you aren’t killing enough at once.
edit: I put alt+Z, bad other mmo!

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

Huh, interesting. Never paid attention enough to notice this.

Since you can’t scale up the low-level areas enough to make them a challenge for a down-scaled full-ascended character, ANet should probably scale the equipment, and maybe traits, too.

Swapping all gear out for something appropriate for the area is both tedious and hides your cool color-coordinated gear, so this is an impractical solution.

Mattargul.9235:

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

Huh, interesting. Never paid attention enough to notice this.

Since you can’t scale up the low-level areas enough to make them a challenge for a down-scaled full-ascended character, ANet should probably scale the equipment, and maybe traits, too.

Swapping all gear out for something appropriate for the area is both tedious and hides your cool color-coordinated gear, so this is an impractical solution.

Read on, this was already debunked.

Mattargul.9235:

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

Huh, interesting. Never paid attention enough to notice this.

Since you can’t scale up the low-level areas enough to make them a challenge for a down-scaled full-ascended character, ANet should probably scale the equipment, and maybe traits, too.

Swapping all gear out for something appropriate for the area is both tedious and hides your cool color-coordinated gear, so this is an impractical solution.

Read the other response below…

other than that..

I ask Why? Whats your reason or logic for wanting that? Im not asking to be a jerk. Im asking to get a better understanding.

If the answer is to be more challenging? How so? Is 5 secs vs 60 secs to kill a low level mob really more challenging? At a personal level, I consider that more an annoyance than a challenge.

I can relate to not swapping gear because it tedious.

Here is the thing. Quite a different number of people claim they want low level areas to be more difficult or challenging. Then what we have to wade through, how you exactly define more “challenging” or “difficult”. Because those are very relative to the individual. It kind of equates I want the game to be more fun or I want the game to be easier?

How so? do you want these things? The devil is in the details. You want it to scale?

Will scaling perfectly to its natural level for your toon, make it more challenging? Im am going to guess, probably not. Perhaps the fight takes a little longer, but is perfect scaling more challenging at this point in the game for you? Once you have acquired knowledge as player, you dont, unknow that knowledge just because your playing a lv15 scaled too.

Do you currently feel that level 80s pve areas are more challenging? I know they are more difficult, but thats not merely based on the mob scaling. Thats also the overall map difficulty. Contested waypoints, mobs using a full range of lv80 type skills and having a hostile map with aoes going off. None those things would seem appropriate for a lv 1-15 map. etc

So its hardmode you desire? for noob maps? Do you feel that is the best use of anet time and resources? I read a post about 125 things we want. Allot of those items are far more desirable to me than seeing the time and resources allocated to making a hard mode for pve maps.

Mostly Im going to lower level pve maps for some specific things. Map completion and resource farming. At a personal level, Im not concerned with a hardmode for either of those tasks.

down-scaling should be more steep indeed in lowbie areas…

bhagwad.4281:

DeceiverX.8361:

If the starter zones are too hard:

- Take off your armor.
- Reset your traits to nothing.
- Equip a level 0 white weapon.

And there you have it, hard mode.

That’s voluntarily crippling yourself. Players would like to wear all their armor and still face tough content that’s also rewarding. Proper downscaling should go a long way.

Voluntarily crippling yourself.

Is that not the perfect solution when asking for new-player/low level content to be more difficult just because your gear doesn’t downscale well when such content is specifically designed to be easier and more forgiving because new players are less experienced and have worse gear relative to their level?

Even fixing downscaling doesn’t actually solve the problem you’re stating. New content is even easy for players that aren’t down-scaled because it’s designed to be. Mob AI and decisions are predictable and extremely easy to sidestep their damage. Recoil time is high, damage is low, and animations run slow. These monsters and bosses also have no fancy conditional moves or anything, either.

Your retort makes quite literally no sense in this context.

The toxic seedling events are not a faceroll, even for a fully geared 80. They spawn in several low level zones. Very few people seem to do them.

Making things harder in this game?

That usually goes over well on the forums…..

Wanderer.3248:

The toxic seedling events are not a faceroll, even for a fully geared 80. They spawn in several low level zones. Very few people seem to do them.

gee, where are all the he-mans that are BEGGING for hard content? Why aren’t they doing the toxic offshoots? Is it because they don’t want content that’s hard for them, just hard for other people so they can brag that they beat it? YES! I think it is.

There is an easy way to increase downscaling. Change level caps to match enemies in the area. Now you are always 1-2 levels above them which gives some advantage.

If you take a piece of gear of white, blue, green, rare, exotic and ascended and the pieces be of the same level and type just different rarity/quality you will notice the big stat difference. The game scales you down to more appropriate levels but the game isn’t going to make exotic or ascended gear as low quality as white or blue gear. The low level zones have purpose when it comes to crafting, especially ascended and sometimes it’s nice to plow through some mobs and not have to spend hours to gather some ore, trees or whatever.

The game mostly caters to casual players but does provide some more challenging content although Anet didn’t quite do that right. Be glad Anet did anything at all, other MMOs I played don’t down scale players on low level zones which makes even bosses die in 1 shot. At least on GW2 you can’t 1 shot vets and champs so it’s not all bad.

if they are not veterans, so its easy to kill them with their actual lvl by any low lvl.
gear yourself with best gear available at your lvl and you will one-shotting everything.