Guild Wars 2

I’ve been meaning to post this since the last major patch.

I noticed in the patch notes that ANet made the bridge in Kessex herder by adding veteran centaurs and catapults. I was wondering what effect this would have and so I wandered over.

To my surprise, they had indeed seemed to have solved the issue of bots. The catapults created a situation where the bots weren’t able to function in the area, and so for the first time since launch the area was clear.

I was intrigued so I stuck around for the “dynamic” event (which predictably happens every few moments). To my disappointment the addition of the vets and catapults did nothing to make the event more challenging. I stuck around to watch another round, and the result was the same, the centaurs were unable to repair the bridge.

Curious, I entered world chat and encouraged everyone on the map to come to the bridge, but stand on the opposite side. The idea was that the increase in players would scale the event, thus overwhelming any players on the other side not willing to participate in the experiment.

The experiment of course, was to see what happens when the centaurs actually repaired the bridge. One by one players showed up, and before long 30+ players were standing there watching the centaurs do their best. Surprisingly, even though only about 5 players were fighting, the centaurs were still very close to being defeated.

In the end they repaired the bridge, and the resulting Zerg made quick work of the continuing story (resulting in the bridge being destroyed).

I sat there and realized that this game, at times can be difficult in all the wrong places. For example, many dynamic, and heart events can be easily completed by simply button mashing, but walking from one place to another can attract every aggressive animal on the planet, resulting in death.

Or, you’ll spend 20 minutes battling a champion troll, all the while the vets respawn multiple times, yet a giant dragon will go down in a matter of moments, with minor casualties.

I’m a gamer that grew up in a world where games would allow you to progress almost until the end only to inform you that you forgot one item, and can no longer progress (Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest). A world where you have very few lives or continues to finish the game, which would result in hours of careful gameplay and practice (Mega Man, TMNT, Ninja Gaiden).

So, for me, it can sometimes feel that developers these days are too afraid to let gamers fail. Everything is handed to them on a silver platter, and if they just participate, they will win. GW2 even has a metal awards system like you used to have during sports day at school where you get a silver for basically just running in the right direction most of the race.

I long for the day that I’m standing in Kessex hills and the game hits us so hard that we all must fight tooth and nail to hold that bridge, and yes…perhaps even fail the event. I’m okay with that you know. I won’t lose sleep if I have to walk into town and recruit a few players to help me. I won’t quit the game if every now and then I have to rethink my strategy.

ANet, it’s okay to be a challenge sometimes.

Well said. The inconsistencies in difficulty can definitely be.. off-putting.

reminds me of killing ancient dragon without too much trouble in skyrim and be completely ravaged by a bear a few second later.

Well stated OP,

I feel that most of the “difficulty” in PvE is derived from the INSANE mob density in many zones coupled with a ridiculous respawn rate.

Instead of dying because a mob proved to be more challenging than expected you die because some designer thought it was somehow acceptable to have mobs respawn every 10 seconds out of the middle of nowhere.

“I won’t quit the game if every now and then I have to rethink my strategy.”

Problem is,most of casuals (even “hardcore”) will.Only people that care about the game and see their mistake will retry.While all the WoW kids will be like “this is stoopid,i payed for the game,i want everything!!!111”

Cappy.2786:

“I won’t quit the game if every now and then I have to rethink my strategy.”

Problem is,most of casuals (even “hardcore”) will.Only people that care about the game and see their mistake will retry.While all the WoW kids will be like “this is stoopid,i payed for the game,i want everything!!!111”

How do you know it’s “most of casuals” and “all the WoW kids”? There is casual players and there’s hardcore players, there’s impatient players who want to beat stuff up and collect their “rightful” reward and there’s patient players who might actually reflect on whether the problem is on their side. And there’s two other groups, those who try to think outside of a box and try to find a creative solution on their own and those who just ask away and have pretty much a tunnel-vision and can’t see the wood for the trees.

Speaking for myself I am casual, I don’t care for immediate rewards and think if something does not work outright that another method should be tried without bothering other people with it.

My point is you can’t just two-dimensionally nail it down to a casual vs. non-casual problem when there’s so much more needed. I have seen hardcore players who get most of their informations off others and just shine through a lot of activity and are usually quick to anger if something doesn’t work out.

On topic I agree that challenge does not scale with group size. I feel it’s most challenging on your own and as you get more people it’s literally zerg away apart for some exceptions.

Cappy.2786:

“I won’t quit the game if every now and then I have to rethink my strategy.”

Problem is,most of casuals (even “hardcore”) will.Only people that care about the game and see their mistake will retry.While all the WoW kids will be like “this is stoopid,i payed for the game,i want everything!!!111”

I really think using a broad brush and painting people who have rational, legitimate complaints about the game as “WoW kids” is counter-productive. Like I said in the dungeon forum, if you tell someone to just “go back to WoW!” they probably will, and that is not good if you want GW2 to succeed.

As a note, I’m ok with some things taking forever to achieve, like a legendary weapon. These are still attainable even if you can only play for an hour a night, it’ll just take forever.

As for the game being challenging, that is fine as long as the challenge is real. Mega Man games were challenging because it relied on figuring out very set patterns. Zelda games were challenging because you had to think about puzzles. Demon’s Souls was challenging because you had to really pay attention and learn from your mistakes.

Dark Souls was challenging, but for entirely different reasons. The game was poorly optimized, causing frame rate stutters in certain areas. Many of the enemies had grapples and instant kills with wonky hitboxes. The bosses would often have really cheesy mechanics that made the encounters an exercise in frustration because even after you isolated their patterns, you’d do so little damage that a single, minor mistake would destroy you.

The former type of difficulty is excellent, the latter not so much. And the latter is where I personally feel the dungeons in the game are currently, an opinion many other people seem to share. I don’t want the game to just be a complete pushover, but these dungeons are not fun. I think I’d rather see them retuned to provide a good mix of enjoyment and challenge instead of playing with guildmates as we slog through a dungeon for 3 hours before deciding to stop because we aren’t enjoying it and walk out with practically no rewards for what time we did spend.

I’d say you’re looking at challenging vs profitable. I think we both know the force behind games at this point in time. Twenty years ago, game companies didn’t expect or get millions of sales, or have teams of people devoted to micro-transactions, nor did they expect to sell games to 8 year old kids and 55 year old moms. So they made games for gamers. Turns out 8 yo kids, 55 yo moms and people who “don’t have time for games” have more access to credit cards and write the rules for the products we’re sold now. If a pre-teen can’t manage to get the credit card number entered into your store, how are you going to appease your stockholders?

Well I think Arena Net is a private company, not a publikittenraded one so the stockholder thing is kind of a moot point.