Guild Wars 2

Where the mobs in the PoF beta undertuned for the demo? Most of them felt completly boring to fight even if you used those terrible builds with no elite spec and non optimal gear you gained from character creation. I can only imagine how easy they would have been if I would have taken the time to optimse build and gear.
It is especially disappointing for enemies like the veteran hydra which were much stronger in GW1.

You have to remember the demo was of the first part of PoF. Since PoF can be started as soon as you hit lv80 the starting zone and missions have to be balanced to fresh lv80 standards, which means an optimized build will breeze right through it, whereas a fresh lvl80 in cheap gear might struggle a little but can still complete the content.

Also, a lot of it has to ge soloaboe by every profession, and some of them have a much harder time with it than others.

The mobs was definitely pre nerfed. When i first seen Hydras i expected challenging fight but it turned to casual mobs clear like you do in a starter zone while running raid level gear.
Same with a first story mission. I was steamroll with unoptimized starter build with default equipped survival gear.

I hope not. I was one of the few that enjoyed the “difficulty” if you can call it that of HoT, it was fun. I do see that a ton of people just log on for pure relaxation and want to one shot everything so meh, we’ll see.

I like a good balance, not wiping everything in one hit.

And yet, some players have posted about what a difficult time that had in the Story instance.

I thought they were about the same as mobs everywhere (outside Core Tyria), maybe a bit easier. Density was less than some post-Core maps, for sure. Probably more enjoyable for those that didn’t care for HoT.

Enemies may be quite different in the other maps. Not long until we find out.

The first HoT betas were pretty much identical to the demo ArenaNet took to cons, and that was deliberately undertuned so as to be accessible to people unfamiliar with the game. The fact that for PoF it’s described in game as a demo, not a beta, and ArenaNet are going to GamesCon and PAX West in the next few weeks, it’s entirely likely it’s been undertuned again for the same reason.

Also consider it was open to all, so there will have been completely new players who downloaded the free version to try the demo before buying, so again, ArenaNet will not have wanted to scare them away by throwing them in at the deep end.

If they keep making mobs easier and easier might as well just ride around on the mount all of the time and never dismount because combat outside of encounters will be completely pointless and unenjoyable auto-attack fests. :/

I already found them lackluster in some LS3 maps, particularly Siren’s Landing which didn’t seem to have any more difficulty than Cursed Shore.

Jeez … if you want raid difficulty mobs, go play raids. This is open world. Open world mobs aren’t supposed to be hard.

Feothyr.6072:

Jeez … if you want raid difficulty mobs, go play raids. This is open world. Open world mobs aren’t supposed to be hard.

There was a point in time where champion, veteran and elite meant something from mobs.

Now it just means more stats, more HP and potentially 3-6 more levels than a player can have.

I’d be nice of them to make challenging group fights in the open world that make use of these things. The bounties are a step in the right direction, but also have their own issues.

Another Ex-WoW elitist player complaining why the mobs don’t one shot him…

TexZero.7910:

I’d be nice of them to make challenging group fights in the open world that make use of these things.

Why in the open world?

I just read a comment from a guy in the official feedback thread, complaining about how easy the open world mobs were using his raid setup. Seriously? Are you friggin kidding me? OF COURSE they’re easy when you’re using your raid setup! The more challenging content one plays, the easier it gets. So at some point open world content is going to feel easy, but that’s the way it is supposed to be!
We have raids and fractals and dungeons for challenging group fights – we don’t need them at every corner in the open world.

Feothyr.6072:

TexZero.7910:

I’d be nice of them to make challenging group fights in the open world that make use of these things.

Why in the open world?

I just read a comment from a guy in the official feedback thread, complaining about how easy the open world mobs were using his raid setup. Seriously? Are you friggin kidding me? OF COURSE they’re easy when you’re using your raid setup! The more challenging content one plays, the easier it gets. So at some point open world content is going to feel easy, but that’s the way it is supposed to be!
We have raids and fractals and dungeons for challenging group fights – we don’t need them at every corner in the open world.

I didn’t say in every corner of the open world. I said, they done a horrible job at maintaining appropriate mob archetypes and relative power scaling.

A Veteran mob should be able to be handled relatively easily by 1 person
A Elite Mob should likely require 1 good person or 2 Average players
A Champion should require 3-4 good players or 5-6 Average players

Events with all of these should scale appropriately, and Group Dynamic events need to have much better Scaling that isn’t just add more HP.

If you do raids daily, everything in open world will be too easy for you. Very few players however do raids so demanding ALL the content in the game to be equal difficulty is extremely dumb. The open world content is for people to run around solo, with weird builds and half naked. There is absolutely no reason for groups of champs lurk at every corner, ready to drag you into 30 minute fights.

I do hope they up the difficulty. HoT mobs keep me active in the fight and I feel that is a better challenge to them. The ones in PoF feel closer to core Tyria difficulty. I do hope anet is not going back to the auto attack afk that plagued the game for years.

One of the big mistakes they made with HoT was listening to the beta players complaining about how easy the mobs were and thus buffing them all for the release. Beta players are a minority and tend to be from the harder-core end of the player spectrum. Open-world needs to cater mostly for average players: no elite spec, probably a mix of exotic and ascended armour, less than optimum build etc.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

And yet, some players have posted about what a difficult time that had in the Story instance.

I doubt anyone had a difficult time in the story instance because mobs were hard. It was more like pulling lots of them and/or not tweaking the entire build. If you had to fight 20 level 80 Moa in a closed room at the same you might had a hard time too, that wouldn’t make the mobs exciting.

Panda.1967:

You have to remember the demo was of the first part of PoF. Since PoF can be started as soon as you hit lv80 the starting zone and missions have to be balanced to fresh lv80 standards, which means an optimized build will breeze right through it, whereas a fresh lvl80 in cheap gear might struggle a little but can still complete the content.

Not only we had an another expansion before this one, but also 3 full Living World seasons. There are also level 80 maps that require far better builds than core maps, like Dry Top and Silverwastes. There is absolutely no reason to balance the first map of PoF around fresh level 80 characters.

DoctorDing.5890:

One of the big mistakes they made with HoT was listening to the beta players complaining about how easy the mobs were and thus buffing them all for the release. Beta players are a minority and tend to be from the harder-core end of the player spectrum. Open-world needs to cater mostly for average players: no elite spec, probably a mix of exotic and ascended armour, less than optimum build etc.

That doesn’t mean events should be faceroll easy and soloable when labeled as Group events though and this is where even in HoT & Core it falls short.

Group events with differing mob types/scaling should pull together various sizes and types of players and still be able to maintain the feeling that if not for the people around you the task would have been nigh impossible. Hence the group part.

DoctorDing.5890:

One of the big mistakes they made with HoT was listening to the beta players complaining about how easy the mobs were and thus buffing them all for the release. Beta players are a minority and tend to be from the harder-core end of the player spectrum. Open-world needs to cater mostly for average players: no elite spec, probably a mix of exotic and ascended armour, less than optimum build etc.

I remember the opposite. They listened to the beta players of HoT and nerfed the mobs. Anyone remember how the Mordrem Snipers were during beta? Let me tell you that the current iteration is a joke compared to the beta version, even though they are still hard to deal with.

DoctorDing.5890:

One of the big mistakes they made with HoT was listening to the beta players complaining about how easy the mobs were and thus buffing them all for the release. Beta players are a minority and tend to be from the harder-core end of the player spectrum. Open-world needs to cater mostly for average players: no elite spec, probably a mix of exotic and ascended armour, less than optimum build etc.

The difficulty change was most definitely not a mistake. It was a much needed change. There was a reason why the difficulty was slowly building up in LW2. The reason for the complaints was because there were people who went from standing in one spot and never moving until the enemy is dead to now you actually have to avoid the giant red markers on the ground.

I don’t know what challenging means anymore in GW2. At this point most of us can easily solo HoT mobs, which were exponentially harder than this demo.

IF I get an awesome reward and I put in a lot of effort, nice.

If it’s open world, I don’t want to be annoyed. It has to be exciting and rewarding.

Also I skipped 99.99999999999% of all mobs cuz mount.

Fluffball.8307:

If it’s open world, I don’t want to be annoyed. It has to be exciting and rewarding.

This.

I don’t mind challenging content and difficult enemies but there is a place and a time for everything. Open world just isn’t that place.

Feothyr.6072:

Fluffball.8307:

If it’s open world, I don’t want to be annoyed. It has to be exciting and rewarding.

This.

I don’t mind challenging content and difficult enemies but there is a place and a time for everything. Open world just isn’t that place.

That’s your perspective but it’s not the design perspective of the game.

The open world has various states of difficulty for a reason. Most things can be solo’d, but there’s a time and a place for grouping up even in Core.

Also since I’m being quoted, what I was saying is I WANT difficult open world enemies, if they give me a reason to fight them. Drop mystic coins? Sure, I’ll fight the Coin Beast on my way to Dinglehop Oasis, even if it’s incredibly mechanically difficult.

I’m not convinced there is a reason to fight those INSANELY TANKY DUST MITES though. No reward and no challenge, just a waste of 10 minutes.

TexZero.7910:

The open world has various states of difficulty for a reason. Most things can be solo’d, but there’s a time and a place for grouping up even in Core.

I believe we might be talking about different things. I was thinking about random mobs around the map, with no connection to events or other group challenges. Those should not be too difficult/challenging to fight. I’m not saying you should be able to kill everything by simply standing in one spot spamming 1, but as this is the first map new players face in PoF it needs to be relatively easy. There has to be a learning curve and there was none in HoT.

We have to keep in mind that there has to be a place for players that are either new to the game, are running a subpar build or are simply not interested in getting better gear. Especially new players are the ones keeping this game alive. We’re dependant on them.

I figured it’d be obvious that nobody should be able to solo world bosses or events designed for groups. I also agree with what you mentioned above about the different archetypes of mobs.

I don’t think they are under tuned for beta I think they are how ANET thinks the population of the game wants them to be. I think that this is not a good idea.
From memory (which is often wrong) the first HoT beta was tough and a learning curve and fun. The second the mobs where really dropped in difficulty and not really that fun. The mobs at release where a little less than the strength of the first beta and ok, specifically the snipers where at first insane I agree.
In the new HoF preview I am soloing champs like the lower zones, I am taking on multiple hydras (the heads do absolutely nothing but twitch on the ground). This is not good for the game I enjoy but if enough others like it too bad for me.

Feothyr.6072:

TexZero.7910:

I’d be nice of them to make challenging group fights in the open world that make use of these things.

Why in the open world?

I just read a comment from a guy in the official feedback thread, complaining about how easy the open world mobs were using his raid setup. Seriously? Are you friggin kidding me? OF COURSE they’re easy when you’re using your raid setup! The more challenging content one plays, the easier it gets. So at some point open world content is going to feel easy, but that’s the way it is supposed to be!
We have raids and fractals and dungeons for challenging group fights – we don’t need them at every corner in the open world.

Amen. All throughout the horrible HoT zone maps, the mobs there were horrible to deal with. They all felt like Veterans to me. One after another, everywhere you turn. I am miserable in those maps. The demo zone gave me room to breathe and the feeling I wasn’t in mortal danger every 3 feet. I was able to relax a bit and even enjoy the environment. That’s just not possible in the HoT maps. HoT is stressful, not fun, like a game should be IMO. Some of the mobs in the demo zone I found challenging. I don’t want them all to be that way.

I am betting I’m more like the average player. Don’t raid and my gear is a mixture of exotic and ascended on a couple of characters and just exotic on the others. I by no means use meta builds, but builds that suit me. I play video games to have fun, not sweat the entire time. I really hope the demo zone was indicative of the new world as far as mob difficulty and density.

Probably intentional. Expansions are supposed to bring more people in, whereas HoT lost more than it gained. They would want to avoid the major complaints.

GW2’s problem is the lack of a traditional leveling experience. In other MMOs, you’re provided with appropriate gear as you play through the quests, but here you’re expected to obtain it on your own. If you simply follow the story, you’re thrown into HoT with zerker rares, no runes and no accessories. It probably would have gone a little differently if they provided a set of defensive gear at the start, which they should go back and add to the original story so that this isn’t a continuous problem.

Yargesh.4965:

I am taking on multiple hydras (the heads do absolutely nothing but twitch on the ground). This is not good for the game I enjoy but if enough others like it too bad for me.

It’s a decapitated head. The most I’d want to see it do is to spew fire randomly for a bit of extra danger.

I kinda thought that the point of the heads was, other than for flavour, to maybe keep you in combat longer and stop you from mounting and running off? /shrug

Perhaps if players want harder content there could be a hard mode where every foe in PoF is replaced by a shoal of champion trout. You get a special orrian gulper outfit and a troutnado mini for winning GW2.

On a more serious note foes like the Forged did feel a bit undertuned to me, and I wondered at the time if it was to allow players to not feel totally outmatched in a beta and stop them from wanting to purchase the XPac. Perhaps Crystal Oasis will act a bit like a L80 version of Queensdale and we will find the later zones see ramped up difficulty.

For players eager to suffer through difficult fights at every step there is still HoT and always will be. HoT will remain and for anyone enjoying those maps it remains available.

However, until PoF is released, there is no content for players who finsihed core game and find HoT maps annoying and the monsters too difficult. They just quit. Let’s hope PoF will not be HoT 2.0, providing game only for those who already have HoT maps to play in. It should be for those players who do not go for HoT maps at all.

Yes there is still HoT, there are also still mid level base maps that I can solo champs on. I can’t usually solo lvl 80 base map champs, I can solo new expansion champs. Why? I also can’t solo most base map lvl 80 group content but can in HoF. Again why, what purpose does this serve?

Feothyr.6072:

TexZero.7910:

I’d be nice of them to make challenging group fights in the open world that make use of these things.

Why in the open world?

I just read a comment from a guy in the official feedback thread, complaining about how easy the open world mobs were using his raid setup. Seriously? Are you friggin kidding me? OF COURSE they’re easy when you’re using your raid setup! The more challenging content one plays, the easier it gets. So at some point open world content is going to feel easy, but that’s the way it is supposed to be!
We have raids and fractals and dungeons for challenging group fights – we don’t need them at every corner in the open world.

This isn’t really true. I’ve had far more trouble using my raid setup in the open world than any other type of build. That’s because in raids, you can count on some healing and can focus on DPS and little else. In the open world, with no backup or support, you’re own your own and raid builds often don’t do as well.

Yargesh.4965:

Yes there is still HoT, there are also still mid level base maps that I can solo champs on. I can’t usually solo lvl 80 base map champs, I can solo new expansion champs. Why? I also can’t solo most base map lvl 80 group content but can in HoF. Again why, what purpose does this serve?

Maybe the mobs in PoF were so undertuned because players wouldn’t focus on killing or doing specific events but rather explore the large (and empty) maps, test their mounts and only occasionally fight mobs. The community would be really split all over the map as players are testing different things and not really focused, that’s why if there was a meta event, it wasn’t active.

I really hope the actual PoF maps will be much more interesting and challenging than the beta.

maddoctor.2738:

I really hope the actual PoF maps will be much more interesting and challenging than the beta.

Definitely. Look at the North & South outposts as an example. Ordinarily there would be stuff happening here, right? The only event I saw at either of those was an escort event to start.

I like that the areas of dunes are event-free (with exception of bounties). That feels as it should – it’s a desert, after all. When I get to an outpost I expect to see things to do and hope that flavour events of this kind will be added by release.

I agree, I’d like to see more events and event chains. Not so much a meta event though, as that becomes the focus and essentially the only thing to do. I want to see variety. And I don’t want to have to fight a horde of veteran mobs every ten feet while trying to get to and do this variety of things.

My two penneth: the mobs’ difficulty was just fine thanks.

The enemies in the Path of Fire preview felt well-tuned for me. If I was tackling anything one-on-one, it was simple and not difficult. However, I chose to up the difficulty by taking on groups (I particularly liked taking on Forged patrols solo!) in order to make it more interesting.

Overall, I think it is was an excellent preview in terms of difficulty. In addition, I found it incredibly refreshing to actually have the space and time to look and enjoy the beautiful map without having my face slapped by an enemy every 15 steps!

FogLeg.9354:

For players eager to suffer through difficult fights at every step there is still HoT and always will be. HoT will remain and for anyone enjoying those maps it remains available.

However, until PoF is released, there is no content for players who finsihed core game and find HoT maps annoying and the monsters too difficult. They just quit. Let’s hope PoF will not be HoT 2.0, providing game only for those who already have HoT maps to play in. It should be for those players who do not go for HoT maps at all.

No one is asking for that and HoT is not like that. HoT just punishes you more for ignoring fight mechanics which the game should be doing. In core Tyria you can just ignore moving out of red circles from normal enemies because it really doesn’t do much and at worst would be a minor inconvenience. In HoT they finally made it so if you choose to ignore those red circles you get punished for it. I did not feel this need to leave red circles in the PoF demo which concerns me because it feels as if anet is taking three steps back and is going back to the “stand in one spot and spam 1 until everything is dead” playstyle that was abundant in the core maps.

Also, the comment of just go back to HoT well if you want fights where you can stand in one spot and spam 1 the core maps are still there and will always be there for you to return to.

maddoctor.2738:

DoctorDing.5890:

One of the big mistakes they made with HoT was listening to the beta players complaining about how easy the mobs were and thus buffing them all for the release. Beta players are a minority and tend to be from the harder-core end of the player spectrum. Open-world needs to cater mostly for average players: no elite spec, probably a mix of exotic and ascended armour, less than optimum build etc.

I remember the opposite. They listened to the beta players of HoT and nerfed the mobs. Anyone remember how the Mordrem Snipers were during beta? Let me tell you that the current iteration is a joke compared to the beta version, even though they are still hard to deal with.

I remember the Beta was significantly harder then the version that came out on release, and the version that came out on release was significantly harder then what we have now.

I really hope War Forged are under-tuned on the demo because they felt so easy to kill. There are some exception like Canonade or Forerunner but the others are just trash where mechanics can be avoid by spamming 1 and killing them in few seconds.

It’s fine to have mobs outside of events that you can kill easily or avoid because you are on your exploration way. But when you are doing events, you should have to be careful, to focus more on some mobs than the other, to be ready to dodge… And right now each event can be done solo without even looking at mobs skills/capacities.

What is the idea to create an army for Balthazar if you can fight them like you are fighting random warthogs? I really hope some areas in the new zones will be challenging and will have meta events because you need it for replayability.

Might be an unpopular opinion but I actually like HoT and the oevrall difficulty. I just hope they can equally satisfy both sides in the new expansion.

I got surprised by two Hydras when I was exploring with my necromancer and at one point 3rd came to party. I killed them all without dying even if they rammed me constantly, I really thought that they were harder than that. They are a bit underwhelming, thought I think they are cool enemies, but just too easy.

Like someone said already, those kitten Dust Mites in other hand takes too much hits.

Zylonite.5913:

Another Ex-WoW elitist player complaining why the mobs don’t one shot him…

Those “ex-wow elitelist” can’t be taken serious. Yesterday one of them complained on reddit that the New Player Experience is too difficult because as soon as you hit lvl 10 you get flooded with ~30 skills. I asked him if he discovered a 10th class, but his reason was the weapon swap.

Oddly enough I’ve seen quite a few people saying the exact opposite – that they found the enemies, particularly in the story mission, too difficult and they’re concerned that if the entire expansion is like that it will be impossible for them to complete.

My thinking is this probably means they’ve got it about right. There’s always going to be a range of not only abilities but preferences amongst players – some people want harder fights, some want easy fights. We have this debate a lot in my house – I play single-player RPGs on hard mode and have to repeat many battles because I get killed the first time, but I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to beat it. My husband thinks I’m wasting time and plays on easy mode so the combat doesn’t get in the way of experiencing the story.

Since there’s probably no way to put difficulty settings into an MMO they’re going to have to compromise – it’s always going to be too hard for some people and too easy for others.

Emprer.7256:

Might be an unpopular opinion but I actually like HoT and the oevrall difficulty. I just hope they can equally satisfy both sides in the new expansion.

I feel the same way.
I hope they can get it right, but it’s hard to satisfy everyone, I get that. One person’s challenging is another person’s boring. It’s tricky.

Danikat.8537:

Oddly enough I’ve seen quite a few people saying the exact opposite – that they found the enemies, particularly in the story mission, too difficult and they’re concerned that if the entire expansion is like that it will be impossible for them to complete.

One more time. The enemies in the story mission are really easy to fight, the problem appears when players pull more than they can handle. Initially those mobs are engaged with npcs, so you can pull them in really small chunks and destroy them without problems.

Also, the main issue is with veteran and champion mobs, especially champions, that are really easy in Path of Fire. They are even easier than core tyria champions which makes little to no sense.

Story and out world are too completely different things, it’s quite possible for one to be over-tuned while the other is under-tuned

DoctorDing.5890:

One of the big mistakes they made with HoT was listening to the beta players complaining about how easy the mobs were and thus buffing them all for the release. Beta players are a minority and tend to be from the harder-core end of the player spectrum. Open-world needs to cater mostly for average players: no elite spec, probably a mix of exotic and ascended armour, less than optimum build etc.

It was the opposite, HoT was harder in beta and was nerfed for release and nerfed again at a later time.

As I said i used the build you get straight out character creation, did not change a thing. And frankly the build is so horrible that it would get you kicked from any fractal or dungeon group. If its that easy with terrible build, what am I supposed to do there with my fully optimised characters?

maddoctor.2738:

One more time. The enemies in the story mission are really easy to fight, the problem appears when players pull more than they can handle. Initially those mobs are engaged with npcs, so you can pull them in really small chunks and destroy them without problems.

What is easy for you, could be difficult for others. Depends on what class you play and how well you have trained yourself. Your “NPCs” will usually die very fast and no enemy remains engaged with them.

If you get pulled by the dog that knocks you down and instantly applies invisible damage field – you will die. If you have very little condi removal and hit the boss too many times – you will die. If you get between veteran dogs throwing firefields at you – you will die. All these things will kill you too fast to even understand why you died.

It is not difficult to do when you know what goes on but it could be difficult for players going into new area first time.

And of course, HoT preview was much-much worst. Considering how terrible HoT still is, there is hope that PoF will be playable, unless they decide to ruin this expansion too by making everything too dofficult.

I don’t understand how people keep saying HoT mobs are so hard and difficult
, just look at the post above , “considering how terrible HoT still is, there is hope that PoF will ve playable” , lol.

Are people really that lazy to learn to dodge or understand enemy mechanics? Why do people want enemies that can be killed by standing still?

Yeah, fighting a bunch of shrooms with 2 or 3 smokescales in the mix is soooooooo much fun …

I simply find HoT to be boring, stressful, and basically no fun to play. The only reason I have ever played a video game (mostly a waste of time) is for relaxation and to forget the stress of real life. HoT is more stressful to me than real life!