Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

When I play a game, I’d like to be at least slightly challenged. This is one of the main reasons I NEVER pve anymore.

With the addition of PVE raids, I’m starting to be able to enjoy good content again, as it actually takes training, focus and mastery to get through the raids. PLEASE don’t nerf that too!! I’m so scared of them nerfing raids as well!

What do you guys think? Should PVE be kept easy and not challenging, or should they slightly bump up the difficulty level, so that we don’t just steamroll through everything and look at PVE like just another mob farm fest? Thank you for reading

EDIT: I agree with you guys that I should maybe post suggestions to make World Bosses a little more fun and challenging. Although I would like to see us all think about new ideas, I’ll throw a couple in myself:
– The same way ANet revamped The Shatterer, I think all bosses should be revamped to work better with the current content that’s out there. Due to poorly considering how powerful players would become with each update and each game change, World Bosses are now way too easy to be considered fun to do. They are now viewed as a repeatable farming mechanism and nothing more. (Exceptions to this are the newly revamped like Shatterer)
– As polarbear.2497 pointed out, I think the boss scaling algorithm in regards to player count around it should be looked at and modified to provide a different scaling.
– A few bosses like Tequatl and Shatterer have more diverse, interesting mechanics to them that make fighting them not just a matter of sheer brute force, but also of group coordination and tactics. I believe a few bosses like Fire Elemental and the Great Jungle Wurm should get more thought put into their mechanics, so that they may become interesting.

With that said, I truly appreciate ArenaNet’s efforts in this game as it is amazing and unique, and I’d like to thank them for that. Any thoughts?

I agree with you that PvE has for the most part become too easy. I think it was done to keep newer players satisfied with the progress they can make without too much effort. I definitely think that scaling needs to be looked at – the larger a zerg, the harder the encounter should be. This is not generally happening to the extent required to make the fight challenging (Fire Ele is a good example). In this regard, I’d prefer that mechanic timing and number of additional enemies is adjusted on the encounters, rather than simply increasing the health pool / toughness of the boss. In this way, zerg size also produces some variety in the fight.

xKiddoliox.6785:

Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

Ah, the days when Shadow Behemoth died in literal seconds, where the people from the pre didn’t have enough time to get the World Boss kill. I think 6 secs was the quickest Behemoth Kill I ever saw.

But yh, I’m not sure if its just me getting better but a lot of things that I thought were quite hard a year or two ago is just face-roll easy now.

Other then Pocket Raptors, as much as I hate them. I like the challenge they posses.

Ah, pocket raptors. How I hated them, until I found out that damage fields and a few AoEs work perfectly against them.

As to the OP, I’d indeed appreciate some more challenge. But that would require some thoughts from ANet’s side and not just mindless increases of HP, toughness and damage per attack.

Pocket Raptors + Whirling Axe = Dead Pocket Raptors

xKiddoliox.6785:

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

When I play a game, I’d like to be at least slightly challenged. This is one of the main reasons I NEVER pve anymore.

With the addition of PVE raids, I’m starting to be able to enjoy good content again, as it actually takes training, focus and mastery to get through the raids. PLEASE don’t nerf that too!! I’m so scared of them nerfing raids as well!

What do you guys think? Should PVE be kept easy and not challenging, or should they slightly bump up the difficulty level, so that we don’t just steamroll through everything and look at PVE like just another mob farm fest? Thank you for reading

You do realize FE is in a starter area, right? If you want a more challenging boss do something in a higher level zone, like the recently reworked dragon in Charr territory that always has kittens.

I do not go telling people that play other content that their stuff should be changed when it does not impact me.

Well, I prefer easy content. When I play games I just want to relax and pwn everything.
If I want challenge, I log off and play real life.

CptAurellian.9537:

But that would require some thoughts from ANet’s side and not just mindless increases of HP, toughness and damage per attack.

You forgot the irritating one-note, knockdown-spam attacks. White Mantle Knights are the most lethal thing in the new content. And there’s a host of HoT mobs that are just punishingly boring.

If ANet can barely get it together to give all their enemy encounters good, variable attacks, there’s not much cause to believe they won’t just make high-damage HP sponges out of everything.

It’s the above that always makes me question these “pve too easy” threads. There’s never any offer as why the authors think so and pretty much never make a recommendation as to what would be acceptable difficulty.

“Enemies die too quickly.” HP pools increase.
“Wah, kill times are too long. Boring!” HP pools come down, toughness goes up. Condition meta spikes and zerk gear loses its worth.
“Wah, condi too strong!”
…Well, what now?

“I’m so special I do everything in naked zerker gear.” Enemies start doing tons of damage and have 25% uptime on evades so you can’t burst them down.
“Wah, I die too much now! These enemies are cheap!” ..Well, that’s what you asked for.

xKiddoliox.6785:

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

When I play a game, I’d like to be at least slightly challenged. This is one of the main reasons I NEVER pve anymore.

With the addition of PVE raids, I’m starting to be able to enjoy good content again, as it actually takes training, focus and mastery to get through the raids. PLEASE don’t nerf that too!! I’m so scared of them nerfing raids as well!

What do you guys think? Should PVE be kept easy and not challenging, or should they slightly bump up the difficulty level, so that we don’t just steamroll through everything and look at PVE like just another mob farm fest? Thank you for reading

You realize that when the game first launched no one was level 80 and with max gear and full traits? It took time for the majority of the players to hit 80 and gear up. There also weren’t a crowd of level 80s at the world bosses either. Of course PvE was harder back then. If you want to have the same type of PvE challenge go back to your launch time gear of mismatched greens and a handful of traits.

Rauderi.8706:

lots of seriously true stuff

Frome me its a /thread here.

xKiddoliox.6785:

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

It sounds to me what you’re complaining about is PvE skills/traits being buffed while the enemies aren’t. You’ve said you raid so I’m going to infer from that you know about elite specs and the new HoT stats. More players with those are obviously going to make old enemies much easier to kill. That’s why FE goes down in 5 seconds, not because of nerfs. Check out the Shatterer for a boss that’s been revamped since HoT and you’ll see he takes far longer to kill now than before. I’d like to see all Central Tyria world bosses updated to fit better with the new stats/traits/skills, but I’d rather have new content first.

Menadena.7482:

xKiddoliox.6785:

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

When I play a game, I’d like to be at least slightly challenged. This is one of the main reasons I NEVER pve anymore.

With the addition of PVE raids, I’m starting to be able to enjoy good content again, as it actually takes training, focus and mastery to get through the raids. PLEASE don’t nerf that too!! I’m so scared of them nerfing raids as well!

What do you guys think? Should PVE be kept easy and not challenging, or should they slightly bump up the difficulty level, so that we don’t just steamroll through everything and look at PVE like just another mob farm fest? Thank you for reading

You do realize FE is in a starter area, right? If you want a more challenging boss do something in a higher level zone, like the recently reworked dragon in Charr territory that always has kittens.

I do not go telling people that play other content that their stuff should be changed when it does not impact me.

Just because it’s a starting area, does NOT mean it should be face-roll easy. It is called WORLD boss for a reason! It should take a world to kill one, because it’s supposed to be difficult! Not just run in, tag boss, and you’ve got free rewards.

Bellatrixa.3546:

xKiddoliox.6785:

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

It sounds to me what you’re complaining about is PvE skills/traits being buffed while the enemies aren’t. You’ve said you raid so I’m going to infer from that you know about elite specs and the new HoT stats. More players with those are obviously going to make old enemies much easier to kill. That’s why FE goes down in 5 seconds, not because of nerfs. Check out the Shatterer for a boss that’s been revamped since HoT and you’ll see he takes far longer to kill now than before. I’d like to see all Central Tyria world bosses updated to fit better with the new stats/traits/skills, but I’d rather have new content first.

I agree with the fact that they should revamp it all. But I don’t very much agree with prioritizing new content over fixing old content. New content shouldn’t be used as a distraction to what the game already offers, so that players complain less. It should be simply enjoyable, fun content that adds onto the already good old content.
Just look at World Bosses. They added new content but they didn’t properly think the old one through, so we get overpowered players when compared to the older World Bosses.

I think there’s two other factors worth considering.

The first is that as you play the game you get better at it…. the stuff that was challenging when you first started is going to be much easier once you have a grasp of combat, builds, etc.

The second is the Dynamic Level Adjustment. Personally, I think it’s very flawed. If you are naturally of the same level as the lower-level zone you’re in with blue/green gear, combat is noticeably more challenging than when you’re lvl 80 decked out in exotics, but ‘level adjusted’ while in that same zone…. a trash mob that takes 5-10 hits normally now takes 1-3; a veteran that takes a bit of strategy to defeat now is face-rolled. I think a more “accurate” DLA would go a long way to making PvE more engaging.

~EW

Your fears seem unreasonable to me.

People have said it already, but many open-world pve encounters are still challenging for new players with trash gear and little experience with their class (let alone knowing how to synergize their abilities with other classes). While it’s true that my HoT 80s regularly solo some content (such as bandit champs) that was probably not meant to be done alone, have you recently tried to take down a bandit bounty with an at-level toon, perhaps with the help of only 2 or 3 more at-level characters who are clearly new? It’s tough enough to give a sense of achievement if you guys make it. I also regularly carry groups of nooblets through dungeons. That stuff is still hard for new folks, hard as it is for some of us to remember how it was to be that way.

I think it comes down to the fact that we hate not being able to clear stuff if we’ve invested a good chunk of play time and effort into an event. Balancing near-guaranteed clears against not making things faceroll easy is probably a lot harder than it sounds.

I think the AB meta is actually a great example of Anet getting the compromise right. Any decently organized map can clear that meta, but there’s still always a bit of tension for at least one of the lanes. The mechanics demand that at least some of those present know what to do (armors keeping frogs pinned/dead, pushing/pulling the bomb, moving triggerblossoms properly, knowing where to run in shroom form, etc), enough so that if nobody plays smart, the event fails. However, with a reasonable number of knowledgeable players, it reliably succeeds.

I feel like that’s exactly where most open-world PvE should be: near-complete lack of strategy/good play = failure, reasonable amounts of strategy/good play = win.

Raids are an entirely different story, and if I recall correctly that content was specifically aimed at folks clamoring for more challenge. Unless Anet does something dumb and uses raids as a gate blocking something cool non-raiders want to get at, I don’t think there’s a raid nerf in the future.

xKiddoliox.6785:

Menadena.7482:

xKiddoliox.6785:

Hello everyone,

I’d just like to say that PVE has been getting constantly nerfed. When the game first launched, we could actually enjoy mildly difficult PVE content, whether it was the world bosses, the dungeons or the fracatls. But now? Everything is EASY!!! Fire Elemental is one of the most killed World Bosses and now it literally takes 20 seconds to kill!

When I play a game, I’d like to be at least slightly challenged. This is one of the main reasons I NEVER pve anymore.

With the addition of PVE raids, I’m starting to be able to enjoy good content again, as it actually takes training, focus and mastery to get through the raids. PLEASE don’t nerf that too!! I’m so scared of them nerfing raids as well!

What do you guys think? Should PVE be kept easy and not challenging, or should they slightly bump up the difficulty level, so that we don’t just steamroll through everything and look at PVE like just another mob farm fest? Thank you for reading

You do realize FE is in a starter area, right? If you want a more challenging boss do something in a higher level zone, like the recently reworked dragon in Charr territory that always has kittens.

I do not go telling people that play other content that their stuff should be changed when it does not impact me.

Just because it’s a starting area, does NOT mean it should be face-roll easy. It is called WORLD boss for a reason! It should take a world to kill one, because it’s supposed to be difficult! Not just run in, tag boss, and you’ve got free rewards.

A world boss is just a term, bosses in starter areas are designed for around level 15. You do not HAVE to do them. If you do not like FE do one of the harder bosses.

OP not signed.

xKiddoliox.6785:

With the addition of PVE raids, I’m starting to be able to enjoy good content again, as it actually takes training, focus and mastery to get through the raids. PLEASE don’t nerf that too!! I’m so scared of them nerfing raids as well!

For the most part I agree with your entire post. Not to say it’s been made easier, but as players become more experienced things like what you said tend to bappen.

What I quoted is what I disagree with because all it takes is DPS gear and repetition to learn that stuff. No challenge, no real focus (I’ll have music on, multiple private convos, be on the phone) is needed. I would love to see something done to the raid content, either current or future, where that is not the case. Ideally I’m talking like going in without a guaranteed chance at victory. Whether random mechanics, or stricter and more punishing mechanics.

I remember a zerg killing jungle warm before it could properly spawn.

That said, I agree all of the WB are boring outside of Teq, shatterer, and triple wurm.

PvE too hard nerf now

PvE too easy stop nerfing it

Rinse and repeat

HardRider.2980:

PvE too hard nerf now

PvE too easy stop nerfing it

Rinse and repeat

That’s true for everything, even outside of the game. But that’s how a company tweaks its game to get better and better.

Guildwars 2 players are accustomed to everything being easy.

If a pug fractal group wipes even once pl leave the party immediately.

ppl won’t accent pugs into a raid group unless they can prove they are the best player in gw2 history.

all loot and achievements must be given away at first attempt otherwise its “too hard pls nerf”

Nobody is willing to work towards anything in this game and tolerate adversity, because the game has been an autoattack farm for years, and the player base expects everything to be given to them for zero effort.

challenge is moved towards expansion content and beyond, the core game is casual and able to be fully enjoyed by people who aren’t at a high skill level, I think it’s perfectly fine the way it is, if you want to be challenged, go to verdant brink and beyond!

voltaicbore.8012:

(armors keeping frogs pinned/dead)

Armors suck at fighting frogs without players who actually deal damage to back them up – Sure, they can break the bars somewhat easily (But it takes all 3 CC skills – hope you don’t need a bonebreaker stopped), but then they’re immune to further CC for a while. Also – their own CC spam shreds the armor’s breakbars. And Armor has a strong single attack, but its sustained DPS is awful. Frogs do a better job distracting armor than the reverse.

95% of the game is so easy a caveman could do it by keeping 1 key pressed to win.
Only 1% is actually challenging (not hard), the 3 raids.
Hopefully future content becomes harder

ANet has been upping PvE difficulty since the intro of Karka in Nov., 2012. However. there are problems.

• Players demand stuff. New (i.e., better) stat combos and elite specs both resulted from player demand, and both generated power creep.
• Players get better. Every time something harder has been added, the first reaction is some players thank ANet while others demand the harder stuff be nerfed. Later, the thankful start throwing “too easy” around again and the complaints dry up. This is learning curve at work.
• ANet can’t seem to decide who it wants the game to appeal to.

Since the OP is raiding and likely has the best armor, weapons and skills sets etc. , I would suggest that maybe it’s time to stay out of the starter zones and just play the end game and stick to the harder content instead of trying to encourage Anet to make the game more difficult for those that are not as elite. FE is a starter area, you know what to expect when you go to low level areas.

Eh, no thanks. MMOs are time consuming enough as is, I don’t need the encounters to be particularly challenging as well. I’ve always preferred getting a lot of little things done with relative ease to spending a long time on one piece of content.

Also, we’re already at the point where a lot of newer content is frustrating to try and complete without consulting a guide. Actually, if you think about it…the game is pretty difficult if you try to do everything completely legit – no metabattle or dulfy or wiki.

I think there is room in the game for easy and hard content. A lot of the content on core Tyria maps is designed for players at various stages of leveling. I do think many of the events have become stale and need to be updated. The minor event Tekki portal in Brisban Wildlands should deliver random creatures from Tyria. It’d be funny to see pocket raptors or karka come out from time to time. The Claw of Jormag could be updated to include ley-line and Inquest. They could make the pre-events a 3-way battle between players, Inquest and Jormag’s minions ending in the Claw event.

I don’t know whether I agree entirely with the OP…

I think the areas in core GW2 are pretty good. Ultimately, they’re designed for players who are at lots of different stages in the game. So I think they serve their purpose well in that regard. I would say that they’re an appropriate challenge for people of that level. However, that’s not to say things have become a little bit tiresome and some slightly more ‘challenging’ events could be added to maps, which would give an incentive for high level players to revisit areas.

Maps with world bosses, e.g. the starter zones, I think are in a much better state than they were. The Fire Element was just horrificly powerful around launch, and the ‘Great Jungle Worm’ was pathetic. I don’t think that they should be drastically overhauled, they’re in starting areas!! Yes, they’re a world boss and I do think it should have a little challenge, but Shatterer style coordination would be ridiculous at this stage.

HoT and post content I think fulfils the challenge criteria pretty well? I mean almost all the maps require coordination if you want to get high level rewards… I think Anet is going in the right direction in this regard. Even the mobs seem a bit more cleverly designed. The worst kind of challenge for me is just upping the HP on mobs and giving them insta-kill attacks. I like challenges that are more dynamic than that, which I think Anet has achieved somewhat…

In conclusion, I think the core game is relatively ok… but could do with some minor tweaks and additions. However, if anything, I’d say HoT and beyond are pushing for more challenging content in PVE… So I think OP’s concerns are unfounded.

Though I would add, that I think some content in HoT requires a ridiculous time investment. People with families, kids etc, can’t always afford to stay on the same map for 90 minutes… So this is something I’d like to see altered in future content

From vanilla world bosses the only ones that can be challenging when the zerg reach enough numbers are the Triple Trouble wurms, Tequatl and Shatterer only require coordination when the numbers aren’t too high, and not by much, just the people operating the siege weaponry need to be aware of what they are doing as the weapons are integral part of those fights now.

For the other bosses, the ones from starting areas can stay as they are as they are teaching basic mechanics, but I would like to see Taidha Covingtom, Golem Mark II, Mdoniir Ulgoth and Claw of Jormag reworked, specially the Claw of Jormag as it is a dragon from an “end game” area. Orr temples are fine as they are in my opinion.

I remember a time when we did fire ele and it wiped everybody, consequently it was nerfed. then Ascneded came backa and bosses were buffed a bit, then HoT hit and everything gained 10%-25% DPS and stuff stayed the same.

NO bosses were not nerfed, it’s powercreep. This is caused by the wish for peole to grow. Only content now up to date and challenging is t3/4 fractals, solo- or duodungeons and RAIDS.

Now we found the ways to kill raid bosses fast and easy they are pretty simple as well, as are Fractals…

Powercreep. no more, no less. It will happen again when we get the next expansion

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I remember a time when we did fire ele and it wiped everybody, consequently it was nerfed.

It was a bit more complicated than that. The OP element came from it’s scaling system for adds being broken – with too many people around enough of the embers spawned to make any attempt to cross the bridge a suicide, and to cover most of the floor in the room with lava fonts. However, if you had like 5 people inside the room, ready for action when the fire ele spawned, you could kill it in 5-10 seconds.