Guild Wars 2

PvE lacks challenging content. Let’s be clear here, in PvE there is challenging content. There are multiple problems that exist with the majority of PvE content that result in player boredom, I just want to highlight some of the biggest issues, and y’all can discuss them.

I also want to add that this is a great game, and it has a lot more growing pains to deal with that a game following the traditional MMO model because we’ve not seen this type of model previously. As time goes on the game will be refined, more ideas will be implemented, things will be fixed, and the game will get better.

Problem 1
Areas within the world map take incredibly long amounts of time to traverse (if you have waypoints and money though it’s not an issue). That’s not a bad thing by itself, because when a player is in “exploration mode” it’s great to see the world, however it does become an issue when combined with other problems. This means it takes a long time to get back and forth between the challenging parts of PvE. Problem 1 gets a higher visibility due to problem 2. Problem 1 also gives problem 2 higher visibility.

Problem 2
At higher character levels it costs a lot of coin to fast travel. This means people are less incentivized to travel quickly between challenging content, which means the other options are to travel for free yet very slowly or simply not do other challenging content. Free travel requires long runs and in some cases lots of loading time traveling to PvP > LA > Nearest Home City to desired zone > Running to desired zone. This combination of high level (not character level) issues prevent people from quickly experiencing challenging content back to back. I’m going to sneak in a suggestion besides identifying the problem here, make cities free to waypoint to and make waypoint costs based on the distance from the home city nearest to the desired waypoint.

Problem 3
Zones don’t have user friendly difficulty indicators on the map, besides dungeon icons, mostly because there simply isn’t much challenging content on a map; though Jumping puzzles don’t have a map identifier and should, unless designated as “hidden” in which case ppl should be able to unhide it after discovery. Even if challenging content is displayed in a user friendly manner via UI or map, the open world concept will cause many others to flock to there as well, which is problem 4. And problem 4 wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for problem 5, which is enemy/event scaling. Problem 3 is very significant, as it relates to the quality/amount of content that exists to give players a challenge.

Problem 4
The world is open, which is not actually a problem. The problem is that people are good at problem solving, and like the skritt, people in mass quantities can overcome problems. Zergs steamroll events, and high health pools don’t increase difficulty, only time. Poor enemy/event scaling (problem 5) make problem 4 very visible.

Problem 5
Poor enemy/event scaling. Scaling only seems to be raw numbers, which is not very interesting. More health or damage being available to enemies does very little to change the challenge presented. New mechanics, additional “interesting” enemies, additional objectives, etc are more interesting ways to add challenge.

Problem 6
Rewards are poor. For the majority of challenging content in general PvE, there are very low end rewards. There really should be middle of the road token token rewards similar to Explorable Mode Dungeons for at least rares, if not exotic common skin items. Where can players work towards a decent reward in PvE besides dungeons and 100% completing the level 70+ areas? Problem 7 makes problem 6 very visible.

Problem 7
Grind. Grind has a very counter nature to challenge. Grind is completing the same content over and over for efficient rewards. It’s understood that an MMO’s greatest adversary is player efficiency. Developers simply don’t want players to be able to experience content in an efficient manner because they can’t create content as quickly as players consume it. ANet has banned people for their own mistake and called those people exploiters (low karma cultural weapon, don’t even get me started on that), prioritized their time to close efficient farms (many of which were bugs), reduced rewards, implemented diminishing return systems, and implemented a significant gear grind as a treadmill for players. Even though the gear grind is not necessary players feel it is necessary to have the best gear, and it somewhat is necessary because it matters in WvW. That all said, it takes a long time to get the things you want in this game, and it is through repeating the same content, not experiencing new content or overcoming something that super challenging (which goes back to problem 3, where there is a lack in challenging content). From a character reward perspective Grind yields better rewards than completing challenging content. Problem 7 creates part of problem 6, ANet must keep rewards low in order allow problem 7 so that players walk the gear treadmill for a longer amount of time, which they are willing to do in order to get advantages in WvW and PvE.

Overall I think ANet has done an excellent job, minus banning people for spending their karma on cheap cultural weapons that was due to ArenaNet’s own mistake. I didn’t take part in that, but looking back it really bugs me, but it’s all water under the bridge especially since it didn’t affect me. Good job ANet, I hope you’re already addressing the problems outlined above as well as others unmentioned. Keep up the good work and thanks for making a AAA game.

It sounds like your not using enough of the money you earn in game to play the game(Im assuming you are 80.)