Guild Wars 2

Raven.1524:

By the way I play FFXIV but with a controller, I tried it on GW2 with an Xpadder and action camera ON, but I don’t like the fact that I can’t control the inventory without moving my mouse or the big quantity of AoE ground targets

Off topic but have you considered the steam controller? I personally love m&k too much in gw2 to make the permanent switch, but I’ve used this controller for couch play and it works great. The steam software is solid and there are existing profiles you can tweak to your preference. Feel free to drop me a pm, I can share my profile on steam for you or link the original I modified it from.

I can use my inventory and everything using its radial menus and touch pads, and with the action cam and fast casting/press and hold aoes you can get a lot further than just Xpadder using the touch pad and gyro for precision aiming (I tried Xpadder as well once upon a time)

Hupsel.1920:

Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players.

I can only think of one that falls into this category, and that’s “Hearts and Minds”. Everything else can be solo’d. Some missions are harder than others, yes, but still doable once you get the hang if it. The only difficult parts are some of the story achievements that are easier done with mates.

I also solo player, from all story mission I’ve play I found only Caudecuous fight in story 3 that feel unfair specialize when that OP jade golem show up…

@Djinn no. I am not.
Been lvl 80 means nothing in terms of Story experience.

TLDR: Every chapter in Story have their own way to face. That is why I called it “First Time”. And, when you bring a different class to the same battle, that battle become a First Time. Even for the same class, every time you make a new Character can be a first time if you want to try a new build, if you want to put it in a different instance, environment than before.

For example, when you are fighthing against Caudecus for first time (let say) using your necromancer you going to learn a few things like how the red circles will push you all around the room w/o stability, how conditions will kill you if you stay close to Caudecus after his telport, etc.
After that you go with your guardian now you can take stability, stunt breaks, cleanse and the fight will be DIFERENT. Willl be your first time with your guardian but not your first time against Caudecus. And you will learn a bit more.
By the time you going to use your thief you can bring Hard to Catch trait for stunt breack, Uncatchable to run around circles around Caudecus while damge the mobs and Signet of Malice + Lotus Training for pasive healing while, again, you dodge and run aroung Caudecus. You don’t even need to CC if your health is not full.
Or your necro is your main and only. But still, every time you been defeted, is a time to learn. Necro have stunt break, have pasive healing, have wells for mobs. If you die in the middle of the battle, you can let the npc rez you and use that time (can be a long wait) to retrait and change skills.
Same can be said for all the classes.

GL.

DoctorDing.5890:

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

If they cater for the lowest common denominator that’s when everyone else leaves the game. Much as a challenging level can turn people off a game, easy difficulty level can also turn people off a game, like the literal millions who bought Guild Wars 2 and then run away. That’s also lost players. For every player leaving due to challenge, how many do you gain? And the opposite, for every player who leaves due to low difficulty, how many do you gain?

If they make content for lowest common denominator it doesn’t mean it’s content for everyone, that’s just factually wrong.

I don’t see how adding an easier mode for the story stuff would harm anyone. /shrug

DoctorDing.5890:

I don’t see how adding an easier mode for the story stuff would harm anyone. /shrug

It works for fractals, tweak the awards and achievements based on difficulty level and its a fair model. Same for raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497:

I’ve had a problem with most of the story missions for HoT because I was in zerk’s gear, kitten the people who say use zerks by the way. You’re just bad if you die in zerks… no the lot of you are being unrealistic because I know for a FACT you’re not getting out of that clean. Otherwise you wouldn’t hear people complaining so much about pocket raptors and mushrooms.

Lots of high damage mobs and AOE fields, can easily get one shotted by bosses. Or get hit with some unusually long chains of CC so you can’t do kitten.

When I swapped to something Like marauders that could stay a little healthier when getting swarmed by a bunch of high damage mobs… it got a lot easier.

You could do it in zerks and not die. But it’s boring because it requires you to play safer by taking a couple at a time.

Anyways… Season 3 and HoT is not friendly to anyone who is squishy as heck. Get some vitality or toughness on you.

I see more people dying because they try to run through pocket raptors while ignoring them. Just about every enemy has at least one mechanic which makes fighting them easier. For example, you can potentially avoid all damage from those veteran vinetooths in AB by simply running through them to behind them at the proper time. In most cases, you’ll only take damage from the first swing.

Not complaining about the individuals. Individually, they are easy to deal with.

Mushrooms are easily kited, use a ranged weapon.
Chaks are fairly squishy pressure them will normally do the trick. For energized ones you need to be patient or eat some damage.
Snipers give you a sign that you’ve been locked on, and will fire around the time the mark disappears. (The shot can be reflected but the part that hurts the most will not and continue going)
Shadowleapers are countered by Nuhok stealth detection.
Including a swarm of pocket raptors, which you just need to cleave.

But when there’s plenty of crap that you need to worry about, you’re taking a lot of damage regardless of what you do. Especially when you need to deal with Six second long cool knock downs that may or may not get chained on you because you forgot to bring something that removes knock down OR because it’s chained you burn your only escape and get knocked down again.

vesica tempestas.1563:

DoctorDing.5890:

I don’t see how adding an easier mode for the story stuff would harm anyone. /shrug

It works for fractals, tweak the awards and achievements based on difficulty level and its a fair model. Same for raids.

I agree with this idea. This way everyone gets to see the story.

vesica tempestas.1563:

DoctorDing.5890:

I don’t see how adding an easier mode for the story stuff would harm anyone. /shrug

It works for fractals, tweak the awards and achievements based on difficulty level and its a fair model. Same for raids.

The problem with adding tiered difficulty is that it would take ANet time and resources to do so. How much we don’t know. However, in one of the threads on easy mode raids, posters were cautioned (by Gayle, iirc) not to assume that adding difficulty tiers would be easy.

Also, were ANet to start adding easy tiers to raids and story, will they then be asked for hard versions of same, as well as hard versions of open world maps? Why should people who want things easier get what they want, but players who want harder content have to accept easy content in a lot of aspects of the game?

Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497:

Ayrilana.1396:

Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497:

I’ve had a problem with most of the story missions for HoT because I was in zerk’s gear, kitten the people who say use zerks by the way. You’re just bad if you die in zerks… no the lot of you are being unrealistic because I know for a FACT you’re not getting out of that clean. Otherwise you wouldn’t hear people complaining so much about pocket raptors and mushrooms.

Lots of high damage mobs and AOE fields, can easily get one shotted by bosses. Or get hit with some unusually long chains of CC so you can’t do kitten.

When I swapped to something Like marauders that could stay a little healthier when getting swarmed by a bunch of high damage mobs… it got a lot easier.

You could do it in zerks and not die. But it’s boring because it requires you to play safer by taking a couple at a time.

Anyways… Season 3 and HoT is not friendly to anyone who is squishy as heck. Get some vitality or toughness on you.

I see more people dying because they try to run through pocket raptors while ignoring them. Just about every enemy has at least one mechanic which makes fighting them easier. For example, you can potentially avoid all damage from those veteran vinetooths in AB by simply running through them to behind them at the proper time. In most cases, you’ll only take damage from the first swing.

Not complaining about the individuals. Individually, they are easy to deal with.

Mushrooms are easily kited, use a ranged weapon.
Chaks are fairly squishy pressure them will normally do the trick. For energized ones you need to be patient or eat some damage.
Snipers give you a sign that you’ve been locked on, and will fire around the time the mark disappears. (The shot can be reflected but the part that hurts the most will not and continue going)
Shadowleapers are countered by Nuhok stealth detection.
Including a swarm of pocket raptors, which you just need to cleave.

But when there’s plenty of crap that you need to worry about, you’re taking a lot of damage regardless of what you do. Especially when you need to deal with Six second long cool knock downs that may or may not get chained on you because you forgot to bring something that removes knock down OR because it’s chained you burn your only escape and get knocked down again.

Which doesn’t ever happen if they manage their aggro. It’s a skill many learned in GW1 but isn’t exclusive to that game.

even for pocket raptors, I run past most mobs, ofc easiest on mesmer or thief with stealth, and blink, but alot of classes have swiftness or travel speed or some sort of leap or blink sometimes, this is where people should learn to play without auto targeting and have easy keybinds for targeting or learn action cam, and use leap skills or anything really to get the hell away from them really fast. I have an engineer with 25% speed modifier and slotted rocket boots and I was running past everything. I’d wait for a bit like literally maybe 30 seconds in a safe spot to get the recharge back and then rocket boot past them. I do gs leap on ranger etc. warriors should have no prob. also don’t forget ur dodge loll. also stealth glides are helpful. or blocks and aegis. but the list goes on, on how to play well or in this case run and skip well

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

Are you saying that players who have trouble with boss fights are a “very small minority” and how do you know that?

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

Are you saying that players who have trouble with boss fights are a “very small minority” and how do you know that?

Lowest common denominator is by definition a minority. Games should not be balanced around them just as they shouldn’t be balanced around elite players.

Ayrilana.1396:

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

Are you saying that players who have trouble with boss fights are a “very small minority” and how do you know that?

Lowest common denominator is by definition a minority. Games should not be balanced around them just as they shouldn’t be balanced around elite players.

Is “lowest common denominator” really a minority “by definition”? The lowest common denominator of any game playing capability is those people who don’t even know the rules – want to take a guess at the percentage of the world population who don’t know the rules for any given game? Think that’s really a minority?

No, it isn’t always the case.

Lowest common denominator is not the best way to talk about the player skill continuum in an MMO. Skill is better discussed as being on a bell curve. A seven range curve (very low, low, below average, average, above average, high, very high) will produce results where the ends of the tails (very low and very high) are much smaller numbers than the mid-range (average). This is likely going to be true even in games where the curve is heavily skewed (either towards more skill, or less skill). A game population in which those with the least skill are in the largest demographic on the skill continuum is unlikely.

So, the question with regard to GW2 is. “Where on the skill continuum do we see people being consistently unable to complete story instances?” On the seven range curve I talked about, do these people fall only in the very low range, or do we include the lows? How about the below averages? I think we’d see a lot more complaints if the dividing line was higher than the low range.

IndigoSundown.5419:

vesica tempestas.1563:

DoctorDing.5890:

I don’t see how adding an easier mode for the story stuff would harm anyone. /shrug

It works for fractals, tweak the awards and achievements based on difficulty level and its a fair model. Same for raids.

The problem with adding tiered difficulty is that it would take ANet time and resources to do so. How much we don’t know. However, in one of the threads on easy mode raids, posters were cautioned (by Gayle, iirc) not to assume that adding difficulty tiers would be easy.

Also, were ANet to start adding easy tiers to raids and story, will they then be asked for hard versions of same, as well as hard versions of open world maps? Why should people who want things easier get what they want, but players who want harder content have to accept easy content in a lot of aspects of the game?

^^ Exactly this.

Adding extra difficulty tiers is not a trivial task.
And if I may add something to that, how easy would this easy be? Any kind of difficulty tier would exclude some players anyway. There are some who never run T1 fractals or dungeons for instance.

As for your second part, I’m waiting for the hardcore version of Tangled Depths

The only battle I needed help with was the last HoT boss.
Everything else was relatively easy or with an OK difficulty and I did it with a DH (GS/Scepter + Torch, maybe focus), full zerk with less than 12k HP and barely, if any, defensive skills (can’t remember well, it was a while ago).

So…yeah, I kindly disagree about it being unfair.

Deihnyx.6318:

Take off the zerk armor and use something that will help you survive.

Less DPS is better than being dead.

Not really. If you can kill something faster than it can kill you then why change it.

Most of the encounter mechanics will kill you if you have soldier or zerk armour. So it doesn’t matter what you are wearing.
Lern the mechanics and your class, then you can play it ( and kill it faster ) with zerk ( or condi if you have a condi build ).

Most of the story fights have a gimmick, once figure that out they become so arbitrarily easy you’d wish the story bosses were a little harder

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

Ashivan.5216:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

I do repeat those missions over and over again (I’ve got 6 characters right now that have completed every single zone and every single story in the game from personal story up through LS season 3).

With new chapters of the LS coming out every 2-3 months with a new zone, I don’t believe there’s time to make and test more modes. That’s one of my objections.

It seems to me there are a lot of people who would rather have the game dumbed down than learn how to play it.

Vayne.8563:

Ashivan.5216:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

I do repeat those missions over and over again (I’ve got 6 characters right now that have completed every single zone and every single story in the game from personal story up through LS season 3).

With new chapters of the LS coming out every 2-3 months with a new zone, I don’t believe there’s time to make and test more modes. That’s one of my objections.

It seems to me there are a lot of people who would rather have the game dumbed down than learn how to play it.

Do you repeat them because you like them and the challenges they bring or because you have to do it for the new characters?

Also, Vayne now you are saying there’s a lot of people who want easier story missions… but you argued a while back that we’re just a few ppl, bad at the game. Thanks for the boost

At the end of the day is the developers choice (and their business department) if they go with rewarding the faithful players with increasing harder content or they try to accommodate that for a larger (maybe hypothetical) audience.

Ashivan.5216:

At the end of the day is the developers choice (and their business department) if they go with rewarding the faithful players with increasing harder content or they try to accommodate that for a larger (maybe hypothetical) audience.

I’m not convinced (there is no data to prove it anyway) that those who find the story missions hard are enough to be worth getting extra development time allocated to them to create an easier version of already existing content.

Is the content hard or the player lazy?

maddoctor.2738:

Ashivan.5216:

At the end of the day is the developers choice (and their business department) if they go with rewarding the faithful players with increasing harder content or they try to accommodate that for a larger (maybe hypothetical) audience.

I’m not convinced (there is no data to prove it anyway) that those who find the story missions hard are enough to be worth getting extra development time allocated to them to create an easier version of already existing content.

Is the content hard or the player lazy?

That is not a relevant question tbh although you might think it is. Most people are ‘lazy’ when comes to entertainment and they don’t want to struggle to enjoy what they paid for.

If they paid for the story they should be able to do it without much hassle. It’s that easy.

Anyway, I think this discussion will go nowhere. I just wanted to support the voice of the players stating that the story missions are too hard to be enjoyable while playing solo. It’s indeed true for a lot of players, most of them casuals (like me, I guess) that are not playing this game for long stretches of time.

Maybe I’m only person who like HoT difficult specialize verdant brink and auric basin…
(but Tangled Depths just too much… it’s more annoy than challenge for me – -")

It give me sense of adventure and how dangerous maguuma is… I still miss my first time when step there. XD

Only my complaint is enemy respawn too fast for solo player since many of them really tanky and hit like truck even what ever I use full set of soldier or berserker….

Ashivan.5216:

If they paid for the story they should be able to do it without much hassle. It’s that easy.

When you can’t beat something, while many others can, maybe the problem isn’t with the content but with you. If they struggle on some content they can always ask for help, that’s where my “lazy” comment was going. This community has proven more than once to be very helpful to such players, provided they are specific enough. I mean you cannot possibly help someone who says “this is too hard!”. Not much to work with.

You see even in this thread you read about someone who had trouble with story missions and was using a build from metabattle. Builds from metabattle are not appropriate for story missions or in general when you are soloing, because they assume buffs from others, healing, aegis, distortion, and obviously revival in case of dropping down. You usually don’t have such luxuries when playing alone, unless your own build provides them (except for revival of course).

And besides, if you are doing Heart of Thorns story, it means you already finished the Personal Story and if you are an older player LW1 and LW2 as well, so you should be already more than enough trained to finish the new story missions. If you are doing LW3 story it’s more than likely you already finished Heart of Thorns. It’s a difficulty progression, you can’t expect a story mission of the second expansion to a game to have the difficulty of the tutorial.

Ashivan.5216:

If they paid for the story they should be able to do it without much hassle. It’s that easy.

Anyway, I think this discussion will go nowhere. I just wanted to support the voice of the players stating that the story missions are too hard to be enjoyable while playing solo. It’s indeed true for a lot of players, most of them casuals (like me, I guess) that are not playing this game for long stretches of time.

Lol.
They didn’t “pay for the story”, they payed for an option to do the story. If they are not capable of beating it because they didn’t bother trying, or because they have absolutely no idea how the game works (because they never bothered to try and find out!), or because they are not willing to change their super-special-snowflake-role-play build to something useful, then it’s their problem.
Do you ask for a refund if you bought a single player game and found something in it too hard?

It doesn’t matter if you add difficulty tiers or easy modes, there will always be someone unhappy or someone who finds it too hard. Some players will cry for changes until the instances are so easy that they clear themselves while the player can AFK, but heck, even then you will find those who complain.

Personally, I find making legendaries too hard. I payed for a game with legendaries so please make them easy to get for me, just send me them for free, because anything more than that is too much.

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

Are you saying that players who have trouble with boss fights are a “very small minority” and how do you know that?

Lowest common denominator is by definition a minority. Games should not be balanced around them just as they shouldn’t be balanced around elite players.

Is “lowest common denominator” really a minority “by definition”? The lowest common denominator of any game playing capability is those people who don’t even know the rules – want to take a guess at the percentage of the world population who don’t know the rules for any given game? Think that’s really a minority?

No, it isn’t always the case.

There’s majority and there’s minority. Are the majority of people struggling or is it the minority of players that are?

Ashivan.5216:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

You’re missing the point of what I was saying. It has nothing to do with a game population being low to the point that there’s only hardcore players. It’s no more that than having a game with a population so low because of terrible players that struggle at everything.

They’re two ends of a spectrum and I was saying that the game should not be balanced to either despite some people thinking that it should be balanced around the lowest end. All it does is alienate the players between the two spectrums who tend to make up the majority of players.

Games are the only type of art, that maybe denys you to use it until the end ;-)

That would be like you buy a book and in the middle of the book it changes from english zu chinese.

Stalkingwolf.6035:

Games are the only type of art, that maybe denys you to use it until the end ;-)

That would be like you buy a book and in the middle of the book it changes from english zu chinese.

If you’re claiming that the solo designed story content is the equivalent of a person with no knowledge of hanzi trying to read a book written in it, you should probably try playing with your monitor turned on.

Helbjorne.9368:

Stalkingwolf.6035:

Games are the only type of art, that maybe denys you to use it until the end ;-)

That would be like you buy a book and in the middle of the book it changes from english zu chinese.

If you’re claiming that the solo designed story content is the equivalent of a person with no knowledge of hanzi trying to read a book written in it, you should probably try playing with your monitor turned on.

that was not Guild Wars 2 related, but to the gaming medium in general.

Everyone has content they excel at, and struggle with,
I for example, cant for for the love of my life reach a stable flow in WvW, while raids, fractals and PvP go smoothly

I find a lot of chapters frustrating (bordering on impossible) for me to solo. Or at least to solo without wondering ‘so just WHY does anyone consider this fun’. This is where LFG comes in because odds are you can find someone else in the same boat, especially if it is new content.

Ashivan.5216:

Vayne.8563:

Ashivan.5216:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

I do repeat those missions over and over again (I’ve got 6 characters right now that have completed every single zone and every single story in the game from personal story up through LS season 3).

With new chapters of the LS coming out every 2-3 months with a new zone, I don’t believe there’s time to make and test more modes. That’s one of my objections.

It seems to me there are a lot of people who would rather have the game dumbed down than learn how to play it.

Do you repeat them because you like them and the challenges they bring or because you have to do it for the new characters?

Also, Vayne now you are saying there’s a lot of people who want easier story missions… but you argued a while back that we’re just a few ppl, bad at the game. Thanks for the boost

At the end of the day is the developers choice (and their business department) if they go with rewarding the faithful players with increasing harder content or they try to accommodate that for a larger (maybe hypothetical) audience.

Nope I’m not arguing a lot of people want easier tstory missions. If there are 12 guys posting again and again and again, it looks like a lot of guys though. The loudest voices aren’t always the most numerous anyway. You’re just assuming that’s what I’m saying.

I repeat the missions for different reasons. One of them is learning how to do them better. Improving gameplay or time. I see my progress. Missions that were once sort of challenging become less challenging as I learn the ins and outs.

This way I can give better advice to guildies just starting out. I mean doing a mission on a necro is very different than doing it on a zerker ele. Not necessarily easier or harder, just different.

I never finished one of the Living World series because after a while players who completed them leave. So when I finally get to higher level content, there are not enough players around for a party. Can’t tell the names of the bosses, but yes, it’s too hard for solo players like me who are used to do Tequatl with a lot of players and do some farming…

Vayne.8563:

Nope I’m not arguing a lot of people want easier tstory missions. If there are 12 guys posting again and again and again, it looks like a lot of guys though. The loudest voices aren’t always the most numerous anyway. You’re just assuming that’s what I’m saying.

I didn’t want to continue arguing about this as it’s quite pointless. Just wanted to address this ‘only 12 guys’ thing.

The reason you don’t see a lot of posts is: part of the solo players frustrated with some annoying missions moved on (from the game or from doing those mission) and some of them will not post this as the forum responses can become quite toxic: lazy, just bad, playing with the monitor turned off… and so on.

So those ‘12 guys’ will be the people that do stick around and just raise this concern. It is a valid issue for the more casual players. How would you feel if the situation would have been reversed: the new PvE content really easy and the forums response will be to play PvP/WvW for difficult content or just move one to another game.

Ashivan.5216:

So those ‘12 guys’ will be the people that do stick around and just raise this concern. It is a valid issue for the more casual players. How would you feel if the situation would have been reversed: the new PvE content really easy and the forums response will be to play PvP/WvW for difficult content or just move one to another game.

But we do see that on the forums.

“Weh, content is too easy!”
. . .
“If you’re so good, go play the game in white gear!”
“This isn’t Dark Souls!”
“Well, if you didn’t no-life it…”
“Maybe GW2 just isn’t for you.”

It’s just that this thread got piled on by the less-than-kind veteran players, so that’s what you’re seeing.

Personally, while I found some of the story instances kind of obnoxious, it doesn’t mean we as players should be able to roll them without defeat. It’s possible to respawn and dive back into a fight until it’s over. It’s uncomfortable, and it sucks, but there shouldn’t be a situation where a player can’t complete the story at all.
Hopefully. My memory’s a bit spotty on that.

I’m not a great player; I’m pretty strictly in the realm of “decent” and not much more, but I’ve been able to plow/muddle through all the story instances. My warrior’s set-up is a bit more defensive, so maybe that’s part of it. I can’t imagine doing some of these on a thief. But it’s certainly possible to do, even if the game’s encounters knock you down sometimes.

Unfortunately, a thread like this is also too general to be of much use. It’s too broad and casts accusation too widely. But I do understand where it comes from, because I’ve waded into the individual complaint threads and agreed with a good portion of them. And most of it boils down to some repeated and very annoying combat designs on the part of the boss encounters.

• Overly high damage that increased Toughness does not mitigate
• As above, but a blatant One Hit KO
• Defiance bars make most CC border on useless for blinds, kiting, or other active defense tactics
• Excessive reliance on stun/knockdown/knockback as a punishment mechanic, to the point that Stun Breaks and Stability become worthless. Durations on those effects are frustratingly long.
• Some say that specific fight mechanics are unclear. (While, I agree that conveyance isn’t always GW2’s strong suit, the fight mechanics were manageable.)

The above is more valuable as feedback, with additional (non-hyperbole) evidence as necessary.

Ayrilana.1396:

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

Are you saying that players who have trouble with boss fights are a “very small minority” and how do you know that?

Lowest common denominator is by definition a minority. Games should not be balanced around them just as they shouldn’t be balanced around elite players.

Is “lowest common denominator” really a minority “by definition”? The lowest common denominator of any game playing capability is those people who don’t even know the rules – want to take a guess at the percentage of the world population who don’t know the rules for any given game? Think that’s really a minority?

No, it isn’t always the case.

There’s majority and there’s minority. Are the majority of people struggling or is it the minority of players that are?

That’s a question that no one but Anet knows the answer to. Any one who says otherwise is just guessing, which is meaningless.

Ashivan.5216:

The reason you don’t see a lot of posts is: part of the solo players frustrated with some annoying missions moved on (from the game or from doing those mission) and some of them will not post this as the forum responses can become quite toxic: lazy, just bad, playing with the monitor turned off… and so on.

Most of the hardcore players on this forum are EXTREMELY lacking in empathy or they wouldn’t say that type of thing in the first place. And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

People claiming that a small number of players admitting to having trouble on the forums means that only a small number of players are actually having trouble are themselves having trouble in the logic department.

Djinn.9245:

And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.

Djinn.9245:

Ashivan.5216:

The reason you don’t see a lot of posts is: part of the solo players frustrated with some annoying missions moved on (from the game or from doing those mission) and some of them will not post this as the forum responses can become quite toxic: lazy, just bad, playing with the monitor turned off… and so on.

Most of the hardcore players on this forum are EXTREMELY lacking in empathy or they wouldn’t say that type of thing in the first place. And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

People claiming that a small number of players admitting to having trouble on the forums means that only a small number of players are actually having trouble are themselves having trouble in the logic department.

Just as the VAST majority of players not experiencing issues will not be saying so either. It’s not about a lack of empathy for them. There are situations where rules are rules, or in this case, what’s better for the community overall. Nerfing the game down so that ALL players can complete content with easy is not the best way IMO.

Djinn.9245:

Most of the hardcore players on this forum are EXTREMELY lacking in empathy or they wouldn’t say that type of thing in the first place. And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

Now you are being extremely rude, especially claiming that MOST players do that.
It’s one thing not to ask for help if you are having trouble, it’s a completely different thing to come on the forums and claim that something is hard and should be reduced in difficulty without accepting any help that can indeed make it super easy.

maddoctor.2738:

Djinn.9245:

Most of the hardcore players on this forum are EXTREMELY lacking in empathy or they wouldn’t say that type of thing in the first place. And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

Now you are being extremely rude, especially claiming that MOST players do that.
It’s one thing not to ask for help if you are having trouble, it’s a completely different thing to come on the forums and claim that something is hard and should be reduced in difficulty without accepting any help that can indeed make it super easy.

If you re-read what I typed, I was talking about the forumites who type things like “turn your monitor on” or gg, L2P, etc.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.

I understand that you are addressing the OP, but imo there is a pretty big difference between “unfair” as in

Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players

, and thinking that they are actually being cheated.

Djinn.9245:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.

I understand that you are addressing the OP, but imo there is a pretty big difference between “unfair” as in

Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players

, and thinking that they are actually being cheated.

No, I was addressing you. Specifically, I was offering a counter to your contention that there is a vast silent demographic that is having trouble and not saying anything about it. A lot of people consider themselves to have been cheated if there is a reason they cannot complete a game. As soon as they start thinking the game is unfair, they start thinking that it was not worth the money. From there to cheated is just one less rational step that’s all too easy.

Hupsel.1920:

Hey guys

Loving the game as always, looking forward to the expansion. I am finally playing through Living World season 3 and there is a lot of content there, so congrats and thanks for that! There is one problem, though, which has plagued many missions in Guild Wars 2.

Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players.

Yeah, yeah, this is a MMO and blablabla but I bet there are tons of players out there that queue alone and try the story missions. It sucks that a lot of bosses can destroy you so fast. I think that some of them would be okay for 2-3 players but in solo play you just hit your head against the wall, respawn and go at it again. The design is so bad that it doesn´t matter if you die – you can respawn, the boss has the same health as before then you just continue fighting it, dying and repeating.

I think some mobs could be scaled down for single player play and a lot of bosses could do less damage – maybe even as far as 40-50% less damage.

Thanks!

This game is already the easiest MMO in existence… and you want it to be even easier?

No please, I like a challenge.

If anything, the HP of a lot of mobs should be scaled down (vanilla is fine but HoT and PoF have a lot of HP sponges). Let them keep their high damage, in fact make it even higher, but cut their HP in half. That’s what Anet should do.

Yes there are quite a few I found frustrating or more correctly infuriating when trying to achievements. If this is what you’re talking about I completely agree that it’s a bit too much for some professions. If it’s just the long drawn out fighting the boss over and over until you either complete the task or give up this is why I only ever play the story once most of the time since it’s no fun dying over and over for a story. Absolutely hated the fireworks shows of the final boss fight in Lake Doric. Actually had to get an mouse program so I could actually track my pointer. It’s made life significantly easier in game. Also Anet has a really bad habit of making aoe effects not very visual. And the fight in the Silverhand Mission to start Siren’s landing is utterly ridiculous. I had to go to the WIKI multiple times, this is a poor workaround to bad tutorials. Last fight in Draconis Mons let you work through each mechanic separately then added them together for the final fight making it more forgiving.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Djinn.9245:

And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.

Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.

Numbers are always hard due to you have a self selecting group doing most activities. Players have to care quite a bit otherwise they just leave. Even Metacritic for HoT which is split 70% positive / 30% negative is not a great indicator for this reason. In regards to toxic players, they exist especially on forums. The easiest path is to just ignore them in regards to real discussions.

The main issue for developers is what groups do they want to attract and how to provide content for those groups. For most games I would expect single player story events to be casual, map meta events to be harder, and finally organized play (fractals / raids) to be the significantly more challenging. With more players, you significantly more safety nets thus higher challenge is required in order to keep a reasonable chance of failure.