Guild Wars 2

I wonder if anyone’s mentioned this at this point but I don’t believe that Guild Wars 2 is at all a difficult game, a broken game perhaps, but not difficult. You see it is my opinion that the game is only faking, perhaps emulating difficulty through the assignment of obscenely high health and attack power levels to the monsters roaming the game, see the dungeons for the best example. At the end of a dungeon, for example, one might look back and think to themselves "that dungeon was incredibly difficult, I can’t believe I defeated it, but it wasn’t. All that really happened was a showdown of trying to have the highest dps and tank the bosses before they down you. There’s no planning, no strategy involved, you really just have to hope that you can manage to win and the fates smile upon you. In this respect I believe I actually could call Guild Wars 2 a bad game.

I remember when I first started hearing about Guild Wars 2 I got excited. There were promises that any character, any class, anyone could play anything they wanted. That the class structure wouldn’t be rigid and there woudn’t be the traditional “tanks, debufs, healers, etc.” but with what the game has become at this point I rather miss that style. I miss potions, actually useful debuff, buff, and healing systems. The difference with that class system and this one is clear. In a stable, typical class system seen in most MMOs a dungeon run would be similar actually. Enemies would be known for their obscenely high dps and health, but unlike GW2 you’d be able to counteract it instead of resing every couple of minutes. There’d be someone focusing on healing, perhaps casting buffs and debuffs instead of everyone scrambling to not die or to get back in the fight after warping to the nearest waypoint.

Personally at this point I think the combat needs a complete restructure to be at all viable, dungeons need to be made more interesting and less of a down/res fest, and the game in its entirety needs to be rethought because an MMO that relies on combat not having good combat is inherently broken in its entirety.

I apologize in advance for the scathing words, these are my opinions and I’d prefer to be quite blunt about them. Thanks GW2 devs for taking the time to listen should you choose to do so.

I disagree. The combat system in place isn’t perfect but compared to other current MMO’s it’s a BIG step up. I feel that dungeons involve alot of strategy. Good players will not die even once while lesser players/pugs will die alot. In beta I heard about groups who cleared AC without a single death. My group died around 50 times the first run through.

Feels great as a DPS to be able to help teammates, give me alot more purpose. I really have to observe what the other players are doing to set up the right combo field. This is even more true in PVP.

Even though they hit hard you can almost always avoid taking damage. LOS, dodge roll or a teleport skill for example.

If you want to play healing whack-a-mole or stand in one place pressing a taunt skill there are plenty of other games to choose from.

There is one extreme difficulty in this game, and it’s finding a group for story mode dungeons.
This, at times, is practically impossible.

Other than that, the game isn’t hard at all.
There are some champion fights that are harder than others, but with sufficient number of people (usually you don’t even need 5 people), are very doable with no real fuss.

The only difference between Dungeons in GW2 and e.g. Instances in WoW is, that in GW2 all 5 players have to actively encounter the enemy instead of just standing around dishing out as much damage as possible. There is not much strategy involved in the later too.

What makes GW2 feel like difficulty is just faked is that you can use a waypoint to rejoin a fight after you died. Fight where you just can’t get back in time, e.g. Lupi in Arah 1, are really fun and difficult cause they need the whole team to concentrate on the fight for a couple of minutes. Nobody is ever standing around idle, you always have to fight to stay alive and mange to avoid certain attacks while not wasting your endurance on rather weak attacks.

I still don’t get how people manage to get that “knockdown spam”. Yes, sometimes a lot of mobs have knock down attacks, but as long as you don’t try to have something like a main tank and you spread out properly you just get hit by a knock down once in a while. And if you know that there will be a lot of knock down just equip some stability skills or CC those mobs yourself.

I don’t understand this complaint at all, they made it more difficult because you actually have to move and get out of the way, you can’t depend on a tank to eat all the damage. Finally we have to pay attention and actually play the game instead of headbutting our keyboard.

To the comment about other Action-combat MMO’s: Personal preference really, TERA roots you in one place, I like moving around.

If I would change one thing about GW2s combat it’s implementing active shielding, was great in AOC. For example if a boss is attacking me from the front I can put my 3 shields there and block 50% damage. If a thief in PVP is trying to backstab me I can move all 3 shields to the back etc etc.

I don’t understand this complaint at all, they made it more difficult because you actually have to move and get out of the way, you can’t depend on a tank to eat all the damage. Finally we have to pay attention and actually play the game instead of headbutting our keyboard.

Point is if you look at the encounters from a strategic pov they´re not difficult as the OP stated as there aren’t any overcomplicated or smart mechanics that really require you to even use your brain.

Every single fight (bosses included as well) it’s a whack-a-mole contest (from the mobs pov) and you just have to run around avoiding damage and ditching your own. That’s it.
It’s what I call stupid difficulty.

I run down a hall that has 2 snipers at the end. I’m the 2nd player in, I dodge one of the sniper attacks but as soon as my dodge ends I get one shotted with a 14k shot without even knowing why I had aggro in the first place.

It’s stupid, it doesn’t make sense. Some encounters remind me of survival modes in zombie games. Run, Run ,die, respawn head back, Run, Run die, repeat.

I like GW2 there´s no doubt about it but I would very much enjoy to see some intelligent mechanics implemented in dungeons not buff x or y dmg/HP and call it difficult.

And due to those insane hit tables one can barely play as melee. I don’t want to play a thief that has to use a SB for most of a dungeon just because I risk getting one shotted if I spend more than 3 secs in melee.

I tend to agree about melee being hard in dungeons. But everything else is a step up for me. To be really successful you should use combo fields and finishers. I think the explorable paths do require having to think.

I played mostly CoF for gear but the paths have some really fun mechanics. One room when you have to take turn kiting mobs while NPC fixes the door or whatever.

Aggro shouldnt be used at all, you should never feel safe, it’s a bad mechanic, in other hotkey mmo’s I NEVER felt threatened, the healer and tank took care of me.

Ok, going back to the original post:

What is genuine difficulty?

there is a lot of strategy involved, even if it were only the builds of the various players and them using the right skills at the right time. Just because YOU may not think about what to do at different stages of a dungeon and rely on luck/respawnfests does not mean everything else acts like that also. You confuse strategy with the static role division you are probably used to from other games, while strategy is a broad concept in reality which encompasses chess as much as boxing.

I’m not against the concept. I’m against the execution. I do like combo fields and the dodge mechanics. But you know for sure that a combo field isn’t going to save you from a stupid death. I mean there’s no way of telling when you’re fighting 5+ mobs that you’re going to get one shotted. And it happens.

Sure you can get more defensive stats and traits going on but then your dps is going to get so low it’s going to be even harder on the long run.

Just because YOU may not think about what to do at different stages of a dungeon and rely on luck/respawnfests does not mean everything else acts like that also. You confuse strategy with the static role division you are probably used to from other games, while strategy is a broad concept in reality which encompasses chess as much as boxing.

There’s parts that you will die. Sorry you just will no matter what you do, and if you run dungeons regularly you know what parts I’m talking about.

And no, I don’t confuse strategy with anything. Eventually everything can be learned with practice even if it’s the most complex set of mechanics.

But you don’t have that here. What you have is shortcuts to avoid mobs, exploit mob patterns to ensure you don’t get killed. That’s how speedruns are getting done and you certainly know that. I don’t call that strategy.

I like the fact there are no set classes but I would like to understand why as an engi (an alt) I get aggro like crazy and what causes it. If you have a game that has supposedly no aggro tables but still you can’t tell why a certain mob attacks you (I even tested it by being stopped at a certain spot) something’s not right. I’m assuming he didn’t love me before we even met.

You are one hand saying that there are exploits that take advantage of set mob patterns, yet on the other hand you want set aggro mechanics, sorry, that is just not consistent. 90 percent of the so called strategy in most games is taking advantage of easily identifiable enemy patterns. I welcome the unpredictability of the monsters here. I agree with you on one part though: there are quite a few boss enemies in the dungeons that promote respawn to battle gameplay. But at least repair costs are quite high which is at least some incentive not to play stupid.

Agree with OP.

Once you’ve played through most of your personal story and put a bit of effort into learning what different things do, you learn how to read an encounter, and every readout is either:

1) I/we can win this without thinking much; or:
2) It’s impossible to win this without more people/better gear.

That goes for WvW, PvP, PvE, dungeons – the lot. There’s not a single point in the game where it’s necessary to stop, think and strategise in order to change the outcome of a battle. You will win or you will lose. When people say certain things are difficult, all they mean is that it takes a long time or requires a full team with maxed out gear. They don’t mean it requires synergy or strategy.

And no, I’m not a WOW player. I’m a TF2 player. More specifically, I’m a TF2 player who bought GW2 because I liked the idea of building a character all of my own and exploring a vast fantasy world, but now I find I’m seriously missing that feeling you get in TF2 of going into a battle knowing you need your wits about you, being able to recognise after most defeats how you could do better next time, being able to pull off amazing lucky escapes and incredibly satisfying kills. GW2, unfortunately, is just mobbing and whittling.

With the removal of the holy trinity they also removed the more complex calculations that went into mob AI. So now all the mobs do is run at you if you get close enough and/or do some damage on them.

At this point, without redesigning combat entirely, they could at least realise what they’ve done (everyone is forced to be a DD tank): lose the idea of heavy/light/medium armour which frankly has no place in a game like this (where everyone is a DD tank), and give everyone the same heavy armour stats =)

You are one hand saying that there are exploits that take advantage of set mob patterns, yet on the other hand you want set aggro mechanics, sorry, that is just not consistent.

I never said I wanted set aggro mechanics. What I said is I wanted to understand how the aggro works in this game and I would like to see some intelligent mechanics implemented into the encounters as of now I feel there are barely none.

I also think that trash (which in this game are way more than that) shouldn’t be more difficult that bosses. That also happens in most cases.

But I’m not surprised that people find shortcuts as the game right now encourages you to do it when you have rooms with 8+ silver mobs that will kill you without you even having a shot of retaliating.

Building a game around the idea of no trinity was a great idea, but I have to wonder why they stuck with the whole heavy/medium/light armor approach and promote statistics that basically mimic the trinity without giving you the tools to complete the build (taunts and proper heals). Doesn’t that seem kind of… counter intuitive?

I suppose it depends on what you expect and your prior experiences. I’m used to team difficulty requiring each individual or groups within team to have to handle certain aspects of an encounter that may change or escalate during the encounter. This game just requires everyone to dodge and shoot from range for every encounter. So to me, it’s not even really an MMO, it’s a multiplayer FPS-RPG. I really don’t think you could make a game be both an MMO and have every class have the same capabilities, with no special skills needed for encounters. The same could be said for solo encounters, as 99.9% of the game can be handled with auto-attack and dodge. I wouldn’t expect any changes aside from those making things easier for more people.

Difficulty should challenge your ability to play the game… maybe even require you to take a second look at how you play, what skills n’ traits you have, and so on. The Fire Golem from SE story mode was really the only boss that did that for me. Subject Alpha and the “hard” explore bosses are only hard because they’ll punish you instantly for a mishap.

What if there was a boss that took almost no dmg from attacks, but tons of dmg off combo fields? It challenges you and your team from just auto-attacking for win to “hey we need to coordinate some combo field placement here so we can take this guy out”. A boss with a healing mechanic that forced players to actually use abilities to whittle down the determined stacks so that when he was going to heal you could actually interrupt him?

High hp and dmg output is basically a lazy way of up’ing difficulty; which maybe fine for DE’s, but not for dungeons. There’s a difference between difficult by war of attrition and difficult by unique challenge.

Rysinsun.7306:

Building a game around the idea of no trinity was a great idea, but I have to wonder why they stuck with the whole heavy/medium/light armor approach and promote statistics that basically mimic the trinity without giving you the tools to complete the build (taunts and proper heals). Doesn’t that seem kind of… counter intuitive?

Everything in this game is counter intuitive. Why have levels if the whole game is end game? Why have a horizontal scaling system if all gear has different stats? Why have magic find when all players should have equal chances of receiving drops? Wtf? WHY HAVE HEARTS IF THE WHOLE WORLD IS DYNAMIC?

Going back on topic, this combat system feels like its meant to appeal to players coming from MMOs that have a vertical scaling system just to convert them to a differe t mindset.

Actually the heavy/medium/light armor has to do with varying scales of defense. Namely, light armor gets a higher return on investment per point in armor and toughness than heavy armor…. However, heavy armor usually has much higher defense because those classes are given higher armor and toughness values (not more toughness on the armor, but more on the naked stats).

Most other MMO’s in a dungeon….Tank stands in one place & takes agro, healers stand in one place and heal the tank and you…maybe. Everyone else stands in one place spams dps until mob is down.

GW2….EVERYONE hops around like deranged bunnies, spamming dps, boons, conditions & heals until mob is down.

I prefer the latter style of game combat. But thats just me. <<hop-hop>>

Sort of a gross oversimplification of dungeon’s in other MMOs…. yes you do have tank n’ spank, but you also have bosses with some very interesting mechanics that you have to deal with; and usually deal with in a unique fashion beyond heal more, dps more, tank more (or in GW2 case, dodge more).

There’s nothing wrong with the general idea of the GW2 style except for the fact that there’s often little need to spam boons or heals on other players, or use combo fields. The truly necessary co-op part is sort of missing other than the simple fact that “soloing this dungeon is likely very long or not possible so I need 4 other chaps to add their damage so I can get out of her in some timely fashion”.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Sort of a gross oversimplification of dungeon’s in other MMOs…. yes you do have tank n’ spank, but you also have bosses with some very interesting mechanics that you have to deal with.

There’s nothing wrong with the general idea of the GW2 style except for the fact that there’s often little need to spam boons or heals on other players, or use combo fields. The truly necessary co-op part is sort of missing other than the simple fact that “soloing this dungeon is likely very long or not possible so I need 4 other chaps to add their damage so I can get out of her in some timely fashion”.

This. So many skills seem wasted either because their cool down is too long or their effect isn’t noticeable without combos being used. Auto attack and kiting/dodging can only be fun for so long and used for a limited number of “fresh” boss encounters. More reaction based skills on reasonable cool down timers are needed imo. This would allow for more interesting fight mechanics instead of the way point DPS zerg racing we have now. Not to mention offer more variety when dealing with combat instead of simply kiting and dodging.

Agenteusa.6380:

I run down a hall that has 2 snipers at the end. I’m the 2nd player in, I dodge one of the sniper attacks but as soon as my dodge ends I get one shotted with a 14k shot without even knowing why I had aggro in the first place.

There is multiple ways to handle that encounter. If your talking CM which it sounds like those mobs are perma rooted. They just shoot whatever comes down. Clearing a nearby room and using cover/range dmg to kill one at a time. Just charging them isn’t how that fight is “supposed” (though I guess it can be done that way) be handled, thats why they tossed flame/net traps in the adjacent rooms. Last pug I had just cleared the nearby room (used AoE to clear guns then charged and AoE’d the perma rooted mobs inside). Then sidestep out with range and take out the snipers/bomber one to one. Or else you can stealth past them or just run it.

Agenteusa.6380:

And due to those insane hit tables one can barely play as melee. I don’t want to play a thief that has to use a SB for most of a dungeon just because I risk getting one shotted if I spend more than 3 secs in melee.

I know quite a few thieves that don’t have a problem with melee. The thing is they don’t stand and wait to die. They jump in DPSDPS/Condition stack and back off if they are getting hit. That is how the class is designed, ever wonder why you can stealth and drop all agro mid fight?

Edit:
“There’s nothing wrong with the general idea of the GW2 style except for the fact that there’s often little need to spam boons or heals on other players, or use combo fields. "

This nails it on the head. Combo fields are nice, but just aren’t up to snuff. Even when you can get neat buffs from them they last WAY to short compared to the encounter itself. It would be great is I could Chaos armor myself off of my guildies Mesmer and have it last for at least 1/2 the fight, as it stands now it ticks for about 5 seconds and vanishes. Really? That isn’t helpful at all. The most you get out of combo is more DPSDPS in the way of Fire/poison projectiles and that doesn’t work right. For example:
Player Poison lays down a poison field
Player Fire lays a fire field over it.
Player with bow shoots – it will only take one or the other. It would be amazing if we could mix those and receive fire AND poison dmg (or a completely new type of condition dmg), but it is a flat dull two layer system that needs to change.

Rysinsun.7306:

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Sort of a gross oversimplification of dungeon’s in other MMOs…. yes you do have tank n’ spank, but you also have bosses with some very interesting mechanics that you have to deal with.

There’s nothing wrong with the general idea of the GW2 style except for the fact that there’s often little need to spam boons or heals on other players, or use combo fields. The truly necessary co-op part is sort of missing other than the simple fact that “soloing this dungeon is likely very long or not possible so I need 4 other chaps to add their damage so I can get out of her in some timely fashion”.

This. So many skills seem wasted either because their cool down is too long or their effect isn’t noticeable without combos being used. Auto attack and kiting/dodging can only be fun for so long and used for a limited number of “fresh” boss encounters. More reaction based skills on reasonable cool down timers are needed imo. This would allow for more interesting fight mechanics instead of the way point DPS zerg racing we have now. Not to mention offer more variety when dealing with combat instead of simply kiting and dodging.

I agree with this. Some skills are simply too situational and their cooldowns are insane.

I think OP and other critics are missing something really important here. The general complaint is “run, run, die”, “fight boss, die run back”, “fight, res, fight, res, waypoint” and finally “there is no strategy or team work”.

Im going to let you in on a secret. :: looks around :: srsly, this is going to blow your mind…the strategy is not die, have to contantly res or waypoint . Iknowrite?? It was always there. Right in front of your face, but you couldn’t see it.

Two snipers at the end of a hall? Teleport mechanics, shield mechanics, stealth mechanics, group stealth combos, invulnerability, aegis, confusion. And there’s no rush to talk with your group and see what they want to try or experiment with. You can even change all of your skills pre-encounter to adjust to the situation.

The content doesn’t fake difficulty. It forces players to stop for a second. Think. Adjust and engage. Who’s fault is it you are impatient or joined an impatient group and got shot in the face?

It’s quite common at this point in the game for groups to be running dungeons and not having a single full-death, yet alone an entire party wipe. In the paths I have done the most (AC, TA), I don’t get so much as downed any more. But it’s a challenge. It’s difficult. And it took some experimenting to see what will and wont work. And as a benefit, when you don’t die…the dungeon goes faster. Yep, you get done sooner and can do other stuff. It’s amazing! Who would have thought taking a minute to figure out how to do something right would be quicker than getting downed/dead over and over.

It’s pretty easy to tell from most of the posts like this the people that just like difficult stuff and would like more complicated mechanics, and the ones that complain the dungeons are too easy because they can, and choose to, die their way through each room instead of doing things efficiently.

@above guy – no it’s just the mob AI is simplistic. If you got to see the coding on mob AI here and then compared it to another game I think you’d realise.

@Acidic

I agree with your last paragraph for the most part… but interesting that all the examples of difficulty (from a non-health, high dmg standpoint) mainly come from the trash and less from the bosses…. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd?

There is multiple ways to handle that encounter. If your talking CM which it sounds like those mobs are perma rooted. They just shoot whatever comes down.

It was an example, I didn’t say it could be done. And besides I’m not talking about the part with siderooms, i’m talking about the pathway with the traps with 2 snipers on the other side. When you say they shoot everyone going donw there, ok that seems fair, but how do they choose? I mean is it just random? If I have 4 guys in front of me, why does he shoot me?

That’s the kind of answers I would like to get on aggro .

I know quite a few thieves that don’t have a problem with melee. The thing is they don’t stand and wait to die. They jump in DPSDPS/Condition stack and back off if they are getting hit. That is how the class is designed, ever wonder why you can stealth and drop all agro mid fight?

Again, I’m not complaining that you can’t go melee.
You can it’s just that if you can go ranged and deal the same dmg it’s much better for you and your team.
If you’re constantly getting in and out of melee (even if you are on the mob’s back) you are losing a lot of dmg and besides I’m not really a condition thief so that hurts me even more to get in and out all the time. All I’m saying is quite often you are on a mob’s back and without any warning whatsoever (ok maybe a tiny split second) you get one shot if you hang around in melee.

I did all the paths on exploreable mode so I’m not saying I can’t do x or y. What I’m saying is it’s a bit frustrating trying to play a melee centered build in dungeons.

And I agree with most posts following mine. I share the same opinion that these days most mmo’s have bosses with inflated dmg/HP that don’t require a brain to do. They’re just hard sometimes cause of that inflated dmg.

It’s pretty easy to tell from most of the posts like this the people that just like difficult stuff and would like more complicated mechanics, and the ones that complain the dungeons are too easy because they can, and choose to, die their way through each room instead of doing things efficiently.

Since you seem to fully approve the mechanics and people who get one shotted on snipers I would like to know from you what’s your take on CoF p2 when Magg has to cross the field.

You surely know what I mean right? Along with all the other shortcuts people take cause they aren’t fun and don’t bring anything to the table.

lollie.5816:

@above guy – no it’s just the mob AI is simplistic. If you got to see the coding on mob AI here and then compared it to another game I think you’d realise.

Would you believe I have/sometimes still do program AI? It’s entirely possible you have used or played something I worked on if you play a certain genre of games on 360/PS3, or went through any sort of convoy training in the Army in the last year.

Guess it doesn’t matter either way. Yes, I recognize the AI, and the methods used, and could make some pretty good guesses on how they are implemented. And have some good ideas as to why they are implemented as they are.

To begin with, AI and path following in particular are incredibly expensive in terms of resources. They can also be relatively slow. The more complex you try to make them, the slower and more expensive they get. We won’t get in to the complications of complex AI and the UDP protocol (which is what I assume GW2 is using, never checked, but its standard for MMOs).

The most reasonable compromise for capability in regard to performance and data transmission is would be something along the lines of a simple state machine and a greedy path following algorithm. And it looks like that’s pretty much what we have now. But some of the states aren’t available unless there are a certain amount of people around, which is a pretty neat twist.

If you are wanting some award winning, industry recognized, evolutionary AI to come from an MMO… that’s a long wait for a train won’t come.

@Bruno Sardine

“….Sort of a gross oversimplification of dungeon’s in other MMOs…”

Yep, it is.

Because, in the end, no matter how you want to dress it up. It amounts to some poor boob (I include myself here also) sitting in front of a keyboard / monitor spamming keys until the mob is dead. You can say…“Oh, but this game makes us move here first”…or that game makes us “jump through this hoop first” and its all still the same thing.

No one can define “difficulty” or “fun” because its different for all of us. Just choose to play the game that fits your definition the best.

Agenteusa.6380:

It’s pretty easy to tell from most of the posts like this the people that just like difficult stuff and would like more complicated mechanics, and the ones that complain the dungeons are too easy because they can, and choose to, die their way through each room instead of doing things efficiently.

Since you seem to fully approve the mechanics and people who get one shotted on snipers I would like to know from you what’s your take on CoF p2 when Magg has to cross the field.

You surely know what I mean right? Along with all the other shortcuts people take cause they aren’t fun and don’t bring anything to the table.

A few people pick up extinguishers, the rest run behind them across the platforms and CC or knockback the mobs as you go. Once you get to the rock, they drop aggro anyways. Waypoint back to the path and do the next part. Zero deaths, zero downs, zero time wasted. Not sure what you think the problem with that is?

AcidicVision.5498:

Once you get to the rock, they drop aggro anyways…Not sure what you think the problem with that is?

The problem there is you’re forced to exploit terrain/AI (reaching a point in area so mobs leash) so you can get to an area you are able to actually play in.

AcidicVision.5498:

The content doesn’t fake difficulty. It forces players to stop for a second. Think. Adjust and engage. Who’s fault is it you are impatient or joined an impatient group and got shot in the face?

Come on, give me an example when stopping to think before engaging will make the slightest bit of difference to the outcome of the battle. The boss fights are so long and the effects of buffs so short that you’ll have used up every single trick up your sleeve – no rolls left, no stealth, no reflect, no nothing – before the health bars a quarter of the way down. Same with massed groups of mobs.

Sure, I might be missing something, but I’ve not seen a single youtube demonstration, post on these forums, wiki page or anything anywhere that suggests an actual cogent, clever, interesting strategy beyond the obvious “Here’s a neat trick that will get you out of a jam once every three minutes.”

It doesn’t help that the collision detection in battles works on a completely different basis to the visual representation of what’s happening, so you frequently won’t know if you’re ‘out of range’ or ‘obstructed’ until your weapon has actually made contact with an opponent, and likewise be hit by an AOE or projectile that looked like it was nowhere near you.

Example 1: The six worms and worm boss in TA
Example 2: The torch section of Rhiannon’s path in CoF
Example 3: Mark I and II golems in SE.

I can keep going…but just looking at those three you can see how stopping, deciding where people will go and what they will do before running in mashing your face on the keyboard will make the encounters smoother and faster and leave you with less of a repair bill at the end of the dungeon.

You know those “tricks” you talk about? The ones where people know “stand here and have the thief do this in this room…”? You think they just made those up? No. That stuff comes from people that play and actually think about how to complete something and the information trickles down to all of the other players.

You want to narrow that down to single mobs? Groups of Wardens and Necros will chain KD players and can easily wipe a party in TA if a group just rushes in. The pack of Icebrood wolves at the beginning of HoTw will at best be a long chaotic fight, and at worst kill half the party if the group immediately aggoes without stopping to consider them.

Oh, but what about smaller meta events that require communication beyond “3…2…1…”, well you can get the light passing or golem escort sections of Arah done on the first try or you can die a few dozen times hoping you get lucky.

Do we need to continue?

“The emulation of difficulty”, applies to pretty much every MMO when it comes to scritped content like dungeons, the only difficult thing in every MMO is PvP.

Agree with the OP about dungeons and the health of trash mobs and bosses. It’s not difficult to fight for an extra 10 minutes when the first 2 were not difficult to begin with.

That’s not called “difficulty”, it’s called “tedium”.

I think personally that they just blanket bumped the health on trash mobs in dungeons so that people can’t complete them faster than they’d like (30-45 minutes), but that doesn’t make them more challenging, just more annoying and less fun.

I stopped bothering with dungeons until this is addressed.

As an aside, I agree with people saying it’s hard to get a story mode group together due to ANet making it so they only give rewards the first time. I’d very much like to see it changed so that you still get the full reward if at least one person in your group has not completed it, and perhaps once per day even without someone that hasn’t completed it.

It’d still make it so you can’t simply farm story dungeons over and over, but at least those that haven’t done them yet would be able to find a group, and those that have completed it would no longer have a massive disincentive to play it more than once.

Coming from someone who played backline in gw1 in both pve and high-end pvp, I love the combat mechanics in gw2. It forces EVERYONE to be combat aware and to utilize their cooldowns to maximize effectiveness. If you don’t like that idea, then I’m sorry, but this game is not for you. Sure you might be able to drag yourself through a dungeon by dying and running back from waypoint, but this obviously terribly inefficient.
Keep in mind that this game in still young and I’m sure they will introduce way more complex boss encounters in future patches/expansions.

@Quick Mouse, who are you replying to?

In any case, trash mobs having stupid amounts of health does not make them difficult. It makes them boring as hell.

Bad use of the term “emulation”
By saying they emulated difficulty, youre saying the game is still difficult.

Should have said “poorly emulated difficulty”

Just sayin..and id rather have a challenging game than a difficult game.

There were similar problems in high-end content in the original GW (think Hard Mode and DoA). I think (and this is pure speculation) that Arenanet is still feeling their way around their new engine’s capabilities, and their content designers are used to using the “high HP == high difficulty” formula (examples: dragon general fights) rather than placing a high value on positioning, synergy and resourcefulness. I predict future content will be more interactive and interesting as they learn to push the engine to its limits.

Sadly what makes this game difficult is the near instant respawns and over spawning.

It’s a cheap way (and lame) to add difficulty.

lollie.5816:

@above guy – no it’s just the mob AI is simplistic. If you got to see the coding on mob AI here and then compared it to another game I think you’d realise.

and yet they kill players, seems like a working AI to me. The randomness of the AI here offers a far more exhilarating combat experience that “hide behind tank” situations the majority of other mmorpg rely on.

This entire thread goes to show what WoW and it’s imitators have done to the MMO player base. It’s sad really.

And that’s the bottom line.

AcidicVision.5498:

Example 1: The six worms and worm boss in TA
Example 2: The torch section of Rhiannon’s path in CoF
Example 3: Mark I and II golems in SE.

I can keep going…but just looking at those three you can see how stopping, deciding where people will go and what they will do before running in mashing your face on the keyboard will make the encounters smoother and faster and leave you with less of a repair bill at the end of the dungeon.

These are dungeons, right? I’ve only done the first two so far, so can’t comment on these. All I’ll say is I’ll be very surprised that they saved deep tactical play just for dungeons.

You know those “tricks” you talk about? The ones where people know “stand here and have the thief do this in this room…”? You think they just made those up? No. That stuff comes from people that play and actually think about how to complete something and the information trickles down to all of the other players.

Sorry, but if we’re talking about the same thing, the point is: it’s negligible. Utterly negligible. I’ve worked out a bunch of interesting things to do with my ranger by combining different traits, moves etc. It makes so little difference – I could still take down most mobs with just auto-attack and key mashing while kiting. And the ones I couldn’t take down, or the groups I couldn’t take down, all my carefully worked out combos will buy me maybe a couple of extra seconds.

You want to narrow that down to single mobs? Groups of Wardens and Necros will chain KD players and can easily wipe a party in TA if a group just rushes in. The pack of Icebrood wolves at the beginning of HoTw will at best be a long chaotic fight, and at worst kill half the party if the group immediately aggoes without stopping to consider them.

’Don’t aggro a load of mobs at once’ is incredibly basic. It’s not what I’d consider a strategy or something that taxes me to think much.

I’m looking for something beyond: proceed carefully, try to aggro mobs one at a time if possible, take out weaker ones first, save AOEs for multiple foes, and then various strategies for burst damage or evasive action. We’ve all worked that out by level 30.

Oh, but what about smaller meta events that require communication beyond “3…2…1…”, well you can get the light passing or golem escort sections of Arah done on the first try or you can die a few dozen times hoping you get lucky.

Not done this either, so maybe just maybe they’re saving all the stuff I’m asking for for those sections of the game I haven’t encountered, despite roaming widely and moving gradually up to level 80. The two dungeons I’ve done involved a section with flame throwers on the wall, some snipers at the back and two bosses that you had to keep apart by throwing rocks at them. I’ve also done a puzzle in an underwater dungeon requiring people working together. But it seems to be spread awfully, awfully thin and rely on gimmicky, awkward mechanics (like the laborious process of picking up and throwing rocks), rather than inviting of strategy and fast reactions.

Focksbot.6798:

I’m looking for something beyond: proceed carefully, try to aggro mobs one at a time if possible, take out weaker ones first, save AOEs for multiple foes, and then various strategies for burst damage or evasive action. We’ve all worked that out by level 30.

Sorta like the “Use this to turn off the traps in a fight” that shows up in a number of dungeons, especially as said traps are close, if not completely, capable of 1-shotting players?

It just sounds you want (outside of the dedicated Healer & Tank) more Environmental factors working in boss fights, and a greater expansion of the rather simplistic combo system …

Something I can get behind on those two points.

Environmental Factors such as environmental weapons to break a bosses defense (Or better damage) are spawn in certain places or drop off of certain enemies (Which already shows up with Boulders to use on some boss fights like SE Story final boss), but have a trick to get to them. This can be hidden behind jumping puzzles designed for in-combat, a touch of skill with a nearby siege weapons that require charging a shot for how far it goes, or trying to decide which environmental weapon from many is meant for a specific state to break. Then you can add in environmental protection spots from the 1-shot AoEs, that are either random or triggered. The key would be its not needed, but it sure as heck makes a fight much easier when used if you have the skill to get the item/place/etc.

(Warning random thoughts below)
For an expanded combo system? Well for an expansion, lets call them Mistborn Echos.
Mistborn Echos: When two allies perform with exceptional skill side-by-side, there is a chance they may resonate with the Mists causing a Mistborn Weapon to be formed that holds the skill and power of the hero who once or will wield the actual weapon.
Basically, when two allies in the same party and in close range of each other use a Combo Finisher within a second of each other, an environmental weapon may appear that one of the two allies can pick-up that lasts for X seconds. Said environmental weapon will likely be 1-shot, but the skill chosen/used will be much more effective then a player’s normal skill and also counts as a combo finisher. If two Mistborn Weapons are used next to each other within a second, it will spawn always spawn another.
The reasoning behind the environmental weapon choice, is to prevent complaints about a combo-weapon appearing in a person’s hands and suddenly they find themselves missing their normal skills. Further, the limitations are there to make a bit of skill, or at least coordination, to use. Thus the requirement of two allies (not just one similar to how Self-combos can be used) and being in the same Party (So zergs don’t have them spawning all over the place). Though low CD combo finishers may need a limitation of only a % chance to trigger this, in comparison to long CD combo finishers.

Then a similar setup is made for Combo Fields from two different allies in the same party, but instead of a Mistborn Weapon they add an additional effect via pulses in the Fields while both are active dependent on which two fields are combined that further help allies in the field and hinder enemies in it at the same time.

Of course PROGRAMMING such a thing would probably be painful and buggy at first. Ah, but tis but a dream.