Guild Wars 2

Well, there’s the issue with your idea, Mario.
“Suppose that new content comes out where the enemies hit harder, have more health, etc.”

That’s just artificial challenges. It doesn’t provide an actual challenge. The way those challenges work is that they’re just “number” challenges. What I personally think that ArenaNet could do is have outward scaling of challenges, instead of vertical. By this, I mean:

Have different types of dungeons. Maybe there’s a dungeon where it’s purely all about building and defending your little outpost from hoards of enemies. Building and repairing walls, putting up cannons, repairing the doorways (kind of like how WvW works)

Maybe they could do one where it’s a ship / boat battle against pirates. You have to target specific parts of the enemy’s ship to weaken them, sink them faster, and all sorts of things. Those could all very much require cooperation and teamwork. Then after the ship is disabled, you raid their ship and fight off the remaining crew or whatever.

My idea is, instead of just having the game based off numbers for these dungeons, have it more based on strategy. If you go that route, there are countless numbers of ideas that can be used for dungeons, all of which could be very, VERY different from the others.

Noxu.7203:

Well, there’s the issue with your idea, Mario.
“Suppose that new content comes out where the enemies hit harder, have more health, etc.”

That’s just artificial challenges. It doesn’t provide an actual challenge. The way those challenges work is that they’re just “number” challenges. What I personally think that ArenaNet could do is have outward scaling of challenges, instead of vertical. By this, I mean:

Have different types of dungeons. Maybe there’s a dungeon where it’s purely all about building and defending your little outpost from hoards of enemies. Building and repairing walls, putting up cannons, repairing the doorways (kind of like how WvW works)

Maybe they could do one where it’s a ship / boat battle against pirates. You have to target specific parts of the enemy’s ship to weaken them, sink them faster, and all sorts of things. Those could all very much require cooperation and teamwork. Then after the ship is disabled, you raid their ship and fight off the remaining crew or whatever.

My idea is, instead of just having the game based off numbers for these dungeons, have it more based on strategy. If you go that route, there are countless numbers of ideas that can be used for dungeons, all of which could be very, VERY different from the others.

You slightly missed the point and I see what you’re arguing. You’re arguing more difficult content from a mechanical standpoint. While I’d personally enjoy that, not everyone has the twitch reactions to deal with progressively more difficult content. “New” and “More Difficult” are two completely different things in this case. Maybe I can illustrate this better through numbers:

Say the current content has a difficulty of 7. Now take a skilled player, they can complete up to a difficulty 8 and therefore clears the 7. Now take an unskilled player, they can complete up to a difficulty 6. So, they start to gear themselves out until their skill+gear is able to clear the 7. Now say that difficulty 8 content were to come out. The skilled player can complete it. But the unskilled player is stuck at 7 because there’s no new gear. This is essentially how your scenario plays out if simply “increasingly more difficult” content is released.

The gear treadmill repeats that first part over and over again, keeping the content challenging (to varying extents) for everyone while being completable. I’d personally prefer content to become “increasingly more difficult,” but that would also leave a large portion of the playerbase behind if they’re not skilled enough.

What I’m saying is, because the content is new and your gear isn’t overgearing the new content, challenge will exist simply because you need the learn the new strategies. In that sense we’re on the same page, new content with more variety.

I get what you’re saying.
The only thing I see wrong with that idea is that, even when you get this new content and the enemies are more powerful than you… what happens? You have a challenge for a while, but eventually you’ll overpower that content just as much as you would with my idea.

I think both ideas work out pretty well for their own separate reasons. The only thing that I think my idea would have over yours is that, content wouldn’t be negated over time. All content could remain relevant and keep people doing them.

This is my example for that: When I played WoW, I loved the raids, they were a lot of fun. But then I got more gear, got super powerful, then all the raids that I did were just… steamrolled. Then when the next expansion came out, all that world, all of that raiding was all negated.

The way the plateau of gear is now, all content has the potential to remain relevant.

(If I’m understanding your idea right, of course. It’s 2 a.m. here. =p )

Noxu.7203:

I get what you’re saying.
The only thing I see wrong with that idea is that, even when you get this new content and the enemies are more powerful than you… what happens? You have a challenge for a while, but eventually you’ll overpower that content just as much as you would with my idea.

I think both ideas work out pretty well for their own separate reasons. The only thing that I think my idea would have over yours is that, content wouldn’t be negated over time. All content could remain relevant and keep people doing them.

This is my example for that: When I played WoW, I loved the raids, they were a lot of fun. But then I got more gear, got super powerful, then all the raids that I did were just… steamrolled. Then when the next expansion came out, all that world, all of that raiding was all negated.

The way the plateau of gear is now, all content has the potential to remain relevant.

(If I’m understanding your idea right, of course. It’s 2 a.m. here. =p )

Reread my post if you missed the numbers example that I just added in an edit, I think it better explains my point.

Also, I wouldn’t say everything you did in WoW was negated. I also raided in WoW and thought the same way at first. But the only thing that got negated was the gear, which was materialistic. In the end, I got the challenge I wanted. Using WoW as another example. You say the raids would get steamrolled once you were geared. That’s how the current content in GW2 is right now in full exotics. So what if new raid content came out in WoW, requiring new strategies and everything, BUT your current gear was still the best? That new raid would probably be really easy and put into farm status rather quickly.

And to address your first remark, I only need that initial challenge. With the gear plateau that challenge may not even exist from the start because my gear is already the best.