Guild Wars 2

I am not sure why ANET and their developers keep focusing on Hardcore players and their demands for more difficult content and ignore casual players.

ANET themselves have stated that the majority of their player base are casual players playing approx. 20 hrs a week.

Why do we (Casual players) have to take the brunt of these “insane” difficulty changes to all of the new content ?

My friends and I where looking forward to HoT, only to get turned off by the level of difficulty and coordination required. We just don’t have that kind of abilities.

As a result my friends and our guild no longer participate in HoT maps.

We just finished the HoT story and left the map. There was no fun in playing it.

Neither did the Masteries in HoT offer anything that we valued in that area.

Same with Raids. We were all excited about them, only to discover that the difficulty level was huge. That’s not fun for Casual players or fair. Excluding people that do not have the time or skill or resources is just wrong.

The Game is suppose to be appealing and fun to all levels. Not only Hardcore players.

We need a system where both Casual and Hardcore players can enjoy new content and challenges without frustration.

As I have said before, bring back the old GW 1 “Hard Mode” button.

That was a great feature in GW1, where players could switch from Normal (Easy) Mode to Hard Mode with a flick of switch and both player categories could enjoy the game.

It also allowed Casual Players to occasionally try the “Hard Modes” on their terms.

But please stop making everything so difficult to enjoy.

Something to think about.

Maybe the new maps and riads aren’t made for you? You can obtain better skills and learn the game better, but even if you do the reward-effort ratio isn’t good compared to much of base Tyria and it’s way less flat than better maps. There are just so many chances to fall off a cliff or get choked in the new zones, not too much wide open space.

I did some serious raiding with 20-25h a week back in WoW days. 4h 3 evenings a week + some random gameplay. Was enough to eventually clear mythic.

Hours played per week mean very little in regards to player skill. There quite a few “casual” gamers who are incredibly good at this game. Please don’t lump in lazy, less skilled, unmotivated, or simply bad at the game with the “casual” crowd. Casual means less time to play. It doesn’t mean you can’t raid and can’t be good at it.

Prime Greek.1092:

Same with Raids. We were all excited about them, only to discover that the difficulty level was huge. That’s not fun for Casual players or fair. Excluding people that do not have the time or skill or resources is just wrong.

Really?

Raids are out for 2 days now and you come to the forum complaining that they are too difficult?

What where you expecting, content so easy everyone and their mother can do it in the first try?

I’m sure after the first Guilds have succeed in the Raids they publish Videos and Guides how to clear the raids and with these Guides many players will be able to beat Raids.

+1 to the OP, from the standpoint that alienating any one segment of the population will not be healthy for the game in the long run. If casual players feel left out, they’ll move on to something else. The same applies for hardcore players.

For the sake of player retention, ANet should really consider designs that allow choice, and that appeal to a broader population of gamer. It’s asking for trouble to cater to one group at the expense of others.

For example, I’m what you might call a “casual hardcore” player; I like a challenge here and there, but I don’t have a lot of time to play, and sometimes I like to just chill when I play. I would LOVE the option to play the game in “regular” or “hardmode,” depending on my time availability and “where my head is at” when I log on.

Along the same lines, I’ll beat the drum again for a selectable difficulty level for HP challenges. If a player just wants to progress their character, let them choose easy mode, where they fight a veteran level mob for the HP. If they want a challenge, with perhaps a chance at better loot or maybe a chance at a unique skin, let them choose hard mode. Win/win.

Our skills are good. We have played the game since the beginning and have over 14K AP each. and we each have at least one legendary weapon crafted with full ascended armor and weapons.

Still, the difficulty is to high in our opinion. I have seen others on this forum and other with the same complain . I am trying to propose a solution to a key question.

“CAN ANET ACCOMDATE BOTH THE PLAYER THAT WANTS AN EASIER CONTENET AS WELL AS ONE THAT LIKES A HARDER ONE ?”

Seems that in GW 1 that was possible. Why not in GW 2 also ?

I think that would allow all players to enjoy the game at the level they want.

That’s also makes better business sense fro ANET. Why turn away people form the game if you can accommodate them ?

Exploration: Casual.
Dungeons: Casual
Fractals: Casual (with scaling to harder if you wish to have more of a challenge)
World bosses: Casual
PvP: Casual (in the sense that it’s easy to get into for new players and you can do a match here and there at your own pace for fun)
WvW: Casual in the sense you could get a 3man together and go capture points if you want. Sadly the game mode seems quite barren these days.
Raids: Hardcore.

I’d say GW2 is pretty bang on with having the majority of their content casual friendly. With a minority of it for hardcore players. That’s exactly the way it should be and is representative of their player base.

So what’s the problem? You feel everything should cater to casuals players?

If you strictly mean casual as in 20hrs/week players and not skill based. Then there’s literally nothing that isn’t casual friendly in GW2. Heck even the first raid boss is designed to be defeated in 8min. However much time you put into mastering the encounter to actual do it in that time is completely up to you.

Heaven forbid a game have a learning curve…

Man you people complaining about the difficulty of ENDGAME CONTENT have never played another MMO have you? Or Dark Souls.

Go play that and then whine about a learning curve.

Casual means less time to play. It doesn’t mean you can’t raid and can’t be good at it.

True. But considering that i saw ppl in chat and on forum say that they spend 6 hours inside the raid and still didn’t manage to kill the boss you can imagine that not everyone is able to do that. Meaning for those ppl it will take a long time to adapt and learn.

Like in most other games, including fps ones, people that spend a lot of time in a game get to know the maps by heart. I can tell you that after so many years i still know the maps from MOH:Allied Assault by heart. I can even visualize them in my mind.

Players that play ‘casually’ do not have that luxury to be able to know everything about mechanics of a boss in the same amount of time or ever. I play some games casually as well, and i’m very good in them, but HoT is different.

In HoT they switched up the difficulty by a few notches, adding the group coordination (which is not bad) but at the same time requiring you to rethink your build regarding survivability. Then they introduce raids (1st wing – 1st boss) and it’s already obvious for most that it’s designed with only the most hardcore of players in mind.
The same players that have 161 MP spend and have already done lvl 100 fractals.
‘Casual’ players can’t just do that.

We just don’t have that kind of abilities.

That, to me at least, is someone who freely admits they enjoy the game for the fun it brings but do not have the time nor ability to do things they wanted to do in HoT because of the level of difficulty and design.

And that ‘someone’ is by all accounts still a majority ingame. I’ve said it before, people wanted it to be challenging, but not near impossible for the majority of players. Something the dev’s and designers clearly overlooked.

Imo, the raids will become the new dungeons for the hardcore players while the rest just forgets about it and moves on.

Man you people complaining about the difficulty of ENDGAME CONTENT have never played another MMO have you? Or Dark Souls.

It’s never endgame content. That’s why expansions exist. And this isn’t Dark souls, i’ve played that (and DS2), don’t compare it with this.

Prime Greek.1092:

Our skills are good. We have played the game since the beginning and have over 14K AP each. and we each have at least one legendary weapon crafted with full ascended armor and weapons.

Have played since beginning means nothing
Over 14k AP mean even less
Craft a legendary and full ascended means that you can get gold in game, no skill involved.
(I also play since betas, have a legendary and 3 full asc sets, over 21k AP, and I can’t guarantee my skills)

Prime Greek.1092:

Still, the difficulty is to high in our opinion. I have seen others on this forum and other with the same complain . I am trying to propose a solution to a key question.

“CAN ANET ACCOMDATE BOTH THE PLAYER THAT WANTS AN EASIER CONTENET AS WELL AS ONE THAT LIKES A HARDER ONE ?”

Nope.
Raid was created with the hardcore/top skill players in mind, everything else in the game was made for the casuals.

Prime Greek.1092:

Seems that in GW 1 that was possible. Why not in GW 2 also ?

I think that would allow all players to enjoy the game at the level they want.

That’s also makes better business sense fro ANET. Why turn away people form the game if you can accommodate them ?

Boy! you are so wrong.
Domain of Anguish and Underworld was HARD, very hard and Underworld in specially was very punishing, you fail 1 event you are kicked of the stance, it started to be a bit more doable after many power creep increase with expansions.

The problem isnt anet not catering to casuals, the problem is casuals demanding ever aspect of the game to cater to them. For 3 years pretty much all content has been catered to casuals and the hardcore players never got content catered to them. Now that anet is adding content for hardcore players a whole horde of casuals are demanding it be tuned to them when it wasnt for them in the first place.
Not every single game mode has to appeal and be catered to every single player. There is plenty if content for casual players, but not everything needs to be. Let the hardcore have their parts of the game and leave it alone.

Prime Greek.1092:

I am not sure why ANET and their developers keep focusing on Hardcore players and their demands for more difficult content and ignore casual players.

As a casual player myself I find this quote to be way off. The vast vast majority of the game is casual and has been simplified so much that you rarely need to use more than auto-attack. The new HoT maps are some the first content that kinda falls into the intermediate category and the new raids may ultimately fall into hardcore (I say may because people might uncover easy/fast ways to complete them).

Even HoT maps become fairly easy once you get a few masteries under your belt and understand what is going on. I personally just run past the vast majority of the mobs because I find them irritating or too slow to fight and that works just fine. This game is extremely casual friendly. There’s no need to complain about one hardcore element.

This whole arguments rest on the two types of content have to be mutually exclusive. They don’t. Anet can make content for all types of audiences. Your experience in non-hardcore content isn’t lessened by you not doing hardcore stuff.

Demanding every aspect of the game cater to the audience you fall in is pretty selfish.

Difficult content can only add to the game not take away. Broaden your horizons or don’t play that particular part of the game.

OP, simply put, this is your (rather uninformed) opinion. You can’t demand everyone else comes in here and had the same opinion as you. You are uninformed because seriously this is the first week of raids. People are going to be in there 6 hours because they don’t know what they are doing. When it’s all figured out a raid isn’t going to take more than 2 hours. I’m certain Anet did not design raids to be 6 hours long. I read through some of you other posts and you’re pretty good at catastrophizing everything, in other word blowing the negatives out of proportion. With such a negative viewpoint on everything you’re only going to have a negative experience.

In singleplayer games you have optional content that’s harder than the base game. In very old school games like Final Fantasy VIII or Star Ocean: The Second Story you have optional bosses and even an entire dungeon that’s very unintuitive to even reach. Yet it’s fun unlocking new attacks and weapons or even just a badge of Omega that communicates that you mastered the game.

However, MMOs are different in many ways because it’s all about balance and player retention. What are the two most important things in an MMO?

1.PvP balance above all. All classes should have a PvP spec with high skillcap classes reaping the best overall rewards for the skilled. A rock papper scissors (or medium beats light while heavy beats medium but light beats heavy) type of system combined with low skill druid trumps low skill rogue but high skill rogue trumps high skill druid is an ideal medium to strive for.

2.Economy. Guild Wars 2 here is mostly good, silk and T5 leather have value now. Sure, silver is still worthless (I’m holding onto it since it seems like it’d be next on the list to give value) and other mats go for near vendor value and you don’t get as much gold per hour relative to time spent in events, but overall it’s balanced.

In a single player game since there’s no PvP (except for certain modes in certain games) and economy (while there could be a well thought out “economy” in a single player game you aren’t cheating any real people by reducing the need for grind in a rebalance mod) the priorities are different:

1.Challenge. In PvP it widely varies based on opponents’ skill and tactics, but in PvE it tends to be fixed. Since we’re talking strictly singleplayer in this context however different people have different skill levels so different difficulty levels can be done. In Phantasy Star Online 2 you have different “difficulty levels” but they’re more like repeating zones for a certain level range than traditional difficulty levels. Can’t see it working for an MMO like GW2 except for instances.

Back to single player: you can keep easy mode players from progressing past a certain point while giving the hardest mode players access to secret levels and endings to reward their mastery of the game.

Controls: Very important in multiplayer too. Responsive, intuitive, and customizable. If you can’t mouse move then at least have controller functionality, though it’s still inferior to a mouse due to how tapping a thumbstick lightly does nothing while a micron of more effort means a crosshair speeds off so there’s no good control. Improve thumbstick sensitivity and controllers become a good alternative to keyboard and mouse.

So we have challenge and controls being the most important elements in a singleplayer game in general while still retaining importance in MMOs. Specific mechanic importance depends on genre while something like “fun” is too vague. Why is it fun or unfun?

Raids are fine however difficult content should never be part of the core campaign trail in any mmo.

WoW or any MMO you can name the difficult content is not part of the core campaign and is rather found off the beaten trail. However Gw2 has this found on the main trail and having the so called higher level content smack dab in the middle of the path casuals have to take just to see the ending of the story is idiotic. The reason why it exists in this game is because Anet only provided four maps or rather 4 event maps. I don’t mind difficult content and I remain adamant that this game needs a side map with content much more difficult than what we see in HoT and have adequate rewards for that difficulty. But the way it’s set up now is just wrong and it will and even has been nerfed becaue it was a mistake to implement it in that fashion.

As for raids they just need a LFR tool furthermore Mastery level needs to go because for dungeons we already had Zerker, Class, and AP checks and for raids I’m sure there going to start demanding people with over 100 mastery points as well. Makes no sense whatsoever to count Mastery points but that total replaces our level and it’s what people will see and judge.

raises hand

Casual player here, and I love the HoT maps (okay, TD can go die, but… :P), and the masteries, and the new specs. I haven’t tried the raids yet, though.

Doam.8305:

Raids are fine however difficult content should never be part of the core campaign trail in any mmo.

WoW or any MMO you can name the difficult content is not part of the core campaign and is rather found off the beaten trail. However Gw2 has this found on the main trail and having the so called higher level content smack dab in the middle of the path casuals have to take just to see the ending of the story is idiotic. The reason why it exists in this game is because Anet only provided four maps or rather 4 event maps. I don’t mind difficult content and I remain adamant that this game needs a side map with content much more difficult than what we see in HoT and have adequate rewards for that difficulty. But the way it’s set up now is just wrong and it will and even has been nerfed becaue it was a mistake to implement it in that fashion.

As for raids they just need a LFR tool furthermore Mastery level needs to go because for dungeons we already had Zerker, Class, and AP checks and for raids I’m sure there going to start demanding people with over 100 mastery points as well. Makes no sense whatsoever to count Mastery points but that total replaces our level and it’s what people will see and judge.

Well looking at the lfg group tool i see 2 raid groups looking for more both want experienced players that know the strats have over 4k ap and have to ping there gear to make sure there in the right stat for there class and ALL ASCENDED – not exotic like it suppose to and there build/weapons pretty much every thing lol

Raids will kill this game get ready for logging in once a week and screaming at every one

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Open world content – easy to moderate difficulty
Open world events – scaling difficulty, with difficult side events, bonus events, etc.
Hero Points – selectable difficulty, with scaling loot (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare)
Instanced content (including raids and dungeons) – selectable difficulty (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare), with scaling loot.

Everybody wins.

There was never a question for me as to whether or not raid groups would eventually require full ascended.

It was only a matter of time.

Don’t mix up Casual with lazy and bad and if you got 20 hours to play a week you are not really a casual of any kind

A – Not really a Q/A thing.

B – If the open world is too difficult to solo, I recommend bringing a friend. Not only does the game get easier, it makes the slough through mastery levels less boring.

“Casual” is a descriptor of averge play time, not player skill.

I have several “casuals” in my guild that have no problem with the new content. The same people that make up a large portion of our raid squad. The weekly cooldown on raids is actually extremely casual friendly.

The HoT content is moderately more challenging specifically because it is designed for people with a lot of practice playing characters in the easier core content. This is no different than how GW1 did things. Later content releases were significantly more challenging than earlier ones (and GW1 as a whole was generally more challenging than GW2 as a whole, even on normal mode)

TBH i dont even find HOT maps that difficult. The mobs themselves arent individually much worse than creatures in orr. The only really annoying ones are frogs and snipers which arent too tough after all when you focus them or use some defense.

The only difficulty ive had is during events when im alone or with 1 other person and get overwhelmed. I feel this is more a scaling issue though than a difficulty one.

I would hate to see the difficulty reduced even further to the level of autoattack only neccessary as thats just so boring. Hot maps are the second time in gw2 (first being SW) ive seriously enjoyed open world pve and i dont want that to die.

Spiral Architect.6540:

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Open world content – easy to moderate difficulty
Open world events – scaling difficulty, with difficult side events, bonus events, etc.
Hero Points – selectable difficulty, with scaling loot (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare)
Instanced content (including raids and dungeons) – selectable difficulty (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare), with scaling loot.

Everybody wins.

I could not agree more.

I think that all content should be accessible by people of every scale.

I also think that some of the people replying should not be using terms like “lack of skill”, “more time to develop”, “bad/lazy players”.

All people in this game play to the level they can. And yes, my guild and I are on the low end of performance but we try and we have fun.

However we feel very excluded from HoT and from Raids.

Making content so difficult that people cannot enjoy is just wrong and unfair. ANET needs to bring balance to this game for all players.

Spiral Architect.6540:

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Open world content – easy to moderate difficulty
Open world events – scaling difficulty, with difficult side events, bonus events, etc.
Hero Points – selectable difficulty, with scaling loot (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare)
Instanced content (including raids and dungeons) – selectable difficulty (Easy, Difficult, Nightmare), with scaling loot.

Everybody wins.

This would work for me. Don’t really see a downside.

Valky.2574:

Doam.8305:

Raids are fine however difficult content should never be part of the core campaign trail in any mmo.

WoW or any MMO you can name the difficult content is not part of the core campaign and is rather found off the beaten trail. However Gw2 has this found on the main trail and having the so called higher level content smack dab in the middle of the path casuals have to take just to see the ending of the story is idiotic. The reason why it exists in this game is because Anet only provided four maps or rather 4 event maps. I don’t mind difficult content and I remain adamant that this game needs a side map with content much more difficult than what we see in HoT and have adequate rewards for that difficulty. But the way it’s set up now is just wrong and it will and even has been nerfed becaue it was a mistake to implement it in that fashion.

As for raids they just need a LFR tool furthermore Mastery level needs to go because for dungeons we already had Zerker, Class, and AP checks and for raids I’m sure there going to start demanding people with over 100 mastery points as well. Makes no sense whatsoever to count Mastery points but that total replaces our level and it’s what people will see and judge.

Well looking at the lfg group tool i see 2 raid groups looking for more both want experienced players that know the strats have over 4k ap and have to ping there gear to make sure there in the right stat for there class and ALL ASCENDED – not exotic like it suppose to and there build/weapons pretty much every thing lol

Raids will kill this game get ready for logging in once a week and screaming at every one

I really dont see a problem here that apug raiding group that wants to play something that was advertised as the hardest content in the game has some requirements. Experienced? Well, you should definitly know your class. Later if raids are more common definitly the minority of pugs wants to explain the whole raid to first timers.
4k AP Well not quite an issue there. If you reached Lv80 and the HoT Maps you would probably have them anyway cause you can get them pretty fast. Its just the only indicator a pug group has to judge if a player has spent some time in the game. Sure there are good players with less AP but the majority of people with lets say 500 AP will probably have no idea what they are doing.
Ascended? Well i personally have no problem with exotic and i doubt it is really needed but it was said by the devs that the raid is balanced around ascended. so for a pug i see no problem to ask you to have ascended gear if you wish to beat a raid in the first week after release.
Build/Traits/Skill and everything? Well i will probably also do this if i pug or if i run with guildmates. Heck i allready do this from time to time in PvP and in dungeons. It is allways helpfull to know what your allies are able to do and what not. You lack condition remove, well i will equip AoE Cleanse then. You have AoE stability, well i can unequip that. You are condi damage focused, well we missed one. And so on. There is no issue that a pug group wants some information with who they are playing, cause you cant faceroll raids (yet) no matter what build everyone is playing.

I havent tried it personally yet, but some friends of mine were in there. They were too unorganized but did run out of time at the vale guardian. What they said so far this boss is not harder than others, you just need to get better organisation and look at your group composition.

To the open world difficulty. Yes, the enemies there are harder and at the beginning some mobs were pretty hard simply because i didnt know what they do. Pocket Raptors for example, the first time they killed me. Now not anymore, i just block,blind,evade their first attack and kill them. If you know the will jump at you as soon as you are near them the are not hard. Snipers, yeah they deal damage but thats all. Dont stand in their red lines and you are nearly done. They are more annoying if there are other enemies arround, so i try to watch at them with at east one eye. Frogs? I really have no Idea how you have a hard time with frogs? It seems they do nearly nothing except getting invisble but thats just annoying not hard or dangerous.
Mob density is too high? what the heck are you doing? running in a 5000 unit circle and aggro everything you get to fight it at once? Normaly you dont run in other mobs while figthing a group.
Some should really rework their builds while as a glass staff elementalist it might be a problem to stay alive a dagger/warhorn tempest is nearly immortal against most encounters in the open world. I think some players hate it to die and rage out, i die too. I die a lot exspecially if i play a class i am not common with. But guess what i waypoint and try again and again and again.

Meta-Events can fail? Yeah they can and they often do. Probably mainly caused because they are new and the majority of the players does not know what to do, but if there is a commander that organise the event they are in a good place except chak gerrent so far but i think thats just a matter of time. Meta Events are more like tripletrouble now, i havent seen posts that the triple worm is too hard?

Heropoints cant be done solo? I think the can i duod a few of the champs really not hard so solo is for sure challenging but with a few players more its not that hard except if a zerg scales the boss somewhere ridiclious like at the suspicious orichalcum ore or at balthazar. But the thing is you dont even need to do these champ heropoints. You just need them if you want a new legendary or a special weapon skin, but these things are desgined to need effort.

I really dont see a need so far to nerf anything in the open world, if it hasnt stayed in the game for longer.

Draknar.5748:

Exploration: Casual.
Dungeons: Casual
Fractals: Casual (with scaling to harder if you wish to have more of a challenge)
World bosses: Casual
PvP: Casual (in the sense that it’s easy to get into for new players and you can do a match here and there at your own pace for fun)
WvW: Casual in the sense you could get a 3man together and go capture points if you want. Sadly the game mode seems quite barren these days.
Raids: Hardcore.

I’d say GW2 is pretty bang on with having the majority of their content casual friendly. With a minority of it for hardcore players. That’s exactly the way it should be and is representative of their player base.

So what’s the problem? You feel everything should cater to casuals players?

If you strictly mean casual as in 20hrs/week players and not skill based. Then there’s literally nothing that isn’t casual friendly in GW2. Heck even the first raid boss is designed to be defeated in 8min. However much time you put into mastering the encounter to actual do it in that time is completely up to you.

Heaven forbid a game have a learning curve…

I must agree with this. I’m as casual as they come. If I never enter a raid instance, I’ll be okay. And I’m more than fine giving ‘hardcore’ players the challenges they want with the rewards that benefit their efforts.

Given how casual the game is overall, I feel this is only fair.

Kayberz.5346:

The problem isnt anet not catering to casuals, the problem is casuals demanding ever aspect of the game to cater to them. For 3 years pretty much all content has been catered to casuals and the hardcore players never got content catered to them. Now that anet is adding content for hardcore players a whole horde of casuals are demanding it be tuned to them when it wasnt for them in the first place.
Not every single game mode has to appeal and be catered to every single player. There is plenty if content for casual players, but not everything needs to be. Let the hardcore have their parts of the game and leave it alone.

I agree. Not every game mode should. My only issue is that so much of HoT upped the time or group requirements while simultaneously nerfing other traditionally casual content or making traditionally casual content, such as map exploration or hero points, harder. In fact, I’ve got no issue with HoT being for those interested in harder and larger group content. I’ve got an issue when the expansion becomes a sort of requirement to get even when that’s not a player’s interest. Imo, keep raids & high level fractals challenging, dungeons casual and rewarding enough to merit people wanting to do them, and map exploration or things required for basic character progression casual & soloable for all players (including those who may have disabilities or lower ability).