Guild Wars 2

darkace.8925:

The number of complaints I’m seeing about Liadri brings to light the conditioned state of (seemingly) most gamers. They want easy, accessible content and they want to be able to complete everything (so as to maximize achievements or loot or just to feel good about themselves).

On the other end of the spectrum are the players who genuinely want to be challenged. The fact that some players have defeated Liadri says she can be defeated. The fact that many players are complaining that she’s an unfair fight says that defeating her requires skill.

The OP is conveniently leaving out the other kinds of gamers. This is not just something you can simplify down to two types.

• Some players want to be able to complete the gauntlet on their particular class. The gauntlet unfairly makes some of the content harder to complete for some classes.

• Some players like a challenge, but feel the difficulty in the gauntlet comes not just from skill, but mostly from poor visibility, camera issues, and cheap one-shot mechanics.

• Some players have little gold, and still want to beat all the bosses. Bosses like Liadri rely a lot on trial and error, and grind through player’s wallets with armor repairs and way point costs. Challenge or no challenge, trial and error is always an unfair type of challenge that lots of players do not enjoy.

I couldn’t even beat the sniper (yet) and I just stopped trying because it was annoying to have to walk up there after I’m dead ^^;

But I’m not complaning, I’m glad they made something challenging. Some people needed it and ANet did it. For others who can’t do it, they can still zerg below for easy loot.

Reikou.7068:

Xenon.4537:

Stacking in the corner to kill spider queen, subject alpha, etc. doesn’t show any skill at all. Yes it’s faster, efficient, better, etc. but that’s exactly why it doesn’t show skill… it requires no skill. Being able to dodge the attacks normally and fight the boss normally is a sign of skill. Being clever enough to stack is simply a sign of efficiency.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

“The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about “skill” and how he has skill whereas other players—very much including the ones who beat him flat out—do not have skill. The confusion here is what “skill” actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is a sequence of moves that is unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take “skill,” according to the scrub. The “dragon punch” or “uppercut” in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a “skill move.”

I once played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with “no skill moves” while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him five times in a row asking, “Is that all you know how to do? Throw?” I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, “Play to win, not to do ‘difficult moves.’” This was a big moment in that scrub’s life. He could either ignore his losses and continue living in his mental prison or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.

I’ve never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I’ve also never seen a prize for a player who played “in an innovative way.” (Though chess tournaments do sometimes have prizes for “brilliancies,” moves that are strokes of genius.) Many scrubs have strong ties to “innovation.” They say, “That guy didn’t do anything new, so he is no good.” Or “person X invented that technique and person Y just stole it.” Well, person Y might be one hundred times better than person X, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the scrub. When person Y wins the tournament and person X is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person Y has “no skill” of course."

Referring to fighting games, but it is analogous to what is being discussed here.

e_e

Whut.

I don’t see why this is so complicated. Standing in a corner requires no skill. Yes, standing in a corner makes it easier to win. Winning doesn’t = skill. I could win a fight against Mike Tyson if I brought a gun.

And for the record, I do stand shamelessly in the corner with everyone else, but I don’t have convoluted delusions that doing so requires more skill than doing it the normal way.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The OP is conveniently leaving out the other kinds of gamers. This is not just something you can simplify down to two types.

• Some players want to be able to complete the gauntlet on their particular class. The gauntlet unfairly makes some of the content harder to complete for some classes.

Harder, but not impossible. I’m willing to bet some of the fights are more difficult for X profession while others are easier…that it all balances out by the end.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• Some players like a challenge, but feel the difficulty in the gauntlet comes not just from skill, but mostly from poor visibility, camera issues, and cheap one-shot mechanics.

Poor visibility, camera issues, and “cheap one-shot mechanics” (if it can be dodged or otherwise avoided, it’s not cheap) are issues everyone who beat Liadri had to overcome. I agree with you that the game’s engine or a lack of polish shouldn’t add to a challenge’s difficulty, but in this case those issues obviously don’t make the fight impossible to win.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• Some players have little gold, and still want to beat all the bosses. Bosses like Liadri rely a lot on trial and error, and grind through player’s wallets with armor repairs and way point costs.

If someone doesn’t have the money for repair costs perhaps they should head downstairs and spend – what? – ten minutes farming with the zerg? That would cover more than a few repairs.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Challenge or no challenge, trial and error is always an unfair type of challenge that lots of players do not enjoy.

If they don’t enjoy it, why are they doing it? If the answer is “for the rewards”, then that’s playing back into the entitlement. “I don’t like this. But I want the reward. But I don’t want to work for it through trial and error.” What is that if not entitlement?

Esplen.3940:

Dagraan.2854:

there are very few actual skilled players wanting to do content because its challenging, and not because they feel entitled for a reward to shove in the face of others.

I dunno, a lot of people that I know who did Light Up The Darkness did it to challenge themselves (and complete all the LS achievements), not because they wanted to brag about it.

orly because a lot of them have been bragging about it on the forums.
out of those “a lot of people” theres a lot more who’s stuck on liadri herself or have just done the 11 achievements for the exotic bag of coins.

but the fights aren’t skillful when they can be farmed with all 5 gambits because you have 0 defense and all power. these skilled fights shouldn’t have been trivialized by the oh so popular zerk build

Wow, really.

If it was impossible to win the gauntlet on a class, I’d see a manner of debate, but it doesn’t seem that way.

I find it funny that people accuse gw2 of being boring and lacking of content, but once the content actually gets challenging, they throw a fit. It’s nothing I don’t expect; honestly there should just be a lever you pull and the game will tell you how awesome you are. (And there would still be complaints that some people get to pull it more).

I’m sorry. It’s a game. There is success and failure. The game is generous to not really penalize you for failure, but you’re not supposed to beat the game by default. I’m seriously concerned if some of the complaints are seriously. God forbid you pick up an older game that hands you a “game over” screen; one that says “Yea, you screwed up and failed, try again”. Does it really make you less of a person for not being able to do some task in a video game? Pro tip: It does not. Stop pretending missing out on achievement somehow makes you less of a gamer, or a person.

Point is, it’s one thing to not be skilled at something. We’re all bad at something. It’s another thing to say something can’t be done, just because YOU can’t do it, while blissfully ignoring everything to the contrary. That’s still okay. But the world I’m afraid, doesn’t revolve around you. Just please self reflect on it. When you say “This is bad for us”, did you mean “this is bad for me”. At least have the guts to say it when you complain and speak for yourself. But you’re probably bad at complaining too, since that kind of attitude aspires for mediocrity.

P.S. I won’t finish the gauntlet, don’t really enjoy the mechanics, and most likely won’t aim for it. I’ll just have to like, live with it.

If you want it, you’ll try for it. If you think it’s stupid, broken, and imbalanced, then the activity itself has no value and there is also no point in complaining about it.

Sometimes there has to be a loser. I’m afraid it has to be you this time. Accept it with grace and regroup. Also, this thing’s been out like a week?

arjeidi.2690:

I find this attitude way more harmful than the “entitled” attitude. Players wanting to exclude other players from enjoying the game simply because “they’re not as good as ME so they don’t deserve to have awesome things in a video game.”

kitten off and get over yourself. Its a video game, everyone who buys it is entitled to enjoy it. You want skill to mean something? Go do something in real life that requires skill. You’ll get all the exclusion you want there.

You would have a point, if the status quo you are defending didn’t do the exact same thing, but with time spent instead of skill. Do you want “awesome things”? Be ready to grind a lot or play 12 hours per day. Exclusion? Right there.

For me, there’s one very simple reason why I found this update offensive—the difficult content does not feel accessible. I don’t care if content is hard, but I extremely dislike difficult content that does not offer people a level playing field.

My problems with Liadri are:

• The game suffers performance problems even on good computers due to the zerg and group events. I’m on a rig that handles T1 WvW fine (it’s only ever choked during Lost Shores), but I still got lag spikes and skill latency that caused me to get killed. I can’t imagine how horrific it is on lower end machines, and that’s not fair.
• The tries are gated by queues and tickets. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but for me (and I’m sure there are others like me), this was a huge problem. This is NOT because I’m impatient and NOT because I don’t want to farm/buy tickets. My learning style is that I repeat things over and over without delay. I tend to fail difficult encounters 30 times on end, never getting any further or better, until something suddenly clicks and everything falls into place. When I’m forced to take a break, it completely screws me up. This gated entry system felt like it directly targeted my learning style, as though the way my brain works makes me second class. This ended up pitting me against my fellow players. Whenever some poor person showed up, probably hoping to have someone else around to res them if they failed, I would log out and switch to another overflow until I found an empty one. Every time I ran across someone to res (because I still believe in helping other players no matter what), I was mentally cursing the other player for taking time away from my chance to learn the encounter. I have the skill to beat Liadri (I’ve done it twice, once on a class I barely ever play), but this system felt arbitrarily gated in a way that was extremely player unfriendly and goes against much of the philosophy of the game’s PvE design.
• The content is expensive — Not just in waypoint and repair costs but in gear. I spent over 30g getting gear and runes on different alts trying to figure out a way to beat the content. This was fine for me personally because I had the gold and all the stuff I got can be used for future game play. If I didn’t care about other players, then I’d just write it off and then go farm it back. But there are plenty of players for whom buying even a second set of armor and runes is a big deal. This makes the content seem unfair. If the content were permanent, this would be fine, but…
• The content is time limited — Yes, I know it’s coming back, but I don’t know when, and I don’t know if there will be more bosses when it does. Being time limited automatically puts an extra subliminal amount of stress on the player, urging you to complete it on the game’s schedule, not on your own. Whether this is a good thing is a matter of opinion, but I personally dislike it. Add that to all the factors above, and it makes this an extremely aggravating encounter.

I fit your definition of “skilled.” I’ve beaten Liadri, and I’ve beaten all the other “difficult” content this game has thrown at us. I’ve done every jump puzzle, including Mad King, and I’ve led groups through every dungeon path in the game, including all Arah explorables.

At the same time, I also apparently fit your definition of “entitled.” I collect minipets. That’s been my thing since the game launched. If it wasn’t for the mini, I probably wouldn’t have bothered doing Liadri. But I did. If you honestly only want hard content for the challenge, then you should be fine with there being no rewards, cosmetic or otherwise, to that content. If you want difficult content most people cannot do and also want there to be rewards associated with it, then not only are you also being “entitled,” you are in the minority of people who will ever benefit from that entitlement. You’re being selfish.

TL;DR: If there’s going to be hard content, that’s fine, but make it permanent. Design it so people have a fair shot at completing it. Design it so people don’t view the rest of the community as antagonists who are ruining their attempt to obtain rewards (because it’s a game, and like it or not, rewards are there at least partially to convince players to try things they might not otherwise do). The game got all of that right at launch, yet now the living story seems intent on trampling all over that design philosophy. As a player who’s been extremely loyal to the game until now, my distaste for Liadri is not because the fight is difficult but because its implementation goes against every reason I bought the game in the first place.

ArchonWing.9480:

Wow, really.

If it was impossible to win the gauntlet on a class, I’d see a manner of debate, but it doesn’t seem that way.

I find it funny that people accuse gw2 of being boring and lacking of content, but once the content actually gets challenging, they throw a fit. It’s nothing I don’t expect; honestly there should just be a lever you pull and the game will tell you how awesome you are. (And there would still be complaints that some people get to pull it more).

I’m sorry. It’s a game. There is success and failure. The game is generous to not really penalize you for failure, but you’re not supposed to beat the game by default. I’m seriously concerned if some of the complaints are seriously. God forbid you pick up an older game that hands you a “game over” screen; one that says “Yea, you screwed up and failed, try again”. Does it really make you less of a person for not being able to do some task in a video game? Pro tip: It does not. Stop pretending missing out on achievement somehow makes you less of a gamer, or a person.

Point is, it’s one thing to not be skilled at something. We’re all bad at something. It’s another thing to say something can’t be done, just because YOU can’t do it, while blissfully ignoring everything to the contrary. That’s still okay. But the world I’m afraid, doesn’t revolve around you. Just please self reflect on it. When you say “This is bad for us”, did you mean “this is bad for me”. At least have the guts to say it when you complain and speak for yourself. But you’re probably bad at complaining too, since that kind of attitude aspires for mediocrity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ

P.S. I won’t finish the gauntlet, don’t really enjoy the mechanics, and most likely won’t aim for it. I’ll just have to like, live with it.

If you want it, you’ll try for it. If you think it’s stupid, broken, and imbalanced, then the activity itself has no value and there is also no point in complaining about it.

Sometimes there has to be a loser. I’m afraid it has to be you this time. Accept it with grace and regroup. Also, this thing’s been out like a week?

Clearly you aren’t reading most of the complaint threads then. Very few of them are actually talking about how difficult the fight is and have more to do with the harsh punishment failing a fight brings with it and the outright poorly designed arena.

fellyn.5083:

ArchonWing.9480:

Wow, really.

If it was impossible to win the gauntlet on a class, I’d see a manner of debate, but it doesn’t seem that way.

I find it funny that people accuse gw2 of being boring and lacking of content, but once the content actually gets challenging, they throw a fit. It’s nothing I don’t expect; honestly there should just be a lever you pull and the game will tell you how awesome you are. (And there would still be complaints that some people get to pull it more).

I’m sorry. It’s a game. There is success and failure. The game is generous to not really penalize you for failure, but you’re not supposed to beat the game by default. I’m seriously concerned if some of the complaints are seriously. God forbid you pick up an older game that hands you a “game over” screen; one that says “Yea, you screwed up and failed, try again”. Does it really make you less of a person for not being able to do some task in a video game? Pro tip: It does not. Stop pretending missing out on achievement somehow makes you less of a gamer, or a person.

Point is, it’s one thing to not be skilled at something. We’re all bad at something. It’s another thing to say something can’t be done, just because YOU can’t do it, while blissfully ignoring everything to the contrary. That’s still okay. But the world I’m afraid, doesn’t revolve around you. Just please self reflect on it. When you say “This is bad for us”, did you mean “this is bad for me”. At least have the guts to say it when you complain and speak for yourself. But you’re probably bad at complaining too, since that kind of attitude aspires for mediocrity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ

P.S. I won’t finish the gauntlet, don’t really enjoy the mechanics, and most likely won’t aim for it. I’ll just have to like, live with it.

If you want it, you’ll try for it. If you think it’s stupid, broken, and imbalanced, then the activity itself has no value and there is also no point in complaining about it.

Sometimes there has to be a loser. I’m afraid it has to be you this time. Accept it with grace and regroup. Also, this thing’s been out like a week?

Clearly you aren’t reading most of the complaint threads then. Very few of them are actually talking about how difficult the fight is and have more to do with the harsh punishment failing a fight brings with it and the outright poorly designed arena.

Of course. Why would I waste my time on most of them?

My post is within the context of this thread. If it was simply an issue of the walk being too far then the OP would have made absolutely no sense.

Also, harsh punishment? (lol repair cost+ wp fee + time spent running back+ticket) when it’s no more severe then any other death really. And yes, the inconvenience made me not want to bother, but such hyperbole is what annoys me more than anything else.

Effort could amount to hours of smacking a slab of granite with a pool noodle.

I mean it’s going to take a while and in attempting it you have obvious intent for something worthwhile to happen in the end. If you truly learn from each experience then over time you should get better. After the first whack with the pool noodle you will probably change your strategy. If you don’t learn from mistakes and you keep trying well…..

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Farming for tickets to play content you are interested in is like mowing the lawn to earn money for movie tickets back when you were 14.

Not every adult appreciates the throwback he is subjected to playing GW2. The game should treat adults like adults and even though you waste time playing the game no matter what you do, the game should try to avoid situations where the waste of time becomes too obvious.

Being forced to do X before you can do Y is one such thing. Especially when Y is being promoted by PR, especially when X and Y have no game mechanical connection and simply happen to be part of the same content update.

FourthVariety.5463:

Farming for tickets to play content you are interested in is like mowing the lawn to earn money for movie tickets back when you were 14.

Not every adult appreciates the throwback he is subjected to playing GW2. The game should treat adults like adults and even though you waste time playing the game no matter what you do, the game should try to avoid situations where the waste of time becomes too obvious.

Being forced to do X before you can do Y is one such thing. Especially when Y is being promoted by PR, especially when X and Y have no game mechanical connection and simply happen to be part of the same content update.

Your comment makes no sense. The content seems to function exactly like adulthood. You go to work so you can have the money to do other things. The concept of mowing a lawn so you can afford to go to the movie is suppose to be seen as something a more responsible teenager on their way to adulthood would do.

In your suggested concept you would get to go to the movies without any prior earning of the money to get in. This is being treated more like a child in that you don’t have to account for anything.

You seem to be saying, “I am an adult, therefore X shouldn’t apply to me, and I should be allowed to skip to Y if I want to.” This seems very childish indeed/

Xenon.4537:

e_e

Whut.

I don’t see why this is so complicated. Standing in a corner requires no skill. Yes, standing in a corner makes it easier to win. Winning doesn’t = skill. I could win a fight against Mike Tyson if I brought a gun.

And for the record, I do stand shamelessly in the corner with everyone else, but I don’t have convoluted delusions that doing so requires more skill than doing it the normal way.

If winning does not equal skill, then what does? What defines whether you are skilled or unskilled at the game?

Don’t you people know? There are only ever two states on the Internet!
Good and Bad.
There are no states in between!

I’ve beaten Dark Souls & Demon’s Souls.
My Demon’s Souls character is on a fourth NG+.

I haven’t beaten Liadri.

And yet apparently, if I criticise the design of this fight at all, it’s because I’m a bad gamer and I’m acting “entitled”.

First off, those saying it just comes down to pattern recognition are lying.
It also depends very heavily on build, gear and even profession. I now know I am going to beat her as I’ve realised a bombkit engineer will make the fight almost ridiculously simple.

Secondly, I really need to quote Inigo Montoya at those who throw the word “Entitled” around in such a carefree manner:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Internet and marketing has corrupted the meaning of the word. What they REALLY mean to say is “Spoiled”.

The Internet corruption has resulted in it being entirely associated with negative connotations, when in fact, the word has lots of positive associations, particularly when used to describe something a customer has purchased.
If you pay for your Internet connection, you are entitled to receive the Internet. This is not a bad thing.

The continued corruption of the word over the course of time can lead to abuse of the customer, where if they believe that entitlement in general is a bad thing, they will let companies ride roughshod over them.

Don’t use “Entitled”.
Use “Spoiled”.
Of course, if you then read your sentence back to yourself and realise it’s somewhat confrontational to use the word “Spoiled”, well maybe it’ll make you pause and consider how much empathy you are or are not showing.

I dont believe in Skill in PvE anymore since GW2 released. I am finishing my Meteorlogicus and need CoE for that. I had never set a foot in there but only got downstated once in all three paths by subject Alpha.
In path 2 I had to solo the final fight with 40% on Alpha left.
This is because this npcs like every other npc has a repetitive pattern you just need to familiarize with to avoid ANY damage from it.

The rest of the group (a premade guild team) died around once or twice in every mobpull or Alpha fight through the entire dungeon. They claimed to do this dungeon every day repeatedly and still are not able to dodge 2 seconds after the circles appear or avoid the lava death at the destroyer.

Still everybody got gold and crests after 30 minutes of basically a PvPer carrying a PvE crew.

With situations like this one coming to out of my ears every day, you dont have to wonder why ppl complain about trials stage 4 or Liadri.

Same in WvW though. Anet is buffing the classes ppl like most to the silliest easymode. And zerging and blobbing is rewarded infinitely more than knowing your game and killing people outnumbered in smallscale.

10 years ago MMORPGers were looking for a challenge.
Today they are looking for loot. And as soon as they have the drop, please make it impossible for anyone else.

Torvarren.6295:

Your comment makes no sense. The content seems to function exactly like adulthood. You go to work so you can have the money to do other things.

However games should not be an extension of life under the same ruleset. Or do you want ArenaNet to patch it in so you do not only have to repair your armor, but also to wakitten, dry it and then iron it? I suppose not.

As an adult, you already worked once to have spare time, the luxury of doing what you want. If a game then puts in another layer of pre-requisites, it comes off as unnecessary. It is not a problem when the entire point is to grind out some reward. But the 1vs1 arena is a new type of player interaction with a game mechanic. Walling that off behind a layer of rather boring gameplay is less than desirable.

Just look at how PR is structured, they say “play the new thing”. They do not say “play the old thing some more and maybe you get to play a bit of the new thing”. To that end, bag farming needs to be nerfed into the ground and entry tickets removed.

As for real life comparisons, if I go to the cinema, I pay the price and enter and watch the movie I want. I do not need to pour coke behind a counter in addition to that.

Mungrul.9358:

Don’t you people know? There are only ever two states on the Internet!
Good and Bad.
There are no states in between!

I’ve beaten Dark Souls & Demon’s Souls.
My Demon’s Souls character is on a fourth NG+.

I haven’t beaten Liadri.

And yet apparently, if I criticise the design of this fight at all, it’s because I’m a bad gamer and I’m acting “entitled”.

First off, those saying it just comes down to pattern recognition are lying.
It also depends very heavily on build, gear and even profession. I now know I am going to beat her as I’ve realised a bombkit engineer will make the fight almost ridiculously simple.

Secondly, I really need to quote Inigo Montoya at those who throw the word “Entitled” around in such a carefree manner:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Internet and marketing has corrupted the meaning of the word. What they REALLY mean to say is “Spoiled”.

The Internet corruption has resulted in it being entirely associated with negative connotations, when in fact, the word has lots of positive associations, particularly when used to describe something a customer has purchased.
If you pay for your Internet connection, you are entitled to receive the Internet. This is not a bad thing.

The continued corruption of the word over the course of time can lead to abuse of the customer, where if they believe that entitlement in general is a bad thing, they will let companies ride roughshod over them.

Don’t use “Entitled”.
Use “Spoiled”.
Of course, if you then read your sentence back to yourself and realise it’s somewhat confrontational to use the word “Spoiled”, well maybe it’ll make you pause and consider how much empathy you are or are not showing.

Not too bad. I do believe we are entitled to certain things, such as bugs being fixed or being able to play because we bought the game. Thus it is fair to suggest that this thread had a particular use of this political buzzword.

The problem here is when people feel that they are entitled to things that they aren’t, which well, let’s use the word spoiled for a moment.

In either case, a player being bad or good has no bearing on how spoiled they are. This much is true. Let’s also consider “good” being “good” at Queen’s Gauntlet. It’s possible to be good at some areas and terrible at other areas too.

The thing is that a good player that has a bad attitude (spoiled) is that they can back their words up with proof. In other words, even though they have a bad approach, it doesn’t matter, because they are able to get around what was bothering them in the first place. In other words, they can rely on themselves to get what they want.

A bad player that has a bad attitude, on the other hand, cannot back it up, and only has excuses to make. They cannot overcome this obstacle (unless they cry loudly enough and tell A-net to nerf it).

In reality, both types should be ignored, but the ones with skill are able to get along without the approval of others and able to overcome something thus deserving of the reward, while the ones without skill have nothing to fall back on and thus don’t deserve anything.

It is certainly fine to criticize the mechanics of the fights, but at least a modest analysis of the situation should be needed— it may or may not be a L2P issue, but a lot of people aren’t honest enough to rule out user error.

I’ll throw in my two cents, btw great post Mungrul. I’ve completed Demons Souls several times as well, but not Liadri. I didn’t mind dying a few times in Demons Souls, because I always felt it was my own fault. Demons Souls also doesn’t spam insta-kills around (contrary to what people claim) and doesn’t have the same camera issues that GW2 has.

With the gauntlet, a lot of these boss encounters can not be completed unless you know what opponent you’re facing, and re-skill accordingly. This is never the case with Demons Souls.

With the gauntlet, some bosses are much harder on other classes. For example, I play a necromancer, so I have no way to deal with insta-kill attacks, other than the two dodges that everyone has. Deadeye was a pain on a necromancer, and so is Liadri. With Demon Souls, you can complete every boss easily on every class. It is a much more level playing field.

With the gauntlet, some bosses kill you before you’ve even adjusted your camera so you can see them. Keep in mind that the default camera angle at the start of a match is always bad. You can never see your opponent until you turn the camera. That is terrible!

With the gauntlet, you can often poorly see the red circles that you need to avoid (due to the grating on the floor). Demons Souls doesn’t have red circles. The visual effects are clear enough, so that you don’t need an artificial circle to tell the player what to avoid and where.

In short: We are no stranger to difficulty. But there’s difficulty, and there’s bad game design. Making something hard, doesn’t automatically make it fair, or fun. There’s many things that can make a fight difficult, and they’re not always good things.

On the topic at hand I agree with @Conncept above that skilled is not the opposite of entitled and so the OP fails out of the gate. On the one hand I agree with the OP that challenging content should be available in the game as long as it’s not gating significant content or reward. On the other hand I agree with @Mungrul and @Mad Queen Malafide that what we often see masquerading as difficult is simply assured death through any available random agency. The key to appropriately challenging content, as in Dark Souls, is that you are able to do a combat post-mortem and understand exactly why you died. This is also how you improve your game. Too often in GW2 your only actual mistake was to enter combat in the first place. I don’t know how many times I’ve died without the slightest idea of why and had to consult the combat log, often finding some random 20k hit from out of the particle blur. This is not challenging content for those who appreciate challenging content.

Zumy.6318:

I dont believe in Skill in PvE anymore since GW2 released. I am finishing my Meteorlogicus and need CoE for that. I had never set a foot in there but only got downstated once in all three paths by subject Alpha.
In path 2 I had to solo the final fight with 40% on Alpha left.
This is because this npcs like every other npc has a repetitive pattern you just need to familiarize with to avoid ANY damage from it.

The rest of the group (a premade guild team) died around once or twice in every mobpull or Alpha fight through the entire dungeon. They claimed to do this dungeon every day repeatedly and still are not able to dodge 2 seconds after the circles appear or avoid the lava death at the destroyer.

Still everybody got gold and crests after 30 minutes of basically a PvPer carrying a PvE crew.

With situations like this one coming to out of my ears every day, you dont have to wonder why ppl complain about trials stage 4 or Liadri.

Same in WvW though. Anet is buffing the classes ppl like most to the silliest easymode. And zerging and blobbing is rewarded infinitely more than knowing your game and killing people outnumbered in smallscale.

10 years ago MMORPGers were looking for a challenge.
Today they are looking for loot. And as soon as they have the drop, please make it impossible for anyone else.

Well pvp is much more competitive than pve for a lot if you have good opponents. About subject alpha, i understand you one of my friends farmed all his armor there, and i was with him, he and all his pugs died always, meaning i needed to practically solo that boss every round and run.

Of course MMORPGers for they gameplay arent as challenging as other games.

Nearly all said theres a lot of difference in skill between people that die in alpha and the ones that not. Even if that skills are called reflexs. Same goes in Liandri, theres people that doesnt even get to her. Shamefully theres people that doesnt care of the meaning of the achivments, they want it for the APs, so if they hit a wall it need to be destroyed (via nerf) so they can have the APs.

You missed one group of gamers and they’re present anytime this topic gets brought up: The Entitled Skilled.

The believe everyone who isn’t them is a “casual nub” who can’t play video games to save their lives, wants everything to be easymode and must all be auto attacking, unskilled scrubs. They refuse to acknowledge that there are a lot of types of players, a lot of types of skills and not everyone enjoys the challenges they do. If you don’t play like them, you’re not worth a thing. You’re brainless and stupid, you’re why GW2 sucks. The event isn’t bad, you are. The bugs aren’t a problem for a “real” gamer, just a “casual”.

Ugh..

This whole event has made me sick to death of them and remarks like that. I’m disabled. My skill set isn’t going to be one of high reflexes. My big challenges are vistas and jumping, I feel very accomplished when I get a vista that required a lot of jumping and figuring out how to get to. My biggest rewarding achievement was placing first in Sanctum Sprint against a very relentless group. There is no “easymode” for me because even when I’m in a zerg – I’m looking out for fallen players or making sure no one gets left behind or figuring how to get the boss down with the least amount of player deaths or doing more than standing still and auto attacking. Only time I do that is when I’m lagging badly or I can’t see past the rush of other people to do much else. My skill is in secondary support which I was very good with in another MMO and when I finish a boss or vista or area – I’m always thinking “Oh gosh.. how will I get my thief or ranger or other class through this area with their skill set and strengths/weaknesses?”

So this game doesn’t hold my hand and I’m getting tired of it being implied that it does. This game isn’t Nintendo Hard but it requires time, thought, and effort. Dungeons have to be learned. Bosses have certain ways they need to be defeated. It takes time to develop your playstyle and determine which builds and classes fit it. I have no idea what this supposed “easymode” everyone talks about is because I’ve never experienced it. I joined during the first Karka event. I remember that 2+ hour long battle. Easymode? Where?

I’m sorry, but I’m also not skilled and equipped in the same way as “hardcores” are and I do hate The Gauntlet but I’ve come to realize these people need content like that and as long as I’m not missing out on story/lore, or anything important – why should I care? What does missing out on a mini or a title mean to me? I’m entitled to a game that works without bugs. I’m entitled to a game that takes a reasonable amount of skill to enjoy because that is what I was told I bought. I’m not entitled to be handed achievements I didn’t earn and as long as I’m NOT missing out on story/lore/new map areas/entire events or having it shoved in my face that because I can’t beat Liadri, that I’m a bad awful “casual” player – I don’t care.

What I care about is being forced into these Nintendo Hard situations and Anet made a wonderful choice in keeping The Gauntlet separate and optional. I don’t have to touch it and the hardcores and elitists can wholly enjoy it without me. That was genius. I want more content like this for them. The only thing that makes me want to flip a table is the gold farming – you want to talk easymode and entitled, there it is.

I think the problem that “Entitled People” are addressing is because of the Mini Reward, if there’s no reward for killing her, alot of those “complain posts” would just never exists.
I only see 2 solutions:

a) Made the Mini avaible in a “easy content” too.
b) Defeat Liadri just earn you Achivement points(just like Light up the Darkness achievement).

Aerlen.5326:

Nintendo Hard situations and Anet made a wonderful choice in keeping The Gauntlet separate and optional.

All this Nintendo Hard situations the players that defeated her faced too, and they just don’t give it up(Learn and Adapt) because of those problems – I spend gold(WP, Repairs and Gear), experiment diferent builds, read diferent strategies, watched videos… I made all just for the Mini? No!

I did it because I wanted to prove to MYSELF that I am capable of doing!

With the gauntlet, a lot of these boss encounters can not be completed unless you know what opponent you’re facing, and re-skill accordingly. This is never the case with Demons Souls.

RIght, so you fight the opponent a few times, learn their rotations and adapt accordingly. If you’re not swapping out skills based on encounters anyway, then you’re just a bad or a lazy player, I do it all the time in WvW, dungeons and even open world PvE. Why should my stock skillset of blink/feedback/decoy work against deadeye just as well for me as swapping the blink out for the mantra that can apply 1s daze to stop the kill shot?

lliadri requires the usual DPS and fix build paired with gimmick..

As most of gauntlet does.

The issue is can a tank beat lliadri?
NO because dps is not enough.

To beat lliadri you need builds more than skills.
Phase 1 is easy enough phase 2 is outright impossible unless you have a proper build

The same issue of ANY dungoen out there…

If you have enough gold lliadri can be easy….

Deadeye is the best example….thieves farm it with all gambles active just to say….

I think Anet absolutely is aware that people want really challenging content. And people who want easy stuff. Look at the Super Adventure Box. We had this cloud which enabled easy mode and devs talked about an hard mode incoming in one of the next SAB releases.

I think Anet only needs to find out how to implement this without hurting their core principles. They need more suggestions how a version of hard mode could be implemented.

hm what if Anet implements 1 or 2 new servers which has different rules – a hard mode server? You could only guest there, so it can’t be your homeserver.

sidneijr.7051:

I think the problem that “Entitled People” are addressing is because of the Mini Reward, if there’s no reward for killing her, alot of those “complain posts” would just never exists.
I only see 2 solutions:

a) Made the Mini avaible in a “easy content” too.
b) Defeat Liadri just earn you Achivement points(just like Light up the Darkness achievement).

Aerlen.5326:

Nintendo Hard situations and Anet made a wonderful choice in keeping The Gauntlet separate and optional.

All this Nintendo Hard situations the players that defeated her faced too, and they just don’t give it up(Learn and Adapt) because of those problems – I spend gold(WP, Repairs and Gear), experiment diferent builds, read diferent strategies, watched videos… I made all just for the Mini? No!

I did it because I wanted to prove to MYSELF that I am capable of doing!

Great for you. I can’t and I’m not interested in the stress it would cause me nor do I want to be handed the mini or an achievement or have it dumbed down. Don’t imply people who don’t want to go into Nintendo Hard mode are lazy scrubs who never want to prove anything to themselves and can’t adapt and learn or that hardcorers who complete that content don’t deserve a different – but non-game important – reward.

The problem with this kind of thing OP is you end up like Blizzard. You decide the fix is the same stuff with ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ modes. That sounds like a solution. But its not really..

The reason is even GOOD players will pick the easier path – if it offers the same reward. Even if they are good enough.. The human mind will absolutely pick the path of least resistance – even if it less fun.

Some of those people – probably MANY of the people that zerg down champions in a train on some servers could two man down some of those same champions. This would probably be even more “fun” for them. But they are driven by the rewards.

If you could make 10,000 a day pushing the S key vs. 5000 bucks at a real fun job – almost everyone would pick the push one key solution. For this reason what you want is UPLIFTING content.

You want all gamers to be challenged A LITTLE – across the board. This is hard to implement. But if you just sink down and give people ‘easy work’ they eventually get bored and quit. Blizzard is learning this the hard way..

Easy and hard modes don’t work – because everyone – even capable players pick the easy ways – and yet they don’t like it. You need a system that rewards challenging encounters more then easy one – and you need content that forces even low skill gamers to improve a little.