Guild Wars 2

Tuning
15characters

Hero challenges should be solo tests of skill similar to the Queen’s Gauntlet. They should have never been group events. After all, they’re not called heroes challenges and besides, there’s no challenge in a group.

They should have kept the mastery requirements though. There was no need to nerf that and reduce the cost.

Healix.5819:

Hero challenges should be solo tests of skill similar to the Queen’s Gauntlet. They should have never been group events. After all, they’re not called heroes challenges and besides, there’s no challenge in a group.

They should have kept the mastery requirements though. There was no need to nerf that and reduce the cost.

I totally agree… however you can’t stop people from grouping up… so mind as well make it a challenge.
If you do make it instance based a lot of players will never get them… or… they will seem to easy to more experienced players.

Healix.5819:

Hero challenges should be solo tests of skill similar to the Queen’s Gauntlet. They should have never been group events. After all, they’re not called heroes challenges and besides, there’s no challenge in a group.

They should have kept the mastery requirements though. There was no need to nerf that and reduce the cost.

I had thousands of skill points turned into spirit shards what about my time I’d already put in playing the old classes? I don’t feel like playing the xpac on what I’ve already been playing for 3 years, surely fun must be factored in, no?

The HP cost should have remained, the only thing that should have changed was the unlocking order. I would have had the traits unlocked right after each other leaving stuff like the skins & upgrade components at the very end. So you’d only have to spend 200 HP or so on unlocking the traits but if you want the bonus stuff you’d have to stick it out for the full 400 HP.

It was the same with the release of GW2. Then the Gauntlet sometime after that.

It was easier for a bunch of people to get on the forums and QQ rather than l2p.

It takes someone 5mins to make a post about how ‘hard’ something is when it may be forever to actually get good at it.

I don’t get why people are complaining about the reduction of HPs to gain full access the the ESpec. It removes nothing from your experience. If you want it to be harder, just don’t use it until you have 400, self imposed. If you do not have the self control to do so, then you have nothing to stand on.

For those that do not want to have to gain so many skill points on alts that often do not have even much of the core map completed, its great.

Imo, there should never have been any gate to gaining the ESpecs. They should have made a quest you do which finished with an instance that gave you the spec, none of this do this and this, repeat 40 times crap.

I don´t get eather why pll are complaining about the reduction.
400 HP complaining about being too much
250 HP complaining about being too light

It´s just Anet becomes the bad guy….no matter what they do.
I think it is good for WvW and PVP players who don´t want to do any PVE:)
So guys lets just enjoy the game and play the way we want;)
peace

“The nerfs don’t make this game worth the money”.

http://imgur.com/150oL6m

I didn’t have high hopes for the expansion, but they actually manage to create something amazing… and now they are systematically destroying it with all these nerfs.

They just nerfed the entire Verdant Brink map… if they continue at this rate, the entire content will be finished in a month even by casual players… then the same players who cried “too hard OMG” will cry “OMG no end game, you suk ArenaNet” and then move on… just like last time.

I think this is it… if history repeats its self, there is no way ArenaNet can come back a second time from it.

The contents have only been nerfed on hero points. I promise, you still have years of grind in different aspects of the game. Please recognize that not everyone wants to go through all the new maps with old specs. There are also tons of champs still around plus raids inc, and fractals to 100.

For a group that said anyone who wanted hero points reduced for elites were whining, crying, babies, and just plain bad…you sure have a lot of cry in you as well.

Tyria has not ended.

leftyboy.9358:

The contents have only been nerfed on hero points. I promise, you still have years of grind in different aspects of the game. Please recognize that not everyone wants to go through all the new maps with old specs. There are also tons of champs still around plus raids inc, and fractals to 100.

For a group that said anyone who wanted hero points reduced for elites were whining, crying, babies, and just plain bad…you sure have a lot of cry in you as well.

Tyria has not ended.

Exactly… nerfing stuff will make it trivial and it will turn into a grindfest… like people doing CoF p1 10000 times (i know the guy who claimed he did that, although i am not sure it is possible… ).

Also… being involved with YouTube and social media for so long i kind of know the numbers… and the numbers don’t look good at all…

I honestly don’t know where they are getting the money to continue, Heart of Thorns has to be big…

Metacritic score is already 7.7…

Nemesis.8593:

“The nerfs don’t make this game worth the money”.

http://imgur.com/150oL6m

I didn’t have high hopes for the expansion, but they actually manage to create something amazing… and now they are systematically destroying it with all these nerfs.

They just nerfed the entire Verdant Brink map… if they continue at this rate, the entire content will be finished in a month even by casual players… then the same players who cried “too hard OMG” will cry “OMG no end game, you suk ArenaNet” and then move on… just like last time.

I think this is it… if history repeats its self, there is no way ArenaNet can come back a second time from it.

Not trying to disagree with you by the way I’m pointing out that Anet are tuning these maps trying to find the right balance. The just went live Thursday and many areas hadn’t been played so they’re going to be tuned. These maps should always be a challenge imo.

This is what I was saying in another post but someone read it the wrong way and decided to be rude as they clearly have nothing better to do. I think this is end game content, it’s not supposed to be easy is it?

Nemesis.8593:

Besides the nerf to the required HP to unlock the full specialization… i’ve just been to the 2nd HP challenge only to discover that it too has been modified… the champion which was suppose to spawn is now just a veteran.

If the contents gets systematically nerfed, people will rush through it… and one month from now they will complain they will not have any content to play. Furthermore there will be a far greater gap between raids… and the new open world content, unless of course raids will be nerfed into the ground as well… in which case i really do not see a future for this game.

I have soloed 90% of all HP champions so far… with two players it should be no problem what so ever.

Heart of Thorns has been amazing so far, don’t take it away from us… please… stahp…

/beg

Soloing champs isn’t possible for a lot of different classes and builds. Sure, if you run a ranger most of them can be done, it then becomes a question of whether you can kill it within the time limit- which isn’t easy solo and relies quite a lot of getting lucky with bursts and avoidance.

Considering it’s the first week and it’s already getting hard to find anyone to help at HP’s, Anet have made the sensible decision to adjust the mob difficulty at HP’s so they are achievable when the mob population thins out. By any class. This is a good thing, and if you can’t see that then your ‘experience in utube/streaming’ didn’t teach you anything other than how to try and self promote.

They have also sensibly lowered the 400 HP grind to 250, which is still a grind to unlock something that was touted as being available on day one. For people with multiple toons who didn’t have any spare HP it’s still a grind. The gating of many of the HP’s behind cheese mechanics such as masteries means it turns into a grind to get the masteries to get the HP’s.

I’m not a fan of running around mindlessly killing pve mobs in ‘events’ to get the exp to fill up that mastery bar, as it’s not what I want to be doing, which is playing wvw with my elite spec on my toons (which doesn’t count exp towards…), so for me the whole release has been one long put off. I force myself to log in and get it done, rather than look forward to logging in to play and have fun during my leisure time.

Nemesis.8593:

leftyboy.9358:

The contents have only been nerfed on hero points. I promise, you still have years of grind in different aspects of the game. Please recognize that not everyone wants to go through all the new maps with old specs. There are also tons of champs still around plus raids inc, and fractals to 100.

For a group that said anyone who wanted hero points reduced for elites were whining, crying, babies, and just plain bad…you sure have a lot of cry in you as well.

Tyria has not ended.

Exactly… nerfing stuff will make it trivial and it will turn into a grindfest… like people doing CoF p1 10000 times (i know the guy who claimed he did that, although i am not sure it is possible… ).

Also… being involved with YouTube and social media for so long i kind of know the numbers… and the numbers don’t look good at all…

I honestly don’t know where they are getting the money to continue, Heart of Thorns has to be big…

Metacritic score is already 7.7…

I guess people grab what they want to grab, because that’s not what I was saying, but to each their own. We apparently just differ widely on our definition of what good content is, but I do agree the CoF thing is pretty silly. Pretty sure Anet just didn’t foresee that loophole while making the expansion. I could see some sort of change to the dungeon in the future. They’ve pretty much given up on dungeons anyways.

Going to agree with OP, everything people have whined about are just learn to play issues.
For 3 years now players have been spoonfed easy mode, they don’t have to do anything to get exotics, they don’t have to do much for ascended gear, you can easily play all of the Vanilla content without knowing how anything works or even what the skills on your skill bar do. (Looking at you rangers/mesmers that just spam all the longbow/greatsword skills and nothing else).
People got comfortable using their 1 weapon, settling on their traits and never changing them, getting their zerker exotics and not doing anything else to be decent at the game. The excuse of ’I’m casual’ is no reason to not know how your class works.

If you don’t want to be good at the game and this stuff isn’t important to you then great, but don’t expect to just be handed everything people who actually want to play or be good at the game get.

Now you can’t faceroll so easily, you have to change your gear, learn what your skills do and change your traits, it’s apparently ‘too hard’.
This content is supposed to ease people into raids and teach them what’s to be expected. If people find learning what’s on their skill bar to be too difficult I don’t hold out much hope for the raiding content.

Please ANet, don’t nerf this content, it doesn’t need nerfing, people just need to learn how to play the game. If you nerf this content you will have to nerf raids when people cry that they’re too difficult.
Not all of us want to be spoonfed, we want to play the game and earn our rewards.
There is a reason a large amount of players left the game because of lack of challenging content, now they’re back please don’t nerf everything again.

People forget, this is an expansion pack, not a living story update. If you don’t want to grind, don’t grind. There’s nothing wrong with unlocking stuff slowly, this content is supposed to last you months, not a few days or weeks.

I agree with the OP. I soloed many of the HP champion mobs on full zerker gear, and I consider myself a casual who PVP more than PVE. Anet needs to stop nerfing stuff here and there.

I see the future, Anet will nerf raid because lots of forum warrior QQ

Lol Anet can’t win either way. Nerf content because half the players complained, now that it’s been moderately nerfed those who were actually enjoying it now complain. Either way Anet loses in thus aspect it seems lol.

Well right yesterday I soloed my last hero challenge then… felt excited, but truly not so hard with a necro and a bunch of pets. I kinda like the nerf but also liked the daunting feel of vast and dangerous environment. Hope the rest feels still hard…

kankanKk.2748:

I see the future, Anet will nerf raid because lots of forum warrior QQ

This is a lot of people’s fear, and it’s rightly justified to feel this way. The same people that gave bad reviews and complained here and on reddit will do a repeat of that to trivialize Raids.

Agree, I am a causal gamer played form the release date of GW2. After 3 year of waiting, I finally got something challenging and permanent in GW2 when the release of HoT. (I love Queen’s Gauntlet, but it’s temporary) And than it is all gone less than a week… I don’t see any point of nerfing those challenging contents. Players with lower skill should try to look for help on the map instead of crying on the forum. Or if we could see a solo raid later on if player keeps crying? (Go back to single player game if you want to solo everything in MMO)

BTW, I do think tuning the HP to 250 is a good move, but why don’t you reduce the HP gained in HoT to increase the ratio of Tyria HP? I think that would have a better balance between 100% map completion character and those who are not…

Not nerfing, fine-tuning.

If raids will get nerfed too then it will be just like WoW. I call it: People will cry that content is too easy at some point in the future T^T

But seriously, I am not a professional hardcore nor a casual, perhaps something more than middle too, I dunno. Either way, I was born (by being “born” I meant the first time I got into internet) during the era of MMORPG’s when they were a real definition of what this genre is. Let’s take Lineage II for example:

There is a quest line to aquire 3rd tier of your character’s profession. It was a massive grind fest of killing mobs (even previous tiers had lots of running and grinding stuff).
From those years of my childhood I remember NOTHING of anyone whining about those quest lines being tough.

Only those who had unwavering desire to obtain, got it and deserved it, the rest just gave up and that was it.
I do not blame the majority of this community for HP nerf, it’s not their fault that we are being molded in an era of soft-core “guide my hand” MMORPG’s
I don’t spend much time on playing the game now (IRL stuff you know it) and I grind the crap out of this content as hard as I can because I like the challange, even if its a seemingly boring grind. I think like that because I like immersion and if we really lived in a world of fantasy as we do in real life, then this is how it would look like… a huge grind-fest.
We are different and we like various stuff and experiences. HoT should never be that demanding from the start and just kept the vanilla level of things, then there would be less salt.

People like this were the main reason why the game took so long to hit Beta before it was released (the main game, not the expansion.) because the fact the matter is people are less likely to complain about something if they do not know what has been changed.

If ArenaNet released the game at 250 instead of 400, a lot of people would have been happier and there wouldn’t be people complaining about nerfs.

It’s your choice to follow the changes anyway, if you think you should get 400 before getting everything unlocked then thats okay. Go ahead and not unlock anything until you reach 400 points and its exactly the same as before.

They did what they needed to do to salvage the content. Had they not done this people would have continued to blast through the content to get the specialization they wanted to begin with and that would have led to boredom a lot faster.

You can make a game fun and captivating, you can create memorable moments and beautiful graphics. You can create complex and challenging puzzles or encounters.

Or, you can create a bunch of gates, roadblocks, time sinks…and put some rewards behind them.

Both ways, people will rush through the content. When people are playing a new game they eat it up no matter what. If it’s just fun and open and memorable, they will rush through because it’s addictive and you can’t turn it off. If it’s a bunch of miserable time sinks and gates, people will push through the shortest, fastest path just to get it over with and get to the things they enjoy or the rewards they want.

The real question is what happens after players rush through. The first type of design brings people back again and again for the long haul. The second kittenes people off, pains them, and makes them want to never do the content again if they don’t HAVE to.

ArenaNet created some really cool stuff for the expasion…much like my first paragraph. BUT…they tacked on some of the gates and grind from my second paragraph and put the fun behind that. Because of that, a lot of people were rushing / pushing through cool / fun content and a beautiful new world as fast as they could just to get the painful time sinks and gates out of the way so they could have fun. Not a good thing.

What they are doing now is reducing the unnecessary pain. The time sinks and gates really don’t slow people down, they just ruin the pacing and experience of the content and make it a means to an end, rather than an experience in and of itself. By loosening those restrictions, they allow people to experience the new amazing fun stuff for what it is.

It was a good decision, and I hope they continue in that same direction. This wasn’t a “nerf” of content…it was a removal of pointless time sinks in the way of the content and mechanics that people bought the expansion to experience.

Have to agree, it’s ok to challenge players. Its ok to make a player ponder, can I solo this, might need a hand here. If content is lightened then I hope that it has coding to ramp up as more people appear to increase the scale of the event.

Copestetic.5174:

kankanKk.2748:

I see the future, Anet will nerf raid because lots of forum warrior QQ

This is a lot of people’s fear, and it’s rightly justified to feel this way. The same people that gave bad reviews and complained here and on reddit will do a repeat of that to trivialize Raids.

1. Raiders say that it’s absolutely necessary for as many people as possible to be incentivized to do raids.
2. Raiders say, that raids should be so hard, that only the best should be able to do them.
3. Raiders are surprised that most of the previously incentivized people find the content too hard and complain

I bet, that if Anet will listen to those complains (because at that point dissatisfied people will be in majority) raiders will be surprised as well.

Seriously, some logic and consequence here. If you do not want some content to be “trivialized” (hint: it wasn’t, it was just made a bit easier) try to avoid the situation where a huge number of casuals would have a reason to run that content. Because, in the end, casuals ountumber hardcores by a huge margin, and their displeasure has a bigger impact on the game than yours.

Copestetic.5174:

This is a lot of people’s fear, and it’s rightly justified to feel this way. The same people that gave bad reviews and complained here and on reddit will do a repeat of that to trivialize Raids.

No, they really won’t. An elite spec that isn’t even elite is the definition of casual content. Raids are not. Give people some credit for basic intelligence to discern between the two.

If the raids hold back too many people, they most likely will get nerfed a little, but not for months and it will only be after new raid content is out. That’s how it works in raiding games and Anet has no reason to stray from that model.

In fact, this isn’t even a raiding game, so the raids may not see much in the way of nerfs at all. In raiding games, it happens because most of the content is a funnel that leads you to raids. But that’s not the case here.

Yeah, keep it challenging please.

Perhaps they should just make the encounters to where you can increase the difficulty by choice. That way the people who prefer solo can move on and the people who want a harder fight can opt for the tougher mob(s). Of course the harder fight would return better rewards and achievements.

This has worked in several other games to pacify the elitists and the lesser skilled at the same time.

Im not a hardcore player, I dont know everything about my class, but I do hate rolling through things.
Normal tyria is.. beautifull, NPC’s are fun, combat is fun, lots of things to do. But except maybe in Arah dungeon and Aetherpath.. there wasnt a moment where I died and thought hey.. i gotta do this differently

HoT maps are beautifull, NPC’s are fun, combat is challenging, stacking against mordrem? hah you died! It costs me so much energy to turn away from HoT maps and try and play a bit of halloween too because.. well.. its here now.

HoT story is amazing! The bossfights are challenging! I was so set on fighting endboss solo, in the end all my gear was orange (thankfully not gone yet) but he went down!
HoT makes me stop in PvE so many times when i run around solo and see this group or mordrem approaching
I can honestly say that Ive hidden myself in nooks and crannies and continued after they had left ^^’

HoT is fun and challenging, Im sure players who are better can just run through everything but I enjoy this, Im playing with my brain, using the environment and not just standing there hitting stuff and sorting inventory at the same time.

Please dont nerf it till its normal tyria /beg

Moonlit.6421:

Lol Anet can’t win either way. Nerf content because half the players complained, now that it’s been moderately nerfed those who were actually enjoying it now complain. Either way Anet loses in thus aspect it seems lol.

Which is exactly why threads like this area pure idiocy.

After running around most of the night yesterday, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Hero Point adjustment is a good thing. Before it felt like a chore to earn enough points to unlock even a single skill/ability. Making the challenges scale down to match the number of players around means I can solo them when I’m alone. Now it feels like I’m making reasonable progress.

In other words, it’s fun again.

As someone with multiple characters, some who barely had any surplus points when HoT launched, this will help a great deal. Masteries are still a grind, but since Masteries are account wide I can accept that they take a while. Plus I can casually earn Mastery XP while I’m working on the Hero Points.

I’m guessing it’s just scaling to party size now, I tried doing a few of these before and it’s impossible to solo a champ before the timer runs down, so if these actually scale like they should have now I’m even happier.

Look im not gonna be mean im gonna be honest OP, this is a game “for” casual players, the WOTLK MMO that everyone in that generation wanted since every other MMO’s focus is so heavily on “hardcore” player content and trying to relive the burning crusade glory days that, im sorry, are long dead.

Its time to either move on, or adapt to the change, the “hard” content you want doesnt fit GW2, nor the quota it was intended for, GW2 was made with the mind set of solo, casual, relaxing, content, for people that wanted an easy ride and no unnecessary strings.

This game isnt obliged like wow to deliver on its designs since they not only went fully free to play recently, but are essentially making a market loss by doing so, in essence, they choose to make a relaxing game and tbh, content “will” be more soloable over time, and more easy to do.

Maybe you just dont enjoy this game no matter how much you want, maybe, its just not for you, but you have fractals, raids, PvP tournaments for “challenging” people that want “challenging” content.

That gate, that set of content is for “you” the entire thing is for you, all of it.

I am certain the raids will appeal, the fractals will be engaging, the pvp will be rewarding and tough.

But the open world pve is meant to be for everyone, not just 1% of the player base getting upset that everything is too easy and too fast to complete.

You have, your content, its called Fractals, Raids, Dungeons, PvP.

That, is your content, stick to it.

Maybe I missed, but most of the posts I saw just asked for the HP request for elite specs to be toned down or even spread out in a way to give you your traits unlocked first and skills and skins later so you could run with your line full traited as long as you had all the HP from the base game.

Now I don’t mind things being harder buy I will say this. It’s a weird balancing act with open world pve. Open world pve is the content for the masses it should be do able by the largest amount of people so it’s hard to keep the highly skilled or the hardcore player happy with it.

The real issue is that the hardcore people are still working on the map and haven’t moved on to the fractals or raid yet.

Moonlit.6421:

Lol Anet can’t win either way.

Of course they can’t. They lost the moment they decided to make the whole expansion aimed at hardcores, and yet sell it to mostly casual customers.
They really need to decide once and for all who exactly is their core target audience. They simply cannot have two of them. Not when the goals of those groups are in direct conflict with each other.

Nemesis.8593:

If the contents gets systematically nerfed, people will rush through it… and one month from now they will complain they will not have any content to play.

I already dont have any contest to play outside of farming ap. Finished maps, story. What else to do in ls3 50$ bundle?

Not everyone has endless hours on their hands to farm hero points. And some of us want to enjoy the content rather than having to run around the map purely with the mindset of unlocking new content as quickly as possible while ignoring the fun in HoT.

Reducing the Hero point cost was the correct choice.

Fozzik.1742:

You can make a game fun and captivating, you can create memorable moments and beautiful graphics. You can create complex and challenging puzzles or encounters.

Or, you can create a bunch of gates, roadblocks, time sinks…and put some rewards behind them.

Both ways, people will rush through the content. When people are playing a new game they eat it up no matter what. If it’s just fun and open and memorable, they will rush through because it’s addictive and you can’t turn it off. If it’s a bunch of miserable time sinks and gates, people will push through the shortest, fastest path just to get it over with and get to the things they enjoy or the rewards they want.

The real question is what happens after players rush through. The first type of design brings people back again and again for the long haul. The second kittenes people off, pains them, and makes them want to never do the content again if they don’t HAVE to.

ArenaNet created some really cool stuff for the expasion…much like my first paragraph. BUT…they tacked on some of the gates and grind from my second paragraph and put the fun behind that. Because of that, a lot of people were rushing / pushing through cool / fun content and a beautiful new world as fast as they could just to get the painful time sinks and gates out of the way so they could have fun. Not a good thing.

What they are doing now is reducing the unnecessary pain. The time sinks and gates really don’t slow people down, they just ruin the pacing and experience of the content and make it a means to an end, rather than an experience in and of itself. By loosening those restrictions, they allow people to experience the new amazing fun stuff for what it is.

It was a good decision, and I hope they continue in that same direction. This wasn’t a “nerf” of content…it was a removal of pointless time sinks in the way of the content and mechanics that people bought the expansion to experience.

^^^This, I don’t understand why anyone has an issue with this change. Its a very healthy change that will help retain players. Long boring grinds to drag out content is bad game design that just kittenes people off. Its an MMO people will always eat it up as fast as possible. If its actually good content they will repeat it, if not then they won’t. If its not, then making it a grind to finish makes it even more likely that people will not be hanging around. Its supposed to be fun entertainment not a chore.

Burtnik.5218:

Nemesis.8593:

If the contents gets systematically nerfed, people will rush through it… and one month from now they will complain they will not have any content to play.

I already dont have any contest to play outside of farming ap. Finished maps, story. What else to do in ls3 50$ bundle?

So you did all the masterieas, unlocked all the vendors, got all the new crafting recipes, all the new armor sets, all the new collections, unlocked every wvw rank, unlocked all the spvp reward tracks, found all the new wondering merchants on old tyria and got all the achievements?

You win the game.

Personally I also think a game I’ll have fun with for a month is preferable than one with the same months worth of content that’s fun and a bunch of boring grind on top of it just to pad out the length.

Nemesis.8593:

“The nerfs don’t make this game worth the money”.

http://imgur.com/150oL6m

I didn’t have high hopes for the expansion, but they actually manage to create something amazing… and now they are systematically destroying it with all these nerfs.

They just nerfed the entire Verdant Brink map… if they continue at this rate, the entire content will be finished in a month even by casual players… then the same players who cried “too hard OMG” will cry “OMG no end game, you suk ArenaNet” and then move on… just like last time.

I think this is it… if history repeats its self, there is no way ArenaNet can come back a second time from it.

The expansion has not even been out a week, yet, and you’re already forecasting Anet’s doom and gloom.

Yea, that sure makes sense.

Samhayn.2385:

Burtnik.5218:

Nemesis.8593:

If the contents gets systematically nerfed, people will rush through it… and one month from now they will complain they will not have any content to play.

I already dont have any contest to play outside of farming ap. Finished maps, story. What else to do in ls3 50$ bundle?

So you did all the masterieas, unlocked all the vendors, got all the new crafting recipes, all the new armor sets, all the new collections, unlocked every wvw rank, unlocked all the spvp reward tracks, found all the new wondering merchants on old tyria and got all the achievements?

You win the game.

Most masteries which is just huge grind. I dont care about new armor sets, all i wanted is mistward and i got that one. Unlocked all wvw ranks? Theres 9999 of em. Spvp tracks? Yeah unlocked them all. AP is not something i care much about. I am basically done already.

I’ve not logged in since the nerf. I’ve played about 4-5 hrs per day since release of HoT. Normally I play about the same time per month. I’ve really just taken the time to play the game, or “a game”. I rarely do that. I rarely can do that. I had 91% of my elite spec yesterday, just needed to get 3 more hero challenges. I’ve played as my new spec all the time since release. Never felt I had a hard time. Just as ANet themselves stated they saw the hero spec as a progression, where you get to somewhat semi-start over with leveling.

Anyway, I’m probably the most casual player here on the forum, with like 500 hrs of game time since launch – 3+ years ago. And about 700 hrs in GW1, which I got for almost 10 years ago. I found this more challenging content fun, and it sort of brought me back to GW1 where you had to think before taking on ten mobs all by yourself; usually – you didn’t.

I thought they were on the right track again with challenging open world content (Snake Dance, anyone?), where you can just jump in and play and have a good fun killing some random monsters, then just log out – because that’s basically how I play this game. I’m just sad that they listened to this percentile that get heard in the forums – complaining. Heck this game is far from hardcore it’s just a little challenge. Challenges takes time. Progression takes time. And I just get the feeling that all developers are catering to the new generation of patience-lacking kids that put their energy into complaining rather than just playing.
What if Crash Bandicoot were released today, and til’ next week they would have so many people complaining over that it’s too hard that they made the jumps easier – it just wouldn’t be the same. It probably wouldn’t have been remembered in the same way as it is now either. It was a game tough enough, far from hardcore, that was just genuinely frustrating fun.

So if it is as you say, that they’ve not only lowered the HP-cap, but also made content easier. I’m very much disappointed and not really that tempted to play anymore. I’m gonna login now and see for myself, but if this is the case I’ll probably go back to my 4-5 hrs a month again.

Nemesis.8593:

Besides the nerf to the required HP to unlock the full specialization… i’ve just been to the 2nd HP challenge only to discover that it too has been modified… the champion which was suppose to spawn is now just a veteran.

If the contents gets systematically nerfed, people will rush through it… and one month from now they will complain they will not have any content to play. Furthermore there will be a far greater gap between raids… and the new open world content, unless of course raids will be nerfed into the ground as well… in which case i really do not see a future for this game.

I have soloed 90% of all HP champions so far… with two players it should be no problem what so ever.

Heart of Thorns has been amazing so far, don’t take it away from us… please… stahp…

/beg

They are tuning content based on patterns. The game is only becoming better and more approachable as a result. Monday was a horrible time to be in game on Verdant Brink. Today with the tuning and fix the mega-server I feel like I’m finally playing it as intended and it’s awesome. Tuning is a a normal phase post launch for MMOs.

But really, why do you care? You got your reward as your herded though the gate at launch then decided to stay in game from god knows how many hours blasting through new content… The problem is the hardcore community in GW2 seems to be hell bent on turning it into another trash “me first” grind fest MMO and you’ve all collectively failed. ArenaNet is holding to the original tenants of their manifesto.

Let me explain something to you about casual gamers. We are big gem store spenders. We have lives outside the game because we prefer winning and being “me first” in life instead of always accomplishing that in a game world. GW2 has always been the “MMO for everyone” there is still plenty of hardcore content, but you’re not going to steal the game away from the large causal and simi-causal base who love it just as much as you do and probably spend more in the cash shop to support the company.

If you want an MMO that leans heavy on rewarding only the hardcore crowd there are plenty of great options.

HERO POINTS SHOULD BE SOLO FRIENDLY.