Guild Wars 2

Some people here just demand change. Probably myself too. I’m sorry about that, it’s just a lot of emotions going on right now and I’ll try and stay constructive. I’m sure the devs have read our threads here and on reddit and are already thinking about it.

The reality we might face could look like this: New players are overwhelmed with the difficulty in the 1st HoT map. Metrics might say that people are killed too often.

Now we should find fair arguments, why these facts would still be good for the new zones.

Just stating: “give us,… we want” will get us nowhere and would probably lead to a disconnect between players and developers (just like we had in the dungeons forum, where devs just disappeared).

As seen in title, in BWE 1+2 it was much, much better. The HoT experience is worsened after the patch.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The reality we might face could look like this: New players are overwhelmed with the difficulty in the 1st HoT map. Metrics might say that people are killed too often.

But Verdant Brink, and more to the point, Heart of Thorns, are level 80 content – “new players” shouldn’t be here. These areas shouldn’t feel like Kessex Hills. Players that have made their way to Verdant Brink should have already worked their way through the personal story, they should have experienced dungeon content, etc. We might be able to make a fresh level 80 for the purpose of the beta, but the reality is that when the expansion launches, these “new players” won’t be there until they have a firm grasp on the game – so if it’s data that’s persuading these changes, Arenanet needs to understand that the data they’re looking it might very well be skewed in some fashion.

We shouldn’t be catering to a player base that wants to stand idle while playing a game that prides itself in having an active combat system.

If this detune turned out to be permanent, another Casual™ move.
Terrible adjustment.

Devildoc.6721:

The only mobs that anyone thought were problematic in prior betas were the snipers and smokescales. Snipers have not just been nerfed they just got removed. What needed to happen with snipers is to have a cooldown on their sniping skill so that if you interrupted it it was meaningful (they’d just do the snipe skill again until you were out of interrupts or were dead)

They havent been removed, there is atleast a few in the north kinda behind the Raid instance in a grey area. They have been removed from story and some locations but they are also dunno if we should call it nerfed becouse they have changed their skills, now they can stealth (I dunno if it is a Hunter’s shot), and they can do a knock back and then I have seen them do a Rapid fire but it is alot less painfull as before.

/signed

I want this content to be hard. Now i can faceroll things in open world :C

some other voices

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3na4rx/bwe3_open_world_pve_nerved/

bad nerf, autoattack mode again

I really really hope they revert back to BWE2 mobs cause these mobs are a joke! the mobs from the previous bwe required you to think a little more and be a little cautious in some fights which made it really enjoyable

I get that they may be trying to cater to the more casual players but please don’t because atm the way the mobs are it makes the map extremely boring its like the standard pve maps I think on the odd occasion I may use a well on my necro otherwise its just press 1 and go through the map

this is just my opinion but from what I see a fair few people agree with it, but in the end this is your choice anet on what to do but please make it harder we were promised harder content and this bwe is defiantly not it (I cant say for raids since been unable to get into them yet)

I totally agree. I hope Anet will bring back difficulty for pve content like it was in BWE1/2.

what I liked about BWE2 difficulty:

• I couldn’t just run by all mobs easily. I couldn’t trivialize content that easily. Once too many mobs were onto me it was really difficult to survive, so choosing the fight became meaningful.
• Having mobs survive longer made me realize the new mechanics they use, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
• Mobs which have really hard hitting attacks made me adjust my build in order to survive, it felt great to use reflects effectively and satisfying when enemies hurt themselves.
• I remember that one cave with the small mushroom guys in it. I really wanted to know what’s in there, but I had to go through the mobs first. It built a tension, one of them downed me and made me realize that I have to earn that exploration.
• The jungle actually felt really dangerous. It all fit together, the sound, the graphics, the difficult gameplay.
• playing with other players became meaningful. It really made a difference and I had many szenerios where someone came to help me and vice versa.

Definitely agree on this. I got my new druid and was completely useless in our 4 man group because of this nerf. Because of that we had to go and do a fractal instead to test it.

Seriously why did you nerf mobs so kitten hard in this beta? they are too easy. It was an ok challenge before and we really had to think and use tactics. Now you just jump in and smash like the Hulk. Boring as kitten. Increase the difficulty.

Was there any specific reason for it?

Because for once open world felt more demanding and it really felt like we ARE wandering into hostile and unknown territory and that we take it to the next level, the next step where our typical gameplay might not work…

Now I can just go full zerk and faceroll my way through the map and it became just another pve area to blaze through instead of this thing I go to because I seek the next thing…

Please revert the changes, it is just not fun this way.

I’m really upset that some of the difficulty was nerfed. I remember there were many threads from the first beta predicting this would happen, and almost EVERYONE was begging ANet not to nerf the open world. Once builds and gear are figured out it will naturally nerf itself.

These are endgame, level 80 zones. They should be THREATENING! ANet knows we want more difficult content, so what gives?

I could understand the overall difficulty nerf before the core game’s release; I didn’t agree with it but I could see how some new people could be frustrated by dying at the early levels.

But Heart of Thorns is supposed to focus on the end game, and I sincerely hope that isn’t limited to raids. The open world and the story is made for level 80s, for people who already know their profession, it should not be training grounds for new players anymore but rather training grounds for the more challenging content.

BWE2 balance was great, it was finally decently challenging and you couldn’t just faceroll everything. The threat of the snipers in the story mission was huge, but if you managed to beat them without dying, it felt great; you actually had to think how to deal with them, now you just press buttons randomly, again, and things die.

What you’ve done now is removed any sense of challenge from the story and open world, and suddenly the map feels much less enjoyable, and I’m not as excited for the expansion as I was before. I tried the dragonhunter and went afk in a spot while forgetting that a veteran beetle spawns there; when I came back, he was attacking me but I stayed at full health. This definitely wouldn’t have happened last time, and it definitely should not happen at release.

tl;dr: Bring back BWE2 balance, we’ve had enough facerolling enemies until now.

Casuals strikes again.

Raid players beware. They are applying pressure on Raids already.

aNet will break.

Azumi.9572:

Casuals strikes again.

Raid players beware. They are applying pressure on Raids already.

aNet will break.

The thing is, I barely see ANY players calling for nerfs??

Currently there are like 3+ threads on this forum begging for a difficulty increase. What is going on?

This needs more attention! If you want us to be roaming around the jungle, please make it difficult enough to hold our attention. I don’t want HoT to just be mastery completion and chill – let it feel a bit easier once we’ve spent a good chunk of time “mastering” the jungle, not right off the bat.

/signed

Tipper.6973:

Azumi.9572:

Casuals strikes again.

Raid players beware. They are applying pressure on Raids already.

aNet will break.

The thing is, I barely see ANY players calling for nerfs??

Currently there are like 3+ threads on this forum begging for a difficulty increase. What is going on?

Last Beta Weekend, there were complaints about the difficulty of the trash in Verdant. There were also tons people happy about the challenge.

aNet listened to the casuals who complained about it being hard, evidently.

100% agree. Content in HoT Maps needs to be challenging.

Agree.
Even when I’m playing solo ; sometimes the mob don’t have the time to show their skills, it’s already dead.

I’m now running with full berzerk stats again and don’t feel in danger.

I’m with you.

nerf=no need for strategies=no thrill=no satisfaction when I take down the enemies

I been in on all 3 beta tests. And doing the first one was actually too hard because some of the mobs was overlapping eachother and you could easy end up with three or four of those that will kill you if you were not careful.
There was no way of reaching a spot were you could stand still for a few sec to get your cd backs to proceed. There was just hordes after hordes of mobs and moving from one point to anohter having to deal with 10 veterans, 5 elites and 50 normal mobs were at least 10 had oneshot skills every 5 meters was a bit exhausting.

Second beta it was toned down and it still felt challanging to deal with, but i was saticefied and it felt ok that it was hard. A bit lesser mobs, less hard to deal with and points were i could get out of combat.

This beta feels like they nerfed everything down to the ground. There is nothing in there that is hard to deal with, and if there is anything i can just dodge away and leave. At this point cursed shore feels harder to wal through, but only because the mobs there are anoying and slow you down. I did not even see those horrible bow mobs that one shot you, and those that runs you over and shadowstep to you, well he did two times and then i was to far away from it to care. The events was super easy as well, the feeling i had the last beta were it was a struggle and a challange to make those events, and the champs was so hard to beat but fun. This weekend the champs was a big meh and they went down super easy and the only people that went down was those that always stand in kitten over and over and then die and wait for a ress, but they will always be there, why make content around them?

Why is there never any inbetween for you guys when it comes to nerfs? Why take such huge swings so that the content suddenly feels to easy?
I read all the forum posts from past betas and they were all pretty clear and said the same thing, please don’t make it to easy. Tone a few of the mobs down a bit so they don’t one shot some of the classes, and give us some spots to get out of combat and get cd’s back. And maybe place the hardest mobs on event spots instead of spots were you just move from point a to b.

And you did tone it down but here is my problem. First beta my healthbar was mostly on low and it was a constant struggle. This beta it have not moved under 80% except for when falling down.

So could the guys with the big nerfhammers please replace them with something less? Maybe toath picks?

Tipper.6973:

Azumi.9572:

Casuals strikes again.

Raid players beware. They are applying pressure on Raids already.

aNet will break.

The thing is, I barely see ANY players calling for nerfs??

Currently there are like 3+ threads on this forum begging for a difficulty increase. What is going on?

You probably enlarged the wrong word. Probably you won´t see them because the majority of people asking for easy mobs are not on forums min-maxing or bickering like we do, but give feedback directly by ticket or with likes dislikes or something like that while they sit in the train or something like that.

I’m okay with the intro mission getting the nerfbat, it IS the story intro after all. I’ll be rather sad if the nerfs to Verdant Brink stick, though. >.<

Agreed on the idea that BWE2 was way much better in terms of difficulty.

Fifteen times yes.

100% agree here. BWE2 was much much better in terms of difficulty!

Yes revert the changes back pls it was super!

As the Title says, please bring back the mob difficulty from BW1 and 2. It is WAY to easy now and not even challenging in the slightest. Don’t make the same mistake that you did with Vanilla GW2.
Also bring back the Mordrem Snipers in the story and the general Mob density in the open world. It just feels not dangerously to wander through the jungle anymore and it should be imo.

thx for reading!

WARNING: Huge wall of text.
So i know there are already many forums showing sadness towards the nerf for open-world content and HoT story instances. However I either missed or didn’t see any posts specifying some reasons why, so I’m doing this.

First of all, there are some arguments against this:
1. Who cares? Its open-world anyways. : Open-world affects most other aspects of Gw2, which I will go in below. Also, I’m not saying open-world should be extremely difficult like raids, however it shouldn’t be so easy you can not pay attention and stroll through the maps and story.

2. Calm down! This is a beta and they probably know this. No need to bother like this : Whether this is true or not doesn’t matter because there are only 20 days until HoT releases. And this is the LAST beta weekend.

3. Maybe the open-world wasn’t nerfed, rather we got used to the content/got better and we got better tools (elite specs etc) : If this is the case, then Anet needs to consider buffing open-world content as the problem isn’t solved anyways.

Ok now to the reasons. Please add more reasons or feel free to disagree with mine in the comments.

1. A-net’s fear of player frustration as Gw2 is directed (as of now) to a more casual audience is irrelevant : The reason I say this is because the events that are happening right can easily be compared to the Gw2 base game beta. For those who don’t know the content was a lot harder then as well, and Anet nerfed it. Personally I’m not too peeved with that nerf because it was the release of the game. People were bad and didn’t know the mechanics and lower level. However HoT is an EXPANSION, all of the content is level-80 based. By this point people should be SOMEWHAT good at the game. Personally right now running in Queensdale at lv 10 is no different than running in Verdant Brink at lv 80, which is very bad for an MMO.

2. Open-world actually affects other content : What this means is that an easier open-world actually affects the skill level and acceptance of the player-base and even go as far as affecting WvW, raids and masteries. A key reason for this is because open-world shares mechanics and gear with those other parts of Gw2. If players don’t know what they are doing, that just shows the open-world content doesn’t have enough difficulty and mechanics to teach them.

3. Immersion : Gw2 has great lore and great story to it which is mostly explored through personal/HoT story and the open-world (which were both nerfed as far as I’m aware) and perhaps this is one of the reasons they were nerfed, so that everyone could experience the story. Once again, however, since HoT has no level or gear raise everyone playing it, even if the game is casual-based, should have some idea of what they are doing. Would you rather half-pay attention to the open-world or story instances will killing bosses by spamming buttons or actually pay attention to what you are doing, and when you beat a mordrem boss feel like you accomplished something and that mordrem actually had some sort of THREAT, unlike most the current open-world bosses. The second option is much better for immersion and story.

The difficulty in the previous BWE´s were really good.
Now its only disapointing.
But to reinforce these two points I want to tell a little bit about, why I think the difficulty in the previous BWE´s were imo perfect.

First is my father (he is not the forum guy, I even don´t know if he knows a forum exist). He is “only” a casual player. After over an year of playing this game, he still don´t understand most of the combatsystems. His builds are lackluster and he doesn´t know, what most of his skills even do. In short he is “a bad player” a casual to the core. BUT and this is really important! He enjoyed the first BWE´s even if he goes down like thousand times. Yes, at times he was alone he ranted sometimes, because he couldn´t figure out, why he was going down, but he rants in vanilla too. I roamed the new map with him, like always at first he was really bad and keep dying countless times. But after a while he adapt, he became more cautious in roaming this new map and so he became “better” at it. He still doesn´t understand a thing a the new map in view of combat mechanics but he were able to survie it and with other players around he was able to complet events without much frustration and enjoy the map to its fullest. (all at BWE2, I might confuse some grammatical tenses, its my bad point in english, srys for that)

Second myself: I am not the very best player, but I think i has understand most of the combat, have a descend build for my charakters and know what my classes are capable of. In BWE2 it was really fun to roam the map and at some points to push myself “to the limits” (a little bit overdramatic) to get trough the entcounters. It was a hell of fun, I really enjoyed the challenge. At the end of BWE2 I almost completed a nighttime defensiv group!-event on my own. I was there alone and had to play really to my limits. It was one of my greatest encounters in open world in the whole game. At the end I failed the event, because two or three mordrem were enough to get the “captureprogress” working in there favor. I pushed them out a few times, but was not able to negate there progress, so at the end Iit was a fail. But even with many mordrem I was able to hold my ground for a long time (~1 min were on the timer left at the end) and I hasn´t gone down once. Hell I even were running a full glasscanon build at that time, and still were able to survive.

TL;DR: Even my father (casual noobplayer to the core, who doesn´t understand most of the games combat, traits, skills he play and so on) was able to survive and enjoy the open world content at BWE2!
I myself (imo medium skilled player, to lazy to “learn” pro skillrotations, but in full understanding of combat mechanics, combos and traits/skill I play) was able to almost beat a nighttime defencive group!-event alone!, wihtout going down once in full berserkgear, full dps-traited.

If the difficulty will stay like now in BWE3, it will be a high blow to all of my enthusiasm in regards of HoT. I was really looking forward to the expac, especially for the new maps and the great experience in BWE2… now its only a pale shadow of this great experience!

BWE3 difficulty too easy, BWE2 just right. Please fix.

Pick up the difficulty ANET. How are we supposed to see this “death of the zerker meta” when it is obvious that mobs have been made easier to kill? It was fun, interesting, and challenging to run in zerker gear knowing the risk that there were mobs out in the wild who could one-shot me. Now there is no risk/reward, only zerked-out lawnmowers.

Signed. This is supposed to be the end-game stuff, the hard stuff. Keep it at that.

BW3 feels not so dangerous as BWE1 and BWE2. It should feel dangerous. But it was already in BWE1 und BWE2 that when a zerg was doing the events, they were not challenging.

However, the new champion in the tree-tops “Gwyllion” has a really nice mechanic and wiped us (a small group) a few times with his veteran friends.

Signed, make it harder than any orr zones.

Azumi.9572:

Casuals strikes again.

Raid players beware. They are applying pressure on Raids already.

aNet will break.

I’ve not seen anyone asking raids to be nerfed, more that they want ascended to be less grindy to get.

if the boss drops ascended gear in live then everything will be fine, it can be started in exotics and you can get ascended from raiding, meaning you can progress through raiding, without grinding for 10k silk like people were worried about

hell, I’ve seen people wanting the first boss to be made harder (I disagree, from a game design perspective it’s in a good spot to teach new raiders about boon stripping, body-blocking, condition requirements, and stacking when appropriate, my one gripe is that the mechanics aren’t conveyed well (eg using a square instead of a boon arrow on the blue miniboss). a “foot in the door” “baby’s first raid boss” deal))

Just finished the entire Diarmid event chain. At each stage the boss is now a champ rather than a legendary difficulty, and the group of 15 players I was with were able to kill it in around 20 seconds. The fight used to be unique and its different attacks were interesting mechanics, but now it barely had any time to do any attacks. If this is supposed to be one of Mordremoth’s generals, I shudder to think how easy the final boss is going to be. The hardest part of the event chain is running the salvage parts, only due to its tedious nature.

I bought the expansion hoping for challenging and difficult content. Easy content isn’t going to hold my attention for very long, and I imagine a lot of players would agree with me.

I completely agree on this.
BWE 2 seemed really balanced between challenge and satisfaction.
Yesterday I made a Druid with an equipment mix of apothecary and dire and I simply melt through anything that comes near with two traps and torch 5, for veterans I might need a trap more and some torch 4 and sword 3 but that’s it.
I then made a full zerker mesmer (I’m in no way experienced with mesmer, I used tomes to 80 and used mine as bank from then on) and he simply steamrolls everything … except for the snipers that got removed from pretty much everywhere. Once there are two or more I’m down. And I like it.

While I was really hooked in BWE2, I found myself tabbing out of the game while autorunning or listening to music while playing this BWE because nothing feels like a threat anymore. If there is a mob I kill it and move on.
Last BWE when there was a mob I thought “oh kitten, I don’t have enough xyz to survive this”.

Bring back the difficulty please.

Just finished the entire Diarmid event chain. At each stage the boss is now a champ rather than a legendary difficulty, and the group of 15 players I was with were able to kill it in around 20 seconds. The fight used to be unique and its different attacks were interesting mechanics, but now it barely had any time to do any attacks. If this is supposed to be one of Mordremoth’s generals, I shudder to think how easy the final boss is going to be. The hardest part of the event chain is running the salvage parts, only due to its tedious nature.

I bought the expansion hoping for challenging and difficult content. Easy content isn’t going to hold my attention for very long, and I imagine a lot of players would agree with me. Please bring back the harder difficulty

Yes please, I enjoyed having to stay awake in open world.

signed. I agree, difficulty in BWE2 was much better

I really disagree. Open world should be about exploration and minor challenges. For me the nerf to Orr was perfect. No one likes to go through a hundred challenging fights to get to somewhere. After a while it just becomes a drag.

If you want challenges, they’re there in raids.

I’m not a good player by any means but the difficulty is non existant now… I’m back to brainlessly mashing and melting everything in sight, which is boring.
BW 2 had me actually use my brains a little which was fun.

I have to agree, Bw3 is way too easy. I can understand why it was made easier, the first time I played the first personal story instance, right at the first encounter I was killed and I image so did a lot of other players and that may have been perceived like a bad thing (what impression will players have where the first thing they fight kills them?) the answer to that is A great impression. Personally I was like awesome, its true, HoT will truly be challenging content.

A lot of people I spoke too were of the same opinion too. Even some people who left cause they felt the game was too easy were considering returning after I explained that veterans in HoT are something to fear. You need to be careful on what you’re doing since a mistake or two will mean you get downed. Alas now it doesnt feel that way anymore.

I personally think its a mistake. Dead penalty is really light, dieng doesn’t have big consequences as such I dont feel its a bad thing having content that you need to learn how to beat. It will force people to learn how to play their builds which is a great added bonus too!

very disapointed in you Arena, dont even feel like playing the beta anymore

Agreed. A LOT.
Wanna know what my friends said the most yesterday during the time they were in HoT.
“I can’t believe i didn’t die there.”
That’s the sentence i heard the most when they were testing out Druid and Scrapper.
This not only shows how much more challenging and fun the game was before, but also might skew their perception of the classes they play during this last BWE. PLEASE revert.

having too easy content also is a negative for new players: mobs melt too fast so a lot of players can’t contribute to the killings. They aren’t fast enough/do too little damage. It happened to me quite a couple of times: when I reached a mob it was already almost dead. I had to switch to Shiro Legend to shadowstep on mobs to contribute.