Guild Wars 2

yep I agree. this is too easy. bwe2 was way better

HidingCat.4037:

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.

so why putting mobs in maps in the first place?

Sorry, I disagree. Exploration feels much more rewarding, when you have to get rid of a guardian first. Bypassing any foe feels just not rewarding.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Ardid.7203:

Mob density was enormously reduced.

I too enjoy slogging my way through dozens of enemies to get anywhere. That’s why everyone loved pre-nerf Orr /sarcasm

well, we did. was so much better

@HidingCat: thats what waypoints are for

surely there should be something in HoT for people who looking for something between raids and unthreatening exploration

especially since it was sold by the devs on that basis, of a challenge existing

I see I’m not alone in my disappointment so instead of starting another thread I’ll just add my voice to the highest one up. I absolutely loved the difficulty level in the previous BWE. It felt just right.

This? This killed my entire desire to even play the BWE so I’m thankful for the other people who are hunting the bugs I’ll never meet. This is such a disillusion going forward. With the amount of people coming here to complain about the same thing, I feel confident that you’ll make it harder again but I’m afraid you’’re going to cut the difference in half and launch with difficulty in between the last BWE and this which would still be bad. Balance is not something you get sort of right. It either is or it isn’t; and I know it’s tricky and players have different skilllevels but we can compare between then and now. How many threads are you seeing that the new difficulty is much better?

I would very much encourage you to disregard your latest tuning effort for monster difficulty/density/HP/damage/… and just roll back to whatever it was during the previous BWE.

And it breaks my heart saying this but this game, this game I don’t really want to play after tasting the previous BWE. It’s okay to die in the new world. No one in Maguuma is a new player scared off by death in a Story instance. It should put fear in us. The increased level of danger was exactly what the game needed and makes perfect sense storywise.

silverwaste mobs would steam roll these weak VB mobs at this point

Totally agreed ! Encouraging players to communicate and party up in open world is what is missing in gw2 for me.

I agree, please Anet bring back the mob difficulty of BWE1

I agree, this BWE doesn’t feel like I would be in a dangerous jungle at all… I was running my tempest around in the default celestial exotic gear and died only once when I stopped mid-fight to eat my breakfast. It feels like Orr is a lot more dangerous place to go around than this jungle where we’re supposed to be on our toes during the nights just to survive till dawn.

I’m not a hardcore player but I do know my way in combat so being able to facetank most mobs in the jungle with my ele just isn’t any fun. I like it when I need to stay alert and sometimes do my best to escape dangerous situations. I want to feel that I could die at any moment in the jungle if I’m not careful.

I do hope that if the difficulty level is kept this low then the other areas would give us a lot more challenge. I could understand the first map being easier to get around but the joy of discovering new places when there is danger present is just not there now. And I do not wish to see a horde of easy-to-kill mobs to make it more “difficult”. I would be glad if there was few mobs that would be actually dangerous and I would need to stay alert when going through a jungle (now it feels like running in Queensdale).

BrotherBelial.3094:

Or you are just better at playing, as you now know what to expect? People seem to forget that what makes most things difficult is not knowing what you are doing. Once you do. Most of the difficulty is gone.

Then how come in BWE3 I’m completely steamrolling through the HoT content, absolutely melting veterans on a class I never played before (Druid) with Clerics gear, while in BWE2 I had difficulty killing veterans on my main profession (Guardian) using Berserkers gear?

This isn’t just us learning the content, they actually significantly reduced the health, DPS and density of the mobs in HoT.

Haven’t played the current BE. Going by BE1 and BE2, I felt the difficulty was fine. If you consider that most people (maybe even all) were running around like headless chickens having no clue what is going on, yeah there is room for improvement player side wise.

I get the dilema though. Anet are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Make the content to hard and people won’t play it, thus the zones get deserted and are not playable. (this is a big issue on scaling. Make sure the zones work with a low amount of players as to not have to go down the road of having to increase rewards for people to even play)

If the new areas are to easy, people will blow through the content and get bored. We’ll basically get 4 more Silver Wastes areas. That won’t have the same pull though, since players are farming SW in anticipation of HoT. Most have even grown tired at this point and are simply waiting for new content. If this new content is nothing but a snooze grind fest -> byebye playerbase.

HidingCat.4037:

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.

Actually, I’d argue that the balance we experienced in BWE 2 provided just enough challenge; not faceroll easy (which it is in BWE 3) but you had to be aware of certain particularly nasty mobs and deal with them accordingly. During BWE 2 I was able to run/jump/glide around and experience as much of the map as I wanted, and knowing that if I wasn’t careful I’d be fodder for Mordy’s minions made the whole experience that much more fun and rewarding.

Currently, it feels far too close to being a level 80 running around a starter zone watching everything melt under auto attacks. Add the issues gaining/progressing masteries to that, and any desire I have to spend more time in Verdant Brink has nose-dived fast.

Perhaps it would have been better to have had a brief (2-4 hrs) stress test earlier in the week? Just a few hundred players – however many they’d need to functionally test things – to identify potential Beta-breaking issues and then have time to fix them for the actual beta …. but hey, that’s hindsight for you.

Legendary enemies also got nerfed back to champion level. Diarmid, once a worthy legendary opponent, died in a minute. I didn’t even notice a lot of attack patterns anymore, just dodge when he spins and then back on it and faceroll.

My only explanation: they nerfed it for this BWE only so that more players push to the end of the event chains in order to see the canopy and test it.

It just doesn’t felt rewarding to reach the canopy. There was this one boss in the canopy (blade…something) that died quite fast. His one-shot mechanic was countered easily by Revenant’s reveal.

Stormbolt.7293:

I get Anet catering to casual players in the base game, but this is an expansion designed and marketed towards veterans. It should be tough as nails. It’s a level 80 zone in an expansion, casuals or newbies won’t be playing this.

I’ve been in the game for 3 years now, I consider myself a casual, and I’m in verdant brink already. Other casuals will be there also. This isn’t an expansion for the “veterans” whatever that may mean, it’s an expansion for everyone. For tough as nails go to a raid. The rest of the game should maintain its character and consistency throughout. The nerf to difficulty was a bit much imo, betah weekend 2 lvls of difficulty with an adjusted damage spread for the snipers and we’re golden (again in my opinion). Tough as nails is over there through the red portal.

good post. I also want to add that this nerf is also quite bad for most players:

Enemies die in seconds. If you don’t play ranged or melee shadowstepping it’s quite difficult to contribute to events. Once you reach an enemy, the mob is already dead.

BWE2’s mobs survived much longer, so picking fights was important. Even when many players hit a mob it survived long enough for everyone to do damage on it.

agree this beta is really boring compared to the last 2. plz un nerf anet

Azumi.9572:

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

Yeah, imagine that. A company catering to their core audience and not a vocal minority in a forum. Who would have thought? I mean it’s not like they caved in and gave “hardcore” ppl raids or anything. Which btw will probably get nerfed too after 6 months. It’s almost like they’re trying to make money by wanting ppl to enjoy their product and stay in the game buying crap they don’t need from the shop. The nerve!

The expansion should be ultra hard, 3000 hour minimum /age affair. And! there should be a written exam before allowing us to enter verdant brink. Passing mark of 75% upwards. The test should be ultra hard too, to make sure that only the purest of the pure vereran hardcore players can access it. None of them pleb casuals should play along side the noble veterans. Am I right?

Totally agree with starting post. Please raise again open world Content difficulty

I agree as well. The difficulty of the previous betas was a welcome challenge to general gameplay. And now, well, it’s just as mind-numbing as the AI in the core maps.

You developed this new AI technology for use in HoT, so do make sure to use it for what you intended it for – more intelligent AI that is more challenging to kill.

I feel the same. I very much enjoyed the harder open world and I hope the enemys in the release version will have that again.

ReiCH.6273:

Azumi.9572:

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

Yeah, imagine that. A company catering to their core audience and not a vocal minority in a forum. Who would have thought? I mean it’s not like they caved in and gave “hardcore” ppl raids or anything. Which btw will probably get nerfed too after 6 months. It’s almost like they’re trying to make money by wanting ppl to enjoy their product and stay in the game buying crap they don’t need from the shop. The nerve!

The expansion should be ultra hard, 3000 hour minimum /age affair. And! there should be a written exam before allowing us to enter verdant brink. Passing mark of 75% upwards. The test should be ultra hard too, to make sure that only the purest of the pure vereran hardcore players can access it. None of them pleb casuals should play along side the noble veterans. Am I right?

Filthy Casual. Get away from me before you infect me with your grossness.

This is supposed to be a continuation of the main game, yet the open world content right now feels almost less challenging than vanilla GW2. The game itself needs to feel like a climb to new challenges, not a plateau of the same stuff.

I hope the massive outcry from the community is making Anet reconsider these changes to the open world, because if this is the direction that they intend to take, it might very well ruin the expansion.

Why have the open world mobs in Verdant Brink been nerfed? In BW2 they were exciting and fun. Why would Anet remove that excitement by making everything too easy?

For example: snipers were a fun and unique enemy because they actually introduced a certain amount of tension and fear to running around what is supposed to be a dangerous jungle. That excitement is gone.

Why have they done this?

The character slot debacle was a massive outcry. This here, hm, not so sure.

Stormbolt.7293:

I get Anet catering to casual players in the base game, but this is an expansion designed and marketed towards veterans. It should be tough as nails. It’s a level 80 zone in an expansion, casuals or newbies won’t be playing this.

I 100% agree, except, they -will- be playing it, but they have the entirety of the core game to get their feet wet, simply put.

If a newbie wants to get into the jungle immediately, they might get punished for it, which is how it should be imo.

I mean come on, it’s an EXPANSION for crying out loud. Nerf it a couple of months down the line but keep it hard and enticing initially, at least!

I have to agree with this post. I was surprised yesterday, and just thought that maybe it was due to the changes made to Tempest (which is the class I played/play the most throught the different BWEs)… but apparently everyone gets the same experience.

As you say, even if the mobs were left untouched, they need to scale to the buffs that we, as players, get. It does feel more like gardening than struggling to survive in the Jungle. Of course it was challenging and sometimes discouraging but the immersion was so perfect. BWE2 was really in a great place with the open world (except for a few bugs with the quests, but they’re fixed now).
I basically afk’d in the middle of a contested camp at night and just lazyly pressed a few keys whenever a mob got to me. And it died. I shouldn’t have been able to do that. Or I suddenly became godlike at this game, but I sincerely doubt that :p

Totally agree with everything being said here regarding the difficulty of open world mobs being tuned down. BWE1/2 was challenging and sometimes difficult, but it made it extremely fun! Please tune the mobs back up before launch. I know of one person who was undecided about HOTS, so watched a livestream of BWE3 and decided not to buy it because they found it too easy and not what had been promised by Arenanet.

Totaly Agree mate.

There’s like 5 other topics on this, but you know what? I don’t care, it was probably the most exciting new feature of the expansion for me: DIFFICULTY.

(and for a lot of other people it seems)

I can’t say anything about the mobs in Open World PvE but I just did the first step of the Story on a Druid. Now, I know I am an amazing Ranger (just kidding), but using almost exclusively Druid skills I had a very easy time. And Druid isn’t the best choice for a solo instance. I did this same step in BWE2 on several characters and it was much more difficult. I think it is too easy now.

I agree with you there. 5 isn’t nearly enough topics.

the more I think about it, the more I think this is only temporary. Why?

• Drytop is more difficult
• Silverwastes is more difficult
• they’ve added the canopy, an area which was locked before… so they want players to experience it this BWE.

it’s probably intentional so that players get faster to the new bosses. At least I hope so.

My feedback on the begin story instance:

It has become too easy, like playing the first tier of PS. All the enemies melt like butter. Where are the Snipers btw? Maybe the snipers where a little op, but totally removing them is a bit of overkill. More Feedback later, when i have time to play.

Player info: wouldnt call myself casual or hardcore more in between. Core gamer i like to call myself :-)

good good, let the hate flow through you.

i have not played in the beta but i know one thing for sure, i seriously hope the difficulty isn’t going as high as silverwaste.
i like a challenge but not everywhere i stand, if itls as difficult as the rest of PvE then it’s at a good level.

The strength of the mobs felt good in the last two betas. I would suggest tuning them back to their old stats.

I personally like it. Open world pve is supposed to be like this outside of events. Just trying to get to point A to point B shouldn’t involve snipers randomly coming out killing me and stopping every 5 seconds for a fight.

You now have higher level fractals and raids for what you are looking for.

Azumi.9572:

ReiCH.6273:

Azumi.9572:

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

Yeah, imagine that. A company catering to their core audience and not a vocal minority in a forum. Who would have thought? I mean it’s not like they caved in and gave “hardcore” ppl raids or anything. Which btw will probably get nerfed too after 6 months. It’s almost like they’re trying to make money by wanting ppl to enjoy their product and stay in the game buying crap they don’t need from the shop. The nerve!

The expansion should be ultra hard, 3000 hour minimum /age affair. And! there should be a written exam before allowing us to enter verdant brink. Passing mark of 75% upwards. The test should be ultra hard too, to make sure that only the purest of the pure vereran hardcore players can access it. None of them pleb casuals should play along side the noble veterans. Am I right?

Filthy Casual. Get away from me before you infect me with your grossness.

You must be the first person ever to not throw a tantrum when teased a bit…

if I had a hat, i’d tip it off for you good sir/madam/your pronoun of choice ;P

Yesterday I opened this thread on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3na4rx/bwe3_open_world_pve_nerved/) , raising my concerns with the nerfs to open world pve in Verdant Brink. I’m still very emotional and concerned, but I thought about why they did it…

What if they did it intentionally in order to get people into the canopy? Previously the canopy (the third top layer of the map) was locked. Now it’s not, pushing event chains to their end you can enter the helicopter to get up there… to face a bigger threat.
So in short: they want people to test the canopy, so they nerfed everything so that more players get there.

this sounds quite logical, but if this is true, why are the canopy bosses (I’ve only seen one, blade…something) also nerfed? The one I’ve fought today was on champion level and only dropped a champ-bag.

I also heard about a Wyvern fight which seems to be harder than before?!

The nerf is terrible and must be undone

It just makes the maps far less exciting and immersive to explore.

Am I playing a different game to everyone else?
The Legendary Wyvern seems to have 3 times as many HP as before.
Veteran smokescales were challenging before, but this time I have been one-shotted by them more than once running exactly the same build as last time.

It has gotten to the point where it made me think the druid auto attack was actually OP until i read the posts. I was doing way too much damage on celestial than i should. I really hope the maguuma goes back to being a hostile land rather than a mild inconvenience.

BW1 and 2 were so much fun. Mobs actually hurt people! Crazy stuff.

They likely did it due to feedback and it’ll probably release this way. They did the same thing back during the original final BWEs. An ettin’s club smash or a moa’s peck for example used to kill you.

The unfortunate thing is that the open world was in a good place in BW2. That means the nerf must have been a considered decision. This leaves me very little hope that they will change it back and makes me very disheartened and saddened.

I’m an average skilled player and the previous betas were fun and challenging. It wasn’t hard while running full zerk but you had to react to mobs and not just facetank everything. Now it’s like the core gw2 and I don’t have to pay attention. This is not as interesting and I’m less excited for HoT now.

Nidome.1365:

Am I playing a different game to everyone else?
The Legendary Wyvern seems to have 3 times as many HP as before.
Veteran smokescales were challenging before, but this time I have been one-shotted by them more than once running exactly the same build as last time.

people mentioned that they have buffed the Wyvern’s defiance bar. I like this change, a coordinated group could help out open world players in order to defeat the beast much faster (by coordinating cc-skills to drop the defiance bar).

Have you experienced events with multiple mobs in BWE3 yet? Didn’t you notice them melting away quite fast? I had trouble tagging mobs to count as contributing.

Mob-ranks have also been nerfed. Diarmid, previously a legendary boss, is now a champion which dies in 1-2 minutes to a small group.

i agree, this is so easy they siad harder then then all tyria

Healix.5819:

They likely did it due to feedback and it’ll probably release this way. They did the same thing back during the original final BWEs. An ettin’s club smash or a moa’s peck for example used to kill you.

I can’t believe this. Where is that feedback? I also talked with people in mapchat, and not a single one disagreed with me that content is too easy now. Reddit-threads have tons of feedback, 90% of players agree (based on upvotes).

Why are you creating ANOTHER topic that is the same as the 7 topics complaining already???