Guild Wars 2

First off let me start off with saying that I really like the current direction that ‘group-content’ is going. Starting from Tequatl, through aetherblade attacks, marionette, triple trouble, dry top, and throught the silverwaste events, I feel we’ve come a long way in how group content can work. And I really am looking for more challenging content.

That being said, my biggest concern with the ‘more challenging’ content that is set out to come out with the Heart of Thorns expansion is one that we can already see in game.

Coming from my perspective as a fairly avid gamer, certain things are easier to me than others. The biggest issue I have with challenging content in game right now (lets take the Three Headed Wurm) is that the actual encounter is actually far from challenging. The biggest difficulty lays in organising the encounter.
This is not something I enjoy, I don’t like it when the only reason you fail is because you don’t have the proper people and you can’t do anything about it. I hate the whole concept of having to organise an instance just so you don’t have people with the wrong mindset.

I think the biggest issue here lays in ‘responsibilities’. People often feel safe in numbers, whether that’s being part of dealing damage to tequatl or popping bubbles in The Silverwastes. Oh, other people will do it, there’s plenty of them to do it. I often find myself clearing the beach, and hurrying to stomp grub holes because other people are too busy auto attacking a champion at the mega laser.

I truly hope there’s going to be a system to allow for a more engaging mechanism where you can clearly communicate, organise, and structure a fight. I remember even the simplest task as splitting in 3 groups for the three headed wurm was a complete nightmare.

I really hope there will be some sort of way to incorporate structures and tasks into GW2. Whether that’s having someone focussed on boon removal, poison upkeep, raw damage, protection upkeep… whatever, as long as it’s managable. But the problem is that when you scale this up it keeps getting more and more of a challenge based on organisation.

Even something as simple as a player counter could work, so that you can see that there’s only 1 person at the north battery stomping grubs while there’s 50 people at the mega laser.

I really look forward to having challenging encounters and having to puzzle with other people how to overcome them, but I feel so demoralised when you can do whatever part of that puzzle with ease and you’re still not getting it together as other parts are failing over and over again.
That isn’t challenging to me, that’s just agony.