Guild Wars 2

just watched the POI and Colin confirmed hard group content is coming in HOT , he also confirmed that group content with all dps is a NOT what they’re looking for . I welcome this , whats your thoughts ?

My thought is that talk is cheap. I might get excited if I see what this is actually going to be.

At least, more things to do is always better I suppose.

So the post just below wasent enough you needed to start your own thread?

Decrypter.1785:

just watched the POI and Colin confirmed hard group content is coming in HOT , he also confirmed that group content with all dps is a NOT what they’re looking for . I welcome this , whats your thoughts ?

Not what they’re looking for – sure. Like the million other things that they didn’t anticipate but came with the game.
You’ll excuse me for being skeptical.

My thoughts are that currently if you don’t do enough dps you don’t get credit, and thus do not get reward, for whatever you’re doing.
You are, and have always been, punished for not having enough dps
As far as I’m concerned Colin is blowing smoke.

Considering he clarified what he meant in a reddit post and basically verified that he didn’t mean that they disapprove of all DPS groups I’m going to go out on a limb and say don’t expect anything different.

hard is a relative term. If it really fits, expect one week of complaining from you know whom and it will be brought back to GW2´s usual faceroll level.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

My thoughts are that currently if you don’t do enough dps you don’t get credit, and thus do not get reward, for whatever you’re doing.
You are, and have always been, punished for not having enough dps
As far as I’m concerned Colin is blowing smoke.

Sad but true. Until they equally reward the guys doing healing , crowd control and other support, players will continue to gravitate towards carrying the biggest stick.

Tommyknocker.6089:

ScribeTheMad.7614:

My thoughts are that currently if you don’t do enough dps you don’t get credit, and thus do not get reward, for whatever you’re doing.
You are, and have always been, punished for not having enough dps
As far as I’m concerned Colin is blowing smoke.

Sad but true. Until they equally reward the guys doing healing , crowd control and other support, players will continue to gravitate towards carrying the biggest stick.

I don’t think it’s a matter of rewards so much a matter of path-of-least-resistance. Zerker is at present the best spec to run. You could run full nomad, but you’d literally take ages to do anything. You could run cleric gear, but with everyone else running zerker and the downed mechanic whatever you’re pew pew-ing will die pretty quickly and if people fall down someone can just rally them.

Nomad would be viable if they had foes that hit really, REALLY hard, or if they had attacks that were unavoidable or something.

Just as high defensive characters pay for their build by being very low dps, very offensive builds should pay for their build with being under much greater threat.

So far that’s just not true in most cases.

Well hardly any news here, they said at the initial PAX reveal when HoT got confirmed that there would be challenging group content

Heard it before. What is hard is subjective and considering the people they target to market the game to …

Morfedel.4165:

Nomad would be viable if they had foes that hit really, REALLY hard, or if they had attacks that were unavoidable or something.

Just as high defensive characters pay for their build by being very low dps, very offensive builds should pay for their build with being under much greater threat.

So far that’s just not true in most cases.

We have a TON of mobs that hit really, really hard….. The irony is that Nomad’s doesn’t do enough in that situation to mitigate it properly.

The Defense/HP increase and healing from Nomads only makes sense if you’re being attacked by high attack rate, pressure style attacks, but have low DPS overall. The reason this doesn’t work properly at the moment, is that the mobs that do utilize it (Karka, Mordrem and Dredge) are balanced for 1v1 combat, so they retain very high base power or still unreasonably high coefficients on those attacks. So when they scale up, or appear in numbers greater then 3, the resulting DPS instantly overwhelms the difference gained by running Nomads, and you die anyway.

Theres actually a minimum effective health that lets you eat 2 vollys of these kind of attacks; but its requires an almost unreasonably large amount of defense to obtain this. Warriors have the least difficulty reaching it due to their high base HP and heavy armor (generally at the threshold to survive one spike). But for most other classes, you’re significantly short of having enough Eff HP to survive 1 volly without boons or modifiers.

So when the meta tries to makes assessments of PvE, PvP and most of WvW, its centered almost entirely around spike damage and damage negation.

starlinvf.1358:

We have a TON of mobs that hit really, really hard….. The irony is that Nomad’s doesn’t do enough in that situation to mitigate it properly.

Yeah… being 2 shotted in full Nomad is kinda depressing.

Morfedel.4165:

Nomad would be viable if they had foes that hit really, REALLY hard, or if they had attacks that were unavoidable or something.

Just as high defensive characters pay for their build by being very low dps, very offensive builds should pay for their build with being under much greater threat.

So far that’s just not true in most cases.

False.

It appears not to be true because we’ve had 3 years to perfect and improve our ability to stay alive – to learn boss tells, encounters, AI behavior and everything else.

In the current content things don’t appear hard because you have experienced players running the content.

If we were exposed to new content I guarantee you most players would be unable to zerk.

The threat is there for new players even today and was there for everyone at launch .The problem is that given thousands of attempts at said content through trial and error the threat goes away since people learn and adapt.

Harper.4173:

Morfedel.4165:

Nomad would be viable if they had foes that hit really, REALLY hard, or if they had attacks that were unavoidable or something.

Just as high defensive characters pay for their build by being very low dps, very offensive builds should pay for their build with being under much greater threat.

So far that’s just not true in most cases.

False.

It appears not to be true because we’ve had 3 years to perfect and improve our ability to stay alive – to learn boss tells, encounters, AI behavior and everything else.

In the current content things don’t appear hard because you have experienced players running the content.

If we were exposed to new content I guarantee you most players would be unable to zerk.

The threat is there for new players even today and was there for everyone at launch .The problem is that given thousands of attempts at said content through trial and error the threat goes away since people learn and adapt.

Hence we need a new approach. The reason PvP and roaming in WvW are so popular and wearing full zerk is more risky there is due to the fact that your opponents think.

Way back in the beta days enemies in PvE would dodge and get out of the aoe circles occasionally, but many complained that it was to hard for them. I personally long for those days back and I am a self confessed filthy casual. I still hold out a minor thread of hope that the new AI will be implemented world wide and not just in the new areas; but that is most likely a pipe dream.

There are people out there who will complain and shout for nerfs and ‘rebalancing’ as soon as they have to put effort into killing a foe. I would welcome challenging content, but I somehow have doubts that this content will stay that way.

@Tommy – there’s a fine line between players and PvE AI. Too much challenge and the mobs of casual players turn to the forums crying and quit the game.

There’s a reason people who prefer the ultimate challenge in combat turn to PvP and WvW while others prefer to mass zerg world bosses and afk-farm silverwastes.

I don’t think your average GW2 player wants to be challenged a great deal. He may think that he does – but I think that real challenge would turn off a lot of the players who play this casually-oriented game.

Most players want to be challenged – but the real working definition of challenge is “so hard that I still win”. Most players want to be “challenged”… Very, very few players want to be beaten. Or to have to try again. Or to improve when faced with adversity.

Its the invisible, but incredibly deep divide between players that after overcoming a new encounter on the first try say to themselves “I’m so awesome!” and “Got it first try… why am I even doing something so incredibly dull?”

ANet has correctly identified which group plays their bills.

Most players want to be challenged – sure – I can agree with you but not always. In fact I’m going to assume it’s a minority of times. People who use this game to destress and wind down prefer a more relaxed and chilled attitude where they don’t have to perform all the time.

They want the illusion of having done something hard but actually what they’ve done is easy. That’s what fuels their empowerment fantasy that they’re this kitten character that does this and that and beats stuff with his shiny swords and whatnot.

I can’t wait to see how the “hardcore” content is going to be handled.

Kurogami.9210:

There are people out there who will complain and shout for nerfs and ‘rebalancing’ as soon as they have to put effort into killing a foe. I would welcome challenging content, but I somehow have doubts that this content will stay that way.

This. People always ask for challenging content, but then said content is barely played until everyone can do it. I guess it’s human nature to some extent, but as long as I’m interested in what I am doing, I personally don’t care if its “hard” or not.

But that doesn’t make me demand that all content be “easy” either. That said… I hope you guys get your challenging content and then do it quick before it’s nerfed to heck.

So all they did is repeated that hard content is coming without any solid information yet as to what the hard content is going to be. Or how much. You know, based on the current info (from the forums, I don’t bother watching their marketing unless something peaks my interest), they could add one level 90 mob in the corner of a map, make it a group event and call it a day. Heck, if they give it some of the right mechanics it might even be impossible to simply dps down.

If this makes it “confirmed”, then it was “confirmed” quite a while ago when they announced it would have “challenging group content”. Perking my interest for nothing is cruel.

Harper.4173:

Most players want to be challenged – sure – I can agree with you but not always. In fact I’m going to assume it’s a minority of times. People who use this game to destress and wind down prefer a more relaxed and chilled attitude where they don’t have to perform all the time.

They want the illusion of having done something hard but actually what they’ve done is easy. That’s what fuels their empowerment fantasy that they’re this kitten character that does this and that and beats stuff with his shiny swords and whatnot.

I can’t wait to see how the “hardcore” content is going to be handled.

People want to be entertained. Its pretty hard to make something really really easy entertaining.

That said if the difficulty feels impossible many wont be entertained. This isnt to say they must suceed, but they have to feel like success is attainable.

There are many tricky elements in achieving this. I dont think this game gets it right that often.

Evans.6347:

My thought is that talk is cheap. I might get excited if I see what this is actually going to be.

At least, more things to do is always better I suppose.

“Talk is cheap” fully agree with that OP. Problem is WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT EVEN MEANS. Anet is walking a fine line when it comes to this topic. They mess up, the results would be pretty bad (heavy understatement.) They have to present more than “here’s a boss, mobs, whatever” and all it takes is the typical stacking in a corner dps race we suffered for 3 years now. I’m kinda worried since they haven’t been talking about changes to AI (This includes ranger pets, Necro minions and boss/trash mobs) as we’d like but hey, we don’t know yet.

Kurogami.9210:

There are people out there who will complain and shout for nerfs and ‘rebalancing’ as soon as they have to put effort into killing a foe. I would welcome challenging content, but I somehow have doubts that this content will stay that way.

Remember the Days after Release where the Forum was flooded with " Everything too hard"? Even though 99% of the Players were used to traditional MMO thinking ( which is still getting you killed ), didn’t even know how the Classes worked ( the most important thing ), weren’t doing Dungeons at Lvl 80 and had kitten Gear ( a few greens most blues and even some white stuff ) most People on the Forums were demanding Nerfs to the Dungeons.

I also remember two other Things. Getting killed in the Starting Zones because didn’t utilized the Mechanics back in the Beta ( Yes, it was rather Easy to be killed by Mobs in the Starting Zones in the Beta ). And Mobs did dodge out of the AOE Circles but we ahd enough People saying that this would make AOE Skills useless.

And during Season 2 there still were " Things are too hard" Threads popping up and this time the OPs were rather hostile against the ones who didn’t had much Problems with the Stuff and let’s be honest. Season 2 wasn’t that much more difficult than the Stuff we already know, yes it wasn’t that easy but still on the easy average to above average side.

And yes Hard Content means, failing and getting killed, but it also means learning from Mistakes and finally succeeding the Challenge and having a great Feeling that you have accoplished something.
Should the Open World be really hard? Not really, some really hard Parts of the Open World would be nice but this is the Place where every PVEler is plaing.
Should the Dungeons or Raids ( if they are coming ) be hard? Of Course and with fitting Rewards like enough Gold and a reaonable Loot Table with Skins that you can’t get anywhere else.

But how to make things harder and more Challenging? Well having a better AI who can react to our actions would be a good start. Also Encounters should play much more with Mechanics we use and introduce more Mechanics. Things like our Dodge Rolls. Having Mechanics that work with our Dodges would be nice, like a Dodge on the Right time triggering something that Debuffes a Boss and at the wrong Time hindering us in some way.

The Combat System of GW2 has great Potential, Anet only need to use it.^^

Walhalla.5473:

Remember the Days after Release where the Forum was flooded with " Everything too hard"? Even though 99% of the Players were used to traditional MMO thinking ( which is still getting you killed ), didn’t even know how the Classes worked ( the most important thing ), weren’t doing Dungeons at Lvl 80 and had kitten Gear ( a few greens most blues and even some white stuff ) most People on the Forums were demanding Nerfs to the Dungeons.

And those nerfs did happen. Which is one of the reasons why those dungeons feel easier now (they really are easier).

Walhalla.5473:

I also remember two other Things. Getting killed in the Starting Zones because didn’t utilized the Mechanics back in the Beta ( Yes, it was rather Easy to be killed by Mobs in the Starting Zones in the Beta ). And Mobs did dodge out of the AOE Circles but we ahd enough People saying that this would make AOE Skills useless.

Yeah, the mobs were tougher then, and were made easier (by, among other things, dumbing their AI). If that didn’t happen you’d still have new players getting killed by the score in the starting zones.
Wait, you wouldn’t, because there would be much fewer new players than there are now.

Walhalla.5473:

Season 2 wasn’t that much more difficult than the Stuff we already know, yes it wasn’t that easy but still on the easy average to above average side.

Hint: half of the game population has skills below average.

Walhalla.5473:

And yes Hard Content means, failing and getting killed, but it also means learning from Mistakes and finally succeeding the Challenge and having a great Feeling that you have accoplished something.

Not everyone has the same potential. There are people with lower than yours reaction time and manual coordination. If you tweak the content so it’s hard (in the way you specified) for you, those people will not be able to do it no matter how hard they will try. If you balance the content so it’s hard to them, it won’t be hard for you. And if we balance it for the people that are way better than you are, you won’t be able to finish it ever.

Hint nr 2: significant percentage of player population finds Ascalonian catacombs path 3 to be hard. I’m talking about level 80 fully geared in exotics characters. No, i’m not kidding (i didn’t want to believe it at first too).

So, when creating that difficult content, at what percentage of game population should Anet aim it? What percentage should that content exclude? For what percentage should it be not hard enough?

I wonder, did you think about those questions at all?

Well one of two things will happen now: people will ignore the ‘hard’ content or they’ll complain about it.

Maybe both.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Well one of two things will happen now: people will ignore the ‘hard’ content or they’ll complain about it.

Maybe both.

Well if there’s no rewards, people might try it once and then forget it ever existed. If the raids (assuming it’s raids) put some really cool armor and weapon skins that people will want and that can only be obtained by grouping up and doing that content, I think you could get a healthy PvE community.

But yeah, as soon as you put something hard, there’s going to be complains. And there’s probably going to be a lot of cold-showered zerkers in the angry crowd.

(laugh) Apparently, if you think raids help create a healthy PvE community, you’ve never been in a World of Warcraft guild where the need for new gear and bigger egos rule the roost. -100 DKP for you!

-shudder-

Now it’s a definite pass for me. Thanks Argent Dawn.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

(laugh) Apparently, if you think raids help create a healthy PvE community, you’ve never been in a World of Warcraft guild where the need for new gear and bigger egos rule the roost. -100 DKP for you!

-shudder-

Now it’s a definite pass for me. Thanks Argent Dawn.

Funny because “zerk or gtfo” is all this game’s high-end PvE is these days so when it comes to big ego rules I can’t think of anything worse.

I currently play WoW, even despite the trainwreck that is WoD, and I am the main tank of a very successful semi-casual raiding guild so I know what raids do to a PvE community.

Bringing challenging raids that take time to plan out and make up strategies for, while keeping GW’s tradition of “no gear treadmill, all gear’s cosmetic” is the best thing that could happen to revive this game’s grouped PvE.

Decrypter.1785:

just watched the POI and Colin confirmed hard group content is coming in HOT , he also confirmed that group content with all dps is a NOT what they’re looking for . I welcome this , whats your thoughts ?

So we’ll see more bundle phases a la TT in HoT. Yay?

Challenging content or not, the players will eventually come up with the optimal set and build for everything. I just hope it won’t come to “no ranger, no necro, no engi, no thief” as these professions I would see less useful (at this time) in a setting where dps isn’t everything. And I don’t want to see “ele guard war only”. It’s been going on for too long already as it is and this (defective) mentality is just spreading. I can’t imagine what necro and engi mains think having been left out for so long. Getting kicked out of a group based on profession sucks, it used to be like that for thief too so I know how it feels.

If indeed they will bring forth content that isn’t based on the current zerker meta, they better have some pretty solid support ideas for all the professions and not just the usual three professions (ele, war, guard) and the occasional mesmer.

Sounds like more one shot mechanics and bosses with insanely high health pools.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Well one of two things will happen now: people will ignore the ‘hard’ content or they’ll complain about it.

Maybe both.

Both. Assuming the content is indeed hard, but actually doable, there will be people for whose it would be too hard, and there would definitely be people that would still find it a cakewalk.

…and knowing Anet’s attitude towards the rewards, they won’t be worth the effort for sure.

phys.7689:

Harper.4173:

Most players want to be challenged – sure – I can agree with you but not always. In fact I’m going to assume it’s a minority of times. People who use this game to destress and wind down prefer a more relaxed and chilled attitude where they don’t have to perform all the time.

They want the illusion of having done something hard but actually what they’ve done is easy. That’s what fuels their empowerment fantasy that they’re this kitten character that does this and that and beats stuff with his shiny swords and whatnot.

I can’t wait to see how the “hardcore” content is going to be handled.

People want to be entertained. Its pretty hard to make something really really easy entertaining.

That said if the difficulty feels impossible many wont be entertained. This isnt to say they must suceed, but they have to feel like success is attainable.

There are many tricky elements in achieving this. I dont think this game gets it right that often.

Considering the game is still around after 3 years, I would say it nails it. I’m not going to pretend to know how many players or revenues GW2 has, etc… but if the owners/shareholders of Anet haven’t pulled their cash out yet, whatever the game ’doesn’t get right’, it’s clearly working from a business POV.

I don’t think HoT is going to be harder than Vanilla. It’s just going to be the same level of difficult but in a different way. Really, I don’t think the question is if HoT should be harder or easier, but if it does something different. Perhaps getting away from predictable fights and active defenses … I don’t think the people that play this game really want something much harder, just something different.

If the dps is what causes the healing then there’s no issue. You’re still doing dmg and still supporting.

But yeah, we need much more difficult content.

Decrypter.1785:

just watched the POI and Colin confirmed hard group content is coming in HOT , he also confirmed that group content with all dps is a NOT what they’re looking for . I welcome this , whats your thoughts ?

Link or lier,,, yeah lier not liar

Knighthonor.4061:

Decrypter.1785:

just watched the POI and Colin confirmed hard group content is coming in HOT , he also confirmed that group content with all dps is a NOT what they’re looking for . I welcome this , whats your thoughts ?

Link or lier,,, yeah lier not liar

No need, it’s nothing new – they said there will be challenging group content since the HoT reveal. They’ve also been saying they are aiming at more group diversity for at least two years now. Not that it changed much – after all, they have also been quite insistent that it doesn’t mean they want all dps groups to become unviable. And if you remember, the previous time they were talking about challenging group content, we got Teq.

So, basically, nothing has changed, nothing new was announced, we can move on.

Astralporing.1957:

Knighthonor.4061:

Decrypter.1785:

just watched the POI and Colin confirmed hard group content is coming in HOT , he also confirmed that group content with all dps is a NOT what they’re looking for . I welcome this , whats your thoughts ?

Link or lier,,, yeah lier not liar

No need, it’s nothing new – they said there will be challenging group content since the HoT reveal. They’ve also been saying they are aiming at more group diversity for at least two years now. Not that it changed much – after all, they have also been quite insistent that it doesn’t mean they want all dps groups to become unviable. And if you remember, the previous time they were talking about challenging group content, we got Teq.

So, basically, nothing has changed, nothing new was announced, we can move on.

Nothing new has been announced because they haven’t covered the challenging content in detail yet. That’s the only reason nothing new has been announced.

It’s like saying that the ranger isn’t getting an elite specialization because we haven’t had detail on it yet.

I strongly suspect when we get the detail, it will indeed be something new.

Vayne.8563:

Nothing new has been announced because they haven’t covered the challenging content in detail yet. That’s the only reason nothing new has been announced.

It’s like saying that the ranger isn’t getting an elite specialization because we haven’t had detail on it yet.

I strongly suspect when we get the detail, it will indeed be something new.

That’s possible, of course, i was addressing the OP however – the “hard content confirmed” OP is refering to is no more confirmed now than it was when Anet said there will be “challenging group content” at the HoT reveal. There’s absolutely no new info beyond that.

So, to use your example, what OP is doing is the equivalent of saying “ranger elite specialization confirmed! hypehype!”. Yes, it is – and has been for half a year already.

Well, the “ranger elite spec” is actually way more concrete info than “challenging group content”. The second is way more undefined term and can mean almost anything. It can be raids, but it can also be “synchronized swimming” minigame with leaderboards for all we know.

Astralporing.1957:

it can also be “synchronized swimming” minigame with leaderboards for all we know.

Finally some use for all these swimming speed boosters.

Walhalla.5473:

Kurogami.9210:

There are people out there who will complain and shout for nerfs and ‘rebalancing’ as soon as they have to put effort into killing a foe. I would welcome challenging content, but I somehow have doubts that this content will stay that way.

Remember the Days after Release where the Forum was flooded with " Everything too hard"? Even though 99% of the Players were used to traditional MMO thinking ( which is still getting you killed ), didn’t even know how the Classes worked ( the most important thing ), weren’t doing Dungeons at Lvl 80 and had kitten Gear ( a few greens most blues and even some white stuff ) most People on the Forums were demanding Nerfs to the Dungeons.

I also remember two other Things. Getting killed in the Starting Zones because didn’t utilized the Mechanics back in the Beta ( Yes, it was rather Easy to be killed by Mobs in the Starting Zones in the Beta ). And Mobs did dodge out of the AOE Circles but we ahd enough People saying that this would make AOE Skills useless.

And during Season 2 there still were " Things are too hard" Threads popping up and this time the OPs were rather hostile against the ones who didn’t had much Problems with the Stuff and let’s be honest. Season 2 wasn’t that much more difficult than the Stuff we already know, yes it wasn’t that easy but still on the easy average to above average side.

And yes Hard Content means, failing and getting killed, but it also means learning from Mistakes and finally succeeding the Challenge and having a great Feeling that you have accoplished something.
Should the Open World be really hard? Not really, some really hard Parts of the Open World would be nice but this is the Place where every PVEler is plaing.
Should the Dungeons or Raids ( if they are coming ) be hard? Of Course and with fitting Rewards like enough Gold and a reaonable Loot Table with Skins that you can’t get anywhere else.

But how to make things harder and more Challenging? Well having a better AI who can react to our actions would be a good start. Also Encounters should play much more with Mechanics we use and introduce more Mechanics. Things like our Dodge Rolls. Having Mechanics that work with our Dodges would be nice, like a Dodge on the Right time triggering something that Debuffes a Boss and at the wrong Time hindering us in some way.

The Combat System of GW2 has great Potential, Anet only need to use it.^^

I remember when we used to consider subject alpha hard.