Guild Wars 2

And yet many people got to HoT content even solo and had little or no trouble. There have been harder areas in the game. Some of the achievements in Living Story Season 2 are quite hard. Triple Threat is quite hard. The TA Aetherblade path dungeon is pretty hard. High level fractals have existed for a long time.

The change in difficulty is greater to people who didn’t avail themselves of the game.

Also Frostgorge sound in the last zone to have hearts. None of the three end game zones in Orr have hearts at all. Southsun Cove didn’t have hearts. Drytop has no Hearts. Silverwastes has no hearts.

Which means the three last zones of the game, and every zone introduced since launch has no hearts. This stuff is already in the game. The same game you’ve been playing.

The problem is people avoided difficult content and expected level 80 content to be faceroll.

Most of the difficulty in HoT comes from knowing your enemy and thinking strategically. There are other areas in the game that demand this.

If all you’ve done is run the champ train in queensdale or if you’ve leveled mostly in an EoTm train, of course you’re going to be destroyed by things, The less harder content you’ve done, the more HoT will kill you but then many of us didn’t have those problems.

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

I haven’t tried it yet but this overly obsessive push to make everything super hard for the sake of it, isn’t fun at all, i do not need insane challenges in my gaming experience, i play games to relax not be assaulted by frustration..

This does not bode well with me if they are going this direction in the story, i’ll see how it plays out but i might just drop the game again, tired of getting killed pointlessly all the time.. in the name of “Challenge”.

If i wanted Dark Souls gameplay i’d play Dark Souls.

Dante.1508:

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

I haven’t tried it yet but this overly obsessive push to make everything super hard for the sake of it, isn’t fun at all, i do not need insane challenges in my gaming experience, i play games to relax not be assaulted by frustration..

This does not bode well with me if they are going this direction in the story, i’ll see how it plays out but i might just drop the game again, tired of getting killed pointlessly all the time.. in the name of “Challenge”.

If i wanted Dark Souls gameplay i’d play Dark Souls.

The story itself isn’t particularly hard. Traveling through the zones is harder…but it’s not as hard as some people make it out to be. We’ve seen more than one post of peoples scared of the new zones who tried it and wondered what the big deal was.

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

I haven’t tried it yet but this overly obsessive push to make everything super hard for the sake of it, isn’t fun at all, i do not need insane challenges in my gaming experience, i play games to relax not be assaulted by frustration..

This does not bode well with me if they are going this direction in the story, i’ll see how it plays out but i might just drop the game again, tired of getting killed pointlessly all the time.. in the name of “Challenge”.

If i wanted Dark Souls gameplay i’d play Dark Souls.

The story itself isn’t particularly hard. Traveling through the zones is harder…but it’s not as hard as some people make it out to be. We’ve seen more than one post of peoples scared of the new zones who tried it and wondered what the big deal was.

I’m going to try it today, so i’ll update my posts accordingly.

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

This is how I felt when I first started playing HoT maps. It felt like I was playing an entirely different game, and my friends bascially had the same experience. It’s a lot less relaxing for me than the previous maps. What was hard at first, I eventually adjusted to, though I don’t really consider the difficulty level of Season 2 and HoT story instances to be nearly as enjoyable as the core storyline instances.

When I’m focusing on a story instance, I want to be focused on the story, not on redoing everything all the time due to dying so much or needing to be overly careful so as not to die and start all over. That’s my playstyle. HoT isn’t hard for me any longer so much as it’s gotten very tedious because I think the systems used are really, really grindy. I’m just tired of the grind in HoT maps at the moment.

wrathmagik.3518:

I"m fairly good at games.

Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

Pick one please. Only one

wrathmagik.3518:

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

That’s nothing new. No Level 80 Map had

• Cursed Shore
• Southsun Cove
• Dry Top
• The Silverwastes

hearts.

Shylock.4653:

wrathmagik.3518:

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

That’s nothing new. No Level 80 Map had

• Cursed Shore
• Southsun Cove
• Dry Top
• The Silverwastes

hearts.

I wouldn’t have minded having hearts on level 80 maps. I think it would be fun and would give maps more content to play.

Well lack of hearts does make sense, given the hostility of the jungle. Hell we did have heart quest givers die quite often due to events going out of control (especially shiverpeaks’s first map lionguard outpost), but in maguuma all heart givers would be dead nearly all the time, given even hylek village isn’t safe.

HoT is not hard.

Anything new is hard.

Play HoT for 2 months – then come back and let me know if you are still finding HoT Hard.

Players found Silverwaste too hard when it was released – now no-one is struggling in Silverwastes.

Players found Upgraded TEQ too hard when it was released – now its faceroll.

It just takes you a while to adjust to a different type of content – complaints are valid if you are still struggling 3-4 months later whilst playing HoT Exclusivly or have 100 hrs experience in the HoT Maps. Your experience will be very different.

I also find different toons/builds work more effectively than others. My Necro is literally face-rolling all over HoT.

TPMN.1483:

Players found Silverwaste too hard when it was released – now no-one is struggling in Silverwastes.

Mobs were nerfed, and due to elite specs players got a buff.

TPMN.1483:

Players found Upgraded TEQ too hard when it was released – now its faceroll.

Due to several serious nerfs, general power creep and megaserver supplying numbers that the original upgraded version didn’t have.

It’s funny how often in those kinds of arguments people tend to ignore that the content they are bringing up was harder before.

If you’re a capable player (or a player who doesn’t want to wipe every five minutes), you definitely start to adjust to HoT’s difficulty level. It doesn’t make it fun, in my opinion. It just becomes like every other map, only more tedious to traverse. It sucks to settle into doing events or helping people with hero point challenges when you have to run through a gauntlet of hyper-aggressive mobs no matter what direction you go in- slowing you down if you’re on foot and rendering waypointing impossible.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

<snip> but in maguuma all heart givers would be dead nearly all the time, given even hylek village isn’t safe.

That might sum up nicely the problem with open world HoT.

Batelle.1680:

If you’re a capable player (or a player who doesn’t want to wipe every five minutes), you definitely start to adjust to HoT’s difficulty level. It doesn’t make it fun, in my opinion. It just becomes like every other map, only more tedious to traverse. It sucks to settle into doing events or helping people with hero point challenges when you have to run through a gauntlet of hyper-aggressive mobs no matter what direction you go in- slowing you down if you’re on foot and rendering waypointing impossible.

This is my experience is well. IMO, the open world is not where we should see dramatic spikes in difficulty. It goes back to Arena’s bad paradigm of trying to make the open world work for everything when instances are usually a much better wrapper for any kind of non-casual content.

One of the main reasons there’s argument over the difficulty of HoT revolves around the exceptionally poor class balance in the game. Some classes are just way, way easier to solo content with than others. I run Thief and Warrior mainly, and the warrior is far more faceroll-capable than the Thief is. I am flabbergasted at how frequently my Thief is destroyed by the same content that my warrior can just rip through like paper.

I don’t think the HoT maps are bad, per se. They were well designed for what they were trying to accomplish. They just need to be recalibrated a bit.

During the first beta, Hot WAS harder too.
Now is… challenging.
I understand some people want to simply run form an event to another without having to care for the rest of the creatures in the map. Well, while it seems more convenient that way, I think is quite better to have to learn how to confront the hostile environment.

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

Ive already got a massive post about this called “there was a time guild wars 2 was casual friendly” reflecting most of what you’ve already said, the problem was that A-net went and pulled a 180% on their community.

A small margin of the community wanted “challenging” content for groups while everyone else was fine farming silverwastes and doing things at a leisurely pace. Then A-net decided the best thing to do would be copy-paste the silverwastes 4 different times in 4 seperate zones, create group oriented content that literally “forced” you at times to group up to kill enemies (skill challenges spring to mind) at launch it was a nightmare, they toned some of it down but its still rediculasly hard.

Honestly I blame A-net for doing 4 things wrong with HoT:

We didnt need 4 more Silverwastes

The obvious one is that having 4 zones that have the same premise of contribution to a greater objective just doesnt work, Tarir was farmed the most because it was the easiest of the four, with Dragons Stand being a nightmare to get into due to its timer, and almost “No one” even trying the Chak in Tangled Depths for a long time because it was downright impossible to micromanage.

I personally feel A-net did a very poor job of giving this “linear” zone design any meaning, each zone has no real explorable path since its, start at point A, go to point B, repeat.

The zones demand far too much focus on commanders which was all but killed when they introduced raiding since everyones focus was on the raid after that, making it even more impossible to micromanage 4 seperate world boss zones.

I suggest simply removing the octovine from Tarir and making it a relaxing hub to go to, and to remove the Chak Gereant from Tangled Depths as the zone is already complex enough as it is.

By narrowing the number of zones in HoT with contribution to just 2, you remove the unnecessary chaos of massive group content eating away time for hours, it lets some zones feel more relaxing to explore at ones own leisure while others can feel more dangerous in contrast.

Raiding Killed the open world raid

Raiding has more or less destroyed the entire reason for ‘anyone’ to do zone wide map contribution anymore, and with there already being so many world maps across old Tyria and now HoT that require commander raids with WvW sized groups it just makes it impossible to coordinate any group content effectivly.

Raiding is not a healthy thing for Gw2’s massive world content and just frankly needs to go all together, I suggest nerfing the new raid into a new 5 man dungeon and leaving it at that.

No matter what a loud spoken minority of the playerbase says that “enjoys” raiding, the majority do not and its killing the game, creating a very toxic and elitist community and removing that “friendliness” Gw2 boasted about during HoT’s announcement.

Simply put: Remove raiding all together, and never bring it back.

Guild Wars 2’s Catastrophic E-sport push

This isnt working, its never going to work, please stop, Season 1 was barley watched a few months ago to the point that one team rage quit, and the views were so minute that an average league player playing league of legends was getting more attention than the entirety of the E-sport tournament.

I dont know why A-net wastes so much funding on a project like this, its not working, its a waste of money and its pushing them into a nasty corner they cant walk back out of.

Give up on the E-sport thing it will “never” work for GW2 because it just doesnt have enough of a dedicated pvp community to ‘care’.

WvW is an absoleute mess

Again, as E-sports became the focus it took away from the core feature of gw2 that made it so great, massive world content where entire servers battle for dominance and inspire community driven efforts to conquer entire areas together as one massive cluster storm of chaotic grandeose heroic battles.

Gw2 was meant to be great, not small, the scale was meant to be massive, not tiny, world content is more important than raiding and pvp, and always has been, the world vs world community, and the world content communtiy are the majority of this playerbase and always have been.

The small minority of E-sport pvpers and raiders has never been anything more than an afterthought that few if anyone actually cares to cater for.

So just stop giving them “anything” alltogether and focus instead on upping the scale of the world, and the explorability, the enjoyment of great armies fighting terrible dragons, and sitting back to have a laugh watching the amazing views of Tyria.

DoctorDing.5890:

So are you saying that you are here because you like it easy too?

I’m currently playing 5 mmorpgs at the same time. I play gw2 because:
a) awesome features. From gliding, fluent combat to quality of life things such as waypoints or store every material in the bank in 1 click
b)this game has by far the most balanced PvP I’ve ever experienced in the past 12 years. Mainly because it’s skill to win, not level&gear2win
c)story is awesome

I’m not fully committed to this game because the casual nature of the game makes gw2 lack any grind whatsoever, and for whatever reason, I need to grind in a game, or I’m not happy.

Raizen.7981:

. Black Desert Online? Don’t buy it. You won’t reach level 5.

I started laughing and stopped reading right here!

I reached level 15 in BDO in about an hour.

Celtic Lady.3729:

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

This is how I felt when I first started playing HoT maps. It felt like I was playing an entirely different game, and my friends bascially had the same experience. It’s a lot less relaxing for me than the previous maps. What was hard at first, I eventually adjusted to, though I don’t really consider the difficulty level of Season 2 and HoT story instances to be nearly as enjoyable as the core storyline instances.

When I’m focusing on a story instance, I want to be focused on the story, not on redoing everything all the time due to dying so much or needing to be overly careful so as not to die and start all over. That’s my playstyle. HoT isn’t hard for me any longer so much as it’s gotten very tedious because I think the systems used are really, really grindy. I’m just tired of the grind in HoT maps at the moment.

Yes me and my other want to enjoy the game and have time to enjoy the game. But everytime you go anywhere in HOT you aggro 30 mobs and run into a champion.

Its easier now but its still not nearly as fun as the original game.

Einlanzer.1627:

Batelle.1680:

If you’re a capable player (or a player who doesn’t want to wipe every five minutes), you definitely start to adjust to HoT’s difficulty level. It doesn’t make it fun, in my opinion. It just becomes like every other map, only more tedious to traverse. It sucks to settle into doing events or helping people with hero point challenges when you have to run through a gauntlet of hyper-aggressive mobs no matter what direction you go in- slowing you down if you’re on foot and rendering waypointing impossible.

This is my experience is well. IMO, the open world is not where we should see dramatic spikes in difficulty. It goes back to Arena’s bad paradigm of trying to make the open world work for everything when instances are usually a much better wrapper for any kind of non-casual content.

One of the main reasons there’s argument over the difficulty of HoT revolves around the exceptionally poor class balance in the game. Some classes are just way, way easier to solo content with than others. I run Thief and Warrior mainly, and the warrior is far more faceroll-capable than the Thief is. I am flabbergasted at how frequently my Thief is destroyed by the same content that my warrior can just rip through like paper.

I don’t think the HoT maps are bad, per se. They were well designed for what they were trying to accomplish. They just need to be recalibrated a bit.

This is very true. I know alot of guildies that won’t take certain classes into HOT.

wrathmagik.3518:

Raizen.7981:

. Black Desert Online? Don’t buy it. You won’t reach level 5.

I started laughing and stopped reading right here!

I reached level 15 in BDO in about an hour.

That was a joke. Seriously, get in a hardcore guild. Every relevant farming area after 50 is dominated by huge guilds. If you try to get close to a world boss you’ll get PKed immediately.

Ardid.7203:

During the first beta, Hot WAS harder too.
Now is… challenging.

I understand some people want to simply run form an event to another without having to care for the rest of the creatures in the map. Well, while it seems more convenient that way, I think is quite better to have to learn how to confront the hostile environment.

I imagine most people want to be able to run from an event to another, because that’s how you get anything done. I mean, the maps are geared towards meta events and having to group to do HP challenges (which is where the rewards are) and at their current levels, the “rest of the creatures of the map” are an active barrier to doing what you’re supposed to be doing on the map. If they were designed solely as a survival of the fittest type thing with no incentives to being in a certain place at a certain time, then it would be a different story.

It’s not that I necessarily want to run unmolested from one event to another (although, there is that). It’s that I’d like the mob density to be lower so I can move around them and thus take my time enjoying the fabulous scenery and exploring leisurely. That’s just how I like to play.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Raiding Killed the open world raid

Raiding has more or less destroyed the entire reason for ‘anyone’ to do zone wide map contribution anymore, and with there already being so many world maps across old Tyria and now HoT that require commander raids with WvW sized groups it just makes it impossible to coordinate any group content effectivly.

Raiding is not a healthy thing for Gw2’s massive world content and just frankly needs to go all together, I suggest nerfing the new raid into a new 5 man dungeon and leaving it at that.

No matter what a loud spoken minority of the playerbase says that “enjoys” raiding, the majority do not and its killing the game, creating a very toxic and elitist community and removing that “friendliness” Gw2 boasted about during HoT’s announcement.

Simply put: Remove raiding all together, and never bring it back.

This rationale (what there is of it) is flawed. People who raid are most likely the people who were doing daily dungeon tours before HoT. Raids take less time than that, because of the weekly caps. If anything, raids > dungeons freed up some time during which those players might choose to do other things.

There are simpler explanations for the phenomenon you’ve outlined:

• A large percentage of the active accounts didn’t even buy HoT
• Of those that did, some of them were not the target audience
• Of the rest, some have played the content so much they’ve gotten tired of and/or gotten what they want from it
• Some players do not find a lengthy map meta a good fit for them
• Other issues have caused people to stop playing the HoT metas, like loss of participation, map closure during event completion, and DC’s
• Some of the map meta events are just not fun for some people

As far as “toxic and elitist” go, I’m seeing both less in game and less on forums since HoT hit. I think I’d like some evidence that the community is worse now, as I’ve seen plenty of complaints about both prior to HoT.

I agree with the point that we really did not need four more Silverwastes, though. That right there has split the player-base which was interested in that kind of content in the first place. That factor is most likely the biggest contributor to the issue you’re referring to.

Well i tried it today, the maps are dead, no ones in them so the events have taken over..

Everything is incredibly hard on my Ranger and well i just get insta killed by most.. Plus for some strange reason HoT gives me nasty headaches…

The “maps” are not dead. Use LFG to find a busy Silverwastes if you are in an empty one.
Don’t solo bases in SW just like you wouldn’t solo a world boss.
If your ranger is squishee, try playing on something else until you get a feel for the world.
If you absolutely insist it has to be your ranger or nothing.. change your build so you are more survivable.

General Health.9678:

The “maps” are not dead. Use LFG to find a busy Silverwastes if you are in an empty one.
Don’t solo bases in SW just like you wouldn’t solo a world boss.
If your ranger is squishee, try playing on something else until you get a feel for the world.
If you absolutely insist it has to be your ranger or nothing.. change your build so you are more survivable.

What is LFG and how do you change maps to busy ones?

The LFG – looking for group – tool is at the top left of your main screen, it’s the second symbol, it’s next to the cogs and looks like a person with two people behind them. Possibly.. You probably also have the Y key bound to it.

Click it and look for the second option, looks like people behind a magnifying glass and is called looking for group.

You should open by default on Open World Content, you can browse other options if you wish and look for a fractal or dungeon group or whatever.

For now.. on the right you will see lists of groups. Join something with sw, vw, breach, shovel, chest – those words are what you want. A lot will say j/l which means join then leave. If you join one and you are not in their instance then right click on their picture and choose “join in silverwastes”

Even if it doesn’t say j/l you may prefer to. This is fine. Then you can start playing on a busy map. Follow a zerg, look for a commander, learn the map by looking at what you need to do on wiki/dulfy/guildchat/whatever. Silverwastes has a mechanic and achievements. You need to learn one and may wish to get the other. People in map chat are usually helpful so see what is being said and see if you can figure a way to enjoy the new content.

wrathmagik.3518:

I really didn’t understand all the complaining about HOT until I played it.

I mean really, most times when people say things are “hard” (at least in my case) I can faceroll through it. I"m fairly good at games.

When I hit HOT with my other half in game, it didn’t even feel like the same game. Heres a few reasons why.

-Casual? Not anymore. Expect to die. ALOT.

-Exploration/hearts: Gone! As far as we’ve seen so far. Now you just usually get your face eaten by some rampaging champion plant dinasour.

-You can’t even take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.

---

I am not saying HOT is bad. But is certainly doesn’t feel like the game I’ve enjoyed for years.

I hope the next expansion is nothing like HOT.

Its still casual except u grind the whole time you’re on in order to do anything. basically just like before , just more of it.

• i really think there was a leadership/ direction change here, stepping away from the awesome, helpful, friendly, casual fun of the original release and more to let’s make money!!!! direction)*

You won’t die a lot unless you don’t know how to dodge, Haven’t bothered to get your masteries done which is like the very first thing you do! that first week!

There is still tons of Exploration just the hearts are phased out of these maps.
Check out your guild hall if you like exploration, but if you can’t use placeables then its lack luster and makes exploring much more difficult.
HUGE problem with scribbing currently. failed on the roll out of this imo. Of course scribbing is not a sandbox adventure for the individual as i wish it was… its about the group, so bleh… (if u aint liked by yer guild leader you screw’d)
Part of the fun of the guild hall is exploring it!
But the whole lets make it a gold sink mentality isn’t what people wanted, they wanted an place to make their own and bring the guild together not force them to donate to raise the guild level.but enough of that.

You can take a minute to take in the scenery and enjoy the game without dying most of the time.
You must not play alot. “I can faceroll through it. I”m fairly good at games."
HoT is pretty easy as far as solo play, sure there are things/ areas meant to be played with a group, but it not like you’re stepping on TRIB spikes everywhere you go in HoT.

I just think this is your initially reaction to it.
YES its an xpac that has seemed to be for the HARCORE players not casuals. Hence all the complaints. HARDCORES are a small but VOCAL group.

Vayne.8563:

And yet many people got to HoT content even solo and had little or no trouble. There have been harder areas in the game. Some of the achievements in Living Story Season 2 are quite hard. Triple Threat is quite hard. The TA Aetherblade path dungeon is pretty hard. High level fractals have existed for a long time.

The change in difficulty is greater to people who didn’t avail themselves of the game.

Also Frostgorge sound in the last zone to have hearts. None of the three end game zones in Orr have hearts at all. Southsun Cove didn’t have hearts. Drytop has no Hearts. Silverwastes has no hearts.

Which means the three last zones of the game, and every zone introduced since launch has no hearts. This stuff is already in the game. The same game you’ve been playing.

The problem is people avoided difficult content and expected level 80 content to be faceroll.

Most of the difficulty in HoT comes from knowing your enemy and thinking strategically. There are other areas in the game that demand this.

If all you’ve done is run the champ train in queensdale or if you’ve leveled mostly in an EoTm train, of course you’re going to be destroyed by things, The less harder content you’ve done, the more HoT will kill you but then many of us didn’t have those problems.

Honestly i expected new lower level maps, not all just level 80 maps. THat was a dissapointment. THere were 1 or two of a particular range that other ranges had more of. Wish they would have balanced this with an even number of lower range maps so you didn’t have to grind through the same ones over and over on your alts.

Wrathmagik means it’s a radical shift from the way the core game played. Just because something is easy for you does not make it so for everyone else. Some of the responses read like his observation is a personal insult or something.

Calm down.

Yes, I also soloed everything in HoT. But I am not unaware that it was a literal nightmare for other players who could not.

It’s Orr on crack before the nerf to the minions. And, if I had to guess, that’s coming for HoT too this spring.

Kelly.7019:

Vayne.8563:

And yet many people got to HoT content even solo and had little or no trouble. There have been harder areas in the game. Some of the achievements in Living Story Season 2 are quite hard. Triple Threat is quite hard. The TA Aetherblade path dungeon is pretty hard. High level fractals have existed for a long time.

The change in difficulty is greater to people who didn’t avail themselves of the game.

Also Frostgorge sound in the last zone to have hearts. None of the three end game zones in Orr have hearts at all. Southsun Cove didn’t have hearts. Drytop has no Hearts. Silverwastes has no hearts.

Which means the three last zones of the game, and every zone introduced since launch has no hearts. This stuff is already in the game. The same game you’ve been playing.

The problem is people avoided difficult content and expected level 80 content to be faceroll.

Most of the difficulty in HoT comes from knowing your enemy and thinking strategically. There are other areas in the game that demand this.

If all you’ve done is run the champ train in queensdale or if you’ve leveled mostly in an EoTm train, of course you’re going to be destroyed by things, The less harder content you’ve done, the more HoT will kill you but then many of us didn’t have those problems.

Honestly i expected new lower level maps, not all just level 80 maps. THat was a dissapointment. THere were 1 or two of a particular range that other ranges had more of. Wish they would have balanced this with an even number of lower range maps so you didn’t have to grind through the same ones over and over on your alts.

It’s like when Eye of the North expansion for Guild Wars 1 was released. It was all end game content. The reason for that was because there was plenty of non-challenging stuff in the game, I mean tons of it, but very little challenging stuff by comparison.

Anet was filling in the blanks so to speak. They’ve got a pretty big world, lots of easier zones and people have been asking for challenging content for a long long time.

Obviously not everyone wants challenging content, but one of the big complaints about this game was no end game. I’m assuming this expansion was meant to try to fix that.

Before I say anything, I am a wvw player through and through so what I have to say here is based on a simple observation. So take it with a grain of salt.

This game is slowly becoming a try hard game instead of what it promises, a supposed to be casual game. I don’t have to look at the population of the server. I just have to look at my casual guild. We were going 100+ people and strong ( mind you my guild consist of local people in my own country so 100+ is alot and it exist since the beginning, we held gathering sometimes ) then slowly the content asking people to equip themselves for a much harder quest like World Boss fail mode, then people starts to argue with each other, blaming each other and pointing fingers. Then when they release HoT, its still manageable but when they announce Raid and its the only way to earn legendary armor, people just give up and move on to other game.

What once a fun pve content, at least to me since I, myself plays wvw more were also playing pve for blowing off steam and reconnect with people who don’t wvw. Its just that sense of relax and while having fun with your friends doing it together kind of thing. I really hope they bring it back.

Honestly i expected new lower level maps, not all just level 80 maps. THat was a dissapointment. THere were 1 or two of a particular range that other ranges had more of. Wish they would have balanced this with an even number of lower range maps so you didn’t have to grind through the same ones over and over on your alts.

It’s like when Eye of the North expansion for Guild Wars 1 was released. It was all end game content. The reason for that was because there was plenty of non-challenging stuff in the game, I mean tons of it, but very little challenging stuff by comparison.

Anet was filling in the blanks so to speak. They’ve got a pretty big world, lots of easier zones and people have been asking for challenging content for a long long time.

Obviously not everyone wants challenging content, but one of the big complaints about this game was no end game. I’m assuming this expansion was meant to try to fix that.

Making a WoW grind session is not end game content. Or shouldn’t be.

Lower level maps can be more challenging then the ones that came before it if the scaling is done properly. And i was thinking like more variety for lvl 60-70 i think there’s only 1-2 maps of that level. of course when they add the new race “Tengu” this could be implemented better. imo most people that were bored by how easy the game was only were playing one or two toons, they didn’t explore what the game had given them. “I’m lv 80 now what” instead of “Time to try out another race/ profession and go to a different map to lvl in.”

besides if people are bored with a game after a year, they clearly aren’t taking full advantage of what the game has to offer. I hear that complaint by people who’ve only played for 3 months ALOT which is sad.

so the end game content is the grind session of DS? raids?
you could say fractals, but alot of people use that to level so….
imo PVP is good end game content, but some only do that and/or only do wvw…
end game content is kinda a joke, it really should be about fun content that fills your time, not boring grind sessions that make you stop playing the game all together (ex. pandaland in WoW.)

most mmo’s ive played including this one are more about the journey through the game not going from A-Z as fast as possible. Those that get to Z as fast as possible miss out on alot of content and then proceed to whine about there not being content.

Comradez.3759:

Before I say anything, I am a wvw player through and through so what I have to say here is based on a simple observation. So take it with a grain of salt.

This game is slowly becoming a try hard game instead of what it promises, a supposed to be casual game. I don’t have to look at the population of the server. I just have to look at my casual guild. We were going 100+ people and strong ( mind you my guild consist of local people in my own country so 100+ is alot and it exist since the beginning, we held gathering sometimes ) then slowly the content asking people to equip themselves for a much harder quest like World Boss fail mode, then people starts to argue with each other, blaming each other and pointing fingers. Then when they release HoT, its still manageable but when they announce Raid and its the only way to earn legendary armor, people just give up and move on to other game.

What once a fun pve content, at least to me since I, myself plays wvw more were also playing pve for blowing off steam and reconnect with people who don’t wvw. Its just that sense of relax and while having fun with your friends doing it together kind of thing. I really hope they bring it back.

i kinda agree. Raiding is for a small niche of people. I NEVER Was planning on doing it until i found out they stuck legendary armor there and which pretty much forces you to do content you hate. As well as forcing wvw’ers to do pve raids, which in turn draws from a larger pool of players was their idea. I hated raiding in WoW. and loved the Open world raids of Gw2. But then again the overall experince of Gw2 vanilla was positive. Slowly, the community ingame seems to be more negative on each other since HoT. The opposite of what you want to see happen.

CaptainVanguard.4925:

Raiding Killed the open world raid

Raiding has more or less destroyed the entire reason for ‘anyone’ to do zone wide map contribution anymore, and with there already being so many world maps across old Tyria and now HoT that require commander raids with WvW sized groups it just makes it impossible to coordinate any group content effectivly.

Raiding is not a healthy thing for Gw2’s massive world content and just frankly needs to go all together, I suggest nerfing the new raid into a new 5 man dungeon and leaving it at that.

No matter what a loud spoken minority of the playerbase says that “enjoys” raiding, the majority do not and its killing the game, creating a very toxic and elitist community and removing that “friendliness” Gw2 boasted about during HoT’s announcement.

Simply put: Remove raiding all together, and never bring it back.

I seriously can’t wrap my head around this statement. Open world has nothing to do with instanced content and most of the raiding guilds had a dungeon/fractal focus pre-HoT. If you think it’s all the SW chest farmers then just…lol.

Also nowhere do I see more toxicity then when a HoT map fails or when south in DS is once again failing the tower event over and over. Or would you like to blame that on raids as well? xD

But sure, even though the “majority” of the players according to you doesn’t enjoy raiding, it’s somehow destroying open world pve. #logic

Batelle.1680:

If you’re a capable player (or a player who doesn’t want to wipe every five minutes), you definitely start to adjust to HoT’s difficulty level. It doesn’t make it fun, in my opinion. It just becomes like every other map, only more tedious to traverse. It sucks to settle into doing events or helping people with hero point challenges when you have to run through a gauntlet of hyper-aggressive mobs no matter what direction you go in- slowing you down if you’re on foot and rendering waypointing impossible.

The keyword here is “Tedious”

I’m one of those people who can handle hard content but don’t like tediousness in MMO.And due to that I haven’t been in any HoT maps for almost a month.

Valdur.3607:

Batelle.1680:

If you’re a capable player (or a player who doesn’t want to wipe every five minutes), you definitely start to adjust to HoT’s difficulty level. It doesn’t make it fun, in my opinion. It just becomes like every other map, only more tedious to traverse. It sucks to settle into doing events or helping people with hero point challenges when you have to run through a gauntlet of hyper-aggressive mobs no matter what direction you go in- slowing you down if you’re on foot and rendering waypointing impossible.

The keyword here is “Tedious”

I’m one of those people who can handle hard content but don’t like tediousness in MMO.And due to that I haven’t been in any HoT maps for almost a month.

Well said my opinion as well, we play games to enjoy, not to be bored or frustrated.

I remember my very first time stepping into HoT. Yes, there were deaths, and I was getting tired of dying. So I decided to play a bit better, recognize that red target above my head is an incoming Sniper line, recognize which mobs are a high priority to kill, etc.

I don’t die nearly as much as I used to. Who knew?

I got better at it, also, especially with my necro and my ranger. But that is irrelevant, it is tedious. I will occasionally go into HOT just for the heck of it, but I won’t stay there. I certainly have no interest in finishing the story line. I have seen the videos and the fights are just a tedious chore with gimmicky mechanics. No thanks!

I got better at it also and now rarely die. But that doesn’t make the area more entertaining, or less of a chore to wade through seemingly endless numbers of overpowered level 80 mobs. If they just thin out the trash mobs to more reasonable numbers I would like the area much more. Most people don’t want to spend their time engaged in time consuming fights with trash mobs that only drop a green, if anything at all, on their way to events or when roaming around exploring.

They’re trying to create an environment. They want to simulate a harsh jungle. If you can waltz through it leisurely like you’re in Queensdale, where is the fun in that? Where is the incentive to find friends, team up, and do the chains?

They’ve really done a brilliant thing with HoT by having multiple quest chains that split the zergs and break groups down into smaller numbers.

Yes, there is apparently a large group of players that would rather do content only pressing ‘1’ and doing zero preparation at all… but HoT is geared at expanding the core game beyond where it left off… so yes, it’ll be catered towards max level toons who are looking for their next challenge after killing Zhaitan.

I just think it is unfair for a large portion of the playerbase to keep every content in the game faceroll easy. If you’re a casual then no you don’t have the same access, or same rewards as the dedicated. This is how it is in almost every game, and how it is in with anything in life. You get what you put in. But, I do have to say that GW2 has done the best job out of every mmo I’ve seen that allowing casuals to acquire things nearly on par with the dedicated. You can make 8-10g/hr just gathering nodes in mid level zones, or pressing ‘1’ at world bosses. Perhaps casual or, lazier players are spoiled by how anet has treated them…I don’t know, but other than the overpowered frogs that teleport and dodge ranged attacks nothing has stood out as overpowered.

This is from the perspective of a zerker ele main that has map completed every HoT zone.

Rivindor.7258:

I just think it is unfair for a large portion of the playerbase to keep every content in the game faceroll easy. If you’re a casual then no you don’t have the same access, or same rewards as the dedicated.

Frankly, I don’t believe “dedication” has anything to do with it. “Casual” is not an antonym for “dedicated.”

“Difficult” content has always been in the game. Looked back at Angry Joe’s review and he talked about dying so much in dungeons he and his team’s armor imploded and they were naked. Granted he’s not considered a skilled gamer by many, but a lot of those early coverage videos from nearly everyone considered dungeons to be difficult. And since then Anet has consistently brought in challenging content. Tower of Nightmares, 2nd version of Crown Pavilion, Liadri, Marionette, Triple Trouble, Tequatl had an entire server celebrating for defeating it first. “Challenging” content is nothing new to GW2 and I don’t see why Anet shouldn’t make new content “difficult”. Especially when the setting calls for it as the wild Maguuma jungle does.

If I want faceroll casual relaxing I’m glad there are many activities I can go do that in. When I’m in the mood to push myself and face a challenge, I’m glad there’s a place I can now do that as well.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Rivindor.7258:

I just think it is unfair for a large portion of the playerbase to keep every content in the game faceroll easy. If you’re a casual then no you don’t have the same access, or same rewards as the dedicated.

Frankly, I don’t believe “dedication” has anything to do with it. “Casual” is not an antonym for “dedicated.”

Eh based off the definitions I am using, it appears to be so

Casual: without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; passing:
a casual remark.

Dedication: to devote wholly and earnestly, as to some person or purpose

But this is all rhetoric and whether we use the same dictionary definitions or not, my point still stands. I do believe there are different levels of dedication. A minimal level of dedication is for example, to make it to level 80. A little higher level of dedication is learning to play well enough to conquer the HoT maps. Being wholly dedicated, is tackling the hardest content such as raids.

My point is essentially… if someone wants to pop in and one-shot things while exploring the world…GW2 sorta offers an entire world where this is the status quo. Where do we draw the line? Must expansions only offer challenges gated behind acquiring guilds/teams for raids where you must have full ascended and have access to TS etc?

I believe the answer is no. I’m mid range dedicated. I like to hop on, experience a little challenge and danger while I’m exploring, then log off after a few hours. I have no desire to grind out agony resist to spam swamp fractals, or to practice all through the night with my raid team.

What I see is a lot of hate targetted towards the ‘middle class’ so to speak, in terms of players. Casuals are fine with the elite having their content, and are only seeing things from a 0-100 point of view. What I mean is, zero danger is great, and 100(max danger) is great if its hidden away in a corner of the world. But anything in between…no bueno.

Rivindor.7258:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Rivindor.7258:

I just think it is unfair for a large portion of the playerbase to keep every content in the game faceroll easy. If you’re a casual then no you don’t have the same access, or same rewards as the dedicated.

Frankly, I don’t believe “dedication” has anything to do with it. “Casual” is not an antonym for “dedicated.”

Eh based off the definitions I am using, it appears to be so

Casual: without definite or serious intention; careless or offhand; passing:
a casual remark.

This isn’t the definition I would attribute to gaming. I’m a casual player and I’ve also been dedicated to this game for going on four years. I haven’t been careless or offhand about it. Doubt I’m the only one. So many people seem to think that casual and dedicated are mutually exclusive. I’m not one of them.

My lack of enjoyment of HoT’s challenge has nothing to do with dedication or skill and everything to do with playstyle. Again, I’m not the only one for which this is true, but I see a lot of assumptions that my opinion means I’m stupid/unskilled/lazy/mentally ill (yes, really). What it really means is I’m different from a player that happens to like this “go, go, go” environment. Neither one is better than the other.

I’m all for a game having a variety of challenge levels. This game included. Something for everyone. And this includes new content, not just old. Don’t give me the dead horse argument that I have “all of core Tyria to faceroll.” I hope in the future the game adds both challenge and more relaxing content. I think that makes sense overall.

I’d have to know what your gaming definitions of the two words are to have any meaningful discussion.

I don’t know how preferring maps with heart quests, sparse mobs, and nothing too remotely dangerous makes one stupid/mentally ill, or the thread where these assumptions are contained…

I’ve spent a lot of time in HoT and I actually didn’t find that many mobs with the exception of Tangled Depths. I mostly found big lumbering beasts that, once you learned their mechanics you could more effectively deal with. The raptors are quite easy too, and mostly just punish people who attempt to suiciderun through zones.

I would think a casual player would like to take their time, and fight their way through the zones for the first playthrough whether than rush through. That seems even more of a ‘go go go’ mentality to me than my own playstyle. Perhaps this whole time, I’m the more casual player?

Of course, after the first playthrough very little running is required once the WP’s are unlocked. I feel like a lot of assumptions are being made of my own posts so, I’ll just observe this thread after this post.

All I want to say is I enjoy the atmosphere of being in a dense jungle and having to be on my toes. I don’t think I’d be entertained if I never had to use my heal skill… and to buy an expansion where I’d likely be forced to venture through zones for story purposes that don’t offer any new challenge or learning curve would severely cut into my value gained from the expansion.

People get a bad 1st impression from hot. If you play a couple of hours you’ll adapt. And no, you won’t die a lot anymore. Also, there is a lot to do, just check the achievement tabs for each map.

Of course there is a place for more challenging and harder content. I don’t think anyone would dispute that. The issue with HoT is that it is ALL in that category. It’s a bizarre decision to launch a paid-for expansion that only targets a subset of the player base. Casual players either have not bought the xpac, or have bought it and are not playing it because they don’t enjoy it. Both of those cases have a real impact on Anet’s business, both now and with future expansions. Those players are not going to “L2P” or “git gud”. They are just going to spend less or seek an alternative game.

It’s too late now but they really needed to include some easier maps and events in the xpac. One thing’s for sure, I won’t be rushing to pre-order the next xpac.