Guild Wars 2

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think I see where you’re going with this, but I’m not sure I agree. Let’s take it from a different angle.

The gliding in the early area of the zones is supposed to be an attrition mechanic. It’s supposed to make you think before you glide. Judge distance. It makes the first zone a puzzle and adds interest to it. You think that dying is a really bad thing, but there are tons of people who play this game who don’t care if they die. In my experience, older school RPG gamers really hate dying and people who play FPS games don’t care as much because dying is expected. The idea of making it death is to make you think. It’s only a problem if you keep doing it.

But you need some gliding to get around in VB and you work on gliding and jumping mushrooms to get there.

What you don’t need in VB is nuhock wallows. But you absolutely need those in TD….without Nuhock wallows, TD is a nightmare to navigate.

The point is, the game isn’t designed so you can do zone 1 and zone 2 and zone 3 in sequence. It’s designed more holistically. You do what you can in Zone 1 and then you go to Zone 2 to do the next things you can do. There’s a mastery point in the second zone that requires poison resistance. If you don’t have it, you can sit there and wait till you get it, but why not just go to the next zone. You don’t need to get it today.

If you approach each zone from a completionist point of view, you’re making the game harder for yourself. The idea is to see something really cool, know you can’t get to it so when you can later on, it feels like an accomplishment. This is something that’s absolutely missing from the earlier zones.

My guess is completionists have a very hard time with this game anyway. Try getting every minipet or every skin. It’s just not really designed for that. The idea is to get the stuff you like hopefully it’ll be different from the stuff I like and we will then look different, have different minipets, different glider wings, different back items.

The new zones were, in my opinion, well designed, because they make you wait to get certain things. That’s intentional. It’s a design decision. It’s obviously not a design decision everyone likes

However, when I was in VB, seeing it as a puzzle, not having unlimted gliding made it more fun for me. Unlimited gliding, for me, gives me more freedom…but I had a blast figuring out the limits of where I could and couldn’t go.

To add to that, I did VB with limited gliding. Finding your way around can be hard going, you learn the map as you go. You can glide to here, bounce from here, this chopper leads to this boss, the jumping puzzle is up that away, the hero points and mastery points are waaaay over there in the middle near the bottom.

And then I have done VB with unlimited gliding. And a total game changer. I glide from completely different places now to get to say Doomteeth, or Patriarch during the day. A whole new experience due to mastery progression.

Plus it has meant I actually played the maps, did the events. I didn’t just run through to get the MPs and claim I’d won the game. I actually did the content, lots and lots of it. When I didn’t want to do any more, more gliding was the goal that encouraged me to do a bit more each time I was there.

You are right however that it’s not the difficulty that needs nerfing. You could take all the mobs out of HoT, VB would still be hard. That might be a case of tough because it is what it is. Watch the videos of people soloing their way round it and follow what they do. Do it once, never have to do it again.

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

I think that HoT misses the mark for the experienced casual player, which is really the center of the bullseye for MMO design. The modern MMO is a massive sprawling thing which should have something for everyone recognizing it has a very diverse playerbase.

Open world PvE which is the core of core content should be playable comfortably (i.e., be normally challenging) by the common casual player. It’s really what you are selling them. Challenge should be there and every MMO has it because they need to address a diverse playerbase. Usually you find challenge up to the very crushing kind in instanced play.

HoT will be nerfed further because it’s not tuned for the experienced casual player. How do I know this? Because I’ve played from the beginning. Orr was exactly analogous to HoT in terms of difficulty. There were massive quantities of mobs spawning near instantaneously that had access to near infinite hard CC. You would get CC’d, break stun, get CC’d, be released, get CC’d, …, and die. Orr feels about right now. And, HoT will eventually feel right.

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

@Indigo Sundown

In regards to HoT being so unpopulated that you won’t be able to do hero points, with the mega server technology that’s pretty unlikely to happen at least not for many years.

I don’t know how many people are playing this game at any instant, but even old servers (before the game was free to play) usually had people to help you out, no matter what time I was playing. If I tagged up and used map chat, I’d get people. Anywhere any time, almost all the time. Maybe on a rare occasion I wouldn’t …but the next time I would anyway.

Out of all the people playing at any given time, are we assuming people won’t be running the HoT zones at all?

I mean hell there’s an entire guild dedicated to running Dry Top.

If the need is there, guilds will form for that too.

And in a worst case scenario you can make a friend or join a guild. I can’t think of any point in any map I can’t three man.

If I had any confidence in ANet’s ability to fix megaservers, I might agree with you.

Seriously what major concern haven’t they fixed. It’s not a question of if…it’s a question of manpower. Did they fix culling. Sure. It took ages but they fixed it. They fixed the down hill bug that killed people. They’ve fixed stuff that’s important all along, but it takes them a long time.

I strongly suspect that the pressure they put on people to work faster means that coders don’t document their work properly due to feeling rushed. So when they leave and new people have to decipher their code it takes much much longer for them to fix it.

That doesn’t mean they’re incapable of fixing it. It means not enough attention was paid to documentation to make it faster/easier to fix. It’s like being wise with pennies but losing dollars. Documentation on coding is massively important.

But Anet’s coders are top notch. Look at how other MMOs handled maintenance and updates. Guild Wars 2 is better than almost all of them. Very little down time compared to almost every MMO I’ve played.

The programming is fine. And the famous Susan is one of the head server designers, she’s still there after 12 years.

They have plenty of ability. It just takes them a long time.

Fair enough, I’ll amend my statement to, “If I had any confidence that Anet will fix the mega-server system within a time frame where I might still want to play HoT, and in a way that might make the game more enjoyable for me, then I might agree with you.”

I’m leery of Anet’s “fixes.” Many of them have made the game worse, fixed “problems” I wasn’t having in ways that made my quality of play worse, etc. Hopefully, you’ll forgive me in thinking, as a result, that “fixing” the HoT mega-server system will work out. If they make it function as mega-server does in Core, well, that is not going to make the zones very much more accessible. I consider that the most likely outcome.

I believe that there are issues with mega-server that go beyond things like changing the number in the part of the program that checks the shard for “too low” population, or writing a subroutine that rechecks the shard as closure approaches to see if events are being progressed. It may be that the inability to choose shards (as was available in GW) is not possible with the technology they’ve used for the game. I believe that a better solution would be to scale the various events for a smaller “minimum needed” would be a better solution which would not require the whole taxi business — which works (for me) sporadically at best. If Anet went that route, I’d be happy — and very much surprised.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head. Loud whooshing sound and all. I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone. So I have to remain pretty stationary. That’s pretty deadly in HoT. It’s also pretty deadly in Cursed Shore sometimes.

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me, so I don’t. I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head. Loud whooshing sound and all. I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone. So I have to remain pretty stationary. That’s pretty deadly in HoT. It’s also pretty deadly in Cursed Shore sometimes.

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me, so I don’t. I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

I disagree wholeheartedly. To actually see someone play the game would give a great insight into why someone fails. The best way to see what my students were having difficulty with was to have them work out a few problems as I watched, and then I could spot the mental mistakes that they were making. With videogames, it is not that different. The mental barriers are plainly visible.

This isn’t a Lupi solo, where you need to take a long series of flawless actions to succeed. You don’t need to be that good at the game. For the vast majority of enemies, there’s a simple one or two step trick that you need to follow that lets you beat them. Most of the time it boils down to the exact same thing: when the enemy does a super big and dangerous attack, step out of the way.

Seera.5916:

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

I believe videos are the way to go here. You don’t have to make your own, just watch someone else’s. I’m too old to let myself be frustrated because I didn’t see someone else doing it first to get an idea of what I’m meant to do. This has saved me from several of the “adventures”, I took one look at someone doing them and was like.. naaah.. I’m not even going to bother attempting to do that.

Seera.5916:

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head.

This is true. For various reasons. But what are rotations? My toons have that gathering tool that spins you around whilst gathering.. those? I jest.. I jest..
Get on metabattle and get a build. Then we can talk. Ready? Press 1. Sometimes 2. Often not 4. Because it’s PvE, walking into range, killing mob, aggroing the next mob and turning around and running away are all the rotation you need.

Seera.5916:

I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone.

My wife can just about move and steer – movement controls and mouse. I haven’t tried to get her to shoot anything yet. She is currently parked in Rata Sum at a bank and last time I stood over her to get her to move from one side of the room to the other, she laughed hysterically for about five minutes. I have no idea why, moving isn’t that funny. She then spent five minutes seeing how far away from her pet and mini she could get before they’d follow her. What can I say.. I didn’t marry her for her gaming skills.
Most mobs can be shot stationary from range. Most mobs can be chopped to bits stationary. They’re not that smrt. Alternatively the other take away from this is stop doing it alone. Or if you have to do it alone AND can’t walk and move, play a ranger and let your pet tank.

Seera.5916:

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me

You 100% could. Some of them anyway. I play with arrow keys on my left hand, mouse for pointing with and firing in my right. If you can’t do this or anything resembling this kind of movement and have to essentially walk OR fire because of a really good reason (you only have one hand for instance) then I don’t think you can really learn from anything I could show you, you need specialist devices. Otherwise learning to run and gun is something you can learn and should learn for any game, not just this one. Some stuff you can’t learn imho but movement and firing is just keybinding and practice as long as you have functional limbs. Practice outside of HoT first. Don’t learn to fight in HoT cos smokescales, frogs, arrowheads, raptors.. they’ll all kill you whilst you’re learning.

Seera.5916:

I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

They are and they aren’t. If you can jump and move, you can glide. If you can run and gun, you can either shoot stuff or run past stuff. If you can figure out the basics of the new maps then they’re a lot of fun. Watch videos of each map. Watch them in chunks because the maps can be done in sections. Don’t have to memorise a 40 minute run. But those 40 minute runs… they’re being done by kids with glass cannon builds, you don’t have to fight your way round the map unless you want to.

Find a zerg. You don’t have to join the squad or party or even talk to anyone. Soloing with people is an excellent way to add some defence to your playtime and will give you loot and event completion rewards that you wouldn’t have got otherwise. Look for people in LFG to see where the zerg is. Once on a map, look in chat for people doing something you want to do, hero and mastery points are always best done in groups, even when marked as solo.

Sartharina.3542:

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think the idea they were trying to go for with HoT maps was a “Metroidvania”-style progression with the masteries. The first time through the maps, you’re supposed to take your time and see what they have to offer, with a few things locked behind higher-level masteries to allow for re-exploration, and other upgrades making the maps easier to navigate to reduce the tedium of backtracking through the massive maps, once you’ve already explored the new details.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in opening and learning maps, and truly exploring them and how they fit together (instead of just “Go here to hit Point A”)

You know that makes sense after doing HoT but the thing to remember is this is an MMO which had its direction planned for in Core, changing the whole game into a Metroid type experience is jarring to be polite.

As a customer i personally hate Metroid and all the clones it made, i just dislike those style of games and i’m not interested in playing them..

Which probably explains why i hate Heart of Thorns with a passion.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

For me personally as a Daredevil the frog things are almost unbeatable, they are teleporting, unhittable and do incredible damage solo, in a pack i am dead.. i may as well stand still and let them kill me because even if i attempt to fight them the end is the same.

I tried to pass two on a vine in VB and was killed 10 times in a row didn’t even drop one of them in the 10 tries, that to me is broken mechanics and i move on, its no longer fun after 10 frustrating tries so i logout, i did not go back since.

Say what ever you like “l2p” “git gud” if you cannot pass something in 10 goes no amount of “git gud” will help.

You know you can just run past them, right?

When Maps are empty – There is so much that can’t be done – Completing Mastery one of them – Just saying – Fab over all – Don’t find myself going there much any more – No one playing – So I now give it a miss – Or a hit and miss – Enjoyed it while it was Hot – Running cold now-

My experience is the opposite of yours. No-one playing? What timezone/map are you referring to when you say this.
Also you’re aware that megaserver can drop you in empty maps and you can just use the LFG tool to get to a more populated map most of the time, right?

General Health.9678:

Get on metabattle and get a build. Then we can talk. Ready? Press 1. Sometimes 2. Often not 4. Because it’s PvE, walking into range, killing mob, aggroing the next mob and turning around and running away are all the rotation you need.

I’d actually argue against Metabattle – it has specialized, high-end builds that require you to know how to use them, most of them oriented to Instanced Group Play (How can I support my team of 4-9 others?), PvP (How can I kill other players while taking and holding points?), or WvW (Again – Killing players)

Sartharina.3542:

I’d actually argue against Metabattle – it has specialized, high-end builds that require you to know how to use them, most of them oriented to Instanced Group Play (How can I support my team of 4-9 others?), PvP (How can I kill other players while taking and holding points?), or WvW (Again – Killing players)

Not sure what you’re arguing against, you’re just listing types of specialised gameplay, metabattle excels at providing builds for that. Obviously you wouldn’t pick the ones you just mentioned if you wanted to PvE.

It’s better to start with a build you can tweak than from scratch if you really don’t know what you’re doing. I usually grab a Fractal or Raid build for PvE as general dungeon builds were always good for general PvE.

Sartharina.3542:

General Health.9678:

Get on metabattle and get a build. Then we can talk. Ready? Press 1. Sometimes 2. Often not 4. Because it’s PvE, walking into range, killing mob, aggroing the next mob and turning around and running away are all the rotation you need.

I’d actually argue against Metabattle – it has specialized, high-end builds that require you to know how to use them, most of them oriented to Instanced Group Play (How can I support my team of 4-9 others?), PvP (How can I kill other players while taking and holding points?), or WvW (Again – Killing players)

I’m literally doing every PvE related thing with my glass canon raiding tempest, glass canon raiding daredevil, raid zerker herald and raid zerker PS. Once you’re experienced enough(this can take a day for a good player or never for a total noob if we’re talking about HoT content) you’ll see that the build you’re playing has no impact whatsoever in terms of difficulty.

There’s a couple ways to play a game when you find it going tough :

1. you can keep trying different things and learn thorough experience, and be rewards for your genuine progress (this is what games are meant to offer)
2. you can research how other people do it and learn from that
3. You can procrastinate and look for excuses rather than either of the 2 above (because we know deep down 10 – 100s of thousands of other people with the exact same class can do the content with no issues right)

The game is not a hardcore examination of your memory and motor skills, its simply a little challenging at the high end of its content spectrum.

Dante.1508:

Sartharina.3542:

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think the idea they were trying to go for with HoT maps was a “Metroidvania”-style progression with the masteries. The first time through the maps, you’re supposed to take your time and see what they have to offer, with a few things locked behind higher-level masteries to allow for re-exploration, and other upgrades making the maps easier to navigate to reduce the tedium of backtracking through the massive maps, once you’ve already explored the new details.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in opening and learning maps, and truly exploring them and how they fit together (instead of just “Go here to hit Point A”)

You know that makes sense after doing HoT but the thing to remember is this is an MMO which had its direction planned for in Core, changing the whole game into a Metroid type experience is jarring to be polite.

As a customer i personally hate Metroid and all the clones it made, i just dislike those style of games and i’m not interested in playing them..

Which probably explains why i hate Heart of Thorns with a passion.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

For me personally as a Daredevil the frog things are almost unbeatable, they are teleporting, unhittable and do incredible damage solo, in a pack i am dead.. i may as well stand still and let them kill me because even if i attempt to fight them the end is the same.

I tried to pass two on a vine in VB and was killed 10 times in a row didn’t even drop one of them in the 10 tries, that to me is broken mechanics and i move on, its no longer fun after 10 frustrating tries so i logout, i did not go back since.

Say what ever you like “l2p” “git gud” if you cannot pass something in 10 goes no amount of “git gud” will help.

So you fought the same enemy ten times, but didn’t try to use stealth to simply run past them, or smokescreen to block their projectiles, or dagger storm to reflect the projectiles back to kill them, or basilisk venom to disable an burst one of them down, or double dodges/vault their arrow volley to close in and kill them, or scorpion to pull separate and kill them?

Dante.1508:

Sartharina.3542:

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think the idea they were trying to go for with HoT maps was a “Metroidvania”-style progression with the masteries. The first time through the maps, you’re supposed to take your time and see what they have to offer, with a few things locked behind higher-level masteries to allow for re-exploration, and other upgrades making the maps easier to navigate to reduce the tedium of backtracking through the massive maps, once you’ve already explored the new details.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in opening and learning maps, and truly exploring them and how they fit together (instead of just “Go here to hit Point A”)

You know that makes sense after doing HoT but the thing to remember is this is an MMO which had its direction planned for in Core, changing the whole game into a Metroid type experience is jarring to be polite.

As a customer i personally hate Metroid and all the clones it made, i just dislike those style of games and i’m not interested in playing them..

Which probably explains why i hate Heart of Thorns with a passion.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

For me personally as a Daredevil the frog things are almost unbeatable, they are teleporting, unhittable and do incredible damage solo, in a pack i am dead.. i may as well stand still and let them kill me because even if i attempt to fight them the end is the same.

I tried to pass two on a vine in VB and was killed 10 times in a row didn’t even drop one of them in the 10 tries, that to me is broken mechanics and i move on, its no longer fun after 10 frustrating tries so i logout, i did not go back since.

Say what ever you like “l2p” “git gud” if you cannot pass something in 10 goes no amount of “git gud” will help.

With permanent dodges, we’re invincible 100% of the time, while dealing the second highest DPS in the game. You can literally stealth past anything, or abuse 3 450 range dodges + 2x 900 range shadowstepts+ 1x 1200 shadowstep which make for an incredible 4 350 range in a 4 second window. It’s irrelevant how much damage somebody else outputs, if it can’t land a single hit on you.
They are teleporting? You know that our F skill is an 1200 range shadowstep to the target, right? You know that your 2 main utilities should be Fist Flurry/Palm Strike which are both stuns, right?

If the game is so unfair to daredevils, why did I solo almost every single hero challenge in HoT, on a freaking glass canon DD?? Why can I solo content meant to be done by groups? Am I a hacker? I’m not even a good player. Either revise your totally wrong approach of the class, either find some other class to play, because thief isn’t for new players, either quit the game.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

Try playing as a keyboard turning clicker – WASD to move (no strafing) and only clicking skills, including dodge to be fair. Only use 1 hand at a time (keyboard/mouse) and delay all your actions by a second to simulate a slow reaction time. Limit yourself to random rare gear, clear your traits, choose whichever profession you play the least and base your weapon/skill choices on whatever looks the coolest. You’re now almost at the level of the average MMO player, which is why nearly all MMOs are below easy.

Healix.5819:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

Try playing as a keyboard turning clicker – WASD to move (no strafing) and only clicking skills, including dodge to be fair. Only use 1 hand at a time (keyboard/mouse) and delay all your actions by a second to simulate a slow reaction time. Limit yourself to random rare gear, clear your traits, choose whichever profession you play the least and base your weapon/skill choices on whatever looks the coolest. You’re now almost at the level of the average MMO player, which is why nearly all MMOs are below easy.

Which is why also MMOs are a dying breed unfortunately. I understand that we’re the generation who made MMOs popular back in the 2000s, and I also understand that most of us are now between 20-30 years old, meaning uni/jobs/families, so we don’t have the time to invest in games which we used to, like 10 years ago. 10 years ago, a noob could learn in 20 hours what a good player would learn in 20 minutes. The problem nowadays is, that the noob doesn’t have 20 hours to invest, in order to learn that particular thing, so he’d rather try and rant, so perhaps the game will change around his tight schedule. Some MMOs actually did that. Gw2 is the biggest MMO that has the system that even players who have little time to invest can reach the “top” of the game in a short amount of time.

The problem is that the people are greedy, and they want more. You made a hard game easy? Make it easier. You made it easier? Make it even more easier. And so on. That’s why I honestly haven’t heard of a title easier than Gw2, and it saddened me to see(after the SQU) that the devs are giving in to the demands of the bads and making the game even easier.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head. Loud whooshing sound and all. I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone. So I have to remain pretty stationary. That’s pretty deadly in HoT. It’s also pretty deadly in Cursed Shore sometimes.

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me, so I don’t. I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

I disagree wholeheartedly. To actually see someone play the game would give a great insight into why someone fails. The best way to see what my students were having difficulty with was to have them work out a few problems as I watched, and then I could spot the mental mistakes that they were making. With videogames, it is not that different. The mental barriers are plainly visible.

This isn’t a Lupi solo, where you need to take a long series of flawless actions to succeed. You don’t need to be that good at the game. For the vast majority of enemies, there’s a simple one or two step trick that you need to follow that lets you beat them. Most of the time it boils down to the exact same thing: when the enemy does a super big and dangerous attack, step out of the way.

That tells you the what they did that caused them to fail. You don’t see the reason.

It could be because the player has a disability or they could have poor internet connection in general. You just assume that any mistakes are due to lack of knowledge. Not the kittenumption to make, but the video itself doesn’t tell you that.

Raizen.7981:

…and I also understand that most of us are now between 20-30 years old

I have no hard facts, but I suspect your typical age estimate might be at least a decade too low. Gamers are older than you think.

I’ve been claiming to be under 30 for almost 20 years now….

General Health.9678:

Seera.5916:

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

I believe videos are the way to go here. You don’t have to make your own, just watch someone else’s. I’m too old to let myself be frustrated because I didn’t see someone else doing it first to get an idea of what I’m meant to do. This has saved me from several of the “adventures”, I took one look at someone doing them and was like.. naaah.. I’m not even going to bother attempting to do that.

Seera.5916:

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head.

This is true. For various reasons. But what are rotations? My toons have that gathering tool that spins you around whilst gathering.. those? I jest.. I jest..
Get on metabattle and get a build. Then we can talk. Ready? Press 1. Sometimes 2. Often not 4. Because it’s PvE, walking into range, killing mob, aggroing the next mob and turning around and running away are all the rotation you need.

Seera.5916:

I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone.

My wife can just about move and steer – movement controls and mouse. I haven’t tried to get her to shoot anything yet. She is currently parked in Rata Sum at a bank and last time I stood over her to get her to move from one side of the room to the other, she laughed hysterically for about five minutes. I have no idea why, moving isn’t that funny. She then spent five minutes seeing how far away from her pet and mini she could get before they’d follow her. What can I say.. I didn’t marry her for her gaming skills.
Most mobs can be shot stationary from range. Most mobs can be chopped to bits stationary. They’re not that smrt. Alternatively the other take away from this is stop doing it alone. Or if you have to do it alone AND can’t walk and move, play a ranger and let your pet tank.

Seera.5916:

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me

You 100% could. Some of them anyway. I play with arrow keys on my left hand, mouse for pointing with and firing in my right. If you can’t do this or anything resembling this kind of movement and have to essentially walk OR fire because of a really good reason (you only have one hand for instance) then I don’t think you can really learn from anything I could show you, you need specialist devices. Otherwise learning to run and gun is something you can learn and should learn for any game, not just this one. Some stuff you can’t learn imho but movement and firing is just keybinding and practice as long as you have functional limbs. Practice outside of HoT first. Don’t learn to fight in HoT cos smokescales, frogs, arrowheads, raptors.. they’ll all kill you whilst you’re learning.

Seera.5916:

I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

They are and they aren’t. If you can jump and move, you can glide. If you can run and gun, you can either shoot stuff or run past stuff. If you can figure out the basics of the new maps then they’re a lot of fun. Watch videos of each map. Watch them in chunks because the maps can be done in sections. Don’t have to memorise a 40 minute run. But those 40 minute runs… they’re being done by kids with glass cannon builds, you don’t have to fight your way round the map unless you want to.

Find a zerg. You don’t have to join the squad or party or even talk to anyone. Soloing with people is an excellent way to add some defence to your playtime and will give you loot and event completion rewards that you wouldn’t have got otherwise. Look for people in LFG to see where the zerg is. Once on a map, look in chat for people doing something you want to do, hero and mastery points are always best done in groups, even when marked as solo.

Watching does nothing for me. The only way it would be remotely useful for me is if they did a dual with the game and the keyboard/mouse. Seeing the effects on the screen or the keyboard/mouse by itself will not tell me how to better play. And how one person plays is the worst for someone else. Because people have different reaction times and internet connection speeds. I’m very very hands on learning. I have to actually DO it to learn it.

That’s the thing, that’s what I do and I still die. So it’s obviously not as easy as that. Please find me and link me a build that literally says do whatever skills you want for the rotation. All of the ones I’ve seen, dictate which skill when and when to switch attunement/weapon.

One on one I can typically handle stationary in HoT, it’s just when I do dodge out of the way I end up aggroing something else. I only have issues in the areas where the enemies are close together where it’s easy to get multiple enemies aggroed. And I’ve got a stubborn streak. I want to do 100% map completion and story completion on my first character. Which is an elementalist. I don’t want to get through the maps and go this is easy because my pet tanked it and then be worse off on my other characters that don’t have a ready made tank.

I don’t have an aversion to doing it alone and I don’t typically do so. It’s just I don’t want to have to group to do my personal story. That’s when I get into the most trouble. I have maybe one or two of the hero challenges on the first map because I stumbled upon them.

The problem with learning outside of HoT to move and fight is I’ve gotten good enough to not need to move and fight at the same time for 99.9% of core Tyria. And the only way I’ll ever learn it is if I need to do it at the same time. Which means HoT maps. And a mouse with numbers on the side.

That’s the thing, my frustration gets to rage quit levels insanely quickly. I can die maybe once or twice before I rage quit, especially if it takes me 10 minutes to get back to where I was because I can’t remember how I got there in the first place.

But I also don’t feel ANet needs to make the maps any easier. I realize I’ve got a L2P issue that’s mental (no physical disability and no internet issues). Mostly I currently don’t want to put forth the time to do so (doesn’t sound appealing and games are supposed to be fun) and between work and minor cold/allergies I haven’t had the right mindset to do so.

It also doesn’t help that I’ll play for an hour a so for a few weeks and then go a few weeks with just logging in to get the daily log in rewards. Because I’ve found something else to play (I hop from game to game or from game to Netflix).

DoctorDing.5890:

Raizen.7981:

…and I also understand that most of us are now between 20-30 years old

I have no hard facts, but I suspect your typical age estimate might be at least a decade too low. Gamers are older than you think.

I’ve been claiming to be under 30 for almost 20 years now….

Well to be honest I did say most of us, and most of the people I meet online are at around 22-25. It can be that the older guys aren’t that talkative so I didn’t meet more. Anyway, it’s just my understanding, be it right or wrong, but I do hope I made my point clear

‘The average age of someone who plays games is 31 years old. In fact, more gamers are over the age of 36 than between the ages of 18 to 35 or under the age of 18. They are also mostly men, but by a slimming margin’

considering computer games have been around from the early 80’s and we havent died yet

vesica tempestas.1563:

‘The average age of someone who plays games is 31 years old. In fact, more gamers are over the age of 36 than between the ages of 18 to 35 or under the age of 18. They are also mostly men, but by a slimming margin’

considering computer games have been around from the early 80’s and we havent died yet

And GW probably attract a higher proportion of older gamers than many other games. I suspect it also attract more women than similar titles too.

Danicus.4952:

I am an experienced casual player. 13K APs, 950 WVW rank, Closer to the Stars, done dungeons, raids, crafted ascended gear etc, etc. I’ve read quite a few honest postings about frustrations with HOT, and the trend in responses has been to respond to the OP by saying “learn to play better” or “I did it just fine, there is something the matter with you.”

I personally find HOT uninviting as a solo PVE player. It lacks the difficulty progression structure present in most games. It demands group (zerg) participation for individual rewards. It requires the development of mobility masteries to effectively access map areas efficiently. It loads the player with an ocean of inventory filling currencies or keys. It creates an unprecedented level of grind for goals.

I’ve completed the HOT personal story with a rev, and moved partially through with 4 other characters.

I’ve completed the new specializations with all classes. I find them fun and interesting additions to the game (imo the best part of the expansion) – getting HOT HPs pretty annoying of course. I must admit, I turned in some WVW credits to unlock some HOT HPs.

I was really looking forward to HOT, but am truly ambivalent about the expansion maps at this point – even with the nerfs.

I find myself now checking in, hitting the daily and getting out.

Pretty sure I won’t buy another GW2 expansion – especially if it follows the map design and skill progression structure HOT model. It’s a shame – I am a long time dedicated GW player – sorry to see the franchise pick this path.

My core point is, telling an OP that is frustrated with HOT to “L2P” or “I did it, what is the matter with you?” is missing the mark. There are authentic design departures here, and they are not friendly to the casual player.

I agree with you on players telling others L2P. It’s unnecessary and I think there are some tweaks they could make that would make the jungle maps more palatable to players who find the difficulty a bit much and unlocking HPs/Masteries tedious.

Having said that, I really feel players who become immediately impatient with the jungle maps are missing out. Maybe it isn’t your cup of tea, and I wholly encourage ANet to take that into account in the future by producing content for everyone (flat maps and non-flat maps for all tastes, please!). But personally, I was extremely impressed with the exploration aspect of HoT. TD and VB in particular are works of art that I’d love to see more of in the future.

I suppose if you’re immediately frustrated upon entering these maps and don’t much like the idea of taking your time learning your way around and unlocking the required masteries, but I thought this was a “casual” game? What’s the rush?

The core game features map completion which, as a former WoW player I can’t fathom why anyone would be interested in slogging through. After all, there is no challenge in core map completion for the most part. It’s just a massive grind. Why is that “good” while TD et al are “bad”?

I also agree with others who point out that, since the last major patch the jungle maps are far more solo-friendly. Most of the events can be done solo or in a small group of 2-3 players. Only a handful of events aren’t like this, including the big event at the end of the cycle. But those events are hardly a “zerg”. They require a fair amount of coordination.

But to each their own. You don’t like the maze-like vertical maps and more difficult event-based content. I love it. I wasn’t here pre-HoT, but I got through the core game as quickly as possible and spend most of my time in HoT open world. I wish there were more to do there, but the events are a lot of fun, the rewards are decent, and navigating what used to be an impossible maze like it’s nothing feels rewarding, too.

Seera.5916:

General Health.9678:

Seera.5916:

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

I believe videos are the way to go here. You don’t have to make your own, just watch someone else’s. I’m too old to let myself be frustrated because I didn’t see someone else doing it first to get an idea of what I’m meant to do. This has saved me from several of the “adventures”, I took one look at someone doing them and was like.. naaah.. I’m not even going to bother attempting to do that.

Seera.5916:

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head.

This is true. For various reasons. But what are rotations? My toons have that gathering tool that spins you around whilst gathering.. those? I jest.. I jest..
Get on metabattle and get a build. Then we can talk. Ready? Press 1. Sometimes 2. Often not 4. Because it’s PvE, walking into range, killing mob, aggroing the next mob and turning around and running away are all the rotation you need.

Seera.5916:

I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone.

My wife can just about move and steer – movement controls and mouse. I haven’t tried to get her to shoot anything yet. She is currently parked in Rata Sum at a bank and last time I stood over her to get her to move from one side of the room to the other, she laughed hysterically for about five minutes. I have no idea why, moving isn’t that funny. She then spent five minutes seeing how far away from her pet and mini she could get before they’d follow her. What can I say.. I didn’t marry her for her gaming skills.
Most mobs can be shot stationary from range. Most mobs can be chopped to bits stationary. They’re not that smrt. Alternatively the other take away from this is stop doing it alone. Or if you have to do it alone AND can’t walk and move, play a ranger and let your pet tank.

Seera.5916:

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me

You 100% could. Some of them anyway. I play with arrow keys on my left hand, mouse for pointing with and firing in my right. If you can’t do this or anything resembling this kind of movement and have to essentially walk OR fire because of a really good reason (you only have one hand for instance) then I don’t think you can really learn from anything I could show you, you need specialist devices. Otherwise learning to run and gun is something you can learn and should learn for any game, not just this one. Some stuff you can’t learn imho but movement and firing is just keybinding and practice as long as you have functional limbs. Practice outside of HoT first. Don’t learn to fight in HoT cos smokescales, frogs, arrowheads, raptors.. they’ll all kill you whilst you’re learning.

Seera.5916:

I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

They are and they aren’t. If you can jump and move, you can glide. If you can run and gun, you can either shoot stuff or run past stuff. If you can figure out the basics of the new maps then they’re a lot of fun. Watch videos of each map. Watch them in chunks because the maps can be done in sections. Don’t have to memorise a 40 minute run. But those 40 minute runs… they’re being done by kids with glass cannon builds, you don’t have to fight your way round the map unless you want to.

Find a zerg. You don’t have to join the squad or party or even talk to anyone. Soloing with people is an excellent way to add some defence to your playtime and will give you loot and event completion rewards that you wouldn’t have got otherwise. Look for people in LFG to see where the zerg is. Once on a map, look in chat for people doing something you want to do, hero and mastery points are always best done in groups, even when marked as solo.

Watching does nothing for me. The only way it would be remotely useful for me is if they did a dual with the game and the keyboard/mouse. Seeing the effects on the screen or the keyboard/mouse by itself will not tell me how to better play. And how one person plays is the worst for someone else. Because people have different reaction times and internet connection speeds. I’m very very hands on learning. I have to actually DO it to learn it.

That’s the thing, that’s what I do and I still die. So it’s obviously not as easy as that. Please find me and link me a build that literally says do whatever skills you want for the rotation. All of the ones I’ve seen, dictate which skill when and when to switch attunement/weapon.

One on one I can typically handle stationary in HoT, it’s just when I do dodge out of the way I end up aggroing something else. I only have issues in the areas where the enemies are close together where it’s easy to get multiple enemies aggroed. And I’ve got a stubborn streak. I want to do 100% map completion and story completion on my first character. Which is an elementalist. I don’t want to get through the maps and go this is easy because my pet tanked it and then be worse off on my other characters that don’t have a ready made tank.

I don’t have an aversion to doing it alone and I don’t typically do so. It’s just I don’t want to have to group to do my personal story. That’s when I get into the most trouble. I have maybe one or two of the hero challenges on the first map because I stumbled upon them.

The problem with learning outside of HoT to move and fight is I’ve gotten good enough to not need to move and fight at the same time for 99.9% of core Tyria. And the only way I’ll ever learn it is if I need to do it at the same time. Which means HoT maps. And a mouse with numbers on the side.

That’s the thing, my frustration gets to rage quit levels insanely quickly. I can die maybe once or twice before I rage quit, especially if it takes me 10 minutes to get back to where I was because I can’t remember how I got there in the first place.

But I also don’t feel ANet needs to make the maps any easier. I realize I’ve got a L2P issue that’s mental (no physical disability and no internet issues). Mostly I currently don’t want to put forth the time to do so (doesn’t sound appealing and games are supposed to be fun) and between work and minor cold/allergies I haven’t had the right mindset to do so.

It also doesn’t help that I’ll play for an hour a so for a few weeks and then go a few weeks with just logging in to get the daily log in rewards. Because I’ve found something else to play (I hop from game to game or from game to Netflix).

I don’t know if this will help you, but one issue unique to elementalists is their inability to weapon swap. So if you’re using d/x, you’re locked into melee to deal damage. This is a big handicap in HoT as there are some enemies which are far more dangerous at melee range. It’s not impossible to fight them at close range, but it increases the chances of having problems significantly and likely contributes to that uncomfortable feeling that the jungle masters you rather than the other way around!

If that is an issue for you, try using the staff more in open world. I think it’s a lot easier to work with due to the range.

AliamRationem.5172:

Seera.5916:

General Health.9678:

Seera.5916:

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

I believe videos are the way to go here. You don’t have to make your own, just watch someone else’s. I’m too old to let myself be frustrated because I didn’t see someone else doing it first to get an idea of what I’m meant to do. This has saved me from several of the “adventures”, I took one look at someone doing them and was like.. naaah.. I’m not even going to bother attempting to do that.

Seera.5916:

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head.

This is true. For various reasons. But what are rotations? My toons have that gathering tool that spins you around whilst gathering.. those? I jest.. I jest..
Get on metabattle and get a build. Then we can talk. Ready? Press 1. Sometimes 2. Often not 4. Because it’s PvE, walking into range, killing mob, aggroing the next mob and turning around and running away are all the rotation you need.

Seera.5916:

I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone.

My wife can just about move and steer – movement controls and mouse. I haven’t tried to get her to shoot anything yet. She is currently parked in Rata Sum at a bank and last time I stood over her to get her to move from one side of the room to the other, she laughed hysterically for about five minutes. I have no idea why, moving isn’t that funny. She then spent five minutes seeing how far away from her pet and mini she could get before they’d follow her. What can I say.. I didn’t marry her for her gaming skills.
Most mobs can be shot stationary from range. Most mobs can be chopped to bits stationary. They’re not that smrt. Alternatively the other take away from this is stop doing it alone. Or if you have to do it alone AND can’t walk and move, play a ranger and let your pet tank.

Seera.5916:

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me

You 100% could. Some of them anyway. I play with arrow keys on my left hand, mouse for pointing with and firing in my right. If you can’t do this or anything resembling this kind of movement and have to essentially walk OR fire because of a really good reason (you only have one hand for instance) then I don’t think you can really learn from anything I could show you, you need specialist devices. Otherwise learning to run and gun is something you can learn and should learn for any game, not just this one. Some stuff you can’t learn imho but movement and firing is just keybinding and practice as long as you have functional limbs. Practice outside of HoT first. Don’t learn to fight in HoT cos smokescales, frogs, arrowheads, raptors.. they’ll all kill you whilst you’re learning.

Seera.5916:

I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

They are and they aren’t. If you can jump and move, you can glide. If you can run and gun, you can either shoot stuff or run past stuff. If you can figure out the basics of the new maps then they’re a lot of fun. Watch videos of each map. Watch them in chunks because the maps can be done in sections. Don’t have to memorise a 40 minute run. But those 40 minute runs… they’re being done by kids with glass cannon builds, you don’t have to fight your way round the map unless you want to.

Find a zerg. You don’t have to join the squad or party or even talk to anyone. Soloing with people is an excellent way to add some defence to your playtime and will give you loot and event completion rewards that you wouldn’t have got otherwise. Look for people in LFG to see where the zerg is. Once on a map, look in chat for people doing something you want to do, hero and mastery points are always best done in groups, even when marked as solo.

Watching does nothing for me. The only way it would be remotely useful for me is if they did a dual with the game and the keyboard/mouse. Seeing the effects on the screen or the keyboard/mouse by itself will not tell me how to better play. And how one person plays is the worst for someone else. Because people have different reaction times and internet connection speeds. I’m very very hands on learning. I have to actually DO it to learn it.

That’s the thing, that’s what I do and I still die. So it’s obviously not as easy as that. Please find me and link me a build that literally says do whatever skills you want for the rotation. All of the ones I’ve seen, dictate which skill when and when to switch attunement/weapon.

One on one I can typically handle stationary in HoT, it’s just when I do dodge out of the way I end up aggroing something else. I only have issues in the areas where the enemies are close together where it’s easy to get multiple enemies aggroed. And I’ve got a stubborn streak. I want to do 100% map completion and story completion on my first character. Which is an elementalist. I don’t want to get through the maps and go this is easy because my pet tanked it and then be worse off on my other characters that don’t have a ready made tank.

I don’t have an aversion to doing it alone and I don’t typically do so. It’s just I don’t want to have to group to do my personal story. That’s when I get into the most trouble. I have maybe one or two of the hero challenges on the first map because I stumbled upon them.

The problem with learning outside of HoT to move and fight is I’ve gotten good enough to not need to move and fight at the same time for 99.9% of core Tyria. And the only way I’ll ever learn it is if I need to do it at the same time. Which means HoT maps. And a mouse with numbers on the side.

That’s the thing, my frustration gets to rage quit levels insanely quickly. I can die maybe once or twice before I rage quit, especially if it takes me 10 minutes to get back to where I was because I can’t remember how I got there in the first place.

But I also don’t feel ANet needs to make the maps any easier. I realize I’ve got a L2P issue that’s mental (no physical disability and no internet issues). Mostly I currently don’t want to put forth the time to do so (doesn’t sound appealing and games are supposed to be fun) and between work and minor cold/allergies I haven’t had the right mindset to do so.

It also doesn’t help that I’ll play for an hour a so for a few weeks and then go a few weeks with just logging in to get the daily log in rewards. Because I’ve found something else to play (I hop from game to game or from game to Netflix).

I don’t know if this will help you, but one issue unique to elementalists is their inability to weapon swap. So if you’re using d/x, you’re locked into melee to deal damage. This is a big handicap in HoT as there are some enemies which are far more dangerous at melee range. It’s not impossible to fight them at close range, but it increases the chances of having problems significantly and likely contributes to that uncomfortable feeling that the jungle masters you rather than the other way around!

If that is an issue for you, try using the staff more in open world. I think it’s a lot easier to work with due to the range.

I use scepter/warhorn currently with the tempest elite, so not quite tied to being up close and personal. I do have a staff for her, though, because that’s better for the world bosses.

I also have the Glyph of Elementals elite for when I need a tank :P

Dante.1508:

Sartharina.3542:

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think the idea they were trying to go for with HoT maps was a “Metroidvania”-style progression with the masteries. The first time through the maps, you’re supposed to take your time and see what they have to offer, with a few things locked behind higher-level masteries to allow for re-exploration, and other upgrades making the maps easier to navigate to reduce the tedium of backtracking through the massive maps, once you’ve already explored the new details.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in opening and learning maps, and truly exploring them and how they fit together (instead of just “Go here to hit Point A”)

You know that makes sense after doing HoT but the thing to remember is this is an MMO which had its direction planned for in Core, changing the whole game into a Metroid type experience is jarring to be polite.

As a customer i personally hate Metroid and all the clones it made, i just dislike those style of games and i’m not interested in playing them..

Which probably explains why i hate Heart of Thorns with a passion.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

For me personally as a Daredevil the frog things are almost unbeatable, they are teleporting, unhittable and do incredible damage solo, in a pack i am dead.. i may as well stand still and let them kill me because even if i attempt to fight them the end is the same.

I tried to pass two on a vine in VB and was killed 10 times in a row didn’t even drop one of them in the 10 tries, that to me is broken mechanics and i move on, its no longer fun after 10 frustrating tries so i logout, i did not go back since.

Say what ever you like “l2p” “git gud” if you cannot pass something in 10 goes no amount of “git gud” will help.

I’m not trying top insult you, but I main daredevil. This is a skill issue. You need to understand how these enemies work and how to counter them.

First, they passively evade ranged attacks. So you want to keep on top of them. The first thing they’ll do when you close range is leap backward, evade, and fire a volley of arrows.

Counter this by dodging toward them so they land on top of you. The arrows will miss and you’ll be at melee range with the frog evade on cooldown.

If your damage isn’t good enough to take them down quickly enough, use stealth to avoid damage or stuns like impact strike to lock them down.

You can also bypass them completely by simply evading or stealthing past them.

Again, this isn’t a l2p post. Just a good faith attempt to help. If you’d like to see this demonstrated some time, hit me up in game.

Ddaredevil is honestly my most powerful open world class hands down. It totally dominates in the jungle.

Healix.5819:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

Try playing as a keyboard turning clicker – WASD to move (no strafing) and only clicking skills, including dodge to be fair. Only use 1 hand at a time (keyboard/mouse) and delay all your actions by a second to simulate a slow reaction time. Limit yourself to random rare gear, clear your traits, choose whichever profession you play the least and base your weapon/skill choices on whatever looks the coolest. You’re now almost at the level of the average MMO player, which is why nearly all MMOs are below easy.

I already am. But seriously, I mouse my skills and imported the old control scheme from city of heroes, so I use the keyboard primarily to turn. I imagine watching me play would be actually frustrating to someone who’s good at the game, because to change my camera I end up having to anchor myself in place for a few moments. I learned to play this game on a track pad. Granted, it was a Mac trackpad, which is the Cadillac of the trackpad world, but still.

Seera.5916:

That tells you the what they did that caused them to fail. You don’t see the reason.

It could be because the player has a disability or they could have poor internet connection in general. You just assume that any mistakes are due to lack of knowledge. Not the kittenumption to make, but the video itself doesn’t tell you that.

What they did is a direct consequence of why they did it. Cause and effect share a necessary relationship. People, being people, generally do people things, so it isn’t too hard to figure out.

If the guy playing the game has Parkinson’s disease, he’s going to mention it. I’ve seen plenty of discussions on game difficulty will someone will bring up a disability of some sort that would prevent them from getting better. But, I also see plenty of posts that proclaim the game impossible with absolutely no explanation as to why.

The problem is, you’re trying to take a very specific and rare theoretical case, and use it to abandon common sense. It is fairly easy to see the set of paradigms governing a person’s actions in the game, and once those paradigms are shifted, the world opens up to them. If some specially misshapen snowflake should come my way, I’ll take that into consideration.

Seera.5916:

Watching does nothing for me. The only way it would be remotely useful for me is if they did a dual with the game and the keyboard/mouse. Seeing the effects on the screen or the keyboard/mouse by itself will not tell me how to better play. And how one person plays is the worst for someone else. Because people have different reaction times and internet connection speeds. I’m very very hands on learning. I have to actually DO it to learn it.

That’s the thing, that’s what I do and I still die. So it’s obviously not as easy as that. Please find me and link me a build that literally says do whatever skills you want for the rotation. All of the ones I’ve seen, dictate which skill when and when to switch attunement/weapon.

There is an oft under-emphasized point of education, but nonetheless it is an important one: listening is a skill.

Yes, it is a skill. It is a shame that most people are expected to just know how to listen, and it is also a shame that people expect to just zone out at stimuli and learn things. If you intend to learn, you can’t just have knowledge drizzled all over you and expect to consume any of it.

Take an active participation in your listening. When watching a tutorial, slow the video down so you can see which skills are activated at what time. Look at the build screen to see what equipment they are using. If you’ve lost the train of thought, go back in the video and watch that part again to see what is happening. Make a mental checklist of what they are doing. Keep the video open in another window while you try out skills on a golem in the mists.

That said, there’s a strange irony in what you’ve said here. To see someone’s hands or keyboard while playing is actually nearly useless information, since keybinds can be individualized. But, there’s also a reason why it is that the build videos go over specific rotations: the builds, skills, and techniques are chosen to have the maximum combination of DPS and group support. Because of this, there is no “this build is worse for other people”.

Likewise, on pretty much any build video I’ve seen, and on nearly every metabattle page, appropriateness and discretion are encouraged. They come with a variety of weapon/utility changes for different circumstances. The rotations and skills chosen are a best case scenario. You’re still expected to dodge when a big attack is coming your way.

Wanted to add an explanation on how to fight the bladedancers, and some other things I thought might be helpful to a daredevil struggling in the jungle.

First, you need to be aware that all these guys want to do is stun you, and then wind up an attack that will basically kill you in one shot as a daredevil. Fortunately, they are very slow. If you’re fighting them solo, go ahead and eat the stun if you like. Just be ready on bandit’s defense, kick them in the face, and you should be able to take them down before they can do much to you.

You can also take these guys out with zero effort with a couple of doses of unload if you run p/p for your ranged set.

If paired with a shadowleaper, just get in close to the leaper to force it to leap backward as you would approach a solo leaper. Evade toward it (evade rather than steal in this instance, because if you attempt to steal during the backward leap you’ll miss and eat a face full of arrows for your trouble!) and you will put distance between yourself and the bladedancer. Take the leaper down and it’s back to an easy 1v1 against the slow and predictable bladedancer.

They also like to stealth at times. If you don’t have stealth detection unlocked, you won’t be able to see them coming. Just keep on the move and evading until they reveal themselves. The arrows will miss and you can take them down. You have endurance for days. Don’t forget to use it! It’s the cornerstone of your defensive strategy as a daredevil.

Other recommendations:

- Use staff because it deals the best damage to the most targets.

- Take crit strikes for invigorating precision because the more damage you deal, the more you heal.

- Take unhindered combat in the daredevil line for mobility.

- Use berserker or marauder gear.

Here’s what I usually run in open world HoT, if you’d like a template of a build that (at least for me) does extremely well in the jungle.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW6an8lCFOhFmCOOBkmiFYCbOEOCbhbBqlTHSLBEAyAA-TBSBABAcRAiQJ4Nq/kvuhHeCAFpEDBTcXt/o8AA-e

Hope it helps, and again feel free to hit me up if you want to run around the jungle some time. I’m always down to beat up some frogs!

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

@Indigo Sundown

In regards to HoT being so unpopulated that you won’t be able to do hero points, with the mega server technology that’s pretty unlikely to happen at least not for many years.

I don’t know how many people are playing this game at any instant, but even old servers (before the game was free to play) usually had people to help you out, no matter what time I was playing. If I tagged up and used map chat, I’d get people. Anywhere any time, almost all the time. Maybe on a rare occasion I wouldn’t …but the next time I would anyway.

Out of all the people playing at any given time, are we assuming people won’t be running the HoT zones at all?

I mean hell there’s an entire guild dedicated to running Dry Top.

If the need is there, guilds will form for that too.

And in a worst case scenario you can make a friend or join a guild. I can’t think of any point in any map I can’t three man.

If I had any confidence in ANet’s ability to fix megaservers, I might agree with you.

Seriously what major concern haven’t they fixed. It’s not a question of if…it’s a question of manpower. Did they fix culling. Sure. It took ages but they fixed it. They fixed the down hill bug that killed people. They’ve fixed stuff that’s important all along, but it takes them a long time.

I strongly suspect that the pressure they put on people to work faster means that coders don’t document their work properly due to feeling rushed. So when they leave and new people have to decipher their code it takes much much longer for them to fix it.

That doesn’t mean they’re incapable of fixing it. It means not enough attention was paid to documentation to make it faster/easier to fix. It’s like being wise with pennies but losing dollars. Documentation on coding is massively important.

But Anet’s coders are top notch. Look at how other MMOs handled maintenance and updates. Guild Wars 2 is better than almost all of them. Very little down time compared to almost every MMO I’ve played.

The programming is fine. And the famous Susan is one of the head server designers, she’s still there after 12 years.

They have plenty of ability. It just takes them a long time.

Fair enough, I’ll amend my statement to, “If I had any confidence that Anet will fix the mega-server system within a time frame where I might still want to play HoT, and in a way that might make the game more enjoyable for me, then I might agree with you.”

I’m leery of Anet’s “fixes.” Many of them have made the game worse, fixed “problems” I wasn’t having in ways that made my quality of play worse, etc. Hopefully, you’ll forgive me in thinking, as a result, that “fixing” the HoT mega-server system will work out. If they make it function as mega-server does in Core, well, that is not going to make the zones very much more accessible. I consider that the most likely outcome.

I believe that there are issues with mega-server that go beyond things like changing the number in the part of the program that checks the shard for “too low” population, or writing a subroutine that rechecks the shard as closure approaches to see if events are being progressed. It may be that the inability to choose shards (as was available in GW) is not possible with the technology they’ve used for the game. I believe that a better solution would be to scale the various events for a smaller “minimum needed” would be a better solution which would not require the whole taxi business — which works (for me) sporadically at best. If Anet went that route, I’d be happy — and very much surprised.

Actually I think the megaserver needs to be fixed, whether or not they fixed the scaling. You can’t scale DS for 5 guys. It would be ridiculous. I’d hate it. It would lose what it is and a lot of people like what it is. The megaserver must be fixed no matter what.

That doesn’t mean scaling can’t be revisited, but they’re different problems that require different solutions.

The thing is, Anet has assigned a team to do this, so it’s not just changing a few numbers. I think they’re reworking the system altogether.

The megaserver was fine before HOT, so obviously something in HoT maps threw it out of whack. Whatever that is, that needs to be addressed, no matter what and I absolutely believe Anet is addressing it.

Vayne.8563:

You can’t scale DS for 5 guys. It would be ridiculous. I’d hate it. It would lose what it is and a lot of people like what it is.

Being off-topic a bit, but doesn’t DS actually scale for 5 people? There’s a lot of people who did DS runs in 5/10 man parties because it’s way easier than doing it with huge zerks. I actually did a DS in 11 people and it was waaaay easier than doing it “the right way”.

Vayne.8563:

The megaserver was fine before HOT, so obviously something in HoT maps threw it out of whack. Whatever that is, that needs to be addressed, no matter what and I absolutely believe Anet is addressing it.

I think what broke Megaserevers was every map being on a timed meta. People suddenly HAD to start taxiing in and out of maps (And at approximately the same time across all instances, due to shared timers. Only Dry Top has a similar nature in Core Tyria, and it’s practically a HoT map anyway). And mass player migrations confuses the hell out of the Megaserver system, because it’s not what it was built for (It goes through all the effort to find a good map for you, and then you want to leave it. Or everyone else leaves, leaving you all alone. Poor megaserver system. It tried )

Raizen.7981:

Vayne.8563:

You can’t scale DS for 5 guys. It would be ridiculous. I’d hate it. It would lose what it is and a lot of people like what it is.

Being off-topic a bit, but doesn’t DS actually scale for 5 people? There’s a lot of people who did DS runs in 5/10 man parties because it’s way easier than doing it with huge zerks. I actually did a DS in 11 people and it was waaaay easier than doing it “the right way”.

I don’t think a party of five would work against the boss at the end before mordremoth or the fight itself.

You’d have to split the party some people to take down the boss and some to kill the collectors and keep the preservers at bay. I’m almost 100% positive splitting 5 people into two groups couldn’t accomplish that. Maybe ten could, but that’s ten per lane or 30 people and I still think that would be hairy.

More than that, once you get to the actual modremoth fight, you have plants that spawn on every island with a time limit to kill them all. It would advance the bar if you can’t make it. Five people per lane is 15 people. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t clear all the islands on those phases, which means that at the end of the day, the leyline energy would rise faster than you could kill mordremoth.

But it’s okay for me. I mean that’s the whole idea of a giant meta event like that being okay for five people would take it down a notch for me. It’s supposed to be an army incursion.

As returning experienced player. The whole open world design of HOT is very poor. It seems to be a grind from the start. Not an adventure. You follow the story but you have to grind stuff to go through the story. Definitely not fun to do as solo. Since the launch of HOT I have done 2 maps and only at 80% completion of those 2 maps. It be just nice to progress through the story without hitting roadblocks all the time. This does not feel at all like the 1st time when I leveled and I was in awe in how much fun it was. HOT really is no where as good as when this game originally came out. It is not fun anymore. For a game where the philosophy was no grind. This game has more grind than any other MMO I have played. All it is is farming and grind. I like to do the raids but no one will take you unless you are fully ascended. And to that get there you have to farm materials. This is not fun.

This really isn’t a discussion of difficulty as some people seem to have been obsessing about but the mentioned and very real issue that HoT doesn’t follow the same design aspects of gw2 and that it was lacklustre. For instance gw2 wasn’t supposed to have a dedicated healer but now there are tempests/druids and these are needed for raids. A lot of things take a long grind to unlock, like masteries which lock off parts of the maps, the elite specs, the raids as they require ascended equipment and that’s time gated. The issue with the grind is that there’s just not much to do, like there’s only 4 maps. I’ve done them all at least a dozen times.

I do disagree that the maps are bad. I really enjoyed them, I wish there were more but there arent. It makes me feel ripped off

Danicus.4952:

I am an experienced casual player. 13K APs, 950 WVW rank, Closer to the Stars, done dungeons, raids, crafted ascended gear etc, etc. I’ve read quite a few honest postings about frustrations with HOT, and the trend in responses has been to respond to the OP by saying “learn to play better” or “I did it just fine, there is something the matter with you.”

I personally find HOT uninviting as a solo PVE player. It lacks the difficulty progression structure present in most games. It demands group (zerg) participation for individual rewards. It requires the development of mobility masteries to effectively access map areas efficiently. It loads the player with an ocean of inventory filling currencies or keys. It creates an unprecedented level of grind for goals.

I’ve completed the HOT personal story with a rev, and moved partially through with 4 other characters.

I’ve completed the new specializations with all classes. I find them fun and interesting additions to the game (imo the best part of the expansion) – getting HOT HPs pretty annoying of course. I must admit, I turned in some WVW credits to unlock some HOT HPs.

I was really looking forward to HOT, but am truly ambivalent about the expansion maps at this point – even with the nerfs.

I find myself now checking in, hitting the daily and getting out.

Pretty sure I won’t buy another GW2 expansion – especially if it follows the map design and skill progression structure HOT model. It’s a shame – I am a long time dedicated GW player – sorry to see the franchise pick this path.

My core point is, telling an OP that is frustrated with HOT to “L2P” or “I did it, what is the matter with you?” is missing the mark. There are authentic design departures here, and they are not friendly to the casual player.

cool story bro.

Quin.9740:

It be just nice to progress through the story without hitting roadblocks all the time.

Masteries are the alternative to increasing the level cap. You’ve always had to grind if you tried to rush through the story. If you legitimately explore however and participate in the content available, you shouldn’t have any problems obtaining what is required – no grinding whatsoever.

If you’re skipping adventures, note that your first gold through each one is a major chunk of experience and they can be completed daily for ~100k each, making the experience portion of masteries trivial. Mastery points in comparison shouldn’t be a problem until much later on, but that later half isn’t required to progress.

Seera: I do not know if this is feasible for you, but a Razer Naga HEX mouse has made a world of difference to me in the matter of moving and shooting. I don’t even use all 6 of the thumb buttons. I bound buttons 4,5,6 to my left, back, right strafe keys, and press both LMB and RMB together to move. Thus all my motion is via mouse and I only need to hit one keyboard key at a time to fire off abilities (other than ctrl T to target and my chosen ctrl S to swap ground snap to target aoe and free placement of aoe). I bought the HEX immediately after the first BWE way back when. I am not a coordinated twitch reflex gamer, I’m 50 years old and never figured out console controls as I grew up with basic joysticks. Yet I can move around in combat quite freely thanks to the HEX. There are only two handicaps it gives me: mouse steering means if I’m always turning the same direction (eg Mad King Clocktower) I run out of mouse pad room, and I do have a little bit of a problem fast placing aoe targets as my cursor is wherever the mouse steer has put it — thus my love for the snap to target option.

I have found HoT maps a lot of fun, I’ve even commanded lanes in DS. If I hadn’t gotten the HEX I don’t know that I’d ever have been able to sustainably play GW2 at all given that WASD movement combined with skill use has always eluded me.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Healix.5819:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

Try playing as a keyboard turning clicker – WASD to move (no strafing) and only clicking skills, including dodge to be fair. Only use 1 hand at a time (keyboard/mouse) and delay all your actions by a second to simulate a slow reaction time. Limit yourself to random rare gear, clear your traits, choose whichever profession you play the least and base your weapon/skill choices on whatever looks the coolest. You’re now almost at the level of the average MMO player, which is why nearly all MMOs are below easy.

I already am. But seriously, I mouse my skills and imported the old control scheme from city of heroes, so I use the keyboard primarily to turn. I imagine watching me play would be actually frustrating to someone who’s good at the game, because to change my camera I end up having to anchor myself in place for a few moments. I learned to play this game on a track pad. Granted, it was a Mac trackpad, which is the Cadillac of the trackpad world, but still.

Seera.5916:

That tells you the what they did that caused them to fail. You don’t see the reason.

It could be because the player has a disability or they could have poor internet connection in general. You just assume that any mistakes are due to lack of knowledge. Not the kittenumption to make, but the video itself doesn’t tell you that.

What they did is a direct consequence of why they did it. Cause and effect share a necessary relationship. People, being people, generally do people things, so it isn’t too hard to figure out.

If the guy playing the game has Parkinson’s disease, he’s going to mention it. I’ve seen plenty of discussions on game difficulty will someone will bring up a disability of some sort that would prevent them from getting better. But, I also see plenty of posts that proclaim the game impossible with absolutely no explanation as to why.

The problem is, you’re trying to take a very specific and rare theoretical case, and use it to abandon common sense. It is fairly easy to see the set of paradigms governing a person’s actions in the game, and once those paradigms are shifted, the world opens up to them. If some specially misshapen snowflake should come my way, I’ll take that into consideration.

Seera.5916:

Watching does nothing for me. The only way it would be remotely useful for me is if they did a dual with the game and the keyboard/mouse. Seeing the effects on the screen or the keyboard/mouse by itself will not tell me how to better play. And how one person plays is the worst for someone else. Because people have different reaction times and internet connection speeds. I’m very very hands on learning. I have to actually DO it to learn it.

That’s the thing, that’s what I do and I still die. So it’s obviously not as easy as that. Please find me and link me a build that literally says do whatever skills you want for the rotation. All of the ones I’ve seen, dictate which skill when and when to switch attunement/weapon.

There is an oft under-emphasized point of education, but nonetheless it is an important one: listening is a skill.

Yes, it is a skill. It is a shame that most people are expected to just know how to listen, and it is also a shame that people expect to just zone out at stimuli and learn things. If you intend to learn, you can’t just have knowledge drizzled all over you and expect to consume any of it.

Take an active participation in your listening. When watching a tutorial, slow the video down so you can see which skills are activated at what time. Look at the build screen to see what equipment they are using. If you’ve lost the train of thought, go back in the video and watch that part again to see what is happening. Make a mental checklist of what they are doing. Keep the video open in another window while you try out skills on a golem in the mists.

That said, there’s a strange irony in what you’ve said here. To see someone’s hands or keyboard while playing is actually nearly useless information, since keybinds can be individualized. But, there’s also a reason why it is that the build videos go over specific rotations: the builds, skills, and techniques are chosen to have the maximum combination of DPS and group support. Because of this, there is no “this build is worse for other people”.

Likewise, on pretty much any build video I’ve seen, and on nearly every metabattle page, appropriateness and discretion are encouraged. They come with a variety of weapon/utility changes for different circumstances. The rotations and skills chosen are a best case scenario. You’re still expected to dodge when a big attack is coming your way.

I’m very skilled in listening. However, you’ve forgotten that there are 3 major types of learners: visual, auditory, and hands on. Some people are great in one and horrible in another. I’m great with hands on. Really good with visual. Horrible with auditory.

Seeing those keybinds is useful to me though, if done split screen with the actual game. I’m highly hands on learning, with visual coming in second. So if I see that he’s moved his skills around, it may give me an idea on how to adjust mine to see if that makes things easier. I’ll see the how he does what I see on the screen so that I have a better chance of being able to actually do it in game and cement what I’ve seen. I’ll see when he does skill 4 immediately after skill 3 or if waits a second. There are too many skills for me to memorize which look is which skill and which have what cast time and what the cast looks like so seeing the keyboard for me is ok, he’s using Skill X in this situation and he’s got it mapped to this button for quicker hitting of it.

I have been told that my mind processes things and works very differently than most people’s. So while, I do get that for most people seeing the keyboard and the game screen may end up being information overload, it would actually help me. My brain is wired weirdly.

And yes, some builds are worse for other players. A newer player isn’t necessarily going to be successful in a glass cannon build. They may be better off in a more defensive build. Once they learn the game better, the glass cannon build may become just as good as the defensive build for them, if not better.

Healix.5819:

If you’re skipping adventures, note that your first gold through each one is a major chunk of experience and they can be completed daily for ~100k each.

… if you find yourself having to use the words “Repeated Daily”… THAT’S A kittenING GRIND!

Seera.5916:

I’m very skilled in listening. However, you’ve forgotten that there are 3 major types of learners: visual, auditory, and hands on. Some people are great in one and horrible in another. I’m great with hands on. Really good with visual. Horrible with auditory.

Not forgotten:

Keep the video open in another window while you try out skills on a golem in the mists.

Seera.5916:

Seeing those keybinds is useful to me though, if done split screen with the actual game. I’m highly hands on learning, with visual coming in second. So if I see that he’s moved his skills around, it may give me an idea on how to adjust mine to see if that makes things easier. I’ll see the how he does what I see on the screen so that I have a better chance of being able to actually do it in game and cement what I’ve seen. I’ll see when he does skill 4 immediately after skill 3 or if waits a second. There are too many skills for me to memorize which look is which skill and which have what cast time and what the cast looks like so seeing the keyboard for me is ok, he’s using Skill X in this situation and he’s got it mapped to this button for quicker hitting of it.

You don’t need to memorize skills at all. If they don’t outright tell you which skills they press in which order, you can see which skill they are using on the hotbar. It blinks then goes on cooldown whenever they use that skill. There’s a reason why it is that nobody goes into keybinds: people playing GW2 learned to play on the PC from different kinds of games, which each have their own keybind style. Once a person has a “setup” that they learn from a game, they import that setup over to GW2. Then there’s the variety of different hardware you can be using, with different keyboard layouts and mouses with skills bound to the buttons on the side. In the end, a guide on how to setup and bind keys doesn’t get made because all it does is result in a bunch of players complaining that those keybinds didn’t feel right or make them champions.

Here’s the thing that perplexes me: you claim to be a kinesthetic learner, but your demeanor contradicts this. I’m a kinesthetic learner, too, and I share a trait with every other kinesthetic learner I’ve personally met: we take initiative. A “hands-on” person puts their hands on things. We fiddle, stretch, take apart and put back together to get a good grasp of something. That’s how we interact with the world. We like to mess around with things. This is what is contradictory: I’ve never met a hands on person who refuses to put their hands on something. Quite frankly, I’m not sure you’re actually a kinesthetic learner, but are just using that as an excuse for poor listening skills. The information is still there, being presented in multiple formats. A kinesthetic learner doesn’t arbitrarily dump information because it doesn’t suit their preferred learning style. They just convert that information to their preserved learning style.

Seera.5916:

And yes, some builds are worse for other players. A newer player isn’t necessarily going to be successful in a glass cannon build. They may be better off in a more defensive build. Once they learn the game better, the glass cannon build may become just as good as the defensive build for them, if not better.

No, they’re really not. Something I recommend to every player, even new ones starting out, is to go full glass cannon in PVE. The reason is quite simple: it is better, period. In GW2, glass cannons are not “better if you have the skills”. Due to the close ratios of damage an durability in this game, going full glass doesn’t kitten your character’s performance. The game was balanced around PVP, so a glass cannon character has roughly an equal product of effective HP x DPS as a character with defensive stats, and neither build choice is designed to be impotent in some way. Because of this, there’s little reason to not go whole hog on offensive stats.

And by going with a meta build (or something close to it), this maximizes the possible performance of the player by using the most efficient combination of utilities, skills, and traits. The interactions of utilities and traits isn’t some free-form “nothing affects anything else” system. They work off of each other, multiply each other, and culminate into a final product. This is why going for full offense works so well: those tiny 5% and 10% increases multiply each other, making each one better overall.

Sartharina.3542:

Healix.5819:

If you’re skipping adventures, note that your first gold through each one is a major chunk of experience and they can be completed daily for ~100k each.

… if you find yourself having to use the words “Repeated Daily”… THAT’S A kittenING GRIND!

Not really. A grind is when you have to do a task unceasingly. Something you do daily is, at worst, a “chore”.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Seera.5916:

I’m very skilled in listening. However, you’ve forgotten that there are 3 major types of learners: visual, auditory, and hands on. Some people are great in one and horrible in another. I’m great with hands on. Really good with visual. Horrible with auditory.

Not forgotten:

Keep the video open in another window while you try out skills on a golem in the mists.

Seera.5916:

Seeing those keybinds is useful to me though, if done split screen with the actual game. I’m highly hands on learning, with visual coming in second. So if I see that he’s moved his skills around, it may give me an idea on how to adjust mine to see if that makes things easier. I’ll see the how he does what I see on the screen so that I have a better chance of being able to actually do it in game and cement what I’ve seen. I’ll see when he does skill 4 immediately after skill 3 or if waits a second. There are too many skills for me to memorize which look is which skill and which have what cast time and what the cast looks like so seeing the keyboard for me is ok, he’s using Skill X in this situation and he’s got it mapped to this button for quicker hitting of it.

You don’t need to memorize skills at all. If they don’t outright tell you which skills they press in which order, you can see which skill they are using on the hotbar. It blinks then goes on cooldown whenever they use that skill. There’s a reason why it is that nobody goes into keybinds: people playing GW2 learned to play on the PC from different kinds of games, which each have their own keybind style. Once a person has a “setup” that they learn from a game, they import that setup over to GW2. Then there’s the variety of different hardware you can be using, with different keyboard layouts and mouses with skills bound to the buttons on the side. In the end, a guide on how to setup and bind keys doesn’t get made because all it does is result in a bunch of players complaining that those keybinds didn’t feel right or make them champions.

Here’s the thing that perplexes me: you claim to be a kinesthetic learner, but your demeanor contradicts this. I’m a kinesthetic learner, too, and I share a trait with every other kinesthetic learner I’ve personally met: we take initiative. A “hands-on” person puts their hands on things. We fiddle, stretch, take apart and put back together to get a good grasp of something. That’s how we interact with the world. We like to mess around with things. This is what is contradictory: I’ve never met a hands on person who refuses to put their hands on something. Quite frankly, I’m not sure you’re actually a kinesthetic learner, but are just using that as an excuse for poor listening skills. The information is still there, being presented in multiple formats. A kinesthetic learner doesn’t arbitrarily dump information because it doesn’t suit their preferred learning style. They just convert that information to their preserved learning style.

Seera.5916:

And yes, some builds are worse for other players. A newer player isn’t necessarily going to be successful in a glass cannon build. They may be better off in a more defensive build. Once they learn the game better, the glass cannon build may become just as good as the defensive build for them, if not better.

No, they’re really not. Something I recommend to every player, even new ones starting out, is to go full glass cannon in PVE. The reason is quite simple: it is better, period. In GW2, glass cannons are not “better if you have the skills”. Due to the close ratios of damage an durability in this game, going full glass doesn’t kitten your character’s performance. The game was balanced around PVP, so a glass cannon character has roughly an equal product of effective HP x DPS as a character with defensive stats, and neither build choice is designed to be impotent in some way. Because of this, there’s little reason to not go whole hog on offensive stats.

And by going with a meta build (or something close to it), this maximizes the possible performance of the player by using the most efficient combination of utilities, skills, and traits. The interactions of utilities and traits isn’t some free-form “nothing affects anything else” system. They work off of each other, multiply each other, and culminate into a final product. This is why going for full offense works so well: those tiny 5% and 10% increases multiply each other, making each one better overall.

You seem to have forgotten that I get easily frustrated when things don’t go my way. And that when games cease to be fun, I tend to alter what I’m doing to make it fun again if I’m not feeling well or work’s been hectic. Which typically means I either quit playing GW2 or go back to playing in core Tyria. And as I’ve mentioned, that’s been the case recently; I’ve got either a minor cold or allergies acting up and we’ve been short staffed for about a month at work with increasing work loads. So my desire to gut through the frustration to L2P isn’t present, to force myself to not mentally shut down which I tend to do when I get frustrated. When things calm down at work and I’m feeling better, I may feel up to gutting through the frustration to L2P.

And that for me, practicing against things that are not that at the difficulty level that I have trouble with doesn’t work for me. So golems in the mist won’t help me learn – part of what I meant in my previous post by wired differently.

I’ve got a tendency for impatience, I’m hard on myself when I don’t get things right the first time (I HATE and have a hard time with things that don’t have a right answer), and as mentioned I tend to mentally shut down when frustrated.

And like I said, a defensive build may be better for someone who is new to the game. I purposely chose the elementalist for my first character when the game launched because it wasn’t the easiest class. I also don’t think I would have enjoyed GW2 as much as I did when I hit 80 on my main if I had initially gone glass cannon. I went full clerics with very defensive stats. She’s now a mix of mostly berserker and assassin with mostly offensive traits (with some clerics and other random stuff that I haven’t bothered to upgrade yet). My other characters jumped head first into a mixture of berserker and assassin with offensive traits when they hit 80. A mixture due to me not wanting to spend that much on their gear since I’m working toward Meteorlogicus.

Some people are just fine starting off in the deep end of the pool. Others need to learn on the shallow end.

HoT is fine as it is. The next expansion areas should have (my opinion) a different loot system where the chance for rare and better drops increases with aggregate group luck and be challenging for 4 person teams to survive in. That way, those of us willing to grind against impossible odds can do so. Call it an unfair skill and new account barrier, if you like, but this game has little to teach team strategy in PvE. It needs something like that.

So essentially, the problem you have is a set of personal failings that get in the way of normal function. A short temper and poor self motivation is something you should work on, not something everyone else should work around. Likewise, I don’t care what your personal health is. As I write this, I have a fire in my belly and full body nerve pain, spurred from a vicious food intolerance and restaurant servers who lie about the ingredients in their meal. Everybody’s got problems, everyone is miserable for some reason, and the world works because we don’t let our ailments bind us and our shortcomings define us.

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind. Part of the fun of playing a game is learning to play the game. You should like getting better, getting smarter, and out-witting the puzzles set before you. If you absolutely dread having to figure out the extremely basic tactics needed to fight an enemy, then this is a mental barrier imposed by you alone. It is utterly baffling how you can purposefully choose one of the hardest classes to play in the game, but can’t choose to use one of the dozen tactics the class provides that would allow you to get through HoT.

And like I said, a glass cannon build is what everyone should go for when they start the game. The glass cannon is not the deep end. The pool is almost completely uniform in depth.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So essentially, the problem you have is a set of personal failings that get in the way of normal function. A short temper and poor self motivation is something you should work on, not something everyone else should work around. Likewise, I don’t care what your personal health is. As I write this, I have a fire in my belly and full body nerve pain, spurred from a vicious food intolerance and restaurant servers who lie about the ingredients in their meal. Everybody’s got problems, everyone is miserable for some reason, and the world works because we don’t let our ailments bind us and our shortcomings define us.

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind. Part of the fun of playing a game is learning to play the game. You should like getting better, getting smarter, and out-witting the puzzles set before you. If you absolutely dread having to figure out the extremely basic tactics needed to fight an enemy, then this is a mental barrier imposed by you alone. It is utterly baffling how you can purposefully choose one of the hardest classes to play in the game, but can’t choose to use one of the dozen tactics the class provides that would allow you to get through HoT.

And like I said, a glass cannon build is what everyone should go for when they start the game. The glass cannon is not the deep end. The pool is almost completely uniform in depth.

You seemed to have missed the line in a previous post where I said I wasn’t asking ANet to make the game easier for me because I know my problem is a personal L2P issue.

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind.

I know my problem is a personal L2P issue.

Everyone has their own speed. The great thing about GW2 is there are game modes and areas for everyone. It is exceedingly casual while also offering challenging content.

Some are great learners under pressure. Some enjoy overcoming their shortcomings. Some like to role play with no combat at all. Some like defeating real players. Some like following the game’s story. Some like coordinating a winning strategy.

As long as GW2 can offer new challenges and content for each of the many subsets, it will do well.

Seera, focus on completing just one task. One you have done that, then work on another. Learning is incremental. We all get distracted and daunted by too many tasks.

BRA has been at this a while and is farther ahead in learning skills. We, the players, are all spread out; not just in skill but in preferences… subsets of ‘skill’ where one player who is terrible at PvP and PvE may own a large chunk of the BLTC stock.

You do not have to compete with others. Just find challenges that interest you. Maybe you want to lean guild missions, or craft, or trade, or grind champs, or map areas, or grind events for loot and xp and karma, or build rank in PvP; decide on something and work at it.

From a game design PoV, satisfying the most customers fir the least cost is their game. The best we, as players, can do is explain how our ‘suggestions’ and opinions matter in terms of growing player base; more specifically, gem buyers and client purchases.