Guild Wars 2

Yargesh.4965:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yargesh.4965:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yargesh.4965:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Imo a big difference between the HoT areas and the Silverwastes/Southsun is related to the terrain. In Southsun/Silverwastes I can solo run through there as there is enough room to maneuver or avoid mobs, especially in a fight, without involving other groups of mobs. With the HoT, there will be a number of hard hitting mobs in a narrow lane that I can’t skirt around and if I try to fight, I get in range of more mobs or come up against a wall or drop off. It means a constant need to hack my way through a seemingly endless series of trash mobs that can’t be avoided while I’m trying to get to the fun stuff, the events. It’s not challenging so much as it’s tiring.

Gliding.

Doesn’t work all that great when you’re going uphill, or on the same level for that matter.

going uphill turn around and jump, you are not affected by damage enough so that you are knocked out of the air (yet). Have not found a lot of flat ground so while it is a problem it is not a huge one.

If I’m making my way to an ongoing event uphill from me, how in the world does turning around and jumping get me where I want to go? Or did you not even bother to read the post?

I am not trying to argue, I am giving advice. Turning around and gliding will take you out of combat. Since I have found that there are usually a couple of ways to get anywhere. This could be more convenient than bashing through a wall of mobs. Also these maps need to be thought in 3D. I think though people are going to have similar issues as underwater combat and not think in all available directions.

Ok. But actual explanations are better than cryptic comments like, "going uphill turn around and jump, you are not affected by damage enough so that you are knocked out of the air " as that doesn’t tell me that you are suggesting I use gliding to get to an alternate route to my spot uphill.

• Mobs are better than before, people having problems need to read their enemies, for example:

The silvari snipers are just about to check the huge mark above your head, dodge, reflect , block, interrupt and do damage, repeat if you cant.

Smokescales are more about: mist aoe is cast, move away, invlun, etc to dodge the shadowstep mode of the enemy and then hit.

• The enemies arent hard, neither they are as easy as before.

Is just that a “not so big” group of players that are totally used to the low difficulty standars of vainilla gw2, and as such never improved, went head on (to die in some cases) against HoT mobs, in a lot of cases in their berzerker gears, witch most of them could use since the difficulty of vainilla was too low.

Plus only a part of this group want nerfs, the other are fine with the challenge.

• In conclusion:

Since the game didnt teach them to be more skilled and they neither did for themselves, they went to die there and are complaining now.

• Posible solution that doesnt hurt the affected “not so big” population:

Create a “training maguma camp” where players go against some of the enemies of HoT and are explained about they dinamics, reading mobs skills and passives below they health bar, posisionating, and such.

Give a title, mini, some skins, gold, etc and a mastery point as a rewards, progresivly as players complete the “training camp”.

With this rewards people will not avoid this camp and guys that can take the content will go for the shinies also.

So as ever there’s a split in the community between those players who want high difficulty mobs, and those players that really don’t … or don’t want them all the time anyway. Isn’t the solution to use mastery to access challenging content? So that in playing the game it becomes (potentially) harder. At the moment as you gain more mastery points it seems that the game becomes easier, isn’t that the wrong way around? Don’t you want the content to become more challenging at “endgame”? Shouldn’t the challenging content be something that you work towards? Leave the “vanilla” jungle easy to navigate and not terribly challenging, and put the scary mobs in places you need skill or mastery to reach.

binidj.5734:

So as ever there’s a split in the community between those players who want high difficulty mobs, and those players that really don’t … or don’t want them all the time anyway. Isn’t the solution to use mastery to access challenging content? So that in playing the game it becomes (potentially) harder.

This isnt even the challenging content they said theres going to be -.- . Its just people dont be used to the level.

Lucius.2140:

Is just that a “not so big” group of players that are totally used to the low difficulty standars of vainilla gw2, and as such never improved, went head on (to die in some cases) against HoT mobs, in a lot of cases in their berzerker gears, witch most of them could use since the difficulty of vainilla was too low.

• In conclusion:

Since the game didnt teach them to be more skilled and they neither did for themselves, they went to die there and are complaining now.

• Posible solution that doesnt hurt the affected “not so big” population:

Create a “training maguma camp” where players go against some of the enemies of HoT and are explained about they dinamics, reading mobs skills and passives below they health bar, posisionating, and such.

Give a title, mini, some skins, gold, etc and a mastery point as a rewards, progresivly as players complete the “training camp”.

With this rewards people will not avoid this camp and guys that can take the content will go for the shinies also.

Don´t forget to hand the poor below than average Berserk players that ridiculously still exist after literaly years of practice in stacking and being at the top of the foodchain in a world of mediocre mobs also a supper and let them rest on a comfortable bed after they have completed the camp for some minutes, with a busty nurse sitting beside them and sing a nice song.
(If you are disabled or somehow hindered, you are of course excused from this comment)

This post is so much win. It perfectly illustrates how the mighty have fallen in the course of a single weekend and the bandwaggoners have been separated from the veterans that can actually play Berserker^^

In my opinion mobs difficulty was good. when i played the story istance for the first time with an elementalist running a build similar to my main character, I even thought they were easy… people should realize that they were fighting against new mobs and probably their characters weren’t running optimal builds. and, well, we are going into the jungle’s deeps to fight an elder dragon, a bit of difficulty even in the open world is well accepted.

I’m not a bandwaggoner, nor am I a vet. I don’t like to play berserker, either. I hardly play 5 hours every week, so I’m not what you could call hardcore gamer…
I believe that autorizes me to say: The new mobs are fine, you just need to think a bit and move more.

Whats up with the snipers? The only dangerous things are enemy specific special abilities. Charges, raptor leaps and the rest, a nice and refreshing list compared to the enemies in the other lvl80 boring zones. This is a maximum level expansion zone, the mobs are supposed to surprise you. There is a reason you have wasd on your keyboard and the ability to dodge and those nice utility skills + being able to change key bindings.

The mobs were a bit tougher and had a few deaths but it is a learning experience, I didn’t mind. I played a my usual profession, since I wasn’t going to take the time to learn a new profession. Will maybe do that from scratch and learn how to play Revenant at full release. I play a mobile warrior (dodge roll) with a hammer and rifle, always have (shh, don’t tell anyone I am doing it wrong. I am old, AARP anyone. You can teach an old dog new tricks but it takes time). I also mix gear and do not run pure zerk, you know play your way.

If I wanted to just explore, I went by day. By night I found the area not too difficult but I needed to keep moving. Gliding also allowed some freedom to move about. The old guild I belonged to is gone and I play solo now. It certainly is easier with a few others when moving at night and I did move around with others.

Maybe a small tweak here or there on the numbers of mobs spawning but I think the difficulty was right for this area. I really enjoyed the beta and look forward to another.

Lucius.2140:

binidj.5734:

So as ever there’s a split in the community between those players who want high difficulty mobs, and those players that really don’t … or don’t want them all the time anyway. Isn’t the solution to use mastery to access challenging content? So that in playing the game it becomes (potentially) harder.

This isnt even the challenging content they said theres going to be -.- . Its just people dont be used to the level.

I don’t know if you recall but way back in the mists of time (one of the beta weekends), the mobs were quite “challenging” and ArenaNet, after some complaints, dialled down the mob difficulty. There were quite a few members of the community who were made very sad by this decision, others were made very happy by it. There is a difference between “dont be used to the level” and “don’t enjoy the level the content is pitched at”. What I’m saying is that rather than make the baseline content hard, make the baseline content as easy as comparable zones (ie. Frostgorge and Orr … not Southsun) with progressively harder content being in harder to reach places.

People who enjoy challenging zones are easily bored, if you don’t believe me look at Southsun in comparison to Curse Shore or Frostgorge Sound, Southsun is quite a bit harder in general (although quite rewarding) but it’s empty except when it’s time to kill the Queen. Why is this? I think it’s because the people who want challenging content got bored and stopped playing there, whereas the people (like me) who like casual content are still pottering around the older level 80 zones, still in the game, still buying stuff from the Gem Store.

I’m not saying don’t include more challenging content, only that it’s not a great idea to set the bar of entry at a level that people aren’t comfortable with. Of course I could do the content, I’m sure pretty much everyone on this thread or who took part in the beta could do the content, but there’s a difference between being able to complete it and enjoying the experience. I didn’t bother with the Queen’s Gambit because I didn’t enjoy that sort of content but it’s great that it was there and that people could access it and (even the ones who didn’t use exploits) were able to get their Liadri mini. The thing about the Gambit was that it didn’t form a barrier to anything, if you wanted to be challenged, you could be but if you just wanted to charge around in the areas underneath you were free to do so.

ETA: Hardly any of my characters are Berserker geared, and I’ve been playing since beta so I have some idea of how to dodge … so thanks for all the smart comments but, as I said, there is a difference between not being able to complete content and not enjoying content.

I enjoyed having enemies that took a little thought to beat. Enemies susceptible to stacking are boring.

I think I have never died to a common mob before this beta.

10/10 I might get myself into pve. Truly amazing. This is what FUN is: being challenged to our best in order to compete, struggle to overcome our limits and finally emerge VICTORIOUS.
Enough with the “stand still, and press something on the keyboard, the mobs will die anyway”. Finally there arent mobs with 1000000000 HP and basically no DPS anymore.

If you follow the idea that Soutsun failed because it was hard and not casual, please also consider that people fell in droves while Orr was new and exciting, and again when the champion ghosts were a little bit overpowered and literaly sucked the life out of everything.

It is not a success because it requires effort, has not much too offer story- and event wise, lacks easy champions and the rewards are solid, but not spectacular enough to lure people away from their easy going, super boring trains in the vanilla areas(Unlike SW). Talking about carrying owls to Athens here, if many people are actually asking for the easy grind, we others are screwed and either have to leave or admit defeat and force ourself in the game, making it basically a colourful chatroom.

With the risk of repeating myself… I’m not a “hard-content seeker”, nor a vet or expert player.

The beta was not hard. It was just right: difficult enough to keep you on alert, simple enough to learn and survive.

Seriously, you just can’t compare it to Liadri, or even to the journal achievements.

binidj.5734:

I don’t know if you recall but way back in the mists of time (one of the beta weekends), the mobs were quite “challenging” and ArenaNet, after some complaints, dialled down the mob difficulty. There were quite a few members of the community who were made very sad by this decision, others were made very happy by it. There is a difference between “dont be used to the level” and “don’t enjoy the level the content is pitched at”. What I’m saying is that rather than make the baseline content hard, make the baseline content as easy as comparable zones (ie. Frostgorge and Orr … not Southsun) with progressively harder content being in harder to reach places.

I remember, also a reason why this game was branded as ultra casual and most of the “hardcore players” left, same reason why they are making the mobs harder now. Same reason why a good combat system (that we have, for MMOs at least) basically isnt necesary in the vainilla game.

And also if you check, the guys that asked for the nerf, passed generally from not action based combat to an action based combat. It was a bad sample, because they have a different mentality, one that hasnt changed much in some groups thanks to that nerf.

I understand what you said, but i think the level of the HoT mobs right now, are what you will put as the easy part. I agree that the enemies could be harder in more difficult to reach places, hope they do it.

Plus a lot of the people posting that they died, are really not used to that level of difficulty, if you die theres less joy, so they enjoy less (but some liked it ^^ ).

Only a portion dont like it and can, and in a lot of cases it have to do with rewards.

binidj.5734:

People who enjoy challenging zones are easily bored, if you don’t believe me look at Southsun in comparison to Curse Shore or Frostgorge Sound, Southsun is quite a bit harder in general (although quite rewarding) but it’s empty except when it’s time to kill the Queen. Why is this? I think it’s because the people who want challenging content got bored and stopped playing there, whereas the people (like me) who like casual content are still pottering around the older level 80 zones, still in the game, still buying stuff from the Gem Store.

Southsun basically dont have nothing to do. Poeple need objectives, been hard or easy and southsun doesnt give them., Dont have many events, and lore wise isnt as complete as other maps.

Its dead because its incomplete.

The other hand are the rewards, the more “effort” you put in to a task, the more reward you are expecting.

Aside form the farming nature of the map, this reward-effort its the same reason why Silverwastes, that have open world mobs stronger than most vainilla pve maps, have people (and have more when they were going for the luminicent armor), because the rewards compensated the effort.

binidj.5734:

ETA: Hardly any of my characters are Berserker geared, and I’ve been playing since beta so I have some idea of how to dodge … so thanks for all the smart comments but, as I said, there is a difference between not being able to complete content and not enjoying content.

Wasnt direct for you specificly, not sure if that one its for me either (not gonna read all the thread -.-).

Evans.6347:

The snipers are a bit too much. They almost down any class in one volley.
The rest is fine.

Tbh, had some fun with those last hours. Moving with Ventari’s projectile bubble felt like moving in a transporter in Beirut.

I think ideally, mobs should vary a bit based on location.
I really don’t understand the people who want every trash mob fight to be a white knuckle teeth clenching sweat dripping heart pounding fight to the death where missing a single dodge or reflect by .000000000000000000000000000001% of a second means instant death. Makes no sense to me.

Does that mean I think such mobs shouldn’t exist at all?
No.
Simply that Not every freaking mob on the map needs to be that way.
We call them trash mobs for a reason, they’re filler between points A and B and while sure it can be interesting for them to be dangerous for a bit, after not that long simply moving around is going to be insanely tedious.
Want to walk to the other side of the map for something?
45 minute death slog, get killed on the way, grats start over.

Now, I like interesting mobs. For example the snipers that keep getting mentioned.
1. I do think they do just a little bit too much damage.
2. However, they’re fairly easy to kill, glass cannons if you will.
That is a good design, powerful, but dies quickly if you know how to get close.
What isn’t good design, is mobs that are that dangerous but take minutes to kill because they also have insane health.
(This was my problem with a lot of the mobs in SW, far too many vets and elites. Would have been a lot more interesting to fight if it didn’t take so long to kill each one, and that was a heavy part of what made them dangerous the sheer HP counters.)

You want interesting fights.
Cool.
We just don’t want every single fight to be that way.
We don’t want to fight every single mob between points A and B every time we make the trek
Trash mobs rarely dropped anything interesting anyway, and if they keep the same mindset that SW had they won’t drop almost anything at all
People keep saying we need more challenging and more rewarding content.
But all I see is harder and less rewarding.

The biggest challenge to the enemies came at the start of the weekend, when I didn’t know how the enemies act, and I was testing out brand new skills and weapons (and a brand new professions).

By the end of the weekend, I was doing pretty good against them. I had learned what new skills and abilities worked for me. I had learned what to expect from enemies. I was able to solo most things of Veteran status, only really having trouble when there were other enemies around.

For group events, it really just came down to people working together. As long as people worked to take down Vine Tenders at the same time, the giant vines were a breeze (though I do think the Tenders could lose a little health). Other events worked in similar fashion – as long as people worked together, events could be beaten.

I think, overall, the enemies this weekend had a good challenge, without being too difficult. Sometimes, we just had not yet worked out the best way to deal with a particular enemy/event, but we shall given a little time.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

We just don’t want every single fight to be that way.
We don’t want to fight every single mob between points A and B every time we make the trek
Trash mobs rarely dropped anything interesting anyway, and if they keep the same mindset that SW had they won’t drop almost anything at all
People keep saying we need more challenging and more rewarding content.
But all I see is harder and less rewarding.

Speak for yourself.

I want every fight to be interesting.

The mobs aren’t op, the environment is op, i died more to using dodges and dash skills of cliffs then anything else, especially in the beginning when using the shiro revenant, how many times that backwards dash just sent me swooping over the edge of a cliff :p

I agree with runeblade, i want every fight to be interesting. You only need to do waypoint A to B like one time and you can skip that area so i don’t see the harm in a little challenge, especially mobs that force people to actualy think about the skills they use.

I found that most of the mobs were a reasonable difficulty – an effort to kill. However, the smokescales were just about three-shotting me. If there was more than one of them, I was dead within 1-2 seconds. I’d like to see their condition damage balanced a little.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

I think ideally, mobs should vary a bit based on location.
I really don’t understand the people who want every trash mob fight to be a white knuckle teeth clenching sweat dripping heart pounding fight to the death where missing a single dodge or reflect by .000000000000000000000000000001% of a second means instant death. Makes no sense to me…

You exaggerate. There are nasty situations, yeah but there was no such hardcoreness you are describing. If you want to collect your daily powerful blood there are plenty of kindergarten zones around. This zone is about fighting a desperate fight in the jungle and you probably should not pull more mobs if you are alone and not equipped with the proper build to do so. (have some condi cleansing, stun breaking, invisibility, blocks, etc)

As a celestial engineer (i know there is no such meta anymore, still) i found it extremely difficult to get yourself killed and the ammount of hp the mobs have is mostly not out of place. I havent died once even when rushing trough packs of mobs to get to certain locations. (you have 15-30 or whatever abilities, lol, use them) As meditation dps guardian with berserker gear i really had to watch out for the aoe damage marks on ground and for the abilities made to be dodged. Overall: it feels good to do pve again. 5 man dungeon gold farming, daily fractal run and world boss killing is getting really old and never was challanging, this semi-challenging content is a good substitute.

When it comes to pve, im casual

do NOT make the mobs any easier, otherwise pve gets stale and repetivive

Casual PvE player here. (I haven’t ran any dungeons, only ran 5 fractals (for Mawdrey), no real PVP/WvW experience in 500 hours of playtime)

And as a long time casual PvE I player I just wanted to say that I thought the mob difficulty was largely fine in this beta. I got destroyed by these mobs at first like everyone else. But as the weekend went on, I learned their strengths and weaknesses and which type of skills I needed to be using against them. And you know what? Exploring a map on a decked-out max level character was actually fun and interesting for the first time in ages.

The only mob I couldn’t confidently fight by the end of the beta were the Smokescales. They seemed to be randomly evading attacks even when outside their smoke field which I don’t think was supposed to be happening.

And to those complaining about too many challenging mobs between point A and B: I would like to remind you that as you gain certain mastery abilities, traveling around the map becomes much more trivial. The glider lets you fly over dangerous territory, bouncing mushrooms provide shortcuts, speed boost mushrooms let you run passed mobs, etc etc. I feel like if the map wasn’t crawling with challenging mobs those exploration masteries wouldn’t really be appreciated.

Okay more feedback form me.

First thing. The describtion below the health/boon/conditon bar is nice, but some mobs don’t have one at all. Even in the old world.

The different Mordrem mobs first snipers

• -Kick attack is a nice skill for them to have to get the melee guys away from them, and I have died to being kicked away, and then a flurry of arrows to my face.
• -The flurry of arrows. Is the attack you have to watch for, and is part of what make them a interesting foe to fight, mitigate the damage or get ready to die! Could possibly be lowerd by a small amound like 5%.
• -The line attack is very easy to avoid, just keep moveing. If you stand in it you are in for a bad time. Also a skill I like.
  Overall I like the Mordrem Snipers. Probably the one mob I have died the most to, because of the flurry attack.
  Assassins
• -Shadowstep and then a flurry attack. Its really hard hitting, but so easy to avoid, just keep moveing or mitigate it somehow. It also stacks might if I am not wrong, which then make it more worthewile to take a boon strib.
• -The Leaping Deathblossom attack. This is not deadly at all, and stacks a few bleeds 3 stacks at most. Should stay the same, or maybe have more bleeds added to it, if you really want this mob to be deadly in not only raw damage way, but also condi.
  hammer guys
• -A general thing about them is, you can’t CC them before they start to do the big hammer attack, makeing any cc heavy build less effective against them (interrupt mesmer)
• -The hammer attack I like, I don’t think it does a lot of damage, I don’t even know if it does a knockback. I didn’t get hit that much from it.
• -Normal auto attacks probably hits for a good amound of damage.
• -I don’t think they are a big problem when solo, so thats great, still makes you think when fighting them.

Smokescales

• -These guys are very deadly on zerg gear atleast.
• -The shadowstep like ability they do, its for maybe a little to much, I would like to see a 5% to 10% drop in damage.
• -The blind field thing they do, is very annoying in a good way. You have to pull them out to be able to hit if I am right. It should maybe have a few moments of opputunitys instead of just makeing every attack not hit.

Stonehead dinosaure

• -Have a fun mechanic to them, if you make them run into a wall or something else, they get brifly stunned and have 25 stacks of vuln, makeing that the oppotunity for damage! Also, they only take damage from behind. I mostly played Revenant with swords, so the auto attack with the boomerang attack hit them even when I was in front. Also Shipponing health deals damage from front, if I am not mistaken.
• -The long cascading damage + knockdown they do can be predicted. It takes like 3-4 second before they do the attack, giveing you enough time to react. The damage is not super high on this, but still high enough to make you care.

Mushroom guys all of them

• -The explode on death is good damage, and makes it so if you fight more than one, you have to move around and not just face tank spam #1.
• -Good variety of skills on all of them. Some charges, some shoot spikes at you. Others spawn Spoorlings that just go and explode (Seriously love that ability!) And some pull.
• -Its hard to react with CC on them when they turn upsidedown since its really fast. Thats my only thing I didn’t like against them.
• -Together, and escpecially in the Itzel Hunt event in the cave, they are hard! Much harder than the other Hunt events. But please don’t change than unless thats the only event people keep failing because its to hard, but until people start complaining about that event, don’t nerf it.

In general

• -Plenty of mobs that are really easy even in zerg gear with repeat #1 and maybe #6
• -The beetles on their own are really easy, the charger beelte, stand in front and deal damage, they dont deal much themselves, only the knockback is annoying.
• -The beetles that stacks high vuln on you are also easy since they don’t do much damage themselves.
• -Fighting about 3-4 beetles at once make for an exciting fight. I have footage of that, but not a program to make a video to show :/
• -The tigers are also easy, they just do a pounch attack which is not that high damage aswell.

Overall experience: Most mobs make you think about what you are doing, and as the revenant, I had to make use of all my skills in Malyx and Shiro. A good mix of hard mobs and easier.
I don’t find it to hard to get around the map at all, even with mobs trying to stop me. And when you get Mushroom and Gliding, its much easier to skip areas with lots of mobs.
I said it somewhere here before, and ill say it again. What ever you do, don’t nerf it so much that its a push over, right now its in a very good spot, and I wouldn’t mind more challening mob mechanics later in the expansion aswell! Can’t wait for challening content reveal and to see the rest of the Jungle!

Zev.3407:

When it comes to pve, im casual

do NOT make the mobs any easier, otherwise pve gets stale and repetivive

It will get stale and repetitive if you planning to play it long term anyway, by then players would be seeking more efficient means to accomplish their goals.

Challenge ? yeah it will entertain u for the first few dozen of hours, when you’re crossing a map for the hundredth time though, you will be seeking for efficiency instead.

Dungeon running is a perfect illustration of the meta mindset, efficiency over challenge, skipping trash mobs in favor for a easier, more production run. If players are not able to skip the content, they will just zerg up, like they do in cursed shore or on world bosses; players are even zerging up in southsun cove, farming karka for their shells and vials (southsun cove is far from a dead map).

ScribeTheMad.7614:

We just don’t want every single fight to be that way.
We don’t want to fight every single mob between points A and B every time we make the trek
Trash mobs rarely dropped anything interesting anyway, and if they keep the same mindset that SW had they won’t drop almost anything at all
People keep saying we need more challenging and more rewarding content.
But all I see is harder and less rewarding.

So that’s the problem, you want another mindless farming map. The mobs in SW do’t drop anything if you only farm events. the trash mobs do drop stuff like wooden chest and such. exactly the same as tequal’s trash mobs.
Although i agree we could use some love there and let those trash mobs to drop something same as Ulgort’s pre event-

I really hope Anet doesn’t listen those kind of comments to make Hot like a mindless farming map. We have already too many of those and i need something to actually play.
I like the actual state, i like that you can’t just zombie run thru the map were you can’t be bother to even see what is around.

An interesting experiment. Say ANet leaves the difficulty substantially as is. Will those claiming they want such difficulty still want it six months after launch? In other words, will the harder mobs provide longevity in and of themselves, meaning (some) players will repeat the fights over and over and over just because it’s fun? Or, will there have to be reward incentives that keep the content vital until such time as it’s been farmed out? So far, the latter is the state of the game, but the former represents ANet’s vision.

IndigoSundown.5419:

An interesting experiment. Say ANet leaves the difficulty substantially as is. Will those claiming they want such difficulty still want it six months after launch? In other words, will the harder mobs provide longevity in and of themselves, meaning (some) players will repeat the fights over and over and over just because it’s fun? Or, will there have to be reward incentives that keep the content vital until such time as it’s been farmed out? So far, the latter is the state of the game, but the former represents ANet’s vision.

People complain because they individually get owned by the mobs. I expect Verdant Brink will be probably just as faceroll as any other zone when the events get going and the zergtrain starts. The main and probably mostly cosmetic rewards will be from events anyway. The mainstream activity will still be casualfest, there is nothing to worry about for those people. At least in the meantime you wont get bored to death if you want to reach a vista or something when you are alone because the mobs can punch hard.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

We don’t want to fight every single mob between points A and B every time we make the trek

If you don’t want that, don’t do that.

If you see a group of mobs that seem hard to beat for you, then do not engage them but go around and avoid them.

It was possible on the map. I did it. I roamed around alone the whole map several times to explore without fighting. It is doable even without gliding and mushroom jumping. Maybe you did not see that yet because the map was new and unknown.

And with gliding and mushroom jumping traversing the map without fighting becomes much easier.

Of course you have to be careful. It’s a jungle out there.

Bandit.8279:

Beldin.5498:

meeflak.9714:

(Didn’t play beta) but if mob difficulty is hard enough to make people QQ. GOOD! Keep it hard, make it harder! This game needs challenging, rewarding content. I love this game to death.

The thing is .. its not rewarding .. its just trash mobs that drop the same trash
than other mobs, they are only harder to kill.

We don’t know what the rewards are yet.

Not to mention I was having heaps of fun taking on hordes of Veteran Spiders on my Reaper. Ripping through stalkers and Veteran Stoneheads on my Assassin Revenant. And that first solo kill from my Reaper on the deadly Veteran Smokescale was absolutely sublime.

No greater reward in a video game then having fun!

I killed the veteran Smokescale +2 normal one and some other crap with my
necro .. after that some of those rolling Dinos .. then the Veteran Mushroom
with some normal ones by his side .. and then i wanted to go down on a
small cliffside, and there was a normal mob, no veteran, that simply didn’t
took any noticable damage, and after it killed my golem suddenly there were
5-6 red circles around him and my necro in deathshroud was dead.

Didn’t make me feel good for the mobs i killed .. it just annoyed me because
i don’t want to “work” in a game all the time. I wanted to explore the area
and not fight for mal life every 3 steps i took. And also i don’t want to play
2 steps forward 3 steps back, because after each dead you can restart at the
only waypoint i had, and had to wade again through all those mobs because
of respawn.

And i don’t even complain about those veteran beetles that are just there to
be annyoing sacks of hitpoints.

In the end the zone will only be zerk, train, glide .. or ignore after a while if the
density of mobs will not be reduced.

I just wanted to add my input, I thought the challenge was long over due. Messing around with new builds/classes I probably died twice as much in Verdant Brink as I did in the rest of Tyria and I was never left frustrated by an encountered (except maybe smokeskins, they seemed to glitch around. I know that’s intended behaviour it just doesn’t look that great)

Here is my take on this whole thing, HoT’s mobs rekt my face a few times, but that made me care more of what was I doing, where was I doing it and against what I was doing it. It made the game engaging, not difficult.

What I am afraid of now is that when HoT releases we will have a lot of people on these maps and the numbers will make these engaging fights trivial. Sure, when you are fighting veteran dinos you have to be careful and smart with your cooldowns (for example, using both legends on Revenant instead of mindlessly staying with Shiro the whole time); but if you have 15-20 people around you that veteran dino is going to go down fast.

For me Verdant Brink is good as it is, people coming from vanilla GW2 with zombie tactics will have a bad time at first but they will learn little by little by working with other people to down the mobs.

What I want to see is the later maps on HoT being actually difficult, say you have the night cycle on the last explorable map of HoT and you have to stay put until sunrise because if you leave the outpost (even in numbers) it will be near impossible to reach another outpost before getting killed. Say you make all waypoints contested during the night, so if you die you need your fellow players to res you or you will stay dead and miss the rewards. Add a few mobs that require serious coordination/maxed masteries to beat and you will have meaningful and engaging open world content.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that we don’t need to nerf the mobs, or having a bootcamp on how not to play GW2 HoT (i.e use your dodge bootcamp). Verdant Brink can be a huge bootcamp to learn how to dodge, the next map will make you switch your gear, utilities and weapons to beat certain mobs, and the rest of the maps can be when we really get our faces eaten unless we worked on our masteries and gaming/teamwork skills on the previous maps.

Keep it up Anet

Druj Rosenkloitz.3729:

What I want to see is the later maps on HoT being actually difficult, say you have the night cycle on the last explorable map of HoT and you have to stay put until sunrise because if you leave the outpost (even in numbers) it will be near impossible to reach another outpost before getting killed. Say you make all waypoints contested during the night, so if you die you need your fellow players to res you or you will stay dead and miss the rewards. Add a few mobs that require serious coordination/maxed masteries to beat and you will have meaningful and engaging open world content.

this right here must be one of the worst ideas i’ve heard in a long long time for this game. night in guild wars 2 lasts for approximately 40 minutes. you want people to stay in a camp for 40 minutes because the mob difficulty and density is such that even with a group of players you won’t make it. you want them to stop whatever it is they’re doing and just hang in there for 40 minutes fighting off mobs that require coordinated effort and max masteries just to stay alive. oh my god, the fun. and if they don’t make it in time for that amazing content they’ll die, and stay dead unless they res in another map (points in this one would be contested) or some other person comes to res them and then die right next to them so they can socialise in a meaningful manner those 40 minutes. brilliant, just brilliant.

you sir, should apply for a developer position. you’ve got this.

i suggest they also develop a system where they can send small charges of electricity through your mouse and keyboard. and when you die or get hit, you take a small electric shock, you know to help you improve.

also, reverse leaderboards. scrap the best, record the worst and then publish their names in the website each month so as the rest of the community can mock and ridicule the worst players.

What I want in HOT:

1) Enemies that give you an actual challenge as seen with the current mobs in VB.
2) Encourages parties/ grouping
3) Encourages more than just pressing 1111111111 or the “stacking in a corner” meta I know most of us are tired of

What I don’t want in HOT:
1)Faceroll content. If you’re gonna add a challenge, give one.
2) One class trumps all. The last thing I need is the toxic “no ‘insert class’” we’ve seen in LFG’s for the past few years.
3)Elitism. Those people can stay in old Tyria speed running dungeons for all I care.

I’m good with the mobs kicking my kitten.

My opinion: Still easy, but not too easy anymore

CodeHavoc.7926:

What I want in HOT:

1) Enemies that give you an actual challenge as seen with the current mobs in VB.
2) Encourages parties/ grouping
3) Encourages more than just pressing 1111111111 or the “stacking in a corner” meta I know most of us are tired of

What I don’t want in HOT:
1)Faceroll content. If you’re gonna add a challenge, give one.
2) One class trumps all. The last thing I need is the toxic “no ‘insert class’” we’ve seen in LFG’s for the past few years.
3)Elitism. Those people can stay in old Tyria speed running dungeons for all I care.

I’m good with the mobs kicking my kitten.

How can you not want elitism in hot when you practically say that only people who want to group should take part in the expansion and the rest can stay back in tyria… you don’t want other people’s brand of elitism, yours is just fine… just saying …

PorceleinEve.2973:

CodeHavoc.7926:

What I want in HOT:

1) Enemies that give you an actual challenge as seen with the current mobs in VB.
2) Encourages parties/ grouping
3) Encourages more than just pressing 1111111111 or the “stacking in a corner” meta I know most of us are tired of

What I don’t want in HOT:
1)Faceroll content. If you’re gonna add a challenge, give one.
2) One class trumps all. The last thing I need is the toxic “no ‘insert class’” we’ve seen in LFG’s for the past few years.
3)Elitism. Those people can stay in old Tyria speed running dungeons for all I care.

I’m good with the mobs kicking my kitten.

How can you not want elitism in hot when you practically say that only people who want to group should take part in the expansion and the rest can stay back in tyria… you don’t want other people’s brand of elitism, yours is just fine… just saying …

He said encourage parties not require and you know it, pretend victimhood to allow you to use the word “elitist” – classy…

CodeHavoc.7926:

What I want in HOT:

1) Enemies that give you an actual challenge as seen with the current mobs in VB.
2) Encourages parties/ grouping
3) Encourages more than just pressing 1111111111 or the “stacking in a corner” meta I know most of us are tired of

What I don’t want in HOT:
1)Faceroll content. If you’re gonna add a challenge, give one.
2) One class trumps all. The last thing I need is the toxic “no ‘insert class’” we’ve seen in LFG’s for the past few years.
3)Elitism. Those people can stay in old Tyria speed running dungeons for all I care.

I’m good with the mobs kicking my kitten.

In your “dont want” list the 2. eliminates those elitists from the 3.. However, they are not really elitists but time efficient gold farmers. There is no pve elitism, hell there is no even pvp elitism in this game except for the tournament players promoted by arenanet itself.

(note: Nope, fractal high levels dont count for elitist activity, check out WoW challange modes and mythic raids to get reference of what real elitist pve difficulty is. This message is not for you, CodeHavoc.)

I dont know about that “challenging group content” arenanet is so afraid to even reveal… but the difficulty of the common mobs in the new zones are a good start to what you want and i agree with you. More healthy elitism!

Coulter.2315:

He said encourage parties not require and you know it, pretend victimhood to allow you to use the word “elitist” – classy…

he most definitely is elitist, the guy right over me agrees too.. oh but it’s “healthy” elitism so it’s ok… right?

i didn’t claim anything, most of all victimhood, i just pointed out the obvious, that he wants a certain kind of play to become dominant and that’s ok for him, but other types of play are “elitist” …

no victimhood what so ever in pointing out the double standards.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Coulter.2315:

He said encourage parties not require and you know it, pretend victimhood to allow you to use the word “elitist” – classy…

he most definitely is elitist, the guy right over me agrees too.. oh but it’s “healthy” elitism so it’s ok… right?

i didn’t claim anything, most of all victimhood, i just pointed out the obvious, that he wants a certain kind of play to become dominant and that’s ok for him, but other types of play are “elitist” …

no victimhood what so ever in pointing out the double standards.

Ok you guys just seem to be having a competition over who uses the word ‘elitist’ more.. I’ll leave you to it.

Mobs are fine, people freaking out after very little time thinking about them should just look at the tools available to them.

Coulter.2315:

Ok you guys just seem to be having a competition over who uses the word ‘elitist’ more.. I’ll leave you to it.

Mobs are fine, people freaking out after very little time thinking about them should just look at the tools available to them.

as stated elsewhere, mob difficulty and mob density and respawn timers are all separate issues at work here contributing to the difficulty of the experience.

many people here didn’t complain about the difficulty of individual mobs (except maybe the snipers) but mostly about their density (making dodging and kiting difficult) and respawn timer (by the time they’ve killed one mob, another one just spawned right next to them) and that made it difficult for them.

it’s not one issue, but 3, and people with romantic ideas about the difficulty of the mobs aren’t really helping. whether you approve of it or not, this game was casual friendly, and as a casual i need it to remain that way if i am to enjoy it. if it doesn’t i’ll just stop playing. simple as that. but, since they’re asking for our opinion, we might as well share it.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Coulter.2315:

Ok you guys just seem to be having a competition over who uses the word ‘elitist’ more.. I’ll leave you to it.

Mobs are fine, people freaking out after very little time thinking about them should just look at the tools available to them.

as stated elsewhere, mob difficulty and mob density and respawn timers are all separate issues at work here contributing to the difficulty of the experience.

many people here didn’t complain about the difficulty of individual mobs (except maybe the snipers) but mostly about their density (making dodging and kiting difficult) and respawn timer (by the time they’ve killed one mob, another one just spawned right next to them) and that made it difficult for them.

it’s not one issue, but 3, and people with romantic ideas about the difficulty of the mobs aren’t really helping. whether you approve of it or not, this game was casual friendly, and as a casual i need it to remain that way if i am to enjoy it. if it doesn’t i’ll just stop playing. simple as that. but, since they’re asking for our opinion, we might as well share it.

I want the content maintained as was seen in the beta, I haven’t enjoyed PvE this much in such a long time. I would be bitterly disappointed if complaints from people, who haven’t put much effort in, derail the trend to engaging content.

You can say you’re casual and want it to cater for you but you have so much already please just give us this – if you try a bit harder and learn what your class can do I’m sure you can enjoy it with me (its not even that hard really).

I hope anet stick to their guns and keep the game fresh.

Coulter.2315:

I want the content maintained as was seen in the beta, I haven’t enjoyed PvE this much in such a long time. I would be bitterly disappointed if complaints from people, who haven’t put much effort in, derail the trend to engaging content.

You can say you’re casual and want it to cater for you but you have so much already please just give us this – if you try a bit harder and learn what your class can do I’m sure you can enjoy it with me (its not even that hard really).

I hope anet stick to their guns and keep the game fresh.

You’re missing the point, I don’t want to try harder, i want to come home after a hard day of real life, sit on my pc for 2 hours and relax and unwind with some friends doing stuff that don’t stress, or strain me. I try hard already in life, in a game i don’t want to try at all.

I don’t get to make the decision if it’s gonna be casual friendly or not, I ‘m not collin (I promise), all i’m saying is that as a casual I expect the experience in this game to remain consistent. Trust me i’m not about to barge in on your challenging group content, i just want to roam the jungle, enjoy the story, grind my masteries while relaxing and go about my business. This game was marketed as an all inclusive casual friendly game, you’re not just asking for this little bit to change, you pretty much want the game to change target groups. And if it does, i’m sure people like me will leave the second we’re through with the story. Nothing more, nothing less.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Coulter.2315:

I want the content maintained as was seen in the beta, I haven’t enjoyed PvE this much in such a long time. I would be bitterly disappointed if complaints from people, who haven’t put much effort in, derail the trend to engaging content.

You can say you’re casual and want it to cater for you but you have so much already please just give us this – if you try a bit harder and learn what your class can do I’m sure you can enjoy it with me (its not even that hard really).

I hope anet stick to their guns and keep the game fresh.

You’re missing the point, I don’t want to try harder, i want to come home after a hard day of real life, sit on my pc for 2 hours and relax and unwind with some friends doing stuff that don’t stress, or strain me. I try hard already in life, in a game i don’t want to try at all.

I don’t get to make the decision if it’s gonna be casual friendly or not, I ‘m not collin (I promise), all i’m saying is that as a casual I expect the experience in this game to remain consistent. Trust me i’m not about to barge in on your challenging group content, i just want to roam the jungle, enjoy the story, grind my masteries while relaxing and go about my business. This game was marketed as an all inclusive casual friendly game, you’re not just asking for this little bit to change, you pretty much want the game to change target groups. And if it does, i’m sure people like me will leave the second we’re through with the story. Nothing more, nothing less.

At no point did GW2 get marketed as a game for those who “don’t want to try at all”, I can’t support your desire to reduce the complexity of content because you try hard at work. I see you will defend your interests but it cannot be healthy to ask a game to not progress in complexity and required knowledge for 3 years. Asking for a faceroll expansion will kill it.

I hope you can play with friends and it isn’t too stressful but it must not cater to the “don’t want to try at all” crowd – it will kill the game.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Coulter.2315:

I want the content maintained as was seen in the beta, I haven’t enjoyed PvE this much in such a long time. I would be bitterly disappointed if complaints from people, who haven’t put much effort in, derail the trend to engaging content.

You can say you’re casual and want it to cater for you but you have so much already please just give us this – if you try a bit harder and learn what your class can do I’m sure you can enjoy it with me (its not even that hard really).

I hope anet stick to their guns and keep the game fresh.

You’re missing the point, I don’t want to try harder, i want to come home after a hard day of real life, sit on my pc for 2 hours and relax and unwind with some friends doing stuff that don’t stress, or strain me. I try hard already in life, in a game i don’t want to try at all.

I don’t get to make the decision if it’s gonna be casual friendly or not, I ‘m not collin (I promise), all i’m saying is that as a casual I expect the experience in this game to remain consistent. Trust me i’m not about to barge in on your challenging group content, i just want to roam the jungle, enjoy the story, grind my masteries while relaxing and go about my business. This game was marketed as an all inclusive casual friendly game, you’re not just asking for this little bit to change, you pretty much want the game to change target groups. And if it does, i’m sure people like me will leave the second we’re through with the story. Nothing more, nothing less.

Let’s agree to disagree then. For me, I want the difficulty in Verdant Brink to be a baseline where everything else in the expansion increases upon.

IndigoSundown.5419:

An interesting experiment. Say ANet leaves the difficulty substantially as is. Will those claiming they want such difficulty still want it six months after launch? In other words, will the harder mobs provide longevity in and of themselves, meaning (some) players will repeat the fights over and over and over just because it’s fun? Or, will there have to be reward incentives that keep the content vital until such time as it’s been farmed out? So far, the latter is the state of the game, but the former represents ANet’s vision.

I know I will. Right now in the live game, I don’t do dungeons or fractals. I only started doing fractals to get the glowing backpack because its my favourite. I don’t like to do dungeons except for Artherpath, but why do Aether if I can get more rewards from doing 3+ other paths? If every dungeon actually felt like a challenge instead of stack might, blow em up before they even do anything, and the number of bad boss mechanics/designes (Really, just stacking in the corner in the Aether fractal and just aoe the golems is lame, really lame! No one cares about the wall hitting them) I might actually do them. Because then the rewards you get feel like they have much more value to me.
I don’t do Silverwaste because doing the same events over and over gets old really fast, but I like the Mordrem mobs, they actually put up a fight.

What I am saying, compared to almost everyone else, I like to do things if they are challenging and reward me with something special that I know not 90% of all players have. A few weeks/months into gw2 release, haveing Orr Heavy armor felt cool. Now I don’t even care about it. Actually, the only gear I really care about is Glorious, since I requires some work, not skill, since even if you loose every game, you eventually still end up getting it all. No skin in the game imo is special. (The Teq weapons and Wurm armor is kinda special, but only because of RNG not so much because you are a skilled player, everyone can do the wurm if they are on a organised map).

IndigoSundown.5419:

An interesting experiment. Say ANet leaves the difficulty substantially as is. Will those claiming they want such difficulty still want it six months after launch? In other words, will the harder mobs provide longevity in and of themselves, meaning (some) players will repeat the fights over and over and over just because it’s fun? Or, will there have to be reward incentives that keep the content vital until such time as it’s been farmed out? So far, the latter is the state of the game, but the former represents ANet’s vision.

We already had that experiment .. it was calles Southsun Cove .. and its filled by
masses of player every single minute of the day .. lol

Beldin.5498:

IndigoSundown.5419:

An interesting experiment. Say ANet leaves the difficulty substantially as is. Will those claiming they want such difficulty still want it six months after launch? In other words, will the harder mobs provide longevity in and of themselves, meaning (some) players will repeat the fights over and over and over just because it’s fun? Or, will there have to be reward incentives that keep the content vital until such time as it’s been farmed out? So far, the latter is the state of the game, but the former represents ANet’s vision.

We already had that experiment .. it was calles Southsun Cove .. and its filled by
masses of player every single minute of the day .. lol

No one goes to Southsun because there is nothing there.. These maps are filled with events and things to do. Stop looking for the result you want then hammering history to fit.

Beldin.5498:

IndigoSundown.5419:

An interesting experiment. Say ANet leaves the difficulty substantially as is. Will those claiming they want such difficulty still want it six months after launch? In other words, will the harder mobs provide longevity in and of themselves, meaning (some) players will repeat the fights over and over and over just because it’s fun? Or, will there have to be reward incentives that keep the content vital until such time as it’s been farmed out? So far, the latter is the state of the game, but the former represents ANet’s vision.

We already had that experiment .. it was calles Southsun Cove .. and its filled by
masses of player every single minute of the day .. lol

It’s not that simple. SSC was a hastily-thrown-together map with few events and mobs that were a reaction to comments about the lack of threat posed by the Risen. Its reward systems were pretty well non-existent except for temp LS S1 events, mob drops, and Karka Queen. LS S1 and Queen were added later. HoT is going to be the result of everything ANet has learned in the three years since launch. They will use reward systems to keep HoT zones hot (pun intended) that never made their way into SSC.