Guild Wars 2

I understand that this goes entirely against the current hype train currently going on, but this are serious problems that ArenaNet have continually ignored.

1) There is no lasting and viable PvE content for your above average to hard-core player. The closest thing we have is Fractals but lasting content designed around doing the same fights that get incrementally harder is inherently bad. If you are doing the same thing over and over again, looking at the same scenery over and over again, it is not lasting content.

It does not look like ArenaNet intends to address that problem at all as everything that looks to be added by ArenaNet is not substantive content. The content is looking to fall into the category of “shiny” content which is content whose interest is solely based on it being new and different. Such content will only hold players attention for, at best, six months.

2) The new WvW map is an extremely good addition but two and a half years is far too long between new maps. The new map will only hold its “shinyness” factor for up to six or so months at best after which player attrition will start ramping up again.

Here is what I am expecting from this expansion. There will be the usual player boost from months 1 to 3. After three months, most hardcore player interest will be at or near pre-expansion levels. Once the expansion hits months 6-8, your above average players interest will also be at near pre-expansion levels.

1) I heard rather many mentions of new harder than ever group content during the stream, so I would assume they are adding what you are talking about.
The main issue is that the only real way to make something lasting is to require people to grind it over and over and over and over again in order to progress, something that goes against the whole philosophy behind GW2.

2) We had Edge of the Mists in February 2014, that is less than a year ago, not even close to two and a half years.

Clearly the pre-expansion levels are rather large based on the activity in-game, so I really don’t see how that is so much of an issue.

We don’t know whether or not there’ll be more dungeons, fractals, hell even raids for that matter. There will be ‘challenging group content’. Might want to wait until they add the details about what they mean with that. Except for raids, dungeons and fractals isn’t something you announce as a major ‘new’ feature.

The new map will play an important role in WvW. It’ll be an addition rather than a replacement (eg. part of a rotation) of current maps. As to how fun it’ll be, we’ll have to wait. They also said there would be a revamp/fleshing out of the current WvW mechanics. Sounds to me like they’re gonna try and make WvW gameplay deeper. Again we’ll just have to wait for the details.

lordkrall.7241:

1) I heard rather many mentions of new harder than ever group content during the stream, so I would assume they are adding what you are talking about.
The main issue is that the only real way to make something lasting is to require people to grind it over and over and over and over again in order to progress, something that goes against the whole philosophy behind GW2.

2) We had Edge of the Mists in February 2014, that is less than a year ago, not even close to two and a half years.

Clearly the pre-expansion levels are rather large based on the activity in-game, so I really don’t see how that is so much of an issue.

1) They have promised hard group content for the hard core player since the game was first conceived. They have yet to deliver on it nor seemed to truly attempt to deliver on it. Everything about their releases has been centered around the casual-average player area.

2) Edge of the Mists is not a WvW map. Edge of the Mists is, and has always been, something entirely separate from WvW.

You don’t see it nearly as much because of the combining of server in pve, but the attrition of players really becomes evident when looking at WvW (where they have yet to combine servers). I am currently on a t2 server, and the population here would be comparable to that of a t5 server a year ago.

Gorefiend.9675:

1) They have promised hard group content for the hard core player since the game was first conceived. They have yet to deliver on it nor seemed to truly attempt to deliver on it. Everything about their releases has been centered around the casual-average player area.

2) Edge of the Mists is not a WvW map. Edge of the Mists is, and has always been, something entirely separate from WvW.

I would love to see you take a group of casual-average players and finish the Triple Trouble Wurm or Tequatl.

Edge of the Mists was a map developed based on WvW-players suggestions, with the help of WvW-players beta-testing and released for the benefit of WvW.

You might not like it, but claiming that it is not a map for WvW is completely false.

lordkrall.7241:

1) I heard rather many mentions of new harder than ever group content during the stream, so I would assume they are adding what you are talking about.
The main issue is that the only real way to make something lasting is to require people to grind it over and over and over and over again in order to progress, something that goes against the whole philosophy behind GW2.

2) We had Edge of the Mists in February 2014, that is less than a year ago, not even close to two and a half years.

Clearly the pre-expansion levels are rather large based on the activity in-game, so I really don’t see how that is so much of an issue.

i agree with the hardcore pve stuff. I felt like colin iterated this a lot of times.

your 1 is kinda a paradox, your asking for content that is “lasting” but don’t want it to be a form of repetition. How can it be “lasting” if there is no “over and over again”?

lordkrall.7241:

I would love to see you take a group of casual-average players and finish the Triple Trouble Wurm or Tequatl.

Edge of the Mists was a map developed based on WvW-players suggestions, with the help of WvW-players beta-testing and released for the benefit of WvW.

You might not like it, but claiming that it is not a map for WvW is completely false.

Tequatl was never a hard fight because of the fight itself. The difficulty for Tequatl came from having to do it with casual-average players which that content was difficult for. That is not enjoyable for the above-average to hardcore player.

Edge of the Mists has negligible influence on the WvW matchup. It was put in place as a testing ground as well as a place to go when the WvW maps were full. It was never implemented as an equal to WvW.

Gorefiend.9675:

Tequatl was never a hard fight because of the fight itself. The difficulty for Tequatl came from having to do it with casual-average players which that content was difficult for. That is not enjoyable for the above-average to hardcore player.

Edge of the Mists has negligible influence on the WvW matchup. It was put in place as a testing ground as well as a place to go when the WvW maps were full. It was never implemented as an equal to WvW.

Your problem is you are playing a casual friendly game and are expecting a hardcore experience.

Zevilo.9304:

your 1 is kinda a paradox, your asking for content that is “lasting” but don’t want it to be a form of repetition. How can it be “lasting” if there is no “over and over again”?

Lasting by adding more onto it regularly as well as shortening the ramping up of difficulty significantly.

lordkrall.7241:

Gorefiend.9675:

1) They have promised hard group content for the hard core player since the game was first conceived. They have yet to deliver on it nor seemed to truly attempt to deliver on it. Everything about their releases has been centered around the casual-average player area.

2) Edge of the Mists is not a WvW map. Edge of the Mists is, and has always been, something entirely separate from WvW.

I would love to see you take a group of casual-average players and finish the Triple Trouble Wurm or Tequatl.

Edge of the Mists was a map developed based on WvW-players suggestions, with the help of WvW-players beta-testing and released for the benefit of WvW.

You might not like it, but claiming that it is not a map for WvW is completely false.

Teq is easy, every pug group does it today, no need of ts3 even.
And as it was said, EotM is not a WvW map, it’s not based on WvW-players suggestions, and the majority of the testers were PvE players. The result is evident.

I have my fears, that new map will be yet another karma train.

Aedelric.1287:

Gorefiend.9675:

Tequatl was never a hard fight because of the fight itself. The difficulty for Tequatl came from having to do it with casual-average players which that content was difficult for. That is not enjoyable for the above-average to hardcore player.

Edge of the Mists has negligible influence on the WvW matchup. It was put in place as a testing ground as well as a place to go when the WvW maps were full. It was never implemented as an equal to WvW.

Your problem is you are playing a casual friendly game and are expecting a hardcore experience.

This game was billed, and continues to be billed, as an all encompassing theme park game. There was going to be something for everybody. They have so far failed the above average to hard-core audience.

Bigsexy.8302:

lordkrall.7241:

Gorefiend.9675:

1) They have promised hard group content for the hard core player since the game was first conceived. They have yet to deliver on it nor seemed to truly attempt to deliver on it. Everything about their releases has been centered around the casual-average player area.

2) Edge of the Mists is not a WvW map. Edge of the Mists is, and has always been, something entirely separate from WvW.

I would love to see you take a group of casual-average players and finish the Triple Trouble Wurm or Tequatl.

Edge of the Mists was a map developed based on WvW-players suggestions, with the help of WvW-players beta-testing and released for the benefit of WvW.

You might not like it, but claiming that it is not a map for WvW is completely false.

Teq is easy, every pug group does it today, no need of ts3 even.
And as it was said, EotM is not a WvW map, it’s not based on WvW-players suggestions, and the majority of the testers with PvE players. The result is evident.

I have my fears, that new map will be yet another karma train.

And you can do the same thing with all the old WoW raids. Once you have the content on farm it is no longer hard, that is hardly exclusive to this game…

It took days for the first guild to beat Teq, and that was with organization and TS.

Wurm took weeks for most guild groups with TS to beat.

You are confusing farm status with “easy”.

“Hard MMO content” means a raid fight that you have to grind over and over until the weakest player in your group can manage to press their buttons in the right order. THATS IT. THEN after you have gotten even the slowest and worst player in your team to be able to do it you have to grind over and over until the new gear drops AND you mange to roll for it. THIS IS NOT ENGAGING TO A LARGE SEGMENT OF THE PLAYERBASE OF GW2.

Highly skilled individual play exists in almost NO MMO, the only one that came close was The Secret World and to be honest it died because many people thought it was TOO unforgiving.

The constant complaint about wanting this “hardcore” content is totally misplaced in the MMO genre. If you are actually a solid player then learning a Raid takes seeing it once or twice then it becomes a waiting game while your worst team mates catch up.

Every time I read the words " above average to hard-core player" in this thread, I get this sinking suspicion someone is downplaying their self-righteous justification of trying to be “better than everyone else” cause they play stuff others are essentially locked out on.

‘’Hard raids’’ are no different than Teq or the Wurm. People take weeks to learn them and then everyone starts to finish them and therefore they become stale.

There is no challenging MMO in today’s market, it is just challenging for the first 3 days, then all content becomes repitive and you will grind it with other experiened players and roll-over the content.

I think a lot of people will be looking at what the endgame of this expansion is, as to whether it’s worth it.

I mean if there’s one thing that makes GW2 starkly inferior to GW1 it’s that GW2’s endgame is all fragmented and people don’t want to work on anything, so you only see them doing trivial LS tasks. I mean standing next to some guy farming on the same map is not epic.

nGumball.1283:

‘’Hard raids’’ are no different than Teq or the Wurm. People take weeks to learn them and then everyone starts to finish them and therefore they become stale.

There is no challenging MMO in today’s market, it is just challenging for the first 3 days, then all content becomes repitive and you will grind it with other experiened players and roll-over the content.

Tequatle was hard for the average player. The above average player would take around an evening to learn it. As you have stated, you can make content that is hard for the above average and hard core player. The key is adding in enough of that content to where the dead time in-between is manageable. The only pve content that ArenaNet has delivered that was truly difficult was Fractals. Problem is that by the time you got the difficult levels you were already sick and tired of seeing them.

To reiterate, if the content is challenging for you for three days, it is still challenging content.

Now, if ArenaNet would come out and say they they do not intend to deliver content for my interests then that is completely fine. Just don’t tell me you are going to deliver content then fail to do so.

I think they were pretty clear without being specific that harder-core group PvE content is a big focus for the expansion; it’s why I’m posting here and considering playing again. It was lacking in the original game.

Today was just an announcement… let’s wait for the reveals!

There never will be lasting and viable PvE content for your above average to hard-core player because the game isn’t targeting rhw average to hard-core player market.

You’re second point is valid but again, who really cares about a new map for WvW … it’s not really ‘new content’. My complaint is that if it’s JUST a new map, it’s more of the same.

I bet that if they added something as simple as a timer button to dungeons, and possibly higher rewards when completed below a certain time, a great many hardcore dungeon players would be extremely happy for quite a while. Just the fact that the word ‘dungeon’ wasn’t even mentioned once, when it’s such an important (if not the most important) part of PvE. Shows once again that they don’t really care about that part of the game.

Lethality.1732:

I think they were pretty clear without being specific that harder-core group PvE content is a big focus for the expansion; it’s why I’m posting here and considering playing again. It was lacking in the original game.

Today was just an announcement… let’s wait for the reveals!

Kinda in the same boat here. Colin mentioned ‘hard group content’ a lot. However that doesn’t mean it’s actually going to be hard for your above-avarage player.

Their main philosophy seems to be that even the worst of the worst can obtain almost everything if they just grind long enough and to my knowledge the fractal tonic which can be acquired at lvl50 is the only exception to that rule.
What really would get me to be hyped about the expansion is new hardcore content with a token system to prevent bad rng, less reliance on gold for rare skins and fixed fractal rewards. For crying out loud, why do we have that weapon box even in the game when it drops only on lvl 51+?!

I really hope they tried to implement content for all types of player, not just the super casual ones.
For now it’s wait and see, though I wouldn’t hold my breath.

First, as many others already said above, we don’t have the details yet but there has been a strong emphasize on new really challenging content. My guess is that Anet is hinting at raids but don’t know yet if they will be able to fit them in their HoT schedule, otherwise they would have been mentioned today. If we don’t get raids with HoT, they probably will come with one feature pack right after.

Second, what is a challenging content for you ? Let us take WoW, one of the references in terms of high end PvE content. They added a new ultra hard raid mode (mythic mode) with their last expansion pack. Well, that ultra hard mode was completely beaten by several of the best world raiding guilds the same week it was released. It is obvious that even the most challenging content around is not challenging for some players.