Guild Wars 2

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

Both !

Though, I do agree that he went a bit crazy on some of those gambits….!

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

Though, I do agree that he went a bit crazy on some of those gambits….!

I would personally like to see them keep the handicap in fractals since its already in the game. They need to make something fresh and new, imo.

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

This is certainly not my experience. Everything is easy, once you know how.
I youtubed some videos on Wildstar veteran dungeons (not having played the game) and the mechanics aren’t that far off from GW2 (basically don’t stand in fire, dodge this, kite that type stuff) all of which can easily be learned and mastered through rote.

This ones present simple challenges: avoid lazers, don’t stand in circles, interrupt, and tank and spank. Nothing that I’d imagine wouldn’t become easier with enough practice. The difficulty here seems to come primarily from how hard the boss hits and the amount of damage done by the lazers. These (debatably) would be artificial difficulty what you seemingly seem to be arguing against.

This article presents two types of difficulty
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596
In the case of GW2 design difficulty would be somewhat scaled back from the articles example of Dark Souls. Primarily the difficulty would appear in the design of encounters, so the mechanics involved. But as seen in the Wildstar examples this takes the form of rote-mechanics. Jump over enough lazers and eventually jumping over lazers won’t be difficult at all. But onces you’ve mastered jumping over lazers, then allowing players to add more lazer or faster moving lazers means that they now have a slightly different challenge that would require learning, more or less, from the start again.

The problem is that Anet can increase the stats but then people would complain about artificial difficulty. Anet could design encounters to be more challenging through mechanics and such but then people would accuse everything being too gimmicky. Anet has done both and the difficulty has been accused of being both depending on the challenge.

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

This is certainly not my experience. Everything is easy, once you know how.
I youtubed some videos on Wildstar veteran dungeons (not having played the game) and the mechanics aren’t that far off from GW2 (basically don’t stand in fire, dodge this, kite that type stuff) all of which can easily be learned and mastered through rote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hILCb0H1s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSAGK-tXmkA

This ones present simple challenges: avoid lazers, don’t stand in circles, interrupt, and tank and spank. Nothing that I’d imagine wouldn’t become easier with enough practice. The difficulty here seems to come primarily from how hard the boss hits and the amount of damage done by the lazers. These (debatably) would be artificial difficulty what you seemingly seem to be arguing against.

This article presents two types of difficulty
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596
In the case of GW2 design difficulty would be somewhat scaled back from the articles example of Dark Souls. Primarily the difficulty would appear in the design of encounters, so the mechanics involved. But as seen in the Wildstar examples this takes the form of rote-mechanics. Jump over enough lazers and eventually jumping over lazers won’t be difficult at all. But onces you’ve mastered jumping over lazers, then allowing players to add more lazer or faster moving lazers means that they now have a slightly different challenge that would require learning, more or less, from the start again.

Like you said you havent played the game. Its easier to say something than to do it. Sure its similar mechanics to what gw2 has, move out of aoe pretty much, but the way it is implemented keeps the player on theirs toes the whole fight, even once mastered. I have done that dungeon many times and if youre not on your A game on that specific fight you’re going to die.

The way Wildstar implemented their dungeon mechanics is leagues beyond gw2, which is sad because I know gw2 PvE can be amazing. A example of some cool mechanics in gw2 is when the sandstorm giant is scaled up and places random small aoe circles which stun you if you are on it and you have to actively break out of it, the centaur in the LS 2 had some cool mechanics. Its clear that there is potential for real difficulty so why take the artificial route?

CureForLiving.5360:

This is certainly not my experience. Everything is easy, once you know how.
I youtubed some videos on Wildstar veteran dungeons (not having played the game) and the mechanics aren’t that far off from GW2 (basically don’t stand in fire, dodge this, kite that type stuff) all of which can easily be learned and mastered through rote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hILCb0H1s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSAGK-tXmkA

This ones present simple challenges: avoid lazers, don’t stand in circles, interrupt, and tank and spank. Nothing that I’d imagine wouldn’t become easier with enough practice. The difficulty here seems to come primarily from how hard the boss hits and the amount of damage done by the lazers. These (debatably) would be artificial difficulty what you seemingly seem to be arguing against.

This article presents two types of difficulty
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596
In the case of GW2 design difficulty would be somewhat scaled back from the articles example of Dark Souls. Primarily the difficulty would appear in the design of encounters, so the mechanics involved. But as seen in the Wildstar examples this takes the form of rote-mechanics. Jump over enough lazers and eventually jumping over lazers won’t be difficult at all. But onces you’ve mastered jumping over lazers, then allowing players to add more lazer or faster moving lazers means that they now have a slightly different challenge that would require learning, more or less, from the start again.

Spot on, while that fight and most boss fight in wildstar when you start are pretty tough, once you begin to learn them, they weren’t that bad anymore, (and you are absolutely right wildstar combat wise in many cases have a lot of similarities to GW2, tbh if they hadn’t went for such a hardcore centric focus i believe it could have been very successful, but that is not what we should be discussing here) even having done just the normal version of the dungeon, going into veteran dungeons wasn’t that bad either, if you got good at the normal dungeon at the lvl you supposed to run each dungeon, the main difficulty from vet dungeons imo, was the fact that they put on timers to get better medal (higher medal = higher loot, and you needed back when i played at least silver to attune for raids), if you were to actually jsut take your time and dont care about getting medal vet dungeons weren’t that hard either.

Ofc all this would depend on your whole group being hard as it were literally impossible for a single person to solo such content, so if one kittens up could make it near if not impossible to finish, but if you whole group good enough wasn’t that hard (personally i played esper healer, and healing was actually pretty tough in that game, since you had to aim your heals, not just target someone (okay was like 1-2 targeted heals per class but those were mainly low cost low efficient heals, you shouldn’t be using much)

EDIT: so yeah beast, i HAVE played that game and i agrees pretty much with what Cure said and disagree with most of what you said. Also that specific fight he did link is probably one of the hardest boss fights of the dungeons (never got to get attuned to raids, simply cause i HATE HATE HATE the RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH you needed to do in vet dungeons to actually attune, not because i wasn’t capable of doing it)

GummiBear.2756:

CureForLiving.5360:

This is certainly not my experience. Everything is easy, once you know how.
I youtubed some videos on Wildstar veteran dungeons (not having played the game) and the mechanics aren’t that far off from GW2 (basically don’t stand in fire, dodge this, kite that type stuff) all of which can easily be learned and mastered through rote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hILCb0H1s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSAGK-tXmkA

This ones present simple challenges: avoid lazers, don’t stand in circles, interrupt, and tank and spank. Nothing that I’d imagine wouldn’t become easier with enough practice. The difficulty here seems to come primarily from how hard the boss hits and the amount of damage done by the lazers. These (debatably) would be artificial difficulty what you seemingly seem to be arguing against.

This article presents two types of difficulty
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596
In the case of GW2 design difficulty would be somewhat scaled back from the articles example of Dark Souls. Primarily the difficulty would appear in the design of encounters, so the mechanics involved. But as seen in the Wildstar examples this takes the form of rote-mechanics. Jump over enough lazers and eventually jumping over lazers won’t be difficult at all. But onces you’ve mastered jumping over lazers, then allowing players to add more lazer or faster moving lazers means that they now have a slightly different challenge that would require learning, more or less, from the start again.

Spot on, while that fight and most boss fight in wildstar when you start are pretty tough, once you begin to learn them, they weren’t that bad anymore, (and you are absolutely right wildstar combat wise in many cases have a lot of similarities to GW2, tbh if they hadn’t went for such a hardcore centric focus i believe it could have been very successful, but that is not what we should be discussing here) even having done just the normal version of the dungeon, going into veteran dungeons wasn’t that bad either, if you got good at the normal dungeon at the lvl you supposed to run each dungeon, the main difficulty from vet dungeons imo, was the fact that they put on timers to get better medal (higher medal = higher loot, and you needed back when i played at least silver to attune for raids), if you were to actually jsut take your time and dont care about getting medal vet dungeons weren’t that hard either.

Ofc all this would depend on your whole group being hard as it were literally impossible for a single person to solo such content, so if one kittens up could make it near if not impossible to finish, but if you whole group good enough wasn’t that hard (personally i played esper healer, and healing was actually pretty tough in that game, since you had to aim your heals, not just target someone (okay was like 1-2 targeted heals per class but those were mainly low cost low efficient heals, you shouldn’t be using much)

EDIT: so yeah beast, i HAVE played that game and i agrees pretty much with what Cure said and disagree with most of what you said. Also that specific fight he did link is probably one of the hardest boss fights of the dungeons (never got to get attuned to raids, simply cause i HATE HATE HATE the RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH you needed to do in vet dungeons to actually attune, not because i wasn’t capable of doing it)

The thing was the dungeon wasnt hard anymore but it wasnt close to easy. Even after you learned everything you could die in a dungeon if you didnt focus and have fast reactions. It stayed fun because of that. I wouldnt claim that the difficulty was the reason for its failure but like you said thats a topic for another time.

Beast Sos.1457:

The thing was the dungeon wasnt hard anymore but it wasnt close to easy. Even after you learned everything you could die in a dungeon if you didnt focus and have fast reactions. It stayed fun because of that. I wouldnt claim that the difficulty was the reason for its failure but like you said thats a topic for another time.

I will respectfully disagree with that, if you had a good group that knew what they were doing most fights became pretty easy with time, as long as you didnt try to meet the actual time other optional challenges (which btw would fit nicely in under the artificial difficulty funny enough, right? ), sure some fights took longer, and did allow for less mistakes than others, but still in the end with enough practise you could make it near 100% sucessrate, if all you were going for were pure completing them. Ofc if you factor in the optional and time challenges again (you know those artificial difficulty things they had), we had a different thing, but even with those and even more practice you could get near 100% success rate for at least silver, probably even gold

GummiBear.2756:

Beast Sos.1457:

The thing was the dungeon wasnt hard anymore but it wasnt close to easy. Even after you learned everything you could die in a dungeon if you didnt focus and have fast reactions. It stayed fun because of that. I wouldnt claim that the difficulty was the reason for its failure but like you said thats a topic for another time.

I will respectfully disagree with that, if you had a good group that knew what they were doing most fights became pretty easy with time, as long as you didnt try to meet the actual time other optional challenges (which btw would fit nicely in under the artificial difficulty funny enough, right? ), sure some fights took longer, and did allow for less mistakes than others, but still in the end with enough practise you could make it near 100% sucessrate, if all you were going for were pure completing them. Ofc if you factor in the optional and time challenges again (you know those artificial difficulty things they had), we had a different thing, but even with those and even more practice you could get near 100% success rate for at least silver, probably even gold

Sure, if you you dont mind going on a 3 hour run instead of a 40 min run then it will becomes “easy”. I agree the time limit does fit under artificial difficulty but its not the same as for example, taking away dodging or no down stat in a game made with that part of the combat mechanics. Also Wildstar dungeon werent suppose to be super difficult, that is where the raids come in.

At the end of the day all content becomes easier relative to what it was but that doesnt mean it has to become boring. Some artificial difficulty is fine, such as a time limit and extra objectives. But when you go and take away mechanics from the combat to simulate difficulty then it becomes a problem, imo.

While i dont agree with some of wp suggestions, they dont represent artificial difficulty. They essentially change the game structure. Mechanics you can use to defend when enemies attack 3 times as fast changes how you play. How you play without rally changes the game. How you play when one death is all you get changes the game.

Artificial difficulty is mostly like increasing hp pools.

GummiBear.2756:

Beast Sos.1457:

The thing was the dungeon wasnt hard anymore but it wasnt close to easy. Even after you learned everything you could die in a dungeon if you didnt focus and have fast reactions. It stayed fun because of that. I wouldnt claim that the difficulty was the reason for its failure but like you said thats a topic for another time.

I will respectfully disagree with that, if you had a good group that knew what they were doing most fights became pretty easy with time, as long as you didnt try to meet the actual time other optional challenges (which btw would fit nicely in under the artificial difficulty funny enough, right? ), sure some fights took longer, and did allow for less mistakes than others, but still in the end with enough practise you could make it near 100% sucessrate, if all you were going for were pure completing them. Ofc if you factor in the optional and time challenges again (you know those artificial difficulty things they had), we had a different thing, but even with those and even more practice you could get near 100% success rate for at least silver, probably even gold

I dont think most people could complete veteran dungeons with a 100% no wipe rate. with practice they could totally get it done but its real easy to wipe with a stupid mistake or two. not at launch anyway. dont know what its like now, and im sure the top 10% of players may come close to being able to do that.

agreed on its downfall being artificial difficulty so it makes perfect sense that gw2 shouldnt follow in its footsteps.

i think the encounters in ws are better designed overall. they have many phases all of which put pressure on certain members of the party. if you finish a phase but inefficiently, it will make the rest of the fight harder. the phases also take more concentration to deal with whereas a lot of phases in gw2just makes you dodge stuff till its over or stack. i think encouraging specialized roles would help with this since the boss fight could then punish poor teamplay and reward excellent team play. lets say a boss takes double dmg from condis but cleanses them frequently. someone has to interrupt the boss on a cleanse to put it on cd.

finally a key component gw2 is missing is a resource that needs to be managed like mana. i think that will make designing fun and difficult content a little tougher. im interested in what comes out of this but i really am hoping against a gambit system.

Every dungeon is easy once you learn the mechanics involved…..

Even in GW2, at launch so many people complained about:

- How hard dungeons were and how punishing the repair costs were…….
- It felt unrewarding to run dungeons when dying took away 50% of the reward at the end.

Not taking into consideration they didn’t know jack about builds and such yet, a.net caved, nerved dungeons and buffed rewards more than once to appease the masses….

The result, is what we have now:

- Easy boring dungeons in general…..
- Trivialized exotic gear….
- No fear of dying since there is no monetary punishment for dying again and again.

Moral of the story….

be careful what you ask for !

Dungeons were fine, people didn’t learn the game before asking for [censored] nerfs.

Now dungeons are ruined as an end game activity.

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

The thing about that is, yes content will be easy once you figure it out and if the content is truly difficult you will still run the risk of dying and defeat….BUT that last part is harder to do when you can rally so easily, mobs can be strafe-tanked, you can 100% reflect projectiles back at them, 100% nullify damage for periods of time, so on and so forth. I’m not saying the game is too easy, I’m saying it’s too forgiving, and it’s that way because of all the luxuries we’re allotted to make the game so.

If it required investment to get some and not all of those luxuries would be a different story…

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

This is certainly not my experience. Everything is easy, once you know how.
I youtubed some videos on Wildstar veteran dungeons (not having played the game) and the mechanics aren’t that far off from GW2 (basically don’t stand in fire, dodge this, kite that type stuff) all of which can easily be learned and mastered through rote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hILCb0H1s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSAGK-tXmkA

This ones present simple challenges: avoid lazers, don’t stand in circles, interrupt, and tank and spank. Nothing that I’d imagine wouldn’t become easier with enough practice. The difficulty here seems to come primarily from how hard the boss hits and the amount of damage done by the lazers. These (debatably) would be artificial difficulty what you seemingly seem to be arguing against.

This article presents two types of difficulty
http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596
In the case of GW2 design difficulty would be somewhat scaled back from the articles example of Dark Souls. Primarily the difficulty would appear in the design of encounters, so the mechanics involved. But as seen in the Wildstar examples this takes the form of rote-mechanics. Jump over enough lazers and eventually jumping over lazers won’t be difficult at all. But onces you’ve mastered jumping over lazers, then allowing players to add more lazer or faster moving lazers means that they now have a slightly different challenge that would require learning, more or less, from the start again.

I think this whole argument is pointless. ANYTHING, if it’s reasonably possible, and not based on pure random, becomes trivial once you practice enough.

Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELROG7uppps

Paprikaspice.8462:

GummiBear.2756:

Beast Sos.1457:

The thing was the dungeon wasnt hard anymore but it wasnt close to easy. Even after you learned everything you could die in a dungeon if you didnt focus and have fast reactions. It stayed fun because of that. I wouldnt claim that the difficulty was the reason for its failure but like you said thats a topic for another time.

I will respectfully disagree with that, if you had a good group that knew what they were doing most fights became pretty easy with time, as long as you didnt try to meet the actual time other optional challenges (which btw would fit nicely in under the artificial difficulty funny enough, right? ), sure some fights took longer, and did allow for less mistakes than others, but still in the end with enough practise you could make it near 100% sucessrate, if all you were going for were pure completing them. Ofc if you factor in the optional and time challenges again (you know those artificial difficulty things they had), we had a different thing, but even with those and even more practice you could get near 100% success rate for at least silver, probably even gold

I dont think most people could complete veteran dungeons with a 100% no wipe rate. with practice they could totally get it done but its real easy to wipe with a stupid mistake or two. not at launch anyway. dont know what its like now, and im sure the top 10% of players may come close to being able to do that.

agreed on its downfall being artificial difficulty so it makes perfect sense that gw2 shouldnt follow in its footsteps.

i think the encounters in ws are better designed overall. they have many phases all of which put pressure on certain members of the party. if you finish a phase but inefficiently, it will make the rest of the fight harder. the phases also take more concentration to deal with whereas a lot of phases in gw2just makes you dodge stuff till its over or stack. i think encouraging specialized roles would help with this since the boss fight could then punish poor teamplay and reward excellent team play. lets say a boss takes double dmg from condis but cleanses them frequently. someone has to interrupt the boss on a cleanse to put it on cd.

finally a key component gw2 is missing is a resource that needs to be managed like mana. i think that will make designing fun and difficult content a little tougher. im interested in what comes out of this but i really am hoping against a gambit system.

I never said most ppl could, after all there are some ppl that just seem plain out unable to learn from their mistakes, but assuming you not one of them, eventually you will get a near 100% success rate, sure it may take longer or shorter depending on how fast you and your group learn, but eventually you get there.

i certainly agree that wildstar dungeons are better designed in general. On the resource making it harder i dont really know, and by that i truly mean i dont really know, so will neither agree or disagree about that one. I do however think the whole telegraph system is one of the part of ws combat system that allowed it to make much more interesting mechanics, while gw2 system i more realistic in that you actually have to see the projectiles etc and evade them based on that, the telegraphs of ws allows for far more tight situations, like for instance the first boss in the first dungeon you get to on the exiles side, one of his attacks, that he uses like 4-5 times i think in total during the fight, cover the WHOLE room in one big aoe that has i think 5 or 6 safe spots that not bigger than 2-3 ppl could stand in each if they didn’t overlap each other or something like that, now try to actually do something like that in gw2? The way the few dmg indicator circles we do have are designed in a way that would look very weird with such one. I geuss the more cartoony graphic style of ws does allow a lot more freedom in design on a lot of things vs gw2’s realistic style.

And then there is the whole(relatively fast recharging at least when it comes to pve) dodge system in gw2 that does allow you to avoid any dmg if you time it correct, making it near impossible to design a boss taht forces ppl to spread out or otherwise forcing them to reposition, which a lot of fights in ws did force you to

Leo G.4501:

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

The thing about that is, yes content will be easy once you figure it out and if the content is truly difficult you will still run the risk of dying and defeat….BUT that last part is harder to do when you can rally so easily, mobs can be strafe-tanked, you can 100% reflect projectiles back at them, 100% nullify damage for periods of time, so on and so forth. I’m not saying the game is too easy, I’m saying it’s too forgiving, and it’s that way because of all the luxuries we’re allotted to make the game so.

If it required investment to get some and not all of those luxuries would be a different story…

% based nerfs to defensive skills are assinine, especially with down 10% hp and if anyone dies game over.

you cant make a game of skill, and then make your success or failure have a lot to do with random chance.

random based gameplay only works when players have to react to it. You cant react to your defensive abilities randomly failing to work.

if they need to have reflect be less effective, they need to have enemies that strafe and move based on reflect fields, or they start meleeing, or using targetless AOE.