Guild Wars 2

Full headline: Hero Points: Champions vs. time limit vs. missing players

First something about me: I’m a Veteran, played Guild Wars nearly since the very beginning and have about 25 characters. I’m really enjoying it to play my characters through all the campaigns and to all places on the map. All of my characters are able to travel to all cities/outposts in a second. This is especially convenient for helping guild mates or friends.

As for Guild Wars 2, I do the same thing: 100 % Map with all of my characters. Yeah, I might take every waypoint instead, but it feels … incomplete. So all of my characters have 100 % of the main game. I even took all the Vistas and Points of Interests of Silverwastes, Southstone Cove and Dry Top, even there is no reward for it. It’s just for the sake of completeness and no profit motive.

Now there is Heart of Thorns with it’s (partially) new mechanic of Hero Points. Now you have to defeat champions instead of just Veterans. Some of them are fine. You can take them out/solo them, if you are stubborn and your skills are high enough and maybe some other players join the fight = easy going. At least most the time. Because there are at least two exceptions: Verdant Brink: Vampire Beasts. Tangled Depths: Mushroom Queen. Maybe there is one or two more, but especially these two challenges are hefty. At the moment there are luckily enough players to deal with them. But very soon the time will come you have do deal with them on your very own.

Today my second character has his 100 % HoT. And the most time I had exactly this problem: No players. So I used the LfG and luckily players joined the fight. But I guess, it’s just a question of time, until most people will lose interest. In both cases (see above). I had to wait, until we had enough players. The Mushroom Queen requires at least 5 players and even then, it’s more luck beating this kitten. I guess she even could easily take out Modremoth. But there is more: You have to deal with them under a time limit.
I noticed, my Condition classes are way more effective against them. More CC, more damage, easier to recover. Direct damage classes need often longer. But so far I just played my strong characters; characters I do have much practise playing them. Soon I will play less offensive classes like supporting or healing classes. I managed it to do 100 % in the main game, but this Hero Points are one size too big. Way too tough Champions with tons of HP and a time limit. I’m afraid of dealing with them in the near future.

As I said: At the moment there are enough players for the most time. But time will pass very quick. With locations like Dragon’s Stand and Tangled Depths I assume players won’t complete HoT as often as the rest of Tyria. Probably they will skip hard Hero Points. I would suggest to consider the difficulty of the Champion hero points in the interest of most of the players. Remove the time limit, make them easier. I don’t mind, if they upscale to Champion level, but only if there are enough players around. And btw: The Mushroom king just spams his AoE’s and there is simply not enough space.

Other opinions?

10 Minutes you get for some of them is more than enough.
I and I am sure a lot of other players do not want everything made easy.

You people keep complaining how the game is too casual and how we are losing players because of that but the moment something challenging appears you made countless crying posts begging for it to be nerfed.

This has already been nerfed enough.

GW2 Is an MMO. Play it as such
Make friends, form parties and guilds and help each-others

Thats my two cents…

Some of them are a real pain to reach, and then if you’re running the wrong build it’s a long run back, or if your dodge was on cooldown, or a myriad other reasons, like not playing a fully elite specced toon.

Even running to some of them can be a real pain if you don’t know the map well or don’t have a perfect memory, as there aren’t always places to stop.

Contested WP’s also make for even longer trudges back- a problem that will get worse as the map gets quieter.

As Nephziel is an expert I’m sure he’ll be willing to help you through them all after you join his guild, and demonstrate how to solo each one on every class:-)

Some of the spaces you have to fight in are very small, which is fine if you have lots or armor and some passive heals going but not so much fun for those with less heals or lower armor.

Another problem is some of them have one hit mechanics that are quite an issue for some classes.

Personally I think all HP’s should be Veterans or communes which scale with the number of people there- so if you want a greater challenge, bring more people.

The map events are currently quite a challenge and if you want a real challenge, go play wvw or spvp or (hopefully) the new raid system.

Gathering essentials shouldn’t be gated behind champs when they already hard enough to get to for many non-prime time players.

I think silver bosses would be perfect, to be able to solo the most of them. I don’t see why some want to keep it the way it is, it’s not harder, you just need more people… hasn’t got much to do with skills imo.
But in general i think 100% completion on hot maps is hell. WP’s, gates, adventures contested half of the time, and if you finally find one, you need some new mastery … , can’t solo etc. Only one reason to block this … you need to play more, not have more fun. gl getting 100% map on so much characters.

I have been trying to get the vampire bat in the canopy of VB for a while on my Revenant. The most I’ve gotten was two, the first time we couldn’t coordinate CCs well enough to defeat the life drain. The second time, two of the players, including me, accidentally fell off the ledge, so that was a bust.

I wish there was a better reason to run these events a second time, so people who already did it would be interested in coming back and doing it again.

One problem that ANet faces with their chosen method of content generation is that challenge is often overcome by outnumbering the content. They’ve learned a few things about how to work around this player choice (e.g., SW Vinewrath, Marionette). Afaik, though, have not applied this knowledge to Hero Challenges.

HoT is the new game. Presumably, ANet wants all players to buy it and play it. Players have vastly different levels of skill, time to play and inclinations. There should be something for everyone in HoT because it’s the new game.

The OP is correct. Over time, these HC’s are going to be of interest only to people who take their time going through stuff, who are working on their umpty-seventh alt, or late adopters. Any that are group challenges or that one must be in the top third of player skill to solo are going to be problematic eventually, if they aren’t already.

Now, maybe ANet knew this going in, and plan to adjust the difficulty of these things once the initial herd is done with them and is long past caring about their one-and-done rewards. Maybe they didn’t. I guess we’ll see.

Most of the GW2 vanilla Hero points are a joke , other than finding out how to get there.

Having elite specs gated behind completing at least 4 hero challenges in HoT if you have world complete isn’t a lot to ask (250-214 =36 as opposed to 186 before the elite spec change). I don’t think that is a huge problem as long as you can do most of them (i.e. enough to complete an elite spec) without a huge number of players.

IndigoSundown , I predict that after several months and sales taper off they will nerf it just because there are fewer people on the maps.

It’s still a bit early to ask for changes to it, many players have not bought it yet judging by emptiness of maps. After the future November 17 patch with raids (and maybe Black Friday?) I can see more people dropping into HoT. Arenanet also needs to fix the megaserver issue.

P.S. The buff to conditions makes it better since it is less focused on power-heavy berserker gear style builds.

Solution: Play WvW until you have all HoT hero challenges complete.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I have been trying to get the vampire bat in the canopy of VB for a while on my Revenant. The most I’ve gotten was two, the first time we couldn’t coordinate CCs well enough to defeat the life drain. The second time, two of the players, including me, accidentally fell off the ledge, so that was a bust.

I wish there was a better reason to run these events a second time, so people who already did it would be interested in coming back and doing it again.

They give daily reward and xp. So that’s something

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

I had a thought a day or two ago that they should make the daily reward for beating these HPs into an “all the time” reward. As in, if you tag and help out, you can do them over and over.

This would give them more of a repeatable incentive and if farm groups got going on them, you’d practically have people begging in map chat for those who don’t have the HP yet, so there’s someone to activate it.

I realize it would not be a perfect solution. You would still have the issue of not being able to solo most of them and in theory you could end up with people standing around the same HP all day instead of going to different ones.

But the potential is there for improvements that will last the test of time and still maintain HPs as memorable content.

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Please. They’re only worth ten points because ANet faced a dilemma.

They capitulated to player complaints about the new trait/skill unlocks by allocating enough HP to unlock all of core just via leveling. This left them with players who had as many as 214 HP unspent. Since it seems their original intent was to have players gain about as many points in HoT to unlock specs as they could have earned in core, they had to either make the HoT points worth the same as core ones and have a ton of them, or they had to value them higher. They chose the latter so they didn’t end up having a challenge every dozen meters in the new zones.

That said, I have no problem with the HC’s being more of a challenge than the core ones. However, let’s not pretend that an arbitrary valuation selected to meet a design objective means anything other than what it obviously is.

Challenge is fine. Having HC’s be group challenges is going to cause problems down the road. It’s not good design to present exploration objectives as group content because exploration is a one-time reward, and group content needs a pool of players willing to show up for those group events. In an MMO this means rewards. No reward, no interest from the lion’s share of players. You might be willing to go help all and sundry get their HC’s, but I doubt that a majority of players will, and maybe even you will be less than thrilled at the 3,689th call for help.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Please. They’re only worth ten points because ANet faced a dilemma.

They capitulated to player complaints about the new trait/skill unlocks by allocating enough HP to unlock all of core just via leveling. This left them with players who had as many as 214 HP unspent. Since it seems their original intent was to have players gain about as many points in HoT to unlock specs as they could have earned in core, they had to either make the HoT points worth the same as core ones and have a ton of them, or they had to value them higher. They chose the latter so they didn’t end up having a challenge every dozen meters in the new zones.

That said, I have no problem with the HC’s being more of a challenge than the core ones. However, let’s not pretend that an arbitrary valuation selected to meet a design objective means anything other than what it obviously is.

Challenge is fine. Having HC’s be group challenges is going to cause problems down the road. It’s not good design to present exploration objectives as group content because exploration is a one-time reward, and group content needs a pool of players willing to show up for those group events. In an MMO this means rewards. No reward, no interest from the lion’s share of players. You might be willing to go help all and sundry get their HC’s, but I doubt that a majority of players will, and maybe even you will be less than thrilled at the 3,689th call for help.

Regardless of the reason for the change, and it may be as you say, it doesn’t change the fact that this points are worth more. There’s no contesting this. You can say they’re worth more because Anet was forced to capitulate to it’s rabid fan base, or you can say it’s worth more because venus was in retrograde. It doesn’t affect my argument at all.

Once they were worth more, there was no reason not to make them harder, particularly now that you don’t need them all.

Yes, some people are completionist and must have everything but that’s not really Anet’s fault. Anet has created a situation were you can complete the only world and do three easy challenges in the new zones (there are plenty of easy ones) and then you have your elite spec unlocked. That’s the situation that exists right now.

On my world complete characters, I had to complete 3 skill point challenges in the new zone. I’m relatively sure there are 3 communes or points guarded by a vet now.

For everyone else there’s something more challenging. Enough people have been asking for something challenging for long enough that this would only be an issue if someone absolutely needed this to unlock their elite spec.

But that’s not really the case.

To add into the mix you can get some relatively easily in EoTM negates any real argument.

You can’t do those skill points, but you don’t need them either. If you do need them, adapt.

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Please. They’re only worth ten points because ANet faced a dilemma.

They capitulated to player complaints about the new trait/skill unlocks by allocating enough HP to unlock all of core just via leveling. This left them with players who had as many as 214 HP unspent. Since it seems their original intent was to have players gain about as many points in HoT to unlock specs as they could have earned in core, they had to either make the HoT points worth the same as core ones and have a ton of them, or they had to value them higher. They chose the latter so they didn’t end up having a challenge every dozen meters in the new zones.

That said, I have no problem with the HC’s being more of a challenge than the core ones. However, let’s not pretend that an arbitrary valuation selected to meet a design objective means anything other than what it obviously is.

Challenge is fine. Having HC’s be group challenges is going to cause problems down the road. It’s not good design to present exploration objectives as group content because exploration is a one-time reward, and group content needs a pool of players willing to show up for those group events. In an MMO this means rewards. No reward, no interest from the lion’s share of players. You might be willing to go help all and sundry get their HC’s, but I doubt that a majority of players will, and maybe even you will be less than thrilled at the 3,689th call for help.

Regardless of the reason for the change, and it may be as you say, it doesn’t change the fact that this points are worth more. There’s no contesting this. You can say they’re worth more because Anet was forced to capitulate to it’s rabid fan base, or you can say it’s worth more because venus was in retrograde. It doesn’t affect my argument at all.

Once they were worth more, there was no reason not to make them harder, particularly now that you don’t need them all.

Yes, some people are completionist and must have everything but that’s not really Anet’s fault. Anet has created a situation were you can complete the only world and do three easy challenges in the new zones (there are plenty of easy ones) and then you have your elite spec unlocked. That’s the situation that exists right now.

On my world complete characters, I had to complete 3 skill point challenges in the new zone. I’m relatively sure there are 3 communes or points guarded by a vet now.

For everyone else there’s something more challenging. Enough people have been asking for something challenging for long enough that this would only be an issue if someone absolutely needed this to unlock their elite spec.

But that’s not really the case.

To add into the mix you can get some relatively easily in EoTM negates any real argument.

You can’t do those skill points, but you don’t need them either. If you do need them, adapt.

Please note that my gripe is not the challenge per se, it’s the amount of players needed to complete the points. One reason that I did not purchase HoT is that I do not like herd events. The particle spam, even with the new “reductions” is headache inducing and not at all visually appealing to me. I was (and still am) concerned that HoT does not offer very much for those who want to stay “far from the madding crowd,” as it were.

Exploration objectives used to be that type of content. Core zones are also full of content that could be done solo or with small increments of players. HoT seems like a smorgasbord for herd content, with not all that much for those who dislike that type of thing.

While one can argue that “this is an MMO” and that “HoT is endgame content,” the XPac ought to be attractive to everyone. It ought to build on the game for everyone. Well, not everyone prefers herd play. Other than the story and adventures, the descriptions of what’s on offer seems to indicate that HOT is lacking in this regard. Perhaps I’m wrong, but based on reviews and reports, this is the conclusion I’ve drawn.

Finally, the issue of group one-and-done content is going to cause problems for late adopters. There ought to be a way to preserve challenge via HC scaling while making all the points solo friendly.

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Let’s not pretend the 10x hero points was a design choice for challenge. Not that I’m bitter about how they handled elite unlocks (disappointed is the closest I get), but it’s easy to spot that the hero point structure was designed to force acquisition of points for the elite specs.

These are character-defining trait lines, and they shouldn’t be locked behind “group” content, especially without indications of which challenges are group and which ones are “commune” gimmies. Granted, “locked” isn’t 100% true, since old Tyria completion fills out a majority of the skills and trait line, thanks to polite acquiescence by the dev team.

People were screaming for help at the Balthazaar hero point in AB last night; I wanted to help, but after searching 40 minutes for the entrance (and dying a couple times when I was looking at my map to try and figure something out.) I said to’heck with it. No WP to go back to, can’t look at my map, and no obvious entrance despite running and gliding around the area.

I will be unlocking this hero point in WvW, I don’t care how long it takes me; it was thoroughly unrewarding and frustrating to try and find my way in there so I am not going to do it.

Rauderi.8706:

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Let’s not pretend the 10x hero points was a design choice for challenge. Not that I’m bitter about how they handled elite unlocks (disappointed is the closest I get), but it’s easy to spot that the hero point structure was designed to force acquisition of points for the elite specs.

These are character-defining trait lines, and they shouldn’t be locked behind “group” content, especially without indications of which challenges are group and which ones are “commune” gimmies. Granted, “locked” isn’t 100% true, since old Tyria completion fills out a majority of the skills and trait line, thanks to polite acquiescence by the dev team.

There are enough soloable hero points on Verdant Brink that no one needs to group up with anyone to get these so called “character-defining traits”.

DarcShriek.5829:

Rauderi.8706:

Vayne.8563:

But you don’t need every hero point to completely unlock your spec. If you want the extra hero points, you don’t start the event and you organize in map chat.

Because unlike other hero points, you get 10 hero points for these, so why wouldn’t they be harder? The reward is much higher.

Why should something be just as easy for a reward 10 times as great? How is that good game design?

Let’s not pretend the 10x hero points was a design choice for challenge. Not that I’m bitter about how they handled elite unlocks (disappointed is the closest I get), but it’s easy to spot that the hero point structure was designed to force acquisition of points for the elite specs.

These are character-defining trait lines, and they shouldn’t be locked behind “group” content, especially without indications of which challenges are group and which ones are “commune” gimmies. Granted, “locked” isn’t 100% true, since old Tyria completion fills out a majority of the skills and trait line, thanks to polite acquiescence by the dev team.

There are enough soloable hero points on Verdant Brink that no one needs to group up with anyone to get these so called “character-defining traits”.

Which is still no excuse to support bad game design.

Maria Murtor.7253:

Full headline: Hero Points: Champions vs. time limit vs. missing players

First something about me: I’m a Veteran, played Guild Wars nearly since the very beginning and have about 25 characters. I’m really enjoying it to play my characters through all the campaigns and to all places on the map. All of my characters are able to travel to all cities/outposts in a second. This is especially convenient for helping guild mates or friends.

As for Guild Wars 2, I do the same thing: 100 % Map with all of my characters. Yeah, I might take every waypoint instead, but it feels … incomplete. So all of my characters have 100 % of the main game. I even took all the Vistas and Points of Interests of Silverwastes, Southstone Cove and Dry Top, even there is no reward for it. It’s just for the sake of completeness and no profit motive.

Now there is Heart of Thorns with it’s (partially) new mechanic of Hero Points. Now you have to defeat champions instead of just Veterans. Some of them are fine. You can take them out/solo them, if you are stubborn and your skills are high enough and maybe some other players join the fight = easy going. At least most the time. Because there are at least two exceptions: Verdant Brink: Vampire Beasts. Tangled Depths: Mushroom Queen. Maybe there is one or two more, but especially these two challenges are hefty. At the moment there are luckily enough players to deal with them. But very soon the time will come you have do deal with them on your very own.

Today my second character has his 100 % HoT. And the most time I had exactly this problem: No players. So I used the LfG and luckily players joined the fight. But I guess, it’s just a question of time, until most people will lose interest. In both cases (see above). I had to wait, until we had enough players. The Mushroom Queen requires at least 5 players and even then, it’s more luck beating this kitten. I guess she even could easily take out Modremoth. But there is more: You have to deal with them under a time limit.
I noticed, my Condition classes are way more effective against them. More CC, more damage, easier to recover. Direct damage classes need often longer. But so far I just played my strong characters; characters I do have much practise playing them. Soon I will play less offensive classes like supporting or healing classes. I managed it to do 100 % in the main game, but this Hero Points are one size too big. Way too tough Champions with tons of HP and a time limit. I’m afraid of dealing with them in the near future.

As I said: At the moment there are enough players for the most time. But time will pass very quick. With locations like Dragon’s Stand and Tangled Depths I assume players won’t complete HoT as often as the rest of Tyria. Probably they will skip hard Hero Points. I would suggest to consider the difficulty of the Champion hero points in the interest of most of the players. Remove the time limit, make them easier. I don’t mind, if they upscale to Champion level, but only if there are enough players around. And btw: The Mushroom king just spams his AoE’s and there is simply not enough space.

+ 1
Hot PvE = Bad Design

Nephziel.6053:

10 Minutes you get for some of them is more than enough.
I and I am sure a lot of other players do not want everything made easy.

You people keep complaining how the game is too casual and how we are losing players because of that but the moment something challenging appears you made countless crying posts begging for it to be nerfed.

This has already been nerfed enough.

GW2 Is an MMO. Play it as such
Make friends, form parties and guilds and help each-others

Thats my two cents…

The Base Game (Story + 100%map) was entirely possible solo (execept Arah story mission)
HoT is stuck with a lot -You can’t do it Solo- and with a story mission unlock behind EXP Grid/Mastery

If Arena.net would have warned us about this meta PvE gameplay changes, I would have not pre-pushing HoT

Nephziel.6053:

10 Minutes you get for some of them is more than enough.
I and I am sure a lot of other players do not want everything made easy.

You people keep complaining how the game is too casual and how we are losing players because of that but the moment something challenging appears you made countless crying posts begging for it to be nerfed.

This has already been nerfed enough.

GW2 Is an MMO. Play it as such
Make friends, form parties and guilds and help each-others

Thats my two cents…

Who’s “you people”?

We are all different people, saying different things.

It’s not the same people saying contradictory things.

If you’re going to use the (slightly rude) term “you people”, at least use it properly.

Nephziel.6053:

GW2 Is an MMO. Play it as such.

I thought the motto was “Play as you like”.

Trying to get map completion on Tangled Depths and Dragon Stand? Good luck to you! I’ve decided that I simply don’t have the time to care about PvE enough to endure the kitten one must go though with HoT now that the game is in that awkward state of flux between the initial launch herd keeping the maps overflowing to the eerie, empty state they are in today before the lower population tuning has been completed. Simply put, it’s a horrible time to be playing the expansion right now.

I ended up spending about 50 gold just to get other players to assist me in Auric Basin and Tangled Depths to get what I needed from these maps. Had I not offered money and had to wait on other players or guildies objectives to align with mine what took ~4 hours would have taken many days. As an adult with time constraints I also understand time constraints of others. Every person is and has a right to be selective with how they spend their time in game. In an idea world (or a better game design perhaps) players would have very strong built in incentives to help other players, but that is not what’s happening so the answer is to quit playing the game, wait awhile for ANet to take (possible) action or to create your own incentives and offer compensation to players. This works.

I have to distinguish the things I find fun and what aspects I find a boring chore. If there is a way to eliminate the boring chores then that’s worth the investment to me. I decided it was worth dropping $10 USD in gems to gold to set aside for players who would help me get around the maps. Also as someone who suffers from geographical dyslexia, I would struggle with Tangled Depths even if the zone were full (about 20% suffer from this condition) With it empty I find myself aggroing mops, often dead then having to respawned at distant waypoints. It’s in a horrible state right now!

But when you offer to pay people, what you’ll find is people often offer to help for free. Of you should still pay them because ArenaNet has given them next to no incentive to assist (which is why they all ignored you in map and guild chat until you offered gold).