There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Aenaos.8160

Aenaos.8160

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.
If you like harder content you should be expected to play such content in
instances,because hard content in the open world makes the game inaccessible
for the majority of the population.
The ratio between open world content and instanced raid content should be
balanced always in favour of the open world content,since that is what most of
the players will definitely play,not only in GW2 but in every other MMO as well.

-Win a pip,lose a pip,win a pip,lose a pip,lose a pip,
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Mesis.2951

Mesis.2951

I would call myself casual player with tendency to slip into hardcore style for a short period of time.

I think the biggest problem is scaling

Content

Content is either very hard or too easy. Playing solo or in the small group is usually challenging and fun way to play but when you meet something like “commander train” the game gets dull and easy very fast. It is also sad that commander train is the fastest and easiest way how to get stuff.

Another topic should be items, drops and their power

I liked years ago (game start) the euforia you get when yellow or orange item dropped. It felt good and the progress you could see.
Word bosses and champion events felt hard and rewarding.
People could also chose to gather material to craft their own gear or sell it.
Dungeons, Jumping puzzles and Karma were also another ways to get gear.

I feel now I get A LOT of useless items from drops and chests (It feels like getting gray, white, green items in WoW)
It is absurd. I havent recieved a SINGLE item that was useful for me from drops in eternity (it was at the Orr few years ago)

Also, I feel that addition of Ascended items was … meh. It feels like new raid tier in WoW but you can only craft it which in my opinion is not fun.
I read that exotic>ascended is increase 5% in stats. I think the difference should be lesser. Let´s say 2.5% This would help to diminish difference between casual and hardcore player while still letting hardcore players feel special.

The thing I like the most on GW2 are jumping puzzles
I find it difficult to level up since HoT. So I have more mastery points than I can spend.
I am currently mastery lvl 4 (or something like that) and have about 43 mastery points

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Ricky.4706

Ricky.4706

honestly, the ascended stuff is what disappointed me most about anet, I’m a fan of the artwork, but whomever decided it’s ok to gate stats in a world that has areas that mix pve and pvp – such as wvw ….will never be someone I’d respect – it’s a very very elitist decision, and I’m quite sure they are the one responsible for all other elitist type content that most of the gw community dislikes.

Moving that person to the mailroom will greatly improve guildwars 2, i’m sure it will upset some employees though because chances are, he’ll only deliver mail to the highest paid people …..and lose everyone elses mail, but better them than the paying customers lol

IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels

(edited by Ricky.4706)

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.
If you like harder content you should be expected to play such content in
instances,because hard content in the open world makes the game inaccessible
for the majority of the population.
The ratio between open world content and instanced raid content should be
balanced always in favour of the open world content,since that is what most of
the players will definitely play,not only in GW2 but in every other MMO as well.

First of all, I don’t think the new zones are inaccessible to the majority of the player base, and I think you’d have a hard time proving it. Very few guilds are as casual as my guild, we’re not raiding yet, for example, but everyone has been able to do the new zones.

Also you talked in another post about having to group for hero points. You don’t. You may need other people around for hero points, but that’s not the same as grouping.

In fact, there are many examples of things in the open world you can’t solo that were in the game before HoT, like temples in Orr.

The question is why you believe you absolutely need every hero point. If you get all the hero points in the open world, I think you need four hero points in all of HoT to unlock your elite specialization.

I can point you to four hero points that are either veterans or communes, without ever leaving verdant brink.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.
If you like harder content you should be expected to play such content in
instances,because hard content in the open world makes the game inaccessible
for the majority of the population.
The ratio between open world content and instanced raid content should be
balanced always in favour of the open world content,since that is what most of
the players will definitely play,not only in GW2 but in every other MMO as well.

If an instance is hard it will also be inaccessible for those who can’t beat it, what’s the difference with it being in the open world?

And you are wrong about the ratio, in most MMORPGs out there the open world content is used mostly to level up until you reach the cap and start doing instances and raiding. GW2 was/is one of the few MMORPGs that you can play exclusively in the open world and have nearly all the rewards, bar a few cosmetic ones and some tiny few others. That’s because GW2 has the dynamic event system which allows the open world content to scale to the number of players and although some group events require organization, it’s not like doing raids or any other instanced content – level of organization.

Do you really want to turn GW2 into an other instance-heavy MMORPG where the majority of the population is hidden inside instances, both hard and easy ones, and the open world is just a playground while leveling? Or you want the open world to continue to offer multiple tiers of difficulty for all players to enjoy?

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: ikereid.4637

ikereid.4637

I love what HoT brought to GW2, I just do not like HoT. I went through HoT to get what I wanted out of it (all Elite specs, story done on my main 3 characters, and the required masteries to get the story done with maxed Gliding for the upcoming patch). Just finished the Gliding max mastery last Tuesday. Since then, I have not stepped into a HoT zone not even to raid.

But you know what? Aside from RAIDs, I am not spending more then 5% of my time in HoT, anyway. Most of my time comes from doing FoTM (gearing more of my characters for the raids…really good Gold Flow from FoTM right now…its more fun then most other game modes for PVE…ect.), like 80% of my game time, then my weekly RAID, following by my nightly Teq and TT kills. In between I am cleaning inventory in LA or DR.

If I were to create a new character, I would probably run it through mapping to level instead of spending tomes (Id probably use an instant 30 scroll, to be honest) so that would put me back in classic zones for a while…but since I am getting gear from FOTM for my alts and such I dont really have a need to run through HoT zones to grind out gear once that alt would be level 80….not that HoT gives any kind of rewards like that anyway.

There really feels like there is a gap between what we get out of classic GW2 vs HoT over all. And I think the biggest question that needs asked is ‘what is the Point of HoT, Post release’. Because for the most part there isn’t one.

Desktop: 4790k@4.6ghz-1.25v, AMD 295×2, 32GB 1866CL10 RAM, 850Evo 500GB SSD
Laptop: M6600 – 2720QM, AMD HD6970M, 32GB 1600CL9 RAM, Arc100 480GB SSD

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I love what HoT brought to GW2, I just do not like HoT. I went through HoT to get what I wanted out of it (all Elite specs, story done on my main 3 characters, and the required masteries to get the story done with maxed Gliding for the upcoming patch). Just finished the Gliding max mastery last Tuesday. Since then, I have not stepped into a HoT zone not even to raid.

But you know what? Aside from RAIDs, I am not spending more then 5% of my time in HoT, anyway. Most of my time comes from doing FoTM (gearing more of my characters for the raids…really good Gold Flow from FoTM right now…its more fun then most other game modes for PVE…ect.), like 80% of my game time, then my weekly RAID, following by my nightly Teq and TT kills. In between I am cleaning inventory in LA or DR.

If I were to create a new character, I would probably run it through mapping to level instead of spending tomes (Id probably use an instant 30 scroll, to be honest) so that would put me back in classic zones for a while…but since I am getting gear from FOTM for my alts and such I dont really have a need to run through HoT zones to grind out gear once that alt would be level 80….not that HoT gives any kind of rewards like that anyway.

There really feels like there is a gap between what we get out of classic GW2 vs HoT over all. And I think the biggest question that needs asked is ‘what is the Point of HoT, Post release’. Because for the most part there isn’t one.

The point is HoT provides a different alternate experience to the core zones, for people who don’t care for instances ie raids and fractals.

What you’re really saying is I haven’t set foot in HOT because I prefer this content. But I spend most of my time in HoT because I prefer that content.

Anet was looking for holes in what was being offered in game. What wasn’t being offered in game was good open world challenges that weren’t world bosses. Something you could play that stepped you up a level in the open world. Orr is mostly too easy now. Southsun is okay but rather small. Dry Top is still fun for me, but I’ve done it a million times. Silverwastes is the best of the old maps for me, but again, I’ve played it to death.

So now I have four new maps with four new map metas that are more challenging than core tyria. Yes, I run fractals but I’ve yet to raid.

HoT provides an alternative. If HoT was like the rest of the game and gave us relatively flat, easy to navigate zones that weren’t challenging, it would have less point than it does now.

People would have finished them even faster and be ready for more. And what would have been the point of that?

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Aenaos.8160

Aenaos.8160

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.
If you like harder content you should be expected to play such content in
instances,because hard content in the open world makes the game inaccessible
for the majority of the population.
The ratio between open world content and instanced raid content should be
balanced always in favour of the open world content,since that is what most of
the players will definitely play,not only in GW2 but in every other MMO as well.

If an instance is hard it will also be inaccessible for those who can’t beat it, what’s the difference with it being in the open world?

And you are wrong about the ratio, in most MMORPGs out there the open world content is used mostly to level up until you reach the cap and start doing instances and raiding. GW2 was/is one of the few MMORPGs that you can play exclusively in the open world and have nearly all the rewards, bar a few cosmetic ones and some tiny few others. That’s because GW2 has the dynamic event system which allows the open world content to scale to the number of players and although some group events require organization, it’s not like doing raids or any other instanced content – level of organization.

Do you really want to turn GW2 into an other instance-heavy MMORPG where the majority of the population is hidden inside instances, both hard and easy ones, and the open world is just a playground while leveling? Or you want the open world to continue to offer multiple tiers of difficulty for all players to enjoy?

The difference is that a instanced Raid serves exactly that purpose.
It is hard content catered to a minority of the population that is into
playing such content.
By placing such content in instances you free up the open world for more
laid back and fun content.
Unfortunately the open world content in HoT is neither laid back nor fun.
Open world content should serve the purpose of being available and playable
by anyone and everyone.
In HoT there is no multiple tiers of anything.
It’s just one big tier of try hardiness and zergs.
And a lot of players are not enjoying and not playing HoT although they bought it.
I’m one of them.
If you have any doubts about this,check other related threads in this forum.

P.S And that don’t mean that the game should be more instance based.

-Win a pip,lose a pip,win a pip,lose a pip,lose a pip,
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-

(edited by Aenaos.8160)

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.
If you like harder content you should be expected to play such content in
instances,because hard content in the open world makes the game inaccessible
for the majority of the population.
The ratio between open world content and instanced raid content should be
balanced always in favour of the open world content,since that is what most of
the players will definitely play,not only in GW2 but in every other MMO as well.

If an instance is hard it will also be inaccessible for those who can’t beat it, what’s the difference with it being in the open world?

And you are wrong about the ratio, in most MMORPGs out there the open world content is used mostly to level up until you reach the cap and start doing instances and raiding. GW2 was/is one of the few MMORPGs that you can play exclusively in the open world and have nearly all the rewards, bar a few cosmetic ones and some tiny few others. That’s because GW2 has the dynamic event system which allows the open world content to scale to the number of players and although some group events require organization, it’s not like doing raids or any other instanced content – level of organization.

Do you really want to turn GW2 into an other instance-heavy MMORPG where the majority of the population is hidden inside instances, both hard and easy ones, and the open world is just a playground while leveling? Or you want the open world to continue to offer multiple tiers of difficulty for all players to enjoy?

The difference is that a instanced Raid serves exactly that purpose.
It is hard content catered to a minority of the population that is into
playing such content.
By placing such content in instances you free up the open world for more
laid back and fun content.
Unfortunately the open world content in HoT is neither laid back nor fun.
Open world content should serve the purpose of being available and playable
by anyone and everyone.
In HoT there is no multiple tiers of anything.
It’s just one big tier of try hardiness and zergs.
And a lot of players are not enjoying and not playing HoT although they bought it.
I’m one of them.
If you have any doubts about this,check other related threads in this forum.

P.S And that don’t mean that the game should be more instanced based.

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion. I don’t really love challenging content all the time, but HoT isn’t really challenging so much as a learning curve.

By the definition you give, every zone should be a starting zone and there should be no end game zones, because some people will find them hard. There are people who never go into Orr because they find it too hard for them. Or Southsun. There are people who don’t go into Dry Top because the jumping is too hard for him.

An end game zone is always supposed to have some sort of challenge or it wouldn’t be the end game zone. But a lot of players aren’t particularly challenged by Orr any more, not just a couple a lot, and so a lot of them wanted something more challenging. Not just raiders. Not just hard core players. People used to gaming (which is quite a large number).

I find the HoT zones more fun than the core zone. They’re not as casual, but they’re not really hard core either. They do, however, have a learning curve.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

…but everyone has been able to do the new zones.

I haven’t. Couldn’t get through it, although not due to mission strength. I just couldn’t find my way through the map once I hit DS. I tried many times, but each time was more frustrating than the last, so I finally gave up.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion. I don’t really love challenging content all the time, but HoT isn’t really challenging so much as a learning curve.

I don’t call HoT zones challenging. I call them absurd. Not absurdly hard, but just absurd. To be locked out artificially for any period of time with no story element involved is just crazy. And to have maps that even the most dedicated and hardcore players have admitted are crazy hard to navigate, well that was just dumb.

Even the events and wandering creatures aren’t challenging. They’re just exercises in knowing when to flee because the spawn rate is too high. That’s not challenging, either.

Challenging would be new creatures that you have to do new things to defeat. HoT merely upped their power levels. So far, I haven’t had a single event or story mission that I would call challenging.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Aenaos.8160

Aenaos.8160

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.
If you like harder content you should be expected to play such content in
instances,because hard content in the open world makes the game inaccessible
for the majority of the population.
The ratio between open world content and instanced raid content should be
balanced always in favour of the open world content,since that is what most of
the players will definitely play,not only in GW2 but in every other MMO as well.

If an instance is hard it will also be inaccessible for those who can’t beat it, what’s the difference with it being in the open world?

And you are wrong about the ratio, in most MMORPGs out there the open world content is used mostly to level up until you reach the cap and start doing instances and raiding. GW2 was/is one of the few MMORPGs that you can play exclusively in the open world and have nearly all the rewards, bar a few cosmetic ones and some tiny few others. That’s because GW2 has the dynamic event system which allows the open world content to scale to the number of players and although some group events require organization, it’s not like doing raids or any other instanced content – level of organization.

Do you really want to turn GW2 into an other instance-heavy MMORPG where the majority of the population is hidden inside instances, both hard and easy ones, and the open world is just a playground while leveling? Or you want the open world to continue to offer multiple tiers of difficulty for all players to enjoy?

The difference is that a instanced Raid serves exactly that purpose.
It is hard content catered to a minority of the population that is into
playing such content.
By placing such content in instances you free up the open world for more
laid back and fun content.
Unfortunately the open world content in HoT is neither laid back nor fun.
Open world content should serve the purpose of being available and playable
by anyone and everyone.
In HoT there is no multiple tiers of anything.
It’s just one big tier of try hardiness and zergs.
And a lot of players are not enjoying and not playing HoT although they bought it.
I’m one of them.
If you have any doubts about this,check other related threads in this forum.

P.S And that don’t mean that the game should be more instanced based.

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion. I don’t really love challenging content all the time, but HoT isn’t really challenging so much as a learning curve.

By the definition you give, every zone should be a starting zone and there should be no end game zones, because some people will find them hard. There are people who never go into Orr because they find it too hard for them. Or Southsun. There are people who don’t go into Dry Top because the jumping is too hard for him.

An end game zone is always supposed to have some sort of challenge or it wouldn’t be the end game zone. But a lot of players aren’t particularly challenged by Orr any more, not just a couple a lot, and so a lot of them wanted something more challenging. Not just raiders. Not just hard core players. People used to gaming (which is quite a large number).

I find the HoT zones more fun than the core zone. They’re not as casual, but they’re not really hard core either. They do, however, have a learning curve.

Well ofc this is just my opinion and this is the purpose of this thread,to post our opinions about this.
This is the expansion,it’s not the end game zone of the expansion we are talking about.
Since there isn’t a end game zone.ALL of the expansion is the same.
4 new zones.All the same difficulty.
Do you see the problem here?
I like hard content as much as anyone.But I also like to drop down a gear or two
and do my exploration and my JPs and the HPs etc.
I expect from an expansion to cover all the spectrum of content.
HoT is 90% the hard stuff and a hint of all the rest,and it’s such a shame.
These are great zones for exploring that are being destroyed by the overtuned mobs.

-Win a pip,lose a pip,win a pip,lose a pip,lose a pip,
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Coulter.2315

Coulter.2315

…but everyone has been able to do the new zones.

I haven’t. Couldn’t get through it, although not due to mission strength. I just couldn’t find my way through the map once I hit DS. I tried many times, but each time was more frustrating than the last, so I finally gave up.

Games shouldn’t be balanced around the inability of their worst players though. You being incapable and easily frustrated by that fact should have zero impact on further development.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion. I don’t really love challenging content all the time, but HoT isn’t really challenging so much as a learning curve.

I don’t call HoT zones challenging. I call them absurd. Not absurdly hard, but just absurd. To be locked out artificially for any period of time with no story element involved is just crazy. And to have maps that even the most dedicated and hardcore players have admitted are crazy hard to navigate, well that was just dumb.

Even the events and wandering creatures aren’t challenging. They’re just exercises in knowing when to flee because the spawn rate is too high. That’s not challenging, either.

Challenging would be new creatures that you have to do new things to defeat. HoT merely upped their power levels. So far, I haven’t had a single event or story mission that I would call challenging.

What you’re calling crazy has been done in dozens and dozens of games throughout history. And you can do it, you just gave up.

It’s really really not that hard.

I offered to teach people how to go through the new zones and not one person took me up on it. People just want to complain.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Soon.5240

Soon.5240

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion. I don’t really love challenging content all the time, but HoT isn’t really challenging so much as a learning curve.

I don’t call HoT zones challenging. I call them absurd. Not absurdly hard, but just absurd. To be locked out artificially for any period of time with no story element involved is just crazy. And to have maps that even the most dedicated and hardcore players have admitted are crazy hard to navigate, well that was just dumb.

Even the events and wandering creatures aren’t challenging. They’re just exercises in knowing when to flee because the spawn rate is too high. That’s not challenging, either.

Challenging would be new creatures that you have to do new things to defeat. HoT merely upped their power levels. So far, I haven’t had a single event or story mission that I would call challenging.

What you’re calling crazy has been done in dozens and dozens of games throughout history. And you can do it, you just gave up.

It’s really really not that hard.

I offered to teach people how to go through the new zones and not one person took me up on it. People just want to complain.

Daddicus is not calling them “hard” just absurd. I don’t have any problem with any NPC (you learn to zig when they zag) but I don’t find the increased HP to be challenging, hard or innovative. As you admit, “it’s been done in dozens and dozens of game….” .

So much the sadder.

My “ah” moment with HoT was in the AB map. Somewhere in the SW corner of the map, I was perched in a tree, looking to make my way east, and I saw six (6) pocket raptor groups on the trail. This was the straw that broke this camel’s back.

The issue was not that a group of pocket raptors is hard (they are not). It was my thinking, “Sweet Kitten, three years waiting for an expansion, and this is all that Anet could think of ? Speed bump after speed bump, after speed bump?”

I mean, sure, I could have killed one group after another, but then I remembered that I have standards and dignity and a sense of what constitutes good game design. It wasn’t much long after that I just gave up on expecting the HoT maps to provide me anything more than loathing and a regret that I spent fifty dollars on the work of such pedestrian game designers.

As you say, I can get this in dozens and dozens of games…..

Most of them for free.

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Posted by: reapex.8546

reapex.8546

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.

I want open world content to be open world content,and Raids to be Raids.

Or you want the open world to continue to offer multiple tiers of difficulty for all players to enjoy?

The difference is that a instanced Raid serves exactly that purpose.
It is hard content catered to a minority of the population that is into
playing such content.

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion.
I find the HoT zones more fun than the core zone. They’re not as casual, but they’re not really hard core either. They do, however, have a learning curve.

HoT is 90% the hard stuff and a hint of all the rest,and it’s such a shame.

You may want to try changing your gear, if you find HoT very hard. The difficult now is what makes its fun imo, it’s not as hard as BWE2. Also, the number of smokescales have been greatly reduced.

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Posted by: sED.9342

sED.9342

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

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in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

but I don’t find the increased HP to be challenging, hard or innovative.

And this is were I stopped reading because you obviously have zero experience fighting HoT mobs. In fact the whole thing about calling them “not challenging” shows that you haven’t actually fought them. The usual excuses of those who need to Learn to Play, “it’s not hard, it’s just absurd”. No, you just need to get good and learn how to play, stop giving lame excuses.

Actually most HoT mobs have less HP than any core Tyria mob, some even to the point of half the amount (smokescales). HP values in HoT are ultra low, that’s why having a proper build and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each mob makes it easy to deal with them. That’s how “good” mob design should be anyway, tricky to deal with unprepared, and much easier if you know what to expect and mastered their abilities, and to this end HoT did a very good job.

Clear L2P issue here.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

But it’s just your opinion that open world content should be laid back. And fun is absolutely a matter of opinion. I don’t really love challenging content all the time, but HoT isn’t really challenging so much as a learning curve.

I don’t call HoT zones challenging. I call them absurd. Not absurdly hard, but just absurd. To be locked out artificially for any period of time with no story element involved is just crazy. And to have maps that even the most dedicated and hardcore players have admitted are crazy hard to navigate, well that was just dumb.

Even the events and wandering creatures aren’t challenging. They’re just exercises in knowing when to flee because the spawn rate is too high. That’s not challenging, either.

Challenging would be new creatures that you have to do new things to defeat. HoT merely upped their power levels. So far, I haven’t had a single event or story mission that I would call challenging.

What you’re calling crazy has been done in dozens and dozens of games throughout history. And you can do it, you just gave up.

It’s really really not that hard.

I offered to teach people how to go through the new zones and not one person took me up on it. People just want to complain.

Daddicus is not calling them “hard” just absurd. I don’t have any problem with any NPC (you learn to zig when they zag) but I don’t find the increased HP to be challenging, hard or innovative. As you admit, “it’s been done in dozens and dozens of game….” .

So much the sadder.

My “ah” moment with HoT was in the AB map. Somewhere in the SW corner of the map, I was perched in a tree, looking to make my way east, and I saw six (6) pocket raptor groups on the trail. This was the straw that broke this camel’s back.

The issue was not that a group of pocket raptors is hard (they are not). It was my thinking, “Sweet Kitten, three years waiting for an expansion, and this is all that Anet could think of ? Speed bump after speed bump, after speed bump?”

I mean, sure, I could have killed one group after another, but then I remembered that I have standards and dignity and a sense of what constitutes good game design. It wasn’t much long after that I just gave up on expecting the HoT maps to provide me anything more than loathing and a regret that I spent fifty dollars on the work of such pedestrian game designers.

As you say, I can get this in dozens and dozens of games…..

Most of them for free.

Ah how you love to misinterpret what I said.

Look, there are swords and dozens and dozens of games,. so there should be no swords on this one. Oh this a sword, this game must be bad. What a ridiculous claim.

The person I was responding to suggested that having content gated by having to do something else first was somehow ridiculous. It’s a major part of the game system. We already have high level fractals which gate people without enough AR. Saying something is crazy that’s done in a lot of games doesn’t make the game bad.

The pocket raptors are there for a reason. To stop people from running running running and skipping, thus trivializing content. They add and addition layer of thought to the game.

But I’ve never played an MMO that had a zone really anything like the way the zones in HoT were laid out, even though the basic tenets of game design may have been used.

If you really think HoT is like other MMO expansions, then I dont’ really know what to tell you. They didn’t introduce a new tier of armor. They didn’t raise the level cap and they did some pretty clever stuff with some of the way the events work.

And yes, some stuff worked better than others, but the way you misconstrued my post isn’t going to change anything.

How many MMORPGs do you know what don’t raise the level cap or introduce a new tier of gear with an expansion?

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

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Posted by: Soon.5240

Soon.5240

The pocket raptors are there for a reason. To stop people from running running running and skipping, thus trivializing content. They add and addition layer of thought to the game.

But running past them is exactly what most people do — once they are familiar with the maps. Kitten knows that killing them does little to chip away at the 4m+ XP that Anet gated their “mastery” content behind.

My post was to highlight that not everyone who dislikes HoT maps does so because they are “hard” (which seems the be the knee-jerk, Pavlovian response of most white knights when any criticism of HoT is posted to the forums).

Even some long time players just don’t like the fact that Anet chose the easy route of eschewing the core PvE game’s thoughtful, immersive, exploration and RPG’ing for tired old HP sponges, XP gating, lather-rinse-repeat single-meta-event maps, timers, break bars and platform Adventures.

These are what you can find in “dozens and dozens of games”. Most of them needn’t even be MMO’s.

The core Tyria maps WERE what made GW2 unique – and Anet turned their back on them.

Edit: WvW was also unique – before they deliberately nerfed it in order to push people into their esport PvP. Now, it’s just dead.

(edited by Soon.5240)

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Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563

vesica tempestas.1563

Lol don’t be silly, they made a bad decision with the eve new map design that is all. As for those raptors, I kill them, it’s fast xp.


“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize

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Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563

vesica tempestas.1563

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Wrong,, ‘casual’ content is about accessibility and the path to gaining a legendary or ascended is equally available to all. You may not like long term objectives, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t, and certainly not a generalisation like ‘casusl’ you could equally say we ranks is not casual because it would take years to get to max rank, or gathering gold is not casusl because it would take years to gather enough to feel rich in game. Just because you don’t like something that does not mean it’s bad content.


“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Wrong,, ‘casual’ content is about accessibility and the path to gaining a legendary or ascended is equally available to all. You may not like long term objectives, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t, and certainly not a generalisation like ‘casusl’ you could equally say we ranks is not casual because it would take years to get to max rank, or gathering gold is not casusl because it would take years to gather enough to feel rich in game. Just because you don’t like something that does not mean it’s bad content.

So you consider the Winter’s Presence shoulder to be casual?

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Posted by: Gurni.1925

Gurni.1925

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Wrong,, ‘casual’ content is about accessibility and the path to gaining a legendary or ascended is equally available to all. You may not like long term objectives, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t, and certainly not a generalisation like ‘casusl’ you could equally say we ranks is not casual because it would take years to get to max rank, or gathering gold is not casusl because it would take years to gather enough to feel rich in game. Just because you don’t like something that does not mean it’s bad content.

So you consider the Winter’s Presence shoulder to be casual?

That was definitely NOT casual.
With all its DC and connecting problems….I not even managed to get into the JP…..

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

The pocket raptors are there for a reason. To stop people from running running running and skipping, thus trivializing content. They add and addition layer of thought to the game.

But running past them is exactly what most people do — once they are familiar with the maps. Kitten knows that killing them does little to chip away at the 4m+ XP that Anet gated their “mastery” content behind.

My post was to highlight that not everyone who dislikes HoT maps does so because they are “hard” (which seems the be the knee-jerk, Pavlovian response of most white knights when any criticism of HoT is posted to the forums).

Even some long time players just don’t like the fact that Anet chose the easy route of eschewing the core PvE game’s thoughtful, immersive, exploration and RPG’ing for tired old HP sponges, XP gating, lather-rinse-repeat single-meta-event maps, timers, break bars and platform Adventures.

These are what you can find in “dozens and dozens of games”. Most of them needn’t even be MMO’s.

The core Tyria maps WERE what made GW2 unique – and Anet turned their back on them.

Edit: WvW was also unique – before they deliberately nerfed it in order to push people into their esport PvP. Now, it’s just dead.

But many people do not like them because they’re hard, and you know, hard doesn’t ONLY mean hard to kill. If you find them confusing then they are HARD to navigate, which is also hard for people.

Daddicus has trouble getting around, he finds that difficult which is another way of saying hard.

You can say that hard only means creatures are hard, but I say it doesn’t matter if people find the creatures hard or the navigation hard. The bottom line is they’re having difficulty.

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Posted by: Sicarius.4639

Sicarius.4639

Arena Net have not been playing to their strengths with Guild Wars 2, focusing on the elite crowd and e-sports has been a mistake. They should be nurturing the casual player and PvE side of the game as much as they can as that is where their bread and butter is.

Lets see what this year holds, hopefully they start making smart decisions when it comes to the direction of content development.

Actually I think what you’re seeing is compensation for how it’s been. It really has been too easy. Being casual doesn’t mean you want no challenge at all, at least for a lot of us.

But, I think that they heard complaints about how easy the game was for a long long time and they compensated and now that they’re hearing the other complaints they’ll compensate again. Originally they said they couldn’t bring gliding to core tyria, it would be too much work and suddenly it’s here.

There’s a new Shatterer fight with new achievements. I think the development cycle is very long, so it looks like the game has taken a new direction. I expect that the direction will shift back again, soon enough.

Gotta sell those gliders.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Wrong,, ‘casual’ content is about accessibility and the path to gaining a legendary or ascended is equally available to all. You may not like long term objectives, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t, and certainly not a generalisation like ‘casusl’ you could equally say we ranks is not casual because it would take years to get to max rank, or gathering gold is not casusl because it would take years to gather enough to feel rich in game. Just because you don’t like something that does not mean it’s bad content.

So you consider the Winter’s Presence shoulder to be casual?

That was definitely NOT casual.
With all its DC and connecting problems….I not even managed to get into the JP…..

Exactly. I think there is some problem here, namely identifying what a “casual player” and what “casual content” is.

Personally I don’t think that a casual player is a bad player, or that a hardcore player is a good player, being one, doesn’t suggest the other. A casual player can read guides and change their builds just fine so difficulty has nothing to do with how casual content is.

A player who grinds all day to get gold to buy a Legendary isn’t a casual, he is a hardcore grinder. Just because you can get something by playing on your time and do things that you like, doesn’t make it casual friendly, because it might take years upon years to earn it. You might not play the game for that long.

A player who runs a raid once a week for an hour with a group of friends isn’t necessarily a hardcore player, casual players can run raids. They won’t do it on set schedule, or not run them for 3-4 hours each time, but raids do not exclude casual players from running them with like-minded individuals.

That’s my take on it.

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Posted by: Manasa Devi.7958

Manasa Devi.7958

Personally I don’t think that a casual player is a bad player, or that a hardcore player is a good player, being one, doesn’t suggest the other. A casual player can read guides and change their builds just fine so difficulty has nothing to do with how casual content is.

See, here’s where things go astray when people use the word “casual” to define players. It has no agreed upon meaning and people using it in conversation are always talking about completely different things.

In my interpretation of the concept, a “casual player” will never ever consult a guide to the game he’s playing. Because I use the meaning of “casual” that says: “done without much thought, effort, or concern”. (Quoting a dictionary there, I don’t want to paraphrase in my own words and have someone come out and tell me that that’s not what “casual” means.)

Reading or watching a guide online goes against what I consider casual gaming.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Reading or watching a guide online goes against what I consider casual gaming.

When I say read a guide it doesn’t mean a full wiki guide or a video on youtube. It might be something as simple as someone saying in map chat “do not CC” during the Gerent fight.

It’s a multiplayer online game and above that it’s an RPG. There will be situations where your build won’t work, like fighting the Red Rock Bastion boss without conditions. Asking for advice on how to proceed, or searching online for them (the reading guides part) isn’t something that takes so much effort to do, in fact for Guild Wars 2 it’s no effort at all since you can type /wiki <term> in game to search for it.

It’s not like you will be required to search on multiple forums and ask for advice, or search for youtube videos for most content. Just using an in-game command or chatting. Isn’t a casual gamer someone who plays for the communication with other people too?

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Posted by: Maximillian Greil.1965

Maximillian Greil.1965

My complaint is rewards. There isn’t any meaningful rewards in the content they’ve added. It’s the same problem GW2 has had since the start. You remove gear giving you better stats as a rewards. Great, what do you replace it with?

nothing.

We’re really starting to see the effects of that now. You have content that feels like it has barely any rewards to it, because there aren’t really any rewards to be had.

It’s why we see these huge inflated prices for stuff. People have all this gold and nothing to spend it on. If you’re not interested in legendaries, there’s nothing for you to do.

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Posted by: Doam.8305

Doam.8305

LoL

Even in GW1 they knew to make challenging maps a side item the problem with HoT is that this isn’t the case at all. In GW1 the story path or the main path is casual friendly as it always should be in any game however once you walk of the beaten path you’ll end up in more difficult content however in HoT the main story path and this more difficult content is one in the same.

Should a person making their way through content have to deal with roaming zergs and is this not the reason why the low level trains were altered? If I’m walking from one story point to another the content should be relative but then why in GW2 is it more difficult to make it to the next story point that actually doing it? Not saying the map is overly difficult but it’s more difficult than the story it connects. You run through tons of pocket raptors, stalkers, smokescales, and chak then when you make it to the story instance none of those things are present and it’s a cake walk in comparison.

This is a sign of bad level design more than anything else there is no defending this because the path shouldn’t be harder than the story desitnation unless it’s a boss or something. So yeah this isn’t casual friendly at all the main story path shouldn’t have those mobs in it as you don’t kill a ton of chak to make it to your location and then in the story you end up spotting them for the so called first time and fight far fewer packs of the things.

HoT maps should have been balanced better mob positioning should be changed and additional maps should have been created of the story path with the more difficult content people wanted. Heck GW1 is known for this for instance those paid runs through prophecies those running paths weren’t something you had to actively fight through to complete the main story. The story went through Kryta to get to Droknars forge it didn’t make people run straight south through the shiver peaks through the runners path. So why is HoT making people take that path instead of balancing the path around the story like cutting through Kryta. Heck every path in Prophecies that people would get paid to run through is an instance of having more difficult content outside of the path the story cuts through the map and HoT failed at this most basic aspect of MMO gaming.

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Posted by: Manasa Devi.7958

Manasa Devi.7958

Well, that’s what happens when you only add a measly 4 maps. Everything has to happen on them, there’s no room for “off-the-beaten-path” content.

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Posted by: Coulter.2315

Coulter.2315

Even in GW1 they knew to make challenging maps a side item the problem with HoT is that this isn’t the case at all. In GW1 the story path or the main path is casual friendly as it always should be in any game however once you walk of the beaten path you’ll end up in more difficult content however in HoT the main story path and this more difficult content is one in the same.

I would contest this assertion, I would say the GW:EN maps were about as difficult as HoT maps (Tarnished Coast maps and Depths of Tyria). Do you remember the large groups of dinosaurs and krait? My memory isn’t what it was but I do remember groups of mobs that were dangerous.

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Posted by: Mesis.2951

Mesis.2951

LoL

Even in GW1 they knew to make challenging maps a side item the problem with HoT is that this isn’t the case at all. In GW1 the story path or the main path is casual friendly as it always should be in any game however once you walk of the beaten path you’ll end up in more difficult content however in HoT the main story path and this more difficult content is one in the same.

Should a person making their way through content have to deal with roaming zergs and is this not the reason why the low level trains were altered? If I’m walking from one story point to another the content should be relative but then why in GW2 is it more difficult to make it to the next story point that actually doing it? Not saying the map is overly difficult but it’s more difficult than the story it connects. You run through tons of pocket raptors, stalkers, smokescales, and chak then when you make it to the story instance none of those things are present and it’s a cake walk in comparison.

This is a sign of bad level design more than anything else there is no defending this because the path shouldn’t be harder than the story desitnation unless it’s a boss or something. So yeah this isn’t casual friendly at all the main story path shouldn’t have those mobs in it as you don’t kill a ton of chak to make it to your location and then in the story you end up spotting them for the so called first time and fight far fewer packs of the things.

HoT maps should have been balanced better mob positioning should be changed and additional maps should have been created of the story path with the more difficult content people wanted. Heck GW1 is known for this for instance those paid runs through prophecies those running paths weren’t something you had to actively fight through to complete the main story. The story went through Kryta to get to Droknars forge it didn’t make people run straight south through the shiver peaks through the runners path. So why is HoT making people take that path instead of balancing the path around the story like cutting through Kryta. Heck every path in Prophecies that people would get paid to run through is an instance of having more difficult content outside of the path the story cuts through the map and HoT failed at this most basic aspect of MMO gaming.

I think that was intended in this expansion. The jungle represents what is is

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Even in GW1 they knew to make challenging maps a side item the problem with HoT is that this isn’t the case at all. In GW1 the story path or the main path is casual friendly as it always should be in any game however once you walk of the beaten path you’ll end up in more difficult content however in HoT the main story path and this more difficult content is one in the same.

I would contest this assertion, I would say the GW:EN maps were about as difficult as HoT maps (Tarnished Coast maps and Depths of Tyria). Do you remember the large groups of dinosaurs and krait? My memory isn’t what it was but I do remember groups of mobs that were dangerous.

I agree with this. There were story steps you had to get to and packs of raptors patroled and if you took the time to fight one, there was a roaming group of mixed dinosaurs that came through that would just wipe you if you weren’t careful/didn’t know what you were doing/didn’t build for the encounter.

In fact, there were often really powerful dinosaurs you’d start fighting and then you’d get a raptor patrol on top of you. The open world was much harder than the story missions in Guild Wars 1 and we didn’t hear a lot of complaints about the design.

The fact is, anyone can learn to play this content without too much effort. I’ve helped teach quite a few people how to get through it.

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Posted by: DoctorDing.5890

DoctorDing.5890

I agree that EotN brought more challenge but the step change was nowhere near that of HoT and there was one very important difference : map freedom. You could choose to skirt around most of those mobs and then pick your fights where you needed to. The HoT maps are much more constrained by terrain so you have less choice about what you fight and where you fight it. And, of course, you had the handy heroes in GW1, always willing to step up and take the heat on your behalf whilst you ran away, um, I mean performed a cunning strategic manoeuvre.

(One thing I do think GW2 lacks are those wide ranging patrols. They really did keep you on your toes.)

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Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563

vesica tempestas.1563

I started reading this thread and i had to stop at the end of the first page. guy is making a great point of how the game is casual. and yes, it is. but i laughed and just about fell out of my chair when hes calling a TWO YEAR grind to craft a legendary casual. there is NOTHING casual about two years. so your telling me after about 20 years of playing this game i will have a full inventory of legendary gear. somebody please tell me how crafting legendary gear is casual. it is the dumbest most unmotivating grind i have ever encountered in any game.

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Wrong,, ‘casual’ content is about accessibility and the path to gaining a legendary or ascended is equally available to all. You may not like long term objectives, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t, and certainly not a generalisation like ‘casusl’ you could equally say we ranks is not casual because it would take years to get to max rank, or gathering gold is not casusl because it would take years to gather enough to feel rich in game. Just because you don’t like something that does not mean it’s bad content.

So you consider the Winter’s Presence shoulder to be casual?

yup, I’m farming it, and will continue to do so next year, I only play a few hours a week. I’m also working on ascended gear, WVW rank, Fractal rank, and gathering materials that I will use for a legendary when one that appeals is added. You see Casual players play casually – we see no need to rush in GW@ as we are not punished by the power curve and most normal people don’t obsess over what they cant have immediately. – its a game.

‘casual’ friendly means casuals are not excluded because of scheduling, not that it takes longer to do things – that’s obvious.


“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize

(edited by vesica tempestas.1563)

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

‘casual’ friendly means casuals are not excluded because of scheduling, not that it takes longer to do things – that’s obvious.

This is /thread. It might be obvious but even what’s obvious eludes many people.

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Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

Games shouldn’t be balanced around the inability of their worst players though. You being incapable and easily frustrated by that fact should have zero impact on further development.

And why do you stoop to name-calling? How have you determined that I am one of the games worst players?

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Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

but I don’t find the increased HP to be challenging, hard or innovative.

And this is were I stopped reading because you obviously have zero experience fighting HoT mobs. In fact the whole thing about calling them “not challenging” shows that you haven’t actually fought them. The usual excuses of those who need to Learn to Play, “it’s not hard, it’s just absurd”. No, you just need to get good and learn how to play, stop giving lame excuses.

Actually most HoT mobs have less HP than any core Tyria mob, some even to the point of half the amount (smokescales). HP values in HoT are ultra low, that’s why having a proper build and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each mob makes it easy to deal with them. That’s how “good” mob design should be anyway, tricky to deal with unprepared, and much easier if you know what to expect and mastered their abilities, and to this end HoT did a very good job.

Clear L2P issue here.

Interesting that you make all sorts of claims against Soon, but you don’t back ANY of them up? Just name-calling and one-upsmanship.

Instead of throwing around insults, try actually putting a real argument forward.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Not really. Raids require at least full-ascended gear. The GAME doesn’t require them, but there are virtually no teams who will accept less. And, the game doesn’t punish people for being exclusive.

However, you’re missing the point. Flannum said no required grind. But HoT is essentially nothing BUT grind.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

Exactly. I think there is some problem here, namely identifying what a “casual player” and what “casual content” is.

Personally I don’t think that a casual player is a bad player, or that a hardcore player is a good player, being one, doesn’t suggest the other. A casual player can read guides and change their builds just fine so difficulty has nothing to do with how casual content is.

A player who grinds all day to get gold to buy a Legendary isn’t a casual, he is a hardcore grinder. Just because you can get something by playing on your time and do things that you like, doesn’t make it casual friendly, because it might take years upon years to earn it. You might not play the game for that long.

A player who runs a raid once a week for an hour with a group of friends isn’t necessarily a hardcore player, casual players can run raids. They won’t do it on set schedule, or not run them for 3-4 hours each time, but raids do not exclude casual players from running them with like-minded individuals.

That’s my take on it.

I agree.

I’ll add that there is probably a continuum between casual and hardcore, so some of what you bring up may apply to a lesser or greater degree to any single player.

But, you’re right on target: the definition is soft, and that leads to disagreement. SOME of that disagreement is real, but some is simply not using the same terms to mean the same thing.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

See, here’s where things go astray when people use the word “casual” to define players. It has no agreed upon meaning and people using it in conversation are always talking about completely different things.

In my interpretation of the concept, a “casual player” will never ever consult a guide to the game he’s playing. Because I use the meaning of “casual” that says: “done without much thought, effort, or concern”. (Quoting a dictionary there, I don’t want to paraphrase in my own words and have someone come out and tell me that that’s not what “casual” means.)

Reading or watching a guide online goes against what I consider casual gaming.

My definition doesn’t match yours, but you have a dictionary behind you, so you’re on firmer ground.

However, I will add the same thing I wrote just a post or two ago: there are degrees. I tend to use guides a lot, because I want to be the best player I possibly can be, within the limits of my casualness.

I abhor having seek-and-find things in most areas of my life. Where’s Waldo doesn’t exactly turn my crank.

Still, I, for some reason, like mapping games. But, I don’t like getting stuck in them. That’s when I turn to the wiki and guides.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

By reading what you write, you can’t complain you can’t do anything AND not be terrible. Pick one.

I see your problem. I didn’t say “anything”. I said one very specific thing: finding my way through the map. Are you seriously saying that makes me the worst?

(edited by Daddicus.6128)

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563

vesica tempestas.1563

since its really hard to define casual, you are better defining hardcore – and that for me simply means the player commits to long regular scheduled hours for scheduled events and will prioritise those events over everything including RL commitments at times. Hardcore exclusive content has firm content power gates that require that scheduled time and that is not raids in GW2, that’s being enforced by players who are still stifled with the need to micromanage.

Casual is simply everything else, you can play 2 hours a week casually and you can play 30 hours a week casually.


“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

Two things: This discussion on the definitions is good. Perhaps we should start a new thread to discuss just that?

Second, I may have used the wrong name above. The map I had trouble with is the third one you get to in HoT. I’m not sure what the name is any more.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Soon.5240

Soon.5240

but I don’t find the increased HP to be challenging, hard or innovative.

And this is were I stopped reading because you obviously have zero experience fighting HoT mobs. In fact the whole thing about calling them “not challenging”

Clear L2P issue here.

Clearly, L2R (Learn to Read) issue here.

The increased difficulty level of the NPC in the HoT maps was about the only thing I did like about the Maps – but once you learn the NPC algorithms, they ain’t that hard. Sorry if they are for you dude. L2P

I bought the expansion about 2 weeks after most of my guild did, so I solo’d much of content. Obviously, I joined with others for the meta-events, etc. But exploring and going up against large mobs WAS fun. I changed my Celestial Engi (which I’ve got about 4,500 hours on) to a Dire PP w/4 Gyro Build and Rocket Boots – and burned and bled my way through the jungles.

Until I just got bored.

The mobs were not easy (if you can read, you’ll see I never said that). I just said that after awhile they were boring and repetitive. I didn’t feel like I was playing an MMORPG. I felt like I was playing a Nintendo platformer.

Maybe I’m more easily bored than you? Maybe I like challenges?

(edited by Soon.5240)

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Not really. Raids require at least full-ascended gear. The GAME doesn’t require them, but there are virtually no teams who will accept less. And, the game doesn’t punish people for being exclusive.

However, you’re missing the point. Flannum said no required grind. But HoT is essentially nothing BUT grind.

Except casual guilds attempting to do them which accept less. If you insist on pugging you play by pug rules. If you run with a casual guild the rules change.

A lot of people start with ascended jewelry which is easy to get, and maybe ascended weapons. People in guilds. If you want to pug, you can always make your own pug group and say all welcome, no ascended required. I bet it fills.

There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Alveda.8409

Alveda.8409

Answer. Legendaries were never meant to be casual. The trade off is they’re not required either. Early on, when people asked Eric Flannum if there would be stuff to grind for, he said, yes, but there wouldn’t be required grind.

This is where your legendaries fall, and to a lesser degree ascended weapons.

Not really. Raids require at least full-ascended gear. The GAME doesn’t require them, but there are virtually no teams who will accept less. And, the game doesn’t punish people for being exclusive.

However, you’re missing the point. Flannum said no required grind. But HoT is essentially nothing BUT grind.

Except casual guilds attempting to do them which accept less. If you insist on pugging you play by pug rules. If you run with a casual guild the rules change.

A lot of people start with ascended jewelry which is easy to get, and maybe ascended weapons. People in guilds. If you want to pug, you can always make your own pug group and say all welcome, no ascended required. I bet it fills.

Lots of casual guilds can’t pass Gorseval DPS check. Of course, an all welcome pug raid group would fill, but they probably can’t even phase Vale Guardian and repeatedly wipe on Green Circle. That was my experience of pugging raid for the first two weeks. Raid is not for casual. If you can’t bother to invest in full ascended character, no serious raid group will consider you. Casual raid group may, but you can enjoy your Gorseval wipe.