What if HoT maps weren't as difficult?

What if HoT maps weren't as difficult?

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Posted by: Valento.9852

Valento.9852

Since 2014 it’s become known that ANet had hired someone in order to bring more challenging content to the game, and we’ve seen some effects of that as time passed. It’s also common sense that, although we want complex enemy behavior, it’s easier said than done, specifically considering the very nature of MMOs. This has all been done in response to a huge outcry for challenging content ever since people realized dungeons+fractals weren’t really examples of difficulty.

With all that being said, how would you guys (both veterans, and non-veterans) receive a news that HoT map mobs’ AI/group comps have been changed in order to provide easier encounters? How would the community perceive HoT encounters if they were to be downgraded in difficulty to match Central Tyria? Would you be against it or in favor? What your suggestions would be to improve the maps?

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Posted by: ShinjoNaomi.1896

ShinjoNaomi.1896

Just a guess here…

But there would probably be a small wave of ‘Thank you Anet! I can play now…’ posts on the forums…
Followed soon after by a bigger wave of ‘WAAAAH! I’M BORED NOW! GG ANET FOR RUINING MY EXPERIENCE!’ type posts…

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Posted by: DoctorDing.5890

DoctorDing.5890

If they make the open world mobs a little easier I believe that we’ll see more folks in the maps, that the meta events will not need players to engage in the taxi lottery and that the megaserver will be able to function properly, like it does across the rest of the game.

It does not need nerfing to the ground, it just needs nerfing enough to make it a little more survivable for the casual gaming majority that GW and GW2 traditionally attracts.

The really difficult stuff needs to stay in raids, high-level fractals etc.

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Posted by: Randulf.7614

Randulf.7614

I very much doubt they would ever downgrade to core game difficulty level. Doesn’t mean that they wont and shouldn’t tweak the difficulty in places, but that much of a nerf would probably be as bad for the game as making it too difficult.

There are quick wins like mob densities, nerfing the hylek dps, re-balancing the breakbars on bosses they could look at.

They have to look at long term survival of the maps. Can HoT maintain population as new areas open up? Currently I don’t think so

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Posted by: Ashivan.5216

Ashivan.5216

The HOT difficulty is exacerbated by the difficult navigation and useless 2d minimap for the 3d environment. Also the waypoints are few and really far from each other.

There are a lot of places when you can’t really stop and try to understand where you are supposed to go in order to reach a certain point – the mobs will just kill you. Also forget about taking a quick bio break. Sometimes you can’t even move to a WP as you’re always in combat mode because the mob groups are so close to each other.

The first 2 jungle maps are somewhat ok but Tangled Depths is on another level of frustration.

Basically they made an expansion with 2x the difficulty (mobs, map navigation) for somewhat casual people playing GW2. They just had to pick one and stick with that.

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Posted by: Torolan.5816

Torolan.5816

HoT mobs are not the problem. If you leave your berserk thief at home and can play your class, you will die sometimes but surely not when you learned how to deal with them.
HoT maps are the problem. If you are like me, you need some time to see what is going on on a map. I loose interest quickly when I can´t even reach a Mastery point and fight for it because it is encircled by walls you can only breach with tricks.

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Posted by: zeldara.4127

zeldara.4127

I would not need a nerf that brings it down to core maps level. Nor do i wish it to stay at present difficulty. Somewhere in between would be nice. So it feels like an fun endgame area to a solo players well, instead of it feeling like a tiptoe around in a dungeon setting alone instead of an open world map. Keep some harder pockets in the maps that would prefer grouping up and some group needing events like now or very skilled player, but not on the main roads.
That would be my preference and might entice me to log into the game before Living Story continues.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

ANet did this for Orr and I don’t think it worked out best for the game. It’s nice that it’s easier to navigate Orr, but it also means that there’s little interest in going there except for event (or tree) farms.

Similarly, people complained about Dry Top and Silverwastes being too difficult to navigate.

I want new zones to be progressively more difficult because my sense of progression is how well I’m able to get around. I think the game would be duller if Magus Falls was nerfed down to the difficulty of other zones.

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Posted by: LeslieW.3281

LeslieW.3281

If it was not so difficult I would start playing again, I enjoyed GW2 but HOT is not for me, so let the players that like it get on with it without me, I have plenty of other things to do, having purchased something which is of no use to me I will not be putting any money in to this game in the future.

(edited by LeslieW.3281)

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Posted by: bananaman.1685

bananaman.1685

The difficulty level and forced grouping is the reason I have not bought hot. The vibes from this forum about hot are overwhelmingly negative and it mainly seems to attract the type of player i avoid.

I’d really like to glide, but there are currently no other reasons to buy the expansion. Maybe if they nerf it a bit then normal players will be able to enjoy it.

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Posted by: Ardid.7203

Ardid.7203

Totally against. I still liked better the difficulty level the HoT mps had during the first beta. HoT is way easier now.

As always, I MUST reafirm that I am not a great player, that I play few hours weekly, and I don’t do much Fractals or Raids. I’m SURE most players can play better than me.

My only secret to survive is that I don’t use berserker gear. Which was one of the original points of rising the difficulty on the new maps: to boost build diversity.

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Posted by: Gomes.5643

Gomes.5643

Well with Beta-Event 3 (I think?) we had the situation of nerved HoT-zones. Was really boring. And everyone wanted the difficulty back.

In my opinion you can critisize a lot on HoT. But not the overall enemy design and difficulty.

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Posted by: Jahroots.6791

Jahroots.6791

ANet did this for Orr and I don’t think it worked out best for the game. It’s nice that it’s easier to navigate Orr, but it also means that there’s little interest in going there except for event (or tree) farms.

Is there really anything of note in any of the maps besides event and node farming?

Challenging map and enemy design is fine for occasional play, but in the long term I find farmable content more sustainable.

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Posted by: DoctorDing.5890

DoctorDing.5890

Well with Beta-Event 3 (I think?) we had the situation of nerved HoT-zones. Was really boring. And everyone wanted the difficulty back.

In my opinion you can critisize a lot on HoT. But not the overall enemy design and difficulty.

The problem with any beta is that it does not attract a balanced cross-section of the players. It’s always going to be heavily biassed towards the fanatical end of the player spectrum. It’s a bit like going to a gym to do a survey on fitness habits.

HoT needs to be more inclusive.

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Posted by: Gorani.7205

Gorani.7205

The “difficulty” of HoT maps comes in a great variety of things that – added together – makes the maps not fun (and not difficult).

Some things have already been mentioned here:
>> Navigation: The 2D map is completely useless and sometimes even misleading. If you have not maxed some masteries navigation is even worse.
>> So many CC skills on mobs. Fungus, saurians, Mordrem, pretty much everyone has a CC this is just highly annoying when you want to get from A to B.
>> Waypoints are often contested, so yo have to walk/glide/jump there, so CC mobs are a greater nuisance.
>> Hero Points. A lot of them require you to fight champion mobs with break bars and are sometimes even hard to beat with 3 or four people (e.g. Vampire beast in the top level in VB). This makes you depended on help and leads to HP trains that draw people away from meta events.
>> Meta events scale pretty badly (IMO), so that e.g VB night time camp defense is almost impossible to solo, which will be much bigger problem when population shifts out of the HoT maps in the future.
>> The cycle for meta events is way to long. While VB and AB are tolerable TD and DS are a no go. Anet did a lot better with the meta events in SW. You can get in and out of those any time and still feel like you are doing well.
>> Meta event lock out. Meta events don’t only lock you out of things you want to do on a time scale, but also in terms of accessibility of content when it comes to Adventures. If you can access an Adventurer only 10min each hour, because the meta chain did not progress (or has not started or just ended), you will stop to bother. Hell, I haven’t even played some.
>> Adventures themselves are horribly balanced (e.g. Shooting Gallery to name the worst offender I know) and are tied too much to collections (IMO) and to mastery point acquisition.
>> Acquisition of Flax (& Sand). This material needed in Scribing and Guild Hall upgrades is limited to a few spots in the HoT maps, but is needed exponentially more for every day stuff. Don’t tell me, you don’t have dedicated Flax Farmers at Itzl town, too.

All those things listed are not fun-draining too much, if you had them occur scarcely, but HoT maps add them all together in a few maps.
To keep players on those maps, Anet’s team has to address some (or all of those issues) to keep people playing there.

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(edited by Gorani.7205)

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Overall mob difficulty in the open world is not, by-and-large, a thing in MMO’s in general. Progressive difficulty in max level zones in the open world in MMO’s is also not a thing — except for level increases and stat progression. However, you get levels and gear as you progress. Thus, while a L90 mob is very much stronger than a L80 one, it’s meant to be fought by a level 90 character, and the experience is basically the same as a L80 fighting a L80.

Since open world (absent group things) in MMO’s is by-and-large a solo thing, mob challenge is (or ought to be) balanced around an individual player’s capabilities. However, GW2 does not always have you fight singletons. In core, for instance, if you fight most mobs one-on-one, there is little chance to lose. However, the game does not throw mobs at you exclusively in singletons. A mob hard enough numerically to offer challenge to a solo player is likely going to be too hard if faced in groups as large as I see routinely in core.

Developers could do what they did in Wildstar originally. There were stronger mobs (always placed as solos) and weaker mobs (always in groups of however many). GW2 does not do this. The Risen Noble (for example) is the same whether it is solo or in a pack of eight of them.

So, what we see in HoT is that some individual mobs hit harder than most core mobs. However, HoT is also designed primarily around groups of players running around. So, many individual mobs have better numbers, and you’re more likely going to run into groups.

I think it’s possible to make HoT easier for solo play without nerfing mob stats. This could be done by changing mob density (for placed mobs) and by adjusting group event scaling so that the minimal number of players the low end is designed for is lower. The events should still scale up as they do now, and the low end should not be solo — unless that solo player is in the top 5-10% in player skill.

What Anet has announced was not a nerf to mobs.

AMA on Reddit/Dulfy Summary Page

With HoT we leaned more heavily on the organized content unfortunately at the cost of more casual experience. This is something that we plan on making adjustments to and are taking into account as we develop maps in the future.

Since I believe that HoT maps can be made more accessible without changing mob stats, I’d be disappointed if ANet nerfed them. I would be in favor of the changes I suggested above, or something similar.

@ Gorani

Good analysis, +1.

(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)

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Posted by: curtegg.5216

curtegg.5216

They need to scale events in HoT much better. There are a whole lot of people that like to solo through (Tyria had that). I always seem to be in empty HoT maps restricting my options of play which even with the LFG to mitigate this is bad (thank you mega-server). The events should scale from being capable to be solo’d to handling large player groups. I’ve got so many chain events in HoT that are missing like one of the chain that drive me nuts because of the reason above.

Also, why are over half the mastery points buried behind stupid mario like mini-games. I thought this was a MMORPG? Add more event and boss driven mastery points Anet.

Your customers Anet are not pleased!

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Posted by: Doggie.3184

Doggie.3184

The HOT difficulty is exacerbated by the difficult navigation and useless 2d minimap for the 3d environment. Also the waypoints are few and really far from each other.

There are a lot of places when you can’t really stop and try to understand where you are supposed to go in order to reach a certain point – the mobs will just kill you. Also forget about taking a quick bio break. Sometimes you can’t even move to a WP as you’re always in combat mode because the mob groups are so close to each other.

The first 2 jungle maps are somewhat ok but Tangled Depths is on another level of frustration.

Basically they made an expansion with 2x the difficulty (mobs, map navigation) for somewhat casual people playing GW2. They just had to pick one and stick with that.

Yeah I tried to farm TD a few times but a lot of the events I see on the map I end up having no idea how to reach and they either finish before I reach it or I reach an abandoned boss or something that isn’t soloable. Auric Basin is a cool map but the random vine walls that block paths really annoy me.

I don’t have any issues with the normal mobs other than cc spam being annoying. Although one of the reason they’re strong is they tried to get people to shy away from using berserker which is one reason some can’t handle it. They don’t want to change their armor/builds around cuz they built the rest of the game around farming mobs and dealing tons of deepz to them. Allowing heals to tag mobs was a nice step in right direction although haven’t really tested it myself yet.

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Posted by: Rivindor.7258

Rivindor.7258

The difficulty level encourages team play and has made me more interested in PVE again. It is more tolerable if you don’t use berserker stats but I still do anyway. My gunflame berserker warrior breezes through most of the content, and my core elementalist in some cases does even better(I don’t like using tempest for hard content).

I can’t speak much on the other classes. I did briefly try a reaper and I was able to solo even a few of the heropoint bosses with a minionmaster build. HoT is the endgame pve. It’s beyond Orr, beyond SW… and if you want to play it then either arrive properly equipped, or grab a friend or guildie and adventure together.

I don’t do HoT content without always having food and utilities. I just use the basic cheap food wvwers use with +70 vitality and hp regen then any sharpening stone. If the difficulty level is lowered then it becomes faceroll and boring. Right now I actually feel accomplished if I can defend a camp in VB night alone. One thing I do think needs to be toned down are the frogs that teleport, evade ranged attacks, and nearly one-shot you but nothing else has really stood out.

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Posted by: Valento.9852

Valento.9852

The difficulty level encourages team play and has made me more interested in PVE again. It is more tolerable if you don’t use berserker stats but I still do anyway. My gunflame berserker warrior breezes through most of the content, and my core elementalist in some cases does even better(I don’t like using tempest for hard content).

I can’t speak much on the other classes. I did briefly try a reaper and I was able to solo even a few of the heropoint bosses with a minionmaster build. HoT is the endgame pve. It’s beyond Orr, beyond SW… and if you want to play it then either arrive properly equipped, or grab a friend or guildie and adventure together.

I don’t do HoT content without always having food and utilities. I just use the basic cheap food wvwers use with +70 vitality and hp regen then any sharpening stone. If the difficulty level is lowered then it becomes faceroll and boring. Right now I actually feel accomplished if I can defend a camp in VB night alone. One thing I do think needs to be toned down are the frogs that teleport, evade ranged attacks, and nearly one-shot you but nothing else has really stood out.

I agree with this particular frog. They’re hard to deal with, and becomes a serious problem for solo’ing if they come in veteran forms because of massive evasiveness and high DPS + veteran category stats make them way too resilient.

Overall, I think most posts are aiming at map layouts, not mobs per se, which is a good thing. Density balance is a very sensible point they should tweak. What I do hope they make right is, while working on map layouts, don’t break them into a linear boring paths of grass.

Most environments in Tyria are like that, and I really LOVE all the maps, but it’s about time they change the navigation to something more elaborate/interesting. Problem really lies in the complexity PLUS roaming groups of mobs (notable in TD), they shouldn’t force us to deal with terrain and mobs at the same time, unless it’s some specific part of the map. Some caverns are dark too, and this increases the confusion.

If one could travel TD with a 1st person camera, I’m sure you all would be amazed, but in truth playing such map can be frustrating, whether the mini-map is unclear, or you’re swarmed by deadly groups of chak.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

There would be positive effects but I think there would be negative ones too. Who’s to say the negative effects would balance with or be less than the positive ones to justify nerfing the HoT difficulty? That’s a rhetorical question; no one is in a position to claim one way or the other.

In theory, what I do think would be a win (ignoring real game factors like server side resources, etc …) would be to offer two levels of content for specific things. I would be all for allowing players to open server instances of certain maps, inviting friends in them and completing content at elevated or eased off difficulties, in open world, dungeons and fractals.

Crazy? Not really. If http://www.anarchy-online.com/ can do it over 8 years ago with it’s ancient game architecture, well … companies like Anet could do it too, perhaps easier.

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Posted by: Malediktus.9250

Malediktus.9250

HoT maps are not hard/difficult. I wish they were hard.

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Posted by: Valento.9852

Valento.9852

There would be positive effects but I think there would be negative ones too. Who’s to say the negative effects would balance with or be less than the positive ones to justify nerfing the HoT difficulty? That’s a rhetorical question; no one is in a position to claim one way or the other.

In theory, what I do think would be a win (ignoring real game factors like server side resources, etc …) would be to offer two levels of content for specific things. I would be all for allowing players to open server instances of certain maps, inviting friends in them and completing content at elevated or eased off difficulties, in open world, dungeons and fractals.

Crazy? Not really. If http://www.anarchy-online.com/ can do it over 8 years ago with it’s ancient game architecture, well … companies like Anet could do it too, perhaps easier.

I thought about something somewhat related to this, but focusing on map metas. It would be cool if you had an option in “Y” game menu that you could set “Meta” or “Chill”, and the game would arrange players with same settings to the same map, creating shards as needed but preserving the players’ intent. This way, besides putting friends and guildies in the same overflow, it would primarily slot players based on this “Map mode” setting, and it would at least reduce the number of times we witness meta fails because many people went AFK, or just wouldn’t do the meta and would do heropoint train instead.

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Posted by: Batelle.1680

Batelle.1680

Personally I think that, when it comes to open-world PvE, the balance should be geared towards LCD accessibility. People who can solo a legendary mob with their monitor covered in a sheet aren’t being kept from doing content that they paid for, they just lose out on a challenge that can be relegated to places that aren’t mandatory to event/player progression.

On the other hand, people who aren’t combat masters (or those who just want to play the godkitten game without having to fret about changing up the gear and build that works literally everywhere else) and/or who have disabilities that prevent them from ever “getting gud” are essentially shut out of HoT maps at their current difficulty, or deeply dissuaded from doing anything simply because trying is an exercise in needless frustration.

Like I get people want their difficult content, but when it comes to open world, it should be 100% optional and not impede other players and their own personal progression.

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Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

The problem I have with all this is that, spare a few particular enemies, the HoT maps aren’t that hard. Yes, the enemies can pose a threat, but only if you aren’t paying attention. The best tactic to beat most of the enemies is “casually walk out of the way of their gigantic telegraphed attacks”.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

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Posted by: Eval.2371

Eval.2371

With all that being said, how would you guys (both veterans, and non-veterans) receive a news that HoT map mobs’ AI/group comps have been changed in order to provide easier encounters?

I’d laugh then cry. Why? because the changes solve none of the problems with HoT content.

Tangled depths getting easier AI doesn’t make navigating it any easier, it also wouldn’t stop me from spending up to countless hours to play on an organized dragon stand, or solve the issue of trying to run a verdant brink map with a bunch of people organizing for raids in the map.

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Posted by: Aer.3970

Aer.3970

People who can solo a legendary mob with their monitor covered in a sheet aren’t being kept from doing content that they paid for, they just lose out on a challenge that can be relegated to places that aren’t mandatory to event/player progression.

Like I get people want their difficult content, but when it comes to open world, it should be 100% optional and not impede other players and their own personal progression.

I might agree with you if there was substantial engaging content elsewhere, but there’s just not. The hanful of dungeons are years old, and completely unsupported. Fractals are almost as old, just as stale, and even fewer to choose from. Raids are the only new, interesting content, and they’re only available when you can arrange a time with 9 other people.

It’s just neither reasonable nor considerate to tell everyone who wants non-faceroll content to “go away and play in the instanced closet” like a second class citizen.

The amount of easy content in GW2 utterly dwarfs the amount of content that requires a degree of caution.

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Posted by: Khisanth.2948

Khisanth.2948

At least for the chak it is more effort to kill while offering crappier rewards. They are similar to karkas in terms of difficulty but at least karkas can drop karka shells and vials of powerful blood. Chak drops leaf fossils. -_-

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Posted by: Batelle.1680

Batelle.1680

I might agree with you if there was substantial engaging content elsewhere, but there’s just not. The hanful of dungeons are years old, and completely unsupported. Fractals are almost as old, just as stale, and even fewer to choose from. Raids are the only new, interesting content, and they’re only available when you can arrange a time with 9 other people.

It’s just neither reasonable nor considerate to tell everyone who wants non-faceroll content to “go away and play in the instanced closet” like a second class citizen.

The amount of easy content in GW2 utterly dwarfs the amount of content that requires a degree of caution.

Here’s the thing- everyone who has HoT paid for it. That means that people who find it too overtuned to play have literally nothing. And you can complain about dungeons and fractals being old and stale, but so is base game Tyria if you’ve been playing the game for three years.

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Posted by: Aer.3970

Aer.3970

Here’s the thing- everyone who has HoT paid for it. That means that people who find it too overtuned to play have literally nothing. And you can complain about dungeons and fractals being old and stale, but so is base game Tyria if you’ve been playing the game for three years.

Yeah, I paid for HoT too, so I guess those arguments cancel each other out, and if you claim that I can play face-roll content just fine, I’ll tell you to git gud, so let’s just not even go there.

I’d happily trade 3 of the 4 (75%) of the HoT maps for 5 or 6 (25%) of the core Tyria maps. You’re doing pretty kitten good in the quantity department, you know.

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Posted by: battledrone.8315

battledrone.8315

they would have more happy players in game
and, they would have more money for the next content cycle

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Posted by: Shylock.4653

Shylock.4653

How would the community perceive HoT encounters if they were to be downgraded in difficulty to match Central Tyria?

Most of Central Tyria are not Level 80 maps. So I think you are comparing apples and oranges.

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Posted by: Raziel.4216

Raziel.4216

It’d be boring faceroll content like the rest of the open world.

If Legend of Zelda came out tomorrow, the usual
forum dwellers would go nuts about the need to
“grind” to get exp, new swords, new potions etc

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Posted by: MadRabbit.3179

MadRabbit.3179

It’s not difficult though in open world. It’s just annoying.

Dark Souls is difficult. Dark Soul’s difficulty is painstakingly crafted to be fair and to provide multiple ways for players of different styles to beat the content.

Heart of Thorn’s difficulty is not. It’s just the same simplistic AI with the damage turned way up and no thought to all about balance or fairness. Some mobs are ridiculously over tuned while most others are incredibly trivial.

There was clearly no thought as to whether or not some of these over-tuned mechanics could be handled fairly.

It falls it the category of “We’ll just randomly one shot people during Dragon Stand to create the illusion of things being really really hard”

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Posted by: Deniara Devious.3948

Deniara Devious.3948

The HOT difficulty is exacerbated by the difficult navigation and useless 2d minimap for the 3d environment. Also the waypoints are few and really far from each other.

^^ This ^^

I have died only few times in total to any mob or boss at the HoT maps. The mobs and hero points are soloable with a decent build. I don’t think they should be made easier.

The real difficulty of the new maps is navigation. I had most of deaths falling down e.g. gliding ends or just my own mistake or that annoying poison. The waypoints are way too few and many of them are almost constantly contested. Add few waypoints and make them so that they are not contested. I really also hate the concept of time gating pve content behind map meta events. The old Tyria maps were much better because you could always solo 100 % of them no matter what was the meta timer.

I hope next expansions will give us less complex maps, where there is significantly less verticality and gimmicks. The emphasis should be fighting the opponents, not the map.

Deniara / Ayna – I want the original WvWvW maps back – Desolation [EU]

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Posted by: Shylock.4653

Shylock.4653

It falls it the category of “We’ll just randomly one shot people during Dragon Stand to create the illusion of things being really really hard”

If you get randomly one shot during Dragon Stand you are doing something wrong. It never happened to me.

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Posted by: Nilkemia.8507

Nilkemia.8507

MadRabbit’s statement is accurate. The enemies aren’t harder in the sense that they’re smarter in any way. Their skills are either just really powerful and spamable, or they come at you in such numbers that you can’t reliably fight them off while also having cheaply powerful spamable skills.

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Posted by: Razor.9872

Razor.9872

Just a guess here…

But there would probably be a small wave of ‘Thank you Anet! I can play now…’ posts on the forums…
Followed soon after by a bigger wave of ‘WAAAAH! I’M BORED NOW! GG ANET FOR RUINING MY EXPERIENCE!’ type posts…

Are you a psychic, or time traveler? O_0

NSPride <3

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Posted by: Shylock.4653

Shylock.4653

MadRabbit’s statement is accurate. The enemies aren’t harder in the sense that they’re smarter in any way. Their skills are either just really powerful and spamable, or they come at you in such numbers that you can’t reliably fight them off while also having cheaply powerful spamable skills.

The biggest difference between HoT and Core Tyria is that you cannot facetank every enemy or run into zergs of enemies. I don’t think that requiring the player to position himself and think while playing is a bad decision by anet.

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Posted by: MadRabbit.3179

MadRabbit.3179

It falls it the category of “We’ll just randomly one shot people during Dragon Stand to create the illusion of things being really really hard”

If you get randomly one shot during Dragon Stand you are doing something wrong. It never happened to me.

Well, then you are full of it, incredibly lucky or play a class with a high health base pool.
I’m going to go with full of it though, because you can’t have a discussion on difficulty without some guy claiming he’s the resurrection of Duke Nukem.

There is a number of mechanics that can do it. The dragons during the final fight do enough damage to one shot anyone and their altitude at which they fly means you can’t focus on a ground level fight and track every dragon in the air to watch for a strafing run. It will happen to you once unless you maintain perfect situational awareness through out a long and boring fight where it’s easy to forget about them.

Fully scaled Champion Snipers that use their line based attack double dip with damage, because the initial projectile hits and then the tick it applies hits immediately after. They also track you if targeted with no way to evade except a very brief window when he releases his bow. If he is not tracking you and tracking someone else, then you have to maintain perfect situational awareness never to get caught in the shot.

Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.

(edited by MadRabbit.3179)

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Posted by: MadRabbit.3179

MadRabbit.3179

MadRabbit’s statement is accurate. The enemies aren’t harder in the sense that they’re smarter in any way. Their skills are either just really powerful and spamable, or they come at you in such numbers that you can’t reliably fight them off while also having cheaply powerful spamable skills.

The biggest difference between HoT and Core Tyria is that you cannot facetank every enemy or run into zergs of enemies. I don’t think that requiring the player to position himself and think while playing is a bad decision by anet.

Either you are trivializing this beyond something realistic or are used to being carried in large groups so much and have never actually examined some of the fight mechanics in a 1 on 1 scenario.

Smokescales have a flurry based attack with evade windows that constantly repositions itself and has a duration longer than two consecutive dodge roles. You cannot fully avoid or mitigate all the damage of this attack unless you are a class that has a block or invuln that lasts the duration of the attack. Even if you mitigate most of the damage with two dodge rolls, the reset time occurs before you have refilled your bar or you heal is off CD. This is not a fair and balanced difficulty mechanics; it’s just overtuning a mob.

Shadowleapers can put so much consistent damage pressure that I can barely out cycle them when fighting a veteran or above with my daredevil with a full initiative bar of evades and blinds and more dodges and endurance regen higher than other classes. Not a fair and balanced difficulty; their normal attacks do equal damage to the highly telegraphed power attacks of other mobs and when scaled up to their elite or champion versions, have just as much hp. They are just overtuned.

Dark Souls involves thinking and repositioning and using strategy to beat mobs. This…is just as annoying as kitten and it’s the annoying kind of difficulty that makes players want to quit.

Rehabilitated Elementalist. Now, trolling the Thief forums with my math.

(edited by MadRabbit.3179)

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Posted by: Aer.3970

Aer.3970

I find reducing as much damage from the smokescales teleport attack then killing it tends to stop it from doing a second teleport attack. Those things are made of paper.

I also have no issue with shadowleapers, unless they surprise me or come at me in a group, and that just means I wasn’t paying attention. Get the upper hand early and people tend to win.

That said, I don’t recall fighting them on my DD. I may take a trip down to TD tonight just to see how I fare.

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Posted by: Ardid.7203

Ardid.7203

Hmm…

I have been “randomly” one shot by the acid wyverns in Dragon stand. It happened the first two times I did that metaevent.

After that I learned to not stand over the acid areas, but keep close to them, because the wyverns usually target different areas of the floating island, and to quickly avoid to the side if RNG jesus still choose to dump that green thing over my toon. It is also very wise to NOT be alone in the islands, just in case the acid still downs you: normally other players will quickly revive you if you aren’t fully dead. It is a group event, after all.

I doubt Shylock is full of it, because I’m hardly a high-skilled player, yet I can easily avoid being one shooted, even when using full viper armor. (Yes, I know is not that efficient in pve, but I prefer condi to power most of the time.)

Against the smokescales the answer is twofolds: alertness and surprise. They are dumber than most players, and have low hp. So the more effective way to kill them is to strike first, and hard. I usually launch a good initial attack, taking a good 2/3 of their lifebar, then block or avoid their multi-attack, then finish them when they are on cooldown. Is not “easy”, but I wouldn’t ever call it “hard”. The only mandatory part is to see them before they see you.

Shadowleapers, I don’t know, I usually just CC them, and try to avoid their attacks through them, so I got to their backs. Surprise attacks also work well against them.

My point is: maybe this game is not DarkSouls, but strategy does work. Also, I rarely try to defeat champions on my own on HoT. IMO they are not designed to be solo’ed.

I think if someone is having so much trouble with HoT foes, they should probably use a more defensive armor set. Making them relevant was one of the major points of HoT. Berserker isn’t everything.

“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks

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Posted by: Shylock.4653

Shylock.4653

There is a number of mechanics that can do it. The dragons during the final fight do enough damage to one shot anyone and their altitude at which they fly means you can’t focus on a ground level fight and track every dragon in the air to watch for a strafing run.

Those are an afk check, if you stand still you get killed. On top of that they are only active while a quite small amount of time. If you move while they are active and watch your surrounding you don’t get killed.

Of course there are things which can kill you but those aren’t random. If you learn the encounters and the enemies it is not that hard.

Either you are trivializing this beyond something realistic or are used to being carried in large groups so much and have never actually examined some of the fight mechanics in a 1 on 1 scenario.

If I don’t do Meta-Events on the HoT Maps, I play solo most of the time on these maps.

I have done all 40 HoT HP on all classes and have done everyone at least on one class solo. Some are easier or harder on the different classes but these are all group events and not meant to be soloed. I don’t try to kill each group of mobs which I see in the open world, but why should I?

I do think that the HoT maps need work, but not because of their difficulty. I think the accessibility should be reworked. The Meta-Event Chains are quite long and some need quite a bit communication. In organized groups that is no problem but it excludes many casuals.

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Posted by: Nilkemia.8507

Nilkemia.8507

The biggest difference between HoT and Core Tyria is that you cannot facetank every enemy or run into zergs of enemies. I don’t think that requiring the player to position himself and think while playing is a bad decision by anet.

Contrary to what you think, I don’t “facetank” enemies or run into swarms of them. I try to position and use line of sight to my advantage. However, depending on where and when fighting the enemy, there is sometimes no real cover for any advantageous positioning. And even when there is, the sheer number of enemies around when an event scales leave few options that work in one’s favor.

And, it doesn’t change that quite a number of the enemies either hit harder than they should, can CC often, or are just annoying to deal with.

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Posted by: Anyandrell.6238

Anyandrell.6238

IMO HoT doesn’t really need to be nerfed – with the exception of the frogs (both shadowleapers and floppers) and the NUMBER of mobs. Don’t get me wrong,strategy is awesome, and my condi reaper almost never dies, but it can be a PIA whenever the breachers get to the any of the points in AB and she’s attacked simultaneously by two Veteran Shadowleapers, one or two Cavaliers and 4-5 Mounts. She might die 1 out of 10 times, but even so, it’s quite a fight.

So with these exceptions, HoT doesn’t really need to be nerfed.

BUT there are a few mechanics that NEED to change. The most important one being the conflict that appears from the existence on the same map of HP trains and meta. Because if there is an HP train, you can’t practically do meta. The map is full due to the HP train, but you don’t have enough people to do the meta and it scales when in fact very few people are doing the meta. The solution proposed above with making choice maps for either HP or meta is one idea, or make it so when meta starts the regular HPs are not valid anymore but there’s a way to get HPs from the meta itself.

The second MAJOR thing that needs to be change is the drop quality. Not the drop rate, that is ok. But the drop quality is abysmal. The only reason I do play HoT is because metas are fun. Not for the drops. I get better drops in SW for example in less than half the time required to do a meta in HpT. The drop rate is pretty much the same. And if this would be grudgingly acceptable in Verdant Brink, once you go deeper in HoT it’s more and more abysmal. With the peak being DS meta. I did it dozens of times, and at one point I actually started writing down the drops. The Dragon chest itself only gave me something of interest (leyline gear box) when I did it the first time. The rest were simple green gears and rarely (maybe one out of three) a rare or max two rares. This is ridiculous.

If you want us to populate the HoT maps, and aren’t willing to nerf or change mechanics or anything, make the meta drops worth the effort. Not even the number of chests for a successfull AB meta can’t stand up to expectation because of QUALITY. Since I’ve been playing HoT, I’ve got two exotics. TWO. In so many months. And I play at least 20 hours a week at least – maybe not every single day, but at least every other day and definitely most of the week-end. Mostly in HoT until I get so disgusted with the drops that I move to SW. It gets boring after a while (hence not playing every day). And if I wasn’t working on a legendary, I’d play way less.

A map can get boring not just because it’s too easy. But also because the rewards aren’t worth the effort.

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Posted by: Shylock.4653

Shylock.4653

And even when there is, the sheer number of enemies around when an event scales leave few options that work in one’s favor.

When an event scales the amount of friendly players increase. You don’t have to fight all that enemies alone. In my experience most events get easier with more players.

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Posted by: pepsis.5384

pepsis.5384

HoT monsters need a serious review. Right now they are balanced illogically and unintuitively and this is me politely stating how kittening stupid the current HoT mob design is. You have a massive veteran creature that looks like the xenomorph queen, you expect it to be a big threat but very soon it becomes clear you can basically stay in front of it and AFK auto-attack it to death. Its not a threat at all. Then you have these tiny mobs like the pocket raptors eating away 600 to 1000 hp with each bite – from a character with 2800 armor – and they bite really fast. Or the rolling devil, a small, not even veteran mob that can hit for 2k non crit on a tanky char. That is major kitten right there. Trash mobs capable of pushing me to the brink unless I fight them seriously? But im supposed to be this epic hero of shaemoor! Remember? Im here with a good build and great gear, I shouldnt be pushed around by trash.

Next are animations. There are these smaller, bipedal , non-veteran lizards ( sometimes solo, sometimes with a mordrem rider). They, like almost any other HoT mob, can knock your char back or down but the animation is plain wrong. So what the lizard basically does is circle around in one place and your toon is knocked, the timing is such that once knocked the lizard charges you for another knock just before you’re able to recover (without poping a stun break). Attacks that disable or are dangerous need to be telegraphed better. EDIT: Kinda like trolls, they look around and you’re dazed, what the heck is that?

Next is the short mob description under the name. Example " poisons, bleeds, evades " and you prepare for condis and missed attacks but then the first thing the critter does is knock you down. Really Anet? The lil kittener can disable me but you didnt think it prudent to list that in there? Dont get me started on the excess of CC in HoT. The expansion mobs are nothing but unimpressive critters with CC slapped to almost every move and damage modifier turned up to 11.

Does all that make the xpack unplayable for me? No, I played thru it with 3 different classes, mix of exotic/ascended gear. Its quite doable once you get the hang of the overabundant cc. But it is still as kittening annoying today as the first time I set foot in the jungle.

So, if the goal with HoT was to keep a player annoyed, then job well done Anet.

(edited by pepsis.5384)

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Posted by: pepsis.5384

pepsis.5384

ANet did this for Orr and I don’t think it worked out best for the game. It’s nice that it’s easier to navigate Orr, but it also means that there’s little interest in going there except for event (or tree) farms.

Similarly, people complained about Dry Top and Silverwastes being too difficult to navigate.

I want new zones to be progressively more difficult because my sense of progression is how well I’m able to get around. I think the game would be duller if Magus Falls was nerfed down to the difficulty of other zones.

They have JPs for your target group, HoT however nearly turned the game into a giant platformer. Thats a no-no for me

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Posted by: pepsis.5384

pepsis.5384

It’s not difficult though in open world. It’s just annoying.

Dark Souls is difficult. Dark Soul’s difficulty is painstakingly crafted to be fair and to provide multiple ways for players of different styles to beat the content.

Heart of Thorn’s difficulty is not. It’s just the same simplistic AI with the damage turned way up and no thought to all about balance or fairness. Some mobs are ridiculously over tuned while most others are incredibly trivial.

There was clearly no thought as to whether or not some of these over-tuned mechanics could be handled fairly.

It falls it the category of “We’ll just randomly one shot people during Dragon Stand to create the illusion of things being really really hard”

This guy gets it ^