Guild Wars 2

Ah, Heart of Thorns. Some people say it’s too easy. Some say it’s too hard. A few say it’s just right. And what does ANet say? ANet says that HoT was made to bring in new systems to be used to make future content.

So, this leads me to the title question. Why didn’t HoT come with a difficulty adjuster? Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

No single difficulty will make everyone happy, that is and has always been obvious. And yet, we’ve still not seen any signs of the common sense solution to the problem. Why?

Palador.2170:

Ah, Heart of Thorns. Some people say it’s too easy. Some say it’s too hard. A few say it’s just right. And what does ANet say? ANet says that HoT was made to bring in new systems to be used to make future content.

So, this leads me to the title question. Why didn’t HoT come with a difficulty adjuster? Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

No single difficulty will make everyone happy, that is and has always been obvious. And yet, we’ve still not seen any signs of the common sense solution to the problem. Why?

because its a virtual world in a mmorpg not a single player game. The alternative is an instance per skill level, if that’s the case you would be as well doing away with the virtual world and having a diablo 3 style interface – different game altogether ensues.

Actually I run HoT solo. So far I have also run personal story solo as well (both Tyria and HoT).I like the challenge. I will join up with others when I can benefit (hero point trains in HoT) but otherwise I like to explore and go solo. Reason is it is more challenging to run solo. And yes running Hot solo is harder than PvP or WvW or dungeons or fractals.

Especially the Tangled Depths.

It didnt’ come with a difficulty adjuster, because it’s open world. I’ve never seen a open world game of any kind with a difficulty adjuster. For an open world it would be several copies of the same game, splitting the population into different versions of the same maps. It would also then mean all those maps could be subject to different bugs, which would have to be looked into.

There is a way to make HoT easier. Learn the mobs. Learn your skills. Don’t be afraid to switch things up if something isn’t working. Maybe even talk to someone who knows and let them show you around.

I made this offer on these very forums. An offer to show people how to survive and have fun in HoT. And with all the complaints, not a single player took me up on my offer.

That might have made it easier too.

Palador.2170:

Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

I think you guys missed that line in my first post.

We have dungeons (sort of), raids, fractals, and story instances that are all… well… instances. Don’t you think it would increase the appeal and replay value of them if you could adjust the difficulty to what you want it to be?

And yes, rewards would have to adjust as well. That’s fine and fair. But how much depth and story can they put into something like raids if only a minor portion of the player base is expected to ever clear it to see it all?

This would go for future instanced content as well. With adjustable difficulty to draw more players in, it might even become worthwhile to reconsider the idea of a dungeon-like instance as part of a new area or story line.

Palador.2170:

Palador.2170:

Even if you can’t use it on the overworld maps, I’m sure people would have loved it for other parts of the PvE game.

I think you guys missed that line in my first post.

We have dungeons (sort of), raids, fractals, and story instances that are all… well… instances. Don’t you think it would increase the appeal and replay value of them if you could adjust the difficulty to what you want it to be?

And yes, rewards would have to adjust as well. That’s fine and fair. But how much depth and story can they put into something like raids if only a minor portion of the player base is expected to ever clear it to see it all?

This would go for future instanced content as well. With adjustable difficulty to draw more players in, it might even become worthwhile to reconsider the idea of a dungeon-like instance as part of a new area or story line.

I think you underestimate the cost of creating multiple versions of instanced content. The game already has it in fractals, where the instances are identical in terms of maps and overall foes. At each new level, there are new challenges (instabilities, some foes gain new abilities, etc.) That turns out to be costly to set up.

I’d rather that ANet continue with one difficulty level for each instance, with exceptions like fractals and challenge mode, rather than trying to do 3 versions (or 5) of everything.

Sorry Palador, I didn’t catch what you were asking for.

Yes, I agree that it might have gone some distance to pacifying the more casual player base, particularly the raid.

On the other hand, Fractals are easier now than they’ve ever been and you can get all the way to level 20 with no AR at all.

… I don´t want such a diff-adjuster, but instead of using multiple instances of maps I think you could just apply some kind of buffs on the player?

Palador.2170:

We have dungeons (sort of), raids, fractals, and story instances that are all… well… instances. Don’t you think it would increase the appeal and replay value of them if you could adjust the difficulty to what you want it to be?

Dungeons are much easier now that people know how to run them and you can make them harder by doing them at lower levels, doing them with less players etc. I don’t think a slider to make dungeons easier is something that should be done, given how they abandoned them completely. Only dungeon that needed a difficulty adjustment is Arah Story and they did that.

Fractals already have a difficulty setting… I don’t think a second difficulty setting would make any sense.

Is it really worth it to spend development time for instances that are already easy (core game) and rebalance all their rewards? The Living World story instances are a bit harder and they have ways to make them extra hard, the achievements. Perhaps adding achievements to the original story instances would be a good thing, but is it really worth it, or even needed?

So that leaves us with raids. Was this all about raids?