Guild Wars 2

termlah.3452:

The unfortunate thing is that the open world was in a good place in BW2. That means the nerf must have been a considered decision. This leaves me very little hope that they will change it back and makes me very disheartened and saddened.

there might be a reason why they nerfed it only temporarily

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/why-they-nerfed-BWE3-s-open-world/first#post5564192

The players who care more about the game and are more likely to voice their opinion are also the players who want more difficult mobs (I’m one of them).

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Healix.5819:

They likely did it due to feedback and it’ll probably release this way. They did the same thing back during the original final BWEs. An ettin’s club smash or a moa’s peck for example used to kill you.

I can’t believe this. Where is that feedback? I also talked with people in mapchat, and not a single one disagreed with me that content is too easy now. Reddit-threads have tons of feedback, 90% of players agree (based on upvotes).

I saw like 1 or 2 threads where people complained that they die too much. That’s about it.

Because it’s worth complaining about.

another reason for the (hopefully temporary) nerf:

They reset masteries. In order to get it back faster they nerfed mobs/events. People need the gliding mastery in order to get to the added new content: the canopy.

The unfortunate thing is that the open world was in a good place in BW2. That means the nerf must have been a considered decision. This leaves me very little hope that they will change it back and makes me very disheartened and saddened.

you shouldn’t read that much into it. it was their last beta weekend & their last chance to gather data before launch. so it was guaranteed to be different than bwe2 if only for the purposes of experimentation.

I would like to echo this sentiment as well.

While I do have doubts and concerns regarding the implementation and difficulty of raids in terms of how that affects the community, I completely, 100% support the raised difficulty of Open World content as demonstrated in BWE2.

Two perspectives here: One, the struggle and harsh environment of Verdant Brink pre-BWE3 worked wonderfully with conveying the narrative of your story.

Two, open world difficulty is perhaps one of the best vehicles for building the Player-helping-Player dynamic. No one needs to be particularly charismatic or well versed in whatever strategy is required to leap in and help others. What one person can’t accomplish, two may be able to, and what two can’t, three can drive it even further. Camaraderie is built through accessibility to help one another, not necessarily through ease of difficulty.

Orr, once upon a time, felt very similar to Verdant Brink and was justifiably nerfed due to the lack of density of players available to tackle its challenges after time had passed. But right now, with a swath of players ready at the gate and megaservers implemented, why not give it a shot?

HidingCat.4037:

I really disagree. Open world should be about exploration and minor challenges. For me the nerf to Orr was perfect. No one likes to go through a hundred challenging fights to get to somewhere. After a while it just becomes a drag.

If you want challenges, they’re there in raids.

This is supposed to be a jungle where dangerous creatures live in. Verdant Brink is where Pact fleet crashed and everyone is afraid of the night time since anything could kill them. Where is the fun in exploring a new and dangerous area if there is no danger at all? And when you make it to the difficult-to-reach area you’ll unlock a waypoint nearby so you don’t have to go through a hundred challenging fights again to get there.

If you don’t want to fight while exploring you can consider hiring a bodyguard, I’m sure there would be many people up for the challenge and it would make it even more interesting ;)

The enemies were challenging in the previous beta events. Now they are far easier to kill.

I would love to hear a convincing argument for why the nerf might be temporary. Sadly, I don’t think I will…

I’m a casual gamer, well maybe a bit more advance than that, but I’ll still put myself in that category. So when I say that ANet has made the game too easy should resonate with you. Every single enemy is just LAME!

Were there some things that needed a Nerf? Maybe. Did everything need a Nerf? Hell no. There’s no satisfaction with poking an enemy and it just falls over dead. I’m not using my new Specialization to its fullest potential.

So ANet, please bring back what was and not this……… dumbed down game play.

As the title says, this game has guided us, mentored our unknowing minds to learn about the mechanics, skills and tactics needed to progress from simple farms to pirate infested waters.. from fiery plains into the very heart of the risen army.

You have challenged us as we’ve struck down power hungry villains, massive beasts and titanic dragon champions. We’ve fought against Molten alliances, ground shaking Marionettes and devastating assaults against Lion’s Arch!

Now is the time to prove our legend as we fight further into the depths of a new enemy! New minions that shall trample what we’ve learned, to show who is ready and who is not, to test who will stand their ground and who will run away!

Return the Mighty Mordrem! Let their hammers turn the ground to rubble, their arrows pierce through our armor like feathers while their wild corrupted beasts shred every limb of our form!

We’ve been ready Arenanet! We stand atop the corpse of the Shatterer, the Claw, Tequatl and even Zhaitan! You know this! Now give us something that will eat us alive!

Take away the nerf from the NPC enemies!!!

Shoe.5821:

you shouldn’t read that much into it. it was their last beta weekend & their last chance to gather data before launch. so it was guaranteed to be different than bwe2 if only for the purposes of experimentation.

I really wish I was convinced by this argument but I’m just not. At all.

I hope the reduction in difficulty wasn’t because of player feedback…

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

it’s probably intentional so that players get faster to the new bosses. At least I hope so.

That’s what I hope too but it also works the other way: What if they intentionally cranked up the difficulty in BW2 so people would spend more time fighting the mobs and the difficulty we have in BW3 is how it’s always supposed to be?

Yes, please buff the open world back up to BWE2 difficulty again.

I understand that raids are the new “challenging content”, but not all of us have the time and social connections to do those. For example, my social connections are all with roleplayers, who have differing goals in game and aren’t all gathering for the purpose of PvE. I play GW2 for the RP community, but also because it’s one of the few MMOs that has been doing casual PvE content that isn’t trivially easy: jumping puzzles, Queen’s gauntlet, story achievements, taking on champions and the Dry Top/Silverwastes events in the absence of the zerg, etc, etc.

I’ve been looking forward to much more of this in Heart of Thorns and it’s pretty sad to see everything nerfed after it was such a satisfying challenge in the last beta weekend.

Even if they don’t bump it all the way up, it shouldn’t be preschool. They do this at their own peril. If cats blow through content too fast, they will only have themselves to blame.

termlah.3452:

Because it’s worth complaining about.

Complain in one of the other 7 complaining topics. And for the record..it really isn’t.

Nidome.1365:

Am I playing a different game to everyone else?

That’s what I think when I read most of the comments here. I don’t need stronger enemies. It may be very easy if you are in a big group of players. But if you are alone or just with one or two other players it’s still difficult enough.

By the way I’m a little overwhelmed by the new map. I’m not even able to explore all areas (what is canopy? ^^). I think I need more signposts in that jungle.

I found that Verdant Brink’s night cycle didn’t feel all that dangerous.
I think that during the night when there are the bonfire events, enemies should get a buff or we should get a damage over time debuff when we aren’t in range of the bonfire event.

Much like the fractal where you need to stay near fire or you’ll die from frostbite. if a feature like this was added it would feel like we actually survived the night and not easily move around a place thats supposedly really dangerous at night. it would make players think to themselves “Oh, its almost night time i better find a bonfire to survive til morning.”.

I would also like to hear what other peoples thoughts are on how Anet could make this expansion more challenging.

Sylent.3165
I personally like it. Open world pve is supposed to be like this outside of events. Just trying to get to point A to point B shouldn’t involve snipers randomly coming out killing me and stopping every 5 seconds for a fight.
You now have higher level fractals and raids for what you are looking for.

Absolutely disagree. In GW1 people paid other characters to run their toons to Drok’s. Because fighting through the trash would take hours. If you think easy is the road to take, what will you do 9 days later when the content is sleepy?

And….(sigh), once again this is an MMO, designed with groups of people playing together to sift through content.

Metal Gear is a great solo experience.

What the hell? I’m all for thread consolidation, but the entire point of the beta weekend is to provide feedback. Where do you get off telling people they shouldn’t do that?

If they thought the average mob difficulty in BWE2 was too much, it maybe could have been toned down a little, however I think it got toned down too much. This should have been a slight adjusting of the knob – not turning it way down like this. Agreed with those above that things got tuned a bit too far. (Although the smokescales in BWE2 were a bit much.)

Signed by faithful

Hey everyone,

I have had the pleasure of playing in the second BWE and now this third and final BWE. I made my revenant, just as last time, and quickly dispatched the enemies in the Silverwastes to get to the jungle. Expecting the same mission as last time I prepared my build and practiced a bit before I went into Verdant Brink.

As I encountered the first Mordrem, I saw those were 2 melee guys isntead of 1 melee and a sniper. The first time I met the sniper I got my bottom handed back to me, now I just raced through the mission.

The part where you have to hold out untill Rytlock comes felt way too easy. It wasn’t ‘holding out till reinforcements’ but more of a bore. The NPCs could tank the melee mordrem while I was fiddling around with some skills. In BWE 2 that part felt really engaging. Scary Mordrem coming from all sides. Condi AoEs, sniper arrows and massive melee knockdown AoEs all over the place.

I felt like kungkittenhero last BWE when I understood the mechanics of the mobs. They were easy enough to kill, not too high HP but they packed quite a punch. This BWE the whole open world feels kinda lacking with the Mordrem. It doesn’t provide the same heroic feel when you conquer the foes in the jungle but it feels exactly like the rest of the game, which isn’t the reason why I came back for HoT.

Tonight I will have a go at the Raid with my guild but until then, the open world in BWE3 makes me a little bit sad.

Please make the enemies do more damage again, include more Tormentors, Snipers and make the dagger Mordrem chase and stab me like mad again.

Make us fear the jungle as we did last time.

You now have higher level fractals and raids for what you are looking for.

They didn’t add any fractals in hot, and raids don’t look very pug friendly.

It’s literally just the new zones. What’s the point of grinding up masteries to explore if it just gets you to more content you can faceroll with your autoattack?

I had way more trouble with the Silverwastes enemies between the beta spawn and Amber Sandfall than I ever did with anything in Verdant Brink. It’s a little confusing why guys that go down in a stiff breeze even have defiance bars.

Hmm, some mobs do seem a little easier today than they did yesterday, but that could just be me.

Good post.

I want to point out also how ridiculous is the OpenWorld right now. I am a main Necromancer. And before betaweek end, I took off all armor/weapon and ascended gear.

But for fun, I went to Orr, with a MM build.

And guess what ? No monsters, even Champions, managed to kill me. Since Minions, which is really good, don t depend of your stats, they are really strong on their attack.

But, the sad part is, I manage to tank monsters. Yup. With 1100 armor.

• Monster’s attack are too slow. With my guardian, so many time I use my mace #3, on full cast, and no monster attack xD. This is so ridiculous.

• Monsters are too dumb (they doesn t attack me in any sense).

• Monster’s health are far too low. Com’on, it is biscuit.

• Monster’s damage also are too low.

Good ol’ time, there were a really challenging and dangerous exploration in Orr. Not anymore.

Guess what also ? Same in the beta’s zone is happening. You can take off everything and manage to fight anyone.

Arenanet, please, don t let your game be casual. Stop that. Enough game are casual today.

I hate balancing arround putting high health and high damage. But I think it would be more fun if you put back to a normal health, and a higher attack speed than a higher damage.

Actually mitch, it’s the state of the game, so yes it is. If we don’t drill it home to them they will never get the picture.

Shoe.5821
What the hell? I’m all for thread consolidation, but the entire point of the beta weekend is to provide feedback. Where do you get off telling people they shouldn’t do that?
^
Because he still is getting wiped by mobs.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I can’t believe this. Where is that feedback? I also talked with people in mapchat, and not a single one disagreed with me that content is too easy now. Reddit-threads have tons of feedback, 90% of players agree (based on upvotes).

Reddit, the forums, etc, represents a very small percentage of the player base, like less than 10%. The casual majority simply plays the game, so you’re not really going to see much of their opinions. Also keep in mind that people are less likely to give their opinion if it’s going to make them look bad.

Feedback also includes statistics, such as the number of deaths during the first story instance. ArenaNet also has in-house beta testing, where they bring in people for direct feedback. Friends and family of the devs also give direct feedback. The devs also hide amongst the players, watching and playing with you. Some people will also complain through bug reports.

These nerfs were inevitable. They don’t want to alienate the average player. ArenaNet’s goal is to teach them how to play over time, which can be seen in the slight increase in difficulty with every major content patch since launch. There may be more tuning to do, but expect to see the main path through HoT to remain nerfed.

I totally agree! just played beta weekend 3 and it was just really boring
please bring back the beta weekend 2 difficulty or I wont be able to enjoy it, I want a challenge like the 2nd beta weekend because with the difficulty of beta weekend 3 ill have finished the expansion in like two days.

Bring the challenge!

(totally appreciate all your hard work, you rock guys!)

totally agree with the OP. Up the difficulty, make us scared.

Agree too, pls reverse the change. BWE2 difficulty was a good one. Atleast make it somewhat harder than right now.

Beta Weekend 2 vs 3:

They can’t ignore this level of mass disgust. Keep it up fellas! +100

DresdenAllblack.1249:

I personally like it. Open world pve is supposed to be like this outside of events. Just trying to get to point A to point B shouldn’t involve snipers randomly coming out killing me and stopping every 5 seconds for a fight.

but why mobs then? They should just leave all the enemies out, you can’t even tag them anyway considering how fast they die. /sarcasm

They added new mob-ai for a reason. They gave the mobs many attack patterns for a reason. Someone thought it’s probably a good idea to give people a challenge in the open world when they run around carelessly.

This nerf only makes sense in this beta environment where devs want players at specific areas for testing. It makes no sense that this would be final since all of their work on the mobs would be for naught.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Actually mitch, it’s the state of the game, so yes it is. If we don’t drill it home to them they will never get the picture.

Shoe.5821
What the hell? I’m all for thread consolidation, but the entire point of the beta weekend is to provide feedback. Where do you get off telling people they shouldn’t do that?
^
Because he still is getting wiped by mobs.

Not really. It’s your point of view. No more, no less. And either way, you still don’t need multiple topics complaining about the same thing. That actually makes them less likely to take notice, because it looks like SPAM.

Agreed. For me, BWE2 was about the perfect balance. It was engaging to play, and it was satisfying to win. It’s really difficult to get engaged if I don’t care about being hit, or if the mob is dead before I get to see their mechanics.

this game doesnt have a population problem and it wont. Theres nothing wrong with hard mobs, as they should be. Theres always guilds/parties/random lfg/people in the zone that are down to bring the ruckus with you. This is way too easy

Healix.5819:

These nerfs were inevitable. They don’t want to alienate the average player. ArenaNet’s goal is to teach them how to play over time, which can be seen in the slight increase in difficulty with every major content patch since launch. There may be more tuning to do, but expect to see the main path through HoT to remain nerfed.

it makes no sense:

• Drytop was a step up from Orr in difficulty
• Silverwastes was a step up from Drytop
• BWE2 was a step up from Silverwastes

BWE3 is a step back being on level of Orr or even below it.

Like the way you wrote the OP. Completely agree with it!

(Note: never played BWE2 didn’t have any time back then. So I’ll be comparing this BWE to the first one)

Playing the first BWE story instance was more fun ‘cause the enemies were a challenge (the snipers were a little bit op and yes the npc still needed to learn to get out of the red circles). Seeing Rythlock felt like "let’s go kill some sylvary together, ‘cause I don’t mind the help"…
Now all the enemies are melting to my autoattack (just like they do in queensdale). Even in the open world the veterans melt for my autoattack and rarely seem to do damage.
Seeing Rythlock now I was like ‘hey listen, got to kill a dragon, I’ll be back in a few minutes. We’ll catch up then, okay?"

It feels like all the enemies are now just as “smart” as the necro his ‘flesh golem’ :/

I don’t mind them turning the mob density down a little compared to BWE 1 (so that I can actually get to places… but the difficulty is ridiculous… starter zone ridiculous to be exact…). Also, removing the snipers? why? Reduce the amount of snipers orreduce their damage or something… but completely removing them? I just… sigh It felt so good the first time I killed them :/

Also the ‘Legendary Wyvern’ was more difficult (at least in the beginning), but once we got him down to 30-40% of his health it suddenly seemed to go down much easier and faster (not sure why) and wasn’t much of challenge anymore.

This current one is not challenging, but I felt bw2 was not especially challenging either. The mobs were about the same as drytop with a few bonus skills.

bw1, on the other hand, was killer, literally. I believe it was a good direction (and suspect you all did not set it up that was randomly.) The zones leading to the jungle are a good warning that you are approaching a dragon, and just like the leap upon entering (pre nerfed) Orr, you really do gain an increased sense of danger and need for cooperation.

I think the first beta weekend difficulty was appropriate. perhaps a lower HP pool for many mobs (is that simply to collect more data?) But the lethality of it was great. It made the environment threatening, and encourage creativity (problem solving) People would learn to master their characters in new ways (as promised,) and to cooperate more.

Can we get something close to that? I am a casual player with a lot (since day 1) of exp, and not great by any means, but I felt that even bw2 was too easy to be a new challenge. Make it dangerous to just run through the jungle alone, keep the snipers, make night deadly, keep the mobs working together. ?add downed state and executions for the corrupted sylvari?

While they are indeed a bit too easy now, it is worth pointing out that during BWE1 they were completely new, and thus they would have felt much harder than when people had actually learned to fight them.

I wasn’t around for BWE2, but I did read many peoples feedbacks in these forums. Everyone that had constructive feedback reported that the mobs were very difficult. This was their opinion and those from the many people in map chat.

My experience so far in BWE3 is that the mobs feel about right. Vets are difficult to solo, especially if there are adds around. Champions one shot lots of people. I fought a legendary wyvern today, and it was killing a lot of folks and took a long time to get it down.

Granted, my gear isn’t perfect, as I’m playing a beta character, and we don’t have ascended gear, but I can’t imagine it being buffed too much. If they do, we just won’t be able to run from point A to B.

In addition to this, it would be nice to eventually see some of the difficulty of the earlier betas of the main game return as well. Enemy AI used to be at least somewhat intelligent but for three years now we’ve mostly fought enemies that blindly charge you and maybe use one or 2 skills.

Being a “casual” MMO does not mean that it have to be skill-less to play. I would much rather have a game where the content is challenging due to smart enemies and mechanics with minimal gear grind.

Maybe they misunderstood it when they sent out survey forms to random beta testers. Maybe they kept seeing the word “hard” in the survey and thought maybe we didn’t like the difficulty of the content. While I like the difficulty of the past version of the maps, it got me thinking, what about those who are already level 80 but still has greens and blues. I say this from my own experience, I was so noob back then I still had blues and greens and some rares when I hit level 80 the first and second time. This is compounded by the fact that traits no longer give bonus stat points, so all your stat points are derived from your gear. How about this, put an exotic gear seller near the entrance of the map, so people could do the early missions in the map repeatedly and get starter exotics for their characters.

I disagree. To be fair to ArenaNet, they are probably accounting for these zones being empty which happens sometimes. Players with odd schedules who can only play at 3 AM shouldn’t be punished. During BWE1 they were a bit too difficult, they do need to be bumped up a bit, but not too much. Difficulty should be comparable to Cursed Shore. The following maps should be more difficult than the first, if the first map we encounter in HoT is as difficult as all that follow it destroys the progression experience. Not good. Also the first map is a place to learn gliding, mushrooms, etc… It is to an extent a training area.

Agreed. During the second beta weekend I was really finding this game far more enjoyable than I ever have, as I was required to adapt my playing style to the serious increase in difficult. Everyone I spoke to loved it. With this beta weekend, I’m a little bit bored.

I’d really encourage arenanet to revert the changes to enemy behavior that have been made, as the previous iterations was far superior to this one.

Agreed! I was going to make a similar post if there was none. Champs, all the new mobs everything is dying with literally no challenge. That may be fun for a little while, but will be completely boring in a week or two.

Something ArenaColin said on reddit. here’s a link as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3na4rx/bwe3_open_world_pve_nerved/cvmqq66
“Hey folks,
Coming out of beta weekend two we were really happy with the over all open world difficulty. The only exceptions were that the wyvern was way too easy and didn’t scale well, and mushroom stompers were a little much. Thats all that should have changed for bwe3 – we will have to look into what the issue is here to find out why its being perceived kitten much easier. Simple version: we also liked bwe2 difficulty.”

edit:better format