Guild Wars 2

if overflows would only be from a specific server, they’d never be full I imagine. Also germans have quite a few servers compared to Italy for example.

The problem here is that there are more than one activity going on, but only one (events) is communicated via map-markers. The other one – to succeed – isn’t. Of course this leads to anger towards other players, since the ones who do events think they do THE most important thing to make the mission succeed, while those who rescue have no real instant-notification that this one survivor they ressed is one more step towards the ultimate bag.

The number 1200 can only be found on websites, some might think they got the ultimate bag for being successful in all events on the map.

I hope this doesn’t come as too negative, I really enjoy the new patch. It’s awesome, found a few new friends by rescuing citizens together. It’s really encouraging to play a defensive specced profession. I love using the full spectrum of my defensive abilities with my guardian here.

mercury ranique.2170:

This goes from simple things as coordinating (‘need more people in sector orange’) to explaining those things.

it’s not as simple. What is sector orange? You can’t see the routes on the map ingame. Users have created those maps with green, orange and red routes depending on difficulty.

It has become quite a disadvantage to play the game without a guide. I don’t like this direction. API Websites… no thanks. Finding out when the next Worldboss arrives – dragontimers. Meh. Why not have the sky turn black above the zones on the ingame-map to indicate a world boss arriving?

First of all I have to say that I really enjoy the new content. Rescuing the citizens is a lot of fun with a small group of friends or even strangers. I see a lot of complaining about the event though. Bad rewards for players who do the rescue missions is one of them. People are angry about players who do the events instead of rescuing citizens. Everyone gets the ultimate bag at the end, whether they helped at the evacuations or not.

Personally I think a lot is very unclear for people who don’t use websites for the game.

• it isn’t clear that the civilians run to the nearest stealthed Order of Whisper’s guy – not the entrance
• it isn’t clear that reviving npcs counts towards the counter too, not only the npcs with the orange marker over their heads
• it isn’t clear what to do in order to get the ultimate bag – not everyone reads the patchnotes.
• it isn’t clear that the npcs which were saved respawn
• personally I didn’t know that you get +20/30(?) citizens for a successful event

a lot of unclear things imho, so the random guy won’t get it if he doesn’t read the patch notes / internet guides. No wonder tons of people are confused… it’s just bad communicated in the game imho. Events have huge orange markers… so everyone goes there.

How to do it then:
But how would I have designed the event then? Tough question. Maybe Anet could have sent the heroes we all love on those mini-rescue missions (including the orange map marker). This would give players who haven’t read a guide an indication that there is something to do besides the “big events”. Braham could patrol one of the escape-routes and people could join him. How many routes are there? 6-8? Well, we have quite a few heroes who could have run these routes.

There could have been a personal revive and encourage counter also. After the event you would see Braham and Roxx telling each other how many citizens they rescued… like Legolas teasing Gimli how many kills he got. And players whould get +10 extra bags for every 10 citizens rescued.

well I agree that this should be ingame, but I think Anet is working on that ingame solution just as they said they did. It’s maybe just for now so that every new player gets the living story so far to be ready for the big finale.

Good thing takes time, I’m happy when they deliver as soon as it’s ready.

Think of it: they listened to us when we discussed the story blog posts. I haven’t seen any one of those for a while, instead story telling ingame was improved considerably (e.g. Dead End Bar interactive investigation… brilliant).

Thalador.4218:

But you make a good point: new players who bought this game mid December probably have absolutely no idea what’s going on, and are most likely put off even more so from ever touching the LS – not even with a ten-foot-long pole.

I thought you’ve experienced the living story instances lately, if you did you would have known that there was an awesome instance in Marjory’s bar where you got a really good recap of all the things that happened before.

Thalador.4218:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Scarlet is not half as bad as you guys make her if you’ve followed her background story

If I wasn’t exposed to her background story, I’d be still playing to this day. Frankly, I haven’t been able to log in since mid December without feeling physically ill just from a single glance at the LS UI and the name Scarlet… the more they exposed her, the worse it’d gotten.

You’ve seen nothing if you only experienced the stuff from mid December

Scarlet is not half as bad as you guys make her if you’ve followed her background story

I think one of the reasons why people enjoy it lately is because the story is clearly coherent now. What is Scarlet doing in the Mists? What is the Marionette for? A big drill? Leylines below Lion’s Arch? Destruction incoming. It’s not small incoherent parts which make no sense together but instead putting the pieces together paints a pretty interesting picture and leaves room for a lot of epic speculation. Who doesn’t want to experience the rise of an elder dragon?

I love what they did with the Marionette: give key-fragments for participating in the event and combine those to keys which open various chests. It’s really fun to open those chests again and again and again, even though it’s mostly greens.

What I’d like to see as a further evolution of this: combine all the 5 keys to open a new chest which has at least a guaranteed rare and a good shot at (some) exotics (+ a really good chance for something non-combaty – like the Mini)

Trying to analyse the topic:

Does GW2 have a worse RNG than it’s competitors? Let’s take a look at one of the larger games out there: WoW

Best in slot items droprate compared to Ascended Gear (BIS in GW2):
Here is a list of drops from one of the raid bosses in WoW: http://de.wowhead.com/npc=71865#drops:0+17-3-18+1

items of itemlevel 572-574 have a droprate from 0.06 – 0.17 (which means 1-3 out of 1754)

There was a post on Reddit from a guy who opened Champion Lootboxes (which should contain Ascended Gear Boxex), see:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1tphls/analysis_opened_646_gilded_coffers_and_605_gilded/

he opened 646+605= 1251 boxes and got 1 Ascended Gear Box

If you ask me…

• GW2 shows a better droprate
• in WoW you can get BIS only from Raidbosses, in GW2 you can craft it by yourself, no specific content required. Fractals/Dungeons not required.

The problem imho isn’t the droprate but the quantity of items that can drop. Looking at the WoW boss in the link above, he can drop 178 different items, most of it quite good (in GW2 terms: specific exotic stuff). A lot of good items have a droprate above 5% up to 20%… in GW2 on the other hand exotics are still really rare.

PS: what adds to this is the “seen droprate”. What I’m trying to say: In WoW you see the drops of 25 people, then you roll the dice for these items. You might not get a lot, but it looks like you have a quit good chance of getting something.

That said, I love that the ascended stuff is nontradeable like I suggested. The problem here: it’s best in slot and Anet decided that the droprate stays abyssimal for these items (which is understandable since it takes a while to craft these)

I think one of the core problems is that the most items are tradeable. Anet knows that we can buy almost everything for a number of gold on the tradingpost, so they can make those interesting drops (like the new champion weapons) quite rare for the individual. Hundrets of champion bags and not one of those new skins. That’s not fun to me.

If it weren’t tradeable, they would have to increase their droprate… which would be a lot more fun. And I’m not saying from 0.01 to 0.02. We don’t feel this while farming the champs, we feel this when looking at the TP.

What if all those gem-store exclusive armorsets could be rewards in the open world also? Non-tradeable but instead with a relatively ok droprate + a 2nd ingredient which enables you to use it (which is a rare reward for certain challenges).

E.g. aetherblade armorset from the gemstore: drops from aetherblades + the 2nd ingredient drops sometimes from the aetherblade jumping puzzle.

(+ you get a discount for the armorset in the gemstore when you have that 2nd ingredient)

what I’m saying Belzebu: the current options just don’t do it for me. There is much more potential here.

Potential to add loot which is nontradeable, probably non-gear, has a much better droprate (because it can’t be bought in the TP) and will make people to enjoy looting more.

What if a full set of a current low level armor could be turned into a whole new set (or a redesign of that set —> e.g. the flamekissed armore). Imagine you have the full set and a specific non-tradeable runestone which drops on specific maps. Combine this to get the new (improved) set.

Purely cosmetic

People start dropping out of the game or stop buying off the gemstore and baam! Double Loot Chance weekend and *+100 magic find consumable bonuses on the Gemstore.

we had +300% luck on Southsun Cove during a Living Story chapter, but this didn’t make such a huge difference. And I don’t want more of it (more greens, more blues, sometimes more yellow), I want more interesting stuff included.

Maybe it’s just the variety which I find lacking. Maybe I’d wish that other things would be included in loot drops, not only gear. Something that would be fun to collect.

So once you’ve geared your character, you stop looting? But this should be part of the fun, don’t you think?

I see that the gear treadmill is something which we don’t like, this is why I later wrote about cosmetic changes, which still make you want to enjoy looting.

an other idea: give each piece of armor a new “cosmetic slot”. It would work like the minor glyphs in WoW, which only have cosmetic / utility effects. Then include such cosmetic glyphs on gear all over the game (low and high level areas). Important: non-tradeable.

Now people would go out and have something new to find to upgrade their gear. Even low level drops would have the chance to drop something interesting (since it’s a cosmetic change only).

But luck makes no big difference imho (except in the very longterm… statistical). I’d love to say “I feel the difference”, but all it does for me is giving me more greens (uninteresting) and sometimes a yellow (which isn’t that fun to me either).

Other games (which don’t have trading post systems) have drops like set-pieces, which makes you want to collect full sets. In GW2 you can just buy the rune in the trading post, which takes away the excitement of loot.

To iterate: GW2 could include new drops in form of set pieces which are non-tradeable. Set-Boni could then be purely cosmetic (like changing the color of guardian aegis effects etc.) or quite significant (runes which can’t be bought on the TP, with unique effects).

the loot system, does it make sense to you?

pro:

• you are excited about drops while leveling, you often loot something you can use

con:

• as a non-alt player you spend more than most of your time on lv.80… so 99% of the gear that drops is not interesting for your character any more

Looking at these 2 points makes me think that the system needs a revamp. I want excitement out of looting, and statistically inferior drops aren’t doing it for me.

Do you have any suggestions how this could be adressed?

the loot system, does it make sense to you?

pro:

• you are excited about drops while leveling, you often loot something you can use

con:

• as a non-alt player you spend more than most of your time on lv.80… so 99% of the gear that drops is not interesting for your character any more

Looking at these 2 points makes me think that the system needs a revamp. I want excitement out of looting, and statistically inferior drops aren’t doing it for me.

Do you have any suggestions how this could be adressed?

85 WvW ranks and the results:

I’m not sure, does anyone think this is fun? Sure, handing out free rares and exotics isn’t fun either, but when I’m looking at those guaranteed rares for world boss metas…

Naevius.3185:

More to the point, what is its purpose in the event? It isn’t the Marionette that actually shoots at everyone in the final (fail) cutscene, so why does it exist?

A test of how viable giant high heels are?

And why are the platforms there? Can the weapon only be used if you pre-build platforms at the target site?

Hmm interesting thought. I think it’s a defense mechanism to support Scarlet’s minions to power the weapon (the ship above). At the same time it might break morale of the attackers (which would work well in LA too).

edit: wiki also says: Created by Scarlet Briar, it was made in mockery of Queen Jennah’s Watchknight. However, when the supposed aethercannon within the marionette charges up, the marionette intentionally detonates, killing those nearby.

What do you think is the purpose of the Marionette?

We know that Scarlet will invade Lion’s Arch. She has air superiority. One of her probes (the one in LA) turned green which indicates that she found something below LA. She has a toxin which is immune against our antitoxin from the Krait-tower.

…it’s gonna hurt.

But what is the Marionette for? Do kill us – a few ants? She has the toxin and the Aetherblades for that. To dig a huge hole in LA? She has that big drill for that.

hmm…

I admit, tribulation mode might have been a bad example, let’s say SAB in general instead. It isn’t a cakewalk and you have the option for an easy mode as well. I’d like content like this. Tribulation mode is a bit extreme, my mistake.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Zylonite.5913:

I play the game to have fun, not to become better at something….If something tries to change me then it means it does’t accept me as a player??? so is the GW2 player base not accepted within ANet’s walls that now we have to change?

Some people only have fun WHEN they are learning and displaying mastery of skill. If you are not like that, cool. No problem. We love and accept you just as you are. We made most of our game content for you! Don’t ever change.

This worries me a bit, Josh. Most people (I guess) aren’t new players, GW2 isn’t like any jump’n run which you play days / maybe a few weeks. GW2 is a game which many people play for months now, and it’s inevitable that the player becomes better in that time. Players also get levels and gear which makes them even more powerful, so you could be afk in a zone, having mobs attacking you and you will survive. You can entirely ignore mobs by running away in most zones, since they can’t keep up with the player at any time (few use cc skills on you and if they do, they do it rarely).

I don’t like that. It limits the challenging content for players who enjoy a interesting gameplay to level 80 zones mostly imho.

When we look at current games we see the popularity of really difficult games. Dark Souls was huge because of that, Tribulation Mode in GW2 was loved and press enjoys the “higher” difficulty in WildStar.

My suggestion: include really challenging environment within each zone, which opens up new areas to explore with strong monsters to fight. Not only small areas but actually bigger parts of a zone. Something where you have to prove that you know how to dodge, or learn certain patterns. This way even new players could start to learn how to meet a challenge while players who don’t like this simply stay away from this parts of the map.

Making every area accessible by just ignoring the mobs while running through makes the game feel trivial in these parts imho.

… a huge berserker troll guards the entrance to a cave… well… I just run by, into the cave… bye troll.

I guess I could say that the additional polish the game got is welcome.

Zaxares.5419:

Where is this reddit thread? It seems there were lots more minor improvements in this patch that wasn’t mentioned in the patch notes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1vrukl/patch_notes_january_21st_origins_of_madness/

220/24 votes for the stability-using minis can’t be pushed out of the bag that easily anymore haha

I had to smile when I saw the reddit-thread of the new patch and the most top-voted comment was about how minis now stay in the bag when you deposit your collectibles…

it’s the small things that matter to a lot of people, and I think Anet did a huge step with this release

• interesting dialogues of the main characters, even the Quaggan lovers from Kessex Hills reappear
• a lot of (lorewise) interesting stuff in Scarlets hideout, which gives the character a lot more depth imho
• a new golem-model for the new Asura-main character… so awesome
• Kasmeer and Marjory holding hands… aww….
• stuff to unlock (Scarlets journal) that sounds sooo promising, not just a chance for another piece of rare loot
• Jungle Worm minis, each has it’s own animations
• a new icon for certain weapons like Infinite Light
• a hidden mysterious probe in old Lion’s Arch
  …

I really have to say I find this patch amazing, so much love for the details… sure, I like the boss-battles too, but sometimes it’s the small things that make me feel good.

I nominate Nike, he’s/she’s awesome
(I agree with almost all of his posts, some really great thoughts among those)

speak for yourself, I’m quite excited. The wurm seems to be a new of a kind If I understood this the right way it’s a meta-boss which uses a whole map, so he isn’t static anymore. Not sure if this is true or if it’s just the language barrier that hit me, but in case it is this would be a huge step in making meta event bosses more dynamic.

It’s also stated that the wurm is only a “byproduct” of these mystical probes. It’s only the first part of four of the finale.

Chris, are you considering having some sort of quests in the future? I mean we basically had quests with the first Halloween release, and personally I think it was awesome. It wasn’t like classic quests but more like quests with a gw2 twist, like someone mentioned above.

If you’re working on a UI element which tracks such things, this makes me confused since in earlier interviews a dev stated why we will never see quests in GW2.

Nike.2631:

“Hold-up guys. We don’t need to fight those. I have enough tailoring to negotiate safe passage with the spiders. Just give me a sec to click something….” or “Stop! I can use that cauldron over there to bribe the Ogres with some home cooking. We can skip this whole fight.”

I like those ideas. I’m thinking of a jumping puzzle with a backdoor. People who can do it, find the hermit through their jumping technique (and experience how awesome jumping puzzles are) while others got a note from their story-npc which tells you that the ogres who guard the backdoor might be bribed with a neat dolyak-steak (craft one yourself or steal it from a troll).

This system could work as a tool to introduce non-linear storytelling as well as a tool for teasing specific activities (jumping puzzles, crafting) so that people would be motivated to try new things.

hm, about the journey-part

What if you think about it this way: if it’s a problem to bring the player to the event (because the event might not be active at the time), why not bring the event to the player?

The event finds the player who has the requirements (like a high enough rank).

• it can’t start when other standard events are active in the area around the player
• everyone can participate in the players story, but only the player gets specific dialogues out of the npcs which drive the story forward

• if certain locals are important for the event, utilize the runner-npcs who come to you when you are “close” (this could also mean half a map away). Now these npcs will escort you to your player-triggered (through proximity) story-event. The escort could be an event in itself where everyone can participate.

in terms of narrative I’m thinking:

would it be possible to melt existing activities with a strong storyline? Do that jumping puzzle not because of the chest at the end, but to find a npc from your story, some kind of hermit who hates people and hides from other people. (yeah, it’s easy for static activities like jumping puzzles, events would be the hard part)

what could work imho:

• use the expedition system I explained in an earlier post to directly go to specific events. Now it wouldn’t be a problem to have to wait for an event to spawn, since expeditions only take you to event-chains with a guaranteed start when you arrive.

• Order NPCs don’t use local expeditions to take you to event-chains in the region (e.g. Kryta) but these NPCs have special expeditions: their portals go to Order-specific event-chains all around Tyria.

Now you’d experience how it’s like in an Order: the kind of life members of that Order have. Vigil events would be more battle/defense oriented while Whispers events are quite the contrary. Without the expedition system you would have a hard time finding Order-specific events. Even if you knew where to look, they might be on cooldown.

It still wouldn’t feel like a journey yet, there’s a narrative missing.

Devata.6589:

I think the traditional quest are exactly what you need. The only way they really don’t fit in to the design-idea is that it has to be different but then maybe change that idea.

The fact that quests aren’t repeatable also makes them give you more the feeling of having some small form of impact. A dynamic event that keeps repeating feels sort of useless to do.
When you done all the quest you are indeed out of content but they can add quest and there are the dynamic events that still keep on going.

I think the combination of the two would work great. It are both nice systems but not substitutes for each other while the dynamic events are now supposed to be substitutes for the traditional quests. Thats part of the problem.
Mix the two and you have the pro’s of the dynamic events and the journey and story feeling from the normal quest.

Well designing a quest would take ressources of dynamic events, which would be bad imho because

• if you add new events, the world becomes more alive, old events spawn less frequently and there’s always something going on.
• if you add new quests the world loses content for each quest you do. Since there are no new events (because ressources go to quests) you’ll always see the same events.

So it’s clear for me that the answer can only be: more dynamic events, but more interesting ones (writing!!).

I know phasing is not an option, because you might experience content which your friends can’t participate, but what if we take a look at npc-phasing.

Imagine:
There’s a standard event. Everyone can participate. When you’ve gained a certain rank at your Order you will see 2-3 new npcs at this event who don’t participate but give you context why this event is important for “your journey”. They would give you a reward for completing it / the chain, follow you through the chain, tell you interesting lore and the reason why you are doing this, etc. They might even give you new tasks like participate in killing 3 of the veterans (commanders which need to be taken out by a member of the order) which might make the event a bit more challenging to you personally. Still your friend will experience the event just as well, so he won’t see you hitting thin air.
Edit:
When I think of it… the npcs don’t even have to be phased out. They are always there but only a high enough rank member can interact with them.

What do you think? Would this work to drive a narrative or am I missing something crucial?

Colin asked us about the journey if I remember correctly. How do we introduce horizontal progression so that it is interesting and doesn’t feel like a grind?

• events currently don’t feel like a journey to me. They are closed szenarios. It’s certainly a good thing to have those side stories. I LOVE some of the more interesting event-chains which tell a story (the boy in the Norn starter-area who summons bears) and aren’t generic defend/attack loops – much more of those please! But it doesn’t feel like a journey to me.
• quests would tell stories – huge world-wide stories – but they don’t fit in Anets design-idea. Classic quests aren’t repeatable, so when you’ve done one, the zone gets emptier for you. If you’ve done all quests, you’re out of content and find nothing more to do in the zones. They are also static and the wold feels not alive in any way. This is bad as well.

It’s quite hard to think of a system which takes the best of both, because things contradict each other.

Then Anet stated that they want to go away from instanced content (came up with the Queens Gauntlet update). I agree with this, since it takes people out of the world.

quite a nut to crack

Devata.6589:

He seems to be referring to a raid dungeon system. So thats something you do with a guild. That does not split the community more then overflows or dungeons, home instances and so on do.

sure, raids are for much more than 5 players, it does. And yes, dungeons and overflows do split the playerbase. Is it an optimal situation? No.

Well it’s my personal opinion. If I were in a guild and had time to play on schedule like many years ago (which actually drove me away from WoW) I would probably like that idea too. Today I play GW2 because it isn’t a game about raids mostly. A safe haven of all the other “hardcore raiding” games.

Tequatl (the new one) was just the experience I had with raids years ago, but with the fine difference that I won’t hurt anyone when I have to leave in the midst of the battle. And I won’t hurt anyone if I don’t show up regularly either.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

But what would be your issue if such instanced Content is created for People that want it if for example the shatterer and all world bosses are instanced as well as open world it woulnd’t harm you and it would be able for People to get hardmode on those bosses same with dungeons. The Point is if you have to kill shatterer or tentaql instanced with loads of debuffs gambits whatever you Need certain tactics to succed. In open world as you said People like you don’t wanna Play a certain class and mess up the Strategie of others soo instanced is always nice to push boarders let People figure things out without waiting 2 hours for a Boss to spam just that People mess up with going on Canon and Shooting somwhere in the sky…

It would split the playerbase, just like some suggestions before this one. Who would do these big events with us “Randoms” when we already struggle to get enough people for some events?

also why I’m against instanced content: I don’t like grouping and I don’t like dungeons. Sure, you could create an instance with Tequatl inside, but this would only lead to elitism imho.

“Ok, no Rangers, we only take warriors and guardians – about 30+ and 5-10 Mesmers. Warrior with dual swords? No, go away! Oh, a newbie, go away!”

I’ve seen commanders in WvW who want people/professions to play with one specific weaponset. I hate that mentality! At least they can’t kick me. If I wanna play a sword+shield guardian no one should have the right to drop me because of this. No one.

Open world is the ultimate freedom, the no.1 reason I love GW2.

Chuggs.1682:

There is currently no in-game mechanism for PUGS to tackle large scale challenging content, and even if there were (see the Expeditions idea mentioned previously, an NPC in town to collects players to portal them) it would be nearly impossible to balance the idea of actual “challenge” with the concept of 50 strangers wandering up to a boss with no raid system or way to coordinate.

Expeditions were my idea, so I want to clarify this:

Expeditions are quite the contrary of what you think they are. It’s not like you wait with tons of people so that a portal spawns which takes you to the event-chains.

• such portals spawn every 3-5 minutes
• they lead to random event-chains (Meta-Events might be involved, but tons of other event-chains too
• after 3-5 minutes the portal despawns, with it the npc and a new npc arrives at the same time who opens another new portal. This goes on constantly.

So it’s likely to find only a handful of people participating in “your” event, since it’s logistically quite difficult to get too many people at the same time to the same place. Yes, there might be organized zergs, but if you don’t like that, just wait 3-5 minutes for the next portal.

Another possibility: the npc “counts” the players around and creates a portal depending on the number of players. If 40+ are in that area, events for smaller groups won’t appear.

juno.1840:

To be clear — I don’t want more Tequatl. I want smaller scale, instanced, difficult content requiring coordinated team play.

A comparison from the current market: any of the LotRO raids (4 teams of 6) in Orthanc. Those were hard requiring many attempts to master.

I want them to go away from instanced content. BUT I also want something similar as you: content for small groups.

This doesn’t have to contradict each other imho. Sure, if you put a huge timer on a homepage, people would swarm such szenarios. If these are found via exploration though, and they are random events in the world, I think people would be excited. I feel that we need such events as rewards for exploration.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Open World is cool but your Impact in a 100 man Group is to low to call it a test of skills:)

I wasn’t talking about doing Meta Events as a task of hardmode Furthermore, being 2 levels below the zone level gives you a lot of mob-aggro. Anet could also say: if you’re being downed, you have to restart the challenge (going back to the npc because your trainee-armor is broken now).

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

I guess you missed my Point here. I am only speaking about dungeons not world Content. I think dungeons and Fractals should be the world where hard Content Needs to be found. It’s just a fact that it is way to hard to Balance Content in open world reasons for this are:
- People going afk while dead scaling the Event up
- Trolls
- Many ways to exploit bug things ect
- Way more issues that can appear

While it might be intresting to test it I think the real Content with Special dungeon tokkens should be around dungeons only. Where you can make your fix Group and make sure nobody is desturbing it triggering another Event by mistake.

Short Version: I think you didn’t get I was only speaking about dungeons:)

I disagree. I think where GW2 is really strong is the open world, it’s dynamic events. It’s the main content of the game and all people should find interesting enough content for them to do at the main content. Sure, dungeons should be hard. Explorable mode was supposed to be rock-hard, don’t know what happened there. The newest iteration (Twilight Arbor Path) looks like they found a good balance.

Open world hard mode could definitely work with downscaling imho. Dead people / afk people cannot scale an event up, that’s not how it works. You have to be doing enough damage to make an event scaling up. If you’re dead because you are bad, the event (should) scale back again (I haven’t tested this) since you aren’t contributing.

As you see, you can’t troll via downscaling. You are just the same as a lowie player, and you don’t scare lowies away, do you?

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Colin (at Pax) talked about ‘hard mode’ stating that it wasn’t something they were looking at doing because it would break up the player base too much. I do agree with that. The more instances we have, the more broken up and less cohesive we are. The less likely we are going to find people to do the content we’re trying to do, which results in the hours of standing around shouting ‘lfg.’

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for challenging content; however, I don’t think most people are. They try to give us challenging content (Tequatl, new TA path, etc) and then people don’t bother doing it. It’s not that they want ‘challenging content’ its more they simply want more shinies. True, people do desire having a shiny that other’s can’t get, so they can preen, but they don’t want to have to work for it either. This isn’t true of all people, but sadly it is true of the majority.

What I think: people want a hard challenge with a reward which shows that they have mastered the challenge. SAB did this really well, different colors for different difficulties… awesome.

It’s all about risk-reward ratio. Why should I fight that champion if I would have nothing which reminds me of my victory? I want to look at my character/my achievements/my … and see what I’ve accomplished and am proud of.

Just look at the ones who now run with a mini-Liadri. This IS definitely something to be proud of, the battle was really challenging as well for most of us. This was perfect.

@Hardmode: Personally I think the scaling system is awesome for introducing a hardmode without hurting other players. You could be scaled back to -2 levels below the zone level, not being able to use waypoints, etc… Why would this be acceptable? Because you meet real low level players in the world constantly. No one cares, if he dies he won’t contribute to the upscaling of a mob anyway. If he survives, he can support and ress others just like a high level character, as well as CC on the enemies equally as effective.

Anet could also experiment with the possibility that "hardmode"players give surrounding normal players a damage-buff / scale surrounding players +1 level above normal.

But how could you implement hardmode with staying true to lore? How would it be believeable to be weaker when lv.80+? Well there are a lot of possibilities:

• A npc (Master trainer) want’s to see if you would be worthy of a new skill. You have to accept the challenge, do specific tasks while wearing a trainee-armor (white armor + weapons which scale you to -2 of zone-level). The tasks would be things that will be tracked like your daily on the top right of your screen (like: kill 25 centaurs and 2 veteran centaurs, dodge 20 enemy attacks, help 3 npc xy (dynamic events) in the area xy,…)

• A npc would give you a certain poison which makes you weaker. Stand the trials with that poison on you to grow even further.

zamalek.2154:

DarkWasp.7291:

I’m tired of PuGs, but I also want to PvE on my own time so organized groups aren’t generally an option. I just want stuff I can do solo.

Keep in mind GW2 was designed to be social. You may not get too much traction with ideas that exclude social interactions. In my opinion: at same time a lot of PUGs behave in an antisocial manner; so a small amount of soloable and challenging content might be nice for when you want to take a break from them.

I’m in the same boat as DarkWasp. I don’t enjoy groups, but in GW2 you don’t need to be grouped to have a lot of fun. You can interact with other people at any time, this is what makes the game so special. You are right: it’s designed to be social, but this doesn’t mean that everything has to be designed for organized groups only.

I love roaming around with other people. It’s just the freedom to go wherever I like without being kicked from any specific party if someone decides to do this, that I love.

Having said this, I definitely want GW2 being designed to be a game for everyone, even for people who love the freedom to go their own paths occasionally. For this the game should use the scaling mechanic to support this. It’s not fun to fight a champion for more than 20 minutes, although I’m good enough to dodge all of his attacks.

Well, we have a new kind of mobs now, elites – something between champions and veterans. I like this a lot, it shows me that Anet hasn’t forgotten about us lone wolfs. The difficulty is a bit low though imho, not much stronger than veterans and quite rare in the world (I can’t remember where I have seen the last one).

You might say that I should play singleplayer games, but it’s not other people I don’t like, but rather the artificial grouping and the dependencies from certain people and the rigid structure. Finding other people in a battle vs. a champion and having to group them first in order to be able to interact with them is bad. Good thing GW2 is better than this.

zamalek.2154:

Conski Deshan.2057:

(short of say making a second copy of the maps where everyone in it is in hardmode)

I actually think this is a good idea – it was one of the ideas I came up with for giving PUGs a chance against Tequatl (have an NPC that will drop you into an overflow with harder and more rewarding XYZ).

It’s not a good idea because it would split the playerbase. Instead of fuller maps, maps get much much more empty.

BobbyStein.2315:

This is a common complaint, and one that we’re very aware of. We’re discussing a variety of ideas that will allow players more flexibility in experiencing the Living World content, but we’re not ready to announce the details since the designs aren’t finalized yet.

I love how the last Living Story releases were kind of overlapping, or how the destruction of the tower was coupled with player interaction. It’s certainly a step in the right direction and shows your good will to adress our concerns. I have thought about some solutions myself, but it’s a tough nut to crack. Especially when you see people leaving the permanent stuff (which everyone wanted to have, me too) left behind and drift to the new content.