Fun or Ordeal?

I read that AN had been making the game more difficult out of deference to WoW refugees who like things more hard-core. Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.

I've previously completed three toons here: an ele, a warr, and a hunter. None of them was a world-beater, but I had fun with each. I took a few years off and returned recently because I heard the Path of Fire expansion was worthwhile. I've been struggling to relearn my ele and get him back on the story path. It took me several days to progress to the point of making it through Dry Top. I found myself playing the World Summit story, which I had previously completed on at least one of my later toons.

My ele's a bit of a glass cannon. That works in team play and in open world if I choose my ground and don't try to tackle too many enemies at once. In each of the story instances, I've needed a tank and healer to survive. AN thoughtfully provided such until the climax dragon fight in the world tree. That was catastrophic!

There's an overwhelming amount of adversity in that scenario. Damage comes from all directions, you have to kill the three shoots and then hit the dragon, rinse and repeat for a total of at least four cycles. You're constantly being crippled so you can't run away from damage. And when you inevitably die, it offers to restart you from a check point but DOESN'T RESTORE YOUR ARMOR!

So there I am, running around stark naked, getting off a couple of hits before they knock me down and stomp me again. It was the opposite of fun.

This is a plea to broaden your base by making the story instances easier. As regards the open world part of the game, Dry Top is a horror for a soloist, which is what you'll be if you go inoff-peak hours. And it's a long, dreary way back from the nearest waypoint if you screw up.

Maybe you would consider some settings for casual vs hard-core players that would make the game more fun for those of us who are less talented or driven. That's most of the world, btw.

Have you considerated, you know, changing your build? Not every build is optimal for every fight in the game. You said it yourself, you are bringing a glass cannon to a fight where damage is flinging all over the place, maybe run a bit tankier? The full zerker meta died years ago when harder monsters were introduced to the game.

Yeah, i would definitely appreciate an easy setting for story instancesTo make it fair to people + have achievements still something to strive for, do not allow grouping for easy instances(?) + for definite restrict extra achievements - those being everything except the achievements which track completion of story. so you'd still get the achievement for story completion, but wouldn't get any other achievements

I found HoT/PoF exceedingly difficult alone, granted i had a terrible build when i did them, but two parts of HoT and...well...nearly everything in PoF after entering glint's lair killed me several times over, and two parts of PoF had fully destroyed my armor by the time i did them. It just made them boring to do when I wanted story more than anything...in the balthazar final fight i didn't stay alive more than a minute on my main, an ele.

I think these things, the ex pack stories, are great for elite players but for casuals like myself these are far, FAR too difficult to do alone. it just makes them annoying and drains motivation to complete the stories. So an easy option would be fantastic.

Open world is harder to balance for this aspect, but i've had no issues even on diffult open world stuff myself- at worst, it's a few minutes to wait for a second person to appear.

GW2 is easier than GW1 and both of them have always been casual games where you can quit and come back, or play at your own pace, and never get out-leveled and out-geared by others.

Being casual never meant being bad.

Always carry a few Instant Repair Canisters if you're doing instanced content.

I've never heard that rumor about deferring to WoW players. What I did read was that as the playerbase has gotten stronger due to Ascended gear, new stats, and experience, the game has tried to keep up.

As far as making story instances easier, you might consider asking someone(s) to join you. You might have luck with the LFG.

Good luck.

Maybe you would consider some settings for casual vs hard-core players that would make the game more fun for those of us who are less talented or driven. That's most of the world, btw.That sounds reasonable, as phrased. It just leaves out a key point: we can already play in casual mode by joining with other people. Isn't it ultimately best for everyone if ANet only releases one version of each story, tuned for 5, but possible for one, if that one is willing to figure things out?

Find some folks to do the story with; it's a lot of fun, especially in an MMO.

@jmrathbun.7263 said:I read that AN had been making the game more difficult out of deference to WoW refugees who like things more hard-core.Not sure where you read it; it's not something ANet has ever said. If anything, they've made the story instances easier. New instances tend to be hard, because it's always easier for them (and the community) to tone things down rather than make them more difficult. And new instances tend to be hard because people have new skills/traits and can handle more.

Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.The instances are designed for five players. If you find them troublesome with only one, use the LFG tool or ask for help in /map or /guild.

I've previously completed three toons here: an ele, a warr, and a hunter. None of them was a world-beater, but I had fun with each. I took a few years off and returned recently because I heard the Path of Fire expansion was worthwhile. I've been struggling to relearn my ele and get him back on the story path. It took me several days to progress to the point of making it through Dry Top. I found myself playing the World Summit story, which I had previously completed on at least one of my later toons.That is one of the harder instances. However, it's much, much, much easier with even just one extra person; with five, it's almost always a cake walk.

My ele's a bit of a glass cannon. That works in team play and in open world if I choose my ground and don't try to tackle too many enemies at once. In each of the story instances, I've needed a tank and healer to survive. AN thoughtfully provided such until the climax dragon fight in the world tree. That was catastrophic!Like you, I'm stubborn and don't want to change my builds for story instances.However, I will if it's tougher than I can manage on my own. Usually, that leads me to better builds.

There's an overwhelming amount of adversity in that scenario. Damage comes from all directions, you have to kill the three shoots and then hit the dragon, rinse and repeat for a total of at least four cycles. You're constantly being crippled so you can't run away from damage. And when you inevitably die, it offers to restart you from a check point but DOESN'T RESTORE YOUR ARMOR!Your armor can break 8 times before it affects your build. If I die even 2 times in a row, I'm stopping until I regroup, rethink.To rephrase an infamous quote: the definition of unnecessary frustration: repeating the same actions, hoping for a different result.

This is a plea to broaden your base by making the story instances easier. As regards the open world part of the game, Dry Top is a horror for a soloist, which is what you'll be if you go inoff-peak hours. And it's a long, dreary way back from the nearest waypoint if you screw up.So there are a couple of approaches to encountering challenging content:

• Blame the company for making it too hard. Wait for them to fix it.
• Blame age, "casualness", returning status.
• Figure out what's going on: is it build? is it misunderstanding mechanics? Is it timing?

@jmrathbun.7263 said:I read that AN had been making the game more difficult out of deference to WoW refugees who like things more hard-core. Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.

It's the opposite. GW2 was heavily nerfed during its original beta essentially because of WoW players trying to facetank enemies. Back then, enemies right at the start could kill you within a single attack, much like HoT. ArenaNet had always intended to increase the difficulty, which they've been doing with every major release since launch. They've always been about skillful gameplay, catering to the gamers, rather than the casual majority like most other MMOs.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.The instances are designed for five players. If you find them troublesome with only one, use the LFG tool or ask for help in /map or /guild.

Story instances are designed for five players? That I doubt. If they were, it wouldn't be possible to finish them solo for the majority of players (myself included).

@tairneanach.8427 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.The instances are designed for five players. If you find them troublesome with only one, use the LFG tool or ask for help in /map or /guild.

Um, no, that does't follow at all. They designed them for 5 casual players. Unless ANet goes out of their way to prevent it, it also means that "dedicated" players can solo it.

(All dungeons were designed for 5 and most paths can be done by one, except at specific points which require more bodies... and even some of those can be cheezed. That also goes for Fractals: there are bosses that were specifically designed to confound soloists... and yet some people can solo them.)

But isn't that a moot point? Regardless of intent, the fact is that the "easy mode" in this massively-multiplayer game is: try it with more people.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@tairneanach.8427 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.The instances are designed for five players. If you find them troublesome with only one, use the LFG tool or ask for help in /map or /guild.

I'm confused. Are you talking about dungeons or story instances? Cause yes, dungeons clearly were designed for full groups, but I'm pretty sure the story is designed to be beatable solo by most players. And since the OP was talking about the story exclusively, I figured that was what you were going on about too.

I don't know. I think ANet's spot-on with the story mode difficulty. It's pretty easy to solo. Easier yet if you grab a few people. For an MMO, that seems about perfect. Before HoT, I was definitely in the "this is too hard" camp, but I learned how to dodge, not use berserker in every slot, and eventually to make better builds for my play style (rather than whatever X site said is "meta" or best for raiding).

No one ever likes hearing it while having difficulty, but the difficulty IS plenty low. If you aren't yet able to solo it and don't want to improve, grab someone to help. It is an MMO. People are everywhere. If you don't know anyone, plenty of guilds and maps are full of friendly people.

The difficulty of story instances needs to increase over time, it is the only way to educate the playerbase in basic skills. Look what happened with the Eater of Souls, people had absolutely no clue they should interupt the drain cast, just awful levels of game literacy which need improved. One of the best ways to get people to think about their build or play better or understand mechanics is to put those lessons into story instances, it forces them to learn (which is good for everyone because then you can have more complex world bosses or better group partners in instanced content).

@Coulter.2315 said:Look what happened with the Eater of Souls, people had absolutely no clue they should interupt the drain cast, just awful levels of game literacy which need improved.

ArenaNet doesn't actually want to teach people. If they did, that boss would have paused for 10 seconds with a break bar, a background NPC would have commented on it, and if you failed, you would have been instantly downed. As it originally was, you had 1s to break it and the drain could kill you within seconds. Increasing the difficulty isn't going to teach the majority of players, they'll simply stop playing when it's no longer fun.

@Healix.5819 said:

@Coulter.2315 said:Look what happened with the Eater of Souls, people had absolutely no clue they should interupt the drain cast, just awful levels of game literacy which need improved.

This is the tragedy of it all, they cannot have a break bar half-way through the second expansion and people know what to do. HoT should have taught everyone what a break bar was and Anet should have put break bar tutorials into core too. Difficulty does teach people, you only learn when you fail, they just should have made people learn break bars earlier than Eater of Souls.

I mean... there's some reading and learning required, so i guess for some people that might be hard.

I've never found anything hard in this game. Combat is fairly straight forward and all the information you need on it is generally presented to you in either the UI or the standard game tropes.

I do agree with the OP that a lot of story content is not meant to be soloed by a lot of character types. I've soloed my way through all the story content so far, and actually made short work of the Eater of Souls, but I have had struggles with some portions where I've found the damage piles up way too fast if you make a simple mistake, or the enemy is so tanky that it takes forever to wear them down. It's definitely an issue sometimes.

And for those suggesting "change your build," that can be a significant investment to make. It's not as easy as swapping a medal in PvP (and really at this point, maybe it should be).

@Ohoni.6057 said:I do agree with the OP that a lot of story content is not meant to be soloed by a lot of character types. I've soloed my way through all the story content so far, and actually made short work of the Eater of Souls, but I have had struggles with some portions where I've found the damage piles up way too fast if you make a simple mistake, or the enemy is so tanky that it takes forever to wear them down. It's definitely an issue sometimes.

And for those suggesting "change your build," that can be a significant investment to make. It's not as easy as swapping a medal in PvP (and really at this point, maybe it should be).

We more mean swap Fire for Earth or Dagger to Focus and change utilities. You don't need a new set of armour, just more defensive traits and defensive weapon.

@Ohoni.6057 said:I do agree with the OP that a lot of story content is not meant to be soloed by a lot of character types.

Utter nonsense.

The entirety of the story is built upon being solo content. Every class has the ability to solo literally all parts of the story, you just may have to break your own "habbits" or comfort zone and use different weapons and utilities.

That doesn't make it not meant for solo, it makes it good design as it requires players to learn their classes.

To be fair the break bar is never explicitly explained, a person has to happen to hear someone say "use cc" and then furthermore has to question it (which a lot don't) - there is no tutorial on break bars.

Also while learning in the field is a very good teacher, some of these fights are obscene. PoF especially, I have no idea WHAT i did wrong in the balthazar fights because he does too much damage too fast - im not alive long enough to observe or try anything new......and mind, with the tonne of stuff you do in one single instance, it's hard to leave an instance and reconfigure ones build/even the weapons or skills they use because there'd be too much time and committment to one hard boss lost if the instance was left (e.g the deaprted part 1 - balthazar fight - it took a long time just to deplete his health even a little the first time and i didn't want to leave even though i knew i should to change skills because darn that was hard) - minding that for some of these youre in combat constantly.

@tairneanach.8427 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.The instances are designed for five players. If you find them troublesome with only one, use the LFG tool or ask for help in /map or /guild.

I am also incredulous that Story instances are designed for a full party. I have never read that anywhere.

yea, personal stories are god awful to play, same with LWi skip as many, as i canif they had made some ordinary content, they would had done so much better

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@tairneanach.8427 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

Not every player agrees. Older players, those coming back after a vacation of a year or more, casual players looking for the story more than an exhausting ordeal may feel overwhelmed and drop out.The instances are designed for five players. If you find them troublesome with only one, use the LFG tool or ask for help in /map or /guild.

Didn't know that.They are both personal and ls or just personal?

Personal Story lines should always be soloable. Groups have plenty of content reserved for them.Living story lines.. I don't care. They are beyond any salvage for me.

@TexZero.7910 said:The entirety of the story is built upon being solo content. Every class has the ability to solo literally all parts of the story, you just may have to break your own "habbits" or comfort zone and use different weapons and utilities.

Utter nonsense.

That may be your personal experience with it, but I guarantee that it does not coincide with the experiences of others.

That doesn't make it not meant for solo, it makes it good design as it requires players to learn their classes.

Story mode is TERRIBLE for helping players "learn their classes." It's way too one-size-fits-all for that. All story mode can do is either let you through, or kill you. Either it will be a horrible slog, or a fun experience, and if it's horrible, it gives no indication as to what you could do to change that. A teaching mechanism has to do more than deliver failing grades, it needs to actually instruct on how you can improve. If it's not doing that, then the "instructional" element is not serving a function.

Well designed encounters have to teach you what to do to overcome them, they need to highlight the proper mechanics, and if necessary, indicate what builds you're meant to be using. There is way too much variety in GW2 builds for the content to insist that you stumble upon the "right" build. It either needs to tell you exactly which build you should be using, or it needs to accept whichever build you happen to be using.