I miss the old hard HoT map meta!

Not that I hate the current iteration of HoT metas event: it is absolutely great for the zerg to work together to accomplish objectives with risks and rewards. Yet nowadays, the rewards are great but the risks are minimal. I have never seen Auric failure in years (unless it is 5 UTC in the morning) and DragonStand is a joke! Verdant Brink is as fine as it is, since the tier level is adequate for the effort. Sometimes, hilariously, I wish Auric could fail a bit for more chat drama or DragonStand marathon inside the tower. At least, the meta has something to be yearn for. In prime time those events turn into a braindead/boring click fest.

I am unsure why Devs decided to turn down the difficulty level of HoT metas. They have been the best events in the game before (even if people failed, the chat never got tired and thus the map was ALIVE!).

Well....it's old content now. Having those old events fail now and be near the same difficulty as when they came out would grief a lot of people just trying to run old content for items they didn't get. It was a blast (yet very VERY irritating having a 2 hour DS map fail) when it was current; I would like to see new maps have metas of the same caliber- not make the old maps harder.

Edit: also part of the difficulty was people just not knowing what to do, over the course of the first year as new players kept coming in, the maps would be full of only a handful of people who knew the meta. Getting every single person to cooperate and do the damage required on maps such as DS and Tangle Depths was half the battle. Now they run like a well oiled machine, scaled down in difficulty of course, but people have them down to a T.

You seem to miss people not knowing what to do so not getting the most damage at the right time.

Other than nerfing Gerent, I wasn’t aware that they nerfed the other metas since their release.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Other than nerfing Gerent, I wasn’t aware that they nerfed the other metas since their release.

And Gerent was a lot less alive as a result. Not sure what the op is referring to either

The meta changes were done a few months after hot launches. Not aware of anything after a year

I would assume it's just that most people doing those events now are people who have done them before. People are more experienced and know how to play through these events more skillfully as compared to when the events were new.

@mickey.2816 said:Not that I hate the current iteration of HoT metas event: it is absolutely great for the zerg to work together to accomplish objectives with risks and rewards. Yet nowadays, the rewards are great but the risks are minimal. I have never seen Auric failure in years (unless it is 5 UTC in the morning) and DragonStand is a joke! Verdant Brink is as fine as it is, since the tier level is adequate for the effort. Sometimes, hilariously, I wish Auric could fail a bit for more chat drama or DragonStand marathon inside the tower. At least, the meta has something to be yearn for. In prime time those events turn into a braindead/boring click fest.

I am unsure why Devs decided to turn down the difficulty level of HoT metas. They have been the best events in the game before (even if people failed, the chat never got tired and thus the map was ALIVE!).

Only nerf that got done semi recently was the Gerent. The metas seem easy cause people overall know what to do now. Ive seen DS fail 2 or 3 times in the last month cause of people failing to do damage on the chamber bosses, so they still fail from time to time. You should be glad they succeed so you can actually get the rewards, failures cause nothing but frustration and wasted time, of which the latter is very precious to players.

As others said I don't recall any major nerfs to the HoT meta events. What probably happened is the players running them now are mostly players that farm them. Farmers already know what to do as they've repeated the content countless times, meaning it's highly unlikely to fail. If they ever made the Gerent meta important for a new collection, you'd see failures because the non-farmers, non-experienced players, would also go and play the content, which would increase the likelihood of failure. Right now, aside from the occasional new player or those hunting for missing collections, most of the big HoT meta events are being run by experienced players/farmers.

Even during the height of HoT popularity, success and failure depended heavily on the hour and the day of the week. During the week you'd see the Matriarch's break bar always break without fail, while during the weekends it was a different story. All kinds of different players tried them on the weekends and let's just say it didn't go well sometimes.

So in summary, what changed is the experience of the average player running them and the number of the players participating (lots of events scale badly) that make them look easier now than before while their actual difficulty is the same.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Other than nerfing Gerent, I wasn’t aware that they nerfed the other metas since their release.

I mean auric was nerfed substantially, not sure if it was by intent but they definitely changed the damage the octovines take.

I agree with you.It's insane how falling asleep has almost become a viable strategy to complete these events now.

Some of the nerf may actually be power creep for player characters.

@"mickey.2816" said:I am unsure why Devs decided to turn down the difficulty level of HoT metas.

The Guildwars 2 Playerbase has a long proud tradition of rebelling against any content that takes effort. There are a significant number of very vocal people who believe that this game should offer zero challenge. These players scream "NERF!" every time any piece of content is hard enough that they have to do so much as trait for an encounter. The moment any meta event runs even a risk of failure the forums and reddit are flooded with these players whinging, screaming and playing the consumer martyr.A perfect example of this is Tarir versus Serpent's Ire. Tarir is actually a more complex meta, but since it involves breakbars we get a weekly post talking about how much more "enjoyable" AB is and how "No one wants to do Serpent's Ire".Though occasionally we also get a post saying breakbars should be removed just to keep it spicy.

Every time a story mission forces the players to think like (Hearts and Minds, Confessor's End or the new episode with the Sniper instance) the players who believe this go out of their way to have the encounter undertuned by brigading on this forum or reddit.

The developers have been increasingly playing to this group and basically delivering the message "if you want something hard, do T4 fractals or raids".

What we have left are souless metas without challenge, story instances without fail conditions and beetle races.

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"mickey.2816" said:I am unsure why Devs decided to turn down the difficulty level of HoT metas.

Not that im gonna object to what you are saying, but what about Confessors end forced people to think, its been a bit but still i cant really remember? All that bloody mission did was force me to have a freaking headache cause of that stupid room at the end that moved.

As to Serpents ire, the only problem i have with that event is how finely tuned it is, if the tuning got tuned a bit or the rewards got upped so it would be worth trying and failing it would be fine.

On top of that, you cant market a game as Casual, and then have content in it that results in time wasted. I would love for the story to have a bit more difficulty(Please anet add in hard modes that have ONE achievement for finishing all missions in that section on hard.) but when the games primary playerbase(the one it tried to attact) is the side that is super casual you cant have content that is frustrating, or fails and expect people not to complain.

@"Dante.1763" said:On top of that, you cant market a game as Casual, and then have content in it that results in time wasted.

Please show me one piece of Arenanet advertizing that says "Casual!....Easy!".In fact when Arenanet talked about Heart of Thorns prior to release wasn't it "the challenging content our customers asked for"?Weren't Raids "our toughest content to date?"I have never once seen an Arenanet advertizement talk about how easy the game is. I've never seen any one Anet employee brag about "Open World Bosses that melt in 15 seconds by everyone autoattacking!" as a way of evangelizing the game.

Wooden Potatoes recently did a small set of streams where he showed that the personal story can be beat using nothing but a ranger pet in all but two instances. Do you think Arenanet looks at that and sees it as positive marketing for this game?"The game so easy you can beat the core story without using a single skill! The Ultimate CASUAL experience ! AHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

The closest I've ever seen is a developer or two proud of how accessible the game is.

You know who actually does talk about this game as if it shouldn't have any challenge or learning curve in general PvE ?The same ones who brigade against anything in this game with a skill floor.

I get that after HoT was received so poorly Arenanet started to play to the lowest common denominator out of economic necessity. But over the past two years the game has gone too far in the direction of the complainers and is at serious risk of alienating me....the average gamer.

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Dante.1763" said:On top of that, you cant market a game as Casual, and then have content in it that results in time wasted.

I wish you would have answered my /other/ questions i asked too instead of focusing in one sentence...woulda been nice as i was actually curious, but since you went on a mini rant that curiousness is now gone, and i really dont care anymore, congrats i suppose.

I tried finding a few of the interviews and amas where i remember them talking about the game being alot more "laidback" which really translates to casual.., but its hard to do given the time frame.

But i remember them nerfing the game even before it was released(Zhaitan battle for instance).

HoT failed publicly at least, perhaps not financially(which you address), but it showed ANET who was playing their game, up to that point they had vocal minority asking for harder and harder content on the forums and reddit, when it launched and it was difficult(hell even i had trouble for the first few weeks), the majority of players came out against it. ANET tracks what gets completed and if those numbers arent up to their standards they change things.

The only reason World bosses melt like they do is the idiotic levels of powercreep that exist between the two expansions because anet literally does not know how to balance their game, if they redid everything from the ground im fairly certain the game would be a much better experience, and this is something i wish they would do. Put a pause for a quarter on LS content and do a total rebalance, it would really benefit the games long term health, as much crying as it would illicit from the players.

As to being the average gamer, i dont think so, I can put hours into video games, but im probably far more average than you(outside of World of Tanks, GW1 and GW2 my most played game is Starmade, a voxel space building game with over 4k hours logged), I despise games like dark souls and bloodbourne do to the difficulty and i never play above normal difficulty in any of the many strategy games i enjoy playing for examples of why i say that. The difference is, i just dont cry when things get hard like the vocal minority of players do(the other side of the vocal minority that was asking for the game to be harder). The average gamer in GW2 is currently playing the game in silence because they are content.

I don't pve that much but i do like to drop into the various metas and find they are completed far too regularly and far too simply. The challenges should be made a bit more difficult and awkward to complete as they are currently exceptionally easy.

Or, you know, dial back the damn power creep thats kittened everything up

@"Dante.1763" said:On top of that, you cant market a game as Casual, and then have content in it that results in time wasted.

They never marketed the game as Casual, when it means easy/effortless. In fact even on release they marketed parts of the game like Orr meta events and dungeons as "hardcore". The casual part of the game was from the idea of no subscriptions and you can leave and come back without feeling like you missed something. Judging by Season 1, even THAT part of their marketing was a little bit misleading. This game was never marketed as being easy regarding gameplay, only easy to pick up, easy to leave, easy to come back, that's the casual part of their marketing.

Done tarir to get everything there, all auric wepons, both backs and the 100 wins title. never bothered with serpents ire. Didnt see anything warranting the time invested, especially with all the screeching about the difficulty.

@mickey.2816 said:Not that I hate the current iteration of HoT metas event: it is absolutely great for the zerg to work together to accomplish objectives with risks and rewards. Yet nowadays, the rewards are great but the risks are minimal. I have never seen Auric failure in years (unless it is 5 UTC in the morning) and DragonStand is a joke! Verdant Brink is as fine as it is, since the tier level is adequate for the effort. Sometimes, hilariously, I wish Auric could fail a bit for more chat drama or DragonStand marathon inside the tower. At least, the meta has something to be yearn for. In prime time those events turn into a braindead/boring click fest.

I am unsure why Devs decided to turn down the difficulty level of HoT metas. They have been the best events in the game before (even if people failed, the chat never got tired and thus the map was ALIVE!).

I have always hated map events that require huge numbers of players to complete. If there is going to be such a mechanic, it should certainly scale, and dramatically, such that if there's just a few people, they can reasonably complete it.