Stop power-creep, nerf the player.

Am I the only one that feels like the core game is too easy and that even HoT and PoF arent challanging enaugh? I Personally feel like the player is to powerfull, for instance quickness used to be rare, few and far between. These days Chronomancer maintains it permanatly. The dps, Weaver provides outclasses core elementalist compleatly. You can do 80% + then core ele if you know what youre doing.In addition comparing expansion based healing skills to core ones... its insane Well of Eternety is better than anything else by far.

I just feel this huge powercreep is making the core game unplayable (far to easy, even orr is compleatly a push over), and HoT areas which seemed hard to me before my elite spec. became a total what-ever.Not to mention the dungeons. They were allways fairly easy, but wipes were actually possible.So far I completed 9 difrent paths in 3 man groups. And im not saying we did, im saying we did it in standart times before HoT.

I just came back about 2 months ago, and I cannot get used to this. Is there any hard content in the game?

Ive been saying this for awhile now, the entire game needs to be re balanced from the ground up due to the major changes that have happened.

@Dante.1763 said:Ive been saying this for awhile now, the entire game needs to be re balanced from the ground up due to the major changes that have happened.

Glad im not the odd crazy person here... Even mounts I think were a bad addition. We already have waypoints, and with both the game which is really big starts seeming incredibly small.

If I am not mistaken, there is a quite good autocorrection feature here...

Aside from that, this game intends to be casual. Either because casual players are louder than you (and ask for nerfing everything) or this was the original ANet goal. Of course there are exceptions like raids in PvE, seems like something you should check :)

I don't think it is power-creep at all. It is just the natural progression of our characters. Not everything has to be hardcore requiring a group to complete anything. Sometimes easy is a good thing in a game.

I, too, feel we should arbitrarily punish the player base and snatch things away from them like a capricious demon

It would be difficult to nerf the player as neither GW2 nor Anet has direct access to our physical form...

;P

@OrbitalButt.5708 said:I, too, feel we should arbitrarily punish the player base and snatch things away from them like a capricious demon

Im trying to argue that the game is too easy. Reduce the amount of damage the players output, increase the health pool on enemies add more skills to them. I want this to make the open world and dungeons (long forgotten) more playable.

Which new hot/pof builds will make my warrior and ranger super OP in open world?

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:I don't think it is power-creep at all. It is just the natural progression of our characters. Not everything has to be hardcore requiring a group to complete anything. Sometimes easy is a good thing in a game.

I'd argue that game shifted from easy/casual to trivial in some cases, which I believe OP is talking about.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:I don't think it is power-creep at all. It is just the natural progression of our characters. Not everything has to be hardcore requiring a group to complete anything. Sometimes easy is a good thing in a game.

Yes, its what im saying. Most areas are compleatly pointless.

@tomaz.4978 said:

@OrbitalButt.5708 said:I, too, feel we should arbitrarily punish the player base and snatch things away from them like a capricious demon

That would kill the game. You saw what happened to HoT right when they tried that? Players left in groves. What you want is a death sentence for this game because the average player does not want that level of difficulty in the open world. If you want that level, I suggest you try raids and T4 fractals.

I think the veteran player base has pretty much gained ascended everything so it seems to be easy. I also think that people have over the years learned how to combine food/sigils/runes/utility to become the best they can be. To punish the veterans with nerfs because they are geared and a better player is to punish the incoming new players and drive them away since there is much content to cover rather than vanilla maps. Not a good business model imo if that were to happen. Too easy..... eye of the beholder

@usnedward.9023 said:I think the veteran player base has pretty much gained ascended everything so it seems to be easy. I also think that people have over the years learned how to combine food/sigils/runes/utility to become the best they can be. To punish the veterans with nerfs because they are geared and a better player is to punish the incoming new players and drive them away since there is much content to cover rather than vanilla maps. Not a good business model imo if that were to happen. Too easy..... eye of the beholder

Thats the issue. I have 3 set of ascended armor, alot of ascended weapons, plenty prestige skins and im no longer exicted by this game because its too easy. I think it would infact be very well excepted by veterans if open world and dungeon mobs would get alot stronger.

The 2 main things that bother me is the difrence between core and spec. professions. Elite specializations are in general over powered.and the other thing is

Dungeons are forgotten.

A huge leap would be already if the dungeons would get ALOT harder and the rewards would get ALOT bigger.

@tomaz.4978 said:

@usnedward.9023 said:I think the veteran player base has pretty much gained ascended everything so it seems to be easy. I also think that people have over the years learned how to combine food/sigils/runes/utility to become the best they can be.

To punish the veterans with nerfs because they are geared and a better player

is to punish the incoming new players and drive them away since there is much content to cover rather than vanilla maps. Not a good business model imo if that were to happen. Too easy..... eye of the beholder

Dont expect anything to ever happen in this game again with dungeons. Considering they fired their dungeon team, as much as i love dungeons and want to see them come back as something thats not overly dead, it wont happen.

And what of the new players who try out the core game? Leave the core game as it is.

challenge = pvp/wvw

There's this unpopular game known as Phantasy Star Online 2.The first mission you usually take on is called Subdue the Za Oodan.For anyone that isn't new, you can one shot everything in that mission. Literally. The mission also can be beaten in less than 20 seconds if you're fast enough.Majority that's been in the game would find it pointless, useless, and should be buffed.Newer players wouldn't be able to do as much and the mission is mainly set up for you to get a feel of the game slowly and gradually get a little bit stronger as you go.

Back to this game? Same thing.When I start on a character and let's say limit myself. No buying even the cheap items I can in the beginning city. Not buying even the 4 slot bags. No glider and no mounts.Why? Because you usually start off dead broke and of course have no level 80 to get the expansion additions. The game is not as "easy" and "useless".

As others say on here. When you have stuff and even equipped yourself with those "endgame" items. Certain places and certain areas will feel like a cakewalk. The way HoT and PoF is set up is not even close to the Core game. Some might never get the expansion. They might spend money, but maybe not on the expansions and maybe just stuff in the gem store.Just because you fine them pointless... that's not anyone's fault. Don't go into areas that you don't like or find pointless. I loathe Dredgehaunt so I never go there. or Lorner's Pass... or Tangled Depths unless I have to and so on.

How about nerfing your own self? I'm not even trying to joke.There's people that play games for "challenge" to the point that they would try to play a game with low armour, no gear (like some people I've seen with Dead Souls) and stuff like in Pokémon known as Nuzlocke (it has an e in it right...? I'm not into that).You can try some of those areas with level 80 NPC gear and no expansion stuff meaning no elite skills or anything. Maybe you might enjoy those areas again?

Not everywhere or everything is catered to everyone and you shouldn't try to change something because of it.Warrior isn't for me, but that doesn't mean I think they should remove it from the game. Or Engineer. or Guardian.

@tomaz.4978 said:I just came back about 2 months ago, and I cannot get used to this. Is there any hard content in the game?

Dungeons, Fractals, and Raids. Take your pick.

@tomaz.4978 said:

@OrbitalButt.5708 said:I, too, feel we should arbitrarily punish the player base and snatch things away from them like a capricious demon

No. That would make fights take longer, be more tedious, and less fun. And giving things a lot of HP is one of the cheapest and laziest ways to make something harder (which they already do anyways to an extent). And you're not taking into consideration players that don't have HoT or PoF, who would be punished simply because you thought the core zones weren't hard enough. I almost want to dismiss this as a troll thread.

It's important to remember that GW2 never intended to be a "casual" experience. The goals at launch were that you could play your class in all the content, but also that content like dungeons would actually be quite difficult. The current state of the game isn't the result of ANet losing or changing their vision, but rather ANet not really grasping the limitations of the game they built. What's happened is that they've had power creep come in more and more steadily, and while they've updated enemies, the players have been far stronger than open world foes for a long time.

If ANet were to do a massive overhaul of the engine, it would lead to a very different game. I would be in favor of difficulty being closer to what it was at launch, and even a bit harder. The chance of failure at PvE is what makes PvE content interesting. It's part of the reason T4 fractals and Raids work as well as they do, all things considered. At this point, though, I'm not sure ANet considers it a priority to rebalance the game to that extent. They have, however, been pretty good about making existing content more engaging, with all their enemy types and diverse enemy packs we see in PoF. I hope this trend, at the very least, continues.

Part of the problem, too, is that open world content struggles with being meaningful. It doesn't make sense to have every fight be a life or death situation if it is inherently meaningless. If open world content were more meaningful (say, enemies gave better/more drops on average, combat and events had more weight and world-building elements to them, etc.) then it would make sense to increase the difficulty.

Overall, if ANet wants to reclaim the game as having varying degrees of difficulty across the board, they need to own up and do it, rather than being afraid of losing players. Yes, some players might quit because the game is too hard. But sometimes the well-being and integrity of the game is more important than player retention, and it will be better for the games health for it to spend more time teaching players the intricacies of the system and then rewarding skillful play than it will being a loot pinata for players just looking for the next shiny toy.