Personal story gotten very easy??

[Shaktidev.5679]

Although I've been playing awhile, I haven't done stories in a while. I leveled a new revenant for the fun and was amazed that there was literally no challenge to any of the storylines. I remember 'forging the pact', the timberline episode being difficult but boss died right away. The final Arah, victory or death story (which used to be a party experience) is now a breeze. Wow. Is that everyone's experience?

[LucianDK.8615]

Youve just gotten better at the game.

[Acheron.4731]

OP is OP...........nerf revenant

[Danikat.8537]

I know it's not everyone's experience because we get people on here periodically complaining that either specific bosses (usually ones with odd mechanics like the Mouth of Zhaitan), entire story steps or even the entire story is too difficult and the only way to complete it is in a group. Also Anet haven't made any changes to the personal story in a long time.

I think it's because GW2 was designed to be a game where player skill is important, knowing how the game works and how to use mechanics to your advantage counts for a lot even if you're playing an unfamiliar profession. So if you know what you're doing (and apply that knowledge!) it will be much easier.

[Chichimec.9364]

@LucianDK.8615 said:Youve just gotten better at the game.

For me it was exactly this. I did the personal story when I was still fairly new to the game and got clobbered when I tried to do the last chapter. It was more than a year later before I bothered to go back and finish it and yes, it was significantly easier. Both my game play and my gear were a lot better. Heck, the first time I did the Battle of Claw Island I barely made it through by the skin of my teeth. Now it's easy peasy. :)

[Mewcifer.5198]

@Chichimec.9364 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Youve just gotten better at the game.

For me it was exactly this. I did the personal story when I was still fairly new to the game and got clobbered when I tried to do the last chapter. It was more than a year later before I bothered to go back and finish it and yes, it was significantly easier. Both my game play and my gear were a lot better. Heck, the first time I did the Battle of Claw Island I barely made it through by the skin of my teeth. Now it's easy peasy. :)

Same here. After learning how to make a proper build and getting better gear I have had a lot less trouble with content that used to stump me.

[coso.9173]

To me it's a mix, there are pretty way bosses, and then one that has like 47284837382u simultaneous aoes that stun, knock, and kill me in 1 sec. I wish there was some kind of medium place.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

The personal story did receive a number of nerfs a few months after launch.

There's also better gear available sooner as of the NPE and similar feature patches that had updated the personal story rewards or added the level-up rewards. And veterans especially are more likely to either have, or easily afford, better gear as you level up. Veterans are also more likely to do story steps at a higher level (e.g., using an experience scroll or tome of knowledge to get a high level then doing a number of story instances at once).

Also due to the NPE, you cannot enter a personal story instance "underleveled" to create artificial difficulty intentionally or unintentionally.

And of course, having played the game for a while, you know skills better, and know which ones are better to equip and which are not.

[Sojourner.4621]

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Chichimec.9364 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:Youve just gotten better at the game.

For me it was exactly this. I did the personal story when I was still fairly new to the game and got clobbered when I tried to do the last chapter. It was more than a year later before I bothered to go back and finish it and yes, it was significantly easier. Both my game play and my gear were a lot better. Heck, the first time I did the Battle of Claw Island I barely made it through by the skin of my teeth. Now it's easy peasy. :)

Same here. After learning how to make a proper build and getting better gear I have had a lot less trouble with content that used to stump me.

I have to agree with the general consensus here. Even if we talk about strictly more recent events. I did my first run of PoF within about two weeks of release. I have since run the remaining 21 of my characters through. Each character was easier than the last, and now if I replay episodes on my first it is easier as well. It would potentially be easy to blame this on power creep or differences in the power of individual classes... but the number of characters I have run through means that I have run multiple of every class. The game gets easier as a matter of course not necessarily because something got nerfed or something else got stronger... but because we all know much better how to play what we've been given. Earth djinn now take seconds to kill when before they were sorta 50/50 on whether I even survived an encounter with them. One hydra joining a group of enemies roaming used to be a problem and now I can drop dead in to the center of the cluster of them below Temple of Kormir and take 6-7 at once. HoT really pointed out to a lot of us on its release just how easy all of core tyria was, and just how bad at the game we were.

[DonArkanio.6419]

GW2's Story content is awfully easy. That's for sure.I tried playing most random builds without any real rotation in mind and honestly didn't feel a difference. Just had more fun because I didn't 1shot every mob.

[Shaktidev.5679]

K, thanks all for the perspective. Sword/sword Revenant plus dwarf hammers does such awesome are damage, mobs do die very efficiently.

[TamX.1870]

@Shaktidev.5679 said:Although I've been playing awhile, I haven't done stories in a while. I leveled a new revenant for the fun and was amazed that there was literally no challenge to any of the storylines. I remember 'forging the pact', the timberline episode being difficult but boss died right away. The final Arah, victory or death story (which used to be a party experience) is now a breeze. Wow. Is that everyone's experience?

@LucianDK.8615 said:Youve just gotten better at the game.

My experience is identical to Lucian and several others in this thread: they felt difficult on first toon (gosh, I struggled with certain things which I wonder nowadays, that how it would even possible :D), but taking later toons through it has been easier and easier. Just like other content, too. When I stepped to HoT maps first time on my first toon, gosh they felt difficult. More recently, taking a new toon to HoT is more like a routine to get the HPs and such. And the time span in this is something like bit over a year, so not that much changes in class mechanics.

[FrigginPaco.4178]

Unfortunately, Anet or any other developer for that matter, has little insights as to how difficult game content will be for every last player. I personally feel like the story is a breeze to run through, but I've got minimum 300 hours on each class and a total of 5.7ish k hours over 7 years so... little in the way of PvE surprises me, let alone challenges me. Especially open world.

[Luthan.5236]

At release afaik story could have been done regardless of the level of the char. Now you unlock chapters every 10 level. Which makes it already feel easier cause you do the level 1-10 stuff at level 10, the level 11-20 stuff at level 20. (Before that you could at level 15 already do some of the stuff from the 2nd chapter - if you were good enough.)

Zhaitan got changed so it is soloable.

Also gear might affect the difficulty. With that the level also is important. Lower levels just don't have exotics. Full exo (or even ascended) level 80 with all skills unlocked that ignored all the story and then decides to do them ... will have it a lot easier. (Also more skills unlocked than intended - for the low level story parts where it is tuned to players that are just at that level having normal or max gear with blue colored names rarity and the amount of skills/traits you'd have at that level usually.)

[nerdshock.7406]

My main two rangers went through a large part of the personal story before the New Player Experience and I remember having a hard time. I actually didn't even finish 'Victory or Death' until after it was soloable. Being able to move on to the next chapter while not fully hitting the recommended level was possible at that time,. so yeah that probably was a huuuge part of it being so hard. I used to get caught up in the story and pushed forward while having a lower level.

Recently I created new characters and definitely found it a lot easier to go through the personal story missions. I also joined the boyfriend while he tried to complete 'The Battle of Claw Island' and I warned him about all the difficult parts and to get ready for a rough battle... but it was over pretty fast. I have to admit, I was a little shocked. Fortunately the expansions and later living world content offer more challenge, at least for me :3

[lare.5129]

my mate try to play gw2, do some story - and ask me - "oh, why so hard????"exp exp exp

[Dayra.7405]

@Sojourner.4621 said:just how easy all of core tyria was, and just how bad at the game we were.

7 years ago, core Tyria (esp. Orr & Dungeons) appeared more difficult, it got nerved a bit, but the main thing that made it so easy as it appears now, was the development of the game without change of core Tyria.Ascended Equipment, Elite-Skills, Masteries, Improvement of core-skills to balance to elite-skills, better food, stacking of conditions, ....All these improvements of char-power made the unchanged core Tyria as easy as it now appears.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Shaktidev.5679 said:Although I've been playing awhile, I haven't done stories in a while. I leveled a new revenant for the fun and was amazed that there was literally no challenge to any of the storylines. I remember 'forging the pact', the timberline episode being difficult but boss died right away. The final Arah, victory or death story (which used to be a party experience) is now a breeze. Wow. Is that everyone's experience?

You are right. With the strength of current meta builds and the power creep etc core missions have gotten boring. They are way too easy now. No challenge at all.

[Blocki.4931]

I think another thing many people overlook is the fact that back then you could rush through the entire story underleveled. Now it's segmented to a few instances and then you'd have to reach the next 10 levels before the next story step becomes available. That and easy access to gear we didn't have back then either.

That's no excuse for having easy instances right now though. But considering how many people cried how impossible to kill Joko was in his instance... oh well. The moment an instance requires a mechanic people will complain and said instance will be made easier.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

@Shaktidev.5679 said:K, thanks all for the perspective. Sword/sword Revenant plus dwarf hammers does such awesome are damage, mobs do die very efficiently.

That's what I use for my weekly key run. :)

[Rasimir.6239]

@Dayra.7405 said:

@Sojourner.4621 said:just how easy all of core tyria was, and just how bad at the game we were.

7 years ago, core Tyria (esp. Orr & Dungeons) appeared more difficult, it got nerved a bit, but the main thing that made it so easy as it appears now, was the development of the game without change of core Tyria.Ascended Equipment, Elite-Skills, Masteries, Improvement of core-skills to balance to elite-skills, better food, stacking of conditions, ....All these improvements of char-power made the unchanged core Tyria as easy as it now appears.Player skill really has a much larger impact than all of the technical changes combined.

My husband started playing last year. He is an experienced MMO player, but I was amazed at how much trouble he had (and still has) with parts of the story, including several of the core personal story instances. With my 7 years of experience at playing this game, I can easily play the same story instances on badly geared/traited characters and still have a much easier time than he does, simply because things like dodging, reacting to boons & conditions, knowing how and when to use invulnerability or how to utilize combos have become second nature to me in those seven years, while he was playing other games with different mechanics.

[Tommo Chocolate.5870]

This is my experience as well, and I agree that it has a lot to do with having more experience of the game now. One point that I don't think anyone else has mentioned is that I now know that it's best to prioritise gear and traits that increase damage - whereas when I first started I didn't know which stats were the most valuable so I tried to keep them fairly balanced, which led to having a character who didn't deal much damage but wasn't tough enough to survive easily.

I actually think this has quite a negative effect on replayability. In most games, replayability value for me usually comes from playing on a higher difficulty level. In GW2, not only are there no difficulty levels, but the game is actually easier each time you replay it!

[Dreamreaver.4908]

What they said. Also, at some point, max base stats jumped from 914ish to 1,000. That helped too.

[TheGrimm.5624]

Experience does go a long way. Have there been some buffs and nerfs, yes but understanding game mechanics I would say also players a big part.

[Ashantara.8731]

@TheGrimm.5624 said:Experience does go a long way. Have there been some buffs and nerfs, yes but understanding game mechanics I would say also players a big part.

Which there are zero of in the core campaign's story missions. At least no life-threatening ones. The pre-Claw Island personal story missions are fun for their diverse story-telling, but everything thereafter is truly a sad sight to behold these days.

@Blocki.4931 said:I think another thing many people overlook is the fact that back then you could rush through the entire story underleveled. Now it's segmented to a few instances and then you'd have to reach the next 10 levels before the next story step becomes available. That and easy access to gear we didn't have back then either.

:+1: