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In your opinion, is GW2 too hard?


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@Ashen.2907 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:I can go afk on my ranger and come back to find that, without a single ounce of effort on my part, I have earned gold in events that spawned on top of me. It doesnt get much easier than succeeding with zero effort.

Yeah, that's against the ToS, so....

Nope.

It is not against the ToS to have to go to the door to pick up an Amazon package, or to the bathroom, etc. The pizza guy seems to purposefully time his arrival to coincide with in game events.

Good luck with that.

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Most of it is fine... but they you have the stupid instanced events and missions in the crappy Living World series. I made the mistake of finishing the Kourna / Palawa Joko crap just now and spent the whole time shouting at the screen because it is crap, uses really cheap tactics and is boring as hell.

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For years, games developers have stated that the ideal game is easy to learn but difficult to master. Sadly, I have to say that I believe GW2 is HARD to learn and nigh impossible to master - because regardless of how much you play it, (in competitive modes) you still need the reactions of an alleycat, incredible foresight, knowledge of every class and ability in the game and how to counter or avoid it. Call that "Skilled play" if you like, but for me that's the whole point. Those aren't things that you just pick up by dint of playtime alone - this is why lots of perfetly adequate WvW players are just crap at the combat. It's simply too difficult for most players.

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This is a trick question, while I think there is some content that is way too hard (raids) the rest of the game is way too easy, I mean fractals could have given us some challenge the problem is that they force you to start on the lowest levels and by the time you got to the harder parts you already know how to do them by heart so it's still easy. the open world is very easy. maybe the strikes are a good step forward, you can die but you can learn the mechanics and eventually finish it. I have never had any issue doing open world content, it was always too easy, maybe if there is no one around it get's a bit harder.

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@"Amaranthe.3578" said:Either way if you don't understand your build there's no point playing a RPG.

This may be shocking news for you: In the old days before the megaservers, there were a lot of players role-playing in GW2, and they did it even without fighting. And a role-player would probably ask "is staff the appropriate weapon for my ele" but not "how much dps can I make with a staff". At that time, role-players in GW2 usually did not mean DPS, healer, tank, support, etc. when they talked about roles.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:Neither of the options is true. In fact, the game is both too easy and too hard at the same time. There's either very easy content, or content that's supposed to challenge better players (although the skill difference gap means, that for some top players even that content is very easy), but there's practically nothing in the middle.I agree it's both at the same time. I think part of the skill gap is that the game caters mostly to casual players (which is fair enough if that's your main player base) but have made character builds too complex for such players. The reason I say this is that if it was more transparent and straightforward and doesn't make you choose between flavour and build (weapon choices do that), then I think a lot more casuals would take an interest in at least getting somewhat better.

But all in all the the same content can be too hard and too easy depending on who you are and it seems it would make more sense to make sure the game systems don't add to exacerbate that as much as they do.

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Let me explain. I know multiple people about to quit over making strike missions part of the area achievement. It is simply to hard for them. I have heard a lot of complaints about Drakka as well. My fiance hates it.

I raid, but if my fiance quits because the things they use to enjoy are locked behind new harder content, I will go where my fiance goes and that will create a ripple affect.

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@Josiah.2967 said:I have heard a lot of complaints about Drakkar as well.

I'm seeing entirely too many failures on this boss. It's still a boring meat-sack that, if not down to 25% in the first 5 minutes or so, is pointless to continue.Which is a horrible feeling for a half-hour encounter that shows up once every two hours.

The boss isn't hard, it's just a statistical HP-sponge for no reason.

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@Rauderi.8706 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:I have heard a lot of complaints about Drakkar as well.

I'm seeing entirely too many failures on this boss. It's still a boring meat-sack that, if not down to 25% in the first 5 minutes or so, is pointless to continue.Which is a horrible feeling for a half-hour encounter that shows up once every
two hours
.

The boss isn't
hard
, it's just a statistical HP-sponge for no reason.

As we used to call gw2 bosses back in 2012-2014. Gifs with huge health pool...

Great animations with tons of health and nothing more.

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I think PvE can stand to be a bit more punishing tbh. There is something to be said for making players have to actually think about a build or an mob even in open world content. I remember the initial frustration in GW1 when party wiping right out of a gate into the world because I pulled too much hate at once, but it felt ten times better once I learned how to tackle that content as well. I'm not saying there needs to be a huge ramp up on the lower level maps, but a slight noticeable increase to the PvE difficulty could help stop the "shut off my brain and roll through this area" that has plagued this game for forever now. It might make people less apprehensive to do raids, etc later on.

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@"PookieDaWombat.6209" said:I think PvE can stand to be a bit more punishing tbh. There is something to be said for making players have to actually think about a build or an mob even in open world content. I remember the initial frustration in GW1 when party wiping right out of a gate into the world because I pulled too much hate at once, but it felt ten times better once I learned how to tackle that content as well. I'm not saying there needs to be a huge ramp up on the lower level maps, but a slight noticeable increase to the PvE difficulty could help stop the "shut off my brain and roll through this area" that has plagued this game for forever now. It might make people less apprehensive to do raids, etc later on.Considering that MMOs these days tend to house more casual players than ever before, I think this will be detrimental to the player base. An increase in difficulty doesn't result in people taking up the challenge, but rather complain about it and then avoid the content if it doesn't change or leave the game entirely.

What GW1 had was companions that could do a lot of the work for you and a character build system that was far easier to understand for players. I think that before talking about harder content, they need to look at how to get casual players on board first. And I think you'll agree that a lot of people have sucky builds and don't use their characters to the fullest or anywhere near it, but that's the bigger problem I think that needs to be addressed first. Not by making content harder but by making the character build aspects more transparent and direct. Personally my eyes already start rolling when I see durations of skills of 1.25 seconds...I mean really? Micromanagement to the hundredth of seconds is not for casual oriented players. And there really is too much going with this system for most people I suspect.

I keep referring to it but Andrew Gray, in a sticky here, said that raids only attract a small group of players. So that tells me that the amount of people who really are interested in more challenging content cannot be that big. I'm sure there may be some open worlders that would like a bit more challenge but for any one of those you can probably find ten who don't want that. And so it makes more sense to look at why that is. Why do so many players have crappy builds and use mostly skill 1?

My point is that the tools that players have been given to create their character builds are too confusing and intricate for a lot of people. I'm sure that more hardcore players find these things easy and enjoy how it works, but I've got the distinct feeling that those people are not the majority... by far.

And though in other MMOs I've raided quite a bit, I don't here and joined the casual crowd. I don't like how it works here and I think that GW1 in that respect had a far superior set up because it was much simpler and more direct in how it worked but still allowed for a lot of variation and discovery of what worked and what didn't. And it made it easier for casual players to follow that. But the game was also based in instanced zones and structured groups, including heroes/mercenaries. GW2 is set up entirely differently but as much as that has certain advantages it also has downsides. In GW1 you could have normal zones and Hard Mode zones. In GW2 you have one type of zone that has to work for casuals and hardcore players alike. Not saying it's impossible to do that but let's say they certainly have been struggling with it from the start and it's not been resolved so far.

My guess is that if they raised the overall difficulty of open world, it will chase a good amount of casual players away. You might like that until the day the game shuts down due to a lack of players. So I'd rather make it easier for casual players to have better builds and use more skills. At the moment some people might think it's easy enough, but I don't think it is or we would see fewer sucky builds. It's better to let people raise themselves up easier than set higher expectations for them. That used to work 15-20 years ago. Times have changed I think.

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@"Gehenna.3625" said:Considering that MMOs these days tend to house more casual players than ever before, I think this will be detrimental to the player base. An increase in difficulty doesn't result in people taking up the challenge, but rather complain about it and then avoid the content if it doesn't change or leave the game entirely.

What GW1 had was companions that could do a lot of the work for you and a character build system that was far easier to understand for players. I think that before talking about harder content, they need to look at how to get casual players on board first. And I think you'll agree that a lot of people have sucky builds and don't use their characters to the fullest or anywhere near it, but that's the bigger problem I think that needs to be addressed first. Not by making content harder but by making the character build aspects more transparent and direct. Personally my eyes already start rolling when I see durations of skills of 1.25 seconds...I mean really? Micromanagement to the hundredth of seconds is not for casual oriented players. And there really is too much going with this system for most people I suspect.

I keep referring to it but Andrew Gray, in a sticky here, said that raids only attract a small group of players. So that tells me that the amount of people who really are interested in more challenging content cannot be that big. I'm sure there may be some open worlders that would like a bit more challenge but for any one of those you can probably find ten who don't want that. And so it makes more sense to look at why that is. Why do so many players have crappy builds and use mostly skill 1?

My point is that the tools that players have been given to create their character builds are too confusing and intricate for a lot of people. I'm sure that more hardcore players find these things easy and enjoy how it works, but I've got the distinct feeling that those people are not the majority... by far.

And though in other MMOs I've raided quite a bit, I don't here and joined the casual crowd. I don't like how it works here and I think that GW1 in that respect had a far superior set up because it was much simpler and more direct in how it worked but still allowed for a lot of variation and discovery of what worked and what didn't. And it made it easier for casual players to follow that. But the game was also based in instanced zones and structured groups, including heroes/mercenaries. GW2 is set up entirely differently but as much as that has certain advantages it also has downsides. In GW1 you could have normal zones and Hard Mode zones. In GW2 you have one type of zone that has to work for casuals and hardcore players alike. Not saying it's impossible to do that but let's say they certainly have been struggling with it from the start and it's not been resolved so far.

My guess is that if they raised the overall difficulty of open world, it will chase a good amount of casual players away. You might like that until the day the game shuts down due to a lack of players. So I'd rather make it easier for casual players to have better builds and use more skills. At the moment some people might think it's easy enough, but I don't think it is or we would see fewer sucky builds. It's better to let people raise themselves up easier than set higher expectations for them. That used to work 15-20 years ago. Times have changed I think.

I agree to an extent regarding what could be addressed by Anet, but I think that part of the problem here is that there are so many players that simply hit one over and over while on cruddy builds because Anet breeds that behavior from day one in the game. If all you get from the core game (and i mean from level 1 to level 80 and fighting Zhaitan) is a game that can be "beaten" on a ranger using pet command skills (WP did a whole series doing just this), that is a major problem. It means there is literally zero reason to ever learn how to build or play your character even moderately well. Then when they get into HoT content that might be a bit more punishing, they don't have the toolset to do it well, and more-so feel that end game content like fractals and raids are way out of their league, and they aren't completely wrong since that stuff is geared toward people that wanted harder content to begin with. While i personally don't do raids, its not because its inherently difficult (especially once a meta is established), but because it relies almost entirely on a meta and is only hard if the group doing it doesn't know what they are doing.

No, what I was suggesting was making the PvE experience more meaningful from day one. If I go to a part of the map that is two levels above my current level, I want to feel that. I want there to be a reason to kite and dodge even at early levels. Make me have to pull an enemy or allow me to use more than just my one or two skill. Roflstomping the spiders in the orchard at level 3 shouldn't be a nothing burger. I should worry about pulling 3 or more spiders/bats at that point, but I don't. I'm not calling for things in these areas to kill new players in frustrating ways, but they need to have more impact than just being a spot to quickly grab xp to rocket me to level 10. I remember when the game first dropped and my wife and I were exploring and happened to go to the garrison on our level 4 toons. Some level 6 centaurs rolled up on us and made us rethink blindly running out into that field where they could CC and really hurt us. We had to regroup and really watch how we fought in that area, but we in turn learned a bit more about our skills and more importantly how to fight harder enemies.

If we are saying , however, that PvE needs to stay they bastion of the uber casual that doesn't have to even try to learn their class well or barely learn them, then we can't be surprised that the number of people bored with the game or unwilling to try the endgame content due to actual difficulty is so much larger than those of us that enjoy more challenging content.

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@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

@"Gehenna.3625" said:Considering that MMOs these days tend to house more casual players than ever before, I think this will be detrimental to the player base. An increase in difficulty doesn't result in people taking up the challenge, but rather complain about it and then avoid the content if it doesn't change or leave the game entirely.

What GW1 had was companions that could do a lot of the work for you and a character build system that was far easier to understand for players. I think that before talking about harder content, they need to look at how to get casual players on board first. And I think you'll agree that a lot of people have sucky builds and don't use their characters to the fullest or anywhere near it, but that's the bigger problem I think that needs to be addressed first. Not by making content harder but by making the character build aspects more transparent and direct. Personally my eyes already start rolling when I see durations of skills of 1.25 seconds...I mean really? Micromanagement to the hundredth of seconds is not for casual oriented players. And there really is too much going with this system for most people I suspect.

I keep referring to it but Andrew Gray, in a sticky here, said that raids only attract a small group of players. So that tells me that the amount of people who really are interested in more challenging content cannot be that big. I'm sure there may be some open worlders that would like a bit more challenge but for any one of those you can probably find ten who don't want that. And so it makes more sense to look at why that is. Why do so many players have crappy builds and use mostly skill 1?

My point is that the tools that players have been given to create their character builds are too confusing and intricate for a lot of people. I'm sure that more hardcore players find these things easy and enjoy how it works, but I've got the distinct feeling that those people are not the majority... by far.

And though in other MMOs I've raided quite a bit, I don't here and joined the casual crowd. I don't like how it works here and I think that GW1 in that respect had a far superior set up because it was much simpler and more direct in how it worked but still allowed for a lot of variation and discovery of what worked and what didn't. And it made it easier for casual players to follow that. But the game was also based in instanced zones and structured groups, including heroes/mercenaries. GW2 is set up entirely differently but as much as that has certain advantages it also has downsides. In GW1 you could have normal zones and Hard Mode zones. In GW2 you have one type of zone that has to work for casuals and hardcore players alike. Not saying it's impossible to do that but let's say they certainly have been struggling with it from the start and it's not been resolved so far.

My guess is that if they raised the overall difficulty of open world, it will chase a good amount of casual players away. You might like that until the day the game shuts down due to a lack of players. So I'd rather make it easier for casual players to have better builds and use more skills. At the moment some people might think it's easy enough, but I don't think it is or we would see fewer sucky builds. It's better to let people raise themselves up easier than set higher expectations for them. That used to work 15-20 years ago. Times have changed I think.

I agree to an extent regarding what could be addressed by Anet, but I think that part of the problem here is that there are so many players that simply hit one over and over while on cruddy builds because Anet breeds that behavior from day one in the game. If all you get from the core game (and i mean from level 1 to level 80 and fighting Zhaitan) is a game that can be "beaten" on a ranger using pet command skills (WP did a whole series doing just this), that is a major problem. It means there is literally zero reason to ever learn how to build or play your character even moderately well. Then when they get into HoT content that might be a bit more punishing, they don't have the toolset to do it well, and more-so feel that end game content like fractals and raids are way out of their league, and they aren't completely wrong since that stuff is geared toward people that wanted harder content to begin with. While i personally don't do raids, its not because its inherently difficult (especially once a meta is established), but because it relies almost entirely on a meta and is only hard if the group doing it doesn't know what they are doing.

No, what I was suggesting was making the PvE experience more meaningful from day one. If I go to a part of the map that is two levels above my current level, I want to feel that. I want there to be a reason to kite and dodge even at early levels. Make me have to pull an enemy or allow me to use more than just my one or two skill. Roflstomping the spiders in the orchard at level 3 shouldn't be a nothing burger. I should worry about pulling 3 or more spiders/bats at that point, but I don't. I'm not calling for things in these areas to kill new players in frustrating ways, but they need to have more impact than just being a spot to quickly grab xp to rocket me to level 10. I remember when the game first dropped and my wife and I were exploring and happened to go to the garrison on our level 4 toons. Some level 6 centaurs rolled up on us and made us rethink blindly running out into that field where they could CC and really hurt us. We had to regroup and really watch how we fought in that area, but we in turn learned a bit more about our skills and more importantly how to fight harder enemies.

If we are saying , however, that PvE needs to stay they bastion of the uber casual that doesn't have to even try to learn their class well or barely learn them, then we can't be surprised that the number of people bored with the game or unwilling to try the endgame content due to actual difficulty is so much larger than those of us that enjoy more challenging content.

Yeah I get what you're saying and I think we essentially agree. The slight difference in my views is perhaps that I think that making content harder at this point in the game will not have the desired effect, nor doing things like Strike Missions. Personally I feel that the character building needs to be made more accessible so more players will at least have decent builds that they feel they have some control over. That then allows content difficulty to go up a notch because the gap will be closer.

I think that if ArenaNet want to just add medium content as a stepping stone, they are forgetting that the first stepping stone is character builds and not difficulty. There was a time when difficulty was seen as a challenge to overcome by most players in a game. Now it's an annoyance that people don't want to deal with cause it costs effort and they just want to have fun. My situation is different in the sense that I've done endgame raiding in other games but I don't like how character builds work here and so I don't engage in it cause I frankly don't want to raid if I don't like how characters play. That's why I prefer being casual and making builds with weapons I like rather than the best choices. I could do better but as I find the way traits, skill sets, stats sets etc are handled in GW2 boring and restrictive, I chose to be casual here....though I do still put some thought in it and use a lot more than skill 1 :)

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@Gehenna.3625 said:Personally I feel that the character building needs to be made more accessible so more players will at least have decent builds that they feel they have some control over. That then allows content difficulty to go up a notch because the gap will be closer.For that, Anet would need to severely reduce player choice in stat/traits/skills selection. Or make those choices far less relevant.

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I only say too hard from my experience, which is not much.I'm still fairly new so I'm working towards completing the living story, still on season 4 so I haven't done any of the newer stuff yet. However, it seems that in every single instance there is at least 1 battle or feature that gets me killed or reset dozens of times. I'm a suuuper casual player and I'm really enjoying the story, but it's hard to enjoy it when I'm on the verge of closing the whole game during every single chapter out of frustration. Admittedly the fault is on my end, because I have absolutely TERRIBLE ping and there's nothing I can really do about it. Because of that, I'm just kinda screwed in terms of timing, which is basically a necessity in PvE. Other than that I just kinda suck at combat LOL.I do genuinely love this game and I know the majority of people breeze through it like a feather, but in my personal experience it's too hard to even get through the living story-- in fact I almost always ignore the achievements because there's no way I can complete them.I've never done any raids or fractals... whatever those even are... and based on some of the replies I've seen I don't think I'll be set to try them any time soon with the way this game is going for me LOLAnother thing in regards to the difficulty of this game is some of the ridiculous requirements for unlocking things. My main example right now would be the Griffon. By now most people are done with the Elon Riverlands, however there is some group event that I have to do to complete part of the collection. The thing is, I can never find anyone to help me get through it since everyone is past this stage of the game. I've given up on trying to get the Griffon for the time being because of that, and also because of the price, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon.I'm not looking for replies telling me to "get good" or to tell me why I'm wrong, I'm just telling it as it is for me. Like I said, I love this game. I don't see myself leaving any time soon, I feel too far in to stop now haha. This is the first real MMO that I've played so it kind of feels like home to me in a way. I just wish there was at least a difficulty option for living world since the game is very unforgiving towards my ping issues. Yes the game is too hard FOR ME, hence the title of the thread is asking for my opinion. I'm aware it is cake for like 90% of its players, but I just happen to be in that bottom 10%.

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@AquarIan Z.4351 said:

Another thing in regards to the difficulty of this game is some of the ridiculous requirements for unlocking things. My main example right now would be the Griffon. By now most people are done with the Elon Riverlands, however there is some group event that I have to do to complete part of the collection. The thing is, I can never find anyone to help me get through it since everyone is past this stage of the game. I've given up on trying to get the Griffon for the time being because of that, and also because of the price, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon.Ask for help, especially when the dailies cycle into Elon.

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I would have NEVER played this game if I knew it was so full of jumping puzzles. After the last update that is so full of bugs it is making other games look good. I certainly am not spending nay more money on this game which depends on jumping puzzles and repeat 20 times for an achievement. Those who wanted it harder probably already had their achievements and wanted it harder for others.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Personally I feel that the character building needs to be made more accessible so more players will at least have decent builds that they feel they have some control over. That then allows content difficulty to go up a notch because the gap will be closer.For that, Anet would need to severely reduce player choice in stat/traits/skills selection. Or make those choices far less relevant.I think that some reduction in choice but also clearer choices when it comes to traits and such and weapon choice being less relevant would be involved yes. Otherwise you'll never get a lot of people on board in the matter of improving.

So people need to either accept that there will be a big gap between casual players and more hardcore players and accept open world content will be easy or things need to change so more people are willing to get on board in getting better. But some people will likely not be happy with those changes.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

Another thing in regards to the difficulty of this game is some of the ridiculous requirements for unlocking things. My main example right now would be the Griffon. By now most people are done with the Elon Riverlands, however there is some group event that I have to do to complete part of the collection. The thing is, I can never find anyone to help me get through it since everyone is past this stage of the game. I've given up on trying to get the Griffon for the time being because of that, and also because of the price, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon.Ask for help, especially when the dailies cycle into Elon.

Ask for help and use mentor tag (arrow icon in the upper left corner of your UI). If I need help with anything I just put on mentor tag and people come. If you also ask in /map you will get people for sure.The only step in the Griffon collection that might need some more organisation is the Facet bounty but for that one you have legendary bounty trains that are active pretty much all the time. You can also ask commander if he will do Facet and I'm sure you will get it soon. I got legendary achiv way before all the champ ones. And for the champs I just put on mentor tags and done them almost without fail. Helps if there is a daily bounty on that map.

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@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:I agree to an extent regarding what could be addressed by Anet, but I think that part of the problem here is that there are so many players that simply hit one over and over while on cruddy builds because Anet breeds that behavior from day one in the game.

Honest question: WHY is that a problem? If the game is designed for those players and that's how those players play it ... what is actually the problem?

Let's be clear. It's not the players that decide what kind of game this is, it's Anet. Either by luck or by intent, Anet created a game (at the beginning at least) that appealed to significant number of people, enough to make a go of this game for a long time. Allowing people to faceroll 1111111 WAS part of that formula.

Maybe people have baggage from other MMOs or their own ideas of what should be ... but the easy play IS part of what made GW2 successful. Clearly, that appealed to more people than what many other people's own ideas of what the game should be actually is. So either those ideas are missing something, or other parts of the game were SO good that people suffered the 11111111 to play it. I'm thinking it's the former because frankly, GW2 game immersion and story is typical and predictable.

Do not underestimate the desire for soccer parents with more money than time to fund a game they can only play a few hours a week with their '1' key.

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