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No, HoT should not be further nerfed. It is not meant to be the regular power fantasy.


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@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@"Ultramex.1506" said:People just need to get better, no! I'm not saying this as an elite, but someone who is willing to learn from past mistake to improve, dumbing everything down further won't encourage growth.Having trouble beating an enemy? See what you did wrong and learn the enemy attack pattern, for example: smokescale! Either block or double evade and when it use smoke just lure it out!Although i must say, enemies in HoT are easier with range than melee, except for that frog which has been nerfed

There is a large segment of the populace (large, not majority..) that likes to be able to stand still in the game in the middle of areas with enemy creatures without dying while they [fill in blank with alt-tab, message friends, check map etc]

People attach a large significant to dying in game. Because of course reasons.

There are complaints about the aggro range in PoF maps....

It truly seems as if people only want to auto attack and not worry about mechanics or focus.

They just want to move on to the next area.

PoF aggro range is a bit of pet peeve of mine. It's not at all about difficulty. It's that you can never get out of combat in PoF. There's always another stupid sand eel or forged sniper 2000 units away that for some reason decided it wants to come after you. I don't want things "easier", but I also don't want to be forced to fight 20 mobs due to chain aggro every time I stop to harvest a node!

I mean I get it. But being an old school RPG player I am conditioned to go to a town or outpost if I want a break..

Even as an old school RPG player, I never had a constant, continual string of fighting without even a small break. I'm not talking about sorting through the loot and such. Just one fight after another fight after another fight after another fight after..... Not in my RPG experience.

But do you remember being able to just sit in the map, outside of a town or outpost, and do nothing?

Maybe I just played bad ones lmao..

I am not trying to besmirch people for their thoughts... And maybe it has come across like that, it’s just cities, waypoints, etc are there for breaks...

i played lots of ragnarok online, you can definitely find a safe spot or corner somewhere out in the openworld or in a dungeon where you can sit down to regen your HP and SP (if you were solo and weren't a healer or didn't have a healer party mate) this is also a good time to take a short, 5 to 10minutes break from playing.

there was still danger though, since mob spawns aren't fixed to a location (the spawns are fixed in number but can spawn anywhere/randomly in the whole map or a wide/predefined area), they weren't anchored to their spawns like in modern mmorpgs (they can freely roam or walk around once spawned), and a few can teleport as part of their idle so there will still be a chance some monster would walk up to you while your character was resting/regen-ing.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@Cerioth.7062 said:Honestly most of the issues described here would be fixed by introducing better core game tutorialization that forces you to learn your abilities and counter mobs.Perhaps, so, but I don't really like things that are 'forced'. /shrug

Why even bother playing the game if you do not want to learn its mechanics? How is the game going to make you learn gameplay if you can indefinitely avoid it?

Obviously it does not have to be a per character thing, can just be once per account thing that you can repeat as needed.

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@Cerioth.7062 said:

@Cerioth.7062 said:Honestly most of the issues described here would be fixed by introducing better core game tutorialization that forces you to learn your abilities and counter mobs.Perhaps, so, but I don't really like things that are 'forced'. /shrug

Why even bother playing the game if you do not want to learn its mechanics? How is the game going to make you learn gameplay if you can indefinitely avoid it?

Obviously it does not have to be a per character thing, can just be once per account thing that you can repeat as needed.If I were to struggle with content, then I would be forced to learn on my own. Having something in place that forces that on me when the game decides to is not something that I would prefer.
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@"Hashberry.4510" said:HoT has been nerfed significantly by mounts. Too much so, I wish the pocket raptors would tear you down if you were cocky enough to charge through them.

I remember when HoT came out and I first saw pocket raptors (I only recently turned on the feature where enemy names are shown in red). I thought "what cute little guys" and the next second I was dead.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Ultramex.1506" said:People just need to get better, no! I'm not saying this as an elite, but someone who is willing to learn from past mistake to improve, dumbing everything down further won't encourage growth.Having trouble beating an enemy? See what you did wrong and learn the enemy attack pattern, for example: smokescale! Either block or double evade and when it use smoke just lure it out!Although i must say, enemies in HoT are easier with range than melee, except for that frog which has been nerfed

There is a large segment of the populace (large, not majority..) that likes to be able to stand still in the game in the middle of areas with enemy creatures without dying while they [fill in blank with alt-tab, message friends, check map etc]

People attach a large significant to dying in game. Because of course reasons.

There are complaints about the aggro range in PoF maps....

It truly seems as if people only want to auto attack and not worry about mechanics or focus.

They just want to move on to the next area.

PoF aggro range is a bit of pet peeve of mine. It's not at all about difficulty. It's that you can never get out of combat in PoF. There's always another stupid sand eel or forged sniper 2000 units away that for some reason decided it wants to come after you. I don't want things "easier", but I also don't want to be forced to fight 20 mobs due to chain aggro every time I stop to harvest a node!

I mean I get it. But being an old school RPG player I am conditioned to go to a town or outpost if I want a break..

Even as an old school RPG player, I never had a constant, continual string of fighting without even a small break. I'm not talking about sorting through the loot and such. Just one fight after another fight after another fight after another fight after..... Not in my RPG experience.

You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself...

Agreed. Never getting out of combat: never being able to have your health pool regen, never getting rid of debuffs, and in PoF getting one movement debuff after another, always having multiple mobs on you, ... These are the reasons I loathe The Desolation. I hate it less now that I have mounts, but I still hate it. 1/10 would not access again if not for map completion and bounties.

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I soloed all of pof and hot.just gotta pick the right class as not all of thrm are up to the task. I main Reaper in pve so its all a real cakewalk i hadent been in downstate on my necro since HoT released till today actually. And it happened in drizzlewood coast as i didnt know what i was getting into as it was my first time on that map and the mobs are super tanky. But played the last few hours and once again its pretty cakewalk.I would say second place would be power renegade. It has tons of sustain as well

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The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

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@kharmin.7683 said:The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

tbh i use builds meant for fractals and the only time i actually had to change a build in anywhere in PvE was when joining the Mad King Labyrinth Festival farm-trains to focus on mobility traits and doing less damage to allow everyone to get credit on kills/events

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@"kharmin.7683" said:The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

Edited to add: You're the post I quoted so that I could expand on your points.

Especially when the entire PoF content has to be played on three different characters, in order to progress the banners achievement - which is locked behind selecting three different factions to support when in Ammoon. It is beyond silly to expect those three characters to be out of a list of only two viable options.

Additionally, the story is a key point of difference for GW2. There is an expectation that players will play the story. Statements like "l2p" miss this point. The end-game content, which is specifically designed to be difficult, is raids (and fashion wars). The story should be easily achievable for casual players with any build/profession.

Making the story difficult to finish means that a key selling point of the game is restricted to purchases who will "l2p". As well as raids, PvP and WvW cater to the higher end of players who have "l2p". When there is an order of magnitude difference in DPS between many casual players and the raiders, even having the story difficulty pitched at the mid-point between these two ends creates problems for most players. You don't alienate most of your players if you want to stay in business.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@Cerioth.7062 said:Honestly most of the issues described here would be fixed by introducing better core game tutorialization that forces you to learn your abilities and counter mobs.Perhaps, so, but I don't really like things that are 'forced'. /shrug

Why even bother playing the game if you do not want to learn its mechanics? How is the game going to make you learn gameplay if you can indefinitely avoid it?

Obviously it does not have to be a per character thing, can just be once per account thing that you can repeat as needed.If I were to struggle with content, then I would be forced to learn on my own. Having something in place that forces that on me when the game decides to is not something that I would prefer.

Clearly this is not the case, because posts about "x content is too hard" keep popping up all over the place, instead of players actually learning what their mechanics do.

Lack of proper tutorialization is also the reason why people struggle to get into raids.

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@Croc.1978 said:Yes, difficulty in HoT is fine as it is.

That said, there's really nothing that prepares players for what awaits them in the green hell before they enter it. They probably intended Silverwastes to be that preparation, but it doesn't work. And nerfing Orr post-release was a mistake.

I guess the best advise you could give new players now is:

  • play Orr
  • play Silverwastes (not RIBA) for a while
  • start PoF and get at least Raptor with canyon jump
  • enter Verdant Brink

I think the best advice is toncomplete pof and play hot as a prequel.

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@Hesione.9412 said:

@"kharmin.7683" said:The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

Edited to add: You're the post I quoted so that I could expand on your points.

Especially when the entire PoF content has to be played on three different characters, in order to progress the banners achievement - which is locked behind selecting three different factions to support when in Ammoon. It is beyond silly to expect those three characters to be out of a list of only two viable options.

Additionally, the story is a key point of difference for GW2. There is an expectation that players will play the story. Statements like "l2p" miss this point. The end-game content, which is specifically designed to be difficult, is raids (and fashion wars). The story should be easily achievable for casual players with any build/profession.

Making the story difficult to finish means that a key selling point of the game is restricted to purchases who will "l2p". As well as raids, PvP and WvW cater to the higher end of players who have "l2p". When there is an order of magnitude difference in DPS between many casual players and the raiders, even having the story difficulty pitched at the mid-point between these two ends creates problems for most players. You don't alienate most of your players if you want to stay in business.

I agree more with kharmin here actually. As for stories, I believe they should be achievable by all professions (though not necessarily easily as they have always been), but certainly not with every build (as they arguably have been regarding the difficulty, or rather lack thereof).

One of the core promise that GW2 has made and been successfully keeping since launch, is to allow players to modify their builds easily, so that players can switch between different tactics to deal with what they are facing. And now with the build templates, it is so easy for players to create new builds specifically for what they have problem to tackle down, and then switch back what they feel more like running, that I hardly see any reason for the developers to take into account all possible build combinations while designing story levels.

In fact some story levels actually suffer from being too easy. For example, I remember, years ago ,when I decided to create new characters of professions that I have not yet tried out and complete the core stories with them leveled straight up to 80 with Tomes and in exotic gear. Oh boy, that was a hellish experience. The combat of the entire Orr arc was so easy, even for me as someone entirely new to the class, that it became tedious. The Eye and the Mouth were both trash, and the final fight against Zhaitan was a complete joke. Imagine that, while the story keeps telling you that this is the threat that may destroy all civilization in Tyria, the final battle just feels like the opposite of that. I mean, for goodness' sake, at least give us the difficulty equal to the fight against Balthazar.

Though I gotta say that when it comes to dungeons, I agree with what you say. The dungeon stages was really not designed for players still leveling up, while they were meant to be played while the players are leveling up progressing through the story. Though understandable, it was still a shame that the developers decided to completely avoid touching it anymore due to technical reasons. The difficulty of the dungeon stages really should have scaled with the member of the party with highest level instead of requiring players to max out at 80 and acquire proper gear first.

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@"kharmin.7683" said:The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

It isn't. That's just one player's opinion and it isn't accurate. See videos from guys like Lord Hizen (or myself!) who design builds for open world boss solos on a variety of classes. There is no class in this game that isn't capable of going solo against far more than what the story and general open world expansion play require! Even those with a reputation for being "squishy" can do it. It's all about designing a build that works and learning how to play it (although some classes you can just skip that learning part because it's just that easy - see cmirage with staff!).

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@"Ultramex.1506" said:People just need to get better, no! I'm not saying this as an elite, but someone who is willing to learn from past mistake to improve, dumbing everything down further won't encourage growth.Having trouble beating an enemy? See what you did wrong and learn the enemy attack pattern, for example: smokescale! Either block or double evade and when it use smoke just lure it out!Although i must say, enemies in HoT are easier with range than melee, except for that frog which has been nerfed

There is a large segment of the populace (large, not majority..) that likes to be able to stand still in the game in the middle of areas with enemy creatures without dying while they [fill in blank with alt-tab, message friends, check map etc]

People attach a large significant to dying in game. Because of course reasons.

There are complaints about the aggro range in PoF maps....

It truly seems as if people only want to auto attack and not worry about mechanics or focus.

They just want to move on to the next area.

PoF aggro range is a bit of pet peeve of mine. It's not at all about difficulty. It's that you can never get out of combat in PoF. There's always another stupid sand eel or forged sniper 2000 units away that for some reason decided it wants to come after you. I don't want things "easier", but I also don't want to be forced to fight 20 mobs due to chain aggro every time I stop to harvest a node!

Correct. This is why those zones are largely abandoned and why PoF needs attention much more than HoT does. HoT is perfectly fine IMO - it operates as a proper set of challenging end game zones with tons of meta activity. PoF does not. It's just a bunch of beautiful but fundamentally casual exploration zones all but ruined by excessive aggro and nonstop tedious combat.

I don't think it's either realistic or desirable to try to make them more like HoT zones. I think they should be more like core zones, which mostly just means reducing aggro range and maybe mob density in some areas.

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As much as I initially didn't like HoT, I've come to like the map and it's complexity.

I can't find everything I want to and have a difficult managing the terrain on some of the maps. There are plenty of people who enjoy the taking a train around to show people where to find stuff. That's what makes the game fun, others helping you and in turn you payback later by joining a pug or helping with a Champion boss to gain an achievement.

Now that we can use Desert Mastery to complete Legendary weapons it opens up another option. I hope the new expansion also allows for Legendary completion, more options are better.

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HoT was just perfect when it came out. As OP mentions it required teamwork. Unfortunately, there's a rather deep anti-social vibe permiating the gaming community now - possibly an artifact of the preferences of younger players to avoid social contact, who shun teamwork in anything but the most basic sense. Thus, the rise of the "Massively Single Player RPG" evidenced with for example, Warcraft's various iterations on player Strongholds and LFG queues. The onus in modern MMOs is a little less on discovery and co-operation, and more on spoon feeding, hand holding and constant back patting. Un-nerf the difficulty I say, force players in HoT zones to actually partake in the "massively multiplayer" part of the genre, and ignore the cries of those who cannot go half an hour without the game giving them something for the simple act of existing.

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They made GW2 so game is equally difficult either solo or in party.Small party vs large party game adjusts.

But Todays GW2.HoT, doing some content like the map with Mordemoth. LARGE PARTY LARGE PARTY LARGE PARTY, only 1 version.Thats not how GW2 was designed originally.

So yes I agree with HoT not being nerfed... But it needs an easier version if less people are doing it.Can't expect people to do 60 person content anymore if only 20 people doing it. And it only has 60 person version, no max players version, no 20 player version, only one version.

Just like World bosses, if 20 people show up and want to do a world boss, have a 20 person version (i wouldn't go any lower).All you do is adjust the health anyways. If max players show up all you do is raise the health it has. Whats wrong with lowering it for less people?

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@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Ultramex.1506" said:People just need to get better, no! I'm not saying this as an elite, but someone who is willing to learn from past mistake to improve, dumbing everything down further won't encourage growth.Having trouble beating an enemy? See what you did wrong and learn the enemy attack pattern, for example: smokescale! Either block or double evade and when it use smoke just lure it out!Although i must say, enemies in HoT are easier with range than melee, except for that frog which has been nerfed

There is a large segment of the populace (large, not majority..) that likes to be able to stand still in the game in the middle of areas with enemy creatures without dying while they [fill in blank with alt-tab, message friends, check map etc]

People attach a large significant to dying in game. Because of course reasons.

There are complaints about the aggro range in PoF maps....

It truly seems as if people only want to auto attack and not worry about mechanics or focus.

They just want to move on to the next area.

PoF aggro range is a bit of pet peeve of mine. It's not at all about difficulty. It's that you can never get out of combat in PoF. There's always another stupid sand eel or forged sniper 2000 units away that for some reason decided it wants to come after you. I don't want things "easier", but I also don't want to be forced to fight 20 mobs due to chain aggro every time I stop to harvest a node!

Correct. This is why those zones are largely abandoned and why PoF needs attention much more than HoT does. HoT is perfectly fine IMO - it operates as a proper set of challenging end game zones with tons of meta activity. PoF does not. It's just a bunch of beautiful but fundamentally casual exploration zones all but ruined by excessive aggro and nonstop tedious combat.

I don't think it's either realistic or desirable to try to make them more like HoT zones. I think they should be more like core zones, which mostly just means reducing aggro range and maybe mob density in some areas.

I'm not sure I agree that the only issue with PoF is the aggro range. Take that away and change nothing else and you'll still have huge, empty maps with not much going on. Apparently, that's what some players enjoy, but I think the persistent activity of the HoT maps is evidence that players enjoy that sort of group activity.

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@"Ultramex.1506" said:People just need to get better, no! I'm not saying this as an elite, but someone who is willing to learn from past mistake to improve, dumbing everything down further won't encourage growth.Having trouble beating an enemy? See what you did wrong and learn the enemy attack pattern, for example: smokescale! Either block or double evade and when it use smoke just lure it out!Although i must say, enemies in HoT are easier with range than melee, except for that frog which has been nerfed

There is a large segment of the populace (large, not majority..) that likes to be able to stand still in the game in the middle of areas with enemy creatures without dying while they [fill in blank with alt-tab, message friends, check map etc]

People attach a large significant to dying in game. Because of course reasons.

There are complaints about the aggro range in PoF maps....

It truly seems as if people only want to auto attack and not worry about mechanics or focus.

They just want to move on to the next area.

PoF aggro range is a bit of pet peeve of mine. It's not at all about difficulty. It's that you can never get out of combat in PoF. There's always another stupid sand eel or forged sniper 2000 units away that for some reason decided it wants to come after you. I don't want things "easier", but I also don't want to be forced to fight 20 mobs due to chain aggro every time I stop to harvest a node!

Correct. This is why those zones are largely abandoned and why PoF needs attention much more than HoT does. HoT is perfectly fine IMO - it operates as a proper set of challenging end game zones with tons of meta activity. PoF does not. It's just a bunch of beautiful but fundamentally casual exploration zones all but ruined by excessive aggro and nonstop tedious combat.

I don't think it's either realistic or desirable to try to make them more like HoT zones. I think they should be more like core zones, which mostly just means reducing aggro range and maybe mob density in some areas.

I'm not sure I agree that the only issue with PoF is the aggro range. Take that away and change nothing else and you'll still have huge, empty maps with not much going on. Apparently, that's what some players enjoy, but I think the persistent activity of the HoT maps is evidence that players enjoy that sort of group activity.

Yeah, but the issue is there's only so much of that the game can handle. There's a strong argument to be made that the population is already spread too thin with the large number of maps containing significant meta activity with strong rewards. Personally I feel they've overemphasized that with the LW when they should have been balancing it with a combination of dungeons/raids/small group content and more casual solo-oriented zones.

And instead of HoT having nothing but that and PoF having none of it, both expansions should have had a mix of both. But it's too late for that now, so I say keep HoT how it is and pare back PoF a little bit and let it be a bit of a slow/casual region. Hopefully Cantha will be a little more mixed.

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A lot of you 'git gud' people need to chill and stop with the hyperbole of what casual players want. No we don't want faceroll content, no we don't want participation rewards for just having characters on the same server as a meta event. Nerfing HoT initially WAS the right move for the game, and it seems like the devs have learned from that mistake. PoF was better balanced for the general player base and I hope they continue with that trend for EoD. Leave hard content for raids, strike missions, challenge mode fractals etc.

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@Virtuality.8351 said:

@"kharmin.7683" said:The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

Edited to add: You're the post I quoted so that I could expand on your points.

Especially when the entire PoF content has to be played on three different characters, in order to progress the banners achievement - which is locked behind selecting three different factions to support when in Ammoon. It is beyond silly to expect those three characters to be out of a list of only two viable options.

Additionally, the story is a key point of difference for GW2. There is an expectation that players will play the story. Statements like "l2p" miss this point. The end-game content, which is specifically designed to be difficult, is raids (and fashion wars). The story should be easily achievable for casual players with any build/profession.

Making the story difficult to finish means that a key selling point of the game is restricted to purchases who will "l2p". As well as raids, PvP and WvW cater to the higher end of players who have "l2p". When there is an order of magnitude difference in DPS between many casual players and the raiders, even having the story difficulty pitched at the mid-point between these two ends creates problems for most players. You don't alienate most of your players if you want to stay in business.

I agree more with kharmin here actually. As for stories, I believe they should be achievable by all professions (though
not
necessarily easily as they have always been), but certainly
not
with every build (as they arguably have been regarding the difficulty, or rather lack thereof).

One of the core promise that GW2 has made and been successfully keeping since launch, is to allow players to modify their builds easily, so that players can switch between different tactics to deal with what they are facing. And now with the build templates, it is so easy for players to create new builds specifically for what they have problem to tackle down, and then switch back what they feel more like running, that I hardly see any reason for the developers to take into account all possible build combinations while designing story levels.

In fact some story levels actually suffer from being too easy. For example, I remember, years ago ,when I decided to create new characters of professions that I have not yet tried out and complete the core stories with them leveled straight up to 80 with Tomes and in exotic gear. Oh boy, that was a hellish experience. The combat of the entire Orr arc was so easy, even for me as someone entirely new to the class, that it became tedious. The Eye and the Mouth were both trash, and the final fight against Zhaitan was a complete joke. Imagine that, while the story keeps telling you that this is the threat that may destroy all civilization in Tyria, the final battle just feels like the opposite of that. I mean, for goodness' sake, at least give us the difficulty equal to the fight against Balthazar.

Though I gotta say that when it comes to dungeons, I agree with what you say. The dungeon stages was really
not
designed for players still leveling up, while they were
meant to
be played while the players are leveling up progressing through the story. Though understandable, it was still a shame that the developers decided to completely avoid touching it anymore due to technical reasons. The difficulty of the dungeon stages really should have scaled with the member of the party with highest level instead of requiring players to max out at 80 and acquire proper gear first.

Did you read the bit where I said, When there is an order of magnitude difference in DPS between many casual players and the raiders, even having the story difficulty pitched at the mid-point between these two ends creates problems for most players?

People on this thread, handwaving away that people need to "git gud" or need to "l2p", are missing the point.

These players are still an order of magnitude lower in DPS in open world as well.

Having the open world and the story instances too hard, for many players, doesn't make logical sense, at least for keeping a player base. And I say many because the distribution for DPS is not normal, in a statistical sense. While the arithmetic mid-point between the bottom and top DPS (inside level 80 areas) I estimate to be somewhere in the range 15-18K, there are many many more players under than mid-point than there are above it. The distribution is heavily right-skewed. Looking at open-world content where I have been in a squad and running ArcDPS, almost daily for over a year, the median DPS was around 10K, and that was with people stacking.

So if open-world and personal story content is aimed at even the 15K DPS player, it's going to be too difficult/disheartening for many players.

And that's the problem.

Back to builds. I continue to ::headdesk:: at games that implement a system where people can select any one of a number of builds, when only a couple are viable. I'm not talking about simply adding or removing more breakbar skills, I'm talking about wholesale build changes where a limited number/combination of profession specialisations and traits are basically the ones that are viable. So everyone is pushed to using the same small set of cookie-cutter builds, where a number of specialisation combinations and trait combinations are never used in viable builds. For efficiency, the game could simply include pre-built builds that have been assessed as "best in class" (or, at minimum, not be shite builds) for the current game build and let people simply select the one they want.

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@"Hesione.9412" said:Back to builds. I continue to ::headdesk:: at games that implement a system where people can select any one of a number of builds, when only a couple are viable. I'm not talking about simply adding or removing more breakbar skills, I'm talking about wholesale build changes where a limited number/combination of profession specialisations and traits are basically the ones that are viable. So everyone is pushed to using the same small set of cookie-cutter builds, where a number of specialisation combinations and trait combinations are never used in viable builds. For efficiency, the game could simply include pre-built builds that have been assessed as "best in class" (or, at minimum, not be kitten builds) for the current game build and let people simply select the one they want.

they should also really consider removing stat combinations that are subpar for general use, less variety in stat types means less variance in damage numbers, sacrifice freedom to guarantee effectiveness.

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Hot is not "easy to solo" gliders and mounts help a lot.. try soloing without them.. New customers have to.. Classes are so unbalanced a Engi, Necro and a Guardian can storm through the maps while Warrior, Ele and Mesmer get killed every second.. Even Rangers and Revenants have some issues..

No you aren't right op.. sorry but you are very wrong.. you are a niche in this game.

@Cerioth.7062 said:

@Cerioth.7062 said:Honestly most of the issues described here would be fixed by introducing better core game tutorialization that forces you to learn your abilities and counter mobs.Perhaps, so, but I don't really like things that are 'forced'. /shrug

Why even bother playing the game if you do not want to learn its mechanics? How is the game going to make you learn gameplay if you can indefinitely avoid it?

Obviously it does not have to be a per character thing, can just be once per account thing that you can repeat as needed.

Its not the mechanics to learn i'm on 250ping as an Aussie and hot is inundated with cheap shot mechanics designed to bully customers to death.. not fun in the slightest to play.. Even as an 8 year vet i try to avoid Hot and i've only ever completed pof once.. its just not a fun aspect to deal with daily..

@zealex.9410 said:

@Croc.1978 said:Yes, difficulty in HoT is fine as it is.

That said, there's really nothing that prepares players for what awaits them in the green hell before they enter it. They probably intended Silverwastes to be that preparation, but it doesn't work. And nerfing Orr post-release was a mistake.

I guess the best advise you could give new players now is:
  • play Orr
  • play Silverwastes (not RIBA) for a while
  • start PoF and get at least Raptor with canyon jump
  • enter Verdant Brink

I think the best advice is toncomplete pof and play hot as a prequel.

That wont help you need minimum Glider, Bunny and a Flying mount to avoid a good chunk of deaths..

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@"Dante.1508" said:Hot is not "easy to solo" gliders and mounts help a lot.. try soloing without them.. New customers have to.. Classes are so unbalanced a Engi, Necro and a Guardian can storm through the maps while Warrior, Ele and Mesmer get killed every second.. Even Rangers and Revenants have some issues..

No you aren't right op.. sorry but you are very wrong.. you are a niche in this game.

@Cerioth.7062 said:Honestly most of the issues described here would be fixed by introducing better core game tutorialization that forces you to learn your abilities and counter mobs.Perhaps, so, but I don't really like things that are 'forced'. /shrug

Why even bother playing the game if you do not want to learn its mechanics? How is the game going to make you learn gameplay if you can indefinitely avoid it?

Obviously it does not have to be a per character thing, can just be once per account thing that you can repeat as needed.

Its not the mechanics to learn i'm on 250ping as an Aussie and hot is inundated with cheap shot mechanics designed to bully customers to death.. not fun in the slightest to play.. Even as an 8 year vet i try to avoid Hot and i've only ever completed pof once.. its just not a fun aspect to deal with daily..

@"Croc.1978" said:Yes, difficulty in HoT is fine as it is.

That said, there's really nothing that prepares players for what awaits them in the green hell before they enter it. They probably intended Silverwastes to be that preparation, but it doesn't work. And nerfing Orr post-release was a mistake.

I guess the best advise you could give new players now is:
  • play Orr
  • play Silverwastes (not RIBA) for a while
  • start PoF and get at least Raptor with canyon jump
  • enter Verdant Brink

I think the best advice is toncomplete pof and play hot as a prequel.

That wont help you need minimum Glider, Bunny and a Flying mount to avoid a good chunk of deaths..

In case anyone was actually planning to listen to this guy, let me just save you the trouble with this video of an HoT champion solo that anyone (even Dante here!) can do. As a bonus, I'm wearing green gear that costs about 2s per piece so anyone can afford it. I've also slotted all signets for utilities and no weapon swap to avoid any complications. You can literally just push buttons at random with this build and win. The only thing that matters is pushing dodge and auto attack over and over.

Seriously, Dante, do yourself a favor and try this. You might begin to realize what people are trying to tell you and what you never could have learned playing through content once and then complaining about it endlessly for years. Find a build that works. This one happens to work even if you don't want to!

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@Hesione.9412 said:

@"kharmin.7683" said:The content shouldn't dictate the profession one needs to play. All professions should be able to manage through it, perhaps some easier than others. Yes, content can (and arguably should?) make a player change their build or concept of their character to have an easier time, but it shouldn't be merciful to one or two professions at the cost of the others.

Edited to add: You're the post I quoted so that I could expand on your points.

Especially when the entire PoF content has to be played on three different characters, in order to progress the banners achievement - which is locked behind selecting three different factions to support when in Ammoon. It is beyond silly to expect those three characters to be out of a list of only two viable options.

Additionally, the story is a key point of difference for GW2. There is an expectation that players will play the story. Statements like "l2p" miss this point. The end-game content, which is specifically designed to be difficult, is raids (and fashion wars). The story should be easily achievable for casual players with any build/profession.

Making the story difficult to finish means that a key selling point of the game is restricted to purchases who will "l2p". As well as raids, PvP and WvW cater to the higher end of players who have "l2p". When there is an order of magnitude difference in DPS between many casual players and the raiders, even having the story difficulty pitched at the mid-point between these two ends creates problems for most players. You don't alienate most of your players if you want to stay in business.

I agree more with kharmin here actually. As for stories, I believe they should be achievable by all professions (though
not
necessarily easily as they have always been), but certainly
not
with every build (as they arguably have been regarding the difficulty, or rather lack thereof).

One of the core promise that GW2 has made and been successfully keeping since launch, is to allow players to modify their builds easily, so that players can switch between different tactics to deal with what they are facing. And now with the build templates, it is so easy for players to create new builds specifically for what they have problem to tackle down, and then switch back what they feel more like running, that I hardly see any reason for the developers to take into account all possible build combinations while designing story levels.

In fact some story levels actually suffer from being too easy. For example, I remember, years ago ,when I decided to create new characters of professions that I have not yet tried out and complete the core stories with them leveled straight up to 80 with Tomes and in exotic gear. Oh boy, that was a hellish experience. The combat of the entire Orr arc was so easy, even for me as someone entirely new to the class, that it became tedious. The Eye and the Mouth were both trash, and the final fight against Zhaitan was a complete joke. Imagine that, while the story keeps telling you that this is the threat that may destroy all civilization in Tyria, the final battle just feels like the opposite of that. I mean, for goodness' sake, at least give us the difficulty equal to the fight against Balthazar.

Though I gotta say that when it comes to dungeons, I agree with what you say. The dungeon stages was really
not
designed for players still leveling up, while they were
meant to
be played while the players are leveling up progressing through the story. Though understandable, it was still a shame that the developers decided to completely avoid touching it anymore due to technical reasons. The difficulty of the dungeon stages really should have scaled with the member of the party with highest level instead of requiring players to max out at 80 and acquire proper gear first.

Did you read the bit where I said,
When there is an order of magnitude difference in DPS between many casual players and the raiders, even having the story difficulty pitched at the mid-point between these two ends creates problems for most players
?

People on this thread, handwaving away that people need to "git gud" or need to "l2p", are missing the point.

These players are still an order of magnitude lower in DPS in open world as well.

Having the open world and the story instances too hard,
for many players
, doesn't make logical sense, at least for keeping a player base. And I say many because the distribution for DPS is not normal, in a statistical sense. While the arithmetic mid-point between the bottom and top DPS (inside level 80 areas) I estimate to be somewhere in the range 15-18K, there are many many more players under than mid-point than there are above it. The distribution is heavily right-skewed. Looking at open-world content where I have been in a squad and running ArcDPS, almost daily for over a year, the median DPS was around 10K, and that was with people stacking.

So if open-world and personal story content is aimed at even the 15K DPS player, it's going to be too difficult/disheartening for many players.

And that's the problem.

Back to builds. I continue to ::headdesk:: at games that implement a system where people can select any one of a number of builds, when only a couple are viable. I'm not talking about simply adding or removing more breakbar skills, I'm talking about wholesale build changes where a limited number/combination of profession specialisations and traits are basically the ones that are viable. So everyone is pushed to using the same small set of cookie-cutter builds, where a number of specialisation combinations and trait combinations are never used in viable builds. For efficiency, the game could simply include pre-built builds that have been assessed as "best in class" (or, at minimum, not be kitten builds) for the current game build and let people simply select the one they want.

First of all, for the record, I am by no means an elitist player. Out of all my 10 characters, only one runs the so-regarded meta build for Fractals. All the rest of them run sub-optimal builds in terms of DPS. And I do not even do Raids.

Now, I agree with your observation on the distribution of player performance, but the way you put it in your argument is the part that I do not understand. Correct me if I misunderstand you, but It seems to me that, in your mind, DPS is the one and only viable mean for players to tackle down a problem presented to them, which I'd argue that in reality is entirely not the case for the majority of non-Fractals/Raid contents. Simply refer to the video posted by AliamRationem above.

Or to put it in other words, it seems to me that for you the only means to increase content difficulty is (or, as you might rather say, has been) to raise the DPS check for players even further, which is not the case either. Content difficulty can certainly be raised via mechanics and other means instead of simply the blend DPS check.

And in case you missed it, people primarily complain how the jungle is so difficult to survive instead of how they feel inadequate with insufficient DPS.

As for builds, though I am of course limited to my own experience, I have yet to learn any build completely not viable for any content. Even for Fractals and Dungeons if you can find a group of people who are willing to run with you in non-meta low DPS builds, chances are that you will eventually grind the boss down as long as you can survive it. The reason meta builds are as such in PvE is more often that they are more "efficient" in terms of the time needed to complete a certain content, so that less time is wasted on the grind, than that they are the only few tactics that actually work.

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