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Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]


Lonami.2987

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:GW2 has a story that is directly tied to raids ( see the bloodstone fen story regarding the squad leader bennet) So having raids not accessible to the average player ( as In, not completable ) means that the story drops and restarts missing a chunk that our character "knows" about, but we do not.

That's wrong. The NPCs talk about it if your account has raid kills, otherwise it is just ignored. Bennett doesn't know you if you never rescued him. The story of Forsaken Thicket is not needed to understand LS3. It is just a prequel and you get more informations from LS3 than raids. Infact you get more information about the raid via LS3 than from the raid for LS3.

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I did some part of the raids and it's not that hard, but I simply don't want to invest more time. I don't have much time left with a 100% job. And there are so many other good games I want to play. I also have a big social life and attend a lot of live concerts etc. Also there are some other hobbies. So now I simply am not willing to sink in 3 hours of raiding without any progress once or twice a week. Time is precious and I can play and have a lot of fun playing Super Mario Odyssey for example - 3 hours full of fun and joy. Or sinking 3 hours of failing and waiting in a raid. That's my point. I did that in WoW several years ago and I was doing it and I liked it, but priorities change and life changes and that's why we need a mode like raid finder with lower rewards but easy to accomplish so not only a fraction of the players can see the story and the content the company created. I don't see why dedicated raiders have a problem with this. Meanwhile all major MMOs offer different difficulties - some have even 3 or more difficulty levels.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

How is this game hardcore focused? 1 raid in 10 month, 2 fractals with OPTIONAL CM? In the meantime 8+ openworld maps , story instances,....and so on.are you kidding?

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@sigur.9453 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

How is this game hardcore focused? 1 raid in 10 month, 2 fractals with OPTIONAL CM? In the meantime 8+ openworld maps , story instances,....and so on.are you kidding?

That's just the start. From what you guys are saying the core game was a lot easier, and with each expansion Anet are slowly making the content more challenging. There won't be an instant change of course, but it will gradually happen over time.

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused.

I hope you can read what you quoted, mostly the second paragraph. The game wasn't "casual focused", there were quite a few releases that added challenging content, story parts that had increased difficulty, mobs of a higher difficulty level than both expansions and so on. What happened is that people forgot about all that, because it was temporary content, plus the huge content drought before the release of the expansion caused players to only spend their months in brain dead farms. The game was never "casual focused" in terms of difficulty and challenge, the game was casual focused in a dozen other things, easy to reach level cap, no gear treadmill, no level cap increase with expansions, easy to get higher stat gear, no subscription fee, no competition in the open world (be it for exp, quest objectives, resource nodes or loot), no requirement to form a party to play most of the content and others. That's what made the game "casual friendly" and all of it still applies. The game had since release harder and more challenging fights. "Casual" can mean more than just difficulty.

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first.

Got some kind of confirmation about this? I'm sure you have some hard facts proving this about Guild Wars 2, some statistical analysis and data directly from Arenanet on what kind of content players like or not.

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@sigur.9453 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

How is this game hardcore focused? 1 raid in 10 month, 2 fractals with OPTIONAL CM? In the meantime 8+ openworld maps , story instances,....and so on.are you kidding?

That's just the start. From what you guys are saying the core game was a lot easier, and with each expansion Anet are slowly making the content more challenging. There won't be an instant change of course, but it will gradually happen over time.

Open world =/= challenging content. (Zerg everything) Im sorry you feel that way.

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@sigur.9453 said:

@sigur.9453 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

How is this game hardcore focused? 1 raid in 10 month, 2 fractals with OPTIONAL CM? In the meantime 8+ openworld maps , story instances,....and so on.are you kidding?

That's just the start. From what you guys are saying the core game was a lot easier, and with each expansion Anet are slowly making the content more challenging. There won't be an instant change of course, but it will gradually happen over time.

Open world =/= challenging content. (Zerg everything) Im sorry you feel that way.You could even argue that Hot was "harder" then Pof, but that wouldt apply to your theory.

Edit: apperently Forum IS challenging for me, sry for doublepost.

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@sigur.9453 said:

@sigur.9453 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

How is this game hardcore focused? 1 raid in 10 month, 2 fractals with OPTIONAL CM? In the meantime 8+ openworld maps , story instances,....and so on.are you kidding?

That's just the start. From what you guys are saying the core game was a lot easier, and with each expansion Anet are slowly making the content more challenging. There won't be an instant change of course, but it will gradually happen over time.

Open world =/= challenging content. (Zerg everything) Im sorry you feel that way.

I'm just going by what you guys are saying. I've only been playing this game for a couple of months, so I don't know if it used to be harder or not.

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@sigur.9453 said:

@sigur.9453 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

The problem with Heart of Thorns is it came after the really easy core game. There was no in-between content for some of the players. On the other hand, those who did play Season 2 when it was released shouldn't have any issues with Heart of Thorns, if anything a lot of the mobs were significantly nerfed with the release of Heart of Thorns. But I guess even the hardest mobs become easy if you hide behind huge blobs of players. But there is also the story of Season 2, how did they get over that and then had issues with Heart of Thorns. More likely the content drought before the expansion caused the players to become terrible at playing the game, no instanced story parts, just follow the tag in huge blobs and auto attack mobs to death for months makes players soft, and dumb.

Ever since their first release they upped the challenge level, adding harder mobs, adding harder story instances and so on. They've been increasing the challenge level of the game for 5 years, so I wonder what are these players who don't want to "get good" still doing here. And you can't say that a Molten Brawler, a Twisted Horror, a Mordrem Thrasher (of Season 2, not the nerfed HoT version) are easier than the new Heart of Thorns mobs. Many probably forgot how they were and then called Heart of Thorns hard. Temporary content had this effect on difficulty and challenge, people forgot about it, it's another of the sad drawbacks of temporary content.

The game has a wonderful combat system, yet many don't want to use it. If all some players want is a multi-loot farm to get their rewards without even playing the game, then what can I say, they should leave the game as soon as possible. Although Arenanet still creates brain dead farms (some unintentional), they are also creating some exciting encounters too.

Easiest way to train people: take away brain dead farms so they have to play the game to get anything.

It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused. Unfortunately at the same time Anet are trying to please both the casuals and the hardcore players. Blizzard had a similar problem although in the reverse, where WoW started as a pretty hardcore experience (similar to games like EQ2, etc) and then switched its focus to more casual gameplay. The problem is that in trying to please both parties, you inevitably end up pleasing nobody. And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first. If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.

So whether you like it or not, an mmorpg's success relies on the casuals, as they form the majority of the playerbase.

How is this game hardcore focused? 1 raid in 10 month, 2 fractals with OPTIONAL CM? In the meantime 8+ openworld maps , story instances,....and so on.are you kidding?

That's just the start. From what you guys are saying the core game was a lot easier, and with each expansion Anet are slowly making the content more challenging. There won't be an instant change of course, but it will gradually happen over time.

Open world =/= challenging content. (Zerg everything) Im sorry you feel that way.

I'm just going by what you guys are saying. I've only been playing this game for a couple of months, so I don't know if it used to be harder or not.

Raids and Fractal CM ´s are hard(er), the rest...not so much, mobs are annoying at best (since release)

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:It seems that the focus of the game is changing from how it was before HoT, from a very casual focused game to a more hardcore focused.

I hope you can read what you quoted, mostly the second paragraph. The game wasn't "casual focused", there were quite a few releases that added challenging content, story parts that had increased difficulty, mobs of a higher difficulty level than both expansions and so on. What happened is that people forgot about all that, because it was temporary content, plus the huge content drought before the release of the expansion caused players to only spend their months in brain dead farms. The game was never "casual focused" in terms of difficulty and challenge, the game was casual focused in a dozen other things, easy to reach level cap, no gear treadmill, no level cap increase with expansions, easy to get higher stat gear, no subscription fee, no competition in the open world (be it for exp, quest objectives, resource nodes or loot), no requirement to form a party to play most of the content and others. That's what made the game "casual friendly" and all of it still applies. The game had since release harder and more challenging fights. "Casual" can mean more than just difficulty.

@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:And unfortunately despite your wishes for harder content, when it comes down to player populations, there will always be more casuals than hardcore players, meaning if you want to keep a game running you have to cater to the casuals first.

Got some kind of confirmation about this? I'm sure you have some hard facts proving this about Guild Wars 2, some statistical analysis and data directly from Arenanet on what kind of content players like or not.

It is the nature of mmorpgs, whether you like it or not. Just take a look at this graph from WoW raiding:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1745139-Armory-Stats-Highmaul-and-Blackrock-Foundry-Blue-Tweets-Heroes-Map-Rift-Wardrobe

Looking at this graph you can see that for a single wing of a WoW raid, there are multiple difficulties (mythic being the hardest). 70% of the WoW population completed the first wing on any difficulty. That then drops down to less than 10% of the WoW population who completed that same wing on the hardest difficulty. So if you are a games developer, do you think it makes more sense to make content exclusively for the <10% of the population, or 70% of the population? What do you think is going to keep the game running for longer?

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@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:I'm just going by what you guys are saying. I've only been playing this game for a couple of months, so I don't know if it used to be harder or not.

Let's take a trip to the past, so new players know and older players remember:Shadow of the Mad King: Added the Modus Sceleris (usually solo) fights and the Ascend to Madness mini-dungeon (also solo)Lost Shores: Gave us the Karka, the Young Karka especially became the bane of new Southsun explorers, also Fractals of the Mists (9 of them) was introduced hereWintersday: The first Wintersday gave us the little toy princesses in the open world which could wipe entire groups of players, sadly subsequent Wintersday events only have skritt as opponents which pose no treatFlame and Frost: Gave us multiple different Molten Alliance mobs, play the assorted fractals to find them, Molten Brawlers were probably the hardest regular mobs. It also gave us a fun new dungeon to play, which was later split in two Fractals.The Secret of Southsun: gave us two mini-fights, Canach and Subdirector NULLSky Pirates of Tyria: A new dungeon, which is now split in two Fractals, and lots of new Aetherblade mobs. Outside the instances, you can find them in Edge of the Mists and inside the Not So Secret jumping puzzle

Up to this point there have been additions of harder-than-release mobs and lots of instances, after those the main focus of the game became the open world and huge blobs, however there were a few instanced/challenging pieces of content:

Cutthroat Politics: the candidate trials was a nice activity, challenging enough to get the best timersQueen's Jubilee: the Queen's Gauntlet, a solo experience where you duel various powerful NPCs was a great additionTequatl Rising: the revised Tequatl, although open world content, it was considered very hard, especially for random groups, for a long timeTwilight Assault: another dungeon!Tower of Nightmares: a multi-layered open world zone with lots of new and exciting foes, krait and nightmare court mostly.Fractured: another Fractal was added, together with a re-release as Fractals of the Living World dungeons mentioned above.

Here is where instanced content (repeatable) of any kind stop being released. It was November 2013, from August 2012 to November 2013, in 15 months, they added 13 dungeons, some mini-dungeons, challenging activities, and lots of new and exciting enemies to fight. All much more challenging that what we got at the game's release.

Afterwards we got the exciting Battle for Lion's Arch and the end of Scarlet which was challenging for open world content. Then until October 2015 with the release of Heart of Thorns we only got 2 farm maps, Dry Top and Silverwastes. From November 2013 to October 2015, nearly TWO years of no challenging content added. Granted from January 2015 to October 2015 we got absolutely nothing.

Was Dry Top and Silverwastes stupidly easy? No there were new Mordrem mobs introduced there, that were severely nerfed when Heart of Thorns was released. Mordrem Wolves had retaliation (now swiftness) and could instant kill light armor users when hitting from behind, Mordrem Thrashers used to be immune to attacks, unless you hit them from behind (where they left a trail of torment and cripple). There were also many challenging story parts, and even more challenging achievements to get, so the game didn't become really easy at that point, however, and this is important, none of the challenging bits had lasting power. So once their value was diminished, we were left with 2 years of farming the same two maps, or farming some other maps, waiting for the expansion release. And during those 2 years the community became dumb, and the "Guild Wars 2 is for casuals" argument appeared.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I tried to illustrate every release we've had and how Arenanet always added some degree challenge in their releases, until the content drought.The "Heart of Thorns is too hard" argument was from players with sort memory, or those who never played the game before and only played during the "let's form a blob and farm mobs while watching netflix on our second monitor" period.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:So if you are a games developer, do you think it makes more sense to make content exclusively for the <10% of the population, or 70% of the population?

Guild Wars 2 Raids are NOT at the same level as WoW mythic Raids.

I'm aware of that, but the principle still applies. If you try and cater too much to a minority of your playerbase and exclude the majority, your game will most likely fail.

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I'm gonna somewhat defend against a claim that's being made consistently here, which is that GW2 playerbase is in average less skilled than in other MMOs. This is just not true. I play MMOs since the golden era of Lineage 2 and WoW and people "sucked" just as much back then as they do here and now. The lacks of vertical progression and gear obsolescence is what actually causes it to show harder in GW2. I've tanked through endgame Raids in games where PvP was open and people lost their nerves harder than any Triple Trouble ever; It's also blatantly shown in WoW where content becomes obsolete once people have the gear to melt through encounters and only the few % of first clears actually "count" for what it's worth.

In other games you can hide yourself from actually playing well behind either a paywall or farmwall worthy of shiny S-grade equipment, whereas in GW2 all you can do to live up to your reputation is perform your rotation, there are no "buts" and ascended equipment will give you less than 5% of error margin compared to everyone else. And this playing capacity is much less widespread than you all are making it out to be (regardless if you personally think it's easy to achieve). The first game was actually like this too, you reached level 20 and that was it no more vertical progression. What makes it or breaks it on that game is your theorycrafting skills so you can choose correctly which skills are going to be best suitable for a given instance.

GW2 in some ways but not others, actually pushes players much more than a lot of MMOs around. What it does lack is a more streamlined mechanism of introducing the game concepts such as the defiance bar, which is probably caused by the fact that many of these concepts weren't even around during the time of release. Once that is done with (and the Fractal team is somewhat achieving it by putting fractals like Shattered Observatory and Twilight Oasis with a good T1-T4 progression), we'd probably see less disdain going towards raid content. Basically, it's easier to close the gap between newbies and raiders from the newbie side (because it just has to be done seamlessly in the rest of the game) than it would be by working into bringing raids to newbie levels. And don't kitten on GW2 newbies, the playerbase is not worse than in other games.

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:So if you are a games developer, do you think it makes more sense to make content exclusively for the <10% of the population, or 70% of the population?

Guild Wars 2 Raids are NOT at the same level as WoW mythic Raids.

I'm aware of that, but the principle still applies. If you try and cater too much to a minority of your playerbase and exclude the majority, your game will most likely fail.

We got 5 Raid wings in 2 years. We got 16 new open world maps in 2 years. Do they cater too much to a "minority"?

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:So if you are a games developer, do you think it makes more sense to make content exclusively for the <10% of the population, or 70% of the population?

Guild Wars 2 Raids are NOT at the same level as WoW mythic Raids.

I'm aware of that, but the principle still applies. If you try and cater too much to a minority of your playerbase and exclude the majority, your game will most likely fail.

We got 5 Raid wings in 2 years. We got 16 new open world maps in 2 years. Do they cater too much to a "minority"?

ok so.. a lot was made for 100% of the community.. how does that justify making stuff for the minority? Why not just keep making stuff or the 100% so we all can enjoy the game?

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@STIHL.2489 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Wandering Mist.2973 said:So if you are a games developer, do you think it makes more sense to make content exclusively for the <10% of the population, or 70% of the population?

Guild Wars 2 Raids are NOT at the same level as WoW mythic Raids.

I'm aware of that, but the principle still applies. If you try and cater too much to a minority of your playerbase and exclude the majority, your game will most likely fail.

We got 5 Raid wings in 2 years. We got 16 new open world maps in 2 years. Do they cater too much to a "minority"?

ok so.. a lot was made for 100% of the community.. how does that justify making stuff for the minority? Why not just keep making stuff or the 100% so we all can enjoy the game?

100% of the game are playable by 100% of the community (exept of course expac content...you get the point)

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@maxwelgm.4315 said:GW2 in some ways but not others, actually pushes players much more than a lot of MMOs around.

Guild Wars 2 used to push players from release date and up to about June 2013, then it started focusing more and more on blob content. Until November 2013 there was a healthy mix of blob and non-blob content, then at that time we got the epic Season 1 finale, the Battle for Lion's Arch content, spanning 3 months, from January 2014 to March 2014.

Apparently with Scarlet's death, game content variety also died, from March 2014 up until October 2015 and the release of Heart of Thorns, the only "challenging" parts were story instances in Season 2, and mostly some of their achievements. Nothing repeatable. The rest of the content, was farming on Dry Top and the Silverwastes. The final event of Silverwastes, the Vinewrath was a sad excuse for content compared to the Marionette we got earlier. One and a half year of being lazy, farming the same thing over and over.

When the game was fresh, on more than one game reviews, you could read that this is a challenging game. A "hard game", and when considering dungeons, "some of the hardest content in an MMORPG". Then with Scarlet's death, we got to the "Guild Wars 2 is the easiest game in the market". It's interesting how player perception changed over the years, without something phenomenal happening in the mean time.

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Raids need a "starter" for those who want to join the action, but are put off the the "hard core" nature of the single line.So many of those who say it's easy to join a PUG get out there and train in raids. No one is actually training! They are showing. There is no training when you constantly die. You don't learn anything watching others.

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@"Game of Bones.8975" said:Raids need a "starter" for those who want to join the action, but are put off the the "hard core" nature of the single line.So many of those who say it's easy to join a PUG get out there and train in raids. No one is actually training! They are showing. There is no training when you constantly die. You don't learn anything watching others.

Then those who can clear Raids were taught how to by the Six Gods?

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@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:If you try and cater only to hardcore players, you will most likely fail, which is exactly what happened to WildStar. Wildstar was designed to be an upgraded version of vanilla WoW when it came to the difficulty of its content, and focused all its effort on catering to hardcore raiders. Their problem? There weren't enough hardcore players to make it work and the game flopped.Now that's a rather questionable claim, given the astonishing amount and, in some aspects, severity of bugs Wildstar had at launch. Add in some incredibly bad design principles that were not at all connected to the "hardcore" stuff and I seriously doubt the "hardcore" factor was the decisive one in that game's fall. Unfortunately, we'll never know due to that annoying lack of neat and tidy control experiments in real life.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Game of Bones.8975" said:Raids need a "starter" for those who want to join the action, but are put off the the "hard core" nature of the single line.So many of those who say it's easy to join a PUG get out there and train in raids. No one is actually training! They are showing. There is no training when you constantly die. You don't learn anything watching others.

Then those who can clear Raids were taught how to by the Six Gods?

I was referring to those who advertise that they will train, but don't.I can show you how I do something with my character (the pro with the build and equipment), but you (the beginner tripping over your shoelaces) may not be able to translate that to your character quickly enough between bouts of dying to learn from your mistakes to not do that again.People are asking for slowed down version for beginners to learn what builds and equipment to use (and to tie their shoes) and not die as easily to learn.Even Fractals ramp up from easy to hard, why do people think Raids should remain immune? Just think how many more people would Raid if they weren’t intimidated by the automatic standstill to full-speed aspect.

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