The new map looks great but…

[lezbefriends.7516]

6 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

If gw2 is your standard of an overally hard action mmorpg, then most of the action mmorpgs are as well. With that knowledge, all your answers are a google search away.

But GW2 is easy and so are all action MMORPGs…

[moony.5780]

8 hours ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

Name 2 difficult action MMORPGs…

Guild wars 1 was 🙂

and to name a 2nd: Kalonline.

 

But i never played anything else other than these 3 games 😄

Edited October 14, 2021 by moony.5780

[moony.5780]

Honestly in my opinion the concept of gw2 and the difficulty is great. People can solo it and its easy enough for people with a handycap, such as playing it with 1 hand. Anyone can choose his/her own speed how to play the game. But also there lies the problem. Any individual is different. So a solo experience should be adjustable. Just running around nacked doesnt help in that. Playing the game in a wrong way and get 100 times less loot is no fun, while playing the game correctly with forexample 1 lvl higher mobs and they drop only 1,2 more gold feels much nicer. (And 1,2 is lets say 2,4 silver instead of 2 silver)

 

Gw1 was a really great game and untill today it gives real reasons to play the entire map in hardmode or even easy mode (zaishen quests). I think gw2 lack some reason to go back to old maps with a small challange and nice rewards. But in solo style not just more boring bosses.

 

I do not wish to splitt the Community with my suggestion but to unite all of us. The promise at release that a Veteran player can play with a new player together, while both enjoy the game 100% doesnt work nowadays (at release it did work). It should be possible to make ownself weaker without removing the armor.

The latest Mario kart game solve this issue in a nice way. They added settings that anyone can choose how much help they get while driving, so experienced and new player can play together while both giving all they have. The alternative would be falling from every cliff someone see just to handicap oneself...that's just sucks like removing the armor.

Edited October 14, 2021 by moony.5780

[Sobx.1758]

10 hours ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

But GW2 is easy and so are all action MMORPGs…

Cool, then maybe there's a misunderstanding in the way difficulty is perceived in this thread. I was responding under the impression that content like HoT is said to be harder and it seems you should understand that approach:

On 2/11/2021 at 12:55 PM, Mortifera.6138 said:

HoT maps are more difficult, so players receive the proportionate reward. Seeing as how no one want HoT difficulty back, sub fee is the only other option.

So are they all easy? Or is some content harder ""but no one wants it back"" (while others, like OP clearly do want it, so that claim was -and still is- wrong anyways)?

Edited October 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[otto.5684]

As much as higher difficulty seems good it is not. First, there is major difference between players with various skill levels. Due to the game’s design it factors significantly in the player damage output and ability to avoid. Not sure if this is a 100% accurate statement, but supposedly one of the devs mentioned that a highly skilled player could deal 10x more damage than a casual player.

 

“But we can have various instances with various difficulties.” The issue with that is this segregates the player base too much. There probably would not be enough players to fill all the instances. Also, is higher difficulty equal to higher reward? If yes, the other difficulties will mostly be unplayable. If not, then efficiency dictates playing on the lower difficulty.

 

Then we get to diversity limitation. More than any other place in the game, open world is open for all builds. The higher the difficulty gets, the less builds will be viable. 
 

Also, this some classes will have extreme advantages over others. Some classes can play super cheesy builds. There is a reason why pvp has major nerfs compared to pve. Do I even need to explain why something like condi mirage + torment runes + condi/toughness/hp build will be near immortal, while a berserker ele would be one shotted?

 

There is a reason why most difficult content is instanced, have specific number of players and is time gated. I would be ok with something with limited difficulty, like HoT maps.  Beyond open world breaks down to a cheese fest.

 

 

 

[lezbefriends.7516]

25 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Cool, then maybe there's a misunderstanding in the way difficulty is perceived in this thread. I was responding under the impression that content like HoT is said to be harder and it seems you should understand that approach:

So are they all easy? Or is some content harder ""but no one wants it back"" (while others, like OP clearly do want it, so that claim was -and still is- wrong anyways)?

What’re you on about? I said if you want higher difficulty, just remove your gear. (Or play a shooter…)

[Sobx.1758]

3 minutes ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

What’re you on about? I said if you want higher difficulty, just remove your gear. (Or play a shooter…)

"What am I on about?" Exactly what I wrote in my posts above. Which part did you not understand?

(if you want a self-play game, pick a telltale one, not action mmorpg -I really hope we can stop repeating the same 2 sentences now and move forward from here the last few posts)

Edited October 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[lezbefriends.7516]

2 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

"What am I on about?" Exactly what I wrote in my posts above. Which part did you not understand?

(if you want a self-play game, pick a telltale one, not action mmorpg -I really hope we can stop repeating the same 2 sentences now and move forward from here the last few posts)

Action MMORPGs are easy. If you want a harder game, play a different genre,

[Sobx.1758]

1 minute ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

Action MMORPGs are easy. If you want a harder game, play a different genre,

Again, by your own words:

On 2/11/2021 at 12:55 PM, Mortifera.6138 said:

HoT maps are more difficult

So yeah, lets have at least that 😄

[TwiceDead.1963]

I liked HoT before the nerf. I like HoT after the nerf. It's perfect.

EoD will probably have it's own quirks, just like PoF has ridiculous aggro ranges and HoT has a lot of incoming oneshot potential.

[lezbefriends.7516]

Just now, Sobx.1758 said:

Again, by your own words:

So yeah, lets have at least that 😄

You’re so desperate to win a losing argument, you dug a months old post from another thread. Except “more difficult” doesn’t mean it’s hard in general. 

[Sobx.1758]

4 minutes ago, Mortifera.6138 said:

You’re so desperate to win a losing argument, you dug a months old post from another thread. Except “more difficult” doesn’t mean it’s hard in general. 

I already quoted that above, where you responded with "what are you on about", but I guess you never read the quote, hence the confusion. Anyways, you understand the concept of harder content here, so that's good.

To make it clear, it's not about "winning" or "losing" (and I don't see how it was "losing argument" in the first place? Is it because you'd try to go on with "you can't prove it's hard for me" or something like that?), it's about facts and the only reason to post that quote was to remind you that you indeed understand the concept of harder content in action mmorpgs.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[lezbefriends.7516]

Just now, Sobx.1758 said:

I already quoted that above, where you responded with "what are you on about", but I guess you never read the quote, hence the confusion. Anyways, you understand the concept of harder content here, so that's good.

And you’re pretending not to understand so that’s not good. Action MMORPGs are easy. Go play a console game. Or take off your gear. Instead of quoting me from months ago.

[Sobx.1758]

I'm not pretending not to understand anything. I see there's no point in dragging this comment chain any further if you refuse to accept facs even if you spelled them out for yourself in the pretty recent past.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

@artcreator.4859 btw because of the above comment chain, it became clearer how subjective the difficulty is in the first place, can you maybe expand on what exactly you mean when you say add difficulty? Is HoT/PoF more difficult? Would you want it like that, harder or maybe completely different?

And I'm not here to argue your idea of difficulty btw, just wanted to know the context of the thread 😛 For example I mostly agree with these takes on the matter from this thread:

5 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

There is a reason why most difficult content is instanced, have specific number of players and is time gated. I would be ok with something with limited difficulty, like HoT maps.

,

4 hours ago, TwiceDead.1963 said:

EoD will probably have it's own quirks, just like PoF has ridiculous aggro ranges and HoT has a lot of incoming oneshot potential.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Astralporing.1957]

On 10/10/2021 at 10:00 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

Casuals do fine with increased difficulty if introduced to it in manageable steps and when games teach them what they need to do in order to step up.

This game unfortunately has some core mechanics built around an assumption that the players will do that improving completely on their own, without game helping them to do so (and, in fact, with game being unable to help them solve most of the issues they might run into when trying to improve).

Most of the stuff you need to learn to improve is also not something that goes hand in hand with the "slow, gradual improvement" idea. It's more like a set of very few (but also very, very high) steps, instead of one gradual incline.

[Gibson.4036]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

This game unfortunately has some core mechanics built around an assumption that the players will do that improving completely on their own, without game helping them to do so (and, in fact, with game being unable to help them solve most of the issues they might run into when trying to improve).

Most of the stuff you need to learn to improve is also not something that goes hand in hand with the "slow, gradual improvement" idea. It's more like a set of very few (but also very, very high) steps, instead of one gradual incline.

Agreed.

It’s not good at introducing things in small bits and testing players in them to progress.

[Rasimir.6239]

On 10/15/2021 at 1:09 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

Agreed.

It’s not good at introducing things in small bits and testing players in them to progress.

That's one of the drawbacks of giving the players the freedom of playing how and what they want. If you want to force introductions of game mechanics on players, you need to force the players across a narrow gameplay path so they can't avoid said introductions.

 

No more leveling by crafting, level boost tomes and scrolls, spvp at level 2 and similar, because the game would have to make sure that people go through all those introductions before they participate in high-level content. Somehow I don't think such a change would go over well with the playerbase ...

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

That's one of the drawbacks of giving the players the freedom of playing how and what they want. If you want to force introductions of game mechanics on players, you need to force the players across a narrow gameplay path so they can't avoid said introductions.

 

No more leveling by crafting, level boost tomes and scrolls, spvp at level 2 and similar, because the game would have to make sure that people go through all those introductions before they participate in high-level content. Somehow I don't think such a change would go over well with the playerbase ...

It's not the content and "shortcuts to leveling" that are a problem. Even with those, in a game designed for that people would be able to slowly but gradually improve until they eventually arrived at their own skill ceiling.

The problem was always the multitude of build choices, with 90% of those - and i am being very generous here - being just plain bad. And with game being very bad at explaining to the players which options are good and which are bad. Which is completely intentional, btw - there's no point in making a player choose between good and bad option, after all, if that choice is immediately followed by visible signs "pick that one" and "you'd be stupid to pick that other one". If you did that, there would be no point in having those bad options at all.

You can very much offer players options to play what they want and how they want, and yet still help them progress, but in order to do that you need to ensure that all the options they get are good ones (and the only thing they need to learn is how to use them well).

It does not matter whether the game can teach you how to use well the good options or not, if most players end up picking bad ones.

[Teratus.2859]

On 10/9/2021 at 12:43 PM, Krzysztof.5973 said:

An opt-in hard mode in GW1 style would be nice 🙂

Aye, but it would be difficult to implement in the open world.

Story stuff absolutely possible but open world would just be too complex and too easy to abuse.
Leeching etc for better loot.

[Teratus.2859]

On 10/9/2021 at 9:24 AM, moony.5780 said:

I wish it is possible to adjust the difficulty...so everyone can choose their own setting. 

 

Personaly i wish the game would get harder the longer someone plays.....i think gw2 is the only game i play that gets easier by time instead of more difficult. (Except HoT maybe, but even HoT is too easy on my main after all these years).

I blame pandering for this issue tbh.. but not pandering to casuals, rather pandering to new players.

Don't get me wrong though, I want more people playing Gw2 and I love that the game still gets new players and I personally love helping those players out when I see them in trouble or asking questions.
But what I don't care so much for is new expansions having their content designed with new players in mind.

All the expansions in Gw2 and living world are supposed to be played after the Vanilla game.. the Vanilla game should be the first thing new players should be doing when they join Gw2.
This is where they should be learning the game, learning how to make builds and how their classes work etc.
This in itself brings up a few other issues as well which is something i've brought up many times in the past when talking about the need to go back and improve the Vanilla game, and i'm glad to see this opinion is becoming more popular these days as well, even some content creators for Gw2 are starting to bring it up now and again as well.

If new players want to jump right in, use a lvl 80 booster and go right into brand new expansion content, well that's fine.. that's their decision and I don't think they should be denied the ability to do that if they really want to.

But they should understand that in doing so they are going to struggle, especially if they go off alone because this content should be designed for the long term player who knows how to play the game.
This content should not be designed to "go easy on newbies" like a fair bit of expansion and living world content is, excluding HoT which is honestly the only paid release that did cater to the experienced player base.

It's the failure of this which I think is mostly responsible for Gw2 being far, far too easy for most people, hardcore and casual players alike.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Orack.9756]

I really like HoT difficulty, it have help me a lot to understand how to adjust build and use skill right to solo anything.

HoT map design are amazing too.

Not a big fan of PoF, and probably not the only one since these map are empty pretty much all the time where HoT map have always ton of people around.

I hope the new chapter won't be to easy but don't ask for anything, I'll just wait and have fun exploring w/e it's hard or easy ^^

[mercury ranique.2170]

I doubt that HoT is more popular because of the difficulty. More like the gold/minute ratio. It is much more rewarding and the amount of reward does not scale with the difficulty. This means the amount of rewards you get is way much higher. 
This was also clearly visible in the early days of Palawadan. It drained HoT into PoF to something that gave gold a lot easier.

Having said that, most people in HoT play in massive blobs that also diminished the difficulty.

I have two thoughts on this matter.
1: Not everyone likes the same difficulty. It should be a personal preference. An hard mode option like GW2 would not work as it is open world and you should not devide the playerbase.
2: Rewards should be evenly distributed. difficult content should be more rewarding, but not exponantional like it is now.

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by mercury ranique.2170

[Gibson.4036]

7 hours ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

That's one of the drawbacks of giving the players the freedom of playing how and what they want. If you want to force introductions of game mechanics on players, you need to force the players across a narrow gameplay path so they can't avoid said introductions.

 

No more leveling by crafting, level boost tomes and scrolls, spvp at level 2 and similar, because the game would have to make sure that people go through all those introductions before they participate in high-level content. Somehow I don't think such a change would go over well with the playerbase ...

I don’t know that you have to force anyone, but if you have a breadcrumb trail and people follow it, they should get the steadily increasing instruction and difficulty. 
 

Behind the story, beyond the narrative entertainment of it, could be a game design that does this very thing. The 1-80 personal story could have steadily introduced break bars, dodging, and endgame mechanics. Each living world story instance could have been instruction toward what players need for the metas and dungeons/fractals/raids/strike missions released with them.

Players can skip the tutorial story, but then it’s on them.

It feels like ANet is getting this, and starting to design this way, but that doesn’t fix the problem of players jumping into core leveling and feeling like they hit a wall in HoT.

Im curious how much the new EOD tutorials will help. I guess they’ve said many new players jump right to current content, so maybe it will. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Were there even the current break-bars when the game launched?  Might have been difficult to add a tutorial in the Personal Story for something that was yet to exist (the change to Defiance Bars).

[Gibson.4036]

15 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Were there even the current break-bars when the game launched?  Might have been difficult to add a tutorial in the Personal Story for something that was yet to exist (the change to Defiance Bars).

Good point. So it really should have been introduced better with their introduction. I was just pulling a few common "players don't still don't know how to" things out of my hat.

I can think of places where the story missions do train incrementally in something you will need to know to finish that story instance. It'd be nice if they were tied to what peopel need to know in the rest of the game. We could have been taught, for example, about the randomized ley abilities (I can never seem to remember their exact names) that PoF bounties have during the story, in an incremental way that would have prepared people to do face them out in the world instead of relying on commanders to yell "melee now, range now" or "if you have the orbs on you, get to one of the other orbs". Again, just an example, but stuff like that players will get if they are introduced to them and incrementally tested in them.

It looks like they might be doing this in EoD. In addition to the tutorial "break the golem's break bar" kind of stuff, that water event they showed looks like a more developed, less obvious dodge tutorial than the silly "dodge into the chest once" tutorials in the core starter zones. If so, maybe there will be a smoother learning curve as new players join.