Harvest Temple CM <1%

[mov.1246]

HT CM is too hard and should be nerfed in my opinion.

Guild wars 2 claims itself as casual friendly and everything should be doable for everyone with more or less effort. Why anet made such a super hard content that seems exclusively for top tier guilds? I doubt there will ever be a pug who can manage to do it, and that is the problem. Some people cant join a raid guild with settled times due to real life duty. And some people cant take a whole day or hours after hours to attempt.

This strike already seems to be extincted from LFG, in the first days you saw a lot of squads looking for people, but now you rarely see any HT CM LFG. Players already figured out it is wasted time (except for training purposes) to aim for a kill. And I dont see any replayability for this CM, it is just too hard to find dedication to do it a 2nd time. First time for achievement and title, and thats it.

NO content in this game should be excluded what pugs cant do, and NO content in this game should be exclusively for 0,01% of the elite playerbase. The other 3 CMs have a well done difficulty: they are hard, but arent impossbile for pugs.

No offense to the devs, this is a great piece of hard content, but I think you overstretched the difficulty a bit too much.

[A Hamster.2580]

2 hours ago, mov.1246 said:

HT CM is too hard and should be nerfed in my opinion.

Guild wars 2 claims itself as casual friendly and everything should be doable for everyone with more or less effort. Why anet made such a super hard content that seems exclusively for top tier guilds? I doubt there will ever be a pug who can manage to do it, and that is the problem. Some people cant join a raid guild with settled times due to real life duty. And some people cant take a whole day or hours after hours to attempt.

This strike already seems to be extincted from LFG, in the first days you saw a lot of squads looking for people, but now you rarely see any HT CM LFG. Players already figured out it is wasted time (except for training purposes) to aim for a kill. And I dont see any replayability for this CM, it is just too hard to find dedication to do it a 2nd time. First time for achievement and title, and thats it.

NO content in this game should be excluded what pugs cant do, and NO content in this game should be exclusively for 0,01% of the elite playerbase. The other 3 CMs have a well done difficulty: they are hard, but arent impossbile for pugs.

No offense to the devs, this is a great piece of hard content, but I think you overstretched the difficulty a bit too much.

No, HT CM should not be nerfed. No one is forced to play HT CM. You can play normal mode or the story mode version of HT if you want to solo it. Your claim that pugs cannot complete HT CM is false. As of this very moment, there is a post on reddit from a group stating they have cleared HT CM with logs and youtube POV's and that they were just 10 randoms that got together and set a schedule. I still see groups recruiting for HT CM every week.

 

The entire game should not be tailored around a specific group of players that cannot find time to play with others on a consistent basis. I have a full time job and still plan to one day join a group to tackle HT CM. If you think you will never be able to clear HT CM, then you will never be able to clear it.

Edited July 24, 2022 by A Hamster.2580

[Will.9785]

OP is right.  ANet shouldn't be creating content for the 0.001% of players.

According to GW2 Wingman only 9 groups have cleared it.  That's 90 players out of tens (hundreds?) of thousands.  Granted, not every clear is on wingman... but even if you multiplied it by 10, it would still be < 1000 players.

What's worse is that now they are locking cosmetics behind them.  This has never been done before.  In a game that's basically all about cosmetics, COSMETICS ARE CONTENT.  A title is fine, but cosmetic rewards is a bridge too far.  The whole reason I play GW2 is because its different and you can dip in and out as your schedule permits and earn cosmetics at your own pace.  Even legendary armor could be earned this way.  You could earn a few LI each week and take breaks if you needed to.  But you can't do that with the Imperial Everbloom, especially not with HTCM.  Now you are forced to join a static and spend weeks on end bashing your face against the wall and if you happen to miss a day and your static clears it you have to start all over with another group, because let's face it 95% of players are never going to want repeat it after they get it the first time.

The focus should be on open world content.  That is, was, and always will be what sets this game above and apart from every other MMO I've played.  SooWon was a step in the right direction (though they should have never locked the turtle behind it).  We need more of that.

And as far as I can tell, EOD strikes are dead.  Every time I check LFG I see IBS strikes and I hardly ever see EOD ones, let alone EOD CMs.  It's probably because there aren't any good rewards for EOD strikes and they locked the 1 decent item behind the CMs.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Will.9785

[A Hamster.2580]

7 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

What's worse is that now they are locking cosmetics behind them.  This has never been done before.  

 

7 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

But you can't do that with the Imperial Everbloom, especially not with HTCM.  Now you are forced to join a static and spend weeks on end bashing your face against the wall

This is false. Completing HT CM is not the only way to get this new infusion. No one is forcing you to join a static and bash your face against the wall for this new infusion. There are two alternative ways to get this new ever bloom infusion similar to how you would go about acquiring the other super rare infusions.

1.) keep repeating the easier strike CM's for a chance to loot it like how you can keep repeating certain open world metas for a chance to loot the other super rare infusion. (dragon void, chak egg, queen bee, etc)

2.) save up the gold to buy it from other players like how you can save up gold to buy the other super rare infusions (heart of khan ur, dragon void, chak egg, queen bee, etc)

 

7 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

And as far as I can tell, EOD strikes are dead. 

Again this is false. I think you are looking at the LFG at the wrong times. People are still clearing these to be able to buy their weekly Antique Summoning Stone. It's easy efficient gold. I know I am able to join at least one EOD strike on any given day right after server reset.

 

[samsar.9152]

4 hours ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

 

This is false. Completing HT CM is not the only way to get this new infusion. No one is forcing you to join a static and bash your face against the wall for this new infusion. There are two alternative ways to get this new ever bloom infusion similar to how you would go about acquiring the other super rare infusions.

1.) keep repeating the easier strike CM's for a chance to loot it like how you can keep repeating certain open world metas for a chance to loot the other super rare infusion. (dragon void, chak egg, queen bee, etc)

2.) save up the gold to buy it from other players like how you can save up gold to buy the other super rare infusions (heart of khan ur, dragon void, chak egg, queen bee, etc)

 

Again this is false. I think you are looking at the LFG at the wrong times. People are still clearing these to be able to buy their weekly Antique Summoning Stone. It's easy efficient gold. I know I am able to join at least one EOD strike on any given day right after server reset.

 

And also the same thing happening than with raids. Ppl do them with guildies and/or with discord community because EOD strikes are mostly close to raids in terms of difficulty. 

[Zok.4956]

16 hours ago, mov.1246 said:

HT CM is too hard and should be nerfed in my opinion.

I don't agree. There should also be instanced content in this game that is so hard, that only a very few players ("the best") and very dedicated, static groups can clear. Maybe even after weeks of training, dedication, practice etc.

With EoD strikes (which are not only Strikes 2.0 but also Raids 2.0) Anet seems to go in the right direction. You have several difficulty settings (easy mode in the story, normal mode in the strike and hard mode/raid mode in the CM and very hard mode/Raid-CM in the HT-CM) and all these encounters share a lot of the same assets (map, boss models, etc.) and this sharing not only reduces dev time and development costs but makes sure that "story-only players" don't miss anything (except maybe rare loot and achievements/titles).

With this Anet can create "the same" (more or less) content for "story mode" players and for players that want a real hard challenge.

 

12 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

What's worse is that now they are locking cosmetics behind them.  This has never been done before.  In a game that's basically all about cosmetics, COSMETICS ARE CONTENT.  A title is fine, but cosmetic rewards is a bridge too far.

Sure they have done it before.  They even locked legendary raid gear behind raids.  For some players clearing raids is probably more difficult than for you clearing HT-CM. 

 

12 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

But you can't do that with the Imperial Everbloom, especially not with HTCM.  Now you are forced to join a static and spend weeks on end bashing your face against the wall

That's how I started raiding in GW2 a lot of years ago. It did took us a while until we could do our first full clear. And we liked that challenge and it was a great feeling of success/achievement after we beat it for the first time.

 

12 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

The focus should be on open world content.  That is, was, and always will be what sets this game above and apart from every other MMO I've played.  SooWon was a step in the right direction (though they should have never locked the turtle behind it).  We need more of that.

PvE-instances (and PvP modes like sPvP and WvW) are the places for challenging content.

Open world  should not be the place for challenging content, OpenWorld is the place for large scale epic fights that can be cleared by (more or less) experienced players in their open-world self-sufficient builds if there are enough players present in the map at that time.

If I am in an organized, pre-formed squad (each sub-group has alac/quickness) there is no challenge beating SooWon (it just takes way too long and is boring) but if I am in an unorganized map with some ad-hoc players there is also no challenge because usually the map will NOT succeed and nowadays no one will even try it.

SooWon was a step in the wrong direction for Openworld content.

[samsar.9152]

Soo Won is easy if the map is really organized. But it takes so much time to prepare for everything that its so much easier to do something else. So yeah... I agree. 

[Ashantara.8731]

On 7/16/2022 at 10:24 AM, triada.6245 said:

More like: YOU like this fight, others dont

You're generalizing exactly like the person whose statement you "corrected." 😉

I love the HT Strike Mission in NM, and from the videos I saw, the HT CM is exciting! So there goes your "others don't" claim.

13 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

And as far as I can tell, EOD strikes are dead.

That's why I can find groups every day to do the daily in CM (or NM if the respective CM was already done in the current week), because it's "dead." 😄
 

Edited July 25, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Heibi.4251]

Let's not get into an argument on who enjoys hard content. I enjoy challenging content as well. My initial opening post is aimed at asking ANET if concentrating on content that fewer than 1% are able to complete should be done. As of now someone says 9 groups have done this. That's 90 people out of what - 500,000 active players? That's 0.00018% of the population. Even if you say there are only 100,000 players that's still 0.00009% of the population. Is that a good business model? You still had to devote DEV/DEVs time to it. Sure there are lots more trying it out, but the success rate is very low(obviously), and I'm sure ANET has the metrics on this. 

 

On a side note I like the changes to the old world bosses. They don't die in less than 2 minutes anymore. Plus they added some "teaching" mechanics in starter zones that never existed before. I thank ANET for doing that.

[A Hamster.2580]

9 hours ago, Heibi.4251 said:

Let's not get into an argument on who enjoys hard content. I enjoy challenging content as well. My initial opening post is aimed at asking ANET if concentrating on content that fewer than 1% are able to complete should be done.

The way you present this is misleading. It makes it seems like the entire "content" was only made for less than 1% of the players. In reality, it is the challenge mode of this content that currently has a low clear rate (it's only been a month since release). The normal mode and the story mode of this content have been cleared by many.

 

This is analogous to a game developer creating a game with three difficulties. Easy, Normal, Hard. It's been 1 month but only less than 1% of players have been able to clear hard mode while many have cleared Easy and Normal. Someone then asks the developer if Hard mode should be focused on.

Edited July 25, 2022 by A Hamster.2580

[Heibi.4251]

2 minutes ago, A Hamster.2580 said:

The way you present this is misleading. It makes it seems like the entire "content" was only made for less than 1% of the players. In reality, it is the challenge mode of this content that currently has a low clear rate (it's only been a month since release). The normal mode and the story mode of this content has been cleared by many.

 

This is analogous to a game developer creating a game with three difficulties. Easy, Normal, Hard. It's been 1 month but only less than 1% of players have been able to clear hard mode while many have cleared Easy and Normal. Someone then asks the developer if Hard mode should be focused on.

I never even mentioned the normal mode. That can be done be everyone - yes. Therefore it is worthy content and ANET set the difficulty at the proper percentage population-wise. CMs in Raids are regularly completed and are not aimed at such a small fraction of the community.  Sure, ANET is proud of creating something far beyond normal CMs.  My entire question involves creating content that is so difficult that only 90 people have completed it after a full month. There should be a medium that ANET should aim for when creating a CM. Do they aim for 0.000018% of the population or do they aim for at least 10%?  10% should be the goal, imho.

[Zok.4956]

31 minutes ago, Heibi.4251 said:

There should be a medium that ANET should aim for when creating a CM. Do they aim for 0.000018% of the population or do they aim for at least 10%?  10% should be the goal, imho.

10% would mean no more CMs in fractals, raids, strikes, etc. because my guess is that CMs are cleared by way less than 10% GW2 players. Maybe 1%. Maybe even less than that.

Challenging content in a game like GW2 (that has a lot of different player types and play styles and game modes) is always only for a very small part of the player base. The harder the challenge, the less players try and clear the content. That's normal.

I think it is good that one strike-CM, the HT-CM is "ultra hard" and is a big challenge even for experienced raid and CM players.
 

 

[Sobx.1758]

18 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

OP is right.  ANet shouldn't be creating content for the 0.001% of players.

Luckily there's a non-CM version of the encounter available, so it's not like this content was created for 0.001% of the playerbase, it's just another layer added to the content.

18 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

What's worse is that now they are locking cosmetics behind them.

"Worse"? There's nothing wrong with locking a cosmetic item behind harder content. It would be a problem if it dropped  gear with higher stats, but cosmetic? Complaining about it is nothing more than entitlement. You're not somehow bound to get any reward in the game no matter what you want or don't want to do. It's not like you can't play whatever you want because you don't have a specific skin or infusion.

18 hours ago, Will.9785 said:

And as far as I can tell, EOD strikes are dead. 

Baseless. Unless we count "I don't like it so it's dead"  -which still makes it false. 🙄

Edited July 25, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Cuks.8241]

3 hours ago, Heibi.4251 said:

Let's not get into an argument on who enjoys hard content. I enjoy challenging content as well. My initial opening post is aimed at asking ANET if concentrating on content that fewer than 1% are able to complete should be done. As of now someone says 9 groups have done this. That's 90 people out of what - 500,000 active players? That's 0.00018% of the population. Even if you say there are only 100,000 players that's still 0.00009% of the population. Is that a good business model? You still had to devote DEV/DEVs time to it. Sure there are lots more trying it out, but the success rate is very low(obviously), and I'm sure ANET has the metrics on this. 

 

On a side note I like the changes to the old world bosses. They don't die in less than 2 minutes anymore. Plus they added some "teaching" mechanics in starter zones that never existed before. I thank ANET for doing that.

Its not a full encounter though. Its just one mode. It doesnt require that much dev time.

I think its a good addition and they should keep up at it if they want to expand the raiding/strike community. No serious raiding guild is going to tackle gw2 if the hardest encounters are cleared in a few tries.

[Krzysztof.5973]

5 hours ago, Heibi.4251 said:

Let's not get into an argument on who enjoys hard content. I enjoy challenging content as well. My initial opening post is aimed at asking ANET if concentrating on content that fewer than 1% are able to complete should be done. As of now someone says 9 groups have done this. That's 90 people out of what - 500,000 active players? That's 0.00018% of the population. Even if you say there are only 100,000 players that's still 0.00009% of the population. Is that a good business model? You still had to devote DEV/DEVs time to it. Sure there are lots more trying it out, but the success rate is very low(obviously), and I'm sure ANET has the metrics on this. 

 

On a side note I like the changes to the old world bosses. They don't die in less than 2 minutes anymore. Plus they added some "teaching" mechanics in starter zones that never existed before. I thank ANET for doing that.

Let's get into an argument that this fight is still bugged as (insert kitten here). Multiple classes' traits are not proccing, balance in general is (insert kitten here), which makes the fight harder than it should be. The worst parts are unfinished and inconsistent transitions of phases. We've wasted multiple hours, because AOEs did not disappear like they should. They put in the patch notes that they fixed resetting of the fight, they did not. It's missing a lot of polish overall. 
Many more squads would have killed it if any ANet put more effort into this CM before releasing it unfinished. 

[Katary.7096]

On 7/24/2022 at 8:46 PM, mov.1246 said:

I doubt there will ever be a pug who can manage to do it, and that is the problem.

For the record: I was right there with you in thinking that pugs would likely not clear that encounter, but then...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/w74t2b/yet_another_soowon_kill_voidwalker_title/

[Cyninja.2954]

13 minutes ago, Katary.7096 said:

For the record: I was right there with you in thinking that pugs would likely not clear that encounter, but then...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/w74t2b/yet_another_soowon_kill_voidwalker_title/

 

That's not a pug group. They didn't know each other before, but they still spent dozens of hours and days practicing together. Which essentially means they became a static for all intents and purposes.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Firebeard.1746]

On 7/24/2022 at 2:59 AM, Krzysztof.5973 said:

It took them 7 years to add simple easy mode buff into raids and you expect them to add a 3rd difficulty into strikes? 

Good point. They do feel more effective and responsive in their dev cycles these days, but maybe you're right. I guess high-end players don't want any kind of competitive PVE with compelling rewards either given the reacts. This community seems to be at war with itself and anyone who wants to help everyone is crazy. Lulz. 

[Wintermute.5408]

I think there's a difficulty gap with this one.

Strikes are supposed to be EZ training mode. That's fair.

Then the CMs, my impression, were meant to be normal raid difficulty. Which most of them are. That would make the current 4 strikes into a proper full wing content-wise.

Instead we get a CM that's above raid CMs in difficulty. I'm not against that kind of content as long as there are no practical reasons to do it. But I honestly think this level of difficulty should be reserved for strikes under "nightmare mode" or something, while CM strikes should be within the difficulty range of normal difficulty raids.

Then again, looking at raids and fractals, anet isn't familiar with difficulty curve concept anyway.

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

Then again, looking at raids and fractals, anet isn't familiar with difficulty curve concept anyway.

Theres actually quite nice difficulty curve with EOD strikes. You start really easy and ramp up from there all the way to HT CM. 

[Wintermute.5408]

34 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Theres actually quite nice difficulty curve with EOD strikes. You start really easy and ramp up from there all the way to HT CM. 

To the same HT CM that's supposedly the hardest piece of PVE content in the game? Sure m8. Smooth curve.

[Sobx.1758]

16 minutes ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

To the same HT CM that's supposedly the hardest piece of PVE content in the game? Sure m8. Smooth curve.

Just because something's the new hardest pve content doesn't automatically make it not on curve.

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

I say, its okay to give hardcore players some bone here and there but the day I see "for sale on lfg" is the day Anet should nerf it down. or just ban sale period.

Looking at Raid lfg, I can't help but feel like people against easy mode are the one selling raid runs.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Yellow Rainbow.6142

[Cyninja.2954]

4 hours ago, Yellow Rainbow.6142 said:

Looking at Raid lfg, I can't help but feel like people against easy mode are the one selling raid runs.

There are/were many valid reasons to have been, and still be, against "easy mode" in the past and present. Most of them have nothing to do with selling.

1. streamlining of content reduces the epic nature of encounters (probably the weakest given the actual fight matters, still some of those raid boss fights were very epic when entering the arena the first time)

2. focusing on multiple difficulty modes takes up more resources. Resources which are missing else where

3. offering multiple difficulties has to come with a pay-off in regards to resources spent. Which in turn means the developers need to encourage more players to play all the modes

4. encouraging and/or designing your game around players going through different tiers of instanced content leads to a more instanced content focus

To summarize:

There were valid reasons to argue against "easy mode raids" in the past from the standpoint of keeping the content niche, both to not shift the games focus to much on instanced content away from open world, as well as to retain some form or reasonable development time (if other content was not to be affected release wise).

The net result right now:

- Players who never wanted to do instanced content and who still do not desire to enter instanced content get less content overall.

- Players who always had some form of barrier to entering challenging instanced content have an easier time to enter this content.

- Players who were doing challenging instanced content get less unique but more regular content updates.

TL;DR:

As a player who enjoys instanced content myself, and open world and story content in-between, and was against spending more resources on training modes in the past (even without selling), I don't mind the developers spending more resources on instanced content and basing their balance even more around that type of content instead of only open world. I do miss larger living world updates and wonder when we will see any of those again (unlike say PoF where living world picked up almost seamlessly post expansion).

As far as sell runs, I'd imagine that with emboldened mode giving more players a peak at legendary armor, while also being rather limited in actual LI per week, I wouldn't doubt if sellers are having even more demand now. Not sure if true though, maybe I should ask around.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Juan.6124]

You have over 50 open world maps to play. Chill.