HoT >> PoF

[wraithedge.5476]

Why is Heart of Thorns so so so much harder than Path of Fire. Its kind of crazy. It like the designers went through a phase where they hated the players with HoT and then decided to be fun again with PoF.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Core Gw2 Was baby Mode easy. 

So they thought "Hey let's go from easy to normal mode with HoT". 

But because the playerbase was only used to baby mode difficulty, people got decimated left and right by trash mobs. 

So they made HoT easier. After launch. 

With PoF, they learned that their playerbase can't handle above baby mode difficulty or has any willingness to learn even the most basics of combat. 

So they stuck to that since. And if they up the difficulty even a little bit, the forum gets flooded with a tsunami of tears. 

See Soo-Won, Eparch, Umbriel etc. 

Edited September 13 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I would prefer they had a personal open world and story instance difficulty option which scaled your own power but nothing else (so everyone can still share a zone).

I like the difficulty of HoT and like working with friends while exploring whereas in PoF bringing a friend takes it from being easy to being trivial.

[WhiteSmoke.5926]

If only it was hard

if only !

[Dean Calaway.9718]

HoT is still the best GW2 expansion ever.

JW was exciting before they nerfed the Destroyers, imagine having enemies that you actually have to fight, we can't have that apparently.

[jzzabelle.8520]

19 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

HoT is still the best GW2 expansion ever.

JW was exciting before they nerfed the Destroyers, imagine having enemies that you actually have to fight, we can't have that apparently.

PoF for me edges it out.

Mounts were the best and most impactful addition to the game. Griffon being a secret, 'exclusive' mount, which nobody knew about prior to launch, was amazing. Mounts in GW2 are still the best in MMOs. Nothing beat the feeling of exploring different areas in the PoF maps, some of which were inaccessible until you had the correct mount unlocked. 

Edited September 13 by jzzabelle.8520

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

10 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

So they stuck to that since. And if they up the difficulty even a little bit, the forum gets flooded with a tsunami of tears. 

See Soo-Won, Eparch, Umbriel etc. 

Well Eparch had a massing influx of '"accidentally" afkers when they offered the T2 variant , more in any other gold-making areas ,, something that the devs quickly had anticipated and offered in other metas and from now on , they will do in other future modes :P.

While Soo Won people have a problem with the constant RNG tail that offered 80% damage reduction+massive HP , while the raiders cried in the same for Umbriel in the convergances withe mobility-evades  , while the casuals went to OW for the T2and didnt get affected .

Now we wait if enought people create contant threads that they want to counter powerceep and we buff up the 1-7 raids , on "cutrrent standard , like T4 fractals 😛)

 

Edit: By doubling the hp or raids bosses and doubling the Timer , it only "slighty" affect gold/per people , while the sexy armor still exist fr the most .

If theres lack or gold , we can force people to do the "baby mode" ALSO ,  for extra rewards , having more people in the lfg

 

Spoiler

(you see old gg , you want content with huge hp  to remind people

Now we wait for them  to do something foolish

Its called Check mate , in chess ?

 

And somewhat to contact the Old Credits youtube hag and tell him , for everyones sanity +devs this kind of devs is the best format , rather than be there to be everyones moms to help them escape real life problems  )

 

Edited September 13 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[Tula.6021]

12 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

So they stuck to that since. And if they up the difficulty even a little bit, the forum gets flooded with a tsunami of tears. 

See Soo-Won, Eparch, Umbriel etc. 

You mean to say Anet never learns? Or Anet never loses hope?

I love baby modes. Just my thing. Come home from work and chill. Pls no difficulties. I already avoid raids.
 

13 hours ago, wraithedge.5476 said:

Why is Heart of Thorns so so so much harder than Path of Fire. Its kind of crazy. It like the designers went through a phase where they hated the players with HoT and then decided to be fun again with PoF.

But from the point now HoT isn't hard. Image when it got released and players still only had their core armor stats equipment, no specs, no power creep. I image it as green hell of death.

When I returned to the game (somewhere ice brood saga) and went to HoT with my old main char from old core days, my ranger, I died sooo often I had to completely change my equipment. And I could. I could use stats others didn't have back then.
Whatever, I dropped the ranger, created a revenant, used the 80er boost, got celestial armor and had my fun.

PoF was prettier. And I liked the story better.

[Randulf.7614]

I find the Awakened and their condition spamming far harder than the HoT mobs - even after the big HoT nerf

But PoF in general was built in responses to some of the criticism of HoT and to make it more accessible. Unfortunately they also took out so much reason to return there. 

HoT was great at the time because it was new and different and really changed the perspective on what GW2 could deliver. As much as I still love the pioneering spirit of HoT, I find it lacking a bit today in terms of variety of content or mapwork. It does however stand out as high quality in what it delivers by today's standards. And the metas are very strong (putting aside the power creep)

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I guess I'm an exception in that I find PoF to be harder than HoT.

HoT enemies are simpler in that they have a gimmick.  They've got one thing that you need to watch out for, and after you deal with that one thing the enemies are a piece of cake.  In PoF the enemies aren't as dangerous (well, some of them), but they run in packs and they have a higher aggro range.  As somebody who's usually running around in full glass, having hordes and hordes of enemies attack from afar really wears you down.  I find the PoF bosses to be harder, too, due to the unstable magic abilities.  The HoT bosses don't have some randomizer that can render your entire build inoperable.  

[EDOTDOT.9265]

On 9/13/2024 at 11:36 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I guess I'm an exception in that I find PoF to be harder than HoT.

HoT enemies are simpler in that they have a gimmick.  They've got one thing that you need to watch out for, and after you deal with that one thing the enemies are a piece of cake.  In PoF the enemies aren't as dangerous (well, some of them), but they run in packs and they have a higher aggro range.  As somebody who's usually running around in full glass, having hordes and hordes of enemies attack from afar really wears you down.  I find the PoF bosses to be harder, too, due to the unstable magic abilities.  The HoT bosses don't have some randomizer that can render your entire build inoperable.  

I can somewhat agree with this.  I don't necessarily think that the enemies in PoF are more difficult per se but it's certainly not the most enjoyable experience when I practically can't move five feet without having every creature in rendering distance jump me.  It's almost like somebody at ANet wanted to make PoF more like Diablo or Path of Exile with the sheer number of mobs but forgot to adjust the Time To Kill accordingly.

[Tula.6021]

On 9/14/2024 at 6:36 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I guess I'm an exception in that I find PoF to be harder than HoT.

No.
I dropped HoT and did PoF and liked and finished PoF and then went back to finish HoT.

I found PoF easier.

[Allori.7149]

HoT was what hooked me in this game. Nothing will replace the feeling of exploring that jungle with just a mere glider and no masteries unlocked. The exp and Hero Point grinds were insane and hard, because I didn't have a proper build yet and you needed like 400 HP to train an elite specialization. I felt challenged and it was very rewarding. The metas are insanely good and still relevant to the present day (what we can't really say about PoF).

With that being said, power creep, nerfs and mounts destroyed the experience, you can't really tell it's hard now. 

Edited Sunday at 02:31 PM by Allori.7149

[wraithedge.5476]

PoF had nice reachable content that I felt I had a chance at. I didn't always win but I always knew what I had to do to get there. I could always spot the gap when I didn't prevail.

In HoT, getting insta-one-shotted by hero-point bosses, who knows. Go buy better stuff at the gem store? Walking into a room full of mobs that give each other fury on pulse, who knows. Just don't play that part of the game? Bosses that are really group champions with gold rings in a room barely bigger than they are so its face-tank or nothing... Who knows. Just be a different character I guess.

In the end the design just felt malicious and made no sense. PoF made more sense by far and its achievements felt reachable even when they were difficult.

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 hours ago, wraithedge.5476 said:

PoF had nice reachable content that I felt I had a chance at. I didn't always win but I always knew what I had to do to get there. I could always spot the gap when I didn't prevail.

In HoT, getting insta-one-shotted by hero-point bosses, who knows. Go buy better stuff at the gem store? Walking into a room full of mobs that give each other fury on pulse, who knows. Just don't play that part of the game? Bosses that are really group champions with gold rings in a room barely bigger than they are so its face-tank or nothing... Who knows. Just be a different character I guess.

In the end the design just felt malicious and made no sense. PoF made more sense by far and its achievements felt reachable even when they were difficult.

Better stuff at the gem shop? What? Rooms too small for range? Huh?

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I find OW HoT a bit more difficult than PoF, tho I agree that PoF can overwhelm you with mobs.

Putting difficulty aside, I know a lot of people love PoF but as someone who did both for the first time recently (last 2 years) I really love the HoT zones. PoF feels empty in comparison (probably partly by design, it does have quite a bit of desert) and lacking in interesting events going on. I struggle a bit to understand exactly why - maybe the emptiness, maybe the stronger mobs in HoT, or the stronger bosses/hero points, or that HoT has more other players, or it might be the much stronger metas in HoT. Probably a combination of all of these I guess. HoT just felt more like an ongoing struggle against Modremoth and the mordrem whereas PoF feels a bit boring in comparison.

Edited Monday at 03:41 AM by Mistwraithe.3106

[DanAlcedo.3281]

On 9/13/2024 at 6:50 PM, Tula.6021 said:

You mean to say Anet never learns? Or Anet never loses hope?

I love baby modes. Just my thing. Come home from work and chill. Pls no difficulties. I already avoid raids.

I would explain it like this:

If you do 50% of your potential dps, you can beat 99.9% of all pve content. 

If we just count Openworld, meta/world bosses and things like convergences etc, 25% is enough. 

It's a problem however when countless people do 10% and whine when they are told to get better. Which is sadly the reality we live in. 

Even confirmed by Anet. The average gw2 player does roughly 10% of what they could be doing. 

Eparch (before the nerf) needed close to 20% for a kill. So you see the problem. It was to much to ask for from the Gw2 playerbase at large. 

To add some rough numbers:

50% = 20-22k dps

25% = 10-11k dps

10% = 4-5k dps

Edited Monday at 11:17 AM by DanAlcedo.3281

[Solomon Darkfury.3729]

On 9/12/2024 at 11:43 PM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Core Gw2 Was baby Mode easy. 

So they thought "Hey let's go from easy to normal mode with HoT". 

But because the playerbase was only used to baby mode difficulty, people got decimated left and right by trash mobs. 

So they made HoT easier. After launch. 

With PoF, they learned that their playerbase can't handle above baby mode difficulty or has any willingness to learn even the most basics of combat. 

So they stuck to that since. And if they up the difficulty even a little bit, the forum gets flooded with a tsunami of tears. 

See Soo-Won, Eparch, Umbriel etc. 

HEy now... Pocket Raptors were LETHAL at launch lol

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1 hour ago, Solomon Darkfury.3729 said:

HEy now... Pocket Raptors were LETHAL at launch lol

Anything is lethal when that's the first time a mob fights back. 😉

[Tula.6021]

21 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

If you do 50% of your potential dps, you can beat 99.9% of all pve content. 

That sounds like me in my chill mode.

21 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Eparch (before the nerf) needed close to 20% for a kill. So you see the problem. It was to much to ask for from the Gw2 playerbase at large. 

Eparch was logistic (I don't know if still). You needed a dedicated team to do the portals and hinder the spawns to reach Eparch. You needed support and you needed movement.

The first two times I did that meta it failed because Eparch got buffed up so much (while everyone just ate a hell of dmg himself) that the time ran out.

When I joined a squad with organised people just for portals and adds we managed him. No fail since then. But that meta is just terrible nonetheless, for an open world meta.

If Eparch was only damage dealing, then I'm sure we wouldn't have failed the first two tries. Also maintaining a dps rota was difficult because of the damage lines and circles and later the fire waves too, trying to get away/out of that and stay alive at the same time. That all costs dps. When I got 2 rotas out as qdps herold, I was lucky. Doesn't surprise me at all that the Eparch meta is a bad dps example.
Octovine would be better there because once the shields are down (and the frogs got removed or kept busied elsewhere) it was all stand still and doing rota. ❤️

21 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

It's a problem however when countless people do 10% and whine when they are told to get better. Which is sadly the reality we live in.
Even confirmed by Anet. The average gw2 player does roughly 10% of what they could be doing. 

If the majority of customers only use 10% of what's possible a developer has then to ask himself whether he failed the target audience either with the content offered or the entire battle system. That sounds like time wasted that would served better elsewhere. For whom are the rest 90% of potential? For 20% of customers?

You know the 80/20 rule?
Use 20% of your input to reach 80% of output.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

On 9/12/2024 at 9:43 PM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Core Gw2 Was baby Mode easy. 

So they thought "Hey let's go from easy to normal mode with HoT". 

But because the playerbase was only used to baby mode difficulty, people got decimated left and right by trash mobs. 

So they made HoT easier. After launch. 

With PoF, they learned that their playerbase can't handle above baby mode difficulty or has any willingness to learn even the most basics of combat. 

So they stuck to that since. And if they up the difficulty even a little bit, the forum gets flooded with a tsunami of tears. 

See Soo-Won, Eparch, Umbriel etc. 

As someone who liked Soo-Won but hates the eparch fight I don't think it's just difficulty that makes it bad, think for me it's more the weird basement Arena just feeling so cramped and anti climactic after the grand epic platform Soo-Won is fought on. 

[Allori.7149]

From what you said, I can imagine what might be wrong. I'm a bit reluctant to elaborate, but maybe it might help you... In the past, people really complained about the difficulty in HoT and it was nerfed or taken in consideration (for worse or better) in the next expansions.

Quote

In HoT, getting insta-one-shotted by hero-point bosses, who knows. Walking into a room full of mobs that give each other fury on pulse, who knows.

First of all, HoT hero points were not really meant to be soloed (what drastically changed from PoF and beyond), that's why they give 10 hero points instead of 1. There are constant HP runs on LFG to help you not only reaching them, but also killing the bosses. If in a run, you can run naked and still get all of them.

I personally prefer to do POF and EOD hero points, because they are mostly communes and were much easier.

They can be soloed with elite spec, a proper build, gears and a rotation. The gears can be of exotic rarity and bough from the tp or obtained in many cheap ways across the world.

You can get BIS gears (ascended) by just doing your dailies/weeklies/specials and buying them with astral aclaim points.

You don't need to theorycraft anything about builds and gears when starting. There are plenty of websites to ger proper builds ( my favorites are hardstuck.gg, snowcrows.com, guildjen and discretize).

Quote

 

Go buy better stuff at the gem store? 

 

The gemstore doesn't sell gears, just account upgrades (bag slots, bank tabs...) and cosmetics. Yes, you can convert gems to gold, but it's really not needed to get exotic/ascended gears. 

Quote

Just don't play that part of the game?

Bosses that are really group champions with gold rings in a room barely bigger than they are so its face-tank or nothing... Who knows. Just be a different character I guess.
 

Honestly? Just get good. Learn your skill priorizations and how to dodge. Maybe respec to an easier profession... LEARN HOW TO MOVE AND HOW TO DODGE, BE DEFENSIVE.

You should be stacking anyway, playing at range will only make you exposed and you will get less boons overall.

Quote

In the end the design just felt malicious and made no sense. PoF made more sense by far and its achievements felt reachable even when they were difficult.

I can only think of the frogs in the south of VB, the Balthazar HP and Chak Gerent, but they were just meant to be harder, not malicious.

Edited Wednesday at 03:45 AM by Allori.7149

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

19 hours ago, Tula.6021 said:

If the majority of customers only use 10% of what's possible a developer has then to ask himself whether he failed the target audience either with the content offered or the entire battle system. That sounds like time wasted that would served better elsewhere. For whom are the rest 90% of potential? For 20% of customers?

You know the 80/20 rule?
Use 20% of your input to reach 80% of output.

The numbers may surprise you.  You can get half of the benchmark just by auto attacking if you're geared up.  There's many low intensity builds out there that do even better with minimal button presses.  Even if you aren't geared up, in something like full Soldiers you can hit 60% to 70% of the benchmark if you try hard, 80% to 90% in trailblazers.  Even on my worst days, I can run up, press 1 button to start auto attacking, and do 5 times what the average player does.  Even if I'm in full Soldiers gear, I could auto attack and do 3 times what the average player does.

I've spent quite a bit of time contemplating how it is that the average person is so poor at the game.  When it comes down to the depth and complexity of combat, the biggest issue that players face is the paradigm.  GW2 is unlike other RPGs and MMOs in many ways that cause it to favor maximizing damage.  The average player walking into GW2 is going to be completely unaware of this, or how the mechanics of the game cause it to favor maximum damage.  They'll build themselves with random bits of gear they find (AKA the RNG build), or they'll pick bits of gear for roleplay reasons, or they'll refuse to gear themselves at all, or they're so afraid of dying they'll go 100% into defensive/gear/traits/utilites.  It is a combination of not knowing how to gear a character, and not really caring how they gear a character.  

Your assertion, though, is a flawed application of the Pareto Principle.  It isn't that these players "use" 10% of the game.  It is that they have 10% of the damage output of best players.  They "use" quite a bit.  In fact, there's very little that is sequestered away from these players.  That big hurdle I described above is really just a matter of awareness.  Clearing the hurdle is really easy, but most players just won't bother with it.  Likewise, the devs aren't putting the majority of their development time into high-end elite content.  Quite the opposite, actually: fractals and raids are largely neglected in the development cycle. 

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

On 9/16/2024 at 2:12 PM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

I would explain it like this:

If you do 50% of your potential dps, you can beat 99.9% of all pve content. 

If we just count Openworld, meta/world bosses and things like convergences etc, 25% is enough. 

It's a problem however when countless people do 10% and whine when they are told to get better. Which is sadly the reality we live in. 

Even confirmed by Anet. The average gw2 player does roughly 10% of what they could be doing. 

Eparch (before the nerf) needed close to 20% for a kill. So you see the problem. It was to much to ask for from the Gw2 playerbase at large. 

To add some rough numbers:

50% = 20-22k dps

25% = 10-11k dps

10% = 4-5k dps

Well thankfully alts are spamming messages  that we should aim to recreate the  HoT era  (dedly mobs) , so people build as tanky as posible , so even the 10% numbers are not rechable .

Spoiler

Essentially people are trained  up for PvP , all this time :PPP

And any high HP increased in OW for people to get bored LI builds , should instead be implanted first as a test subject in Instances for some "time"

 

Spoiler

(or you know auto-lfg , and segragate each other

Or if people afk now that we metuculus used EVERY OTHER OTPION (xaxaxa) offer GW1 henchman

One way or the other before GW3 shows up , casual will get the Set , that most sellers defend their money print . Meanwhile dont want their mode to be improved or blatanly afk , so essentially the old gg hands are free to other modes/copy other game mecahnics to said modes  :PPPP)

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:03 PM by Killthehealersffs.8940

[DanAlcedo.3281]

15 minutes ago, Killthehealersffs.8940 said:

Well thankfully alts are spamming messages  that we should aim to recreate the  HoT era  (dedly mobs) , so people build as tanky as posible , so even the 10% numbers are not rechable .

Essentially people are trained  up for PvP , all this time :PPP

 

And any high HP increased in OW for people to get bored LI builds , should instead be implanted first as a test subject in Instances for some "time"

 

  Reveal hidden contents

(or you know auto-lfg , and segragate each other

Or if people afk now that we metuculus used EVERY OTHER OTPION (xaxaxa) offer GW1 henchman 😛)

 

Making yourself more tanky when mobs kill you is exactly the wrong mentality to have. 

Cool. You take less dmg but so does the enemy now. The fight takes longer than before. More time to get punched in the face. 

If one thing is true in GW2. More dmg always makes your life easier. 

More dps means less mechanics to deal with. In raids and such. 

Enemies can't punch you when they are dead. 

Add the fact that you almost always have the initiative against npcs. (If you have the ability to use your eyes to be aware of your surroundings).