Level of Difficulty for Story Instances

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@Algreg.3629 said:People are absolutely convinced it would not matter trying a different build, trying different things, they are convinced there is no self-improvement possible. That really has me worried far beyond the game tbh.

That sort of thing is why I included the reference to learning how to survive in full glass. That was painful at first, but Jennur's Horde taught me that learning how to play better lets you win, and stubbornly refusing to learn lets you lose. We can all learn that kind of thing, but we have to be willing to do it.

[Overlord RainyDay.2084]

Actually I do have one complaint about the difficulty of story missions, and that is: respawning in combat. When you get into an encounter you may find that you didn't bring the right tools for the job. Even if you know what you need to do, you need to get out of combat to switch. Sometimes dying helps, but often it doesn't. In the last battle of Be My Guest, I was able to figure out what to do, but realized I didn't have enough CC. So after I got killed by the wall of death, I was hoping I would get a chance to change builds, but no I was thrown right back into combat after respawning, so I just had to power through. I wasn't about to go through the entire mission over again just for that. Making it so you always respawn away from combat so you can swap weapons and skills would probably solve some frustrations. The personal story was pretty good about that, but not so much in later LW chapters. People like me saying "just change ur build bro" doesn't do too much good if the only way to change your build involves restarting a 30 minute mission.

[Haishao.6851]

@Overlord RainyDay.2084 said:Yeah, that's one of the few where it does throw new mechanics at you, expect you to pick them up quickly, and it does take some serious practice to get through. Now, you can get a friend to carry you through it, you'd just have to have your friend open the instance, and you accept completion for your chapter when they finish. It isn't going to let you complete it yourself or get achievements, but you could get past it that way, if you so desired.

It doesn't throw a new mechanic at you. It's the same as zephyrite's aspects skills, but more powerful. It's been a major part of getting around Dry Top for over a year before HoT releases.

[zealex.9410]

I disagree. Dont get me wrong i dont take enjoyment in u not having as much fun as you could have, but theres nothing that tells us that Anet plans on doing multiple modes for lw story. With that being said me, as someone who finds most instances easy and some of them abit harder than that but still not hard id wouldnt have fun with the story if the encounters were even easier in alot of cases.

If they do ever introduce modes then by all means have nm be as easy as ud like.

Personally i really like the way gw1 has handled its story missions.

[Cernow.3974]

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I would like to put forth an argument of Story Telling and "Stakes". This is kind of telling with a lot of players from this generation not really understanding what makes a story compelling, along with a stark difference in how they read things. This is easier to explain in passive media, since the story telling generally has carry most of the weight. But in games, the interactive element changes much, if not all of the perception of the situation..... and this is something thats difficult to account for when you can't count on your audience to play along. This is why I've been trying to bring attention to the fact that "Role Playing" doesn't mean what people think it means, and its having a major impact in player attitude and level of cooperation. The latest round of "Not my Commander" threads further highlights this issue.

The story chapters don't have a lot of time to flesh out characters and the setting the way any passive media would have to afford to do its job....... and as a result, the majority of the weight in getting the player into the right head space, is the puzzles and fights that make up the majority of a story chapter. Having a well themed or well designed fight quickly gets the player invested in the immediate events. And to keep it going, the mechanics have to follow similar rules to build up and pay off, that you would want to use in any good story. But theres an extra problem layers all over this...... Players generally don't like being told explicitly what to do, because it comes off as either insulting their intelligence, or "bad design". But if players are terrible at catching on to more subtle methods (a common challenge for any good mystery arc), when the pay off is supposed to happen, they immediately feel lost and insecure in that moment of confusion.

Pulling all of this together.... how much of an interactive situation can you strip out, before its weight and investment is utterly lost on the audience? But if they design around that, it would mean shifting everything into cut scenes and other passive interactions, making the fights superfluous (aka pointless), and comes off as lazy padding for time. This is why the "mode selection" or "options" type solution people keep throwing around aren't anywhere near as simple as people make it out be. Especially when a lot of story content is regularly criticized as being low quality, and not engaging; only to be met with equally loud criticism from another group when the game actively tries to directly engage with the player more.

Thanks for the considered response. It's a refreshing change from the stock lazy responses of "improve your gear" and "learn to play". For what it's worth, all my characters have ascended weapons and jewelry and a mix of ascended and exotic armour, good runes and researched builds etc I know how to play, I've completed pretty much everything in game other than Fractals (I slot for WvW) and Dungeons (not my thing). There's no story instance I've failed to complete, I just don't feel they are balanced properly, especially compared with other content in the game, particularly as the emphasis is surely meant to be on the story rather than some kind of gear check or skills / competency meter.

I agree that if story instances are made too easy or mechanics are too telegraphed then there's no sense of achievement or being part of something epic. But all too often it seems the concept for what constitutes an "epic" fight are things like carpeting the floor in aoe spam, floods of adds, excessively chained crowd control, tedious levels of mob health or one-shotting the player with mechanics which are often opaque. It's all the usual stuff just ratcheted up, seemingly to roadblock the player and cover up for a lack of depth. But turning the dial up to 11 is a lazy solution for making something challenging.

Not all story instances are like this, there's some enjoyable ones too. I'm currently taking another character through LS2 and beyond, will make some notes.

[juhani.5361]

@"Gehenna.3625" said:I think the HP of bosses in stories should be cut in half regardless. Some people find them too hard and have their reasons. I personally find the fights too long and tedious and already get bored with the fights before getting the boss to 50%. It's just unnecessary to make the fights as long as they are simply because of the huge HP on them.

Dodging 27 circles at a time in every fight gets old. Having to do that 132 times in each fight gets really boring. Yes the numbers are made up but it feels like that a lot. I think it's really unnecessary and it breaks the story telling as well. Let the world, dungeon, raid bosses etc. be the challenging ones and the story ones a bit more fun for the more casual players because that part is about the story and there's plenty of challenge already I'd say.

Having to do the same mechanic 97 times in a row doesn't help either, especially as the timing gets tighter and tighter. I ran into this in about half of the story boss instances in PoF-- the worst being that crystal thing in Glint's Lair. I'd done the mechanic successfully three times. Why isn't that enough to prove I've gotten it down? The fourth took me about five minutes of flailing around like a fool in the explodey-crystal field just to get the shield and the special ability to the monster. Talk about tedium! I was never close to dying, but constantly failed to trigger it by minuscule microseconds of timing. I'm getting older, my reflexes and carpal tunnel are getting worse. But the timing is getting tighter and tighter. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I'm not going to miraculously "git gud" all of a sudden.

@"starlinvf.1358" said:

Which raises the important point of available resources. In single player games this job would normally go cheat codes and difficulty settings. But being a primarily multiplayer game, you have the resources of a community (with this one being exceptionally eager to help out), it comes off as counter-productive or even arrogant when someone claims that this "isn't an option" to achieve their goal. This is ALWAYS an option; and its only price is the minimum level of social skills required to communicate with another human being, and a basic understanding of social etiquette. Its the insistence that "it isn't" thats irritating people when these threads pop up.

Theres an age old Norn saying "There is no Shame in a Hunter asking for help when it is needed", and something along the lines of "a lone hunter doubles as prey".

I'm going to guess that I'm not the only one like this. Social skills have nothing to do with reasons I don't seek outside help. Publicly admitting weakness and that you suck feels like crap. Simple. I don't play games to feel like garbage. I play to have fun. If something's intended to be solo content, then I'm going to do it as solo content.

The unfortunate side-effect to no gear grind in this game is that you have no other strategies to get around difficulty. In ESO, I can upgrade my gear and craft new sets. I can rank up my CP level. In SWTOR, I can grind eleventy-billion heroics to get my command crates and the next tier of gear. I can do dailies for an eternity and blow my Marks of Favour on Kaidan container keys in Secret World Legends to upgrade my gear. There's no alternative path here at all-- and in a lot of cases even ascended armor is mostly out of the hands of casual open world players unless they have the fortitude and gold to withstand the crafting grind in this game.

Just to clarify-- I'm not talking about rewards or making legendary armor accessible in PVE, etc. My point is pretty much that strategies that work for lone wolf players in most MMOs don't hold true here at all. And that's a problem when you're dealing with base story content.

@Rasta.2371 said:I don't care if the story is faceroll easy, I just wish the writing was good.

See, and that's the other part of the equation. I'd probably scream and cuss at my screen for an eternity as I threw myself at boss after boss if I enjoyed the story. I'd end up bruised and battered, but happy, because I love stories. Unfortunately, I don't like the story here. So it's just not worth the pain.

And I forgot the last part-- what I'd love to see at minimum:

A repair bench in each instance and a couple of seconds to collect yourself after death to heal up, replace skills, etc. I died once during the herald fight right after the Night of Fires thing in PoF. I took a second to try to heal up and suddenly fire started burning me. I was punished for not instantly jumping back in. Those mechanics need to go.

Difficulty levels would be nice, but even the small above tweak might make me consider touching the story again.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

Another thing I’d like to see removed is the caging of players if they die. For example, the last story part of HoT. I was in a group and died during the last boss fight and was sent to a cage where I sat there twiddling my thumbs while the other players finished the fight.

That sux.

I understand ANet might not want us to rez rush the boss but caging for the entire fight is too much. Send the player to a cage if you must with a short penalty box sentence but let us leave the cage and get back to the fight. It’s not fun to watch others carry us while we sit there.

[battledrone.8315]

i doubt they can make this happen, even if they want to, they would have to mess around with the code, that is unstable to begin withi have never seen so many DCs, as in this games story instancesAFAIK , "gathering the pact" is still bugged , and that has been in game since launchif they actually made story mode a la SWTOR i would definately reinstall and try it out

[Khisanth.2948]

@MDove.2391 said:

@Overlord RainyDay.2084 said:

Changing up your weapons and skills can help a lot.

Also, people forget there's always the option of bringing a friend. Sometimes I think the story is balanced around Anet expecting that the average player does the story with a friend/guildie.No changing up weapons/skills or bringing a friend is going to get me thru the instakill red circles in Prized Possessions, following Ruka.Managed getting that far, then nope! Then, having to leave--back to the beginning.But, I get what you are saying. Thank you.

o_O

The only red circles I remember from that one is around the postule like things but those aren't insta kill. Allowing the Faolain/vinetooth thing to catch up to you IS instakill though.

If it's that section two uses of the leap skill(I think it was the third one) will get you through it.

[battledrone.8315]

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@"Algreg.3629" said:People are absolutely convinced it would not matter trying a different build, trying different things, they are convinced there is no self-improvement possible. That really has me worried far beyond the game tbh.

That sort of thing is why I included the reference to learning how to survive in full glass. That was painful at first, but Jennur's Horde taught me that learning how to play better lets you win, and stubbornly refusing to learn lets you lose. We can

all

learn that kind of thing, but we have to be willing to do it.

how exactly do you know where other players limits are?furthermore, how do you know if they even want to go to "the limit"?

[Khisanth.2948]

@"Overlord RainyDay.2084" said:Actually I do have one complaint about the difficulty of story missions, and that is: respawning in combat. When you get into an encounter you may find that you didn't bring the right tools for the job. Even if you know what you need to do, you need to get out of combat to switch. Sometimes dying helps, but often it doesn't. In the last battle of Be My Guest, I was able to figure out what to do, but realized I didn't have enough CC. So after I got killed by the wall of death, I was hoping I would get a chance to change builds, but no I was thrown right back into combat after respawning, so I just had to power through. I wasn't about to go through the entire mission over again just for that. Making it so you always respawn away from combat so you can swap weapons and skills would probably solve some frustrations. The personal story was pretty good about that, but not so much in later LW chapters. People like me saying "just change ur build bro" doesn't do too much good if the only way to change your build involves restarting a 30 minute mission.

Did you not notice the fact that the entire instance was littered with bones including that final room? The skill you get from picking up a bone pretty much anywhere in the game is a CC.

That aside you can simply change build while dead.

[juhani.5361]

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:Another thing I’d like to see removed is the caging of players if they die. For example, the last story part of HoT. I was in a group and died during the last boss fight and was sent to a cage where I sat there twiddling my thumbs while the other players finished the fight.

That sux.

I understand ANet might not want us to rez rush the boss but caging for the entire fight is too much. Send the player to a cage if you must with a short penalty box sentence but let us leave the cage and get back to the fight. It’s not fun to watch others carry us while we sit there.

Wow, talk about kicking you when you're downed! I think I've read about the penalty box before, but I thought it related to group content. Guess it goes to show how far I never went in HoT ;) I should force myself through the rest one of these days.

I really don't get why this game deals out so many penalties when you die. Obviously, you died because something gave, because your stats weren't high enough or your skill, etc. So why make the rest of the encounter even harder with downed penalties? Most games do something akin to this and I've never understood the design mentality behind it. You're not going to do any better if the game penalizes you. So why is this a standard gaming mechanic? What exactly do you gain from it? You're not going to learn how to be more effective with your skills if you can't even muster up the same resources you had at the beginning of the encounter.

Eh, never mind. Just musing on why games love to rub failure in your face...

[Algreg.3629]

@juhani.5361 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:Another thing I’d like to see removed is the caging of players if they die. For example, the last story part of HoT. I was in a group and died during the last boss fight and was sent to a cage where I sat there twiddling my thumbs while the other players finished the fight.

That sux.

I understand ANet might not want us to rez rush the boss but caging for the entire fight is too much. Send the player to a cage if you must with a short penalty box sentence but let us leave the cage and get back to the fight. It’s not fun to watch others carry us while we sit there.

Wow, talk about kicking you when you're downed! I think I've read about the penalty box before, but I thought it related to group content. Guess it goes to show how far I never went in HoT ;) I should force myself through the rest one of these days.

I really don't get why this game deals out so many penalties when you die. Obviously, you died because something gave, because your stats weren't high enough or your skill, etc. So why make the rest of the encounter even harder with downed penalties? Most games do something akin to this and I've never understood the design mentality behind it. You're not going to do any better if the game penalizes you. So why is this a standard gaming mechanic? What exactly do you gain from it? You're not going to learn how to be more effective with your skills if you can't even muster up the same resources you had at the beginning of the encounter.

Eh, never mind. Just musing on why games love to rub failure in your face...

what do you mean, group content? Of cause the penalty box works for groups only in HoT final. They don't put you into the box till you relog as the solo instance owner (yet :) )

many penalties? The small temporary decrease in stats? The negligible equipment damage you repair for zero cost? Come on.

You gain from it: at least a very small discouragement of the infamous corpserush strategy.

[maddoctor.2738]

@juhani.5361 said:Wow, talk about kicking you when you're downed! I think I've read about the penalty box before, but I thought it related to group content.

That penalty box is only used in the last fight of the HoT story and to my knowledge it doesn't exist in any other part of the game at all.

[Overlord RainyDay.2084]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"Overlord RainyDay.2084" said:Actually I do have one complaint about the difficulty of story missions, and that is: respawning in combat. When you get into an encounter you may find that you didn't bring the right tools for the job. Even if you know what you need to do, you need to get out of combat to switch. Sometimes dying helps, but often it doesn't. In the last battle of Be My Guest,

I was able to figure out what to do, but realized I didn't have enough CC

. So after I got killed by the wall of death, I was hoping I would get a chance to change builds, but no I was thrown right back into combat after respawning, so I just had to power through. I wasn't about to go through the entire mission over again just for that. Making it so you always respawn away from combat so you can swap weapons and skills would probably solve some frustrations. The personal story was pretty good about that, but not so much in later LW chapters. People like me saying "just change ur build bro" doesn't do too much good if the only way to change your build involves restarting a 30 minute mission.

Did you not notice the fact that the entire instance was littered with bones including that final room? The skill you get from picking up a bone pretty much anywhere in the game is a CC.

That aside you can simply change build while dead.

You're right. I was forgetting the bones. I remember skulls giving fear, but I completely forgot that bones give a stun too.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@juhani.5361 said:Wow, talk about kicking you when you're downed! I think I've read about the penalty box before, but I thought it related to group content.

That penalty box is only used in the last fight of the HoT story and to my knowledge it doesn't exist in any other part of the game at all.

There's also the Thaumanova Anomaly, though I think that's the only other one unless PoF has some I don't know about.

[juhani.5361]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@juhani.5361 said:Wow, talk about kicking you when you're downed! I think I've read about the penalty box before, but I thought it related to group content.

That penalty box is only used in the last fight of the HoT story and to my knowledge it doesn't exist in any other part of the game at all.

Thanks for the info :)

[juhani.5361]

@Algreg.3629 said:

@juhani.5361 said:

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:Another thing I’d like to see removed is the caging of players if they die. For example, the last story part of HoT. I was in a group and died during the last boss fight and was sent to a cage where I sat there twiddling my thumbs while the other players finished the fight.

That sux.

I understand ANet might not want us to rez rush the boss but caging for the entire fight is too much. Send the player to a cage if you must with a short penalty box sentence but let us leave the cage and get back to the fight. It’s not fun to watch others carry us while we sit there.

Wow, talk about kicking you when you're downed! I think I've read about the penalty box before, but I thought it related to group content. Guess it goes to show how far I never went in HoT ;) I should force myself through the rest one of these days.

I really don't get why this game deals out so many penalties when you die. Obviously, you died because something gave, because your stats weren't high enough or your skill, etc. So why make the rest of the encounter even harder with downed penalties? Most games do something akin to this and I've never understood the design mentality behind it. You're not going to do any better if the game penalizes you. So why is this a standard gaming mechanic? What exactly do you gain from it? You're not going to learn how to be more effective with your skills if you can't even muster up the same resources you had at the beginning of the encounter.

Eh, never mind. Just musing on why games love to rub failure in your face...

what do you mean, group content? Of cause the penalty box works for groups only in HoT final. They don't put you into the box till you relog as the solo instance owner (yet :) )

many penalties? The small temporary decrease in stats? The negligible equipment damage you repair for zero cost? Come on.

You gain from it: at least a very small discouragement of the infamous corpserush strategy.

Like I said, I never made it far in HoT. I've never done a HoT adventure. I've never entered (or wanted to enter) a raid. For all I knew this could have been something connected to some map meta I've never done.

And, yes, stat decreases are extremely punishing when you're operating at the margins of your skill level. Depleting your resources when you're having trouble is the antithesis of being helpful and actively hinders learning a boss encounter. And no kidding it's a vestige of corpse runs that I've read were par for the course in obsolete MMOs. The question is, "Why is this a standard gaming mechanic?" Followed by, "What's a player supposed to gain from it?" If you don't know the actual game design rationale for said mechanics, an "I don't know" would suffice.

[Rasta.2371]

See, and that's the other part of the equation. I'd probably scream and cuss at my screen for an eternity as I threw myself at boss after boss if I enjoyed the story. I'd end up bruised and battered, but happy, because I love stories. Unfortunately, I don't like the story here. So it's just not worth the pain.

It would be great if the story was good AND it was challenging. If you played Guild wars 1 releases you would know what i mean, the Winds of Change arc for example was incredibly well written, and somewhat challenging.

[particlepinata.9865]

In my opinion it would be a good idea if it was more balanced, like it was in gw 1 story missions for example. Not to easy, not too difficult, with an optional hard mode, with increased rewards exp etc. Maybe one hero companion would be nice, like a gw 1 hero, but i understand that they don't want that, because before you know it, certain people keep whining for full hero parties for everything.

[maddoctor.2738]

@particlepinata.9865 said:In my opinion it would be a good idea if it was more balanced, like it was in gw 1 story missions for example. Not to easy, not too difficult, with an optional hard mode, with increased rewards exp etc.

Before or after Heroes? Because GW1 missions were much harder before the addition of Heroes and became a joke after it. I think the current story mission difficulty is balanced, depending on your profession, some make it ridiculously easy, while with others it's a lot harder. It's solo content so it can't be balanced around every profession having an easy (or hard) time doing it because the game's balance team doesn't take solo play into consideration at all.

[Malediktus.9250]

Story instances are already braincell killing easy level. If Anet caters to the very lowest possible skill level we might as well just watch a movie than playing

[particlepinata.9865]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@particlepinata.9865 said:In my opinion it would be a good idea if it was more balanced, like it was in gw 1 story missions for example. Not to easy, not too difficult, with an optional hard mode, with increased rewards exp etc.

Before or after Heroes? Because GW1 missions were much harder before the addition of Heroes and became a joke after it. I think the current story mission difficulty is balanced, depending on your profession, some make it ridiculously easy, while with others it's a lot harder. It's solo content so it can't be balanced around every profession having an easy (or hard) time doing it because the game's balance team doesn't take solo play into consideration at all.

That your opinion, not a fact for the average player. And im talking from the time i played, when you could only equip 3 heros, not a full party, maybe started later with gw 1?

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I find the story mostly easy, and you don't even can fail since you rez even during boss battles. That said, if you are handicapped or just not so good in playing games, it would be a welcome trait to have different difficulties like most single player games offer.

[maddoctor.2738]

@particlepinata.9865 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@particlepinata.9865 said:In my opinion it would be a good idea if it was more balanced, like it was in gw 1 story missions for example. Not to easy, not too difficult, with an optional hard mode, with increased rewards exp etc.

Before or after Heroes? Because GW1 missions were much harder before the addition of Heroes and became a joke after it. I think the current story mission difficulty is balanced, depending on your profession, some make it ridiculously easy, while with others it's a lot harder. It's solo content so it can't be balanced around every profession having an easy (or hard) time doing it because the game's balance team doesn't take solo play into consideration at all.

That your opinion, not a fact for the average player. And im talking from the time i played, when you could only equip 3 heros, not a full party, maybe started later with gw 1?

You could use 7 heroes during Winds of Change. 7 Heroes were added on March 3 2011, Winds of Change was added September 29 2011. And you are denying that different professions have variable difficulty in playing solo/story content? That's not really an opinion because the professions are badly balanced when it comes to solo play. There are easy ones and hard ones

[juhani.5361]

@"Rasta.2371" said:

See, and that's the other part of the equation. I'd probably scream and cuss at my screen for an eternity as I threw myself at boss after boss if I

enjoyed the story

. I'd end up bruised and battered, but happy, because I love stories. Unfortunately, I don't like the story here. So it's just not worth the pain.

It would be great if the story was good AND it was challenging. If you played Guild wars 1 releases you would know what i mean, the Winds of Change arc for example was incredibly well written, and somewhat challenging.

I guess it depends on the type of challenge. I've never gotten very far in GW1 because the camera gives me the queasies. Challenges that involve using your brain would be a lot of fun, but anything involving timers or reflexes isn't for me. Or mechanics that fit the encounter. My favorite boss battles have been Darth Sion and Darth Nihlus in KOTOR 2 because they require using intelligence, logic, and the clues you've gathered throughout the game to optimize the encounter. Or the boss battles in Secret World Legends' The Darkness War, or "fighting" Big L in the Nightmare in the Dream Palace mission. Heck, most of the boss battles in SWL feature some kind of story logic. Encounters designed to bring a real mood, tell a story with consistency, etc. I'd love it if Anet could bring some of that sort of encounter design into the story.