Guild Wars 2 should have harder content.

[Taygus.4571]

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

[Skotlex.7580]

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

I'd be happy if most events wouldn't feel dumbed down once there's a large party going.

I do think open world events are at the right level of challenge, however, nearly no event is safe from becoming trivial when faced with a zerg.

Thus, rather than ask for harder content, I'd ask for better event scaling. :)

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

[Taygus.4571]

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

[Cobrakon.3108]

There is a bit of a semantics issue with regards to "hard" content sometimes on the mmo side of the industry. If by hard you mean a lot of grind and patience, no thanks. But if you mean hard as in the commonly used hard of all types of genres then yes please! Simply getting together with 10 people and memorizing dungeon mechanics is not hard and doesn't interest me either. The holy grail of difficulty is to maintain a strong level of difficulty and create a system that doesn't weaken against the evolving gameplay community which makes content easier as time goes on by finding more efficient ways to beat content. The problem is if you raise the skill floor your going to inevitably cut off part of the community from completing the content. If the community can accept. that there will be content that some of us will not be able to do in part or in full, then we can move forward with more interesting content. People might say raids already count as that, but in truth the only thing stopping people from doing the raids is not forming connections with people and not willing to grind and memorize the content.

So what does that harder content look like?skilled content could see more focus on:

1. reflexes-(better monsters with tells that require skill and counter strategies)
2. Timing of abilities
3. Bosses do more damage but have less hp (less time to max damage in one spot and more spike damage)
4. Utilize Dodging mechanics and other active mechanics instead of passive mechanics.

These are just a few ideas but I believe are important to make the content both harder and more rewarding.

[Taygus.4571]

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

There's enough incentives for raids and fractals...but they're not exactly the most popular content in the game...and CMs... how often do they get done?

[Vayne.8563]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

Right ... but what is their process for testing things? Nothing is a better testing ground than how it actually works. It's not about being proactive because IIRC, there isn't a test server with a full population to ensure the numbers are right. We have to recognize that WE are the test server.

There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I'm cognisant that ANET isn't Blizzard and doesn't have the same resources, and even with their PTR realm, very often a patch goes live with bugs and features that are obviously flawed.

But I'll refer to the example I gave already: It didn't take long for ANET to announce they were changing the time gating from 24hrs to 2hrs. They also quickly addressed the issue that XP was locked behind mastery points we couldn't get until after completing a lengthy and timegated collection. The community raised these issues within 24 hrs of the patch going live, and ANET obviously agreed with the objections.

So why didn't the devs think of that in the first place? I don't believe we as the player base are like the Skritt, and therefore have a collective intelligence that magnifies with our population.

And again, had they discussed the time gating as part of the sneak preview, do you not think the community reaction would have been identical? ANET could then have changed the time gate before releasing the patch, saving the players a good deal of frustration.

It seems like the devs think they are doing us a favor by keeping everything a secret and springing new content and features on us, but lately it seems that philosophy is doing more harm than good, as once these features go live, the players discover flaws that ANET then scrambles to fix - and I'm not talking specifically about bugs, but about design choices. In the meantime players can lose out on time and resources, and it fosters negative feelings - all of which is bad for business.

I don't have a solution, but I'm not going to pretend like I don't see a problem, and one that seems to manifest more and more of late.

I think this is where Anet has missed a step ... they forgot there was a content difficulty between 'scrub' and 'hard'. Nothing a casual player experiences prepares them for Fractals, Raids, Dungeons, etc... How they continue to fail to bridge that disconnect ... amazing.

Low level fractals are actually fairly easy for the most part. Or there are certainly easier ones among them. I take new groups into low level fractals quite frequently as in TIer 1 fractals and if you practice the easy ones, you get better at them until you're ready to move up to the next one.

The real issue here is training. People who want the game to hold them by the hand, instead of learning from someone else is more a problem than the game not feeding you. There are plenty of people who'll teach you how to do stuff in this game. I'm one of them.

I offer people help all the time. Only a small percentage of people ever accept the offer, but I offer.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.

[Obtena.7952]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

Right ... but what is their process for testing things? Nothing is a better testing ground than how it actually works. It's not about being proactive because IIRC, there isn't a test server with a full population to ensure the numbers are right. We have to recognize that WE are the test server.

There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I'm cognisant that ANET isn't Blizzard and doesn't have the same resources, and even with their PTR realm, very often a patch goes live with bugs and features that are obviously flawed.

But I'll refer to the example I gave already: It didn't take long for ANET to announce they were changing the time gating from 24hrs to 2hrs. They also quickly addressed the issue that XP was locked behind mastery points we couldn't get until after completing a lengthy and timegated collection. The community raised these issues within 24 hrs of the patch going live, and ANET obviously agreed with the objections.

So why didn't the devs think of that in the first place? I don't believe we as the player base are like the Skritt, and therefore have a collective intelligence that magnifies with our population.

And again, had they discussed the time gating as part of the sneak preview, do you not think the community reaction would have been identical? ANET could then have changed the time gate before releasing the patch, saving the players a good deal of frustration.

It seems like the devs think they are doing us a favor by keeping everything a secret and springing new content and features on us, but lately it seems that philosophy is doing more harm than good, as once these features go live, the players discover flaws that ANET then scrambles to fix - and I'm not talking specifically about bugs, but about design choices. In the meantime players can lose out on time and resources, and it fosters negative feelings - all of which is bad for business.

I don't have a solution, but I'm not going to pretend like I don't see a problem, and one that seems to manifest more and more of late.

I think this is where Anet has missed a step ... they forgot there was a content difficulty between 'scrub' and 'hard'. Nothing a casual player experiences prepares them for Fractals, Raids, Dungeons, etc... How they continue to fail to bridge that disconnect ... amazing.

Low level fractals are actually fairly easy for the most part. Or there are certainly easier ones among them. I take new groups into low level fractals quite frequently as in TIer 1 fractals and if you practice the easy ones, you get better at them until you're ready to move up to the next one.

The real issue here is training. People who want the game to hold them by the hand, instead of learning from someone else is more a problem than the game not feeding you. There are plenty of people who'll teach you how to do stuff in this game. I'm one of them.

I offer people help all the time. Only a small percentage of people ever accept the offer, but I offer.

Unfortunately, this illustrates the problem. While it's great people like you offer training, based on the industry experience, Anet should have anticipated this gap was present in their game. What do I know .. .maybe Anet doesn't care if there isn't a large population of people doing raids or high level fractals, or any content for that matter. What I do know is that the gap exists and if people want harder content, something needs to bridge it to justify further hard content development. Offering training is good, but doesn't do that effectively for a large part of the players.

[Vayne.8563]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

Right ... but what is their process for testing things? Nothing is a better testing ground than how it actually works. It's not about being proactive because IIRC, there isn't a test server with a full population to ensure the numbers are right. We have to recognize that WE are the test server.

There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I'm cognisant that ANET isn't Blizzard and doesn't have the same resources, and even with their PTR realm, very often a patch goes live with bugs and features that are obviously flawed.

But I'll refer to the example I gave already: It didn't take long for ANET to announce they were changing the time gating from 24hrs to 2hrs. They also quickly addressed the issue that XP was locked behind mastery points we couldn't get until after completing a lengthy and timegated collection. The community raised these issues within 24 hrs of the patch going live, and ANET obviously agreed with the objections.

So why didn't the devs think of that in the first place? I don't believe we as the player base are like the Skritt, and therefore have a collective intelligence that magnifies with our population.

And again, had they discussed the time gating as part of the sneak preview, do you not think the community reaction would have been identical? ANET could then have changed the time gate before releasing the patch, saving the players a good deal of frustration.

It seems like the devs think they are doing us a favor by keeping everything a secret and springing new content and features on us, but lately it seems that philosophy is doing more harm than good, as once these features go live, the players discover flaws that ANET then scrambles to fix - and I'm not talking specifically about bugs, but about design choices. In the meantime players can lose out on time and resources, and it fosters negative feelings - all of which is bad for business.

I don't have a solution, but I'm not going to pretend like I don't see a problem, and one that seems to manifest more and more of late.

I think this is where Anet has missed a step ... they forgot there was a content difficulty between 'scrub' and 'hard'. Nothing a casual player experiences prepares them for Fractals, Raids, Dungeons, etc... How they continue to fail to bridge that disconnect ... amazing.

Low level fractals are actually fairly easy for the most part. Or there are certainly easier ones among them. I take new groups into low level fractals quite frequently as in TIer 1 fractals and if you practice the easy ones, you get better at them until you're ready to move up to the next one.

The real issue here is training. People who want the game to hold them by the hand, instead of learning from someone else is more a problem than the game not feeding you. There are plenty of people who'll teach you how to do stuff in this game. I'm one of them.

I offer people help all the time. Only a small percentage of people ever accept the offer, but I offer.

Unfortunately, this illustrates the problem. While it's great people like you offer training, based on the industry experience, Anet should have anticipated this gap was present in their game. What do I know .. .maybe Anet doesn't care if there isn't a large population of people doing raids or high level fractals, or any content for that matter. What I do know is that the gap exists and if people want harder content, something needs to bridge it to justify further hard content development. Offering training is good, but doesn't do that effectively for a large part of the players.

Actually Anet has ALWAYS had the philosophy that they want the community to come together for this stuff. That they don't want to put everything out in a sliver platter. You may not agree with the design but it's always been intentional.

I first became aware of this in Guild Wars 1, when Hearts of the North was introduced as part of the Guild War Beyond content. They had a bunch of stuff scattered around the world that you had to find with no clues. And they said it straight out. We wanted to create buzz. We wanted the community to come together and figure this stuff out and share it and pass it on. It was the same with Nicholas the Traveler. No one expects to hunt him down in the huge world every week. Someone would find him and it would get posted to the wiki.

Not everyone needs to be personally trained. Some people watch videos or look up stuff online which is yet another way of sharing info. But if you're playing an MMO and you insist on soloing and you insist on not doing research, you're never going going to be as good or get as far as people who do. And this is by design. You may not like it, but that's the game.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.Got it in one. That's all the begging for "challenge" has ever been about: rewards to lord over the unwashed masses. That's the reason raiders shriek with rage at ideas like "legendary armor should be available in PVE outside raids" and "raids should have multiple difficulty modes, so more of the playerbase will do them".

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.

Harder content is not enough, if it was the case take away achievements and and chest rewards for raids...tell me you wouldn't be upset without methods to...wait...

Can't say certain words so internet show off will have to do

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.

Harder content is not enough, if it was the case take away achievements and and chest rewards for raids...tell me you wouldn't be upset without methods to...wait...

Can't say certain words so internet show off will have to do

Player : "This is so boring, I can just steamroll through everything with 111111. Devs plz make harder content for me so I stop being bored. Make it really hard, like 10x times harder so me and my hardcore buddies can finally have some fun challenge"

Devs : "Ok, here is the harder content we made just for you."

Enraged player : " What is this??? This harder content has the same rewards as filthy casual content. There is no point doing this kitten."

Good ol' gamer hypocrisy, never fails to be amusing.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.

Harder content is not enough, if it was the case take away achievements and and chest rewards for raids...tell me you wouldn't be upset without methods to...wait...

Can't say certain words so internet show off will have to do

Player :

"This is so boring, I can just steamroll through everything with 111111. Devs plz make harder content for me so I stop being bored. Make it really hard, like 10x times harder so me and my hardcore buddies can finally have some fun challenge"

Devs :

"Ok, here is the harder content we made just for you."

Enraged player :

" What is this??? This harder content has the same rewards as filthy casual content. There is no point doing this kitten."

Good ol' gamer hypocrisy, never fails to be amusing.Don't bunch me with the rest of em. Ice been in the entire game series since gw1 release. I know what people want from all sides. Don't make this into a witch hunt thread

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

It was more of a general observation about players than personal. Meant to show the hypocrisy of players who ask for harder content, but would refuse to play it if it didn't come with better rewards. I see nothing wrong with players wanting something as long as they are honest about what it is they really want.

[phs.6089]

@MrPhantasia.5924 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Look at past MMO's. More difficult early MMO's like EQ did OK, but WoW enjoyed phenomenal success by comparison with the formula: put the more difficult content in instanced settings, make the open world easier. Most MMO's since have done just about the same thing.

ANet

has

made open world harder over time. LS2 maps offer more effective mobs than core maps. HoT has more effective mobs than LS2.

The general feeling is that PoF is easier than HoT. However, I find I am no more likely to have a problem in Heart of Maguuma than I do in Elona. To me, Elona seems to have a bit more condition pressure, whereas HoM has a bit more burst. Mobs swarm more in Elona. The jump from core to HoM is quite jarring, where the jump from HoM to Elona is not. Learning curve is a thing in games. If Hot taught players to play better, then they took those skills to Elona. For Elona to be seen as equally difficult to HoM, ANet would have had to make it harder to emulate the initial challenge experience that HoT offered.

That said, the fact that Elona is

not

harder than HoM suggests that ANet thinks the open world is about as hard as open world is going to get. Alienate enough players and revenue goes down. That brings it back to instances as the possible venue for greater PvE challenge.

Even instanced content has to appeal to a broad spectrum. That leaves difficulty settings as an option. Dungeons are dead to ANet. I don't see that changing. Fractals already has a sort of difficulty setting. Could the top end get harder? Maybe, I don't really know. Raids offer bosses with variable difficulty. I don't know the use metrics for raids, but ANet does. Raid offerings seem to be contracting rather than expanding, which suggests either that raid content may not be bringing in enough numbers to warrant more resources, or that the diversion of resources to "other projects" impacted raids as much or more than everything else, and we've yet to see the release pattern for the trimmed ANet.

Finally, a difficulty setting for story instances would not have been a bad thing. I doubt we'll see it -- at least retroactively -- at this late date, though I suppose ANet could experiment with coming offerings. That could depend on whether doing so would be too resource intensive, and create even more delays.

Wow saw massive success during the period where ow was "hard" it wasnt all instanced.

How many WoW players who participated in dungeons or raids thought its OW was hard? I didn't think so.

Vanilla WoW leveling wasn't bloodborne or dark souls but it was consistently threatening and just getting 1 or 2 adds in a fight could mean death.

That wasn't hard, that was plain timesink, those mobs still were trash mobs, juts were hitting hard.

[Xanadrine.4352]

I dont know op i think it can be plenty difficult, i get my butt handed to me a lot. Then again im off solo all the time, and getting dismounted into a pack of branded vets with a vet hydra is no fun. HoT is still rough, pof has a bit wider areas to not agro so many, but dragon fall can be ridic.

[zealex.9410]

@phs.6089 said:

@MrPhantasia.5924 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Look at past MMO's. More difficult early MMO's like EQ did OK, but WoW enjoyed phenomenal success by comparison with the formula: put the more difficult content in instanced settings, make the open world easier. Most MMO's since have done just about the same thing.

ANet

has

made open world harder over time. LS2 maps offer more effective mobs than core maps. HoT has more effective mobs than LS2.

The general feeling is that PoF is easier than HoT. However, I find I am no more likely to have a problem in Heart of Maguuma than I do in Elona. To me, Elona seems to have a bit more condition pressure, whereas HoM has a bit more burst. Mobs swarm more in Elona. The jump from core to HoM is quite jarring, where the jump from HoM to Elona is not. Learning curve is a thing in games. If Hot taught players to play better, then they took those skills to Elona. For Elona to be seen as equally difficult to HoM, ANet would have had to make it harder to emulate the initial challenge experience that HoT offered.

That said, the fact that Elona is

not

harder than HoM suggests that ANet thinks the open world is about as hard as open world is going to get. Alienate enough players and revenue goes down. That brings it back to instances as the possible venue for greater PvE challenge.

Even instanced content has to appeal to a broad spectrum. That leaves difficulty settings as an option. Dungeons are dead to ANet. I don't see that changing. Fractals already has a sort of difficulty setting. Could the top end get harder? Maybe, I don't really know. Raids offer bosses with variable difficulty. I don't know the use metrics for raids, but ANet does. Raid offerings seem to be contracting rather than expanding, which suggests either that raid content may not be bringing in enough numbers to warrant more resources, or that the diversion of resources to "other projects" impacted raids as much or more than everything else, and we've yet to see the release pattern for the trimmed ANet.

Finally, a difficulty setting for story instances would not have been a bad thing. I doubt we'll see it -- at least retroactively -- at this late date, though I suppose ANet could experiment with coming offerings. That could depend on whether doing so would be too resource intensive, and create even more delays.

Wow saw massive success during the period where ow was "hard" it wasnt all instanced.

How many WoW players who participated in dungeons or raids thought its OW was hard? I didn't think so.

Vanilla WoW leveling wasn't bloodborne or dark souls but it was consistently threatening and just getting 1 or 2 adds in a fight could mean death.

That wasn't hard, that was plain timesink, those mobs still were trash mobs, juts were hitting hard.

Call it whatever you like, it had the same effect.

[Linken.6345]

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.Got it in one. That's all the begging for "challenge" has ever been about: rewards to lord over the unwashed masses. That's the reason raiders shriek with rage at ideas like "legendary armor should be available in PVE outside raids" and "raids should have multiple difficulty modes, so more of the playerbase will do them".

So who is making this easy mode raid, centainly not the raid developers they are busy making new raids.Are you willing to get 1-2 maybe even 3 less living world releases each year just to get the easy mode raid wing or wings shiped out?

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

@Linken.6345 said:

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:Just make all events and content, even hearts x10 difficulty, the events would scale up x10 times which has stronger enemies / unlocks more abilities they have. then do the same for dungeons.

Why? What makes you think the majority of players want this kind of gameplay?

Separate instance like gw1 had a HM server

There's already not enough players in many of the maps at times...what makes you think there's will be enough players for this?And I assume.. you wouldn't just be wanting harder maps...but also special rewards to make these maps "worth it"?

Of course, why have it harder without incentive. The maps can fill up faster than you realize if enough incentive is there.

Wait...you mean to say that difficulty itself isn't enough as an incentive? Isn't the whole point of this debacle to have more challenging content so the hardcores finally feel accomplished, playing the game instead of steamrolling content? Why even bring rewards in this when the supposed issue is the lack of proper challenge?

Or is the real issue something else entirely and challenge is just a front? Just another way to filter out filthy casuals and get more value out of our exclusive shinies? Well one can at least be honest about it.Got it in one. That's all the begging for "challenge" has ever been about: rewards to lord over the unwashed masses. That's the reason raiders shriek with rage at ideas like "legendary armor should be available in PVE outside raids" and "raids should have multiple difficulty modes, so more of the playerbase will do them".

So who is making this easy mode raid, centainly not the raid developers they are busy making new raids.Are you willing to get 1-2 maybe even 3 less living world releases each year just to get the easy mode raid wing or wings shiped out?

Im not saying "drop all raid content or divert all resources from one bunch to another for my or a specific group alone's sake" I personally dont care who does it or when...It was just wishful thinking.

Legendary weapons and armor already have a lot of completion requirements for maps alone. there could be some more incentive for those that still play AND do raids. It doesn't have to come out of raids alone. a Hard Mode dungeon mode or Hard mode map events and hearts can still benefit most players of all kinds including casuals.

Something like: Each HM map / dungeon completion could have an associated cosmetic infusion reward that you can upgrade statwise to whatever nomenclature you want but you have to still provide the materials in the forge to do it. It would just be blank... These infusions could be part of a Season like PvP would have. Every season would be a new infusion. It would cater to both casuals and hardcore endgame players(even raiders) because lets face it. if you can show off your achievements, its what really matters...not just cash alone.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@"LucianDK.8615" said:I dont think you remember the launch of HoT. Anet catered to the vocal minority wanting harder content. And the casuals just couldnt cope with it, and hot got nerfed over time.

"Vocal Minority"

• GW2 launch in all its casual-friendliness was the most successful in MMO history by the numbers.
• Raiding is the smallest population in the game even in comparison to sPvP and WvW.
• HoT was a massive flop and many of its features regarded as horrible decisions by large segments of the community/former community.

Mhm. "Vocal Minority"

You know what a "hardcore" game looks like? Wildstar.

Turns out that community is one of the smallest and least-profitable with some of the least rights to complain.

Want to make the game harder? Take off your armor and play off-meta. Don't cry me a river when you can't find a group, either. "Competitive" PvE is nothing but stat checks, and everyone already knows the PvP formats in this game have been a joke since HoT.

[MrPhantasia.5924]

@phs.6089 said:

@MrPhantasia.5924 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Look at past MMO's. More difficult early MMO's like EQ did OK, but WoW enjoyed phenomenal success by comparison with the formula: put the more difficult content in instanced settings, make the open world easier. Most MMO's since have done just about the same thing.

ANet

has

made open world harder over time. LS2 maps offer more effective mobs than core maps. HoT has more effective mobs than LS2.

The general feeling is that PoF is easier than HoT. However, I find I am no more likely to have a problem in Heart of Maguuma than I do in Elona. To me, Elona seems to have a bit more condition pressure, whereas HoM has a bit more burst. Mobs swarm more in Elona. The jump from core to HoM is quite jarring, where the jump from HoM to Elona is not. Learning curve is a thing in games. If Hot taught players to play better, then they took those skills to Elona. For Elona to be seen as equally difficult to HoM, ANet would have had to make it harder to emulate the initial challenge experience that HoT offered.

That said, the fact that Elona is

not

harder than HoM suggests that ANet thinks the open world is about as hard as open world is going to get. Alienate enough players and revenue goes down. That brings it back to instances as the possible venue for greater PvE challenge.

Even instanced content has to appeal to a broad spectrum. That leaves difficulty settings as an option. Dungeons are dead to ANet. I don't see that changing. Fractals already has a sort of difficulty setting. Could the top end get harder? Maybe, I don't really know. Raids offer bosses with variable difficulty. I don't know the use metrics for raids, but ANet does. Raid offerings seem to be contracting rather than expanding, which suggests either that raid content may not be bringing in enough numbers to warrant more resources, or that the diversion of resources to "other projects" impacted raids as much or more than everything else, and we've yet to see the release pattern for the trimmed ANet.

Finally, a difficulty setting for story instances would not have been a bad thing. I doubt we'll see it -- at least retroactively -- at this late date, though I suppose ANet could experiment with coming offerings. That could depend on whether doing so would be too resource intensive, and create even more delays.

Wow saw massive success during the period where ow was "hard" it wasnt all instanced.

How many WoW players who participated in dungeons or raids thought its OW was hard? I didn't think so.

Vanilla WoW leveling wasn't bloodborne or dark souls but it was consistently threatening and just getting 1 or 2 adds in a fight could mean death.

That wasn't hard, that was plain timesink, those mobs still were trash mobs, juts were hitting hard.

Vanilla WoW certainly had more down time, but the fact that mobs were threatening, your character was weak, you could only handle one "trash" mob at a time without cooldowns or consumables forcing you to both learn to pull and cc carefully as well as incentiving grouping even outside of dungeons are genuine increases in real difficulty, not just upping the down time.

[Xar.6279]

Its probably all about ArenaNet's buisness model.I mean. No p2p = No new content.

While if it comes to PvE... The rule is simple and sounds: things are challenging only when you're doing them for the first time.EVERYTHING becomes easy, when you repeat it over and over again. No matter how hard content they do for you.So PvE just can't depend only on repeatability (as pvp can for example). It's unhealthy for the game.PvE needs ALOT of developers work to be successful.

And that's main problem of GW2. People repeat things over and over. Because there's nothing new to do. And they become more, and more salty.They're just tired of learning new players. Because they already done it thousands of times. So they avoid new players. And it's fully understandable. People wont change it by those posts which says "learn new players. Be nice. Blah blah blah". Some will ofc. But they'll just burn out sooner or later anyway. So their work dont matter after all.

Finally everyone complains. "Casuals" says that game is 2hard. And "Hardcores" says there's no challengies.

While in healthy, well-done pve game mode it works this way:New and old players learn new things together Because when new content appears then its new for everyone... Old content goes to trash. And everyone focus on new things. And progression.

But also maybe ArenaNet just dont fully understand how PvE works? And how to do it well? I dont know. As I know ArenaNet always focused more on PvP. So maybe they dont understand PvE. That would explain a lot. (e.g. those dungeons in 2012 which allowed players to use WP's in combat, etc, etc xD )

[Obtena.7952]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

Right ... but what is their process for testing things? Nothing is a better testing ground than how it actually works. It's not about being proactive because IIRC, there isn't a test server with a full population to ensure the numbers are right. We have to recognize that WE are the test server.

There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I'm cognisant that ANET isn't Blizzard and doesn't have the same resources, and even with their PTR realm, very often a patch goes live with bugs and features that are obviously flawed.

But I'll refer to the example I gave already: It didn't take long for ANET to announce they were changing the time gating from 24hrs to 2hrs. They also quickly addressed the issue that XP was locked behind mastery points we couldn't get until after completing a lengthy and timegated collection. The community raised these issues within 24 hrs of the patch going live, and ANET obviously agreed with the objections.

So why didn't the devs think of that in the first place? I don't believe we as the player base are like the Skritt, and therefore have a collective intelligence that magnifies with our population.

And again, had they discussed the time gating as part of the sneak preview, do you not think the community reaction would have been identical? ANET could then have changed the time gate before releasing the patch, saving the players a good deal of frustration.

It seems like the devs think they are doing us a favor by keeping everything a secret and springing new content and features on us, but lately it seems that philosophy is doing more harm than good, as once these features go live, the players discover flaws that ANET then scrambles to fix - and I'm not talking specifically about bugs, but about design choices. In the meantime players can lose out on time and resources, and it fosters negative feelings - all of which is bad for business.

I don't have a solution, but I'm not going to pretend like I don't see a problem, and one that seems to manifest more and more of late.

I think this is where Anet has missed a step ... they forgot there was a content difficulty between 'scrub' and 'hard'. Nothing a casual player experiences prepares them for Fractals, Raids, Dungeons, etc... How they continue to fail to bridge that disconnect ... amazing.

Low level fractals are actually fairly easy for the most part. Or there are certainly easier ones among them. I take new groups into low level fractals quite frequently as in TIer 1 fractals and if you practice the easy ones, you get better at them until you're ready to move up to the next one.

The real issue here is training. People who want the game to hold them by the hand, instead of learning from someone else is more a problem than the game not feeding you. There are plenty of people who'll teach you how to do stuff in this game. I'm one of them.

I offer people help all the time. Only a small percentage of people ever accept the offer, but I offer.

Unfortunately, this illustrates the problem. While it's great people like you offer training, based on the industry experience, Anet should have anticipated this gap was present in their game. What do I know .. .maybe Anet doesn't care if there isn't a large population of people doing raids or high level fractals, or any content for that matter. What I do know is that the gap exists and if people want harder content, something needs to bridge it to justify further hard content development. Offering training is good, but doesn't do that effectively for a large part of the players.

Actually Anet has ALWAYS had the philosophy that they want the community to come together for this stuff. That they don't want to put everything out in a sliver platter. You may not agree with the design but it's always been intentional.

I first became aware of this in Guild Wars 1, when Hearts of the North was introduced as part of the Guild War Beyond content. They had a bunch of stuff scattered around the world that you had to find with no clues. And they said it straight out. We wanted to create buzz. We wanted the community to come together and figure this stuff out and share it and pass it on. It was the same with Nicholas the Traveler. No one expects to hunt him down in the huge world every week. Someone would find him and it would get posted to the wiki.

Not everyone needs to be personally trained. Some people watch videos or look up stuff online which is yet another way of sharing info. But if you're playing an MMO and you insist on soloing and you insist on not doing research, you're never going going to be as good or get as far as people who do. And this is by design. You may not like it, but that's the game.

All true. I'm just saying, if people want more hard content, that bridge needs to be gapped. If Anet isn't going to do it, more people need to get a hell of a lot more tolerant.