When will the Devs wake up to under utilsed zones???

[Genadine.7253]

So I am a new player to GW2 and must say the Story upto the end of HoF was great, Icebrood started OK but was rushed in the end, 20 minute finale was a Joke and the Joke is on us for playing it.

 

But here goes, I am assuming that the Devs have the tools to see participation in Zone Meta Events so they know what is popular and what isn't.

 

Given that is true, why has nothing been done for Zones like Thunderhead Peaks which is total garbage if you want to get anything done, Branded Mobs in general are OP compared to other Zones of similar level, density is too high and reward is non existant, When the Meta Starts and Instances are closing due to low player numbers, that must ring alarm bells somewhere?

 

So come on Devs spend a little love on the under used zones as any new player has to progress through them all and some are not worth a Second visit.

 

Thought and Opinions from Vets ??

 

Regards

[Fueki.4753]

I'd love for them to revisit older maps and make them worth revisit.

 

However, in your example of Thunderhead Keep, the Branded enemies aren't the actual problem.

The amounts of lags caused by server-side problems are a much bigger problem on that map.

To fix that, Arenanet would either need to switch from Amazon Web Servers to stronger servers,

or massively tone down the source of the lag (if that can even be done).

Edited May 17, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[Obtena.7952]

There are plenty of good maps that make me not worry about what happens to the old maps that aren't good. At some point, I think how good maps are becomes irrelevant because we are just saturated with so many that my concern is it's difficult to get content done in them. If there are some bad maps, that problem is less. 

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

The problem with this is that most people playing MMOs treat them like jobs, and obsess over time/gold excel spreadsheet figures to the extreme. They only care about the absolute best gold/time ratio events, so the only way to make other maps more played is to make all the metas have the exact same time/gold reward ratios.

 

The problem with that is that the maps that do have those are only that way because they have been rendered stupidly easy by power creep(The HoT metas are a prime example), and you aren't going to go and make all the other metas that easy to get people to play them.

 

If anything, devs would do the opposite, and nerf the overplayed metas like the HoT ones, which vastly over reward for how little time/effort you have to put into them. But that would just kitten off a bunch of people who would continue to do those metas anyways out of sheer stubbornness, and familiarity.

[Clex Mix.7624]

30 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

There are plenty of good maps that make me not worry about what happens to the old maps that aren't good. At some point, I think how good maps are becomes irrelevant because we are just saturated with so many that my concern is it's difficult to get content done in them. If there are some bad maps, that problem is less. 

Well another point to add is that most zones in WoW are literally only used for leveling. It’s going to be impossible to populate every map with tons of people. Players are going to go to zones that are profitable, that have collections and that are “current”. 

 

I really don’t see this as a problem tbh. It happens in every mmo, it’s not really going to be addressed.

[Teratus.2859]

Long time supporter of supporting old content.

I largely blame these issues on this "forget the old move on with new" attitude that Anet and some players tend to have with Gw2.

Take this recent IBS disaster as a prime example.. I would say to Anet.. Go back and fix the finale somehow so it's better.

But others would say.. nah it's sucky content anyway just make new stuff instead.. and Anet is more likely to go that way as well.
The end result sadly is that all the bad content in this game stays bad forever.
All the outdated areas of the game remain outdated forever.
The overall quality of Gw2 as a game is forever diminished by these issues.
That IBS finale will always be a massive disappointment that may kitten you off every time you play it..

New players may get lured to the game because they saw a new expansion and thought.. kitten that Gw2 looks amazing!!
But then they play the game and think, oh.. this is nothing like that expansion trailer showed at all.
Then they learn that they have 2 full expansions and several years of living world content to go through before they are "caught up", A whole season of which is unavailable to play and has been for more than half a decade and to top that off they also have to pay for every living world season before they get to that cool new content they saw in the new expansion trailer which is what attracted them to the game in the first place.

So they can choose to pay and slog through all that dated old stuff which Anet don't seem to care about anymore or just skip ahead to the cool new stuff and not have a clue what's actually going on.. which a lot of people really don't like doing.

Either way it's easy to feel in that case that the devs care more about money than the quality of their game.. regardless of how true or untrue that may be it's still and easy feeling to get when old content is neglected like that.

For me I want all of GW2 to be an awesome experience.. not just the new stuff which for the most part only feels "awesome" because it's new anyway.
Not all old content is bad or dated though.. but there are clearly parts of the game that are, especially in the vanilla game and they deserve some much needed TLC.
And I for one would adamantly argue that Gw2 would be a better game overall if they did have that much needed TLC.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Infusion.7149]

I'd rather there be optimization of the core client (not the graphics API) since even with d912pxy or dxvk there are limitations along with bugfixes on content with high exposure before Steam release (think Sunqua Peak which all core players will be able to encounter).
 

Improving older zones in terms of rewards isn't the way Arenanet typically goes about things, usually outliers are nerfed appropriately (see Istan).

Thunderhead Peaks is the only zone you can get serpentite jewels reliably (which you need for Diviner gear) so it doesn't need help.

[Sobx.1758]

13 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

So they can choose to pay and slog through all that dated old stuff which Anet don't seem to care about anymore or just skip ahead to the cool new stuff and not have a clue what's actually going on.. which a lot of people really don't like doing.

Lucky then, because they don't need to do that at all if their goal is just to "catch up" 😄

 

 

I don't think there's a point to aim at every map/meta to be ""worth the second visit"" (which would probably be the equivalent of "being worth farming" from what I understand?) seeing how with colliding timers, people will just pick the one that's most efficient/easiest/gives most rewards and still swarm one over the other.

Map like Thunderhead Peaks might seem problematic because it locks the diviner craft, but they've already addressed that by changing the jewels to tradeable and 50-60 silver each doesn't seem like a steep price.

[Teratus.2859]

3 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Lucky then, because they don't need to do that at all if their goal is just to "catch up" 😄

 

 

I don't think there's a point to aim at every map/meta to be ""worth the second visit"" (which would probably be the equivalent of "being worth farming" from what I understand?) seeing how with colliding timers, people will just pick the one that's most efficient/easiest/gives most rewards and still swarm one over the other.

Map like Thunderhead Peaks might seem problematic because it locks the diviner craft, but they've already addressed that by changing the jewels to tradeable and 50-60 silver each doesn't seem like a steep price.

Well by "catching up" I mean more about story 😛 a large portion of people play this game for the story and that is a pretty dominant part of this game.
Nobody really picks up a book and starts reading at the last chapter lol same thing XD

Not all maps need to be farmable though no, but they could do with some updated events, stronger or more intelligent enemies and better introductions to newer and more widely common mechanics like defiance bars for example.
We still have that difficulty spike issue between Core/LW2 and HoT for example which people still complain about because the core game never really challenges you hard enough to prepare you for HoT's higher difficulty curve.
Updating Core's end game areas like Orr with some stronger enemies and events would help that imo.
We have to consider how much power Creep has been introduced to the game since the core world was released.. even core builds can steamroll through the vanilla maps far too easily because of that.. which only worsens issues such as newer players not bothering to learn how to Dodge or utilise CC properly which become invaluable skills later on in the game.

[Blocki.4931]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I'd love for them to revisit older maps and make them worth revisit.

 

However, in your example of Thunderhead Keep, the Branded enemies aren't the actual problem.

The amounts of lags caused by server-side problems are a much bigger problem on that map.

To fix that, Arenanet would either need to switch from Amazon Web Servers to stronger servers,

or massively tone down the source of the lag (if that can even be done).

The lags that they fixed months ago?

[Sobx.1758]

5 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Well by "catching up" I mean more about story 😛 a large portion of people play this game for the story and that is a pretty dominant part of this game.
Nobody really picks up a book and starts reading at the last chapter lol same thing XD

Oh, then it's mostly instanced and people not zerging metas don't change too much 😛 Just the story isn't exactly that time consuming either, especially if they're actually interested in it, so not sure that's such a slog. Overally new people can do what they feel like doing 😄

 

5 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Not all maps need to be farmable though no, but they could do with some updated events, stronger or more intelligent enemies and better introductions to newer and more widely common mechanics like defiance bars for example.

Whether or not events need stronger/more intelligent enemies seems to be a subjective issue, so might as well assume each of them is mostly "how it's supposed to be", not that it makes a huge difference to me if someone wants to go through every map, event, meta in the game and make a list of their desired changes even if just to see if everyone will agree with them, which is rather doubtful if not impossible.

Introduction to common mechanics like defiance bars -sure, I agree. But I think that's something that should be introduced around the leveling process where the basic game mechanics are being explained. 

5 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

We still have that difficulty spike issue between Core/LW2 and HoT for example which people still complain about because the core game never really challenges you hard enough to prepare you for HoT's higher difficulty curve.
Updating Core's end game areas like Orr with some stronger enemies and events would help that imo.

Again, seems pretty subjective -personally I didn't have much of a problem going from core to hot despite still dying to something new like cute raptors, but I consider that to be exactly the learning process. You died to something because you didn't know/expect it to be deadly? Well, now you do expect it to be deadly, so improve/adapt/whatever and move on. I don't see the need to buff the core content, apparently some people enjoy it more than anything else, so w/e.

5 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

We have to consider how much power Creep has been introduced to the game since the core world was released.. even core builds can steamroll through the vanilla maps far too easily because of that.. which only worsens issues such as newer players not bothering to learn how to Dodge or utilise CC properly which become invaluable skills later on in the game.

If someone wants to play optimally and min-max, then they'll move forward and out of the core zones rather fast anyways and it won't be long until they get to the stronger mobs, so I don't really see the need to buff core which would shorten the ramp-up of the difficulty.

[ASP.8093]

Lol, you picked the glitchiest zone in the game. People purposefully stay away from it because it you can't rely on the server being stable enough to ever get to the end of the meta. (I've still done it a few times, to get various things.)

 

I think most of the mobs are fine, for what it's worth. Only one corner of the map has excessive density and that's to make it feel "impassable" outside the meta (you can still maneuver around to get the Mastery Insight with some stealth or other tricks, though).

[Teratus.2859]

51 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Oh, then it's mostly instanced and people not zerging metas don't change too much 😛 Just the story isn't exactly that time consuming either, especially if they're actually interested in it, so not sure that's such a slog. Overally new people can do what they feel like doing 😄

It can be the first time around due to the leveling and mastery process.. easy to forget about that when most of us now can just boost to 80 and already have mastery's unlocked.. not to mention the mobility benefits of mounts.

The first time around you're forced to play the game as intended and new players have to level more casually since they have limited exp sources typically from events, exploration and story completion.
It's still decent but a fair bit slower than what experienced players are used to.
Even crafting isn't a good option for exp gain for new players since they lack the mats.
Their lack of access to mounts also slows that core world experience down too, specially when they can't keep up with those who are farming event chains.. which is also a reason why just flooding core with new or better farms isn't a good idea.

Then when they do get to expansion content they have to deal with the essential mastery thing (My wife had this problem in HoT)
Their story progress can be halted entirely until certain mastery's are learned which they themselves have point and EXP requirements which can also cause a bit of frustration.
If you spend your points on one mastery then realise later you need another to continue the story it can be pretty annoying if you then have to go looking for mastery points and you just don't know where they are.. it can delay progress pretty hard in that case and i've seen a number of players struggle with this when they are new to HoT, my wife included as I said already.
The difficulty spike doesn't help this either and some players need help dealing with this which they sometimes can't find.

 

Quote

Introduction to common mechanics like defiance bars -sure, I agree. But I think that's something that should be introduced around the leveling process where the basic game mechanics are being explained. 

That's pretty much what i'm asking for, but to then enforce those lessons players need to be challenged by certain enemies and be encouraged to use them regularly in the endgame.
That's why I think Orr needs to be upgraded a little to push for that.
Later personal story missions would also help if they pushed it.

One thing that annoyed me quite a lot in more recent content is the Fireheart Rise DRM.. You'd be amazed at how many people I did that with that just wouldn't CC Braham when he loses control and the ice Charr goes invincible.
They'd rather spend several minutes witling Braham's HP bar down and then waiting for him to snap out of it afterwards rather than just break his CC bar so we can instantly get on with the fight.
This happened a lot.. no joke, most pug groups I played with did it.. and in the Lake Doric mission too the boss's invun phase where you have to break his CC was the same in many missions.
People really should be learning this stuff in the core game and have it as basically instinct by the time they are playing current content.. I blame the core game more than the players for this issue though, the core game just doesn't teach people these essential gameplay elements.. you could even argue that they are encouraged to ignore them most of the time.

 

Quote

Again, seems pretty subjective -personally I didn't have much of a problem going from core to hot despite still dying to something new like cute raptors, but I consider that to be exactly the learning process. You died to something because you didn't know/expect it to be deadly? Well, now you do expect it to be deadly, so improve/adapt/whatever and move on. I don't see the need to buff the core content, apparently some people enjoy it more than anything else, so w/e.

I never had much issue with the spike myself either, but that's because I always shunned Meta Builds (still do) and opted to play with builds that I liked and were fun to me.
When HoT first came out it was designed to be that hard challenging PvE content people were asking for so Anet built it to push hard against the established meta's of the time which was pretty much nothing but stacking glass canons in melee and smacking things till they die.. and those kinds of builds got utterly wrecked lmao
Meanwhile I was mainly playing a ranged glass LB ranger that used spirits  and a very very tanky Necro Minion Master so I was able to go through a chunk of the HoT open world without too much trouble at all.. on the necro I was even soloing the Hero Points.
I have however seen many many players over the years complain about the HoT spike even after all the nerfs it has had so it's them i'm mostly considering when I talk about it fixing up the old stuff.
Players who have gotten used to just not bothering to dodge or use CC's because the core game fails to push the importance of those tools tend to be the ones who struggle most when they get to HoT.

 

Quote

If someone wants to play optimally and min-max, then they'll move forward and out of the core zones rather fast anyways and it won't be long until they get to the stronger mobs, so I don't really see the need to buff core which would shorten the ramp-up of the difficulty.

That's a whole other problem imo which i've addressed in other threads in the past.. new players just copying some optimal meta build from a website tend to end up having no idea how the build system works later on nor how to modify their build to deal with things that cause them issues.
I strongly advise that new players do not rely on published meta builds like that.. learning how to make builds and how your class works is pretty important in this game and extremely useful.
Even with Meta builds some struggle in HoT too.. just copying a recommended build doesn't mean you'll understand it or know how to play it optimally.. in fact it's probably another contributing factor to the issue of people not bothering to learn how to dodge or use CC properly because those builds even played poorly can just steamroll through the core game.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

It can be the first time around due to the leveling and mastery process.. easy to forget about that when most of us now can just boost to 80 and already have mastery's unlocked.. not to mention the mobility benefits of mounts.

The first time around you're forced to play the game as intended and new players have to level more casually since they have limited exp sources typically from events, exploration and story completion.
It's still decent but a fair bit slower than what experienced players are used to.
Even crafting isn't a good option for exp gain for new players since they lack the mats.
Their lack of access to mounts also slows that core world experience down too, specially when they can't keep up with those who are farming event chains.. which is also a reason why just flooding core with new or better farms isn't a good idea.

Then when they do get to expansion content they have to deal with the essential mastery thing (My wife had this problem in HoT)
Their story progress can be halted entirely until certain mastery's are learned which they themselves have point and EXP requirements which can also cause a bit of frustration.
If you spend your points on one mastery then realise later you need another to continue the story it can be pretty annoying if you then have to go looking for mastery points and you just don't know where they are.. it can delay progress pretty hard in that case and i've seen a number of players struggle with this when they are new to HoT, my wife included as I said already.
The difficulty spike doesn't help this either and some players need help dealing with this which they sometimes can't find.

True, but then it has nothing to do with the core zones, mobs being too easy (because HoT/PoF are already harder), somehow having to play through unplayed metas (because you don't need those for masteries/story progression) and so on. If you need a meta like chak in HoT to go to the next map, then it's still consistently played/zerged. So I would say the point stands even tho they might need some (not all) masteries to progress through HoT/PoF, but we all needed them and it doesn't have a lot to do with unplayed metas -LW or not- afaik.

I don't see what the problem was, we've all played through it, we've all needed masteries to progress, it's not exactly hard and it's just... playing the game. In the end it's still mmorpg with open world content and if someone just wants to "go through the story while not touching anything else" for whatever reason then maybe... wrong game (or even genre)? 😉 

 

It seems this is mostly a complaint about not being able to rush through the game (story, not even the general game content) without thinking/looking up how to do it beforehand (because you can still check what you'll need to do that if that's what you really want to do). And I can't really agree with its validity.

Quote

That's pretty much what i'm asking for, but to then enforce those lessons players need to be challenged by certain enemies and be encouraged to use them regularly in the endgame.
That's why I think Orr needs to be upgraded a little to push for that.

That is a mechanic that is regularly being used in endgame and has been for a while. No opinion about adding it to Orr, but I don't see a reason not to (apart from the ones outside of the game and more dev-resources-related, probably shouldn't be a big problem either way).

Quote

Later personal story missions would also help if they pushed it.

Might be wrong, but pretty sure some of them do.

Quote

One thing that annoyed me quite a lot in more recent content is the Fireheart Rise DRM.. You'd be amazed at how many people I did that with that just wouldn't CC Braham when he loses control and the ice Charr goes invincible.
They'd rather spend several minutes witling Braham's HP bar down and then waiting for him to snap out of it afterwards rather than just break his CC bar so we can instantly get on with the fight.
This happened a lot.. no joke, most pug groups I played with did it.. and in the Lake Doric mission too the boss's invun phase where you have to break his CC was the same in many missions.
People really should be learning this stuff in the core game and have it as basically instinct by the time they are playing current content.. I blame the core game more than the players for this issue though, the core game just doesn't teach people these essential gameplay elements.. you could even argue that they are encouraged to ignore them most of the time.

Yeah, I already agreed with the idea of adding that to the leveling proccess/tutorial, even though I have no doubts there will always be people that are just interested in holding "1" or literally pressing everything off cooldown because colors and numbers are fun, w/e 😄

Quote

I never had much issue with the spike myself either, but that's because I always shunned Meta Builds (still do) and opted to play with builds that I liked and were fun to me.
When HoT first came out it was designed to be that hard challenging PvE content people were asking for so Anet built it to push hard against the established meta's of the time which was pretty much nothing but stacking glass canons in melee and smacking things till they die.. and those kinds of builds got utterly wrecked lmao
Meanwhile I was mainly playing a ranged glass LB ranger that used spirits  and a very very tanky Necro Minion Master so I was able to go through a chunk of the HoT open world without too much trouble at all.. on the necro I was even soloing the Hero Points.
I have however seen many many players over the years complain about the HoT spike even after all the nerfs it has had so it's them i'm mostly considering when I talk about it fixing up the old stuff.
Players who have gotten used to just not bothering to dodge or use CC's because the core game fails to push the importance of those tools tend to be the ones who struggle most when they get to HoT.

Well, then those people need to improve and learn from their mistakes like anyone else 😛  It's not like they lose anything when they fail, it just means they didn't understand the content/encounter/mechanic and either need to try and solve it themselves or look it up online/ask for help. There were threads on this forum comming from people that said x is too hard, y is impossible, z is bugged, but when people explained to them why they were dying and what they should do to succeed, the response was... "I don't want you to help me, I want it to be easier". I don't think this is the attitude any game should be aimed towards. From what I've see if someone looks for the help in gw2 then they will be helped, but if someone "just doesn't want to improve, but instead to hold one to -and through- the endamge", then... no, thanks.

So the question I see here is -if that difficulty jump is so unbearable then how did "everyone" manage to get through it?

Got too used to not dodging? Well, now they can get used to dodging. Got too used to "just holding 1"? Well, read what your abilities/traits do and start using them. You get the idea... 😁

 

Quote

That's a whole other problem imo which i've addressed in other threads in the past.. new players just copying some optimal meta build from a website tend to end up having no idea how the build system works later on nor how to modify their build to deal with things that cause them issues.
I strongly advise that new players do not rely on published meta builds like that.. learning how to make builds and how your class works is pretty important in this game and extremely useful.
Even with Meta builds some struggle in HoT too.. just copying a recommended build doesn't mean you'll understand it or know how to play it optimally.. in fact it's probably another contributing factor to the issue of people not bothering to learn how to dodge or use CC properly because those builds even played poorly can just steamroll through the core game.

Yup, but if someone wants to take a shortcut then they're free to do it. I don't see that exactly as a "game's problem". There's plenty of time to try each and every trait and skill even while leveling up to at least vaguely understand what does what. And when I wrote "min-max" I've meant not only using a good build, but also using it efficiently. How I see it is: if I rush through the tutorial (or skip it entirely), I'm hardly entitled to complain about not understanding endgame.

 

 

 

 

...anyways, somehow I don't think that's what OP meant.

 

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[DeceiverX.8361]

3 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Long time supporter of supporting old content.

I largely blame these issues on this "forget the old move on with new" attitude that Anet and some players tend to have with Gw2.

Take this recent IBS disaster as a prime example.. I would say to Anet.. Go back and fix the finale somehow so it's better.

But others would say.. nah it's sucky content anyway just make new stuff instead.. and Anet is more likely to go that way as well.
The end result sadly is that all the bad content in this game stays bad forever.
All the outdated areas of the game remain outdated forever.
The overall quality of Gw2 as a game is forever diminished by these issues.
That IBS finale will always be a massive disappointment that may kitten you off every time you play it..

New players may get lured to the game because they saw a new expansion and thought.. kitten that Gw2 looks amazing!!
But then they play the game and think, oh.. this is nothing like that expansion trailer showed at all.
Then they learn that they have 2 full expansions and several years of living world content to go through before they are "caught up", A whole season of which is unavailable to play and has been for more than half a decade and to top that off they also have to pay for every living world season before they get to that cool new content they saw in the new expansion trailer which is what attracted them to the game in the first place.

So they can choose to pay and slog through all that dated old stuff which Anet don't seem to care about anymore or just skip ahead to the cool new stuff and not have a clue what's actually going on.. which a lot of people really don't like doing.

Either way it's easy to feel in that case that the devs care more about money than the quality of their game.. regardless of how true or untrue that may be it's still and easy feeling to get when old content is neglected like that.

For me I want all of GW2 to be an awesome experience.. not just the new stuff which for the most part only feels "awesome" because it's new anyway.
Not all old content is bad or dated though.. but there are clearly parts of the game that are, especially in the vanilla game and they deserve some much needed TLC.
And I for one would adamantly argue that Gw2 would be a better game overall if they did have that much needed TLC.

 

I absolutely never understood why they lock old LW content behind paywalls.

I can't seriously recommend this game to anyone who likes story content because almost none of it is really available.  I don't really play LW at all - at least I skip everything I can, and I gave PoF a chance.  It made zero sense whatsoever going from Ex1 to Ex2.  If I was a story-driven player, I'd think it was just a horribly-translated KRPG.

 

If the business model is to overwhelm players with paid DLC in order to know what's happening in the game, the business model is bad and those players will just leave.  MMO's want repeat customers first and foremost.  Whales drive the big margins, which is fine, but population keeps those people playing at all.

[Linken.6345]

3 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

 

I absolutely never understood why they lock old LW content behind paywalls.

I can't seriously recommend this game to anyone who likes story content because almost none of it is really available.  I don't really play LW at all - at least I skip everything I can, and I gave PoF a chance.  It made zero sense whatsoever going from Ex1 to Ex2.  If I was a story-driven player, I'd think it was just a horribly-translated KRPG.

 

If the business model is to overwhelm players with paid DLC in order to know what's happening in the game, the business model is bad and those players will just leave.  MMO's want repeat customers first and foremost.  Whales drive the big margins, which is fine, but population keeps those people playing at all.

 

Well now is a great time for you to recommend it to some friends since they will add living world episodes for free 1 week each starting at may 25th.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

5 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

I absolutely never understood why they lock old LW content behind paywalls.

Most non sub based MMOs do this. DCUO, ESO, and LoTRO, being prime examples. Every bit of story content after vanilla you have to pay for. GW2 is fairly generous in this regard because you can get it for free.

[Cameryn.5310]

2 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

Lol, you picked the glitchiest zone in the game. People purposefully stay away from it because it you can't rely on the server being stable enough to ever get to the end of the meta. (I've still done it a few times, to get various things.)

 

Are you referring to the Thunderhead Keep meta?  

 

I literally just did that yesterday evening, with a ton of other people.  Had no issues whatsoever and we downed the legendary boss at the end without problem.

[Emberheart.8426]

While Thunderhead peaks may not always be active, there are squads that do lw4 meta trains. They hop between lw4 maps and do metals fairly efficiently. These groups do visit Thunderhead, so it's not really a dead zone. It's just not constantly active.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Ganathar.4956

[DaFishBob.6518]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Thunderhead Peaks is the only zone you can get serpentite jewels reliably (which you need for Diviner gear) so it doesn't need help.

Not anymore, you can get them from the home branded mass node and they're available on the TP. Thunderhead Peaks is no longer the exclusive source or even the most reliable if you're never on for the metas.

[Teratus.2859]

4 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

True, but then it has nothing to do with the core zones, mobs being too easy (because HoT/PoF are already harder), somehow having to play through unplayed metas (because you don't need those for masteries/story progression) and so on. If you need a meta like chak in HoT to go to the next map, then it's still consistently played/zerged. So I would say the point stands even tho they might need some (not all) masteries to progress through HoT/PoF, but we all needed them and it doesn't have a lot to do with unplayed metas -LW or not- afaik.

I would disagree on that.. I mean we call it a difficulty spike because there is a jump between the core game and HoT in terms of difficulty.
That alone kinda says that the core zones are "too easy" at least compared to HoT, but it's not just this factor at play.
Power creep is also a factor which adds to the whole meta build steamrolling thing I mentioned before which also leads to bad play habits like not learning stuff that you'll need later in the game in current content like how to use CC's and dodges effectively.

As far as the mastery point goes I was talking more about how without prior knowledge it's easy to mess yourself up a bit with masteries, easy to ignore some that you don't think are all that useful and invest all your points into like gliding or something only to realise that to progress with the story you need to reach rank 2-3 in other mastery lines you haven't even started yet and don't have the points for.
This leads to mandatory exp grinding and point farming which if you're having trouble in HoT content anyway can become incredibly frustrating which is what happened to my wife.

Back when HoT first launched too I made the same mistake with my points and ended up in that same situation being unable to progress with the story.. minus the struggling with difficulty element, but back then the experience caps for HoT masteries were significantly higher than they are now so I was forced to grind exp like hell to get those mastery's unlocked.
 

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I don't see what the problem was, we've all played through it, we've all needed masteries to progress, it's not exactly hard and it's just... playing the game. In the end it's still mmorpg with open world content and if someone just wants to "go through the story while not touching anything else" for whatever reason then maybe... wrong game (or even genre)? 😉 

 

Well to be fair Gw2 is exceptionally casual and solo friendly compared to virtually every other MMO out there so I can't justify saying "wrong game" lol if anything it's definitely the right game 😛 

But I think it's important to note that the experiences we had back when we played HoT were not the same as they are today.. the powercreep we have now wasn't a thing back then.. HoT mobs were stronger and the exp grind for mastery progress was significantly higher as I said above.

I should also note as well that a lot of players didn't just adapt to HoT either 😛 many of them went online and complained until Anet came in and nerfed the content grind and difficulty down so they could survive longer than 5 seconds there XD
Most players back then  had a lot more experience with Gw2 though, they'd been playing it a while and had experience with the harder endgame stuff at the time which was Dungeons and Fractals.
It's quite different to the experience a new player with all of todays powercreep etc will go through when they get to HoT.. specially if they're not learning how to actually play the game and just using some meta build they copied from the internet.

 

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It seems this is mostly a complaint about not being able to rush through the game (story, not even the general game content) without thinking/looking up how to do it beforehand (because you can still check what you'll need to do that if that's what you really want to do). And I can't really agree with its validity.

Quite the opposite, I think the problem is more that they can rush through the core game because it's too easy and the PC etc.. it's why they don't learn how to actually play the game which is why HoT ends up being a wall for some.

 

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That is a mechanic that is regularly being used in endgame and has been for a while. No opinion about adding it to Orr, but I don't see a reason not to (apart from the ones outside of the game and more dev-resources-related, probably shouldn't be a big problem either way).

Might be wrong, but pretty sure some of them do.
 Yeah, I already agreed with the idea of adding that to the leveling proccess/tutorial, even though I have no doubts there will always be people that are just interested in holding "1" or literally pressing everything off cooldown because colors and numbers are fun, w/e 😄

Partly resources yea.. but I also think it's got a lot to do with them just wanting to move on all the time.
The mechanics are in play in the core world though.. pretty much every Champ or higher creature has a defiance bar so it is there, the problem is that these enemies are just so laughably weak that you never really need to break them anyway.

That's part of the problem imo.. stuff like that teaches players that defiance bars are irrelevant and they can just ignore them which screws them over in later game content where they are far more involved in most encounters..
This was also part of the problem with stack and smack Zerker meta too back in the day, people got so used to just ignoring AoE etc and just wailing on enemies that they went nuts when they were getting decimated trying to do that in HoT where the strategy didn't work anymore.

If the core game had more creatures that required breaking to defeat them even in the personal story that would probably solve this problem.
If they just added tutorials that explained all this stuff it wouldn't really be that useful since you won't end up actually using CC's and dodges regularly enough to make it a habit like we do in current content.
That's why we need some stronger open world stuff etc to keep people using these mechanics regularly through the core game.
 

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So the question I see here is -if that difficulty jump is so unbearable then how did "everyone" manage to get through it?

Got too used to not dodging? Well, now they can get used to dodging. Got too used to "just holding 1"? Well, read what your abilities/traits do and start using them. You get the idea... 😁

Well as I said above.. they kinda didn't 😛
HoT got major nerfs shortly after it came out because people were complaining about the difficulty lol 
I think it had several big updates that basically nerfed it down over time, was a while ago though can't quite remember.
HoT is easy today though specially with the power creep we have but that's an easy claim to make for us veteran/experienced players to make cause we know how to play the game.
The wall is still there for those who don't though, and sure they can learn all that stuff in HoT but it would just be so much better if the core game prepared them for it.. plus it would make the core world a tad more fun for everyone else in the process. (much like the bandit champs and the Awakened invasions did)
 

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Yup, but if someone wants to take a shortcut then they're free to do it. I don't see that exactly as a "game's problem". There's plenty of time to try each and every trait and skill even while leveling up to at least vaguely understand what does what. And when I wrote "min-max" I've meant not only using a good build, but also using it efficiently. How I see it is: if I rush through the tutorial (or skip it entirely), I'm hardly entitled to complain about not understanding endgame.

 

...anyways, somehow I don't think that's what OP meant.

There really isn't any kind of tutorial stuff to rush though though except for those racial intro missions which really don't do anything besides teach you how to move, talk to NPC's and press 1 lol
But I agree that people who just rush through the game with some steamrolling meta build are in part to blame for getting to HoT and then being like "ahh my build don't work anymore!!" 
It's hardly the builds fault you don't know how to actually use it lol
But likewise to that you do tend to see a lot of players encourage this behaviour as well which I don't agree with at all.
Gw2's core game being so easy and outdated only helps that problem as well when it's just so easy for a noob to steamroll over it's hardest content using a build they don't really understand.. they just know works.
Just all contributes really lol

[Teratus.2859]

5 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

 

I absolutely never understood why they lock old LW content behind paywalls.

I can't seriously recommend this game to anyone who likes story content because almost none of it is really available.  I don't really play LW at all - at least I skip everything I can, and I gave PoF a chance.  It made zero sense whatsoever going from Ex1 to Ex2.  If I was a story-driven player, I'd think it was just a horribly-translated KRPG.

 

If the business model is to overwhelm players with paid DLC in order to know what's happening in the game, the business model is bad and those players will just leave.  MMO's want repeat customers first and foremost.  Whales drive the big margins, which is fine, but population keeps those people playing at all.

As much as i've defended Gw2 when it comes to how it monetizes things.. this is actually something I fully agree with you on.
Living world being locked behind paywalls in it's current state is imo one of the worst things Anet does when it comes to monetization.

I've always been in support of bundling the living world seasons into the expansions that come after them.
LW2 bundled into HoT and LW3 into PoF.
But Anet went and instead bundled HoT with PoF which is just a narrative cluster kitten as far as story progression goes.
It's like buying a book with Chapters 2-3-5-7 and 8 torn out and being told you have to pay extra for those pages.. except for Chapter 2, someone lost that one so too bad you'll never have a complete book XD 

This really does bug me because I know a lot of people personally who really like MMO's and have actively avoided playing Gw2 because of this very thing.
It's just too messy and that turns some people off.

[Firebeard.1746]

They've already got some tools they use. One, was they consolidated LW dailies and that helped the zones immensely (PoF ones for sure). They already do boss rush events from time to time as well. I think the best thing to do is suggest further improvements and what you think would help if you're still having issues.

I mean I haven't done the PoF ones recently, but is getting groups for it that bad when it's the daily? You're complaining about it, but I've never had an issue when it's been the daily.

[Sobx.1758]

13 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I would disagree on that..

Ok.

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Power creep is also a factor which adds to the whole meta build steamrolling thing I mentioned before which also leads to bad play habits like not learning stuff that you'll need later in the game in current content like how to use CC's and dodges effectively.

Power creep in form of especs and mounts? New players don't have access to them in the core zones, which is why you still balance those zones around them and not around people that felt the need to come back to the starting zones with the new toys.

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As far as the mastery point goes I was talking more about how without prior knowledge it's easy to mess yourself up a bit with masteries, easy to ignore some that you don't think are all that useful and invest all your points into like gliding or something only to realise that to progress with the story you need to reach rank 2-3 in other mastery lines you haven't even started yet and don't have the points for.
This leads to mandatory exp grinding and point farming which if you're having trouble in HoT content anyway can become incredibly frustrating which is what happened to my wife.

Disagree it's somehow "easy to mess yourself up with masteries", there's enough points around to grab. And if someone just clicks without reading or thinking then, again, it's not game's fault. If someone wants to be efficient then they naturally need to put some thought into what they're doing. Or look for guides, but nobody should pretend that they're needed in this case.

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Back when HoT first launched too I made the same mistake with my points and ended up in that same situation being unable to progress with the story.. minus the struggling with difficulty element, but back then the experience caps for HoT masteries were significantly higher than they are now so I was forced to grind exp like hell to get those mastery's unlocked.

Ok. I didn't, because I read before clicking -which is something that should be a "go-to" method also outside of the game 😛

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Well to be fair Gw2 is exceptionally casual and solo friendly compared to virtually every other MMO out there so I can't justify saying "wrong game" lol if anything it's definitely the right game 😛 
 

Sure, but not if someone expects a linear single-player storytelling game experience, which is pretty much what I was responding to. Casual or not, it's still an action mmorpg.

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But I think it's important to note that the experiences we had back when we played HoT were not the same as they are today.. the powercreep we have now wasn't a thing back then.. HoT mobs were stronger and the exp grind for mastery progress was significantly higher as I said above.

It wasn't the same because it was harder? So... I don't understand how this is negating what I've said in any way tbh, seems rather like it just plays into what I've said.

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I should also note as well that a lot of players didn't just adapt to HoT either 😛 many of them went online and complained until Anet came in and nerfed the content grind and difficulty down so they could survive longer than 5 seconds there XD
Most players back then  had a lot more experience with Gw2 though, they'd been playing it a while and had experience with the harder endgame stuff at the time which was Dungeons and Fractals.
It's quite different to the experience a new player with all of todays powercreep etc will go through when they get to HoT.. specially if they're not learning how to actually play the game and just using some meta build they copied from the internet.

The "power creep" mostly consists of things new players don't have access to at that point. But maybe specify what EXACTLY you're talking about, because just re-reading "powercreep" as a catch-all term tells me nothing 😛

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Quite the opposite, I think the problem is more that they can rush through the core game because it's too easy and the PC etc.. it's why they don't learn how to actually play the game which is why HoT ends up being a wall for some.

If someone wants to rush without understanding basic concepts of the game that are explained to them on the way there then... you know... it's a problem with their attitude, I guess. And as I said, if they hit a wall and start failing then they know it's time to adjust their playstyle and improve. 

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Partly resources yea.. but I also think it's got a lot to do with them just wanting to move on all the time.
The mechanics are in play in the core world though.. pretty much every Champ or higher creature has a defiance bar so it is there, the problem is that these enemies are just so laughably weak that you never really need to break them anyway.

That's part of the problem imo.. stuff like that teaches players that defiance bars are irrelevant and they can just ignore them which screws them over in later game content where they are far more involved in most encounters..
This was also part of the problem with stack and smack Zerker meta too back in the day, people got so used to just ignoring AoE etc and just wailing on enemies that they went nuts when they were getting decimated trying to do that in HoT where the strategy didn't work anymore.

If the core game had more creatures that required breaking to defeat them even in the personal story that would probably solve this problem.
If they just added tutorials that explained all this stuff it wouldn't really be that useful since you won't end up actually using CC's and dodges regularly enough to make it a habit like we do in current content.
That's why we need some stronger open world stuff etc to keep people using these mechanics regularly through the core game.

Nah, literally just need to add info about breakbars to the tutorial/guide pop-ups and that's about that. If people want to kill bosses without breaking the bars then they're free to do it. If they "hit a wall because now they need to break the bar" then all they need to do is adapt and start breaking the bar. So just tell them what it is and how it works so they don't need to google "gw2 blue bar" and we're k.

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Well as I said above.. they kinda didn't 😛

Sure, except they did, so now each of us can pick their own version that supports what they want it to support 😁

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HoT got major nerfs shortly after it came out because people were complaining about the difficulty lol
I think it had several big updates that basically nerfed it down over time, was a while ago though can't quite remember.

Sure, that's what people repeat and that's also what I repeated until someone mentioned the relevant patchnotes in another thread some time ago and apparently the nerfs weren't really that "major". So unless you can show me actually major nerfs that kept comming over time then... nah, for now I wouldn't say they were major.

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HoT is easy today though specially with the power creep we have but that's an easy claim to make for us veteran/experienced players to make cause we know how to play the game.

This whole time I was talking from the perspective of me first entering HoT maps btw, "power-crept veteran player comming back to previous maps" has nothing to do with what I wrote above, just saying.

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The wall is still there for those who don't though, and sure they can learn all that stuff in HoT but it would just be so much better if the core game prepared them for it.. plus it would make the core world a tad more fun for everyone else in the process. (much like the bandit champs and the Awakened invasions did)

Not a wall, more like incentive to use game mechanics that were explained to the player (except bb I guess).

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There really isn't any kind of tutorial stuff to rush though though except for those racial intro missions which really don't do anything besides teach you how to move, talk to NPC's and press 1 lol

...except maybe reading while leveling 0-80 would tell you that you're wrong with that claim 😉

If someone wants to rush through it, it's on them. If someone doesn't want to read -just like with masteries- it's also on them.

 

 

 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Teratus.2859]

2 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Power creep in form of especs and mounts? New players don't have access to them in the core zones, which is why you still balance those zones around them and not around people that felt the need to come back to the starting zones with the new toys.

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The power creep" mostly consists of things new players don't have access to at that point. But maybe specify what EXACTLY you're talking about, because just re-reading "powercreep" as a catch-all term tells me nothing 😛"

Not just E-specs and mounts no.. a lot of general updates, balancing, trait and skill improvements to the base classes over time.
Core classes are a lot stronger than they used to be.. so the powercreed does effect them as well, not just the e-specs.

The core world content existed even before multiple large changes which completely remastered the trait system were introduced.
Back then we couldn't even access 3 whole trait lines which is the standard now.
I don't know if core world content was ever really rebalanced for this either.. it certainly doesn't feel like it was in any case.
 

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Disagree it's somehow "easy to mess yourself up with masteries", there's enough points around to grab. And if someone just clicks without reading or thinking then, again, it's not game's fault. If someone wants to be efficient then they naturally need to put some thought into what they're doing. Or look for guides, but nobody should pretend that they're needed in this case.
 Ok. I didn't, because I read before clicking -which something that should be a "go-to" method also outside of the game 😛

You have the luxury of hindsight here 😛 
First time through HoT you won't know about certain masteries being required for story progression unless you randomly look it up or someone tells you about it.
If there is a disclaimer on them now it's not something I'm aware of since I did them years ago after I already went though the "crap I have to level this mastery up twice to progress the story" problem.. and i'm pretty sure the only time you were notified that a mastery was required for a story mission was literally when you got to the mission and it said "complete X mastery to unlock next mission" which was annoying if X mastery required tons of exp grinding (which it did back in the early HoT days) and a bunch of mastery points that you had to go and find because you just spent the last of the ones you had on a different mastery.

For new players who just want to play the story and find the open world HoT stuff too hard I can see that still being a problem that forces them into grinding exp in content they find frustratingly difficult.

It's easy for us to tell them they just need to learn how to play when they've already hit the wall so to speak but that's basically just the same thing as telling them to "Get good" really.
The HoT wall wouldn't be an issue in the first place if the game prepared players better for it. 🙂
 

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Sure, but not if someone expects a linear single-player storytelling game experience, which is pretty much what I was responding to. Casual or not, it's still an action mmorpg.

True it is.. although Gw2 is probably one of the most casual and linear story focused action MMO's on the market lol
Well linear in the sense that your choices really don't mean crap past a certain point in the core game and remain that way indefinitely.

I think some people jump on the Gw2 action MMO thing too hard though, lot of the meta culture for example who want things to be harder and more like other MMO's where their super ultra DPS meta's can be the be all and end all of the game but Gw2 just isn't that kind of game.
Ultimately it's the casuals that dominate this game not the hardcore MMO player.


 

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It wasn't the same because it was harder? So... I don't understand how this is negating what I've said in any way tbh, seems like it just plays into what I've said.

Well not just difficulty, traits, builds etc are different, there was no meta for HoT at first either.. as I said the old core world meta's got stomped originally in HoT XD 
The experience was different overall to what exists today but the same problem of people not knowing how to handle certain mechanics in HoT or know how to make builds to deal with the content still exists.
 

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Nah, literally just need to add info about breakbars to the tutorial/guide pop-ups and that's about that. If people want to kill bosses without breaking the bars then they're free to do it. If they "hit a wall because now they need to break the bar" then all they need to do is adapt and start breaking the bar. So just tell them what it is and how it works so they don't need to google "gw2 blue bar" and we're k.

If only it were that easy eh 😄
I think we all know from experience that just telling people to dodge and use CC doesn't work.
At least outside of instanced stuff mostly.. sometimes in it too.
I think teaching this stuff in the story content is the best way to go about it myself.. instanced, controlled, voice potential etc.
Open world tutorials are too chaotic.. and popups are too easy to miss or ignore when your attention is elsewhere.

Perhaps it would be a benefit to improve descriptions though.. I've been playing a lot of Pillars of Eternity recently and one thing I enjoy about those games is how you can right click on just about every skill and ability in the game and get a detailed description of what it does.
Gw2 relies far more on people having to go online and look up skills and traits and sigils etc to see what they do and sometimes that info still isn't clear enough.

For example Superior Sigil of Transference just says "Healing to other allies is increased by 10%"
Ok.. does that just effect direct healing from AoE skills like shouts, traps and wells?.. does it include the regen boon? What about lifesteal?.. does it effect the Vampiric Presence trait?.. if it does will my VP get priority over another Necromancers VP if I have this sigil equipped cause my lifesteal aura is slightly stronger?
Stuff like that is extremely unclear and confusing even for long time players.
 

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 ...except maybe reading while leveling 0-80 would tell you that you're wrong with that claim 😉

If someone wants to rush through it, it's on them. If someone doesn't want to read -just like with masteries- it's also on them.

My presence in Gw2 predates that entire leveling system upgrade so i've never actually read them myself.
Was already an experienced player when that got implemented lol
Good if it is there though but much like I say when it comes to easy mode raids discussions.. learning through doing is a significantly better teacher than just reading or being told how to do something.
I don't think core world Gw2 provides a good environment for that though.. at least for certain mechanics like CC's and breakbars.