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Player challenge and difficulty
Hobbes92
Member Posts: 8
First I would like to apologize if this has already been adressed in another post. I did several searches and couldn't seem to find anything specific to my concerns.
My questions go out to all of those players who spent a fair amount of time in the GW2 betas.
What is your overall opinion of the difficulty of Guild Wars 2? The couple of days I spent in the betas left me feeling unchallenged. To be fair I did not spend a great deal of time in PvP, opting to explore more of the PvE offerings (got to level 15 with a human engineer.)
Does the PvE difficulty ramp up significantly at higher levels? Would you say the major challenge lies in PvP?
I appreciate any input you have because I didn't have much time to play in the betas ^_^
Thanks 
Comments
Low level zones where tweaked down in difficulty, but the higher you get in level the harder it becomes.
You cant have starter zones with to high difficulty, afterall not everyone is a master and people need to learn how to play the game.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
This ^
There are some very difficult events and some that are very easy while both at the same content level. There's a variety of tasks with different level of difficulty, but overall, the higher level are you come into, the content becomes more challenging.
One other thing: I've never seen so much player deaths in PvE than in any other mmo I've played. That tells something about this game's difficulty.
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^ This. They did say somewhere in the beta forum that they tweaked the difficulty down to low in the 1-15 zones, they uped it a little bit again on Sunday (they lowered it a little so that people could get a feel for the Asura and Sylvari, since everyone was starting from scratch again). the higher zones were better difficulty, closer to what it was in BWE1 and 2, not as difficult as I would like it, because I was still able to consistently kill enemies 4 levels higher than me, but still more difficult than most other MMOs.
The biggest difference to 1-15 difficulty, though, has come because they made enemies learn more skills at a little higher of a level. If you've played all the BWE and closed beta, you would have noticed that very few enemies have AOE attacks in the lower levels now, whereas many enemies used to have them.
Later levels? Higher level? When and where exactly are these events?
My Wife and I were usually doing content a a few levels higher than we were and it kept things a bit more challenging.
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First thing yeah, difficulty in starter zones was nerfed, which is understandable because it's starter zones (although not everyone was pleased) so don't expect the rest of the game to be that nice. More speciafically, special attacks have all but disappeared from starter areas, but expect conditions/AoEs etc... to be much more present in later parts of the game. That was what they said in interviews.
But all in all, in PvE, you have to consider two things. Dying and failing in events. And if you don't die as often as before, I can tell you I have played in a nearly empty Charr zone this BWE (trying to stay spoiler free) and my success rate for DEs was 40% or so. If you go stop an invasion all by yourself, I think outleveling the zone and being really good at what you do will be necessary. Then again, I think grouping up with two other people would increase that by a lot. After zergs are gone, the entire world becomes group content, or at least that's my prediction.
Zones that are level 25+ mostly. Also trying to solo champion mob is impossible and veterans can give some challenge.
Thanks for all of the replies everyone!
I definitely understand why developers wouldn't want starting zones to be too challenging as it could scare off perspective players. However on the other side of the coin I do appreciate a bit of a challenge, and I'm happy to hear the difficulty ramps up after the starting zones!
Trend I noticed in the BWE:
- 1-15: allows you to mindlessly smash mobs, can easily destroy multiple mobs at once, veteran's are easy, champions are nothing but a long fight with the occasional dodge.
15-25: allows you to mindlessly smash single targets, taking on multiple mobs at once requires you to dodge or you'll get LOL killed, mobs start to have various skills such as stun, daze, & cripple, veteran's require *some* positioning and thought when it comes to using conditions and dodge because they usually have 1 skill that will eat at least 1/2 of your health, champions have moves that take 2/3 of your health and stun/KB so you always need to kite or you'll die
25+: all of the above except now that mobs hit harder and have access to most conditions/boons, champion mobs are known to 1HKO you if you don't dodge certain mobs, beware of mobs that can frenzy
The early starting areas are very easy then things get more difficult (not hard). However, I think that the BWE skewed much. Sure the starting areas are very easy when you have lots of players around. But at level 7 I went to an area where there weren't any other players and found things much more interesting (i.e. I died a lot more). As mentioned, the higher you go the more difficult it gets. For me the bottom line is that it is harder than WOW and much harder if you explore on your own.
One earlier poster mentioned the fact that the game is much harder solo. I totally agree with this. Even in groups, when fighting multiple and high level mobs expect to die a lot. I believe that I have died as much in the GW2 betas as my year in RIFT.
I am somewhat concerned that GW2 willl end up like RIFT. As the player zerg ebbs and the starting areas clear it will be harder to level. I see no problem for this in the starting areas but level 16+ it could be a real factor.
If you really want difficulty you can go solo or try dungeons.
After playing all BWEs, i thought the difficulty was a little higher than expected, especially the Personal Stories if you're lower in levels than the intended level.
What I find funny about alot of mmo players, is this. They be so concerned about a mmo's difficulty level and scream for it to be more challenging. However when they get to the parts where they die often or have to think tactically they start screaming the game is too hard, or start calling for nerfs. There were posts on the beta forums about things being to difficult, and than you get posts about things being to easy. There are three types of players when it comes to games, there are easy mode players, medium level players, and your insane difficulty players.
Now the people that seem to post the most when it comes to difficult level, are the easy mode players and the insane difficulty players. These players tend to ruin the game for the medium difficulty players, because of the see sawing difficulty levels. I enjoyed my time in beta and did not feel that the game was to hard or to easy, if i fought stuff near my level I won the majority of the time. If I fought stuff 2 to 3 levels above my level it was an extreme challenge that resulted in death, which is the way a game is suppose to be, and I was solo the entire time. But the easy mode and extreme difficulty level players are going to ruin this game.
I find this discussion funny just because of the fact that GW2 is way more challenging than any other leveling content I've gone through in any other mmorpg, easily. (WoW, Rift, Swtor, TSW, etc, zzz.)
I thik they have this covered with the scaling which Rift does not have (or didn't when I played it for a couple of months). I am not saying your concerns aren't valid, only telling you to take heart that they scale. I was able to solo 3 different DE's over the BWE because I got lucky and found them when others were not around only because I knew of them from running a duo with my wife. If the population is down in an area while you are leveling rest assured that you can stil do the DE's. Now the champion mobs.... that was a different story and a hard learned experience for me. I'd advise leaving them alone when exploring by yourself or you will get eaten. Champion Troll anyone???
/edit Forgot to comment on the OP. I read in the official forums that the difficulty was turned down enough that you could stand in front of all the starter zone mobs and spam 1,1,1,1 so decided to try it. You couldn't but it wasn't far off. The difficulty was definately tweaked down and here I was thinking I had gotten good at thief. I never made it past the starter zone during BWE3 so I can't tell you past that.
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Well, at level 15 y ou would have still been in the first zone. It gets significantly more difficult once you leave the first zone, and more interesting
The Dynamic events become a lot more in depth with many more different chains and outcomes.
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I found even the upper level areas of the starter zones to be much more difficult. For example, the freaking water area of the Sylvari zone with all those damn Krait was quite nasty. Also, there is a Nightmare Court enclave area just near the Morgan's Spiral jumping puzzle that was pretty tough. Lots of difficult mobs in close quarters...real easy to get adds.
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It is easy as cake. PVE or PVP it is all about brute force, no much thinking and i like that way. I don't have time for difficult games. Don't worry it is not hard as TSW more like console mmo.
You want a challenge, ok. Killing the fire boss in the Asura starting map is pretty hard [I even think is a little bit overtuned], and overall yes the difficulty ramps up once you're level 25+.
there are a lot of overcon mobs. maybe not neing super hot at dodging yet made them seem overcon .. and they are only overcon and challenging because most of the mobs are too easy. thus being lulled to sleep by mobs that keel over in seconds, when a mob actually puts up a fight, im 2 steps behind.
overall the game feels targeted at a level far below what I think it should be. for what that's worth.
I fully plan to group as much as possible while playing, and while scaling should help with the DEs .. the normal stuff is going to get boring fast in a group
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Its posts like this that really make me wonder about myself, and how good I think I am.
I felt that the game is pretty easy until you get past lv 10. After that it starts to ramp up with knockbacks, reflections, etc. I love a challenging game, and I felt I got that. To hear from some posters that its "mind-numbingly easy" (just paraphrasing) makes me wonder if, Im doing something to make it much harder, just suck, or other posters are not being totally honest.
I have a feeling your next experience @ GW2 will be your first ...one on one fights aren't bad but catching adds can be somewhat painfull if you aren't ready to kite when things get out of hand
You are fine. This community is filled with masochistic gamers that are waiting for their permadeath, full loot sandbox open pvp game.
If you are not pulling your hair out of frustration and screaming to your parents or gf of how the fuck are you gona do this its not challenging enough for some people here.
Hey, pvp naked if you want a challenge. (Glorious TIP of the day) thank you, thank you.
the skill challenges get harder at least. around lvl 17 in the norn area there was one skill challenge that was super hard to beat by yourself. the dude kept spawning minions the longer he was alive.
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