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Guild Wars 2 is easy?
Random000
Member Posts: 1
So, I tend to usually sit back and grab the popcorn on these forums, but one thing really bothered me lately...
That thing is, that people who don't like Guild Wars 2 keep claiming that the game is easy mode. Just yesterday I was reading about how the "absence" of the trinity is only possible because the game is a whole lot easier than other MMO's. So I watched a ton of videos on various MMO's.
I will not tell you my personal opinion of how difficult the game is, I will let the numbers speak for themselves.
Pull up any gameplay footage of WoW on youtube. Pull up a sharp footage of a character leveled between 10-30. Also, make sure you can see his maximum health points at some point in the gameplay. If you notice, in WoW, under standard condition and standard buffs, a player takes on average a total of 5% damage. That is, a character with 3,000 hp fighting a normal mob of similar level will take about 100 to 200 damage.
Do the same thing for SWToR. You'll notice here that under standard conditions and standard buffs, a character will take on average, 3% damage. That is, a character who has 3,000 hp fighting a normal mob of similar level will take 70 to 110 damage.
Now do the same thing for GW2. You'll notice here, under the same circumstances as the other two games, that a player will take a wopping 10% damage on average. That is, a player of 3,000 health fighting a normal mob at similar levels will be taking around 300 damage. That averages to about double of both WoW and SWToR.
That is just combat. Now pull up a video with some sort of healing going on. Here, you'll notice that in both WoW and SWToR, healing is simply much more effective then they are in GW2. It was hard to get a good comparison for healing, as healing skills and spells come in all sorts of flavors. But suffice to say, your strongest heals in GW2 will heal about 25% of your health on average. This is much lower than both SWToR and WoW where heals will do on average 50%.
There are a lot of reasons why Guild Wars 2 is easier and more casual than other MMO's. There are waypoints. There is seamless grouping. There is minimal grind. Lots of players can and will claim that Guild Wars 2 is an easy game. But after just a few videos on youtube, I have to say, that combat simply is more difficult then that of other games. You literally die in ten hits from a normal mob attack. Normal mobs even have special attacks that can one shot you if you do not dodge.
Again, when talking about numbers (which are only averages and will vary depending on player builds) GW2 simply has harder hitting mobs. That is not something we can change unless ArenaNet changes the system. If you feel enticed to, you can easily pull up dozens of footage from MMO's and compare the percentages to other MMO's.
I have accounted for mob attack speed, which are pretty much the same in all three games. I have accounted for DoTs, which still favor GW2 as being more harsh. I have accounted for criticals, which also favor GW2. My numbers are just averages and should not be taken as factual statistics, but let's face it, GW2 is NOT as easy as haters claim to be. Other genres obviously have harder hitting enemies, especially FPSs and single player RPGs. This discussion is only for MMO's, and yes, there are probably a few MMO's that hit harder than GW2.
TL;DR
Start from the beginning. 
Comments
So...much...free...time.
I'm too lazy to actually look at videos. I do know that mobs hit harder in GW2 than in WoW and SWToR though. I tihink anyone who has played in any of the games will agree, that you simply cannot take more than a dozen hits from any mobs.
But there are a few things you might not have accounted for.
The skills recharging in each game may cause some issues with your numbers. Healing at 25% three times in 10 seconds is better than healing at 50% one time.
This, along with mob health should be considered. Does the mob in GW2 live for as long as the mobs in WoW and SWToR? If mobs in GW2 dies quicker, than their hits are only harder for a shorter timeframe. Again, I am too lazy to actually look into this... but anyone... feel free to.
Also, it would be nice if we could get some more games listed with this data. Sure the data is crude, but it's still pretty neat.
Edit - Yes, this guy does have a lot of freetime...
Actualy prior to BWE3 I would have said no, however I definitely think the general gameplay was easier this time around. It could be that I'm getting better at it, but I'm just not sure. The personal storylines still had plenty of challenge though, and the dungeons are still ~incredibly~ hard. But the mobs I was running into during events and just random killing felt easier this time around.
By and large however, I wouldn't say GW2 is an easy game. That the lack of trinity is only possible 'because it's easy' is faulty logic, not having people to dedicate their time to healing you just makes it potentially harder. I say potentially because, if you have great reflexes and can think on your feet, you can actually get away with needing very little healing. If you're anything like my first dungeon team however...oy...By hour 2 (yes, it took that long to finish with that group) I was screaming at my screen, "STOP STANDING IN THE F**KING AOES!!!!!!!!!!!"
I'm sure people will get it eventually, and the challenge level will drastically decrease as people master the elements of gameplay, but that's to be expected and an unavoidable circumstance of playing the game. Human nature deems we learn and thus adapt, until new challenges (i.e., content) make themselves known.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
No MMO is easier than WoW these days. You can practically level to 85 in your sleep with no risk of dying.
both games are easy if you know how to play mmo's , wow is just easier. Ive run many firelands raids bwd and BOT in wow . Raids there are cookie cutter builds and common sense even for the tanks. Any nitwit on a vent server with a little common sense can run a raid and tell the dps when to move and the healers when to start topping off . People think raiding is hard but the only thing hard about it is when you have a couple of guys who would rather look at porn or whatever that cant stop standing in crap and wiping the raids.
Guild Wars 2 takes a bit more skill then even your average raid but so does TSW also. But once you learn the combos and synergys of monsters and player classes alike it becomes second nature even for GW2. I would only measure a game of how easy if more people can get the hang of it faster than the other game. Guild Wars 2 has a learning curve so therefore its harder at first then say wow. Once you learn though the two are no different in regards to challenge.
Personal experiance...WoW I did not actually die the first time until level 30ish. GW2 Died first time during the tutorial during the tutorial at level 2 at the boss fight, and a couple times more from minotaur event at level 3-4.
No stat numbers involved just the way it is.
All Murlocs must die horrible, painful, bloody deaths!
All MMOs I've played felt easier than GW 2. Standing rooted clicking three or four buttons is always easier than having to circle and dodge a mob. *yawn*
Actual leveling is easier. How could it not be? Those dynamic events only scale so far before players completely overrun the waves of mobs. The people that get in on the ground floor shouldn't have much trouble at all completing dynamic events. Even if they fail, they either still get some XP, or the failure leads to a secondary DE.
WvWvW and explorable dungeons are another story.
Some of the dynamic events can get really hard.
They made it easier in BWE3.
Pretty sure thats all what it takes!
Because it makes sense comparing nowadays casual "catch your max level friends in a couple weeks" WoW, to release GW2.....
You obviously were not in WoW´s launch when:
1) wearing full white + a couple greens was the norm and the items had literally 3 times less stats.
2) Spells and talents at low level were ridiculously weak and non dps classes struggled to kill monsters
4) Monsters were 3 times stronger ( literally ) and a lot of quests had you face powerful elite monsters.
5) Not finishing the first dungeons till well into your 20´s despite the fact they were made for lv 15 was the norm.
Just to name a few things.
Yeah, to my beta experience, GW2 is easier than WoW at launch.
Does that make it " a noobish easy mode game" Not by any extent of imagination.
But yeah, it´s kinda silly to make this kind of comparison.
Rawr.
That's actually a good point. Like I've said, WoW wasn't always as retardedly easy as it is now. Even when I started playing back when the first mount level was still 40, things were rough, there were no heirlooms to breeze you through everything and enemies hadn't been nerfed and now TOTALLY removed of their Elite status... but WoW was a different game back then. I consider it fair to compare GW2 to current WoW because let's face it, Blizzard does not deserve kudos for cheapening the overall experience like they have..
GW2 was a lot easier in BWE3 than in BWE1 but easy is a relative term. Anyone who done a dungeon (particularly in "explorable mode"*) know that GW2 is relatively hard compared with most MMOs.
Still, I did sign the petition to make the game harder again on the official forum...
No its not easy. In WoW for instance I can play and even get to 60 just soloing and not dying once.
I died 3 times in the Beta weekened and got into a downed state at least 8 times. Its not easy. Its not impossible but its more challenging than any other mmo I've ever played.
The reason I didn't die as much as I could have is because the betas were simply PACKED with people, it was the most intense and successful beta I've been a part of, and for that reason there were always plenty of people around to save my tuckus when I got AOE'd by the scaled-up enemies...
But what people have to ask themselves is... when the servers are low pop or the initial thrill wears off, how do you suppose you'll survive against a wave of Krait or pirates? People are misinterpreting the difficulty because of the amount of assistance readily available. It's going to be hard if there's no one around. Enemies hit like a ton of bricks.
WoW doesn't try to make leveling painful. To me, when I want a challenge I PvP in WoW. Go fight some of the top ranked players and then tell me how easy WoW is.
Having done Ascalonian Catacombs explorable a few times, I'd say that Ghost Eater is definitely easy in terms of technicality, is all he does is summon oozes and drop some aoe. The rumbler (For lack of a better name) drops rocks from the ceiling and fears. Honestly in explorable catacombs is all you have to do is kill breeders, not get burrowed on, and not get pounced and bring at least 1 elementalist for meteor shower when needed.
I don't want to derail but I think this is a worthy related comment. In any MMORPG I have played, I have only ever died due to my own confidence, stupidify, or insanity. I am speaking purely of common mobs though.
I can't beat them because I don't have 5000 resilience. lol That's mostly wthat separates WoW PvP'ers from other games in terms of "skill".
Besides, I want leveling to be enjoyable like it used to be in WoW. That's a huge part of the game, why do they even create all those zones if they're not challenging?
Guild Wars 2 isn't easy, and at the same time you can't call it hard. A good bit of its difficulty comes in that theres not all that much you can do. In tera you could dodge, in GW2 the dodge control is a bit clunky and in many cases you will find yourself unable to dodge an attack due to the way it functions, particularly true on melee.
Its not easy but its not hard either. If anything is 'hard' in the game its figuring out what the heck skill/stats should be focused on. In that case, it makes the game far more complex and difficult on a theorycraft level.
double wow .. classic. as in .. not much of a measuring stick.
we are talking about the trinity, not soloing quest mobs. meaningful content that I would hope would be challenging enough that it might actually destroy my entire team from time to time.
since you bring up wow though. tbc dungeons in particular were murderous by comparison to anything in the past 5 years. vanilla wow being difficult, but much more manageable for the most part.
now, you can go watch videos of those dungeons and you will probably see raid gear guys facerolling them and you may think they were easy. heroic shadow labs, arcatraz or w/e .. those were hard dungeons.
then came WoLK and I was 1 shotting instance 5 levels above me. and so went the rest of the genre.
bringing up newWOW as a measuring stick for difficult is silly. just as there are likely many that will laugh at bringing up TBC as a measuring stick for difficulty when compared to games before wow.
and i'll end by saying, easier is fine .. except when they leave out difficult altogether. wow used to have elite mobs just walking around the landscape. sometimes they just walked up and squashed you. they were great fun to take down. we dont even have that option anymore. tbc may have gone a little far concerning casual players ... but that's no reason the genre had to flip completely in the other direction.
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
That was just about the final straw for me for WoW. They removed the elite status from all those scary world bosses because "wah, getting a group was too hard". Now they're just big marshmallows with targets on them waiting to be one shotted.
The increase in rate of death shouldn't be all that noticeable, as it scales, NPCs were hitting as they were I"d assume due to the amount of people.
With thief it's easy to stay alive largely due to the escape abilities (which I will say I had to use quite a bit), didn't try any other classes yet.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As long as you understand how the combat works then yeah, GW2 is easy. But I haven't played a hard mmo yet so it is all relative.