Difficulty Up! Quality Down!

Let me first say that this thread is writen with respect towards a great game and it's creators and the only reason that I troubled to write it, is because I care to see this game continue with the Superior quality that made me buy all of it's chapters and recomend it to a dozen more close friends.

I will like to comment the new update, that introduced the domain of anguish. The difficulty level in that particular place is illogical high and unfortunatly is not a smart difficulty, that someone could use his wits to find a good build, or demand a high level of cooperation from the players team. It is a blunt, stupid difficulty based on strong and numerous monsters.

This update revealed to me, that for the first time, something in GW was created out of the principles of quality. Showed that you run something quick, without a single good idea in it's structure, untested, and obvious time-pressed. Maybe you want to catch some deadline for the next GW chapter but this way you risk to compromise one of the best games ever in creativity, beautiness and support.

You might think that I am saying all this because I am one of those guys that don't like to get a hard time from a game, but I assure you is all the contrary. There is nothing I enjoy more, than a good challenge.
My first time in FoW and UW was a plaisant surprise.
Later on I enjoyed very much the Sorrow's Furnace update, not an elite place from the difficulty point of view, but was a state of the art creation, a game inside the game shouting that you care to create a high quality game.
Canta's elite missions were a real challenge and with the right cooperation and ideas (builds), one could resolve every time he/she entered.

I was expecting more from the Nighfall's elite or at least something equal to the creations before and what I saw was a total luck of ideas and creativity, replaced by more monsters a player team can handle, something that will keep us occupied until the next chapter maybe. Besides players find always a way to resolve.

Don't do this, don't sacrifice Nightfall's quality, because the next chapter should be out in 5 months. Work more on this chapter, make it perfect, convince me that you still care to produce the best game around, make me enjoy the game and not being frustrated by it and rest assure that I will support you like always I did, for the quality, fun and relax, you are offering to me.

That is my personal opinion of course, I don't mean to offend or harm anybody. This is a thread because I care and I want to continue play in the best game around.

Apologies for my bad english and thank you for your time to read this.

Haven't been there yet as I am still yet to finish the game... quite hard to pick up groups that don't suck (PUGs FTL). But I hope what your saying isn't true

I think people will find that after a few weeks someone will find some good strategies to use in this area. Aftewards, then the difficulty will seem somewhat less. I remember that the Canthan elites seemed really difficult at first before people started figuring out what to do. Besides, having an uber difficult area at the end, after the game, assuming that it can eventually be beaten, is not such a bad idea. READ: so long as overcoming the difficulty pays off appropriately.

Give it a few weeks. It hasn't even been more than a few hours so far.

EDIT: I'll admit that the masses won't figure it out. It'll take some elite players to do so. While I was in I saw very few people in there even wearing Lightbringer, much less very many over lvl 1 or 2. Most of the ppl throwing out their skillsets didn't even have gaze. As a warrior I was the one sitting at the gate using Gaze while someone was prot'ing me. There needs to be some LB elitism initially in order to figure this stuff out. I'm only a Mighty LB so I'm sure I'll be left out of that, but there need to be some lv 6-8 groups going in there and scouting around. Leave the level 1's and 2's behind for a while until the area is scouted and there's some intel. It's not that hard to get to level 4 or so at least. Most of them don't realize that LB is more than just gaze, as it reduces dmg against you and increases ytour dmg against them. A full party of 6-8 LBs should be able to make their way through there and develop some better strategies for the rest of us...

the DoA has been playable for like 7 hours! were u able to get through the canthan elites within the first 7 hours after gaining access to them? probably not.

4 words... patience and innovative builds.

I read the first paragraph and this is what I have to say :

you dont release a mission without testing it... get that straight
this is a elite mission, some can some cant
its not even been 24hours this mission is out... chill... its like saying "IF I CANT BEAT THIS GAME NOW, NEVER... SUICIDE"

2 words. Barrage Pet.

Another DAMN barrage pet place; except maybe this time you need ONE warrior to help tank the first group, and like 3 MMs. oh wait; thats half the team. 2 monks, and......2 rangers? :/

Quality down, difficulty in ESCAPE VELOCITY.

This mission isn't really that "elite"; all it does is spawn new strategies from a strict line up. Dervishes? Paragons? hahahahaha I almost crapped myself laughing. They're WORTHLESS here. So are ritualists, and mesmers, and assassins, and elementalists.

They have 10 classes and only 4 of them can actually team up to get far. /golfclap

Tactics, which is used in Urgoz's Warren and The Deep and required the funky builds, doesn't apply here. This is simply Party vs. Party. And that's impossible.

Factions elites were the same.

But when they opened, they weren't flooded with every Tom, Dick and Harry, in their shiny new afk farmed R8 and primeval armor without insignias or runes.

They were entered by the most hardcore players in GW, who used every trick in the book and farmed 20 million faction to hold the town.

DoA isn't "hard". But then again, neither is RoT. Or is it? The first time I entered that area I was getting wiped left and right. I now run that place with heroes for chests, loot and LB while mostly watching TV (no, not afk farming). While playing a monk. Yes, that's how easy it has become. Change in builds, change in gear, change in tactics, understanding of patrols, skills, effects, .... And one day, you realize it's so easy. Same with Shiro. Give me a PUG, and in 30 minutes, everyone has masters. Easy mission.

Wait at least 2 days before signing something off, and you might find that on the fourth try, things start going rather smoother, especially since others learn as well.

It's a little early to start calling DOA "too hard." But it's certainly obvious that it's at least "damn frickin' hard."

Like I said in my previous post, I don't mind the difficulty, but I do mind the lack of smart difficulty. Throw me a large team of overpower monsters and waiting for the players to come up with something (and players always come up with something), shows that this update wasn't in much care like the previous elite missions.
My post wasn't against the difficulty but the kind of difficulty. I don't want to wait a few weeks until I read from guidlwiki the build that solves everything. I want to work on an intelligent idea of a challenge and come out sooner or later, alone or with friends.
Many big bad monsters is not an intelligent challenge and is not something I was expecting from such a great team like anet (and I truly believe that they are the best in their work).

All this game has is "big bad" monsters. What you're asking is........well I have no idea. What the hell do you want, fire traps? All this game has is monsters; and the "newness" has been pushed to it's limits.

I suppose they could always incorporate complex math puzzles that can only be solved by 12 NASA scientists; but then that would make people hate Anet and force them to prank call pizza delivery guys to their office out of spite.

i think the quality is very good in this game maybe some missions are hard but if u try them again you think of new ways to do the certain parts

Play Smart is not just about good build, it's about many things:

1. Learn to avoid combat
2. Learn to avoid the take hit and heal up; and learn to prevent damage.
3. Learn to make enemy kill themselves.
4. Learn to take advantage of Environmental Effects in Realm of Torment

I like the new difficulty. I can't even remember when's the last time that it take me this much time to figure out strategy for the quests. I like to see henchmen in Gate of Anguish.

I'm not asking to be able to finish this misson in the first 7 hours of playing. Just to be able to get past the 1st group of mobs would be nice. Is that really to much to ask for ? Sorry but wasteing the best part of an hour to form a group that would of been able to beat any other mission in NF and then geting wiped in seconds is NOT my idea of fun. And lets not even mention the UTTER crap that we got when we managed to kill a mob. I was getting better stuff from mobs on starter island.

When I first played urgoz no i did'nt finish it but I managed to get some where and each time after that I got futher. Yes it was hard but we managed progress and could see a way to get further. Aslo the drops where amoung the best in factions. BUT its not the case here no matter what build or party set up we try its oh look we are dead in seconds. If we should be lucky enough to kill something and get a drop its some utter crap white weapon thats not even max. So really whats the point?

The only way you will receive a real difficult, changing, interesting challenge is to fight PEOPLE, not the computer's NPCs.

PVE will never ever ever ever ever get a challenge like that.

The most PVE will get is stronger monsters, more and more mobs, more overpowered monster skills and ridiculous fighting instances.

And guess what, soon enough it will be too easy.

What the hell are you on about? As someone said somewhere, it's a puzzle. Solve it ffs. Really not that hard, you have a million skills you can combine to get something utterly devastating.

And yeah, check the Campfire section. Piece of puzzle solved, need testers now.

The new elite is indeed quite difficult

However, I'm sure theres a perfect build out there waiting to be discovered to beat the mission. There's a lot to learn here.

Going back even further, this reminds me of the all the screaming and howling that went on when ToPK was changed over from Halls to what it is now. People were coming out complaining it was too hard.

It just takes a while to figure it out. They don't just slap something together and throw it at the community and laugh at us. It has been playtested, it has to be doable.

Yea, Noone is saying there won't be a build to complete it, their complaint is it will be another limited build that only contains like 3-4 classes using certain skills.

Which is of course is going to be true, every spot like this we have in the game is limited and hard to PuG unless you conform to certain classes with certain builds.

I just accept it.

at first im like >< because i cant get a team of a popular build to run through the missions in an hour to get my new rit, havent event got to the first castle yet >.>

i think its kinda cool that this mission, and the ai in it cant (from what ive seen so far) be made a mockery of.

might need some daze and interrupts on the ele spikers and prots for melee.
...overall good teamplay tactics

ty arena net for making this a fun new addition to guild wars

Indeed. Anet should have made DoA an elite mission where not excactly what gimmick build you are using.
The enemies should beat you by brains, not 100% brawns.
It should be beatable using any WELL BUILT balanced build (yes, even with place for 1 or 2 P or D.)
What should be the deciding factor between Victory or Death should be how good you are at playing the character. Not wether or not you bring Winter+Greater Conflag and Mantra of Frost, or any other gimmick.
You should stick to what you did in GWF. Make the challange in the mission in form of odd environmental effects and other gameplay gimmicks. The monsters should still be hard, but not like THIS! Here, the way you create challenge is by overwhelming by numbers.

The GWF team might have been bad at making locales and story.
But the GWN team seems to be bad at balancing PvE challenges to be challenging and yet FUN.

I now get what "Luck of the Draw" is an easter egg of...

_Zexion

The jury is still out for me... I've been trying with the same group for over an hour. We've successfully killed two mobs of margonites, but we are being raped by the other demons. It may well be that you have to have very high Lightbringer ranks to do any of these missions.

If that's true then it's a bit sad, because I don't feel like grinding those ranks out. However, I can see why ANet would make it like this... so you have to PvE a lot.

Lightbringer elitism = holding a town in my eyes. Sure, everyone who beats the game can access the new area, but not everyone will be able to enjoy it. Why can't we get an elite mission that doesn't have any requirements other than being there to get in?

Yes, before you guys point out the obvious, I understand it's an elite mission, but there should be a higher level area besides FoW/UW where we can simply show up and form a group.

How smart are the monsters in UW? DoA isn't just hard because the monsters do alot of damage. If there was a group of 50 Aatxes it would take 5 seconds to figure out how to kill them.

The image says it all

Care to elaborate

I can never understand why people get upset by these.....ALL pve rpg games increase challenges by one or more of three ways, and I mean ALL!!!
1) Increase number of monsters
2) Increase the boss' hp and damages
3) Give monsters something players don't have, such as skills, effects etc

If you want smart opponents with intelligence, try HA or GVG. No digital monster is ever gonna be smart enough to provide longlasting challenges, period.

We should'nt have to go to RA, HA or any of the PvP based areas in order
to have a fun challenge, its why theres a PvE aspect in GuildWars, hence
it being an MMORPG, but theres a challenge, and then theres
unfair odds, as represented in the Domain of Anguish.

HA and RA for example is about balance, so comparing those areas to
the Domain of Anguish is unfair. Where teamwork was once required, it now no longer helps in a way that was accesible by everyone (who has beaten the game), and is instead countered moreso by POWER than strategy.

This is feel is where the Domain of Anguish went wrong, but thats jusy my oppinion

yea...it's just a matter of time until someone finds some gimmick build that makes Domain of Anguish a cake walk...

You shouldnt need gimmicks to have fun though, thats the main problem

I've yet to clear more than three groups.

...I love it.

well the wiki still says "presumed" for the location of Mallyx - So, uh- anyone get farther than a few groups?

I am definately a person who hates having to run 'special elite-mission only builds' and anything of that nature. Its the same thing that makes me rather saw off my toes in alphabetical order than play HoH (and I play a lot of pvp)


Once people figure out which skills which creatures have in regards to which map and effect you have, then yes- the gimmicks will arise.


What makes it really interesting, is that I have seen everything there tonight- people looking for everything - because nobody knows what to run. I dont have enough characters to the end of the game yet, aside from my Nightfall Characters- and honestly, they are doing the worst id say.

I played for a few hours for absolutely no gain in the grand scope of things and decided to wait until there is more information available on the effects and skill patterns of each new area.



Although - Im sure the AFK LB Farmers are having a much easier time... which is really really lame.

My rit is the next in line to make torment, so I might just put off the mission until then (but then I miss out on my gems etc with others)

Very frustrating- I applaud you and hate you at the same time anet.

1. The maps always start on a dead end and there's always at least 1 mob blocking the path... there's no way to run...
2. Spike DMG FTW here, I am sure people can heal massive DPS in 1-2 secs
3. I am sure this can be done pretty quickly with level 28 mobs...
4. I wonder how I can take advantage of 10 DMG for every second you are moving... I guess I can run myself to death in case they don't mob me to death...

Please allow me to remind you that:
1. The monsters are still the same
2. The AI is still the same

What's different? Hmmm... bigger mobs and level 28 mobs with new names instead of level 20. How original...

Will we beat it? Yes... in time... but is there a point? Yeah... me 1 | anet 0 How boring.

When I arrived 1st to the RoT I just couldn't go out of the 1st outpost (raping monsters). Then I just came to me... I was trying to overwhelm them damage-wise which, since I'm lvl 20 and they are lvl 28 is impossible. However then I found a fairly easy way to trash every group I encounter and all I had to change was one build... mine. from 3 SH eles I left the heroes carry on with SH and I switched to water with maelstorm and voila! Monsters dying left right and center.

Sure these mobs will have higher attributes and all that, but if I managed to kick RoT with just Heroes + henchies, how can it be that 8 humans can't kick a rather similar area? A guild team with Teamspeak should trash this fairly easily imo. Also, if you guys are worrying about the margonites, well... maybe you want to re-examine how keyboard commands work for they are far easier than the torment creatures (they don't split).

Gaile was in Kamadan last night and she said that the people who tested it beated it in a completily (spl?) legal way. So yes, it is possible, and no, you don't have to whine because you can't beat it.

You Know it's thanks to people like YOU that I will never voice my opinions on these forums.

btw

Nice post Lord Beramus and maybe you can help fiqure it out for some of us

Advertisement:

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song The only way you will receive a real difficult, changing, interesting challenge is to fight PEOPLE, not the computer's NPCs. PVE will never ever ever ever ever get a challenge like that. The most PVE will get is stronger monsters, more and more mobs, more overpowered monster skills and ridiculous fighting instances. And guess what, soon enough it will be too easy.

This Advertisement brought to you by the Guild Wars League of PvP. Because PvE is never supposed to have a real challenge.

/sarcasm

Seriously, if they can't make a PvE game more challenging without throwing a group of 24 monsters per square inch at you with a level that you will never reach, then I think its time to throw in the towel at making PvE games altogether. Just make it purely PvP and allow the bulk of the userbase to move on to other games that deserve it.

Bunch of spoiled brats! Get out of my favorite game if you have nothing better to do then dissing the stuff too hard for you to handle.

Get those lightbringer ranks up, then try again.

Personally, i won't get close to the new area before i'm at least vanquishing, and i dont get into parties with at least the same rank acrcoss the board. That's what elite missions are about: It will take "grinding" aka. playing the game for a time to be able to stand a chanse. It's like every professional sporter would complain they aren't champion of the world.

Frickin wimps... If it's not easy, they decide that it sucks.

And before anyone calls me elitist: I never even completed an elite mission in Factions; but i won't complain about it because they are supposed to be nearly impossible.

Let me tell you having high LB rank does next to nothing. Hammer Margos do 300+ damage on a normal hit. Ele spikes are just stupid, and the mesmers are worse. Winter + Greater Conflag. kinda works. All in all it's just another lame..."lets see how many overpowered monsters we can fit in a 4x4 room" mission.

Maybe I have once more to clear my point in this issue. I am not judging the high difficulty of this elite area, I don't care if I can't finish it because I can't figure out a certain build or a Team-Build. What conserns me is the quality of that difficulty.
If you want to do something difficult and challenging fitting a great game like GW you can't just throw many big monsters in a new map. You should think ways that make the player having a hard time without being frustrated, that make him take a step further every time he tries again to beat the challenge, make him elaborate his last failure to find the solution.
This kind of creation demands time and a lot of work from the developers and designers part, and believe me I woudn't be so demanding if I didn't think that the guys in anet are the best in the game industry with enormous experience in their backs.
I don't doubt Miss Gray when says that this area can be beaten, but the fact remains that it will beaten by a few elite players (propably game testers), that later on they will pubblish the build or the team build and the rest will be able to finish it out. This way is not fitting to what you were offering to us until now..High quality!
I even doubt that is playtested as it should have, what I mean is that playtesters tend to be experienced players that cooperate very well with each other for the purpose to solve the challenge, but then you have to adjust your results with the majority of the community level that is surely lower. Something that is not the case here.
I can't stop seeing a time pressing issue in the creation of this particular update, something that you wanted to get over with, to move on for your deadlines.
Think about Tombs, Canthan Elites, Sorrow furnace, FoW and UW and if you can't figure something new, stick in the old good recipies. Even the best can't always offer an innovation but they can always offer something good.
I repeat myseld saying that I woudn't bother to post here if I didn't think that you can do a lot better and I am writing this posts out for respect for your creation and your abilities to gives us a challenge that will serve the purpose of a game...fun (not frustration)