Make PvE Challenging

The Beauty of PvE is you have your own choice

you can go in the first time and die - then

a) go on guildwiki find out what builds your group needs to take and print out the maps showing exactly where to go and a detailed explanation of what to do

or

b) try to figure out a good counter build for your group without peaking and figure everything out together using teamwork.

It's your choice

actually there is a third even easier choice

c) get a run

Blah, PvE is hard enough for some of us as it is. Ugh.

/not signed


I know that the game is rather easy, but think about the new players. Even with the weak AI, I had alot of trouble getting my ranger through Kryta.

I WOULD agree with a new area like SF (Not DoA since it is TOO hard for most people, and rewards aren't good enough for lot's of people to play DoA...)

As for me... I like GW how it is, I still have hard times some times when fighting, and when I want a challenge, I just take a hench less.

More damage means one turn kills on casters with 60 AL as well...

Having intelligent, well-constructed mobs everywhere would get old fast. It's fun when you come up against something that you have to work to beat, but when you're just trying to get from one side of a map to the other it can get pretty tedious fighting through group after group. Turning every one of those thirty mobs into a little HA team wouldn't make the trip fun, it would make it slower and more annoying.

Also, the OP didn't consider DP. In PvP it's not really a big deal if you die every now and then because there's always morale from the Hero or the flag stand to bail you out. In PvE there aren't any easy boosts like that and the instances can get pretty long, so deaths have a lasting effect on your performance.

All of that said, I think it'd be cool to have smart enemies every now and then in quests and missions, or in small maps that aren't part of a long trek.

You want PvE to be challenging? Try to get to Legendary Survivor without help. Once u succeeded into that, you have the right to complain but not before

I'm all for it. Imagine how much fun a mission like, say, Thirsty River would be if each of the enemy "teams" was a different pvp-style team.

I would actually replay the mission for the fun of it. That is what pve should be about to me.

/sign
I agree that a more thought out skill bar is better then giveing monster brutal strength, under the idea of "fair competition"(well I know this is what A-Net want in pvp, dont know about their idea for pve, any paper on that??=P)

However the AI it self need a fix, the fact that the current AI have no tactic sense at all and never evolve wont help, you can give them very thought out balance build, they still going to run it into ground.
As we can see from the Hero, AI have poor idea on "combo", they dont know how to get the biggest effect from their skill bar. And the fact is...they might never will, they are AI after all=P its man made. The closest I can think of will be enter all the data of pvp matches, something like those computer cheast game. Maybe A-Net can name their AI "DEEP BLUE X" or something=P

And I dont know how others think, but a lv 20 monster act the same way as a lv 1 never spell smart and dinamic AI for me~_~(so does every race act almost the same..but lets take 1 step a time). Pluse this should give a better sense of "growing difficulty" to player, and might also act like a guide to newer player=P. They can learn by mimic their hero or the monsters.

The current mob might need a little redo too, not saying they should only have 8v8 all the time in mission...it will be sad for "GOD of KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH" only have so little armies. I guess given them sense of combo for their skill bar but not as a team should be ok as a starter(not saying monk dont heal team..but maybe no spike=P...a 11 man spike is a different lv from gvg 7 man spike.)

Notsigned.

1. The player is a hero, while the typical mob is a footsoldier. You hone your skills, the typical mob walks around a fire all day till you come along, and returns for more tomorrow, hell, some just hide underground untill you walk by to kill it.

2. PvE is plenty challenging for most people. Otherwise, you would see a buttload more survivor titles around, that weren't paid for in places like droks.
Try not playing the PvE story several thousand times in a row. Beat it with heros? Use henchies? Done that? Start eliminating Henchies from your max party limit. Done, more difficult for you, doesn't affect everyone else.
What, you can solo the missions? Do it all with one hand.

3. Customer base. It's small enough as it as far as Anet is concerned, this would cause more and more people to leave and not buy further expansions.
(*note, why does it have to be ragequit? because you're all hardcore? pht, get out of the basement for some air once in a while)

4. Enough crossbreeding of PvE and PvP has been done. AI will never(or not for a very long time) substitute for a human at the keys. Timing is better, sure, I get my 1/4 spells interrupted by 1/2 ranger skills, but eh, the AI has no sense of priority or judgment that's flexible, and won't any time soon.
If AI were as good as you claim you want it, it's timing would slay you.

5. If the game is old, and too easy, um...move on? You don't hear die hard Atari fans complaining about pitfall, and still playing it 19.5 hours a day. Why don't you "ragequit" and find something that's more challenging something that's more similar to real people, oh, wait, you're alergic to reality.

That's pretty much it, and I know some of it was gotten to before me, but a little repitition never killed anyone. If the OP is still refusing to eat or leave the comp to pee it might soon though.

I think people here are mis-understanding something. High damage does not mean PvE is challenging. Who cares if they score 2 kills on you? You kill them faster, rez up, and move on to annihilate the next party because of the sucky healers monsters have.

Very nice post. I am in full support.

Q Eff Tee.

/notsigned.

Well hard core players(dont know what those are) but if your talking about top level people who beat the game easily, really we only need one....thing.

the cap level, cap level would make it fun for lvl 20's because all they have to do is all the easy missions and beat the game, maybe look for new builds.....but I would love the level cap to raise up, not because of power, but for a something extra to do......bosses, bosses arent bosses until they get like shiro..... if you want a skill work for it, with a 8 man team/6 man team to get it...
more stradigy.....some items that can do stuff to your armor or skills, weapons.....skill bar cap to 10

many other things but....you know...

o ya forgot this....atleast give monsters 10 skills, what do they have like 4?

hmmm....

I think PVE can be more challenging, but not sure how. I am not an elite player....hell I have yet to get past the gates of DOA and the PUGs I was with for tombs and Urgotz got wiped at the gate.

I want to do Urgotz..I really do, but I am forced to adhere to a certain build BIP or MM or SS to even get in...its formulaic, if you are with the right group..

I actually thought NF was fairly challenging. Dasha Vestibule severly messed up my Necro...yes I know BHA and its pie, but still NF required me to change my skills and my party make up (PUG or heros/henchmen)

Also, I only have 2-3 hours to play per night...I can't get involved in grind at all.

so I am all for the challenge....as long as it is not more mobs of higher level DPS....

BTW, how do you beat DOA...I want the Rit hero...I have awesome rit skills

lol i feal you willa the mursat monk boss took 25 min with my ranger and henchies thats a chalange he has a true skill bar

I don't think anyone's really advocating that every mod in the game should be this way, but it'd be nice to see more challenging encounters than we currently have right now and this is a good means to achieving that.

Think your going a bit over the top. Conventina the Matron and Willia the Unpleasant have awful skillbars. The only thing that makes them hard to kill is the fact they spam Orison with a base AL or about 160 with half condition/hex duration. Bring along Disrupting Chop, Distracting Shot or Diversion (or hell pretty much any mesmer skill bar Wastrels Worry, which is marginely unfair ) and you've just destroyed its build.... its build been Orison of healing, over, and over, and over.

Tbh i think the best build for a monk in Prophecies is a Forgotten Sage. Aegis, Orison, WoH, Vig Spirit. The fact its on a lvl20 who dies in seconds is the issue, but 2 of them are extremely good at surviving with 4 Arcanists pressuring with Kinetic Armour.

As for the Margonite Anur Ki... bad example. Its a lvl28 superhealer with infinite energy. Shadow Monks are the exact same, but they're both in elite areas. Skree Griffons on the other hand... now there is a superhealer thats not in an elite area.

It would actually help if Anet were maybe interactive with PvE. Every few months or so change the builds of common mobs if they're obviously lacking. 1 of the reasons DoA is so good besides the insanely high damage of enemies is that they have skills from all 3 chapters. Look at the Heket Warriors... Steady Stance... there build is absolutely useless. For the love of god give them Desperation/Drunken Blow. Aslong as the boss doesn't have it theres no chance skills will cross chapters. But seriously... Heket are useless atm.

As for your point about the Afflicted Monks... they do naff all. Thats there point. The keep the rest of the team clean with Draw Conditions, occasionally use RoF and smite the crap out of minions. The Ritualists do all the healing. And they're pretty good at it too. Soul Explosion is perfectly suited to Flesh of my flesh. Order of Apostasy + MASSIVE degen and conditioning. Afflicted are a perfect high offensive mob. Anti-minion, anti-tank.

Other than the fact plenty of mobs have absolutely useless builds which seriously need updating, PvE is reasonably challenging atm if you know where to look. Or just don't keep attempting to go with perfectly tuned builds to counter it...

However, this change will never happen. And reason has absolutely nothing to do with AI, or technical difficulties. Instead, the answer lies purely in human psychology.

In any business, staying afloat means understanding what your average customer wants. In GW's case, average customer to whom game is marketed is a casual gamer. Now, whether we, players who clocked thousands of hours, got UAX ages ago through PvE or PvP like it or not, casual players aren't here for the challenge. They are here for that moment of escapism, and satisfaction of quick and decisive victory. Level and monster design in GW is a direct reflection of that - prophecies, where average player is assumed to be essentially clueless to most basic mechanics, factions, where it's assumed that player is a returning player and has a little bit of a clue. As a result, AI skillbars are significantly harder in factions. Finally nightfall where introduction of heroes in combination with even better skillbars does indeed present the good learning curve, and tolerable "challenge level" - for the casual player. As that is who the "main path PvE" is designed for.
Read up some threads posted by casual player croud here a couple of months ago - you will see a massive amount of complaints about some stuff that would seem enormously easy for the hardcore croud. Perhaps the best example is the still present "OMG, that AI monk just won't sit there and take my axe in his face like a good little bitch - instead he runs. HOW DARE HE SPOIL MY FUN?!" threads amond many, many similar complaints. And yes, that is the definition of "fun" to some. Who are we to argue that our tastes are better then theirs?
As a result, game has to cater to many different tastes, and PvE we have is the "acceptable middle ground".

Elite areas on the other hand, are indeed, for the hardcore club. In there, monks are actually healers, mesmers rape casters, touchers slaughter tanks and elementalists are true glass cannons. Those are the areas that are meant for players with extensive knowledge of game mechanics, inner workings of skills and skill interaction. There is absolutely no spot for casual player there, at all (as proven by massive amount of complaints post-DoA release, which have later ceased as casual crowd has, as usual, figured there's nothing left for them in the game and left till next chapter, and new content comes out).

So let us calmly remind ourselves who is the croud footing the bill for our extended server usage and try not to alienate them any more then nessesary. DoA is already there if you're hardcore enough, and if you want even more challenge, you'll have to do the same thing you did when you got bored of urgoz and deep - wait for next chapter and even harder elite area.

Disclamer: I agree with OP about challenge level and general boredom in PvE.
Also, while I am indeed a PvPers mainly, I'm also an avid PvEr, who has, among other things, a pretty much purely solo elite survivor (finished all three chapters and got most exp from questing - cantha rocks), so I do know what I'm talking about here

Unfortunately, if we follow the current path, harder elite area really means bigger damage numbers and more triggers for Protective Spirit.

Drew seems to be asking for monsters that are a serious tactical challenge, which is exactly what an elite area should be. Arenanet, meanwhile, has been trying to make their elite areas difficult by buffing the damage over and over, apparently oblivious to the buffstacking and AI exploits that make PvE hard to build for but easy to play.

I should remind people that the proposed idea is to make mobs have real skillbars near the end of the game, or even, only in the Elite Areas.

As it has been said before, fighting L28 mobs is not as fun as fighting a variety of somewhat intelligent AI opponents with decent builds on their bars.

As I understood OP, suggestion was to "replace lvl28 high damage mobs with lvl20 with creative builds". Inherent problem is, as mentioned above, in the fact that when a casual players kills a big ass "lvl28", he feels he's accomplished something big. When he kills a lvl20 with a better build, he feels the same as when he was pruning plants on marga coast, because to casual player, "good build" is not something easily grasped, much less fully understood and made enjoyable to kill, unlike simple to undertand "lvl 28".

And hell, if you ever PvP, you know just as well as I do that the suggestion "monk sitting in wards with blind surge nearby" is not fun in any way to attacker - instead it's frustrating as hell. It's not that rare to get "f****** wardcamper" comment in some matches even in high end gvg - and yet you expect PvErs to go through the same thing and like it?

They'll learn that specific enemies are hard in an area when they take the "Difficulty: Master" quest and get their asses handed to them the first time they try it.

If they want to beat the hard level, yes. That's the idea. They'll have to work as a team just like the enemy is.

As an aside, when was the last time you've seen an NPC actually staying in the wards. :P

Why make PvE Challenge it alrdy Challenge. hehe just kidding i like PvE to be more Challenging but make it reasonable Challenge and not it so hard that I cant do anything that would ruined the Game for sure

I completely agree with the OP. I've thought that mobs should have decent bars from the beginning.

If PvE was like this, it *might* force people to use more dynamic builds and utility skills like snares and knockdowns, which I think most people have a lot more fun with. nukers + tanks + monks using only a handful of skills over and over is pretty boring. And usually I don't even need a tank, so it's just nukers + monks.

Good skillbars + shitty AI = barely increased difficulty. The AI messes up a lot of skill combinations, and it'd take a lot of efficiency/effectiveness sacrifices to get bars that actually work. The main things that make AL60 casters so hard to kill in pvp is not their skillbars, but their USE of those skillbars, and of course positioning and preemptive kiting and protection in the form of stances(shadow of haste) or enchantments. The AI can't do this very well, and it certainly doesn't understand the concept of covering important enchantments or hexes, so they should be fairly easily picked off by players.

Concerned about ward camping? Let's not forget that you can just run half an aggro bubble back and they'll run right out of it.

If there were decent walkthroughs and/or tooltips, it would be plenty friendly to the average player. As said, players could eased into this new form of pve, and wouldn't have to be rushed into level 20 mobs with 8 skills including res sigs. Walkthroughs on basic game mechanics like the ones on Shing Jea Island would be a fantastic way to accomplish this, in conjunction with tooltips with suggestions on improving weak builds. Stuff like "healing over time is usually inefficient and ineffective compared to direct heals unless your AL is incredibly high" and "make sure your build can sustain your energy over time".

I've got an idea: take the same basic idea behind the Crystal Desert - namely, a buildup to then-PvP ToPK - and improve upon it, with more difficult (strategically, not with brute force) enemies. Heck, you could make those areas optional with better than normal rewards. Just give PvE players incentive to play better against harder enemies.

I have to disagree on making the game harder. GW is a game with no monthly fees. the main source of income is new comer. if the game is famous of being hard. new people will hesitate to join GW family. then the market will shrink and GW will end. the current game play is challenging enough for many people consider many have trouble to get bonus or master or even the mission.

it is unnecessary to make the game harder. but making it challenging in other way will do in some part of story. the current trend is either super powerful boss or wave and wave of mobs. both are challenging but we can sue some pvp-like challenge such as having smart AI once a while.

PvE was never ment to be challenging just so people could finish it and so there was no grind factor. Don't like PvE?
Play PvP

I think people are misunderstanding some thing again.

Level 28 mobs will backfire eventually. The best example is, as stated before, urgoz/the deep. It's very hard to clear it with any group other than bp. So everybody plays it. It's too hard because you get nuked by 50 lvl 28 monsters.

However, in the other areas, it switches back and forth between being too easy and being hard. What's hard about enemies that are constantly in perma-frenzy? They do a bit more damage, true, but you kill them insanely fast. Ruby djinns are an example of where it's hard. Most groups don't realize they should spread out and get owned.

Weird... everything is different now. When they released chapter 1 Thunderhead Keep mission was one of the hardest mission in game. Now its easy like hell cause we know how to fight there. We know what builds we can use, and the most important thing we have new skills from new chapters.

I ve done TH Keep some days ago with My Dervish (primary char now). I asked my friends if they wanna help they said sure. To be honest it was a piece of cake... . MM, SS, Obs/Flesh tank, Bonder, Healer, SF burn them to death and barrager. It was like a bliztkrieg. Muursats and white mantles were overrun with brute force.

Urgoz and Deep are useless as examples, as they are off main path and considered elite. Jut because b/p, to an extent, allows casual player to "cheat" his way around the elite factor of the area doesn't mean that it doesn't function like it's intended. Noteably, b/p is horribly slow and risky, while a group of actually good players (read - friends or guildies with a clue) will take something around 2 hours to finish these areas with a real build and a good amount of teamwork and knowledge of encounters.

Signed. I didn't see this thread until now, but I have a similar complain/suggestion. Make pve more challenging by making the enemy ai smarter. It's a little senseless to run into a mob with your mob and see who gets wiped out first.

Instead, reduce the number of mobs, but make them better (sort of like FOW). Timewise it probably works out to be the same, maybe slightly longer. But, it's certainly more satisfying to beat group of 6 decent enemies than 50 retards that you steamrolled that may have taken just as long.

Quality over quantity.

The biggest problem most of us long term players face is that we are long term players that know how to play.

There is little learning needed when we see a new mob, we know most of the skills and how to deal with them. The ones we dont we sit back watch and learn fast, or read up on them at Balthazar priest.

The challange lvl is fine as it is, for new players. What we need is something thats outside of the normal story progression that has varrialbe lvls of difficulty. Sorrows Furnace was a great example, the quests were mostly easy but still had some challenge to them. You had to work with a team to deal with the quests requiring your party to split up and accomplish to goals at the same time.

This, I believe, will will be the key to making chapter four or other end game content more player freindly. They need to make missions/quests with multiple goals that require a party to split up and deal with 2 or more things at the same time. This would reduce the need for lvl 28 high dmg mobs and add a great deal of planning to these mission/quests that does not exist for most all of GW as it now stands.

/signed, with an explanation.

I think the OP is spot-on: the challenge in PvE lies largely in the first trip through the storyline. The boredom sets in on the second or third character.

That said, I DO agree that consistently facing mobs which are more "realistic" and therefore more likely to make the player "work" would skeeve out the "casual" gamer. How casual would that gamer have to be to punk out? Who knows?

So what about this tweak: Instead of random mobs, or progressingly different mobs from east to west, or north to south... Say, three mobs in a zone that are, as the OP and others suggest, balanced and realistic.
Then, to prevent Flavor of the Zone builds...those mobs could be randomized in terms of skill builds.

So you (the player) wouldn't face a series of balanced, almost-human-style groups, all across the zone, playing 20-minute fights one after the other. Instead, most of the mobs WOULD be "foot soldiers," as someone called them. And the boss mobs at lvl 28 could even be left untouched too. But somewhere in the zone--at a random spawn point--you would encounter this smart mob that had, as heroes do, a complete skill bar with seriously effective skills and AI. One battle, two battles in a zone that ARE epic...that would be all right with me.

And I'm pretty casual.

And as for the objections that this would screw up the noobs...well, why? I mean, if the monsters are the same level as you, and you can stack guildies, heroes, or hench...then why is it so bad to see this? Wouldn't people learn a) to expect it somewhere? and b) to build for the possibility?
and besides...if it turned into a random spawn point...rezone and hope to work around it.

Last, any "human-style" or "realistic" skill bar is vulnerable to an array of counters that anyone should have in the bar anyway, right? an interrupt, and/or a stance remover, a degen or condition or hex, a defense, and so on...

I think that there are two case studies here that might be instructive:

1. The small groups of elementals in Vabbi: A couple of Ethers (mesmers), Sapphire Djinn (Dervish), and Ruby Djinn (fire ele). The ethers carry rez SIGS, and will rez their Ether friends. The Sapphire Djinn is a pretty bad tank, and Hero/hench AI prevents it from being much more effective...but it is good at keeping the healers occupied for a few. Imagine that group with a solid pair of healers, and smarter tanking. Winnable? Absolutely. More interesting? Certainly.

2. In Sorrow's Furnace: as you pass the site where you battle over Oro, and descend a passageway, you run into a room with a large stairway. At the bottom, several dredge and some Summit. At the top, as you enter: several dredge and summit. This group often includes 2 priests of sorrows,who heal each other and the group rather well, and carry hard rezzes, I believe; this group includes also at least one dwarf MM, one dwarf ranger, and one or more warriors. Bad aggroes can make this a truly exciting battle.
Yet that particular room doesn't often spell the end of my team's SF trip...in 8-man or 5-man, it's hard, but not impossible; it require AWARENESS of the aggro and of the situation (who's dying, who's rezzing, who's pinging low energy...); it requires an array of skills to defeat these critters.
Sure, the B/P "gimmick" group can clear this...sometimes. (But not if the golem goes down...)...and the 8-man can...most of the time. But not without work.

So I ask: are these balanced groups bad things? As a pve player, I say, heck no.

props to the OP and all the others in this thread.

^^ Very well put. All I can really say to that is "what he said."

Yeah, this sounds like a great idea OP.

A) Iv never seen ANYONE b/p the deep...and my alliance owns cava...

On topic: I would support this idea, assuming they dont make it so monsters keep their insanely high att points/hp/energy...haveing a horde of lvl 28s with actual GOOD skill combos...would hurt....Can you imagine comeing across a patrol of 3 SF nukers, 2 grenths dervs, 2 ZB monks, and a mesmer in your avg mission? Yeah, that would make it considerably harder....

The biggest killer of the current PVE is the predictability and repetitiveness. Every time you warp into the same instance, EVERYTHING is the same. So whether or not the PVE is challenging or not, eventually it will get stale real fast.

As some dude said - it should be selective.
Very less from the whole community will enjoy this. I mean it is logically to do so, but some people like the simple action. You just sit, cast a armor, then rain 3 nukes and feel happy.
For example the last AI enhancements were taken very negative amongst most, remember (even when kind of fixed), While others like me were very happy about them (without the infinite run), it made every battle a mini warfare (especially when fighting an enemy party).

So - switchable.

No... I think the game is fairly difficult already for new players, and I think, at times, the enemies have almost even-footing with the players (better bars than the henchies at points).

I think PvE is by nature balance towards the player in terms of skill selection... the mobs have numbers and levels in their favour, so skill choice/player intelligence is what tips the odds.

If you really want a challenge, do GvG. It's the eponymous, flagship arena of the entire game (and the most fun, imo). PvE introduces the skills and a mildly fun adventure, but PvP is where it's at.

awesome post! Couldn't agree more.

Want harder PvE? Get Frustrations.. er.. Factions.