How difficult would you like your PvE?

Reset everything back to the way it was originaly. Make the game skill based like it was originaly. Now all there is is cookie cutters for everything which sux. Ther is no skill in the PVE now the game is for the PVP crowd and they are slowly giving the PVE crowd the bum rush.

Mega Mouse

Back up your statement.
I've seen you post this, many times before. it doesn't get better of repetition.

Oh my lord, you've nailed it. That is (besides the misspelling which I corrected), the cleanest way I've ever heard or seen anyone put it.

I'm not sure for the most of us, but I like the experience to also be fun, refreshing and challenging. I like to kill baddies as much as I like to explore the beauty of an area, and if I only get one of those it's...kinda boring.

Now that I've read this whine fest, I'ma actually weigh in. Most of you are being silly wankers, crying about how hard it is. If you are having trouble, adapt and evolve. If you don't like elite mission difficulties, don't play em. Lord knows I don't, who wants to sit huddled against a canyon, spamming Searing Flames at a big group of super-sized Bone Fiends while hoping for a drop anyway?

The rest of the game is manageable, so adapt to it.


That said, if Anet decided to put in larger numbers of weaker monsters (a la The Undead Hordes quest in Kryta or that quest at the end of the Centaur quest line with the 50 some Margonites attacking) at intervals throughout the game, I'd love it. The sheer numbers always makes me feel like I'm "The Man (tm)" when I hear their chorused death grunts.

That, and I'd really like the ground to get a bit more blood soaked when I'm getting my massacre on.

Something that you could do without fustration. Regular Realm of Torment mobs are fine, you *can* kill them without losing members if you go about it the right way. But there are some mobs that are just moronic... The 4-5x Rain of Torment mobs you get in the Domain of Fear are just ridiculous. Theres almost no way to counter 4 spread out Water spikers without a completely specific build. When things can wipe out entire teams of henchman in seconds using water magic... somethings overpowered.

Personally i'd like Anet to just pay slightly more attention to builds... Steady Stance on Heket makes no sense at all with there current build. Some mobs are well designed, but some are just a completely half-arsed job. You can roll Heket without even thinking about it. Roaring Ethers can roll you if your not careful.

I would say just the way Prophecies was and get rid of timed missions I miss seeing sword cross when you get the bonus.I would say to it should be gradual.

All mobs shouldnt be more than 8 levels stronger than you.

Mob party size shouldnt exceed your party size by more than 25%.

Mobs should all have 8 skills, including ressurect spells.

Mobs should have multiple balanced team builds from a pool of skills that randomly generate each time you enter a zone.

I think we were actually agreeing. I apologise that I generalised my views, but this whole debate about making the game harder really annoys me.

Ive played since prophercies and I loved that system, I didnt see any need to change it. Then came factions and the level of difficulty just shot up stupidly.

Not impossibly hard, just frustratingly hard.

I agree that the game should be made more challenging with better AI and tactics from the creatures.

My greif is that Anet doesnt do that. Their trend is to simply make more and more creatures capable of interupting, able to ress and multiply. This doesnt add to the challenge, it simple makes them harder to kill and more frustrating.

Factions was not a casting friendly game due to that. It was alot more a wammo game.

NF was fine, until a point where the difficulty shot up, and you were thrown into the deep end with huge mobs and alot of them. Its more a shock to the system when you go from relatively nice gameplay to sudden elite-esc areas.

Dont get me wrong. I dont mind a challenge, aslong as its intelligent and not just creatures being buffed up and numbers increased.

I honestly found/find the ROT a pain to play in, because certain areas are just mob heavy and its like a mine field. You cant pick groups off intelligently because you agree entire areas.

My idea of fun in pve is not linked to the level of monsters but:

1) it is immersive and you discover places (with the quests, etc...) as already stated by many.

2) The cooperative mission are well designed and thus interesting. By well designed I mean that it does not only involve going forward-kill-forward-kill etc...

Clear exemples were aurora glade where you had to use a runner (split of group) or bloodstone fen where you had to carry items around without touching the monsters hitting you!! Even thirsty river was cool since it reminded me of some PvP experiences. A few nightfall coop mission were good too.

In Hall of Heros you have a lot of creative victory conditions. Why PVE could not have also creative victory conditions, place that involves split party stategies, etc?

All in all, most PVE now only involves kill-forward-kill-forward and it is why you only need heros and hench to win. Only one human mind is necessary to lead the whole group.

The difficulty of the game is not only linked to the level of the monsters but by the way the game challenge you! (as already stated by many above).

My 2 cent
Have fun in game

I am new at posting Forums, but not new in reading and using them.

First, I like how some are hard and some are Easy, like someone said early in the Forum, but when you get to the uber hard ones they are plan silly, and when you do the easy ones, they are plane silly.

My personnal opion is the game should be harder early to force you to build a good char, as you advance through the game, make the game change in the WAY it is difficult, so again it forces you to change you char, and makes you into a better player. (i.e Early use Wars, as you go through through in Mesmers, and Prot. torwards the end of game make a orginized foe party) This will force a player to adapt

As for the Cookie Cutters and such.. Bud, get creative and create your own test it and submit it... Don't depend on the Cookie Cutters, because by you saying that you are (in my eyes) saying you having fallen into the mold. BUT I do agree with the game going to PvP base more than PvE base now.

Oh yeah 1 more thing.... A-Net STOP messing with the AI, they were great like 2 weeks ago, the new Mods you made, are messing them up and creating too much Lag...

D
o
A

Yeeeeh!

I reckon a Moderate difficulty will do, otherwise everyone will have the same builds for the certain missions, and that won't be good.

I think DoA difficulty is going too far.. it encourages ultra pure cookie cutter pre-invented teams, and even with the "perfect" cookie cutter setup, it's still hard.

No thanks.

Something along the lines of the Gate of Madness (the mission before abaddon, if that's its name?) would be good though. I'd probably prefer it to the current mission setups, simply because it encourages human teams to form together and triumph over a difficult obstacle.

The current PvE meta-game has been ruined by heroes, almost every mission is just as easy, if not even easier with heroes than it is with real players. Some of us like to play multiplayer internet games to play with REAL PLAYERS.... why else would i be playing GW and not final fantasy X or something?

I like a mix of things in an area. You move along in an area and just see how fast you can mow though the baddies. Then you run into a really tough group and have to do some planning and setup.

I like the Warren for difficulty. I well played party can grind along as long as you have a guide or know the ropes. Special builds do it faster.

Hard missions are boring not because of challenge but because almost every team only accepts certain professions and builds, which makes it near impossible to do it with other players if you don't like playing that certain profession or build...

Factions? Harder than Prophecies?

Really?! o_0;

I found the difficulty level of Factions for the most part to be about perfect.
And yet certain parts of the Southern Shiverpeaks I still find painfully difficult... far above the difficulty of most of Factions (along similar lines to trying to solo the Eternal Grove at Master rank with heroes and henchies).
Along similar lines, most of Prophecies is a level-grind. Factions revolves less around level / raw strength and more around familiarity and skill synergy.

As for Nightfall though, I only just got Margrid the Sly. Kourna was a perfectly acceptable level of difficulty... but from what you're saying I imagine things are about to get a whole lot nastier.


On another note... I think Chapter 4 should bring back, at least in some missions (though clearly not all), the time-based ranking systems. There is little so exhilerating as zerg-rushing Vizunah Square with a couple of minion masters.

I love PvE.

I have been playing this game since 2 months after originally released (prophesis).

I have the 3 campaigns.

Nightfall was a much awaited campaign after the flop Fractions, I mean Factions was.

DoA and Razah the hero was the most anticlimatic things that I have seen in the GW saga so far.

Why?

Simple. Let me say what I think on RAZAH. Not that impressive after so much publiclity given, I mean a ritualist! and then it leads me to DoA (dead on arrival) as I call it.

The whole concept of this new PvE sucks for me because of the amount of time you have to spend to get a team and the amount of time it takes to do a quest.

Not to mention the coffers and in the majority of cases the crsp items they yield.

I have said it before and I say it again.

NIGHTFALL CAMPAIGN = EXCELLENT STUFF

DOA = SPOILER TO NIGHTFALL

No GG on DoA ANet

Indeed. Fortunately, most of the posters in this thread have agreed to that same point. Perhaps we'll be heard.

For the most part I think the difficulty is just about right with a few exceptions -

*I think most of factions has mob density too tight/large. Have some tough areas on a map is good - but requiring each every fight to be epic just wear on you - especially when quest make you clear the same place 14 times...
*I think thing the various demons (or whatever you call the things like blades of corruption) in the realm of torment are a bit much with the mob size/spawn a new creature infinitely.
*The Gates of madness mission is too build specific and most build rely on skills from other campaigns. My opinion here would change if the team build options were more versitle for success

Otherwise I think the difficulty is just about right. Some easy areas. So tough spots. A few very hard missions, a bunch of challenging ones and a few easy ones. I do wish they didnt fall into the same 'difficulty is defined by time required to complete' trap that all MMOs seem to. Eliteness should not be defined by how long you have to sit at the computer - things should be in roughly 1 hour chunks.

couldnt agree more!
ive been playing for a freaking year and a half and have some 3k hours but i get trashed into oblivion by the first three groups in the domain of fear? its kinda obvious that i am not the most casual player - and that can either mean i totally suck at this game (which i doubt) or the game is just not designed in a best of way.
so now i have my necro and mesmer at fear and ive decided that ill stop playing my assasin since i cant bare the idea of having to bring it through this piece of crap again. and ill only make characters that wont need to go though RoT anymore. once these two guys get through - i am done with torment!
and if they continue to add more content like this that will be 'mandatory' - i am just done with gw - since its obviously turning into a game i dont like. bloody hell - its a game - i should be having fun - not praying that it will be over and done with as soon as possible!

I think it's hard enough as it is, ugh. People who say it's too easy probably have 100 level 20's with all the best/most expensive equipment EVER.

Alot of it is like work.I dont mind it hard but it get pretty reduntant at times.Especially with respawns and such.Boring to keep killing critter over and over and over.
A game should be fun.GWP with the exceptions of Titans if you took out a critter it was over.I like NF but there is alot of cheesy stuff.It gets old.A couple of missions almost put me to sleep.To much regurgatating(SP).I like my PVE challeging but fun.

I hope hard mode offers some extra skill points and xp.
That way we can choose the hard difficulty for some extra skills points/xp or we can choose the normal difficulty for what we are already used to getting.
Some places are very hard if you don't use your skill points to learn the right skills to make the missions easier.
Many missions require certain skills and tactics and can be very easy to those who have taken the time to get them.
Except DOA. That place seems to be out there. I have every skill for my mesmer and still have no idea what to effectively use there. It's murder x 10 for him. Can anyone here help me?

I like the way it currently is, I only have two complaints (and only one is a real complaint). Gates of Madness and restrictions on AI.

Right now, almost anyone can beat all three games. For a game to sell well, this needs to be the case. If you can halfway understand the game, halfway come up with a build, and halfway work in team nearly all the missions are doable. The one exception is the Gate of Madness mission, Shiro kills too many. Hopefully it will end up like THK and builds/skills make it pretty easy, but so far no real hope of that. Those of us that have played the game since the start can beat it no problem with hench (I've gotten masters every time I have tried after the first time I went in blind), but it is a bit of a skill needed spike.

The other (real) complaint is that I am restricted to where I can take the hench. For me, it pretty much means I can only solo/hero a few areas. As a casual gamer that really sucks, I would love to see more of FoW or the UW but until this is allowed I can not do a build that I can do so. Maybe someone better with them can clear it with a team of four (I've seen screens of some amazing things done with hench), but I am not one to do so. Maybe they, as many that do not want this say, are too hard to hench but without given the chance I would bet they are. If they are truly too hard for the hench to be useull then nothing will have changed, only the complaints gone.

As is, there is pretty much a PvE area for nearly any skill level. I can clear SF with no huge barrier (some missions are hard and a few I haven't tried - but the area in general), same with ToPK - though it takes a lot more effort and time. The elite areas offer more challenge.

If main story line areas were made much harder too many would be driven off, many more than would be happy with increased difficulty. As is the difficulty of late game areas probably about breaks even from what I have seen, and their solution on making post-game areas hard doesn't make the "hardcore" players happy (though, given what I know of AI development we are mostly decades away of the intelligence most demand, you will note that while they complain they still play).

I come here to have fun,not to be made think about my build doh!Doa is hopelessly hard for me still i want that damn shield!I like to play with monsters that wont kill entire party in 3 secs,its not why i got this game.Yes, after playing this for 2 years.. i want it more easy.I dont like to get frustrated over stupid mobs or so called hard core players,screw them.

Uhmm, I hate to break it to you but expensive equipment only looks different and no matter how many characters you have, you still only play one at a time. There's isn't a green or gold that can beat a collector's item. Just the same as FoW, Vabbi or 15k armour only looks different but has exactly the same stats as the normal 1k/1.5k armours...

It doesn't matter if there's a hard mode cause you can choose to ignore it. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I would warm up to the the idea if hard mode gives better drops.

Well, it is a tough mission but with the right team build it's not that bad. The team build even allows for a couple of spots of any classes.

- 2 monks as usual.
- 1 warrior tank with wild blow
- 1 MM
- 1 SS
- 1 Empathy/life degen Mesmer
- 2 any class

The best way to do it is with the bonus cause that gives you extra defences. So first kill the Lich and then do bonus...then kill shiro

Shiro will attack the MM's minions before attacking players since shiro always goes for the weakest/lowest levels first. The SS uses spiteful spirit and insidious parasite and the mesmer uses empathy. Shiro can remove hexes with one skill so keep stacking the hexes and stack others on top whenever you can....watch shiro die quickly with his tons of attacks...he takes about 100 damage with each attack...the more attacks the quicker he dies...and wild blow will take care of his stances.
Add some blinding skills and it's a laugh....

I would really hate to think what shiro will be like in hard mode...something tell me that is going to be the real mission to beat....again

For the story campaign, the current difficulty is sufficient. I don't enjoy pve like I once did, but I do appreciate that I can hench/hero any mission if I need to. If I have to get back into the pve pug thing again just to progress to a skill cap, that will be annoying.

I like it the way it is, but even then it becomes frustrating in certain missions. In my opinion, Peter Molyeneux had it right. Games should always be fun and enjoyable to play - if you were reading a book and became extremely frustrated with it, would you continue to read it? Why whould games be different?

I'm not saying games should have no challenge at all, but I think they need to keep the difficulty down. It still needs to be hard enough so random noobs that are rushing through aren't going to be able to finish it, but you shouldn't have to be a tactical mastermind with a guild to be able to finish it either.

Hard mode seems like a great idea. Keep the regular mode as it is, but add a harder difficulty for those who find it too easy.

wanting higger dificulty has major pitfall:

the one wanting harder stuff always imagines himself "pwning it" (because he is like ... good enough) while non-l33t others fail it.

Then, something along DoA( New tombs / Urgoz ... being bit historical but resulted in some nice flame stuff too) comes and he gets himself "pwned" while other suceed. going to fansite and posting some angry stuff follows soon.

Be carefull what you wish for ... it might be too much.

Hiya!

I feel the progression of difficulty is right on the spot in Nightfall; the increase in difficulty in the explorable areas in general as well as the difficulty in the missions. Guild Wars is a game based upon knowledge of character and team builds; player skill plays an important part as well since it's required, in the later areas of the game, that you have some knowledge of the game mechanics (conditions and hexes, target calling, positioning, pulling, envirionment awareness etc).

What I would really like added to GW, however, is some more information about each explorable area/mission BEFORE I enter it woven into the story; for example a mechanism where NPC's spread rumors about what kind of environment we're entering as well as what kind of monsters/monster groups we will face, so that we'll have a chance to correct our character and team builds accordingly. As it is now, in the later parts of the game, it's most often necessary to play the mission/explorable area once and then go back to adjust the build in order to get it right. Either that, or do as I normally do since it's quicker, read the forums and Guildwiki and set it up correctly before I try it out. How about giving us a village/outpost elder to talk to before moving on?

/Gwon

Hard mode is the answer, it should be an option for the player to have harder PvE. Right now, if you are with a friend, or out with a player group, even RoT is too easy. With Heroes and Hench, RoT is hard enough that some famous PC game magazine editor and blogger recently rage quit GW because he thought it was too hard ... and he had been playing since Prophecies release.

Casual players are the majority and nothing should be done to alienate them. And I agree that if there is a hard mode, it should not merely be more mobs, but rather monsters who have full skill bars and secondaries ... with good drops wouldn't hurt.

imo, all pve campaign right now isn't hard. you can do it without much difficulty with henchies and heroes.
it would be more fun if they make the boss like dragnar, lichlord, shiro, abaddon, varesh, or other bosses harder to fight. (just boss. not underlings... )

Dito! That is why I think designers should leave it to the players. Give us the possibility to make any area extremely easy, normal or hard.

The lightbringer rank is something to make things easier in RoT, but it takes way too long to get it up.

If you want to try to hench FoW/UW, just ask a friend to take 3 heroes and go in with you. Then he/she can leave, but you keep the heroes, so you can try it with 7.

As long as they increase difficulty without being like DOA. What nobody wants to see is the exact same missions, etc with same monsters but twice as many of them or level 30 instead of level 24 or whatever. I would think that an update doing anything else would be difficult, so they need to wait until they can do it right or not do it. As far as how the missions are now, they are all really easy IF you know the exact team build to use. Most can be done with anything, but the ROT needs to be set up correctly to be easy.

This is the post a-net needs to read...I don't know how they could do it, but this is how it should work. heal monk, prot monk, then random group of 6 other classes should have difficulty but not impossability in doing the missions. Then if people want it to be easy they can use a build like that used in DOA or a B/P or some other gimmick to make it easy. No area should be so "hard" that only a specific team can pass it and nobody else because I like many have several characters and would like to be able to do everything and go anywhere on all of them, (dervish, mesmer, ranger..none of them will be able to do DOA {unless some uber skills come out in next chapter, then they will be able to do it until the nerf bat hits} so I would like all areas doable with balanced build.

I guess its best to give players a wide scale of options: Nursery mode, Weak mode, Normal mode, Hard mode, Impossible mode... Rewards can be related to the mode you play.

Also let players be free to choose if they like to enter a level with a human party or henchmen/heroes.

What I don't want is missions/area's that only can be played as 'elite', like DOA. Anet should get rid of the system "more creatures = harder". Make it harder by more variations. But no time based stuff.

I admit I like a relaxed game. One single player should always be able to slay any single ai opponent in the game.

i like it the way it is. Elite Area actually means something.