How difficult would you like your PvE?

/agreed this post is too short

I'd like to see a lot of things done to increase the skill level required for pve.


First off let's get enemies decent skill bars, not this 3-4 random skill garbage. Make sure they have 8 skills (or 7 and a rez) and make sure they're coherent, sensible builds. A few vetted pvp bulids would work fine imo. Now, make 5-6 possible skill bars and put them into a pool.

Second, make the monsters spawn with a randomly selected bar from the pool for their class.

Third, improve enemy AI. Super high levels aren't needed imo; enemies that actually present a challenge are. Make enemies use interrupts more efficiently, use shutdown on appropriate classes, make warriors use Frenzy in a way other than randomly and have them build up then unload, etc.

Fourth, make mobs more balanced. Have a few warriors, a few rangers, a few mesmers a few eles, and a few monks... or rits. Mobs with 4 warriors, 4 rangers and a monk are not challenging at all. Now, randomize this balaned so you don't get the same profession distribution every time.


One of the main reasons pve is so brain dead easy currently is because you always know what enemies will spawn, what professions they are, where they will spawn and what skills they will carry. If you make enemies more dynamic, this promotes skillful play over copying builds off of a forum and C-spacing your way to victory.

The Guild Wars mantra is supposedly "skill over time spent playing" but this does not hold true in pve currently. Even a mending wammo can finish the game by auto attacking and spamming Power Attack in an average PUG, even if it takes him a few tries. Players should be required to learn the game and improve their skill in order to progress.



Or maybe they're just not bad at the game? Armor and items don't mean anything in this game, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

Do not change the difficulty. Please make the skillbars of mobs "random". I know that would be anti farm code. But if you have to play the same over and over... random skillbars would be highly motivating.


Also I highly like the random bosses in prophecies!

Actually folks that say it easy are probably the same ones that join your pug talk smack and go AFK when you do the mission.What is easy is for folks to talk a lot of smack on forums and in the game.Reason I prefer hero/hench .
Anyhow the game needs to be setup for both hardcore and casual players.It should be about fun.What they did in Desolate area was a blast.It is fun and different.I get a kick out of it.I am running my 4th chr thru it and it still enjoyable.

I'd much rather see monsters with filled and functional skill bars as opposed to stupid brutes with 4 skills that are buffed to levels beyond 20.

doa isnt hard... just the quests r soooooooooo long people fall asleep which makes it hard =D

pve is fine alot of people struggle with it how it is now therefore keep it at his level also it makes it easy for me who just does it when im that bored and cant do pvp =D

Although it's not difficult per se, I like the level of game play of a good team when clearing out FoW or UW, although it's been a l-o-n-g time since I've did either. I just like it when it's an organized, friendly team that listens to each other's inputs and achieves a great deal of completion simply by using good coordination. DoA is crazy hard, almost every team splits after the first time they attempt it, thinkin, "f*** this for a game of soldiers".

Yes, and if you look at guildwiki there are even cookie cutter ways of getting through the missions (gate of madness since the quotes doesn't include that tidbit). However, for a vast majority of gamers it is a brick wall and it is required. Again, I have masters on it for every character that has been there and I see no reason that if I fell like taking my other 7 there they will too - but then we are not the average gamer that is giving Anet their money.

I hench everything, I hate playing with other players so I have no "friends" in game. The ones I do have are ones I trust for running and purchasing things from. Nor do I want to sit around for an hour waiting on someone to log in the game to do that with me - that kinda defeats the purpose (I have had random people help me by doing this before). There are currently places that artificially prohibit me from going there. The fact that one can do as you post is, again, a perfect reason to explicitly allow it. All it does is restrict a casual gamer more than needed as most longer term players have simple ways around it. Amusingly enough, if the other person has decent hero builds it is *more* powerful than what I want to be allowed to do.

I have no problem with post game areas ramping up greatly in skill needed. I think the main story should be quite inclusive and the post game stuff only be limited by how far your skill will allow you to go, not because someone else wants to force you to play the way they do. SF and ToPK are prime examples of this - great job on them - allowing hench has in no way ruined them and those of us that have unusual schedules know they can always pop in and play non-trivial areas if we so choose.

Anyone here who says that they want DoA difficulty or anything allong those lines is a sucker who likes to farm all day. Now, you're all going to get indignant in my face, and I'm okay with that, because I'm right.

"More HP", "More Enemies", and "More Damage" difficulty is for slow thinking people. It encourages niche farming and repetitive stupidity. The more you make these "More HP", "More Enemies" and "More Damage" numbers, the more that this crap gets more and more narrowed down into boring bullshit.

The ONLY fun missions in Guild Wars are Grand Court Of Selbekeh, Jennur's Horde, Jokanur Diggings, and Abaddon's Mouth. Ironically, these are the ONLY missions in PvE that require you to multitask.

Start thinking about making situations that require puzzles, strategy, and multitasking instead of increasing the stupidity factor, Arenanet.

Yea, Jennur's Horde makes me want to kill myself...but...Abaddon's Mouth? How do you need to multitask in that?

Anyhoo...I notice a lot of people saying they would like "Realm of Torment" difficulty throughout most PvE...well that would be "ok" if some of the "annoyance" was removed. By "annoyance" I mean a) environmental effects and b) Call to the Torment.

Call to the Torment is one of the annoyance-skills. I just hate it. It doesn't make the battle harder (providing you kill the thing that just duplicated)...it just makes it longer...and more, well, annoying.

There is a fine line between "harder PvE" and "annoying PvE".

Personally if mobs in, say, Minister Cho's Estate were going to be raised to lvl 30 for Hard Mode and all use a skill like "The Call Of Cho" where every creature multiplies 5 times and has 50 in each attribute...I'd rather it stayed as it is...because that sort of difficulty hike is more "annoying" and less "challenging". I'm just a little worried that "Hard Mode" means a Chahbek Village where all the lvl 0 Corsairs are replaced with Lvl 30 Shiros.

"Midshipman Shiro is using Meditation of the Reaper!"

...no thanks.

I'd like the missions to be that "hard mode" that I can't get master reward with 4-6 henchman (including myself). (My favourite example: Master Reward (4:38min) Grand Court of Sebelkeh with myself as ranger, Acolyte Jin, Olias (360hp), Tahlkora, Paragon-henchman. So it's definatly possible considering that the team has only 2 rangers and an order necro as damage-dealers. Same for missions like Raisu Palace, which were allready completely henchable with Masters before Nightfalls release! Hero's made it even more easy and I feel like people actualy forgot to learn how to play.

So yes, make hard-mode hard but not annoying. It's annoying when I have to bug-use the AI of opponents with a tank to stand on a corner and block the opponents cause they can't run around corners that are blocked and have 3 nukers and a SS-necro kill em off.
Making the opponents teams AI better and have a better skillbar is more like it. And most important of all: without rising their lvl to 28. Enemies with a better skillbar can become hard-mode enough. At least a bigger chalange than DoA, which is easier than baking a pie when you have a tank that knows where to block. The rest just walks along for 90% of the time...

So... give me hard-mode

Your right, that much is true, although Anet likes to just keep things simple as possible. Your point still shines though and I wish the same. Personally my favorite mission is Elona Reach if you don't have a ranger(other then myself ) running it for you. Fast paced simple task, time limit etc. If 90% of the missions in Guild Wars were like the ascendance missions in the Crystal Desert we wouldn't have this problem.

I've changed my mind.
Making PvE a lot harder, would in the end, just make it into PvP.
I like my PvE to be a stress relief.

I like to be challanged enough that I can be proud of succeeding, but not so much that I'm stopped for more then a few days, if that.

For those who are wondering, I do pretty much everything with heroes and henchmen, but occasionally find a group for somthing hard enough to stop me repeatedly that enough other people want to do, and nothing annoys me more then being required to assume a superexact build, or have an elite skill that I don't find to useful (EG barrage. What's so great about it?).

That's what I do, but there are probably some who think the opposite.

I'd like PvE harder so you have think, solve puzzles or work together on tactics, what I don't want is it being made harder by making mobs bigger or roaming mobs overlap which seems the currenmt method as that just makes quests annoying.

I would like thought put into the monsters that I fight. Instead of making the monsters lvl 30=40 and extremely overpowered, why not make the monsters lvl 20-25 and actually have GOOD BUILDS!!! With the new heroes we now know the potential of AI and how good it can actually be, opposed to the crappy AI characters that A-Net has given us in the past with henchies and monsters. Why not make groups with rez sigs so that killing the monk of a monster group doesnt always end the fight completely. Why not make monster groups have 2 monks running aegis chains (which the AI runs very well) and why not have monsters ACTUALLY HAVE 8 SKILLS ON THEIR BAR!

Most monsters only have 4-5 skills. I just want some decent competition without giving the enemies a handycap like making lvl 40s that deal 200 dmg in one hit (DoA reference).

EDIT (off topic a little): Lets get one thing strait, when people are comparing the difficulty of prophecies, factions and nightfall, prophecies is the best game ever followed by nightfall and factions. I know this topic is about difficulty but hello! factions is ugly and poop easy soooooo... it stinks. Nightfall and prophecies are way way way better games. Prophecies is nice because it has easy and hard parts (and pre-searing is the best introduction to a game I have ever sean! this beginning area is soooo much fun and you are able to get very comfortable with your character without dieing repeatedly). Nightfall is great because it introduces sooo many new and interesting elements to GW gameplay and has some slightly more difficult areas but also, you have better abilities on your team with heroes so i feal it makes up for it. Lastly, factions sucked. It was ugly, the most frustrating, and the shortest game of the three. Honestly, the pure look of the game was terrible. I felt like I was in the poor side of Detroit. EWWWWWW! It was terribly frustrating with all the winding turny map design which was awful. It was also incredably short. I can finish the game in about a day! Why did I pay 50 bucks for a game that is about have the size of the game I previously purchased (profecies). Oh yea... not allowing me to use the merchant in a town because I am not aligned with that side is obnoctious!

So you can suck on that factions lovers!
FLAME ON!!!!!

Nearly impossible, but possible! That's the difficulty I want! and doable alone, not all times I want play with people, i.e. I would love play DoA with a full 8 hero/hench team, why not? also UW and FoW.

BUT, that type of difficulty could be too much insane for some people, so, an option for play normal OR hard could be right we need. Obviously if you play in harder mode, "maybe" you must get double gold, double drops, or whatever.

Example: Guardian of Tyria: You now get double gold on drops, and +33% possibility of greens and golds drops (and in chests) in Tyria territory.

Right, this is probably the lamest example i could come up with but forgive it . In WoW heroic dungeons, most if not all monsters one-shot anything less than a warrior/druid and sometimes even those two if given the opportunity. Some normal dungeons have monsters just like it too.

It's pretty similar to GW, except the one-shot part. Except, boss fights have phases were things happen that makes it more difficult . Spawned zergs, AoE , Enrage timers/trickered on low health (the ownage - mode), and so on. I'd like to see some tougher boss fights, not more of shiro type though .

Normal PvE is pretty fine as it is, imo just that bosses might want some tweaks. Storyline/uw(etc) bosses that is, outdoor bosses could remain as they are if it would be too much.

mmm, I agree 99% of bosses in GW are too easy, just double difficulty as a normal monster.

About that "one-shot" in WoW, has WoW a skill like Protective Spirit? because I don't see how a team can manage "one-shot" monsters.

Me/Mo "rezzer"
Me/Rt "rezzer"
Res signets
Vengeance

So hard that if you ever go afk your comp explodes sending shrapnel everywhere killing everything is sight. That would own

This pretty pegs it for me. Oh I like a challenge occasionally when I have some time to put into it but usually I don't. I get enough frustration at work.

I would like it just like PVP.No heath,energy or other environmental degen.I want the monsters level straight up just like PVP also.Just give the monster cookie cutter builds and then it is player vs monster.Also monster should be given remotes.One could be a paragon another maybe a mesmer.Every other group must have one of the monsters go LJ.Two out of every three groups must have one monster go afk.Now that would be cool.

Personally I like being able to solo in lower level areas, I wish that part of the game was expanded a bit more.

I actually hope they remove "Cry to the Torment" in normal mode and put it in hard mode.

I like the difficulty of Prophecies. Once you know what you are doing you can take any character class with any reasonably good build and use only heroes and henchies to beat the game. There are a few harder missions, and 1 or 2 missions that can be run, but in general a reasonably adept player can beat the game playing any class with just heroes and henchies. I want to be able to play all of the classes, and have the ability to actually beat the game with all of the classes, without playing the missions 100 times to get every single little nuance.

I think that should be the basis for a normal mode.

A Hard mode on the other hand, should be difficult. Not stupid difficult like DOA, but hard enough that you need a good group to get through it.

The Factions experience differs so much depending on which class you are playing it is ridiculous. That isn't right.

Also, what is it with getting the characters to level 20 as fast as possible. Again, Prophecies has this right. You can play the game as it was meant to be played, or jump ahead with a run to Drok's to pick up armor. The other games you blink and you are level 20. yuck.

I find that the PvE is too repetitive. I want more missions that require unique tactics.

However, I also feel that the difficult fights within each mission need to be contrasted by a few easier ones. As it is now, just about every fight is on a gradually increasing curve.

But that makes things boring, takes away from the difficult fights and makes everything seem more drawn out and bland.

Variety is the spice of life after all.