Games For Windows Editor cracks under RoT pressure

Your statement is at best ambiguous and at worst self-contradictory. If you can get 'those items' without doing the quests, why would an improvement of those quests make any difference?

The issue here is this: farming is generally the best way to get something - you can farm XP (ie. skill points), you can farm gold, and you can farm equipment. Therefore, in order for quests to make a difference, they either have to give you something that can't be farmed, or they have to give you things that can be farmed, but with much less time and effort. In the case of the first option, I don't know of anything that can't be farmed, so I don't believe that to be a viable choice. In the second case, most rewards are so easy to farm that quests would have to give you those rewards in obscene quantities to be competitive - we're talking on the order of several plat and tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of XP per quest. Are any quests in the game honestly difficult enough to warrant that kind of reward?

We enjoyed it just fine. Being fast and efficient doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself.

I want goddamn skills quests back

I completely agree with Burst Cancel.

This guy sounds like he is frustrated because he is good at every other game but this one has really made him think about the build he is using before going out and testing it, and then instead of going back in to redo and retesting it, he makes a blog about how the game sucks. Guild Wars is an amazing game (I admit it has fallen a bit, but it is still one of the best games I have ever played), there is no need to go attacking ArenaNet for making an area too hard for YOU, maybe instead of making an article that many people read (I guess) go to a forum and discuss your problems and maybe the Guild Wars community can give you tips on how to set up a build better, meet people who are willing to help you with those [Master] Quests etc etc.

Sounds like he is just whining.

PS: those people who are defending him, I'm guessing you are loyal readers and will back him up. There is nothing wrong with backing him on this, but maybe you need to see that there are better ways for him to handle such things (ie, ASKING FOR SOMEONES HELP.)

Realm of Torment is pretty brutal compared to everything from factions and prophecies because of patrols and call to the torment. Domain of Anguish is basically Realm of torment but with stacked environmental effects and mobs with higher damage. If it weren't so it would be like FoW or UW where people could actually use any build so long as it is effective.

The non-funness and low reward most of us are talking about. Is quite simple really.


For those who doubt it. Do this test. Go clear 1 area of RoT then write down the drops you get there damage color and what mods they come with.


These are the types of rewards most people have been talking about.

From what I can gather, he thinks the Realm of Torment is too hard and quest rewards don't represent the difficulty of the area. I know people have expressed their concern for the difficulty before, so he's not alone on that point. The problem is, a lot of people express the ease at which they breeze through PvE in general too. From what I can tell Anet have been ramping up the difficulty and people are starting to complain in the opposite direction. The obvious response would be to notch it down again and then implement an optional hard mode, something they clearly intend to do.

As for quest rewards, the problem is that Anet always offer a farming alternative, making it pretty difficult to increase reward beyond 'I could get it easier elsewhere'. In that sense the reward is always going to feel inadequate. I think this is something they'll eventually have to address.

Judging from the way he made his point I'd say he's tired of more than the RoT. I think maybe he should find something else to play for awhile and see how he feels about the next chapter.

There's a joke in there somewhere.

Pretty much what I kinda think. I wouldn't mind higher rewards in general, but that is not the same as what is being said. I wouldn't mind more gold or XP in general, though I do wish they had more Lightbringer points from quests and that the RoT bounties gave more than 2 lb points per kill. It *is* somewhat irritating that those rewards there are the same as Vabbi.

More XP - why? My Dervish already has enough skill points to get max skill hunter - no farming, just beat all three games and did quests. Gold? She purchased vabbian chest, feet, hands and primeval head and leggings all dyed black, superior vigor, major vigor for all heroes, and full rune sets including insignias - again no farming, just playing through all three chapters (no elite areas cleared at that point either). Heroes are fully equipped with greens or max golds from chests/drops. I average about 3 hours of gaming a day since nightfall release, going into nightfall I had spent all my gold on armor for my ele (which I ended up getting rid of and purchasing her a set of sunspear elite - also purchased in the last little bit from playing the game and no farming).

If I hadn't fully equipped three characters worth of heroes to the hilt I would have enough to cap all the skills. Still, no farming. And when I finally go back to doing that I *hate* high level farming. Griffons/hydra's are as high as I go.

Given what just playing the game gives you if you pay attention (all my sales are merched or done at the traders, trading with players takes too long), to give good enough rewards would devalue them to the point that they will no longer be worth it. In the end, the rewards for Vabbi and below are too high to have the RoT (or even the DoA) *ever* give rewards equal to its difficulty without totally destroying the economy. Heck, the highest rewards are in Vabbi (trade contracts) and they pretty much blow every other quest reward in all three chapters away. If you scaled that up to compare with the difficulty difference then inflation would split people into those who have made it to the RoT and those that haven't - about like the early days of the 105 monks.

{edit} I would add, however, that some of the elite areas probably do warrant that type of PvE reward. That is much better than the current DoA stuff. Though - what do I complain about? As a pure hench/hero player I can't go there anyway.

If you really want to help the little players who have a hard time, then do them a favor and stop looking at thing’s from only your prospective and see it from theirs.

I see in most posts people can’t seem to look past their own ego (i.e. I’ve played 5,000 hours, black FoW armor, PvP, I can solo farm RoT, koabd, the list goes on). While others try to justify that it’s easy because they had one successful run. Do you also expect that 121,185 members on this forum are the same 1 million (or 3 million how ever you want to look at it) experienced players that use the same 8 skills found on the builds listing on wiki when all three chapter combined there’s roughly 1200 skill, not everyone owns all three chapters.

I read one post where the “experienced player” ripped on a person that is new to the game, he used the same excuses that are found right here in this very thread. He even went to great length to list the players skills and actions, but never once thought about asking the person if they only owned nightfall and if they where new to the game, common sense should have been enough to ask that simple question. I guess the best mentality is to degrade, flame on people because you can’t relate with them.

The only difference between him and the other people who have said the same things, his voice seems to be louder then others that’s all.

This thread is pretty much dead, it’s eight pages repeating itself going no where. But I can only guess why it’s been allowed to stay open for this long.

I have to agree with the OP on this. Guild Wars has steadly become less fun and has become more of a chore to play than anything else. The first chapter (yes I am a GW veteran) was great, I actualy loved to go back and complete what I missed, now I don't even care to finish the game with more than one character let alone do the grind to finish with another one. They have steadily been nerfin skills that were fine to placate a group that used to be the minority, but has now become a majority not due to more of them playing, but due to less PVE players in the game. Its not fun anymore and it truly needs a rollback to the days it was fun.

Mega Mouse

They could have at least made Inscribed Secrets give the same rewards as the trade contracts in Vabbi.

What the hell is the point of offering bags and runes of holding at that stage in the game? It's pathetic.

Ok wait... You want me to see from your perspective yet you wont see it from mine? Obviously he owns all 3 chapters, instead of going and writing something like this he could have asked someone for their advice on RoT (ie wether they also thought it was hard, or found it easy).

He gets to a hard part and says "screw this game", that is not a mature way to handle it. He could have come to guru (or another fansite) and stated his experience (not the way he did in the article, I mean like "I went outside to do this quest and had to res kill, is this normal for that quest?"), and asked for advice. I admit that it is harder than most areas of the game, and Anet could have cut down on the amount of high level monsters there, but there is better ways of talking about this then saying the game can "die and go to hell".

Please don't ask me to see your point of view if you can't see mine.

I agree with Hell Raiser there...

We all come to that point in a game where we all either do something about it, or say screw it.

For me RoT truely was that spot, but instead of quiting or complaining the rewards suck. I gathered all my knowledge and stated I could do this.

Now I want to go onto other things such as DoA. And the "lack" of rewards isthe least of my worries.

Maybe I'm crazy but I thought having Primeval Armor for beating Nightfall ment something, at least whenI wear it I feel it does. And that works for me.

All in all its virtually impossible for any game or any gaming company to satisfy everyone all the time.

I see you saw the firs bit of my post and not the 2nd part so to reiterate my point was not so much getting more cash but getting rewards such as skills and maybe something you can collect to get a cool weapon or off hand like DoA has. To basically sorta give a purpose to the area beyond passing through it.

What skillz... oh no... not another one of these threads... mod... mod!... MOD!

I never had any real problems completing RoT, and I herohenched most of the quests. I don't consider it a "fun" place to go, and my characters spend very little time there, but that is more a matter of aesthetics than it is difficulty.

Now, if this editor was talkign of the Domain of Anguish (many people confuse it with RoT), he might have a point.

But RoT itself is not all that difficult, and I'm by no means uber-elite.

You didnt know? if someone else said it sucks, it must be true

That's the problem, really. Besides getting XP for skill points, there's really no reason to do the quests. At all. And now that you brought that up, I'm not sure what the devoloper's could do to make the quests worthwhile.

I agree with the OP. If you forget about exp, most Tyrian quest rewards have way more value than the RoT rewards. Especially if you see skills as 1K.

What's so hard about giving us a good reward for hard(er) quests. I'm not one of the super 1337 guys, and I DO think that RoT is a pain to play in (Haven't been in RoT after getting trampled in Breaking the Broken by over 40 Torment creatures -.-)

Uber strong monsters that duplicate are NOT making the game challenging in a fun way, they're making it a friggin hell, where nobody likes to play. Quests there are the last thing I wanna do, unless they give me something in return.

Most of my characters have about 500 skillpoints already - enough to get the titles, so EXP doesn't mean anything to me. And for a measly 450 gold, I'd rather kill some Hulking Stone Elementals in Ascalon -.-

RoT is just a pain to be in, and if A-net wants to make the quests attractive, they'll have to give us VERY good rewards (I'm not talking about some stupid gold, but about platinum here. Or give us skills).

Maybe a title for completing quests might make it more interesting, but I don't think it's enough to make RoT popular.

I read the artical, and clearly I have to disagree. To me the guy is a casual player, and how wrong can he be, my sin has no problem with heros or henchies getting through quest in the realm of torment, and same goes for the rest of my characters. Now there are some areas that require a change in tactics and builds, but that is what make the game a challenge.

There is one valid point to his argument, that is skill nerfs, everytime Anet nerfs certain skills that are clearly balanced for the elete areas of PvE, to balance PvP, it make questing that much harder for PvE players. That is a conflict to the marjority of the community who play PvE.

Lastly, I am tired of PvP players saying that guild wars was designed as a PvP only game. How wrong can you be, guild wars was designed to be a online game were players can group together to either play PvE or PvP, depending on their option, yes there are guilds, but not all battle each other, although the option is there.

I think a lot of players who complain just want this game to be WoW where the hardest areas give the best loot, wile in THIS game the hard areas just give items that proove you can handle them (or buy them). Doa weapons are for the best of the best. That means not you and me.

Another thing you can compare it to:

GW rewards: Medals made of fake gold like the olimpic games
WoW rewards: über loot like sponsored professional sports

How does better loot make GW look like WoW? And since when do quests give items that prove I can handle them? If you're talking about the inscribed secrets, I trade them in for a superior salvage kit, which is used up the next day.

Harder areas SHOULD give better loot. Otherwise there is no reason to do them.

How about this:

GW rewards at this moment: A free glass of water after getting tortured 24 hours long.

He's talking about the Realm of Torment, by the way

That's actually the most accurate analogy I've seen in awhile.

"Hello there, mister Secret Keeper, sir. I'm sure glad I made it past all those demons. Good golly, them's tough cookies. Earned myself some of these Inscribed Secrets. Could you trade me a bag for one of them please? Much obliged."

...other than the satisfaction of knowing that you completed them?

Personally, I am surprised that "loot" really defines whether an area is fun or not. In the mini-quests during the Dragon Festival, I remember how many people complained about only getting XXX amount of Jade Wind Orbs after completing that pretty difficult "special" series of quests.

Yet, that was one of the most fun things I've done in Guild Wars. I guess each person has their own "thing" that drives their fun...I'm surprised that, with the relative meaningless value of gold/items nowadays (with the addition of inscriptions), people still place so much emphasis on wealth.

I think Anet missed the mark with this one...

Quite simply DoA is too hard to be 'fun'. Realm of Torment isn't worth the effort even though it's quite manageable. Truth being most people only went in because they had to (finishing the story). They won't return. I sure as hell didn't.
Enemy patrols feel cheap. Quickening Zephyr seemingly not affecting enemy casters. Plus the ultimate kick the face, Cry of Torment (Woohoo! Look! I'm 2+ people!). All for what? Poor drops and elite caps? Yeah...
(Though I must say, grinding through it 7+ times on different characters feels somewhat sadistic _-_).

I'm sure this isn't falling on deaf ears (10+ pages? Hell no). The question is what are they prepared to do about it. A response would be interesting. Oh and in regards to DoA, something better than '...well people have beaten it you know?' would be nice. In this area, your 'fun' balance is broken. Sadly there just isn't any way around that point...


Note: Apologies, but I couldn't care less about what a reviewer has to say. I'm playing the game already (like the rest of you) so I don't really need to know what he thinks about it. Call me a fool if you feel the need...

Well I'm VERY satisfied after knowing I completed that god-aweful quests :P

The quests aren't fun, even with good loot, but with the loot, there's a reason to do the quests. Things like Defending Droknar's Forge, Villainy of Galrath etc. They ARE fun. They're hard, but not undo-able, and everyone has an equal chance of beating them. Also, they don't annoy the hell out of someone.

Realm of Torment quests are just darned annoying. 'Ohh I almost FINALLY killed the stupid ranger... omfg it duplicated again... for the 6th time -.-'

And then the dumb Area effects. It's just so annoying to change skills everytime you get into a new area. Realm of Torment monsters are boring to fight against, the fights take very long and are very frustrating cause of duplicating, and there are way too many of em bunched together.

Ever saw on tv how people eat dog sh!t for 50 bucks? Well RoT is the same, but then without the 50 bucks.

Ok, so then imagine the rewards for quests like breaking the broken was much higher... like 20k. Would that make it fun? No, then you'd just have more people whining that they couldn't do it because they want the reward and can't get it. Enough people already whine about things that you have to work to get, like fow armor and crystalline swords.

You can change the reward all you want, but it's still the SAME quest. If you don't like torment demons, then you still won't like them if they drop phat loot. In fact, you'd get annoyed that you had to fight these stupid creatures to get the rewards.

If you don't like RoT, then you should be happy that the quest rewards aren't huge. That way, you can simply ignore the side quests and feel like you aren't missing anything. You can just blow through RoT, and then go back to somewhere more fun to farm. If the rewards were big, you'd be annoyed that you were being "forced" to do RoT quests to get the rewards.

It seems like the issue is that people don't like RoT itself. It's too dark and depressing, or they hate the torment demons, or the area effects, etc. Therefore, the key to making it "better" would be to fix THOSE things. Not say "well if you torture yourself for several hours we'll give you something cool". I would much rather do something fun for several hours for a mediocre reward than do something I hate for some meaningless in-game money. Or perhaps people like the idea of a game that's more like work?

I think that if the reward for hard quests is bigger, people will try harder for the quests.

It's much like farming, really. Farming itself is rather boring, but it's the result that matters. There are of course people who don't like to farm, cause it gives them a feeling that they're going through too much trouble for gold. These people just ignore farming.
The same would happen with the quests, some people would just ignore it. But now, about EVERYONE ignores the quests. Maybe people do them once or twice, but I don;t know anyone who'd go through these dumb quests 8 times.

If there was a good quest reward, I would do the quest, and it's even good for PuG-ing, since it's easier and the reward is the same for everyone. (And I think the quests will become popular with a huge reward such as 20K. Also, getting annoyed over something you chose to do is kinda weird. I got annoyed over the quests, but I didn't know they were so lame back then.

As it is now, it can't get any worse, cause I don't think alot of people actually do the quests in RoT (there are exceptions, of course), so having rewards improve can only make it better.

Is cash the only reward you can possibly imagine? You always come back to the cash whereas there are plenty of other type of rewards possible.

Even if it is the same quest, it's the purpose that gives the motivation to go out and do it. Especially if you've been playing for a while and have a lot of characters to bring through the same quests, a nice reward (which does NOT have to be cash) is a nice motivator. The idea of getting a sense of accomplishment from completing the area only works for one or two characters...not ten.

And the other guy that said that the DoA golds are only for the best players certainly doesn't understand the game much. Anybody with lots of cash can get them without playing DoA. And to play DoA you do not have to be the best but just a team that works together and uses the same trick over and over again for 8 hours...Not my idea of the best gamers...the best chore-gamers yes...but not necessarily the best gamers.

With the exception of Troubled Keeper, I've done all the RoT quests 6 times, and I plan to do them more when my other characters get there. I find I feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that through skill I can defeat monsters using brute force and overpowered skills. To me, that's what GW is about.

The RoT quests are my favourite in the game. There's that sense of accomplishment, which is especially the case when I get through the quests without dying. And there's the fact that I like the plot behind them. (Yes, some people actually like the PLOT of the game and not just making money). Also, I find I make a lot of money while doing these quests, and a lot of xp. I also pick up quite a bit of lightbringer points at the same time. IMO, it's far more interesting getting LB points while questing than just killing things for no other reason.

I really don't think adding bigger rewards would suddenly make it fun. I remember the first time the canthan elite missions were opened to the public. OMG did people ever complain a lot about those missions. And the rewards for those missions are not miniscule. It was because they wanted those rewards that they tried so hard and got so frustrated. Also, remember all the whining about THK? The "reward" of that was advancing to the fire islands, which was fairly desirable. And I remember many people ragequiting over that. My point is that increased motivation to get something at the end of a quest or mission does NOT decrease frustration for most people.

As for considering other rewards... I used the example of money because that's what most people seem to want. Few people want more xp. There could be skill rewards but that would be pointless so far into the game... I'm pretty sure most people have the skills they want by that time. I do agree that there should be more lightbringer points for the quests... but that goes for quests in the desolation and vabbi too, as far as I'm concerned. In the Desolation, masters quests get you all of 15 lightbringer points. If that's not a disappointment, then I don't know what is. But we're not talking about the Desolation, and at least master's quests in RoT give you 100 points.

Or perhaps they could make Razah a reward for an RoT quest. Now THERE's a case of risk/cost vs. reward being severely unbalanced. Especially given how easy it is to unlock him through pvp.

Edit: Upon further consideration, I can think of another way to improve the experience of questing in RoT. Make the heroes and henchies actually follow called targets. I find that most problems occur because they will randomly attack whatever creature they want, and nowhere is this more problematic than in RoT. It can be annoying to be working at killing a rain of terror, and when you finish realize there's now 3 arms of insanity instead of one, even though it's nowhere near your target. Or, the dreaded scenario of your target using call to the torment, and trying to kill it, and being the ONLY one attacking it. Which is especially annoying when playing a monk.

*sigh*...If only more people could find the satisfaction as you do when completeing those quests.

I'm not calling you out or making fun. It's admirable, and I wish I felt the same as well.

The problem is not that they are hard. It is that people don't bother with them. That means you rely on heroes and henchman that stand in AOE, don't manage energy, and have mediocre intelligence as to skill usage. Then the problem remains as to PUG players who don't got a clue.

So the only way to go is guild/alliance groups for the masters difficulty ones. With heroes and henchman it takes dp and an hour or two to do the masters ones.

Well now I know 1 person who wants to do the aweful quests and get no reward at all. The plot is nice, but I know the plot after doing the quest even once. And for alot of trouble, I don't even want to know the plot. Making money isn't important, but why else do dumb and troublesome quests in a boring and troublesome land over and over again? Questing for Lightbringer points doesn't work for me either, since I simply forget that I have the *insert monster type*-Hunt on me. Questing is equal to killing monsters for no reason to me.

Making rewards bigger won't make the actual quests more fun, but it will make it more interesting to do the quests for alot of people. Elite missions have too small rewards for all that trouble (come on, 5 hours of pain to maybe even get killed at the boss. And when you finally beat it, there's no guarantee of YOU getting a green).

Getting to the Ember Light Camp after THK isn't a reward, it's needed to continue the game. But Thunderhead Keep is a bad example, since it doesn't have cheating duplicating monsters, depressing scenery and lame area effects.

Having Razah as a quest reward IS a good idea. Rewards don't have to be money, they have to be interesting. How about 5 random vials of dye? I always love to do the dye trader quest cause I have a chance on a black/white dyé.

I agree with this. There should be more to a quest reward if its a tough quest to do.


I thought that he was a quest reward? Its just that you have to torture yourself in DoA in order to get him.

Wait, are you sure? I thought RoT was easier than the Ring of Fire! I hench the whole thing. It's not that bad if you take it slow & focus on 1 mob at a time. I really don't know what he's talking about with the whole random aggro thing.

Heck yeah. The quest about helping the Forgotten was great. I had a Forgotten sage follow me through the whole map healing my party! It was great!
But I also aggree they need to make more, varied things to work towards. It may be as simple as adding really cool looking 15k weapons crafters or auras you get for quests or being able to craft your own items, or something. Just more things you can choose to do as goals. The titles are like a band-aid. The cheepest possible thing they could make you work toward. A name. I think they can do WAY better than that. 15k armor is probably the coolest thing they have in the game as an "extra" goal. And most of it is kinda meh.

LOL!

So people are complaining about REGULAR Rot being too hard?
Weird, i tought everyone tought the game was too easy.Rot gives those guys what they want and they whine again.

Perhaps you guys should work on those lightbringer points a bit. Even casuals can become lvl4 easily.But i mostly see lvl1's and a few lvl2's in Rot, wile brave lightbringer is something you should have after the desolation.

My conclusion: Many players rush trough the game and get pissed if the game suddenly becomes too hard. Kill those djinn and margonites folks, 20% extra damage output is not laughable in Rot. It works on your heros too, and btw.: heroes can use customized items as well.

Only a few people find the game too easy. Alot of people still have problems with lots of quests. (Just died with Assault on the Kodash again -.-)

There are only a few people that find the game too easy, and these people should probably just try and solo DoA :P

RoT isn't too HARD, it's just boring as hell, and annoying too.

Perhaps, but every time a margonite bites the dust, it's a little christmas in my mind.

What you aren't reading are the comments; I saw at least one person say that they decided not to buy GW based on his review.

That person is a fool then. That Game Mag editor threw a tantrum, and you be daft to take his word for it alone. Besides 1 person isn't any loss.