Make Zei Ri available after NM WoC

Its a worthwhile reward for the time and effort involved. All they have to change is to let you do HM from the start, then its all fine.

i finally completed HM and got zei ri. i managed to solo the majority of it, though on 2 quests i grouped with others. i didn't use any consets. (i used it once but, party wiped still :/) the process of repeating the whole quest chain was the most excruciating and painful ever.

i painstakingly completed pre-nerf "tracking the corruption". i spent several hours tinkering with builds and positioning, even went in with a full "balanced' pick up group of players, yet the attempts still failed. just when i thought cleansing minister cho's, cleansing hajiu lagoon... that tracking quest was beyond annoying.

i'm a casual player, and part of finishing some woc hm quests were pure luck. i've sat in outposts trying to advertise to look for parties. i've seen other players advertise looking for parties for hours too. i can sympathize with the other players who are struggling and having difficulty to reap the benefits. yes, HM is supposed to be challenging, but when one has to spend several hours to successfully complete one quest when they have tried every build, strategy they can come up with using their own resources, then it doesn't feel fun and rewarding as much anymore.

when i actually got zei ri, it was a relief. however, surprisingly i was getting more excited about turning in the minsterial commendations and requisition orders for the lockboxes to see what i could get. (and with luck i got a mini from one of them). doing hm alone had a lot of rewards other than zei ri, it gave a lot of money, orders, lockpicks.

tl/dr; /signed

@markaedw- people are probably not willing to help because they are too busy soloing woc again on their other characters

The issue with this is that it contradicts the very essence of the Hard mode only quests - which WoC's HM quests are obviously a part of - which is to provide additional content for those who wish to complete it.

While no one is forcing folks to get Zei, having Zei available only to those who do the HM quests is enticing to the point of indirectly forcing folks to do those quests. Which is a bad move based on the original design of HM quests.

The original design was to be "top of the top" - something that only the best players, who always complain things are too easy, would be able to enjoy doing. This is what the Test Krewe were told when testing the Titan quests' HM versions. And they were optional 100% of the way without ever giving rewards that couldn't be obtained elsewhere.

Until part 3 of WoC, where they nerfed the HM quests, this was true.

Whether or not Zei is available in NM is irrelevant at this point, imo. The fact was that they made him available only in HM, and in turn was forced to do the same thing that they were forced to do for the Battle of Lion's Arch so as to make new content available to players.

I just hope they revert to the original thought of the HM quests - giving no unique rewards, but more of the better side of pre-existing rewards. And in turn, making them challenges and keeping them challenges. Even if 80% of the playerbase can't beat them - it won't matter because they wouldn't have to, unless they're completionists to the point of being unable to live without completing something (and no one is that).

To close things off:
/don'tcare

Which proves my point and why the HM hero reward was and is a bad idea. I'll repeat myself, grouping had a narrow window, and now any late comers are being punished and locked out.

/signed.

Playing through NM with my 10 'main' characters (one each prof) will be quite enough. Playing through 20 times is just crazy. I generally only do HM content on a few of the characters.

As for extra rewards for playing in HM... you get double the quest rewards, which add up to being rather generous.... 72P, 2x(diamond, ruby, sapphire, onyx), something like 20 lockpicks.. not to mention the end weapons and all the drops. Sure that's chump change for some of the ultra-rich out there, but for most players that's a pretty healthy reward.
Putting a hero there is just kinda crazy.

As I mentioned before, it isn't rare for ANet to have high difficulty at the start and then have it reduced after some time (with things like consumables, heroes, enemy rebalances, skill rebalances...), so those that are able to do things get to show off for some time, and then everyone gets to do it.

Be nice if doing it once opened it up for all toons. It is time consuming...

Yeah, they have a history of doing that. The question is, do we want them to make acquiring Zei Ri easier by adding him as a hero earlier than at the end of the HM quest chain, or do we want the HM quest chain to be watered down?

So what I'm getting from this thread is that people want Zei Ri with no effort or just do one quest HM and get the rit. Beside that, everyone apparently wants to go through WoC NM or HM or whatever really easy - just wand them all to death. Well, it's not supposed to be work, but on the other hand there must be a difference between the players who understand skills or those who want to emprove and those who just use meta. If you're playing it just for fun, why do you really need another rit hero? Fun doesn't involve 3 rits heroes as far as I know. True, whoever can complete it HM wouldn't need another rit hero, while most of the people who can't complete it HM would need another rit hero to help them complete it in HM. Kind of a paradox. I was thinking outloud (finished WoC NM on 7 chars and HM on only 1 char - sin) - if it wasn't for the rit hero as a reward for completing WoC HM, what else would have pushed me to finish it? Nothing, really...doing WoC NM on those 7 chars got me all the Orders needed to get Imperial Weapons. If I need money, I won't spend billions of hours playing WoC NM or HM to get rewards, I'll rather go farm something. If I wanted more Gold Z Coins I guess I could do more daily zaishen stuff on all my chars...so what is it for a guy like me that could make me go all the way through WoC HM? The Rit hero was and still is the best reward for me. Everything else I can get on my own, doing sc's or w/e. For those who want another rit hero? Play WoC HM. It's not that tough. I'm no elitist, I didn't get much help (beside reading the suggestions on wiki), didn't use any cons and I still did it. So just play it. Heroes and yourself or get some friends to help you. When you're gonna finish it, you'll realize it's not that bad and maybe you're gonna learn a lot of things out of it. Tactics, builds, situations etc. Good luck with it and if anyone needs any company through WoC NM or HM, let me know. I might wanna do it again for fun.

I can't speak for everyone, but of the posts I've read, that's not the case.

The first bit can be read that way, or it can be read as not having to grind tediously or go through the hardest content in the game for one measly yet desired hero.

The second part is more of an alternative, rather than an addendum. They want HM watered down because Zei is too hard for most people to get.

It's not "new rewards, no work" from what I saw (some people will undoubtly want this), but rather "new rewards, not impossible-for-some-to-complete work."

This here is the issue with the HM quests. The original HM only quests were designed for people to go through if they want the challenge, not if they want the reward. WoC HM quests started this way, but not with Zei's addition.

TBH, I'd prefer no Zei in the game than ruining what I thought was the best part of HM quests.

And that is a brilliant suggestion.

/signed

Reasons:
1. Doing it once in HM was OK with me, but doing it 10x for all my characters? Waaaaay too time-consuming.
2. Doing it once in HM is not OK with most people. These forums are full of posts by people who can't manage Cho's HM or Tracking the Corruption HM. It's not cool to have something that's completely out of reach for a large part of the player base, especially when...
3. It's the third rit hero. (Or third mesmer hero if you replace razah and convert him.) This is significant in-game advantage. A lot of top-end 7H build possibilities are foreclosed if you don't have Zei Ri or cough up real-world cash for merc heroes.
4. There's nothing left to do once you get him. What's the point in getting a shiny new hero if you have no content left to tackle with him?

Chthon's second point is not actually fully bad. With so many people failing at HM WoC, but still wanting to have it done (for Zei Ri or not), an incentive for teamplay is created. If one person with heroes can't do something, they should organise within their guild, or at least try to PuG it. And, in addition, it creates a new opportunity in the market to exploit for those who can finish it - even someone who's not a hardcore runner might get some cash from running people through WoC HM, if they find the correct strategy.
That's related to another positive side of WoC HM being that hard for so many people. If their motivation to get Zei Ri is high enough, they will learn to adapt their builds at some point. They'll check a few teambuilds that they've never used, maybe even will experiment with something themselves.
On top of that all, new hard content provides more interest in a certain part of the market: consets. Sure, hardcore farmers will get more cash if the demand exceeds supply (or, at least, will sell their cons faster), but it's also an opportunity for everyone to get some additional money, given the low difficulty of making a conset for sale.


I'd be much more interested in those possible new teambuilds that include an additional ritualist. 7H builds with three rits, or two players running six rits might open new ways of further breaking an already broken game. And with no new content, posing even bigger challenges, there might be little use of the new hero.

Completed yesterday WoC HM for the first time and to me it wasn't that hard, just time consuming.
There around 3 quests that can give trouble:
1) Rescue at minister cho. Hard but doable with heroes, depends a lot on the enemies team but nothing a few dp removers can't handle.
2) Tracking the corruption. Easier since the nerf but minor mistakes on taking care of agro can still lead to disaster. (half a brain required)
3) Warning the angchu. Dumb luck required on enemy team setup and if the bug strikes making the 2nd group not appear.

Other than this three quests there's not much to worry about, and i see no reason why people can't at least make everything on one character.

Having said that i still don't think that we should do all that on every single character, GW has always been marketed as non grind required game.
So, after Zei Ri is unlocked in a character, the game should do one of the following:
1) Have a new quest to unlock him (no need to complete the whole quest chain, just give him or make some kind of solo mission showing how he got to the last battle to aid the player against Reiko)
2) Automatically unlock HM WoC on every other char (still need to complete the quest chain)

I think any of those two options would be welcome to those who would like to enjoy the new hero but don't want to go through all the hassle every time, while still making everyone experience the whole content at least once.

Rescue at cho's in HM is quite balanced atm ( at least that is my experience).
I hero'd my way through it on derv/necro/rit/ele/sin/para/ranger.
As long as you use a longbow to pull the groups seperately there isnt much that can go wrong imo.

Tracking can still be challenging, but its more forgiving then it was.

Warning the Angchu can be done with a dedicated resto, sos channeling, and an ST with spirits gift and some other goodies.

Allow sos to place spirits at the ministry mob while still friendly, then flag behind the angchu.

That sounds like 3 Rit heroes to me... as a prerequisite to get the third Rit hero.
Sure there's Ne/Rt restros, and there's mercs, but there's still a bit of chicken and egg here.

Resto and Sos are both N/Rt.

No need for that 3rd Rit, the only rit in that setup is the ST, and both Razah and Xandra can do that.
As a matter of fact, why would I want a rit healer?
Nec resto has way more reliable energy managment.
So nothing strange going on there, don't just see what you want to see.

I didn't meant that rescue at cho was impossible, just hard with heroes since needs some micro sometimes (and for that people need half a brain to play and know the indicators of retreat instead of just c-space).

I did angchu with another 3 players. Me N/Rt healer, a sin SY spammer and 2 warrs (1 SoS, 1 DSlash) (setup far from optimal). We did easily the 1st time, got hit by the bug. Retry full of mages barely lasted 30sec. 3rd time was alright, a couple of deaths but manageable.

3 Rits are in no way needed for anything. They may be optimal for some setups but not required. I barely run rits on my setup (woc was the 1st time i actually needed and used them) and even SoS is rare for me (as necro) to run.
2 Rits can do a fine combo between ST/SoS/SoGM (my view of rit holy trinity). For caster classes any of them can run SoS pretty well (with the added bonus from spirit summon skill), for melee they can most of the times play SY spam and drop ST if they know what are doing (boring as hell but gets the job done).

All in all a 3rd rit is a good hero to have and should require work to unlock (and the amount of work to have him the 1st time is acceptable), just not a nightmare to have in all the chars in this kind of repetitive grind.

Most of my characters have heroes that aren't so worked on since they already have enough of the game completed to just hang out with PUGs or friends. That leaves me with just my main with the potential to complete WoC hard mode. It would basically give a hero of a strong hero profession to a character that's loaded with heroes, so that would mean a lot of spending and grind to even start WoC with another.

One would think it would be natural for someone to start off hard mode after normal or do the hard mode version of a quest right after the normal for more reward. The difficulty of the the hard mode versions is a large enough turn off for the entire set of content that had a lot of time and hard work put into it for some people. People know hard mode ranges in how hard it is, but players come to expect that they're at least decent in hard mode after years and without a learning curve in most areas that could make adjusting to WoC easier.

I've played WiK many months after the ending, so I feel the time spent with WoC quests is fine assume a player is able to complete them in a timely manner with enough skill (that I have apparently not acquired) and polished heroes.

I don't care if the difficulty of the hard mode versions is gutted at some point, but I do think it'll become something expected with anything new with a challenge if it happens with WoC. We can see already from this thread that at least some people wouldn't be surprised.
Then three ritualists are required to play optimal for some set ups.
I don't think anyone will want to take you up for your offer to play with you when you start off your reply with such language.

The problem with this thought is that most of HM content isn't hard at all. Any kind of subpar 7h setup can do most (if not all) vanquish and missions (master/bonus) while the player as no skills, no armor and overagroing the entire map.
Legendary Vanquisher and Guardian aren't even close to hard (even when it was 3Heroes+henchmen) just time consuming. When people compare the new HM to that they get easily mis-leaded by that fact and go straight to "it's impossible give me a nerf".
Even I got this feeling when started WiK after my "vast achievements" on HM content but quickly got the hang of hit.
We try, fail and learn how to do things right. If we're still failing 90% of the time it's still our problem and not game design.

Unfortunately it will, some nerfs I considered necessary but my guess is ANET will dumb down WoC even further like they did with BLA (I still don't know what was wrong with that quest either) to please the masses.

I agree he should be available after NM, not because I think it's "too much work" (anything in a game which is defined by the word work should be purged as bad game design) but because HM is a niche offering. It pushes people into specific builds and play styles and a lot of people simply don't want anything to do with it - not because it's too hard, but because it changes the game from something they enjoy playing into something that's a chore and they despise because they can't play how they want to play.

HM should never have rewards unique from those offered in NM. They should never have given a hero as an exclusive reward for HM players.

ehhh, not sure if i wanna "sign" or not.

i admit i do not enjoy the WoC content very much. i went through it in NM and i feel like thats enough. knowing i have to do it all TWICE...on EVERY one of my characters...does not sound very appealing. :/

but i also dont want everything just handed to us.

i feel like the way they did it...NM/HM...was a kinda dumb way to make it seem like there's much more content than there actually is. to get the heros should just be two quest chains seperate from the main one. or...reverse them...give the rit for NM so he can help with the slog through HM to get Miku, lol. >.>

Then we would be complaining how lame the HM reward is.

stop crying and do it. you work for what you want.

This is my opinion in a nutshell.
And for those saying its to much work: I want Zei Ri, so I do WoC nm and hm on all my 7 pve chars.

For those saying they can't group: PM me ingame, I have a few characters that have to start woc yet, and a few not very far in.
I am happy to party up with anyone who wants to do so ( IGN = my forum username)

For those saying its to hard: I am more then happy to share my knowledge about builds, quests, positioning and everything else concering WoC to help you.

As long as you put yourself together and convince yourself to play through the content.

Don't get me wrong, but that's english I'm writing in. At least that's what I thought. Second - I was nearly saying that people should just try doing WoC HM more. Most people just quit after get their asses kicked once or twice. Most people just use meta and expect to work wonders and if they don't, they're like "if discord can't do it, nothing can do it", most people get their asses kicked and register here & start complaining. Group with people, friends, guildies, allies, ask for help instead of just whining. And no, I don't care if anyone will pm me, asking to accompany them or not. I did it and will continue to do so on all my chars. No complaints, just try and finish entire content the best way I can & know. If other people could finish it, so could I. That's what friends are for. Happy hunting everyone!

/notsigned

HM having a special reward is perfectly fine. Nobody *needs* the new Rt hero, since the whole game is heroable without it. Therefore, it's perfectly fine if not everyone gets him.

People who think they are entitled to every reward in the game by facerolling through the NM content have the wrong mentality imo.

/notsigned

Although it's more likely luck mode than hard mode, Hard Mode is by definition supposed to be harder and thus has it's own reward.. On any game today, you have achievements if you beat the game in easy mode but as well if you beat it in the highest difficulty, so it's fine..
Besides, i don't believe that hero is really a must and justify introducing him without finishing HM( if it was about unlocking an outpost or a mini-game, sure... but not about this)

love that bolded part, as thats all what some people do

as alot of people have said (and not just here) WoC is NOT easy, especially HM
people i know who have done like everything in HM pretty easily found WoC HM too hard

HM is, and should be, an extra to those who have done everything in the game on NM already, NOT a next content, or way of playing

HM has been made most likely cuz people said the game (without HM) was too easy, which was their own fault, as most have used pvx as their faceroll builds, and now they want the game even harder AND want to be rewarded more than NM players do, while they want:

1. HM, so everything is harder
2. rewards for HM

thats asking rewards for something people gained already
HM gained its own titles, now must have its own hero too? why?

as for WoC itself:
challenges are fine to me, but something this hard is insane
sure, some people think its easy, but thats always

think about it, if they reward HM even more (like this) then people who think its too hard (which is the majority right now) will quit the game even sooner

let the hero then be unlockable with zaishen coins, as secondary way to get it, like 30 gold z coins would do it

i dont get why people want HM AND a reward for something they got
getting a reward for a reward they got?

i mean, zaishen quests have a normal NM rewards, which gives you z coins already, its not like you only get money and xp for NM z quests, less, but still get them

do WoC a 2nd time and gain 2nd hero, or let us get the rit hero with z coins, fair to everyone who doesnt play HM as they find it way too hard, especially WoC on HM

small note: i dont care, as i have xandra and razah, and have enough with those 2, and i think the 3rd rit hero is too ugly, lol
and its just more fun to have all heroes, but to do whole WoC on HM, which is insane.... no thx

its so hard that noone really helps me anymore, even those who have helped me with other HM stuff, when i needed help

Too hard? I ran through it all with a group of 7 heroes. No PvX builds, I just made my own builds and adapted them to the situation.

People who find it Too Hard probably want to complete everything at once, and don't have the endurance to try again. I don't mind trying something 15 times, in fact I prefer finishing something after 15 tries over making it first try. It means there is challenge.

The only quest I found "too hard" (even though I also completed this with my hero group) was Tracking the Corruption, which got nerfed last update. I don't know how it is now, since I can't get the quest again, but I assume they made it in line with the other quests.


For the same reason that NM got it. The general reason that content gives a reward at the end, in online games.

Try it with heroes, I found it that easier sometimes because you can manage them all yourself, as in skill usage and position flagging. If you play with other players you need to make sure the teamplay is really good, because if two people do different things it can easily mean wiping.

Sorry, but that's a super silly argument. Getting Zei Ri as a reward for beating WoC HM is perfectly comparable to getting an additional gold trophy (or unlocking better achievement, or getting more points in some other ranking) in offline games like God of War or even Starcraft 2, after beating said game on the hardest settings. Beating GoW on Titan Mode does require a specific gamestyle in your mind - the one that puts you at the top of your possibilities, using everything you can and keeping your health and mana bars in mind. Same with the hard mode of any strategy games - the AI gets better, the resources are scarce, and the game requires you to utilize all your skills, (micro)manage your units, as well as mind your builds (especially in games like SC).
And it's perfectly fine to get an additional, not only bigger, reward, if you manage to beat the hardest difficulty, giving your best in the way it was supposed to be beaten, and not facerolling with Carriers to your satisfaction.
The only difference is that in MMO games, bigger rewards for a bunch of players may have its indirect impact on the whole community. If we were to get special weapons with more mods after beating WoC HM, i'd understand the problem, because it'd break the game and it'd require people to grind HM WoC if they want to stay at competitive level with others. As it is now, if i get an additional rit hero, it won't break your gaming experience, it won't make your game any worse or harder (it might actually make it easier if you group with me and i use my heroes). So it's just like with trophies for beating hard mode in God of War.

I totally agree that the repetitivness of WoC is a problem. First of all, the first part of WoC is ultra dull, and doing it twice on one character (NM/HM) is enough to bore the hell out of the players. Then there's the problem of doing it with all characters that you want to get Zei Ri for, and let's face it: the whole questline is long, and you have to complete NM first.
This issue should be tackled. The short and easy way is to unlock Zei Ri for the whole account once he was obtained by any of your characters. Another easy and quite satisfying way is to unlock WoC HM for the whole account once any character beats it in NM. There are at least several other possibilities, but yeah, this is a problem, especially for completionists without a dedicated main character, who want to get everything they can for all of their ten PvE chars.

Talking about WoC HM's difficulty - i completed it with a primary Mesmer (before changes) and with a primary Paragon (after changes), with heroes only, without cons, save dp removals.
Yes, it required me to alter my usual builds and look for new solutions. Yes, i couldn't play the game as i used to, as i 'wanted'. Yes, i wiped quite a lot, especially with the Paragon (while imbagon is certainly helpful, she has only limited access to skills and her heroes are crappy, especially when compared to the main Mesmer). Yes, it took me some time.
So what?
Games are supposed to take time and pose challenges to overcome rather than facerolling in several minutes. GW originally was supposed to require frequent build changing in order to adapt to the mission/zone you're going into, as it's prime mechanic, the skillbar building, is based rather on Magic: the Gathering than other MMOs.

We could argue about the HM itself, or some of the game's mechanics, but given all the circumstances, the current situation is perfectly fine.
If you can't beat GoW on Titan, get better at it. If you can't beat WoC HM, get better at it. Sure, 'better' means 'learn the mechanics, know the system, and find out how to best exploit it', just as with any other game - play by its rules, but make them yours.

Here, if they add Zei Ri to the nm reward for WoC, then i demand at the end of a nm FoW run that the eternal forgemaster gives us free obsidian armor. just saying.

what i see here is: some can do it, so everyone can
too bad, but we're not the same, noone is
i have seen people who completed it on HM and still say: its way too hard for its own good
yet here people say: i can, so you can do it too

that kinda let people feel being bad at GW only cuz the challenges get harder and harder, and many people cant do it (like myself)
thx to that kinda community, i dont join GW2 (as i said before), as its only : you can do it if you want to

you cant let someone really use his legs if he doesnt have any (example)
not everyone can do everything others can, it just doesnt work that way, otherwise this world would have had too many "stronger" people

i've tried HM many many times, and i just cant get through much, still.....
i had millions (not litterally) of hero builds, and didnt work out at all
me using builds i cant use, means i fail from the start (which is why i got sick of the non-helping part of this community in GW)
"use this, use that" or "you can do it, just keep trying"
they have no idea who i am, and what i can do.... and what i cannot do, which is why i'm struggling to stay in GW

anyway, i'm not just talking about myself
as i said: challenges are fine, but shouldnt always get harder and harder, especially not like this

i also know failure is part of learning, even though it works the other way around in my case, but we should have fun
doing something as hard as WoC on HM, thats no fun for most, as i've seen (even to those who made it in 1 run)

GW is no longer for fun (community wise) its more about competing and get everything harder and harder

i dont think i can make myself clear enough here, so i keep it like this
i'll just have to find help for my other 2 chars somehow.... and people i know dont bother doing it again.... so gl to me

have fun in your hard mode game....

Thats a rediculous comparison. Just saying.

Obviously you have no interest at all in grouping or getting better at all.
All you do is crying that its to hard for you, and that nobody will team up with you or help you, despite several people in this very thread including myself, have offered to provide builds,advice, and even willing to group up with the peoplewho struggle.
Yet you choose to just ignore that and keep on whining.
Yes I do not have a clue who you are, and frankly, I do not need to know either.
Because knowing you is not required for making you pass WoC.
You want fun, yet refuse to take on the challenge.
Learning is part of the process.
WoC does not need to feel like work.
If you would succeed in doing everything on the first attempt without any difficulties at all, where's the fun in that, whats the achievement?

How about unlocking it using 15 gold coins or 80000 balthazar faction coz i don't like the idea of making myself do hm quests (idc really since a necro/rt is much better)?

Never said with that meaning but if you bring it up.
Excluding rescue at cho and the angchu I did all the other with heroes all unruned, mostly with their starter weapons running a lot of different subpar builds (though for some quests i did have to take an ST rit hero). I just bothered to read the discussions pages of each quest (there are plenty of helpful tips) and after failing ponder what i did wrong and what i could improve.
Surprisingly sometimes the weirdest answer is the correct one. For example on finding jinnai most tips tells you to go to the graveyard while i found much easier to just be on top of the enemies spawn point near it, killing them as they spawn.

I'm not a god playing with heroes. I probably can't do DoA or UW in NM with them, much less HM, and after seeing the lvl 40 titans smashing my team I completely gave up.
Still i made WoC and with a bit of effort and half a brain people could at least get through it once.
Besides a Rit hero is a much better prize then any other HM reward so far and should keep he 1st time interesting.

The number of people unable to realize the difference between difficult content and grindy content is truly baffling. I suppose the old GW mantra of skill > time spent was actually DOA, it just took this long to for me to realize that.

If you took the time to read my previous posts you would know I don't support the idea of having to grind WoC in NM+HM with all chars to get the hero.
I just won't tolerate the laziness of not going for that once to unlock him and then get an easier (in the sense of taking less time not actual "brainless easy") for the remaining chars. That way it would be a challenge to unlock and not require any further grind whatsoever.

You act as if I had specifically quoted you and was replying to what you said. The statement was merely a reflection of the thread as a whole.