The reason why high-level content is soloable and why PvE is easy in general.

You're kidding, right? Heroes, due to their customizability (and ability to control them), are insanely better than henchmen. How could this improvement in their characteristics NOT impact the number of people that play solo?

because you can only have 3 of them, not 7 like henchies

and thats the balance

Heroes didn't change if I play a PUG or not...I learned in Prophecies after all the little shits got it for summer break the first year to avoid PUG's like the plague. If I am not playing with the guild or someone I know, it was me and the henchies. Like someone said "at least the henchies bring a rez sig" and they stay with you.

As for making PvE harder /NOT SIGNED...If I want a challenge I will PvP for the night...If I just want to relax, I will play PvE. If I want to be bored I will take another(#8) chara through the same old grind.

Orozar used to be very, very difficult with henchies. Now, with heroes, it's a lot easier.

ToPK w henchies took a loooong time to do, deaths were extremely common, and getting to the end wasn't a sure thing. I can get thru ToPK now with a hero/hench group in about 5-10 mins more than a human group.

The amount of chatting and lfg in towns is way more prevalent in Tyria than Elona also b/c of heroes.

Back on topic. I wouldn't like to see a pve metagame develop due to improvements to monster AI. If I wanted to play a balanced build with a fairly rigid skill bar, I'd play pvp. A lot of my fun in pve comes from experimenting with builds without the fear that I'm going to get slaughtered.

Also, if mobs are smarter and take longer to kill then a buff to drops would be needed. PvE players have gotten used to a certain rate of reward (i.e., loot) for their effort and would become upset if it was reduced.

All in all, this suggestion would lead to a reduction in PUGing and this game doesn't need to further reduce the already low levels of social interaction.

I'd be for this under the condition that it is only the high-end areas that are made much more difficult (though random spawns in explorables would rock socks in general, no more pre-set boss zerging for greens)

Areas like DoA, UW, SF, FoW, ToPK, Urgoz, The Deep being this hard/harder would be great and while DoA can be difficult it isn't challenging, the difference being that they just spawned (in a direct quote from a quest) "an infinte number of demons"

Smarter AI > Massive Amounts of AI

However the players will always outsmart the developers, the simple reason for this is that there are many more of us. Plus the way GW is designed, characters are so flexible that it makes adapting a matter of time and people figuring out appropiate builds, this is actually one of my favorite features of GW, i love all the builds and seeing what others come up with.

playing with henchies/heroes != soloing.
Playing alone without henchies = soloing. Like solo farming.

Or OMG have a mission where you have to solo. kinda throws the not supposed to not solo right out the window.

Unless some of you are playing some weird version of GW. the Baby fed version( now on ill just call you guys the BIBBERS).

And for those that seem to hate farming and soloing, get a life really. it doesnt hurt or effect your gameplay. And anet has already stated they are not against it. Sorry if you are not good enough to be able to do it yourselfs, cause thats how you guys sound. Cant wait for the next thread to start about Anet wipe my bib for me its so dirty.

Tihark Orchard is a Solo mission

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Tihark_..._%28Mission%29

/notsigned
Please quit trying to make PvE into PvP. I don't PvP for a reason. Not becasue its harder or more challenging. I have Onlined gamed with online competitions for years. I cant stand the politics of keeping a large group happy with each other. I like to log in, and quickly start one of the many task I have to do for one of the many toons I have.
There is a story line in PvE with predictable bosses and support foes. You cant have them spawn in different locations everytime. Or have different skills every time. If you are new to the game you take on a quest or missin and its one way. Ok how are you to plan if you get wiped, cause next time they will have new skills or spawn in a different location. No they shouldnt make the everyday story line random for skills or spawning. Now if your bored go to the elite areas. That is what they were created for. To give the veteran a challenge. I can tell you this. DoA is extremley hard. Heros wont cut it you need a full group of human players all high level lightbringer and full coordination. Should I need this to complete the crossing the desolation mission or mission x or y. No. I should't have to depend on someone else to advance in the regular game that I paid for. I think Anet is doing the best they can. I know it's been said but did you think that becuase you have done the mission or quest 12 times that it won't be easy. Thats the way it is. The story can't change after doing it once.
Besides I think you are complaining about nothing. Looks like some kind of hard mode is gonna be implemented in the future. Just look at the protector title. If you haven't maxed it already then you will see that there will be a hard mode.
If you want to be blind about what your up against. Or if you want to guess at what skills the foe is bringing then PvP. Please leave the story alone and PvE alone.
O and a side note about farming. Do you really think Anet is against farming. Then why do they have a triple green weekend drop. They think people wil just ignore that and continue playing the game as normal.
"Hey I hope that boss is gonna drop that green I want as I advance in the storyline". Nope People stop everything and focus on kill the same boss over and over and over. Farm, farm, and more farming. Go right now and count for 5 minutes how many people are farming Ghial. Then next triple green weekend drop into Senji's corner for 5 minutes and count how many times you see spammed, Lfg to farm Ghial. Btw, I would love to see how many times Ghail is killed over that weekend.
Anet has no problem with everyday farming from regular people. On the other hand they hate the chinese farmers. Or botters who farm gold or other things to sell on ebay or whatever site its sold on.
Please don't increasing make the PvE more Like PvP. I have no intrest in it. I would suspect a lot of people feel the same.

But Empty, your missing the point... This ISN'T a PvE game...

it's a competitive game with a PvE element built over the top of a PvP competitive game

And here you have the biggest problem in Guild Wars...the great divide and who should get priority.

The MAIN part of ALL Guild Wars chapters IS PvE and there is an element of PvP for those that choose to play it, though Factions did introduce more of a PvP influence on the PvE world, which sometimes really did get annoying.

I didnt buy GW for PvP, i just dont really enjoy it. I play GW for the game and the story, to do the missions, complete the game and beat the big bad. The point of things not being constantly random is that you can learn the strategies and actually beat the mission. The enemy nearly always has teh advantage of numbers, if not intelligence, that will wipe you if you were not careful.
If you dont like the main game or dont find it hard enough, stick to the Elite areas, i'm sure you can get killed enough times there to satisfy you.

/Not Signed ...dont let PvP obsession ruin PvE more than it already does.

I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm saying ANet screwed up due to not advertising the game properly as the competitive game it is...

Actually, another thread has offered a solution...and option for a 'hard' difficulty setting in PvE.

That way, all us regular folkes that quite like PvE the way it is can keep it that way, while those that want it more like PvP or ridiculously hard at all stages can flick a switch and off you go...higher level critters with random strategies, spawns, whatever gets you going.
The rest of us play on 'normal' difficulty and its business as usual.

I guess you'd have to have a reward for the 'hard' setting, because even if you got your dream of harder critters, you'd want something to show for it, so i guess there would have to be a gold drop or rare drop increase in 'hard' level, but that's really all another thread. All the same, it would be FAR better than forcing us all to have our 'tactically evaluated' game ruined.

While I agree that the original intent was PvP. The title is Guild wars. But I do believe the PvE community is larger. Plus I would say over half of the Dev. time is put into PvE side, 75 to 85% maybe. The only thing that is added each chapter for PvP is new professions and skils. PvE gets that plus a huge environment with a rich story line. Many things to do in PvE. I don't know from experience but I have read that all the PvP maps could fit on one of the islands. I'm not discounting PvP. I have nothing against it. I'm just saying that PvE should remain PvE and PvP is PvP. that's all.

Edit: this is what I am talking about, the post being a moot point.



http://img473.imageshack.us/img473/4074/gw021gv4.jpg

Ok, PvE is actually upwards of 90% actually, however, your understating PvP additions...

Each chapter adds new arena's, builds, play styles, metagame changes and lots of other things aswell
I've only PvP'd for a few months, but its far more inolving than the 2 years of PvE I've put in so far...

Im glad you cleared me up on that. I admit I have about 1% of the total knowledge about all there is PvP. But again in responding to the post of GW is PvP first I would have to think Anet Spends far more time on PvE stuff than PvP.

On content? yes

On playability? yes, although some would disagree

On game mechanics? Nope, cos thats done through PvP

On Skill balances? Nope, PvP again

However, when you start playinging Pvp (honestly, if you can Pve, you can Pvp, but once you PvP, your skill level in PvE rises x10% at least), you notice that its all the same... try Alliance battles and the Zaishen Training

If you didnt notice i knew that. i was being sarcastic about you and another poster saying Anet dont want people to solo.

be that as it may, its not a solo mission, its the worst example of a fedex I've ever done and i hate that mission...

That mission was especially loved by idiots that love that sort of thing from WoW, go see him, go talk to her... FFS

My knee jerk reaction was no.
But after reading a few of the better ideas, as well as the OP's original, I understood what the OP was driving at.
Hell why not, it certainly couldnt hurt. Of course they couldnt just go and make the whole game harder, but certain areas, where the difficulty is known to be cranked, that are not required to complete the story line, but have a suitable reward for the difficulty involved. Basically to make it worth playing the 'Hard' area.
Sure they have the 'Elite' area, but they really arent that much harder, once you get the builds down. So monsters who switched up builds, would be awesome.
/Signed.

I have ab battled. I did it for 15k kurzick armor. I still do it to move characters through the story line. But unless you GvG where all members are on comms in direct communication coordinating movements and such its just a free for all. It's kinda fun. But it will always be more of a challenge(guessing game) than PvE. Or it should be.
The OP thinks that PvE is solo'able because it does not have the things he or she suggested. I think that it is easier because after doing it 12 times, or whatever, it will be easier. But the is no way to prevent that without changing the whole PvE experience for the new Player. Like I posted in my previous post. I believe a solution is being developed for this complaint with the hard mode. These Dev. were from Diablo so there are implementing some kind of hard mode in the future. How they are doing it s anybody's guess. they could be doing it the way the OP suggested or whatever. that is fine. If you can choose between a hard mod and easy mod cool. that way the game isn't a immediate turn off for the new player, hence making him/her give up the game.

Edit: How many skills can you assign to random appear on the foes. You couldn't have a unlimited amout. The Ai couldn't handle it. Until you have true AI you will never have the same experience playing against computer foes vs. Human foes. Just can't Happen. The things they can give the computer and edge that gives them some fighting chance is in areas of more health, more armor. They can target quicker and react quicker. They can micro manage better. But they will never have the X-Factor that humans have, that being humans. It is just going to be really tough to make the PvE experience harder for the veteran without screwing it up for the new person with the suggestions made buy the OP.

Edit again: I shouldn't say the Ai couldn't Handle it. What I should've said is who would want to spend hours and hours coding ai to handle every single random situation that could arise when doing something like that. There has to be some kind of limit set. You would have to make a few skill builds that would spawn randomly. But the the community would just learn to handle that situation too.

Here is the screen shot again:
http://img473.imageshack.us/img473/4074/gw021gv4.jpg

GW was started as a PvE project even before the company was renamed to Arena.net. During all open betas the game was advertised as a CORPG, with the C meaning competitive on the PvP side and cooperative on the PvE side.

When the game was released, every unlock had to be gained by playing PvE. Balthazar faction was introduced 2months later. How can this be, if it was a purely PvP centered game?

Get your history right and stop spreading false information.

I know, i was there!

But it was meant to be a competitive game with Pve as a stepping stone for PvP and PvP as the end game!

He wasn't talking about history of GW creation, well not accordign to the quote, I'm not going all that far back to really find out either.....nvm, I went back and read a bit....I withdrawl the prior.

Anet has proved that it's centered around PvP by continually adjusting PvE AI to simulate PvP, and adjusting skills so that they're balanced in PvP, however it started, I don't know, but that's how it stands today.

On that note, I think they've gone about far enough. The point of PvE is to learn the mechanics of the game a bit before diving right into PvP, and the option to do either is what keeps people playing the game.

They've gotten it to where even without AoE, if one monster out of a mob is getting roasted, he'll withdrawl(not far enough, but he does) and attempt to get his regen kicking.

They take it much further and they'll lose their some of customer base.

I think some of the pro OP votes are based out of jealousy that they cannot work a build that is able to solo farm(or don't for purely asthetic reasons), not all, but some.

Some of their PvE customer base actually likes this aspect (smart monsters, mimicking PvP team tactics), and hope ArenaNet will continue to develop it.

But yes, there is also a group that want dumb monsters. Even when the game was first released, some players complained that they could not lure a single monster out of its group.

Damn elitist. "If it's not my way it's dumb."
ppffhht.

What I was talking about, is that if monsters are uber hard, a minority will like it. They're not going to quit, however, if it doesn't become that hard.

A vast number of players will quit though, when the PvE becomes too hard. The last thing Anet wants is to alienate people who already like the game as it is.

Hopefully this will be the currently fabled "hard Mode" we're hearing about

foes have began to have a culture.......i dissagree on rethinking all enemy builds, but they do need a whole spell list, not just 4 spells....

charr, and other things that are civilized in thier own way should have the same simple builds, but yes 8 spells.

the hydra, and FoW/Uw monsters should have random builds

no one monster should have the same build as another I agree, but instead of saying give diffrent builds to each foe outside, might want to say give more builds to diffrent races harpies have one set of builds, crusader guys have another set of builds

there arent already 80%? I never noticed.....I think every civilized race should have monks 100%......but the un-tamed should rarly have a monk on the side....monks are hard enough when it comes to two in a group.....

I think spawn point shouldent be more random......(the places where you respawn right?) because people built them, or something did, and it woldent be smart to build one somewhere........not usefull...

good thinking on this, there has to be more....not a simple topic to type down a couple things about

This new hard mode A.Net is designing is the exact opposite of this suggestion.

I too want a variety of mobs, level 20, but tough, 8 skills on the skillbars, and ready to work together.

Things were different back then, when this thread started. Were the battle isles even introduced?

UW needs to be soloable so people have anything left to do in the endgame, seeing as doing the endgame with 8 people is completely pointless due to the horrible drop rates of Ectos.

I agree with the suggestion to make PVE harder and give monsters real skills, but don't apply it to UW unless they also increase the Ecto drop rate 8x or give Ectos as quest rewards. Otherwise UW would just become another DoA that almost no one plays.

Actually, it has been stated that drop rates are actually better with more party members... I shall scout out a Quote, but I believe it was Alex Weekes that stated it

Sorry to bump up an older topic, but i believe this should apply to hard mode.
/signed

A bit too late now...

Maybe for GW:EN or GW2?

I still prefer charrs with different combinations of the Cora and Prophecies Fire and Energy storage skills and better AI than having them doped.

But as Hard mode currently is it is ok too.

Yep, i'm just hoping for the small chance that they remove the DoA like effect of 50% casting time, 50% attack speed ect and replace it with monsters with eight skills, a secondary and maybe some sort of team build. Imo that would not make it easier, just more enjoyable (for my taste anyway) and maybe help out on the mesmer being useful debate at the same time.
What would you prefer? (just generally interested)

My suggestion: Play nightfall, where they usually do work as a team (kind of), or PvP. The campaign mobs and areas are fine as they are for the most part. AI and farming rules need some work, especially after the recent update, but monster demographics are fine.

OH GOD YES

This would make it SOOO much more exiting so I dont feel like I'm running around a reset version of the land I just slaughtered!

Variable enemy builds... /signed
-so that mob of Wind Riders dont ALL have the same skill list, just variations of some skills.