To Arenanet and NCsoft.

You and me both. I've completed the game 4x now. 2 El/Mo's, 1 Monk, 1 Mes/Nec usually played as a fast-cast minionmancer. With both El/Mos (playing support healer) and my monk, I thought I would have red bars burned into my retinas for days.

I wish there was a way to press a button and make everyone discuss something with fewer emotions.

Elona Reach: Seven tries.

Dunes of Despair: Two tries.

Thirsty River: One try.

Dragon's Lair: One try.

Ice Caves: One try.

Iron Mines: Two tries.

Thunderhead Keep: Three tries.


Now I can breeze through most of those missions after figuring out the strategies needed and honing them. Elona Reach, Dunes, Thirsty River, Ice Caves....Dragon's Lair...

Those late-game missions are easy as hell. Like others have said, it's teamwork or lack thereof that is going to determine success or failure. And that's one of the beauties about this game: the missions can be incredibly difficult, but that's only when you're on a team of complete and utter dipshits.

Honestly, I was expecting hell on earth based on a few choice whiners here...but how they managed to spend 8 hours on Elona Reach is beyond me. A good Necromancer works wonders.

The game is not too difficult. If not too easy, then just right. The major difficulty increases are exactly where they need to be, actually occurring during the start of each new "act."

Gates of Kryta, Act II, first experience with Smoke Phantoms.

Sanctum Cay, Act III, first experience with desert enemies like Hydras, Jade Scarabs, Forgotten, etc.

Droknar's, Act IV, Southern Shiverpeaks.

Ring of Fire, Act V, and we know what's going on in there.

There are gradations between those points, of course, but overall, that's how the game goes, I've found--and it's a very solid progression.

Too hard? Tone down the missions? How about adapt or die? lol

I dont think its the game talking.

First time I played GW it also took me ages to get through the Ascenscion mission & Thunderhead Keep because I didnt have a clue what constitutes a good party, I also didnt have friends yet that could help out on said missions.

you forgot to mention the part about being a warrior/monk. Me being a mesmer/monk gives me no ability to do that whatsoever. Lets all just tank.

The big changes that need to be made are to henchmen AI and infusion (just give them full infusion, they are already pretty stupid.) The henchman AI should not completely fall apart in certain missions (ring of fire is a good example where they run into every environmental hazard they can find.)

A few specific mission can use some tweaks too (ring of fire design is pretty dumb, players are heavily encouraged to just brute force the front door.)

Missions are made hard by the fact that most players are very bad. Having the henchmen be anything better than pathetic (which makes it really sad when they outperform most players) would be nice.

I also mean no disrespect to anyone, but the desert missions are hardly impossible to do and neither is any other mission in the game. I completed every Desert and Southern Shiverpeaks mission more than 20 times. To an experienced player that just have the right level of difficulty, IMO. Ice Caves and Iron Mines are even too easy, I think. Thunderhead Keep (the hardest PVE mission I think) is a walk in the park if you have the correct strategy how to approach it. Yes, this might take a few tries to find out (or a little search on this forum if you don't want that). There is one problem, though, which has been mentioned by other posters here as well: It is very hard to do for PUGs, since there are idiots out there who have no clue at all about the game or strategy in general. In missions like Thunderhead, guys like these will get you killed and since about 20%-30% of all players belong to that group, chances are that you will have one in your PUG every single time you try. I'd avoid PUGs in Thunderhead, Elona or Thirsty River if you have to chance to. Get a guild team if possible and fill empty party slots with henchmen.

If there is any problem with the game's difficulty at all, it's that the earlier missions are easy enough to give the idiot players a wrong feeling of safety. Those people arrive in the desert and still think they can play as dumbly as they want and still win the day.

Ok, unless this game got challenging we'd have idiots everywhere. We need to seperate the good from the bad, how would you like going into a PUG of people in Abbadon's mouth and most of them were too stupid to do thunderhead keep or ascension?

We all know that GW's PVE is somewhat shoddily designed. But the OP's comment simply highlights it.

It's typical of the sort of "die-reload" thinking that pc game makers fall into these days.

What they -should- have done, was make the missions easy to "complete", but add a range of optional bonuses of progressively higher difficulty for each mission. These bonuses dont affect your ability to complete the mission. (as opposed to the bonuses in current missions, which are a huge cause of death sometimes.)

This would not only keep players from getting stuck, which isnt fun at all, but it also makes the missions much more replayable, and rewards skill in a way that current missions do not.

Probably, that means having resurrect points in missions as well, so that when you try a bonus and die horribly you can change your mind and avoid it.

Or having the bonuses occur after the mission is completed. (eg. in Sanctum Cay, the bonus is "hold out for as long as possible before going to the ship". The longer you survive, the better your bonus. If too many members "die", it merely just goes to the cutscene of everyone going on the ship, dragging their "dead" comrades along. And then the mission ends successfully.)

Using Thirsty river as an example, this mission is the hardest of the ascenction missions (just my opionon). I think i tried this mission about, oh 10 times. Which is the most i have ever had to re-do a mission.

Basicly 1 or 2 of the people in the group i did it with would ignor calls and basicly attack / do what they saw fit to.

At the time my guild members were not logged on, so i looked for another guild team which i could join, Did it first time.

It really does pay of playing with a group of people who are familiar with each other.

Basicly from that point on if i couldnt get into a group that didnt speak to each other and work together i would leave that group. Ive done nearly every mission from that point either on the 1st or 2nd attempt, and am on the last levels now.

That is the most important key to succsess, picking a good group.

However saying that, taking thirsty river again.

The first part of the mission is to kill giants, which really is a piece of pie. I dont see why after you have got part this part, that you can re-start after that if you fail.

However i would not like to see more res points than that.

Having no res makes you more carefull, a good group wont rush in knowing that if they get it wrong then there done for, and your res signet really becomes a life saver.

If i knew i could res if i failed, well then theres really no penalty for simply rushing in there haphazardly and failing.

Just res and try again.

My father brought me up as a gamer and taught me this very important skill for games. I've been playing video games since before I could comprehend english. In fact, it was video games that got me to start reading as a lot of the earlier NES games I played were RPG's and had a nice lot of text to read through to understand how to play it and what's going on during it. We didn't have those fancy voice actors and big explosions to keep people's short attention spans interested you get these days.

Patience is always a virtue with anything. Many people who really know me say I am quite intelligent or wise beyond my years (21 years old atm), but I prefer to believe that it's those old fogeys everyone ignores have some important things to say.

If you're in a group at an outpost for a mission and they seem impatient, drop them. It will always be patience that will keep your team alive through the game. The youngun's, regardless of how headstrong they are don't know how to GAME.

Thirsty River is easy when your build is right using just henchmen. My W/N laughs at those Forgotten Ones trying to blind us all the time and "Shields Up" at Tactics 13 helps Alesia and Lina survive better. I brought several low-levelers (2 humans + 6 henchmen) through this mission when noone would take them since all you need is obviously "PRO TEAM LF EXP PLAYERS - NO NOOBS".

How did you manage to get 9 in the party? Especially from Crystal Desert where the max is 6 and the max in the game is 8?

Oohh *smites himself*

We were/are only 2 human players (including me), the rest henchmen. "Several low-levelers" means one of them in a round.

Thanks for pointing that mistake out.

Well I have to disagree with making any missions harder, ok some are fine as they are, but most actually need to be made more difficult.

Why?... Easy, when you can have an easier time beating a mission with henches then a pug, in my book they are too easy and even easier when in a good group.

Even some of the missions that require real people because of certain task to accomplish, aren’t too hard, they just require a tactic that the henches AI can’t handle.

As for some of the harder missions, well in my personal taste they still need a bit of tweaking on the harder side. I know it won’t happen, but I can still dream can’t I?

Just quick examples why in my humble opinion they should be harder:

Thunderhead keep: Just last night went trough it with 7 guild mates and a hench, yes we were also on TS, but that mission was way to easy. Our two monks had it so easy they even felt bad when a pet went down! Yes I do understand we had a good group and were working together, but we are in the later part of the game, I would think that team work and strategy would be required and expected at this stage of the game.

AB’s Mouth: Couple weeks ago, a guild mate and I decided to head in there to cap Fevered Dreams, we didn’t feel like bothering finding a pug for this and decided to give it a shot with henches. Well long story short, the maps on the boards were down, so we basically cleared the entire map and therefore almost finishing the mission.

Only then did we noticed that my guild mate took the wrong character in to cap the skill (we actually had a good laugh about that one). Since we had already done the mission with our characters we started goofing off and only then got killed.

Sorrows Furnace: Suppose to be the hardest thing in GW, Went in with a good pug that lost 3 members during the questing and still we finished all that we wanted to accomplish in there, found it too easy what can I say.

I do have a good understanding of the game, but am nowhere near the level of what we could call expert or elite players. I clearly don’t have the knowledge of an Ensign and yet find the toughest missions to be relatively easy.

As it is now, I’m not sure the pve aspect is actually challenging enough for longevity, I’m already finding too easy and as time goes by probably a lot more people will start feeling the same.

The toughest thing in GW is actually finding a decent PUG, I would vote to make that aspect easier, but don’t think it can be done…

Just my two cents.

Unik

I am an old cat myself, I wish I was 25 years younger and still had my reflexes so I could pvp with these younger guys. Yeah the missions are progessively harder expecially a couple of the new Titan missions. But the PvE is definiately doable on a high level for us. I think we are maybe better because we actually have the patience to develop a charactor. However if you are calling for a nerf I totally disagree with you. There is no reason for this, if you are feeling frustrated join the older gamers club they have a guild ingame maybe they will run though some missions with you. Don't embrass us older gamers by calling for a nerf thats not cool at all. Also, if your health is bad just be satified with what you can still accomplish. When the younger guys beat me so bad in basketball it took me a week to recoperate from the bruises. I had to join the other old guys and take up golf. Not nerf the sport I loved so much. Don't make a special interest group out of us, just have fun.

This is exactly what I am saying although out the game even in presearing how is was that.I would have to say just to get the over all mission over with it would would be nice to have res shrines or to the what this person is saying.It is either that or have quests in the mission as an option but still getting the same amount of points and XP.This is the only poster who has gotten to what I am talking about.I don't have anything against mission either give us an option or ease up on it.I just want to fight my doppleganger or mirror image and get these 3 mission over with so i can say I am ascended.

I will admit I have been run to the Draknors and been farming around there and such and I ran my 2 charactor up to the War Camp and went into Sarrows Funace now that not all that hard although I was useing henchies I just kept pulling and pulling.I was with a pug and they started to blame and I had to say stop the blaming as we lost a player going into the furnace anyway we didn't make it to far I was playing Monk at the time with Mhenlo.I could of taken some of the quests there but I didn't I figured to the best of my concious seeing as how I am not ascended even not infused I won't unitill then but I need something to get confidence about missions back it is like takeing a driveing exam say 15 times.

I never in my first post said nerf the mission just ease up on them and I am with a guild that is hardly active and appointed leader.I am a beta tester as well.When I beta tested I tested the PVP side of the game and it is fine right now a few things need fixing but aver all PVP is fine.I can fight it out in halls of heros and the arenas anytime if most of the player are PVPers nad know how do call target as I was doing lastnight and the missions don't do anything to prepare you for PVP as PVP has less grind except for faction.You could play in the PVP side easier than PVE.There was one person who said you have 8 skills on you bar well you don't as you have your SOC in of them.That only leaves 7 skills unless we went back to the skill charms.

wow, I think you are the first person I've heard saying formal PvP is easier than PvE...

I think Thunderhead Keep and The Northern Wall should be swapped over to keep ALL the idiots confined to one zone.

(and close the breach)