The difficulty level and it's influence on dynamic events.

Blindchance

I haven't had a chance to play beta and I have few concerns about difficulty level of the game and how it might affect our game experience. I'm a bit afraid that to keep the game accessible for everyone ArenaNet might make the game too easy.

In the result the game will end up bland and players will succeed in the dynamic events way too often. Preventing themselves from exploring different event outcomes. It would be a real shame as I see branching out events as one of the selling points of the game. I really hope that event failure is a part of ArenaNet equation as important as the down mechanics.  After all people go into down state quite often so why not randomly change difficulty level of some events ( more mobs, more difficult mobs )  to prevent the players from succeeding too often.

From what I have seen in available videos, because of big player numbers the events where too easy. The events didn't spawn more mobs or make them difficult enough to offer a challenge to a large group of players. Instead of using the all options in combat to succeed ( movement, dodging, blocking, CC ) all players did was simply out damaged the mobs. I hope it changes in later zones and it was only for sake of smooth introducion to the game world.

Loke666

I do remember walking into the human starting area in BWE1 and suddenly finding about 40 players dead and some bandits jumping on their bodies.

But that might have been the scaling #¤%& up and they might have fixed that sadly. I loved it, my thief killed a load of bandits.

Alucardlb

I have gotten to level 30 in the betas and can say that once you get out of the starting zone exspect to die, even if there is alot of people with you

eggy08

You can't base your claim off videos and BWEs alone. If you haven't played the game, you wouldn't understand. This is a beaten down topic many times. All resulting in one thing:

1. BWE3 was nerfed in difficulty so people can experience it easier or a bug, not sure which, they fixed it thou.

2. All you can probably see is starting zones, which in turn was where 90% of the population was. If you went outside the starter zone like I have, you would understand that the less people, the harder the DE and more challenging the game gets the further you go.

3. The game isn't designed to catter to the casual on later level areas. Thats the point of the leveling down system. If something is too hard for you, go back to earlier level zones and you still get the challenge AND you get the same experience. Saying that later levels will be too easy is BS because there is no reason for them to make it easier for everyone since they implemented the scale down system.

4. The game is clearly made for failures. Hence why when you fail a zone, the quest changes and you got a new DE to do. If the game wasn't designed for failures, they would never implement this at all. If you fail to capture a town, then the mobs take it. You haven't watched the right videos or read any of the difficulty comments if you do not know this.

I'd advise you to search difficulty in the bar because I'm not writing you a 30 page list of reasons this game has difficulty because its all been said before and the mods will just lock this because you didn't bother to go back and look.

seridan

The first Dynamic Events players will experience, although a cooperative experience, shouldn't be compared to actual group content of other MMORPGs. Instead, they should be treated like the initial, tutorial, quests in other games. It's not fair to compare the first DEs with group content, just because they both require groups to complete, as there is no other content available in GW2. They obviously made the first DEs easier, just like in all other MMORPGs you must go to a group/elite/heroic area to find anything that is even remotely difficult. Even in later zones, some DEs WILL be easier than others

DanitaKusor

My experience from the last stress test was that the difficultly scales fairly well.  As an example, the giant boar event in Queensdale.  I was doing that in one of the last stress tests with a warrior and was finding it could put me in the downed state within 2 hits if it turned on me.  Now admitidly that was a group event, but it scaled up to the point where it was a challenge.

Blindchance

Originally posted by Loke666

I do remember walking into the human starting area in BWE1 and suddenly finding about 40 players dead and some bandits jumping on their bodies.

But that might have been the scaling #¤%& up and they might have fixed that sadly. I loved it, my thief killed a load of bandits.

Oh man, I would love it it happen, even at random from time to time an event could spawn some champions and more mobs and take players by surprise.

eggy08

Originally posted by Blindchance

Originally posted by Loke666

I do remember walking into the human starting area in BWE1 and suddenly finding about 40 players dead and some bandits jumping on their bodies.

But that might have been the scaling #¤%& up and they might have fixed that sadly. I loved it, my thief killed a load of bandits.

Oh man, I would love it it happen, even at random from time to time an event could spawn some champions and more mobs and take players by surprise.

I thought we wanted discussion.. I guess not.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/361066/Guild-Wars-2-needs-elite-difficulty-contentEDITguess-i-was-wrong.html

There I did the work for you, now can we lock this thread before it becomes a 20 page back and forth rage fest of experience vs. videos?

dageeza

Originally posted by Loke666

I do remember walking into the human starting area in BWE1 and suddenly finding about 40 players dead and some bandits jumping on their bodies.

But that might have been the scaling #¤%& up and they might have fixed that sadly. I loved it, my thief killed a load of bandits.

Lol this happened during the 1 hour stress test yesterday, i dunno if its because everyone was low level or what but during the moa bandit event about 20 of us were suddenly overwhelmed by a ton of bandits coming from both sides on wave 5 (never seen this many at once before)..

We got wiped and failsauced it..

Which led to a second DE which led to a third which was rustling the birds back away from the bandits and returning the stolen moa's..

Later this games pve will still likely cater to casuals but the deathrate will be immense for those who havent brushed up on their skills..

Its really fun to take off in a private group of 3-5 if you are looking for a challenge in pve, in this game you can and will go from facerolling stuff one minute to being facerolled the next..

Blindchance

 Good to know. I was suspecting that the first zones are going to be more a tutorial zones then an actual representation of the game. Hopefully ArenaNet won't make it too easy over time ( patches, balancing etc. ). Anyway thanks for dispelling my fears, it would be a shame if all the active elements of the combat didn't need to be used.

seridan

Originally posted by Blindchance
 Good to know. I was suspecting that the first zones are going to be more a tutorial zones then an actual representation of the game. Hopefully ArenaNet won't make it too easy over time ( patches, balancing etc. ). Anyway thanks for dispelling my fears, it would be a shame if all the active elements of the combat didn't need to be used.

The only "issue" with event difficulty is that not all of them scale for a very large number of people. They might scale for up to 12 people (example) but if a huge zerg of 150 people goes to an event area, they will rarely scale properly for them (unless they are boss encounters of course). It will be best to avoid following the zerg during the first hours

tordurbar

I almost wish that Anet would make GW2 just as hard, if not harder, than many of the posters here wish. That way the game population would dwindle to the level of AOC, Aion, WH, and Tera. That would mean less forum activity and we can finally have a break with the hype.

Sarcasm aside I believe that Anet has done a good job with the difficutty. When the hardcore complain it is too easy and the noobs complaining that downleveling is making it too hard then Anet has found the right balance. I suspect that the hardcore will win in the end as that seems to be the Anet leaning but I will enjoy the game until then.