Curse

Skye Marin · Jan 25, 2007, 02:49 AM // 02:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lucky_

As I understood OP, suggestion was to "replace lvl28 high damage mobs with lvl20 with creative builds". Inherent problem is, as mentioned above, in the fact that when a casual players kills a big ass "lvl28", he feels he's accomplished something big. When he kills a lvl20 with a better build, he feels the same as when he was pruning plants on marga coast, because to casual player, "good build" is not something easily grasped, much less fully understood and made enjoyable to kill, unlike simple to undertand "lvl 28".

They'll learn that specific enemies are hard in an area when they take the "Difficulty: Master" quest and get their asses handed to them the first time they try it.

Quote:

And hell, if you ever PvP, you know just as well as I do that the suggestion "monk sitting in wards with blind surge nearby" is not fun in any way to attacker - instead it's frustrating as hell. It's not that rare to get "f****** wardcamper" comment in some matches even in high end gvg - and yet you expect PvErs to go through the same thing and like it?

If they want to beat the hard level, yes. That's the idea. They'll have to work as a team just like the enemy is.

As an aside, when was the last time you've seen an NPC actually staying in the wards. :P

Avatar Exico · Jan 25, 2007, 02:55 AM // 02:55

Why make PvE Challenge it alrdy Challenge. hehe just kidding i like PvE to be more Challenging but make it reasonable Challenge and not it so hard that I cant do anything that would ruined the Game for sure

Ugly_Jim · Jan 25, 2007, 03:17 AM // 03:17

I completely agree with the OP. I've thought that mobs should have decent bars from the beginning.

If PvE was like this, it *might* force people to use more dynamic builds and utility skills like snares and knockdowns, which I think most people have a lot more fun with. nukers + tanks + monks using only a handful of skills over and over is pretty boring. And usually I don't even need a tank, so it's just nukers + monks.

Good skillbars + shitty AI = barely increased difficulty. The AI messes up a lot of skill combinations, and it'd take a lot of efficiency/effectiveness sacrifices to get bars that actually work. The main things that make AL60 casters so hard to kill in pvp is not their skillbars, but their USE of those skillbars, and of course positioning and preemptive kiting and protection in the form of stances(shadow of haste) or enchantments. The AI can't do this very well, and it certainly doesn't understand the concept of covering important enchantments or hexes, so they should be fairly easily picked off by players.

Concerned about ward camping? Let's not forget that you can just run half an aggro bubble back and they'll run right out of it.

If there were decent walkthroughs and/or tooltips, it would be plenty friendly to the average player. As said, players could eased into this new form of pve, and wouldn't have to be rushed into level 20 mobs with 8 skills including res sigs. Walkthroughs on basic game mechanics like the ones on Shing Jea Island would be a fantastic way to accomplish this, in conjunction with tooltips with suggestions on improving weak builds. Stuff like "healing over time is usually inefficient and ineffective compared to direct heals unless your AL is incredibly high" and "make sure your build can sustain your energy over time".

Savio · Jan 25, 2007, 05:50 AM // 05:50

I've got an idea: take the same basic idea behind the Crystal Desert - namely, a buildup to then-PvP ToPK - and improve upon it, with more difficult (strategically, not with brute force) enemies. Heck, you could make those areas optional with better than normal rewards. Just give PvE players incentive to play better against harder enemies.

pve-er · Jan 25, 2007, 06:24 AM // 06:24

I have to disagree on making the game harder. GW is a game with no monthly fees. the main source of income is new comer. if the game is famous of being hard. new people will hesitate to join GW family. then the market will shrink and GW will end. the current game play is challenging enough for many people consider many have trouble to get bonus or master or even the mission.

it is unnecessary to make the game harder. but making it challenging in other way will do in some part of story. the current trend is either super powerful boss or wave and wave of mobs. both are challenging but we can sue some pvp-like challenge such as having smart AI once a while.

stuntharley · Jan 25, 2007, 07:05 AM // 07:05

PvE was never ment to be challenging just so people could finish it and so there was no grind factor. Don't like PvE?
Play PvP

Bankai · Jan 25, 2007, 07:35 AM // 07:35

I think people are misunderstanding some thing again.

Level 28 mobs will backfire eventually. The best example is, as stated before, urgoz/the deep. It's very hard to clear it with any group other than bp. So everybody plays it. It's too hard because you get nuked by 50 lvl 28 monsters.

However, in the other areas, it switches back and forth between being too easy and being hard. What's hard about enemies that are constantly in perma-frenzy? They do a bit more damage, true, but you kill them insanely fast. Ruby djinns are an example of where it's hard. Most groups don't realize they should spread out and get owned.

Arcane De Farad · Jan 25, 2007, 08:06 AM // 08:06

Weird... everything is different now. When they released chapter 1 Thunderhead Keep mission was one of the hardest mission in game. Now its easy like hell cause we know how to fight there. We know what builds we can use, and the most important thing we have new skills from new chapters.

I ve done TH Keep some days ago with My Dervish (primary char now). I asked my friends if they wanna help they said sure. To be honest it was a piece of cake... . MM, SS, Obs/Flesh tank, Bonder, Healer, SF burn them to death and barrager. It was like a bliztkrieg. Muursats and white mantles were overrun with brute force.

Lucky_ · Jan 25, 2007, 02:01 PM // 14:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

Level 28 mobs will backfire eventually. The best example is, as stated before, urgoz/the deep. It's very hard to clear it with any group other than bp. So everybody plays it. It's too hard because you get nuked by 50 lvl 28 monsters.

Urgoz and Deep are useless as examples, as they are off main path and considered elite. Jut because b/p, to an extent, allows casual player to "cheat" his way around the elite factor of the area doesn't mean that it doesn't function like it's intended. Noteably, b/p is horribly slow and risky, while a group of actually good players (read - friends or guildies with a clue) will take something around 2 hours to finish these areas with a real build and a good amount of teamwork and knowledge of encounters.

Kuya B · Jan 25, 2007, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Signed. I didn't see this thread until now, but I have a similar complain/suggestion. Make pve more challenging by making the enemy ai smarter. It's a little senseless to run into a mob with your mob and see who gets wiped out first.

Instead, reduce the number of mobs, but make them better (sort of like FOW). Timewise it probably works out to be the same, maybe slightly longer. But, it's certainly more satisfying to beat group of 6 decent enemies than 50 retards that you steamrolled that may have taken just as long.

Quality over quantity.

Crom The Pale · Jan 25, 2007, 07:10 PM // 19:10

The biggest problem most of us long term players face is that we are long term players that know how to play.

There is little learning needed when we see a new mob, we know most of the skills and how to deal with them. The ones we dont we sit back watch and learn fast, or read up on them at Balthazar priest.

The challange lvl is fine as it is, for new players. What we need is something thats outside of the normal story progression that has varrialbe lvls of difficulty. Sorrows Furnace was a great example, the quests were mostly easy but still had some challenge to them. You had to work with a team to deal with the quests requiring your party to split up and accomplish to goals at the same time.

This, I believe, will will be the key to making chapter four or other end game content more player freindly. They need to make missions/quests with multiple goals that require a party to split up and deal with 2 or more things at the same time. This would reduce the need for lvl 28 high dmg mobs and add a great deal of planning to these mission/quests that does not exist for most all of GW as it now stands.

englitdaudelin · Jan 26, 2007, 05:10 AM // 05:10

/signed, with an explanation.

I think the OP is spot-on: the challenge in PvE lies largely in the first trip through the storyline. The boredom sets in on the second or third character.

That said, I DO agree that consistently facing mobs which are more "realistic" and therefore more likely to make the player "work" would skeeve out the "casual" gamer. How casual would that gamer have to be to punk out? Who knows?

So what about this tweak: Instead of random mobs, or progressingly different mobs from east to west, or north to south... Say, three mobs in a zone that are, as the OP and others suggest, balanced and realistic.
Then, to prevent Flavor of the Zone builds...those mobs could be randomized in terms of skill builds.

So you (the player) wouldn't face a series of balanced, almost-human-style groups, all across the zone, playing 20-minute fights one after the other. Instead, most of the mobs WOULD be "foot soldiers," as someone called them. And the boss mobs at lvl 28 could even be left untouched too. But somewhere in the zone--at a random spawn point--you would encounter this smart mob that had, as heroes do, a complete skill bar with seriously effective skills and AI. One battle, two battles in a zone that ARE epic...that would be all right with me.

And I'm pretty casual.

And as for the objections that this would screw up the noobs...well, why? I mean, if the monsters are the same level as you, and you can stack guildies, heroes, or hench...then why is it so bad to see this? Wouldn't people learn a) to expect it somewhere? and b) to build for the possibility?
and besides...if it turned into a random spawn point...rezone and hope to work around it.

Last, any "human-style" or "realistic" skill bar is vulnerable to an array of counters that anyone should have in the bar anyway, right? an interrupt, and/or a stance remover, a degen or condition or hex, a defense, and so on...

I think that there are two case studies here that might be instructive:

1. The small groups of elementals in Vabbi: A couple of Ethers (mesmers), Sapphire Djinn (Dervish), and Ruby Djinn (fire ele). The ethers carry rez SIGS, and will rez their Ether friends. The Sapphire Djinn is a pretty bad tank, and Hero/hench AI prevents it from being much more effective...but it is good at keeping the healers occupied for a few. Imagine that group with a solid pair of healers, and smarter tanking. Winnable? Absolutely. More interesting? Certainly.

2. In Sorrow's Furnace: as you pass the site where you battle over Oro, and descend a passageway, you run into a room with a large stairway. At the bottom, several dredge and some Summit. At the top, as you enter: several dredge and summit. This group often includes 2 priests of sorrows,who heal each other and the group rather well, and carry hard rezzes, I believe; this group includes also at least one dwarf MM, one dwarf ranger, and one or more warriors. Bad aggroes can make this a truly exciting battle.
Yet that particular room doesn't often spell the end of my team's SF trip...in 8-man or 5-man, it's hard, but not impossible; it require AWARENESS of the aggro and of the situation (who's dying, who's rezzing, who's pinging low energy...); it requires an array of skills to defeat these critters.
Sure, the B/P "gimmick" group can clear this...sometimes. (But not if the golem goes down...)...and the 8-man can...most of the time. But not without work.

So I ask: are these balanced groups bad things? As a pve player, I say, heck no.

props to the OP and all the others in this thread.

Vinraith · Jan 26, 2007, 05:30 AM // 05:30

^^ Very well put. All I can really say to that is "what he said."

Tozen · Jan 26, 2007, 05:37 AM // 05:37

Yeah, this sounds like a great idea OP.

Teger · Jan 26, 2007, 05:52 AM // 05:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

urgoz/the deep. It's very hard to clear it with any group other than bp. So everybody plays it. It's too hard because you get nuked by 50 lvl 28 monsters.

A) Iv never seen ANYONE b/p the deep...and my alliance owns cava...

On topic: I would support this idea, assuming they dont make it so monsters keep their insanely high att points/hp/energy...haveing a horde of lvl 28s with actual GOOD skill combos...would hurt....Can you imagine comeing across a patrol of 3 SF nukers, 2 grenths dervs, 2 ZB monks, and a mesmer in your avg mission? Yeah, that would make it considerably harder....

SodOffShotgun · Jan 26, 2007, 07:25 AM // 07:25

The biggest killer of the current PVE is the predictability and repetitiveness. Every time you warp into the same instance, EVERYTHING is the same. So whether or not the PVE is challenging or not, eventually it will get stale real fast.

Arcador · Jan 26, 2007, 07:51 AM // 07:51

As some dude said - it should be selective.
Very less from the whole community will enjoy this. I mean it is logically to do so, but some people like the simple action. You just sit, cast a armor, then rain 3 nukes and feel happy.
For example the last AI enhancements were taken very negative amongst most, remember (even when kind of fixed), While others like me were very happy about them (without the infinite run), it made every battle a mini warfare (especially when fighting an enemy party).

So - switchable.

Eilsys · Jan 26, 2007, 08:11 AM // 08:11

No... I think the game is fairly difficult already for new players, and I think, at times, the enemies have almost even-footing with the players (better bars than the henchies at points).

I think PvE is by nature balance towards the player in terms of skill selection... the mobs have numbers and levels in their favour, so skill choice/player intelligence is what tips the odds.

If you really want a challenge, do GvG. It's the eponymous, flagship arena of the entire game (and the most fun, imo). PvE introduces the skills and a mildly fun adventure, but PvP is where it's at.

=DNC=Trucker · Jan 26, 2007, 09:08 AM // 09:08

awesome post! Couldn't agree more.

Shokuji · Jan 26, 2007, 09:37 AM // 09:37

Want harder PvE? Get Frustrations.. er.. Factions.