Rubedo.8769

The problem isn't that Anet gave Mesmer toys to other classes, its that they gave it to other classes and then made it so that those other classes could provide more and more and more on top of what they gave them without giving Mesmers a decent trade in return to keep them relevant. I can't speak for everyone but I don't believe anyone is asking to go back to the days where only Mesmer could apply quick/alac, but there should also be a reason to take Mesmer's now, which honestly there isn't. Why take a Mesmer when you can take other classes who do the same thing as Mesmer, and do it better and easier than a Mesmer does.I can literally go into LFG and even though I'm geared for content be told "Oh no we don't want you on Mesmer, switch to something else." I've had to just start making my own groups for running content most of the time, since my guild isn't around much anymore for guild groups, because most groups want nothing to do with Mesmers. Anet needs to come to some sort of decision for Mesmer, at this point we're either top tier gotta have class or we're kicked from groups simply for existing, we've almost never been in position where we fit well with most groups without being over tuned.

As someone who's played since the 3 day head start, I'd say yes. Definitely come back and check it out. See if you still enjoy it. Personally I take a break from the game here and there but always end up coming back and having fun playing it. The player base isn't as huge as it once was but its rare that you'll find maps completely empty even old story maps. Chat is usually lively and story missions are pretty cool. I would advise just come back with whatever you already have and play around with it for a while, then if you find you still enjoy it, which I think you probably will, go ahead and purchase whichever expacs you need and play those stories and get the LW episodes your missing.

And yet again, you completely ignore what I actually said. It would be a optional difficulty change, like I said, if you want to do the content currently as it is and show off just how great you are to stroke your precious ego then by all means, do that. But since when was giving people options a terrible thing in an MMO? What effect does someone else doing their own solo instances in a different way from you in any way detract from your gameplay? I'll answer for you, it doesn't. Not all players are uber leet like you, so some players would appreciate at least having that option. Some players don't like having to go out third party websites for cookie cutter builds to clear content and would prefer to play how they find fun, and would like the options to do so in SOLO content that doesn't effect anyone else. But please, continue to show how much you want the game catered to you and only you while anyone who doesn't feel the same way should have to suffer because it's not what you want. That's a great way to bring new players to the game.

Two words: wasted developer resources. We are talking about 2+ year old content, Daybreak was released in November 2017. This isn't about encounters at the beginning of the game but encounters -after- the ending of the story. Unless of course what you are after is to make the Personal Story easier for some reason. Furthermore, with Path of Fire Arenanet made it literally impossible to fail encounters anymore. Its not really wasted developer resources if it gets new blood into the game, and revamping old content to give more options to new players is never a bad thing if it brings players into the game, or brings players who quit back. I'm still not sure why anyone would be against giving players more options but i mean, thats your feelings on the subject. "Our Easiest Content yet!""Ten Man instances that can be solo'ed!""Story missions without Mechanics!""Open world maps with ZERO ambient threat!" You really think these are good selling points for the franchise? You obviously didn't read any of what was said earlier in the thread, I never said anything about changing group content, actually I stated that group content should remain the same, the only things that could be tuned would be the players SOLO STORY INSTANCES which has zero affect on anyone elses gameplay, if you want to do the harder content so you can show off your giant e-peen then by all means, but allow other players to play on a more tuned down version to also enjoy the story more than the mechanics if they so choose.

Two words: wasted developer resources. We are talking about 2+ year old content, Daybreak was released in November 2017. This isn't about encounters at the beginning of the game but encounters -after- the ending of the story. Unless of course what you are after is to make the Personal Story easier for some reason. Furthermore, with Path of Fire Arenanet made it literally impossible to fail encounters anymore. Its not really wasted developer resources if it gets new blood into the game, and revamping old content to give more options to new players is never a bad thing if it brings players into the game, or brings players who quit back. I'm still not sure why anyone would be against giving players more options but i mean, thats your feelings on the subject.

They should check the Icebrood Saga then People shouldn't be forced into one part of the content of the game just because they don't find overly challenging solo content fun. Your starting to sound like the type of person that thinks that just because a challenging piece of content to you is what makes things fun that everyone else should feel the same way. Not everyone thinks that way, nor should they be forced to play that way if its not fun for them. This game needs to be able to play to a bigger audience in some way, otherwise it's never going to last. If opening up the solo instances and making them more enjoyable to more people helps in that respect then why hate on it so much? What effect does it have on you personally if someone else plays the solo portion of the game on a simpler difficulty than you did? MMORPG's thrive on catering to many many different styles of play, and telling people they can't play just because maybe their not as good as you is a pretty terrible way to encourage new people to try the game out.

Exactly why it's a worthless change, increasing mob health and damage would in no way make fights more exciting and interesting when mobs already lack any skills and capabilities. A Smokescale has half the health of a Risen Thrall in Orr, yet it's way more challenging foe, a Pocket Raptor has almost 1/4th the health of a Risen Thrall yet it's a more challenging foe as well. Mechanics is what makes content interesting it's why Season 4 has interesting fights, while Season 5 is terrible What most people that want some kind of way to reduce difficulty aren't concerned with more interesting or exciting fights. Most want a simplified fight that they can actually enjoy the story itself and the exploration of the story instances. If you use the current boss fight levels are the "challenging" level of play then keep that as the hardcore version then give players to option to tone that back a little bit if their more a story driven player.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the difficulty slider in games like Witcher all they do is increase mob damage and health and maybe affect spawn numbers. That wouldn't make story fights in GW2 more challenging. Just take a look at that encounter where the commander and Braham fight those charr soldiers in the Prologue. No amount of tinkering with health and damage would make that fight enjoyable/challenging, they were sacks of health ready to be beaten. Such a slider is a lazy designer's option that might work well in a single player game, but it's hardly actual "difficulty". And doing a pass on all instances to give proper mechanics and skills to all encounters in a "difficult" mode would be unrealistic as it would take too much work for very little gain. Mechanics wouldn't really need to change with a difficulty selector, just the mob hp and damage done by the npcs could be affected. (Obviously something like this would need playtesting, rough drafts, etc...to perfect the right balance between mechanics and mob scaling, but it could be done.) Also going back to readjust the old solo instances could provide gain for the game itself, especially with the base game being free. Revamping old content would help new players, since they are the target audience for the older solo content. Right now if a player downloads the game and finds something in a solo instance too difficult on the first try in the current system they just stop playing the game and uninstall. That doesn't help the game at all. If the game wants to survive it has to draw in new players, and telling people if their struggling with something to "git gud" does not build a decent community or draw in new players. I'm not saying that you personally would say that to someone asking for help but just looking through the forums will show you that there are a lot of people who would. Now if the player could adjust their difficulty to something slightly easier until their more knowledgeable with the game systems and mechanics it could keep them interested. People need to lose this mindset that if something is fine for them then its perfectly acceptable for everyone and nothing should change and no other opinion should matter. Everything can be improved in some way or another. If something like this were implemented in solo instances only it would have zero affect outside of that particular player. It wouldn't matter if you did it on the hardest difficulty and someone else did it on easiest difficulty.

The thing with difficulty in this game is no matter what Anet does it won't appease everyone. As far as PvE difficulty, imo, solo instances such as story mode things should have a difficulty slider, so people who want a challenge can set it high while those who want a simple experience and are only there for the story itself can enjoy it without wanting to throw their computer out the window because a fight has too much going on to actually enjoy it playing the class and build they want to play. Difficulty sliders would be fine in SOLO instances only, as it would have little to no affect outside of that instance since story mode fights rarely actually reward anything impressive that it would matter. As far as group content goes, there should only be single difficulties, unless you want to follow an example like WoW where you could have say a normal and heroic mode, which honestly most dungeons in this game already have with story mode and exploration modes. The biggest problem setting different difficulty levels to this game for group content would lay in the balancing of classes. In other games, like WoW, FFXIV, etc..., you can balance healers to healer, tanks to tanks, and dps to dps then balance the groups to their purpose. In GW2 you can't do that because they didn't want that Holy Trinity of tank/dps/heals. So you can't balance content to roles since every class can be every role to an extent. It makes it impossible to balance properly, since once you nerf one thing everyone stacks something else. Remember one of the big selling points of this game was that you could play whatever you want however you want, which should still hold true, at least in solo play, solo play includes solo instances. People shouldn't be shoved into a build they don't enjoy just to clear solo content when thats not how the game is marketed. In group content then yes, people should play the builds/setups that complements the groups composition, and that is the sacrifice you make if you want to play the high end group content. But like i said before, nothing Anet does will appease everyone. If they gave difficulty options to people in solo instances there would be people on the forums screaming that its not a good thing, even if it wouldn't have any effect on them and then the people who want the difficulty changes made would come back screaming that their being elitist gatekeepers. That's just the nature of the forums. There is no win here for anyone honestly.

Its a simple fix, apply a sliding difficulty bar that the player can set their desired difficulty for their own story instances. It's not like the rewards from story instances are all that amazing to start with so it doesn't really matter. Then the players who are "zomg git gud baddie" can have their "challenging" story boss to make themselves feel uber leet, and the people who want a simpler fight scenario can do so without it affecting anything else outside their solo experience. The Witcher had a difficulty adjustment system that allowed players to play the game at a difficulty of their choosing and was heralded as one of the greatest games of all time. I see no reason that we couldn't have the same thing here if that's what would make the players happy. Being able to adjust difficulty on a SOLO instance would have no affect from one player to another. If you do it on the highest difficulty then great for you, if someone else does it on the lowest difficulty then hey great for them. One does not affect the other.

Except with WoW you get new expansions every 2 years 1)New massive maps,with TONS OF STUFF to do2)New armor3)New dungeons4)New Heroic dungeons5)New battlegrounds6)New items that actually matter7)New raids (released throughout year)8)New skills,new builds,new talent,new glyphs9)Active lfg/lfm with system so perfect,you can jump instantly in any battleground at any given time,you can find raids at any given time,morning,midday,night (no excuses like; well its too early) you can do arenas anytime you want,literally.10)New heroic classes,new starting zones,hundreds of new quests... And pvp,pve and bg updates on weekly basis,balances and changes. All this coming from someone who hates wow...and i quit all my subs and deleted game for a while now. I understand GW2 has no sub,but no one forces you to do all 100 things other company does,because that costs money,do what you can but actually invest some actual effort and just try for once,rather than adding jumping puzzles thinking how you gonna please all "cough" 2 million players,knowing NO YOU WONT,but what could actually please every single player is new dungeon,new pvp mode,world vs world changes,build changes etc... Would it hurt to add living story with pvp involved?New actual pvp mode called 'battleground'? Im talking about pvp because every release for 3 years now was pve only... Anyone else remembers the times when releases were about showing how you care about game,and your players?Today is everything about giving less and less with the excuse 'well you can't say we never release nothing' Lol, ok Massive maps that you quest through in 2 hours and then only return to to redo those quests rebranded as "World Quests" yea, thats lameArmor is bland af in WoW and just recoloring over and over and over and overDungeons are just an AoE meme at this point, run drop AoE and afk watching NetflixSee 3.There hasn't been a new bg added since MoP except that trash BG they tried with Seething Shore which everyone hated.You mean items that are bland af and require no interaction whatsoever and are just there to pad your ilvl? yea lame.Raids, those glorified dungeons that just AoE and charge thanks to LFRHeart of Azerorth....no thanks we don't need that meme garbage here in GW2LFG/LFR destroyed the community in WoW, singlehandedly. If you don't look at how that was implemented and done and see the problems with their system then you have to be in complete denial. Its a garbage system that even the dev who implemented it said was his biggest regret in working on that game.Heroic classes that basically come out OP af and rarely ever get brought in line. No thank you. No new starting zones since MoP with panda bears. Hundreds of new quests, yep go fetch 10 boar asses and wolf paws. yep thats exciting content right there!

Personally I never understood the whole "omg we have to have expansions or the game sucks!" mentality. Personally I'd rather have the content released periodically for free than spend $40+ on an expansion, i'll support the game through the gem store as they release things I like there. They said their going to give expansion level content over the course of the new Sagas, we're one episdoe in and people are screaming that the sky is falling. We should see how this plays out and if we get that level of content from the sagas and its free as long as your logging in then screw it why wouldn't it be a good thing.

Look at someone's post history before painting people as complainers. You may see that the dissat of many people comes from a pretty rational place. I’ve been here since the three day head start so nice try on the attempt to make yourself seem veteran status when you’ve only been around since season 3 and PoF. And yes a lot of the complaining is basic whining. People don’t get what they want so they cry on the forums. Nothing more. Oh the episode was shorter than normal. Let’s completely ignore the fact that the devs already addressed that numerous times and kick and scream on the forums in a temper tantrum. Oh the map is small? Let’s once again ignore what was said by the devs so we can throw yet another tantrum on the forums. We are one episode into the saga. It’s too early to say the whole system is trash when we don’t even know how long the saga will be or how their spacing will be.

Sometimes, I honestly just have to facepalm at some of the complaints i see nowadays on these forums. The whiteout effect is easily counterable by staying near a shrine and just running to it when you get a few stacks, the whiteout even at max stacks doesnt inhibit your view that much other than the outer edges of your screen, unless your playing at 100x100 resolution I'd say your overreacting about this. The mechanic is fine. the setup is fine, this is entirely a learn to play issue. You have the ability to wipe the buff at any time you want, if you choose not to do that, that is your choice.

I honestly have been enjoying the pacing of GW2, coming from WoW, who give content updates maybe every 6+ months and those content updates are just endless time grating grinds and poorly done ones at that. If Anet is releasing content every 2-3 months with decent gameplay like Whispers in the Dark, I'm happy with it.