Originally posted by Roche7

 I haves another question. I saw this somewhere but I can't seem to find it again. I saw that it was possible to up the difficulty for solo content. So far the only scaling information I can find now is about when adding more players it will get harder which makes sense.

You can always take on areas and content a little above your level if you want more of a challenge. I would mention that the game is balanced to be challenging. There is no death penalty, when you hit zero HP you go into a downed state and can access a few special skills as you fight for life. While you are in the downed state, if you finish off a mob you will be revived. If you die, anyone can rez you. I mention death and dying because even though the game is meant to be challenging, if you do push your limits and die, death is a lot less frustrating than in other games.

You will always be scaled down when taking on lower level content, but higher level PVE content requires a higher level character to group with you to get side-kicked up in level.

As to the anti-greed thing, the game design is very promising. When more than one person, grouped or not, attacks the same mob, everyone who does a certain threshold of damage (roughly 5% - 10%) gets full xp and full loot! So, there is no need for mob tagging, no such thing as mob stealing and with content scaling up with more players, it gets more rewarding for everyone. So, you will always want to help and be helped.

There are also 5 man dungeons in the game. These will offer a story mode, which is easy to play with a pick up group and then unlocks Exploration mode for your caracter on completion. Exploration mode offers three paths to the end boss and each path will be through different areas of the dungeon, so it's pretty much like having four full dungeons for each dungeon setting. The Exploration Mode dungeons are very challenging and will require well organized 5-man groups that play well together. Dungeons reward tokens to everyone for completion that can be spent on gear, so no one competes with other to role for the big items or gets left out if the boss fails to drop something you need or can use.

The personal story mode content is instanced, unlike the rest of the game (except Dungeons, which are also instanced). These combine really cool 2D animated cut scenes with full voice acting, as well as fully interactive story related PVE game content. You can invite others into your personal story. Content will scale up accordingly. Also, you can't outlevel your personal story content, the level will always be adjusted for you. During character creation, there are some background questions that you answer, which along with race and class choice determine how your personal story can proceed. It's a branching, rather than linear storyline and there are thousands of possible combinations of individual story elements, so there is much replayability. If another character invited into your personal story does happen to have that same story element, they can chose to accept your story line choices, or reserve the right to play through again and make their own choice.

As far as side-kicking, I'd just mention that the power scaling curve of armor and weapons in the game is much more shallow than in other games, so even though the higher level character in a side-kicked duo will have some power advantage over the lower level character, it won't be a huge disparity. Whether you are scaling your wife up, or scaling down to join her for lower level content, it should still be challenging and fun either way.

With the world populated by Dynamic Event Chains, rather than static Quest content, if you chose to scale down so she can progress through zones you have already played through, you will encounter a lot of events you didn't catch the first time through and the zone itself will likely be in a different state, with some villages that were friendly for you now controlled by enemy NPCs, new defensive structures built, or old ones destroyed, etc...

It really is just about perfect for a duo, or for any group of friends that like to play together, but level at different rates. :)

Originally posted by Roche7

 I haves another question. I saw this somewhere but I can't seem to find it again. I saw that it was possible to up the difficulty for solo content. So far the only scaling information I can find now is about when adding more players it will get harder which makes sense.

Well for higher difficulty solo content there are the exploration mode dungeons which are designed to be difficult for experienced 5-man teams. You can always try to solo them and earn everlasting glory on the youtubes :)

In addition, there are elite dynamic events in the open world which are designed for a minimum number of players and theoretically are un-soloable... but you can try.

And finally you can solo in WvW and try to make a one-man army Rambo style.

(also just doing plain old conent several levels higher should be plenty difficult)

Imo there's plenty of difficult content you can attempt to solo, but there is nothing specifically designed as such. Maybe later on they'll add elite/explorable content for personal stories? Seems a logical course of action to me once the majority of players reach max lvl with at least one character.

Originally posted by fiontar

Originally posted by Roche7

 I haves another question. I saw this somewhere but I can't seem to find it again. I saw that it was possible to up the difficulty for solo content. So far the only scaling information I can find now is about when adding more players it will get harder which makes sense.

You can always take on areas and content a little above your level if you want more of a challenge. I would mention that the game is balanced to be challenging. There is no death penalty, when you hit zero HP you go into a downed state and can access a few special skills as you fight for life. While you are in the downed state, if you finish off a mob you will be revived. If you die, anyone can rez you. I mention death and dying because even though the game is meant to be challenging, if you do push your limits and die, death is a lot less frustrating than in other games.

You will always be scaled down when taking on lower level content, but higher level PVE content requires a higher level character to group with you to get side-kicked up in level.

As to the anti-greed thing, the game design is very promising. When more than one person, grouped or not, attacks the same mob, everyone who does a certain threshold of damage (roughly 5% - 10%) gets full xp and full loot! So, there is no need for mob tagging, no such thing as mob stealing and with content scaling up with more players, it gets more rewarding for everyone. So, you will always want to help and be helped.

There are also 5 man dungeons in the game. These will offer a story mode, which is easy to play with a pick up group and then unlocks Exploration mode for your caracter on completion. Exploration mode offers three paths to the end boss and each path will be through different areas of the dungeon, so it's pretty much like having four full dungeons for each dungeon setting. The Exploration Mode dungeons are very challenging and will require well organized 5-man groups that play well together. Dungeons reward tokens to everyone for completion that can be spent on gear, so no one competes with other to role for the big items or gets left out if the boss fails to drop something you need or can use.

The personal story mode content is instanced, unlike the rest of the game (except Dungeons, which are also instanced). These combine really cool 2D animated cut scenes with full voice acting, as well as fully interactive story related PVE game content. You can invite others into your personal story. Content will scale up accordingly. Also, you can't outlevel your personal story content, the level will always be adjusted for you. During character creation, there are some background questions that you answer, which along with race and class choice determine how your personal story can proceed. It's a branching, rather than linear storyline and there are thousands of possible combinations of individual story elements, so there is much replayability. If another character invited into your personal story does happen to have that same story element, they can chose to accept your story line choices, or reserve the right to play through again and make their own choice.

As far as side-kicking, I'd just mention that the power scaling curve of armor and weapons in the game is much more shallow than in other games, so even though the higher level character in a side-kicked duo will have some power advantage over the lower level character, it won't be a huge disparity. Whether you are scaling your wife up, or scaling down to join her for lower level content, it should still be challenging and fun either way.

With the world populated by Dynamic Event Chains, rather than static Quest content, if you chose to scale down so she can progress through zones you have already played through, you will encounter a lot of events you didn't catch the first time through and the zone itself will likely be in a different state, with some villages that were friendly for you now controlled by enemy NPCs, new defensive structures built, or old ones destroyed, etc...

It really is just about perfect for a duo, or for any group of friends that like to play together, but level at different rates. :)

 The more I read the more I am interested in this game. From all the videos I have seen there is already more polish to this game then most have at release. I feel this is really the only big advantage WoW ever has, Blizzard makes sure everything plays well and it is one of the things I have not liked about other newer MMOs.

 The fact the game looks this good while still being months away from release is a great sign to me. I have been looking for a fault and I just can't find one. I have had my hopes shattered by so many recent games that I can't help but try and pick it apart. So far I can't see any major flaws. Gear not being of value in GvG? I think... is great and something I had asked for a million times to fix WoWs pvp but I just got flamed for asking. No flying mounts is awesome and I hope they keep travle from being to fast as I have found this always seems to ruin MMOs for me as soon as near instant travel to everywhere becomes an option.

 Warhammer was rushed. SWTOR characters look odd to me, the way they move and the game sounds like a glorified single player RPG. WoW is welll.. its wow and keeps getting closer to the sterotype it always had. FFXI has been dumbed down a bit to much and is getting really old. FFXIV looks nice but looks like it will never be fixed. Everything else tried to rip off WoW and didn't even do a very good job of it.

 I like the reduced number of abilities(and the clean UI it creats). This is something that I liked about most FFXI jobs and EQ. Also something I started to hate about WoW, while some class/specs don't have or need many abilities some of them have an stupid amount of skills they need to function. Needlessly complicated imo.

 The races seem cool, not human but I don't care I have never played a human in any RPG if I didn't have to.

 Graphics are very nice looking but I hope I don't need a super computer to run the game. I am going to have to build new computers but I don't want and my wife wont like the idea of building an expensive computer for her. If I can't keep the price of hers down I don't think this will go over.

 Sound looks like it will be good. This is a big one for me. The bland music of WoW I always found annoying. How much they reused music in the original game I found really annoying.

 I think my biggest issue at this point is talking her into playing it with me. She has bascially given up on PC games but I think I may be able to talk her into this one. The fact she wont have to be a healer anymore will probably help sell her. She never wanted to be a healer before but because everytime she tried to let someone else do it they always sucked so she got tired of it.

 Not sure what else might get her into the idea. How is the GW community? If it is anything like the community of EQ or FFXI that would probably help. She hates the WoW kiddies and probably would enjoy being away from that(They also invaded my FPS games which made her rather mad). Never being ninja looted again would be a plus I think.

 Now I just get to sit back and hope they don't do something stupid to ruin it for me.

Graphics are very nice looking but I hope I don't need a super computer to run the game. I am going to have to build new computers but I don't want and my wife wont like the idea of building an expensive computer for her. If I can't keep the price of hers down I don't think this will go over.

 I think my biggest issue at this point is talking her into playing it with me. She has bascially given up on PC games but I think I may be able to talk her into this one. The fact she wont have to be a healer anymore will probably help sell her. She never wanted to be a healer before but because everytime she tried to let someone else do it they always sucked so she got tired of it.

The graphics are nice but you wont need a powerful PC to view the beauty of art work. It's been designed in a way that even low end PC's can see and say "wow this area is beautiful!!!". That's my take on it anyway. Haha.

Everyone will have a self heal and dodging will play an important part of combat too.

Originally posted by VaultFairy

Graphics are very nice looking but I hope I don't need a super computer to run the game. I am going to have to build new computers but I don't want and my wife wont like the idea of building an expensive computer for her. If I can't keep the price of hers down I don't think this will go over.

 I think my biggest issue at this point is talking her into playing it with me. She has bascially given up on PC games but I think I may be able to talk her into this one. The fact she wont have to be a healer anymore will probably help sell her. She never wanted to be a healer before but because everytime she tried to let someone else do it they always sucked so she got tired of it.

The graphics are nice but you wont need a powerful PC to view the beauty of art work. It's been designed in a way that even low end PC's can see and say "wow this area is beautiful!!!". That's my take on it anyway. Haha.

Everyone will have a self heal and dodging will play an important part of combat too.

Yeah, from what Arena Net has said, the game has been designed on some pretty outdated gaming PCs and still plays well on them, although there will be some graphics bells and whistles to reward someone with a better system.

They aren't close to determining final system specs, but I have a feeling that any new system you build with a some what decent video chipset will be more than up for the task. Many low end, current generation video cards notably outperform high end cards from three years ago. Some high end (though cheap for the price premium) integrated video chip sets today also perform fairly well.

The only caveat for someone who hasn't built a PC in a while is that today's video cards tend to require befier power supplies than in the past. Just don't skimp there and you should be able to put together new game systems that significantly outperform systems that are a few years old with out a high expense. There is a lot of mid range hardware that offers great "bang for the buck" today.

Originally posted by Roche7
No flying mounts is awesome and I hope they keep travle from being to fast as I have found this always seems to ruin MMOs for me as soon as near instant travel to everywhere becomes an option.

There will be teleport travel. There will be waypoints spread out all over the world. You'll have to travel on foot to each waypoint one time to discover it. Then, for a fee, you'll be able to teleport instantly to any waypoint you've previously unlocked. I suppose those of us who enjoy slower travel and the immersion and exploration it allows can just choose to not use the teleports. :D

about the scaling of content. While everything will tend to auto scale to the amount of players doing the content, if you want to give yourself a challenge then do a 5 man dungeon with only 3-4 people. Dungeons stay at the same level of difficulty for 5 people, but they can be completed by 3-4 man if you and your buds are skilled enough to do so. 

Originally posted by Ablestron

about the scaling of content. While everything will tend to auto scale to the amount of players doing the content, if you want to give yourself a challenge then do a 5 man dungeon with only 3-4 people. Dungeons stay at the same level of difficulty for 5 people, but they can be completed by 3-4 man if you and your buds are skilled enough to do so. 

 

From everything I've heard, the dungeons will be a big challenge for 5 people. I don't think 3-4 would have much luck. The story mode will take 5 reasonably competent players on their game...the explorable mode will take 5 excellent players working in perfect concert. We've heard about several play tests where groups were wiping over and over. Dungeons are designed to be very challenging 5-person content.