One concern I have about GW2 is that if PvE content is truely challenging (which I am expecting), people will have to come to terms with the fact that they aren't as good at it as they thought they were when their gear crutch is taken away.  If I had to guess, based on my own personal experience, I'd say somewhere around 1/3 of the players are "skill deficient" but they are able to get by due to their gear.  Even the most basic and blatently obvious hazzards (like rings of death on the ground) are beyond some people's comprehension level.  And I'm not talking about people making simple mistakes... we all do that.  I'm talking about not being able to mentally process multiple things at once.  For instance, they can move, and they can shoot, but they can't do both.  Trying to process three things at once would be impossible for them to pull off.

Look at the stigma of PuG'ing dungeons.  Most people hate them, why? Because more often than not you have people who just don't measure up, and even one bad player can destory an otherwise good group.  Personally I don't think it matters whether it's a PuG or a guild group, you just tolerate the guild group (because you know the people) and keep repeating the content until the less skilled players finally get it right.

With GW2 there won't be a gear crutch to fall back on so the problem will be more pronounced.  So what then?  Will Anet have to dumb down the game so everyone can complete the content?  Will those people just have to shape up or ship out?  I'm really getting sick of devs reducing the difficulty of content and taking all of the challenge out of it just because a minority of the players can't cut it (Rift is a prime example of that)... and that's with games that DO have gear progression.  Hopefully that won't happen with GW2 since there's no monthly subscription income they have to be worried about losing if they don't cator to the lowest common denominator.

Agreed, because of that, GW2 wont have the playerbase of the other hand holding MMO's.

But thats isnt a bad thing.

There will always be people who suck, in DE other people can carry them but in dungeons doubt that is possible which is fine.

Not every1 should be able to finish dungeon, afterall most people in WoW ( vanila/TBC while i played) or other games never experineced/finished hardest raids.

I hope it gets harder. I like difficult games. Makes winning worth something. If its too easy, youll just get bored(SWTOR)

Having the difficulty where 80% of your playerbase can see the content sounds like a good idea.

What's the point if you spend money/time that only 5% of your playerbase see/experience?

As a designer/programmer, I would want users to use my stuff.

If some PvE content is truely challenging let's hope ANET can resist the temptation to simplify it so that "everyone" gets a chance to master it.

IMO one of the larger mistakes Blizzard did was to keep simplifying the content every release so that just about any Tom, Dick or Harry could get through it, even if it did keep those folks paying for a sub. (at the cost of players looking for more challenging title moving on)

I agree, not all content should be completed by all folks, some should be so darn hard a causal player with poor hand eye like myself just isn't going to make it.

Now, the ratio is important, if too much of the gameplay is like that, you'll end up driving away too many customers, which might be important in the sale of future expansions.

ArenaNet has always had this carebear mentality when it came to pve. They gave us hard mode but they also gave use pve only skills that were way too powerful. I am hoping it is not like that again. If it is I'll probably get bored and look for something else to play.

'Content exclusion' by making things difficult is going away as there is very little reason to exclude content from your players.

More and more MMOs are introducing some sort of difficulty mechanics though which is the next step in game design.

No need to worry.

Only dungeons are difficult, but each dungeons will have a "story mode" that isn't too hard. Casual players will have a hard time getting rare gear from dungeons, but that's all.

seeing this game cater to more casual players in almost every possible aspect in this game, im quite worried if they will make this game hard :D just saying..

Originally posted by VowOfSilence

No need to worry.

Only dungeons are difficult, but each dungeons will have a "story mode" that isn't too hard. Casual players will have a hard time getting rare gear from dungeons, but that's all.

But then, they can easilly aquire less rare gear that is just as powerfull, so who cares.

On top of that most DE's are quite good to do. And players will almost win every DE, unless they up the difficulty of DE's.

Not everyone that stands in a ring sucks, some people just don't have the attention span or reflexes to move or react as required.

That being said, I don't think the whole game needs to adapt to that. I like that even as an okay player I may not see everything. Makes the rewards that much rewarding when you do get in, see, and destroy.

EDIT: added "don't"

So far the feedback gathered from BWE's is that DE is not challanging enough, especial when a huge group of players do them! I hope thats get corrected

Originally posted by jondifool

So far the feedback gathered from BWE's is that DE is not challanging enough, especial when a huge group of players do them! I hope thats get corrected

The way the game is set up, i feel even if you have 1 bad apple you could still get stuff done. it will be harder but its not like other games where if the tank or healer or cc is bad the run is over. the fact that everyone can revive also helps, and it does seem like the game is easy in the beginning and gets progresively harder, hopefully this allows for people to learn there class and game mechanics

Originally posted by Corthagath

seeing this game cater to more casual players in almost every possible aspect in this game, im quite worried if they will make this game hard :D just saying..

Casual players just means people who do not have several hours to play every day, not ppl that want easy stuff.

Originally posted by jondifool

So far the feedback gathered from BWE's is that DE is not challanging enough, especial when a huge group of players do them! I hope thats get corrected

To be fair, I remember hearing that Dynamic Events scale up to X number of players for the most part. So an event that would only scale up to... say 10 players, would definitely be easier when 15 players are taking part. I remember hearing one event specifically being said that it can scale from 5-10 up to 100 players.

But that's something I'm sure ArenaNet is looking into. You don't want the Dynamic Events being too difficult though, and that there is the kicker. You have to strike a balance of fair difficulty for the minimum number of players, then ensure it scales fairly up to it's cap.

There's only two main ways of increasing difficulty in an MMO (or any game for that matter).

1) Increase Enemy Aggression/power. Whether its replacing the Charr canon fodder with Elite Flame Legion Warriors, or ramping up the AI to be more merciless with its skills (or altering its skills a little), you increase the quality of enemies,

or

2) Increase Enemy Numbers. Throw more at them. And then some more.

And they are limited to just how far they can scale these things, specially with the latter. Far too many enemies spawned can drag down areas. While with the first one, you can only make the enemy so much more powerful before it's completely unfair, no one would want to do an event where walking into it is practically signing your death warrent, because the number of players present has boosted the enemy strength up to the point of one-shotting everything within a five mile radius. No one wants to deal with Foe Fire personified.

I'd also like to add that it seems like the current beta is limited. All the footage is probably maxing out around lvl 35-40. That leaves plenty of harsher Dynamic Events we haven't seen. And far as I'm aware of, we've yet to see the Shatterer or the Undead Dragon fights pop up in the Press Beta footage. Both of those fights seem to promise a much more "challenging" battle from what I've seen and read.

The non-WvW pvp matches will be dominated by skill players, but that's the end of it. One's lack of skill in WvW or in open-world events is not going to be a determining consideration of any kind. It's not like your ability to participate in such "end-game" content is being regulated by other players who judge your skill as lacking.

In other games, you only got into "end game" content if a very elite group judged you worthy and allowed you access.  So you would have to have great gear to be judged worthy. There is no such "skill judgement" equivalent mechanism in GW2; everyone gets to experience the end game content.  Everyone.

Originally posted by Meleagar

The non-WvW pvp matches will be dominated by skill players, but that's the end of it. One's lack of skill in WvW or in open-world events is not going to be a determining consideration of any kind. It's not like your ability to participate in such "end-game" content is being regulated by other players who judge your skill as lacking.

In other games, you only got into "end game" content if a very elite group judged you worthy and allowed you access.  So you would have to have great gear to be judged worthy. There is no such "skill judgement" equivalent mechanism in GW2; everyone gets to experience the end game content.  Everyone.

I'm sure everyone will be able to "experiencing the content", but that doesn't mean they'll be able to finish it.  And it's not really an "end game" concept.

If "everyone" will be able to complete the content without a gear crutch then that would mean the content in GW2 will have to be so easy a child could do it.  I've played with plenty of skill deficient people in other MMO's who were only able to complete an encounter (where they actually had to contribute) because they were over-geared for it.  Supposedly that can't happen in GW2.

Also, in a typical MMO there are certain roles/classes that cator to people with less skill.  The ones who can stand in the back and just pew pew, for example.  From the dungeon footage I've seen for GW2, that doesn't appear to be an option.  Everyone looks to be constantly moving around to avoid attacks and hazzards while executing skills.

Just look at some of the gameplay videos for GW2.  It's easy to spot the less skilled players because they just stand there and take a beating while playing whac-a-mole with their hotkeys.  They die often.

Originally posted by Grotar89

There will always be people who suck, in DE other people can carry them but in dungeons doubt that is possible which is fine.

Not every1 should be able to finish dungeon, afterall most people in WoW ( vanila/TBC while i played) or other games never experineced/finished hardest raids.

this pretty much sums up my thoughts. 

Originally posted by Dragonantis

Agreed, because of that, GW2 wont have the playerbase of the other hand holding MMO's.

But thats isnt a bad thing.

I am sorry but are you serious? GW2 is as causl as it gets and even though i dislike 'hand holding' term GW2 has plenty of it. Only because you don't see NPC with quest markers on their head doesn't mean that GW2 is any less guided than other themepak MMOS.