Guild Wars 2

Evidence of the corruption!

Jerus.4350:

That game took Meta’s and shook them up like they were martini’s with fresh ideas and design. “ohh you all like DPS, well here’s a raid/mission that punishes DPS with extra challenge, still think you can handle it” “ohh you pulled it off, bravo, we’ll try harder next time.”

The dev who was in charge of it was a genius of design, an avid player who had just joined the team a few months prior and simply understood the playerbase better than anyone I’ve ever met. As an intern during a beta process the players petitioned to hire him fulltime because he was kittening awesome haha. I guessa after that reception you have to follow through with quality.

dreams

Jerus.4350:

Iris Ng.9845:

Jerus, Lord of the AFK Realm.

<3, it’s a dark realm of bitter pessimism, only the strong shall endure it and come out with any sanity, or is it insanity? I forget at times.

It still amazes me that you bother to log in just to AFK into the netherworld xD Dem login rewards. So worth it :P

Reminds me of something a guildie said recently: “Character select is the new Lion’s Arch.”

deSade.9437:

Wow, jesus and hipstermania are wedding? I’m inviting myself. I love weddings: plenty of alcohol and lots of opportunity to go crazy!

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I actually followed along with that. deSade’s madness is spreading.

Studies elder scroll

wauwi.9162:

Man, crossregion-grouping would be awesome!
The ping wouldn’t, though…

This is why Purple Miku is my hero. Lives in NA, and kicks kitten on EU servers. kitten made it so I can never use ping as an excuse :P

Jerus.4350:

I was just commenting to a friend I wish I had more buddies to play with who were of the same mindset as me. So many are polarized, either extreme meta including composition, build and strat, or the flip side of total PHIW.

<3 ARES. Core group ran meta (minus strats like IB chaining…), and PHIWs always welcome for flavor.

It’s a kitten ed shame you weren’t around before the dungeon scene died.

In other news, I just played my first Arah since Lupi broke. Sold the duo for 7g/slot, up from 3 when I stopped playing. Hurrah for dungeon negligence! \o/

EcoRI.9273:

too bad twitch/reddit and youtube weren’t as popular back then. Imagine the kitten storm gw1 would’ve had for their pve?!

Good point. Ever think if there weren’t so many videos showing how good a person could be at the game we wouldn’t have an anti-zerker thread every other day?

I think you forgot that PvE is scripted and you can’t be good at it.

Wethospu.6437:

I think you forgot that PvE is scripted and you can’t be good at it.

There sure are a lot that are bad though

EcoRI.9273:

Everything except for corner stacking and that ac story sounded like legit reasons to me.

So you think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is an exploit? You agree with him that chain immobilize is an exploit? You think managing defiant through team coordinator to land powerful CC is an exploit? You think use stability, reflects and aegis to prevent cc, block projectiles and stop big hits is an exploit?

Face it, the guy barely makes a coherent point and is basically been carrying a 2 year case of BM because his condi-Necro build is garbage. He is just a more verbose variant of the people who want the game changed radically so his special snowflake build is meta.

Wethospu.6437:

I think you forgot that PvE is scripted and you can’t be good at it.

I thought the general perception is that if you can solo lupi off wall (and naked), you are good at this game. Oh, wait… it’s Wethospu who says otherwise… I’m so confused now. What’s about PvEsportz. Doesn’t it count as being good at PvE? Oh boys… hmmmmm

Jerus.4350:

Wethospu.6437:

I think you forgot that PvE is scripted and you can’t be good at it.

There sure are a lot that are bad though

You remind me of someone who said he was bad at History during middle school. Then I said: Come on, you are only bad at memorizing!!!

Simon says “DODGE!”.

wauwi.9162:

Simon says “DODGE!”.

But I have no dodge button, only W+1

Iris Ng.9845:

Jerus.4350:

Wethospu.6437:

I think you forgot that PvE is scripted and you can’t be good at it.

There sure are a lot that are bad though

You remind me of someone who said he was bad at History during middle school. Then I said: Come on, you are only bad at memorizing!!!

I was always good at history!

But, yeah I’m a baddy in this game because while it is scripted there is still a dice roll on which attack it will be in many cases. I have terrible reaction times, clumsy fingers, and horrible eyesight. So really I shouldn’t be a gamer, but hey, I try.

NikeEU.7690:

EcoRI.9273:

Everything except for corner stacking and that ac story sounded like legit reasons to me.

So you think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is an exploit? You agree with him that chain immobilize is an exploit? You think managing defiant through team coordinator to land powerful CC is an exploit? You think use stability, reflects and aegis to prevent cc, block projectiles and stop big hits is an exploit?

Face it, the guy barely makes a coherent point and is basically been carrying a 2 year case of BM because his condi-Necro build is garbage. He is just a more verbose variant of the people who want the game changed radically so his special snowflake build is meta.

I think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is lame. I would prefer to have a button that does it automatically for me. Kind of like what they did in gw1 with the 4weapon sets.(Build/gear templates please anet) Icebow 5 is lame, I personally think alot of hard CCs don’t work well in this game. There are some exceptions like Mai Trin when not cheesing with stealth. That fight has a good implementation of smart use of the hard CCs currently in the game. I don’t like that guardians can get over 40seconds of constant projectile protection. It is pretty passive play which goes counter to the active playstyle of gw2. I would prefer a lower duration lower cooldown system where players have to react to the projectiles to reflect them.

His main argument was that berserker is too dominant and too good and that nuking bosses down in under 5seconds is lame. That I agree with.

EcoRI.9273:

NikeEU.7690:

EcoRI.9273:

Everything except for corner stacking and that ac story sounded like legit reasons to me.

So you think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is an exploit? You agree with him that chain immobilize is an exploit? You think managing defiant through team coordinator to land powerful CC is an exploit? You think use stability, reflects and aegis to prevent cc, block projectiles and stop big hits is an exploit?

Face it, the guy barely makes a coherent point and is basically been carrying a 2 year case of BM because his condi-Necro build is garbage. He is just a more verbose variant of the people who want the game changed radically so his special snowflake build is meta.

I think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is lame. I would prefer to have a button that does it automatically for me. Kind of like what they did in gw1 with the 4weapon sets.(Build/gear templates please anet)

Sure, they should make it so you have two combat sets (or 1 if youre an Ele/Engie) and the others useable out of combat to make it more elegant. But the system is not the issue he brought up, he think’s its an exploit to swap weapons quickly to prestack 25 might with a single Ele, for example. He is wrong, it’s a moronic point.

Icebow 5 is lame, I personally think alot of hard CCs don’t work well in this game.

Ice Bow 5 wouldn’t be lame if bosses in downscaled instances didn’t die so fast. Though I am annoyed by HP sponges with no mechanics, you have to admit that Ginva the Butcher is a boss where freeze, strip, freeze, strip, freeze is a challenging and fun tactic. I will grant you at AC and so on when you kill bosses before they do a single mechanics it’s not great. But at level 80 it’s much more reasonable display of skill and coordination. but thats more of a downscaling issue than an Ice bow issue.

I don’t like that guardians can get over 40seconds of constant projectile protection. It is pretty passive play which goes counter to the active playstyle of gw2. I would prefer a lower duration lower cooldown system where players have to react to the projectiles to reflect them.

Luckily double wall is soon to be a thing of the past, and hopefully the new content will require fights to be very mobile so standing on one static spot behind a wall for a long time is less than useful. But again, using reflects vs projectiles isn’t an exploit it’s just using a powerful skill to hard counter a powerful mechanic.

Nemesis is fairly disingenuous in that he shows Lupi wall spoit as an example of all reflects being exploits, but he fails to show the dozens of other dungeon encounters where reflects are perfectly reasonable responses to the challenge of the boss.

His main argument was that berserker is too dominant and too good and that nuking bosses down in under 5seconds is lame. That I agree with.

Again, that is a low level downscaling issue. Even when bosses take 5 minutes to kill berserker is fine. The nuking them down in 5 seconds with berserker is a kittened argument. Soldier’s is 40% worse DPS than Berserker. those 5 second bosses would die in 7 seconds with Soldiers builds. That’s not any more challenging. So clearly it has nothing to do with gear and everything to do with down scaling.

NikeEU.7690:

EcoRI.9273:

His main argument was that berserker is too dominant and too good and that nuking bosses down in under 5seconds is lame. That I agree with.

Again, that is a low level downscaling issue. Even when bosses take 5 minutes to kill berserker is fine. The nuking them down in 5 seconds with berserker is a kittened argument. Soldier’s is 40% worse DPS than Berserker. those 5 second bosses would die in 7 seconds with Soldiers builds. That’s not any more challenging. So clearly it has nothing to do with gear and everything to do with down scaling.

Which means, that with proper downscaling, zerker would even be better then and the differences between zerker and anything else would raise from “abyssmal” to “several lightyears” and people tired of the zerker meta would be even more bored of it.

PHIWs are being attracted by nemes—-count chocula’s name as moths are attracted to lights… spreading over my beloved general ramb—discussion?
KILL IT, KILL IT WITH FIRE!
…
You kill it, I’ll be over there drinking my beer. Here. /drops flamethrower kit
Be good and I might even initiate you to some of my secrets…

It’s not just double wall Nike, Wall->Shield->Wall is pretty insane projectile coverage. Mesmer is pretty great too but at least it takes precise timing, more actions and a bit of luck (kitten phantasms being killed).

And the damage obtainable even without wallsploit on Lupi certainly seems wrong, and worth saying that all reflects should be looked at to prevent such occurrences.

But, yeah, downscaling… I was so happy when they nerfed it that one patch, then people QQ’d hard as kitten and they reverted it calling it a bug, I was disappointed.

look who i found

Bored? Check this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/No-Trinity-and-Maybe-Trinity

The first sentence is my favourite.

Minigrump.4961:

look who i found

Karma, no less :}

Minigrump.4961:

look who i found

No. Oh god no. Why is he outside? Is he going to follow us into other dungeons? Then again, could be Varra.

@wauwi: Read half the OP. Closed thread. Welp.

EcoRI.9273:

too bad twitch/reddit and youtube weren’t as popular back then.

I’m not sure if this is the reason. I can remember watching videos about how to boonprot. I still got one boonprot vid here which was made by iQ before 04.2006.
Farmvideos were quite popular since farming required some knowledge about build, skillusage, running route to pull all 40 enemies at the same time, etc.
There were no streams, so this might be a huge difference.
But I remember watching lots of tutorial or those frosty mass-sync-dancing videos.

Maybe its because Anet had another schedule back in these days.
Guild Wars was released in April 2005, Factions in April 2006, Nightfall in Oktober 2006, EoTN in August 2007.
If I remember correct there were ~ monthly updates which changed many skills dramatically. So maybe this kept players busy and they weren’t developing SCs so fast. Or they didnt get known so fast since nearly nobody was doing his 100. dungeonrun.
Imagine GW2 would have 4 expansions now which each would’ve the same amount of content basic GW2 has. Or regular skill/trait reworks which would change many builds.
Don’t think “speedruns” or meta/stack discussions would be such a thing. Its a bit a sign of boredom.
Even terribad players like me start to improve equip, playstyle, build and are doing “fast” dungeonruns.

Some famous Jack McDaniels videos seems to be from ~2006.
2007 club elona (his third video?):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki-lNeK9xnk&list=PL16FAAA4C36831040&index=6
(to end the retro:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWCTlxEp6Ds).

If gw1’s pvp were out now, it’d be even more grand.
Grand. Past.
/sigh
Instead I’m stuck with… this. Not even the grace of splitting pve/pvp, they’re giving me.

Whatevs, I’m back to dai for today.
Fought for Josie’s hand and won! The crowd cheering, the swords flashing, my love running to me and… scolding me like I were a brat.
/very awkwardly romantic sigh

Talyn.3295:

I was just about to say this. I remember the first time I did this in Guild Wars 1. I was like, “OMG, what is this foul sorcery, that was supposed to take hours!”

My very first Underworld full clear took just under 8 hours in a full 8 man group.

1x W/Me – IW stance tank
2x E/Me – Arcane Echo Meteor (one with Obs Flesh)
1x Mo/W – Word of Healing
1x Mo/Me – RC Prot (+ Protective Bond/Life Attunement)
2x R/Me – Echo Trappers (one with EoE)
1x N/x – SS

Back then there was no Dhuum so clearing all the shrine quests was…anti climactic. This was before 55hp monk which was around September 2005? Later I did use a Obs Flesh terra in place of the Warrior which was just straight up better for dealing with the split play on Four Horsemen.

About 5-6 years later my last Underworld full clear took less than 1 hour in a split team of 2x 2 players and 4x solo Shadowform E/As in a variant of what is now known as Terraway. I mainly played the Obs Flesh Terra or E/Mo ether renewal prot/infuse.

Terra groups were quite demanding of players and most would not take risks with people they didn’t know or had not played with before. If you spent a few months away from the game, you probably wouldn’t be able to get into a Terra pug.

GW1 was far, far more elitist than anything you will ever see in GW2. Speedrunning practically defined the PvE meta after Shadowform. At that time, team comp was shifting away from clearing content sequentially in an 8 man group to soloing/duoing content concurrently. In DoA, they were doing that 3 man thing with the famine ranger. I never got into DoA so I don’t remember how it worked.

In Underworld, damage immunity/avoidance was always better than mitigation. Damage reflection was king (Sliver Armour). Within a year of release, nobody wanted to do 6+ hour runs to fail on Four Horsemen or Servants of Grenth.

I really think Anet need to expand the dungeons and make them more vast in size; maybe something close to the map size of malchor’s Leap, or at the very least the size of FoW and UW were in GW1.

DP Should be brought back although not in the 15%, 30%, 45%, 60% death penalty form whereby your stats were hindered each time you died, but rather in the form of the hearts vessel depicted in Super Adventure Box. In other words if you’re downed you lose a heart, you can still be revived, although if all party members lose their said hearts and are downed then game over and everyone in the current instance is teleported outside of the dungeon. However in order to regain a heart you would have to kill a certain number of foes maybe 30-50, or its subtracted from your current kill count; which doesn’t appeal to me at all.

Also there should be a kill count to mitigate speed runs, whereby each/every mob/individual npc you kill within said dungeons would increase the amount of rewards inside a rewards chest. The chest would have their own RNG system and be solely based upon the kill counts. The items, and etc that is within said chest can only be obtained within the specified dungeon.

Example: if you kill 100 Ascalon npc’s; which could be called Ascalon souls or whatever, by the end of the dungeon you would receive a level one chest. 200 a level 2 and so on up to maybe a tier 5 or 6 (500-600 enemies total)

I would suggest there be multiple rewards chest and that their only effected by an individuals kill count “until opened”.

In terms of the current path system, or quest system I would suggest keeping them the same, but expanding them by being able to complete multiple quest in the same instance, and receiving the 1 gold + 90 tokens at the end of said quest.

If a player is accidentally disconnected from the server allow their kill count to be placed on file, or be tracked similar to the score boards depicted in PVP ( example: get to 500 points to win), so if they log back into the same instance they’re able to start where they had left off.

Increase the number of Npc’s, allow them to have more complex patrols, add puzzles and traps to the dungeon that would discourage bots so you can get rid of “DR”.

Add trophies or points of interest that could be used to advance the new legendary precursor crafting system, or in other ways that would immerse the player into the game.

Add more lore and scenery to the dungeon that is interchangeable so its a new experience every time you enter.

In terms of the boss fights in said dungeon allow them to be worth a certain number of points or kill counts similar to the guild lord in Stronghold/ or the “Legacy Of The Foefire” map. Maybe each boss could be worth anywhere from 15-50 point, or kill counts.

australian upload speed sucks. this is a 6 minute video btw

Minigrump.4961:

australian upload speed sucks. this is a 6 minute video btw

But you have kangaroos…

kitten, I can’t stop thinking about the cake I have in the fridge. Still 1hr to go but I want to eat it now :/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Meta-s-and-exploits-are-killing-this-game

Figured this might be mildly entertaining. Never seen such a disconnected rant before. “There are lots of exploits in the game that should be fixed: wall at lupi, cm… and now dps is a prevalent meta and classes are being excluded!” Uhm…. huh?

30 more mins to The Final Moments of a Poor Cake.

Deleted my female guardian and first character Aurora; currently re-rolling a Charr in her place.

Bring on the tides of war! Charr!

My, my. Such a plot twist in Fairy Tail. Who knew there was a second Dragneel?

winterchillz.2564:

Deleted my female guardian and first character Aurora; currently re-rolling a Charr in her place.

please remove yourself from the game

winterchillz.2564:

Deleted my female guardian and first character Aurora; currently re-rolling a Charr in her place.

Bring on the tides of war! Charr!

I’m making a male asura thief. Death of human female meta incoming!.

Talyn.3295:

EcoRI.9273:

too bad twitch/reddit and youtube weren’t as popular back then. Imagine the kitten storm gw1 would’ve had for their pve?!

Good point. Ever think if there weren’t so many videos showing how good a person could be at the game we wouldn’t have an anti-zerker thread every other day?

I think there will be less complaints for sure. Speed is all relative, if people believe that 30 minute AC runs are normal, they wouldn’t be complaining in my opinion.

maha.7902:

please remove yourself from the game

You’re just mad that we wiped the floor with you 200 years ago at Ascalon.

EcoRI.9273:

I’m making a male asura thief. Death of human female meta incoming!.

Hype!

By the way, Eco, your trolling has been out of bounds lately, totally entertaining lol

hard mode dungeons!

What I don’t like is the discrepancy between the loot tables of dungeons vs. fractals. Fractals you have to work 3x as much to get less loot. Anet needs to totally revamp the loot drops to reflect actual work it takes to do the runs. Tequatl ver. 2.0 requires coordination of PCs to have victory for descent (but boring loot). Triple Trouble loot table should be 3x what it is (reason why no one does it anymore). The marionette fight was a very fun interesting fight (best I felt in the game). But all these illustrate the same MMO mentality of how fights are designed in these games.

SOAPBOX time: I wish MMOs would incorporate battle tactics at the individual NPC level so how they interact in groups would be unpredictable. Why aren’t mobs smart enough to know not to run blindly around a corner to a waiting stacked group of PCs? It amazes me how the AI of MMOs is sorely lacking on NPC mob strategies. Most of the AI goes to the mechanics of the fight requiring PCs to learn the process to win and once done it becomes rote. It’s like you apply a backward chaining AI methodology to a scheduling problem when a simple hill climber method works so much better.

I wish MMOs would make individuals in mobs have different battle sense and the combination of the NPC mob group results in more unpredictable fights, not an overall mechanic people learn to exploit weaknesses. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the world boss would consider zerg composition and change it’s tactics based on that. This is pretty easy to do, why Anet and others have not incorporated this capability in their games escapes me.

Also, the other thing I don’t understand is the fact being in combat slows you down. It should be just the opposite. It’s probably Anet’s way to compensate for the dodge mechanic.

Here are a few explanations of why the AI is done in certain ways. Not saying the AI can’t be improved, because it definitely could, but this will at least make you understand design choices a bit better.

1. In GW1 the meta strategy was to ball all the enemies up around the tank and nuke them with AOE like Spiteful Spirit (to name one). When hardmode came out they introduces new AI that ran out of AOE. Essentially, all that change did was make certain skills unusable. AOE skills like Firestorm or Spiteful Spirit or Ray of Judgement became unusable. Those skills may not even have existed. People defaulted to other means of DPS that didn’t trigger the anti-AOE ai. People switched from one set of OP skills to another. Since all AI is inherently limited, people found the new limits and defeated the new system. the lesson is that they made a big change that accomplished very little other than nerfing an entire set of skills. If anet wants to nerf all AOE skills then fine, but I suspect nerfing a bunch of skills indirectly isn’t the goal of any AI change.

2. PvE mobs that dodge, evade, or kite are inherently annoying. You said it yourself, you don’t like going slower in combat. When enemy mobs snare you it’s annoying because it very rarely means you’re going to die, it just delays the inevitable. By the same token there are plenty of mobs in GW2 that have built in evade (Kohler, CM archers etc) and they are simply annoying rather than fun. Let’s say a mob dodges 1/3rd of all attacks. OK, well how is that any different from just having 1/3rd more HP when all is said and done? It really isn’t. The end result is the same but it’s much more annoying for a player to miss with his skills than to land with his skills even if kill times are identical. People playing the game like their big flashy attacks and spells. They like seeing big numbers. If my choice was a boss who evaded every third attack and one with 33% more HP I’ll take the second one any day.

3. I think the biggest problem with the trash mobs in this game is that the mobs aren’t balanced parties except in Arah and Silverwastes. When you encounter a bunch of spiders in the open world, they are all the same: poison inflicting and bite attacks and the occasional immobilize. In arah the Elite Risen mobs run in mixed packs with the ranger, mesmer, ele, warriors etc. They have more powerful versions of the player’s skills, lot’s of AOE attacks and are very difficult for unprepared players. That’s pretty much the level of mob difficulty we should be getting in challenging content moving forward. In GW1 Nightfall they did a good job of introducing the mixed packs of mobs in the open world and as a result Nightfall had the best open world PvE of the original game. I think there is a good lesson there.

4. Lastly, your “battle sense” comment is very similar to people who want PvE mobs that behave more like PvP players. I think this comes from a few misunderstandings. At the mechanical level, as I explained before, dodges, evasions, kiting and snares are annoying to fight in PvE. Not many of the people advocating for more pvp-like combat in pve have thought through the implications of that from a fun perspective. Next, you have a big issue: properly balanced PvP fights are close affairs. If you are equally matched to your opponents you will only win 50% of your fights. Nobody wants to play PvE where you only beat the mobs at each encounter 50% of the time. In reality, I don’t think this is even possible to design but in theory it doesn’t sound particularly fun.

The last criticism of that thought is that wanting more pvp-like combat comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of why people play PvE at all levels. Sure a person with a WvW or PvP background might wish pve was more like PvP since it would relate the gamemode to their skillset and the combat that they like. However, from a game design perspective this is no what most PvE’ers want. PvE players want to feel powerful: big attacks, big spells, flashy animations etc. PvE players want the mobs they fight to feel significantly more powerful than themselves. For a PvPer the best fights are ones where you fight an opponent of equal skill level that is like a cat and mouse chessmatch. In PvE the best fights are a group coming together to utilize synergies to defeat epic scale powerful bosses, whose mechanics do not look like human players in any regard. I think if more of the people making requests for “more pvp-like combat” understood what the audience wanted they would understand why their request makes little sense.

NikeEU.7690:

Snip.

Well said, To bad more people don’t get this.

Aye very well said. I was gonna post stuff, and well, you covered it all I like the third point very much though.

Exactly like the improved accursed mobs in winds of kryta or whatever the name was in gw1. They used a pvp-based skillbar with lots of synergies among the builds and were capable of wrecking an entire party with a spike. They were much stronger and much funnier to fight than regular mobs.

Found a super awesome high resolution painting of Rytlock. Now gonna turn it into a render (I think that’s the name of it?) and use it for a t-shirt.

CHAAAAAAAAARR

Minigrump.4961:

look who i found

Who is that?

only the most cancerous NPC in all of GW2 :-D

winterchillz.2564:

Found a super awesome high resolution painting of Rytlock. Now gonna turn it into a render (I think that’s the name of it?) and use it for a t-shirt.

CHAAAAAAAAARR

Yeah, it can be called render.

Oh, I’m probably going to play a bit again in a few days. Anything I should be prepared for/any actual big dungeon/fractal changes I might have missed after not having played for over half a year?

NPC? What? explain

forum bug

any actual big dungeon/fractal changes I might have missed

lol

Lupi’s p2/3 range attack now hits in melee. Elemental Source’s Swirler can no longer be destroyed thanks to screwed up hitboxes on “object” targets. That’s it I think.

maha.7902:

any actual big dungeon/fractal changes I might have missed

lol

I know, I know. lol

@Jerus: Ah, so only annoying stuff. Thanks for the heads up

So I have to pug frequently when I do dungeons. Most of my friends have left and there are really only 3 of us left. Last night I got a warrior who felt the need to tell me after the dungeon was done that we didn’t need to stack walls anymore since the FGS nerf.

I am well aware of this. But since its a pug group I can’t expect everyone to know this. Many pugs still stack those corners just like way back then. And they don’t know why. I know why, but I don’t feel the need to argue everytime I pug as to why we don’t need to stack anymore.

#puglife

Sometimes if you just run at the boss they follow you. Pugs are like lemmings. ;>