Instanced content done right...

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

Somehow gw2 seems to get “outdoor” and larger scale content a BIT more right, but fails to offer any decent “indoor” and small group content.. See spvp too…

If you are someone with access to the chain of command or you are chain of command or one of the people working on gw2 in some capacity then pass this along…

In addition to better “indoor” content, you also need good professions because that is THE root of all these problems… We been better variety and better defined roles and more meaningful and balanced profession things…

oh, and difficulty scaling too for all “indoor” content…

Better rewards as well…

Let’s all learn something new today shall we…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J0mGwJv0kBE

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jlqaIjfntW4

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pid2yhH9EDQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQ4oHOGD-E

Here is some open world raid content too… A lot of mass fun…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkfvkJeYKk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gfTsiQpbcQk

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.

(edited by Swagger.1459)

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

I’m not sure you’ve gotten your point accross.

First off, linking videos to a different MMO will be widly confusing to people who have never played that MMO. I for one never played City of Heroes, so all I got from those videos was:“They sure love bright flashy neon colors in that game.” The only people who would understand are players familiar with that game, but those already know about how these things were better.

A short explenation of what you aimed to show would have been helpful.

Second, City of Heroes went bottums up. In order for players, developers or anyone to take advice from things that game did right, you might want to explain why things were good. Then explain why those good things had nothing to do with the game going bust. There are quite a few past MMOs that had great ideas implemented but didn’t survive. Still, explaining why something was good/bad goes a long way of people not just going:“That game went the way of the Dodo. No way we are taking any suggestions from there.”

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

I think I explained enough with the words I chose.

Their “profession” were varied and fun and supported good gameplay. Instance content was far superior as well. Hand and hand they were fun and far better than any instance content we have here and far superior in the all things “profession” department as well…

Players are free to research as well…

I’ll pull up some videos of gw2 instanced content for a more side by side viewing comparison…

I’m thinking most gamers will get the drift without having to write a novel…

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

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Posted by: SirMoogie.9263

SirMoogie.9263

Their “profession” were varied and fun and supported good gameplay.

Were they all capable of building for support, damage, and control in interesting combinations or were there specific professions for specific group roles (e.g., healer, DPS, tank)? If the latter that’s not going to come to GW 2, Arena Net wants all professions to have the tools necessary for overcoming encounters. 1 This has been their stated goal since they were marketing the game.

What makes you think CoH professions were more varied and fun? What does “good gameplay” look like to you? And no the videos don’t immediately strike me as good game play, and rather look like a chaotic mess (which is what many MMOs look like when you have more than a handful of players together)

1 – Whether or not they’ve achieved this is another matter.

Instance content was far superior as well.

What made it far superior?

I’m thinking most gamers will get the drift without having to write a novel…

Add me to the list of players who don’t see what the fuss is about.

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

Yeah, professions were far more versatile and flexible and self sufficient in many ways and had great individual roles and team roles and hybrid roles and you name it…

Take a look here… http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

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Posted by: Wartna.8671

Wartna.8671

Yeah i 100% agree with you man.
There is a ton of games which have better stuff than GW2 atm.
Just do some research, take a look; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

No but really… Wat? Never played City of Heroes, no idea what i am looking at.

I’m thinking most gamers will get the drift without having to write a novel…

Add me to the list of players who don’t see what the fuss is about.

+1

Far Shiverpeaks
Kalevala [KALE]

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

I think I explained enough with the words I chose.

Their “profession” were varied and fun and supported good gameplay. Instance content was far superior as well. Hand and hand they were fun and far better than any instance content we have here and far superior in the all things “profession” department as well…

Players are free to research as well…

I’ll pull up some videos of gw2 instanced content for a more side by side viewing comparison…

I’m thinking most gamers will get the drift without having to write a novel…

Fun is subjective and so is “varied” and “good gameplay”. I’m not defending instanced content in GW2 – but honestly you’ve only showed us your preference here.

Why was CoH better at instanced content?

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

I’m pretty sure developers are aware of coh and I’m sure for many of them it’s a trip down memory lane.

Varied isn’t subjective at all when it comes to classes/professions/archetypes… Follow the link and look at all the detailed information within.

Videos were to show the fast paced nature of things, team play and the feeling of gameplay, and none of the developers could argue that the game didn’t do certain things really well. City captured the “heroic feeling” with “professions” and the content built around them… GW2 strives to make you feel like a “hero” with our characters, but leaves a whole lot to be desired…

Heck, even a lot of player created instanced content through the game’s “mission architect” feature was more exciting than most instanced content here.

That game was mostky instanced content yet no shortage of players playing them. I never had an issue putting together a team for any end game “dungeon” or “raid” instanced content… Yet here look at the state of dungeons… Look at how uninspiring fractals are to most… Look at this one very uninspiring raid that I guaranteed doesn’t have a healthy participation rate…

Do some research guys if you want, it’s all right there and explains things better… Watch the videos and look some up and find some instanced content videos in comparion from here…

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.

(edited by Swagger.1459)

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Posted by: PopeUrban.2578

PopeUrban.2578

CoH was a great game, and the reason it went bottom up wasn’t due to failing player population, but more to do with an absolutely ridiculous F2P scheme that did nothing to bring in new players, and seriously alienated existing players. The switch to F2P, and how badly they handled it basically killed the game in stead of having the intended effect of pulling in new players.

As for balance, I agree that CoH had really excellent mechanical character development. However, it was also based on a hard class/role system that is unlike GW2.

For those that didn’t play it, basically, it worked this way. You chose a class (archetype) from among broad categories like “melee DPS, Ranged DPS, Support, Tank, Pet class, Stealth DPS, Control” and so on.

From there, you chose a primary and secondary set of powers. For example, The blaster (ranged DPS) chose a primary line of ranged DPS powers, and a secondary line of control powers. These lines (called powersets) Were generally themed around a central idea. For example, you could choose to be a blaster that took fire dps powers and gadgets for control powers, or fire/fire, or Assault rifle/wind, or rifle/gadgets, etc.

Those powersets were often shared among classes with some variations. For example, a stalker using the claws powerset had a stealth and an assasination attack, while the scrapper using claws had more sustain powers in those slots, but the rest of the powers were generally the same.

From there as you leveled you also had the option of “power pools” which were little mini-classes of 4 powers each that were avaliable to all classes. These came in various flavors, and stuff like travel abilities, and general buffs and limited damage skills for things like acrobatics, athletics, etc.

Rather than gear, you chose to invest slots in your powers, and you didn’t have slots to fully slot out every power you had access to. You filled these slots with enhancements, so if you had a power you wanted to be extremely accurate, you could slot it and add a bnuch of acc enhancements to it, or in stead enhance the damage, or control elements, etc. Later they added crafted enhancements where you could add sets of enhancements to powers for unique set bonuses, or single unique enhancements to do things like adding a DoT to powers that didn’t have one and so on.

Equipment didn’t exist, as it was completely replaced by the enhancements system, and in stead (being a superhero game) your apperance was completely up to you to determine.

It allowed a great deat of build freedom, but was not without its problems, however, it still worked on a more trinity style system than that found in GW2. The best way to describe their relationship is that GW2 is a lot like playing CoH if the only avaliable classes were the DPS ones. You have a little support and utility, but the bulk of your role is damage. You could build DPS classes tanky in CoH, or build them with more control, etc. but it wasn’t a game designed around taking all DPS everywhere like it is here.

PvE design in GW2 can’t be compared to other games for this reason. Class balance is more about making sure classes can build to any role and do it differently, so it’s more like if CoH had a class called “fire guy” that had access to all the fire powersets, and the powerset you chose determined your role rather than the class.

Thus, encounter balance is designed around different roles, because different classes accomplish these roles in different ways. A lot of the elite specs are built around adding options for roles that the class didn’t already have, and I imagine as we move forward we’ll see more of that design, where a class with no viable support builds gets a support elite, a class with no viable bunker gets a bunker elite, and so on, so that at some point they can be more strict with roles knowing that most players can easily spec in to a required role on any character.

Guild Master – The Papacy [POPE] (Gate of Madness)/Road Scholar for the Durmand Priory
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ

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Posted by: Harper.4173

Harper.4173

I’m pretty sure developers are aware of coh and I’m sure for many of them it’s a trip down memory lane.

Varied isn’t subjective at all when it comes to classes/professions/archetypes… Follow the link and look at all the detailed information within.

Videos were to show the fast paced nature of things, team play and the feeling of gameplay, and none of the developers could argue that the game didn’t do certain things really well. City captured the “heroic feeling” with “professions” and the content built around them… GW2 strives to make you feel like a “hero” with our characters, but leaves a whole lot to be desired…

Heck, even a lot of player created instanced content through the game’s “mission architect” feature was more exciting than most instanced content here.

That game was mostky instanced content yet no shortage of players playing them. I never had an issue putting together a team for any end game “dungeon” or “raid” instanced content… Yet here look at the state of dungeons… Look at how uninspiring fractals are to most… Look at this one very uninspiring raid that I guaranteed doesn’t have a healthy participation rate…

Do some research guys if you want, it’s all right there and explains things better… Watch the videos and look some up and find some instanced content videos in comparion from here…

Varied depends on your perception and how you choose to see the content. For example: Call of Duty’s perk and specialist system (Black ops 3) allows you to combine various elements – between different weapons, perks and specialist abilities you’d say there’s a lot of variation but on the other hand one can look at it and see “generic guy with gun”.

Same goes for MMO archetypes – you basically have either melee or range – each one being either dps, heals, support or cc. Or a mix of them.

Variation is relative.

I can’t comment on what the “feeling” of CoH was having never played it but I will agree that GW1 did a better job of making you feel like “the hero”.

In GW2 “the state of dungeons” is what it is because the developers decided to nerf them into oblivion in order to “force” people to migrate to the new Raids and reworked fractals.

There was literally a reddit post where a dev took questions – when asked if dungeon rewards were nerfed in order to deincentivize them the answer was clear: yes.

So – the state of dungeons is arguable – had the developers not wanted them to be the ghost town they are now – they could still be alive. I’m sure they would have taken things as far as taking them out of the game but there would have been too much backlash.

Fractals are in a bad spot because once again they’ve been touched and in the spirit of Anet and fractals broken even more. Why?

-Fractals were cool and unique because of the “random” element of the islands you got – they were a jump into the unknown and with the new system that’s taken away.

-Fractals were cool at release – 3 years later the same fractals over and over are bound to be “uninspiring” -we should have had 3 times the number of islands we have in game by now.

-Fractals are uninspiring because the new instabilities are just annoying – they don’t make for clever gameplay nor do they reward you for being skilled or prepared – they just make the experience more of a drag.

I believe it was phys who so nicely explained in another thread that the random nature of some instabilities just make them annoying and impossible to counter – look at “enemies apply random conditions” – enjoy your random fears.

Or all enemies explode on death – that one really isn’t a drag at all and rewards clever and skilled play.

Also on Raid “participation rate” – how do you measure “healthy” – do you mean participation out of the total gw2 players or just the 5-10% top players raids were aimed at?

Most top tier players I know in the game are raiding, have raided or plan to do so.

If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”

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Posted by: Xillllix.3485

Xillllix.3485

I’ve never heard ANYONE say the new Guild Wars 2 raids were FUN.

People say “too hard”, “easy”, “made it pass the first boss”, “don’t like it”, “done it once, never again”… But, never have I heard someone say it was “cool” or “fun” or “enjoyable” or “the best content in the game” or anything of the sort. Everyone is sort of “meh” about it, and those who repeat them seem like addicts that just want to be able to brag about having a legendary armor or being better. They don’t seem to enjoy it either, but in my huge friend list I think only 1 or 2 are actually doing them and everyone else just doesn’t give kitten about it.

I think Raids in Guild Wars 2 are just filler content to make it seem like HoT has new endgame content when in reality it doesn’t.

Meanwhile I bought Bioshock Infinite for the ridiculous price of less than a GW2 outfit (an half a dozen other games) and I’ve been AMAZED by how good it is, so I’m taking a GW2 break which may turn out to be until the next expansion if Anet can create some enjoyable instanced content.

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Posted by: cranos.5913

cranos.5913

I’ve never heard ANYONE say the new Guild Wars 2 raids were FUN.

They are fun.

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

I think I explained enough with the words I chose.

Their “profession” were varied and fun and supported good gameplay. Instance content was far superior as well. Hand and hand they were fun and far better than any instance content we have here and far superior in the all things “profession” department as well…

Players are free to research as well…

I’ll pull up some videos of gw2 instanced content for a more side by side viewing comparison…

I’m thinking most gamers will get the drift without having to write a novel…

Well you are free to futility, but this discussion got going the moment you gave more context.

Also no, YOU are trying to get a point accross. No one should have to reasearch anything unless they are hooked. Your OP was terrible and you first answer was barely any better. The moment you expect others to have to do your work for you (aka research stuff they have no vested interest in) you lose.

I’ve never heard ANYONE say the new Guild Wars 2 raids were FUN.

People say “too hard”, “easy”, “made it pass the first boss”, “don’t like it”, “done it once, never again”… But, never have I heard someone say it was “cool” or “fun” or “enjoyable” or “the best content in the game” or anything of the sort. Everyone is sort of “meh” about it, and those who repeat them seem like addicts that just want to be able to brag about having a legendary armor or being better. They don’t seem to enjoy it either, but in my huge friend list I think only 1 or 2 are actually doing them and everyone else just doesn’t give kitten about it.

I think Raids in Guild Wars 2 are just filler content to make it seem like HoT has new endgame content when in reality it doesn’t.

Meanwhile I bought Bioshock Infinite for the ridiculous price of less than a GW2 outfit (an half a dozen other games) and I’ve been AMAZED by how good it is, so I’m taking a GW2 break which may turn out to be until the next expansion if Anet can create some enjoyable instanced content.

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

(edited by Cyninja.2954)

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Posted by: Xillllix.3485

Xillllix.3485

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

I’m sorry but I’ve played the raids multiple times. Personally I don’t find it good content at all, it’s just boss fights with gimmicky mechanics and gated by annoying timers. There is no story, nothing to explore, no real motivation to keep banging your head on the wall either. It’s a shame on the endgame content that was to be found in Guild Wars 1. I think it’s a complete fail, it’s not going to keep people playing this game.

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Posted by: cranos.5913

cranos.5913

Timers are so generous they can be ignored.

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Posted by: EiLrahc.8076

EiLrahc.8076

So yeah… I clicked on the first video link and found no context whatsoever to the discussion.

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Posted by: laokoko.7403

laokoko.7403

You are telling Anet to learn something from a dead game.

Dont’ worry. 10 years from now when GW2 is dead, people will tell developer’s to learn from GW2 too.

Because for some reason, players like to reference all those dead game, and tell developer they should learn from them.

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

I’m sorry but I’ve played the raids multiple times. Personally I don’t find it good content at all, it’s just boss fights with gimmicky mechanics and gated by annoying timers. There is no story, nothing to explore, no real motivation to keep banging your head on the wall either. It’s a shame on the endgame content that was to be found in Guild Wars 1. I think it’s a complete fail, it’s not going to keep people playing this game.

The timers are so generous though that they are a non-issue. They are only there to make people not cheese the encounters by going full tank and just ignoring all the boss attacks.

The only boss where this is a slight issue is Goreseval, hence why I mentioned he is considered the least interesting.

About the story aspect, well you must have not been paying attention since there clearly is a story (granted it’s not a shiny cinematic which spoonfeeds it to you). Let me link you to woodenpotatoes 30 minute video where he goes through everything we learn in the raidwing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkJ9LiR2Hh0

If you don’t fancy WP, there are other youtubers who have done videos on the raid story so far as well.

I’m not saying you are wrong for not liking the raid for its story since this is a purely subjective thing, but from my experience (again subjective as well) you are not part of the majority.

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Posted by: NovaanVerdiano.6174

NovaanVerdiano.6174

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

I’m sorry but I’ve played the raids multiple times. Personally I don’t find it good content at all, it’s just boss fights with gimmicky mechanics and gated by annoying timers. There is no story, nothing to explore, no real motivation to keep banging your head on the wall either. It’s a shame on the endgame content that was to be found in Guild Wars 1. I think it’s a complete fail, it’s not going to keep people playing this game.

So you’d rather fight trash with no mechanics and no timers? Open world it is for you.
Story is there, just not thrown at you, but hidden in those letters and what you can see from the encounters/small bits of dialogue. Gear/drops you can only get there are your motivation, if that’s not for you, again, there’s open world.

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

I’m pretty sure developers are aware of coh and I’m sure for many of them it’s a trip down memory lane.

Varied isn’t subjective at all when it comes to classes/professions/archetypes… Follow the link and look at all the detailed information within.

Videos were to show the fast paced nature of things, team play and the feeling of gameplay, and none of the developers could argue that the game didn’t do certain things really well. City captured the “heroic feeling” with “professions” and the content built around them… GW2 strives to make you feel like a “hero” with our characters, but leaves a whole lot to be desired…

Heck, even a lot of player created instanced content through the game’s “mission architect” feature was more exciting than most instanced content here.

That game was mostky instanced content yet no shortage of players playing them. I never had an issue putting together a team for any end game “dungeon” or “raid” instanced content… Yet here look at the state of dungeons… Look at how uninspiring fractals are to most… Look at this one very uninspiring raid that I guaranteed doesn’t have a healthy participation rate…

Do some research guys if you want, it’s all right there and explains things better… Watch the videos and look some up and find some instanced content videos in comparion from here…

Varied depends on your perception and how you choose to see the content. For example: Call of Duty’s perk and specialist system (Black ops 3) allows you to combine various elements – between different weapons, perks and specialist abilities you’d say there’s a lot of variation but on the other hand one can look at it and see “generic guy with gun”.

Same goes for MMO archetypes – you basically have either melee or range – each one being either dps, heals, support or cc. Or a mix of them.

Variation is relative.

I can’t comment on what the “feeling” of CoH was having never played it but I will agree that GW1 did a better job of making you feel like “the hero”.

In GW2 “the state of dungeons” is what it is because the developers decided to nerf them into oblivion in order to “force” people to migrate to the new Raids and reworked fractals.

There was literally a reddit post where a dev took questions – when asked if dungeon rewards were nerfed in order to deincentivize them the answer was clear: yes.

So – the state of dungeons is arguable – had the developers not wanted them to be the ghost town they are now – they could still be alive. I’m sure they would have taken things as far as taking them out of the game but there would have been too much backlash.

Fractals are in a bad spot because once again they’ve been touched and in the spirit of Anet and fractals broken even more. Why?

-Fractals were cool and unique because of the “random” element of the islands you got – they were a jump into the unknown and with the new system that’s taken away.

-Fractals were cool at release – 3 years later the same fractals over and over are bound to be “uninspiring” -we should have had 3 times the number of islands we have in game by now.

-Fractals are uninspiring because the new instabilities are just annoying – they don’t make for clever gameplay nor do they reward you for being skilled or prepared – they just make the experience more of a drag.

I believe it was phys who so nicely explained in another thread that the random nature of some instabilities just make them annoying and impossible to counter – look at “enemies apply random conditions” – enjoy your random fears.

Or all enemies explode on death – that one really isn’t a drag at all and rewards clever and skilled play.

Also on Raid “participation rate” – how do you measure “healthy” – do you mean participation out of the total gw2 players or just the 5-10% top players raids were aimed at?

Most top tier players I know in the game are raiding, have raided or plan to do so.

Yes, I could have been more descriptive for the players. I’ll work on it when I have time.

My initial thoughts, as can be seen in the op, were to have the developers look at this as stated. It was more tailored to the team because they have a better understanding of this stuff.

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.

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Posted by: Xillllix.3485

Xillllix.3485

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

I’m sorry but I’ve played the raids multiple times. Personally I don’t find it good content at all, it’s just boss fights with gimmicky mechanics and gated by annoying timers. There is no story, nothing to explore, no real motivation to keep banging your head on the wall either. It’s a shame on the endgame content that was to be found in Guild Wars 1. I think it’s a complete fail, it’s not going to keep people playing this game.

So you’d rather fight trash with no mechanics and no timers? Open world it is for you.
Story is there, just not thrown at you, but hidden in those letters and what you can see from the encounters/small bits of dialogue. Gear/drops you can only get there are your motivation, if that’s not for you, again, there’s open world.

No I’d rather GvG and PvP, stuff that actually is skill-wise challenging, instead of the false difficulty or high HP and timers. I want hard content in a game that can get you involved from both a story and gameplay perspective, but the raid here are just boring as hell. Look for a party for 2 hours minimum, fight this boss with a million HP and probably fail 10 times until people quit, then this other boss with a million HP if you have a good party, then this other boss with a million HP, repeat. Even the Arah dungeon initially was way better developed than this.

Seriously, I can’t believe people can’t see how kittening cheap the raid content is. It’s not what I paid 50$ for. For 50$ you can get amazing games that have had so much more work in them than this expansion, like the latest Assassin Creed. I don’t see why anyone would waste their time with this just to get an armor skin.

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Posted by: Rising Dusk.2408

Rising Dusk.2408

I watched the videos in the OP and my takeaway is that I vastly prefer GW2’s combat system, raids, Fractals, and even dungeons to the things I saw in those videos.

[VZ] Valor Zeal – Stormbluff Isle – Looking for steady, casual-friendly NA raiders!

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Posted by: NovaanVerdiano.6174

NovaanVerdiano.6174

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

I’m sorry but I’ve played the raids multiple times. Personally I don’t find it good content at all, it’s just boss fights with gimmicky mechanics and gated by annoying timers. There is no story, nothing to explore, no real motivation to keep banging your head on the wall either. It’s a shame on the endgame content that was to be found in Guild Wars 1. I think it’s a complete fail, it’s not going to keep people playing this game.

So you’d rather fight trash with no mechanics and no timers? Open world it is for you.
Story is there, just not thrown at you, but hidden in those letters and what you can see from the encounters/small bits of dialogue. Gear/drops you can only get there are your motivation, if that’s not for you, again, there’s open world.

No I’d rather GvG and PvP, stuff that actually is skill-wise challenging, instead of the false difficulty or high HP and timers. I want hard content in a game that can get you involved from both a story and gameplay perspective, but the raid here are just boring as hell. Look for a party for 2 hours minimum, fight this boss with a million HP and probably fail 10 times until people quit, then this other boss with a million HP if you have a good party, then this other boss with a million HP, repeat. Even the Arah dungeon initially was way better developed than this.

Seriously, I can’t believe people can’t see how kittening cheap the raid content is. It’s not what I paid 50$ for. For 50$ you can get amazing games that have had so much more work in them than this expansion, like the latest Assassin Creed. I don’t see why anyone would waste their time with this just to get an armor skin.

Yes, from what I heard current GvG meta is stacking Hammer-Revs and current PvP-meta is pretty much everyone bunkers, cc-spams and whatnot. Really fun and challenging. The raid offers some starting lore for it, since it’s a side story and the first out of three wings, what do you expect? We’ll get more lore in the other two wings.
Where’s false difficulty in raids? If you fail because of the timer, you suck really badly and raids are too hard for you, it’s pretty simple considering decent teams can kill all bosses with 3min+ on the timer.
Looking for a party 2 hours minimum? Your fault if you’re pugging, raids are meant to be enjoyed with a guild or friends.

Also, you didn’t pay 50€ just for raids; you paid for the full package of HoT, raids are part of that. Even if you don’t enjoy them, and that’s your right, that doesn’t mean no one else enjoys them and you can just ignore that part of the package, instead focusing on things you have more fun doing.

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Posted by: Cyninja.2954

Cyninja.2954

You’re funny. You judge your opinion on:

- people who keep rerunning the content (have to be addicts and bragartists, can’t be due to the content being fun)
- people who don’t do them (my guess is most have not tried or tried and failed). Great way to get to know content, ask people who haven’t done the content.

If you had spent the time talking to people who do the raids, you’d get quite a few to answer that the raids are a lot of fun. The mechanics for the 3 bosses are interesting (Goreseval is usually the one everyone mentions as least interesting due to the dps check aspect) and quite fun.

Now this might not extend to people trying with bad pugs, but most regular raiders will tell you exactly this: the first wing is a lot of fun and most are looking forward to the next wing.

I’m sorry but I’ve played the raids multiple times. Personally I don’t find it good content at all, it’s just boss fights with gimmicky mechanics and gated by annoying timers. There is no story, nothing to explore, no real motivation to keep banging your head on the wall either. It’s a shame on the endgame content that was to be found in Guild Wars 1. I think it’s a complete fail, it’s not going to keep people playing this game.

So you’d rather fight trash with no mechanics and no timers? Open world it is for you.
Story is there, just not thrown at you, but hidden in those letters and what you can see from the encounters/small bits of dialogue. Gear/drops you can only get there are your motivation, if that’s not for you, again, there’s open world.

No I’d rather GvG and PvP, stuff that actually is skill-wise challenging, instead of the false difficulty or high HP and timers. I want hard content in a game that can get you involved from both a story and gameplay perspective, but the raid here are just boring as hell. Look for a party for 2 hours minimum, fight this boss with a million HP and probably fail 10 times until people quit, then this other boss with a million HP if you have a good party, then this other boss with a million HP, repeat. Even the Arah dungeon initially was way better developed than this.

Seriously, I can’t believe people can’t see how kittening cheap the raid content is. It’s not what I paid 50$ for. For 50$ you can get amazing games that have had so much more work in them than this expansion, like the latest Assassin Creed. I don’t see why anyone would waste their time with this just to get an armor skin.

What I take from your post is this:

- you haven’t completed any of the raid bosses. You probably tried Vale Guardian a couple of time and failed. Yes, 5-8 minute fights with multiple mechanics are just to long to bother with.
- technically you didn’t pay any $$$ for raid content since quite clearly you are not a raider. The rest of the HoT content is up for grabs for you
- spvp and wvw are in terrible shape right now (balance and content wise), not sure why you would even bring that up.

But we’ve derailed this thread long enough. This was about what GW2 could learn from CoH and not your preferance in game modes.

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Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

So I heard the words “City of Heroes” get mentioned a few times. I’m actually surprised that it wasn’t my videos that were linked, so I did guide videos for their raid content. Avid CoH refugee here.

The thing is that the way CoH worked and the way GW2 works are… very different. GW2 is all about action and dynamics, whereas CoH was about statistical fortitude, individuality, and varied roles. There was a big thing here: City of Heroes wasn’t hard by default. Yes, there was a difficulty slider you could crank up to the maximum to get ridiculous difficulty, but by its default the game wasn’t too hard.

Now, if you want to talk about the profession system, I can. I have an in-depth knowledge of the whole thing, and the customization in CoH is, dare I say, a few orders of magnitude higher than GW2. Let me explain:

City of Heroes had two sides, each with 7 classes. The classes were hero side: tanker, scrapper, controller, defender, blaster, peacebringer (epic), warshade (epic). Villain side had: stalker, dominator, mastermind, brute, corruptor, arachnos solider (epic), arachnos widow (epic). 14 total. The epic classes are closer to what you know of in GW2, in the sense that their builds are highly constricted. You’re basically playing a specialized enemy at that point, but even then you could squeeze out a few builds form their sets.

Now, these classes, formally called “Archetypes” basically gave you your base stats, the nature of the class, and an innate power or two. The specifics of the class came down to power selection. You would select a primary power set, which did your base function in many different ways, then a secondary power set which did your secondary function a number of ways. Then you’d pick an ancillary power set, which provided a toolbox for you to use. Alongside of that were several power pools you could pick from that gave general augmented powers for all classes to use. And form here, you could customize the appearance and colors of these powers. You could also get a series of temp powers or weapons, as well as raid specific powers to use.

Your head might be spinning now. But let me give an example. The scrapper was a melee DPS class. Primary function was high melee damage, secondary function was taking hits and self defense. There were 18 primary power sets, 11 secondary power sets, 8 ancillary power sets (optional), and 9 power pools of which you could get 3 from them. So, going by just the primary 3, you could build yourself with 1,584 different combinations. For the scrapper archetype alone.

It gets better. Once you have your powers, you can select which ones you get as you level up. City of Heroes didn’t have an “auto attack”. The entire game was more skill and spell based, and you picked these spells from a set list as you leveled. So, even if you have the same archetype with the same power list, you may have chosen different powers in those lists, so you could end up different.

It gets better. To customize your character, while leveling you also received several “slots”. These “slots” can be assigned to powers to give you further customization. Up to 6 slots could be given to each power, and in each of these slots you could put enhancements. This was the City of Heroes equivalent of equipment. These enhancements could augment nearly every aspect of a power imaginable (power, accuracy, endurance cost, recharge, range, potency of various statistics including healing, defense, resistance, endurance modification, CC duration, CC magnitude, movment speed, tc). So, once you have your powers, you had your enhancement slots to place around and augment these powers, and you could augment them in various ways. The game was balanced around something called “single origin” enhancements, which just do their one thing. The optional equipment was “invention origin”, which were crafted, and were better than single origin. The higher tier of invention origin enhancements came in sets, which gave effects depending on how many of a set you slotted, giving you global buffs to your character. This meant that, should you put in the legwork, you could spec yourself out in ways that made you a demi-god among mortals. With the difficulty slider, you could crank the numbers up quite high, to the point where you’re the equivalent of 8 people 4 levels higher than you.

In the end, after you had picked your power set from 1,584 options, you had nigh incalculable ways to build that specific option you picked, for your archetype alone. Not every archetype had as many powers to choose from, but you basically had a thousand options for 10 different classes, and then limitless ways to build from there. Given the also “several orders of magnitude” more robust character customization system, any character you made was unique. In how they played, how they were built, and how they looked, the character you made was unique. You really felt attached to that toon, because it was yours and yours alone.

Going out of the specifics and talking more about generalities, one of the interesting features about CoH’s system was that buffs were king. There were countless ways to buff yourselves and teammates, and these ways were frequently exclusive with each other. For example, for durability, you could have your damage resistance increased (the amount of reduction you take from a hit), your defense increased (the chance you’ll be hit), receive a hit-point barrier that would absorb attacks (static damage reduction), and also various debuffs to enemy accuracy and power. If you get all of this in one place, you’ll end up with some nigh unkillable players (until you crank the difficulty, that is).

While there were “damage classes”, there wasn’t a class that was so kitten as to not do damage. Instead, the classes had different techniques they could use to handle any situation, and when built up properly the boundaries that would limit one or the other would disappear. You weren’t restrained, is what I am saying. Also, the game was balanced more around you being ambushed by multiple enemies than fighting extremely tough enemies, so fights felt like you were throwing goons and chumps around, more than you and 8 people slowly plinked away at a big monster.

GW2, by comparison, doesn’t have that. Yes, GW2 doesn’t restrain the classes and lets everyone “do damage”, but classes lack the uniqueness that CoH archetypes had. By comparison, everything feels samey and zergy. Worst part is, other MMOs are worse than GW2 at this, so they feel even more stale.

GW2’s character customization spends all its time on the face, only to have your face completely covered by equipment and so far away no one can ever appreciate the work you’ve done to it. Even though I’ve tried making unique looking characters, I just end up looking like “elementalist number 2301” in a faceless zerg of players, playing the same as any of the other 2300 eles before me, and being “ele” has little distinction.


I suppose that is one of the things that bothers me a bit about finding another MMO. City of Heroes was my MMO, in that I loved most things about it. Yes, overworld events and the landscapes needed a major overhaul, and more focus on PVP was needed. But, I loved my toons. I designed them, gave them backstories, lived out their stories, and I had no idea how good the system was until I tried other MMOs and found myself with an identity crises. I like how they looked, I like how they felt, I liked how they played different, and I like that everyone I played with was also as unique as I was. The community was stellar, too.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

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Posted by: Kagamiku.9731

Kagamiku.9731

I’ve never heard ANYONE say the new Guild Wars 2 raids were FUN.

People say “too hard”, “easy”, “made it pass the first boss”, “don’t like it”, “done it once, never again”… But, never have I heard someone say it was “cool” or “fun” or “enjoyable” or “the best content in the game” or anything of the sort. Everyone is sort of “meh” about it, and those who repeat them seem like addicts that just want to be able to brag about having a legendary armor or being better. They don’t seem to enjoy it either, but in my huge friend list I think only 1 or 2 are actually doing them and everyone else just doesn’t give kitten about it.

I think Raids in Guild Wars 2 are just filler content to make it seem like HoT has new endgame content when in reality it doesn’t.

Meanwhile I bought Bioshock Infinite for the ridiculous price of less than a GW2 outfit (an half a dozen other games) and I’ve been AMAZED by how good it is, so I’m taking a GW2 break which may turn out to be until the next expansion if Anet can create some enjoyable instanced content.

Raids are currently the best part of GW2 for me.

You can now add it to the list.

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Posted by: Swagger.1459

Swagger.1459

I watched the videos in the OP and my takeaway is that I vastly prefer GW2’s combat system, raids, Fractals, and even dungeons to the things I saw in those videos.

That’s perfectly fine.

The differences in design are…

The city content was inclusive to all players and “professions”.

Difficulty settings were available to challenge players and teams.

No waiting around to form teams… Watched big otter stream for a very short time and it was a lot of talking while they were trying to get a team… Yeah fun fun…

“Professions” and roles for content, which gw2 is just starting to define after 3 years, were far far far far far superior in design. Read blood red arachnid’s post.

Teams could be made of any group or mix of “professions” to complete the content depending on player skill. Imagine an all warrior raid… Or all elementalist raid… Or a raid without an actual tank… Or all druid raid… Or half thief and half necro team… Or half engineer and half mesmer team… Or any number of completely unconventional team make ups of great players playing smart…

Content was fast paced and challenging enough to where not being proficient with your “professsion” or role led to wipes…

Many of the devs here know city of heroes and its strengths…

I do not know your “dungeoneering” background, but I would suggest that if you want to lead this part of the community as a specialist, you should do more research into these areas so you can be a better and more knowledgable and more aware and more experienced and more well rounded representative and voice of this community…

New Main- 80 Thief – P/P- Vault Spam Pro

221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.

(edited by Swagger.1459)