Guild Wars 2

First of all, I would very much like to say that I have been enjoying my time within Guild Wars 2. There are things that I have come to love and be somewhat annoyed with, but that only enhances the charm of the game in my eyes. What I am going to be doing below is putting together a short little bullet list of items that I feel could be done to improve the dungeon experience a bit, as well as some comments that are related to dungeons that I would appreciate being addressed.

• 1. Something Isn’t Right Here — When I say difficulty tweaking, I am by no means saying that the challenge of the dungeons should be reduced or nerfed. The difficulty is a refreshing change from other MMO’s currently out there at the moment. However, while reading through these forums, I have noticed that there’s a bit of a trend. Many of the people feel that the encounters are either too difficult, too random, or lacking in some form of mechanics that makes the boss encounters fun. For instance, I have seen that the developers have stated in this forum that the difficult dungeons are indeed designed for highly coordinated and highly skilled groups of players, who are utilizing their skills to the fullest to complete the content. But I am afraid to say that I can pay attention to some of these bosses all day and not see any of their ‘tells’ due to the sheer number of particles on the screen at any given moment. Some other means of advertising what they are planning on doing next and some time to react appropriately would be a nice thing to be implemented in some future update. This particular issue resonates closely with my next point.

• 2. But What If I Want To Swing My Sword? — A trend that I’ve noticed with many of the boss encounters within many of the dungeons is that they seem designed for ranged professions more often than the melee ones. Of special mention is the Iron Forgeman encounter within Sorrow’s Embrace. There is literally nothing at all during the course of that fight for the melee to do, except dealing with adds, and they’re not particularly difficult to handle anyway. The fight is made even more frustrating if say the melee class forgot to bring a ranged weapon with them, and/or they are unfamiliar with the encounter and forget to swap out weapons beforehand to prepare. What makes many of these fights especially frustrating for melee classes is that they are consumed in what I mentioned in point #1, being that there are a veritable sea of particle effects going off all at once, and the melee have a much harder time seeing the ‘tells’ of the bosses, not to mention a much reduced reaction time. As mentioned above, having some sort of alternate means of indicating what bosses are about to do and somewhat more time to react. This makes the melee feel more involved with the encounter and allows them to feel like they’re contributing in a way that the class feels designed for.

The boulders and the adds that can mess up your party are more than enough to keep melee characters busy…

(Apologies for the double post, but the original was too long for one entry, apparently)

• 3. Safety Dance — Currently, the boss encounters seem to be the sort of thing that groups, even the well put together ones, survive via the skin of their teeth (at least in my experience, I can’t speak to the very skillful players) rather than any form of strategy for dealing with boss mechanics. The boss decides who to attack seemingly at random, and if you happen to be particularly unlucky, you go down and there’s little you can do about it. This goes with the previous two points well, as it alleviates the problems associated with those points. Introducing mechanics that function reliably and in an interesting way can be a very fun way to spice up boss fights, especially when said boss fights boil down to long drawn out affairs because the boss has a massive pool of health, and the group figures out his damage patterns and suddenly the group’s spending about 5-10 minutes simply trying to down something that ceases to be fun. More strategy could be easily implemented via some reworking of how the boss mechanic ‘Unshakeable’ functions, as an example. This mechanic makes bosses immune to crowd control for a set number of crowd control skills used on the boss. Even if you happen to have a profession along that’s very good at control, only some of their control abilities are being put to use, as the boss is immune to them half the time. This further reduces the amount of strategic use of skills against boss encounters.

• 4. That Grinding Sensation — Grind is endemic to MMO’s. It’s simply part of the nature of the beast. From what I’ve been reading and hearing in-game however, despite ArenaNet’s best attempts (for which I applaud them) this game still has quite a bit of grind in its gears. The best example comes in the form of how many times you must run an explorable mode simply to get what amounts to a cosmetic option. Yes, we as MMO players will do just about anything to get our shinies, but this whole exercise can be made somewhat less painful by reducing the number of tokens required to get the dungeon gear items. I admire that ANet is trying to make the more epic loot feel more epic by making it harder to acquire. However, making it harder to acquire also indicates more grind to achieve that result, and this seems to fly in the face of the game’s stated design goals. In fact, the entire Explorable Mode experience (from what I can tell) seems to go against what Guild Wars 2 was designed for. In essence (to borrow a euphemism), ‘Bring the Player, Not the Class’. A well orchestrated group, regardless of what skills, traits, weapons, etc. they choose to bring to the fight should be able to down this content, rather than what occurred quite heavily in the original Guild Wars (I.E. only certain professions being desirable because they brought a skill that was more useful in certain encounters than another profession). Again, I refer to my above point regarding more strategy in encounters, as opposed to what each profession does specifically. There should be a way for all groups (played well and organized, of course) to overcome challenging content without having to resort to pulling out their cookie cutters.

(Last leg, I promise.)

• 5. Greed Is Good, Greed Works — This is a special note I’m making regarding what I’ve been reading about the apparent anti-farming code implemented in the game, as well as the reduced amount of reward from the dungeons. Having worked a ranger to 80, from what I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable source of income once you have completed all the maps and the like, and while my character was usually able to afford most things, there are some things that still feel dear after all this time. Only having accrued around 24g total thus far, I’m wondering if the amount of money one earns via certain activities (dungeons, most notably) shouldn’t be buffed or given a small boost. Reading many of the topics on this forum, many see some of the explorable modes with some disdain simply because it feels like they’re spending hours on content for not much reward, and the repairs are especially harmful to their pockets, with no apparent means of recuperating that money. For those of us who don’t have the time or the patience to play the market, this becomes something of an issue when there are many many gold sinks present within the game. Waypoint travel, while inexpensive at maximum level, becomes more expensive when you must factor in the cost of purchasing salvage kits, gathering tools, and repairing your gear. Even more so once re-traiting, cultural armor sets, and the like enter the playing field. So, a number of things can be done about this. The amount of money earned can be given a small boost, a happy medium where you are able to afford things without feeling like you’re spending a fortune on gear repairs and the like, or the cost of these items can be reduced to allow players to feel like they are actually accruing wealth over time, rather than feeling like it’s all being spent on repairs, etc. For many, grinding is the only means to acquire this wealth, either via dungeons or simply going around and slaying mobs for an hour or so. Grinding out wealth is something that is acceptable, in my view, and imposing limits on just how much wealth players are able to accrue in any given sitting seems again to go against the intended design goals of this very well put together game.

I look forward to the positive discussion this topic might bring about, and that we can find ways to improve what is already a very well constructed product. To those of you who have read all the way to the end of this long and exhaustive post, you have my thanks for your time and energy, and hope that you enjoyed the read.

(Actually for the spoiler boss, you can kill the popups and take the boulders and rock the boss as a melee character. The boulders also do more damage than most ranged attacks.)

But yes, melee characters feel weird in dungeon. My flamethrower engineer uses primarily elixir gun and rifle, flamethrower as a backup when we need additional DPS against things that is slow-ish or mobs upon mobs… My thief on sword/pistol though, just shadow step in, pistol whip until whenever, and if in any sort of danger shadowstep back out. I guess that doesn’t really count, though…

Edit after seeing the part about greed: Heck yeah. Shouldn’t be an anti-farm code in place. Instead there should be some sort of reward for players that do different stuff. A lot of different stuff. Like a ramping, compounding bonus for killing creatures of different type, doing different dungeons and events and things, doing underwater or abovewater contents, even playing Keg Brawl and other similar events when they are in… Motivate players with greed, not make players’ eyes grow green with promise of phat lootz, only to snatch it away 30 minutes later because you just did it. I swear, we are (I am) simple creatures! ;_;

Bloodtau.4672:

The boulders and the adds that can mess up your party are more than enough to keep melee characters busy…

But dealing with adds (while an essential function in a lot of fights) doesn’t feel quite as glamorous or heroic as wailing away on the boss like the ranged members of your party are able to do with nigh impunity, does it?

Granted, this could be solved with a little shift in mindset about what’s more useful regarding boss encounters.

To Kogasa: I have never quite understood ANet’s almost obsessive need to eliminate farming within the game. It’s how most people within MMO’s generate their income, by farming up things to sell on the auction house/trading post, which usually gets used in crafting and is removed from the economy. This tends to keep the economy sort of self-correcting and stable for the most part. I spent a good hour farming up some T6 Fine Crafting Materials the other evening. And all I got for my trouble was about 75s, give or take. You make the rare things rare by reducing drop rates, not by limiting the amount we’re able to gather. If we want to spend countless hours doing boring repetitive work to get crafting materials and the like, let us, by gosh. We’re spending time and effort in YOUR game.

Freya Norgarde.4517:

To Kogasa:

Farming is bad.

The above line is hammered and drilled into a lot of MMO game designers. They really meant well – they want the players to explore the wider universe, listen to every lores, and explore every corner and niches. Some games reward players for doing so (and indeed, GW2 reward you for that), while others punish you for not doing so.

Players want rich and glory.

The above line is hammered and drilled into most of us on a societal level – we are reward-driven creatures (and punishment-driven as well, but let’s not get into that). We work because A: We get paid, wooo! B: The lucky ones get to feel satisfaction in their work.

Farming creates riches and glories.

The above line is the root of the problem. Popular farming techniques gets spread between players fast, because everyone means well and wants to have the riches and glories, and sharing is caring, right? But for game designers, it seems like players passing the hard drug called “Not enjoying the game” around, so they try to stifle that.

So we get a conflict of interest between players and game developers. It’s simple and a very common case in MMOs. Some tackles the problem by making everything less valuable (new contents! Level 100 armor! Your level 80 legendaries are worthless now!), some tackles the problem by taking away the ways in which the players can farm and do existing contents, or otherwisely punish them for it. Some will go sideway, creating new money sinks, new activities for players to do and kill time (distract them). Most game developers do a mixture of the three methods.

GW2 is using the second mthods, but let’s be honest here – whatever they do willkitten off everyone, and if they don’t do anything the players are doing themselves a disservice. So… They are inbetween rock and hard place right now.

As stated in my posts, the game already has enough gold sinks, and from the look of things, not enough ways to reliably earn income. I’m not saying put in daily quests or some stupid nonsense into it, but I would think farming is the most earnest expression of people actually enjoying the game. They’re willing to spend countless hours doing trivial nonsense in their game, to try and earn enough cash to buy the precious shiny they’ve been eyeballing for the past ((insert length of time here)).

And yes, farming does create riches and glory. The whole point of the MMO is to make you feel like you’re progressing, like you’re advancing in a world where other people are advancing around you. Inhibiting that advancement is like saying ‘thanks for playing our game, but we really don’t want you playing our game’ and it just baffles me to no end.

As to the farming is bad line, I have never once fully grasped how exactly farming is bad. Botters and the like are a pain, and they do something to destabilize economies I suppose. But even if you had a crash of an in-game economy, wouldn’t it eventually simply fix itself? Not to mention there’s always the option of simply resetting the economy.

Yeah, I don’t know why farming is bad – I actually agree with you, in that I don’t see a problem with farming.

Some people have less time to farm, some people have more time to farm. Some people use the excuse “I have a life” to get away from lack of skills and mistakes in MMOs, implying that farming and investment of time is somehow something bad, reinforcing the idea that farming is BAAAAD in the game developers when it isn’t, not necessarily…

By the way, some people use the exact same excuse, “I have a social life” to get away from the reality that they have bad grades in university. It’s a silly behavior…

I don’t believe that MMO’s can ever truly get away from the grind. It’s just part of the nature of the beast at this point. But what I’m starting to get a wee bit upset about is the fact that it seems like ANet has put the grind in all the wrong places, and hopefully they’re going to do something to fix that at some point.

MMO doesn’t have to be about the “grind” in a traditional sense, in my opinion. Grind’s kinda a moot point after a certain point – why get everything else when you have everything you need and want already? The grind isn’t need. The grind’s a want, not a need. It’s something extra, something to do beside for the main game content.

But dungeoneering isn’t extra like other game’s grinds. It’s the most major part of GW2’s end game content. Without access to exploration mode dungeon as a casual player, what else can you actually do in GW2? WvW and PvP contents aside. Think about it carefully… Exploration? Hit 100% and it’s done. No more. WvW? Are you going to be grinding for the Stonemist Castle title? … There’s really little to do beside for dungeons. Aside from the reduced reward AND repetition causing reduced rewards, the problem is partially “There’s nothing else to do.”

… I would suggest everyone to chillax, enjoy a game of Keg Brawl, or RP once in a while, of course.

As a MMO game designer, a goal is to mask the grind or divert the focus away from repetition and make it a want , not a need, in order to keep players entertained after the end of the game. ANet is sorta doing it brute-forcely, forcing players to be unable to repetitively do things without suffering some penalties, but their intent is… good. I agree, they are putting the grind in places that I wouldn’t care about, and I would like to see some sort of changes as well.

The way the current dungeon system is functioning, they sure have a funny way of brute forcing attention away from a grind. I’m not saying that exotics should be easy to acquire from explorable modes. Or any sort of the high end gear (cultural and dungeon gear) that people actually want. But currently, there is a massive grind associated with these items that makes it so noone wants them anymore, because they have to run X dungeon too many times to make it interesting or fun to do so. The cultural armors are also prohibitively expensive.

My suggestion to ANet on that front is to reduce the token cost of the dungeon sets. I’m not saying make them available after doing only one run of explorable mode. But there is a happy medium where it doesn’t take 100 to achieve the same effect.

As to the limiting of player wealth and the ability to accrue that wealth, I will say that I have never seen something as asinine hard coded into a game as ANet’s anti-farm code. It was there in GW1, and was silly, and now it’s back in GW2, and it’s still silly. The market in MMO’s tends to take care of itself most of the time. I really wish ANet would learn this.