Guild Wars 2

Dalanor.5387:

4. Yep, thats why i tried the max melee range, but while i didn’t get hit i couldn’t see any damage floater. You know, camera issues and stuff. Hmm, maybe i should watch the combat log. Oh well, next time.
And again, the boss is big enough that you can see his swinging, even if its covered in blue / orange flames and Sigil of Fire proc tries to blind you. There is still an option to reduce graphic setting that its less frustrating and it can give some performance boost too which is needed to the well timed dodges.

This is one of the major reasons im annoyed about these fights. Anet release more zerg content. They upset the casuals by making conditions even more useless. Then they prevent any sort of skilled play on the knights by making the auto attack with no cooldown 400+ range and full 360 degree. Its completely anti melee. Which means its a dps check that really matters if people are leeching or not because you are forced to semi range or 100% range which is less dps than meleeing. It boggles the mind why they would design fights like this.

I managed to work out a way to melee on warrior, but it involves a lot of running away and waiting for the big windup attacks which means you dont have a lot of time to dps before you have to retreat again. If i tried it on an ele, thief, guardian I would faceplant instantly with one mistake. And its not really about reading tells its about how much time you are willing to risk in melee before that auto attack crushes you and/or dazes you in the danger zone. Its just stupid.

Dalanor.5387:

3. They are allowed if they are older than 12 year (not if anyone cares about this tbh), but i can’t understand whats the point in this. The game is even translated in multiple languages like german, french and spanish. If you can’t speak neither of them, why on earth you play? (im not speaking personally to you).

I find this to be a particularly perplexing statement. I appreciate the fact that ANet has actually managed to attract players from all over the world – not just stopping at European borders. I’m actually proud that our community is so diverse and that we have a global reach of fans.

If I knew that someone who couldn’t speak English, German, French or Spanish made the effort to actually learn our language, I’d be encouraging them, not berating them. Sure they might not speak as fluently (And GW2 makes use of terminology that sometimes baffles even new English players like ‘stack’ or ‘FGS’), but all in all, they’ve made a lot of effort to even bother playing this game.

runeblade.7514:

So, my question is: what can ANet do to naturally teach players to dodge, to eat appropriate food, to set traits to their characters and so on?

For one thing, Anet needs to change the default keybinds.

The default keybind is not usable. It doesn’t say fluid gameplay but scream clunky gameplay all over. To not change the keybind is a huge handicap.

I seen players using the default keybinds, their enemies kill them so easily.

Pretty much. The UI is straight up MMORPG (Seriously, most MMORPG interfaces default to a single visible skillbar with a “spinner”. Not that different from the GW2 weapon swap), but you can’t really go out onto 6-0 without letting go of wasd or mousing the skills…

What can I say, GW2 with all its emphasis on class independancy and zerg-oriented content/modes makes it an ideal place for breeding and maintaining scrubbery.

If they actually wanted to change that, they’d have to overhaul the entire game, or create a new one from scratch, possibly by bringing the solid foundations of GW1 to the next level.

Regarding the rally system. When I started playing, I had a GREAT problem figuring out what my downed skills were doing for a simple reason: when downed, I had no time to read the tooltips. For me, it is only natural to search for information in other sources (so eventually I googled it), but for many people it’s not.

guardian.6489:

Hmm I’m getting flashbacks I could have sworn they’ve done this before…..

“Avoid the shockwave!”

“Tendrils, fall back and attack at range!”

“Watch the Tendrils or you’ll get poisoned”

“STAY AWAY FROM THE WHIRLPOOL!”

“Stay clear of his feet!”

Ya they did that during the Tequatl fight but people still struggled :P

They struggled because it was hard at that point, not because they had no idea what to do:) I really like those hints from NPCs. And IMO, those really contribute to immersion.

Dalanor.5387:

Also, its just a personal opininon, i find it not only selfish but offensive and disrespectfull against other players if you play a MMO if you can’t even understand the language it was writen. Maybe i should try an eastern game to understand why it could be good.

I will always remember how a whole party tried to tell a thief from a non-DE server to use Shadow Refuge in Caudecus Manor, but all he could say was “no speak english”.

wolfpaq.7354:

It really bothers me that you are listing the 25% knight health decrease as something arising from a lack of skill. That decrease has nothing to do with skill. It has everything to do with the design flaws which include…

-snip-

It has nothing to do with skill. It’s a stupidly designed encounter, plain and simple.

I’ve spoken about issues of recent concepts in this thread and other places, but here we’re talking about player skills apart from design flaws. We at Piken were downing all knights consistently post-patch pre-nerf, so I can’t say it was hard; it was, well, challenging because it required a certain amount of skillful people and succeeded even with lots of charriors getting kittened and condi-classes pulled. If TTS succeeded in the 6-minute achievement with the current pre-nerf design, than it clearly shows how skill is prevailing over design here. The Mario fight was, on contrary, hard; the zerg was split into smaller groups, and the margin for error was really small, so eventually it failed more often than not.

Oh, and… I miss the mender duty QQ

Conncept.7638:

I don’t know if there is any point in my explaining this because you are clearly a 99% competitively driven player, and I don’t think you are ever going to understand. But I will try.

Some players, most actually, vary between very little or completely non-competitive. If you ask them why they play you will get two responses: ‘Because it’s fun’, or ‘Because it’s cool’, which basically mean the same thing. You will never get the response ‘Because I’m good at it.’ or ‘Because it’s challenging.’.

Being fun or cool is a combination of all the aesthetics (real and imagined) which happen as a result of the players interactions with the game. The gameplay is driven by the player. In other words the player has an aesthetic experience as the result of his gameplay decisions. The animations drive these aesthetic experiences, the sounds drive these experiences, the responses of the NPCs, Mobs, and environment drive these experiences. And yes, additionally, the varying mechanics of the gameplay drive the experience. The experience is the whole of the parts.

…and I thought that flashing underwear was a good reward itself… (Joking.)

Ok, I see your point but I do not agree on the accent. For me, aesthetics are very important – I had a hard time persuading myself to try GW2 because non-magical medieval setting is ultimately boring to me; I looked at dresses of Blade and Soul, I looked at cute Elins of Tera Online, I looked at their cool looking spells and fantasy worlds and I just couldn’t believe that I was going to walk among wooden barns of Queensdale instead. I also knew I would never try WoW or Wildstar for the same reasons. Still, there were sylvari – a local equivalent of elves, and I gave it a try.

However: I used to play zoomed in at low levels, but when I reached Orr, I was playing zoomed out, and I am playing zoomed out 90% of time now – so I actually never see what my dodges look like in the middle of the fight, covered with particle spam and while I actually look at the mob or my skillbar or mob’s buffbar. That said, I believe that dodging is not the most important thing that requires visual improvement at this stage.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Regarding the rally system. When I started playing, I had a GREAT problem figuring out what my downed skills were doing for a simple reason: when downed, I had no time to read the tooltips. For me, it is only natural to search for information in other sources (so eventually I googled it), but for many people it’s not.

There is a similar, tho lesser, issue with transform skills.

Then again, the game has had a problem with “discoverability” from day one…

I suspect the game was designed with a myopic focus on the post EOTN GW1 crowd, thus blinding the devs to the influx of new players (both from other games, and to the genera as a whole).

Meaning that they designed the game for lore hounds, explorers, and experimenters that will poke and prod everything just to see what happens while they keep extensive notes.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

People get hit by it, because they dodge it. They’ve been conditioned by the game to dodge when a red circle appears. But when the knights do their pull attack, you must actually wait and dodge after the circle has disappeared. With all the lag and visibility issues, is it really surprising that a lot of players are struggling to understand the timing of this attack? It’s inconsistent design.

Well yes actually it is surprising unless it is their very first time, if you have eyes in your head it should become obvious very quickly when you have to dodge. Really the only excuse is lag.

Fenrir.3609:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

People get hit by it, because they dodge it. They’ve been conditioned by the game to dodge when a red circle appears. But when the knights do their pull attack, you must actually wait and dodge after the circle has disappeared. With all the lag and visibility issues, is it really surprising that a lot of players are struggling to understand the timing of this attack? It’s inconsistent design.

Well yes actually it is surprising unless it is their very first time, if you have eyes in your head it should become obvious very quickly when you have to dodge. Really the only excuse is lag.

Inconsistency really is a recurrent problem with AoE markers (as well as other mechanics). I for one had a hard time timing the cone AoE of blue holo because unlike the knight’s pull, you have to dodge in the middle of the AoE cast; I manage it mostly now, but most people get hit by it regularly.

digiowl.9620:

Meaning that they designed the game for lore hounds, explorers, and experimenters that will poke and prod everything just to see what happens while they keep extensive notes.

I can’t say it’s a bad concept per se – it’s actually a good one, something which makes discovery part of the pleasure. But combined with generic people laziness (who do not derive pleasure from unrewarding discovery) and ability to play and succeed without poking every button and learning from it becomes a timed bomb.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Inconsistency really is a recurrent problem with AoE markers (as well as other mechanics). I for one had a hard time timing the cone AoE of blue holo because unlike the knight’s pull, you have to dodge in the middle of the AoE cast; I manage it mostly now, but most people get hit by it regularly.

Again, it’s pretty easy to learn what to do in a short space of time in that encounter (you can toggle “walk” on and stroll around the holo parts without much trouble). The trouble is quite a large number of people simply don’t pay enough attention, part of the reason that is the case is because the encounters don’t make them pay attention, and part of the reason is down to the players themselves. Well, lag issues aside ofc.

Personally I think it is a great idea to have subtly and not so subtly different encounter mechanics, that way it keeps you on your toes, makes you adapt and makes you actually pay attention to what is going on. So I am not convinved such “inconsistency” is a problem, although there are ofc question marks over what kind of content should see such mechanics.

Having said all that, it seems a bit run before jump really. If ANET wants to make more open world/large group centric content which makes people need to not only apply basic skills but also pay attention and adapt. Then they need to be adding more low-mid level open world/large scale content (and/or tutorials) which gives the average player a grounding in the basics, makes them comfortable with them and allows them to become second nature so they can adapt to subtle changes in combat dynamics in endgame level events.

EDIT – My post seems a bit of a mess there in fairness so i’ll TLDR it:

“Inconsistencies” are fine so long as the groundwork has already been laid to promote the basic skills more in the first place.

I think another thing that Anet could do to help teach players skills, is by expanding the range of options for commanders in PVE. It’s a bit of an underrated role for commanders, but at least on my server, the Marionette event saw many commanders rise to the task of teaching players how to do the fight.

Commanders have the opportunity to act as mentors for inexperienced players, without explicitly being mentors. By instructing players during these massive events, the less experienced players can pick up a lot about Gw2’s combat from others.

The problem however, is that commanders are often seen in a negative light. The old tag-for-prestige problem is but one reason. But there’s also the limitations inherent to commanding in the game. There’s the draconic message suppression system that makes commanding in PVE more bothersome than it needs to be. There’s also very little ways to quickly count how many players are with you, or ways to get them all in your squad. And providing instructions in the form of icons is a bit tricky, when it’s hard enough to explain to players how they can join your squad in the first place (and why they should do so).

I think the game could do a lot to smooth this out, so that inexperienced players do not have to first learn what a commander is, and what squads are. Maybe squads could be dynamic and automated.

azerte.4365:

I would love if they brought more ‘elite’ solo/dungeon content. For example something like the Mad Kings Clock tower with a boss like Liadri at the end and when you die you need to start all over again. (maybe not that extreme but still i’d love if it was that hard) Add some very good rewards at the end and this will force people to play more active instead of spamming 111111111.
Tequatl and The Wurm already do a pretty good job at this, although people still don’t care all that much about dying since the zerg will get them back up in a few seconds.
Make it small scale and players will learn to rely on their own more.

Will they though? Or will most people just decide ‘too hard, not fun’ and not bother doing said content, the way a lot of servers have already gone with Tequatl and the Wurm? It would be interesting to see what percentage of players completed Liadri or SAB challenge mode, and how many people are regularly completing Teq/Wurm (I don’t believe my server has completed Wurm yet, despite regular efforts and a dedicated guild for it.)

I don’t think they can change it. I don’t think there is anything in the world that can change the fundamental human nature to seek the path of least resistance. But godspeed to y’all, if you decide to try.

(The fallacy of illusory superiority applies here again as well…)

1. If players can’t understand simple commands in english or whatever language they client / server have, it doesn’t matter (kill this, defend that, come here etc).

2. Commanders can’t type in a different color to see orders easily and even if they could new players still wouldn’t understand what that blue taco means and why that dude writes so differently. If it turns out he / she just spend 100g for it, it degrades the value of the person.

3. If a tutorial system isn’t forced down on new players throat via the starting instance it’s hard to inform them ingame. Anet must exclude dungeons, personal story and other optimal, but not mandatory content to teach players.

4. There is no 4th point.

5. Keep it simple. Threat the playerbase like a dumb dog, but make a quality standard for decent or even better players. NPC dialogs are nice at Teq, but what if the players plays with muted sounds or don’t watch chat / npc messages?

6. Make effort towards the end reward. Tagging a boss and going afk shouldn’t be a possible option, not even a party. It simply feels unfair if you work hard for killing the enemy, but Sir Scrubberton refuse to move his … hand.

How Can ANet Improve Average Player Skills

Short answer – they can’t. I suck so badly it shall most likely stay that way.

They can improve the average player skills by disabling many abilities until it’s been drilled into their heads after many repetitive actions.
They should do something like:

Disable Weapon Skill #2 until level 2
Disable Profession (F1) Skill until level 5
Disable Offhand and Two-handed Weapon until level 7
Instant death until level 9, where they unlock Down State/Rally
Cannot wear Masterwork Equipments until level 14
No Traits until level 20
Unlock Elite Skill at level 50

BlueZone.4236:

They can improve the average player skills by disabling many abilities until it’s been drilled into their heads after many repetitive actions.
They should do something like:

Disable Weapon Skill #2 until level 2
Disable Profession (F1) Skill until level 5
Disable Offhand and Two-handed Weapon until level 7
Instant death until level 9, where they unlock Down State/Rally
Cannot wear Masterwork Equipments until level 14
No Traits until level 20
Unlock Elite Skill at level 50

What about staff guardians facerolling the content in open world / champ trains / WvW?
Oh right … champ train … it’s sooooo rewarding in Queensdale (XP, loot, coin) that it’s overshadows every other options. And if you take into consideration that human is the most played race …

Dalanor.5387:

BlueZone.4236:

They can improve the average player skills by disabling many abilities until it’s been drilled into their heads after many repetitive actions.
They should do something like:

Disable Weapon Skill #2 until level 2
Disable Profession (F1) Skill until level 5
Disable Offhand and Two-handed Weapon until level 7
Instant death until level 9, where they unlock Down State/Rally
Cannot wear Masterwork Equipments until level 14
No Traits until level 20
Unlock Elite Skill at level 50

What about staff guardians facerolling the content in open world / champ trains / WvW?
Oh right … champ train … it’s sooooo rewarding in Queensdale (XP, loot, coin) that it’s overshadows every other options. And if you take into consideration that human is the most played race …

Good point!

Here’s some more:
No Vistas until level 11 (no free XP!)
Can’t use Salvage Kits until level 15
Can’t create and join guilds until level 16
No access to Trading Post until level 17.
No access to Asuran Gates (waypoints) until level 18
No Jumping Puzzle chest access until level 21
Level 35 to access WvW
Level 45 to access PvP
Possibly 50% more exp needed per level
Remove all skill points at 1-15 maps
Personal story starts at level 10

So you want to enable the chinese client on the west?

On a serious note, just change the champs into elite or beefy veterans OR remove the events but keep the champs so they can be farmed for loot or whatever but the player must explore to actually get some experience with the class.

Another thing. Encourage people to play in melee somehow or highlight the facts that melee does way more damage and cleaves.

GW2 rewards players for being bad. Even when they fail you get rewarded. If ANET wanted to reward players better for doing good and gave out no rewards for failure most players would stop being bads.

Dalanor.5387:

So you want to enable the chinese client on the west?

No way! I came up with those ideas myself…not.

Anyway, haven’t read through the entire thread, but my real suggestion is that the reworked boss fights be locked out (account bound, to avoid repetitiveness) until you pass an easier solo instance version of said bosses (or something that’s very similar), which blatantly explain the mechanics needed to fight the bosses.

BlueZone.4236:

They can improve the average player skills by disabling many abilities until it’s been drilled into their heads after many repetitive actions.
They should do something like:

Disable Weapon Skill #2 until level 2
Disable Profession (F1) Skill until level 5
Disable Offhand and Two-handed Weapon until level 7
Instant death until level 9, where they unlock Down State/Rally
Cannot wear Masterwork Equipments until level 14
No Traits until level 20
Unlock Elite Skill at level 50

So basically Chinese GW?

Rather simple actually.

Make every normal mob like Liadri, make every champion/event like the Jungle Wurms.

Everything should be a challenge where slacking off and losing concentration even for a moment means absolute failure.

Until very recently, it was literally impossible to “fail” anything in PvE. Players could only ever give up. Make failure in PvE a very real possibility, and I think many players would start picking up their game.

You add Liadri and 1/2 of the player base goes ape – becausr they can’t dodge 3 second telegraphed attack.
Just like last time.

The problem with Liadri was the overly cramped cage the fight was happening in.

Had the same fight been happening in a open air arena, i think there would be much fewer complaints.

That was the whole thing that made the fight challenging, you couldn’t just run away and hide.

ANet cannot improve average player skill, at best they could have developed and marketed this game toward the hardcore crowd.

Also, while there’s always some challenging content, MMOs have never been primarily focused on skilled, active gameplay. Don’t be surprised that an MMO is full of players who aren’t particularly interested in playing this way.

Nick.6972:

That was the whole thing that made the fight challenging, you couldn’t just run away and hide.

Pretty sure he’s referring to the camera whenever you move to the edge due to the dome restricting your view, rather than the fact you’re stuck in a smallish area.

Dalanor.5387:

1. Agree, but its a trial and error issue. You dodge, you fail, you realize that it pulls after the circle appears on the ground and it fly into the air. You are able to do it second time. The boss is big enough to see this animation even when there are a lots of effects. And Aurora Glade isn’t that populated anyway.

More than enough to send people to overflow, meaning that is not a issue limited to a single server.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think another thing that Anet could do to help teach players skills, is by expanding the range of options for commanders in PVE. It’s a bit of an underrated role for commanders, but at least on my server, the Marionette event saw many commanders rise to the task of teaching players how to do the fight.

Commanders have the opportunity to act as mentors for inexperienced players, without explicitly being mentors. By instructing players during these massive events, the less experienced players can pick up a lot about Gw2’s combat from others.

The problem however, is that commanders are often seen in a negative light. The old tag-for-prestige problem is but one reason. But there’s also the limitations inherent to commanding in the game. There’s the draconic message suppression system that makes commanding in PVE more bothersome than it needs to be. There’s also very little ways to quickly count how many players are with you, or ways to get them all in your squad. And providing instructions in the form of icons is a bit tricky, when it’s hard enough to explain to players how they can join your squad in the first place (and why they should do so).

I think the game could do a lot to smooth this out, so that inexperienced players do not have to first learn what a commander is, and what squads are. Maybe squads could be dynamic and automated.

I agree with this. I have negotiated my way through so many of these latest events due to fantastic commanders on AG. I had no idea, for instance, about the end phase of the holo fight where, if you down the three holos very close together you get the infinite light attunement and can basically have a MUCH easier time when all the mini-holos spawn than if you don’t kill the first three at the same time. It was also great to see just the one person taking control and explaining what to do and watching everyone do their best to follow the instructions. At the “leave green go blue”, I literally watched an entire zerg swing in the direction given. It was the smoothest that event has ever gone.

I also had the fortune to run a Marionette event under the direction of the good Mad Queen herself, and it was a great experience. Despite by that time my knowing each of the Wardens by heart, it was still great to see sensible, positive and useful information coming across in chat. There were no insults, no impatient outbursts, no capslocks except for the “GOOD LUCK” at the beginning. It was lovely.

These are the kind of people I actively want to listen to, that I want to take advice from and that I want to try hard for. Give me advice politely, understand that if this is my first time at this event, I may not execute your instructions perfectly all the time, and give me a chance to try and if we fail, try again. I can guarantee you that if that happens, I will try my absolute hardest to follow instructions. And I shall also pass those instructions on if I am at the event again later and other people need help.

Commanders could have a great part to play in mentoring.

There are, however, also some fairly horrible commanders who are rude, automatically assume you are an idiot and talk to you as such despite you not having said anything yet, or don’t know what they’re doing and blame anyone and anything they can when things go wrong. These people, even if they do know what they’re doing and are saying some sensible things, will always get ignored by others because you insulted them first chance you got. Treat me like an idiot and I WILL ignore you and work things out on my own. I am not so childish as to set out to deliberately fail the event, because I want to succeed as much as the next person. But don’t think I’ll respect you if you disrespect me.

CrossedHorse.4261:

I also had the fortune to run a Marionette event under the direction of the good Mad Queen herself, and it was a great experience.

Why thank you darling, that is mighty kind of you.

CrossedHorse.4261:

There are, however, also some fairly horrible commanders who are rude, automatically assume you are an idiot and talk to you as such despite you not having said anything yet, or don’t know what they’re doing and blame anyone and anything they can when things go wrong. These people, even if they do know what they’re doing and are saying some sensible things, will always get ignored by others because you insulted them first chance you got. Treat me like an idiot and I WILL ignore you and work things out on my own. I am not so childish as to set out to deliberately fail the event, because I want to succeed as much as the next person. But don’t think I’ll respect you if you disrespect me.

Such commanders quickly teach players who not to listen to. I’ve seen those commanders as well, especially during the marionette event. They would yell at players after a failure, and call them names. That’s not a way to get people to follow your lead. As I always say, when I command a group of players, we fail or win together as a team. I try to lead by example, and teach players that failing is a part of the game, and it’s really not such a big deal.

The last thing I would want to do as a commander, is discourage players from trying again. Even after a failure, I think a commander should stay positive, and simply analyze what went wrong. That is helpful. And if the same players stick around for a second try, they may take the lessons learned to heart, and the outcome might be entirely different.

Yes, the Marionette event did spark some rage, didn’kitten

The succeed or fail as a team philosophy is a great one. I am very pleased to think that, despite the odd one or two, most of the commanders I’ve run events with in AG are followers of that way of thinking.

I also agree with your original point there there could be so much more that commanders could do. I, for instance, have never worked out what on earth joining a squad does. I click on the commander, click “join squad” and literally nothing happens. I thought it would be like joining a larger party, where you could get squad-specific instructions, even across the map, and where the commander might be able to see his group etc, etc. But there was nothing, where this could have been a fantastic tool. In WvW it would make things so much more fun and dynamic, and may well encourage more commanders to split the zerg and create smaller squads (aside from the 5-man havoc squads you see around) of maybe 15-20 people for raids, harrying the enemy, flanking etc. Of course, that can happen now, but this would make it easier.

More on topic, a lot of people fail to realise that just because they play every day does not mean others do. I quite often don’t play during the week, and might join a LS event for the first time over a week in. People will ask why I don’t know what is going on, when the event has been running for X days, and never seem to believe you when you say it’s because you haven’t played yet. Why wouldn’t they believe that? Also, newer players are joining all the time etc. There will never be a state where absolutely everyone and his mother knows what is going on at any time.

Similarly, pointing out and giving links to guides is good and useful. I learn a lot from watching videos on Youtube and looking up information. But, and it is a good but, knowing everything that happens, what to expect and what to do, is very different from actually doing it, and people fail to realise that. Just telling someone to look at a guide may be a useful starting point, but it can’t stop there. The Marionette event, for instance, before I turned up the second time I could tell you everything about how to succeed at that event, but it didn’t mean I knew how to execute it perfectly because I hadn’t experienced it. And yes, things went wrong – ppl got knock back into bombs which downed them instantly etc, etc. So just knowing doesn’t always help. you have to try and you have to fail to really learn. And for some, that takes longer than others, and that really is not something that is their fault.

Random thoughts on the topic:

• There are “lesser-skilled” players in every MMO, but GW2 design throws all PvE demographics together in the same content, whereas in other games the skilled and lesser-skilled seldom interact.
• Some players demanded harder events; GW2 design places these harder events in the persistent world and in the LS. Since the content is new, everyone goes to these events, whether they wanted harder events or not.
• Some players demanded events that could fail because some events required no skilled. Now, we have events that require some skill or the event fails, and the event fails sometimes. What did people think was going to happen?
• How do the people complaining in this thread know that the people dying in LA events are the same people each try? Do you make lists? How do you “know” its not different people doing the event for the first time. Are you assuming that because you’ve played the event umpteen times that everyone must have?

This is an interesting message.

The entire topic would be similar to asking yourselves, If you think the government can make you a better person.

Bottom line is it can’t.

Anet itself can’t make anyone a better player and they shouldn’t even try as it would be wasted resources in attempting it.

The simple truth is we are not created equal.

Some players are more skilled , some players are less skilled.

The ONLY thing Anet can do it make content which can appease both groups. They are not capable of anything beyond that.,

TooBz.3065:

Conncept.7638:

TooBz.3065:

Conncept.7638:

Okay because soooo many people seem to have addresses my post on improving improving dodge by making it more mechanically and visually varied, with ‘No mo particle ’ffects’.

A) I did not say only particle affects, but animations. Simple fact, nobody plays this game and says “Oh look, did you see that dodge roll! It was exactly the same as the one six seconds before it, and the one six seconds before that, and the ten million I’ve done and seen since launch!”

B) We already know the existing particle affects and animations are being worked on. Putting more in for better and more varied telegraphs, and the efficacy of the current ones, are two completely unrelated issues. This is a non-argument.

Just because they are “working” on it, doesn’t mean that massive particle effects doesn’t make it difficult to see telegraphs.

No, but that problem is with overall particle effects in the game, not any specific one. Therefore, adding a few specific effects is not going to affect the fix to overall effects when it comes. Plus this is only a problem with large event bosses, how does that even affect more varied dodge gameplay? It doesn’t, quit harping on a non-issue.

Didn’t harp. First time I posted anything about it. Stop harping on me about my posts. :P

Sorry, I should have stated ‘those who have been harping on this issue please stop doing so’

Fenrir.3609:

Azreell.1568:

This is an interesting message.

The entire topic would be similar to asking yourselves, If you think the government can make you a better person.

Bottom line is it can’t.

Anet itself can’t make anyone a better player and they shouldn’t even try as it would be wasted resources in attempting it.

The simple truth is we are not created equal.

Some players are more skilled , some players are less skilled.

The ONLY thing Anet can do it make content which can appease both groups. They are not capable of anything beyond that.,

Yes people will always have different skill levels and skill potential, but people get better at things by experience and challenge. If the game had more content which got people used to basic skills and added more content which challenged those skills then plenty of people would get “better”. Will everyone? No.

I’m not sure how the “better person” analogy works. That sounds rather morally ambiguous whereas being able to dodge more efficiently is a metric which can be trained. It’s altogether different.

It’s not different at all.

The point is simple. ANY player can improve his skill set by practice, researching encounters and understanding his class. In other words investing some time to improve.

But, What you are asking for is for Anet to take away the above work and design content around doing the exact same thing to make it "easier’ or carry said players who are not willing to take the initiative to improve.

I’m sorry but our society has enough hand holding.

Darwinism has a place in videos games and worked well in all prior games I have played.

It gives other players something to strive for.

Azreell.1568:

This is an interesting message.

The entire topic would be similar to asking yourselves, If you think the government can make you a better person.

Bottom line is it can’t.

Anet itself can’t make anyone a better player and they shouldn’t even try as it would be wasted resources in attempting it.

If that were true, that would mean that every game designer ever has wasted time and precious resources, by providing players with useless tutorials.

Not exactly an idea I subscribe to.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Azreell.1568:

This is an interesting message.

The entire topic would be similar to asking yourselves, If you think the government can make you a better person.

Bottom line is it can’t.

Anet itself can’t make anyone a better player and they shouldn’t even try as it would be wasted resources in attempting it.

If that were true, that would mean that every game designer ever has wasted time and precious resources, by providing players with useless tutorials.

Not exactly an idea I subscribe to.

This game does have a tutorial system. It’s called the leveling process.

Beyond that – there is absolutely nothing that can be done to improve said players skill level beyond said player investing time and effort in improving himself.

Also, As stated some players are good and some are bad. There is no equality when it comes to skill and it’s silly to think that there could be.

Profession story quest lines that teach you all the basics of combat + tips and tricks

Azreell.1568:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Azreell.1568:

This is an interesting message.

The entire topic would be similar to asking yourselves, If you think the government can make you a better person.

Bottom line is it can’t.

Anet itself can’t make anyone a better player and they shouldn’t even try as it would be wasted resources in attempting it.

If that were true, that would mean that every game designer ever has wasted time and precious resources, by providing players with useless tutorials.

Not exactly an idea I subscribe to.

This game does have a tutorial system. It’s called the leveling process.

Beyond that – there is absolutely nothing that can be done to improve said players skill level beyond said player investing time and effort in improving himself.

Also, As stated some players are good and some are bad. There is no equality when it comes to skill and it’s silly to think that there could be.

And the games leveling process serves as a god awful tutorial. Hence alot could be done to improve the skill level of the average player.

The fact that people have different skill/potential skill levels and that not everyone is the same, does not mean that through experience and challenge the average person cannot improve. Given the right mechanics and encounters which drive practice and challenge, you would find many probably would indeed improve.

Azreell.1568:

This game does have a tutorial system. It’s called the leveling process.

Beyond that – there is absolutely nothing that can be done to improve said players skill level beyond said player investing time and effort in improving himself.

How about that heart-quest in Queensdale that explains blocking?
How about the hint pop ups?
What about dungeon mentors?
What about the gradual learning curve that was present in the Molten Facility?
How about the Zhaishen battlegrounds in GW1?

They could create challenging content with both desirable and prestigious rewards that require skill to overcome.

Liadri was a great example of this and required players to leave their comfort zone in order to overcome it.

Currently there is too much emphasis on zerg-content where you DPS race down specific mobs with dozens of other players. With hard-rezzing in place, few people ever have to suffer the consequence of their poor performance.

Small man group content is where the challenge should lie and unfortunately Fractals aren’t that place. They take too long and too much grind and don’t really offer desirable rewards that are exclusive to that content.

Give us the "inspect" command so we can see other people’s builds and traits. Also, instance more content like open world events so we can keep bads and special snowflakes with green gear and "unique" builds from ruining the event for people who are there to win.

When no one wants to run with them, they’ll either learn or remain alone and prevented from ruining other people’ experience.

This whole “Everyone else is bad and I’m the only good player in the game” mentality is so old. Saying it doesn’t make it true. You can’t always win and not everyone gets a trophy despite what mommy says.

There exists a group of players, like myself, who really enjoy logging in and just having fun. We do not min/max, we do not care about consumables, and we do not necessarily equate defeating an encounter as the only way to have fun. If I have fun during the encounter and it fails, I still have fun that is great, fun is the only reason I log in.

That said, during my “online time”, I do not want to waste it researching encounters and checking other people’s builds, etc. I just want to play. All I hear in this conversation is, “Anet please do your best to force others to play the way that I want them to instead of letting them have fun their own way.”

The leechers and such will always be there and if they want to play that way so be it. I have not played an MMO where somebody did not figure out ways to leech. I do not care what reward he gets for doing whatever he is doing. I just worry about myself.

What I get from this thread.

Players: “There’s no hard content, content that can actually be failed!”
ANet: Here, have harder content that can be failed!"
Players: “We’re failing that content because it’s hard. Teach everyone else how to play better.”
ANet: “How do we do that?”
Players: “Make harder content!”
ANet: “We just did that…”
Players: “Put it where I won’t be affected.”

The real issue here is where they are trying to put “harder” content.

If it was the remit of instanced solo/dungeon/guild raid sized content, then it wouldn’t be an issue, you could simply avoid people who are either bad or just not interested in that kind of stuff.

By trying to do raiding differently (i.e. jam it into the open world environ) they have made life very hard for themselves. Good players will moan that “bads” are making the events fail, bad players will moan that the content needs a nerf and it shouldn’t be about the “elitists” and everyone will moan about “faceroll zergs” if the content is too easy.

kratan.4619:

There exists a group of players, like myself, who really enjoy logging in and just having fun. We do not min/max, we do not care about consumables, and we do not necessarily equate defeating an encounter as the only way to have fun. If I have fun during the encounter and it fails, I still have fun that is great, fun is the only reason I log in.

That said, during my “online time”, I do not want to waste it researching encounters and checking other people’s builds, etc. I just want to play. All I hear in this conversation is, “Anet please do your best to force others to play the way that I want them to instead of letting them have fun their own way.”

So much this. I’m on the same page here.

I do agree that the game could use more hearts like the blocking/timing one in QD, or even some more helpful pop up tips. However, I’m going to point out for every 1 person that finds them helpful, there’s going to be at least 1 that finds them [not helpful] [annoying] [a waste of developer time]. Take you pick / insert your own word there. Of course, there are also those who will do the hearts, read the tip, etc and it does absolutely nothing to change their play in any way. In one ear, out the other so to speak.

It simply boils down to the same ol’ “kitten ed if they do, kitten ed if they don’t.” No matter what they do (good bad or otherwise), someone isn’t going to happy.

IndigoSundown.5419:

What I get from this thread.

Players: “There’s no hard content, content that can actually be failed!”
ANet: Here, have harder content that can be failed!"
Players: “We’re failing that content because it’s hard. Teach everyone else how to play better.”
ANet: “How do we do that?”
Players: “Make harder content!”
ANet: “We just did that…”
Players: “Put it where I won’t be affected.”

This events are far from being hard content, it is a race where player only need best damage nothing more.

i can see that as hard content.

Man this thread. I have read through the whole thing, and some of the stuff said wow. There is nothing you can do to help people get better if they don’t want to or the can’t.

I am lucky to have a very good guild. I have a lot of people in there I would consider good friends. But with that said, there are a few of these friends that play the bad builds, or the bad style as has been said in the post. There are some that will go down on every dungeon boss or in these events. Guess what I take them with me all the time, I take them with me on the big LS events, and I defend them in map chat when kitten hole start ragging on stuff that happen with their elitist attitude.

I know some players just can’t get any better. I know some that I play with are older, their reflexes slower, so guess what they did, they found a build to play with that helps them stay alive and have fun. Maybe they can’t make the dodge like they are supposed to, so what, they are having fun. THis is a game, and everyone is going to have a different opinion about what is fun for them.

No body should be required to have a certain build or anything else. Find what works best for you and go with it. The nice thing about my guild is we don’t ever worry about anything that is going on in this thread. Everyone is included in what we do, everyone is more the willing to go and help when needed. We dont’ ever have to pug anything and deal with kittens.

tldr: There is nothing that can be done to help players that either don’t want to get better, or they just can’t get any better.

Aeolus.3615:

IndigoSundown.5419:

What I get from this thread.

Players: “There’s no hard content, content that can actually be failed!”
ANet: Here, have harder content that can be failed!"
Players: “We’re failing that content because it’s hard. Teach everyone else how to play better.”
ANet: “How do we do that?”
Players: “Make harder content!”
ANet: “We just did that…”
Players: “Put it where I won’t be affected.”

This events are far from being hard content, it is a race where player only need best damage nothing more.

i can see that as hard content.

Not sure if the last sentence is supposed to be, “I can’t see…” or not — but, anyway…

It’s obvious the OP and his supporters see the new event(s) as “harder,” otherwise there’d be no need for people to have to “learn” to play better. His solution is for ANet to put in tutorial content that encourages people to improve their play.

Thing is, these events are content that encourages people to improve their play. The OP wants there to be a tutorial to do this instead of using content he wants to play. The bad news for his idea is that putting in a tutorial after the fact would not generate the improvement he’s looking for, because:

• New players make up a small portion of the player-base
• Existing players would not go do “tutorial” content unless there was a reward for doing so

If there were rewards for doing so, players like the OP would also be doing the tutorial content, and running into the same issues they’re complaining about now.

IndigoSundown.5419:

It’s obvious the OP and his supporters see the new event(s) as “harder,” otherwise there’d be no need for people to have to “learn” to play better. His solution is for ANet to put in tutorial content that encourages people to improve their play.

Thing is, these events are content that encourages people to improve their play. The OP wants there to be a tutorial to do this instead of using content he wants to play. The bad news for his idea is that putting in a tutorial after the fact would not generate the improvement he’s looking for, because:

• New players make up a small portion of the player-base
• Existing players would not go do “tutorial” content unless there was a reward for doing so

If there were rewards for doing so, players like the OP would also be doing the tutorial content, and running into the same issues they’re complaining about now.

Summarised neatly, thanks.

Answering to the last part:

• More “difficult” content will come, as events like Mario were generally received as well-designed and entertaining, and there’s a clear tendency towards such events.
• This content may be introduced game-wide as a (properly scaling) single-person “tutorial dungeon” which has a permanent achievement category (similar to Aetherpath) and gives a good unique reward (similar to the shiny weapons from AP chests), plus gold/laurels. I do remember how eager I was to get my first Zenith skin and how short of gold and laurels I was; competitive-driven players, however, will do this content once to get their APs because there’s nothing better than “free” APs.
• If it is a “dungeon”, the instancing solves the problem of doing content with other people.
• This tutorial dungeon may also let players face mobs of different player professions and builds, as well as, probably, means of temporarily changing stats for measuring damage and survivability.
• This can be introduced as a part of LS – some kind of “Asura Training Grounds” which were built for all heroes after the rumours of a new dragon surfacing; I virtually see how little asuras lecture players and show them exhibits to train on! This content can remain permanent and get highly advertised by NPCs in starting and low-level zones.
• At this stage of the game the “exploration” part of experience can be greatly spoiled by both availability information on the Internet and “activities” like Queensdale zerg which result in players entering other zones and asking for a “train”. So at this point, again, probably a tutorial on other basic in-game “laws” and the “how it was supposed to be played” thing can be implemented there as well.