I try to stay optimistic, but this post will swing back and forth. Here’s my thoughts from a 3 year PvXer having played all game types in a relatively tryhard fashion throughout..
PvE
FoTM - Starting here mainly because this is heralded as ‘the FoTM" patch. FoTM was close to my heart, earning all skins pre-HoT and daily runs, but I can’t say I’m optimistic that we’ll see a fix for the main issues here of (1) rewards, (2) mistlocks being uninteresting/un-fun, (3) replay-ability over 50+.
- Rewards: My speculation is that the reward increase will just bump a few more silver per encryption while reducing the drop-rate of encryptions and keys … for a net loss or net same per fractal run. You’ll see encryptions go up slightly on the TP for (1) the patch hype and (2) the reduction in supply. I do not forsee any added creativity to the rewards system (ie. new content, exclusive minis, etc).
- Toughness scaling: Great—now zerk is back on par with condi. Unfortunately, everyone that cared has already done the 50-100 achievos and with no incentive to go back and that is probably not changing any time soon. The only reason I could see making us go back would be for Ad Infinitum.
- Ad Infinitum: We are likely to not even get the completed recipe revealed this patch. I can only imagine the sheer amount of un-creative, un-inventive time-gating that will be in our future for this. Time-gate is not an achievement—it’s a stalling technique to prolong the life of poor content. The content is poor if you have to time-gate it to get anyone to want to do it. Since the PvP legendary will require 2 seasons, I’m unfortunately expecting quite the gate on this guy too.
- Fractal leaderboards: No one wants this. No one. There is a chance that it gates the Ad Infinitum which will only kitten of people even more. No one wants this.
- Solution? If you bump Fractal liquid rewards to near-dungeon levels, people will do FoTM for cash like old dungeon running. If you scale those liquid rewards appropriately with Frac level, then people will run those higher levels. Do not time-gate the kitten out of the legendary. A legendary should be achieved. Put some hard accomplishments on it. Ad infinitum should be a symbol of fractal pride. You want to see a player with Ad infinitum and think, “kitten , he completed x,y,z and earned that. wow.” not that he farmed a time gate for 250 fractal pages and then bought a ton of mats off the TP. No one wants Fractal leaderboards and it is/was a bad idea in the first place. Do not put Ad Infinitum requirements in RNG boxes. Don’t do it.
Dungeons - Just kidding.
Open World HoT / Story / New Elites - We could have had more maps and story could have been longer, but I had a great time. I played all elites through the maps and story and I enjoyed them all. I’m playing all elite specs through the new PvP seasons achieves and enjoying it 95% of the time. As predicted, that open world / story content lasted 1-2 months and the lull is here. Raids only delays that content lull for those of use who do it.
When is the next Story season and map scheduled? Doesn’t look like there has been much of anything new added to Wintersday—which is okay—so that team must be working on the next season.
Raids
Raids are almost perfect. They look amazing, the story has me wanting to follow through, and the fights are great. The trash fights are even engaging instead of a chore—you know you peed a little the first time when you panned behind you during the chase sequence. No cut scenes and no helpless NPCs for us to baby sit or bug either! The story moves with the action!
Bad players are punished for bad gear, bad builds, and most importantly, bad play. However, many many different builds and compositions work just fine. Strong teams of players can cruise through in around an hour or two—and it feels great. You bond pretty hard with a team you can count upon and those bonds are key in an MMO community. The struggle and the first kill you score is exactly the feeling these games aim to provide and the raid team nailed it. Turn your speakers down and go watch some of those first time kill videos around—every TS is ecstatic.
The drop rewards are pretty weak, however. I don’t expect a Ghostly infusion off every boss, but there should be some middle ground, but the currency system was a great idea and fixes a lot of problems. The problem is the fact that once you cap out your shards and boss kills for the week, there is no reason to help anyone else get their kills.
If you want a player-friendly, helpful culture, you need to incentivise it. If a team needs help, they’re probably not the strongest team and that means you can be there helping them for hours as they learn. If you’re burning good, expensive food to do it, that puts a helper in a pretty negative spot. I enjoy seeing anyone make their first boss kill, but that often costs hours.
Solution? Give shards or some bonus for multiple boss kills with players on the team that have not yet killed it that week. This combats farm teams do a degree.
PvP
I won’t talk about class balance. The meta is what it is and you either like it or don’t and adapt or don’t. Personally, I play everything so I could care less.
Leagues is such a great concept and if you ignore the pip system and a lack of a solo queue and think of all leagues is or could be and it’s great. The small problem is the metrics feel flawed (PUG vs premade on voice chat is straight garbage) and the MMR/pip system needs work.
Specifically, higher MMR players face other higher MMR players in games worth the same amount of pips as low vs low, thus both players will climb the ranks equally fast and a higher player can’t break out. Currently, the pip system reflects players who grind pips, not the better players so far. A great player who gets matched and wins a high MMR game should skyrocket into an appropriate league. If you can hang with ESL players, you shouldn’t have to grind through green when you can hang with reds and above. The league is still a week or two old and I’m sure in time things can flush out much better.
After leaving amber, Leagues has completely fixed my 4v5 problem. I recognize this is partially luck, but people not wanting to lose pips seems to make everyone’s internet connection a whole lot more stable.
Solution: High MMR game wins should be worth a whole lot more pips. Lack of solo queue is kitten. Pure kitten. Unless they want to add a voice comm system to PvP, then give us solo queue. Also, why are players who solo and players who team even in the same rating system? How is that not flawed. :S
WvW
In beta, we said the maps were too big and had too much PvE. Well, the maps are too big and have too much PvE. We also said changing the reset time to something more convenient for the A-net team while killing the most-important and strongest WvW night was a bad idea. While it feels like this is exactly what happened, does anyone have any stats on how bad all of this hurt WvW? Honestly, it feels like they’re so out of touch with what WvWers want and now WvWers feel like the old PvPers before the eSports push, not that PvPers ever had it great.
If you ask the WvW community what they want, they’ll tell you. They have told you for 3 years. Less PvE, more fights, more action, less lag, bug fixes.
GvG - Too little too late? No one cares about GvG anymore or I’m now too far away from the GvG community to even hear the noise.
Game Performance
The 64 bit client was a step in the right direction, but this engine has been hell for the players and the devs for all 3 years. Devs complain that the creativity they want to bring to the game is always limited by the game engine. Players complain because we have monster PC gaming computers that can choke on even small scale encounters. Memory leak and everything else.. I personally have a beast computer, but I can stutter in the Sabetha or Gor fights even on lowest graphics some days. My PC has crushed every singe other game it has ever touched.
Official Forums
These forums have become a ghost town. From the “tight” moderating to the lack of red posts, I honestly don’t know why I post here anymore. My posts often get deleted, but I will be cross-posting this on Reddit anyways. These days, it feels like you have to post it there if you want anyone other than Gaile to see it anyways.
Tell me what you think!
If you agree or disagree and what you think I got wrong. If you have any stats to back or combat my points, please lay it out (ie. player participation on new WvW reset times, etc).
-Gavx