Guild Wars 2

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

Well, 10.000 dollars for the tournament they just announced:p

Ulti.6730:

Well, 10.000 dollars for the tournament they just announced:p

Problem solved

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-guild-wars-2-invitational-and-regional-qualifying-tournaments/

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

What a well thought out and intellegent suggestion, complete with practial and creative suggestions to contribute to a constructive discussion that may one day lead to implimentation of exciting new content.

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

Funnily enough they had achievement like these in the Aeatherblade dungeon. And people raged like mad on these forums about it being “impossible”.

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played?

The issue is that MMORPGs have been made to cater to people who have time to spend, not skill. This makes sense from the point of view of a pay to play game, in which the goal is to keep people p(l)aying – if a reward is a matter of skill, some players know it’s likely they wouldn’t get it, so they wouldn’t even try. If something is a matter of only time spent, then everyone could get it, as long as they play (and thus pay) just a little longer.

GW2 is not a pay to play game, and so it does not need to follow this model. But the MMORPG players who flocked to GW2 are somewhat addicted to that kind of grind, so expect a lot of them to refuse the idea of rewarding skill as opposed to time spent.

Yet again I come across a thread that has little constructive value – AND yet again I find myself being just as un-constructive by pointing it out.

Honestly its a wonder how people dont rage quit the forums long before they rage quit the game.

Skill?

What kind of skill supposedly exists in the game?

Jumping Puzzles? Yes, if begging for someone else to work for you is skill. Dungeons? Yes, if using the gear and professions that someone else tells you to in a way someone else tells you to.

The only thing I can see reminiscent of actual “skill” would be successful commanders in WvW. And let’s be honest, WvW is mostly about coverage rather than successful leaders.

Olba.5376:

Skill?

What kind of skill supposedly exists in the game?

Jumping Puzzles? Yes, if begging for someone else to work for you is skill. Dungeons? Yes, if using the gear and professions that someone else tells you to in a way someone else tells you to.

The only thing I can see reminiscent of actual “skill” would be successful commanders in WvW. And let’s be honest, WvW is mostly about coverage rather than successful leaders.

Have you observed high level tPvP?

Well, skill-driven gameplay is what we were promised by Anet. I brought GW2 fully expecting a challenging game, like GW1 is.

However, GW2 is an experimental game. It’s trying to innovate, to do things differently, and usually those kind of games are unpolished. When a company decides to do a new game, they have the option between trying something different, or taking something that already exists and improve upon it. While a company like Blizzard takes working formulas and makes them even better, Anet likes to try different paths.

The consequence is that no one – including the devs – know those new mechanics will work out until the game is finally out and millions of players are testing them. A lot of the most promising ideas, like the lack of a healer, the lack of required roles, the dynamic events, etc, had a lot of unforeseen problems that were only discovered after the game was out. There’s a lack of depth in the current combat system, the lack of trinity has degenerated the game into a dps train rush, the dynamic event system had poor scaling, the dungeons were not as exciting as they could have been.

Ultimately, what happened to GW2 is what usually happens in experimental games: it brings new mechanics, those are usually unpolished or broken because they’re new and thus they bring new unpredictable problems, and we’re left waiting as Anet (or even any other company) takes those new ideas and improves them in the future.

We’ve seen better event scaling lately, better dungeons (even if only temporary), and who knows what else might come, but this is all still in a very experimental phase. Players who want solid, tried-and-true challenging content will have to be busy with other games in the meantime, and wait for GW2 to grow.

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

Fotm = Infused Ascended gear?

Arah = Neat looking gear to some, and other stuff you can buy with Shard of Zhaitan.

sPvP = Not so good at rewards there but it seems you can win real good, read above posts.

lordkrall.7241:

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

Funnily enough they had achievement like these in the Aeatherblade dungeon. And people raged like mad on these forums about it being “impossible”.

What? We finished the final boss in under than 12 minutes first try.
1 Guardian 3 Warriors 1 Mesmer.
Get better.

Add new hardcore dungeon with timer, the better you finish it, the more rewards you get, make it 2 hours long.
Then again, thanks to the good GW2’s game mechanics, everyone would just run Warriors with berserker gear.

no such thing as “skill” in this game.
Just pick OP build, OP class, mash all the buttons = win.

The amount of practice it takes to be proficient in a class or build is minutes to hours in this game…

In other action MMORPG’s time it takes to be fully proficient in a character class is on the order of months or more.

tPvP is more about organization, having best builds etc. Planning, strategy, and organization easily compensates for individual skill when the other team is disorganized but each player is very skilled.

Kurakura.7281:

no such thing as “skill” in this game.
Just pick OP build, OP class, mash all the buttons = win.

The amount of practice it takes to be proficient in a class or build is minutes to hours in this game…

In other action MMORPG’s time it takes to be fully proficient in a character class is on the order of months or more.

tPvP is more about organization, having best builds etc. Planning, strategy, and organization easily compensates for individual skill when the other team is disorganized but each player is very skilled.

So no, you haven’t watched high level tPvP then?

I guarantee that there’s a world of difference between two teams running the exact same builds, with exact same strategies, yet one team ‘button mashes’ and the other actually knows their build/role.

Making statements like you’ve made above pretty much shows your knowledge of high level tPvP is severely lacking.

Kurakura is right in that a well-organized team is better than an unorganized team with individually better players. Of course, at high level tpvp, all players are good. :P

Personally I am a fan of skill based content as well. The jumping puzzles are probably the closest thing to it in GW2 so far. There are some that are fairly easy, but there are also some like Griffenrook Run that can give you a run for your money.

So those I enjoy.

Creating something that is skill based or ‘difficult’ with out creating content that is tedious is certainly a challenge.

For example, the jumping puzzle in Metrica with the wind that blows you off various areas. To me that is more tedious then it is difficult. Then of course once you learn you can use stability skills to toally ignore it, that goes away altogether but that is besides the point.

Griffenrook Run as mentioned above I think is more skill based. It requires you to beat it in under 3 minutes while avoiding all combat from the Griffens while completing this jumping puzzle where half of the jumps come pretty kitten close to killing you. If you have pick up eggs along the way to heal yourself and grant speed buffs. So to be that requires some skill to master.

That being said it is still very subjective. What I’ve just described may be easy for someone more skilled then I, or they may hate the sound of it and it would be terribly frustrating and unfun.

So implimenting skill based content that is going to suit a large player base is no small task. If A Net does it in a creative way I will certainly applaud. In the mean time I will continue to enjoy the fun, light content that exists in the game today.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Kurakura is right in that a well-organized team is better than an unorganized team with individually better players. Of course, at high level tpvp, all players are good. :P

Meh, that’s not always true. I’ve solo queued before (and gotten a full team of solos) and face-rolled organized guild teams (decent ones at that). During these wins my team had 0 communication, 0 strategy, and 0 cohesiveness. We just all did what we thought was best.

Craptrain.7203:

Meh, that’s not always true. I’ve solo queued before (and gotten a full team of solos) and face-rolled organized guild teams (decent ones at that). During these wins my team had 0 communication, 0 strategy, and 0 cohesiveness. We just all did what we thought was best.

Also happened to me, but I’ve also lost to plenty of premade players that were nothing special. It depends on the degree of skill of each player. Certainly, no matter how organized you are, if you can never win in combat against better players, you’ll never get any points. But there are average players who can coordinate really strong bursts or are very efficient at team rezzing, and against those, unorganized teams just don’t have a chance.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Craptrain.7203:

Meh, that’s not always true. I’ve solo queued before (and gotten a full team of solos) and face-rolled organized guild teams (decent ones at that). During these wins my team had 0 communication, 0 strategy, and 0 cohesiveness. We just all did what we thought was best.

Also happened to me, but I’ve also lost to plenty of premade players that were nothing special. It depends on the degree of skill of each player. Certainly, no matter how organized you are, if you can never win in combat against better players, you’ll never get any points. But there are average players who can coordinate really strong bursts or are very efficient at team rezzing, and against those, unorganized teams just don’t have a chance.

I hear ya. Just trying to make the point that organization does not always trump individual skill and that the latter has a greater impact than the other poster would care to admit.

Olba.5376:

Jumping Puzzles? Yes, if begging for someone else to work for you is skill. Dungeons? Yes, if using the gear and professions that someone else tells you to in a way someone else tells you to.

Unless, of course, you’re the type what does her own jumping and learns ta play the game herself. A body can’t complain there ain’t any skill needed in the game if all they do is ask others ta do it for them.

IMO, this game does take skill to be good at. but it doesn’t take skill to get rewarded for things. Also, imo, this game actually consists of a rather skilled player base COMPARED TO OTHER MMO’S which make the game fun when playing spvp and wvwvw. There is a larger issue with GW2 that trumps not being rewarded for skill vs time spent. And that is being rewarded for being lucky vs skill and/or time played. This, imo, is why people don’t really do pve content outside of dailes and some gold farming. GW2 has to do a better job of making pve more enticing to make the skilled and the general population step outside of wvwvw every now and then.

pullnointer.1476:

… arah gives nothing

Arah gives you credibility and a real variety of challenging fights, which is worth more than all the COF1 gold or TP-flipping profits you see other people grinding away at in a single unflinching location day after day after day.

sPvP … while fairly inconsistent in how it’s always-changing… does a similar thing probably to an even more passionate octave… While the MOST “skilled” players also receive Gems.

Let’s not forget WvW which prior to April, only had a couple armors for sale and none of them were Exotics IIRC.

Another thing left out here, Orr Temples … whose chests generate a lot of Cores & even some Lodestones for lots of people daily assuming those servers run enough support builds to actually keep the rest of the Zerg alive.

Addendum to the Orr Temples: Obsidian shards are the most direct way to quickly generate T6 mats now since most “endlessly spawning” Event Mobs that used to drop them, have since had their Drop Tables completely “Smiter’s-Booned” (removed from play).

If there is any one single totally-underrated, underpopulated & unrewarding piece of content in this game…. Besides open World Champions of course …. It would definitely be Caudecus’ Manor. Very few people do it now because enough FotM runs gets you a Utility Pendant that gives roughly the same amount of Magic-find as every single piece of Noble gear combined…. This is a Problem Compared to most of the other problems. But it’s a problem that 99.9% of the playerbase seems more than happy to overlook so long as they have easy farms like COF, COE, FOTM, WorldBosses on predictable Timers, and all the other crap that gets farmed by glass cannons on a daily basis.

CryxTryx.9208:

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

What a well thought out and intellegent suggestion, complete with practial and creative suggestions to contribute to a constructive discussion that may one day lead to implimentation of exciting new content.

whoru to talk kitten here?

In GW1 missions had bonuses that yielded extra skill points if completed. It made some missions a lot harder.

Kurakura.7281:

no such thing as “skill” in this game.
Just pick OP build, OP class, mash all the buttons = win.

The amount of practice it takes to be proficient in a class or build is minutes to hours in this game…

In other action MMORPG’s time it takes to be fully proficient in a character class is on the order of months or more.

tPvP is more about organization, having best builds etc. Planning, strategy, and organization easily compensates for individual skill when the other team is disorganized but each player is very skilled.

Lol, it’s pretty obvious you don’t play PVP in this game.

The high end PvP isn’t decided before it starts, simply because of their classes.

Pretty much everyone runs their own build that works for them.

Kurakura.7281:

The amount of practice it takes to be proficient in a class or build is minutes to hours in this game… .

Says every person what thinks he’s good in a profession.

Erasculio.2914:

The issue is that MMORPGs have been made to cater to people who have time to spend, not skill. This makes sense from the point of view of a pay to play game, in which the goal is to keep people p(l)aying – if a reward is a matter of skill, some players know it’s likely they wouldn’t get it, so they wouldn’t even try. If something is a matter of only time spent, then everyone could get it, as long as they play (and thus pay) just a little longer.

this is what I don’t understand. why do people allow an imaginary carrot to lead them on? “rewards” don’t mean squat if all something takes is easy, boring, repeated tasks. I value fractal weapons over legendaries because all legendaries take is insane amounts of grind/rmt. also what’s the deal with people not being able to break a skill barrier? are there actual people in the world who think “oh this is too hard, I rather kill trash mobs in the open world over and over instead of trying to exercise my brain cells every once in a while”?

I’d love to see one on one fights. no capping buildings or anything, just 1 on 1 to the death fights with rankings based on each class, death to win ratio.

pullnointer.1476:

also what’s the deal with people not being able to break a skill barrier? are there actual people in the world who think “oh this is too hard, I rather kill trash mobs in the open world over and over instead of trying to exercise my brain cells every once in a while”?

More than skill is involved. There’s talent and equipment.

Skill: Learn mob mechanics; learn which weapons/powers are advantageous in which fight. Learn tells for which attacks to dodge.

Talent: Good twitch reflexes. Sure, you can improve by practice, but only within what’s possible for you.

Equipment: An optimum computer and an optimum connection. The best twitch reflexes in the world won’t matter if the server decides you’ve been hit before you even see the attack coming.

A dungeon for a talented player with good skill and good equipment is going to be a lot easier than it would be for someone with marginal talent and mediocre equipment. Being on the low end of things with regard to twitch reflexes and equipment can actually hinder the development of skill, because of the onset of frustration.

These issues, along with gear, are why there is such a discrepancy in dungeon experience between the haves and the have-nots — and why so few players post that dungeons are tuned “just right.” It’s likely that players with talent and good equipment will never understand this, because it’s easier to assume that players who are doing poorly are “bad” than it is to try to figure out why.

What this means is that there are rewards for skill (as well as talent and rig), in the form of dungeon tokens, dungeon coin rewards and access to more of the game. It just doesn’t seem like it to you because you take those for granted.

Erasculio.2914:

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played?

The issue is that MMORPGs have been made to cater to people who have time to spend, not skill. This makes sense from the point of view of a pay to play game, in which the goal is to keep people p(l)aying – if a reward is a matter of skill, some players know it’s likely they wouldn’t get it, so they wouldn’t even try. If something is a matter of only time spent, then everyone could get it, as long as they play (and thus pay) just a little longer.

GW2 is not a pay to play game, and so it does not need to follow this model. But the MMORPG players who flocked to GW2 are somewhat addicted to that kind of grind, so expect a lot of them to refuse the idea of rewarding skill as opposed to time spent.

Guild Wars 2 is funded by the cash shop and so needs players playing. That’s what’s behind the content every two weeks model. More people playing means more cash shop sales…even if only 20% of the people are buying. Because 20% of a bigger number equals more money.

PvE-wise pretty much only ways to get some challenge is to do high level FotM or solo. That’s probably one reason why I’m sitting below 10 gold at the moment (and the other is spending it recklessly to stuff like waypoints).

Well, if there are rewards for achieve points, then how about to at least make some skill-based achievements? Like completing dungeon without deaths/getting downed, or killing bosses for less than X minutes. For interrupting some dangerous casts. Dodging X attacks in a row. Heal other people when they have less than 5% of their hp, etc. Its not that hard.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Well, if there are rewards for achieve points, then how about to at least make some skill-based achievements? Like completing dungeon without deaths/getting downed, or killing bosses for less than X minutes. For interrupting some dangerous casts. Dodging X attacks in a row. Heal other people when they have less than 5% of their hp, etc. Its not that hard.

I agree there should be some skill based achievements like not dying in dungeons etc.

Just keep in mind, many skill based achievements, people will find a way to bypass. Like the swamp fractal and avoiding the traps. All you have to do is get to the wisp enclave without hitting a trap then stand there while three other people do the work. There are no traps for the final boss, so the less you do in the fractal the more likely you are to get the achievement.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Well, if there are rewards for achieve points, then how about to at least make some skill-based achievements? Like completing dungeon without deaths/getting downed, or killing bosses for less than X minutes. For interrupting some dangerous casts. Dodging X attacks in a row. Heal other people when they have less than 5% of their hp, etc. Its not that hard.

yes, even more so because dungeons/fotm don’t give many achi points atm.

IndigoSundown.5419:

~

dunno brah, I don’t think you can attribute too much to those factors.

lordkrall.7241:

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played? not like they’re hard, but fotm gives nothing, arah gives nothing, no automated spvp tourneys with enormous prizes for winners…

Funnily enough they had achievement like these in the Aeatherblade dungeon. And people raged like mad on these forums about it being “impossible”.

Hold on, Aetherblade was temporary content, people were desperate to get them achievements before it went away, why not have permanent decent challenges like Aetherblade? Even many people saying it was easy, it was not THAT easy just because some did it fast, compared to all the other content hp-based it was a more decent challenge.