Showing Posts For Aelelan.1639:
1 2
It’s an important mechanic of the fight. They only do the pull when they are supercharged so you can’t let them hit the walls themselves or they are going to do this annoying thing to you. Maybe they could have telegraphed this better (made it more obvious how to prevent the pulls) but it’s a great mechanic that is definitely avoidable.
The last thing we need in this game is more faceroll content in high-end PvE. Let’s not get me wrong here but for god’s sake it is SO refreshing to have something that is actually challenging to do in PvE.
<Player looking for a team>
Ingame name: Aelelan.11639
Main Class / Potential Classes (Incase team requires): Guardian – alts: Warrior, Necro
Region: NA/EST
Practice Times: Any weeknight that isn’t Tuesday – weekends work too.
Experience: Honestly very little but I like to think that despite my credentials U’m not that bad – 18 Tournments played, 9 won, 69 matches played and 38 won overall.
Other (Anything else that you would like to add): I’m a pretty dedicated guy but my schedule tends to be very haphazard. I’m willing to keep open communication though and strongly believe that the most important thing to having any success pretty much in any group activity is communication – and I’m not bad at it
8/10
I’ve been actually watching sPvP matches. That’s just so cool to me. It’s actually fun to just spectate matches. The F&F dungeon is a really good step in the right direction as far as boss mechanics go, and the fact that it is temp does suck but the drastic improvement in dungeon quality is enough for me to just be happy with the improvement inherently. weapon skins that are cool and NOT RNG-based is awesome.
That being said, I have’t actually experienced them but I hear that the event scaling in Orr is rindonc. Class balance hasn’t really bothered me at all as a Guardian thought I’m sure I’d be singing a different tune if I were a different profession.
Don’t let the 8/10 fool you, since a 10/10 is perfect and the patch wasn’t perfect I couldn’t give it that in good conscience but I love this patch. Really awesome patch all around, ESPECIALLY with arenas and spectator.
Two quick suggestions to improve the spectator mode:
1. The spectator mode should definitely allow you to shift camera by double clicking the icons on the minimap. This was just something that I intuitively tried to do while spectating.
2. I can’t really say that the static cameras at each point are that necessary or at very least need some improvements. It seems like it would be ultimately be in a caster’s best interest to have all the information provided by having a player’s point of view rather than the blank screen given by these pre-placed cameras.
I can’t say that it’s that big of a deal. As it is a majority of esport viewers do so through streams rather than direct in-game spectating. Any match worth watching likely would be one you would be better off watching with a shoutcaster to begin with.
I still think there’s room for improvement but I agree. Cased actually asked questions and engaged in discussion with the devs rather than just letting them talk the whole time with a live audience. It can still be better, but it was a step in the right direction and for that we thank you Caed!
This is a really nice post. I think it’s pretty important that this be brought up as well because though the changes to the Temple of Grenth show some progress Anet really has a long way to go before we have some truly engaging PvE bosses. A
As it stands, dodging – though it adds a fun timing element to combat – trivializes a lot of mechanics by giving complete immunity. From my experience with the combat I think that making the decision to dodge or not to dodge – which attacks to soak vs. which attacks are really worth your dodge – matter is crucial to creating a boss fight that keeps players making decisions rather than camping on the dodge button.
I hate to keep beating the dead horse here, but this is really just something else. The skins are awesome and the puzzles themselves are just mind-blowing. You can really tell it came from the heart. Truly a talented team of devs who worked on this. I’m happy shell out some money for gems for this.
I don’t think his enumerating what has been released in the two months in 2013 was necessarily to claim “here are all these other things that we did, why don’t you go do these things instead” but rather to say something more along the lines of “these are all the systems that we’ve been working on while also doing the living story and now that they are done we can allot more resources to the living story”.
It’s a pretty flawed argument to claim that “because I’m not going to be playing it, then it’s not content” or insinuate that because something isn’t necessarily applicable to you it isn’t a valued addition to the game/doesn’t take up resources in development.
I’m all for giving feedback on the personal story – I also thought that the content was very over-hyped – but not only is a claim that these additions are somehow not worth adding to the game irrelevant, it’s also just plain incorrect.
What is just plain incorrect is the manner in which that ‘content’ was presented. That particular ‘content’ could have been presented in a manner which would have allowed every guild, large or small or in between, to begin their participation in and enjoyment of the ‘content’ right away, without any delay wrought by exclusive and prohibitive prerequisites. There should have been two and only two prerequisites for getting started with Guild Missions:
1) have a Guild Wars 2 account, and
2) be in a guild.That’s all.
Flawed argument or not, I maintain that such ‘content’ does not count as ‘content’ for those excluded – by design! – from the ‘content’.
As for the Living Story, as I’ve said previously, I don’t see much life or much story – but! I have at least been able to repair signs and pick up mementos and find lost personal items and fight invaders without having to fulfill some exclusive and prohibitive prerequisite. Other than having a Guild Wars 2 account, of course.
All completely valid complaints, but the way you phrased your original post it made it sound as though the things like Guild Missions (things that exclude people not interested in joining a guild big enough to get the influence) somehow don’t take time to make because it isn’t content that you’ll be playing.
I think we can both recognize the truthfulness in the fact that because things like Guild Missions were being created, things like the Living Story were temporarily less intensively developed. This explains minimal living story content bringing us back to what I was saying – this was the whole point of Captain Stein telling us what else was made in 2013 so far.
I don’t think his enumerating what has been released in the two months in 2013 was necessarily to claim “here are all these other things that we did, why don’t you go do these things instead” but rather to say something more along the lines of “these are all the systems that we’ve been working on while also doing the living story and now that they are done we can allot more resources to the living story”.
It’s a pretty flawed argument to claim that “because I’m not going to be playing it, then it’s not content” or insinuate that because something isn’t necessarily applicable to you it isn’t a valued addition to the game/doesn’t take up resources in development.
I’m all for giving feedback on the personal story – I also thought that the content was very over-hyped – but not only is a claim that these additions are somehow not worth adding to the game irrelevant, it’s also just plain incorrect.
I really agree with this decision. You start making so many things account bound and you start running into the realm of “Now that I’ve done everything on one character I can do it on all the characters.” As it is, you can hop in to sPvP and play any class as if it were maxed out. I want to be able to build up my alts just like I did a main.
There are definitely a lot of things in GW2 that just should be standard fare. I really dig TERA on a lot of levels, but Jesus, every time I attack I get rooted and then I frown.
I’ve been trying to point this out for a while. Vertical progression is not something to fear. It’s not some arbitrary catch word that you can look at and say “WELP NO REASON TO PLAY THIS ANY MORE” because no two vertical progression systems are made equal. This mechanic is only as prevalent or as opaque as the designers implement it to be. This isn’t a world of black and white where vertical progression can either be non-existent or lead to you being left behind by guildmates because of a power creep that is too hard to keep up with without devoting absurd amounts of time to staying relevant.
There is an innumerable amount of methods for a game to implement vertical progression, and each system in one game is different than another because they are created under different environments with different intentions. We know Anet’s intentions, and we know the unpopularity of overly-permeating power creeps so at the present we have no reason to believe that their brand of vertical progression should be anything like that of previous MMOs. It inherently won’t be, but I’m talking about a much larger difference than between WoW and Rift (though I’ve never played Rift honestly).
Edit: Just wanted to add a shout-out to the OP for making such a well-written post. Very intelligent and well thought out.
(edited by Aelelan.1639)
The responses to this topic indicate one thing.
RNG exists in GW2.
I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS. This wasn’t in their mainfesto:
“We don’t believe in RNG. We think that RNG is bad. Like rly bad. No srsly. Bad.” – Calvin Johansin
Money back.
I don’t even understand why they added it in the first place. Nobody was complaining, and nothing was broken. They just randomly decide to dumb down an already simple game.
And don’t even get me started on the whole “lulz we’re gonna be esports!” when they only a few PvP developers. Apparently they only have one person doing the programming for the entirety of sPvP. /facepalm
I also heard that Arenanet is made entirely up of one single person working from home named Arena Net.
That’s not what I mean. Can I do Fractals > 10 without Ascended, infused gear? No.
Content has been gated.
What, I’m supposed to be content that I can do Fractals 1-10? There is something the game will not ALLOW me to do, simply because I haven’t been grinding my kitten off for a specific piece of gear.
Oh hey look, my guildies want to throw together a group to do Fractal 12. I’d love to play with them! Can I? NOPE! Because I’m not infused. Content has been gated.
^ This is a real story and happened today. With Arenanet’s explicit statement that this is how they will handle new content, I can look forward to a lot more of that.
The game also won’t allow you to run around completely naked, that content is not being gated though. My only problem is that there isn’t anything different about Fractals 12 vs. Fractals 1. Barring agony and the difficulty increase, they are the same exact dungeons. There is nothing waiting for you beyond Fractal 10 (aside from of course playing with your guildies if they can’t play with you) aside from an increased chance for some rares/exotics (according to what you say). Is the loot chance the content that you’re missing out on? The experience of playing with friends? The increased difficulty? If not the items, I’m still struggling to see what specifically the content is that you are missing out on.
It’s frustrating to know that you can’t go and play with your guildies when they want to do harder difficulties, but that doesn’t mean that you’re missing out on content. You’re missing out on a experience for sure, but that’s not content, that’s just something created by the content, but that still seems like a valid thing to be angry about missing out on.
To bring it back a little, I think that getting so far into particulars in itself shows that there are questions that are worth being answered and problems worth being solved by the concept of Ascended gear (the middle ground between Legendary/Exotic). It has its place within the game, but still hasn’t been fully fleshed out.
The world’s most nonsensical and rambling post has finally come to a close.
(edited by Aelelan.1639)
snip
Is there something in the game I cannot experience without acquiring a certain type of gear?
Yes.
Content is being gated. End of story.
Additionally, I’m having trouble even getting GUILDIES to run Fractals with me, because no one sees the point of running Fractals < 10 because the rewards are dismal compared to the rewards for Fractals > 10. Why put work into content for lesser rewards when the same work can get you greater rewards? And yes, I say same, because Agony aside the “difficulty” level of the upper Fractals is negligible. Before you say it, my guild is full of nice and helpful people, but the perceived need created to get the top-tier gear again and not get left behind has even the nice players abandoning others in a mad scrabble to the top. I didn’t have time to play this weekend, so I’m stuck at Fractals 5. Content has been gated not only by gear required, but also by required “prerequisite steps” that just stinks of WoW.
I suppose if you want to consider the ownership of an item content, then the system gates content, but I certainly don’t buy that. The content for me is what you do to get the rewards. At least now I know what you mean. I can rest easy.
The system isn’t perfect but I can understand its necessity and why it was added to the game. Hopefully it will be made better.
Orion.7264There was no problem to fix to begin with. THERE WAS NO DISCREPANCY BETWEEN EXOTIC AND LEGENDARY. Stats were the same. Therefor changing stats had nothing to do with anything, and introducing a new top tier of stats merely introduced a new problem.
Was there a substantial gap between the time required to acquire legendaries and the time required to acquire exotics? Yes. Could they have introduced a tier in between exotic and legendary? Sure. “Legendary” or “Ascended” or whatever they want to call it, the equivalent cosmetic tier of armor would have been great. Instead, here’s what they did:
1. Introduced a new stat tier.
2. Made the acquisition of that stat tier incredibly long and expensive, NOT bridging the time gap between exotic and legendary but LENGTHENING it do to overlap in acquisition methods.
3. Gated new content through the requirement of above stated new stat tier to advance beyond a certain point.
4. Introduced a discrepancy between WvW players and PvE players and their relative power.
And those are just the top four problems, all INTRODUCED by this Ascended gear. What was solved?
I definitely think that the Ascended gear still needs to be balanced. It IS very difficult to get them (albeit not as hard as Legendaries – at least they hit the middle ground) and they could do with being a little easier to get. That’s a fair point. I also agree with you that the set of gear could have been cosmetic or could even have just had the infusion slot for infusions that only give Agony resist. Both reasonable alternatives and ones that I hope that they consider. I suppose that I meant to say that this IS a singular problem WITH a singular solution rather than implying its perfect as is – because it’s not. I’m mainly arguing against two things:
1. The assumption that this somehow means that we’re going to have a gear treadmill with the consistent introduction of new tiers of gear. That’s just something that would not make any sense given the professed reasons for this new tier: Bridge the gap between how hard it is to get Legendaries and how much time it takes to get Exotics. The efficacy of the current state is arguable, but its purpose is not. This came directly from devs.
2. Ascended gear gates content. It doesn’t because Agony is only introduced after the 10th difficulty in Fractals. By this time you’ve run the dungeon at least 10 times (probably more than that) and have seen all the dungeon has to offer. There is nothing new waiting for you after that 10th difficulty in terms of original content. People even have claimed that it’s possible to get passed the 13th difficulty without any Ascended gear.
As for your last point, it has been confirmed that Anet will introduced new ways for Ascended gear to be obtained. PvE and WvW players will have ways to get the same gear. in respective modes. Whether or not that in and of itself is unfair is moot as well because as it was there was already gear discrepancy between players through levels and the gear tiers even before Ascended. The only difference is that this tier takes longer to get.
Edit: Orion posted in reply to a different post. Don’t want to start multi-posting for no reason.
This begs the question – what is the content? The reward or the dungeons themselves? I would say the dungeons themselves. The 9 Fractals. The rewards are simply a by-product of playing content. They aren’t in themselves content. You aren’t experiencing content by getting an item, you’re experiencing content by playing the dungeon they created. Furthermore, the first piece of Agony resist gear is created through the mystic forge – not by drops. the Backslot is created with the mystic forge recipe consisting of:
T6 mats(not from the dungeon at all)
Vial of Condensed Mist Essence(dropped from difficulties 1-10)
50 ectos
Philosopher’s Stones/Crystals – 24 Skill points
So far all things you can get from anything outside of the dungeon or difficulties 1-10. The infusion for the agony resist comes from:
Base back slot item
Glob of Coagulated Mist Essence(5 Vials, Mystic Coin, Fractal Relic, and an Ecto)
250 Ectos
Gift of Ascension
The slotted infusion upgrades are also made with all materials made outside of Fractals 10+. You get my point. You are able to build Agony resist without ever entering difficulties 10+ and this builds more than enough resist to go farther into the dungeon so that rings can start dropping.
(edited by Aelelan.1639)
Well maybe I am missing something here, but it seems people are complaining that they “have” to obtain these Ascended items to stay competitive but competitive with what? The only reason to have Ascended items would be to do the new Fractals at the higher levels? I understand it might give players an edge in WvW but couldn’t they just balance it out by releasing a PvP Armor set of comparable stats?
You realize that PvE is a competition? Getting into groups is already segregated between exotics/others, and now you can bet there will be the same with Ascended. At least exotic gear was reasonable to get. New content is also balanced based off of the highest tier of gear, so players in PvE without Ascended gear will struggle through more difficult content (yes, struggle, because the difference in stats between full Ascended gear and full Exotic gear is comparable to the difference between full Exotic and full BLUES) purely because they didn’t grind for months through RNG and massive gold sinks to get their full Ascended sets. Not to mention content that will be artificially gated and locked to players through bullkitten mechanics like Agony.
Based on how they have balanced previous dungeons, there’s no reason to assume that only people with Ascended gear will be capable of running new dungeons. As it is you can run the first 1-10 difficulties of the dungeon without ever using a piece of Ascended gear or even exotic gear for that matter. Hell you don’t even have to be level 80 to do early difficulties as it is. No content is gated by Agony because the only thing waiting for you after difficulty 10 is…the same exact 9 fractals you’ve been playing to get to that point. That’s the content. For 10 difficulties (arguably 13 according to some) you’ve been running the same dungeons you will see when you get passed the threshold into Agony difficulties. Nothing new is waiting for you therefore no gated content. You’ve already seen the content after doing 10 difficulties of the dungeon.
I still am kind of baffled this discussion is going on now that the dungeon is out. You can complete up to level 10 in the dungeon without ever seeing Agony or any reason to have Ascended gear. Period. What content is gated? You’ve seen the content. 10 TIMES. Nothing exists for someone who has all exotics vs. someone who has Ascended.
The only legitimate concern I can see here is that it’ll have an adverse (albeit miniscule) effect on WvW, and they’ve already said there will be ways to get it through WvW. How is this even a discussion anymore? We have yet to know whether they will add more tiers (in which case there’s reason to worry since there’s no more time investment gap between Legendaries/Exotics). The only thing they’ve done is keep quiet about whether or not there will be new tiers, likely because of a kittentorm like this one. I’d be paranoid to say anything is out of the question too when I know that there will be a flock of angry forumgoers to man the flame cannons if something goes not according to plan. I’d be extremely surprised to know that there are more tiers beyond Ascended but would be happy to eat my words if there ever is one.
They have stated they wont release a new tier every 3 months, u can eat your words now :P
They have said that they will slowly add the last pieces of Ascended gear into the system (chests, weapons, gloves, boots, etc.) to ease into the new tier rather than release it all at once and have players get overwhelmed, NOT that they are releasing a new tier every three months.
I still am kind of baffled this discussion is going on now that the dungeon is out. You can complete up to level 10 in the dungeon without ever seeing Agony or any reason to have Ascended gear. Period. What content is gated? You’ve seen the content. 10 TIMES. Nothing exists for someone who has all exotics vs. someone who has Ascended.
The only legitimate concern I can see here is that it’ll have an adverse (albeit miniscule) effect on WvW, and they’ve already said there will be ways to get it through WvW. How is this even a discussion anymore? We have yet to know whether they will add more tiers (in which case there’s reason to worry since there’s no more time investment gap between Legendaries/Exotics). The only thing they’ve done is keep quiet about whether or not there will be new tiers, likely because of a kittentorm like this one. I’d be paranoid to say anything is out of the question too when I know that there will be a flock of angry forumgoers to man the flame cannons if something goes not according to plan. I’d be extremely surprised to know that there are more tiers beyond Ascended but would be happy to eat my words if there ever is one.
Do the math. First, it’s just the beginning. Second the pieces are at least 20% better than exotics. how on earth is that miniscule? LOL
How is “it’s just the beginning” any sort of argument that there will be more tiers in the future? I can’t tell you there won’t be new tiers in the future, and you can’t tell me there will – hell Anet implies in their silence/refusal to speak definitively on the subject that even they can’t speak for what circumstances might arise and potentially warrant another tier. My personal take is that there isn’t a problem to be solved anymore and therefore there should not be any reason why another tier should be introduced. A tier of gear was a solution to a problem (the discrepancy between Legendaries and Exotics) not a precedent to be followed.
If you fixed a broken chair leg with wood glue and the problem is solved, why would anyone in their right minds continue to put glue on the fixed chair leg? The problem is solved, the chair leg is fixed. You don’t need to keep putting on any more glue. Anet saw that their gear tiering system was broken (or rather unbalanced) so they fixed the problem with a middle ground between the two tiers that had the biggest discrepancy. Why would they keep adding more tiers? There is no more problem for them to fix with any more tiers of gear.
I still am kind of baffled this discussion is going on now that the dungeon is out. You can complete up to level 10 in the dungeon without ever seeing Agony or any reason to have Ascended gear. Period. What content is gated? You’ve seen the content. 10 TIMES. Nothing exists for someone who has all exotics vs. someone who has Ascended.
The only legitimate concern I can see here is that it’ll have an adverse (albeit miniscule) effect on WvW, and they’ve already said there will be ways to get it through WvW. How is this even a discussion anymore? We have yet to know whether they will add more tiers (in which case there’s reason to worry since there’s no more time investment gap between Legendaries/Exotics). The only thing they’ve done is keep quiet about whether or not there will be new tiers, likely because of a kittentorm like this one. I’d be paranoid to say anything is out of the question too when I know that there will be a flock of angry forumgoers to man the flame cannons if something goes not according to plan. I’d be extremely surprised to know that there are more tiers beyond Ascended but would be happy to eat my words if there ever is one.
Yes.
Though they already have a LFG feature it definitely needs to be more robust. For sure.
I thought these were easily the best encounters in the game aside from a few isolated bosses in a few Exp modes. Aside from the DC bug this goes to show that the system can work. I’ve had an incredible amount of fun just learning the encounters. They’re not perfect and sometimes get a little repetetive with how long some of then are (Svnair Shaman) but it’s such a leap in quality from the previous explorable modes its just uncanny. Truly hats off to a great job on this one for sure in my book.
I had always thought that a gear treadmill was when a game consistently introduces a new set of more powerful gear as new content is added. I always figured that this implied that there had to be many content patches that introduced new tiers of gear to claim its existence but the Guild Wars 2 forums have proved me wrong. A gear treadmill is incurred the second that you introduce a set of armor that has more stats than previous sets, regardless of whether or not it happens as a consistent mechanic of progression for new content. Some would argue that because GW2 has not had any of these content updates with new tiers of gear and because Devs have explicitly stated why this was added a singular solution to a singular problem that it lacks the consistency that a gear treadmill contains, but that’s just plain ridiculous.
SonicTHI.3217Please spare me diplomatic spin crap. I already heard that from ANET PR guys. What we want is actual reasons and justifications for those actions not some watered down text that has no real answers and just begs for more questions. Saying legendaries are too grindy so we ll introduce more grind for stats so you actually need to grind is ridiculous without first justifying stat grind in the first place.
If you wanna assume I support Ascended gear, be my guest. I’m not going to tell you not to. I can just tell you that I honestly don’t think it was a good idea and think there are other better ways within the anti-stat boost framework to give the middle ground they seek. Whether you accept that as truth is your problem.
They listened to a portion of their playerbase – great. They put a plan into action to solve it – also great, but they didn’t put a necessarily effective one in. No reason to leave the game altogether. You call it departure from principles, I call it experimentation with solutions outside of the restrictive guidelines that they set forth pre-launch. The reason I make the distinction is because departure from principles implies that this is something they are doing consistently – adding gear statistically better than our current gear to give progression. To pretend that because they decided in one patch to introduce something outside of their conceived realm of possibility for the game is reason to jump to the conclusion “WELL kitten I GUESS THATS IT FOR ME. THEY’VE GOT A GEAR GRIND” is just straight up ridiculous. I’ve said it before – there was a problem, they gave a solution. This isn’t a precedent by which to dictate future decisions. They didn’t say “ kitten I GUESS THIS WHOLE COSMETIC THING DIDN’T WORK OUT. OH WELL BACK TO STATS FOR THIS GAME”. There just isn’t nearly enough evidence to support that this is the new norm for this game. I’ll be happy to eat my words when there is because when you’re wrong you’re wrong even when I’m the one that’s wrong.
Ostra.3927So if you have a friend.. a close friend that suddenly says “you are not worth my time anymore” wouldnt YOU be upset? Of course. All we want is an honest answer to why the change. If it is because they truly think this is for the better fine, we can disagree and go our seperate ways. If they had no choice, fine they have a job and bills like I do, I would understand.
I guess I got a little inflamed and went off a bit too much. It’s really just pent up from posters less understanding/patient/coherent than you are.
They have said their reasons though: Ascended gear is mean to be a middle ground between getting a Legendary and getting Exotics. They can probably do it better, but they recognized a problem and proposed a solution.
My problem with your argument though is that they aren’t just arbitrarily saying “you’re not worth our time anymore”. People have definitely been saying that there is nothing to do at 80 – they had hit a wall with getting a legendary. It was too big of a task for a lot of people to undertake, and what many would call the main source of “endgame” suddenly became irrelevant to them as a result. They made a request to Anet and they have responded in a way that they saw best fit – far from what I would consider being treated like trash. A sect of people made their requests known (albeit a sect that they may or may not listen to) and they have responded. Perhaps not in the best way, they attempted to solve this problem, and now we suddenly have spit in their faces claiming that people will never play the game again and that all is lost for this game. I can appreciate toughness and a good verbal tear-down of an introduced mechanic, but these aren’t grounds to say “I’ll never play this game again.” especially after as big a change as this one. They have demonstrated (on a more general design scale) through this change that they are both listening to their playerbase (arguably too much) and that they are not too proud to rule out rethinking what they had originally intended to please what they can ascertain is the will of their fans (the ascertaining part is where I think the problem is).
These are good things to me firstly because this is the polar opposite of what we have gotten from plenty of game makers and even filmmakers – a complete an ardent claim that these are works of the maker and should be made only as the maker sees fit (George Lucas). If nothing else it is at least a change. Secondly because it bodes well for the rethinking of decisions as unpopular as controversial as this one.
I firmly believe that this game couldn’t do much to make me ever make a claim that I will never look at it again considering the amount of exploration there is left in the principles that they have put forth. Who knows though – I could be eating my words in a year or so.
All doom and gloom. GW2 is going strong and will go on for a long time to come.
If its going strong why did they completely reverse one of their core principles and not tell us a single thing about it before? They have not told us why they did this, why it was necessary, on what feedback they acted on… nothing!
A company that doesnt provide answers to its customers is always hiding something. Its usually trouble.
They’ve stated this before. They only implemented what people have perceived to be the beginning of a gear grind because they felt as though the difficulty/time invested in getting a Legendary and the difficulty/time invested in getting an Exotic set were too far apart. They introduced Ascended as a means by which to give people some sort of a middle ground between those two things. I think they could have achieved the same goal without adding extra stats, but this act was founded in a very real and justifiable reason. If they’re willing to make changes these big as soon as this, they are probably willing to rethink their changes just as quickly. Anet isn’t some demon company, and they don’t implement changes with malice – contrary to how some people would imply by their vehement anger. They care about the game, and anyone willing to delude themselves into thinking otherwise hasn’t seen this quote:
“I’m going to try to get some sleep, because I’m exhausted, and tomorrow is going to be a very long day. There is such a range of emotion I’m experiencing right now, but mostly I just want to say that I hope you guys love it. Love it forever, or love it and then move on to something else, but just love it, and know that three hundred of us melted down our hearts to give it to you. It’s all yours soon.”
We’re talking about people here – introducing free content not only because it’s their job but because they are extremely passionate about their work. It’s easy to just turn these people into faceless monsters out to annihilate all the hopes and dreams you POURED into getting your Exotic sets (lol). You’re not happy about it, fine – say it and go do something else for a bit but don’t hold some arbitrary grudge against these people as though they have some sort of vendetta against you and your virtual accomplishments.
I’m really sick of these threads debating whether or not the game is successful. It’s literally just for the purpose of baiting people into coming to the thread so that you can all talk about how much you hate someone or something . MMO players just really love to hate stuff and argue about how they can make games better than any random game studio they choose to criticize that day – taking pleasure in the ridiculing of someone’s livelihood because they couldn’t give you an experience deep or meaningful enough for you to waste your spare time with.
Maybe I’m just as pathetic for bothering to involve myself in it.
Thank your for replying.
I’m still not okay with this. I play Guild Wars 2 because it’s what I want in an MMO. I’m not stuck on a gear treadmill, trying to get into gated content, or dealing with any of the design gimmicks that other franchises have become notorious for.
Having read ArenaNet’s design philosophy before buying the game, I was very excited. But now a new tier of gear is being added for gear progression, and gated content is being added.
For a lot of people, the reward was getting to the level cap, getting the gear they wanted, and then experiencing the content that’s there. Now, those rewards have lost their value.
I, and many others, feel lied to. We purchased the game under the premise that success was measured by skill, rather than gear checks.
You assume that this content is gated by Ascended armor which really may or may not be true, but likely isn’t. I find it hard to believe that you will not be able to progress at all through the Fractals dungeon without first having Ascended gear. Keep in mind that Fractal runs are done in sets of three random Fractals of the total 9 mini-dungeons there are available. Imagine – without a single Ascended piece of gear – you enter the dungeon. You are able to complete 3 runs of the 9 fractals and are assured to see all 9 Fractals of the dungeon at least once. Now on the 4th run through things start to get hairy and you can’t progress through the dungeon. OMGWTFGATING.
No.
You’ve seen the 9 Fractals. There is nothing new waiting for you that the content patch hasn’t already allowed you to see (assuming that Ascended gear has a chance of being attained through the first three runs at the same chances as any run after those first three). You’ve gotten your shot at all the Fractals, and now you’re repeating the same content and NOW is when things start to become a problem without Ascended gear. Now Ascended gear isn’t preventing you from seeing content, its preventing you from repeating content in one single run. If you want to be able to get through more runs through the dungeon you’ll have to start accruing Ascended gear.
In this situation, you’re not gated from content at all, you’re merely forced to reset the dungeon to its original state so that you can start again from the beginning to keep trying to get Ascended gear and gain the ability to do more than 3 runs through the dungeon at once.
I haven’t played the content obviously, but then again neither have you – I’m merely making a counter-point within the framework of the information that they have given us to show that these assumptions could easily be overturned by the intricacies that have yet to be seen.
Probably because that “free” content is showing every sign of forcing players to grind new gear repeatedly, which the developers explicitly said would never happen. Just because it annoys you doesn’t make it any less valid.
I find it hard to believe that this Ascended gear could be seriously that difficult to get to make an entirely fresh content patch the size of the Lost Shores go stale before you get the armor. You’re argument is based upon the presumption that this gear is somehow going to destroy the novelty of the new content by how hard it is to get. How can you say that you are being forced to “grind” this new content when – for all you know – the amount of time you would have naturally spent playing the new content for the sake of just seeing the new content is the same amount of time needed to get Ascended gear. They’ve inherently made the system anti-grind by releasing entirely new content with Ascended gear.
How can you say that you’re going to be sick of the Lost Shores before you get your Ascended gear (especially with a content patch this large in such a short period of time)?
I think a lot of you need to define what you consider grinding. In the dev post the man clearly states that pieces of the full Ascended set will be slowly integrated with the new content that is released each month in the same way that they only have three pieces coming out right now. Just playing the new content the way that anyone would when a patch hits should in theory be enough to get the Ascended pieces that are released in that content patch. This patch it’s two rings and a back – next month it might be gloves and boots. You have the entire month (or rather, according to his post at least three months) to gain the two or three items as you naturally play the content that they release over time. From what I can gather (and according to how they say they want this Ascended gear to be a middle ground between exotics and legendaries) this will be the only new tier to be inserted above exotics and will be rolled piece by piece as new content is released so that every time you need to go and get some new Ascended pieces you have entirely new content to do it in.
Example: I’m play the Lost Shore update and I get all the Ascended pieces for this content update (the room for this turning bad is how hard it is to get these pieces in the patches themselves). Sweet. Three months pass and Content Patch B hits and they release two more Ascended pieces with it. Now I go to the new zones/dungeons of Content Patch B and get two more pieces of my Ascended set. Continue this cycle until poof you’re in a full Ascended set of armor.
If there was a way to keep attaining these rewards fresh and exciting ever single time this certainly is the closest I’ve seen. You get a new kittening content patch every time there’s another few pieces of Ascended gear to get – how much more fresh can you get? They’re literally giving you new content with every few pieces of Ascended gear so that attaining these pieces of gear is the farthest thing from a grind.
I admit though that the hole in this system is how hard it will be for someone to get their Ascended pieces within these new patches, but it’d have to be pretty kitten difficult to get these pieces to outweigh the freshness of the new content.
As if the difference between having Ascended and Exotic armor will make the difference in a WvW battle. To say you’re obligated to get Ascended gear to be effective in WvW is like telling me to not bother doing WvW with my alts because I’ll be dead weight until i hit 80 – which simply isn’t true.
You don’t have to do it to contribute no, but it definitely makes a difference. As much as 26% by the numbers some have crunched. Over 50 stat points once a whole set of this stuff is in, and you definitely could tell the difference of having +50 for one Orb when they were in.
But talking about coming in under 80 is entirely different, because when you do that, you are still on the path to max gear by doing the part of the game you like. I also went into WvW early, mid 20s, and while I was not as effective as a true 80, at least I knew that by continuing to play WvW I would eventually get to 80, as well as enough karma/badges to get to max gear like anyone else there. In this new dynamic, from what we know so far, the only place this Ascended gear exists is in dungeons, yet it will give an advantage in PvP. That is not acceptable, and makes no sense. Even by their own manifesto, it is opposite to the design intent they stated, where all modes are equal progression and power wise. Not sure why someone wouldn’t care that their preferred part of the game was getting the short end of the straw.
And don’t think this new content will be the end of tiered progression. The gap will only grow and grow, now they have chosen vertical over horizontal. So keeping a parallel track via WvW is very important.
I’ve never felt as though as an 80 in full greens I was ever not competitive in WvW, but really I suppose that’s just my personal experience. It’s definitely a valid concern to say that there should be some way to get the gear in WvW but I honestly can’t forsee this particular update posing any sort of real concern for people playing WvW. Whether they had plans to continue this exact type of gear progression in coming patches I think was pretty safe to say at a time, but based on the extremely negative feedback I would think that Anet will be closely watching how Ascended gear turns out in live and reconsider how they implement their particular brand of gear progression.
I hope balancing out something to equal Ascended items is a ‘hot topic’ in the office. If not being able to get them straight out via WvW, badges, etc.
Because there are a lot of people that play WvW as their endgame and have no interest in being forced to run dungeons to stay on level footing with everyone else in WvW. Which would be ridiculous.
That would be the same as if a PVE player had to go into WvW and capture 100 keeps in order to get gear to have the best chance for them to beat their dungeon boss.
I really hope this is being thought about right now. Don’t ruin the one mode that has actually been an above the board success.
As if the difference between having Ascended and Exotic armor will make the difference in a WvW battle. To say you’re obligated to get Ascended gear to be effective in WvW is like telling me to not bother doing WvW with my alts because I’ll be dead weight until i hit 80 – which simply isn’t true.
I don’t understand – this shouldn’t affect the Fractals dungeon. Hopefully, you complete the 9 Fractals of the dungeon and when you start REPEATING the content you start to encounter the gear problem. In that case, what have you missed out on? You’ve seen all the content. There was nothing you couldn’t see without only exotics but once you started to repeat the 9 fractals you need to have the gear. There’s no gating to content because the content is available regardless whether or not you have Ascended gear.
I can’t wait. Sounds like the GW2 team has some great stuff coming our way. I’m all for new items and content. The more the better for me. I like having stats to work for not just different art styles. Keep up the awesome work ArenaNet you’ve made a loyal customer out of me!
An oasis in a desert. Truly.
I’m not really all that worried about the change either honestly. If they’re willing to make such a big change to the game this early on, it’s clear they’re at least willing to shake things up a bit in their game. Maybe I’m too much of a glass of water for a volatile thread like this one, but any content is exciting content for me. I wanna see some of those boss mechanics.
You people are really stupid. Even if ascended gear has better stats, it’s something to work toward. You cry about not having anything to do at 80, and then that legendaries aren’t worth it because you only get slightly better stats – and now you’re crying over this? Most people don’t even buy level 80 weapons, and use 78 because the stats trade off vs value isn’t significant.
If you really want nothing to do, then go play a single player game. MMO is meant to evolve and introduce new things… even if they are new items with better stats, there’s got to be a reason for it. Have any of you morons considered that ANet is typically applying and changing things in RESPONSE to the community – as in you kitten asked for it, and that’s why it’s coming. They are changing acquisition of legendaries because people had a difficult time with it. They adjusted and nerfed professions as required. Do you idiots seriously think they’re just going to go and “ruin” everything they’ve spent so much time on setting up?
It shouldn’t hurt to use your head. And until anything official with official stats on these items are released, you idiots shouldn’t jump the gun. It’s kittens like you all that ruin games in the long run.
This has nothing to do with WOW or any other MMO. If you can’t progress, you’ll just go and do something else – lots of people stopped playing after hitting 80 – and even more complained how easy it was to get max everything. So stop being hypocritical and show some support – they’ve been listening to us so far, they’re not gonna drop something that’ll annihilate all the work they’ve put in.
My hero!!
If this far into the game they’ve decided to venture into turning one of the game’s core principles on its head, what does this mean for the future? I’m not saying it’s bad thing to do so, what I AM saying is that it shows we’re dealing with a company that is more disposed to rethinking their original design philosophies. Whether that is a good or bad thing is up to interpretation, but I can tell you that it at least shows a willingness to experiment rarely seen in a genre as costly as MMOs.
Good thing they aren’t pumping out content updates every month. That would imply that there are several hundred people actively working on the game to make it better and releasing their progress in the pursuit of that goal every month. Plus, how would that fare for doomsayers? What would we have to talk about then?
We’ve seen ONE content update – for a holiday that already had a premise that was founded deeply in GW1’s precedent. We have yet to see the kind of ORIGINAL content that they can create in a single month. All I’m sayin’ is that I’ve got a tinfoil hat on that says there was a Dev that when asked about dungeon-like content with more than 5 people they responded with a “we don’t want to spoil anything”, and if they’re already looking at stuff this different from current content types I can pretty confidently say that things will be interesting for this game. Why people are so willing to just give up on a game that professed to be getting MONTHLY CONTENT UPDATES is beyond me.
I think the chance for GW2 to be established as a popular e-sports game has been missed. Unfortunately, I think that even if a matchmaking system was implemented at this time, there wouldn’t be enough players that would return to have an active ladder. I hope I’m wrong though, because I think GW2 is amazingly well done. However, I’ll continue to play WoW in the meantime (despite its terrible game balance), simply because I can play against people of my level at a consistent rate.
I pretty much agreed with most of your post except for the part in which you stated that the chance for GW2 to be an e-sport was gone. I think what everyone forgets is that LoL (currently and most assuredly a solidly if not the most successful a game has been as an e-sport) didn’t just poof into existence as the behemoth of the e-sport scene that it is now. Is there a camp of GW2 PvPers that came into the game with higher expectations that were let down by the PvP? For sure. But just because that camp of people may have left (hell even if 90% of the PvP playerbase got up and peaced the kitten out of the game) that doesn’t erase it’s potential as an e-sport for existence. Certainly not now, and I’d argue not even if things stayed the same as it is for 6 months with literally NO change at all – balance or otherwise.
There’s no doubt that it isn’t going to be nearly as EASY for the game as it would have been were there more features added for release, but it’s not like some PvP God will forbid this game from entering the pearly gates of e-sportdom if it doesn’t prove itself in a trial by fire within some arbitrary amount of time. That’s just absurd. Not to mention it doesn’t even have to become an e-sport to be fun. WoW’s PvP sucks donkey dick as an e-sport, but people love the hell out of it – and for presumably good reason.
Personally I think that rather than implementing the Paid trounaments first , it should have been a rating/ELO system.
By putting out Paids first, there are only three brackets of play – PuGs, free, and paids. Placing PvPers into only three ability levels alienates anyone that lies in between these brackets. This could have been better remedied through a ranking system because ranking systems and matchmaking systems that pair teams of similar rankings, by nature, has as many times more brackets of ability as the ranking system cap has in relation to the current system.
For example, let’s say the rating cap (if a cap is really what is even used) is 3000. There are, therefore in theory, 1000x more ability brackets for players to fall into which alienates a far smaller group of PvPers. In practice it isn’t REALLY 1000x – more like 500x or 600x because having 1 more rating than another team doesn’t really hold THAT much significance, but the example is just to illustrate the concept.
By creating a matchmaking system based off a ranking system, less players are alienated because there are exponentially more brackets of ability for players to fall under. It isn’t perfect because there’s no way to express every single person’s ability level with a number, but it’s certainly better than having so few ability strata for players to fall into.
I’ll be 18 next month and it’s great. I’m very excited to see where the game goes from here. Seeing all these MMO launches leads me to believe that things can only really start growing/progressing after all the hype has deflated. Aside from just being a good time right now this game has a ton of potential.
This is exactly why Anet usually doesn’t say anything before it’s solid enough that they are sure they can deliver on their promises. The PvP scene starts getting anxious becauseAnet isn’t saying anything so they put out official statements that imply a certain date and then you get people upset because they feel like Anet hasn’t followed through. kitten happens in game dev. I feel like there will be plenty of time to do paid tourneys whenever they do get put into the game but hell that’s just my gut feeling.
“Today to prepare you for the AP exam, we’ll be taking a practice MCAT!”
Wish I could’ve dodge rolled out of that one.
So worth the money, and there’s more to come. Even the people who DON’T think that it was worth their money have the opportunity to see if it ends up being worth their money down the road and that’s probably the best part. With such a low barrier to re-entry, it’s more likely than ever that someone who wasn’t a fan of the way things were right at launch can come back later and find out that things have changed for the better. It’s kind of mind blowing.
Lol I love this bow precisely for posts like this. Makes everyone go “Wait…what?”. The rest of them are serious enough to offset the lightheartedness of this one. It’s great.
There is a lot of potential for some interesting encounter design. The problem is that this is sort of uncharted territory for PvE in MMOs (as far as I know). There haven’t been many big titles that have offered “trinity-free” PvE encounters. I think that judging the entire premise of these dungeons based on Arenanets first tries does not give us as players the right to claim that the idea is inherently flawed. I still have faith that the concept of a trinity-free dungeon system can be just as entertaining as one with a trinity. One of these things has had the opportunity to be extensively iterated on over years and years and the other has just seen the light of day for the first time in a little over a month ago.
Even the dungeons in their current form have their strong points which illustrate the potential power of the system. Lt. Kohler comes to mind immediately for me. Having to dodge that scorpion wire was probably one of the most fun mechanics of a PvE encounter I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The immediacy of the danger (knowing that if you didn’t time it right you’d be pretty much boned) created an element of excitement that was lacking for me as a DPS character in encounters from other MMOs.
The system has potential, just like the rest of the game. If you give them time to iterate on these systems based off of feedback they gather from players in a live setting, I’m extremely confident that the system will start to show its benefits.
Oppressive? The dev post clearly stated that the DR system was NOT intended to be reached when farming naturally. The guy even took the time to clearly state that exploits/botters = BAD and farmers = GOOD. How much clearer could you POSSIBLY get that they are not intending for actual people naturally playing the game to get hit with DR? You may be impatient to get the actual fix from them, butyou really can’t take solace in the fact that they have clearly stated that they intend to fix the main gripe with DR? – normal people getting hit with DR while they farm legitimately.
Last time I leveled a character in WoW I was lucky if I saw a single person from 1-85. I may have seen two.
I don’t think there is a person here who would argue that the game’s basic design philosophies are somehow broken – after all everyone bought the game with the promise of those principles. The game has an extremely solid foundation. If everyone stopped heralding doom and gloom and committed themselves to seeing the game become as good as it is CLEAR that it CAN BE no one would feel the need to justify themselves with threads like these. It might not do it as quickly as we want, but I’m confident it’s gonna get there. I genuinely believe that Arenanet is here to help, not to hurt. I’m excited to see what the future holds for the game and one of the best parts is the fact that I can be along for the ride without the absurd commitment of a monthly sub. I’m playing Torchlight 2 in tandem to GW2. That’s awesome. With a raid schedule back when I played WoW? ESPECIALLY at the beginning of an expac? Good kittenin’ luck.
This is great news!
Though, my own personal conspiracy theory is I think ANET was also trying to study how players complete these dungeons.
A holy-trinity-meta hasn’t been discovered yet, or at least it’s very low profile. So in the process of fixing the dungeons, I think ANET has also been studying how players compete against overpowered foes.
In other words, I think they’re collecting data to design better content in the future.
Just my own conspiracy theory here… xD
This isn’t much of a conspiracy theory. I’m personally pretty much 100% positive that this is the case. Dungeons have a potential to be amazing – that’s evident even with their current state. Though they’re far from perfect right now, I suspect the next dungeon we see from Anet will have a better idea of how they should be run. That’s what I’m hoping at any rate, but I’m very confident it will happen.
1 2