Showing Posts For AngryToaster.5190:
I’m not sure the character classes we have are built to function in large raids. The five man encounters in dungeons have their different mechanics, but the open world bosses just sort of stand there and absorb damage until they fall over.
In the future Anet could probably design some content for large groups, but first they’re going to need some time learn about how the people are using their characters in existing encounters.
Let me offer my experience so far.
I’m playing a lvl80 engineer. Here’s my spec:
This build throws potions and uses the elixir gun. It does bleeds, poison, healing and boons. So the stats I want to stack are condition damage and healing. I plug these into gw2db’s filter, and find the gear I want. Turns out I need Divinity’s Council gear from CM. No other gear I’ve been able to find has these stats.
I’ve gotten some runs in so far. It’s been a mixed bag. I did two with friends of mine, but they’re playing XCOM now. I tried one triple-header with my guild, but nobody seems eager to do it again. The remaining runs I spent up to an hour and beyond trying to build pugs for. These have been more interesting than I usually tolerate. One was basically hijacked by a player with a tenuous grasp of english and broken caps lock, and who was obsessed about using some weird terrain exploit to avoid a few pulls.
I’m not asking for a less challenging game. I’m asking for a reward system that doesn’t incentivize people to restrict themselves to a single dungeon. I’m asking for the opportunity to play constructively without banging my head against the wall. I’m asking for a reasonable way for all those bored LFG-ers in Lion’s Arch to play together.
As far as people gaining false prestige by farming for Arah gear in AC, consider what Arah gear actually means. It’s no more powerful than AC gear. The value of its appearance is subjective, to say the least. In my opinion, a well-honed blade of a character, properly specced, statted and geared, built around a experience-grounded battleplan, and wielded by a knowledgeable and intelligent player is FAR more impressive than some blender-spec dude in a badly dyed Halloween costume.
As it stands, little effort or skill is required to get exotic gear. One can easily warm-body auto-attack through any dungeon, wear gear with any stats, and reskin it with transmutation stones to look nice.
When you run into trouble is when you attempt honest min-maxing. Armor sets with the same stats you need only come from dungeon vendor. This means you have to run that dungeon, and no others. But once again, effort and skill aren’t factors. Time and luck are what you rely on. Time to find a group needing your specific dungeon for as many days as it takes, and luck that the group will be any good.
Repetitive dungeons don’t make it harder to gain gear, they make it boring. I wouldn’t mind at all if we had to unlock a dungeon’s vendor by running all its paths before we could buy gear. I wouldn’t mind an price increase on the gear. I wouldn’t mind a long Saturday of dungeon hopping with people from wherever in the world, slaying bosses and looting tokens to buy alt-spec gear.
The system he have isn’t challenging, it’s boring. If you geared your character under the current system, it means you overcame boredom. Putting up with a boring videogame isn’t anything to be proud of.
You seem partial to the existing dungeon reward system. Would mind telling us about your experience with it? Maybe tell us about how it’s effected your dungeons runs.
Certainly. I realise that to gain specific rewards, I must do specific tasks. I think the item prices for some dungeons seem rather high considering how much more difficult (in terms of time taken to complete) to other dungeons they are.
I feel that the weapons for Asura are too small, and that their tiny size makes me apathetic as to if/when I buy these hard-to-acquire dungeon items, since I can barely see them, let alone anybody else.
And it’s “affected” in this instance.
Well I don’t think dungeon tokens of any sort are going to make your asura bigger.
My complaint is not that gear is too hard to obtain. People’s specific/separate gear needs force them into specific/separate dungeons. Their specific tasks are separate tasks. People have that much more trouble simply finding a cooperative group. If you can use tokens from more dungeons, you can find more useful groups.
In my opinion, the current sytem works fine. I’ve been running my butt off to get enough tokens for full AC armor and several weapons. I put the work in, learning the paths and eventually leading guildies and PUGs through them. I’ve earned the armor and the weapons. Anything worth having is worth working for. If Anet changed the system, making universal tokens, that would cheapen the work I and other people who’ve earned the tokens have done. Anyone remember Galaxies? “Whoo hoo look at me! I just spent a month earning Jedi status!” " Wow! good job! We’re gonna give you this special cloak as a consolation prize!" " What? What do you mean consolation prize?" " Yeah turns out EVERYONE gets to be a Jedi now. But hey! You look FANTASTIC in that cloak! You keep up the good work champ!"
I’m not looking for less work. I’m asking for a less tedious work environment. I’m perfectly happy to do the currently required number of dungeon runs needed to earn gear.
It helps no one to force people to beat the same dead-horse dungeon day after day.
If this is the problem then why not simply put a restriction on what gear you can acquire based on the dungeon you have completed.
No. I think Arenanet needs to tell people to sod off and not kowtow to this vocal minority. The original system makes sense, but some dungeons are horribly difficult – THIS should be their priority.
You seem partial to the existing dungeon reward system. Would mind telling us about your experience with it? Maybe tell us about how it’s effected your dungeons runs.
@Greekman
Sounds like a fine compromise to me. You could further sweeten things by adding a vendor who required you to unlock every dungeon.
If you’re afraid of people being unable to get groups, that’s happening right now.
Do you really want to make it even worse than it already is?
Of course not. That’s why I want fungible dungeon tokens. That way, pugs can work together toward a common goal, rather than having to depend on the kindness of total strangers.
I’m not sure I understand the difference between players and grinders. When I play Killing Floor, I don’t limit myself to one match a day. When one match is over, a new map loads, and a new match starts.
If you’re afraid of people being unable to get groups, that’s happening right now. The lfg spam in Lion’s Arch always has a specific dungeon attached to it. Instead of grabbing four people and heading off to do any dungeon, people are forced to sit around waiting for the group they need.
I like dungeons. I like learning about bosses and improving my skills. Ultimately, this will result in dungeons becoming trivial to complete. In time, I want to pass this knowledge on to new players. You might call this grinding or farming, but I call it playing the game.
It’s good to know developers are taking steps to experience the same gameplay as customers. It’s disheartening to think what faux pas would result from such a disconnect.
I’d love to hear about your experiences speccing and gearing a lvl80 character, Robert.
That might make sense if the Arah gear was actually better than Ascalonian Catacombs gear, but it isn’t. All the gear is lvl80 exotic. The only difference between gear from the token vendors is the various stats. The desirability of these stats depends on the player’s choice, but they all add up to the same gear value.
Separate but equal dungeon tokens limits the free use of dungeons, and provides no actual benefit.
And in GW1 a weapon did the same damage as all other weapons, but the difficulty to acquire them were what drove cost. Assume you make this one dungeon token system, all the players get the gear they like the skin the most of… then what? They have nothing to strive after, and thus no reason to stick around. Providing a one dungeon token system would be akin to making legendaries no more difficult to get than any other exotic.
Some things NEED to be harder to attain.
If a person wants a set of gear just for the appearance, they’ll just have to earn that along side the gear they use for effect. I’m also fairly certain no legendary gear is available for purchase from dungeon vendors at this time.
Gear is the main carrot that draws people to content. You’re right in saying there should be a challenge to overcome to acquire it. But the system in place isn’t challenging, it’s tedious. It forces you to run the same dungeon for days on end to earn the gear you want. The dungeon reward system should encourage players to explore content and work together, not farm the same instance.
That might make sense if the Arah gear was actually better than Ascalonian Catacombs gear, but it isn’t. All the gear is lvl80 exotic. The only difference between gear from the token vendors is the various stats. The desirability of these stats depends on the player’s choice, but they all add up to the same gear value.
Separate but equal dungeon tokens limits the free use of dungeons, and provides no actual benefit.
@Drew
How would that be a bigger problem than what we have now? We already get the same quality of gear for each dungeon. Whether or not you gain useful rewards for a dungeon is my issue. If gear with stats you want can’t be purchased from a particular dungeon vendor, there’s no incentive to run that dungeon.
If you do decide to do go with a pre-made group, all you’re doing is agreeing to share the pain. What about pickup groups? Spend a while in Lion’s Arch reading lfg spam for dungeons other than the one you need. It tends to damage one’s enthusiasm.
As far as being respectful, I think I’ve been quite respectful. I haven’t accused anyone of whining or given in to fanboy-ism.
(edited by AngryToaster.5190)
use the tokens from other dungeons and trade them for rares.the cheapest rares are 30 tokens each.you can get 2 rares to salvage each run
Salvaging low level rares isn’t going to help anyone earn lvl80 exotics.
How does gathering tokens for vendors that sell things I don’t need maximize my rewards? The only vendor offering the gear I want (healing power and condition damage) only accepts CM tokens. The fact that I can’t run other dungeons and earn this gear is itself the problem.
One token to rule them all.
Any character to find them.
One vendor to bring them all,
And in the forge bind them.The main problem we see with a universal token system, is that players will find the easiest dungeons they can do within the DR system’s influence range, and just do them over and over.
It would be like if people could use all their CoF tokens from the speed/exploit clears, and buy up Arah Dragon armor. Were that the case, the armor itself would have no real value behind it. When you look at a player and you see a full suit of dragon armor, you know that they did a certain thing to get that armor. With a universal token system, you lose that sense of knowledge of what another player has gone through to get what they have.
I’m looking at the dungeon vendors right now. An exotic Corrupted Orrian Masque cost 180 Shards of Zhaitan, and comes with 45 power, 32 precision, and 2% crit damage. An exotic Ascalonian Clergy Cowl costs 180 Ascalonian Tears, and comes with 45 power, 32 toughness, and 32 vitality. The same level of reward is offered for both dungeons. Difficulty currently has no impact on the quality of your reward.
He’s my personal experience. My engineer build uses condition damage and healing power. The only gear I’ve found with both those stats is purchased with Seals of Beetletun. This means two things. First, to acquire desirable exotic gear, I need to farm CM dozens of times. Second, all the other dungeons have no desirable gear for me. I can run them, but I have no hope for useful loot from them. These facts leave me with days of running the same dungeon over and over. This gets old very fast, as you can imagine.
If you’re really worried about people farming AC to buy Arah gear, you could scale the rewards for dungeon difficulty. Or scale them against how many times the player has run that dungeon recently. Or scale against how my times the whole server has run that dungeon recently.
I would love to experience all the dungeons in the game. But you don’t leave the arcade with a pile of tickets as your souvenir. You trade them for a mug or stuffed animal, which you can cherish as a physical sign of your ski-ball prowess.