(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
Showing Posts For Bad Decision Dino.1386:
What's being done to fix conditions in PvE?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Bad Decision Dino.1386
Well if there are many other potentially returning players such as me who quit the game due to the massive shortcomings that have been here since Beta when it comes to build variety in PVE, then it has everything to do with the expansion from a financial perspective. This is supposed to be the “Big Sell” for getting people like me back into the game, and they’re already botching it by bringing so much attention to the game at a time when it’s least presentable to new players (between the NPE, Trait rework, and completely incoherent story if you missed LS Season 1). Trying to get my friends into the game right now is just an exercise in prolonged apologies, convoluted explanations of systems they don’t understand and I barely recognize, and promises that “It’ll get better!”
And while all those are forgivable, I’m holding off on throwing any more money at the game before seeing if ANET can at least decide to wake up and address a huge problem at the core of their mechanics.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
It was as expensive in GW1 also.
If you truly believe this, then I guess we just have a fundamental difference in how we perceive reality.
People see one type of build on the internet and they think that is all there is. There is more, but people would rather copy and innovate.
If there are 10 encounters, and each has a totally different optimal build that requires a certain niche stat and talent distribution (and might very well get nerfed out of commission in the next patch), but Zerker works 2nd-best for 9 of them and never gets significantly nerfed, then anyone who doesn’t have the time to grind out 10 different gear sets is essentially being forced into Zerker.
This isn’t GW1 where you could try out new things on the fly. Innovation is costly, time-consuming, risky, and frankly, not tremendously rewarding.
Cause stacking and only pressing 1 will get you through spider queen in AC…right..
Cause stacking and only pressing 1 works with mai trin…right..People’s one-track mind of gw2 being a one-track playstyle are over exaggerating and delusional. I’m all for good change, but these reiterating comments are just..lol
If that’s how some of you people play then there really is a problem.
It’s not that a one-track playstyle is the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY to play the game. There are alternatives.
The problem is that given the overall dominance of that one playstyle, and the amount of time it takes to grind gear, you’d be a fool to invest hours and hours and hours on any ascended gear that isn’t Zerker just to support a few couple of niche builds that happen to work in certain fights.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
Trinity isn’t necessary, but Zerker Master Race for a year and a half straight doesn’t give me confidence in the future of the game.
If those players feel it’s a “grind” I really wonder at what game they left GW2 to play. Call of Duty perhaps?
GW1, genius.
I can handle being told to switch to a certain build for a dungeon run. My concern is that with the ability to reset traits ANYWHERE, people are going to be asking to switch the entire team’s stat-distribution and build before every specific BOSS fight just to eke out a little more of an advantage.
Instead of “LF1M must be X build”, it’ll be “What kind noob are you? You didn’t research the three different builds and gear sets you need to counter the specific mechanics of each of the bosses in this run?”
The trait-reset can stay free, but it should really be limited to within towns, or at least NOT inside dungeons.
Yeah because people aren’t already complaining about extra tiers of armor. You want to add not 1, not 2, but 3 extra tiers outside of what we now have?
…
lol
Reading comprehension, dummy. Only one tier is anything we don’t already have (the last tier just really being different shades of Legendary) and even that tier I’d be more than happy to get rid of if Anet hadn’t already gone ahead and made Ascended statistically better than exotic.
I mean geez, if we could have this structure with the Fabled tier I suggested just taken out entirely, and have Ascended and Legendary stats nerfed back to be equal with exotic, that’d be even better! But the codes and recipes are all in now, and the same idiots who supposedly buy into this whole “Ascended gear is only 5% better!” nonsense would probably still have a heart attack once they got the news that their oh-so-precious gear that they “totally didn’t grind for” got nerfed. So this is the more realistic approach.
I assure you. No one seriously complaining about the addition of Ascended tier would have a problem with what I’m suggesting. If you actually read the post and stop trying to troll with misleading oversimplifications (“Lolol if 1 new tier is bad, more is doubleplusbad!”), you’d see how this is meant to directly address their issue.
I don’t see how I misread what you said. How does creating more stuff to grind fix any issues when people are already complaining about the grind?
How are you not getting this?
The only thing I added was one tier which is essentially identical to what Ascended is right now, only it’s EASIER to obtain! Then I reworked the following tiers so that those who do obtain them are better rewarded for having done so – in the form of NOT having to grind additional versions of those items for different builds and characters.
The system I’m suggesting is a huge reduction in the grind, and lets players who don’t want to grind at all get off the treadmill far earlier than they have the option to right now.
Leveling and max gearing a char in GW1 took about 1/20th the amount of time it took in GW2 before they added ascended. This doesn’t like like something GW1 devs would do at all, just a lesser version of the monster grind GW2 has decided to add.
True. But then we’d have a game where you get to max level in the span of a day, and have nothing to do for the rest of the game because you’ve already unlocked all 16 of your skills and there’s like maybe 2 builds in the meta for you to choose from. Anyone seriously looking for this game to start playing more like GW1 is gonna be waiting a long time. But at least with a gear structure that doesn’t further discourage players from experimenting with new playstyles, the game could begin to approach a more dynamic metagame than one in which players are essentially married to the one build on their main character that they spent half a year gearing into. A flexible gear structure, even if it requires a little grinding, at least allows the game room to grow horizontally rather than vertically in the future.
I mean, can you imagine if 6 months from now, after everyone’s just finally gotten their characters equipped with their first complete set of Ascended, ANet just dropped a surprise expansion that adds new weapons, trait lines, and types of skills to choose from that fall outside of the parameters that people have already geared for? Or heck, a whole new class that you have to deck out in Ascended? Even if it didn’t raise the level cap, people would have an aneurysm over having to re-gear their characters for the new meta. ANet is painting themselves into a corner by keeping things they way the are.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
Yeah because people aren’t already complaining about extra tiers of armor. You want to add not 1, not 2, but 3 extra tiers outside of what we now have?
…
lol
Reading comprehension, dummy. Only one tier is anything we don’t already have (the last tier just really being different shades of Legendary) and even that tier I’d be more than happy to get rid of if Anet hadn’t already gone ahead and made Ascended statistically better than exotic.
I mean geez, if we could have this structure with the Fabled tier I suggested just taken out entirely, and have Ascended and Legendary stats nerfed back to be equal with exotic, that’d be even better! But the codes and recipes are all in now, and the same idiots who supposedly buy into this whole “Ascended gear is only 5% better!” nonsense would probably still have a heart attack once they got the news that their oh-so-precious gear that they “totally didn’t grind for” got nerfed. So this is the more realistic approach.
I assure you. No one seriously complaining about the addition of Ascended tier would have a problem with what I’m suggesting. If you actually read the post and stop trying to troll with misleading oversimplifications (“Lolol if 1 new tier is bad, more is doubleplusbad!”), you’d see how this is meant to directly address their issue.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
GW1 never saw higher tiers than what was originally in the game. So no, “GW1 devs” would not design end game gear like this.
I do agree on cosmetics and stat/skin selection though.
You’re right, if we want to be purists about it. But if GW1 devs had been in charge, the game would be VERY different from its very core elements. Dealing simply with how end-game gear could fit into this game as it stands and still keep the spirit of the manifesto and the history of GW1, I think the real ideal solution would’ve skipped straight past what I labeled the “Fabled” tier, and just had Ascended items be Exotic Stats + Mutable, without the stat upgrade. But what’s done is done, and I can see the point of view that maybe Exotics were a little too quick to attain. I got most of mine shortly after hitting 80 just with the karma I’d accumulated while leveling up.
GW1 did have a fair bit of grinding when it came to the whole process of unlocking item varieties (runes, insignias, weapon hilts, etc…) that widened your selection of builds, and I think a grind from Exotic to the mutable Ascended Tier, as well as the idea of Legendaries as “Account Unlocks” would be a great compromise between this set of dev’s perceived needs to give us something to grind, and the players’ expectations about what we were promised this game would be about.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
^ Yuuup. Same
If the Legendary players really want something mechanical to gloat about over other players, I would throw them the bone of making it so that their Legendaries have the same bonuses, and are natively Account Bound without all the transmutation hassle.
This should be post of the year. I am 100% against gear threadmill. But this is something i may actually do (in the long term).
Its something new, its something fun. I like it!
I would only make at least the BiS armor/weapons be dropable in dungeons or by tokems at the end of the dungeon. Since im not a fan of crafting and WvW. So i could getting my gear doing what i like.
Also, new dungeons permanent to game (with new armor skins) as well as mini games and stuff. And the game would be perfect.
Great post Bad Decision Dino.
Glad someone read the actual post! I’m definitely all for alternate means of obtaining any of the weapons on this tier. I just figure they probably want to keep Ascended and Legendary on a certain threshold of overall effort/rarity, whether it’s through crafting or PvE or WvW.
I’m all for it. It’s part of the changes I suggested in my thread regarding a complete overhaul of end-game tiers. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-GW1-Devs-would-ve-designed-end-game-gear/first#post2802772)
Though I disagree that you should even need to unlock the other sets to be able to do it. For the kind of grind that ascended weapons require, they oughta be able to do that natively. Keep in mind that to get a dual-wielding/weapon-switching character fully geared out, you’re going to have to grind 4 Ascended weapons as it is, without even having alternate specs. Let’s not even talk alternate characters. It would be far more cost-efficient to buy more bank/inventory space with gems at that point.
It’s amazing how petty the Legendary weapon holders are being in this thread though. For the past year, Legendaries have only been about prestige skins, but now they add this little bonus that you’ve had for less than a month, and suddenly you’re entitled to hold this over the unwashed masses?
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
The sad thing is, if GW2 is copying the generic WoW model it’s not doing the best job at it, if I actually wanted it I’d play another MMO that does it much better.
Right. At least getting geared up in WoW is a matter of doing some decently fun dungeon runs with your friends, not just farming materials in zergfests all day. And with defined class roles, once you got that gear, it was a pretty sure bet that you wouldn’t regret the decision. Here, you’re pretty much screwed if you ever want to try out a slightly different build.
In terms of GW2 It doesn’t really matter what tier you choose as the stopping point of vertical progression; it would have had one that was easily and trivially achieved. The GW franchise is not about chasing an ever ascending power curve. Beyond that would have been skins. You can name them as tiers if you want and that would probably be more interesting. The key post max level gear (in terms of power) at max level would be that character progression would be horizontal and we would be talking about expanding skills/abilities rather than grinding out power. GW2 could have been a worthy successor within the franchise.
Oh, I absolutely agree. But that philosophy would’ve had to have framed the game from the earliest versions of the design, down to the number of skills and class traits. I’m just talking about how we could’ve implemented the gear tiers in the game we currently have to work with. If the dev’s truly believe that we needed something to do after Exotics to keep us interested in a “grind”, this is a solution that could very well be implemented in the near future to both adress that problem, and bring what GW2 is now more in line with the philosophy of GW1.
Disclaimer: I suppose to be more accurate, what I really meant was “How GW1 Devs would’ve designed end-game gear had they been called in when ANet had already decided that Exotics were ‘too easy’ to obtain, and the game needed to give players a reason to grind.”
Obviously, if they’d been in charge of the game from the start, everything would look much different and we’d probably have been walking around in maxed out gear somewhere around level 40. This is not a “Let’s time travel all the way back to GW1” thread, but rather, a look at where we could realistically go from where the game already is now. It’s a direction that we could progress towards that would bring GW2 back into line with the original manifesto, GW1’s core theme of horizontal progression and experimentation, and the promises that were made to players in the run-up to the game’s launch, while still respecting the integrity of GW2 as a separate and distinct game from GW1.
Exotic Tier – Character bound, end-game ready gear. Not Best in Slot but good enough to get you through nearly all content.
Fabled Tier – Character Bound Best in Slot gear. Craftable at 450 using a similar amount of mats as Ascended, minus Time-Gated materials. Buyable on Trading Post. “Bridge” between Exotic and Ascended. All tiers beyond this are arguably unnecessary to pursue.
Ascended Tier – Character Bound. Craftable at 500 using the same mats required right now, including Time-Gated components. Not buyable on Trading Post, but available through alternate ways of playing the game such as WvW. Ascended has the Mutable property, which allows the player to switch the Prefix stats at an NPC (similar to respeccing at a Skills Trainer), though you will still have to switch out Infusions or Sigils. Essentially makes your character “Patch-Proof”, if a future change to your class changes the PVE and WvW meta away from all the time you’ve invested in your specific set of gear. Allows you the freedom to pursue alternate characters. Promotes horizontal progression in players, experimentation in builds, and while it encourages a heavy time investment in acquiring it, giving the hardcore players something to achieve, it saves many players a lot of time in the long run by not requiring months of grinding to try a different build.
Legendary Tier – Account Bound. Best in Slot. Storable in your Achievement panel similar to the Achievement Skins. Mutable stats. As a reward for your insane amount of grinding, if you have a Legendary 2-handed sword, you’re forever freed from having to bother with obtaining another end-game 2-handed sword ever again. You’re the master of 2-Handed Swords on all your characters, and are free to devote your time to unlocking other less-common legendaries like underwater weapons. If you’re really crazy and you already unlocked two of the same Legendary on different characters, congratulations, you can refund your second weapon for a different Legendary of your choice. Again, promotes horizontal progression, and arguably saves certain players time as a reward for the grind, though the grind is completely unnecessary.
Plaid Tier – Same as Legendaries, but simply more rare skins to go in your achievement panel that you can use to coat your Legendary items. Caters to the Crazy-Hardcore grinders who only do it for the prestige. Some Plaid items only available in WvW to differentiate that crowd, while other cosmetically different ones are only available in the deepest levels of FoTM.
Just as in GW1, there would be plenty of grind to do, motivated by concrete advantages, but none of it provides direct power increases. It simply enhances your versatility, encourages you to explore how different classes and builds work, and allows you to bring different types of power to different situations.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
Why do you bring pugs in here? Make your own party and play how you want. That’s how good players do anyway. You could say I run with typical zerker elitist yet I can go ahead and run with hammer in dungeons and that’s perfectly fine for them.
Because friends and guildies never get annoyed when you keep making their job harder by rolling with a useless “eccentric” build…
FYI, it may not be a big enough deal to break friendships, but making your guildies stay up late that because you couldn’t pull your weight so you all had to retry that dungeon after 4 wipes because you were so close to winning is a really quick way to ensure those friends start thinking of you as more of a charity case, and making up excuses to run their serious content with other groups.
@Harper
Haha. Yeah, sure, mad. I just think it’s funny when someone starts bringing in the dictionary into it and using it to justify shouting “YOU WILL BURN THIS REPETITIVE MOTION INTO YOUR HEAD UNTIL ITS SECOND NATURE AND YOU CANT GET IT WRONG! THAT IS SKILL!” Like jeez man, here comes the Dodge Gestapo!
You say that dodging is the only place where skill can be developed because this game isn’t anywhere near as complex as MTG, yet ignore that OP’s entire point is that the game should start progressing towards the goal of adding multiple layers of complexity into the game beyond dodging. Instead of creating a more complex game, you’d rather just give up and reduce 8 whole classes to a glorified Quick-Time Event. It’s not like you can’t look up on the internet when exactly you need to dodge in a fight at which phases, and which animations telegraph what attack.
Your idea that challenge variety would all be invalidated because people can just go on the internet and look up the optimum build is hollow. Because that’s already the case. I went on the internet, and found out that there is an optimum build. It happened to be Zerk or go home. “But maybe if I try something with traits that favo-” “NO! SHUT UP! WHY ARENT YOU IN ZERK, NUB?”
At least when different build possibilities are emphasized, you spent a little time wondering which of the 10 builds you saw on the internet will work for you, your next challenge, and your play-style. Skills in this game are different enough that just copy-pasting a build from the internet that favors different traits and weapons than what you’re used to actually does require a great deal of practice. Or hell, they may even be beyond your capability of playing, so you have to tweak it so it works a little better for you. I know I couldn’t just go from playing 80 levels of Flamethrower/Elixir engy to flinging grenades every second just because the internet told me it works.
And at no point did OP say he didn’t like dodging. He just said he’s disappointed by the reductionist design direction that makes it the be-all and end-all to the game. As for me, I love the dodge mechanic and its emphasis in the game. But I’m hardly even playing anymore due to the gear grind this game requires at this point, and finding out that the PVE meta has shifted towards the ONE TRUE WAY of gear (one that I never bothered to acquire because I favored a different playstyle) just sours the game for me.
Oh great, in order to not get yelled at by my fellow players in End-Game, I have to grind out a set of gear for a boring build that the internet told me to use, instead of using the gear and build that I meticulously planned out to work for my individual preferences and playstyle. Everyone likes to justify it by claiming that “Well you don’t HAVE to do anything! No one’s holding a gun to your head and MAKING you use Zerk…it’s just…you know…stupid to do anything else if you want to contribute to your team.”
It’s a difference of 28 days and material cost. And that’s IF your second set is a two-handed shortbow instead of something like or P/D, or P/P, or S/P which makes it around 42, again, all assuming you have the materials to refine ready every single day for one and a half months and never miss a log-in.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
I do not desire for this game to be GW1, I would just like a more diverse GW2. Skill isn’t just defined by reflexes, also by strategic planning.
That’s where you’re wrong OP. Let me elaborate : “the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance” ; " dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks".
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skill
You heard it here first! Magic: The Gathering players are mouth-breathing skill-less drones. I mean anyone can just look up a deck build and breeze straight through to the tournament, amirite? Now pressing one single button at the right time…Hungry Hungry Hippos is where the REAL skill is at!
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
So you play a “dedicated staff elementalist,” meaning you only do a few of the activities in which a staff is desired/optimal or choose to do all of the other activities with a less than optimal weapon…but choose not to limit yourself on your thief – I see no issue here with ascended weapons.
That’s really reaching for a justification there. My point is that it takes a fraction of the time to gear out a single build for Elementalist or Engineer than it does the thief, or other melee classes that can switch between up to 2 sets of 2 completely different weapons. With the elementalist, I could very well get 3-4 ascended weapons, each of them having the stats to support a whole variety of builds and roles. For the thief, the same amount of weapons have to be grinded just to support one single build. God forbid a player wants to have a different set of stats for a different type of content on a thief and ends up having to get 5 to 8 weapons to juggle around!
I certainly don’t care for the Trinity, but “one build/gear-set to rule them all” is equally sucky on all accounts.
Why ? because you want to feel like you are a unique snowflake ? It’s fine the way it is considering the ascended grind, the very thought of having to get multiple set of different stats on this would make me feel nauseous.
That’s the POINT. Having Berserker be the ONLY acceptable set for PVE means that if you want to run any other kind of content, you have to use your Berserker-geared character to grind out a whole ‘nother set of gear for the other builds and playstyles you’d like to use that are trash in the current PVE framework.
I guess so then. I mean I guess it’s no skin of my back, since I main a Rifle engineer and I’m really favoring the Ele over my thief as it stands. But daaayum…you’d think they’d at least halve the number of Time-gated Mats for the 1-handers if nothing else. It definitely makes me lose all interest in leveling my Thief, and somewhat for any other class that depends on weapon switching. These changes are really encouraging people to entrench themselves into one class and one build, and throw out any silly notions of leveling alts, or even having secondary builds for end-game.
It may just backfire if their intention is to increase the longevity of game. Like…yeah, sure, I maxed out my one main dude, but instead of going back and bringing another class to 80 and continuing to enjoy the game, I’d be more tempted to just burn out on the one dude til I’m sick of it.
I’ve been playing both a dedicated Staff elementalist which doesn’t require weapon switching, and a Thief for which I use 4 different weapons in total. Am I missing something with regard to the Ascended crafting ingredients? Because it seems to me like it would take 80 days of straight crafting just to gear the Thief up to the same level of performance as the mage. And considering how they already brought two-handed weapons into line with regard to stats and sigil slots, is there any reason why the Elementalist isn’t coming out waaaay ahead over my thief in terms of the grind required to get them to perform at the same tier? The same thing for a Rifle engineer (assuming they un-nerf Kit damage)?
I mean I know the imbalance was already somewhat part of the game, but the sheer scale of difference when you introduce ascended and time-gated materials seems to bring it out way out of line.
Personally, I’m finding it really aggravating. The range of it seems to have doubled, which means it always places me in an unpredictable location. I used to use Phase Retreat to trigger the Leap Combo while staying inside the Chaos Storm, but now it takes half of Chaos Storm’s duration to run back into the circle after hitting it and popping up like 30 yards away.
Oh, and thanks for adding a bright pink trail to the jump. It really wasn’t easy enough to tell the difference between clones.
(edited by Bad Decision Dino.1386)
If the curtain isn’t high enough, it probably can’t even be called a curtain – more like an temporal tennis net.
Engineer Traits Fireforged Trigger and Rifled Barrels interact strangely.
Posted by: Bad Decision Dino.1386
Normal Cooldowns for elixir gun skills:
Elixir F: 8
Fumigate: 12
Acid Bomb: 15
Super Elixir: 20
Cooldowns using the trait Rifled Barrels (which should have no effect on cooldowns):
Elixir F: 5
Fumigate: 12
Acid Bomb: 15
Super Elixir: 20
Cooldowns using the Cooldown reduction trait Fireforged Trigger:
Elixir F: 6.5
Fumigate: 9.5
Acid Bomb: 12
Super Elixir: 16
Cooldowns using BOTH traits
Elixir F: 5
Fumigate: 9.5
Acid Bomb: 12
Super Elixir: 20 (Upon using the skill, the countdown will START going down from 16, but it’ll glitch back up to 20 and start over)