Guild Wars 2

I’d be okay with it if they’d ACTUALLY removed underwater combat, but given that there are still a lot of underwater bits you have to do in order to get map completion/hero points, it’s kind of a pain. (and I don’t know if there are still underwater fractals, but if so that’s a serious problem.)

Also, the fact that they don’t seem willing to answer any of the threads on this topic is getting really annoying.

I was in the story quest Hearts and Minds. Beat Braham’s boss, then fought Caithe’s. I killed Caithe’s boss while I was downed, but despite her valiant attempt to rez me, the boss’s expanding ring thing was still going on and it killed me. I rezzed at the checkpoint and got back in, but the boss is gone, Caithe is there but noninteractive, and the quest isn’t progressing. The story tracker in the upper-right says I still need to kill that boss.

There’s no exit from the arena, and I can’t WP elsewhere, so I don’t seem to have a choice other than to log out and hope it resets the quest. This is not ideal, as it means I need to kill Braham’s boss again… which took forever, so I’m not really looking forward to that.

When you swapped around some hero points in VB in a recent patch, the icons on the map showed completion for the locations where I did them before.

Awkward wording, I know. To be more clear:

On one of my characters I had done the Flamerider kill challenge (let’s call it HP A, near the zone boundary to Auric Basin), but not the Coztic Bladedancer (let’s call it HP B, high up the vines near the Nobles’ Landing WP). After they got swapped around so the Bladedancer (B) is in the Flamerider’s old spot (A), that one (Old location A) still shows as completed, but I can initiate it and attempt to complete it(haven’t been able to successfully yet, but it still erroneously says it’s completed). The old location of the Bladedancer (old location “B”), on the other hand, is just a channel now, and says it’s incomplete on the map but interacting with it says I’ve learned all I can from it.

Sorry if that’s still a bit unclear.

Have we ever seen any comment on the whole underwater legends thing? It’s a bit baffling to have the utilities locked, but facet pulsing still work.

Perhaps it’s a failure of my forum skills, but I haven’t been able to find any comment on how this is supposed to work for Revs, despite lots and lots of threads. (I saw a few threads from the beta before the weapon skills were implemented, but I haven’t been able to find anything addressing the legends or utilities.)

Did I miss something? If not, could we get some word on it?

(edit: typo. Also, apparently the suffix following “kung” in a martial arts context is caught by the swear filter.)

I have it happen sometimes on area transition. Once I saw it happen I started looking, and most of the instances I’ve noticed coincided with area name popups. Not sure if that’s the same issue, though.

One other piece of useful information that informs intent, which I did not possess when I stsrted the thread: If you are in Glint legend, if you activate your buff-pulsing, they CONTINUE to pulse while submerged in Glint legend, despite the slots being empty. You cannot activate the flip skills (as they aren’t actually in the slot), nor can you deactivate or switch the ones you’re pulsing (except by switching legends, which turns them all off as normal). Having the buffs does actually does help a lot in practice, though it contributes to the impression that this is not working as intended.

Well, you still do have your weapon skills, but not having a heal skill REALLY hurts. >.<

Good luck!

Also FYI, when you unlock Druid it gives you an Exotic-rarity staff, and unlocks a collection that (with time and work) eventually gets you an Ascended-rarity one. (This is the case with all elite specs, with their respective new weapon.) You won’t have to worry about keeping one around for eventual use.

If you find one you like the look of, though, especially if it’s not too valuable on the market, consider equipping/salvaging/adding it to your wardrobe. You won’t be able to resell it on the market, but that way you can use the look later with a transmutation charge and you don’t have to have it cluttering up your bank.

I’ve found that it’s risky to assume anything would be simple to change in software. I assumed they flagged them non-aquatic for a reason… lots of things go wonky when you have to deal with targeting and effects in 3D, and they have to stop implementing somewhere.

I was just thinking that since swapping skill bars and weapons when you submerge is already implemented, it might be more straightforward to apply the same logic to the legend slots than to rework (and thoroughly debug) 15 more skills… but then I’ve obviously never seen the code base.

Really, it’d just be nice to have an idea what the design intent is here. It would be a bit strange if the legends were balanced around the assumption that if you fell in a lake with the wrong ones slotted you were helpless.

There’s going to be a lot more involved in any legendary than crafting, so I wouldn’t stress over it.

The bottleneck is going to be gold, and barring a crazy-lucky rare precursor drop, you’ll need to work for a while getting all the mats(/the money to buy them) after you hit cap. Before you hit 80, you won’t be able to do most of the highly-profitable stuff, so the best thing you can do is probably level.

Levelling a craft skill is a fairly easy and quick way to get xp, but also a relatively expensive one… remember, every mat you use levelling is (a fraction of a) gold you didn’t make, and almost nothing crafted will sell for appreciably more than the mats.

I’m aware that makes it sound like a joyless process. I can’t actually in good conscience recommend making what I describe above your guiding philosophy. That’s just the best advice I know for making a beeline from start to legendaries.

Hey, love the Revenant so far! Just wondering if there were any plans to allow you to have it automatically switch you to Malyx/Shiro when you go underwater. If there are other plans, or if this is working as intended, that would be good to know too so we can plan around it.

Currently those two are the only legends that have any heal/utility/elite skills that work underwater. I get it that, conceptually, a stone dwarf might not be ideal in an underwater setting, but only Malyx and Shiro have any underwater skills at all, so any other legend leaves you with nothing but weapon skills, not even heals. You can’t swap the legends out while in combat, so accidentally diving in too near a shark can be a lot more dangerous than for most classes. (It’s a nasty surprise for a Glint/Dwarf rev, I can assure you… “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!” >.<)

Presumably there are some thorny tech reasons not to let the others work underwater without some significant reworking. (I can believe that… they do some odd behaviors that might be strange outside of a plane.) I would expect, given the way underwater utility skills work for every other class, to be able to set legends for underwater use and land separately, but that’s not the case… it just uses the same ones.

Any comment would be appreciated. (And if there’s any way we could get our Herald skills underwater, even just the boon portions and maybe the heal, that would be awesome!)

Grinding for vanity/cosmetic stuff is fine. I like doing a certain amount of this, at a fairly leisurely pace. My only issue with current legendaries is the dependence on a wildly-RNG precurser, which is something they’re moving away from going forward.

Grinding for stuff that gives better stats, particularly if you’re going to balance content around the assumption that people have it, can go right back to WoW and die, thank you very much.

Thaddeus.4891:

Astralporing.1957:

shion.2084:

log in … get Laurels… have trinkets.

repeat that for 5 months for a set

84 days so less than 3 months and that’s the maximum. You can cut down with

- Achievement Chest give you between 1 and 10 laurels each 500 Achivement pts.
- In your daily there is Fractal. You can only do the first island and get a Pristine. Each time will take you 15min max and you can even do it with two friends at level 1. In 2 months you probably be able to get 1 ring from that instead of laurel.
- In your daily there is Fracal 1-10. Doing all 4 islands on the weakest difficulty give you 2 Pristines in around 30-45min.
- Doing Guild Missions will give you both Accessories in 1 months with only 1,5 hour per week max. Even small guild of 5 people can 3 Commendations per week and get both accessories in 2 months.

So really, even someone that doesn’t like Fractal and in a very small guild can get a full set in 2 months with zero problem.

Grats on consistently taking down the guild bounties every week with 5 peeps. (Wiki says 2 commendations a week, but that’s neither my personal experience nor my point.)

So assuming your numbers are correct (they look about right, though a consistent 30-45 mins seems a little optimistic for a round of fractals if you’re not aggressively kicking new peeps), in just under three months you can get what you need to be able to grind fractals for the gear you need to start grinding high end fractals for more ascended gear, and likely very little else (scale 1 fractal drops not being great).

If you really don’t like the experience of fractals in general, that seems like a spectacularly bad deal. “Congratulations! After nearly three months of constantly doing that thing you don’t like, you’re now allowed to do that thing you don’t like HARDER!”

Also, remember, come HoT the top isn’t going to be 50 anymore… assumptions about where this grind train ends are going to need to be revised.

That timetable is also assuming you’re doing just that for at least an hour a day for around two months, bare minimum. Does that actually sound like fun to anyone? That IS what we’re all here for, right? Fun?

—==—

The default answer to this, which I’ve gotten several times in this thread already, is, “Well, you clearly don’t like this game, then. Go play something else.” The fact is, I do want to play Guild Wars 2. If Heart of Thorns becomes a game I can’t play, eventually I might take your advice, but what I really want to play is the game they’ve been pitching and selling for several years now. That game ISN’T anywhere else. I’m posting because I’m concerned that I might be watching that awesome, unique game bury itself in other games’ toxic refuse in an attempt to chase the “hardcore”. I’ve watched it happen before, and I really don’t want to see it happen here.

I’ve been accused of speaking out of fear. That is correct. It is not, however, speaking out of ignorance, but rather bitter experience. I fear I might lose my favorite game to the same bunch of bullies that ruined my last several favorite games.

Labjax.2465:

Andred.1087:

So much salt, I love it when people whine about “grind” when you can literally do anything in-game that gives decent loot and get your ascended gear in a few months’ time, just with a couple hours a day. Top-tier gear doesn’t just fall out of the sky!

To be fair, from the way Anet described the game early on, it would seem that top-tier gear more or less was supposed to fall out of the sky. So if people are basing their expectations on early dev proclamations, then I can see why they would be mad.

Altho, at this point, people should prob work on getting over what the devs said 2-3 years ago. As they love to say in Game of Thrones, “Words are wind.” That’s the first lesson of transactions. Anything that isn’t written in a contract is potential BS.

Even stuff in contracts can be BS, but at least if it’s contract, you can sue the bejeezus out of people who try to stiff you.

You’re right, and I’m not saying we were promised anything. I would kind of like the game I was sold, not because of any kind of presumed promise, obligation, or contract, but because I REALLY freaking like that game. It’s fun, and more to the point, it’s unique in the market.

When (not if) the people who are foaming for the top-end raiding get tired of it, they’ll just go down the metaphorical street to the next stat-driven Skinner box. Lots of those people came here through games like Rift and Wildstar, lighting for a few months then ditching when they predictably got bored with it. Because the devs saw those gamers as their bread and butter rather than a plague of locusts o’er the land, they invested heavily in them, alienating the rest of their audience. When the raiders moved on, they left a wasteland.

THAT is ultimately why I’m worried. I really (really) like this game precisely because it isn’t a slave to the ruinous trends of the industry. It is its own thing and should do its own thing, and the more of its unique appeal gets painted over in WoW’s colors for the sake of attracting the “hardcore”, the more I worry for its future.

Ashen.2907:

They said that we would have BiS gear by level 80. Not at some point after farming post level 80. Not after gathering X thousands of <insert item here>. Not after maxing out crafting. By level 80.

We actually got full max level exotics more slowly than their announced intention.

From September 27, 2011 Source

Colin Johanson: _*Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base*.

Thanks for tracking down the quote, I’d looked but couldn’t remember the wording well enough to google productively.

Zeppelin.6832:

Coulter.2315:

If you’ve not been bothered to do high end pve for 2 years (probably haven’t done Fractal 50 with zero Ascended) then why the QQ? You don’t even like this content.

This ^^

Which was responded to earlier in the thread.

Substance E.4852:

If Anet is going to shoot their own kitten off and try to lock instanced content behind grind barriers and not through genuinely harder content, people will just leave for games that do a much better job of it.

Raiding has the possibility of being a genuinely good way to bring in people not satisfied with what GW2 has to offer right now. If Anet decides to instead make it a pale imitation of what other games do, those people are likely to stay right where they are.

This is true, and why everyone should care about the grindy gearing-up process.

From the start, this game’s been about doing something different, and doing it well. Guild Wars 2 has some really neat combat systems, and when the encounters are more about dealing with interesting mechanics than performing optimal might stacking, they can be really fun! The more hoops they make you jump through before you get to do stuff, though, the more they move away from their emphasis on fun, active gameplay and toward the usual MMO time-sink-as-a-fun-substitute that many of us came here to get away from.

If you want to grind for more powerful gear, there are much better games for that, and there are always going to be.

Coulter.2315:

Then 1) it isn’t gear-gated (I’ve explained this A LOT, Ascended Armour is +20 Primary Stat and +16 Secondary Stat i.e. irrelevant) and 2) I still think LS3 will be part of GW2’s future – but I don’t have more than an impression (but then neither do you).

If it’s irrelevant, why balance around it? (And how does one balance around something irrelevant, anyway?) Either it’s irrelevant, and not worth balancing around, or it is relevant, and a problem for those of us who haven’t been grinding dungeon runs for cash for the last three years.

Oh, I’m sure we’ll see more living story, and if the past is any indication, it’ll be pretty cool. The direction they seem to be taking the story has a lot of potential. It’s not what one could call highly-repeatable, though, and it’s definitely not (historically) something one’s likely to spend a whole lot of time in as a player. It’d be kind of nice to have other stuff to do.

Ayrilana.1396:

The vast majority of the content within this game doesn’t have a need for a specific tier of gear. Almost everything can be completed in blues.

Players wanted challenging content and it’s very difficult to do that if you make it so that all tiers of gear can complete it. If players in blues and beat a specific piece of content, while find it very challenging, how challenging do you think it would be for those in exotics and ascended?

Let me ask you this, then: When players ask for “challenging content”, how many of them do you think mean “mobs that have higher numbers attached”? I would argue very few players are asking for that specifically. When most people hear that, they think of more interesting and complex mechanics that are difficult to trivially ignore or abuse. Higher tier requirements are just higher numbers, not more interesting content.

I think, also, very few players are asking to have “all tiers” able to complete these things. The issue is the perception that (at least some of) the highest tier (statwise) will be considered required for all of the content they’ve been pushing and marketing, which is tied to both very expensive components (especially silk, but that’s another thread) and mechanically simple daily crafting. (Or of course dumb luck.) That’s not challenge; you aren’t having to earn anything meaningful or surpass your limits, it’s just a transparent time and money sink you have to wade through before you can do stuff.

Coulter.2315:

If you’ve not been bothered to do high end pve for 2 years (probably haven’t done Fractal 50 with zero Ascended) then why the QQ? You don’t even like this content.

Good question, and precisely relevant to my main point.

You are correct in that I don’t like it. Or more specifically, I don’t like the model that you have to spend a bunch of time and gold doing un-fun grindy things in order to be able to do what’s meant to be the fun stuff. That sort of thing is the core of many RPG’s, and a big part of why I play GW2 is that it’s (at least nominally) based on a different philosophy, that games should be fun to play. The phrase they keep using in their marketing as what they want to avoid is “waiting to have fun”.

It’s not true that I have zero ascended, but I don’t have much, mostly because I don’t have a main. I have eight characters, and I can’t stand to play the same one all the time. If I have to invest heavily in one to be able to do the “fun” stuff, I can’t switch things up, and that kills it for me. Requiring ascended to do new content is a problem for me, not because I can’t get my hands on ANY, but because I can’t afford to gear the character that would be fun to try it with.

My original question could be rephrased as, “Is so-called ‘high-end’ (gear-gated) PvE the only type of activity that’s getting ongoing dev time after HoT release? That’s the impression I’m getting from the marketing releases, and as someone who believes in GW2’s mission statement, it worries me.”

Vayne.8563:

Unless you get an ascended weapon from beating Tequatl, in which case, top tier gear did just fall out of the sky….just saying lol.

Or a random ascended weapon drop in a fractal. Or a precurser, ever. Top tier gear does in fact drop from the sky on rare occasions, but as it’s not expected to be how one gears up on purpose, that’s really beside the point.

Andred.1087:

So much salt, I love it when people whine about “grind” when you can literally do anything in-game that gives decent loot and get your ascended gear in a few months’ time, just with a couple hours a day. Top-tier gear doesn’t just fall out of the sky!

And this game is explicitly supposed to NOT be about gear tiers.

I’m not asking to do everything. Keep your raids. I’m asking to have something to do, in an ongoing fashion.

(And no, adventure camping and old map bonuses are not what I’m asking about. Beating my own time in a minigame is NOT ongoing content, nor is event grinding in stuff we already have.)

shion.2084:

I’m not sure how there can really be much discussion about this.

Because this is a forum, a place for people to air their concerns and issues and present them as feedback. I am concerned about this, and the fact that you aren’t doesn’t make my point invalid.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

These threads are getting old.

Get ascended gear or don’t play the content. You had 3 YEARS, suck it up or leave.

/thread

Congratulations, you are the problem!

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Well, my friend, dungeons are balanced around a team of five and people solo them.

That’s because dungeons do not have any mechanisms to prevent subpar groups from finishing. Raids do.

Look the first raid boss has already been beaten. That’s like the first day of raids. Less than a day. I’m sure those guys probably all had ascended gear but I’m just as sure that a mixed group could do it once the fight is learned. I watched the video, I saw what was done. If a fully geared group can beat it on the first day, not even a full day, then I’m not worried about everyone having to have full ascended gear…keeping in mind that ascended jewelry is relatively easy to get.

And that was the first boss, being taken down with ascended gear. All that says is that the first boss doesn’t take more than a day to learn the tactics for, and nothing whatsoever about gear nor about what’s going to be neccessary to finish.

That said, the answer to my concerns isn’t “but we can raid!” They’ve said directly that raids are “not for everyone,” and as someone who can’t stick to a main and certainly can’t afford to gear my alts, that cuts me out. I think we can agree that the enforced gear treadmill in high end fractals makes them “not for everyone” either, for many of the same reasons. My question was, “so going forward, what new content does ‘everyone’ get when they buy the xpack? Just a Living Story patch and ‘adventure’ minigames, or are there plans to have substantial content going forward that doesn’t necessarily involve gearing up?”

Vayne.8563:

Of course dungeons are relevant if you’d pay some attention to what’s going on. Dungeons were BALANCED a certain way and people do them with MUCH LESS.

Raids are BALANCED around ascended gear. We’ve seen one boss of one beta. People will figure out ways to beat it, it’ll get easier and everyone will be able to do it. I’d wager entire teams of people will be able to beat it in exotics, because of my previous experience with the game.

Experience tells us that good players are generally better players than devs. That’s almost always true. So if a dev tells you ascended is needed (which they haven’t said anyway), then why would I naturally assume they were right.

Hell ascended was introduced in the first place because devs thought it would take a lot longer for people to get exotics.

Yes, how the company operates in the past has everything to do with predicting what they’re likely to do in the future. If you can’t see that, there’s not much point in continuing this conversation.

You’ve testing nothing, you have a theory based on no real evidence and you try to claim that my educated conclusion is meaningless simply because you don’t agree.

Let’s see what you have to say in six months time.

I’m not saying what you have to say is meaningless. I called dungeons irrelevant because they are abandoned content. They are not being actively balanced around anything, as they are not under active development at all, and the only mention they’ve gotten in quite a while was the recent announcement that their gold rewards were being nerfed to make dungeon gold farming (which is what most people are still doing there) less appealing.

You are correct that I have no evidence of anything. If what I was saying was, “I have evidence that this is true”, or asserting any facts at all, that would be a fine response. What I have are concerns based on a reasonable premise, rooted in my own limited experience, which is impossible to test as fact before the concerns become either validated or moot. That’s why what I sought was information on stated design intent, as that directly informs the shape of the game in the future, but is unspecific enough to possibly be an answerable question.

I sincerely hope that, in six months time, I’m too busy doing fun stuff in-game to have much at all to say. Happy people don’t generally frequent forums. For the moment, color me worried.

BaconofPigs.1683:

Cdoto.4920:

<snip>

Why do you think Raids are designed for elitists? You use the term elitists here to mean negativity. That’s an attitude. Raids are actually designed for people who want to do more challenging contents. There is a difference.

<snip>

If the ranger/necro goes and cry about it and actually believe he fits in that group, that player actually fits the definition of what an elitist actually is because he actually believes in the scenario where his inclusion would be better than the meta which itself is already the best by definition.

Maybe I should have said, “Raids are intended to exclude many people, and cater by design to a type of player who sees themselves as having superior talent and/or skill.” It would be nice to have a word for that without a pejorative context, but unfortunately in gaming that kind of attitude does tend to correlate with certain negative attitudes and create toxic community dynamics.

I will agree that attempting to join a group labelled “meta” without being meta is silly, and crying about it is also silly. The idea that someone is crying about it because they think they’re “better” than the meta seems a bit odd, though. In my (admittedly limited) experience, I’ve never met anyone who explained their thought process that way. Generally, what they were complaining about was not being able to do group content at all without being meta. Saying “Waah, they won’t let me play!” isn’t generally an elitist sentiment. It might be unrealistic, misguided, misinformed, entitled, and/or whiny, but it’s not elitist.

The problem I see is that if non-meta groups don’t happen, and you’re not meta, you just can’t do it. You can of course say, “Get friends!” or “Get Gud!”, but frankly, the whole game isn’t designed to exclude people, nor should the whole expansion be (even if raids are).

Vayne.8563:

Cdoto.4920:

<snip>

And you know this how? You’ve obviously tried the raids will a full team of people in exotics and came to this perfect conclusion. All that was said directly was that raids are BALANCED around ascended gear.

Well, my friend, dungeons are balanced around a team of five and people solo them.

Yes, because clearly (1) I asserted a “perfect conclusion” of some sort (whatever that means), (2) I have to have conducted an experiment in-game to draw preliminary conclusions from a news post, (3) my point was specifically about raids in the first place, and (4) dungeons are in some way relevant. Bit of a straw man there.

Still, thanks for staying civil, friend.

Ashen.2907:

Zach.2618:

If you don’t have it yourself you are free to run raids in exotics no one is stopping you.

<snip>

But I am inclined to believe that the community will be much less forgiving than the content itself.

This.

People in fractal runs kick (or ditch) quite readily as it is. Any setback could lose people, and lots of groups are not shy about booting anyone who seems to be slowing them down. I invite you to look for a mid-to-high fractal group when it’s not the daily as a ranger or necro. Bring a book. For extra points, and pull out a bear pet once you get in.

Perhaps you will be more open. If so, more power to you. If the devs are saying this is what you SHOULD have though (“what it’s balanced for”), people will take that as the minimum.

—==—

Also, to be clear, I am not saying that I should be allowed in your raid, or complaining about raiding at all really. Raids are for the elitists, that’s straight from the devs. If you want exclusive content, grats, you’ve got your little hill to be the king of. I’ll check it on youtube.

I’m asking if the design intent going forward is for everything PvE that gets ongoing dev time to require some amount of Ascended gear.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Cdoto.4920:

lorddarkflare.9186:

I think it is extremely disingenuous to label Fractals as simply ‘gear-gated’. Not to mention that Raids actually have a much less stringent gate than Fractals.

Even on the current system, you can get pretty far with fractals in just ascended trinkets.

And it is not like crafting Ascended Armor is dark magic.

What would make it a more honest description in your opinion?

Are you disputing the claim that a certain grade of gear is a functional requirement to complete this content? That would be odd, given that you go on to say that one can “get pretty far” if you already have some of the gear behind which it is gated. So… you can get part-way through the gated content when you’ve partially overcome the gate.

Ascended trickets are not difficult to get. In fact, most ascended trinkets are notoriously easy to get. You can get a full set with just normal play.

The actual hard gate only comes into play after you have placed agony infusions in all those slots.

My challenge stems from the implication that fractals are virtually unapproachable unless you are fully decked out in ascended. That is what calling it ‘gear-gated’ suggests and that is clearly not true.

Ah, I see the disconnect.

What I said was “required to complete”, not “required to attempt”. Strictly speaking, you can walk into the raid in full exotics. It might even be possible to complete that way, given perfect play. Good luck finding a group willing to let you try, though… and that’s what I mean by a “practical requirement”.

There was certainly no attempt to deceive or misrepresent.

lorddarkflare.9186:

I think it is extremely disingenuous to label Fractals as simply ‘gear-gated’. Not to mention that Raids actually have a much less stringent gate than Fractals.

Even on the current system, you can get pretty far with fractals in just ascended trinkets.

And it is not like crafting Ascended Armor is dark magic.

What would make it a more honest description in your opinion?

Are you disputing the claim that a certain grade of gear is a functional requirement to complete this content? That would be odd, given that you go on to say that one can “get pretty far” if you already have some of the gear behind which it is gated. So… you can get part-way through the gated content when you’ve partially overcome the gate.

munki.6402:

I have a lot of ascended: multiple weps on six characters. Full armor on three and pieces on two others. I am definitely a filthy casual, playing maybe an hour and a half a day, if that. Go figure.

Congratulations. You’ve got yours, so kitten everyone else, right?

I wonder how many total played hours that is over the time you’ve been playing.

Astralporing.1957:

lorddarkflare.9186:

And it is not like crafting Ascended Armor is dark magic.

Of course it isn’t. Nobody says getting ascended is difficult (as in, requiring any level of skill). What it is is costly, time-consuming and grindy.

This.

Or really, either “time-consuming and grindy” or “purchased out of pocket for real money”.

Quote from the Economy article:

“As the game progressed, we shifted focus from dungeons to fractals and raids, and we firmly believe that fractals and raids are the content that we want to continue to support.”

This has implications that worry me. The new PvE content you intend to continue to support consists entirely of content that requires grinding for (at least some) Ascended gear to be able to complete? (And therefore not to get kicked from PuGs?)

Can we get some clarification of design intent here? You’ve talked a lot about the Raids (understandably, as they’re new and shiny) and a bit about the Fractal changes, but those are both gear-gated high-end challenges. Unless the map exploration is somehow a LOT more robust than we’ve been led to believe, it just doesn’t look like there’s any place for a casual or mid-tier player in HoT.

What is your vision of the future for PvE players who aren’t on the No-Life Elitist front, once we get through the story? Perpetual Verdant-Brink-style event grinding? Trying to beat the guild high score in adventures for the next two years? (Serious respect for the guys making them, they look neat, but I bet THAT won’t get old fast.) Or are we just left with a really expensive living world episode?

At the very least, there needs to be some setting or option that makes the flames from the many Burning stacks on a boss not show up. It makes it problematic to make out animated telegraph tells. (and asura in general.)

I’d also LOVE to be able to, on my end, either tone down or turn off the trail visuals for legendary greatswords… a couple of max-size male norns swinging Twilights in a small area might as well be an AoE player blind. >.<

The other stuff is mostly manageable, but those two things are problematic.

Honestly, if this is something the engine just can’t do, telling us so at least says that you know it’s an issue.

If they’ve acknowledged this, can anyone provide a link?

This would be awesome. It’d be really nice to be able to see Mossman’s windup animation in all that fire.

I realize it’s not the core issue, but to the earlier poster who complained of the green arrow overriding local stuff:

You can change the User Interface > Content Guide option to change the behavior of the arrow so it won’t override local stuff. I didn’t know this was an option for a long time, and it’s especially handy when there’s an event daily.

I’m okay with the intro mission getting the nerfbat, it IS the story intro after all. I’ll be rather sad if the nerfs to Verdant Brink stick, though. >.<

Oh, thought this was a dev response to the other issue, where the bits to channel on weren’t appearing.

Same issue, only mastery point that’s appearing is the one west of Faren’s WP, and it’s not functioning. (Can channel, get nothing, and can channel repeatedly.)

Verdant Brink is difficult to navigate, much less explore, with no ability to gain mastery points.

SableHaze.3870:

Like title says..I completed the Hero Point just northwest of camp resolve and game crashed. I didn’t think much of it, got back into the game and been playing awhile and doing events in SW and came to the Hero Point just Northeast of Amber Sandfall and game crashed when I completed the challenge once again.

I’ve gotten the same thing today.

I’m on my ranger, and I snagged the hero point in the Skritt tunnel near the Topsy-Turvy then the Ancient Devourer in the southwest. Both times a crash.

Error message reads, “Type not set (did you call Initialize when you made this frame?”
Go go dynamic typing.

I’m on a Mac client.

I’d have enclosed a screenshot, but the client went unresponsive and I had to force-quit it to get out.

It occurred to me to wonder, is the Fractal mastery considered a Central Tyria mastery, a Meguuma mastery, or its own thing? As far as gaining progress on it, I mean.

It would make sense to have to do fractals to get progress on it, I was just wondering if was possible to select another track to progress while doing fractal runs.

I already posted in this thread, but it was more a general approach than specific suggestions for future events. Thought I’d put my 2cp in on that topic.

(This is on the assumption that “invasion” type events are meant to encourage working together to complete shared objectives, that approaches like the “tag and ditch” or “don’t finish, champ farm” are unintended and undesirable behaviors, and that the systems and rewards should incentivize this and feel like a worthwhile use of time aside from the value of “the experience”.)

-If the invasion consists of series of events, and you’re trying to track personal contribution through a buff, only pulse the buff to people in the area of the event. This is the best suggestion I’ve seen to discourage tag & ditch tactics… it means you’re optimally rewarded for helping groups actually clear objectives as quickly as possible, like you would if you were actually trying to drive the invaders out. (Alternately, you could have the objective target [spawner vines, for example] spawn an object on death to interact with that gives a stack of the buff, but avoiding bugs/abuse might be even more problematic with that implementation.. not sure how things work under the hood.)

-Tracking personal contribution through a buff is a good idea, but it absolutely needs to persist through a discon. I did three rounds of the event before I gave it up and have yet to see a blossom, simply because of client crashes. That does not feel good.

-I understand (and agree with) the idea of not having the mobs drop loot, especially after the perverse champ bag incentives from the Scarlet Invasion, but NO gold/karma/xp is a bit much. I would propose that the events themselves should give some money and xp, based on bronze/silver/gold, and possibly even give a champ bag or something at gold. That would go a long way toward making the event rewards actually feel like a net gain, even if they’re still technically not, and further encourage swift completion of objectives.

-The four day duration is a bit punishing. The rewards aren’t new unique stuff, so it’s not THAT big a deal, but as someone with other obligations this weekend it would have been nice to have some hope of getting a nice reward. Just a week would have been MUCH better, so as to allow people who have non-standard schedules to make up some progress.

Thanks for the effort and the communication. See you in the jungle.

Kirigato.7183:

Sorry if I’m asking too much but is there any class that resembles Healthcliff

Not mechanically. (No one has infinite guard cheaty powers.) Visually you’re looking for heavy armor and sword-and-shield, so guardian or warrior probably. Guardian’s got better blocks (or at least more of them in their skill set), but with lots of glowy stuff and blue fire. SAO is a low-magic setting after all, unlike GW2, so it may not be the visual you want.

Engies get shields, but the style is all wrong. Mesmer gets a shield as well in HoT, but they’re in light armor.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We have been tracking player response and recognize that this event has not gone as intended.

<snip>

We encourage all of you who’ve participated in the Mordrem Invasion to please share your constructive thoughts on how we can improve on these types of experiences in the future. Please share your ideas and feedback in this thread.

Thank you.

I appreciate your forthrightness, and while I did not find the event enjoyable, the live support team was on the ball fixing the bug, and it’s appreciated.

I would like to suggest that you make a fairly detailed post after the event, breaking down the design intent of this event, why it was designed the way it was, and what lessons have been learned. Not a retreat or an apology, but a frank explanation. It doesn’t have to be a high-profile press release or anything, but a forum post (which reddit will of course link to) could reach a lot of annoyed people.

This is still the internet; a lot of people are going to complain whatever you say or do, and haters are gonna hate, but what best serves your relationship with your customers is to give the impression that you’re listening and (this is the crucial bit) reacting to our feedback. Showing us why this looked like a good idea helps with that, and helps shift the conversation from “the devs wasted my time and don’t care” to “hey, the devs are ACTUALLY listening!”

The next step, of course, is actually learning said lessons… of course, that remains to be seen. By pre-ordering HoT, I’m making a gesture of faith that this game is still on the rise, and I certainly hope that faith is rewarded. This event is more of a speed bump than a springboard in that regard, but solid communication is the key to turning it into an overall positive influence on the community.

See you in the jungle.

Extra bonus for the crashy/Mac crowd, if you discon at any point during one of the invasions, you don’t get blooms at the end of it even if you got a stack built up after. Did three invasions… two were before the fix, one after. No blooms yet.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

It’s basically the Scarlet Invasions except:

- You LOSE gold while participating in them, thanks to waypoint costs, gold costs on the bloom “rewards”, and a baffling lack of loot, karma, or event gold.

Good point, forgot that one. New/poor players need not apply, I guess.

I want to give a shout-out for the live support team… you guys did an excellent job of quickly addressing the bug with the bloom drops. Go you!

Then I’d like to shout in a different way entirely at the people who designed the event. There are so few interactables per event that the only way most folks get any participation credit is by hitting things, and any decent zerg is burning the mobs way too fast for that to be dependable. There aren’t really any mechanics to speak of for the other people to handle(other than the plant’s personal space issues), so it just turns into a massive tag scramble. Add in the fact that you’re not incentivized to see the events to completion and it’s just punishing people for not being selfish jerks who tag and ditch.

It’s un-fun and lazy, but I could ultimately put up with that… I routinely do the Shatterer fight for loot, after all. What really rubs salt in the wound is making an honest attempt to participate and finding that it interacts badly with the mac client crashiness which is exascerbated by busy zergs and which we haven’t heard anything about in about a year , which costs me my buff stack when it rears its ugly head. Guys, you CAN make buffs that persist through a discon. You’ve done it before. This just punishes people for events outside their control (and also Mac players), and that’s just silly.

This event is causing enough kittens on the forums to make Bob Barker cry, and frankly, the people responsible for implementing this clusterkerfluffle deserve every one. I remember the previous invasion events (very cool), and I really wanted the one leading up to the first expansion to be fun.

I really enjoy the game, and assuming this kind of frustration isn’t the norm going forward, I hope to have a lot of fun in the Jungle. Silence is implicit support, though, and I was too frustrated by this not to speak up. So whoever’s fault this is… (points at metaphorical stain on the carpet) Bad designer. Bad. See what you did wrong, and please don’t do it again.

And to anyone else with a Mac, well, good luck I guess. Maybe some day it’ll get out of beta.

Later edit: Extra bonus for the crashy/Mac crowd, if you discon at any point during one of the invasions, you don’t get blooms at the end of it even if you got a stack built up after. Did three invasions… two were before the fix, one after. No blooms yet.

Please don’t require Ascended/Agony Resistance gear, or anything like it, as the baseline for entry to any new content.

The biggest advantage I see in GW2 is the fact that it doesn’t HAVE to degenerate into a gear grind just to see content. If you want to grind for rare pretties, then that’s great; you’ll look really cool, and I’m glad that the game supports such. You can still go see and do pretty much anything, even without being highly-geared, especially if you’ve got a couple of friends.

I really hope I’m worrying about nothing, but reading Linsey Murdock’s Ascended Gear article left me more worried than excited about the future. If the game moves to a rigidly tiered structure, where this dungeon’s gear is required to get into the next dungeon, then it gives up the accessibility that really distinguishes it in the MMO market. I know I’m not the only one who left other games to abandon the tier treadmill, and it could go a long way in allaying our fears if you could make clearer the design intent and high-level systemic nature of the “item progression initiative” mentioned in the article. Please, don’t freeze out the casual market… keep new content going forward accessible to new 80’s.

I love this game, and the best thing this game has done is challenge all assumptions about what an MMO “should” do, from convenience, to pricing, to progression. Thank you for shaking up the market, and I hope you continue to do so.