Showing Posts For Desthin Sinkropht.4123:
It’s a really nice idea but it is the players that will cause the problems. As soon as some people in a group want to bail out and some want to stay in then there are going to be unhappy players. Unhappy players every run.
The game design should allow players with restricted time to manage that time carefully. If someone can manage an hours worth of time they can do something productive for that hour and log off satisfied. Endless dungeons really exclude that sort of player and only rewards those people who stay online for hours on end.
this is why some suggested being able to log off in the dungeon, and i suggested at certain points you could stop, log off, or pick up new players in the same level. You couldnt leave with that charachter though, just essentially pause the progress, or regroup.
As long as the elements of scarcity remain (limited inventory space, repairs, vendoring, etc), then logging off should work fine. In fact, this system would even be able to support “lobbies” at the end of each floor, where players that need to leave can be replaced by players who are in that lobby. Hotjoin is a possibility as well, where anyone on your floor can request to join your party.
Anyhow its all brainstorming that will probably be ignored, but a fun exercise none the less
The Dev’s DO read the forums, but they can’t respond to everything. Even hinting that they are interested in this brings a certain amount of expectation.
As a thought exercise though…yeah. It’s good to keep the gears turning in the community instead of it turning into a “kitten about the current state of things” echo chamber ;-)
Why not just ask for it to be incorporated into fractals? Creating a parallel event for a relatively small number of people maybe is not cost effective.
Because fractals use a very different balance system for loot and gameplay, closer to a traditional GW2 dungeon than the Labyrinth’s survival system. I envisioned this as something within Dessa’s Lab, as a type of Fractal instance, but not in the fractal rotation.
I’d also like to take a moment to clarify that the loot drops would consistently increase in QUALITY, while the limited inventory mechanic keeps the QUANTITY down. A long Labyrinth run could end up with a person out of salvage kits, out of gathering tools, and holding stacks of salvaged materials (in an attempt to condense the trash loot) and only the very best drops. This also gives a use to those fancy unlimited use kits (and makes the silver-fed kit almost worth it!) beyond overpaying for a minor convenience.
In my mind, I see 6+ hour labyrinth runs replacing some of the normal dungeon circuits. Not because of the gold value (it’d probably be lower), but because of the better QUALITY of drops (which feels better and helps progress personal goals such as collections)
I can only dream that a dedicated guild out there somewhere will try to pull a 24-48 hour Labyrinth delve, attempting to fill their inventory with exotic drops after going hundreds deep for the massive MF bonus.
Clarification: The better prepared a group is when they enter (salvage kits, tools, etc), the more compressed they can get their loot, bringing more value back.
You should always be able to begin from the last level begun (Waypoints at the entrance to each level?)
The MF bonus for survival would have to reset then. The limited inventory and lack of vendors is there to prevent a huge influx of items/gold, in favor of people having a huge amount of chances to get those oh-so-sought after exotics and ascendeds.
Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)
Today’s focus is on the Dungeon system, namely a new type of dungeon experience that many feel is lacking from the game…A true dungeon crawl!
Labyrinth of the Mists
A new kind of Fractal
Labyrinth of the Mists would be a new addition to Dessa’s Lab, giving players a chance to go on an old-school dungeon crawl.
What’s the same
Like the Fractals, the dungeon has a Fractal Level, determining similar values.
Like the Fractals, you can choose to bail after each “level”
Like the Fractals, the highest starting level is determined by the least progressed player.
Like the Fractals, there is a boss at the end of each level with a chest.
What’s different
The Labyrinth is setup in “Floors”, each granting an increase to difficulty and Magic Find. This would scale VERY slowly (1% per level)
The Labyrinth is isolated from the rest of Tyria. You can’t deposit from the inventory, access the trading post, or even find an anvil/vendor.
What’s SPECIAL
Chests have a chance of dropping Repair Canisters and Vendors, giving you a chance to refresh your armor and sell anything you aren’t saving for the final haul.
Harvesting Nodes can spawn in the Labyrinth.
The Labyrinth makes use of surprise attacks and traps that aren’t just “dodge the red circle”
Example Labyrinth Floors:
CM Tileset:
• Special mobs include turret ambushes and stealthed separatist patrols.
AC Tileset:
• Special mobs include Graveling Mounds and the infamous wall-troll.
What’s the point?
Well, the idea here is to provide an experience that appeals to farmers (Get the MF high enough and you start getting some NICE rewards), explorers (The zones are randomized, so there is always a surprise waiting), and thrill-seekers (How deep you can you go on limited supplies?)
Feel free to tear into this idea, as it’s NOT a balanced product.
Since I can’t copy/paste this with formatting:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-Designer-s-viewpoint-Megaservers/4095551
Whew, hit the post character cap there. Can I get a megaserver in here?
Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)
I’m going to be doing a few posts here about the most troublesome topics in GW2 in order to stimulate good discussion and hopefully reduce improve clarity. Today’s focus is on the Megaserver system, namely a breakdown of the intended functions and differences between it and traditional district-based server splitting.
First off, let’s quote the wiki on what the megaserver does:
Average population per map copy +225%
Player goes to the same map as his or her party +25%
Average population from the same party as the player on joined map +36%
Average population from the same guild as the player on joined map +5%
Average population from the same home world as the player on joined map +6%
Average population speaking the same language as the player on joined map +41%Those are some nice numbers. What do they really mean to us though?
• Maps will always be full, near capacity, or quickly filling, as opposed to a random assortment of full and empty maps.
• The majority of the time, the map will contain people who are participating in events of some sort, keeping the game flowing.
What about the infamous population cap? Well...it turns out that nothing changed except the ability of the players to get into a server more efficiently, oddly causing people to not be able to get in.
wait, what?
Let me explain with a comparison:
Overflow System:
1. Attempt to join, find out your home server’s map is capped.
2. Get tossed into an overflow made of a random selection of player who also hit the cap.
3. Wait for the queue to end so you can join everyone in the normal server.
4. Event ends while waiting because you were in a queue.
5. Rage, go to the forums to demand a server placement system that puts you with allies and automatically creates a new map as needed.
Megaserver system:
1. Attempt to join, don’t even know the map is capped because you are placed in another high population zone. (THIS IS WHERE THE OLD SYSTEM ENDS)
2. Decide to force-join your guild while they are doing tequatl.
3. Rage, go to the forums and demand a queue system.
The thing to take away from this is that trying to force 100+ people into a map without considering existing populations just doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Overflow, and it doesn’t work in Megaserver.
Common Solutions (And why they don’t work)
• "Just put a queue on the megaserver!" This just means that everyone and their minipet are going to sit in a queue instead of rolling to the next megaserver as intended.
• "Just use a priority system!" You mean the one that already puts the vast majority of players in the right spots with no complaints, leaving the minority to vocally declare the system broken?
Which leaves us with...
Guild Instancing.
Guild Instances require 75% map capacity in guild members. That may sound like a huge restriction, but bear with me a second.
The vast majority of people "hitting the cap" repeatedly are players trying to join others in a guild. In normal gameplay, players come and go on a map with such frequency that you rarely get a cap message. World/Guild events oppose such a system, encouraging large amounts of players to drop into a server, regardless of the existing population makeup. Having the ability for guilds to create seperate instances fixes this, but introduces new problems.
• Server Load increased: Guilds making new maps would cause overflow-esque lag all over again. Solved! Requiring 75% participation means you are not causing additional server load because you have essentially created a megaserver like the normal system, but appeased the server efficiency gods by ensuring that it won’t be a waste of resources.
• Community exclusion: Guilds can "take their ball and leave", screwing all players who wanted to join in. [i]Solved! This is no different than a normal megaserver, except more predictable and less annoying for everyone involved. PuG tequatl will still happen. PUG friendly guild events will still happen. This just gives guilds who BREAK THE MEGASERVER the option of bypassing it.
BONUS IMPLEMENTATION ROUND!
Activate Tequatl event. All members of the guild activating the event who are in the map are moved to a new instance. A counter appears, showing the map population %. When this reaches 75%, the event can be triggered (this time for real!) and the map is treated as a normal megaserver. Optionally, the guild can (goldsink?) have the map reserved entirely, only allowing guild members to join.
Thanks again for reading, and remember to stay civil in the discussions!
OP here to clarify some stuff. I’m not advocating additional stack limits. I’m advocating a new mechanic that rewards consistency (you know, that thing that DoTs are known for) while not increasing server load.
I’ll explain the intensity idea again:
Let’s say you have 5 guardians, all applying burning. Under the current system, you get a hodgepodge of burns, interfering with each other. Under the new system, this happens:
Player 1 applies 2 burns
Player 2 applies 2 burns
Player 3 applies 2 burns
Player 4 applies 2 burns
Player 5 applies 2 burns, but the cap is 9. That 10th burn triggers “Immolated”, a new condition that ticks upward in intensity as long as it is maintained. To maintain it, the previous condition (burning) must remain capped at 9.
This rewards cooperation (keeping the stacks capped), shouldn’t increase server load (there is already something in place to discard excess stacks, and this is using the same condition trigger as the previous system), and makes condition builds MORE useful the larger the HP pool is on an enemy.
End result:
• In a small party of very few condition builds, they do their full damage without interference, and get a decent bonus if they manage to stay capped during boss fights.
•In a large group, overlapping condition users can cover each other during downtime (dodge, downed, boss mechanic, etc) to keep the stacks running and steadily increase damage over the course of the fight.
•In PvP, you would almost never cap your stacks, much less maintain a cap. This is a good thing, since condition builds are effective vs players already.
EDIT: Note that applying new stacks of burning would not increase calculations, it just resets the burn timer as usual. Immolate meanwhile only cares that burns remain capped, not the math behind them. [If Burning=9, then +1% Immolate damage per tick]
(edited by Desthin Sinkropht.4123)
Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)
I’m going to be doing a few posts here about the most troublesome topics in GW2 in order to stimulate good discussion and hopefully reduce improve clarity. Today’s focus is on Conditions, namely how condition caps can be avoided and the challenges associated with it.
First off, let’s quote the wiki on the major difference between condition damage and normal damage:
Damage caused by conditions ignore armor and other effects that reduce damage, such as protection.
That’s a pretty big difference. Heavy Armor, Toughness, Protection, Frost Armor. None of it matters to conditions. Even scarier, most classes have to go out of their way to get good condition removal (or at least pass up a more synergistic skill in the same slot), and even that is usually limited by cooldowns. Kind of a rough world for PvP eh? Let’s see what happens in PvE though...
...oh dear. It appears that multiple people with condition builds don’t really play nicely together. Unlike a party of direct damage builds, where everyone does the majority of their damage regardless of the actions of other players, a single condition caster is vulnerable to disruption by the rest of the party (since all classes apply incidental conditions even when geared for direct damage). It gets more complicated when multiple condition users are in the party, as having 2 Burning based characters is no more effective than having one.
So, what can we do about it?
That’s a pretty complicated situation, with no clear cut answer.
With our previous observations though, we make a few guidelines for an improved version of condition stacking mechanics.
Players should not prevent each other from functioning. Knockdown warriors do not stop bow rangers from shooting people. Why should an elementalist prevent the guardian from burning?
Conditions should be satisfying to keep applied. The burst warrior has to dodge, kite, and find/create an opening for his combo. The condition necro has to continuously keep reapplying conditions. Both are hectic, but the warrior gets a payoff from a perfectly executed combo, but the condition user...gets a slightly higher number on the DoT ticks.
So, what does this mean for our current conditions?
It means conditions need to either stop interfering with each other somehow, or have enough synergy to overcome that interference.
Non-Interference is VERY hard to accomplish in this situation, so I’ll be focusing on synergy bonuses instead:
• Damaging conditions scale in intensity as stacks are maintained. This means that all contributing casters to the damage stack are getting increased damage for coordinating and reliably applying the condition. This is also a one-sided buff for PvE condition users since players regularly attempt to remove conditions, while monsters generally don’t.
Next Up: Megaservers
Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)
I posted a while back in the Fractal CDI, and now I’m going to be doing a few posts here about the most troublesome topics in GW2. Today’s focus is on Crowd Control, namely how crowd control can be satisfying and useful in a group situation without the use of CC-negating buffs.
First off, let’s quote the wiki on what exactly we are dealing with:
Unshakable is an effect that grants resistance to control effects. Unshakable will grant one stack of Defiance for each player in the area (minimum 3) when the creature has no stacks of Defiance and is targeted by a crowd control skill. Blindness is applied and removed as usual and has its usual duration, but it only causes the next attack to miss 10% of the time; the condition is still removed even if the attack hits.
Note that Blindness (while not strictly CC) has a damage dampening effect by causing attacks to miss. Oddly, Chill isn’t given the same treatment.
A lot of dissatisfaction concerning this system stems from the binary nature of the Defiance buff. In a large group, it is nearly impossible to time a large CC to hit right as the group removes the last stack of Defiance. The inability to make meaningful tactical decisions beyond “don’t die, keep hitting it, do the special mechanic X” (Also known as “The Plays”) is rooted in this binary (either you CC or you don’t) and obfuscated (you have no reasonable way of knowing if your 3 second stun or one of the 40 other 1/2 second dazes will actually be the one to break through defiance) system.
So, what can we do about it?
With our previous observations, we make a few guidelines for an improved version of our CC reduction mechanic.
- CC should be at least marginally useful when used: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Abilities have unique effects. That effect is not “remove a stack of arbitrary CC negation”
- CC should be a tactically used mechanic, not a spammable I-Win button: The current defiance system is intended to work this way, but the coordination required to effectively CC rises much faster than the effect of CC itself. If you have 5 players, you can fairly reliably CC a dungeon boss at the critical moments where it’s CC or die. When you have 10 players, the mobs scale up to match, so effective damage is the same, but now CC is that much harder to coordinate.
So, what does this mean for our current CC skills?
It means that mobs need to RESIST, not NEGATE. Scaling effectiveness means that every person can have an appreciable effect on CC, and brings tactical usage of skills back into the limelight.
Examples (Assume diminishing returns for all values):
- Chilled: Movement speed decreased by
66%Variable%; skill cooldown increased by66%Variable%;stacks duration.
Chilled is now weaker when being applied by a single player, but each application makes it more powerful.
- Blind: Next outgoing attack has 10% Miss Chance (rolled per target, not per attack);
stacks duration.
This reduces the binary nature of rolling a single 10% blind attack. Instead, the attack misses 10% of the players, giving the group a chance to react and recover.
- Knockdown/daze/stun: Allow chaining, but apply defiant stacks in the opposite manner to the current system. Instead of having to burn CC to land one, Chaining hard CC causes stacks of a buff, granting a powerful stunbreaker and temporary CC immunity if it goes high enough (Variable by enemy type!).
Brought in a Jiu-Jitsu expert on this one. When grappling or performing takedowns, your first move is likely to be your most effective, and further struggles give more opportunities for devastating counterattacks.
AARM on Tarnished Coast is reliably getting Silver, and getting Gold every 3 runs. 8 champ boxes for gold reward plus some extra greens. They are also teaching non-guildies how to do it.
Thanks for taking time to speak your mind, but i think it kind of shows the problem, you guys arent sure what you are going to end up with. I mean its consistent with an iterative process, but, I think you need to narrow your focus, and start with a more defined vision. You also need to commit to a course, and make it the best course possible, you can add to it, or create other things later, but you need to be able to follow through.
i think you guys have a lot of talent, and are fairly adaptable, but you also need a creative vision to focus that adaptability around providing the best solutions/design to fit the specifications of the situation.
TLDR, come up with a good idea, commit to it, follow through. oh, and tell people something to let them know whats on the horizon.
Transparency is a good thing, but sticking with a design even if it turns out to be suboptimal isn’t always good. They are still trying to find the right balance on that.
Proposal Overview
Queen’s Gauntlet “boasts” in fractals, in the form of Forced+Optional modifiers.
Goal of Proposal
Mods would increase variety within fractals at all levels of difficulty, as well as add another axis for balance and customization of the gameplay experience. This also gives an outlet for reworking Agony to be more satisfying to overcome.
Proposal Functionality
When selecting the fractal level, you can also select any number of Mods. These Mods remain in effect until full completion, as opposed to a single zone. The gain for the players is (as usual) better rewards.
As a secondary function, Mods could be added as scaling difficulty modifiers to fractals to replace agony. Each tier would apply a randomized Mod to the Fractal, scaled to the current fractal level. Agony Resist would reduce the individual effect the mods have on the player. These Mods stack as the player increases in Tier, eventually having to deal with multiple deadly modifiers at the same time, instead of a single Agony mechanic.
Associated Risks
Boast Preplanning: The inherent randomness of Fractal selection should prevent the players from planning which Mods to use on which runs, but a silver cost for adding Mods could help with this as well, creating a goldsink and preventing players from adding a Mod, starting a fractal, then bailing on it if they don’t like the fractal given.
Information Paralysis: Having too many modifiers in place at one time could cause unintended frustration, as opposed to fair challenge. I suggest Forced modifiers be very simple in nature.
Examples:
(Enemy Tier=Normal, Veteran, Elite, Champion, Legendary, Etc)
“[Enemy Tier] Enemies apply [Agony] Stacks of [Condition] on hit”
“Conditions from [Enemy Tier] Enemies last [Agony]% longer
“Fractal Level increased by #” (intensifying the other mods!)
Thank you for your time devs.
What makes this perspective so valuable? Is it simply because you feel its valuable among all the other perspectives? I’d really like to hear your train of thought.
I consider it a valuable perspective due to its merit and rarity. It was a argument that I hadn’t heard previously, and therefore merited extra attention.
What is casual vertical progression anyway
Vertical progression that casual players aren’t left behind because of.
“Would that be acceptable.”
I believe the designer should know enough about their game to know what’s acceptable, and not have to cherrypick among a whirlpool of ideas. As one poster before state, quite elegantly I might add, the design should be for the sake of the game’s DNA. I’m not confident that this thread is even breaking the cellular level and you’re asking others what would be acceptable?
Dialog between players & designers provides feedback on possible changes. Dialog between players provides perspective for the designers. Neither of these things happen unless everyone is civil. It’s not really about cherrypicking, it’s about finding the things that stand out and addressing them as a community and as a company.
Forgive my rather accusatory tone, but has brought you to deign post in the forum of lowly gamers? Are here simply to quell the noise of rowdy dissidents? If so, then there’s little point to thread as it’s regurgitating the rhetoric of many before you, most of whom I wouldn’t even say are designers. Are you here to open discussion? If so then I highly suggest that you reassess both your methods and your disposition.
I posted to give the perspective of a person who has been through the process many times before, and to encourage others to discuss the issue from multiple angles, instead of only as a player. I found myself upset with many of these changes too, until I took a step back and put my Professional hat on instead of my Player hat. There are still things I am unhappy with ANet about (lack of communication, employee churn causing workflow breakdowns, etc) but from where I sit, I still see a company that set a new benchmark for MMOs in general. GW2 may not be the top game forever, but it definitely invalidated countless crappy MMOs just by existing. That was worth my investment in it, and until they prove that they aren’t interested in the players and fixing their issues (and I don’t mean NOW, I mean that they are still trying), then they will keep getting my support.
@Accusation: I apologize if it seems that I’m talking from a “high horse” of sorts. I don’t mean to, I just try to clearly state my opinions (both professional and personal) and the best way for me to do so is to rewrite my post 2-3 times until it’s as clear as possible. Unfortunately, doing so tends to make my posts sound less personal.
@OP:
I dislike ascended gear. That said, I agree with you that it is, theoretically, possible to create a system wherein vertical progression exists but is limited to such a rate that everyone who plays the game reasonably often does not fall behind the power curve. However, Anet has not succeeded in this goal.
The key aspect to a casual vertical progression would be the ability to continually progress based on tasks that the casual player will complete during a normal play cycle. IMO, laurels tied to dailies and monthlies were a good design decision in this direction. For the most part, everyone can complete the daily in a reasonable time period regardless of the specific activity they are engaged in for that session (and activities that cannot complete the daily should have been included to cover the rest of the game).
However, each of ANet’s other ascended acquisition methods relates to a specific gameplay type, where you cannot reasonably expect someone to complete it unless they are focused in that task specifically: FotM, Guild Missions, Crafting. IMO, this is bad design, because it creates the feeling that the player must engage in specific activities to chase gear instead of playing he content that each player believes is fun.
Ascended gear should never have been used as a carrot to get people to try specific content that ANet was attempting to promote.
Instead, ascended gear should be available via all playstyles. And don’t try to say that is currently the case; I don’t consider 40 laurels and 50 ectos per earring to be reasonable when you need 2 per spec per character.
It appears weapons are headed in his direction as well. Where crafting was optional before, now you will need to level 3 crafts to maintain max stat gear. Prior to last Tuesday, there was no expectation for a majority of players to complete this task.
With the new post today about ascended gear, I’d like to take a moment to emphasize a specific part of it:
First off, crafting is not the only way to get Ascended Weapons! Anywhere you can get an Ascended Material drop or an Ascended item drop there is also a rare chance that you will get an Ascended Weapon chest that allows you to choose which weapon type you want from within a stat combo. And lastly, there is a new collection tab for Ascended Crafting materials that includes all the new materials and gives you a little peak at the additional materials coming later this year.
Ascended is a loot drop, just like exotics are, and everyone has a 20% MF base now, so your average rarity for drops goes up. On top of that, if you aren’t a crafter, you can salvage ALL the stuff you find and turn it into more MF for better drops. This means that non-crafters are going to have a valuable place in the economy as suppliers of materials, since they will have relatively higher MF, and thus more and better mats.
EDIT: Also, the new account-based MF makes each successive alt easier to gear. They ARE trying, it’s just slow going.
@OP:
The key aspect to a casual vertical progression would be the ability to continually progress based on tasks that the casual player will complete during a normal play cycle. IMO, laurels tied to dailies and monthlies were a good design decision in this direction. For the most part, everyone can complete the daily in a reasonable time period regardless of the specific activity they are engaged in for that session (and activities that cannot complete the daily should have been included to cover the rest of the game).However, each of ANet’s other ascended acquisition methods relates to a specific gameplay type, where you cannot reasonably expect someone to complete it unless they are focused in that task specifically: FotM, Guild Missions, Crafting. IMO, this is bad design, because it creates the feeling that the player must engage in specific activities to chase gear instead of playing he content that each player believes is fun.
Ascended gear should never have been used as a carrot to get people to try specific content that ANet was attempting to promote.
Instead, ascended gear should be available via all playstyles. And don’t try to say that is currently the case; I don’t consider 40 laurels and 50 ectos per earring to be reasonable when you need 2 per spec per character.
It appears weapons are headed in his direction as well. Where crafting was optional before, now you will need to level 3 crafts to maintain max stat gear. Prior to last Tuesday, there was no expectation for a majority of players to complete this task.
This is an extremely valuable perspective, one I haven’t heard anywhere else yet. If ANet were to make Ascended item vouchers part of the monthly reward, would that be acceptable?
True, but when it comes to sPvP, it’s mostly spamming with no skill involved until you’re in an organized team or going against such a team.
I disagree here. Any player CAN theoretically make a build and throw their numbers at someone else until they fall down, but this is a very small part of the combat system. Take the classic Hundred Blades warrior for example. It takes exactly two buttons to invalidate such a build (Stunbreak+Dodge), meaning all the spamming in the world fails to a little skill. GW2, much like it’s predecessor, is based around using skills at opportune times to achieve maximum impact.
(I’d also like to preemptively kill the argument that the hundred blades warrior could have just used his combo at a better time, because that’s a skill that the player must have learned at some point, and the moment that the other player found a counter for the HB spam, the arms race of player decisions has begun, meaning player skill is now a significant factor.)
I’m still waiting for them to release a legendary I really like, I have the image of the perfect armor in my head but it’s not possible with the current items available in game. Another problem is that people like me who run one character and focus everything into it soon find themselves short of INTERESTING stuff to do. You can always do something, true; but to those who like PvP, PvE won’t suffice once they’re bored of it. For the PvErs, the current PvP/WvW system doesn’t have the appeal, so what to do when you’re 100% map completion and maxed stats with the gear you want?
It seems there is a general agreement that the content pre-living story was too slow to release. I am glad that ANet is starting to get their release schedule in order. Out of curiosity, what content do you want?
Well, the game’s out a year and we got a few time gated trinkets. That does not make a full set of gear yet. So for the people who want gear progression it’s too little too late if you ask me. It certainly was for me.
I’d much prefer a careful development team who gets it done eventually over one who screws it up permanently by rushing it. What would you have done differently that would have allowed gear progression while still satisfying people who dislike grind, other than the aforementioned clearer communication?
There is still gear grind. Just because it looks different doesn’t make it a good thing.
If you believe that there is gear grind, please define it for the purposes of the discussion. I see vertical progression, and the legendary stuff (which I admit is rather grindy, but is being corrected in the form of precursor quests and such)
Time gating is crap. It’s completely artificial and all it does is slow people down who have more time to play. A known side effect are the people who log in just to do their daily and log out again. Wonderful idea.
Time Gating is a design tool. How it is used determines its value in a given game.
Isn’t the hourly timer for an invasion Time Gating, since they could have them all going on all maps all the time if they wanted to. Are cutscenes Time Gating, since many are unskippable and slow you down? The only thing that makes it artificial is the lack of ingame reasoning for it.
Slowing down those who have more time to play is the purpose of it, as it means that those who dislike the gear treadmill can go at their own pace and not get left behind. The community as a whole has to either agree on a set progression schedule (impossible, as everyone has differing opinions on it), or the designers have to enforce one that alienates as few players as possible.
As for the daily argument…I do that myself quite often, and I feel quite comfortable with it. Sometimes I just don’t feel like playing GW2, but I do feel like getting that bite-sized portion of achievement that comes from the daily.
Farming events yes. You know the solution to grind is not introducing grind and then make it dead easy to do so. That gets old real fast.
This turns back towards the definition of grind for you. Many players enjoy only having to do a given event once. Many players like to be rewarded for doing it many times. Those who have a purpose for massive quantities of materials and gold (legendary seekers) have myriad ways to acquire it, while those who just want to get their exotics can experience the content and be well rewarded for doing so.
Oh and I leveled a toon to 80 in a couple of weeks and had enough karma and gold to instantly fully equip my character in exotic gear top to bottom, with the addition of an ascended amulet. On the same day I turned 80 I could afford this. No need to do anything, it was already done before turning 80.
It’s so kitten easy it makes it pointless. I quit because I was done. I finished my toon. I didn’t have a reason for any dungeons because none of the heavy armour options for dungeon gear is appealing to me….so there it was. I was all done. I thought of leveling an alt but couldn’t be bothered. Already had 40 gold spare and over 100k karma and my alt is level 11….I mean c’mon.
It’s so easy it’s become completely pointless.That’s not a good thing in my book.
I urge you to take a look at This article on Content Locusts .
While the article is a little inflammatory, it makes a point regarding outliers within gaming communities and the impact they have on the game industry as a whole, as well as the individual games. Your experience is very different from many others, who wish to go slower. This is why clear communication between ANet and community is essential, to try to encompass as much of the player base as possible.
I agree with your post, pretty much every part of it.
I must say, however, the gear is too easy to attain and not needed enough in my opinion. I have more than enough gold to get everything I want and need but have no incentive to do so because it would hardly boost my performance.
I find that performance in GW2 is drastically more dependent on personal skill than numbers. While leveling my elementalist, I was regularly fighting veterans 5+ levels higher than me while wearing hodgepodge gear I picked up. The game just doesn’t reward stat bonuses as heavily due to the active playstyle of the game. It’s much closer to Devil May Cry: MMO Edition than a rotation or numbers based game.
My suggestion to you is to find a legendary you REALLY like, number crunch the hell out a customized build for you to use it, and enjoy the maxed stats for life while playing your own personalized combat style.
There is a lot of hate being thrown around concerning the introduction of ascended gear and time gated crafting, so I feel the need to post here and clear something up for the general community.
Whatever demographic of gamer you may be in, you aren’t the only demographic being catered to.
Before you pull out the pitchforks on me, let me explain myself a little.
Some people like to see the numbers go up. Some people want purely aesthetic rewards. ANet stated at one point that they didn’t even want LEVELS in the game, but that alienated so many players that the game would have been doomed from the start. ANet could have thrown their hands up and said FINE, here’s your kitten levels! Enjoy the WoW clone!
But they didn’t. In the end they made what was probably the most sound design decision they could. They made levels irrelevant overall, but still relevant to the player in terms of progression.
Now here comes the other boogeyman of MMOs: Vertical Progression. I need to make this VERY clear…Vertical Progression is nothing more than the introduction of new gear levels over time. It is NOT inherently a bad thing. “Gear Grind” is a TYPE of VP, the most easily abused and the one most common in MMOs. ANet isn’t infallible (as the ascended gear being dropped on us with fractals shows), but they are showing remarkable levels of awareness in regards to what the players want out of gear, and they are taking responsible steps to make sure the majority of players get what they want.
You wanted more numbers? You got:
Ascended gear.
You wanted to remove gear grind? You got:
Time Gated Crafting, ensuring that the vast majority of players can easily keep up.
Long periods between gear releases, ensuring that even the most casual player can have the gear with minimal effort.
Farming Events Where the casual player can join in the living story to get enough materials to cover just about anything
As an experiment, I have only played 1 Invasion per day, only done my dailies as part of the invasion, and only completed the living story. I made 20gp this week in gold rewards/selling lower tier items, and got enough mats from the higher tier items to craft an entire set of exotic gear. I have no significant magic find. I don’t eat MF food. I just play for one invasion per day. Hell, I afk’d for the last half of an invasion and got 30 greens and over a gold just for being there.
TL;DR: Gamers as a community have condensed legitimate game design concepts into buzzwords that trigger kneejerk reactions.
To the people who will be responding to this, I’d like to ask you in advance to take a moment to think about exactly what is going on here, and exactly what you want to accomplish what your post. The cleaner this thread is, the more likely it is that ANet will join the conversation and actually communicate with us instead of trying to wade through pages of rage and whining.
@ANet: Communication & Transparency go hand in hand, and aren’t limited to player issues. We need to understand EXACTLY why you make a given decision, preferably before you implement it. Feedback is only useful if it’s something you can change afterwards, and the debacle when Ascended gear could was first released could have been avoided entirely if you had had transparent discussions regarding their introduction beforehand. My advice as another member of the industry: Add links on your to-do list to subforums for that feature, in a forum called “upcoming content”. Moderate the hell out of that forum to cull whining and raging, so players can hold real discussions about the features, and you can get valuable feedback.
The fractal system (while clunky and incomplete) had a great idea to it: Give a dungeon additional value by voluntarily increasing the difficulty in exchange for increased drops.
Apply that in an unrestricted fashion and you have a recipe for skill-based rewards.
A party goes into Ascalon Catacombs for the first time, doing story mode and getting rewards appropriate to the original dungeon level.
A party goes in a 2nd-4th time, doing each explorable path and getting rewards based on their CHARACTER level.
Currently, everyone just farms the dungeon for more of those rewards/tokens. Excess player skill leads to some slightly faster runs and a little more gold.
Let the players choose their own difficulty level (A sliding % scale) for appropriate rewards. (A % boost to MF)
Possible Problems:
• If someone finds an exploit that allows easy kills, then they will jack the MF slider to the max and abuse the hell out of it. (With the oft-touted metrics, this should be easy enough to detect. If a player goes from 14% to 100% difficulty boost and rarely fails, something is wrong.)
• Elitist players will refuse to play with “noobs” because it’s a waste of their time to not play at their highest MF rating. (Elitists will always be elitists, no matter where you force them to play. Let them sit on lonely thrones.)
• Only the best players will be able to afford anything, because they have all the money from their MF runs! (This one is sort of a strawman, but I brought it up because it’s seen often enough. This is exactly what diminishing returns is for. Uncap that slider, but make the numbers scale unfavorably so casuals still get enough from their runs, and “farmers” get rewarded, but not to the point of destroying the economy.)