Showing Highly Rated Posts By Edge.4180:

Solo Instancing?

in Tower of Nightmares

Posted by: Edge.4180

Edge.4180

I don’t mind if content can be soloed. Likewise, I don’t mind if content can be done in a group. What I do mind is when I lose the option to do either one.

Your game was designed around the concept of dynamically scaling content based on the number of players present. Whether it’s a general open-world event or a personal storyline mission, the ability to support a full party or a party of one has always been there. And so, I’m confused as to why you would ever choose to break groups of friends apart when they’re trying to play this game together. First in Southsun, then Dragonbash, and now again in this update. I really can’t imagine a greater offense for an MMO.

I’m not suggesting the Last Stand at Southsun, or Dragonbash, or the solo instance in this event were difficult. They were not. What I am saying is that nothing kills an evening a gaming like logging into an MMO to play this event with a friend, and then suddenly the game won’t allow us to play together because someone out there decided we should really be enjoying this content alone.

To make this clear: Ability to enjoy content solo = good. Ability to enjoy content in a group = good. Losing the ability to do either = not good. You have the ability to dynamically scale difficulty based on the number of players present and thus support anything from solo play to full groups and all the iterations in between, so can you please make use of it going forward? Stop introducing events that can only be done solo, or only be done in a group.

Let us sell Rep buttons

in Suggestions

Posted by: Edge.4180

Edge.4180

yes. not worth as much (as you got some value from it in the form of a vote), but letting unredeemed tokens be worth something while voting wasn’t was not a smart move.

Actually, if anything I think they should be worth more to encourage people to get out and vote next time instead of just letting them rot in their inventories. Get involved or lose out.

Why won't you help me give you more money? (Storage)

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Edge.4180

Edge.4180

You added new clothes to the gem store. That’s great! And I would love to buy them.. but I am out of room.

I would spend much more money in the gem shop on almost every town-clothing cosmetic item you offered IF (and only if) you created a town-clothing specific, self-expanding storage location for it on my character.

Here’s the thing.. town clothing in my normal inventory is taking up valuable adventuring space where more important itemst can go. Thus, it’s not going to happen.

Town clothing in my bank is useless to me.. I want to be able to switch to it exactly when I want it, not after I make a trip to the bank for it and back again. So, not going to do this either.

On top of this, my bank slots are maxed and (for whatever reason) you won’t allow me to buy any additional ones. So you’re not getting any more money from me in the storage area.

But, if you put a specific storage area on my character that only accepts town clothing items and has infinite capacity, and I will fill it with as many town clothing accessories as you toss up on the store. As it is right now, every time I look at a piece of town clothing on your store the #1 reason I pass on purchasing it is because I know I just don’t have space to store it and can’t justify allocating space to something I’ll only use occasionally. Why are you allowing that to even be a factor influencing my decision?

Help me give you more money, because you’re not going to get it from me any other way. Storage space and town clothing.. that’s the only two areas of the game I have any interest in spending money on, and one of those I’ve maxed out and the other you’re not providing me the space for.

Your reach is exceeding your grasp..

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Edge.4180

Edge.4180

..but in all the wrong ways.

I appreciate what you, the developers, are trying to do with your holiday/weekend/special events. And I would love to also appreciate the hard work you’re putting into them. But the simple fact is you’re pouring all your effort into a game that seems to be incapable of supporting your designs. And the scary part is it seems to get worse with each attempt, as you push for something more grand than the last which is ultimately only grander in its scope of failure. In the end it is actually hurting the public perception of your product.

There are so many things wrong with how you choose to handle these types of events, I really don’t even know where to begin. And I refuse to summarize things in a phrase where 50% of the comment is the word “sucks”, as so many seem ready to do, because your ideas are awesome and I want to applaud them. But this game’s engine is literally thwarting your best intentions at every single turn.

Here are just some examples:

- Fighting invisible monsters amongst invisible players is exactly the opposite of fun. And I know you’ve admitted there is a problem with the way your game culls and renders content, and that you’re working on it, but it makes me nervous when I see members of your development team claim that it’s only a major problem in WvW but not so much in PvE. What’s even more frustrating is that you’re aware the problem exists, but continue to release content that will never function correctly as long as the problem is around. It’s like you’re designers are creating content for a game that has already licked the issue, when in reality you haven’t. Why allow this?

- You really should make more use of private instances. The Lost Shores phase 1 events are a good example of this. Some of your NPCs have several pages of dialogue that most players will never be able to absorb the lore of because other players can always put that NPC into a state where he is no longer having that conversation. When there are 30+ players surrounding an NPC waiting to activate him, there is always going to be someone who is going to do so immediately the moment that opportunity arises. It also wrecks believability when an NPC challenges you to a fight, is then smacked down by 30+ players at once, and then seems confused as to how you could have possibly won. Your unwillingness to stick these NPCs in private instances is incompatible with your desire to feed players lore. And for players like me who actually enjoy the lore, it’s really frustrating.

- Your special events keep breaking after being activated repeatedly. And I wish this was something that I had confidence that you could fix, but the truth is even your normal events have been suffering from this same problem since launch. If you haven’t been able to fix those, you’re not likely to fix these anytime soon. This, to me, seems like another reason to stick these special event NPCs in private instances. At least then the players have the option of resetting the instance if something in the scripting jams.

- You spend all this time writing and recording minute-plus nifty dialogue exchanges between special event NPCs, and the audio completely cancels whenever a player moves up to one of these NPC and hits the “F” (interact) key. How are things like this not tested first? How much effort would it take for someone to test that versus the amount of effort and time it took to write and record those conversations? Someone is dropping the ball in a big way here.

This isn’t even touching on the client-server communication delays that seem to happen in large fights, the way the audio for the entire game seems to cut out for minutes upon arriving at something like a busy karka invasion event, the fact that players can participate in one of these invasions for 15+ minutes and not actually get credit for any of the kills because they apparently didn’t do enough damage compared to the output of the zerg.. I just don’t understand what your goals are here. If you’re trying to deliver exciting, dynamic, epic content to the players.. it’s just not working.

I honestly believe few people are going to come away from these events feeling better about your game. If anything, the impressions they’re leaving players with are likely negative. And over time you’re attempts are becoming worse instead of better. Your Hunger Games event, for example, during beta was a lot of fun and worked pretty well. Your Halloween event.. it had a lot of problems (players who remember it fondly are likely thinking of parts that were not actually events.. like the clock tower jumping puzzle, the PvP matches, the Mad King dungeon runs. The actual dynamic events that took place in the world, though.. riddled with bugs). And now we’re at the Lost Shore event and if you take away the Fractal dungeon, I’m pretty sure most people would call this update a complete flop.

(cont)