Showing Posts For Elydian.1763:
GW2 would be horrible with raids, it has no real trinity. It would just be chaos
I agree to a certain extent. But I think it’s more that ArenaNet have yet to find a way to make encounters interesting without the trinity.
The main problem with encounters at the moment is that threat and aggro are not predictable. We have no real idea of how they work or whether they differ between encounters. Because there is no systematic way to control a boss’s aggro, it descends into chaos pretty quickly.
If there was a way to coordinate threat and have people choose to take aggro at various points within the fight, with people then flexing their roles from DPS to support to tanking during the fight, it would feel a lot more coordinated.
The biggest factor though is that encounters are just not difficult or interesting enough. By allowing all class compositions to be viable, ArenaNet have had to lower the difficulty so that nothing particular is really needed, hence all encounters can just be zerged.
The ranged advantage has been a problem in MMOs since the beginning. No-one, including ArenaNet, has yet found a good solution. Consequently, I’ve not played melee since my very first WoW character, 7 years ago.
If you can get something done from far away, why would you ever want to take on any of the difficulties, dangers or risks of going close? It’s an inherent advantage. Shadowstep-like mechanics go some distance to fixing the problem, but not completely.
all the same game play and content.
This is exactly the problem.
Playing the game for fun.
Radical concept, I know.
Ever considered that the people who feel they need rewards exist because the PvE game just isn’t fun at 80?
Radical concept, I know.
Pondering returning to WoW, despite quitting 18 months ago when Cataclysm sucked.
It’s amusing really. Before GW2 was released I had no desire to return, yet what GW2 is missing has reminded me why I liked WoW despite all its faults.
But hell, £30 plus £9 sub just to try it out? Ouch.
I miss challenging and difficult games. However, I feel there’s a difference between challenge and punishment. Challenge should motivate me to try again when I fail. Losing gear and experience is likely to just make me think I can’t be bothered to try again because the risk is too high.
I very much miss the game design of the late 80s and early 90s, when actually finishing a game was not a given, but something you earned from playing well. Your reward for playing well was seeing more of the game. I can think of countless games I never even close to completed because they were so difficult, and that’s exactly why I loved them.
There’s an obsession today with the idea that everyone should see everything, however badly they play. It’s a horrible design philosophy – these are games, not movies – and it’s akin to demanding to be crowned champion of Wimbledon merely because you pay the membership fee.
It’s pretty naive to think that the complaints and most of the issues being brought up are shared by half of the game’s subscriber base. The math just isn’t there.
I wouldn’t be so sure that it’s less though. Remember that SWTOR lost 75% of its players after 4-5 months, mostly due to issues with endgame.
The number may not be that high for GW2 yet, but I see no novel reason why it won’t go exactly the way SWTOR did.
Numbers aside, what is clear is that the playerbase is divided on happiness with endgame.
“Skinner box”.
This term is being thrown around way too easily in response to people constructively criticising the game.
When I quit WoW, I too was guilty of throwing this term around a lot.
However, from what I’ve read of people criticising GW2’s endgame, it’s not because they want a Skinner box.
(As an aside, for people who are curious as to what “Skinner box” means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber)
What people want is a sense of further progress after reaching 80. This absolutely does not mean they automatically want an artificial reward system for logging in. What they want is for there to still be fresh challenges to keep them going more-or-less until the next PvE content is released. The game in its current state does not offer this, as the current PvE endgame does not offer significant challenge to the point where it can’t be immediately beaten by even half-good players (not even really good ones).
The problem I see in these forums is that people who clearly have never raided on a long term basis at any kind of level above farm status PuGs, are accusing WoW’s raiding system of being a Skinner box loot grind, when it was absolutely nothing of the sort. The Skinner box part of WoW was in the daily quest system, amongst other things, but it barely made an appearance in the raiding game whatsoever, especially in the heroic raiding game.
The joy of raiding in WoW at a competent level – that is, cohesive raiding guilds, not PuGs – was in taking a team of friends into a raid instance and strategising and practicing strategies to take down bosses (and sometimes even trash in the early days) until the moment that everything clicked and you overcame them. This would sometimes take several evenings PER BOSS. This was a challenge, and this was enormously fun and rewarding. Raiders continued to log because of how enjoyable progress raiding was – “progress raiding” meaning raiding before a boss has been defeated for the first time. They didn’t do it for the loot. The loot was a bonus, a nice little additional reward and a way to display your achievements to others. The stat increase was merely a way Blizzard used to gate later raids from you so they maintained a sense of ordered progress through the content – that’s all it was, and is, for. There are problems with stat inflation, granted (overgearing raids, and PvP balance being the obvious ones), but nevertheless it’s just a form of gating.
People are far too quick to accuse “raiding” of being a mindless grind of repetitive, easy content until you’re geared. I have no idea which raids you guys have been doing, but that sounds like GW2 explorables to me, not WoW raids. I won’t deny that after your guild had cleared a raid, there would be a period of farming that raid to fill in the gaps in people’s gear to ready the group for the next tier, but this actually wasn’t particularly boring either, especially if you were a group of friends on voice coms. Generally the boss fights were entertaining enough to stay interesting for at least a short while after you had defeated them for the first time anyway, and it didn’t take much longer than that for the group to be geared and ready for the next challenge. Add to that the sense of enjoyment that people get from developing their character, and raiding was and is great fun.
Calling progressive raiding in WoW a Skinner box is just plain wrong, and people are clearly getting their wires crossed with some other aspect of the game, as it was certainly not without those psychological tricks, but raiding was not one of them.
GW2 is ripe for having a great raiding game, and ArenaNet don’t need to inflate gear stats, as they can gate by some other method. Raiding is and was rewarding in its own right, and the people who are bleeting on about “why can’t you just play for fun?”, well raiders did and do, it’s just that GW2 offers no challenge or experience anywhere near on par with organised raiding.
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Why can’t “fun” be a goal?
Because the PvE after 80 is not fun.
Unless you think doing the same content over and over again is fun.
Nothing, I stopped playing shortly after my entire guild of 10 or so did the same. The game is fun up to 80, then the fun stops.
I lie in hope that ArenaNet will not be arrogant about their philosophies on endgame, and at least attempt to realise that this is not a hot-join game, it’s a persistent world, and that it’s not fun to repeat the same content over and over again outside of PvP.
The thing is, this isn’t a competition between the progression-heads and the the rest. ArenaNet can satisfy both without short-changing one or the other.
The problem is not about the gear stat plateau. As a progression-head myself, I don’t need better gear as an incentive, just a reward that sets me apart for achieving difficult things. In that respect, the gear skins are fine.
The problem is that the PvE end game is not difficult enough and has no progressive element. WoW added a progressive element by using gear inflation to gate entry to raids of increasing “difficulty”. An important point people are missing here is that raiders don’t raid for gear, they raid because the raids are incredibly challenging and interesting, and incredibly satisfying to defeat. The rewards of gear are merely a cherry on top, and more importantly, a badge to wear so people can see that you have beaten the raids. The fact that Blizzard tied in the stats on the gear as a gate mechanism for further raids is actually quite a trivial point.
ArenaNet need to gate progression in a more well defined way. Rather than having 4 or 5 dungeons with random sets, they should have 5 dungeons of increasing difficulty that gate each other. That way, skilled players can distinguish themselves by the particular skins they have earned.
Besides everything, the most important thing that ArenaNet have got wrong with PvE end game is that explorables are nowhere near hard enough or interesting enough in comparison to raids, so rather than rewarding people for the skill of defeating rock-hard encounters, they’re rewarding people for repeatedly clearing easy ones. So instead of people feeling proud of their accomplishments and earning rewards for them, they’re mindlessly grinding and feeling no pride after boring themselves to death to get gear skins which symbolise nothing.
What a lot of developers are also missing is that it’s not all about everyone being the guy with all the stuff. The fact that only a few may earn the most prestigious rewards is exactly what makes an MMO interesting in that respect. When I first leveled to 60 in vanilla WoW, I was a casual nub, and seeing the only guy on the server with Quel-Serrar was fascinating to me, and something I thoroughly enjoyed, even though I didn’t have it myself. It symbolised something to strive for.
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You arent supposed to farm. Anything you need is easy to craft or cheap on the TP.
Those things on the TP, where do you think they come from?
ICC was actually pretty good, but that buff was an absurd idea.
TBC was awesome and I’d resub to that. Cata is awful. Doubt I’ll bother with MoP. People keep talking about going back to WoW because the raids have meaning and GW2 dungeons don’t, but WoW raids have no meaning as long as LFR is in the game.
The phrase “go back to WoW” has no meaning nowadays, because WoW nowadays is pretty much just Blizzard seeing just how little they can do and still get subscription money from the poor, exploited fanboys.
By the way, Anet has publically stated that since they have no subscription model, they understand that people will get bored and take breaks. They almost encourage it. They also have acknowledged that while they will continue to provide support and content updates, they are not required to keep you entertained 100% of the time for months on end like subscription based games.
You have a source for this?
I’ve been following this game for years and never once witnessed them say anything close to that.
The game will persist, with or without you; plenty long enough for me to get my $55 worth. In fact, it already has. I could quit playing today and be happy, as it was entertainment money well spent.
Are you somehow paying a subscription for this game?
No, but as a persistent world MMO, I expect it to persist. That is, I expect the world to continue to matter when I’m logged off. With no long term playability it ceases to matter. If I wanted to play a game like that I would have played a cooperative game.
The MMO genre symbolises more than that, subscription or not. Lifting the burden of a subscription is not an excuse to make a shallow game. Many people would rather pay ArenaNet a subscription if it meant that the game could add a deeper experience with continuing progression.
The understanding, and shall we say, unspoken agreement between ArenaNet and the players, was that Guild Wars 2 would cast off the shackles of the original Guild Wars and be a fully persistent world MMO, where a cash shop would be used to replace the income of a subscription, enabling them to create a lastable experience.
There’s a difference between constructive criticism and whining that the game doesn’t fit your pre-conceived expectations. 90% of people are just complaining for the sake of complaining. Very few can give legitimate reasons as to why they are complaining, and even fewer can debate their position on the game without spouting off the same circular logic every post.
I’ve been reading these forums a lot over the last few days and a lot of the criticisms are not like that at all; they’re well written and do have very good reason. There are many similar threads on similar subjects, but I feel that’s a good thing. There are grave problems with endgame and it needs to be visible to ArenaNet that a lot of people are not happy about it.
The issue isn’t about criticism, it is about demanding this game should be a clone of another game instead of its own design.
Some of us like different games to be different. Is GW2 perfect? Nope. Does that mean it should contain the same formula for advancement (gear grind, farming and mindless raids)? No.
The problem is that it has no formula for advancement at all.
It does, but text is cheap as hell in terms of database storage space.
I trust they will improve this. Sooner rather than later…
I really hope they plan on doing it sooner, as this is an issue that honestly makes me want to leave and play another game. Breaking my cycle of action every hour, is just… no.
You’re far from alone on that one. I feel the same, and have read plenty of comments stating the same.
Of all the changes that have been made to all the MMOs I’ve ever played, it’s this one alone that has actually made me reconsider playing at all.
You don’t design a game around grinding, then make grinding against the rules.
“In Spanish, it is “minino” (the more harmless form of the word ‘kitten’ in Spanish)”
There’s a harmful word for kitten in Spanish?
I agree with Knote. However, if they’re going to do that they need to fix pets attacking on the move, else say goodbye to a bunch of DPS.
Your friend is pretty correct about how GW2 currently stands. There are some interesting mechanics here and there, but the ArenaNet team are obviously still dealing with a new combat system. I’m pretty sure they’ll catch up with WoW in this respect eventually.
I’m still yet to encounter anything in PvE that has challenged and entertained me quite as much as raids did in WoW.
I’m confident it’ll get there though.
I found this Reddit post helpful:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/zrd0c/complete_level_80_exotic_armor_list_find_the/
I covered this. People find lots of things in various MMOG’s fun; it’s not necessary that Anet provide for or allow everything that any player finds to be fun.
Of course. The problem though, is that ArenaNet were clearly aiming for mass market with GW2, which means it can’t be niche. It has to try and please a lot of people, not just the players from GW1. They have to be able to embrace people transferring from WoW.
However, I understand where you’re coming from. GW2 does things differently. It takes the things people believe to be necessary for an MMO to succeed, and throws them out or replaces them with systems that are better. It did this with many things. The problem though, was that they assumed that a game changing at endgame was necessarily a bad thing. It’s not, in fact, it has to change, because leveling is about progression for a lot of people, and when the leveling stops, that feeling of progression has to remain else there’s a feeling that the game has ended. Only PvP games can survive this. GW2 hoped and promised to provide a good core PvE game as well as its PvP.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for the gear grind, and I’m not for the gear treadmill in the slightest. As a player, all I want, and all I think you’ll find most PvEers want, is a good flow of challenging PvE encounters, with a sense of increasing difficulty, and a badge to wear when we’ve beaten the hardest encounters. That’s all we want.
GW2 very nearly provides this, and can potentially completely satisfy this mindset. The problem isn’t even a gear progression problem, it’s the sense that we’re being forced to over-do the content to gain any badge at all. In short it’s far too grindy. The other problem is that the monetary rewards are being diminished to a point where we can’t even break even anymore when taking travel and repairs into account.
GW2 has a reward system, but the game is not rewards-centric.
Like I said above, the game is already frustratingly close to giving enough reward as it is. It doesn’t need to be reward-centric.
Although it might be hard for you to imagine, not everyone plays MMOGs primarily for the systematic reward progression.
I’m well aware of this, however, many do, and you can’t just say that this isn’t the game for them, as that’s a drastic oversimplification of the big picture. GW2 right now is doing MMO better than any MMO has done before it. People can’t simply “choose WoW” anymore, because so many things about GW2 make WoW seem rather stale. The MMO genre is still young, and hence the market is not yet at that ideal stage where there’s a separate MMO for everyone, which is arguably exactly why theme park MMOs exist, to try and cope with a sparse market. ArenaNet know this, and are doing their best to do what WoW has done. That is, please MMO fans, rather than pleasing MMO fans that don’t care for progression, or MMO fans that only care for progression. This game truly has the potential to please both, so why stop short?
Yes, and they thought all non-musical movies would fail, because nobody would go to see them.
That’s not the same thing. You’re implying that the only reason people want progression is because that’s what they’re used to. That’s not true. It’s because it’s what they like, because, well, it’s an aspect of human nature to be satisfied by progress. Why do you think so many genre games are starting to record all sorts of stats on players? Look at Battlefield 3. People enjoy being able to amass a portfolio of achievement. It’s human nature.
What is not available, however, is the ability to invest endless amounts of time in your character to make them significantly more powerful than the characters of players who don’t play the way you do, or for the reasons you do.
Like I said, we’re not looking for statistical advantage. I applauded ArenaNet’s philosophy on this. There was nothing more frustrating in WoW than taking a break and “falling behind”.
No elitist raids, no uberguild exclusionary in-game mechanics. They celebrate the explorers, the soloers, the jumpers…….tyranny of in-game jerks who play all day long every day.
Who said wanting a challenge wasn’t also a casual play style? In addition to this, if it can celebrate all these niche demographics, why can’t it also celebrate the raiders? You’re immensely prejudiced towards raiders. We’re not all jerks who play all day long. Every raiding guild I’ve ever been a part of has been a great group of friendly people, who all, believe it or not, have full-time jobs and raid because they love defeating challenges by designing and executing strategies with a good group of players who love doing the same.
and has put a big red flag up to reward-farmers that no, this is not that kind of game, and you will not turn it into one.
And who’s being exclusionary now?
The problem with what you’re saying is that rewards play a part in people’s enjoyment of the game. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
Calling a reward system a ‘Skinner Box’ goes too far. I’m well aware of some MMO developers resorting to cheap Skinner Box techniques to trick people into continuing to play (I’m looking at you, Blizzard). But including a reward system in the game, rewards with which you can purchase items within the game, adds to its depth.
Take that away and all you end up with is a hot join game with a really elaborate lobby, where there’s nothing to do but chat and play mini games. Persistent world MMOs need to be more than this. They need to be an ecosystem. Guild Wars 1 was not an MMO, it was a hot join game with an elaborate lobby. MMOs need to present some kind of progression at level cap, else there remains nothing to do except PvP – cue mass exodus of PvEers and Guild Wars 2 gets labelled ‘another game that failed to beat WoW’.
As bad as WoW has become, Blizzard understood, subscription or not, that in order to hold on to players, you need to give them a consistent challenge and feeling of progression. They did this with increasing raid tiers and a gear treadmill. There are all sorts of issues with gear treadmills that I won’t go into, but the trouble with Guild Wars 2 is that it removed the gear treadmill without replacing it with something else for PvEers to get their teeth into. Tiered raids without a gear treadmill would have been fine.
‘Fun’ is a non-word, as it’s far too subjective to ever be considered an objective value in its own right. Plenty of people find being challenged and rewarded, and progressing incredibly fun. You don’t, evidently, but you can’t just encourage those sorts of people to just leave the game, else I think you’ll find the game will fail, just like SWTOR did before, for the same basic reason: there was nothing for PvEers to do at cap after a couple of months.
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The Guild Wars 2 Twitter feed is usually the best place to find this out.
I feel exactly the same way as you. It’s astonishing really, because a week ago I had no real issues with the game at all. I really don’t want my adventures in North Kore…sorry…Tyria to come to an end so soon, but I have no motivation to play anymore since the patch – it just seems futile.
ArenaNet seem to have set a new precedent in what is termed an exploit. It’s getting far out of hand. Some things are just tuning and design issues. Calling everything an exploit is just shifting the blame from developer to player unnecessarily, and often incorrectly.
Personally though; I say set the cycle to 24 Hours. In WoW usually just before I log out for the night (or if me and my girl were bored since we had to suffer through long distance at times) I/we would go to my favourite city and just wonder about and enjoy the city at night for about 15-30 minutes.
A 24 Hour cycle adds a major and relaxing immersion factor that really turns a game world from just another virtual space, to a home away from home.
I totally agree with this. Unfortunately, most people don’t. I tested the water by suggesting this before, and got shot down by the majority, who complained they’d never see the day.
And on top of that, the ways to get that gear are more of a grind than raiding twice a week ever was.
This is sadly true. I’m still baffled as to why ArenaNet decided against raids. Raids don’t automatically mean a gear treadmill. They’re just highly challenging PvE content with good rewards. That’s it, really. I don’t understand why that’s supposedly bad.
Am I the only one that wants The Dreamer because the idea of a ranger piercing people to death with rainbows is hilarious?
All OCDers love achievements, boxes to tick, bars to fill, and things to complete. As one myself, it is both the love and bane of my MMO play habits.
However, one thing I’ve hated since their inception are daily quests and achievements.
The problem with daily achievements are that they’re not compatible with life. In general, most people do things on a weekly cycle. They go to work for a few days, and then they get to spend maybe a couple of days doing what they feel like doing. Most people with a fairly normal life like to schedule their pastimes on a weekly basis because of this. You don’t hear of many people waterskiing every day, for example. That’s because they just don’t have the time to do it every day. However, to make up for it, they may decide to waterski all Saturday long to get their fix.
The problem with dailies is that they make people feel they have to log on every day to get the most from the game, when most people just don’t have time. A better system would be to change the daily achievement system to a weekly achievement system consisting of 7 times the amount of things to get done. That way, people who can, and want to log in daily can get things done as they usually do. People who only have time one to two days a week can log in and get the same achievements done during a time more fitting to their lives.
Blizzard realised this when they changed their daily heroics to 7 times weekly heroics. It just makes more sense for human beings.
My solution – just not to even try. I do like the idea of legendaries being legendary. But actively hindering farming, which is the only way to get them strike me as a dumb move.
Yup, same for me. It would just be horribly frustrating. It’s completely ruining my motivation to even bother.
“I think what they not want you to do is getting these things done within 2 days of your so called ‘grind’. Think about it!”
Putting invisible internal cooldowns on loot is a horrible way to implement these kinds of limits. WoW did it with dailies and that was also a horrible way of implementing the same thing. What it essentially does is make players feel pressured to log in on a daily basis, when real life makes this incredibly difficult to do. Allowing players to grind on their own schedule alleviates this.
The latest patch notes have left a lot of people further confused about how you want us to play the game. The vast majority of endgame desirables, as well as much of endgame crafting requires what most people would describe as a large amount of grind.
Some people are fine with grind, some are not. I won’t express an opinion either way. What I’m concerned by is the seemingly confused and conflicted philosophy that you appear to have on it. You set up endgame as a grind, yet you continue to expand upon measures to stop grinding. Right now, as a player, I’m not really sure what to do anymore, as all the things I’d like to work towards in the game require grind, yet you seem insistent upon stopping me doing so.
I understand that the change to dungeons is to encourage people to play a larger variety. I also understand that the mob-type loot-lock is to discourage botters. However, these measures infringe upon our gameplay too much, and are counter to what the endgame requires.
Can you help me and other players understand how you want us to play the game? Because right now, I’m not sure.