Guild Wars 2

how is this even a discussion -.-
if anet needs people to test and dont have enough to do so by their own will, they should do like every other company when needing people to do stuff they dont want to and PAY people for their work time…

and the fallacy of “then they will release an untested product” is even more laugheble. you pay them for their product so it better be tested and ready when it is released because that is what you paid them for -.-

it is really that simple…

bit of a necro i think but:
i think properly the biggest reason pvp doesnt have more success in gw2 is this:

The biggest and main problem of pvp.

For pvp to be truly good and enjoyable, it needs to be based on player skill.
Meaning that the better player will always win.
Now how is this possible? By being predictable.

With predictable I mean that the player knows what to expect.
When meeting class A, the player knows that when playing Class B he needs to react in a certain manner, and use skills in a certain way.

Now this is normally done by the predictability class setup.
Each class plays in a specific way and got a specific skill playstyle.
Meaning you will never see an Assassin that do high long ranged dps, or one that is super tanky.
You know that when you meet an assassin it will mean a few things:
Lets take Aion as an example: if you meet an assassin you know that it will mean it’s initial burst will most likely start out with stuns, or the stun will be a follow up at your first gap creator, meaning you need to have an anti stun and a gap creator ready for that.
It means big spike in the dps for the first 30 seconds, so you need to simply kite/cc/def for that timespan.
You know it got 1 high disengage so you need to close gap when it gets reasonably low.
Etc. etc. etc.

In short you know what it will do very precisely, there is very little moment of something you couldn’t have predicted and trained against. And since you know exactly what is coming BEFORE it hits you, you can prepare the strategy and the style of combat that you need to do, you can also train these effectively.

If you look at every high success pvp game then they all have the same thing in comment, every encounter is very predictable in what it needs to do to win. It knows this before the encounter even starts.
Equally you always got the tools to do what is needed if you got the RL skills to play correctly.
It comes down to who plays their class/character best, not who had the best build, who were just lucky or who got the jump on the unknowing opponent.

Now when all that is explained here comes the problem in pvp in GW2, it is almost 100% unpredictable.
When you meet an enemy in GW2 you cannot know what builds they are running, how their playstyle will be, or how to counter it. These things you can’t figure out before the engagement is well on its way and by then the entire point of “predictability” is gone.
(you won’t notice weapon sets and build etc. before you are already attacked).

Equally, every class can play as any role, so meeting a specific class got no counter playstyle.
This means you can’t effectively train to play against certain classes.
You will need to train your build against every class in every role, which makes it impossible to truly set up strategies for encounters, and it becomes much more of a “figure it out on the fly”.
On top of that you also have hard build counters, which means even if you did your homework perfectly if you meet the wrong build you just can’t ever win (equal skilled players).

All this makes the encounters very chaotic and it lacks the entire base of Good pvp play.
That you can predict that meeting a certain class (which is very easy to see/acknowledge/notice which opponent am I fighting),
means fighting a certain role (which means you instantly know which strategy and playstyle to fight with, and you can effectively train to an extremely high skilled RL skill lvl to make it pure RL skill focused more then anything else),

ofcouse there is other mechanics in the pvp of GW2 which is not optimal, but those are more of a “design discussion for or against” then you can say it is elementary for ALL good pvp foundation.
Of other area’s I think is hurtfull for the pvp scene is “downed mechanics” (which is promoting specific builds and playstyle over others, and is rewarding worse RL skilled players that are better at communication over players that are better RL skilled but doesn’t communicate; which is hurting everyone and overly rewarding premade groups with ts/etc),
spvp’s “extra help mechanics” (stuff like trebuchet, lightning cannon, etc. that takes away actual combat RL skill needed to win).
Lack of clear roles on each class, which includes clear knowledge of stats points distribution and easily overview of abilities choosen (as mentioned).
Pvp map setup and camera view (lots of the spvp maps are made badly depending on how the camera works in this game, meaning it becomes a “clusterF***” very easily especially in closed inviroments).
They way capture points are caught and hold (it promotes specific playstyle and builds over others. Also promote very stale games with everyone in tanky builds.)

A suggestion for a solution:

“premade roles with premade builds for pvp”.
Meaning when signing up for pvp you choose your role and a premade build for that role will be used.
An interface marker will be added which instead of just showing class of an enemy it will show the Role+class of it.
In this way you could +- fix the problem (and you could purposefully create builds which was equally powerfull)
:)

As a last note the balance between, melee vs ranged, dps vs tank is utterly and completely broken in this game, some builds just straight out CRUSHES other playstyle 100% of the time. Devs need to recheck their excel numbers because they are utterly and completely off when it comes to the balance between roles playstyle.

since you can buy gold with rl money, and buy gems with gold.
it makes no sense that you can’t buy mini’s that was bought with gems, which could be bought with gold -.-

commen logic….

btw: it is not exclusive if every one can buy it with gems which can be bought with gold -.-
if it is buyerble with gems, you might as well let it sell for gold, since some one already shelled out the gems, and you are now * them with making it bound..

Ticky.5831:

The Char and especially the Asurans are the best animations I’ve seen in any MMO.

things that isn’t moving as a human would be MUCH easier to animate then something that needs to move in a way we are extremely familier with and which we supconciously know when something is off in its movement pattern

i believe this is the reason why so many of you like those more ^^

Taiyoroku.1028:

Have you played blade and souls or black desert? thats actually good mmo animation…

B&S yes. big fan of it. played chi and ru and just waiting for the eu release (where i am properly gonna use a ton of time: love a lot of their combat mechanics, ignoring the slowdown in combat
(grrr wtf does devs do that we do NOT need snail speed to be able to control our combat (which is easily proofed in aion), come on please stop it already :/ …),
it got some amazing mechanics for pvp and i am so much looking forward to the Esport scene of it ).
beautifull animations as well, but still thinks character/body wise gw2 is better by quite a large margin B&S body animations have gone the more traditional route of “attacks” instead of “body manipulation” (to explain it in short terms)
:)

black desert, no but seen quite a bit of it and don’t really like it, animations are Very standard mmo’ish, i didn’t see anything that impressed me (think the game in general is mega hyped and doesnt deserve it).

Dawdler.8521:

Are you talking about human animations? Because they are the worst in the game, lol.

Asurans easily beat them all, the attention to detail on ear movement, momentum and small “jumps” is incredible. Poledancing empower ftw.

Then the Charr, which really feel like they put power into everything they do, from hammering to staff magic (if you think Norn/Humans use their entire body tossing a fireball, watch Charr literally raise on their toes lol).

After that Norn, then a tie for last place between Sylvari and Human.

while i most admit i havent gone through all characters, all classes (far from).
i simply took from what i have seen by playing the chars now stated in the post.

you need to be carefull that you don’t “overdo it” (some games does that, and it looks unrealistic and “plastic” when that happens), as an example the asura war-greatsword easily gets into the area of “overdone” (but again i hate that little thing :P )

however what i am focusing on is how their animation of the bodies of the characters are extremely well made in their physical movement of how you would expect a person to move in the given situation ^^

i tried to give two example’s in the bottom
if it is still unclear i can try to see if i can explain it better ^^

So i wanted to give the devs props for their animations in the game.

Now GW2 have the best animations I have seen in any game. Let me explain why I say this.

When you look at most games when using abilities/skills the model of the character itself is rarely very well animated to follow the skill used.
In GW2 the animation quality of the character when using a skill is generally pretty amazing.
1:
The characters animation when you use a skill are made in a way that it looks like it got weight to it, and that the physical rules of movement is in place. By that I mean, the speed of movement of each limb in relation to another; your lower arm will have a higher speed then the upper arm, arms will move with the shoulders and move faster then legs, but slower then the upper body etc.
The Casting time fills the time with the animation so there isn’t much/if any wasted time where there which is not a visual representation that explains why the skill haven’t gone of yet. Which gives a good amount of realism in the feel of the skill.
(all this is extremely rare in games because it means that the animators need to have a high insight in human movement pattern, something most normal people don’t have (most people, including me, I know that got a good insight on this is martial artist)).
However, this aspect is extremely important because even though you don’t know why you can see the difference and you know something is correct/of when it is (for most people).
2:
Animation effect: the effects are generally beautifully made. They have a good visual representation and they sync up extremely nicely with the characters animation of movement. there is a reasonable impact feel too it’s visual look and the sounds in general which helps amplify this. However the feel of impact on the visuals of the skills themselves, not the character model, is the weakest part of the animation and could be slightly improvet.
3:
The effects doesn’t make a “clutter”: it is reasonably easy to see what is going on, even when 5 people stack their ability effects. Which is something that is extremely hard to do, and will often impact the visual effect of the skills themselves (which it also somewhat does here, but it is very well done compared to other games).
Making the skills visual effect look flashy and cool, while NOT cluttering the screen when 5 people are stacking effects, is extremely challenging

These are the reason I think GW2 have the best Animation quality and animation graphics I have seen in a game yet

If there should be any improvement it would be on the “feel of impact”. There could be more of an “impact” feel on skills; like small knockback, or animation representation that shows your attacks are hitting hard. Physics which knocks corpses around on killing blows. Model animation that shows impact (as in enemies movement getting impacted, like if you pushed some ones shoulder while he was running, not hard enough to make him change course but hard enough for his shoulder to give after.) etc. stuff like that
But this is also something we almost never see in games (and the few I can recall it is badly made)

Well I wanted to post this because It have been on my mind the last couple of days and even though the devs responsible for this aspect properly already know it, I think it is important to reinforce their knowledge and let them know they are, if not the best, amongst the very best at their jobs ^^

Thanks to the animators and visual artist of GW2 you done an amazing job (sorry if others were involved in this aspect that isn’t within those two categories, of couse you are also amazing)

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Two fast example’s since feedback is sometimes easier to get with some example’s:
Elementalist casting meteor storm:
His entire body is moving, you can see the speed difference on leg movement to body movement, you can see due to the acceleration in the arms movement speed that he is tensing his muscles because it takes great effort and concentration to pull/created meteors from the sky.
It gives a clear indicator that he is doing the effort.
The visual effects of it is quite clear without clustering up the screen. The sound on impacts is decent letting you hear each “thump” clearly.

Now what could have been even better is if there would be small crater where the meteor landed, and an effect of dirt being thrown up and around (properly killing performance is the reason it isn’t there hehe). When enemies get hit by it, their body is impacted and “pushed” animation wise, or hands covering their face for 1sec, or if hit directly their legs and body bend down a bit as if hit by something heavy.
But as it is, it’s already extremely well made.

Lava font: the fast movement of the arm with albow first and then stretching it so the underarm move at a much faster speed. Giving a feel of “power” behind the movement.
Shoulders that follows the movement with the upper body:
It is extremely nicely animated.

edit:
playing Sylvari elementalist primarily (charr war, human nec, human mes)

i think people are confusing the word “challenge” with the word “handicapped”.
lots of people love challenge in their rl, no one cuts of their leg because of it -.-

i think pvp would be 10 times more fun, if it wasn’t so easy to abuse and if exploitors where removed.
for the openworld stuff, it is the area that determines it, but it would be cool with an option to turn on “hardmode” which would essentially nerf your stats all over (downlvl you much lower then the area’s lvl) and then give you an equal bonus to all rewards

Palador.2170:

Erebus.7568:

casual is a term for people that don’t want to put in the effort, but just wanna have fun without anything that makes them put effort into it which isnt immidiately entertaining or rewarding.
often these are grouped with exploiters, cheaters, hackers, or people that just don’t care enough for it.

hardcore is a term for people that put in the effort.
this would be meta gaming, insane amount of hours to specificly train aspects of the game. doing spreadsheets, figuring out the mathematical formula’s for ingame stuff. using the time to optimize strategise statistically (again most of that is done in a spreadsheet). etc.
hardcore players actually use very High amount of their free time(hours for gaming) planning their playsession instead of actually playing the game itself.

Excuse me?

In this game and others, I’ve known both hardcore and casual players. Of the two, in every game it has ALWAYS been the “hardcore” players that are more likely and willing to hack, cheat, and exploit.

Why? It’s simple, really. Hardcore players are more likely to be driven by rewards and obtaining them is their main goal. Casuals are more likely to be enjoying the game itself, not the rewards.

Look at dungeons. A casual may run one a few times, then move on when it gets dull. But a hardcore will find the one that’s the best for rewards, and grind on it. Hone their skill until they’ve got it down pat and there’s no real challenge left, to make sure they don’t waste time by failing a run. They run it until it becomes boring, a chore. Then someone says “Hey, jump up here and run along this wall, and you’ll glitch through and skip some of the fights!”, and that sounds good to them. They’re tired of that fight, so they do the glitch and skip it. It’s just how people work.

Hardcore do not generally NEED shortcuts or easy modes to complete something, because they have done the vast research to know EXACTLY how to beat a design as it was intended, and they put in the effort to TRAIN themselves to do so.
Using exploits, hacks etc. dulls your abilities and makes you worse. Something you generally do not see hardcore players want.

There is a single exception: if the game design FORCES exploiting to compete, due to casuals wanting to be able to compete as well and devs being stupid, then you will see some hardcore players follow suit.
But that is basic psychology; you could take the most morally correct person in the world, put him with the wrong people, in the wrong situation and his morale will be compromised to keep existing in that environment.
(you often see this with Botting; when botters are allowed to run amok, you can either “buy gold”, start to bot yourself, or be left behind in the dust:: again this is an issue due to casuals f’ing it up and devs not doing their jobs: very sad but true).

The so called “hardcore players” that uses hacks, exploits, cheats etc. in general are not hardcore players.
They are usually casuals that doesn’t want to put in the effort to be hardcore, but they want to be seen as one, so they Cheat. (typical it’s a player mentality of “I don’t care about gaming integrity. I just want to feel cool without putting in the effort to learn the game, and train enough in the game, to reach that point myself”).

Casuals just want to enjoy the game and they do not care what it will take to do so.
If they do not enjoy it without putting the effort into it, they will leave or cheat.
Harcore on the other hand will continue to try and find the best way to overcome the issue, if they can’t they will most likely leave (due to it not being a design they can accept, and cheating is not their tasted).

Dungeons are a perfect example of the so called hardcore players, which are actually casuals, going “we don’t want to have to LEARN how to get good, so instead we cheat, break mechanics and exploit to complete the content”.
This is the easy mode solution, the VAST majority of the exploiters would NEVER EVER put in the effort to actually figure any of this out, they simply just get the info from some one that got it from some one, etc etc etkittenil you hit the FEW hardcore players that after ages of optimizing realised that “hey this is a bug” reported it and shared it with their friends.

Sadly as time goes by and devs give the opinion of “we don’t care if you bug abuse” the hardcore players which doesn’t care if they need to do it as intended (because that is what they are using their time optimizing and learning to do), will be FORCED to either do the easy mode exploiting, or get an insanely limited reward for their time.

Which leads to the “exception” I mentioned in the start (when you FORCE them to either quit or do it, some hardcore players will do it, but most will leave. Since cheating is not in the hardcore players natural playstyle: else he wouldn’t have come to a point where he puts enough effort into gaming to be called a hardcore gamer).

Most people don’t realise how Few hardcore players there actually are.
Check around in your guild/friends, ask how many is using hours on spreadsheets for optimizing stats output. Trying to figure out the mathematical calculations of dps depending on which mobs where. Setting up scheduled plans for reward/hour on days, for specific goals. Training the same rotations upwards of 1.000.000 times to truly master it (science says it takes roughly 1.000.000 repetitions to truly master a psychical movement (within elite sports, I assume I can transfer that knowledge to motor movement and coordination in games)). Using vast amount of time studying the mechanics and workings of the game to see if there would be better ways to optimize it. Etc etc.

Stuff like that. I bet you it is VERY few that actually continually use many hours on these things.

I am not a hardcore player in gw2.
I never was; it just never cought my interest enough to invest the extra effort because of several core design mechanics which i couldnt accept (downing mechanics, slowdown in combat, lack of balanced roles/trinity setup, and later on the “exploit or fall behind” attitude, which generally turns my interest down for games.).
But for a good time when the game released I did play it a lot and I did use a good amount of time to understand it (where amongst the handfull of first to complete all dungeons etc. before people found the exploits etc.).
but i never but the effort into it to the extent that I would call myself a hardcore player of gw2.

Being a hardcore player in a game takes A LOT more then just enjoying the game, knowing the basic mechanics, being good at it and/or being a fanboy of the game.

Which is what most casuals don’t understand and one more reason they are not hardcore gamers.

btw:
all the talk about casuals, and hardcore is always subjective since there isnt a clear difinition of it.
the explanation i gave you is the attitude the hardcore players i have run with, and myself included when i do hardcore gaming, has.
ofcouse different players sets a lower bar or requirement for calling themselves hardcore…
some people also think mobile gaming is a hardcore gamer disciplines (and if we are talking statistics then the most hardcore gamers in the world is 36 year old females playing mobile games: but well…
our standards are much higher, we hardly even consider people playing mobile games, for actual gamers)

Zalavaaris.5329:

Erebus.7568:

dom.2748:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Some “casuals” enjoy difficult challenges too. Please stop equating “casual” to “bad” or “easy mode” for kittens sake. Many of us do not appreciate it.

Not going to happen it’s patented elitism claptrap. Typical that most people need to try and build themselves up by tearing others down and this caters to the worst of that demographic.

No, it is just fact. By definition casuals put less time into the game and thus less time to get better or to practice.

casual is a term for people that don’t want to put in the effort.
aka exploiters, cheaters, hackers, or people that just don’t care enough for it.

hardcore is a term for people that put in the effort.
this would be meta gaming, insane amount of hours to specificly train aspects of the game. doing spreadsheets, figuring out the mathematical formula’s for ingame stuff. using the time to optimize strategise statistically (again most of that is done in a spreadsheet). etc.
hardcore players actually use very High amount of their free time(hours for gaming) planning their playsession instead of actually playing the game itself.

most people that consider themselves hardcore got no clue what hardcore gaming is. just because they play 10 hours a day doesn’t make them a “hardcore player”.
true if you invest 10hours playing the game each day, you are more likely to be amongst the hardcore group
(since people investing vast amount of time planning game sessions etc. oftend use vast amongst of time in the game as well)
but it is no garantee and your active gaming hours isn’t what determines if you are a hardcore or casual gamer at all.

No…. casual is a term for people who put in less TIME not effort.

NOPE it is not.
a good handfull of Pro gamers actually turned pro after only a few months of gaming.
by your difinition these players would be casuals because they haven’t put in enough time yet.

on the other hand you have players using 10 hours a day on a game, yet they do not know how to do a good build, how to play the mechanics of the game, or how to even home/train your skills within a particular aspect of the game.
but you would call these players hardcore players?

time have NOTHING to do with weather or not you are a casual or hardcore player.
neither does RL skills in that particular game.
what makes you hardcore is the effort you invest in the game, outside the game, meaning the effort you put into arquiring knowledge beyound the normal play session.

but as said the VAST majority of casual gamers see’s themselve as hardcore gamers^^
the statement “i am hardcore because i play a lot” is a statement casuals use because they can’t accept that they are just another casual having fun in the game, and not part of the hardcore which actually invest huge amount of effort into understanding everything about the game, optimizing it and themselves to become the best they could in it.

dom.2748:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Some “casuals” enjoy difficult challenges too. Please stop equating “casual” to “bad” or “easy mode” for kittens sake. Many of us do not appreciate it.

Not going to happen it’s patented elitism claptrap. Typical that most people need to try and build themselves up by tearing others down and this caters to the worst of that demographic.

No, it is just fact. By definition casuals put less time into the game and thus less time to get better or to practice.

casual is a term for people that don’t want to put in the effort, but just wanna have fun without anything that makes them put effort into it which isnt immidiately entertaining or rewarding.
often these are grouped with exploiters, cheaters, hackers, or people that just don’t care enough for it. (very much an instant/fast satisfaction thing which doesn’t have much “pride/honor”(in lack of a better english term) for how they accomplish this.)
casuals makes up the VAST majority of a gaming community, which is also why if you let them do what they want they will screw up the long term of the games (in general, since their focus is short term)

hardcore is a term for people that put in the extra effort (which is rarely very fun, but nessesary if you truly interest you in the long term: often these are maximizers).
this would be meta gaming, insane amount of hours to specificly train aspects of the game. doing spreadsheets, figuring out the mathematical formula’s for ingame stuff. using the time to optimize strategise statistically (again most of that is done in a spreadsheet). training rotations for hours (AFTER doing the teori of how it is done best), which is quite boring (the pro-gamer thing, which most people don’t understand is learning/training which is NOT fun, it is hard work). etc. etc. etc.
hardcore players actually use very High amount of their free time(hours for gaming) planning their playsession instead of actually playing the game itself.

most people that consider themselves hardcore got no clue what hardcore gaming is. just because they play 10 hours a day doesn’t make them a “hardcore player”.
true if you invest 10hours playing the game each day, you are more likely to be amongst the hardcore group
(since people investing vast amount of time planning game sessions etc. oftend use vast amongst of time in the game as well)
but it is no garantee and your active gaming hours isn’t what determines if you are a hardcore or casual gamer at all.
(for hardcore gamers it is 50% a job and 50% a game: and the vast majority of hardcore gamers are gaming addicts. which is pretty logical considering their lifestyle/extreme interest in games :P )

if raiding is done like dungeons then it won’t.
people will find ways to exploit and bug everything out and it will be easy mode like everything else is because of exploiters.
and Anet will nerf all rewards so it is useless to do it as intended; and you will be forced to exploit 24/7, get zero reward/hour ratio, or not run at all….

due to the extreme exploitation the game is laughebly easy in it’s core.
people never learn to actually play and all they learn is how to exploit.

which in return means any one that likes the challenge, or just the fun of the designed and intended gameplay will leave/have already left…

this game BADLY need a “no exploit policy /exploiters will be banned twice then perma banned”; and starting to fix all the exploitable area’s of the game.
but won’t happen since if the devs had a mindset which considered long term good gameplay, they wouldnt have allowed the exploitation to get this bad with ZERO effort to stop or punish it for several years now.

so conclusion:
expect easy mode trash exploiting gameplay with wierd “gimmick” progression that have no other purpose then arbitrary creating grind for each raid to pass some arbitrary unpassable terrain unless you unlocked mastery x -.-

i doubt many have joined and i doubt many will stay.
why?

because of the stated the game is in right now.
everything is just one big exploit hunt.
learn how to exploit everything the most (if you like such gameplay my suggestion would be to just hack the system and be done with it, ofcouse that also takes effort which is what exploiters is trying to avoid -.-) and do everything SUPER easy mode, because it takes next to ZERO skill to complete anything when exploiting and breaking the game mechanics as people do now….

people play games to feel challenged while having a fun gameplay and feeling that they archieved something and got rewarded for it.
it is very few people that find a game enjoyable for very long once they start using the “cheat code” to make EVERYTHING insanely easy and trivial…

the extreme exploiting at this point have gone out of hand….

as an example i did a handfull of dungeons today; i purposefully avoided any dungeon calling for meta, speedrun, or explicit setup.
yet i didn’t get a single run where people didn’t:
1: run pass 90% of all the mobs.
2: bugged out bosses so they couldn’t even attack or their skillsets became useless.

it was absolutely no fun at all….
i might as well have used hacks which just gave me a reward and a little “Congratulation, you got ZERO skills, but you know how to exploit the system and break the game mechanics” which would have given more joy since at least i wouldn’t have to sit there looking at “bugged” content being abused to a degree that would make the ncsoft team on aion Perma-ban you for the extreme abuse….
-.-

i am choked of how much of a different there is on how devs view gameplay within the same firm…
comming from so many ncsoft games; knowing exploiting will be punished not rewarded, and then landing in gw2 where exploiting is not only rewarded but it doing the content as intended is punished by the devs (all rewards was balanced to match time for the exploiters)…
it is only 1 stop from stating flat out that people are allowed to just hack their system as long as they just pay a fee, or just selling streight out pve hacks themselves….

which i wouldnt even be so supriced over since they are already encuraging the selling of services that equals to simply hacking a dungeon and instantly get the reward with zero effort on your part (just rl cash bought gold)..

you do not need to think for long to understand how big an issue this have become and how much it will/have alienate the Vast majority of mmo players….

it is truly sad in my oppinion

lol find this funny.
you are angry that some one exploited you because you where exploiting the game system :P

oooh the irony

edit:
scamming is ofcouse not ok and should result in instant ban, repeated offense permaban.
but so should exploiters ^^

btw hardest dungeons in the game is speedrunned in less then 20 minutes -.-
or some done by solo players etc….

it should be more then clear that the dungeon system is broken…
i am amazed that so many can even discuss that o.O
i guess “easy/skip mode” is the way some people want their content, just wish there was a “hard/full mode” that would eliminate all that nonesense for players that actually want the challenge/have to do the effort AND want a reward equalling it..

savacli.8172:

The game already has barriers in the form of defeat boss or complete event to progress. These are physical barriers that are not designed to be bypassed (doing so would be considered an exploit by most of us on the forums).

Now, filling a route with trash mobs that may or may not drop loot? That’s not required content but rather an obstacle. How a group goes about dealing with the obstacle is up to the group itself.

if the trash mobs are not a part of the “effort” which should be there for you to get the reward.
then they shouldnt even be in the dungeon in the first place, remove them.
if they are suppose to be a part of the effort for the reward, force people to deal with them

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It’s one of those human things to do something with the path of least resistance and danger, especially when there is a reward at the end. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.
I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I don’t imagine this next update will resolve all the skipping behavior. The path of least resistance is engrained in people, and even if I do everything I could to incentivize people, there will still be those who skip stuff. I have been fixing exploits that will require players to complete more of the events in dungeons, but I am sure people will still skip what they can to get to their end goal.

For now I would encourage those not looking to skip to find some folks who don’t like skipping and make a guild with them… or maybe look for guilds that are dedicated to not skipping, and tag along with them. I’m in a couple of them (anonymously), and it really is an effective solution to playing the game the way you want to play it: Find other people with similar interests and band together with them.

lets try in a nicer phrasing so it doesnt get deleted (properly will -.-)

“so since nothing has changed and it is years since you stated you are looking into it and will find a solution is it safe to assume that your team lacks the capability of comming up with an actual solution or any kind of fix to the problem?
or that you just don’t care at all that it is a problem?
-.-

dutchiez.7502:

Maybe it’s time to realize that development on dungeons has pretty much come to a complete stop and complaining on the forums isn’t going to change anything.

+- yer… it is a saaaad thing that something so simple to fix is ignored

but if that truly is the case… on the bright side 3-4 months untill B&S

Chaos.5072:

Erebus.7568:

Chaos.5072:

Take a look at what the dev who made the dungeons has to say: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/first#post1205684

Posts like these are what make me read the dungeon forums. Best comedy on the Internet.

i just read that, i also answered it right over your massage if you had read it -.-
which IF you had you would properly also have read what robert said, and thereby known that he is saying the EXACT same thing i am, and also stating it is an issue -.-

maybe learn to read? seems to be your problem here mate

I’m starting to think you didn’t read it either. Here, I’ll give you the best part:
“I would encourage those not looking to skip to find some folks who don’t like skipping and make a guild with them… or maybe look for guilds that are dedicated to not skipping, and tag along with them. I’m in a couple of them (anonymously), and it really is an effective solution to playing the game the way you want to play it: Find other people with similar interests and band together with them.”

And this was written before LFG. Now it’s even easiest to find those players with similar interests. Happy dungeoning mate

you know what a temporary work around is?

you wanted him to say “well i read this thread and NOW i just fixed the code for it, it is all cool now”
or
" i read it and i have absolutely no solution or thing you can try to better the situation untill i find a fix"
?
-.-

maybe actually read his whole statement instead of cherry picking would help

Zui.9245:

So you didn’t skip any mobs in Arah?

Not even in Path 2?

Because there’s this one area in Path 2 with infinitely respawning mobs that you have to skip by design. I wonder how you got past it.

Are you really claiming that all skips, even skips you’re forced to do by the design, is “counter intuitive to the design and idea of the devs when looking at dungeons”? Also, if not for skipping, why does stealth exist in PvE, and do you really think ANET didn’t think players might use it to bypass mobs they allowed you to bypass with it?

the first couple of times we did it, no one knew how to exploit to skip it
so we had to simply just clear our way through the mobs ^^ (don’t recall if we missed any, but we killed anything that was within sight)

we did was was designed (you talking about the robot part, where you hide under it’s shield and follow? since we followed it as intended which is NOT skipping, but doing as INTENDED design wishes you to do.
keep in mind i havent played for i think a year now if not more hehe.)

as said you are NOT skipping the content, you are using the robot AS intended
(if however you do the EXPLOIT mode and RUN it, which you can do if you know what you where doing, then YES it is an exploit and you are ruining the design and purpose of having the robot there and the fact you need to keep it running.
so yes if you do it like that, it is counter intuitive to even have the robot or the mobs there, if you do not intend for them to ever be used, to make the group overcome a new kind of “challenge”.)

if stealth was designed to skip mobs, it would have a version with a much longer base lasting time, like in aion (5min base)

Chaos.5072:

Take a look at what the dev who made the dungeons has to say: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/first#post1205684

Posts like these are what make me read the dungeon forums. Best comedy on the Internet.

i just read that, i also answered it right over your massage if you had read it -.-
which IF you had you would properly also have read what robert said, and thereby known that he is saying the EXACT same thing i am, and also stating it is an issue -.-

maybe learn to read? seems to be your problem here mate

stachekiller.2591:

This was addressed by the designer of the dungeons 2 years ago. Please see here for his opinion:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/first#post1205684

Where art though Robert Hrouda?

you do realise that he is saying the same i am right?
that it is a problem and they would like to fix it, but they are unsure how.

the fact their designers are terribad at game design doesn’t make the issue closed
they know it is a problem and instead of fixing it they are basically putting their heads up their behinds.

which is why it is importent to remind them now and then that the problem is STILL THERE and it is hurting the player count:
(i did aion for many years, run boring max effective dungeon runs 10ish hours a day, EVERY day, as if it was work, but work you also did in your weekends…
only such hardcore people will keep staying and doing these dungeons when you ignore the fun factor and force the “effective play over all other”..
and needless to say that is VERY bad for the game overall)

when all that is said, my voice will properly be silenced again in a few days, when i lose interest in the game due to incompetent devs doing nothing to fix the issues ^^
(which was also why i stopped playing the first time around)

savacli.8172:

Nothing was designed to be skipped? Have you seen Arah? .

i did arah before people learned to skip it.
it took ages.
(think it was 4ish hours to do the whole thing, if i recall correctly: but you are not suppose to run all routes in one go: and it is pretty normal from mmo’s that a long dungeon run takes 1-2hours to do)
to do and the reward was vastly higher then it is now because of it.
it actually took some effort (which was the entire intention)…

your complain about my suggestion seems to be:
reward/effort isn’t as good if this happens; but thats a reward balance issue, which is a number tweaking

NACotser.4125:

Erebus.7568:

NACotser.4125:

Erebus.7568:

snip

snip

both are to stop abuse
to stop people skipping because it have major negative effects on the gameplay and intended design of dungeons.

and stopping people from getting rewards without doing the dungeon.

should be pretty easy to understand ^^

btw: i was amonst the first bounches to do lupi

and NOTHING was designed to be skipped, that is why the rewards was SO much higher then they are now.
rewards got mega nerfed because every one skipped.
and instead of skillfull combat gameplay, you just needed to learn skillfull exploiting and skipping.
bad direction for a game

I’m not having trouble understanding I’m having trouble comprehending why you think it’s a good idea to force players to kill every mob. Secondly: Skipping isn’t an exploit, no aspect of the game is being manipulated, people are simply choosing to not kill everything in sight. If you however do want to, you can do that without forcing everyone else to do the same. There’s a whole guild, forum post, and LFG tool dedicated to finding like minded players

first of it is an exploit, you are doing something that wasn’t intended by the designers when creating the content.

now ask yourself:
“why did the designer of this dungeon put these mobs here if he didn’t intend for us to do them?”

then ask yourself:
“is the rewards of the dungeon suppose to reward you for the effort of doing the dungeon, and if so does skipping half the encounters thereby VASTLY lowering the effort of doing the dungeon make it fair that we get the full reward when we didn’t put in the full effort?”

lastly ask yourself:
“since rewards are static anyone NOT skipping is getting VASTLY lower rewards per hour for doing the dungeons as the designers intended it to be done. is it fair that they are being punished for doing the content as it was intended to be done?”

when you answered all of those (it is pretty simple, there is only 1 logical answer for each one) try to figure out a way to change the problem, a suggestion for the change which would fix it ^^

garcialak.9215:

Erebus.7568:

garcialak.9215:

I think those are problems because it’s not my playstyle so nobody has fun doing that and it should be “fixed”

actually it most be a clear design flaw aka problem.
or some one just felt like wasting time and money.

they put a lot of stuff in the dungeons because it was intended for you to tackle that stuff, and when you ignore that stuff you are doing something not intended.

as i describe so nicely if you wanted to think about it:
it is the issue of “maximizing rewards vs playing the way it is fun/intended to do”.
as mmo’ers the vast majority will play the way which gives them the greatest reward, which is why the way to get the greatest rewards need to be the way “it was intended to be done”.
which we must assume “the way it is intended to be done” is designed to be “the way which should created the best/most fun gameplay experience”

when that is said: the exploiters are hurting the gameplay for every one else, because the rewards as i also mentioned gets balanced depending on speed of the fastest.
so them exploiting to do it faster, is lowering the rewards for the players which are playing it as intended…
SO even if that is the way they like it, it is hurting the vast majority (and i would argue they only like it like that because the reward is higher then it would be otherwise; if reward vs time was the same they wouldn’t care, or they would be happy; doubt many if any players think it is fun to run/skip stuff, if they could get the same reward/hour by fighting it and playing as intended)

Hrouda disagrees. A lot of trash mobs are made to be skipped. Your idea idea to make the mobs never lose aggro and full pull to you is one of the worst I read on this forum, and people kitten post often.

If you don’t like to skip, don’t do it. Don’t force people to play how you want.

you seem to not understand the basic of ecconomy in the game.
first of harder to find good parties so it is a bad option.
but more importently the reward/hours is Not worth it.
YOUR exploiting the system is ACTIVELY hurting Others gameplay experience.
you comprehending this untill now?

now i do not blame you for doing it, because it is the design that is flawed, since reward/hour will essentially be the importent part.
now the point is that Reward/hour for skipping should EQUAL the reward/hour for not skipping
which would be impossible to do a solid calc on. therefore change it.

on top of that the design is made for you to “learn to deal with the situation that is set” aka “be good enough to do it”, now skipping the whole thing breaks the effort which is intended for you to be allowed to even try to get the reward.

in short exploiting the system is hurting the overall gameplay in many ways and it shouldn’t be there because it IS exploiting the system.
however the reward/hour need to not get nerfed by doing so, so it needs to be boosted to the ratio of time increased

i am not sure if any of this is getting through to you
if not, well sad but no helping it ^^

Thaddeus.4891:

1) Too bad for you. Selling is there since GW1 and will continue to be with the blessing of Anet.

2) A lot of people like skipping and it’s part of the game for them (I include myself). But true enough, Anet doesn’t really handled them very well. Skipping should fall into two category. First is skipping by a meaningful choice. You can either skip for a faster run, of fight for more reward. Right now, most skipping are not a choice since there is no incentive to fight everything. The second situation are obligatory skipping. This should be clear with unkillable super boosted enemies that are hard to skip.

Sorry but IMO your solutions are bad. The first isn’t a problem, while the second are just forcing players to play the way YOU want. Infinite Leash and Barrier are not good design. They are just ways to force player into a specific way of playing.

i dont agree that you should be able to just get the reward instantly without doing the work for it. (if they wanted that they would have made a gold to dungeon currency convertor)
but we won’t agree here. so next part.

i see skipping like this:
Either the content shouldn’t be there because it is not worth/fun to do, anet should remove it and stop wasting dev time on such things.
OR
the content is intended to be done for whatever design reasoning and therefore you shouldn’t be able to skip it

since dungeons already designed in a manner where skippeble content is CLEARLY indicated by “if you dont want this boss, ALL the content over here can be ignored”, i don’t see how skipping content that is clearly designed to be done if you want the reward at the end, would ever be a valid design choice (it is basically just wasting money and dev time).
:)

NACotser.4125:

Erebus.7568:

First last fix the skipping part:
There are two ways of fixing this:
1: you set up barriers/doors/invisible walls for each room area that stops progression and doesn’t disappear before you killed all enemies up to that point.
2: when aggroing a boss, all enemies up until that boss will auto agro you and never lose agro again before they are all killed or boss loses agro. Should the boss die without losing agro the mobs will NEVER lose agro (so any exploit trying to get around this will mean you need to either clear the mobs afterwards or restart the run).

This whole post seems pretty ridiculous, but particularly this. Making mobs NEVER lose aggro is suggested as a way to make the game more fun? Sorry but if I have to wade through every mob in every dungeon to complete it, I don’t think I’ll ever run a dungeon again. Besides, a lot of waves of mobs are DESIGNED to be skipped. Point in case: Arah hall before lupi.

both are to stop abuse
to stop people skipping because it have major negative effects on the gameplay and intended design of dungeons.

and stopping people from getting rewards without doing the dungeon.

should be pretty easy to understand ^^

btw: i was amonst the first bounches to do lupi

and NOTHING was designed to be skipped, that is why the rewards was SO much higher then they are now.
rewards got mega nerfed because every one skipped.
and instead of skillfull combat gameplay, you just needed to learn skillfull exploiting and skipping.
bad direction for a game

garcialak.9215:

I think those are problems because it’s not my playstyle so nobody has fun doing that and it should be “fixed”

actually it most be a clear design flaw aka problem.
or some one just felt like wasting time and money.

they put a lot of stuff in the dungeons because it was intended for you to tackle that stuff, and when you ignore that stuff you are doing something not intended.

as i describe so nicely if you wanted to think about it:
it is the issue of “maximizing rewards vs playing the way it is fun/intended to do”.
as mmo’ers the vast majority will play the way which gives them the greatest reward, which is why the way to get the greatest rewards need to be the way “it was intended to be done”.
which we must assume “the way it is intended to be done” is designed to be “the way which should created the best/most fun gameplay experience”

when that is said: the exploiters are hurting the gameplay for every one else, because the rewards as i also mentioned gets balanced depending on speed of the fastest.
so them exploiting to do it faster, is lowering the rewards for the players which are playing it as intended…
SO even if that is the way they like it, it is hurting the vast majority (and i would argue they only like it like that because the reward is higher then it would be otherwise; if reward vs time was the same they wouldn’t care, or they would be happy; doubt many if any players think it is fun to run/skip stuff, if they could get the same reward/hour by fighting it and playing as intended)

Plok.5873:

Dinks.2478:

So Legendary armor needs a way to save multiple runes to it otherwise the stat-swapping feature will be pointless. I think you should be able to add runes to the armor permanently or maybe there are a limited number of slots snip

I support this rune library concept and the analogous sigil library for legendary weapons. Like the last 100 times it was suggested.

would be cool, and would give a good reason to get a bounch of rune sets on one armour ^^

Devildoc.6721:

Giving higher stats on gear would be totally not Guild Wars’ style. If you want gear treadmills you’ll need to find another game.

i am sorry but you didn’t read what i wrote. could you please read it and then answer
i am in NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM! suggesting any stats alterations or item changes in any manner ^^

the rest is that you want more cosmetics and options to get these ^^
which i think is also good, although there is lots of ways to get them, you could easily add some cosmetics (as i also suggest) to this system

edit:
maybe you got the gear treadmill from my last edit? where i note that upgrading of gear part ^^
i mean upgrading gear tiers, so you got a good reason to get a lower tier gear and use ressources on it, because when upgrading it you won’t have lost the ressources you will just pay the difference from that tier to the next ^^
that was what i meand with that part
but yes thats another thread and i properly shouldnt have included it, it was just an afterthought hehe

Dungeon fixes:

There is a few things which I find really sad and bad about dungeons:
which contributes to a none fun, but more rewarding dungeon run playstyle.

First: people selling runs.
The idea of buying/selling dungeon rewards I find saddening, the point of dungeons is to incentivise people to have fun running them. The whole focus of “selling runs” breaks this completely.

Two: skipping most of the dungeon.
The ability to run pass everything skipping the vast majority of the dungeon is again counter intuitive to the design and idea of the devs when looking at dungeons.
It also forces people to do so because rewards are scaled for “time to complete” and time to complete is determined by average time.

Both of these ends up hurting the overall gameplay by the focus going from Fun to Effectiveness.
It is the endless discussion within game design of “Effective != Fun” which means that the most effective way to achieve a goal is not always the most fun one.
The more you allow people to exploit around to optimize reward, the more you pressure people to do what is “less fun, but vastly more rewarding” which creates a bad gameplay overall.

So now, I explained the issue I will come with some extremely simple and easy fixes.

First last fix the skipping part:
There are two ways of fixing this:
1: you set up barriers/doors/invisible walls for each room area that stops progression and doesn’t disappear before you killed all enemies up to that point.
2: when aggroing a boss, all enemies up until that boss will auto agro you and never lose agro again before they are all killed or boss loses agro. Should the boss die without losing agro the mobs will NEVER lose agro (so any exploit trying to get around this will mean you need to either clear the mobs afterwards or restart the run).

Lets fix the other issue:
Selling of runs: you are supposed to be rewarded due to your contribution to the entire run. Therefore I suggest the set in a system which monitors assist kills of enemies, it very simple looks at how many kills of the enemies where you are part of and it rewards you on a % scale.
So if you where only there for 0% of the kills up until the boss then you get 0% rewards. If you where there for 80% of the kills you get 80% of the reward.

In this manner you are rewarded on how much of the run you actually contributed too.
(the contribution should look at mob groups, so if you hit a mob of the mob group or do a positive thing on a group member or if you are just within 2.500 distance of a mob that dies, all mobs in that group is tagged as you being a contributor.
If you die, resurrect and does not get back in time, you still get full contribution for all mobs which was in the group you attacked.
If your team then ignores you and keep going even though you are not back you will not get contribution for anything they kill without you being there)

The contribution is supposed to be set up in a way that forces you to be part of the action to get any rewards, but do not punish you for being unlucky or bad at it.

SUGGESTION: how to give incentive for endgame content.

So I started up guildwars2 again after a year’s break+- and within the first hour I did nothing but just get the view of the new stuff (which took approximately 30-40min). Then I ran in a circle for 10-20 mins trying to figure out what I wanted to do. It durned on me that there was really nothing to do.

It wasn’t because there was no content to do, or the content was bad.
(ignoring the issue’s that is with some content, because that is not the focus of this thread).
There is plenty of dungeons that could be fun to run.
Lots of living story stuff.
Lots of worldmap event stuff.
Even fractale stuff.
Properly some other stuff not at the top of my head.

Therefore, it is not that there was not anything to do, but that there was absolutely no incentive to do it.

I tried to find incentive to do something.
but frankly the only things I can get is legendary weapons at this point, think there is new armours as well though (got exortic) but it seemed like a crazy hassle just to get into what I need to do to get legendries (assuming armours as well but haven’t checked because I gave up). the extreme grind for gold to buy it, or doing a gameplay of gathering (which is a gamaplay I don’t enjoy) is nothing that I find incentivising and it doesn’t give me a “clear goal path or reason to do stuff”.

When ingame currency becomes the major endgame thing you need, it loses its meaning and it is never an incentive (even less so when ingame currency can be bought with rl cash).

Now I am setting there thinking what could be done to change this? Meaning what incentives could be given to make people have a reason to run dungeons etc?

The first thing that hit me was the rewards:
Endgame is at this point all about legendries and runes; so for rewards I would suggest using these: since they are often so big/expensive that it can’t be single rewards they need to be purchased by currencies.

So which currencies should it be bought with?
Since gold is already a currency allowing you to buy it we will look at other aspects:

With the focus on “let people have FUN while feeling they are working towards WORTHY rewards”
With this in mind I would say that “ALL content should give rewards towards this” but not as an “extra reward” because then it is just a counter as you play rather then a reward system.

Instead, I would suggest a npc trader that allowed you to trade your different currencies for a “Special Reward currency”:
The ratio shouldn’t be a 1:1 ratio, and it shouldn’t be the same ratio for every currency type; each currency type should have it’s own ratio depending on the time to get acquire it.

The currencies that should be tradable into “Special Reward currency” would be:
1: all the dungeon currencies.
2: all the trophies from farming in the fields.
3: all the event special currency drop stuff.
4: fractal currency.
5: pvp currency.
If I missed any do tell ^^
(all of which should be account or character bound, to avoid screwing with the current legendries sold and gained via crafting)

“Special Reward currency”:
should be used to get any rune or legendary item you would like, maybe even some cosmetic stuff.
Essentially it would be your “endgame goals” which would be available here.

In this manner, no matter what you enjoyed to do in the game you would be able to turn the rewards for your playtime into a reward currency you can easily monitor the progression off and which would be a progression towards Worthy rewards that you would like as an endgame player.

It would also mean that if you are a casual, returning player, or simply don’t like to bother researching all the stuff of “where/how/etc” to get what you want, you have a VERY clear and easy to understand goal.
Meaning you log in and go “what would I like to do today” instead of “what do I want to get of rewards, and what how do I get it”.
So you are following the rules of HAVE FUN and Gain Worthy rewards incentivising you to keep doing what you find fun. Instead of the arbitrary hassle, it is to have to follow a specific “recipe” towards an obscure goal.

And of couse one of the most important things about this whole suggestion is: it will have NO direct negative effect on people that prefer getting their stuff with the current system.

So Thoughts? ^^

edit:
another thought is to allow people to upgrade their gear as they go along, but that is for another thread (would give incentive to get different gear tier, instead of going streight for top tier when available)

Ohoni.6057:

lots of stuff

we GREATLY disagree.
your answer is basically “well if you don’t like the one playstyle which the game promote, then dont play the game”
i say “it should promote all major playstyles so there is something for most people’s enjoyment”.

those two view types will NEVER EVER agree.

equally i say:
“there is a problem in the design here which could have been made better, it should be corrected so it is as good as it can be”
you say
“if you don’t like it the way it is dont play the game”

again same thing, those two views can NEVER agree ^^

we got two very different ways of looking at games and gaming.
i believe we should constantly strife to created the VERY best experiences by changing gameplay to accommodate all different playstyles that people enjoy.

you believe we should strife to created the best experiences by accepting it is as it is and try to just get the best out of it, and if we disagree with the design to an extent where we believe we should complain then we should just stop playing instead.

so yer
no reason to keep discussing it between us two, we got different views on how games and gaming should be so we would never agree beyound the fact that we both most want the best gaming experience ^^

wanted, ranged, nuker.

Conncept.7638:

VodCom.6924:

Conncept.7638:

Xillllix.3485:

Ohoni.6057:

Think beyond the “new” factor and you’ll realize all the flaws it has starting with the base core mechanic. Tempest should decrease your attunements cooldown, not increase it.

Decrease. . . lol, no.

Why not? Skills have internal cooldowns anyway, all you would be getting would be a faster attunement boon. Mesmers are getting dual shatter from stealth. Single shatter is already game-breaking OP.

Because that’s already what the arcane tree does, and people have wanted less swap-centric and more elemental-themed builds since launch.

This was, unfortunately, the wrong way to address either issue. The overloads don’t reward you for staying in an attunement for longer, they punish you staying in it for more or less the same amount of time as the base class.

You lost me on the word punish . How does adding an extra option to each element punishes you?

How does either being forced to stay in one element for twenty seconds or lose it for twenty seconds reward you? It doesn’t. It is a punishment for playing the class the way all its vanilla content most heavily encourages you to play it, and a punishment for playing the way the elementalist community would most like the class opened up to, mono and duo-attunement builds. Overcharges are literally the worst of both worlds combined in to one mechanic.

i actually posted a good suggestion to change the ele to work for both things ^^
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post5440350
which also use a overloading system :P
made the suggestion like a year or more ago, i assume they thought the idea was cool they just f’ed up the actual implementation of it (no suprice there )

Ohoni.6057:

It is a caster class; by the very name itself ELEMENTALIST.

Elementalist has nothing to do with “caster.” It means “one who deals in the elements,” and even a D/D Ele does that just fine. You are projecting what you want onto the class, that is not what it ever actually was or claimed to be.

It is the mage class of the game (or as close as it gets), weather or not you agree with it is a different matter.

No, it’s just a light armor magic-wielding class. If anything, the closest this game has to a “pure” old school mage is the Mesmer. GW2 likes to play with tropes though, and tries to avoid the “pure old school” paradigms whenever possible.

If you call it an assassin and gives it nothing but long range support skills, that doesn’t mean the name suddenly alter its meaning, just means you either gave it the wrong name or f’ed up the design

Nothing wrong with a pure ranged Assassin, that’s what half the Thief forum is clamoring for, but again, “Elementalist,” do they play with elements? Yes? Nailed it then. Now, if the class was called “Wizard” or “Mage” then I might agree with you more.

The fact that ele close combat builds are amongst (if not the strongest) the strongest builds in the game (far supirior for competitive play then staff aka long ranged weapon) and that it wins over warriors melee builds with ease, shows something is completely wrong when we are talking balance of classes (and expectancy due to naming and conventions).

That sounds more like a problem with how Warriors are designed though.

All the major problems of pvp can be tracked back to the downing mechanics as a big contributor to the problem.

I can see why the downed state limits the effectiveness of long range nuke builds, but on the other hand, it also limits the effectiveness of long range nuke builds, which prevents them being completely overpowered. You can still nuke out a downed player at long range, in many cases this is even easier than trying to stomp them since they can’t fight back, rally off you, or use “stomp escape” moves to avoid being stomped. This is a fair balance.

Trinity AGAIN a good reason no other game have tried to eliminate a trinity system, some have tried to make it more focused on different roles then “support == heals” and focusing it on shielding or CC’ing.

The trinity is just a cheap gimmick to avoid actual gameplay balance. I much prefer GW2’s balanced system, but to each his own.

Capture point (point is only capturable when you are not taking damage and can’t be neutralized if you are taking damage).
Stops the forced to melee on them.

That would make conquest mode practically unplayable. You’d just have enemies nuking the capture points from outside of most build’s attack range, forcing people to leave the capture circle to engage them, and basically no points would ever be captured because there would always be someone throwing a little damage around. It would go sooooooo slooooowly.

forgot the tempest answer: soo your excuse is that the “tempest HAVE to be the eye of the storm?” then why is there fire?, why do you take damage in the eye ? etc etc etc.

1. because it’s a fire storm. The “storm” is a metaphor. 2. You don’t take damage, because you’re the eye. The characters around you do take damage, because they are not the eye. Remember that the deadliest parts of a hurricane are the bits right around the eye, because that’s where the winds spin fastest.

Give an example of an elementalist from any other game which doesn’t ”proof” me right and you wrong, in your generalization of what an ”elementalist” is.

On top of that the ele only got ONE weapon type which is closeCombat, yet it is the only builds that are truly powerfull (at least vastly more powerfull then any ranged build).
The playstyle of the best competitive ele builds are that of a Fighter/bruiser or an assassin, not a mage/ele/magic user (or again give an example of a game where the playstyle of the ele is the same’ish to underbuild your argument)

You ever wondered why ALL successful games use at least the core stereo types and keep to their stereo playstyle? (gw2 does this as well with most of it’s stereo type classes, thief/assassins, warriors, necromancer and rangers of the top of my head)
You think it is simply because they simply lack imagination to change it up? (since that would just be smacking a name tag on another class and changing the animation look)

Or can you follow that it is done for a very good design reason of catering to the people who enjoy that playstyle, class and look, which they have come accustomed too through many years of gaming.
So instead of having to “reinvent the wheel, by calling it a boot” they use the term “wheel” so people know what to expect so they can easily get what they enjoy.

When that is said I don’t mind changing it up a bit.
However when you take a class which is played in a “locationary, long ranged, tactical, nuker/cc, glass cannon” playstyle, and turn it into a “tanky, sustaining/nutrition war, reactionary, close combat” playstyle as it’s BEST beyond any comparison build and style.
Well THEN I have a problem because you are misleading the users and you are focusing on the opposite of what you clearly intended to convey to the users that you would.

Melee, tanky builds should be a secondary more than a primary:
If you LOVE the playstyle of these bruiser, assassins, you would play such a class.
It is a matter of insuring that you got the classes playstyle which different people enjoy, when you hard-focus on only one side of the coin you are screwing everyone else over because you are a selfish one…
Which of couse I don’t think is ok
——————————————————————————————————

So you say “due to ele close combat builds being vastly stronger then ranged builds” it is a problem with other classes? Not a problem with the other builds of the ele? That sounds like you are going in the wrong direction there -.-
Either close combat build is way too strong or the ranged are way too weak…. Due to the design of the game setup, it is nearly (if not fully) impossible to get the long ranged builds to be as strong, or close combat as weak, without screwing over the other builds as well.
(Especially since the game is hard focusing its entire design on melee ranged, war of nutrition type combat and giving the finger to anything else -.-

Even without downing long ranged nuker builds is in NO WAY, like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAY op at all -.-
The fact is they are quite weak even without downing, and nearly useless with the downing system.
Due to the insane amount of gap closers on melee-ranged skillsets, the extreme lack of effective cc and gap creators on long ranged skillsets, and the VERY high eHP and eDPS difference from those two build types, the melee ranged builds still got the upper hand even if you remove the downed states.
(you should and properly does already know this… how many long ranged builds do you see stand a chance in a fight vs melee ranged builds? Yer none if we are talking best players: almost all combat is done in less than 600 range, and vast majority less than 300 range)

And hehe “still nuke out a downed player”… come on man, you know as well as everyone else that in a fight between equally good players/teams that is not an effective valid tactic for dealing with the downed mechanic

No it is not just a gimmick, now you are just being directly stupid.
Stop that and use your head.
More than enough games have proven that trinity is an extremely good system, which allows vast diversity in builds, roles and playstyles.

It gives a good reason for people that enjoy ONLY doing support to teams, which doesn’t enjoy attacking enemies, to play like that and to have an important role in the team.

It gives people that like playing “immortal” characters that can survive everything, but don’t care about damage, to play in the playstyle they like and enjoy the feel they get. And Still be an important part of the team.

It gives the ability for people that want nothing more than just hammering in high dps numbers to focus 100% on that and never get kitten for being extremely squishy, the ability to play like that.

off-tank builds etc etc etc

It gives the ability to actually do balance that forces you to accept that you need to play with other people that enjoy different playstyles then you do.
Which in return gives a Far higher amount of playstyle and roles, which can be effective and valid. (which is FAR less “gimmick” and requires far more thought to do a good balance setup for it, because you ain’t just “cheap cheating” and streamlining everything which you can and they do, when you don’t have to balance around more than “one role type” being valid)

Now you know as well as I and everyone else what your chance’s is to be allowed to come on farm/speed runs if you insist on being Full support or Full tank spec.
It is close to 0%. Literally, NO good group would want to bring you for dungeon runs if they knew you did that.

The lack of trinity (or equal system) removes the ability for devs to build content that allows for different playstyles and different roles which you might enjoy.
It sets up a game system where there will only be ONE role, which is optimal, and ONE build, which is optimal for that run, and if you aren’t a person that enjoys that particular playstyle and role, tough you are going to have suboptimal runs with suboptimal people…. What joy right -.-

So in short: you need to do more thoughts/research on why trinity systems are good, and what impact it have and why it have such impact.
You will learn a lot from it

Well you didn’t get what I said
Once you capture a point it is YOURS like in every normal capture the point pvp scenario in every other game. To neutralize the point and stop the enemy getting points you would need to take the point without being attacked.
So YES the person defending the point would need to move away from it either to pull you too it, or to attack you; which is how it should be!. However as long as no one that is not in combat is not on the point it will generate points for you

I love how you ignored everything I said about the tempest thing and ONLY focus on the part which I stated was a “bad argument like you did it” even though you did this you got it wrong.
Because if it is the eye NO ONE standing in the eye should take any damage -.-
And a tempest doesn’t make firestorms, those are two different phenomenon’s.

Anyway, if you want to get back to the actual meat of that part I have here copied it from my last answer:
facts is if you are the controller of the tempest (which we need to rewrite for abilities to make sense at all, so we accept it is just a naming with no meaning, earth skill? from a tempest no :P ) you should be able to control where it lands (on top of that it is exceedingly lame that all the abilities is the “same” working, kinda proofs how little effort went into making it)
check my suggestion on that a year ago (or more cant remember)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post5440350

:)

Ohoni.6057:

the problem i have seen with ele since release
(havent played in a long time now, just got back not sure i wanna though),
is that it is a mage type which are best when played as an assasin or bruiser type..
meaning it is not a long range CC/nuker, it is an nutriusion fighting, close combat class. (which is OBVIOUSLY not what people that usually enjoy playing mage type classes enjoy the playstyle off (since they would play assasins or warrior types if they enjoyed that playstyle))

This seems like a personal problem though. “I want this class to be something it totally isn’t and never was! Why can’t it be the class I want instead?!”

Ele is not a “caster” class, it is a light skirmishing class. It has an artillery stand-off spec available, but that is not the only spec available. Dagger builds are not “wrong” just because you prefer staff.

i don’t get either why ALL the attunement overloads are basically the same thing, all aoe damage abilities around yourself (water is support though still around yourself), just silly…
fire should be AOE ground targeted,

Because you are the tempest, you are the eye of the storm, it flows around you. I imagine when Eles get their ranged elite spec it will have some variation on the ranged Overload, but this is their skirmish spec, which better compliments their core play styles.

removing down mechanic all together and introducing trinity to pve would be the best move they could ever make.

None of that is remotely true.

the “stay on the point spvp” does the same thing, it punishes builds designed for long range nuking or cc+nuking, and rewards melee bruiser builds.

How would you design a small group PvP system that would reward long range nukers? Particularly ones that would not make them horridly OP in the process? Besides, from my understanding, LB Rangers seem to do ok in PvP.

Will answer from top to bottom:

It is a caster class; by the very name itself ELEMENTALIST.
It is the mage class of the game (or as close as it gets), weather or not you agree with it is a different matter.
If you call it an assassin and gives it nothing but long range support skills, that doesn’t mean the name suddenly alter its meaning, just means you either gave it the wrong name or f’ed up the design

The fact that ele close combat builds are amongst (if not the strongest) the strongest builds in the game (far supirior for competitive play then staff aka long ranged weapon) and that it wins over warriors melee builds with ease, shows something is completely wrong when we are talking balance of classes (and expectancy due to naming and conventions).

All the major problems of pvp can be tracked back to the downing mechanics as a big contributor to the problem.
On top of that there is a reason you don’t see ANY other game competitively do this kind of mechanic (it is not because it haven’t been thought of, it have and been dismissed because it is a HORRIFIC system that breaks the “very fine and hard to reach” balance completely).

Trinity AGAIN a good reason no other game have tried to eliminate a trinity system, some have tried to make it more focused on different roles then “support == heals” and focusing it on shielding or CC’ing.
But no other game (with any success) have tried to eliminate it.
The reason for that is very simple “if you eliminate the need for roles, you eliminate the need for diverse builds and classes, and you end up with badly balanced/made dungeons, pve and pvp”
(which should be more then clear from the dungeons and the major issues which was there forever with only specific classes where invited for speedruns etc. because nothing else was needed, and to my understanding that hasn’t changed from the year-+ I have been gone: apparently only one type of builds are truly effective for dungeon runs )

Should prove pretty well that it is the case even though you deny it (I am guessing you play melee, D ele, or theif? Would be my first guess -.- since those are extremely rewarded for the downing mechanic -.- )
———

I would do like they done in TONS!!! Of other mmo’s.
You got a ton of options.

Spvp:
Capture point (point is only capturable when you are not taking damage and can’t be neutralized if you are taking damage).
Stops the forced to melee on them.

Capture flags (is generally a “kill before you can take” thing.).

The removal of downing mechanics would do a TON here, making you able to actually build towards winning a fight and have the win without the extra of “ow you need to get to the downed person and finish them off, if you get downed wupti they are up again Bs”.
Would also open up for a lot more diverse builds.

Besides: The balance between “range vs dps vs survivability vs supportability” is extremely well documented in mmo’s at this point, if you can’t make that pretty spot on with the absurd amount of data you got available then you don’t deserve to be a dev responsible for this area.
————-
edit:
forgot the tempest answer: soo your excuse is that the “tempest HAVE to be the eye of the storm?” then why is there fire?, why do you take damage in the eye ? etc etc etc.
(yes silly argument but so is yours)
facts is if you are the controller of the tempest (which we need to rewrite for abilities to make sense at all, so we accept it is just a naming with no meaning, earth skill? from a tempest no :P ) you should be able to control where it lands (on top of that it is exceedingly lame that all the abilities is the “same” working, kinda proofs how little effort went into making it)

check my suggestion on that a year ago (or more cant remember)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post5440350

a little bump now that we got “overloading” which is basically the “overcast” i asked for.
although i think my idea is better overall, and have abilities more diverse and overall usefull for all weapon sets ^^

so with overload comming i found it funny since it is so close to my suggestion years ago :P haha

can see i called it overcast instead off their name “overload” hehe :P
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post2825766

i do think however that the way their abilities work on the overload is much worse then what i suggested back then, and that you are forced into a specific spec to even use them

sad to see it is yet another thing that pushes elementalist to become the “thief with magic attacks”

yer said this in another thread:

ow yer and could we stop focusing the ele’s abilities on close combat -.-
yes i am looking at the tempest attunement design (and new skills for that matter, horn not included),
overdrive is an awesome cool idea and i actually wrote an idea extremely similar as a suggestion way back: (i can only assume the smartest dev saw it and thought “thats sounds cool, lets see if we can’t get it in”; and he was sooo close, they just f’ed the actual effect of each attunement overdrive)
so yes, seriously stop making it a close combat thing.
allow the player to select where the overload spell is placed, in the same manner as you would with any ground target aoe… (or make the overdrive differ depending on weapons; so staff got long range abilities, scepter got the current and D gets even closer ranged)

i don’t get either why ALL the attunement overloads are basically the same thing, all aoe damage abilities around yourself (water is support though still around yourself), just silly…
fire should be AOE ground targeted,
lightning should be Single target (big laser from you to target, major damage),
water support (kinda is, but should be ground target and do something really awesome/cool),
earth should be CC+condisions or Major protection.
and all long distance, 900 or 1200 max distance)

edit:
the idea that elementalist needs to be a close range fighter is directly idiotic -.-

ow my old suggestion which is basically the overloading they put in now:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post5440350

actually effective diverse builds in dungeons will never happen, diverse groups only comes if you force a trinity (or other such forced needed roles).
since they refuse to do so, there will always be a “best approach” which all will go for.

the 3 deadly sins anet have done is stuff done due to complete ignorance of any other mmo before them:

1. refusing to have a form of trinity (or equally setup).

2. downing mechanics (which works to counter the lack of trinity; but also work in pvp which is gamebreaking)

3. slowdown of base movement speed when entering combat (instead of having a sprint function usable outside of combat. the movement speed is already so slow it is basically doing slow motion: yet they gave a “dodge function” to try and counter the lack of base mobility, which because it gives you immunity to damage while dodging just broke the combat/gameplay feel even more)

.
worst is all this is basic knowledge to anyone with half a brain, that is interested in the mechanical side of game design and have followed the mmo market for just the last 10+ years

-
edit:
but fgs i don’t believe the devs will Ever come that far in their personal skillset:
i mean they can’t even figure out how to change dungeons so people don’t skip everything -.-
and that is absurdly! easy to fix, just set in doors (or “invisible” walls for that matter) which doesn’t open before you killed all the mobs up to the door.
incredible it can be so hard for them to figure out.. and don’t give me crap with “ow they made that content for people to completely skip and run pass it” because we all know that is bs -.-

overloads should have long range. and be a general thing no matter what you took.
the trait should just help the cd etc.

like this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post5440350

Wolfric.9380:

I would remove all down state skills and rally. Down is helpless. Dead is autorelease.
Would be a hard move but very straight forward and easy.

will never happen, devs are not smart enough to ever do something that would have such a major positive impact on the state of the game

the downing mechanic is in it’s core design gamebreaking (especially for competitive pvp).
but clearly some one on the team had the oppinion of " I DO NOT CARE HOW BAD IT IS, IT IS A GOOD IDEA AND I WANT IT IN THE GAME!!!" which is why it even exist in the first place.

removing down mechanic all together and introducing trinity to pve would be the best move they could ever make.
alternatively if they don’t wanna do actual work on rebalancing some pve for that, introduce/re-tweak more/better “ressurrect mechanics/skills”.

but again this would be a major positive move all around so will never happend..
it is as likely as them removing the silly “movement slow when in combat” which is also just a silly and badly made design all together….

..
(ow yer and could we stop focusing the ele’s abilities on close combat -.-
yes i am looking at the tempest attunement design (and new skills for that matter, horn not included),
overdrive is an awesome cool idea and i actually wrote an idea extremely similar as a suggestion way back: (i can only assume the smartest dev saw it and thought “thats sounds cool, lets see if we can’t get it in”; and he was sooo close, they just f’ed the actual effect of each attunement overdrive)
so yes, seriously stop making it a close combat thing.
allow the player to select where the overload spell is placed, in the same manner as you would with any ground target aoe… (or make the overdrive differ depending on weapons; so staff got long range abilities, scepter got the current and D gets even closer ranged)

i don’t get either why ALL the attunement overloads are basically the same thing, all aoe damage abilities around yourself (water is support though still around yourself), just silly…
fire should be AOE ground targeted,
lightning should be Single target (big laser from you to target, major damage),
water support (kinda is, but should be ground target and do something really awesome/cool),
earth should be CC+condisions or Major protection.
and all long distance, 900 or 1200 max distance)

edit:
link to my suggestion which is years old, that suggest this overload thing :P
although in a much better way i think ^^
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Attunement-and-Traits-Revamp-idea/first#post2825766

the problem i have seen with ele since release
(havent played in a long time now, just got back not sure i wanna though),
is that it is a mage type which are best when played as an assasin or bruiser type..
meaning it is not a long range CC/nuker, it is an nutriusion fighting, close combat class. (which is OBVIOUSLY not what people that usually enjoy playing mage type classes enjoy the playstyle off (since they would play assasins or warrior types if they enjoyed that playstyle))

this is made so much worse due to the core design of pvp being horrific:
the downing mechanic hard punishes long range nuker builds, while rewarding bruiser close combat build insanely.
the “stay on the point spvp” does the same thing, it punishes builds designed for long range nuking or cc+nuking, and rewards melee bruiser builds.
(here we also need to note that hard cc and actual hard nuking long range is extremely limited for the ele, making the builds with this subpar just because of available skillsets)

the entire games competitive pvp scene rewards those bruiser close combat builds while punishing ranged and nuker builds down to its very core game design… (at least if you don’t enjoy Zerg WvW pvp.. which let us admit is just a big ZERG feast of “meeh”)

and lastly the “field/finisher” mechanics
(which is just horrificly bad design decisions all the way through, arbitrary complexity, forcing specific playstyles, badly designed due to the already too complex setup needing to streamline all the effects of it, etc etc etc.. just a bad idea which got forced through by worse devs -.-)
which force close combat to effectively use all the bonusses (which is a must at higher lvl combat)

which is why a “traditional elementalist playstyle” is just really kitten bad in gw2….
in essense it is due to absurdly bad devs having no clue how to design a pvp scenario that doesnt reward one type extremely compared to another…. (or more likely because the devs are ridiculess biass in their design decisions, with none of them playing “traditional mage classes” )

doubt any change would fix that.
(due to the core game design of spvp and especially downing mechanics, being a direct reason to the main meat of the issue with the “elementalist class”)

exploiters. of all kind. wish they would all be perma banned, but exploiting in gw2 is as normal as using skills is … kittened game

zencow.3651:

Erebus.7568:

any vid against a half decent war that doesnt miss 60%+ of his stuns/burst becouse he simply sucks? (60%+ of his stuns/burst he uses out into tin air, no dodge or defensive used to negate them, he simply just use them without being close enough or facing the target.. its really sad to see…)
else it doesnt really show much and i would still say vs a decent stun war you got 0 chance to win.

Find me one and I’ll see what I can do. The second vid was one of the better warriors I’ve found after searching all day.

thats choking, maybe they just kinda suck then :P

anyway ty for the vids, its nice to see the fight. feels kinda like seeing a full bunker build fight though (takes forever) ^^

Zelyhn.8069:

Erebus.7568:

silvermember.8941:

Erebus.7568:

ARM.3912:

Zelyhn.8069:

Indeed I won’t admit this, not because it is untrue but because this is not what we are discussing here.

Someone made a claim that no ele can deal damage comparable to that of 100b in a single attack, I proved it wrong.

If we start discussing anything more than this, like class designs, then this conversation will never end. We do not have the skills or the knowledge to solve the “grand equation of classes” across all game modes and in all types of content. All we can do is compare simple concepts.

You didn’t prove anything, you just rattled off some numbers you made up. Find a video or find a new lie.

his always like that -.- no proof all talk and trolling…. its freaking annoying to discuss with him becouse of his bs, so just give it up early.

I feel like he is a paid shill design to give new or uninformed ele misinformation.

yup same feeling or that he simply is paid to keep praising anet to make their bad decision look better on the forums. even though its clear to any person not braindead that they continually choose to ignore the issues with the ele instead of fixing them

Please look at my complete posting history and then review your statement.

i did and its the same bs as always, not even vids to try to prove the claim on top mobs…
i quoted another person which actually also proved you wrong easily right here which you choice to ignore yet again and still keep your idiotic claim -.-

as good as every post i see you make is the same bs, and there is a ton of them -.-

Galtrix.7369:

Caffynated.5713:

Galtrix.7369:

I’m still doing massive damage even without full berserker gear.

You’re doing what you mistakenly believe is massive damage. Meanwhile, I’m Hurr Durr Blading my way through life 60,000 damage at a time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITieQhX0MeE

MY EYES!! DX

nice dmg there, now maybe the i**** zely can give it a look and kitten with his lies

tripple post :/ bugged

doeble post bug

Frye.4608:

Well I did go and made a warrior, insta-leveled to 20 with some thing i had in my bank, used 80 skillpoint items for utilities, got level 20 white gear and went into wvw. 4x signets obviously, because I hadn’t played it at all and didn’t feel like learning 4 utilities too.

In a nutshell : IGNORANCE IS BLISS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish i never did this. This 5-minutes-old character was VERY close to my elementalist in the best gear available. He out-heals my ele even. It feels like enjoying your toy train until you see the new XBOX 1080 that the kid next door just got.

For those that think I shouldn’t moan, here is proper scientific research about the need for proper rewards : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HL45pVdsRvE

Now when you are done laughing at animal abuse, tell that monkey that gets the cucumber he shouldn’t moan. He should still be pleased with it, right? We are fundamentally not wired that way. This video also does wonders during pay negotiations with your boss

that vid was pretty awesome, shows the psychologi pretty well