And about the silent majority… while no one can speak for everyone, from just looking around we know that 90% of the players don’t have legendaries, spinal backpacks and full ascended sets with different stats to swap out for different purposes.
While I have all this stuff, it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to put in this kind of time/effort just to be able to play mid-level content.
What have “legendaries, spinal backpacks….” got to do with skill or challenging content?
But of course. I have a set of zerks just hanging out in my invetory.
“Ping gear zerks only”
-pings dusty zerks in bottom of invetory- Here ya go meta lord. Let’s do this dungeon and go our separate ways.
Haha, yeah, I mean you could just join or start your own non meta group and not be a total jerk but sticking it to the mean old meta man is just so cool.
1 lvl 11 mobs(eagle raptor) is now able to kill a lvl 80 warrior in full ascended nights gear that’s using healing signet.is this to stop us afk in low lvl area.
how does ltp work when you are afk?
I think the current downscaling is ott, but using an afk death as an example of that seems a bit daft.
The ltp issue is clearly “don’t afk where a mob can kill you”.
One more players who got ascended berserker gear and is afraid to grind another set with different stats. Sorry, buddy, but conditions are the new meta right now.
The instanced pve meta (the only place ascended is really needed) is still direct damage/zerk as far as I am aware.
I do not care for speed. I’m not a speed runner or plan to ever be a speed running. Zerks are unappealing to me.
I’m sure everyone who uses this forum can now sleep soundly knowing how you personally like to pay the game.
Perhaps tomorrow you can make a thread letting us all know what type of icecream you like whilst trying to bash people who like other flavors, we will all no doubt be utterly enthralled.
we have no clue how much content HoT has. we dont know how many maps there are, we dont know how many dynamic events there are, we dont know how many story line missions there are, we dont know if there are dungeons / fractals or even raids. how can you objectively make this statement "But I just refuse to spend 50 bucks plus on Silverwastes 2.0 and some LS updates. " ?
Perhaps they should have released a bit more detail then. The whole ambiguity with regards to the “challenging content” alone is enough in itself to raise doubts.
This is the problem right there. True MMOs suck. They’ve always sucked. Guild Wars 2 made an attempt, with mixed success, to take the suck out of MMOs.
ESO didn’t take the suck out of MMOs and so you’re right. It feels much more like an MMO. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only guy here who thinks the MMO industry is broken.
Now do they want me take hits or not!? I mean all this active combat talk and yet they intoduce tanking gear.
I’m not sure where your confusion lies here tbh. They include non glass sets for a variety of reasons, non of which invalidate the thing you seem to be arguing against.
And please don’t start me on this “Gear doesn’t determine playstyle” nonsense. Take a look at entangle in a power and condition build. Same as necromancer scepter, offhand sword warrior and life blast in 0/6/4/0/4 terror builds.
And yet gear clearly does not determine playstyle, it supplements it.
So when you read LFGS “zerker exp only” it translates into “I want as much gold as possible on my limited play time, don’t join if you are going to slow me down.”
My solution: Along with the 24 hour time range/gate that is already in place, create a 30 minute time range where you can only earn 1 dungeon path reward and make the dungeon reward 5g.
What this does is it makes it so speed does not equal more reward.
So you rather want to reward "Hurr Durr, I’m going to join a “Zerker only” party with my nomads gear to troll them" -people?
Actually yes. I interpret anet’s design philsophy as one where they want to promote players to be friendly and not toxic. If we remove speed = more reward from deungeons, i believe there will be less zerker only elitism in lfgs. And if lfg was more friendly towards casual players and beginners we can actually see the dunegon community grow at an alarming rate and in which case anet might want to support dungeons more.
Yeah, wanting to make changes to gameplay/mechanics in order to teach bads who wear zerk gear a lesson doesn’t seem like the best idea in the world.
Raising the challenge/threat/danger level to where that happens more often than it does now seems like a GREAT idea to me. And that’s not just the spite talking .
Yeah it sounds like a great idea, when done by adding new challenging content.
Content which pushes active defense and group synergy within the current combat mechanic framework, not which artificially creates faux challenge by whacking in randomness and unavoidable damage just to shaft those “filthy zerkers!!!”.
If it’s a very small amount now, what makes you think the hard core crowd is going to be satisfied. I see two pretty much mutually exclusive events.
Either there’s enough hard core content to satisify the hard core crowd for a period of time, which means there’s the rewards problem I fear, or the hard core crowd gets some token hard content and doesn’t really stop complaining anyway.
Not sure why you think that getting a tiny bit of content is going to stop the complaints, or even hard core people from walking away.
“The hardcore crowd might still moan, so let’s not bother adding anything at all”.
Yep, kittenes me off no end, because with the latency I have in Tasmania, it’s quite a bit harder to get the Liadri mini than it would be if I were stateside. That’s pretty much the only challenge in the game I haven’t managed….but I haven’t tried that hard. When you die in that fight and you’re no where near the black area that’s killed you on your screen, you pretty much know it’s not worth your time.
So there is a precedent for it in the game and oddly enough I don’t see it causing the game to fold.
Adding in some challenging instanced pve (which will comprise of a tiny fraction of the games content) is not suddenly going to see the playerbase collapse and the game shut down.
Trying to please everyone leaves no one pleased.
Perhaps they should have thought about that before making a game with open world and instanced pve, with spvp and wvwvw.
You need to read my argument again. I didn’t say BIS gear. I said rewards. Let’s pretend Anet puts the coolest mini or coolest tonic in a raid. It’s possible. A cool outfit. A cool skin. Now, if there becomes enough of those things that people can’t get, people will feel disenfranchised. That situation doesn’t exist now..
I understand all the advantages that instances have. But a lot of people in favor of instances don’t seem to understand the disadvantages, or they deny them when other people point them out.
Having played many games centered around instances, I think I know some of the problems they cause. You can even see some of them here. The divide between “elitist” speed runners and casuals. The abuse of people who aren’t quite as efficient because the people they’re running with are so pro. The exclusion of certain professions from runs altogether.
That stuff doesn’t happen in the open world. It’s an equalizer. It allows people to play what they want, not in the most efficient manner. And you know, not all people see an RPG is as a system that has to be beat.
So if you lock the challenging content away in instances that are so hard you need specific builds to beat them, as was sometimes the case in Guild Wars 1, you end up with people demanding certain builds and you have a more toxic community in general. You may not see this as a problem but I do.
Even in the open world, harder content can cause tensions but no one can stop you from participating. That’s a big thing to some people.
So as much as I’d like to see forms of content that are challenging in the open world, I don’t want to see this stuff locked away instances so a small percentage of gamers can do harder content, particularly if that harder content rewards them in such a way that people who don’t want to do it are pressured to do it for those rewards.
That’s how it works in most games and I’ve always thought it sucked.
Yes the game needs more challenging instanced pve content.
The game is a themepark, not some deeply complex sandbox, adding in some new instanced content is not going to suddenly take away peoples beloved semi afk chest farm zergs, or prevent them from adding other non instanced stuff.
If they had wanted to purely focus on a “open, living, breathing fantasy world” they should have made a player driven sandbox. Instead they made a themepark which includes instanced pve.
Because something that can be soloed can hardly be challenging for a group. See all the speed run records. The dungeons are a joke for any half decent group.
That makes no sense following on from your initial post. Why would enforcing n man gates a) make dungeons challenging or b) make any sense?
“Dungeons are a joke”, fine, you don’t make them harder by enforcing arbitrary gates just to stop soloers, you instead make them more challenging (adding in gate mechanics if they make sense, are part of the lore, or are fun for that particular dungeon). Now if someone can solo them after that, all power to them. But your original idea to gate them just to stop soloers is a bit odd.
Wow, some of you “It’s an MMO stoopid!” sound like a bunch of self-righteous prigs.
I agree with the OP.
So, how does letting me solo something detract from your fun?
btw that’s rhetorical…
I’m all for soloing dungeons in this game, it’s what I enjoy (outside of flipping the TP and stuff like Liadri, it’s all I do really). But from my point of view it’s more a case of “the developers spend the square root of zero time on dungeons, what little time and effort they spend on them should be spent on making challenging small group content, not ensuring that every single path is soloable”.
Well, if you look at the votes for the video, most are upvotes.
So, it would seem like most of the people who watched it are, actually, quietly agreeing and that the people trying to defend the current situation, for whatever reason, are a vocal minority.
-1
The opposite should happen. Each dungeon should have at least 1 spot where 5 players are required to stop people from soloing group content.
No.
Edit: Why on earth would you enforce that? As long as a dungeon is set up to promote challenging group play, there is zero reason to arbitrarily enforce a specific number of minimum players.
Add in n person requirements/gates when you think they make sense/increase the challenge/fun. For all other times, if someone is capable of soloing group content (or doing it duo or three/four man), why should you whack in gates to prevent that?
The meta will shift somewhat with the new expansion (symbols dps meaning mace/focus second set instead of sword/focus second set etc) but zerk should still be the go to stat choice.
I can empathise with the OP but as a someone who enjoys solo dungeon/fractal runs, I couldn’t care less that certain gates/mechanics mean that some paths are “off limits” for solo attempts. At the end of the day it is meant to be group content, just enjoy the ones you can do.
Personally I’d rather the devs spend what limited time and effort they devote to instanced pve in the future (and let’s face it, it is going to be very limited time and effort) to adding new/improved small group challenging content.
The dungeon story goes along the same path as the personal story, while separate in influence it still plays along the same path. So assuming you do the PS as you level, waiting till the end to do the dungeons will still seem out of place.
There is nothing to stop the player grouping for the content at the relevant time (i.e. doing it in order), then going back at max cap to solo them (in order), take his/her time and see the cutscenes.
Tbh there is nothing really stopping someone making a group saying “no cutscene skipping” either, for story mode that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Anyway, I fear we maybe derailing the thread somewhat.
They are already soloable, just takes some effort instead of steamrolling.
Dungeons progress as you level. So while you can solo some of them at 80 w/exotics but not at the time the dungeon was designed for. I doubt a level 40 can solo CM Story.
I’m not entirely sure why that matters. Just go back at level cap and solo them.
True. But the content content is not challenging enough. We don’t really need a guardian or mesmer in most of the current content. We need really need protection or weakness except maybe in fractal 50 melee. We need try to give vigor to the team, we never need to take sigil of energy except in solo, etc. More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.
That’s because the content is a) old and b) easy. Neither of which is a problem caused by zerk stats, “the meta” or active combat.
Perhaps if people started making “Heres some suggestions for new challenging content” threads instead of “omg kill zerkers already, my facetank needs to speedrun!” it would be a step in the right direction.
I do agree with you though, we do need more content and more challenging content at that.
This does not work. Because they would still be running the equivalent of “zerker” which means best dps – only instead of 3 stats you would only take two.
Yes but zerker now is 3 stats out of 3. If it was 2 stats out of 3 (hell it could be 3 stats out of 4, i don’t care). Then people could take zerker and still have a choice left for the 3rd stats which would be support or defensive oriented. Condition Duration could create a problem because maybe Power, Precision, Condition Duration would be the only optimal gear since condition duration is hybrid. It’s a support and dps stats. But now we enter into detail or a undeveloped idea, so….
This solution is basically nerfing our damage and making everything take longer but doesn’t change anything else.
It’s nerfing only if they remove ferocity and won’t balance anything at all. Like i said, they could keep ferocity and give us 4 stats gear instead of 3. Or they could remove ferocity and balance things out so the nerf isn’t too high. They could boost power, or they could merge precision and ferocity together. There is a lot of option to limit or eliminate the nerf all together.
It doesn’t actually create more options though, it just shifts from one optimal gear choice to another. Trying to force in one defensive stat for the sake of it seems pointless.
For any given specific content dps/dps/x will be optimal, that will be the meta. A necro going from zerk to dps/dps/condi or a guard going from zerk to dps/dps/boon duration does nothing to increase gear options, it merely sees a shift from one named set to another.
The fact that all the serious enemies tend to rely on slow, heavy attacks means Block/Dodge/etc. have way more value than Tou/Vit/Heal in most Dungeon/Fractal situations.
In an active combat system, active defense should have way more value than passive defense. Even so, said passive defensive gear/builds are more than powerful enough to trivialize a large amount of the games pve content.
Someone mentioned something along the lines of “zerkers should be punished when not taking supportive players”. The point is, they do. The support is gained through active defense, as it should be. Some still seem to be equating “support” with standing at the back of the party spamming heals or taunt/tank/buff, a line of thinking simply not at odds at all with this games combat system (instanced pve).
Why didn’t you just solo it when you were poking around in there?
As for your suggestion, I can’t really see why not, hard modes would also be nice. But in all honesty, the chances of the existing dungeons getting any major updates is slim to none.
Ele is good for soloing, warrior and guard are also very good for it (not tried soloing on any other classes so not sure about others, although I imagine thief is good as well.
As the other poster mentioned, not every path is soloable due to mechanical restrictions.
In terms of resources, the forums here are good ofc (especially the stuff by any of the guys/gals from the likes of DnT, SC, qT or rT) and you can always check the following:
Ugh, thanks for reminding me of SWG. Talk about ruining one of the best mmos (or at least one with the most potential and scope outside of the like of UO and perhaps EVE).
If you are talking about the Player Senate, it was a good idea that allowed for a decent link between the wider player base (those that interacted on the forums predominantly) and the devs via the representatives. But ofc, there were issues with it at the same time.
I disagree completely. They are 100% responsible for general game play behavior of every player (unless it is hacking, scamming, or potty mouthing in chat).
I pointed out that the so called toxic environment is seemingly brought about by people who either a) can’t read, b) want to troll zerk groups or c) people moaning about min/maxers because their build/gear doesn’t fall into the meta remit. The developers are not 100% responsible for said actions.
Yes there are content issues and yes the designers are predominantly to blame for them, but the “toxic environment” is mainly down to the players as mentioned above. You could find like minded players to clear dungeons and make constructive threads asking for future changes. Or you could troll zerk groups and kitten post all over the forums moaning about elitists, that choice to be "toxic"is down the the player.
Either you make your dungeon a full blown speedrun, and intentionally design it for that purpose. Or you prevent this sort of skipping, and create a fun, rewarding dungeon crawling experience, where not the only reward is at the end. You spread out the fun and the rewards, so the entire experience feels rewarding.
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