Yeah, the Legendary blog post left me without a lot of hope. It seemed to describe a long process of “do exactly what we tell you, no choice, no options, PLAY IT OUR WAY.”
That seems to be the opposite of fun to me, and the opposite to the first three years “play it your way” promise. I really hope they clarify all this that you will have actual options, and not be forced into specific lanes if you want specific rewards. There are plenty of activities that I absolutely love in this game, but there are also plenty of activities that I want no part of, and I don’t want the game telling me that I have to do a little bit of everything if I want certain rewards.
Again, you are taking the quote out of context again and again. This is the 7th-8th time I counted. The play it your way has always referred to play the class you want. It was never meant to be do whatever you want we hand you the same reward anyway. It couldn’t be taken out of context worse than this. Goodness. Write honestly. Don’t misrepresent the information for your personal gain agendas.
“The play it your way has always referred to play the class you want.”, really? You think that being able to play different classes in a MMORPG is that much of a draw that it would justify making it a games main selling point?
“Honestly” speaking the new system is a grind (defined as engaging in a repetitive task over and over for some gain or reward), its not the worst grind out there but calling salt sugar doesn’t make it any sweeter. There’s no point in faffing about on that point, besides depending on how grinds are handled they aren’t even necessarily a bad thing in gaming.
I think this particular change is so-so, it’s not outstanding but neither is it terrible. There are positive developments and negative developments. The main negative development point for me personally is this recurring idea of pushing players into content they do not like by hiding desirable rewards that are exclusive to that game mode. Rewards that are not merely cosmetic but have real advantages over anything comparable that can be attained in other ways.
I acknowledge that there are many factors in developing and refining systems that limit what you can do within a specific time frame and in a specific area of the game *bold*but*bold* Anet courted a diverse player base, they went out of their way to do this, why should they be any less beholden to part of that player-base than others if the numbers make it viable to do so?
I prefer to do things my way at my own pace, I can play nice with others just fine but only for so long before I lose interest. Long group content is clearly not for me so personally I don’t mind either way what happens to Raids.
That said, raids are hard, the “special snowflakes” that get through them deserve a pat on the head and a noddy badge, but what I don’t want to see however is too many desirable items being exclusive to raid rewards or developer focus and time being disproportionally spent on that game format . There’s a fine balance to be maintained, special snowflakes want to feel special so let them but if everything else pales in comparison or the quality is of a lesser standard then you cater too much to the snowflakes at the expense of everyone else. In practice, although perhaps not in intent, punish the diversity that is suppose to be the products main selling point.
Having some sort of deja vu going on here. I feel like I should stop it but I am always amused by conversations that lead to no conclusion for anyone.
“lead to no conclusion for anyone” would imply that reaching a conclusion is the goal. One group has their absolute ideal the other has theirs, its more a question of who can bang their head on a brick wall the longest than trying to reach a consensus.
If you don’t have it yourself you are free to run raids in exotics no one is stopping you.
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But I am inclined to believe that the community will be much less forgiving than the content itself.
This.
People in fractal runs kick (or ditch) quite readily as it is. Any setback could lose people, and lots of groups are not shy about booting anyone who seems to be slowing them down. I invite you to look for a mid-to-high fractal group when it’s not the daily as a ranger or necro. Bring a book. For extra points, and pull out a bear pet once you get in.
Perhaps you will be more open. If so, more power to you. If the devs are saying this is what you SHOULD have though (“what it’s balanced for”), people will take that as the minimum.
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Also, to be clear, I am not saying that I should be allowed in your raid, or complaining about raiding at all really. Raids are for the elitists, that’s straight from the devs. If you want exclusive content, grats, you’ve got your little hill to be the king of. I’ll check it on youtube.
I’m asking if the design intent going forward is for everything PvE that gets ongoing dev time to require some amount of Ascended gear.
As far as I know there hasn’t really been any conclusive word on that but my assumption is yes, with the 5% stat difference between exotic and ascended being increased to 10% it is likely that this is what they are building their new balance around. It won’t make playing in exotics any more impossible than playing in rares is in regular play now but it will make things a little harder and take a little longer.
In short we’re being gently but firmly pushed in the full ascended direction and considering the nature of competitive play and instanced group play they can also rely on the player base itself to help nudge the rest in that direction. We will likely also be seeing desirable items that are probably non-transferable (so as not to unbalance the economy) and raid exclusive to “sweeten the deal”.
If as a caster main I proposed that only 3 out of every 100 hits from a melee train charge landed would that seem viable to you?
Ground targeting serves a purpose, namely to deny the opposition access to an area, blunt a charge or shore up a failing line. If it does any of the above then believe it or not, its working “as intended”.
Stability is in a good place right now, despite what the naysayers and doom criers would have us believe. It still serves its purpose but no longer gives complete immunity, opening the way to more varied and more tactical engagements than before. You actually have to think before you leap, literally.
God, I hope not. Far too many people running around stealth capable and not afraid to use / abuse it. So for the sake of simple variety I’m crossing my fingers they get something, ANYTHING!, other than stealth.
Public Relations is all about controlling your image. You try to control the pace, frame discussion, set the stage because if you don’t someone else will and not necessarily to your benefit or in a a direction that will prove helpful to your goals. Keeping quiet is counter intuitive to that.
Granted CRM (Customer Relations Management) and PR (Public Relations) aren’t exactly the same thing but they’re similar enough for certain things to apply regardless. A “minimal communication” communication policy makes things kitten the CRM and downright frustrating for customers which makes it harder on PR.
Call it a lack of imagination or maybe an unqualified opinion but this layperson fails to see the benefit.
The changes make it easier on the people who grind AP and I’m happy for them, I am but for the rest of us (or at least for me) it’s not an improvement, really. It’s kind of a schlep .. It’s the carrot and stick method (carrot = slightly better reward, stick = more effort & less freedom), “slightly” better mind, not nearly enough for me to go out of my way to do dailies, whereas before I’d do them just by playing the game. Its safe to say I’m no fan of the new daily requirements .
Since when has fun = bad? Get this straight. You who want zerk do not have fun. You play so that you can eat the carrot at the end of the stick, but you aren’t having fun … Down with zerker. blah blah blah
I may be anti-DPS meter and anti-inspect but there’s nothing wrong with playing zerker, I mean I play in head-to-toe zerker gear and that’s my choice just as it’s everyone else choice to play the way they want to. Playing my way doesn’t make things any less fun simply because I choose to do it with a particular gear stat combo .. to each her / his own.
I think it would be nice to have a dps meter and perhaps even a way to see the stats and dps of people in the party.
It comes down to that, the main reason as far as I can figure there isn’t anything like a DPS meter. We already have things like “optimal” and “non-optimal” (read: “META” and “non-META”) getting in the way of things, if things like group DPS meters and inspect became features they’d have traded the trinity for a single META. They already did this in a way but no sense in taking things further down that dead-end. Nevermind the rampant elitism that would likely reach fanatical levels and alienate a large part of the player base, which is bad for the game as a whole, bad for the player base in general and bad for the company.
Well, given that we are headed into the holiday section of game updates I think it will be a safe assumption that we won’t see even a menial change to the trait system (even for QoL reasons) until AFTER the living story resumes.
So, maybe sometime in February then? Maybe? Anet? Anything? Is there literally ANYthing in the queue for Traits?
Like I’ve stated: at the very LEAST i’d like to see some acknowledgement that they understand the trait system is broken and they’re looking into it, talking about it, discussing it, whatever.
Preferably in a blog post because it feels a little more “official” than just throwing a post on the forums that only forum-members can see.
They take the fight club approach to anything either under development or not under development (The first rule about things under development is: You don’t talk about things under development), so basically the first you’ll here about a change to the trait system is just before its implemented .. I have doubts about them doing anything about traits at this point so don’t expect so much as a peep from them on this.
“We want to give players the opportunity to try things they may not normally experience”, I’m reserving judgement till I actually use the new system but that sentence is 7 kinds of ominous. I’d rather not be given the “opportunity” to be lead around the game on a leash any more than I already am.
Harder should mean smarter enemies that use player abilities like a player would, not overpowered monster abilities that one-shot and have no cooldown at all.
Programming the AI to do that isn’t as easy as it seems, with so many factors to consider and take into account of, its far more feasible to keep the AI for non-unique npc’s and enemies fairly simple. That means keeping their skill set at a level the AI can manage, in practice that means only 2 or 3 skills, short cooldowns to make up for the lack skill variety. Fairly high damage to add a little difficulty to every encounter thereby encouraging you to use strategy, it is indeed more difficult than what you may have encountered before but not difficult enough that the tools you currently have at your disposal are insufficient to the task. The high health pool is to account for us the player, we exploit weaknesses and play in various unpredictable ways. The AI can’t keep up so the health pool is high to maintain that level of difficulty within the limitations of what that AI can do to counter or react to our actions.
Besides a fairly dim-witted AI is actually a better thing than you’d think, we read telegraphed attacks, note patterns and behaviour to survive some of these encounters. If the AI fought as we do (dynamically), considering the numbers they through at us you’d be in a far worse position than you are now. Also consider having to run AI that powerful for every different type of enemy … It may not seem like it but this is really the lesser of two evils.
Oh, that … To be honest not being able to reset via stealth bugged me quite a bit more the clones issue, those buggers kept tracking me invisible or no. I run a clone factory set up so I suppose that made things easier for me with regards our clones being Aoe’d into oblivion shortly after they’re spawned. Phantasms are another matter altogether, so yeah it took a little longer than it could have but I figure it’s still manageable.
We weren’t the only class to have drawbacks in that boss battle, I would think Necro MM’s would have similar issues, to a lesser extent Rangers too, what with their pets. What separates us from them however is that so much of playing the Mesmer class revolves around illusions in one way or another with no way to get around it. Necro’s don’t have to go the MM route, they have options they could play around with. Rangers, well they have a pet whether they want one or not but they can still do a fair amount of damage and function fairly well without one up all the time. Mesmers can’t reasonably get around using illusions, I think that was a mistake in the design but since it is what it is all you can do is work around those shortcomings.
They seem to be playing around with how they structure boss battles, trying new things and all that. I ranged the entire thing so can’t comment much about how it was in melee but in the same way that ranging it or being condition heavy isn’t always optimal (read “just about never optimal”), why should melee? Admittedly I’m not exactly unbiased but whereas power melee generally works well in much of the content across all game modes, having situations where it still works but not quite as well as it normally does isn’t a bad thing.
Didn’t feel kitten in a boss fight being built almost exclusively for condi damage and that’s progress in my book. Here’s to hoping for more of the same, the same direction/concept not necessarily the same mechanics I mean.
I seem to recall reading something along the lines of the plan being not rebuilding LA too quickly as that would diminish the effect its destruction had. As far as its final design is concerned I doubt they have it ironed out completely. It’s their chance to rebuild from the ground up, I’d rather they not hash it so I don’t mind the wait so much. You can sort of see hints of the direction they want to take it though, like decentralizing merchants and such which should help with the epic lag some had in the old LA .. Fingers crossed I won’t be eating my words a year from now.
Those goes more money grabbing scheme instead of fixing the game.
Let’s clarify this for Gaile; as there seems to be a special disconnect when it comes to understanding player desires. (see recent Gem Conversion thread).
It is not that you are adding new items to the game. That is great. Players like new items. It is that too often, as is this case, the items are locked behind an RNG wall with no way to obtain other than Insane Trading Post Pricing (if an item is even tradeable) or sacrificing your first born to the RNG Gods. These should have been added to the Candy Corn Cob Vendor. Even as much as I disagree with the price points on that guy, it at least makes it obtainable without relying on luck. Personally, I think all Holiday items would be a good addition to the laurel vendor as well, similar to the Season 1 Rewards.
You do realize of course that were they to be made available via the Candy Corn Cob Vendor the pricing would have to be balanced around the other methods of obtaining the skins right? Meaning at the end of the day they wouldn’t be any easier to get this way .. which is fine in my books, you need a few high end things floating around out there for those that are interested in that. (see GW1’s Obsidian armor) It’s their relative rarity that gives them value.
Adding holiday items to laurel vendors just isn’t feasible, why earn them any other then and you’ll have lost one of the key motivators of people actually going through the content. Season 1 rewards are available via laurels because those events aren’t going to be developed further so there’s no other way to earn those items.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m more than happy to call Anet out on a number of things, I’m not shy of joining the “angry mob” when I feel its justified but I also think we need to think about our arguments and structure them well in order to be taken seriously and to get what we want, within reason.
Indeed, good to see that it will be changed based on feedback (did anyone actually think otherwise?)
Not so good to see that this will basically mean that people will start raging everytime they don’t like something, since it is shown to work twice in a row now.
While I didn’t join the “angry mob” this time around, they have valid points. Whether or not Anet listens is almost secondary to the fact that the impression that many have is that they don’t, hence the rage. Had Anet dug their heels in in an attempt to forestall any future demands, which they could have, it would have further damaged the relationship between themselves and the player base and it would not have solved the problem merely exacerbated it. Open lines of communication and a happy player base is good for them and its good for us, if players feel they are being heard and their concerns are being taken seriously they won’t feel the need to resort to raging.
In a word, “not happy” (well 2 words .. never did like Math), the Spring 2014 update made leveling an absolute chore. Stuck with it though, ‘nose to the grindstone’ and all that but yeah, with the September 2014 feature patch I think I’m done with that .. I just can’t make heads or tales of it, not the “new” system, I mean the decision to implement it. Why? As I see it, it’s a step backward and I’m no business major or great visionary but that’s generally the opposite direction you want your development to take is it not?
You beat it no problem while others floundered and found it difficult / challenging, well done! What more do you want a gold star? a noddy badge? Honestly I have no problem with those that found it easy, I myself finished it without too much trouble, but I don’t know that it excuses the condescending and self important attitude it’s given some people.
what would have been nice to know that fractals would be required before spending 3 weeks making two thirds of an item.
Choice makes customers happy, social engineering to push people into things they do not enjoy does not.
Sad to see after being away from gw2 for a while the “no soup for you” attitude is still alive and strong.
Ever gone fishing? You hide the hook with bait, after all what fish in their right mind would bite down on an obvious hook? Once the fish bites the hook sets and it’s too late then … I just woke up, the fishing metaphor was the best I could do
I don’t mind a little social engineering, it’s not necessarily a bad thing and it happens all the time but at least usually it’s not so glaringly apparent. When you don’t notice it, it doesn’t bug you as much, but when you do notice it’s annoying in the extreme. That is when you get resistance, that is when you get customer dissatisfaction.
Yes to all of that. If you want to do those tasks, great. Those can be the quickest and easiest ways to do it, but there should be alternatives that might take more time and effort to achieve. Like with other elements of the backpack, “I want a Clay Pot but don’t want to grind T6 for geodes, so I can just buy one on the TP for about 11g.” Options. It’s also worth noting that this is not a standalone item, but rather the extension (possibly not even the final extension) of a multi-stage quest item. Players have put a lot of time and effort into developing their plants to this stage, only to be told that they have to do something extremely distasteful to continue. The “QQing” is perfectly understandable.
Coucillor Phlunt: "Not so fast, my muscular friend. In light of this new development, I have decided to add further stipulations to the deal. ", It’s a classic bait and switch. I was almost 2/3rds of the way in before they pulled out that particular requirement. Not a fan of Fractals, never have been and holding desirable items from other game modes hostage isn’t about to change my mind.
What really gets me though isn’t so much what I feel is a bad design choice but that people who will in no way be handicapped or otherwise negatively affected by the OP’s proposed alternate to FOTM are so strongly opposed to it. /sigh
There’s not much I could add that hasn’t been covered in the last 34 pages (honestly though, only read a few to get the general idea), all that’s left to do is wait for an official response …
This made a lot of players to quit, because they can’t do anything else, there is no GOAL in the game anymore. That’s where the problem lies, and now Anet is heading into the right direction, in my opinion, with introducing this method …. it will be worthwhile to do dungeons and a lot of players will have an incentive to log in again and play with the game.
so the solution is more powerful gear? (yes, yes its only marginally more powerful but bear with me here) then when these same people are done getting this gear what then? release another set of marginally more powerful gear and upgrade legendary tier weapons again? no, so make it harder to get maybe? epic grinds don’t deter some so i guess releasing this armor in stages sort of addresses that problem while you wait for the release of the next expansion, which is exactly what i think A-net is doing. its a holding pattern. this isn’t a flame, by any means, nor necessarily a criticism , just an observation. as i’ve yet to see exactly how this system will be implemented (granted its pretty simple in concept) and play out. while cynical, for now i’m content to wait and watch.
Miscalculated the range or duration in a dungeon today (still not sure which) when i left to go fetch someone who was stuck behind several hordes with no waypoint access to where we were. ended up stuck there with him when my portal wouldn’t co-operate …. it took forever and a day to get back to the others in what was meant to be a speed run. I’d love a visible timer or range icon or some sort of indicator on the UI
not sure i could stand another major nerf, mesmers are a useful lot but not particularly powerful in a conventional sense (sometimes stating the obvious is necessary). “balancing” which seems to always come down to nerfing in our case would negatively affect either usefulness or the little raw power we have. adjusting the portal i have no problem with, as long as its nothing too drastic but what is it about mesmers that makes A-net want to pick on us so much?
Trahearne hijacking your personal story – I can deal with, i don’t need my character to be the archetypical messiah / savior or even be in the spotlight constantly but it does feel awkward when you feel like the third wheel on a date in your “personal story”
2.
final mission of the “personal story” is compulsory group content / dungeon – Here too i can deal, its disappointing at best but on its own is not quite enough to make me storm Areanet HQ at the head of an angry peasant mob; pitchfork, torch, tar and feathers in hand.
3.
the loss of all individual identity after level 40 – the game mechanics being what they are i understand why your character seemingly looses all previous personality traits, racial identity and associated quirks / mannerisms. becoming almost bland in comparison. the change is more obvious for some races than others but this is the bottle-neck where the various initially different stories and their distinct characters and “feel” need to be woven into a single coherent narrative. i understand that, i don’t like it but i understand.
Its the unholy trinity of these 3 things that on their own are, at worst, minor-ish annoyances but put together form the basis of the only major criticism i’d go to the trouble of leveling at this game.
i came, i saw, i … dithered about at the gate all confused expression and disbelief before turning around and going to see if i couldn’t track down that one pair of gloves i need to get the full set of armor while i waited to see if i’d be any more inclined to finish later. a bit anticlimactic really. its been a few weeks now and i’m no more motivated to than i was before, although i did finally find those gloves. i give Arah the evil eye from time to time when i see it on the map, smug as you please, a yet to be completed quest line but that’s about the limit of my interaction with it. yeah its not “impossible” in the way that most unpleasant things aren’t impossible but it doesn’t mean you necessarily want to do them either. Taking nothing away from the rest of the game, which is on the whole fairly decent (that’s a compliment btw) this last bit of the “personal story” left me deflated.
They came out more or less the way I expected them to, if anything, they look more plant-like now than they did in a few of the earlier trailers. If they look similar to humans its cause they’re meant to, just like fern hounds look like dogs (No one really complains about that though).
Not really a lore buff but I remember something about them being the Pale tree’s interpretation of a human and there being a large variety from the near human looking to more plant looking ones. In real world terms that means since everyone has their preferences, instead of limiting Sylvari aesthetics one way or the other and probably catching flak from a section of the fan base, they leave the choice up to the individual ( within the limits of their vision of a Sylvari ofcourse ;-) )
My only gripe is with the shortage of Sylvari themed armors (I mean other than cultural armor, couldn’t they atleast start you off in leafy armor?) but that’s more of a minor annoyance than anything, nothing major.
Didn’t really play the first game or the expansions, read up on the lore though for context, so I prob can’t say much in the way of Lore that hasn’t already been mentioned. Speaking from the writers perspective though I assume the Charr are as they are because that’s their niche role. They weren’t particularly cultured or advanced in the first game because they didn’t need to be. They were the antagonists as seen through the perspective of the PC and humanity in general, taking into account racial bias, the constant warring and the resulting hatred between the two is it that much of a surprise that they seemed (as I’m fairly certain was the intention for you / us to) little more than animals. They were also not playable, interaction with them was usually limited to fighting so they didn’t have to be particularly well fleshed out or have much of an Identity outside of their role which was to play the antagonist.
Skip ahead 250 in-game years and they are playable, need to be more fleshed out, are now multifaceted / complex and they’ve advanced technologically (even given my opinions on this all I’ll admit to be taken by surprise by just how far they’ve come on this last front but what we’ll give the near archetypical little green men from mars with space-age technology aka Asurans a free pass because they slap a “its magic not sci-fi” stamp on everything but when the Charr have Industrial Revolution level technology with a few WW1 era military additions we cry foul?) The reason I figure the other races haven’t changed much is because they already have a niche, they have an established place in the narrative. The Charr are re-defining theirs outside of being the brutish antagonist of the earlier games. The other race that is still finding their place / niche in the story are the Sylvari. Imagine that, the 2 races still carving out their roles / niche taking prominent roles (in terms of important characters met, leadership roles and general input into the story) … Hardly a coincidence.
