Afaik, your friend should be able to access Siren’s Landing, at least, as long as he has logged in recently, or up until the release of PoF (assuming he also owns HoT).
As far as LS3 content access goes…. here’s a comparison:
- Sub games: charge for XPacs and any new maps that come with them; rent you access to the game and XPacs you also bought; rarely if ever add new maps between XPac’s.
- Most non-sub (or sub-optional) games: gate access to new maps behind an XPac or DLC price; and tie access not only to that price but also to ownership of the base game. Note the dual conditions required — own base game, plus pay.
- ANet: publishes DLC (every 2-3 months). They also charge for it. It may be shorter DLC, but then the episodes don’t cost very much. They also have a dual access condition requirement (own latest XPac and pay for episode). And here it gets different: they waive the DLC cost for people who log in during the episode’s release period.
Which one’s the better deal? I know what I think. I suspect that the sour grapes from people who didn’t get that free unlock is based on frustrated expectations caused by inattention and/or failure to research fully before purchase; and failure to consider what the alternatives are in the gaming industry. No one else gives DLC away, even if it’s “just” a loyalty reward.
Fyi, you can go to the Dev Tracker on these forums and use your browser search. This will be CTRL F on most browsers. Type the search string into the box that appears. Be aware that you can only search one page at a time, but if looking for the latest news, start on page 1. Also fyi, I don’t recommend “ticket” as the search string, at least not now, as it appeared many dozens of times on the first page.
This post by Gayle Gray was in a thread about 6 days ago.
“Hello,
I checked in with our Customer Support Team today, and they said they are making steady progress in reducing the queue and in improving turn-around time on tickets. Things are still very busy for them, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel!"
Given that there is uncertainty in speed of handling tickets, I suspect this is about as close as you are going to get.
… while it’s a well known fact that tiers would resolve the current problem with raids …
How is that a fact? You’re ignoring facts. ANet has stated that legendary Armor is and will remain an exclusive reward for the only tier of raids currently in existence. Fractal weapon skins only drop in higher tier fractals. Anyone looking for L. Armor would not benefit from lower tier raids. For that to be false, ANet would not only have to change their mind about sticking to one tier of raids, they’d also have to change their approach to exclusive rewards in the only tiered content in the PvE game.
If you get over your rage, try googling PayPal.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world’s largest Internet payment companies.7 The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.
PayPal can be used in more than 200 countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal
If you don’t get over the anger, or decide to leave anyway, good luck.
More importantly, there’s no reason a skill needs to suck unless you’re fighting something with a defiance bar.
Reasons for short duration.
- Vs. normal mobs: most of these mobs die so quickly that lengthier duration is not needed. In the case of a few of them, short duration CC serves to interrupt mob skills a players might not want used. The only thing lengthier CC would accomplish in these fights is to CC-lock the mob until it’s dead. Boards don’t hit back, and neither do mobs that die before they can use a skill. This makes for boring combats. Core already has too much of this kind of fight. The game does not need normal HoT and forward mobs to not be able to fight back.
- Vs. Veterans: Short duration CC serves primarily as an interrupt. Some veterans have mechanics that players might find dangerous, or more likely annoying. While lengthier CC might actually expire before their larger health bars get ablated, this is hardly a necessity of game design.
- Vs. Elites are generally encountered (outside dungeons) in events that have scaled up due to the number of players present. Longer CC duration could mean these mobs will spend the entire fight unable to act, if the multiple players present have at least some game awareness. Meanwhile, short-duration CC would still be useful to interrupt.
- Lengthy CC in other games’ PvE is used primarily to remove one opponent from a fight long enough to deal with another. There is little need for such in GW2 given the plethora of cleave and AoE available to characters.
That you either disdain these reasons or didn’t think of them does not mean there is no reason for CC duration to be as short as it is. It also does not mean the skills “suck” in any kind of sense other than that you don’t like the way it is.
And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.
Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.
I understand that you are addressing the OP, but imo there is a pretty big difference between “unfair” as in
Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players
, and thinking that they are actually being cheated.
No, I was addressing you. Specifically, I was offering a counter to your contention that there is a vast silent demographic that is having trouble and not saying anything about it. A lot of people consider themselves to have been cheated if there is a reason they cannot complete a game. As soon as they start thinking the game is unfair, they start thinking that it was not worth the money. From there to cheated is just one less rational step that’s all too easy.
Interesting, I wouldn’t have guessed that you were replying to me as you were talking about “being cheated” which I never said or implied. I also don’t see, nor agree with your logic-leap.
“Cheated” was offered as a motivation for player complaints, not something you said. The logic leap might even be a stretch. However, that does not change my opinion that a vast number of those who have difficulty will complain rather than remain silent. Psychologically, some will think it isn’t worth their time to complain. Others complain loudly and at length anytime they think anything is wrong with their purchase. Some will, some won’t.
Neither of us know percentages. ANet might. Maybe there aren’t vast numbers having trouble?
As I said, I don’t see the leap that someone who might think that the game is too difficult for them = they feel they are cheated. But you are obviously entitled to your opinion that people who find something too difficult for them will complain. I don’t see much evidence for that in the world, but perhaps I have missed it.
And I never said there were “vast numbers”, if you re-read my quote what I said was
the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it
vast: of very great quantity or expanse; immense
The use of the term vast to describe a majority certainly implies indisputable numbers such that no amount of edge cases being swayed the other way would reduce the majority below half. Those are numbers you do not have, which makes the claim spurious.
Let’s face it, many who post here are trying to sway others (especially ANet) to their views. In that context, use of the phrase is a bald-faced attempt to sway opinion using a spurious claim. You even all-capped it.
I’m not going to fault you for trying to make a case. I can and do object to claims to know what other people who have not posted are thinking. A simple, “I believe that there have been many people who failed story missions due to difficulty but who have not complained.” would have made your point. It would also have avoided implications that you know things you cannot know.
I apologize for not recognizing that as the source of my reaction in the first place.
And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.
Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.
I understand that you are addressing the OP, but imo there is a pretty big difference between “unfair” as in
Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players
, and thinking that they are actually being cheated.
No, I was addressing you. Specifically, I was offering a counter to your contention that there is a vast silent demographic that is having trouble and not saying anything about it. A lot of people consider themselves to have been cheated if there is a reason they cannot complete a game. As soon as they start thinking the game is unfair, they start thinking that it was not worth the money. From there to cheated is just one less rational step that’s all too easy.
Interesting, I wouldn’t have guessed that you were replying to me as you were talking about “being cheated” which I never said or implied. I also don’t see, nor agree with your logic-leap.
“Cheated” was offered as a motivation for player complaints, not something you said. The logic leap might even be a stretch. However, that does not change my opinion that a vast number of those who have difficulty will complain rather than remain silent. Psychologically, some will think it isn’t worth their time to complain. Others complain loudly and at length anytime they think anything is wrong with their purchase. Some will, some won’t.
Neither of us know percentages. ANet might. Maybe there aren’t vast numbers having trouble?
I will never understand why people bring up armor weight as if it’s a big debate point.
Maybe because heavy armor users take much less damage so they suit better for frontline?
Assume a 12,000,000 base hit.
A Berserker heavy armor wearer in Ascended takes: 5,284
A Berserker light armor wearer in Ascended takes: 6,100
A difference of 816, about 15%
A heavy armor wearer in Ascended with +1.5k Toughness takes: 3,182
A light armor wearer in Ascended with +1.5k Toughness takes: 3,461
A difference of 279, about 9%
Toughness makes a much bigger difference than armor weight. As you add more, the percentage taken between heavy armor and lower weights decreases.
That’s not to say that guards and revs are not front-liners for a reason. However, that reason is less the weight of their armor and more due to their contributions to the current boon vs. boon-strip meta.
We have 3 choices here.
1. Make it so these special collection skins are fairly easy to get (Not recommended)
2. Make it so we don’t have small challenges like Sanctum Scramble, and instead put it behind a large grind (Something I don’t personally want)
3. Keep it as is.
ANet has more than these three choices.
4. Find something else that presents a challenge to replace the adventure requirement.
5. Drop one requirement, still leaving, iirc, 13.
I do find it ironic that a reward attached to an Elite Specialization requires playing fringe content that requires one to not use one’s build.
Putting the inmates in charge of the asylum is never a good idea.
So, um, why does even ranged exists, then?
Because:
- Players (including, apparently, the OP) like to use ranged attacks as part of a character concept.
- The existence of ranged and melee in the two PvP modes allows for greater diversity and counter-play.
- There is a huge skill continuum in GW2. Players on the lower side of that continuum might want to stay at range in some encounters, as doing so is often safer and thus more enjoyable for them
The OP’s mistake is not in wanting to play an at-range character, it is in asking for a removal of the opportunity cost for doing so.
It sounds like this issue could be resolved if you made a minimal effort to either go around mobs a tiny bit more or use the skills just prior to running straight through it/them rather than while right on top of them.
It’s not that small. Especially in crowded areas and in Orr, where most enemies can see you from across the map. Your mistake was assuming that I don’t make effort to avoid enemies. My entire point is that now it’s significantly less reliable with warrior wielding a warhorn. Which is true. And it’s also an unnecessary change for such a small ‘upside’.
Since I very rarely have issues avoiding mobs when going somewhere else, I can only assume that you are not making enough effort. As to a change, I can only assume that ANet was thinking about its combat use, not running across the map.
Faster in combat movement isn’t just about foes that try to run away. I agree that is rarely a problem. The biggest benefits to increased in combat movement, IMO, is closing with foes more quickly and maneuvering to reduce incoming damage. I can save dodges for really important moments if my movement is sufficiently fast to allow me to maneuver out of the way of some attacks without dodging.
This.
I wouldn’t call the sales of HoT “really really low”, do you have something to back that up? Someone officially claiming that the game indeed sold really low? Because the lack of revenue after the release of HoT can also be attributed to the core game going free to play and not being good enough to increase the sales of the expansion. And that conversion of free players into paid customers was indeed confirmed as one of the causes for the reduction in revenue, while the sales of HoT weren’t.
In the earnings report for Q4/2015, NCSoft reports that GW2 made about $13.5M more in the HoT debut quarter than in other recent quarters, and that “other sales” (i.e., gem store) were “stable.” At the minimum $50 price, that’s 270,000 sales. Of course, for retail sales, ANet only got wholesale money. However, they also sold $75 and $100 packages. At a guess, they sold 300,000 copies, possibly more, in the release quarter.
Q1/2016 sales were also higher than the quarters leading into HoT. However, no statement was made as to the stability of gem sales. It seems likely that there were quite a few HoT copies sold, but nowhere near as many as Q4/2015 unless gem sales tanked. Doubtless, ANet sold more HoT copies since Q1/2016, but there are no indications of how many as they only report revenue, not where it comes from.
It seems possible they sold around 500,000 copies all told, but who knows? I tend to think that 600K is too high, and that 400K is too low, but I could be off at either end. Bottom line, though? We don’t really know.
I’ll leave it to someone else to decide if what we do know represents low sales or not.
Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay and Bitterfrost Frontier throw loot at players like it’s going out of style. I seem to get more rares on BSF, for what it’s worth.
BSF has mini metas. The first is a periodic cycle where players close 8 rifts, then a Champion Bloodstone Elemental appears. There’s also a cycle of 5 events. The first four involve fighting Jade Construct Champions which appear and try to destroy Bloodstone Stalagmites. The fifth event involves defeating a leyline Legendary. Then there are a series of Champion Spirits which appear at night, followed by an escort of the spirit of a character who appeared in the original game. Finally, there’s a standalone boss spirit also from the original game, and his pre-event. BSF does require gliding and mushroom jumping is a plus, but navigation there is significantly easier than any of the HoT maps.
EB and BFF don’t really have map metas. EB has several repeatable (daily) hearts, each of which has a pre-event/boss event attached. BFF also has repeatable hearts, and a day/night cycle with Champs appearing at night. Players in BFF can also chest run (solo or not) using a torch taken from one of a series of shrines. The chests mostly contain a currency or two, and a couple of green/blue salvage bait. Rares drop with reasonable frequency as event rewards in both zones. Again, gliding and mushroom jumping are a plus.
The trick to these maps for me has been to jump from one to the other. They aren’t as involved as the SW (to me), so avoiding over-play means I have not yet tired of them. I rarely play more than an hour or two at a time, and there are few occasions on any of these three in which I don’t have full bags before I’m done.
Finally, each map has a currency that one can gather (Blood Rubies, Petrified Wood and Winterberries). Those, plus Unbound Magic can be exchanged for Ascended Trinkets with access to the HoT stats as well as core stats. The vendor in BFF also sells, for the same two currencies, Ascended Breathers with selectable stats.
Hope this helps. I didn’t speak of the other 3 zones because I don’t know them well. Maybe someone else will.
Good luck.
Of the three core Necromancer Elite Skills, only Plaguelands is usable underwater. Lich Form and Flesh Golem are not. That you did not experience it on your Ranger means you were using either Spirit of Nature or Strength of the Pack. Had you tried Entangle, you would have been unable to use it underwater.
I think it was a mistake to remove the vendors. However, no amount of whining has changed Anets mind on this yet (keep at it though, the mapping requirement in WvW was removed because of the perpetual whining).
I say that as primarily a wvw player. Let the thing be bought with badges and let the people who don’t get how awesome WvW can be, leave with their little trinket.
ANet has thrown a few bones to PvPE and WvW players over the years. Reward tracks which award PvE rewards is one. They’ve shown little interest in catering to the, “I don’t wannas!” of PvE-primary players.
The WvW mapping requirement was removed because the nature of WvW kept people who wanted to engage with the requirement from succeeding. Players who wanted to do the task were often unable to because their server was always third, and thus the same color week after week. There were times this lasted for months. Through no fault of their own, they couldn’t succeed.
Needing to put in a few hours to complete the track is not in any way unfair. Players who attempt to complete the track, will. The vagaries of WvW matches will have little to no impact.
I don’t fault you for wanting PvE players who don’t really want to be in WvW to leave. However, I doubt ANet is going to bend on this one. If someone really doesn’t want to engage fully with WvW, they can still get the Gift via dailies, even if all they ever do is Big Spender, giving them a use for all those badges from achievement chests. It just takes longer.
You know what this all sounds like to me? It sounds like ranged classes need their damage buffed to make up for lost booms etc. And melee classes should receive more damage mitigation for taking the risk. Both can deal competitive damage, range won’t get the extra defense because of their natural safety and melee can get a boost in survivability. Seems like a good way to play how you want and still be a contributing group member.
Sadly, every class has ranged and melee options, which means how do you buff what?
One could buff ranged attack damage by boosting skill coefficients on ranged attack skills. I suppose, in theory, ANet could add a Defense stat to any weapon whose skill range is <300, say. Not that doing either is necessarily a good idea.
Nothing would prevent a group from taking all ranged weapons, and still stacking. They’d get the buffs as well as the increased ranged damage. Melee bosses could prove difficult to keep at bay if everyone were trying to camp 900 or 1200 range, though. Most ranged attacks, it doesn’t matter that much. However, Ranger LB and Mesmer GS suffer damage loss when not at long range.
Working in concert with others within buff range is a choice. So is staying at range. Buff range is smallish, largely because of the size of capture points in sPvP. That it also adds some small degree of challenge to instanced combat is likely a happy accident.
The radius on Locust Swarm is 210. 210. That’s really small.
Radius on Call to Arms is 600. While bigger, this is also not huge. A skill that applies Vigor is primarily meant for combat, but whatever.
It sounds like this issue could be resolved if you made a minimal effort to either go around mobs a tiny bit more or use the skills just prior to running straight through it/them rather than while right on top of them.
ANet has demonstrated in the past that they track a lot of data (I remember in the one-year anniversary blog seeing that Risen Thralls had caused the most defeats). Whether changes need to be made might be determined by stuff like:
- 65% of players complete story instance X with no defeats; 25% complete it with 1 defeat; 8% complete it with multiple defeats and 2% fail to complete it after multiple defeats.
or
- 15% of players complete story instance X with no defeats; 23% complete it with one defeat; 27% complete it with multiple defeats; and 35% fail to complete it after multiple defeats.
I’d be inclined to decide, were I in charge, that the former scenario is acceptable, but the latter isn’t.
The opportunity cost for being able to benefit from group boons and heals is the need to remain close to the character applying the boons/heals. If someone can gain the boons (or give them, since an increase in range would work both ways) without needing to remain close, then the opportunity cost associated with gaining them has been removed. Opportunity costs are good for games. Removing opportunity costs makes a game less interesting, and less challenging.
This is a good example of how opportunity cost works in game skill design. The opportunity cost for being able to move the skill throughout its duration (as your target moves) is that the skill is PBAoE. The opportunity cost for being usable at range would be that the skill, once cast, would be locked at that location, as is Lava Font.
Ele has plenty of options for cast-at-range AoE. I suggest leaving Overload as is.
And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.
Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.
I understand that you are addressing the OP, but imo there is a pretty big difference between “unfair” as in
Story missions, especially those with bosses, are way too hard or unfair for solo players
, and thinking that they are actually being cheated.
No, I was addressing you. Specifically, I was offering a counter to your contention that there is a vast silent demographic that is having trouble and not saying anything about it. A lot of people consider themselves to have been cheated if there is a reason they cannot complete a game. As soon as they start thinking the game is unfair, they start thinking that it was not worth the money. From there to cheated is just one less rational step that’s all too easy.
And it takes empathy to understand that the VAST majority of people having trouble in any situation are not going to admit it. Look at the running joke about men not asking for directions.
Sure, there will be some people who are too embarrassed to admit they’re having trouble. However, you are VASTly underestimating the fact that people are very likely to squawk if they think a product is cheating them. Ask anyone who works in retail.
Condition damage for conditions main damage
Precision for proccing traits/runes/sigils with extra conditions
Expertise for condition durationYep, just 1 stat.
Then my conditions ignore Toughness and Protection, but they suffer from -duration, heavy condition removal and Resistance.
Explain to me why when a Thief does to much damage people call out the Thief, or if Revenants deal to much damage with CoR people call out CoR.
However when someone does to much damage with Conditions, it’s ALL Conditions that need to be adressed (read: nerfed hard). Despite the fact there are many builds that use Conditions that are balanced or even underpowered.Maybe i should start doing that too. Gunflame does to much damage, nerf all Power stats by 20%.
Horrible logic. Everyone saying Precision and Expertise are necessary feel free to explain to me why Dire isn’t available in sPvP then? Because it’s completely rigged as a setup, you would get way more out of just the condition stat than someone running just power.
You call my logic horrible and come up with such complete nonsense yourself.
First you make the faulty premise that Dire is not available in pvp because it’s unbalanced. Secondly, you make the faulty assumption pvp is a paragon of balance to begin with. Thirdly you propogate the false idea that WvW is an equivalent gamemode to pvp, when even anet has acknowledged it isn’t and balanced it seperately.
Forth, there are also stat combinations available in pvp amulets that are not in pve.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Bringing-PvP-stat-combinations-to-WvW
As well as various runes/sigils that are only available in pvp.Then you also make the false assumption that only getting Condition damage is better than only getting Power as an offensive stat. A claim that has been made time and time again over the past few years, yet no one has EVER bothered to actually proof it. Just parrot it.
Your counter “argument” is entirely based on assumptions, with absolutely nothing backing it up. It’s below horrible logic, it’s not logical at all.
no one needs to prove that power alone is worse than condition damage alone, its something thats just known.
“I don’t need to proof my claims. We’ve just screamed it as fact long enough that it is has become a fact.”
its already been proven, is my point. like stop trying to argue that lmao
An appeal to “conventional wisdom” is the same as conceding the argument. What you’re really saying is, “Some people agree with me so I’m right, but I have no proof.”
Horrible logic. Everyone saying Precision and Expertise are necessary feel free to explain to me why Dire isn’t available in sPvP then? Because it’s completely rigged as a setup, you would get way more out of just the condition stat than someone running just power.
Yes, Dire was removed from sPvP. PvP has a lot of bunker going on. Dire’s direct damage counterpart, Soldier’s, is also not available in sPvP.
I’ve tried different condi builds using Rabid or Dire. A lot of them ramp up slowly and do not have the huge ticks of damage. There are also some condi builds which ramp up a lot faster, and do generate large ticks.
It’s also possible to generate a power build that hits like a truck, or one that doesn’t. No one complains, though, that the direct damage stats are at fault. They recognize that discrepancies in power build effectiveness are balance issues. Well, the same is true with condi builds. Some builds have too many cover conditions, which make cleansing difficult. Some conditions have fewer stacks but larger ticks. It’s too easy with some builds to apply a lot of stacks.
Were ANet to adjust the numbers of the condition damage stat, the under-performing condition builds would be even worse. I’d rather they fix the real problem, the numbers on the conditions applied by some weapon/utility skills and some traits.
This can’t be right. I don’t see Burning Precision (apply burn on crit) or Arcane Precision (apply bleed in earth and burn in fire attunement). There’s also traits like Symbolic Power (symbols have a chance of burn), Ancient seeds (striking a CCed foe bleeds), Sharper images ( illusions bleed on crit).
So, lack of diligence on my part, you got me.
Lowest common denominator is not the best way to talk about the player skill continuum in an MMO. Skill is better discussed as being on a bell curve. A seven range curve (very low, low, below average, average, above average, high, very high) will produce results where the ends of the tails (very low and very high) are much smaller numbers than the mid-range (average). This is likely going to be true even in games where the curve is heavily skewed (either towards more skill, or less skill). A game population in which those with the least skill are in the largest demographic on the skill continuum is unlikely.
So, the question with regard to GW2 is. “Where on the skill continuum do we see people being consistently unable to complete story instances?” On the seven range curve I talked about, do these people fall only in the very low range, or do we include the lows? How about the below averages? I think we’d see a lot more complaints if the dividing line was higher than the low range.
How is it that to play a power spec, you must get multiple stats such as power, precision, ferocity, and when you play a condi spec you only need 1 (maybe 2) stats at most and the rest can be put into tank (toughness/vitality).
This assumption is incorrect. You only need max power, precision and ferocity if you want to maximize your direct damage output. If you want to similarly max your condition damage, you also need three stats: condition damage, expertise and precision (there’s a lot of “apply condition on critical” out there).
So, the questions should be, “How does Rabid compare to Knight?” and, “How does Dire/Trailblazer compare to Soldier?” If you answer those questions, you will see that the discrepancy is lower than people who hate on condition builds are assuming.
Now, the OP is expecting three rebuttals. While all three are applicable, the real issue is balance. There are specific skills which apply conditions that are out of balance. However, that’s not a gear issue, it’s an issue of outlier skills. There have been and still are outliers for power damage attacks, also.
Adapting is another good one, though I’m not going to play the meta card. Condi has been strong in the PvP modes for a long time. However, they’ve certainly gotten stronger since the condi rework. Power, on the other hand, has always been strong. The real issue in most of the condi complaints is that the power players don’t want to have to adapt.
Are we living in same era?
Most traits and sigil has been patched to be on hit instead of on crit.
Zero on-hit sigils apply damaging conditions. Two on crit sigils apply a damaging condition: Earth and Torment.
Of the 9 professions, five have a trait that can apply a damaging condition on crit.
Sharpened Edges: chance for bleed on crit
Rampant Vex: chance to apply torment on crit
Bloodlust: Chance for bleed on crit
Sharpshooter: chance for bleed on crit
Barbed Precision: chance for bleed on crit
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way it’s designed in GW2 creates a problem where defensive stats actually undermine your defense in most situations, which largely makes them a pointless trap option, and that’s just silly.
Flawed assumptions lead to flawed conclusions. True in every case, true in this case.
I don’t see how adding an easier mode for the story stuff would harm anyone. /shrug
It works for fractals, tweak the awards and achievements based on difficulty level and its a fair model. Same for raids.
The problem with adding tiered difficulty is that it would take ANet time and resources to do so. How much we don’t know. However, in one of the threads on easy mode raids, posters were cautioned (by Gayle, iirc) not to assume that adding difficulty tiers would be easy.
Also, were ANet to start adding easy tiers to raids and story, will they then be asked for hard versions of same, as well as hard versions of open world maps? Why should people who want things easier get what they want, but players who want harder content have to accept easy content in a lot of aspects of the game?
You’re supposed to boon strip Retaliation off your target. The problem in PvE is that not every class can boon strip, and the mobs only have three moves, so odds are unless it’s a normal or Vet, the boon will just go back up after a short time. If your boon strip is on CD, or you don’t have any, yeah, waiting it out is not a lot of fun.
Even if they remove the cost (or just lower the cost, which I think would be sufficient) and put in a basic ident vendor so people don’t have to do hearts, people still won’t be happy until the unid’s are sorted by color. People don’t want to be bothered by blues and greens and the sigils / runes they’ll absolutely get from them after id-ing.
I sort of feel that was mildly the purpose of unid’s to begin with – an answer to all the complaints about minor and major runes and sigils cluttering up inventories. (Because it’s so tedious to merch them) And this does address that. If you salvage w/o id-ing, you don’t go those items. Do you potentially salvage an exotic? Yes. The trade off is you get a bit more in materials and you don’t have the minor/major sigil/rune clutter. If you are worried about potentially missing out on that rare or exotic, then it’s your choice to id things. At which point, its your choice to deal with that clutter. Trade offs are not necessarily bad things.
The trade-off of getting more mats and not dealing with runes and sigils versus losing a chance to get a whatever ought to be sufficient. Why does the side that chooses the latter also get added cost and inconvenience?
I’m guessing they feel there needs to be another gold sink in the game. This seemed like the logical option to stick it on. Would you be fine if they dropped the cost completely, but still required you to do the heart grind? Or drop the heart and lower the cost? Or introduce a purchasable indent kit like gw1 that we need to lug around? It wasn’t free there either. Cheap, but not free.
If magic find does affect what can drop from the unid’s, maybe they have a better loot table which should result in better drops = potentially more money gained? As opposed to just salvaging the materials and selling them, since the glut of materials will likely drive those costs down. Its one theory behind the cost, but since I’m not in the dev’s head, I honestly don’t have an answer as to ‘why’
Either way, I don’t think their mind set was ‘how to we kitten over our players today?’ After all, they are players too. They get to deal with this the same as we do.
Yeah, well, I don’t think so, either. However, I don’t trust them to take the desires of anyone but the loudest group into consideration. I also don’t trust them to get things right. Dwayna knows they’ve gotten plenty wrong.
For now, lets put it at a wait and see. It could be more valuable to identify then salvage. Unless salvaging Unidfied loot happens to give lower tier leather and cloth… then well… you bet your kitten that I’m going to skip iding.
Wait and see is all we can do besides let our feelings be known. Oh, well, if this system works as I fear it will, it won’t be the first time ANet has given me the short end.
Even if they remove the cost (or just lower the cost, which I think would be sufficient) and put in a basic ident vendor so people don’t have to do hearts, people still won’t be happy until the unid’s are sorted by color. People don’t want to be bothered by blues and greens and the sigils / runes they’ll absolutely get from them after id-ing.
I sort of feel that was mildly the purpose of unid’s to begin with – an answer to all the complaints about minor and major runes and sigils cluttering up inventories. (Because it’s so tedious to merch them) And this does address that. If you salvage w/o id-ing, you don’t go those items. Do you potentially salvage an exotic? Yes. The trade off is you get a bit more in materials and you don’t have the minor/major sigil/rune clutter. If you are worried about potentially missing out on that rare or exotic, then it’s your choice to id things. At which point, its your choice to deal with that clutter. Trade offs are not necessarily bad things.
The trade-off of getting more mats and not dealing with runes and sigils versus losing a chance to get a whatever ought to be sufficient. Why does the side that chooses the latter also get added cost and inconvenience?
Assuming the runes/sigils complaints were the driving force behind the ID system, why does a change designed to benefit those complaining have to have a negative effect on some of those who were not complaining? Why should one have to go to a vendor to see what one’s loot is? Why does there have to be a cost? Surely ANet could have designed a system to benefit group A while having no impact on B.
A solution to bag space issues does not have to be a win-lose scenario. Absent more info, it sure looks like a lose for me and anyone else who likes seeing their loot. Under other circumstances, I’d be happy to wait to complain after seeing more about this system. However, once it’s implemented, it’s going to be too late — if it isn’t too late already.
I like the idea since, from what I’ve heard, you can salvage without having to identify AND the unidentified gear will stack with itself. This will cut back on the “hurr, I killed 5 things and now my bags are full” problem. I don’t see the big deal.
The unid loot includes ALL loot drops including exotics. You right click, salvage all, and just salvaged a pre-cursor you didn’t know about.
As much as I despise the identification annoyance that is looming …
The loot in the UnID’d container is not going to be rolled until and unless you ID. What that means is that players will be salvaging chances to roll a precursor if they salvage. That’s also assuming that IDing uses the same loot tables as other containers and random drops from mobs throughout the game. If it’s a separate loot table, with Elona-themed items, for instance, the table may or may not include precursors.
The chance for a precursor is small enough that most people probably wouldn’t give two cruds if they salvaged it. I mean, we’re talking about a chance that is only SLIGHTLY better than winning a lotery. And you can get it from killing a freaking level 5 tuna.
I’d rather play than spend the time bashing through thousands of unid loot worrying about this being the one.
Unless they give higher chances of exotics, named exotics, precurssors, or interesting skins… I don’t see it being worth the effort if you’re going to get a massive heap of masterworks.
And this is the fundamental dichotomy, folks. This new system by ANet caters to the mindset that loot stinks. Identification aids and abets players who think the way this one does, while kittening anyone who dares to actually enjoy the loot aspect of play.
There’s a way to please both groups, though. All they’d have to do is remove the cost and the need to go to a heart vendor. That way, no one loses. People like Leo salvage to their hearts content. People who want to open the containers open them the same way they do bags now. No, but we can’t have a win/win, we have to have a win/lose.
So if there’s no tag and no squad, what? Just abandon the map? No. Anything that bolsters the idea that the only way to play is to blob or scout for one makes WvW worse. The existing system is not perfect, but no system — including the OP’s suggestion — will be.
I like the idea since, from what I’ve heard, you can salvage without having to identify AND the unidentified gear will stack with itself. This will cut back on the “hurr, I killed 5 things and now my bags are full” problem. I don’t see the big deal.
The unid loot includes ALL loot drops including exotics. You right click, salvage all, and just salvaged a pre-cursor you didn’t know about.
As much as I despise the identification annoyance that is looming …
The loot in the UnID’d container is not going to be rolled until and unless you ID. What that means is that players will be salvaging chances to roll a precursor if they salvage. That’s also assuming that IDing uses the same loot tables as other containers and random drops from mobs throughout the game. If it’s a separate loot table, with Elona-themed items, for instance, the table may or may not include precursors.
If you liked Affliction Warlock and Shadow Priest, try Blood Magic Necromancer. If you decide to run a direct damage (power) build, use dagger/focus opposite ax/focus and wells. If you want to do an attrition (condition damage) build, use scepter/dagger opposite staff and make sure to slot Epidemic as a utility skill. Of course, gear for whichever damage type you choose (power or condition damage).
Whether you choose condition or power, once you gain the blood magic line, your attacks will siphon health. You’d have the largest health pool in the game and a second health bar in Death Shroud. The rotations are not hard. You can avoid minions if you aren’t into pets (I don’t run minions on any of my necros except for the short-lived ones which are created with the Rise Shout in the Reaper Elite Spec (which you won’t have and won’t need to worry about while leveling). You can get a speed boost via the skill Signet of the Locust or the trait Quickening Thirst in Blood Magic’s Adept Tier (you should have a dagger in either main hand (power build) or off hand (condition build).
I have zero downtime in GW2 with any profession. It may have been long enough since you played, but health returns quickly, weapon and utility skills are mostly on short cooldowns and the few that take a bit of time are generally “Oh, crap!” skills that you will not need in most fights.
Welcome back and enjoy.
Alas, if only forum topics could be more descriptive, so readers could know what they’re about before being subjected to the sight of a gaudy asura.
jk.. that’s actually kinda cool
Qui legit, et cave. (Let the reader beware)
Half tempted to solo the last instance of HoT without armor and no traits allocated just to prove a point on how soloable it is.
The two biggest barriers to completing such content are twitch skill and willingness to experiment to find something that works. You cannot teach twitch skill, but you can show people builds that work. Removing your build would simply be demonstrating your twitch. All you’d be doing was proving someone wrong on the internet. That would not be helpful.
Except twitch skill isn’t really needed for that instance. Content can only get dumbed down so much before it becomes a detriment to the other players. It should not be balanced around the lowest denominator.
So, what, it’s all about build, then? How is doing the instance without a build going to help?
To show how soloable it is. The same way that you could show that anyone could do dungeons way back when without needing exotic gear. You handicap yourself to the point where it’s obviously soloable with regular gear and builds.
And the people who think it’s too hard will learn nothing, because they will assume that you are just a better player than they are. Your video would just prove their point in their own minds. If all you would be doing it for was to prove them wrong in your own mind, or blow your own horn, that’s fine. If you’re trying to prove something to those complaining, it won’t work.
You’re probably right that it’d be ineffective.
I just feel that content should be nerfed so that to the lowest denominator. Now if the main issue is like what the poster above you said was theirs, perhaps Anet could implement something where an NPC gives hints if you don’t make progress after awhile or something. At least that way you would sit fighting a boss for 20+ min without any progress and getting frustrated if you couldn’t figure out the mechanic.
I assume you meant “…shouldn’t be nerfed to the lowest common denominator.” in the first line.
I’m of two minds about ANet putting hints in the game. They tried that with some of the old world bosses. I’m not sure how effective that was, or if people who might have needed such were paying attention. My question would be, “Would enough people use the hints to make putting them in worthwhile?” If so, I’d like such hints not to be obtrusive for people who like figuring such things out.
The issue is that there are different types of people involved. Some like encounter mechanics and harder bosses. Others just want more of what they’re used to and like, which is showing up and kicking the NPC’s butt without changing build, struggling with mechanics, etc. The issue is exacerbated because much of the core game and Personal Story encourages just that type of gameplay.
For those who want the latter, maybe it’s enough that there be walk-throughs on the wiki or Youtube. The problem with that, of course, is that some really don’t want to use those resources. I doubt ANet is going to change existing story instances up. Who knows what we’ll see in PoF?
Half tempted to solo the last instance of HoT without armor and no traits allocated just to prove a point on how soloable it is.
The two biggest barriers to completing such content are twitch skill and willingness to experiment to find something that works. You cannot teach twitch skill, but you can show people builds that work. Removing your build would simply be demonstrating your twitch. All you’d be doing was proving someone wrong on the internet. That would not be helpful.
Except twitch skill isn’t really needed for that instance. Content can only get dumbed down so much before it becomes a detriment to the other players. It should not be balanced around the lowest denominator.
So, what, it’s all about build, then? How is doing the instance without a build going to help?
To show how soloable it is. The same way that you could show that anyone could do dungeons way back when without needing exotic gear. You handicap yourself to the point where it’s obviously soloable with regular gear and builds.
And the people who think it’s too hard will learn nothing, because they will assume that you are just a better player than they are. Your video would just prove their point in their own minds. If all you would be doing it for was to prove them wrong in your own mind, or blow your own horn, that’s fine. If you’re trying to prove something to those complaining, it won’t work.
Half tempted to solo the last instance of HoT without armor and no traits allocated just to prove a point on how soloable it is.
The two biggest barriers to completing such content are twitch skill and willingness to experiment to find something that works. You cannot teach twitch skill, but you can show people builds that work. Removing your build would simply be demonstrating your twitch. All you’d be doing was proving someone wrong on the internet. That would not be helpful.
Except twitch skill isn’t really needed for that instance. Content can only get dumbed down so much before it becomes a detriment to the other players. It should not be balanced around the lowest denominator.
So, what, it’s all about build, then? How is doing the instance without a build going to help?
I imagine it’s not an easy problem to fix. They could make it so groups could not join squads, but that would inconvenience people who want that functionality. I’d say the inconvenience would be trumped by the loss of progress in instanced content, but I’m not one of the people who do join.
Half tempted to solo the last instance of HoT without armor and no traits allocated just to prove a point on how soloable it is.
The two biggest barriers to completing such content are twitch skill and willingness to experiment to find something that works. You cannot teach twitch skill, but you can show people builds that work. Removing your build would simply be demonstrating your twitch. All you’d be doing was proving someone wrong on the internet. That would not be helpful.
The lack of gem store sales goes to two things. Anet said it themselves. Not enough free to play players picking up HoT. Their words, not my words.
Every game has attrition. This is particularly true of a 3.5 year old game. There were a lot of people who bought HoT, finished it in 3 months and left again. That’s called normal in MMO space. You don’t have to blame HoT for normal. You’re only looking to blame HoT because you don’t personally enjoy it, so you want to read those numbers as not normal.
Most MMOs 3 months after expansion drops lose people. WoW does. No one blames the expansion because it’s expected.
What Anet expected was more free to play players to pick up HoT, because of that happened there probably would have been more gemstore sales
But there was a very loud negative publicity surrounding HoT and launch and anyone in the industry will tell you that’s the worst time for bad publicity because it’s the time when 90% of your sales are being made
Personally the community did more to damage the game than the game itself. In the beginning Anet did make some pretty bad blunders, and those blunders got major coverage. People on the fence don’t buy when that happens.
Less people in the game means less game sales, but then, a content draught for the main player base also means less players which means less gem sales.
You can blame it on HoT all you want. It’s fueled by our dislike for HoT. Normal falloff is normal.
Edit: As an example, dungeon rewards were completely nerfed and a reasonable percentage of the dungeon running community, which did exist, stopped playing. They didn’t stop playing because the jungle was too hard or the maps were too complex> They stopped playing because their content of choice was not worth running. That has very little to do with how many people who played HoT liked HoT.
Edit 2: Here’s a thread from reddit, which is community controlled, instead of just anyone posting anything. People who post stuff that doesn’t get community support tend to get downvoted until they’re posts are no longer visible.
Naturally reddit is comprised of people who probably know the game better, but at least there, this is what the community thinks.
I’m not blaming HoT for anything. I am debunking your previous assertion that gem sales were stable through HoT launch and for a year thereafter. They weren’t. The only possible explanation I offered as to why was, “Content drought.” not HoT.
The statement about “not enough free players bought HoT” was in the NCSoft report. While ANet may have provided data and analysis, NCSoft made the statement. Lower gem sales being due to free players failing to buy HoT? May have been a thing, but to my knowledge ANet never stated that as a reason. The statement in the report was about revenue from HoT sales being below expectation. In the same report, gem store sales were cited as “stable for Q4/15.”
I also challenged your assertion that raids were at fault for the content drought. While that’s a perception shared by a bunch of people, it’s a flawed one. I’ve already said why. Maybe if you reread without going on a mental tangent that I’m somehow blaming HoT for something, you’ll get what I’m saying.
The rest of your post is addressing things I did not say, or mean to say. I’ve criticized HoT in the past. I leveled no criticisms at the XPac this time.
Anchorage can be contested. The Shipwreck Rock WP is at a similar distance and does not get contested. Fixing it does sound like a good idea.
- The most potent and most-common small-scale classes aside from cases where things end up totally overpowered tend to be ones which are absolutely useless in zerg fights. When was the last time you saw a commander ask for rangers, thieves, or mesmers (outside of a veil/portal/blur bot)? They’re basically useless in big-scale encounters, unfortunately by design.
To give a little bit to the mesmer class here.
I’ve never been turned away from an organized group for playing a support chrono.Boon sharing resistance is still pretty important, especially since everyone’s boons end up corrupted most of the time anyway.
Not to mention dropping gravity wells deep on a group’s back line can flat out stop small organized groups from standing a chance against your larger, less organized zerg.
I haven’t been in T1 in the past few months, so maybe things have changed, but last I knew, since the changes to boon sharing the mesmer was no longer included as part of the meta which is why I excluded boonsharing from the list.
Upped usage of necromancers and condi reapers and the likes for mass corruption pushed them hard out of their prior purpose AFAIK.
There’s a degree of utility which any profession can bring – I frontlined a bursty power thief meant for target prioritization/pin sniping in most groups up until this last patch which removed my build from the game – but there does come a point when people need to understand “yeah, I’d generally be more useful on a guard if I were equally as good on it.”
The mesmer has the ability to make some pretty big moves in highly organized groups, but historically so have thieves and mesmers. Most open raids won’t kick by profession choice – it’s why they’re open raids – and always want you playing your best, whatever profession that is. That doesn’t mean they aren’t secretly hoping for more of what’s on the top-end of useful.
I guess we’ll see how desirable Deadeye is for zerg play once PoF drops. If it is, that’s one less roaming profession that’s a red-headed stepchild in a zerg.
There is far too much CC, but there is also far too much access to potent, permanent boons, and far too much access to invulns and blocks/negation as well.
The way things are right now, you can’t kill people without locking them out of playing their characters, because most professions are just immune to everything and super mobile/reset-capable for good portions of every fight.
If they nerf CC, they need to nerf everything else.
And I’m not at all opposed to that.
I fully agree, though it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle once it’s loose.
Five months of a content draught is a long time, particularly for an expansion that wasn’t huge to begin with. If you look, at every other MMO they follow the same pattern. WoW subs start falling off after 3 months and by six they’re pretty low.
Raids aren’t a scapegoat. Raids are a very visible target that wouldn’t have been a target if something besides raids were coming out for the PvE crowd.
You can’t take a casual PvE game with no raids, add raids and then ignore the rest of PvE for 9 months without actually experiencing some raid hate. Not necessarily because raids deserve it, but because they become a symptom of what’s wrong.
Yeah, that’s the perception, but it isn’t the reality. The reality is that most of the live team was working on things other than raids, it’s just that they felt they needed to address issues with HoT and lay the groundwork for regular periodic living story episodes going forward. They no more ignored general PvE in the drought than they did in the ~9 month drought that preceded HoT release.
After five months, sales fell about back to were they were and it took more than a year before they dropped to their currert low state.
As stated before, Q2/16 was the biggest drop in revenue from (primarily) gem sales that the game had seen. They went from a median in the months preceding HoT of ~21,000 Mn KW to ~14,000 Mn KW. They may have dropped further since (I lost interest in following the numbers tbh) , but you cannot say that gem sales remained stable for a year after HoT launched and be accurate. In fact, of those discussing the Q2/16 numbers, a lot pointed at the significant drop and blamed the drought, which of course led to blaming raids.
So, I’m going to ask. Did people blame the Shatterer revamp, or the revisions to HoT, or the balance team, the L. Weapons team? No, they blamed raids, because of prejudice. Just as there were a lot of factors that led to HOT sales being substantially lower than there were active accounts before it hit, there are a lot of factors which led to the PvE content drought. Most of those get ignored. That makes raids a scapegoat.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
The expansion did fine for well over a year, longer than WoW expansions hold their own The drop in profits only happened after a very long content draught in which the only PvE content coming out was raids. The indictment should be on the raid focus while ignoring the casual player.
Your memory is poor and your prejudice is showing. HoT launched in Q4/15. The content drought extended from its launch until July of 16. The first quarter in which revenue dropped below 20,000 Mn KW was Q2/16 which began about 5 months after HoT launched and included 3 of the last 4 months of the drought. That’s a fair bit less than a year.
By March, 16, people were complaining that there was nothing to do in general PvE. If HoT had done fine for a year, its content would have held peoples’ attention longer than it did.
As to the so-called raid “focus,” that’s where your prejudice is showing. Raids coming in intervals of a few months per wing was known before HoT launched. Access to raids required HoT purchase. Keeping to a schedule does not mean that they abandoned or ignored the casual player.
Other things occupied a lot more dev time than a couple of raid wings to which a small number of devs were assigned. What other things? Shatterer revamp; HoT revamp (bet that took a bunch of person-hours) , at least one balance patch, one L. weapon, two festivals and gearing up to be able to start cranking out Living Story on a more regular basis.
Raids were the scapegoat. A lot of people need to blame something. Some of the non-raid community are prejudiced against raids. Some of the raid community make statements that reinforce the stereotype of raiders as seen by non-raiders. Blaming raids was picking the low-hanging fruit. I guess I’ve grown to expect more from you, and I’m sorry to be disappointed in this one case.