Showing Posts For Lenaro.5924:
There’s no question thief has high mobility but that doesn’t make the class OP.
And Crinn there is no question badly played is badly played. But good thieves know the limits of what a thief can do and learning those limits is the first step to beating thieves.
Most thieves aren’t good enough that they are “unkillable.” If any player can’t beat a class no matter what then they need to learn how that class ticks.
You would be correct if the primary focus of PvP weren’t mobility. The fact that Thief reigns supreme in mobility is a problem when the meta of a point capture focuses heavily on roaming and decapping.
Thieves are, more or less, unkillable in skilled hands. If you somehow manage to land CC amidst their flurry of iframes, they will stunbreak out, and if they’re clearly outmatched they can simply run.
What, specifically, would you suggest is the counter to this playstyle?
Edit: To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Thieves are statistically OP. Or even that they’re OP in a match breaking way. What I’m suggesting is that Thieves so clearly embody an essential role in the meta and there’s no counter to that role and no profession which performs it better.
For everyone quick to jump to the defense of Thief answer a question:
How do you counter a Thief without assuming misplays on the Thief’s part, or that you have a superior Thief?
The OP is right, Thief has a massive impact on the match because they fill an essential role in a point capping game mode. They also fill it in such a way that nothing comes even close – nothing can replace a Thief at decapping/roaming without taking a hit to efficiency.
Assuming the Thief is a good player if you attempt to engage them while they backcap then they’ll move on. They have damaged your team as you’ll take more time chasing/stopping them then they will, they will rejoin the fight sooner, or reach a new point to decap sooner. The Thief wins when a better fighter wastes time chasing them, that is their objective.
every class has counters
learn this and prosper friend
Enlighten us.
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Seriously?
The entire game’s combat system is and was designed around PvP. Do you really think that PvE is why we have active dodge mechanics, downstate, stunbreak and mobility skills?
Like seriously half the traits and 4/5ths of the utility skills are literally pointless in PvE and are only used in PvP.
Absolutely, most of those mechanics are specifically tailored to PvE.
Downstate mechanic offers nothing but needless complexity to PvP. In PvE it offers an alternative to immediate death. The player screws up and should die, but is given the potential to not.
Mobility skills exist in every game, and most aren’t overly useful in PvP. On some professions, this isn’t true, but to give an example – Rocket boots, one of the Engineer’s few mobility skills, is garbage and you would never substitute a better skill for it in PvP. Mobility makes travel through the world more engaging and serves mechanic avoidance in PvE quite well. In PvP mobility alone isn’t useful enough to use a slot for (weapon abilities don’t count as they don’t have the same cost of a slot). To justify the use, it needs much more packed in utility.
Active dodge mechanics better service PvE than they do PvP in GW2. They serve as the primary mitigation tool for difficult PvE, they are the crux around PvE is designed in the absence of a concrete role system. In PvP something equivalent was certainly necessary, but iframe dodges actually serve to, again, create needless additional complexity.
Before you completely disregard this idea, hear me out. Iframe dodges extend fight length in PvP, they make it far more difficult to land big burst, they increase the importance of CC which increases the amount of CC, this increases the amount of stability, which increases the amount of boonrip, which increases the number of boons, etc. They are an important part of PvP and the game would be very different without them, but to give an example: a better implementation in PvP would be to have 1 iframe dodge on a considerable CD. This would create broad windows of opportunity for attack. As stands, they add a ton of unnecessary complexity.
Stunbreaks are a PvP designed feature, you are correct there.
As for traits/skills/weapons, it’s true of every game type. Most of the traits/weapons/skills are pure garbage in a given mode, many are pure garbage regardless.
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I think the three biggest opponents to PvP in the game are..
1. Players have access to too much in every build. The game is suffering from a bloat of abilities/function in PvP. Builds have too much crowd-control, too many boons, disengage, survivability, stability, passive effects, trait bonuses, etc. In order to convince new players to participate the low-end should be simple enough, but with the current system, there are so many variables at play that it becomes hard to track what an opponent has. Everything ends up feeling unfair because the player simply can’t understand the full scope of what their enemy has available.
2. Too few game types, which sadly is almost impossible to resolve at this point. It’s not simply a discussion about introducing new game types and maps, it’s a problem with population. Each new game-type is likely to divide the population unless they always get added to a baseline PvP queue. Even this creates problems, however, as not every player will enjoy every game mode.
3. This is more a personal gripe, but I still strongly believe the downstate is an example of unhealthy design for PvP. It works well enough in PvE, but accomplishes nothing in PvP while having a massive impact on the game-flow and build choices. I suppose it’s not the biggest issue, but it’s representative of an issue in PvP – a lot of systems/abilities/choices simply weren’t tailored to PvP and it shows. A massive rebalance needs to occur, not just of abilities/professions, but also of systems which support PvP.
This is exactly the issue that in my opinion damaged PvP significantly. Every class can play in theory many builds and be anything from tanky to support to damage dealer. Also, you can combine and be a little bit of everything and even deal 2 kinds of damage. So, if you look at some other PvP games (since I am focusing on PvP in this thread), characters there also have some diversity, but their roles are more or less pre-definded, which is what Anet tried to avoid in GW2. However, I think it backfired because it created overly-complicated matching system, where there are just too many variables to be taken into account in order to create balanced matches.
You’re entirely accurate in my opinion. A role system helps PvP as roles imply a system of trade-offs. You might be a glass cannon by default or have limited crowd-control, but you can do damage that no other profession is capable of.
The idea that every role is viable for every profession destroys the system of trade-offs which is healthy for balance.
(edited by Lenaro.5924)
The Good
- The new map is fantastic, particularly the fact that it effectively merges two biomes together within a cohesive theme. Easily one of the better maps released so far.
- The new mastery is fun and the map is designed well to take advantage of it.
- The final fight was engaging and a relatively cool set piece.
The Bad
- The story is dreadful, not in terms of content but in ramifications. There are two possible outcomes.
The first, it’s not actually Balthazar – which is an awful reveal as all it amounts to is a cheap bait and switch. The second, it was actually Balthazar – this has massive ramifications to the scope of the world. We just fought and beat a “god”.
Let’s assume the “gods” are simply powerful entities – why are we equivalently powerful? Why is anything a threat following this? Even if you suggest the god was weakened, this episode spiked the player power level massively.
Additionally, multiple components make no sense, like how Balthazar hired a massive army of Charr, of all things, as mercenaries. The world doesn’t suggest those options exist. Did he pay them? How? Why would they accept? Your character is incredibly well known. When did an army sign up agreeing to fight them?
The fact that any humans allowed us to fight Balthazar is awkward. The fact that we chose to is awkward. If a god of any practicing religion showed up and asked for my fancy new toy I would give it to him, doesn’t matter if I don’t believe in that religion. The fact that we immediately antagonized/attacked Balthazar is weird. I’m assuming this is all a setup to introduce some issue with the human pantheon, but it just comes across as odd in an episodic fashion.
There’s doubtless an intention to tie loose ends together and create something out of this story, but you’re not adding this story in a format which enables that. If this were an expansion a surprise twist followed by enlightening the players can work. This is an episode, it should largely be self-contained. As it stands, this massively undercuts any worldbuilding attempts in the future. If you were really hell-bent on the idea of introducing Balthazar you could’ve done it sensibly and in a more interesting manner. As stands, there was nothing suggestive of Lazarus being a “god” and it simply feels out of left field while adding nothing interesting.
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Warrs kill DHs btw
No.. power war CAN kill dh. The matchup still favors DH.
true story war loses to dh easily
Piggy-backing to say I get kittened by DH’s all the time as WAR. I can win if they screw up, but it definitely feels slanted in their favor.
On the primary topic – the main problem I have with DH is actually how well traps fit into a bunker/contest the point style. I’ve had it happen on numerous occasions that a DH simply runs to the point, often against bad odds, and traps.
At this point I feel like I have 2 choices…
1. Eat the damage, pop all of my mitigation/iframes/dodges to prevent them from contesting the point
2. Back off the point and let them freely decap it
Neither choice feels acceptable, I feel like either way the DH has come out ahead. To me, though I’m far from the most experienced player, it seems like DH is the only build which forces the decision of either lose the fight, or lose the point. When I’ve chosen to eat the damage, even on WAR with a substantial amount of invuln, I’ve always lost the resulting fight without massive team support showing up. It takes too many of my defensive abilities and I’m left with a fraction of my kit following the traps.
By comparison, I choose to get off the point – I cannot re-enter it until my team shows up. I could enter and, just as I would had I remained on the point, blow all of my defensives to survive – but then I lose the resulting fight. I just don’t understand what the proper response is.
(edited by Lenaro.5924)
Continued from above…
7. PvP
Lack of any fun class mechanics, fun game types, rewards, any attempt to balance certain fundamental flaws in the combat system in regards to PvP, and an excess of gimmicky fun-sucking mechanics made me quickly realizethat PvP was not a priority.
When GW1 was largely popular as a PvP game this feels like a slap in the face. My friends and I who bought GW2 for launch bought it for PvP. Also, where the crap is my GvG?
8. Story and Characters
The story is uninspired, predictable, and dis-engaging. Somehow the characters are worse.
9. Content Release
The design for content packages in GW2 is terrible. Creating small story centric releases that are only available for a short time is bland, doesn’t reach most players, and a downright waste of development resources. Focus should rest on creating content with no expiration date in large bulk packages, that can last players in between new releases.
The episodic release idea was stupid when it was announced, and it’s stupid now.
10. Personal Gripe
I feel that GW2 is better suited to be heavily instanced, much like GW1.
I’m not saying I’d prefer an instanced game, I don’t see instanced and open world as comparable, they’re two distinct formats each with their own advantages/disadvantages. I have no preference for one or the other, but it does feel, to me, that GW2’s systems are better suited to a heavily instanced experience.
I can just imagine having events that are actually meaningful by permanently altering your personal instance, similar to how GW1 was handled. It would facilitate an easy over-arching storyline for each zone that is currently lacking as well as allowing challenge to exist, rather than zerg trains through the zone.
I want to start by saying that the reason I’m posting here is because I see a number of good systems with a great deal of potential in GW2. I love some of the things Anet has done and see the potential for a great deal of improvement. I’m not here simply because I’m bitter and wish to ruin anyone’s experience.
If you disagree with my complaints/gripes, congratulations!, you’re an independently minded human being. Be an adult and accept that your problems may not be mine, and the reverse applies as well. I’m presenting my honest opinions as I feel that’s the healthiest thing for the progression of the game.
1. Class Design
The mechanical design of classes in GW2 is dull. Abilities all too often fall into a simple +damage category. Control skills are non-existent which was incredibly disappointing having come from GW1. While they are obviously different games the design of abilities in GW1 is possibly the best I’ve seen in a MMO to date, while GW2 is possibly the worst.
A lot of this has to do with the removal of the trinity. While it may have started as a good idea at the design table there was never the addition of added mechanics to take its place. There’s a distinct absence of roles in combat which means that any form of compelling team-play is off the table.
2. Challenge
The challenge in GW2 is non-existent. Due to the lack of roles, removing the potential for team-play, all “challenges” in GW2 come down to individual player skill. Some people may enjoy this, but I find the approach and strategy to an encounter far more interesting than advanced button mashing.
Even solo the monsters in GW2 are far too easy. It really feels like the development team was told “You need to make the player feel heroic”, and they did, just to a stupid level. I haven’t felt that I could die to enemies in PvE at all in GW2. The only time I have is when doing something insanely stupid, just to make it interesting. You can solo virtually every event, excluding world bosses. Even world bosses however provide no substantial challenge as its simply about having ‘x’ number of players present in a semi-present state (It’s debatable whether or not the latter is even necessary).
3. The leveling experience
The hearts are dull replacements for quests, they’re virtually identical except hearts remove what little made quests interesting, context The hearts also have incredibly dull mechanics.
Events are repetitive, uninteresting due to no story with substance behind most of them, easy beyond belief, unrewarding for those who play better/contribute more to an event, and overall an incredible disappointment.
There aren’t choices in leveling, unless you consider going to lower level zones and doing incredibly easy content, making the leveling experience even less rewarding, a choice.
4. Dungeons
While I already mentioned challenges in GW2, I feel Dungeons deserve a category of their own. Dungeons are by far one of my favorite forms of content in a MMO. I love the team-play that comes in a dungeon, I love a challenge that requires multiple attempts or some form of reasoning to determine how to achieve success. GW2 dungeons are the most straight forward I’ve ever experienced, requiring absolutely no coordination whatsoever.
Players should need to understand how to interact with their teammates, understanding the tools available to the different members of a party and coordinating effectively to conquer an encounter. In GW2 the closest thing to coordination is revival, which brings us to…
5. Downed State
The downed system is the laziest and most ill conceived system I’ve ever seen in a game. If encounters were balanced to force the players to utilize this feature it might be different, as it stands however the downed state is simply ‘x’ number of screw ups allotted to each player in a team. When encounters are exceedingly easy, no coordination is required, and there is no complexity to use of any skill set this allowance ends up hollowing the feeling of success to any encounter.
6. Consequences
There are no consequences for failure or poorer play in the game. If this were only a certain element of the game it’d be understandable, some players simply wish to experience and not be challenged. However, as nothing offers consequence for failure or poor play it feels, to me at least, that better play is punished.
Events are a perfect example. While leveling trying harder/playing better in an event provides no additional reward from simply auto attacking. This caused me to ‘tag’ events while leveling, simply doing the bare minimum required to get a gold and moving on. If my efforts aren’t rewarded the first time it can still be fun, the hundredth starts to get tedious, the thousandth is a downright pain in the kitten .
People looking for a reason to play the game will get worked up over anything to be completely fair though. This isn’t something that drew any friends of mine currently uninterested in the game back into playing. If the impact is actually significant, as in substantial story changes in future content due to Kiel being on the Captain’s Council instead of the good candidate then the event will have been a success and I will hope to see more in the future.
That being said though, I doubt that there will be any real changes from this event and my best guess is it was just used as a gimmick. Time will tell whether or not they intend for more significant backlash from the event. Until that time it’s hard to judge it.
I’ve been told I have the power to see into the future, I’ll tap into it for you folks, because I’m just that nice.
-Jenna dies.
-In the power vacuum created Caudicus and Logan duke it out for the kingdom
-Logan kills Caudicus and claims the throne.
-Logan gets mobbed by adoring tween fans and trampled to death.
-Every single human in a position of power dies due to their own frailty and stupidity.
-Charr invade Kryta and reclaim their lands.
-Charr enslave Humans, sounds mean, but don’t worry it’s actually really funny.
-Charr decide it’d be funny to spread a plague among the humans.
-They were wrong, funny is an under-sale, it turns out to be hilarious.
-Plague has unexpected consequences and turns all of the human survivors into Quaggans (PC and NPCs).
-We learn the origin story of Quaggans, it makes quite a lot of sense.
If people actually discussed improvements to the game, no one would be arguing that the game is shallow or not. Whether it is or not depends what aspect you’re talking about and arguing about it from a standpoint of “the game is boring because it has no depth because I spam 11111” is going to get argumentative. Why? Because it’s not constructive.
I don’t believe anyone in the thread said “the game is boring” as chances are they aren’t playing. People can infer whatever they choose from a statement, but that doesn’t make it the case. The combat is flawed in my opinion, and discussing what causes it is the first step to determining solutions. If conversation can’t happen a fix never will. By all means though, you tell me exactly what needs to happen to perfect the combat system without discussing it or gauging other opinions within the community. I’m sure the system you come up with will be exactly what the game needs and won’t have a single nay-Sayer.
Here’s a proposal for an alternative, you could make the legendary skin detachable from the item and have a skin bank, such as in sPvP. Skin would be available for use on all characters, but you would only have the 1 skin. Stats would be tied to what weapon you attach it to, but you’re able to swap the look at will.
Either way suits me fine, not planning on working towards legendary weapons in the future, but this would make it so you can’t transfer the item stats if there would be any reluctance to do so.
I never knew until today that there was a text limit in posts…
Quick fix order to my issues, as I don’t believe in presenting complaints without explaining how I would go about fixing them.
1. Re-evaluate the design mantra of the game, even if they stick with what they have there needs to be a clear and developed understanding of whether they want role-less combat or combat with roles of their creation.
2. Determine whether they want a system more reliant on player interaction and teamwork or one where independent skill settles fights.
3. Overhaul the entire combat system (Skills, Weapon-sets, Traits, Classes) based on their previous decisions.
4. Re-balance encounters based on the state of the game.
For all I know they’re already working on 3 and have a strong idea of the direction they want combat to go in, but still worth posting this up as there’s never harm in sharing ideas.
You know what would be amazing? If people recognized that this kind of discussion is healthy, regardless of whether or not you agree with the OP, and discussed it instead of jumping down the throats of those who have different thoughts or trying to dismiss their argument with the ever intelligent “L2P” comment. I know, I know, unrealistic to expect people to not act like children. Well, I can dream.
On topic: Yes, the combat is shallow in my mind. However, it’s hard to pin this on a particular system or even the combat itself. One of the core problems with combat is actually the encounter system. There are very few encounters in this game that challenge you to use anything other than your auto-attack and heal, maybe a total of 3 that I can think of.
Even in encounters that do require more thought/effort to play the game-play is still lacking. Combat is too simple for many classes, you’re cycling through a simple rotation of highest DPS. There aren’t meaningful and worthwhile skills that aren’t damage. Skills that control, debuff, or support are largely meaningless and without any value, this is a problem of both encounters and the simple fact that they cannot compete with pure damage in their current design.
You would think that’s everything, but it continues, builds are restricted. Absurdly restricted. I’ve played as most classes by this point and played around with builds in all that I’ve played, and many Classes build is completely determined by weapon choice, but these are the lucky classes currently. Some classes weapon choice is determined for them. There isn’t enough balance across the field with traits, stat distribution, weapon sets, utility skills, elites, or even heals. Some classes are lucky enough to have more choice, but every class is hindered by the fact that a number of their choices are inadequate by comparison to what their others offer.
But wait, there’s more! As someone else brought up the thought process behind removing the trinity was very idealistic and could have worked, but for a variety of factors didn’t. The game has a doctrine of it’s own that’s unbreakable, and it’s a much worse one than the original trinity, damage. Damage, damage, and more damage. There is nothing else beneficial in the overall design of the game for PvE currently. This was touched on earlier, but it’s not a merely unbalanced skills doing more damage/less damage than their counterparts, it’s reflected in the design mantra of GW2. The original design aimed to keep support, control, and debuffs below damage. Otherwise you end up with the trinity.
But wait, there’s more! Another substantial factor in the combat currently being inadequate is the choice to engage avoidance as the primary deterrent from damage. Hear me out on this, as much as I love dodging for big attacks, when almost all damage can be avoided by competent players it severely undermines monster’s abilities to kill. You can almost always heal any direct/unavoidable damage, but even if you couldn’t there are very few instances of unavoidable damage.
Lupi, considered one of the more threatening and challenging bosses in the game, is as simple as avoiding attacks. Knowing when to dodge, avoiding AoE circles on the ground, and murdering his face off with your auto-attack. In fact, many classes are forced to only auto-attack as doing anything more might require closer proximity to Lupi. You want to stay at a range.
The big problem with unavoidable damage is that it completely undercuts the ability for monsters to kill you without you kittening up. However this problem runs deeper than it’s surface value, it can’t change. Without a more comprehensive role system you can’t allow enemies to guarantee damage on PCs. This is up to the developers ultimately, whether they feel they want a role system or if they want more of a reliance on self-skill in teams. It’s not something that can be answered as it’s a personal preference, however it does limit what’s offered in the combat system.
TLDR: Encounters are currently not balanced to produce ideal combat, Skills/Weapon-sets/Traits/Classes are not perfectly balanced yet and further limit choices in combat, there is a design mantra that encourages development of content without roles which has developed a system where damage is the only role, and as the bulk of damage is avoidable AI doesn’t have a chance against competent players.
The developers are working on a lot of these problems, and I’m confident they’ll be able to fix a lot of the current flaws, however that doesn’t make this problem not exist and it’s healthy for the game to have a community cognizant of the game’s flaws.
No real reason it couldn’t happen for flavor if enough people were interested, I suppose itemization would be a bit of a nightmare (RNG determines drops and so finding exactly what you want would be challenging) however there is the marketplace for that.
Realistically the weapons shared between classes function as entirely unique weapons, if there was enough support and enough of a reason I don’t see why they couldn’t add a flavor unique weapon type.
I’m content either way, but certainly not an awful idea and might just be something people are interested in seeing. Point of the thread I suppose.
There would be more than enough people interested if I had to venture a guess, but I doubt it’s something they want to add with the state of the game. To make it anything other than painful to play on there would need to be dramatic overhauls of fundamental mechanics which would require a great deal of time and effort on the part of the developers. I doubt the amount of work they would need to do would be worthwhile from the standpoint of the company and an unaltered version of the game running with open world PvP would be a nightmare. I love open world PvP, but I still wouldn’t play on a server with it in GW2 that wasn’t altered tremendously.
What challenge? Those camps require you to just throw bodies at them.
The only challenge is finding 20 people willing to do it.
Let’s be honest, that’s the only challenge in WoW’s raids too. Well, that and doing the raid before to get the gear needed.
Yeah, like the folks above me said, WoWs raids are actually quite challenging. WoW basically has the best raids in any game running, it’s one of the reasons the community has lasted as long as it has, comparing content in GW2 currently to raid difficulty in WoW is just wrong.
There are a few face-roll raids in WoW as I recall, but not many, and even when mechanics were figured out the raids often took a hell of a lot of coordination. I hope that GW2 gets content as challenging in the future.
“Earn a Legendary in SPVP” mentality is BS. First off, that isn’t currently possible.
Secondly, if Anet wants to provide special, awesome rewards for high-achieving PVP players, that’s awesome. But the current Legendaries have their own difficult system and there deserves to be some reward across the entire game for achieving it.
To not allow current Legendaries in SPVP is to make it a different game than the rest of Guild Wars 2.
While I don’t disagree with you on any particular point, if you think legendary weapons should be available in sPvP it stands to reason that any special awesome rewards for high-end sPvP players should also merge into PvE+WvW.
In my opinion dueling should not be instanced. This isn’t due to me being awesome at duels and wanting a crowd, but simply because the largest benefits to the community at large emerge when dueling isn’t instanced. Let’s face it, in every MMO there is down-time, whether big events aren’t occurring, you simply want to have access to your friends in-game, or any number of other reasons; GW2 is no different.
Many people in this down-time aren’t overly social, they hang around hubs doing minor tasks, checking the marketplace, and potentially chatting within their own guild. Dueling provides a spectacle for players to enjoy for those who want it, and there will be plenty of those players, even if you personally don’t want to watch dueling. It groups players together and encourages commentary, discussion, and overall social behavior. This isn’t a bad thing, and in fact it’s something sorely lacking from GW2 currently, there isn’t a lot of social lubricant in the game now.
If you have a problem with watching duels, there are already many systems that are equivalent or worse allowed within cities ( Skill spamming, Fireworks, Box-of-Fun, Costume Brawl, etc.). It wouldn’t be unreasonable to determine “districts” in a city that allow dueling, keeping it out of the Marketplace/Bank/Crafting Stations. Preventing it entirely in cities simply seems a waste of what the feature has to offer.
As for in an open world I really just can’t understand why you would instance it, there’s no harm I can think of. It won’t be obnoxious as you can simply steer clear of it if you truly offended by the act. From an immersion stand point dueling really isn’t outside of the realm of possibility. It’s in fact far stranger that people never come to blows with one another. There’s obviously tremendous tension in the game world given that every race has a splinter faction at war with everyone.
And as it’s been brought up hundreds of time by this point I’ll make my note on harassment through dueling brief. It’s harassment, it’s reportable, and action will be taken against players who harass others with dueling. It’s not enough of an incentive to not implement a system, as every system has the potential for abuse. It shouldn’t factor into the discussion of whether a system should be implemented because the decision should be based on what a feature can bring to the game. If a feature is set to be introduced counter measures against abuse should be implemented as seen fit.
(edited by Lenaro.5924)
They’ve already announced they’re re-examining rewards in sPvP. No specific details at this point, but the team definitely seems to be aware of the fact that rewards in sPvP right now aren’t acceptable.
Actually there are logical lore limitations that would prevent certain races from frequently having members of that race as certain classes, especially members of that race still part of the sovereign nation for that race. But the developers choose to ignore these reasons as they’re aware that your experience playing is more important. The same could happen with weapons if they chose to, but at this point it’s irrelevant as giving any single class a new weapon without counter-balancing their entire set and every other class in the game would be horrifyingly dumb and the developers simply wouldn’t do it. The game has too many balance issues as it stands, in the future hopefully we’ll start to see expansion with weapon sets, but right now it’s not a great idea.
Well, back on topic.
Simply no. If the “boon” would provide buffs, it’d have to be the same for both. Assuming you’d get gold from one and MF from the other, you’d choose the one you’d prefer. But to keep the original meaning of the living story fair, you’d have to vote for the character you prefer.
real-life example:
x candidate would offer you $1 for voting and
y candidate would offer you ice cream for a vote.then you’d rather vote for the direct reward instead of voting for the candidates.
To be completely honest it’s already irrelevant, to keep the original meaning of the story as it should be there never should have been the ability to crossover to both sides. Quite a number of people I’ve seen have roughly a 50/50 split in their votes because of wanting to complete achievements for both candidates.
Many people already vote for both because you get rewarded for both, the “original meaning” as you phrased it never really existed within the game.
Along your example, why get only ice cream or a dollar when you can get both?
I’d be fine with dueling arenas in cities. Make them instanced? Even better. I’d also be fine with dueling out where mobs spawn — after all, it’s likely there will be combat there anyway. Now, whether ANet will be willing to make a free feature that competes with the current paid implementation is another issue.
This would be a fair compromise. In fact I would want it this way.
I am an RPer, so having dueling not be allowed in the main cities would be even better than duels anywhere and everywhere. Only trolls would want to have duels at the crafting stations or taverns and with a limitation like this it would solve alot of drama that would be caused.
Thank you for being understanding and level headed.
While I’m open to compromise if people feel strongly enough about it, I don’t think this particular suggestion is necessary for dueling to work. You could simply have hotspots in the city where dueling isn’t allowed, i.e., areas where there is a large amount of player traffic. I personally don’t feel it’d be necessary, for instance, to restrict dueling in taverns. I understand that they’re often a RP hotspot, but as a consummate RPer I can safely say that being able to duel in different set pieces in the city often finds it’s way into many people’s RP.
Instancing dueling would lessen what it could bring to the game. If people feel strongly enough against it then it would certainly be an acceptable counter-measure to make other players more comfortable, but I personally feel that other social interactions in cities can be just as disruptive (Ex. Costume Brawl, fireworks, instruments, skill spamming, etc.).
Wanted to quickly mention, as someone didn’t recognize the possibility of it a few posts back. If they add dueling to PvE regions of the map there is genuinely no reason that it shouldn’t be added to the Mists. I honestly see a more easily accessible dueling system in sPvP as a huge step forward in the ability to better balance sPvP, especially inner-class balance (traits, skill choice, stat distribution).
But I don’t RP and I’m not talking about RPing. I’m talking about immersion, and in my opinion the immersion base is far larger than most people think it is.
From surveys in the past, we know that in most games only a very small percentage of players actually consider themselves raiders or raid with any regularity. In addition, far less than half the player base PvPs or considers themselves PvPers. So what does that 50% of the playerbase do…they’re not raiding and they’re not PvPing. In other words, they eschew the typical end game.
This is where Guild Wars 2 is strong. It doesn’t really have an end game…at least in the traditional sense. I mean you can PvP on day one. There are no raids.
So I’m guessing the people that like this game tend to be people who don’t like other MMOs as much. In other words, non-raiders…particularly on the PvE side. That’s the rest of us. Not RPers, just people who enjoy the open world.
And I strongly suspect most of them are not pro-dueling.
This leads to two main questions, in my mind, that should be answered in the interest of a fair discussion about implementing a new feature.
1. What precisely is it about open world dueling that is detrimental to immersion?
2. If the answer to the first question is that dueling is significantly detrimental to immersion in the game, how can the proposal be altered to move it into the acceptable range for breaking immersion?
I personally don’t see open world dueling as a huge detriment to immersion. There are hundreds of other features that have been implemented that I believe either share the same negatives as dueling or far exceed them. The reason for this is because there are acceptable levels of immersion breaking in a game, if what the feature has to offer isn’t significantly offset by how it ruins the atmosphere it’s worthwhile to implement. However, I obviously have a bias in this area so seeing responses from others would be worthwhile to the discussion.
There have already been many proposed ways to implement dueling, many of which are far more considerate of immersion than many I would suggest. I have played a number of games in which dueling has been a benefit to the community at large. People enjoy participating and people enjoy watching. Everyone? No, but you can’t expect any feature to have universal appeal.
One of the best aspects of dueling is that it’s a form of reusable and dynamic content that has a focus on player-player interaction. It even allows for players to create their own fun and games based upon it. You can set up any rules you want to in advance.
This leads to some incredibly fun alterations on rule-sets, whether they’re for balancing or sheer shenanigans. In fact a clan I led in Anarchy Online had the better part of a month and a half of our member’s time devoted to a dueling season. We started up brand new characters at level 1 and had a series of benchmarks where we would stop, perfect our character in their current state and then undergo a series of duels. This led to an unprecedented amount of our members playing together on a daily basis and genuinely everyone had fun with it. Friendly competition is never a bad thing, if it becomes unfriendly when brought to the community at large the suggested feature by many in this thread should suffice for ignoring it (Have duels set to auto-decline).
I didn’t tell this story entirely to brag about how awesome myself and the people I play games with are, it was only 95% of the reason, but to give an example of the kind of creative and fun content that players can make out of player-player interaction features. They are exactly the form of content that GW2 is currently lacking, and I think dueling would be a strong first step in the right direction.
EDIT
Wow, I really know how to wall of text a thread up. I honestly thought it was shorter this time…
(edited by Lenaro.5924)
Ah, you misunderstand. This has nothing to do with only adding things to the game I like. This has to do with not adding something to the game that encourages a specific community to join.
It’s like not having open world PvP…the same sorts of “smack-talking” non-carebears if you will populate the world.
At presence there’s more or less a divide between PvE and PvP. This is Anet’s signature. It existed in Guild Wars 1 and exists here. PvP is that way. PvE is this way. Anet has always kept the PvPers in their own area.
People are asking Anet to change how they do business because they think they know better. Well as a long time “care-bear” I can tell you seriously that you don’t. People like me and people like you don’t mix. We just don’t Put us together and you ask for problems.
We had an RPG guild and the guild leader opened it to PvPers. Pretty soon even mention of the word RP was enough to get you bullied. It was a bad move. I told the guild leader when he did it it was a bad move. The guilds split and everyone is happy.
I don’t care what they add to the game. I care if they change the existing game in a way that will make it worse for those playing any area of the game.
In this case, inviting those who like that to be with those of us who don’t is simply asking for trouble.
And if you don’t think the smack-talking, annoying constant chatter about pwning this guy won’t infiltrate chat…you’d probably be wrong.
I respect your opinions and experience, but I can tell you that mine differ slightly.
I love PvP and I love RP. And before you think I’m some mythical rare breed, there are actually quite a few of us. I’ve led a number of guilds over the years that reflect this play-style. The current group of folks I play with are all from a series of guilds across a variety of games in which the focus was RP-PvP.
As a result of running these guilds I’ve had countless interactions with other players who focus on RP/PvP. In both communities there were certainly always those intolerant of the others, and there’s never a lack of jokes tossed out about other communities, but as a whole they’re quite able to play with one another and enjoy the game together. Most people who don’t RP will always have the “Oh…really?” reaction when it’s first mentioned, but usually people get over it quickly enough if you’re an average enough person.
I think the hardcore PvP community has just gotten a bad reputation for some reason when none really exists. There are certainly bad apples in it, but they exist everywhere.
Smack talking would almost certainly happen, it’s inevitable, but it’s inevitable that in any area of the game people are kittens to others. I’ve seen quite a lot of discussions in the game that I would call worse than smack talking, always hilarious when people blatantly call someone a moron or worse because their gear/understanding of the game isn’t quite up to par. Or the Grammar kittens, always hilarious. Or the people who insult others for genuine complaints.
(PROTIP: Don’t ever call into question the potential that GW2 is anything less than perfect while in-game, you’ll be beaten to death in chat with sticks. Maybe something more painful if availible.)
Some people insist on feeling superior, dueling being added will only change what people brag about, not that they’re bragging.
I do want to ask you directly though, could you please elaborate on what it is that you feel dueling would change that would directly lessen the quality of the game for other players. I really haven’t been able to come up with anything personally and most responses I’ve seen are much less thought out, so I would genuinely appreciate a thoughtful and detailed response.
There is genuinely not a single legitimate reason why dueling should not exist within the game.
1. It’s an easily implemented (Hopefully, suppose it’s possible their engine is limited in a way that prevents it) system that will provide hundreds upon thousands, potentially
even millions, of hours of entertainment over the life of the game.
2. Would actually benefit the competitive PvP scene, as testing in this game is still severely limited. The sPvP system lacks transparency in figures, effectiveness of skills/weapon sets, and trait balances. A dueling system would make a lot of this much easier to test, offering up the solution of a custom arena is and always will be absurd as you should not be forced to pay money in order to educate yourself in PvP.
3. People want it, quite a lot of people.
All of the negative responses I’ve seen are filled with self-centered thinking. Any negative you can conjure up with the dueling system I can conjure up with others.
I personally detest /dance in games. I’m fine with it in certain circumstances, but there’s nothing more I hate than playing with a friend (He knows it too, and keeps at it, like a kitten) who consistently /dances when we’re roaming around committing mass genocide. Anyone can say that a particular element of the game “annoys them” or “takes them out of the game”, but that doesn’t mean the game should cater to it. By the way, I was serious about the dancing thing, I want to murder all of you who do it, ideally in some really painful way.
Also seems prudent to point out that there effectively is already dueling in the game that’s far more of an eye-sore than real dueling would ever be, which is the costume brawl. If dueling ruins your immersion how on earth do you see it as all good that a Moa and an Elemental can duke it out in LA square without interference.
If someone can come up with a better reason to not implement it than “I don’t want it so it shouldn’t be part of the game”, then by all means put me in my place. It just seems to be the case that all of the negative responses I’ve seen are rooted in “I want” thoughts and not genuine downfalls of the system.
Edit: Saw this post and decided to respond
A mind reader you’re not.
I don’t want dueling because the type of player that is attracted to that stuff isn’t at all generally attacted to the type of game I want or play. In general I think the duelist community is incompatible with the community I’d rather see in the game. I feel the same about open world PvP of any kind.
This game is filled to the brim with conflicting communities and game-styles as are most moderately successful MMORPGs. If you think content releases should be filtered only to what you enjoy then I believe you might be in for a rough surprise. ANet has taken careful care trying to satiate all of their players, given their player base is highly divided in play-style.
You can duel anytime, any short wait is long enough for a duel. They can occupy you when bored, are a great medium for interaction within the community, especially meeting players you otherwise wouldn’t. It even entertains those who choose to not duel themselves. It’s a system that will contribute more than any other that exists in GW2 currently and will mold itself to every community in the game.
In short: dueling is a great type of dynamic content that allows players to make their own fun, which is something GW2 needs.
One last note, seems a lot of people are against dueling around crafters and I want to pose the question …Why?
Crafting is an utterly mundane aspect of the game, there is nothing interesting about the process once you’ve determined recipes and even prior to that it’s a pretty slim system. Usually you just hit a button and wait for 10,000 of an item to materialize in your inventory, do you really hate free entertainment during mundane tasks?
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but your discriminating against other peoples way of lifestyle. Mesmer portals have always something in the game and thus it is completely within reason that you can use the skill for its intended purpose, which includes skipping jp
a button that does everything for you isnt in the game because its moronic and obviously not going to happen. you’re comparing apples and luxury boats.
the mesmer still has to do the jp himself, he doesnt get it for free. The player earned the skill, played the mesmer, now they can reap the benefits. Thus the mesmer is a little more diverse.
there’s more than one way to skin a cat, why should your way be correct and our way be not?
Positing that because it’s always been in the game makes it acceptable is absurd, developers make mistakes too, like anyone would in their position. There have been hundreds of changes made to the game over it’s lifespan, as there should be. Developers aim to fix problems with the overall health of the game. A “feature” that allows skipping content is a problem.
If we were talking about removing people’s ability to participate in content it’d be one thing, but we’re not. In this instance what’s up for discussion is removing the ability to skip content. If you want to have fun trying a jump puzzle you won’t succeed in, be my guest, I won’t hamper your ability to do this or criticize you for your efforts. However, just because an individual isn’t willing to/cannot succeed in content in the game doesn’t mean we should marginalize completion of that content.
I was being sardonic with my comparison, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Allowing skipping content and receiving equal reward is not a good system to employ.
You seem to have a negative opinion of the systems I suggested, These systems are identical in practice to portals in JPs. You seem to dislike the thought of features that allow you to skip content within the game, you’re just more accustomed to what portals bring to the table.
I appreciate how Developers potentially landed on Mesmer portals being where they are and in their shoes I probably would have made the exact same mistakes. It’s difficult to foresee every path that the community could take in use of abilities, but even though it’s understandable it’s still a mistake that needs correction.
Ultimately I feel my way is correct, as you feel yours is, because I believe it’s unhealthy for the game to promote skipping content. Mesmer portals, while an awesome and unique skill of the profession, should be altered, limited, or removed in jump puzzles. I don’t think the game needs to remove flavor that makes Professions unique, but I believe portals can be fixed without doing so.
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Alternatively if your friend isn’t skilled enough to do that jump puzzle you can relocate to one that’s easier and more within reach (Compromise!).
..Why does it matter if you get something that changes the game for you? That’s pretty much the foundation of the argument for people who have no problem with Mesmer portals. People shouldn’t be bothered that others are playing the way they want, I want all dungeon items in the game freely given to me, level 80, and legendary items. It’s my game and according to the kind of logic that makes Mes Portals in JPs acceptable it’s acceptable for me to get all of this stuff free as long as I want it.
The only questionable one is Legendary items as they affect the economy, my other points do not and therefore have no bearing on anyone else in the game, so why shouldn’t they occur?
Fact is nobody gives a monkey how you do it because it’s just a bit of fun for people who want something else to do. The more you restrict it, the less fun and more chore-like it becomes. That’s why there should be no seal farming in dungeons and the gear should be handed out.
If you’re allowed to find using a Mesmer portal to reach the end of a JP fun then I should be allowed to find a button to reach the end of dungeons fun. Don’t discriminate against my choice of a play-style.
(edited by Lenaro.5924)
I just wanted to add onto this in the hopes it’s noticed a bit more quickly. I don’t think it’s possible to beat him currently. Would be nice to see a fix to this as all of the others seem to be working as intended.
“If you don’t like them, just don’t use them” is an absolutely absurd argument. The bottom line is that use of Mesmer portals does trivialize the rewards offered in jumping puzzles.
A large reason why anyone does anything in games is the reward, why? Because due to divine creation, evolution, or the small men/women that inhabit our skulls we like stuff. Additionally rewards make an activity feel like more of an accomplishment. Working at a job for 30 years without recognition of your efforts in the form of a promotion or raise will likely leave you without the impression that you were appreciated or valuable.
If you’re genuinely of the opinion that anything that doesn’t affect others isn’t a problem then I demand that developers add a button that gives me every piece of dungeon equipment in the game, already soul-bound and incapable of salvage. It has no impact on the economy as it can’t be sold or converted to ectoplasm/dust, and it saves me the trouble of running dungeons. For that matter, I want every legendary in the game too. Also, I should be given every Ascended piece of equipment with this button. Seems the developers have their work cut out for them.
I empathize with those who are incapable of doing some of the jump puzzles, I really understand this (kitten you straight to hell dark room). However, dissolving what interesting and challenging content there is for the more advanced players isn’t a fair approach either. As I said, doing all the work while watching others get rewarded for nothing as fun or rewarding. Players who are amazing at doing jump puzzles should be rewarded; just like those better in Dungeons, PvP, WvW, and any other aspect of the game deserve additional rewards.
If we as a community decide that we should marginalize those who are more skilled in a particular field because we want to experience every inch of the game we’ll be left with a less interesting game as a whole. While you might not think the community means a whole lot our feedback will push and pull the developers towards their ultimate approach to this kind of discussion in particular.
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Evade destroys the idea of large burst damage, burst damage destroys the idea of sustained damage, sustained damage destroys the idea of effectively tanking, effectively tanking destroys the idea of fun, and fun destroys the idea of PvP in it’s current state…no wait, crap, it’s the other way around. I was on a roll there.