Guild Wars 2

This seems to be the Anet theme; let’s come up with a great idea, like challenge based dungeons, telegraphed attacks or a simple sidebar, then COMPLETE DESTROY IT by overdoing it on every possible level.

It’s sad this post is go derailed and whinny.

“Dungeons are too difficult on pre-80s, both to find groups for and to be effective in.”

This should be the one and only point. Leveling in this game is horrible, even the first time, because all you do is hearts. Nothing breaks up the grind. If the game had quests that would work, or if the low level dungeons were possible to be run by LOW LEVEL PEOPLE NEW TO THE GAME then everything would be fine.

Any other game I play with friends I can ask "do you want to go do “x” tonight" where x is a quest, an instance, or a drop to camp, and that is motivating. In guild wars it’s “do you want to log on and do more hearts that are exactly like the hearts we did last time? And more jumping?”

Between the stupid frost and flame tracker which I care nothing about, and the stupid super adventure box tracker which I care nothing about, and my daily / monthly quest I can’t see heart and event objectives without clicking them

Is there a way to remove the trackers I don’t care about?

I’ll give you fractals, but not “outside of cof p1”. This make up is the best for any zone with the exception of MAYBE new CM and even in that case just make one of them support instead of zerk and you’re golden

5 warriors is also the best way to role WvW, without question. although they will not all be zerk.

Honest question for the devs: Does it bother you that the ideal group for any of your content in 5 of the same class / build? Does it bother you that most groups only want this one class / build to join? Has it ever made you think “you know what, maybe something is not right about that”

Just wondering.

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

I dunno if it’s broken. Economies are going to fluctuate. And supply and demand is going to be a big factor in fluctuations. As your example of daggers selling more than swords. I could see how daggers would be in higher demands since two of the most popular PvP professions(thieves and D/D Eles) use them. On the flips side I don’t see 1h swords used nearly as much as daggers. I admit I got no real numbers to back that up. Just observation.

My example in’t daggers selling more then swords as why the market is broken. That the iPad selling for more then the nexus 7 even though they cost about the same to make. Market factors make it so apple can sell the iPad for more. That’s great, and how free market works.

My example is that apple selling a hunk of silica, some aluminum, and LCD screen for SIGNIFICANTLY more then it could sell an assumed iPad for. That market is broken, as apple should not make iPads. That’s what happens in guild wars and why I use the word “broken”.

Thanks for the great replies!

It seems we are talking about two things; brokering and crafting. Brokering is playing the BLAH to buy items low and sell them high. A very profitable and mildly enjoyable thing. One of the things you can do this with is crafted items.

What I’m trying to talk about is crafting itself, and why craft? Any argument you can make about market velocity of a crafted sword applies equally to the components, and that looks like it’s almost always the best way to go.

Oosih I see your point about the karma items, there seems to be a little bit of profit in them in the lower levels. It seems like daggers and great swords are crazy out of line with other items; a 50 rare dagger was selling for 25 silver where a sword of the same type needing the same resources (slightly more in fact) was selling for 2 silver 1 copper. At 80 it seems to fall off though, with almost all karma items selling for less then the globes needed to make them.

Again, I’m not trying to say crafting sucks or there is no point in doing it … hell, I got 15 levels off it and that makes it worth it right there. I’m just figured I was missing something, seeing the IG economy seems pretty broken.

This isn’t meant to be a criticism of any system, I’m just looking for information. I really enjoy crafting and this game’s recipe based system, so I leveled up to 400 just for fun and have no regrets. But I do have some questions!

It looks like anything you could possibly want is already on the market for much less then it would cost to make it yourself. So if you are looking for equipment it’s better to just buy stuff then to craft it.

At the same time, it looks like the raw components sell for more then crafted items. For example, if I have 3 small claws and some ore, I would make more selling them separately then I would combining them into an item and selling that item.

Are there hidden recipes, BOP items, or some other system I’m not aware of that adds benefits to crafting? Or it a losing game you take part in for the fun and xp?

Thanks a ton for the great feedback. I’m sure it will really help.

Thanks for the reply man, and for the great advice.

I understand that getting better at PVP by reading, playing, and experiencing more will make be better at PVP. So I think that’s some great advice, but it’s only half of what I’m asking.

Me problem isn’t that I constantly up against things that I don’t understand or I can’t beat; from the experience I do have and what I’ve read online, most of the time when I attack someone I can size up what is happening and react, and like I said, I win some and I lose some, pretty much 50/50. So I guess I would say I’m just fine at PVP, but nothing special. What I’m saying is that it seems like although I can deal and react to 7 classes and win sometimes, there is one class that I simply can not win against ever. Same with builds, there are 100s of builds I’ve encounter and killed except 2 or 3, which seem completely unstoppable.

The question I’m asking is … do I just not understand some non-obvious point (I tried to do research before coming here and have read a lot about builds and the like so that why I say non-obvious) or is that just how PVP in GW2 works … there are a few completely OP builds and if I’m not playing one, I should be.

Hey there. I’ve been playing for about 2 months now, but I’m still pretty new to PVP. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I had a few questions that I was hoping the community could help me with. My PVP experience is very consistent. I run around, I fight people, sometimes they kill me, sometimes I kill them. Fun is had by all. Most of the time, that is. Sometimes however, I run into a mezer in which case I’m killed 100% of the time, or sometimes I run into “that guy”. He’s generally a warrior or guardian. He takes no damage from anything I do, instantly heals every condition I put on him, and in the extremely unlikely event I do a small amount of damage, he heals it instantly. He always has 5 or more boons up, and he’s faster then me. Eventual, he gets board of laughing at my attempts to harm so he hits me with one attack that roots and stuns me will doing 20K+ damage.

The first question is about mezers – Should I just be playing one? It’s very clear that they are the most popular class BY FAR in PVP, with most 5 on 5 games I play having 4 to 6 mezers in them. They seem pretty much unstoppable.

The second question is … what’s going on with “that guy”? Is there some trigger I should be looking for? Am I unknowingly doing something wrong that giving him this complete immunity? Is there a way to counter it?

Any help would be great!

To the math people: You absolutely can not work out the probability of an event based of counted data. You CAN work out the mean event, and from the mean event you can work out standard deviation, and from there you can work out how unlikely a given event is in terms of sigma, or how many standard devastation outside the expected result the observed data is. We need a LOT of data though.

To work out the probability of something you need to know the number of events and the trend towards any given event. We would need to know exactly what the chance of 0, 1, 2, or 3 globes is to do any meaningful theory craft. Without this exact data you are GUESSING the probability of something, you can never know it.

For example, if the odds were 50% zero, 0% one, 0% two, 50% three (and expected return of 1.5) the standard deviation is much different then if the chance is 0% zone, 50% one, 50% two, 0% three.

That said, just for fun, let’s say it’s an even distribution; 25% zero, 25% one, 25% two, 25% three. This means he got an event that was 25% likely 25 times in a row. That’s between 3 to 4 sigma, making it a rather common event, statistically. It should happen every half a million times or so. You don’t even START to consider something proof your probability is wrong until you are regularly seeing sigma 5 events.

As a game designer, what is the appeal of finding something people are doing, enjoying, and finding rewarding and then changing it. I can understand the desire to polish and the hope that the changes will make things “better” … but why not start with underutilized locations and areas that people avoid because they don’t like them.

Your own response says what you did was pointless; you counter the comment that ti’s too difficult by it’s only difficult until you figure it out. In a few weeks people will be saying it’s too easy. Well … if this change is only going to fix the perceived problem for a few weeks, why bother? Are you going to up the difficultly again in a few weeks? Then again a few weeks after that?

What about new people who want to figure out the mechanics on there own without going to a web site or inviting experienced players. This is the first opportunity to do that, after all. Why make the mechanic so unforgiving that they don’t have this option without the best possible gear in the game.

Understand I haven’t done the new AC and have no comment on it’s current difficulty, I’m asking about the logic behind scaling up and how your response of “everyone will just think it’s too easy in a few weeks” works into your game design strategy.

A lot of changes to the daily and the way treasure is awarded seem to be geared towards getting player to spend online time warping between zones and spending short bursts of time in each. It it possible to get some insight into why this is a desirable thing? How is the game benefiting from telling players they can’t spend the majority of their time in areas they enjoy unless they give up some reward?

If the problem was there are some zones that are overplayed vs. other zones, would that not point to the fact that the zones that are under utilized are likely poorly designed with either monsters or terrain that made it frustrating, or events that made it unrewarding? Is the best solution telling us, the players, to go and do the zones we don’t enjoy OR ELSE. Wouldn’t a better solution be taking a look at why some zones are favored over others and making changes?

The changes to the daily are the most upsetting because, with all due respect, they show a complete lack of unified vision in your team. For a month we listen to how the motivation for the changes to the daily is to make sure players can earn rewards by choosing to do what they want instead of being forced to follow a set number of goals, but the end results includes goals so specific that you’re not going to earn then unless you do the exact opposite; forget what you want to do and go to the zones dictated by your dailys, do the type of events dictated by your dailies, using the tactics dictated by your dailys. Either of these goals is valid, from one point of view. A lot of games force you to one practical zone or quest for your daily and that’s fine. The problem is you are saying one thing (we are going to make it so any player can earn dailys doing whatever they want) and implement the complete opposite.

Long story short; it would really help to get some clear insight into how you see players spending their time online, and why you feel that letting us just hang out in the zones we chose doing the quests we chose over and over is so threatening to that vision.

It’s 2013 … am I really playing game where 4 people can lose hours of progress because the group leader goes link dead?

Any plans to fix this? I’m sure you could talk to every other MMO in the last 8 years and ask them how they work around it.

As an extremely causal gamer who has never played the market or traded on the BLTC, I find the idea of earning 500gp to 700gp “just playing” to be extremely reasonable.

I think I’m going to make 30 to 40 gold a month if I continue my causal play (10 or so hours a week, no guild, don’t read the wiki much), which means I could have the best item in the game after a year of very casual play. That’s insanely easy by MMO standards.

It’s also reasonable to assume gold generation scales. So the people who are playing 60 hours a week should be earning 180 to 240 gold a month, likely much more as I’m sure they are much more skilled and knowledgeable then me when it comes to gold generation.

PvP in every game is always going to have a lot of toxic chatter. Go play SW:TOR PvP, then WOW, then come back to GW. The one thing your’ll notice is how DIFFERENT they feel, way more different then the PVE game in each. As such, everyone thinks it would be better if it was more like (or less like) some other game. Everyone has an option.

The best way to keep the community from getting toxic is to keep them engaged, but for some reason this rarely happens. I’m new to GW2 so I don’t know about your devs, but the posts in PVE threads vs. post in PVP threads for pretty much every game I’ve played is comically slanted in PVEs favor. SW:TOR for example had 107 dev posts about PVE in one month and 2 in PVP. When people feel no one is listening to them and no one cares, they tend to get ugly.

Personally, I think the PVP in GW2 is pretty much average. There are a lot of class balance issues and it’s basically just a zerg rush from point to point, but there is fun to be had. I would be great to see a dev post “well it feels like a zerg rush because we wanted a team based game” or “it shouldn’t be zerg like, here is what we are doing to stop it” would be fanatic. 99% of the people on the PVP treads just want to hear that as well. If you make a post like that in PVE there is a good chance someone will reply, but in PVP … less so.

Every MMO will get progressively easier with time. It is a rare (and generally horrible) decision to make a game harder. This is simply a factor of appealing to the masses.

Some people really enjoy hard games with challenge. A quick look at steam achievements for “completed the game in hard mode” or anything similar will show you, however, that type of players is a marginal minority at best. Most people like something to be just challenging enough that you can fail if totally mess up, not challenging enough that you actively need to be awesome to win.

MMOs appeal to the players who want challenge by releasing content that is tuned to be super difficult, allowing the best players to complete this content first. Then the dial it back to make it more accessible so that most players can complete it, and finally make it so trivial you would need to TRY to fail. Then they release new content that is super hard. It’s the circle of life! It’s the same in every MMO and apart from the few people who like to complain about how they are elite and no one should be able to do the same content of them ever, it works really well. The best of the best get to barge about how they did everything first but Joe blow newbie knows he’s never going to be “locked out” of any content given time.

So far I’m enjoying a lot of aspects of the single player experience, but one recurring design choice confuses to me. Please take this as either a request for clarification (if the choice was intentional) or a suggestion (if you were not aware)

I’m very much the explorer, and I spend my time running around the huge, rich word you have provided me with. Time and time again, I’ll find that one POI or special location that’s behind a very large amount of monsters, and this gets me very excited. I plot my course and get ready to fight my way to the objective. However, time and time again either the re-spawn timer is so aggressive, the mod density so tight, or the monster powers involve things like summoning or stealth / teleportation that puts them too close to other mod groups I find its just impossible to make any real progression. This don’t mean I can’t make it to the POI or location … I just resolve that I can’t fight my way and run head-long though the monsters. I have yet to find an instance where this didn’t work, even for things like chests that take time to open. You can run though the group and fight the monsters that follow at the chest location to eliminate the re-spawn issue and without having to worry about agro of the large amount of monsters in the area. This seems very counter intuitive to me; I’m being rewarded for skipping content and NOT fighting the monsters guarding something.

It doesn’t increase the difficulty of the game or even the task by making these monsters re-spawn so fast or making mob density this tight as you can just run to wherever you are going. It doesn’t make the encounters themselves any more “challenging” as it’s not even an issue of dying; I can sustain the fight forever, I just can’t move forward. All it does is encourage a play style where you run from point A to point B ignoring as much content as possible. This seems a shame because I would love to have the time to take it all in, fight the various monsters you have created, and explore the various locations you have created.

If you were to tone down the re-spawn, lower the amount of mobs in some high density places, and re-think some monster abilities that do nothing to increase challenge but instead make a monster extremely frustrating to fight (stealth, summon, long snares) your game would be far more appealing to a wider audience.

Honestly, I don’t mean to bring drama or anything, but I have very little faith about the security of my account and your ability to prevent hacking if you can’t prevent spam messages from gold sellers on your own forums.

What’s going on? I’ve been an active member for less then 2 weeks and already have 3 messages.

Having this problem as well.

Things will be fine for anywhere from 5 minutes to a hour or so, then any time I try to use mouse look I’ll get stuck without a curson and the keybouad will become unresponsive.

I’m been looking at my I/O overflow while this is happening and it fills up, ie, GW2 stops asking for or accepting keyboard I/O commands when this happens, it’s not just “lag”

Makes the game completely unplayabe.

Also having this problem. Very, very sloppy on the part of the devs and with no GM support in this game I am currently unable to continue my story because of a targeting issue. Just horrible and unthinkable in this day and age. This needs to get fixed.

Very interested in what you are talking about Skukran but I’ve never seen one on the list. Are you talking structured PVP or tournaments?

One maxed out guild group in vent fighting 7 groups of randoms who have no purpose to be there other then getting steam rolled, or have I just had bad luck with my first few matches?

I’m kinda “play testing” this for some friends for another game, and based on my limited experience so far this is my reason to tell them not to bother. Any one who’s been here longer have any insight?