Showing Posts For Lord Kreegan.8123:
40 years ago when my reflexes were sharper I could have handled those fast CC methods of stuns and knockdowns but as the OP stated now they are just annoying. At 58 my reflexes are just not what they once were… <snip>
Only 58? Snot-nosed punk! Get off of my lawn!
I don’t think the cool down time is shorter than it was; this problem has existed for a while. GW2 is the only game I’ve ever played where the mobs have a distinct advantage over players.
Maybe it’s ANet trying to force players to group; I don’t know; but I have this image of a ten-year old developer wringing his hands in glee that his “design” has caused another player death.
I doubt that it’s fun for any player; I don’t know of any player that likes to die, especially if that death is caused by broken mechanics in the game and not by any action on the player’s part; but, there are players who (a) always have a group of friends to play with and don’t encounter any problems of this sort; they love to insist that they are somehow “better” than other players; (b) have lots of money (or access to mommy’s credit card) and can buy the best gear, thereby minimizing the problem; they also love to claim that they are somehow “better” than other players; or (c ) are part of the lemmings who are absolutely afraid to say this sort of gameplay sucks, lest their association with the game lowers their standing in their own eyes and makes them acknowledge that they aren’t better than other players.
It’s like the fat little neighborhood boy who owns the football and insists that he must play quarterback or he’ll leave and take his ball with him… Unfortunately, there are always developers and elitist arrogant players in this genre of gaming who get their jollies by seeing the misfortunes of other players.
Kind of pathetic, really…
Hey, Anet; IT’ S A GAME!! It’s supposed to be FUN!! F-U-N... Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall… or eventually go bankrupt…
Go into the bank building in Lions Arch and time how long it takes for the NPCs to appear, not just other players… even the main central graphic isn’t there initially.
Go into the trading post and time how long it takes for the NPCs to appear, much less the other players. You’ll see the little icons (the scales) that are over the NPCs heads a good ten seconds before the NPCs appear.
…and that’s a peaceful area.
In hostile zones, I no longer have any confidence in my situational awareness — bad enough already because of the kitten camera — because now mobs may be present — even attacking me — and I’m not going to see them.
Okay, let’s get real for a second…
At a fundamental level, every class has a basic attack (skill 1); other attacks are comprised of a weakening attack, a knockback attack, an AoE/multi-target attack, and a longer cooldown “large damage” attack. That’s basically it. Other than skill 1, the ordering of those skills varies, and the variations on a theme are present… but they’re just variations on a theme. The additional skills pick up “some” variety, but if you break those down, you’ll find a few so-called “boons”, regeneration, speed enhancement, etc. for every class.
My point being that there honestly isn’t a lot of difference other than some classes being squishy, some being not so squishy, and some being hard-armored; some doing more DPS than others; and variations on the hit points and healing abilities… corresponding — it seems — with the classes’ squishyness.
I’ve got five 80’s that I’ve leveled up together. Quite seriously, I don’t find a lot of difference in their gameplay. I just have to remember whether I press 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 for a given general capability… and I can do that in my sleep.
The only exception is that I have to be careful with autoattack on my ranger when he is using a sword since he likes to run off the edge of cliffs and platforms to his death (stupid, stupid, stupid implementation of “pounce”, and since it’s autoattack, he’s screwed).
If you want complexity, try Rift… or even go back to WoW. GW2 is not complex.
Its balancing issues, IMHO, are between players and mobs/NPCs, not between classes… My characters can be stun/knockdown/daze -locked by groups of mobs; players can’t do that to mobs because of animation delays, server-client connection lag, and cooldowns. I might,if I’m lucky, stun/knockdown/daze a mob for a second or two… or not, since events don’t always fire, although the cooldowns always seem to fire…
My characters can be one-shot by mobs; players can’t do that to mobs. Every now and then I’ll see a mob disappear, but it’s obviously a glitch, not from damage. Meanwhile, my elementalist is scared to death of going anywhere she can’t kite a mob.
My characters have to suffer with the poor implementation of the camera (narrow FOV and its tendency to not keep targets in view), horrible implementation of autotargeting (poor bunnies; I feel so sorry for you), and poor TAB-targeting, all of which make situational awareness a problem for the player; mobs don’t have any problems with that… etc.
This is the first MMORPG I’ve played (and I’ve played a lot of them going all the way back to UO) where human intelligence doesn’t give a player an advantage over the mob…
…and for my warrior, I simply right-click on the mob and then go make a cup of coffee. His health regen will carry him all the way through the fight and the next couple of untra-quick respawns…
No, this game is not balanced… but it’s not because of complexity.
Tybalt bit into a poison apple rather than be killed and end up as one of the risen.
Borrowing from fairy tales, since ANet’s writers’ creativity was lacking the day they wrote this story (actually, they were all hung over at the time, but don’t tell anyone), Tybalt lies in a coma in the middle of the forest waiting for Princess Charming to wake him with a kiss.
He is surrounded by the seven dwarves (Azura) who will talk you to death if you attempt to approach him.
Your personal story will have you searching out the forest to find him, fighting your way through the dwarves, and giving Tybalt a big kiss… after which time he will awake, complain about the slobber in your kiss, you’ll ride off into the sunset (actually, you’ll use a waypoint since there’s no riding in the game, and there won’t really be a sunset because the sun never sets in this game), and you’ll live happily ever after…
…until the next expansion.
First off, it’s fallacious to presume that level 80’s are running around in full exotic/ascended with superior runes.
I have five 80’s; there isn’t time in the day to grind that much equipment or enough gold to buy that much equipment… and I’m a retired old fart, so I have more time in a day to waste on this stupid game than most people.
Second, quite frankly the scaling system is so borked up that my 80’s are MUCH more powerful in a level-appropriate zone than in a lower zone to which they’ve been scaled down and mobs in encounters have been scaled up. ANet hasn’t figured it out yet… they’re not even close IMHO.
It’s not just overpowered krait…
ANet said they were “experimenting” with new ways of handling scaling; the overpowered Krait is just one example.
I’ve got five 80’s (five different classes) and I’ve been through most areas/events/mobs multiple times. Today I went out with my warrior and experienced another one of ANet’s experiments… For a particular fight I’ve done several times before, where I usually had to fight a single group of three mobs, I now got wave after wave of three mobs. I think I fought six waves… and barely survived on my warrior. Any of my other alts would have died.
Personally, I don’t think ANet has a clue how to balance mobs against player characters; there have always been overpowered mobs (relative to on-level characters) as a result of poison, knockdown, daze, and other skills that put character skills to shame (I sure wish my thief’s posion-applications – for which he’s traited – could knock out a mobs health as fast as their posion knocks out his). But now, things have gone past “poor balance” to ridiculous.
Maybe they’re telling us we all have to run around in groups from now on…
Well, I can always go back to Skyrim (at least all the mechanics aren’t broken) until ESO or Archage comes out…
…my other tunes.
tune
noun
1.
a succession of musical sounds forming an air or melody, with or without the harmony accompanying it.
2.
a musical setting of a hymn, poem, psalm, etc., usually in four-part harmony.
3.
the state of being in the proper pitch: to be in tune.
4.
agreement in pitch; unison; harmony.
5.
proper adjustment, as of radio instruments or circuits with respect to frequency.The game may be “dead” to you, but it’s not “dead” to everyone. It’s certainly not “dead” to me. Apparently you allowed yourself to get over-enthused about the “personal story” hype and now are totally shocked that it is not the greatest thing of all time. What did you expect, seriously—-a personal novel tailored specifically to your character? Go write a book!
Sorry for the poor choice of words – tune Vs character. I was expecting something like the GW 1 story lines.
The sound of the word is right, is was a word used a lot 10 years ago to reference ones character. However it is spelled toon.
Thank you for the correction.
Actually, it’s short for “cartoon”…
Great, thanks! Would you also know where I’d purchase a pick from? Just ant TP?
Pretty much any merchant in the zone you’re doing the mining…
“Flush” the WoW experience out of your head. Crafting and resource gathering in GW2 bears very little resemblance.
Being a retired old fart (yes, retired old farts play MMORPGs), I typically play for a couple of hours in the morning and then play again later in the afternoon.
Four days running, now, with the daily nearly complete on whichever one of my characters I was playing that day, the daily RESET.
I do not focus on doing the daily specifically when I’m playing; that’s too much like grind, not entertainment; I get the daily done as part of normal gameplay, usually while going through the process of completing exploration of a zone: kills, events, aquatic kills, crafting, dodging, etc. are all part of normal play.
If we are obligated to focus specifically on doing the tasks in the daily, then personally I’d just as soon not bother with it at all.
I’m playing the game MY way, not ANet’s way.
My ranger is my main; I generally prefer sword and torch over all other weapons (longbow for ranged engagements) because the combination seems to do much, much, much more damage (because of burning damage) than any other combination.
However, that’s only true if there are no cliffs in the vicinity of the fight, no ramps, no bridges, no edges, no jumps, etc. …because the ranger with a sword (because of the absolutely sheer stupidity of ANet’s design for the weapon) with “1” set as auto-attack loves to run off heights to his death…
Axe and torch are another good combination… many fewer suicides. The only problem is that the thrown axe tends to pull in extra mobs.
Butter drops were — for a long time — one of those “excessive drops” that ANet scaled back.
I have so much butter that I just vend any butter drops these days.
Wayyyy lonnngggg past the pat-on-the-back phase…
Most of these stupid awards are just part of the marketing/advertisement game (compare the number of advertisements on game sites by a game company to the amount of awards their games get from that site; there’s a very obvious correlation).
I have noticed some very crappy games getting the various game of the year awards; don’t be naive about it.
Nope, not caused by right-clicking while moving the camera…
In the last day or so, on three different alts, I’ve found that targets got dropped… Not the old auto-targeting problem; not the usual TAB-targeting problem; this is new… Targets that do not have the ability to “vanish” or fly-out of line-of-sight to break targeting are breaking targeting. One moment I have a target; the next moment I have no target.
It’s more than frustrating; it leads to character deaths…
Just one more bug in GW2…
I have four 80’s and one alt in his 70’s who will probably hit 80 either today or tomorrow. I’ve been playing since release… yesterday was the first day I ever got exotics as “drops”… and actually I got TWO as the exploration reward for completing a zone, one item my character could use and one item I’ll have to give to one of my other characters.
I’m going by memory, but both items were level 70 items, so their stats weren’t all that wonderful…
Got a couple rares yesterday, too, which surprised me because I haven’t been seeing many rare drops lately either. Apparently the RNG gods were smiling on me yesterday… although none of the rares were usable by the class of the character I was playing… which seems to happen more often than not.
Well, you see, after killing Zhaitan, the bureaucrats and politicians decided they didn’t need Trahearne any longer; they gave him some medals, a retirement check, and sent him home. They then voted themselves a payraise.
So, he is no loger Marshal of the Pact.
That’s why he can’t give you a Dawn and 100 Charged Lodestones.
Personally, I hope not.
Everyone has their own opinion and set of tastes, but I have not enjoyed the personal story on any of my five alts (doing different variations of the story). I have found the story to be shallow, the instances often buggy amd/or imbalanced, and the rewards usually not level-appropriate (if you do hearts, DE, story, exploration, and crafting simultaneously in the game, you cannot help but out-level the story and the rewards you get from completeion of a story segment just aren’t worth it).
When I found out the last part of the story is a mandatory group exercise, I pretty much decided against even bothering to progress the stories on my five alts any further… and just wait for ESO to come out.
I’ve bumped into this in zones and in the story mission; I don’t think their downscaling algorithm works in a consistent fashion and it affects some classes more than others.
I’ve got five alts, three currently 80 and the other two mid-70’s; in general, because I do the hearts, DE, stories, exploration, and crafting, I have always outleveled the zones and crafting. Before this last change to the scaling algorithm, all of my characters were generally a bit OP when they went down to lower zones (usually for map completion activities, but also for crafting materials).
Since the change in the algorithm, I’ve found that:
- My pets (ranger and mesmer) obviously do not scale down as much as my characters; pets seem to continue to remain a bit OP
- Ranged weapons seemed to have been scaled down more than melee weapons; my ranger and elementalist are almost ineffective unless they go melee (which means the elementalist doesn’t last very long at all)
- Armor mitigation doesn’t seem to have been scaled down in the same way as offensive capability; my warrior often appears invulnerable even again five mobs, while my elementalist has trouble fighting even one… that’s NORMAL mobs
When they’re in level-appropriate areas, the different classes play in the manner I expect and grew accustomed to as they were leveling up.
Granted, it’s just perceptions; I haven’t been collecting any data on the phenomenon. However, I trust my perceptions. The characters definitely play diferently in lower zones (my elementalist – fire specced, no less – has to almost pop all her skills to take down individual normal mobs).
It’s rather disappointing when lower level zones/mobs are more difficult to fight for some classes than zones.mobs of the same level.
I have mostly encountered them around vistas, jumping puzzles, and “avoidance paths” – the latter being routes you would logically take to avoid mobs to get to some desired location, only ANet wants you to fight your way through… I guess to either cause you to die (and pay for repairs) or to force you to use a group.
All three cases tend to kitten me off… If I’ve found a route to a vista or a jumping puzzle (and I’’m not talking talking about an exploit; just an obvious route), then I should be able to take it. It’s extremely annoying to find what appears to be an obvious path up a hill or ruined wall, but you can’t take it because ANet apparently wants you to do some stupid Mario Brothers jumping game.
Similarly, if I choose to avoid mobs in order to get somewhere and I find a path to do so, then I should be able to bypass them… especially on my squishier toons. With mob density being what it is and the ridiculous respawn rate being what it is; with mobs often appearing out of thin air in what appears to be clear areas; players should have some options to go around terrain they don’t want to traverse.
Nope… ANet wants you to play the game their way. So, the game becomes nothing more than hack ’n slash; no brain-power allowed…
Without subscriptions, how do you choose which players to merge into one server? You may make judgments on the basis of recent player activity, but players may be just taking breaks and planning on coming back, potentially causing overload problems later.
My own server was one of the low servers until soe big PvP guild moved to it, but in PvE I don’t see a lot of other players (I guess the PvP’ers don’t spend much time in PvE). That’s okay with me; if I’m out wandering “the wilderness”, I don’t expect to see a lot of other people. As it is, I think there are far too many NPCs in the world… especially those annoying mobs who spawn out of thin air and attack me, then respawn seconds after I’ve killed them (contrary to the BS ANet tries to feed us about respawn times)…
I find there’s just enough other players to locally help one another in the open world on most events. There aren’t enough, however, to thin the mob population. If ANet’s respawn rate and mob density are based on some presumption of greater player population, then they screwed up because there are way too many mobs and the respawn rate is much too fast.
That’s my only gripe about populations.
Well, as long as we’re asking innocuous questions:
- Why do we get walnuts from pine trees?
- If Sylvari are “born” in the roots of trees, why are there male and female Sylvari?
- Do female Sylvari breasts produce tree sap?
- Do Sylvari need to be periodically watered and fertilized?
- Why do ogres have a British accent? Are all Brits ogres or are all orgres British?
- When the Risen say “It begins!” what is beginning?
- Why does my Ranger like to jump off of cliffs when he uses his sword?
- Why does my Elementalist like to burn little baby rabbits indiscriminately?
- Why are salt water sharks and barracuda in fresh water lakes?
etc.
It’s not just the thief class; it’s not just the clusterbomb within the thief class skills set. I play Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior, Mesmer, and Thief alts simultaneously (as in leveling them all at the same rate; they’re all in their 70’s now) and all the classes — irrespective of which weapons you’re using — have skills that sometimes fail to fire. It’s more noticeable with ranged skills, but it also happens with even melee skills. Check your combat logs sometime… you’ll find disconnects.
Face it, guys and gals, the game has bugs…
How many times have you been one-shot by a mob in PVE that was 20 levels lower than you, not a veteran, not a champion, and also not even close to you — and with no ranged ability, no animation showing you any form of attack, and no feeback as to why you died?
It’s the same basic problem; the engine doesn’t keep up and we don’t see all the animations or have all the events fire.
Hey, we’re not paying any subscription, so live with it until something better comes along…
If this was a sub-based game, I would have already voted with my wallet and left.
There are a lot of things that I like about the game, but its many bugs, broken mechanics, and balance issues would not be tolerable if I was paying a monthly subscription.
I expect any product I purchase to be finished and of high enough quality to warrant the price. GW2 is really at Beta-stage of development, good enough for a B2P business model, but not good enough for a subscription-based business model.
Ignoring the sarcasm in Fiennes’ post above me…
Reality is that this is a B2P game, not a subscription-based business model, and ANet accordingly isn’t staffed with a huge marching army of developers and programmers… and probably has a lot of junior (read “cheap”) staffers handling QA. It’s fairly probable that ANet wants to be profitable, so they’re not going to staff up beyond what’s sustainable for their cash-shop revenue stream.
If you noticed (and how could you not notice), the game was released with a lot of bugs, a lot of balancing issues, a lot of load issues (see “culling”), and a lot of missing features that are in most MMORPGs… even though it went through the usual Beta testing cycles. It’s very apparent that the “Beta testing” was really just the typical marketing done by most of these development companies.
If you look at the various buglists out thee, you’ll see almost every issue you’ve ever run into, so they’re aware of them. When will they fix them? Probably not until I’ve moved on to another game… so, I’m not going to worry about them.
It’s just a game, not the end of the world.
In line with what FugueState said, if ANet’s record to date on bug fixes and failed mechanics (inclusive of the camera performance, TAB-targeting, auto-targeting, and RMB targeting) is the measure of “…it is only a matter of time before the issue is resolved…” then we might as well presume that the problem will never be fixed.
I hate lemmings…
I would like to take this moment to apologize to all of the many innocent rabbits, frogs, deer, chickens, and other simple animals out there that I have inadvertently targeted and killed as a result of the horribly KITTENED-up camera-RMB-targeting lash-up in GW2.
This game is lacking QA…
This game is lacking balance…
This game is lacking workable game mechanics…
This game certainly isn’t lacking bugs…
Etc. …Designing the social aspects of a game correctly isn’t about man power, it’s about understanding MMOs and MMO players and building around that.
And that’s where I think things went wrong as in that ANet designers didn’t truly understand the implications of their concepts. They may have sounded good on paper but didn’t translate well into the game.
Didn’t say it’s about manpower; it’s about experience.
To develop a good social interface and environment requires someone with extensive experience in (a) behavioral science, and (b) human factors engineering.
Bet you my paycheck against yours that they have nobody with those qualifications.
Fun. Period. [Vice the frustration that GW2 presents in a whole lot of ways.]
Maybe they’ll get there before ESO comes out.
This game is lacking QA…
This game is lacking balance…
This game is lacking workable game mechanics…
This game certainly isn’t lacking bugs…
Etc. …
Since this game is B2P, I can speculate that the development team wasn’t/isn’t composed of guys with thirty years of experience in game development since such people tend to be rather expensive, besides being few and far between, and a B2P game isn’t going to have a super-expensive development crew. Being short on experience — that is, knowing what works and what doesn’t — means such niceties as proper social design aren’t going to be in the game… maybe after a few years of bug-fixes, re-work, re-thinking, and stealth fixes to basic mechanics.
BUT…
…it is B2P (no subscription), so while I might prefer a more polished product, the other games out there right now (TSW, TOR) are pretty much C-R-A-P (aka K-I-T-T-E-N).
Ditto.
Gw2.exe does not show up in the task manager as an application, but does show up in the process list.
Right after release, GW2 often did not shut down properly, but would hang my machine. I suspect this is just a continuation of the original problem.
I experienced two DCs within a minute (of course, that also means I was able to reconnect right away, too).
He did everything right,
But was killed by instant respawns
And enemies that appeared out of thin air
That weren’t there before.
I’ve had it happen many a time… using master tools and other special tools, when much lesser tools worked to produce the proper item. Usually it happens with harvesting plants, but I’ve also had it happen with chopping trees and mining ore (although, obviously, you don’t get fiber then).
I /bug it when it happens, not that I think ANet is ever going to bother fixing bugs… I’ve begin to think that finding bugs are one of the mini-games to occupy our time. [/sarcasm]
Sometimes I think it’s class-based; if your character is squishy (elementalist, mesmer, necromancer) or range-based (ranger); or you attempt to use terrain in almost any fashion (but this isn’t consistent, either) to gain an advantage, the mob resets and regenerates.
However, I have seen mobs reset and regenerate when I haven’t pulled them even an inch from where the combat started, too; they’ll reset by just turning around, regenerate instantly, and then turn around to fight again.
Other times, if you keep hitting them as they return to the starting position, they won’t regenerate, although they will reset their AI…
If you use AoE attacks from a terrain position that gives you an advantage, it is apparently okay, but if you use a one-on-one attack from range, you’ll get a reset and regeneration or “Invulnerable” banners flying in your face.
I have had “Out of Range” and “Invulnerable” banners pop up when I’m standing right by the mob, only standing on a step on stairs one lower or one above the mob…
[WoW and LotRO used to have the same problem; it is a result of the algorithmic shortcuts used to calculate distance between players and mobs, packaged in the libraries developers buy.]
So, no, thee’s no discernible pattern, likely because different people wrote the AI scripts, acting independently and without subsequent review for consistency.
“I have seen this instant respawn thing before too I think however tho it’s not a true instant respawn. What I think happens is it is another mob spawning that you killed a min or 2 ago that just happens to spawn where you are when it is probably set to respawn from a random spot out of probably 4-5. Respawning just after you kill another mob that spawned in the exact same spot would give the appearance of an instant respawn.
Nope, in this case it is an actual instant respawn.
I had taken my mid-50’s level Charr Ranger to a level 15+ zone to farm for crafting materials (Tiny Totems, Tiny Venom Sacs, Tiny This, Tiny That…) since they don’t drop in enough quantity through normal play, and for map exploration. I found an area where the mobs spawn at one location and run to another a short distance away; you can attack them enroute and they ignore you, not fighting back until they reach their destination.
With a long bow, it is possible to position yourself midway between the spawn point and the destination, engage the mob as it spawns, and let the pet finish it off… With a yellow bow, I was doing a lot of damage (FWIW, scaling really doesn’t work that well; I was mowing down mobs) and the pet could finish the mob off quickly while I engaged the next mob.
I’d see the XP banner on screen and an instant later, the mob respawned and I’d re-engage.
I quit doing this after a very short time because I considered it to be an exploit; I reported it as such. But, I could have farmed that location all day long… although I would have been bored to tears…
I found another area yesterday very similar, only in this other area, the mobs instantly respawn and then don’t move, so it is very clearly an instant respawn. I was on my mid-50’s Mesmer this time (same zone as the other instant respawn for the same reason) and again was mowing down the mobs (the clones evidently don’t scale well, either), and it was very obvious: XP banner followed by instant pop of a new mob.
Anyway, ANet has no credibility with me anymore. I’ve seen too many examples of this and other failed mechanics.
If you define “challenge” as something that requires you to think to overcome an obstacle, then there is no challenge in GW2. There are only artificial mechanics players can’t overcome through thought or skill because they have no way to react.
(edited by Lord Kreegan.8123)
No one else been stomped all over on like this before? Please don’t count bandits in queensdale, everyone should know where they are coming from and will spawn lol….
Everyone has been stomped on like this…
IMHO, the biggest flaw in the game is the combination of mob density, respawn timers, and the way mobs spawn right on top of you – and not just event mobs.
How do you clear a path to some location you’re going to when mobs appear out of the air (or ground, if you’re talking Dredge)?
How do you choose a path to get from point A to point B if mobs are going to arbitrarily spawn on that path out of nowhere?
To add insult to injury, ANet steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem, instead claiming (in the forums) that respawn timers are all balanced… BS; I know an area where respawn is instantaneous.
My frustration with this game is that at least 50% of my five characters’ deaths have resulted from what I consider to be broken mechanics in he game, respawn and magical spawns out of nowhere being the biggest culprit.
Apparently, ANet doesn’t realize that people play games for fun; dying because of flawed mechanics isn’t fun.
The game very definitely is NRFPT (Not Ready For Prime Time); it needed another six months of Beta testing – real Beta testing, not the phony Beta testing used for marketing purposes.
The thief class has a whole lot of other issues…
Just tell him to keep pressing the “1” key… That’s pretty true for all classes. Other skills are situational.
None of the above… I hate jumping puzzles.
If I wanted to play Super Mario Brothers, I’d play Super Mario Brothers.
The biggest problem with the jumping puzzles is the camera; too often, you can’t control it to see where you have to jump because the camera has a mind of its own. The second problem with the jumping puzzles is that you need to be somewhere back from the puzzle to see where you need to jump to begin with, but ANet likes to stick the stupid puzzles in the middle of high density mob areas.
Add to that the fact that PC controls aren’t exactly tuned for that sort of thing; i.e., you don’t always jumpt when you push the controls to jump; and you’ve got a messy mechanic in the game.
Super Mario Brothers with bifocals and a limp…
[quote=1158541;Zeldain.5710
That’s what guilds are for.
Everyone – especially the developers – is hell-bent on facilitating solo players in mutli-player content. This is to the detriment of the genre and has to stop.
[/quote]
I disagree…
The “best” groups, IMHO, are those that occur spontaneously whenever two or more people are in the same area working on a common goal, not arbitrarily combined into a “group” through some artificial game mechanism.
I almost always help others in the same area I’m in and almost always find others in the same area helping me, not only because we’re working on the same goals, but also because it’s just the “right thing to do”… without anyone bothering to form a formal group. To my mind, that’s how it should be. Formal groups are artificial.
I have been “actually stuck” (fallen through the world; run through the side of an object and been unable to reverse direction) and /stuck DID NOT provide any message or serve any other purpose. I have been in locations where I could not move at all, but could only turn around in place, and /stuck did nothing.
I have used /bug in all of these cases to alert ANet, but /stuck has been useless.
It’s just one more thing poorly done in the game.
I turned it off because of my frustrations with it, but even turning it off doesn’t work right. VERY OFTEN, as I’m just moving around in PvE, my characters will decide to arbitrarily target some mob and start auto-attacking, causing a fight I don’t want at the time, and – if I happen to be retreating at that moment to recover health – can lead to the character’s death.
It’s a broken, borked, screwed up, poorly designed and implemented mechanic in the game. Unfortunately, it’s just one more broken, borked, screwed up, poorly designed and implemented mechanic in the game.
TAB-targeting is just as bad. Hit TAB expecting to target the mob right in front of you, the one that’s beating on you with its sword, and – NO! – you target the opponent at max range that was ignoring you and add another opponent to the fight.
In my opinion, this game is still in BETA… Maybe that’s what happens with a non-subscription business model.
When the original game gets out of beta, let me know… Then we can talk expansion.
I have five characters: Warrior, Ranger, Thief, Elementalist, and Mesmer; all around level 50 (I am leveling them up simultaneously).
Bluntly, the warrior is BY FAR the easiest to play; the ranger second easiest.
Why? Simple reason; the mechanics in the game are ANTI- kiting and it is pretty much essential that you are able to kite when you play thief, elementalist, and mesmer (not so much the ranger because certain pets can effectively tank).
The game mechanics, as poorly as they are designed, essentially force lightly armored characters (when not in an organized group) to stand toe-to-toe with opponents… or they reset.
Add in the fact that there is ridiculous mob density in many areas with ridiculous respawn rates (you cannot effectively clear a path to get to an objective location in many areas of the game without a group unless you get lucky, even burning all of your skills on cool down), and there is a significant problem with non-heavy armor classes.
10%-15% better armor protection, someone said? BS. My warrior can stand toe-to-toe with most mobs and take little to no damage in the period of time that the medium ad lightly armored classes would be demolished… and does as much damage to the mobs during those encounters as the heavier more-DPS oriented classes do.
Sorry; in actual play I find the game’s classes are poorly balanced, and that’s just for PvE.
I find the game is at a late-Beta level of completion. It has not been balanced yet. There are a LOT of problems with the game’s mechanics.
I really, really want to like this game, but if this was a subscription game I would have already cancelled my sub.
Not ready for prime time…
I normally don’t bother posting in forums, preferring to just read, but in this case I will comment.
It is much easier to define “imbalance” than it is to define balance, so let’s go with standard hypothesis testing techniques. If it is possible to prove the counter-argument is valid — or state unequivocably that the counter-argument can’t be disproven — then it can be inferred that the hypothesis is invalid.
The hypothesis is that GW2 is “balanced”…
Let’s just look at PvE, players of whatever class versus mobs, since PvP is too greatly dependent on player skill:
1) Can a player “stun-lock” / “knockdown-lock” a mob? No. But mobs can effectively “stun-lock” / “knockdown-lock” a player between the time of the effect and the animation delay time to recover from the effect. On my five different characters (all different classes), I have had many occasions where I’ve lost 3/4 of the health bar to mobs with the ability to stun or knockdown the player — before I could ever react.
2) Can a player cause a mob to lose its targeting of the player to interrupt the skill being fired? Not really, although a player can run away, attempt to dodge (if there is a visual cue for a player to react to), or possibly “break lock” with stealth or some other skill… although the mob then just resumes targeting 99% (wild exaggeration) of the time. Yet, there are lots of different mobs that continually break targeting, making it impossible for player’s characters to fire their skills. Just this morning, while trying to reach a skill challenge, my Mesmer had to cross an area where two skelks were hidden (“invisible”, meaning they only spawned once you entered the area). They phased in and out SO FAST that it was impossible to target them (either TAB-targeting or mouse click) and fire off a skill. They were eighteen (18) levels lower than my Mesmer… yet they killed her five times before I could get past that point on the terrain. I couldn’t even use my “on-death” skills because they required being able to target an opponent… and I couldn’t target one long enough to effectively use the skills.
3) Do players “respawn” so fast — contrary to the BS we’re being fed about respawn timers — that it is impossible for mobs to advance on terrain, trying to reach some vantage point, before the players that were just killed come back to life and attack them from behind? No. Players have to respawn at some waypoint usually quite some distance away from the terrain that is being fought over; they don’t get to respawn right on top of their opponent and it takes time for them to return to the fight.
4) Are players on some magic leash that if exceeded when fighting a mob causes the player’s health to regenerate very quickly and, more often than not, makes the player go invulnerable? No. But the current “leash mechanics” cause some absolutely ridiculous situations in the game where it is impossible for classes — the glass cannons and even the leather armor wearers — to fight effectively because the developers evidently expect the players to go toe-to-toe with the mobs.
Enough of that…
On the one hand, it’s nice to play a game where it’s not possible for players to just walk over the mobs. However, it’s not because the mobs’ AI is so marvelous. It’s because the game has some decidedly artificial mechanics built in that heavily favor the mobs.
Unfortunately, these artificialities are blatantly obvious in the game and make gameplay — even in PvE — imbalanced… and, quite frankly, tedious.
I believe there is a decent balance between classes; of the five I play, they all suffer pretty much the same way in the same circumstances. But, there is a very poor balance between players and the game environment…
…and it seriously hurts enjoyment of the game.
(edited by Lord Kreegan.8123)