Showing Posts For MassIneffective.2364:
While I did enjoy this game on release, and still do to a certain extent…I was a die-hard fan of the original and this game just didn’t resonate with me like GW1 did. Granted, ANet wanted to expand their player base beyond the theorycrafters and build wizards that populated the original (it was very heavily based on build synergy, and people that didn’t grind out the optimal builds were often shunted out of the winner’s circle).
That being said, it’s very easy to get going in the new Tyria. The living story is fairly immersive, and I still enjoy the story behind my Sylvari Guardian. I’m still hoping for a story arc that takes us back to the Crystal Desert to push out Palawa Joko and hopefully reunite with some of the remaining humans in Elona.
Just a few points of comparison:
WoW |—————| GW2
______Immersion___ x Guild Wars has always had better immersion, imo.
_______Combat____x The combat system is much better.
__x_____ PvE________ PvE endgame has some gaps and isn’t very challenging.
________ PvP_______x Open-world PvP at its finest.
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50% higher attackspeed on all Pve Mobs.
50-100% higher attack damage on all Pve Mobs.
100% better defensive stat scaling on players.
Make LoS’ing impossible. (For example higher Mob cleave damage, better mob AoE spells. Or just simply throw in some more objects where LoS’ing is currently being executed. I can think of many spots where a simple object like a box or tree or whatever would shot down the ability to LoS entirely.)I’d love to test something like this for a few days and see how it works.
Let me tell you how that would end up working:
1. Speed runners will flood the forum because you’re nerfing them (and only them) – they don’t typically carry defensive abilities or gear for defensive stats.
2. The average player will become much less effective overall, because the current dodge mechanics would do nothing to alleviate the 150-200% increase in incoming damage.
3. The leveling process would become excessively cumbersome to the point that newer players will be discouraged very early in the process.
4. Aegis becomes useless, Blind becomes overpowered, Chain CC/kite builds become overpowered, condition damage builds get pushed out of the limelight.
5. Removing the ability to use line of sight defensively makes dodge rolling useless, and removes terrain as a battlefield mechanic. Also makes ranged builds legitimately broken because they can just walk around a building in circles while plinking you to death – they’ll never see you or be able to attack you.
So this is just a bad idea, you don’t change the meta by chancing the overall difficulty in PvE from mild to broken.
I don’t think it’s likely either, but if they ever release an actual expansion for GW2, we can get our hopes up again.
By actual expansion, I mean something like the expansions for GW1 with a sizeable chunk of PVE content, some new stuff for each of the existing classes (maybe the expanded weapon sets), new zones, and hopefully new professions.
And you think that this is “too much work that could be put elsewhere”? Why not spin the lore so that the next dragon was winning the fight (launch event) until the dervish/alch/shaman/etc (heroes who bring back lost knowledge or something) came along to turn the tide for the Tyrians? Seems like a fair way to add new professions.
Also, it’s not like they’re really adding any meaningful content right now. Honestly, I’d settle for a new weapon type or two and more diverse PvE AI/mechanics.
Edit: I don’t like how they burned every possible route for expansion they had by cutting off Cantha and Elona before the events of this game even occur. We should at least try to take back the crystal desert now that Zhaitan has been stopped with the end of the first story arc. The humans haven’t been completely eradicated from Elona, so the “dervish” could still be possible from a lore perspective where we get a break from fighting dragons and go to free Elona from the iron fist of Palawa Joko.
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Show me where you’re seeing the Dervish being rolled into the Guardian. Guardians are Monks, who where phased out because they exist primarily as a support role and don’t have much versatility outside that, and ANet wanted each class to be able to perform any combat role. So they gave monks heavy armor and greatswords.
While I agree that the human gods are fairly insignificant to the other races (Norn being the only other race that openly acknowledges their influence to any degree), ANet could spin this by implementing one race-specific class to each of the playable races – Humans get Dervishes, Norn get Shamans, Asura get Alchemists, Sylvari get —-—weavers (not sure what to put there, something plant-related), and Charr get —-—bane (something referencing their disdain for gods).
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As someone who mained a Dervish from the day Nightfall dropped, I can’t say I like the idea of giving a Dervish a bow.
That being said, I’m all for bringing back the spin-to-win Sandman.
Here’s my take based on your proposal:
Arias were more of a Paragon thing.
Vows should be a double-edged sword – abilities that limit you in one aspect of combat while empowering another, and are mutually exclusive, meaning only one vow can be active. Recasting a Vow could reverse the effects.
Signets should provide instant benefit, either offensive or defensive, at the cost of removing a boon or two.
Auras should be brief area effects that apply a boon or condition.
Enchantments should be personal auras that empower your direct strikes or auras, but are consumed by them.
I like your idea for the stance bar, they could be something like:
Dancing Winds – increased effectiveness of movement and attack speed modifiers, be it increasing your own speed or your allies’, or decreasing your foes’ speeds.
Dancing Sands – increased effectiveness of conditions and boons.
Dancing Blades – increased effectiveness of direct weapon strikes.
Dance of the Mystic – increased effectiveness of direct healing and defensive abilities.
And of course, we can’t forget the Avatars – the iconic elite skills of the Dervish. Big, bad, and broken. (can you tell I’m a bit biased?)
Although your idea of the Dervishes’ unique resource (Tempo) is interesting, I would say that Momentum would be a better word to use, especially considering that if you’re using a scythe, using your momentum effectively is part of knowing how to wield it. It’s not a stop-and-start weapon like a sword, and if you look up videons of traditional dervish dances, they know how to manipulate their momentum pretty well.
I think the system should be set up so that successful attacks and dodges increase momentum, being CCed or interrupted has a momentum penalty, and each dance having its own momentum finisher to “end” the dance and pour your energy into a high-profile ability that breaks up the flow of combat for a few seconds, so as to differentiate it from the Adrenaline system that Warriors use.
I like where you’re going with this, and I would absolutely love to see Dervishes make an appearance in GW2.
I want to feel OP again!
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You’re coming at from the perspective that toughness and vitality don’t do what they are supposed to do. However they do work. Players in PvP do use them. The problem is that you don’t need that sort of work in PvE because players use well tested tactics and can run the dungeons in any gear whatsoever. Note that – any gear whatsoever. They therefore use the highest dps gear. Making other defensive gear even more defensive isn’t going to change that.
Reducing existing defenses to make dungeons harder for speed runners is actually just going to hurt the newcomers who already find dungeons tough, very tough. Newcomers can use all sorts of builds and tactics to get through dungeons already. It’s just not optimal.
Giving defensive stats an extra bonus to defense or offense is just going to break PvP where plenty of builds can work already.
most of yall are missing the point.
the point is to have stats effective active abilities.
So that someone who is defensive statted gets an active benefit for using his defensive skills.
Then people will make real choices based on gameplay/playstyles. Thing is, right now, berserkers get the same benefit from defensive/control/support skills.Its not even really about speed running, its about creating some more variation in playstyle. check gw1, its not really about anti beserker, its about interesting playstyles/choices
You missed the part where they’re trying to tell you that PvE is so ridiculously trivial that defensive abilities are relatively useless. There’s very little variation in PvE in terms of what the NPC baddies are going to throw at you. Oh look, that guy’s ranged. Might have to use a gap closer. Oh look, that guy heal himself. Might want to interrupt that…or just nuke him so he doesn’t have time.
The point is, zerker meta in PvE is here to stay regardless of how little you enjoy it. Tankier builds may become the meta if ANet ever decides to get off their butts and make PvE enemies as mechanically diverse as they were in GW1.
Don’t hold your breath for that one.
Me, I’m still waiting on the expansion that brings back the Dervish. Best class they ever came up with. (plsplsplsANetsenpai).
Oh and to the guys that said you wont see zerkers in pvp…are we playing the same game? Zerk rangers all over the place!
But we all know rangers are relatively useless on the whole and have been since Factions. :P
Plink, plink, plink.
Along comes the Elementalist, who Rides the Lightning all the way to the little old ranger’s grave.
On a side note, the original title of the thread is a bit…misguided.
If you think Elementalists are glassy, you’ve never seen a good earth mage.
Assassins with guns (aka thieves) are supposed to be squishy. They’re designed to pump out damage, not take it to the face. Then again, nobody is anymore…you’re supposed to block or avoid it.
Rangers have enough CC between themselves and their pets to trivialize their durability problems.
Mesmers are deceptively nimble, much like Thieves. A good Mesmer won’t let you close enough to damage him.
Monks are now Guardians, which kinda sucks…but meh.
Engineers are Heimerdinger. Turrets OP. Kitekitekitekite.
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Absolutely intentional on the part of the devs. Do you know why Guild Wars 1 remained a niche game, good as it was, for pretty much it’s entire existence?
Because it required people to think to play it. Those who are more hard core about how they play games think in terms of going to a site and getting builds. But I’m sure a huge percentage of players tried Guild Wars 1 and walked away because they couldn’t figure out what to do with builds at all. They didn’t know or understand how to play the game.
Guild Wars 1 suited people like me, who love to think and play with skill sets and try to figure out how to build a better mouse trap, but I can assure you, I’m not any kind of majority. For players like me, the game worked. It even worked for my friends who were more casual, because I could always give them the builds I worked out.
But for a lot of people, that game was completely overwhelming. Hell there were people who played and were overwhelmed by Guild Wars 2, so just imagine how much magnified that problem was in Guild Wars 1?
The idea of tying skills to weapons, combined with forcing everyone to take a healing skill, means everyone basically has at least a usable build. That’s why the open world is so easy. To not chase people off who just want to run around and kill stuff and feel like they’re doing something relatively challenging. And for some people, parts of the open world are challenging.
I’m one of those players as well. Finding synergy in weird places was one of the best parts of that game. While I agree that reverting fully to the old skill system won’t work with GW2, I feel that it should contain niche gameplay elements that people like us can still delve into the way we did in GW1. I just haven’t seen anything that really caters to the players like us that aren’t satisfied by meta builds and catch-all content.
Do you think ANet would ever compromise by giving us some high-end PvE endgame with the option to build like we did in the original, where you can mix and match weapon skills to create more specialized builds? With some commonsense limitations like requiring a 1h/offhand setup to equip shield or focus abilities and you can’t equip ranged attacks without a ranged weapon.
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I haven’t even logged on in weeks now when I used to always play. There’s honestly nothing left to do anymore at this point. I could run around wvw or something; repeating the same thing I been doing 1000 more times but I’ve used every combat style and build possible at this point, even the broken ones, and feel bored of the same old mechanics. Still wondering when the whole “adding new weapons to every class” and the eventual “all weapons for all classes” thing is going to happen.
Anet never talks about future plans due to company policy, which is unfortunate, but at the same time it makes me feel like there isn’t really any in development.
Therein lies the problem. GW1’s skill system allowed for an infinite degree of expansion since abilities were tied to attributes (some skills required melee/dagger/bow/other specific weapon, but that was a comparatively small number to the current state of GW2). Since 80% of your abilities are currently tied to your weapon choice, expansion is severely limited to what weapons they choose to add…which is a very, VERY small number by comparison when you consider that there are only so many weapon types you can add before they start to overlap.
Thanks. When I said one armor I was talking about something that didn’t need AP grinding, and complete sets, not just a piece of armor or something. As I do count outfits as armors (even though I despise them), that’s still 3 IG sets vs 14 GS sets…
12 ingame sets, actually: Radiant, Hellfire, Illustrious (ascended) and Glorious all have a version for each armor weight.
More or less irrelevant since only one armor weight applies to each character.
Anet has said quite clearly that Guild Wars 1 was not an MMORPG, because even if you wanted to count Spamadan, you couldn’t actually play there, which is why it was a lobby. You couldn’t fight. You couldn’t use skills.
You got your party together to play…in what some would call a lobby. Sure you could sell there, or even participate in Mad King Says.
But if Anet tells us it’s not an MMO, why should we believe you?
MMOs are about a persistent world. It’s a world where things happen even if a player isn’t there. Guild Wars 1 didn’t have a persistent world, the entire game was instanced, except for cities which were lobbies.
In other words, once you got your party together to play, and entered the game world itself, you had zero chance of running into anyone who wasn’t already in your party.
…I think you missed the part where I agreed with the assertion that GW1 was not technically a MMO in my second post. Regardless of what it was, I could avoid other players when I wanted to, and find as many players as I could fit on my friends list when I wanted to…just like in any MMO. Some of the PvE endgame wasn’t soloable even with heroes, which forced you into group play. I had no problem with that, because the challenge was welcome.
Anywho, regardless of how you classify GW1, I sometimes forgot it wasn’t a true MMO. I think that’s an accomplishment on ANet’s part.
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In order to really be called an MMO you need the Massive part
waves at you from Spamadan district 99
In all honesty, I can see what you mean by that. It never felt disconnected to me, though. Party size was kind of annoying at various points in the game, but it never really served to distract from the immersive elements of gameplay that GW2 seems to lack more often than I’d like. The two ends of the spectrum are hardcapped party sizes like in the original and the 80-man zergfests that world bosses have become. They need to balance it somehow. Right now, GW2 has both extremes but doesn’t really apply them meaningfully or attempt to incorporate them into a single, universal party system that can span both dungeons and large-scale open world content.
Mini-rant: Dungeons also need to be more relevant to the story, akin to the missions in the original, IMO. The paths should be a choice that determines how your presence affects the outcome of an important conflict, rather than “you can choose one of three NPC guilds that determine what transmog set you can farm and what NPCs show up in your personal story”. I’m getting away from myself here…story mode was a big letdown, but meh. It shouldn’t have been a purely solo gameplay element, and I’ll leave it at that.
GW1 never felt disjointed or disconnected because of the instancing and party system. It was immersive enough that those elements didn’t degrade the experience. GW2 seems disjointed and disconnected because instances are either idiotically simple story missions or ridiculously boring content that’s been there since release (or soon after in the case of fractals) and hasn’t evolved in any way since then. Dynamic events are sometimes interesting, and progressive events are a nice touch, but they’re not challenging in any way unless you’re the only person in the zone (which is never the case, they’re always zergfests).
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8 years ago, Anet provided more content to a lobby game. So noted.
I’m not sure what you’re calling a “lobby game”. The original Guild Wars was a fully-fleshed MMO. Granted it had three separate storylines that didn’t really intermingle (although they tried to force this somewhat with the advent of heroes in Nighfall).
At any rate, here’s my list of things they lost with the release of GW2:
- leveling and story mode are solo efforts apart from zergfest random events.
- skill diversity is significantly diminished because they abandoned the hybridization system and made half your skill bar weapon-dependent, meaning you’re forced to build around your weapons rather than your preferred playstyle.
- by extension of my second point, the number of viable builds has been diminished to near-zero by comparison.
- until you encounter a veteran/champion unit, you don’t even have to use the reactive combat mechanics that were added in an effort to break away from the “tank ’n spank” style of play. And even then, most of them just hit hard enough to force you to use a healing skill every so often.
- story mode involves too much “go here, talk to this guy” and not enough “we’re in trouble, get your weapon ready and start blasting things”. Yes, the lore is interesting, but I prefer aggressive negotiations.
- endgame PvE content was relegated to “farm this 3 times a day for a month to get your BiS gear, then go farm gold to get your weapons” within months.
- capturing skills was infinitely more fun than “go stand here to get a skill point, go 11111111 this guy for 30 seconds to get a skill point, go help this guy for a skill point”.
- DERVISHES WERE BLOODY AMAZING. WTB my effing Dervish. And Ritualists. They were fun too. Bring back the expac profs…please…
- profession system kinda sucks in the sequel…they legitimately removed one of the six original classes because its role was too heavily defined as support (Monk), and it didn’t have much application outside that apart from a handful of viable smite builds. So they said “let’s give them a pseudo-paladin with half the monk skills we want to use but have no place for”.
- living story is pretty stagnant. You should have developed one storyline to its conclusion like you did with Prophecies before moving on to other branches.
Edit: removing content like they did was probably the biggest mistake they’ve made so far. If you’re that uncertain as to what direction you’re taking this amalgamation of good intentions and poor execution, then you should just stick to releasing more expansions for the original.
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I think the route that would better serve this game would be to introduce class evolutions where a class has a choice at level 80 to evolve into 1 of 2 new advanced classes(per specific profession)or stay as the vanilla class. This way you get variety, but it’s not game breaking. ArenaNet has a real disdain(justified or not)for skill splits for different formats(wvw/pve/pvp)and this hybridization you are talking about totally flies in the face of that. It just wouldn’t work without skill splits for formats.
They’d just be copying Final Fantasy at that point, and they used skill splits as a balancing mechanism for 7 years with the original Guild Wars. If they really didn’t like doing it, I never saw anything about it during that time. And it was a much better solution than every other MMO’s, which was fix it on one side while breaking it on the other.
So you are only talking about Utility skills now? As I already mentioned above even for utility skills it wouldn’t work, utility skills in GW2 are how different professions are different from each other and you want to remove any idea of unique profs? Which skills would you limit anyway? Most utility skills are unique to a profession for a reason.
Also, about the weapon skill lock, I really don’t understand why people count only the utility skills and compare their amount to the amount of skills in GW1. GW2 has a total of 960 skills, more than how many GW1 had combining Prophecies and Factions if you add all skills in, but in order to make their argument of less skills, you remove everything and count only utilities.
GW2 released with double the amount of skills GW1 had at release. In GW2 you effectively play a hybrid by weapon swapping, that’s already like playing 2 different builds, a Hammer+Longbow Warrior has a different playstyle (and build) than a Sword/Sword + Longbow Warrior.
There is your hybrid. Accessing Portals / Stealth and Projectile reflection is all people would do from other professions, to give them to professions that miss them.
My point being that I don’t like that weapons are the source of over half your active abilties. I liked it more when you could use any skill from your profession at any time, and with more than one type of weapon.
As far as utility goes, aren’t most of the unique mechanics like stealth and whatnot restricted to weaponry now? If they’re not, reworking a handful of weapons would fix that.
Call it fanboy nostalgia or whatever, but GW2 just deviated a bit too far from the original for my taste. I liked the old combat system and skill hunting and not being limited to a handful of viable options. That being said, GW2 is a decent game in its own right, but it doesn’t quite feel like Guild Wars unless I focus on the story.
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You only have access to 5 skills at a time (weapons are irrelevant since they’re specific to the class and weapon type). GW1 had far fewer limitations on builds precisely BECAUSE the game was balanced around hybridization. The only problem I see with implementing it in GW2 is that each class only has around 30-40 skills. Hybridization would have to be less extensive than it was in GW1. Granted, it would be a year’s worth of work to put the system in play but I feel that it was a core part of the Guild Wars experience and shouldn’t have been left out of the sequel.
The only thing about traits you need to change is the runes you have access to. Adding more traits would be irrelevant and imbalanced for the exact reason you just mentioned.
As for some classes becoming less desirable since you can grab their skills form a secondary, limit the skills you have access to from your secondary profession. Keep the unique mechanics locked to the core profession while basically providing alternate means of applying common effects through hybridization. And as always, hybridization is a big fat helping of opportunity cost. While you have several options, you can only take one.
Mesmer portals are an interesting mechanic, but by enforcing a minimum distance between entries and exits, there wouldn’t be much of a problem with them.
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Skip the bold text if you played the original Guild Wars.
For those of you who never played the original Guild Wars, you need some background info. In the original game, you were only restricted to your core profession (what you chose at character select) up to a certain point. Partway through each campaign you would be allowed to sample a few abilities from other professions, and choose a secondary profession to augment your abilities. You had access to every skill from both professions, and you could change your secondary profession at any time while in town, after you had purchased the ability to use each profession as a secondary. The only drawback is that you couldn’t put points into the primary attribute of your secondary professions (akin to trait points, but each profession had 4-5 unique attributes and one of them was restricted to those with the proper core profession).
Example: Elementalist
Attributes:
Fire Magic
Water Magic
Earth Magic
Air Magic
Energy Storage (Primary) <— Players who started as an Elementalist could put points into Energy Storage, but a Ranger who chose Elementalist as his secondary profession could not.
Okay, so the background info is done…my question is, has ArenaNet ever considered bringing back the hybridization system? It was one of my favorite parts of the original Guild Wars, and made the number of possible viable builds nearly limitless…as a testament to this, websites like pvx.wikia.com and gwpvx.gamepedia.com still hold thousands of player-created builds for various purposes.
Also, where the heck is my Dervish? WTB spin-to-win scythe man. :(