Showing Posts For Moosey Fate.9278:
sorry for the double post. I will look into deleting it. This forum has an unconventional UI from any I’ve seen before.
I wanted to add though….
Or surprise me and prove this is good. I’m not leaving the game over this, but it’s not exactly extending my desire to play. Maybe I’ll be surprised, I just don’t see it. I see this solution as exagerating things that are issues to my personal enjoyment of the game. Honestly, there are a lot of bugs (events locking up, enemies becoming invinvible while you stay in agro status, realm guesting) that should be taken care of before new changes are implimented anyways. Don’t underestimate peoples desire to play more if they can play with all their friends. For some people all their friends are in their guild on one realm. For many people, we cannot play together without server transfers. And a single transfer would only add one friend while removing another (from friends accessible to pay with). The paragraph is not to get too wrapped up in the specifics, just to say there’s bigger, more important things to fix. Get this game out of beta feeling should be first priority. As it stands, GW2 is a game I plan to continue playing even with updates I don’t care for, but it’s not a game I dare recommend to anyone. I was the first couple weeks, but I stopped. I would love to recommend this to others, but I can’t in it’s current state. And ascended gear I don’t see helping this cause. I don’t want to show someone this game for the free weekend when I think there are enough things that will turn them off. I’ll recommend it to them (they’re much more casual than me, and likely won’t even think about it much otherwise) when those things polish up, assuming changes haven’t just conveluted it into obscurity.
Anet has always had one of the best manifesto philosophies for game design. I really just wish they would strengthen the identity set forth by that manifesto rather than washing it out to appeal to a more classing MMO audience. I criticize only because I like the game, I like the franchise, and I want to like it more rather than be turned off. Hope there’s something helpful in here. If you opinions for what make a game great differ from me, that’s fine. But these are my opinions. I am not a typical gamer, and don’t have typical motivations, but I feel a lot of observations in this post are legit despite those differences (I even go out of my way to mention things that could be changed that I wouldn’t necessarily like, but would have certain results).
After reading the comments by Chris Whiteside, I can fully say I don’t support adding the Ascended tier.
The orange tier is already a steeper climb than max stat gw1. All tiers below max stat are effectively useless merchant or salvage fodder in a game with such speedy progression. The speedy progression is good, but this feels like a case of GW having split identity… wanting to have it’s cake and eat it too. There are too many sub-optimal tiers already. Which washes out the optimal tiers and make the rarity from drops overly high. I feel the rarity of yellow should be the rarity of max stat as it stands. This exagerates that. It exagerates the poor up-leveling for WvW. It exagerates the overpowered downleveling in PvE. There are better ways to solve the issue of a high but absolute progression bar than adding a tier. It also adds convolution to an already convoluted gear system. If this infused mechanic must be added, there are better ways to add it than this.
The mechanic should focus on ways that keep maxed players interested in playing. This is a band-aid approach to fixing a larger problem. While it will add more convelution or interesting mechanics (choose from the previous terms depending on your perspective), it’s still creating a new max progression wall. GW1 had less of a complaint of no end game, and I belive this was an outcome of larger factors. Farmers could sell max appearance gear (or all the components for other players to get it themselves). This kept them playing to just get more and more rich, even if there wasn’t a point to it all. I am not attracted to that feature, just saying it had a certain camp of people playing longer. GW1 build system involved no money sink to experament, and that experamenting gave way to amazing builds, personal ownership of builds (for those who didn’t simply look up builds). It was harder to balance, but it helped the longevity for some people. I was attracted to this feature. The larger issue isn’t a need to add this tier, it’s that a combination of the mentioned things, and otehr things from GW1 helped sustain it. For example, while it may be great you can’t build these crazy builds, that the pve doesn’t facilitate solo farming masses in the same way, that so much high end glamour gear is soul/account bound, it all comes together to make an environment when people will play less once they hit the max stat wall. All those things may be theoretically great on their own, but they all take something away too, and the sum in this rare case is not greater than the sum of it’s parts. But continued grind shouldn’t be the solution either (like it might sound like I’m supporting). Unfortunately, it’s what keeps many playing beyond the wall. PvP is a great way to sustain beyond a wall, but not everyone is interested in that. PvE gameplay is what should be fixed. Not elevating the PvE wall. Or creating more convelution where you will need different gear for all high end things (which would bore you quicker of the game I’d think, if you just went for the optimal end game gear farm, and not the variety). The dynamic events and skill use systems are great. The build system I’m not a fan of. But play to the strengths. Improve unique challenges for dynamic events. Improve event re-starting chains. Don’t be afraid to create instances for exploratory areas where event chains are more impactful for solo or small group play. Add a major boss to each explorable zone that doesn’t have one. Add alternate weapon skills for you to slot, which require a more task oriented achievement instead of resource gathering achievement. Add gear that has no stat, but changes the visuals of certain skills used that have a scavenger hunt means of attaining. I’m not saying which of these are ideas i’d really like to see in the game, and which are just mind farts. But the point is, the evolution of mechanics should be something more than just a new wall creation. Even if this is the only wall ever created. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see that a place ticking away 100 damage per second for each non-infusion, or an enemy only being reasonably vulnerable to ascended damage will do what this update attempts to accomplish. It’s a really cool mechanic for an isolated dungeon experience. For example, run past task A to get to task B. Task B infuses you so you can destroy baddies in task A. But make it an instance thing where you must do task B then A each time you do that dungeon path.
After reading the comments by Chris Whiteside, I can fully say I don’t support adding the Ascended tier.
The orange tier is already a steeper climb than max stat gw1. All tiers below max stat are effectively useless merchant or salvage fodder in a game with such speedy progression. The speedy progression is good, but this feels like a case of GW having split identity… wanting to have it’s cake and eat it too. There are too many sub-optimal tiers already. Which washes out the optimal tiers and make the rarity from drops overly high. I feel the rarity of yellow should be the rarity of max stat as it stands. This exagerates that. It exagerates the poor up-leveling for WvW. It exagerates the overpowered downleveling in PvE. There are better ways to solve the issue of a high but absolute progression bar than adding a tier. It also adds convolution to an already convoluted gear system. If this infused mechanic must be added, there are better ways to add it than this.
The mechanic should focus on ways that keep maxed players interested in playing. This is a band-aid approach to fixing a larger problem. While it will add more convelution or interesting mechanics (choose from the previous terms depending on your perspective), it’s still creating a new max progression wall. GW1 had less of a complaint of no end game, and I belive this was an outcome of larger factors. Farmers could sell max appearance gear (or all the components for other players to get it themselves). This kept them playing to just get more and more rich, even if there wasn’t a point to it all. I am not attracted to that feature, just saying it had a certain camp of people playing longer. GW1 build system involved no money sink to experament, and that experamenting gave way to amazing builds, personal ownership of builds (for those who didn’t simply look up builds). It was harder to balance, but it helped the longevity for some people. I was attracted to this feature. The larger issue isn’t a need to add this tier, it’s that a combination of the mentioned things, and otehr things from GW1 helped sustain it. For example, while it may be great you can’t build these crazy builds, that the pve doesn’t facilitate solo farming masses in the same way, that so much high end glamour gear is soul/account bound, it all comes together to make an environment when people will play less once they hit the max stat wall. All those things may be theoretically great on their own, but they all take something away too, and the sum in this rare case is not greater than the sum of it’s parts. But continued grind shouldn’t be the solution either (like it might sound like I’m supporting). Unfortunately, it’s what keeps many playing beyond the wall. PvP is a great way to sustain beyond a wall, but not everyone is interested in that. PvE gameplay is what should be fixed. Not elevating the PvE wall. Or creating more convelution where you will need different gear for all high end things (which would bore you quicker of the game I’d think, if you just went for the optimal end game gear farm, and not the variety). The dynamic events and skill use systems are great. The build system I’m not a fan of. But play to the strengths. Improve unique challenges for dynamic events. Improve event re-starting chains. Don’t be afraid to create instances for exploratory areas where event chains are more impactful for solo or small group play. Add a major boss to each explorable zone that doesn’t have one. Add alternate weapon skills for you to slot, which require a more task oriented achievement instead of resource gathering achievement. Add gear that has no stat, but changes the visuals of certain skills used that have a scavenger hunt means of attaining. I’m not saying which of these are ideas i’d really like to see in the game, and which are just mind farts. But the point is, the evolution of mechanics should be something more than just a new wall creation. Even if this is the only wall ever created. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see that a place ticking away 100 damage per second for each non-infusion, or an enemy only being reasonably vulnerable to ascended damage will do what this update attempts to accomplish. It’s a really cool mechanic for an isolated dungeon experience. For example, run past task A to get to task B. Task B infuses you so you can destroy baddies in task A. But make it an instance thing where you must do task B then A each time you do that dungeon path.