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The PvX mentality removed choice in some regards, and created it in others.
Because I could build a nearly self-sustaining hero team, it freed me to play subuptimal builds. I finished all four campaigns as a Ritualist PC, who had one of the worst PvE passives in the game. I have no regrets, I liked their armor. It mattered not if I was a poor candidate for any speed clear team, I could do tons of content without their approval.
I never thought of GW1 as a game of balance. More like, a game of Magic cards, where certain cards are clearly superior, or become superior through synergy, but you can make do with other cards until you get them. Since GW1 didn’t have nearly the buy-in that it took to get an optimal deck in MTG, I never QQed about the lack of balance.
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First of all, please tell us all the optimal build for say a warrior when fighting the wurm. I’ll tell you that my shout healing warrior is more than likely twice as valuable to the success of that event than a zerker build (which BTW is why that event I left failed). 8 classes all running the same build, and they failed, just saying. Farming is about speed so faceroll works wonders for that and speed dungeons, but little else.
Unless they recently changed the shout healing trait, I doubt that’s it.
A Guardian spamming “Retreat!” on CD probably does more effective healing (if you consider damage soaked = damage healed). And the CD on “Retreat!” is the same whether you wear Berserker’s, Cleric’s, or show up to the fight in the nude.
If the enemy hits me for 3/4ths of my health and you heal me for 1/8th, you are not a significant stopgap against attrition. If I dodge the blow instead, your healing is completely wasted, and I would have been better served with Might, Fury, and/or Vigor.
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Arenanet designs the meta, not the players.
If they changed the coefficient on abilities and traits with AoE healing so that they were at all worth the opportunity cost, do you honestly think we wouldn’t see more people wearing Cleric’s?
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The mobs already play GW2 like we do. They spam their autoattack damage and occasionally do a cooldown if its a significant nuke. They just don’t have the good sense to wear Berserker’s.
Dodgerolls don’t make it any more intelligent. If they just had big prompts that flashed a picture of the V key on your screen when it was time to dodge, like a console game like Batman or Ryse, people would be up in arms. But put it on a obscure, badly animated monster windup and people here treat it like its as cerebral as Star Trek’s 4 dimensional chess.
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I’d replay steps just for the XP.
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The main theme here by the “nerf” crowd seems to be making it harder to gain xp, mats and money for no real good reason.
Why should champ bags be limited or flagged?
Why should players be forced out to other areas if they do not want to be there?Only real reason I’ve heard so far is because people in other areas cant do the content, and want to force other people to do it with them. What makes you think people would do that “other content” with you, even if champs were nerfed?
If you need help doing content where there are a lower number of players how about you join a guild and ask them along? Or better yet, make some friends and explore content with them together?
Basically it seems to me that some people for some reason are on the one hand anti-social in an MMO, yet on the other demand players to help them out. Or they are somehow against other players getting the gear/look/gold they want because the “anti-social” types already have it and don’t want others attaining it.
“Why should you have to find a different champion to get bonus champion loot bags?”, you ask?
Why should you have to find another node to mine instead doing the same one over and over?
Why should you have to complete another dungeon path to get the bonus chest instead doing the same one over and over?
Why should you have to complete another fractal level range to get the bonus chest instead doing the same one over and over?
Why should you have to fight a different world boss to get the bonus chest instead doing the same one over and over?
Why should you have to jump a different puzzle to open another puzzle chest instead doing the same one over and over?
Why should you have to find a different map point after you completed one instead doing the same one over and over?I think it’s pretty obvious no matter if you see it or not.
And yet, players congregate to the activity that DOESN’T force “variety” down your throat. Sounds like democracy is alive and well, and the people have voted for a reliable source of income and XP.
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City of Heroes I think is a good example of a way to do it too.
Incarnate trials never required you to depend on someone healing you, or taunting enemies off of you. And you’d never have to join Ventrilo so some 13 year old could yell instructions at you.
You had to follow instructions, but they almost always offered you some sort of autonomy, because you’d have to split up during them.
These two were frequently completed by pugs without issue, often enough getting the badges for not screwing it up too
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lambda_Sector_Trial
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Behavioral_Adjustment_Facility_Trial
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Entirely horizontal progression can work in something like Super Mario Bros. where the game revolves around a few basic skills, but for something as time demanding and as in depth as an MMO I really doubt you could ever completely get away from vertical progression for the simple fact that you wouldn’t have enough ways for your game to really get any more challenging if the players only response to anything is “move forward, jump”
I’ve seen a pretty high skill cap when I’ve watched Super Mario World speedrunners.
Wish I could say the same about champion farms, or Siege of Orgrimmar LFR.
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I did, until they significantly ramped up the time investment involved in attaining BiS items.
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Let’s take “need” off the table for a moment.
What exactly are the long term advantages of NOT being fully loaded out in BiS items?
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You don’t need ascended gear to play, you need to know how to kite and dodge and think ahead. That’s more powerful than any ascended.
Such skills don’t exist in a binary state. Maybe someone is great at rotating their cooldowns to kite, and not so good at reading boss tells and managing their endurance. Maybe someone knows the tells, but only reacts in time to 50% of the attacks. That’s where gear upgrades come in.
If ascended gear lets me take a boss down 10% faster, that’s a significant amount of time in which I can’t make mistakes. Consistency isn’t easy.
Take a game that’s pure skill, like The Touhou Project or DoDonPachi or Quake. Nothing in those games has an attack that’s impossible to dodge. However, you have to keep doing it. Now, double your damage. That cuts the amount of things you have to dodge in half.
Removing the elitism of things like CoFp1 from the picture, let’s just look at normal dungeon content. If the party wipes, since there’s no tanks or healers, who’s going to get looked at first? Lacking any fight-specific mechanics to fail akittens going to be the first guy who was downed. Any upgrade that prevents me from being “that guy” is highly desirable. Not, technically speaking, necessary, but the problem here is that the English language lacks a word between “desirable” and “necessary” that cannot be argued against so strongly as it is on these forums.
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I’d also like to know why this change was even necessary. This is supposedly a game where you can level via crafting, so why make it even more ridiculously expensive to do so than it already was???
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People seem to be confusing the manifesto as a ‘promise’, rather than a ‘statement of intention’.
It doesn’t matter what you call it. Whatever it is, it was the reason a lot of online RPG players, who have become jaded by developer greed, short sightedness, community disconnectedness, and attempts to appeal to the lowest common denominator, decided to give Arenanet the benefit of their much abused doubt and trust.
There’s times when developers are overly ambitious, yes. The beta of Ultima Online attempted to be a fully realized artificial life simulator, until players were introduced and it led to mass extinction. When you release a “statement of intent” (as you put it) and then do the opposite thing, however, that’s just being a bad faith actor.
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Q) Will your exotic weapons disappear when the patch hits on tuesday?
A) Nope.
Q) Do you need ascended weapons for any sort of content to complete said content?
A) Again, nope.
It doesn’t force anyone to do anything and it certainly doesn’t “kill” anything. If people would stop thinking they need to have their ascended weapons all done at once and instead picture it as long term thing much like legendaries then they’d be way better off and stress themselves out less over them.
The only concern I have about ascended weapons it that they will cause unwarranted elitism.
Q) Can you theoretically kill most dungeon bosses naked?
A) Yes.
Q) Would I want to attempt it, especially with PUGs?
A) Good grief, no.
The difference between Exotic and Ascended is ~8%, around the same as if you had not worn pants to the dungeon.
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At least post a video that shows actual gameplay of a dragon fight
I was expecting a Vindictus dragon or something
30 minutes? Not with the attention span of THIS forum.
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How can so many people be unable to derive meaning from context?
It’s Monster Hunter, a series well known for its excellent mechanics wherein you take down gigantic creatures as a team.
It’s a cinematic because it implies Monster Hunter games as a whole.
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If you don’t care, then why bother with the fire field? I don’t play LH Eles or blast-finish Engies, because mastering their kittened up rotations is more work than PvE is worth. Unlike them, the Warrior has other options, like proccing might off the GS, that are simpler to use.
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crafting is a form of progression.
every other MMO out there has great icentives for lvling up crafting
WoW for example lets u craft gear that is the same tier as the current raid. and lets u sell to players.
its about time u had crafting so you can be self sufficant and start learning how mmos work.
Here’s some features that WoW also had that you neglected to mention:
A) The ability to specialize in gathering instead of crafting, allowing you to serve an economic niche.
B) Raid incentives for gathering professions (albeit not as good as those from crafting, but its still there and not an “unfilled slot”).
C) An addon API, allowing crafters to make optimal use of their time through sophisticated, hands-off systems.
I’m fairly certain crafting is in GW2 because its regarded as an “MMO thing”, even though, when people praise this game, its because it feels like an “action game” and not because its an incredible virtual world simulator where you have a job.
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Axe/mace can pair with LB or GS, depending on the fight. In a PUG with someone I don’t know I’d rather him just have the hundred blades DPS rather than putting down a fire field that no one’s prepared to blast.
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Not a fan of Jeremy Soule, so I listen to Touhou Project music instead. Keeps me alert.
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I miss the GW1 system where you go to a vendor who provides the look you want, then using runes (that tie into your playstyle rather than just giving a flat, vertical bonus) to customize it.
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I don’t want vertical progression, because right now, the only thing that can go up in any substantial matter is DPS. And if your DPS goes up at the same time they introduce a boss with more HP than the last tier of bosses, what’s the point?
Before they introduce vertical progression, they need to introduce more than one thing you can progress. Since they already threw out the trinity, that leaves an alternate advancement system. One with more interesting effects than, say, you get with WvW ranks.
Since we’re not getting that either, I will continue to look at crafted ascended gear as wasted effort, thank you.
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I remember when I first heard about public quests, around when WAR was in beta.
I thought, “Wow, what a great idea! I’ll never be friendless in an MMORPG again! I’ll make myself a skilled contributor and everyone will want to associate with me.”
Things sure have changed. From there, to Rift, to here, to FF14ARR I’ve yet to be anything but another face in the crowd going 1111111111 and desperately trying to tag stuff.
The manifesto promised more than this. C’mon guys.
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The Trinity. I’ve given it a year of DPS only, and found it to be more boring and homogenized than the traditional system, and even more so systems that hybridize roles, like City of Heroes and Dark Age of Camelon.
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People used to say the external website was “adequate”.
I think that’s changed recently, what with the emergence of “path selling” in the wake of the CoFp1 nerf.
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It’s the only really expensive thing worth buying, other than cultural armor (and gems, at launch, when I was able to get three characters slots off what I made by leveling to 80).
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I kinda think the title should be replaced with a symbol next to the name on the nameplace. What is this Pinesoul a “veteran” of? The tree wars?
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I kinda find the community schizophrenic about this issue.
If you say professions should be balanced for 1v1, people shout L2 TEAMWORK!!!
And then, when you say there should be more synergy between professions in PvE, they cry, “Go back to WoW if you want the trinity!”
Get off the fence, guys.
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As someone who’s more on the roleplayer side of things than of hardcore ownage PvP, I’d like to see duelling, actually. It creates community. I usually turn on “auto-decline duels” in games where the option exists. However, I always think its really cool when you pass through a place like the gates of Orgrimmar and see a bunch of duellers going at it, with spectators coalescing nearby.
Sort of like what happens here with the costume brawl box o’ fun.
Want to integrate it into the “flavor” of GW2? Make it a dynamic event. As part of a Living World update, add fighting pits all over Tyria, or just in select spots, where two people can register as combatants. Maybe use the bundle system to normalize them to an 80 in full zerker’s stats, even if they’re both level 2.
There’s certainly compromise possible here, no need to go “go play that other game if you want duels”.
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I’d have an easier time if they had a separate icon for balloon towers you’ve already visited.
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Wow – walls of text!
Some people are jerks – that’s all.
For example, the jerks who come on to text-based communication mediums and say that they can’t be bothered to read all the text.
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This is a good reason for the game to have a dungeon finder instead of relying on a 3rd party website.
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My choices:
Zerg PvE: Guardian Staff, Mesmer Staff, or Engineer Grenades. Tag everything, vaccuum in the loot/XP/event contribution/whatever.
Organized PvE: Necromancer Axe (use it to fill up the bar, then start life blasting), Thief Shortbow, or Ranger Shortbow. Stay stacked up on your buddies for boons, don’t try to snipe unless you’re on voice and can run back in when someone calls it. Elementalist S/D or Engineer Grenades if you’re really good at blasting your own fire fields (I’m not, so I don’t play those professions).
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Engineer Turrets are long lasting… when i build them in Lion’s Arch.
On a more serious note, I would enjoy it if several different types of pet summoning skills had cooldowns that began after you summoned them: Turrets, Minions, AND, topically, Elementals. Rangers already use a skill that swaps pets instead of summoning them, so instead of this, they get to complain about pet AI and AoE vulnerability.
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I could get a lot more done in an hour in GW1 too, thanks to things like lower level cap, useful rewards from quick PvP events like Jade Quarry, and free fast travel. As long as we’re importing good ideas from it.
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Of the three light armor professions, I would say a Lighting Hammer Elementalist would require the most APM. Setting up fire fields and then blasting them can take a lot of fancy fingerwork, which is what it sounds like you want.
Necromancers do good single target with daggers or Life Blast, but in either case you’re 1111111ing things to death. Mesmers have nice AoE and utility, but its very straightforward; reflect when you need to reflect, timewarp when something has a lot of HP, shatter before the anchor dies, etc.
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WoW has unreasonable queue times because it is a holy trinity game. There will never be a queue for a GW2 lfg no matter the implementation. Even using gw2lfg.com I never have to wait more then 30 seconds to find a group.
This. Everyone is a DPS in GW2. Heck, darn near everyone was a DPS in Challenge Mode in MoP, but you wouldn’t want to run that way with the general public.
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OP, even me with 0 understanding of economics can figure out this simple chain reaction… now stay with me and read carefully:
High valued precursors prices drop by 300g each (by becoming more common) —> T6 mats prices go up.
Another example we’re experiencing right now:
World boss chests spawn a 100% rare loot per day per account —> Certain mats prices go higher due to ectos becoming cheaper. This has globably shifted a lot of mats prices since they are all tied together in one way or another.Creating better farming spots or destroying ones, does not make things harder for everyone.
The value of all the items on TP is decided by the community, by putting together everyone’s capabilities in getting them.
So if you can’t get gold fast enough, you need to get on with the program, and stop being so persistent, others made it better that you. Ask yourself how and don’t be too lazy to figure it out.Also, an argument of “I’d rather play the game my way” won’t hold water, why?
Because you bloody farm 8-18 hours a day, and if that was fun for you, then you wouldn’t have made this topic.All t6 are tied to dust…..the drop rate of dust.
Something you are forgetting is that the whole community is not needed to determine prices. As long as a portion of players exceeds the supply of an item, that portion has the ability to set prices…..ie if 1 item drops and 2 of the richest players are willing to pay x amount above everyone else for it…it doesn’t matter what the rest of the community decides.
Get on with the program of playing tp or grinding quick easy paths? That’s…..well think about it a bit and see if it really makes sense in terms of a mmorpg’s overall health.
Excellent post.
There seems to be this pervasive idea people have that the economy is a gestalt of every player’s actions, and that, if a sink like waypoint costs were remove, the entire game would be swamped in a sea of crippling inflation.
It’s not true. Only people who sell things CoFp1 farmers want have any effect on the economy. Every other interaction amounts to less than a drop in a bathtub.
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It’s like this: People who only farms CoF or does PvP (does something little all over again) tends to tell others that there isn’t anything else. Like I was told that there isn’t any challenge in PvE. Then I asked if that person did any fractals and stated lvl50+ fractals is challenging. He said he never does it because he doesn’t like it. I asked about Arah. He said he doesn’t like that either.
That is the type of the people who keeps telling these “facts/truths” about this game. They never actually want to do anything. And then complains. I also asked him to join the fractals lvl61. He said he doesn’t want it because it is too hard. Then the irony hit. I told him Arah is easier and he could join me on the run. He didn’t want that either. He said it’s impossible to get past Gigantus Lupicus.
That’s why I keep ignoring those people who says “there isn’t this and that in this game”
Edit: also they usually don’t have 100% world completion.
Not all “difficult” games/modes are created equal.
What if there was a dungeon that, as you progressed, would randomly pop up with difficult equations to solve, with a time limit? At a level that, say, 99% of players would find impossible to do in their head? That’s a pretty hard dungeon! But it’s not exactly an RPG any more. It’s testing a completely different skillset.
Similarly, your friend may not find the RPG metagame in Arah or Fractals rewarding or fun. And that, once all the minigames of that “high end” content are stripped away, find the results (CoF path 1) so trivially simple that it makes Patchwerk look like Illidan.
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The OP acknowledged the PR trope of “This is not a game in which you farm, we’ve evolved beyond that”. It’s not about him not knowing that, because he does
It’s about the dissonance between that line, and how the game actually plays.
There’s a distinct lack of cohesion between how Legendaries work, systems like Diminishing Returns on mats, and the “no farming” line. None of these ideas play nicely with each other.
My theory: there are too many chefs in the kitchen. Now, this may not be the situation, but its how I can see it playing out.
- One designer, who’s incredibly naive and idealistic, thinks he has a grand vision of this game, where people never farm, they just have fun without thinking about it, like an ant gathering food. He thinks people will either “get” his vision, or they’ll go back to WoW if they want to grind so badly.
- A suit from NexonC Soft, who doesn’t actually play this game, nor have a practical understanding of online games in general, but he gets to monkey with it all the same.
- A programmer who doesn’t have the luxury of the aforementioned designer’s idealism, has to deal with the day to day issues of a live game. He’s caught between meeting the demands of both Designer and Suit, as well as juggling priorities between what they want, and fixing things that are blatantly broken. People aren’t being good little sheep and admiring other people’s Legendaries, and instead are trying to grind them out themselves? Better get on that! Some anti-social guy figured out how to grind Crystalline Dust so he doesn’t have to do CoFp1 with four strangers in order to have money! NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRFFFFFF! People aren’t converting gems to gold? Better put in a million stopgaps that make this B2P game more like MapleStory. No one’s playing Engineers and Necromancers in PvE? Sorry, don’t have any time to address this.
Whether you think the OP needs to get a life or not, he’s hit upon an issue with the lack of focus with this game’s live team.
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I can understand your frustration. I find something wrong when dungeons in a game like guild wars, are being run with “preferred” classes and builds. This, in a game that, says you don’t HAVE to play a certain way.
Not the warrior’s fault though. It’s a flavor of the month. Just wait, whatever class you are playing will be preferred at some point in time.
People have been waiting to be “the new Warrior” since BWE1. Good luck with that.
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Remove the nerf altogether.
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There’s not even a passive block, like shields in real MMORPGs. Great design guys.
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Why not just implement it anyway? No need to talk to an NPC.
1) Go into Dungeon / Fractal
2) Slaughter everything.
3) Receive prize.
If you’re talking about open-world, I disagree, simply because it removes players from the world.
Those require 4 other people. Vanquishing could be done alone.
Boo freaking hoo on being removed from the world. I’m sure the crowd of over nine thousand at the Shadow Behemoth will miss me SOOOOOO much.
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Judging by the numbers, GW2 is doing pretty well.
Which numbers? Sales != active players. And sales can’t be doing too great if they’re charging gems for things that should have come with the game, such as dyes that blend properly with armor textures, spectating, and custom arena modes.
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I listen to Touhou Project doujin music
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For those of you recommending crafting as a powerleveling method
http://www.gw2crafts.net/total.html
Over 65 gold total. Not exactly something you have when working on your first 80.
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Based on my experiences with other games, when a major, infamous money maker gets the nerf bat, its not the people who figure out these routes who gets hurt. They just do something else that’s profitable. They might even have figured it out before the nerf hit, because they knew which way the wind was going to blow.
It’s the more casual player, who reads guides on how to make money that are easy to find/google, who are left in the cold. Prices don’t deflate, because the clever farmers develop a new method.
The best method, IMHO, is to make casual play more profitable. IE easier dungeons in general, more money for dailies, etc. If this causes inflation, oh well, waypoints and repairs are relatively cheaper, and the price of ectos goes up.
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I think people unfairly dismiss GS Warrior as “press 2 to win”. Yes, because of the numbers they put out, its pretty close to true. But think about it from a design perspective. There are two skill shots, an excellent risk:reward conversion rate with 100B, and decent utility with their crippler and closer. It’s a “complete package”. If they made more weapon sets about skill shots and risk:reward, they might already be on the road towards becoming competitive.
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