Showing Posts For Sengel.7801:
Solo players cannot advance in the new content, and any decent publisher would disclose such a fundamental change prior to taking your money.
Wrong! I’m going thru HoT right now mostly solo. Sure, sure, there are times being a in a group(organized or not) is pretty much mandatory(such as the events) but if I can solo much of HoT then anyone can.
QFT:
The story steps can be done solo (mordremoth fight is a bit tough but doable); hero points are just a “Hey anyone want to do X hero challenge?” away from done; Mastery gates are pretty low and can easily be gotten for the few early adventures that you get at the beginning.
Saying that meta events require people is a bit of a “no duh” moment honestly. No level 80 map has EVER been a reliable solo experience. Not Orr, not FGS, not Dry Top, not Silverwastes. All of them needed a good amount of people on the map to make the whole thing work.
I went into Dragon’s Stand for the first time last night; There’s 70 hero points there that are essentially do the event and they’re handed to you. There are at LEAST another 140 points (14 more) that can be done the same way. There are multiple champs that are right by waypoints and I’ve never had problems getting them.
Now, HoT maps cannot be traversed like EVERY other map in the game (that’s a problem) since you have to be really careful with pulls and can easily be murdered and have to start all over again.
Map completion should be difficult for an 80 map. (look at Orr)
Factions is a completely different thing from HoT.
1. Factions was a campaign, meant to be completely standalone.
2. It was built on a simpler engine (read less advanced) and thus took less time and resources to develop new 3D content.
3. In Factions, they only had to develop new armor to fit one race, humans, and all armors only had to be optimized to fit the animations of a specific class that only had a certain set of class-specific animations.
Factions and HoT cannot be compared. The situations and structure of the two are completely different. You might as well be comparing Pac Man to Asteroids.
Anet had half the # of employees when they made Factions, they made it way less time & Factions had to make a new set for every class, not just 3 types modified for body types. (especially when the only real modifications are for Charr & asura & the system may even be automated by the look of the quality on the Charr) So yes, it can be compared. & no, it doesn’t always add up.
Apparently you’ve never created a 3d model.
In the GW2 engine, armor must be hand rigged to each and every body type (so 5-6 per gender per race). an “automated” version would look terrible because of little differences between races (humans have longer legs than norn, sylvari dimensions don’t match up with humans…etc) so each of these needs to be done by hand in order to get the aesthetics right.
thirdly, they’re only required to make max level armor (not any starting armor) which has the assumption by the community to look “epic” so that’s even more modeling and rigging.
Yes the team size has doubled but the work has far more than doubled ( 1 body type per armor * 10 professions * 2 genders or 20 separate models to rig to 10 body types * 5 races * 3 armor classes * 2 genders or 150 separate models to rig , and the complexity of the armors have gone up so that rigging takes way more time)
lastly, true armor sets need to not clip with existing armor pieces, see light vigil pants with seer shoes for an example of this not working, so you have to go in and verify with every race (5) every body type(10) and every piece of armor (way too many to count) and every animation (too many to count) to make sure that it doesn’t clip that bad, and yes the current amount of clipping is “not that bad” compared to just slapping that stuff on.
This is the real reason that we’ve gotten so few new “armor sets” (not outfits as they don’t have to jive well with existing armors) and so many new weapons (since they’re fairly simple to avoid clipping). The inclusion of them in to the bltc as opposed to the open world reflects the sheer amount of man hours (I’d guess somewhere around 2 weeks for 2 artists PER armor set)
WoW gives the whole experience away right off the back, no surprises. Arena Net loves giving little surprises in their games so they don’t give it all away (been here since GW2 beta and GW1 prophesies before that)
We have seen all mechanics save druid and scrapper. All elite specs will be tested and if you’ve been a lurker here seen that all of them have either been overhauled or at very least tweaked significantly since BWE1 (example revenant).
Masteries still take too long to level for my tastes but with them being account bound I can’t really complain. (though this could be from lack of interesting events or events that don’t’ reward enough xp for their length [a 20 min event shouldn’t award the same amount of xp as a 5> min event])
Just like with the core game, ANet doesn’t want to spoil everything for us and would rather us just test systems rather than content. With how huge VB FEELS, I have full faith that my money is well spent.
Do I need to farm all the heropoints 9x now?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Sengel.7801
The thing is you cannot, so far as I know, skip along the circle of unlocks. So if they have any items interspersed with the skills and traits, you perforce must spend points on those before you can continue unlocking the mechanics. Thus even if you only need 70 points for all your traits and skills you won’t be able to buy them all if you only have 70 points because of required fluff in between.
I don’t mind that, I want the fluff, though I’m glad the big special item is at the end so it becomes a goal rather than an impediment to play. I just think people need to consider how many HP they actually need banked to get to all the useful stuff.
I think “Fluff” would be at the end of the line not interspersed; Arena Net wants us playing these elite specializations as soon as we want to (this includes the herald) so they won’t make it a “grind” to integrate them just one to get cosmetic rewards like the rest of the game (even ascended armor /weapons isn’t that bad now a days)
Do I need to farm all the heropoints 9x now?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Sengel.7801
Yes , hero points are certain.
Just watch the Scrapper PoI.
Dev said something like: “If you invest enough hero points you can get the cool hammer once everything else is unlocked”
It sounds like the amount for skills / traits will be low (50-70 like 1 trait line + 1 skill line now) but another 100+ for the cosmetic rewards. They want us playing these elite specs asap if we want to. (Like my boosted rev is going to be not going down mallyx and ventari lines until i finish the herald line if i can)
An article on an “NPC type” the majority of the players won’t care about after 1-2 weeks of play….bigger then “actual feature” articles written so far about the expansion.
…i honestly don’t know how to feel about this.
This is very similar to what they did before the GW2 release. We knew startlingly little about a ton of GW2 at beta time from their articles. Anet doesn’t like to give all the secrets away even on base systems.
There’s a reason why people preferred using AI interrupter henchmen in GW1; it was this exact solution you’re giving here. If a computer is allowed to react to “major” abilities from the player; hey will do so correctly 100% of the time and players won’t be really able to get those abilities off or they’ll use those abilities ot cheese the system.
I think zerker has it’s place, but it shouldn’t be the ONLY meta option and thus is ridiculously overpriced on the AH(considering I farm mats for it just to make the tidy profit off of the insignias). If conditions become crittable I’d love to see Condi damage, Ferocity, percision called like Malevolent (Mallyx armor)
I think “exclusive stacks” are the way to go. What I mean is, just like damage, the instances of a condition are unique to you (like how in wow you can have multiple fire mages with ignite on target and not get overwritten). The stacks you apply contribute to your DPS and don’t effect any other. The “Stack limit” could be there for the person but not for the whole zerg. Also crittable condis would be completely op if we ever get a precision, ferocity, condi damage armor set.
Overall condis are pretty decent in the SPVP arena where people kite like nothing else and projectiles are kinda hard to land. WvW won’t see any change because the WEG condi strip groups is a player thing and not something you can actively dis-incentivize without gutting the class in sPvP. so this would be a PvE only change (and armor set if that stat combo came into being)
I feel like they’ll want to remove Trahearne to give Canach more room to grow, but I really hope they don’t. It would be an interesting rivalry to explore.
I’m all for developing writing in future, rather than chopping heads because it’s a simpler way to address player dislike/concern.
I can’t help myself from thinking of Canach “growing” by eating miracle grow…
hate to break it to ya but probably not. Character slot I’d say is the max we’ll get complimentary
It baffles me why the writers decided that corruption (dragon or Nightmare Court) is a one-way street. The greatest stories are redemption stories, and there’s so much more room for interesting character development if it is possible (evem if almost impossible) to bring someone back from darkness.
Imagine Star Wars if the decision had been made that no one could ever be redeemed from the dark side of the Force. :P
But dragon minions ARE curable (see glint and Arah explorable). Nightmare court members are more of a political party than actual corruption
We’re getting a feature pack before HOT launches (as evidenced by the guy stating that the stability rework is going to be “sooner than you expect”). I’d assume that any skill re-works (ie necros getting resistance from their condi build, warriors getting it from that stance…etc) will be included in that feature pack which will probably also add in all the UI elements that will be new in HoT.
As blizzard has shown, it’s easier to push the “big patch” a few weeks (2-4) ahead of the expansion to fix any UI bugs/wierd stuff BEFORE everyone is playing the hot (tee hee) new content.
With what we’ve seen of the Revenant and it’s resistance stacking, it’ll only take a good boon stripper to destroy a Mallyx revenant. (Resistance is only on long cd or high energy cost skills and only lasts a couple of seconds; you see the revenant get blinded several times when showing off his skills in the PoI). A Jalis tanky build will be wrecked similarly to other bunker builds. Support and Zerk (Glint and Shiro [Vizu?]) will be handled by existing strategies. Besides with gear, unless it’s celestial, you’ll only be able to “specialize” one of your legends with the other one being left by the wayside. and this is excluding the fact that their elites are far less powerful than other elites (justified by their lack of a cd) and the fact that their bars can be accurately guessed by a look at them/their buffs.
I fully expect to love the Rev (since I love my ele and engi) but it’s not without it’s own glaring weaknesses.
So we’re pulling the whole “it’s new so they must suck” thing again? Didn’t that happen with the assassin? How about hey let’s explore this new open world place together and not be kittens about it.
there’s a difference between a directional “move character here” a la whirlwind and ride the lightning and controlling a projectile. I assume that the “pathing” algorythm takes the caster and the castee and paths between them. This type of skill has to use code from BOTH skills. Still really cool that they’re still iterating on their existing code.
they did state in no uncertain terms that the ready-up was not the whole product
I see projectiles getting a slight buff to get in line with the Revenant 100% (but slow moving) proj. finisher on auto attack.
The concern is that will the old classes still be balanced in the new balance state with their specializations and the revenant.
Been lurking on the Revenant forum for a bit and see one major concern pop up over and over again:
Revenant will have all the new tech and none of the other classes will.
This is Arenanet we’re talking about here; when they created the Dervish, Rit, Assassin, and Paragon in a game that was far harder to balance than this one, the new professions were played less ultimately than the core 8 and were completely balanced in the grand scheme of things.
I fully expect that Anet will utilize the tech on all base classes because they don’t want everyone to be rolling revenants if they don’t want to. So yeah necros are probably getting resistance, it’s almost guaranteed that warriors are. (besides the fact that resistance looks like it takes a LOT of energy management to keep up 100%, like I don’t get to attack ever level of energy management) The new stability will be across the board and it will adjust all skills that give stability. Guardians will probably gain some sort of reflect on their walls, though the advantage to guardian walls is that they are either set and forget or circular which does not have a very easily dodge roll around solution.
I know it’s the will of the internet for people who think they know everything to spout tripe until something is “fixed” in their eyes. But come on guys, sky’s not falling. The base classes will get an update (probably a feature pack before the expansion even launches like they do every 6 months).
The ritualist is far from a “junk class” considering its the only class that does NOT draw magic from the four primary schools. So in theory, we may be looking at a magic that is older than the dragons themselves, or at least before the bloodstones, and possibly inedible to them. It was explained a VERY long time ago that we as players are >1% of the total populations of our respective races (explanation for why there are no race/class restrictions). In addition, the Charr are masters of military training. It’ll most likely be that Rytlock “trains” our character through proxy or lesser officers. The revenant seems like a really suped up version of the rit being able to channel not just through ashes but through weapons making them less fragile. In addition to that seeing able to channel legendary foes as well means that they are bending the reality of the mists to their will. Remember that GW has the mists(think the twisting nether from wow) AND an underworld. Necromancers rely on the destruction school. (This magic is yummy to dragons). Ritualist do NOT rely on magic (or dragon energy)
Check out GW wiki for more details.