Showing Posts For Sungam.9204:
If their goal is to teach people how to play their classes better and they want to avoid frustration, they should look into having the bosses damage scale up based on the HP remaining on said boss.
Spawn in learn the mechanics in 20 seconds, manage your dodges/aegis/etc. You start getting punished (stuns/debuffs) in the last 50% of the boss if you take a telegraphed hit. You go down or critical in the last 25% if you take a telegraphed hit. You know basic enraging mechanics.
Stop throwing low skilled players in the deep end, expecting them to have a sudden epiphany mid-fight(or mid-load depending on their computer) on how to play their class better. All that does is frustrate the other 149 people on the map.
Give people time to learn the encounter, then ramp up the difficulty(tension).
I do think that this boss was a massive step(no pun intended) in the right direction for Open World Bosses, but there is room for refinement.
The CC would be fine if the mobs didn’t respawn so fast. By the time you kill a Vet and start on the next pack, the first pack you just killed has respawned and is likely targeting you.
So eventually we all get on our thieves or warriors and skip everything with mobility or stealth. Defeating their design and frustrating other players.
That’s how I would sum up this tower content.
Frustrating.
I hope this event and Tequatl’s after event numbers convince ArenaNet to abandon this style of design and focus on content that everybody can enjoy.
There are too many other quality games coming out soon that are going to be doing Guild Wars 2’s manifesto better than ArenaNet is currently.
That’s because you’re a warrior. You have access to tons of stun breaks, Heavy Armor and OP heals. I can solo the tower like cake on my warrior. Try doing the tower on a cloth class, the 5 second stacking immobilizes, DoTs, and Spike damage quickly stack up to the ultimate conclusion that this content is not worth the frustration. Also even on a warrior, it’s tons of fun to bash your wallet against Champion gatekeepers that refuse to downscale to vet.
This tower was zerg content with no good reward, they tried to patch the reward to attract the zerg again, but the event was already abandoned. If you came to this tower outside the 3 day window at the start, prepare for hours of frustration trying to get to the top floor, with monsters on short spawn windows, the amount of CC you have to deal with, being in combat the entire time, and ridiculous environmental effects. This type of content has to stop. Even in a group we have to deal with uplevels being downed constantly, and mechanics that were obviously designed for a large zerg and before the last round of balance patches. I wish they would stop this 2 week patch schedule and spend more time focusing on enjoy-ability, scaling, QA, and event design.
As much as I love my warrior, I’m sick of content that seems built around super high-pop servers, or heavy classes.
This Living story was not fun. Scarlet can have that useless lake. I think we have dragons or something more important to deal with.
Address Zerg Momentum.
The current “limitation” of 5 AoE targets strongly encourages players forming tight zergs in order to get objectives completed quicker.
One of the hardest things right now in WvW is to get morale up if your server is facing a zerg from another server and you don’t have an equal population to counter it man for man.
I would like to see the AoE limitation made into a map wide status effect. While populations are low enough that the server can keep up with the calculations, AoEs attacks and buffs have full effectiveness. This allows lower population servers to afford to spread out and reduce a clumped zerg’s AoE effectiveness while having full effectiveness with their AoE skills on that zerg. Eventually if a fight seems approachable people stick around on both sides and map populations eventually balance out. Once populations reach the hardware threshold everybody on that map gets hit by the reduced AoE effectiveness that we currently experience at all times.
Ideally in the build up phase we would see more field combat and back and forth battles. Once the AoE limit kicks in we would see a shift to the current WvW zerg strategies. The key is to make sure the transitions sets up all participating sides for an even as possible battle. If your commander feels that your zerg still can’t stand toe to toe with the opposing zerg, your server should have a decent enough map presence to defend objectives using the AoE cap ignoring siege weapons. Close intense battles are more fun than rolling over other people or getting rolled.
Making it harder for a zerg to gain momentum against lower population servers would be a welcome change to WvW.
As long as you have the numbers the new Tequatl is a cakewalk. He can even be downed faster than some other HP buffed bosses like Shaman or Golem MK II. The fight requiring a full map worth of people is its own problem that I’ve complained about multiple times. I’ve resolved to knowing that if I want to do Tequatl I have to guest to Blackgate and get into an Overflow with a TTS guild. ArenaNet will eventually address this by doing server merges on low population servers that can’t pull numbers to enjoy their new population based content. If people can’t enjoy content, they will quit. You can see signs of ArenaNet getting ready to have mass server merges with the addition of the new WvW queue map. It’s never in an MMORPGs best interest to have people sit on worlds that don’t have the natural population to do content.
Another serious problem with Tequatl is ArenaNet refusing to address why an event requiring a full map worth of people with general knowledge of the mechanics is still utilizing a ridiculously long spawn window. I’m fine with the event having a longer cool-down period, but the long spawn window needs to be addressed.
Nothing is more fun than sitting on a mid-level map for an hour. You can’t even run a champion farm during the spawn window because you need to be ready to DPS from the start.
Beat it once, got all the achievements, got 4 greens and 1 rare, and I am not coming back.
I have 100 undead potions, food, 240 Fire Elemental Powders, full ascended PVT gear, Ice Bows and Fiery Greatswords.
As long as I have to wait for 2 hours to guarantee a spot in the main server’s kill window this event is dead to me. I can farm all the other world bosses or do a WvWXP train and get more drops doing actually fun things for the time investment required.
This fight fails at its implementation because they abandoned one of the best features of Guild Wars 2 PvE; Scaling. This is the second time they’ve done this in a recent boss implementation.
This fight has one fixed power level. So once you master all the mechanics it boils down to a DPS wall. If your server has the DPS, you win. If your server doesn’t have the DPS you lose. Your mastery of the fight has nothing to do with it. In other MMOs this fight would require a gear check to make sure you were contributing DPS.
I won’t even mention how the last two boss fights implemented by the boss team, completely ignore boss psychology and even the basic rule of three. Stick to the fundamentals, this even applies to MMORPG boss design.
And yes waiting 4 hours just to be in your server’s kill window is the dumbest thing I’ve ever had to do since I’ve started playing this game. I could be doing other things I enjoy like WvW, or other bosses. We’ve all seen the rewards for this fight, and once I grab all the achievements, I’m done with it. This fight is not worth the loss of general time especially with WvW leagues coming up.
To make myself feel better about the loss of Tequatl, I’ve already replaced him with Mega Destroyer in my daily boss farm.
This massive zerg required content must mean it’s almost time for server merges! But before that buy a transfer to the more populated servers so you can enjoy this content such as Tequatl and Bloodlust in the Borderlands.
And the Tequatl encounter right after that victory got to 85%. I don’t find sitting for an hour and half on a map to be fun just to avoid being in overflow for the one time a day this gets completed. For Yak’s Bend this is a 4 hours population window where you have to stay on one map.
Anybody for starting a Sparkfly Fen champion farm?
The same reason people don’t know to have stability ready when Tequatl goes back on two legs.
You can place a Hero’s Banner where they spawn. Just saying.
- 50 DKP if you’re not on mumble/teamspeak/vent
- 50 DKP if you’re a Ranger. Reroll an Elementalist so you can be useful.
- 50 DKP if you’re condition spec.
- 50 DKP if you’re not in PVT or Berserker gear.
- 50 DKP for being in the wrong location for your gear.
- any chance at victory if you’re playing on a low population server or off-hours
Bring on the enjoyable fun elitism.
Poorly designed and untested content is sometime apparent on day one.
Recent case in point Diablo 3’s design being centered around the auction house or the original untested Inferno mode. This cost them a lot of reputation and they had to spend an entire year backpedaling from their bad original design.
Some people can objectively look at content and conclude that;
1) This content doesn’t fit core principles of the game.
2) This content was not tested appropriately.
3) This content is not accessible.
4) This content excludes significant numbers of players.
Imagine a door. You open the door and see a man. This man will either punch you in the face or give you a piece of delicious candy. How many times do you open that door for a chance at that candy?
Right now for the North American servers alone we have been collectively punched in the face 383 times and have received 1 piece of candy. Ouch.
If you don’t play prime time, you will never ever finish Tequatl in his new form. If you’re on a low population server, you will never ever finish Tequatl.
Tequatl is an excellent example of a instanced guild boss. It does not belong in the open world anymore.
We’ve done this on Yak’s Bend. The problem with Pick Up Group, open world content is that people won’t listen to you, they won’t buy potions, they won’t eat food, they won’t use the best gear, and they won’t learn the encounter before they try it. The great part is you aren’t a raid leader, you don’t have any control of the people that show up for this fight. You just have to pray that the fates align and you have enough intelligent people in order to cover the main objectives. If you don’t, you’re out 15 minutes or more, a waypoint fee, and maybe a repair bill.
In the 15 minutes of the Tequatl fight you could gather Ori and Ancient Wood and make more money, or most likely craft your ascended weapons before Tequatl would ever randomly drop one for you. You can also do a champion farm or 2 paths of CoF. If you did 4 temples in Orr you would have the same number of Dragonite as completing a full Tequatl encounter and you’ll have lower blood pressure.
I believe the misplaced that system along with their copy of the manifesto.
Considering that after 1 year, the majority of (melee) people still don’t know where to stand or how to move to do optimal damage to world bosses, the failure rate of this encounter is no surprise.
I really feel bad for people that are playing in off peak times. This is content with account bound rewards that they will never be able to complete.
Time to server transfer.
Would you rather fail because all 6 Hylek turrets were destroyed or because of some arbitrary timer?
Yak’s Bend is back up to 85% …
I agree, the fight in an of itself is a ton of fun and definitely doable.
The arbitrary 15 minute timer seems pointless.
From an RP perspective what is Tequatl thinking?
“I’m going to give these guys 15 minutes to kill me, if they don’t I’ll just smash their cannon and corrupt the area.”
A more RP solution would be
" I can’t risk destroying that cannon until their turrets are taken down, once all 6 are destroyed I’ll smash their mega laser and corrupt the land! Myuahahaha"
Yak’s Bend cot to the 75% cannon phase this run.
It’s also worth noting there was no overflow on Yak’s bend.
People are already not going to the event.
Yak’s Bend got him to a sliver over 75%
There is an insurance commercial that had the quote, “just because you’re a good driver, doesn’t mean everybody else is.”
Same applies to Open World bosses and Pick Up groups. You may have the best gear, and know the encounter inside out, but if the other people don’t, you’re going to be paying for it.
Tequatl in its new form is perfect raid content. It is not perfect Open World content.
Eventually it’s going to see
“My server sucks at Tequatl but X server is good at it, I’m going to guest/transfer there”
“Man nobody else is using food and potions, why should I waste my money on them?”
“Nobody else is using PVT gear, why should I buy it?”
“Tequatl fails most of the time and doesn’t drop decent stuff because all the good stuff has a low chance to drop. Why bother since he already failed 5 times today?”
Factor in the cost of food/potions/WP costs/Repairs/RNG loot table for account bound gear and let me know if he is worth it in the long run.
The problem with this fight is that in order to get a reward for the group the 6 people on the cannons have to be spot on with all their hits which is far too much to ask in an 80 man PUG raid.
If you get 1-2 afkers on cannon, what are you going to do? It ruins the whole fight for 80 people. It’s not like WvW siege you can’t kick the bad people off the cannon.
The fight has very interesting mechanics, but the scaling leaves much to be desired for its PUG nature.
I just want to play the game, I don’t want to start having to keep a list of chores I need to complete daily to maximize my returns.
It takes me 4 hours on average to do all the account chest world bosses right now even with their short kill times allowing me to pop between events fairly rapidly. After I kill World Bosses I can then do other things like WvW, champ farming, dungeons, etc. I’ve killed every world boss possible (when not bugged) every day at least once since I was able to.
If the challenge factor(read time consuming) outweighs the reward/overall enjoyment of the encounter I would drop world bosses in exchange for champ farming which is more profitable. This would especially be the case AFTER I get all the exclusive gubbins tied to that encounter.
That being said, I’m looking forward to seeing if this makes these bosses more fun to do while maintaining an appealing long term reward value.
Challenge weighs itself against all other content in the game in terms of reward for time spent. Dungeons, Exploration, JPs, World Bosses, WvW, sPvP, Scarlet, Living World. There is more than enough content to move around to in this game if one falls behind the other.
Why are Ascended Account bound?
Initially they wanted YOU to run the Fractals of the Mists and experience this “endless” dungeon tower. So by having them be account bound they were hoping that would be enough incentive to get the majority of the population to run these dungeons regularly. But the overall reward of fractals was below community expectations for the investment needed.
So instead of wasting this planned cycle of gear, they eventually added the exclusive Fractal rewards to the Laurel Merchant. This is an obvious daily Unique Users boosting system. MMORPGs are built on interlocking incentives and reward systems to encourage players to return day after day. By providing another way to get accessories that the majority of the community thought weren’t worth the trouble of doing fractals, they managed to kill two birds with one stone. If at this point they made Ascended Accessories that dropped from fractals Soulbound on Equip, that would have removed the major selling point of their Daily Login attraction.
The Ascended Cycle was designed to encourage repeat daily user logins over a long duration of time.
We have the same pattern for the ascended weapons, but instead of being tied to dailies and monthlies, the returning user gimmick is daily crafting. At this point in time most regular players through guild missions, WvW, and laurels, should have one or multiple character in at least one full ascended accessory set. Thus in their minds, as users our options are; make alts and gear them, get bored and quit, or continue playing the game. So we get the timely release of the Ascended Weapon sets. The account bound boxes that drop the weapons are a nod at attempting to satisfy us, but the random nature of the stats and their account bound status makes sense when you consider that the entire ascended concept was built to boost Unique User counts by encouraging daily repeat logins. You can think of it as a casino comps. Sure free drinks and a free room are nice, but you wanted to win the jackpot, at least it’s something and you can always try again tomorrow. Just login, you might get it tomorrow. It’s all about feeding the addictive nature of players tied to probability reward systems.
When we the user base exhaust and complete our ascended weapon sets, we’ll get the next release in this account bound daily user cycle.
And then the question becomes: What happens when we exhaust the entire Ascended Armor, Weapon, and Accessory Set?
You can see why long term this design is dangerous.
I can safely say at this point, we will never see non-account bound ascended items and the drop rates and acquisition rates of these items will be kept intentionally low. They designed this system to encourage us to want to login and continue playing the game everyday. Like what many of us were doing before the creation of Ascended.
(edited by Sungam.9204)
13% gets multiplied when those small attacks from a zerg start impacting you.
You can down your target faster allowing you to be more useful to your zerg or get killed 13% faster and be a liability to your zerg. When Ascended Armor gets added to the mix now people have higher toughness and vitality thresholds for you to overcome in your yellows or oranges. If your zerg can’t overcome this threshold you will lose the war of attrition.
Ask any WvW commander if they would rather lead a zerg of 40 people in full exotics against an equally skilled and classed zerg of 40 people in fully optimized Ascended gear.
Endgame is whatever brings a player to log into an MMORPG once they have obtained max character level.
For some that could be world completion, world bosses, dungeon completion, cosmetic armor and weapon, fractal advancement, WvW, sPvP, Living World Content, gear progression, champion farming, guild interaction, dailies, raids, etc.
Having an clearly accessible and varied library of activities that convince max level players to log in daily is what defines a strong or weak endgame for an MMORPG.
The more often a player logs in the more likely they are to extend their subscription or interact with your item shop.
But they did warn you and even reverted the original patch 19 days ago that implemented that change.
Please get in the habit of reading release notes every time you get a patch. It will save you a lot of grief and give you a heads up on changes.
As for consumable karma boosters of which I also have a lot of, you can use them to boost the Karma you get from completing events. It’s obvious they are shifting to have Karma be a more scarce currency so every bit will help once your current pool of Karma is used up.
I work in MMO operations. Trust me if you don’t speak out about something. We will think it is okay. But if you speak out and we can correlate that with reduced Unique Users and daily spending activity we will take note.
It’s just like politics. If an issue impacts you negatively you speak out louder. If an issue troubles you, you groan about it but move on. And if you’re satisfied you say nothing. Eventually if you lose enough loud minorities, you’ll find yourself in trouble.
It’s a lot harder to get back a player than it is the acquire them initially.
Ascended gear isn’t bad, it isn’t evil. It’s potentially dangerous and I don’t agree with the method of its implementation. At the same time I fully understand why it was added to the game.
I also can’t help but feel that Guild Wars 2 has lost sight of itself over the course of the year.
There are more than enough champions to go around.
Also there is no such thing as a “normal” player. What defines a normal player changes from person to person.
I run world boss events and in the downtime I run around in the champion farms. Normally I would just log out of the game with a timer window open and play something else in between world boss spawns.
I never farmed CoF. I knew it existed as a very profitable farm, but I find Guild Wars 2 dungeons to be detestable. I’m not mad at CoF farmers because I chose not to do it. The additions of champion rewards in the meanwhile was perfect for a player like me who loves running in large sociable groups having fun and making some money.
You’re basically asking for a group of people having fun to be punished because you think they should be having fun in other ways.
Making an enjoyable and accessible game is all about having various avenues for enjoyment and then having the player choose what is right for them.
I love Guild Wars 2. I can’t talk it up enough to all my friends and many of them played it casually. The problem is we have jobs and Guild Wars 2 pre-ascended allowed us to gear up and try new builds and new ways of playing the game in about 2 week’s casual time like you stated. Guild Wars 2 was one of the few games out there that allowed us to feel like we were not falling behind the curve. We could be in BiS gear and enjoy any aspect of this great game without it feeling like a chore. If the optimal meta builds changed it didn’t take a large investment of time or money to adjust to the new status quo.
Then fractals came and with it Ascended gear.
Just like that we had the start of a vertical progression gear treadmill. I’ve had my fill of gear treadmills. Every Korean MMO under the sun does gear grinding and BiS bragging rights. WoW, one of the penultimate MMOs even does this with 20 man and 10 man raiding. We have already experienced those games. We don’t want to experience them again with a new skin. With ascended gear this game took a major step in the direction of being like every other game already on the market. And my friends and I took a step away. We quit.
Finally they added a way for someone like me who had zero interest in Fractals of the Mists to get BiS again by playing the game normally. I returned, but couldn’t help but notice the time-investment required to get Ascended gear outside fractals. This worried me because pre-ascended we could, with relative ease, change builds and play styles. Now If I invested my time in accessories perfect for Build A and decide that I would prefer to play Build B which needs a whole new accessory set to be optimal. All of a sudden this time sink would hit me again. The ability to rapidly change builds and play styles was removed. Take a look at your Skills and Traits menu and the fee for re-rolling your traits. Account bound Ascended items are counter-intuitive to the original design of the game.
With Exotics being the BiS slot option and not being account bound I had the option of hoping that I got the stat point arrangement as a natural drop or selling everything that didn’t match my ideal build so I could purchase the items that I needed. The design of Ascended items removed this flexibility.
Guild Wars 2 needs to rediscover its original motivation and design and innovate off of those ideals. It does not need to copy design and elements from a niche market that has fatigued its player base. The promises made at the start of Guild Wars 2 made us love it and hold out hope for it. But the longer time goes on the more it seems like those promises were made by politicians. We’re promised something different, but we get more of the same.
Out of 20 of my real life friends that played this game regularly, only I remain.
I have 20 weapons to replace on my characters before they regain BiS status. I was enjoying the game with BiS gear before ascended and was working towards getting some legendary weapons and the armor that looked the coolest. Now I still need to do that but with the nagging notion that my characters are not perfected. With the extreme time investment needed to get ascended as a non-fractal player, I fear reading the class balance section of the patch notes.
Ascended items aren’t required for general accessibility of PvE or WvW. Eventually small changes can add up into something bigger. Once this ascended cycle is complete and there are enough installed sets will we be seeing patch notes that read something like:
- Players now have access to the continent of Cantha. Players are strongly recommended to have ascended gear with agony infusions to counter the Agony from creatures in the region.
- Added new skills that give the players access to Agony.
- Agony effects obtained from other players will last 30 seconds.
- Agony Resistance Infusions can now be purchased with 30 laurels in every major city.
- Special WvW Agony Resistance Infusions can be purchased with Badges of Honor in your world’s Citadel.
I fear this day because the frame work is being laid for this to be a possibility. Vertical progression is an answer to high level retention. It’s the easy answer, not the right answer.
Ascended is here to stay and I accept that. But its convoluted and time consuming nature of acquisition is putting a negative pressure on players like me. I don’t like when my games transition into chores and work. I don’t have the time or patience for it anymore. Bottom line, chores are not fun. Player uncertainty in the stability and direction of your product is a major detriment in the games as a service era.
Thank you Arena Net for providing me with a game that for the majority of the past year was an incredible amount of fun to play. I hope that in this upcoming year I’m still logging into Guild Wars 2 because it is fun to play, not because I have to.
This is my story.
(edited by Sungam.9204)