Guild Wars 2

ipan.4356:

I’m sick of this generation of games and developers.

Fiontar is right – but it’s not just Anet and Blizztard – it’s the whole industry.

We’ve been plagued by a generation of cynics and board room directors making games.

The only interesting stuff I ever see anymore is on Kickstarter. Broken Age was just released.

I can’t wait for the Oculus Rift to hit the shelves, because I don’t think we’ll see anything worthwhile until then.

They don’t make games anymore, they make payment models.

(1) I don’t think cynics are making video games, rather I think you are looking for a different word.

It seems to me that since the early 2000s there’s been a development model that I like to call ‘good enough development’. In this model, consciously or unconsciously practised, very little time is spent by the development team on pre-production and concept building. Solid examples of this are good ideas that look to be only partially implemented where they aren’t poorly implemented. When this is combined with publisher pressure to meet milestones we see significant pressure put on the folks doing code and model work, resulting in all sorts of issues. And when we add to this a lack of attention to QA, something that circles right around to pre-production and concept work, their is either no time to make necessary changes or they are shrugged off because what works is ‘good enough’ and things can be fixed later.

(2) One word I want to see disappear is ‘value’. ‘Value’ is not a synonym for ‘fun’ and using that sort of language focuses solely on monetisation. You’re entirely correct to note that payment models are an inappropriate focus and this is something that we see as more people that have no business in video games push for ‘value’, getting as much content as possible for as little money as possible. Precious little thought seems to go to whether or not the content is quality content, whether or not systems are in place to facilitate experiencing content.

With that in mind, another word that needs to die in a fire is ‘consume/consumption’. Following a purely financial point-of-view, too much is made of how players ‘consume’ content as opposed to how players ‘experience’ or ‘play’ content.

Language matters and players latch onto language that they see people inside the industry use. We need to get away from ‘consuming value’ and get back to experiencing quality game content.

(3) It’s going to be considered arrogant or elitist but I don’t have enough kittens to give about it: too many people who don’t belong involved with video games are ruining the experience for those of us that actually care, the great developers who are being hamstrung and the actual gamers, not merely players looking to kill time or for whom video games are mere entertainment indistinguishable from watching a movie.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

All complaints or compliments regarding gameplay, bugs, and services aside, I’d just like to give props to Anet for the story they’re bringing to Tyria.

I don’t really like Scarlet, but only because I find her obnoxious. It’s probably a good thing I don’t relate with a supervillain. That being said, I love the entire Living Story arc thus far. It’s so refreshing to play a well-crafted MMO with multiple running storylines occuring in different areas to different people, all of which have a permanent and recognizable impact on the game world. I think the destruction of a major hub is a bold move and totally in line with the behavior of a psycopathic magical terrorist. I also cannot WAIT to see if my prediction regarding what lies beneath Lion’s Arch is correct. I understand that not everyone goes for this sort of thing, but Anet has stated clearly many times that they want a world with real permanence where cooperation is encouraged, and story has been a top priority since GW1. I applaud the work they’re doing.

Today I participated in my first Living Story events after the Flame and Frost ‘pick up the refugees and fix the signs’ event. I’m not sure what happened between then and now but I started off with a bafflingly minor ‘living story’ and am ending with a bafflingly major zerg.

I’m not a fan of zergs, primarily because I find it very difficult to believe that even meagre playtesting somehow missed that it is bad design. Zerg-like content has its purposes, don’t get me wrong, and in this instance there is a very real need for zerg-like content to really emphasise just what is going on here. But zerg-like is not a zerg.

A zerg has no room for finesse by design (or lack thereof), whereas zerg-like content has room for finesse. There could have been more, smaller events, or LA itself could have been set up so that only groups of 20 or so, randomly assigned or otherwise, were let into the besieged city with NPCs acting as meaningful filler.

There are ways to design better content, from the first bit of the Living Story to this last bit, and from what I’d experienced at the beginning and the end it just wasn’t done. With all of the problems Guild Wars 2 has, especially the long-standing problems, it’s very difficult to see ArenaNet doing something real to address various development concerns and move forward in a positive direction. The only positive thing that I can say is that at least they are not charging a subscription fee while they (hopefully) figure things out.

I don’t know, I really don’t…I came back after a little over a year and found things in basically the same state, with all of the same old problems. It’s not exactly easy to want to continue to play.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

cheers for your responce.

We been on that road many time though, many many times.
Many people have asked very decent and reasonable questions the last year many people dedicated their time to get bug reports in, discuss traitlines, suggest fixes, point of flaws and tried to keep positive.

since the amount of responce we had over the period of one year in regards of bug’s and broken mechanics is 6.
4 resulting in a fix over a peroid of 6 months.

If you look into reports made they are clear, truthfull and spot on when it comes to description.

That said, if no dev visits the forum or bothers to read the reports or answers what’s the point.

I stopped playing over a year ago because of the state of affairs in the game in respect to design issues generally speaking and the Necromancer specifically -it was the class I played for years in Guild Wars and what I wanted to play here so I’d like to think this makes sense. I was polite but forceful with my criticism and the ArenaNet response was that ‘I quit’ threads weren’t allowed, nevermind the fact that I was giving them valuable input as to why I was no longer going to play. It wasn’t some ‘kitten u all suckzorz’ thread, it was feedback.

A little over a year later I came back and saw that things didn’t change…but somehow I was able to have fun. I had to push myself to be able to find that fun but, truth be told, it can be found, though not easily, given the number and quality of very real issues.

The state of affairs here is appalling and, unfortunately, it truly is par for the course in respect to MMORPG development. The most positive thing that can be said is that while other companies charged a monthly fee with the same issues GW2 has while working through those issues, there is no monthly fee charged here. This means that the players don’t have to suffer the indignity of paying to support a studio that has real issues when it comes to design. I’m very pleased by the fact that ArenaNet doesn’t visit that indignity on the playerbase, it’s one of the few things positive things going for them from a critical point of view.

At the end of the day it’s long-standing issues like this and silence in respect to serious-minded, legitimate questions (e.g. What is a Necromancer?) that make it so frustrating to play. It’s not a bad thing for developers to interact with the community in a way I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread. It is a bad thing for the silence to remain because it just lets all of the negative sentiment fester and that becomes the only voice that the community hears.

3 days and closing on 600 views in a thread asking after the design concept of a class because it seems to (1) bear no resemblance to its predecessor from Guild Wars and (2) doesn’t have a clear concept in the current game, as evidenced by some comments from folks here and a plethora of well-constructed comments over the years in the Necromancer section.

We can say that very few of the issues with the Necromancer have been meaningfully addressed from launch. (Sadly, yes, from launch in August 2012.) What we can’t say, unfortunately, is that we received a meaningful, well-constructed commentary from the developers on this issue.

I understand that from a PR standpoint this is not something that you folks at ArenaNet would like to touch -then again, perhaps some of you do want to address this issue- however we really need a response in respect to just what a Necromancer is supposed to be given the long-standing state of affairs for the class. Again, while the Ranger is not in a good place it at least has a coherent theme that functions through its mechanics and the Warrior and Guardian, while arguably redundant, are two sides of the same coin: the Necromancer is just a large question mark.

Can we please have a response?

No one here is looking to argue why things haven’t changed meaningfully since launch for the Necromancer, the only question at hand is just what exactly the Necromancer is supposed to be given the long-standing state of affairs in respect to the words used to describe the skills/traits and the mechanics of those skills/traits conflicting and/or being quite underwhelming.

I get the whole play-it-safe-PR thing and, at the risk of sounding antagonistic, ArenaNet really does need to play it safe because they’ve cashed it a large amount of their goodwill. After reading comments by Valve personnel about bad communication being more damaging than no communication I can’t help but come back to this thread and add a bit more along those lines because, truly, this is a question I want ArenaNet to answer.

What is a Necromancer?

No communication for a protracted amount of time is bad communication. It is communicating a lack of presence and even a lack of care. There is nothing at all wrong in creating a sticky post that says something to the effect of ‘ideas that staff are interested in or express positive sentiment toward should not be considered to be things that are going to be included in the game in the future, considered for inclusion in the future or even in development. This is conversation and the only way to have an open dialogue is if this is accepted’. Granted, very few people seem to be ok with accepting such but this sort of thing needs to happen.

Please, what is a Necromancer?

The lack of meaningful change since launch, the amount of money no doubt ear-marked for development of truly passing content when that money could have been better spent elsewhere (cf. all sorts of well-constructed posts I need not reference here), the long-standing design issues (ibid), long-standing profession bugs (ibid) and now this oppressive silence is really disturbing. Some will say this is a cry from entitlement, while others will understand the real frustration and how terrible this situation looks. There are times when silence simply allows negative sentiment to build in intensity and, for a lot of people, people who don’t even look at this forum, that negative sentiment is incredible in size. I’m one of those people and it’s not my fault.

Someone in a position to comment meaningfully on this issue from ArenaNet…please let us know what a Necromancer is supposed to be. The Ranger at least has an identity even if it is in a bad position mechanically, the Necromancer (not counting the seemingly redundant Warrior/Guardian situation) is the only profession that doesn’t have a clear theme connected to it’s mechanics. We don’t manipulate death and the dead, we don’t manipulate the power of blood or our enemies (hexes don’t exist and health siphoning is incredibly weak), other classes share our conditions and more meaningfully, but we have a Death Shroud. And while that Death Shroud has exactly nothing to do with death it is a cool mechanic fit for a dark sorcerer type. But this cool mechanic is drained quickly in the presence of conditions and doesn’t protect us from any conditions or even purge conditions on use. Effectively, we have another health bar with new and cool skills attached to it.

For my part I’d like to see the Necromancer made coherent and around the idea of Death Shroud, renamed of course, to fit the theme that it seems the Necromancer is supposed to actually have. This, of course, is conjecture because I don’t know what the Necromancer is actually supposed to be…I just know, like so many others, what it can be and what it isn’t.

After playing a N/Me (Curses with Domination) in Guild Wars for a number of years, I’d like to think that I have an idea of what a Necromancer is in the world ArenaNet set up. The Curses/Domination spec was what I primarily played but, for a change of pace, I had a few nice vampiric, plague-spreading and minion-master builds that I liked to use. It was pretty clear to me what the overall theme for the profession was and it was something that I found enjoyable to play across the various facets of the theme.

But here, now, in Guild Wars 2, I have no idea what a Necromancer actually is supposed to be.

Minions are utterly uncontrollable and, while this existed in first three Guild Wars campaigns and G:WEN, there is a real problem here with the minion AI. It’s not at all uncommon for minions to do absolutely nothing if the player isn’t getting attacked and it’s not at all uncommon for minions to do absolutely nothing if the player is getting attacked. Sure, players would have to micro-manage their minions to keep them alive, buffs up and what not, but the minions actually attacked in a reliable fashion. But not here. This makes Minion Masters, Necromancers with real control over the dead, an absolute bust.

Vampiric builds do not offer any meaningful survivability and other players with significantly greater familiarity and willingness to test these issues to the Nth degree have already brought this up. I won’t attempt to add further detail, instead I’ll just give their work a nod and say that the ‘your soul is mine’ play-style that kept Necromancers alive in the thick of battle in the first Guild Wars games is another absolute bust in Guild Wars 2.

Hallmarks of the Necromancer theme are fundamentally broken and this is undeniable.

I’ve come to thinking to myself that Necromancers have been silently re-envisioned and that I should look at them as some sort of dark sorcerer. This makes sense seeing Death Shroud has nothing whatever to actually do with the old Necromancer theme. This new dark sorcerer theme is something I’d be able to embrace were it not for some glaring issues.

The Necromancer as a dark sorcerer sees their greatest power come alive from pure power builds. This is because conditions cap incredibly quickly in group events and can be removed without much trouble, irrespective of PvP or PvE play, leaving power builds as the only reliable source of damage. The problem then comes from the fact that the power-focused weapons are the dagger and the axe: short- and mid-range weapons that are ultimately melee weapons. So, all things considered, we have a dark sorcerer playing at close range with melee weapons and lacking in survivability.

I took me about a year to come back and try Guild Wars 2 and…and I’ve seen that there has been no meaningful change in the class that I’d long since found the most interesting. When it comes down to it I don’t know what the Necromancer is supposed to be and it’s astonishing that ArenaNet would choose to look at the Ranger instead of a class with not only horribly broken mechanics but lacking an overall coherent theme, generally speaking but especially in direct relation to all but the Warrior and the Warrior v.2 (Guardian).

There’s nothing polite I can say about the situation. The only thing I can do is ask ArenaNet, with all sincerity, what is a Necromancer supposed to be?

I’m not sure where to put this, so I will put it here. There is nothing here which is constructive in itself, only in that it gestures for the development staff at ArenaNet to look at the thoughts of others scattered throughout these forums. With that said, this is not an attack -however, if people would like to construe it as such, it’s the most polite in the history of verbal attacks.

Now, to the meat of it.

I have absolutely no desire to log into my Guild Wars 2 account and I do not believe that giving any rationale as to why will help anything. I do not believe that ArenaNet can or will do anything to make Guild Wars 2 better than the visually stunning yet remarkably mediocre and needlessly buggy game that it has been since launch.

That I do not believe anything can or will be done to fix the plethora of issues people have diligently compiled, spoken of politely and typed in rage-filled bursts should be telling and taken to heart. Sadly, I am quite sure that it will be locked and dismissed as simply more forum vitriol -nevermind the jokes that will come from my handle.

If people can find pleasure in Guild Wars 2 I am happy for them, I truly am. I don’t think that they’re somehow less of a person for it and I don’t think I’m superior for not being able to find pleasure in Guild Wars 2.

That’s all I will say on the matter and I can only hope that respondents and CMs are polite, that this thread is left open and that it is taken to heart. I’m not the only one that has lost faith in what was once an amazing developer and, unfortunately, I don’t think that I will be the last.

Best of luck to you, Guild Wars 2 players and ArenaNet.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

TheBitterness.6912:

Mark of Evasion: now the Mark of Blood triggered by this trait actually works. However, it only puts out ONE Mark of Blood. I understand that only one trait-made Mark of Blood can be out at a time, but that isn’t the issue here. The Mark is made when I dodge, triggered and when I dodge again no second mark is made.

Mark of Evasion trait has a 10 sec cooldown, so if you dodge twice within 10 sec, only the first mark will be laid down.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mark_of_Evasion

I’m glad that this isn’t an issue, simply something that isn’t shown anywhere in-game. If only the other issues were so simple. ^^

Roughly twenty minutes ago during the Champion Giant event in Diessa Lowlands, I saw that Mark of Blood and Reaper’s Touch were not working correctly. The damage portions of these skills worked exactly like they were supposed to, however the health regen portions did not work at all. Oddly enough, the healing from my Blood Fiend worked without any problem.

I reported this as a bug and included two screenshots using the ‘take screenshot’ button to show that the enemy took damage from those two abilities in the combat log.

Unfortunately, this issue mainly persisted against other mobs afterward and outside of the section of Diessa Lowlands. I say mainly because very, very occasionally the regen from either of those abilities would actually go take effect. I logged out and logged back in, finding no change…but things get stranger. My girlfriend was grouped with me on her Mesmer and, during this particular part of the issue, said that she saw the regen effect up on me ‘almost constantly.’ This was the case even when the regen effect was not showing on my screen and not taking effect. In other words, it’s not a UI issue.

I haven’t been playing long, a little over 30 hours in a week, but I’ve played with this build almost the entire time (Staff/Sceptre and Focus) and I have never encountered these issues before.

I have absolutely no idea what is causing this issue but I will be following this thread to see if anyone can figure out what the situation is. With that said, considering the nature of combat in GW2 and healing, I’m not inclined to play the game until this issue is fixed.
—————————————
UPDATE:

On a hunch, I logged back in to see if, for whatever reason, having the client off for about 30 minutes before logging back in will do something. I don’t know if it did, but there is an update to be had:

Mark of Evasion: now the Mark of Blood triggered by this trait actually works. However, it only puts out ONE Mark of Blood. I understand that only one trait-made Mark of Blood can be out at a time, but that isn’t the issue here. The Mark is made when I dodge, triggered and when I dodge again no second mark is made.

Mark of Blood: the regen effect will now properly trigger, but on only one condition: it cannot be used to start the fight. It will work multiple times throughout the fight if it was NOT the first skill to touch the mob.

Reapear’s Tuch: same as Mark of Blood.

This update complicates the problem because, in a way, it seems to be adjusting itself but in a very awkward way. It also does not explain why the issue occurred in the first place. I will log in sporadically to see if this issue self-resolves.
———————————
Update: 04 February 7:46a EST

Mark of Blood and Reaper’s Touch continue to function in the way described in the first update.

The Champion Giant event in Diessa Lowlands also functions the same way. NO REGEN from Reapers Touch or Mark of Blood trigger at all, ever, under any circumstances. This is now the second time I have come across the event and encountered this issue, an issue that persists irrespective of my health.

ArenaNet, please figure out what is causing these two very, very odd issues.

Zoid.2568:

The necromancer right now has some problems with the minions, there’s not an UI to tell them where and what to do, they die easily in dungeons and in larger scale battles. If you level up and do soloing content they are fine.

[cut]

From my experience, this is true. Minions are utterly uncontrollable and, while I don’t believe that they should regain life like a Ranger’s pet (I want my Mark of Blood to reliably heal them), I firmly believe that Necromancers should be able to control them like a Ranger’s pet. This isn’t something that I see as incredibly difficult, though it would make the Necromancer a more complex animal.

One way to address this is to bind the F2-F6 keys to the minions that would be in the 6-0 keys. This is because, at most, we can have 5 minion skills and they can correspond easily. A simple three-button scheme of attack, follow and passive attached and just above each key on-screen is the only other thing that is needed for minion control. Unfortunately, this would make controlling individual minions difficult as more minions are in play.

Another way to address this is for the F2-F4 keys to control all available minions en masse, using the standard attack, follow, passive structure we’re familiar with. This would be a significantly easier way to implement minion control, both for Anet and for the players.

I’m sure there is a middle ground in there somewhere but, as it stands, Necromancer pets are marginally useful because Necromaners simply cannot bank on minions doing anything useful beyond those second skill activations.

For example, sometimes I have watched my minions split to both sides of the road in Wayfarer Hills when going down to road with the Svanir ballistas and they do this without any real rhyme or reason. The key word here is ‘sometimes.’ There seems to be no sensible AI guiding when and what minions do. Sometimes they do absolutely nothing and follow me, sometimes they split, sometimes they just attack one of the ballistas, there’s never a way to tell.

Similar issues are present out in the open world. Sometimes my minions will not attack something that is attacking me if I haven’t attacked it first and sometimes my minions will attack it immediately.

Ultimately, Minion Master Necromancers are not interesting because minions simply do not work in a reliable way. Minions are more of a liability than anything else to Necromancers and their unutilised potential is very unfortunate. There is no way for a Necromancer to be a true master of minions if he cannot control them in any reasonable way.