Achievements are bad design in general — they do nothing but trivialize content by subjugating actual experiences to a laundry list. They can be a crutch to add value to bad content, or filler to stretch out too little content, but they do nothing but devalue good content.
I bet most players would be far more in awe of the sights and sounds of the living story and get more enjoyment out of exploring it if they didn’t see it first through the lens of a simple check list.
The content has the value that it is assigned, and if you place the value emphasis on the play experience, the experience will be perceived as valuable. If you value your content as points and as a skin, players will weigh whether or not they want to play it based on how they value the points and that skin. Kind of a tragedy. It’s like you make a beautiful painting and then sell it for a couple of bucks because that’s the expectation and standard.
@esplen: Well, soloing or two-manning five man content really isn’t fun. It’s not that it can’t be done, it just isn’t very entertaining to try, especially repeatedly, and for such poor rewards given the effort.
@vayne: As for joining a super casual guild, I do realize that this is an option, and in truth, we are part of a few casual guilds right now. The complaint isn’t that there isn’t fun stuff to do with other people (there certainly is!), the complaint is that there isn’t much that’s fun, challenging, and rewarding to do when we want to play by ourselves.
Don’t know if anyone is in the same situation, but I really just have a few people I enjoy playing with — to be honest, the most fun I have playing this game is just with my girlfriend. In all cases, I enjoy the quality of interaction more when playing with just one or two friends. It would be great to have some instanced, challenging content that can be tackled with two or three people.
I don’t know why every dungeon must adhere to exact balance for 5 (maybe there are some magic metrics that five man dungeons retain the player-base better), but I can’t imagine having a few dungeons designed for less people (or even more) would do anything but help a wider variety of players enjoy the end game.
The personal story accomplished this perfectly for a while, but as you know, it isn’t end game and tends to run out rather quickly.
Huh, kind of similar to you Reaper — I only play with my girlfriend. We enjoy jumping on a few days a week together after work. We like doing our own thing at our own pace, have our own guild, and to be honest, we have more fun just playing by ourselves. It’s a bit of a bummer that there isn’t much challenging end game content for one or two people though. I’d kill to have just one or two permanent two-man dungeons in this game.
I’ve got a set that I’m happy with on my Asuran Engineer. The hat is a bit weird (it looks like you are wearing a bra on the back of your head), but the rest of it is suitably steampunky.
That basically an endorsement for DD ele or Kits engineer to have the highest dps in the game. And honestly that just doesn’t work. No class has a skill cap so high it cant be given a rotation. No matter ho w high you feel the skill cap is on your class due to the buttons you push the fact is in order to do all that pretty dps warrior must be in melee.
Now before nades got nerfed (30% damage reduction) you could literally sit all the way in the back of a part have vulnerability and bleeds and pop more aoe dps than anyone. The funny thing is still vs more than 3 mobs aoe dps from nades will still win out.
And the funny thing the way you achieve this? Spam 1. So NO its not tied to what is the perceived skill ceiling. complex builds get lots of tools and tricks. They are hard to predict and counter. Warrior for the lack of a better word are stupid and easy to counter. There are no tricks or a bunch of tools. The reason we were given raw dps is due to this fact as the devs have stated. We kill or be killed and that’s about it.
Well, to be honest, I do think the Ele should have the highest DPS in the game — and I’m being objective… I don’t even play one. I think that distinction is better placed on them than on a Warrior. So, yes, that’s exactly what I’m endorsing and I think that’s a trade off they should get both for their more complicated rotation and their fragility.
Furthermore, I do agree with you that the old grenades were stupid OP, but that’s been gone for months now. The new nades don’t hold a candle to warrior DPS, especially since the KR nerf, and you definitely aren’t going to get far just spamming 1. I think that engineer’s intended role is sustained AoE DPS though, and even though they could use a bump, they don’t need the top DPS crown.
Because we are talking about PvE, predicting and countering simply isn’t a factor. Complicated rotations are what -can- be countered by the AI.
Have 4 level 80s fully geared — Engineer, Mesmer, Necro, and Warrior. My Warrior, in general, kills -everything- in PvE faster and with far less effort. The other classes bring a bit of specialized utility, and different levels of fun and engagement (I love my engineer, and he’s got my 100% star)… but yeah, my Warrior destroys.
They definitely feel OP to me, simply for the reason that their damage output is the highest and their skill cap (in PvE) is among the lowest. I’m okay with the damage output being very high, but I think the highest damage output should be tied to the highest skill cap.
Warrior should exist in the spot where they do 10-20% less than the best damage in game, but do it much easier than max damage output imho.
Permanent please! Seriously, this is amazing content, and very fun. It’s an excellent complement to the existing gameplay. If Superbox got a new update every month I would play it without question.
These items are mainly earned through guild content, we included them on the laurels vendor to give players the opportunity to earn them if they are not in a guild but they are priced high to encourage players to try and accomplish them via the guild content.
You can’t try and steer players so obviously and not have them resent it. While this may be extraordinarily fun new content, attaching it to such a heinous grind (a month per trinket, again??) and insisting, in practical terms, that all players must now partake has already made it feel like a chore before even starting.
How about just making fun new content and leaving out the heavy-handed stick-and-carrot approach? GW2’s greatest strength is it’s great breadth of play experiences. Why not continue to incentivize players to enjoy the content that matches what they like, while just adding new content for the sole purpose of appealing to more players?
Ah, good to know. If that’s the case then not as much of a big deal — seems like I’ve done an enormous amount of runs for just greens though — and the rares I did get came early.
Super frustrating to only have a limited window to get the event items you want and then being hit with DR code preventing you from getting them. It’s like someone isn’t thinking this through at all.
