Guild Wars 2

Arioso.8519:

Here’s an idea, (mostly because this is kind of how I’d like runes to have worked in the first place)

We get a new tier of runes like the OP suggested, but… they don’t work in sets. No set bonus for these new ascended runes, but each rune just has one flat-out effect.

So an ascended rune of speed that gives you the 25% run bonus from traveler’s flat out. No stats. An ascended rune of might that gives you the chance of might when hit and 20% to your might duration. A rune that summons a rock dog when you’re hit. A rune that causes you to deal extra damage from behind your target, etc. A rune that causes a parrot to attack your target when you hit them. Etc. Basically, most of the “interesting” effects that tend to come as the 6 rune set bonus, but with the ability to mix&Match them at the expense of extra stats.

As it is, there’s never a reason to mix&match runes, (making the need for a set of 6 just an inconvenient expense) and that sort of system might open up the door to some unique build possibilities.

They probably set up the system as-is to reduce complexity. I would be surprised if they turned around and undid that.

Don’t forget that you can CC the mobs too to reduce their danger. Or block the attacks. or invuln through it. Pretty much anything other than taking the hit.

I feel like a lot of people don’t use stun breaks or even know what they are. My newbie friends had no idea they were a thing until I pointed them out.

shimmershine.3156:

Well as far as ascended runes/sigils go, I kinda like the idea. maybe if the runes were a bit different say than their exotic versions perhaps.

If they’re just different then they don’t need to be ascended. Ascended would mean objectively better in some way (like bigger numbers). That would be terrible.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time getting and managing gear in order to be on par. Getting gear is tedium.

I wish PvE used the gear system from sPvP. Simple, and easy to experiment with different things. One of the reasons I haven’t tried any other stat combos in PvE is that there’s a pretty big switching cost.

No thank you to power creep and vertical progression. You can play pretty much any other game in the genre if you want that.

I don’t want mounts. Sounds clunky. If they can’t do underwater combat I doubt they can do mounted combat. Besides, we have waypoints and swiftness for travel.

Vehicles and siege towers could be interesting in WvW though. I enjoyed Mount & Blade quite a bit.

Hannelore.8153:

Khisanth.2948:

Danikat.8537:

I don’t know, my first campaign was Prophecies and I got my first character to level 20 just before leaving Kryta (in fact I think it was during the Divinity Coast mission). I still had the Maguuma Jungle, Crystal Desert, South Shiverpeaks and Ring of Fire to go, had barely started the ‘real’ storyline (I still thought it’d be all about the charr).

It wasn’t as fast as Factions or Nightfall, but still pretty quick compared to other games. Even in non-grindy single-player RPGs you usually won’t hit the max level until very close to the end of the game.

That does not sound very “normal”. Mobs outside of LA is lv11. Mobs outside of Sanctum Cay is lv17. Arriving at LA a character should be lv15 +/-2. If the level difference is more than 6 mobs give no experience. A 19 character would not have gotten any exp from the mobs in Divinity’s Coast. Completing the mission and bonus would have given 2k exp but you would have had to somehow get within 2k exp of leveling from even lower level mobs.

Going back on to the topic of the thread though. I have yet to see any reason given for the benefit of loitering about at lower level. “Too fast” implies there are reasons to not level. The only benefit I can think of is for opening champ bags and even that is only slightly useful.

The reason to not level is that the horrible downscaling system renders all pre-80 content childs play for a player with even a mediocre skill level. It completely ruins the fun of exploring the world, map completion, etc. because what is a serious threat to newbies turns into “kill 20 mobs at once with my whirl -sunglasses-”.

Fixing the scaling could help, but ultimately there is far too much pre-80 content in this game (most of it, in fact) to justify the current levelling speed.

And as I pointed out earlier, levelling is something that can provide alot of value to a game, despite how many people do not like it. When properly implemented, it encourages socializing, teamwork, and can even be relaxing.

ArenaNet clearly realized this with HoT, or we wouldn’t have masteries… :P

I’m pretty sure downscaling used to be more aggressive. I remember seeing a lot of people whine about how they couldn’t faceroll through low level content with their level 80 characters. My reaction was basically “if you can’t faceroll through the starting area, you’re bad at the game.” That was not received.

I’d be happy if they got rid of levels. It’s an archaic concept. Of course, some people are a bit reactionary in their game tastes and think an RPG isn’t an RPG without levels. (Hope they never see a whitewolf game. their brain might explode)

This is the only MMO I’ve played where I’m glad to see other players. In most MMOs other players are more likely to steal your kills/loot/resources, or kill you. They did a good job with that part of the design.

Kids these days. Bring back the Guild Wars 1 healing signet! (From what I recall, it was a decent spike heal on a low cooldown, but you took double damage during the activation. No passive effect.)

You might get some mileage out of the in-game LFG tool.

warbignime.4610:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

I think a time limit would be a little too restrictive. I agree with simplesimon and think that a level and zone cap would be a better solution.

Oh, and make sure that these accounts can’t use any chat other than party chat. I don’t fancy seeing a load of gold sellers in chat :P

The problem is new player needs to experience pvp, pvp could be a game of it self. And level gate that is kind of hard.

I was wondering if they would benefit from making the spvp free to play in some limited way. Practice and Unranked only, limited character slots, PvE rewards sit there until you buy the game. Could bring new players in, but I don’t know if it would be worth the development costs and community backlash. It seemed to work for TF2, and sPvP could probably learn a thing or two from TF2.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I agree that it is a bit silly due to the easy character-swap work-around. But, it probably still serves a small purpose, especially for new players who have not done the story mode and want to experience it without waiting in LFG forever. Or even if they ask some guildies if anyone will do the story mode with them, people will probably be more likely to join if they can bring an alt and unlock the dungeon on them.

It’s really not that big a deal. You do the story mode once on the new character, and explorable is unlocked forever.

If they want to encourage people to do story mode more, they could make the rewards better. Some tokens, maybe.

TANGENT TIME:
Horizontal progression means more options. When they add new skills and traits in GW2 that’s generally horizontal growth. Like if necromancers had an elite well that immobilized, damaged and blinded. It might be cool, but you’d have to take off lich form to use it.

Vertical progression means more power. That’d be like if they added a skill ‘Improved Lich Form’ that did 30% more damage. Everyone who used Lich Form would want it because it’s an improvement.

That kind of vertical growth is often used to create a sense of progression. You do content X and get your +10 power gear, and then your numbers are big enough to do content Y. Once you do content Y, you get your +20 power gear. With the +20 gear, you can do content Z.

One of the problems with that is it’s often kind of illusionary progression. Your numbers are bigger, but if it still takes kittens to kill a monster it doesn’t really matter.
/TANGENT

All of that said, I found the new leveling experience to be very slow. It takes too long to get to the good parts. Maybe if I didn’t know about the good parts already I wouldn’t mind, but I do, and it’s not good. I want to play with my toys, not fart around repeating content until I’m allowed to.

Aside, I’ve had no trouble getting sub-80 dungeons going using the LFG tool.

I don’t know about the OP’s idea, but I’m really glad I got my characters to 80 before the new player experience. It looks like it takes entirely too long to get to the fun parts, now.

Schaffa Zeinadine.6342:

aliksyian.7642:

As long as the standard animations are used in PvP, I think this might be fun.

Well, why not?

Eliminates the chance of some animations being harder to read or faster, and thus providing an advantage. That’s why pvp should really use standard models/colors

As long as the standard animations are used in PvP, I think this might be fun.

The new player experience is really annoying when I try to show new players around. I want to show them things like vistas and harvesting and skill challenges, but they’re all locked behind a level gate. A lot of their cool class mechanics also take a really long time to unlock.

I’d quit. I’d never pay a subscription for a video game. I haven’t bought any new games in a long time because I have a hefty backlog, so adding $15/mo would be a huge increase in expenses.

Imagine if they got rid of ‘deposit all’!

It’s a quality of life feature. Getting rid of it would make the game more annoying, not more interesting.

I don’t like the map. I’ve never seen it come up as a majority vote. I’d rather eat a dishonorable debuff than play it.

It’s on arena net to police its community. Pretty much any large group will turn toxic if it’s not moderated. Unpleasant people will drive pleasant people away, so over time you only have unpleasant folks and people who’re willing to put up with their crap.

If anet hired a few interns to go through block reports and handed out serious bans for being toxic, the problem would probably get better. I expect there’s a lot of middle-of-the-road people that will be polite if others are polite, and jerks if others are jerks.

Drakortha.6974:

At the end of a match the popup doesnt remain nearly long enough to see how many kills I got, points, etc. Is there a way I can bring this menu back up, maybe in the lobby?

This would be neat. I’d like more details tracked overall for spvp, too.

Einlanzer.1627:

Lady Elvea.2847:

Once upon a time I had a boxed MMO in one hand and a boxed GW Prophecies in the other, and I was trying to decide which one to go for. In the end, I went with Guild Wars based on the “skill, not hours played” sales pitch and then found myself playing many hours because it seriously delivered.

I’ve had a lot of faith in ANet devs over the years because they built a lot of credit with GW1. The past two years seems to involve them being hell-bent on flushing that down the toilet.

I miss the low level cap. I miss the many, many skills to choose from. I miss the freaking variety in game styles I could choose to play, and the variety of enemies I encounter. I honestly think a large part of GW2’s lack of content feeling finds its origins there.

Yes, perhaps GW1 had too many skills and a lot of ways to really suck, but I think GW2 overcompensates to extremes- to the point of becoming dull. I have literally not once changed my level 80 skills and traits after maxing out my gear two years ago (Ascended treadmill not counted, more of the same). I have 10 skills that work everywhere and I never nead to think about them. Occasionally I move, I dodge, or carry a bundle. That’s GW2 in a nutshell; not necessarily lacking content but having a lot of the same bland stuff.

Agreed on all counts. The lack of available skills to experiment with really, really hurts this game. Combat feels very repetitive with too little room to experiment.

Yep. My friend who I played GW1 quit GW2 pretty quick because he didn’t find the build options nearly as interesting as GW1. Personally I liked GW1’s system much better.

GuzziHero.2467:

Yeah, you need 2 dodges to escape that attack. If you only have 1, or there are other mobs about, good luck!

Are they like the golems in CoE explorable? I hate those things and their 4 knockdowns in a row death lasers.

OP is master level troll. I approve.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Geez people, A.net said early on that they will be trying something different with GW2. They learned that expansions are NOT the best way to push forward things. After all in Factions you could get to lvl 20 in 2 hrs or less. People were eating through those expansions fast and then complaining that there wasn’t enough content.

People were also clamoring for a living world – one in which places changed. Well, A.Net has tried to combine both. Was it successful, the jury is still out but at least it is different. The world does feel more like a living world compared to the likes of ArcheAge and ESO, both which feel dead as doornails.

Currently, no company will make all of their players happy. It goes with the attitude, that I bought your game, you need to keep me entertained forever.

If A.Net put permanent content in ( which they have, BTW – Southsun Cove and Dry Top are examples), people still complain. If they made an expansion, the same people claiming they want one will complain that it wasn’t enough or crummy or some other reason. Most posters come here just to complain.

You could get to level 20 in factions quickly but you didn’t finish the campaign at 20. It was great. I hate leveling. I want to spend as much time as possible with all the toys available to me. That’s what’s interesting, not overcoming artificial barriers and fake feelings of improvement.

Sure would be nice. Earlier today I signed into a character I hadn’t played in a while, started changing traits around and then realized I couldn’t remember exactly the working loadout I had before I started. Really wished I could’ve saved it.

+1 to OP for magnificent trolling. I salute you.

Pandaman.4758:

Honestly, if ANet is going to be trimming features in their own game to make it less intimidating to new players, then we’re going to have to talk about the elephant in the room: the Holy Trinity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with the current non-holy trinity system, but many games use it, anyone who has experience in other MMOs will be more familiar with that playstyle, and the boring and straightforward nature of the trinity also makes it extremely easy to learn for those who have don’t have experience in MMOs. It already seems like ANet is starting to flirt with that concept given the recent introduction of the Nomad set (and possibly the upcoming Forsaken and Apostate sets, which seem like off-tanking stats).

I doubt they’ll remove dodging altogether, but does anyone else think they’ll be making tanking and healing viable alternatives to dodging? Would it be a reasonable expectation to see this change if the goal is to grow the player base by appealing to people who didn’t like GW2?

I wouldn’t be surprised if upper management was ordering them to make it more like WoW/other MMOs. I don’t think they’ll do it, though.

Oh, but that would be rich: Lots of people asking for new classes, and they add the GW1 monk as a healbot class. Total Monkey’s paw.

If they wait long enough, the people who want new sPvP and dungeon content will move on to other games. I guess that’s like a win for them, somehow?

I expect it would be like the monkey’s paw. We’d ask for something and get some twisted version of it that’s true to the letter but a betrayal of the spirit.

“We don’t want to grind for max stat gear”
“Done! Now it’s only available in the gem store”

On the topic of dungeons I’ve never had a problem getting groups when playing any class. Not every group clears it in record time, but even a meh group is, what, 10-30 minutes slower than a pug “speed run”? I don’t see that as a big deal.

I really want to know who had the idea of developing all this content and then throwing it out. I want to know so if I am ever in a position to make hiring positions they will not ever, ever, get the job.

That said, yes, letting players access old content in some form or other is a good idea. Seems like some of it would be good for guilds to tackle.

I dabbled a little in PvE to try out ranger and flamethrower engineer, did some sPvP until the same issues as always got me kitteny. I expect I’ll play other games mostly. I am no longer anet’s target audience, and I don’t expect to be unless there’s some sort of coup inside anet against upper management.

How long is the expected wait time for Solo Arena? I’ve never gotten in a game for it because I always give up after 5-10 minutes.

Astral Projections.7320:

This has been brought up before on several threads. On one of them at least, the answer was given that they decided it would take up to much data space to store all the pet names.

From that thread: source

(In this thread the OP thought it was a bug, so the answers refer to that. The part about saving names answers your suggestion).

MokahTGS.7850:
“This is actually not a bug, it is working as intended. It is not optimal, but to save the names of all of your pets (read: all of everyone’s pets) would require another large name database that ANet did not create. Currently the pet name feature saves the name in the slot, not the pet, so changing out the pet type resets the slot name.
Perhaps someday they will change this, but it is not a bug”.
Jason King
Live Response Embed
“This is pretty much exactly what’s going on.
Tl;dr: we may change this some day, but it’s not going to happen in the near future, and it’s not a bug”.
ArenaNet Community Team
— Live Response Embed —

Uh huh. So they don’t care to add the feature. Let’s not pretend storing a bunch of text is difficult.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

aliksyian.7642:

You really are disingenuous. Or stupid. Or a troll! I’m going to use a plugin to block your posts.

Possibly the first, definitely not the second, the third is possible but unlikely.

Well I got tampermonkey set up to block his posts, so tonight’s been productive.

I’m pretty sure anet’s internal politics are a mess. I bet a lot of people working there would love to work on dungeons or other fun content, but their upper management won’t give them the go ahead. I don’t know how you fix that. Pool our money and buy out the company, maybe?

Vayne.8563:

aliksyian.7642:

Everyone go look at the glassdoor.com entries for arenanet. A fair amount of people who worked there agree that the upper management is out of touch. Important people have left.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm

What percentage is a fair amount? Just curious.

I’m not sure what algorithm glassdoor uses, but enough that it is the second of two cons it shows in the overview header. (The first is their “sink or swim” attitude for new hires.) I assume glassdoor shows the most relevant pros and cons in the top section because that is the sensible thing to do.

Everyone go look at the glassdoor.com entries for arenanet. A fair amount of people who worked there agree that the upper management is out of touch. Important people have left.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm

You shouldn’t be allowed to rejoin a game once you leave or go spectator, either. Not until the match is over.

Well, yeah. Remove the ability to pick what team you go on, too. You hotjoin, you get autoassigned.

I’m pretty sure the intro mission used to force players into a downed state. I think they took that out for Reasons.

You shouldn’t be allowed to pick your team when you join. If you become a spectator you probably shouldn’t be allowed to rejoin as a player until the match is over.

The only dialog I liked was the “Did she just call us fat?” exchange. I don’t remember much of anything else, except from feeling like the pauses between lines were slightly too long. Maybe people around me just speak faster and interrupt more.

Also did they have to bring kittening scarlet back? I am going to continue to believe that the steam golems are alternate timeline asuras doing, not their kittening GM PC.

It was.. okay. About as good as other areas that were already in the game.

The story had some problems. More glaringly, it has the common video game trouble with trying to tell a preset story with the player as the protagonist. Apparently they went for the "go along for the ride and awkwardly have NPCs “ask” you questions with only one answer" solution. I don’t feel very engaged if I’m not doing anything.

This is a terrible idea. Gear gating doesn’t belong here. I don’t understand people’s obsession with bigger numbers on their gear. It doesn’t make you a better player. If anything it makes you play sloppier because the gear’s stats are a crutch.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Everyone starts off in the same game with the same resources and the same opportunities.

Anyone who is rich deserves to be rich. Games are the ultimate in equality, there is no discrimination, so anyone can do anything.

The only variable is RNG which gives some people precursors, but getting a single precursor just makes you middle class, not rich. 2k+ in gold and assets is what I would consider “rich”.

This is bullkitten because not everyone has the same amount of time to play, and in most MMOs time = power.

I don’t have high hopes.

What I really want is something like GW1 missions. A chain of instances I can do with some friends at my leisure that have some light story.

Short of that, big events like the Orr invasion, without NPCs being important, and with more incentive to hold onto whatever gets held. Like how about you can forge really cool armor skins, but progress is only made while the PCs hold the WvW-like regions.

I don’t like this system. Dead levels are usually bad design, and I don’t like that it now takes longer to get all of your tools. That seems very un-guild_wars to me.