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I really hope Mike O’Brien says something soon about all of this. He has been the manifesto spokesperson for years.
He should explain the reason for this change in his vision.
The reason for this change is obvious: Nexon bought a lot of NCSoft shares, and applied pressure to NCSoft so they are calling the shots at ArenaNet now.
The decision to abandon the Manifesto and target the WoW audience came from them, and ArenaNet has nothing to say in this matter – they are not even allowed to talk on the forums besides statements approved by NCSoft.
ArenaNet developers are so desperate they communicate with little messages in the game (or over twitter).
And Mike O’Brien is probably contemplating what he should do – watch how NCSoft slowly destroys the game and his company similar to EA destroying Bioware, or leave and start something else. Not an easy decision.
(edited by cele.7398)
you guys didnt played gw1
agony system was in gw1 and that was released 2 years before lotro
lotro tried to copy it and failed becouse different game mechanics
I have not played GW1, but from what I hear, “Spectral Agony” was in one instance (?) and you got your already equipped armor “infused” by continuing the story quests and thus becoming immune. That is just a simple instance unlock mechanic, not the gear treadmill they are adding now.
One difference here is that the dungeon will already be open to players without any infusions at all. I don’t think we know how many fractals yet. By doing the dungeon at a lower difficulty, you can open up the requirements for doing it at a higher difficulty. Is that so different that opening explorable mode by doing story mode?
Again keeping in mind that you can open up at least some of the higher end content without doing the lower end parts.
It is different – if they just wanted to get players to play through the lower difficulties, why not simply enhance the Story/Explorable mode mechanic? Why does it have to be Radiance, tied to a new item tier with better stats, creating a gear treadmill?
Also, it is really obvious how ArenaNet follows Turbines footsteps.
“The LOTRO Store will offer convenience, not advantage.”
From the beginning, they were selling P2W character stat boosts not realistically obtainable through gameplay.
“Legendary Items will level with you.”
From the beginning, you had to grind your legendary item to its max. potential in LOTRO, and with every level you gained, the item was totally obsolete and had to be scrapped. This never changed.
“GW2 will only have cosmetic, not gear progression.”
3 Months later, they introduce Ascended gear with Radiance, with better stats than exotics so everyone will have to get them and grind the dungeon.
“We do not plan to introduce another gear tier in 3 months.”
ArenaNet promised 3 months ago (and during development) that there will be no vertical progression whatsoever, “we leave the gear grind to other MMOs”.
And now they promise that they won’t add another tier in 3 months? If they cannot keep to their own broadly advertised “MMO manifesto”, why should I believe a word they say now?
An MMO company that openly goes back on one promise will never keep another. We learned that with Turbine and LOTRO. I am disappointed that ArenaNet is no different, and I wish I could get a refund for the copies of GW2 I purchased. (Sadly, not possible with Amazon and Green Man Gaming.)
On Nov. 18, 2008, Turbine released the first Expansion called “The Mines of Moria” to their MMO, The Lord of the Rings online.
This expansion introduced a new game mechanic, Doom/Radiance.
Of course, many players were opposed, and some kept repeating that it was not going to be as bad as it sounded like.
Basically, the endgame lair raid had 80 “Gloom”, a player debuff that directly decreased outgoing damage and max. health and increased incoming damage. The Gloom in the final stage of the fight was so high that players without protection sat at ~30% of their max. health.
The protection was called “Radiance”, a new player stat – 10 Radiance counters 10 Gloom.
Radiance was found as reward for doing the “cluster instances” in hard mode – every piece of gear had 10 Radiance.
Of course, the raid dropped two items with 20 Radiance. The next Raid that was released had 120 Gloom and dropped items that gave 30 Radiance. And Radiance armor, along with drops from the raid, was the best stuff obtainable with crafted items being on a poor 2nd tier.
Players complained that they couldn’t obtain the gear from the previous Raids as most raiders moved on – many casual guilds stopped altogether as it was simply not feasible to outfit all needed alts with full radiance armor.
The feedback continued to be negative, Turbine defended the system even when hardcore raiders left for other games and casuals had no interest in doing raids that are a year old just to see new content. The game went downhill, and Turbine, after a final decision to go F2P, did the only thing that they should have done from the beginning.
The Radiance mechanic was completely removed from the game.
F2P didn’t change much with the Item Store being Pay to Win and the continuation of the dreaded “Item Advancement System”. Still, casual players had at least the chance to see new content.
Many of us came to GW2 because Anet promised there would be no gear grind, no item spiral, and no Pay 2 Win. They already started to break their promises, three months after release.
So why do you choose to repeat the very same mistake Turbine, a competitor, did four years ago by blatantly copying a failed mechanic, Anet? Why do you cater to the needs of the tiny hardcore minority when there is no subscription fee that those players pay to keep on with their treadmill?
I am utterly dissapointed that GW2 is just going to be LOTRO reloaded. Item Treadmill in November, Item Advancement in December, Pay to Win probably in the next year. I went through that and came to GW2 to escape it. Where is the MMO that promised not to be an MMO?
The Lieutenant in AC frustrates us to no end.
Not only is his wind-up barely noticeable without constantly watching for his animations, but it also breaks through Dodge and even pulls through the Pillars sometimes due to lag.
Also, with the high amount of conditions and damage floating around, we are still supposed to also fit in a stun break somewhere in our 3 utility skills, and if you are distracted for a second – bam insta death.
Rifle bandits in CM, targeted by 2-3 bandits in a row, endurance quickly depleted – insta death.
With the completely random aggro mechanic (? we can’t find a pattern), the bosses still focus on downed players even with others attacking him, so you can watch your character getting beaten to death slowly because its fun!
Our guild consists of rather experienced dungeon runners from previous MMOs (LOTRO), but we cannot figure out how to beat the dungeons with the instant-death penalties on every little mistake and the crazy amounts of damage/conditions/cc enemies inflict with very little recovery options. With the high rep costs, we stop trying to figure out fights after a few attempts because nobody wants to pay precious silver for something that isn’t fun and get’s us nowhere.
So we will completely stop running GW2 dungeons for the time being, besides Arah for the story. Try making them fun next time, Anet.
Dialogue system Why are the interactive and spoken dialogues separated? It makes our character personality mostly irrelevant, and just feels strange, dropping out of the cutscene to make a choice.. why not combine them for the personal story, and keep the text-based stuff for world NPCs? It would have a lot more impact if our character actually says our response, and see/hear the other person react, at least once in a while.
Destiny’s Edge – they have no relevance in the Personal story past 30. We only receive occasional love letters from them, telling us how they’ll return soon, but don’t actually see our mentor outside of the dungeons (which I mostly skipped while leveling for reasons better discussed elsewhere), why not let our mentor join us at least occasionally, or let us talk to them, get their advice, or let them save our kitten in an ambush, so that we actually admire them and lighen up when they appear (besides the poor humans who are stuck with Logan)?
Caithe is the only Sylvari with the same Wyld Hunt as my character, but we don’t fight together even once against Zhaitans minions, she is nowhere to be seen in Orr, and only fights at the end in Arah as regular punching bag, with the completion of our Wyld Hunt not even mentioned after Zhaitans death?
Let them show up more often and interact more with our characters, and keep the reunion/issues of Destinys Edge for the Dungeons.
Trahearne – We Sylvari at least get to know him as a character before Orr, and his “Impossible Wyld Hunt” made me interested in his character – but I can see how other races don’t like him “stealing their show” because they have no idea who he is. He desperately needs more of a personality, more interaction, and some explanation of where his powers come from along with him actually being powerful in combat. Let us talk to him besides him giving orders and some “personal missions” or something. He feels rather bland for being so important, and my character being second in command.
The Source of Orr
As said above, having companions we care about guarding our back would have been so much better than the bunch of generics.
At the last stand, make us actually form a line of defense and have the mobs attack us instead of running to Trahearne – chasing mobs around is not really a compelling final battle.
I heard some sort of music playing during it, but could not figure out what it was over the combat sounds (with default audio settings) – it would have been epic if the combat sounds fade into the background, character boon/condition responses get muted (“I’M FEELING FURIOUS!!”) and the music plays clearly and loud (I guess it was the Sylvari Theme?)
Also, some more weight on the final cutscene would have been great, like showing some of the land slowly transforming – just seeing some roots in the middle of the lake is an unsatisfying visualization of cleaning the entire corruption of Orr.
And please tell Trahearne that shouting “MOVING ON!” (his standard phrase when dropping combat) in the middle of the cutscene ruins the mood.
Aftermath
The dialogue after Zhaitans defeat was oh so cheesy, it made me cringe. Let us have a meaningful personal talk with our mentor and Trahearne, show the other Dragons react to Zhaitans death, a memoriam of the losses we suffered and tone down the “Friendship defeats everything” a bit please.
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That was rather exhaustive, but I was disappointed with the PS since the rest of the game is great, and wanted to let the devs/writers know why.
TL;DR:
Storyline should be more mixed up instead of three separated parts.
Lack of interesting characters that actually live up to the end and accompany you on missions (and/or get send on that other mission in your stead)
Spoken dialogue system should be more interactive.
Destiny’s Edge mentor lacks screentime.
Trahearne needs mor echaracterization for being so important.
Source of Orr could be more epic with music in the foreground and your companions at your side.
Aftermath should be more serious and less cheery.
Feel free to post your thoughts/comments, I’d like to hear what others think about the stuff I mentioned. Troll posts will be personally ignored of course.
So I just completed the Personal Story after the Gates of Arah were finally working again and wanted to give my opinion on what was lacking, as the PS is one of the “big things” of GW2.
I played a Sylvari Ranger and joined the Priory.
Obviously, some of the things I suggest would require significant rework of the PS, so my feedback is rather something for future expansions or games.
WARNING: PERSONAL OPINION, SPOILERS AND WALL OF TEXT AHEAD. You have been warned.
There is a TL;DR at the end.
Completely isolated story parts – the racial, Guild and Pact story lines feel like they are completely separated and don’t have anything to do with each other, even if the previous storyline didn’t really conclude. My Sylvari just found out there is another Pale Tree, and the plot is completely dropped when I join the Priory, so I expected it to pick up again after some time – but it seemed to me that as soon as you reach the Guild part, the Race you chose doesn’t matter at all anymore.
The same with the Pact part – as soon as you reach the Orr plot, your Guild choice becomes irrelevant, you are suddenly commander of every guild. This not only feels off, it also drastically diminishes replayability – if the racial story ends at 30, there is little reason for me to continue the PS unless I chose another of the 3 guilds, and when reaching Orr I might as well stop playing the PS all together, as I’ve already seen/did everything of it.
I’m not asking for vastly different plots depending on choices, but the story lines could have been mixed up more without branching any of them – let the main Orr plot go on hold every once in a while for a Race and Guild specific intermezzo quest all the way to 80. For example, send my Sylvari back to the “other” tree to recruit them to the war effort (after some small subplot) and just place some NPCs of them in the ending battles, or send me to a Priory-exclusive special mission once in a while, just to keep those fundamental choices relevant.
Lack of interesting characters. The GW2 storyline is (imho) not very original – good heroes kill bad dragon, BTDT. But then again, neither was Mass Effects, for that example. But Mass Effect had interesting subplots and characters that drove the game, and Guild Wars 2 lacks the former and has nothing to offer on the latter. The only characters that actually stay for more than one or two quests are killed off – in a rather bland way – and then the Story expects me to have an emotional investment in them.
Take the Priory Mentor for example – the only thing I remember her for is flying around laughing while I climbed stairs, and then she wants to single-handedly hold back an army? Her sacrifice was so bland and generic that I lost the little bit of interest I had in her character, and had to think hard who the hell the Eye of Zhaitan meant when he dropped her name. Again, the writers thought I had any attachment to this character who was killed off a long time ago before we even got to know her? Same with the asura demolitionist, same with the charr pilot. Are there any other side characters besides Destinys Edge and Trahearne?
Characters like Garrus, Thane and Tali from the ME series didn’t have that much screentime either, but they were around (long enough to be relevant) and you could talk to them. Let us have some companions from our Race choice and our Guild, give them a story to tell, send them with us on missions instead of generic faceless punching bags “Vigil Crusader”, “Order of Whispers Agent” etc. , let them drop some hilarious one-liners that other characters respond to – nothing sophisticated or expensive, but enough to make us care for them. For a game that strives to revolutionize the MMO part of the genre, the writers did little to keep up with the standards Bioware set for the RPG part.
You can go even further and let us send them on the alternative missions in our stead. Right now, all the binary mission choices feel like “attack/defend generic fantasy location #1 or go to generic kinda important fantasy place #2 to get generic ancient artifact #3 or perform generic fantasy ritual #4” and the other part will be miraculously done by someone else you don’t know or care about. But if we had to send one of our companions on the other mission, worrying about their survival and get a funny comment when they return, the entire branching quests mechanic becomes a lot more interesting. Make them part of the last stand, and if you really want to add drama – kill off a (randomly chosen?) character at or near the end, when we care, in a non-cheesy way. Look at how Mass Effect 2 did it at the end, I was grieving for poor Mordin (before I loaded a save) more than I would if every single GW2 character died.
(I heard that they tried to do something like that with the Charr warband, but are those actually companions through the Guild and Orr parts?)
Hello,
I bought the regular version of the game over at Green Man Gaming, and after leveling a bit decided that this game is worth buying the Collectors Edition.
However, I’d like to unlock the CE content on my existing account, and give the regular game key packaged with it to a friend via e-mail – is this possible? With my previous MMO (LOTRO), the Collectors Edition had 2 keys, one for the game and one for the CE content, so I gave the game key away as I already had an account.
If only one key is shipped with the CE, can I contact support and ask them to “exchange” the game keys? That would be great.
Thanks in advance!