Guild Wars 2

hey robert, i’d like to give you a different perspective on this new change to waypoints. it feels like i’m playing a pub match of cod4 search and destroy. for that matter, ANY fps style search and destroy or elimination game mode where, if you die, you sit out until the round resets. typically i avoid these game modes unless 1) i’m training for a competitive match or 2) if i’m willing to sacrifice actual playing time for theoretically greater challenge (rarely am i willing to sacrifice playtime).

i feel some parallels now to gw2’s dungeons with respect to the above. granted i’m a casual dungeoneer and i have not experienced all dungeons, the only place i’ve ever planned to “wp zerg” has been in pug cof p2 at defending magg….no where else. so when this change was first announced i thought it was a huge over reaction to (imo) a non issue.

so far i haven’t noticed too much of a difference but it is an annoyance when i can’t waypoint whilst everyone’s alive because someone else is still in combat. and, most importantly, its NOT fun when you have party members go down on a boss and you can’t res them cause the boss hits hard…especially if you happened to be the dead one…sitting there…waiting (to have fun…lol). sure it can be argued that it’s a ‘better challenge’ and that it ‘produces better/smarter play’ but thats what i go to fractals for….

i guess what im trying to say is that i see dungeons as free-for-all, ctf, team-deathmatch pubs (for the most part casual, fun, fast paced flow, group up with randoms and go) and fractals as search n destroy/elimination pubs (organized, focused, punishing). now the dungeons (depending on the quality of the pug, or lack thereof) have the potential to infringe on the SnD pub feeling on even the easier of paths. your idea was good in theory but i don’t think its the optimal solution as currently implemented. not sure why simply redesigning the encounters wasnt enough.

hopefully this made sense.

sooo…a short lived, market-corrected net-ecto salvage requires a perma ban but karma-precursor exploiters are temp ban and not required to delete?

like said before, test stuff before you release & utilize your account rollback system.

no need to be so harsh for such a silly (creative/clever) mishap. it is wintersday after all…

disappointed with chris’ response and the direction yall’ve chosen. youre getting less of my money (if any thanks to gold conversion) in the near future and less of my attention in the distant future. please stick to your manifesto.

ive tried this 3 times so far….the client immediately crashes after launcher disappears to char select screen. when i try to rerun gw2 after the crash it hangs at ‘Downloading 0kb’ on the launcher. no progression at all. i have to reboot inorder to get it to progress. and i have to remove the -testVerticalFov in order to actually play.

:(

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.

please stop while youre ahead. youve already just made a bunch of gw1 vets very upset for going against your supposed core design principles (source: manifesto).

i don’t think the majority of your loyal players want power creep. give us a variety of shinier skins/effects, varied ‘endgame’ zones (note: zones is plural), and newer, better, more interesting boss/dungeon mechanics. i’m kinda dumbfounded as to how you assumed gear grind was tolerable.

We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.

a small gear grind is still a gear grind.

and, lets be realistic: if you’re implementing ‘gear progression’ to palliate the complaints of players who’ve already farmed their legendaries and somehow ‘have nothing to do’, who do you think will be the first to complain when they farm their new ‘ascended’ sets and now ‘have nothing to do ingame’?

from a consumer standpoint, the further you deviate from gw1 & your manifesto the less inclined/compelled i am to purchase gems for my personal use. and this is, in my opinion, a rather large deviation.

i suggest a compromise: allow us to carry each other. literally.

refer to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Noble_Intentions_Plan_B

we already have bundles implemented in the game. allow us to carry another player as our bundle as we traverse through a jumping puzzle.

what does this do?

altruism – encourages players helping players
conciliatory – ‘skilled’ players are recognized as being ‘good’ and ‘unskilled’ players are getting achievement
placatory – see above, no reason to whine for any crowd
community – for every 1 person charging gold for a run there will be 10 offering to ‘carry’ for free
awesomeness – it would be so fun to watch a guildy run a puzzle…with you as their (very) pesonal cheerleader :P plus it gets them a 1st person view of how the jumps should go

also bear in mind the longterm benefits of implementing this:

challenge missions – a la gw1 — timed quaggan carry race
tag team functionality – at checkpoints players ‘switch’ – bundle becomes runner, runner becomes bundle
observer mode – its kinda like observer mode…
endless imaginative opportunities for functionality in pve and observing wvw/spvp

i personally enjoyed the challenge and the feeling i got after 4 hrs when i finally completed it was unmatched so far in this game. but i can see how some just aren’t able to complete it. however, i dont think char models are an excuse…you can easily use the center of your screen to tell where your char is and you also get used to the feeling of ‘being too close to the ledge’ right before you fall off so you know when to jump. the worst thing, imo, is landing a jump with a char….it’s deceptive. but the puzzle was great and i look forward to more challenges in the future. all in all great job event team.

i will not buy costumes until there is a costume npc (same as from gw1; accountwide)

i would be tempted to purchase aesthetically pleasing weapon skins if the gem price were reasonable (ie actual skins, not attained through gambling)

i will definitely purchase weapon/armor skins if the gem price were reasonable and there were a skin/fashion NPC (i’d purchase that npc as well; preferably accountwide)

3 alts all under level 10……5/6 pages of act 2…..all en route to fort cadence (1 AT fort cadence)….

in the future can we get a little bit more of an advanced warning (and, no, i dont mean an 8 hr “we’re gonna get to this soon!” post)? 3minutes wasn’t enough time for me to hire a bodyguard to at least snag a complete set on 1 alt

this turned into a wall of text, i’m sorry. TL,DR: efficiency is not exploitation, the DR ‘solution’ logically makes little sense, speed-clearing should be spun into a challenge mission type feature with increased dungeon difficulty

im really surprised by how anet have decided to handle this “problem” & slightly disappointed by the route they chose to take. being from the “high end speed clear” community that gw1 players created for themselves, i’m confused as to why yall (anet) aren’t embracing this “style” of play. “record runs” were the lifeblood of many players; the reason they logged in and went to the “endgame” areas was for a low time upon completion, with the chest rewards as an after-thought.

instead it appears you’re backing yourselves into a lose-lose situation: you are punishing proficient players (going against the whole revolution/freedom/manifesto thing) and at the same time angering a portion of the player-base with buggy band-aids. all because of, as stated above, an ill-conceived system created as an ill-conceived solution, no matter how good the intent.

i’m not sure why ya’ll decided to go with this system…yes, ‘exploits’ are bad and need to be fixed. however, you cannot equate efficiency with exploitation.

for instance, in gw1, skilled players were able to clear the Underworld in 7 mins, Fissure of Woe in 7 mins, Domain of Anguish in 17 mins, and ALL other elite areas (INCLUDING dungeons) in ridiculously low times (source: http://gwscr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3). Even though the end chests weren’t as important as the holding the “world record” time, the loot was never (to my knowledge) negatively manipulated by anet…instead the dungeon/area difficulty & mob/player skills were tweaked. from my point of view it should be MUCH easier to increase dungeon difficulty and/or tweak simple mechanics/objectives (ie magg ai) than implementing some semi-draconian set of undocumented, unpublished, semi-untested rules.

but, sadly, i digress (and apply ‘this isnt guildwars1 buddy’ here). the logic behind this also confuses me… so you want to create a ‘safety net’ to stop exploits…great, but being legitimately efficient at your content is not exploiting. if it is, the problem is in your content and the content should be corrected. you want to slow the speed at which players acquire tokens so the armor skins are “elite”…simple, make the dungeons harder justifying the “elite-ness” factor. 30 minutes per dungeon rule…is a poor benchmark as people are already hitting well underneath this (unless you plan on increasing difficulty). you want to artificially reduce the “grind”/farming that people have to go through to attain the tokens…sounds great, but changing the pattern from farm1 dungeon over and over to rotate between farming 2 dungeon paths doesn’t actually reduce the grind or farming. you want to keep the economy in check…a noble gesture but there is already a huge wealth gap between the market-savvy, the early karma ‘exploiter’, and the normal player. even so, reduce silver and/or experience for running any path twice (should be easy to tag a char like this, will integrate seamlessly with achievements) but leave tokens alone. win/win.

it’s really quite silly and disheartening to read all the backlash and see ya’ll struggle to post convincing arguments for an elaborate, overbearing DR system. i personally don’t care much for dungeons at the moment, nor do i care for skins in general, so the outcome of this debacle doesn’t affect me much at all. i just honestly feel that ya’ll are missing a huge opportunity to spin this into a beloved feature rather than a restrictive rule-set (/wiki gw1 challenge missions, recording top times by guild).

oh, and if you are deadset on a daily reset model, please please please make it obvious when the reset time actually is and please please please announce that there actually IS a reset time. i had no clue this was actually in game until i read one of robert’s replies in the dev tracker so im sure a ton of normal players are in the dark.

as an aside, a friend bought mists of pandaria yesterday…i saw the box at work and on the inside of the foldout cover it has a small text blurb mentioning ‘racing against other groups to complete dungeons in the fastest times’. i’m paraphrasing but when i read that i was literally taken aback — why was wow, the game with dungeon lockouts, limitations, and timers, implementing (read: evolutionizing) a feature that MY game should have already done?