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I had nearly unlocked my chronomancer before the change hit. Another day would have done it.
But I am really happy about this change. I did have fun doing it the first time around. The thought of unlocking alts though was really off putting to me. There are characters I would have left to rot with the old requirement – for instance I wanted to unlock a Druid at some point since I’ve always played a healer in other mmos, but don’t overly enjoy the ranger class, and I’m not the only one. Next time you’re doing difficult content in the jungle you might get a few heals thrown your way.
Druid is not a spec I’ve seen much of so far.
With the change, every new unlock will bring a fresh experience of the new content. I can take my fiancé without world completion through the content. I can get my mother in law to give the game a fair shake, and there are some shinies in the gem store I was holding off on buying I’m getting this weekend because I can now see myself unlocking all the mastery lines and eventually going back to old content with fresh skills.
I think it’s brilliant.
I really think you guys are so grateful for a change – any change – that you’re missing a few things that point to this not being much of a compromise.
1) Hero points are still account bound.
2) They are still gated behind some masteries.
3) You are still forced to spend Hero Points on ALL your skills and utilities before you can even unlock the elite spec.
4) The elite specs are all earned in a linear fashion – which means you MUST spend your hero points on traits AND SKILLS that you may never even use.As it is, 250 HP is easier to swallow versus 400 HP, true…if you only have 1 or 2 alts to grind. But once you hit 4-5 alts and up… this is still a HUGE amount of grind.
It’s not. With a Dulfy guide (yay for Dulfy guides), you’ll be up and running in no time for 25 challenges.
Thank you ANet! I had nearly unlocked my Chronomancer and was put off unlocking my alts…but now, I can start to work on each one in turn. This is a great compromise.
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: cygnus.8913
(edited by cygnus.8913)
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
The mastery system as only been available for 15 hours. Your complaining about it being forever is just pure over dramatization. Congratulations on being awarded the William Shatner award for dramatic excellence.
First, thank you for saying, in your first sentence, my very thoughts: “It’s been less than 16 hours, and that’s ’forever?” Secondly, thanks for a smile. I’d love to see the statue that goes with that award.
I know you’re just trying to inject some levity, but in a thread full of unhappy players, a response like that is like a drunken Facebook post – if players still feel the same way a week from now, two weeks from now, about this system, you’ll never live that kind of flippancy down in the community.
First rule of dealing with complaints – you can acknowledge how a person feels about something without agreeing with them. Try it, you’ll get people on side.
I think Gaile does a grand job most of the time of what is frankly a thankless task of listening to and appeasing two groups who want different things whilst having to answer to the third who pays her rent – but I saw this type of thing before in the Traits thread and its really soured me after months of patiently calling out issues – I only hope peoples unhappiness with this is not going to be a repeat of that debacle.
Myself – ive read around, ive not been able to play today because of lag and it seems that slow though it will be my best bet is to gather enough Hero points in WvW then move into the Jungle only when I have enough to at least be able to move around the map with Glider and Mushroom help as vertical maps tied to content blocks dependant on hero points locked within said maps is a total turn off to me.
People should be able to move around without having to cover most of the expansions maps to be able to become the spec they want to play as – crikey even WoW wouldn’t pull this sort of rubbish.
It is a thankless job and as the forum ‘face’, you’re going to be the pinata. There’s no response that will make everyone happy and it’s not in your power to make the sort of decisions that will make people happy. I do understand, I’m engaged to a game dev who has as you can imagine interactions with community people.
But on the other side of the coin myself, as just someone who plays games and has read a lot of forums over the years, humour is just misplaced as the first thing to use when players are complaining in these numbers. It just says to the readers that you took the time to read the posts but didn’t think they were worth addressing. And perception is everything, not what you intended.
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: cygnus.8913
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: cygnus.8913
The mastery system as only been available for 15 hours. Your complaining about it being forever is just pure over dramatization. Congratulations on being awarded the William Shatner award for dramatic excellence.
First, thank you for saying, in your first sentence, my very thoughts: “It’s been less than 16 hours, and that’s ’forever?” Secondly, thanks for a smile. I’d love to see the statue that goes with that award.
I know you’re just trying to inject some levity, but in a thread full of unhappy players, a response like that is like a drunken Facebook post – if players still feel the same way a week from now, two weeks from now, about this system, you’ll never live that kind of flippancy down in the community.
First rule of dealing with complaints – you can acknowledge how a person feels about something without agreeing with them. Try it, you’ll get people on side.
So is leveling.
Levelling can be done almost anywhere. If you don’t like one option for grinding, you can go do another instead.
Mastery points require you to grind specific piece of content to get the point. Then go grind somewhere else.
Then there are the pay to win elements. Masteries are a mechanical benefit to your character. Some mastery points require living story achievements. So if you don’t have the living story, you have a choice:
– Miss out on the mechanical benefits
– Buy the living story in the gem store.I agree that masteries would be a more fun system if they weren’t region locked, but I can’t honestly think of a way to do that that doesn’t also make old content obsolete as new content and masteries are added. Like, let’s say we go forward in time to another expansion, and you could do all the materies with XP from anywhere. Now you can completely skip all the magumma jungle progression by getting XP in the new expansion, meaning magumma becomes a ghost town people only go to to click hero points or farm special mats.
They tried that approach when they made southsun, and as a result southsun in usually completely unpopulated, and thus not very interesting to run around. It becomes obsolete, wasted content just like low level zones in more traditional MMOs, and it gets even more wasted the more content is added to the game. That’s a problem, as it makes the early game extremely unfun for new players, and you see a lot of mmos getting around this system by giving people instant high level characters, effectively making that already barren content even more barren, basically giving in to the problem rather than attempting to fix it.
Masteries being region locked ensure there’s always some sort of legit reward for playing all the parts of the game, no matter when you start playing it. I’d love a different solution but I honestly can’t think of one.
Players will play in zones they find fun. Southsun is a ghost town because it’s pretty boring imo. Masteries act as a funnel because if you could get mastery points by doing content in the core game, those players who prefer more ‘vanilla’ maps and world variety would drop the jungle like a hot rock.
I like the jungle, but I’d spend less time there if I had more of a choice. If you could level HoT masteries in the core game, and the jungle became a ghost town, it wasn’t good content to begin with.
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: cygnus.8913
If I find a bug
I will post a nice haiku
To explain it all
Most considerate,
Though if you find an exploit
Please don’t post it here
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: cygnus.8913
I have officially lost interest in this thread. Reading a laundry list of useless ire is accomplishing nothing. Off to other threads. GLHF!!!
I imagine ArenaNet is reading it laughing at how with HoT they are really pulling one over on the more casual players. I’m sure if you hounded them they would probably refund your money for the expansion at this stage but I don’t expect them to change their view. It’s clear they no longer care about the casual player base and their aim is to maximize profits off items like gem store XP boosters by providing mastery’s that require XP and reinforcing the need for those mastery’s by tieing the Elite Spec unlock to them (you have to have the mastery’s to get to certain points in the map where those beefy 10-pint hero challenges will be and you’ll have two a do a lot of HoT map competition as well). Want to do HoT casually? You can meet your Elite Spec sometime in 2016. Meanwhile the group you play with are on-line 24/7 grinding away for theirs as you go out of sight and out of mind. I believe Heart of Thorns is an expansion designed to flush the casual players from the game or to push them out of the PvE part of the game.
Whoever set the rules for Elite Unlock
- must have all core specialization trait lines maxed
- must spend 60 hero point just to unlock (no traits get unlocked with those 60 points, that’s just to make the panel available with zero elite traits)
- No ability to use Spirit Shards or other items to contribute to Elite Spec
Whoever set this up hates the casual GW2 player. Their new mission is to make you give up the things you love outside the game to grind. It’s no different from other MMOs but it is a very different message than what they were preaching in their pre-launch 2012 manifesto. It signifies they have sold out the casual player to the hardcore player demands.
I can’t see that being their intention. Hardcore players are only a minority of the playerbase. You go too hardcore, you wind up like Wildstar.
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
Can we stop calling people who went out and did entire world completion on their alts just to prepare for this “casual/lazy/want everything handed to them/whatever.”
I think the disparity here is what’s really awkward and shocking. It’s like, what’s the point of doing normal hero challenges now when one challenge in the jungle gives you more points than entire non-Orr maps in central Tyria
Anet is deliberately making the real world into a free-to-play realm, minimizng it’s value to veterans.
Which is a silly thing to do with 90% of available content.
Their goal is to make the old world unattractive so veterans buy the expansion. Levelling alts, however, can only be done in the old world. Perhaps they dislike altitis?
The jungle does look awesome. But it does seem really odd to give ten times the HPs in the jungle. It introduces a vertical progression typically reserved for trinity MMOs to GW2, which was all about horizontal progression – the HPs are just levels, essentially. Pre expac, I could go nuts in Queensdale for days grinding out events if I wanted (Queensdale is still one of my favourite areas of the game).
What if I don’t like the jungle? What if I like it for a while and then prefer the mustiness of the old world to the endless greenery? Why can’t I get the same progression in the old world at even an approximate pace? It’s jungle overdose time.
(The jungle could be awesome, but as Fawlty Towers put it):
BBasil Fawlty: So, uh, this is your new menu.
Colonel Hall: [reading] Duck with orange; duck with cherries; duck surprise.
Mrs. Hall: What’s duck surprise?
Basil Fawlty: Er… that’s duck without orange or cherries.
Colonel Hall: I mean, is this all there is – duck?
Basil Fawlty: Umm… yes… done, of course, in three extremely different ways.
Colonel Hall: And what do you do if you don’t like duck?
Basil Fawlty: Ah, well, if you don’t like duck, uhhh, you’re rather stuck.The basic argument is that the jungle is harder content, and many of these may require masteries to reach. In addition they may be just plain harder to obtain in a mechanical sense compared to core tyria. Fights or jumping sections could be harder, etc.
The theme of HoT is “PvE that doesn’t suck” compared to core tyria where literally everything in the open world can be accomplished by hitting 1 and rolling your face across the keyboard. It’s basic risk/reward mechanics at work.
How well anet balances challenge with the HP payout remains to be seen, but that’s the general idea at work.
Also keep in mind that hero points are a finite resource, but elite specs are not. Elite specs are an ongoing system, and that necessitates a relationships between the specs and offering more hero points. This means that hero challenges are considered, like mastry points, an ongoing advancement system to make sure new maps, expansions, etc. have content in them that players need to do for the sake of horizontal progression so that there’s a compelling sense of ongoing character progression throughout new content.
Lol @ “PvE that doesn’t suck.” I think GW2 did the best it could without a trinity, and I didn’t see any indications in the last BWE that anything had changed significantly (the wyvern was cool, but the content didn’t seem harder, just longer – my very initial impressions).
As a comparison, FFXIV recently had a new expansion called Heavensward. Parts of it were great, fabulous – other parts were ‘oh gawd, I have to do this again.’ They had one zone in the expac which was practically designed for flying – lots of verticality and places hard to reach that weren’t easily visible from the ground. I viewed it as a chore to play through that zone on my characters.
GW2 is great in the base game because there are some zones I really like (Queensdale, Gendarran Fields, etc) and other maps that I personally don’t rush to do (Orr is one of them, though I do some champ farms there). I can get progression in the base game by doing events anywhere I want. Now I have to get progression in the expansion by doing events in the expansion only unless I am prepared to work ten times as hard/ten times as long for it. Remember ‘the entire game is end-game?’ That’s one of the best draws of GW2. Now the entire endgame is endgame. It’s not innovation.
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
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Posted by: cygnus.8913
I remember having some of the same first impressions of the game as the OP did, that the game was unintuitive mechanically – like what stats should I pick for my gear- how much do they actually give me DPS wise, so I know that a condi build is better for me than a zerker setup? The game could make this more transparent imo.
For dungeons I sort of agree. I’ve always been a dungeon runner in MMOs – GW2 dungeons are fun, but poorly designed. Skipping big parts of the dungeons is related to mob aggro and I agree that’s pretty borked – really, mobs should ‘stick’ with you in a dungeon instead of running back. But it’s been this way for so long that people would complain (a lot) if it ever did change, and it’s not going to be changed at all now that dungeons are being put to one side. (I’m not saying it would be more fun to fight your way through all those mobs, but I don’t think the dungeons were ever intended to be played that way). So yeah, you do get scenarios where people expect you to know when to run and yes, plenty of groups will leave you where you fall and if you’re a new player who doesn’t know when to do that, it’s a very strange experience (and an unpleasant one in your friend’s example). I also agree that dungeons aren’t as cooperative as the rest of the content because their focus is on speed vs reward. A large chunk of the playerbase only run them for their rewards and newbies or lowbies get in their way. Maybe that’s part of the reason ANet aren’t supporting them any more.
Having said that, I am disappointed that there are no new dungeons in HoT. For me, dungeons are such a staple of MMOs that I struggle to imagine an MMO expansion without a single added dungeon.
SPvP I can’t speak to because I don’t do it very much.
Now that I’ve said all that, if you can overlook some of the issues above (or join a good guild/make your own groups and be very specific about the type of person you want/all welcome) then the game can be a lot of fun. It has its own charm and niche.
I’m a little confused about the dungeon nerfs with a mind to incentivising Fractals further. Fractals are, after all, a series of mini dungeons, albeit with scaling difficulty. I say potato, you say potayto.
My concern is that the Ascended grind will become really onerous if there is no more efficient way to obtain materials for it. For light armour wearers in particular, the materials are really expensive.
John, can I ask – given that higher level Fractals and (disputably) Raids are likely to require Ascended gear much of the time, this (more of a) ’buyer’s market’ you plan to create: will it make it easier for players to collect Ascended gear in terms of its constituent materials? If the end result is that it takes players longer to accomplish the same goal, that’s just adding extra mileage to the gear treadmill so players can reach that content. If it creates a more level playing field in terms of newer and older players, that’s a great change imo, and I can see what you did there.
Having said that, I understand if you can’t answer that, because the price of silk would probably tank if you did.
I can see both sides of this. I see why 80s want to bring 80s in the best gear, and I see why sub 80s want to be included. Well, when I say included, I mean the ratio of 80 groups to non 80 groups very evidently favours 80 groups, which evidently makes sense given how old the game is now.
Exactly this – I would say there are more active 80s in the game than there are active non-80s. The active non-80s should be looking to become 80s and thus be a part of the “big group” so they can be included.
The idea of being 80 and having some of the best gear in the game to do AC P1 would have been hilarious to me – like ‘seriously?’ Now if you roll a new toon, you find the older players sorta pulled the ladder up behind them.
This also is largely in fact that Anet gave dungeons better rewards. And thus people came in to farm those rewards.
I don’t know if you were around before the reward revamp to dungeons ( giving any path a 1+ gold reward) but before then there was no “toxic dungeon community” – people didn’t run dungeons – and that was just the way it was. CoF P1 was farmed – the rest ignored unless you needed the tokens or achievements.With the new rewards – came new incentive to play – and thus the farmers took over – and for good reason. At introduction the rewards were very good.
My experience has been though (avoiding the obvious 80 meta groups playing my alt) that a lot of these groups aren’t being specific about who or what they want, so you jump in and you get jettisoned out.
True – because these people playing a lot like they do expect things to be a certain way – nor do they care that one person gets kicked.
They expect that people should “know by now” how dungeons are done – because the majority does them a certain way.
And just like in most real life cases – majorities don’t care about minorities.It’s not the end of the world by any stretch, but my argument is that it’s a bad experience for a new player if it happens frequently enough. We were all new and noobish once upon a time.
Absolutely – it must be a pretty terrible experience to join and get kicked ( possibly insulted) and never know why.
I don’t think I was around when the rewards got revamped. I played intensively at launch, took a break, and come back from time to time. I’ve been playing FFXIV for about the past six months – had a blast, but kinda ran out of content. I’m also an altoholic – I have problems deciding on a class to ‘main’ at any one time, so I have 80s now in everything but thief and warrior. I came back to the game a couple of weeks ago and only really noticed what I wrote my OP about since then, but it could be that I wasn’t paying much attention back then. I actually remember getting more shinies when the game launched, and my luck is awful for drops – 26 globs of globby goop from a S2 story chest today, among other junk items for the forge. Remember when Black Lion Chest keys dropped on a not impossibly rare basis? Those were the days…
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the meta turns out in the expac. It’s been really good to discuss this with yourself and the other posters. You’re probably right that not much can be done about it, which is a bit of a shame. I am going to console myself by gambling on the TP in dreams of becoming impossibly rich…Silverwastes farming is sucking the marrow right outta me.
I do catch your drift and just to make it clear I wasn’t posting with the intent of singling you out at all, but I read about 90% of the posts on the thread so far (or at the very least, skimmed through them) and there’s quite a lot of people under the impression of how this community is supposedly awful.
It’s certainly not perfect and there are obviously a lot of problems that need to be addressed, but people on here really need to understand that elitism is something that will always exist in the world of gaming and like any MMO, there is a large spectrum of good, bad, nice, mean, stupid, and intelligent players.
In that regard, it can be very similar to real life and as such the best way to handle a situation is often times the same way— ignore and avoid those that cause you trouble to the best of your ability.
With no offense to anyone the things you’re talking about Miku are part of human psychology – it’s called hedonic adaptation.
The better off you are the more sensitive you become to issues that would be considered inconsequential in other circumstances.
You see this in games and in real life – you might think people who “have it all” live peaceful stress-free lives but that’s not actually true – simply their sensitivity to stuff that stresses them increases and their general level of stress tends to stay at about the same level.So while some people are really worried and uncomfortable about not having anything to eat or a place to live others express similar levels of worry and lack of comfort regarding matters such as pronouns or what clothes to wear and so on.
First world problems?
We should discuss them – what I’m saying is simply that human beings adapt.
They adapt to good and bad conditions – which is an intrinsic trait that allows us to survive incredibly harsh conditions.
If humans couldn’t adapt like this past generations that were forced to live in very difficult, hostile and deadly conditions would have simply “given up” – but they didn’t – they just took things as “the norm” and pushed on.
The reverse is observable today – many things that would appear as wonders straight out of a utopia for people just a few dozens (not to go as far as hundreds) of years ago are considered “baseline” and not even given much thought. We consider them a given and thus still find room in our lives for the so called “first world problems”.I do believe that yes – ultimately we’re being over-sensitive – we see it in many aspects of our society – humans have once again adapted and take a huge number of things for granted. The risk there is as far as I’m concerned immense.
But that’s simply a different discussion all together. I would simply like to add that gamers 10 years ago didn’t push as much to be “included” – and if people didn’t like their play style these gamers were much more open to changing and adapting – in contrast today’s gamers seem entitled( I make this claim with no intent of aiming any of it at you – you seem to be a very moderate person).
When I wanted to do The Fissure of Woe in GW1 and couldn’t find groups I tried to join a FOWSC ( speed clear for FOW) – and when I was booted for having the wrong build I didn’t flood the forums ( as many players do today) with cries of “elitists are ruining my life” – I simply looked up the FOWSC meta, got the right build – watched a youtube video on it and then went with a group. And it worked. I got FOWSC done.
Why is it that people don’t do this anymore?
Good post.
I can see both sides of this. I see why 80s want to bring 80s in the best gear, and I see why sub 80s want to be included. Well, when I say included, I mean the ratio of 80 groups to non 80 groups very evidently favours 80 groups, which evidently makes sense given how old the game is now.
But the thing is that when I started the game, there was no meta. My toon got an e-mail saying ‘hey, come to this dungeon’, I went with other newbies and we did the best we could. The idea of being 80 and having some of the best gear in the game to do AC P1 would have been hilarious to me – like ‘seriously?’ Now if you roll a new toon, you find the older players sorta pulled the ladder up behind them. Do I understand why? Sure, because it’s less efficient and players have less tolerance for ‘carrying’ people because the game doesn’t encourage or reward it. My experience has been though (avoiding the obvious 80 meta groups playing my alt) that a lot of these groups aren’t being specific about who or what they want, so you jump in and you get jettisoned out. It’s not the end of the world by any stretch, but my argument is that it’s a bad experience for a new player if it happens frequently enough. We were all new and noobish once upon a time.
I returned the game recently prior to HoT, after being a day one player.
I decided to level up an alt – a little Asuran Elementalist. I’ve been leveling her up with a mixture of WvW, world PvE and dungeons.
Several times in the past week, I’ve been kicked from groups, before the first boss (sometimes even before I enter the dungeon), because I am not level 80. I’ve even been kicked from my own group (one I formed to get past the ‘80 exp zerker only 4k exp’ groups). Sometimes, I’ll join a group that doesn’t specify 80s only and be kicked for not being 80. In fact I just had a lovely conversation with a most polite soul who insisted that I get my main for Twilight Arbour or gtfo.
Now don’t get me wrong, players are entitled to set their own ‘filters’ on who they want to join their group. I avoid those ‘full 80 zerk’ parties like the plague anyway. But I can only get around this insistence on top level gear to play lower level content by creating my own groups and being very specific that everyone’s welcome and it’s not an 80 only run.
This ‘culture’ of making sub 80 players feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit is not going to endear it to new players. These welcome parties expect players to know everything.
Guild Wars 2 used to be well known for its community. It still has a great community, just not when it comes to dungeon runs. I half expect to see ‘Blue Moa run, 80 zerk 4k AP’ next. FFXIV beats this game hands down for genuinely helpful players. New players who come in after HoT are going to find experiences like these incredibly off-putting. Why has the game become like this?
In a game where the game starts at level 80 – and where most players are already level 80 – the simple fact that you’re not 80 means you don’t fit in.
And if you don’t fit in people will kick you.The older the game gets the more stale the “gameplay” experience becomes – and the population in the game shifts towards a more “reward-oriented” instead of “gameplay and experience oriented” group.
Why? Because the old content is old – and people who played it for gameplay or experience got bored and moved on – so most people that are left are “reward-oriented” they stuck around because their fun is in the rewards not the content itself.
And for those players a non-80 character is a problem – because it means it will take them longer to get their rewards – which is against their play philosophy.Well, my Ele hit 80 today (whee!). Not in zerk yet, though.
I agree with your assessment. It could just be that I forgot things were like this – I did take a long break.
FFXIV has down-leveling in its dungeon system and dailies that revolve around them (rewards only motivation). Yet I’ve seen (and been) raid geared characters paired with fresh players who were patient and helpful to a fault, with ‘elitism’ being very uncommon. I guess the difference is that FFXIV gives you no choice who you’re matched with if you want those rewards – when people have no incentive to be more inclusive then you’re right, they generally won’t be. For the benefit of new(er) players, though, the game could use a random matchmaking system with greater rewards for completion. ‘Spose I can’t really blame the players when the game mechanics encourage this sort of thing.
Having said that, I’ll try to make a point in future of taking varied groups to dungeon content so I don’t become exactly what I’m complaining about now that the alt I was leveling is 80. All I ask is full Ascended and 10k AP. Sheesh.
Random matchmaking with different players is something you can’t add retrospectively to a game without causing massive damage and uproar. People don’t like their freedom taken away – especially their freedom to associate with others.
This sort of system works with games that have it from the get-go – you start out with it and if you want to accept it you do and if you don’t you don’t – but adding it halfway through a game’s life cycle is very very bad design.
New players have to adapt – but that’s true for every game – plus matching new and old players together opens a huge door for conflict and abuse on both sides.
Imagine that with the FTP system you can make endless “newbie” accounts to troll others and with random matchmaking there’s nothing they can do about it.
I for one lean towards the other side of the spectrum – I feel people of different playstyles and mindsets should interact with each other very little – and the more filters we have in between the better – avoiding conflict and stress on both sides.
Good points, although perhaps if it wasn’t mandatory, it would be more ideal. I guess though that if the rewards were very good, people might consider it mandatory. So perhaps you’re right. In which case, maybe in time there might be better ways for groups to add criteria for runs, so it’s clearer as to what groups want sometimes – e.g. minimum gear required filters and such.
I do catch your drift and just to make it clear I wasn’t posting with the intent of singling you out at all, but I read about 90% of the posts on the thread so far (or at the very least, skimmed through them) and there’s quite a lot of people under the impression of how this community is supposedly awful.
It’s certainly not perfect and there are obviously a lot of problems that need to be addressed, but people on here really need to understand that elitism is something that will always exist in the world of gaming and like any MMO, there is a large spectrum of good, bad, nice, mean, stupid, and intelligent players.
In that regard, it can be very similar to real life and as such the best way to handle a situation is often times the same way— ignore and avoid those that cause you trouble to the best of your ability.
With no offense to anyone the things you’re talking about Miku are part of human psychology – it’s called hedonic adaptation.
The better off you are the more sensitive you become to issues that would be considered inconsequential in other circumstances.
You see this in games and in real life – you might think people who “have it all” live peaceful stress-free lives but that’s not actually true – simply their sensitivity to stuff that stresses them increases and their general level of stress tends to stay at about the same level.So while some people are really worried and uncomfortable about not having anything to eat or a place to live others express similar levels of worry and lack of comfort regarding matters such as pronouns or what clothes to wear and so on.
First world problems? I dunno whether I’d apply what you’re talking about to raising a topic like this (I have a degree in Psych). If we apply this principle to every suggestion or debate on these forums, there wouldn’t be many of them. Should we not discuss these things because there are worse things going on in the world? Are we being over-sensitive in our cushy lives? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know.
I returned the game recently prior to HoT, after being a day one player.
I decided to level up an alt – a little Asuran Elementalist. I’ve been leveling her up with a mixture of WvW, world PvE and dungeons.
Several times in the past week, I’ve been kicked from groups, before the first boss (sometimes even before I enter the dungeon), because I am not level 80. I’ve even been kicked from my own group (one I formed to get past the ‘80 exp zerker only 4k exp’ groups). Sometimes, I’ll join a group that doesn’t specify 80s only and be kicked for not being 80. In fact I just had a lovely conversation with a most polite soul who insisted that I get my main for Twilight Arbour or gtfo.
Now don’t get me wrong, players are entitled to set their own ‘filters’ on who they want to join their group. I avoid those ‘full 80 zerk’ parties like the plague anyway. But I can only get around this insistence on top level gear to play lower level content by creating my own groups and being very specific that everyone’s welcome and it’s not an 80 only run.
This ‘culture’ of making sub 80 players feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit is not going to endear it to new players. These welcome parties expect players to know everything.
Guild Wars 2 used to be well known for its community. It still has a great community, just not when it comes to dungeon runs. I half expect to see ‘Blue Moa run, 80 zerk 4k AP’ next. FFXIV beats this game hands down for genuinely helpful players. New players who come in after HoT are going to find experiences like these incredibly off-putting. Why has the game become like this?
So you say you’re getting kicked by the community and yet you tell us the community is great. You just slapped yourself. You see the community is bad to you. It’s either you go with the flow of elitism or play with your friends/all welcome/casuals/whatever. I see those kind of posts all the time getting kicked kicked and kicked blablabla.
I didn’t contradict myself – the world PvE community is fine – there aren’t any world PvE mechanics that encourage the kind of behaviour I’m talking about in my OP.
I’m also not saying that the groups who kick are ‘bad people.’ I don’t think the current game mechanics encourage people to be more helpful in this situation of course.
That you see these sort of posts all the time might indicate it’s perceived to be an issue?
Not so much in the habit of slapping myself, but thanks.
(edited by cygnus.8913)
Yesterday I played through a Sorrow’s Embrace with a party of 4 new FreePies (F2P-account holders).
It was a long and very fun run.
I had fun, because it was super cool relive how exploring a dungeon for the first time is.
And they had fun because they felt like they had super support asura on their team.
A real great time.I really start loving all the new people that come into the game exploring everything for the first time and having loads of fun.
Looking forward to be using Scrapper’s function gyro a lot in the future.
That’s awesome. Are FTP players easily recognizable? I have seen groups saying no free players, but I wouldn’t know which ones were free if I ran into them.
This game is the best you can expect from a modern game. It’s not the games fault, it’s not this communities fault, it’s simply the way the internet has become. I’ll say this is not the best community I’ve seen in an MMO, not even the second best, but it’s not nearly as kittenome people make it out to be. It’s not any worse than anything you’ll see at this point.
I do miss my old EQ community, where I could let strangers just put their dungeon path purchases on a tab and pay me the next time they saw me, or even just pay me whenever they got the cash, I literally never didn’t get paid. I was worried once as the person disappeared after it was over for like 2 days, the next day I get a whisper from them to meet me in the main hub so they could pay me. Really awesome community in that game, but that was a super old game, and still had it’s negatives, on the PVP servers we certainly mastered griefing (I was a kid then so I participated my fair share, my guild even got famous at the time for one of it’s members http://www.notaddicted.com/fansythefamous.php) thankfully that was pretty much reserved for the PVP servers and left there. The non PVP servers if someone was a jerk, you simply didn’t play with them, never really had issues.
Anyways getting off track in nostalgia (if you want a laugh that link is pretty funny, note you couldn’t kill people under level 6 on PVP servers, so he did a lot of things to mess with people, some of the most beautiful trolling/griefing I’ve ever seen), but GW2 is as good as it gets now. Follow that same mentality I saw in EQ and you don’t have many problems. Treat people with respect, avoid people that are jerks (you can usually tell withing the first minute of playing with someone) and your time isn’t wasted often. I’ve personally had very few issues. The thing I find most trollish in this game is the megaservers
Interesting link, I didn’t know EQ was like that. My brother used to play it a lot. I got hooked with WoW and my future lack of productivity was history.
I definitely agree that the internet has become more trollish, but that some games encourage that more than others. A game’s design encourages certain types of player behaviour (emergent behaviour).
GW2 has done away with most of the things that encourage poor behaviour in other MMOs. It doesn’t encourage (or at least not sanction) cheating and swindling players like Archeage did because it is part of the ‘yo ho ho and a bottle of rum’ experience. It doesn’t allow for kill stealing like WoW did, so other players can help you achieve your goals in world PvE (a brilliant addition).
What the devs did for dungeon PvE was also done with the best of intentions. MMOs get older and the lower level dungeons would have become ghost towns (ish) down the line if they didn’t make it rewarding to do so. Ergo, you have a large glut of level 80s doing this content, but taking new players or under 80 players is the least efficient way to do that – naturally these players will be relatively excluded because they are now a hindrance.
I personally think this could be bettered somewhat with random grouping tools, as long as the rewards are worth it to the player. Aside from wanting to be helpful or welcoming, there is no incentive to take random 50 Joe to your nth run of dungeon x. This is one area where FFXIV did it right: have a daily linked to a random group dungeon, give extra rewards if the player hasn’t done it before, and give extra rewards for completion. Throw in some achievements around that for the achievement hunters and newer players will be less reliant upon the ‘charity’ of other players or the availability of their guildmates to run the content. It’s Pavlovian but I think it’s got potential.
I do catch your drift and just to make it clear I wasn’t posting with the intent of singling you out at all, but I read about 90% of the posts on the thread so far (or at the very least, skimmed through them) and there’s quite a lot of people under the impression of how this community is supposedly awful.
It’s certainly not perfect and there are obviously a lot of problems that need to be addressed, but people on here really need to understand that elitism is something that will always exist in the world of gaming and like any MMO, there is a large spectrum of good, bad, nice, mean, stupid, and intelligent players.
In that regard, it can be very similar to real life and as such the best way to handle a situation is often times the same way— ignore and avoid those that cause you trouble to the best of your ability.
I agree. The OP was because I couldn’t avoid the gits because they often don’t make their entry requirements specific. It would be a shame for newbies to run into that, especially for content that was kinda intended for them.
(edited by cygnus.8913)
I returned the game recently prior to HoT, after being a day one player.
I decided to level up an alt – a little Asuran Elementalist. I’ve been leveling her up with a mixture of WvW, world PvE and dungeons.
Several times in the past week, I’ve been kicked from groups, before the first boss (sometimes even before I enter the dungeon), because I am not level 80. I’ve even been kicked from my own group (one I formed to get past the ‘80 exp zerker only 4k exp’ groups). Sometimes, I’ll join a group that doesn’t specify 80s only and be kicked for not being 80. In fact I just had a lovely conversation with a most polite soul who insisted that I get my main for Twilight Arbour or gtfo.
Now don’t get me wrong, players are entitled to set their own ‘filters’ on who they want to join their group. I avoid those ‘full 80 zerk’ parties like the plague anyway. But I can only get around this insistence on top level gear to play lower level content by creating my own groups and being very specific that everyone’s welcome and it’s not an 80 only run.
This ‘culture’ of making sub 80 players feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit is not going to endear it to new players. These welcome parties expect players to know everything.
Guild Wars 2 used to be well known for its community. It still has a great community, just not when it comes to dungeon runs. I half expect to see ‘Blue Moa run, 80 zerk 4k AP’ next. FFXIV beats this game hands down for genuinely helpful players. New players who come in after HoT are going to find experiences like these incredibly off-putting. Why has the game become like this?
In a game where the game starts at level 80 – and where most players are already level 80 – the simple fact that you’re not 80 means you don’t fit in.
And if you don’t fit in people will kick you.The older the game gets the more stale the “gameplay” experience becomes – and the population in the game shifts towards a more “reward-oriented” instead of “gameplay and experience oriented” group.
Why? Because the old content is old – and people who played it for gameplay or experience got bored and moved on – so most people that are left are “reward-oriented” they stuck around because their fun is in the rewards not the content itself.
And for those players a non-80 character is a problem – because it means it will take them longer to get their rewards – which is against their play philosophy.
Well, my Ele hit 80 today (whee!). Not in zerk yet, though.
I agree with your assessment. It could just be that I forgot things were like this – I did take a long break.
FFXIV has down-leveling in its dungeon system and dailies that revolve around them (rewards only motivation). Yet I’ve seen (and been) raid geared characters paired with fresh players who were patient and helpful to a fault, with ‘elitism’ being very uncommon. I guess the difference is that FFXIV gives you no choice who you’re matched with if you want those rewards – when people have no incentive to be more inclusive then you’re right, they generally won’t be. For the benefit of new(er) players, though, the game could use a random matchmaking system with greater rewards for completion. ‘Spose I can’t really blame the players when the game mechanics encourage this sort of thing.
Having said that, I’ll try to make a point in future of taking varied groups to dungeon content so I don’t become exactly what I’m complaining about now that the alt I was leveling is 80. All I ask is full Ascended and 10k AP. Sheesh.
Being kicked from yuor own group is pretty funny lol
Yeah, I suppose it is.
Well, I figure the best way to avoid it is this…if I join a group that doesn’t specify zerk/80s only, and everyone else is an 80 (like my experience today), I’ll just say:
“Hey, is this 80s only?”
And if they say yes, (like today) then I’ll just go “Okay, thanks” and leave. Beats being booted before I start.
I dunno why my experience doesn’t tally with others in this thread who report very little of this. I’m not going to pretend I’m pro in dungeons, but I certainly don’t think I’m bad at them, and I don’t think I fare much worse than anyone else. I haven’t been kicked mid dungeon – it’s either right at the start before we start clearing or just after I’ve joined, which to me says I didn’t fit the group composition they were looking for. It’s also not an issue for my 80 toons – just my little 75 staff ele.
On the upside, I’m not that far from 80 now, so I can look forward to no more of this stuff until I roll Revenant.