Showing Posts For deacis.5387:
I think, it is necessary to define, what actually is perceived to be rewarding for a person spending time with a game like GW2. In the end, most of the time it comes down to the acquisition of something rare, of something most of the community don’t have, something that makes you stand out – be it a title, good looking equipment or whatever you can think of. That being said, the way this rare commodity can be acquired is what this discussion should focus on, imho.
In GW2, if you are rich in time and/or money, you can stand out. Some would say, this is only true when it comes to cosmetics. But no, investing either time or money – in contrast to GW1 – is now to a certain extent a substitute for skill. Yeah, I know – if you have the skill, you can beat every part of content having only greens on your toon (excluding higher level fractals of course), but that is not the point. If you are all exotics (and after they continued the creep: all ascended), it is or will be much easier and less time consuming to beat content and earn rewards with the current system. As a side effect, this can even go as far as content getting really boring, because of it being too easy with full exotic gear on. That’s what happened already with the entire game outside the dungeons and this part of the damage is somewhat irreversible.
But at least the issues with the current reward system in GW2 could easily be fixed by adding new types of content to the game (could even be open world DE). That content simply needs to be so hard it can only be beaten by a really well coordinated group, with sound tactics and a high level of skill. The reward then should be a high % chance rare drop, that is NOT sellable on the TP, so the only way of acquisition is to be good at playing the game – riches not helping a bit. That way, the balance between the viable ways to earn rewards in the game could be reestablished. The developers somehow seem to have forgotten, there should be actually three to satisfy the demands of all types of customers: Time, Money AND Skill.
It is fact with full magic find gear that you are sacrificing a third of your potential damage. If I knew some one was running full magic find in my fractal group. I’d kick them out in an instant.
Not fair to the other people that put in 100% whilst those who want to use farming gear only put in 66%. That is being carried in my books.
I completely agree. Joining a e.g. fractals team with MF gear simply is parasitic behavior, if not the whole team agrees on running MF. In the end 4 persons trade lowered team performance against nothing, while only a single person profits. Translates to: 5 people invest more time, so that 1 can reap the benefits. Yeah, sounds fair, right?
As I see things, MF is good for all the soloers out there, but when it comes to Coop, it is an entirely contra productive mechanic. GW2 PVE is about accomplishing things together? So whats the use of having MF instead of getting rid of it and adjusting drop rates for everyone instead?
They could add additional weaponry, for example a crossbow, a rapier, a whip, a halberd etc. – usability distributed evenly over all existing classes. This could potentially add multiple new play styles to all classes and the existing traits system could be expanded to include specific major trait slot selections associated to the new weaponry. If done right, this could be a good way of adding stuff without damaging the balance, but it’s not much in terms of character progression. It just adds variety.
In order to increase build variety, capturing of new healing/utility/elite skills from bosses is a good idea, I definitely agree. But I really think, that the whole trait system does not fully use its potential. The impact on the basic attributes is too small in my opinion (300 points max., only ~10% of most attributes at lvl 80) and only a fraction of the available major traits really affects game play in a way you could really speak of a distinguished “build”. In GW1 it really made a big difference, if you allocated 12 points to an attribute and buffed it via runes in your gear, or if you just invested a couple of points to enable the use of a specific skill for that build. Not to speak of the secondary class option, which was really a vital part of many viable GW1 builds. It was somehow comparable to building a Deck for a trading card game. It was a good idea to make something new and different, but why not keep what is really good and what made GW1 great?
There is a lot of potential in that area and at the end of the day a much more sophisticated way to make a fantastic game even better, than just implementing the same dumb and uninspired formula of expansion we see with all the other MMOs out there (raising level cap, power creep etc.).
ANET has proven, they can do it with GW1 – I’m confident they won’t fail us with GW2. I wouldn’t try to deny the fact that this time it’s a good deal more obvious that they are just another company aiming to make money (the gem store is a part of the game, not just a subtle option), but I still have not lost faith in them for being game developers with a vision ;-)
Just my two cents on that: I think, the current mechanic represents somewhat of a compromise, in that it addresses some simple issues:
1. You have to play the content associated with a specific item or type of gear in order to acquire it for your character.
2. You can’t make profit from farming these areas, since you can’t sell the harvest.
That’s ok for me. It’s a statement of the developers true to their anti-grind-formula. BUT, there is a really annoying downside: At the end of the day this severely punishes people for playing the game the way it is meant to be played.
Here is an example: I play GW2 with 4 friends, all casual gamers like me, and we started playing the FOTM dungeon together shortly after it was added to the game. We really enjoy the challenge and the variety it offers, but the fun got spoiled multiple times along our way by account bound loot. Exotic armor parts could not be given to a mate more in need of it than the finder, 2 of our group already got 2 ascended rings to counter agony, where 2 others still have none. The first thing you want to do as a good team is to allocate this second ascended drop to a party member who still has no agony resistance yet, in order to keep the team balanced and effective. If THAT isn’t annoying, I’m lost for words …
I think, the problem here is not the fact, that the loot is account bound – I can’t think of any other way in enforcing the two points I mentioned above. The problem is the RNG dependent acquisition of it. E.g. if they want you to beat content X to get loot A with a chance of 33%, they could simply change it to beat 3*X or better X+Y+Z, in order to always (!) be rewarded with loot A, right? Translated to the FOTM scenario, this problem has only been partially solved by adding the new tokens to trade for rings with one of the observatory golems, since you need to beat scale 10,12,14,… at least 10 times to be able to do that. In other words, be lucky OR be forced to grind until you are, since FOTM 11++ is pain without agony resistance.
Making something easier to some players just because they are LUCKY, is BAD design – bottom line.