I have no signature, but I still agree with Listenbird.
Opinions are personal, they don’t apply to “the” playerbase.
@tmorrow:
It’s in the patch notes from the January update. Enough said.
Unless you believe all Elementalists should receive separate in-game mails for every single skill or trait change, owners of Legendary X should receive in-game mail that the particle effect of their Legendary is no longer bugged, people entering AC dungeon should receive in-game mail that the bosses have been revamped, etc.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Jornophelanthas.1475
I think an issue at this point is not only what will resolve the issue but how will they apologize to the community. With so much hate atm just throwing in something without an apology still would leave alot of lingering emotions xD
You have a point. But solutions do not exclude apologies, and vice versa.
Personally, I understand the anger, but I wouldn’t need an apology from ArenaNet. I also haven’t pre-purchased HoT so far. I prefer to wait for more money and more information about the release. (A release date would be the minimum for me to consider making a purchase.)
This is as good a time as any to post a link to Matipzieu KyA’s excellent analysis of the situation on page 14 of this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/page/14#post1522077
I sincerely believe that this analysis needs to be quoted or linked to on every page of this thread, in order to entice both ArenaNet and new readers to this thread to read it. The author is actually thinking with ArenaNet, using his/her own professional expertise to shed light on the current state of Guild Missions.
Additionally, I’ll also quote myself, mostly for the suggestions that sparked part of the current discussion:
In my view, there are 2 problems:
1. The cost to access Guild Missions may be fine for large guilds, but is prohibitive for smaller guilds.
(Those who argue that small guilds want stuff for free, while large guilds work for it are overlooking the fact that small guilds need to earn a lot more Influence per person to be able to buy the same upgrades.)
Suggestion: All that is needed for small guilds to not feel left out is to put the very lowest tier of each type of Guild Mission behind a lower unlock threshold, while keeping the higher tiers behind more expensive unlock thresholds. Done in such a way that all unlock costs add up to the same levels they are now, so that large guilds who have already unlocked Bounties are not disadvantaged.2. Guild (Bounty) Missions themselves cannot be completed with the small number of players many small guilds have available.
(Those arguing that bystanders in the open world can help with the mission overlook the fact that bystanders do not receive special rewards, and may have little incentive to help. Also, finding 2 Champions in 15 minutes is hard enough if you don’t have 10 people.)
Suggestion: The easiest solution is to introduce lower-tiered Guild Missions that can be done with five people. For example, a Guild Bounty that requires finding and defeating only 1 Champion in 15 minutes. Or a Guild Rush that is balanced for 5 active participants. These should offer accordingly low rewards, of course, but should still allow players to earn Guild Commendations and the guild to acquire Guild Merits.I believe that the underlying problem is that ArenaNet considers “small guilds” to be guilds with 10 active players online at peak times. Unfortunately, guilds with less active players during peak times than this are not thought of at all.
I agree. One of the nice things of Dry Top as a cooperative zone is that a handful of unmotivated or absent players cannot ruin the end goal for everyone else.
Because that is a major issue in Tequatl, Three-Headed Wurm and similar encounters.
@Mesket:
Hence my structured argument why the original post by Blood Red Arachnid apparently disregards Toughness and Vitality, and ostensibly postulates that these may be entirely replaced by play skill.
I have a number of suggestions:
1. Add the option to display/hide headgear and shoulder gear in dialogue cutscenes.
I would like to have the option to see my wear character wear his/her helmet/goggles/mask/hood when talking to Logan Thackeray, Eir Stegalkin or other story NPCs, especially since many professions receive iconic headgear from answering a biography question during character creation.
This can simply be done by creating more options than ‘hide/unhide’ for these equipment slots. My suggestion would be to give the options:
- ‘always hide’
- ‘hide in dialogue cutscenes only’
- ‘hide in character display only’
- ‘always unhide’
2. Add the option to display/hide headgear and shoulder gear in the character selection screen.
Simply have the character selection screen respect the ‘hide/unhide’ options you can select on the Hero screen.
3. Sylvari townclothes are hardly recolourable.
The male Sylvari townclothes only have two dye channels, and these only affect the frills and highlights of the garments. More than half of the townclothes is NOT recolourable. To make matters worse, the main colour of the garments (especially the shirt) is identical to the character’s skin colour, and as a result it can be quite hard to distinguish the townclothes from the sylvari’s bare skin.
Compare this to the male Norn’s townclothes, which have FOUR dye channels.
My suggestion is to either retroactively ADD a dye channel to the Sylvari townclothes, or to offer fully recolourable townclothes in the gemstore.
4. Add more Maguuma Jungle zones.
The Maguuma Jungle appears to be a very small area. Asura and Sylvari players each have their own city and their own 1-15 area, are subsequently moved into a shared 15-25 area, and are then shunted towards Kryta.
Compare this to Humans who can level up to 55 without ever having to leave Kryta, Charr who can level up to 70 in Ascalon with only a 5-level gap (between 25 and 30), and Norn who can level up to 60 in the Shiverpeaks, all three in exclusively level-appropriate areas.
As it stands now, the Maguuma Jungle appears to be woefully underdeveloped, leaving little room for Asura and Sylvari flavour to the world (compared to the numerous human villages in Kryta, Norn lodges and homesteads in the Shiverpeaks and Charr warcamps and fortresses dotting the Ascalon landscape).
My suggestion is to add a 25-40 area to the Maguuma region, and the perfect spot for it would be north of Brisban Wildlands and (north)west of Kessex Hills, so that level 25 players from both these areas have the option of exploring it. Additionally, there are numerous locations from Guild Wars 1 that can be incorporated into it, including Rotscale’s Mausoleum, Bloodstone Fen, and (possibly) Ventari’s Refuge.
5. Add a collectibles bank tab for rare crafting materials
We have bank tabs for common crafting materials (cloth, leather, metal, wood), for fine crafting materials (totems, venom sacs, fangs, claws, blood), for cooking ingredients (butter, spices, fruits, meats, vegetables), for gemstones (garnets, turquoises, pearls, etc.), but not for the rare crafting materials (ectoplasm, essences, and onyx, molten, glacial, or destroyer shards/fragments/lodestones).
Could this be added, optionally as a purchasable expansion in the gemstore?
(edited by Jornophelanthas.1475)
Which major traits are you using?
Which healing/utility/elite skills are you using? Are you attached to any of those?This information is needed for other people to give you meaningful advice.
Major trait is Fire.
“Glyph of Elemental Harmony” as Healing
Armor of Earth / Arcane Blast / Arcane Wave as Utilities.
Summon 7-series Golem as Elite.
By “major trait”, I meant the trait powers that you selected in each of your traitlines that you have 10 or more points in.
I apologize for the lack of information, my armor is indeed Rare, I crafted it myself using a recipe for Intricate Silk Insignia, all Carrion set of six.
My bad. I thought it could only be crafted in green. Still, exotic is a significant upgrade from rare, and quote attainable.
I didn’t know I could upgrade armor to exotic using transmutation stone, I guess I got a lot of homework to do, I do have some of those for later investigation on how to use them.
You misunderstand. By “upgrade to exotic”, I meant acquiring exotic armor and equipping it instead of your current armor.
What the Fine Transmutation Stones can be used for is to transfer the runes and/or the appearance of one piece of equipment onto a similar piece of equipment (destroying the equipment from which the rune is removed).
I do not dislike Scarlet, and I believe she is not really a “Mary Sue”, but rather a subversion of one.
She has exaggerated skills, intelligence, powers, etc. but at the same time, this will avail her nothing, because she is barking mad. Her insanity truly impairs every ability she has, and this is illustrated by all the bridges she burns behind her (both in the short story and in the game).
The point about Scarlet being a prodigy in everything she has ever tried, and having graduated with just about all known races is not meant to emphasize her “coolness” or “power level”. I sincerely believe that it is meant to present her as “wasted potential” or a “promise forever unfulfilled”. Because she threw away all her exceptional abilities, in favor of madness.
Scarlet is a tragic figure, because everything she has accomplished is pointless, even though she claims every defeat as a victory. (“Never mind that you destroyed everything here. I already learned what I wanted to learn.”) Everything is expendable to her and casually thrown away, and I would not be surprised if she ends up casually throwing herself away for her irrelevant ultimate goal.
Note that if Scarlet had actually not been written as mad, and had accepted her role as brilliant sylvari engineer (and not a villain), she would have been a classic Mary Sue (just like Queen Jennah).
Right now, she is a tragic recurring villain with no redeeming qualities. The only thing where Scarlet fails as a character is that we do not love to hate her enough, because we were never given enough information to empathize with her before her grand unveiling at Queen’s Jubilee.
I think you may be better off linking to the post directly:
If you want free loot with no effort, then interactive games like Guild Wars 2 are not for you. In fact, there is a classic MMO that should suit your purposes just fine: Progress Quest. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest)
Equipment you buy from karma/heart vendors cannot be sold to merchants, sold to the trade post, shared with your other characters, or salvaged for materials. This is to prevent easy and guaranteed ways to convert karma to coin.
There is one viable use for such items rather than destroying them: collect up to 4 items of the same quality (i.e. all blue, or all green), and put them in the Mystic Forge. You will get a random item of the same quality and slightly higher level requirement (with a small chance of getting an item of the next higher quality category).
While the new item may not be useful to you at all, you will be able to sell/salvage this one. (Unless you have the bad luck of receiving another soulbound item; what comes out of the Mystic Forge can be from any loot table, including the karma verndors’ selling list.)
The Mystic Forge is normally located in Lion’s Arch, but is currently temporarilly stalled at Vigil Keep. It’s very close to the hub of asura gates from all the racial capital.
I second this suggestion. Many town clothes headwear items have been converted to regular armor options. Why not the opposite, by enabling the ability to display your regular armor headgear while wearing an outfit from the neck down?
The reason mix-and-match was disabled for outfits was because of clipping issues between light/medium/heavy/outfit skins. However, merely the fact that all the glasses and funny hats can now be combined with regular armor shows that these clipping issues do not exist with headgear.
Just give a choice: extra slot or base game
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Jornophelanthas.1475
I think this is an excellent suggestion.
This would ameliorate a lot of the discontent that have struck the existing player base. What has made these people mad is the thought that they will receive less value for their money than new players. Offering them some additional value to offset this perceived waste would solve most of the problem.
This could take the form of something a new player would not miss, or would already receive as part of the base game. A character slot is perfect, because of the new Revenant profession. Although about 800 gems (the price of an additional character slot) would also work.
Unfortunately, the guild mission system runs counter to a very simple tenet that is required for any successful game:
It must be easy to access, but difficult to master.
Easy access is necessary so that players get involved and engaged in it.
Difficult mastery is necessary to keep players challenged, so that they will keep coming back for more.
The guild missions are NOT easy to access due to the prohibitive cost for unlocking them. Accessing this requires:
1a. More guild influence points than a small guild (5 people) can muster;
OR
1b. Joining a larger guild, which may run counter to some people’s preferred playstyle;
AND
2. At least 10 active players to participate in any guild mission.
YES, small guilds CAN unlock guild mission content eventually, but will only start doing so months after larger guilds do so.
But NO, they will not be able to complete even the most simple mission without at least 10 players.
YES, players in small guilds CAN join larger guilds (without giving up their membership in the small guild), but if they do not like playing with large groups of strangers (and only prefer grouping with their close or real-life friends), they may not enjoy themselves, even if they would otherwise enjoy the content.
Unfortunately, because of the access barriers imposed to guild mission content, some players will never be able to earn any guild merits. And these players just happen to be exactly the casual players that are Guild Wars 2’s intended target audience.
Therefore, I am hoping that the next month or so, the developers will see the impact the current system will have collected feedback both in-game and out-of-game and will be able to adjust the system accordingly in order to please as many players as possible.
(Of course, on a personal note, I am hoping that they will add reduced-scale guild missions with a lower unlock cost for small guilds to earn (small amounts of) guild merits.)
If I were to post three suggestions for horizontal character progression in Guild Wars 2, they would be these:
1. Ability to collect equipment skins in PvE lockers, including town clothing and one-time skins from Living Story achievements
2. Improve interaction with the three Orders, for examply by building up faction with them to be used as currency for cosmetic rewards, or other such systems that invite players to spend time with their Order.
3. Redesign of the home instances to reflect a character’s achievements
(i.e. not just improve the Personal Story impact, but also giving customisability like in the GW1 Hall of Monuments. An example could be displaying banners or NPCs in the instance that depend on the title worn by the character upon entering the instance.)
Those are the suggestions I would give. Oh wait, I think I just did.
ArenaNet has stated that such behaviour in dungeons (i.e. kicking party members just before the final reward for selfish reasons) is undesirable. If you still know their character names, you could report them in-game.
Isn’t the fun of the game in, you know, playing it?
Given that everything gives XP, making it to level 80 is an inevitable consequence of playing, which hardly makes it an achievement.
And finally, Guild Wars 2 does not have any super-magical-fun content that can only be experienced by max-level/max-gear characters. The level 1-80 content is actually the core of the game.
So congratulations on skipping the entire game.
I am quoting the following from another thread (the full link is in my post above). The highlighted parts are most relevant to this discussion.
Point (5) should address ZudetGambeous’s position.
Point (6) is an issue that the Training Bounties do NOT address.
Core problems:
(1) This mechanic has created a disparity between large and small guilds.
(2) This disparity is that large guilds have better, faster, easier access to large content.
(3) The consequence of the disparity is that there is extreme pressure on small guild players to leave their small guilds and join larger guilds.
(4) The practical effect of this disparity is that it creates an unfair and unfun tension within small guild players: they must either sacrifice their friends, their guild, or their ability to enjoy content as first-class players. (Options: (1) Have the entire guild merge into a larger guild, the small guild dies and the special relationships they have are diluted in the big guild, assuming they are all folded into one and can find one that suits their taste, culture, habits, language, environment… this can be a destructive process. (2) Splinter and join large guilds separately, losing the friendships. (3) Endure as a small guild with unequal access to content.)
(5) Players in large guilds, whose incentive maximizations are already satisfied, do not have this problem. They both do not have any incentive or structural reasons to understand why small guild players are “whining”, “qqing”, etc, and do not see any reason that the current system is wrong.
(6) It is uncertain that small guilds will even be able to complete their guild missions at all under any circumstances, or if so, that they will only be able to do so under reduced circumstances, effectively meaning small guilds are barred from guild content, or that small guilds are not legitimate/acceptable under ANet policy. If this is the case, it is EXTREMELY offensive to small guild players, like myself, who believe that our guilds while small are just as legitimate as large guilds.
(7) All of the above are destructive to many guilds and communities. In effect, this patch has done harm to the community that it sought to promote friendship and playing together within. It has had the opposite effect for many players.
1. Elementalists do not have the ability to swap weapons. Instead, they have the ability to swap attunements. You should treat this as a weapon swap option, because each attunement gives you access to a completely new skill set.
2. It is perfectly viable to use (for example) weapon skills from earth attunement without putting a single point in the earth traits. Some of the trait powers give a bonus to a specific attunement, but that bonus is not necessary to use that attunement. (Also, only a few of the major trait powers that you can choose from are limited to skills from a specific attunement.)
3. Over the course of 80 levels you will receive 70 trait points. Since each traitline only goes up to 30, it is possible to max out 2 traitlines, or to fill out 3 traitlines to 20 points each.Therefore, it is perfectly possible to give 2 of your attunements all the trait bonuses you want.
4. You do not need to play all four attunements intensively, but it is recommended to regularly swap between at least 2 attunements, with perhaps a 3rd (because of the cooldown on attunements) as a fallback option. If you WANT to go all-out and swap between all four, perhaps the Arcane traitline is for you.
In summary, elementalists are NOT suited for playing in only 1 attunement all the time. Why? Because then you only use half the number of skills other professions have access to (because elementalists can’t swap weapons in combat). Because it is perfectly possible to give at least 2 attunements all the trait bonuses you want. Because the cooldown on your weapon skills encourages you to change attunements (e.g. why not use some air magic skills while all your fire skills recharge). And because different attunements are suitable for different things (e.g. fight going badly? swap to water attunement for some extra healing skills).
Starting at level 70 (“The Battle at Fort Trinity”), the personal story density increases to one story per (recommended) character level, with the instances taking us progressively deeper into Orr. As usual, a personal story rewards around 33% experience towards the next level.
At the same time, Orr is a region without renown hearts, and a large number of (meta-)events. Some of these (meta-)events even need to reach a certain stage in order to safely progress through Orr.
The problem I identify is that it is very hard to NOT level beyond the recommended level for my personal story past level 70. The reason for this is that the huge XP bonus for completing a story, in addition to XP earned during exploring and participating in the events along the way, are more than enough to level me up before I even reach the next personal story instance.
This means that the story rewards are potentially no longer appropriate for my level, and that there is a decent chance I already have better equipment than the personal story awards.
In fact, the only viable way for me to complete my personal story AT THE RECOMMENDED LEVEL at all, is to not craft between personal stories and to not do any additional exploring as I travel twoards my next story instance. The events (and occasional node gathering) I find along the way are already enough to level me to the point where I should be for the personal story.
The bottom line is that I do not want to actively avoid crafting and exploring Orr in order to enjoy my personal story rewards.
The suggested solution I offer is to reduce the experience rewards for the level 70-79 personal stories by half. It would seem more balanced that personal stories award half the experience if they have twice the frequency.
I take issue with the thread title. The question “Why do you still log in?” suggests that the logging in will (or should) stop soon. The OP is putting his/her own personal bias into this poll.
In answer to the question:
1. Because I enjoy playing the game.
That is not a bad thing. What ArenaNet wants to avoid is certain people having a 17-hour gaming session immediately after an update, in which they complete all new content in one go. The next day, these people start whining on the forums that “we want more new content”.
Players are encouraged to take their time at the new content, instead of compulsively rushing through towards the rewards (and never stopping to actually enjoy their play experience).
Besides, I find the accusation of “a new level of time gating” a vast exaggeration, given that it only takes 5 minutes in 3 additional days to finish a meta-achievement.
I think these kits were never intended to be used in challenging group content (like dungeons or fractals), and this change removes any potential to “exploit” them (i.e. bypassing or significantly easing difficult content through invisibility).
Really, is it a bad thing that players can no longer rely on a dirt-cheap novelty item to beat difficult content?
@LanfearShadowflame:
You should read this post on page 14 of this thread for a very well-argued account of the (potential) problems you describe. Even if you ignore the rest of this thread, you should read this.
(It’s 4 posts long, with one person’s short post somewhere in the middle.)
I am guessing the marrionette battle would make a nice boss fractal, with some minor tweaks to allow it to be done by a party of five:
- Party fights its way through a barricaded tunnel towards a green gate.
- Party is transported onto the first of the 5 platforms, where it fights Warden Keeper I. Upon victory, destroy a generator, break Chain 1.
- Party is transported onto the second of the 5 platforms, where it fights Warden Keeper II. Upon victory, destroy a generator, break Chain 2.
- Party is transported onto the third of the 5 platforms, where it fights Warden Keeper III. Upon victory, destroy a generator, break Chain 3.
- Party is transported onto the fourth of the 5 platforms, where it fights Warden Keeper IV. Upon victory, destroy a generator, break Chain 4.
- Party is transported onto the fifth of the 5 platforms, where it fights Warden Keeper V. Upon victory, destroy a generator, break Chain 5.
- Party watches victory cinematic, and a big chest appears.
All of these problems with temporary content can be easily fixed by looking at how GW1 did it. They had historians that would re-tell the story to the player, effectively putting you in an instance where you get to re-experience the past content without it affecting the current living story event. This solution is so simple and obvious it boggles my mind why Anet lacks the basic common sense to put it in.
First, lack of resources. All their developers and programmers were fully devoted to cranking out the two-weekly updates during Season 1. Based on the skimpiness of some of the content (Canach’s Lair during “Last Stand at Southsun” comes to mind, but also the pointless Dragon Effigies during “Dragon Bash”), I believe they were stretched thin.
Next, priorities. After Season 1 ended, they chose to first give the quality-of-life update that was the April feature patch. I think it is defensible to give the game a new polish, since this part of the game had been neglected since Living Story started. And after April, the China launch of the game took full priority.
Currently, Living Story Season Two appears to be the top item on the agenda, and it is quite possible that the thing you suggest will be in it. (It is significantly less work to include a feature like tracking progress from the start of a project, rather than adding it midway.)
Are you kidding me? How much extra resources does it take to put in an NPC that links you into an instanced content that already exists?
Also once the npc is implemented it’s a simple matter of adding new LS content to his instance list because the basic framework is already in place.
They did it with GW1 and they did it with GW2’s NPCs offering rotating events like Southsun and Crab toss. So I can’t accept the excuses you’re making for them.
Unless you are actually a (game) programmer, making a claim of “how hard can it be” is not credible.
You should look up the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).
I am not a programmer myself, but I can make a few guesses why it would not be easy to implement such a thing:
- Some instances are designed to be exclusively solo (e.g. Scarlet final battle), some are exclusively designed for five-person groups (e.g. Molten Facility dungeon), and some are exclusively designed for the open world (e.g. Scarlet’s Marionnette). It takes different types of programming to craft together a single replay menu for all three of these types of content, and I highly doubt whether the open world content can even be feasibly accessed by enough players.
- Certain instances were only meant to become available after gaining certain achievements (e.g. Scarlet’s Hologram). Others are on a strict timer tied to the in-game clock (e.g. Escape from Lion’s Arch). Adapting these for replay requires effort on the part of programmers, as all these instances would need to work on the same basic infrastructure.
- Certain things that were added to the game after a given instance was already removed could interfere with the functionality of the instance. This all needs to be checked and tested thoroughly for every instance, before it can be added to the game. For example, certain NPCs in certain instances could start saying the wrong thing to you, because they don’t recognize the achievements they used to check anymore.
- The rewards on most story instances are not repeatable, or consist of festival items and temporary currencies that can no longer be redeemed. This all would need to be rebalanced as well.
- From a developer standpoint, it may be undesirable to spread the player base too thin across too many events. If this happens, no large scale event requiring some degree of coordination (e.g. Escape from Lion’s Arch, Scarlet’s Marionnette, or the Great Three-Headed Jungle Wurm) would ever have a chance of succeeding again.
- Crab Toss and Southsun Survival are mini-games that run on the PvP-engine. As such, they were already quite similar. And even so, developing the activity NPC functionality probably involved more resources than one person thinking: “Hey, that’s a nice idea. I’ll take the next five minutes to put that in the game.”
There may be many, many more things that professional game developers and programmers need to worry about before (re-)releasing anything to the gaming public, that we simply have no knowledge of. But just because we have no knowledge of it, does not mean that it does not exist.