Guild Wars 2

Esplen.3940:

nakoda.4213:

Your mother’s IQ is slow low that she doesn’t even know how to crossthread a micronfluxcapacitor multiphasic unit with a simple dimatrix array power inversion unit equipped with a subsonic alpha wave modulation circuit.

I mean, how human do you have to be not to realize that a simple recalibration of the carbohypothermic intake valve release frees up the injection array subprocessing unit so that it can combocalculate the exact reverberation of the magic stream inversion coil.

::eyeroll::

what a dolt.

Why crossthread it when you can simply multicrossthread it. Also the dimatrix array power inversion has been outdated by the new trimatrix array power inversion which has an exponentially better power inversion capacity. You don’t even need the subsonic alpha stream inversion coil at all, in fact it was proven to slow down the process by tenfold with the new trimatrix array.

There is no need to combocalculate, that’s just wasting your iterations. Simply take a quantum nucleic phasitron and adjust it to entwine into the array. You can get rid of the entire coil and intake valve.

Seriously… who taught you this stuff?

Your mother did.

But at least SHE knows that a trimatrix array is incompatible with a decahedron infusion dynamo which is WHY the subsonic alpha stream inversion coil needs to be linked up to the megaflux protocore of the temporal energy capacitors.

Seriously, the quantum nucleic phasitron is untested technology bordering on mere MECHANICS. We covered that in first level progeny class. At least your mother’s IQ isn’t so low as to miss THAT.

You might as well swap the unitron projection processor for introflux capacitration multiplier. We all got taught in second level that combocalculation takes no more than a 0.00003812312432^16 nanosecond longer to iterate the output figures than a intake-less power inversion unit. Why remove something that frees up magic for the thermokenetic hydraulic system?

Your mother’s IQ is slow low that she doesn’t even know how to crossthread a micronfluxcapacitor multiphasic unit with a simple dimatrix array power inversion unit equipped with a subsonic alpha wave modulation circuit.

I mean, how human do you have to be not to realize that a simple recalibration of the carbohypothermic intake valve release frees up the injection array subprocessing unit so that it can combocalculate the exact reverberation of the magic stream inversion coil.

::eyeroll::

what a dolt.

In the past year and a half, his reading and map skills have increased exponentially. If we were sports fans, I know he’d have collected and memorized every single baseball card in existence; since we’re not, he pores over the GW2 Official Player Guide book and memorizes the names of skills :P. Like, for fun. When he’s supposed to be putting on his pajamas. rolleyes

Other than that, I would consider him a really normal 6 year old kid. He’s CRAZY about Legos, likes to watch Wild Kratts and Timmy Time, enjoys gymnastics, makes his bed nicely but complains about picking up the crayons after coloring, loves to ride his bike but can’t quite do it without training wheels because our sidewalk is all tilty… you know the type.

• He has figured out how to deposit his materials (which I periodically go in and sell on the TP for him since he doesn’t do crafting).
• He understands targeting a little better, but can still get confused if there are same-named foes around.
• He’s started to figure out how to send /say messages and /tells, although we have a rule that he can’t talk to anyone that I haven’t put on his friends list.
• He is amazing at watching for buffs and debuffs, both on you and on your foes (walking by while I’m in the middle of a boss fight: “wow! 25 stacks of bleeding! And 15 stacks of vrunalarblilty! [ sic ] you guys are so good at this, mommy.”
• He’s as annoying as heck about giving play advice, especially when you are downed. (He still would rather try to rez you than kill the thing you have targeted when you’re downed, so there are limits to his understanding of that whole mechanic.)
• He still doesn’t have a true understanding of which stats are most useful to him, but he does have a general idea what the stats do and how to pick equipment that works for him.
• Similarly, he is able to alter his traits whenever he is in the mood to do so.
• He is familiar enough with his right-side skills (7-9) that he can swap them out to fit the occasion or his mood.
• He is able to change his look in the wardrobe and frequently runs out of transmutation stones.
• He has learned that it’s not really helpful to keep things for his alts, and got a copper fed salvage kit, so he salvages anything green and under that he doesn’t want for the present character, and sells or banks yellows.

This is a child who is just entering first grade, playing his first MMO.

So in case it wasn’t obvious, let me sum up the point here:

TL;DR: My kid got this game when he was five, and he could play it functionally, although he leveled slowly. Now he is six, and he plays well enough that he could probably fool a pug into thinking he was just a non-verbal medium-noob adult. He did not need the ridiculous leveling changes that were made, and many of them would have probably caused confusion as the gameplay changed as he went along.

If a five year old can do it, it’s not too complicated. They shouldn’t have changed it, because it wasn’t broken. When the only justification for your “improvements” are that leveling isn’t fun because you took away the trait-at-every-level fun, maybe you need to rethink that, too.

Removing the ability for new characters to learn at their own pace is ridiculous in the most literal sense (e.g. enjoy this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-On3Ya0_4Y ridiculing the changes). Furthermore, making these backwards steps apply to new characters on existing accounts with higher-level characters is, in a word, painful.

PS. Don’t even bother commenting on my parenting skills. I give less than zero cares about your opinion, will ignore your advice/opinion and continue doing what my husband and I feel is best for our individual family, and will not respond to you. Unless you’re supportive, in which case… :-D But regardless, this post is not about that, it’s about the game being so easy a caveman little kid can do it, and about the game staying “smarter than a first grader.”

A little bit of perspective on this:

My six year old has his own account. We bought him one for his fifth birthday, because when he was four, he kept begging to come play on my account, and one day he spent all my money on buying bronze harvesting tools (that was before the account wide bank). Well, I was sick of that, so I just got him his own account, and if he wanted to spend all his copper and karma on garbage, fine.

Obviously at age just-turned-five, he was not familiar with MMOs. I had let him play my ranger in LOTRO a bit but it was way too hard for him because there was so much back-and-forth on the quests and at that time he was just beginning to read; he couldn’t follow the quest instructions and he didn’t have the intuitive understanding of how a map corresponds to where you are in the real world. He basically would run until he found a body of water and could swim around. :-P

I figured GW2 would be an improvement, because you could complete quests (hearts) just by being in the area, and it only told you about the stuff that was nearby. GW2 is also pretty good about having the NPCs shout at you if they want you to talk to them, which reduces the need to read.

SO.

When he first got the account, here are the things he could not understand:

1. Traits – how they afffected his stats, which ones were useful, how they triggered
2. Targeting enemies (e.g. the fact that you could have two Inquest Assassins in your field of view, so the one you’re looking at might not be the one you’re actually hitting)
3. Purposefully moving the camera to have a better view of what he was doing / understanding how the camera interacts with the terrain and being able to correct it
4. Armor and weapon stats, including runes and sigils
5. Buying and selling strategies (ie what to keep, what to sell/salvage, whatever)
6. Skill cast times and how they affected skill cooldowns
7. Conditions
8. The chat function (thank goodness)

Here are the things he was capable of understanding when I took the time to explain them (not an exhaustive list):

1. Gathering, and how you have to have a gathering tool equipped
2. Talking to people with icons to get stuff (hearts, karma)
3. Talking to skill point guys would trigger a fight
4. Use skill points to buy special skills
5. To compare armor, highlight it and compare the tooltips, keep the one with the higher number (oversimplified, but that’s what he could handle at the time)
6. Yellow name foes are not aggro but can be fought; red name foes are aggro.
7. The downed state and rallying
8. Waypoints
9. Changing what is in your hand changes your skills.’
10. Push down button twice to dodge
11. Sending items via mail to mommy or daddy

Here are the things he came in understanding intuitively:

1. Click on something to fight it, push icons on screen to fight it.
2. When you start out, you don’t have many skills, but you learn more as you go.
3. Hey look! there is a shiny light up there! Maybe I can jump up to it. I’m here, what does it do? Says push F. Ooh, a video! I can replay the video a lot! Cool!! (aka, he freaking loved vistas)
4. When you walk past something, it opens up on the map and says discovered. oh hey look! I see a diamond! a square! A heart, I need to help that guy!
5. Every time I do something “grown up”, flashy lights make this red bar on my screen get bigger. Ooh, I am level 2 now!

I just logged him in and did /age on his biggest character, a level 68 engineer, and got the following:

You have played this character for 152 hours 48 minutes over the past 578 days.
Across all characters, you have played for 294 hours 10 minutes over the past 644 days.

For those who can’t do the math, that comes out to 27 minutes a day, which is actually more like 2.5 hours once a week. My guildmates have run him through the story dungeons up through Sorrow’s Embrace; he’s leveled high enough for CoF but hasn’t had computer time since then. He’s able to follow along well enough that he gets credit for killing things, doesn’t die any more than the adults do, doesn’t wipe the group.

His other characters (one of each profession) range from level 13 to level 26. I regretfully had to tell him, when he walked by and saw me making this post, that he has probably lost access to some of his skills on most of his characters. His answer was “well, that’s okay, I’m still really strong without those skills, because I have good armor and weapons.” But realistically, I expect him to be frustrated at how many things he cannot access on some characters when he CAN access them on others.
[character limit, contd below]

I’m certain they enabled the “best” of the options they tried, and by that I mean the one that will engage “new” players longer.

I’m dubious that this method will actually “work” in any tangible sense at the end of the day. It’s not that the game is any easier. The mouthbreathing Candy Crush Saga iStore crowd is still going to quit because they’re still going to be frustrated by things being “too hard.”

The new method doesn’t dodge for them. They’re still going to get steamrolled the first time a champion rears back with an obvious tell. The new method doesn’t rally for them. They’re still going to be lost in the downed state.

The people who quit this game because it was too confusing are still going to be confused. They aren’t interested in learning. They don’t want to improve (that would be work). They want to log in, kill things with no difficulty, and earn [x] reward after [y] hours.

If that is the sort of player Arena.net feels they have to cater to, then Arena.net has to submit entirely to their wants, and give them a faceroll easy game. Otherwise, Arena.net has to accept they will never win over that crowd, and focus on their existing players.

Lucia The Lightbringer.2568:

I don’t think these new changes are too bad, I understand that some more experienced players think that the new leveling system is “dumbed down”, but also keep in mind that xp from level 1-20 is extremely easy to get and it won’t take too long to unlock all those skills.

Also keep in mind that there ARE players who really don’t understand what’s going on around them, and these few changes might make it easier for them and keep them interested in game instead of leaving them confused.
I know that to a lot of people out there skills and traits are like second nature and almost self explanatory, but then again there are other people who still keyboard turn and ask how come other players strafe so fast.
Or those who don’t know that you can CHANGE KEYBINDS and instead of mouse clicking on your 8 skill (which takes forever) you can just bind it to whatever you prefer.
I remember being a nub warrior and I kept using the Rush skill, which would automatically attack the nearby moa and I was frustrated cause it would put me in combat all the time, but then I realized, oh, I can turn off auto attack!

There are lots of those small stupid things that some people just don’t pay attention to, and I think that this new change might make their leveling experience a little easier to understand and improve overall skill.

I’m not saying that everyone who clicks their skills or keyboard turns is a nub, I’m just trying to use it as an example of a simple thing that lots of people overlook and giving them a hint on how to do it might change their experience drastically.

Can you explain to me how slowing down the skill distribution and traits will help introduce players to advanced features of the game? I genuinely feel like I’m missing something here.

Slowing down progression does not make learning totally unrelated aspects (crafting, dungeons, pvp, wvw, etc etc etc) easier or hard.

I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep on saying it. New players need better guidance, not a slowed down experience. GW2 offers no true guidance for their advanced features and relies on the community teaching the community and people researching the wiki to learn about these things.

The massive downside to this? I only know how to go through the ascalonian catacombs quickly and efficiently, while skipping the story and standing where I’m told to stand. I only know how to do story mode and path 3. in short, I only know the status quo, because by relying on the community to teach, unless you happen across a very, very patient group of people willing to explain everything to you, you will only be shown the quick and easy way to do what the majority like to do the way the majority like to do it.

Is this the feedback topic for the leveling changes? I have to vent a bit, forgive me:

But ANet, you went WAY overboard with these changes. You stripped basic mechanics from the game and the classes and made it so much more harder to get into the good stuff. I’m borrowing someone else’s bullet points from Reddit, because they echo mine:

“Weapon skills are level-gated. You get access to all your weapon skills by level 10
You don’t have steal. No idea when that opens up.
You start with signet of malice instead of hide in shadows. This is probably the least offending one, but I still don’t like it. Stealth is a core mechanic for thieves, as is Steal. No reason to gate it behind levels.
You unlock the ability to dual wield weapons on level 7, weapon swap is 15.
Utility skills unlock on levels 13, 24 and 35. Elite is 40.”

PLEASE think about this again. You effectively ruined starting a new character for veterans and in an attempt to make the game better for new players, made it equally more boring.

You know, everyone started this game as a new player…..and it really wasn’t that hard to learn. I mean, how hard can it be? You unlock one ability at a time – and that takes a couple of kills to do at a low level. Are you telling me that there are players that can’t read a newly unlocked ability every five kills or so?

And then once you do that intro quest, you are spat out in the real world to do… what exactly? When I was a new player, I had the npc/mail/quest tracker say “talk to that scout” (icon on map) and LOW AND BEHOLD the scout gives a nice summary of what to do in the world. “Go and find challenges” (indicating skill points) “You can travel with these” (indicating waypoints) “go and help people” (Indicating hearts). What was wrong with that system? It was clear and insightful. It made people (or me and my guildies, at any rate) want to go out and GET those waypoints and help those people and do those skill challenges! The story was right there to get stuck into.

I made a new character to see things from a new player….and guess what? As an long time player, I know what the hearts and vistas and skill points mean. As a new player, I imagine a person starting in the world thinking “now what? where are the quests? What do I do?”

And the “Minitures have been hidden due to rising player population.?” I’m watching my wife’s character now. Can’t summon a mini due to the “rising population” but she gets a kitten invite to a denser map because THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PLAYERS IN HER CURRENT ONE! I had better stop my rant before I find I’ve pulled out all my hair.

style.6173:

+/- duration food allows for people to better plan strategy. This game lacks that already and removing more of it is a bad idea.

I disagree and think it’s the complete opposite.

If they tone down the condition duration/reduction foods, it will give players more freedom to choose food that actually complements their builds. Many people choose Lemongrass Poultry soup simply to negate the +40% duration of Koi Cakes/Veggie Pizza. If it was shaved down to something along the lines of 25%, players wouldn’t feel so pigeonholed into having to run -condi duration food.

Also, 40% condition duration is quite high compared to the benefits other foods give. It’s the equivalent of going 8 points into your condition duration trait line. You then still get the additional +70 condition duration. Most other foods that give you a stat increase only have their high stat giving you the equivalent of investing 2 in their respective trait line.

Announce season 2
Wait two weeks for popcorn thread
Tournament bully

oblivious.8074:

PS. As a member of a smallish roaming guild I would like to say ditto to everything Conchis said.

As a punishment for forgetting to mention Yarr, Conchis will be forced to man an arrow cart 8h/day on a northern tower in gandara borderland for a week, shooting at everyone who passes by but never ever engaging in an actual fight.

I feel that this may need reviving, considering the amount of community engagement threads flying around atm. Behold my powers of thread necromancy \o/

we asked where balance
he asked where we need more siege
took spreadshot to face

Devon tried to roam
Edge of the Mist has ledge
Necromancer feared him off

Promises were made
Edge of the Mist was a fail
Account bound xp?

random fall damage
while climbing carver’s ascent
works as intended

The end of PvDoor.

• Doors should only be damaged by rams and ballista.
• Walls should only be damaged by cats and trebs.
• 25% price reduction on siege equipment.

• if for some technical reason structures cannot be made immune to player damage, reduce damage taken from players to 1 dmg.

so easy it’s kind of a facepalm it is not already as such right now in WvW.

Please leave WvW alone…some of us chose to play on a lower ranked server for a reason. Forcing everyone to play on a permanently full map will only lead to even more mindless (or mindful for al i care, zerg is zerg) zerging and effectively renders solo players useless.

I’m really scared of the impact this is going to have on WvW and server pride. I play on a lower tier server for a reason. I hate mindless zerging, and WvW is mainly what keeps me in this game since I view it as good end game content. I like the EotM maps, but I hate the mega server zerg mode of it.

Best solution in my mind is to leave the major cities/non combat zones out of this addition, and only have it take place in the open world.