Guild Wars 2

Do you really think they can balance a 33%(or more) speed boost ITEM in such a way it doesn’t affect speed related traits, runes, skills and sigils? Do you really think the item speed boost will NOT become mandatory once it make permaswiftness builds, scape skills and swiftness sharing obsolete?

Gliding barely affect speed. While you feel to move faster, that is only true when the slopes are steep enough (Some other players have made the measurement). However Gliding has already made all the “falling” traits obsolete, useless. These were really situational traits. Speed traits aren’t situational. They are a basic part of half the game (The game is not just combat. Is exploration too).

I’m literally praying they don’t mess everything up just to sell mounts. And I’m not a religious man.

My request for xpac 2 is Anet, please do not start a hype train campaign on the upcoming features unless you know for certain that you can deliver them and can do it in a timely manner.

Be honest about features that don’t come immediately with the expac…… Give us a timeline of features yet to come and try to stick to it

AliamRationem.5172:

The game provides numerous examples of niche gameplay. What you find too complicated or confusing, others consider a great feature of the game. There are 4 maps in HoT, and only one of them really pushes the envelope on this. You say it’s poor design, but as TD is my favorite map and I’m dying to see at least one more like it in the next expansion, I have to disagree. They didn’t make all of the maps so confusing.

There is truth to this statement. The problem is this:

1. HoT is GW2’s first expansion
2. It came after 3+ years of core being the game
3. There were numerous changes to core over those three years. Many of those changes made core even easier that it was already perceived by veterans. The New Player Experience is the most visible of those changes, but was by no means the only one. So, ANet took an (perceived to be) easy game and made it easier. By easier, I mean not only was combat easier, figuring out what to do in the game was easier. For instance, early zone hearts were changed so that players earned heart credit via one click, where before they’d had to do two or three.
4. The rationale ANet offered for the NPE was to attract players who found GW2 too difficult to get into.
5. If people are going to buy a game expansion, it seems like it ought to offer them what they want.
6. Due to ANet’s business model, HoT is presented as being the game going forward.
7. That means that anyone who wants to be active in the game ought to buy HoT. For instance, to get access to Living World updates, people need to buy HoT.
8. People who wanted challenge, difficult exploration, raids and whatever else HoT offers got what they wanted (at least to some extent).
9. Meanwhile, those who wanted more of the same play they apparently liked in core did not get what they wanted.

So, people who wanted challenging combat and exploration were given something that the game had so far lacked. However, there was a portion of the player base that ANet had made multiple attempts to cater to who got XPac zones they found difficult to navigate, with mobs they did not enjoy fighting. This was, to my mind, a questionable business decision. Had GW2 left core difficulty as it was in Beta Weekend Event 1, HoT mob difficulty would not have been an issue. It’s as if Anet wanted to appeal to various points on the player continuum, including both ends, but keep fumbling in their attempts to do so.

I can see both sides of the argument. Had HoT been just more core, they might have lost the players who wanted more engagement. As it is, they may have lost players who didn’t want that much engagement. in hindsight, ANet also lost some people to the whole “HoT is not worth the price/vets shafted/no character slot/etc.” mess. So, in hindsight, a first XPAc that offered a more balanced mix of content (in terms of who it was aimed at) might have better served ANet’s business interests.

Labjax is certainly correct in saying that entertainment products have a (sometimes very) short window in which to hook people. The thing is, people whose goal was “interesting fights in an area that requires me to struggle to learn it” were hooked by HoT from the beginning. However, the same experience did not hook those who just wanted to show up and blow off some steam after a frustrating day at work.

AliamRationem.5172:

The game provides numerous examples of niche gameplay. What you find too complicated or confusing, others consider a great feature of the game. There are 4 maps in HoT, and only one of them really pushes the envelope on this. You say it’s poor design, but as TD is my favorite map and I’m dying to see at least one more like it in the next expansion, I have to disagree. They didn’t make all of the maps so confusing.

I can’t really disagree with this, as it’s factually true that some will like what others don’t. For every criticism that an artistic project gets, if you involve enough people, odds are there will be some people who like it, if not love it.

Doesn’t stop me from giving constructive criticism though.

Labjax.2465:

In response to the point about learning maps:

Well said.

In response to the point about learning maps:

1) If the go-to defense for the maps being complicated is “you eventually learn them,” that’s not a defense that would fly in any design meeting I could respectfully be a part of. There’s a reason that complex features often have tutorials to go along with them; to use the reading analogy that Vayne brought up, you don’t just hand a child a book and tell them to learn how to read. Reading is also a poor analogy as a defense because reading can take years to learn and that’s with heavy guidance and instruction. So if learning the maps is like learning to read, it’s way too difficult.

2) Some people have a poor sense of direction. Even with a map, they can get turned around easily. I am one of those people. No amount of playing the maps changes this fact. Instead of instinctively navigating spaces, I more or less have to memorize parts of them. This takes time.

3) The difference between navigating the HoT maps with most-to-all gliding mastery (and some non-gliding, like nunoch wallows) unlocked versus navigating it with no gliding mastery unlocked is night and day. And once again, this takes time to do. Meanwhile, you’re trying to unlock the masteries in the very maps that would be less confusing and difficult to navigate if you had the masteries. It’s a bit like having you play in the NBA, so that you can qualify for college basketball.

You might be inclined to skim over these points and go, “Well see, it all comes back to if you spend enough time, you’ll learn.” If so, you’re missing how poor of a design philosophy that is. You have to assume that people are going to misunderstand things, get confused, get frustrated, and that many will silently leave if they can’t figure out what to do. Because that’s what a lot of people naturally do when faced with an optional piece of recreation for which there is no obligation to stick with it.

As a contrary example, some will keep going as a matter of pride, or because they want the challenge. But many won’t and I guarantee you the many that won’t make up the majority of the gaming population. The gaming population isn’t a small, devoted crowd anymore. It’s a monstrous behemoth of a spectrum, with wildly varying skill levels.

But more important than that is the fact that… good design makes the player feel smart for doing virtually nothing; good design teaches the player how to be smart and instills confidence in them; good design is like an invisible mentor that stays with you, no matter how good you get. The point being, if you’re going to get defensive about how something is designed, you better have an argument that’s stronger than “people will get over it.” Because if your hope is that people will get over it, you’re about saying, “Yes, the car is on fire, but it will burn itself out eventually and then I can drive home.”

By the time the problem has resolved itself, it’s too late to fix the issue.

That being said, arguments over design choices I welcome and I’m not right about everything when it comes to games. But this stuff about “you eventually learn” is not a good argument. If I’m a filmmaker and release a movie, I don’t want it to “eventually” become a box office hit; it needs to be one now and it’s got a small window in which it can pull that off.

MMOs do have a learning curve a lot of the time. I get that kind of defense. But it isn’t a carte blanche excuse for complexity or confusing design. It’s possible to make something too complicated or too confusing.

Vayne.8563:

Except that if you get hits on an event, and you can’t get back to it, most of the time you still get credit anyway. It’s just not as punishing as you say.

In fact, I often get credit for events I’ve barely touched in HOT, just as I’m passing by.

Event credit isn’t really the issue. Though ironically, you’re describing tagging events and getting credit, but some of them in HoT are structured with such gaps in things happening that it’s easy to have participating credit lapse even though you’re actively trying to contribute.

But that’s not what I was referring to anyway. I’m more referring to the fact that if you are roaming solo, mobs are merciless and there’s no way around it but to group or be very reactive and prepared. I feel like I remember reading that they nerfed them a little bit at some point and they were even worse than they are now, at release.

One of the things I remember enjoying about this game in the past was exploring maps and completing them on my own, at my own pace. It was kind of relaxing and gently fulfilling in an entertaining way. HoT maps, you can barely stand still without aggroing a group of mobs that will quickly kill you (if you aren’t sufficiently reactive/prepared). There’s just no room on those maps for relaxed exploration. When I paid for HoT, on some level, I thought I would be getting more of the thing I liked and I didn’t. And that was upsetting.

And it doesn’t help that with how the maps are laid out, I have to pull my map out a lot to figure out where I am and where I need to go, which means I now have to “pause” and stand still. I did some maneuvering around a map tonight in Tangled Depths and was spending half my time checking for a “safe space” or taking a 1-2 second peep at the map, like I was in a warzone and expecting to be shot at any moment. It was tense and frustrating, and I felt relived when I logged out.

I am not what I’d call a “casual gamer” either. I used to be very hardcore in one game and my first instinct is to look for the depth in game systems. But I never played this particular game for that. I played it for the more relaxed, flowing experience. And HoT did not provide that.

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

snip

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Then you go to the revive system and with large groups, we’re back into twitch land and simple mechanics. Timing again (timing when to try to rez yourself) or timing of other players rezzing you in time. There’s a little thinking in it, in deciding whether to keep attacking to go for the rez-kill, or try to rez yourself, but it’s still very simple. While you’re downed, most of the thinking man’s complexity is nonexistent. And because, with large groups, it’s easy to get rezzed, even when dead, there’s little motivation to care much about dying.

So in a nutshell, GW2 is a thinking man’s game sandwiched in-between twitch mechanics that partially trivialize and undermine the thinking part of it. That’s why so many people know so little about their classes, their abilities, their gear, etc… because in most aspects of the game, there’s nothing even nudging them to bother. One might think that the obvious conclusion is that GW2 should have been harder and thus would have taught people better, but it may not have gotten the population it did if it was.

The fact is, the situation we ended up with is that there were a bunch of players who were happy with the style of the game (that style mostly being “you don’t need to bother”) and then HoT came in and said, “No, you definitely do need to bother. And if you don’t, your play experience will be miserable.”

Naturally, this miffed a lot of people.

To sum it all up, basically the game sends mixed messages: Think about everything, don’t think about anything. Maximize your output, no stat meters allowed (I’ve been away a while, I wonder if that’s still a thing?). Learn your class and gear, in large groups it doesn’t matter because of sheer volume of player pressure.

The game has never said no stat meters allowed. I don’t know where people came up with that. Damage meters have been around for this game for a long long time. They’re neither supported by Anet nor against the TOS. At least many of them aren’t.

The game doesn’t send mixed messages at all. There’s a ton of content that people avoid. Back in the day you could get to 80 by doing nothing but the Queensdale champ train. You’d have never left a 1-15 zone. But you’d still be level 80.

If at that point you tried to run Arah, you’d be dead, pretty much all the time, because you didn’t play the game.

The game has always punished people for bad play, but to different degrees. If you died in Orr, with most of the waypoints contested, which is much of the time, then you have to run back. That’s punishing.

And there were plenty of ways too die in Orr. So many that Anet had to nerf both mob density and mob difficulty in Orr. Which means the game launched with harder content.

People who avoided dungeons and fractals simply didn’t learn the game. Then they expect an expansion to be launched with beginner content.

It’s like Eye of the North in Guild Wars 1. It didn’t pull any punches, because it was expansion content. It was made for people who beat the other games.

And you know, in Guild Wars 1, you could look up a couple of party builds, load up your heroes a certain way and play too. But that didn’t make you good at the game, and if you tried more challenging content, you’d often be flattened.

Living Story Season 1 upped the difficulty of the game considerably. Even stuff in Dry Top and Silverwastes was harder than the core game and the Living World Season 2 story, that was harder too.

Not everyone has done that content, but it was also considered punishing by some people.

HoT is continuing a trend. It’s not that hard, because I know so many mediocre plays who run it wthout problems.

That people think it’s that hard because they keep dying over and over? I don’t believe most of the player base is in that category. More people than are in Orr, perhaps, but I don’t think 60% of the playerbase can’t deal with the mobs in HoT, or find it particularly punishing.

I also don’t think everyone who dislikes HoT, dislikes it because of mob density. There’s a woman in my guild who loves running tier 4 Fractals but HOT is too hard for her. Not the mob density or difficulty. That’s not a problem for her.

Figuring out where to go, that is a problem for her.

I think there are a lot of people out there who never learned the game, and I feel like that’s Anet’s fault.

Vayne.8563:

I agree with this. HoT is more punishing of mistakes. The problem is the game prior to this has not be punishing enough and people don’t know how to play the game. They don’t know their professions. If the game had been more punishing people would have learned. They haven’t.

So they think HoT is too hard. It’s not. It’s punishing of mistakes that shouldn’t necessarily be made, at least not often.

I don’t find myself dying or running back a lot in HoT on any profession, and I’m not exactly a pro player, or a min maxer. I make my own builds. I don’t have ascended on most of my characters, except jewelry which is relatively easy to get. Even then some people only have exotics.

But I learned to play the game, so I don’t make that many mistakes, and so I enjoy HoT.

What people are really saying is that the game has failed to teach them how to play.

Yes and no. Punishing people generally doesn’t teach them how to play in the first place. It works for a dying generation of gamers who are into punishing design, but in the mainstream, it really doesn’t appeal. And I think you’d find that in the niche market where punishing design is desired, those are the same sort of players who take their punishingly-designed game experiences very seriously and will go seriously, super duper hardcore in figuring out how the game works to eke out every little advantage.

GW2 has always suffered from having a confusing combat system. The framework of it has some depth that would appeal to the super duper hardcore crowd, but the framework is also weighed down by a number of interlocking systems that don’t quite mesh.

Dodge, for instance, is a mechanic that basically allows you to trivialize any attack in the game if your timing is right (and provided it’s not on cooldown). It’s that simple. So on that level, the game seems insanely simple and if you’ve spent most of your gaming hours playing FPS titles, excelling with GW2’s dodge will probably be a breeze. It’s not really a thinking man’s mechanic though.

You go past dodge and it goes right into depth city. Gear stats, traits, abilities, etc… all the standard trimmings of a thinking man’s MMO.

Then you go to the revive system and with large groups, we’re back into twitch land and simple mechanics. Timing again (timing when to try to rez yourself) or timing of other players rezzing you in time. There’s a little thinking in it, in deciding whether to keep attacking to go for the rez-kill, or try to rez yourself, but it’s still very simple. While you’re downed, most of the thinking man’s complexity is nonexistent. And because, with large groups, it’s easy to get rezzed, even when dead, there’s little motivation to care much about dying.

So in a nutshell, GW2 is a thinking man’s game sandwiched in-between twitch mechanics that partially trivialize and undermine the thinking part of it. That’s why so many people know so little about their classes, their abilities, their gear, etc… because in most aspects of the game, there’s nothing even nudging them to bother. One might think that the obvious conclusion is that GW2 should have been harder and thus would have taught people better, but it may not have gotten the population it did if it was.

The fact is, the situation we ended up with is that there were a bunch of players who were happy with the style of the game (that style mostly being “you don’t need to bother”) and then HoT came in and said, “No, you definitely do need to bother. And if you don’t, your play experience will be miserable.”

Naturally, this miffed a lot of people.

To sum it all up, basically the game sends mixed messages: Think about everything, don’t think about anything. Maximize your output, no stat meters allowed (I’ve been away a while, I wonder if that’s still a thing?). Learn your class and gear, in large groups it doesn’t matter because of sheer volume of player pressure.

Gw2 never had a good system for teaching players and theres a big gap between vainilla and hot, as Djinn said in one of his posts, thats anet fault (ls2 its a difficulty progression, perhaps not so soft for some, but its not free or included with HoT). Wildstar even explain what cc its at the intro tutorial xd. I have explained that in raids here xd.

Ashen said a good solution, practice some of the dungeons and fractals, your skill level will go up and hot will be less traumatic xd.

Also, hot story its really good and the actual LS3 has been even better. So it really its worth the training xd

Btw, did you tried ls2?, its the more close “next chapter” from the vainilla game and will be an intermediate difficulty step before hot.

Djinn.9245:

Ashen.2907:

To be honest, you might want to spend some time learning your preferred profession a bit better before moving on to HoT. The content in the core game doesnt really teach you much about playing well. HoT is supposed to be more challenging for play by those who have a better handle on their characters.

Leveling a character to 80 and through the entire Personal Story should teach you all you need to know. If it isn’t, that is Anet’s fault.

Also, where did Anet state that HoT was supposed to be for those who were better players? I don’t remember seeing that at all.

They stated repeatedly that HoT would be more challenging than much core content. It is. Its not a matter of the expansion being meant for, “better players,” as you suggest (not what I said) but rather that it is likely to be more manageable for players who have a better handle on their character than someone who just started the game a week or two ago.

That said, I agree that the core game does not do a particularly good job preparing players for increased difficulty.

To clarify, my post was not meant to be a dismissive L2P jab, I hope it isnt taken that way. But, the reality is that HoT was released to challenge people who had been playing for years. I dont think that it will take very long for even a new player to adapt to the expansion content, but some degree of adaption will be necessary.

Perhaps posting build and gear might allow others to give advice?

Wanze.8410:

Rauderi.8706:

Ayrilana.1396:

Insignias don’t cost 50-75 gold. Please research the costs.

Query from the wiki puts a Berserker’s Intricate Gossamer Insignia at a little under 14 gold. It’s a bit excessive for a single component.

Though, where it gets more uneven is in what those insignia are used to craft. Looking at Exotic gear:
Berserker heavy chest: …still under 14 gold. The bulk of the cost is heavily in the insignia.
Berserker medium chest: 18.5 gold, because of the additional hardened leather.

Consider the parallel inequity in Ascended gear, when silk was out of control and leather was in the tank. That armor type imbalance was the reason why players recommended a change to patches/insignia in the first place. Instead of doing it right for a healthy market, ANet overcorrected and gave us another mess.

And you can buy Nika´s Exotic Medium Berserker Armor Set for 15-20g for the whole set so I dont know, why people would craft one.

Great. Now buy the Viper set for the non-power meta.
Stop deliberately missing the broader point for the sake of apologetics and protecting your investments.

This is an issue that will not be fixed with hidden work-arounds or ignoring the problem.

I don’t really think this is about players not having money for it. It’s about the discrepancy between light/heavy and medium. Why should it cost more for a medium armored character to get geared? Aren’t we all supposed to be on a level playing field.

Randulf.7614:

Ashantara.8731:

Randulf.7614:

Can’t say I am a fan of this idea.

Neither am I, as it is impossible to solo-farm (unless you manage to run through in a hurry, but even then you are bound to die eventually, and the nearest waypoint is on the opposite side of the map).

In their defence it is meant to be group farmed.

It’s just too badly done. Solo, it’s almost impossible to farm effectively, but in group it becomes laughably easy. There’s no real middle ground here.
“Challenging content” it is not. Merely a gate against solo players.

Ashen.2907:

Randulf.7614:

Thanks for the heads up Ayrilana.

Can’t say I am a fan of this idea. It locks the farm behind those who have access to ls3ep4 only and doesn’t benefit the wider playerbase. Better drops and salvage rates were the answer imo.

If supply increases then the wider playerbase benefits (or suffers) whether or not they have access to LS3-4.

I understand the theory here, but these are core basic mats which everyone should have the option to farm directly or buy directly. They should be treated like the other core mats. Rarer, prestige mats would be more appropriate for niche group farms.

In b4 thick is at npc price again.

Thanks for the heads up Ayrilana.

Can’t say I am a fan of this idea. It locks the farm behind those who have access to ls3ep4 only and doesn’t benefit the wider playerbase. Better drops and salvage rates were the answer imo.

All this talk of kittens. You know what this game needs? Ducklings. Fluffy little baby duckies.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ashen.2907:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Because cats are superior creatures. You had to ask!?

~ Posted by Franklin, Gaile’s pet

Giraffes > cats.

Pffft. Nonsense!

I defy you to find an example of a giraffe being caught up in a tree. : )

Narcemus.1348:

I don’t know if this has been said before, or not, but why just have cats that you can add to your home instance? That only really feeds into one group of people, cat people. I personally wouldn’t spend even 1 copper to get these cats in my home instance, but if I were given the opportunity to add puppies, or full grown dogs to my home instance I would blow through whatever gold it took! Please?!

Don’t worry, one day we will set sail to the South, for there are no cats in Cantha and the streets are paved with cheese So set your mind at ease!

Keep the dream alive!