Guild Wars 2

Reverence.6915:

Basically what I’m reading here is that you don’t want to play “MMORPGs”, but rather, “co-op/multiplayer RPGs”. MMORPGs have evolved past the “RPG” element towards a social experience. There’s no “role play” left in MMOs because “role play” (the way you want it to be done) can’t be done with a massive community – there’s too much disconnect between different players in expectations and time commitments.

In the past, when MMOs were smaller, role playing was indeed a main focus. I’m thinking back to late 90s/early 2000s Runescape, where the concept of instances and dungeons didn’t exist and many people simply played to make their character reflect them as a person (whether it was combat focused or a complete pacifist). In other words, role playing.

MMOs now don’t have that because they aren’t, if we’re going into semantics, RPGs. They’re more or less an interactive social network, pioneered by the likes of “Second Life”, “IMVU” and such. When we put time into these games, we expect adequate compensation equivalent to the time we put in. Whether we’re a PvP player or a dungeon raider, we expect that our time get adequately compensated.

I don’t disagree with your premise, but I strongly disagree with the way you talk down to people who want more out of this game for the way they want to play it.

How does 10 man make something more of an MMO than 5 man? This is an unreal statement to me.

Playing in a more organized instanced content isn’t what makes an MMO an MMO. Lobby games can be like that. What makes an MMO an MMO is a persistent world where you play with other players. For all intents and purposes, dynamic events better define the MMO concept than raids. What I’m hearing in a lot of these posts is people locked into an arbitrary definition of what an MMO is because of what an MMO has been. I find that the saddest part of this whole thing.

Anet really did want to do something different and a fan base that simple couldn’t adapt to it changed the plan in my opinion. That’s why we’re stuck with stuff like ascended gear and why raids have finally made it here. Because Anet couldn’t change the genre as much as they expected they would be able to. Fair enough I suppose. They have to make the games for players.

But saying I want a coop game because I don’t want to raid? Raiding is NOT what defines an MMO. Raiding has virtually always been an MMO sideshow for a small percentage of the playerbase. We know from many devs over the years that most MMO players don’t raid, so saying I don’t want an MMO because I don’t want to raid is simply not on.

Ashen.2907:

Then again, I think that GW1 did a better job of teaching players, at least those who stuck with it, to improve their game. By the time people got to some of the more difficult content, the gradual difficulty ramp up had prepared them to some degree.

I wish GW2 was a better “teacher”. The amount of players who still don’t know what a breakbar is and how to break it is alarming. But the game never actually teaches you what a breakbar is so it’s not entirely their fault, their only fault is not reading map chat where everything is explained lol.

There are also so many people who want to skip the entire difficulty curve just to get their shinnies. LS1 would’ve helped with all this, teaching people by increasing the difficulty gradually and working as an excellent bridge for HoT, but then they thought it would be nice to remove it completely so we have this great gap now.

Need a better tutorial for sure

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

They didn’t push instanced content, they pushed open world content. That’s the point.

And this is still the case.

The raid team is less than 5% of the dev team. Raids are part of HoT and represent a small fraction of the expansion.

I agree with this. It doesn’t really have to do with what I’m talking about in my OP, though. This is simply a response to someone telling me why what I’m saying is essentially wrong. My argument isn’t that raids shouldn’t exist.

My argument is that specific rewards shouldn’t be locked behind them, as in an entire tier of gear, or functionality. They didn’t do it in Guild Wars 1, and I don’t really see the need to do this here.

It doesn’t matter if 1 person works on raids or 100, if people feel disenfranchised by having something in game that they simply can’t get without spending hours doing content they don’t like.

Agreed. In GW1 the only thing gated behind specific endgame content were skins, and heroes (which were a form of functionality).

Still, feelings are feelings. Fun is a feeling. If it is not fun you are less likely to play, spend money, etc. I totally get that.

Personally I would rather see GW1 HA style rank emotes as the special rewards for content. Nothing that would affect your character’s normal appearance, no functionality, but enough cool factor to make pursuing them worthwhile (to me).

Heroes really weren’t gated behind content though, not in the sense of something like raids or grind. Most heroes came from completing missions. You certainly didn’t need to gear up to get them. They missions were fairly easy.

If you couldn’t do them on your own you could bring up to 7 friends for most of it. Those were more like quests than anything else. If you want to call that gating, go ahead, but it’s nothing like grinding raids for tokens.

The fact is, I don’t think I ever failed an attempt to get a hero. Maybe Razah the first time. But the entire thing required 15 minutes of playing with no real prep.

In other words, through normal gameplay you unlocked those heroes. You didn’t need to gather a team of people since you had heroes already and you could solo most of that stuff.

SkyShroud.2865:

RP….means….roleplay
MMORPG means massive multiplayer online role playing game…

considering RP alone…role playing the character….
does people actually think that the character get strong overnight?
the character must undergo some training, repeating things to strengthen and continue to strengthen by repeating training, that is where grinding come about.

but if is a long leveling process, people then complain about the grind for leveling, it is really hard to satisfy people.

so, end up, they spread the grind to other places like getting items from dungeons.

This is very much why I like the open world more than dungeons. Going into the dungeon I’m fighting the same boss with the same mechanics every time. Every single time. It reduces the game to a game of memory. He raises his arm, dodge in. He moves back, you can stun him or whatever.

In the open world I can participate in taking a town and you know, if I run back later and the town is lost again, it’s not, in my mind, the game centaurs (or whatever) taking the town.

Even in real life, a town can be taken back and forth by the enemy, so it’s easy for me to immerse myself in that content.

Not the same when I’m fighting a single named boss in a dungeon who has three moves and repeats them over and over again.

Randulf.7614:

Except an entire tier isnt really locked behind raids. Legendary and ascended are essentially the same, except you can switch stats on the fly, something that is neglible outside of raids anyway and just something they added as a tiny extra.

Then raiders would have no problem with legendary functionality being obtainable outside of raids, right? I mean, it’s a little thing, apparently. A “tiny extra”.

Leo G.4501:

Vayne.8563:

So what do you say to people who want viper trinkets to finish their build? Do they also have an agenda?

Not to sound dismissive, I’d tell them to stop feeling so entitled. It’s just a stat distribution, not gear. If you can’t use Viper’s, use something else to complete your build. If you’re OCD and you just have to have everything the same nomenclature, it’s called a disorder for a reason…

The game shouldn’t just hand you everything you want your way all the time. And I’m not saying people who complain want everything handed to them but as a gamer, games should challenge you and push you out of your comfort zone for specific rewards. So long as the game doesn’t force you to have it, it’s not an actual issue, but a manufactured issue that is case-by-case depending on the player.

That all said, I’d just suggest the devs release those gear sets through other means but that doesn’t really solve anything, it just quiets those who would be satisfied with the solution and leave all else excluded.

There’s a big big difference between asking for a hand out and asking for multiple ways to get things. That’s my whole point and your responses are backing up my very need for this thread.

We don’t want to run this particular content so we’re entitled. You’ve said the word. You find the content okay, you’re not disliking it, so anyone who does either has to force themselves to do that content or they’re entitled.

I don’t know about you but I think people play games to have fun. Not to run content they don’t enjoy.

And I still maintain that WvW players would want this stuff as much as PvE’ers would, and yet they’d be forced to PvE to get it. Do you think they’re entitled too? Ugly word if you ask me.

People are using the word entitled to make it seem like people want something for nothing. I simply want to have options to get stuff without having to do something long term that I don’t have fun in a game.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what entitled means.

Vayne.8563:

I think people just need to know that not everyone that doesn’t want to raid is necessarily lazy or incapable. Some of us just don’t enjoy it.

You can not want to raid and still enjoy a challenge…just a different type of challenge.

I don’t disagree with that, but that’s an internet community issue. Anet made some fairly stupid statements about ascended requirements which fueled that, but otherwise it’s a difficult situation for them control. At least no in game inspections/dps meters exist, but I don’t think the elite Vs casual mentality, which is what it boils down to eventually, can be overcome.

Whilst people continue to post lfg entries like “experienced only” all they are doing is continuing the ongoing trend for raids dying away, by putting walls up for new players. These appeared less than a week after the 2nd wing appeared and yet the vast majority of players could never be experienced so soon.

This is why raids are dying away in MMO’s. It’s not because of rewards, it’s not because they are too hard, it’s because it is fashionable for players to block players out.

But that’s a subject for a different thread

Good read and very well written, Vayne. I don’t always see eye to eye with your opinion, but on this we agree. One of the issues I think is they have no way to gauge this kind of interest with a metric.

I really hope they go back to some of the things that made this game great when it was released. It really is a special game, but it’s so far removed these days from what I liked about it. It’s all wait and see for me these days and daily login rewards with the hope they return to their roots.

BDO has really filled the void for me these days. I drive a farm wagon around trading goods. I decorate my house on the coast. I enjoy fishing trips on my buddy’s fishing boat. You may want to give it a try.

Leo G.4501:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure why an interesting discussion has to have a single over-arching purpose. Sometimes, you can talk about something because it interests you, without having some major agenda, no?

I guess you’re right there. But then ultimately, the true purpose rises up:

“If I started raiding, within months, I’d be looking for another MMO, because ultimately it’s too much time playing something I’m not personally enjoying. Since most of my other goals have been accomplished, why lock legendary armor behind raids exclusively? How does that help raiders?”

To me, there’s just never enough time in the day to do all the things I want to accomplish or enjoy doing so I guess ‘purpose-less’ things kind of irk me (looking at you FB) so I’ve always got my eye on what purpose things serve.

So the issue is that this Legendary Armor (lol I don’t have as much time to browse the forums like I used to!) is going to be locked into Raiding. Firstly, I never really cared about keeping up with the Logan’s (as someone joked) so as long as the armor isn’t statistically better than Ascended, there’s no real problem not having it at all. Secondly, there’s always looking at perspective: as a game designer, what would you put at the end of hard repeatable content that will keep the playerbase engaged with the content? You can’t put nothing there. You can’t just hand it out easily. You can’t allow it to be bland or useless. While I can understand the discontent with having story gated into the raids, I can’t feel bad about locking legendary armor. I’ve gone all these years without a legendary weapon and only recently began manufacturing some ascended weapons out of necessity to have some goal to reach (not to get more powerful but to save on inventory space!). The difference is need and want.

Now what the game needs, IMO, is balancing its content. WvW kinda got some overhauls but only after years of waiting. PvP is constantly getting updates and now we’ve got Raiding as a different type of content. The main thing I’d say the game needs is to make sure there is a separation between PvE content and Raiding as well as Dungeon/Fractals.

That said, there will be that friction between what people want. Best to just accept that and post what it is you want and hope that the devs listen for future releases.

Legendary armor, certain trinkets which you can only get from raiding at this time. And of course future rewards.

The issue is that I’m out of goals and locking goals behind something I’m not likely to enjoy is annoying, but that’s not the only agenda here and if you believe it is you’re fooling yourself.

My biggest agenda, if I had to pick one, was letting people know not everyone who doesn’t want to raid can’t do it, is lazy, or wants to press 1 to win.

That’s the bigger agenda.

So what do you say to people who want viper trinkets to finish their build? Do they also have an agenda?

Absurdo.8309:

But you’re not looking for raid content. Please, don’t destroy it. You want more sandbox maps, events like the destruction of lions arch and the zephyrites, and bosses like the marionette. But please understand, we haven’t had new fractals or dungeons for over 2 years. For people like me, who enjoy the combat, this content is tantamount.

So ask for what you’re looking for. New maps. World events. But don’t neuter or slow down raids in the process. It’s ok for people to enjoy different content in this game.

I appreciate how genuine this post is. Also, while I am unlikely to play raids, I agree that players who like this type of content ought to get such content periodically.

I believe that there are members in almost every demographic who seem unhappy whenever anything gets added that isn’t their preferred content. Those sub-demographics seem to get larger whenever a content drought in general happens.

For me, the issue also seems to be that ANet — like most if not all MMO companies — just cannot come out with stuff fast enough. I was hoping that after the China release stopped sapping developer time, that ANet would both diversify content offerings and get back to more regular content releases. I’m not sure that quarterly releases are going to fit the bill, especially if the actual playable content offered is the equivalent of a boss revamp.

HoT was indeed a change in emphasis for ANet. Not only were raids added, but the maps were more narrowly focused than the core maps (except DT and SW, perhaps). I expect that the pendulum will swing back, maybe as soon as the HoT revisions hinted at. I expect that those revisions will be yet another case of ANet spending resources to make something, then spending even more to modify it. In other words, I’m in wait-and-see mode while remaining dubious.

So, I expect that Vayne will get the content he and doubtless others are after, sooner or later. I also expect that the wait will be too long for some. What I wish I didn’t expect is that some group is going to get thrown under the bus in the process.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

They didn’t push instanced content, they pushed open world content. That’s the point.

And this is still the case.

The raid team is less than 5% of the dev team. Raids are part of HoT and represent a small fraction of the expansion.

I agree with this. It doesn’t really have to do with what I’m talking about in my OP, though. This is simply a response to someone telling me why what I’m saying is essentially wrong. My argument isn’t that raids shouldn’t exist.

My argument is that specific rewards shouldn’t be locked behind them, as in an entire tier of gear, or functionality. They didn’t do it in Guild Wars 1, and I don’t really see the need to do this here.

It doesn’t matter if 1 person works on raids or 100, if people feel disenfranchised by having something in game that they simply can’t get without spending hours doing content they don’t like.

Absurdo.8309:

I appreciate how genuine this post is. But I fundamentally disagree with its conclusion.

I dabbled in a couple of mmo’s before guild wars 2, but never really got hooked on any others. What hooked me on guild wars 2 was the active combat and cooperative open world mechanics.

I can dodge. I can move while attacking. I don’t have 4 skill bars worth of skills. There’s no kill stealing. No node stealing.

For my first year, I enjoyed the open world. It’s beautiful. Quests appear to have meaning. There’s always another nook to explore.

But, eventually, you discover everything. Yes, anet had living story releases, but you beat those too. So what kept me in game? Fractals and dungeons. I just love the combat. Can’t get enough.

So raids? They help bring out some of those combat mechanics. And they do a really good job in doing it.

I can see why people are upset. There’s no real exploration in the new zones. Most are somewhat dangerous, so you can’t really stop and smell the roses. And the story was so short that you can beat it in a couple of days.

But you’re not looking for raid content. Please, don’t destroy it. You want more sandbox maps, events like the destruction of lions arch and the zephyrites, and bosses like the marionette. But please understand, we haven’t had new fractals or dungeons for over 2 years. For people like me, who enjoy the combat, this content is tantamount.

So ask for what you’re looking for. New maps. World events. But don’t neuter or slow down raids in the process. It’s ok for people to enjoy different content in this game.

How is not looking an entire tier behind raid rewards destroying raids? Or are you saying people will only raid if you force them to for rewards? I don’t believe dungeon runners are half the player base, even though more than half the player base as run dungeons. I’ve run dungeons dozens of times…each dungeon dozens of times, with the exception of TA Aetherblade and Arah path four which I’ve probably run a dozen times. I do it to help people in my guild if they want something for an achievement, but for much of the time I find it to be more of a chore.

Yes, there are those who love dungeons and raids, but if they’re not a majority you shouldn’t create rewards just for that group that include functionality. In Guild Wars 1, everyone could get top level stuff. What you couldn’t get were skins.

I don’t understand how applying that here would kill raids. I’m not anti raid. I’m anti-taking away goals that might help keep people playing who don’t want to raid.

If I started raiding, within months, I’d be looking for another MMO, because ultimately it’s too much time playing something I’m not personally enjoying. Since most of my other goals have been accomplished, why lock legendary armor behind raids exclusively? How does that help raiders?

Fade to Black.7042:

Didn’t read the thread but only OP post.
I agree what Vayne said, and my conclusion is that MMOS aren’t for you. People who like playing MMOS like to compete against other players, you’ll find friends bc at some point you don’t want to be alone, and you’ll have a good time with them for example beating Raid boss, doing guild runs etc…
People who really don’t like this game or any game, just don’t come here braging about it, they just leave and move on, they simply doesn’t care about the game.

I don’t understand what are you trying to say? complain about something that isn’t working ? just drop an idea, what would you like gw2 to have.

I too like you started playing rpg with papers and dices, rpg and mmos are nothing alike, if you want to have the rpg feeling of progressing exploring dungeons doing a quest just go play Baldur’s Gate or something like that.

This is pure projection on this part. Even years ago, Scott Hartsman who was the lead designer of Rift said straight out that developers couldn’t afford to ignore people who solo in MMOs. Wildstar devs, who designed their game around dungeons and raids said that they really didn’t get that more people would want less competitive content and apologized and tried to add that content. And a Loitro dev said directly that less than 10% of Lotro EVER raided or PvPed since launch.

Even Guild Wars 2, before launch in the FAQ, had a question about soloing content. So obviously if a signficant portion of the playerbase is soloing they’re not playing the game to compete.

Then there are people play RP or play MMOs for social reasons. And then there are people like the over 200 people in my guild who just play the game to have fun with friends.

If you have data to prove what you’re saying I’d love to hear it, because it seems to me that many people, including many developers believe that a huge portion of the MMO crowd are casual. For example, of the hardest raids in WoW, Ghostcrawler himself said only 5% finished them. And hard core players continually complain how these games keep getting more and more dumbed down. I’m not sure why you think MMO players on the whole are so competitive.

Fade to Black.7042:

Didn’t read the thread but only OP post.
I agree what Vayne said, and my conclusion is that MMOS aren’t for you. People who like playing MMOS like to compete against other players ….

I disagree with that notion 10 fold.

I love MMOs, I love being surrounded by other flesh and blood players to chat with. But the only competition I’m having is myself vs the game world. I have no compulsion to compete with other players which is why I love GW2. No KS, no rush to the new mat node first, no loot or XP sharing. This game’s PvE is designed to NOT be a competition. You want to compete, go play PvP. Heck go play an FPS or whatever version of sport console title you can school each other in. The only competition you have in PvE is keeping up with the Logan’s in terms of fancy skins or titles or AP or swanky rewards anyone can get if they do content X, that you can wave around in front of one another.

There is a non-insignificant population here that cares squat about PvP or WvW and are simply here for the story, the world, and the ability to interact with it and each other. MMOs aren’t just online versions of playing King of the Mountain when you were 8.

Vayne.8563:

Storm.1653:

If everyone was given the best stuff Just for participating there would be no progression, nothing to work for and would be very boring for the majority. Once you finish the story, then what?? The game is over?? Trying to get your niche experience from a game not designed for it is kind of crazy Tbh.

But that’s exactly how it was in Guild Wars 1, and Guild Wars 1 did fine that way. Why do you think so many people were annoyed by ascended gear?

In Guild Wars 1 we had elite armors and we had normal armors and they were the same in fuction and stats, the only difference was the skins.

We had great weapon skins like the volatic spear, the celestical compass, but the only difference between that and much cheaper weapons was the skin. There was no difference in functionality at all. It worked for five years for Guild Wars 1 and would have continued working except Anet wanted to make a game to take the world to places they couldn’t do within the confines of Guild Wars 1.

That didn’t have to include tiers of gear locked behind specific content. A really awesome skin would have done the same job.

Amen.

I much prefer the idea of player progression post level cap than gear progression. In GW1, after hitting level cap, the focus for me was on completing stories, getting cool weapon and armor skins, and becoming a better player. Long after I had every skin I could ever want, had completed every mission, had a stockpile of tens of thousands of ectos, etc…I was still working on improving as a player…and it was fun to see my personal progression.

Fade to Black.7042:

People who like playing MMOS like to compete against other players,

Just no. Maybe you have not noticed, but the vast majority of PvE in this game is cooperative, not competitive. That is what made this game the success it is. It is not very clever to turn away from that.

Hi Vayne, just wanted to drop in an thank you for this post. It puts down some of my wories in words I as a non-native speaker surely would not have found.

I come from a different perspective with my own MMO experience, but in the end it boils down to more or less the same point.

When the hardcore/raid guys repeated their desire to have parts of this game support their way of gaming, I thought to myself “well, why not? I will never again set foot into something that is responsible for the worst experiences in my MMO history, but I don’t need to. So if they then finally kitten when they get what they want and it does not cost too many dev resources which are then missing in the parts that are played by the majority, I couldn’t care less.”

Well, it turns out that there will be raid-exclusive rewards and now that players who belong to the “non-hardcore” say “well, can we then have a normal mode for this please so that even the players who may have disabilities or are not so much into this stuff can do it at a slower pace?” it shows (again) which box of pandora this whole business has opened. It turns out that several of the tolerance-demanding hardcore players do not have much tolerance in them towards others themselves. Some simply seem to need to feel superior to others and therefore feel an urge to lock others out.

While this may be a personal problem and there is for sure professional help for that, it is something ANet could have foreseen and countered before it became obvious, because it can quickly become toxic for “the best MMO community around”. Therefore I think it is really time for the countermeasures:
a) raids need an adjustable difficulty setting
b) raids should not have a raid-exclusive gear rarity level

Storm.1653:

If everyone was given the best stuff Just for participating there would be no progression, nothing to work for and would be very boring for the majority. Once you finish the story, then what?? The game is over?? Trying to get your niche experience from a game not designed for it is kind of crazy Tbh.

But that’s exactly how it was in Guild Wars 1, and Guild Wars 1 did fine that way. Why do you think so many people were annoyed by ascended gear?

In Guild Wars 1 we had elite armors and we had normal armors and they were the same in fuction and stats, the only difference was the skins.

We had great weapon skins like the volatic spear, the celestical compass, but the only difference between that and much cheaper weapons was the skin. There was no difference in functionality at all. It worked for five years for Guild Wars 1 and would have continued working except Anet wanted to make a game to take the world to places they couldn’t do within the confines of Guild Wars 1.

That didn’t have to include tiers of gear locked behind specific content. A really awesome skin would have done the same job.

maddoctor.2738:

Tailoring a game to 4-5 people is really easy, in an MMORPG you have loads of players so what do you do? Tailor it to some unofficial “majority”? Anything that isn’t doable or desirable by that “majority” should be removed or tweaked so they can do it?

Not quite, but close. You can have content and rewards for minorities, but you have still to pay attention, so if that a content/reward is desirable to a majority, then that majority should be able to play/obtain it. Preferably without getting to hate the game in the process.

maddoctor.2738:

And anyone who bought the game for the instanced based content has been disenfranchised for years. When was the last dungeon added to the game?

Yes, i’d rather have more dungeons than Raids. I agree with you on this completely.

Leo G.4501:

This thread confuses me.

So what is the issue here? The suggestion?

From what I can figure, you’ve had a past experience with some fashion of RPGs and you want an MMO to recapture that?

To me, my most interesting and influential RPG experiences were via online thread/skype. The story was partly within each character and the reward was revealing more about characters and how they fit in the world. No armor, trinkets, baubles, etc (although if you wanted them for your character you could certainly seek them). Could there be another online game that accomplishes the same? Maybe…only 1 I can think of off the top of my head, but even then, it’s only approaching similarity. It won’t ever reach those thread/skype sessions.

Taking what games like GW2 are, they’re just experiences. Different ones. I never seen the point of affording effort to discussing what something isn’t. Save the effort discussing what something could be…or just creating that ‘could be’ outcome yourself…but then I consider myself a creator. I think I enjoy creating a ‘thing’ more than I like getting in that ‘thing’ and test driving it.

The issue is that this game once provided me with an experience I enjoyed and I enjoy it less now due to a perceived change in focus. I’m not sure how that isn’t an issue, or how much clearer I could have really said this.

When this game launched, dynamic events and the open world gave me more of the feeling I was looking for than either raids or PvP. Those things are going to be more focused on now than the were in the past, which is something that takes away from my personal enjoyment. Others seem to have similar issues. But I thought why we have this issues would be interesting to look at as well.

maddoctor.2738:

If I recall the term “living breathing world” appeared later in the game’s lifetime and not at release, or even during the first couple of months. The “Living World” came later on and part of the game that was sold included instanced content. All the early releases included instanced content, Ascend to Madness, Trix’s mini-dungeon etc It’s not like they hated instanced content

Druid is an excellent DPS and offensive support option, enhancing the damage of the entire group with multiple buffs. They have both power and condition damage builds that have nothing to do with healing.

Hard mode option was added much later in GW1 lifetime, at that point it was much needed to keep the older content relevant.

We don’t even have ONE complete Raid, we don’t know what exactly will be needed to craft the complete Legendary armor, and yet people are asking for a reduced difficulty setting already.

They mentioned that the game would feature a living, breathing world before launch.

August 9th, 2011

My name is Angel Leigh McCoy, and I’m one of several writers on the Guild Wars 2 design team. We’ve been molding Tyria into a living, breathing world, and I’m here to share some audio clips of in-game dialogue and give you some insight into the sylvari, Tyria’s newest race.

As to raids and reduced difficulty setting. The people who are asking for that paid just as much money as you did and they have as much right to ask for what they want as you do to ask for what you want. At that point it’s up to ANet to decide which side to do content for but they need to be able to hear what everyone wants, not just the people who want raids for raiders.

maddoctor.2738:

Tailoring a game to 4-5 people is really easy, in an MMORPG you have loads of players so what do you do? Tailor it to some unofficial “majority”? Anything that isn’t doable or desirable by that “majority” should be removed or tweaked so they can do it?

If I feel disenfranchised I’m going to feel that way, fair or not.

And anyone who bought the game for the instanced based content has been disenfranchised for years. When was the last dungeon added to the game?

Anyone who bought the game for the instanced content paid very little attention to the advertisements prior to the game’s launch. The words living breathing world were mentioned over and over again. What part of that makes you think instanced content.

Yes there was a page devoted to dungeons but most of the rhetoric was about dynamic events and living breathing worlds. I knew it was the focus long before the game launched.

They also said there was no dedicated healer class, which changed a bit with raids, considering the ranger’s elite spec is a healing spec and if you don’t want to heal, well too bad.

The game was never sold to be focused on instances. Where as Anet did say repeatedly that the game centers on dynamic events.

As for tailoring a game to 4-5 people of course that’s impossible. But then, putting in something for say 20% of the people and locking rewards behind it isn’t exactly going to make you a hero either.

Raids with multiple difficulties but must lower rewards for the lower ones and special skins for the higher ones would have solved the problem.

I mean Guild Wars 1 had a normal mode and a hard mode for every dungeon, so we know this company can do that.

The question is why they decided not to do that.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Even in single player RPGs rewards are “locked” behind specific content. Putting specific rewards behind specific content is how every RPG work, and that’s how MMORPGs work (Because they are RPGs)

In pen and paper RPG that content is always tailored for the players. As a good GM, you’d never put a reward one of the players might care about behind a content/quest that player would dislike. And if you found out this was the case mid-adventure, you’d redesign on the fly to avoid that problem.

RPGs are way more than you make them, dungeon hack’n’slash campaigns are practically the lowest, most crude form of it.

Obviously I was talking about video game RPGs, which is what MMORPGs are. GMs can’t exist in video games

GMs can exist in online games at least, because they do, but in essence you are right. However, I used to have a conversation with new GMs back in the day when I was considered sort of a well known GM back in high school. What I said back then and maintain to this day is the the success of the game will be based on the GM’s ability to tailor the content to the group.

That means that if you make it too hard so no one will succeed, you won’t be a popular GM. If you make it so easy that it’s a cake walk and there’s no chance of not succeeding your players will get bored.

There’s always a middle ground. The problem is, as you’ve pointed out, there is no GM here, but the devs have to work with the same guildlines reguardless

If the game is too easy people get bored and if 70% of the game can’t or won’t (it really doesn’t matter) participate in an area of the game where they give exclusive rewards, then the devs have to prepare for backlash.

This isn’t about being fair. It has nothing to do with fairness. Everyone paid for the core game and the core game didn’t have raids, and futhermore had nothing remotely like them. We all bought the expansion based on what he knew from the core game. Where the game has significantly diverged for that the company has paid the price in the good will of veteran players.

Basically the happier you were with the game before the expansion the less likely you are to forgive the changes that made the game less enjoyable for you.

Now, having hit the level cap for achievement points and having nothing but long term goals left, I’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. I don’t think I should be forced to play content I don’t enjoy and I don’t think giving players like me nothing to work towards is really the best alternative to keep us playing.

You can say it’s not fair if you like but that doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. If I feel disenfranchised I’m going to feel that way, fair or not.

I enjoyed the marionette and save Lion’s Arch events…… I can’t remember anything in season 2 that I liked

Ashen.2907:

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons. That Hackmaster +12 would be taken from the hoard of the biggest, baddest, most challenging boss at the end of a series of increasingly difficult encounters.

The repetition thing…yeah, but a GM in a pen and paper game, in general, has more ability to write new, “playable content”, that doesnt involve repeating last week’s adventure for his weekly group to enjoy. Some posters on these forums have listed play times that equate to 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, since launch over 3 years ago. I have never met a pen an paper GM, myself included, who could meet that demand with new content.

When I GMed I did a lot of stuff on the fly. Obviously programmers can’t do this, so your point is valid.

But I’m quite tired of people assuming that because I don’t want to raid, I’m lazy. It’s not my thing because it was NEVER my thing.

As for the most potent rewards, that’s not a rule at all and never happened with our games. You could get anything anywhere, in much the same way you could get a precursor killing a deer in Queensdale.

That was how the game was originally designed. Sure you had to do dungeons to get legendaries, but you didn’t have to devote huge amounts of time to get through a dungeon. What the program is asking for here is to do something that requires quite an investment in time and energy to get something. Dungeons really didn’t do that. It’s taken the commitment level to new heights.

Some might find that fine, but I don’t. Not three years into a game.

This post hits the issue I’m experiencing with the recent game direction head on.

The developers have moved further away from the idea of an online world that was continually changing (eg, giving us something new to do on a regular basis) and more toward the same tired model every other AAA MMO uses.

It is now less about the player’s story (“This is my story”) than it’s ever been and that is disappointing.

The developers need to read Vayne’s post closely and, in my opinion, realize they are rapidly drifting away from their core customers – and trying to force fit tired content models they have seen bring customers into other MMOs into a game they were never designed to be a part of. In summary, they need to get back to the basics and philosophy that made this game amazing.

If shouts are 2x instant and 2x 1/4, signets should by all instant, or at least earth instant and fire/water 1/4. If shouts gives auras, signets should at least give 1s of invulnerability.

Far more builds will be available if we will have water field as utility. Instant. Glyph of ele power or rework glyph of renewal or arcane blast rework into arcane water.

Arcane Surge should add condi dmg or condi duration and arcane skills attuned to earth should immobilize+cripple or immoblize+2stacks of bleeding. Rest remain unchanged.

Bliding Ashes should provide its own source of burning foes.

Piercing Shards should provide its own source of voulnerability.

Serrated Stone should provide its own source of bleeding.

Traits that gives you bonus stats based on other stat should have any additional effect to be more appealing: power overwhelimg, ferious winds and strenght of stone.

Ele should gain two new elite skills: one for underwater and second something like glint wings that launch foes, but instead its could be pheonix, pheonix of fire/lightning/aquatic/dust (depends on attunement) for additional effect. Well telegraphed and would feel like elite.

Edit:/ I came up with yet another new version of lingering elements version 3.0 : you choose one weapon skill as f5 so it can be use regardless of attunement. Due too that in many cases probably I would choose the hardest hitting aa’s to cover my weak dmg from other elements.

This class with most weapon sets used to be more about fast decision making before HoT came out. Overloads have ruined the class for me, it would not matter how hard you buffed the current state of overloads, pressing a button just to watch a massive aoe go to town on your enemies for years on end is just not my idea of a good time.

It’s BORING, and it needs to change! While some people may like the idea of the current state of overloads I have a feeling most of my elementalist bretheren think its horse kitten. I find it really hard to believe people wanted the elementalist playstyle go from DDR level button pressing to a game of Roll your forehead across the keyboard until you hit the overload button.

Please speak up and let anet know they’ve made the class waaaaay too boring.

TL;DR. This aint about balance, this is about removing a boring mechanic and replacing it with something fun and interesting.

The warhorn skill “Cyclone” only affects an opposing player once when the skill fact lists it as having 9 impacts.
Guild mates and I tested in our PvP server. We tested to see if the skill would strip more than one stack of stab off an opposing elementalist’s Armor of Earth (10stab). Only 1 stack of stab was ever removed, even when following the cyclone animation.
We also tested if the skill could “pull” a single foe multiple times. The opposing player took a direct hit of Cyclone, taking the effect of pull, then stunbroke. The opposing player then ran into the cyclone after stunbreaking but never was affected after the initial pull.
I expect Cyclone should work similarly to Revenant’s “Surge of the Mists” where a single target potentially may be hit by most of the impacts of that skill.

If any others could run tests of their own and comment or vouch, it’d be greatly appreciated.