Hell, FotM is a fantastic place to show your prowess, if only they didn’t tarnish it by just making it a gear gate.
Imagine if almost everyone had the same stats, but your group managed to make it deep into FotM. Hell, it could give titles for every level so you can show off your superb mastery of the dodge mechanics.
Instead it is a matter of how many times you have ran it to get the gear that pushes you further.
I want my Mist Delver (28) title.
Can i have Mist Delver (3)?
The current iteration should be Mist Delver (249 runs)
speculation and useless conjecture.
Um, no?
lol, he said that ascended gear is going to be endgame for the next year
He also said that they want to continue increasing the power curve
Your post spoke of new tiers, new stats blah blah. They have said no new tiers and releasing ascended gradually through all of next year as a shallow power curve. You’re being dramatic because you want no power curve, its not a new set of gear entirely every 6 months, which is what your post said it is. Thats speculation and useless conjecture. You are speculating that we will need new gear every 6 months which is not what they have said and 2-3 items out of 12 do not make an entirely new set of gear either. So yes, what you have is speculation and useless conjecture, nothing factual.
They also said that they will likely release new tiers along with expansions.
You think they are just going to increase the power curve for the next year then just stop? Really? What would be the thought process there? If they are for an increasing power curve, they are going to keep doing it. If they are against it, they would stop it.
They have said they are going to continue increasing it. By what logic do you think they will stop increasing it?
Hell, FotM is a fantastic place to show your prowess, if only they didn’t tarnish it by just making it a gear gate.
Imagine if almost everyone had the same stats, but your group managed to make it deep into FotM. Hell, it could give titles for every level so you can show off your superb mastery of the dodge mechanics.
Instead it is a matter of how many times you have ran it to get the gear that pushes you further.
I want my Mist Delver (28) title.
Lording it over the plebs can be accomplished in more ways than just stat advantage. that’s true. The problem is MMOs over the years have moved away from designing game content that can only be accessed by the elite and towards a model where everything is easy enough that everyone can do it. That means the only way left to allow people to feel better than their peers is through better gear obtained through an easy but very reptitive grind.
Look for example at the original EQ. Sure, gear from Vox or Nagafen was good. But the primary appeal of the gear wasn’t the stats. It was the exclusivity. If you had a cloak of flames you were cool not because you attacked 10% faster than someone with a FBSS but because you were one of 5 people on the whole server who had one.
These days content is designed so everyone can get the Cloak of Flames if they keep at it long enough. It’s not locked off by difficulty, it’s locked off by time. In that environment people naturally gravitate towards stats as the way of feeling superior.
You don’t need a “Cloak of Flames” to be recognized as being good at the game.
You can be recognized as being good at the game by being good at the game around people. The whole concept of needing a ribbon to prove that you’re good at the game is pretty dumb.
And again, to continue this thought…
“Vertical progression” (I hate the term but it does make sense) makes the whole being good thing irrelevant. Oh, you finished AC EM with a full group of 35s? Cool story bro, we do it in 7 minutes on our level 80 full exotic group. Inflated stats remove any kind of achievement from most of the game.
Lording it over the plebs can be accomplished in more ways than just stat advantage. that’s true. The problem is MMOs over the years have moved away from designing game content that can only be accessed by the elite and towards a model where everything is easy enough that everyone can do it. That means the only way left to allow people to feel better than their peers is through better gear obtained through an easy but very reptitive grind.
Look for example at the original EQ. Sure, gear from Vox or Nagafen was good. But the primary appeal of the gear wasn’t the stats. It was the exclusivity. If you had a cloak of flames you were cool not because you attacked 10% faster than someone with a FBSS but because you were one of 5 people on the whole server who had one.
These days content is designed so everyone can get the Cloak of Flames if they keep at it long enough. It’s not locked off by difficulty, it’s locked off by time. In that environment people naturally gravitate towards stats as the way of feeling superior.
You don’t need a “Cloak of Flames” to be recognized as being good at the game.
You can be recognized as being good at the game by being good at the game around people. The whole concept of needing a ribbon to prove that you’re good at the game is pretty dumb.
speculation and useless conjecture.
Um, no?
lol, he said that ascended gear is going to be endgame for the next year
He also said that they want to continue increasing the power curve
So, I’m pretty angry right now.
I spent a lot of time, effort, energy, and gems into acquiring my two and a half exotic sets. I understood this to be an investment because, like GW1, this gear wouldn’t become obsolete.
With the implementation of Ascended gear, I’ve realized that this wasn’t the case. All of the gear that I so painstakingly earned and bought is now obsolete. I’ve realy worked for nothing.
I love the idea of horizontal progression – like GW1, working towards extra skins and other non-combat ways to differentiate your character. I feel chated, lied to, and deceived.
I would like a refund for my gems and for my exotic gear. Or, I would like them transmuted into Ascended gear.
Given exotics are still the “best-in-slot” available for everything except rings and back, how is your current set obsolete? The new ascended tier will be released over time, so you will still get some use out of the gear you have worked hard to obtain before you need to think about upgrading.
And then the thing between Ascended and legendaries comes out.
And then the thing after legendaries
And then the thing after that.
And it’s just an endless grind that becomes obsolete in 6 months.
While I agree, and that is a very good argument against “vertical progression”…cool story bro.
But vertical progression is all about lording it over normal people, whether its PVE or PVP.
Once people come to the realization that it is possible to “lord of the plebs” without having 3x (or in D3’s case, 40 times) higher stats, they will come to expect more of the genre.
There was no gear difference in GW…but there were kitten sure people that I didn’t want to play with, and far fewer people that I actually felt comfortable playing with in that I wouldn’t have to carry them since they aren’t better than the AI.
Vertical progression is a crutch.
To add onto this, the “there’s nothing to do” crowd did kind of have a point. The structure of the original GW was far more… accommodating for “horizontal progression” and “lording over the plebs” by knowledge and skill.
The mission based system of Guild Wars worked better for getting people together for general playing, and the personal story fails HORRIBLY in the same sense. Guild Wars 2 does a great job of making it worthwhile to play around people, but fails to capture any essence of playing with people, outside of dungeons anyway.
But vertical progression is all about lording it over normal people, whether its PVE or PVP.
Once people come to the realization that it is possible to “lord of the plebs” without having 3x (or in D3’s case, 40 times) higher stats, they will come to expect more of the genre.
There was no gear difference in GW…but there were kitten sure people that I didn’t want to play with, and far fewer people that I actually felt comfortable playing with in that I wouldn’t have to carry them since they aren’t better than the AI.
Vertical progression is a crutch.
The closest game to “perfect” that I can think of is EVE, but of course some people prefer fantasy to scifi, or theme park to sandbox. EVE is still the best though.
EVE does have a lot of redeeming qualities that just don’t exist in other MMOs.
But it also lacks in a lot of other areas. The only part of the game I can get into is mining. But then to get past the standard frigate you need to join a mining corporation that hauls the ore you mine, which requires all of the horrible things of raiding such as setting up time and being required to be there, etc etc.
I said REQUIRED grind, you don’t need the ascended gear if you don’t want it outside of that ONE dungeon itself past a certain point
For now.
Now, outside of ascended gear and the Fractals of the mists, what grind REQUIRED grind is there? I am just a little lost in regards to what people are considering a grind in THIS game, and I personally don’t feel a grind that is required to compete at the present time.
Just asking for clarification.
…what?
Your post is basically “besides this new grindy thing they added to the game, where is the grind people are complaining about?”
Really?
It’s also sad when the casual player thinks they deserve more for being lazy or impatient.
Nobody is asking for doing more for less, I don’t think. I think they are asking for more to not equal more.
One problem with vertical progression in games is that it obsoletes content. The difference between 35 with blues and 80 with exotics in AC Explorable is staggering to say the least. A fully geared group of 80s can blow through any of the paths in minutes, obsoleting content besides farming gold or whatever.
A good chunk of the player base in this game is coming from GW1. In Guild Wars, no matter how many thousands of hours you spent farming to get the millions of gold required to by FoW armor, Gates of Madness in Hard Mode was still hard. Exactly the same difficulty as if you had bought a fresh set of level 20 armor for 5k gold.
Regardless of what you may want to claim, those GW players aren’t wrong to want the same system. GW did exceedingly well compared to most other MMOs since…well since WoW.
Do you get anything in Counter-Strike, Battlefield 1942 or Minecraft for playing them? No. They are simply fun. I wait for the day when MMO developers will start taking risks and implement a system that will truly focus on fun instead of grind.
The problem with this, is that RPG content can never continue being fun. CS, Battlefield, and CoD are “fun” (using this term loosely) because they are competitive, and no two enemies are always the same and encounters are different each and every time.
Minecraft is fun in the same way that Lego’s are fun. It appeals to a different section of your psych than most other games, and that part likely cannot be appealed to in the scope of an MMO, though I’ve pitched a few ideas to my co-workers and other designers about how to translate it into an MMO, but nothing has come of it yet.
RPG content is stagnant and cannot continue being fun for the sake of fun. Gear grinds are intended to keep people hooked long enough for new content to be designed. You mention Skyrim in your post…how many hours did you play Skyrim? 100? 200?. I personally played it around 150 hours. I thoroughly enjoyed it…but there’s no reason to go back to playing it, even with the new DLCs.
The only way for this to be countered is user-generated content…but there’s many implications with that. EVE is the closest example to a successful user-generated game, but translating that into a standard MMO format is near impossible.
GW2 my friends…is nowhere near the perfect MMO. Can’t even live up to it’s name.
. . . a perfect video game cannot exist. It is just that simple.
This is actually something I’ve came to realize in my many discussions with co-workers and fellow developers.
Every mechanic and system has aspects that are good and bad. Some good mechanics are polar opposites of other good mechanics.
It is a beautiful sight when a studio puts together complementing mechanics that mesh extraordinarily well together…but it will never be perfect, just like there will never be a perfect movie or a perfect painting.
Gaming background? Lol…I’ve played everything, and am a current developer and programmer for a small gaming company that has released a couple very successful games.
How I feel about GW2? It’s better than other MMOs, but is missing something that makes me want to keep playing it like I did GW1…mainly the shallowness of the character build systems compared to the original. They are lightyears beyond WoW (especially the horribly dumbed down system now), but is still missing something. Every build feels more or less the same.
The only way to create “unique” content is playing with other people.
Doing the same content with two different groups can be VASTLY different experiences. Even more so if different professions and specs actually brought different things to the table rather than just more or less damage.
Trying to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your group and min/max them to overcome difficult challenges is great. But everything is generally too easy, and other people generally too incompetent to have that kind of situation. You’ll have runs that you just blow through everything without stopping, then the runs where you’d have to try to counterbalance your strengths and weaknesses just becomes a frustrating chore.
Gear balance also adds onto this significantly. If content is a joke with decently geared people, it is just going to be frustrating with undergeared people.
That is boatloads of programming and Neverwinter was a series of games they let people run on their servers via a toolset. Making this game open source would be a big mistake, its not a single player RPG. As for the random dungeons..I think FoTM basically is discovering the possibilities with that.
While FotM is new and pretty refreshing (the jumping puzzle type of things, and the “dungeon” aspect are great), it will lose it’s luster and just become going through the motions. I’m sure people delving into level 20+ are already bored out of their minds regards the laser ramp thing and the harpy platform jumping.
Not to say FotM is flawed, it is a great jumping off point. It allows them to easily add in new set pieces to keep things fresh, and being “in the mists”, they aren’t exactly tied to the lore of Tyria or the location, which is fantastic…it lets them design everything from a clean slate.
But yeah, it will never truly be random. It will just be different orders of set pieces in which each set piece loses it’s luster. That said, expecting a truly random dungeon that is interesting every time is a pipe dream at this point in time. It just isn’t possible with current technology.
Obviously you need to earn your gear in an MMORPG and people’s most favourite part of an MMORPG is the gear.
Stopped reading here. I don’t give that many kittens about gear.
I mostly care about depth in character builds. GW2 does fail pretty badly compared to GW1 in that department, but is far better than other MMOs like WoW and RIFT.
I also don’t really care for equipment other than looks. I play the game to have fun playing the game.
I disagree about the depth of character builds. While you have less skills to work with, you have traits to mess around with. I spend a great deal of time in build editors fooling around.
Yeah, but most traits are horrible and or broken, and half of all weapon sets aren’t worth using.
At least the terrible skills in GW1 could possibly be used to complement other skills. In GW2 you’re just pretty much stuck, you can’t make up for a weak weapon set with utility skills…you just simply don’t use that weapon set.
Bunker pretty much means sit on one place and hold ground.
Blink is a short range teleport.
Vertical progression is getting better and better gear the more you play
Horizontal progression is getting different gear the more you play
PBAoE is self centered area of effect.
Obviously you need to earn your gear in an MMORPG and people’s most favourite part of an MMORPG is the gear.
Stopped reading here. I don’t give that many kittens about gear.
I mostly care about depth in character builds. GW2 does fail pretty badly compared to GW1 in that department, but is far better than other MMOs like WoW and RIFT.
Those who may invariably refer to Spectral Agony from GW1 should take a moment to recall that it was more of a plot device and was mitigated by a one-off quest.
Pretty much.
I actually liked the infusion in GW1. I don’t think “you have to do X content to access Y content” is a bad mechanic, in practice. But that already exists with FotM levels.
The whole concept of “you have to do X content repeatedly until you have gear to do Y content” is flawed and grindy.
Only if you can throw them
Yes, people shouldn’t be doing stuff just for the rewards.
But the rewards should also not be so crappy that it’s not worth doing.
And yes, I still think that doing anything in the game should not be about the rewards. That’s like doing your homework only because you know you get a candy bar for it, rather than doing it to learn.
So nothing anywhere in the game should give any rewards and everyone should just start at 80 with the best gear and just do stuff for fun!
Unfortunately, this utopian game would likely fail miserably.
It won’t take 2x the time if there’s 4x the people doing it.
You do realize events scale?
And getting 2x the rewards for something you previously got 1x the rewards for is still going to affect things.
Not really, as most people aren’t regularly doing them, and they are a relatively small part of doing events (usually after a longer chain of them).
And that’s even assuming that events are a significant source of the gold in the game.
So you’re saying that ANet should add in better rewards, thus speeding up inflation and requiring additional coin sinks just because the players are stuck-up, efficiency-minded drones who refuse to do anything that doesn’t give them a tangible reward?
Complaining about inflation when trying to insult people who care about getting things.
Well done in the irony department.
Oh but I’m not complaining about the inflation. It’s just that if you boosted the rewards, the inflation would just catch up and the same thing would repeat.
Which would make all the rewards you get seem even less significant. Which would just repeat the same topic, except now everything would be worth even less.
Boosting the rewards does not lead to fun. It should not lead to fun. That’s like saying that you cannot have fun without rewards. And that’s pretty screwed up, if you ask me.
Getting 2x the reward for something that takes 2x the amount of time isn’t going to cause inflation.
Guardian support equals Wall of Reflection
Sigils only affect the weapon skills don’t they?
So you’re saying that ANet should add in better rewards, thus speeding up inflation and requiring additional coin sinks just because the players are stuck-up, efficiency-minded drones who refuse to do anything that doesn’t give them a tangible reward?
Complaining about inflation when trying to insult people who care about getting things.
Well done in the irony department.
Thieves are about stealth and there is nothing stealthy about a black powder rifle particularly at night where the smoke lingers for what seems like an eternity. With that said i dont mind a 1200 range attack but Rifles certainly aren’t the way to go
Flintlock Pistols weren’t exactly the stealthiest things ever either.
I do admit there would likely need to be restrictions for it though.
Something like one message every minute or something to keep people from “chatting” in it. As well as possibly a permissions thing within the guild, so that if someone has a tendency to spam it, the guild leader can just take away their rights (or not give it to everyone in the guild to being with).
I think multiple guilds is still good for the guild member as they can represent a guild that has more people online. And plus they can join specific orientated guilds joining a) a guild that has all their old friends in, b) a dungeon-specialist guild c) pvp specialist d) wvw specialist guild.
But being part of multiple guilds doesn’t really work out that well.
I was part of a guild with IRL friends (before they all quit playing). If I joined another guild, and represented that guild to find people for a dungeon or whatnot, I’d miss everything that my IRL friends were talking about in guild chat. I guess I could just represent, do some LFG spam, then go back to my friend’s guild…but then if everyone was doing that, nobody would be there to see the LFG spam.
Yes, it is good in concept, but kind of flawed in implementation. If you aren’t representing a guild, you may as well not be in that guild as your name on the roster spot is irrelevant to both you and the people in that guild. Some way of communicating with people not representing is the most obvious way of getting past that barrier.
I’m just tossing my idea into the hat, as I think it would address the main issue (finding groups) without filling your screen with clutter from showing guild chat from all guilds. The main point of guilds is to do stuff together anyway, and you can do that while representing or not. If you don’t want to do stuff with a guild, why are you part of it anyway?
care to explain how resetting servers will fix all those glitches ?
Because a lot of the glitches consist of stuck pathing or NPCs getting stuck in or under terrain.
Resetting the server would reset the NPCs.
Group events wouldn’t be so bad if they were worth it. They’re not all broken, but many are far too difficult for the lack of award, the troll you are referring to is a good example. I don’t agree with their removal. Scaling and a reward tweak would be enough.
Yeah, rewards feel terrible for them. They require a lot of people, and usually require a lot of time…for the reward of a normal event.
Should be like at least 2.5x a normal event.
I was also thinking on the lines of this.
1. Considering your idea – Broadcasting
I don’t think it’s reasonable for anyone who is not representing but are in one of your guilds to receive this ‘broadcast’. It may be the case where they don’t really want to deal with that guild and stopped representing for a break.
Then what’s the point?
If someone joins a guild, then that is their prerogative. Members of a guild are part of a guild. If they “don’t want to hear it”, then leave the guild, or turn off Guild Broadcast (or whatever). The whole being part of multiple guilds but not really part of guilds thing is kind of dumb.
I was excited about the whole being part of multiple guilds thing. But it turns out, all it does is artificially inflate roster size, as 80% of guild members have nothing to do with your guild despite being active.
Having fun already is the reward system.
Anyone who is playing a game to “get better rewards” is shorting themselves.
The reward of games is to have fun, not get better items.
I think this would be a neat idea. Of course gotta work out all the little complications, but it would certainly be interesting.
Yeah, there’s admittedly a lot of small complications that I didn’t address. Like how they come into existence to begin with, how the guild leader “takes” items away from inactive players, etc. There’s a plethora of different solutions to all of the different small complications, and I figured that addressing all of the small things would make the heart of the suggestion take a back seat to the specifics, so I didn’t.
Lack of a better term, so you’re have to excuse the play on GW1 vocabulary.
Anyway, what I’m finding with guilds, is that they are all big, and all have a lot of active members, but only about 15-20% of the members of any guild are representing. That doesn’t really help find groups to do things unless you send the other 80% whispers.
So, what I’m thinking about, is a special chat channel that will announce something to all of the members of all of the guilds you are a part of, whether they are representing or not. Would make finding groups infinitely easier, or whatever else.
Maybe only allow certain ranks of guild members to use it, so that not everyone is spamming it all the time.
We have soulbound, and account bound.
I think items that were “guild bound” would be interesting. I’m envisioning items that could be put into the guild bank, and people could take them out and use them as long as they were representing the guild. Leave the guild or stand down, and it gets taken off and gets sent back to the guild bank. Obviously couldn’t be sold, either to the vendor or the trading post.
Bump?
Hardly any attention at all to this? Is that enough to just assume it is good and not controversial enough for people to troll?
the rising issue of party leaders kicking multiple group members to invite guildies or friends after they have gotten to that last boss
Pretty simple fix…track whether the player left on their own volition or if they D/C’d.
Only allow “catch up” if the player wasn’t kicked.
It never ceased to be an appreciation thread. You just mentioned faults, I’ve yet to see any.
Best support, best damage, best survivability, giant hammers.
Guardians have faults?
Just thought I’d mention how great it is that I picked Guardian as my main.
Really sucks for other classes lol
Yeah, no. What happens if there was an emergency and have to leave?
I’m more concerned about GODAWFUL groups.
I was in a group earlier that spent 2 hours getting down the second boss of AC Story Mode. I ended up leaving at the twins because there was just no way, with half of the people spawning back at the beginning of the dungeon and the other half opening and closing the doors and not being able to figure out how to get through.
A global LFG bulletin board type of thing would be pretty cool…assuming it wasn’t hidden away at the bottom tab of some random page.
No thanks