Nope the writing analogy works perfectly. I submit a proposal for a book and the publisher accepts that proposal. While working on the book, I see something that’s there doesn’t really work. Most of the time it’s something minor, but sometimes it’s something major. I’ve had a book I’ve delivered so completely different from the synopsis I sold that you’d almost not know it was the same book. The publisher doesn’t care if the book is good and the book will sell.
The publisher in your analogy is not comparable to the customer in an MMO. The publisher is NCSoft.
Anet is a business. They’re not your best friend. They’re not your parents. They’re a company. They put out a product they try something and if that thing seems to not be working they are pretty much obligated to try something else. From this perspective it makes them neither dishonorable or liars. It does, however, make them pragmatic.
I think that choosing to tell lies arguably does make one a liar. Advertising X in order to convince people interested in X to purchase your product, and then, after collecting their money, choosing to not deliver X is arguably both dishonorable and an example of lying.
If you invested millions into a product, millions of dollars, five years of your life, and you saw it not work, what’s your responsibility to the player base? To remain attached to what you said three years ago, before you saw the trends, or to change the game to make it work “better”.
Your responsibility to your consumers is to deliver the product you advertised to them in order to convince them to spend their money.
Not everyone is necessarily going to agree what’s better, but Anet wouldn’t have changed it if things were going great in the first place.
According to ANet things were going great from the beginning. This has been used to further advertise and sell the game. The turn around began within what, two months of launch ? A little hard to argue that the advertised model was failing when ANet has maintained that the game has done well from the beginning and the model was changed so shortly after launch.
Name one other game where the AVERAGE rate of reaching max level is 5 days
I would love to see the data (and source) demonstrating that the average time to reach max level in GW2 is five days.
I too have a hard time accepting the standard subscription model after playing GW2 for a year.
After GW2 I have the opposite experience. For the first time in years I am looking at going back to sub based games rather than no monthly fee (F2P or B2P) games.
I don’t buy this argument that there is a “barrier” to subs other than a financial one. And if you can’t spend $10-$15 on a sub, you need to do something else other than gaming with your free time.
The barrier is there (for some people) not because they cannot afford $10 -$15 per month, but because they do not like the idea of renting their games. A guild-mate in a hybrid model game averaged $70 – $80 per month in cash shop expenditures but refused to pay $10 per month for a subscription that would have included much of what he was buying through the cash shop.
i – Through a bigger supply from farmers, the materials in question become close to worthless….
This means players who do not farm require more gold, because they too need to buy a huge stockpile of for example ancient wood logs, and they are forced to use the very farms the farmers exploit in order to gain enough gold.
The first part of the quote and the second contradict each other.
Farmers bring down the market value of many things that can be farmed, lowering prices on those items.
Farming can impact inflation regarding farmable currency, such as gold, but this will be very heavily impacted by the ratio of farmers to non farmers in game.
If farmers are a relatively small portion of the player base and their combined income represents a small portion of the total size of the active currency in game then their farming will have little impact on inflation.
If farmers represent a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of the player base then the resulting inflation doesn’t matter as much because most people have the large currency reserves to offset.
Of course a middle ground is possible as well. Even so, as you said, driving down prices on some materials is part of this process and so non farmers will face increased prices on some things, offset by lowered prices on others.
I posted this because I didnt want it to get lost in the other thread.
So they are resetting level 80 fractal to 30. So what?
It is just a number. Much ado about nothing.They are just saying that anything over 50 now equals 30 and there are new levels with new mechanics being added.
Most people “skipped” the odd levels anyway because of the extra chest the even ones gave. Now we wont have to repeat to gain levels.
You lost nothing but a number.
Did they take fractal relics from your account? No
Did they take ascended items got? No
Did they take any gold you earned? No
Did they take any loot you found? No
Did they take anything besides a number? NoIt wasnt even a number anyone but you could see.
So sorry but I just dont get the big deal with this.
Threatening to quit the game over this is just plan silly.
You had alot of fun doing those fractals and now you have new ones to enjoy.I am looking forward to not having to level alts any more.
I had a necro that was in the 20s but guess what necros arent good for high levels so I had to level another class. Big deal, now I can play any of them I want. As far as the account bound rewards. Most days except weekends I dont have time to run more than one set of fractals a day any way and most of the time I dont want to anyway.If they decided to make the overall level cap for characters 60 instead of 80 but you still kept all the XP, the gold, the loot etc you got along the way, but now its 60 instead of 80, would you still be this upset? My guess is that people would rejoice that its no longer so long to get to level cap than it was before, and now leveling alts is much shorter.
TLDR:
It doesn’t matter to you and so it should not matter to anyone else and they are silly for not having the same priorities in their fun as you ?
But you cant really expect them to keep what amounts to a dev bugged zone as the standard.
I would be inclined to agree if ANet refunded the money spent on gems to access the “bugged zone.”
why should they refund you gems for accessing the bugged zone? no one ever asked you to try to break the wall via gems? If we found out using the speed boost item allowed you to run through certain walls, and behind these walls was an unfinished dungeon, should they refund your gems for buying this item?
When they closed this use, and you only had access because you unlocked what amounted to a waypoint, didnt you figure hey guys we are in a bugged zone that isnt currently accessible except by us and the people we choose to invite.
Should they make everyone now do everything you did, when they never intended you to break through the wall?
They mislabeled it an infinite dungeon, it was not that. But you guys had to realize you werent where you were supposed to be some time ago. You enjoyed being there, but dont expect the game to cater to you, or refund you money for the tool you used to break the mode.
You are making an inaccurate assumption.
I have not played Fractals at the mentioned levels and do not know anyone who has.
ANet sold a product to people knowing that the product was being used to progress in certain content. I would tend to agree that the refunds should not cover purchases made after they, “closed this use,” though.
no game company, or producer of items covers refunds for improper use of an item. People sell lockpicks, if i use it to break into an abandoned building, i cant expect to get a refund if the company decides to fix the locks. The res orb exists outside of fractals it was not marketed as a fractal tool, it existed before fractals. People chose to use it to get around a game mechanic, and get to the forbidden zone. Thats what they wanted out of it, its what they got. They closed the hole, thats all really
In order for something to be forbidden it must be forbade. Such was not the case here (initially). Players announced that they were using res orbs in this manner and asked if it was intended or allowed. Anet opted to not respond initially. They chose to allow people to continue to spend money to access content. If they are going to remove the benefits of the purchase they should refund the purchase price. Again I do believe that such refunds should not be extended to those who continued after zone became forbidden.
You mention getting around a mechanic….res orbs are designed, intended, and sold for just that purpose, to get around a game mechanic.
But you cant really expect them to keep what amounts to a dev bugged zone as the standard.
I would be inclined to agree if ANet refunded the money spent on gems to access the “bugged zone.”
why should they refund you gems for accessing the bugged zone? no one ever asked you to try to break the wall via gems? If we found out using the speed boost item allowed you to run through certain walls, and behind these walls was an unfinished dungeon, should they refund your gems for buying this item?
When they closed this use, and you only had access because you unlocked what amounted to a waypoint, didnt you figure hey guys we are in a bugged zone that isnt currently accessible except by us and the people we choose to invite.
Should they make everyone now do everything you did, when they never intended you to break through the wall?
They mislabeled it an infinite dungeon, it was not that. But you guys had to realize you werent where you were supposed to be some time ago. You enjoyed being there, but dont expect the game to cater to you, or refund you money for the tool you used to break the mode.
You are making an inaccurate assumption.
I have not played Fractals at the mentioned levels and do not know anyone who has.
ANet sold a product to people knowing that the product was being used to progress in certain content. I would tend to agree that the refunds should not cover purchases made after they, “closed this use,” though.
But you cant really expect them to keep what amounts to a dev bugged zone as the standard.
I would be inclined to agree if ANet refunded the money spent on gems to access the “bugged zone.”
Grats on getting y our transfer (back).
I am glad that your experience does not match my own and hope that your luck in this matter continues.
1) A tangible indication that this process isn’t some form of placebo or sleight of hand.
2) see number 1.
3) see number 2.
Hmm,
The last people I knew who played GW2 just quit over this. Hope the next patch isn’t, “Honor Among Thieves,” where a new faction of thieves “reset” all players’ wealth to zero, or perhaps “A Plague of Vampires,” where bloodsuckers reset all character level progress to 1.
I am very disappointed in this thread. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I inferred from the title.
Anet’s wanted the game to be an e-sport, they also wanted the game to be a major PVE MMO. They were not willing (or not able) to do what it would take to bring both desires to fruition.
After initial retreats in 2012, I can’t see that many people quitting the game. In fact…
You might want to double check the meaning of the word, “fact.” It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does.
Which forces more and more people to use real money to buy gems.
The word, “force,” is a bit strong there unless the ANet hit squads are waving guns in players’ faces.
Ultimately its a product that one can purchase if one so desires. The company even allows one to get the product at a discounted rate (or even free !) if one is willing to play the game.
I’m not sure why anyone would be against a game company attempting to increase their revenue through an attempt to increase the size of the player base so as to, potentially, have more money to invest in the game…Unless of course the complaint is being made by someone who is opposed to the idea of the game growing.
I’m not sure that zero real world money qualifies as too expensive. If you are paying real world money you are paying for immediacy.
A. 5-12 for the most part with occasional forays into the realm of PG13.
Well, until we know what that other game is, can’t make a fair comparison, to judge if you are right or not. I can only go my by experience of playing MMOs like EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, WoW, LOTRO, Eve, SWTOR, SWG, Age of Conan, Aion, TSW, Rift and so many others, and say that Guild Wars 2 has been no different in bug fixes than any of the other MMOs I have played. Guild Wars 2 also has shown that a sub fee is not needed for a better quality game (and yes quality is subjective, I know that). No MMO that I can think of matches what you are describing.
I have to agree. All of the games I have played (COH, CO, STO, WoW, LotRO, DDO, AoC, Aion, TSW) have had their fair share of bugs and delayed bug fixes compared to GW2.
I would probably have been too busy asking myself, “you spent how much effort and energy developing and using a time machine….to warn me/us about a video game ?”
Oh, and what the guy above me a few posts said about lottery numbers too.
I hate when people say this. when RPGs didnt even have levels at first. Tabletops—>MUDs—->First MMORPGs
again levels wasnt always part of RPGs. so thats not something that can define something that wasnt always part of them.
Actually RPGs did have levels at first, starting with the first tabletop game.
Levels allow the game designer to provide a number of elements to a game experience:
1) It makes gradually increasing difficulty in encounter design to match player skill progression easier. A more skilled player will have the potential to level more quickly and so reach higher plateau’s of play sooner.
2) It provides an avenue of character progression, something that has been a part of the RPG genre since its inception.
3) It provides a tool for implementing game balance by allowing the devs to compare class/skills/gear/etc at a common point rather than being forced to compare them across a broader range of scope.
Even so, I prefer the idea of level-less games. My favorite table-top game has no levels.
The sheer fact that wings on your back does not break immersion in the REAL WORLD
You might want to double check the definition of the word, “fact,” as used there. You might find that there is little, if any, fact in that statement.
For what its worth: I think that the existing wings are fine and would not mind seeing more options at some point in the future. I would, however, prefer to see some other options explored first.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
It wasn’t really directed to you. It was directed to the people that don’t like something, therefore they don’t want new things in the game.
Just because they do not like wings does not mean that they do not want new things in the game. I expect that they do in fact want more new things added to the game but would rather see finite dev resources applied to something other than more wing options.
This thread is about the increase in condition damage.
You might want to consider asking a moderator to alter your thread title then. You are likely to continue facing comments about the overall effect of ascended gear as long as the title seems to imply that is the subject.
For the Future of Scarlet:
Ok, I want one thing, ONE THING, when it comes to dealing with Scarlet in future content:
These portals she keeps using? The ones that tens of millions of mobs come rolling out of every week as the invasion events continue?
I want my side to drop the idiot ball, take the initiative, and for SOMEBODY to figure out how to put me and a band of my hardcase friends (Hey, Rox. Whassup, Braham? Oh, Majory and Kasmeer made it too!) back through the portal all clandestine-like.
I want a 1-5 player roflstomp ROMP though her secret base. And the most important thing of all?
I don’t want to see Scarlet at all. If she’s always out building alliances, then kitten she can be out wining and dining her new harpies-&-skritt team-up or whatever. I want to burn her whole base to the ground and do racial dances in the ashes.
You give me bloody-handed vengeance against her Twisted Clockknights Factory, let me be the one launching the surprise attack on a secret Aeitherblades Barracks, let me dump a vat of acid over her personal stockpile of toxic spores, and most of all LET ME CATCH HER UNWARES for a change, I’ll take back fully a third of every nasty caustic remark I’ve ever made about the character. Just let her come up short one time.
1,000,000 bonus points if there’s a full fully voiced epilogue for after we pull out, Scarlet get back, sniffs the air curiously and says “That’s strange. I don’t remember leaving the stove on…”
Offer’s on the table ANet.
You are my hero.
I originally started typing up a big post about explanations and reasons and theories, but I think that they’d get in the way of the point I’m trying to make, so I’ll keep it as concise as I can.
What is:
Glow mask areas remove the shiny effect beneath them in the current system.The armor glow and skin glow are two different systems. The only control currently possible is through the armor dye of that area.
What will be:
Textures: I’ll get the textures to work like they used to. By this, I mean they can go back to darker and have their gradients as much as I can while keeping the glow.Dye Masks: I will get them to behave more like the old shapes, but you’ll still see some tweaks because of the glow. I see a couple folks mentioning dye masks being removed. This was unintentional and I’ll look into it.
Glow Shape: I can minimize some of the glow layer shape in the texture so it doesn’t affect the broadness of specular as much. You’ll get most of your shiny leaves back.
What I’m working on:
The glow isn’t as rich and saturated as one would predict. This wasn’t touched and is not a part of the texture or dye files, even though the dye shape is now controllable. There may be a way to get this changed on the shader, but it would only affect cultural armor and nightmare court stuff, not any clothing.The glow can get to be more aligned to the color. If you dye the shape blood red, it will glow like a traffic light. If you dye it dark red, it’ll glow dark red. If you dye it pink, it will glow pink. If you dye it white, it will blow out so bright. …if you dye it black or dark dark dark, it’ll barely glow if at all.
By dying it dark, you can effectively artificially “mostly turn off” the glow. This is the biggest middle ground while still giving the people who love the glow their choice as well.
Thanks everyone for your feedback on this change. I tried my best to explain this system and what I’m working on, but there are technical elements and nuances that are fairly complex to describe. Note that any changes I could make will not get into the game the next build release. But they may get into the build after that. Now back to work for me. :}
This is how a dev communicates with and demonstrates that she cares about the concerns of her players.
Thank You
1) Ascended gear.
2) Excessive particle effects obscuring combat encounters.
3) Emphasis on Zerg gameplay.
4) The implementation of interrupts and other soft control options.
5) Poor performance of archery options for rangers.
6) Ascended gear.
Not sure, somewhere close to a grand I would guess.
Response to Ashen:
1-2) So now you’re separating game types from features.
PvP is a feature. If you count every map as a separate feature does that mean that you have to count every quest in PvE as a separate feature ?
3) The account wallet is a bit different than a place to store currencies..
It is exactly a place to store currencies. It is implemented in a fashion that makes withdrawing easier though. I was not debating the merits of each game’s approach to an account wide currency storage, merely pointing out that both had them. I find the GW2 currency wallet to be superior, but that does not mean that it represents a feature included in GW2 but not in GW1.
4) Those who spent hours waiting in queues for those games might say that overflow servers are a good thing.
I’m not forgetting anything there, just wanted to make the point that the specific elements mentioned here were included in GW1 (in a superior fashion).
5) I’ll give you this one, even though “crafting” in Guild Wars 1 was a pale thing compared to crafting in Guild Wars 2.
Agreed. Crafting in GW2 is superior to crafting in GW1 if you like crafting. As a caveat I would like to beat a dead horse and point out that gating the best gear behind crafting makes the crafting system in GW2 worse for some people.
6) While some Guilds did socialize in the Guild Hall, I was in a number of Guilds in my time in Guild Wars 1, and I didn’t see any of them. Most of us socialized in the world while we played. If you didn’t GvG and I didn’t, the Guild hall was a convenience place to get some stuff you might have needed. Of course, the skills guy there only had the most basic skills and if you wanted other skills, you’d have to teleport all over the world to buy them. Remember when you were making a new build you saw mentioned and you had to hit five outposts to get all the skills you needed?
Perhaps your guilds were small (max team size being 8 for most of the world) or perhaps your guilds did not prefer to socialize “in person ?” But, even so, PvP (even in a game where that was the developers’ focus initially) was a fraction of the focus for the playerbase and GvG an even smaller fraction of PvP.
Yes a new character might have to seek out skills that they wanted. Then again skills were part of the horizontal progression of the game. I am pretty sure that you cannot sit in LA in GW2 and get all of the rewards from all of the game’s content either.
7) The direct trading feature was something that was hit and miss with me. It was convenient for friends and guildies, but I didn’t love finding a single guy in Kamadan standing around, and having to run over to him. Remember, Guild Wars 1 didn’t have mail. Direct trade could only be done by standing next to someone. In Guild Wars 2 we have a mail system which allows you to send something to a guildie without being in the same zone.
Mailing someone something and hoping that they mail the agreed upon trade back is not an improvement over meeting them face to face with a trade interface IMO. Mail in GW2 is definitely an improvement for gifting things though.
This is what I think the OP is talking about. You mention some things from Guild Wars 1 as if they were finished products that worked perfectly. Would you really go back to having to be next to someone to send them something? Is that really a feature that is so lacking that mail doesn’t suffice to replace it?
I did not mention things in GW2 as if they are finished products. I did mention their existence though. Were you mentioning things like the TP in GW2 as if it were finished and working perfectly (error attempting to trade sound familiar ?). Yes the ability to trade directly with someone with an actual trade window is a feature whose lack cannot be overcome with mail.
The OP is trying to say that people are forgetting just how “primitive” (for lack of a better word) Guild Wars 1 was.
I don’t think I’d like to play a game with no marketplace or mail system again, or a game that forced me to run back to the bank every time I wanted to get a currency on a different character.
I’m not saying Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a great game…but it’s not the kind of feature-rich perfection that people seem to remember it as being.
I think that’s the OP’s point.
My post merely pointed out that some features you seemed to be claiming to exist in GW2 but not in GW1 were actually present in GW1. In some cases they were implemented in a superior fashion in GW1, and in some cases GW2 does a better job.
I generally do not play content that I do not enjoy. On the other hand I have at times participated in content that I did not know if I would enjoy because the reward seemed interesting (and I believe in trying new things) only to discover by the end that I did not enjoy that piece of content. At that point I would not repeat the content just for another chance at the reward.
Ah, you’re talking about features. My bad completely. Stuff like an auction house, an account wallet, a format of PvP like WvW, a personal story, an actual LFG tool, multiple races to play. Those are all features too. And then there’s stuff like overflow servers and guesting (something most MMOs don’t have). For that matter crafting is a feature that Guild Wars 2 has that Guild Wars 1 doesn’t.
Because there’s no Guild vs Guild in this game (the main feature guild halls were used for in Guild Wars 1), the work that would have went into that went instead into WvW, which is another feature. You may not like it, but I think WvW is better on the whole than most of the PvP available in Guild Wars 1.
In other words you’ve mentioned a couple of things you’d like to see in the game (fair enough by all counts), while ignoring the features that are already in the game as if they’re not already there.
1) WvW is just a PvP mode, of which GW1 had more, not a separate feature.
2) Personal (everyone shares the same ones so the name is merely a proper noun not an actual descriptor) Story is just a series of PvE quests/missions, not a separate game feature.
3) Account wallet is a place to store currencies that is available to all characters on an account…something which existed in GW1.
4) Overflow servers…you mean being forcibly separated from those you wanted to play with ? That is a feature ? and guesting….In GW1 you could play on any server you wanted, without being limited to a certain number per day, at any time.
5) Crafting: GW2…walk to a location where there is an interact option and click buttons to generate useable items from raw materials. GW1…walk to a location where there is an interact option and click buttons to generate useable items from raw materials. More options of useable items to generate in GW2 though.
6) I GvG’d in GW1, even so the main use of Guild Halls was as a social hub for guilds and alliances (and for dueling) in my experience.
7) I am glad that they added an AH, too bad they felt the need to remove a feature (direct trading)that existed in GW1, and pretty much every other multiplayer game of this sort ever created, to bring it in.
Okay, this doesn’t affect me; however, I find it necessary to comment.
Other than obvious bug fixes, existing armors and even weapons should never be changed. Spend your time designing new things and leave the existing alone. People who like them use them and people who don’t, don’t.
It’s quite scary if we need to pay attention to every suggestion or request made by anyone because some designer might listen to and use that as an excuse to change something we like.
Again, this needs repeating, if we’re using something it is because we like the way it looks so please leave it alone. And, if you see a demand for a changed version, then make a new one that’s a variation of it.
^^^ This.
Ultimately turning something that your players made a point to pick out and spend resources on into something that they did not choose for themselves is a bad idea.
…developed by a company other than Anet.
The obscuring of target models by particle effects in this game are the worst I’ve seen. There’s a megadestroyer in there somewhere, you can sort of see his leg. This is with the option selected to make targets more visible.
What he ^^^ said.
But what do you miss when you miss that temporary content? Some achievement points and a backpiece? A minipet.
The above seems to be contradicted by the below. You dismiss any concern that one might be missing something by skipping a chapter of living story…
Except that parts of the living story are quite good and some are even brilliant.
…and then claim that one would be potentially missing something very good and even brilliant.
Those two points, both from this very thread, are mutually exclusive. Either one is missing something brilliant by skipping a LS chapter or there is nothing of significance to be missed by skipping a LS chapter.
I think you guys are confusing personal preference with bad content.
And you confuse personal preference with good content. That is somehow better ?
the word ‘by’ means next to or close to, also means upto and beyond. Close to, well that is going to be a matter of opinion, getting ascended is beyond hitting level 80.
That is a contextually incorrect use of the word. If you are supposed to be at your work desk by nine AM you have failed to adhere to that requirement if you arrive any time after nine.
If you put your car into the shop for repairs and the mechanic promises to have it ready by next Friday, would you consider him to have kept his word if he did not have it ready for ten years (which would be beyond next friday as per your misuse of the word) ?
(edited by Ashen.2907)
Why do people want to change WvW’s rule set now when it was like this before?
It was not like this before.
I didn’t see anyone complain about WvW ranks either
Choosing to not take notice of something does not mean that it doesn’t exist.
B) GW2 was never stated to be anything like GW1.
When a game is advertised as having everything that GW1 players liked about GW1 then it is being stated as being like GW1.
id say if your goal is getting an ascended weapon you can probably get 1 per week if you play 12 hours a week through normal play. so probably 5 weeks to get 5 weapons if your taking it easy.
Normal game play.
Lets say I were to up your numbers to 20 hours per week of my normal gameplay (which includes zero crafting), how long do you think it would take to get five weapons ?
Here are the determining factors in a fight from most to least influential:
Number of Participants
VoIP
Latency
Class
Level
Build
Skill
Passive buffs
Boons
GearAnyone going to argue with that list? Seems pretty common sense to me.
Numbers only matter when they actually come into play. I’ve been locked down so hard no gear would have saved me.
This does not address anything I stated in the quoted post.
Gear is one part of the formula. Choosing to purposefully introduce imbalance into such a situation is a bad idea IMO.
No.
But they have started to act like consumers who should hold the producers of a product accountable for its failings. For the longest time now MMOs have gotten away with something that other products only wish they could. Produce a product for consumption and then have the customers who must then deal with the product’s shortcomings defend and make excuses for the producer.
When MMO companies decide to chase the big bucks by going mainstream they must come face to face with the fact that they no longer get to hide behind the veil of being a niche market with devoted fans, who know that they have nowhere else to go for their fix, as their customer base.
If a million people buy hostess twinkies and find bugs that prevent them from being consumed as intended its not OK.
I know the question was not directed at me, but here goes anyway.
Did you actually enjoy WvW before?
Yes. Quite a bit actually.
if you did, i really doubt youd stop because of ascended gear…
Your doubt would be misplaced (in my case at least).
And why? Because now you can’t be secure that you lost because the other player was better?
In response to our two questions (in reverse order)
2) I could not be certain that my losses in a 1 v 1 situation (a relatively rare but very fun occurance IMO) could be contributed to comparable player skill before. Is his class superior ? Is his class just better suited to 1 v1 ? Is his spec superior ? Is his spec just better suited to 1 v1 ? Is his internet connection better ? Were my key skills on cooldown when the fight started? Did I make a mistake (I do not consider making a mistake to be an indication of overall skill, but it can certainly affect the outcome of a fight). There are too many variables for me to make an assumption such as you seem to be suggesting.
1) Why ? Because I do not enjoy playing a game at max level with less than max level gear.
I understand answer 1, and answer 2 is my entire argument for leaving WvW as is.
There are just too many variables in any given WvW fight to determine that gear and gear alone made a difference to the outcome.
I’d go as far to say that it doesn’t, ever.
I think that your final sentence goes too far, but you are entitled to your opinion. If one component of many cannot be the sole determening factor then skill cannot either.
Character performance is the sum of multiple constituent components. Gear is one. It contributes to the end result. Reduce its contribution and the end result is reduced. If you reduce the end result on one side of a formula without doing so on the other side then you have created an imbalance. That imbalance may not be, in every case, sufficient to offset other imbalances (such as one player being much more skilled than another) but the imbalance is still being created.
A game where skill is a component cannot balance that aspect (IMO). But it can at least attempt to avoid creating other imbalances to further exacerbate the matter.
Eisberg and I have killed ascended weapon having opponents 1v1, but that doesn’t count apparently.
No offense sir, but no it does not count.
Anecdotal examples are not evidence of statistical performance.
Was his skill level comparable to yours ?
Was his build comparable to yours in terms of 1 v1 performance ?
Was his internet connection comparable to yours ?
Were any of his key skills on cooldown ?
Was his endurance bar at all depleted at the beginning of the fight ?
etc.
I mean a glass bottle filled with gasoline has defeated a tank in the past, would you be inclined to go one on one with a tank armed only with a bottle of gasoline based on such an example ?
I beat a competitive chess player once. Not sure I would want to count on that as an example proving that one does not need to know how to play the game in order to beat someone who has spent years studying it.
Again, I see your point. Skill is very important to performance in GW2. That does not mean that the numbers behind character performance are not also a determining factor.
I know the question was not directed at me, but here goes anyway.
Did you actually enjoy WvW before?
Yes. Quite a bit actually.
if you did, i really doubt youd stop because of ascended gear…
Your doubt would be misplaced (in my case at least).
And why? Because now you can’t be secure that you lost because the other player was better?
In response to our two questions (in reverse order)
2) I could not be certain that my losses in a 1 v 1 situation (a relatively rare but very fun occurance IMO) could be contributed to comparable player skill before. Is his class superior ? Is his class just better suited to 1 v1 ? Is his spec superior ? Is his spec just better suited to 1 v1 ? Is his internet connection better ? Were my key skills on cooldown when the fight started? Did I make a mistake (I do not consider making a mistake to be an indication of overall skill, but it can certainly affect the outcome of a fight). There are too many variables for me to make an assumption such as you seem to be suggesting.
1) Why ? Because I do not enjoy playing a game at max level with less than max level gear.
I know the question was not directed at me, but here goes anyway.
Did you actually enjoy WvW before?
Yes. Quite a bit actually.
if you did, i really doubt youd stop because of ascended gear…
Your doubt would be misplaced (in my case at least).
I do not have the antipathy for the LS that others do. I think the idea of serial story telling in small chunks, like a comic book really, that flesh out the world beyond the overarching campaign story is wonderful. Absolutely love the idea.
Having those additions, or some significant portion, be temporary (in my comic book analogy above you can always choose to pick up back issues that you missed during a hiatus) means that there is an element of, “if you ever take a break you will miss stuff that you will never be able to see again,” to the mix.
I am not sure how, “if you take a break you will miss out on stuff that you will never be able to catch up on,” is supposed to not discourage people from taking breaks.
Which game have you ever played that the goal of combat was not killing the mob.
The difference is that all classes in GW2 are designed to be DPS, with a side of something else (and sometimes that side of something else is more DPS). In other games the game is designed to include characters for whom personally killing the mob is not a/the main (if at all) design element for group play.
A character who does no damage, without adversely affecting the group’s performance, while increasing the group’s effectiveness through other means is a common option in other games. Less so here. That is not a pet peeve of mine as I prefer DPS plus soft CC as a play style. But I know others for whom the emphasis on DPS is a bit of a bummer.
The addition of new things to Tyria via the LS is not an indication of the passage of time. It is functionally not significantly different than another game adding new content, with the temporary aspect as an exception.
Its pretty easy to test the lack of passage of time in terms of world evolution/story development in game, go to AC, CM, etc.
Personally I do not consider the lack of passage of time in game to be a problem.
Old content that wasnt delivered through LS is yes frozen in time but I am talking about the LS, that content was definitely not frozen in time.
We had the molten alliance invasion which created refuges as they ravaged towns (here we could see cragstead in flames) the invasion themselves stopped once we destroyed their molten facilities (passage of time, we had an invasion and we actually stopped it) the refugees went to southsun cove and helped with building up the infrastructure (new structures, refugees in southsun, refugees no longer in LA, Black citadel and haelbrak… passage of time) we helped release the refugees from their contract and so they left the consortium oppression but still needed somewhere to go. They opted to move to cragstead and help rebuild the place (now cragstead is no longer a pile of burning rubble its being rebuilt and you can find those refugees there again more passage of time)
A lack of passage of time isnt a problem no but it makes for a less exiting less immerssive game world.
I don’t see what you describe about the LS as being significantly different than introducing evolution to the game world in larger chunks through an expansion. A game receiving zone(s) sized expansion, perhaps explorers just found it, perhaps denizens of the new zone invaded the game world and now heroes are tracking the invaders back to the source of their power, etc, is expanding upon/evolving the game’s storyline just as is the case with the LS. The difference is a matter of the size and rate of the delivery. In both cases, generally, the existing content remains static.
This difference is similar to a serial TV show vs a sequential series of movies. In both cases the setting’s story evolves as “content” is added, just in different sized chunks at different rates. I don’t consider either to be inherently superior.