This is a feedback. Not a complaint. Not a request for change. Not a suggestion. The purpose of this topic is to bring to GW2 game designer awareness of certain issues regarding jumping puzzle and vista in case they don’t already know.
I tried looking for a general feedback forum. There is none. So I post here.
Do you know that there are players who cannot complete a single jumping puzzle and a huge number of vistas in the game? These group of players (including myself) played with a lag (due to geographical distance from the server) and where a jumping puzzle and/or vista requires high level of precision (e.g. landing on a tiny landing spot floating in the air), there is no way we can accomplished the jump successfully. No way.
I reckon that when you do your game testing in your lab, lag is never an issue and this would never be a known problem. Perhaps it is my problem, my bad psycho-motor skill that don’t allow me to successfully complete these jumping puzzles. The best is for you to create and simulate some artificial lag in your lab environment and do those jumping puzzle and vista for yourselves to verify the validity of my claim. At the same time, you can test out using some low-end mouse and not high precision mouse to gauge the jumping puzzle experience. I am pretty sure there are learning points which you can gain from this exercise, such as specifying official system requirements for jumping puzzle and vista.
That is all I have to say. Thanks for listening.
Ha ha … this is funny kitten. This is what gaming should be about, worry-free fun via player innovation. This bring back my wow memory when we had all the stealth char (rogue and druid) cloaked inside the flag room waiting for that solo enemy to come steal our flag. When that solo enemy entered into the deep end of the room, all 8 of us uncloaked and surround him. He probably kitten in his pants and do a /beg on this surprise ambush and we had the laugh of our time. Those were the days.
..and I’m not the only one thinking this. It’s become a complete zerg fest and is nowhere near what it was made out to be.
Scenario #1:
Group A of 5 players attacks a tower with a single ram. Group B with 25 players sees orange swords at tower and swiftly gets there. Group B wipes Group A with ease, where as Group A barely did 10% damage to the door.
I can feel your frustration on the uninteresting routine of zerg tactics in WvW. I mentioned in one of my previous post on the impact of repair bill (in general pvp death penalty killing the players’ innovation of WvW tactics as nobody wants to leave the comfort zone of a zerg force to operate in smaller strike forces) and the impact is starting to be felt by many players who complains about the monotony of WvW tactics. If you take the pain to explore WvW mechanics, you will not feel the same monotony and pain.
I give you an example by using your above example. If you are operating on a 5 man strike force with a single ram, you don’t get 5 players hitting the gate. I tell you why. One single hit from the ram is 8000 dmg. One hit from a single player to the gate average about 80-100 dmg (more or less). Going by this mathematics, it takes about 100 hits from a single player to make up the equivalent of a single ram hit. So, don’t bother to let player hit the gate, it will make no significant impact to the gate hp.
With the player freed up from hitting the gate, deploy the 4 of them not manning the ram out to the 4 different directions as sentry to lookout for enemies. If you see a large force incoming from a distance, abort and RUN for your lives. RUN is seldom a tactics in many players’ book. Perhaps it is cowardly to run from their perspective. At the end of the day, its their pride that kills them, not the enemy.
And furthermore with no players but only the ram hitting the gate, you will NOT create the orange sword on the map. We called it the stealth attack. Zerg forces normally prioritize orange sword against white crosses. With a good chance that there will be other orange swords on the map, the enemy zerg force will not come your way.
There are a lot more innovation that can be had in small strike force. One tactics is called ‘tracking the enemy zerg force’. It is very difficult to stop/defend a huge zerg force from taking over any objective. A smart approach is to not fight them head on but to let them capture the objective but have a smaller force to retrace the enemy zerg force route with a 1 to 5 min delay. Everytime the huge zerg force take over an objective, the smaller strike force will recapture the objective 1 to 5 min later. When the huge zerg force completed their map ‘tour of duty’, they would have realized that 80% of their captured objective has been recaptured back. By that time, they may have decided to deploy small forces in their captured objective to do defending which in turn will thin the size of their zerg force going forward. If they shall decide to retrace their route to recapture the objective, you would have also succeeded in slowing down the progress of the zerg force. Best of all, you can do this with just a 5-man strike force. Imagine what ‘damages’ a 5-man strike force can do to a 100-man enemy zerg force. And it is not just through senseless fighting.
WvW play need not be monotonous if you don’t want to. Experimentation is key and the game mechanics doesn’t seem to encourage that at the moment.
Granted most people here by now have pulled off some sweet ress’s on their server mates, but lets face it….the idiot should have died as punishment for his stupid behavior.
I don’t think that the player who rushed in to take out the seige machines that has been defending the node and keeping the invader at bay for hours and got downed in the process is guilty of any stupid behaviour. If anything, his heroic act that ended the senseless holdout for hours should be well rewarded with a quick coordinated res from the subsequent attack waves to ensure he don’t die unnecessarily to the cause.
I have witnessed many selfless act (which may appear stupid on the surface) on the part of many players to know that they earned a well-deserved res from the downed state.
My vote goes to fire elementalist.
Many professions has high dps AOE (Engineer has grenades, Thief has cluster bomb, Necro has staff/marks, Fire elemental has lava ring and cosmic fire rain, Ranger has longbow AOE like those from arrow carts).
However, high dps AOE is only one quarter of the equation. You have to also consider the cool-down on these AOE spell. Ideally, you want a high dps AOE with little cool-down.
When you take AOE spell cool-down into consideration (the second quarter of the equation), you eliminate Ranger profession as their longbow AOE has a long cooldown comparatively. Arguably, you can also eliminate thief cluster bomb, which is fueled by initiatives and not cooldown. You run out of initiatives, you are basically hit with the cooldown effect until you recover your initiatives.
The third quarter of the equation to consider is the effectiveness of the hit rate of the AOE. AOE is a ground target based spell. There is a slight delay from the time it is activate to the time it causes damage to the targeted ground. The longer the delay, the lower its effectiveness because enemies are mobile and can move out of its AOE circle before it do serious damages to them. Considering this factor, you can eliminate thief cluster bomb because its trajectory travel time to the target is lengthy in comparison. Although Engineer grenade has a lower trajectory travel time compared to thief cluster bomb, I will also eliminate it because there is still some delay in the travel time.
The last quarter of the equation to consider is the flexibility to switch easily from high dps AOE to high dps single target spell. AOE is good for enemy crowd, but at other times, you want high dps single target spell, especially if you want to kill off a downed enemy from a distance. Necro’s staff number 2 to 5 skills are all marks (AOE) with only a single target spell in number 1 skill. However, number 1 skill is not a truly high dps spell. At the same time, marks are useless against downed enemy as downed player will not trigger off marks.
With that, we are only down to the last contender, the fire elementalist. Fire elementalist has a very low cooldown and immediate cast number 2 lava ring AOE if traited and zero travel time (immediate cast and damage). At the same time, it has high dps single target number 1 and 3 fire spell as backup. Fire elementalist spell range of 1200 is also pretty good. Its is quite ‘balanced’ on many considerations.
PS: if you want a specialist to take out seige enemy defending from the WvW tower/keep, you may want to look at Ranger whose AOE can reach 1500 range. At the same time, its AOE circle damage range is also quite wide, often hitting enemies/seige machine on the inner side of the tower/keep wall where AOE from other professional cannot often reach.
due to the downed state.
I am so over killing people just to have them instant ressed back up. This is not fun not does it reward skillfull gameplay.
It needs serious changes or remove the whole concept from any type of pvp.
The irony is … it takes skills to res from the downed state. It takes some teamwork and tactics to res your comrade from downed state without killing yourselves. And it takes some skill play to take maximal advantage of enemy’s downed state. So, how can you say it does not reward skillful gameplay.
You probably just scratch the surface of WvW tactic play, so you may not appreciate the downed state and its use in WvW tactic. I give you just one example to bring across the point:
What do most player do when an enemy is in downed state? Finished him off immediately or spam spell to kill him off as fast as possible. Right?
For me, its situational. I will assess the situation first. Especially when enemy is downed in an area where it is a ‘choke’ point, I will not let him die immediately (I cannot control it if other comrades are spamming their spells on the downed enemies. That is why I say it is situational) if conditions permit. I will attack his downed hp down to 10% and I will let him res up to 50% and will start my attack to bring his downed hp down to 10% again. I will keep him alive so that his downed state is a bait for his comrade to come and rescue him. And if you have seige support in a choke area, you are going to finish off many clueless enemies who will rush in to res their friends. It takes some skill to position yourselves and to coordinate all these with your other comrades.
I agree that player alt-f4 for various reason. But I also think the repair bill is a major cause of it. It may not stop player from alt-f4 if we remove the cost but it will eliminate a large group of them.
The following is why I think repair bill is a major cause:
(1) Having pvp daily for 8 years on WoW, I have NOT encountered a SINGLE player doing alt-f4 when he is sure to die in pvp (such as 1 vs 5 enemies scenario, or having a full stacks of dot on him with only a fraction of hp left on him). Pvp death on Wow carries no penalty and no repair bill. But if you suffer fall damages in pvp, you pay repair bill.
(2) On the other hand, on the other end of the extreme, Eve Online which I play on and off for about 2 – 3 years (not continuously but it adds up to that number of years) carries one of the most harsh pvp death penalty in any games. You see all kinds of evasive tactics (including alt-f4, docking into the safety of the space station etc) used by player to avoid the repair bill or ship loss ALL THE TIME. GW2 player doing alt-f4 is nothing compared to what Eve Online player will do (just to give an example, ejecting immediately from expensive ship and board a cheaper ship so that the loss is minimal) to escape paying pvp penalty.
Just to elaborate further on my observation of these 2 games philosophy when it comes to pvp penalty. Wow never bother, Wow only interested in keeping their player happy. In contrary, Eve Online is very religious on pvp penalty. They are very particular about player bypassing pvp penalty and has implemented lots of measure to ensure player pay their ‘proper’ due.
The end result: Wow has many casual players who enjoys the game even when they are not as skillful or have powerful gears than hardcore players. It is no surprise they can still keep a huge player base even when they charge a monthly ransom. However, in Eve Online, those players that are still in the game for longer than 6 months are mostly hardcore players who meant business in a game environment where mistakes are costly. The mood in Eve Online is very different. Its more like business than a game. Its no fun for most people. Don’t take my word for it. Go play their trial to experience it for yourself.
So, what I am saying here. What I am saying is … all these alt-f4 issues are not new. It has been prevalent in other games too and the effect of the counter-measures (such as delay timer etc.) has also been felt in these other games. The effect is there for all to see in those games. Please do go play those games before you suggest certain implementation in GW2. Don’t destroy GW2 just because you ‘think’ your suggestion is good. You don’t need to ‘think’. The end result is there for you to see in those other games.
why exactly would someone only pve anyways? i don’t even understand people that only pvp/wvw. why would you NOT want to experience 100% of the game? i guess the same reason why people drop $59.99 on call of duty every year and rush to only play a subpar online fps experience :/
You are coming from the perspective that there is only one game that player can play. The truth is, it is not.
Players who want to pve will play in the best pve game. Players who want to pvp will play in the best pvp game. That is why you tend to see players engaging in only one type of game play within a single game. That does not mean they don’t pve or pvp entirely. It is just in different games.
Game developer who don’t appreciate this fact and focus on their core competency but spread themselves thin trying to be best in EVERYTHING is just asking for trouble.
Yeah I have heard quite a bit of necromancers…I have heard they have excellent survivability, but how is there DPS?
I have 5 lvl 80 professions as comparison. At the start, I have no favourable opinion of necromancers thinking that it is not likely to be high dps when its dmg is dot-based and its staff/mark attack is not direct attack (it has to be triggered by foes). I level it just for the variety of play style.
Now that I have experienced going through all the 5 different profession, I have a pleasant surprise finding that my necromancers is the best tank of the lots. AND the one thing that surprised me the most is …………….. my necromancer can downed mobs faster than any of my 4 other professions which effectively meant that it has the highest DPS. It is just mind boggling and unbelieveable. But I am not complaining.
Here:
“And actually, in February, we’re going to do a whole bunch of expansions on top of that world vs world area, to make that experience even more uniquely Guild Wars. "
Any touchup before Feb is probably be some bugs fixed or skill rebalancing, I reckon.
It is unwise to have your hope up in anticipation of Feb WvW update. Going by past records, it is likely to be more a disappointment than a pleasant surprise.
I hope Anet has learnt from Sony Online on how to make a successful WvWvW implementation. Sony Online’s Planetside 2 is probably a wakeup call to Anet on the value and positioning of WvWvW in the game end-play. Planetside 2 revenue model could also be something Anet can COPY to monetarize its WvWvW model. Copy if you must if you are clueless on how to make WvWvW works. I don’t give a kitten whether you copy as long as if it benefits WvWvW gw2 players.
Fast game exit (in this case alt-f4) is an age old implementation in many past games. There is a term for it. Its called ‘Boss mode’. You know, while playing the game, your boss happen to enter the office. That is when you activate the ‘Boss mode’ and exit the game in split of a second. It has saved many careers and livelihood whose survivors have paid back by supporting the game industry years on years.
Pulling out the ‘Boss mode’ such as implementing a delay timer is going to kill many souls out there. Getting a job is hard these days. Players are going to spend less time on game without ‘Boss mode’. I ventured that games without ‘Boss mode’ has uneven play time distribution with huge peak off-office hour but minimal or virtually no player during office hours.
I am speaking in the interest of the game, and not in the interest of the bosses out there. So don’t start a discussion on whether it is right to play game on office time.
Implementing a debuff, delay timer to prevent player from alt-f4 sounds kitten good on paper.
This type of approach is again, as I repeat here again, a stick approach. You basically PUNISH those who alt-f4 so that they do not repeat the same act again. A stick approach is not going to make the situation better. Some will be pissed and leave the game. Others will play less (either the debuff prevents them from playing less or the repair bill has deficited their gold reserve). It a lose-lose-lose situation.
I would prefer a carrot approach. Remove the kitten REPAIR BILL. It makes everybody happy and in the game. And it will ELIMINATE the alt-F4 problem once and for all.
I’ll be honest: on occasion I will do the ALT F4 but only when culling creates some silly zerg issues or if I get ganked by griefers who are sitting in the EB jp doing nothing but waiting at the chandelier room to ruin someone’s effort.
If I got killed fair and square then the person deserves those badges from my death and I deserve to pay the repair bill.
This. Same as me. If it is a fight that I feel fair and square, so be it if I lose. Otherwise, Alt-F4 all the way.
What I meant by a non fair and square fight -
For example, when fight start, your char start moving beyond your control. At first I thought I am hallucinating. I even lifted my hand from the keyboard and mouse and I see my char moving on its own on screen.
For example, standing at the stair inside the inner part of the tower wall trying to recuperate from the AOE damage and suddenly you got pull over the wall and into the enemy zerg.
For example, when fight start, some skills refuse to fire off no matter how many times you press the button. This happens often when enemy is down and you intend to spam your spell to finish him off. Your spell just ‘magically’ refuse to fire. And of course, the spell ‘return to normal’ when that enemy revive himself from the down state. Great.
Exploits or otherwise, I don’t care. When such unexplanable things happen, the enemies are not getting my badge. Period.
I go with a necro. I got more kills in WvW on a necro than on a thief. Thief is fun though but not that ‘tough’ to survive WvW carnages.
All these discussions of the recent fiasco has succeeded in making a simple matter more complicated than it is.
I shall use a parallel example to try to bring the matter back to its FUNDAMENTAL.
Recently, I bought a newly launched brand A ice-cream (2nd generation of its GW series line of product) on the recommendation of my friend that its vanilla flavour is good as my friend has been eating its 1st generation product for a while.
I went to the supermarket, picked up this brand A ice-cream paying attention to its packaging detail to ensure that I choose only the vanilla flavour. I am not against chocolate flavour and its has been a best selling flavours for years as far as ice-cream product is concerned. I choose this particular vanilla flavour because I have still tubs of brand W chocolate flavour ice-cream with its latest panda mascot in the fridge left unconsumed. I have no LACK of chocolate flavour ice-cream.
I went home, open up the ice-cream tub and stay consuming. It is refreshing to the taste after years on heavy flavoured ice-cream. However, half-way through the tub, I realized that there are specks of chocolate chips sprinkled among the ice-cream. Am I entitled to feel upset?
Perhaps not some may say because after all, 99% of the tub is still vanilla flavour. It does not materially affect GENERAL flavour as claimed in its packaging. Just skip the chocolate chips part and consume only the vanillar portion. Oh well, there are 2 sides of every arguments and it is pointless to go further because both sides are right and wrong at the same time. I am starting to feel its a waste of time to feedback.
The FACT is I have a bad after-taste now. If I go out shopping for vanilla flavour ice-cream again, it is not likely to be brand A because I don’t TRUST it anymore. If I want chocolate flavoured ice-cream, I will consume brand W.
The matter is so simple. I don’t see how complicated it can evolved till now. Any business who cannot distill this FUNDAMENTAL … … I rest my case.
(edited by Assassinin.4963)
But is there an OFFICIAL CLARIFICATION on this issue thus far? I afraid not. But no worry, the complaints will die down sooner than later (which I believe its the delay tactics Anet is using to tide them over this ‘crisis’) because those who complains but still cannot find closure to the issue would have left the game. I believe many of these players are having a fun time playing PlanetSide 2 now. Its a sad day for GW2.
The problem with an official clarification in my opinion is this issue has been so overblown and every single thing said has been jumped on analysed in detail and twisted to mean something negativite never intended that you’re not going to get an official reply before it has been vetted by a ton of people! No one is going to risk posting something that might be misinterpretted!
That is the inexperience of Anet on handling such issue. If there is an issue, the number one thing to do in PR is to issue a statement to ACKNOWLEDGE the matter. The statement need not go into detail (which you said need more brain work to draft) but just a confirmation that a more detail clarification will be released in due course. Even if it requires a tonne of people to draft and vet through such statement release, it has to be done and it has to be done 24 by 7 asap if Anet really appreciate the importance of addressing the customer concern. I think Anet has missed the “golden hour” for such clarification. Its only damage control at best from this point onwards.
But if Anet don’t think this is an important issue, then it is another matter totally.
My god people.. they added one tier of gear as a one-time gameplay improvement, why the kitten is everyone acting like this is the apocolypse?
The term “slippery slope” comes to mind. Many players here have years of MMO playing experience and they can smell rats from a distance. And they are sounding a warning.
‘Slippery slope’ is a really bad argument to make against something, because it only works based on presumptions – that one thing will turn into another thing and that into a third thing, which is more terrible than both the things that precede it. But, unless we’re talking about good, solid numbers – numbers that aren’t inherently biased by perception, audience, representation, etc – all you’re really doing is saying that it happened somewhere else, perhaps more than once, and that you’re really, really certain it’s going to happen again. All that we can honestly, truly say is that it is a thing that might happen, based on some evidence that may be relevant or not, but that it also might not happen. If you honestly know if something’s going to happen, I suggest you get involved in stocks.
I’m not doubting people’s experience or opinions, just how accurately the past can predict the future in alternative, superficially-similar circumstances. And honestly, in terms of this forum if nowhere else, I’d consider all the doom-saying to be a considerably larger detriment to the enjoyment of players than the potential for something to go wrong or not. It’s a downer, man. Harshing my buzz.
You have a point which I don’t disagree on the part of overreacting to the possible power creep issue.
However, you also have to understand that MMO unlike other genres of game requires persistent commitments of hundreds/thousands of hours and money from players. It is as much a commitments of emotion and loyalty to a game which they bring themselves to login to play everyday. MMO is like no other games and it is itself a long-term investment in a certain sense.
When a player commits to such a long-term investment, it is only reasonable that they need the confidence of continuity in game direction and manifesto and no nasty surprises sprung on them along the way. Just like all other investment, they need to establish the trust before they commit more resources into the investment.
When the first sign of change seems to suggest a betrayal of the original manifesto intent, it is understandable for player to seek clarification, to the point of seemingly overreacting. What they want is clarification from the designer / decision maker. If the clarification is forecoming and immediate, it would have addressed the issue. Player will not complain further and will not be seen to be overreacting. Player will either choose to leave (cut short their investment loss in this game and move on to the next game which fit their desire) or stay to play. Period.
But is there an OFFICIAL CLARIFICATION on this issue thus far? I afraid not. But no worry, the complaints will die down sooner than later (which I believe its the delay tactics Anet is using to tide them over this ‘crisis’) because those who complains but still cannot find closure to the issue would have left the game. I believe many of these players are having a fun time playing PlanetSide 2 now. Its a sad day for GW2.
Bandit camps? Caves? Pirates? Leveling?
Dude have you even reach Orr and beyond to see the respawn rates and mob density there?
Yes I have went through the 3 different Orr land zones. Been there done that.
However, in comparison, the respawn rate in some of the Charr starter zone is still insane. Orr land zones respawn rate is nothing compared to those in the abovementioned Charr zone. My Charr char is the 3rd char I created. So I have some basis for comparison on questing difficulty. When I saw that insane spawn rate in Charr starter zone, I venture that perhaps some configurations are done incorrectly at the server. I immediately switch out to other zones to quest. I don’t go back to Charr zone since.
My god people.. they added one tier of gear as a one-time gameplay improvement, why the kitten is everyone acting like this is the apocolypse?
The term “slippery slope” comes to mind. Many players here have years of MMO playing experience and they can smell rats from a distance. And they are sounding a warning.
Purchase exotics gear and salvage them. Sell the salvage material on TP. In this way, you monetarize those karma points. Don’t waste those points.
I thought Karma items weren’t salvageable?
Ah yes. I just realized that too. My mistake. Perhaps exotics gear is not a good way to monetarize karma point.
I believe you can buy other stuffs like cooking ingredient or crafting materials which you can then sell on trading post. This is a nice way to monetarize those karma point.
Have to agree that GW2 community is one of the friendliest around. Perhaps it has got to do with the design of the game. Here in GW2, the game mechanics are designed to prevent unhealthy inter-players competition (that is not the same as the usual pvp/WvW).
For example, in gathering, each player has their own set of resource nodes. Your gathering does not take away resource nodes of other players. There is no need to fight over resource nodes.
There is no factions here. So there is no such claims as biased design or nerf against specific factions. With no factions, you don’t have faction specific classes. There is also no specific class specializing in tanking and healing etc. Every player can play with the same array of class choices and features. No griefing over differences thus.
At the same time, in pvp/WvW, all players identity are masked off. No personal targetting is thus possible. This encourages player to deal with the game play and not the individual player. At the same time, when you die, you spawn at a safe location and not in the original place of death. No camping of corpse is thus possible. Personal vengeance against specific player is thus minimized.
If the original game manifesto is to be believed, this game don’t encourage gear grind and gear should not make a significant impact on game play. Through this, you will not create “class” difference among different player. You don’t get classed into different category based on what you wear and not how you play. You would not need to be subjected to “gear check” before being allowed to participate in group-based activities like running dungeons. And for that, you also don’t get kicked out of group for arbitrary reasons. But with the introduction of ascended gear, this dynamics may change.
The kind of crowd in the game is very much determined by how the game designers want them to be.
WvW is classified officially by GW2 as PVE and NOT PVP. That should answer your query. Period.
As to why WvW is classified under PVE, I don’t know. Many players are equally confused.
The feedback link in my email is broken. Their QC fails again and has not been enforced before they sent out their email solicting feedback.
Purchase exotics gear and salvage them. Sell the salvage material on TP. In this way, you monetarize those karma points. Don’t waste those points.
I have the exact same error. Seriously, did I just read somewhere in that email that GW2 value the customer feedback? And those customers like me who bothered to click the link to feedback were presented with an error page? /facepalm
I am lost for word to say.
I think you guys may have misread what I am trying to say in my earlier post.
It is NOT about shirking away from one’s personal responsibility in this episode. The original poster has admitted that he is probably lazy and has therefore claimed his personal responsibility in this event. I myself think he is also partially responsible for what happen. He cannot be totally non-responsible.
The point I am trying to drive at is: Is Anet fully non-responsible in this episode by its implementation and lack of safeguards and perhaps clearer documentation on its warning?
I don’t think Anet is fully non-responsible as I have detailed above. And therefore, I think it is not unreasonable for Anet to partially refund some of the cost as a goodwill to its customer (the original poster). It probably cost nothing to Anet to partially refund the deal but it will win it the goodwill of its player. Its a win for Anet, I believe.
(edited by Assassinin.4963)
I love this game too. I hope they will settle this recent ascended gear unhappiness soon as I would like to see the game growing and I would like to keep playing it.
I would not say this is one of the best MMO out there, in fact some of the things here are one of the worst ever that I have seen implemented (for e.g. the accuracy and conciseness of its documentation and the stability of its trading post. Wow documentation and its handling of new content release as well as Eve Online market place will shame GW2’s into oblivion.). But I love this game for its entirety.
Are you suggesting that ascended gear should be banned to use outside of the said relevant dungeon so that players are not pressured to gear grind. If that is the case, it would be good. Players will not bother to grind them since it is only of specific use.
But is ascended gear banned from use outside of the said relevant dungeon(s)? I don’t think so.
Try to visualize this virtual litmus test to gauge the attractive of WoW PVE vs GW2 PVE:
(1) GW2 start to charge $14.99 per month sub for its players on par with WoW monthly sub. How many existing players will leave GW2 and how many new paying players will GW2 attract?
or
(2) WoW remove its monthly sub to go f2p on par with GW2. How many existing players will leave WoW and how many new players will WoW attract?
In comparison, you have to talk apple with apple, orange with orange. I have a clear answer in my heart to the above questions. You have yours and so will other readers here.
You all have your answers. I rest my case.
I am not too sure whether this is a relevant topic … but what the hell.
I was just wondering whether this recent rush job of introducing ascended gear for ‘vertical progression’ and heavy emphasis on PVE content and invite friends for free trial thingy has got to do with a whole load of WoW player’s subscription expiring this few months.
Back a year ago, WoW has this one-year sub package whereby if you sub to a one-year WoW package, you get a copy of diablo 3 FREE. My personal one-year WoW sub is expiring next month (Dec 2012). I guess many other Wow players’ sub will also be expiring these few months.
Is Anet targetting to attract this group of WoW players to GW2? I see other new MMO launching this and next month, probably to also attract the WoW group of players.
If this is indeed true, my advice to Anet is this: don’t waste your effort. You are not ready to take on WoW in PVE content. On a scale of 10, Wow is 8/10 while GW2 is 0.5/10 on PVE content. This is my personal take (on the backing of 8 full years of DAILY (including Sat, Sun and public Holidays) playing experience on WoW) on the current competition. Others may disagree.
On the other hand, GW2 has a good fighting chance at pvp against Wow. I am not taking about SPVP as Wow has their own arena and bgs which are equally competitive. I am referring to massive pvp (i.e. WvW) which Wow has NONE.
This is the vacuum which GW2 should proactively compete to top instead of charging heads-on against the existing market juggernaut’s strength while the juggernaut is still resting on its PVE laurel.
why not add to that buff +100 damage or something like that
This I like. Scale our dmg according so that outmanned does not equate to disadvantages.
Or alternatively, scale down the supplies requirement for seige machines accordingly when outmanned. In this way, lesser populated server can build more seige machines to fight back. Doing so will also encourage night capping hour as golden hours to build seige machines due to its lower supplies requirement. When most of the players returned to WvW during the day hours, they will have tonnes of seige machine at ready to fight. The fight will be epic.
The only solution to your grief: Play a thief yourself.
Whenever I am hurted by enemy thief, I will observe and learn how they do it. Thereafter, I will login to my thief char and applies the same learning back to their comrades.
This is karma in action. You grief me, I will grief your comrade back using exactly the methods which you have used on me.
I will attempt a comparison but by no mean a complete or unbiased one:
Range
====
Ranger > Thief.
You can trait ranger longbow to 1500 range. That is 300 further than many caster’s 1200 range. This is a huge plus in WvW battle.
The longest range for thief attack is 1200 (cluster bomb). All the other thief range attack is 900 distance.
DPS
===
Thief > Ranger
Thief boost high crit and high power if spec right. They kill things/player fast.
Ranger attack is more steady-streamed and lesser of burst-mode dps.
Toughness
===
Ranger > thief.
Thief dies easy in fight. So thief has to rely heavily on burst-mode dps to finish the enemies fast before he dies.
Ranger is tough. My ranger can basically stand in the arrow cart AOE fire taking only little dmg with each barrage (my ranger hp dmg is also mitigated by his passive heal signet).
Ranger pet like bear are tanky creature. They are tough and can self-heal and tank most veteran mobs out there for you.
AOE ability
====
Ranger > thief
Ranger has longbow skill num 5 AOE similar to arrow cart aoe while thief has cluster bomb AOE. The only reason why I feel ranger AOE is more superior than thief is because of its longer range (1500 for ranger 1200 for thief).
I WvW all the time. So this longer range AOE is a great help when hitting keep/tower defenses.
Survival-bility
=====
Thief > Ranger
Ranger can be tougher than thief but they cannot out-escape like a thief can. A thief can basically chain cast stealth ability to offer them at least 6 seconds of stealth which allow them to escape from the heat of the fire. Pursuing enemies will probably retreat when you are in stealth. However, for ranger, I find that enemies will pursue you all the way till they kill you no matter what it cost them. They will even down and kill you in front of legendary defender even though they knew they will get killed by the defender in return.
Enjoy-ability
====
I am a WvW person. So I enjoy Ranger more when I am looking for kills. However, when I am in the naughty mode of ‘disturbing’ enemies, I will play thief. For every 10 kills I got on my ranger, I probably only get 1 on my thief for the same length of game play. But that is my play style – range style. It may differ on other ppl’s thief char. Some thief are prolific killers on the battleground but they are also the one that I see who will get killed in return eventually.
My advice
===
If you have plenty of game time and patience, play a ranger char first. When you reach lvl 80, use your tank pet and go farm mobs and materials in the pve zone to earn gold. Farming is easier on ranger char than thief, especially taking on more than one mobs at a time. When you have enough gold, use it to buy 800 gems to buy another char slot which you can use to create a thief char later.
So what happens if you are skint and have no money and die????
I believe in that ‘dead’ state, you can still chat, open and send email to seek help from friend.
If nobody helps you, you can open up Trading post to sell you inventory items.
If you have no inventory items, you can ungear and sell you armor and/or weapons.
If you have no armor or weapon (fully naked), you can sell your inventory bags.
If you have no inventory bags, TOTALLY NOTHING, you can seek help from technical support offline.
If technical support refused to help you, I think it is not unreasonable to delete GW2 and move on to other game.
There should be some protection mechanism in-built to prevent this. Why would anyone want to soulbound an item which they cannot use? If anything, it probably has to be an accident or oversight on the players’ part and therefore the game should have some in-built protection to safeguard against this. Putting a confirmation dialog is just so meaningless, though it succeed in shifting the responsibility to the player and hence Anet can claim non-responsibility.
Agreed?
No, I don’t agree at all. When a dialog box comes up saying “THIS WILL SOULBIND THIS OBJECT TO YOU, ARE YOU SURE???” I think that is plenty.
We have way too many warnings about using hairdryers in the shower as it is. People need to start assuming responsibility for their actions and ignorance.
And not to be mean, but I don’t for a second believe he didn’t get the message saying that would soulbind it, nor do I believe it doesn’t say “soulbound” on the item description.
This is akin to a salesperson coming to an individual asking “I am selling you a bottle of air for US$500. Are you sure you want to buy it?”. If the individual say yes (to the extent of actually signing a contract for it), and paid US$500 but later complain to the court of law, the judge will probably look at it from the yardstick of reasonable-ness rather than just the black and white contract signed.
The question arises on whether the bottle of air is indeed of material use to the individual who purchased it. Even if it shall be claimed that the bottle of air contains perhaps more oxygen than normal air and hence may provide some benefits to the individual, then the next question of reasonable-ness would be whether it cost as much as US$500 to purchase that bottle of air. The cost of similar high-oxygen product used in the medical industry would probably provide some benchmark on the reasonable costing.
If the test of reasonable-ness shall raise a doubt, then it would not be unreasonable to ask the salesperson to justify why a refund (or a partial refund) on his product is not reasonable. And whether the salesperson is partially accountable for not making a clear presentation of his product which led to some misunderstanding on the part of his customer?
Back to the currrent context, the question to ask would be “is there a reasonable use for purchasing a soulbound item which a player cannot use?”. If the answer is yes, for example to salvage it to gain crafting material e.g., then the next question to ask is “would another item out there be available for salvage that potentially yield the same crafting material. And if it exist, then what is its cost?” “Is the cost paid by the individual to purchase that exotics items reasonable for the purpose of salvage when another substitute item is available at a (probably) lower cost?”
If we were to further nitpick on this matter, the dialog confirmation box may have stated that the item may be soulbounded but has not detailed the consequence of being soulbounded within the same context of the dialog box. Is it reasonable to assume any player to fully comprehend the meaning and consequences of soulbound item and whether the term ‘soulbound’ is so universally known that it is ‘reasonable’ for any public individual to know its full meaning without further explanation?
If there are doubts, then Anet cannot claim full non-responsibility on its part but has to shoulder some responsibility.
Agreed?
Things change and they will. That is the only constant whether it may be by intent or forced by circumstances.
Just check back in from time to time and see how it develops. At current moment, it is cost-free to come back if you shall decide to leave this game for ‘greener pasture’. No need to uninstall (unless you need the HDD space), throw away your registration code or resell your game because you may like this game in future when it changes ‘for the better’. You may never know. Nobody knows.
There should be some protection mechanism in-built to prevent this. Why would anyone want to soulbound an item which they cannot use? If anything, it probably has to be an accident or oversight on the players’ part and therefore the game should have some in-built protection to safeguard against this. Putting a confirmation dialog is just so meaningless, though it succeed in shifting the responsibility to the player and hence Anet can claim non-responsibility.
Agreed?
With only a 150 strong technical team, I doubt you can be top in every category. Unless you are as big as WoW development team, you probably has to focus on where you want to commit your resources. Is it spvp, pve or wvw?
I came into this game on feedback that GW is a pvp-orientated game. I love pvp (but not one with death penalty) especially in massive pvp like in WvW. I came into this game with that expectation. I am not disappointed. I suspect that more improvements are possible in WvW and hope to see it implemented here rather than in other games.
This recent new pve content launch has pulled many people away from WvW participation over the weekend to the extent that the game experience has deteriorated. It has succeeded in self-cannibalizing WvW (I don’t know about sPvP as I normally don’t play sPvP).
If GW2’s future plan is to focus on pve. Fine. No problem. Just make it clear so that player like me can decide whether we would like to commit our resources now knowing that WvW will play second or third position to pve. That does not mean we will quit GW2 but at least we know where we stand as a player. (I stayed 8 years with WoW even when they announced they will be more pve-orientated than any other things because I still enjoy their battleground until GW2 promised a more massive battleground in WvW than WoW battleground).
It is useless to say that GW2 would like to be top in all 3 categories. This is not possible given the competition out there in the MMO market and size of GW2 development team. Please let us player know when you are ready on your direction on GW2 core competency to develop. I hope this will be sooner than later. Otherwise, we players will form our own opinion which may be different from GW2 intent. This is not healthy.
I venture a guess that WvW is actually not in the core plan of GW2 at the start. That massive PvP that involves more than 2 parties as a game concept is popping up in other upcoming MMOs’ feature list sprung GW2 to take it up as an ‘add-on’ which they have no clear plan for it but would also not like to discount it totally.
But time is running out for GW2 as noted by others who mentioned PlanetSide 2 which promises similar WvW on a much more massive scale potentially involving thousands of players. Other games has an aggressive plan for their WvW. GW2 has to now step up their plan for WvW or risk remaining the laggard in this category.
I am a pvp gamer, especially in massively pvp type like in WvW. Whichever game do this part of the game well will hold my attention, bandwidth and resources. I hope it would be GW2 than other games.
I’m going to go back to EVE online.
I was hoping GW2 would be a sandbox fantasy MMO of the kind I have a soft spot for (instead of a spaceship MMO) that could be my new home, but it appears that is not to be.
I still have 4 PLEX in my EVE Online inventory that gives me 4 months of free play and tonnes of materials and ships that I can sell to buy at least another 10 PLEXes (assuming each PLEX still cost 400 million ISK each). But I am not going back to Eve Online in the near future simply because the agony of the pvp death penalty still haunt me to this day (even when I am now much more skilled (2+ real life years of training hours) and can tank my ship to allow me to escape most attacks). Though it is a cool and fun game, the nightmare still linger with me and preventing me from going back. At least not in the near future.
Ok, it looks like I am discussing other games in GW2 forum and risk another inflaction point for being irrelevant, hold your gun Mod. What I relate about Eve Online applies equally to GW2. I mention at length in my previous post about the impact of leveraging repair bill on WvW death. This 2 issues are similar though the penalty is lesser than in Eve Online.
IF and if I ever left GW2 in future (I will DEFINITELY go play PlanetSide2 when it launch in a day’s time but I am not leaving GW2 yet), this repair bill issues in WvW will similarly weigh on my mind when I am considering coming back to GW2 to WvW which is the only thing that holds my interest in GW2. I know that at lvl 80, the repair bill should not be too much a burden as I can earn much more through other means, but the psychological burden is still there. It WEIGHS on my consideration.
Please reconsider what I said so that you can facilitate our decision making on game choice to commit our resource in future. Help us to help yourselves. Please.
Thief if you like killing people.
Guardian if you don’t like dying.
I think otherwise. Choose thief if you don’t like dying. As a thief, you will NOT die. When your hp hit a low threshold, stealth and do a alt-F4 to exit the game. No one will kill you for sure.
Ok I am pissed by this thief bug. I termed it as a bug because I think the thief exploitation of the games loophole is not intended as a game design and hence need fixing just like any other bugs.
The thief bug that I refer to is their ‘stealth and alt-F4’ ability. Everytime a thief loses a fight (with probably <10% hp) they do a stealth and then alt-F4 to exit the game totally, thereby effectively offering them a failsafe getaway EVERYTIME.
I am pissed off because such encounter are becoming very frequent now. Within the half an hour time, I encounter 3 different thief enemies doing exactly the same thing.
I hope this will get some fixing from Anet. If otherwise, and Anet ‘endorse’ such unfair exploitation of the stealth mechanics, then I will level a thief and do the same to the enemies and pissed them off too. I am pissed, the enemies will be pissed and every customer will be pissed. The only loser will be Anet. The choice is yours.
Currently WvW uses the same skills as PvE, so PvP balance changes do not have an impact on WvW.
You guys should consider extending the sPvP rules to WvW. There’s a lot of stuff that’s overpowered/messed up in WvW because you continue to use PvE rules instead of sPvP rules, which are actually balanced for, you know, fighting other players.
Anet cannot extend sPvP rules to WvW. Doing so will mean they cannot charge repair bill in WvW. This would be a great drain on their revenue.
Thief seems to have super-normal ability beyond stealth.
A group of us (4 members) engages a solo thief in WvW Danelon supply camp. (Ok, he is actually the one who initiated the fight with a group of us. Obviously, he is confident to fight us solo.) He is good at stealthing and downed a number of us, but we always res our downed member before he can finished them. So, his hp is diminishing with each second of fight until finally he decide to run.
We chased him and cc him with all that we have got and we managed to downed him. In his downed state, he just disappeared. Ok, we thought to ourselve this fellow is just another alt-F4 losers who quit game before the finisher is planted on him.
2 second later, I saw in the mini-map a enemy downed icon beyond the gate of Quentin. I went after the downed icon intending to assist whoever has downed the enemy. To my surprise, I saw it is the same thief whom we are fighting at Danelon who is in the downed state beyond Quentin gate.
HOW THE HELL he travel in downed state from Danelon to beyond Quentin gate? Someone can offers a possible explanation?
Yeah, go to other race zone to level up as what others had said. I have personally leveled all the 5 different races (4 races to lvl 80 and 1 race to lvl 42) in the 5 race specific zone. By far, charr zone is the most insanely difficult to quest. I got killed more time in charr low level zone in my level 80 gears than in other high level race zones. In fact, I don’t get killed that many time even in orr land.
Charr zone is just insane in my opinion.
You can’t use logic to explain everything. Try explaining why undead NPC has health point (hp) in the first place. What is health to an undead? Aren’t they already dead? Why certain undead has 10K health point while other has 5K health point? Some undead more ‘healthy’ than others?
I mean if the gear had cool skin jobs and the dungeons are fun I don’t see a problem with them, I would even run them myself even though i prefer the PVP and making Money Grind.
People don’t play games for fun, what’s wrong with you?
Do you think jumping around is fun? I don’t. I find it idiotic. But obviously jumping is a huge fixture in GW2 via its vista and jumping puzzle.
So some people play game not for fun. Or so as I see it. But that is just a personal perspective from someone who don’t find joy pressing ‘spacebar’, ‘spacebar’, ‘spacebar’, …., ‘spacebar’ a zillion time just to travel from one point to another.
If going by your logic that undead should not be affected by such conditions as bleed and poison, then necromancer profession should be immune to them too. Necromancer in some other games is technically classified as undead.
I don’t know about GW2. They may view necromancer as not undead. If they can classify WvW as PVE and not PVP, then anything is possible.