Guild Wars 2

So, what should be done about WvW? My answer to this are to rework the incentives. As much as I like the lulz of playing WvW, the fact is that a certain level of incentive is needed to keep people interested. So, for the remainder of the thread, if you don’t want to be a bitter lil’ boi, this can be a good place to come up with new ideas and incentives to help make WvW a more attractive option for players to play in.

Currently, the rewards in WvW are also as strange as U.S. tax laws: the primary rewards in WvW comes from player kills, which have little to do with the actual scoring system in WvW. This creates an extremely strange and unfair reward system for WvW, in that the capacity to get rewards is based upon enemy population, which is based on your own server’s rank. This creates a form of negative feed back where the fewer people there are, the fewer reasons why you’d want to get into WvW, which makes fewer people want to go there, which gives even less reasons to go there in the first place.

Sucks, doesn’kitten Well, as for the “fix” to this problem, I take inspiration from a few other games. And by taking inspiration, I mean “shamelessly ripping off and claiming these ideas as my own”.

The simplest idea I can borrow is to put a series of high rewards that are based in holding towers and keeps, and exploration. Here’s some highly basic and unrefined ideas on stuff that can be done:

-Towers would have workers that would gather materials, and a respawning chest that will give players fine crafting materials after they’ve had control of the tower for a consecutive half hour.
-Keeps would have farming patches and gathering nodes that will replenish themselves regularly (half hour, 15 minutes with worker upgrade).
-Stonemist would have both of these, and also increase the magic find of players in WvW.

The basic idea being that WvW would be about grabbing and holding real estate long enough to get a series of perks from doing so. Supply camps wouldn’t get anything, since their ability to provide supply would directly contribute to the ability to grab and defend other places. In lower population servers, it would be easier to grab and hold things without worrying about flipping immediately, but high population servers will end up with players farming each other for drops.

Likewise, currently in EotM it is far more profitable to just capture places than to keep them. Another idea, albeit a more punishing one, is to make it so capturing any tower/keep starts a 15 minute long event where you have to defend it, and if you don’t defend the tower/keep, then the event fails and you don’t get any awards. That way, instead of gigantic zergs just rushing around grabbing whatever they can, the players would have to hold their captures long enough to get the gold/karma off of the keeps. I say this is “punishing” because ultimately it delays players from getting rewards, instead of giving incentives for playing differently than they do now.

Unfortunately, the flow of creative juices has run dry on my end. But alas, I think this will open up the discussion to more things. For now, I’ll just throw these out

-Week long rewards for player servers winning matchups
-A score scaling incentive other than Power of the Mists

Personally, I blame myself for the following problem, since I wasn’t quick enough on the draw to dispense my wisdom to Anets eager ears before they made a series of paradoxical decisions. So, I am willing to accept everyone’s hate for the next few lines.
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Still hatin? I’ll give you a few more lines.
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Alright, that’s enough. Get over it you spiteful lil’ boi.

Enough fluff. Here’s what I’m talking about. O.K. just a bit more fluff. You’ve gotta love that bunny. This thread will be two posts: post one is what the problem is, and post 2 is what should be done as I decree it.

But to be serious now, there is a strange, almost paradoxical philosophy that Anet has developed regarding WvW, and in fault I blame the players for it because they have developed these expectations. But, I will not resolve the next few lines for my hatred, because I’m better than that. Most importantly, I’m better than you, you hateful lil’ boi.

I’ve seen a few MMOs that have a permanent faction based conflict in the overworld. DCUO and Aion are two such examples, and they are an example as to why this idea sucks: the faction based conflicts result in servers being heavily stacked in one direction or the other, turning the game into a free ride vs. gank fest depending on which side you stumble into.

WvW was designed specifically to be a three-way gank to prevent one-sided domination. If one side had superior numbers, coverage, and skill, then the two smaller sides can team up and kill the biggun’. Disproportionate populations were meant to eventually be balanced out on a server by server basis, but with changing active populations there’s no guarantees, so the whims of the seasons means one server will be roflstomped by the other quite frequently. This was expected, and so the rewards in WvW are based mostly around being in WvW, lest one server be punished for another’s inactivity.

To this end, it has always been my understanding that WvW is inherently unfair. It is a war where the treatise are shaky at best, the size of anyone’s army is up for debate, there is no standard time of engagement, and you will always be fighting on two fronts. The monetary incentives are contrary to the game’s scoring system, causing a conflict of interest in the players. So, you get into big fights for the lulz and for the thrills of large scale combat, and after each week you laugh about what happened and prepare for the next fight.

But, what Anet is doing with WvW isn’t based on this premise. No, the premise of “It’s not fair, have some fun” gets thrown out the door as soon as you have seasons, tournaments, and rankings. Now, we see complaints about 2 vs. 1s, coverage vs. coverage, buying guilds and recruiting players to shore up numbers, time zones and which one is overpowered, etc. Now, under the premise of all being fair in love and war, this is just whining. But if you have an actual competition, then these complaints are legitimate.

Think about it: When in a game of soccer have they put 3 teams on the field, and then tried to award medals for whomever won that game? When has there been a game of football where all the players wait for the other team to fall asleep so they can score touchdowns unopposed? When in a game of basketball is it fair for one team to outnumber the other on the field 3 to 1? When is there a game of chess when the players get paid for how many pawns they take, regardless of if they win? The answer to all this is “never” because these are nonsensical and stupid things, and any serious spectators will laugh in your face over how utterly ridiculous the system is.

A 3 team soccer game might be fun. I won’t argue that. But will it be fair? Absolutely not. The season has epitomized the problems with this model. I mean, look at the standings and ask yourself if anyone is surprised about the outcomes. The only upset I can see is that BG was doubleteamed, which under non-tourney standards is par for the course, but in a tournament is a cheap move.

These problems are endemic to WvW. You can’t fix cheap moves, coverage, time zones, and population differences. It is because of this that the whole tournament thing is utter rubbish. You end up having to hand out cheap, nigh meaningless rewards in a hodgepodge that strangely punishes or rewards tiering in an arbitrary manner. The whole thing ends up more convoluted than U.S. tax laws, except that the rewards have to be low or else people will feel even more ripped off for things out of their control.

If you want my advice for WvW in the future, it would be simply thus: no more tournaments. Change incentives, and add new things to WvW.

Nerelith.7360:

Saint.5647:

Vesuvius.9874:

Maliel.8362:

This is just typical behavior in games without subscription fees, have you ever visited the League of Legends forums?

I’m assuming there’s more whining there because more children play LoL . Grownups don’t whine, they provide feedback.

O_o You must work with some wonderful people.

Not whining is part of the defining traits of being grown up. You can be an adult…( over 18, or 21…depending on your jurisdiction), and Not be grown up..( mature).

Maturity is a lie told by society to force you to conform to their standards. People don’t “grow up”. They just get fatter and suddenly more is expected of them. They still have all the same actions, it is just now when Billy takes Tammy’s cupcake, he can dredge up an endless series of sociopolitical, idealistic, and philosophical reasons why he deserves Tammy’s cupcake.

And now for something completely different.

I see a lot of complaints about the gem store. Maybe it is just me, but I’ve never really had an issue with how things are in the gem store. This is because I mostly see the stuff there as superfluous extras that I’ll just buy with in-game gold anyway. Granted, the gem store seems like an afterthought to the game’s design, but it doesn’t seem intrusive and overbearing at all.

To be fair, the proportion of n00bs in other classes is pretty high as well. I see tons of camping rifle warriors, scepter guardians, staff eles that stay in water, P/P thieves, P/P Engis that stay in pistol and don’t use kits, scepter/greatsword mesmers that use mantras, etc.

Difference is, when people play a guardian, they’re told to get gud. When people play a ranger, they’re told to reroll.

Yep. Thieves are pretty good in dungeons. Though they do have a redundancy issue, since a thief fills their niche so well, that a second thief won’t do it any better.

Something I hate is that now the shades seem to inflict corruption in an AoE. Originally I could just kite the enemies, or I could face tank them with blinds. Now, I get stacks when I’m not even being targeted by anything.

So far that is my only complaint. The event is hard, but it isn’t too bad.

“Guild Wars 2 is the worst MMO ever released, except for all the ones that came before it”.
~ Winston Churchill… ish.

You know, there is a minecraft mod called Iguana tweaks. This is a mod I hate, since basically all it does is make the game inconvenient. You move slower, you don’t heal up, food sucks now, your inventory space is shot, mining takes forever… just a horrible mod. And yet, some people just plain love this mod.

Why am I talking about a minecraft mod? Because it epitomizes why many people hate GW2: There are a lot of features that GW2 removed from standard MMOs that players absolutely loved. To these people, it wasn’t an inconvenience, but a way of life.

*Grind. Worst game I played had 30+ skills, 99 levels in each, and each can take weeks to level even if you no-life. Now, some players like this, because it gives them a simple goal they have to work for, and without a carrot on the stick, a lot of people lose meaning in a game.

*Disproportionate PVP. Same game as above, each level of gear cost 10 times more than the last, with the best gear in the game costing more money that the gold cap. Some people like this, because they don’t want an even playing field. They want their endless slog to amount to sheer statistical pwnage in PVP.

*Fixed combat roles. The most recent MMO I’m playing has something like this, where you need one of tank/healer/resource management/ DPS in order to do pretty much anything. The fact is, some people like being necessary and crucial to their team due to their role, and like that everything hinges on a proper role performance. This provides a sense of guidance to players and their playstyle.

*P2P trading. Fact is, some players like to pretend they are in a foreign bazaar, trying to haggle their rares. They like the thrill of finding deals, and making big bank through sheer audacity alone.

*Harsh penalties for death. One game I played had it so death made you lose all but 3 of your items and your entire inventory. Some people like that thrill of danger.

*Long travel times and mounts. Some players like the remote and exclusive feel of different areas. The convenience of the WP takes away the experience from the journey.

*Additional resource management. Some players like having to deal with mana, or attack items. since it provides more depth to build around. The more factors you can adjust, the more depth you have to build around.

*Likewise, large build depth. GW2 is fairly locked in with classes and traits go, but some games have such large build diversity that it is nigh incomprehensible. Personally, this is one I like. Give me a hundred things to tweak, and you’ll keep me occupied with just theorycrafting for days.

*Limited crafting and inventory resources. Some players like competing for resources, since it brings value to obscure corners of the world, and strange monsters to fight. Managing inventory can be another “resource” players have to deal with.

*Animations and dodges. Some people want the game to be lower maintenance, and don’t want to have to deal with dodging or placement with uber attacks.

*Instances. Many players want to be isolated from other players, and hate having to deal with randoms who might come up and interrupt what they are doing.

I think GW2 is a good game. The way things run are extremely responsive, smooth to play, easy to get in to but hard to master, and there is a lot of anti-hassle measures. The update philosophy, balance frequency, balance methodology, story writing, and the gem store focus are crap, but this makes GW2 stagnant, not bad. But, the fact is that GW2 has many features that players don’t like or want, and GW2 is missing many features that are present in other MMOs.

Heck, I listed a boat load of features I miss from CoH in another thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-do-you-miss-from-other-games/page/2#post4055272

Necros offer a few things. Massive bulk, good vulnerability, strong debuffs in general, and decent self buffing abilities. Problem is, most of these traits are useless in organized groups.

All monsters have the PVT mentality.

I wouldn’t mind the occasional additional flag to enemy behavior. The idea I have is that a ranged mob will never voluntarily enter within 600 range of a player, instead choosing to orbit to get LoS instead of just stacking like a bunch of mindless animals.

Though most difficulty will have to come from better skill design, and not necessarily smarter AI.

I wouldn’t call it punishing as much as I would call it strangely beneficial. Sometimes I really need to increase the distance between me and my opponent, and the shot does that well.

I write about these things every once in awhile. So, a few links. First, the berserker thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/To-clear-the-air-about-Berserker/first

This outlines what a few of the issues with berserker are. The short version:

#1: Anet has to balance rewards and difficulty around something. Balancing without zerker leads to inflation of gold, and boring/unchallenging content. Balancing with zerker in mind leads to unrewarding, overly difficult content that much of the playerbase can’t get in to. The ideal balance should be in the middle of the two, but with the distance so wide between reward times for gear choices, Anet will end up satisfying no one.

#2: The more diverse styles of gameplay that is encouraged, the more diverse the players the game will attract. Having multiple ways for players to express themselves is a good business model, and currently the PVE game doesn’t enforce this too well.

Unfortunately, the best solution so far seems to be to make the game harder in ways that are specific in their discrimination against pure DPS strategies. Such as adding higher ambient damage through faster attacks, and adding mechanics to the game that encourage smart use of movement skills, debuffs, and the various other mechanics that are currently only used in PVP. This pushes the zerker issue into that gray area where the solution just may be more harmful than the problem. At least in short term, anyway.

Now, about stacking: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Stacking-analyzed-and-ideas-for-mob-design/first

#1: The stacking issue is not a zerker issue. All the reasons people stack in zerker gear is the exact same list of reasons people will stack in cleric gear and soldier gear.

#2: Stacking as an issue is mostly a cosmetic one. This is, however, still an issue, and does reflect to a certain degree how generic many mobs are.

#3: Many of the issues attributed to stacking are really standalone issues. I.E. The spider queen not using her AoEs, which may be a problem, is an issue of enemy programming and not stacking.

I wouldn’t mind this as well. I rarely take screenshots, but when I do, I prefer to have an adjustable camera.

As far as dungeon rewards go… they don’t seem to bad.

Something you have to consider is that, although the gold bonus from dungeons can be fairly large, they are also fairly limited in two ways.

#1: The reward is only once per day per account. This puts a throttle on dungeon based inflation that other gold producers simply don’t get.
#2: Dungeons aren’t run by a large portion of the community. Heck, I think its a majority that avoid them…

So, while the theoretical inflation from dungeons might be high, the actual inflation is a lot lower.

This does propose the next question: if the dungeon gold reward were to contribute too much toward inflation, would there be a way to solve it? There actually might be a way to do this: Make dungeon currency more valuable by increasing the amount of things that can be bought from dungeon vendors, and/or substantially increase the number of tokens from those vendors. Then, dungeons could serve as an inexchangeable currency that would only generate profit indirectly via selling the rewards on the TP. This is like what I do with most of my tokens now, where I buy rares, salvage them for mats and ectos, then sell them on the TP.

To match the current wealth of dungeon runs without affecting inflation, you’d have to more than double the amount of tokens received. This all serves as a solution to a problem I’m not sure even exists, though.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/To-clear-the-air-about-Berserker/first

I thought about this issue once. Though most of the good stuff is in the first 3 posts, there’s quite a bit throughout the whole thread. Though note: the original comparison was made before the ferocity nerf, so the build links won’t tell the same story.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Those reasons may all explain why people join efficiency groups when not willing or able to engage in the efficiency play-style. However, they do not excuse butting in where one was not invited. Efficiency players who join “anything goes” groups and demand efficiency, likewise.

Excuses #1 and #2 are simply, “I choose to disregard what others want.” I have no sympathy for those positions.

Numbers 3 and 4 represent legitimate dilemmas. However, there are teaching groups — some are run by members of the dungeon community. Forcing a given group to accept a teaching role, however it may appeal to those wanting it, is not an ideal solution. I tend to be helpful in games, but I’m not always in the mood nor do I always have the time do so. Players can group with the like-minded, or join guilds that offer to take the less experienced on dungeon runs. An LFG group — consisting of random players who’ve advertised they want a fast run — is simply the wrong venue for a teaching experience. It’s not reasonable to expect the convenience of the PuG tool while also expecting a learning experience on demand, with little to no effort on the part of the prospective student.

Number 5 is ignorance. If this is happening, then there are two possibilities. Either the person has learning issues, or is willfully ignorant. I feel for people who have learning issues. I believe that one should not be rude to them. The willfully ignorant I avoid whenever possible. While I do not advocate rudeness to such people, removing them after a polite explanation is not rude — though it may not make one a humanitarian.

None of this is to say that I approve of anyone being rude, talking down to others, kicking without some explanation, etc. However, neither do I believe that people have the right to demand others hang out with them even if they aren’t in tune with what those others want.

I don’t think they excuse butting in, either. My philosophy with forming groups in games is always “his group his rules” system.

Though #2 isn’t disregarding what others want. As far as these people know, a bunch of randoms is exactly what the other bunch of randoms in the group wants.

I form teaching groups myself. I always open my dungeons with “all welcome” and ask if anyone needs to be taught the dungeon before we begin. What I also notice, however, is the rarity of these teaching runs. Fairly recently, I decided to get dungeon master and do CoF and Arah, and were I to sit around waiting for someone to form an LFG specifically to teach me, I’d still be sitting here today. I had to take initiative myself on that one, but most players don’t have the mental fortitude to teach a bunch of other newbs a path they themselves haven’t run yet. Ideally, other people would take this initiative themselves. Realistically, people treat the LFG like a job interview: canned answers, only flaw is that they “work too hard”, and it is O.K. because the system is inherently unfair anyway.

There is another choice for #5: language barrier. I’ve actually met several people who can play games without speaking the language. Though it is as incomprehensible as someone going through life without being literate, it is possible for someone to observes the trends in behavior and learn quite a lot from that. This is actually a form of culture education called “full immersion”, and like full immersion the learning process is about tripping over the whole darn thing until you learn to stand. So, until they eventually figure out that “zerk” means “full berserker gear”, and that it is enforced randomly, they’ll have no proper means of learning.

Ashen.2907:

1) I commented on elitism. Giving preference to one person because they are superior, or perceived to be so, in some way to an alternative is a form of elitism.

2) Intruding on a group in contradiction of its clearly stated goals and desires is rude and selfish. The community theater across the street from my home advertises ballroom dancing on the first wednesday of each month. It would be very rude and selfish of me to walk in and start square dancing.

5) If there is a word that you do not know being used then you should know to ask. If you are not willing to ask a question in a situation where you know that you are not in the know the consequences are your own.

Of course the expectation is in the mind. It is in the mind of the person who formed the group and labeled the LFG according to that expectation. It is in the minds of those who join a group so labeled. It should be in the mind of anyone seeking to join that group. This is not significantly different than a group labeled as needing one more for HotW and having someone join with the intention of doing AC. If the player doesn’t know what HOTW means he knows that he doesnt know, and has the option to ask. The same is true with a team advertising for a zerker. If a player doesnt know what the word zerker means he knows that he doesnt know and can ask. If I say to you, “Yggdrasil stands tall,” and you do not know what Yggdrasil means you will immediately know so and could ask.

I think that you are over psychoanalyzing the individuals looking for a faster path to game rewards. “Sometimes a cigar,” I mean an advertisement for a speed run, “is just a cigar,” I mean an attempt to complete an objective a bit faster.

#1: Guess again. Elitism is not based on preferences of performance, but exclusion of perceived deficiencies. The word itself is based on the notions of privilege being separated into the sole ruling class, and thus always manifests as an exclusion by standards. There is no “pick A or pick B” option in elitism, only a “don’t pick A”.

#2: As far as these people know and experience, the title is meaningless and thus garners no further expectations, because no one respects them anyway.

#3:You misunderstand how potent a lack of knowledge can be. Because they don’t know what the word means, they don’t know if it is important enough to ask about. The title might as well be the collection of random gibberish that spews out of map chat, and no one cares about that stuff. People go through life encountering unimportant words that have absolutely no impact on their life, and thus aren’t worth learning. Yggdrasil is one of those words.

The whole point of the list is the fact that, no, the speed expectation is not in the mind of people who join up on these groups, nor in the mind of people seeking to join these groups. Hell, sometimes it isn’t even in the mind of the people who form the groups, because they’ll just copy/paste what they see, or they’ll inherit the group from someone else who used those tags and don’t care to change them. While you have done a good job of saying that you hate people who do this, this doesn’t suddenly make it not true.

God Of Mustard.6354:

Abridged to save space

#1: They wouldn’t be sad if people weren’t being so retentive over the issue. Quality of life aside, there is a very strong anti-elitism presence in the game, and without proper population policing tools, what option is there other than to make them feel as unwelcome as possible? As far as they consider it, their sabotage is done for the greater good of the game. Without any additional principles to guide them, you’ll see exactly how far your standard man is willing to negotiate with the devil.

#2: Kicking for forming requirements in groups and standard expectations when entering a group environment have very little to do with each other. You have to understand, for many people the prospect of a full zerk party has absolutely no qualitative meaning, and thus garners no more respect than writing in a bathroom stall.

#3: This doesn’t have to deal with being carried at all. Those players can be fully self sufficient in their gear choice, but not self sufficient in others. It is counterproductive to make someone wear armor that they can’t function in, because then is when they truly have to be carried.

#4: If they differ in aspects, then they aren’t the same. There again, is a difference here, where one joins with the sole expectation to learn to not be carried. Temporary sacrifice for the greater good. Besides, forming a learning dungeon party doesn’t work, because then they’ll just get a bunch of other people who don’t know what to do, and they’ll learn nothing from their deaths. It is that strange kafkaesque paradox where, to learn to run dungeons in zerker gear, you have to already be able to run dungeons in zerker gear.

#5: As much as I wish this were rare, I find out surprisingly often that it isn’t. GW2 is a multi-national game filled with all levels of devotion to the game. Not everyone is going to pass far enough into the culture of the game and through the language barrier to know that “zerk” means berserker gear, or that “GC” means berserker gear.

Your prospects on diagnosing the problem are dubious at best. When the issue is “why do people join up zerk groups but not in zerk”, this can only be the case when said group is already advertised as “zerk”. If it is not labeled as such, then it is not such. To have elaborate expectations about a party, but don’t indicate or demand these expectations is to be truly irrational.

Likewise, I myself am a zerk player, and I still denounce the evils of elitism regularly. This is because I understand that other people will play differently, and my higher risk for performance is an unnecessary choice that I have made.

Every one of those except for magnetic shield does damage… BTW you can drop fire bomb and then BoB and still get the blast.

PVE build is easy: Full zerker, 6/6/0/0/2 for max DPS or 6/5/0/0/3 if you want Last Gasp for defense.

Weapons: Dagger Mainhand, focus offhand, then warhorn/dagger offhand. Utilities are basically whatever is needed for the encounter, but personally I take consume conditions, well of suffering, signet of spite, well of darkness, and flesh golem.

Conditions do have counterplay to them. Firstly, condition applying attacks are rarely superior to regular power attacks, so they can be dodged, blocked, evaded, blinded, countered by stun, etc. Second, conditions have cleanses. Third and most dangerous, there are classes that can transfer conditions, which is arguably the most powerful counter in the game. It literally transfers all remaining damage of an attack to someone else.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Did they say every weapon? I have a hard time seeing what use a Warrior, Thief and Engineer would have for a Scepter or Focus.

Whacking stick.

Thwap!

That would just be a vid of an engi that drops fire bomb, then blasts BoB, Healing Turret, Magnetic Shield, Rifle Turret, then switches to grenades and spams them against an enemy.

If you are in a group with low condis but good stacking, it can put out more vulnerability and damage. Also if you are kiting people in PVP/WvW, those mines lying around can hit unexpecting players.

Ashen.2907:

1) I highly doubt they really hate elitism in general, but may dislike when it works against them personally. I would not be surprised to find that if asked to choose between a surgeon that graduated top in his class and who has since performed a given procedure hundreds or thousands of times and one who barely graduated with assistance and who has little experience with the procedure in question the elite hating individuals would discard their hatred in favor of the superior option. I believe that its not a matter of, “principle,” but rather of personal advancement.

2) If the run is labeled a certain way in LFG anyone joining who does not meat the listed parameters is being selfish and rude.

3) Then they shouldn’t be joining runs labeled as zerker only. If I cannot swim it would be disrespectful to the other members of the team for me to join a team swim event.

4) There are runs that do not require zerker only. The player is also capable of starting his own group.

5) Good point, but if you don’t know, ask, seems reasonable. I also believe that it is safe to assume that if you have no idea what something is you might want to research it a bit before joining a group designate for it.

The anticipated speed of the run is not and expectation that only one person has. It is an expectation that anyone joining the group in accordance with its advertised goals has. One person ignoring the expectation of the intent and goals of everyone else in a group of players is being selfish and rude in the same way as if I joined a PvP group and decided to throw the match.

1)You confuse “elitist” with “good”. You’d be amazed how many people with a militant superiority complex aren’t superior at all. Zerk requirements in the game are extraneous, and that is a fact.
2)Matching regular expectations isn’t selfish and rude.
3)I agree, but nonetheless this doesn’t change how someone feels.
4)Forming their own party doesn’t matter. They’ll just get a bunch of other people who don’t know what to do, and they’ll learn nothing from their deaths. It is that strange kafkaesque paradox where, to learn to run dungeons in zerker gear, you have to already be able to run dungeons in zerker gear.
5)You do not understand the true effects a lack of knowledge really has: because they don’t know, they don’t know to ask.

The anticipated speed of the run is an expectation that exists only in the minds of people who are familiar with the content, familiar with the terminology, embrace the zerker meta, embrace elitist discrimination, and have instituted the unrealistic expectation that everyone will tag along and perform perfectly. This isn’t “one person” in the entire world of GW2, but only those who have purposely imposed those expectations on themselves.

You seem to misunderstand my purpose. I don’t think people should join zerker parties without having zerker gear. I’m saying that the whole “I’ll grab on to these guys to get faster tokens” idea is a delusion of paranoia, projected by a superiority complex onto its victims to legitimize deep hatred of their fellow man.

I get way too attached to my own toons to do this, but this shows up in a lot of MMOs. Back in City of Heroes, they were called Iron Eagles.

It was cool, because these guys actually formed cohesive groups that played through content together, and would have multiple alts to replace the guys they lost. For them, the standard dungeon run was a hair-raising experience.

Its not super lame, actually. The thing is, different classes have different utilities, and in case one class be becomes super common, their utility is always filled by another teammate.

Fenrir.3609:

They are getting “carried” in terms of the anticipated speed of the run. You can faceroll through pretty much all the content (and solo a great deal of it) in tanky gear/builds but it will take a while longer than a dps team.

Now those trying to get into zerk runs in tanky gear are doing so because they want to get through the content quickly, being carried on the back of other players dps, whilst they use suboptimal gear/builds . i.e. they are being carried.

The “anticipated speed of the run” is an expectation that only you have. People will join zerk groups while not in zerk for a myriad of reasons that don’t involve hoping other players carry them:

#1: They hate elitism and defy these extraneous expectations out of principle.
#2: They expect everyone else to just join up in whatever they are wearing anyway, and don’t think the tags have any real meaning.
#3: They factually cannot operate in zerker gear, and thus their higher bulk actually gives them higher sustained DPS than zerker gear would.
#4: They just want experience in the run, but since no one will ever form a “teaching n00bs” group they feel like they have to lie just to get their foot in the door. It is hard to learn the content when you die every other attack, so even if they have zerk gear, they want to run with more durability before going out on a limb.
#5: They don’t know what “zerk” is. Funny thing, berserker doesn’t contain the word “zerk” anywhere, so unless they are in the know they won’t know.

You’ve got to realize that the majority of players in the game don’t follow the “zerk or else” meta. They have different ideals, and truly think they are contributing in their own way. It is quite rare to get players who truly think that, because someone is in berserker gear, that they’ll be carrying them. That’s just projection more than anything else.

Yoh.8469:

Which is exceedingly bazaar

I personally would say it is more swapmeet or mall than bazaar.

Enough joking aside, I think the lack of super-meaningful multiplayer interaction is partly because of the community. The community in this game is quite timid. I fear this may ultimately be Anets fault, though, since they follow a social darwinistic method of teaching players.

This “carry” thing is a bit misleading. You can completely nearly all content in the game in clerics or soldiers. Played well enough, inferior stat combinations are more than self sufficient. I mean, if they are wearing greens or something, then that you might call that carrying because they are undergeared and need to be supported.

It is a simple solution, and probably the best solution, but it is also a harder solution. Mostly because you have to balance out what the rewards quite precisely, otherwise only one of clearing/skipping will ever be done. Though I hate skipping, so I wouldn’t mind if things were levied more toward the clearing side.

I’ve actually played a game with a DPS meter now, and I’ve found the tool to be nearly useless.

The DPS you do is in direct proportion to how much damage other people do. Taken the extremes (1 zerker, 4 clerics vs 4 zerkers, 1 cleric) for example: in the 1z4c party, that one zerker is doing far more damage than the other players are, causing his DPS to be high. But, in the 4z1c party, he’s just average with everyone else, and because all the monsters die quicker, his overall damage per second plummets.

Compare that to the cleric gear guy. With everyone being the same in a group (say, 5 clerics), their damage will seem fine both absolutely and relatively, since they’ll get to do a larger proportion of the damage overall. But, throw on exceptions, and one person appears a lot weaker than the other.

Because of this, without careful experimentation, nearly any kind of meter (private, public, end of dungeon or up to date) doesn’t provide absolute or valuable data about yourself. It just provides relative data.

Second, the meter really doesn’t teach someone. We have a players who run PVT, Clerics, and Rabid in PVE because they’ve assumed a role. Telling them that they’re doing less damage doesn’t stop them from assuming this role.

This also doesn’t instruct players on what they’re doing wrong. This requires initiative, innovation, and research on the players part. As far as they’ll be able to tell, differences in damage are freak occurrences, because from group to group their DPS never holds stationary.

Third, DPS meters are often shallow and neglect other useful information. For example, on my ele I’ll sometimes use elemental attunement to constantly pop protection for the rest of my party. While protection is quite valuable for keeping people alive, going into earth attunement constantly reduces my deeps, and the meter will not show what the compensation for this is.

All in all, I see very little use for a DPS meter.

The topic confuses me a bit.

If you guys are talking about loot, you have to explain what you mean by this.

A)Gold, karma, or other currencies?
B)Crafting mats?
C)Exotic equipment, unique skins, or otherwise “rare items”?
D)Other odds and ends that don’t fit into the above?

Because each one of those is a different beast in itself. Just straight-up gold is a wealth producer, and can contribute to inflation of gold. Crafting mats and “rare items” acquire wealth by being sold on the TP, which due to taxes contributes to deflation of gold.

As for the gem market… that one is also a complicated little monster, and I think people are being overly paranoid over it. The more gold there is, the more people buy gems with gold, which makes gems more expensive. The more valuable gems get, the more likely people will buy gems with cash. Gold and gems match each other in value, to a certain degree, and because of this any farming will have only a minute and temporary impact on gemstone sales.

So the real question is, why does Anet reduce certain farming tactics? Well, I can think of a couple of reasons.

#1: They want more players to run dungeons for their gold and mats. You can call this a tinfoil hat, but I can’t find any evidence to disprove this, so it stays on the table.
#2: Anet is trying to adjust disproportionate inflation somehow. Gold and commodities don’t always grow together, so sometimes one will be curbed to prevent drastic overflows. For example, low tier mats are currently nearly worthless, and removing the low level champ trains might increase their value, thus providing new players with more liquid wealth.
#3: Anet is trying to change their early game image. I must imagine that, for new players, seeing the queensdale train was disheartening, as it is an example of the kind of endless grind that GW2 has been really good at avoiding. Anet probably weighed the losses of people who like the easy grind, and just assumed that they would go elsewhere.

There’s probably more reasons, but I’m too sick to try and write anymore. On the plus side, this cold has given me a much grittier and deeper voice, so be sure to reread this post while thinking of me as being extra manly.

I have an issue with new guys who don’t say they’re new. This isn’t just some kind of oppressive elitism, either. I form the group with the LFG title “All welcome”, and when all players arrive, I ask if anyone is new to the dungeon or doesn’t know what to do, or needs anything to be explained.

Of course, we’ll all sit there for about 3 solid minutes before someone manages a “yes”. But, often times, there will be no response. So, I assume everyone has done the dungeon or knows what to do. The moment we get to a gimmicky boss, the group wipes 3 times in a row before someone says “lol I don’t no wut to do here lol”. Its like, why didn’t you say something in the first place? Why did I have to watch your butt get destroyed three times before you thought it might be prudent to bring up your lack of knowledge on the matter?

For a master’s degree in economics, you haven’t said anything that I didn’t learn from career class in highschool.

Allow my crazy brain to work here for a moment: Precursors and legendaries in the game are not a necessary commodity. They are a luxury. Because they are a luxury, this means that buy price and list price are not the actual exchange rates for these items. No, the exchange rate is usually the result of some anonymous TP negotiations, between buyers constantly raising their offer, and sellers constantly lowering their price, until they collide and the price is reached.

The clockheart is actually pretty easy… in theory. And in practice. But, there’ s a big problem* with the clockheart (note: not actually a problem).

The clockheart requires a strategy that newbs and n00bs are polarized against. The easiest way to beat the clockheart is to facetank him. His melee attack does pitiful damage, and the only real danger in melee range is when he throws you. If you are on a toon with any sort of bulk, he is really easy to facetank. “Any sort of bulk” basically means anything more durable than a 30/30/0/0/10 zerker ele.

But, the first response players have is to be timid and panic, and run away while ranging at maximum difficulty. Of course, Caithe keeps yelling at you to stay in melee range, or otherwise he’ll throw gears around, but the players are just too terrified to listen. So, for all those who don’t know, I’ll list all of the attacks of the clockheart:

Attack one: he smacks you. Small cone, pittance of damage (1.5k on glass cannon elementalist), just surround the clockheart and melee him down.

Attack two: throws gears that stay on the map until his super attack. They do high damage in an AoE and don’t go away. He doesn’t use this attack in melee range, so stay in melee range.

Attack three: he throws a player behind him. This does decent damage, and is unblockable. Be sure not to stand in line of the electrified floor. Stability can stop this, but with his low melee damage it is best to just eat this attack and continue on.

Attack four: He will raise one hand above his head very slowly, then slam down a wave of damage. This does a crap ton of damage, but it is really easy to avoid. Just dodge when he slams, or walk around behind him to avoid the attack.

Attack five: He’ll raise both hands above his head and put a ring around him, and then immobilize everyone nearby while making himself invincible. He’ll then start accumulating a personal buff, and after he gets 30 stacks (in 30 seconds), he’ll do his super attack. The best way to stop this attack is to interrupt him while he raises both hands. Second best way is to pull a hologram to him while invincible, and kill the hologram on top of the clockheart.

Attack six: His super attack. He’ll slam the ground multiple times, doing immense damage proportional to how much health he has lost. This is basically a team wiping attack. The best way to avoid this attack is to never let him use it. But… the super attack is not unavoidable and unblockable, so if you can chain enough evades and blocks, you’ll survive it.

So, short strategy? Melee him, avoid his big one-handed attack, interrupt his big two-handed attack. End of strategy.

I support this.

Originally, if I wanted to get a rune set for a particular toon, I would have save up the tokens and then spend the tokens on the other toon. Any of the runes I got from running the dungeon on alts just ended up being deleted.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Dear Arachnid, I forbid you from making threads and posts of this calibre in both near and far future as far as GW2 is concerned.
No single instance of boredom should ever warrant making threads as constructive for games as undeserving.

I suppose it is a weird way to pass the time, but I’m different. Maybe it’s the aspergers, but sometimes when my mind goes racing, it enters into this strange dialectic reasoning debate over a topic, in which it constantly tries to pit options and counterarguments against itself to come to a conclusion. It can actually be quite maddening sometimes, since there is no off switch for my special kind of nonsense. Trust me, the whole self-academic debate thing is less interesting when it gives you an 8 hour bout of insomnia because your brain can’t resolve whether cheese is evil.

Channeling this 7th level insanity into writing shortens and helps focus the mind. Without a record to go by, my bad memory will drop and recover different things in an endless cycle. By writing things down, it somehow resolves my daily madness.

Harper.4173:

I can see how you might think the majority of players want this but you might be surprised at the actual reality.

To think that the challenge loving, dynamic boss dueling people that post stuff like this on the forums are the majority of the player base is really not a wise idea.

I don’t think the majority of players want this. I mentioned this in the dredge defense post, that most people have come to have a rather lazy expectation of the game. Particularly because the game validates this expectation around every curve. The mentality of complacency is a kittene to shake.

But I stand as the minority in many ways. Instead of an end to stacking, a lot of people want the following:

A)Anti-melee mechanics
B)Anti-zerker mechanics
C)Anti meta mechanics
D) Anti n00b mechanics
E)No change at all
F) Substantial increases in difficulty
G) Substantial increase in ranged effectiveness

So I ask not to judge the volume of my voice, but the quality.

I’m not exactly sure when this became about the zerker meta…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

But don’t you see that melee stacking, zerker gear meta, the uselessness of toughness and vitality, the etablishment of one shot mechanics, and many more flaws are the direct result of the ablility of every single class no matter of specialisation to avoid all incoming damage very frequently?

Actually no.

Frequency of evasion is all about perspective. While you say that the problem is that players evade too frequently, I say the problem is that enemies don’t attack frequently enough. I mentioned this in another thread awhile ago about the zerker meta. Amongst the three posts of literary gold that I produced for all to be in awe over, the short and sweet “problem” I diagnosed is that enemies don’t attack frequently enough. While the players were given skills and techniques appropriate for fighting other players, the mobs in the game were designed for an extremely basic MMO.

That said, the issue of stacking is independent of the zerker meta. Heals, defensive boons, and defensive utilities all work in an AoE. If the game were a cleric/dire/soldier meta, players will still stack for the exact same reasons I listed in the first post. Getting rid of dodges isn’t going to make all of that go away. I don’t think it even should go away, since from a) to i) none of those are intrinsically a “flaw”.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ve almost never seen players stacked that closely together. It might indeed be the norm, but you couldn’t prove this by me. That said, ANet seems to feel that visual clutter and massive particle blur is visually appealing, so I’m not sure that visual presentation in combat is a big concern to them.

Massive particles and visual effects fall under a drastically different category from character models clipping. I mean, have you seen the back of Asuran Eyeballs? I still have nightmares about those things… Anyway, the thing with big particle effects is that they serve a function by themselves. The large particle effects signify actions taken by enemies/friends, and with a lack of cast bars, it is important to visually signify actions. The particle effects are also meant to signify potency in attacks, so that a player can visualize the impact of their techniques.

The clutter and blinding lights appear to be a side effect of bad foresight: Anet didn’t really test this with 20+ players on the screen, or test this with all players cluttered in melee range, or considered that should players be meleeing with no passive defenses, that particle effects can obscure tells. Of course, they attempted to rectify this with an effects reducing option and better AoE field indicators, so this serves as an admission by Anet that no, gigantic blasts of bright light are not the best design choice.

Constantly bringing up particle effects is a deflection, though. The existence of a different problem doesn’t suddenly make the current problem go away.

Again, I don’t see tons of this. Maybe it’s because I avoid the pseudo speed-runs practiced by the PuG community. This is an AI aggro issue, and could be ameliorated by changing the way mob following works — without introducing mechanics to force players to not use teamplay mechanics.

…

What I would find unsatisfying would be the game denying me the opportunity — as a matter of course — to benefit my teammates via the use of skills that: block, reflect, provide fury, provide might, provide blind, provide stability, etc. How does free-lancing actually generate a greater sense of personal contribution than using skills that actually contribute more than just one’s personal DPS?

…

Particle blur makes it much more difficult for me to see tells than proximity. Ommv.

Never, at any point in any of this, is my intent to discourage teamplay mechanics. I’m not sure exactly when this devolved into the false dilemma of disorganized chaos / stacking, but there is more out there than just the extremes.

You need very little to run dungeons.

The whole warriors only or heavies only meta is antiquated. We know this, because so many classes provide more utility and damage than a warrior. What warriors get is a set of unique buffs, and high standing bulk.

Of course, warrior damage is outdone by thieves and elementalists, and on single targets I think even necro can out damage a warrior if group buffs are up. Some people even argue that engi and ranger do more damage than warrior, too. Then, if you get a phantasm mesmer that can sustain 3 phantasms, then their damage can skyrocket as well.

Warriors are played a lot because they are bulky and low-maintenance, meaning that it is easy for new players to get the hang of, and are relatively safe options for doing dungeons. But, given more experience and skill, other classes get to shine.

Isn’t what the OP suggesting exactly what traits do?

Honestly, I see very little reason for not having a /duel command that opens you up for a duel with a big jolly roger on your head, and if someone else types /duel near you while flagged, you can engage in combat after 10 seconds (in which someone can type /duel again to opt out).

I mean, if you don’t want to duel, then don’t type /duel near someone with a big skull and crossbones over their head. Even if you die, due to cheap travel costs and no more repair costs, the loss means very little. Heck, even if they have a duel prompting system, just and an option to auto-decline duels and not see duel prompts, and you’re good to go.

The biggest legitimate argument I can find against this is that, as the game is designed for team combat, duels aren’t going to be balanced between classes. This will result in a whole lot of people migrating to the forums to complain about imbalances that Anet has no intention of fixing. On top of being annoying, this will mean more time devoted to weeding through these complaints, and more people dissatisfied with Anets philosophy balance.

Just think of the different games people can invent with this. When the whole open world becomes a PVP map, you can do all sorts of things. I imagine elaborate games of tag and cat and mouse, hide and seek, bounty hunts, and endless duel challenge scenarios in various dangerous situations.

RPing involves playing the game in character. Socializing involves just talking about whatever.

You know, I wonder if anyone has ever made one of these polls and put in stuff that is against the games rules, just for the lulz. Its like, having one of those “how did you hear about blank” surveys, and have “prison” as one of the checkboxes.

But anyway, “nothing” IMO should be an option, since there are many people who play the game, but don’t play PVE. Or, many people who like to talk about the game, but aren’t currently playing it. These guys matter, too.

You know, I am really not sure how class roles fit in to stacking…

Anyway, another idea I had for an anti-stacking mob is an enemy who only takes direct damage when his target is at range. When his target is in melee range, he just puts up a barrier and melee attacks from it. This enemy would be, by default, a ranged mob with a high fixation aggroing by first sight, and he would attack via a brightly colored channel attack, so everyone knows who he is targeting. This one would be group content only, but of course the shield goes down when CCed.

Another idea: a mob that has a short range AoE defense buff that they only apply to each other. By themselves, they would be fairly standard enemies. But, if you get them all together into a ball, then their buffs stack, and they become much more difficult. The idea is that these mobs are deployed in formations, and only begin chasing players once they are in melee range, so at the beginning they are only half buffed and you want to try and split their formation. But if cornered they become much more difficult. You’d have to use pulls/knocbacks to move them, or in worst cases splitting up so different aggros will follow you by default. Though I do fear that this idea might be a bit too difficult for standard enemies…

Or, for more just utterly stupid chaos, an enemy that, once dead, creates an AoE short duration knockback explosion 2 seconds after death. That way, it is encouraged to either knock away enemies before they die, or to move away from their corpses after killing them. Of course, what would be funny is if these explosions also damaged their friendlies, so if things go right/wrong there would be this cascade of explosions that knock players and enemies around like ping pong balls. The idea is that, since there will be a bunch of enemies that arrive sequentially, after the first kill or two the stack will eventually devolve into more panic as people run in different directions to avoid the explosions. The “friendly fire” on this attack scatters enemies, making the fight more dynamic and unpredictable.

Unfortunately, that’s all I have for now. I was trying to think of an idea involving quantum physics/ the weeping angels, but I couldn’t really think of a system that discouraged stacking with that.

To be fair, a lot of the kitten comes from a moment of weakness. When someone is frustrated with the way things are going, having that obnoxious guy yelling at you is the straw that breaks the camels back.

If you randomly walk up to people IRL and say they suck at PVP, they’ll just laugh at you. Context is important here.

spoj.9672:

Dark fields are fine. We just need other combos (mainly finishers) and this will allow us to actually use our dark fields properly. Lightning fields already give vuln on whirl and projectile so i dont think its realistic to ask for vuln on dark fields.

Smoke fields already cause blind on projectile and whirl, so I don’t think its realistic to ask for blinds on dark fields. Dark fields are something that is nearly exclusive to the necromancer, and making dark fields useful will greatly improve the combo field play for necromancers. If you really don’t like vulnerability, you can always goo with something else on leap and blast.

The definition for open world is way too wide. By being almost anything, it means the poll means almost nothing.

I suppose the greatest advantage to a lack of trinity is agency.

The reason why I say “I suppose” is because I’ve never actually played a game that had a hard trinity like this. For my full MMO playing history:

PSO: Had spellcasters that also had heals/buffs/debuffs. No tanks: you were supposed to get out of the way when attacked.
PSU: Same as PSO. These were action games more than anything else.
RS: This game had a paper/rock/scissors mode of combat, where attack types were defended against by particular defense types, and “heals” consisted of consumables with limited inventory space.
MHT: This game didn’t have classes. You just ran around attacking monsters, and survival was your own responsibility.
City of Heroes: This game had 4 roles (tank, damage, support, control) and healing was one form of support. However, this game had intrinsically adjustable difficulty, and was balanced at base on generic character speccing, so using expensive enhancement sets and responsible building tactics, the 4 roles basically dissolved, and you would get support/control/tank doing high damage, and damage not needing support or control anymore. Also, buffs/debuffs/control were far more powerful than the need to tank or have innate high damage.
GW2: What we are playing now.
DCUO: Has 4 hard roles, which consist of tank/cc, damage/misc/ heals/buffs, and mana management/debuffs. Closest to an actual trinity.

So, to that end, my experience with the trinity is limited.

That said, there’s little out there that would encourage me to play a trinity game. The trinity is ultimately a system of deficiencies and negatives. It is a series of weaknesses that forces cooperation:

DPS: You do damage but nothing else.
Tank: You don’t do damage. Enemies chase you around and try to kill you, but you take less damage.
Healer: You don’t do damage. You heal the guy who gets chased around, and the
errant DPS that gets hit sometimes. Everyone blames you for failure.

None of this sounds appealing to me. I like to actually, you know, do stuff in the game, and so do most people. This is why DPS is several times more popular than the other two roles. I prefer systems that are designed around giving players strengths, and not deficiencies. I want to be a class that does damage and also debuffs, or does damage and also heals, or does damage and is also really durable, or does damage and also has movement/control effects.

This is agency. I get to play what I want, and group how I want, and am capable of engaging content in different ways as I see fit. I want to be the last survivor, soloing the boss that just killed all those before me, capable of winning because I am not dependent on others to function on the most basic level.

But in the trinity system, I feel so frail or impotent.

I would include the options of “nothing”, “socializing”, “roleplaying”, “leveling for WvW”, “Merchanting”, and “Achievements”.

maha.7902:

stuff

I always have a hard time debating someone when I suspect they are being disingenuous. Now, I can argue about all the different ways someone can handle, build about, and expand upon all of the different ideas I have, but ultimately this is all worthless if that someone refuses to be reasonable. There is a very unfortunate tendency I see all the time, where when given a notion, someone will be so argumentative that they will instantly dismiss ideas by assuming the worst possible circumstances possible.

For example, lets take the directionally based damage reduction idea. You claim it is just a damage throttle.

#1: Enemies don’t have rigid HP upon design. An enemy with directionally based defenses can have their HP adjusted freely upon creation, and the neutral point for a 90% reduction in defenses is at 82% HP, assuming all players do only direct damage.

#2: These enemies won’t reduce condition damage, meaning that if focused on a condition based player via a simplistic aggro system, then there wouldn’t be any damage reduction for that group.

#3: The frequency of enemies in content is variable upon design, as well. So, if one wants to encourage better tactics, they can have fewer enemies along the path if these enemies have a direction damage reduction component.

#4: CC can be effect against these enemies to ensure maximum damage. In particular fear effects on immobilized or cornered enemies will force their back to be turned to all players, allowing all players to have maximum damage against this enemy.

#5: These enemies can have attack animations of variable length, encouraging players to rotate around the enemy when they do a large telegraph, allowing maximum damage for all players should the one who drew aggro be smart enough to go around to the enemy’s rear.

#6: These enemies can have a built in weakness to CC effects, such as making stuns and knockdowns last twice as long. This would encourage frequent use of CC to maximize damage by the singled out player.

#7: Directional damage reduction can also be direction damage increase. Instead of a 10/100 split, you can have a 10/200 split on enemies with marginally higher HP, allowing for greater overall kill speed than regular enemies with basic tactics. This causes big, flashy numbers, and people like seeing big numbers.

#8: I have yet to hear an objective argument against slightly longer kill times. Just people complaining that they don’t like it, and arbitrarily enforcing their distaste on X circumstance. Hell, anything can be considered a damage throttle if it forces you to dodge or heal, and thus stop attacking for awhile. For now, I will assert that directionally based damage reduction encouraging smarter positioning against enemies is an engaging mechanic that will make the game more fun. Proof of this is the fact that you have to actually do something to counteract this defense.

The conflict about integrity is whether you didn’t say these things because you didn’t think of them, or because you didn’t want to bother bringing it up. For now, I demand proof that you are actually worthy of talking to, otherwise I encourage everyone in this thread to just ignore you.