Guild Wars 2

That’s the point. “Buy our game, get free max level character”. It’s meant to sell.

Definitely a good patch.

Humblebrag: making each combo field color coded was my idea.

The trial is meant to sell new players on the game. It isn’t meant to give a fully accurate depiction of everything a class can do.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally, I don’t care about whether someone has “earned it” or how “fair” it is that someone gets an instant 80. All that is just frivolous nonsense. It doesn’t matter how fast someone else managed to get to 80, either.

My concern is about new players who will be doing level 80 content, but don’t know a single thing about the game. The whole leveling process is not only a necessary carrot on the stick for new players, but also a tutorial process. You learn what your skills and utilities do, you learn how enemies attack and move, you learn about dodging, conditions, crits, and various other mechanics. By the time you hit 80, you have a general working knowledge of how the game is supposed to be played. Even if you crafted your way to 80, that requires a lot of wealth and also the forethought to research how to do it.

But now, instead of having new players who don’t know what to do wandering around the starting areas, we’ll have new players who don’t know what to do in level 80 zones, messing with meta events, begging for cash, joining raids without saying a word, etc. The functioning population of the game becomes dumber once you have a “new players instantly max level” item.

I disagree. If a player is inclined to learn what his character can do, s/he will, whether that’s in the core leveling maps or in the trial in SW. If they aren’t, they won’t. There are plenty of vets dying in meta events who don’t know all that much about their characters’ capabilities, and they leveled in core.

Arguably, the core maps contain many mobs that teach players to stand and take what they dish out. At least SW mobs are closer to what one sees in HoT. If one’s first experience of the game is SW, that’s a better incentive to master the character than face-tanking groups of mobs in Lornar’s Pass.

That is false. People pick up skills and knowledge without having to actively pursue that information themselves. The proposed incompetence of vets is not on the level of players who haven’t even had a chance to experience the game. The free trail also gives players soldier gear, which is a gear set specifically to sit there and tank attacks.

I’d rather have a new player who used the boost, spent some time in SW learning the basics than a three year vet who never changes his bar. The point is that there is zero correlation between choosing to use the boost and not choosing to explore the profession.

That doesn’t make sense. You’re saying I’m wrong by purposefully choosing an exception and then pretending that everything else doesn’t exist. The fact does not change that a player who goes from 1 to 80 has more experience, more time, and more opportunity to learn both actively and passively than a player who just jumps to 80.

I never said you were wrong, I said I disagreed. Nor am I pretending anything else doesn’t exist. I believe that willingness to learn is going to matter more than time in game.

The game is not rocket science. It does not take that long to learn profession mechanics and how the game works. Yet, there are plenty of players who’ve been around a long time who haven’t bothered to learn either. Years of experience in core didn’t prepare a lot of folks for HoT.

Where I’ll grant that experience does come into play is in learning individual mob abilities, what to avoid, what to CC, etc. SW is a better teacher for that than any of the sub-80 zones in core, because it shares some mobs with HoT.

I am not stating an opinion. You can’t “disagree” without asserting that I am incorrect.

The difficulty of the mobs in SW will have an opposite effect: by introducing these more difficult mobs to players, they’ll be reinforcing an extremely timid playstyle. You know the one, where players wiggle back and forth while auto attacking with their ranged weapon. The reason why it would encourage this playstyle is because the enemies in the SW were designed specifically to counteract the all-melee tactics that were used before its release. So, new players will take the path of least resistance, and just bearbow the whole thing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally, I don’t care about whether someone has “earned it” or how “fair” it is that someone gets an instant 80. All that is just frivolous nonsense. It doesn’t matter how fast someone else managed to get to 80, either.

My concern is about new players who will be doing level 80 content, but don’t know a single thing about the game. The whole leveling process is not only a necessary carrot on the stick for new players, but also a tutorial process. You learn what your skills and utilities do, you learn how enemies attack and move, you learn about dodging, conditions, crits, and various other mechanics. By the time you hit 80, you have a general working knowledge of how the game is supposed to be played. Even if you crafted your way to 80, that requires a lot of wealth and also the forethought to research how to do it.

But now, instead of having new players who don’t know what to do wandering around the starting areas, we’ll have new players who don’t know what to do in level 80 zones, messing with meta events, begging for cash, joining raids without saying a word, etc. The functioning population of the game becomes dumber once you have a “new players instantly max level” item.

I disagree. If a player is inclined to learn what his character can do, s/he will, whether that’s in the core leveling maps or in the trial in SW. I they aren’t, they won’t. There are plenty of vets dying in meta events who don’t know all that much about their characters’ capabilities, and they leveled in core.

Arguably, the core maps contain many mobs that teach players to stand and take what they dish out. At least SW mobs are closer to what one sees in HoT. If one’s first experience of the game is SW, that’s a better incentive to master the character than face-tanking groups of mobs in Lornar’s Pass.

That is false. People pick up skills and knowledge without having to actively pursue that information themselves. The proposed incompetence of vets is not on the level of players who haven’t even had a chance to experience the game. The free trail also gives players soldier gear, which is a gear set specifically to sit there and tank attacks.

I’d rather have a new player who used the boost, spent some time in SW learning the basics than a three year vet who never changes his bar. The point is that there is zero correlation between choosing to use the boost and not choosing to explore the profession.

That doesn’t make sense. You’re saying I’m wrong by purposefully choosing an exception and then pretending that everything else doesn’t exist. The fact does not change that a player who goes from 1 to 80 has more experience, more time, and more opportunity to learn both actively and passively than a player who just jumps to 80.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally, I don’t care about whether someone has “earned it” or how “fair” it is that someone gets an instant 80. All that is just frivolous nonsense. It doesn’t matter how fast someone else managed to get to 80, either.

My concern is about new players who will be doing level 80 content, but don’t know a single thing about the game. The whole leveling process is not only a necessary carrot on the stick for new players, but also a tutorial process. You learn what your skills and utilities do, you learn how enemies attack and move, you learn about dodging, conditions, crits, and various other mechanics. By the time you hit 80, you have a general working knowledge of how the game is supposed to be played. Even if you crafted your way to 80, that requires a lot of wealth and also the forethought to research how to do it.

But now, instead of having new players who don’t know what to do wandering around the starting areas, we’ll have new players who don’t know what to do in level 80 zones, messing with meta events, begging for cash, joining raids without saying a word, etc. The functioning population of the game becomes dumber once you have a “new players instantly max level” item.

I disagree. If a player is inclined to learn what his character can do, s/he will, whether that’s in the core leveling maps or in the trial in SW. I they aren’t, they won’t. There are plenty of vets dying in meta events who don’t know all that much about their characters’ capabilities, and they leveled in core.

Arguably, the core maps contain many mobs that teach players to stand and take what they dish out. At least SW mobs are closer to what one sees in HoT. If one’s first experience of the game is SW, that’s a better incentive to master the character than face-tanking groups of mobs in Lornar’s Pass.

That is false. People pick up skills and knowledge without having to actively pursue that information themselves. The proposed incompetence of vets is not on the level of players who haven’t even had a chance to experience the game. The free trail also gives players soldier gear, which is a gear set specifically to sit there and tank attacks.

Personally, I don’t care about whether someone has “earned it” or how “fair” it is that someone gets an instant 80. All that is just frivolous nonsense. It doesn’t matter how fast someone else managed to get to 80, either.

My concern is about new players who will be doing level 80 content, but don’t know a single thing about the game. The whole leveling process is not only a necessary carrot on the stick for new players, but also a tutorial process. You learn what your skills and utilities do, you learn how enemies attack and move, you learn about dodging, conditions, crits, and various other mechanics. By the time you hit 80, you have a general working knowledge of how the game is supposed to be played. Even if you crafted your way to 80, that requires a lot of wealth and also the forethought to research how to do it.

But now, instead of having new players who don’t know what to do wandering around the starting areas, we’ll have new players who don’t know what to do in level 80 zones, messing with meta events, begging for cash, joining raids without saying a word, etc. The functioning population of the game becomes dumber once you have a “new players instantly max level” item.

Mitch.4781:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Conditions don’t crit. Ferocity and precision do almost nothing.

The exception being that, some traits and runes/sigils can apply conditions on a critical hit. However, the internal cooldowns and or infrequent application means that the contribution precision adds is nigh negligible.

Surely they must do something though? Otherwise why would Rampagers gear even be available? You may as well get Carrion and have the extra hp?

Good question. Rampager gear is often lauded as one of the worse gear sets, precisely because it just doesn’t do what other sets do.

I suppose it is supposed to be “hybrid” gear, for builds that are meant to do both direct damage and conditions at the same time.

Conditions don’t crit. Ferocity and precision do almost nothing.

The exception being that, some traits and runes/sigils can apply conditions on a critical hit. However, the internal cooldowns and or infrequent application means that the contribution precision adds is nigh negligible.

I’ve gotten players being stubborn, but I haven’t received abuse of any kind. Then again, I’m a fairly take-charge guy.

My sunglasses? I don’t have sunglasses. I have color changing lenses.

Its at the point where even if I did get a drop, I couldn’t pay the listing fee to sell it.

While staying alive, that is. This is an action game, not pen and paper. You’re meant to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and DPS, not just sit there and take it.

EDIT:

Personally, I hate the trinity system, and if the game went that direction I’d stop playing completely.

The reason is that the trinity system is a system of negatives. Each player is built specifically to be ineffectual own their own, and this was done so to deal with the extremely basic aggro mechanics that older MMOs had. It is about having a series of classes that are inept and incapable on their own, forcing a grouping up.

In reality, the trinity system is actual a duality system. It is about tank and healer, and is built around maximizing effective HP and effective health regeneration per encounter. Enrage timers had to be added to harder content to give DPS a role, because otherwise everything would be completed just by having tanks and healers. The DPS role is basically occupied by extra people you use to fill the party slots once you have the requisite tanks and healers.

The system isn’t necessarily boring, as much as it just plain sucks. You don’t have independence, and the moment something goes wrong everyone blames the tank/healer. Because nobody wants to be the tank/healer, everyone stands around waiting for one to show up in a group. And throughout all this, I keep wondering where the red mage is. Maybe it is because I hail from the days of Phantasy Star Universe and Monster Hunter, but having the classes be ineffectual specifically to force grouping is a horrible idea. I’d rather have each class be effective, AND have a set of strengths to go with it. Then, I’m not forced to wait around for people to play the game, and if something goes wrong then it isn’t automatically the healer’s fault. I’d rather be empowered then specially incompetent.

The problem I have with all this is that, spare a few particular enemies, the HoT maps aren’t that hard. Yes, the enemies can pose a threat, but only if you aren’t paying attention. The best tactic to beat most of the enemies is “casually walk out of the way of their gigantic telegraphed attacks”.

This doesn’t just happen with bombs, either. I’m noticing reaper shroud skill 5 will glitch out in the same way.

BTW the meta builds are usually made by the guild DnT.

Now, a strong build is one that

#1: Is coherent. You’d be surprised how many builds have random things in random place.

#2: Is capable of affecting change, particularly better than other builds that attempt the same thing. “Affecting change” is the universal way of saying that it can either do a lot of damage, put out sufficient enough heals, or hold aggro. Buffs/debuffs/conditions fall into this category as well.

In general, my builds are pseudo-meta. That is, they look like they’re meta builds at first glance, but closer inspection I’ve tweaked them for solo play. One of the issues of the meta is that the builds are always made operating under several assumptions:

#1: Boons and vulnerability are handled by other people around you.
#2: Your team is already full of other meta builds.
#3: Perfect play.
#4: Anything other than the champion is going to magical melt and pose no threat and/or be skipped.

Because of this, they favor unique and specific kinds of buffs, and damage tactics that don’t necessarily synergize well, but because buffs and conditions are already handled by “other people”, you go with them instead.

I, however, used to pug run dungeons with random people who would use completely random and unpredictable builds/tactics. Because of this, my builds are edited to have better self buffing and defensive options. I.E. I usually ran sword/pistol thief, because the weakness and blinds and cleave are actually really useful in a stack. Sure, I didn’t do uber single target DPS, but I certainly kept the team alive and cleaved down enemies that would’ve this random group of people.

But in general, yeah I favor max DPS. This isn’t an “I’m so skilled I can do it” kind of brag. Building for maximum damage is just plain better.

My biggest issue with an instant 80 package is that, there will be a massive influx of n00bs who don’t know squat about the game. Leveling to 80 is there to prepare you for 80, both by giving you experience in the game and by giving you some base funds and equipment to use. If you have instant 80s, then you have a bunch of players running around in whites you have no idea what dodge is.

For PVE? Nope. Toughness isn’t that useful. There’s several problems with it.

#1: It scales horribly. The actual stat that reduces damage is armor, not toughness. But, toughness increases armor. So, if you put get 700 points of toughness, you’ll be taking 73% of the damage that you used to. This gives you roughly have of what you would normally expect from a stat (which would be 59% damage).

#2: It is inferior to vitality basically everywhere. The most efficient spread of stats regarding the overall durability of your character is when HP = Armor x 10.. Long explanation short: the maximum area given a set perimeter is a square, and effective HP is an area. If you look at the classes, only one class (necromancer) starts out in the sweet spot. Every other class is very far. For example, the elementalist has 11k health, so to hit the sweet spot where a point of toughness is equal to a point in vitality, you’d need to have invested 755 vitality. Basically, every point you’d get from an armor set anyway.

#3: Killing things faster is always a better option. If you reduce your damage to become more durable, then the enemy lives longer and does more damage in exchange. Because of this, doing 36% more damage is roughly equal to taking 73% damage, because the enemy is only going to live 73% as long. Offensive stats scale quite a bit better than toughness, though, which makes them actually do more damage than toughness would buy. The second advantage is that faster kills = faster loot, which means more money earned overall.

#4: It isn’t even necessary to survive most enemies. You can already beat nearly everything on the overworld just by running up and auto attacking them in glass cannon gear. Should you need to survive, you’re better off going with more defensive utilities and traits than you are changing gear. Remember: gear costs money, utilities and traits are free.

#5: Upscaled enemies will just power through it anyway. Though damage is expressed as a large set of numbers, in reality what you have is a “meter” of sorts. This “meter” is how many attacks by a specific enemy you can take. When fighting upscaled enemies, you’d be amazed how many of them can do 1.5x to 2x your entire HP bar. Here, taking 73% as much damage doesn’t even buy you a single strike. Or even a second strike, if they take off 90% of your health.

#6: It doesn’t do anything for conditions or fractional health damage. When the priest of Grenth drops you from the roof, the armor does nothing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something that I do find a bit interesting. When I look at other game economies, wherein loot is differentiated by power and aesthetics, then I can see why there is always a demand for higher and stronger items. You have a tier-system:

Item A is weakest but cheapest and affordable
Item B is more expensive and stronger
Item C is really expensive but not the strongest. It just looks nice
Item D is the strongest but it looks horrible

And so on. In this system, items of inferior quality still have a demand, for the budgeted player and the newer player. Item B isn’t the “best” in any sense, but you’ll still want it because the increase in power helps you to get more powerful things faster. This creates a chain of demand.

But, in an all-aesthetic system, there is no Item A, B, or D. There is only item C. This… really cuts the demand down, actually. There is no longer an “affordable” option or a “more powerful” option. Those are things everyone wants. But aesthetics? Well, that’s up to personal taste, so the demand for an item changes from “any player who could equip it” to “only the player who wants the specific aesthetics of that item”.

So to have a super valuable item, you need two things.

#1: An item that has an aesthetic that everybody wants
#2: An item that has a drop rate so horrendously low that it is in high demand for the few players who want that aesthetic.

Hence, why it is that after 3 years of continuous play, most players haven’t had a precursor drop. Though Anet has found some ways around this in the game. Mostly achievements, but at least there is a demand for an item outside of “how it looks” and “how rare it looks”.

This is why most drops in this game are “meant” to be salvaged. The materials are either directly (used to craft) or indirectly (gain gold to buy needed/wanted stuff) used to gain the very rare stuff. Outside of a few serendipity drops like a Teq Hoard, the most desired rewards are by and large incremental. The advantage of that type of system is that — while the target may be a long way off — you know roughly what it will take. The disadvantage is that there are almost no “Awesome!” reactions to drops.

Supply and demand plays a role in those other MMO’s, also. The really “expensive” stuff is also either low drop rates, gated behind content (like most Epics in that other game), soulbound on acquire, or some combination of those. What makes them seem more rewarding is, yes, somewhat better drop rates, but also the lack of items gained by incremental rewards as the method to get anything of real value.

Complaints about precursor drop RNG have been around almost since launch. When ANet decided to “fix” that problem, what did they do? They created an incremental system. This suggests they think that the choice lies between incremental or RNG. If there’s a third option, I’ve no idea what it would be.

Other games can also have incremental reward systems via crafting, collections, achievements, and gold. Unless the MMO has a collapsed economy or is extremely liberal with account/soul bounding, then you can always gather enough money to get the rare loot.

That isn’t the issue, though. The problem is that, in order to make something really valuable in GW2, you have to make it rare on a whole other level, due to a lack of global demand for most items. I say “precursor” because it is the one most people can relate to, but there are plenty of others. Invisible shoes, for example. I kill 3 invisible mushrooms every day, but realistically I’m never getting the drop, because even when thousands of people are regularly killing those mushrooms every day, nobody is getting the shoes.

This is one of those threads where, I wanted to say something when it was first made, but due to schedule problems I didn’t have the chance, and now the thread is 200 posts into nitpicking and fights. So, to respond to the OP:

munki.6402:

tl;dr Raids do not frighten me. The elitism that tends to be bred by Raiding annoys me. I have better things to do with my time.

Basically this. Though I’d like to expand a bit.

The biggest problem with raids is that there is a large series of expectations that are imposed on the player just by being a raid.

#1: You’re expected to already know the raid. The high tension encounters, multiple simultaneous mechanics, enrage timers and hard DPS requirements do not lend to a learning experience. Unless you happen to already be in a group of tryhards with a lot of free time at launch, you don’t get to “experiment”. You have to follow the strategy that was hammered out by the people before you, and if you don’t then you’re just wasting the time of everyone around you.

#2: You’re expected to have the necessary gear and class already. In the rest of the game, “meta builds” have become almost a joke, but in raids they’re the standard. You can’t bring a condi guard because you like how it plays and it works “well enough” in the open world. You need to have the gear already (including ascended weapons and trinkets) role that your class is expected to play, and if you don’t then go buy it.

#3: You’re expected to be good at the game, because failure leads to wipes. If you’re clumsy or have lag, the game isn’t going to slow down to hold you’re hand. It’s going to take the entire class out for a paddling because of the inadequacy of your performance, and nobody wants to spend their entire raid time waiting for the slow guy to “get gud”.

#4: By being the “hard” content, the raids attract players who want to show off how big their e-“manhood” is. So, any time you make a mistake in the raid, you get the full unrelenting wrath of social outcasts who have limitless free time to vent their misplaced frustration over how unpopular they are in middle school. If you’re lucky, you’ll get the guy who feels all big and awesome by “explaining” things to you, in which after you’ve been kicked for your second failure you’ll have gist of what to do, so hopefully you can lie your way into LFGs and guild runs until you have actually practiced the bosses. Basically, it attracts the second worst general playerbase in videogames overall, aside from PVPers.

#5: You also have to “know” the people already. The LFG is horrible for finding raids, so unless you’ve already got a guild for raiding or have a friends list full of people who raid, then you don’t have anyone to raid with.

You can just go and do tequatl. You can just go and do dungeons. You can just go and try fractals, too. You can’t just go and raid. You have to do in-depth research and preparation before you can even set foot in a raid, or you end up ticking off a lot of people and wasting a lot of time.

Sarrs.4831:

Outside of rewards, the problem with dungeons is almost exclusively just the difficulty and tuning.

Tune up the dungeons to require Exotic gear rather than blues/greens as is the current tuning point.
Tune up bosses and mobs with more relevant mechanics, as well as new AI that we’ve seen around the place, particularly the Shatterer remix.

Raids build camaraderie because they’re hard and you actually need to work together. Most dungeon paths don’t seem to do that.

The problem is, most dungeons aren’t level 80 content. They’re 35, kitten, 65, 75 level content. They were meant to be doable at that level, i.e. in masterwork level gear.

Anyway, now to post about stuff that has nothing to do with the above: One of the reasons why the dungeons were abandoned was because all of the changes/updates that were made to dungeons weren’t well received. The amount of time it took to remake and tune up dungeons just wasn’t cost effective.

This is something that I do find a bit interesting. When I look at other game economies, wherein loot is differentiated by power and aesthetics, then I can see why there is always a demand for higher and stronger items. You have a tier-system:

Item A is weakest but cheapest and affordable
Item B is more expensive and stronger
Item C is really expensive but not the strongest. It just looks nice
Item D is the strongest but it looks horrible

And so on. In this system, items of inferior quality still have a demand, for the budgeted player and the newer player. Item B isn’t the “best” in any sense, but you’ll still want it because the increase in power helps you to get more powerful things faster. This creates a chain of demand.

But, in an all-aesthetic system, there is no Item A, B, or D. There is only item C. This… really cuts the demand down, actually. There is no longer an “affordable” option or a “more powerful” option. Those are things everyone wants. But aesthetics? Well, that’s up to personal taste, so the demand for an item changes from “any player who could equip it” to “only the player who wants the specific aesthetics of that item”.

So to have a super valuable item, you need two things.

#1: An item that has an aesthetic that everybody wants
#2: An item that has a drop rate so horrendously low that it is in high demand for the few players who want that aesthetic.

Hence, why it is that after 3 years of continuous play, most players haven’t had a precursor drop. Though Anet has found some ways around this in the game. Mostly achievements, but at least there is a demand for an item outside of “how it looks” and “how rare it looks”.

You’ve got to remember that loot has been generic’d in order to keep different modes of play equally rewarding. That means nobody gets anything special.

But really, what made loot feel valuable in the old days was the stat gain. It was valuable because it was better than what you had previously. GW2 mostly doesn’t have that, to keep the barrier of entry low.

Vayne.8563:

There are certainly hard parts to it and certain jumps are pretty hard. But figuring it out is relatively hard. It’s certainly easier if people run to youtube and look up a video.

In fact, figuring out where to go and what to do is hard. In fact, it’s hard in the same way a raid is hard.

Most people figure out what to do relatively fast raiding, but it’s the execution that takes practice…SAB tribulation mode is the same way.

It requires patience, repetition and focus. But it’s the puzzle aspects that I enjoy most.

This is my experience with nearly every game ever. Most games are a puzzle. You just have to figure out the method, then suddenly it is easy.

I’m encountering the same problem. For some reason, each time I try to throw a bomb, there’s a good chance that it’ll just explode at my feet without going anywhere, or fly at an extreme downward angle.

It’s making getting several achievements impossible.

Yeah, I’ve been noticing that, too. It made the story fight hard, since i was relying on those smoke fields to disable the enemies.

Leo G.4501:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

No, you have opinions based on the facts of how MMO concepts evolve and mutate.

…

Opinions can be uninformed or just overzealous generalizations or just flat out wrong.

You have no idea what an opinion is. You’re just using it as a blanket term to dismiss whatever you don’t agree with.

There’s a dozen other ways to reason about things out there other than opinions. Extrapolations are one. Observations are another. Juxtaposition, yet more still. Speculation exists, too. Expectation is there as well. These culminate into hypothesis and theory. Interestingly enough, these create a standard with which they are falsifiable. Thus, they are not a personal quality judgement of any sort.

Unless I preface something with “Personally”, or “IMO”, then I am not offering an opinion. I am offering an extrapolation, an observation, a comparison, a speculation, a hypothesis, or a theory. To counterpoint, lets take an extreme example. Lets say I were to eat a handful of mud, and proclaim it is delicious. How do you prove it is wrong? You can certainly prove you don’t like it, and you can prove most don’t like it, but what does that matter against a warped taste pallet that frankly does not care what others think? Is the love of the taste of dirt an overzealous generalization, or “uninformed” somehow? No, it is not.

Leo G.4501:

Well duh I don’t take issue with some facts you pulled up from a wiki or a youtube video (lol I’ve seen them already, most likely). But when someone comes around making wrong generalizations (“hurr durr The only time you’ll be seeing an MMO that has a similar style to the old ones is if it is designed specifically to tap into nostalgia. duuur”) then yeah, I’ll go and take offense.

That is not a generalization or an opinion. It is a prediction.

Your method of reasoning, quite frankly dumb. You’ve disregarded why it is people would “crave” these styles, and just taken it as some self evident ubiquitous truth. You came to your conclusion by dismissing information, not embracing it.

If you think I acquired this knowledge by wiki or youtube videos, then you are horribly mistaken. I’ve lived it. I’ve been walking this earth since before Nintendo was a thing. I played the atari 2600 and the intellivision. I saw as turn based became a thing, became widespread, and more importantly I watched as the RPG elements turned away. I watched turn based become games about recharge bars for pseudo real-time combat, rhythm and timing games, card games and pre-fight strategizing, over-head tactics and placement commanding squads, etc. And then, I watched as those games moved away from the turn based component altogether, and become fighting games, rhythm games, real time strategy, and the modern ARPG that we see everywhere.

That move wasn’t arbitrary or random. It was a market movement. Those games sold better. And them selling better wasn’t an arbitrary or random move, either. If you want a source I can give you one. Spoiler: of the 25 best selling games, there’s only two turn based games, and both of them are Pokemon.

Leo G.4501:

But apparently you don’t consider the artistic side of game design. Not saying it’s an artform but it takes a creative mind to craft a game and limitations are a chopping block for cleverness, forcing creators to think outside the norm.

So you utilize the strengths of a design and build upon it, not disregard it because something else that’s newer and fresher is possible. It’d be different if the older designs were inherently flawed instead of just different. That’s why they are still made. They are different and gamers enjoy variety. The reason you see so many action-MMOs made now is because they weren’t very viable before.

That’s the problem, though: the designs did have inherent flaws. I.E. if Everquest wasn’t flawed, they wouldn’t constantly try to make more and better Everquests. Now that we both agree that videogames are not an artform, we can say what they really are: a piece of engineering and technology made specifically to sell entertainment as a service. Artistry is is but one facet that may be entertaining. There are many more. When you recognize that, you can break down the different game styles into advantages and disadvantages, and analyze them as an engineer or an economist would.

Lets take GW2 for an example, and compare it to what the OP lists.

“Gone are the days of slow dungeon crawls and long repetitive encounters.”
-Low availability to the general public
-Attention fatigue and horrible retention rate
-Low public appeal or interest
+Low cost to time investment ration assuming your players are already hooked
-Requires skinnerbox mechanisms to manipulate players to keep playing.
-Skinnerbox leads to irritable community who plays out of obligation and not fun.
+Can milk a lot of money via purchases or subscriptions from a hooked fanbase.

“one of the biggest selling points of an MMORPG is for progression within a communal environment. You grind (often through repetitive gameplay) to obtain great items and show them off to online crowds, which makes you value and appreciate your achievements even more.”
-Severe inequality between players of different ages time investments
-Elitism
-Unfair in competitive aspects (hard and soft PVP)
-Depressing grinds
+Personal accomplishment
+The ability to wield superior strength due to greater time investments
-Repetitive
-Severe inequality between players of different incomes (cash shop games only)

This is Stockhom Syndrome.

I can sympathize with the loss of some older systems in MMOs. IMO there’s a much better thread on this subject, in which before it devolved into raid bickering it actually went over a lot of different things that are missing now but in conventional MMORPGs that were actually good.

Well, given how resources are currently being split, there’s a good chance that the Living Story team just doubled in size.

I suppose the biggest thing I take issue with, is that his video starts by assuming that the decision was a good one, and then defends this assertion by invoking an argument from ignorance over and over again. “Oh, you can’t say it is a bad decision because you don’t know how many people are working there already”, or “You can’t say it is a bad decision because you don’t have the metrics.” and so on. Basically, his whole video is that we are in the wrong for saying that this was a bad decision, because we cannot possibly comprehend what would be a good decision in this circumstance.

Yeah, no, I don’t buy it.

Woodenpotatoes is the opposite. Instead of using what we don’t know to assert that we cannot know, he builds on the knowledge that we do have and reasons back and forth between the points. Generally, I tend favor this approach, as I have issues to surrendering to ignorance. Deep, personal, existential issues, but issues nonetheless.

The one point he does make is that I think the community is a bit too outraged over this decision. I myself am more or less just mildly annoyed, but some people are just fuming. Social media is a bit like an echo chamber, in that the negativity keeps bouncing back and forth until it builds to the point where people start throwing bricks at peoples house. This decision isn’t that bad. But it is bad.

Leo G.4501:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Deleena.3406:

I have always had the feeling many older MMORPGs was prolly like that because of technology of their time (like not having speedy internet for examples)

I came here to write a longer version, but basically this. Here’s the long version anyway

Do you ever wonder why it is that the original final fantasy games were turn based? Or why it is the first MUDs were turn based? Little hint: it isn’t because turn based combat was such a unique and enthralling thing that the games just had to be made like that. It was due to hardware issues. You couldn’t have an action game on arpanet. The connection speed was too slow and too costly. You couldn’t have an action game on the NES and have all of the space for the story that went into those games. The gameplay for these amounted to “press A, then wait for a bit”, or in MUD’s cases it involved typing out a sentence just to perform a single action.

The traditional MMO (i.e. Everquest) was designed with cooldowns and cast bars because computers at the time couldn’t handle an action game. It would have been a dream come true if you had a game that had the rich and entertaining combat of street fighter, but the massive world and lore of Final Fantasy 3. Now, as technology advances and programmers get better, there is no longer a limitation on how an MMO handles its combat. So they go for the hybrid action of Wildstar, the faux-fighting game Blade and Soul, or the brawler style of Black Desert. It is more fun to watch, and more importantly it is more fun to play.

The only time you’ll be seeing an MMO that has a similar style to the old ones is if it is designed specifically to tap into nostalgia. Fact is, it is a smart decision to tap into the audiences with flashy and involved combat. It is a good decision, because it opens up MMOs to a larger crowd, instead of splitting the same one-million playerbase across a dozen different games. The emphasis on casual play is a good decision because accessibility means more people are capable of playing the game on a reasonable schedule. You’re going to have to get over it, grandpa. We’ve got kindles now. We don’t need books anymore.

To segway off your point: I think that’s why gaming now a days became so bloated and full of issues that tarnish gaming as a hobby. Forget about the cost of developing, testing and marketing these cutting edge action-style MMOs. It gets down to the meat of the game when you have hurdles and limits you have to work with. Sure, it’d be great to have an infinite resource project that can literally make your imagination come to life in a huge interactive environment but don’t short-change the classics for what they accomplish or pigeonhole player expectation on simply growing technology.

There’s a reason there’s multiple genre of MMOs: because people crave those styles. Be they turned based, card based, action based, text driven, etc. Not nostalgia but because they’re unique or fitting their preferred gameplay experience.

tl;dr: The quoted is just your opinion and I think it’s wrong.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove. An “opinion” cannot be wrong, as it is a quality judgement made by a person. However, as you have taken issue not with the history of technology or the history of the market, but the silliest of extrapolations to take personal offense, then I’ll write a bit about the topic you’ve shoved into my mouth.

The turn based combat styles of old MUDs were the cutting edge technology of the time. At no point am I implying that these games weren’t accomplishments. However, I will not delude myself into thinking that all of the design decision for those games were made because it “fitted their preferred gameplay experience”. To believe that is just silly. A limitation is just that: something that binds you down and limits your options. What you want to make gets cut shot down by being impossible or impractical, so you’re stuck with what you can make. If Everquest was designed as it was ideally meant to be, then why did they make a second one with newer, better technology? Why did they try to make a third one after that with even newer, better-er technology?

The idea of regarding videogames as a form of artistry is ill-conceived. If MMOs were designed to have game styles that “fitted their preferred gameplay experience”, then we wouldn’t have a persistent decade+ of WoW clones, we wouldn’t have “Korean Grind” with egregious cash shops, and GW2 still wouldn’t have raids or ascended gear. These events, they aren’t random unpredictable phenomena in the gaming market that happened to coalesce into a endless WoW clones. MMO’s are a business, and their design choices are done first and foremost on whether or not they’ll make money. We’re getting more diversity in MMOs for business reasons:

1. It is a stupid to make a WoW clone when WoW is still WoWing it up all over the place. So, you try and tap into a different market, one that isn’t preoccupied with WoW.
2. Nostalgia is more than just memory. It is familiarity. The advantage to any system that players are familiar with is the barrier to entry is suddenly very low. Hence, why people made WoW clones for awhile. You’ll see this in requests all the time: “I’m looking for a game that is a 2d MMO like Maplestory” or “I’m looking for a game that is a top down dungeon crawler like Diablo”, etc. Take the socratic method, and ask “why is it that people crave these styles”. Don’t just declare it such and let its existence circle to be proof of your claim.
3. Production and maintenance cost is a thing, and I will not “forget it”. MUDs were turn based because it is relatively low maintenance, and it is still low maintenance today.
4. People who make MMOs, like most people in life, have no idea what they’re doing, and are throwing darts at a board of game design and hoping something happens to make millions.

You can consider this my proof by contradiction. My statement is true because assuming the contrary to my statement leads to a bunch of unexplained phenomena and nonsensical results.

Behellagh.1468:

These are the same people who were leaving when Ascended tier were announced in November 2012 and every other time there was something to ticked them off.

And who knows, maybe they did leave in 2012 but the nature of a B2P MMO is they have forum access forever so they could simply come back here to make more noise.

I see this written a lot, but I’ve never actually seen proof. I’ve been in this game since launch, and I’ve seen a whole lot of people leave. From guilds, to friends/ignore lists, to names on the forum I see suddenly vanish. It isn’t unreasonable to think that when someone leaves a game because of “insert company decision here”, that they really are gone for good.

If it isn’t the corporate structure, then it is one of two things.

#1: Conceptualization of the new weapons. Yes, we talk about black lion skins being released, but that’s basically a single weapon aesthetic stretched into 12 different shapes. Hard part about coming up with legendary weapons is going to be… coming up with them. Finding new ways to be flashy and have unique special effects. Half the legendarys we have now are joke weapons. “Hey, lets put a disco ball on a stick!”: moot. “Hey, lets put a planetarium on a stick!”: meteorologicus.

#2: The collection system itself. I haven’t done a legendary weapon collection myself, but from what I hear they can be pretty involved. The collections basically involve re-coding a lot of legacy content with new flags and drops, and given the scale of how many legendarys are yet to come, they basically have to re-code the entirety of core Tyria. Then you have to do so every legendary weapon has some kind of story or theme. Worst of all, the collection system is extremely buggy and prone to bricking, resulting in each legendary weapon being a massive amount of programming work to get fixed.

Either way, Anet dug themselves kitten.

Deleena.3406:

I have always had the feeling many older MMORPGs was prolly like that because of technology of their time (like not having speedy internet for examples)

I came here to write a longer version, but basically this. Here’s the long version anyway

Do you ever wonder why it is that the original final fantasy games were turn based? Or why it is the first MUDs were turn based? Little hint: it isn’t because turn based combat was such a unique and enthralling thing that the games just had to be made like that. It was due to hardware issues. You couldn’t have an action game on arpanet. The connection speed was too slow and too costly. You couldn’t have an action game on the NES and have all of the space for the story that went into those games. The gameplay for these amounted to “press A, then wait for a bit”, or in MUD’s cases it involved typing out a sentence just to perform a single action.

The traditional MMO (i.e. Everquest) was designed with cooldowns and cast bars because computers at the time couldn’t handle an action game. It would have been a dream come true if you had a game that had the rich and entertaining combat of street fighter, but the massive world and lore of Final Fantasy 3. Now, as technology advances and programmers get better, there is no longer a limitation on how an MMO handles its combat. So they go for the hybrid action of Wildstar, the faux-fighting game Blade and Soul, or the brawler style of Black Desert. It is more fun to watch, and more importantly it is more fun to play.

The only time you’ll be seeing an MMO that has a similar style to the old ones is if it is designed specifically to tap into nostalgia. Fact is, it is a smart decision to tap into the audiences with flashy and involved combat. It is a good decision, because it opens up MMOs to a larger crowd, instead of splitting the same one-million playerbase across a dozen different games. The emphasis on casual play is a good decision because accessibility means more people are capable of playing the game on a reasonable schedule. You’re going to have to get over it, grandpa. We’ve got kindles now. We don’t need books anymore.

I tried quite hard to make power scrapper work. It was, without question, the weakest class I had played. Skill ceiling too high for too little reward.

Condi at the moment is much better. Easier to do and you output a lot more damage. As a plus, engineers are also one of the best condi classes, so getting a raid spot wouldn’t be too hard.

Saw the title of this thread and thought

“Well now. You won’t be getting legendary weapons, either.. Ba-ZING!”

I… don’t much else to add to the thread other than that. I just want an effective raid LFG and party system myself.

I don’t know where you guys get this whole “faithful supporter” thing with WP. I’ve seen him rant about bad things in GW2 countless times. He’s ranted about the story in HoT, he’s ranted about gear prefixes and designs (particularly his inadequacy as a healer with a healer spec), I even saw a compilation video where he complained about all of the small things that were added/done to the game. The reason why I watch WP’s videos is because he’s actually fairly level headed.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Valky.2574:

Don’t you mean possible LAST video for gw2 .. he is thinking of quiting now

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4c9r5d/wooden_potatoes_no_more_new_legendary_weapons_a/

3rd post or 2ed if you don’t count the topic

Eh, he said:

“I don’t like the sound of their future expansions at all if this is really where they think they should be, size wise. So in a world where that’s all they put out? For sure I’ll be moving on.”

He said something similar in the video, too. So, if Mo (and/or ArenaNet at large) come out and say “Yeah, we really do think HoT was the right size for a good expansion”, WP will be leaving the game. He didn’t say he’s leaving now or that this was his last video (or one of the last videos).

Problem is, Mike already did that.

Arenanet is an ideal driven company. You must not forget that. And as an ideal driven company, they’re all about the good feels and self esteem and non-judgemental attitudes. Dealing with the failings of HoT is hard because it makes you feel bad. So, to feel good about themselves, they’ll constantly reaffirm with each other that HoT was a good expansion, only talking about its good points. Everyone who disagrees is a hater, or a troll, or they’ll get over it. How can they not get over it, when HoT is such a good expansion?

So when Mike says he takes offense to the expansion not being complete, he’s not being disingenuous. He’s being sincere. Since he is sincere, that is the standard we can expect the next expansion to have. And the next one after that.

Though to be fair, I do think HoT catches a lot of flack where it shouldn’t. It isn’t as bad as people say. It has problems, but it isn’t as bad as people say.

If you want my personal feelings on the matter, I don’t care much for legendary weapons. They’re cool looking, sure, but they aren’t going to hook me on the game. So the decision to axe the legendary workers for more updates makes sense…

Until you realize that the vast majority of their workforce is dedicated to the next expansion. So the axing of legendary development is the most logical out of the illogical decisions you could make.

Coldtart.4785:

Objections to dps meters are classic examples of the no-perfect-solution fallacy. Just because players that are already idiotic will find a new way to be idiots if given a tool beyond their intelligence doesn’t mean it’s a bad tool. The very same people that would supposedly become ‘toxic’ when given dps meters are already being ‘toxic’.

Dps meters are useful to people that care about winning. Given that raids are supposed to be for players that care about winning I don’t see why there’s a problem.

Not really. It’s very basic, tried and true psychology: the easier something is to do, the more likely people are going to do it.

Honestly I find this entire discussion about what would happen with DPS meters to be an aside. We have history to show what happens. The real question is: do the advantages that DPS meters give (ease of testing, immediate self evaluation and improvement, bragging rights, curiosity) worth the disadvantages that DPS meters cause (elitism and discrimination).

Pandaman.4758:

Svarty.8019:

What a peculiar situation.
The Legendaries aren’t done six months after HoT.
I wonder what the deal is here. Are the models done, or is it taking ages to set up all the quests to acquire them? Either way, it seems there’s too much effort going in – judging by the SXSW panel, the developers spend FAR too much time thinking. Just my humble opinion. I like that they are pouring love into their work, I just think the balance is off.

Given how quickly they can bang out Black Lion skins, it’s highly unlikely the models are the bottleneck. It’s more likely that the framework for Collections is flawed in some way that bogs down development, like every collection item requiring a change and testing of every associated mob, event, and/or loot table (so one Legendary is the equivalent of tweak 30 different events) or something.

I suspect they only managed to get the first three out by skipping testing, since any amount of testing should have told the devs it was stupid to have collection items in events that would only spawn after failed events.

This definitely makes sense. Although I remember the collections being horribly bug-ridden as well as badly designed.

I’m a proud owner of The Juggernaut. It is one of the few legendaries that I actually like. Gotta be honest, shooting unicorns and disco balls for maces aren’t my thing. But a liquid metal hammer that coats you is just plain awesome.

I’ve tried the one that attempts to read the chatbox. It is glitchy and I’ve only managed to get it to work right once.

Now, I’m for a personal DPS meter.

Originally I was against them because they were superfluous. Playing all of my classes, I can generally feel when one is lagging behind another, whether it be in burst or in sustained combat. But now that enrage timers are a thing, they aren’t superfluous anymore. We’re actually being hard timed to see how much DPS we can output.

Testudo.4620:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now I’m wondering how it is a team of 6 people assigned to the purpose of modeling various weapon sprites/animations and writing a collection are somehow going to meaningfully contribute to living world updates in such a way that their absence would’ve been distinctly noticed in future upcoming updates.

they have to make the collections too

Reading is not an exploit.

Right now I’m wondering how it is a team of 6 people assigned to the purpose of modeling various weapon sprites/animations and writing a collection are somehow going to meaningfully contribute to living world updates in such a way that their absence would’ve been distinctly noticed in future upcoming updates.

You can put it into your bank and take it out on another toon.

Not necessarily outdated, but lately the profession I’m having the hardest time with is the Engineer. For the simple fact that it takes two-three key presses to accomplish what other classes do in one.

Originally this wasn’t as much of a problem, because the engineer was both an extremely versatile and extremely potent class. But, as other classes keep getting buffs to their damage, and as they keep getting more utilities, the engi starts losing its place. Even if in theory the engi should still be pretty top tier, at least as far as condi damage goes, in practice my DPS is kitten by the convoluted nature of it all and my utility is cut down because I have to grab kits for DPS.

Generally, I find the problem isn’t necessarily “pay to win” as much as it is “pay to win over me”. I.E. PVP advantages.

Leo G.4501:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

At some point in time, I do wonder when this discussion became about legendary armor, instead of about then nature of raiding in MMOs as a whole.

That may be partially my fault and I apologize.

The OP does talk about so much more and I was hoping to get discussion going on making your characters more personalized to instill more personality to your character besides the whole skin-race that results in most people settling on a look like their wardrobe projectile vomitted on their character model.

Rather than poking holes in raids, gear tiers and what not, how about adding journals, character bios and other unique features to the game. shrug not the best ideas, just what was on the top of my head.

I’m definitely all for character bios. Had them in CoH, and I want them here.

As far as characterization goes… I think one of the better things is also one of the harder things. The best way to personalize a toon is to make them operationally different. To invoke other MMOs (city of heroes again), the different classes weren’t just different in name. They were different in play. Picking up a controller (control/manipulation main, buffs secondary) was a completely different experience from playing a scrapper (melee main, armor secondary). Scrappers would flip out and kill things at point blank, taking on multiple foes at once. Controllers would divide and conquer, disabling and separating enemies while picking off targets one at a time.

The classes in GW2 are actually very homogenized. They have the ability to, at least to some extent, do everything, and the combat of nearly every class can be broken down into a 3 step process:

#1: Melee auto.
#2: Use skills higher than melee DPS when off cooldown.
#3: Use occasional utility skill/dodge if and when they are demanded.

End of every class strategy ever. When taken at its most basic elements, the only real difference between my thief and my engineer is how much I have to mash the keyboard to do DPS.

The reason why this is hard to fix is because this was intended by design. GW2 was made PVP-up. Each class was designed specifically to be capable of fighting off and beating any other class (give or take some “skill”) in numerous ways, and so a great divide between types of play between classes would run contrary to this design. It would create a paper > rock > scissors > effect that would lead to rage and ineptitude in the players.

The good news is, this is on the way to be fixed. By “on the way” I mean that elite specializations increase the divide between class types. While ranger and thief are scarily similar, Daredevil and Druid are quite different. As more elite specializations are released, the identity of the classes are going to become more separated, and their builds more personalized.

Hopefully elite specs will be released at a rate of more than 1 per xpac.

I definitely would like to see more rugged armor sets for male characters. I’m not into guys, so I don’t want anything that is “suggestive” insomuch as I want to look like Conan the Barbarian.

I did find a decent setup with my male mesmer, though. I settle for arms, too.

Absurdo.8309:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

At some point in time, I do wonder when this discussion became about legendary armor, instead of about then nature of raiding in MMOs as a whole.

I think this quote by the OP started the discussion :

Does everyone deserve content for them. Sure they do. Does everyone deserve exclusive rewards just for their content that no one else can get because they’re looking for a different in game experience? That one I’m not so sure about.

Either way, I’m going to be posting less here, because raiders aren’t wrong for wanting focus on raids, PvPers aren’t wrong for wanting focus on PvP and people like me, we’re not wrong for not wanting to be driven into game modes that do not interest us just to get specific rewards.

The argument is that non raiders are not driven into raids because of legendary armor, as legendary armor is a prestige skin item. Rather, people like OP should complain about the content drought, which I agree is a problem. Not raids.

The OP’s post goes over so much more than just raid rewards, though. The discussion about legendary armor is distilling everything into its most extremes. Though I think that would be most easily solved just by making the armor pieces tradeable.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The only metric I saw was a red post saying that there were about 30% participation rate for raids. Don’t care enough to go digging for it.

30% of what number? All accounts? All active accounts? All accounts that purchased HoT? All accounts that purchased HoT and are active? Such a stat is very ambiguous without context. For instance, 30% of all accounts would be a lot more than even have access to raids, which require HoT purchase. 30% of accounts that bought HoT would be (at a guess) ~100K accounts, which would only be about 7% of the claimed 1.5M monthly account logins pre-HoT.

Good question. Hell if I know. I’m did a small search trying to find the exact comment and didn’t see it, so I don’t know the exact wording. I would assume that it is either 30% of active accounts, or 30% of HoT accounts, as any other number would be silly.