Just as an example of the things that make people leave due to lack of WP: You are fighting the Vinewrath. You go down. Your choices are abandon the fight completely or lay there and hope someone helps. Without a waypoint, once you go down in that fight you are out of it. The time needed to walk back is too long. And that is the kind of things that makes people give up on the Silverwastes map.
Your point was that too few waypoints would lead to map death.
This is not the case.
Todays daily was silverwastes. There was nothing in LFG so I just stayed on the map I landed on. I was the only person escorting the first bull to the first fort. I then retook that fort with a couple of other people who turned up. Then escorted another bull to another fort.
In the end with no more than three other people around me I got all four events done.
Sure I didn’t complete the meta and kill all the legendaries, but if I wanted to do that I’d throw up a LFG.
More waypoints in Silverwastes wouldn’t help me do the meta, only more players.
How is an entire map with only <10 players not “map death”? Also, while you might have been able to do the forts (in part because you got lucky and some other people who were doing dailies showed up, which is not the general case), you also said that you couldn’t actually do many of the other events without LFG. On the original maps, LFG for open world events is not needed, because there are enough people incidentally around to do most of them. Even for crazy ones like Triple Wurm, there are enough people randomly around for you to do it without LFG and why? Because there is a waypoint right there at the start, so people just come if they want to do it. Most trackers don’t even bother showing the stuff on the new maps because either you organize to get there or you just don’t do them. The middle ground of “there are enough people here to just go if I want” is lost without waypoints.
Game design 101: If you place your save points too far apart, people will stop playing because they don’t want to do the same thing over and over.
And yet that isn’t what is happening is it? Silverwastes was the most populated farm map for the longest time, it didn’t need WP’s everywhere, just enough to get onto the map and into the labyrinth after the meta.
With HoT maps the complaints are about the maps being full all the time. That lack of waypoints again must be causing that, right.
Exactly my point: The new maps are all fine under the assumption of high population. Which they each in turn had when they were the new hotness and everyone was exploring/doing the story. But the lack of waypoints turns them from well designed into badly designed once the newness wears off and the population drops below a threshold. At that point, you have more people going around solo than in either organized or ad-hoc groups, and at that point what was fine becomes difficult because the monster amounts and difficulties, tuned for several people, result in lots of deaths just trying to get from place to place from shear aggro levels, and makes it hard to do events that were tuned to be done by several large groups and are now being attempted by single small groups or just being ignored by solo players. With more waypoints there would be less retreading which would appeal to the solo player and a greater ability to gather and do events for groups, whereas now most would rather do events on the original maps because doing them doesn’t require popping in 30min early and trekking across the map to get to the event spot (there is a reason all the major world bosses and events that are regularly done are those that are right near waypoints).
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
Sometimes it’s better to reflect on “what are/were the dev’s intentions?” instead of “this is not what I want.” That would be a better and less self-focused discussion than claiming that it’s carte-blanche bad game design.
Game design 101: If you place your save points too far apart, people will stop playing because they don’t want to do the same thing over and over.
By the way, that is literally part of the Game Design 101 class. An entire lecture was on that topic.
Even genres that operate on toughness recognize this. There is a reason that “torture platformers” like Super Meat Boy have short levels. You can only make a level so long and bank on the determination of people to show their skill so much before the annoyance of repetition kicks in.
MMOs additionally have to walk the line between “can be done alone” and “can only be done if you gather a group”. The waypoint system was part of GW2’s mechanism for getting around this. “Yes it was hard and I died, but at least I can rez at this reasonably close location” was how it was able to make things that were tough even for groups but not turn people off to playing when they had to solo. The lack of waypoints on the newer maps breaks this, turning it instead into “I couldn’t do it this time because I got too much aggro at once/a boss was where I needed to be/there didn’t happen to be enough players to do the event and now I have to go through 20 minutes of map hiking to get back.? kitten this.”
I’m all for the story, but not when it impacts the gameplay negatively. By that argument there should be 0 waypoints in the Heart of Magumma.
You can complain about the waypoints in Orr being contested a lot, but at least they are there to be contested. Using the Silverwastes again as the example, there is basically only a single useful waypoint on the whole map, right at the entrance. Sometimes the Hidden Depths point is handy, but the Drydock Grotto point is almost completely worthless, and all 3 of those points are in the southeast. 2/3rds of the map has 0 waypoint coverage. Essentially no matter what you are doing, if you die at any point you have to start over from scratch. That is the very definition of frustrating map design.
This frustration is readily apparent in the low map population, which only makes it worse for those who actually are there since the event difficulty is extremely high and often has multiple simultaneous parts in different places, and without high player population completing them is virtually impossible. If it were possible to teleport in near what you wanted to do and to respawn if you died without having to cross the whole map, then maybe we would see more interest in doing things in the area.
If this map had even minimal coverage, then there should be waypoints in each of the 4 forts and at the entry to Verdant Brink at least, with more preferable.
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
I had been trying to figure out what was so annoying to me about the newer maps, and it finally dawned on me: the EXTREME paucity of waypoints. On the initial maps, even if you die, it’s not too bad because there is a good distribution of waypoints to work with. But on the newer maps, the waypoints are few, far between, and especially on the LW2 and HOT maps, hard to get to in the first place for initial activation. The worst offender is the Silverwastes: It has 3 waypoints for the whole map, only 1 of which is easy to reach, 1 of which is in a useless location, and 2 of which require getting through very difficult areas where you are very likely to die due to the volume of enemies to activate in the first place. So for 99% of the time you spend on the map, if you die your only option is to start all over at the entry point.
Maps need waypoints. They are what keep the game from being excessively annoying to play. They exact a toll for death but keep it from being too excessive. The newer maps ignore this, taking the worst lessons from save points in console games. This does not make the game challenging, it just makes it annoying because you end up playing the same parts over and over, punished for not executing everything with perfect precision or for being unable to gather an organized group at any point.
Put in more waypoints. Give all the maps the kind of coverage the original maps had. Difficulty is fine, but difficulty by forced repetition is not.
I was expecting a difficulty increase on the HOT maps, but so far the spike is so steep that I can barely do anything. I haven’t done much outside of Verdant Brink, but so far I haven’t been able to do any of the hero points, get to most of the vistas or POIs, or even get all of the waypoints active.
Some of this is expected, as I am still working on navigational masteries such as gliding and mushrooms (going slowly because I am not spending much time there due to playing through LW2), but the main obstacle is simply the combination of the toughness and number of monsters and the confined combat areas. I have wiped many many times by being ganged on by 5+ mobs with not room to maneuver on the many bridges and narrow paths, no way to keep from aggroing them (ie Either they are so close they all aggro at once, they chain aggro, or the area is so small that in moving to fight the first one I can’t help but aggro others) and no way to break aggro other than jumping off a cliff and hoping I have somewhere to glide to. I can only dodge so much before I am out of endurance. Combine this with many annoying mechanics, such as lots of high powered invisible monsters (Shadowleapers), monsters with throw+stun that can chain if there are multiples (like the beetles), Monsters with undodgeable abilities (shadow chargers), and a general inability to do any level of Pass Parade and it makes getting around Verdant Brink very hard by yourself.
Is there any advise people can give for dealing with the new maps?
I posted this because I actually am getting repetitive motion strain and so I looked at all the places where this could be streamlined. I want to play the game, but without some help from Anet I am going to have to stop for health reasons.
The crafting interface doesn’t require you to run to the bank because it is the bank, and so it’s connected to the contents of your bank/collection materials. I’d personally like for the Mystic Forge to be the same way, but I figure there’s probably a good reason why it’s not that way.
And that would be…………
This game has so much unnecessary clicking. It would be nice to be able to play without so much risk of repetitive stress injury.
- Why do we have popups above the map for items? Aside from levels and mastery points, none of these have anything to them other than clicking on them, then clicking accept to have the loot sent to your inventory. Just put it in and save the clicks.
- Why do we have to handle materials manually? The deposit all option is nice but is hidden behind a dropdown. Just send them strait to the bank. At least provide a toggle for this.
- Why do we have a dropdown with 4 options in the inventory screen (behind the gear)? Just make 4 big buttons. Dropdowns should be for times when there are too many options to show. There is plenty of room.
- Why isn’t there an option to open all containers? This shouldn’t be automatic, since you are sometimes juggling inventory space, but when you aren’t just let us open them all, or at least as much as we have room for.
- Why isn’t there an option to salvage all salvage items? It’s fine to not have options to salvage all regular items (no good way to avoid mistakes with that), but for items whose only purpose is to be salvaged, just do it with one click.
- Why can’t the Mystic Forge deal with items in the bank? The crafting system otherwise can do this. It makes the Forge needlessly fiddly and completely removes any kind of experimentation, since you can’t have enough in your main inventory to do so.
The crafting interface doesn’t require you to run back and forth to the bank to manually find things, so why can’t the Mystic Forge work that way too? It makes things extremely awkward and makes finding things experimentally impossible.
I have never cleared this dungeon regardless of composition or build without multiple full wipes vs this guy. He is too strong, in too confined of area, with too many turrets backing him up. This is by far the worst designed fight in the whole game.
I consider Rytlock to be a tagalong from Destiny’s Edge, not a true member of the new group. It’s a generational thing, especially in how he interacts with Rox.
Anyone else annoyed by the lack of Sylvari in the new group? Destiny’s Edge was a big deal because it had 1 of each race, but the new group has 1 Norn, 2 Humans, 1 Asura, and 1-2 Charr (depends on if you count Rytlock as a core member or just a DE member tagging along) and 0 Sylvari. I thought they were setting up Canach to end up joining the group but that never materialized.
I don’t mind having more than 1 (Especially with the Kasmeer-Marjory dynamic), but I hate not having any Sylvari at all. I really think this needs to be addressed; it leaves Sylvari fans feeling left out of the new group dynamic and seems to marginalize the race that was so core to the story. It also leaves the Sylvari elements of the story feeling left out; just imagine what would have gone on with a Sylvari member during The Call that instead got addressed only from the outside.
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
There are a number of waypoints that are always or almost always contested. This makes them pointless except as essentially another POI for map completion.
A number of these, such as Concordia, are leftovers from LW2’s vine attacks, while some others are just positioned such that there is always some kind of event going on in the area (or occasionally are part of capture events that no one does very often, and so are always in enemy hands).
At the very least, those points that are 100% offline due to the LW stuff should show as permanently contested no matter where you are waypointing in from, instead of looking valid until you fail to appear in the proper location. While obviously the server system means showing event-dependent contesting from other maps is not possible, the LW disables are fixed and unchanging. Ideally, the ones that are semi-permanently locked need to be repositioned or the relevant events tweaked so that they are more useful, and the LW points should be fixed up and brought back into service already. Contesting has it’s place, but it is very annoying to be routed around uncontrollably, especially with long load times per waypoint use.
The Ley Line Hub in Dry Top really needs to have its own waypoint. Not only is it a cool place to hang out, but you have to go there repeatedly during a play through of LW2, and the lack of waypoint in the area can make this needlessly tedious as you get caught up and redirected by events constantly on the way there. Your nearest options are the Repair Station or Vine Bridge waypoints, which are often contested or have various events going on between them and the hub cavern.
UM I totally disagree, every time I salvage all my stuff that I accumulate( mainly from pvp reward tracks and killing world bosses) I have soo many matts that I run out of space in my storage to hold them and have to just sell them all on the trading post. And back when key farming was a thing I salvaged all my crap I got from doing hearts and killing low level things and always filled up my jute space really quickly and had to just start selling it. But if there’s a shortage in jute on the trade post it could be cause of no more key farming….
I have this as well, but only for high tier materials, ie Mithril, Hard Wood, Silk, etc. Which is the problem: I can’t get to the point where I can craft using the higher tier mats because I can’t get the lower tier mats because everything gives me higher tier mats than my current crafting level can use. That’s the crux of the issue. While I can purposefully go to low level zones to get low tier wood and metal, when I try to do the same for cloth, which you will need at various points in almost all disciplines, I get harvest rate like those I mentioned earlier that barely let me do 1 discovery for an hour+ of “gathering”. That’s why this thread is specifically about the issue for cloth and leather, and not for issues concerning wood and metal.
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
As a test I did Wayfarer Foothills from 0 to finished, killing everything I came across. I got 17 Jute Scraps. 17 for doing the entire map without doing any skips, on the lowest level map where you should be getting tier 1 mats. This is supposed to be a balanced acquisition rate?
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
Okay, let’s list the current methods for getting Cloth and Leather:
1) Random drop – available at all levels, drop random based on zone
2) Bags – available at all levels, contained drop random based on zone
3) Salvage items – available at all levels, salvage drop random based on zone
4) Salvage equipment – salvage drop random based on level of salvager + luck stones
5) Map rewards – Available at all levels in limited quantity based on zone and rotation
6) Marketplace – Available at all levels at significant cost, inversely proportional to tier
7) Refine at Mystic Forge – Only allows promotion of lower tier to higher tier mats, wasteful
E) Home instance nodes – in home instance, if purchased for 800 gems per node type
You omitted the primary source of cloth and leather, which is bags.
You can have as much cloth and leather as you want if you focus on killing humanoid enemies of the appropriate level since they all drop bags, and the bags all have around a 30% chance to give you cloth or leather.
You’re right, I did leave those out. However, the cloth and leather you get out of them are level dependent. So lower level mats don’t drop as your character increases level. This is why high level mats aren’t so expensive, but does nothing to fix the shortage of low level mats.
Also I didn’t mention the special nodes you can get for the home instance for cloth and leather, because those require gems and shouldn’t be considered since most people won’t have access.
Okay, let’s list the current methods for getting Cloth and Leather:
1) Random drop – available at all levels based on region, drop random
2) Salvage items – available at all levels based on region, drop random
3) Salvage equipment – Returns dependent on character level, drop random
4) Map rewards – Available in limited quantity based on map and rotation at all levels
5) Marketplace – Available at all levels at significant cost (ex – Just scraps 2 silver+ ea)
6) Refine at Mystic Forge – Only allows promotion of lower level to higher level mats, wastefulThe first two methods depend on luck, the third also depends on not outleveling the equipment drops for the material you need, which is ironic because by doing the crafting you outlevel the material you need. The fourth method is reliable if you can find a map on the right rotation spot, but is limited in how much you can use it. The fifth is freakishly expensive for most applications. The last only allows promotion (which is almost never needed) and is horribly inefficient, being available only when you have a full 250 of the lower mat and yielding a very small amount of the new mat. None of these are particularly reliable or viable for any intentional resource gathering in quantity.
Materials of the same tier close in price on the TP at the time I’m typing this. Close is relative, you might disagree how much is considered close, so ymmv.
T1: Jute, Copper, Rawhide, Green Wood.
T2: Wool, Iron, Thin Leather, Soft Wood.
T3: Cotton, Seasoned Wood. Course Leather is roughly 1s more than these.
T4: Linen, Rugged Leather. Hard Wood is roughly 1s40c less than these.
T5: Thick Leather, Elder Wood Log. Silk is way less than both of these.If you feel that farming cloth/leather is too inconvenient, time-consuming, or subject to RNG, then go farm trees… sell logs on the TP, and buy the cloth/leather you need.
Given that the TP prices reflect availability as much as demand, that list that tells me that there’s not as much of an availability/farming problem as you think… t4 being the closest to an exception.
~EW
On the contrary, what this tells me is that T4 is the only one available in abundance. Not surprising given they are found on the maps people spend the most time on and are the salvage rewards for people playing on lvl 80 characters.
There are two causes for price inflation: low supply and low demand. Low demand inflation can only occur if there is a market for the item as a specialty or luxury, which low level mats are not. The elevated prices for lower level mats therefore must indicate a supply shortage, otherwise why would people be willing to pay those kinds of prices for something they could go get themselves?
Okay, let’s list the current methods for getting Cloth and Leather:
1) Random drop – available at all levels based on region, drop random
2) Salvage items – available at all levels based on region, drop random
3) Salvage equipment – Returns dependent on character level, drop random
4) Map rewards – Available in limited quantity based on map and rotation at all levels
5) Marketplace – Available at all levels at significant cost (ex – Just scraps 2 silver+ ea)
6) Refine at Mystic Forge – Only allows promotion of lower level to higher level mats, wasteful
The first two methods depend on luck, the third also depends on not outleveling the equipment drops for the material you need, which is ironic because by doing the crafting you outlevel the material you need. The fourth method is reliable if you can find a map on the right rotation spot, but is limited in how much you can use it. The fifth is freakishly expensive for most applications. The last only allows promotion (which is almost never needed) and is horribly inefficient, being available only when you have a full 250 of the lower mat and yielding a very small amount of the new mat. None of these are particularly reliable or viable for any intentional resource gathering in quantity.
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
Also having a lower level character that you don’t play very much, can be used to open those bags or salvage the drops to have them yield lower tier materials.
That requires that you have spare accounts lying around. Not everyone will have those. Slots cost money and some people in particular like to have a character for every class and aren’t going to spend more money to buy even more slots just to have a junky harvester character, both due to the money and due to the desire to play with their fully leveled X class character instead of low level one.
There is a major balance issue with material acquisition. While Metals and Timbers are fine, and with some exploration it is possible to locate whatever food you might need, and even gems show up enough from general mining, obtaining certain cloths and leathers is virtually impossible. Firstly, you can’t go out looking for them because you just have to wait for them to appear in drops, but even more problematically, there is no way to farm for lower level items such as Jute. If you haven’t been able to level up your crafting before you outlevel the drops for these low level materials, you have no good way to get them. Even salvaging stops being a viable source due to your drops becoming too high level to yield the low level materials.
This further leaves you unable to utilize the later drops, resulting in you ceasing to mine, lumber, etc. as you are full up on higher level materials and can’t do anything with them. Then the entire system breaks down and you start not even bothering to gather at all.
There needs to be an alternative acquisition method for Cloth and Leather materials of all levels, so you are not depending on random chance to acquire them. This could be the addition of nodes for them, perhaps in towns or cities, or the addition of quests that are guaranteed to drop certain materials. But there needs to be a way to get them on purpose when you need them, rather than by pure RNG.
(edited by Boogiepop Void.6473)
The crafting ui would be indeed a godsend for Forge. The current UI would stay as the “discovery” pane, but a list of unlocked recipes (with the ability to select quantity of items to be forged) is a necessity.
Our mouse buttons cry for deliverance. Do not let those cries be unheard.
Heh on the other hand the crafting UI is in need of its own improvement though it is mostly a problem with scribing and to a lesser degree cooking.
The discovery interface in general needs help. For cooking it’s a nightmare as you have to sit there trying every possible combinations of hundreds of items.
We were intentionally doing it without looking it up. Philosophy of the subgroup in the guild that did this is “I should be able to play the game without looking up a guide for everything.” And a few people did try for the stem but missed it so we disregarded that solution.
I need Jute. Salvaging blues and greens gives you tons of Wool. There is no good way to get Jute.
Salvage them on an appropriate low level character.
I shouldn’t have to make and run around with a low level mule just so I can get the materials I need to actually do anything in a crafting discipline.
I need Jute. Salvaging blues and greens gives you tons of Wool. There is no good way to get Jute.
Anything to improve the mystic forge would be appreciated.
These exist in the game, but only if you buy them for your home instance. This makes it very frustrating to do anything with either material, since you have no way to reliably get it. It would be really nice if they would just have some nodes for these in the world in towns and city areas. That would fix the current bottleneck issues with Tailoring, Leatherworking, etc. where you just cannot get the base materials in sufficient quantity to advance.
I don’t have Mad Memories, just 2 of the pages that go to making it.
I was mostly thinking that there might be a way for me to finish it even though the event is over since I started it already, but it sounds like there isn’t.
Just to test this out, a bunch of us (30 people) from my guild all went to do this at once (one extra person stayed below for revives). After 7 full wipes trying to reach the tilted lillipad, 1 person made it purely by chance. This is ridiculous. The jump needs to be adjusted so it is more doable. Hard it one thing, but 1/240, where the 1 can’t even explain what they did OR duplicate the doing of it, is not.
I also want this. I was doing some jumping puzzles yesterday and I kept having to start over because the glider would go off when I didn’t want it to and I would overshoot.
Although ironically in one place where I wanted the glider to go off after I missed a jump and was falling to my death, it wouldn’t because it was staying disabled by the jumping puzzle the whole way down (Dark Reverie).
I just found a pair of Candy-Powered Matter Meters and a couple pages from Mad Memories in the inventory of one of my older characters I hadn’t played in a while. Any point to these anymore or should I just dump them?
I just found a pair of Candy-Powered Matter Meters and a couple pages from Mad Memories in the inventory of one of my older characters I hadn’t played in a while. Any point to these anymore or should I just dump them?
If using action camera during victory or death, you cannot lock onto the 3 flying dragon minions (Ogravros the Moondeath, Fafnarin the Heartslayer, Horrogos the Soulbreaker) without exiting action camera mode. Due to the mechanics of the cannons, this means you are unable to attack them at all unless you realize that this is the cause of the targeting issues.
Like every other enemy in the game, they should be targeted by looking at them when in this mode. Alternatively, using 2 should just attack them automatically, as the cannons during the Zhaitan fight do, since they are the only legal targets anyway.
This is ridiculous. There should be away to get something this basic without resorting to the TP or endgame content. It’s inventory space, not a legendary.
My crafting isn’t high enough (Still novice leather worker since I can never find the kitten mats) and I am still working through the dungeons on story mode…
Where can I get bigger bags? I am so sick of constantly returning to Lion’s arch because my inventory is full.
I was hoping this was generally addressable since I have multiple characters (thief, elementalist, necromancer, warrior).
Everyone around me seems to have MUCH higher movement speed than me. How do I make my character go faster?
Griffonrook Run is ridiculously well hidden. Finding the entrance, even with an instruction manual, is an exercise in blind groping since half the time you can’t even see as you lose yourself behind the plants due to the camera. It is virtually impossible to find without being told where it is.
If it was destroyed it can be fixed.
When will the Mirkrise Waypoint be fixed? Having it permanently contested makes the entire lower left of Brisbane Wildlands inconvenient to access, since you are forced to divert to Ultrametamagicals or Triforge Point, which are both a long walk away from Tangle Root and access to Dry Top. Especially bad if you happen to go down fighting to clear the passes and need to revive at a waypoint.
I never discover anything because I don’t have the room to stock up on any items that won’t go into the bank. It’s a catch 22. If I keep items to use for crafting, I can’t do anything else because I’ll have no inventory available. If it is only for crafting, it should have a bank slot.
I have been trying to level up weapon smithing but mothing I do seems to move the bar and there is almost nothing I am allowed to craft anyway. I have multiple stacks of full 250 materials in higher quality stuff, but am not allowed to use it because I can’t get my level to go up. This seems to happen in most of the crafting disciplines. It doesn’t help that some of the intermediate materials don’t have storage slots in the bank for some reason (dowels, bronze weapon parts, seasonings, etc.), so I have to craft them and then sell them because I don’t have room in my inventory for items that don’t have a function out in the world.
Kind of a kittenty reward if that is the case.
Still not fixed.
Some of the items you get cannot even be gotten rid of in the mystic forge. What are you supposed to do with these when they are no longer needed?