Guild Wars 2

I mean there’s so much diversity of loot but it’s all trapped within the TP and Mystic Forge… You should play the mystic forge as a way to get an extra chance, but instead it’s essentially the endgame skin generator.

How am I supposed to get better if explore mode is cheese-fest? I don’t mean taking my death and graveyard rushing back… I can usually solo a boss long enough for folks to do that. Really aside from the Fire Golem phase of the Kudo fight, nothing else has really been all that challenging aside from maybe a few trash mob encounters.

There’s actually little difference between a lot of the boss fights, just different flavors of strafing/dodging and punishing you for not doing the evading correctly. Aside from the Melandru Priest, I don’t recall ever really having to play outside the box with my characters. Sure, other MMOs have there “rinse and repeat” flavors, but they usually take awhile to execute properly. Yes you want to make it casual friendly, but that shouldn’t surrender offering any such challenge.

Might be worthwhile, depending on the stats you’re looking for, to look at dungeons as well. They might not get you the gear faster, but it can sometimes be a nice refresher from the farming… unfortunately, unless the dungeon is Arah, you’re likely going to have to port to LA and then back to Cursed Shore afterwards (or if you don’t find a group).

People need to get used to the idea of being flexible in a different manner… Other MMOs generally require flexibility in the sense that you’re doing something non-traditional yet still within your role whereas this game requires flexibility more in players swapping skills that best apply to the situation.

You don’t necessarily need to retrait, just be ready to not use the same set of skills all the time. Even as an engineer, I may rarely swap skills, but I might have to juggle between kits a lot more given the fight.

I don’t think you necessarily need raids… you have tons of paths, make them more interesting. Have your “cheese path” but also have the “insanity path” for others. Cheese path with standard rewards, “insanity path” with insane rewards (tons of tokens, boosters, mystic coins, exotics, whatever).

Well just like they disabled grubb’n til they fix it… Can’t they disable the event and just keep the gates open (and vendor available) until fixed?

Scourge.4317:

bcbully.7289:

Verticle progression would be a start. Hell any progression is better that what’s there now. There isn’t even horizontal progression. There is a sort of cosmetic grind, but even this seems tacked on and very limited.

Plenty of other games out there that offer that. The cosmetic grind has been been around since Guild Wars Prophecies. And it has worked wonderfully for the last 7 years so why change it to be like every other mmo currently available? Explain why its tacked on and limited? I don’t see that at all. It gets rather ridiculous when people keep asking for this game to change when its been advertise and known to be this way for a couple of years now.

I mean a lot of the skins are locked away in the mystic forge… and the dungeon sets are more of a grind than real challenge to get. I don’t think that was true in GW1.

I don’t mind the “entry fee” for dungeons being uniform in the sense that I only need to be a certain level rather than have attunements or certain minimum gear requirements… but at the same time, there should be legitimate challenges. Not every dungeon route has to be the masochist’s delight… but at least have them and offer some carrots at the end (even if they are just skins).

I will concede that some associate endgame to PvE, and possibly even vertical progression type PvE… but there’s also the idea that endgame PvE isn’t really there because no challenges really present themselves other than farming for skins. Dungeon loot was supposed to be a symbol of Prestige… there’s really little challenge presented in those dungeons except in the story modes where the majority of bosses actually have interesting mechanics where I really do need to coordinate through skill synergies offered throughout the party.

I think the issue is that the trinity sort of still exists because they really only took a hammer to the kneecaps of the legs of the triangle that are healing and tanking… Yes the stats invested in toughness and +healing are noticeable, but not quite the same as if those stats had been invested in power and precision (condition dmg kinda gets kittened a bit too). The mechanics of many fights as well don’t necessarily promote the need for a legit cooperation but rather just adding everyone’s dps together. Sure, cooperation can probably get you further than just winging it, but few challenges really require good execution on a real cooperative level. Subject Alpha and Giganticus require good execution on part of the individual players doing their job to save themselves, not necessarily doing their job to help others.

While he maybe easy, I think it was a good fight from a mechanics standpoint. Too many of the explore bosses are sort of generic and hit hard, which doesn’t necessarily make for an interesting fight.

Well I don’t think we have to go to the extreme of “free”, but at least scaled appropriate to what a player can reasonably earn. 1.50s between wps within the Frostgorge and Orr zones might be ok given how much you can make… 1.50s between wps within Queensdale or whatever is a little high relative to what you can reasonably earn within the same amount of time.

You get down leveled, yet the costs remain constant?

Dead Space had better armor cosmetics for engineers than this game >.>

@Acidic

I agree with your last paragraph for the most part… but interesting that all the examples of difficulty (from a non-health, high dmg standpoint) mainly come from the trash and less from the bosses…. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd?

Falcor… The long forgotten Luck Dragon. How can you win when this dragon uses luck hax to pwn? Answer: you can’t.

I want to craft an exotic rifle that looks like a Candy Cane and shoots Tinsel as the particle effect… MAKE IT SO!

Sort of a gross oversimplification of dungeon’s in other MMOs…. yes you do have tank n’ spank, but you also have bosses with some very interesting mechanics that you have to deal with; and usually deal with in a unique fashion beyond heal more, dps more, tank more (or in GW2 case, dodge more).

There’s nothing wrong with the general idea of the GW2 style except for the fact that there’s often little need to spam boons or heals on other players, or use combo fields. The truly necessary co-op part is sort of missing other than the simple fact that “soloing this dungeon is likely very long or not possible so I need 4 other chaps to add their damage so I can get out of her in some timely fashion”.

Actually, the term has been used since the ole paper n’ pen days and was the term to mean “munchkin”…. Who were basically people that just wanted to dominate the game at the expense of the roleplaying aspect; the “power gamers” of pen n’ paper if you will.

So… it’s perfectly applicable in the gaming world since it has a history of it’s own pre-dating video games and independent of the term you’re referring to?

Or if we really want the PC version (excluding the munchkin term so we don’t offend all those folks from the land of OZ as well)… “get some boss level-appropriate gear”

Actually the heavy/medium/light armor has to do with varying scales of defense. Namely, light armor gets a higher return on investment per point in armor and toughness than heavy armor…. However, heavy armor usually has much higher defense because those classes are given higher armor and toughness values (not more toughness on the armor, but more on the naked stats).

And that’s the thing… soloing vs. party.

When I’m solo’ing and using wps, chances are I’m in Orr or Frostgorge… maybe going to do a CoE or dungeon run where the dungeon isn’t in a start zone. Point is, I’m doing me and I know I’m getting a profitable return.

When I party, I’m basically just tossing silver away when I should probably just give my friend the money instead and be like “get some boss twink gear instead”.

I “horde” gold because the prices of stuff is expensive. Maybe I don’t want to sit there and farm all day. Hey, I can enjoy helping my friend or doing my own stuff and be able to afford TP stuff? NOOOOOOOO

The way stats are scaled is completely unbalanced… Your return on investment in an offensive stat greatly exceeds the defensive stats (in ignoring vitality).

Defense, which is determined by armor and toughness, has diminishing returns.

Power has no diminishing returns.

Precision and crit damage also have no diminishing returns, but linearly scale and are unaffected by anything… So high defense doesn’t change the opponents crit rate or effectiveness of the crit.

Power is only reduced by a target’s defense, even then it’s a ratio of power to defense multiplied by the base dmg (which is some combination of weapon dmg and skill dmg)…. The power to defense ratio is almost never less than 1 even if a player doesn’t stat power (and the opponent stats toughness). So in a way, power eventually does not linearly scale at a point because it exceeds the rate at which defense can scale.

Healing and condition only give about +10-20 points of heal/dmg per 100 points invested (conditions vary by bleed, poison, and confusion). For conditions, 10-20 maybe ok since the damage ignores defense and often plays out to more dps over time. For healing, this is almost unacceptable. Yes, it is possible to keep regen on at all times, but the ticks are so low it’s hardly worthwhile. If someone wants to make their healing truly effective, they should… after all, they’re sacrificing offense for defense.

Difficulty should challenge your ability to play the game… maybe even require you to take a second look at how you play, what skills n’ traits you have, and so on. The Fire Golem from SE story mode was really the only boss that did that for me. Subject Alpha and the “hard” explore bosses are only hard because they’ll punish you instantly for a mishap.

What if there was a boss that took almost no dmg from attacks, but tons of dmg off combo fields? It challenges you and your team from just auto-attacking for win to “hey we need to coordinate some combo field placement here so we can take this guy out”. A boss with a healing mechanic that forced players to actually use abilities to whittle down the determined stacks so that when he was going to heal you could actually interrupt him?

High hp and dmg output is basically a lazy way of up’ing difficulty; which maybe fine for DE’s, but not for dungeons. There’s a difference between difficult by war of attrition and difficult by unique challenge.

Story mode is harder than most explore mode paths… but also, story mode has more interesting boss mechanics.

IMO, the Fire Golem phase of the Kudo fight in SE story is harder than any of the hard encounters in the explore mode dungeons. Heals off conditions (bye bye condition builds), really hard to dodge/strafe all his attacks which hit real hard with the harsh DoT at the end, and a buttload of HP. I think if I was scaled at level 80, it would still get my behind kicked thoroughly by this guy…. Although having almost x3 more HP would help alot.

Yes, you can recoup your loses from wp travel…. IF you make that travel productive. Basically, I have to play a very specific way, of essentially min/maxing my time, or else I’m financially punished for it. How is that casual-friendly? Oh, casuals shouldn’t be so concerned about their gold amounts… why? Given player behavior and corresponding buying power, wp costs are basically regressive taxes by nature.

If I go back to a lower zone to help a buddy out, I don’t necessarily recoup that loss. Also, because it’s so much more cost-effective for him to wp around, I can’t keep pace with his movement… I’m basically slowing him down if he walks with me. Luckily, I can more or less maintain constant swiftness on my engineer so that he can solo for a bit and I’ll catch up eventually.

And if wps are going to be so expensive, then areas like Orr shouldn’t have a large portion of them contested. There should be more than one/two wps that are never contested and evenly distributed around the map so you can at least be somewhat near the intended destination.

As much as it’s players unlearning things, it’s also Anet relearning things that they’ve abandoned. Yes, they don’t want to be “traditional”, but rejecting “tradition” doesn’t mean not taking any lessons from the past.

Endgame is really all about pacing. Leveling is one way to pace a character, legit challenges are another; always having some flavor conflict also helps naturally drive the desire to keep going. Think of games with great endgame, PvE and/or PvP, and see how these themes exist within those game…. Then look at GW2 and observe the same themes. See how they’re different.

I think GW2 has a lot of the pieces, but they’re not necessarily put together in the best configuration.

Mostly for the tokens, though on occasion you do get an awesome PuG and just curb stomp. I do love clean gameplay execution.

Stories more tailored around the professions as well as the race might’ve added more epicness for me… I mean think about it, the atmosphere of the game is the advent of Tyria starting to blend magic and technology. Would’ve been interesting if, for example, the story of Engineers are men/women want to further technology for the good of Tyria which is interesting given the varying cultures; imagine a Slyvari engineer in a society that’s pro-nature or a Norn engineer in the very spiritual Norns. The very idea of technology is almost an affront to their beliefs

Love it… That’s what made Thunderfury in WoW so memorable to me because it actually had a unique event tied to it in order to create it. Too much farming and destruction of wealth into the Mystic RNG Forge for a legendary in this game.

Yes, Thunderfury bindings were low drop rates, but if you were farming Molten Core, you were making money… Not building up money to have it evaporated by some slot machine that contains most of the items.

nests.6830:

First time poster here,

Thank you OP for creating this post, I just wanted to get something off my chest here.

I certainly appreciate the amount of effort and time been invested into this game. Creating something on the scale of an MMO is no easy task, and I don’t think players understand how much work and refinement this game has to go through to reach this stage. Rushing through a game that have so many intricate and creative details (conversation, scenery, even the character design) is doing a disservice to the developers. For most of the cases, I feel that the players are being unfair if they think this is a bad game simply because of small personal dissatisfaction. If they do feel that way, please, by all means, create a game that does not have these components AND innovative at the same time. I bet people will still think there are imperfections.

This is not a personal attack against anyone, I just thought it would be fair to appreciate the game a bit more, if not for the personal discomfort, but for the amount of effort and and time invested into something as innovative (in my opinion, or not by others) as this.

Complaints and bringing up issues is almost the entire point of forums or debates in general. Parliament or Congress or whatever doesn’t sit around and talk about the good job they did, they talk about issues and how to fix them (at least that’s the idea).

The whole “make a better game if you have a problem with this one”…. hate this argument. So if a repair guy doesn’t change my oil properly, I have to do it myself? No, I complain and tell him he did a bad job so he can do it properly.

The game isn’t so straight forward as to diagnosing and fixing the problems, but the problems are there and they do need solutions.

Not sure about caps…. but:

Defense (which is affected by armor and toughness) does have some serious diminishing returns once you get past a certain point.

Conditon dmg and +healing scale fairly weakly. With respect to bleed and regeneration, it’s like an additional 10-20 points of healing/dmg per 100 points of +healing/condition respectively.

Power scales the best because direct dmg equations factor in power as ratio between power to defense multiplied by the damage output. So if I have 2000 power, and the target has 1000 defense, the output is going to be twice normal output value. Because defense has diminishing returns as well, power is always greater than defense; even if you invest almost nothing into power.

There’s still little love for the engineer

Think of D3 minus the gear grind, better synergy between classes/professions, and more variation in viable builds (though you still have your cookie-cutters).

Probably not the fairest comparison, but just to give you the jist I suppose.

I think the manifesto is conceptually great, but I’m not sure they 100% delivered on it in terms of execution. I can still get enjoyment out of the game, but every now and then I see something that makes me grumble, and not in a “oh this is a good challenge” sort of way rather “oh this is bad design execution”.

Though I don’t entirely agree with the treadmill statement. Yes, it’s no longer a gear treadmill, but it is one of skins. In fact, there’s hardly a difference between the TP and systems that help support it and the RMAH system of D3 that everyone has lambasted.

I understand the wps can promote bypassing content, but at the same time you’re basically saying it’s ok for Anet to toll you heavily for wanting to play the parts of the game that appeal most to you.

And it’s not like waypoints are exactly always active, and I think if you’ve been in any part of Orr you know what I mean… So it’s not necessarily a guarantee that you can wp to exactly where you want to go or be near.

warmonkey.8013:

If you wanna get to 80 without dying…. drop 40+ gold and craft your way there.

There really isn’t any other way to do it, not as far as I can see.

Besides, you’ll never know how much you can accomplish until you find the point where you fail. That’s a lot of the fun, for me at least. Will this kill me? I dunno but WE’RE ABOUT TO FIND OUT! To quote Sam Jackson.. hold on to your butts! ;D

I did fine leveling my necro 1-80 with no deaths and not sticking exclusively to crafting. Know when to pick and choose battles (I also didn’t do a dungeon so that prob helped).

Sanarian.9614:

Actually, you’re missing the point. I’ve provided a logical, well-explained counter to your argument, and you’re ignoring it for no reason at all.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re available for a couple thousand karma or for a few hundred karma. You think it ruins the novelty of a T3 weapon? Don’t buy it and go save for the real deal. You want it easy? Go get the odd-named copies.

You’ve not really countered the point, only stated the rate of karma gain has changed. Yes, you can get the 63,000 karma weapon faster, but you can also get the 500-1000 karma weapon faster…. The rate of karma gain is uniform and nothing in that regard has changed the OPs original point. Not sure why’d you’d go/care for weapon names when people can’t even inspect what you have and you’re just transmuting for the skin.

The original point is still valid… why have essentially the same item for 63,000 when it’s available elsewhere for significantly less? If you had said “because the vendor is in a major city and not in a level 50-60 zone”, then maybe you’d have an actual counterpoint.

1) Depends on the class… On my necro, I often switch between weapon sets and utility skills whereas my engineer rarely needs any skills/weapons switched around.

2) Guilds probably play a bigger role in terms of social aspects and maximizing enjoyment. Map chat is often used to point out big events or link up for dungeons with the occasional running conversation.

3) Alot of people say it’s what you want to get out of it, but if what you want to get out of it is a PvE experience, then it can be a little lackluster… If you’re more for the PvPs (whether WvW, sPvP, or tPvP) then it could have more staying power.

4) I think the worst and best part about the game boils down to the concepts… I think there are a lot of great concepts and potentials, yet the execution sometimes doesn’t do justice in fleshing out the concepts.

@ oZii

I mean… 40 exotic staves and 100g is a serious commitment of time and effort for a casual game. RNG is RNG I know… but there’s a difference between RNG 50/50 chance and RNG 1/1000 chance.

Yes, maybe Anet doesn’t want everyone running around with Twilights and Bifrosts and such… but making the barrier one of insane farming and RNGs rather than insane challenges seems to go against the very design philosophy which Anet and so many people staunchly support.

It’s kinda funny that while everyone lambasted D3 for it’s RMAH system, GW2 basically did the same thing… The difference being RNG (and prices) for skins rather than stats.

Levels are merely there so that the entire world is not available at the get go. Leveling makes it more available and allows you entry into dungeons without being total deadweight.

As for alts… it’s not endgame, but there is some replay value since they all have a different flavor in how encounters are dealt with and some slightly different perspectives on the story (assuming you also change up the races).

It doesn’t have all that…. there are no epic quest chains associated to the legendary items. A few explore mode runs maybe, but hardly “hey, this event/quest is unique to getting <insert legendary item name>”.

I’m not sure if you can feed token-based exotic dungeon staves into the forge, but if there was a formula that was like 4 staves (or whatever precursor weapon type you’re trying to get), each from a different dungeon = precursor. I mean, you still have to get 1200 or so tokens which is a lot, but at least removes less RNG for more challenge.

Blame the NPC for the spiders… we had a problem with this and she just keeps pulling them yet gets none of the aggro.

Some ranged dudes have auto-locking attacks which to me is completely unwarranted in a player vs. AI (PvE) setting…. Looking at you Ascalonian Rangers.

Maybe it’s a latency thing, but sometimes with projectiles that arc and have a red circle of where they’re supposed to land, I get hit with the projectile…. Even while strafing it and out of it’s path. This is especially annoying when trying to handle the Fire Golem during the Kudo fight in SE story mode or the vines in TA (though they’re not as punishing if you take a hit or two).

While I do agree that you coordination to win, I see that need more in story mode encounters than in explore mode encounters…. and isn’t explore mode supposed to be harder? I’ve rarely encountered something hard in an explore compared to the number of times in a story mode.

fony.5102:

yea, get in a group with someone doing explorable.

Nice… wasn’t sure if there anything more to it than that. I’m guessing I have to complete story mode in order to be able to pick the explore option (if I’m the first person running into the portal)?

Can you bypass story mode for any dungeon and go straight into explore mode?

As much as I’d like to do story mode, it’s particularly rare to find enough folks interested.

There’s really very little reason to go into lower level zones. EVE online probably does the best job at spreading folks around, but they have a much different system that’s really economy driven.

I concede to some of his points… I know Anet wants to break from the traditional, but it doesn’t necessarily mean an absolute rejection of everything “traditional” MMOs have conjured up… Like a LFG system (hey GW1 had that and it was actually good).

Kinda question crafting in the long run, aside from cooking/artificing with the consumables, but if the seasonal things showed anything… Looking forward to crafting a Candy Cane Rifle that shoots tinsel this Xmas season (yes moderator, put this bit in the suggestion forum for Xmas time). In terms of skins as the rewards, you can’t be surprised since they said it all along.

Hearthstone ftw….

Tagging more mobs means you hit the DR faster… Now exp, that’s another issue.

So… you’re from the Durmand Priory eh? NERD!!!!

VIGIL 4 LIFE

:P