Guild Wars 2

Punny.9210:

true but then u should n’t have problem with repair cost. if u can carry 100 treb.

A gross overstatement taken out of context…. Because people for repair costs were saying it stifles people from having patterns which is somehow good, even though you still need resources to build.

I’m saying that not having repair costs makes folks less inclined to be frugal on the battlefield… Both in being aggressive on Offense or Defense and carrying plans with them. There’s still tactics involved, there’s still resources need, you’re just eliminating a cost burden so that folks can focus on the task at hand.

Some people are arguing that it would lead to more folks pocketing the rewards instead and promote botting… Then don’t make the rewards/costs gold based? If costs/rewards were purely karma based? Shrug. Not sure that eliminates the bot issue, but it at least keeps gold, and those related issues, in the PvE aspect of the game.

So stifle the rate at which sieges and defenses can be built? You still need resources for these things… I can carry 100 treb schematics, but if my team doesn’t have the resources to build any of them, they’re 100% useless. The same holds true for defense.

Cancer.9065:

Why should I invest my PvE money into a system that gives me and my server no rewards for being top dog by the end of the week?

Winning servers get bonuses to crafting, ghathering, endurance, etc, etc or did you meant something else?

It’s pretty subtle then? Subtle as in, not worth the investment. Like I said, I’m not making tons of gold from WvW even if I factor out repair costs. And I’m not suggesting we need game breaking bonuses to make it worth our while… but surely there’s some middle ground? The consequences of dying are already there without the need of adding a repair cost.

Good point on the botting, maybe you do almost like a WoW PvP thing where animals and enemies drop resources which are used for various things (additional NPC troops, defenses, upgrades, schematics, etc.). This might also make the WvW more diverse in the zerg-types since it’s capturing points and gathering non-supply resources.

Yeah there are rewards in WvW, but there are also upgrades that require money… So I have to pay the repair bill and expected to also pay for upgrades? Some of these upgrades are expensive btw and it’s not like you’re necessarily making bank off WvW. Why should I invest my PvE money into a system that gives me and my server no rewards for being top dog by the end of the week? As it stands, WvW is a nice distraction at best…when it really could be a whole lot more important. A server shouldn’t feel forced to play, but at the same time there should be the incentive to want the win.

Personally, I hate the repair costs of WvW. I think it very much holds me back from willing to be more aggressive when necessary… Particularly because nothing is at stake for not doing well in WvW. Being top dog last week gives you and your server nothing for the next week…. And if it does, then it’s hardly noticeable. If there was some benefit to being the “winner” for the week, maybe I’d be more willing to die for it.

Well just two comments for this boss….

The boss itself has a rather BS mechanic of pulling you in and doing that blade attack before you can escape from being pulled in the first place. I’ve tried dodging while he’s telegraphing the move and it only works sometimes (sometimes as in i’ll be mid-dodge and still get pulled in yet other times I’ll dodge at the same instance and not be pulled in). I’ve tried interrupting him from doing the blade attack via fear which doesn’t always work (fear usually bypasses the unshakable stacks bosses have).

There’s also the Rangers, which in general have the auto-locking bow attacks that always apply poison and cripple? Why does this game, that promotes dodging, positioning and strafing, have an auto-lock attack feature? I can understand it’s possible need in PvP-type situations, but not PvE. They also have a lot of health for being archers…. they must hit up the Ascalonian Gym buried further in the ruins.

Why is TA considered the starter EM dungeon when AC is the first dungeon you can get access to both SM and EM?

Frankly, all EM dungeons should have a “cheese” path, a medium path, and a hard path… with the rewards corresponding to the difficulty (from quality of drops to token amounts).

Haha…. so much confusion in WvW as warrior-looking characters start throwing grenades and caster-looking characters doing hundred blades and such.

Love it.

The old battlenet system was awesome. It was basically chatrooms followed by “oh hey, wanna play a game?” GW2 has no chat rooms, just local map chat and a friends/guild lists that doesn’t even tell you when these people come online… I’ve seriously gone through a whole play session only to realize my buddy logged on 30 minutes ago and we had no idea each other were on; I only found out cause i hit “Y” instead of “T” in a dungeon I was in.

While I think players are one part of the equation for a social MMO, the systems in place can really inhibit or grow that social experience.

There’s a lot of neat looks but a lot is locked in with the mystic forge. The challenges for “prestige cosmetics” are not really anything more than a grind fest; and ultimately subject to the player.

Even GW1 had gear that not everyone could get, yet wasn’t any better than what most folks could get. That doesn’t exist in this game. The main deterrent in getting or not getting something is not for lack of skill but rather time you’re willing to commit. I like the GW idea that the entry fee for trying is uniform, but it’s rather un-GW like to say the prestige is farming over skill (at least in PvE)

Where’s my /putonrobeandwizardhat command? This game fails.

It sounded like a WoW meets D3, minus the gear treadmill progression that both those games share…. It intrigued me and while I do like the concept and on aggregate enjoy the experience, there are somethings I find not well executed.

Anyone notice how you move slower once in combat? I don’t get that, but it seems to take away from the whole positioning and strafing thing because you’re arbitrarily slowed yet projectiles can move all sorts of varying speeds.

Unforgettable goes both ways…

After the Battle for Fort Trinity was bugging out on me for a number of attempts, I finally got it to work, only for it to randomly boot me out just as I was putting the finishing touches on the quest (though I don’t necessarily entirely put that blame on Anet)

Another is remembering having to wait 2-3 weeks for this one SP to be fixed in order to get 100% map completion. Sure, I did other things but I won’t forget how annoying that was.

Another is Kudo and his golems in the SE story mode. I particularly remember the fire golem since he’s got an insane amount of health, heals from conditions (so forget you mr. necro or other condition built characters) and his fire attacks are not only completely unforgiving, but are almost impossible to dodge/strafe every attack (not to mention, some of those fire attacks still hit you even if they pass you). When I go through a lot of explorable mode dungeons, I think how easy these encounters are relative to that… I think Magg, Subject Alpha, and Lupicious are jokes by comparison.

I don’t want to be a total negative nancy…. there definitely have been fun moments as well. I was just trying to illustrate that OP’s title can be both good and bad moments.

I will say there is a certain approach GW2 takes in introducing the idea of a casual style of MMO play where regardless of commitment, everyone is still on a level playing field… And I like it. It’s nice to know you lose out on nothing from having the game collect dust for a few days/weeks. However, that casual mentality also bleeds into some of their designs and comes out grindy, lazy, or just plain flawed/bad.

I think some people have pointed this out, but 3-5 minutes per phase is usually good for a boss fight… I think the Lupicious fight (pardon if I horribly botched the spelling) is about right… it’s 3 phases and about 12-15 minutes or so; though it might seem to take longer just because you gotta learn it if it’s you or the group’s first time.

Epic fight duration =/= an epic fight.

I don’t mind the carrots necessarily, but some should be less grindy and more prestige… Like great, you have all the stuff for twilight, but now you have to rally a group together to come help you go through a unique chain to forge it (at least for legendary items).

I’m not a fan of slot machines, yet alot of carrots, in the form of skins, are found within it… There’s a really cool laser gun looking rifle that I’d love to grab, but I have to “roll for it” rather than try to earn it through a challenge. I suppose I could buy it off the TP, but where’s the fun in that?

With respect to EM dungeons and their gear, some paths should be intentionally harder yet more rewarding (token-wise, higher drop rates, etc).

Agreed… the support type varies among the professions. However, there’s a combination of some poor design in the dungeons and players that insist they don’t have to change any utility skills or their traits (not necessarily a re-spec, but just even swapping out your 10/20/30 passive trait effects for other effects).

I just threw in D2 cause I was the most familiar with it in terms of bugs and I wanted to show that bugs vary. Not being able to have a stable connection, or connect at all, sucks… but is usually fixed real fast; and if a game only has these types of bugs then the rest of the game is smooth once you can get in. Buggy content/gameplay is exactly that and takes awhile to fix; which can be annoying since it takes longer to fix, but in the meantime you have to deal with it.

I wouldn’t call D2 a smooth release due to the connection issues… and even then it had “end game” issues similar to this game. It took them a few months to get it to the D2 that folks praise, and then the X-pack raised that bar even more.

To play devils advocate with the RMAH (which I despise personally)… It’s actually quite an ingenious way to make some money off the bots while also “trying” to thin their numbers.

Yeah the DR seems to kick in on killing a bunch of dudes of a general enemy type rather than the specific enemy type… There’s actually quite a few undead variants in the Orr Zones, yet killing any combination of them up to a certain point kicks in the DR.

CelticWish.2314:

Athaulf.1530:

Surely you have any evidence for your claim.. oh wait you don´t
On the other hand just name one MMO, one Game or even one pirece of software that
has been produced in the last 15 years taht didn´t have any bugs.
See? You can´t

Guild Wars 1

Do you mean bugs on release? None. But what are the nature of the bugs? D2 bugs, for example, were mostly issues relating to bnet connectivity, not content (infrastructure vs. programming).

“When it’s done” hasn’t happened on a consistent basis since the good ole N64/PS2 years. Sure, every now and then you’ll find a truly polished game, but for the most part this phrase is simply just a talking point or goal that developers and programmers pseudo-aspire towards achieving.

34) The Citizens of Tyria whose governments are taxing them into poverty in order to pay for fancy air ships, lazer cannon things, and massive fortresses made of metal… Just cause the dragons “want to destroy the world”. Just sounds like wasteful government spending.

I don’t mind the casual nature of the game other than the casual attempt at designing some of the in-game mechanics. I think many mechanics probably sounded good on paper, but weren’t executed/tested properly. Luckily, these can be fixed… whether or not they will be is another story.

WvW can be hit or miss sometimes…. Cause if there’s like nobody on then it’s impossible to take certain locations. When tons of people are on, it’s a grueling fight for every inch.

Visually or mechanics?

Visually has to be the cutscene/loading screen artwork.

Mechanically, the Priest of Balthazaar DE (when it works)… because it’s about the only DE I find that truly lives up to many of the design philosophies this game adheres to.

Pretty sure the solution causes more issues than fixes…. but maybe require a unanimous vote to kick?

With regard to flying to places in WoW (via the flight routes)… While I agree the flight time was asinine, the cost was not.

$60 for an entertainment product shouldn’t be looked purely by hours of “entertainment” it can provide, but also relative to the quality hours of enjoyment and degree of enjoyment you can get from it….

I still have an old Risk, Monopoly, and Chest/Checkers set from ages ago and if I can get any half decent player(s), it can be a blast… Considering how many hours I’ve “logged” into any one of these games for their price, GW2 has a long way to go. The difference too… about 95% of my time playing these board games have been enjoyable, even when getting my butt kicked. I can’t exactly say the same for GW2.

Going to a sporting/concert event (for a sport/team/band you like) can be super expensive, but it can be so electrifying to be there such that the enjoyment of the moment way exceeds whatever you could get from any game.

dimgl.4786:

I think players don’t realize running through a world means that they will encounter more random DEs and will make the world feel much larger.

True, but at the same time if the rewards (karma, loot, monies) are kinda meh, then folks are gonna skip it.

One thing that always annoys me with the “running” option is that if I get into combat for any reason, my run speed is immediately slowed to a snail’s pace even if I have swiftness. I’m not sure why this is the case, but it’s absolutely frustrating as if I’m being forced to fight the mob…. which in lower zones might not be a big deal, but in any Orr map is an absolute pain.

Also if you lower the number of waypoints, you should lower the number that can be contested. It’s always lovely to check any Orr map to see all the points contested except for one that’s completely nowhere near your desired location.

No engineer love… that’s what you get for being second best at everything

I agree with the projectiles lock and don’t lock-on point… even as playing a ranged character. I can understand why you may want more lock-on mechanics in a PvP setting, but it seems unnecessary for PvE.

Also, is there an enable cast-time feature? I thought this was one of the best things WoW introduced so I could see what ability the targetted enemy was trying to do and when he’d almost be done casting it; which at the melee range lets you know when to dodge immediately or try to pull of an interrupt, for ranged it’s more like knowing that the projectile is on it’s way (assuming you didn’t pull of an interrupt).

While I think the game could do more to help keep players spreadout throughout the entire map, a good global system (like the LFG feature in GW1) to inform players of what’s going/available and what folks are doing in different zones can go a long way… Though wp costs might inhibit the desire to jump around.

I’ve been playing with a buddy of mine who is fairly new to MMOs (like actual form groups for dungeons and such and not Diablo 2 or 3). To say he gets disenchanted pretty quickly while playing, especially as we’re getting his toon closer to 80, is almost an understatement. I don’t think it’s a matter of preference because him and I like just about the same everything… But I have more experience with coming into a game that’s still sort of vanilla while he hasn’t; so basically I have better tolerance in what to expect and forgive.

He recognizes the potential, but sees that it’s not necessarily all there. He still plays from time to time, but sort of focuses on other stuff instead… and I understand, gamers, consumers in general, want to enjoy their products when they purchase them, not later.

Science.6709:

seeing as you can already see what they look like through the use of 2 websites I really dont see how this impacts anything at all.

Right, because I want to alt tab out of the game and type in manual searches for images instead of right clicking once.

I’m guessing you were never a spreadsheet gamer…. Nonetheless, the “lack of information” on-hand does have certain positive/negative effects on the TP. I’m not sure they’re all that dramatic though. I’m not a coder either so I’m not sure how difficult it is to implement such a feature.

It’s a double edged sword… it could diminish demand for some items while generate more demand for others.

From a pure time spent playing to dollars spent, since people always bring this ratio in, it’s definitely been worth it. However, the enjoyment once I got to 80 has been steadily diminishing.

I acknowledge though that while a lot of my discontent has a lot to do with content, finding a good player-base, whether it’s the entire community, a guild, or group of friends, is key for long-term enjoyment (at least for my enjoyment).

I quit WoW before achievements started coming in… But legendary items in WoW were worth the “grind”. Hell, Thunderfury had it’s own event tied to it.

You also have to factor in that these items, in WoW, are usually waaaayyyy better than what you can get. Thunderfury was so good, you had level 80s still running dungeons/raids with it in Burning Crusade expansion. Atiesh was godly relative to other staves you could pick up when Naxx first came out and it had the portal feature which was neat.

The legendary could be picked up as you were progressing your guild’s collective gear. So it’s not like you were necessarily hunting exclusively for that piece/item… it’s a nice pick up though.

I’m not sure how legendary items are in current-WoW… but I’m pretty sure if they’re only as good as something you could get crafting or a 5 man, but you could only get the item in a raid setting…. Very few people would go for it.

I like Mog’s suggestion…. open up the rewards to being (potentially) the item skins that you can only get from the forge, repair canisters, mystic coins, mystic stone thingys, boosters, dye packs, stashes of crafting mats (whether it’s the harvest mats or the mats you get from mobs).

There’s literally so many things available yet the rewards seem to be fixated on a small portion of the items available in the game.

I think dungeons are too easy mainly cause too many fights are too similar. Say what you will about WoW, but many boss fights (at least for raids and even a few 5-man bosses) forced you to do something different or even non-traditional and in that way made you better with the class you were playing. Many WoW-bosses could easily be tweaked to respect a dps-system rather than the holy trinity system they’re originally designed for… Lazy encounter designs are just lazy encounter designs.

“Tank n’ Spank” or whatever you want to call the equivalent in GW2 is fine perhaps for story mode and a few explorable boss fights, but there really are not a lot of encounters that utilize any of the skills available. Where’s the debuff cleansing fight? Where’s the fight where we need to chain our immobilize/slow mechanics on the boss for a certain duration? Where’s an encounter where the boss can’t be interrupted until it’s doing some big telegraphed move? All classes do have some form of these skills and some group make-ups will work better than others for certain encounters (as it currently exists now). Rather than say “hey you could get through this with perhaps a little co-op”, you say “you’re really gonna need to coordinate, switch up your utility skills, and do a lot to get through this”.

Maybe that’s too much given the diversity of skill between players…. So vary paths with difficulty and reward. The “easy” path is more “tank n’ spank” and only gives you maybe 30 tokens at the end, whereas the “hard” path really needs you to be involved in the fight and gives you 80+ tokens at the end; and then something in the middle that’s a blend of the two paths and gives you 60 tokens at the end. Hard shouldn’t mean that it takes longer than other paths…. It might take longer to learn, but it shouldn’t take longer to execute.

Wait I’m confused… you’re regeneration tics for 300 yet your dwayna rune (which procs the regenerate boon) is 1000 health/sec. Is the regen for 300 per tic passive? As far as I was aware, Doylak runes and the engineer’s backpack regenerator are the only ones that have passive regen and thusly allow you to stack the intensity of regenerates rather than duration.

This is the equation for the regeneration boon:
5 + (1.562 * Level) + (0.125 * Healing Power)

So for 1000 health/sec on the boon, you’d need something like 7k healing power (I’m assuming you’re level 80). Even for 300 health/sec on a passive regen source, you need near 1360 healing power. I can’t say anything about the Wells since they have set values that they tic for and then scale differently with +healing (which I haven’t found the equation for).

Maybe necros get better scaling with heals? Idk, seems a little sketchy either way.

I realize there are other heals, but in my example the +200 extra healing points was off a direct heal (from a combo), not regen.

Healing power is a joke of a stat…. I don’t mind an idea of diminishing returns and things so you don’t stack defense to tank or heal through a fight, but +200 on a direct heal for +1000 healing? +1000 on any other stat is incredibly more effective.

Besides, how many healing sources are available on one character? What are the cooldowns? Oh, if you buff +healing then you can feasibly heal through a fight if everyone is chaining their healing… wait, doesn’t that also go along with the design philosophy of working together?

+1000 to healing should be a substantial increase on your direct heal; +200 on a heal for that much +healing should be per tick of the regenerate boon (and substantially less if the regen is a passive trait, effect).

I realize it’s supposed to be the doorstep of the Zhaitan stronghold and not have this zone as some walk in the park… but you could probably make it a little lighter by doing any (or a combination) of the following yet keep a similar effect:

- Lower the density: esp with pulls, knockbacks, drowning… it’s impossible to fight mobs sometimes without grabbing another 4+ in the process. It’s also the doorstep, not the Gates of Arah, so we could lighten up a bit and get progressively denser as we get closer to the end?

- Increase spawn time: to pull out a Jay Wilson reference, “double it”…

- Lower hp: some of these guys are surprisingly meaty compared to their counterparts in Malchor’s Leap or Cursed Shore.

- Don’t decrease the speed of characters while in combat. I’m sure people have noticed this and I never understood it. If I want to run through a pack because…. gee, idk, maybe folks don’t want to kill everything from A to B because doing so will end up taking all their playtime just to make the journey. But no, some cheap shot and now I move at practically half the speed (before getting slowed or tossed around like a rag doll). Combo that with leashes as long as half the map, and it’s basically navigating these maps at half speed the entire time only to have to kill 3+ mobs once you get to where you wanted to go.

Y’all need to take a look at this, play-test it, and really ask “is this fun?”.

Agree with Aramanth and I think that’s the root of the problem. Challenge should be an interesting use of mechanics since you have all skills available. Say what you will about WoW (I only did pre-WotLK), but I learned a lot about my priest through the dungeon challenges. Subject Alpha is the only encounter that made me think about my engineer.

I think the DEs could use a touch of work at the higher levels to make them just a tad more than tank n’ spank… I like Balthazaar because it’s tough as it should be since you should be close to 80 if not already there; ideally you’ve learned something about the game by that point.

Dungeons could definitely use some work. Not every boss needs to be super challenging, but there should be enough flavor between encounters so their a little different in their own right. While a tank n’ spank is fine every now and then, there should be a Subject Alpha-type fight where you have to pay attention most of the time; flipside though is that if the fights are single phased, they shouldn’t take forever to whittle away at the boss (3-5 minutes per phase).

Also, for engineers that mainly use kits…. these weapons are super worthless except running around Lion’s Arch (assuming I’m not swapping between kits to keep my speed buff up)…. Because the particle effects and even the stats themselves are restricted to the weapon only. Even if they adjusted the kits, not sure it’d go for it.

Nifty looks… for some not all. Honestly, I like the CoE rifle over the predator, but that’s just me (not sure what “nifty” effect the pred-rifle has).

There’s no real prestige to them other than gratz on going farm-frenzy. When I think legendary, I think Thunderfury…. hard to obtain the pieces and a unique event for forging it. Not saying low drop rates > farm frenzy… but the idea that it’s hard to get and there’s something truly special about it makes the item Legendary.

Buff +healing…. you have this stat, but it does nothing right now because the effects +healing has on direct heals and HoTs is so minimal, there’s almost no point in having it.

You have cooldowns for direct heals and regenerate boons, there are passive regens that could get less of the +healing effect…. why is this stat even in the game if it effectively adds nothing to your ability to fight/survive?