Why not just make the paths vary in difficulty, ranging from easy to super hard? Easy is more forgiving, less reward, and a tool to help familiarize players to the dungeon in terms of what mobs and bosses might do and how to deal with those. Super hard would be almost unforgiving, highly rewarding, and tests players on how skillful they play their toon and work together with other players to execute strategy…. with the other two paths varying from these extremes.
As the title sort of hints… and forgive me if my information isn’t perfect, but the explorable mode dungeons have 4 paths. Rather than making them all equally difficult in some manner, why not have them be different difficulties? So when you choose a path, you know it’s either easy, medium, hard, or insane. I think this would make dungeons more inviting to players of varying skill and time-commitment rather than the seemingly mile-high brick wall that some players see it as.
Easy Path:
Probably on-par or a little tougher than the story mode. The idea is to introduce players the general mechanics/tactics that mobs and bosses will use in this particular dungeon. The damage is fairly forgiving and allows players to formulate basic tactics to use against mobs.
Medium Path:
Tougher than easy and a little less forgiving as damage increases and we start to see some more high damage/one-shot mechanics come into the mix. It’s riskier, but still giving players opportunities to learn mob/boss mechanics and try out tactics.
Hard Path:
It’s gonna be tough. You should pretty much know the majority of mob/boss mechanics and how to counter them. Very little forgiveness and requires skillful playing of the character, coordination with the team, and good execution of strategy.
Insane Path:
Pretty much if you and the group don’t perform flawlessly, expect to get rolled.
Now in terms of rewards, it follows that easier = lesser payout whereas harder = higher payout… Not just in terms of token amount after a successful section completion, but drops in general (from mobs, chests, bosses, etc); whether it be increased chance for rares, extra token drops, extra coin drops, etc. So while easy mode will almost guarantee a player walking out with some profit, Insane will be highly lucrative if you can pull it off.
Dungeons are definitely in the vanilla phase and could use a serious, comprehensive review.
In terms of higher tier gear, I’ve said that so many times and there seems to be this super staunch resistance to it. Even if you propose ways of making it so that this higher tier gear only stays in PvE somehow, people just don’t seem to get it and don’t like it…. so I would just say save your breath on this topic.
I don’t think you necessarily need modes since you have 4 paths in a dungeon, so make them of varying difficult and reward (easy, medium, hard, insane) and indicate those difficulties when players are choosing what path to take. Ideally, the paths should all be tuned to take about the same amount of time once you have a general idea of what to do (30-45 minutes or so). The concept is to give players a more gradual learning curve. Easy and Medium would be more forgiving in terms of little to no one-shot mechancis; the idea being to familiarize players to certain mob/boss mechanics that will be used throughout the dungeon and figuring out the best strategies to combat these obstacles. Hard and Insane would be more testing your skill, group coordination, and strategies… and thusly, more punishing.
As I said, the rewards scale to difficult… but I’m thinking more than just in terms of token drop amounts at the end of completing the run. Rares drops, additional tokens, and extra loot/coin-drops also scale with difficulty. So while easy is almost a guarantee to put coin your pocket, hard/insane will definitely give good payouts if you’ve truly mastered the dungeon mechanics.
Good points….
I agree with the varying difficulties in the dungeon paths; it can be a real steep learning curve for folks not familiar to the whole MMO-scene. They should all be tuned to take 30-45 minutes or so…. but it might take a little more time at first to learn it. The easier paths have less reward, but are more forgiving in terms of less one-shotting; their design should be getting players introduced to the typical boss/mob mechanics in this dungeon and some of the tactics that will need to be employed in order to pull off a successful section run. The other paths ramp up in difficulty and reward (with the one path that’s super hard), but are more punishing because they demand better coordination/cooperation and execution. It would also help if there was some indication of path difficult when choosing one… kinda like when you choose a pit challenge in some quests.
I think this helps alleviate some of the repair costs because it gives players a better idea of what they’re getting themselves into. Easy path won’t be too punishing so I’ll likely come out of this with some more coin in my pocket. Medium path is gonna be a little riskier, but some better opportunities for rewards. Hard path is gonna be dicey, so I really need to know what I’m doing otherwise I’m just gonna have a nice repair bill waiting for me. Insanity path (assuming 4 paths to a dungeon) is just dumb to attempt unless I’m a baller.
I kinda see what you’re saying, but at the same time players invested time doing that. So are you gonna refund them for that time spent or are you just gonna be like “you incorrectly spent your time so kitten off”… That seems harsh considering those who made bank off farming or grubb’n or anything else that might be considered an exploit. So you punish only one group?
Does it even matter? They have their gear… but is it actually the gear that will enable them to complete an entire dungeon? I’m just not getting how punishing these players does anything productive.
I don’t see why they can’t implement paths of varying difficulties in the explorable dungeon modes…. You have 3-4 paths per dungeon, so make them all pretty tough? A fairly steep learning curve for casuals and fresh MMO-players wouldn’t you say?
It might make learning the respective dungeons not a steep curve and more enjoyable as the easier routes get you more accustomed to the mechanics you’re gonna experience throughout the dungeon at later difficulties and maybe even get you used to some strategies you’re gonna have to employ.
Now in terms of rewards though, easier routes = less tokens. So if 60 is completing the hard path, 10-15 should be the easy path…. but at the same time the easy path takes almost no time to beat (maybe a little time when you’re first learning it).
I would encourage folks who think there’s no endgame to try the dungeons, now that it take an entire run to get tokens… You might think your full berserker (or whatever exotic set you have) set and current trait/skills setup is fine, but until you’ve run the gauntlet and met the challenges, you really have no idea if you’ve got the best setup.
I didn’t mean that comment as a snipe to you Nyota… I was just making sure, based on some of the comments I was seeing, that people weren’t confusing the two.
I’m actually in all berserker gear, runes of the pack. I do have points in the alchemy trait so I have a bit of a health pool. The rifle going through multiple targets when they basically line up is great. The baddies mainly not moving is helpful too for jump shotting onto them and using acid bomb to just tear them apart.
^ This
We were doing a bunch of the dredge areas for vistas and whatnot and we were getting swamped due to the fast respawns…. yet me and my buddy manage to not die once (I think my buddy went into downed state once or twice, but he’s like lvl 46 and I’m lvl 80 in full exotics). Yeah, it sucks that the costs seem so high, but compared to the gains it’s not much…. Also remember, you can get drops around your level; I definitely got a handful of level 76-80 items while I was helping my buddy out.
If you’re dying a bunch in the lower areas, you might need to examine what you’re doing more closely.
Events slightly scale to your level in terms of their money payout…. Not saying it’ll cover the fees, but if I do the Wolfman in that starting Norn area… that’s usually a silver piece at least.
Also, think of the mats. What are the metals in the zone and how much are they going for on the TP? What about the wood or materials you can salvage for?
I was helping my buddy in the Dredgehaunt Cliff areas and I walked out with easy money from all the gold ore mined, seasoned wood harvested, cotton and leather salvaged off items. I easily paid for the wp traveling and then some… Sure I had to take a slight detour to get the mats, but small deviation for gains is worth it.
… Yeah I’ll go with that Razamis
True, I don’t want to just be handed the carrot. I want Anet to wave it my face, throw it down the dangerous corridor and be like “go get it”.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
Sorry if that seemed confusing before… I wasn’t asking for another tier of gear that required more of the same dungeon run or tokens. I do want a higher tier of gear, but only if that gear is harder to get than the exotics. I like the idea of exotics being the high quality that you can get through farming mats or doing dungeons… because they’re alternative playstyles. However, there should be that upper echelon of gear that really tests your abilities and knowledge of the game (at least in PvE).
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
Exactly Morkath…. people have to stop bemoaning how you can’t compare apples to oranges because comparisons in life are almost never apples to apples. We can argue semantics all day on what’s MMO and RPG and the whole alphabet soup, but the two games do have similarities…. maybe not much, or even at all by some people’s standards, but clearly there’s enough of a connection for people to compare the two as having relative strengths and weakness over one another.
That being said, there are things GW2 does better than WoW and vice-versa. Can those strengths of one game be incorporated into the other and vice-versa? If so (or not), then why?
Here’s a simple example that I think any GW2 person would say is a harmless addition to the game… WoW gives you notifications (you can even toggle them on/off I believe) for when friends and guildmates come online. Why doesn’t GW2 have this feature? Can it be put in?
I don’t understand the whole we don’t want it argument.
If it’s players, how is it affecting you negatively, esp. if the gear is confined to the PvE realm?
If it’s the devs, how does this ruin your game precisely other than not fitting into your philosophy (which is a guiding principal, not a mandate)?
In terms of the actual treadmill part, does it have to follow the “oh I gotta do Dungeon A and gear in it to be able to do Dungeon B and so on….” or is there another way?
Say you have an “elite path” in each dungeon with the reward being a specialized token at the end; this path is real tough and requires players to really understand the game mechanics, their class, and the synergies with other classes. You need X of these tokens to get the top tier gear… but unlike the other dungeon sets, it’s all scattered about so you have to go to all sorts of different dungeons to make up the full set. Does it have to be token-based? No, whatever might work best, I just used it as an example because it’s familiar. The entry requirement for “elite path”? Nothing more than what it takes to get into the explorable mode for that dungeon… if you and your group have the skill and determination, you can get it.
But do the rewards have to be skins? Why is design philosophy being confused as fiat that must be strictly followed? I know what the developers said, but that doesn’t mean what they said is necessarily right.
You have infrastructure in place for this game that balances characters… I see no reason why you can’t have sweet items that are hard to get and have awesome stats. Why do I see no reason? Because if it’s PvE, why does it matter what someone else has? If it’s WvW, you have balancing mechanics… so you can just balance the stats to only give exotic-equivalent stats. The PvE skilled keep their epicness in the PvE realm while the PvP/WvW skilled keep their awesomeness through skill alone in the PvP realms.
Win?
I play a little bit lesser than when I first started… but I think part of that has to do with waiting on guildies to get to level 80 as well so we have more groups for explorable dungeons (and given the recent changes, there might be a better desire to do them). I help level them, but it’d be nice to get some credit for helping them do their personal story (xp, maybe kick in a little coin).
I think necros are particularly unhappy atm because their main damage type, condition, has all sorts of issues (like condition caps and linear scaling of dmg) that just doesn’t match up with the dps a direct-damage dealer can dish out.
Wasn’t the survey more about the class in relation to the game? That sort of matters…
I put a fairly high score on my engineer cause while I’ve enjoyed the concept and execution of the class in relation to the game, I specifically left out my thoughts of the game as a whole. Yes, I’m pretty happy with how the class works in relation to the combat mechanics. I’m not as pleased, however, with the game mechanics overall.
So don’t confuse liking the classes with enjoying the game.
So the game is to be purely judged on how well the design team executed the design philosophy and compare it to its predecessor?
Pretty sure in any market with products, you (the consumer or the producer) also recognize what the competition is and what it’s offering. You can compare, but try to be objective. Yes, GW2 isn’t gonna fit the WoW-mold specifically because it has different aims through it’s design philosophy…. however, that doesn’t make GW2 immune to criticism when we recognize something good in WoW that GW2 could’ve adopted but didn’t because it “didn’t fit the design philosophy”; which may not have been a wise-choice.
Design philosophy is not fiat from the heavens that must be followed to the letter, it’s merely guiding principals and they can be wrong.
I will say the Priests of Balthazaar are probably the closest to legit cooperation in a group raid, just cause if the group just goes in with the sit n’ spam philosophy, except a wipe. If more events were like that, I’d do em.
Rewards don’t necessarily have to be tangible in nature or purely gear-based…. but they need to be meaningful enough in order to entice players to pursue them. Some people need more enticing than others.
The whole gear over skill or vice-versa can easily be kept within their respective realms given the balancing mechanics currently employed… You can have uber PvE gear and have it trivialized down to an exotic equivalency when that player steps foot in WvW; keeping the PvE skill in PvE realm and the PvP/WvW skill in those realms.
Not saying this means the gear treadmill needs to be implemented, but there’s infrastructure in place to have it both ways if will… The only limiting factor is the strict adherence to design philosophy; for better or worse is subjective.
Reward as an incentive is entirely developer created…. but don’t think of reward as purely something tangible, like gear. Reward is also enjoyment, whether that’s just hanging around lion’s arch chatting it up with the guildies and other folks, going further down the rabbit hole that is a dungeon, or clawing tooth n’ nail for every inch on that battlefield…. For some, the “reward of experiencing it” is enough, for others they want their efforts to be validated; and that’s a perfectly human response where toils and tribulations are undergone for some greater outcome. That validation traditionally comes in the form of gear. Maybe you could use guild influence and make that play a bigger role in the game…. but whatever that validation is, it’s up for the developer to figure it out.
The community simply either likes what’s being offered or doesn’t. The community, through good discourse, can help guide developers to understand the rewards we’d like to see, but ultimately it’s their job to create the experience.
I think we’d be singing a different song and dance if the newly implemented dungeon mechanisms were in place at the start of the game. At the same time, though, now that these mechanisms are in place, I would say to those who think they’re fully geared “o rly?”… Try doing a section, try doing them all. Are you sure the gear you have is the best layout for any challenge currently presented to you? Maybe you gotta trade that berserker piece for some pieces with vit/toughness, maybe those runes need to be switched up.
Point is, you can’t say there’s no endgame if you haven’t done it. Just because you have easy access to the top tier gear doesn’t mean you have it and even if you do, you might not actually have the best setup for your toon.
I think now that dungeons will have to have sections completed, we might see a shifting in gear…. Because that full berserker set might’ve worked well for speed runs but might not get you far when it comes to completing a section. So folks saying “they have their full set” may find out they are wrong about that.
They still do… the rate has been changed from fixed to possible drop. All there’s been is a correcting of the risk/rewards.
Low risk = low investment = low reward = longer time to get exotics
High risk = high investment = high reward = lesser time to get exotics
I will say the dungeons and their respective paths are gonna vary in difficulty relative to what’s available. Gear will help, but skill will take you further. I’m not trying to say L2P, but it’s a learning process. You go from 1-80 killing relatively easy mobs and doing events that can be massed to being 80 and having to really work with a small group. Dungeons could use a careful look over, but they’re fundamentally setup so that a player has to really examine their toon and how it works well with the other toons running the dungeons relative to the challenge being placed in front of you.
I’ve been playing an engineer doing dungeons and I learned this quickly… not saying I re-trait, but I might have to switch somethings around to best aid my party and still do good damage.
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
Some people enjoy min/maxing… There’s also something about trying to get the best gear because it usually meant (or in other games used to mean) you put in a lot of effort and beat the hard challenges that the game threw at you; and in turn the game validates your efforts through rewarding you with dope gear. Getting that gear also gives you more scope in what you can pull off. I was helping a buddy out yesterday and we were getting swamped with dredge trying to grab vistas and whatnot. If I wasn’t in full exotics and had the layout I had, I probably would’ve eaten it at least once or twice, but I didn’t. That’s what superior gear does. Sure, you can say that I should just be more skillful. But when the respawn rates are insanely quick, the aggro radius large, and having only so much endurance…. Skill can take you most of the way, but gear certainly helps.
Not saying exotics don’t require effort and I think the new changes will help make getting dungeon pieces a little tougher yet less grindy to get. I think the change helps keep exotics exactly that. In it’s original form, where people could speed run, it seemed like there needed to be some other tier of reward for those doing full sections or full dungeon clears. I think this new change is good.
While I get your story, the “village that survives” is the one that supplies both pears and apples. Thing is, there’s stuff available that can feasibly be endgame; namely, the dungeon paths that aren’t run in their entirety or at all. Putting a little incentive at the end pleases the apple and pear lovers.
What GW2 offers that WoW doesn’t… yeah if you wanna craft and that’s it, fine. Where GW2 has an advantage over WoW… You don’t have to make it a gear treadmill. People should be enticed to go do the harder challenges and be rewarded for them. And you know what stops you from getting the “superior gear”? Nothing. Because as long as you have the level and story mode complete, you can go into a dungeon in whatever… the only thing holding you back is the group’s aggregate skill level. That’s right, skill… not gear, not attunements, skill.
And these dungeon crawlers who beat the challenges, sure they’ll have “superior” gear, but only in the sense of it being superior in PvE…. because with all the scaling mechanics in this game, I’d be surprised if Anet wasn’t able to scale uber PvE gear down to exotic-equivalent gear as soon as the player sets foot in WvW; maintaining the equal playing field that is PvP.
So why only be an apple or pear village when you have the infrastructure to have both co-exist?…. Shrugs
Like… in Tyria or RL? Cause Tyria only takes up a small percentage of my RL time. As much as I’d be willing to try AC, CoE, or whatever, the lack of an actual global chat or LFG system means I have to be in Lion’s Arch doing nothing in the meantime while LFG or I have to be in that particular zone the dungeon is in doing stuff in that zone while I’m LFG; regardless of whether or not I actually want to be doing stuff in that zone.
I know you said that somewhat sarcastically… but one of the big pros for me in this game is the flexibility of how to play classes, the active dodging rather than things just being auto-locked onto you, and coordination of class skills through dps synergy rather than the “holy trinity” structure (which calls for a rigid set of playstyles). The GW2 kind of combat gameplay is unique, different, and has been fairly fun. I know breaking from the mold makes for more freedom in doing something new, but not everything that’s “new” is necessarily good.
you can have high tier gear without the gear treadmill…. you have tons of dungeons with paths people rarely take, assuming those dungeons get played at all. If there are no requirements to get into those dungeons other than level and story mode completion, then why not have some awesome gear at the end of those tougher paths (whether it be actual items or specialize “sectional clear” tokens)? Think of it not so much dungeon A gear to get to dungeon B, dungeon B gear to get to dungeon C gear…. but rather, do we wanna do dungeon A, B, C, D or E? Well A has some pretty nice shoulders, E has those neat helms, C has a good chest for our warrior, but B has chests for our engineer and mesmer…
The only limitation to getting these items, aside from the easy pre-reqs, is willingness and competency…. Nothing more
Because general discussion is exactly that… it doesn’t need to be entirely swarmed with criticisms and negativity. It’s important for devs to know what people like and dislike in order to best know how to fix the dislikes.
I don’t see why fun and rewards have to be mutually exclusive. Anet has plenty of mechanisms in place to separate the PvE from the PvP stuff. The dungeon content is there, yet folks aren’t running it all. Don’t see why some carrots can’t be tossed down that creepy corridor. I derive fun through challenges and those challenges having some meaningful reward…. maybe others do as well and some don’t. It’s nice that those challenges have some reward. I’m not a masochist, I don’t enjoy getting the kitten beat out of my toon or some “try try again” jumping puzzle when there’s nothing worthwhile on the other side (not saying the jumping puzzles offer nothing, but if they did then there wouldn’t be much incentive to do them).
“Oh it’ll affect WvW”… scale down gear in WvW so that a player can only have stats equivalent to wearing exotic gear.
“It’s against the design philosophy”… I guess not having players want to try out your content is also part of the philosophy? I guess having a philosophy going into your design means that it’s impossible to revise or reconsider it at any point in the game’s time span. Why do we even care if the ability to get this gear is possible for any player since the entry-requirements to get it are the same, but only requires the players to be willing and competent?
Bugs are annoying, but I can forgive that given how infantile this game is… Anyone who’s played any MMO will know that they’re generally buggy out the gate.
Saying that this doesn’t have endgame and that I should look elsewhere for endgame is dumb. I think they really have something in this game in the sense that everyone is dps, but does so differently…. and everyone needs to really combo skills and work together. The active dodging is awesome and fun.
Maybe you don’t see that so much in the DE’s because you can just mass the event, but it is more apparent in dungeons. The dungeons are the endgame, the problem is that running the whole thing (or even at all) isn’t necessary in order to get the rewards. This presents a double-edged sword in that there’s an easy path and a hard path that both give you the same outcome…. which some rationalize as the hard path being trivial. I somewhat agree, though I recognize what was trying to be done.
As much as I would love to see a second tier of dungeon armor with better stats (not even that much, just like 10% better stats and AR than the exotics) that’s only obtainable through completing a section or the entire dungeons (whether by actual drop or some special “dungeon cleared” token), i know this goes against the philosophy of GW… even though clearing an entire dungeon isn’t exclusive since the entry fee is the same for all players.
I think it would be cool if the legendary item was actually like a “template”…. So you apply that template onto whatever weapon (has to be of the right type) and it changes the weapon’s skin to the legendary skin as well as buff the stats by 10% (not such the +X, +Y, +Z, but also the min-max on the weapon by 10%).
I know people will qq about that because everyone is supposed to be on the same playing field, but is a 10% increase stat’ed weapon really so OP? OP in what circumstance? PvE? Why do you care if a guy can down an enemy slightly faster than you when you can get the same weapon he can, just invest the time. WvW? I’m pretty sure even an entire server running with legendary weapons is not going to be an unstoppable force. Also, how many people are actually gonna go for that increase and succeed?
I know having better gear than others isn’t the GW philosophy, but come on… it’s legendary. That should mean something other than “ooo it’s pretty looking”, which is ultimately subjective.
Some people will go for it, but I just don’t see the point… most of them don’t have better stats (or even the desirable combination of stats) or a unique effect. They’re mainly just nifty skins. So basically I’m putting in an exorbitant amount of time for a skin?
Yeah….
I suppose you could use the same argument on dungeons, but I see running those as more an alternative to farming the crafting mats for gear; it’s a substitution effect of how you spend your time while trying to achieve the same rewards. Legendary items are just dumb imo.
A bunch of DE’s need to be fixed, and it might be helpful if the NPCs alerted you as to what was going on in ML or SoD (the other two Orr maps) or if the chat was linked…. that way folks would know if Balthazaar, Lyssa, Grenth, or whatever big events were up.
Also, the anti-farm thing is kinda lame in Orr maps considering the lack of mob diversity. Why am I being punished for killing these mobs over and over again when they’re all undead and there’s only a few variations of them in the entire map?
I might suggest Frostgorge Sound… I realize that’s not where Arah or your skill points are, but it’s much less frustrating in terms of farming, though much fewer spawn points for ancient wood and orichalcum.
The three maps that make up Orr can be annoying just because of all the mobs packed in there as well as their abilities to cripple, daze, pull, and all sorts of general annoying if you just wanna go from point A to B.
80 Engineer
9/10
My only real gripes:
- Downed state abilities are kinda meh relative to some other classes
- Elixir gun doesn’t proc traits centered around elixirs even though the gun is shooting different elixirs (as said in the tooltips).
- Kits, in general, don’t adopt any of your main-weapon’s stats (and we only have one weapon set, just an fyi for those who don’t know engineers).
- Rifle is weirdly contradictory in that it’s supposed to be a ranged weapon and has skills to help maintain range, yet all of it’s high-dps abilities require you to be almost point-blank.
I agree with Dandy… if it’s easy, then you shouldn’t be surprised that it feels like grindfest because it’s low risk so the payouts shouldn’t be instant as well as highly lucrative. Now if it’s hard, it should be high risk, high payout and highly lucrative (depending on how good you and your group are at avoiding death). Sure, hard might still be a little grindy, but it’s the difference of doing maybe a handful of runs rather than 100s of speed runs.
That’s why I’m in favor of increased rewards… but more on the back-end of sections or certain paths that are intentionally harder, rather than a general increase.
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
I like the more payout idea, but is that going to be as you progress through the entire section or just a general increase? I say this just because the former gives more incentive for folks to plunge deeper into the dungeon rather than speed runs whereas the later just leaves things business-as-usual, but with higher payout.
I understand where folks are coming from with the universal or token conversion suggestions since the majority of players are mainly fixated on certain dungeons due to their rewards…. But I’m not sure that really is wise in the long run. Yes, it sucks you have to basically take a backseat while everyone else gears. You may even have to run with non-guildies to get what you want… sucks, but if they’re not gonna help you unless it helps them then that just is lame (but often happens).
I heard some suggestions about tokens for globs or other crafting mats, not sure how the devs feel about that cause you can basically convert tokens for gold. Maybe have some weekly (or weekend) rotation where these certain dungeons have bonus token payouts? The account-bound switch of tokens combined with this should make some incentive to do the dungeon unless you have no intention of creating and gearing another toon.
This thread is actually not in the wrong forum or presented in the wrong way… it’s the general forum meaning anything can be discussed. A suggestion in the suggestion forum should be that. If there was a “rants and qq” forum, then maybe this thread would appropriate for that section.
The OP simply stated an issue/flaw he sees with the game… not a suggestion to fix it; therefore, it has no place in the suggestion forum. If you read the thread, some people have been trying to hash out the issues and some possible solutions… so in a sense, this topic can evolve into something that eventually translates into a suggestion in the suggestion forum.
So you’d rather have these “whiny” posts in the suggestion forum and let Anet sift through these to find the real suggestions?… Yeah, go ahead and keep these in general
Suggestions are best presented once they’ve been hashed out… Because if you can pose the suggestion, showing the counter arguments that have valid points, yet still show why you’re suggestion is a good one, then you’ve at least presented a good argument rather than some half-brained pie-in-the-sky nebulous idea.
This is general discussion, and we’re generally talking about the game in the later stages, its issues, and how to best address them. If you think my pro-gear-progression stance is a rant, then present a counter argument and possibly alternatives if you think there are issues but they should be addressed in a different way (hence alternative).
I’m fishing for a discussion so that when I make my suggestion, I’m presenting one that’s actually taken thought and been tempered through discussion… otherwise I’m just wasting the developer’s time.
Why does adventure and co-op mean that players can only have the same equivalent gear? Maybe hardcore players like the superior stats because it tangibly validates and rewards the hardcore effort placed in mastering the challenges the game developers have thrown at us. I think GW2 does a good job at giving us challenges without pre-requisites other than “you need to be a certain minimum level and you’re gonna need to cooperate as well as be fairly skillful in order to do a full dungeon clear”. Sure, not everyone can accomplish this, but the entry requirements for at least trying are almost nothing so everyone feasibly CAN TRY.
What if the exotic dungeon pieces required a special token that you only got for a full dungeon/section clear? It would almost totally kill speed runs unless folks wanted the rares or other vendor stuff. It would likely kill running dungeons because this doesn’t solve the issue of creating a reward for players do master the content other than a skin; which is entirely subjective to the player.
And to play the broken record, since I’ve already said this, I’m sure Anet could add balancing mechanics so that an “uber geared” hardcore player going into WvW would have the item stats nerfed down to the exotic level. You keep everyone in PvP and WvW on the same level, but you reward hardcore PvE-folk for meeting your PvE challenges.
I wanna say @ BeardRex…. yes there are other games that offer the carrot-chase for the power… but they don’t play like GW2 which I enjoy. The all-dps and working together nature of combat, actively dodging rather than the attack being auto-locked onto you… It’s a nice return/update to an old mechanic that designers took out somewhere along the road.
But why can’t there be some middle-ground? They have systems in place to upscale/downscale toons relative to zones, so why can’t I have some awesome uber gear in PvE, but then in WvW that gear is only as good as something of exotic quality? I feel like the content and systems are there to appease the carrot-chasers while not negatively impacting non-carrot-chasers.