I’ll probably wait till I get an official response before the pitchfork really.
For all we know, it could just be a dungeon only thing for that specific dungeon like gw1’s infusion and stat wise it’ll be the same as exotic
Hell, perhaps mmorpg said that to get more clicks either way and they "understood " it like that while Arenanet meant something different at all. I’m quite skeptical since it’s pretty hard to misspell Kodan as Koden too.
Exactly, these armors with “pumped stats” might only apply in the PvE world… with all the scaling mechanisms in place, is it really that hard for Anet to be like “your Ascended gear, with inscription, in WvW is now only as good as an exotic”?
I mean nothing in other games “forces” you to grind; this game has merely narrowed the gap between the blue/green geared from the orange geared. Actually, there is kind of a “forced” grind in that if you die, you really sort of pay the same repair bill whether and item is blue or orange… I realized this yesterday when my mesmer’s blue chest piece was 1s64c to repair and my engineer’s exotic chestpiece was the same cost. Hmmm, which piece do you think is giving me more “bang for my buck” in terms of what it’s offering vs. it’s upkeep?
Yes, experienced all these issues. It’s especially annoying during a boss fight; usually have to use the select target feature just to quickly target back to the boss since tab-target cycling is unreliable.
I mean before we all go overboard with the up’ed stats… do we even know by how much? Is say, +10-20 to any stat gonna make that much more overpowered?
What if it’s increased stats on things like healing power, toughness, and condition damage?… having something with an extra +100 condition damage, while it seems OP compared to other stats, it means my bleed now does something like 18 more damage a tick. Almost the same is true for +healing. Armor + toughness have diminishing returns on how they affect defense, so even +100 extra toughness isn’t the same as +100 extra in any other stat.
Yes, you can still run faster than most enemies even when you pop into combat, but why slow you down in the first place when you get hit by anything when you have this condition called CRIPPLE? You can clearly up the movement speed of enemies (as presented by Undead Villagers and most mobs in Orr), so why do we also have to inhibit speed of players? It just seems like a cheap way of making sure it takes a player awhile to get from A to B.
In WoW, if you run and get hit… you move the same speed as prior to being hit unless you get dazed, which is the same as being crippled in this game. You were more likely to be dazed if you were using some perma-speed buff like a mount or cheetah form… That only pseudo exists in this game (between certain trait/skill configurations in some professions). The decreased movement speed sort of trivializes the importance of swiftness in combat, when movement speed is very much an important tactical advantage for some classes (like the thief).
I know this game will never be a gear treadmill game, but there is something to be said when people recognize a player based on what’s equipped and fear them. If the legendary weapons were more skill-based to get, I’d probably be just as fearful of a warrior with Twilight as I was of warriors with Ashkandi back in the ole WoW days… because while it is impressive looking sword (and Ashkandi had some mean stats), it also said something about the player’s skill.
In this game I see a person with a Twilight and I go after em because they often lack WvW skill because they spent all that time farming instead. Experiences to get legendary items and dungeon sets should make you better at understanding the game mechanics related to combat, not farming.
Hard doesn’t have to be brick wall inflated numbers hard, but execution hard in that the team needs to cooperate and perform or else it fails the encounter.
The best example I can think of is Azuregos from WoW’s Sunwell dungeon. Basically, you have to go in between the “real world” and the “demon realm” to fight two bosses at once. If they both don’t die within a few seconds of each other then the encounter fails. Regardless of how geared or skilled the players are, if you don’t work together, you can’t finish the encounter. This is the hard I’m talking about, this is the hard other folks in the forums seem to be talking about… Not sure why folks seem to think we’re asking for beefed up numbers.
Like…. say there was a boss that took almost 0 direct damage unless it was off combo fields. Well aside from condition builds, you’d need the group to chain combo fields and work off each other rather than just adding dps and cooperating through serendipity rather than actual strategy. How is this hard? It’s actually fairly easy and teaches folks that combo fields are good and should be utilized… slowly instilling them with mechanics that make for good gameplay. But you have to execute this otherwise it’s a long fight that will likely end up in your team failing (as it should if it’s not going to work together).
Yes people who get skilled at the hard path will want to keep doing the hard path for loot and rewards… as opposed to farming Orr non-stop for essentially the same thing? There’s also the DR, so there is some incentive to not keep running the same path over and over and over again even if it does have the best potentials (cause a DR’ed hard path probably won’t be as lucrative as a non-DR’ed medium path)
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
I mean that’s the thing, doing the dailies and monthly achievements does net you profit so long as you’re not dying and using waypoints frequently to finish them… Enough profit so that you can afford the basic costs of playing the game (like repairs and salvage/mining stuff), but you’re not Moneybanks McGee throwing about coin left and right.
The price of TP goods isn’t fixed by printing more money, it’s by increasing supply and/or reducing demand. Unfortunately, the demand is super high yet the amount of materials necessary to get these skins are insanely large and often rare (and just incredibly time consuming) to come by.
I don’t know, but maybe they didn’t design these first dungeons to be extremely difficult, but instead plan on introducing more challenging dungeon content in future updates and expansions? Kind of like building up difficulty as the game goes?
Why? With all explore dungeons having at least 3 paths and a story mode tied to it, why have the explore mode be uniform in difficulty (with the exception of an encounter or two)? You could’ve easily had an easy, medium, and hard path (and for dungeons with more than 3 paths, 2 easy or 2 mediums) with scaling rewards… Easy path is the standard drop rates we’re all familiar with and 60 tokens, medium path is slightly better drop rates with 80-100 tokens, and hard is good drop rates and 120 tokens; or something to this effect.
But here we go… shouldwouldacoulda, but ultimately didn’t.
Not necessarily…. It’d be faster to get the cultural stuff, but TP prices would likely adjust to factor in this daily/month cash inflation.
CoE is pretty good with regards to where it locates and spawns WPs.
Is path 2 the teleporter path? I think that’s probably the easiest. I always seem to have more troubles with the sub and front door path due to his rock spike thing, though I know there are certain ways around it.
Not sure how engineers and necros can’t break out of the crystal… though I can usually survive it if I’m topped off before I get trapped. He also usually sticks by the crystal as well so there’s opportunity for players to use AoE and abilities that hit more than one target to snag him and the crystal.
Well that’s what I think some folks are getting at… the co-op part. I think harder doesn’t necessarily mean inflate health/dmg, but rather make encounters such that there’s legitimate player working with players rather than players adding damage to the pool with some support tossed in.
CoE, as a whole dungeon, is a great example of team cooperation like the evolved bosses, the hacking the sub-station with the mini golems, the golem boss (kinda) and probably a few other examples. It also has some cases where it’s also tough from the “add dps and don’t die” perspective that’s really the majority of GW2 encounters; those examples in CoE would be the lazer grid (at least doing your part and failing not really affecting the team majorly), Subject Alpha, that Icebrood boss dude, and most of the trash.
In PvP getting to the 25 bleed cap usually takes a bit of time and will only be doing 2500-ish per second for a little bit of time, before that even happens you’ll probably be facerolled by direct damage. Not to mention, there’s all sorts of condition removal so you’d be lucky to get that bleed stack high let alone last the full duration.
The 25 bleed cap also caps dps potential to that 2500-ish per second + whatever else we’re throwing it… that still pales in comparison to someone dealing direction damage since enemy defense is pretty much never > than a player’s power… The only exceptions to this are very few PvE cases like that one fight in CoE against that Icebrood boss.
If condition is what’s supposed to win the longer duration fights, but takes awhile to build up, then it should have a point where it exceeds direct damage. That doesn’t exist and the removing the caps (or making them really high) are an easy way to remove the otherwise restrictive barrier.
How is it a legendary weapon if you haven’t worked for it in a fair way. A legendary now doesn’t say ‘He worked so hard for it’ no it says ’He’s super lucky and really wealthy’.
Lol, you obviously don’t know how much a legendary costs. The precursor isn’t even half the cost, and there are so many things you have to do to earn your legendary that cannot be bought. WvW, Dungeons, etc.
If you have a legendary, YOU WORKED HARD FOR IT.
Yeah there’s a certain time investment that you have to put in for Obsidian Shards, badges of honor and tokens from a dungeon to get the gift, but those are hardly difficult… I have almost 500 badges of honor (mostly all from the jumping puzzle before kittens started camping it with siege weapons), the karma necessary for all the shards, and the dungeon token gift without ever actively trying to get those things. I could easily get all these things a few times over and still not have the wealth necessary for all the lodestones, clovers, T6 mats, that are needed.
Hard and time investment are two totally different things.
Given that explore dungeons have paths, there really shouldn’t have been any reason why the paths couldn’t vary in difficulty and reward (and state such when choosing the options). Those who aren’t as skilled can go down the easy path (60 tokens and standard drop rates), those who are a little more skilled and bold can go down the medium path (for maybe 80-100 tokens and better drop rates), and those who think they’re the cat’s meow can go down the hard path (120 tokens and even better drop rates)… yeah there are some dungeons with 4 paths, so 2 easy or medium paths then?
The world DEs are almost the same… by levels 70-80 there are only a handful of challenging DEs and the rewards are uniform. People don’t go kill Captain Rotbeard or whatever cause he’s way down there, fairly tough, and offers the same rewards as doing a Pent/Shelt run… same deal with defending the gates of Arah even though it’s a 14 minute encounter (in which time you could do a Plinx run and get 4-5 times more rewards).
Point is, there was opportunity to cater to various levels of skill and instead the game was set to a “uniform” difficulty (though obviously some paths can be trickier than others, but not necessarily intentionally so).
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
Regardless of playing it smart or not… it’s still a huge investment into farming/gambling/money-making and not really engaging the content to be challenged and rewarded for defeating the challenge.
CoE is definitely one of the better dungeons; not perfect, but definitely overall good. Not tons of trash, good diversity in mobs, varying mechanics in the encounters (though still not a lot of real teamwork cooperation except for the Evolved bosses and hacking the security system), WPs that aren’t too far or too close. Just generally well done.
Just because a few people want certain classes because they believe in some notion of a “dream team” doesn’t mean they’re necessarily right or that it’s a mindset shared by all dungeon runners. It sucks you ran into one, but this happens.
The line between annoying and difficult in Orr is not slim at all… I actually never die, but it’s annoying to be tossed about and slowed every 5 seconds (dodges and zig-zagging is only so effective). The best analogy I can use is driving a bunch of hyper-active kids to a something… it’s not difficult, but it sure is annoying.
The reason why Orr is annoying is a combination of things. One part is that it costs a lot to move about via wps (assuming they’re uncontested which they almost never are) so I have to run. When running, getting into combat is extremely easy with the instant attacks (that one undead with the “chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp” attack anyone?.. you can’t dodge it cause it lasts for so long you’re bound to get hit by at least one chomp) and the accelerated run speed of the undead…. and as soon as you enter combat, your run speed is immediately and dramatically slowed regardless of having swiftness; this in and of itself is effectively a slowing mechanic. Then there’s the CC affects, some can be dodged others are harder to see or instant-cast.
I don’t mind density around Arah, the shrines, or even places with high node density or T6 nodes… but not every square inch of the map has to be populated with mobs that move quick and/or CC.
The game is quite different from other MMOs, but ignoring the fact that a large portion (if not a majority) of your incoming player base has the traditional MMO mentality yet don’t really acclimate them to the new systems, surprise people will find it tough. Not everyone can just pick up a game and instantly “get it”.
As for the style of play… yes, you do have to learn it, but story mode isn’t necessarily the best teacher. Having done all the story dungeons on my engineer (in full exotics), and then repeating on my necro (in mostly exotics)… I would argue that most story mode dungeons are far more difficult to execute than it’s explore mode counterpart (with some exceptions). Notice I said execute… that’s cause many of these story bosses require a lot more coordination and people will often listen, but it’s hard to actually carry through for whatever reasons; though generally I think it’s more the bosses than the gear (think Fire Golem phase in SE Kudo fight…).
Well for one there’s no way to really know what’s going on in other zones aside from essentially tabbing out of the game and looking at some tracking website… So why am I gonna spend time/money to go to a zone to see “what’s up”?
Very little reason to go back since you don’t get as much karma, coin, reward potentials, desirable crafting mats as higher zones.
As much as the game has horizontal progression, there are still many mechanics that weight rewarding activity heavily in favor of the higher level zones.
I’m not really sure what a good suggestion might be without some major overhaul or implementation of something(s).
Ok so how do you use meters to gauge these classes?
Because you’re not just looking at just dps or healing or tanking, but rather all those plus support, reviving, being-downed, etc for any given player… My engineer might not be top dps, but I throw out heal kits, healing field (elixir gun), revive downed players, maintain high stacks of vulnerability, while maintaining a low rate of being downed. We also generally win the fights without zerging it.
You can tell if players are good/bad based on what they’re doing and how the fight is going. If we’re cheesing it, I couldn’t give a kitten if they’re just auto-attacking or not being super effective. If we’re doing poorly, now it’s time to start scrutinizing what folks are doing (not necessarily commanding, but just “hey, you got <insert skill name>?… that could be useful for this fight”.
The time feature never made sense to me since the DR factors in how many times you’ve run it… So you run a path faster, it just means you hit the DR that much quicker.
I also don’t like the timer feature from the sense that you have to wait until the server has gone through a 24 hr cycle to reset… Sometimes I get a few runs in on Friday before going out and then I like to play a little bit in the morning on Saturday, but I effectively can’t do certain dungeon paths because the server hasn’t “cycled through”, even though I haven’t run the path in over 14 hours.
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
All dungeons are dead but CoF and AC. These two are alive because they’re by far the easiest so when some1 wants to waste time (saying waste because you’re not rewarded for anything at all in a dungeon and can’t even make money) they do it in the easiest ones.
Again… server-dependent. Yak’s Bend still has a somewhat consistent search for some CoF and AC parties, but it used to be a lot more TA, SE, and CM. CoE is starting to get some more love in Yak’s Bend as well…. Whereas it was almost impossible to form a CoE group a few weeks ago.
I do agree with Negativity though that CM, and I’ll add by saying a lot of the dungeon armors, are just not that good looking.
You could make some of the mats for legendary items easier to acquire and it would still take a long time to acquire everything.
Low drop rates for items (cloves, lodestones, precursors) + large material requirements is just a lazy substitute for legitimate challenge to achieve the same ends.
I think the elitists just need to calm down, and take thier ridilin. They will probably incorporate harder dungeons/ dungeon modes soon enough. Just take a chill pill, the games only been out for 4 months and your already min/maxing it. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing soon enough.
This game may have been out for 4 months, but boss encounters have been designed in video games since conception of industry. Bugs can be fixed and forgiven, lazy encounter design is just that.
It’s not just the streaming arrows from carts, it’s also from vantage points where it’s not possible for players to attack it using other siege weapons or profession abilities… And invisibility doesn’t give you invincibility; so if they just spam carts then you get hit regardless of them being able to see you. We can argue whether it’s griefing or not, but I think we can agree that it’s not right for opposing teams to be unable to counter such setups…
Usually when arrow carts are on a wall, you can either attack the wall/gate outside of the arrow cart range or attack the gate point blank so that the little overhang shields you from arrow cart attacks…. PvP is rife with all sorts of setups that have pros and cons. This is one example where there is only pro and no cons.
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
How dare them to get in the way of their enemy server in a pvp zone.
Preposterous.
Feel free to show the “non-believers” how to accomplish the jumping puzzle in the face of overwhelming adversity…. It’s not the concept of a PvP jumping puzzle that people are frustrated with, it’s the execution based on choke points that exist within the puzzle that make it impossible for players to combat the kittens spamming an arrow cart or several from a vantage point that can’t be attacked offensively.
Encounters in this game get easier because folks progressively get better at adding to the total dps while not dying…. not because they’re better coordinated in a team sense.
I think about boss fights like WoW’s Azuregos from Sunwell; where you had people going in and out of the real world and “demon realm” to essentially fight two different bosses at the same time that you had to kill within a few seconds of each other or else the fight would fail. Even if you have awesome gear and individual skill, a team that lacks coordination cannot finish the fight. Few of these encounters exist in GW2 and most of them aren’t actually boss encounters.
While the daily doesn’t necessarily reward you in terms of coin, it is a nice chunk of xp, a mystic coin, and a jug o’ karma… most people do it for these reasons and less so for the coin.
I think the trait tree works well, though maybe some classes get a little more flexibility in what they can do than others. For example, engineers and mesmers have all sorts of different builds that all are pretty good. Necros seem to have far fewer builds (not just because certain traits don’t work, but just given the scope of what is offered in the trait tree and what they can do).
Yeah the wolf is a good example… Every now and then it looks like a regular attack except that it depletes nearly all my life. Kohler isn’t too too bad, but his telegraph move can be hard to judge because there’s actually things that shoot out to grab you. It’s easier to anticipate and dodge it the further away you are from him, much harder to do if you’re closer… the part that annoys me is that you can’t interrupt him while he’s telegraphing the move which kinda defeats the point of interrupts (which you’d think you’d wanna use when the boss i doing his/her “big attack”).
You could have a “Hard Mode” that has more likely chances for rares, lodestones, boosters, orichalcum ingots, and a whole bunch of other possible stuff to drop without creating a treadmill progression system. This opens up the possibility of farming the open world for your legendary and whatnot or farming the “hard mode” for the same ends… One will be faster than the other (once mastered) because one will be a higher risk than the other.
Regardless of how much worse GW1 was in this regard, that doesn’t make Orr any more/less enjoyable. There are plenty of places in GW2 with a high mob density, but with a fraction of the CC effects (even the Mad King’s Labyrinth had high mob density and few CCs). Orr is just a pain to move about except for a few paths where mob density is relatively low… I realize the zone’s context in the story, but at the same time where are the thousands of Pact forces then?
I love the design of Orr. It feels like an endgame zone where the most horrible and evil monsters lurk.
Ive learned to adapt and dont have any problems whenever i need to be there.
Leave Orr the way it is or increase the difficulty more, and L2P. Not surprising that this is coming from the “dungeons are too difficult crowd” as well.Also, DEATH, GOOD!!!
I don’t think anyone here said the zone was hard, people have been saying annoying. There’s a difference. Perhaps before telling people to L2P, you should learn to read and comprehend what is written… It’s a more valuable skill to have in the long run.
I suppose it’s server dependent because CM is rather popular on Yak’s Bend… We’ve actually had a bit of a dry spell with respect to folks not running SE or TA since the monthly achievement reset.
And I suppose you can say the story modes are dead… It’s really really hard to find folks interested in it. Maybe if the reward changed (once you completed it the first time) to guarantee a lodestone drop or something worthwhile, more people might do it.
Further solutions to make Orr less annoying:
-fix bugged events, especially the annoying catapults that shoot through walls, so you can’t hide behind walls.
-increase the hit points of guards on the roads, make them more resilient to risen, so they are truly useful instead now they are just pixels laying on the floor nobody cares about.
-put even more guards and scouts along the road for better protection.
-more escort missions, because they provide the fun factor to travelling through Orr and also give directions to newbies.
Seems like a perfect segway into making dynamic events really impactful…. That by escorting plinx or doing other stuff, you increase the Pact’s presence and effectiveness in Orr so that even with the density, there’s tons of tough pact forces fighting all over the place.
I think the general gist is that dungeons are not that hard, but you (and the party) have to be willing to switch around a few things to make it work and listen/execute if someone is saying what to do (just so that everyone is minimally on the same page). Usually if I quit a group, it’s because they’re not even willing to cooperate when cooperation is really critical to completing the encounter (like the chains in AC or the barrels in CM).
That’s no such thing as “griefing” in a PvP zone.
Actually there is… what you can get away with is dependent on the developer. In WoW on a PvP server, ganking and corpse camping isn’t griefing but training mobs is griefing. This is sort of a unique case, would love to hear Anet’s opinion on it since they ultimately decide what is and isn’t griefing.
Personally, I just think it’s a poorly designed jumping puzzle because it’s not possible to complete while in combat, yet you can technically be in combat during any point of it… Regardless of the presence of siege weapons or not having them.
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
Agreed… a significant chunk of content shouldn’t be locked up because a few minor chunks aren’t working properly.
I suppose the question boils down to how the devs wanted the WvW JPs to be played and if players are using certain aspects in unintended ways… This requires a statement from Anet on the matter.
This argument is running it’s course almost the same as the old speed run argument. The community was arguing whether or not it actual was an exploit until Anet actually said “this is an exploit” and changed up the loot system, including the introduction of the DR.
What I see when I read this is three things:
1) “Bro, so I was in Eternal Battlegrounds and I was all killing mobs off on my own. All of a sudden a player came and ganked me while I was fighting a mob. Why is this even allowed? I was doing PvE! I wasn’t even there to PvP!”
2) “Yesterday I was in our Borderlands and I was just roaming around trying to grab material nodes. Every 5 minutes, though, someone killed me. Please ban them because I didn’t even go there to PvP!”
3) “Um, ANet, can you please help? I went to the Borderlands to get my missing Vistas. When I got there I got killed trying to enter the enemy’s keeps so I could snag the Vistas. This is clearly griefing because they refuse to let me into their keeps so I can get my Vista. Ban them. Thanks.”
Seriously. Get real, guys.
My only response to this is…. lets add a few dozen arrow carts specifically placed and used to stop you from doing any of these things, with people who are sitting there for hours on end to prohibit you from being able to accomplish these tasks. Pretty sure that falls under griefing.
Now in fairness, the JP does have rewards that can impact the PvP parts of the game… So there is some tactical advantage in prohibiting the opposing team from getting these rewards. I do like the idea of a JP that has PvP aspects to it… I just don’t think the current JP is well designed with this in mind.
If the forums are the only thing holding you back from trying out a warrior, then maybe you should try it considering all the other classes you’ve actually tried and found some reason to not like them.
Also, how you initially “figure out how to play” a character can very much influence how you end up liking it. For example, my friend had all sorts of issues playing his necro and said it was really not for him (even though we both have almost identical preferences for play-style). When I made my own necro I couldn’t believe how enjoyable it was based on what my friend was saying, then I saw why… He had a totally defunct setup and was barely using the utilities available to him.
That being said… don’t discount your engineer so quickly. I would ask what are the issues you having and what your setup is. Maybe it’s a good setup, but not for lvling or PvPin or whatever you’re trying to do.
When trash takes longer amounts of time and has no real noticeable improvement to the drop rates… then surprise people will skip it whenever the opportunity presents itself. If cores, lodestones, platinum doubloons and other such stuff dropped more frequently off trash, you’d probably have folks more interested in trash.
In general you can usually join a group since they mainly just say "LFM or GLFM… ".
If you want to be part of an exclusive elitist group, they might have certain particulars. I can tell you that Engineers are usually not on the elitist list whereas Guardians and Mesmers are most welcomed.
GW2 loot system , Do you players like it ? yes/no give reasons for both
Posted by: Bruno Sardine.2907
Frankly I’m not all that impressed with many of the skins and it’s a skin game. I know some people said they don’t like the crafted armor, but I would almost argue the reverse… it’s ultimately subjective though. I have an engineer and it makes no sense to me why my outfit (from a fundamental standpoint) would have anything in common with a thief or ranger… I should have a whole bunch of pockets and tech and stuff whereas thieves would have tighter outfits whereas rangers would have that “Aragon look”; or at the very least, vary the medium armor looks so that they’re not all some version of a longcoat with eye-piece or bandit mask.
Some of the weapons are cool, but are really locked in the TP/Mystic Forge with incredibly rare chances of them dropping.
I think loot is terrible, especially in the dungeons… though at least you can make decent coin off a run. Rare drops, including certain types of cores and lodestones, should be slightly better (after all, you need an insane number of ectos and lodestones for legendary items anyway). I know legendary items aren’t supposed to be handed over on a silver platter, but improving the drop rates don’t necessarily reduce the acquisition time… it’ll probably still take a considerable amount of time/coin to get. The loot from chests lack diversity considering there’s all sorts of consumables within the game (bag of gems/gold, boosters, tonics, potions, food, guild influence scrolls, etc.).
Maybe if taking forts/garrisons offered more than just karma/money rewards, then the jumping puzzle wouldn’t be so desirable… You need 500 badges for the legendary and a couple hundred or more for PvP gear (I think you also need them to purchase seige stuff). Idk, but doing just the PvP aspects of WvW yield me very few of these badges whereas the EB chest can give you up to 20 badges…. I’ve yet to get that many in any one sitting of WvW (unless it was a long session).
Most engineer QQ’s mainly relate to the weapon stats not transferring over to the kits… which might sound reasonable other than the fact our kits don’t give us +stats (with a few exceptions regarding traits, though even that can depend on the kit).