This is a raiding game now, it’s no longer about “fun”, its a phallis measuring contest between the dredge of the gaming world.
Harsh I know, but I hate this culture, EVERYONE hates this culture. And ANet advertised their raiding system as one everyone would be able to get into to some degree, preventing this elitist bullcrap.
Then raids finally released, and that was patently false from the off. And they just shrugged and decided they were okay with it, okay with content that applies to the most base among us (and their hangers on), and okay with advertising one product and delivering a completely different one after they had already accepted payment based not on what they delivered but on what they falsely advertised.
I remember raids being described as intended for a niche group of the player base. Being advertised as content aimed at the few, not everyone. Do you have any links or screenshots showing advertisements or statements that I may have missed? I am really curious if we have yet another example of ANet contradicting themself.
Ugh its so impossible to find this crap, but I will do my best.
I remember specifically where I first heard it, because after the developer stated this, Woodenpotatoes addressed it in a video shortly after, taking the stance that he disagreed with the developer and that raids should be for a very small “elite” portion of the playerbase and that they should not aim for everyone. WP argued that having content like that was good for the game, it attracted even players with no interest in raiding simply by the “coolness” factor of huge bosses and instances as well as weightier art and lore, especially through the advertising of youtubers and streamers who would raid.
And I remember it so clearly because I vehemently disagreed with him that it attracted anyone besides raiders, though I didn’t post my disagreement, I wish I had because then finding it would be a simple matter of looking up my youtube comment history.
EDIT: Hmm… this might be the quote that WP went off of in his video but I’m not sure, its admittedly vague and not exactly what I remember, I remember it being in answer to a question either in an AMA or here on the forums, I hope not the forums or its lost to ANets web development team and their inability to make a functioning archive and search bar. But it is from the right time period, when there was basically nothing released about raids save that they were being added to the game with the expansion.
Anyway what I could find is found here, and is from the old game director Colin Johanson. In the interview he states that while of course initially there will be a small group of players completing raids successfully, that he does expect a broad portion of the playerbase to play raid content, for that broader portion of the playerbase to eventually be capable of completing the raids, and for that broader portion to grow given time and more raid wing releases.
Now I don’t know about you but I can’t think of a single game where I would call solely hardcore players and raiders a broad portion of anything at all, so clearly he was expecting some player who do not traditionally raid, casual players are the only thing that comes to my mind. And I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim that the amount of raiders has gone up with time or releases, or that more casual players are completing the raid wings. Most casual players I know gave up on the content just from hearing about it.
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This is a raiding game now, it’s no longer about “fun”, its a phallis measuring contest between the worst examples of gaming culture.
Harsh I know, but I hate this culture, EVERYONE hates this culture. And ANet advertised their raiding system as one everyone would be able to get into to some degree, preventing this elitist bullcrap.
Then raids finally released, and that was patently false from the off. And they just shrugged and decided they were okay with it; okay with content that appeal to and even fosters and grows the worst among us (and their hangers on), okay with releasing content for the 99% with 1/100th of the play time and rewards of content released for the 1%, and most of all okay with advertising one product and delivering a completely different one after they had already accepted payment based not on what they delivered but on what they falsely advertised.
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This was suggested a million times at launch, and died down over time.
But so far as I remember the developers have made no indication they intend to make this change, nor have they made any justification for why it shouldn’t be made. It seems like such an obvious quality of life change that I can’t even fathom why the game didn’t launch that way.
If you are referring to the Content Guide, I don’t think any changes were requested at launch as the Content Guide did not appear until September of 2014’s Feature Pack with the New Player Experience.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-fresh-start-the-new-player-experience-in-guild-wars-2/
Not exactly, those big orange circles and several other accompanying icons that that appear on the map to mark current nearby events, as part of the content guide, were part of the game since launch. And people requested to see those markers from anywhere on the map, instead of only nearby your character, long before they were integrated in to the content guide. If I remember correctly, if you read the patch notes for the NPE release, or one of the patches following it, it says they refined them to more accurately show the radius and current placing of events, but they were in fact in the game long before the NPE and content guide.
Come to think of it why the heck didn’t they just make this change in the NPE patch in the first place?
This was suggested a million times at launch, and died down over time.
But so far as I remember the developers have made no indication they intend to make this change, nor have they made any justification for why it shouldn’t be made. It seems like such an obvious quality of life change that I can’t even fathom why the game didn’t launch that way.
If you are referring to the Content Guide, I don’t think any changes were requested at launch as the Content Guide did not appear until September of 2014’s Feature Pack with the New Player Experience.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-fresh-start-the-new-player-experience-in-guild-wars-2/
Also at launch the game did show all events.
Well … I have no way of verifying if it was actually literally all but I know there were times where the map was basically covered in event circles. Practically speaking that might as well be all even if it was not literally all.
That doesn’t make any sense, there was no content guide at launch, but the content guide at launch showed events at any range? Which is it?
There was the bare bones of a content guide at launch, really just a handful of map markers thrown together with no name or any overarching system, and that system even then only showed events within a certain range of your character. And people did frequently complain about that range.
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This was suggested a million times at launch, and died down over time.
But so far as I remember the developers have made no indication they intend to make this change, nor have they made any justification for why it shouldn’t be made. It seems like such an obvious quality of life change that I can’t even fathom why the game didn’t launch that way.
The HoT maps scale for large groups and meta-events only, there is almost zero soloable content, you can’t even unlock the majority of the skill points solo let alone the achievements and events.
And as soon as that expansion hits, the population on the HoT maps is going to plummet to practically zero, even now they’re dead except during primetime hours and runs with specific guilds. So either complete them now or make peace with the fact that you will never complete them ever.
But, in my opinion, missing out on HoT (the open world at least), isn’t missing much at all. Just catch up with the story on youtube and call it good for the next expansion.
EDIT: Of course this is all assuming that they aren’t going to mess with the scaling on the HoT maps once players start to shy away from them.
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Can you accept the direct spoiled truth?
Balthazar
For anyone wondering that’s not a joke but a legitimate spoiler, you’ve been warned, click at your own risk.
Not a US person. But it would be great to force Anet to reveal the odds for all of their drop rates. They will have to make public the drop rates of the chinese version of the game. I haven’t been able to find them yet.
It’d be better to look somewhere in Europe, online games in China are required by law to have their own client separate from any other region, and because of that they can, and frequently do, have different drop rates.
It can’t be an armor skin because the seams aren’t right. It would have to be an outfit.
Actually the seams are correct for light armor, as is true for most of the old town clothing, but they would probably get serious backlash for turning it into light armor.
In PvE dodge is a great mechanic, in PvP dodge and block can create so dumb scenarios. Some elite spells are barely usable because of that.
This thread is primarily addressing builds, and dodge in PvE enforced a single set of stats for all PvE content until the release of raids, over three years. And even then the streak was only broken by content devolved down to the tank-and-spank trinity; a build system just as rigid, nonstrategic, and uncreative as the DPS singularity that was the zerker meta.
Dodge is a great idea, and I still think it could be an amazing mechanic in an MMO, and THIS would still be my preferred MMO to get it right. But with how it is currently executed in this game it is as far from a great mechanic as you can get.
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Not so long as the dodge system is this untouchable sacred cow entirely removed from the remainder of the game systems.
They had well over 300 at launch, they’ve barely expanded their staff at all. And with how successful launch was, they should have nearly doubled staff right then, and immediately began working on improving gameplay systems for whatever the next major release would be. Instead they shoveled out content that their gameplay systems couldn’t sustain except through extreme repetition of a very few of the games mechanics. If they had worked on the system instead of pushing content out maybe we would be looking at the top MMO in the world instead of a hasbeen.
But instead they doddled around for almost three years, refused to expand on existing systems for a lack of manpower and out-and-out blind pride from company leadership, and now improvement is a far off dream, just basic survival hinges on not screwing up a second expansion in a row.
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To be fair copyright law is so corrupt these days I can understand the confusion, remember a few years ago when Candy Crush successfully copyrighted the use of the word “Candy” in any video game, and sued a half dozen people before the decision was finally (sort of) overturned? Disney has owned dozens of completely illegal (and even stolen) copyrights for decades because once a copyright is made, it is only overturned if someone disputes it, and anyone who even attempts to is crushed before ever seeing a day in court. Copyright law is even more strongly influenced by money and power and underhanded deals than the remainder of our political system.
But yes, you are not supposed to be able to copyright a generally used term like “fruit” or “flashpoint”, but it still happens sometimes, because sometimes the ruling goes to the highest bidder.
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Well first off bolding everything has the same effect as putting everything in all caps, it doesn’t make people think it’s all important, it makes people think none of it is and causes them to skip over it. I’d recommend putting that in a quote instead of bold if you want people to read it.
That said yes the condition system has always been mechanically broken, it’s a mechanic whose only response is entirely binary and pre-meditated.
I don’t know if you’ve played the MTG card game, but I compare conditions in this game to counterspell. Counterspell was a catch all card which countered any one other thing, but had a very specific cost, built on the idea of being balanced around it having such a specific cost that it couldn’t be used everywhere. Boy were they wrong. It quickly dominated the game well outside the realm that its designers thought its cost would relegate it to. The only thing that directly answered it, was itself, and you needed to be prepared for the enemy counterspell, so everyone ran their own. There was no other way to play around it and eventually it was removed from competitive play.
Conditions are the same way, save in an A-B format instead of an A-A one. If the enemy has conditions, you either have their direct counter, condition removal, or you do not, and have no response to them, nothing to play against or even around them. The exception of course are universal responses like dodging, but those are equal responses to everything, still maintaining conditions advantage comparatively speaking.
And so with no gradation of build choice against the mechanic, condition damage can only be in two states: either it is comparable to other damage sources, and everyone brings condition damage and condition removal as their only choices; or it isn’t comparable to other damage sources, and nobody brings condition damage or condition removal.
EDIT: Should have sai that I DO agree with the OP suggestion of normalizing condition scaling between power and condi-damage, it would do a lot for maintaining balance. However, in my opinion, it wouldn’t stop the binary nature of conditions that makes them flip flop between the two extremes of the balancing scale.
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Or, more likely, RIP and in GW3.
I think you mean “RIP and goodbye ANet.” As NCSoft/Nexon pulls all their funding to funnel into another game like they’ve done with many other promising games their meddling and dishonest business practices have utterly tanked.
This game isn’t worth spending money on anymore.
For what reason?
Was it the steadily worsening RNG trying to force you in to the gemstore for anything but one new cosmetic item per update and a handful of armorsets and weapons for an entire expansion? Am I the only one who noticed we’re now getting a lottery-ticket item in the BL chests per event cycle. This game is looking more and more like the waning days of city of heroes, and other korean grinder MMOs they try and squeeze the last bit of milk out before kicking the dried old cow over and running with whatever they managed to get.
Or how about the high-tier content which is completely void of strategy or depth and only difficult because of stat scaling, time restraints, and forcefully hidden mechanics complied with by a single droning strategy? And yet which they continue to work on in spite of a 99.999% of the playerbase having no interest in it to the point that the larger portion of them left before attempting to complete it?
Or maybe the expansion that was 1/16th the size of the original game and yet sold for the price of a full game?
Or the fact that that expansion was one of the worst pieces of game design ever seen from a studio with ANets record? I mean good grief, you know what word I would typify the expansions design by? “Why” For all the times I perfectly complied with and applied mechanics the way playing the base game taught me to, only for the game to throw them back in my face with no explanation, no tells, no signs or learning curve, and call me an idiot for not knowing what there is no logical reason I should have known. Situations to which I could only respond by staring blankly at my screen and asking in utter confusion “Why?”.
How ’bout the selling out their buy-to-play playerbase for free to play? Considered in the MMO genre to be the harbinger of a dying game. And the giving, of all things after the controversy surrounding the wardrobe changes, an outfit as compensation.
The total turn around from the no-grind philosophy they sold the game on to one of the worst grind in a western designed MMO?
Or perhaps the complete turn around from the no-trinity, all roles welcome, strategic high tier content they also sold the game on which they never even attempted to make because it was too hard? Three years of the absolute laziest passing attempts to fix the problems with most of the stats having no use in most content, and not even once cracking open the games base mechanics for overhall, not one instance of exploring a single non-bandaid solution to opening up the game to anything besides the zerker dodge-or-die meta, until, of course, they gave up and devolved down the evolutionary chain to the trinity.
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No I see it too, the GS is a very different shade of red, and I noticed it before reading your post.
ANet is pretty good about this, I misinterpreted a red post on the first halloween, had a ghastly grinning shield drop, and then because of the misinterpreted post I thought I needed to use it to not lose it, and soulbound it to a character. And in the end found the developer was talking about a different set of temporary weapons available at the time with the same skins.
And when I contacted support about it to have it replaced (because I didn’t want the skin, I wanted to sell it at a later date) they said they would love to but they didn’t have the tech yet for replacing items.
So I banked it, finally got around to asking about it again nearly two year later, and support replaced it for me without any trouble.
I don’t see how it’s out of place at all, the asurans see magic the way we see technology in the real world, not as some gift of the gods or deep arcana meant for study in dark corners, but as a force of nature for use in whatever way it can be used; be it war or exploration or just making daily life a little easier or more enjoyable.
I’m pretty sure “people on greens” doesn’t refer to Green Rarity gear. I’ve never done a Raid (nor even most of the Dungeons and most of the Fractals), but even I’ve seen the Dev videos about the first Raid on Guild Chat.
Whether a fight mechanic or gear or otherwise, if the answer is, BRING MOAR DEEPS, or bring more of any stat for that matter, then it’s not a matter of learning, it’s a bar that either you can or cannot comply with, and has zero bearing on the subject at hand.
They could make the content so you could actually learn it from in game experience in the first place. Like any good game designer knows to do without being battered about it by their audience.
It is already that way. Things like videos only help you to learn faster, but it can all be done ingame only too. Or how do you think did the first groups do the encounters when there where no guides at that time?
The game teaches very well. Not enough people on greens? Getting damage! Ofc you have to make the connection betwenn “not doing greens” and “getting damage” yourself, but like every person should be capable of making this conclusion after a few tries.
How would you like Anet to teach you better? Do you want a sign before each boss wich explains you all the mechanics in detail?
It is not already that way. Look at the first people to clear the endgame content, always people from massive mega-guilds, frequenting websites, forums and part of a huge community trial-and-error-ing their way through the content until every nitpicky detail is taken in to account. That is not info a single person could learn in a reasonable amount of time, especially given how much gw2s developers love to obfuscate mechanics that are contrary to normal play.
I assume you mean not doing greens as having green gear? You want to put in some effort to actually make some sense there buddy? That doesn’t even come in to play in this conversation. Do you not know the difference between active and passive play?
The gear bar is an arbitrary choice with no active effect on play. It’s a completely different issue than I brought up, but often maligned by casual players because it is often the hardest bar to surpass for some content, and in the end it isn’t enjoyable to finally learn and masterfully comply with the mechanics of an encounter only to lose in the end because you’re missing a +1 to some stat or other that there is no system in the game or in the encounter itself which indicates that said +1 was needed beforehand.
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What, exactly, are you asking ArenaNet to do? Make groups take you? Make players ‘git gud’ for your groups? I’m confused about what you are asking for.
Good luck.
They could make the content so you could actually learn it from in game experience in the first place. Like any good game designer knows to do without being battered about it by their audience.
Making content that teaches you nothing, requiring material outside the experience to be understood, is like making a movie based on a book, and deliberately writing it to not make sense to anyone who hasn’t already read the book.
And that is how GW2s endgame content has always been made, it’s unintuitive, immersion breaking, elitist design that disrespects the audience and the work itself. And the stupidest thing is that even though it’s done more damage to the game than any other design mistake ANet has made, ANet still just worsens the problem with every single update to supposed ‘high-tier’ content, and then denies there is any problem as the playerbase continually shrinks.
No amount of balance passes are going to fix anything, as evidenced by the last four years, where nothing has been successful save for removing builds from content, never once creating more builds and diversity of play.
What we need is a repass of game mechanics, starting with the major systems like dodging and stats and aggro and AI, and working its way down to individual class mechanics across pretty much all of the classes.
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Arenanet has stated (repeatedly) that there will not be a ‘race change’ available in GW2.
No they have not (ever).
They have stated that because of the work it would require to make new systems to carry over equivalent progress between the characters that they are not currently going, nor have any current plans, to work on a race change.
Can ANet not, ever, say that they are “not working” on something and not have sweeping overblown assumptive misquotes made by the playerbase about the subject?
Nonetheless, I wouldn’t count on it OP, since nearly all of the game story content, achievements, cosmetics, and even the top tier of gear are all account bound; it is very easy to delete and recreate a character, get them to level 80, and gear them up; having lost basically nothing but map completion progress and whatever your current personal story step was.
Delete/remake is likely to remain this games version of a race change, and in the case that you want to keep your characters name, it is reserved for 24 hours after deletion.
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This was actually one of the things the game was sold on with the original outfit system, as stated by a developer in a pre-launch interview found here.
I believe you will find it listed as item #50786 on the list of features this game was sold on that it never actually had in the first place. Since nearly all NPC outfits were unobtainable even when we had the outfit system.
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Reference to a fractal boss that was added, with a new fractal, in that same update.
You couldn’t of just done a Google search? It’s not going to happen. At least not for another decade.
If they don’t make some gameplay changes to bring the game up to speed with its competition, I doubt we’re even going to see the conclusion to Guild Wars 2, let alone a sequel. A game that launched with the steam to overtake WoW has now dropped down to fifth in the western market, is about to be overtaken by a badly ported korean grind simulator, and might as well be dead last in the eastern market. But that’s what happens when you basically waste the first three years after release just trying to figure out what you should do and not spending a dime on expansion of company resources.
In spite of their claims, their initial system is not immaculate, beyond reproach, or impossible to be improved upon, it wasn’t at launch and now it still has those same flaws and is old-hat in the current market. As proven by them pulling a full heel face turn on half their design tenets espoused at launch, devolving down to the trinity, putting in a top tier gear grind, abandoning the living world for instanced story content; and in the end losing a massive portion of their playerbase and consistently losing out to what are honestly lesser games in most respects, but which have put in the leg work to make systems that meet their design intents instead of abandoning them, as well as keeping up with current market trends.
I fear this game has fallen too far behind to even finish the race its on, let alone start another one. I hope I’m wrong, and that they make some big changes, but I kind of doubt it.
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The flamethrower launched as a condition weapon, only became a power weapon to address an, at the time, unfixable exploit with the channeled auto.
It was always intended that it be a condition weapon.
Why is this even a discussion? There is a BURNING condition, it’s a FLAMEthrower. This is like saying our poison grenade shouldn’t poison.
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Just new players huh? Completed a mid-level map last night, got 20 mushrooms, two greens, and a black lion key, which gave me a leveling tome, a resurrection stone, and tier six cooking ingredients. All in all, about nine silver for completing a map.
The whole bloody base game is unrewarding.
Yeah the ele got 10x the buffs it did nerfs
You don’t play ele do you? The things they buffed were things nobody used and the buffs weren’t strong enough to make anyone want to use them.
You don’t think about what you post before you post it do you?
Ele is over 3/4s of my play time over the last four years.
So RTL is unused huh? Strange how it hasn’t left the top three hot topics on the ele forums ever since the last patch where it was changed. Not to mention armor of earth and mistform, which were basically half of the defense of the original arcane/water bunker build.
We got 25-33% uptime buffs on nearly a dozen different abilities, but no, you’re right, that’s totally outweighed by a 7% dps nerf to one ability.
Get over yourself.
EDIT: Pardon me, there are actually some as low as a 15% buff, how horrible, that totally changes my mind. I’m being facetious, it does not, and you’re all being ridiculous
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hm? mostly they buffed it. Arc lightning got up, lots of cooldowns went down. The overload air nerf was the only thing. And I can see why they did it. It was kind of overpowered.
Yeah the ele got 10x the buffs it did nerfs, anyone complaining that we got “hamfisted” is someone angry they can no longer exploit imbalances and cheese easy wins. And in the end, doesn’t matter anyway, attunement system still limits us to one build with some minor changes.
As for the remainder:
Daredevil dodging needed a nerf, there’s no denying this.
The kitten hunter changes have done nothing as traps are not mechanically sound regardless of the DH’s state of balance.
Haven’t tried out the mesmer changes yet.
Engineer is going a good direction but not nearly far reaching enough.
Ranger did not need the condition on crit nerf to justify buffing it’s historically awful traps.
Necromancer changes are kind of boring but overall good.
No one gives a crap about the Revenant. It’s already become the Deathknight of GW2, if it’s there, it is because it’s useful, never because it is enjoyable.
I guess I’m alone here but I like the direction they’re going, and only think they haven’t gone far enough. Our weapons and kits have no identity, every single one does hybrid damage and a little bit of everything and you really play your traits more than your skillls. I wish they would repeat their last two balance patches x10
Flamethrower should be condition, Bomb kit should be power, Grenade kit should be hybrid. I mean there is a BURNING condition, it’s a FLAMEthrower, that is a no-brainer.
But instead, the Flamethrower is still a sucky condition weapon and a lesser hybrid to the Grenade kit. Bomb kit is a power weapon with two condition skills that really is only good supplementing other kits instead of abusing it’s INSANELY high scaling power auto. And grenade kit is a weapon with four conditions skill and an inexplicably nonsensical power-scaling auto that becomes a condition weapon with traits. Yeah, try explaining that to a newbie engine, it can’t even be done in any sensible sounding manner, because it’s just plain awful design beyond justification.
And the problem is the same it has always been; one of two things need to happen, and I’m going to catch a ton of flack for either as I have every time I’ve suggested them before.
If all our weapons are going to be hybrid until traited, then the triple proc on the grenade auto needs to go, so our bleed proc traits can be buffed to actually be useful anywhere else beside the grenade auto. However, this option, honestly leaves so much to desire concerning identity, theme, and fun; plus people like the grenade barrage auto, it’s cool and fulfills a fantasy.
Or, conversely (and in my opinion, the better option) they need to make all of our weapons not mandatorily hybrid in the first place, giving the weapons unique identities from each other.
To do this, add bleeds to the grenade auto, a ton of burning to the flamethrower, swap the grenade kits blind and the bomb kits confusion, make the bomb kits fire field last longer but apply less to no burning. Move shrapnel down to a major or minor trait with an ICD. And boom, now all of our weapons do their own thing but can still be made hybrid with traits. And everything else that applies conditions doesn’t have to utterly suck in order to keep the grenade kit in line.
EDIT: And you people that are saying it has always been power are sitting on a throne of lies! I’m kidding, but still, you are mistaken. History lesson! I’m not sure if it was in the beta only or made it to some time after launch but the flamethower applied some of the highest uptime burning in the game. But because it was channeled, players figured out they could cancel the channel partway through, and start it over again, and get 100% burning uptime with no condition duration. So the developers backloaded the burning, when player stopped using it, they gave it a ton of power scaling as “something to use it for”.
Or in short, it was never intended to be a power weapon, not even a hybrid weapon, it was originally intended to be a full on burning condition weapon, and became a hybrid, then power weapon, to prevent an exploit the developers didn’t have the tech to address at the time. And when it became so it was originally with the intent to change it back someday, but the previous engineer-specialist in the design team didn’t care much about theme or identity and preffered the “ele” engi builds; forced multikitting, rotations, combos, constant swapping, and basically no thematicism and no build diversity because dependency on combos and rotations make for a rigid meta build.
So again, I, for one, am glad for this direction, and hope they take it further until our kits are actually distinguishable from each other in their use, as they have not been in the past.
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We’ve seen how many balance passes now? Has the games balance ever become more balanced, has build diversity ever gone up? The answer is no, to both. Clearly there is a problem with the system that adjusting numbers cannot fix.
I don’t necessarily think the OPs idea will do thie trick, but something needs to be done besides the same old ineffectual balance passes.
You ignore the elephant in the room: balancing for the three game modes must finally be separated. Completely. As long as most stuff applies to all of PvP, WvW and PvE, there will always be massive issues.
I didn’t even bring that issue up? Are you just a naturally antagonistic person?
But in either case, you are incorrect, with how PvE currently is, yes, but with the proper changes to PvE, one could make the same skills and scaling which are effectual against players have the same level of efficacy in PvE. And it would make PvE significantly more skilled, deep, and enjoyable to boot.
How about no, like most of your other ideas? The game is balanced around the current values and overhauling anything to shape up a different system is more complex than making simple value changes to a single aspect of the game.
We’ve seen how many balance passes now? Has the games balance ever become more balanced, has build diversity ever gone up? The answer is no, to both. Clearly there is a problem with the system that adjusting numbers cannot fix.
I don’t necessarily think the OPs idea will do thie trick, but something needs to be done besides the same old ineffectual balance passes.
How is the new legendary a joke? It’s a freaking PIRATE THEMED CANNON! I am wholly confused by these people that get humor, and theme, two completely unrelated concepts, crossed to the point that they can’t even tell the difference between the two. The apples and oranges analogy isn’t even applicable here, this is like getting apples and rocks crossed, the two are so unrelated there is no reasonable explanation for any amount of confusion.
If you don’t like it you don’t like it, but theme exists in any fantasy world just as it exists in the real world and calling this a joke because you don’t like it is inexcusably juvenile and wholly worthless feedback.
Yes, it’s impractical, but this is fantasy, and while they may have rarely been used in battle, armor and weapons crafted for decorative purposes are common in pretty much every era, even ones themed after a specific subject. I mean you can find roman armor covered from head to toe in gilded lion sculptures, completely impractical, yet does anybody call that a joke? No? Then why is this a joke? Pirates and ships and naval warfare are commonly associated with early blackpowder firearms, especially the use of heavy cannons, just as a lion was associated with power and close-arms warfare in ancient Rome.
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I didn’t even know there was a new stat set, why don’t they put these things in the patch notes?
I’ve been waiting for a healing/condition since launch, literally, I was playing a condi elementalist build even back when it sucked so much you couldn’t even tag event mobs and dungeon groups would kick me when they found out.
And while that may be disappointing for you, condi eles only have two condition-on-crit traits, and one of them is absolutely worthless, so boon duration is actually better so far as I’m concerned.
New Player, Sad Player. Expansion ruined it.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Conncept.7638
To be honest, you might want to spend some time learning your preferred profession a bit better before moving on to HoT. The content in the core game doesnt really teach you much about playing well. HoT is supposed to be more challenging for play by those who have a better handle on their characters.
Leveling a character to 80 and through the entire Personal Story should teach you all you need to know. If it isn’t, that is Anet’s fault.
Also, where did Anet state that HoT was supposed to be for those who were better players? I don’t remember seeing that at all.
Anet has stated many times they design their content to be for a continually more skilled playerbase. It’s not just one post it’s one of their design tenets. And it would be a great one, were it not for:
1. They never design content made to improve players. You can’t have better players until you make content that makes better players, and most of GW2s content teaches nothing. And then the developers have the gall to knock the idea of tutorials when they released the NPE.
2. They frequently make content which punishes you for properly executing what little the game does teach. The entirety of HoT is the biggest example, it throws everything the base game taught you about positioning, dodging, scaling, interrupts and a dozen other mechanics back in your face and then calls you an idiot for not knowing what you’re doing.
3. What they define as skilled content, doesn’t even require more skill in the first place! Most of it just ends up being harsher stat/skill/trait requirements, shorter timers, and more people. That’s not a higher skill requirement, that’s escalation and power creep. The only real increase in skill is preservation and proper timing of your dodges, which is a largely binary and uncompelling system that doesn’t feel rewarding to improve in, it just feels like you are being punished slightly less.
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I think ANet has been doing great lately, but at the same time, I still don’t think GW2’s ever going to meet its full potential, or even get back to where it was, until they take some of the games systems back to formula like FFXIV and ESO both did, both of which have also passed up GW2 at this point in concurrent player numbers and financial gain, in spite of two of the worst launches to ever come from any major studio MMO.
Overhauling major systems goes a long way to prove that the developers still give a crap about a game.
And this comes to mind in this thread, because GW2 could afford to take a few pages from BDOs action combat system – more frequently used abilities, better telegraphs, fewer one-shots, more frequently available but more precise defense, and defense and utility which scale from your chosen stats in such a meaningful way that they are not ignored in favor of cheesing a spammy copy/pasted invincibility frame skill.
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Is it just me or are the majority of those unblockable skills ground targeted? That’s part of the mechanic, why would shielding in a direction block something coming from the ground beneath you?
Khulaid the Conquerer, he’s a big red ogre boss outside Ebonhawk, and his event starts with him bursting in through a wall just like the Kool Aid drink mascot.
This one time, I was killing dredge on my way to an event, and this one yellow dredge mob starts singing a little mining diddy as I was sneaking up on him, and I was suddenly like “I can’t kill him he’s just doing his job!” and ever since then I’ve avoided killing the yellow dredge mobs.
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This is pretty much what people suggested for the wardrobe, the ability to save outfits, and stat combinations, separately, and swap them around.
Then we got the wardrobe, and the ability to save stats in any way was not part of it, and I don’t think its ommision was accidental, this isn’t a feature they intend to add. Most likely because when you get to higher levels, gear is no longer gear but the main method for obtaining a bunch of mats and upgrade components, all of which would tank if players could just make them once and then save them forever without sacrificing precious account space.
Pretty much saw this coming since launch, having the lions share of certain mats come from gear was always an incredibly stupid move, ESPECIALLY after making it so drops scaled with level, causing lower level items to actually be worth more than people at that level could reasonably be expected to pay.
If ANet had taken the time to think before hand, or listened to the myriad of players who pointed out this and many other flaws back when they could have been fixed, nodes would have been the primary method for obtaining most if not all mats. But unfortunately it’s so ingrained in to the system now that changing it would basically equate to redesigning the reward system from the ground up.
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Can’t speak for others, as for myself.
PvP’s conquest game mode overly rewards defense over offense, a team without a bunker does not win against a team with one or more, and its the only role two or more of is preferred. This mode enforces such a harsh meta that there is no build diversity, no strategy, no tactics, no depth of play anywhere to speak of; every game boils down to who can stall better. I have zero interest in standing inside a circle and refusing to die, and I can’t imagine who would.
There is no amount of tweaking that can make this game mode enjoyable, it needs to be replaced, and three years of balancing around it has made build diversity worse in every single game mode.
WvW has never felt like epic large scale battle as it should have, when I first heard of it I imagined battles like Helms Deep or the Thousand Orc Army, what we got looks like a grade-school cafeteria food fight. Organization not only goes unrewarded, it is punished compared to a haphazard rotation of throwing bodies at each other and hoping the other guys run out first. And any “epic” properties are completely thrown out the window because of the same design mistake- stacking.
The very idea of “epic” brings to mind the principle of scale, impressive size and numbers, and when you can fit 100+ players in a 1×1 ft radius stacked inside of each other, it destroys all sense of scale, any hope or appearance of that group of players being impressive or weighty. And removes any need for strategy by making it nothing but a a bunch of individuals with no interaction with each other, just acting on the closest object available to be acted upon.
WvW will never feel like anything but one mindless zerg against another until stacking is removed or at the very least heavily discouraged and put at a disadvantage compared to organizing, placement, and movement as a group.
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For me, it’s no different than the other items offered lately in the Black Lion Chests. I think it motivates some to acquire keys.
I think it motivates people to play a different game.
they were supposed to release tengu as a race, and great axe. RIP expansions that are worth buying.
Do you have a link/source for that?
No, nor do they have sources for any claims in this thread or the one linked above.
Pretty much the only things we know, disregarding all the nonsense on these forums are:
A) Anet can make a new race, the tech is there
B) Most NPC races are not constructed like player races, so they would basically have to be remade to be a player race.
C) As of the last expansion they were not working on one.
Careful what you wish for, last time someone complained about this, they just made the gloves hide with any chest-piece that had sleeves, which, depending on your armor weight, can be pretty much all of them.
Stop making outfit threads. ANet has already explained the how and why of their armor and outfit development. Constantly making new threads about dead, beaten horses isn’t going to change that.
The “why” is because they so horribly mismanaged their profits and staff for so long that they can’t put out a product of reasonable quality at a reasonable enough rate to make any money or keep any players around.
And it is entirely their fault, so no, we won’t stop complaining about it.
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BL chests are a lot of fun if you are paying for the frisson of excitement you get just before opening. The contents have always been (and always will be) garbage, except for just enough lucky people to keep things interesting.
That’s not “fun”, that’s a gambling addiction.
And it’s absolutely ridiculous that such a backwards country as China is passing digital goods consumer laws 30 years ahead of the US’s. There should have been a law like this since the late 80s, if our country wasn’t consistently lead by people two generations behind the countries current needs.
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You’re missing:
- Three maps where it is impossible to do anything on your own (even just explore the bloody things), two of which, on a good day, only have people enough for one go round of the meta immediately after reset. And doing one meta a day, you’ll be in these maps for years to come to get a reasonable amount of their achievements and gear. Getting anything is 10x grindier in HoT than it is in the vanilla game, especially anything involving crafting, which is pretty much all of the gear available and a sizable amount of the remaining “rewards”.
- Raids that are, in reality, only difficult because their mechanics are completely unclear, poorly scaled, and have rigid build requirements. In other words they’re not actually difficult at all, but poorly made content hearkening back to WoW and Everquest eras where difficulty was in unlocking gear, sticking to a rigid meta, and uncovering obfuscated mechanics by endless hours of mindbreaking trial and error.
- Class specializations, the majority of which were playstyles the base classes already had, but were removed in one horrible design and balance pass after another. Really, look at them closely, what are they? Auramentalist, confusion mesmer, power necro, control spam warrior, powerbunker engi, evasion spam thief. All viable at some point in the past and removed. The only ones that actually provided a playstyle not stolen from the base classes in the first place is the Druid and Dragonhunter.
- An admittedly pretty good personal story, with an ending that put forth a lot of effort, to justify cutting corners and a lower budget and time frame for working on it. You basically end the game fighting a weedy michelin man, and never actually get to see Mordremoth at all, let alone fight the "real" him. The closest you get is a fight against mordremoths "mouth" (like the Mouth of Zhaitan) instead of Mordremoth himself. It's a really disappointing ending.
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Back in the day, the festivals were a part of the actual living world, which is why they were updated. Now however, they’re simply distractions used to buy time. They could maybe squeeze in 1 festival a year to add on to, but anything major would certainly take the place of a living world episode, meaning everything gets pushed back by 2 months. There’s simply no profit in doing that.
Tell that to all the players the LS has failed to bring back even after a half years worth of episode releases.
Neither since for years they’ve both been equally repetitive. I mean they can’t even scrounge up a new story instance like the ones they put out every other month now? Forget new activities and minigames I just want to hear more stories about Tixx and the Mad King, especially since apparently without continuing the story we’re still not getting any of the former.