https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/468r7g/no_greens_no_distortion_all_facetank_vale/
To those who want to facetank raid and won’t stop cring; Here’s the outcome of how horrible raid would be if devs listened to you. Have fun ignoring every single damage mechanic to beat the raid. Healing and tanking are the main foci here and guess how entertaining this is.
They killed the Boss about 50s before the enrage times even started. Seven of ten players used DPS-builds and gear. They were furlongs away from being an ultra tanking/healing group.
Which only proves the point even more that timers are needed. The damage they brought was:
Everyone else was using a metabattle-ish full DPS build. We just grabbed whoever was around and their classes covered the ground well;
1x A/A Warrior with some PS sprinkled on top
1x Hammer Guardian
2x Revenant (Strength variant)
2x Condi Engi
1x Chronomancer
and yes, they “only” had a base trio healer setup. Now imagine:
- the damage dealers were not random pugs but instead seasond raiders (not saying the ones that joined were crap, but you get my drift)
- there were no timer
Using only 3 healer setup allowed for massive cheese in this fight already circumventing one of the bosses major mechanics. No timer would mean that any group could load up on vita gear (yes, the aoe is 80% flat damage of max life, but the other attacks are not so vita would help buffer against downstate).
The setup shows perfectly what over heal and tank can do to encounters in a game designed the way GW2 is.
Your opinions aren’t garbage; it’s your arguments. You are grasping at straws and have no real point outside of the fact that you are just mad and want to be flippant.
All right, fine. Look, hey, you really want me to show you what I mean…okay…
No, this is a concept most MMO rpgs are based on. RPG stands for role-playing-game and not “I grind for items” game. Does this often incorporate character growth and increase in power? Sure. But to state that this is the only element is to blantly not understand or missrepresent the entire genre.
The only way I am misrepresenting roleplaying games is you if you bring in table-top and LARP which are largely based upon acting in person and not character development.
But, neither of those have any relevance to the discussion at hand, because the discussion is about electronic media. Electornic media variants of RPGs are overwhelming about character development and that character development very commonly involves item progression.
So congratulations, you are right. I have woefully underrepresented variants of roleplaying games that have zero relevance to the actual topic of hand.
You win….something, I guess? The entire point of me stating that was to establish a premise as to different reasons as to why people grind. Whether or not I am accurately represented roleplaying games means nothing outside of you getting kitten because I didn’t
What do I win? I was correcting you on your white and black statement that all rpgs are the same in regard to grind and character growth.
Top RPG games which have 0 grind of the top of my head and there are dozens more:
1. Vampire the Masquerade
2. System Shock
3. Fable
4. Chrono Cross
Notice how I differentiated between MMO rpgs and rpgs which you did NOT. That was the only point I was making but you seem to have read past that.
The day I get mad about people spouting nonsense on message boards is when I quit posting on them.
Why would I would argue with them? What relevance does a certain group of people not labeling Diablo as a “rpg” have to any of this? Is Diablo an electronic media game? Yes. Does that electronic media game have structured grinding for items? Yes. Does that give it relevance to this discussion? Yes.
Call it “butt diamond spelunking” or “clicking simulator”. I don’t give a kitten. It’s label has no bearing. This statement by you has accomplished nothing other than making me waste a minute of my life writing out an explanation as to why it’s garbage.
While at the same time in no way addressing the actual point I was making. There is quite a big amount of people who consider Diablo games to not be rpgs (or at best a subform of action rpg) which goes completely against your premise of using it as an example rpg to undermine your point of all rpgs have grind and item looting.
Oh and ofcorse putting in snidy remarks which you were complaining about I were using.
It’s not a subjective point. There is so much research and material out there regarding these kind of behavioral patterns. But I am not going to go the fully monty and prepare a works cited page for a forum post, because you are mad and don’t like what I had to say.
Do the research. Explore the subject. Educate yourself. Or don’t. I don’t care.
Sure, I know of enough addictive behavior and how game developers put carrots for gamers to achieve. Now please explain, how does this relate to the topic at hand again besides you sidetracking the argument?
We started off as you putting up a thesis that:
Grinding to unlock content isn’t really why people grind; they grind out of a desire to complete their character. This concept is what all RPGs are largely based on; the steady progression and development of a character.
To which I replied that your argument is flawed and people have multiple reasons as to why they grind and/or play rpgs. I don’t have to show the research is flawed, you have to show that people do not play rpgs for any other reason besides the one you stated.
I never stated people do not grind out of your reasons, I simply again corrected you white and black analysis and point of argument.
No? I am not mixing anything up. You are just making an arbitrary distinction between grinds for cosmetic items and grinds to unlock content and placing a value judgement on one mattering while the other doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter. Like if you extent the scope enough, you can place a big picture argument that none of it is mandatory. As long as whatever the goal is desirable to the player, the compulsion to complete it will be real.
Yes you are. The topic at hand is:
- GW2 is to grindy and ascended armor is to expensive
This topic was established by the name and the original post of the TC. Now as far as I care you can add on to the topic at hand as much as you want, but as far as necessary grind for actual statistical increases goes, cosmetics are not part of it.
You have completely failed to address the point that if you take just an empirical approach and scan the chat channels there is tons of peoples doing these grinds for cosmetic items and complaining about how much they hate it.
You just flat out dismiss the psychological relevance of any of this by alluding to some degree of fact that you think you have established but haven’t.
What I did was stick to the topic at hand and not add in a lot of unneeded convoluted bogus arguments. I don’t care about subjective chat channel mumbojumbo or people spending time on something they are not enjoying. I was sticking to what TC was complaining about and worked off of that.
Should I want to discuss god and the meaning of life, I’ll get back to you.
Your telling me people with disposable income take shortcuts in a game they enjoy (or not enjoy, hey it’s other peoples disposable income)? Wow, someone inform the news, maybe get some crowdfunding idea started, we’ll call it Kickstarter. Or maybe some kind of casino where people with addictions can spend their money on statistically to them disadvantageous activities.
I don’t even know what to say to this. There is no greater point to this comment that I can divine. It’s just snarky and sarcastic garbage.
Simple, I was making a poignant, sarcastic jab at your try to explain all the cash people throw at the game as being part of your argument. You must have missed the memo.
Also again, you complain a lot about tone, yet you have used more gutter language in all of your replies than I have in probably over a year on these forums.
So yeah…that’s why I am not exactly trembling in my boots or rushing to backpedal utter the sheer force of your arguments. It’s also why I wasn’t exactly feeling motivated to take ten minutes of my day to respond to this kind of trite garbage.
You are just mad and this post will make you madder and you will respond with an even higher degree of sarcasm and salt, posturing yourself as being intellectually superior to me which is the big joke in and of itself, because of how just weak the substance beneath that posturing really is.
You seem to have very serious ego issues. Personally, I absolutely do not care what your evening is like, but it’s funny you’d assume I were in any way moved by your non-coherent train of arguments.
Tells everyone that their opinion is worth nothing:
So, really, arguments that either flat out negate the grind, because the gear is not required or diminish it’s significance, because the stat increases are so small don’t mean much. One, if you are making on counter argument on the merits of CHOOSING not to do something, then you should probably stop talking. That applies to everything. Two, neither of these two factors do much in practice.
Then pulls the “oh we are only sharing opinions card”:
I haven no problem responding to a counter argument when it’s level headed and fair, but you are arguing largely against your own straw man or you are just dismissing the psychological relevance of micro-transactions, grinding, pay walls and time gates in video games and asserting that you are above it all and it has no influence.
So since we’re both sharing opinions about what each other have to say, I find everything you wrote to be just garbage and you seem to be so upset about me having this opinion at all that you will grasp at any straw to argue against it.
Had you been sharing opinions, you would not have told everyone who has a different one that their is not valid.
Then turns right around and starts trashtalking other peoples opinions in literally the same post. Right…
Grinding to unlock content isn’t really why people grind; they grind out of a desire to complete their character. This concept is what all RPGs are largely based on; the steady progression and development of a character.
No, this is a concept most MMO rpgs are based on. RPG stands for role-playing-game and not “I grind for items” game. Does this often incorporate character growth and increase in power? Sure. But to state that this is the only element is to blantly not understand or missrepresent the entire genre.
Look at the Diablo game series. Those games are purely based on grinding for the sake of grinding. There is no content to unlock; all the content is unlocked before the real grind begins.
Good point, now please go argue with the many people who do not consider Diablo an rpg. If at most it’s an action-rpg and the rpg elements in that game are mostly the story.
So, really, arguments that either flat out negate the grind, because the gear is not required or diminish it’s significance, because the stat increases are so small don’t mean much. One, if you are making on counter argument on the merits of CHOOSING not to do something, then you should probably stop talking. That applies to everything. Two, neither of these two factors do much in practice.
Very subjective point and you try to make everyone have to agree. Well I don’t and I’m sure quite a few other do not either. There is all kinds of players and I, from experience can say, especially older players (I’m sure there is younger ones too) take more joy in the actual game than insignificant numeric increases.
If the actual benefit is so insignificant (for armor it’s 2% stat increase accross the board) and the time invested is so huge and an undesirable process any one going for the stat increases while not ejoying the game is suffering from severe OCD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder). Is this bad? No, but let’s name things by what they are instead of making up bs arguments.
The most common complaint I see in guild chat is how much people hate doing Dragon Stand, but are forced to do it, so they can get Crystalline Ore? Wait, what? Forced to it? Why? It’s not required, right? People have this mentality and perspective, because the sheer existence of slightly better gear than what you have fuels that addicting compulsion to acquire it that forms the driving force of why people play RPGs.
Now you are mixing up 2 different things. People doing Dragon Stand do it for the new legendarys which are cosmetic and as such not mandatory by definition (unless fashion wars, but in pure stat terms not needed). At least you realise that it is an addictive behavior, unfortunately your assessment that this is the driving force for why people play these games is once again off.
HoT has taken this concept to the next level. We can all pretend that we all make perfect rational choices and are not influenced by external factors, but it still doesn’t change the volume of people who are paying for gems to buy gold to shortcut their grinds rather than do the content they are “forced to do”.
Your telling me people with disposable income take shortcuts in a game they enjoy (or not enjoy, hey it’s other peoples disposable income)? Wow, someone inform the news, maybe get some crowdfunding idea started, we’ll call it Kickstarter. Or maybe some kind of casino where people with addictions can spend their money on statistically to them disadvantageous activities.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
I’ll repeat myself, the only encounter in this raid wing at the moment which suffers from to high dps skipping designed boss skills is Goreseval due to developer oversight. Something I do believe should be fixed.
You no more skip skills on gors than on sab or vg by doing high damage. If she dies earlier and doesn’t use her last flamewall, have you skipped anything at sabetha? Have you skipped anything at vg if you have 4 minutes left and he didn’t cast 12 other greens? Have you skipped anything at gors if you miss a cc phase? Or if you dps past a world eater? His important phases he goes invuln for, if being forced to interact with certain mechanics was required, you’d be seeing an invuln phase for it where you have no choice BUT to deal with it.
That’s not the point. Things you do skip with Gore if you dps hard enough:
- he will not spawn adds while he goes invulnerable with his 4 summons → that is not by design
- if you overdps and skip a world eater you do skip the entire mchanic of having to destroy a wall and use the gliding
While I don’t see this as major problems, I will admit that they are essentially things that make the fight easier if you have the dps. Still those are the only 2 things I could think of that do not fall in the “he doesn’t use this skill x-amount of times more”. Part of understanding the other sides arguments is giving ground and accepting or aknowledging problems when they are there.
If players advocating for more tank bring these things up I will aknowledge when they are correct. As it stands though, those 2 minor differences do not an argument make in my opinion. So the entire argument that hard dps groups get to ignore boss mechanics is flawed for the current raid wing.
The problem is, since character progression and meaningful rewards are practically eliminated, WvW being zergfests, PvE combat lacking depth and uninteresting PvP, all that’s left that’s worth doing is challenging content. Which the game is sorely lacking. The most engaging and challenging content imo at the moment are jumping puzzles and fractals before they get repetitive and grindy.
Map completion feels more like a chore than an adventure, due to the large amount of tedious heart quests. Most achievements are either a huge time sink, gold sink, or just feel like a chore. And why would I want to do collections if they are just huge, tedious gold sinks, with only ugly skins as rewards?
Something is seriously wrong with an mmo if jumping puzzles are the most fun thing to do, how aggravating they sometimes can be.
This sounds a lot more like you not enjoying the game than you having to grind something. Which is fine, it’s just important to notice the difference.
This is exactly the problem. Everything besides ascended is already rewarded near-instantly. And assuming, you spent 2 hours per day, 3 days per week and 5 months (I took the lower amount of the spectrum), this is already a total of at least 120 hours of your life spent on what? ascended gear with 5% stat increase. Does that feel rewarding to you? Not to me.
But yeah, it’s necessary if you want to do high level fractals… which require even more grind.
I think you missunderstood pdavis. The ascended gear was not why he played those evenings or those nights and weeks. It was a nice bonus on top of enjoying the game.
That is the difference between gamers that game for loot and gamers that game because they enjoy the game. Now if you want to get into the disscussion of worthwile, engaging and fun endgame in GW2, sure. But that is a different topic now is it not?
To be honest, I don’t understand why A-net chose this MAJOR design flaw. There is something seriously wrong with the ‘grinding curve’. Leveling to 80 and acquiring exotic gear is trivially fast and easy and from there on you have to grind hundreds of hours for ugly skins or a minor 5% stat increase.
It doesn’t help that the loot tables are so random, that it’s practically impossible to hunt for items that you want, so the whole game turns into a massive gold grind. And on top of that, the most boring content gives the best rewards… This makes the whole game feel like a chore
Worst of all, this game promotes afk-tagging, because this gives you the best rewards for the least amount of effort.
All in all, no matter what you do, the time spent in this game feels unrewarded, because it’s either trivial or not worth the effort. There is nothing in between and there is no fun content to make up for it, besides fractals – at least the levels that you don’t need to grind for.
And this is EXACTLY what I mean. Yes, most of people playign this (including me) are tired of the usual MMO grind, and it’s the only thing we know about endgame.
GW2 has alternate ways of doing stuff? Well, it isn’t advertizing them well enough, because everyone is still grinding and inflating the game economy as they try to achieve the gear that, according to others, can be “easily” obtained thru other ways.
“Easily”, since it’s a low drop rate for gear whose stats you can’t chose, which actually turns the trip into ANOTHER kind of grind.
Should you work to get it? Yes, but I mean, A-Net has been looking to make things more fun for us, such as with collections, why not reinvent the way we’re supposed to do this?
Both of you have clearly not been long with the game which is very obvious from these posts.
Instead of getting into the usual details and tearing up your post with all the mistakes you’ve made (yeah, let’s talk about inflation when prices have been steadily declining ever since the dungeon nerf and initial post HoT spike…) I’ll give you some hints:
- imagine your character were done. I mean done as in you need no more items. If it helps, get yourself deced out in full exotics.
- now think of which things in GW2 are fun to you. Guild missions, fractals, wvw, spvp, map completion, LS2, etc.
- play the things you enjoy, stay away from the ones you don’t
- then 6 months from now after having played mostly stuff you’ve enjoyed, check your ingame back account.
- buy ascended armor or not, since you’ll most likely not need it for anything you’ve had fun the last 6 months doing
Here is an extra tip: do the Bioluminescence achievement.
Not sure what to make of your post TC. Are you talking about actual raid guilds or just get a pug to take you along?
If you ment actual raiding guilds, could you name a couple which you’ve tried to get into? The actual guild, not just their A-team which has the content cleared.
The one thing every raiding guild is looking for is new members, see savacli right above my post. A raiding guild without new members dies out eventually.
What raid guilds do not want though is ride alongs who think they get to join experienced raid groups and get carried all the way, then leave once they have their achievements/items. It’s the same as in every other MMO which has raiding. Once content is cleared, everyone is a raider and wants to tag along.
It certainly is more difficult now than when raids got introduced, but it is not impossible and most raid guilds would welcome interested members. Somehow I don’t get that kind of vibe from your original post though. It’s okay, we all need to vent sometimes.
Did you know if you do enough dps at sabetha you don’t have to kill some cannons 4 times?
Hahaha, checkmate.
While I do see that you are making a joke, speeding up an encounter (while taking higher risks with less survivability in damage gear) is not bypassing or circumventing boss mechanics.
It’s just that, you cut the fight shorter by doing superior damage in very squishy gear. Granted active defences means you are not that squishy since you can mitigate most/all damage through skill and dodge use, which is more along the lines of player skill than skipping. If this were so easy though, every pug would have cleared the raid day 1 within 2 hours (let’s be honest, most designated groups did within a day or week anyway, but the overall difficulty of the raid is not part of the discussion in this thread).
The problem with tanky gear is that eventually you can just soak the damage making all the active defences you would usually have to use unneccessary unless it’s instant kills.
I’ll repeat myself, the only encounter in this raid wing at the moment which suffers from to high dps skipping designed boss skills is Goreseval due to developer oversight. Something I do believe should be fixed.
Yes, lets blame arenanet for something that is not their fault.
Or maybe read up and educate yourself about who is in charge of setting up taxes (hint, for most of us, it’s our respective governments).
Granted it is a bit more complicated for US citicens since it’s a state by state decision as far as I can tell:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_digital_goods
In the EU though, this has been clear for a very long time so I don’t see how this comes as any suprise to anyone who has made any type of digital purchases in the past:
https://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/taxes/eu-vat-rates
Most people have mentioned the difference and given good advice as to when 1 or 10 recepies are viable or recommended. Now from my personal experience:
- crafted 3 legendarys so far. I go by 1 clover at a time even though it is a big hassle
- I did try the 10 clover recepie 4 times, never had luck. Yes getting some materials back is nice, but you still lose out on a lot of gold and the last thing you want while hunting these things down is more bad luck shoved down your throat (subjective I know, but my guess is a lot of people will feel this way)
- while doing single clovers I’ve had everything from luckstreaks where I made 9 clovers one after the other to bad luck streaks where I made 14 attempts at clovers and got nothing back. (the bad luck streak is what I keep reminding myself of every time I think about trying the 10 recepie)
The major difference between both is:
- single clovers – closer to the 33% chance but a lot more tedious
- 10x clovers – wild swings in both ways (higher variance – Illconceived Was Na explained it very nicely 2 posts up).
Game is as grindy as YOU want it to be. Perfect design.
Unfortunately quite a few players, especially with HoT and the f2p move shortly before that, come from MMOs where geargrind is the endgame. For those people getting the best gear for their character IS the game (TC seems to be part of that crowd).
The problem will solve its self though. Here is the natural timeline for people who enjoy their gear grind as primary form of gaming in GW2:
1.) player from other MMO enters GW2 – “Oh wow, this is quite fun. Let’s give it a try.”
2.) “what, leveling is almost instant? I get experience for almost everything I do. What is that, a new shiny? cool!”
3.) goes on a message board to boast about having hit level 30/40/60 or anything inbetween. Tells people how great he thinks GW2 is
4.) player hits level 80. Might have rerolled a couple of alternate classes on the way
5.) player progresses from green to rare to exotic quality gear within no more than 1 week – “yay, endgame is fun. Gearing up goes so fast.”
6.) player notices that ascended is obscenely more expensive than exotic but does not realise that it’s pratically useless in 95% of all pve content
Now one of 2 things happen:
-> player leaves since he does not feel the need to grind for gold for an insignificant upgrade
or
-> player grinds ascended gear and maximises his character, then feels bored that there is “nothing left to do” and then leaves
At no point in time did our new player actually take the time to try to figure out how to enjoy GW2. He simply approached the game with the same mentality he had from his traditional MMO and tried to apply this here.
While in general I do support any idea that keeps an eye on the economic side of things (anet is a company after all and they need to make money), I doubt any shortterm or one-time cash surges would change any design philosophies.
That being said, anet are more than capable of monetising their own game and they are doing so more heavily since HoT. No reason for the playerbase to go out of their way and do their job for them. On the contrary, that seems like it would be something that would keep people away instead of bring them back.
You missunderstand what people mean by tank group.
When others are refering to “tank groups” they mean people should not be able to stack defence to make boss attacks useless or circumvent the difficulty of the encouter.
But at the same time, stacking dps to circumvent boss mechanics is somehow perfectly all right
No one said that, but the way GW2 is designed, it’s easier to create content which fits dps heavy comps over tanky comps.
Stop sidetracking.
Also, please elaborate on which content or mechanics get skipped in raids with high dps?
All I can think of is Goreseval by making him skip phases or not summon adds. Problems which could easily be addressed with minor patches and the damage required to actually pull this off is beyond anyone in this thread complaining about timers would ever achieve.
EDIT:
Still waiting on any type of constructive ideas on how to create raid design content from people who do not like timers. All I see so far is b***ing and mo***ning without any suggestions of how to improve things.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
Pick a different target.
Revenant is not in a good state on dealing with necros at the moment. Few classes are if that is any consolation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. It is closely linked to the concepts of responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgments which apply only to actions that are freely chosen.
Don’t like it, don’t get it.
You got us TC.
Arenanet designed equipment to be soulbound over 3.5 years ago (even earlier since these kind of decision are made during design phases) knowing fully well you’d missclick the clear warning notification in order to troll you.
They are evil. You should consider to sue.
/sarcasm
To get keys?
I get a lot of tomes and writs, so every week I make a toon, farm a key, and then continue on with my life as normal.
If you’re thinking of spending gems to get an extra character slot to farm keys, I’d say no, forget it.
This.
That being said, with current BL weapon prices per ticket, it’s not that lucrative an endevour anyway.
If you have the extra slot and enjoy the weekly run, do it.
I would LOVE to see someone else suggest a better way than enrage timers to deal with cheesing hard content with ultratank/healing builds instead of arguing how bad it is. It’s not THAT bad … lots of games have them and they work. It might not be the best but then, does it need to be?
How is using a tank group cheesing? We have groups 5-6 manning, only [insert profession] groups. Why would a slower, damage per second, tank group be cheesing?
I for one dislike the idea of the 1 heal, 1 tank, 8 dd, meta that we have now….hmmm reminds me of the holy-trinity. I would like to see stuff like 3 healers, 5 tanks, 2 dds, new types of group compositions.
You missunderstand what people mean by tank group.
When others are refering to “tank groups” they mean people should not be able to stack defence to make boss attacks useless or circumvent the difficulty of the encouter.
While traditional trinity games allow for easier designs in boss battles to up the required amount of tanks (offtanks, multi enemy bosses, debuffs, etc.), a game designed like GW2 where damage mitigation comes primarily from avoidance and active defences is very hard to balance around with defensive stats.
Think about following:
- how would GW2 be if arenanet removed all the defensive stats from gear?
Answer:
- with some minor tweaking here and tehre, the same as now. They already removed some of the tankier stat combos from pvp.
People need to move away from this notion of tanks in GW2.
Enrage timers are a lazy way to sieve certain builds. There are more ambitious clever and elegant way to accomplish.
But enrage timers are not equal to DPS races per se. The mechanics of the encounters determine the kind of race. 25 million damage required within eight minutes create a DPS race. 20 million healing required within eight minutes create an HPS race. Encouters with other combinations of HPS, DPS and length of boons conditions or CC create other types of races.
If you want to go the lazy with enrage timers then at least create more variety than simply checking DPS in each encounter.
The only encounter that checks DPS is Gorseval.
What are the other encounters are checking? HPS? Boon duration? CC?
All of the encounters check all of these things.
Since we always see 8-10 DPS-focussed builds it seems the same DPS-focussed weighting is used in all encounters. Otherwise we would see more tanks or healing-focussed builds in certain encounters. And the enrage timer would sieve raid compositions with 8-9 berserker/viper-based builds more often.
The reason you see 8 damage builds+tank+healer is because vew raids only do VG and quit.
The timers are generous enough on VG and Sabatha to go more tank. Unfortunately this messes with the targeting mechanic of VG though, and is barely useful for Sabatha because her mechanics are mostly due or die and a bit more tank won’t help (except for the last phase maybe, but if you’ve gotten that far you’d probably rather get her killed asap).
Why only VG raids? Since if you go tank you won’t pass the Goreseval dps check and my guess is few people run with tank setups for VB only to switch to damage at Gore.
To answer you question, VG and Sabatha both check mechanics and raid interaction via:
- positioning
- objectives during different phases
- player interaction with one another
- CC
So no, dps, hps and cc are not the only things encounters are designed around.
There is multiple reasons why raids are dps heavy, most of them have nothing to do with timers in the current raid wing. All you need to do is actually understand the fights.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
My thrill in PvE doesn’t usually come from loot. It comes from getting stuff done. Like when we have a few seconds left to finish a 30 location guild trek and we’re down to 5 seconds and beat it. That’s what thrills me.
Every time we get to T4 on VB at night or TD with pugs. Every time I raid.
If you get thrilled by loot, you got the wrong game, bud.
Both of these.
If you haven’t figured out that GW2 is not about loot, no one can help you.
That being said:
- entering VB at HoT launch and figuring out the new areas was awesome
- Queen’s Gauntlet and other events similar to it
Haven’t cared about loot for ages now. Sure getting that nice item here and there which sells for good gold is nice, but not important.
Topic has derailed quite a bit now has it not? We are suddenly at gear disparrity and other things.
I still lack any type of sensible or possible solution from the “we don’t want timers crowd”.
Here’s the thing, once you come up with at least 1 way of making content work in this type of itemisation game with lack of trinity, people would be a lot more willing to take a “let’s try it approach”. Moaning and crying about timers without offering actual solutions will get you no where.
Then, once you’ve come up with that 1 idea that works instead of timers, make sure you expand on how you would make all the fights work in a similar way because after all, the raid team needs to design multiple engaging boss fights and not just that one encounter.
Here are some hints to think about while coming up with a solution:
- this game has active defences as a central part of its survival mechanic. Overriding them works to a certain extent, but you can’t make them obsolete for every encounter
- itemaisation in general. not going to get into detail, but make sure you understand how the different stats interact and especially how enemy AI reacts to them.
- latency – while a minor point, you need to remember this is a MMO and reaction and latency are a factor
- 9 classes. remember that the content needs to work for a mix of classes. Designing around 1 or 2 classes being mandatory works once or twice, but gets old real fast.
So, now I’m really interested in seeing what people come up with. Since everyone here seems to be an expert game and boss encounter designer, let’s hear them, the great ideas how timers can be reworked and removed with the formentioned points in mind.
Maybe expand and make an entire miniboss fight or such. That would certainly help people a lot in understanding how this sort of content is supposed to work without timers. Also try to avoid replacing one type of timer with another. No, that dps timer versus is a general fight timer is NOT a different mechanic or design.
“Keep in mind, too, that the evade frames in the ‘traverse through the Mists’ skills”
I have to disagree in case of UA i think. Datamined version had prevent capture point which implies that you had invul actually
http://i.imgur.com/SjX7u2A.png
Lets also not forget that some of datamined skills was better than what we have now (while were at it, dagger would be better than sword offhand btw), for example sword grasping shadow has 600 range in datamined pic, shield 4 cures one condi and staff looks much more interesing than the support/utility junk we have atm (pic above for staff)
http://i.imgur.com/wP1UXvH.jpg
“The idea of having a function key to switch modes of a weaponset is an interesting one”
Remember datamined skills for guard?
1. Puncture Shot (DPS Stance): Fire an arrow which pierces enemies, damaging them and causing vulnerability.
1. Puncture Shot (Support Stance): Fire an arrow which pierces enemies. When the arrow passes through an ally it will heal them for a small amount.
2. Light Arrow (DPS Stance): Charge up energy, creating a powerful attack which pierces through enemies.
2. Light Arrow (Support Stance): Charge up energy coating your arrow with light, causing it to heal allies which it passes through.
3. Symbol of Battle (DPS Stance): Fire a slow arcing arrow which explodes on impact, burning targets and searing a symbol of battle into the ground.
3. Symbol of Battle (Support Stance): Fire a slow arcing arrow which explodes on impact, healing allies and searing a symbol of energy into the ground.
4. Protector’s Chain (DPS Stance): Fire an arrow attached with a chain of light. The chain will attach itself to the target, pulling in and crippling other nearby enemies.
4. Protector’s Chain (Support Stance): Fire an arrow attached with a chain of light. The chain will attach itself to the target, knocking back and crippling other nearby enemies.
5. Zealot’s Retribution Stance: Zealot’s Retribution Stance changes your weapon skills to damage and debuff enemies.
5. Protector’s Light Stance: Your longbow skills focus on supporting and aiding alliesIt could be applied as our 5 skill or f2. In the long run rev will suffer due to wep swap. Thats what happen when you do lazy fix.
In case of scrapper.. they can always take mortal as ranged option but the question is.. for what?
…. datamined versions? Really?
So all the changes made to revenant inbetween beta weekends were basically just for fun?
Datamined stuff means diddly squat until something is released. When designing new things in games there is always a process between concept and artists idea and final release product.
Your entire argument about engineers and elementalists is flawed. Those classes are designed with no weapon swap due to one very simple reason:
- oversupply of skills
Both engineer and elementalist have, even without weapon swap, access to the most amount of skills compared to ANY other class ingame. Engineer due to his nature of weapon kit and belt mechanic, elementalist due to summoned weapons and his 4 attunements which change most weapon and utility skills.
Now guess what revenant was lacking the most before they implemented weapons swap? Skills. Weapon swap was a redesign decision after arenanet noticed, due to feedback from the playerbase, that revenant had a to small access to variety of skills.
You should feel ashamed to even put engineer and elementalist in the same bapark as revenant. Those 2 classes have not only more customisation options thanks to changable utilities but also a way way WAY bigger pool of skills to chose from. Revenant as it stands now has the Least amount of available skills compared to ANY other class ingame. Even engineers with not a single weapon utility selected have access to:
- f1-f5 which change depending on utilities (5 skills)
- weapon skills (5 skills)
- customisable heal, utility and elite skills (5 skills)
That is the same amount of skills with more customisability than revenant had without weapon swap and that is without using one of the classes basic mechanics of being able to use weapon kits.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
Staff – used for breakbars
Hammer – used in pve when melee is too risky option or when someone like me is just lazy
Shield – no use since nerf
Sword offhand – little use unless you need block
Axe – dps boost to sword, pull to stack up trash mobs
Mace – useless due to torment in pve
Sword – messed up and bugged as kittenI play in all formats. Sure there are things that weapon swap is useful but does it worth all the nerfing that happened lately? Fun fact is that people still complain about rev, i was actually surprised that we didnt received any nerf in this patch
See, I knew you were assuming that weapon swaps and nerf had to do with each other. They do not.
Here is a train of thought: removing weapon swap will not get revenant weapons buffed.
As far as I can remember we got weapon swap and shiro for BWE1 and Herald on BWE2.
Youre right. Memory failed me. Questio is did it really improved rev all that much? Mmmhm.. not even close to herald i believe in the end.
I disagree that weapon swap was added to give revenants a ranged option.
It was added because the class was very boring and not very engaging to play. It still is simply due to the very constricted nature of having almost no build possibilities.
Before arenanet make any changes, they need to figure out what and how they want to design and keep designing revenant. Removing weapon swamp right now would kill the class.
That being said, the entire concept of utility swaping is very wonky. The game is not designed around this kind of balance. All the other 8 classes are designed with different combinations of utilities in mind. Revenant fixed utilities makes it very hard to hit that sweetspot between overpowered and underpowered.
Weapon swap, base revenant legends and herald are 3 completely different things. Removing weapon swap will not fix the other 2 problems. Weapon swap did not fix revenant, but it provides at least some form of customisation and maybe a way for arenanet to futher balance the class while making the class as a whole more engaging.
Was weapon swap useful for me back then? Yes and no. It was QoL change and i could use hammer as opening weapon, but once i swapped to s/s i camped it till the end. Im still doing that btw. But what if you dont use hammer and go for staff instead? It starts to becoming a little broken as rev can spam blocks like no class in this game, even more so if you use warrior runes.
So your main argument against weapon swap is the fact that you can get multiple blocks from different offhand weapons. That’s a very limited view on what weapon swap allows and is good for. This complaint could easily be fixed by changing one of the offhand weapons skillsets.
By the time Anet figure what they want to do with rev ill be old with long white bear.
Looking around..what warrior is supposed to do? Mesmer? Ele after nerf? I know what rev is supposed to do at least – mimic other professions via legends. Question is if Anet understand that tho. I dont think removing weapon swap would kill the class tho (as i basically play without wep swap atm)Overall i start to think that we should have ended with f1-4 like ele in the end. Someone kittened up.
“So your main argument against weapon swap is the fact that you can get multiple blocks from different offhand weapons. That’s a very limited view on what weapon swap allows and is good for. This complaint could easily be fixed by changing one of the offhand weapons skillsets”
Which might make some weapons even more trash than they was. Atm i consider only mace/axe being in viable state as sword was messed up last patch, shield n hammer deleted. But in the end we will get nerfed both weapon skills, traits and utilities. Look at balance updates since launch.
And once you step out of spvp and play some of the other game modes, maybe you’ll discover some use for the other weapon sets.
Nothing of what you said so far has in anyway made a convincing argument that weapon swap should get removed.
My guess is you are assuming that by getting weapon swap removed arenanet are somehow magically going to buff revenant weapons. I do not share that sentiment and highly doubt that is what is going to happen. As is, weapon swap is one of the few things that add to this very broken class. I’m not going to assume or spekulate on anything arenanet are going to do so I see no reason in having it removed.
Not this again. Please.
Timers are there so you can’t run 10 nomads hammer guardians and tank your way through every fight.
And what is wrong about that? Weren’t we supposed to play the way we want?
and raids were ment to be the most challenging content ingame. Both of those conflict when one makes the other obsolete.
Doesn’t follow. As long as there are checks that must be passed to continue (which do not have to be dps-based. Gorse World Eater is a good example), the fight can throw them at you infinitely. As long as the checks themselves are not trivial to clear, people will eventually start making urrecoverable mistakes.
Not sure what you are smoking. Goreseval is THE definition of a timer which cuts off the fight. It’s probably the only fight where raids wipe due to timer instead of mechanics.
On the same note, yes you are correct in that if you made challenging content challenging enough it would not matter what gear you were wearing. Unfortunately your reasoning ends there since you do not consider (neither have you given any suggestions) as to how this would account for the higher survivability in tanky gear versus glass canon gear. In order for tanky gear to not trivilise content you’d have to make up some insane kitten which essentially becomes undoable in glass canon gear (essentially only making people wear again the minimum amount of tank required, rest damage). Even IF you somehow managed to create a couple of encounters, you would be severly limiting yourself as a developer.
They do it about as fine as grind and hamster wheels replace content. Those are also simple and easy solutions to accomplish easy goal.
Simple and easy doesn’t equal good. Quite often it isn’t.
I’m going to go out on a limp and say that you just felt like comparing apples to oranges. You’ve already shown you have no understanding of how encounter design works in a game, no reason not to throw in a good sounding but totally nonsens comparison.
The last few weeks have been a blast! Like you, I was pretty lost when I started again, but following the Living Story helped me find my feet a lot and really connect with the world. Hero points were a bit of a grind though.
Just a small addition since hero point grinding can be anoying. The Hero challenges in HoT give 10 hero points a piece instead of 1. It is more than possible to max your elite specialisation with HoT only challenges (though likely tricky on a first character).
For the more difficult challenges, there are often people running Hero point farms in the new maps. Just join a group and get them done that way.
Not sure Fay completely read up on Commander’s since it’s +Power, +Precision, +Toughness, and +Boon Duration (combined with the over higher stat bonuses from new 4 stat armor). He is right about it being a weak choice over any pure damage gear for pve.
As of right now, commander’s shines for mesmer tanks if at all. In every other situation you should be going maximum damage. Mesmer are already on the very low end of personal damage, so no reason to kitten yourself even futher.
I disagree that weapon swap was added to give revenants a ranged option.
It was added because the class was very boring and not very engaging to play. It still is simply due to the very constricted nature of having almost no build possibilities.
Before arenanet make any changes, they need to figure out what and how they want to design and keep designing revenant. Removing weapon swamp right now would kill the class.
That being said, the entire concept of utility swaping is very wonky. The game is not designed around this kind of balance. All the other 8 classes are designed with different combinations of utilities in mind. Revenant fixed utilities makes it very hard to hit that sweetspot between overpowered and underpowered.
Weapon swap, base revenant legends and herald are 3 completely different things. Removing weapon swap will not fix the other 2 problems. Weapon swap did not fix revenant, but it provides at least some form of customisation and maybe a way for arenanet to futher balance the class while making the class as a whole more engaging.
Was weapon swap useful for me back then? Yes and no. It was QoL change and i could use hammer as opening weapon, but once i swapped to s/s i camped it till the end. Im still doing that btw. But what if you dont use hammer and go for staff instead? It starts to becoming a little broken as rev can spam blocks like no class in this game, even more so if you use warrior runes.
So your main argument against weapon swap is the fact that you can get multiple blocks from different offhand weapons. That’s a very limited view on what weapon swap allows and is good for. This complaint could easily be fixed by changing one of the offhand weapons skillsets.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
Depending on when you stoped playing GW2 there might be more or less new stuff to cover.
In general I’d recommend just try playing a new character and get used to the game as a whole. If possible, message old friends/guildies and start doing things with people you know.
Otherwise, checkout Bog Otters mini guide for returning players. It’s slightly dated but still fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce_dvXJercI&list=PLMgOinWh2Y7FbZyBhlqgHoPI2w8_76_1w
To answer your questions:
1. try to familiarise yourself with the gameplay in general. Hard to give advice since we don’t know when you quit.
2. the elite specialisations (which you are refering to) are unlocked during the HoT content. There is 1 new class which is HoT only too, the revenant.
3. a total subjective point. Some will say no, others yes. As far as getting reaquainted with the game it’s certainly not mandatory. Maybe give the game a couple of days a go and if you enjoy it, read up and decide if you want to get HoT. Personally I’d say yes, but that’s just me.
snip
Beat me to it. What Lan said.
The major obvious flaw with this example is that it assumes all players run dungeons. This is so far off its not even funny. Talk about grindy, doing the same thing over and over. How long would the player base stay at 100k if that was the case. You can not cherry pick a specific lucrative activity to talk in general about the overall economy. Plus I should be able to play in a way that I enjoy and accomplish all the game has to offer.
You must have missed the waves of anger over the dungeon change. The 100k was an example and accounts for more than enough people on average.
Putting of dungeon running as “no one did it” is one of the weakest arguments I’ve heard in a long time, especially with the still ongoing demands from players arenanet reintroduce the gold rewards. You are most definitely not actively playing this game at the moment or keeping track of what has been going on since HoT.
The entire deflation we are seeing now is in part due to the reduced liquid gold from dungeons.
On this very topic in another post I replied listing a laundry list of items to spend gold on. The gold sinks you list do not even scratch the surface.
So your solution for gold sinks being to low is removing or circumventing one of the biggest ones in the game? Okay, thanks was nice having this dialog. Please keep talking to that wall you very sane person.
On that notion, I’d go as far as to say, the TP is the BIGGEST goldsink in this game, by far. The sheer amount of transactions daily remove gold in a dimension no amount of gemstore or gold-gem conversion (funny enough, the tax here also works as a gold sink) could ever come close to. If I’d have to list gold and items sinks by value amount subjectively i’d probably go with (highest to weakest):
- TP
- Mystic forge
- gold-gem exchange
- everything else
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
I have been watching the prices of Legendaries since Beta and they have drastically increased in price since then. Just because a price stabilizes does not mean it is not inflated. When a small minority of people control a specific market and they choose to keep within a certain high price range does not mean it is not inflated.
Wrong. The price increases are not only due to a small majority of players controlling a market. It’s due to balance changes, players not knowing how much value precursors actually have/had at launch and inflation. The same inflation being held in check by the TP tax. Please inform yourself before spouting nonsense. (let’s look at Twilight, probably one of the most traded legendary items ingame https://www.gw2tp.com/item/30704-twilight?full=1 )
No. Anet did not do this because players were getting scammed they did it because they were not making all of the profit the gold sellers were making. This is a profit driven restriction not a compassionate player feature. The tax is purely to motivate Gem sales. The tax creates the issue of having to leave items on the TP forever otherwise you take a 5% loss which is usually just about all of your profit. It has almost no effect on keeping prices reasonable just look at all the items listed above 1000 Gold.
The TP tax has no bearing on gem sales. Seriously this alone shows you have 0 understanding of how this games economy works, or economy in general.
The massive nerf to liquid gold from dungeons has had a way bigger impact on gem sales/prices than any TP tax ever had.
The TP tax though reduces speculation on the TP since, as you mentioned, putting up overpriced items will cost you a fee. Thus the 5% listing fee discourages mispricing and overspeculation.
You are wrong again.
I never mentioned removal of the TP but as far as your example goes the TP lacks vital information in order to make such determinations. I have listed items for the lowest price and they have taken months to sell. Just because it show a price range does not mean the item is actually selling. You would have to have rate of sale indicators and history for the TP to be that useful.
The TP provides the necessary amount of information for a random user to make a decision. For traders and others, there are enough websites which will provide the additional information. Overabundance of information for a normal user is a thing and does not need to be for normal users.
Dusk may sell for more than Carcharias but it does not actually have a higher intrinsic value in GW2. They are both Legendaries and they are both worth the same number of achievement points. What the difference in value really shows is a flawed drop rate.
What the difference shows is a different supply and demand from the player base. Are you for real? Please stop, you are making any semi-sane person’s heads hurt.
The arguement from me is not for specifically avoiding the 15% tax or getting more profit. It is a very simple thing for Anet to implement and they way it stands now irresponsibly puts people at great risk of theft. All I want is a confirmation mechanism. I am not concerned at all with people price gouging others in P2P trade. If you are selling or buying you must do your do diligence to insurance you are getting a fair deal and if you do not then that is your problem.
Or, they could just not bother with opening the floodgates for gray and back markets, keep their perfectly working inflation counter mechanism via TP and save themselves a lot of unneeded hassle.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
I thought Ascended gear was required to find a raid group, hence all the “lfr eternal full ascended zerk war/herald/dps, etc.”
But I prefer the way it is now, since I’m already full ascended and halfway on my 2nd ascended armor set, it’s a good thing Anet made it more difficult to get ascended gear because I will be on top of everyone else in full exotics! Anet keeping it that way rationally benefits me! So don’t be jealous and mad, it’s only politics and economic inequality, the rich only get richer and the rest get poorer, you mad yet?
Except that we already covered in this thread that:
- getting ascended now is actually easier than before except if you craft all of it, and even then it does not compare to ascended release prices
- you fail to show how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer except for wanting to throw out a cynical phrase which makes no sense
- you still fail to show how ascended is required
Oh wait, I see, you forgot to put in “I want free stuff” in your post. Silly me…
I’ve already stated how I’ve seen in other games. Short burn-phases to change phase or DPS vs the Boss’s DPS on specific phase(s) are ways i’ve seen. A timer for the whole kill itself is just…not creative and lazy. Also incorporating burst DPS into PvE would neat too.
And as others have pointed out, all you do is chop up the timer instead of actually working around it.
Please come up with a serious solution and not just timer semantics.
Your current “solution” is just as lazy as the timers you complain about.
Here is my suggestion, remove the timer but increase the boss damage by 500% after the same amount of time. Problem solved for 90% of the complaining people in this thread since it seems most don’t even understand how basic boss design works.
That’s how those timers work right now actually.
Hence why I suggested it since most of the suggestions so far have bee along the same lines.
Well, now that almost everyone has established that ascended armor isn’t required or needed for almost anything, I have to ask, why did you spend over 400 gold crafting it? Why would anyone spend that amount of gold for something that has so little value? And I will reiterate that given that cost, it would be far more sensible to have changeable stats and sigils. But of course, that feature will be coming in the new legendary armor, and we wouldn’t want to spoil the next big grind fest, would we?
Very easy to answer:
- people being OCD about having the best possible gear no matter how much sense it makes (this is probably the major one)
- people getting all the pieces they need while just playing the game (especially true for trinkets)
- no agony damage. Before HoT you couldn’t rerun swamp and ignore agony damage quite as easy. Full armor was useful for fractal 50
- people not actually doing the math and believing ascended armor gives more stats than it actually does (nope, it’s still only aproximately 2%)
- any variation of the above
From a simple cost-benefit analysis, ascended armor is absolutely not useful, you are correct about this. Then again, if people were rational beings, a lot of thigns would be very different in this world.
Anyway, there is only two ways to keep inflation in check. Limit the source of pure gold or add gold sink. All the methods you talked are all about limiting the source of pure gold. That’s the difference between for exemple Silverwaste, which give almost no gold, but several items instead and Fractal, which give you a lot of direct gold.
The problem with your ideas is that it doesn’t remove any of the gold the game currently give us. If they would remove the TP fee, they would still have to remove gold source or add a new gold sink. And we know how people reacted when they changed the reward of dungeon from direct gold to more valuable material. Dungeon give more reward than ever, but everybody snob them because of the gold nerf.
This.
Had a really nice response explaining the differences between gold rewards and gold influx and gold sinks in the GW2 economy, but honestly, this has been discussed so many times (I actually just deleted it and rewrote this part since honestly, why talk to brick walls). There always will be a couple of new “players” who don’t understand basic economics (and some of those have been going wild in this thread).
Suffice to say, even if you might not agree about how arenanet delivers economic change notice, what their aim is, how they go about achieveing their goals, the GW2 economy is quite stable and more or less inflation free to a certain degree.
There is a certain rotation in what goods have more or less value (mostly driven by design decisions, new content or changes in demand) but we have yet to see the spiral of inflation happen as it does in many other MMOs.
The 15% TP tax is a major component of keeping the games economy healthy.
I’ve already stated how I’ve seen in other games. Short burn-phases to change phase or DPS vs the Boss’s DPS on specific phase(s) are ways i’ve seen. A timer for the whole kill itself is just…not creative and lazy. Also incorporating burst DPS into PvE would neat too.
And as others have pointed out, all you do is chop up the timer instead of actually working around it.
Please come up with a serious solution and not just timer semantics.
Your current “solution” is just as lazy as the timers you complain about.
Here is my suggestion, remove the timer but increase the boss damage by 500% after the same amount of time. Problem solved for 90% of the complaining people in this thread since it seems most don’t even understand how basic boss design works.
The lack of player trading by reason of scam prevention is an excellent example of running a market on socialism.
In a free market, you get some people who are intelligent enough to not get scammed and know how to best sell their items to get the price they want. These people get the full value for what they sell. You also get other people who are impatient, who don’t do research on the market, who don’t know how to sell or buy things in the best ways, and who are stupid enough to fall for dumb tricks. These people lose value constantly. Instead of supporting a system where skilled players get rewarded and dumb players get punished, ANet spreads the pain of being scammed onto everyone.
I think someone needs to read up on government responsibilities and duties. No, free markets are not absolutely free, not even in the real world. There are rules and laws to adhere to.
This is great for the idiot who reads at a first-grade level and doesn’t have the mental awareness to avoid being fooled, because 15% loss all the time may be much better than sometimes 100%. The players that know what they’re doing though take a substantial hit all the time that no market ability can counteract. In fact, the only way around such a thing is to use a system that is even more scam prone and no way enforced, which puts a much greater risk on the market player than even the most basic system of two-way exchange. Even if this risk could somehow be accounted for, the recently introduced cap on gold transfers between players outright stops any transactions of considerably high levels from taking place more than a few times.
In other words, like most areas of GW2, players of all levels are robbed of their agency. For bad players, this is a minor loss, and perhaps even a benefit in some cases, while skilled players get completely dumped on. The biggest beneficiary of the whole thing is ANet, because a system which drains the economy so well by doing that every single time a transaction is made makes the most stereotypical scam of purchasing in-game gold with real world currency a sound business opportunity for the studio.
The irony in what you write is so delicious. Yes, you’d be one of these chums who does get scamed since you don’t undertand the most basic design decision behind the trading post.
Yes, the main benefactor of the TP fee is arenanet because, well because they enjoy making ingame gold go poof. It gets them off.
Then again, the ingame economy which does not spiral out of control due to inflation, as it does in many many many other MMOs, is of absolute no effect to the random player.
The TP fee allows arenanet to:
- prevent a more than necessary devotion of human ressources to the subject of ingame scams. ressources better used on other parts of the game → good for the player
- allows them to better manage and controll the ingame economy by keeping gray and blackmarkets to a minimum → good for general balance
- allows for better control of RMT → technically part of scaming, but I’ll put this as a seperate point since it is a majoy one → good for the player
All you suvival of the fittest hacks need to get out more. This is a game with rules, just as society has rules.
who cares about scams? It all makes game more immersive and alive.
It seems you are all too soft, well, no, it doesn’t seems, you ARE.
In last 5 years I’ve seen this world turn around 180 and people just became so weak, afraid, without self worth, without self spirit.
They don’t want fight for anything, they don’t want make mistakes, they wanna play it all safe when something they care about is on cost. kitten .
Oh absolutely, compared to games like Eve Online, Shadowblade, etc. this game is closer to Hello Kitty than those MMOs. Only problem, you fail to in anyway show how this is a bad thing?
The game has a core player base it tries to reach. You obviously are not part of that playerbase.
gw2 economy will fall down, it has one major flow in it
Well they are at 3.5 years and going strong. Who knows, maybe your predictions will come true, or maybe your just another https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgg8OuA8D0Q
Also I am amused at your real life comparisons. You do know this is a videogame which people want to enjoy right? Maybe take gaming a tad less serious or look for a different game where cutthroat player interaction is desired and wanted.
All I see, is people complaining about timers suggesting that ingame mechanics should take the place of timers.
So in essence, you are objecting to a numeric value which cuts off the fights, compared to a non-numeric visible value which, if it was ment to prevent exploitation of over tanking and just afking the content, would essentially do the exact same thing.
Sure, having non-visible boss mechanics kill you eventually is the neater option compared to timers. Timers though allow for more variety in boss behavior and developement of boss mechanics since you don’t have to find a neat way to end the fight (from a developer point of view).
Personally I see no difference in generous timers (let’s be honest, the current timers are very generous) versus boss mechanics that after some magical timer/event step start ranking up to wipe the group. One is more elegant, sure, but both do the exact same thing = make the fight end at a given point in time.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
The TL;DR i’m making here if you will is neither solution is healthy, but i’d rather if given the option take the power creep as the content is already trivial for most raiders / raiding guilds in the short term.
Again, this is not about “raiders” or non-raiders. It’s about a way of approaching game design and developement. GW2 does not allow for big bursts of power creep. You either introduce power creep and makes parts of the game obsolete or you keep powerlevels constant and try to redesign the game on this level.
In the long term i’d like to see a shift away from the current raid design, and more emphasis be put on player/mob interaction (similar to what thad said above) and less on the traditionally hit it harder till its dead approach. A refresh on the mechanics that allow from more distinct play patterns to emerge is always the better option for any content imo.
That is the exact opposite of power creep. You can’t first make content obsolete by inrtoducing power creep, then redesign it. Well technically you could if you are willing to redesign the entire pve content there is (much like Blizzard did with Cataclysm where they redesign big parts of the vanilla world). That would be so expensive though that the more sensible approach is to keep power creep in check and redesign off of that – ergo classes that are to powerful need to get nerfed instead others buffed. Unless you’ve had a huge update and all the classes are severly underpowered compared to the current pve content, then you could bring the weaker ones up.
I don’t think you’re quite grasping it. Given 2 evil’s of Power Creep or Constantly horrible balance cycles involving nothing but nerf bats, while not addressing the route of the problem (mechanical complexity) i’ll take power creep. This is my personal opinion while being fully aware power creep is bad.
What i’d rather see is changes to the current raids design. It is ultimately too simplistic, which causes certain outliers as far as DPS specific power creep is concerned. This will help in addressing the perceived notion of power creep because you wont be incentivized to take 3-4x (top dps classes) as they may or may not be useful in the content.
As is, people are already saying “raids” are easy… So really what’s the harm in them being “easier”, especially given there’s a new release coming in the next 3 months time ?
I fully understand what you mean, just that your argumantation is still flawed.
First you’d have to prove that balance is so bad that it merits this kind of drastic shortterm solution.
Second you’d have to argue that the balance problem could be solved with power creep, which is even harder to do if you proved that balance so far has been terrible (since if arenanet hasn’t been able to balance decently now, how will they in the future). Thus your “solution” of using power creep to keep players happy has nothing to do with balance. It would simply be a rotation of increasing power of classes to keep players happy without actually helping or fixing balance issues.
Result: the problems stay as they are with just constant breaks between which class gets to be on top now due to overbuffing instead of nerfing. The game as a whole suffers in the medium and long run since we essentially start a buffing armsrace until no content remains playable.
Not like its the cost worth to try for maximising the attuned and infused agony slots. Beyond +12 agony, the price quickly reaches truly ridiculous levels, thanks to the truly obscene amounts of thermocatalytic reagents needed.
If you have a full set of ascended armor + trinkets. Theres x14 slots you can fill with +7 versatile AR infusions. Coupled with the 5 bonus slots (attuned and infused ) you can add to your rings and cloak. You merely need to craft 4x 10 AR and 1x 12AR in order to reach the 150 AR cap.
Or go 3×10 AR and 2×11 AR. Slightly cheaper and gets you to 150 too.
Otherwise yes, the 20-30 copper per +1 AR price has made the infusions a lot cheaper.
Have you looked at the tp, to see how much the higher AR infusions costs? Definitely NOT cheap if you go beyond whats listed above.
Read, comprehend, then post.
I was refering to the fact that +1 AR infusions cost around 20-30 copper a piece, where as they were at 12-15 SILVER a piece pre HoT.
Also due to the exponential nature or how infusions work, 3×10 + 2×11 (requires a total of 7 +10 AR infusions) is cheaper than 4×10 + 1×12 (requires a total of 8 +10 AR infusions). Simple math really.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)
Not like its the cost worth to try for maximising the attuned and infused agony slots. Beyond +12 agony, the price quickly reaches truly ridiculous levels, thanks to the truly obscene amounts of thermocatalytic reagents needed.
If you have a full set of ascended armor + trinkets. Theres x14 slots you can fill with +7 versatile AR infusions. Coupled with the 5 bonus slots (attuned and infused ) you can add to your rings and cloak. You merely need to craft 4x 10 AR and 1x 12AR in order to reach the 150 AR cap.
Or go 3×10 AR and 2×11 AR. Slightly cheaper and gets you to 150 too.
Otherwise yes, the 20-30 copper per +1 AR price has made the infusions a lot cheaper.
The TL;DR i’m making here if you will is neither solution is healthy, but i’d rather if given the option take the power creep as the content is already trivial for most raiders / raiding guilds in the short term.
Again, this is not about “raiders” or non-raiders. It’s about a way of approaching game design and developement. GW2 does not allow for big bursts of power creep. You either introduce power creep and makes parts of the game obsolete or you keep powerlevels constant and try to redesign the game on this level.
In the long term i’d like to see a shift away from the current raid design, and more emphasis be put on player/mob interaction (similar to what thad said above) and less on the traditionally hit it harder till its dead approach. A refresh on the mechanics that allow from more distinct play patterns to emerge is always the better option for any content imo.
That is the exact opposite of power creep. You can’t first make content obsolete by inrtoducing power creep, then redesign it. Well technically you could if you are willing to redesign the entire pve content there is (much like Blizzard did with Cataclysm where they redesign big parts of the vanilla world). That would be so expensive though that the more sensible approach is to keep power creep in check and redesign off of that – ergo classes that are to powerful need to get nerfed instead others buffed. Unless you’ve had a huge update and all the classes are severly underpowered compared to the current pve content, then you could bring the weaker ones up.
Again though at what point during those 3 years of balance did we not have “Power Creep”. It’s about the only way outside of gutting classes that Anet knows how to address balance. It’s never small numerical tweaks to bring all the roles in line with a desired base performance standard.
This is what i’m getting at here, you can say it’s bad and i’ll agree it’s bad but it’s what we have as far as balance goes. Take your pick something that’s ultimately fun for players, or a bunch of more of what’s going down in the mesmer subforum of complaints about how their class specialization got gutted and left for not.
Thaddeus already answered this nicely, but I just wanted to add a bit.
Your logic is flawed. You assume (correctly at this point) that players enjoy buffs more than nerfs. That is correct. You further assume that this extends to the game in general, and that is where you are wrong. While players might enjoy classes being brought on par via buffs instead of ners, the resulting powercreep makes the game as a whole easier, more boring and cuts enjoyment severly. Now most traditional MMOs counter this by making items obsolete or adding futher levels to the level cap thus reseting the power creep and starting the process anew. Both of those don’t work in GW2 thus all people are left with is more and more obsolete content.
One could argue that what’s actually hampering enjoyment of the game isn’t the classes. It’s the lack of frequent meaningful updates. One can even take the recent Shatter Rework as proof of this. Multiple maps were filled and people are out there doing it more frequently because of changes to it.
If we look back at the games history we can see this is fairly common, infact one would argue more so in bringing players back to doing old “trivial” content than any single balance update ever could.
So to argue that content being easier and trivial due to balance while technically correct isn’t the only reason for it being trivial lest we want to forget that age and repetition also kill content.
Oh I absolutely agree. Now if you could explain how this point relates to balance and power creep changes?
Ever heard the proverb:“Two wrongs don’t make a right?”
Just because the game is lacking meaningful, consistent upgrades of fresh content does not mean that balance and power creep should get out of hand. Just as repetition of content and experience, while also responsible for eventually making the game easier, do not justify power creep. It’s just two sides to a coin which both need to be adressed.
Now if you are arguing that class buffs should work as short term “fun boosts and motivators” for players, sure that would work. I agreed with you on the fact that buffs in general are fun for players. Unfortunately I disagree that this is anything else than a short term solution, since the medium and longterm effects, as explained earlier, have a negative effect on the games enjoyment.
Again though at what point during those 3 years of balance did we not have “Power Creep”. It’s about the only way outside of gutting classes that Anet knows how to address balance. It’s never small numerical tweaks to bring all the roles in line with a desired base performance standard.
This is what i’m getting at here, you can say it’s bad and i’ll agree it’s bad but it’s what we have as far as balance goes. Take your pick something that’s ultimately fun for players, or a bunch of more of what’s going down in the mesmer subforum of complaints about how their class specialization got gutted and left for not.
Thaddeus already answered this nicely, but I just wanted to add a bit.
Your logic is flawed. You assume (correctly at this point) that players enjoy buffs more than nerfs. That is correct. You further assume that this extends to the game in general, and that is where you are wrong. While players might enjoy classes being brought on par via buffs instead of ners, the resulting powercreep makes the game as a whole easier, more boring and cuts enjoyment severly. Now most traditional MMOs counter this by making items obsolete or adding futher levels to the level cap thus reseting the power creep and starting the process anew. Both of those don’t work in GW2 thus all people are left with is more and more obsolete content.
Messed around with daredevil a bit today to see if its actual good dps in a real game solo scenario instead of a raid with perfect boon uptime and a boss that almost never attacks.
I soloed lupi about 5 times and all kills were between 3:45 and 4:30, regardless of RNG.
Lets take 4:00 as an average, that means 1,47m hp / 240 seconds = +/- 6,1k dps.This even includes reflected autoattacks since staff autoattack pretty much has a “perma reflect uptime” on lupi if you time it right.
If you compare that 4 minutes to other professions its honestly not that good.
Ele can easily do sub-3, engi can do around 3:30, condi ranger can do 3;30 and easily push 3 minutes, even warrior can do a sub 4.Daredevil gets carried by quickness really hard, if you find yourself in any scenario without it the dps instantly drops to average level.
I feel like discussing a nerf based on a single boss kill is kinda ridiculous because it says NOTHING about the class itself, it just tells that the class is good against a specific boss, under specific circumstances.
That’s like nerfing mesmer because reflects do well against lupi and make it do a theoretical super high dps, even tho in other fights it has low dps.Here’s a daredevil solo to further prove my point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T7ApkLgtHYEven tho the time is currently the fastest p2 solo there is, if you compare the boss fights like abom where thief doesn’t have an advantage due to reflects, to for example goku’s video, the kill time isn’t that good, and that counts for every boss where there are no high damage attacks to reflect
Nice analysis, unfortunately it is of absolutely 0 meaning.
For pve, balance is around full boons since that is what raids will usually have and provide. Sorry, there is no need to discuss pve balance in any other game mode since the only interesting area of balance is raids. Even fractals are faceroll easy after the post trait change and HoT powercreep. If your raid is not at cap might and quickness, you have a very weak setup. Alacrity is the icing on the cake ever since the nerf, but will provide a futher dps increase in a proper setup. Again, no one is advocating for thief damage nerfs, just that the damage needs to get spread out to weapon and utility skills and not mindless auto attack.
From a spvp perspective, well just play a bit spvp and do a count of how many necros/thiefs are currently seeing play. Personally I think this is what is going to get the class nerfed eventually since I doubt arenanet are as much concerned for pve balance. But if you start having 3-5 of a class stacking on teams it doesn’t take a genious that change will be comming (sadly no matter if warrented or not).
After the Fractured update, I ran scale 30/40/50 fractals daily. In 6 months of fractal running, I didn’t get a single ascended box or fractal weapon. I started running fractals again 3 weeks ago. I’ve received 4 ascended boxes so far.
This is the real problem with very small population data sets like the King data, which is basically less than 1000 chests. To be really representitive it needs to be something like 10,000 or more, all from the same account ideally.
A guildie of mine has been running the champ daily and all the other dailies pretty regularly since the patch, let’s just say that’s 4 runs a week for 5 weeks, so roughly 20 (as a lowball estimate) of each chest. He has gotten 1 armor chest and 1 weapon both from the veteran chest, nothing from the champ chest.
Everyone I know who used to run fractals feels like the drops are still significantly lower than prior to HoT, again impressions based on very low sample sizes so basically irrelevant…
However, the initial rewards settings were dramatically worse than before, so bad that even Anet had to do something about it. Of course, Anet says that it was never intended to be worse, but look at the game-wide gold and reward nerfing and massive gold sinks that came with HoT, I find it hard to believe they nerfed fractal rewards “by accident” and I also don’t believe they returned things to the pre-HoT levels, regardless of the King data. Anet wants gold removed from all aspects of the game. Look at the HoT maps, the main rewards are now account bound map currencies… not gold.
People will pull more than one precursor in round of throwing things into the mystic toilet, others will do the exact same thing many times over and get nothing. RNG makes low number sample sets very biased to “luck” or “unluck”
This is the real problem with very small population data sets like the King data, which is basically less than 1000 chests. To be really representitive it needs to be something like 10,000 or more, all from the same account ideally.
771 chest is pretty good if you ask me. Sure it’s not perfect, 2-3k would be ideal if you ask me. But at the same time it’s the best source of data by far. And asking for 10 000 chest from one account is just stupid. That’s 27 years of fractal dude.
In two months there were able to get 771 chest result. So it probably gonna take another 3-6 months to get 2-3k chests. But even then, I don’t think the % will change that much tbh.
Well, I am pretty sure that 771 means the the error bars on that % droprate are quite larger probably +/- 5% or more and how do you explain my guildie who is essentially zero for 20, according to Kings numbers he should have 2 ascended armors or weapons from the champ chest? The problem with considering % chance with RNG is that you can flip a coin and have it land heads 20 times in a row, yet the next flip is still only 50% that it will land tails. Each roll on the RNG table is independent, they are not additive so even with a sample size of 771 the results can be very difficult to translate into a practical drop rate…
It the same thing with precursors. They drop for some, and others of us, myself included, never… well never so far.
So your friend got insanely lucky on his veteran chests (aproximately 2% to get either armor or weapon), and very unlucky on his champion chest (where he should have had 2 items from his aproximately 20 runs).
Now I’m not going to say this is impossible since for someone this will happen. Maybe someone will even go without any drops. This would be super rare though.
Also, with how these drop numbers corelate, is there even a sligth possibility your friend mixed up the chests or wasn’t paying attention? It’s just since we are already in speculation land and “someone told me xyz happened” that does seem like a more plausible cause.
Instead of asking other professions to be nerfed, how about asking your profession to be buffed?
Anybody? No? Oh well…
Instead of asking other professions to be nerfed, how about asking your profession to be buffed?
Anybody? No? Oh well…
Because if you only buff, it’s just a big power creep. GW2 is already plague with power creep, we don’t want more of it.
Power Creep is more fun for players than nerf bats.
Because in a game with no vertical item progression, power creep is a lot more dangerous than in traditional MMOs. Kind of obvious answer or?
We are already past the point where old content is beyond trivial. No reason to fire up the power creep to make the little semi challenging content in the game reach the same place.
It happens when the players in tanky gear die as well. The scaling happens based on number of active participants without regard for what gear the participants are wearing. The bosses do not scale one way for one gear type and another way for another gear type.
Since it happens the same based on all gear types, one gear type wearing set of players are not exploiting the game by waypoint out when they die.
That’s a good argument. But, in theory, the one with more protection should do better at surviving than the glass cannon, in a group.
Still, I’ll give you that point. It’s a good one. (Several others have stated it earlier; I’ve only given it serious thought recently, though, so that’s why I didn’t give credit earlier.)
Wrong – because if you look at this in-game you’ll often find that people with tankier gear are generally worse at the game/less experienced – and will still die a lot regardless.
You assume more protection would give him better survivability – and while it does do that on paper – you are not factoring in player skill or lack of player skill.
Not to forget that the way agro mechanics work in this game, higher toughness in general draws more attention of enemys.
This has been discussed before, and while it’s not that big of an issue on many world bosses (except those with lots of adds), it does lead to following situations:
- low armor (inate armor defense+toughness) pushes players down on the to-target list of enemys thus you get targeted less. It’s part of the mechnic which combined with range dictates enemy targeting priorities
- high armor leads to the exact opposite. You move up on the enemys to-target list and are focused more often. This combined with the minimal benefits of higher armor damage mitigation wise makes it actually harder and puts more pressure on the player to use dodges and survival skills effectively.
Very easy to reproduce. Take a guardian, add 500-1000 toughness (200 is more than enough but let’s go tank mode) to your equipment, and run some fractals/dungeons. Now do the same with full glass canon gear. The difference is night and day. (small note, make sure your party composition is similar. If you are a guardian, warrior or revenant in a group with only light armor classes, your inate higher base defense will affect the results)
So not only might players with higher defensive stats be less skilled, they are game mechanic wise under more pressure.
(edited by Cyninja.2954)