As a player that has struggled mightily with map completion in WvW…and am still only at 96% with a relatively slim chance of sticking it out…
I have to say that I am okay with the current system. I will likely not get the map completion which is disappointing to me. I do, however, look at those that have done it with some degree of admiration for their achievement. I know others may feel differently but I am okay with having things like this in the game that I will inevitably not be able to do…so long as the vast majority of the game is within my reach (which it is).
Without duels, players spam their abilities all the time, everywhere. The bank, crafting, TP….without duels. I really doubt this is a serious issue. In fact, this is about the only place you see costume brawls occur…yet i have seen no complaints about that.
If you can’t be bothered to see other peoples spell effects, even in non-combat areas, you are definitely in the wrong game. No mana cost and no target needed for spell casts encourages useless spell spam more so than any other MMO out there, yet it’s only an issue when duels are mentioned >_>
I’ve read the majority of your posts in this thread and I guess I don’t understand what you are trying to accomplish. You seem to object to any implementation that would place restrictions on the players executing the duels.
Would you use the ability to duel as some sort of public challenge event in or near a populated area such as a popular city such as one-on-one challenge fights for gold, etc.?
Your earlier posts seem to indicate that you wanted PvE dueling so that you could easily use any PvE zone to check out PvE gear and builds with friends. Why would you care if others not involved would be able to view your duel or observe your chat?
I tried to present a solution for what you seemed to want, but from your recent responses there is something else in play that you are not disclosing.
BTW, I have been playing GW2 since launch and I have yet to see a costume brawl. Players do not frequently spam skills around crafting stations or frequently used NPCs either – it has never been an issue. Players do spam skills, shoot fireworks, tell jokes, do emotes, etc. while waiting for world boss events, but all others in the area are there for the same reason and no one is harassed or annoyed.
The biggest issue with dueling is the resultant zone wide (or nearby) channel chat that it inevitably causes. It is as welcome as the Queensdale champion train trash talk when someone decides to try a champion outside the train.
I would love to squash the idea that dueling automatically equals harassment. Anytime a good tool/feature is suggested for GW2 people are up in arms about trolls and harassment.
DPS meter – Nope! elitism, bullies, kick from groups, i play how i want, harassment, etc.
Gear inspect – Nope! Elitism, harassment, belittlement, kick from groups, etc.Yes, harassment may occur around those things, as well as duels. But harassment also occurs everywhere else! All the while, reasonable folk go unnoticed when using these things properly and only the trolls stick out, so i guess only trolls must use those things!
It really is not about whether “everyone” harasses or not. It only takes a minority of adolescent jerks to adversely affect the gameplay experience. I don’t mean to seem confrontational but, truly, this is not hypothetical and I am not just making it up. I do not like dueling and have had to tolerate a lot of crap over the years from what is an admittedly minority of the dueling population. That it is a minority doesn’t make the experience any less crappy.
And…just to answer a previous denigrating post…I am not afraid of “having my feelings hurt.” It is just an annoyance that I can do without. Is it a “deal breaker” for me? No, of course not. I am not going to rage quit if they introduce dueling. I generally am not in favor of it since my past experiences have not been that pleasant. I see it as something I will have to “tolerate” that brings absolutely nothing to the game for me. In other words, in terms of the quality of my experience, it is a net loss. Does that make me selfish? Sure it does…just like those who want dueling are being selfish as well. We all want what we want and those who disagree with us are being selfish.
Sadly…and I am sincere in that…this is not likely to be an issue where we will all come to some grand consensus. I suspect it will be one of those issues that…one side will be happy and the other side will be unhappy…as happens with a fair number of issues in any game.
Playing since the beta, still haven’t played Personal Story pass the level 10 or something.
If I wanted a story based game, I’d play something else.
And the beauty is, unless you really want to join one of the orders, there is no compelling reason to do it if you don’t want to.
Welcome to GW2. I find the in-game community here much more “social” and helpful than in other games I have played. Yup, there will be a few players here and there that will get under your skin but, overall, it is great community.
I actually liked it…Trahearne included. Guess I am just easy to please. I would have preferred that it remain a “personal story” to the end rather than forcing you into a five-man group to do a dungeon but, beyond that, it all seemed pretty good to me.
Our guild is not so large and so our problems are a bit different. We are finding when we move to our mission locations, there are inevitably three or four other guilds there doing or waiting to do the same thing. Different types of missions present different types of problems. Challenges can only be done for credit by one guild at a time…so, while there might be some cooperation between guilds, each guild still has to activate and do the challenge. Yesterday we were stacked four guilds deep for a challenge. Puzzles have a timing element so if you come to your location and another guild is halfway through the puzzle, you must wait until they are done.
I am hoping that Anet is actively working on this. I tend to like the mega servers for open world events and it is indeed great to see so many people in zones that were once deserted. Hopefully some of the difficulties will be fixed soon.
I would not turn down better rewards…but there are some considerations for these pre-events. For example, in the Shatterer pre-event, you really don’t want very many people collecting the pieces…it just takes much longer. Better for one or two to do that pre while the others wait. In the Maw pre-event, there are so many people that it is hard to get a strike in to get credit. There are lots of folks doing the pre-event down at Golum.
I agree that there may be some that could use more participation…and perhaps some design changes might help. I wouldn’t, though, characterize everyone who doesn’t participate in the pre events as as just leeching.
Also, many of us have friends who come into the game and, at least for me, I try to give them a few gold to get them started. Not a big deal for me but it is really nice for that new player, given the scarcity of gold at lower levels. I see this a lot with other guild members as well.
I also much prefer the current system to anything I have seen either before in GW2 or, frankly, in any other game.
I have to say that my favorite part of the patch is the effect of the mega servers – seeing lots of people in the world again. Perhaps it is just my imagination, but this seems to have been accompanied by a sense of social interaction that is reminiscent of the beta weekends…players helping and interacting with other players.
The downside of the mega servers…and certainly not a fatal flaw for me…is that the Jormag fight is no longer doable for me. After four days of trying…and dc’ing three of those four days at the 10% mark, I have given up on Jormag. This, however, seems a small price to pay for the new level of activity. Overall…am very happy.
I have no idea how relevant this is to the specific problem…but here is my experience.
When leveling a toon, I upgrade gear every 15 levels staying in greens the entire time. What I notice is that…when I begin to approach the next “break point”…say…level 32 or 33; level 47/48…where my gear is designed for characters substantially below where I am, the going gets harder. Even in lower areas, I am not one-shotting things. Once I hit the break point and upgrade my gear…bam…I am now back to very powerful in lower level areas.
Not sure if this adds anything relevant to the conversation…it just does seem to me as if, when looking at the downscaling, gear seems to matter.
…and no one would ever e-mote, whisper, or otherwise grief you if you had your toggle set to “off.” Hmmm….sorry….been there…done that.
Never had that happen in any other game with duels and toggling, so I’m not sure why that would magically happen if it were a feature in GW2.
Yup….coming up on ten years in MMOs and have seen more than my share of chicken croaking, rude whispers, etc. I came to GW2 for a number of reasons…one of which was that Anet seems to have done a fairly decent job of removing motivations for griefing. Despite their efforts the forums here recount instances of individuals doing their dead level best to grief other players. While griefing in its various forms is not a constant problem, it doesn’t take too many adolescent, self-absorbed jerks to color the play experience.
…and no one would ever e-mote, whisper, or otherwise grief you if you had your toggle set to “off.” Hmmm….sorry….been there…done that.
The patch has been out a week. During this time, lots of posting and commentary, which I assume they are reading, digesting, and thinking about. Additionally, I am sure they are looking at game play data to identify patterns and issues that surface there. I would hope to see some tweaking over the next month or two but I am not that concerned that I don’t see a lot of forum comment by the devs.
So far I am liking the mega server. I like that more people are out in the zones that were once pretty much empty. I like that champs that once were not being taken are now being taken. My experience thus far has been that people are more social than before the patch (although that might well be just that there are more people around period).
All of that said, there are some things that will need adjustment, such as how the mega server affects guild missions. As others have pointed out, it impact some of the larger events. I suspect (am cautiously optimistic) that over the next few months there will be some tweaks here and there. For me, though, I am happy with the state of things given the amount of elapsed time since the patch was released.
It’s not about not liking new content, it’s that the requirements are ridiculous.
A level 30 required to do level 50 or 80 map completion,
give me a break, that’s outrageous.
Or a low level required to go into wvw and survive, just to get a pve trait.
This is indeed the issue for most of the complaints that I have seen. The basic idea of going out into the world and doing things to get the traits, in and of itself, is fine. The issue is that the current set-up that matches traits to requirements is a bit out of whack. In my mind, this doesn’t require a massive overhaul…just some adjustment of the traits versus requirements with an eye toward which events, areas, and requirements are consistent with the level of the traits sought.
That’s how it works. If the Maw events start outside of it’s prescribed timer event, it will fail upon destruction of the totem.
When the Maw spawns at it’s time, it won’t fail at the totem.
tldr: Maw only works on schedule.
This is correct. To amplify…the events involving the Grawl and the Scholar spawn quite frequently. If they spawn and are done outside the spawn time of the Shaman, then you get to do three events…the Grawl, protect the scholar, and destroy the totem. After that, scholar goes back home to think about it. If these events spawn at the time the shaman is due to spawn, it works just as it always has. The key is to be aware when the shaman spawn time is. Otherwise…well…you get the coin, karma, and xp from the three events. Hope this helps.
I have been mucking around up in Wayfarer Foothills for the last few days doing a number of things. I had heard about the spawning issues but had paid no real attention to the details. I was, therefore, not really surprised when Brogan did his thing and then went back to the house to think about it a bit. This morning, I looked at the actual boss spawn schedule and the wording and it all made sense to me. If you do the chain outside the spawn time…you just get some coin and karma…and some events if you happen to need them for the dailies. When I did it during spawn time, it worked exactly as it always has.
So, I guess for me, I don’t have a problem with it. Just means more events are available. I guess for those that have no idea when the shaman is supposed to spawn, it will be frustrating and confusing but I suspect…if nothing changes, folks will just get used to it.
Ran it Saturday and it worked okay, although the torches were kinda buggy…finally got them all lit.
We didn’t have a problem with people showing up on different servers…but we did struggle with multiple guilds all doing the same thing at the same time. Puzzle was the worst. Not surprising given the timing and coordination requirements. Rush was not too bad…another guild had started it with about 17 minutes left so we joined in and got it done. But…yeah…I think we are seeing some unexpected impact and hopefully it will be addressed in the near future.
Having run our first missions since the patch…yup…I hope that Anet does some tweaking. I think the metaservers are great for open world events and map clearing…I really enjoy seeing all the people out there. Our guild missions, however, were almost funny with all of the different guilds trying to do theirs at the same place and the same time…especially the puzzle where timing is important.
I am cautiously confident that they will make some changes to alleviate this (fingers crossed).
Conceptually I have no problem with the change. The devil, however, is in the details. The idea of having to earn or find the traits in areas that are higher than what would be expected given the level at which you would expect to learn them (i.e., adept traits in high level areas) seems a bit “off.” I agree that going out and earning them…or paying gold for them seems like a good set of options. My only observations is that the options, especially for lower level toons, seem unrealistic (at least the earning part).
All of my ten characters are grandfathered so it is not an issue for them at all. I have two empty character slots at the moment…will likely just leave them sit and see if Anet does some tweaking to make this more reasonable.
Our guild’s first missions since the patch are tomorrow. Thanks for the head’s up on this. We have not really considered the possibility but it sounds like a nightmare.
I do need more. I had a boatload…then after some crafting, I am now out.
The challenge is finding the right balance. What is challenging for you may be overwhelming for me…or vice versa. Some players are here for reasons other than “challenge” and making things more challenging doesn’t necessarily make them more enjoyable. What might be boring for you might be fun for me…and vice versa. Having played a number of different games, it seems to come down to this a lot…how to find those sweet spots in terms of difficulty, access, need for coordination, etc.
Having played since beta, I have seen some tweaking in different directions by Anet…and I suspect that this will go on in the future. Tune things up a bit at times…and tune them down at other times as the player population reacts to changes. I would not expect magnitudes of change in either direction though. I suspect that Anet is pursuing a general strategy that allows for tweaking up and down from time to time but I would be surprised if they changed things such that it was a fundamentally different game.
For the OP…yeah, I see your problem. We get the patch at some point on Tuesday and you have until midnight PDT to log in. I am reading your post to say that you work from 4:30 am until noon…which should give you plenty of time to log in before midnight. As Harbinger noted, most times we see the patch late morning so you should be all good, unless I am misreading your work times.
A completely unique experience…a great laugh early on a Monday morning. Great thread…thanks.
When leveling my crafting I would typically craft six copies of an inscription…one to discover a recipe for each piece of armor. I was on auto pilot one day and, when purchasing exotic inscription recipes, I purchased six copies of one recipe. Five are still sitting in my bank…for what purpose I know not.
WvW is currently the only thing holding me up from map completion. Having stuck my nose in a couple of times…not likely that I will complete the map. Alas…
That said, I am completely okay with the situation as is. For those players who do get into WvW and get map completion…my compliments to you. You deserve the title. If I ever reach the point where I just have to have map completion, for whatever reason, I will just have to suck it up and get into WvW. Until then, I will simply admire those who do.
For me, the issue is not so much how hard encounters are but the amount of coordination necessary to successfully complete it. This is not unique to this game. Creating an encounter that requires a large number of people to perform in a relatively well coordinated approach is a problem. In GW2, as in other games, the large open-world events often end up as loot pinadas. The other extreme, as others have pointed out about Teq, is that the encounters are only enjoyed by a select group of people.
I agree with others that have made the point that having these complex, challenging encounters is not bad…in fact…it it great for those groups who choose to do them. I am reluctant to support taking existing open world content that is not quite so demanding and re-tooling it so that it becomes more and more exclusive. Should Anet make some new content that challenges groups? Sure…sounds good. I would hope that they would not convert some existing content that “the rest of us” are enjoying and convert that.
I have to say…the cost of repairs has never been an issue for me one way or the other with regard to trying to avoid death. The consequences of death are (1) letting my party down; (2) public humiliation; (3) lost time and opportunity.
Having looked at the changes as they have been described thus far, some I really like; some I am more ambivalent about; and perhaps some…not so much. That said, there is nothing that even comes remotely close to causing me to leave the game.
Your armor still breaks, but you won’t have to pay gold to repair it anymore. Why is that a bad thing? I think it’s a great change.
Agree. Especially if you look at it within the context that, along with removing some of the gold outputs such as repairs, they are reducing some gold inputs. I suspect that there will be some tweaking involved in this since making changes like these can have unintended consequences in the economy. For me, though, I am happy to wait and see how it teases out.
As a disclaimer before I respond, I do not do WvW and only run occasional dungeons or fractals with my guild mates. I spend a lot of time in the open world doing whatever I want…
So, that said, I started late last year just buying my complete set of exotic equipment on the TP. I get a few ascended items from laurels or guild commendations and the odd thing here and there from LS rewards but, beyond those, I decide what I want for gear for my new level 80…and then just go buy it. The prices are very, very reasonable and I get exactly what I want. Other folks may have other approaches, but this one is what works for me. Hope this helps.
For the things that I am willing to purchase with gems (bank expansion, character slots, bag slots, etc.), yes, I think they are reasonable. I also think that some of the convenience items such as perpetual gathering tools and the Terrace Pass are reasonable. I don’t purchase other things such as black lion keys, toys, or such…so I can’t really speak to that.
tl;dr: buff all players, nerf all monsters, make gemstore free!
Or, more accurately, “Lets suggest a few adjustments which have the potential to increase the amount of fun people have. That’s what games are for.”
tl;dr indeed.
A couple of years ago, I’d have agreed with this. Now, not so much.
The problem is, what’s fun for one group of players is horrible for another group of players. A percentage of players want things easier and find this game too hard. A percentage of players find this game too easy and want harder content.
Yes, games are here to have fun. If we all had the same idea of what was fun, designing games would be a whole lot easier.
And the treatment for this is understanding who the target market is. As many games are finding out, it is near impossible to create a gaming experience that thrills equally the high end hard core gamer and the casual enthusiast at the same time. Some games try to stratify the experience so that the high end players feel challenged and incentivized to play while at the same time providing content that provides an enjoyable experience for the more casual players. Other games attempt to design for the middle ground hoping to capture elements of both groups, neither of which is ever totally satisfied. Both groups are coming for enjoyment and fun; both groups have money to spend. I expect that, be it GW2, WoW, TESO, or whatever, the level of difficulty and challenge is likely to be the subject of both a game development and a financial performance decision-making process.
Mawwiage…it bwings us togevah!
Two enthusiastic thumbs ups…well played.
Can anybody explain to me why some people have 2 exact same classes and why both at lvl 80? What the heck is the point of having two classes that are the same…?
I guess for me a lot of it is due to the way that I learn to play a profession. I learned long ago in WoW (where you can have two specs), that just creating a second spec on a toon doesn’t work well for me…I never really learn it well. I tend to start with a build and play style in mind at level 1…and learn from there. By the time I hit 80, I feel comfortable. Switching to a entirely different build or play style at level 80 just, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem as fun or as effective for me. So, that is why I have two warriors. Nothing earthshaking…just a preference.
Haven’t played much on other servers, but IOJ folks seem helpful and friendly for the most part. Sure, there are the occasional jerks…but I have to say that, coming from other MMOs, the players on my server are great.
As several posters have pointed out, different people look for and enjoy different things. As for me, I tried GW1…several times…just did not enjoy it. I love this game. This, by the way, “proves” nothing…I just happen to like GW2 better than GW1.
Aside from the guild missions, what the guild means to me is building relationships. These are a group of people that, when I log in, I see who is there and can tell by the chat what people are up to. If someone needs help with a specific thing, it is a great place to post that request and…the help generally appears. There is some amount of discussion about the trials and travails of real life…and it is kind of fun to bat that stuff around.
Yes, there may well be other ways to accomplish all of this…but for me, my guild tends to fill that spot. I genuinely enjoy playing with these guys; I learn an awful lot about the game from them; it is a great place to have discussions about new parts of the game, LS, etc..honestly I just enjoy it.
Loot that can be salvaged gives me to option to either salvage for materials or sell for a few coppers. Not seeing the problem with loot, unless I am missing something.
Weeklies sound okay to me…with this caveat. Currently daily achievements are such that I just go out and play and somehow they get done. Yes, I try to select the zones that I work in to be consistent with the available dailies…but rarely do I take any special pains to do daily achievements (other than perhaps JPs). If you move to weeklies, the danger possibly would exist that it would be intensive enough to require you to “work” on the weeklies in a more concentrated way. Of course, I guess you could basically work day-to-day like I do right now and accomplish the same thing. I assume that the implementation would be the key…how they structured and presented it.
Otherwise, sounds good to me.
Keyboard and mouse. I key bind my utility skills so I can move with my mouse and fight with my left hand (without having to span the entire keyboard). Nothing special on the mouse or keyboard. I have bound my “interact” function to my middle mouse key…really handy for me.
On OP’s list:
(1) Don’t care so long as it does not impact me. I would likely not want to participate and as long as I can go about my business and not be bothered, I am okay with it. If it means, however, that I must either (a) not represent or (b) be subject to open world fighting…then…Nope, not for me.
(2) Don’t care one way or the other.
(3) I like mounts…a lot…but I understand that they are not in this game and I am okay with it. Would love to have mounts…heck…even flying mounts but if they are not in the game, it is not a big deal to me.
(4) Don’t care
(5) Don’t care
(6) Don’t care
(7) Don’t care
(8) Hmmm…not sure how this would work. I am not much of a gambler in any event but if there were some type of chance-related rewards that guilds could unlock, I would not be opposed to it…just wouldn’t matter much to me.
In reviewing my post, I see a lot of “don’t cares.” Just to explain – what this means is that it is not that important to me one way or the other but I have no objection to the concept to the extent that it makes other players happy.
I can certainly empathize. I kind of went through this with WoW. I left after seven years of continuous subscription and playing long periods every day. I chased the new shinies and the better gear, taking on the raids, the dailies, the crafting, etc…until finally I just could not force myself to log in any more. Seemed more like work than fun.
I have been playing GW2 since beta and took a very, very different approach to this game. I do what I want to do (to have fun) and, for the most part, am pretty indifferent to loot drops. I manage to accumulate enough gold to make sure that my toons have exotic gear to run in and, beyond that, I pretty much do not care about anything better. I don’t have (or desire) a legendary; I am not worried about crafting ascended weapons or armor. I log in with specific activities in mind – guild missions three times a week (because I really like running with them); maybe some map clearing; dungeons on occasion; and even wander into WvW from time to time. Bottom line is…I play for the fun of it. If and when it ceases to be fun, I will probably also move on.
Mine sit forlornly on my character selection screen, waiting in vain for a call to action.
I had to laugh when I read this. My elementalist sits in his room because I cannot let him out alone…he dies when someone breaths on him.
Have also done this a few times. I know what you are talking about in terms of having to clear the area before engaging the SP boss, but have never really had a problem doing it playing solo. Not that I am that good, it just did not seem to be much of a problem, as I recall. In fairness, it may have changed since I did it last, though.
Umm well for me I play my alts to spice things up a bit since playing the same profession over and over gets boring. Also I might complete a map on another characters that I’ve done on my main just for kittens and giggles.
This ^^^