Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
We now have learned that ascended gear is becoming more expensive, so, that’s even more build diversity gone.
its not a spike….its 5%……..and nearly every lvl 80 is decked in full ascended trinkets anyway. its simply not a big deal in any game mode until the 10% difference between ascended and exotics becomes like 30%…if it took this long for a 5% increase, you have nothing to worry about…the game will be dead/unsupported by Anet before it ever gets to the point where you “need” ascended.
A 100% increase is a significant spike.
Thanks for screwing altaholics anet, thanks a lot.
I am an altaholic, and I fail to see how this affects us at all. /shrug
You need to make three times as many ascended sets?
While I agree with you in principal, I would like to point out that they also added even more stacking conditions on crits with the confusion on crit, and sum of all fears traits.
Rampager’s gear might end up not being completely worthless.
One step closer to holy trinity with Ventari
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
Heal support characters are valued. Have you not seen the prevalence of shout-warrior in PvP?
The problem is that in PvE, everyone goes glass cannon, and thus everyone gets killed too quickly for healing to work when they mess up, and at the highest levels, even if they’re not going berserker they tend to die too quickly to heal due to enemy damage numbers being so high.
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Gameplay > lore
Why not have both?
Because sometimes you can’t, and in those cases gameplay is given the advantage because people have to play the game.
NPCs are often “OP”, but when you make them playable you have to make them in a such a way that other people will not gravitate to them just because they have something on other race does.
If you could shapeshift and stay in that form, people would gravitate to that, because humans can’t.
Giving them a purely cosmetic transformation as the OP suggested seems like it avoids that.
They should definitely do this if they plan to phase out racial skills entirely (we have yet to hear about how they’ll work post-specilization system so that might be on the table) since norn would be hit the hardest.
It seems like having the racial skills automatically unlocked would be the most sensible option. They’re intentionally not as good as the class skills, but would give new players skills to use until they can get the skill points to unlock the better class skills, far more use than they get now.
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If you think that’s shocking, how about the dagger
More cosmetic mounts would be cool.
Never give them a speed boost though. All that’ll happen is that the maps will end up getting more spread apart to compensate for it, and it’ll get worse for anyone not using one, while giving the people using them the hassle of mounting/dismounting to get somewhere in the same time.
One thing I would request though is the ability to use abilities that grant swiftness while mounted, like the ever popular mantra of healing with centaur runes. While I don’t support going faster because of using it, I also don’t like the idea that you end up moving more slowly while on them.
Elementalists are getting sword. And I for one am not happy about it. To me, elementalists should blast their enemies from afar, not be up-close in combat. To me, that’s more like guardian or warrior sort of playstyle.
I would have liked to have seen greatsword or longbow for ele, but that’s not going to happen, so I just won’t use the ele specialisation, that’s all.
Argghh! Man I hate people who say this crap! Elite specs so far change the core profession and take it on a slight diff path then they stereotyped to be. Swords are fine. Battle wizard style would be really cool!
Fun trivia! Gandalf uses a sword!
Eek! Eles are light armor and are glass cannons. There is a good reason everyone keeps them far from the battle when they can. It is also why myself and a friend cover our elementals in anything that will give a speed boost.
Make them at least a medium armor and I would think about a melee weapon. If not …
The armor isn’t what dictates whether a class can stand in melee or not. Generally, the light armored melee classes just have more tools to survive.
Mesmers are baseline only slightly more durable than elementalists, using the same armor and the medium health pool, but they survive in melee through blocks (If using a sword off hand), stealth (Torch/Decoy), crowd control, and evade/invulnerability uptime.
The reaper uses light armor, but will survive through death shroud turning into an actual second health bar with the ability to heal your first through it, and life force generation.
Elementalists already have a number of evades or invulnerability skills on their current weapons to keep themselves alive, as well as a ton of healing, regeneration uptime and, most importantly, close to perfect protection uptime. Presumably their melee weapon would provide them with even more survival tools.
Also, if you’re already using soldier stats and still feel that they’re glass cannons, there’s always the possibility of using a more survivable stat combination. Berserker fire/air elementalists are glass cannons, celestial water/arcane is nowhere near that.
Elementalists are getting sword. And I for one am not happy about it. To me, elementalists should blast their enemies from afar, not be up-close in combat. To me, that’s more like guardian or warrior sort of playstyle.
That’s kind of the point. The specialisations are adding new playstyles. There’s already the staff for the sit back and maintain maximum range style of play. The daggers are close range, but they’re not true melee weapons, with most attunements actually being quite mid range, and only the air attunement autoattack being actually melee like (i.e. 130 range, effective cleave).
The classes are supposed to have multiple different playstyles, not enforce you to a singular vision of how the class should work.
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Anet could make 1 new map pk enabled so the people that want no competition can not zone there.
You mean like Edge of the Mists?
Because that sounds exactly like it.
1 New map
PK Enabled
People that don’t want to go there don’t have to
Stronghold is also looking like it will fit those requirements. Though some people that don’t like it will be forced into it due to the matchmaking, but that’s the same with every SPvP map other than Courtyard, Skyhammer and Spirit Watch anyway
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First of all people the Revenant is not meant to be a major damage dealer. It’s a tank and therefore does low damage like a tank does. That’s why they are full celestial. Get your heads out of the stupid meta crap and think.
Who designs a tank without heavy weapons?
In order to do their job, a tank needs either enough sustained damage that they need to be dealt with, a ton of ally healing/damage mitigation that their allies just cannot die, or so much CC that trying to break past the tank is a nightmare.
Without one of the above, the tank just gets ignored and ganged up on once the rest of the group is dead.
Guardians are a good example in that they use all three methods in tandem to guard their team. They can grant high regeneration and protection uptime to their allies and curing conditions, while simultaniously providing blinds, knockdown and immobilise on enemies, and also dealing respectable damage, even when not built as a straight glass cannon.
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My one complaint about it was that the new areas seem to be a bit more hardware intensive than the old ones. I noticed a significant framerate drop upon entering into them.
The best place for it is NOT in PvE, but rather in WvW. Go to your opponent’s borderland where your WP is in the lower right of the map, and head toward the south east supply camp. You’ll take about 10 steps (around the bridge area) and you’ll see a ton of ambients to toss your balm at. The best thing about it is that anyone around will not grief you because they are from your server and are there for WvW, not PvE bag farming.
I checked that location, and it’s actually horrible in comparison. There are a lot of ambients, but they’re spaced out such that hitting 3 in a throw is rare, and 2 in one is no more common than in the PvE areas.
The dev’s should have a skill to convert adrenaline to sustain.
You mean the second minor trait in the defense line for HP sustain, and cleansing ire for condition sustain?
Just to throw in my $0.02, I used to enjoy level grinding and watching my characters produce bigger and bigger numbers. But after a while, that appeal pretty much vanished. At this point, levels are, at best, an inconsequential thing that get’s taken care of passively through the normal course of playing the game.
Which leaves me wondering what purpose they actually serve? I’ve heard that they are supposed to act as a tutorial, but while I would hope that you would have figured out a few things about the game after playing for a few hours, what part of that process is actually tied to levels in any way? It’s not location, open world is easy across the board, dungeons don’t scale difficulty to level at all, and fractals are all level 80 with their own difficulty scale.
What what are levels actually for in this game? If they don’t do anything, would it be beneficial to remove them entirely for GW3?When people say levelling acts as an extended tutorial they’re referring to gradually unlocking your skills, traits and other ways to customise your character (like armor going from 1 to 2 to 3 stats). Plus gradually encountering new mechanics, like conditions and attacks which have to be dodged to survive.
It’s supposed to give you time to familiarise yourself with each system and skill/trait before getting a new one, instead of having all the options of a level 80 character dropped on you right at the start.
Which is why it can be a problem when people try to power-level their first character. I once did a dungeon with a guy whose friend had persuaded him to buy the game and sent him a bunch of gold and materials so he could level up quickly by crafting. He’d been playing a week, almost finished levelling and didn’t know the most basic things. As in he didn’t know it was possible to dodge attacks, let alone what key to press or when to do it, he didn’t know what his skills did and couldn’t understand the descriptions so he just equipped signets and didn’t activate them. As you can probably imagine he died a lot.
That’s why levelling can be helpful. The levels themselves may not mean much but even for experienced gamers RPGs are complicated and no two are completely identical so it’s helpful to be introduced to the mechanics gradually. I’ve been playing RPGs for 22 years and my newest one (Dragon Age: Inquisition) still confuses me sometimes, and that’s seriously dumbed down compared to a lot of others.
There are some merits to having pieces given to you slowly. However, sometimes it can create a can’t see the forest for the trees effect.
I personally find it easier to learn game systems when I’m immediately given access to everything that they have available, because I immediately look over everything and try to determine synergies between things, whereas if I were given things a piece at a time, I might instead have focused on them merely as individual pieces rather than a unified whole.
Additionally, the thing that helps you learn a class isn’t the rate at which things are given to you, it’s the need to use them, and the realisation that they exist. I didn’t figure out how shatters worked until I started playing PvP, nor did my thief steal, nor did my ranger every activate a pet command, nor did my guardian ever use a virtue, nor did my elementalist ever leave fire attunement when using a staff, because, through the entire course of leveling them, I never ever needed to.
The only time I learned anything from leveling content was because for some reason I decided to grab the skill point in the Temple of Balthazar as quickly as possible instead of waiting for a zerg to clear it. In order to do that, I looked at my screen and found a specific set of traits and utilities designed to maximise my stealth/invulnerability/interrupts without cancelling my channeling.
The only time I learned something from it, and it was because I decided to do what I wasn’t supposed to, and it only worked because I had everything available to me.
Holding back abilities wont teach anyone anything. Giving them the need to use them will.
If they didn’t, why would they release a completely new mode (and map) for one and a completely new map (including new systems) for the other?
YaY 2 whole new maps you say?
Oh well maybe they should fix PvP problems first, you know, the ones that are driving players out of PvP like AFKers and also maybe do something about the players exploiting hacking in WvW.
Are AFKers actually an issue?
I’ve run into less than ten AFKers in the entire course of reaching rank 75
For example :
– ennemies that are invulnerable unless the first attack is a surprise attack (which requires stealthy classes).-ennemies that only get temporarly vulnerable after getting blocked.
- ennemies that take damage only when burnt, or chilled, or stunnned, etc…
- ennemies that take damage only by Aoes.
-ennemies that take damage only by Aoe heals
-ennemies that take damage only when feared
- energy walls that blocks and hurt you unless you apply reflect Aoe on it
- poisonous areas that can be cleansed only while healing aoe is applied on it.
Just out of interest, I decided to see which classes could do what.
1: Thief, Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer. Any Norn
2: Mesmer, Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian
3: This one I can’t kitten without a specific condition
4: Every Class
5: Every Class, though if it’s the only way to do any damage, thieves, necromancers, ranger would have a lot of time in which they’re waiting for the cooldown on their one AoE heal to come back up.
6: Every Class
uhh, everything has different communities, are fractals and dungeons a sperate entity now? What about TP economy? Living story?
Yes
Yes, but it doesn’t use mechanics at all
Yes
I’m excited for the chronomancer, rebalancing of conditions, and the promised challenging PvE content.
I’m dreading having every one of my characters but my mesmer crippled.
It’s a mixed bag.
Just look at the daily achievements. They can be earned equally in 3 categories: PvP, PvE and WvW. This strongly implies that these are the three co-equal branches of GW2 gameplay. Of course, it is natural for PvE players to think that their preferred mode is ‘the one that matters’ or the ‘one that the others are based on’. That doesn’t mean that they are correct.
daily achievements have changed multiple times, and will likely continue to change.
Really its not about a prefered mode, or one that matters. The devs, in the past have considered wvw and pve to be part of one whole. They felt no qualms making you go to WvW for certain things, and pve for others (the current trait system for example)
The focus of the new design as far as they have told us is focused on skill challenges as the defacto skill earning mechanic outside of leveling,
if they feel like WvW should have its own system, they probably have already designed it into the system.
The only things that you had to go to WvW for were either cosmetic (Gifts of exploration), thus, didn’t change the way you played at all, or were exclusive to WvWvW games, and could be earned doing just about anything in WvWvW (WvWvW abilities)
Anything you could get that might give you an advantage in WvWvW either came from playing WvWvW (WvWvW XP came from just about every activity in it), or could be earned by playing it (Gold and Karma, both of which are acquired from it can purchase the needed ingredients for ascended gear, skill points and gold can be used to acquire traits)
The proposed system is the only thing in the game’s history that actually locks a mechanical aspect of your character behind a specific form of content, and to make it worse, it’s the second most boring content in the entire game (The first being full world completion)
It is a betrayal, as it’s the first time that they’ll actually permanently disadvantage you if you don’t choose to play the way they want you to. The complete opposite of what we were told when they marketed the game to us. If I was after an MMO that forced me to grind things that I don’t enjoy over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, there are other games that do that.
The lack of grinding and the ability to play what you enjoy is one of the many aspects that has seperated Guild Wars 2 from its competitors. Becoming a worse version of WoW or Tera is not a direction that they should head in.
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It’s not fair if you get hero points for playing your preferred mode. PvE doesn’t get hero points for doing dungeons or fractals.
Could we be more constructive about this, like, say, arguing that they should as well.
is it good for the game as a whole, if there is no incentive for doing different facets of the game?
Very much so. It encourages the developers to make content that people want to play because it’s fun to play, rather than because they have to to get the most out of the parts of the game that they do.
If people wont play something without having a carrot dangled in front of them, it’s probably because they don’t enjoy it. If they don’t enjoy it, it fails as recreation, and forcing them to do so is just going to make them hate the game.
There is some merit to minor incentives to try something the first time, as they might simply have never given it a try, but I don’t think that applies here. If they had stated that hero challenges would be unlocked for every character on an account after being acquired once I’d understand it under that logic, but given that they’re something that need to be repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, that kind of falls apart. After the first time, doing them a second or third time isn’t going to make you come to revelation that you love skill challenges.
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Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
- The Hero Points System isn’t part of the expansion per se, they’re fixing a broken system. (and yes, the Skill Point/Trait system is broken how it currently stands)
It’s better than this system. The only reason people complained about it was because of the massive price hike in the cost of unlocking traits. No one was complaining that they were unlocked with gold.
The basic idea worked well, it’s something that could simply be fixed by adjusting the numbers instead of forcing people into playing content that they find old and tedious over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
It’s not fair if you get hero points for playing your preferred mode. PvE doesn’t get hero points for doing dungeons or fractals.
Could we be more constructive about this, like, say, arguing that they should as well.
There’s no reason that WvWvW requires access to their full set of tools any more than challenging instanced content does.
If they don’t have a great need for all their traits, then they can work for the “extras” like everyone else in PvE.
If they do in order to make WvW more competitive, then it should be treated as PvP (because it is, just on a different scale).
And if we’re being honest with ourselves, most of WvW is walking. Boring, dull walking. Which is no different than the boring walks in between hero challenge locations, except there isn’t a megazergblob with constant Swiftness buffs to cheer one on.
I’m quite happy with letting people ‘earn’ their traits. But the problem comes when they have to earn them a specific way. The current system is in theory acceptable, as you can unlock them with gold and skill points which are earned doing pretty much anything in the game that isn’t city based roleplaying and trading post manipulation, neither of which use traits in any way whatsoever.
The only reason they’re an issue right now is the fact that the prices attached to them are obscenely high, and are extremely offputting to many people. Hero points are basically the current system, but without the ability to purchase traits, or pick and choose the specific ones you want while ignoring useless ones. The checklist of a specific task tied to each trait was just replaced by a longer list of specific tasks, of which you can pick 65 of them, but as there are only a few different types of skill challenge, and there’s no way of telling what type of challenge a skill challenge is until you’ve wasted your time walking over there, you can’t just pick the ones that interest you.
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Fractals require you to have specific gear to even play them at higher levels and is 100% an optional addition to PvE. Players (regardless of group composition) playing against different ENVIRONMENTAL enemies. Same with dungeons, and since Anet already mentioned that they are trying to rework Big Z so that is also a soloable instance and not a mandatory dungeon, even dungeons will be another optional aspect of the PvE game mode. because it is optional and not necessary to PvE there is no reason for Anet to allow wholesale access to traits and skills for people playing PvE. In fact it goes counter to them making a PvE game type.
WvW and PvP being very specific maps and tactics against other players means that you would need a complete set of tools when playing those modes. It makes NO sense to even require leveling in those game modes as they are meant to be played differently from PvE.
If WvW was meant to be more like PvE then people wouldn’t even get the up-leveled buff in there, but that isn’t the case. its meant as another form of PvP and should be treated as such to keep players on the same footing with one another to some degree.
You haven’t explained why you draw the categories as PvE, PvP and WvWvW, or why you feel that having access to tools isn’t necessary in some game modes, but is in others. If it’s properly balanced to test you and provide challenging content, it’s very likely that you may need to constantly retrait your builds to solve problems in instanced content. Just because things are easy as they are now, it doesn’t mean that they’ll stay that way.
If you think that you approach group instanced content in the same way as open world content, you’re deluding yourself. They’re worlds apart. By the same logic that just because something is a subset of something else, it’s an optional component of it, every type of playstyle is an optional component of Guild Wars 2 because you can choose not to play it.
There’s no reason that WvWvW requires access to their full set of tools any more than challenging instanced content does. SPvP has a case to be made for it as it does everything it can in order to make its matches fair and remain a competitive mode. WvWvW will never be unless they cap the number of players at an amount equal to the lower current WvWvW population of the three worlds in each matchup, kicking the people exceeding that, or come up with a solution to certain servers just having more people online and playing at times than others. (The buff you gain when outnumbered doesn’t help you win despite the numerical disadvantage, it just gets you more loot).
If anything, instanced content requires it more, as the assumption that people have access to their tools would allow the content designers more freedom to create puzzles or bosses that make use of those resources. Attempting to do so without that would just result in people being completely unable to complete things unless they happened to have picked the mechanics that the situation called for.
We saw what happened when they cut the resources available to low leveled players, the zones got nerfed to be even more of a joke than they already were, destroying any potential for interesting mechanics in them, as they had to balance around the assumption that people wouldn’t have access to the tools needed to cope with them.
Fractals do indeed require specific gear at higher levels for the agony resistance. Gear that you get from either open world content (Drops/World Bosses/Event gold to purchase materials, or gather them yourself, karma for the obsidian shards), Dungeons/Fractals (gold that can buy everything but obsidian shards, which you can buy with laurels), WvWvW (Gold + Karma to buy shards, badges of honor make ascended amulets cheaper too), or even SPvP (Regional tracks give crafting materials, gold, and obsidian shards)
At the moment, everything in the game is optional to everything else, as you can earn anything that has a mechanical impact by playing anything. The reason hero points as announced are a problem is that suddenly it’s locking your mechanics and limiting your tools that may be necessary to overcome situations behind a single style of play (That being skill challenges).
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That fixes WvWvW. Characters that play dungeons/fractals while leveling through any means other than map completion are still forced into grinding other game modes for their abilities though.
Uhm, sorry, but dungeons and fractals are aspects of PvE. There are 3 game modes. PvE, PvP and WvW and fractals and dungeons only exist in one of those modes, so yes if you want to play in dungeons and fractals then you need to do the things required to level up and skill/trait your toon as you would any other PvE character.
Simply by the virtue that someone can play in PvE and completely avoid doing all but one dungeon and never step foot in fractals means that those are optional extensions of PvE. For WvW you already get a “level bump” to 80 and can use level 80 gear while in WvW. The only thing I’m asking for is for them to also do what they already do for the other game mode where you fight others and give access to the skills and traits only while IN that game mode, while still allowing access to diverse rune/sigil combos and food buffs (unlike PvP). Once back in PvE though they would still need to level and gain skills/traits as normal for any activities that can be done from PvE.
They are different game modes. The only thing that fractals and skill challenges share is gear, skills, traits and levels. Three and a half of those being in the same situation as WvWvW. The only difference is the upscaling in level, which doesn’t properly compensate for an actual level 80 character.
The modes are different because they have vastly different gameplay styles with differing objectives. Fractals are about as different from skill challenges as WvWvW is. Possibly more so given the open world nature of WvWvW vs the instanced nature of Fractals.
I guess what I’d wonder then, if it were possible, and maybe (I know this is a big thing to ask as it never seems to work), but can we have someone ask around at Anet if its possible to have WvW like sPvP in so far as, when you enter it, you are “actually” level 80 and have access to the full trait trees and skills, even if you’re lower level? Armor can still be lowbie armor and players will just have to buy a second set they’d use exclusively in WvW along with weapons. (No need to normalize the stats like in PvP), but at least make them not have to worry about being an up-level or grind for the skills/traits). This way people who are exclusive WvW players can just do their thing and if they bring that toon in PvE they will be what ever level they’ve attained via experience and will need to use level appropriate armor and weapons, skills and traits that they have unlocked or can unlock in that game mode separate from WvW.
Basically, is that even possible and if so could it be implemented? I’d imagine it’d be a slight reworking of the PvP code.
That fixes WvWvW. Characters that play dungeons/fractals while leveling through any means other than map completion are still forced into grinding other game modes for their abilities though.
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This is literally the first situation in which a mechanical aspect of the game is being locked behind a single specific game mode while impacting on other forms of play. Even ascended gear had the grace to allow it to be acquired from playing every single game mode. This is a blatant betrayal of the statement on which the game was sold to us that we wouldn’t be forced to prepare to have fun, and that we could play however we wanted.
Using their definition of no grind being that you can just play fun stuff, this is a blatant act of grinding, as people that don’t find skill challenges fun are going to be forced into playing them in order to unlock the mechanical aspects of their character.
If Skill Challenges are that easy, it should take no time to complete them, and receive the missing 1/7th of the Hero Points.
Just as PvE players had to enjoy some WvW for World Completion in the past, it now seems WvW players may have to spend an hour or two enjoying some PvE. I would guess there are about half the needed Skill Challenges in the starter zones alone.
Or, maybe, once everything is revealed, there will be another way for players to acquire the fraction of needed Hero Points. Time will tell!
Easy doesn’t mean quick. It’s easy to complete them, but it takes forever because of the fact that they’re all at least a minute (If you already have their locations on your map and head straight for them) or more (Finding the map transition + Finding the skill point) apart. If they were challenging, they might actually be fun, but in their current state, it’s just a waste of time.
World completion isn’t anywhere near comparable. Not having a legendary doesn’t change how you play. Not having skills that might be useful in an encounter, does. You can still solve problems the same with with a legendary as you would with the multiple ascended items that you can craft with the same gold it would to make one. Besides, WvW players have always had to, and still do have to complete a ton of PvE map completion in order to get that, but no one complains, because a legendary doesn’t change the way that you play.
If there are other ways to earn hero points, Arena.net is welcome to tell us what these are, and if they solve the problem, then it’ll be fine. But they’ll most likely take silence as satisfaction with it as it is and assume that we’re happy with it. We’ll stop bringing up the problem once they announce that they’re planning to solve it.
Just so long as they specifically buff it in PvE, but not in PvP, just like they nerfed retaliation specifically for PvP but not in PvE.
In PvE, it could use a significant buff. In PvP, it’s perfectly fine as it is.
With max healing power and +outgoing heal stuff, you can grant AoE regen that heals allies for 450 health per second.
It’s not a specific value, certain regeneration effects are more powerful than others, for example, the guardian mace symbol regen is actually much more powerful than just about any other regeneration effect. My cleric guardian has a regen of around 1500 over 1 second on her mace symbol, pulsing over the symbol’s duration. It would be higher, but I went with a soldier rune over a monk rune in today’s condition heavy metagame.
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Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
Strange. One of my characters will have 190 or so right away, while others will have 30 or less, purely because I played world completion on one of them while the others I used for other playstyles. That hardly seems equal across the board.
Those that have done world completion aren’t affected. The only people complaining are those that won’t have all of their points after the change. However, it is ‘fair’ across the board for those player as they didn’t do all the ‘work’ for the currency. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pve alt, a wvw player, or a pvp player that stepped into pve to dungeon. They will all require the same ~65 challenges.
Additionally, it’s not just the champ trains. From the very beginning, you could still gain skill points from leveling past 80. Sure, it would take you a while to do it if you weren’t playing skill challenges, but you would eventually be able to do it without wasting your time on things you didn’t enjoy.
Yes, you could still get 1 point per level “after 80.” That was one of the things I touched on in my original long drawn out post, but opted to chop. Yes, you’d have eventually have had enough points that way to unlock everything, but it would have been slow and just as tedious as going to do the challenges. I’m guessing after doing the math anet decided there would be too many points floating around still if they kept those additional leveled points and converted them, so they are getting nixed too.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s only tedious if you focus on skill points. It’s not tedious if they come naturally as a result of playing what you enjoy, also, as I said before, it would be pretty hard to make it easier than skill challenges. I think you might mean less tedious than skill challenges.
I would actually be completely willing to do them if they altered the skill challenges so that they were actually challenging and had interesting mechanics that either didn’t have to be replayed on multiple characters, or had a fresh approach based on which class you were playing. But as they are, they’re just braindead run to a point and do a simple task that has practically no risk to it.
If they did that, I wouldn’t even require a reward from it, I’d do most of them because they were fun, and probably request the ability to do them multiple times on the same character.
If you think that just about any method is easier than skill challenges, you’re fooling yourself. Most of them aren’t difficult, they’re just tedious and boring.
There are exceptions though, such as the skill points in contested orrian temples. In the course of my world completion, they were the only ones that required any thought at all, causing me to look at my resources, retrait for prismatic understanding and illusory persona, equip a torch, decoy, mass invisibility and veil, throw them together, mass invisibility first, then once the stealth ran out, interrupt the first enemy attack with diversion, and then activate my one second distortion at the last possible moment before the fire rain triggered on me, and got the skill point.
It would also be a great time for engineers to realise the true extent of their stealth potential with the smoke field generated by the flame turret + blast finishers, as well as the toolbelt skill of Elixer S. Thieves can just shadow veil, which isn’t as interesting unfortunately.
If every class had a similar potential to solve the problem using their own unique mechanics (as opposed to just waiting for a zerg to clear the temple), they would be amazing.
Give us more skill challenges like that, in which each of them incentivizes you to learn and make use of the potential of your class. That was satisfying progression, not because of what the reward was, but because of the fact that it was a legitimate challenge to overcome using the tools at my disposal, instead of just a time sink like the vast majority of the skill points in the game right now are.
It’s far from healthy for the game to accept locking core mechanics behind boring content in order to make that content valuable, as it just incentivizes them into making lazily designed content and lock important aspects of the game behind it.
You should play content because it’s fun to play, not because you need to complete it to unlock fun stuff. It’s hard to imagine anyone who finds them enjoyable content the second time through (The first time at least has some appeal to people who just explore the world)
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
snip
At least the way they are implementing it is “unfair” across the board.
Strange. One of my characters will have 190 or so right away, while others will have 30 or less, purely because I played world completion on one of them while the others I used for other playstyles. That hardly seems equal across the board.
Additionally, it’s not just the champ trains. From the very beginning, you could still gain skill points from leveling past 80. Sure, it would take you a while to do it if you weren’t playing skill challenges, but you would eventually be able to do it without wasting your time on things you didn’t enjoy.
I’m okay with it taking a month per character, so long as that time is enjoyable. The time I set aside for playing is there to be enjoyable. If I’m spending my leisure time doing chores, it’s no longer leisure time.
We were promised a game in which we could have fun, instead of preparing to have fun. It started out that way, with literally everything but SPvP giving you XP, which in turn gave you skill points and a resource that you could use to unlock your traits and get a set of the mechanically best set of gear. Ascended gear was a step back from that in that the best gear wasn’t easily accessible, but you would still eventually be able to acquire it while playing pretty much any type of playstyle you wanted. This is terrible, in that it completely breaks the manifesto that they sold the game to us under, the ascended grind could be equivocated by redefining grinding to playing unenjoyable content for mechanical rewards. This, can’t. This system is literally forcing people to grind in order to unlock important mechanics of their characters.
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
I’m sorry, but it’s NOT 11 hours on one character. I have 15 characters currently and I’m working through challenges on them presently. The vast majority of them have very little world completion done, a lot of them have nothing open beyond the first few waypoints in their starter zone. Yet, you don’t see me kittening about this.
Edit: And I only get to play an hour an night if I’m lucky!
Even at 5 mins its around 5 hours for 1 character let alone if you have multiples. It may not bother you personally but how about having some understanding that others may not like having the progress that THEY EARNED reset.
The ones that EARNED it leveled to 80 and did the challenges. They won’t be affected.
I don’t consider champ training and clicking through scrolls EARNING anything. And yeah, I did it too to unlock skills. Ive spent gold to unlock traits with the new system. I’m going to lose all of it too, its not the end of the world though.
By that logic, you shouldn’t consider skill challenges earning them either. It’s just running to arbitrary points and completing a task that has absolutely no difficulty, it’s tedious, not challenging, just like champ trains.
If you’re going by that metric, the only people that earned them would be the people that paid for them via WvWvW kills/objectives, High level fractals or SPvP and they should be tied exclusively to WvW rank, Fractal reward level, and PvP leaderboard ranking. All of these are far more challenging, and deserving than skill challenges are. Up the difficulty on them, and give them interesting mechanics that result in every class being forced to approach each of them differently while using their full suite of mechanics, and it’ll be both earning them, and keep them from being tedious. Two to three minutes of running across a map followed by a trivial encounter that doesn’t require any actual skill doesn’t seem like it would appeal to anyone.
People like to simplify it to clicking scrolls, but that’s only the last step. It’s like saying that Skill challenges aren’t earning them because you’re just given skill points. Skill challenges are pretty much just brainless tedium.
Make the skill challenges both actually challenging, fun in and of themselves, and either make them account bound, or varied such that they’re a unique experience with each class and I’d be okay with it. But as they are now, they’re just a waste of time.
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
Except i dont think its fair that someone is able to work on unlocking their elite specs if they havent done enough hero challenges to completely unlock the core specs. Thus a debt is needed. Its essentially saying they never have to complete those extra skill challenges (they arent complete on the map but they may aswell be because you got free hero points).
And you are completely misunderstanding me on my other points. Dont really know how to explain it any other way. I know exactly how they want things to work. You repeating those to me has no relevance.
AGAIN, the point is that the system announced will privilege PvE world completion over other forms of gameplay. I’m not asking that others reach my number of WvW ranks, so why should I be asked to reach their number of ‘skill challenges’?
Not that it matters a whole lot now cuz they recently changed it, but it used to be we were FORCED to go into WvWvW to get our 100% map completion to make legendary weapons. also to fulfill all the achievement for jumping puzzles we had to brave through getting ganked at puzzles choke points to get credit for a PVE reward. We are all sooooo sorry you have to experience a different aspect off the game to get the content you want. /sarcasm off
Legendary weapons were never a PvE reward. It was both a PvE and WvW reward, it had a badges of honor requirement built into it from the very start.
Besides, it’s nowhere near as important as traits. Legendary weapons aren’t a mechanical advantage outside of changing stats, which mostly just compensates for the cost of crafting it (as opposed to one weapon of every stat combination).
Lacking a legendary weapon wont give you a disadvantage when compared to multiple weapons of the same quality, which don’t require map completion.
You will be at a disadvantage if you go up against a situation that requires reflects, and don’t have feedback, because your core traits are Domination/Dueling/Illusions, and you took chaos as your fourth because blink was locked behind it (Manipulations are likely to be in the same track as the manipulation boosting traits), leaving you without feedback/Inspiration (Glamours are likely to be locked behind the trait line that boosts glamours)
lol I hope they triple the requirements and make it 100% world completion just so I can see these entitled whiners explode…
I’d love that. It makes no difference to me personally, because I’m only going back to skill challenges once it’s time to make a third legendary regardless, and it’ll only cause even more backlash if that happens.
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Yeah…. let’s make the game easier than it already is….
If people don’t wanna stick around cause they’re too lazy to learn the game and the things it provides to make one stronger, then the hell with them. You can’t expect to get everything on a silver platter.
The game’s already casual enough, it doesn’t need to get any more casual. And I’m a casual player. I got my first character in around 80h to max level. And I wasn’t even trying to level up as fast as I could. I was just running around…. exploring the map…. in zones way lower than my level….
By casual, do you mean competitive?
Casual is when you can overcome things without having to learn the game, and gain advantages based on factors other than your own skill. Character progression strengthens this, as content is balanced around a certain point, and the ability to out-level it means that it can be overcome by just playing long enough.
Competitive would be if you automatically had everything unlocked, and content was balanced around that assumption. The only way to progress being to improve your own skill. It’s why SPvP gear is its own separate and easily acquired setup.
The whole reason that the rate of ability acquisition was slowed down, and enemies in lower level zones were declawed to compensate for it, was because they wanted to appeal to casual players that couldn’t cope with learning the mechanics of the game unless it was drip fed to them.
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
Surely that’s a better alternative to having to complete group events and/or purchasing traits with gold, right?
No, it isn’t. You get gold and skill points from playing every part of the game that involves mechanics in some way. You only get skill challenge completion from skill challenge completion. It’s a huge step back for anyone who isn’t a world completion player.
its not a step back when you are talking about earning something like 400 more skill points and 43 gold, versus earning 65 skill points.
65 skill points averages at an average of 1 per 5 minutes in pve
vs
400 skill points with an average of 1 per half hour in WvW.
and 43 gold, at an average of 8? gold an hour in WvW.and, even under the old first system, you actually had no skill point scrolls,
the math comes down to like
30 extra hours to unlock all skills
versus
3 extra hours in pve doing skill challenges.If you want to argue for progress lost thats fine, but lets be honest, this system is easier than either previous system.
I think you’re forgetting something.
This system is infinite time in WvWvW/Dungeons/Fractals/SPvP.
This system is easier if you do the content that gives them. It’s far, far worse if you don’t.
Additionally, you don’t need to purchase every trait under the current system, many of them are ineffective (Fall damage outside of jumping off fortresses) or broken (Radiant Retaliation). Under the announced system, we’ll have to unlock every trait in a trait line before we can move on to the next one, because they’re all parceled together, presumably with the grandmaster traits at the very last section of it, because progression/feeling special, and a trait line with only 2 traits open is almost always going to be worse than one with three, making it worthless until you reach the very end of the line.
Somehow I’ve managed to unlock traits from all 5 trait lines on multiple characters with only a single character with world completion, and the rest at or below 35 skill challenges.
If three hours doing something unenjoyable is acceptable, why not just make it a $60 gem store item? It’s more or less the same thing, but at least working overtime gets something productive to society done.
Time to play mesmer while it lasts
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
Surely that’s a better alternative to having to complete group events and/or purchasing traits with gold, right?
No, it isn’t. You get gold and skill points from playing every part of the game that involves mechanics in some way. You only get skill challenge completion from skill challenge completion. It’s a huge step back for anyone who isn’t a world completion player.
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Eponet.4829
I would like to point out that in the time since this thread started every person in it could have obtained 50% world completion by just playing 1 hour per day. This is almost triple of what will be needed to get full unlock status in the expansion, i.e. three characters worth of unlocks.
Or they could have made 500 dollars working an extra hour per day. What’s your point? Would it be considered acceptable if they scrapped hero points altogether and just made the trait unlocks a 40,000 gem item?
Yes, that is a comparable analogy. I’ve done world completion once, and hated myself about a quarter of the way through. It would be even worse doing it a second, or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth, or seventh, or eighth, or ninth time. At least in the process of earning your money you know that you’re doing something productive, even if you hate it.
That datamined stuff contained dagger and axe attacks, and also had 5 skills for each attunement. A one-handed sword would have 3.
Incorrect. For melee weapons, you have three attacks built into the auto attack. Add in skills #2 and #3, and you have five skills, not three.
A Greatsword would have had 7 attacks, instead of 5, for the same reason.
Only if they have a chain attack. Elementalist daggers have none.
It is something eles are lacking, so maybe the axe auto placeholders do represent a sword. But we cannot know for sure until they say something.
They did say melee weapons. Elementalist daggers aren’t melee, they’re shorter ranged than the other elementalist weapons, but the range on their autoattacks are 400/600/300/300. A significant increase over the 130 on every other class’ melee weapon (other than the ranger, because the ranger one handed sword cheats and moves the user closer).
If you’re choosing master traits over grandmaster traits isn’t that a sign that they failed at balancing? I assume most of the reason for doing that is to load up on both straight weapon buffs & movement speed traits, but I sort of doubt that the movement speed traits will survive the system change.
It could also be that you’re using a niche build that just doesn’t gain much use from any of the traits in a tier, even if they’re good for the builds that will normally take the line.
i.e. Power based mesmer taking chaos for prismatic understanding.
Of the traits in the first tier, master of manipulations is great as your adept trait, but then at the master level, if you’re not using a staff, the staff buffing trait is useless, if you’re not building around conditions, the condition damage is useless, and mirror of anguish is just overall bad. I’d rather take illusionary defense.
or Domination in PVE in general. It’s all great in PVP, but in PVE, the master trait is lacking if you’re not running a signet build.
- Hardly enemies have any boons to remove
- Signet buffs are useless without signets
- The enemies that you really need quickness against tend to be near impossible to interrupt after the first one, significantly limiting the usefulness of furious interuption
Isn’t celestial only primarily used in SPvP, where you don’t need to make the armor anyway?
Still won’t change the fact that zerker will still be the faster way through content, if vulnerability stacking can go past 25 that’s just a huge buff to zerker.
Seriously removing the condi cap in conditions is just another bandaid and only increases the single players dps, Vulnerability raises everyones.
[sarcasm]Vulnerability is now op.[/sarcasm]
Has it been confirmed that condition caps are being removed across the board and not just on bleed?
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Edit: Okay I realized that it was stupid to implement the slip feature just like how it is stupid to implement tank healer in an action MMO game, so I would like to suggest a new moderate solution which is: Whenever you move while under the effects of swiftness you slowly degenerate endurance and whenever you use mobility skills you lose a little bit of endurance.
Imagine the trolls that would cast swiftness on people before a boss.
Maybe you should post this on the WoW or LoL forums where it would actually be relevant.
Uh what.
Taunts are rare in LoL. Most tanks don’t have them, and if they do, they’re low duration. Tanks in LoL tend to be characters that are tanky enough to survive taking dangerous positions, and either powerful enough to punish you for ignoring them, or so full of all sorts of CC that they’ll disrupt you and make it possible for their glass cannons to kite/heal.
The first type sounds exactly like the popular celestial builds.
just because i would never make a legendary greatsword – so from my point of view it is unnecessary, it does not mean there is no reason for it to exist.
I agree. Legendary weapons shouldn’t be higher than ascended, and if the gap is closed by reducing ascended stats, legendary stats should continue to match it.
Nobody is crafting a legendary to get stats though, so that point flew right above your head.
Then what is it about them that gives an advantage over others? The only things about them that have any mechanical effect are:
-Ascended Stats
-Stat Changing
If you’re saying that you want stat changing on ascended items to separate it from exotics, then I personally would have no issue with it.
Use dagger storm against rapid fire. Most rangers are dumb and kill themselves.
Smoke screen also stops all longbow damage but barrage. Also makes it hard to fight into a blinding field.Alternatively, steal from one of the numerous GS warriors running away from fights anywhere on your borderland (I’m always like “yo, why u chose a warrior if you gonna run like a lil girl?”), and use it to reflect the RF.
Or just steal from the ranger to interrupt them
just because i would never make a legendary greatsword – so from my point of view it is unnecessary, it does not mean there is no reason for it to exist.
I agree. Legendary weapons shouldn’t be higher than ascended, and if the gap is closed by reducing ascended stats, legendary stats should continue to match it.
Just a point of argument
Ascended weapons/armor/trinkets came out to 8.6% damage when using food and utility buffs over exotic weapons/armor with ascended trinkets and the same food/utility buffs (Truffle Steak+Superior Sharpening Stone, less powerful buffs resulted in a larger difference). from my calculations. The gap closes when you’re have reliable sources of might/fury/ferocity/raw crit chance, but even with a theoretically infinite value wont ever reach 4.98.6% even with a hypothetical near infinite increase to power/precision/ferocity due to the base damage on the weapon being a multiplier on the power. The build contained 300 power, 200 precision and 200 ferocity from traits Builds like 300/300/300 (Like variations on scepter/focus elementalist) in those have less of an increase, while those that run less, which is most builds due to amazing damage multiplying traits tending to be in other lines, will have a greater increase from ascended gear.
Certain classes are effected more than others. Might stackers like Scepter/Focus elementalist see a negligible increase in damage from ascended armor (At least in PvE where nothing removes your boons) (survivability is harder to calculate as it’s not a strict multiplication), and if you have one in your group, you’ll see similar results.
If you’re playing pugs or solo WvW roaming, you’ll see a noticeable difference in damage from ascended armor, and most likely a reasonable increase in survivability.
Either way, you should definitely make ascended weapons, for the base damage if nothing else. +5% damage is pretty much a free trait, and the two together without access to might/fury stacking is almost the difference between maintaining 90% health or not with scholar runes.
(edited by Eponet.4829)
Those with ascended actually play the game. Those who don’t issue statements like “I don’t really have all that much time to play” and plunk down MC or Visa for the same experience.
You could buy ascended gear as well. It’s just more expensive. The only component in ascended gear that can’t be bought with gold in some way are obsidian shards, which are a minor karma cost, and legendaries, which are equal to ascended weapons can be bought.
It’s much more likely that it has to with the fact that exotics can be reasonably acquired just playing whatever it is that you feel like. If anything, it’s ascended gear that’s designed to make people part with more money, as it takes unreasonably long to acquire even a single set just by playing the game. It either takes ages, and then has to be repeated for every character that uses a different rune setup unless you want to hemorrhage gold in rune replacement costs, or it costs 350+ gold to buy the materials.
The only people likely to afford multiple sets of it are trading post investors, people that spend hours grinding the most profitable content for the sake of rewards instead of actually playing the game, or, as you said, people who convert gems to gold. With exotics, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect that by the time they reached 80, you could afford a set.
Also, I’d be totally for white armor/weapons being the highest tier. Progression should come from learning to play your class better rather than simply chasing increasing numbers. But, exotic is where the line gets drawn by most because it’s what most people can afford by the time they reach the level at which they wont be outlevelling their gear anymore.
(edited by Eponet.4829)