(edited by Focksbot.6798)
The South believes that everyone should be equally and fairly rewarded from their efforts. The more you make effort in life, the more you’re rewarded.
This is not what happens in South Korea, or, in fact, any country in the world. With good reason – it would be idiotic. Imagine giving the most money to the person who makes the biggest pig’s ear out of a simple task instead of doing it efficiently.
“Hey, boss, I did those reports you asked for.”
“Great. Put them on my desk.”
“Hey, boss, due to incompetency in language, maths and basic reasoning and using a giant pencil (for the extra challenge), it took me five months to do those reports you asked for.”
“Good God, man! Have a $10,000 bonus!”
Sadly I have been seeing guild wars be referred to as the communist MMO a lot lately and not just around here. Having that sort of reputation could be detrimental.
Anyone with any intelligence would treat a remark like “This is a communist MMO!” with the derision it deserves.
Just so you know, I’m firmly on the side of people who say the lack of gear grind and emphasis on equal stats after a certain point is a good thing and the way forward for this genre. I find the accusations of ANet having missed the point to be ill-founded.
However, I do think it’s a genuine and fair concern that there needs to be some feeling, however illusory, of progression and reward once levelling is maxed out. Something to aim for, say, for people who’re perhaps less imaginative when setting their own goals or who’re driven by a sense of completion.
This is my suggestion: a long, long list of special achievements for difficult or ridiculous feats in combat, to be rewarded by rare skin drops, karma and money.
Examples of some of these achievements (based around the ranger, because that’s the class I’m most familiar with):
Combat
- Finish off two enemies at the same time with one ricochet.
- Kill three enemies by tricking them into attacking a veteran oakheart.
- Set four separate enemies on fire with flaming arrows in under four seconds.
- Set six enemies on fire at once with bonfire or flame trap and survive the encounter.
- Kill five risen in under three minutes whilst naked except for your boots.
- Reflect six projectiles with a single whirling defence.
- Kill an enemy using only your offhand weapon.
- Kill an enemy using the longbow without them coming within 500 range of you.
Support
- Come to the aid of 10 separate downed players not in your guild, having previously not entered the fray (in other words, you weren’t already fighting alongside them).
- Heal the most (excluding self-healing) in a group of five or more when successfully defeating a champion or boss.
- Cure the most conditions (excluding self-healing) in a group of five or more when successfully defeating a champion or boss.
- Inflict the most conditions in a group of five or more when successfully defeating a champion or boss.
I can’t simply agree with you. The game controls can be such that you never get a decent reward for the actions that you’ve undertaken. I the game conditions are not balanced then you will feel like you’ve excessively worked for little reward.
If, by your own example, you can never charge anything but 1 cent mark up on a product you will never feel rewarded for your effort. You’ll never sell enough to make a profit. You can’t make a game like this rewarding enough by playing more hours. At some point you just have to admit it isn’t fun and play something else, or jhust stop playing.
I actually, in part, agree with you about this – the system is flawed. The controls and balance aren’t developed quite well enough to make it feel like you’re really getting a grip on how to master combat.
But my post is more about the theory of the GW2 system, the idea behind its implementation, rather than how it turned out. And I’d say part of the way there is better than not going there at all.
Could somebody who is completely against any progression in gear please explain to me why it is okay for players to have a level advantage on each other but not okay to have a gear advantage? If you truly want to play a game that is perfectly balanced from the start, then why play a game that has levels at all?
The only point in levelling I see is this: it gives you a steer on how far out you can go, how fast to take the story, how ready you are for certain aspects of the game. It’s also a device for introducing you slowly to the full range of potential abilities.
A friend of mine is going to buy the game soon, and I’m going to really enjoy being able to take a levelled up character and help her out in her story mode and general questing without my character being ridiculously OP. Sure, I could roll a new character, but I like my current character and am looking forward to taking her in as the cool sidekick on someone else’s quest.
Another point: I’m at level 77. Are you seriously telling me that in three levels I’ll have:
- Completed the story when I’ve only just done the Battle at Fort Trinity?
- Finished the remaining 66% of the world I haven’t done?
- Done all the rest of the dungeons (I’ve only done two)?
- Completed all the jumping puzzles? (I’ve done about six).
I doubt it. This isn’t about endgame at level 80. You guys are asking for endgame after you’ve done every single thing there is to do in the game. Which means ipso facto you’re asking the impossible!
That’s your perception.
My perception?You get a graduation certificate for being HARDWORKING and dedicated.
You get a promotion for being HARDWORKING and dedicated.
You get rich if you are HARDWORKING and dedicated.
You triumph more easily in mmorpg if you are HARDWORKING and dedicated.How to be good? Be hardworking and dedicated.
You can’t be good without making efforts.
Your perception is wrong. That’s not how the world works. You get rewarded for DOING THINGS WELL. The reason you seem to have made a critical mistake is that doing things well often requires hard work. But that doesn’t mean hard work always leads to doing things well.
Here’s you trying out your ‘perception’ in the real world:
“Hey, Mr Bank Manager, I’m here for my money.”
“What money?”
“I started a business, see, and I’ve been working hard at it night and day, so I figured I deserved a reward.”
“Err… well, did you make any profit?”
“Nope. But I worked really, really hard at it. I dedicated my every working hour to it.”
“But you haven’t made any profit yet?”
“Not yet. But I figure that since our society rewards hard work and effort, you ought to give me a reward.”
“Err… no.”
“But I worked hard!”
“Still no.”
However, keep working hard and you’ll eventually become a GOOD businessman. Then you’ll make money.
Similarly, keep working hard at GW2 and you’ll become a GOOD player. Then you’ll get your reward. That’s the connection. Hard work matters, but it does not = success. It’s just part of the long road to getting good, and when you’re good, then you get your reward.
Everyone likes to work for something and then enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Everyone wants a a reasonable opertunity to compete in PVP on an even field.
But the problem is that 40 year old guys with jobs and families playing an hour or 2 maybe 4 nights a week dont want to compete against 20 year old college students grinding out uber items 40 hours a week.
There is no workable answer.
Hmm. I don’t see why the rewards for their labour have to take the form of gear. Give them gold. Give them karma. Give them rare drops. That’s fine.
Just don’t give them superior gear. They don’t really need it – they’re just psychologically addicted to it.
Fanboys will defend gw2 to death regardless of its flaws.
No, Pillock-silm – we will happily harp on about its flaws. Most of the threads I’ve started on these forums concerns GW2’s flaws. It is a flawed game. There is much to improve. Everyone who you’re arguing with would agree on this.
But one thing that would make the game infinitely worse and would not improve it one iota would be to introduce a gear grind just so that imbeciles who think merit-based rewards = communism can use free time to make up for their dearth of ability.
Yes, this game needs more to do past level 80. It needs, perhaps, a scavenger hunt, more various costumes/outfits, or something of that nature. But it needs a gear gind system like it needs a hole through the head.
Towards your other quote, you’re mixing “communism” and “democracy” together.
You missed the entire point.In democratic society, at least people are rewarded with efforts.
Making effort for graduation certificate can give you a job. It’s not just cosmetic.
Making effort for promotion can give better pay and rewards. It’s not just cosmetic.
Making effort to get richer, you get richer. It’s not just cosmetic.There’s progression and rewards for every effort you did.
The -efforts for reward- to get a job, promotions, get richer are what made it fun.
If everything is spoonfed, we can see examples from silver-spoon children who can’t satisfy themselves with anything when they have everything without efforts. That’s why in reality, silver-spoon children can never have fun in life because they have no solid goals.
I’m getting really impatient with this moronic inability to understand the way different systems work.
Democratic societies do not reward people for effort. They reward people for doing something well, or at least better than other people. We manifestly do not live in a society where everyone gets up, jogs on the spot for eight hours and then gets given an extension to their house, but if they jog for nine hours they get a car as well. Because that would be stupid. In much the same way as it is stupid in other MMOs.
You get a graduation certificate for being GOOD at something.
You get a promotion for being GOOD at your job.
You get rich if you are GOOD at swindling/hoarding/doing business.
You triumph more easily in Guild Wars 2 if you are GOOD at it.
So, for the people who do not care about roleplay, should really stay away from this game?
Maybe they should do something other than levels then? An unlock system for areas instead of levels so no one is mislead to thinking there is special level content?No one is being ‘misled’. It’s your fault if you’re narrow-minded enough to equate levelling up in a deeply unrealistic fashion with proper role-playing. Levelling has always simply been a gating system to control the speed at which the narrative/explorative mode of the game unfolds. ANet have just refined it so as to remove the most patently absurd side effects.
What kind of genuine ‘role-player’ really believes that their character can acquire a sword that does ten or twenty times the damage of another identical-looking one, or double up their armour while still moving at the same pace? It’s got nothing to do with role-playing. If you’re into role-playing, you need to look at all the advancements in the game as a metaphor for your character becoming gradually more experienced and capable, eventually hitting a plateau, just as they would in real life.
Sigh. As i repeat myself once again since you have selective reading… If you’re not a role player then you should stay away from this game?
Maybe it would help if that sentence made sense. Why is there a question mark at the end when it’s not phrased as a question? Are you asking: “Should role players stay away from this game?” If so, the answer is no, they should not, and I have no idea why you would suggest such a thing, except that you seem to have some perverse idea that role playing = gear grinding.
So, for the people who do not care about roleplay, should really stay away from this game?
Maybe they should do something other than levels then? An unlock system for areas instead of levels so no one is mislead to thinking there is special level content?
No one is being ‘misled’. It’s your fault if you’re narrow-minded enough to equate levelling up in a deeply unrealistic fashion with proper role-playing. Levelling has always simply been a gating system to control the speed at which the narrative/explorative mode of the game unfolds. ANet have just refined it so as to remove the most patently absurd side effects.
What kind of genuine ‘role-player’ really believes that their character can acquire a sword that does ten or twenty times the damage of another identical-looking one, or double up their armour while still moving at the same pace? It’s got nothing to do with role-playing. If you’re into role-playing, you need to look at all the advancements in the game as a metaphor for your character becoming gradually more experienced and capable, eventually hitting a plateau, just as they would in real life.
Only the self-delusioned ones really feel that they are playing a real mmorpg. RPG is in fact a “role-playing” game. If not, then what is it? Like the name itself, you role-play someone who’s not you. You breed and grow someone who is not you.
Yup, for sure GW2 isn’t a role-playing game. Because I really am an 8 foot tall black viking warrior woman who wields axes and a shortbow.
I don’t think there’s any wrong with Pilisilm’s communist analogy. If you insist that GW2 is a mmorpg, then it’s true that GW2 is like a communist country in the planet of mmorpgs.
Sorry, but I agree with people pointing out the communist comparison is utterly stupid. I see you and others have completely ignored my earlier posts where I break down what a ‘communist’ MMORPG would really look like. Let me try again (although I suspect it will still be ignored since it leaves your argument dead in the sand).
A full-on ‘krazy kommunist’ MMORPG would:
- Prevent people from logging on more than other people, in case they got better at it.
- Handicap people who were good at it to stop them winning more than an average number of games, because being ‘better’ is not allowed.
- Give handouts to people who were awful at it to improve their performance (hmm, kinda like what gear-grinding does!)
GW2 is designed as a genuinely meritocratic MMORPG that negates the faux-progress of a gear grind and places emphasis on the player’s own skill and judgement. This is exactly how real life capitalism is supposed to work – people who are better get better results. People who are not so good don’t get special dispensation just for turning up and grinding.
So, why doesn’t AN/NC just take out the leveling system then? What is really gained from a level?
Quoting myself, since, I’ve been totally ignored.
It controls the pace at which the world unfolds. You can only push so far into areas that are at a higher level than you, forcing you to spend more time exploring and unravelling areas at your own level. This creates the feeling that as your abilities grow, your readiness to take on more difficult opponents grows with it, which is a sensible mechanics.
The level scaling, meanwhile, does away with the utterly fatuous and unrealistic eventuality of being able to blow down trolls and barbarians with a strong breath in early areas. Overall, it’s a pretty good reality simulation – as you progress, you’re able to take on a wider variety of enemies and hold your own against stronger enemies, but that doesn’t mean the ones you initially struggled with become a walkover.
Oh where oh where is this hardcore hybrid D&D, Star Wars Academy, Guild Wars twitch MMO video game I am looking for?
‘Zactly. I agree there could be a system where the battles are just as extended, but there’s more of an emphasis on the idea of missing or not getting through armour.
A very simplistic adjustment which wouldn’t change much mechanically but would perhaps help with realism is changing the health bar to a ‘last minute block/dodge initiative’ bar. Essentially, everything but the killing blow and the odd status effect shot is either missing or being countered. Visuals could be adjusted to match this – arrows pinging off tough hides, swords glancing off.
The important thing would be to throw in special animations and sounds for the finishers so that the player really gets the sense that that finishing blow has struck home that much more credibly than all before it. So instead of the arrow pinging off, it sinks into the throat with a solid thunk, the fletching sticking out, and a wet gurgling eminates from your enemy. Or a blow with the sword or axe severs heads and limbs, and sinks in so deep that your character has to take a moment to pull his weapon out of the guts of his fallen foe.
I admit (a) there are balance issues, and (b) it’s too late to see this implemented now. Might be nice as an alternative game-mode somewhere along the line though.
1.- how would that work if there is a second bow user? and a third? and a full group?
Maybe bow skills would require FPS aim. If there are three of you versus one beast – well, that makes sense. You’re ganging up – victory is assured. But imagine it was three v three. Do you waste arrows? Or do you try to do it with swords and axes?
2.- what happens when there are more than one player around? it may work for dungeons, but what about the open world where there are around 50 or so players? too weak mobs will make it be unchallenging
Unless there’s lots and lots of them. In TF2, sometimes you’re fighting 30-40 robots at once with four other players.
3.- thats not possible with the current mechanics
Agreed. For all its innovation, I see GW2 as a stepping stone towards realistic, involving combat, and I think boss enounters in particular are hamstrung by the simplicity of the system. One day games will move past the point where everyone is either fully functional (even at 1% of their healthbar) or dead and include states of degradation and injury. Then DPS won’t matter as much as tactics and skill.
5.- pvp thieves already do that, lol, pve would become so much easier
Well, they’d have to be more vulnerable as well. Playing a thief would become all about perfectly executing an infiltration and assassination – when the plan goes wrong, you run. Also, my point about cannons not turning – in this game currently, there’s no safe spot when facing heavy ordance – cannons and trebuchets can literally shoot at their own feet in order to hit you. How about making it so that its possible to approach them cleverly and avoid getting hit?
6.-as much as fun as that can be, it would also leave me a “wtf, thats it?
Except perhaps when you’ve later run out of arrows and you think, “I really shouldn’t have wasted it that time on the troll when I could have switched to axe …”
It’s a bit closer to something like Demon’s Souls, where players are ordinary soldiers and monsters are almost as powerful.
But we’ve all killed hundreds – maybe thousands – of enemies. We’re all one-man slaughterwagons; we’re just doing it in slow motion.
As much as I disagree hugely with people who want to geargrind for killer weapons, I really do think that a fundamental let-down with GW2 is how weak absolutely every weapon feels. If anyone here has spent time playing Mann v Machine, the new Team Fortress 2 co-op, you’ll know the sublime satisfaction in being massively outnumbered and overwhelmed but still able to hold your own through superior intelligence and weaponry.
I can’t help but fondly imagine a version of GW2 like this. Instead of taking three steps, then spending thirty seconds pumping an enemy full of arrows or buckshot, taking another three steps and repeating, imagine:
- One well-placed arrow takes down an enemy as he’s charging towards you. Balanced by a limited supply of arrows, forcing you to save them for enemies that are extremely dangerous up close. After the battle, you scavenge the bodies, retrieving some arrows from the corpses so that they can be used again.
- Standing knee-deep in skritt or grawl, swinging your greatsword, taking out three with every swing, as more of them swarm over you. Slowly but surely, their numbers are wearing you down, but you’re determined to take as many of them as possible.
- Facing a champion, knowing just a few accurately placed arrows will cripple him, but never getting a chance to line up the shot, because he chains together devastating moves so quickly that you’re expending all your energy dodging and weaving. He charges – you masterfully leap out of the way – he skids and nearly falls – take the shot!
- The first few wolves walk straight into your firetrap – it doesn’t just cause a temporary affliction, but causes them to yelp and roll, trying to put the flames out. The remaining wolves dodge round the edges of the trap, but at least you’ve thinned their numbers …
- You land the perfect backstab, jumping from the shadows, killing the separatist cannoneer with one blow. His friends see you, of course, and you have to disappear immediately to avoid being seriously injured, but with the cannoneer down, your team-mates can make it through a gap in the barrage. Now all four of you are behind the wall of cannon, and they can’t turn them quickly enough to face you. The advantage is suddenly yours.
- One of the trolls makes it into melee range. He’s about to knock you to the ground – you fire off your point blank shot – a special arrow with an explosive tip you only carry three of at any one time. It sends him flying back, over the ridge, into the valley, where he lands with a sickening crunch.
in games with gear treadmills, ive gone through insane dungeons and raids that take perfect teamwork and strategy and hours and hours to complete -the difference is you feel like you’re progressing in games with treadmills and you dont in gw2
Calling you out on this – I don’t believe for one minute those ‘insane’ dungeons required ‘perfect teamwork’. In these games, all party leaders want is people with a particular top tier set of gear to repeat the same simple task again and again ad infinitum, no matter the encounter, because they’ve worked out that’s the easiest way through. Calling it ‘teamwork’ because one of you had to keep jamming heal spells for four hours while another person absorbed all the damage for four hours is a bit self-glorifying.
It’s just like N.Korea. When everyone is too equal, no one wants to make effort. Since doctors and cleaners earn the same, who wants to study hard and make effort in life?
Because there are no doctors in North Korea. Right.
Pilusilm – your arguments are riddled with logic-holes. The ridiculous analogy to athletes for instance. Athletes who train for longer will get better. People who play on GW2 for longer will get better for the same reason – they learn to play. Athletes who train for longer hours aren’t rewarded with better gear, for kittens’ sake.
You say “You just dislike the idea of progress”. You know there are many kinds of progress, right? The game has narrative progress – being rewarded by being able to explore more of the world and complete more of the story. Once that’s exhausted, there’s progress in the form of a mass of achievements that can be earned. Then, of course, there’s progress in terms of you actually mastering the game.
People like you just seem to want to be spoon-fed. You think you deserve a pat on the head and a gold trophy just for turning up. If you want the satisfaction of progressing, how about you actually make some progress yourself? Set yourself the task of soloing all champions. Play a difficult area with the loadout you feel most uncomfortable with. Throw yourself out there as a weapon-for-hire and help other players with their story mode. All of these things can bring you engagement and satisfaction – the difference is that you might have to actually put some effort in.
God, if they stopped you gathering nodes whilst in combat I would throw up my arms. Enemies constantly spawn on top of me while I’m gathering. There are flat out too many in the game – it’s non-stop dot-to-dot slaughter whatever you’re doing. What I wouldn’t give for a ‘creep’ mode than let you avoid most encounters entirely, so I could pick when to fight based on whether or not it’s fun for me at the time.
I actually really enjoyed this encounter when I first came across it. I was one-shotted, and left the game bemused to get a sandwich. When I came back, someone was reviving me and a big team had arrived to take on this giant. Over about half an hour of taking it in turns to play cat-and-mouse with him, we managed it.
Unfortunately, every champion since has been quite another story. They always seem to be at the end of long and difficult trails through caves and mountains, past three or four veterans, in tightly confined spaces. Once I see them I know I might as well turn around and go back, because ArenaNet have designed these encounters to be pretty much impossible as a lighter class without a full squad of people.
No space for manoeuvre + respawning vets + monster health bars = turn around and fight my way back out of the cave/mountain trail. It’s not like the chest will have anything truly spectacular in it anyway.
i am in college. i take care of a disabled parent. i cannot, and will not, revolve my life around a video game. however, i still love a good mmorpg and have been a pvp fan since rvr in daoc.
This. Not for me personally, but for God’s sake, people, it’s not communism to invite people of all stripes to play a game – if anything, it’s commercialism. Why would you restrict the appeal of your game to a tiny cadre who are going to devote a significant portion of their lives to it?
This whole earning it vs. people who want hand outs thing sadly reminds me of real life. Meritocracy is a myth, it is a hollow rationalization people use to be harshly judgmental, look down their noses at others, or feel better about themselves.
Good post, and an adroit comparison. It is rather like wealthy people claiming they ‘earned’ their wealth, failing to acknowledge that those less fortunate than them work just as hard with just as much dedication and skill.
Look, guys, it’s pretty simple: if you play the game more, you will always have some advantage. Why? Because you’ll learn the mechanics better. You’ll learn how to react to different situations and opponents. That’s fair. A ‘carebear’ or ‘communist’ system would be one that handicaps people just for being good – a game which calculates how often you win and imposes penalties to try to make you lose more. That would be coddling lesser players. That would be egalitarianism gone mad.
But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the fact that GW2 doesn’t give you an unfair, unearned advantage simply for repeating mindless busywork without learning anything or getting better.
You people who argue for a non-stop gear grind are arguing for a system which says, “You know what, you haven’t improved yourself or put any real effort in today, but hey, here’s something just for turning up and mucking about for a few hours.”
I think I get what you’re saying.
Endgame = something engaging to keep doing after hitting level 80 and finishing your personal story. Repetitive grinding for a few weapons and unbalanced WvW isn’t engaging enough. We need WvW overhauling, and we need things that appeal more widely.
Right?
Aha! I haven’t got that far yet. So Gorr makes his return, does he?
Oh, also, why on earth didn’t you make Gorr and Tonn the same character? Why have two Asura weapon specialists turn up within three or four missions of each other? I guess it would have created the same sort of problems we have with the Sylvari meeting Trahearne early on and then being forgotten by him.
Hi,
So … at the end of Breaking the Bone Ship, I was told to go find Tonn and find out why he hadn’t returned yet. No sooner am I swimming through the water in the direction of the green star than a cutscene interrupts me. Someone says they’ve found Tonn and that he’s dead, but this plays out while my screen is filled with the featureless surface of the water. Then the (terribly inappropriate) victory music plays and I get to choose my reward.
It looks sort of like a bug, but then Tybalt’s death was awfully anticlimactic as well – with some doors shutting (why couldn’t we shut them with Tybalt on the other side?) and a muffled voice.
While I’m here, it’s a bit weird that Tonn is killed because I chose ‘death of an innocent’ as my greatest fear. He’s an explosives expert who seems to love blowing baddies up – about as ‘innocent’ as I am, by the looks of things.
tbh, I couldn’t make my crafting keep up with my level at all. I’ve spent 300 levels crafting junk. Only the special recipes give you weapons that are fairly useful.
My main reason for persevering is so that I can sell the materials – at level 300 huntsman I can refine all planks and ingots from whatever I happen to find and put it straight on the market.
and ur name is “fockbots”, u could have done a better wish list
I think you may have misread my name.
What would it be?
For me, it’s the targeting. The number of times an aggressive enemy has been standing right in front of me, hitting my character, I’ve quickly pressed tab, followed by a number, only to see my character turn 90 degrees to the left or right and shoot an arrow at a distant neutral animal. Why??
Secondary question: if you could CHANGE (not fix) one thing right now, what would it be?
For me, I would prevent nearby creatures respawning round a champion until it has been defeated. I quite like taking on champions by myself, preparing for a long-haul fight where I can whittle them down slowly over time. Unfortunately, I find this impossible while the game has the propensity to respawn one or more veterans I’ve previously killed while I’m in the middle of fighting the champ. I assume this was by design to make solo’ing of champs extremely difficult, but I still hate it.
Are you sure about this? As far as I can tell, all the nodes are replenished after you die or reload the game.
Sure, put in sexy outfits for both men and women, but give them low stats and make them untransposeable – maybe just town outfits.
I’m fine with that.
But if players who perve over girls in bikinis start complaining about seeing men in leather codpieces, they can go super-cute-kitten themselves, the kittens. Kitten kitten. Kitten.
Power creep though is necessary for dealing with larger and badder threats. Dragon kitten has this with a vengeance, people trembled before Frieza, yet in Dragon Ball GT Omega Shenron could basically yawn on Frieza to defeat him. That big guy who stopped a bullet and could move faster than light on the first DBZ episode? Yeah, he’s hopelessly weak in the grand scheme of the show.
Honestly though the whole fusion thing later on was dumb, but power creep helped made the series interesting.
Just to go briefly off topic, power creep manifestly did not make DBZ a more interesting show; it made it get more ridiculous and farcical with each passing season until everyone gave up on it. You had a character who could destroy the moon with a flexing of his fist in the first season, who is at one point supposedly weaker than a tiny, bald monk (or is at least impressed by the monk’s power), who is then in turn used as a punching bag for the rest of the series. No wonder Toriyama called it quits.
They’re afraid of the humiliation of being outgeared by players who play with more effort. They want to be spoon-fed everytime with the excuse of having no time to grind. They’re afraid of hamsters having bragging rights. They want to be the same level as those who put more time into the game. Etc. It started to feel this way after reading some posts in the forum.
What planet are you living on, dude? They’re not ‘afraid’; they just know there’s no point in playing if you literally do not have time in your life to grind as much as other people. They know that a system that rewards loners and addicts is bogus.
It’s the regular MMO vets who are afraid because they’re used to being able to make up for a deficiency of skill/situational awareness/adaptability/creativity by just sitting up until 4am with a stale pizza clicking on goblins’ heads.
I’m on a server where people are often complaining about a lack of people and I’ve hardly ever had to worry about people joining in events. Often I start doing them to see if I can solo them. Sometimes I can, and very often, three or four other people join me in about five minutes.
It is also the best thing happened to me because I leveled a warrior and dont accept any ranger into my dungeon runs now including the guildies and if I want a decent ranged dps I will just take another warrior who doesnt have to sacrifice everything else to be a decent dps and invest in glass cannon build and whom I dont have to revive at every swarm summons, big aoes, pull aoes at boss fights etc and wont have to worry about their buggy and agro-happy pets now.
Sounds like you suck at dungeons. I’ve done them with squads of four rangers and a thief and not had any particular issues.
I’ve noticed people keep comparing GW2 to an FPS, as if the one defining feature of an FPS were the fact that it’s skill-based, rather than grind-based (as opposed to, you know, being in first person and based entirely around shooting).
I really had no idea the world of MMOs was so full of people who feel they should be rewarded purely for the number of hours they spend farming weak enemies, rather than actually getting good at a game. The incentive to play more at GW2 is that the more you play, the better you should be getting at using a wide variety of tactics. If the idea of getting better doesn’t appeal to you enough, or isn’t enough reward for your time … well, I don’t know what to say.
The ‘deep’ sound is appropriate. The boredom with which she says most of her lines is rather troubling though.
I find Entangle incredibly useful – particularly against bosses who spawn lots of lesser enemies. You can pin down the minions and leave them to be slowly killed by an AOE, while concentrating mostly on the boss.
For some reason, I’m not allowed to buy Mistfire Wolf. It doesn’t come up with a price when I hover over.
Not always shortbow – sometimes I use Rapid Fire (on the longbow) or Ricochet (with the axe) with QZ for this combo.
I wanted to play a warrior but didn’t feel like shelling out 30 gold for my cultural just to look good …
So by ‘look good’, you mean semi-nude and impractical? I think it should be a general rule in these games that if you want heavy or even medium armour you have to cover up. Anyone exposing skin gets increased vulnerability. Give people the option to look sexy at the expense of stats, and then facepalm when they whinge about it.
I love this combo for making short work of mobs in an ambush, but is it actually doing anything, or does it just feel like it is? Does burning stack?
Yep – personally, I’d like to get the Raven shaman costume for a Norn. I’d actually really appreciate a chance to prove I can be a Raven shaman.
Lifestyle can only change so much. A female build is a female build, that is the way their genes are.
’Scuse me, matey:
The largest section of the demographic is usually 18-35 males so appealing to that group with hot chicks makes the most sense businesswise. Like arsenal said, on the off chance your game doesn’t have attractive females, people complain.
But they had the opportunity to cater for all groups, and they didn’t. Why do we have so many available body shapes, only for them to differ by such miniscule amounts?
Look, I’m an 18-35 male. I probably would have picked a relatively slim build, regardless of how stupidly unrealistic it is (do you realise how massive your arms have to be to use a wooden longbow effectively?). But why shouldn’t there be the option for people to play hulking muscle-women if they want to?
Like one poster says above, welcome to the double standards of modern society.
And yes, the humans are worse. The available options for people wanting to play a human woman are:
1) Slender, pretty 17-year old.
2) Slender, pretty 17-year old after horrific cosmetic surgery accident.
Love it! In some ways similar to an idea I just posted, but not so similar that you couldn’t have both.
As an endgame option, or just for fun, what about a competitive team scavenger hunt mode, where players have to get as many items from a list as possible purely through drops and the first team to win gets a prize?
Could be done guild v guild.
Of course, if you don’t have these, then it’s a bit hard. What weapon set / utility skills do you roll with?
For group events, twin axes, longbow and a combination of spirits, traps and entangle. My raven can put on blind and I have dodge set up to grant 2 secs of protection but it’s not enough to put away aggro usually – keeps me alive for maybe three or four dodges.
I really hope ANet people are reading these, because many of the posters above make very sensible arguments/suggestions, particularly the idea that the personal story should only ever attempt to treat you like a decent adventurer/credit to the team, not as a central figure, because that leads you to ask: “If I’m so gosh-darn important, why can’t I make any of the important choices?”
Also:
I seriously have never understood this issue. What’s so hard about ignoring the fact that other players are playing through the same story?
It’s the fact that all these players are obviously just as capable as you. As soon as you leave your personal story instance, you go back to a world that will never recognise you as anything extraordinary – you’re just another combat adventurer with a job to do. That’s exactly how you should be treated in the PS as well.
For the record, I started playing as Norn, having not played much GW, and it took me a long time to work out why exactly they were considered a different ‘race’ to humans!