Oh, don’t be hypocritical. You were the one you claimed to speak for the players. And I cite: “The players want the story to be about them.”
My intention, since you seem to be determined to misunderstand, was to encompass the players who are speaking out against the issue. I felt it was an obvious distinction that I didn’t have to spell out. Obviously I was wrong.
I didn’t read the rest of your post, because it hinges on a misunderstanding of my original statement.
I just finished playing through the Battle of Fort Trinity, and I noticed something that’s been bugging me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on before. The scenes that are supposed to make you look like a kitten and a hero play out more like a war reenactment, than an actual war.
So, I was playing through this section of the personal story on my norn ranger, and they’re like, “Fall back and close the doors!!” And I’m like, “Oh crap, we got giants, RUN!!” So, I fall back and close the doors. Cool, no problem.
Then it happens the second time, and this time I notice, I’m the only person running back to seal off the city. Which struck me as odd, but whatever.
Then the third time it happened, I noticed that there were NPC guards standing not 5 feet away from the door controls, staring out into space, while I (second in command of the army) am doing gopher work. “What the hell,” right?
Then I’m told to plant this bomb to blow the door to get the orb back from the risen who stole it, and there’s an NPC sitting right next to the bomb case, and she’s like, “Here’s your bomb!” And I’m like, “You’re already holding the stupid thing, why don’t you set it?” Then the door blows, and I rush in to kill everything, while all the NPCs just stand around and watch. And when I recover the orb, they’re like, “Now, go put the orb back on the pedestal, like a good little girl!”
(Ok, so I’m paraphrasing a bit.)
My point in all this is that every scene is pretty much my character doing everything while all the NPCs stand around with their thumbs up their butts, reading from a script. “It says here that the Commander stole away from the battle to bar the gates, then blew up the barrier and single-handedly stole back the orb in order to sway the tide of battle. So, nobody help her, just sit on the side and watch. We don’t want to ruin the historical integrity of this reenactment!”
The whole thing just feels very staged and wooden. It doesn’t feel like people are actually reacting to a skirmish with the undead minions of Evil, it feels like they’re sort of bumbling around and smacking at each other with wooden swords, while the audience watches the “hero” save the day.
End Scene.
While I enjoy GW2’s style of questing, I have to say that I’m a little sad at how easy it seems to be to fool so many people.
The quest system isn’t really that different from other MMOs. Travel to new area, complete quest, travel to new area, complete quest. And if you’re at a loss for areas to travel to, there’s a handy map that lists all the hot spots where something interesting might be happening! At the end of the day, you can just follow the icons on the map and miss next to nothing in any given zone, which is really no different than following the quest markers in any other MMO.
There’s a jump puzzle or two in each zone, and most of them can’t be found by following the icons on the map, but outside of that, it really is just another game of “Follow the marker.”
If you like the way the story sits, that’s cool. But you don’t speak for me, and you don’t speak for all the other people who obviously disagree with you. So, instead of trivializing their concerns and issues, you should just give your own opinion and leave it at that. Because telling other people how to feel isn’t doing your point any good.
The Destiny’s Edge storyline continues in the dungeons. Which I think is kinda sloppy, considering they’re introduced as a way to help kill the dragon, then shunted off in the personal story and never mentioned again.
Most real heros are unsung and most of them are unknown to most people. There are only a few how also get the glory. But there are only few people how get the glory anyway. But is isn’t actually an argument for any side, because realism can kitten it.
I have no problem with Trahearne “taking all the credit”, which imo he does not. There are enough people in the story who say how awesome I am including Trahearne.
But people on this forum actually want the story to be more cliche and more predicable then it is anyway. I was glad that my player character didn’t became leader of the pact. I was glad that it wasn’t mentioned by everybody that I am the great hero who will slay the undead dragon. Seriously one step more in this direction and the character will sacifice himself at the end of the story and bring salvation to all races.
This I actually not what happens. The PC build up a millitary organisation, with military research and secret service. Than made a step back, that someone could lead and unify this bunch of idiots who couldn’t come up with “Maybe we should work together instead of fighting each other!”
Than he went out gathered the best of the best which is Destiny’s Edge around him and killed one of the 5 dragons. I didn’t done the last mision yet but I expect my character to walk away in slowmo which Arah is exploding behind him.The player character is a bad mary sue as it is, I seriously couldn’t take much more.
I’ve been reading this board since it’s opened, and I don’t think I’ve read anybody saying that they want to be the hero of the day and all the other crap you’re insisting.
The players want the story to be about them. As it stands, the story is about Trahearne and Destiny’s Edge, and your character just becomes a glorified gopher. There’s no sense of responsibility, reward, risk or loss attached with your character, because all he/she ever has to do is exactly what everybody else says to do, with no personal opinions or actions getting in the way of Anet’s Grande Story of Epic Awesome.
The player character could be a grunt in the army for all it mattered, as long as I got to spend some time seeing my character develop more personality than a brick, and create bonds with other characters that last for more than five minutes.
My 2nd character (not even lv 20 yet) is good, fighting anything close to or being evil.
And she is a necromancer…Necromancers aren’t considered “evil” by default in the Guild Wars universe. While they’re often ruthless, many of the Necro characters you’ll run into are just regular people, who are frequently good and lawful types as dedicated to fighting evil as anyone else.
The writing team has said that the player character is always presented as a hero in the personal story.
The issue, I think, is that necromancers deal in death and undead, but are treated as having zero connection to Zhaitan. Despite sharing a method with the Big Bad, nobody seems to be the slightest bit concerned about necromancers as a whole, and where their loyalties lie.
Yes, we know that necromancers have nothing to do with Zhaitan. But that doesn’t mean all the NPCs in the world should know this. There’s plenty of room for hate groups and misunderstandings and a huge, wide gray area of misplaced hatred and uncertainty.
But Anet never capitalizes on it, which is a huge shame.
Correction : Its not that “you dont need gear/ranks to see content” the truth is there is no content. You grind boring dungeons, you look fancy and game is over.
If you wanna look fancy, visit Prada.There’s more content already in GW2 than a person could experience in years; it’s just not content you personally have fun experiencing.
And yet, somehow, people have inexplicably done all this years’ worth of content in a month. Sounds like somebody owns a time machine!!
Home Instance Importance
Available right from the first time a player enters their home instance should be a series of mini quests that let them explore the history of Destiny’s Edge, the Elder Dragons, and their relationships with the NPCs around them. The story is thrown at you in a lot of different directions and this would give players a chance to ‘get to know’ the world and add depth to the relationships that are present.Add some repeatable quests in your home instance. Keep the Salma District clean by taking out local thugs or volunteering at the orphanage/hospital, or helping Petra and Andrew run their bar! A simple repeatable quest in your home instance would give you a reason to come back and add meaning to the area for you as well as strengthening the relationship between PC and NPC characters.
I love this idea. And what would make it shine even more is if, during the repeatable quests, you get face time with your “childhood friend,” where you get to discuss current details of your personal story with them, and get their spin on the entire situation. You know, like two friends just catching up and sharing their thoughts with one another.
Honestly I was going to say not many modern, but in all honesty, I can go back to Baldur’s Gate and Fallout and safely say I hit level cap long before I got to the end of the game.
This is more a nature of the “sandbox” RPG subgenre, in which the storyline isn’t nearly as important as the freedom granted the player to explore and interact with the world. Following the narrative in any RPG is going to lead to game completion long, long before you ever hit the level cap.
GW2 is not a sandbox MMO. I believe there are a large population of players running around the game avoiding personal story and dynamic events only doing Hearts and thinking the story sucks (even a few pro reviewers seemed to not grasp the concept of story delivery in this game) . It’s not sandbox MMO because players can’t make lasting changes in game and players don’t really control the economy (who sets the exchange rate of gems to gold conversion?). Also, although it appears you have multiple paths there really isn’t. In GW2 you a single path through YOUR story, that’s Personal Story chapters. That’s your single path of progression that takes you from level 1 tutorial all the way to the beaches of Orr. You ride that wave until level 80 then dymamic events get you to the final dungeon where the final boss awaits.
Which is sort of my point. GW2, being a themepark, has more in common with narrative-driven RPGs than sandbox RPGs, but has the inverted progression style of a sandbox RPG (without the breadth of explorable “other” content to make up for the lack of progression at the level cap).
Honestly I was going to say not many modern, but in all honesty, I can go back to Baldur’s Gate and Fallout and safely say I hit level cap long before I got to the end of the game.
This is more a nature of the “sandbox” RPG subgenre, in which the storyline isn’t nearly as important as the freedom granted the player to explore and interact with the world. Following the narrative in any RPG is going to lead to game completion long, long before you ever hit the level cap.
I take it, you are one of those players that would not even breath if the game wouldn’t “encourage” you to and possibly stick a carrot for pushing you to do it.
I have always been part of “public in game chats” and similar that foster a community even just talking about random things. I don’t get a “reward” nor the game “encourages” that stuff, but I take initiative and play an active role.
If people prefer to be passive guinea pigs pushing the red button only because there’s food at the end of it, it’s not my – or the developers – fault.
Thank you for completely and utterly missing the point.
But here’s the problem: You read “progression” and in your mind, you substitute it with “gear treadmill from hell,” without stopping to consider that I may not be specifically about gear grinding.
Well then by all means, make a suggestion.
Story*, achievements, skins, pets, minis, collectables, rare crafting materials, etc etc.
There are literally dozens of ways you can reward players for their effort, without implementing a gear treadmill. Many of them require the developers to create diversions that don’t involve killing stuff and looting the corpse, so it’s hard to be more specific until Anet actually moves beyond fixing bugs and making sure combat works properly.
*I believe story to be the ultimate form of progression in any game, where your actions influence the world around you. Unfortunately, story in MMOs is finite and slow in development. Most companies seem content with pumping out new story at a maximum of 1-2 times per year.
the feeling of progression has to be maintained past the point of the level cap.
I take it you’ve never played GW1.
Not enough of it to matter.
But here’s the problem: You read “progression” and in your mind, you substitute it with “gear treadmill from hell,” without stopping to consider that I may not be specifically about gear grinding.
But you’re not insisting that RPGs have progression, because you’re right; they do.
No, what you’re trying to claim is that every RPG has limitless progression and an endgame, and both are, in cases beyond counting, false.
The progression aspect is there between 1-80. Then it caps off. Many RPGs do this. There doesn’t need to be some gear treadmill or other such crap to qualify it as an RPG.
MMORPGs are unique as a sub- (or possible super-?) genre of RPGs, in which the player character reaches the level cap before finishing in-game content. Most RPGs finish their story long before ever reaching the level cap, so the feeling of progression stays linear throughout the entirety of the game. But since MMORPGs are the exact opposite in structure, they create a unique problem for themselves, in which the feeling of progression has to be maintained past the point of the level cap.
Developers, evidently, believed the best way to do this was the gear treadmill.
Whether this is right or wrong is up for debate, but it should be accepted, at least, that this inverted sense of progression from single-player RPGs doesn’t free MMOs from delivering a sense of continued progression at all steps of the game.
(edited by Greyfeld.7104)
GW2 gave you options.
You can play like an hermit or you can join a medium (150 people) guild like I did and have a blast together.Just because you were given the choice to solo does not mean the game does not provide ways to multi-play.
But this is true of every single MMORPG in existence. It’s not unique to GW2 in the slightest, and the mechanics that Anet worked into their game don’t actually encourage socializing. Which is sort of the point, I think.
One day a few years ago, when I was extremely bored, I went googling for a free MMO to play. I stumbled across a little-known gem called Fiesta, published by Outspark. This little game didn’t do anything particularly impressive with its combat, its classes, its gear, leveling, questing, crafting, mounts, or even pvp (hell, I don’t think it even had pvp). But there was one thing that, to this day, still sticks out to me: Kingdom Quests.
Kingdom Quests were instanced quests that were recruited for, once every two hours. So, every two hours, you check a board in town, and queue up for this quest, and once the instance you’ve queued up for is full, you’re whisked away into the instance itself, with a group of other people who also queued for the same instance.
The beauty of these quests is that they’re hard. They’re limited to a specific number of players, so they don’t have to be scaled up or down for some random number of people, which allows the developers to micro-tune it perfectly. It forces the players to not only work together as a unit, but also to manually form groups for quest credit, discuss strategy with other players, and take the time to teach new players the basics of the more difficult fights.
And you know what this all does? It encourages socialization among complete strangers.
That’s the point. When all your content can be steamrolled by tossing enough warm bodies at it, there’s no sense of community, and no reason to socialize with anybody. At the end of your average DE, you may as well have been playing alongside a dozen (or more) NPCs, for all the social interaction it encourages.
Probably the most social parts of the game are dungeons and pvp, neither of which are going to be especially attractive to your average casual player, who just wants to explore the world and take the content as it comes.
Rpg players have been slowly conditioned over time to expect monetary and item rewards for the majority of their adventurea. This isn’t just MMOs, if you go all the way back to tabletop RPGs, PC games like Bards Tale, Ultima, AD&D gold box, Final Fantasy, these games started over 30 years ago, progressed into games like Baldurs Gate, Diablo, Neverwinter and MUDs to make the and EQs and UOs and all the other MMOs we see today.
As far as I’m concerned, it was the introduction of token currency to buy loot that killed MMO dungeons for me. I’ve been conditioned over 30 years of RpGs to be excited about downing a boss and taking his loot, not saving up foodstamps to buy gear.
Personally, I would rather see actions like killing major enemies result in influencing the actions of the world itself, as my “reward.” Unfortunately, video games are limited in their scope due to the need to pre-program a finite number of responses to any given action. So, until the day comes around with artificial intelligence can be designed to dictate the actions of an MMO world, I’ll have to settle for being rewarded with shiny new items.
So until then, yes, I want to be rewarded with loot for killing things and defeating progressively harder encounters.
There is no opportunity for skilled players to stand out and above those that are not.
What? this makes no sense, if everyone has same level gear then the skilled players shine, as skill is all that matters.
Winning a fight because you out stat another player destroys the concept of skill based PVP, and in a PVE enviroment, out stating another player therefore doing more DPS in no way makes you a better player.Making PvP only contain cosmetic upgrades is fine. In PvE it gets old fast when there is no sense of progression. I’m not talking about making it huge upgrades and stuff like in WoW but a sense of progression is needed to keep people interested, this isn’t a sandbox game.
The issue is that many MMO gamers are set in the mentality that at the level cap, progression is directly tied to getting better gear. If a developer could create a sense of progression without leaning on the gear treadmill, they would do the entire MMO genre a massive service.
Personally, I’d like to see a game that updates its storyline more often than once a year.
The only problem I really have with the economy is that 95% of blue gear is vendor fodder, as is 70% of green gear, and any crafted gear that’s not a Rare or higher.
But this problem is a drop rate issue. If the drop rates of blue and green gear were cut in half (and tweaked to be slightly higher in dungeons), we’d see the prices on those types of items rise to compensate, and crafting would be a desired alternate source of gear while leveling, rather than a nice distraction between dynamic events. It would also raise the price of raw materials, making farming a lucrative way to cover the current armor repair and waypoint costs.
But I’m sure if Anet wanted to take that approach, they would have done so long before now.
This is literally the first time I’ve heard of this problem. I’ve bought and sold plenty of items on the TP, and have bought gems for gold on four different occasions.
I lament that this has happened to some players, and I hope it gets fixed soon, but this thread waxes a little melodramatic, imo.
Don’t drown in the sea of fanboy screams.
This game is about as dark and brooding as a Barbie Princess movie.
That said, I HIGHLY recommend the Witcher and Witcher 2 – if you’re looking for a dark fantasy RPG.
Yeah, even if we accept the whole, “Anet only wants us to play heroic characters!” argument, there’s still the fact that heroics require risk, pain and sacrifice. Without conflict, there are no heroics, and the only conflict any character really deals with in this game is the harrowing choice of, “which instrument of death do I want to use today?”
Greyfeld,
So, to be clear, you’re advocating that they ditch the concept of activity-specific commemorative vanity plates because they might require activities you personally don’t care to do to acquire plates you happen to like?
Despite your condescending tone, yest that’s exactly what I’m proposing.
If these were sets that actually dropped inside the dungeon, and had lore and history attached to them, that’d be one thing. But it’s not. It’s vendor gear that you just happen to have to run dungeons (or farm karma) to purchase.
Putting aside the fact that vendor gear should be attainable by any player, through their chosen type of gameplay, this also nestles neatly inside Anet’s supposed design philosophy, because it encourages gamers to choose their own play style, instead of shoehorning them into doing something they don’t want to do.
What would “helping out in other areas of the game map” mean other than something other than the dungeon? You either agree 100% with being able to choose whatever skins you want, whether you’ve done any dungeons or not, or you don’t agree with that choice option.
If it takes a week to grind out the tokens to get your set through dungeons, or a week to grind out the tokens to get your set through DEs (or hearts, or crafting, or even simply farming), then it doesn’t actually matter where you get the tokens. You’re putting in the same amount of effort and time into the same end product. The only difference is that, in this case, people are allowed to choose the path they take to their goal, instead of being forced into a singular playstyle in order to reach the armor set they wish to acquire.
This isn’t the same as “I did a dungeon, so I should get everything on the first run.” It’s spreading the wealth, so that people can choose to do dungeons, or choose to do something completely different, for the same reward, as long as they put in an equal amount of effort.
I would wager that the majority of MMO players see reward(s) as their primary source of fun in that particular genre. For them, a single-player RPG would suffice as a source of pure “fun,” but, in their view, MMOs are about character progression, competition, and the accumulation of intangible rewards/items/money/etc.
I would disagree with this statement. I think the reward/raiding hounds are only a portion of the MMO community, ultimately no bigger than say RPers or PVPers. I believe WoW has created an illusion that these types are the majority of MMO players. If they were SWTOR wouldn’t have burnt so fast.
There’s large group of players looking for a more virtual world experience now that really haven’t been targeted by any MMO company in recent years.
This is what I’m personally waiting on. A real WORLD to immerse myself in. Mechanics above and beyond a health pool and how to make somebody else’s reduce to zero. That’s part of the reason I enjoy crafting, because it involves collection and piecing things together to create something new.
Unfortunately, most developers can’t understand the difference between “breadth of content” and “depth of content.” Adding more dungeons is just adding more of the same thing we’ve been doing for years. Add new ways to interact with the world, give me new reasons to explore and find hidden pieces of lore. Create characters that I can’t wait to interact with, instead of being glorified quest hubs.
I enjoy combat and finding a new shiny piece of gear as much as the next person, but if I just wanted to play a combat simulator all day, I’d pick up a game that actually has good combat… like Street Fighter, or Devil May Cry. I want to play an MMO, because there’s a persistent world that changes based on my actions, and has secrets to explore and uncover.
Things that personality could/should affect:
- NPC dialogue in your home instance
- Your character’s idle animations
- Items (esp. cosmetic ones) that would only be equippable w/ a certain personality
Ideally it would affect your dialogue in story cutscenes as well – this should be included in future expansions.
I agree with most of these, except items. SWTOR made gear split by light side/dark side, and it was a horrible design decision. How a person dresses shouldn’t be dictated by what they say in dialogue sequences.
But this “solution” is very narrow-minded, because it assumes that dungeon rewards should be different from world rewards, and should be set apart specifically only for those who run the dungeons. The reality, however, is that gear progression should have multiple approaches, and the “path” you choose should be based on what you enjoy doing, not which armor set you want to end up with.
100% agreed. Why shouldn’t I be able to gain enough “game currency” to buy a dungeon set of armor by helping out in other areas of the game map? Granted, there should be some “challenging prerequisite” to being allowed to purchase the dungeon set, like proving my worth by completing all paths of the dungeon; but following me earning the right to purchase it, I shouldn’t have to continue to do any one of a very few list of options to actually obtain it.
I’m not even sure that single dungeon run should be required. In the proposal I’m making, these sets wouldn’t be “dungeon sets,” they’d simply be “exotic armor sets,” or whatever the hell you want to call them. Gear that is extremely costly to get ahold of, but can be purchased through time and effort expended in any part of the game you actually enjoy partaking in.
And with an equal amount of time spent doing any one of a number of different things to gain the currency to purchase them, other rewards should be granted as well. Skins, pets, minis, achievements, rare crafting materials, etc etc. It grants the best of both worlds: a token/currency system that eliminates the randomness previously associated with raiding, and random drops that still grant the “gambler’s success” adrenaline surge that many other people enjoy.
Well I think the argument here is that the devs would like to say that certain gear has a connection to the way it was obtained.
I really don’t know anyone who’d work to obtain a dungeon set simply for it’s stats – there are way simpler ways to get gear w/ those stats. It’s the appearance of the armor that demonstrates the player’s accomplishment.
We’re just advocating that there is a less “grindy” way to obtain the gear w/out having to remove it’s connective lore / achievement.
I’m of the mind that dungeon-specific gear should actually drop INSIDE the dungeon. It should also have lore that ties it to that dungeon, and the enemies it drops from.
It should also be no stronger than the “token/currency” gear, so you’re basically just picking it up for the skin.
But this “solution” is very narrow-minded, because it assumes that dungeon rewards should be different from world rewards, and should be set apart specifically only for those who run the dungeons. The reality, however, is that gear progression should have multiple approaches, and the “path” you choose should be based on what you enjoy doing, not which armor set you want to end up with.
100% agreed. Why shouldn’t I be able to gain enough “game currency” to buy a dungeon set of armor by helping out in other areas of the game map? Granted, there should be some “challenging prerequisite” to being allowed to purchase the dungeon set, like proving my worth by completing all paths of the dungeon; but following me earning the right to purchase it, I shouldn’t have to continue to do any one of a very few list of options to actually obtain it.
I’m not even sure that single dungeon run should be required. In the proposal I’m making, these sets wouldn’t be “dungeon sets,” they’d simply be “exotic armor sets,” or whatever the hell you want to call them. Gear that is extremely costly to get ahold of, but can be purchased through time and effort expended in any part of the game you actually enjoy partaking in.
And with an equal amount of time spent doing any one of a number of different things to gain the currency to purchase them, other rewards should be granted as well. Skins, pets, minis, achievements, rare crafting materials, etc etc. It grants the best of both worlds: a token/currency system that eliminates the randomness previously associated with raiding, and random drops that still grant the “gambler’s success” adrenaline surge that many other people enjoy.
For a good look at the balance in seriousness and humor, I’d say take a look at the Imperial Agent story. It certainly gets fairly dark in the later portions, but the start has a lot of a kind of classic “secret agenty” humor… hitting on women, doing somewhat unbelievable missions, etc., but while keeping it all believable.
I don’t want to derail the thread, but I just wanted to say, the Imperial Agent story in SWTOR was phenomenal. My only complaint about it was that some of the later story sequences were completely at odds with the standard, “go to planet, do quests for the empire, hurt the republic,” leveling system. Just one of those situations where the mechanics of the game spoiled my immersion a bit.
But the story itself? Fantastic. And the characters were amazingly well done. I had a strong emotional response toward almost every single non-trivial NPC in the personal story.
If you are forced to repeat a specific piece of the content to get a specific piece of gear, that’s a grind. Whether that piece of gear is “cosmetic” as in GW2 or “opens up new content” as in other MMO’s is irrelevant.
If there’s only one way to get it, that you have to repeat over and over, it’s a grind.
If you had all of the world content available to get a specific piece of gear, that’s an open world design and is quite clearly what ANet were hinting at (if not outright promising).
I think the heart of the matter is that there are too many currencies in this game. If I could buy the dungeon piece I want with Karma, why would I ever go into the dungeons?
Well if I happen to not enjoy the dungeons, why should I? What if I prefer to explore the entire world?
I really, truly don’t understand the mentality behind these content-restrictive currencies.
It seems to be a case of the developers saying, “We don’t want any of our beautiful content to go begging for players. So we’re going to force some groups to go there and experience them.”
Well guys… make it enjoyable and people will go back over and over again. Anybody here ever “beat” a Mario Bro’s game and then play it again? <raises hand>
That’s because it was fun.
So rather than having a bajillion currencies to force people into content, how about looking at content that isn’t being utilized and tweaking it until people WANT to go back?
Am I breaking the laws of common sense somehow with this suggestion? I’m really curious because try as I might, I can not fathom how forcing people to do something that they DON’T want to do to get something that they do want is good design.
Please help me understand if I’m missing something here..
No, this is pretty much common sense. But it seems common sense isn’t common, because Anet isn’t the only MMO developer that’s guilty of this sort of thing.
The problem, I think, stems from the idea that random loot drops are bad, and being able to control what armor you get is good. Thus, the “token” design that WoW originally created (and seems to have trickled down into other games). The idea behind it is that players want to know how many more times they have to run to be guaranteed the gear they want, rather than the unknown time disparity between those who get lucky, and those who don’t.
But this “solution” is very narrow-minded, because it assumes that dungeon rewards should be different from world rewards, and should be set apart specifically only for those who run the dungeons. The reality, however, is that gear progression should have multiple approaches, and the “path” you choose should be based on what you enjoy doing, not which armor set you want to end up with.
For example, what would happen if the karma and dungeon sets were all set to a single type of currency, and you could collect that currency through several different outlets within the game? You could collect it through dungeons, or DEs, or hearts, or killing champions, or very very rarely you could get it to drop from standard mobs (to include your typical “farming” type players).
I can’t think of a single good reason why this shouldn’t be the case. If the developers are worried that some parts of their game won’t get as much attention due to something like this, they should consider looking at the replayability and enjoyability present in that portion of the game, rather than forcing it on the playerbase.
I’ve used a D/D condition damage build for my thief while leveling. I focused on stacking up condition damage for equipments. And in traits for more initiative/dodge/stealths. It basically just spams Deathblossom, the d/d combo skill, and stays moving the whole time, like seriously never stop moving. The caltrops on dodge skill was handy for keeping the enemy just out of range, else Dancing Dagger works for that just as well.
Seriously, this.
When I started my thief, I felt the same way. I was dying constantly, and I felt like there was something I was missing, because I never died that often on my ranger or my warrior, or even my engineer.
If you’re using D/D, your best bet is to load up on condition damage and kite. Kite like hell. Death Blossom whenever you can, and load up with initiative recovery skills/traits. I’m currently using Roll for Initiative utility skill, along with the traits that regenerate initiative when I use Steal, and when I stealth. Then I have 4 different skills that can stealth me (5, once I get the trait that stealths when I steal), which means I can constantly keep 6-9 stacks of bleeds up on multiple targets. Pair that up with the trait that drops caltrops when you dodge, and it becomes a fight to misdirect and evade damage, rather than soak it.
I can’t express how important it is to get used to dodging attacks. Even the non-telegraphed attacks by some mobs can be dodged if you get a feel for how often they attack.
Nowadays, I usually gather 3-4 mobs and spam death blossom, and kite them around the area, popping stealth when I need to drop aggro or reposition or just gain back some initiative.
oh, well nevermind then
I’m not talking about the txt file, I’m talking about the file named Arenanet.log, as I said in my last post.
Since the page you linked says:
We also need a file from your “Documents” folder containing vital information about how your Guild Wars 2 client is functioning. To obtain this file:
1. Click the “Start Menu” and select “Documents.”
2. Locate the folder “Guild Wars 2” and double click it.
3. Locate the file “Arenanet.log” and attach that, along with your “Guild Wars Test.txt” file to your ticket for review.
Yes, I’ve tried port forwarding.
Also note that this issue only surfaced a couple weeks ago.
I’m putting in a ticket right now, but I’m having a problem with one part. The link you gave says to add Arenanet.log to the ticket, but I can’t find a file by that name. The only file in that folder is called local.dat.
I don’t know what that is, and no I am not using wifi.
There’s already a network lag thread, and it’s getting jack-all response from the mods. So, here’s another thread, in the hopes that somebody notices.
Ability lag, rubberbanding, animation hanging, the works. This happens regularly when I’m soloing, but gets exponentially worse, the higher number of players that are active in the area.
I literally cannot participate in dynamic events, because the action on the screen will hang for 10+ seconds at a time before doing a speedup to catch up to the server. I haven’t even entered WvW for days, because the same issue is turned up to 11 during sieges.
This problem was not present when the game first launched, but started showing up sporadically during combat situations a couple weeks ago, hanging for only a fraction of a second or so… not game-breaking, but still annoying. Since then, it’s gotten progressively worse, and is turning the game into something that’s nearly unplayable.
Here is the tracert I ran earlier today:
Tracing route to www.guildwars2.com [64.25.40.16]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms 1 ms 1 ms home [192.168.1.254]
2 77 ms 72 ms 68 ms adsl-68-127-95-254.dsl.frsn02.pacbell.net [68.12
7.95.254]
3 85 ms 88 ms 88 ms dist1-vlan50.frsn02.pbi.net [66.122.172.2]
4 76 ms 68 ms 68 ms 151.164.189.12
5 107 ms 109 ms 101 ms gar23.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.114.5]
6 108 ms 109 ms 105 ms 192.205.32.210
7 111 ms 107 ms 121 ms vlan90.csw4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.254]
8 107 ms 95 ms 94 ms ae-91-91.ebr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.13]
9 100 ms 113 ms 103 ms ae-5-5.ebr1.SanJose5.Level3.net [4.69.148.137]
10 106 ms 105 ms 99 ms ae-1-100.ebr2.SanJose5.Level3.net [4.69.148.110]
11 120 ms 121 ms 109 ms ae-6-6.ebr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.148.201
]
12 130 ms 139 ms 157 ms ae-3-3.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.132.78]
13 148 ms 154 ms 137 ms ae-63-63.csw1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.133]
14 118 ms 133 ms 149 ms ae-1-60.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.11]
15 154 ms 141 ms 135 ms 4.59.197.34
16 135 ms 135 ms 144 ms 64.25.32.9
17 143 ms 131 ms 135 ms 64.25.32.26
18 138 ms 154 ms 151 ms 64.25.32.82
19 127 ms 138 ms 152 ms 64.25.40.16
Trace complete.
I don’t know if the problem is on my side, or Anet’s side, but if I can’t get some sort of word from somebody soon, and the issue doesn’t disappear, I’m likely to just quit playing altogether.
It’s the “chosen one” “destined” crap that I really dislike about Trahearne.
I’d prefer a character with some more realistic motivations than “I was born specifically to do this”.
Shooting a big dragon to death with weapons devised by the Charr and then improved upon by Asura and Humans, I can roll with that. Everyone who had a reason to kill the dragon, which is… everyone, got their brightest minds together and decided on how to tackle the problem.
“How do we kill a big dragon while it’s flying? Our swords can’t reach there and even the biggest swords only make tiny wounds on a big dragon.” says the Norn.
“We’ll use a big gun, flying on an airship!” says the Charr.
“A big laser gun!” says the Asura.
“A big magical laser gun!” says the Human.
and so they get their best and their brightest working on big guns and mega lasers. They have all sorts of designs figured out, one that shoots flak meant to shred up their wings, guns that are especially effective against ghosts and undead, guns that suck in magic, poison it, and shoot it back out, you know, they get creative.
Then they test these guns on other dragons, like the Claw of Jormag, and the Shatterer, and Tequatl the Sunless.
Once they are satisfied with the results, they use them to weaponize airships, and then use them on the big elder dragon.
I like that, they looked at the problem, and came up with solutions.
MEANWHILE in the Wish Fulfillment race..
You have individuals just DESTINED to do these things, and they just happen to know a mystical hippie ritual to accomplish it.
I think now I’d have preferred Guild Wars 2 sans Sylvari. I used to think humans were the big Mary Sue race.. but they pale in comparison to the Sylvari.
Thing is, I wouldn’t even care about the whole “destined” part of the Sylvari racial makeup, if those who fall under that destined role, did so for a reason. You know, Trahearne is destined to help lead the fight against the elder dragons, because he has a bright and cunning mind, and the charisma to lead and direct troops in battle. That sort of thing.
Sylvari are supposed to be this new race that are inquisitive and curious about everything, but most of their lines tend to fall into the “inexplicable mystical wisdom” cliche instead.
No, Trahearne was destined to do this because he dreamed about it. It has nothing to do with his personal qualities, it was just some mystical dream garbage.
It was an example of “if it were done properly.” Not an example of how it’s currently done.
Again, Tarnished Coast server.
Tracing route to www.guildwars2.com [64.25.40.16]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms 1 ms 1 ms home [192.168.1.254]
2 77 ms 72 ms 68 ms adsl-68-127-95-254.dsl.frsn02.pacbell.net [68.12
7.95.254]
3 85 ms 88 ms 88 ms dist1-vlan50.frsn02.pbi.net [66.122.172.2]
4 76 ms 68 ms 68 ms 151.164.189.12
5 107 ms 109 ms 101 ms gar23.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.114.5]
6 108 ms 109 ms 105 ms 192.205.32.210
7 111 ms 107 ms 121 ms vlan90.csw4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.152.254]
8 107 ms 95 ms 94 ms ae-91-91.ebr1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.153.13]
9 100 ms 113 ms 103 ms ae-5-5.ebr1.SanJose5.Level3.net [4.69.148.137]
10 106 ms 105 ms 99 ms ae-1-100.ebr2.SanJose5.Level3.net [4.69.148.110]
11 120 ms 121 ms 109 ms ae-6-6.ebr2.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.148.201
]
12 130 ms 139 ms 157 ms ae-3-3.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.132.78]
13 148 ms 154 ms 137 ms ae-63-63.csw1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.133]
14 118 ms 133 ms 149 ms ae-1-60.edge2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.11]
15 154 ms 141 ms 135 ms 4.59.197.34
16 135 ms 135 ms 144 ms 64.25.32.9
17 143 ms 131 ms 135 ms 64.25.32.26
18 138 ms 154 ms 151 ms 64.25.32.82
19 127 ms 138 ms 152 ms 64.25.40.16
Trace complete.
It’s the “chosen one” “destined” crap that I really dislike about Trahearne.
I’d prefer a character with some more realistic motivations than “I was born specifically to do this”.
Shooting a big dragon to death with weapons devised by the Charr and then improved upon by Asura and Humans, I can roll with that. Everyone who had a reason to kill the dragon, which is… everyone, got their brightest minds together and decided on how to tackle the problem.
“How do we kill a big dragon while it’s flying? Our swords can’t reach there and even the biggest swords only make tiny wounds on a big dragon.” says the Norn.
“We’ll use a big gun, flying on an airship!” says the Charr.
“A big laser gun!” says the Asura.
“A big magical laser gun!” says the Human.
and so they get their best and their brightest working on big guns and mega lasers. They have all sorts of designs figured out, one that shoots flak meant to shred up their wings, guns that are especially effective against ghosts and undead, guns that suck in magic, poison it, and shoot it back out, you know, they get creative.
Then they test these guns on other dragons, like the Claw of Jormag, and the Shatterer, and Tequatl the Sunless.
Once they are satisfied with the results, they use them to weaponize airships, and then use them on the big elder dragon.
I like that, they looked at the problem, and came up with solutions.
MEANWHILE in the Wish Fulfillment race..
You have individuals just DESTINED to do these things, and they just happen to know a mystical hippie ritual to accomplish it.
I think now I’d have preferred Guild Wars 2 sans Sylvari. I used to think humans were the big Mary Sue race.. but they pale in comparison to the Sylvari.
Thing is, I wouldn’t even care about the whole “destined” part of the Sylvari racial makeup, if those who fall under that destined role, did so for a reason. You know, Trahearne is destined to help lead the fight against the elder dragons, because he has a bright and cunning mind, and the charisma to lead and direct troops in battle. That sort of thing.
Sylvari are supposed to be this new race that are inquisitive and curious about everything, but most of their lines tend to fall into the “inexplicable mystical wisdom” cliche instead.
I don’t want to be that guy that claims he can do so much better than the writing team Anet already has, so I won’t. That’s essentially the point of this long ramble I’m about to go on. It’s not that I think I can do better, but I think that they can do better, by showing that they already have!
The writing team as an entity didn’t write or design the personal story content. The personal story team, which was made up of many designers (including a lore and continuity designer and one writer from my team) were responsible for generating that. My one embedded writer helped write or revise dialogue in many of the story arcs, but there were a lot of people on that team who contributed voiced and unvoiced text.
The writing team mostly serviced the personal story team in an editorial capacity up through launch. We’d copy edit scripts as they came over, and were involved with voice-over recording sessions (fielding questions from the voice director, providing context, etc.), but we/I didn’t create the characters or plan out the arcs. Thanks for the kind words, but I want to make sure the personal story team gets credit for that. I like to think that the writing team helped polish up the dialogue where we could, but our involvement was mostly supportive.
The writing team was mostly responsible for writing ambient scenes and dynamic event dialogue, and copy editing or revising everything else in the game that came from the other teams generating content (personal story, dungeon, WvW, etc.).
This is going to sound extremely rude to the efforts of your personal story team, but maybe the personal story should be handed over to your general writing team. Because the dialogue for the ambient scenes and dynamic event dialogue was far and away the best dialogue in the game.
Our characters could have been grunts in the army for all it mattered. It doesn’t change the fact that the personal story is dead in the water at a certain point of the game, and vegi-tales picks up the slack in a way that forces your character out of your personal spotlight.
“You’re a great 1-man wrecking crew, and we need you to perform specialized missions for the army,” would have been a fantastic approach to the final arc of the personal story, without making us lose screen time to the giant asparagus.
Why present the player with a large NPC army, if they're not going to help?
Posted by: Greyfeld.7104
Um…. Lol……….. I am currently on a short business trip on the other side of the planet, and not only am I able to dodge things like your average mob’s attacks, pre-nerfed dungeon bosses, players shooting at me in WvW, Eternal battle ground jumping story turret dodge, personal story….
I can admit that sometimes I die, but dodging them is entirely possible. All you need to do is either guess when you opponent is doing something hence dodging 2 secs in advance, or just dodge 2 secs in advance in general. :P Can’t wait till I get back home!
“The game is fine! If you can’t be buggered to work on your psychic intuition, that’s not Anet’s fault!!”
/eyeroll
What I am saying is to not down-scale me to level 45 and put me in a room full of level 45 mobs. Fill the room with level 45 mobs. If the player wants to tackle it at level 45 (or 40, or whatever) groovy. If, like myself, you’d rather not be quite so challenged then wait for a few levels and then take on the room full of level 45 mobs.
Again, this is about personal stories. There are no “balance” issues here. The only thing that needs to be “balanced” in a personal story is my enjoyment of the game.
Actually this would hurt balance badly.
You’d have high level toons burning down storyline quests (and others likely) for low level players. That would be totally exploitable, unfair, and game ruining.
Please devs, don’t ever do this.
The solo missions are easy if you just wait a few levels to do them. Yes you will de-level, but your gear and skill will be much better.
A level 80 playing in a 45 zone is far more powerful than a level 45 playing there.
This systems works, please don’t change it.
Instead, they need to look at individual missions and tune them if they were set too hard. Far better to take a careful look at this than make a blanket nerf on the whole thing.
I’d love to hear your reasoning as to why other players being speedrun through their personal stories by higher level players effects you in the slightest.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the healing nerf on Shelter went too far. A 2s block can mean everything or nothing, and although it is very useful against multiple enemies or rapid attacks, it’s next to useless against slow, high damage enemies. It will probably block 1 attack, which is something aegis / dodge / mace / knockback / blind will achieve. If all that fails, there’s the invul elite which also recharges virtues. I see no reason to take this over Signet of Resolve. Should I even mention how weak it is against condition spam?
The fix to this is simple.
“Shelter grants extra healing based on how many attacks are blocked. The higher the number of blocked attacks, the lower the extra healing granted by this skill.”
Then you put some sort of internal tracker that marks how many blocks you get during that 2 second cast time, and grants the extra healing accordingly. This gives a larger heal in situations where the block ends up being useless, while maintaining the same utility against large groups and fast-attacking enemies.
But I don’t think the developers are actually reading this, so my suggestion is kinda pointless lol.
3 of each, personally. I tend to go with whatever gender I feel works with the personality I have in mind when I create the character.
Personally, I think it would go a long way to fix the pesonal story issues if the game’s AI was fixed. Or, at the very least, the developers were willing to explain how their aggro system works. As it currently stands, the largest problem is the tendency of the mobs to totally beeline for the player, regardless of how many NPCs are available as a distraction. Any way that could be mitigated would go a long way toward fixing the difficulty issues.
Also, as a player who’s currently leveling a thief:
Double Daggers, the Uncatchable talent, high condition damage, and lots and lots of stealth. Between the sheer amount of evasion and get-out-of-combat-free cards, you can bleed any group of mobs to death, given enough time.
I made a new thread for my lag issues a few days ago, not realizing this thread already exists.
I play on the Tarnished Coast server (US), and I have ability activation lag, rubberbanding, and characters teleporting all over the screen. This problem happens in PvE, but gets ten times worse in WvW, where the ability lag leaps from 1-2s to 5-10s, and the entire battlefield occasionally freezes for half a minute at a time.
The lag is getting worse. I’m starting to have rubberbanding issues out in the PvE world now, and even input lag when using abilities and trying to interact with items in the world.
I would really really appreciate it if a mod can chime in on this issue.
Um… yeah, sure. That works too.
Totally not on topic, but whatever floats your boat.
Get rid of the constant diminishing returns throughout the game!
in Suggestions
Posted by: Greyfeld.7104
i am really afraid of the future of this game , it’s getting harder and harder for casuals to obtain equipment while hardcore gamers that rushed the content already have gold and gear ,
why do i have to be punished for playing Anet? why? having a crazy amount of tokens in order to buy the sets and the low rewards system isn’t enough? why do you keep punishing the players Anet?
This post kinda stood out in the mass circlejerk I see going on around here, but I just wanna chip in my two cents and point out that, via crafting, I’m getting gear just fine with practically no budget that wipes the floor with whatever I find for my next ten levels. I don’t see any kind of “punishment for playing.” Yes, they do need to keep an eye on anti-farming code in level 80 areas and dungeons and fine-tune it, but I don’t see why everyone has to feed into this circlejerk of “INJUSTICE!!” “YES IT IS INJUSTICE!!1!” “OMG ANET IS WORST GAME COMPANY BECAUSE I CAN’T SPEND HOURS AT A TIME SHOOTAN ONE SET OF BAD GUYS”
As far as exotics and legendaries having massive costs, I don’t get the outrage. Personally, when I complete a set of exotics after I’ve been playing for months, I’m gonna be saying kittenright this is a full set of Legendary Exotic Awesome McPants! I worked hard for this!" And until that point? I can EASILY get stat-equivalent gear through crafting and, y’know, playing the rest of the game. You don’t need legendary stuff to enjoy the game, and if you have to farm, set yourself up on a farming rotation and work toward an optimized route.
As far as telling you how to play, ANet does the “go farm somewhere else ya dummy” system because they are proud of the game they made and they want you to explore more of it rather than standing around shooting orr all day.
is it locked to an area that we get DR from or one type of enemy. bearing in mind that fine craftables will of course be something you’ll work towards a specific amount of and may or may not bite the bullet and decide you’ll grind out. Thus you’ll gravitate towards that specific type of enemy for that specific drop and thus trigger the DR. now I a player who doesn’t want to farm but bites the bullet to get it outta the way, have to pace myself because of a mechanic to stop bots? go farm something else til the DR is over? do some dynamic…oh no they get DR too…. or some dungeons…oh wait, they just nerfed the reward and buffered their difficulty to cheese tastic levels….
it’s not catch 22, it’s catch 22 everywhere you turn… these changes were and ARE anti fun.
ArenaNet wants you to play the whole game. They want to do everything they can to counter farms and grinds. And they do this because they want you to enjoy the whole game and work for your high-end rewards.
I thoroughly enjoy Guild Wars 2 exactly the way its drop system is now, with how I play. If all you’re going to do is sit here and circlejerk about the fact that you can’t grind and you actually have to try, then this may not be the game for you, and there are still hundreds of thousands of us who won’t be particularly sad to see you go.
Of course they want you to play the whole game. But, as the person who spent $60 on the game, it’s my decision as to what parts I choose to play.
The moment Anet decides that they’re going to tell their playerbase how to play the game, they’re going to look at a series of ghost servers.