If used downhill, the animation bugs and and needs twice the time to finish. Aster the rush. the “character stops walking animation” kicks in and after that the jump starts.
Ranger GS #3, Swoop, is also very buggy if used downhill.
I don’t want end-game anymore, I want more stuff. Two years and now we have dry, tasteless Living Story about two lesbians worrying more about each other than about Tyria.
…not only does that sound INCREDIBLY bigoted, but I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you even PLAYING the living story?
Also, I’m not the OP. My post was in reply to the ORIGINAL poster, who has since deleted his comment. So… yeah. Go ahead and step right in here, late to the discussion, and make assumptions about everything you missed over the last week.
The discussion has moved on FAR past these first comments. Either catch up to what is being discussed now, or just leave the old stuff drop. This comment is no longer relevant.
Yes. you got me. Im bigoted. My brother, who I am very close to, is gay. His very best friend who is like a member of our family is also… gay. I have a couple of gamer friends I hang out with regularly that are…. gay/lesbian. I’m TOTALLY a bigot.
Im not going to go back to the start of Dry Top and count the numerous times Marjorie and what’s-her-face go on about EACH OTHER and not about the current events. I’m not the only one who was sick of seeing it. EVEN IF it were a man and woman couple, I’d say the same thing. I don’t want their love life thrown in my face at every turn instead of progressing the story.
Go on about each other, or express concern for each other.
Marjorie was injured. Kasmeer is concerned for her to be doing too much too soon. Or she’s supporting her when her sister died. I’m not so sure I’ve seen too much that I’d consider “going on” about each other.
The time for all that was before going on the mission. Not during. I’m talking about the concern over Marjorie’s injury.
I guess you’re an expert on all feelings. The thing is, you can be out doing something with something and STILL be concerned they’re doing too much. Saying something doesn’t make it true.
“We need to stay focused here. This whole area is dangerous.” ~ Kasmeer
You see, Kasmeer isn’t a professional adventurer. She’s a new adventurer. She’s not hardended, she’s learning. So of course she could say something like that, thinking aloud perhaps and then still get distracted when she sees her lover doing something dangerous. In fact, most people aren’t logical beings. They don’t always perform on queue. People in battles and under stress often say stupid stuff, or personal stuff, or emotional stuff or even laugh inappropriately.
So saying that isn’t out of character….nor is worrying about Margie.
Exactly, she never done that before. So why the heck is she there? She doesn’t belong to the battlefield. She is inappropriate for this situation.
Not to mention that all the dialogues between Marjory and Kasmeer would only be half as bad if the progression wouldn’t completely stop every time someone has something to say.Frodo wasn’t a hero either. It’s perfectly normal in fantasy for non-heroes to be placed in roles that require heroes. They do one great thing and everything thinks they’re awesome and puts them in dangerous situations. It’s pretty normal for fantasy fiction.
Not everyone is Conan the Barbarian. Some people are Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, or Bilbo Baggins.
LotR didn’t got carried by Frodo, in fact, most people found Frodo to be the most boring part. Our complete group are all Frodos, they can’t carry the story, yet ANet tries to push them to.
Because you’re supposed to be Aragorn. Anet can’t win. If you put a Trahearne in there, people say he’s stealing your thunder. If you put some new adventurers in there that are there only to back you up, then they’re not professional soldiers.
And Frodo did carry a lot of Lord of the Rings, at least the books. There were huge segments devoted to him and Sam.
Trahearne has problems but not those all claim him to have. The problem with him, in my mind, is that he’s the Dinklebot of GW2.
It would be much more reasonable to ask as commander of the pact for a competent scout squad than traveling with an ex-noble who’s wearing the same dress for all situations, a detective who hasn’t made any money for months now, a norn who should protect his village and work on his legend rather than following us around, a charr who belongs into a warband and an asura kid.
I don’t want end-game anymore, I want more stuff. Two years and now we have dry, tasteless Living Story about two lesbians worrying more about each other than about Tyria.
…not only does that sound INCREDIBLY bigoted, but I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you even PLAYING the living story?
Also, I’m not the OP. My post was in reply to the ORIGINAL poster, who has since deleted his comment. So… yeah. Go ahead and step right in here, late to the discussion, and make assumptions about everything you missed over the last week.
The discussion has moved on FAR past these first comments. Either catch up to what is being discussed now, or just leave the old stuff drop. This comment is no longer relevant.
Yes. you got me. Im bigoted. My brother, who I am very close to, is gay. His very best friend who is like a member of our family is also… gay. I have a couple of gamer friends I hang out with regularly that are…. gay/lesbian. I’m TOTALLY a bigot.
Im not going to go back to the start of Dry Top and count the numerous times Marjorie and what’s-her-face go on about EACH OTHER and not about the current events. I’m not the only one who was sick of seeing it. EVEN IF it were a man and woman couple, I’d say the same thing. I don’t want their love life thrown in my face at every turn instead of progressing the story.
Go on about each other, or express concern for each other.
Marjorie was injured. Kasmeer is concerned for her to be doing too much too soon. Or she’s supporting her when her sister died. I’m not so sure I’ve seen too much that I’d consider “going on” about each other.
The time for all that was before going on the mission. Not during. I’m talking about the concern over Marjorie’s injury.
I guess you’re an expert on all feelings. The thing is, you can be out doing something with something and STILL be concerned they’re doing too much. Saying something doesn’t make it true.
“We need to stay focused here. This whole area is dangerous.” ~ Kasmeer
You see, Kasmeer isn’t a professional adventurer. She’s a new adventurer. She’s not hardended, she’s learning. So of course she could say something like that, thinking aloud perhaps and then still get distracted when she sees her lover doing something dangerous. In fact, most people aren’t logical beings. They don’t always perform on queue. People in battles and under stress often say stupid stuff, or personal stuff, or emotional stuff or even laugh inappropriately.
So saying that isn’t out of character….nor is worrying about Margie.
Exactly, she never done that before. So why the heck is she there? She doesn’t belong to the battlefield. She is inappropriate for this situation.
Not to mention that all the dialogues between Marjory and Kasmeer would only be half as bad if the progression wouldn’t completely stop every time someone has something to say.Frodo wasn’t a hero either. It’s perfectly normal in fantasy for non-heroes to be placed in roles that require heroes. They do one great thing and everything thinks they’re awesome and puts them in dangerous situations. It’s pretty normal for fantasy fiction.
Not everyone is Conan the Barbarian. Some people are Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, or Bilbo Baggins.
LotR didn’t got carried by Frodo, in fact, most people found Frodo to be the most boring part. Our complete group are all Frodos, they can’t carry the story, yet ANet tries to push them to.
I’m going to make a free trial account right now…
I don’t want end-game anymore, I want more stuff. Two years and now we have dry, tasteless Living Story about two lesbians worrying more about each other than about Tyria.
…not only does that sound INCREDIBLY bigoted, but I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you even PLAYING the living story?
Also, I’m not the OP. My post was in reply to the ORIGINAL poster, who has since deleted his comment. So… yeah. Go ahead and step right in here, late to the discussion, and make assumptions about everything you missed over the last week.
The discussion has moved on FAR past these first comments. Either catch up to what is being discussed now, or just leave the old stuff drop. This comment is no longer relevant.
Yes. you got me. Im bigoted. My brother, who I am very close to, is gay. His very best friend who is like a member of our family is also… gay. I have a couple of gamer friends I hang out with regularly that are…. gay/lesbian. I’m TOTALLY a bigot.
Im not going to go back to the start of Dry Top and count the numerous times Marjorie and what’s-her-face go on about EACH OTHER and not about the current events. I’m not the only one who was sick of seeing it. EVEN IF it were a man and woman couple, I’d say the same thing. I don’t want their love life thrown in my face at every turn instead of progressing the story.
Go on about each other, or express concern for each other.
Marjorie was injured. Kasmeer is concerned for her to be doing too much too soon. Or she’s supporting her when her sister died. I’m not so sure I’ve seen too much that I’d consider “going on” about each other.
The time for all that was before going on the mission. Not during. I’m talking about the concern over Marjorie’s injury.
I guess you’re an expert on all feelings. The thing is, you can be out doing something with something and STILL be concerned they’re doing too much. Saying something doesn’t make it true.
“We need to stay focused here. This whole area is dangerous.” ~ Kasmeer
You see, Kasmeer isn’t a professional adventurer. She’s a new adventurer. She’s not hardended, she’s learning. So of course she could say something like that, thinking aloud perhaps and then still get distracted when she sees her lover doing something dangerous. In fact, most people aren’t logical beings. They don’t always perform on queue. People in battles and under stress often say stupid stuff, or personal stuff, or emotional stuff or even laugh inappropriately.
So saying that isn’t out of character….nor is worrying about Margie.
Exactly, she never done that before. So why the heck is she there? She doesn’t belong to the battlefield. She is inappropriate for this situation.
Not to mention that all the dialogues between Marjory and Kasmeer would only be half as bad if the progression wouldn’t completely stop every time someone has something to say.
No to Signet of the Wild, because compared to other classes, the ranger lacks percental damage increase. SotW makes up for that but if you simply nerf it, we’ll lose the strongest damage boost we have.
The Ranger really lacks damage multipliers? That’s news to me. I guess the 20-25% from Marksmanship alone doesn’t count or something…, plus the 5-10% from any of the three other trait line. At what point should it be enough, when we can potentially get 50% like some other Class that doesn’t even have an effective build when they trait that way?
And we also need to stop posting stuff full of theatrics like this :::
Yeah? I count 18,75%. Steady focus gives 10% (not even sure this applies to the pet aswell) and predators onslaught gives 10% to us and 5% to our pet.
Hunter’s tactic will not proc in a proper dungeongroup, since you stack and the boss is facing you.
So I don’t know exactly where you see all dat mighty multipliers, but the ele and the thief can get a 60% temporary damageboost.
I’m really depressed when I think about the story. If you watch this video (this for our german fellows) you get the feeling that the story wasn’t that bad. But if I think back to all the disappointment we probably all had during season 1, I lose my hope to experience actual meaningful story in GW2.
tl;dr
Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.I can’t figure out which.
It’s definintely more of the former.
While the writing isn’t masterpiece quality, I wouldn’t call it horrible… entirely. There are certainly some points that are worse than the rest, which make me prefer stuff on newgrounds over what I’m seeing in GW2, but that’s not universal. The open world stuff I see few flaws on – it’s all instance storytelling thus far in Season 2 that I see as the issue.
And most of the issue is what was presented before: it feels like a checklist. There’s no depth to it. It’s just “we’re doing this, now we’re doing that, time to do these, go do those.” etc. For example:
- Belinda had next to no depth, and felt like it was intended to be character development – but it was done wrong, you don’t introduce side-plots to develop your characters, you let the main plot develop them by showing their reactions to the new aspects of the plot.
- The entire involvement of Scarlet’s past workshop felt entirely unnecessary – even the Eternal Alchemy cinematic. While cool, what purpose did it hold? None. You can remove Scarlet’s involvement completely and have roughly the same story being told. It felt like it was done for the sole point of easing players’ complaints during Season 1 that we didn’t get to see what Scarlet saw – but that’s the entirely wrong reason to impliment such, and it’s far too late to redeem Scarlet’s plot by bringing all this stuff about her now. That stuff should have been placed into Season 1, and before The Origins of Madness (or the stuff we saw during The Origins of Madness and the Edge of the Mists releases should have been earlier, while what we have in Season 2 should have been during The Origins of Madness).
- The ‘gathering the races’ side steps felt unnecessarily short and glossed over. Ideally, each one should have had their own mini-arc to ease their problems. An entire nation’s issues won’t be solved by a single campaign into the heart of the second-largest Son of Svanir stronghold, or by eliminating a single tomb of ghosts. If I were writing it, I’d have ended E1 with the fight against Aerin and a revelation about new dragon minions, had E2 begin with consulting the Pact leading to wanting assistance from the nations to bolster their forces, turning the rest of E2, the entirity of E3 and all but the finale of E4 into solving the races’ issues – rather than pointlessly (plotwise) assisting attacked forts and the Iron Marches (which could still have been attacked, but left as open world not-part-of-the-living-story content), with 2-3 steps each race; 1 race in E2, 2 in E3, and 2 in E4. This was a chance to include multiple stories and/or story progression into the main plot without deviating from the main plot; a chance to show what’s been happening to the world in the two years since Zhaitan’s death aside from Scarlet and Kiel’s plots, and it was utterly and pointlessly overlooked.
Instead of fleshing out the potential of all these plot points, they’re turned into short one-instance done-and-over checklist aspects of the story. Why? We don’t know. What purpose does Belinda’s death serve, exactly? To give Marjory and Kasmeer the unneeded personal stakes in things? What purpose does seeing the Eternal Alchemy serve, exactly? To send us to the Pale Tree (something that Trahearne would have done if we went to the Pact after seeing new dragon minions)?
These are good plots, but they’re not being fleshed out to their best potential. Making the implementation and writing sub-par.
Of course, the implementation has certainly improved since Season 1. But that improvement is like going from a 1 to a 4 on a “being done well” scale of 0-to-10.
When Season 2 began, I thought it was the best kitten thing to happen for GW2. Looking at it after the initial introduction shock, I realize now that’s not so in the least. The best aspects of Season 2 is really just going back to how things originally was (the shared format with the Personal Story) with some improvements (repeatability); the rest was just because it’s merely better than Season 1 – it isn’t better than the Personal Story (well, some of the Personal Story for sure).
The story instances have, sadly, always held a place of “feels like an amateur did it” to me. Even/especially compared to GW1, which had worse voice acting for sure. Season 2 is no different.
Normally, I would just press the little red “+1” button and move along, but since noone would notice that, I’m writing this text to express that I wholeheartly agree with this analysis. The writing has improved compared to season 1. But If the story we had until now would be in a film, I would give it 3/10 points and probably never watch it again.
Yes on the Signet of the Wild change because giving a straight 25% buff to damage for 8 seconds allows it to be abused. The fact that its on a 60 second cool down is irrelevant. (My Suggestion for the change would be for the Skill to last 10 seconds, but drop the damage increase to 10%. gives us more stability, which we need, and drops the damage increase.)
No on Signet of Stone. Plenty of other professions have skills that grant invulnerability, and can deal just as much damage as Rapid Fire in the same time, so why not Ranger?
No to Signet of the Wild, because compared to other classes, the ranger lacks percental damage increase. SotW makes up for that but if you simply nerf it, we’ll lose the strongest damage boost we have.
I agree with you. Suggestions would be wonderful: Practical, reasonably expressed, and clear. Here’s the challenge, and we’ll see if it’s possible and reasonable: Share your opinion about how to improve the end game in (roughly) 100 words or less.
As I’ve already said in another post, before it got deleted because of insulting language (o.O?), I would split the endgame updates into 3 parts: Updating open PvE, updating dungeons and new content.
Open PvE:
- Local currencies for all maps
- Currency should span multiple maps (one for Ascalon, 1 for Kryta, …)
- No time-gated reward (These ranks in Drytop are terrible)
- Meaningful reward, stuff that you would want to buy more than just one time
Dungeons:
- Casual Mode focusing on the story
- Hardmode for challenge/reward
- New AI’s for all bosses, who can also react to player actions
New Stuff:
While I think that the suggestions listed above are a huge step in the right direction, new content is probably the most important part. However the suggestions can be kept in mind when creating new content. In that order:
- New dungeons (!!!)
- Proper raids (not that triple trouble thing*)
- New weapons for the old classes
- New classes
- New zones
- New story
- New world-bosses
* I don’t mean to imply that I dislike Triple Trouble as challenging content, I just really dislike that it spawns on a normal map, not to mention a lvl 45 – 55 map.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
Human stupidity is OP.
As Albert Einstein already said: Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about th’universe!
As for the reward:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-make-the-world-more-interesting/first
This deals with the reward in normal PvE maps.Dungeons should get a hardmode, where the story got cut out and the bosses get new and better mechanics which can react to skills or tactics being used. The reward for completing those dungeons should be more tokens, new skins and more fluff.
Furthermore, raids should be implemented. This is a topic on its own and I haven’t made up my mind how this could be implemented properly. But this is the direction I would go with this game.There are problems with hardmode and dungeons specifically involving splitting the playerbase.
How would you encourage players to participate in non-hardmode dungeons so they are more accessible for newer players. If you can find a good way to not split the playerbase to exclude newer players I would love to hear your suggestion in “the dungeon subforum” :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons~
The reason for the exclusion of hardmode is deliberate. In the later years normal mode parties for Guild Wars 1 was hard to come by. It was hard to find a party (even when starting your own) to play in normal mode.
Perhaps something that they can add is a hard-mode to a re-playable version of the personal story with the exclusion of the dungeons tied to the personal story. This will not necessarily split the playerbase as they are repeating content that is already there. In addition to that the content was designed to be done solo so you are not removing members from a party that a newer or less skilled player would otherwise encounter. I think this is what they were trying to do with the Living World Achievements.
The normal mode should be easier with less reward. It should be that easy, that normal players have no problem completing it.
I think you are over-estimating the population of “Normal players” in dungeons. You will still split the playerbase to the point where eventually you will have no normal players to play with newer players. Also rewarding hard mode more would make it so that “Normal Players” that would normally help newer players would not want to do so as it is less rewarding.
Hardmode dungeons should be the endgame, the most challenging place. I don’t expect many casuals to do those dungeons, but If they do, they should’ve already done all the other content. The hardmode should be like fractal50 challenge-wise.
I just don’t see a way hardmode for dungeons can be implemented that would not split the player-base. If you have a idea on this matter I am more then willing to listen. Until that problem is resolved I do not think that hardmode is a good idea and agree with ArenaNet’s current stance on this matter.
We currently have fractals for endgame and the most challenging place. I have also seen effects to where it has split the playerbase. What is wrong with them? Why do you want to add dungeons to the mix.
I want to split the playerbase because I think it carries less flaws than content that has to be accessible for all players.
How do you want to create more challenging and rewarding content and enable casuals to also be able to complete this content? It’s not possible.
I don’t suggest to lock players out of content. Each “hardcore” content should have a “casual” counterpart, so that casuals can experience the content easier but with less reward as downside.
The reward for hardcore runs however should be unique. The reward could be like Pristine Fractal Relics, while the reward for casual runs should be like Fractal Relics.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
I’ve waited for this.
Finally it’s here…
As for the reward:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-make-the-world-more-interesting/first
This deals with the reward in normal PvE maps.Dungeons should get a hardmode, where the story got cut out and the bosses get new and better mechanics which can react to skills or tactics being used. The reward for completing those dungeons should be more tokens, new skins and more fluff.
Furthermore, raids should be implemented. This is a topic on its own and I haven’t made up my mind how this could be implemented properly. But this is the direction I would go with this game.There are problems with hardmode and dungeons specifically involving splitting the playerbase.
How would you encourage players to participate in non-hardmode dungeons so they are more accessible for newer players. If you can find a good way to not split the playerbase to exclude newer players I would love to hear your suggestion in “the dungeon subforum” :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons~
The reason for the exclusion of hardmode is deliberate. In the later years normal mode parties for Guild Wars 1 was hard to come by. It was hard to find a party (even when starting your own) to play in normal mode.
Perhaps something that they can add is a hard-mode to a re-playable version of the personal story with the exclusion of the dungeons tied to the personal story. This will not necessarily split the playerbase as they are repeating content that is already there. In addition to that the content was designed to be done solo so you are not removing members from a party that a newer or less skilled player would otherwise encounter. I think this is what they were trying to do with the Living World Achievements.
The normal mode should be easier with less reward. It should be that easy, that normal players have no problem completing it.
I think you are over-estimating the population of “Normal players” in dungeons. You will still split the playerbase to the point where eventually you will have no normal players to play with newer players. Also rewarding hard mode more would make it so that “Normal Players” that would normally help newer players would not want to do so as it is less rewarding.
Hardmode dungeons should be the endgame, the most challenging place. I don’t expect many casuals to do those dungeons, but If they do, they should’ve already done all the other content. The hardmode should be like fractal50 challenge-wise.
As for the reward:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-make-the-world-more-interesting/first
This deals with the reward in normal PvE maps.Dungeons should get a hardmode, where the story got cut out and the bosses get new and better mechanics which can react to skills or tactics being used. The reward for completing those dungeons should be more tokens, new skins and more fluff.
Furthermore, raids should be implemented. This is a topic on its own and I haven’t made up my mind how this could be implemented properly. But this is the direction I would go with this game.There are problems with hardmode and dungeons specifically involving splitting the playerbase.
How would you encourage players to participate in non-hardmode dungeons so they are more accessible for newer players. If you can find a good way to not split the playerbase to exclude newer players I would love to hear your suggestion in “the dungeon subforum” :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons~
The reason for the exclusion of hardmode is deliberate. In the later years normal mode parties for Guild Wars 1 was hard to come by. It was hard to find a party (even when starting your own) to play in normal mode.
Perhaps something that they can add is a hard-mode to a re-playable version of the personal story with the exclusion of the dungeons tied to the personal story. This will not necessarily split the playerbase as they are repeating content that is already there. In addition to that the content was designed to be done solo so you are not removing members from a party that a newer or less skilled player would otherwise encounter. I think this is what they were trying to do with the Living World Achievements.
The normal mode should be easier with less reward. It should be that easy, that normal players have no problem completing it.
The playerbase will always be split. Some people want easy runs to see everything while others want hardcore runs with lots of reward. You can’t please both parties with just one type. I don’t expect the “normal mode” dungeons to be popular, but they should be easy enough, so that new players can convince guildies to help them with those normal runs.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
Higher ranks of the guild claiming an objective can refund placed siege in the affected area and get all the supplies back which where drained.
As for the reward:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-make-the-world-more-interesting/first
This deals with the reward in normal PvE maps.
Dungeons should get a hardmode, where the story got cut out and the bosses get new and better mechanics which can react to skills or tactics being used. The reward for completing those dungeons should be more tokens, new skins and more fluff.
Furthermore, raids should be implemented. This is a topic on its own and I haven’t made up my mind how this could be implemented properly. But this is the direction I would go with this game.
L2P. Use reflects. Dodge.
But let me guess… you’re one of those players who claim 100b hits too hard if you don’t move.
The only real joke is that ANet now thinks “The class is fine, no adjustments needed” while our pets still prowl around being semi-useless in certain situations.
Reflects are not a proper defence, as their recharge times are typically 30 – 40s and few classes have access to them
Screw that little ArenaNet employee kitten who doesn’t let me block all the projectiles forevaaa!
The thing that players truly want is a challenge, simple as that. They want something that cannot be cleared by an average player in 3 hours.
Yea, like 0,5% of the players want that, so technically youre right, practically – no.
Actually, according to my calculations, like 99.5% of players want that, so technically and practically he’s right.
It’s pretty simple (Disclaimer: I presume that many people want more challenging content):
This game is supposed to be casual friendly, so the mechanics have to be easy to understand, which they are (and where before the NPE disaster).
Also, casuals have to be able to “complete” the game.
Now we have to determine what completing the game means. In my mind, completing the game means to be able to participate in all aspects of the game.
So “completing” the game means for me to be able to get exotic gear and lvl 80. Both shouldn’t be a problem.
Now the game should allow people who are interested in getting better to progress even further and experience even harder content. The main reward for this should be skins, since they’re the main driving factor for this game but not necessary.
Dungeons and raids, rounded with small, very hard open PvE areas should be fitted for those players.
Open world PvE should be the main go-to content for casuals. They should get nice reward for completing events and such. Players looking for challenge should find them in dungeons and get different loot for completing them.
The current game suffers from open world PvE being almost redundant and dungeons being way too easy.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
I’m on EU servers, so I don’t think I could fight against most of you. :P
Not to mention that I’m not at home atm. But I would join such an event if I can.
As a side note: I hate to min-max my builds. :P
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
There is a vast amount of end game content, but there’s no introduction to it.
After hitting 80 and completing your PS, there’s no introduction to fractals, dry top, the living story, WvW, PvP, ascended gear, legendaries, etc etc etc etc. I could go on and on
Could you? Because I can do that too.
Open world maps, including Dry Top: Explore them once and you’re done with the map. There is no reason to come back. In Dry Top atleast you have the local currency but after you got everything you want, this map is hardly more interesting than any other map. Fractals and Dungeons? Do them once and you’re done with them story-wise. The only reason to come back is to grind gold to get fluff.
Ascended is one of the fluff you grind for. Legendaries are also fluff you grind for.
WvW and PvP are stale. They’re fun but not interesting enough to keep people engaged for 2 years.
All the content GW2 offers can be divided into 3 parts:
1) The uninteresting part: Open world PvE doesn’t offer anything endgame related stuff.
2) Things you grind: Dungeons, Fractals, Worldboss chains
3) Things you grind for: Legendaries, Ascended stuff, Achievements… Skins
And we could add a fourth category: PvP
PvP and WvW are nice for a while, you can kill people with the fluff you’ve grinded for. That’s nice obviously, but since neihter WvW nor PvP recieved any major updates since release, the content gets old. It’s nice for a PvE player to come to this gamemodes for a while if he gets bored from all the PvE content, but it’s not enough to keep the player interested for long.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
I gt the idea!
Remove the cooldown from PBS and all rangers will be soooo busy point blank shotting you to their base that they won’t even have time to use rapid fire!
It’s pretty simple. The players like this game for various reasons. For the graphics, their community, the gameplay or the lore. They’re looking for things to do in the game.
What do they find?
Open world PvE:
Lore-wise the game is interesting but it’s now 2 years old. Reward-wise, the open world PvE was never considerable.
Dungeons and Fractals:
Lore-wise, same as the open world, not enough to keep players interested for long.
Loot-wise the best thing to do but very tedious.
World Bosses:
Almost no lore and also very tedious. Why should anyone having fun killing a boss for the 100th time?
Living World:
Simply not enough content for two weeks. Since this is the only “new”, it gets all the attention. However the story is half-baked and give no incentive to repeat them that often.
So yeah, you can repeat all the good stuff this game got since 2 years, but as long as it doesn’t change the feeling many players have, it will be worthless.
…
This exactly. You say we have soo much dungeons? We got 8. And we got them since 2 years now. They’re stale and not challenging at all. The only reason to still repeat them is to get the gold.
Fractals are not as old as dungeons and can be challenging, but that’s by far not enough to keep people interested for multiple years.
You say we got temporary content? Good, what can I do with it now? Exactly, nothing, it’s gone.
All PvE maps have no reason to be explored twice. There is no reson at all gameplay-wise to go back to Timberline Falls or Snowden Drifts.
We got a worldboss chain, which can be parted into waiting till the boss spawns and pressing 1 till the boss dies. So where exactly is the challenge? Why should I do that day by day for months?
The only endgame this game has is to either join any sort of PvP and seek for challenge (which gets complicated if we factor in the messed up balance) or to farm gold to get gems or legendaries or other fluff. There is no challange, no incentive to repeat the content other than to get the gold. Literally.
The only other “endgame” activity I can think of is to get achievvement points. That is one thing, I wonder how long this will keep the player interested.
It is not like this game is bad, it offers so many possibilities. But those don’t get picked up by the devs and I’m slowly but surely sick of waiting.
It’s nice to hear that atleast some members of the ANet staff think that this game is good how it is. But that doesn’t change my feeling that this game is lackluster.
…
It would be nice to know if a one-time tutorial, which deals with all the aspects of the gameplay (like dodging, downstate, healing skills, utility skills, elite skills, weaponswap, etc.), would have the same effect for you, rather than the current implementation.
While I agree that the level-up rewards shift the focus to the leveling, I’m still highly concerned about the changes.
The problem is not that the gem shop gets consistent updates. The problem is that the gem shop gets all the fun stuff.
We get the Living Story, which is even if the story is great only a one-time experience.
We get new maps which suffer from the same problems as the old maps.
We get some new skins, which are heavily grind- or RNG-gated.The gem store gets skins, skins, skins, useful tools and skins. And everybody just wants these things. No wonder that people get upset with the gem store releases.
If you want these things, feel free to purchase them. The reason why convenience items are microtransactions is to supplement NCSoft/Anet’s income as a business. If you don’t want to pay Gems for these items, you don’t need to. Simply play the game for no monthly subscription fees, as it was intended, as you can still have fun.
As said dozen and dozen times before…
Grinding gold is as fun as doing tedious work: Not at all.
Playing the game ? getting gold to buy skins.
All joking aside.. we are going to need those Asuran launchers.
Am I right….Am I Right!!!!
Chris
P.S: The idea of firing them into walls is also cool! I jest…..
But the life of a single Asura is such a small price to pay to be able to get down that darn wall!
I mean, y’know, they can respawn after…
The Asura missing-neck bug, when it looks like the head would be directly tied to the body, should be a feature for respawning asura who were fired against a wall.
3) What I would sell instead? Animations. I always wondered why my warrior, if wielding dual swords, is only using 1 sword. If they would release an animation where my warrior would use both swords for the AA, I would buy that instantly.
Animations aren’t really a sustainable business model. That’s not something where they can just pump out a new animation every few weeks indefinitely. Skins, however, are a resource they can continuously implement new variations of.
I would like to point out how much content is ONLY available through gameplay. There are plenty of soulbound skins, titles, and various other items that you can’t just “buy”. But at the same time, the real-money conversion to gold is something that makes a lot more things buyable than might have initially been intended.
However, I don’t think that locking people in such a way (AGAIN, locking things out for people who have more money than time from items that are PURELY COSMETIC) is a good thing. There’s no reason to penalize people from having a lack of time by locking content away from them. In the same regard, there’s no reason to lock people out of content simply because they can’t afford it.
The current system, no matter which you have an excess of, you’re able to get the things you want. If something is normally in-store only and you have excess time? Grind gold and convert it to gems. If something isn’t in the gem store and you have excess money? Buy gems and convert to gold.
There’s no harm to the way the system is now, and I don’t understand why you have such an issue with it. Nothing is truly locked out from anyone, it’s just a matter of how much effort you want to put into the reward. Because, you also have to consider the perspective of the “people with money”. Yes, they have money, so they can buy things easier, but they have to WORK for that money, so they might not want to come and grind for something cosmetic after spending all day at work grinding for real money.
They could add dozen and dozen of different animations. For each weaponcombo, for each class, for each race. They could all sell them separately. If that system has any limits, they wont hit them so soon.
Skins are only cosmetic but they’re also the main driving factor of GW2. It’s all about the look, getting new skins is, beside beating the limited content, the only goal you have.
Almost all new skins since launch got put into the gem shop. There are only a few armor parts, backskins or weapon skins that can be gathered in the game, and most of them were only temporarely aviable. The only consistent updates for skins were in the gem shop.
This isn’t real life. We’re talking about a game.
With no parameters to compare everything gets easier to ask.
I would like to get a precursor or legendary as birthday gift.
BL skins for every 2k AP.
Guaranteed ticket scrap in every BL chest.
Also get 1 AP for every hour I’m not logged in the game, so casuals can compete with the hardcore.Get similar rewards of the “hardcore” players, being casual, doesn’t sound right.
You’re misstating and drawing incorrect conclusions. I don’t want skins to be obtainable easier. I want them to be obtainable through meaningful content and neither through endless grinding, nor only through paying money.
Money is a shortcut. There shouldn’t be any shortcuts in a good game.
So, if you want “prestige” skins removed from the cash shop (this seems to be what you’re implying), then what WOULD you have in the cash shop?
There needs to be something. This is still an MMO. This is still something that has constant uptime, constant development costs, and constant paychecks that need signed.
The reason things like this are added to the gem shop is to add something for people to buy, to support the game, which will let them get something they want in the game.
Remove skins from the gem shop, and not only are you removing revenue (meaning people are getting payed less — to a drastic enough extent, people would get fired if the cash influx dropped enough), but you’re also removing the “cool stuff” from people that have more money than time to dedicate to the game. Because that IS a portion of the player base that also needs catered to.
1) I don’t want all skins to be removed, but I want an equal spread between skins in the gem shop and skins that are “free”.
2) Skins that are in the gem shop shouldn’t be “unobtainable” through other means.
The current BLC skins are unobtainable by my definition. The only way to get those skins from the chests is to grind for keys, which takes a long time and is very tedious, then you need to have luck to get a ticket scrap or even a complete ticket and then you need to have 7 of those at worst.
3) What I would sell instead? Animations. I always wondered why my warrior, if wielding dual swords, is only using 1 sword. If they would release an animation where my warrior would use both swords for the AA, I would buy that instantly.
words…
“Prestige” skins? More like skins that show how big your wallet is.
And why he wants those skins? Hmm, maybe becasue that’s what this game is all about, skins.Well, “prestige” is a way to call expensive stuff, both in game and in RL.
I’m a system analyst and I have an ok pay check, I would love to have an Aston Martin but guess what, I can’t have it unless I “grind” a lot for it or have lucky with the lottery “RNG” to be able to get it.
The OP wants the Aston Martin even though he has a regular job and w/o the need of lottery. See where I want to go?
No. GW2 is a game, not real life. “Prestige” in a game should be rewarded for beating the most challenging parts of the game or by investing much time into the game, not by having a huge wallet.
Money is a shortcut. There shouldn’t be any shortcuts in a good game.
Or, to put it better: Shortcuts are ok, as long as the normal way is no pure grindfest.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
If you are a casual gamer, why do you want a prestige skin that doesn’t offer any advantage?
Also, you can use in game gold to buy gems, so save the gold you earn and then trade it.
Another thing is key farm, you get keys doing the lvl 10 Personal Story, there are many updated videos and guides about that.
GW2 is very casual friendly, but the game doesn’t need to be 100% casual focused.PS: If you are a casual you probably have a job of something, then buy gems is even more accessible for most casuals.
“Prestige” skins? More like skins that show how big your wallet is.
And why he wants those skins? Hmm, maybe becasue that’s what this game is all about, skins.
Thanks for the straight answer. (Before anyone can start hating)
1+2+3: A guild-calendar.
Like “9.24.14 6PM: Personal Story group”, “9.22.14 4PM: Map exploration group”
The problem is not that the gem shop gets consistent updates. The problem is that the gem shop gets all the fun stuff.
We get the Living Story, which is even if the story is great only a one-time experience.
We get new maps which suffer from the same problems as the old maps.
We get some new skins, which are heavily grind- or RNG-gated.
The gem store gets skins, skins, skins, useful tools and skins. And everybody just wants these things. No wonder that people get upset with the gem store releases.
Hi All,
I am up to date with the conversation. We are discussing your thoughts internally and continuing to work on the story steps. Once I have some more new I will update the thread.
Meanwhile I just want to communicate with certainty that NPE was not implemented in order to increase monetization from the BLT. It was designed for brand new players to the game. And it is for that reason that we are working with you to understand how to better refine the system.
Chris
Chris
I know you’ve probably read this already or are already aware about it, but please think about this.
Why has each new character to overcome the leveling process, when you only want to educate new players?
New players might need help with the game mechanics once, but not every time they create a new alt.I think every character made once a character hits level 80 should get a free level 20 scroll, and every level 20 scroll should instead turn into a random mini.
In the case of people who have hit 1/2 years of age, allow them to trade their scroll for a miniature box of some sort. For people that already used their scrolls, well – at least they got use out of them. Cut losses and let it ride.
P.S. The NPC that will trade scrolls for minis will look up character age, so someone couldn’t keep trading in scrolls by making new characters.
Your idea deals with the problem that many players don’t enjoy leveling. It gives them the opportunity to simply “skip” this part. I think that this is the wrong approach. People should be able to enjoy leveling. So first we have to determine why players don’t like leveling. The most obvious answer would be that it’s tedious and not rewarding.
Players try to make gold to get the things they want. Doing the personal story, or completing maps isn’t very rewarding. So I think that the reward porcess should be altered instead of giving players the opportunity to skip all the boring or unsatisfying stuff.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
Hi All,
I am up to date with the conversation. We are discussing your thoughts internally and continuing to work on the story steps. Once I have some more new I will update the thread.
Meanwhile I just want to communicate with certainty that NPE was not implemented in order to increase monetization from the BLT. It was designed for brand new players to the game. And it is for that reason that we are working with you to understand how to better refine the system.
Chris
Chris
I know you’ve probably read this already or are already aware about it, but please think about this.
Why has each new character to overcome the leveling process, when you only want to educate new players?
New players might need help with the game mechanics once, but not every time they create a new alt.
I know you want to make leveling more rewarding, but instead you’ve made it feel more like something that has to be done as quickly as possible to become somewhat potent. Leveling feels like work that has to be done before we get to the fun stuff.
Not only that, but you’re even empowering this mindset. It’s like:
“Oh you don’t like leveling? Let’s make leveling quicker, so you don’t have to deal with it that long.”
That’s an easy way to fix the unrewarding and boring leveling experience, but it’s definitely not the best one.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
The old system works FINE. Revert ALL the changes except for the level up reward.
Old system doesn’t work fine though. The old system works fine for you. Colin was quite definitely sure that it wasn’t good enough after having tested it. Which means that their testing is greater than any one person’s opinion. Changes had to be made.
All that’s really on the table here is altering the changes, because it won’t be reverted.
So wow, much… wow.
One would expect that they’ve tested their game enough before release and they came to the conclusion that it worked. And apparently it did, that’s why you, I and everyone else is still here. The NPE got, as far as I understood that, developed solely based on opinions from people who didn’t continue playing but participated in a survey why they didn’t continue playing. Those people however, who stopped playing and participated in the survey, are a very small minority of people who tried this game.Yes, they tested their game before release. However, they tested it on the game playing public that has a high interest in PC based MMO’s.
They are either moving the game into the non-MMO crowd (console players that are having a hard time adjusting to the controls in a PC based game, for example) or into the non-gamer crowd completely (people that do not know how to WASD, let alone dodge).
If you change the game to please a minority but annoy the majority, you’ve done a bad job making this game desirable for the majority. And that’s what these NPE changes are all about.
You should do 4 daylies every day because kitten DA META!!!
(edited by Moderator)
Those people however, who stopped playing and participated in the survey, are a very small minority of people who tried this game.
I haven’t seen anything about a survey. Where is this information?
A dev has said that, If I remeber rightly, about the NPE changes a while ago. You may find the post on the dev tracker.
The subtext was that they’ve asked 10k people who didn’t continue playing why they didn’t continue.
The old system works FINE. Revert ALL the changes except for the level up reward.
Old system doesn’t work fine though. The old system works fine for you. Colin was quite definitely sure that it wasn’t good enough after having tested it. Which means that their testing is greater than any one person’s opinion. Changes had to be made.
All that’s really on the table here is altering the changes, because it won’t be reverted.
So wow, much… wow.
One would expect that they’ve tested their game enough before release and they came to the conclusion that it worked. And apparently it did, that’s why you, I and everyone else are still here. The NPE got, as far as I understood that, developed solely based on opinions from people who didn’t continue playing but participated in a survey why they didn’t continue playing. Those people however, who stopped playing and participated in the survey, are a very small minority of people who tried this game.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
Your pet was dead when the screen was taken. If the pet would be alive, its HP would be lower. Everyone has more HP while in downstate.
And to be honest, pets are like bad designed dungeon bosses. No real threat but an enormous HP bar as compensation.
(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)
Now about how I would fix the problems I’ve listed earlier:
Add
- An optional tutorial, accessible from the character select screen, which treats:
- Weapon skills, healing skill, utility skills, elite skills
- Dodge mechanic
- Downed mechanic and downed skills
- Class mechanics
- Objectives on maps (Renown Hearts, Events, Vistas, Skillpoint challenges, Diving Goggles, POIs and stuff)
- Gathering and traiding
- Lots and lots of tooltips for all things listed above
Keep
- Rewards for leveling
- New renown hearts
- Faster leveling process (I personally don’t like that but many do)
Remove
- Bundled story steps
- Everything that was accessible before and got locked with the NPE changes
Repost from the “Communicating with you” thread:
What I don’t like about the NPE:
Personal Story
One thing I always hated about the Living Story was that it feels like timewarping every two weeks. The Personal Story on the other hand was able to win me over because I could decide when I want to drive my story forward. Now that is gone, now the story comes streamlined and packaged in small bits every time I level 10 levels.
The biggest gripe I have with the new system was that the old system was almost perfectly fine and could’ve been made perfect with just small changes. There is no need to “protect” the player from the story.
And if the rumors are correct, then they’ve cutted out part of the story and rearanged other parts, so they don’t even make sense anymore…
Weapon skills
Same as the Personal Story, I think that the old system was perfectly fine. You unlocked the skills by using the weapon, not by leveling your character.
The old system made more sense, was intuitive and gave us the possibility to use more skills quicker.
Level-up bounty
I really dislike the way they are going with this. They’re locking things we had previously to give them us back later as “reward”. They cut the maps in order to do so and the loot they give for leveling up gives the player a false pretence of how the game is meant to be played. They think that the game centers around getting your character as fast as possible to level 80, when in fact the game should encourage you to explore. Again the old system did this just fine.
Simplified maps
Some key parts about every map gets locked away until you reach a certain level. Skill point challenges, vistas, gathering nodes and goods the heart vendors have to offer.
This again gives the player a false pretence about how the game is meant to be played.
Learning curve
All this changes where introduced to flatten out the learning curve. Someone obviously thinks that a new player is most likely overwhelmed by the game if he first starts. There would be a sight better way to introduce new players to the game:
Tooltips. Lots of them. As example, the downstate shouldn’t be locked until level 5 but should be explained before the player can be downed the first time. There should be a tooltip what the downstate is and what the 4 skills do. The evade mechanic should be explained with tooltips, the map completion should be explained with tooltips, the gathering should be explained with tooltips, everything should be explained with tooltips. And the best part about tooltips: They would be optional.
The reason for all these changes?
In my opinion, ANet aims for getting this game eC or E rated to attract new players.
This would also explain why new Sylvari aren’t naked anymore when they leave the Dream. Young children could obviously get the wrong message…
I was wondering. I read your post and opened the map and looked but couldn’t find the missing heart.
Imo it was harder than the other hearts, especially with the dredge cannons shooting at you. The dredge also can be a harder mob, especially for new people. I guess it was easier to remove that heart than to tone it down.
You can’t find it because it was removed. And I don’t think that removing exsisting content is the right way to deal with issues. Removing exsisting content is never a good idea.
Found it, it’s a Renown Heart in Wayfarer Foothills.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Assist_Grimarr_Molesmasher
I don’t know why they’ve removed it, but it must’ve been to complicated for new players to fight the dredge.
Prepatch, we had 301 Hearts on the world.
Now we have 303 and 3 new Hearts, 1 in Calden Forest and 2 in Plains of Ashford.
So where was the missing Heart? Which heart got removed and why? Was it “too complicated”?