FotM, Ascended gear and the planned incentive adjustments for open world play are all indicators that ANet has learned that players will not repeat content without rewards. Since players devour content faster than it can be programmed, incentives and rewards are going to stay.
I’ll be in wait-and-see on this, but the announcement came as a shock to me. I certainly didn’t perceive AoE as a problem. Some assumptions that I question:
1) People are using AoE v. single targets, and this means AoE is too strong. More likely, they are using AoE v. ST because their weapon set-up only offers 2-3 skills that damage and that are on CD’s, meaning they use the AoE because the alternative is to just auto-attack.
2) That it’s a bad thing for players trying to revive downed allies to be targeted by AoE. If this is the case, will dungeon mobs be doing less AoE on downed players? Because that’s pretty much what happens. If it’s OK for mob AI to play smart, it should be OK for players to do so also.
Well, I’ll wait to see actual numbers on how AoE will be affected, but the information that was provided did not inspire confidence that ANet is either interested in fun or is all that in touch with their own game.
If AoE is being over-utilized it is for two reasons. One, there are a lot of target rich environments. Two, the attack skills are mostly tied to weapon choices. If you are using a weapon that has 1 or more AoE, of course you use the AoE’s when they’re off cooldown because the flipping alternative is to just use the bloody auto-attack all the time.
If WvW doesn’t belong to the world why do you get all of the bonuses won in WvW all the times that you kill a mob, gather a resource, craft a item or heal some damage?
Now that is a valid way to show the connect between WvW and PvE. That does give more merit to having PvE elements in WvW.
Let’s not kid ourselves. The bonuses are “connected” to WvW because the devs put them there, just like they put the explore achievements, the monthly and the legendary requirements — not because there is any sacred connection between the game modes.
Would they be happy with a silver star then as another poster suggested and the title “I’ve been almost everywhere”?
There should be a distinction between achievements. If separate WvW and PvE explore achievements were to exist, the rewards for them should be different and any titles or icons should be different.
You do not need to have that golden start. If you are not prepared to do everything it takes in order to complete it you don’t deserve the achievement.
Give me a break. There is no “deserve” in playing a video game. Achievements are supposed to be part of the fun. People who don’t enjoy the current set-up are asking for something different that will be fun for them.
There is nothing currently wrong with skipping if that is what the group wants to do. That said, I doubt that ANet intended skipping to be used to complete dungeon paths. However, they have neither made a statement against the practice nor revised dungeon mechanics to discourage/prevent skipping or encourage/enforce fighting everything. Until and unless they do, the practice is legit.
I do not like the practice, not because I give a rat’s behind about fighting the mobs, but because it produces yet another reason for the community to be divided. Unfortunately, some anti-skippers don’t seem to want to take the time needed to form a group which thinks as they do, but would rather enforce rules against the practice. Time is thus the real issue — the time needed to form a group from a subset of all who run dungeons rather than the whole population vs. the time of the skippers, who would prefer to spend their time doing things they don’t find as tedious as fighting every group in a dungeon path.
There is nothing sacrosanct about the system as it is. It was set up as it is because ANet wanted more reasons for people to go to WvW and participate. While it does get people into WvW who would not otherwise be there, they are not really there to participate.
ANet thought that people in general would enjoy exploring in WvW. They also thought that people in general would repeat Temple events for blues. They thought that groups would take an average of 30-60 minutes to complete a dungeon path. They thought that jamming hundreds of players and Karka into LA to fight would work. Not every assumption they made in game design has proved true, especially not true “for everyone.”
The game is supposed to be fun. I had a lot of fun doing exploration in GW1 (with a fair bit of cursing thrown in, but I like to curse…). I’d enjoy having an explore achievement in GW2 that I want to complete. I’m asking for one because I don’t think I belong in WvW unless I want to go there to actually participate.
There’s nothing sacrosanct about asking, either, but existing systems have been changed in GW2 because people asked.
You are taking the stance that since it currently is, it means it is absolutely correct and cannot be at fault and the burden of proof is on the person opposing it.
No. I’m reading that some people would like to see a feature to be changed and I’m asking why do they think that change should happen.
So far, the main argument has been “I can do most of map completition on PvE, so that means map completition is a PvE activity”. To which I can easily reply – no, to complete the map you need to play WvW, so it’s not a PvE only activity. To the following question – why should map completition be changed to be a PvE activity, something it isn’t right now – so far there has been no answer. People haven’t answered even why do they want to have map completition if they don’t want to complete the map.
“Reasons” to change the map completion achievement.
1) In GW1 “map completion” (i.e., the explorer titles) was an entirely PvE activity. Areas like the Realm of Torment, Fissure of Woe, and Underworld, were not included. Nor were the PvP areas in the Mists. WvW takes place in the Mists, which is not a part of the world. In other words, the map completion achievement includes areas that are not actually on the map of Tyria.
2) Creating a separate completion achievement for PvE and PvPvE benefits players. The people who want to do it all, get more for doing it all. The ones who are currently not intending to do the achievement get to do the one they want — whether that be the PvE or PvPvE one. All games need more for people at cap to do. The current design is discouraging a subset of players from doing the achievement.
3) I won’t speak to others’ motivations in asking for a separation, but mine are not to get something for nothing. As it is, I will not be completing the achievement. I’d prefer it if there was an explore achievement I was interested in, and that’s what I’m asking for.
I’ll chime in as anti-RNG. If the boxes are going to use that mechanic, I will not be pleased.
The straight answer: because people enjoy them.
The answer that the current state of dungeons seems to indicate: for stuff.
Fwiw, Avatar of Melandru makes me sad. It is almost useless.
You cannot point at any specific sample of drops and say MF works or MF doesn’t. MF improving drop would be strictly a long-haul thing. Let’s say base chance for a rare is .5%, an exotic .1% (and yes, it could be that small). 200% MF would enhance the chance for a rare from .5% to 1.5% and for an exotic to .3%.
Also, MF does not effect the loot from chests, just drops from mobs.
The guild’s leadership decides what permissions each rank in the guild has. If players of the rank of the one who kicked you have that power, it was given to them, probably by the guild leader.
1300+hrs and my 1 and only exotic drop was from a lv 76 regular mob and that was with +0% mf gear. Don’t you just love RNG in games……
Yea, I had a laugh at 200+ and 400 hours with no exotic drops. I’ve actually gotten two now, at about ~950 hours and ~1200 hours.
Achievements like the monthlies and world completion are in the game to give people something to do. Players burn through things to do at speed, then clamor for more to do. Thus, it makes sense to enable players to get achievements (with effort). Forcing players into aspects of the game they’d rather not be in is not conducive to fun.
Therefore, it makes sense to have an open world monthly, a Mists monthly and the PvP monthly. Likewise, a WvW explore and an open world explore. Those who want them all, can get them all. Those who only want some, get those. Either way, there is more to do for most everyone.
At least until this system is fixed, I recommend only guild or friend groups.
Both myself and a roommate got one within the last week.
PvE is pretty boring, especially if you don’t plan on doing any sort of pvp.
Well, I don’t really plan on doing any sort of PvP, and I find PvE really interesting. So I guess you’re wrong.
So I’m wrong because someone else has a different opinion? That makes sense.
You didn’t say “PvE is boring to me” or “for me” or “since I don’t plan”. You said it is boring, especially if you (meaning people other than yourself) don’t PvP.
Since I am someone other than you and don’t PvP, but don’t find PvE boring, your statement is false. Making you wrong.
I think you can safely assume that 99% of all posters on internet forums are offering their opinion, even when they don’t preface their statements with imo. The posts that are not opinion stand out, because they will have some factual content in the form of video, link, numbers, or answers to questions about the game (i.e., “To bind a key, do x.” not “Roll warrior for easy mode.”)
I just dont understand this, why do people need to be forced to play the way they like? is it that hard to choose to play the way you like yourself?
There are opportunities in GW2 for group/guild play, in the form of temple clears. However, the groups/guilds in question will not do this content more than they need to for members to get their exploring done. Why? No shinies. One of ANet’s biggest mistakes in their design for GW2 was the assumption that the player base will repeat content just for fun.
It isn’t just the lack of large group content. It’s the lack of the whole package that early MMO’s developed to their “final” stage in WoW. These players not only want to be able to group, they want the challenge to require it, and the rewards to incentivize them.
Maybe they should have made the temple clears into instanced large group content. Introduce bragging rights mechanics with rewards that help them succeed in such content. Make the drops RNG with a low drop rate. Give the instances lock-outs so they can only be done once per week. Bingo, 5 raids.
Throw in GvG PvP, with a ladder. Then start working on the next iteration.
I just don’t get how they went from getting rewards right in GW1 to getting them wrong in GW2.
Guild Wars didn’t really have very many players, certainly not the numbers needed to support a true triple-A MMO like Guild Wars 2 and compete with WoW.
Actually, GW1 sold 5M+ boxes. Certainly not all those players were concurrent, but the numbers were there.
I do not believe we need raids as WoW does it, i believe Guildwars 2 need to look back at Guildwars 1 and how that worked (successfully i might add) and go back to its roots.
Ditch the dungeons and gear treadmills and go back to how GW1 played..loot wasn’t as necessary and the game was really fun from start to finish..
The thing is, though, that GW1’s lifespan was lengthened because of GW2. Long after everyone had beaten all the campaigns and EotN, they were grinding titles for the Hall of Monuments while looking forward to GW2. There is no GW3 to provide that impetus for GW2.
It’s RNG, i.e. random. Statistically, MF will improve your chances at getting better drops, but you will not be able to point to any one short window and say, “See, it does help!” or, “See, it doesn’t help!” Let’s say that the base chance to get a rare item is .5%. 200% MF would improve that to 1.5%. In any given small sample, the .5 or 1.5 numbers might come up, or might not. Over the long haul, the law of averages says that there will be an improvement.
My opinion is that claiming it is disrespectful to run a sale in the current circumstances, that it is not good business to do so, indicates a lack of understanding of how business works, not some deep insight into how it should.
Sales in a physical store setting are easy to understand. They are used to get rid of stock that was not selling at a higher price, or to entice people into the store where they might also buy other things. In an online virtual items store, neither condition applies. However, there is a third condition that applies to both. This involves people acting to get something they want while it is at a lower price. The store profits, because those customers might not have spent for those items at the higher price. The customers profit because they get something they wanted for “less.”
As for those players who are in wait-and-see mode about GW2 (i.e, they won’t spend any more money until they see where the game is going), this sale was not aimed at you. No game company is going to be able to do anything that will apply to/appeal to all of their potential customers.
Check out this video. He does a good job of explaining mobility in GW2.
DR is completely ridiculous…
Agreed. DR is the wrong reaction to the dilemma of how to keep speed dungeon runners from gathering tokens faster than ANet wants them to. If they want people not to speed run, eliminate the possibility.
If they must have some mechanic to limit those who can do all the content in a path and still complete it “too fast,” then limit the token DR to paths previously completed today, but make it more severe (each time it gets halved). Another option would be to use a lockout so that you can only do any given path once per day.
I like this idea as well, though I wonder how players whose intent is to speed through dungeons will react.
I’m nor sure whether this is intended or an oversight, but would not mind if it changed. It’s also a pain in the god statue effects in Orr, which keep you in combat. I’ve gone in to get nodes more than once to run out of tool after the first tap, then had to leave the area, wait, switch and go back in. Since this was Orr, that was enough time for everything to have respawned. >.>
Logan Thackery is a reincarnation of King Adelbern’s son, Prince Rurik. I can tell by how useful he is.
Yeah he runs into every single pack of monsters all by himself without caring for the group just like Rurik!
The one saving grace is that you had to keep Rurik alive… Logan can face-plant all day long — and he does — and you don’t fail the mission.
Logan Thackery is a reincarnation of King Adelbern’s son, Prince Rurik. I can tell by how useful he is.
The problem is the monthly achievement. GW2 is a game about playing “your way” in words, but not in-game. It really makes no sense to force people to dungeons or WvW for something as generic as a monthly achievement.
People are not forced to do monthlies. While the devs can set monthlies up to be anything they want, it might be better if they varied ALL of the monthly achievements, not just the non-fractal, non-WvW ones. This would give people who don’t want to play these aspects of the game a chance at getting the achievements from time to time without having to bite a kitten bullet.
I think it would be a good idea to change up monthly achievements each month. ALL of them, not change up 2 and leave the Wv3 and FotM in month after month.
I see that FotM and WvW are in the monthlies again. That’s 3 months running for FotM and since launch for WvW. I lost interest at that point. While ommv, my interests do not include the horribly designed, unfun mess that is WvW. If the fights were balanced in numbers like GW1 Alliance Battles, I’d be in favor. As is, with obscene differences in numbers possible, not so much.
Honestly when I started to explore AC Exp a bit more, and find rooms and even events (Has anyone else found the “defeat the ghosts” event in AC yet?) that are completely unused, I began to fantasize about how much better a more “dynamic” dungeon would be. Example: instead of walking into AC and seeing “SELECT ONE OF THESE THREE PATHS THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING GOOD DAY SIR”, you could actually talk to one of the three people and help them, and they would ask for advice on which way you want to go, and there would be side-events for extra loot and different events each time with jumping puzzles and minibosses incorporated into it. Imagine a dungeon being open-ended and a different experience each time you did it, instead of just 3 static paths that everyone knows how to do and farms for money.
Based on pre-launch blogs, I thought we were getting something closer to this than what we got. If it was rushed, hopefully over time they can be revamped. As it is, even the dungeons that are fun have their boring parts.
Maybe ANet should license dungeon runners. Potential buyers could check to see if the seller is licensed, and have piece of mind. One substantiated complaint of kicking someone, lose your license.
Yes, this is only a snapshot, but to me it is a telling one. I took a level 33 Engineer into Queensdale to get events for dailies today. The character was in Strong L32 Greens, with a Strong Rifle. Traits are 10/5/8/0/0. Did an event versus level 11 bandits, and I was down-leveled to 11. Rifle was taking 7-8 auto-attacks to kill a bandit. It consistently took 13-15 uses of grenade 1 to take down a bandit. Maybe its better at higher levels, maybe it isn’t. However, the reduction is nasty at lower levels.
I have a DR issue as well. I do periodic farm runs through Malchor’s and Cursed Shore. I’ve done a larger percentage of them on my warrior. The warrior doing the runs will over and over get nothing but whites, grays and a blue or two. The other two 80’s get the occasional green or yellow item. I would chalk this down to bad luck with the RNG, but since it is happening every single time I run the warrior through, I wonder if I’ve gotten hit with DR because I don’t use her anywhere else.
And why do you care so much if you can shave a minute or two off of an AC or low level fractal run? You can only run them once a day for full reward anyway.
The obvious answer is that its their time to “waste” or not waste as they see fit. This is nothing new in MMO’s. In other games groups will discriminate on knowing the dungeon, gear and builds. In this game, the rest is there, and magic find is just an added part of the gear issue. We live in an age where one’s own convenience is important to a lot of folks.
What honestly would have been wrong with the suggestion to change magic find I said ages ago?
Change magic find to a passive effect on your character rewarded from doing things in game, map completion, pvp, dungeon completions, jumping puzzles etc. The more achievements you’ve done the higher your magic find would rise and the better loot you would get all the time. This would of course mean replacing current magic find gear stats to something else and food and other things which give boosts to magic find other buffs as well.
This system would give better rewards to those who have been doing more activities in game and give you overall better drops depending on how much time you’ve invested into your character. Best of all magic find would not be on gear, food, sigils or anything else, meaning you can actually gear for survival, burst damage in pvp, condition damage etc. Your magic find stat would be I say again a passive effect on your character meaning you would have it in effect no matter what you wear, even if you wore nothing at all.
This idea has potential; maybe the buff would last a limited time, but would refresh each time you did something. Even people who play infrequently do something when they play (presumably). But no MF buff for flipping items on the BLTP. >.>
I think ANet should only leave MF as a food buff + gemstore item, it’s enough, and balance loot tables accordingly.
What do you guys think?
I’d prefer if they eliminated magic find, and boosted the drop tables for everyone. Since that is not likely to happen if they are actually getting revenue from MF boosters, I’d settle for food/store boosts only, getting rid of the MF stat on gear and through sigils.
Face it, drop tables are not going to produce valuable drops at a rate higher than ANet wants. Thus, the tables have to be set to produce that “desired” drop rate taking MF into account. This means that those who don’t use MF are below that curve. MF is nothing but a tax on farming.
Why do people think everything they don’t agree with needs to be “fixed”?
The entitlement culture. People think their viewpoints are both right and important.
@ the OP. If you think this is an exploit, report it and let ANet decide to keep it or patch it out. Given they never patched out mission runs in GW1, I’d say they don’t, though.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
Buying gold, and 4 hours later you’ve got a max level toon, with full exotic gear… You can then go into WvW.
Isn’t this only slightly ridiculous. Giving people who buy the gold this advantage?
Why do you think that paying money to bypass the game they also spent money on confers some sort of advantage?
80 Warrior: 344 hours; 274 deaths; .797/hour
80 Necromancer: 212 hours; 105 deaths; .495/hour
80 Elementalist: 126 hours; 53 deaths; .42/hour
80 Mesmer: 108 hours; 26 deaths; .24/hour
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
The currently open world temple events would have made great instanced raids, with some tweaking. As it is, this content is under-utilized because it is hard unless you have a lot of people, and the rewards for doing them are at the moment minimal. Put these events in an instance, set up a raid size and interface, and make some of the requirements for making a legendary item drop only in these raids. If only…
Golems are just the Asuran answer to the age-old question of, “How do I get things off the top shelf when I’m so short?”
While I don’t have anything against the idea of a golem pet, if there was one, the other races would be clamoring for their own unique pet. And as to a golemancer class, all the existing classes can be played by any race. If there were an Asura only class, there would have to be a unique class for each of the other races.
I would bet that it’s a bug with the interface, that you don’t really have Orichalcum tools equipped and it’s just showing that you do. Unequip your tools, log out, and buy new tools when you log back in.
I’ve seen this happen to a roommate. He got ruined plant fiber on Omnoms while under attack, then a few moments later harvested a different node successfully with the same tools. If it were an interface bug, he would not have been able to harvest T6 mats with the same tools. Not to say there might not be more than one issue, but an interface bug is not the only factor.
Because a cash player can be equal simply kills the game for me . It stops being a game where you earn status and rewards, you just buy it. I don’t wish to play in an environment where the company is fine with you just buying your way through the game. If you are fine with it, go and have fun. I am done here.
That choice is yours to make. I’m sorry that you are choosing being “right” over choosing to continue to enjoy a game you paid for. Good luck in your next game.
4) WvW is competitive PvP.
While this is true in the strict sense of the word, WvW is NOT like GW1 PvP, except in that players are fighting players. Every PvP game in GW1 featured balanced sides. There, the difference was in build/skill, not numbers. I’ve yet to be in a WvW zone where the numbers were not grossly skewed in favor of one of the three servers. I realize this is by design, but this design does not promote fun for me. I also realize that ommv.
I don’t expect the game to change to accommodate those who would like to do monthlies and get an explore achievement without going into the horrid mess that I find WvW to be. However, splitting these achievements would give players who don’t want to WvW something more to do. The current choice is to play a part of the game they don’t find fun, or give up on those achievements. Splitting the achievements and monthlies would also give those who want to WvW and PvE more to do, as they could get both. They did make a PvP monthly to accommodate those who don’t want to PvE, after all.
OK, I don’t know enough about online casinos, but I do know quite a bit about the brick and mortar versions. GW2 is not gambling. I see a lot of posters on various forums trying to compare it to gambling, but it isn’t gambling. Also, brick and mortar casinos never post the odds of slot machines winning ( except in British Columbia) so there’s no way Anet would ever do it. Also, even if they did it wouldn’t matter to most people, because most people (I estimate about 99%) just don’t understand how math and gambling work. Because players are only receiving virtual products, the random purchases you make is not considered gambling.
The products being virtual may factor into it, but that’s not the only factor. In gambling (e.g., raffles, lotteries, slot machines), playing costs money, and in most cases you get nothing. BL Keys open boxes, which are advertised to contain virtual items. They do. Thus, the buyer of the keys is always getting something for his money, although it may not always be something s/he wants. This is more like collectible card booster packs, which are not considered to be gambling. The same is true with regard to the mystic toilet, except you are not putting in money, just more virtual items.
Would it really kill every drive everyone has to play if we all found an exotic every 10 hours of casual (read: non-farming) gameplay or so, instead of every 100?
If that’s been your drop rate for exotics, you should rejoice.
Hours played: 1000
Exotics from drops and chests: 1