Things that need to NOT be on next exp.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
If they put an elite spec on existing weapons for a profession won’t that cause trouble if people use the core spec for the weapon along with the elite spec so that the weapon gets 2 specs being used at once that focus on making the use of that weapon more powerful?
If there was a core spec that had traits which benefit a core weapon, then they could omit traits specific to the weapon and focus on other aspects of what makes the Elite Spec unique. Of course, this would mean that one would have to tie down two trait lines — the elite and the one that feeds the core weapon. That would make for a fair number of complaints, I’d guess. I suspect ANet will dodge the issue for the moment by continuing to add new weapons instead.
As to the OP’s complaint, it is very possible to use existing weapons with the Elite Specs. One example is the condi reaper build which uses Scepter/Dagger + Scepter/Warhorn. It’s kind of out of favor in raids atm after the Jagged Horror nerf, but it is still an effective build, and plays a lot like the old necro condi build, only better. In that build, the only trait that refers to Greatsword is the Adept Minor,, which opens up use of shouts, GS and changes Shroud. The Daredevil trait line has only one option for staff, so one could do a dagger Daredevil build if one wanted. The impediment to that is that Staff 5 does a ton of damage, but that’s not a spec or trait issue, it’s a skill coefficient issue.
I understand, and am sorry for your distress.
The daily reward chests offer sips of 250 reward track XP. It takes 80 sips to get the 20K points to max the Gift of Battle Reward Track. There are 1500 points available each day, but some tasks require PvP. You can do Master of Monuments, Guard Killer, Land Claimer and Caravans all without necessarily seeing another player. There’s also Big Spender, where you can use those badges.
If a player does attack you, /bow. He’ll probably stomp you, but some will let you go. Anyway, it’s hopefully attacking and not being attacked that triggers your disorder. After all, mobs attack you. Desert Borderland can be good for this as fewer players go there. I often also cap camps solo there and don’t see players that often.
Good luck.
Which is why if you want the price to go lower, then you need to not buy coins until they are as cheap you think they are worth.
Using this option would mean that players are making an effort and perhaps a minor sacrifice. I much prefer that option because it would be community derived without asking for the game’s “parents” to step in and “fix” things.
The problem with this option, of course, is that it would take a lot of effort to organize a sufficiently large boycott to make a difference. A spontaneous boycott is unlikely, I believe. The call for a reduction comes from impatience and desire for rapid gratification. After all, if the complainers were patient, they could just wait and eventually get all the coins they need for free.
MMO’s are marathons, but some players seem to want to turn this one into a sprint.
IndigoSundown.5419And, for the record, I’m not part of your “We.”
Just a flesh wound.3589Sorry to correct you, but I’m not part of your “we” either
Sorry, but, in my opinion, you are wrong. Both.
Because English is not my language it is very hard for me to phrase my arguments, so, instead, I will use an example: The game Warhammer Online. I read that in the old good days this game had around 300k subscription per month. And millions of copies sold.
Then, problems started to appear. Not major problems, generating a mass exodus of the players. Common problems – only parts of the playerbase were lost due to each of them. That problems were never solved. And although none of them affected all the players, in the end the playerbase reached a level of 50k subscription per month. In that moment the servers were shut down and the game is now history.
You see the point? For 50k of the players the game had no problem. But they eventually realized that the problems the other players had were, in fact, their problems also.
The same with GW2. A part of the playerbase has a problem. If we don’t try to solve this situation, in the end, we will be all affected.I’m surprised also of ANet attitude. Remember the HoT launch?
A lot of complains – about a lot of issues. The official attitude? These are not problems, of the game. The players are: not good (git gud – remember? ), lazy, casuals, full of imagination – inventing false problems, enemy of the game! Remember Collin’s words? The complainers are not interested in GW2 but instead they want to hurt the game! Every single reason was valid, but not what the players said – the game has problems.
Well, you know what happened – some players (how many only ANet knows) left the game. And the players problems suddenly started to be ANet problems. And the Game Director had problems. And he left the game. Nobody learned from this?A part of the community having a problem means that the community has a problem. Stating that you are not affected is a statement that you are not part of the community.
Back to the topic: The price for MC is not the real problem. The price is the consequence of the real problem: The way the MC enters the game. And this is what – in my opinion – ANet should fix. And they should try to fix other problems too.
Before the problems affecting – each of them – parts of the playerbase will start to affect even the players considering themselves to be not affected.
I’m definitely not wrong about my not being part of the “we” that wants the MC price to be manipulated in favor of those who are impatient. I’m fine with the status quo.
I’m definitely not wrong about neither you nor I knowing how large the groups are that want (or don’t want) ANet to manipulate the price. Neither of us has a pipeline into the minds of every player.
Why don’t I care what my fellow players want? I do, to a point. However, I also know that when there are people who want the opposite of what other people want, it’s inevitable there will be someone who walks a way unhappy. I’m more likely to come down on the side of those who are willing to be patient than those who aren’t.
Wanze.8410And they recently renewed their stance during the AMA that they dont have a problem with the current value of mystic coins, so I dont know why people expect them to change anything.
Sorry to correct you, but we are not talking here about ANet’s problem. This is a player’s problem. And, because it’s supposed ANet is very careful with the playerbase problems, we expect that problem to be fixed.
Remember that ANet had no problem with all the initial issues from HoT – and a lot of players left the game. Then, this started to be an ANet problem and the Game Director left the game too.
Again, nobody on this Forum creates topics about ANet problems. All the topics are about players problems.
And in this case, it seems that ANet simply refuses to fix this problem – the reason is the health of the economy and the TP – at least this is what they say. I wonder, how the growing number of discontent players regarding this aspect can help ANet. Because, at least for me, is clear that not the TP or the economy is the real reason of this stubborn attitude.
Anyone remembers resonating sliver? The price for this product went down from 75s to few coopers in the moment ANet decided to add more sources. Was the economy killed by this? The TP crashed? NO. So, adding new sources and allowing the price to drop is not a problem for the economy or for the TP.
Why in the case of MC this is a problem? And for who is this a problem?
The Coins are used for a huge number of endgame-related goals. All MMO developers walk a tightrope with the fall on one side being that they lose players due to not having enough long term goals to keep players occupied, and the fall on the other being they lose players who want rapid gratification. Even when a developer finds a sweet spot for the rope, they’re going to lose some players on either side. MMO’s have always been about keeping you playing, so they’re likely to err on the side of goals.
The fact is that neither you nor I know just how many people want those long term goals, or are happy to sell their coins to get gold for something else they want, nor how many are dropping the game due to being unwilling to wait for gratification. Since ANet is not acting, it’s possible they’re shooting themselves in the foot. They’ve done that before. It’s also possible they’ve made the best decision for them in the situation. They’ve done that before, too.
And, for the record, I’m not part of your “We.”
I would use “Prefix” when referring to the names of the prefixes (e.g., Viper, Minstrel’s). If I were referring to any set of stats (e.g., Power/Precision/Ferocity), I’d use “attribute combination” or “stat combination” interchangeably.
Rationale: The name assigned to the combinations is the prefix in the item name. The actual attributes or stats in the various combinations should be self-explanatory.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
Meh, I will never understand this obsession with black dyes, they are so boring.
But … black is the new black … right?
Black Flag kills bugs dead.
24% is where you start. You take the measure of the initial difference and then as you see when you add to the bases in any amount you work away from the initial start towards an upper limit which, depending on how the game rounds and the maximum value to begin with, may or may not ever be equivalent. Basically you need that data in order to solve the rest of the problem and find the slopes and so forth and so on because now you can take the two data points, initials, compare them to any given data points which you can call “base + initials” for the values you are using and then from there create a slope and find out how inefficient light armor is in respect to heavy armor.
As for the 577/500-1 that is going to, or should, produce 15.45five% which is the original numbers from the above problem:
1,000,000 / 1967 = 508.39
1,000,000 / 2271 = 440.33508.39-440.33 = 68.05
68.05 / 440.33 = .1545five
In short it’s the same error. It’s extremely subject to change based on damage incoming or “taken” (just change 500 to 600 and it shifts) as a result. This is because it’s a comparative slope problem that deals with a triangle.
It’s trigonometry.
The “base” of the trianble is the 24% difference, the lines that rise will run towards as though they would cross indefinitely but never actually cross numerically are the sides of the triangle. Though they probably would if the data were treated as integers though they should meet and never surpass one another.
It’s just not important. If 15.5% satisfies you I’m plenty satisfied as well.
OK, I’m fine with 15.5% as the percentage change for a comparison between glass Asc. Light and glass Asc. Heavy also. Thanks for the discussion.
Playing MMO’s (and other video games) is wasting time, unless you’re one of those playing an ESport game and are making money doing so. I would not be concerned about playing this game being a waste of time — it probably already is.
The only point to a video game for most is to have fun. If you’re concerned about something other than fun, I’d say you’d be better off giving up video games completely. If you like GW2 as you claim, you’re probably having fun. If so, I’d say keep playing until that changes.
I’m not concerned about the game dying. Not at all. I expect GW2 to last for years more. I’ve seen games with much lower populations hang on for a half a decade and they’re still hanging on.
Why is it unrealistic to expect for 50$ more than 10% of what you get for 60$? HoT was barely 10% of the full game, and I’m being generous here.
Seriously, if they could sell the game for 60$ at launch with 25+ maps including WvW then they should be able to sell an expansion with 3 gvg maps and 15 PvE maps for 50$.
This is a really crucial point for me. Even though I’d expect less content in general for the same price for an expansion, I’d expect SLIGHTLY less, not dramatically less. The cost of supporting a game for time after launch is that it must be done with a smaller team, so that means slower output. That’s fine and I get that. But HoT on release was not even remotely comparable to its price tag.
It’s unfortunate for consumers that MMO content patches or XPac’s are light in content when compared to the original game. That seems to be a reasonable expectation. ~17% less cost should yield ~17% less game. However, that’s not what we see in the MMO industry across the board.
With the exception of WoW, other MMO’s mostly see their market share peak (at a number very much lower than WoW’s peak) shortly after initial release, then decline over time. Even WoW loses market share between XPac’s and that game is unlikely to reach its high-water mark in terms of subs ever again. Still, WoW generates far more revenue than its competition.
Blizzard charges the industry standard of $10 less than the going rate for a new game (currently $59.99 US). That’s the industry standard. That’s what ANet charged for HoT. Blizzard rents access to the game. ANet does not.
The industry standard is that XPac’s only offer a fraction of the base game’s content with an XPac. BC and WotLK offered far fewer zones and 10 levels of content v. 60. They get away with it because they offer raid/gear progression which forces players to raid to progress, renting the game all the while. ESO’s first two post-B2P content DLC’s combined price was similar to HoT’s, and offered a fraction of the content the vanilla game did.
WoW gets away with “far less than vanilla” while charging slightly less than a new game and renting access. How are developers whose games generate (much) less revenue going to produce “slightly less” content than their vanilla game at that slightly lower price point when their production costs are likely similar to WoW’s? That’s the business reality.
The problem is they aren’t open to 15% either.
- snip -
OK, I see my error in the percentage change calculation.
With Asc. Light Armor Stat of 1967 and Asc. Heavy of 2271 as constants in the damage taken calculation, I get values of ~13.39% for percentage change or ~14.35 for percentage difference across a spectrum of varying raw damage numbers. Of course, those percentages would change if we added more Toughness to the constant.
As to equivalent damage and absolute loss problem, it seems we can make the statement that for every 500 damage the Asc. Heavy takes, the Asc. Light would take ~577. That seems to hold true across varying raw damage numbers also and would be true regardless of Toughness.
So, where did you get the 24% number?
Community: A lot of the people that were around at the start of the game aren’t around any more. Whether the active players are better or worse in interactions with others than the departed players is likely a matter of just who one is interacting with. Of a certainty, there’s less interaction in game than there used to be — at least on map chat. Guilds likely range from still friendly and active to dead.
Drama: Different people are going to have different expectations of an MMO. Often, those expectations come into conflict. Since people are essentially anonymous online, the social constraints that discourage kitten-hattery are absent. We can often see the same things happening in social media.
Players Whose Tastes We Don’t Share: While you or I might not appreciate the kitsch that others choose to display, it’s their game, too.
Video-Sharing: Kudos on having the courage to put yourself out there by posting some videos. I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you might have liked.
MMO Longevity: There are a lot of different types of entertainment that pale over time. How many movie sequels get panned? How many game sequels fail? Even the best TV series end eventually once they lose momentum. MMO longevity is further hindered by MMO consumers who expect to play many hours a day and expect the game to constantly provide new things to do. You’ve played for more than a year. If you’re now not having fun, then that may be this game’s life span for you.
Population: With mega-server shards you never know whether the shard is empty, just seems empty because no one is chatting, or whether you just gt dumped in a brand new shard because the existing shard reached the number at which the algorithm triggers a new map. There are certainly less threads and less posts in general on these boards, but I’ve seen deader forums. I certainly see players everywhere I go in game, but I’d expect to because of how mega-servers work. I always see a fair number of people in the WvW maps, but ANet has linked servers, so I’d expect to. One thing we can say with certainty is that revenue was down in Q2 and Q3 2016. What we don’t know is whether that means people are no longer playing — or just no longer paying. No one knows, really, except maybe ANet.
While I dearly love the old times when the Klingons were humanity’s enemy, it seems in the second installment, we’re allies.
It is certainly my hope that ANet can produce a more robust expansion. The OP is spot on there.
I also hope that the next XPac will only tie game-play features like horizontal progression to content one can reasonably expect all players to want to do. Smaller demographic content like raids and mini-games ought to come with exclusive rewards, but imo too many of the HoT reward systems are tied to being a completionist. I have little doubt that ANet’s initiative to shove players into fringe content cost them by alienating a largish segment of the player-base, and it seems that ANet can ill-afford another XPac that is going to do that.
I also hope that we will see ongoing story tied to the XPac purchase. That’s not to say the XPac story shouldn’t be more robust, but I definitely want ANet to continue to do content updates between XPacs, and tying them to XPac purchase creates another incentive to purchase.
And, finally, I don’t give a rat’s behind about housing — but that’s just me.
And you actually bring up another “silent” issue. The armor classes themselves. Soloing an enemy on a Warrior isn’t just easier because it’s a Warrior but because Warriors naturally have the most defense. Since defense is a divider every point of it counts so the 304 point difference in ascended armor is huge. That’s literally 24% of the heavy armor. So just choosing an elementalist opens you to 24% more damage.
That’s insane.
That’s not quite how it works. To get 24%, you’ve divided the 304 point difference by the heavy armor’s defense stat. However, the Armor Stat is the divisor, not the defense stat. Armor is the sum of Defense + Toughness.
A level 80 character in all glass has 1000 Toughness, so a glass warrior in Ascended heavy has 1000 + 1271 – 2271 Armor. The glass Ele in Asc. has 1000 + 967 – 1967.
304/2271 = ~13.4%. However, to see the true difference we should divide by the light Armor stat of 1967. 304/1967 = ~15.5%
Apply the Armor stat to damage to check. I’ll use a base hit of 1,000,000 for simplicity.
1,000,000 / 1967 = 508.39
1,000,000 / 2271 = 440.33508.4 – 440.3 = 68.1
68.1/440.3 = .15467, ~15.5%
This is a statistical error known as the “aggregation problem”. It’s when you take distinct subsets of data and apply them to global systems. I’ll call “defense” or the armor value set A and character value set B.
A: Light is 967. Heavy is 1271. 1271 – 967 = 304.
B: Character A is 1,000. Character B is 1,000. 1,000 – ,1000 is 0.
What this means is that before aggregation we can note where the actual difference is by calculating A and B separately. Afterward we would aggregate them to see the total effect. So you really are open to 24% more damage by choosing a light armor class.
Post aggregation is going to give a lot of difference specifically because it the differences are inherently non-linear. To show that let’s take the same 1,000,000 but let’s add exotic max toughness of 1289 to both.
1,000,000 / (967 + 1000 + 1289) = 307.13
1,000,000 / (1271 + 1000 + 1289) = 280.9
307.13 – 280.9 = 26.23
26.23 / 280.9 = 9.34%
Okay, so why isn’t it still 15.5%?
It’s because it’s a division problem. As you compress the input you’re going to get smaller and smaller numbers. If you added 275 to both totals assuming food and sigils it becomes 8.61% and so forth and so on.
So ultimately we can only take one set at a time and compare it so yes you are in fact open to 24% more damage by armor defense alone which is the only variable that necessarily must differ.
In economics this is called “Ceteris paribus”.
As you so ably point out, adding a constant to the comparison compresses the percentage of damage taken. Intellectual exercises are all well and good, but for practical discussion we should be starting with the numbers which are actually relevant to game play. Since the game never divides damage by the Defense stat alone, the Armor Stat is the correct number to calculate from. So, no, light armor wearers are not open to 24% more damage than heavy armor wearers.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
GW2’s current cosmetic systems are such that anything more than one look per character is cumbersome and/or seems wasteful. It isn’t just dyes for outfits, it’s the one wardrobe slot on which a full change means up to 10 operations (transform 6 armor, 4 weapon) rather than multiple slots, each with its own look, that can be switched with one click. It seems strange to me that a game whose endgame carrots largely revolve around how one’s character looks didn’t include more robust ways to allow players to switch looks more readily.
… it gets far easier the zergier it gets …
/WvW in a nutshell.
And you actually bring up another “silent” issue. The armor classes themselves. Soloing an enemy on a Warrior isn’t just easier because it’s a Warrior but because Warriors naturally have the most defense. Since defense is a divider every point of it counts so the 304 point difference in ascended armor is huge. That’s literally 24% of the heavy armor. So just choosing an elementalist opens you to 24% more damage.
That’s insane.
That’s not quite how it works. To get 24%, you’ve divided the 304 point difference by the heavy armor’s defense stat. However, the Armor Stat is the divisor, not the defense stat. Armor is the sum of Defense + Toughness.
A level 80 character in all glass has 1000 Toughness, so a glass warrior in Ascended heavy has 1000 + 1271 – 2271 Armor. The glass Ele in Asc. has 1000 + 967 – 1967.
304/2271 = ~13.4%. However, to see the true difference we should divide by the light Armor stat of 1967. 304/1967 = ~15.5%
Apply the Armor stat to damage to check. I’ll use a base hit of 1,000,000 for simplicity.
1,000,000 / 1967 = 508.39
1,000,000 / 2271 = 440.33
508.4 – 440.3 = 68.1
68.1/440.3 = .15467, ~15.5%
I’m not sure why people think they shouldn’t be 1g. Just because they weren’t worth anything 4years ago doesn’t mean that’s the price they should be forever. What if they were 5g each? 1g wouldn’t sound so bad.
If one were to dig through the reasoning as to why anything in the game should be cheaper, the root cause is going to be some combination of impatience and frustrated desire. People who want a commodity because they want what it can get them are always going to place more stock in an argument rooted in, “They were at a lower price at some point.” People who want to sell the commodity (or those who don’t care one way or the other) are going to be the ones saying, “Count your blessings.”
Not seeing the logic, here.
“The casual ones are the whole game’s main problem. Most pro players have already left…” “Instead of pleasing the existing casual community that has been left with (sic), A-net should focus on making the game appeal to new gamers…”
So, the OP assumes that non-pros (casuals) are all that’s left to the player-base, but ANet should ignore what they want in hopes of somehow attracting new players (who presumably want harder content) by making the game more interesting to the OP (who presumably thinks of himself as a pro).
That’s basically what ANet tried with HoT. Harder mobs. Raids. Roles in instanced content. I have little doubt that they did attract some new players to the game. I believe raids have been a success. However, the HoT sales results were not great, and the game’s store revenue, which had been pretty stable for nearly two years, has declined in the most recent two quarters. I’m not sure the game can afford another such initiative.
Supplement what you’re doing by being sure to do as many of the WvW dailies as you can. The rewards grant one or two sips of track XP at 250 per sip. You’d need 80 sips for whole track and GOB even if you did nothing else.
Sometimes even Google Translate gets it right.
As to the OP’s complaint, if you’re building/playing well, 3K more health is irrelevant. A good bulk build stacks multiple means of damage avoidance (invulnerability, block, dodge, etc.), damage mitigation (toughness, condition cleanse, protection, etc.) and sustained self-healing (sustain for short).
No matter how useful, overpriced is overpriced. There are lots of must-have useful items in the gem store, of which none cost this much in comparison to what you get. I have said this before, but I think the shared slots should be equally priced with bank tab slots. That’s very reasonable considering it’s one shared slot versus 20 account-wide non-shared ones.
Some people are going to value the convenience offered by a given item higher than others will. The slots seem overpriced to you, but not to others. For the same reason, it’s hard to equate the price of one convenience item to another. A bank tab seems equivalent in value to a shared slot to you. To me, a bank tab does not offer as much convenience as a shared slot, so I consider their relative pricing to be fine.
No matter what price gets set, some percentage of the potential customer base is going to consider it too high. Back during the “HoT is overpriced” controversy, some posters valued the XPac at $20 or even $10. A few even thought it should be free. The fact that ANet keeps releasing more shared slots rather than lowering the price or offering slots on sale suggests that in this case, that price point is working for them.
Doesn’t momentum give toughness? why should it affect vitality then?
Probably a 1% increase via a combo of the Great Fortitude Trait from Strength (10% of Power to Vitality) and the Armored Attack Trait from Defense (10% of Toughness to Power).
If metabattle is to be believed, there is only one build for thief in WvW…
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_D/P_Roamer
I was in doing a bit of roaming and three of us faced one of those the other day. Tons of movement, condi removal, stealth, and decent damage. It might take a bit of practice to get good at it, but this guy was good — we never did put him down, and only good play on the part of the mesmer on my side kept him from kills.
Of course, you have to own HoT to get the Elite Spec, but that’s true with most if not all professions. The vanilla options just don’t stack up well. If you look on this page,
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Thief
You’ll see that only one Fractal and one Raid build don’t require Daredevil.
OK, I think we’ve confused you… just forget about everything and start again:
Without any other buffs, my character currently has 19,404 HP in the main UI (red orb at the bottom).
If I look in my hero panel, it says 19,212 HP (in green font)
If I go to a raid instance, it will change to 19,212 in the main UI.19,212 is my character’s real HP. The higher number is influenced by the WvW bonus. Tomorrow, the HP in my main UI will be higher, and it will keep on increasing until next weekend. Then suddenly, it will drop to 19,212 and the process starts again.
So, to find your real HP, look at your hero panel NOT the main UI.
You can re-confirm it by
- Going into a raid instance (Spirit Vale, Salvation Pass, or Stronghold, but not the Aerodrome). AFAIK all other PvE instances, including fractals will have the WvW bonus applied.
- Putting your exact build into a online build editor http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/
This. To make it even simpler, the lowest number you see while at full health is your real health. If you base your expectations on that number, then anything above that is just a bonus.
I too would like to see less skirts, butt capes, long coats etc. going forward. In fact, imo we’ve got enough of those already and should be getting other options.
While I’m at it, outfits and armors that are much less over-the-top ornate/ostentatious would be nice.
And it’s armor in the U. S, and armour in Britain.
Race has no impact on effectiveness — except that the Charr and Norn, being bigger, can be a liability in some jumping puzzles.
The issue I found with Mesmer was that the profession has no perma-speed boost until you get Chronomancer (i.e., at level 80). Of course if you have enough tomes to insta-80 and don’t mind doing a bunch of HoT Hero Challenges to unlock Chronomancer, that would be less of an issue.
It isn’t just the big hits for me. It’s the fact that a single build can hit for 10-15K in a couple of seconds, and still have evades and/or invulnerability out the wazoo, high sustain, low CD’s on skills and mobility enough to get away with impunity. Maybe there aren’t enough opportunity costs in the build system.
I remember when dailies were regional exactly how the OP says they ‘should be’ and some complained about that.
The OP however does blame Anet because he claims it to be bad game design.
You are misrepresenting the OP. The OP preferred daily events anywhere (as with iteration 1), not regionally. He also neither stated nor implied they were bad design, only that daily events as is are not fun for him.
What’s with these dailies?? Nowadays I have to port to i.e. Caledon Forest and do events there and chase after them before they’re finished, or go to the Plains of Ashford and gather lumber there? What’s up with that? Why can’t I just do dailies in the where I am farming/grinding mats and exp? Old dailies where you had daily gatherer, daily event completion ect. were much better. Did somebody actually suggest this kind of change or what?
Also the thingy that shows where the events are (event tracker i guess?) is showing events where there aren’t any and chasing events over the specific map is not fun.
I don’t see a problem with it. If there is one, then reduce the radius to 500. Small, incremental adjustments are better than large ones.
It’s the same reason why I think, say it makes little sense for Daily Land Claimer to consist only of 1 sentry, but Daily Camp is 2 camps! Is it hard to take 2 camps? No, not at all, but it’s an inconsistency worth mentioning.
FYI, in WvW there are usually two easy tasks (Master of Monuments, Land, Dolyak, Big Spender) and two less easy (more time consuming, really) tasks (2 Camps, Tower, Keep, World Ranker). The easy tasks award one jug of reward track XP, the less easy awards 2 jugs.
If you look at the PvE tasks, there are tasks (gathering and vista) that can be done very fast and other tasks that take a bit more time (events, activities). The PvE rewards are varied enough that it’s harder for me to say that the chests award more/better stuff for the more time consuming, but I suspect that ANet thinks so, and that the sPvP tasks can also be viewed as faster and less fast to complete — although sPvP is not my bag.
And what about the new maps make players split up? If anything I hear complaining in places like Bloodstone Fen that everyone is at Hab and not enough at the Jades or vice versa.
DT, SW, VB, AB, TD and DS all force players to split up to achieve map objectives.
We do have interesting and compelling game play, but if one thing has been consistent among all games I have played is that the players will take whatever they think are shortcuts regardless of what the devs do.
So, players attacking empty space is compelling gameplay? I’ll keep that in mind.
This entire debate is a good case in point. When they had it in the game what you claim as factual about it being good design, making events regional, people argued that they knew as fact that it was bad design. The whole argument is case in point that no matter what any dev does in any game, people will complain. This is why Anet has done dailies the way they have, to give people choice. If you don’t like the daily event completion you don’t have to do it and give up nothing for not doing it if you choose just three options among the twelve given.
I don’t remember a single request for daily events in a single zone. Nor do I remember complaints about regional events except from those who wanted a return to events anywhere. As to giving people choice — dailies and monthlies offered choice as far back as 2013. Modifying the events task does not have to mean sacrificing the good features of the current iteration.
I know what I used to like and I know how I’m reacting now. The events task used to be my favorite part of dailies. Now, I’ll forego daily completion if I can’t find 3 tasks that I want to do other than event completion in a low-to-mid level zone. Maybe I’m unique as a player. Certainly, there are players who only seem to give a kitten about getting their AP ASAP.
Anyway, we’ve been going back and forth with our opinions about what makes good design and what doesn’t. It seems unlikely you’re going to vary from your stance. Also, you aren’t going to convince me that game design that fosters player behavior that makes me think, “That looks silly.” is good design unless you come up a new argument. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Part of the issue is also a person’s computer system if you aren’t seeing mobs spawn. That’s something Anet can’t control.
I see them spawn just fine. They just die as they appear because they’re appearing in ongoing AoE damage from way more players than there are mobs.
It’s not that I care if the event is regional or not, but when it was regional people complained about. What I do hate is people who claim as fact that something is bad design because they personally don’t like it. Sorry, it’s not a bad design and the zones are designed with a maximum population limit and when that limit hits, a new overflow map is created.
The issue has nothing to do with zone population limits. It has everything to do with designing a task that creates typical player behavior in zones not designed to handle that behavior.
The reality is this is a player created issue and one where people would rather complain then actually do something that benefits them.
The problem with this view is that it absolves the developer of the responsibility for producing compelling, interesting game play. Game design cannot depend on players acting in any way other than what they see as the path of least resistance. If it does, the developer is setting the content up for failure.
ANet has taken steps in newer maps to get players to split up. This shows they recognize that player proclivities are something they ought to take into consideration when designing things for players to do. You’re free to think that they don’t need to do that, but their content design going back at least as far as Marionette suggests they don’t agree.
DISAMBIGUATION
CORRECT
- On any day when one or more Heart of Maguma tasks appears, one or more core tasks that would have appeared on a core-only account do(es) not appear.
- Certain core tasks, most notably world boss kills, appear seldom or not at all once a HoT key is enabled.
INCORRECT
- Once HoT is enabled, all core tasks are disabled.
Thank you for the handy summary. I should have done that myself.
The important thing (and the part that kittened me off, really) is that one can log into the game they paid for and find they simply can’t do what they want to do, because someone at the game company thought that would be cool. It’s really not.
More disambiguation. I am assuming that when Tatwi says, “Can’t do what he wants,” he means “can’t complete the daily by doing only core tasks on certain days.” There’s no need to bring up (again) the fact that he can go do things in core regardless.
Honestly it’s bad enough that the original dailies system was removed (because it was nice set of free-form goals that meshed perfectly with the open world / choose your own adventure design that made Guild Wars 2 unique in the MMO market), but to have the few dailies you want to do unavailable… it’s just annoying.
1. I had a nice long exchange with an ArenaNet customer service rep regarding the issue. In fact, he told me to post here and I (reluctantly) did so (this forum is fairly toxic…).
2. ArenaNet support stated that they will add HoT back onto my account any time I would like, I just need to submit another ticket.
So, if you’re also not happy with HoT, it can be disabled on your account. You just go back to not having access to the HoT content. It’s quite a ham-fisted, all or nothing, way to set one’s preferences, but it works…
I suspect that, rather than being ham-fisted, the all or nothing state of HoT permissions is that way because they did not anticipate a need for people to only select some permissions. I’m also not sure there is sufficient demand for ANet to put the resources into redesigning the permissions system away from an all-or-nothing one.
Before masteries were introduced, a while back, there was a period of time where you got to 80 and got nothing anyway and people still played the game. This was before the expansion. The experience bar was only ever originally designed to get you to 80.
Not quite. For 2+ years, in the first iteration, XP accrued post 80 and on level tick, players got skill points. There was a point to the XP bar post 80. When they removed skill points from the game, they introduced spirit shards to replace skill points as currency for MF recipes, etc. Shards came via content and it was at that point no one got anything from XP. The third iteration was Masteries, and XP only mattered for mastery tracks. Neither the completionist nor anyone else got anything once they were no longer pursuing Masteries.
With the mastery system, horizontal progression was introduced. The idea is you only need to earn the masteries you care about. Fractal masteries are irrelevant to a person who has no interest in Fractals.
Precursor crafting is irrelevant to someone who doesn’t want to do collections.
Therefor the OP only has one core Tyrian mastery line that could possible interest him. Then, as it was long ago, you don’t get XP anymore.
Not quite again. In iterations 2 and 3, no one got any benefit from XP except for the mastery lines. Now, there is a benefit, but it’s only for some.
Frankly, I do believe Anet needs to do something like provide a toggle so you can stop earning mastery experience altogether and just work on getting spirit shards.
It would solve a lot of complaints.
I agree. Not the first time I’ve agreed with you, probably not the last.
But this particular complaint…I’m not feeling it. Seems like someone who’s unhappy with the game and looking for an excuse to complain. Because if you were having fun before getting pretty much nothing anyway, I don’t see how the bar moving or not moving has actually changed the game.
My take is that it’s that iteration 4 (XP tick rewards only for completionist players) feels unfair. Of course, I could be projecting.
No, it is NOT a fact that it’s a bad design as you try to claim. The event system certainly is robust enough as the maps have always been tuned for a certain number of players before a new overflow map is created and has been since day 1. If people spread out there would simply be no issue.
And no, people won’t have that issue. I’ve been in full maps before where people were spread out and got events just fine.
And people may think they by asking in map chat it’s going faster but the opposite is true. By asking in map chat rather than just looking for events and going to where the mob is, they are in fact likely slowing themselves down. Just because it’s typical behavior doesn’t mean it’s the right behavior.
I’m unsure what region you play in, or at what time you do the daily events task. I expect that there are peak times and valley times in the two server clusters and that the typical experience may vary depending on when one tries to do the event task.
In NA, in the 3-4 hours after the daily reset, my experience has been that I can wander much of the map without finding any events — or I can map to the chat calls and live with the behavior that ensues as players attack empty spawn points and kill the mobs as they appear, before they get to move. Usually I make the third choice and go to WvW.
You’re free to think that deliberately creating a system that is going to result in players grossly outnumbering event scaling is fine. I don’t. Players have zerged content in GW2 since long before the current daily iteration. ANet had to know about that behavior. Design that is fine only if players behave atypically does not strike me as good design.
There’s something I don’t get. If it’s your preference to wander around finding events by yourself, and maybe seeing another player or two, you could do that better if players spread out more. Why would you care if the events task was regional?
I don’t see it as a bad design choice.
The events task is bad design for one reason. The event scaling system, especially in the older zones, is not robust enough to deal with large numbers of players. ANet should have known that — at least in prime times — there were going to be too many players at events. They should also have known that event scaling wasn’t going to be able to handle them.
I see players who want to follow the mob to whatever events the mob is doing and then complaining they missed out as the ones who are doing something wrong. There are always multiple events going on in a zone and I myself go to places where the mob isn’t and always finish quickly.
The problem with that workaround is that if more people do as you suggest, it’s likely everyone is going to have a harder time finding an event in progress. I used to do the “any events” or “regional events” tasks in underused zones. I couldn’t go anywhere without tripping over an event or even a chain. Now, if I wander the chosen zone, sometimes I get lucky, but sometimes I can cross three quarters of the zone and see no events at all. If you’re getting lucky all the time, then congratulations.
And the reason people ask “Any Events?” is because they don’t want to search themselves and go to the mob.
The reason people don’t want to search for themselves is because they want to finish the task ASAP and they think going to chat-linked events will accomplish that goal. As was pointed out above, that type of behavior is typical to many MMO players. Outnumbering events has been a wide-spread thing in this game since very shortly after launch. It’s one thing to foster that behavior in zones where the scaling is more robust. It’s another to do so in zones where the scaling is so anemic.
Jumping Puzzles extremely frustrating
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
Why? Serious question; for a while there no reward was given to any player, masteries maxed or not, and … the game didn’t die, players didn’t revolt, nobody wept themselves to sleep every night over it.
Complaints on forums hardly constitute a revolt or weeping over the issue. Hyperbole serves no one unless it’s in sarcasm or satire, and you posited a serious question.
So, why did we see so few complaints before, yet we see more now?
Post 80 Level Tick Iterations:
- Everyone got skill points, which were used to buy things shards now buy. Everyone got a minor reward.
- No one got anything. A minor reward got taken away from everyone.
- XP was used to fill mastery bars. Once masteries were done or if a player was stalled due to lack of interest or points, neither group got anything.
- Completionists get a level tick reward. Non-completionists do not. Minor reward restored to one group, but denied to the other.
In iterations 1 through 3, everyone was treated the same. With 4, that no longer applies. The fact that there were few if any complaints about iteration 2, and more about 4, suggests the issue is not the shards, per se, it’s that 4 is perceived as unfair.
I think the decision to have the Mastery System advance as it does was a poor one in hindsight. Maybe a dual currency system was better for ANet’s purposes. If so, it would have been better if they’d used a “track” system like the ones in WvW/sPvP.
In such a system, the XP required for each step could have been the amounts currently needed for each Mastery. The system could still have required points. This would allow for the inclusion of a repeatable PvE track that only rewards the shards as an opt out for players who don’t want to be completionists.
Since it seems unlikely that the system is going to change soon, OP, you have options:
- Stop playing. This may be a bad option if you like playing the game otherwise.
- Change your mind about completing the tracks. This may be a bad option if doing what’s needed is distasteful to the point you’d want to stop playing the game.
- Ignore the existence of the XP bar. This may be the best option. It’s the one I’m using — though I confess every time I see discussion of the current completionist-only system, I think, “<small cats, small cats>.”
Legendary weapons are:
- A supposedly long-term project in a game genre that requires such to keep some people busy.
- A carrot for those who like shinies.
- Part of the GW2 economic stimulus initiative.
- The varicolored badge of the MMO aficionado.
- So that those who want to can draw their Twilight in a jumping puzzle and troll other players by obscuring the path.
Jumping Puzzles extremely frustrating
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
I didn’t see Anet advertise them that way. They advertised them as horizontal progression, leveling is not horizontal progression. They compared them to games like metroid, which I don’t think is quite accurate either.
But no, I never got the idea that they were going to be like leveling, and I’m not sure why you got that idea.
How much of a stretch is it to say, “No level cap increase.” and “Horizontal progression system.” and determine that one is a substitute for the lack of another. Still, it really doesn’t matter. I’m not going to stop disliking the system and you’re not going to stop defending it. It wouldn’t take much to satisfy me. If ANet cba to do that, then they’re telling me they really don’t want my business. <shrugs>
That’s fine, as far as it goes. However, do enough of that across enough demographics and sooner or later it bites one in the kitten. None of us know when or if that point will come — however I think it’s safe to say that enough people were cheesed off about HoT for one reason or another that the game is in a worse place than it might have been if different decisions had been made.
I am recovering from rotator cuff surgery, which meant about 6 weeks of playing with one hand. I wouldn’t even dream of trying Pvp that way. My hat’s off to you. Keep it up and more power to you.
Very few of us who don’t particularly enjoy them are saying that Anet shouldn’t have created hardcore content. I just think they should either have been more inclusive (i.e. different levels of difficulty, or that there should have added a comparable amount of relevant low to moderate level difficulty content added. That’s all. We lack balance.
The fact is — and this is a fact that is readily verifiable if you follow forums at all — that there are any number of demographics that want constant attention, and if the complaints are to be believed, none of them are getting enough to do. That’s why we see lower difficulty content in the persistent world and harder content in instances. Making multiple tiers of difficulty is just flat out more work, and ANet cannot keep up with player demand as is. So, as nice as it might be, it does not look like what you want is likely.
The HoT ones replace the core Tyria ones that show up on the tracker, but you can still complete the core Tyria ones if you want to.
Survey says? Bzzt!
You used to be able to but they changed that a long time ago.
He’s (probably) saying that if you want to do events in core or whatever the task is, you’re free to if you cba to look it up — you just won’t be rewarded with credit for dailies.
Jumping Puzzles extremely frustrating
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
Masteries simply aren’t the same as levels though and equating them to levels is a misnomer, even if Anet decided to show them as mastery levels.
Most people will never need to use a raid mastery because most people don’t raid. So you don’t have to get every single mastery point there.
If you’re not going to make a legendary or if you don’t run fractals you don’t need those masteries.
This is very different from leveling.
Obviously if you choose to get everything you’ll need to do more. It’s a different system.
Then ANet should not have marketed masteries as the “instead of” for a level cap raise. That creates expectations.
As to not completing some masteries, that’s exactly what I’ve chosen. Pity that that means I’m a second class citizen. I can do without Exalted crafting and raid masteries. Still, it seems a shame that I have to be a completionist to gain a trivial benefit from the tons of XP that are awarded for doing content.
ANet is of course free to do whatever it wants. Fans of the game are also free to think this system is fine as is. However, there are consequences for everything.
While I believe emphasizing completionism may not be not a huge source of lost customers, it certainly has cost ANet some. Maybe the pay-off in keeping active players busy a bit longer was worth whatever customer bleed did occur. Maybe it wasn’t. It’s certain though that the game is not doing as well as it was. Maybe it’s aging, but I have a hard time thinking that telling any group of loyal customers, “This game isn’t for you anymore.” is a good thing.
It doesn’t matter how much redoing, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s an urgent issue and therefore any effort is a distraction from other, more timely concerns. If and when they plan for another overhaul, sure, it’s worth considering events within a region rather than a zone. (Still, wouldn’t that defeat the main value of that daily? The community originally requested that ANet encourage veterans to return to less-well-frequented zones.)
Let’s look at a possible scenario. Someone new to the game comes along. Farfetched? Maybe. However, desirable. So, he’s in Brisban Wildlands on his now level 16 character and runs across a defend event. He sees there’s a couple of large groups of players standing outside the event area in 2 different places. They seem to be dropping AoE. However, he decides to actually stay in the area to do the event, except he notices there’s nothing attacking. So he wanders over to where those players are attacking empty space. Suddenly, he sees mobs spawn, then die before they can attack, or even really move. Wow! Great experience! Scintillating, exciting, immersive, challenging game play!
Now, maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s not worth fixing. However, if it isn’t then the NPE wasn’t worth doing either.
Jumping Puzzles extremely frustrating
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
If one doesn’t want to do adventures, raids or story achievements, one can still gather 119 MP’s.
…
What I want is for the stand-in for basic XPac progression to not require niche content. There should be enough points in story and exploration to more than complete the tracks.
You’re asking to be able to max your masteries without even playing most of the PvE content introduced with HoT. Don’t want to do story, don’t want to do raids, don’t want to do adventures, don’t want to explore the world.
163 – 119 = 44. So, those 44 MP’s are suddenly ‘most of the PvE content introduced with HoT’? What we have here is your failure to read. See the bold/italic portions of your post and mine.
Well but see now you have it where I don’t like mini games, or story achievements or raids. That becomes problematical. It’s like saying I want all my mastery points the only way I want all my mastery points. Open world commune or achievements only I like and I’m not so sure that’s reasonable.
The mastery system is a stand-in for level progression. How does one level in any MMO out there, including this one? One gains XP. How does one gain XP in any MMO out there, especially this one? One can do almost anything the game offers. GW2 gives XP for doing almost anything there is to do. It’s an open progression system. One does not have to be a completionist. One does not have to be a completionist for masteries either, but the points make the system a lot more restricted. How is it unreasonable to expect the stand-in for a wide-open progression system to not require niche content?