The game is all about tagging only if you’ve already chosen to make it all about loot.
We could start by either making camps only give 5min participation timer or by giving dimishing returns on participation timers if you just do the same kind of action over and over.
The only demographic that does everything, and so would be unaffected, are zergs. No.
To be honest, you’re complaining about AFKs on an out manned map, but you wouldn’t have those people there anyway if there wasn’t rewards.
I’d be more concerned about afks when every map is queue’d, than afks on an out manned map.
This, at least in response to the OP’s scenario.
Timed progress is going to have such issues. If the timer decays too quickly, then people complain, and those doing tasks that help their side but don’t grant participation will stop doing those things so they can see progress. ANet could have gone with (event-based + kill credit) progress. but that would have placed even more emphasis on herd play, and herding is already a lot more rewarding than havoc or solo play.
I’d be happy to see someone come up with an idea to make WvW gameplay better, but doing so is not as easy as asking for it.
Every player demographic in the game thinks their favorite content comes out too slowly. Every. Single. One. This feeling also applies to fixes, balance patches and cosmetics.
Many who have been here all along, didn’t find HOT as difficult.
And many who have, did. It’s highly personal. You can’t really argue, i’m sure, that there was a spike in difficulty from core to HoT.
I can argue that.
Most of the HOT mobs are similar in terms of challenge to mobs in DT and SW (and thus LS2). The actual challenge progression is more a gradual rise than a plateau with a spike. Now, if someone jumps straight from leveling in core to HoT without doing LS2, they might see it as a spike, but that’s an artifact of their missing a significant chunk of the game.
Some people always see new mobs as too hard (and thus a spike in difficulty). This is because they’ve gotten used to the old mobs due to the practice effect. PvE mobs always get perceptibly easier even if their numbers — and players’ numbers — stay the same. That’s also why we always see “thank yous” from those who want a challenge when harder content is introduced, followed later by claims of “too easy.”
Why i always fail to stun enemy, but enemy always stun me?
He’s got stab, you don’t?
HoT maps owed something to the DT and SW map designs, with changes based on complaints by the community. It seems a lot of people disliked elements of the HoT maps, so S3 maps shifted away from that kind of design. Crystal Oasis made it seem like PoF maps will owe something to S3 map design, but we’ve only seen part of one map. Perhaps ANet has learned that there ought to be different types of map designs rather than all maps of the current iteration being similar. We shall see.
Melee vs. Ranged Damage in Large PvE Content
This is unlikely to change. I can’t see ANet being willing to use different coefficients for skills in PvP/WvW vs. PvE. In the two PvP modes, it’s a lot easier to hit characters bouncing and juking all over the place with a ranged attack than it is a melee one. Since it’s harder to get a melee hit in, melee needs to hit harder.
Also, in large-scale PvE, melee needs to hit harder than ranged, for a similar reason. The cause is different. Mobs don’t move around like player characters do. Instead, mobs have area denial. If you think about the older large-scale content, there was a lot less threat to ranged characters than melee. With HoT and later, we see more AoE delivered further away, but ranged builds can still remain on target longer than melee, unless melee uses a lot of their skills for mitigation, which ranged needs to do far less.
What I would like to see is a bone thrown to melee players in the form of a real option to reduce or eliminate for the massive eyesore of particle effects. These effects not only make it harder to see attack tells, they are an eyesore. I still haven’t seen the models for some of the large event bosses in full detail. I also believe that being able to see better will increase the number of players who will be able to melee in these large events, without changing game balance.
— snip —
Let’s see: knockdowns were used mostly by melee characters against ranged characters, so listing them as an example of melee hate is rather disingenuous. Blinds were often considered most valuable when spammed on interrupt bow rangers, since warriors could still get off a knockdown through it when they needed to. I would consider them to be more ‘anti-physical damage’ than ‘anti-melee’. Cripple was also more often used by melee characters to prevent casters from escaping them, so it isn’t melee hate by any means (seriously, most eles were SF, so they didn’t use it; mesmers could only kd spellcasters…who is supposed to be knocking down melee classes from range?). Bleed is not an example of melee hate (and I honestly don’t see how you could possibly claim that it is). Exploding enemies was only in a couple of places, and those often jumped on top of spellcasters in your party, meaning the AoE affected pretty much everyone. Water magic and illusion slowing hexes I’ll give you, but that’s pretty much the only thing in your list that is actually melee hate, specifically. I would consider things like Faintheartedness to be melee hate, at least in PvP.
I agree with the overall point of your post, though. GW2, unlike GW1, has been extremely melee-centric from the beginning, apart from WvW zerging (and even then, melee plays a large role). The entire objective of sPvP, area control, forces you to fight at melee range. I’m really hoping they’ll take measures to improve the viability and usefulness of ranged weapons, especially in sPvP.
I’ll admit my memories of GW PvE may be selective. I was thinking of mobs like: Enchanted Brambles (melee range cripple, bleed and blind); Death Novas from the melee minions of the Behemoth Gravebanes; knockdowns from Cobalt Mokeles; of course the exploding Afflicted which made up a lot of Factions, and melee-range bleeds applied by Scytheclaw Behemoths. Melee hate was the wrong word.
In GW PvE, much as with GW2, proximity added to aggro, meaning that melee mobs with control attacks that in PvP were used to deal with ranged characters ended up being used by mobs against characters in proximity to them. It’s also possible that my memories of GW may be colored by my last memories of GW are of doing Hard Mode Vanquishing on an Assassin. I took a lot of those hits while my ranged friend and the heroes didn’t. From a design perspective, my inclusion of bleeds was off, but from the experiential side, melee characters got a lot more bleeds applied to them than did ranged characters in PvE. However, the skill design intent — as was true with most of the GW skills — was rooted in PvP.
That does mean the design intent differed from GW2 where a lot of bosses do use massive AoE, the purpose of which seems to be to encourage flexibility by PvE players as regards to melee/ranged. Another factor is that GW2 mob skills are often proprietary to mobs, whereas in GW, mobs for the most part used the sames skills available to players.
I’ve been trying to do the daily events task when it’s in Tangled Depths as part of trying to learn my way around that zone. Here’s what I find frustrating.
- Wherever I am, I generally see an event on the upper right of the UI. However, it’s not on the minimap. Sometimes, it’s a long ways away.
- If I look on the main map, I can often see where such an event is. However, the way to get to it is at times unclear, and very often deceiving. There’s an awful lot of “can’t get there from here” in Tangled Depths.
- Doubtless, if you know the tricks and have spent two years playing the zone off and on, you know where to go to get somewhere. If you don’t, time spent exploring can be unproductive. It often has been. I’ve never seen that anywhere else in an MMO, and that includes the other three HoT maps.
I’ve not given up. I don’t want to have to admit to myself that I have not given the zone a chance. I am getting to the point where I will write the zone off, though, although I’d like to get some of the MP locked there. I have no interest in watching videos or being led around.
TD can be flat out frustrating at the best of times if you’re still in the learning process. I suppose if your play style is like Vayne’s, TD is fine. I rarely have the extended play time to play the way he presents himself as doing.
Some of us are more experienced, but are happy to explain and help. We are having fun trying to kill bosses even if we die many times as we always progress. Last week we killed Cairn-Mursaat-Samarog for instance.
This is really significant. Once people join a guild, there’s the likelihood that they will actually become friendly (if not friends) with the members. This is crucial to the group’s ability and the players’ willingness to enjoy each others’ company, laugh about mistakes and persevere. Friends act that way. Random strangers are a lot less likely to.
In LFG, you will find people who haven’t taken the time or don’t want to form that kind of social bond. You’ll also find people who want a quick run because their playtime is limited. Doubtless, you’ll find other motivations, but none of those motivations will have any relation to the camaraderie that can develop in a stable group.
The people in LFG are not your friends. They are not there for you. They are there for the convenience of having to wait less time and to take less time to complete an instance. People seem to want or expect people in LFG to be social (i.e., friendly to and accepting of the inexperienced). The reason they’re in LFG in the first place is because being social is not part of their agenda, at least at that moment.
That doesn’t mean the LFG can’t be for the inexperienced. It does mean, though, that access to a group when you want to play may depend on you taking the initiative. It may depend on you trying to find other inexperienced players. It may mean you having to accept that you may not succeed and the group may fall apart because of failure. It does not mean that other people in LFG ought to treat random strangers on the internet as they would good friends. That does not mean such people should be rude, but basic courtesy does not include acting toward strangers as they would towards their inner circle.
If the item has to have a 300 gold sink, I would certainly have preferred it be to purchase an item that has no other uses.
Maybe I’ve been fortunate in WvW, but I have run with a lot of really good commanders. I would not like to see clueless players tagging up and running around to troll people on their own server just because they can. You know it’s going to happen. Any system without sufficient deterrent in an online game that can be abused will be abused. 300 is a lot of gold to spend for a few yucks, but if someone needs to spend it anyway…
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ANet has practiced melee hate off and on since the original GW. Knockdowns, blinds, bleeds, cripples, slows, AoE, mobs that blow up in a PBAoE when killed, etc. GW2 is no different now. However, GW2 also has tools that allow players to stand in melee through a lot of stuff like that. In general, PvE players don’t use them as much as I see them used in WvW, for instance.
Now, why is there more melee hate in GW2 PvE than was true at the start of the game? A long standing complaint about dungeons was that groups would stack in melee, max out offensive buffs and burn bosses down in little time. Accusations like “face-roll.” “boring,” “silly,” and “stupid,” flew regularly. Add in that core PvE in the open world was also labelled too easy. ANet apparently decided to do something about the situation. Thus, we see a lot more AoE starting with the introduction of the Mordrem army in LS2.
Get rid of it. This game does not need more gratuitous particle effects. People should want to play Soulbeast because it’s fun, not because it looks like a chlorine cloud.
ANet has said a lot of things over the years, and some of those things are no longer true. Cave ergo per ludio (let the player beware).
The OP’s request is not an ask for a return to the early days, it’s an ask for players who have not spent the cash to unlock the elite specs to be able to avoid competing with players who have.
Complete utter kitten, i own HoT and might get the next expansion too, The game is currently to unbalanced 50% of the fights i have nowdays are just endless fights where you can’t kill each other so eventually you just disengage. Everyone now has to much passive defense and blocks and blinds and insane heals and stealth all without sacrificing anything. The only way to balance this is to remove the elite specs. If your actually defending elite specs being balanced your a joke and have no experience in WvW what so ever. Get lost with your nonsense claims.
Had you read all of your own thread, you’d have seen that I am not defending Elite Specs as balanced.
What I would like to see, though, is ANet stick to their old statements about Elite Specs, which is that they were to be side-grades, not up-grades.
I apologize if I misread your intent. Perhaps I did so because you presume that the only way to balance elite specs vs core-only builds is to remove them. That’s the nonsense. If Elite Specs are unbalanced v. core, it’s because ANet hasn’t balanced them, not because they can’t. It’s a problem of intent, not ability.
As to a core-only map? It’s a bad idea.
People who paid for an XPac should not be barred from playing any spec they want on any WvW map.
I support fixing the problem, and don’t want to create different problems, which such exclusion would surely do.
The OP’s request is not an ask for a return to the early days, it’s an ask for players who have not spent the cash to unlock the elite specs to be able to avoid competing with players who have.
So, you want developers to spend considerably long time to create new game mechanics and add new code just so players who have not payed anything for the game could continue to play it for free longer and stay competitive against those players who did pay? And that makes sense how? Wouldn’t adding such option make Anet earn less money after all that work?
I write a post clarifying what I believe the OP is asking for, and you turn that into an accusation that I want something?
No, I don’t think the OP’s idea of a map exclusive to players who did not pay for an XPac should be honored. People who paid for an XPac should not be barred from any WvW map. What I would like to see, though, is ANet stick to their old statements about Elite Specs, which is that they were to be side-grades, not up-grades.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
- I wonder how many people here supporting the limited window would react differently if they had not gotten the offering when it was available.
- I wonder if people would still be supportive of one day and done if it applied to character birthday gifts. After all, that’s an anniversary.
It’s not a big deal. However, I’ve been a GW2 customer about as long as any, and I do not feel appreciated by a customer appreciation gift in a limited window with little to no fanfare.
Thanks for your answer. How does 916, or 895 scale with the character level ? I believe that atm nobody really know that or even care about. To me an equation is true only when it’s application domain is total, including the level as input.
Having an equation only true for lvl 80 is very frustrating
ANet will doubtless have a table with level on one axis and base precision with no gear at that level. They then would plug the values from the table shown on the wiki Precision page to get precision values for each level. Even if the precision values only change every few levels, the divisor (21 @ 80) changes in a linear fashion at each level, so it would seem there is indeed a somewhat different equation for every level. What the various equations use in place of 916 or 895 is doubtless based on what the base chance to crit with no precision from gear or traits is intended to be. I suspect these numbers would also have to change.
How did people managed to find out that heros panel is false ? statistical tests ? is the thing proved ? Anet should know about that, I guess they would have done something if it were true. If it is then why didn’t they fixed it yet?
If I understand well, when you have 99% or might be less if the delta is increasing, you actually never land a not critical hit, which means the displayed info should be 100% ?
Heh, they haven’t fixed a lot of things. Also, since the wiki is fan created, there is no guarantee that it is correct. I suspect they would have had to do in-game testing with large sample sizes. The display in the Hero Panel shows 4% for a character who has only base Precision. For me to be willing to state definitively that 5% is accurate, I would have to do a lot of testing and post my findings on the discussion page — which I don’t see.
No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze, and then it makes it hard to find the door.
Not interested in needing a pocket healer because someone thought it was a good idea for ANet to reduce my ability to take care of my own character.
I can’t say that I have any interest in my characters wearing any of the overly gaudy, ostentatious, and outright ridiculously overdone skins. However, “despise” seems a bit much. Maybe I just recognize that in a game where I am able to play with (sometimes) more than a hundred other players, there will be people who have wildly different desires and tastes than I do. I have to (regularly) practice tolerance in RL. Why should I not do so in a game based on playing with lots of others?
Disable facets out of combat.
Good grief, no. The best part of playing Herald is the speed boost, the profession’s only integral access to a speed buff. Needless to say, this is more of an OOC than IC benefit.
You do understand that game has already changed most of the core skills, traits, runes, stats and conditions, during the HoT release and years following it? Simply disabling elite specs is not going to bring back “good old days” since everything else has been changed also.
The OP’s request is not an ask for a return to the early days, it’s an ask for players who have not spent the cash to unlock the elite specs to be able to avoid competing with players who have.
The issue with LFG’s and exclusion is solvable only by random grouping, with some form of disincentive for kicking people after the group has formed. That approach would be developer regulation of LFG’s. What we have now is player regulation of LFG’s. Give players freedom to tailor their group experience, they’ll use it. Deny them that freedom, and you’d likely see more experienced players leave the LFG in favor of guild or friend’s list groups. The extreme outcome would result in mostly inexperienced players in the random assignment LFG. Then we’d see the “Content too hard.” posts.
I’m curious. How would random grouping work on Vale Guardian?
For the trash mobs before you even engage the boss itself, you need 2 to 3 condition damage dealers and someone with good boon strip capabilities. Then for the boss itself you need those but someone with more toughness than anyone else as well. How is this random grouping going to take care of these issues?Rift did it by looking at gear numbers. For VG, the algorithm would have to examine and select one player with high toughness, and at least two with a high condition damage stat.
Random grouping works in a game with distinct roles were you make content for 1 tank, 2 healers and 7 dps and each player selects which one of the above they are and join a random group. In GW2 we do not have that easy distinction and most raid bosses require way more than that.
A hand kiter at Deimos, an orb pusher at KC, a flame kiter at Sabetha, the mushroom eaters at Slothasor, there is an huge amount of special roles used in Raids that no random tool can take care of all of them.
That’s a good point. If those roles (or tasks) that are needed for a successful strategy are stat-based, ANet could select for the stat. If they are character-skill-based (as opposed to player-skill-based), they could select for the profession(s) that have the requisite skills. The questions at that point would be, “Are those roles/tasks that would be hard (if not impossible) to design selection criteria for required for completion? Or, is there another way to complete the encounter that is?” If the answers are, “Yes.” then, “No.” a random grouper could not work and the encounter mechanics would have to change to something that is.
Anyway, this is hypothetical and I am not advocating random forced grouping. I just think it’s the only way to force players to play with anyone who happens to come along.
Standard POF $49.99 + Free GW2
New & Returning Players Get: (Non-HOT Purchasers)
*New Class
*Level BoostStandard POF $49.99
Standard HOT $49.99
Standard GW2 $59.99
$159.97 5yr Investment. (Excluding deluxe & Gem purchase)Veteran Players Get:
*Level Boost (By now some of may have 9 or more Characters at 80) Useless.
If you’re going to continue your complaining, at least get your facts straight. You might also look into how businesses work, and how value is determined in business-consumer relationships. Since I don’t expect you to, here’s the crash course as it applies to the situation under discussion.
- 5 Years ago (you?) spent $59.99 to purchase access to GW2. For those 5 years (you?) had the opportunity to enjoy the game. (You?) also got — for no additional cost — access to LS1 and 2.
- 2 years ago (you?) spent $49.99 to purchase access to HoT. For those 2 years you had the the opportunity to enjoy what HoT brought to the game. (You?) also got — for no additional cost — access to LS3.
- Now, (you?) would be paying $29.99 (not $49.99) for standard PoF. (You?) will get the opportunity to play what PoF offers as long as you care to. Freebies: the level boost you don’t care about, plus the shared inventory slot it arrives in (which would cost $8.75 if bought separately).
- The new player spends $29.99. He will get PoF, the same way (you?) will. Freebies: restrictions on free GW2 core removed; level boost (which you seem to presume has value for him); shared slot; and Revenant unlocked.
He does not get:
- Core Gw2 for free (just the removal of the restrictions)
- The 5 years of access (you?) got to core GW2, including any titles, achievements, drops, legendary weapon(s) produced, and anything else that adds value to a virtual game account.
- LS1 (it’s gone)
- LS 2 (he would have to pay an additional, not inconsequential fee to get this)
- Any of HoT except Revenant base profession. Were I to have to tell you how little a percentage of HoT Revenant base profession is, you would have no business talking about numbers.
- The two years access (you?) had to what came with HoT, along with any (see #2 for the add-ons)
- LS 3 (he would have to pay an additional, not inconsequential fee to get this)
Were he to purchase all of the above, he’d be spending a lot more than $29.99, and he cannot purchase retroactive access.
And now the good news. (You?) too can partake of the “enormous” deal that the new player gets with PoF while the Veteran gets so “little.” All (you?) have to do is buy PoF and link it to a new account. Not interested? Why not, if the value of having (your?) account all this time is not part of the equation?
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For those uncertain of what the ANet raid team actually said about tiered raids.
“This comes up a lot so I’m going to jump in quickly since it’s a new post.
Tier systems for Raids come up a lot as a result of what Fractals did. I worked on the original Fractals team and a tiered system with increased difficulty scaling was always part of the original plan for that team. It was never a plan for Raids. They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.
Accessibility in terms of difficulty is something we talk a lot about internally. We’ve made efforts to help players get in by delivering entry level encounters that ease you into the content (STK) and you’ll see more of that in the next release. You’ll still see encounters that live up to previous raid expectations for mid tier and final bosses. And if you think Matthias is a chump then we have something for you as well.
Accessibility in terms of “Hey, my 5 man Fractal group wants to try raids, but we can’t find 5 other players!” is also something we talk about. It’s just a much more difficult problem to solve."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dldnt/crystal_reid_about_raid_accesibility_and_tiers/
So, there’s no definitive, “Will remain as is,” but there is a “Should remain as is.” Tiered raids beyond the variable difficulty inherent in easier vs. harder encounters would require a base philosophy shift. Also. at the moment ANet has created a solution for accessibility due to difficulty, it’s just that some posters don’t like it.
@ Djinn
The best solution to the level-ding reward gap can be achieved (and ought to be) by creating a repeatable level ding XP track that can be selected instead of a Mastery track. That solution would mean that anyone who wanted to could choose that option regardless of their interest in raids, or whether they care to max any given Mastery line they find more tedious than useful.
916 is not a random number. Base precision at 80 is 1000. 1000 – 916 = 84. 84/21 = 4. 4% was the base critical chance at 80 from launch. The discrepancy reported on the Wiki indicates that base critical chance seems to actually be 5% (1000-895)/21 = 5
If you look at some of the different formulae shown in the the older pages on Precision in the Precision History tab, you’ll see that the formula has been moving toward simpler over time, perhaps with the intent of making it easier for different players to predict the effect of added precision to their builds, while also keeping Precision as a base stat rather than treating it like Ferocity and preserving the 4% (or 5%) base chance.
Some of the features offered with PoF are the Elite Specs. Selling a product with profession features when one would have to buy a different product to get access to that feature for one of nine professions just seems like bad business. I’m glad ANet did not go that route.
On the other hand I’m not surprised that someone found a reason to kitten and moan about Veterans being hard done by. To be fair, though, the OP did make an effort to disguise the kittening and moaning. It was not a big enough effort, but what are you going to do?
The same forces drive those who establish requirements and those seeking to get into random groups at will. The primary force is limited play time. Another force is desire for success.
The problem is that the players who know the content inside out know that accepting the inexperienced means the group is more likely to fail, which would mean an unsuccessful run and thus a waste of cherished play time. Meanwhile the inexperienced player knows that if he tries to set up his own group with other inexperienced players they’re going to face the same learning curve that the experienced had to go through to get to be experienced. That is also likely to lead to failure. The difference, though, is that it would not lead to a waste of play time unless the inexperienced player does not learn from failure the way the experienced players had to.
That leads to the third driving force: impatience. The inexperienced are impatient to get on with it, they want to get in groups fast, not after an hour or more of waiting for other inexperienced players to join them. The experienced are also impatient, and thus less tolerant of the inexperienced who could waste their time.
The issue with LFG’s and exclusion is solvable only by random grouping, with some form of disincentive for kicking people after the group has formed. That approach would be developer regulation of LFG’s. What we have now is player regulation of LFG’s. Give players freedom to tailor their group experience, they’ll use it. Deny them that freedom, and you’d likely see more experienced players leave the LFG in favor of guild or friend’s list groups. The extreme outcome would result in mostly inexperienced players in the random assignment LFG. Then we’d see the “Content too hard.” posts.
Because in GW2 raids are not the end goal that every one will need to pursue.
Edit:And generally more resources to actually implement it due to a subscription model.
Neither are they the only end goal in other MMOs. For example, back in the day Blizzard revealed that fewer than 5% of WoW players raided. Then they introduced raids that needed fewer players and the numbers rose. Then they added an accessible, pug-friendly Looking For Raid difficulty and the numbers rose even more.
See they figured out ways of getting more people into raiding, which meant that more people got to see and enjoy the content they’re creating. Which is a good thing for both the players and the company.
An easy mode raid would serve a similar purpose in GW2. It would give people a more accessible intro to raiding and far from being the waste of resources that some people see it as it would instead be a way of ensuring that the work they’ve done in raids would be seen and enjoyed by more people. It would make the raids themselves a better use of resources than they are now.
If you assume that raids in GW2 are done by 5% (I think it’s higher, but whatever), then assigning 5% of the devs on the live team to them seems appropriate. To make an additional mode would require more dev time. I prefer that the devs not on raids work on the stuff they’re working on rather than a story mode raid that would not have sustainability.
As I said above, LFR worked in WoW because of the Blizz approach. They would add a bunch of dungeons, raids, gathering, dailies and quests in with XPac’s while concentrating on dungeons and raids (and festivals) between XPac’s. GW2 offers less with XPacs but more between for non raiders. I don’t want to see the “more between” impacted negatively.
I didn’t say anything about the numbers in GW2 but regardless that’s a bit of a false dilemma.
The raid team should be the ones to add that easy mode, and that easy mode should simply be lower boss health and damage and longer or more forgiving timers. If they put this simpler/easier mode in then it would attract more people to raiding which would increase the percentage of players who raid and therefore the work your hypothetical 5% of devs does would be enjoyed by more players giving a better return on the resources spent on raids.
Either way, scheduling and resourcing is a matter for ArenaNet.
And ANet has said that tiered raids are not going to be a thing.
It was my impression going back to HoT that a large majority of posters wanted to play the new content with the new Elites, not with their old build.
Generally speaking, if you are expressing an opinion, it IS a biased view, biased in how you feel about it. Since other people can have a YMMV moment, therefore, you really should take the BIASed part of your thread title out of the title; my opinion would be just as biased because, like you, it’s my opinion.
Perhaps a better word would be even-handed, since the OP listed pros and cons, which for these forums passes for unbiased, even if by strict definition it isn’t.
Because in GW2 raids are not the end goal that every one will need to pursue.
Edit:And generally more resources to actually implement it due to a subscription model.
Neither are they the only end goal in other MMOs. For example, back in the day Blizzard revealed that fewer than 5% of WoW players raided. Then they introduced raids that needed fewer players and the numbers rose. Then they added an accessible, pug-friendly Looking For Raid difficulty and the numbers rose even more.
See they figured out ways of getting more people into raiding, which meant that more people got to see and enjoy the content they’re creating. Which is a good thing for both the players and the company.
An easy mode raid would serve a similar purpose in GW2. It would give people a more accessible intro to raiding and far from being the waste of resources that some people see it as it would instead be a way of ensuring that the work they’ve done in raids would be seen and enjoyed by more people. It would make the raids themselves a better use of resources than they are now.
If you assume that raids in GW2 are done by 5% (I think it’s higher, but whatever), then assigning 5% of the devs on the live team to them seems appropriate. To make an additional mode would require more dev time. I prefer that the devs not on raids work on the stuff they’re working on rather than a story mode raid that would not have sustainability.
As I said above, LFR worked in WoW because of the Blizz approach. They would add a bunch of dungeons, raids, gathering, dailies and quests in with XPac’s while concentrating on dungeons and raids (and festivals) between XPac’s. GW2 offers less with XPacs but more between for non raiders. I don’t want to see the “more between” impacted negatively.
This genre is called mmoRPG. Seems like some people at Anet don’t really focus very much on the RPG part.
If it seems that ANet focuses less on lore than you might like, it’s because a lot of players care more about the pursuit of the shiny virtual gewgaw than lore. And by “a lot,” I mean most of them. If that view makes me cynical, then so be it.
By comparison, however, I know more about the lore of GW2 just by playing the parts of the game accessible to me than I did in WoW, where I actually participated in everything. This is so (for me) even though I have been stalled in both HoT and LS3 stories due to relentless and pernicious DCing before missions can complete.
MMO’s survive by using reward systems to foster content repetition. ANet has been adamant about keeping the raid rewards exclusive. So, what rewards would be put into story mode to foster the type of repetition we see in normal raids? Without such rewards, a story mode would be a waste of resources by a company that has in the past struggled to put out content on a regular enough basis to retain all of its player base.
WoW LFR works because of welfare epics. Also, that game is heavily dependent on raids as the be-all and end-all of their endgame. Raids in GW2 are a tiny part of the endgame pursuits available.
Some time ago an Anet raid dev commented in the dungeon subforum that they were looking at ways to make the lore bits (and I do mean bits) in raids available to non-raiders. For those of you who want access to that lore, why not wait and see what they come up with?
That could definitely be the case! In all honesty, I’m sure the content was working as intended, but from my perspective it was a bit much. That’s why I say this is my opinion. Honestly, I doubt the devs are going to give my opinion any weight in that department considering your points. Still, I think even if just 1 map IN the expansion eased all players in then increased in difficulty even in that zone map alone would be a good idea. Verdant Brink was just chaos from start to finish. Auric Basin was FAR easier than Verdant Brink. Shoot, I’d argue all the maps were easier than Verdant Brink. In either case, I don’t think you’re wrong and neither do I think I’m wrong. I think these are two valid opinions for different perspectives of the game.
Not to invalidate anything you’ve said, but if you had played through the game all along, you would have seen a progression in difficulty from core GW2 through the second season of Living Story, including Dry Top and the Silverwastes. HoT was not really much harder than those zones, although some of the mobs had different mechanics that had to be gotten used to.
All of that does nothing for someone like you who came back and jumped into HoT without going through the ramp-up to HoT, but that ramp-up is there. You even had to go through Silverwastes to get to Verdant Brink at the start of the story.
Anyway, I’m glad the community was helpful to you and made the experience more palatable. I hope you enjoy PoF.
ANet wants you to buy the XPac(s) and thus access to the Elite specs. How likely does that make the request?
1) The rewards – the ones that consist of Skermish chests and claim tickets – how do I get those? Do I have to fill up the Pip bar?
There are 7 skirmish reward tracks. For each track, you need to fill 4 or more pip lines.
See the WvW interface, second tab, for the pip line you are working on at that moment. Once you fill all the pip lines in a track, you move to the next track. Once you finish the seventh track you can repeat it, but will not get skirmish tickets for doing so.2) If not, how? Are Pips tallied up every X minutes? Is there a clock for that somewhere?
There is a timer at the top of your UI while you are in WvW. It counts down from 4 minutes 40 seconds (or thereabouts). Once it hits zero, there is a short delay where the timer just shows – - – then the timer resets to 4:40 or so and if you are Tier 3 or higher in participation, you gain pips. You build participation by doing stuff in WvW. Killing players, guards, Dolyaks, and completing events (e.g. capturing stuff mostly) add to your participation. To see your current participation, click the circle on the upper right of the minimap. If it says shows you as Tier 3 or higher you gain pips when the timer resets.
3) Is there anything else I should know, which I clearly don’t?
Participation tier decays if you stop doing things. There are two different timers on the participation bar. When the one that’s there while the bar is gold (yellow, amber?) counts down to zero, your participation starts to decay. The decay timer (there when the bar is red) shows the amount of time left before your participation is gone. Whatever color the bar is, doing anything (kills, captures, events, see above) in WvW will reset the bar from red to yellow and adds time based on what you did. If the bar is yellow, then doing something may not add time. If what you did would add 2 minutes, but you are on 7 minutes, you keep the 7, the timer does not go to 9.
I play in WvW regularly and have earned 6 claim tickets since this new system rolled out. I can only figure that I must be leaving before I earn the rewards, and that I just keep missing them.
Thanks for your help.
If you are playing but not getting pips, then do the following:
- Be aware of your participation level. Do stuff until you get to level 3.
- Once participation is up, keep doing stuff for as long as you want to play WvW. If you keep participation at 3 or higher (it goes to 6) pips will take care of themselves, and you will get a pop up bouncy chest just above the mini-map each time a pip line maxes out.
- When you want to quit, you can continue to gain pips for 2 or more timer cycles if you remain in WvW. I usually do inventory management at the spawn point, to take advantage of the time left on the participation timer.
If you are doing stuff in Edge of the Mists, these things don’t add participation, nor can you gain pips there. Finally, the skirmish track resets once a week at the weekly WvW reset, so a partial line (unfinished) will be lost.
What do you mean?
People pre-ordered, based on the announced launch date. Putting that off by four months would result in a lot of angry gamers. I don’t know the refund policy but I imagine a lot of people would request one.
Also, that would leave us with nothing new to do. A four month content drought would also be dreadful at this stage.
Perhaps just two months then? That should be plenty of time to address all of the forum complaints/feedback about the elite specs.
I don’ know, people are still unhappy about the Elite Specs from HoT…
What I’m getting now: ~75% of the trash drops I would get are now stackable, and can be readily salvaged from that stack.
That’s anecdotal evidence and not necessarily accurate due to small sample sizes. My anecdotal PoF demo experience was different, with maybe 90% of the trash drops still appearing as trash drops. Also, there were multiple different containers with one bit of something or other in them. Likely, neither experience is indicative of what will really happen.
Even if your guesstimate is close, creating convenience for one segment of the player base at the expense and inconvenience of another is not the way to go. ANet would be catering to the concerns of those who think loot stinks by thumbing their collective noses at those who don’t. A far better experience could be had by all players if ANet were to:
- Condense loot bags into one type per rarity per zone (as you said)
- Do away with blue lot bags
- Make green loot bags salvageable; or allow them to be opened normally with normal chances for loot
That way everyone wins. The current way, more gambling is added to players’ detriment and loot management for those who want to open bags is worse than it was. The system stinks.
I’m no expert, and I’m likely missing some factors here. In the big picture, I’m not sure what adding this feature brings to the game.
Potential Positives:
- There is a possibility that players will experience some bag space saving. It seemed that way to some posters, but we don’t really know, due to small sample sizes.
- There is a possibility that those who choose to ID will come out ahead on rares and exotics.
- It seems likely, even with small sample sizes, that salvaging players will get more mats by salvaging before ID than they would by salvaging a random green item.
Potential Negatives:
- As you say, material proliferation may result in market downturns, which could make increased material drops a wash for salvaging players and a hit to anyone else’s gold gain. The flip side of this possibility is that mat prices would be sustained through higher supply by generating increased demand, in the form of more material sinks. That would be a plus for salvaging players.
- If IDing generates more rares/exotics, then we could also see either a downturn in mat prices for things like ectos, or the actual rares/exotics themselves. Alternatively we could see another ecto sink. This could benefit IDers, and either cause no impact or hurt people getting rares by existing means.
- If the system is implemented only in PoF, increased material gains via salvaging will make PoF farming superior to farming older zones. “By how much” is the question whose answer will determine the impact on the sustainability of older zones. This is nothing new. Farming SW, HoT and LS3 mats is already a lot more lucrative than farming in core.
Certain Negatives:
- Choosing to ID is going to make loot management more tedious. If you have any interest in seeing what loot you get, there is added inconvenience and cost. Only those who disdain their loot (i.e., it’s only salvage bait) exchange added inconvenience for convenience.
If it’s the only way to get certain items, it will upset some people. If it replaces some portion of the previous drop system, it will upset some people. If the intent is to disrupt markets and currencies, it will upset some people. When the dust settles, the game state may be pretty good, possibly better, but what pains will be encountered to accomplish that (both acute and chronic)… we’ll have to wait for PoF and find out.
It seems certain that this feature is going to upset some people. It already has.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
If I’ve had trouble connecting, it’s likely my own kitten fault. My desire to play any game as long as a lot of people play MMO’s has withered. I want to log in when I feel like it, play only as long as I want, and rarely feel chatty. All of that is antithetical to being a member of a community. Belonging is a social experience, and can only usually be had with effort on the part of the person looking to connect.
I don’t know if any of that resonates with your situation, but it is mine, and it’s all I’ve got without knowing more about how you play.
Premise: Map content gets old fast. Yes, it can. This is a common issue with MMO’s, which rely on people p(l)aying on an ongoing basis, when the developers are unable to generate new content as fast as old content loses its luster. Brain chemistry changes, producing anything from excitement to flow states to euphoria, when one is faced with something new and challenging. This type of experience only lasts as long as the content feels new and/or challenges the player. This can mean that interest will start to fall off after one play-through.
Map Meta Events: There is one and only one major difference between the Silverwastes meta and those in the four HoT zones. The HoT zones’ metas are available on timers, where the only timers in SW are on the boss fights and the period between cycles. Otherwise, the HoT metas seem as well or better designed than SW. LS3 maps seem like a reaction to complaints about map-wide meta events in HoT. Some people didn’t like taxis, didn’t like being on maps that felt empty and especially did not like the event cycle timers. If you’re asking why LS3 maps aren’t like SW, that’s probably why.
Rewards: Yes, rewards are what MMO developers use to extend the life of content past the point where the content no longer feels new. There are rewards in the HoT and LS3 zones. I’m still working on most of them. The problem with the inability of those rewards to sustain interest is rooted in desire for rapid gratification. ANet made them as hard to get as they dared, given the myriad complaints about “grind.” As to taking skins out of the store and putting them in as additional rewards… where do you think ANet gets the money to pay the company’s operating expenses, including dev salaries? What do you propose ANet sell instead? Hint: bringing more people to the game is not going to cut it if the only things for them to buy are bag slots and other such items.
Conclusion: I find it doubtful that the complainers would stop complaining if there were more rewards. Complaining is a constant in human history, and never stops.
The entire point of raids is that they are intended to be hardcore content. A big reason why the raid team is so efficiency and producing them with high quality is that they only have to design for those interested in that challenge.
If I’m not ready for that, there’s the entire rest of the game for me to play.
So no, raids don’t need difficulty modes; there are players who want them, which is not the same thing.
If we took that logic and said “PoF is going to be a hardcore expansion, intended for the best of the best. If the casuals don’t like it don’t worry there’s tons of other content already in game for them to play!”
Now your expansion fails, people start leaving save the ~5% of “the elite”, profits go down and there’s less resources for you to support new content.
Alarmist? Maybe, but that’s where that train of thought leads. Should someone buy PoF knowing that the raids will be catered to only hardcore players, or will they go to a different MMO where they might be able to raid without as much frustration?
Regardless of whatever opinion you might have, it’s good design and good business to make your content appealing to all members of your player base.
With your suggested business model, all content would need difficulty modes, not just raids. WvW would need to be revamped. Raids would need tiers. Open world PvE would need difficulty tiers.
Regardless of what you might believe, it’s not good business for a developer to bite off more than it can chew. Nor is it good business for a developer to decide that while all players are equal, some players (in the model you propose, those who favor easier tiers) are more equal than others. The above is why developers generally try to put enough of something into their games to interest diverse groups.
How does WoW get away with it? Well, raiding is the endgame in WoW. They only introduce new open world PvE or new PvP maps with expansions. ANet cannot do that, or they lose a lot of market share as seen during 2016’s content drought.
So why doesn’t ANet emulate Blizzard and make their endgame totally about raids? There are a lot of players who came to GW2 because they didn’t want to raid. Removing Living Story updates in favor of tiered raids could (probably would) cost ANet their patronage. I believe that group is a lot larger than the group that wants to raid but feels barred from the mode because they don’t want to be a leader.
Were ANet to sell Mastery Points for gems, we would doubtless see complaints about “Pay to Win.” They’d be incorrect, as they usually are. However, such a move would be perilously close to the line. If ANet bowed to this desire, pressure would increase to allow gems to be used for Elite Specs. Given the near-consensus that Elite Specs are core powerful than the alternatives, that line would be crossed. Concessions to player desires to pay for access to game mechanics can put us on a slippery slope. Let’s not take that step.
It is certainly possible for a developer to implement a blind match for LFG. Rift did it for dungeons. The only criteria was whether the player’s gear score met criteria that the devs put into the workings of their LFG system. Rift also selected for tank, healer and DPS roles.
ANet’s way allows players to customize their playing experience as the mad doctor says. Also, GW2 lends itself less to criteria like gear score than a more static game like Rift. I suppose ANet could use full exotic stats as a filter, but that would not allow players to select for desirable builds like the more open system does.
The ANet LFG system places more responsibility for their own experience into the hands of players looking to join groups. They might need to do something other than attempt to join a group that happens to be forming when they want to play. That some players cannot always just log in, LFG and join may be inconvenient and frustrating. However, the assumption seems to be that that is exactly what players should be able to do.
Placing the shoe on the other foot, other players would no doubt find it frustrating to be unable to customize their own experience by selecting who they want to play with.
No system is without flaws. The question is whether ANet could come up with a way for players to group which would both accommodate those who feel entitled to get into groups on demand and those who want to be selective about who they play with.
So far, MMO developers have not really figured out how to design PvE things to do that are radically different than the basic quest types:
- Kill this creature
- Protect these NPC’s/this place
- Escort X to Y
- Collect items X
- Take item X to NPC Y
Meta events allowed ANet to put some variations on these basics, like:
- Split your forces so that you can collect, kill and escort at the same time as part of a grand design.
- Use mechanic X during Phase Y
Notice, though, that the basics are still there. Even the use of mechanics is simply an add-on to what is usually a kill quest.
The only way to get a Gift of Battle (required for Legendary crafting) is via a WvW reward track.
Please change this, preferably by adding an additional method that can be done by playing exclusively PvE content; be that fractals, open world, dailies, achievements, crafting, dungeons, world bosses – whatever works.
Why would this be a good thing for the game? Why do you think ANet changed the requirements for the GoB more than once, each time making it less convenient for those who are strictly PvE?
The requirements have always been either Badges or the Reward Track. Adding badges to the achievement chests made it more convenient for PvE only players, not less.
The only thing I find unfair about the story missions is client instability causing DC’s after you’ve done the fighting but before the long-winded NPC’s finish emoting.