A whole ticket? Pffft. A BLC key would be much more reasonable, imo.
I think you’re looking back with rose-tinted glasses. Everything is better when it’s fresh and exciting. Especially exploration, which is only fun the first few times around.
Excellent post, Diogo.
Unfortunately, most of the features I’ve mentioned are as they are either because of the business model (which is fine, I guess), or the trading post, the later which forces Anet’s designers to add huge money sinks behind every little thing in order to keep its precious economy in check, but at the expense of a fun and rewarding gameplay experience.
There’s no doubt that building the game around it’s economic system, rather than the other way around has been a thorn in most players’ sides since day one, but most of the features you mentioned are absent because Anet is simply unable implement them. Some of the most frequently requested ones are either too costly (hence the lack of armour sets) or too much work (build templates and an option for race changing, for example).
This is the problem. How will people ever learn they’re doing it wrong if they can simply group up, AFK it and win with the achievements.
The actions you need to perform are specific to this encounter, and after you complete the achievements there is no reason to ever play it again.
Ehhh. It could be a lot worse. At least here your monthly progress remains paused where you leave off. In Smite the login rewards are weekly, but completely reset when you miss a day.
What an odd choice of a topic to resurrect.
For what it’s worth, finding a group of people and replaying this instance a solid 5 or 6 times in order for everyone to get all of the achievements was enjoyable though. One of my better GW2 memories.
Mid 2014 was this game’s peak for me, no lie. Here’s what I loved about the game back then:
1) FREEDOM – Max level your characters when and how you want. Hearts and exploring, Crafting, Dungeon swapping. Just about everything gave exp.
2) Frequent Armour skin updates – I really, really, really looked forward to the quarterly addition of armour skins. Spent loads of time farming various content for transmutation crystals (remember them?) and gold to convert to gems and buy a new set. Then a bunch more time trying to piece together the perfect mix-and-match look.
3) Dungeons. I never cared about challenge at all, and was happy to just hop into instanced with random strangers with a reasonable expectation of beating it in 20 minutes or less. Met some truly awesome people and spent hours every day I logged in doing the daily dungeon tour. I think of all the changes, I miss dungeon running the most. The new direction for instanced PVE is a little too niche and not ‘meaty’ enough for my tastes.
Necro is a pretty safe, reliable class for T4. With light group and self-healing abilities (Vampiric Aura), decent DPS and good trash clearing abilities (Epidemic). Has good synergy with Condi PS Berserker. It’s also pretty fun to play, imo. Don’t mind the naysayers.
Tempest is also fun, but significantly harder to play. You’ve got to be fairly skilled to get the most out of this class in T4. In a group of randoms you’ll not likely be able to do the kind of amazing DPS that makes the Tempest’s glassiness worthwhile, and would be more likely to end up downed on the floor half the time.
Oh, cranos. Dude. No. You’ve taken my post entirely out of context. Rest assured that I’m not anti-raid at all.
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.
I can understand why people tend to be closed-minded and dismissive in topics like this – “I’m gettin’ what I want so kitten everyone else.” But I think the lack of options is bad for the game overall. Blaeys provided a detailed and insightful explanation, far better than I could, on page one. Maybe take a look back there if you haven’t already.
Re:cranos
Solo and low-man groups. Arah. Level 50 fractals. Not raid level difficulty, but definitely a challenge.
Even the true elite, who felt like everything was too easy, had options available to make the content engaging and interesting. People ran solo or with a friend. Maybe in white gear or blues. Sometimes naked. Less than ideal but… options none the less.
The difference is that when content is too hard for you to beat, you’re out of options. There’s no p2w type boosts that will allow you to coast through. You literally cannot play it.
This is why I feel like we lack balance now.
Re:Vinceman
That’s why I emphasized the relevance of instanced content. There’s loads of things to do in this game, but only a small number offer any real incentives to replay them. I think they made a huge mistake not adding anything of significance to either dungeon vendors, or as drops in specific paths.
I don’t know about organizing being worthwhile. The population is in serious decline, and it has been clear for quite sometime now that the devs can barely afford to do just enough to keep us around. Critical features that people have been requesting for literally years, and would benefit the entire population (e.g. build saving) are yet to be implemented. Asking for niche content seems futile.
At this point I pop in game for an hour or two each week, and am satisfied to read and participate in the occasional discussion.
I still wonder why it’s not OK for there to exist content that you say, “this isn’t for me so I’ll just not do it.” I don’t understand why raids are this weird game mode where certain players feel entitled to a certain accessibility.
99% of these QQ threads eventually boil down to “I want leggy armor”.
Naw, I’m certain there’s a lot more to it than that.
Anet ‘flipped the script’ on instanced PvE when the expansion was launched. The ratio of easy/moderate: hard difficulty instanced content used to be a lot more balanced. imo. The average player could spend their entire play session between the pug-friendly dungeons and low to mid level fractals and come away rewarded. Those who needed a greater challenge could solo dungeons, run Arah or do high level fractals. Everyone had their niche.
Post-HoT, we’re currently in a place where a large majority (9 raid bosses vs 2 ‘new’ fractals) of the relevant instanced content is hardcore difficulty. Very little has been added for casual and moderate players. People who used to be able to hop into pugs, bang through some content with minimal hassle and go on about their business have much less to do. And it’s especially disappointing because for all their flaws, lots of us kittening love dungeons and wanted more of ’em, or at least some added incentives to continue running the old ones. I think this is a reasonable expectation.
HoT brought about a very fundamental change to the way we play the game, and this is not so much about legendary armour or entitlement as it is ‘Hey, why isn’t there more stuff for us too?’
As I said before, the guaranteed rewards were perfectly fine for the previous level of T4 difficulty. The RNG based goodies from the daily chests had mostly acceptable drop rates as well.
In their current state, particularly in the most recent fractals, I think at very least the RNG drop rates should have been increased to match the added difficulty.
Again, this is the kind of issue where ‘your mileage may vary’. In theory it shouldn’t be hard to complete the dailies, but is often is. Before, success while pugging T4 was basically guaranteed. Nowadays, full party wipes and rage quitters are significantly more frequent.
The rewards was to good before for the time spent, now they are more in line.
Y’know, I think a lot of you players set the bar too low for yourselves. Nothing is “too good” for me. I didn’t spend my money on a game, expecting to find out that a solid three quarters of its content would be so mediocre and unrewarding that it’s not worth playing through more than once.
One should always feel accomplished and well rewarded at the end of a play session, particularly at the endgame.
I measured the time for today’s T4 dailies. 4 unknown people (pugs) + me:
1. Nightmare – 14 minutes
2. Volcanic – 9 minutes
3. Snowblind – 8.5 minutes5 minute difference is negligible because Nightmare is Lvl 100 and the most “difficult” one (not rly difficult imho).
If you really think that’s long then I won’t recommend running any other dungeon path because I doubt that you are faster there with actual pugs besides CoF 1 or AC. And don’t forget dungeons are easier!
(Of course organized fractal groups are a lot faster.)
I get what you, and some others, are trying to say.
However, your experience does not match ours. Maybe we’re mediocre players or just unlucky. Who knows?
I suppose those of you with above average ability and a generally positive approach barely noticed the changes at all, but the bottom line is that we generally have to do more now to complete the fractal dailies (and this is a fact – whether it is a question of skill, effort or time is negligible) for the same rewards, and this detracts from the fractal experience for some of us.
I was doing daily T4 fractals for 2-3 months and I kept getting streaks where my loot for the day would be 7 gold and a couple fractal potions. I have since stopped because the length of time to complete many fractals doesn’t make it a good investment in time.
If I see molten boss, volcanic, snowblind, or aquatic ruins I’ll do it, but then ones like cliffside, mai trin, and nightmare are such a time investment I can’t be bothered.
Yeah, definitely agree. The loot was quite good before the changes, when a lot of this community considered them to be ‘faceroll’ content. Now that many T4 fractals basically require twice the effort and/or time, the rewards hardly seem worthwhile.
It’s especially discouraging when your daily chest gives you a single ectoplasm or single stack potion. Increased challenge should always be followed by a proportional reward buff.
1) Initiate’s Pack. This is by far my most-used back item. It’s simple, sleek and easy on the eyes. Blends well with all armour classes, but especially medium.
2)Practical Scribe’s Backpack. I like this one for my light classes. It reminds me of a proper Wizard’s pack with scrolls and such for spell craft.
3) Mawdrey looks amazing as well. Perfect for Sylvari, Mesmers and just about any character in organic, woodsy looking gear.
I started (and subsequently quit) raiding late and completely solo, at a point where people were already running in 50 and 100 LI req groups. But here’s what worked for me.
1) Read the guides and watch at least couple videos. Most of it probably won’t stick but you will have a general idea of what to expect. Focus on wing 1, escort and trio. This is where most training and newbie groups start.
2)You’ll want to gear up at least two classes that fit into the meta. Choose classes that you can play reasonably well and enjoy playing. This can’t be emphasized enough. If you choose based on popularity alone but hate playing ’em you might have a bad time. Some people can be pretty finicky about team comps, so the more options you have the better. One DPS and one condi is a good place to start. Full ascended gear is ideal, but exotic armour with ascended weapons, trinkets and back item is perfectly viable as well.
Stick to the meta. It’ll cost you, but if you’re ever in a position where you have to ping your gear this can a long way in convincing people that you’re not a complete muppet (half of your success getting into raiding will be convincing strangers to take a chance with you).
Buy appropriate food and utility too. It’s fine to save the pricey stuff for when you expect a kill, and use the 2nd best up until then. You may also want to ‘look’ the part. Don’t be running around lookin’ like you only just hit 80, put your best skins and title on. Impressions count.
3) Find some all-welcome, first timer and no LI groups on the LFG to get your feet wet with. Make your own if none are available and prepare to wait. Be sure you have access to at least TS3 and Discord, and a chat channel with ‘Say’, ‘Whispers’, ‘Party’ and ‘Squad’ enabled. You probably don’t need to actually voice chat unless you really want to, but listening is essential.
Have a go at it, wipe over and over but most importantly learn a little. Don’t sweat it too much, you’ll probably never see any of these people ever again anyway. You may not even get past the first phase for any bosses (with luck you’ll score a couple of kills though) but you will have a much better idea of how your class(es) play and what to do.
4) Serious business time. Get into an organized group. You absolutely will want to find a raiding/raid training guild, or at least a guild with some experienced raiders that does weekly runs. The entire point of the first three steps is that by the time you’re ready to commit, you’re in a position where the experienced raiders will feel like you’d make a worthwhile contribution and not just be another scrub looking to be carried.
Good luck.
At this point, we’re chock full of ‘difficult’ kitten to do. If the devs ever have a go at dungeons again they need to be chill. Like ‘grab anyone and go’ type difficulty. Adujsted to the new elite specs, for sure, but way more chill than everything else.
There’s a difference. A ‘small amount of gold’ is subject to interpretation, but we can infer that it would be significantly less than the current gold→ gem exchange rate.
Also, a flat gold sink of 1 or 2g per charge would be static, while the exchange rate fluctuates periodically (and generally rises over time).
I’m wondering if a lot of the flak is coming from people who got used to running T4’s because they were easy money, and realizing that the game no longer considers this content for them, I can understand being upset with that. They just have to realize that just because t4’s are not for them any longer, that there is still other things that are designed around their skill level or the level of effort that they want to invest. You can be the most skilled player in the world, but if you don’t want to invest effort, it doesn’t mean jack.
It’s exactly this. After the dungeon reward nerf a lot of people expected fractals to replace them as their daily go-to instanced PVE. Low to moderate effort for moderate to high rewards.
Sadly, putting the same effort in for fewer rewards just isn’t going to cut it for most of us. I’d stop playing entirely before I settled for T3 fractals.
Personally, I disagree that there is any inherent value in personal skill or the amount of effort required to beat video game content, but that’s another matter altogether.
It really is an inadequate system, considering the emphasis this game places on cosmetics. You have to put way too much thought into planning and designing your characters’ looks, instead of just throwing things together then sticking with the one you like for a while.
I get that the company needs to make money, but the transmutation system doesn’t really accommodate those of us who have multiple alts, and loads of skins we’d like to use.
My main gripes are these:
(a) Gemstore and BLTC skins should remain free-to-apply once unlocked. Why’s it only the Hall of Monuments and AP stuff that gets this treatment?
(b) Every skin I transmute onto a weapon or piece or armour should remain unlocked for that item, particularly Ascended gear. I can live with losing the skins if I ‘reset’ the item by changing stats.
It’s definitely swampland for me as well, and this is entirely due to the drastic changes. Objectively, it’s well designed for the most part (I dislike the invulnerability phases that feel like a time-sink), but I cannot enjoy it knowing that it has replaced what used to be my favourite fractal.
In general though, I also dislike the ’let’s throw a bunch of kitten at everyone all at once!’ type of difficulty that characterizes the new fractals.
I’m definitely tired of all the long coats and butt capes, but Braham’s new outfit is one trench coat that kicks kitten. This one was really well designed. It’s rugged yet a bit stylish and fits most races’ forms well. Even satisfies the demand for revealing male armour while maintaining a masculine look. I dig it.
This one was really well tuned at 75, just the right amount of challenge. The atmosphere was amazing as well. Actually looking forward to trying 100.
What are they planning to do with the game anymore? To be a game that proclaims to be “varied”, I don’t see that so called build variation, and for it to be “casual”… well, you’re making permanent content for the hardcores but content that goes away (LS) for the casuals…
THIS.
There’s much, much less replay value in LS episodes and the ‘maplets’ that they’re releasing.
Dungeons, fractals and raids are the only PVE content with real, lasting appeal.
@Vinceman
The thing is, content shouldn’t force players out of their comfort zone. This is entertainment. Yes, one must put some effort in and make minor sacrifices, but it should be enjoyable above all else.
This is most people issue with raiding – there’s some decidedly un-fun factors that are inherent to their design.
Posters from raiding community always offers insights, tips and suggestions, mostly with good intentions, but these are usually unlikely to (a) yield success and (b) be enjoyable for non-raiders.
This is because raids are intentionally exclusionary. The devs knew that most people simple would not get into raiding, and this is in many ways exactly what many raiders want.
And that bit about making jokes and wiping together? In my experience this is far more common in dungeon and fractal runs than raiding. People tend to be more sullen during raid runs, in my experience. Even guild groups. Raids are serious business after all.
(edited by Jahroots.6791)
The Living World ala, Main Story of GW2 does not hinge on the Raid. You are welcome to believe it does, that does not make it a true statement.
You are not losing any lore relevant to the Living Story in raids. That’s the hard truth.
That’s false. There’s quite a few odds and ends you can interact with in wing 3 that do give some minor lore and insights into the White Mantle. In truth, most people would consider these inconsequential, but you can’t say that a player isn’t missing out on anything relevant to LS3.
Just because these share themes with previous content does not mean that they are not new. We don’t know what they’re doing with the new fractal, so it’s a bit presumptuous to assume a copy & paste. You’re also assuming that this fractal was ready when the Chaos ready months ago. I don’t know why you brought up Glint’s Lair as that was past of LS2.
Yeah, it won’t be a copy and paste but it might seem a bit…. stale to a veteran player. It’ll probably be good fun regardless, and I’ve got my fingers crossed that pristine toxic spores drop frequently enough to lower the prices of those toxic utility consumables a bit.
I mentioned Glint’s lair because it was a story episode that felt like it would make a good fractal, and I see no reason to stick to one season when re-purposing story content into fractals.
4 months between fractal island releases doesn’t seem too bad to me considering there is also work being done updating other fractals. I think it only seems slow because the insanely long stretch of no content makes it feel like we are “owed” a lot now. But if we can consistently get 3 islands a year + updates to existing fractals, along with other pve releases like LS, raids, and current events, all while building towards the next expansion, I would say that is a pretty solid content output.
It seems slow because they’ve released entire raid wings at once, and fractal islands don’t make for good individual releases. Now, I can appreciate the constraints they are working with and have absolutely no knowledge of the industry at all, but individual fractals tend to be pretty short, thus they work better in bundles.
Sad. Again refurbished and rewarmed stuff.
Fractals based on LS1 events have been requested by players. If you don’t like it then you don’t have to play it.
Re-purposed content is great, but this is the kind of thing we should have gotten bundled together (Chaos, Tower of Nightmares, Glint’s Lair etc) months ago, and have some brand new fractals to look forward to.
I’m happy to have another fractal added but 4 months between islands is just too much, man.
The path wasn’t really hard, the average player was just way less skilled back then.
With the power creep that we have now a semi-competent group would melt that boss in seconds.
Do you have evidence that most people want to raid? Because I personally don’t believe that’s true.
There was a good bit of evidence to show that loads of players attempted the raids around HoT launch. Saw some posts here and on reddit with the figures to back this up, I’d add a link or two if I had them at hand but alas they are all months old by now.
Now, I don’t think most people wanted raiding in GW2 at all. Just that people were interested because it was new content. Everyone from the dungeon and fractal community would have moved into raiding were it not for the high barriers to entry.
The loot does improve significantly at higher tiers, and there’s random wackiness from the instabilities that can be comical (Go home Mossman, you’re drunk!), or a nuisance (Poison trail), depending on your personality and the group’s performance. Fractals are cool as long as you still need ascended gear. After that the appeal diminishes significantly, tbh.
Problem is that we should, ideally, have gotten at least 6 new islands by now. They also ought to release them in groups of three, as they do with raids. Fractals are like chicken wings – not meaty enough for one at a time to feel satisfying.
Core Tyria just isn’t designed with much difficulty in mind. The loot’s mostly bad, the events can be goofy and enemies are lame.
I think that effort would be better put towards breathing some life into the post-launch Level 80 maps. It’d be nice for Southsun, Dry Top and Silverwastes to be updated to reflect the current story, or have some new developments of their own.
(1) Change In Philosophy Since HoT Launch
This is my biggest gripe. I was hoping for an expansion that simply added more of the content I enjoyed since starting GW2 – Customizing armour, dungeons and fractals, festivals and seasonal events and so on. Needless to say, I wasn’t too pleased with the way this content was largely abandoned and neglected. While I do understand many of the factors that went into these decisions, it is still an issue for me.
Also, one of the main reasons I stuck with this game so long is that it wasn’t especially demanding, and offered multiple options for progression. Want to run dungeons all day? Sit at a table and craft kitten? Zerg around in WvW? Go ahead, here’s another level! HoT required me to complete a series of very specific (and often tedious) content in order to progress my Masteries. Didn’t enjoy most of it.
Overall, HoT seemed to be designed in such a way that everything worth doing would take really, really long because there was relatively little content added to begin with.
(2) Economy
I’ve hated the prominence of the in-game economy since I started in 2013, tbh. It’s probably a necessary evil, though. What bums me out is not having any clue how kitten is going to progress, because there’s stuff I used to give away or just straight up vendor a year ago that’s worth 1g each now, and things I spent a fortune on that are now effectively worthless.
There’s also way, way, way too much stuff. Loads of junk, currencies, keys, low-value odds and ends that are somehow needed recipes and take up space in my inventory. Entire tiers of items that are functionally worthless. Sifting through rubbish takes up way too much time.
(3) Imbalanced PVE Instances
Specifically dungeons, fractals and raids.
I really wanted to like raids, but I’m probably just too old for this kitten. Like much of HoT, it’s too time consuming. Waiting forever for someone to fill that one role no one can or wants to, waiting for everyone to get into voice chat, failing miserably, finding people willing to show me why I failed miserably and then failing miserably with them for hours before even getting one kill. I mean, the encounters are cool as hell… just far too intense for a moderately skilled player to actually enjoy.
But the real issue is having virtually all of the new instanced content at top tier difficulty. There are lots of ‘casual’ players who don’t want to spend their time zerging around a map, completely lost in a blob. I don’t spend 500g on cosmetic kitten not to bloody look at it, after all. The wonderful thing about most dungeons and fractals is that the challenge was doing them well. Run through ‘em at breakneck speed, or take a slow and steady approach. You were basically guaranteed to beat it eventually. We definitely need more content like this. I don’t care if it’s new dungeons, fractals or an easy-mode option for raids.
Fundamentally yes, different players have vastly different beliefs and expectations, and tend to lack empathy or the capacity for objectivity.
There seems to be a deliberate attempt to silence any criticism of raids though. I find this curious. And for what it’s worth, this forum is pretty dead without the more…. sensational topics.
There’s nothing I enjoyed in this game as much as dungeon running, but fractals are the way forward.
I’d still like a new dungeon or two for old times’ sake though.
Overall, I was happy with the content of HoT, but felt like a few things were missing:-
- Dungeons. I’d like two new four-path dungeons (one normal, one hard) with all the fixin’s (unique armour and weapons, etc)
- Fractals. I would expect fractal development to mirror what we saw with raids during the last year. Launch with 3 islands, add another 6 over the next few quarters. Add a fractal themed armour set as well.
- Armour sets. I’d also want to see another three full sets added somewhere – gem store or in-game, it doesn’t matter. So long as they are not locked behind ridiculous achievements or literal months of grinding.
- Build and gear templates. Instantly switch between trait and skill set ups, as well as armour and weapons.
It’s the instabilities. Most groups avoid the levels with ‘poison trail’, for one thing.
Pre-HoT there hasn’t been any challenging content at all! Arah could and can be soloed and high fractals until lvl 50 were harder than T4 now but no real challenge at all. We have been missing content like raids for years and it’s been asked for by a decent part of the community. Challenging content was reduced to speedclear things and take over someone’s records.
I won’t get pedantic about this, but I use the term ‘challenging’ in a highly subjective way, i.e. relative to other PvE content and average player skill. I can respect your position though.
In addition, the fact you can low-man raid bosses and I myself have been participating in groups where we carried 1-3 inexperienced players with and without speedclear runners is clearly indicating that there is no real challenge at all if you get used to the mechanics after practicing. It also indicates that some people moaning about raids being hard have definitely suspect intentions: the loot behind it.
Y’know, I have an issue with this. Fundamentally, I see no real difference between the vast majority of you hardcore raiders and regular guys like me and Ohoni. We all want the same thing : interesting encounters to beat and sweet, sweet loot to collect afterwards. You guys just seem to want mechanics that take a while to learn and eventually overcome so that it feels like you’ve done something amazing, while the rest of us are happy with things we can pick up on the fly.
Very, very few people actually want legitimate, consistent challenge. Every group I have run with – training guild, experienced guild, and both exp and newbie pugs – all wanted the same thing. Some were obviously more patient than others, but there was a very tacit sense of ’Let’s get this done ASAP’. I see no reason to look down on others who want to reach the same goal you do, but easier.
The crux of this issue is really balance among the challenge level of instanced content.
Pre-HoT it was much friendlier. There was instanced content for all and sundry – Fractals were fairly easy to get into until at least the 20s, and most dungeons were accessible and readily pugged while Arah and a handful of individual paths offered more challenge. People rarely, if ever, asked for nerfs to Arah because it was completely negligible. You could spend hours running the other dungeons every day, never set foot in that place and not feel like you missed out on anything.
Now it’s changed a bit. Dungeons have been neglected to an extent that they’re not even relevant to anyone besides the f2p crowd and newbies, fractals are still roughly half and half while raids are consistently beyond many (most) players’ capacity (there’s two easy-ish encounters but the organizational requirements are still above average, and Bandit Trio is locked behind Sloth).
So we have an entire raid made up of 9 brand new encounters, but a single fractal added for the ‘pick up and play’ crowd. If they’d maintained something closer to the original balance far fewer people would have taken issue with raids.
I’m also not sure what the intention was here. Maybe Anet (1) genuinely believes the player base can and should ‘git gud’, (2) thinks old instanced content and the open world is enough to satisfy less skilled and casual types or (3) messed up somewhere along the line and is struggling to produce content.
Looking at the game as a whole, I’m leaning towards (3) as the most likely.
(edited by Jahroots.6791)
Now i’m gonna teach people who keep saying Raids are inaccessible a lesson real quick here.
You see that LFG tool. Use it.
Here’s what you do
1) Create your own group
2) Label it one of the following things, Inexperienced / Fun / Teaching / Learning run
3) Set you own req for comp & let people know what if any voice tools your using.You are now the proud starter of a raid group.
If it were this simple, these topics would not exist. Most people lack the basic skills and attitude necessary to succeed this way. Simple human nature. Most of us are followers rather than leaders.
The main problems are:
(1) Synergy – It can be hard to get randoms to communicate and work together even in dungeons, this is amplified in raids.
(2) High turnover – Many people will lose heart and bugger off after a few wipes, and others still will leave while waiting for the remaining spot(s) to be filled
Lets stop using this false equivocation that raids are inaccessible, when the cold reality is people whom claim this don’t want to put in the same effort those before them did in building raid groups & learning.
But raids are less accessible than the rest of the game, and intentionally so. The community doesn’t emphasise this part enough, but unfortunately raiding requires significantly more effort than the average player is willing to dedicate.
Fundamentally most of the design and mechanics are fairly simple, but it’s meant to be the kind of content where you get organised, ‘put work in’ and try over and over and over again until you get it right (with the intention of getting better so that there’s less of the ‘over and over again’ bit). If that doesn’t sound appealing then raids probably just aren’t meant for you. It sucks, but I’d not hold my breath for any changes.
(edited by Jahroots.6791)
It could work if we were only allowed to transmute within a weight class. Put your heavy gear on but set the transmutation ‘protocol’ to medium -BAM! Trenchcoat guardian.
However, not everyone being able to do T4 is basically how the fractal level change was originally announced. This was supposed to be more challenging than the original 50s. It’s not because it was originally horribly poorly implemented that everyone can just demand a a free T4 now imo.
That’s true, but somewhat problematic to me for a couple reasons:
The first is consistency. You make deliberate changes that result in a bit of content being easy for months, players are going to develop reasonable expectations for it to remain that way.
Secondly, this game is arguably in it’s twilight years. Seems odd to me to design so much of the instanced PvE content in a way that will effectively ‘gate’ regular players out at this stage. Especially since it was much more accessible from launch up until HoT.
I’m confused as to what ppl really struggle with though. Is it social awkwardness? Toxic trail? Honestly while the instabilities ask for some extra awareness on your part it’s hardly rocket science to avoid.
The thing I find is that those with ability, especially if they’ve had it for long enough or are naturally skilled, have a hard time empathising with those who do not. We see this time and time again across various real-life scenarios, and of course it is far more noticeable in the gaming community where many of us are arrogant, smug and disingenuous towards others (the ‘gg ez’ and ‘git gud’ crowd, for example)
But in reality, many MMO players aren’t necessarily good. People have asked me to help them through content I personally found incredibly simple. And even with the old instabilities there were certain parts in fractals where lots of groups consistently struggled. The difference now is that instabilities demand your attention, rather than being relatively minor conditions in the background. Players who were just barely getting by under the old system will definitely have a hard time adjusting – some may even come to realise that T4 is now beyond their level of ability.
I don’t care for the new instabilities, they’re messy and annoying. Combat is already a visual clusterkitten by default, and adding a bunch of other stuff into the mix just makes it feel tedious.
Was perfectly happy with fractals up until the update to swamp. Partially because I’m a mediocre gamer and have little to no interest in improving. T4 fractals were pretty accessible and rewarding for long time, and those relaxing laid-back runs were a nice part of my daily routine.
Really not keen on finding new ways to beat old content. I’d probably be much more open to dealing with the flux bombs and poison trails if those mechanics were a part of fresh, new fractals.
Because people passed the stage of complaints. At this point Anet lost.
Vivid Complaint are healthy. Less and less complaint shows that people are fed up and moved away.…or that people are happy now in general and have less to complain about.
Normal people, maybe. Not MMO gamers. Lol. During this game’s peak (which I’d estimate as somewhere between mid 2013 and early 2014) the forum was bustling with activity. People picked every minute detail of every design decision and bit of content apart. These days there’s definitely fewer discussions across the main forums. The happy people are still playing for sure, but the formerly disgruntled ones are just disinterested now.
One way or another you have to buy pretty much everything worth having in this game, I’m used to it. Also, the gold costs that are tacked on along with the content specific currencies are usually negligible (to and end-gamer)
Eh, no thanks. MMOs are time consuming enough as is, I don’t need the encounters to be particularly challenging as well. I’ve always preferred getting a lot of little things done with relative ease to spending a long time on one piece of content.
Also, we’re already at the point where a lot of newer content is frustrating to try and complete without consulting a guide. Actually, if you think about it…the game is pretty difficult if you try to do everything completely legit – no metabattle or dulfy or wiki.