Guild Wars 2

Nikkinella.8254:

So lucky I don’t get to decide on things like this. I would have made the titles worth 10k+ AP just to really rub it in the faces of the AP hunters.

Point is: AP is the only working reward systems ingame. People are repeating stupid stuff ingame (kill the boss without getting frozen for example) for AP. Most of the time there is no other meaningful reward. Killing the AP system would kill all those “repeat XY”. Why should anyone kill all bosses in emberbay?
Why should anyone bother to do the JP in emberbay?
You got not much to do ingame, except farming AP.
Many people – and not only top AP player – do this stuff for AP. Some people even asked for a removal of the daily cap because of this reason.

Killing this reward system (by handing out hundredthousands of AP) would kill a lot of replay value of GW2s content. Anet would probably have to release a new map every two weeks to compensate for your suggestion.

Shakki.3219:

Why should only PvE players be at the top of a leaderboard, why not serious try hard WvW / PvP only people for earning the hardest titles.

You can’t be at the top at the leaderboard without PVP and WvW. You need all aspects of the game.

Shakki.3219:

Could make 1000+ AP Points for WTS Participation and Placement so these Players get something to be acknoledged for as well.

It wouldn’t help. If top players should be also top AP players Anet would have to remove all PVE achievements/dailies. With each LS episode or event anet adds new achievements. These achievements play an important role for the game (see my comment about quests). Removing them would force Anet to implement a proper questlog and probably quest npcs, rewards, dialogues etc. Otherwise people would be done with a new LS episode after ~ 1-2 hours.
Even handing out huge amounts of AP won’t help. Lord Helseth is at 7k AP? Also only top players would get those rewards. But a PVP player at rank 500 would still get no rewards at all.
Why only PVP and WvW? Speedrun guilds, dungeon/fractal solos or first kills in raids?

Shakki.3219:

I really don’t think AP should be only a grind so u have to play parts of the game u dont want.. but also totally removing AP from a section is also the totally wrong way.

APs are the questlog of GW2 and target completionist. They are not meant for competitive players. You are asking for a complete rework of APs. It would be easier to implement other meaningful rewards. And it would make more sense.
Starting from symbols next to the name indicating a rank(pvp exclusive reward currently, PVE players cant get it) to exclusive auras, skins, titels.
A single win (best player) in a PVP season is imho more worth than all dailies. Should it reward more than 15k AP then?
I’m suggesting a permanent tag to the name, similar as season divisions. For repeated wins in following seasons add a number in it. Would have way more prestige than some APs.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

They may bring back LS 1 but they won’t bring back the Monthly AP which was 5k iirc

Monthly APs were merged with dailies. The daily cap was 10.000, the monthly 5.000. Now the combined cap is 15.000. Everyone can get those “former monthly” APs.

Point is: GW2 has no quests. APs are anets bad working workaround for the missing quests. Quests send you back into an old area, give you a motivation to kill a boss or do a task. GW2 had nothing like this. After exploring the map there is no motivation to go back to it – except for farming.
APs fulfil the role of quests. Some achievements are very questlike (see HoT’s achievements: do all events in verdant brink etc.). Some are adding an alternative goals to storyquests (give aurene XY).
Those “quests” are mixed with farming goals “kill XY” “swing a sword again and again”.
Actually this is a bad design. Especially casual players don’t care too much about AP. The AP log is cluttered. Those questlike achievements drown in the flood of all achievements. But those questlike achievements would also be interesting for casual players.

Some achievements are pretty rewarding (asc. equip). But you need to know.
Anet has added several “current events” which are hidden. Without following dulfy it is nearly impossible to know about all current events. That’s content which is probably unknown to a big percentage of the playerbase.
All of this belongs into a questlog.

Other achiements are more like statistics. “you killed YX undeads”. That’s no “achievement”. Dailies are also no achievement.

Actually most achievements wouldn’t qualify as an achievement. Maybe T4 fractals+challange mode, raids, migraine, some jumping puzzles, pvp seasons…anything else is grind. Even PVP wins or WvW achievements: grind.

Toasa.1236:

pvp only Players got roughly 10k ap and now they shouldnt deserve some more?!

Those AP don’t help PVP only players. Most of them won’t reach the top rankings, too. They will get 0 AP.

Dirame.8521:

It is NOT a bad idea to hand out the same rewards for every activity.

I never said that, you might want to reread what you’ve quoted.

Dirame.8521:

Should this even be a discussion? A reward is a reward is a reward is a reward. If you can’t get it, you bloody well can’t get it.

There are different kinds of rewards ingame.
For example raid players would not be amused if you would get the same rewards for doing dailies. But “a reward is a reward is a reward”, right?
Handing out the wrong rewards can wreck reward structures. This, for example, happend with GW2 emotes. They are too easy to get resulting in no prestige. While GW1 emotes are very prestigious.

It makes sense to differentiate rewards. It’s a bad idea to hand out the same rewards for every activity. AP are targeted towards “play everything a bit” completionists. APs don’t target ESL-PVP players.

Anet could reward, for example, the top players with a permanent symbol (similar as the league symbol) at their nametag. Or with other useful stuff as skins, gems, gold, auras or emotes.

It’s a bad idea to mix up rewards. Top PVP Players also deserve exclusive rewards.
AP are a bad reward for a top pvp player who doesn’t care too much about AP (probably most/all of them). At the same time it causes trouble because it wrecks the motivation of completionists. And it will become even worse with each new season.

So: separate both systems. Find a better, more meaningful reward for top pvp players. And let the APs be achievable by everyone to cater to completionists – as in the past 4 years.

Shaogin.2679:

If AP is just for completionists then why care if someone has more AP than you?

I don’t understand your question. Ofc you want to get more/all APs. That’s the idea of completionists.

From a completionists point: when I’m not able to finish all quests in game I don’t even try to. Usually I end up doing nearly no quests at all. When I’m able to (skyrim for example) I’ll try to do each quest. I might stop playing at some point without finishing all quests. But I spend a lot of time doing quests. Otherwise I would only play story and ask for more content without doing any quests.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I am not intolerant

Then you might want to check your wording.

Achievement to earn them.

And all of those APs are no archievements. As I said before, you are asking for a complete AP rework. Remove all those dailies, “kill X” “finish the story” achievements and replace them with “set a new dungeon-run record” “kill mai trin 98 solo” “win the world championship” etc. The average player should have 0 AP then.

Currently APs are simple farmable goals. Don’t get confused by the wording. “legendary” also often implies there is only a single one. Remove all legendary GS except one from the game?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

and I was pointing out that there has always been Achievement Points in game that no one can get so if they remove the Achievement Points from these Titles they should then remove the Achievement Points from all Achievements that can no longer be earned, or they can change the name since most things qualifying as “Achievements” aren’t really Achievements.

All APs aren’t really achievements. Achievements in GW2 are farmable goals.
I already pointed this out in C. The past 4 years achievements had a different function. They were never “exclusive rewards for a small skilled minority”. They were no “achievements”. They are named so, if it bothers you: ask Anet to rename them to “highscore points”, “quests points” or “Arena-Net-Points”.
As legendary weapons are namend legendary weapons, but they are probably the most used skins. But nobody asks Anet to remove nearly all legendary weapons.

As I already said in b: you can’t remove rewards afterwards. It’s too late to remove those achiements. It would also be too late to ask for removal of the PVP-achievements in two years. Currently they are new. Nobody has already earned them. So it is ok to remove them and replace them with something more useful.
As I already said, I’m ok with making past achievements available again. Bring back the old content and achievements.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Oh then they should remove all AP from players that did all the Ls1 content and achievements since you cant get them anymore and for all the other Legendary titles and from all the Monthlies really this is a non issue besides self entitled players crying about Achievement Points being actually awarded for Achieving something.

A) everyone has different goals in a game. You should try to understand that instead of making fun of other people. You seem to be a very intolerant person without the ability to understand other people’s point of view.

B)I was never a fan of AP for temporary achievements. It was a bad idea, because people who missed some of the old events can never catch up. Removing something which was already “earned” is a bad idea, but I would be ok with returning the old achievements as permanent content, for example.

C)Achievements ingame are not earned for personal skill. They never were. You are asking for a complete rework of APs.

D) Helseth has, afaik, less than 10k AP. I doubt he cares about AP. He is not even close to the top AP players. He can easily get 10 AP for doing a daily instead of having to battle against other strong PVP players for a smaller reward. It’s about the titel, not about the AP.

E) legendary weapons are also not “legendary”. You don’t have to be among the top 10 pvp players, for example, to be able to build a legendary weapon. Everyone can get a legendary weapon.

F) getting into legendary division the last pvp saisons was not super difficult. Even I managed to get there. There are way better players than me. You could grind your way into legendary. (and I would be ok with handing out the old achievements in future seasons.)

AP are for completionists. Not being able to complete something ruins the motivation on the long term – and Anet could remove AP at all then.

Top PVP is for people who love competition. Mixing both concepts results in “competition rewards” mixed with “meaningles aspects”. 6 AP? Less than a daily.
But obviously handing out 10000 AP is also no solution.

It’s better to seperate both concepts.
APs as realistic achieveable goals for completionists.
For competitive people exclusive titels/emotes/skins. Or hand out 10.000 Gold for the top players. A pink/golden emote. Or whatever. They probably care more about this than they would care about 6 AP.

Sarrs.4831:

A lack of content released has never been fairly blamed on raids and likely never will be, especially considering the current state of the game in which ANet seems to have gotten their pipeline issues sorted.

I don’t think so. There is a lack of casual PVE group content (not talking about solo content as open world etc.).
Me and my guild are playing one evening a week together and there is nothing for us to do. Dungeons are dead, my guild is too casual for raids (and will ever be) and fractals become boring after some time. Most fractals are afaik from 2012-2013. Reworks are not the same as a new fractal. Also the rewards are the same, there is little incentive to play new fractals often.

Ideally content is like a pyramid. A huge basis for everyone and a small tip of difficult content. GW2 feels like it left out the basis when it comes to group oriented content.
Ember bay is not preparing you to play raids. Dungeons and fractals do, but they are a small fragile plank leading to raids. Instead of the “broad basis” which would be needed.

I don’t think Anet has the knowledge to bring a GW1 HD. Most of the old Anet people have probably left long ago, so it would be a “new” game for Anet.

Ok I Did It.2854:

the combat system is static where you stand in place to attack

You seem to refer to the movement system, which is part of the combat system. Skill usage in GW1 was less static than in GW2 with its fixed rotations, but GW had no dodging.

The less active movement in GW1 was probably a strategic decision by Anet. There are skills which can be used while moving (shouts, stances etc.).
I think it’s a matter of balancing. Perfom an action, be forced to stay still and lose the ability to move. This was important in PVP, because it stopped a healer from kiting. He could kite, but he has to make a decision: kite or cast a healspell.

GW2 struggles a lot with its “permanent movement”. See PVP where players could run in circles avoiding each other all day, if they weren’t forced on narrow capture points. Without capture points GW2s PVP wouldn’t work. A druid can avoid a lot of damage on the huge middle capture point on foefire.
GW2 also has “no movement” skills as 100b or meteor shower, but most skills have no restrictions.

Imho is the PVE movement in GW not even really static. You put more effort into positioning, movement, kiting, paying attention to aggro etc. You do use a speedbuff or cripple as active defence – which you don’t in GW2. But GW requires less fast reactions, except on special builds.

To sum it up: they are different.
GW1 is more strategic, GW2 more actionoriented. Both have their fans. Egoshooter vs strategy game.

Good movement is a difficulty aspects of a videogame.
Examples for this would be the thaumanova boss or mai trin. In lower levels often half the team falls into death/dies to aoe.
“Battlefield awareness” (who has aggro?, which enemy is moving to which position? etc.) and kiting/positioning also requires some experience and can be difficult.
Some groups are fast at rezzing, while others don’t even notice that half their team is downed.

I think a game should increase in difficulty. GW2 is really bad this. So I partially agree on the stepstone thing.

But on the other hand: I’m in a very casual guild. GW2 offers little content for us, which is the reason why many of our guildmates stopped playing in 2012. We were a group of people who played GW together since 2006/2009 and half a year of GW2 destroyed most of our community. (It’s our fault for not leaving GW2 altogether).

GW2 is mostly a singleplayer. GW2 offers little teamcontent. I can be solo at tequatl, solo in tarir, play the story solo. It makes no sense to do this content together as a guild.
GW2s only teamcontent are dungeons and fractals. Thats the content we mostly play together as the remaining ~5 players of probably 200. We enjoy playing together, its the only reason for most of the remaining players to keep playing GW2.
Heard similar storys of other guilds, players and website-communties.
Same was true for GW1, dungeons and dragons online, Lotro, Aion. We always had people leaving for other games, but they always returned to GW1 because of the amount of teamcontent it offered.

I’m not buying a MMO to play solo. I know many people don’t want to play as a team, but there are better games for soloplayers. GW2 also offers tons of content for soloplayers.
If GW2 wants to keep teamoriented players GW2 needs teamcontent. Teamcontent of different difficulties. There might be a raid community which wants harder teamcontent. I’m ok with that. But there is also a very casual community which wants easy teamcontent. Content which requires a team but which is also easy.

GW2s design is just bad. It seperates the community in many different subcommunities with little exchange between those communities. The gap between those subcommunities would be smaller if GW2 would offer more content of different difficulties. So people could climb up the ladder instead of hitting a wall of increased difficulty.
But: currently we only got fractals. I like the system of increasing levels and difficulty. They have been more difficult in the past without the ability of having enough AR.
But they are 2012 content. Playing them again and again as the only teamcontent gets boring. Even I, as a player who has seen nearly every content GW2 offers (~31k AP) feel too casual for raids. My guild is definatly not able to raid, we’re often still having troubles at dungeons or low level fractals. Atm we are busy doing mostly fractals and some storyachievements. Increased fractal difficulty would probably stop the last people of my guild playing. For example thaumanova must have been an traumatic experience for them. I wasn’t with them at that time but i guess they have fallen into death a lot.

GW1 had storymissions of increasing difficulty, comparable to dungeon storymodes. ~20 per expansion. It had hundreds of teamoriented quests. And it had its elite areas/raids, hardmode and maybe 20 dungeons.
In GW2 we got dungeons, fractals and raids. Would be ok, if we would still be in 2012. But we aren’t. We got only half an expansion full of open world zergcontent and some raids. Without any easy or medium difficulty teamcontent.

I think the lack of content is not fixable anymore. GW2 is a pretty old game. We will get another expansion, but I doubt we’ll get a third expansion. The next expansion will probably contain 3-4 open word maps and maybe another raid. GW2 will stay as it is.

TL;DR: GW2 would need more teamcontent to create stepstones. More easy teamcontent, more difficult teamcontent – and everything in between.

Punishments don’t work.

The community is not able to tell if a player plays bad on purpose or not.
There are many (unexperienced?) players that suicide on far when their team needs them mid. Ban them?
Ban people that are not stomping or rezzing?
Ban people for using terrible builds? Ban people for not switching their class to something more useful in this setup? All of this could be on purpose.

How do you tell the difference between a bad player protecting close even when no protection is needed – and a player afking on close? Both will ruin your game, but one of them should not be punished.
How to tell the difference between a bad player actually fighting and a player running into the enemie aoes, using 2 skills and dying on purpose? Especially glas builds can die pretty fast because of a mistake – or on purpose.

Other games try to understand why people afk or why they are hostile. Those games try to get rid of the reasons for such a behaviour. For example a personal kill/death statistic instead of a win/loss statistic causes players to care less about a lost game. But it might give players a reason to throw a match and just focus on having a good statistic.
Hot-join games like most egoshooters got no problem with afkers. People leave if they don’t like their team. Etc.

—>
You can’t force players to play. If they don’t like the matchup they will quit. Or afk. Or play bad on purpose. Or insult their teammates. Or just give “advice” like “press f near a downed enemy to kill him”.

Faux Play.6104:

This is a behavior problem. You fix behavior problems with immediate and certain consequences.

It would required ingame GMs that watch every single match.
I played COD some time ago on a server which was pretty strict. If you called someone a noob you got a “be nice!” warning. If you kept being rude you got banned for a few hours.
These actions have to be taken instantly. Not delayed. Interupt agressions before they escalate.

If you want to punish afkers (which punishment is fair? 10 mins dishonour pvp ban? 20 mins?) it is a lot of work for Anet. People will adapt. They will just run into enemies and suicide. If you try to ban these people you will see many false bans of active players who are just bad – but still doing their best.
You will see way more hostile comments, because players are forced to stay in the game which will cause more rage.

An improved matchmaking helps to reduce afkers. I think it was a really good idea to put former high divisions players into different divisions at season start. Give us an /resign option for lost matchs.

A good workaround would be: form a team. Your teammates won’t afk.

Daroon.1736:

Apparently though, it’s fine for you (and many others like you) to openly admit on the forums to throwing matches.

Is it an wonder why so many players feel so frustrated at the apparent lack of action being taken against this type of player?

Leaving a match is like 10 mins dishonour. Punishment for afking has to be comparable. I prefer Anet to take care of verbal abuses instead.

naming and shaming is not allowed in most/all forums, execept maybe botter forums etc. Reason: no one can check if you are telling the truth. It’s easy to give false impressions, fake screenshots or just throw in a name.
It might be you who gets called an afker. Maybe your kitchen was burning. Maybe you were never afk. Maybe the guy stating you are afking was never in a match with you.
Maybe someone with two or three accounts doesn’t like you. Maybe a guild is mad at you. No one can check it.

I know that GW1 trashmobs could be quite challenging. They caused many wipes.

GW2 trashmobs are different.
You would have to bring back a trinity system, remove most aoe attacks, remove all aoe buffs and turn them to singletarget buffs.
If you don’t players will find a way to stack the enemies, will perma blind them/stun them/whatever. It will only be a open world map with a limited amount of players. Form a team of 5 players and search for an empty HoT map. Thats what we would get as a UW/FoW Map.

Firebird Gomer.9563:

Most of the enemies in UW or FoW were trash mobs and could be easily killed.

All enemies, except dhuum – which was added years later. GW2 has a completly different combat system which makes trashmobs fights usually quite boring.
I doubt that a map full of trashmobs would be able to recreate the GW1 FoW/UW feeling.

NTDK.4897:

If they want to commit, they can go get gear and download voice client and try again later.

True. But it puts the cart before the horse.
Anet did the same mistake in GW1 PVP. It required you to have a team, be on voicechat, talk and to know your stuff. Quite demanding, especially when you only want to test it. As a result after some years PVP was lacking (new) players.

Usually players are developing into more “hardcore” players.
For example in dungeons: Players start to run COF1 for gold. They get better and do AC/TA/SE. They start to use zerk equip, are getting better. They are adding other players to their friendlist, join a guild, start to do COE and arah. Players are developing step by step.
A huge wall of demands scares players away. Fractals, for example: You can play them on a low level, get better, find a guild etc. You don’t need to start on a high level. You are climping up the ladder step by step. You’re not forced to climb up a wall.

It is called “learning curve” and not “learning stairs/wall”. There should be a huge variety of instanced teamcontent leading from easy fractals/dungeons to raids.
And now have a look at dungeons. And at the dumbed down fractals. I don’t know what Anet is doing there, but to me it seems a bit….questionable.

FoW and UW were originally some maybe 5 hour elite maps which kicked you out of the instance when your team wiped. I think you cannot recreate this for GW2.
But it was an important factor of these areas.
It forced you to be careful when luring enemies. To avoid aggroing two groups. You had to position yourself in an open field, to protect your backline, manage your deathpenalty etc.

Both maps were not designed for a small amount of enemies/bossfights, they were designed for teamfights. For fighting a team of trashmobs and avoid the other two enemy teams which were patrolling into your battlefield. I don’t think that such a design would be a good idea in GW2. It would only be a map full of trashmobs.

Maybe Anet could create a similiar looking area. But thats it. It will be something completly different.
See Sorrow’s Furnace or SE. GW2 has completly different gameplay mechanics.

I don’t think its worth it. It’s only about a similar setting.

Some old GW1 scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xORtsQXcs1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTh5srpd-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln9o-cJJUAc

Darknicrofia.2604:

sad to say that if you’re having 25 game losses in amber division right now

last season it got easier at ~ diamond.

Anomaly.7612:

Just…..HOW?

It’s pure luck. You have to brute-force your way to the next division.

Marthkus.4615:

Any reqs what so ever for AC was not “casual” friendly. Which “casual” seems to mean any non-(level 80 zerker elitist).

It’s easier for a casual to fullfill a “zerker elitist” lfg than to bring the required stuff for a raid. When you are complaining about the high expectations for dungeons it seems a bit odd that you don’t care about the expectations for raids/fractals (asc. fullzerk, food, TS, blabla).
Especially because there were many dungeongroups which didn’t ask for fullzerk or you could easily start a group on your own.

Marthkus.4615:

SW wasn’t better gold/hour if you knew what you were doing. This lead to lots of people filling up dungeon, enforcing meta, trying to “get-good” such that Dungeons were better gold/hour.

SW was afaik giving you ~15-20 gold per hour. For some good guildteams it might be true that dungeons were more rewarding (for the first hour?). But(good) pugs ended up with max. 10 gold per hour, usually less.

@Marthkus:
No, it isn’t the same. Asking in AC for a fullzerk is more casual friendly than asking for a condi-full ascended engi for raids. Players are getting more demanding obviously.

Imho Anet failed hard when they decided to give players different stats depending on equipment. GW1 was more innovative at this point and avoided a lot of conflicts by not having stats on equipment.

SW had a better gold/hour rate than dungeons. Especially when pugging.
Your “elitist seeking the best gold/hour” were not running dungeons, they did SW.

In the past there were a lot of relaxed dungeon groups which didn’t cared too much about equip etc. Those groups are gone, too.

I doubt its a good idea for a new player to start with raids. Usually there should be a wide variety of content of different difficulties. Which gives players the opportunity to get better step by step. Raids are not fullfilling this role. Fractals are too repetitive and are getting boring too fast. There needs to be way more rewarding content than just fractals.
Many players started doing CoF1 and AC for gold. They got better, started doing SE, TA. And ended up doing arah. This process is missing now. It was never a well built process, there is a huge gap from open world to instanced group content. Which is ok for a new game with no new content releases, but not for such an old game as GW2.

Marthkus.4615:

They made low level dungeons seem like something only for level 80s in full zerk gear playing the one build death and taxes said was best DPS.

So you want Anet to remove fractals and raids too?
I’m confident Anet is planing to do so.

maddoctor.2738:

I think you don’t understand what’s the difference between objective and subjective. How is giving different weights NOT subjective?

I said that giving wights is not objective. Even in the part you quoted.
Yes, giving wights is subjective. But you also give wights. So you’re not objective.

No, using factor 1 for everything is not better. It is also completly subjective.
You could try to make an educated guess, but thats difficult. GW outposts are way smaller than GW2 towns. So maybe you can compare them to jaka itzel or rata novus. They might be worth roughly 5 times an POI.

GW2 got marked special position on its map, GW doesn’t.
You are counting 116 POIs and Vistas on maps in HoT. I’m leaving out waypoints, dungeon and mission entrances (HoT also got them!) and am just referring to “unique landmarks on a map”.
So roughly 30 per map. EoTN has afaik 15 world maps and ~30 landmarks (they are afaik user defined). So ~ two “POIs” per map. That’s quite a difference to 30 per map. GW2 maps might be a bit bigger and more detailed, but not factor 15. And there are also 13 outposts and 49 dungeon maps (and some of the landmarks are in dungeons). So its quite obvious that comparing special landscapes can’t be done so easily. You’d have to get into each map and check them for special landscapes which would be POI-worthy. Without that a comparision has to be 116: ?.

maddoctor.2738:

You said me adding all HoT skins is bad because you are not interested in female charr skins yet you didn’t mention anything about someone not playing a Mesmer or Elementalist in GW1 which will remove every single skin for those professions from the count. Would that make any kind of sense to you?

It does. When I’m correct HoT has 3 new armour sets and EoTN 4. So roughly the same for armour skins.
HoT has some backpacks and stuff, EoTN has some gloves and hats blablub. I don’t see a big difference. Both should have added more skins.
Weapon skins are different. You can wear every weapon in GW1, but it doesn’t always make sense. That’s not possible in GW2. I’d say weapon skins are similar if you leave precurser collection out. Some of them are reskins or “raw” skins of others, but there are 23*2 new pres. So maybe there are 50 extra skins in HoT. I’m not very impressed, but I would also not say HoT offers no/less/too little skins compared to EoTN. I think they are similar, HoT might be bit better when it comes to skins.

I wouldn’t start counting skins which anet promised to add in the future. Anet also kept adding new skins for GW1 (obsiblade for example or winds of change stuff (GW1 “living story”)).

maddoctor.2738:

IF you want to count only those it’s 182 vs 150

On the other hand those numbers show the reason why many people are complaining about too little new skills in HoT. They got 20 new skills which are available on their class. 150 new skills available are more skills available to your char. While the total amount of skills is indeed bigger. There are two truths in this case. Which helps to understand the complaints about too few new skills. It’s not wrong, it’s just another perspective.

maddoctor.2738:

And Skills and Skins can be very very easily compared between the two games so at least those two are a clear statistic that can be used to compare them.

I was refering mostly to your content/explore comparision.
On skins and skills its a matter of your personal view. Do you care about total numbers or the amount of skins and skills available to one (or more) of your charakters? This will lead to different conclusions.

maddoctor.2738:

My comparison is completely fine though and you failed to explain why you think it’s flawed.

I already explained it.
To repeat i shortly:
-you pick subjective aspects (why landmarks, why dungeonentrances)
-you leave many aspects out which are very similiar (rezz shrines, skill unlocks, GW2 landmarks)
-you give questionable wight to those aspects (all is factored with 1)

All of that is highly subjective.
Your saying “one outpost/town is worth one POI”. That’s your personal decision. You’re not objective.
Your result would be:
32wp*(X1)+ 72 POIs*(X2)+ 40hero challanges*(X3)+ 24vista*(X4) compared to 13 towns*(X5)+ 33 landmarks*(X6)
If you choose X1 =1, X2=1, etc. thats your personal decision. Its not objective anymore. And as I said: you left a lot of stuff out, that’s also your subjective decision. I’d integrate ~150 rezz shrines and ~150 skill unlocks in EoTN, too. But I already explained all of that.

maddoctor.2738:

How useful are all those different armor sets of GW1 if you haven’t played GW1?

Are you serious?
Ofc EoTN has no content at all for a player who has not played EoTN….
All I said was: a player looking for skins will check out which skins are available for him.
He doesn’t care about the amount of skins which are ingame but not available because he got the wrong race or gender. I was trying to show you the limits of your comparision. Your comparision is true for a player who owns every “skinrace” in female and male. And for all other people without a charr male and female etc. your comparision is wrong.

maddoctor.2738:

No. The amount of clicks is one and it’s. HoT: 418, EotN: 150. That’s an actual OBJECTIVE comparison of skill clicks between games.

It isn’t. It’s you personal decision to make this comparision. Based on bellyfeelings i guess. Objective would be to count the amount of skills and don’t mix other into it.
I was not twisting your results up, I was showing you that your results are personal choosen results. Another player could have made the same comparision and could have choosen to express the results as “skills available per character”. He would get different results than yours. So: the presentation of the results is choosen.

maddoctor.2738:

Then I should add all the resource node spawns as well. Let’s see which game has more “features”

You already did that by comparing cities to POIs. It makes no difference at all. Your results are complety messed up, you can also add the amount of female npcs in WoW to your HoT side if you want to. It won’t make your results any worse.
The funny thing is: you are complaining about rezz shrines being different. But your still comparing a lot of completly different stuff which has less in common than WPs and shrines. But shrines are different, thats a good argument. But Vistas and POIs are the same, thats a good argument. So rata sum is the same as a POI.
Thats why I was jumping into this topic. No one should take this comparision serious.
You wanted to create proof for your point, you choose selected numbers and leave anything out that doesn’t fit into your agenda. Feel free to add cooking recipes and whatever to any side. You already did it, so why not keep doing so?

maddoctor.2738:

So you only chose to answer to it because it made GW1 look worse than GW2 and everything else you said about it is completely irrelevant.

No, I only answered because your “comparision” is so flawed i wanted to give users who don’t know GW1 the info that your “comparision” is completly flawed.

maddoctor.2738:

And how does that make an actual comparison between game features?

Comparisions have a very limited use. To compare the amount of work for Anet is nice to know. That’s what you did.
Players interested in a comparision of skins available to them don’t care about your comparision. Because it has nothing to do with your comparision.
Your skin comparision is correct afaik. But is has no value to players who care about creating a unique look on a char. That would be a different comparision. Your comparision has a very limited meaning. Your comparing the amount of work. Not the amount of skins a player can choose from.
You can make an objective comparision “a player with one char can choose from X skins” “a player with two chars chan choose from Y skins”. Would also be objective.
As you can see: its not about being objective or not. Its about knowing the meaning and limits of a comparision.

maddoctor.2738:

Once again, counting the number of skill buttons you can have in a game is a more objective way of comparing them than using “builds”.

With a very limited meaning. 182 skills vs 150 total.
But true is also that we got with HoT ~20 skills per character while EoTN offers 150 per character. That’s also objective. As you can see: you can also be objective but have a different point of view.
It’s subjective which version has more meaning to you. 150 available new skills on each of your characters and a total of 150 skills. Or a total of 182 skills and a ~20 skills per character.

maddoctor.2738:

Not even close. You can’t port to them last I checked.

So you’re saying you can’t compare them because they got different features?
But why did you then choose to compare vistas and POIs? They got different features, you can’t sum them up. You can’t press F at a POI. There are no Vistas in EoTN, why do you compare them to outposts? You can’t press F at an outpost.
So your comparision is “HoT has XY teleporters, EoTN has none”.
And I can answer “EoTN has XYZ rezz shrines, HoT has none”.
This has a very limited meaning. But don’t try to cover this up by mixing it with other numbers.
You can try to give reasons why X can be compared to Y. But it is subjective then. You can try to give an accurate number by saying “a rezzshrine is worth half a wp”. You get a number at the end. But ofc its not objective anymore. Your comparision consists of subjective picked parts compared to other non comparable subjective parts. It is highly subjective. Numbers seem to be objective, but they aren’t.
As you can see with my skill examples. Two objective versions of a comparision. But is subjective which you decide to choose.

maddoctor.2738:

I didn’t start the thread, and I didn’t start ANY thread on this subject using my analysis, yet you only care to prove me wrong (and my analysis) and not the OP, who also tried to compare the two games in a false way.

You also didn’t care to prove the threadstartet wrong. You only did care to bring your completly flawed comparision. So we both are sitting in the same boat.
I don’t agree on each aspect of the threadstarters comparision, but I agree on the conclusion. So it doesn’t bother me enough to give an answer to it.

And about your “additions” just because GW2 has more races doesn’t mean it has LESS choice, it has MORE choice.

My main is a human male. How many armour choices do I have in HoT for him? How many armour choices do I have in EoTN for my male human main? That’s what matters to me. I don’t care about the amount of skins for female charrs, i’ve got no female charr.
That’s why I was talking about players perspective. From Anets point of view your comparision of skins is true. But that doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care if Anet needs years to implement a very complex quest. When it takes me 5 minutes to do it, it isn’t worth 50€ to me. Even if it is more work for Anet than the whole GW2 universe.

And 15 skills per class is false, there are way more new skills added to the game. Why are people only adding the utility ones?

Because that are the skills you’re active using. A “+5%” dmg mod doesn’t change your gameplay. It’s a bit about “unique actions happening when you push a button”.
It’s impossible to compare both systems. GW2 weapons have fixed skills. If you could combine every weapons skill with another one (for example guardians GS whirl and warriors 100bs) the amount of skills would still be the same. But this would create an insane amount of build variety. In GW1 you can do this. For example bunnythumpers make use of warriors hammer attacks combining them with ranger pet attacks and buffs. In GW2 you got traits and more complex runes and sigils.
In the end I think you would have to compare builds. Unique builds, not the same build whith one switched skill or trait. You would have to leave farmbuilds, funbuilds etc. out and just count “meta” or close to metabuilds. Like, for example, necro healers in GW1. All I can say about build variety in GW2 is: I’m using maybe 3-5 builds per class in GW2. Thats not much.

Resurrection shrines are near all the entrance of each map, that’s like adding the same map multiple times for exploration for no reason.

When you want to make a comparision you have to search for similiar stuff which can be compared. That’s where your “comparision” fails.
When you want to compare stuff you always have to check if your comparing comparable stuff. When there is nothing which is comparable you can’t compare that aspect. That’s why comparisions are very difficult. Often you will have to wight stuff, because its is compareable and similar, but not the same. How many POIs is an outpost worth? 10? 20? So multiply the amount of outposts with it.
Thats happening for example when inflation is measured. Bread is more important than a rolex, so the inflation relates more to price changes of bread than of rolex clocks.

Rezz shrines have the same functionality as waypoints.
If you want to compare waypoints to anything in EoTN you should go for rezzshrines.
Or you leave waypoints out, because there is no such thing in EoTN.
Btw: waypoints in GW2 are also usually close to map entrances.

There is no such thing as a vista or POI in EoTN so you have to leave them out, too.
There is no such thing as a hero challenge. So its a 0:0.

maddoctor.2738:

I made a more complete comparison in another thread (or rather an actual comparison since yours isn’t comparing anything)

The comparision in this thread here is way better than yours.

Just to give you some of the most obvious examples: you count waypoints in GW2. In GW there were no waypoints. When you are dead you are automatically revived at rezz shrine. In GW2 you get revived at a WP.
But for some reason you didn’t counted the amount of rezz shrines. GW EoTN has alone about 150 rezz shrines if you leave half of the dungeons out – so maybe even 200. This alone screws the numbers so badly up.
Those numbers are several hundred percents away from truth. Even when you ignore the fact that comparing simple POIs to complete towns is so obviously ridiculus. So Rata Sum is worth a POI?
You count skill unlocks in HoT, but not in EoTN (there are ~150 possible – but not necessary – skill unlock options in EoTN). EoTN has nothing which can be compared to POIs or Vistas, you would have to leave them out. But you didn’t tried to find out the amount of landmarks in HoT (two? idk).

And I think every player who knows both games well enough would disagree on that skill comparision. 150 new skills available on all classes add a bit more new playstyles to a game than ~15 new skills per class. And those skills are different from GW2 skills, they are made to combine them. Which changed their functionality dramatically. For example this: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4sk6t_spike-dark-aura-bug-exploit_videogames
All Skills did what they were intended to do. The combination of them was fixed quite fast (added a recast to deathnova afaik).

Skins: you compare the amount of work Anet has to do to create those skins. A player can’t chose all skins on his main. The amount of skins he can choose of is smaller. And thats what matters to most players. Not the amount of work Anet has to do.

—>
The best comparision is your personal feeling. You can’t make an objective comparision. Some people don’t like open world zergs and prefer to have huge easy maps to explore. Or like instanced teamcontent. I prefer instanced teamcontent, so I like EoTN more than HoT. But thats my personal feeling.
EoTN was released 2007, but I kept playing until GW2 was released.
I doubt I would be still playing GW2 in 2021 when Anet would stop releasing content now. An important factor for me was and is instanced teamcontent, GW2 has little of it.

Ayrilana.1396:

So now you’re counting the various levels in the EotN dungeons as separate dungeons?

If you look carefully: I was speaking of 49 dungeon maps. For each level of a dungeon you have to walk through a portal and get to the new level, same as in GW2. When you go from rata sum to metrica you have to walk through a portal. So I call it a new map.

HoT is not similar to LS2. You got so much more than you got in LS2. Expansions have never delivered as much content as their core games did. There’s also no basis that if an expansion cost a certain amount then it must provide a certain amount.

Yes, this is why there are expansions like the oblivion horse armour.
There are lots of different formulations: “expansion pack (usually DLC)”. “full expansion (usually a whole game)”. “major expansion(something in between)”.
HoT offers four maps. If you want to add maps for each level do so. Would still be less than 15 maps – and there are still no 18 dungeons. I’m not saying it needs to be exact 18 dungeons. Maybe 5 would also be ok. But so it feels like a DLC. Like two LS episodes in one. Remember: LS also offered quite a lot of content. (LS1+2: soutsun, SW, DT, many unique bossfights, new WvW map (EoTM), two new dungeons, …)

You can find the amount of maps in the wiki. But to give you a rough number: 18 dungeons with ~ three levels each. Yes, many map parts are copied. I wouldn’t mind when Anet would implement 18 new dungeons in GW2 which are also using similar backgrounds etc.

I was referring to what was your basis that HoT should have more dungeons than classic GW2 and similar amount of maps.

Because you pay the price of an full addon.

“similar” is a wide range. But if you compare the classic GW2 and the LS2 with HoT: LS2 is closer to HoT when it comes to content.
LS2 is a DLC, no expansion/standalone. I think a fullprices expansion should offer a bit more. But we all knew that HoT would only offer 4 maps, so I guess Anet knows what they can do. HoT seems to be a sucess and there isn’t much flame going on in forums/reddit, so most players seem to be lucky with HoT.

Raziel.4216:

EoTN (only expansion): 0 classes, 150 skills, shiverpeaks, some maps around maguuma, 2 (?) new maps by ascalon, nowhere near as many quests.

With 18 dungeons adding 49 dungeon maps.
An expansion/new standalone can be a bit smaller. But were talking about 4 maps. Not 15 new open world maps in HoT and 18 new dungeons.

Ayrilana.1396:

What’s your basis for this?

GW2 has roughly 30 maps and 8 dungeons which each 4 paths (arah 5). An expansion or standalone should have a similiar amount of content. Maybe not 30 maps, but 4 is quite a huge difference. Thats close to LS2 which added two new maps (SW, DT). Remember, Drytop and SW also got different levels (SW has three levels).

It doesn’t matter if HoT is an expansion or not. If it is an expansion it should have more dungeons than classic GW2 has. And a similar amount of maps.
If only a small amount of content is added you call it a DLC.

BrbTea.3805:

I do not get why it is flawed to compare expansion and “stand-alone” game when both actually cost the same (HoT was not cheaper than Factions or GW2 initially).

Because an standalone has to offer low-level areas. This is (imho) the reason for the fast leveling in factions: Anet didn’t want to create many low-level areas which tend to be boring for max. level chars.
So: a standalone offers more low-level content, an expansion can focus on endgame content. The amount of maps, dungeons etc. can be the same, but its usually max. level content.
The advantage of a standalone is: you don’t have to buy the original game. Expansions are usually only bought by your active playerbase, an standalone can add new players. This is why Anet was loudly announcing Factions and Nightfall as standalone. “hey, you don’t have to buy prophecies. You can only buy factions and play the game”.
This is also the reason why Anet added GW2 classic to HoT. New Gamers are not scared away by a huge paywall, they don’t have to buy two games. So basically HoT is a bundle of a standalone and a expansion.

Raziel.4216:

104 rez shrines in open world or in EoTN, he is not counting the WPs and POIs from the rest of Tyria.

Ofc only EoTN. And as I said, there are still missing several shrines.

To be honest: I doubt any player who really got into GW1 buildcreating would doubt the bigger variety of GW1. There are hundreds of skills. Most veterans got huge lists of builds for different situations and are ofc still changing some smaller stuff. Even if they like GW2 more.
In GW2 I’m ok with way less builds. Maybe two for general PVE for a class. I’m not running like 10 different damage builds on my necro and 3 healing and 2 support builds for general PVE. Yes, that proves nothing. Its anecdotal. But I know both games pretty well. And I already gave you examples why I think the skill comparision is flawed.
I could add different new points like “you can use all 150 skills on your charakter which gives you a bigger variety than just 20 new skills on your charakter” Or “you can combine these skills and are not forced into a fixed skillset by your weapon or traitline”. Or “GW1 skills are more unique”.
You don’t need to agree on it and we both can agree on “we disagree”.

Raziel.4216:

And we could just as easily cherry pick places from HoT, where would that end? once again, not objective.

If you want to compare landmarks pick all HoT landmarks (I already linked you a GW2 landmark list) and compare them to EoTN landmarks. Then you can start a debate about it to see if there are locations which should be added to the wiki. Afaik the wiki-team is always glad about helpful hands and I know for at least the german wiki that forum debates have lead to changes to the german GW1 wiki. After this process you can start to compare the amount of landmarks. I tried to find HoT landmarks in the wiki. I might have missed some by fast clicking through it.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Landmarks
But I only found one landmark for HoT. In the end your result would be “HoT/EoTN offers more landmarks than HoT/EoTN”. More unique locations are an important factor, so this would be a strong argument pro/contra HoT. Other factors like the amount of maps or dungeons or story-parts are, ofc, also important. You can just say that Game XY is in this aspect better/has more to offer.

Raziel.4216:

It’s on the exploration aspect, I already explained this point above, feel free to go to the original topic (the one with maddoctor’s post in it) where almost everyone who didn’t like the numbers tried to use this argument and it was shot down multiple times.

The “exploration” effect is questionable. For an explorator a city like rata sum (even in GW1) has a bit more to offer than a simple POI. He spends more time to explore a whole city than he spends to explore a single POI. If you want to put such stuff in numbers it is common to add “weight factors”. For example when you measure inflation. There are weight factors on products. And the results are not as objective as the numbers try to tell you. Everyone who works a little bit with numbers can tell you that you can easily manipulate numbers to make them good looking. Drop all the people who gave up on searching a job out of the unemployrates. “only X% are searching for a job”. But maybe twice as much are unemployed. Put people into schooling programs when they are unemployed – and define them as “in schooling” and not “searching for a job” and you halfed your numbers again. Sometimes units are missing. Or you see people saying “we halfed our CO2 footprint”. Yes, but your Car is still producing twice as much as every other car. Numbers are easy to manipulate.

Raziel.4216:

You think he made it up? you can check these on the wiki, once again, we’re talking about an objective source of info here, reality not being on your side doesn’t make it made up.

I think he choosed what to compare with what. He selected. I doubt there is a wikipage telling him to compare POIs which towns.
He choose to compare these selected stuff. So what is the result of is comparision? HoT offers more POIs, Vistas, heropoints and waypoints while GW1 offers more landmarks, dungeonentrances, and towns? That is the result of his comparision. Great.
Anything else is caused by a false conclusion.
There is a simple saying “garbage in, garbage out”. If you add the wrong data your results are garbage. You cannot enter temperature values instead of velocity.
To come back to GW2: if you add instead of POIs (temperature) whole towns (velocity) you will get garbage results. That’s what I’m trying to tell you since my first post here. And you have to be careful with the other comparisions too.
For example the skins. It is ok to compare the amount of different skins for each race. Your result is the amount of skins Anet produced. But for many players it doesn’t matter. They are looking for a new outfit and only one small aspect of these produced outfits is available for them. So it is true that Anet produced a lot of different skins for HoT. But it can also be true, that EoTN offers for a single player a bigger variety (idk, I haven’t checked the numbers). So: both can be true at the same time. That’s something you have to be aware of if you do such a comparision.

Why would you remove these bosses? this makes no sense.
He counted GW1 skills and GW2 HPs

I think you don’t know GW1. To explain it: to use an eliteskill you have to unlock it. To do so you have to go to a boss, kill him and then you can unlock the eliteskill for this charakter. It is very similar to heropoints where you have to do the same.
It is very difficult to compare since there are bosses with double elites, you don’t have to kill all of them. But you also don’t need to do all heropoints. Here is a list (german, all bosses on the linked side are EoTN bosses) of the EoTN bosses: http://www.guildwiki.de/wiki/Bosse_%28Eye_of_the_North%29
But as you already said: from an exploration view you would want to experience every boss. So we would have to compare it to all HoT Bosses. So:
you can compare all bosses of EoTN with all bosses of HoT and come to the conclusion that one side has more bosses to offer. But you can’t start counting skill unlocking mechanisms for one side and don’t count if for the other side. Either don’t count skill unlocking for both side or count it for both sides – but then you have to start counting HoT bosses.

Raziel.4216:

The missing EoTN bosses category adds 150 points? please provide your source.

I was refering to the missing 156 rezz shrines. But there are also ~150 bosses in EoTN which are used to unlock elite-skills. Which are also left out in his comparision while he counted skill unlocking for HoT.

This is the 3rd or 4th topic where these numbers show up, plenty of people have taken it seriously, noone has refuted it with numbers yet, everyone ends up using special pleading (your post is full of this fallacy) to support the “EoTN rules!” crowd.

I counted these number myself. You can check them yourself. If you don’t own EoTN I gave you a rough estimation. An estimation is always good to check if results are reasonable. You can also check the dungeon numbers yourself. I linked you the page from which you get access to each dungeonmap and where you can count them yourself.

I think you got me wrong.
To make it clear: I’m sure EoTN offers more content. BUT I’m here just trying to show you, that your quoted comparision is garbage. I’m not here to say that EoTN is superior.
If you go back to my first post you will see that I’m basically saying “you cannot compare it in such a manner” and “its about the feeling”. Players don’t care about numbers. When you feel entertained you enjoy the game. When you feel there is much to explore you are satisfied. You can try to put it into numbers to make a comparision. But your quoted comparision is flawed. So it doesn’t prove anything. Neither that HoT offers more content, nor that EoTN does.
My point is: don’t use such flawed comparisions. No numbers are still better than completly wrong numbers.

Raziel.4216:

Because you had to explore to reach dungeons, you had to kill mobs and go go out of your way to reach’em.

you didn’t get why I was critizising the dungeonentrances. You have to walk to GW2 dungeonentrances too. Why did he left out the raid entrance but did count GW1 dungeonentrances?
Why did he starts counting fictive fan-declared landmarks but didn’t count GW2 landmarks as a comparision? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Landmarks
Why does he count outposts/cities but not maps?
It is quite obvious he wanted to proof his point. His intent was not to make an objective comparision. So he cherrypicked some numbers to create a comparision.
You can see that by the numbers he uses and numbers he doesn’t mention. Its completly pointles to start counting POIs of GW2 with a game without any POIs, Vistas etc. Thats what I’m critizing. His numbers are nonsense.

Raziel.4216:

Feel free to count’em and get back at us, noone is “estimating” the HoT points, I’d expect the same of those who claim EoTN added more.

104 rezz shrines in open world. I think I missed some since i wasn’t concentrating. My estimation was 75 shrines for open world. For dungeons you can use this one: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dungeon
For example: http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/c/c5/Ooze_Pit_Level_1.jpg -> 6 shrines.
I know each level has at least one rezz shrine. Otherwise it would be a gameover when you die, which only happens in elite-areas like UW. I’m counting 49 dungeon levels. So my estimation of ~50 wasn’t bad. On some cards you can’t see the rezz shrines, feel free to do the dungeons and count them yourself. I checked 7 dungeons on a quick research I’m at 52 rezz shrines. There are 18 dungeons, so i didn’t even checked half of them. My estimation seems to be solid. There are now 156 “proven” shrines.
As I said: those numbers are nonsense. He tried to score a goal and killed a whale at the northpole while beeing in southafrica. His numbers are completly wrong. Do you say after elections “president XY gained 50 Billion votes, there are 7 billion people on earth so the results might be slightly wrong but its the best result we got?”.
Why does he even start counting outposts, but doesn’t count maps?

Once again, there is no other way to compare exploration, feel free to provide another measurable method.
Remember: measurable, something we can all check just like landmarks.

A simple and more objective way would be to count the amount of maps. Ofc GW2 maps are more detailed, are bigger and even got several levels. I would double the amount of HoT maps because of that. I think open world content is comparable. There is a bit a lack of variety (less maps with reduced options, no snowy maps for example) in Hot, and a bit a lack of “easy going” maps. But it is still roughly comparable. But there are no dungeons. EoTN has 18. That makes a difference. And there is no hardmode.

Raziel.4216:

Meassured how? Bellyfeelings? rose-colored nostalgia glasses?

I linked you a screenshot of a unique place which is no landmark. As you would formulate it: those landmarkes are defined as landmarks measured by bellyfeeling.

If you want to make an objective comparision you would have to leave the landmarks out. And because there is no such thing as a POI or Vista in GW you would have to leave them out, too. In the end you would compare the emount of waypoints with the amount of rezz shrines. Which is not very helpful. I spend hours (maybe 6?) on my first FoW run. There is not a single rezzshrine.

Don’t see what nonsense we’re adding, don’t see the half of fictive content, I see an attempt @ objective comparisson and you’re just trying to refute it with non-objective means.

GW1 dungeon entrances, landmarks and mission entrances cannot be compared to POIs or Vistas.
On the other hand outposts (maps) were counted. But world maps weren’t. So its quite obvious here is somebody just making numbers up to prove his point without even trying to be objective. A whole city like LA or rata sum equals a POI?
To be honest: thats so obviously wrong. He didn’t even count GW2 “mission entrances”. I think he just tried to make some numbers for GW1 up. Would look bad if he says “195 for HoT, zero for GW”. So invent a few numbers for the GW side, leave comparable “dangerous” numbers out and gg. There is a reason why he didn’t counted the numbers of rezzshrines. Or why he counted heropoints but left skillcaps in EoTN out.

Raziel.4216:

While you’re at it make sure you count every champion or challenging veteran in HoT, good luck.

I was refering to “hero challenges”. Not to bosses. You can’t start counting skill unlocks on one side and don’t count them on the other side. That’s very obvious. So you would have to remove the hero challenges from HoT’s score. So 155 points for HoT.

Raziel.4216:

one missing category does not refute everything.

It does when this categorie adds more than 150 points to you result of 75.
It’s, as I said, not only one missing category. You have to remove hero points. Basically you have to remove vistas and POIs and landmarks and dungeon/missionentrances too. No one would compare 4 maps with 116 (!!!) POIs and Vistas to 33 landmarks on 77 (!!!) maps. (15 world maps, 13 outposts, 49 dungeon maps). It’s quite obvious that you can’t compare 29 points per map with 0,4 points per map. This is why it was summed up. Otherwise no one would take this comparision serious.

It doesn’t have to cause a dramatic change to count as content.

So a new buffood is new content for you? And can be compared to new skills?

Raziel.4216:

He compared it in exploration aspects, you had to explore to reach dungeons, please read carefully before comenting on something.

So why does he add up POIs and compares them to dungeonentrances when it is nonsense? He can compare the amount of dungeonentrances of HoT with the amount of dungeonentrances of EoTN. But you can’t compare them to POIs. Yes, you have to walk into the dungeongate, same as in GW2. But why are dungeonentrances comparable to POIs? Why didn’t he counted NPCs and used this number? Or trees?
His numbers are nonsense.
To give you another example:
You agreed on rezz shrines. Afaik there are ~5-8 on each map and there are (i think) ~15 maps with shrines? So lets say ~75 points to explore. There are also rezz shrines in dungeons. As a rough estimation: the average dungeon has three levels and at least one rezz shrine per level (usually more). So 18*3*1. This would be at least ~50 shrines. “world” and dungeons would add 125 Points to his “EoTN Score” of 75 to a total of 200.
And i think my estimation is conservative, it could easily be 200 rezz shrines or more. When you can easily add such numbers which he totally missed to one side his numbers are completly flawed. It’s not changing his result by 5% which would be acceptable. Its a ~270% difference to his results.
Thats only one detail. He missed other points as well:

Why does he add up landmarks when there no such thing official in GW1?
Landmarks are defined by players. The wiki is maintained by players. Landmarks are “do you remember this cool tree”. For example the lone vigil is listed as a landmark. In arid sea there are two landmarks listed: lone vigil and the city. The dino/dragon-skull (http://i.imgur.com/vkcfwZ3.png) isn’t. There are like one or two landmarks on each map. And on most GW2 maps I can remember a similar amount of “remarkable landscapes” on each map.
GW1 maps offer more places to explore than just landmarks. And not every GW2 POI/Vista is so remarkable that you can still remember it after a few years. “yeah, those 20 POI on map X”. You might remember stuff like “shards of war” – a landmark in GW1, too. But most POIs are not very remarkable. If you compare the german wiki to english: 4 landmarks for crystal desert in the german wiki, 9 in the english version – on 7 maps. As you can see: the amount of landmarks isn’t set into stone. So its useles to base an argumentation on it.

If you sum up nonsense, leave half of the content out, add another half of fictive content…well….you can spell the word beer when take the word house, change some letters, leave some letters out and add new ones.

Raziel.4216:

He’s comparing’em in a different category, feel free to make a “boss” category to compare those, this is irrelevant to the numbers presented.

So its nonsense to sum up the heropoints and mix them up with POIs and vistas. If he wants to compare hero points to anything he has to compare them to bosses. There are afaik ~150 bosses in EoTN. You have to kill them to get access to eliteskills. Why does he compare hero points which are made for unlocking traits/skills with landscapes, but ignores skill unlocking in GW?

It’s like: “EoTN has 124 Quests, HoT has none.” So I got “objective numbers”, proof is HoT has zero content.
Does that give any proof about HoT having “0% content compared to EoTN”? No, it doesn’t. When you want to compare content you have to avoid cherry picking. If you leave out half the content your results are nonsense. When you sum up irrelevant numbers you get irrelevant results.
For relevant results you would have to compare the time needed to explore the stuff. Without time or level gates. And even this results can be influenced by a low movement speed or labyrinth like maps.
Gran tourismo offers like 500 cars, NFS like 20. So gran tourismo has 25 times the amount of content NFS offers? Might be true. But not because of the amount of cars.

Raziel.4216:

GW2 adds a lot of consumables too, wonder why you didn’t mention those.

Because its useles to compare the amount of skills or traits. You have to compare build variety. There is a reason why GW had hundreds or thousands of threads in forums to discuss even more builds. You can still find people debating about GW1 builds. There is basically a build for each teamcomposition and each area. Don’t run a prot-monk in an ench removing area. Avoid minions when there are tons of AOEs. Destroyers are good against fireeles, so run an air or waterbuild. Etc.
I didn’t mentioned consumables because it the same point: they don’t change your playstyle. A +10% dmg mod won’t change your playstyle. You wont start pushing different buttons, use skills in different situations just because you used another buffood. So its the still the same build.

Raziel.4216:

Old post from maddoctor comparing the Gw1 & Gw2 expansions.

That comparision is not well done. For example the comparision of “exploration stuff”: you can compare the amount of maps. But you can’t take dungeons entrances and compare them with POIs. Landmarks are afaik also no official term in GW1. For example HoT’s “the falls” are also in GW Prophecies. Without any “POI”. It’s the same location. Maybe its also a landmark, idk. Every tree could be defined as a landmark.

Hero challenges are mostly small bossfights. But he didn’t tried to count all bosses spreaded around EoTN which you needed to kill to gain their eliteskills.
He counts waypoints but doesn’t count “rezzshrines” (the places where you would be revived when your party wiped, similar to waypoints).
He even compares traits to skills. Some traits add a new functionality, so he is right for these traits (for example the trait switching guardians F1-3 into new ones), but faster trap reloading? More damage when X? Thats not a new skill.
GW1 also offers items which increase the duration of buffs, do more damage when your health is above 50%, reload skills faster, reduce casting time, increase armour etc. Nobody would count these items as new skills.

I think a fair comparision is very difficult.
Point is: its about the feeling. Does the player got the feeling of “i’ve seen everything” and how long does it take till he feels so. HoT has very little content variety and goes more into the depth. Good for people who are farming AP or love repeating open world events. Bad for people who just want to explore. They might be done with HoT after a weekend or two.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is it it strange though that Guild Wars 1 had the exact same holiday decorations and the exact same holiday quests every year, and people just did them and didn’t complain.

Wintersday kept getting updates and was expanded into the expansions. (kamadan got questlines and a decoration, not only tombs, LA, droknar and ascalon. EoTN got new quests and also decorations.)
So: 2005 first wintersday, 2006 nightfall, 2007 UW quests?, 2008 expanded it to eotn, 2009 nothing new?. 2010 snowball fight of gods, 2011 nothing new, 2012 changed hat quest.
EoTN, the last expansion, was released 2007.

Halloween is afaik similar. And that are only two events. There are two other big events which are comparable to wintersday and halloween (canthan new year and dragon festival) plus several smaller events like aprils fool, thanksgiving, eastern, st. patricks, wintersday in july, wayfarer, pirate week.
So even when some events stayed the same, there was overall a bigger variety of events. GW2 has just released a new expansion. Anet hasn’t stopped developing GW2 and is already working on GW3. So its a bit sad they don’t seem to care about the events anymore.

Russia has banned several goods from different countries (like fruits, vegetables, meat, milk). EU has stopped exporting some energy/oil/military technologies and banned products from Crimea, etc.

I doubt videogames are a economical important enough to get banned. But yes, would be risky to invest atm into anything related to russia.

Afaik there are only english, german, french and spanish available. I doubt russia is important enough as a customer to spend the effort to translate the game.

mrstealth.6701:

You do when they have made public comments that could be damaging to your company, sales, reputation, and community.

Had DnT kept quiet about their rapid completion and profiting due to having early test access, this would have been an internal issue resolved by silently removing the guild from testing. However, DnT decided to make their actions public which demanded that Anet react to it in the same public manner.

If they did sign a contract which tells them not to profit from their knowledge. If they didn’t Anet is ok with it. Maybe its even seen as a reward for helping Anet.

There are professional ways to deal with it. For example make clear that they were in the beta. Invite the first “non beta team” to an interview or give them a prize. You could still kick DnT out of the beta, but its stupid to do it in public. It will give other people the impression of a company where public humilation is still an accepted punishment.

AlphaWolf.2709:

You’ve obviously never read up on social justice. I’d encourage you to do so.

This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillory

AlphaWolf.2709:

I don’t understand why Anet is being blamed here.

You don’t fire someone in front of everybody else. That’s just unprofessional.

Altoid.9104:

How is his method flawed? What is better than taking in game dps values to check the theory dps that everyone tends to throw around and discriminate against classes?

It is not completly wrong to try to compare “done damage”. But its very tricky and you have to be very careful or you will get wrong results.

His method is only correct when you’re in the same team and fighting the same boss.
You can not compare two different teams – for example when a team has 25 stacks of might and 25 stacks of vuln your dps should be better than in a team with zero might and vuln.
Builds which offer some might for themselves will get better results in a team without might when you compare them with builds which offer no might. Put the same builds into a team with capped might and you will get different results.

You just have to make sure you compare the same bossfight with the same teams, with the same (always capped) buffs. Then you can say “in team X at boss Y with capped buffs dps is 10k or whatever”. At another boss or in another teamcomposition this value might be wrong.
And you have to redo this after each update changing bossmechanics, skills, …
So all I get out of this debate is: theoretical dps is not realistic dps and
Bossmechanics can make certain builds better. I already knew that – and most players did so too (i think). Many players are switching classes/weapons/builds and are adapting to a boss/team.

Obtena.7952:

Am I to believe that even in the most ideal speed run, optimized situation, Engi does 17K DPS (or whatever it is now) as I’ve been told in Nike’s vid? OK, show me. I hear Revenant can do 25K DPS? Shouldn’t be that hard to demonstrate that even 80% of that can be achieved or say where it’s relevant .. or are the numbers actually HIGHLY dependent on the situation … so much so that they are rendered absurd or irrelevant for most gameplay? Almost no mechanics of any fight are considered. How can any comparisons of builds or absolute DPS values from any of the calculations where these mechanics aren’t considered be taken seriously?

What else is possible? Ofc these calculated dps are very “theoretical”. But you get an impression of the potential of a build.

A realistic test would require huge amounts of work:
-you would have to form a team which keeps all buffs up. Missing buffs will give wrong results.
-you need to repeat the test several times to get an average value
-you need to do this for every boss ingame for every build

Your results would be a huge list of bosses and builds.

Lupi:
- guardian condi build A: X dps
- guardian condi build B: Y dps
-guardian power build
-warrior power build
- …..
Mossman:
- guardian condi build A: X dps
- guardian condi build B: Y dps
-guardian power build
-warrior power build
- …..

Its way easier to give out a “raw dps” value. For both sides: players and testers.
But players have to use their brains. An enemy immune against condi-damage (or with condi remove) will cause lower dps for condi builds. Enemies moving around a lot or forcing players to dodge often will favour condi-builds or ranged builds. Etc.
Players have to figure that out themselves. Those dps values can give you a rough impression, nothing more.

Kami Poi.4659:

I don’t mind that folks want to be the best at certain things but spreading misinformation and enticing people to kick players based on their class and not their skill level is wrong.

There is no good indicator for your skill level ingame. All you can do before beginning the dungeon is to judge on class, acitive/used skills, choice of weapons and AP.
Classes get kicked not only because of dps. Afaik necro was often critized for bringing not enough teamsupport.
A group consists of several classes fulfilling different roles. In the past it was usually a guardian (stabi, blinds, WoR, condiremove) , a warrior (banners, might), a thief (stealth, stacks, blind) and two eles (vuln, fury, might, blinds, icebow). When you know what each class is supposed to do in your dungeonpath you can replace some of them. If you don’t it is risky to change anything. For some content a guard is not needed. Or a thief. You can replace them with a necro or whatever. But sometimes they are needed and you might die because of missing stabi/WoR etc. Good groups can compensate a lot. They know what everyone is supposed to do and maybe the ele is switching to focus to replace a WoR. Or you use engi stealth instead of a thief. Not so good groups get into trouble. Most PUGs are bad at adapting to new situations. They might still be able to do a quick and good dungeonrun in a meta-team. Lets say you replace both eles with necros. In some dungeonpaths it would work. In others (for example) stealth is needed. You need some blasts for stealths. Ofc the guard can switch to hammer for skip parts. Most guards won’t do so, even when stealth is seriously lacking. Your dps might still be ok, but you will get into trouble at stealth parts. Maybe you can rush through without stealth or whatever – but it can cause troubles.

TL;DR: when you don’t know what you’re doing it is usually better to stick to the meta. If everyone knows what to do you can ofc change a lot. Other options might even be better. But it requires more knowledge of the whole team.

Some time ago players complained about dungeons only giving good rewards for completing them. Chests and enemies on the path usually only drop worthless junk.

I think trashmobs should drop better, more rewarding, loot. COE has groups of fast dying enemies which are usually worth killing.
Maybe it helps to increase droprates or improve loot of veterans/elites in dungeons. Or add some easy to kill trashmobs. Or let bosses drop more than one champ bag.
But….I don’t think Anet cares about dungeons. Imho they are great teamcontent (GW2 has a lack of it), a great way to learn about gameplay mechanics/improve your skill, more “casualfriendly” content. When raids really are targeted at the hardcore players: I doubt its a good idea to offer some easy zerg-play content (open world) and raids and nearly nothing in between. There should be a huge variety to team focussed content with different difficulties, so players can become better players. Find content which meats their skilllevel.
But…well…thats nothing new, 2012 arguments. Anet never cared and kept focussing only on huge open world events.