Jon, ANet has always been too paranoid about things like this. I would much rather have a “ruined” economy where everything is dirt cheap and I’m free to enjoy the game, rather than having to “bump” into safety nets all the time. Just remove it. It’s not a big deal. You’re ruining the game for 95% of your players just because you don’t want the other 5% to maybe do something that you might not like.
Actually, that’s the exact opposite of what would happen. When economies get ruined through some exploit leading to a rapid injection of currency, everything gets very expensive, not cheap. The term “MUDflation” refers to the same currency devaluation (and thus inflation of prices) that exists in real life.
Also, it isn’t a matter of some people maybe doing something they might not like, this phenomenon happens in basically every MMO to date (and the MUDs that preceded them). The problem is that players who have limited time or pick up the game at a later date find they can’t keep themselves adequately stocked with equipment appropriate to their level because the prices have risen to the point that it basically requires a fully-leveled character to subsidize them.
Some pertinent considerations would be:
Are you running back and forth between 2 DEs in close proximity over and over?
Are you farming a single DE chain over and over?
Are you moving around a zone doing several different DEs without repeating any?
This could be a major consideration. If you are doing the first or second option, you may be running into the “this is not intended” thing. If repeating the same DEs over and over is what triggers the DR system, then it means that ANet is trying to get people to stop “farming” and move around. In that case the complaint about how ANet is “making us farm” is turned on its head.
I’ve not yet run into any DR that I have noticed, but I tend to travel around a zone a lot and participate in DEs all over. However, I do notice that people say once DR has kicked in, it doesn’t seem to reset when they move along to something new or change zones. That may be a separate issue or not, hard to say since I haven’t even seen it kick in, myself.
If this game bombs, it will mostly be because of homogenized class roles, shallow combat, lack of bar customizability, largely unengaging group dynamics and content structure geared toward singleplayer experience.
How do you get that the “content structure” is “geared towards singleplayer experience?”
You don’t have to compete to “tag” mobs in order to get XP off of them, I constantly see people rush towards a downed or killed player icon on the map, when a DE lights up, people show up from every direction to participate, etc.
If anything, this game encourages cooperative rather than antagonistic behaviors that typify just about every other MMO I’ve played.
A 10% difference is a significant difference, let alone 20% per piece; when you factor in 6 armor pieces, classes wearing heavy armor are effectively using over seven pieces.
10/20% “per piece” is still 10/20% overall, math is hard.
One could argue the removal of the holy trinity was a dumbing down of a well structured and efficient method to run dungeons, yet a majority of the fan base seem fine with the fact that it’s gone.
This game isn’t about “running dungeons” like the prototypical contemporary MMO is, so that might have something to do with it. Also an efficient way of doing things doesn’t mean it is the efficient way of doing things.
The point is that due to the fact that the trinity is gone, all the classes are supposed to be on equal footing and all able to take up any role. The different armor types limit certain classes from doing just that. It’s a housekeeping issue: the classes and weapons have been well balanced (for the most part), but the armor is still based off a “those who wear heavy armor will be tanks and those who wear light armor will be squishies in the back.”
There are numerous other balance considerations to make besides the armor stat. Maximum damage potentials are different, utility skills are different, other base stats are different.
The line of thinking you are using seems to be “all else being equal, these different armor values cause an imbalance.” The key issue here is: not all else is equal. I’ve also seen some non-heavy armor wearers do some crazy stuff when they have aggro. Since nearly anyone with the skill can be an “avoidance tank” the heavy=tank/light=glass cannon paradigm isn’t as strict as found elsewhere.
I don’t think you understand what the problem is. You’re trying to push me to a specific “backstage” role of healer / buffer and you’re telling me that it should be fun. It’s not. I don’t want to be crippled and pushed to these roles, just so that I can play with my friend. All this reasoning really boils down to “just attack less, be more passive and use this passiveness to help friend, maybe”. It’s not about gamestyle, it’s about what the game has to offer for me to overcome these problems. Yes, I always can just go for healing. But it suddenly is no longer fun for me. I have 8 years of playing Druid Healer in WoW dungeons and raids. I liked healing, but I’m done with it. If I ever want it again, I’ll just go back to WoW, because it’s perfect there. In GW2 I want this equality everyone keeps talking about.
The issue seems to be you want to “help” your friend, but lack the humility to do so.
“crippling yourself”
“backstage role”
“being more passive”
The fact that you seem inherently insulted, slighted or emasculated by the act of taking a supporting role in someone else’s journey seems to indicate the problem is not with the game design itself, but that your personality just doesn’t seem to square with doing so.
Like when a kid asks their dad to help build a derby racer and the dad ends up just doing the whole thing basically themselves while the kid watches, then wonders why the whole “bonding” experience didn’t really materialize.
Yeah, on Tarnished Coast the southern invasion in SoD won’t send reinforcements to the rally point (been that way for several days now). As a result nothing happens but the defensive holds on an endless loop.
At this point interest has waned and even the northern and central invasions frequently lose their beach-heads (even though those two segments are still waiting at the rally point according to the overall status). I even saw it get all the way to having basically nothing left but Fort Trinity at one point. ML was just barren, I think I saw maybe 2 other players in an hour+ of running around to WPs/POIs. Haven’t even been to CS, yet.
I finished my last 15-20 levels very over-leveled for the zones I was in and final wrap-up was in FS. I fitted up in rares and headed to Orr hoping to experience the pinnacle of dynamic group world play and start the journey towards set of Melandru exotics and have made next to no progress on that after almost a week.
This is compounded by the fact that I prefer to play in a support role. Providing buffs/boons, healing and reviving like crazy while taking shots of opportunity or when things get a bit overwhelming sometimes knocks me down to silver (or even bronze if we’re short-handed and getting hammered a bit), which doesn’t help.
I’ve been an advocate of open-group world content models where your efforts and outcomes change the situation and reality of the game world around you for a decade now. While the efforts they are making are certainly more than available elsewhere, there’s clearly some need for iteration. Don’t get me wrong, though, it isn’t like the raid farming model started out looking anything like the highly refined concepts that get pumped out in treadmill games at this point, either. It will take time and I hope they are willing to continue working at it and not change course to make a bunch of dungeons instead. But they definitely have to put the work in and get a better implementation of the concept or it’s back to 10 more years of arguments on MMO forums where people sneer at the idea of dynamic content and say “GW2 tried that and failed, so we should never try it again.”
Since you have to follow Twitter to find out what is going on around here, apparently:
@GuildWars2
I got booted as well, I will escalate. ^MK
Ah, you must be of the new generation who constantly wants rewarding and doesn’t do things just for the fun of them.
So you’d be fine with those who focus purely on personal damage output and their own performance only get their rewards reduced to the same point that people who focus on support do?
Because they should just be doing it for the fun of it and not need constant rewarding, right?
Just another example of someone arguing that “the intrinsic reward is all that should matter” to distract from the fact that they benefit from extrinsic rewards being tilted in their favor.
(edited by Kerri Knight.3168)
Batman.2078your reward for helping others is knowing that you’ve helped someone. if you want a reward for it then I think you might be doing it for the wrong reasons
Ah, so the DPSer gets both the intrinsic reward of enjoying that they contributed damage as well as the extrinsic reward of high honor/event medals and the support player is supposed to be happy with the intrinsic reward only.
Your reward for doing high damage is knowing that you dished out some major damage. If you want a reward for it then I think you might be doing it for the wrong reasons.
Kinda hard to escape the obvious double-standard, isn’t it?
Mana.6154Batman, I think the point he’s making is that support doesn’t reward players. Atm, only DPS does, so most people will roll DPS in their self-interest.
Glad to see someone understands the basics of behavioral conditioning. Pavlov thanks you :9.