Guild Wars 2

Here’s one from the other night that amused me: I was helping out with a SW chest train by being tag, while somebody else did the actual leading. It was getting late and I was getting drowsy.

Twice, the guy I was following started moving away and my brain went, “The tag isn’t moving. I’m going to wait to follow until the tag moves.”

Then it hit me that I was the tag LOL. Luckily, I corrected it quickly.

The only thing I’ve heard about tomes is that you won’t be able to use them to level masteries.

Limiting tomes to once a day use in general wouldn’t make any sense, other than annoying people. It sounds like something somebody drummed up out of boredom and it spread through paranoia.

Yeah, wait until I’m ready to play Russian Roulette with my time again. Sounds like a real blast.

I was trying to do Victory and Death: Kill the Elder Dragon Zaitan and I just lost something like 40 minutes of my life because my internet decided to crap out in the middle of it and now I have to start over the mission at the beginning.

I’m pretty upset right now and I can’t help but think the PS desperately needs some kind of checkpoints in place to handle this, so that if you DC or you have to leave your computer and you get booted out for some reason, you don’t lose all of your progress on a mission. I’m frankly flabbergasted that there’s nothing in place for this, considering how significant a chunk of the game is devoted to instanced storytelling and how much time you guys have had to do something about it.

I can’t be the only one who has dealt with this crap. Making a mission super long and then putting you back at the beginning if you get booted out for some reason is absurd. It just is.

A solution would not, and should not, be that hard. If you have to, just take longer missions and split them into different instances. Each time you hit a place that’s good for a “checkpoint,” you leave the instance, re-enter, and you’re now saved to the next part. For killing Zhaitan mission, checkpoints could be each boss kill, for example.

The design is most likely finalized at this point, assuming it’s coming out with HoT, but I do agree with you that some simpler designs for medium tops would be welcome. Fancy stuff is great, but it’s hard to piece together cool looking outfits with a hodge podge of fancyfancyfancy.

In no particular order of priority, I’d say the most neglected design types for each class are:
Medium – Simple tops
Light – Simple bottoms
Heavy – Simple bottoms (particularly slimmer ones)

An example for light would be something like the embroidered pants, but without the frills. Heavy, something like the heavy plate pants, except more metallic instead of padded looking.

The idea: Games that are something like half duration. 250 points instead of 500.

The reason: Geared toward players new to GW2 PvP, these would be there for breadth of experience, rather than depth. Half duration =
- Facing more players in a shorter amount of time
- Seeing different maps more often
- Less chance of frustration if getting impaled initially (less time to get annihilated by the other side)

Other stuff (possible parameters):
- Halved rewards, so there is no reward benefit to doing these instead of the longer games
- No penalties incurred for leaving (easy to jump in and out to get experience) OR penalties incurred for leaving (prepping newbies for consequences of leaving in serious games)
- Higher ranks restricted from entering (maybe) OR all ranks able to come in, so newbies see breadth of opponent skill level
[Anyone else got ideas to add?]

Linfang.1087:

Combing through Dry Top, still looking for keys, but until then..

Love that movie.

It’s horizontal character progression. shrug

Anet is a solid group of devs, but it isn’t a solid group of geniuses. They aren’t going to magically solve the problem of keeping people busy. One way to do that, while keeping in the spirit of their anti-vertical-progression mantra, is to do horizontal progression instead.

None of this is required, as far as I can tell. It’s just icing. And I’m not saying the fact that it isn’t required means you shouldn’t speak up if it bores you (you absolutely should). But don’t expect Anet to revolutionize everything. They are human and working within the same design philosophy constraints as most of the MMO industry.

That said, is buying coffee exciting? Not really. But Starbucks made it interesting by turning the whole thing into an experience of prestige. Half of this stuff is marketing and perspective.

It’s best not to sit there and calculate out how much XP you need because much like staring at a clock, all it does is slow down the time in your mind. To me, the spirit of masteries is that you naturally get XP to unlock them while you are enjoying other aspects of the game.

Currently, once you hit level 80, getting XP is all but meaningless (there was the skill point reward each level at one point, now I’m not sure — a spirit shard maybe?). With masteries, there will now be a point to XP after 80. But rather than being pressured to hit a new level cap like some expansions do, it is horizontal progression that you can do on auto-pilot. Bing, pick a mastery thing to go for. Do other stuff and eventually you’ve got enough XP for it.

If you think of masteries as the goal itself, then yes, the grind will undoubtedly bore you.

Crinn.7864:

Why wouldn’t you be doing unranked? It’s called UNranked for a reason -it’s not serious. Yeah obviously people still want to win, but you’re never going to be able to PvP if you’re too afraid of offending someone.

And really the fact that you realize that you’re underskilled puts you ahead of a lot of players.

You’re right and I needed to hear that. (I just did an unranked and it wasn’t bad at all.)

I still hold, however, that the current setup isn’t very good for getting people new to GW2 PvP acclimated to it. Particularly if they are new to PvP as a whole. I mean, I’m relatively new to GW2 PvP, but more or less a video game veteran with some experience in PvP and it took someone telling me to do it (and then trying it) to realize that unranked arena is basically like other games’ version of normal PvP queues.

I see the word arena and my reflex is to think that it’s serious. I don’t know why they use the word arena when the connotation is usually for serious PvP. Putting the word unranked in there doesn’t really help, since somebody new to GW2 isn’t gonna know how ranks work in the first place.

Add to that that the easy-to-notice Play Now button says nothing about what it’s for and gets you into a game faster than unranked, so it’s more appealing already. There is no description, for example, that says, “Play Now is a come-and-go setup with no penalties incurred from stepping in and out” (or some such thing).

It probably sounds like I’m being nit-picky here, but this is the kind of stuff that can confuse people, believe it or not. It’s all a part of usability.

sephiroth.4217:

Labjax.2465:

When I’m on the losing side, I can’t get through 200 points without seeing someone on my team leave. When I’m on the winning side, I can’t get through 200 points without a “team unbalanced” prompt. Are you kidding me?

From this I will assume you join custom hotjoin matches, nothing wrong with that either but it’s just a hotjoin. People come and go through those matches just trying to get dailies done, some quick kills or warm up or what ever..

If you don’t want that, join unranked or ranked ques, there’s still afks from time to time but atleast it’s a 5v5 locked into the team and game until there’s a winner.

Where do I start with unranked tho? I got no idea what I’m doing. I mean, I’m passable at 1v1 if I’m facing somebody as nubbish as me, but I got no idea how to do team PvP in this game, other than hitting buttons that seem right and praying.

I’m the kinda guy who doesn’t want to go into a semi-serious match, unless I can be reasonably good at contributing.

That screenshot was a total mic drop.

I think you are more or less on the money, OP. But we can’t expect miracle work from Anet. They revolutionized (or at least, “did differently”) a few features and went the standard route on the rest. Which is what most MMOs do.

To escape the grind design trap, you have to come up with a viable alternative for keeping mass number of people to log in for hours and hours out of their day. I’ve noticed that people who get by on “messing around” (e.g. not playing to work toward a goal at all) tend to also be people who don’t have many hours out of their day to play in the first place.

It’s relatively easy to find things to dink around with in a non-serious way, in any game, for 2-3 hours. Doing that for 6-12 hours is a different story. Grinds give the dedicated players something to do and as much as people complain about grinds (myself included) the same people who complain about them tend to do them anyway because the psychological appeal is so strong. The carrot on the stick is a simple, long-term goal to work toward and it’s promised at the end of the rainbow.

If you can think of a truly viable alternative, I think you will impress the entire game development community.

Dawdler.8521:

Labjax.2465:

Dawdler.8521:

Labjax.2465:

He is Neo in the Matrix, with the importance of Morpheus.

So you’re saying that Trahearne is Superman Jesus? O.o

I’m saying he has the everyman quality of Neo, but because he isn’t the main character, it makes him bland and dull.

Oh. So he’s just Jesus then. Got it.

Lol.

Dawdler.8521:

Labjax.2465:

He is Neo in the Matrix, with the importance of Morpheus.

So you’re saying that Trahearne is Superman Jesus? O.o

I’m saying he has the everyman quality of Neo, but because he isn’t the main character, it makes him bland and dull.

The other day, in EotM… our zerg was chasing down the enemy zerg at observatory. We chased them all the way to the top and just as the fringes of our lead are reaching them, they jump off the top of obs.

Except instead of jumping off at the part that’s safe, where you can leap a few times and hit the middle without dying, they jumped off to the left before you even reach the champ and fell to their deaths.

Another time in EotM, our zerg was at BL keep with scorps, tearing down the wall. We’re moments from getting it down, probably 30%, when we hear that FR is incoming. Rather than face FR head on or rush inside as the wall comes down, the commander backs up onto the far end of the bridge away from the wall and puts down an AC. Unsurprisingly, only half of the zerg follows him. The rest tunnel-vision into the keep and die on the boss, or get picked off by FR from behind.

Then (it gets better!) FR is fighting the keep boss and commander pushes forward a bit, into the keep. Close enough to set up an AC near where the wall was. A quick glance at numbers shows that we can probably take what’s left of FR, but rather than push FR while they are occupied with the boss, commander backs away and runs.

I rush in to prove a point, pop warrior CDs, and survive a good 10 seconds against the entire zerg, slowing their cap progress.

Commander says in chat, “Why did you guys run in.”

coso.9173:

I’ll never get all the hate for poor Trahearne…

It’s because he has all the charisma of a dead snail, the personality of a sloth, and the memorability of eye crust.

He is Neo in the Matrix, with the importance of Morpheus.

Andred.1087:

So much salt, I love it when people whine about “grind” when you can literally do anything in-game that gives decent loot and get your ascended gear in a few months’ time, just with a couple hours a day. Top-tier gear doesn’t just fall out of the sky!

To be fair, from the way Anet described the game early on, it would seem that top-tier gear more or less was supposed to fall out of the sky. So if people are basing their expectations on early dev proclamations, then I can see why they would be mad.

Altho, at this point, people should prob work on getting over what the devs said 2-3 years ago. As they love to say in Game of Thrones, “Words are wind.” That’s the first lesson of transactions. Anything that isn’t written in a contract is potential BS.

Even stuff in contracts can be BS, but at least if it’s contract, you can sue the bejeezus out of people who try to stiff you.

Torvic.8256:

Labjax.2465:

Easy. Taimi would take over. She’s about as ill-fitting a leader as Treehearne, so not much would change.

Why would Taimi take over if your character is actually the one next in line to do so?

Because it would be amusing to watch.

Easy. Taimi would take over. She’s about as ill-fitting a leader as Treehearne, so not much would change.

I feel like I’m missing something. Why would you need to see their names?

Why? What is the point of queuing up for a PvP match if you don’t intend to finish it? Why are you even playing PvP?

Every single time I use the random PvP queue, without fail, the players on the losing team drop from the match like lemmings off a cliff in EotM. I seriously see people leave after the first time they lose an encounter with the enemy team. The FIRST time. This is an extremely common occurrence.

When I’m on the losing side, I can’t get through 200 points without seeing someone on my team leave. When I’m on the winning side, I can’t get through 200 points without a “team unbalanced” prompt. Are you kidding me?

This is not good game design. There is no other way to put it. Sorry if that’s rude, but it’s true. When people can leave whenever they want with no penalties, they will. Because most people who play PvP in MMOs are ready to quit the first time they lose.

The only thing that stops them in other games is the penalty incurred for leaving. This is mind-boggling. I can’t even wrap my head around why this is being allowed to exist, unattended, as if it’s actually PvP. You support competitive, tournament PvP, so why in the sam heck would you let your random queues be an utter disaster and thereby discourage people from entering the PvP scene, unless they have a dedicated group of friends to enter the PvP scene with?

And before people reply to say it, yes, I’m mad. But I’m making good points and you know it.

P. S. If you think you can ignore this problem, it’s only going to become more noticeable when more people start entering the PvP scene to get the new legendary drops.

Also, to those responding, if you feel the urge to say, “Do unranked arena,” please explain to me then what the point of the random queue is exactly and why entry to the PvP scene is a usability nightmare.

Lauriewonnacott.9841:

I really have no problem with people playing an MMO just for the solo content, but I still don’t understand what solo content you guys want but haven’t received. Help me to understand this for real please, because as far as I can see you’re getting more solo content than any other MMO I’m familiar with and I’m familiar with MANY. They’re adding adventures kitten – the mother of all repeatable solo content. You’ve got the Living Story, which is legitimately a solo narrative experience unlike what’s offered in almost any other MMO. It just seems like you guys are complaining that you aren’t getting enough solo content but your reasoning isn’t “here’s what we wanted but didn’t get”, but rather “here’s what they added for social play, now I’ll conveniently ignore all of the content that is solo to make it look like I’m being slighted”.

I’m pretty content with where it’s at right now, myself. The only thing that’s creeping up on me in annoyance is the thought that, to my understanding, I basically won’t be able to do guild anything anymore on my own. I didn’t do a lot as it is (mostly just collected influence and got a few upgrades) but it’s sounding like even that will be out of reach for me now. (I know I know, here comes the parade of people saying that guilds are for groups.)

I’m just being honest.

Celtic Lady.3729:

They want fractals to replace dungeons kitten -man content, basically.

Edit: I didn’t know the number five was a naughty word…

The filter on this forum is hysterically overactive.

You can’t even use the word a’ssess.

Or the phrase “isn’t’ it?”

TheLastNobody.8319:

Labjax.2465:

Speculation is going to cause more market chaos than the actual changes.

Your best bet is probably to sacrifice a goat to the great twenty-sided die in the sky and do a barrel roll. If that doesn’t work, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Human sacrifice?

Yeah, you could try human sacrifice next. As long as it’s not an actual human. Just use a blow-up doll instead.

I’m still trying to figure out where this idea of “doing everything is legendary” comes from. Cause it’s definitely nothing at all like real life. in RL, pretty much every famous, legend-like person is/was super good at one thing and that’s what they were known for. They weren’t famous for being moderately good at a lot of different things.

Speculation is going to cause more market chaos than the actual changes.

Your best bet is probably to sacrifice a goat to the great twenty-sided die in the sky and do a barrel roll. If that doesn’t work, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Windsagio.1340:

I had a longer post, but kind of got bored halfway and cut it.

The point is this: “A designer has to be very cautious with the tools they give players”.

The gun analogy is terrible on all kinds of level (earlier they were going for the same point using terrorism, which was equally dumb).

~~~

To the point you’re trying to make, you’re outright wrong. A tool (in this case a gameplay meter) sends a very specific message to the players on how the game should be measured. It puts emphasis on the things you meter.

Yes people will be jerks about groups anyways, but adding a meter says “You should be judging people based on these criteria.” Unless they want players playing that way (which would be madness) it’s just harmful to the game.

They never endorsed key farming, but they did allow it for a very long time. All they would need to do is open up the UI/add-on capabilities a bit more, such that making a group meter is both possible and within the ToS. The community would do the rest.

They don’t need to directly endorse meters at all.

And yeah, I’m splitting hairs a bit, but allowing (community does most of the work) and endorsing (Anet does most of the work) are different in terms of how people view them. If Anet never comes out and says, “We want there to be group meters,” but allows them to exist, people can say that Anet is bad for letting them exist, but they can’t say Anet is endorsing them.

There would be anger, but less of a justification for it.

Altho, at this stage of the game… with how long the game has not had group meters… it’s unlikely that it’ll happen unless Anet drastically changes their model, or they come up with some alternative to group meters that acts in a similar fashion. Too many people are emotionally invested in not having their damage on display and would probably quit over it.

Leamas.5803:

Exactly, since I started playing this game over 3 years ago, the single largest influence on the economy, other than ANet manipulating messing with it, was the bots. Flipping was there before the bots, it was there after the bots, but when the bots were removed from the picture, that’s when we really started to see prices skyrocket. The first time I bought T6 they were all under 5s. Within a week or two of the mass bot killing (Over 35000 accounts according to ANet at the time), T6 prices were over 20s and precursors increased more than that. Bots are bad for a whole host of reasons, but if one likens them to robotic miners, they’re good for consumers because they keep stock high and prices low, well, they’re not good for ANet or the poor fellows whose accounts got hacked.

Unlike bots, which keep prices down by keeping stock high, flipping, on the other hand, works on the opposite principle. It helps keep prices down by reducing the amount of available money in the economy, hence reducing the buying/selling power of the individual. Because of the taxes, you can’t just pick any item and expect to make money. Remember, in order to break even on an item purchased for flipping, it has to be sold for approximately 17.5% higher than what you paid for it it for due to the way the taxes work, that 17.5% is permanently removed from the economy. There is money to be made of course: high end dyes, vanity items like skins and some high end recipes can sometimes turn as much as 50% profit, if you’re lucky and patient and wait for the right time to list. Sometimes you lose and take a huge loss, that’s just how it is. If one were to speculate, and had the money to gamble and sit on things, items required for ascended crafting will likely increase somewhat after HoT comes out due to the ascended requirement for raids.

+1 sir. Well said.

Gaebriel.3754:

Hell, I’ve even seen people call leveling (of all things!) in GW2 a grind.

Lol. Maybe it’s a grind for someone who has 2 hours to play a week.

Altho, I was doing a low level Sylvari war for story achieve last night and I got something like 4 levels in about 2 hours, so even at 2 hours a week it wouldn’t be that bad.

I knew a guy who played Vanguard for years and he used to talk about how in that game, it took him months of 16 hour days (every day) to reach max level.

SW event map all the way. Be sure to use LFG to find maps that are in progress if you end up on one with no progress and nobody caring about events. Alternatively, when that happens, you can taxi people in and get an event run going (just don’t waste your time trying to turn a chest farm map into an event map).

I only tried it briefly with the base gliding ability. It may be more robust once you get the extra stuff unlocked. With the base, it was kinda cool, but I felt like I ran out of airtime way too quickly. It seems to be a thing where you have X amount of time you can remain in the air before you drop like a rock.

Like I said in another thread though, I am spoiled by Saints Row 4’s aerial system.

Dang dude. It looks like it could be concept art for the game. Like seriously high caliber artwork. Well done.

Eirdyne.9843:

“I only play Jumping Puzzles because they give no rewards…,” stops talking and blinks like Verin Mathwin just remembering where she is.

I think I’m going to agree with the OP on this one. The other day I realized, “Hey, I sort of need some Emypreal Stars for some ascended weapons. I guess I’ll go do dungeons…”

We blazed through Aetherblade stuff, then lost a person. We gained were some AP Gazillion elitest who proceeded to die to just about everything. We kicked them, got a newbie and did fine. The group splits up, I find a new dungeon. They’re doing Path 3 of this or that, but no other. The group does alright, splits up, and there’s another group I’m in. Same thing, path 1, but not the others. …Repeat this store enough times and I’ve spent most of what time I have playing twirling my thumbs waiting for a chance to do all the dungeons today. Why? Empyreal Fragments, of course.

Then I think to myself… “Oh, heck with this. I logged in to play, not be treated to watching text on a badly made group finder.”

I think, “I know. Jumping Puzzles! They’re fun. I’ll go do those.” I blaze through a few of those… and after five maps… I have 17 Empyreal Fragmetns. The breaks in my head began to squeal at that point. “Why am I doing this?” This was the first thought I had. Why does Anet continue to kick us in the teeth every time we try to get anything out of playing? We can’t farm mats, we can’t do dungeons unless you’re in the meta, and you can’t progress unless you do either of the former. Wonderful…

So, ya. It’s about time they work on the open world and solo content a little bit. Bacteria would starve in this desert.

Word of advice: Unless I’m having a senior moment at a young age, you can get Empyreal Fragments from EotM chests. Which is pretty efficient if you have a good commander. I don’t know why I’m not seeing it on the Wiki. Wikifail.

I’ve also been getting a few doing SW event runs. Not totally sure where I’m getting them from. Probably from the champ bags.

I think I was doing it the puzzle way in the beginning, until I realized I could do EotM, and then I never looked back.

Zaroua.2714:

“Where does this great difference come from?”

The difference between getting kicked out of a group because of perceived lack of DPS and an actual lack of DPS is ignorance. If you get kicked out of a group for being a ranger or a necro, you can tell yourself that the people who kicked you out are completely ignorant and block them and go on your way, knowing you won’t interact with them again.

However, if you get kicked out because of low DPS on the meter, it could be based on a great number of factors that others in this thread have pointed out. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that frustrated players will look at the meter after a wipe, look at the lowest person and blame them for the wipe, regardless of the fact that this person could’ve been playing the best out of the group for that attempt. Lowest person gets kicked out for that reason and rage ensues.

And that’s the crux of the problem: getting kicked out because of ignorant idiots is one thing that’s annoying and frustrating, but getting kicked out for having the lowest damage when “playing well” doesn’t have much to do with doing the most damage is beyond enraging. And that feeling is one that doesn’t need to be introduced to GW2.

This seems like kind of a weak argument. It sounds like you are saying that meters are worse than not having them because being kicked for having low damage while playing support is more enraging than being kicked because you play a specific class that people don’t think is good enough.

I mean, you’re really getting into subjective emotional reaction territory and while peoples’ emotional reactions are definitely valid, you can’t speak for everyone when it comes to how frustrating different kinds of group rejection are. You can only speak for yourself and, I guess, your friends if you ask them how they feel about it.

Firelysm.4967:

But i wonder, why are Trading Post flippers still allowed to flip without punishment? Those people control the economy, and those people don’t even play the game for real. I’m not saying how people should play the game, but this type of playing is killing the game economy and gaming experience is suffering because ArenaNet is allowing this!

Flippers don’t control the economy. They influence the economy, sure, as do the players who go out and loot thousands of items. They don’t control it.

TP flippers are more or less like the guys who play the stock market in RL. They are playing a game of analysis and prediction more than anything, and sometimes they lose. The way they profit is by winning more often than they lose.

Fox.3469:

Not at all, meters highly encourage this behaviour, i’m no stranger to the feeling myself, if i topped dps meters in wow and we didn’t down a boss, that made me just a little irritated, even if i was playing with close friends or people i knew who were skilled. The feeling that you top the meters is great, but it comes with a feeling that others maybe just don’t put as much effort into it as you do. It ranks party members in a way that is irrelevant to the actual gameplay. Pve should not in any way rank party members. Because once you rank people the ones on the lower part of the ranking will always be considdered “dragging the team down”, even if it’s in the back of people’s mind. This is plainly counterproductive to team spirit.

True, but you can also get team spirit dragged down from flying blind and feeling mutinous when you begin to wonder if your teammate over there is not pulling his weight and that’s why you’re failing. You might even get a little Dunning-Kruger going on and think your contributions are amazing, when objectively, everybody else is doing much more.

I’m still not seeing how these attitudes are tied inexorably to meters. The meters cement, I guess, who has a reason to act a little superior, but

“How often would this happen though”

On a daily basis, just like people are already getting kicked out of groups for a PERCEIVED lack of damage.

If people can get kicked for a perceived lack of damage, then again I ask:

Where does this great difference come from?

What I am hearing over and over is “meters will be bad, similar to [example of people being elitists without meters even existing].”

That shows that people have it in them to be elitist, regardless of the presence of meters.

Here is an argument from me: Most elitist attitudes in MMOs stem from a few, similar psychological issues: Namely, fear of failure, fear of wasted time, and fear of loss of control. Even in games with meters, I can’t think of one time when people made a thing about DPS in open world content. Why? Because the content wasn’t hard and people largely zerged it until it was dead.

There was maybe a 1% chance of failure during any given world boss fight, so there was no motivation to get worked up about how well each person is contributing.

Go into a dungeon instead, where each player’s contributions are magnified and one kittenup can wipe the whole group, and suddenly competence is all-important. Depending on the game, the dungeon, and the group, you can spend 20 minutes doing a dungeon or you can spend 4 hours. Time management can disappear due to the ability to respawn and try again when you fail to kill a boss. Controlling your gameplay/environment becomes difficult, since so much hinges on the actions of a handful of people. Failing can easily be met with harsh consequences of having to start over, even if it’s only one person’s failure.

Compare that with zerg open world content, where the incompetence of one or two, or even twenty players can be mitigated by sheer numbers.

In short: Content that puts a lot of pressure on a small number of players is the single largest contributor to elitist attitudes. It breeds discontent with your teammates and instead of that discontent being mitigated by friendship and camaraderie, the fickle nature of MMO alliances means that many of the people you team with are barely acquaintances.

To forgive a friend for incompetence is easy. Forgiving a stranger for it is a lot harder.

Fox.3469:

Labjax.2465:

So your argument is people would get kicked more often?

My argument is people would be kicked for reasons they cannot help, for random factors happening in the fight. I extended my post with an example.

How often would this happen though, is the question, isn’t’ it?

I can buy, without proof, that it would happen some. But whether it would happen with any sort of frequency is anyone’s guess, as far as I can tell. Seems like the frequency would depend a lot on the community’s attitude in general.

Fox.3469:

Because unlike the two other options, meters don’t show objectively what happens in the game. If people want only full ascended, sure, if they want people with certain builds, that’s fine also imo (in guild groups this is how it works anyway, you try and beat the boss as a team, and look for the optimal way together, if you want to pug, then you gotta go with what the leader wants, or start your own pug) however, dps meters, even if only in raids (wich i doubt it would be and that’s a problem by itself) do not give an accurate representation of skill at all. A certain person can do less dps but be way more skilled, because in that certain attempt of the boss, he had to dodge a whole lot while other people got lucky on positioning. Some of those people may have just straight up died if they got into a situation like the first person got into, but because of a number on a meter that first person now gets kicked. Meters do not represent skill, while armor is a pure stat increase (granted some people may be more skilled and have less armor, and thereby do better, but this is irrelevant to making a pug group, since you want at least optimal gear if you have all people you don’t know) and build is something the leader of a pug group should always have controll over. (not telling you to change, but if they demand a certain type of warrior, for example PS right now in fractals, then it’s their right to do so since they made the group and you got to meet what they want if you want to join, you can always create your own)

So your argument is people would get kicked more often?

PopeUrban.2578:

I have never understood why people go out of their way to solo in MMOs. There are far more gratifying single player experiences in the form of single player games, largely because most single player games don’t need to balance your time and reward acquisition against a massive economy filled with other players, make story concessions to ensure you completing a task doesn’t interfere with another player doing so, and a number of other reasons.

Have you ever hung out at the mall? Gone into a coffee shop to work on your laptop? Walked through a park?

It’s kind of like that.

Single-player games are good, but you are well and truly alone while playing them. I mean, why do you think companions are such a popular design choice in RPGs? Because without them, you’d constantly be reminded of how alone you are while playing.

Human beings are social creatures and even those of us who need a lot of alone time often enjoy the sense of being in the vicinity of other human beings. When I was growing up, I had a lot of brothers and few games, so when we played single-player games, it was often with someone else watching.

I enjoy MMOs as multi-player games too, but for reasons that I’m not going to go into, I don’t want to play them as multi-player right now, unless it’s a situation where I can bow out as needed, without owing anyone my presence.

Does that make sense?

Morfedel.4165:

We have already seen a lot of elitism and toxicity in regards to whether or not you have the proper gear or playing the proper build even without DPS meters. if you think that it won’t get at least as bad if not worse with meters added in, you’re kidding yourself. So yes there are benefits, but there are also a lot of unpleasant consequences, & a lot of people, myself included, feel the consequences outweigh the benefits by a vast Margin.

I want to make a quick point here: If you already see a lot of elitism and toxicity even with meters, why do you think meters would make a big difference?

Zaroua.2714:

“If you are failing a DPS check because your overall DPS is too low”

This isn’t WoW. There’s no gear treadmill, there’s no set group composition. Anet cannot and will not balance raids around tight DPS checks because they simply cannot do so. They mostly refuse to balance PvE and PvP separately and so class balance problems are guaranteed to happen. Since the balance will be uneven, some classes will do less DPS or provide less group DPS than others while fulfilling their role. Those professions will not be brought to raids and players who do not have ascended gear for the character type that is needed to beat the bleeding edge DPS check will be unable to raid until power creep or nerfs happen. This is an unsustainable model, one I’m certain anet has considered and quickly rejected.

If you are certain they will reject the model, then why are we even having this conversation? I thought I’d made it clear that what I’m saying hinges on the possibility of tight DPS checks.

That said, from today’s blog post on the economy:

Over the last couple of years, dungeons have been a major part of the game’s economy; between unique armor and liquid rewards, they’re often farmed. In the expansion, we’ll move away from this paradigm. As the game progressed, we shifted focus from dungeons to fractals and raids, and we firmly believe that fractals and raids are the content that we want to continue to support.

Granted, this is in relation to loot, but the language there is interesting. “we firmly believe that fractals and raids are the content that we want to continue to support.”

Zaroua.2714:

“DPS meter will show very quickly who is not pulling their weight”

Quantify Alacrity and Quickness uptime for each profession and each build of each profession. Next, once you have a spreadsheet to run all the simulations needed to quantify the effects of Alacrity and Quickness for each profession and each build of each profession, apply them to the “DPS contribution through buffs” tab of the DPS meter. Once you’re done with that, come back to this thread and post your results. I, for one, would be ecstatic to know the results, and I’m sure the rest of the community members who care about performance will also be thankful for your hard work.

I take it you are trying to imply that support specs will get neglected? DPS meters would actually show the value of support skills/specs, clear as day, when you see the difference in how high each player can get.

Zaroua.2714:

“Way faster than some complex process using a video and logs.”

Only true for patchwerk type fights. Any decent fight with any amount of complexity will need to be analyzed through logs to accurately pinpoint who’s slacking in DPS. But let’s take a step back here. What you would want to use the DPS meter for isn’t to exclude bad players – you wouldn’t bring them in the first place or you’d quickly weed them out once you realized they’re awful – it’s to find out which professions are underperforming in the hands of great players in order not to bring them in. Unless you intend to pug those raids. But that’s a whole different problem.

Uh, no. Please don’t put motives in my mouth. I don’t know what fights you’ve done in your apparently massive resume of raiding, but I have never needed to sift through a log to see who is slacking in DPS when there is DPS meter right there. If the person couldn’t DPS as well because they have a special role in the fight, that’s obvious from the pre-fight coordination. You don’t need a log to discern it. If they couldn’t DPS well because they’re failing at mechanics, no log is going to fix their problem.

Zaroua.2714:

“What this has to do with being forced to carry multiple sets of gear, I’ll never know.”

Anet wants to tune their raids to require ascended gear to beat; or at least, they’re assuming ascended gear will be required and are tuning accordingly but probably don’t have access to testers/QA who are skilled and knowledgeable enough to beat those fights in exotic gear by min-maxing to the extreme. If ascended gear is required and DPS meters are implemented, the underperforming professions will be shunned and players who play those professions and have a set of ascended gear for that shunned profession will be forced to roll or play a different character and convert/craft ascended armor for that character. But if balance changes happen and the underdog becomes top dog, then everyone needs to convert back or craft anew. Rinse and repeat over a few months and players realize that it’s better to keep multiple sets of ascended gear than to deal with the constantly changing playing field. Without strict DPS timers and without DPS meters to scrutinize who’s underperforming by a few %, this can be entirely avoided.

This assumes that Anet is incapable of competently balancing professions out. So I guess what you are saying is, Anet can avoid the working of balancing professions by keeping numbers largely hidden.

Zaroua.2714:

“In my “extremely extensive” raiding career, I’ve seen countless situations where a DPS meter was helpful.”

Helpful? Sure, no denying that it’s a helpful tool. But it’s not a required tool and incorporating a DPS meter would create more problems for the community as a whole than to would solve. And judging by anet’s past track record, they don’t want the problems associated with DPS meters to crop up in the first place. One can easily see why I make this argument because the whole game was designed around the idea of cooperation instead of the idea of competition that’s so prevalent in other MMOs; in GW2 you don’t compete with other players for drops, crafting materials, rare drops and whatever else.

Like I’ve said numerous times already, it may not be required now. It’s a question of whether the content design will make it into a requirement.

If Anet keeps raids casual, this whole exchange we’re having is a moot point.

Zaroua.2714:

“So I see your “experience card” and raise you with my own”

What, you want my raiding resume? Just ask, the answer will be quite entertaining. Well not for you, but the rest of the people reading the thread will get a good laugh at least.

“As for figuring out what class is best at DPS from no DPS meter, that makes no sense at all. You can guess whose utility abilities will be most useful, but you can’t guess at DPS with no ability to track DPS.”

Spreadsheets.

LOL, no, I don’t need to see your “resume.” My point was, if you’re going to talk about your experience as if it takes the place of an argument, I’m going to pull out my own.

As for spreadsheets, all I can say is… why would you be content with a covered wagon when the world has invented jet planes. That’s gotta be one of the most tedious-sounding solutions to DPS tracking I’ve ever heard of. I think you could make enough money to buy Anet with the extra time you’d spend sorting that out. If that’s the kind of mind-numbing solution people have in this game, in lieu of group DPS meters, then all I can say is, I’m extremely glad I’m not trying to play this game competitively.

Random.4691:

The issue is they are simply not needed and turns off a lot of people. If Anet says "yup, it’s ok, go ahead and create one for yoursleves) it becomes a mandatory feature even if it’s not needed. If they say no, then raids seem more friendly for everyone.

The unfortunate part is, there is no real middle ground, they will either be mandatory or they won’t be allowed. You could use the argument of players having the option but you and I both know that this is nothing more than an excuse and will not be the case at all.

I said it before, personally I have nothing against meters, but I can see the conflict they cause and will lean towards not having them based on this conflict.

Just let the people play the game, if they can complete a raid without it there is no need for it. If you feel that you and your group/guild/friends/whoever benefit from a meter then brainstorm a way to test all factors for yourselves and go forward with the builds and rotations you find to be the best results. You don’t need meters to do the work for you, put some effort in if its that important to you.

I don’t see anything in particular to disagree with here. I think I’ve made it clear that I am talking about IF Anet starts leaning in the direction of raids that have fine-tuned DPS checks. Right now, I have no idea. I have not tested the existing raids and they are in beta to boot.

I am talking about IFs here.

And in this IF scenario, you wouldn’t go in “for fun” and kill the raid bosses in a day. You can have fun doing it, of course, but the question is whether these raids are going to be for the casual-minded or whether they will delve into hardcore territory. Usually how raid cycles work (in games where they are more hardcore) is the raids are tougher on release, but they get nerfed after a few months.

Zaroua.2714:

“They are about optimization and passing DPS checks”

Logs are significantly better at this than meters. Learning to read a log with proper time stamps while comparing it to a video recording of a wipe is the best way to learn what mistakes are being made and why. Then it’s up to the guild/raid group to fix those issues with the tools they have at their disposal. DPS meters offer so little in this regard, even the more advanced ones.

A DPS meter is a log though… also, I’m talking about DPS checks. If you are failing a DPS check because your overall DPS is too low, a DPS meter will show very quickly who is not pulling their weight. Way faster than some complex process using a video and logs.

Zaroua.2714:

“The general idea is, if a raid boss is tuned around optimal damage and healing output from each player to survive and kill the boss, then knowing who isn’t pulling high enough numbers is kind of important.”

You can’t have that in GW2. Having strict, WoW-like tanking/healing/DPS checks can’t work with GW2’s combat, item and economy systems. At least, it can’t work unless the devs want to exclude players who can’t afford to maintain multiple sets of ascended gear per character and force players to have multiple characters with multiple sets of ascended gear in order to fulfill every possible role that a given profession could be called on providing to a raid.

Yes, copying WoW is obviously not going to happen. They made that clear when they eschewed the trinity for, what is it now, 3 years? Even if they wanted to change it now, they would have to revamp combat balancing and every profession from the ground up. The closest they can do is tanky traits and a taunt or two (same idea with healing).

What this has to do with being forced to carry multiple sets of gear, I’ll never know. I played a raiding game for 2-3 years. I’m not some nub, who’s purely theorizing. And my experience says, even in that game, where trinity was built in from the start, plenty of people got away with only having one set of gear. Most of them DPS’ers. It was the healers and tanks, really, who needed to have more than one set, for the most part.

Zaroua.2714:

“The thing about raiding elitism is that a lot of it stems from those harsh DPS checks and the competition of being the first to take down a boss”

No, it stems from people being socially inept, aka, complete kittening kittens. In my extremely extensive raiding career, I’ve only ever seen maybe 2 or 3 examples of situations where players were screwing up on such a massive scale that you could track it by looking at a meter. Rest of the time, looking at meters was only for kitten purposes and gleaming which classes were best suited for a particular encounter – and that last part could be guessed simply by knowledge of game mechanics and knowledge of the encounter at hand instead of having your hand held by a meter pointing out that, hey! this class who’s bad at this particular role on a fight that completely emphasizes the role they’re bad at doesn’t perform as well as other classes.

In my “extremely extensive” raiding career, I’ve seen countless situations where a DPS meter was helpful. So I see your “experience card” and raise you with my own. As for figuring out what class is best at DPS from no DPS meter, that makes no sense at all. You can guess whose utility abilities will be most useful, but you can’t guess at DPS with no ability to track DPS.

I don’t know what you’re talking about at this point.

Zaroua.2714:

I disagree with DPS meters in GW2. Are you going to try and tell me that I’m not a good player despite knowing nothing about me?

Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. DPS meters have got little to do with who is and isn’t a good player. They are about optimization and passing DPS checks. Healing meters are about passing healing checks.

The general idea is, if a raid boss is tuned around optimal damage and healing output from each player to survive and kill the boss, then knowing who isn’t pulling high enough numbers is kind of important.

IF and only IF GW2 raids leave lots of time for error will meters be unnecessary.

The thing about raiding elitism is that a lot of it stems from those harsh DPS checks and the competition of being the first to take down a boss. People will be kittens sometimes, but in principle, it’s not supposed to be a matter of personal insults. It’s a matter of win or lose.

Astralporing.1957:

You do realize, that it would mean a nerf to silk, right? At the point when they not so subtly suggested everyone shoudl be gearing themselves in ascended (because it will be the go to gear for both raids and fractals, and dungeons are getting axed).

I did think of that, which is why I’m probably off on my interpretation. I don’t seriously believe that JS would knowingly nerf silk on purpose, right when people are going to be clawing for ascended gear.

He may be blunt, but I don’t think he’s sadistic.

If they want to support raid content in a big way, going in to the future, then they will have to support meters in some capacity eventually. It doesn’t mean they need to create one themselves. They just need to make it more workable for people to create meters of their own with addons.

To my understanding, it is currently possible to have a janky personal DPS meter, but nothing to compare numbers with others in real-time.

Being afraid of elitism is understandable, especially in faceroll content like the Shadow Behemoth. But what you have to understand about raids is that raids are elite content. That’s always how they’ve been designed. You are supposed to be good at the game to complete a raid and have a team of people who are good at the game with you.

There is nothing wrong with a little bit of elitism in a raid and now that we’re going to have them, meters make perfect sense. The distinction is this:

Meters should NOT make their way into casual game modes. Not group meters, that is (personal damage or healing is another matter). If they can find a way to support group meters, but restrict them to raid content (and maybe fractals) that would be the best solution for everyone, I think.

Wanze.8410:

Labjax.2465:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42WNHGr1jGI

So looking at the content of the post:

Salvaging Changes

Despite keeping a heavy sink of materials in the new endgame weapon journeys, the changes were nowhere close to balancing the current numbers . To help get us closer to where we want to be, we’ll simultaneously roll out changes to the salvaging of some materials. Some of these changes will reduce output to help us maintain scarcity, and some will rebalance heavily input materials with more rare materials to help even out some of the variation of scarcity we currently have.

To me, it sounds like what he’s saying is, there is going to be some reduction of more common mats (such as leather, ore, and cloth) along with an increase in rare materials. So instead of seeing (pulling these numbers out of my yahoo) 30 ore for every 1 vial of powerful blood, you might see 15 ore for every 1 vial of powerful blood.

It sounds like a change in ratios. In terms of profit, it should remain roughly the same once things balance out.

In my eyes, it doesnt even say that actual salvage rates are nerfed. Maybe they just nerf they output of salvageable gear.

So right now you do an event and kill 30 mobs and get 10 salvageable items.

And after the change, you only get 5 salvageable items while killing all the mobs to clear the event but you get 10 random common mats after you completed it.

They output of common mats might stay the same but some of the faucets get moved from salvaging to event or map rewards.

Could be. It’s not really clear on the implementation.

So looking at the content of the post:

Salvaging Changes

Despite keeping a heavy sink of materials in the new endgame weapon journeys, the changes were nowhere close to balancing the current numbers . To help get us closer to where we want to be, we’ll simultaneously roll out changes to the salvaging of some materials. Some of these changes will reduce output to help us maintain scarcity, and some will rebalance heavily input materials with more rare materials to help even out some of the variation of scarcity we currently have.

To me, it sounds like what he’s saying is, there is going to be some reduction of more common mats (such as leather, ore, and cloth) along with an increase in rare materials. So instead of seeing (pulling these numbers out of my yahoo) 30 ore for every 1 vial of powerful blood, you might see 15 ore for every 1 vial of powerful blood.

It sounds like a change in ratios. In terms of profit, it should remain roughly the same once things balance out.

ImTasty.2163:

I think I’m starting to get this analogy. If possible, can you reword it from the perspective of the kids that pretend to be Destiny’s Edge in the lvl 30 PS?

Kid 1: Zoom zoom, I’m Caithe. Feel the mighty wrath of the mother tree!

Kid 2: Caithe wouldn’t talk like that, stupid.

Kid 3: Don’t be a Logan, 2. Nobody wants to be a Logan.

Kid 4: Rawr, I’m Rytlock and I’m going to take down Mordremoth. If you want to join me in my battle, you have to pass a test!

Kid 3: Tests are for dummies.

Kid 1: Stop being such an Asura, 3.

Kid 3: But I am an Asura.

Kid 1: No, you’re just a big, dumb Tyrian.

Kid 2: I want to find my love Queen Jenna. Come to me, my love.

Kid 4: Quiet, all of you! You all fail the test! Give me gold and I will let you come with me, but otherwise you must wait behind for your doom.

Kid 3: Who says you get to decide, fur for brains? I’m going to take on Mordremoth myself, without any of you.

Kid 1: Good luck soloing him, 3. I already tried that. His plants were everywhere.

Kid 2: Plants? I’ll bet Queen Jenna likes plants! Yes! My love, I am bringing you plants!

Kid 4: Fine, you can all come, but this won’t end well. None of you have the Charr power that I do. You are all too… orange. Yuck.

Draknar.5748:

His entire post has been proven to not be true anymore. At least not since they added stat swapping through the forge.

It’s just frustrating as a forum browser to see someone ask for laurel requirements to be removed because of all the sets he’s had to create and future ones he wants to create, see reasonable responses giving advice on how to get exactly what he wants without laurels, and then to have him essentially say, “well I don’t wanna do that.”

That’s all it is. Just frustrating.

Well, one solution to that frustration would be to not read the forums. But I doubt you’re into that solution if you’re posting here to talk about a poster being frustrating. Hopefully you see the parallel here.

Linfang.1087:

Could you restate this scenario through the perspective of a Quaggan?

Baby: Mommy, I’m scared of swimming, could you bring the food closer to me?

Mom: …honey, the food is literally a foot in front of you.

Baby: Yeah, but I have to swim to get there. Underwater. I don’t have any of my cool abilities down here.

Mom: You’re a Quaggan, not a Tyrian. Why don’t you act like it and appreciate the water for what it is.

Baby: I’ll appreciate it for what it is all right. A watery tomb.

Mom: Go to your room.

Baby: I’m already in my room.

Mom: …no, dear, this is definitely the kitchen.

Baby: Oh whatever, it’s all part of the vast, dreadful ocean. What difference does it make. I’ll get eaten by a shark either way.

Mom: If you don’t eat your food, I’ll feed you to the sharks.

Baby: You’re a terrible mother. I hope you get eaten by risen!

Mom: That got dark fast.

Baby: It did. I think the writer has some problems.

Mom: Maybe we should feed him to the sharks.

Baby: I sea what you mean.

Mom: You’re grounded for a month.

Baby: Don’t you mean I’m seaded?

Mom: Two months.