It wasn’t hard the first year of the game. Back then there was a ton of events that gave it away like candy. Now a days it will be much tougher.
Except they’re nerfing the gold to convince people to stop playing dungeons, not primarily to help the economy. They could easily have tweaked the reward to be some some extra guaranteed rares instead of raw gold, but then people would still run dungeons at about the current rates. They want us to stop running them.
Dungeons will still generate a ton of blues/greens which are the biggest source of t5 materials.
Everything generates a ton of blues/greens. There are much, much easier ways of getting them than running dungeons.
Exactly, they are nerfing it to make HoT more enticing just like they did with everything before they introduced EotM and then again when they added SW. They nerf the areas they don’t want you in any more because they have “enough” activity and make the new area the place to be. This way the metrics all say new content is better than old content, even though the truth is new content just has better rewards than old content(mostly from nerfing old content).
In 6 months it will be pugged and in 1year you will see those pug groups grabbing the first 8 DPS and 1 healer then going. There will be some groups that will still need to have the perfect group but to get a completion it won’t be mandatory like it will be for the first 6 months. It will just make it easier and faster. So for all those “casuals” that are stubborn and won’t play the “meta” they will just have to wait to enjoy the raid.
Adding name on the siege would be a great help in IDing trolls while at the same time giving people name recognition for helping their server correctly.
To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea:
- When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion”
- A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes
- If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege
A good idea, but it has a problem:
Several EU servers are running a policy where only commander should deploy siege blueprints. This is to avoid each player throwing ram blueprints on the same gate and thus causing just confusing and players not having enough supplies to finish them. A commander can easily alone put 3-4 rams on one gate or set up 4 catapults to take down a reinforced wall with the current system or deploy more than 3 superior ACs to siege up a tower or a keep. Now he would need to wait to break in the inner keep or somebody else would be needing to deploy the siege. Siege blueprints are a big cost for PuG commanders (myself included), but some receive donations from their allies. Popular commanders are generally trusted by their community and the least likely to be trolls due their visible role in the game.
Siege building and ordering last minute upgrades is also used to burn the supplies in case the keep is full of them, it is surely falling to the enemy hands.
Removing the suggested “exhaustion” restrictions from those who have the commander tag up would not completely stop the abuse, but make it much rarer and more visible. Many now have a commander tag, but a typical siege troll has his main on the enemy server and and is using an alt account and often has an upleveled character, who doesn’t have a commander tag.
Neither of these address the intentional destruction of golems. I mean intentionally taking control of golems from waypoint and just walking them off the cliff.
I cannot invent a foolproof system to stop the siege trolling. My best advice is: use the ingame report tool and have more Arenanet employer or volunteers (among the player base), who handle the reported cases. Serious violations should lead to banning that account from entering WvWvW. Hacking is another issue, which would need human interaction. Infracting the players who report hackers and possibly denying them the access to these forums, is just aggravating the player base.
I agree with all of this which leads me to this comment.
F2P makes banning these trolls only a small deterrent.
We are going to see more and more of these trolls(and trolls in other areas as well). Before there was a monetary obstruction that would slow them down. So the system we had of allowing any level player into wvw worked. Now since that is no longer the case I am unsure if allowing any level of player in is a good idea. There needs to be something that will slow them down like make ftp accounts need to hit a certain level before being allowed into WvW or buy a pass for early entrée. Of course any account that already has it unlocked would be able to create new characters and jump straight in also. This makes it so that they have to invest in the account, either time or money, which both tend to be good deterrents for trolls.
Of course this means you still need to have GMs smacking trolls with the ban hammer. But I really don’t think something like the OPs “exhaustion” will do much. If guilds plan for this and they have even 5 guys make one troll account each, they will be able to do a ton of damage and pretty much ignore the exhaustion.
Who wants to bet how many guilds/people will be kittens and let the enemy take a tower or a keep that someone else has claimed, so that they can claim it themselves?
Unless there is a way to get credit for your guild also I see this happening.
I miss Quagnan Island in the borderlands. I very much prefer them over the wannabe spvp arena they replaced with.
Increasing the amount of other required materials is what I would do. I’m sure that will please everyone, not.
If only to make things equal and lift the value of mithril, elder wood, and leather.
Granted, I’m keen on the suggestion I’ve heard to replace one or more bolts of Damask with Elonian Leather in the armor formulas. Raises leather value, drops the heavy leaning on silk for those poor Tailoring folks.
A similar idea would be to make it so insignias could be made out of other materials. So instead of cloth mats they could be made out of metal or leather materials. There really aren’t any good reasons to not have everything more consistent.
What exactly seems to be the problem here?
Silk price has been quite stable since ascended armor got introduced, so i dont know why they should cut its demand by 33%, 50% or 66%. It would bring it back to vendor value in no time and even add additional demand on all the other tier cloth, which would go up in price.
If Anet things that silk is getting too expensive, and I dont think they do, they will do the same as last year around this time. Adjust the faucets a bit, with new LS reward mechanics and Seasonal Festivals, instead of cutting demand by a ridiculously high amount.
It would not bring it back to vendor level. Its used in to many recipes. When it was at vendor level there was no recipes worth using it in. I mean why would you make level 80 silk gear when you could make gossamer gear instead. So the reason it was at vendor level was because it was literally useless. Now it has use beyond any other material so the refinements for it(and all other materials) should be more consistent. Sure all the TP players won’t like it but it would not be bad for the game in anyway.
I understand that some things will be more expensive than others. I personally just wish crafting was consistent across the board. Make all refinements of a material type work exactly the same. Preferably at what ever the lowest rate is. Silk would still cost more than mythril and leather but would not as far out of whack as it is now. In so many ways this game is one of the most inconsistent games I have ever played. If they had everything consistent it would be much easier to balance everything. Make everything refine at 2 into one, no more of the 3 into 1 or even 4 into 1. Then make it so Silk, mithril, etc. cost 50 across the board and all the lower tiers cost 10 across the board. This will bring consistency and from there they can look at adjusting drop rates and such for the mats if they find things are out of whack. After that they should make it so doubloons work like other mats so that bronze can be crunched into silver and silver into gold and gold smashed into silver and silver smashed into bronze. And make a spot in material collections for doubloons. I hate not being able to deposit them.
Why would they nerf it? It’s mostly blues and greens with the odd rare and dragonite ore.
I’m sick of everyone asking for things to be nerfed. Things need to be BUFFED. Loot on the whole is very poor. Nerf burning, nerf Celestial Ele, nerf DD ele, nerf PS Warrior, Nerf WHAO Ranger,
Just stop.
The low quality loot adds up pretty quickly due to the amount of chests you loot per hour. There is something wrong with the game if such an easy task as looting chests is more rewarding than running dungeons or high lvl fractals.
Plus it also devalues crafting materials. I would prefer being able to sell my loot for more.
Yes and that something wrong is that dungeons and fractals need the rewards buffed. As for the crafting materials I prefer crafting materials go down in price as I am trying to outfit multiple characters. Why should things get nerfed rather than other things get buffed? Would it be that horrible if you could loot the things you want and not have to sell them for gold to get what you want?
IMO dungeons, fractals, world bosses and raids should all have tokens. As that is an easy way to guarantee players are rewarded for their time and effort. I would still have random drops so that players get the “OMG awesome lookie what I got feeling”. That seams like to me the easiest way to keep the loot anything anywhere from anything mentality going but still add the feeling of working towards something with out it being all about gold which is what so many dislike.
Sword and Shield has heavy projectile defense. Sword procs a lot of On Hit or On Crit effects while shield nor synergizes heavily with aegis traits. There’s potential for a defensive burn build that keeps you relatively safe from projectiles. Something like this perhaps
Keep in mind Zealot’s Aggression will move to Master, grant cripple on VoJ passive, and increase damage to crippled opponents by 10% which can keep people close. Hunter’s Fortification will remove a condition on block and give 10% damage reduction when you don’t have a condition. Blocking an attack will cause about 1k damage in burning and isn’t long enough to be worth cleansing. Your crit chance with fury is about 50% despite not showing up on the combat logs. Some of the exact numbers of other effects and traits aren’t up to date, but the idea stays the same. It’s a very anti-kite build that can benefit from a lot of things.
Awesome logic here, we gotta pay a self root, a single target lower dmg, a longer cooldown, for what? Oh yes “block projectiles” which is about as useful as shield before the buff.
Not to mention it’s not a finisher and the 600 range is not correct since as soon as 300 it gets obstructed.
They should at least remove the self root component.Sword is also 1 handed. I mean, I’d normally say you’re comparing apples and oranges, but one of them isn’t even a fruit.
If he was comparing all 5 greatswords skills to the 3 sword skills I might agree with you but comparing 1-3 on GS to 1-3 on sword is pretty much apples to apples to me. If you are saying having the ability to choose different off hand weapons makes it so that one handed weapons need to be subpar I do not agree. Being forced to take multiple traits to get both main and off hand weapons traited is enough of a hit already.
They still need to buff the shield trait though.
My recommendation is to combine the current shield trait with communal defenses into a single trait. Then fill in the gap with a new trait, or bring back one we lost.
I hope they do this. With the changes to shield skills and a trait like this it would really make the shield a valuable support weapon.
Not sure why people so upset that people say f2p brings trolls. Its a known fact that the trolls and children flock to f2p games. Majority of children act toxic when they do not have parental supervision telling them not to act a certain way. Trolls by definition are toxic. Its not to say that there isn’t any decent people that are f2p its just that toxic people flock to those games. As mentioned above the MOBA scene is filled with toxicity and straight up trolls. MMOs don’t get hit as bad because its not as easy to troll. When DDO went f2p it got much more toxic there. In all the time from launch to going f2p in DDO I had never once had a troll go out of there way to make your party fail. Within the first week of DDO going f2p I started getting a few a day. In DDO it didn’t matter though as I could solo most things anyway so I would just laugh at how pitiful they were. In GW2 there are paths like cof p2 that if you don’t have a full party you can’t progress. Which happens to be one of the dungeons that I got a troll in. Imagine that.
I having a check box setting to disable the confirmation box for rares would be nice. Having a second one for exotics would be nice also. Have them unchecked by default so only people that check the box can accidentally salvage things.
A check box for deleting items would nice also. I can’t stand typing out some of the names to delete trash since I can’t sell it.
Is f2p causing community toxicity? some, but no way all of it!
Plenty of toxicity below!! and before FP2
Queens Dale champ bag farm before the huge nerf!
SPVP + trolls on private guild custom arenas
WvWvW and EOTM
Orr Temple events
Dungeons
Silver Waste
Fractals
Past LS events
Yeah there has always been jerks it just easier to tell if someone is f2p new by the total achievement points they have. Some of the trolls I have run into have so little AP that its amazing that they are at level 80. I really don’t know how they could do it. There will always be trolls in all multiplayer games. Its just that f2p tends to bring out more since they have nothing to lose. That and games that do not have a way to punish the trolls.
As always, here’s the solution to the “problem”. Every build, gear set, and whatever is viable in this game.
Your picture is perfect and its why I say anyone who doesn’t follow that reasoning is a troll. There is hundreds of people on each side that will join your type of run if you start the group. In this game there is never any reason to force your playstyle on someone else. If you do, then you are a troll and should not be surprised when you get kicked from a group and you also shouldn’t be running to forums to cry about said kicking.
I have recently seen more people in PUGs trolling. Not sure if its a new thing or not since I quit playing for a long time. People purposefully joining groups to troll the meta runs. People on brand new accounts ignoring chat and doing things to make the run harder, like aggroing mobs and not doing objectives like stand on one brazier and stay on it in cof. When I run groups I just pick the dungeon and say p1 or p2 and take the first 4. I don’t mind showing people the ropes and actually enjoy it. When I happen to join a group that says zerker only, exp only, etc then the expectation is that everyone will conform to the posted LFG. When someone is new and doesn’t know what to do they should communicate that and respond to chat. Those that don’t are trolling and get booted. But like I said I have seen that more and more since I started playing again. Just like in every other f2p game the trolls will come and do their best to ruin other peoples fun because that’s what they do. Luckily we do have the option of booting someone and replacing them which some games do not have that option. Its still annoying though and shouldn’t happen.
This is not an attack on guilds, or an attempt to insult anyone. This is just an unbiased view from a player new to PC gaming.
I switched from console to PC a few months back because I refuse to buy a next gen console in their current state. I had a preconception of how guilds in MMO’s operated. Which has turned out to be almost the polar opposite of how they actually work.
I had thought joining a guild would be like joining an organised team. Set daily schedules for different activities. Groups decided on ahead of time based on a balanced mix of skill to give the highest chance for success for all the teams. So for example: I thought an event of dungeons would go something like this:
Dungeon tour 21/09/2015 @ 19:00 GMT
Dungeons: AC-1+2+3, CM-1+2+3, TA-up+fwd, SE-1+3, CoE-1+2+3, CoF-1+2, HotW-1+2+3.Team 1:
Team 2:
Team 3:
etc etc. And that that would be posted on the forums by the guild leader.I thought this would be the case for all aspects of the guild. That if you were doing something with your guild, it would be a highly organised and smooth operation. After all, why else bother with a guild?
I had also thought that TS and guild chat would be dominated by a running discussion of tactics and game mechanics.
By now you are probably rolling around laughing at how naive that notion was. My experience of guilds has been largely positive and enjoyable but they are nothing more than a loose grouping of players. It’s very difficult to sync up with guildies. I like to run dungeons and I’ll sometimes manage to party up with some guildies for one or two of them. But even then, alot of the time I find people use guilds to get away with stuff that would not be tolerated in pugs.
As for guild chat… it’s just that, people having a chat; which is fine. I don’t know why their isn’t a ‘friend chat’ option though.
Anyway to summarise: I thought guilds would be highly organised, and informative.
Reality: A way to get guild commendations for ascended trinkets.
Pug life baby ^-^
I think one reason you don’t see that in this game is because people can be in more than one guild at a time. So people pop into one guild for WvW, and then another for running world bosses, and then bounce a round a few others to find out who is running guild events/dungeons/fractals. So you don’t need to be in one guild with a set schedule because many people can find people to do what they want at anytime of the day. That’s not to say that guilds won’t have some kind of schedule posted, its just that they tend to not be as structured. More like just having a MOTD that states days and times certain guild events will be running. I doubt there is any that have strict schedules fractals and dungeons though.
So nobody thinks the massive excess of blue and green armor and the massive amount of clicking required for rng crap it gives needs to be adjusted?
Yes I occasionally gamble on weapons in the forge but that has nothing to do with the level 80 armor massive glut. They are items that are not used as they are.
If your really think players can significantly affect how the economy works or doesn’t work, guess again.
Changing how some materials drop does not necessarily make the player base worse off.
What precursor problem? Availability? This would help.
And I clearly explained that blue and green armor, while in super abundance has no significant uses justifying their numbers. Not to mention the absurd amount of clicking required.Converting 80% of level 75 to 80 medium and heavy armor into matching level weapons and increasing the drop rate for leather would be one way to help till like 2017… when legendary armor might appear.
What else in this game exists in basically unused abundance?
No, you are only thinking of your own concerns. The armor does have uses to others.
I hate the f2p model. I prefer a subscription. The sub model makes the population smaller but the majority of what you lose is children, gold sellers, and those moochers mentioned above. I prefer having everything in game and not exclusive to a store. The problem with subscription games is that most games on the market just aren’t worth a sub. Guild Wars 2 is a hidden subscription game. If you pay $20 bucks/month on gems for gold and gemstore items it makes all the grinds in the game much more tolerable and makes the entire game more enjoyable. I would prefer a sub and have all the gemstore stuff added to the game in one way or another but this way is cheap and easy for them. Since they don’t have to create any thing in game like a special vendor or new dungeon or whatever other ways you can think of to get a reward in game. It is rather nice that they are finally admitting that GW2 is a f2p game and removing the cost of the base game. Saying it was a buy to play game and then putting everything into a f2p cash store makes people annoyed. They don’t want hybrid payment systems. They want to know what you get for how much money. In guild wars 1 you bought the game and played it with everything unlocked for that region. If you wanted more you bought one of the other standalone/expansions. When you bought one of those you knew you had bought full access to everything in the box. You didn’t have to drop extra cash for the some skin in the gemstore. That’s been one of the biggest issues with GW2 it was a B2P game that didn’t give you everything in the game. At least not everything unless you have the weird view that buying gems with gold is getting stuff in game. So removing the B2P portion is a big step in the right as it removes the feeling that someone deserves everything in game like they had with GW1.
LoL champion Udyr
https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/23e4aElite_Headbutt-590x331.jpg
https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/4191bUtility_Wild_Blow-590x331.jpg
Berzerker isn’t the first to borrow ideas from LoL and I’m sure it won’t be the last
(edited by Lobo Dela Noche.5127)
Seriously I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Simply because you can have a team of full nomad’s gear players complete a dungeon path does not in any way shape or form change the fact that doing it with a full team of players in zerker gear will be faster and more efficient.
If your pve mobs never hit you, toughness, vitality, healing power, all wasted.
If your foe dies in seconds as opposed to minutes, you are taking less damage.
Have you ever heard of the saying the best defense is a good offense?
You literally can’t even die if your opponent gets disintegrated before it can even attack.
When you get one person not pulling their weight, chances are…. something that should have been dead already will be dealing damage to your team.
Try doing Hotw p1 with a full nomad’s guardian and all zerk players….. then do it again with the same team on a full zerk guardian….
What happens?
You will find that your party will need the healing more when you bring the healer, because things are not dying fast enough and they are dealing damage to you before they are killed.
Sure, you are keeping them alive with support….. but there would be no need to keep them alive if the fight was over and done with already.
What flavor are those crazy pills?
….and pvp and wvw are a totally different ballgame, so trying to talk about all of them in the same post, or even the same thread is silly.
Anyone who is serious about pvp knows about the importance of other stats besides power precision and ferocity, because real people can’t always be facerolled the way pve mobs can be.
WvW and PvP zerk isn’t even the discussion here.
As a pvp player, you should know which stats you are going to need/want to use, and you should know that sometimes you are going to get hit, period.
The gamble of running berserker in pvp can sometimes be worth it, but other times it won’t be.
…with pve full zerker is always worth it, and there is literally nothing you gain from bringing toughness vitality or healing power if everyone is on the same page with you.
Why are so many pve players like ostriches with their heads in the sand about how the game works?
Its a l2p issue if I’ve ever seen one.
As someone with different sets of armor for all my toons and multiples of every profession, take it from me….
I know how easy mode it is to wear pvt gear and facetank…
You literally don’t even need to dodge or evade.…but guess what…. its like riding a bike with the training wheels on….
Sure you can’t fall over.
…but everyone else is driving a motorcycle.
…and they CAN fall over….. but they don’t and they go really fast.
Perfectly said. The only times I ever have issues in dungeons is in the groups where we do not disintegrate things. Doing a one rounder on bosses means the stuff that normally kills players doesn’t get a chance to kill them. I still just post the path and take what ever I get, but those times where I get a group of all zerkers are the best.
When DDO added the DX10 mode it allowed more performance and better quality graphics and effects. They were able to keep and support dx 9 and dx 10 modes at the same time. Adding a x64 bit DX 12 mode will increase performance and it will allow more graphical and effects options to make this beautiful game even prettier. With an MMO of this size there really is no reason to be so many generations behind.
I support this change. Most people find the healing stat completely worthless and the loss of boon duration sucks. This would make some non-dps builds more viable, while dps builds will still be kings at what they currently do.
People can say “play as you want” is taken out of context and doesn’t mean what they think it means but that does not change the FACT that the game has a fraction of the amount of freedom that the game had at launch. You can defend the changes all you want but it is a lie to say that the game has not lost much of its “play you want” feel. Maybe you like less choice and think it will make the game more balanced or just like things easier with less theory crafting but please defend it on its actual merits and not by saying that the change from “play how you want” to “play how arenanet wants” isn’t happening. Because it is happening and you defenders of the change kitten well know it.
The most interesting part of this thread is the constant vision I get of some players actually enjoying killing the same skelks over and over again to obtain materials rather than performing a number of other (repetitive) tasks to obtain gold and buy what those skelk drop…..
I guess I can see being upset that Anet thwarts the ability to farm skelk to your hearts content, but they do provide other options that sane players would consider less tedious…..but to each their own (I guess).
don’t kid yourself. The majority are not performing a number of other tasks to obtain gold to buy what they want. They are grinding out a couple select things. Sure they could mosey around doing random stuff but that is not going to get the gold very fast. So people will go to silverwaste or whatever the new FOTM spot is and grind that whether they like it or not because its the highest paying right now. Sure they might throw in the world boss train and a few dungeons but still they are grinding. The only difference between grinding gold or grinding specific items/mats is that when you are limited to just grinding gold everyone ends up grinding at the same place. Arenanet wants to know why 90% of their mid level maps were empty, its because there is no point in going to them unless they have something worth farming there. Since this game is all about farming gold, every place that isn’t in the top 5 for making gold will be empty until the world boss train runs through it for 5 minutes.
One of the biggest problems is that GW2 is a AAA game. Its not some cheap kitten FTP game where people expect the game to be a crappy unrewarding grind fest but that’s what Arenanet are treating the game like. I think everyone except Arenanet and a few white knights expect more from a AAA game. When HoT comes out the only thing we can expect is more of the same. After over a year of waiting for them to support things like the NPE and Trait changes with little to nothing being done it is obvious that Arenanet does not have the will to actually treat GW2 like a AAA game.
Ugh please, have any of those people complaining actually played an actual f2p MMORPG game?
I remember when I first started MMOing with Maple Story almost a decade ago. Forget skins and money, it took me and my friends MONTHS to grind a single character to 4th job, not even to cap level. We didn’t even had time to worry about skins or stats or whatnot. We had to GRIND on mobs just to to able to ACCESS content. Hundreds of hours of pressing a button, killing mobs, taking advantage of every double exp events, doing the same thing over and over again just to gain access to higher level content. In the end, the grind was too much and we all quit the game.
Fast forward a few years, and me and my friends played Dragon Nest, and again, still grinding. Running the same dungeon DOZENS of times to get a single level, with no variety. You HAVE to run this dungeon to get to the next level, as other dungeons either took too long, or barely gives any exp. People used ‘boost’ others, helping them clear dungeons quickly with a high level character in their party for a price.
That’s not mentioning the pay-wall you have to pass to get to the final content, as without good gear, you won’t get a place in a party to clear raids. Without doing raids, there is no reliable way to make money, which means you don’t get good gear.
Only way to get pass the pay wall? Spend hundreds of hours farming gold to have a chance to get mediocre gear to be ‘barely’ accepted into a party, or open your wallet and buy things foo the cash shop to sell/ buy equips from players using cash.THAT is GRINDING. If you don’t DO THIS, you will not get to do ALL THE OTHER THINGS AFTER THIS.
What you guys complain about is FARMING, which is OPTIONAL.
Can you enjoy the game withoutAscended Gear/ Legendary Gear?
Yes.Do you NEED to repeatedly run dungeons to enjoy all the content?
No.Do you NEED to get that awesome looking Legendary/Skin to play the game?
No.Those “grindy” items, such as Legendaries and Ascended Armor are more like a status symbol, a sign that you have invested time and money into the game. They are hard to get for a reason.
And, if there are no ‘grindy’ things in GW2, then what is the point? There will be nothing to work towards. It might as well be a single player game with a multiplayer function.
And btw, I have yet to see an F2P game with more customizing option then Gw2, especially for free.
Arguably Maple Story had larger variety of outfits and skins, but 99% of them are DURATIONAL and is only purchasable by using REAL MONEY. No ‘convert in-game currency to cash shop currency’.
And the skins of Dragon Nest costs more than 30-40 USD for a single ‘low grade’ set, and to get the best skins, you have to pray to RNGesus and spend MORE money to combine two lower grade skins (with the obligatory extra fee of the combination device of course) for a chance to get a better skin. None of that BS in GW2.I’m still amazed that GW2 has no subscription fee, and it is ridiculously cheap (I got it during a sale some time ago), which is definitely a steal.
So for those who compare gw2 to those F2P mmos I’ve grown to detest so much (especially after playing gw2), I dare you to actually try to get into a real F2P mmo, filled with Pay-to-Win ideologies, before QQing about GW2 just because you are too lazy or too cheap to invest time and/or money into the game.
Yeah, MapleStory defined grind for me. Bland outfits, microscopic storage. Grinding a ton of critters to get X drops of Y only to get to go back and get X drops of Z from the slightly different color critter in the same area that takes five minutes to get to and get back from.
Just because something is worse doesn’t mean the thing its worse than is good.
why does gw2 feel like a grindy f2p?
The original Guild Wars made money mostly through selling new campaigns. Much like a book (in the meaning that you read a book, and if you enjoyed it you will likely buy the sequel), ArenaNet used to make content that would be fun for players, so, when players were done with it, they would wait for the next chapter of the game. The original Guild Wars didn’t get microtransactions until late in its life, and those were never the focus.
GW2 is the opposite. We do pay to buy the game, but ArenaNet’s focus is on the Gem Store. Which means, instead of focusing on fun content, ArenaNet cares about artificially increasing the game’s life by encouraging repetition (read: grind) and by encouraging daily log-ins (the dailies, now the log-in rewards) in order to increase player exposure to the Gem Store and hopefully have people buy stuff from it.
Since F2P games usually rely on the same strategy, it’s to be expected that GW2 would feel like it were F2P.
The main change, I think, is that now people are willing to pay more for less. Back in the days of the original Guild Wars – which, remember, was released more or less when WoW was first released, so pay to play and grind were not as widespread and F2P games were very rare – we didn’t have so many people willing to pay for subpar content that they don’t even enjoy but that gives them a shiny reward. Now, well…
Yup, people have been brainwashed into accepting the F2P and DLC business models. Its funny and sad at the same time watching people defend the companies ripping them off giving them subpar content just because its not as awful as some of the competition. Like being not as bad makes something automatically good.
(edited by Lobo Dela Noche.5127)
A small drop of positivity:
ANet said, that you get 400 hero points for getting to 80. You will need other 65 to get full unlocks. But is 400 not enough? Surely, you will not need every skill in the game to enjoy playing.
If someone already has every skill and trait unlocked, then yes they need every skill. If they can’t figure out how to keep everyone where they currently are when it comes to unlocking everything then they should not change it. It screams incompetence.
Are you sincerely suggesting that leaving the current system in place is a better option than getting a completely new system?
It doesn’t scream incompetence. It’s not the same system. You cannot both change things fundamentally and also keep everyone where they currently are. It’s not possible.
This response is just mystifying me. I have been waiting for a new system for a year. So far, based upon what we know, this is just overwhelming good news. I cannot believe that you want to quibble over something that may or may not even end up impacting most people in live, as we don’t even know what it’s going to look like. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, here.
I don’t see any of it as good news honestly. I see that they gave us a completely terrible system that they knew everyone would hate and are now switching to the backup plan that most would hate but since its “not as bad” as what we have now people are praising it like its the best thing since buttered bread. Its still BS being forced to grind for something that we used to get for pretty much free(3.5g). And the amount of content to come with the expansion is pitiful because Colin doesn’t want a “big world”.
To be honest, all my 80s have 100% map completion so they won’t really be affected. This game was amazing at launch, so amazing that it jumped to the top 5 list for MMOs. Now people are cheering for crap. When crap is better than what you have now its bad. So yeah to me it says incompetence or deceit when they can’t do something like keep players with full or partial unlocks at the same spot regardless of how they got those things unlocked.
A small drop of positivity:
ANet said, that you get 400 hero points for getting to 80. You will need other 65 to get full unlocks. But is 400 not enough? Surely, you will not need every skill in the game to enjoy playing.
If someone already has every skill and trait unlocked, then yes they need every skill. If they can’t figure out how to keep everyone where they currently are when it comes to unlocking everything then they should not change it. It screams incompetence.
I’m actually more concerned with not being able to hybridize specializations. What if I want to be kind of good at Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Arcane instead of really good at Fire, Earth, and Arcane?
All in all though, it does have potential to be a pretty cool system.
That was never really a thing, though.
Your options were:
Be good at two things and bad at a third.
Be good at one thing and fair at two things.
Be good at one thing, fair at another thing and bad at two more.
Be good at one thing and bad at everything else.
Be fair at three things and bad at a fourth
Be fair at two things and bad at the other two.That was your build choices.
This is horse manure.
What you said makes kind of sense for the stats we currently get for trait allocation but we will not get those stats points in the new system. however its still a gross exaggeration though.
Currently going 2,2,1,1,1 may make you a complete generalist by stats but it could make a completely solid build based off the traits. Most might not do that though and would stick to the more popular 3,3,1 type of build. So now the stats will say you are completely focused in to a couple types of stats but the traits are mostly focused in to creating a different kind of solid build. The one trait all by itself in one line doesn’t make you bad at what it does, it complements your other traits to make those even stronger. The fact remains that currently there are lower tier traits that are better for some builds than taking a higher tier trait. So taking one or more lower tier traits at the expense of taking a second grandmaster does not make you bad at something. It makes you amazing at what you building for.
and yes, I realize that some of you are wondering if I’ve been hacked, given my general stance on these things.
That’s funny I really did do a double take on your name lol.
I get what you are saying but I see no reason they can’t give my level 80s that have all skill and traits currently unlocked the full skills and every specialization bar filled. Then again if they really don’t want me to come back and really want me to quit posting here for ever, then they can make me have to grind out what already have. That would seal the deal, yall would never hear from me again.
That’s why they really need to grandfather us in. What ever is currently unlocked on a character should be unlocked after the update. Who the heck wants to grind to get something you already have.
Especially if you grinded it out in the current BS trait system.
(edited by Lobo Dela Noche.5127)
They need to make it so people are grandfathered into this. So that people that already have every trait unlocked will still have every trait unlocked after this change. I like the idea of splitting the stat points from the traits and allowing 3 maxed out branches. I hate the idea of less traits and being limited to only 3 branches. I think it would be better if they made it so you could spend the extra stat points like in the current system but just don’t tie the traits to them.
They really need a PBE server for testing. That any player can logon to see what’s coming and test it. And they should listen to player feedback about that server.
Thats a horrifying prospect.
If the goal was to make the process MORE grind-y and less fun over all then yeah, make it a bar to fill.
If they’ve been listening though, and I do mean REALLY listening to what we’ve suggested for Trait revamp they’d know that a common theme that we’ve expressed here has been to make obtaining the traits actually meaningful.
make the things we need to do to get them have something to do with the actual traits themselves AND (this is the most important suggestion) make sure they are level appropriate. Add to this a lowered cost for purchasing the traits for those that want to buy them outright and I think most (not all), but most people that have been at these threads would be satisfied.
Am i wrong in any of those 3 key changes being the most wanted from a lot of people in here?
In a way you kind of are asking for a progress bar. Fall X amount of times and unlock you reduced falling damage trait would most likely show up as a bar like in the achievements. Which honestly would not bother me as long as its not a stupidly kittened amount of times to fill the bar. Maybe if the bars weren’t available till you unlocked the tier its in. Then make it something like fall 20 times. Anything more than that and it would be a stupid grind.
But none of that will happen anyways as it will take to much work and arenanet only does half – @ssed stuff.
To borrow from my post in the NPE feedback thread:
- Trait unlock system, while on the surface looks like a great idea, is a hassle. On my post NGE characters, I’ve had to either go around my hindquarters to get to my elbow…er trait unlocks, or simply save up skill points/cash and buy them. With the engineer in particular, I have had to buy all of his, since I literally had none unlocked upon unlocking traits in general. If Anet insists on keeping this in place to promote exploration of the game…maybe make the unlocks account wide? Otherwise, I would simply ask to have the old system back.
They already had map completion and the world explorer achievement to get people to choose to explore the world if the lore and atmosphere weren’t enough to get the person to do it on their own. Using traits to do it is a bully tactic so they can get their metrics to say what they want they want them to.
They don’t have any fix yet. That much is obvious.
At best they are planning on making it a bar to grind out like masteries. Pick a trait when bar full. Oh, and you can use gems to fill the bar completely.
Mark my words, this xpac and trait change will see a huge push in monotizing all of these systems.
This is exactly what I’m thinking. The majority of the things they work on have the goal of increased gem sells. The few things that don’t are extremely small QoL things like the trait respec button. Which get added so that white knights can have at least one thing to mention when giving praise to the feature packs and updates. Small trivial stuff to sweeten the taste of all the crap they keep shoveling on to our plates.
Hopefully they will look back on their past experiences(GW and GW2) and find a way to fix the game as a whole.(My advise is to tell a certain Korean publisher to F*** OFF).
The policy of silence comes from arenanet and not from ncsoft. So even though ncsoft are probably the ones pushing many of the bad ideas, arenanet could still be talking to us.
Hard to believe Anet let this disaster remain in place for so long.
Exactly my thoughts. After the overwhelmingly negative feedback on the current trait system, it’s still in place and for almost an year.
It seems that the devs are very arrogant and do not care what the player base think. Very sad.
Yes, the arrogance is very strong with anet. Someone at anet could have rolled back the system but does not want to admit that the old system was fine the way it was. So they will change it again to something else we never asked for, rather than just roll back to a system that was fine the way it was at launch. Someone at anet has a new vision for what they want GW2 to be and so they will change everything until the heart of the game is a completely different game. The only things unchanged will be superficial, the pretty graphics, the DEs, the LS, and the faster paced combat. But their obvious goal is to turn GW2 into a different game.
I just don’t understand why. GW2 was a very strong game at launch and for the first year. Why would you want to risk changing something that makes money. The arrogance just blows my mind.
EDIT I really should have just named it “GW2 and the Death of Guilds”. The small part is something really near and dear to my heart.
This is an absolutely crucial article to read as we get ready to head into HoT. I have tried to articulate this very point on these forums but sadly my communication skills are not up to snuff. There are some things I disagree with for sure, but for the most part, I have to say I agree.
I remember when we were doing the Guild Hall CDI. I was a huge advocate of pro-rating the amount of whatever guilds had to earn in order to get basic amenities for their guild halls. For example(and this is all hypothetical), if a 100 person guild needed 100 gold to have a basic merchant at their guild hall then a 10 person guild should only need 10 gold. Smaller guilds shouldn’t be forced to pay the same 100 gold just because “that’s the way it is”. We already earn Influence at such a slower pace and really I wish that was pro-rated as well.
Before I ramble on and on, really just read this article. Devs too, please. I think it’s so important for little, tight knit, guilds to be able to thrive just as much as the “Corporation Guilds” this article addresses. And. please don’t comment til after you have read the article http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/09/massively-overthinking-the-death-of-the-mmo-guild/
I really believe this is a discussion we should all be having. Community in MMOs should not be homogenized and watered down.
Thanks for your time.
People will game the system if they can. Allowing a way to get the amenities for cheaper will be abused. All everyone would do is make a side guild and only include a few players, buy everything(at the cheap rates) then when they have everything they want everyone in guild switches to the new guild. Flat rates are the only way to stop that. DDO did it pretty good, they had flat rate but the tiers were unlocked with guild influence and the guild influence was easier to hold with the less people you had. This made it so the a guild of one person could get many of the benefits but not what the larger guilds could do. The large guilds could still invite guests to there guild halls(ships) to enjoy some buffs and such. Its hard to keep large guilds going and takes tons of work. You should not get everything they get unless you put in the work for it.
This is coming from someone who prefers small guilds. In most the games I’ve played the guilds I have been in normally have less than 10 members. Normally that’s just me and close friends and family members. I have been in some with more members but for some reason and tend to fall back into creating my own small guilds eventually.
Edited to add: I do agree that the ability to be in multiple guilds at once has ruined all guild loyalty. You now have everyone turning into fair-weather friends. That I have never liked about GW2 and felt it is a bad decision even if it is convenient for some people.
(edited by Lobo Dela Noche.5127)
It seems to me that they cut the GW2 budget because they thought that they could get by with the bare minimum with the LS. Running on a skeleton crew to milk the last few pennies they can with out really investing in the game. I 100% expect HoT to be equal to a $10 DLC in other games. I do not see the trait system ever being fixed as they have had a year to make the current system bearable and they have done almost nothing. In fact they have done nothing to better the system in the last 10 months. Which shows a complete lack of care to fix the current system and/or they lack the ability to do so. Which is pitiful. They could have actually tried to fix broken events or move the unlocks to other events, which they did on a couple of things. Which got peoples hopes up that anet actually intended to support this BS change and make it work but then they stopped. Since that was obviously to difficult for them to continue doing they could have easily lowered the gold and/or skill point cost of traits to ease the burden but did not.
I would really like to spend time in this thread discussing the up coming trait changes but the lack of support on the current system and the lack of communication on the upcoming changes leaves nothing to discuss except how inept anet have become at maintaining an MMO.
(edited by Lobo Dela Noche.5127)
To me, the fact that traits are tied to buggy content is the worst offense and should have been the first thing they concentrated on, either by fixing it or just changing the trait unlock to something else. That right there tells you how much they care about a quality product and it makes me sad.
The priorities and decisions made by the higher-ups are pushing me more and more to quitting the game so I don’t have to feel guilty for supporting bad behavior. Since I have zero faith they care about our concerns in any meaningful way, the only way I can express my displeasure in a way they will care about is through my wallet. They haven’t gotten any money from me in a good while and won’t for the foreseeable future.
Their metrics are setup so that if you are logging in everyday things look good for them. That’s why they changed daily rewards to login rewards. So even if you are not spending money you are giving them what they want if you are logging in regularly.
[…SNIP]
If the answer is, “we are focusing 100% on getting HoT out the door so it won’t happen until after HoT’s release”, then fine. Just say so. Let us, the consumer, make our decisions based upon real honest information and not something cooked up by PR. I promise that level of honesty will work out more for Anet than stringing people along with silence. Silence only makes us shout louder and pick apart every little thing that has ever gotten under our skin. Its actually worse for Anet in the long run to be honest.Now…about that trait revamp. How’s it coming? Is there really no update at all that can be given at this stage?
Unlike most other IT groups or management companies, ANet isn’t capable of rolling back changes. Its weird, but they have to “re-program” the change back to what it was. One would think it would be changing a few lines of code back to what it was, then BOOM! done, but not ANet. Its the weirdest thing. I tend to blame it on bad project management processes.
I’m sure they did backups before hand so they should be able to revert but it would probably revert other things at the same time. I doubt that is the reason why they won’t do it though. I’d put money that they don’t want to come out and say they were completely wrong and that the old system was perfect and didn’t need any changes. By changing it to a new system they can go to meetings and say they believe they were right in making changes but that they made the wrong ones and this next time things will be better. Its the kind of “I’m never wrong” attitude that anet has shown in the past.
As far as all the talk about when will the trait change come, I’d put money on it dropping the same time the HoT does. It would be kittened if it came after and it would be a wasted marketing chance if done before. Since if it drops at the same time they can market it like its part of the new expansion even if it is available for those that do not get the expansion. It would still be nice to hear it from anet though. A simple yes same time as HoT, or before HoT, or after HoT would all suffice. Sure we all want a more precise ETA but simple answers like that to our questions would go a long way. The arrogant silence was old a year ago. Its now on the we are incompetent and would rather stay quiet then say anything stupid side.
A key person in design leaving mid-project is troubling. People come and go from game studios all the time, just not usually during such a critical phase. Sky ain’t falling or anything. Eye brow raising for sure though.
Critical phase? What critical phase? The game’s been out for over two years. Nothing “critical” was going on other than what some may feel to be a PR problem between players and developers. The expansion was likely simmering for the last year or more, simply waiting for the right time to announce it.
HoT design is in critical phase. Heck, as of a month ago they were still deciding what the other Legendary Stances were going to be for Revenant. When people leave a company during creative phases, something has usually happened. I am in no way saying that is what happened here, but when you design stuff you usually want to see it through to the end as with any job. When you start a project you want to finish it.
I just thought of something funny. What if Behellagh is privy to information and nothing is really happening in anet HQ and he just spilt the beans. lol
I agree with you though. Its not good when you see a lead leave mid project.
Supposedly, players wanted to get their traits by having to repeat the same few events in-game over and over on every character, so they could get them like they did in GW1.
And Anet thought it was a good idea to listen to them over the rest of the playerbase that never asked for that?
Forumites were raving all over about how much fun acquiring skills from bosses was in GW1. People who liked the old system never spoke up.
This is why people need to speak up when they like the status quo. When they don’t, the status quo gets changed to whatever the loudest voice wants.
This is not what the loudest voice wanted. This is a nod to what people discussed in the horizontal CDI thread. I mean, if the loudest voices had been championing skill hunts, why does it seem logical to translate that to the trait system? That doesn’t make sense at all.
Its like a kid asking for a basketball to be like his older brother. And then he gets a baseball. Its not what he asked for. Similar does not mean the same.
The trait unlocks via content were an interpretation of a system from GW, an apple that fell quite far from the tree. It was/is not an import of the GW system except in that you do something and get something for it that contributes to your build.
The differences:
- Elite skills were bound to specific bosses; some of the skills could be found on more than one boss. One might have had to fight through a zone to get to some bosses, but fighting the boss was never lengthy (like zone completion).
- Except for some of the Prophecies bosses, the bosses spawned on-demand; no waiting for events to pop or for champs to respawn. Players had some control over even Prophecies bosses by returning to town, then to the zone, thus re-popping the instance.
- With henchmen and heroes, there was no waiting for enough players to show to take on a group event boss.
- Elite skills were often the centerpiece of a GW build. However, one could only use one elite skill at a time. Hunting more elite skills allowed for making a variety of builds. However, build variety in GW2 requires (worst case) 7 traits per build unlocked, not 1 elite skill.
Yeah, I remember the various requests for skill hunting to be ported into GW2. I’d say that the overwhelming majority of requests were for new skills that could be hunted, not hunting for traits.
And not just new skills, new Elite Skills.