Guild Wars 2

Skoigoth.9238:

Well, I´m not a game designer, I´m a player and as a player I will make use of all relevant tools the devs gave me to complete any given content I want to complete.

And that is exactly what you are expected to do.

Skoigoth.9238:

The notion the people play something “the wrong way” just because you would have designed it differently is just your personal opinion, not a somehow universal truth.

That does not dismiss the fact that there can be unintended and unwanted emergent game play.

Skoigoth.9238:

In my book, as long as you don´t clearly break the rules of the game (e.g. by using save-spots, breaking out of maps or mountain-goating your way to the final boss of a dungeon) it is not wrong, whether one likes it or not.

There is no right or wrong in this case. Merely a question whether the game designer has achieved his intended game play.

Skoigoth.9238:

I don´t think game developers can really dictate what is and what is not fun for the players.

If they can’t, they are bad at their job. It is a game designer’s job to know what their players like, and create an enjoyable/entertaining/satisfying experience.

Skoigoth.9238:

They can steer it to an extent by limiting game-play options, yes, but in the end everybody enjoys different things about the game and gets annoyed/bored/frustrated by other things.

If a game designer cannot foresee these things to some degree, he is not good at his job.

Skoigoth.9238:

But if you are not forced to do it as well, why do you want to take the fun away from me then?

And what if you got a better game play experience in exchange for it?

Vargamonth.2047:

Lumping those together with completely unrelated things like skipping or stacking, as both you and the OP did, is hardly going to reinforce your positions.

Well to put things in perspective, these issues are related to one overlapping issue: This skipping and kicking scenario that comes up a lot.

Vargamonth.2047:

Designers probably didn’t intend skipping to be so prevalent, that’s something I can easily agree with, but it’s not like there’s an easy and healthy fix for that. You can take the issue into account when designing new content. The old one, however, would need a serious and deep rework.

On that I totally agree. It is a gigantic problem, with many sub problems that would all need to be sorted. It would be much easier to start over from scratch.

Vargamonth.2047:

Here are some words from the former Dungeon Master on this matter:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/16tbxt/robert_hrouda_on_skipping_mobs_in_dungeons/

Robert’s final words on the matter are kind of depressing. They sound as the equivalent of a game designer throwing his hands into the air, and saying “I can’t fix this mess, I did my best”. From his point of view, I totally understand. He’s just trying to work with what he’s got, and is not responsible for the sloppy combat design, or the choice to make these boring linear paths.

To me though it seems that they clearly failed in making the trash mobs rewarding, and fun to fight. A side effect in my opinion, of a combat system that is not very well thought out.

Fenrir.3609:

That is a bit of a strange answer in all honesty. The points I raised are primarily down to the players themselves.

Game designers are partly responsible for how a player behaves in a game, the key point being the"partly".

I disagree completely. They are 100% responsible for general game play behavior of every player (unless it is hacking, scamming, or potty mouthing in chat).

Fenrir.3609:

Trying to absolve the blame for the “toxic environment” from the players who cba to read or intentionally go out of their way to annoy people (like the OP seemingly does) by saying “it’s the designers fault” simply doesn’t cut it.

I couldn’t disagree more. If the players skip everything, its because the designer made it skippable. And made doing the dungeon normally no more or less rewarding than skipping all the content. Since the only reward is at the end, and there is nothing to explore, players skip everything. When players can’t keep up, they get kicked, and players are unhappy. All this is the fault of the designer, and could be prevented by the designer.

Either you make your dungeon a full blown speedrun, and intentionally design it for that purpose. Or you prevent this sort of skipping, and create a fun, rewarding dungeon crawling experience, where not the only reward is at the end. You spread out the fun and the rewards, so the entire experience feels rewarding.

Fenrir.3609:

We all want new, challenging content and tweaks to the combat system. If someone is keen enough to come to the forums and propose change, you would imagine you would see threads like “New instanced content, a future approach”, or “New content, the combat dynamics moving forward”. But no, instead we see people who seemingly don’t even know what stacking is, moaning about it and extolling the merits of trolling zerk groups.

I think it is a cheap discussion tactic to try and latch on to his misuse of the word stacking, when we all know what he means. Stop it, it is not an argument. We all understand that he is talking about corner stacking, safe spotting, and wall stacking. So lets attack the actual argument, rather than attack the person.

Fenrir.3609:

Yeah because you want a guy who goes out of his way to harass/annoy a section of the playerbase in the game, or who s%^*s up a new player help thread by banging on about “elitists” to have any input at all with said games design…

If I were in charge, I’d rather have a coder who says “This is a giant mess, how can we fix this?” rather than “Everything is fine, move along!”.

That is not to say that I agree with his proposed solutions, or would give him free reign. But at least he recognizes that there is a problem.

bullyrook.2165:

I disagree :P. Sexuality and your views on sexuality are only pieces of character design, they are not separate, but composite.

You know what, you are right. I think what I meant to say, was that it sometimes seems to me as if they are specifically trying to write a character of a particular sexuality. Which is why to me it sometimes comes off as artificial, insincere, forced.

It comes across as “insert token character here”, rather than a natural development of a story.

Leo G.4501:

I wish people wouldn’t speak in absolutes.

Sometimes it’s better to begin writing a character without the dimension of sexuality (just the same as it might be with the dimension of religious belief) and add it along the way when it is meaningful and impactful. That isn’t to say writing a character with such dimensions to begin with is bad, it’s just a different way of writing and may or may not be better as you develop the character.

This is kind of what I meant, although I didn’t mean for it to come across so absolute.

Fenrir.3609:

I would suggest the “toxic environment” is caused by people not reading or otherwise ignoring a groups reqs, joining regardless and then moaning about it when they get booted. Or by people going out of their way to p$$s of groups who just want to play with like minded players.

It is caused by the same individuals constantly spamming up the forums with threads containing the same old anti meta crud, badly hidden under the guise of “game improvement”.

When you take that position, you distance yourself entirely from the idea that game designers are ultimately responsible for the player behavior that they help create. It is a position that I couldn’t possibly disagree with more.

Skoigoth.9238:

That´s your opinion (and it´s totally OK for you to have it, no question), but nothing more

Why thank you. I tend to feel rather strongly about it, because game design is my job as well. It’s a topic close to my heart. I can’t stand it when people let a game designer off the hook so easily. If players were playing the game wrong in one of my games, I would feel completely at fault for it.

Skoigoth.9238:

And why do you think my argument is rubbish? It is fact that nobody in this game is forced to use these strategies. Everybody has the freedom to create their own parties, with their own set of rules and the possibility to enforce those rules.

Yes, but ultimately it’s the game designers that design what is possible. They design what is the most profitable, fun, and easiest way of completing a dungeon. So it just bothers me when people say “then just play it your way”. That’s missing the point. A dungeon should encourage players to be played the way the designers intended it to be played.

Skoigoth.9238:

And it is my opinion that the “solutions” he presented are pretty stupid (note the “I personally” in my post).

I would say, misinformed. The intention is there, but I do not agree with the solution he presents.

Skoigoth.9238:

No need to be salty =P I´m not dismissing every suggestion ever made on this forum, just two of those the OP of this thread suggested, because I think they a) wouldn´t solve anything or b) would break some stuff completely (imagine e.g. cliffside fractal with player collision, hf walking across those planks).

I don’t think player collision is the answer either. But I recognize the problem he points out. I think he just oversimplifies the issue. It is really a very complicated problem, hinging on many other problems.

fracture.9754:

I don’t get it, you can’t vote no, you can only vote yes. How do you vote no?

By not voting? Seems obvious to me.

fracture.9754:

The only problem here is the group you do dungeons with, that’s all. Are you asking Anet to help you find “better” friends?

Here, have a fruit basket. For being one in many posters to completely miss his point.

He is not having trouble finding a group. He has a problem with OTHER people being kicked from groups, because they aren’t running fast enough. It has made doing dungeons toxic and unpleasant, and I totally agree with him.

I can run dungeons just fine, but when I see that VOTE KICK pop up because someone died, I get angry. I vote no, and then await the inevitable players that leave the group. That is what playing dungeons is often like. I hate it. It’s not the player’s fault though, it’s the design of the dungeons.

fracture.9754:

Remove everything, nerf everything, please no more fun in my videogames! All I want is to take nice, relaxing 6 hours every day to finish one path per dungeon.

Way to go in not presenting any solution, nor acknowledging any problems. Just stick your head in the sand, poke fun at a poster for pointing out a problem, and then pretend the problem does not exist. Lets go back to that earlier example shall we? Lets not ignore the problem:

One person is somehow able to type and run at the same time (macro maybe?) we’re bypassing these mobs and going to the boss!

At which point the new ranger while attempting to run and type at the same time meets a sticky end.

He lies dead only meters away from the starting point.

Then suddenly without even offering any assistance, a message window pops up asking to kick the now dead ranger.

I then hit the do not kick button and try to ask that we collect up and fight our way back to him. He’s new.

Two members just quit the group, apparently they don’t have time to help teammates.

(So ends the beginning of the Saturday night debacle)

^^^ THIS is a problem that needs to be solved. This is not how the game was intended. We’ve all seen this happen, and a player not reading the LFG correctly is really not the real issue here. Untill you acknowledge that this is not just a player problem, but a design problem, you are not going to improve the dungeon environment.

Fenrir.3609:

This game, like all mmos is designed to encourage people who WANT to work together to work with each other. Strangely enough, that is exactly what is happening in zerk/meta groups, like minded people with the same goals grouping together.

That would be fine, if it didn’t lead to a toxic environment where players who want to play the dungeons normally, are kicked from the group. And to be fair, speed clearing was already a thing in GW1 (and I wasn’t a fan of it then either). skipping one or two mobs is fine, and probably intended. But skipping everything, and cheesing encounters… probably not. But it seems many posters are very willing to pretend that this is intended design, when it is clear that just not a whole lot of design went into the dungeons, and this was an unintended side effect.

Derenek.8931:

I got my own company. I heard rumors Anet doesn’t pay as well as other companies anyway.

Yes, there is a stubborn rumor that Anet pays below the industry standard, while pushing unpleasant deadlines. At least according to ex employees. Better to remain independent.

But to keep things in perspective, these are of course reviews written by people who were let go by Anet. And when people are let go, they rarely leave positive reviews. The reviews do all seem to agree on the same points though, and it also seems in line with what Josh Foreman described about the work climate during the SAB2 crisis.

Frankly, I don’t think the problem is just with the AI. If I were doing game design work for them, I would probably start by giving the monsters builds first. But encounters and environment go hand in hand, so big changes to the dungeons would also be unavoidable.

It’s such a mess right now, it would be much easier to just erase the existing dungeons, and start over from scratch.

But then you also have the problem that what ever challenging content you create, must be doable with all classes. Since the classes are currently severely unbalanced, you’d need to fix that too. So many problems are connected to each other. I would not want to be in the shoes of the game designer that has to fix all that.

Derenek.8931:

I’ve typed very specific and comprehensive suggestions over the last few days bro. It is probably 50 pages worth through the forums. And inline many others, I am offering to actually do some behavioral AI coding for Anet if they will let me see the code.

Being able to code AI is one thing. But being able to code it within GW2’s environment is a whole other beast. I think the problem is a lot more complicated than you assume. Custom game engines often are strung together with bits and pieces of code, held together with duck tape. And you have to work within that unstable framework.

Mossy Gargoyle.3274:

Please, Anet, keep this guy away from your code. No good can come from it.

-Says someone who is not willing to make any contribution to improvement what so ever.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You have yet to present any cogent argument that clearly shows that skipping or stacking is “bad game design”. The only subjectively-bad game design here is in how easy so many encounters are and how that enables success with simple tactics.

It clearly was NOT the intention of the designers, that the players would dash past every mob possible, exploit flaws in the ai to get monsters stuck in corners and in walls, and exploit spots where the monsters can’t get to them, yet the players can safely kill them. It was clearly NOT the intention of the designers that people were constantly kicked from groups for not skipping all the content fast enough. The game was intended to encourage players to work together, and not exclude one another. But that is not what happened, and the game designers are responsible for that mess.

Skoigoth.9238:

The thing is, if these people really want to kill every single mob in their path, while being scattered across the room, they are 100% free to do so. Nobody will stop them =P

All they need to do is list their party as “pX – full clear – no stacking” on the lfg-tool and enforce said requirements by kicking people that don´t fulfill them. That is really all they need to do.

Yeah, that argument is rubbish, and you know it. What the game designers need to do, is create dungeons that don’t encourage this sort of behavior. Plenty of other MMO’s are perfectly capable of doing that. So why make excuses, and try to put the blame with the players?

Game designers are responsible for the behavior of players in their game. It is their job to create an environment that encourages the intended playing behavior. When that fails, and players not do what they intended, the designer is at fault. I think it would be hard to find any competent game designer that would put the blame on the players instead.

Skoigoth.9238:

So I personally don´t get at all why there is a need to come here and suggest ridiculous and absolutely tedious stuff (sry OP) like this:

He is trying to present a solution to a complex problem. We may not agree on his solution, but the problem is real.

Skoigoth.9238:

Just try to play the game how you want and find like-minded people to do so. Don´t try to force your preferences onto a different/broader audience, m´kay? Entitlement mentality is bad, m´kay?

-He said with a smug tone, dismissing any suggestion that the current dungeons are a horrible mess that were rushed with the game to meet an early release date.

Awesome analysis Bhawb!

Rising Dusk.2408:

Furthermore, ANet has confirmed before that stacking is not an exploit.

Stacking in a spot where the boss can’t get to you, IS cheating however. And how often does that happen during speed runs?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Your story is unfortunate, truly, but the fault lies with either the people who listed the LFG

NO. <—capitalized to make a point. The game designers are 100% responsible for this behavior.

Rising Dusk.2408:

ANet shouldn’t and won’t restrict the gameplay to force players into the slow and long way of clearing a dungeon by killing everything. They will leave the paths open so both types of players can do whatever they like, which is exactly how it should be.

That is no defense for bad game design. Why are people so eager to make excuses for the game designers? They really are at fault here.

Evapor.6849:

“Anet isn’t a lazy company” – Derenek, 2015

Im framing this on my wall.

The devs most definitely aren’t lazy. They work their butts off, often with very unreasonable deadlines, while being paid below the industry standard. The company though… thats a matter of opinion.

Derenek, I don’t disagree with anything you just described. And I think it would be foolish for anyone to deny that this is a problem. We’ve all been there, and it IS a problem. I’ve had a ranger like that in a speed running party, and have seen him get kicked all the same for just trying to play the dungeon. I’ve felt bad about having to put up with these dumb exploits, while skipping everything as fast as possible. And yet, I didn’t get the impression that I was missing much. I have played the dungeons normally, at a slow pace, and there was very little enjoyment. So I totally understand why people skip it all.

Ronpierce has a point. This weird disengaging, running away, and just standing around doing nothing, is something necromancer specific. I’ve never seen enemy mobs do that.

Rising Dusk.2408:

And for the record, while no one here can force ANet’s hand, I am 100% aware that a number of this forum community’s suggestions have, through me, been heard by the developers. They know that we want updates, they’re just choosing to work on other things, and they’re confident that what they do in HoT will make this community happy… whatever it actually ends up being.

I don’t think they choose what upper management thinks they should work on. I’m sure a lot of devs read these forums, and know that we are unhappy about several things. But whether upper management pays attention to that, that is what really matters. In the end, it’s their call. And that is exactly the problem, because I fear that they are completely out of touch with their own game, and with the community.

They’ll have to fix it eventually. The ai of ranger pets also relies on it.

Talyn.3295:

Frostmaw was just a bag of HP if I remember correctly.

It was more than that. You also had damage spikes and Wurm Bile to deal with.

Talyn.3295:

With Luck we might see content like that at some point. Not the combat, but the lore and the story and the interesting places to visit. I would love to re-visit the Domain of Torment again. I found it alot more fun then alot of the later game stuff we have right now.

Its bizarre how often UW, FOW and DOA gets brought up, yet Anet does not seem to take notice. I don’t event think they’d have to change much about UW to implement it into GW2. You could almost have the exact same quests, and the same final boss battle, and it would be great.

dlonie.6547:

I think it’s time to just realize that GW2 isn’t the game for you. You had fun in GW1 and hoped GW2 would carry over some of the features you enjoyed.

But it didn’t. And it won’t. There are greener pastures out there if you’re seeking greater build diversity/smarter AI/more complex encounters than this game offers. Might be time to move on.

Hence why I’ve recently been playing more DDO than GW2. Better dungeons, and more build diversity for sure. Just looking at the enhancement trees for each class is staggering.

Just look at this stuff! THIS is what GW2 needs. This is what I call build options:
(Keep in mind, you can choose from all 4 of these trees at the same time, and you can also multi-class!)

dlonie.6547:

People who still have hope for dungeons do make me smile….

Never change. It’s beautiful, in a sad kind of way :’-)

Hope? Nah. Those in charge only look at statistics. If the dungeon population is on the decline, they’ll assume this means that they should focus on other content instead (instead of assuming that perhaps people want better dungeons).

If they took only one gaze at what the community thinks about the game, they’d realize that raw statistics are a poor representation of what the player base would like to see. This also goes for build diversity.

I don’t mind min/maxing. But there’s not a whole lot to work with, when the game mostly revolves around DPS. That’s the sort of min/maxing I hate. I would love to have the sort of min/maxing, where you experiment with different builds, have skills and traits that interact with each other in creative ways, and come up with niche builds. I don’t get that from my class right now. It’s either condition, MM, life stealing, fear build, or power. There’s nothing here that lets me do creative stuff with my character.

In GW1 I had a necromancer that could sometimes beat impossible odds, thanks to a clever build that I created. In Fort Aspenwood I would fight off three players all by myself, just because I had created a build that balanced offense and defense in such a clever way, that they had a lot of trouble taking me down. And I would solo Frostmaw in hardmode, all thanks to my skill combination. I loved being able to do that, by experimenting with builds. So I love min/maxing! But not if its just maximizing damage.

Talyn.3295:

So you lose the previous argument about builds and you latch on this as a counter move?

No. If you read back, someone else (NikeEU) derailed the conversation in this direction, and I simply defended my position from a totally different discussion. Because I still stand by it. It was not my choice to talk about improving boss encounters and dungeons (I’m already in such a discussion in a different thread). I initially talked about min/maxing, someone else dragged it off topic.

Talyn.3295:

Do you remember the AC spider change?

I recall how many post I saw about pugs getting wrecked after. There were just as many post if not more from people who said this fight became to hard. The sad part? It was just as easy as it was before.

Yes, the change did not change a whole lot about that dungeon, or the fight itself. In fact, you can still stack at that encounter just fine.

Talyn.3295:

We are not against the idea of Innovations or improvements. We are however against un-needed changes that won’t accomplish anything but drive new players away or will do more harm then good.

You might not be, but many other players ARE. The point here was that the topic was dragged off topic, and my opinion regarding the visibility of boss-attacks was brought up (from a totally different discussion years ago), as if that some how has any relevance to a discussion on mix/maxing. It was a perfect example of players hissing at the mere mention that something in the game was not well designed, and could be improved. And I don’t get that. Why would anyone defend the current effect spam in the game? We can all see it. Don’t call a pile of dolyak droppings, a birthday cake, when we can all see it for what it is.

Talyn.3295:

P.S. I recall two or even one year ago when the Fire Elemental fight actually lasted long enough to be fun.

I never minded those changes. That fire elemental was way too challenging for a starter zone to begin with.

NikeEU.7690:

1. The game isn’t 111111 at the highest level. When speed run guilds doing fast runs fight a boss there are tons of things happening at the same time. You’ve never experienced it,

Yes I have. Don’t make assumptions on what I have or have not experienced.

But that only speeds up the run. You can bypass most content by just spamming 1,1,1,1,1. Maybe not Arah or Fractals, but plenty of content in the game lacks any challenge, and requires no special builds what so ever (especially the old dungeon content). I wish it did. I’d love to be required to change my skills specifically for a dungeon, rather than only maximizing damage. But the game just does not make any such demands on the players. And it bores me to tears.

NikeEU.7690:

2. The combat system is ridiculously deep,

No its not.

NikeEU.7690:

and many of the bosses have cool and interesting mechanics.

You may have not played enough games then. The bosses in GW2 mostly lack mechanics. Heck, most bosses in GW2 don’t even have stages. The few bosses that actually have stages are Lupi, Tequatl, the Wurm trio and the Molten Duo. But almost all bosses in the game keep repeating the same behavior throughout the entire battle. Which is so boring.

If any boss fight lasts over 5 minutes, and no new behavior has been introduced during that time, that is a bad boss fight.

NikeEU.7690:

The problem is that many of the best bosses don’t have nearly enough HP. Lupicus has about 1.44 million HP and groups have the option to EZ mode it and push him into the wall. If his HP was buffed to, say, 5-10 million, and you didn’t have that wall option the fight would be “epic” in nature. it’s unfortunate that anet balanced the end game pve around the capabilities of the worst players rather than the best or even average.

I think Lupi is mostly fine. It’s most of the other bosses in the game that deserve the same amount of design time. The wall thing is a bug. But mechanically he’s probably the most interesting boss in the whole game. Why aren’t the other bosses up to this standard?

Wethospu.6437:

People stack because bosses and other enemies are really weak in many dungeons.

I think this is a simplification of the issue. Yes, they are weak, so players can stand in one spot and spam their skills, but:

-Cleaving effectiveness is also maximized if the enemies are close together. This is related to the next point.
-Aggro control is almost none existent. To keep the enemies in one place, the players stay in one place.
-Boon spamming dominates the game, and for that you want players to stay close together.
-The foes themselves make no effort to break up a pile of players.
-The foes do not run out of aoe effects.

1. The community
2. Their own staff
10. Statistics

Zania.8461:

More specific considerations re: constructive suggestions
1) AI is an issue across the board. Having monsters dodge from AE would be nifty, but it is likely going to cause more issues than solve

Any change/improvement to AI would introduce new problems that would need to be tackled. That is not an argument for not improving the AI.

Zania.8461:

2) Collision eats resources. This will require a lot more data to be processed (to see if the positions overlap), which is taxing. Furthermore this can be used for griefing and/or exploiting.

This is an assumption, and not based on facts. This would in fact not cause a dramatic decrease in performance, and would not be taxing at all.

However, if players block each other, that would cause some opportunities for griefing. If the players only block enemies however, but not each other, this issue would be solved.

Zania.8461:

3) Then there will be a simple calculation – is the clearing of the dungeon worth the final reward? Yes – people will speed clear, and nothing will change. No – you lose about 50% (if not more) dungeon population, and get a fallout on boards.

That is really no argument at all.

Zania.8461:

4) Once again, this will simply have people ask whether complete clearing of trash is worth it on reward per unit time basis. If no, people will keep speed running. If yes, people will stack pull almost all trash and AE it down.

This depends entirely on the solution that Anet comes up with. I disagree that these are the only possible outcomes.

Zania.8461:

Bottom line – Does stacking and skipping NEED a fix? If so, is it worth risking applying a fix that might break more things that it will fix in a game mode support for which has been largely discontinued? I don’t believe ANet cares enough about dungeons to do something like this.

This is not really a case of implementing a fix. It’s a case of completely redesigning dungeons. But no, it doesn’t seem like Anet cares. They look at statistics, not at the community.

My own thoughts on all this? Stacking is the result of the dominance of boon spamming and DPS in the game. The game rewards stacking, so if you want to stop that, give the players a reason not to stack. Reduces the effectiveness of boon spamming, and give enemies means of dealing with a clutter of players (aoe attacks, control skills). Better ai, along with more strategy to the dungeons, would improve the combat overall. The game is currently too simplified and forgiving. It doesn’t make any demands for strategy, and so the players can just blast through it with the cheapest of tactics. The game needs to mature, and the game designers need to get their act together, in order to fix this.

Stacking is not a problem. It is a symptom of bad game design.

Harny.6012:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I said that the tells on enemies in GW2 were very poor, and especially hard to see considering how dense all the particle effect spam is in the game. I compared this with a game like God of War, in which all enemies have very clear windup times and tells.

Sure, let’s make this game more similar to some other games out there. Im sure they made it better then it is in GW2 for everyone.
There is too much variety in this world, right?

Way to go in completely missing the point. This is what you get when players pull quotes out of context, and deliberately derail the conversation. But let me remind you what the point was, with the picture at the bottom of this post.

Derenek.8931:

Asking for better AI coding isn’t asking to be similar to other games, it’s asking to raise the standard in order to match those games.

^ See? He gets it.

Derenek.8931:

What I’ve been asking for is that Anet redo their AI and level design coding in minor ways to give more depth and complexity to their game. You’ve got a fourth gen MMO with second gen AI.

My point exactly. There are higher standards in video games today. The action needs to be visible, and game play is more important than visuals. Combat needs depth and strategy, and not this 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 spam that we see in GW2.

Derenek.8931:

Of course if the dungeons are changed, a lot of how people play the dungeons will also change. Instead if being able to rely on their gear to allow then to solo run from Point A to Point B kill one monster and grab a chest, groups will have to be more cohesive and move strategically.

I desperately want to see this happen. I long for strategic dungeons, rather than the sloppy corridors filled with mindless trash that we have now.

Derenek.8931:

However for many people who want to play in a fun cohesive group where players have to work together the whole time to complete a mission it would be pretty awesome. Most of the trolls here I know have run these dungeons dozens if not hundreds of times.

You’d think they’d get tired of these boring lazily designed corridors by now. Demand better content people! Don’t just accept the bad content, that not even the devs themselves would be proud of.

Derenek.8931:

Don’t you guys get tired of “pull the lever, out comes cheese… pull the lever, out comes cheese… Repeat… Etc…” You don’t want something new and challenging?

Some people seem highly resistant to the idea of innovation and improvement. Like vampires hissing at a ray of sunlight.

I wouldn’t be complaining as much about DS, if they changed it back to what it was on release. When damage didn’t spill over from DS into our actual life pool, DS did allow us to do what other classes do with invulnerability, kinda (survive single damage spikes).

This would solve at least one of the issues.

I think you may be mistaken there. Even the tiniest obstacle, like a boulder, doorstep, a plateau, or in this case a table, requires minions to “step up”. Both in pvp, wvw and pve necromancers notice on a regular basis how minions get stuck on even the most basic of objects. It would be great if minions could simply climb onto such objects, instead of trying to path a way around them.

So if a player jumps down a plateau in WvW, instead of trying to find a way down (and probably getting stuck in the process), the minions would simply jump down the plateau in pursuit of the player.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

I was able to run everything kitten with Sabway/Discord Heroes and never really had the need to change my build, or those of my heroes for that matter. Does that mean it’s always the most effective setup for a situation? No. You can always make minor tweaks to get through faster, like using EoE in GW1 if you knew there were many mobs of the same type.

There were definitely areas in GW1 that you would not get through, unless the entire party specifically tailored its build for that area. Take for example Mallyx the Unyielding, who took quite a while to figure out. At first people were exploiting bugs, just to beat him, till eventually people figured out a way to do it. So no, I don’t think this holds up. Same with the Aatxe in the Underworld, for which you needed protection to survive their heavy hitting attacks.

insanemaniac.2456:

what class(es) do you play? have you never done something like… switch to elixir U for ac p2 end boss orrrr se p1 3 champs cuz party has no guardian?

I play necromancer exclusively. Granted, we don’t have a whole lot of builds to choose from.

NikeEU.7690:

Depends. Does switching a trait or two count? Does switching a utility skill count? I’ll bet you say no, but I’ll also bet many of your GW1 builds are just minor variations of each other too.

Depends. Some of the DWG or SS builds have a few skills switched around. But overall they are all pretty different. But keep in mind that in GW1 switching out one skill makes a far bigger difference than it does in GW2. In GW1 the skills ARE your build.

NikeEU.7690:

And I can beat every instance in GW1 with Mesmer/Ritway without changing whats your point?

GW2 does not make demands for specific builds. GW1 does.

NikeEU.7690:

I ran in. I took aggro. My team’s healers and spirit spam keep be alive. Stuff dies. Wow so complicated.

That is a lot more than you have in GW2. GW2 does not have inter class dependency.

NikeEU.7690:

It’s a valid commentary. When I watch top players of any game I don’t understand play, I am 100% sure I miss all the nuance and depth of their game play. I don’t know why you think you’re different or why GW2 is different.

You are suggesting that I am not at the top of my game in PVE, and that I have only a rudimentary understanding of the game. That is a childish, and offensive thing to say, and not really any argument what so ever.

EcoRI.9273:

I remember in guild wars 1 there was a story mission where there was a mark of protection healer stone summit boss that was impossible to kill if you lacked DPS.

Nonsense. In GW1 you can shatter any enchantment. This is exactly what gave GW1 more depth to its combat. You could adapt (and often had to adapt) your build to a particular encounter.

Same with fighting Glint back in Prophecies. If you didn’t interrupt her Crystal Hybernation, you could be in for a very long haul. Same with Kanaxai in the Deep, where you had to knock him down, and had to remove his enchantment.

This is something GW2 does not do. You are not ever required to bring specific skills.

True, they flip flopped constantly on life stealing in GW1. Little buff here, big nerf there. Never making it really strong, unlike Spiteful Spirit, which dominated the PVE meta since day 1. A really bizarre thing if you think about it. Here you have one necro skill in GW1 that obviously blows all others out of the water, yet they are constantly hesitant to make life stealing worth while. In the end, what we got after dozens of minor changes, was that life stealing was just “useable”. It didn’t impress anyone, but it worked, kind of.

This makes it all the more mind boggling that they still can’t get it right in GW2. Come on Anet, put some effort into it! How hard can it be to balance one mechanic? Are you really going to take 12 years to get it to work? If that is the case, you are either terrible at balancing skills, or you simply do not care.

NikeEU.7690:

1. Almost none of those are “meta” builds. Most of them are PHIW garbage. Which is fine, but stop passing them off as meta.

Do you have even half that number of builds for any given class in GW2?

NikeEU.7690:

2. Many of them are boss specific builds. I would make a similar thing for gw2 where I change builds up for particular encounters. I wouldn’t call tweaking a build for a specific scenario a new build.

I have never had to change my build for any boss in GW2.

NikeEU.7690:

GW1 combat was all about layering defense. Since there was no active defense besides a highly skilled prot monk in pvp, the best strategy was to overload on passive defense. 99% of encounters in pve could be beaten by having one DPS class being buffed to the moon by 7 support thanks to insanely high layered defense.

Most boss battles in GW1 were a lot more complicated than that. Besides, lets not forget roles and aggro management.

NikeEU.7690:

If you played the game on a higher level you’d know that people tweak their builds for each encounter. You admit as much that you fail on AC burrows so please stop insinuating that you even have a rudimentary understanding of what experienced players do.

Oh wow, get off your throne please.

Reflection is also crazy powerful in PVE, so mesmers have that going for them.

Anchoku.8142:

This is a matter of perspective and I admit it is a blurry one with all the modifiers attached but the fact remains that Necromancer rakes no damage to health while in DS.

It is not a matter of perspective. DS is not invulnerability, end of story. DS does not provide immunity to conditions or control skills. So as long as no one recognizes this imbalance, the necro will never become on par with other classes.

DS does not scale with focused fire, or very heavy hits. Invulnerability does.
DS does not make you immune to control skills. Invulnerability does. (that is why we get stun locked, when other classes don’t)
DS does not make you immune to conditions. Invulnerability does.
DS does not allow you to heal or use utility skills. Invulnerability does.
DS requires a resource (life force). Invulnerability doesn’t.

Since we are the only class without an invulnerability mechanic, our class simply has the worst defense of all classes in the game. The whole game revolves around the 2 dodges mechanic, which is broken because of invulnerability, which is in essence an extra dodge.

So why do all other classes get 3 dodges, and we get only 2?

That is a question I would like to ask the game designers at Anet.

Fermi.2409:

And yet I’ve never had issues with the burrows, and can’t remember the last time I failed then. Even the really bad group I had tonight pulled them off on the first to, albeit with some struggling.

So they were struggling, and yet you find it hard to imagine that other groups managed to fail?

That does not make sense.

What they should do, is implement something similar to the way zombies navigate in Left 4 Dead. You basically have a nav mesh, where enemies are allowed to jump up and down from ledges (by connecting multiple unconnected nav tiles). This allows enemies to climb over height differences, jump down from a height, and step over small obstacles.

Having them speed up if they distance themselves too far from their master, is also a good idea. But for that to work, they first need to stop getting stuck. And for that you need more clever navigation.

See the picture below on how Valve solves this sort of navigation.

This is a nav mesh. Only ai characters can see these tiles, and use them to reach their objective. They check the shortest distance, and then determine a path across the tiles where they don’t get stuck on obstacles. Tiles that are at an angle are marked a different color, and indicate that a climbing or jumping animation is required.

Notice how a connection has been made between the floor and the table. This allows characters to step onto the object. In Source, the creation of nav meshes is automated. Which means the game engine can examine a map, and create a basic nav mesh on its own. The level designer can then manually step in, and correct the nav mesh to fix problem areas. For GW2 the nav mesh would be huge for each explorable area, so that would still be a lot of work. But I can’t imagine any other solution.

That is a good point Shiki. It would seem that our minions and pets simply do not use the same pathfinding as normal mobs. Very odd and inconsistent.

Sagat.3285:

3 more years to go, I’m taking this from someone who made a comment about GW1 balance.

That is correct. It took them 6 years to fix the mesmer for PVE in GW1, so we have 3 more years to go.

flow.6043:

I’m with Bhawb on this one. Death Shroud itself is not the problem.
Healing through DS would solve a lot of problems, and in addition to that DS could easily be upgraded with some extra skills like an extra heal on #6, maybe a short block/invuln that allows safe stomps, maybe a short distance teleport + stunbreak just to get out of focus fire.

The block/invuln is key here. Currently all classes have either invulnerability, evasion, blocking, or bonus endurance. This translates to extra dodges, and an ability to escape stun-locking.

Necromancer is the only class that doesn’t have this. That is why we get stun-locked in wvw, and absolutely obliterated.

The healing in DS would be welcome, but what they really need to change is this imbalance. Personally, I HATE invulnerability skills. They are absolutely terrible. In Guild Wars 1 they were the root of many problems, where players would exploit the hell out of them to solo entire chunks of the Underworld. Quickly perma-assassins dominated these areas, as well as obsy-eles. It is almost always a bad idea to add invulnerability skills to a class, while not adding them to other classes. That is equal to introducing a severe class imbalance.

Now in GW2 people can’t keep them up infinitely like in GW1, but it is still a problem when one class does not have access to this skill, when all other classes do.

The necro has many problems, and DS is but one.

-We have no invulnerability, blocking, evades or extra endurance. All of these basically translate to extra dodges, which unbalance the game. If the necro is the only class without them, this puts the necro at a very unfair disadvantage.

-Our minion ai is rubbish. This pretty much undermines the feasibility of any minion build. We can’t have our Flesh Golem getting stuck on a doorstep, or our fiends picking their nose in the middle of combat.

-We can’t heal in DS, and it is there for not an extra healthbar. DS actually prevents us from doing a lot of things that other classes can do perfectly well while using their invulnerability, evasion or blocking. Again, a huge unbalance between the classes. It locks us out of our utility skills, unlike the defensive options that all other classes have. DS also doesn’t scale with damage, unlike a skill that renders you completely invulnerable to everything.

-Life stealing is rubbish, and doesn’t heal in DS. Anet took forever to make life stealing even slightly useful in GW1, and they struggle again in GW2. Right now a life stealing build just doesn’t cut it. And I suspect it never will.

-We have poor access to stability. This becomes especially troublesome under focus fire, where any other class can activate their invulnerability, and we get reduced to dust. It allows other classes to stun-lock us with control skills, without any means for us to escape death.

-We lack support skills that boost offense. We really need the sort of Might spamming that the other classes bring to the table. Either that, or they need to dial back how much Might stacking dominates the game. Right now necros don’t bring the group support that a party wants.

-Our strengths are control and conditions; two mechanics that PVE is against. PVE is notoriously anti-conditions, and anti-control skills. There’s the condition cap, and bosses that are immune or resistant to conditions. There’s defiant, and worse, indomitable. This would all be okay, if that third mechanic (DPS) had counter measures as well… but it doesn’t. Which is why DPS dominates the game so much. We excel at the mechanics that PVE does not care about.

-Fear. No one likes you for fearing the enemies away, that your party members are trying to kill. So why do we have fear? Why is it in the game?

-Axe is rubbish. It’s just absolute trash.

-Related to the axe, we lack the ability to cleave (hit multiple foes with one melee attack).

-Our trait lines are filled with trash traits.

-We lack useful combo fields, and we lack combo fields in general.

-We don’t have reflection. Reflection is kind of OP, and ironically the classes that already benefit from some of the a fore mentioned skills that dominate the game, ALSO have access to reflection. That is a very strange design decision.

-Anet is not interested in the necromancer. This is evident by how they have repeatedly quickly skipped over the necro class in just about any podcast. Sure, the guardian gets a lot of the spotlight, but the necro gets little more than a brief mention.

A game like GW2 should not need very complicated AI for minions and pets. All it needs is a reliable engage/disengage (and not standing around refusing to attack), and reliable pathfinding. The unreliable nature of minions attacking seems like sloppy programming to me. But good pathfinding is simply a difficult thing to code.

I presume that GW2’s terrain uses a nav-mesh, but the terrain is of course a lot more complex to navigate than that of GW1. There’s lot of bumps and obstacles that enemies could get stuck on, and they do. They need to get this sorted out. We can’t have our Flesh Golem getting stuck on a doorstep mid-charge.

zenleto.6179:

So now paying for non-essential items is considered a grind? Have I read the post right?

Guess they successfully fooled you. Very effective marketing. The OP is right on the money. The game has steadily been changing towards more and more cash grabbing, and less and less new content. This is a trend that already started once they introduced the in-game store in GW1, and it has progressed downhill ever since GW2.

It seems to run parallel with a change within Anet itself, the company’s mentality and it’s staff. But it’s really nothing new. There are plenty of other game companies that do the same, to a worse or lesser extend. It’s one of the biggest problems that the game industry is facing at the moment. And while at first everyone seems fine with it (after all, it’s all optional), eventually plenty of players start to notice the sharp decline in quality in the game itself. After all, there’s always a price to be paid.

I have to wonder, why was it necessary to begin with? Wasn’t the game profitable enough without it?

Minion AI definitely felt more reliable shortly after release. But sadly, with a lot of fixes, also came a lot of new problems.

Vargamonth.2047:

If the group can just combine 7500 effective power (lvl80 score), which is an average of only 1500 per player (something that pretty much everyone can achieve with a trait / utility reallocation), and everybody uses a decent weapon, burrows shouldn’t be a problem at all.

And yet they often are. I have seen it happen countless times. And look, I can’t examine the skill bars of these other party members and see what they are running. And I don’t want to be the person to tell others what weapons to bring, and what gear to wear. But I hate it when it is simply a lack of maxed out damage that is causing a pug to wipe.

I also hate it when Tequatl simply flies off because 80+ people weren’t doing enough damage together to kill him in time. I don’t think the people causing the lack of DPS are bad players, but I hate that it is even a factor at all. I hate this sort of min-maxing.

Tweaking a character is fun, but failing a mission because the party lacks enough DPS just sucks the fun right out of it.

Supreme.3164:

Necromancers are not the only ones with the low morale, majority (if not all) eles are simply tired of playing the same spec, same traits and utilities to reach a fair level of viability. We’re praying for a burst specialization that doesn’t get farmed by thieves and med guardian with little effort….we’re praying like you for a fair treatment, majority of players made an ele with the idea of playing a caster class..not a battlemage

I think this may also be one of the effects of such a simplified combat system as GW2 has now. Back in GW1 we had dual professions and 8 skills that we could switch out. That was a huge amount of diversity in builds and a lot of freedom.

Now in GW2 we have just those 4 skills. One of which is an elite, and one which is a healing skill. Sure there are traits as well, but many of those don’t combine very well, and many classes are stuck with a handful of useless traits that no one ever uses. And we also have a few weapons to choose from, each with its own fixed skill bar. That’s just very limiting.

There’s just not a whole lot of room for diversity within the current system.

iSmack.1768:

Ehh… I’m expecting our specialization is going to be quite sub par (prove me wrong ANet)… So I stashed a bunch of tomes ready to finally make an alt (I don’t like having alts and only play my necro) and ditch my necro for good.

Since they have no idea what to do with our specialization, I bet you Necro will be the last to reveal.

-AND no idea what to do with our class.

I fear you are probably going to be right, if Anet’s disinterest in our class is anything to go by. They just don’t seem very excited about anything necro, nor do they seem to pay any attention to the community.

sorudo.9054:

funny to see so much negativity about necro’s while they outshine in survivability and control,

In WvW a necromancer gets absolutely facerolled when attacked by multiple enemies. Any other class just pops their invulnerability skill, and runs for safety.

Necromancers most definitely do not outshine in survivability. In fact, they kind of outshine in their lack of said survivability. Necromancers are unique in that they need to invest in survivability to be on par with other classes.

Necromancers also have an absolutely rubbish downed state, that does not allow them to escape death. Unlike some other classes, that can move and stealth while downed.

NikeEU.7690:

I don’t believe that is true at all. I just think the story is remarkably fake. If they are level 80 and have Power anywhere in their stat set they can auto attack and kill everything in AC no problems. This sounds like a made up story to me.

You have got to be kidding me. This has happened to me countless times, and I can’t be alone. Why is it that whenever someone brings up a story from their own experience, and others disagree with it, they immediately yell out that it’s a made up story?

Seriously.

Quite often when I join any PUG, I’m usually the last one standing when it comes to those darn burrows. People either lack DPS, or lack survivability. Either way, the pug wipes, and I can’t clear them by myself. Then with much nagging, and with sometimes some stubborn player who refuses to change his build rage quiting, we finally manage to get one of the eles to bring frostbow, and then we finally pull it off.

NikeEU.7690:

The combat system isn’t shallow, but some of the encounters are. And lastly, there is as much build variety in the meta as there was in GW1.

No there is not! And stop saying that, you have no idea what you are talking about. You are embarrassing yourself. I need only look at my GINORMOUS list of necromancer builds for GW1, and see how HUGE the difference in build variety is. See the picture below.

There was SO much more to combat in GW1, than there is to the current combat in GW2. There was aggro control, disenchanting, buffing, protection, interrupts, hexing, damage, bodyblocking, kiting, use of height difference, energy denial, conditions. And all of those mechanics had a purpose in PVE and PVP.

GW2 is mostly just DPS and dodge rolling. There is very little aggro control to speak of. Interrupting is mostly rendered useless by defiant. The PVE game is almost build against the use of conditions in many ways. Height use is not allowed (enemies go invulnerable). Kiting is not allowed, because enemies are on tight leashes. Disenchantment has very little purpose, especially in PVE. There is no inter-class dependence, or any clear roles to speak of. And very little strategy, if any at all. Monsters don’t even have builds in GW2!

Yes, the combat is shallow! Certainly if you compare it with GW1.

Also, in GW1 you would change your build completely for each mission! Some missions would be made much easier with minions (because they had lots of bodies). Other missions (such as UW) lacked bodies, and Spiteful Spirit was king. I would also adapt my protective and support skills depending on the mission. If I was doing a mission with lots of Wurms, I would bring hex removal to get rid of Wurm Bile. If I were doing The Deep, I would switch to a 1hp necro and bring Blood is Power.

That does not happen in GW2. And shame on you for even thinking that there is the same build variety. There objectively is not.

NikeEU.7690:

Let’s not forget the “shallow combat system” you decry you have in the past advocated replacing with colored lights over bosses heads that tell you when to dodge. So I take your “combat system” analysis with a grain of salt.

Way to take that completely out of context.

Let me put that in context again:

I said that the tells on enemies in GW2 were very poor, and especially hard to see considering how dense all the particle effect spam is in the game. I compared this with a game like God of War, in which all enemies have very clear windup times and tells.

People like you then made of fun of that criticism, yelling out that I wanted bright signal lights on the bosses. Because apparently it is heresy in the church of GW2 to criticize the visibility and/or the graphics.

This is of course completely irrelevant to my point about the shallow combat system, but I guess you have to drag in unrelated points to kind of avoid having to actually defend your position.

Nightwin.6423:

Currently necros are not a totally special class for pve,

Translation: There are absolutely rubbish in PVE, bottom of the barrel.

Nightwin.6423:

providing not a lot for parties

Translation: Providing nothing for parties.

Nightwin.6423:

and being only a decent addition.

Translation: They have nice outfits.

Nightwin.6423:

If so will necros loose a place a pve and only improve in pvp and wvw

What place do we have to lose? We are already bottom of the barrel. It is hard to imagine things could be any worse than they already are for the necromancer.

Larynx.2453:

Any sort of difficult content needs to be organized, and organization which requires an hour of set up to ferry 100 people on to a map is ridiculous.

One of my many frustrations in the game. It’s fortunate that Aurora Glade has a lot of competent guilds that take down these world bosses on a regular basis. But I remember getting over 70 people into the zone to fight Tequatl, and it just flying off because we still didn’t kill it fast enough. Ferrying over 100 people is unreasonable and not very fun (you are basically fighting the game’s lack of districts), and a boss leaving because it is on a timer is also lame. I prefer to lose a boss fight either due to a complete player wipe, or due to failing a clear objective.

Larynx.2453:

Not to mention just by the nature of being open world any clueless player can wander into the fight and accomplish nothing, while making the content harder for everyone else and still being rewarded. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel; instanced content works.

I’ve seen this quite often with the Triple Worms. Players carefully trying to battle the dynamic scaling, in order to not over scale it. Players should not even be aware of the system when fighting a boss, that’s just silly.

Larynx.2453:

There’s no intrinsic reward from completing the content like you get with heroic or even normal raiding in World of Warcraft. Progression is a term that does not apply to PvE in GW2 outside of loot and personal challenges.

Agreed. There are no rewards or progression to look forward to.

Personally I love min maxing in any other game. But I hate it in GW2. Ideally, I would prefer to run my own build, where I combine offense with a bit of defense. But in GW2 you need to maximize your damage, and I hate it.

I hate it when I do AC with random players, only to find out that we are not doing enough collective power as a group to destroy the burrows in time. Either they have too little offense in their build, or their survivability is so poor, that they are eating dirt in mere seconds. I don’t even think it’s a case of them being bad players. They just happen to have a build that does not maximize damage enough for them to finish the dungeon.

There’s something incredibly boring about tweaking your character to only maximize the damage output. Especially when the combat system is already pretty shallow, and the build variety is equally poor.

Statistics over community feedback

The problem seems to be that Anet is developing this game in a vacuum, where they pay more attention to statistics, than to feedback from the community. As such, I don’t expect any of the criticism is being heard. For sure there are devs that read these forums, and are aware of our concerns. But they don’t have a say in the matter, I suspect. It’s all about the people in charge, and it seems it is they who pay only attention to statistics. This is probably why we’re not getting a new Super Adventure Box. See, this is how it often works in the game industry:

SAB 1 = a great succes? Producer: “Marvelous! Make another one!”
SAB 2 = a lot of criticism? Producer: “Rubbish, lets never do this again!”

This sort of blind adherence to statistics, prevents the game from ever developing beyond what it is right now. That is I fear why we haven’t seen any raid content, or any improvements to dungeons. But there is also the problem of small teams working on an island.

See, those in management positions in the game industry, often think that experimenting with different design approaches is a good way to manage projects. So they’ll occasionally have the sudden crazy idea to split a perfectly well oiled machine, into several tiny teams, where no one really knows who is in charge. These teams then work on their own private islands, where it becomes unclear who is the lead of what, who has to answer to who, and any idea is just fine. So you’ll end up with leads having to answer to animators, and nonsense like that. That is also how projects like SAB are born. Sure, it is a very creative and original fun gag. And the game play is fun too. But it has of course nothing to do with GW2. Had a competent project lead been in charge, SAB would never have made it into the game to begin with. This is not criticism towards SAB itself, but merely to the incoherent design, and lack of dedication to a strong design document and style guide. Who approved it to begin with? Either you commit to it, and keep making new SAB levels. Or you never introduce it to begin with. But be consistent in your design!

This is what happens when you cut up teams, and let them do their own thing. What you really need is a clear design structure, where there is one lead game designer, one art-lead and one lead level designer, and everyone answers to them, but the lead game designer gets the final say in the matter.

But you also need to stay in touch with the community. Statistics aren’t everything. If you decide to not further develop dungeons, merely because the statistics show that few people actually play them, then you are disregarding the fact that lots of people are asking for challenging raid content. Now I do not know if this is the case. I do not know if dungeons are suffering from a strong decline in popularity.

But what I am saying is that currently Anet is following a very incoherent design philosophy. Teams seem pushed to unreasonable deadlines (which is why some living story chapters were very disappointing). There doesn’t seem to be a very clear idea of where the game should be heading. So a producer looks at the statistics regarding the last Living Story, and deduces that lots of people are playing the open world event chains. So at the drop of a hat, that can become GW2’s new design direction. No more heart quests, no dungeons, no raids. Just these giant event chains with a very low difficulty. But this ignores the possibility that perhaps a lot of people enjoy normal PVE content more, and would love to see more heart-quests instead, or more difficult content.

You will not ignore the chest! It demands attention! Look at it! LOOK AT IT!

Yes they do seem to have a tendency to hit you over the head with it, I agree. If you compare this with the way Dorrian is written in Dragon Age 3, it is quite a contrast. Dorrian is a homosexual character, but he is an interesting character regardless of his sexuality. It is pretty clear what his interests are, but the game does not beat you over the head with it. He doesn’t constantly remind you that he’s interested in men, and only brings it up if you specifically ask him about it. The game focuses on him as a character.

I felt the kiss scene between Jory and Kas, after defeating Scarlet, was very forced. And I do get this impression that they are trying very hard to take any opportunity to remind us of their relationship. It didn’t come across as a natural way in which two people in a relationship act towards each other.

It seems we are in an era where the media is trying to inject a lot of portrayals of same sex relationships into everything: Movies, television shows, comics and also games. This seems to be going hand in hand with a cultural shift, where it is becoming more and more accepted (all be it at an embarrassingly slow pace).

It has a habit of feeling a bit heavy handed or forced though, in my opinion. Writers tend to stumble and fall in their efforts to include such depictions, and it can often feel like they are including “token-characters”. Sometimes it can even feel like they are undermining the very credibility of their own setting, in order to conform to modern political correctness.

It should be noted that we have seen some decent attempts at portraying same sex relationships in games, such as in some of Bioware’s titles. But more often than not, the writing can be a bit clumsy. It feels like “including same sex couples in games”, is more of a trendy thing to do, rather than an honest acceptance of something that to me, should not be special at all.