Just played through this zone for the first time, and I wanted to make this thread to congratulate Arenanet on a job well done. I think this is the first time in any game where I’ve felt like I’m truly part of an invasion force/raid.
There’s a nice balance between content that can be soloed and content that simply can’t. I ended up going through the central invasion, and got all the way to the harbor on the other side before it was simply impossible to solo. And I’m fine with that. If I could solo the entire zone, there would be no point to having other people at all, would there?
Frankly I don’t see what the point of adding laurels was in the first place.
Karma basically shares a purpose with Laurels: A currency that you gain by going out into the world and doing things, as opposed to sitting on one’s proverbial behind in Lion’s Arch all day and spamming lfg fractals level 46.234. And we were already getting a healthy sum of karma from completing our dailies! Why not just make a karma vendor with the same items as the laurel vendor has now? This would also solve the current issue of there being no real karma dumps for people who don’t care about their legendaries.
I don’t care if its balanced or not, I still want to be able to fight someone else without getting lolheartseekered by 4 thieves at once.
At worst, I get lolheartseekered by only one thief at once.
You just answered your own question.
/thread.
So I pay all the kids $20 each. The original kid comes up to me and says, WTF? this job was worth $80 now? I would have done it myself then! No I say, if you do it yourself it worth $20, if you do it with others its worth more.
Does this make any sense?
It makes sense, and I too would be a bit mad at the original kid, but how does this correlate at all to GW2?
Just how many champions are you capable of soloing, much less the priests in Orr?
If you’re adequately skilled, yes its possible to do most of the content in game, but certainly not all of it. And its not like you can solo WvW, PvP matches, or (almost all) the dungeons in the game.
There’s content for solo players, and content for groups. Just the way it should be.
Forgive me, but I am completely clueless as to what the OP’s issue here is. Do you want people who join a party to actually get less loot than someone who plays solo?
If so, this probably isn’t the game for you, as Arenanet is trying their hardest to encourage working together with other people by removing as many of the possible detriments as they can.
I tend to explore what comes my way, while constantly moving towards that 100% world completion. Best of both worlds IMO.
If I see a rather suspicious cave, I’m going in it. If i see some stepping stones, I’m jumping on them.
Wow, I wasn’t expecting this many replies at all, much less in under a day…
I figured I’d wait a bit to post what I would do, in order to not derail the thread into “OP’s opinions are stupid” and completely ignore the premise. Anyways, as for what I would change…
1. Fix all the obvious bugs with the custom music system, such as the crafting playlist not working at all, and the Main menu/boss battle playlists not randomizing. On top of that, I’d add more playlists, like UnderwaterCombat, Dungeon, and zone or terrain-specific playlists, like swamp/snow/grass. Battle playlist also needs to play when fighting a champion, no matter what.
2. Put explorable mode dungeon tokens on trash, and give each trash mob a high chance of dropping drops of liquid karma/moneybags. Drastically reduce the rewards for finishing the dungeon. Seriously, why is trash even here at the moment if it’s worth skipping it?
3. Make some ascended gear pieces that are world drops, as well as some that can be attained through WvWvW and dungeons besides Fractals. Can’t find a group for anything other than fractals at the moment because there’s no impetus whatsoever to go to any other dungeon.
4. Reduce the quantities of mats needed to craft legendaries, but implement extremely difficult requirements to craft them, such as questlines, going to spots in dungeons, jumping puzzles, even. I think the effort required to get them is at a good spot at the moment, but the methods through which to actually craft the legendaries could be vastly improved. The main reason I’m not even trying for one at the moment is that it’s too much grinding and farming for a sword, when I’m perfectly fine with my current one.
5. Someone suggested in the lore thread about making Trehearne the next Big Bad lore-wise. Do this. Just about every player hates him, for one reason or another.
What’s the first thing you’re going to do?
I support this thread. GW2 actually has a great music track, but it uses it so poorly that many people (including me) are led to believe it’s worse than it really is. And even if you use the custom playlists, (which are a GREAT idea by the way. You can’t please everyone with a single OST, so why not let people use what suits their own wishes.) the way they are implemented does nothing to fix the problems of why I wanted the original OST swapped in the first place.
1. MASSIVE overuse of certain tracks, particularly the ambience ones. After about the 20th time of hearing a certain melody in queensdale (the one when you visit a vista) I wanted to punch my monitor. This still happens in custom OSTs, with the same track being repeated 2-3 times.
2. Some places that need their own soundtrack cues don’t have them. Notably Orr, which has NO soundtrack at the moment, dungeons, which use the same ambience and battle music as the open world.
3. Battle tracks don’t come on nearly often enough. At least put a slider or something in the audio menu. And no matter how many mobs are involved, turn the battle music on when fighting a champion, possibly a veteran. Having the peaceful ambience going on in the background during my epic fight with an ogre does nothing to reinforce the mood.
4. Crafting playlist doesn’t work at all. Lion’s arch doesn’t trigger City playlist, which is where 90% of players are hanging out anyway. Boss Battle playlist doesn’t shuffle at all.
5. As mentioned earlier in this thread, there’s the same ambience all over the world. Try subdividing the tracks into “Swamp” “Grassland” “Ominous location”, and the such.
6. More playlists for the custom OST feature. “Dungeon” “Dungeon Combat” “Underwater Combat” “Village” “Snow” “Desert” “Underground”, and the three mentioned above would all be welcome, but for now I’d settle for just a few of these.
People will always gravitate towards the path that gives the least resistance for the most reward.
I too hate this method of skipping 90% of the dungeon. (And I’m a thief, of all classes)
I think the issue was hit upon in the dungeon earlier, mobs are way too time consuming and risky, and don’t contribute anything interesting compared to the end-dungeon reward. The fact is that putting the metaphorical carrot on a stick at the end of a dungeon causes people to get to the end through any means necessary.
Arenanet’s taken steps to experiment with streamlining more, by having boss chests before the end give out 3 tokens each. This is still nothing compared to the 60 tokens
at the end, however.
If we want the problem of everyone skipping most of the dungeon fixed, the obvious solution is to intersperse those rewards onto the trash mobs and other bosses, perhaps dangle a slight bit more at the end to keep the whole feel of “congrats! you finished a dungeon!”
Trash mobs should have a rather high chance of dropping a token, karma drops, bags of coins, the stuff people actually run the dungeon for in the first place. This way people will WANT to kill the trash for their phat lewts. But hey, if some groups of trash are atrociously overpowered, you would still have the opportunity to skip it.
Just talking off the top of my head here, but what do you guys think?
what about short bow?
Bad shortbow players: Clusterbombclusterbombclusterbombclusterbomb
Good Shortbow players: Offers a combo field to your team, one of the best blast finishers in the business, FANTASTIC mobility even with no mobility utilities, moderate damage output.
I do agree with the OP, in that many thief builds have to be boring in order to be viable, with shortbow being a notable exception. This is a direct result of the initiative system. If one ability does even remotely higher damage than another, the optimal build would be to spam it endlessly in order to dish out the most damage. After all, why waste initiative on an ability that does 2000 damage when you could be using it on an ability that does 3000 damage?
So how do we solve this problem then? Shortbow offers spamming as an option, at the cost of much of your mobility/versatility. Because of the initiative system, we can’t stop people from spamming the highest damage ability over and over and over, but we can encourage it. Some possibilities:
1. Using one ability for a second time 3 seconds or less after using it the first time will cost an additional initiative. The effect stacks. So the first lolheartseeker costs 3 initiative, the second costs 4, the third costs 5. That’s already 12 initiative.
2. BUFF THE OTHER ABILITIES. If we have a reason to use abilities other than lolheartseeker then most of us will give them a shot once in a while. But right now…
Pistol:
Body shot is a DPS loss 99% of the time, depsite being a supposed “open with me and you’ll do more damage!” ability.
Black powder shot can be walked, dodged, or evaded so easily it’s not even worth the initiative,
Flanking strike on land is too slow to ever actually hit anything, Flanking strike underwater has the same problem and kittens with your camera. whereas Shadowy assault doesn’t.
Spear’s normal attacks are actually pretty good, but the stealth breaker isn’t. 6 1/2 seconds of weakness might as well not be there at all.
Nine Tailed-Strike does comparable damage to shadowy assault, but doesn’t grant evasion, so Shadowy Assault is just flat out better 99% of the time. At least make this daze or something…
Tow line(I think that’s the name) has such a long recovery that your opponent will be out of range for anything else when it finishes.
All that’s left is Shadowy assault…
It’s basically an issues with levels. Thieves are unusually reliant on their utilities/traits to effectively fight. Thieves at low levels are both fragile and don’t have the proper gear to tear kitten up yet.
At the same time though, I find it incredibly an incredibly satisfying experience to level up a thief. You actually feel like the PvE environment poses a threat to you, and that you need to adapt and work to overcome these challenges. As opposed to a warrior, where I have had no trouble at all mashing my face into the keyboard and emerging from combat with 95% of my health left.
Don’t even both with optimizing builds until you reach at LEAST level 75. You’re just going to replace that gear soon anyway, and virtually any build can work in PvE if you’re smart about your dodges/ability usage.
It’s clear what Arenanet wants P/P to be at the moment.
No forms of crowd control, no forms of survivability, no access to stealth, despite having one of the best if not the best stealth breakers.
Clearly the Pistol is meant for raw damage/utility. The problem is, it can’t really do its own job well.
Body shot is completely worthless as-is. Just use 1 more unload and you’ll get more damage. Headshot is a difficult-to-use, but very powerful skill. Black Powder could use a larger AoE and 1 second longer duration.
1. Equip a shortbow.
2. Trait yourself to share venoms and +1 charges to all venoms.
3. Apply Basilisk Venom.
4. Press 1 twice.
Congratulations. You have stunned 3 enemies for a grand total of 3 seconds. Add a few bros into the mix and its even longer.
Basilisk Venom is fine where it’s at. It just needs some trait/shortbow love and its amazing.
I once used it as the other weapon set for my P/D build. I would tack an “apply bleeding on weapon switch” rune on one, condition dmg on the other, then spam death blossom and marvel at your 18 stacks of bleeding. Though its uses were limited, since I could accomplish the same thing by staying in P/D.
Before you nerf anything, you need to fix.
- Venom Utility to not be worthless.
I’d hardly call it useless. In fact, you can use shortbow and literally triple the effectiveness of all your venoms. Add venom sharing and +1 charges to all your venoms and you have a monster of a PvP support build.
Basilisk Venom alone is two 1.5 second stuns that affect 3 targets, and can be applied to your entire party.
The only problems i see with Venoms are their relative weakness in PvE, because of less of a need for crowd control. That and Skale venom is just bad, even if you give it to your entire party.
I’ll help out here, since people completely ignored my thread on this topic.
Hemorrhage: Deadly Arts, 20 points. Application of a bleed effect has a 30% chance of weakening and crippling the target for 2.5 seconds.
Bullet Time: Acrobatics, 10 points. Landing a critical hit with a pistol-based ability regenerates 1/5 of your endurance bar.
Raid: Deadly Arts, 30 points: Using body shot or Vital shot triggers a state on the thief that prevents weapon swaps and usage of any non-pistol based ability, but grants stability, swiftness, and 50% faster activation on all attacks for 5 seconds.
Duelist: Acrobatics, 10 points: 5% increased damage with sword-based abilities. Grants a 30% chance to block any incoming melee-range attack, a 15% chance to block any incoming ranged attack.
Edge Counter: Shadow Arts, 20 points: If the thief is crowd-controlled while using an ability, he will immediately break the stun and counterattack with his current stealth-breaker ability. 60 second cooldown.
You realize why haste exists, right? No, it’s not because Arenanet is stupid. It’s so that even Joe Schmoe who picked up the game for the first time just yesterday can have fun in PvP.
Anyone who done a 100b build, lolheartseeker build, or almost any glass cannon build knows just how easy and satisfying it is to kill someone using the build. It provides an outlet for fun to everyone who tries sPvP, from the most grizzled veterans to the noobs.
I think it’s a smart design decision on Arenanet’s part, and eventually people will learn to play with or around it.
Playing Venom SB right now, and I gotta say the conditions/utility I’m putting out is just insane… Once people discover this it’s going to be the new Flavor of the Month build.
30/10/30/0/0
Deadly Arts: IV / VIII / XII
Critical Strikes: III, could probably swap out these 10 points somewhere else, but I feel like I need the damage.
Shadow Arts: II / VII / XII. Feel like every bonus in this branch except for VII and XII are wasted, but sharing venoms is just that good.
Weapon Rune: Gain might on Crit
Armor Runes: Lyssa, because I run withdraw/Basilisk Venom, both of which have unusually low cooldowns. The Precision is also nice.
Knight Amulet+Knight Gem.
The only issue I’ve seen with this build is how easy it is to get locked down and killed if you get hit with even a single disable. Also has no way of removing conditions, but you have the capability to run from a fight against a heavy condition user.
It seems like no matter what I do in PvP, I’m not making a difference either way. I know I’m not an expert in PvP, and possibly not even good, but it seems that no matter what I do, I can’t actually do anything useful.
1. I ninja an undefended point, for 2 people to come and retake it. I end up feeding the enemy 5 points, while only making that many points for my team if I’m lucky.
2. I help out in the giant battle raging over the central point. But no matter what I play, I can’t make any difference in the battle. If I’m a glass cannon, I just get murdered by that lolheartseeker Thief or 100b warrior that came from behind. If I’m a tank, I can’t do kitten for damage or even make it on to the point sometimes, thanks to all the CC and knockbacks. If I’m somewhere in between, I get the worst of both.
3. I hide in the brush and wait for the guys defending the point to leave. They never do. I’m doing literally nothing and not helping the team at all.
I can’t be the only one feeling this way. It seems like sPvP is all about living and dying by the mob, since I can’t do much on my own. 1v1 fights are non-existant, and even if they did exist it would only be a complex version of rock-paper-scissors.
1. If a team needs 7 people to finish someone off, they’re doing it wrong. A few tweaks could be made to balance out the various downed states, but it’s otherwise fine as-is.
2. We don’t need to get rid of this mode, but another mode desperately needs to be added . Right now the winning team is whoever can last the longest while staying in the circle, making tank builds god tier. IMO the only competitive mode should be a 5v5 arena-esque mode.
3. Sort of already implemented in the current ranking system, but yes it could be improved.
4. Yes.
5. Make unranked PvP servers and allow free join/leave, and ranked servers give a rank penalty when you leave.
6. Ever heard of WvW? They have a great majority of what you described.
7. Hell yes. Right now the only way to duel someone is to go on a low pop PvP server, which has its own array of problems.
8. Glory is basically the tokens you just described. But as to what gear is “better looking”, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Same, though I hadn’t initially thought it was the patch…
I wanted to be a pirate. So I did.
Though when I got into it, I find thieves to be a good class choice for me regardless of the piratey-ness. Low enough health that you have to actually dodge stuff, high damage potential if you can combo correctly, tons of mobility, ability to pick your fights, it’s all there.
Would like to see arm-blades for a more close-quarters combat weapon. Sort of like a D/D that relies on something other than evasion/stealth.
A crossbow would also be nice, but I’m not sure what its abilities would be.
It really is amazing. Knowing Jeremy Soule, he might have been the one to compose this, but I really wish he had been this on-the-ball for the rest of the game. I don’t HATE the soundtrack, per se, but compared to his work on Supreme Commander, I think he could have done better.
This P/D build’s finally been working for me in PvP.
Mainhand: Pistol, +10% condition duration Rune
Offhand: Dagger, +10 Condition Damage/kill Rune
All armor has Runes of the Afflicted
Healing: Hide in Shadows.
Utility 1: Devourer Venom.
Utility 2: Shadowstep:
Utility 3: Needle Trap.
Elite: Thieves Guild : Dagger storm
Traits:
Deadly Arts: 30. Mug (III)/Corrosive Traps(II)/Panic Strike(XI)
Critical Strikes: 10. Pistol Mastery(V)
Trickery: 30. Flanking Strikes(IV)/Instinctual Response(II)/Initial Strike(IX)
Pretty much what the title says. Post your suggestions for new utility skills and/or traits.
Skills:
Shadow Feint: Counter move which will give the Thief evasion for 1 second while he retaliates with his current stealth breaker skill.
Firecrackers: Launches a few small firecrackers at the target area which deal AoE damage and apply Burning.
Traits:
Duelist: Grants 5% bonus damage with swords – Shadow Arts, 10 points.
Hemorrhage – Application of a bleed effect has a 30% chance of crippling the target. Deadly arts, 20 points.
Bullet Time: Landing a critical hit with a pistol-based ability regenerates 1/5 of your endurance bar. Quickness, 10 points
Vital Shot: Fix the stupid animation bug that is causing this skill to do garbage for DPS.
Body Shot: Increase the duration of Vulnerability to 11 seconds, and increase the damage output by 30%.
I think these 2 alone would make P/P solid mid-tier.
Jade Maw Fractal – One of our group members was knocked off the edge during the Jade Maw fight, and he somehow managed to make it to the bottom without dying from fall damage. He then described some sort of area where he could see other fractals but not go to them (Ascalon was one of them). Since the rest of us had wiped on the boss, and there was no way for our group member at the bottom to die, there was no way for us to complete the fractal.
Since I know you’re listening Arenanet, what’s the point of not allowing defeated players to release unless everyone is defeated? If someone gets stuck or glitches out of the instance like in my case, the four other players are completely helpless? Plus if someone dies, you HAVE to go back and revive them or 4-man the rest of the instance. This is especially painful in the colossus fractal where you can land in the starting area by falling off and you wont be teleported back up.
Main Menu:
Heroes of Might and Magic 4 – Main Menu
Ambience:
HoMM2 – Swamp Theme
HoMM4- Grasslands Theme
HoMM4- Snow theme
HoMM5- Haven Campaign Theme
WoW Cataclysm – Breath of Al’Akir
WoW Cataclysm – Thaurissan’s Reach
WoW Cataclysm – Tempest’s Wake
WoW – Elwynn forest theme
Ferazel’s Wand – River of Fear
Ferazel’s Wand – Unemployed in Greenland
Alisia Dragoon – Stage 5-2
Castle Crashers – Snow World theme
Battle:
HoMM3 Combat themes 2, 3, and 4
HoMM5 Haven combat theme 2 (the fast one)
Metal Gear Solid 3 – Battle in the Base
MGS4 – For Liberty
Deus Ex – UNATCO Return: Raging Battle
Boss Battle:
Starfox 64- Boss B
Super Smash Brothers Brawl- Vs. Ridley
Persona 4 Arena – Shadows of the Labyrinth
Persona 4 Arena – Battle Hymn of the Soul
Castle Crashers – Necromancer theme
City-
HoMM 3- Inferno town theme (Black Citadel)
HoMM 5- Academy town theme (Rata Sum)
HoMM 5- Sylvan town theme (The Grove)
HoMM 5- Haven town theme (Lion’s Arch/Divinity’s reach)
Civilization 5 -Denmark Peace theme (Hoelbrak)
Crafting:
Persona 4 Arena- Electronica in the Velvet Room
Underwater:
Starfox 64- Aquas
Starfox 64- Zoness
Remind me again what the point of this mechanic is?
The vast majority of fractals have some sort of gauntlet. If you die in the gauntlet, good luck getting the rest of your group to run back through the gauntlet a second time just to rezz your sorry kitten which may not even be possible. Most groups would rather 4-man the rest of the instance than risk their precious repair bill for you.
The fact that you are not allowed to release and run back if you die is practically begging for griefing as well. Case in point: The colossus fractal, where one angry fellow grabbed the hammer and jumped over the edge of the platforms, landing back where the instance begins, then disconnecting. To get the hammer back, the group has to run all the way down the colossus all over again. And if you die, you respawn midway up and basically have to start all over. And by the time we get the hammer back, someone else fails at climbing wooden boards and falls off AGAIN and lands at the bottom with the hammer AGAIN.
To get to the point: Remove this mechanic. If you want to keep it in for boss fights to ensure no zerging, then fine. But know that right now, if even one person dies during the instance you’re basically a man down for the rest of the fractal.
Thieves get a lot better at PvE with levels, particularly when you hit 30 and get your elite skill. Both Thieves guild and Dagger storm absolutely wreck anything they come across.
My issues with the personal story:
1. Not everyone can be a kitten, Arenanet. It’s hard to feel proud of being the commander of a coalition of the three major Orders and the slayer of Zhaitan when EVERYONE ELSE IN THE GAME can say the same thing. No, not everyone has completed Arah or even finished their personal story, but if they took the time to do that then that is exactly what would occur. When everyone’s a hero, nobody is.
2. As mentioned in another thread, the entire point of a branching storyline falls apart when it all leads to the same ending. For (sort of) the same reason most people hated the Mass Effect 3 ending, no matter what choices I make in my journey to get there, I always become the slayer of Zhaitan. Not only does it make these choices seem weightless, but it adds to the problem in #1. I know it takes a massive amount of development time and effort, but I think myself and the community would be suitably impressed if you managed to make multiple possible endings for your personal story. For example,
- You fight Zhaitan and help cleanse Orr. Basically what we already have.
- You boss it up in Frostgorge Sound and help the Kodan against Jormag. (I haven’t explored there thoroughly yet. I’m assuming there’s kodan and stuff, but I don’t have a good grasp on the area’s storyline.)
- You help gather up Destiny’s Edge for Round 2 against Kralkatorrik.
- Building on my early Asura personal storyline, Kudu steals my Infinity ball and tries to destroy the world with it. Would culminate in Crucible of Eternity somehow.
I think multiple endings would definitely help the personal story be more personal.
3. Stop killing people off without a kitten good reason. The sacrifice of Tybalt was pretty well-done, but once Orr comes around this just falls apart.
-One of the Pale Reavers dies because she stays behind so that she can signal the artillery strike. First off, I probably would have actually felt something if I was a sylvari and experienced them from low level, but being an asura, (who are both arrogant and used to people spontaneously dying from experiments gone wrong) I didn’t really know or care for her. Second, and more importantly, why didn’t we realize one of us wasn’t going to make it out alive earlier!? Surely one of us would have commented to Geargrind, “Hey, wait a minute, if one of us stays behind to send the signal, won’t that kill us?” You don’t send soldiers this high up on the totem pole on a suicide mission without letting them know its a suicide mission. Why didn’t you make the signal fail to go off or something, giving the Sylvari a reason to stay behind and fix it or something?
-There was some type of escort mission with the people from the human starting area, who, again, I didn’t particularly care about. All’s going well until a champion wraith appears! Oh no! What will we do?! Luckily for us, the wraith has about 1/10th of its proper HP and no damage, so the group kills it in about 10 seconds. But wait! It healed back up to half health again! Suddenly a wild cutscene appears, and the NPCs are complaining about how the Wraith is “too strong!” They’re helpless against the Wraith as it’s about to finish one of them off! But then another NPC I didn’t know or care about sacrifices herself to save him! Meanwhile, what the hell am I doing as the group’s leader during the cutscene? Charging for a kamehameha? Possibly. When the cutscene ends, we kill the Wraith again in about 9 seconds this time. Probably the least believable quest I’ve ever seen in an MMO.
To end on a positive note though, you guys at Arenanet have come the closest by far to creating not only A personal story, but a good one. The final battle against the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan was an absolute blast, and the first time in the game that I’ve managed to make it past the first track in my BossBattle playlist! And the personal story from levels 1-30 was absolutely fantastic! It’s clear from that alone that you guys are more than capable of making a great personal story.
Edit: Gilosean.3805 have you finished the personal story? I got almost 10 levels worth of content in Orr about Tegwyn and Carys in my personal story, despite not knowing jack about them beforehand. If someone else is actually getting my krewe to help them, I’m gonna be mad…
(edited by MasterGeese.4756)
But why?? quaggan are…. disgusting…
Foo! Quaggan doesn’t like you…
I feel like Arenanet is dangling above the pit TOR and countless other MMO’s fell into.
And that pit is: trying to cater to “MMO hoppers”. Instead of focusing on the people still playing the game without issue, they are focusing getting back the players that aren’t playing anymore. And it will most likely fail. There is a significant portion of players who get bored very quickly and just go from MMO to MMO to MMO. They are never satisfied, no matter what. Wasting effort on trying to tie them down when the effort is exactly that: a waste.
Do they really think that adding a gear ladder is going to bring back that many players that stopped playing? And even if it does, do they really think it’s going to tide them over another 3 months? Most of them will be done within weeks, if not days, and just stop playing again. They upset a huge portion of the dedicated playerbase in attempt to get the flaky/non-existent playerbase back. They are risking players they know would have kept playing the game on the chance they might get some of the hoppers to return.
This just doesn’t seem like a smart gamble to me, and for the most part, history will back up my feelings on the matter.
I hate to double post, but this guy is 100% right, and deserves to know it.
You are right, of course. But for Arenanet to go all out and market their game as THE ONE that dares to be different, getting millions of people to buy into that promise, only to betray them 3 months later, that’s downright comical.
I’m not going to quit GW2 yet. Partly because I still adore with a passion what Arenanet has done with the game before this patch and because I think they deserve a chance.
Like I said, that other MMO is having an extraordinary peer pressure effect on GW2. It’s only natural for Arenanet to buckle under such massive pressure. I’m very saddened by Arenanet’s decision, but I respect it. To say they’ve “betrayed” us I think is a bit too strong, even given the situation. And in their eyes, they’re giving the people (The people crying for gear treadmills and newer endgame) what they want.
1. This is a flatout unrealistic expectation to begin with. No MMO is ever “done.” Even “that other MMO”, after 12 years? of development time is not done. No the devs havent implemented everything they said they were going to, but name one MMO that has given the public exactly what it said it would give. No more, no less.
2. Yeah, this is kind of silly. And it shouldn’t be that hard to implement… But then again, I’m not the one making the game.
3. Again, this is simply unrealistic. No, guardians should not be pure support and thieves should not be pure damage, but making them all equally good isn’t going to cut it either. There should be a middle ground where Guardians are the best at support, but they can still do decent damage, and Thieves put out great damage, but have some good utility too. IMO Arenanet is pretty kitten close to this already.
4. I’m a thief, and I’ve NEVER been refused from a group before. Perhaps I’m just lucky, but I think I’ve come across a grand total of one instance out of my entire dungeon career in GW2 where class comp actually made a difference. (It was damage type. I relied heavily on conditions against a boss that consumed conditions to heal itself. And even then, the group didn’t kick me and we beat the boss anyway after a few attempts)
Level doesn’t make all that much of a difference in dungeons, thanks to scaling. And I’ve yet to see a “LF3m SE story, 80’s only!” in Lion’s Arch chat. Not sure where you’re getting the idea that people hate to have low lv players in their group.
5. Arenanet didn’t really lie here. The story branches… and then they conveniently forgot to mention that it comes back together again. Nevertheless, I agree with you here. I would appreciate a story much like the one I had up to level 30.
6. This was a stupid idea to begin with. You would run out of new gear pieces very fast, and then have no reason to do a dungeon. Unless of course, they would properly tune the dungeons to what I suggested in another thread.
Xp: Fine as-is.
Karma: Multiply the total amount awarded in dungeons. 1500 or whatever is laughable for the amount of work put into a dungeon.
Money: Could use a slight increase.
And these should be spread out over the whole dungeon, not just given at the very end, to encourage people to run the whole dungeon and not skip every trash mob or boss they can.
7. Oh god yes. This has annoyed me and quite a few others on the forums. Frankly I don’t understand why the Ascended armor doesn’t just have the infusion slot as the difference and have the stats be the same as exotic armors.
8. They’re still relevant if you want your gift of Exploration. The problem lies in the fact that “high level” zone events give more xp/karma/money than events in low level zones. Not very much, mind you. An event in Plains of Ashford gives 240 karma, while one in Orr gives 360 Karma. The fact that such a small difference is enough to entice so many people to grind events in Orr should demonstrate the need to balance out the entire world. Events all over the world should give the same xp/karma/money completion bonuses if Arenanet intends for people to populate the rest of the world.
As for the crafting mats… If that’s really causing people to stay in Orr, then the crafting nodes need to be evenly spread out amongst the rest of the world, a la WvWvW. Of course, this would make farming any sort of grinding for crafting mats hell. Fine by me, though. I’m very against grinding in an MMO.
9. There will inevitably be throwaway items as long as people try to save up for big ticket items in GW2. For instance, the training manuals. Nobody is going to buy some weapons, potions, or food on the trading post because they’re trying to save up for those manuals or that piece of cultural armor.
That and there’s the whole mindset of “Well i’ll just outgrow this item later… no point in buying it.” So people never bother to waste money on items in the trading post. I honestly don’t know how Arenanet would fix this would completely overhauling how levels work in the game (more than they already have…)
The soundtrack’s priorities for playing in this game are completely messed up.
To demonstrate this, google “Guild wars 2 playlist” and follow the instructions to place music of your own in the game.
There should be a few things you immediately notice:
1. Ambience plays way too kitten much, and is rarely if ever cancelled out of. This means you can enter a city, do crafting, and in many cases start a battle and still have the ambience soundtrack playing instead of the correct playlist.
2. Battle only starts up in mid size battles and up. The requirement is fighting around 4-5 mobs at once for the soundtrack to start up. To be fair, I’d rather have this than the battle soundtrack start when fighting Every. Single. Mob, but I think the requirement could be brought down to 3, maybe even 2 mobs.
3. If you’re downed during a fight, and then rally, the battle soundtrack tends to start the next battle song instead of continuing where you left off from the first one. This can lead to some rather jarring audio in cases where you are downed/rally several times in quick succession.
4. The city playlist doesn’t like to play when it’s supposed to. You have to be inside a city when you log on or another song ends. On top of that, it seems to ALWAYS start at the first song in the playlist, no matter what. The same rule also goes for the Boss Battle playlist. I’ve been told the crafting playlist does the same thing, but I don’t use it so I wouldn’t know.
5. As for hearing the same tracks over and over, the playlists seem to start from the first song in the list an abnormally high amount. In fact I’ve never heard anything but the first song. in my Boss Battle playlist more than once, because only one has ever lasted more than 4 and a half minutes.
To answer the thread title’s question: No.
I confess that when I played that other MMO, I did exactly this. I felt obligated to log on and do a dungeon every single day, just so I could fit in with the rest of the community and the rest of my guild that was also doing so.
It’s a shame that the other MMO has completely and absolutely codified MMOs like it has. Even if that other MMO was absolutely perfect, (It’s not.) the rest of the genre has no chance at survival. Any attempts to deviate from that other MMO will be instantly compared to that other MMO and denounced for being different, the result of something as simple as peer pressure. Any attempts to copy that other MMO will be laughed at and ignored. If they wanted mechanics similar to that other MMO, they would play that other MMO.
This leaves that other MMO with an effective monopoly over the genre. Any sort of MMORPG today has no choice but to be compared to that other MMO, with its veterans, fanboys and the like bringing the influence of that other MMO over to a game like GW2, intentionally or not.
I fear power creep because TOO MANY people will have those high tier items, not too little. In fact, I would LOVE to see content that is so hard that only the top 5% of the population can beat it. I’m probably not in that top 5%, but it would constantly give me something to strive for, as opposed to gear collecting. Power creep, gear treadmill, whatever you want to call it, is the most superficial form of difficulty. It only lasts as long as you don’t have gear.
If you’re really this pissed about the time commitment, guess what? You don’t HAVE to make a legendary! And I bet Arenanet doesn’t expect about 95% of the game’s population to! There are so many other things to do in this game… why not take advantage of them?
Please tell me what do you think about the end game pve, guys? Does it really satisfy you to grind Plinx and other dynamic events all the time? Is running dungeons for the same gear, what you can buy or craft, is the answer? Oh yeah you can do it for the looks, but come on…
As I read the news about the patch, I became really excited, because a minor gear progression will be available – an incentive to do dungeons. The end game will become interesting, as you have to beat mobs, bosses, the whole dungeon to get better gear, therefore making progression and create a stronger character, which, in my opinion, is what end game should be about. An MMO is about making your character better and better to beat the upcoming content. As things stand currently, you reach lvl 80 and you can get a full exotic (end game) gear in no time. This made a lot of players to quit, because they can’t do anything else, there is no GOAL in the game anymore. That’s where the problem lies, and now Anet is heading into the right direction, in my opinion, with introducing this method. ( I don’t want to come up with WoW, but if it isn’t for their end game raids and gear progression, the game would be pretty much dead now.)
This is why I can’t understand the rage about it. Do you really want to continue farming events for gold, and get a different looking armor, or go into a dungeon with your mates and fight for a better gear and feel good about it? Furthermore, they are introducing this whole system in pieces, which is really a sensible thing to do now. You get the back item and the rings now, and in later major updates we will be able to get more. Most importantly, it will be worthwhile to do dungeons and a lot of players will have an incentive to log in again and play with the game.
Finally, I’m sad that the community is flaming about it like no tomorrow. You don’t know yet, what will it be, but you immediately start writing whine posts and saying things like this is the end of gw2… :/ Just be patient, and you will realize that, in fact, it’s a good thing.
Just my two cents, and /heavy flamesuit on :P
I will give you the fact that the patch hasn’t been implimented yet, and that this may not be nearly as bad as it looks.
I don’t grind Plinx, and have no intention of doing so. The way I see it, there are hundreds, even thousands of ways of getting the same resources that you would get during the Plinx event. Sticking to a single method of acquiring karma/xp/money is a waste of a great game, and it’s hard to believe that so many people are completely ignoring the rest of the game just for more shinies. What are you, skritt?
“An MMO is about making your character better and better to beat the upcoming content.”
This is where we differ VASTLY. I’ll do my best to argue my side, and I hope you’ll hear me out, as I have done to you.
The gear treadmill that you describe is very superficial. Do seeing bigger damage numbers really constitute fun for you? If so, do you enjoy looking at large numbers on a calculator too? I strive to make my character better and better too, but though learning how to strategize and make decisions in the heat of battle, not through acquiring +10 armor. GW2 may be the first MMO where skill is a vastly greater factor than gear in the outcome of a fight. Given adequate scaling and access to the needed skills, any character can stand up to any other character, given the right decisions are made.
“This is why I can’t understand the rage about it. Do you really want to continue farming events for gold, and get a different looking armor, or go into a dungeon with your mates and fight for a better gear and feel good about it?”
No, yes, and yes. I don’t “farm” events. I venture out and take part in whatever events happen to come my way.
I hope you honestly consider my side of the story. I don’t intend for this post to be flaming, but some things just need to be said.
They never stated that the content would require the infusions, it would just be made easier by them. It is an awful lot like(if not exactly the same as) the infusions against spectral agony used by the Mursaat in the original Guild Wars. Was it impossible to play the content without it? no. Was it more difficult without it? yes.
And therein lies the problem. Anyone who was around in that other MMO at the end of WotLK knows exactly what will happen.
“LFM VoA 5k GScore Required!”
To elaborate, VoA was a very easy instance that only existed as a loot pinata. However, that didn’t stop people from insisting that the run go as smoothly as possible by requiring outrageous amounts of gear. If you had 5k GScore, then you had no business running VoA in the first place. So what’s my point? It doesn’t matter if the infusions will be required to beat the instance or not. Nobody, unless they are EXTREMELY desperate to find a group fast, is going to even allow anyone without infusions to join a group. And why would they? Even if its the greatest GW2 player ever, they’re still only making the content harder for the group as a whole by not having those infusions.
Arenanet is running dangerously close to starting a gear treadmill, and I personally don’t like it one bit.
1. 19 M
2. Important, but not critical. Story can keep me wanting more as the game progresses, but if the gameplay is absolutely flawless, then I’ll play it no matter how bad the story is. On that same token, no story can save kitteny gameplay.
3. Individual characters, and how they interact with one another.
4. A bit of both. I picked Asura, since it fits my personality better than the “Endangered species” humans. I do identify with my character somewhat, about a 6 on a scale of 10.
5. Something I determine. The game is merely an environment to progress.
6. I don’t have one. Or if you REALLY want an answer, “To boldly go where no asuran has gone before.”
7. It fits in very well, and Arenanet has done the best job of it so far. But they’re still far from perfect when it comes to personal story.
8. I don’t believe that. The stories may be similar, but I would be suprised to find quite a few people doing the EXACT same personal story as me.
9. My character is just one of the many people that live in Tyria. Therefore, my story is simply one of the pieces of Tyria’s story as a whole. Group story is less personalized, for obvious reasons, and it feels like you could stick anyone in any group storyline, whereas the same cannot be said for personal story.
I agree. I find it impossible to find my story “personal” when I’m in a position that’s so freakishly powerful (commander of a coalition of the 3 most potent orders on Tyria…), and I’m well aware that everyone else in the game shares that position.
I would definitely appreciate the story more if it were the journeys of a normal person, not the Mary Sue who saves the world because they are just that awesome. Seriously, there are more than enough of those in the genre already.
If the personal story were to branch out into multiple possible endings, that would be amazing as well. For example, if you made a choice midway through the story, your final questline could be,
1. Fighting the undead in Orr (not as a commander).
2. Fighting Jormag’s minions in Frostgorge sound.
3. Finding a long lost brother that defected to (Sepratists, Nightmare Court, Inquest, Sons of Svanir, Flame Legion)
4. Crafting the ultimate weapon of ultimate destiny
and the list goes on of possibilities…
Though that would take a monstrous amount of development time, I firmly believe it would make the story more personal.
“Once you hit lvl 80, your pve experience pretty much revolves around dungeons and event grinding in Cursed Shore. However, the dungeons are repetitive and un-fun (which I’ll get into below), and that pretty much leaves a major grind-fest so simplistic and repetitive that players have been mistakenly caught in ANet’s anti-bot web.”
-All I can say is, “no it doesn’t?” I highly doubt it’s even possible to reach 80 with 100% map exploration. You have an entire world of events and habitats at your fingertips. Why do you feel the need to stay in one place and grind events there? The events in a lv 1 zone grant about 240 karma, and the ones in Cursed Shore grant about 360. If that alone is causing you to feel “forced” to grind Cursed Shore, then perhaps its best for every event in the game to grant the same rewards. Or at least zone-wise.
-Dungeonwise, I’m not convinced the playstyle you describe would be any more fun. If you could stunlock the enemy so easily, every fight would just turn into a tank and spank and become boring real fast. The way it is now, you have to be on your toes all the time, but you are still more than capable of soundly defeating whatever you may come across.
Loot-wise, I absolutely agree. Dungeons should reward MUCH more karma than they do at the moment, and should be a good source of rare crafting mats. More XP and money would be nice, but I can live with the amount you get now. Not only that, but it should be rewarded on a boss-by-boss basis, possibly even a trash-by-trash basis. One thing I can’t stand is people skipping bosses and trash because they just want to get their 60 Ascalonian Tears and go home.
Zone-wise: Loot that is useful at all levels? Oh hell yes. Zone-specific loot? Only under a few conditions:
1. The zone-specific loot functions like tokens. Zone-specific crafting mats already exist in cooking to an extent, but can be implemented for other crafting skills as well.
2. There are two types of vendors: One that allows you to buy cool things with the Zone-specific tokens,
3. and one that allows you to exchange tokens for other kinds of tokens. It wouldn’t be a very fair ratio, to encourage people to actually get the tokens from the zone instead of farm another zone.
4. Dynamic events and World bosses reward those tokens.
Class: Death Knight (just kidding… please don’t.)
Weapons: Arm blades. Please.