I think this one is really funny: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/13427956?t=28m05s
I mean yeah it’s probably possible to do a raid with 3x thief dps, 3x ranger dps, 2x necros dps, a ele healer and a guard tank. But you are shooting yourself into the shoe.
Also not to mention the requirement to have the right gear. Yeah you can be a condi player as what ever profession you have, but you need the equipment first anyway.
Wow, I never saw that. What he says is the exact opposite of what is happening. ;(
Oh and the two minutes earlier are also interesting: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/13427956?t=26m59s
I really love how the ‘holy-trinity’ gets bashed over and over and when we have these “my class in not viable in XYZ” nobody thinks that’s its because of the lack of ACTUAL roles. Maybe dd, tank and healer is boring and stale but at least it works and is most important ‘balanced’.
Also don’t try to come with “damage, control and support” it’s not the same and doesn’t work. The main problem is how (because of the lack of actual roles that multiple professions can fulfill) some professions BECOME a role and most other profession aren’t able to fill that role (or much worse).
Some ‘role’ examples are the warrior for banners, thief/engie for a lot of stealth, mesmer for alacrity and in general the imbalance of max DPS of professions.
So yeah I’m not asking for a ‘holy-trinity’ but for more ‘balance’ between the professions by making the ‘meta-roles’ (the op-roles) more accessible to other professions and more balanced in general.
I think this one is really funny: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/13427956?t=28m05s
I mean yeah it’s probably possible to do a raid with 3x thief dps, 3x ranger dps, 2x necros dps, a ele healer and a guard tank. But you are shooting yourself into the shoe.
Also not to mention the requirement to have the right gear. Yeah you can be a condi player as what ever profession you have, but you need the equipment first anyway.
The concept of LS1 had some flaws.
First of all the fact that the content was temporarily means the game doesn’t get more content (less content for new players). After several season there would be so much “lost content”.
Secondly changing the maps makes old personaly story missions (and content) really weird. “Oh Lions Arch is destroyed by Scarlet Briar. But in my personal story my enemy is still Zhaitan?”. Not to mention old speech lines that don’t fit at all.
Also I think some people seem to think that the ‘lower’ quality and amount of content of LS2 is because it’s permanent content now. Has everybody already forgotten that they started developing HoT at the same time?
About bringing the content back: This should be done with a whole new “Looking For Squad”/taxi system. The new maps and some older world bosses (e.g. triple trouble) need that too anyway.
You should be able post your squad in the LFG/LFS tab and if you have a filled squad you should be able to create new “instances” of maps. With this in place the old maps and bosses from LS1 could be added as some sort of locations in the mists (similar to fractals) and be opened by having a filled squad too.
Do you know how much of VB is nothing but air?
AB and DS are pretty much one layered with some “caves”.
Only TD goes in the right direction. However there also a lot places in each layer that have ‘nothing’. If you have a map with 4 layer it’s not equal to 4 maps if each layer only has 50% of the map size as playable area.
So yeah saying the 4 new maps have the same amount of content like 20 old maps is crazy. More like 6 to 8, maybe.
Well WoW finally get’s a wardrobe too. So taking good things from other games is not that bad. (Did you know WoW has an account bound toy tab?)
GW2 has besides the personal story nothing really ‘personal’ in the open world. It doesn’t matter if you are at a event alone, with other players or not at all. It really doesn’t matter. That’s what OP probably is missing and it’s also a good point.
Obviously having tons of quests with “kill 10 monkeys” isn’t what a game need but maybe a guy who is talking with you and gives you a “quests” with a background isn’t that bad after all.
What for example if instead of having mastery points placed around the world you had small quests where people tell you to do certain things. Maybe instead of having collections that magically appear have actual NPCs talking with you, giving you the items and so on? Idk, IMO it seems more interesting than going to point A and pressing F.
And yet it lost to ESO for best MMO. How unfortunate :/
That being said HoT really is lacking content and a lot of stuff like the story or the fact that we got very few new skins ingame make it seem rushed. Still liking the game but as far as expansions are concerned Heavensward should have won by a country mile.Nope, Heaven sword release(3.0) has no where near as much content as HoT, It has 3 maps(including a city), a few skills for each class no where near specs of hot of course and end game is still the same token grind.
What 3 maps? It’s 6 new maps, 1 new big city and 1 small new city. Not sure how you get to 3 maps.
If we are going down this route HoT also have 2 Guild Halls. Advantures, Mastery system, raid wing, pvp league, Stronghold , 4-5hours of voice acted story campian, dozen of collection and achivement. Better than FF14 rat race gear grind if you ask me.
“A 4-5 voice acted story campaing” which is not that good. Even though not everything is voice acted in FFXIV:HW the story AND presentation was so much better.
This game is so not hardcore.. Listen I get that SOME people might feel the game is too hard. But here is the rub..
1) People get bored easily by content that they can always complete.
2) To extend this content – you have to make the grind longer..So GW2 has to find a balance between content creation (expensive)/challenge/repetition..
I think they have done really great here. So I would say – be careful what you wish for. Here is the problem with your scenario OP.
Easy content = more grind. More grind = less players. Less players = money lost.
Sure you can have content that is too difficult..
Then you have hard content = massive frustration. Frustration = less players. Less players = money lost..
I certainly don’t think Arenanet has done that. I see LOTS of players who don’t really like old GW2 who are back playing this game. I’d say that is mission accomplished.
The content might be too difficult for some people – but extremely few. I’d say less the 1 in 1000 video game players would have any difficulty in this game. This is still a very easy game for the most part. (I am not counting raiding or competitive PvP – those are more difficult.).
I don’t oppose hard content, but I oppose hard content in open world, especially the TD meta.
I think the TD meta sets a good precedent. Not all super tough content should require formal grouping. It is likely intended for guilds to taxi people in taking up the entire map and complete it in an ultra organized fashion.
No. Just no. What you are achieving with that is simply a way of forcing people to use a bad system to create a “pseudo instanced” version of a map. This is basically instanced content but you aren’t in a true instance. You have to prepare that instance which is is just unnecessarily annoying.
Because maps need to be designed for the mechanics within the game, and adding that might have altered the map in a way outside of its intended design— with the potential pitfall that whatever you added is so good, after all it wasn’t part of the design— that it breaks the content so badly it becomes almost mandatory. The new maps, for example, are designed with gliding as a main focus.
You can’t just put stuff in, just because.
Give mounts +33% perma ms and they will break nothing. Also the core maps are easily breakable already anyway.
gw2 has wp’s and movement speed increase’s. Personally I think the current system is a good balance for getting around.
Not really, it’s annyoing as hell and it depends on your profession. Also based on your current build you have to change your traits/skills just to be faster. Open menus and click on buttons/items. Wow! Walk to your location and change everything back. – Open menus and click on buttons/items again. Wow!
IMO there are also too many waypoints. Once you have all you don’t really walk through the map, you just tp, tp and tp. I think less waypoints and mounts would have a better balance.
(edited by Neox.3497)
Are people even reading what OP said? Most answers have nothing to do with what he said.
“Okay guys we will kick you all so the price of the upgrade is 500 times cheaper and then invite you back.”
No.
The only thing they could add are smaller guild halls that are way cheaper and have little less features.
There are quite a lot of simple ways around this, taking an average of your guild number week after week, if the number goes down drastically it counters that by keeping you at the higher number, if it is stead at a low number week after week keeping it at a lower % of the normal prices. You can’t honestly sit there and say its okay for smaller guilds to get the shaft. Its basically forcing people to go to larger guilds if they don’t have the money, and thats all it is, MONEY that separates the small vs large guilds, just to get the bonuses from the guild halls.
It would punish big guilds for having a lot of players. Bigger guilds would start to kick inactivate players and players who don’t help buying stuff. I’m in a larger guild (currently ~90% representing) and have “spend” 0 gold so far for the guild hall. However I’m doing guild missions and some organized stuff sometimes (with Teamspeak). I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one like that and I could imagine the leaders would hate such a change since they are really open but would have to kick or ask for gold from their members.
Also why would bigger guilds have to pay more if the product is the SAME at the end? As I said: New guild halls that are smaller and cost less (to upgrade) would be a way to make it better for smaller guilds.
(edited by Neox.3497)
[…]and at least two minutes per add.
My problem with the adds were that you always had to walk backwards to get out of the aoe which decreased the melee DPS quite a lot.
“Okay guys we will kick you all so the price of the upgrade is 500 times cheaper and then invite you back.”
No.
The only thing they could add are smaller guild halls that are way cheaper and have little less features.
I’m guessing we’ll get LS content for another 3 years and then maybe a 2nd expansion. If they do what they did before, LS comes out every 2 weeks.
The expansion could easily come in 2 years or less now that they have the new systems. (Masteries, elite specs, raids etc.)
I killed him solo today without dying once. Easy.
However if you die just once you are cursed. It bugs so bad. Also without knowing the mechanics it’s very likely that you die at least once. Especially when you thought you were safe under Brahams shield.
The fear of losing progression.
Your ascended/legendary equipment would be “useless” and all your farm be wasted. However I think a upgrade system would have totally worked by adding a partial cost of the new equipment.
A very simple example:
Cost of a new level 90 ascended weapon: 250 of mat 1, 2 and 3 and 200 gold.
Cost to upgrade a level 80 ascended weapon to level 90: 25 of mat 1, 2 and 3 and 20 gold.
This essentially give new players a better change on “catching” up without making veterans feeling they get ripped off.
(edited by Neox.3497)
I would also add to this that the “verticality” and layers of the map make it very difficult to find and event even when you’re in the right xy position; and often the place you have to go to change layers is quite a way away and not obvious. I’m sure it’ll get easier as we all learn the maps more, but for initial exploring it’s confusing as heck, and I’m not sure it’s worth it just for more vertically complex maps.
That’s really true for Tangled Depths.
I agree with point 2. Actually forgot to mention it in a thread I’ve just started. Personally, I’ve not had much of a problem with point 1, but I’ve been grouped for most of the content so far.
Yeah point 1. is varying for me quite a lot. The first day I actually had the best Verdant Brink maps. Now they feel (or are) very empty and the same for Auric Basin. While I can understand that many players also moved to the other 2 maps I don’t think that the first 2 maps aren’t played anymore at all.
Generally I think the new maps have 2 problems.
- 1. Empty maps (or the feeling of ‘empty maps’)
I don’t know if it’s just a bug that many players join empty maps or if they just think they are empty. However that’s a problem either way simply because the thought of an empty map makes you less likely to do events since they are meant to be done with many players.
- 2. No direction when playing
When you join a map very often it isn’t clear where the current events are. Example: Verdant Brink most of the time. Yes you can visit the outposts but quite often the events are somewhere else. You do events less likely if you don’t even know where they are.
These two points combine make the new maps not so fun to play since most of the content are the events OR are content gated behind the events.
The only ‘solution’ that could work so far are commander tags but not every player has it or tags up.
I really think a change of how the events are shown on the map would be a good start.
How are your experiences so far?
It really looks bad if you zoom out. They have to define the edges much better in some way.
The biggest WvW flaw I can see is the megaserver and the fact that the individual servers are redundant. I was hoping that they would address this issue in the expansion, but instead they replaced a map that wasn’t broken with another. Some creative thinking is necessary here if the WvW community is to be saved outside of top tiers. Server mergers might help, but I would rather see a change that removes servers entirely, because right now they ONLY exist as an idea to separate the player population, and it’s not working well at all.
Personally I would like to see some sort of “guild alliances” system:
Guilds could create and join guild alliances which replace the servers.
The ranking and matchmaking system should be changed from the ground up to be based on shorter matches (4 to 6 hours).
Additionally there could be a “freelancer” system. Guild Alliances could “allow freelancers” if they want. If someone with no WvW guild wanted to play WvW he could simply press the “Join as freelancer” button and he would randomly join a guild alliance that is looking for freelancers.
Now such a system would be a big change but I think going in that direction is the next step for WvW if it wants to be much more successful.
Open world pve in my opinion is supposed to be a fairly easy casual experience. It’s not anymore, it’s become difficult for a regular solo player to hop on and enjoy. People wanted hard content, they have raids, and fractals, but needed more. They kinda took the casual relaxed players out.
But the content isn’t hard. It’s only hard if you play alone. With a big group it’s really easy.
That’s the reason once again why open world can’t be truly challenging. Mostly because the scaling system is not working perfectly. Doing open world content alone vs with 2 players is already a huge change and makes the content much easier.
Currently I would say the new open-world content is balanced around 5-man groups to be still a kittenallenging (for the average player). But zerging is still super powerfull and solo-ing is really bad.
What anet has to do: Either change the scaling system (a lot of work probably) or seperate solo and “group content” a bit more.
IMO a really great design fault we have in the expansions are the Adventures. They are unavailable most of the time and to activate this “SOLO-content” you have to do a series of GROUP-events. I mean think about it! Who had this idea? … Well, I actually like the idea of the Adventures being instanced but why are they “locked” and unplayable most of the time like that?
All together I would say it would have been much better if the maps were generally design for solo play but with some events that are aimed at bigger groups. Make “Solo Adventures” available all the time and add “Group Adventures” that require a event chain first.
Simply: Make the hard content instanced or optional in the open world.
(edited by Neox.3497)
Play a bit more and tell us if you still have that opinion.
I must agree.
Even when playing with many players on a map it feels grindy and I don’t want to imagine how bad it is to play alone when not many are playing.
Agreed. I’d say this is the best underwater combat I’ve encountered. Most people, I think, don’t like underwater combat in general due to that third dimension that needs to be accounted for, as most are likely far more accustomed to mere two-dimensional combat.
For me it feels like the underwater weapons just have random attacks and compared to ground fights the movement and camrea feels very clunkly. It also sucks how 99% of the time you have one skill set (besides some minor changes for certain situations) and then for 1% you are in the water and you have different skills. Not even taking in account that you usually have really kittenty traits for underwater combat.
Simply taking the ground skills and modifying them would have been so much better. Ground target skills would be AOEs around the target and/or replaced with new unique skills that fit to underwater combat (like move up or move down). But what ever, they already created tons of underwater skills.
That would be a soft enrage and is actually quite good. In short: The longer the fight, the more damage the boss will deal.
Also this doesn’t make berserker useless. Probably the opposite. Berserkers are important because if the boss dies early, the damage won’t increase. Really simple. It should just be balanced right.
I’m not sure if I understood the new system right. Will it be like that for example?
Level 0: Urban Battlegrounds
Level 1: Swampland
Level 2: Aquatic Ruins
Level 3: Uncategorized
Level 4: Snowblind
Level 5: Molten Furnace
Level 6: Cliffside
Level 7: Volcanic
Level 8: Thaumanova Reactor
Level 9: Underground Facility
Level 10: Aetherblade
Level 11: Solid Ocean Fractal
Level 12: Molten Boss Fractal
Level 13: Captain Mai Trin Boss Fractal
Level 14: Urban Battlegrounds
Level 15: Swampland
Level 16: Aquatic Ruins
Level 17: Uncategorized
Level 18: Snowblind
…and so on…
That’s how I read it. Now my question is. What stops players from farming a certain level (e.g. “Level 12: Molten Boss Fractal” or “Level 15: Swampland”) over and over again and reaching level 15 really fast. The same could be applied to higher level fractals that are “easy and fast”.
Also as someone already asked: How will they add new fractals to this system?
Or is the system different and I have a wrong image of it?
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Neox.3497
massively devalue gameplay and preparation accumulated on the core Tyria maps.
Didn’t they already did that by giving you enough Hero Points by reaching level 80 if you don’t get the expansion?
Easy, cap HPs to not much beyond one ES until there’s another.
Missing the point. I’m not going to spend ANY HP on Berserker with my Warrior. I am categorically disinterested in it theme-wise and mechanically. So I’m going to have 600 HP sitting around when the second Espec comes out. If “not having it first day” is such a big deal, are they gonna~
- Say ‘Screw you and any sense of choice, you have to buy Berserker in full before you can start on the one you actually want.’
- Say ‘Ha ha, the second one costs 2000 points. But don’t worry the challenges in the new zone are worth 50 HP each. Oh, and you can gets stared for a mere 500. (a.k.a. a direct repeat of todays’s bombshell)
- Say ‘Fine. You planned. You saved. It’s 400 points and you can buy it now.’
‘Cause I’m not holding my breath for 3 after people planned and saved and built up their HP waiting for Heart of Thorns to release.
That’s where I think different kind of hero points (‘Hero Points’ and ‘Jungle Hero Points’) would be good. The normal ones are limited to the core specs and the new ones are limited to the new elite spec. Add to that a simple conversion of 1:10 (HP:JHP) and you have the same practical system like right now. And for future HPs/elite specs you would also take a 1:10 conversion from the previous HPs/elite spec.
The improvement would be that even after 10 expansions you wouldn’t have high numbers for the new elite specs.
Still, he’s wrong. A good puzzle is one that remains hard even after it has been done few times already.
What puzzle retains its difficulty after you not only know the solution, but have practiced its implementation?
One that doesn’t have a “cheap solution”. Or simply one that is a little bit different everytime.
I’m not only saying I want “more randomness” in a raid but the things each players does in there should change the outcome. I mean how many of you would be able to move and use everything exactly the same every fight with 10 people?
You should be able to make (very) small mistakes that don’t result in a wipe but in a change of plan.
Bosses like Lupi are so monotonous everytime, yeah maybe “hard” for some but once learned it’s not that hard to repeat.
The luminescent set is great. Legendary weapons however not. They are nothing but a gold grind (mainly because of the precursor), unless you were really, REALLY lucky or tried your luck at the mystic toilet, potentially losing everything.
Also: “that’s boring old WoW style”. Yeah we better need more chest trains like in the Silverwastes. That’s real content! Who needs “hard content” anyway? lol /s
Servers should die. Alliances should replace them and Guilds should be able to declare their allegiance per season/quarter/whatrver. You should only be allowed to rep one guild for wvw per season unless you quit the guild entirely. This would resolve issues and make it so anyone could play with their guild.
I already had a similiar idea. This whole WvW system is not really effective and with a different system it could be so much better.
I mean why do servers get points in the nighttime where almost nobody is playing? At that momemt the server with the most players and the fastest way of acquiring structure gains the most points and you rarely meet enemies.
Imagine a full map mostly with players going for a win instead of personal loot in a shorter match. Wouldn’t that be much more epic? Make the system more to the direction of PvP with actual matches that go on for multiple hours instead of a week and give the guilds of the winning alliance (and the players who helped with the win) interesting rewards based on their current ranking.
Winning match-ups right now isn’t really important for the personal player. Sometimes losing actually means “better loot” for the next week when your server can destroy lower tier servers.
Also one thing that has nothing to do with what I said. Why isn’t there at least one server in EU which has no server transfer cost? Why would anyone PAY gems to help a lower tier server? I think there should always be at least one server which you can join to for free (the lowest tier/lowest WvW population server).
I also don’t like this system completely. However what you are saying there seems really weird and not better.
I simply think locking weapons and utilities behind one spec is not that good. This will make interesting builds in the future impossible where you want the weapon of spec 1 and the traits or utilities of spec 2 for example. Or maybe you just want the new weapon and not the new profession mechanic. This seems very “forced” IMO.
It works that way exactly because of the future. If you can use skills of one spec with the mechanic of another spec then that would mean that with the introduction of each spec the number of builds you can make (i.e. the number of combinations of traits, weapons and skills) grows exponentially which would make balancing exponentially difficult (this is essentially what happened with GW1 and something that Anet explicitly wants to avoid with GW2). This is something they avoid by tightly connecting the traits to the weapons and the skills.
That’s surely the main reason. But still. I think the most important would be to balance the top and that won’t be that difficult.
What would you rather have: “5 top tier builds of 100 possible ones” or “5 top tier builds of 1000 possible ones”. Keep in mind that for casual play you would have MUCH more diversity with the second one.
However if anet really thinks they won’t be able to balance it right let them. It’s better this way than thinking they can balance it but not being able to.
Yes. If everything works as supposed no mats should be that expensive again since people will be able to farm them if they are in the rotation.
I also don’t like this system completely. However what you are saying there seems really weird and not better.
I simply think locking weapons and utilities behind one spec is not that good. This will make interesting builds in the future impossible where you want the weapon of spec 1 and the traits or utilities of spec 2 for example. Or maybe you just want the new weapon and not the new profession mechanic. This seems very “forced” IMO.
i think if anet is smart they will make rewards reliant on participation, that way they can knock this on the head before it starts. fractal and dungeon selling is one thing but it would be a shame if people were able to do that with the raids
Yeah probably that.
Each boss in a wing will probably and should drop something good (or have a chance). So technically you would sell bosses and not the raid which would makes “selling raids” not so simple. People will probably “carry” the ones who pay them through the dungeon instead. Which is totally acceptable IMO.
If raids really have only ONE big reward at the end. Well GG.
All I see here is people jumping the gun waaaay to early on this one, we don’t know how big the nerf is, we don’t know how rewarding the content in HoT is, we literally know nothing! This is coming from someone who runs almost all dungeon paths almost daily, it is 100% of my income, and even I can see that this is all just mad QQ over something that we all know nothing about.
Please give Anet a chance before raging and calling them greedy pigs.
Much less gold seems quite a lot IMO.
I think some guys forget that it is a PERSONAL meter.
Before anyone says it’s to counter the gold inflation. Why don’t they add more “non-gold” rewards to dungeons once they have reduced the gold?
Why don’t dungeons reward a new chest that has the same content as the “Lost Bandit Chest”? I mean you did a whole dungeon, some other people pressed “F” and walked from point A to B and gott thrown at with those chest. Why can’t dungeons give you some of that?
3 years of base game set the precedent.
Hahahahaha. Okay.
Necros, you guys will always suck in PvE – 3 years of base game set the precedent.
I think you’re missing the point, the open world was supposed to be for casuals, Meta Heads had their own fiefdom in the instanced areas and now they are taking away from the open world.
It’s not open world just because it’s on the world map. Arah is actually on the normal world map too (but not visible) so why don’t you cry over that?
Also it’s not taking away any space. The world is HUGE. I don’t think it will ever be full and even if that somehow happens after 562 expansions they could even introduce a whole new planet somehow. I mean we can already teleport around the map, so why not to another planet, who knows what we have seen after so many expansions.
I’m pretty sure you get your exp for gliding in the first few story instances which won’t require any gliding.
I can see this being the biggest complaint after HOT and people stop whining about raids. “X profession killed me just because he has a specialization, P2W!” And honestly they almost have a point, specializations are made to be no stronger than core specs, but no mmo is ever 100% balanced.
Id say let ppl be able to buy access to specializations like you can do for certain runes, but you only get 1 at a time. So someone can choose to play for 2 weeks to get 100 gold (made up number, but it should be somewhat high) to get access, or they can buy HOT and get it right away. It might lead to less actual sales, but it will get more people into the game.
If they go for unlocking it should be something you get from PvP and make it per profession (if it’s pvp only).
The main reason for F2P was to get more people to buy HoT.
Otherwise idk. A perfect balance won’t be possible anyway.
It would be great. However there are some problems:
- The old maps aren’t designed with glide so you would be able to get out of the map much easier (a lot of work)
- Jumping puzzles would be broken and would need to be “protected” somehow (a lot of work)
Maybe they will do it in the future but before that I would rather see SAB back.
Giving enemies single, rare and dodgeable skills to allow more damage is not an interesting, fun, or chllenging mechanic. It’s a cheap way of forcing certain build and squad compositions in order to make 99% of all other builds useless and be nothing but a waste of time.
You can do better, ANet.
In other words, “I don’t have a counter-argument, so I’m going to mock you instead.” Stay classy.
Adding more frequent attacks is the only solution for the system used in GW2 and a raid wide damage skill fulfills that. As long as not every raid boss has this same mechanic that’s totally fine.
Giving enemies single, rare and dodgeable skills to allow more damage is not an interesting, fun, or chllenging mechanic. It’s a cheap way of forcing certain build and squad compositions in order to make 99% of all other builds useless and be nothing but a waste of time.
You can do better, ANet.
(edited by Moderator)
Seeing how the meta discussion got derailed into incentive. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with this paper . I found it pretty useful to understand playing styles and incentives in general. That being said unless someone can accurately pole in the Gw2 community for what reasons they play stating ‘reason X is the main reason players will do thing X’ is pretty arbitrary.
I also notice arguments over semantics on what meta means. (IF)Meta being the most widely accepted and proven way to accomplish thing X by doing actions A instead of doing actions b,c,d, etc. Then it simply comes down to optimization. And optimization is something that won’t go away in gaming. Shown by the amazing amount of speed clears of numerous games not limited to MMOs <optimizing time and resources>. Solution? All feasible actions that can be done to do thing X should have equal weight in completing thing X successfully with individual skill, knowledge, communication factors ignored.
So, in theory a group of all clerics should be able to clear dungeon X as fast as a group of Zerkers, dire, etc. \o/
That’s where my hope comes that you won’t be able to do the content with only 10xA or 10xD, but that you can or you MUST do the content with 5xA and 5xD or 3xA, 2xB, 2xC and 3xD or 5xB and 5xC or any other combination.
B and C would be a mix of A and D.
For example~:
A = Berserker’s
B = Soldier’s
C = Knight’s
D = Nomad’s
I know in practice it’s not that simple but going in that direction would be great. Add the “requirement” of 2 tanks, 2 healer, 4 pure damage dealer 2 condition damage dealer and on paper pretty much every set could be viable in the the right team composistion without taking 5x longer to complete the content.
And as I said on paper, in practice this might not be that easy to implement. Additionally there comes the profession balance, but that’s another topic.
Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.
Also – you can’t make content both easy and hard – easy to get done but difficult to speed clear. Because if the content is easy enough to begin with simply doing those things faster will clear it faster.
The fact that more players will be sad is true – but it should motivate them to improve – since all games should have you constantly striving for something – and ideally through that strife and struggle should come self-improvement as a player.
For content to have a significant lifespan and staying power in an MMO you have to make it repeatable – and people won’t repeat content and raids for the sake of “prestige” – they will do it once and be content with being able to get a really fast run and then won’t care about it – 1,2,3,4 seconds do not matter that much to people.
What matters are practical rewards something you can get for yourself – so for that
reason these real, tangible rewards are the factor that will motivate people to do the content over and over and over again.Ask yourself this – if the 1 – 3 gold reward at the end of each dungeon got removed – how many people would still run dungeons?
What if you also remove tokens and skins? How many people would still run dungeons?It’s the practical rewards that keep people playing.
And here I thought you people wanted challenging content for its own sake!
Funny how that argument immediately went by the wayside once Anet started kowtowing to you.
Challenging content requires good loot or we end up with something like Aetherpath. Why do something that’s hard when you can just do the easy things that reward more?
Also the current discussion went totally off road.
Raids need to be challenging, otherwise everybody will run it once per week and everybody will have the legendary armor at the same time.
Also not many will “speed-run” it anyway simply because of the weekly loot and that’s a good thing. As I said earlier the meta(s) will be about just COMPLETING the raid and NOT about finishing it FAST.
You won’t lose much time since it’s only once per week and since all-full zerker might not be possible the optimal completion time won’t be that much higher anyway.
Anet seem to disagree.
Raids are supposed to be hard. Maybe even to hard for casual and normal players (if arenanet keep their word).
You wishing for them to be something else will not change their current design and idea. Maybe arenanet will nerf raids down the line, or make them more casual accessible. In that case though, we would see the “zerker meta” return and people would again be up in arms about it.
Can’t have it both ways. Either challenging content, or speed clearable content due to lack of difficulty.
Yes, the latter. It should be “clearable” easily enough, but speed-clearing should take skill, just as any idiot can complete a circuit on a race track, but only the very best can complete it with peak times.
Raids are on 1 week lockout times, what benefit is there to “speed clearing” them?
That’s wishful thinking.
That’s pretty much why I think we will see a “soft meta” for casuals just to clear the content.
Also in general the one thing I think might be bad is the balance of the professions and their roles. I can imagine that certain raids will be much easier with the perfect “profession” composition. But that isn’t a flaw of the raid, it’s simply the balance of the professions that is bad.
So you really believe that only the one perfectly optimal party composition with the right professions running the exact ‘meta’ builds will succeed? I sure won’t be able to figure it out, so please make an elite raid guide soon, preferably before the expansion releases, since you seem to know what it will take already. Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise with the lesser players like me.
No. That’s not what I meant.
Will all of the Meta-Messiahs please hurry up and publish the exact builds you are requiring for each profession you’ll allow in your raid party? I’ll need detailed gear lists (weapon, armor, runes, sigils, trinkets) as well as skills to equip and a rotation for pressing my buttons. I’ll put my character together exactly as you require and practice until I am good enough at doing exactly what I’m told to please you. Then I will get the coveted chance to complete a raid in record-setting time. It won’t be ‘playing’ at all; it will be a job. But really, why play when you can work?
No. You won’t complete the raid in record-setting time. Without the “meta” you won’t be able to finish it at all.
It´s nonsense like this that keeps me wondering how mankind was ever able to leave the planet or build a better weapon than the bow. I am pretty sure that a mobile phone could navigate a space shuttle to the moon today or guide a rocket because it has vastly more power than the best computers in the 60s. I imagine Wernher von Braun sitting at NASA headquarters, complaining that his rockets are not meta enough to even lift off.^^
Any undertaking has a low limit, the absolute minimum to beat it you want to achieve it. Reach it, and the loot is yours.
So saying that a strict meta will be necessary to beat it is
a) pure speculation at this point
b) unlikely because Anet has hopefully playtested it over and over again with different setups
It is surely right that the meta will allow it to be done in record time or at it´s best, but claims that it will be impossible without if Anet is not specifically looking for this are plain weird.
“Nonsense”. Have you ever thought about a meta that isn’t so strict?
The current dungeon meta (zerk meta) is about saving time, the new raid meta will be about completing the raid.
There will of course be a pro raid meta at some point which focuses on the time. However the most IMPORANT for casuals will be COMPLETING the raid. Thus MOST players will be using the casual raid meta.
Remember that raid-loot will be on a weekly lock-out and the devs said it will be really hard to complete. Do you really think casuals will try to go for the best time? REALLY? They won’t CARE if it takes 40 or 60 minutes as long as they are able to even FINISH it. Unlike dungeons that you farm as fast as possible since it’s easy as f***.
There will problably be different kind of ways to complete the content (multiple casual metas = “the not so strict casual meta”). And casuals will use the one that is available to them depending on their professions and equipment they have or maybe even create a mix of them.
Also it’s not really the meta that will be more strict it’s the CONTENT that is more strict!
/Edit: I replaced “pub” with “casual”. That’s a better wording.
(edited by Neox.3497)