Guild Wars 2

People would constantly complain “NOO!! AN AI THAT IS SMART!! NOOO!!”.

It really doesn’t need to be an issue. I mean I wouldn’t give enemies that use boons in any clever ways, I would just give them really simple, cheap boon use, something where if you’re a generic power build it would make absolutely no difference and you could ignore it, but if you’re a boon-based build it would make all the difference.

I don’t want to do the math on this using real game numbers, but let’s say that a given enemy is meant to do 1000 damage per hit, that’s what is considered a fun and balanced amount of damage for that type of enemy to be dealing.

A normal enemy, you’d just give him an attack that deals 1000 damage and call it a day. Instead, give him only 900 damage per hit, but give him pulsing Might stacks that replace themselves every few seconds so that they’re always active, and they bump his damage to 1000.

With them, he’s exactly as balanced as he should be. If you strip them, he’s underpowered. If you steal them, you have Might now. If you corrupt them, he’s really hurting.

Give each enemy a couple stats like that, things where they are by default below the balance line, but then have constantly pulsing boons that keep them permanently at their intended level, unless the player does something about that.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ohoni.6057:

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

I don’t think that’s true. Have you seen an official source on that? Making them have their own weight would seem to be inefficient to me. My assumption to this point is that each outfit uses one of the existing weights, whichever one matches the shape they’re trying to achieve. Obviously this doesn’t prevent players from wearing the Outfit doing their own weight class, but I think if you put a Warrior in an Outfit with a “light weight skeleton,” then it’s just a Warrior in a light armor skin.
(Snip)

Townclothes were a fourth armor class. I don’t think they’ve ever explicitly said but it’s reasonable to assume that outfits (which are not armor but are onesies that slip over armor) and which are a replacement for townclothes are not one of the armor classes but are the 4th armor class.

(About townclothes)
“It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor”

Edit: and this sentence from the same post
“Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class.”

Those imply that Outfits and Townclothes don’t count as a weight class, but I still don’t believe they confirm it, from an underlying systems mechanic. I think both of those comments can still indicate that while we players should think of them as a 4th weight or whatever, since they can be worn by all classes, I don’t believe that they have bespoke rigging or anything like that. I think they are still built on the skeleton of the existing armor weights.

Now they might cheat a bit, and have a chest and leg pieces that couldn’t be separated along the traditional lines and not clip with other types of clothing in that set, but that’s true of a handful of other armors too, like some of the CoF armor where if you put on the chest then it ignores the leggings you have entirely, because to do otherwise would likely lead to clipping issues.

Go back and see what they’ve said about outfits. You still are missing the entire reason they exist is because they don’t bring any of the baggage of pieces. There is simply no difference between what you describe and having armor pieces.

Yes, and my point is, they need to have more armor pieces.

I’m not saying that this would be easy, I’m saying that this is necessary, whether it is easy or not. Whatever reasons they have for doing Outfits instead of armor, they are not good enough to only have Outfits instead of armor. They need to get over those reasons.

Honestly, if it was that easy, do you really think that it’s never occurred to them to try this? Do you think this is the first time it’s been suggested? Do you think they like being constantly criticized for the slowness of releasing armor pieces?

Which is why, over the past several years, they should have been moving Heaven and Earth behind the scenes to make this happen. They shouldn’t need us to keep prodding them over it.

A lot of classes in this expansion seem to be based around boon corruption mechanics, meaning that these builds would not be terribly useful in an environment low in available boons to corrupt. I’m hoping that PoF enemies will be balanced around having a lot of active boons. Their base damage and speed and defense and all of that should be lower than average mobs, but offset by having boons restore that functionality to normal levels. To most characters, this would make no difference, but to the new boon-corrupting classes it would allow them to benefit from those effects.

I will be absolutely gutted if Oakheart Vines don’t appear all over the place. That is the absolute best thing added to the game since launch.

My hope is that core movement abilities will get alternatives in PoF, not as “big deal” adds, but just as things you can get if you need them.

Admittedly I’m no sPvP expert, but I think a Deadeye would have a very different role than a normal Thief. I don’t see them as solo cappers or moving around constantly, I see them as sweepers, camping the 1/4 or 3/4 position of a map, and +1ing people attacking or defending a point, picking off the most important targets. Like on Foefire, I would see a Deadeye just camping the top ridge over mid, taking potshots at people fighting in mid, taking potshots at people fighting over far or home, never coming closer than max range to either of them and just moving around in that space.

Let a more stand-up character actually cap the points and hold on to them, the Deadeye makes sure that anyone who tries to fight that person is massively debilitated and quickly dead.

Doesn’t that work?

Now yes, this means that they are at threat for being dived onto, but then what I would try to do is disengage and move to the opposite camp point, meaning they’d have to chase you through mid if they wanted to follow (which hopefully you hold), and you can just start working the opposite side. In either case, you’ve dragged them into an off-point fight, at least.

making a complete new design for another gender is of course much more work than simply fitting en existing one to another shape.

Again, not by a huge amount. The shape and texturing of armors designed to fit feminine contours has to be entirely different than ones designed to fit masculine contours. Yes, they would have to do less time on concept art, to a point, but the actual production of the armor, the modeling and texturing of it, would be about the same whether they are unique designs or a shared design, assuming an equivalent level of complexity.

There’s already dozens of them in the game, nobody ever uses them precisely because they’re boring to look at.

I do think that there is a balance they could achieve, some weapons that are nicer looking than “iron sword,” but not so elaborate and fanciful as a lot of the ones we get. I don’t know, there are a lot of weapons that I really love, but there are certain repeated aesthetics in GW2 weapon design that I never enjoy. For example, there are still plenty of “Katana” style swords and daggers that could be made.

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

I don’t think that’s true. Have you seen an official source on that? Making them have their own weight would seem to be inefficient to me. My assumption to this point is that each outfit uses one of the existing weights, whichever one matches the shape they’re trying to achieve. Obviously this doesn’t prevent players from wearing the Outfit doing their own weight class, but I think if you put a Warrior in an Outfit with a “light weight skeleton,” then it’s just a Warrior in a light armor skin.

The real problems with mixing and matching in the current model is that the chests and legs are hard to mix and match, because the waistlines are often in different locations from weight to weight.

Ohoni, what you’ve just described is cutting up the outfits into armor pieces and making 6 different armor pieces from them. This is exactly what they’ve said takes them far too long to do: making armor sets.

Yes, and they need to get over that. If it takes them “too long” then they need to take that time regardless. It’s better to have one 6-piece armor set than to have ten one-piece outfits.

But I do accept they are telling the truth that for whatever reason, they cannot feasibly churn out armor pieces using the armor rigging as coded.

But my point is, after five years, they’ve let that flaw lay too long. It’s past time to fix it. If that means completely rebuilding their rigging systems and hand-tweaking every existing armor set in the game, then that’s what they need to do. There is absolutely no excuse that remains adequate.

Remember, the outfits don’t have pieces. They are a seamless cover.

Breaking the outfits into pieces shouldn’t take an extraordinary amount of time. It might not be an automatic process, but in 3D modeling terms it’s not a huge deal to snap one bit off from the rest and clean up the edges a bit. If it is at all difficult, then it’s only because they lacked foresight when originally modelling them and boxed themselves into a corner, and the players should not have to suffer for that.

When will we be getting a PvE version for this?

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

That’s not true. All they’d need to do is:

1. Keep outfits exactly as they are now.

2. ALSO, in addition to that, unlock in the wardrobe any clothing pieces that could potentially be mixed and matched with other pieces, which could then be used as any other clothing skin.

Let players decide what they want to do with that, and if it ends up looking silly, that’s their business.

So for example, a player gets the new Sunspear outfit, then the outfit appears in their inventory, and they can equip it as an outfit if they like, same as now. They would ALSO get, in their wardrobe, the Sunspear Helm, in all three clothing weights, Sunspear Pauldrons, likely in all three weights, and Sunspear gloves probably too. Not positive on that. Then they would also get the Sunspear legs, boots, and torso in whatever the native “weight” of the armor, which I assume is heavy.

Maybe some of these would clip funny if you mixed and matched them with the wrong pieces, but if so, leave it up to the player to decide. Ideally they would also make the tweaks necessary to make them as adaptible as possible, like to make it so that the gloves and boots can be in “hands/feet only” mode for use with long pants and sleaves that otherwise clip.

Ideally though, they would just get their kitten together and unify their armor system. I’d hoped that they would do this for PoF but it doesn’t look like they have. One of their biggest problems is how the three armor weights have different skeletons, which means that you can’t mix and match certain portions of them because they wouldn’t line up in the same places. They need to fix this, just deciding on a single skeleton and then taking the time to re-map all existing armors to fit that skeleton. I’m aware that this is not an insignificant effort, but it is a NECESSARY EFFORT.

Get it done, ANet. Put a team on it, and get it done.

These limits only have downsides. it limits players to what they want to wear, and it means MORE work for arenanet, since every outfit or armor requires 2 versions, guy and girl version. which in return means we get armor and outfits only half as often as we could if we had unisex clothing.

They still need to shape the armor to fit the different physiques. Making a wedding dress so that it can fit on a male human body is not significantly less work than making a wedding tuxedo. They basically have a system in place to help them convert human male armors into male Sylvari, Norn, and both male and female Charr and Asura bodies, but they don’t have one to convert clothing from male to female humanoids or vice-versa.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more outfits that look the same from male to female, but “saves time” is not entirely accurate.

Does it matter? Why is having to remember that Concentration really means Boon Duration an issue when having to remember that Ferocity really means Critical Damage Percentage wasn’t?

You make a slightly unreasonable assumption in there. . .

I think if they’re going to be streamlining stats then they really should just get in there and streamline it. Remove the Crit Damage stat entirely (from view, at least), and rename Ferocity to Crit Damage. Any case where a stat has a name that makes no sense relative to its actual function, rename it to be a word that means the thing it does instead.

It seems people never learn. They took a hit on HoT, and now they can’t wait to take another hit on PoF. I will wait, and wait, and wait. Most likely I will not even buy PoF because I am a PvP player and there is nothing new for PvP…

It’s funny, because I was almost thinking the opposite in places. Looking over the new classes, a lot of them seem designed primarily with PvP in mind rather than PvE performance, with a lot of “counter play” options that won’t really be useful in PvE where enemies have less going on to counter. If you like GW2 PvP, I can’t imagine not finding something fun to do with the new classes.

It’s tricky for them to add expansions with PvP though, because what can they really add that wouldn’t “break” PvP? They can’t have PoF-exclusive maps, for example, because that would just fragment the population and lead to long load times. Really all they can do is add the new classes, and even then they have to try and balance them against the HoT classes, because otherwise it becomes anti-competitive.

They also changed the name of the stat from Boon Duration to Concentration so that it’s extra clear and you don’t have to worry about mixing datatypes.

But my point is, why change the name of Boon Duration, which is a title that means “the duration of boons,” to Concentration, a title that means “think real hard about the mess you’ve made of this with your poor life choices, think real hard,” when instead, it was well within their grasp to rename “Concentration” to “Boon Duration,” and had a title for the stat that actually describes the function the stat plays within their game world?

How is that not the best world ever?

You’re not there yet. Try, “I don’t want outfits.”

Not strong enough, that implies that liking Outfits is a coequal choice, like something that a reasonable person might decide. It needs to make the point that this is not a rational option.

Raine.1394:

As a long time MMO player mounts are nothing new for me. And, I confess, I love mounts. But, there are a couple things that bring concern with the fact that it is Anet that is implementing them. First, I hope that they are not hidden behind silly insane grinds. Mounts, for me, are fun, enriching, and just a very large QoL addition to any game. There are some that should be extremely easy to obtain (the functionality) and there should be some that must be pursued. Second, I hope that they are not used to gate content. And, this is a large fear because Anet. I don’t want to need a particular mount to do particular content. I don’t want to encounter anything in PoF that remotely resembles a bouncing mushroom. I don’t want a required mount in order to do platforming. I want them to be for travel and for fun. It would be hugely disappointing if they gated content or were a platforming tool. (From the video this may already be a lost cause.)

Those are the main concerns. Additionally, I would like true flying mounts at some point. This is largely for the view of the game world they would provide. GW2 is such a beautiful game I would love to see it from every angle. There are some who believe this would be antithetical to exploration but I disagree. There are areas that I quested through in WoW with flying that, because of the questing, I stood on just about every square inch of the zone. And, I know those maps like the back of my hand because of flying not in spite of it. Anyway, my thoughts on mounts.

From Bog Otter’s post-show stream, it looks like we’ll unlock the mounts one per new map, and then their skills will be unlocked as masteries, same as HoT masteries. You can do basic stuff with them right away, but it looks like each will have an upgrade to their core trait, the only one we know already is that the Raptor leaps very far forward, and can be upgraded to jump even further. There will be content that cannot be reached without the right mount and upgrade, as a bridge was shown that cannot be jumped with anything less than this upgraded leap.

I doubt we’ll see flying mounts any time soon. Gliding at least you can only go downward from a height, so most places are still impossible to reach. If you could fly upward as much as you like then too much of the maps would need to be “no fly zones” or rebuilt entirely to accomodate them at this point.

As I suggested in another thread, the “too creepy for Arachnophobes” issue might be avoidable if they had a “spiders” toggle in the options menu, where if you turned it on then the Spider mounts would appear to be something else on your client, like a machine or another animal. They already have a lot of client-side instanced content, like Heart Quest objectives, so it’s possible that this might be doable (even though each game system is its own thing and it may not be doable).

Because then you have “boon duration” in your traits and effects that is a percentage value, and “boon duration” in your gear and food that is an integer value, and then you have upgrade components which are a mix of both of these. If you had an upgrade component that read “+5 boon duration”, as a newer player, you would likely not know if it’s intended to be a percentage value or a fixed value until you equip it.

That’s easily solved, you just put a symbol, like this one, “%” next to the ones that are intended to be taken as a percentage value. There are already abilities in the game that do this, like the traits that give a percentage of Stat A as Stat B.

Rangers are naturey woodland people, not modern hunters. They already have two different bows. They’ll probably get a rifle eventually, but until then, you have other options, and plenty of people will enjoy the new class.

They aren’t removing boon duration and condition duration. They’ll still appear on traits and effects, just no longer on food or equipment.

Why have a distinction between boon duration and concentration/same for conditions/same for crit chance/same for crit damage? Because then you’ll be trying to calculate your total values from roughly 50 slots from raw percentage values, when a converted gear value is both easier to use and provides more accurate values.

But why not just have a stat that is called “Boon duration” that you can raise and lower, and what that stat does is raise and lower the duration of boons? I mean, so long as people know what a “boon” is, if you ask a thousand players, including newbies, “what do you think Boon Duration does?” and at least like half of them will say “change the duration of. . . boons? Maybe?” And they’ll be right! If you ask those same people “And what does Expertise do?” And maybe only a few people will guess that it means “Also raise boon duration?” And only a VERY few people will even realize that that isn’t the correct answer, because Expertise is the Condition one!

K.I.S.S. ANet.

Let’s hope thief gets a slo-mo visual following the bullet as it flies from the gun to its target and splatters it. Yeah, I know it’s an open world and you’d be in danger from enemies while you watch the visual, but how cool would that be?

I think that would be a fair “penalty.”

so in the upcoming balance update we will be converting all equipment and consumables that provide a bonus to Boon Duration or Condition Duration to use Concentration or Expertise instead.

So you have a stat in the game called “boon duration,” which controls the duration of boons, and you have a stat in the game called “Concentration,” which controls the duration of boons, and you decide to remove the one call “boon duration?”

WHY?

Why remove the stats that do exactly what they say they do, and leave in the stat which nobody will have any idea what they mean unless they look it up in a wiki?

How does that make any sense?

Why not just leave Boon Duration and Condition Duration as the stats, and remove Concentration and Expertise?

They did skins in the beginning but its too much work to fix every little clip for the 6 pieces of armor for each of the 5 races for both sexes and the 3 different types of armor, apparently. one skin fits all just easier. But i agree this is fashion wars!

Yeah, I’m well aware of their excuses but I’m also too tired of them. This is a problem they have, but it’s a problem they needed to have fixed years ago.

Maybe when you learn not to use exaggeration and hyperbole. Neither seems likely.

Fyi, “Nobody wants outfits.” is not a true statement. You can only speak for yourself.

“Nobody with taste?”

hehe I like to see ppl write “Firebrand have so good looking visuals” but saddly visuals do not make this game unless you sit in LA showing off your class visuals.

Sure, but they do make the class fun to play. Balance is far more likely to be fixed than visuals are, so if the Firebrand is underpowered at first, they can always tweak that up later. My issues with the DH had nothing to do with balance, I just thought it was stupid for a Guardian to be a “Dragon Hunter.”

From what I’ve seen of the new Thief class, Steal is how you mark the target, so with a Trickery Deadeye, you activate Steal, it marks the target which will provide various new benefits, and it will also apply all the old Steal bonuses that you trait into, the only difference is you will not shadowstep to the target now.

And yeah, Necro doesn’t have shroud, but it seems to provide alternative benefits, which isn’t entirely a new thing. Shroud-related traits will probably apply “while you have X effect active” or something.

I think the Firebrand looks pretty badkitten. I love the visuals.

Ok, so I guess I’ll give my overall impressions, based on what I’ve seen so far:

Mounts:
I like them. They seem kind of fun. I’m not sure about how you get on and off them, whether they might be kind of a hassle for doing that (I get annoyed when a mount forces you to stand still for several seconds before you can take off with it), but I’m optimistic. Definitely want the jackal one, but the pika is cool too.

Maps:
Look interesting. I very much hope that there’s a “dune sea” map in there, like TOR’s Tatooine or DA’s Hissing Wastes, I love those long, mellow expanses of nothing from time to time.

Classes:
Defintiely some cool new mechanics, I like the creativity at play like that Rev ability that has an inverted cone shape, or the Thief’s self-rooting mechanic. The Ele spec looks like a nightmare, but could be a lot of fun once you figure out a good rotation, and was way more ambitious than I expected. They all seem to have a lot of cool new tricks.

Overall, I have mixed feelings. I’m definitely going to pre-order, although I have zero interest in the outfit or free weapon skin being offered, and I expect to enjoy it a lot, but I do wish they’d announced some more “big picture” changes to the game, like “no more outfits, we fixed the buttcape issue” or “you can dye weapons now!” type stuff. The sort of big technical hurdles that we can’t expect to come from nowhere. I mean, I guess mounts are in that vein, but they are kind of redundant what with normal travel options and gliding, so they don’t exactly “wow” me. I like them, just not like “killer app” like them. Still generally positive though.

I do hope we’ll see another “beta” weekend though, since the 11th is basically the one weekend I can’t make due to Otakon.

It seems to replace your weapon keys, at least one of them causes you to attack, presumably another activates a “special movement” option. Or it could just be jump, who knows? It’s definitely player controlled though.

Yeah, the bonus gear not only looks a bit lame, but it’s an OUTFIT. When will they learn that nobody wants outfits. We want armor skins, bits and pieces that we can mix and match with different armor skins as we see fit. I would take a single completed armor set for 2-3 dozen outfits any day of the week. I would take a single good pair of shoulders or gloves over a full outfit skin. They need to give up on the Outfits, and this pre-order bonus is a really bad sign.

Will the previous elite specizalations be required to unlock the newer ones? The same way you must have everything else unlocked before getting current ones

No. They designed their Elite spec system such that you could skip HoT entirely and still make the most of PoF and later expansions. You will still have to max out your non elite spec stuff though.

Will they be cheaper to unlock if we have the other one unlocked? Getting the new elite specizalation will be extremely easy between hot hero points plus the new ones that are being added if you don’t have a current elite specizalation while people who currently have a specizalation will need to work harder now to get these.

Probably not, although if you felt like skipping that spec then yeah, it probably would be easier to grab the low-hanging HoT points and spend them on the new spec.

I expect the new specs to unlock just like HoT, they don’t seem to intend to reinvent the wheel on these, although I really wish they would change it, because the one major issue with HoT’s was that you had to unlock everything in order, which I feel is a far inferior player experience than if you could pick and choose traits and abilities at will.

With the HoT method, you couldn’t get ANY GM traits until you had ALL the Master ones, couldn’t get the Utilities the devs chose to be last until you’d gotten the earlier ones. That meant that most of the time spent leveling the class, you were either in your vanilla specs, or playing half a class.

If you could pick things ala carte (with varying costs), then you could prioritize your favorite skills and traits, and have a single “complete” build in only 1/3 of the time or so, and then you could spend the rest of the time expanding your options and filling out the class.

In the meantime, I suppose I could be taking my existing characters around to pick up the spare HPs that I ignored after maxing out my classes.

Just to play devil’s advocate here to all the people that say “eh, spiders, no big deal,” but maybe the difference here is that the spider is not only gigantic, but also could be anywhere, since it’s player controlled. I mean, I could see people being willing to actively avoid enemy spiders, or at the very least they could be prepared for them, psyched up for them, but being at the bunk and someone rolls up on a 10ft Spider, that might freak them out. I’ve never had issues with spiders myself, but I get it.

Also, it should be noted that if a spider was a mount, within the context of how this game uses mounts, then players would have to use them themselves to get past certain content, and that might also be a bridge too far. I think the “instanced alternative” would work fine though. If it’s technically feasible.

Yes, you can see it in the videos. There just isn’t a ton of it shown so far, because most of the maps seem to be relatively low to the ground and much of the traveling is on mounts.

In WP’s stream, Bog Otter talked about how there was once a Spider Mount being tested, and it was dropped because of aracnophobia concerns. I can 100% understand this.

However.

What if they put it back in, but “instanced?”

Like what if they added it in, but have a “spider toggle” in the options, and if you have this turned off, then instead of seeing a spider, you would see something else, maybe a mechanical device, or some animal that doesn’t look like a spider. Then people prone to being triggered could avoid that worry entirely, while players who like spiders could have a cool spider mount.

Given how much other content in GW2 is only on a client-side basis, like Heart Quest elements, certain spell visuals, etc., it doesn’t seem so unreasonable to believe that this would be possible, although of course game design is full of things that defy common sense. Just a thought.

Depending on the traits you choose, you also get a huge dps spike, since you get a special attack when you auto and your clones can do the same.

Where is this info coming from? I watched the reveal videos and it had none of this?

So what’s the deal with the new Mirage dodge move? You get the evade proc but don’t move? How is this not a downgrade from the existing option where you get an evade proc AND move? Does the evasion last longer? Is there more of a buff to it? I mean from the looks of it this would make the Mesmer hell to play, since not only would an already slowly moving class be even slower moving, but we’d be at the whim of the numerous ground targeted AoEs in the game.

I don’t want to doom-and-gloom this, I’m just genuinely baffled as to what the advantage here is based on the promo video.

Oh chillax, it’s not portal. From the looks of it, it might allow multiple characters to use it, but I doubt even that. It also isn’t likely to have nearly the range of Portal, it seems to be a combat feature to allow you to move around within a tactical space. It really doesn’t seem like it would be much more than their already-available Spectral Walk power.

One big question I have about this new hall is, what about players that don’t buy the new expansion? Like with the old one, players who didn’t buy HoT couldn’t use the HoT Guild Hall features. But lets say you have a guild were 95% buy the expansion and 5% don’t. They can use the current HoT hall, but presumably they wouldn’t be able to access the new hall, so if you switched, they would lose functionality in the process. Is there some plan in place to resolve this? Will HoT-only players be able to access the new hall?

Erzian.5218:

Imo every game mode should have its own unique rewards (including skins), as it encourages playing different parts of the game.

Again, though, there is NO benefit to ANYONE for any player to be playing a part of the game that he is not enjoying. Any system should be designed to respect player preferences, and while it might offer an incentive to play one mode over another "as in the goal is easier there), it should never hard wall off anything into one mode or another, because then you’d have players either engaging in content that they are not enjoying, or missing out on rewards that they really wanted, either of which would be an avoidable negative gameplay experience.

Feanor.2358:

Technically, pretty much anything can be bought with real-world money. Does it mean there’s no prestige to be had at all in this world?

Yes, EXACTLY.

Fatalyz.7168:

But surely if your idea were so righteous and so much better for the game, even that percentage would have overwhelmingly support your idea.

Saying this betrays that you have absolutely no idea how a poll works or why a scientifically administered poll has any actual value.

Fatalyz.7168:

If you really think that your idea is so much better for the game. Please go create a survey/poll/etc asking if skins should be locked behind specific content, post it to Reddit, and let the community show Anet what they want. If it is better for the game, I’m sure the community will come together behind you, and you can really show Anet how the community feels.

In case you’re unaware, polling for opt-in online communities are rarely representative of the views of the in-game population. LotRO, for example, once noted that the majority of their forums population seemed heavily invested in raiding, while only less than 15% of actual players spent any time in them.

Feanor.2358:

Speaking for myself, I thought the same, back when I did my first legendary. But in the end I’ve stat-selected it very rarely. In the long run, I’m definitely behind on money because of that, and it never really made any difference on space. In hindsight, I could have simply stat-swapped ascended weapons to the exact same effect, at a fraction of the price.

Yeah, going for Legendaries because of stat swapping is silly. I have two Legendary weapons and the Ascension, and I often lose track of which character even has the actual Legendary version, because I set the stats where I wanted them and then never messed with it again, and then just transmuted the skins onto various other Ascended and Exotic weapons my characters already had. It’s all about the skins, not the stat swapping.

Fatalyz.7168:

This is your opinion that it would be better for everyone. I strongly disagree. It is better for everyone who wants skins as rewards for specific content.

That’s a rather preposterous standard though, that’s claiming to stand for a principled position held by an indeterminate number of people, rather than standing for the people who want the armor and cannot have it. It’s basically saying “I can’t support you getting that thing you want, because I want to support people who’s only position is that they don’t want you to have it.” The two are not equivalent positions.

Really? Show me where he said, “I enjoy taking pleasure in the misery of others.”

It wasn’t in reference to you, it was in reference to a statement by DutchRiders. Are you a sockpuppet account for DutchRiders?

That is your opinion of malicious. Let me provide you the definition:

Malicious: characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm.
Malice: the intention or desire to do evil; ill will.

People that take pleasure in being able to accomplish something that others are not, are not evil, have an intention or desire to do evil or ill will towards those that can’t, nor are they intending to do harm to them.

That’s a rather fanciful take on it. I believe that taking pleasure in other people’s failings IS evil, IS ill will towards those people, and deliberately acting to prevent them from having an easier time of it IS evil, IS ill will towards them. You don’t, apparently.

I’m curious. What are you going to do when the next expansion comes out and it has even more skins locked behind specific content? Specifically skins that you want behind content you don’t enjoy doing.

I’ll continue to push for them making these available to all players in a way that they find enjoyable, as I have been doing for as long as this has been an issue.

Fatalyz.7168:

Except that you tell the people that want skins as rewards for completing specific content, that what they want doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t make you happy.

Not that it doesn’t matter, just that it matters LESS.

If you want to have the skin so that you can have the skin? Great, so do I.

If you want to have [something] that can show off that you accomplished something significant to others? Weird, but that’s fine too, you can have that, in the form of a title, nametag flair, bundle, something that serves no function other than to wave your virtual codpiece around. Fine.

But if you want to have that in the form of a skin, and because you want to use it to show off, you want to deny other players convenient access to that skin, then no, not fine. I reject your entitlement to that right.

It is better for everyone who wants the skin to have it than for only those who like to raid to have it.

Heck, just look through this thread, you don’t even have majority support in this thread for making skins available through other modes.

I know, which comes as a complete shock to be on the raid boards of the official forums! You’d think that the board devoted to raiding would be more open to the idea of having their toys taken away so that the other kids can play with them too!

Where is the upside for people who want skins as rewards for completing specific content? And how does what you want, outweigh what they want?

That’s a selfish position. They do not deserve an upside. I was talking about people who just wanted to play and enjoy the game for themselves, not those who thrived on what others lack.

You are assuming that he is taking pleasure from the misery of others.

That’s not an assumption, it is a statement of fact.

There is pleasure in being able to achieve something that others are not, but that does not mean that it is malicious.

Not true. Taking pleasure in being able to do something that others cannot is inherently taking pleasure that others cannot do something, which is malicious. Now what is not malicious is in taking pleasure in your own accomplishments regardless of how many other people can do it, and without needing outside validation that they see your accomplishments.

Xstein.2187:

The main point is just that some things have qualities that make them hard or nearly impossible to compare to other things to the point that they shouldn’t be compared to the point of equality.

Ok, so long as you don’t then claim that raids are somehow incomparable to other ingame activities. Anythign in GW2 can be compared to anything else in GW2 to some degree.

And the analogy about money made per hour was about how people performing different work for the same amount of time is not necessarily equal.

Which nobody disputes. Nobody is talking about offering identical rewards per unit of time regardless of the work being done.

Of course you could make the same amount of money if you worked longer. However, this is exactly why I made the super bowl ring analogy. Because there are some things that don’t work this way. Time does not alway make things equal. Even if you don’t believer this, I can assure you many others do.

And again, I’ll repeat that a superbowl ring should not be compared to weapon and armor skins. the ring has no inherent value beyond as a symbol that you participated in a superbowl (yes, it does include precious metals and jewels, but you could make your own ring with similar material value and nothing would stop you doing so), while a skin has value whether or not it denotes that you participated in content.

However, that STILL doesn’t make getting on the leaderboards in pvp equal to insights.

Why not?

From your last post, I get the vibe that you think I think raids are much more difficult than all other areas of the game and that I think no other areas of the game should get legendary armor. However, I can assure you that this is not the case at all.

Then there is no problem with other areas of the game being sources for Legendary armor progression.

As to the rest of your post, I can honestly say I have no idea what you actually do believe at this point.

apharma.3741:

No get off your lazy backside and earn them, there’s a lot of titles and prestigious items in the game you have to work hard to earn and that is why people go for them.

Any items that do fall into that category should be changed. If players want to “go for” high prestige items, that’s great, but these “high prestige” items should not come in the form of weapon or armor skins, because players can reasonably want those regardless of any associated prestige.

If everyone was suddenly handed out noble peace prizes for doing a years worth of charity work the value of that has plummeted dramatically.

Again, you’re talking about a trophy, an item which has no value outside of its value as a signifier of achievement. I’m talking about weapon and armor skins, which DO have a value even if everyone got one for free.

Putting aside that I have a hard time believing you are over 20 with your warped views, what game were you referring to that you had been playing for 15 years that simply gave you anything you wanted any way you wanted without ever having to leave your comfort zone?

I didn’t say “game” singular, I said “games” plural. not counting pre-MMO games, my first MMO was Asheron’s Call, then EQ, DAoC, CoH, WoW, Champions, DCUO, SWTOR, and Marvel Heroes, and those are just the ones I’ve purchased or paid money into. My point wasn’t that these games did it better, it was that I loved GW2 because it was BETTER than any of these games. I’d played them all because they had something I wanted in a game, but ultimately left them all because of what they lacked, and GW2’s done the best job of being the game I wanted, the game without raiding, the game without “prestige” malarkey, where the whole point was cooperative, not competitive. HoT put a big hit into my faith in the franchise.

Xstein.2187:

. You can try to give me fruit to make up for a pumpkin I got for halloween. You can say x amount of apples should make up for a pumpkin, but in the end a pumpkin is a pumpkin.

Yeah, but if you’re making a pumpkin pie, and can’t use pumpkin for whatever reason, you can use sweet potato, or butternut squash. Both are smaller, so you’d need more of them for the same recipe, but they work out.

A person shouldn’t get paid the same amount per hour if they operate a toll booth vs say if they are a professional football player.

No, but if a tollbooth operator makes $60 a day, and a football player makes $60 every ten minutes, then if those players go to the store, the tollbooth operator’s $60 is just as good as the player’s.

For example, many believe that even if the toll booth operator works for 20 years, they shouldn’t get a Super Bowl ring that the professional football player earned in 1 year.

Yes, but then we get back into what should and should not constitute a “trophy.” I have no problem with raiders having exclusive access to trophies celebrating their victories, items with little to no intrinsic value, such as titles, nametag flair, celebratory bundles, minor hall decorations, etc. I firmly do not believe that items of intrinsic value, such as armor and weapon skins, should be confused for “trophies,” because players can reasonably desire these things without having any attachment to the “worth” they supposedly signify.

I’m aware that there are people who would insist that raids are just soooooo much better and more important than anything else that it’s impossible to have any worth in your life if you aren’t raiding, but I reject that entire premise and ignore anyone espousing it as hopelessly deluded.

Raids are content, just like anything else. Most raids are more difficult than most other content, but not by magnitudes. I don’t begrudge raids having a reasonable level of reward, but nor do I believe for a second that raids are owed “impossible to compare” rewards relative to the rest of the game.

This is why I think a insight replacement would break down into fighting and complaining.

Perhaps, but I have little sympathy for the sort of people that would begrudge their happiness, and at the end of the day, if two people have something rather than just one, I will be much happier for the guy who got something that he wanted, than for the guy who already had it and is upset that the other guy has it too.

Xstein.2187:

You see, I believe this would be good in theory, but in reality it would break apart if you are not very carefull. For example, referencing apharma’s post above, how are you suppose to make sure the WvW portion contains a strong enough “comparison” to raids?

I’m no expert on WvW or on what is the best balance point for this. If we posit that it could EVER be fair for WvW to get ANY version of Legendary armor, then it should be eligible for the existing set too. I would say that in cases where they wanted to, for example, make raids the “best” way to get a given piece, then they would determine the average time it would take a player to earn it in raids, and then figure out a WvW goal that would take twice as much time and effort. It would probably be a good idea to use this to incentivize roles that people otherwise don’t tend to do but that are considered healthy for the mode (ie not zerg swarm).

Of course it may be possible that WvW is just not a mode suited to distributing rewards, in which case the whole discussion is moot and they would need to be left off the list, but I think there’s likely a compromise in there someplace.

And again, that’s why I think it’s best that instead of trying to perfectly balance each acquisition method, you deliberately unbalance them, so that one method definitely IS the better one for a given ingredient, but others are definitely easier for others, so collecting them all they mostly balance out. It’s much easier to wildly overshoot than to nitpick over minute imbalances. It’s sort of like a rock/paper/scissors balance in certain games, even if the relative strengths of each type can vary, you’d need a pretty strong rock to beat a decent paper, which gives paper a value even if it’s in some ways weaker than the rock.

However, pretty much nothing in the other game types really even remotely compares to insights.

Insights are just a collectible currency. You’d just collect them through some other means. I’ll grant that there are few other aspects of the game that would be as worth one Insight per unit of time as beating a raid boss, but they could perhaps add Insight fragments or something, and combining 10, 100, or 250 of them could result in a single Insight, and they would be given out by various tasks in varying numbers. There are plenty of things in the game that are at least half as worthy as beating the weaker raid bosses.

Addition: Just to be a little more clear, my suggestion that the armor should have required all 3 types wasn’t really to “encourage people to play more types”. It was more an example how I would have done it because it would have helped with the problem while at the same time requiring achievement in all areas.

Again though, I don’t see any value in “achievement in all the areas.” I mean if you love all three, that’s great, go for it, but if you just really love one type, then you’re as valuable to the game as that other person, and should not be punished for that by having to spend a lot of time in areas that you don’t like.

Xstein.2187:

If you used all 3 game modes, than everyone going after the armor would at least have one or more aspects of the collection they enjoyed.

But they would also be likely to have to play a significant amount of 2/3 modes that they don’t enjoy. Mutually assured annoyance is not the ideal solution, having everyone a path that they 100% enjoy is the superior solution.

The way I would do it is to

1. Have many ingredients necessary for the final build of the object.

2. ONE of these ingredients could only be found in each of the three modes, OR in one specific mode (like raids) that they want to highlight, but would be buried very shallowly, something that only takes a few hours to acquire. It would give incentive to TRY that mode, but would not force players to spend more than a reasonable amount of time at it if they don’t enjoy it.

3. The remaining components would be available in ALL modes. If you like to raid, there are ways to find them in raids. If you like PvE open world, you can find the bits in the open world. If you like to PvP, there are ways to earn them in PvP. If you like WvW, there are ways to earn them in WvW. You only need to get one of each, so pick the method that works best for you.

Perfectly balancing these isn’t really feasible, but they can skew the balance deliberately, so that at least a few of them are clearly easier to get in a given mode than in the others, and other items are clearly easier in the other modes, so that a player who wants to be 100% efficient would end up doing all the modes for a bit, but a player that insists on only doing one mode would still be able to do that for all but a tiny portion of the total acquisition time.

Xstein.2187:

I’m a firm believer that if you want the one set of legendary armor in gw2, then you should play everything in gw2.

I disagree strongly. Wooden Potatoes made a good comment about this in one of his HoT review videos (the one on WvW, I think), but the devs seem to believe that most players enjoy doing a little of everything, while in reality, most players gravitate towards exactly one playstyle, and spend all or most of their time there. There is no benefit to encouraging players to spend significant time in all three modes unless they ENJOY all three modes.

They can make playing all three modes the easiest way, the shortest way, so that players inclined to do that have a nudge in that direction, but players who definitely don’t want to do that, definitely shouldn’t have to, and should have alternatives available.

Weli.4568:

Need examples of these games that are balanced around the easy mode. You can’t just throw statements out there without backing it up with examples. And it should be you convincing us that it indeed needs a nerf and not us convincing you that it doesn’t. As you are clearly in the minority in this one.

I can actually think of very few games that don’t have their story modes balanced around very casual-friendly “normal” gameplay, and the few exceptions tend to have “Souls” in the title. I mean, just of games I’ve played fairly recently, Mass Effect (any), Dishonored 2, basically anything out of Bioware or Bethesda, the story modes are typically very hard to die in. If there are high challenge elements, they are either in harder optional difficulty settings, or in out of the way optional areas that have nothing to do with the core story. Again, nobody’s saying that they can’t offer challenging content, just that it shouldn’t be along the default story path.

You said damage was issue, this would be true if there was no space to maneuver on the platform but as there’s all the space you could ever need plus you can glide away in case of the worst case scenario

I admitted that gliding away wasn’t even something that occurred to me, since traditionally gliding off a platform in mid air would result in floating to your death, but again, that seems like an element that works better for a “git gud” encounter, a challenge mode where the point is to keep trying and improving and overcoming, whereas I think that story missions should be more straightforward, something meant to be fully grasped the first time through, rather than something intended to fail you so that you’d regroup and try again. Any “advice on how to do better” is entirely irrelevant to the point of this thread, which is that you shouldn’t need any advice to clear it, everything you need should just come naturally.

It’s a philosophical distinction.

Rasimir.6239:

Why have a fight at all if you win by default, without any knowledge of the fight or fight mechanics? You might just as well skip the fight and just do cutscenes then.

I think maybe you’re exaggerating my position. I’m not expecting an encounter that you can AFK through, that just completes itself. I’m just thinking of it more as a test that does not fail you before you’re done. I think the player should still need to learn how to defeat the enemy, I just think that he should not have to worry too much about being defeated while he’s figuring it out. The difference between a highly skilled/prepared and a less skilled/prepared player should not be that one succeeds and the other fails, but that the first succeeds much quicker than the latter. And of course if the latter player makes no attempt to actually learn the mechanics, then he would never succeed.

Static.9841:

Nope, but when just about every single one of them is contrary to your “it’s so hard, it needs to be dumbed down” ethos, you need to take a step back and realise that maybe you’re the problem here.

But others have expressed difficulty with the encounter as well. It’s not as one-sided as you seem to think. It’s just that most of those people said their piece and moved on, while a few people keep coming back to pound on me until I shut up about it (which, spoiler alert, will not happen).

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t ever remember being at risk to dying in the tutorials and I used to key farm.

Once you understand even the basics of GW2 combat, it is very unlikely that you’ll die in the tutorial areas, because the lethal attacks are easy to avoid, but if you don’t understand the basics, if you don’t expect tutorial enemies to even _have lethal attacks, or aren’t used to having to manually dodge attacks in an MMO, the original tutorials could have some nasty surprises to them, that was my only point. GW2 was trying some really different things, great things, but not terribly familiar at the time.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Perhaps, the OP should be championing for an Infantile Mode, rather than a Challenge Mode.

I think that would come across as mocking to the players who used it, when the entire point is to make them feel more comfortable and powerful in the game. I don’t think you really understand the point of this thread.

zealex.9410:

and why arent ppl complainin about the caustic nightmare skins bein locked behind 100 cm or gold fractal weapons?

I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, but the reason I’m not complaining about it is because the look of those skins (and Ad Infinitum, for that matter) do not particularly appeal to me. But if any other player did particularly like those skins, and wanted them available through other methods, I would not be trying to shut them up, I would support their efforts. My stance is that ALL items should be available through multiple means, but I only directly speak up about items that I am personally interested in, because I have limited time and effort to spare.

boolah.1325:

Let’s be serious now.. Raids have been out for more than a year. The recipes have been known for as long. People are complaining now that they can’t have this nice new toy because they didn’t bother to take it serious enough get the LI or provisioner tokens?? meh

I’ve been complaining about this issue on and off since before raids came out. At every step I was told to “wait until the raids actually come out,” “wait until the method of earning the armor is actually announced,” “wait until they actually release the armor,” etc. My stance has remained consistent throughout the process, that the skins should be available to players who don’t enjoy raiding.

Feanor.2358:

Following this logic, you should make every item in the game freely accessible. Because for each aspect of the game you can surely find a player who dislikes it. Now, this would be a net negative. Because you’d be robbing players at large of the sense of reward and achievement.

That’s called a “reductio ad absurdum” argument. Any argument, taken to extremes, breaks down. Nobody is suggesting taking this to extremes. for someone to be a “player in good standing” in GW2, it is expected that they enjoy at least one of the major types of content that the game launched with (perhaps more, but at least one). It is expected that they want to continue playing that type of content.

The argument being put forth is not that players should be able to get any reward from any silly thing they feel like doing, that is an unreasonable burden on the devs and impossible to balance. Rather, the argument is that any activity that the devs see fit to be a supported gameplay element, worthy of some decent rewards, those rewards should be fungible with any other reward in the game, there should be some sort of exchange rate, such that effort spent in activity A can earn the same rewards provided by equivalent effort in activity B.

It’s not an attempt to boost my ego. Perhaps you can best think of it as a trophy. A reminder for a long and hard effort.

And I have no problem with you receiving a trophy for your efforts. What I do mind is you receiving an exclusive weapon or armor skin, because unlike a trophy, that skin has a value that has nothing to do with its representative nature.

NikeEU.7690:

I dont enjoy interval training or track workouts but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to run a 16 minute 5k right?

Why not? Of course the real world has rules of physics and biology that (so far) we cannot change, but if you were living in a game, and a developer had the ability to allow you to run a 16 minute 5K without that training, then why shouldn’t they? This is why real world comparisons often make zero sense in game design discussions, most of the rules do not apply the same from one to the next.

apharma.3741:

The armour skin is nothing but a prestige item, it is no different to a title,

That may be your opinion, but I clearly do not share it. The skins have value in their appearance alone, they have that value whether only one person has it or everyone has it. That is the difference between armors and titles. If you believe that armor skins are worth nothing more than prestige, that’s fine, so long as you don’t try to use that as justification for making it harder for me to get access to the skins I want.

Except you do want to devalue peoples efforts, you essentially want to remove the hard work others put into it trying a new game mode, learning new techniques and classes to benefit a group of 10 people working together.

No, nothing can take any of that away from them. The value of their efforts is that they have improved, and are better today than they were when they started. That remains true regardless of what happens with Legendary armor. Any value they derrived from having exclusive access to Legendary armor skins, that is value they were never entitled to in the first place.

Correct me if I’m wrong but GW1 had many skins locked behind difficult content, why is GW1 getting a free pass but not GW2?

Because I never played GW1 and never had any interest to. GW2 is the game that interested me, and the only ANet game I’ve played. GW1 is completely irrelevant to me as a player, just as someone might love FFVII but have no interest in FFV.