I got exotic armor to be done with it, because I hate grinding of any kind. Even having to gruel through dungeons for so long to finish a second set was far more than I had wanted. I just wanted to get my characters to 80, outfit them with full exotics so I could concentrate on doing other things. Unfortunately to get to 80 you basically have to do everything in the game anyway. It’s just a bad system for me. I don’t like it at all.
I wouldn’t be advertising the game to anyone, with the gear debate going on. ANet doesn’t need any new customers, with the way they’re treating existing ones.
If the developers were sure this was a one-time thing they would have said so, emphatically. The fact that he said “three months” seems to imply they’re keeping the door open and not blatantly saying “never,” as they’ve already been caught in a lie several times now. Saying it this way lets imbeciles do damage control for them in the short term, and then in the long term, keep the door open for adding more and more tiers.
I imagine it’ll be a lot of "We’re excited to offer players the chance to – " sort of replies. Fluff. Nothing of consequence other than drumming up traffic for Kotaku.
If I could get a developer into a room one on one and ask them questions and get an honest answer out of them, free of PR concerns, that would be great. Unfortunately the only thing we can really do is actively complain about the move and withhold financing them and actively even using the game until they realize they’re making a big mistake. The reactions have basically been three: Good, Bad and Not too big a deal. The third group will only choose a side over time, once they finally finish up content and realize it’s now actively impacting them. It seems like ANet is basing a very large aspect of its core design on the complaints of Locust players, which as everyone should know, ruins MMOs during their early launch months. Some never recover.
The worst part of 100% completion are usually the hearts, since they take forever to complete if no DEs start triggering around you, which is a problem with the game’s very limited content and harsh leveling system. Vistas are the least of your concerns.
They said they wouldn’t “add a new tier every three months.” They didn’t say they never would. They just said it wouldn’t be frequent.
Common, Uncommon, Masterwork, Rare, Exotic was already way too many for me. No one cares about even half of those, and it wasn’t necessary to keep adding them as your level went up. At most, there should just be three or four. Preferably? Just one. “What’s the best weapon?” “Anything you can equip for your level.”
“Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.”
Sounds like this is a special case – a fix to a problem – so you can assume there won’t be another tier, until an expansion that is.
Does level 81 gear count?
The thing is, it doesn’t solve it. It just prolongs the boredom of the progressives, who will just stop playing again once they run out of numbers to chase after.
(edited by Plague.5329)
ANet is of the opinion that it was necessary to add another tier to the rarity list. I supposed after Ascended we may have Double Ascended or maybe Super Exotic 3. Maybe some screaming and hair growth in between.
If GW2 had only a single rarity (well, no rarity – just ‘normal’), do you think it would impact the game at all? If, instead of having multiple rarities that no one uses, and instead of Exotic or Ascended or Ultra Super Surpassment Armor XTreme being the thing that takes a while to get, it was instead just level 80 armor, and most people had level 78 or level 79 armor, how do you think this would impact the game, if at all?
What if level 80 armor was easy to get (or was even mandatory for you to equip before the final story mission), but looked terrible, and the more expensive armors just looked a lot better? I’m sure the “Progressives” (it’s so wonderful the game has its own political terms now, isn’t it?) are of the opinion that these things are necessary to keep them invested. But what do you think?
Is it possible for games to maintain a sense of personal progress without tying that progress to an investment in gear numbers? Is true horizontal progression possible? Many GW1 players will reflect back to the first game. And certainly, that game never had any stat increases at all. The level cap never even went up. And somehow it lasted for years and, more importantly, financed the game you are playing today, due to its success. But were titles added in later campaigns just another form of vertical progression? What about gathering skills, elite or otherwise? Isn’t that the same thing? If not, why isn’t it the same thing? Try to explain why that form of vertical progression (if it is) is okay, when gear progression isn’t?
I have my own opinions but I’d like to see people actually have a real discussion about game design rather than just telling each other that they’re stupid and need to go back to WoW/GW1. This means more than a couple of sentences or a couple seconds of thought would be nice. I imagine many, not having any experience with this sort of thing, won’t be able to formulate their opinions, and may even believe something incorrectly based on their true motivations, so hopefully you may even be able to shed light on why things work as they do, for those who just want to play the game.
I can understand ArenaNet maybe rankling as the WoW kids ran rampant on these forums and elsewhere, jeering about “no endgame.” I just think the proper response would be to present a unique, kick-kitten endgame rather than a pale imitation of a failed concept from every other MMO – which is exactly what Agony is: a lame copy of LOTRO’s Radiance, famed for almost killing that game.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of DEs and boss scripting, and NPC AI, but forget it, let’s add in a stat for them to grind.
They aren’t going to move product by offering the same (less! older! proven to fail!) thing as everyone else. Chris and Linsey’s little letters read like something out of last decade.
Again for the blind impaired.. Agony is the same ability as Spectral Agony that was used by the Mursaats. It is part of GW1 lore and now the history of GW2. So whatever is in GW2 history is fair game to be returned. And FYI Spectral Agony was in the game long before Lord of the Rings online was even thought of. So get over it.
Agony was not in GW1. They’re just calling that so stupid people can make the argument you are stupidly making, to try to deflect the obvious fact that this is a broken mechanic. There was a monster skill called Spectral Agony in GW1 that kept players from entering very high level zones before they’d actually done the rest of the story. Playing through the story turned it off, as it was just a gating mechanic to help new players learn the game.
That’s funny, it’s always seemed to me that the progression supporters are just WoW players who don’t know what they’re doing if someone doesn’t show them a big number to gallop after. The vocal minority. That’s the problem. The game is being diminished to cater to the vocal minority of progression obsessed players. You are the problem. Not the actual players.
Step back, everyone. I’ve got the best one:
WALKING.
Yes, for too long we have been burdened with the lack of a progression element for a skill we learned as soon as we began playing, that has gone nowhere. With the acquisition of new armor tokens to apply walking runes to your armor, you can now mitigate the brand new, skill-based buff of “Fatigue!” Fatigue slows down your character, to the point that they just give up and stop playing. By purchasing new armor with a new Fatigue slot, and equipping Fatigue gear to mitigate this new effect, you can boost your character’s overall speed to the point that it destroys this amazing new condition. We’ll be looking to add new levels of Fatigue in the future! The first levels only slow your characters, while the final levels may cause your game to just close itself entirely, or uninstall! And look for the level 80 severity of Fatigue, which causes you to forget the game even existed, while the developers have to find new jobs because they apparently don’t have any sense!
I was leveling my alts to outfit them with exotics, now that I had finally gotten done 100% outfitting my Warrior with exotic armor and exotic weapons (the weapon part takes a lot longer for a Warrior). Needless to say, knowing they were attaching more levels to this killed my motivation entirely, as I already was sick of leveling them all up. Especially knowing they may add more tiers later to keep the WoW idiots invested (“we won’t be adding a new tier every three months” [just every nine months!]) means I no longer want to play. Number chasing for your own equipment has never been part of this franchise. Adding it, to me, means the franchise is now completely dead. The soulbinding nonsense and the whole dye fiasco and all the other tiny little things that were minor insults to the first game have piled up to a breaking point for me. It’s no longer tolerable. ANet pushed too far.
The thing about it being an “effort gap:”
Yes. Legendaries are hard to get. But they aren’t better weapons. Adding another rarity above Exotic then, is a waste of time. If you’re grinding a weapon or armor for its look or rarity and it has the same stats as Exotic, why would you waste your time on that new rarity? In fact, why even waste time on exotics? Just farm the legendaries, if they’re easier to obtain. Even if they aren’t, if Ascendent has the same stat values as Exotics, who would bother wasting time on them? Hence why I’m sure they felt the need to ruin the game by vomiting this new rarity into the mix.
It seems like exotics are just the new rares, and will be obsoleted in a few months because ANet retroactively decided people were getting them too easily, and they didn’t like that at all. Which is especially funny in a Guild Wars game, where you had your face shoved into a max stat vendor area as soon as you hit max level, to make sure you were completely outfitted for the rest of the game. In GW1, achieving max stats was never important. In GW2, it’s now the dev’s primary obsession.
Most common is definitely Greatsword. As most Warriors are just brainless min-maxers, and it deals the most damage of any of their weapons, there you go. Bow for tagging enemies, as well.
[…] Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. […]
1) The fact you have to phrase this as “allow people time to acquire them” is a direct indicator that you intend this to be a grind to get max stat armor. This is already in direct tension with not only your stated goals as designers, but also with many of your customer’s understanding of what the game was going to be, as well as your customer’s desire for that game.
2) This seems to imply you believe it will be mandatory at some point for all players to be decked out in nothing but legendaries, and that legendaries will have a higher statistical advantage over exotics and even possibly ascendant armor itself. Do you then want all players to feel a need to grind to Ascendent level armor? Legendary armor, eventually? What about new players who join the game after all these months of grinding to get these items? How are they supposed to play catch up to all of this? Why are you ruining your own game by placing such an inordinate focus on grinding equipment numbers? Are you also telling us our current exotic armor, gotten from dungeon runs, will eventually be worthless if we pick the game back up in several months?
My suggestion to you is to reevaluate your practices and come to a better understanding of what players want from Guild Wars. You aren’t making Guild of Warcraft 2. Please stop tainting this franchise with the stink of this tired old MMO convention. You promised to destroy the Sithconventions, not join them. If you can’t think of ways to expand your endgame without resorting to these tired exercises, whereas GW1 never had this problem, please remove yourselves from the development of this game and put more capable employees in your place, as it is apparent you are not equipped to give many of us the game that we were promised.
10 more dmg make you more PRO?
0.00001% more crit chance make you more PRO?
getting 4% MF in WvW make you more PRO?
not able to add runes, orbs or sigils to these items make you more PRO?The stats is just ONE problem.
Another one is “Restricted Content” = bad idea (If you have multiple alts, you can see the problem in the long run)BTW : Your argument is a fallacy Ad Hominem
the same “restricted content” was in GW1
to progress more into the story you HAD to infuse your armor
Infusing your armor was part of the story. That’s like saying in order to progress the story, you had to progress the story.
Yeah, I’m sure your room full of enabling friends reassured you greatly.
Acidic, you really just don’t get it. There’s no hope for you. Greens were just perfect rares meant for non-hardcore players to obtain so they could avoid grinding for a perfect weapon, which was a big problem at the time for most players. This is the opposite of that situation in every way. You obviously are blinded by something, and can’t see that. A shame for all of us, I suppose.
blah, blah, blah, something valid and well worth reading but way too long to quote
This is the SAME thing. Honestly…when I get home I am going to need to get on youtube and illustrate this for people.
In GW you traded availability and perfect stats for the ability to customize. In a gold req 9 max weapon you could put in the staff head, wrapping and inscription you wanted. But creating that weapon took time or gold; however, you could run right out the door of Grenth’s footprint and get one of four green items in about five minutes and they would be max, but you had no control over stats.
In GW2 you trade a small stat boost and availability for the freedom to customize. Ascended gear will be hard to get, yet alone the exact stat combination you are looking for, and when you do get it, you can’t modify it with normal runes/jewels/sigils/crests.
Your rose tinted nostalgia glasses are getting foggy.
It is not. The same. Thing.
“In GW2 you trade a small stat boost and availability – " Are you really so deluded that you can say what you said, begin the next sentence with that phrase and NOT immediately stop and realize they are not the same thing?
It will not be the same unless the stats are exactly the same in every way, and only if you can infuse normal armor just as easily as getting new armor. That is the only acceptable version of this system. Call Ascended items “Uniques,” give them the same stat items and make them drop from bosses and then sure, I’ll call it the same thing. But as it is, you’re misconstruing a very minor burp in GW1’s development in a small minority of the population to support an egregious divorce of the core tenets of the game from the reality of actual play. Do not EVER do this again.
Somehow I doubt you were even there for the release. This sort of reaction never took place. At best, people were concerned that introducing greens would cause people to think of them as being superior because it was creating a separate kind of item in the game world. That, and actually getting a perfect rare was often annoying in PvE because they had the tendency to appear with req 10 or +14% innate and so on. The greens were there to basically resolve that problem.
The roles there were reversed, with the elitists who were obsessed with grind basically being against uniques because they would no longer be special, and the everyday player getting sick of having to try to track down a perfect version of an item “you don’t need to progress.” (As some of you kittenes from other MMOs are so fond of hee-hawing at everyone.) The difference is that GW1 Anet saw this as being a problem with grind – even a minor one that most GW2 players would see as being whining – and solved it. Whereas GW2 Anet freaks out and completely obliterates their game philosophy by introducing game concepts that older MMOs tried and did away with years ago. To top off this situation, rares eventually became a little more prestigious anyway, because of that random element in getting a perfect one, and because their stats were exactly the same. Yet, most people didn’t care either way, and were just happy to have a weapon that was perfect and looked cool.
Even then, in that situation, there was only a small portion of the fanbase complaining about this on sites like GWG. Elitist, grind-focused players who were chased from the community, because the game was clearly about skill and horizontal progression. Certainly not five thousand people screaming about it and calling for blood in one thread.
Any time I see someone outright lie about the first game in an effort to support the foolish decisions of whoever these people are today that call themselves Anet, it gets on my nerves.
There are less efficient builds that try to do the same exact thing. These are also pushed out by Thieves in that team burst slot. So, no. There are other builds that are effective in PvP, but not in tPvP due to how the meta works, which is the result of concentrating so heavily on the Conquest game type.
Because the core designers of GW1 left around 2009, leaving only incompetents to imitate existing games while piggybacking the manifesto of their betters, without understanding it.
The term insanely popular would not describe the game in the NA market, it had a huge following and dwindled away a few months after launch. You were left with koreans and the few die hards.
That’s a hard argument to make, when the money they made off GW1 financed the entirety of GW2 – the whole half decade of work they put into it.
GW1 was very popular. Only your prejudice against it says otherwise.
Mike O’Brien posted:
Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.
You missed the last part of the quote.
“Unless it’s just, like, four points, or something. Because who cares about that, am I right?”
The thing about the “it’s only 5 points” thing is, the same can be said of the other tiers. But I don’t really want to run dungeons with someone who’s in level 76 common rarity armor just because “it’s almost the same thing.”
If you’re going to deck out your character, do it. And that means exotics are a waste of time, when you can just be farming for Ascendant armor. You don’t see people clamoring to buy up rare armor, do you? No, they farm karma for the best. Because that’s the game.
Personally, I’m just not playing GW2. I actually roll a new character in GW1, Presearing. To my surprise I actually have been having far more fun, despite already having over 3,300 hours logged in GW1.
Good for you. Why are you still here then…? Not trying to be offensive (much..).
To let ANet know they’re making a series of dire mistakes, in the hopes they will tomorrow have a meeting, try to recover from their hangovers and tell one another, “Oh man… we messed up guys. We messed up bad.” And then fondly remember GW1, and drastically remodel GW2 to be less terrible.
While i understand your point of view, problem is that opinion is only other half of the whole.
So which one they should listen then? Others say they want sense of progression, that usually means gear, title or achievements. All of them are grind in the end.
Then others say they don’t want to grind stuff.
I think people asking for gear progression are just ignorant players from other MMOs that don’t know any better, and aren’t really missing the treadmill. They’re instead missing that sense of persistent progression and identification with their avatar, and they falsely related that to the gear. I agree the game is missing that (sense of continued progress). But caving in to WoW players that aren’t trained as designers to begin with is only going to turn the game into a standard MMO, not the manifesto driven game it was advertised as being.
ANet usually isn’t prone to knee-jerk reactions, so that tells me that either this was an especially stupid move on their part (and they’ve attempted several of those already – remember as far back as energy potions during alphas?) or… or, it was something they’ve been planning for months, and probably since release. And the backlash was something they never expected because they failed to recognize that to players not in the know, this would not be a “finally, the tier they couldn’t add right away” moment, but instead a complete betrayal of the core tenets of their design philosophy. Considering the amount of content behind this patch, I am almost certain this is something they had planned on from the start, player complaints or not. So on the bright side, they aren’t imbeciles. They’re just misguided.
“I really feel like I’ve left an impact on the world around me!”
Personally, I’m just not playing GW2. I actually roll a new character in GW1, Presearing. To my surprise I actually have been having far more fun, despite already having over 3,300 hours logged in GW1.
Good for you. Why are you still here then…? Not trying to be offensive (much..).
To let ANet know they’re making a series of dire mistakes, in the hopes they will tomorrow have a meeting, try to recover from their hangovers and tell one another, “Oh man… we messed up guys. We messed up bad.” And then fondly remember GW1, and drastically remodel GW2 to be less terrible.
To this day, GW1 remains the only MMO that ever did it right. Which is the platform GW2 ran on as its manifesto, and then promptly abandoned to reveal it was just another MMO. Hence the anger and frustration. People who say the treadmill is the only way are people who either never played GW1, or barely played a few hours of it.
Sometimes I get the feeling most of the current ANet staff never played GW1 either, or they wouldn’t be kitten the franchise with gold sinks, crappy combat, prolonged grinds, terrible build systems, trading post obsessions, an empty endgame, an isolated and deserted and ignored PvP and an overall contempt for its own playerbase coupled with selling its very soul to the unwashed WoW masses in an effort to find a bigger paycheck. GW1 was a game that did what GW2 claimed it wanted to do. I think we all should have known better when it was already clear that GW2 was a step backwards from the first game (and a minor step forwards for most MMO players, as they’re ignorant and don’t know any better). It’s apparent that whatever the modern incarnation of this company is, they are not equipped to deliver the game gamers have been waiting for.
First off, many components to GW2 already make this difficult. For one, getting to max level takes longer. Another, getting max armor obviously takes much, much longer. In addition to this, the combat system is a shadow of GW1’s system. Much of fleshing out your character was buying every single skill in the game, which many never even accomplished, in addition to capturing the very useful and highly sought after elite skills. There are barely any skills, most are either worthless or cannot be resorted, and elite skills are generally worthless and not desired anyway. So already, most of the ways GW1 succeeded where GW2, after three months, has already laughably failed, cannot be put into place without major changes to the game. Which is why I think you’re seeing ANet abandon ship and just latch onto the WoW players. They feel like they have no choice.
Now, GW1 made mistakes, but that’s why you improve those systems instead of removing them. This is GW2’s first mortal sin, and it was one committed by the staff years ago.
GW2 needs a way to change the behavior of skills, and that way needs to be funded with gold, and require a large time investment, but have a payoff by drastically changing the way skills behave. GW1 did this with new skills. GW2 attempted this with traits and completely, utterly and foolishly failed as hard as any game I have seen. The entire build system is a big joke, and one of many reasons why their desire to be an e-sport will never, ever happen.
Endgame is all about character progression. When you beat any game, you only go back through it on new game +s to fully flesh out your character and see new content that was locked the first time through. GW2 similarly needs daily area completion rewards per zone, a hard mode of some kind (maybe lowering your stats instead of reinstancing?), and most importantly, a “skill treadmill.” That is the biggest thing lacking in GW2, opposed to GW1. GW1 survived for almost a decade off giving players the ability to try out thousands of new builds that were always changing and evolving with the times. GW2 offers a kick in the balls.
Personally, I’m just not playing GW2. I actually roll a new character in GW1, Presearing. To my surprise I actually have been having far more fun, despite already having over 3,300 hours logged in GW1.
I have had a similar reaction. I imagine the “Ascendant Patch” will go down in infamy as the first nail in the coffin, and what turned the game from being the chosen one to unmasking it as just another MMO, with fewer features.
What I find funniest is the line, "to help give you the edge in end game content.” Before that they claimed they were adding gear progression because people pointed out that there wasn’t any endgame. Then they claim that once you have a full set of this stuff, then you’ll have the edge FOR the endgame. Which… is the acquisition of these items. Which you no longer need. Because you just got them.
Things like this are like big special effects in movies. They try to cover up the lack of real content by throwing explosions at you, instead of addressing core issues with the narrative/design.
While I do think a fair majority are not entirely pleased, like ANet employees have said, polling is slanted towards people who want to take a poll. So, you’ll get odd results that ANet has stated they will freely ignore over “their own scientific methods.” As for what this science entails, I’m sure everyone not playing the game or giving them any money will be a fine Control.
Nay for stat-based gear progression.
LinseyOriginal Guild Wars fans may recognize that we took a familiar approach to our new progression.
NAY this ain’t familiar. It’s an insult to fans of the original Guild Wars.
It actually made me physically angry that they invoked GW1’s name to support something that flies in the face of everything that made that game great. It’s like seeing someone invoke George Washington as they burn the American flag.
As the others said. And there was no blogpost saying “Yes, they ARE indeed better than your old items (at least by a little) and I hope you’re as excited by that as I am!!!!”
No. Extreme disappointment. Hope, excitement, all dead. No.
I did this to check my /age from GW1. (3,303 hours, btw). I felt a huge weight lifted off of me when I decided to waypoint to Lion’s Arch, and realized I didn’t have to pay any money to do so. I’ve had plenty of feelings like this since logging back in, in disgust over what has happened to the franchise.
I’ve had the impulse to make a new character in pre-Searing, that I doubt I’ll follow up on, but for any old GW1 players like myself, I think it’s a good experience to have.
Money. ANet compromised on GW1’s design to try to appeal to a wider base of average MMORPG players. They went a bit too far and made the grind important, without fleshing out the parts of the game that made GW1 so appealing in the long-term. People started to leave the game because they ran out of grind (and the game didn’t have the GW1 style content that kept people in the game). Consequently, they’re using infusion as a new gating system to stretch out their (lack of) endgame content to create the illusion of progression. Basically, they’re banking on the “it’s not a big deal” reaction some players are having.
Guild Wars 1 player. I bought the game for the Guild Wars experience. I feel like every time mentions that game now, it’s like they’re taking its name in vain. GW2 is nothing like GW1. I played GW1 to avoid everything that is wrong with MMOs. GW2’s manifesto purported to do the same thing. This update is the total, complete bankruptcy of that vision and a shameless attempt to jump ship from that vision onto standard MMO conventions, because I’m sure they were seeing that the numbers were not projecting to sustain their financial model in the long term.
The Guild Wars franchise is dead to me. The item rarities, the forge, the prolonged grind to get to max level, to get max level gear, the total destruction of the old combat system with the replacement of a MOBA-style, generic combat system, the complete destruction of GW style PvP, and so on. This is not Guild Wars. I thought perhaps you might retract your mistakes and return to the GW1 vision, but you’ve chosen your side. Thousands and thousands of hours poured into the first game. You’re just WoW/LoL/(take your pick) 2 now. You’re catering the game to WoW players, and flipping GW1 players the bird. You will never see the inside of my wallet, ever again.
You know what would be great? Just a gladiator pit. Both teams are in cages, the cages open. Objective: Kill Them. And then you kill each other. It’s like… a PvP game, or something.
I bet if they put a standard TDM along Conquest and people had the option to choose, you’d see Conquest die out real kitten fast.
I honestly want them to stop adding content to things I didn’t want to begin with, and… you know, add what I want. It’s like getting a monopoly board for Christmas. You appreciate having it, you guess, but you’d really like a new console system. But then they keep buying you monopoly accessories. The History of Monopoly. Monopoly dice cozy. Monopoly OST. Just… stop it, with the Monopoly. I appreciate the effort, but I don’t want it. Your butthurtness over how my wants are “wrong” coupled with your inordinate fascination with Monopoly is beginning to get on my nerves.
I’d just go back to the Mesmer and then do dungeon runs / farm until you can afford to get one of your other alts up. Warriors aren’t much for anything in WvW. Or PvP, in general.
Most of the things we’re good at in WvW are under very specific circumstances. Anything we can do, another class can do much better. I’d suggest, if you plan to keep trying with it, is to bring a bow and a mobility set (either greatsword or sword + warhorn basically) and just follow the zerg, and tag enemies where you can. If you’re lucky you’ll be in a sizeable group of around ten and happen upon a slightly smaller group of enemies. I guess at that point you’ll enjoy yourself, but that’s not exactly a common thing in WvW, obviously. Warriors make fine camp killing machines, though. Good group mobility and all.
I’m not saying Warriors suck, but… you know. You’d probably enjoy yourself more with a Thief.
Numb, why are you blanking out your skillbar? Especially the primary slots? Some people….
If you can’t get into it, it’s probably not for you. The only reason I play Warrior is because I like the aesthetic and identity of being one. As far as builds go, it’s rather mediocre and boring. Most people who play them for the builds are just spamming HB and stacking might, and such. If you really, really like seeing a bigger number than other people can create, I guess you might like the class? I’ve never cared about that, and have a low opinion of people who do obsess over it, so I’m the wrong person to ask about that.
I guess just try things you haven’t tried. Unless you like min-maxing or (like me) just being a Warrior archetype, it’s a rather boring class, compared to the others.
It shouldn’t be linked to damage at all. It should reduce burst recharge rates. The two grandmaster traits that currently do this (and there should not be two to begin with), should instead do something like grant stability on burst skill use, or remove conditions on use.
Not many. Most look terrible. Aside from the generic looking lava and ice hammers already mentioned, there’s probably three others I can think of, if I can remember the names. The Legionnaire hammer is fairly big. There’s a spiked club skin that’s fairly big, although it’s just a generic, big stick with spikes on it. And… the Ascalonian Catacombs hammer is kind of the smallest of the “big” hammers.
It’s bizarre to me that they made all these ridiculous looking pauldrons and greatsword skins, yet hammers, of all things, they chose to make sort of realistic looking. Bizarre. Especially considering GW1 skins, which were (up till Nightfall anyway) generally realistic, much bigger. I miss my Stonecrusher hammer. Random, but I also liked the hammers in Vagrant Story. I remember the first time I finally looted a Damascus two handed mace as a rare drop from a Minotaur, equipped it, and audibly swore when I saw it. Normally I prefer realism to my looks, but when you’re wielding something meant to convey brute force and power, err on the side of awesome.
Not really. A warrior is obviously way squishier than a guardian, for example. They’re almost easy kills. And that’s because of mainly utility problems. That’s more important than health, but a large margin.
Although obviously any element can complicate things.
It means exactly what I think: That the designers were forced to givem them massive mitigation abilities in order to compensate for their lack of HP.
The devs weren’t forced to do anything. They’re the ones who did both of these things. Intentionally. If they thought having everyone have almost the same health pool size was a good idea, they would have done it.
I think you’re falsely associating health numbers with the bunker problem, that the two are somehow the same issue. They aren’t. They’re already going to resolve that. Health overall means almost next to nothing in this game. Look at bosses. How hard are they to kill? They’re not. And they have literally millions of health in some cases. Millions. Health is the afterthought, not the skills. They design the skills the way they want them, and THEN the developers adjust the health values. Again, what matters are the skills. The health numbers are almost completely irrelevant, especially when a Thief can basically one-shot any class in the game in a couple of seconds, regardless of their health, as long as the target is stunned or caught off guard, or so on. Health does not matter. At all. It’s a minor supplement to classes that have no innate utility. Note how Warriors and Necromancers have the highest health. Neither of those is exactly exploding with utility options. Necros moreso than Warriors, but it’s obvious those health points are just buffer values to help the classes buy some time while better classes pound the crap out of them.
(edited by Plague.5329)
My main issue with hammer 4 is that hammer is obviously an attacking weapon, not a defensive one, so that 4 skill is basically just another interrupt. Yet, you can’t use it offensively very easily. You basically have to stun a target, stand right in the middle of their body, then use the skill and hope they don’t dodge out of it, as that’s the only time they can’t just walk outside of its range.
Roots in general are bad skills. Hopefully most will be removed from the game at some point. Rooting is something that should only be used on skill designs that would otherwise just be too powerful. I don’t think many people are going to be complaining about the hammer cripple ability if you could actually move while you use it. I get the feeling whoever was responsible for it just thought it looked better, at the time.
^ If your argument is that they don’t see it coming, so it’s irrelevant, then there’s no point in even saying the wind-up is a good balance to the skill’s design, since your enemy won’t see it anyway.
You also run into the problem of, “Well, Kill Shot isn’t meant to be used in 1v1s, so when you’re in a 1v1, you just can’t use it.”
Bad design. Terrible, in fact.
I just have two things to add to this:
1. There’s a reason Kill Shot has 1,500 range and can pierce targets (when traited of course…but what kind of rifle warrior doesn’t bring that trait?).
2. This game is NOT designed around 1v1. It is designed around 5v5.
That is all. Take from that what you will.
I may agree if not for the fact that in 5v5s, Conquest is designed to split those five into at least three groups, resulting in… 1v1s. Or 2v1s. Maybe a single 3v2, at best. That, and the fact that due to the Warrior lacking mitigation utilities, they are often the first target, because they’re so easy to burn down, as they can’t stealth, clone themselves, portal away or what have you. As such, trying to design a burst skill around the idea that no one is going to be attacking you, in a game mode designed to create very small skirmishes in which you will most likely be the primary target is… not good, at all.
I think this skill and many other elements of the profession are relics of early alphas when they still weren’t sure how they wanted the game to be played. Just as the greatsword is intended to be a large group sustained pressure weapon, but is instead played as a chasing spiking weapon, things like Kill Shot seem designed around the idea that the Warrior is a support, sustained presence profession that is most effective applying pressure across multiple targets. Which obviously… that’s just not how the game is played, at all. In large enough encounters where that could be the case (true 5v5s, for example), melee can fall apart fairly easily, and there are of course much better ranged damage options than a Warrior with a gun.
If GvG actually existed, I imagine Warriors would play a much bigger role. Unfortunately, that sort of combat doesn’t exist yet. It’s a larger overall problem with the game that’s associated with the Warrior being considered “done” way too early in development, in combination with the game being so early into release that it’s missing lots of vital features, along with not being old enough to warrant any major changes in the class.
You (OP) want to trade arcing slice with hundred blades, and then you say designers were not sane for not having made it so from the start? Come on man, talk about bad ideas.. hundred blades as a burst ability would give us a MASSIVE dps downgrade. It would cut greatsword dps clean in half at least in pve settings, while changing absolutely nothing in pvp settings. I’m sorry but this is just a horrible idea.
I know. And that’s why it’s a great idea. In fact, it’s brilliant. The greatsword has no business doing that much damage, that often. That’s what the axe is for, from a design point of view. HB is currently just a spammy noob button, and the burst ability is a joke. By moving the two, you do two things: you give the GS its identity as a sweeping multi-target sustained pressure weapon back, and you turn the burst ability into something that’s not only worth using, but requires some thought about when you want to use it.
You also neglected to mention the innate quickness that scales with adrenaline, which is by far the most important part of the switch. This lends itself to a variety of possibilities: do you build only one level (which is easy enough, even without any adrenaline gain abilities or traits at all) and supplement that with a normal stun or Frenzy? Do you build two levels and just try to get it off as quickly as possible for sustained DPS? Do you build three levels and simply spike someone when their health is low, and they’re ready to heal?
I think you’re not concerned about the design of the weapon at all. I think you just want your damage number to be as high as possible, and don’t realize how easy that is to adjust. You can alter a damage value on any design, across any weapon. Your concerns there are completely irrelevant. If switching the two means you take away overall DPS, then raise the damage values across the other skills. It’s easy. Switching the two skills is better design. That’s all there is to it. You turn the burst skill into something that is versatile and serves a purpose, and also can’t be spammed but is also powerful enough to be considered a class specific special move.
Again, maybe this is my background in design talking, but try to imagine if every weapon in the game just did 1 damage. Don’t even worry about the damage values. Try to think about the weapons in terms of what they do and why they do those things. Design the weapon for that role (which is exactly how the developers do it) and then adjust the damage values accordingly. Arguments about reduced DPS are 100% irrelevant in any discussion about weapon design. Those are afterthought numbers you adjust after designing the weapon around concepts. Never, ever the other way around.
Mesmers don’t need nerfs.
Oh, yes. Yes. They do. Remember they’re using the Warrior as their base line, as it’s been in development the longest. How threatening are Warriors? They aren’t. Guess what that means for you. Enjoy your nerfs. You’re currently overpowered. The only reason why you think it’s the other classes that are the problem is because you’re the one using it.
Same deal with Thief players. You see them counter-whining on the forums all the time because they’re enclosed to their own class. They don’t know how bad they are, or worse, they do, but they’re just trying to downplay it in the hopes the developers will actually believe it, and go easier on them.
They’re both going to get hit hard, and probably not as hard as they should be hit.