Considering how Devs buffed every other class, we should even ask for more. It won’t ever happen but why should we only ask for reasonable things?
Asking for reasonable buffs is more likely to be taken seriously than asking for a string of completely broken and overpowered ones.
Still, I mean, we had to ask for a really long time to get reasonable stuff like evade buffs on deathblossom or not-quite-a-fix for p/p
playing since beta I’ve never seen a small buff to thieves coming without a huge nerf to something else. Also I’ve never seen buffs to thieves staying untouched for more than 4 months. I’ve seen instead some clearly broken things (aka withdrow healing) not working as intended (as written on patch notes) and still not fixed after 2 big balance patch. On the other hand things like improvisation not working with new skills, being fixed in 2 days.
Sure, but being stupidly, comically unreasonable doesn’t make it more likely that we’ll be adjusted in a way we like. It just makes it more likely that any little time spent reading our suggestions quickly declines to zero from the near-zero it’s at now.
They removed it because the basic design was flawed, and like crab toss during its first release, it was flooded with people gaming it for achievements rather than playing it as intended, and yelling at people attempting to actually play the game.
They know that if they put it back in without the achievements people will complain about its pointlessness, so they left it out.
This is likely intentional, just like how in the priory storyline they refer to a certain historical figure as “Dagnar Stonepate” (and this isn’t a typo, that line is voiced) rather than his accurate name “Dagnar Stoneplate”
It’s meant to illustrate imperfect knowledge of history.
Once there are 2+ elite specs “bottom slot only” is an easier system to understand than “you can only equip one” even though they effectively do the same thing.
What they need to do is put a more noticeable gold border or different shape for the elite spec slot so it’s easier to distinguish that it’s somehow different from the other two.
Considering how Devs buffed every other class, we should even ask for more. It won’t ever happen but why should we only ask for reasonable things?
Asking for reasonable buffs is more likely to be taken seriously than asking for a string of completely broken and overpowered ones.
Still, I mean, we had to ask for a really long time to get reasonable stuff like evade buffs on deathblossom or not-quite-a-fix for p/p
Mesmers are, generally, more awareness focused and strategic in playstyle. You don’t spend a lot of time reacting with a mesmer, but rather taking in the big picture of what’s going on around you and using the right combination of skills to counter the whole battlefield.
How you use your skills together, and what the opportunity cost of having them on cooldown is is very important to mesmers, as a lot of their abilities are only truly effective when combined with other abilities in the proper way.
Thieves are more reactive/impulsive in playstyle. The initiative system and thief’s general low survivability means being much more aware of where you sit in the fight from moment to moment, and you’e making an endless series of quick decisions with not much advance planning. Unlike mesmer, who thrives on making great plans, the thief thrives on making good reactions.
While thieves have a few important skill combos (stealth sttacks and certain leap finisher interactions) thief skills tend to be more independant of one another, where using a single skill and havin g it on or off cooldown (in the case of utilities or elites) is a bigger consideration than how your skills interact. The ability to react well tends to be much more important than planning well.
Basically, if you like “setting up” to get a win, go mesmer, but if you like “countering” to get a win, go thief.
A big part of it is learning the new tells and scripts. Normal mobs are more punishing than before with a gimmick burst attack every 10-15 seconds. Still, most of them to give you a fair chance if you study them. There is also lots of new stuff to not stand in like the blue goo from the chak and the fire lines from the snipers. Mushrooms are quite fun – on their own they are easy but a couple together love to combo you in a hilarious way with knockdown followed by bomb. Some of the Vet mushrooms also troll you by casting a red circle around themselves but then the actual spell is leaping to a random player.
A few types are a bit ridiculous like those rolling devils which seem to just pump out constant damage to anyone in melee range.
The devils are extremely easy. Pretty much any hard cc, or just 4 or 5 soft ccs like cripple disables them for five seconds, knocking them down and preventing them from taking any actions at all.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
To clarify: the banner recipes you had are unlocked automatically, but to actually craft them again, you need to build workshop upgrades first, and level up a scribe profession. The same with WvW siege (though they apparently require different upgrade paths). The 24/48h buffs, and wvw buffs are just gone, and replaced by new ones that need to be researched from scratch.
Basically, the only thing from the old guild that remains and is accessible immediately without need of prior reunlocking is guild bank.
True. However you can also buy any consumable you had unlocked in the old system with favor from an NPC in the guild initiative. They still require you to do guild content, just like the versions crafted by scribes.
You still have access to those old unlocks even without a single bit of progress in the new system, and unliek people who didn’t have the unlocks, you can actually produce them without spending any material resources, an ability that no new guild has.
In addition, when you do build the guild hall those unlocks are still unlocked, meaning you don’t have to spend resources, aetherium, or favor to unlock them again once you get to that point.
For complete noobs? P/D daredevil with dash.
It’s an easy rotation to learn, and you get to spend a lot of time in stealth without also having to do really tricky positioning to use it. Taking dash from daredevil makes you really slippery and the perma-swiftness gives you a tin of get out of jail free cards.
It might not stack up as you advance in rank and get matched against better opponents, but it’s very good for learning enemy skill animations and getting used to the overall flow of using stealth in PvP.
After a while you’ll probably want to graduate to more complex builds like the p/d or new staff stuff that most people run.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Ally shadowsteps are probably a thing we won’t ever see unless they only work on group members. Its sad, but they could be used very easily to grief people in open world content.
As for the rest of the idea, I like the basic concept, but the skills themselves seem pretty anti-thief. Traditionally, thief support is more about debilitating enemies than buffing allies, so I’d imagine a thief warhorn to be far more themed around demoralizing enemies than buffing allies. Stuff like “your ally’s next attack applies weakness.” or “Enemies around you are dazed” or “remove x boons” or “targeted enemy taunts other enemies for x seconds” style skills seem more in line with what I’d image thief warhorn would do.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I love the personal story, but I did enjoy it more when I received loot from the mobs in them.
Loot is fun. shrugs
It was cool, I agree, but I’m pretty alright with the more interesting rewards they give for completing the steps now, and moving other rewards to challenge achievements so you’re more encouraged to do something different on replays rather than repeat the same instance on the same character.
The backpack collections and stuff like “here, pick one of the new sigils in a totally non-rng way” really made me not miss getting mob loot in story steps so much.
The loot and xp is fine, it’s just been moved away from mob farming and on to events and chests to encourage people to play the game in the intended manner (do events and explore) rather than in a way that the game isn’t designed around (farming mobs)
Loot is far better in the new zones. Do events>get currency/keys>buy keys>open chests.
GW2 was never designed around mob farming for loot. They just took out the parts that made people attempt sub-par methods of play like farming. You kill mobs because they help you progress events, or in self defense, not because they drop loot. You’re doing events and looking for chests to get the loot. The mobs are the obstacle, not the objective.
The assumption is that people who buy the game have access to its features. People who don’t own HoT at this oint are either legacy accounts that have something you can no longer get (a paid core account without HoT) or F2P guys, who are glorified trial accounts and have a far larger set of restrictions than just guild hall things.
GW2 is a buy to play game. They assume people playing buy something occasionally (at the current rate, once every three years) to play the game and pay for the servers. The confusion right now is that certain people have forgotten the business model since it’s been so long between main releases, or that they see free accounts and assume it operates like other f2p models that nickel and dime you with required microtransactions to get full access to content.
It’s fine the way it is. Full glass builds are still viable, but full glass builds also require a higher level of attention and skill, so they have a more balanced risk/reward style of play.
This is in stark contrast to vanilla open world content, where full glass builds incurred virtually no addition risk for completely ignoring defensive stats, traits, and abilities.
You can still run glass damage builds. You just have to actually play them like they’re glassy damage builds now.
Not trying to be offensive here I swear… but a ten man isn’t a guild.
The thing is, GW2 says that it is. Any number that they allow to make a guild and name it and have access to the guild panel, etc, is by definition, a guild.
What I don’t get is why they allow the confusion of making a small guild but then don’t tailor much of their guild-focused gameplay to include the small ones. It would have been better, imo, if they had set a minimum guild number and then included that number in their guild content percentages.
I mean, it just stands to reason that something that is meant to be challenging for 500 people all working in tandem for say, 9 months, to achieve is going to be an unreasonable hardship for 10 people or 50 people.
I know all the white knights just respond to this with “50/20/10 people don’t deserve to be a guild” or “work longer, stupid” but it’s still a really disparate goal for both group sizes.
Having it be a disparate amount of work for equal advancement is fine, as long as smaller guilds (within the framework that they designeed the system for, 5 players or more) are seeing meaningful advancement at a reasonable pace.
I run a small guild. We’ve been averaging an upgrade to one thing or another every day or two, and looking at the projections for cost it’s going to slow to about one a week before we hit the same time gate wall as every other guild, and the rate of resources stops mattering as the time for aetherium mining becomes the primary bottleneck.
We only really have three people far enough in to their “personal endgame” to contribute resources regularly, and with just those tree peope I’ve found the rate of advancement feels perfectly reasonable.
It really is a matter of getting your guild to actually pitch in, and that was the entire point of the redesign. To make guilds require and reward active effort rather than passive reward.
I agree that it’s inconsistant in the new system to continue to allow people to found guilds alone as the new systems don’t really support that size.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Everything a small guild needs is available for less than 200g. An expedition costs 100g and you can buy the merchant and repair station for less than 100g with no other materials needed besides favor. If you want more than that, you need to play the game just like everyone else.
Just because you “want it now” doesn’t mean you’re entitled to it. You have to work for it like everyone else.
We did, and managed to get a full unlock on our guild eventually. And then it got taken away from us.
That’s the part you seem to be missing. It is a massive grind just to get to the point where our guild was two months ago.
Yes, i think i am entitled to the things i have already worked for.
You know, you are complaining like you are the only one whose full upgrade guild got taken away.
There are more than 4,000 guilds (according to anet statistics that claimed guild halls) and how many % of those guilds complained?
eermm what’s your point and what are you trying to represent.
4000 guilds is nothing in comparison to how many guilds are in the game.. on any given hour you can count a 100’s of different guilds trying to recruit in map chat.
Maybe now ask yourself how many of those 4000 guilds have 10 or less members.. I don’t mean solo guild banks.. actual guilds with small friends/family members.Bottom line is you have no clue what your on about and what the stats really show.
I will stick my neck out and say the vast majority of those 4000 guilds are much larger in size and therefore have a much easier time in claiming, unlocking and upgrading.
No one said it has to be easy win for small guilds.. the same level of difficulty can exist based on appropriate scaling of requirements and difficulty without having to resort to ripping players off with an expansion promising new features then effectively taking away what they had already achieved and locking it behind further gold sinks and grindfests and forcing guilds to start over… desperate attempts at player retention and gem sales with kind of mullarkey will likely only force players to grow discontent and leave, something my guild discussed only last night.I’m in a 140 person guild… so not large by any means. Any given night we have 20-40 regularly active players. We claimed Guilded Hollow our first attempt a day after launch. We were one of the first few in the world to get our pvp vendor up. We were the first on our server to get our arena up…
We are a tight knit organized guild who use TS regularly to coordinate and socialize. All of us put the guild before ourselves. We have a set schedule of guild events everyone enjoys so we get things done as a community.
It’s not about how big your guild is. It’s about the type of people you recruit and the in guild atmosphere you foster…
of course its about your guild size.. if your in a small guild of <10 players you have to work way harder or rely on others to help. Just to increase guild levels and complete missions is an ask in itself… if the requirements were better scaled to accommodate but keep the same level of difficulty as a guild with 20, 50, 500 members then it should have been done.
To now say small guilds under a certain size should no longer function is a smack in the face from ANET.
But as I have said before the only real way to combat this rip of philosophy is to stop putting coin their way and/or leave.Not trying to be offensive here I swear… but a ten man isn’t a guild. It’s a raid party. A wvw havoc squad. A group of friends with a tag… I honestly feel 10-20 person guilds would be the minority in this game. They can’t cater to the minority. My advice? Expand your circle of trust. There are very good people out there looking for a guild.
According to Colin, arenanet considers 5+ people a guild actually, and that’s the number they designed the guild systems around.
Considering you can easily claim a hall with 3 people, and only a very small number of guild missions require more than that (and a large number of them are soloable) I’d say they did a pretty good job hitting the accessibility goal of their stated minimum number.
It would be more clear if they changed founding a guild to require 5 people so users could stop being confused about the intent of the guild systems.
Granted I haven’t played much of Maguma on my thief yet but the only mob i notice that has a large issue with this is the wyvrens, when they start spitting fire at you. It gets worse with lag since you can’t always tell your in the fire.
Any balance suggestion that use lag as reasons for a change are not valid suggestions.
The game is designed to be played within ideal latency conditions, lag isn’t a game design issue, it’s an issue with the user’s connection or the game’s servers, both of which are completely separate things from ability or encounter balance unless they cause lag at a server level.
better heals or protection on shadow refuge doesn’t seem too broken, but honestly SR doesn’t need help. It’s fine the way it is. Blindness would be stupidly overpowered. The entire counter to SR is knocking the thief out of it by attacking almost at random. Adding blindness would completely prevent melee fighters from countering.
Knockdowns on headshot would be overpowered to the point they’d practically have to double the init cost just to balance it. I’d rather have the current lower cost version so I can have ready interrupts if I manage my init well.
If you’re specced in to trickery daze on steal is solid for any build. When fighting mordrem you have a good chance to also get a branch as the stolen item, which you can follow up the steal with.
Also, the new daredevil elite is better than BV at smashing break bars, even if you don’t have any traits invested in physicals given the daze>launch in its first two attacks, which is two hard CCs with no cast time compared to BV’s one CC with a cast time if you haven’t traited for venoms.
Other way. You cast once, BV is set. You cast twice (in melee range) and you get TD. Also (some kind of bug) but BV takes more of a breakbar per hit than TD. Just a thought.
Not quite. For BV to work you need to cast BV, and then execute an attack (or two attacks when traited). In the instance of TD, you’re executing two attack animations with no cast.
I’ll have to experiment with the break bar hit of one BV versus two hits of TD. I generally don’t take BV specifically because of the cast animation.
This is actually a common occurance with even the normal dodge if you’re hitting a lag spike.
Unlike most skills, which don’t fire their effects on your client until they’ve been reported to the server and then sent back to you, dodging, like movement, is exectued immediately on the client, and you’ll only notice inconsistancies if your ping is high enough that what you send the server is significantly different than what you performed on the client.
In cases where you’re getting interrupted mid-dodge, what’s happenning is that you dodge on the client, but the ability that is hitting you is actually recieved before the server recieves your dodge command. So, when you get those packets back from the server to sync, you end up interrupted because you were actually cc’s before you dodged according to what’s happening “for real” on the server.
If you have “x happens on dodge” traits that trigger at the beginning of a dodge (like caltrops, or swiftness from dash/acrobatics) you’ll notice when you’re experiencing this kind of latency pretty easily. Those traits should trigger the moment you dodge, but if your latency is bad you’ll dodge and they’ll trigger a little after.
If you’re specced in to trickery daze on steal is solid for any build. When fighting mordrem you have a good chance to also get a branch as the stolen item, which you can follow up the steal with.
Also, the new daredevil elite is better than BV at smashing break bars, even if you don’t have any traits invested in physicals given the daze>launch in its first two attacks, which is two hard CCs with no cast time compared to BV’s one CC with a cast time if you haven’t traited for venoms.
Guild halls are a HoT feature, not part of a free update. The maps are located in HoT zones, and HoT is required to claim them. Make sure to explain this to your members that don’t own HoT yet before they contribute to the treasury.
It might also be a good idea to explain to those members that further content patches, with the exception of festivals, are also HoT content.
At the end, your leftover unused influence will be less than 100.
So, there’s no way to use up the last less than 100? Ugh! That is so messy! There should be a way to zero it so it’s nice and clean.
Some people.
Agreed. That last 42 influence is silly. They should just remove it :P
. Run and they will bring you down!
From range 1200!
Yeah, they’re a little bugged, actually. Fortunately, I have a hammer, and they splat pretty easily.
Rolling devils on the other hand…
You have a hammer
Rolling devils are extremely vulnerable to CC. One cc completely disables them for like five seconds. Don’t bother building up a full adrenaline bar. Grab your hammer, and spam burst, 4, and 5, every time its avaliable. You should be laughing at groups of these guys.
Sure, why not.
Influence can only be converted to favor in amounts of 10k
However, once you build a mine in your guild hall, you’ll be able to convert influence to mining boosts in amounts of 1000 and 100.
At the end, your leftover unused influence will be less than 100.
Yes, but the intent is that it should cost zero gold. Which is why the gold you spend, the class you play, and the gear you wear don’t factor in to them.
lol everyones base is equal,.. please dont make me laugh.. have you even played an adventure yet to realize, that you get slowed down in them to move even slower than normal.
You move in adventures like a felt snail with just only like 85% movement speed or so, at least feelable slower than normally without even a trait, rune or swiftness ect,. to increase your movement speed…Anet has designed the adventures, that you can get it easier by progressing your masteries.
Do you consider this also cheating? Ridiculous!! People which have learned the Speed Mushroom Mastery can move 40% faster within adventures where anet has placed them to give further progressed playes anadvantage there over players that havent learned this mastery yet to the point even, that this mastery is in certain advantures absolutely required to even have a chance at al to get those adventures done with Gold and without them you hardly make it even to silver in some cases!!My equipment belongs to my Player progression and not only Masteries, so when I brign to an adventuires, that requires to be swift and agile equipment, that makes me swift an agile, then I think this is just being SMART and not cheating ROLMAO /facepalm
The difference is that your masteries taking effect are equalized advantages avaliable to all classes at no additional cost. Speed boosting traits, passives, gear, etc. may vary. This is why masteries are used in adventures, but character stats are not. They don’t want you to have to go buy a whole new set of gear just to do an adventure, but they assume (rightly) that leveling masteries is something you’re doing anyway, regardless of whether or not you’re doing a specific adventure.
Problem is with with Adventures, that they are sometimes heavily mastery biased.
Certain Adventures can you do surely with gold, without havign to invest first alot of tiem to build up the right masteries to even have at all a CHANCE at Gold, other Adventures can you do without needing to have any masteries at all..
This isn’t a problem. Like many things, this is intended to make the mastry system rewarding to progress. You can get more places, do better in adventures, etc. This is why, just like hero points, mastry points, and many other things, there are some you can utilize fully or more easily with the right masteries, and some you can not.
It’s the samce principal as when you were leveling. You had a rough time with a +3 mob. Then you leveld. It was easier and you said “yeh, my character is more awesome now”
Remember that masteries are intended as progression akin to leveling. They used the mastry system to make ongoing “leveling” a more customizable experience, and to not create an ever-rising gear treadmill.
What you’re calling a problem is an intended part of the design of masteries.
Gem price inflation/deflation is entirely player driven. Gems are created by us, I think it is, when we purchase gems with money, and are destroyed/taken out of circulation when we convert ingame gold to gems.
Price in ingame gold for 100 gems depends on the ratio between creation/destruction of gems – think John Smith orignally mentioned something like this being the mechanic.
Theres a finite amount of gems ingame at any one time and their price depends on supply.
Hope I got it right enough to make sense.
Not quite right.
Gems to gold conversion rates aren’t based on the total amount of gems people have purchased. They’re based on the total amount people have sold, and thus added to the currency market.
Basically, when the game launched, the marketplace was seeded with an initial stock of gems and gold. I can’t remember what that rate was, but that was the only time the rate was ever defined by anet. When the first person bought gems with gold, it removed gems from the gem pile, and added gold to the gold pile, increasing the gold value of gems. When the first person bought gold with gems, they added more gems to that pile, lowering the gold value of gems.
At any given time the gold to gems rate is influenced only by how many people are converting gold to gems or back, as they’re not technically converting them, but rather buying them at a variable market rate determined by supply and demand and not by any other outside factor.
When you see the gem price spike, it’s because there are more people buying gems with gold than buying gold with gems. When you see the gem price drop, it’s because more people are buying gold with gems than buying gems with gold.
Except, he has a point. If WVW players want the “Elite” specs to play in WVW in any reasonable time they have to do HOT, pve content, that they probably dont enjoy.
Quite honestly im all for making WVW like PVP where all skills and specs are unlocked for the area, which i know the OP didnt say that, but still.
TBH they should have done this long ago, as well as doing away with the “server” system in favor of a “season team” system so the matchmaking worked better and the overall mode was better matched/more competitive.
I honestly don’t see what they’d lose by moving WvW to the pvp build system and having it pay out the same rewards it already does in terms of loot/ranks. They’d just be removing what seems to be an unnecessary barrier from a mode that they already went to a lot of trouble to create a mode-specific form of progression for in the form of wvw ranks.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
Shouldn’t every guild still have everything they had before without redoing it? Sounds like super bad design.
You might think that a new guild system wouldn’t delete previous capabilities; but, ArenaNet apparently doesn’t see it that way. Many players agree with them.
Curious that.
Unless I’m missing something, they only deleted capabilities that were incompatible with the new design. e.g. timed buffs and other such things that encouraged logins and tags rather than group play.
If you had a consumable unlocked, yo still have it unlocked. You can still do missions and buy it for favor until you have a scribe that can craft it, but it’s more expensive now because guild consumables are simply more expensive in general.
They moved the guild system from a passive part of play to an active and goal oriented one. What they removed needed to be removed. Awarding people a basically infinite supply of buffs just because they have a lot of people logging in while simultaneously making it virtually impossible for others to even acquire said buffs on a reasonable time frame without dumping in a disproportionate amount of gold was a bad system.
The new system is objective based. Yes, if you have more money, or more players, you’ll complete those objectives faster. However, it’s a temporary rather than a permanent handicap. The old system was one of permanent handicaps, where small guilds worked and spent, and large guilds printed consumables and slept through guild missions.
While your growing pains may be a bit jarring, in the long run this system is actively more beneficial for guild equality, member retention, and overall health of guilds as organizations.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but in my experience this system has encouraged the guild to really get together and accomplish things as a guild, and see satisfying results for those actions. And, I mean, I run a guild that at most has 5 or 6 actives on a normal night.
I’d wager “deserted bordelands” syndrome stems mostly from people wanting to try out the pve and the need to get some guild upgrades from said content to level their scribes and fill out those war room upgrades.
Well, that’s optimistic. Maybe long term you’ll be right. But the WvW people aren’t saying they’re waiting for upgrades in order to play these maps. They’re saying they don’t like the maps at all and therefore are not playing them. If this is true for the majority of them, then it isn’t gonna get better with time.
Sure, and I can’t speak for them. Personally I’m of the opinion the current WvW crowd doesn’t like the maps becuase they’re used to the problematic super-blob model of WvW Anet specifically set out to break with these maps.
It’s similar to how the design of all the new PvE maps were built specifically with mechanisms to break up giant player zergs that trivialized content or de-emphasized individual player effort or skill.
It’s a valid question. I found the old borderlands poorly designed and generally dull PvDoor run-in-circles affairs and the mechanics and geography of the new borderlands actually fun and tactical.
I am obviously not representitive of the core WvW community
The question is, is anet more interested in persuing their stated goal of fixing wvw and attracting people like me, or more interested in catering to the people who just want more of the same?
It goes back to something like Skyhammer. I like skyhammer. I think it’s an interesting and unique map with an interesting gameplay element. Anet thought so too. That’s why they made it. However, their PvP community really hated skyhammer. So now, no skyhammer in rotation.
It still remains to be seen if the quiet in WvW is due to genuine disinterest, or just plain pve tourism. I think only anet has the tools to really gauge that by tracking player activity metrics, as you and I both know that forums are an unreliable source of data in regards to what the majority of a player population is doing/playing.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
It sounds to me like there’s a thing you want, and you know how to get it, and you know how to get with all the other people going after the exact same thing.
And those things put together kind of have a way of ensuring that people are around trying to get t4 maps coordinated.
It’s almost like someone planned for it all to work this way!
Also, an entirely new PvP mode and WvW map with a lot of new mechanisms there.
Not sure why you’d use the WvW desert borderlands in your argument. Yeah, it’s “new” content, but no one is using it, so those of us that want to really can’t. We’re having trouble adding this to the line-up and it’s through no fault of our own. A better name for them is “deserted borderlands.”
Also, more people would use the guild content if it was more accessible to smaller guilds. Yeah, we can argue ad nauseum about how everyone should be in a 500-member guild or screw you, but the point is, not all the content from HoT is something everyone can necessarily do equally, which makes what is there seem even smaller.
Desert borderlands being empty isn’t a lack of content from a design end. It’s a lack of content from a completely understandable player interest end. I don’t work for anet so I obviously don’t have the exact metrics, but I’d wager “deserted bordelands” syndrome stems mostly from people wanting to try out the pve and the need to get some guild upgrades from said content to level their scribes and fill out those war room upgrades.
The design of it all was built for longevity though, around an economic model that assumes functioning rarity of items beyond the current period of economic adjustment. Complaining desert borderlands are empty is kinda like complaining that there aren’t any SW chest farm maps. It’s a temporary inconvenience that’s a result of an overall positive long term design.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
LS3 is likely to begin with traherne’s funeral, and be quickly disrupted by disturbing news of something sinister being afoot.
They’re supposed to be hard and require some luck and practice though, the entire design mimics arcade game setups with high scores. They’re not meant to be things you breeze through on your first few attempts, but rather content with some legs that might require a session or two of play devoted to an adventure to get that gold.
I honestly and truly think the people dissatisfied with the amount of content in HoT haven’t actually played HoT much, or aren’t in a guild.
It’s up to you whether you think it’s fair or not, but an absurd amount of work was put in to the guild hall systems, and they went to the trouble of releasing with two entire guild halls.
Not only that, and absurd amount of time was put in to the HoT event chains. Nealy every single chain has one or more unique mechanics, and all of those chains are easily 10-30 minutes long, fully voiced, with coherant internal storylines.
Also, an entirely new PvP mode and WvW map with a lot of new mechanisms there.
The people upset about the amount of content in HoT are explicitly upset because they don’t actually care about at least a third of thecontent released, or are willfully ignorant of the fact that HoT is by-design the purchase price of a “season pass” for all LS, and raid content between now and the next expansion (for no monthly fee)
It’s immaterial to complain about it in comparison to something like nightfall. It is far more expensive and work intensive to design, program, and develop something of the visual and technical caliber of HoT compared to Nightfall. I do 3d work for a living. The difference in time required to pop out a low poly model versus a high poly model with god looking normal and specular maps, custom shaers, etc. is extreme. The visual fidelity in GW2 is quite frankly insane compared to its peers in the MMO space, and honestly requires a lot of effort, not to mention the massive amount of voice work (even for non-story elements and normal events there is player character voicework) and specialized programming challenges for the numerous adventures.
They’re fine the way they are. They aren’t difficult. They require coordination and give substantial reward for the effort.
That is the definition of good game design, and a great example of the type of cooperative PvE design Anet has always chased in their open world.
A game in which everything succeeded all the time with no coordination or effort led to a very stale game, and a lot of CDI feedback that people wanted exactly what we got
We got content that isn’t faceroll, even if you bring the world’s largest zerg, but is very easy to complete if the map decides to work as a team and complete it.
We got PvE that doesn’t suck
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
There are plenty of incentives for them to donate. Literally every single guild service is acquired by donating resources to finish upgrades.
If you have to beg guild members to work toward the benefit of the group… why do you tolerate such antisocial and selfish guild members in the first place? Why isn’t your hall a group effort that everyone is excited about?
This isn’t a problem with the system. It’s a problem with your guild. The system creates group content and economic objectives. If your guild members don’t care about the welfare of the groups, that isn’t a problem with the system. That’s a problem with your guild.
The old system was horrible. It did nothing to reward or incentivize group efforts. It handed out advancement just for logging in. It made guilds nothing more than a tag that gave you stuff with no associated groupwide cost or effort. The new system’s dynamics are simple: you get out of your guild what you’re willing to put in.
The old system was passive and boring. The new system is active and creates guild objectives. It’s sad some guilds are figuring out they don’t care as much about their group as they thought they did.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I’d actually love for this thing to have unlocks for perhaps the zone edge waypoints in each zone, even if those unlocks are fairly expensive.
However, the point of it isn’t for general travel, it’s meant to be used specifically to deploy to guild missions from your guild hall. It does that pretty well for the most part. You’re only really meant to use to to do guild missions with. If it’s not opening portals to mission areas, are you sure they weren’t missions where finding something is part of the mission goal, like a trek or bounty? Teleporting you directly to a bounty or trek spot would kind of nullify the points of the mission.
This might seem shicking, but the best gold these days is actually playing the game by participating in map metas, doing events, or hitting gathering nodes.
Honestly, it was stupid to have loot drop as bags in wvw in the first place, if the bags were just going to warp to your feet. What’s the point of having a world-lootable device if there’s no reason to walk over to a corpse and loot it? The whole idea of teleporting loot bags was always really dumb.
Because your bags can be full.
But changing it to have an item “bag” that can stack by 250 could solve it.
Overflow inventory is a thing. Heck, map rewards, and before that screen chest rewards deposited stuff to the inventory.
There wasn’t really a tech reason to make it bags. For that matter, there wasn’t much of a reason to have bag/corpse looting in PvE either considering looting is instantaneous in this game, but it makes slightly more sense in pve for the immersion factor I guess. I never really understood the bags in WvW. They just seemed unneccessary, so obviously I’m in favor of autolooting.
What’s funny is if you invested all the time you’ve spent creating and replying to threads whining about hero points, you’d be done already.
Wasn’t one thread enough?
Honestly, the Improvised set would have made more sense as drops in Verdant Brink (you know, Pact survivors creating makeshift weapons to defend themselves and all that). It’s a weird choice for a black lion set though.
Oh you. New weapon skins as in game drops without a corresponding content patch? Clearly you’ve forgotten which game you’re playing.
This is not the arenanet of yore that simply adds weapon skins to the game silly. This is the arenanet that releases a fifty dollar expansion alongside a nearly-as-expensive day one gem store package, and creates an entirely new equipment slot that can only equip gem store purchases.
Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy HoT. But recognize the gemstore train isn’t pulling over any time soon.
As for the skins? Brilliant. I was getting sick of slightly different colored spikes and particle effects. Now I can get a more awesome staff to match the whiskey bottle and mug mace/focus on my heal guardian.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Honestly, it was stupid to have loot drop as bags in wvw in the first place, if the bags were just going to warp to your feet. What’s the point of having a world-lootable device if there’s no reason to walk over to a corpse and loot it? The whole idea of teleporting loot bags was always really dumb.
Actually this system for WVW makes perfect sense. It gives incentive to help defend a tower, keep or Stonemist. If you had to walk over to the body to get your loot it means all your defences and using defence siege is just going to waste. If you try and wait for the whole enemy zerg to be dead before trying to go and loot the bodies they would of course disappear by then. Could you imagine the crying on the forums if this system was not in place for WvW?
You’re missing the point. If it’s going to be a pain to have the bags drop on the bodies, then why have bags drop at all? It was silly to put the loot in bags in the first place rather than have it pop in your inventory so you can concentrate on the task at hand.
Basically, if the bags teleport, then why have bags in the first place? The bags are unneccessary if they just materialize at your feed and only serve to make you hit f for no discernable reason. Get it?
Honestly, it was stupid to have loot drop as bags in wvw in the first place, if the bags were just going to warp to your feet. What’s the point of having a world-lootable device if there’s no reason to walk over to a corpse and loot it? The whole idea of teleporting loot bags was always really dumb.
Base the costs on the capacity of the guild. Start guilds at 10 people with upgrades for 50, 100, 250 and 500. If you upgrade your capacity, you lose access to whatever, but are discounted what you’ve already paid. Basing the costs on zerg guilds is silly. It’s the zerg guilds that should be heavily punished.
Why do such guilds need to be “punished”?
Their method of play is just as valid as anyone else’s. Some people like being in massive herds.
More important question:
Why do you care which it is?
Are you really under the assumption you can expose some sort of insider trading scandal that will have any measurable effect?
Let’s say the worst was true, and that you had uncovered some sort of insider trade. Nobody’s getting fired over it. No further market corrections are being made. You’re not getting a shiny medal. At worst someone at arenanet gets told “hey man, don’t do that” because it’s a video game and the comparative values aren’t enough to destabalize the economy.
One person getting rich in an MMO doesn’t matter. When that person getting rich seriously screws up the value of goods for others, that’s when it becomes a problem.
Skill splits are unnecessary because you have absolute control over PvE encounters.
Splitting the function of skills makes it far more difficult for players to transition between modes, and it makes their characters and build feel very inconsistant.
Balancing around PvP makes sense, because you can balance encounters and mobs around player skills without screwing up your competitive game, or needing to track what amounts to twice as many skills.
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