in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
My thought on it is this, I thought we were finally getting somewhere with moving toward account based unlocks. Characters should be, for the most part, replaceable. Our accounts should be the focus of progression and the character just a visual representation of us. That’s why I like Masteries but, Specializations shouldn’t be so long to obtain. Especially when they’ll likely add more in the future. Say I have a Reaper and wanted to replace the character, how long would it take to roll a fresh character and actually play as a Reaper again? That repetition and duration is what I’m worried about in the future.
I completely disagree.
Characters should always be the focus of progression. Interchangable characters create a balance environment where your developer ends up not really caring when things are broken. “So what if class X can’t do content Y? They can just roll class Z and transfer the rewards”
Not only that, it completely kills any sense of accomplishment or fondness for individual characters. It’s an RPG. Characters are things that are supposed to evolve over time based upon the trials they face and the challenges they overcome.
Certain account based systems that allow you to give alts an advantage are cool. You obviously built this support system. Completely replacing character advancement is not cool at all. At that point you may as well remove characters as a system entirely, and just have a single avatar you can respec at will.
There is literally not point to alts when you remove character based advancement systems, and no reward for advancing those alts.
As someone with over 50 characters, I disagree with you. The system as it’s described does not stimulate growth, it stifles it. It makes it so punishing to want to change and to grow a new character that people won’t change and won’t explore new characters. How many are holding on to old characters just because of irreplaceable crafting recipes? If you need a trait to RP or feel accomplished, than you need to work on your RP. Oh and for balance, this game has two modes of PvP. Every profession and race will always require balance. I, the player, should always be the focus of all design and that includes progression. I, we, are our accounts first and foremost. Characters are a subset of our accounts.
You have over 50 characters specifically because you don’t care about characters as a concept.
Characters are, thematically, individuals. They have individual stories, classes, races, etc. from both a mechanical and a storytelling standpoint. This is a staple theme of RPGs in general. In an RPG, you are your character first and foremost. Whether you actually roleplay as that character in chat or whatever is irrelevant. The core assumption of the game is that the world reacts to you as that character, not as the person controlling it. NPCs do not acknowledge the existance of demigods pulling the strings of groups of adventurers, waypoints do not remember that you “the player” have visited them once before, etc. You character defines the limitations, story, interactions with the world, etc.
Characters in RPGs are designed and intended to be individual entities with individual lists of victories, defeats, and accomplishments as they are generally assumed by the mechanics of the game to be residents of the world in which they live rather than puppets being driven around by an unseen force.
Certain games do treat the player has the central point. Largely multiplayer competitive and less narrative focused games.
This is also why PvP in GW2 is decaupled from character advancement systems, because characters as individual entities are not important in a game mode where the player rather than the character is at the forefront. PvP doesn’t bother to treat your character like a character because it isn’t a game mode about characters.
PvE is absolutely a game mode about characters rather than the person playing them. This isn’t a “roleplaying” standpoint, but a basic fundamental fact of PvE world, encounter, and reward design.
Build it as a damage/crit set, same as d/p or d/d
You’ll use mostly the same gear and runes, take either bound or dash for the dodge.
You can skip shadow arts and in stead take acrobatics or another damage trait line as staff and the DD line have enough built in survival tools that you can run them as stealthless builds.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Staff doesn’t really have any damaging conditions, so it’s not a good choice for a condi build.
At best I could see using it as a pve tank with condition duration to extend the weakness and blinds. Condition damage, however, is not something staff should be used for.
I never said I bought influence; I said I earned it ie. PvP guild does PvP —> influence.
Someone claimed we still had plenty of time to turn 350k into something useful. I don’t know how 1d11hr falls under plenty of time to spend 350k.
Convert it to favor? These aren’t guild hall guilds and the devs even joked about to ridiculously poor the conversion rate will be. That seems like hardly an answer.
My complaint is a lack of an adequate way to spend my influence.
Que banners.
Speed up que on banners until they are complete.
Que more banners.
Is it a less efficient way than waiting out the ques? Yes.
Is it a more efficient way to spend the influence than converting it to favor? Maybe?
I’ve nearly run down all our influence at this point, but if I were you I’d just que up banners and junk (I made stacks of bank yaks to run through the merits) and just do the favor conversion system after release.
I mean, if you have 350k in the bank, you obviously weren’t using it for anything important anyway, so who cares if you waste it on overexpensive banners or badd ration favor conversion right?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
My thought on it is this, I thought we were finally getting somewhere with moving toward account based unlocks. Characters should be, for the most part, replaceable. Our accounts should be the focus of progression and the character just a visual representation of us. That’s why I like Masteries but, Specializations shouldn’t be so long to obtain. Especially when they’ll likely add more in the future.[…]
I completely disagree.
Characters should always be the focus of progression.
I completely disagree. The player should always be the focus of progression, balanced against the progression of the player character…
Could you explain? I’m not sure I understand this statement exactly.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I have officially lost interest in this thread. Reading a laundry list of useless ire is accomplishing nothing. Off to other threads. GLHF!!!
hold on a mo – I claim my gold…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-two-reward-tracks-and-elite-specializations/
“As long as you’ve purchased Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, you’ll automatically unlock access to all elite specializations in PvP.”
in PvP
And that is totally what is happenning.
Remember that Anet has never referred to WvW as “PvP” and always referred to it as “WvW”
I don’t recall Morfedel limiting his challenge to a specific game mode…
Oh crap semantic loopholes. I’m glad I didn’t put up any money!
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
Your question doesn’t make any sense. You need the hero points to use the knew specialization, NOT to do any content within the new zones.
A gear treadmill is designed specifically to be able to complete content, only.
Because elite specs are optional you do not need to unlock the current elite spec to gain the ability to unlock the next one, or the one after that, and so on.
And further, the elite specs themselves are not purely vertical progression. They are optional horizontal progression. They add options at the expense of taking core weapons trait lines, and utilities. They’re not simply raw buffs that pile on top of the three core specs you’d already have on your character.
You won’t have four specs in the next release, and five after that, creating a system of perpetual upward advancement where you have to do A to be powerful enough to access B.
In stead, you have to do core to unlock core, and from there you choose to persue an elite spec, or stick with a core build. Going forward you choose which elite spec you want to persue, and as the system expands you have an ever broadening range of options for how to actually unlock those specs, since unlike masteries, hero points are not regional, but global systems.
Congratulations, you’ve now returned full circle to the point about how elite specs are optional, not a part of the actual content, and therefore do not add value by being gated because it is irrespective of the content in question.
I rest my case.
Optional does not mean they are not part of the content, or not an advancement system.
it means they are exactly what they were designed to be.
A horizontal progression system
It’d be nice to have class quests but that’s a LOT of work for something only a fraction of the playerbase gets to experience.
Same reason they stopped doing them in WoW even though they were the best quests in the game.
It’s not out of the question.
Anet has done a lot of work in HoT to make the story more reactive to player race and class, (it’s not just the sylvari dragon thing) and they clearly want to diverge that idea of “the story is personal and your character choices are important” wherever they can.
They’re actually doing more of that kind of thing in HoT than they did in the last half of the core LS.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I have officially lost interest in this thread. Reading a laundry list of useless ire is accomplishing nothing. Off to other threads. GLHF!!!
hold on a mo – I claim my gold…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-two-reward-tracks-and-elite-specializations/
“As long as you’ve purchased Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, you’ll automatically unlock access to all elite specializations in PvP.”
in PvP
And that is totally what is happenning.
Remember that Anet has never referred to WvW as “PvP” and always referred to it as “WvW”
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
My thought on it is this, I thought we were finally getting somewhere with moving toward account based unlocks. Characters should be, for the most part, replaceable. Our accounts should be the focus of progression and the character just a visual representation of us. That’s why I like Masteries but, Specializations shouldn’t be so long to obtain. Especially when they’ll likely add more in the future. Say I have a Reaper and wanted to replace the character, how long would it take to roll a fresh character and actually play as a Reaper again? That repetition and duration is what I’m worried about in the future.
I completely disagree.
Characters should always be the focus of progression. Interchangable characters create a balance environment where your developer ends up not really caring when things are broken. “So what if class X can’t do content Y? They can just roll class Z and transfer the rewards”
Not only that, it completely kills any sense of accomplishment or fondness for individual characters. It’s an RPG. Characters are things that are supposed to evolve over time based upon the trials they face and the challenges they overcome.
Certain account based systems that allow you to give alts an advantage are cool. You obviously built this support system. Completely replacing character advancement is not cool at all. At that point you may as well remove characters as a system entirely, and just have a single avatar you can respec at will.
There is literally not point to alts when you remove character based advancement systems, and no reward for advancing those alts.
burning just needs to be made interesting in stead of just being “flashier bleed with higher damage”
Give it a special effect like all other non-bleed conditions so it has actual tactical uses beyond just dealing more damage.
I think it would be cool if burning returned to duration stacking (possibly with a bit of a damage bump) and naturally spread its remaining duration to all nearby non-burning targets each tick, like disease in GW1. Then it would have a unique function like all the other conditions.
This would put it in the same niche as disease. It’s a relatively low DPS condition, but it’s very difficult to completely remove due to the way it spreads. Disease was pretty darn effective at breaking stacks, keeping up AoE pressure, or simply keeping up as a cover for other conditions you didn’t want to be removed quite so fast, and builds designed around exploiting burning on your target could have a lot of that burning damage moved over to effects that benefit from burning in stead.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
We had another thread about this, and in that thread I suggested that luck past 300% be put in to a repeatable achievement track like agent of entropy.
This keeps it from influencing the economy, doesn’t create a situation in which uncapped MF players have a reason to not eat luck for MF, and funnels ongoing luck in to one of the only systems in the game designed around endless uncapped advancement.
I think break bars on characters have the same basic problem as duration stacking stability.
Stability specifically counters “lockdown” style hard CC, which soft CC is generally countered by cleanses. Hard CC is also countered by stunbreaks, and much of skill balance is done around this core separation between “hard” and “soft” cc.
Because soft CC is often spammable for various reasons (in creasing sustain on some classes, pressure on others) and hard cc is not (because spammable hard CC is unfun to play against) they moved to the stacking stability we have now to allow coordinated hard CC to punch through stability so boon stripping is less of a “make or break” mechanic for team fights in pvp or future instances.
This allows soft CC to maintain a separate balance.
On mobs the break bars are a good solution, as in general the assumption in PvE is that any time you want to interrupt a mob, it is critical to the fight design that you do so. PvE is asymmetrical. In PvP, or even giving players a break bar versus mobs creates a wildly different balance paradigm that takes a lot of workarounds to make sure it remains balanced.
Thus, I think the break bars being relegated to mobs seems to be the best solution, since mobs don’t need to be balanced to be “fair” as much as “fun to fight”
You have to level to 80 to get in to the jungle anyway.
By which point you will have no use for hero points except to progress elite specs.
There’s nothing preventing you from not playing the content you specifically powerlevelled to gain access to.
Core hero points, since the latest change to them, were not useful for anything but world completion anyway. Now they give you a little head start on your elite specs if you pick them up while leveling.
They weren’t really supposed to replace the need to do challenges in the new maps, and were never really designed for that purpose.
You’re asking them to subvert the entire model they built centered around hero points being a limited commodity.
The whole idea is that specific characters need to demonstrate the ability to complete challenges, not that you can go do challenges on whichever alt makes them easiest.
They specifically broke up skill points in to hero points and shards for this reason. To prevent you from just unlocking stuff due to having some massive stockpile of points, and thus allowing you to skip content intended to be tied to character advancement.
You’re basically asking to have waypoints, karma vendors, and character levels be account wide unlocks. It’s a very similar system now. Your alts can make the process easier by advancing masteries, just as your alts can make leveling easier (by doing dailies for xp scrolls, or leveling crafting to provide sweet leveling gear) but progress on alts isn’t now now was it ever intended to completely replace progress on a given character.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I’m on the fence with this one but Anet does itself no favors with it’s BWE’s and using this as a selling point for pre-purchase. To me this is the catalyst of much of this complaint and I’m still of the opinion beta testing should be done by beta testers, not used as a sales pitch to customers.
I’ve played a fair few games where at the starting level your a fully kitted out uber-beast of death slaying everything in sight in some huge awe-inspiring battle with all skills unlocked and all weapons blazing full bore. Wahoo this game is friggin amazing!!!
end flashback/dream sequence
You wake up at level one naked holding a wet noodle realizing it will be a LONG time before you feel that way again.
From what I can garner this is exactly what has happened here with giving players everything for nothing to play with, then taking it away. Sure might work ok in an offline RPG but in this genre it just seems to kitten a lot of people off.
It is the same reason (although partly in reverse) of why I skipped most of the BWE content. I wanted to be surprised by the new stuff and I knew I would be getting a good chunk of it after paying $100 for the kittening thing. Not only would I be seeing all the content, but it would be ready for prime time. Now I wish I had done as much of the beta events as I could because I will not see the things I had a taste of for a VERY long time. Especially on all my characters. Oh well, at least I get to play with the revenant specs.
Like someone else said earlier, there is not a match between what new specs I was looking forward to the most with what existing specs I like. In fact, the new spec I like the most is on a spec I loathe and hoped it would reinvigorate the profession. What is the point of my first HOT experience being with a profession I can not stand? I would think they would want people to have as good an impression of the jungle as possible.
Exactly. For me, the new Reaper spec looks fun for my languishing necro. I was looking forward to playing her again with the Reaper’s skills and traits.
But because I wasn’t happy with her existing specs, I never did world completion on her, and she has few hero points. So I’m forced to play her thru HoT with a spec I don’t like to get what I was looking forward to. Where’s the fun in that?
Now, on my mesmer, I like her current spec, like Chronomancer, and have 133 hero points. She might be fun in HoT as I earn hero points.
Funny thing about my Ranger main — she is my only character with World completion, and I have no interest in Druid. I’ll spend the points because they’re there, maybe get a skin.
My other characters are so far behind, I probably won’t play them. My poor engineer has almost no hero points, and like my necro, I was hoping to jump right into the Elite spec.
So I think I’ll be playing my mesmer, if I play at all. At this point, I’m actively looking for a new game.
That’s unfortunate, but the whole point of the system is to add depth and options to characters people, presumably, already like rather than replace characters they hate.
The addition of the revnant is the intended “replacement character”
Like, I see what you’re getting at, but it’s a bit like complaining that characters suck at level 1 and are more fun to play at 80.
If you don’t like the game, that’s a valid opinion, but the whole idea was to add progression similar to new secondary classes and skill trainers in GW1. Obviously if you don’t like necro, and like the reaper, it may be a pain, but it’s highly unlikely you’d be a fan of anything post-reaper as you don’t actually like the class as a class, right?
No, I love the pre-HoT necromancer concept and design. I don’t like how weak it is in so many ways. Reaper fixes that problem. I like the class as it’s being updated.
Consider this… I love my Ranger main, and have 0 interest in the druid. So the 214 hero points I have sitting on her is a waste.
Now, If ANET gave me a way to transfer hero points between characters, I’d be happie r. I did the work, just on the wrong character (years ago).
Not really a waste, think of it as a bank. Knowing you don’t want druid means you have those points in the bank for the next e-spec, right? Maybe a petless ranger spec if we’re lucky!
The next expansion will likely need 4000 points to get its specialization, if ANET follows its current model.
Actually, if they follow the current model of elite specs being exclusive choices to one another and requiring you to first level to 80 (and thus have all the hero points required to unlock all core class specs and skills) the logical assumption is that the next one will cost exactly the same amount, and give exactly one weapon, one trait line, one heal, one elite, four utilities, some sort of class mechanic change, and two skins.
That’s pretty much exactly how they told us the system is designed anyway, moving forward in time to when there are 2+ elite specs to choose from.
I honestly think they should have just killed all plans for the rev and released HoT with 2 elite specs for each class so people weren’t so confused. Rev mechanics would have made a fine guardian elite spec with very few adjustments.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I’m on the fence with this one but Anet does itself no favors with it’s BWE’s and using this as a selling point for pre-purchase. To me this is the catalyst of much of this complaint and I’m still of the opinion beta testing should be done by beta testers, not used as a sales pitch to customers.
I’ve played a fair few games where at the starting level your a fully kitted out uber-beast of death slaying everything in sight in some huge awe-inspiring battle with all skills unlocked and all weapons blazing full bore. Wahoo this game is friggin amazing!!!
end flashback/dream sequence
You wake up at level one naked holding a wet noodle realizing it will be a LONG time before you feel that way again.
From what I can garner this is exactly what has happened here with giving players everything for nothing to play with, then taking it away. Sure might work ok in an offline RPG but in this genre it just seems to kitten a lot of people off.
It is the same reason (although partly in reverse) of why I skipped most of the BWE content. I wanted to be surprised by the new stuff and I knew I would be getting a good chunk of it after paying $100 for the kittening thing. Not only would I be seeing all the content, but it would be ready for prime time. Now I wish I had done as much of the beta events as I could because I will not see the things I had a taste of for a VERY long time. Especially on all my characters. Oh well, at least I get to play with the revenant specs.
Like someone else said earlier, there is not a match between what new specs I was looking forward to the most with what existing specs I like. In fact, the new spec I like the most is on a spec I loathe and hoped it would reinvigorate the profession. What is the point of my first HOT experience being with a profession I can not stand? I would think they would want people to have as good an impression of the jungle as possible.
Exactly. For me, the new Reaper spec looks fun for my languishing necro. I was looking forward to playing her again with the Reaper’s skills and traits.
But because I wasn’t happy with her existing specs, I never did world completion on her, and she has few hero points. So I’m forced to play her thru HoT with a spec I don’t like to get what I was looking forward to. Where’s the fun in that?
Now, on my mesmer, I like her current spec, like Chronomancer, and have 133 hero points. She might be fun in HoT as I earn hero points.
Funny thing about my Ranger main — she is my only character with World completion, and I have no interest in Druid. I’ll spend the points because they’re there, maybe get a skin.
My other characters are so far behind, I probably won’t play them. My poor engineer has almost no hero points, and like my necro, I was hoping to jump right into the Elite spec.
So I think I’ll be playing my mesmer, if I play at all. At this point, I’m actively looking for a new game.
That’s unfortunate, but the whole point of the system is to add depth and options to characters people, presumably, already like rather than replace characters they hate.
The addition of the revnant is the intended “replacement character”
Like, I see what you’re getting at, but it’s a bit like complaining that characters suck at level 1 and are more fun to play at 80.
If you don’t like the game, that’s a valid opinion, but the whole idea was to add progression similar to new secondary classes and skill trainers in GW1. Obviously if you don’t like necro, and like the reaper, it may be a pain, but it’s highly unlikely you’d be a fan of anything post-reaper as you don’t actually like the class as a class, right?
No, I love the pre-HoT necromancer concept and design. I don’t like how weak it is in so many ways. Reaper fixes that problem. I like the class as it’s being updated.
Consider this… I love my Ranger main, and have 0 interest in the druid. So the 214 hero points I have sitting on her is a waste.
Now, If ANET gave me a way to transfer hero points between characters, I’d be happie r. I did the work, just on the wrong character (years ago).
Not really a waste, think of it as a bank. Knowing you don’t want druid means you have those points in the bank for the next e-spec, right? Maybe a petless ranger spec if we’re lucky!
You still have plenty of time to turn that 350 K into …
To my knowledge, we will no longer be able to make consumables (banners, etc) after Friday. Is this not correct? Can we still make consumables?
I know whatever is queued will be completed, but 10 slots of build queue isn’t going to spend my remaining 350k. I’m been spending my influence from as long as I can remember—way before the influence announcements.
For those of you thinking 350k is no big deal, it translates to 1000g on conservative numbers. I don’t think anyone here would be happy on losing 1000g that you’ve actually earned.
Well there’s your mistake. You bought influence with gold and expected it to be worth the money.
I don’t have enough character slots to roll a revenant. I used the free one to roll a guardian.
I’ll get around to it though. Probably make it a norn female since they have the coolest heavy racial armor pieces to mix and match.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I’m on the fence with this one but Anet does itself no favors with it’s BWE’s and using this as a selling point for pre-purchase. To me this is the catalyst of much of this complaint and I’m still of the opinion beta testing should be done by beta testers, not used as a sales pitch to customers.
I’ve played a fair few games where at the starting level your a fully kitted out uber-beast of death slaying everything in sight in some huge awe-inspiring battle with all skills unlocked and all weapons blazing full bore. Wahoo this game is friggin amazing!!!
end flashback/dream sequence
You wake up at level one naked holding a wet noodle realizing it will be a LONG time before you feel that way again.
From what I can garner this is exactly what has happened here with giving players everything for nothing to play with, then taking it away. Sure might work ok in an offline RPG but in this genre it just seems to kitten a lot of people off.
It is the same reason (although partly in reverse) of why I skipped most of the BWE content. I wanted to be surprised by the new stuff and I knew I would be getting a good chunk of it after paying $100 for the kittening thing. Not only would I be seeing all the content, but it would be ready for prime time. Now I wish I had done as much of the beta events as I could because I will not see the things I had a taste of for a VERY long time. Especially on all my characters. Oh well, at least I get to play with the revenant specs.
Like someone else said earlier, there is not a match between what new specs I was looking forward to the most with what existing specs I like. In fact, the new spec I like the most is on a spec I loathe and hoped it would reinvigorate the profession. What is the point of my first HOT experience being with a profession I can not stand? I would think they would want people to have as good an impression of the jungle as possible.
Exactly. For me, the new Reaper spec looks fun for my languishing necro. I was looking forward to playing her again with the Reaper’s skills and traits.
But because I wasn’t happy with her existing specs, I never did world completion on her, and she has few hero points. So I’m forced to play her thru HoT with a spec I don’t like to get what I was looking forward to. Where’s the fun in that?
Now, on my mesmer, I like her current spec, like Chronomancer, and have 133 hero points. She might be fun in HoT as I earn hero points.
Funny thing about my Ranger main — she is my only character with World completion, and I have no interest in Druid. I’ll spend the points because they’re there, maybe get a skin.
My other characters are so far behind, I probably won’t play them. My poor engineer has almost no hero points, and like my necro, I was hoping to jump right into the Elite spec.
So I think I’ll be playing my mesmer, if I play at all. At this point, I’m actively looking for a new game.
That’s unfortunate, but the whole point of the system is to add depth and options to characters people, presumably, already like rather than replace characters they hate.
The addition of the revnant is the intended “replacement character”
Like, I see what you’re getting at, but it’s a bit like complaining that characters suck at level 1 and are more fun to play at 80.
If you don’t like the game, that’s a valid opinion, but the whole idea was to add progression similar to new secondary classes and skill trainers in GW1. Obviously if you don’t like necro, and like the reaper, it may be a pain, but it’s highly unlikely you’d be a fan of anything post-reaper as you don’t actually like the class as a class, right?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
They have been posting this stuff in blogs for months dude.
They’re not devaluing existing content. They’re setting a precedent for elite specs as relevant to content
An elite spec cost 400 hero points. This is a hard number we know now. This is an inherant part of that system. HoT challenges grant 10 because they wanted to ensure people could actually play nothing but HoT to gain them.
Of course it isn’t designed to allow you to entirely skip progression in new maps. That would be ridiculous. People would literally be saying “why would I waste my time doing hero challenges that don’t give me anything?” and the thread would be just as long and angst ridden as this one.
In stead they built a system in which mastering all of the optional core points means you can skip half of the new ones. Moving forward, you’ll likely see that system continue. You will never have enough hero points to instantly unlock an elite spec, but you’ll always have options in terms of how much of the content you want to do.
Like core world completion because it’s easy and there are more zones? Fantastic! That means you can skip half of the HoT challenges.
Don’t like the first elite spec? FANTASTIC save your ero points for the next one.
Making a comparison between the value of core content and HoT in terms of character progression is simply flawed thinking. Core content is intentionally unchanged, it is intentionally easier, and it is intentionally paced for leveling first and world completion as a secondary goal. HoT, and all content going forward is specifically built, progression wise, around the elite spec system.
Core specs aren’t considered optional. They’re considered “mastering your core class”
Elite specs, however, are optional and exclusive to one another
If you’re mad about devaluing old content, why aren’t you mad that taking an elite spec makes you drop a trait line? Why aren’t you mad every time they release another stat set for gear? Will you be mad when the next elite spec releases and you have to choose between them?
Having ten point challenges do nothing to devalue old content. You need to be 80 to get in to the jungle. If you’re 80, you have your core specs completed. now you can choose to do a lot of simple challenges, a lesser number of harder ones, or a mixture between the two. The entire system is designed so that the core content retains value by making sure all those extra hero point actually do something for you character besides being traded to miyani.
A HoT hero challenge is worth 10 points. A base-game hero challenge is worth 1 point. For anyone who hasn’t already completed the existing challenges, they serve absolutely no purpose. Why waste your time doing things for 1 point, when you can just go to the jungle and do things for 10 points? “Devaluing” doesn’t get any more black and white than that.
Again, because those points never existed primarily for progression purposes in the first place
Again
Core hero challenges are explicitly designed as optional objectives,supplemental to leveling
HoT hero challenges are explicitly designed as required objectives, to completely replace skill gains through leveling with skill gains through challenge completion
They have two different values for exactly this reason.
They’re not devalued, they were already of less value in the first place
Please explain, given your above argument, how exactly this is different from a gear treadmill dungeon series that requires a set of gear from one dungeon in order to complete the next, and is purely sequenced from a “first” dungeon to a “last” dungeon.
Because elite specs are optional you do not need to unlock the current elite spec to gain the ability to unlock the next one, or the one after that, and so on.
And further, the elite specs themselves are not purely vertical progression. They are optional horizontal progression. They add options at the expense of taking core weapons trait lines, and utilities. They’re not simply raw buffs that pile on top of the three core specs you’d already have on your character.
You won’t have four specs in the next release, and five after that, creating a system of perpetual upward advancement where you have to do A to be powerful enough to access B.
In stead, you have to do core to unlock core, and from there you choose to persue an elite spec, or stick with a core build. Going forward you choose which elite spec you want to persue, and as the system expands you have an ever broadening range of options for how to actually unlock those specs, since unlike masteries, hero points are not regional, but global systems.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
They have been posting this stuff in blogs for months dude.
They’re not devaluing existing content. They’re setting a precedent for elite specs as relevant to content
An elite spec cost 400 hero points. This is a hard number we know now. This is an inherant part of that system. HoT challenges grant 10 because they wanted to ensure people could actually play nothing but HoT to gain them.
Of course it isn’t designed to allow you to entirely skip progression in new maps. That would be ridiculous. People would literally be saying “why would I waste my time doing hero challenges that don’t give me anything?” and the thread would be just as long and angst ridden as this one.
In stead they built a system in which mastering all of the optional core points means you can skip half of the new ones. Moving forward, you’ll likely see that system continue. You will never have enough hero points to instantly unlock an elite spec, but you’ll always have options in terms of how much of the content you want to do.
Like core world completion because it’s easy and there are more zones? Fantastic! That means you can skip half of the HoT challenges.
Don’t like the first elite spec? FANTASTIC save your ero points for the next one.
Making a comparison between the value of core content and HoT in terms of character progression is simply flawed thinking. Core content is intentionally unchanged, it is intentionally easier, and it is intentionally paced for leveling first and world completion as a secondary goal. HoT, and all content going forward is specifically built, progression wise, around the elite spec system.
Core specs aren’t considered optional. They’re considered “mastering your core class”
Elite specs, however, are optional and exclusive to one another
If you’re mad about devaluing old content, why aren’t you mad that taking an elite spec makes you drop a trait line? Why aren’t you mad every time they release another stat set for gear? Will you be mad when the next elite spec releases and you have to choose between them?
Having ten point challenges do nothing to devalue old content. You need to be 80 to get in to the jungle. If you’re 80, you have your core specs completed. now you can choose to do a lot of simple challenges, a lesser number of harder ones, or a mixture between the two. The entire system is designed so that the core content retains value by making sure all those extra hero point actually do something for you character besides being traded to miyani.
A HoT hero challenge is worth 10 points. A base-game hero challenge is worth 1 point. For anyone who hasn’t already completed the existing challenges, they serve absolutely no purpose. Why waste your time doing things for 1 point, when you can just go to the jungle and do things for 10 points? “Devaluing” doesn’t get any more black and white than that.
Again, because those points never existed primarily for progression purposes in the first place
Again
Core hero challenges are explicitly designed as optional objectives,supplemental to leveling
HoT hero challenges are explicitly designed as required objectives, to completely replace skill gains through leveling with skill gains through challenge completion
They have two different values for exactly this reason.
They’re not devalued, they were already of less value in the first place
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
It’s absolutely not an illusion. Nobody will be doing any sort of group content that doesn’t involve the hero challenges, because why would they? The reward that they want isn’t there. It may not be directly caused by the decision to gate elite specs, but the beauty of cause and effect is that it does not have to be direct. There’s no denying that the pressure wouldn’t still be there if the elite specs weren’t gated.
Lol. My partner and I will be entering the expansion together at launch.
She is entering first on a character where she doesn’t even plan to play the elite spec… And I on one I am not in a hurry to unlock.
So yeah. We will be doing all of the things we come across. Perhaps don’t assume every player is you.Yet you will be running into people, or rather they will be running past you, to do the minimum that they have to. This in turn will scale events that they may have no intention of touching, moreso than it already would. I personally think the Hero Point Trains are going to run into serious roadblocks in the form of Masteries, though, so in that respect they will have to participate in events. However… this still pushes people to find optimal times to do things, so they can get elite specs as fast as possible. Would some have done this anyways? Of course. But why should even more be pushed into doing so? I’m concerned about the inevitable collision of those that want to enjoy it, and those rushing to finish things as fast as possible. So much that, I think a number of us might very well avoid HoT areas for a bit.
How is this any different than how the open world works already?
People are always running past one another to find the fastest route to whatever it is they’re after in the zone. People run past events to gather, or to get to personal story instnaces, or waypoints, or pois, or vistas, or whatever it is they happen to be personally after.
I don’t see how anything has changed.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
The people complaining about this are literally complaining that character progression systems scale linearly relative to the number of characters you want to progress.
Next you’ll be asking for waypoints to be account unlocks.
Even with your assumption that everyone is only worried about having to grind alts aside (Protip: That’s not the only reason people are unhappy about this), many people have already progressed their characters. Not everyone enjoys being told that the work that they did amounts to nothing.
People who want more “progression” can feel free to make a new character and start over. The rest of us would just like to be able to complete the new content with the elite spec of our choice fully fleshed out from the start. I’m not very satisfied with the thought of finally fully unlocking the Herald, only to realize that after rushing through the content and not having any fun that there’s none of it left to complete with my fancy new e-spec.
Elite specs were, from the very first reveal always advertised as anet’s new method of ongoing character progression
Not a thing they hand you as soon as it hits live, but progression That is used as the way to add new character build options.
The breakup of skill points and miyani currency was done specifically for this reason, just like the specialization system was done specifically for this reason. making hero points a limited commodity and converting all excess skill points from the old system was also done specifically for this reason. The whole game was redesigned around this progression system months ago, alongside very detailed blog posts as to why.
They said this a whole lot during the trait update, the reveal of elite specs as a system, and continually during all the “hoT is really about designing expandable systems we will continue to use in the future.”
Again, they specifically stated progression is a thing they want to be ongoing but that they want to do it without a vertical gear treadmill
What part of any of the information we’ve had over the past year gave you the idea that elite specs weren’t designed from the ground up as a progression system?
It’s literally the GW2 version of adding new skill trainers and secondary class options. They’re major feature updates, intended to give characters additional horizontal avenues of progression beyond the previous limitations.
I really, for the life of me, don’t understand what people are so up in arms about.
It’s almost as if you expected to be at the end of expansion character progression the day the expansion released. That was never advertised or even implied. How everyone got it in their heads in the first place that they’d be running around in full on elite specs outside of sPvP is beyond me. It’s not how the game has ever worked, or has even ever been advertised as an intent
They intend that you complete new content to access new character build options
And when the next elite spec is released, you can bet it will come alongside new PvE maps and new WvW angry letters corresponding to those maps. It is literally half of the content of all open world maps moving forward by design because it was the only part of world completion that was meaningful aside from getting achievements in the first place
The other half of the system is masteries, and masteries are the account end of that progression system. This is the character end. The game is full of complimentary systems like these, generally limiting things useful across all characters as account systems (bank tabs, crafting, etc.) so that you don’t end up doing the same unlocks on wildly different characters, and things useful only on a given character (bag space, profession skill unlocks, gear) as character systems. In general the account unlocks help facilitate faster progress through character systems. The relationship of masteries to elite specs is no different.
Source? As far as I’ve read into, masteries were the only source of “progression” that we’d be getting in HoT. If they had said anything about elite specs requiring a grind that far exceeds anything possible in the base game, then people would have voiced their outcry much sooner and would not have bothered themselves to rigorously complete the map on as many characters as they possibly can for the exact reason of avoiding the extra grind now so that they can enjoy the new content the way that they want to.
Someone else in this thread brought up a great point regarding the artificial inflation of hero points as well: What happens when the next expansion and round of elite specs is released? Will each elite spec cost 4,000 hero points, with each challenge in the new zones being worth 100 points each? That’s a great way to ensure that nobody will ever be ahead of the curve, but it’s also a great way to ensure that nobody will care about any previous content once new stuff is released. It really ends up with an effect no different than if straight-up vertical progression were implemented in this game. The only difference is that instead of inferior skills with lower damage numbers, we have inferior content with devalued progression points that nobody will ever want to touch again because the new stuff has literally 10 times more of a reward for what will likely amount to roughly the same amount of effort.
Anet is setting a horrendous precedent with this. People who wanted to grind their way through HoT for the new elite specs could have freely done so by their own will. With the way they’re going about it now, however, we’re basically being told that any of our previous work amounts to nothing, and that there’s no reason to ever touch the base game content beyond the bare minimum. Why would you ever want to do map completion anymore, when you can achieve better results with 10% of the time and effort required in the jungle?
This is a horrendous design choice, and is a textbook example of exactly what not to do when designing an expansion for a game. People are going to rush through the new challenges while avoiding anything else, leaving any sort of extra group content to languish. Launch is now going to be an absolute mess, because they’ve literally devalued anything that isn’t a jungle challenge by a factor of 10.
They have been posting this stuff in blogs for months dude.
They’re not devaluing existing content. They’re setting a precedent for elite specs as relevant to content
An elite spec cost 400 hero points. This is a hard number we know now. This is an inherant part of that system. HoT challenges grant 10 because they wanted to ensure people could actually play nothing but HoT to gain them.
Of course it isn’t designed to allow you to entirely skip progression in new maps. That would be ridiculous. People would literally be saying “why would I waste my time doing hero challenges that don’t give me anything?” and the thread would be just as long and angst ridden as this one.
In stead they built a system in which mastering all of the optional core points means you can skip half of the new ones. Moving forward, you’ll likely see that system continue. You will never have enough hero points to instantly unlock an elite spec, but you’ll always have options in terms of how much of the content you want to do.
Like core world completion because it’s easy and there are more zones? Fantastic! That means you can skip half of the HoT challenges.
Don’t like the first elite spec? FANTASTIC save your ero points for the next one.
Making a comparison between the value of core content and HoT in terms of character progression is simply flawed thinking. Core content is intentionally unchanged, it is intentionally easier, and it is intentionally paced for leveling first and world completion as a secondary goal. HoT, and all content going forward is specifically built, progression wise, around the elite spec system.
Core specs aren’t considered optional. They’re considered “mastering your core class”
Elite specs, however, are optional and exclusive to one another
If you’re mad about devaluing old content, why aren’t you mad that taking an elite spec makes you drop a trait line? Why aren’t you mad every time they release another stat set for gear? Will you be mad when the next elite spec releases and you have to choose between them?
Having ten point challenges do nothing to devalue old content. You need to be 80 to get in to the jungle. If you’re 80, you have your core specs completed. now you can choose to do a lot of simple challenges, a lesser number of harder ones, or a mixture between the two. The entire system is designed so that the core content retains value by making sure all those extra hero point actually do something for you character besides being traded to miyani.
I think it would be cool if anet finally split off WvW as its own game type with its own auto-legendary gear so they don’t have to keep making hamfisted progression half steps, and we don’t have to keep reading threads like “well I only want to play game mode X, but have to play Y to get Z”
They need to decide if WvW is its own game mode or not. No matter what stupid half measures they institute, the overlap in PvE and WvW will continue to hurt both. You’ll still have PvE-centric farms ruining EOTM, and you’ll still have WvW players complaining they have to go do PvE until the modes are properly split off.
If you’re not going to split them off, then you need to basically take a stand and say “We consider WvW a hybrid mode, and we expect WvW players to play PvE as income, and WvW as expense.”
Currently they’re failing at both separation and integration by attempting to do half measures of both.
Can we please just cut WvW from PvE for good, and get rid of the “server selection” for “seasonal team selection” since, you know, WvW stopped mattering to PvE a long time ago, and servers stopped mattering to PvE after that… why attempt to keep this vestigial relationship between the two if you were’nt willing to stick to your guns in terms of server buffs, world completion, or a number of other places the modes interact?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
The people complaining about this are literally complaining that character progression systems scale linearly relative to the number of characters you want to progress.
Next you’ll be asking for waypoints to be account unlocks.
Even with your assumption that everyone is only worried about having to grind alts aside (Protip: That’s not the only reason people are unhappy about this), many people have already progressed their characters. Not everyone enjoys being told that the work that they did amounts to nothing.
People who want more “progression” can feel free to make a new character and start over. The rest of us would just like to be able to complete the new content with the elite spec of our choice fully fleshed out from the start. I’m not very satisfied with the thought of finally fully unlocking the Herald, only to realize that after rushing through the content and not having any fun that there’s none of it left to complete with my fancy new e-spec.
Elite specs were, from the very first reveal always advertised as anet’s new method of ongoing character progression
Not a thing they hand you as soon as it hits live, but progression That is used as the way to add new character build options.
The breakup of skill points and miyani currency was done specifically for this reason, just like the specialization system was done specifically for this reason. making hero points a limited commodity and converting all excess skill points from the old system was also done specifically for this reason. The whole game was redesigned around this progression system months ago, alongside very detailed blog posts as to why.
They said this a whole lot during the trait update, the reveal of elite specs as a system, and continually during all the “hoT is really about designing expandable systems we will continue to use in the future.”
Again, they specifically stated progression is a thing they want to be ongoing but that they want to do it without a vertical gear treadmill
What part of any of the information we’ve had over the past year gave you the idea that elite specs weren’t designed from the ground up as a progression system?
It’s literally the GW2 version of adding new skill trainers and secondary class options. They’re major feature updates, intended to give characters additional horizontal avenues of progression beyond the previous limitations.
I really, for the life of me, don’t understand what people are so up in arms about.
It’s almost as if you expected to be at the end of expansion character progression the day the expansion released. That was never advertised or even implied. How everyone got it in their heads in the first place that they’d be running around in full on elite specs outside of sPvP is beyond me. It’s not how the game has ever worked, or has even ever been advertised as an intent
They intend that you complete new content to access new character build options
And when the next elite spec is released, you can bet it will come alongside new PvE maps and new WvW angry letters corresponding to those maps. It is literally half of the content of all open world maps moving forward by design because it was the only part of world completion that was meaningful aside from getting achievements in the first place
The other half of the system is masteries, and masteries are the account end of that progression system. This is the character end. The game is full of complimentary systems like these, generally limiting things useful across all characters as account systems (bank tabs, crafting, etc.) so that you don’t end up doing the same unlocks on wildly different characters, and things useful only on a given character (bag space, profession skill unlocks, gear) as character systems. In general the account unlocks help facilitate faster progress through character systems. The relationship of masteries to elite specs is no different.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
Probably the exact same number considering the first elite spec is technically an upgrade to the base class (swapping a base line for an elite line) in terms of progression (though possibly not in terms of power) but further elite specs are pure sidegrades (swapping out one elite spec for another)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
The people complaining about this are literally complaining that character progression systems scale linearly relative to the number of characters you want to progress.
Next you’ll be asking for waypoints to be account unlocks.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
This is just flat out terrible. Core gameplay should NOT be gated behind a grind. Some of us play 9+ characters. You want to shut cosmetics behind grinds? You want to shut toys and vanity items behind grinds? You want to shut proportionate rewards behind grinds? Sure. Cool.
But it’s just plain bad design to shut core gameplay for the expansion specs out behind a long grind.If you can unlock all the traits and skills in short order, that’s fine. It’s ok for the special skins to then take another 200+ points to unlock. But people are going to despise running around for the first week with a half-finished traitline and missing abilities.
Feeling forced to dash off into the jungle and skip content and rush hero points so I can fill out my trait line is going to directly reduce my desire to play GW2. When I think “I feel like playing my Mesmer now that Chronomancer is available” and then remember I need 100+ more points to unlock Chronomancer abilities and traits and the only way to get those points is to grind WvW or to skip jungle content in favor of focusing on hero challenges, I may well just not bother. Because this issue won’t just come up for Chronomancer. It’ll come up for Reaper, and Daredevil, and Berserker, and Tempest. It’ll come up for every single spec.
This is an incredibly alt-unfriendly design decision.
Yeah, like adding new classes, new skills in GW1, new levels in insert your favorite level cap increase MMO here and generally any system that adds character advancement.
This is the most alt friendly game in existence by a large margin. I’d rather have systems that are compelling for people that want something that feels like an accomplishment for one character, than a system that is watered down to an insignificant amount of content or effort just to be “alt friendly”
It is a character advancement system and the last one left in the game since the introduction of scrolls/tomes from dailies.
Why is it such a bad thing to have to, y’know, play characters to advance them a bit?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
Can we stop calling people who went out and did entire world completion on their alts just to prepare for this “casual/lazy/want everything handed to them/whatever.”
I think the disparity here is what’s really awkward and shocking. It’s like, what’s the point of doing normal hero challenges now when one challenge in the jungle gives you more points than entire non-Orr maps in central Tyria
Anet is deliberately making the real world into a free-to-play realm, minimizng it’s value to veterans.
Which is a silly thing to do with 90% of available content.
Their goal is to make the old world unattractive so veterans buy the expansion. Levelling alts, however, can only be done in the old world. Perhaps they dislike altitis?
The jungle does look awesome. But it does seem really odd to give ten times the HPs in the jungle. It introduces a vertical progression typically reserved for trinity MMOs to GW2, which was all about horizontal progression – the HPs are just levels, essentially. Pre expac, I could go nuts in Queensdale for days grinding out events if I wanted (Queensdale is still one of my favourite areas of the game).
What if I don’t like the jungle? What if I like it for a while and then prefer the mustiness of the old world to the endless greenery? Why can’t I get the same progression in the old world at even an approximate pace? It’s jungle overdose time.
(The jungle could be awesome, but as Fawlty Towers put it):
BBasil Fawlty: So, uh, this is your new menu.
Colonel Hall: [reading] Duck with orange; duck with cherries; duck surprise.
Mrs. Hall: What’s duck surprise?
Basil Fawlty: Er… that’s duck without orange or cherries.
Colonel Hall: I mean, is this all there is – duck?
Basil Fawlty: Umm… yes… done, of course, in three extremely different ways.
Colonel Hall: And what do you do if you don’t like duck?
Basil Fawlty: Ah, well, if you don’t like duck, uhhh, you’re rather stuck.
The basic argument is that the jungle is harder content, and many of these may require masteries to reach. In addition they may be just plain harder to obtain in a mechanical sense compared to core tyria. Fights or jumping sections could be harder, etc.
The theme of HoT is “PvE that doesn’t suck” compared to core tyria where literally everything in the open world can be accomplished by hitting 1 and rolling your face across the keyboard. It’s basic risk/reward mechanics at work.
How well anet balances challenge with the HP payout remains to be seen, but that’s the general idea at work.
Also keep in mind that hero points are a finite resource, but elite specs are not. Elite specs are an ongoing system, and that necessitates a relationships between the specs and offering more hero points. This means that hero challenges are considered, like mastry points, an ongoing advancement system to make sure new maps, expansions, etc. have content in them that players need to do for the sake of horizontal progression so that there’s a compelling sense of ongoing character progression throughout new content.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
All the people calling this setup “grinding” I really don’t understand.
It isn’t as if you’re doing the same hero challenges over and over. You’re running around HoT maps, doing events, hitting hero challenges and mastry point thingies. This is exactly the same as all the endgame maps in the core game, orr to silverwatses, just with different icons on the vistas.
It is literally the same exploration-centric advancement model as the core game with the exact same model. There are more hero challenges than you actually need points, so you can skip the ones that are too hard/boring/etc.
Were you all the same people complaining there wouldn’t be anything to do in the HoT maps except grind events for mastry xp as well?
They even threw WvW a pretty giant bone here, and honestly the only “grind” in the system is there for the people who go out of their way to avoid the intended advancement paths through either naturally playing WvW or exploring the HoT maps and jump on the sure-to-be-formed EOTM “lets ruin EOTM by using it to farm” train that people who want WvW stuff without actually playing WvW set up already anyway.
Someone explain to me how this is a grind. It looks like fun progression designed to get you moving around the maps, just like leveling in core.
Your question/statement at the end has been answered multiple times.
You are grinding it over and over again, If you want to get elite specs on multiple characters. You are grinding it if you want it quickly. It’s disincentive to sit back and enjoy the content, if you want the elite specs.
Again explain to me how this is different than leveling.
Or gearing alts.
Is the problem that you’re actually expected to play characters to advance them?
If you don’t like playing those characters, why do you care about their elite specs?
I just don’t understand it.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
All the people calling this setup “grinding” I really don’t understand.
It isn’t as if you’re doing the same hero challenges over and over. You’re running around HoT maps, doing events, hitting hero challenges and mastry point thingies. This is exactly the same as all the endgame maps in the core game, orr to silverwatses, just with different icons on the vistas.
Expecting world completion to give you the whole thing is silly. It gives you a significant head start. A head start you absolutely earned, but that you don’t actually need if you don’t want to repeat old content. Hitting all the hero challenges will similarly give you more points than you need so you have a head start on the next elite spec if you’re into it.
It is literally the same exploration-centric advancement model as the core game with the exact same model. There are more hero challenges than you actually need points, so you can skip the ones that are too hard/boring/etc.
Were you all the same people complaining there wouldn’t be anything to do in the HoT maps except grind events for mastry xp as well?
They even threw WvW a pretty giant bone here, and honestly the only “grind” in the system is there for the people who go out of their way to avoid the intended advancement paths through either naturally playing WvW or exploring the HoT maps and jump on the sure-to-be-formed EOTM “lets ruin EOTM by using it to farm” train that people who want WvW stuff without actually playing WvW set up already anyway.
Someone explain to me how this is a grind. It looks like fun progression designed to get you moving around the maps, just like leveling in core.
As to the argument that it’s alt unfriendly… it’s leveling. It’s actually more alt friendly than leveling is already. Masteries are account bound, meaning that after that first character you can stroll in to the jungle on all your alts for those extra hero points with all your fancy gliding, mushroom, etc. masteries and get to those points way faster. It’s very close to letting your alts benefit from unlocked waypoints in core. Each alt is going to be stacking mastry xp that’s going to make that progression easier for the next alt.
Were you just expecting each new elite spec to be patched in and immediately unlocked? Where’s the character progression there? That’s just a feature patch.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Yes. And they’ll all be in the gem store despite the fact you paid fifty bucks for an expansion.
And you’ll all complain about them.
If you add Trappers to PvP without adding some base damage to Thief traps, you’ll have thieves killing stupid people who don’t have any condi cleanse at all without ever breaking stealth, since condi damage by itself does not proc revealed.
I see a fair few trapper thieves inWvW, and allowing a build with little to no counterplay (stand in their smokefield, if you are close enough) doesn’t make for good pvp.
I fixed that for you.
That build is all troll and no teeth. It only ever kills someone once, then they come back with condi cleanse they should have been running anyway and laugh at it. It wouldn’t perform at all in sPvP as nobody there is dumb enough to run without basic cleanses.
It has counterplay. Lots of it.
I don’t know if you were around at GW2 launch day, but it was by far one of the smoothest and most problem free launches I’ve ever seen in an MMO.
Then they had to do some learning the hard way during secret of southsun and a lot of WvW culling woes. Then they eliminated culling, and worked out a stable baseline for full zones that we’ve been using ever since. This was where they fixed their “max players on map all on screen” problems for the most part.
Since that time they’ve worked in a lot of systems to handle large player loads on single maps, and field tested those systems multiple times in the map releases during LS2, and their entire server cluster backend is built around creating map instances on demand to account for increased load (as they intentionally created systems of increased load with megaserver)
Unless HoT is wildly more popular than GW2 was on launch day (highly unlikely) it’s a pretty good bet that the launch should go smoothly from a server performance standpoint. No telling from a content function/bugginess/explitability standpoint as Anet has always been extremely averse to spoiling content with public testing.
I’d say at worst it’ll connect and run fine but we might find stalled or broken events/content more than we’d like in the untested areas of verdant brink and beyond. At best it’ll all run just fine. In reality it’ll probably run just fine with a couple really nasty zero day event and vendor bugs that will get hotfixed before most people even get to the content.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
It’s flavor text really.
You mount a raid to clear the mordrem out, and the basic assumption is that by occupying the site you’re also keeping out further mordrem incursions “off screen”
an occasional “defend the guild hall” or “Mordrem den found beneath the guild hall, eliminate it!” guild mission in the new randomized system would be cool, though actual defense events IN the hall are problematic because of the decorations. It would make people prioritize decorations as defensive structures, which is a cool idea, but not necessarily the intent of the current version of that system.
If it were some sort of instance door found inside the guild map I could see it working though, just a tunnel you need to fight to the end of and kill a boss, kind of like a miniature version of the original fight to claim.
Trapper dragonhunter with trap runes and elite signet. Stealthed 100% heals for maximum annoyance alongside thief and mesmer stealth stacking.
So in episode 4, Q&A, Colin states that you need to run guild missions to gain enough favor to start the expedition. I thought it was just 100 gold? I thought you had to have a guild hall to queue guild missions? What is the actual truth to this?
You don’t need a guild hall to do missions. You don’t que them like in the old system. There are no unlocks for mission types and you don’t “build” each attempt.
You have, without any guild hall upgrades, three mission slots which are randomly rolled every week. You can tell the system to give you all pve, all wvw, or all spvp missions, or tell it to choose randomly from all three. If you choose to use missions from all three parts of the game at random, the system will give you a 10% favor bonus when you complete them.
You’ll need favor (no official word on how much) as well as the 100g to do the expedition to claim a guild hall. Thus, most guilds will need to do some guild missions before they can claim, or trade in old influence. Depending on the amount required, the influence trade in method may take several weeks as there is a cap on how much influence you can convert from the old system of 10k influence a week. If the expedition requires more favor than that, then you’ll either have to do some guild missions or wait several weeks as you cap out your influence trade ins.
The guild hall upgrades will allow you to unlock additional mission slots allowing you to do more missions per week, or simply allowing you to choose from a bigger randomized pool.
Honestly it sounds like a centerpiece of another elite spec. Daredevil is very much about mitigation specifically because they don’t want daredevil mitigation to stack with future elite specs. I’d say a new elite spec could be much more offensively focused with the primary element of risk being swapping out steal for shadow form.
Given GW2 mechanics, I’d see shadow form working very similarly to the necro’s form, with a twist. In stead of being a separate hp bar like the necro, you’d gain immunity, become revealed, and all your attacks would target enemy resources rather than HP for the duration. So, in shadow form you wouldn’t deal or take damage. In stead you’d directly assault core class mechanisms, or directly debilitate foes in a non-damaging manner.
You’d directly stack cooldowns with each hit on to:
Guardian virtues
Engineer toolbelt skills
Mesmer shatters
Ele attunements
Ranger pet skills/swaps
And you would directly reduce with each hit:
Necro life force (or the necro’s HP if they are in form)
Warrior adrenaline
Revnant energy
Thief initiative
In PvE you would directly reduce break bars, even when the break bar is invulnerable, and against player pets/mobs without break bars you’d stack debilitating non-damage conditions like slow/frost/cripple etc.
As for how to charge the form, I like the idea of having it powered by “reverse adrenaline” and gaining charge whenever you dodge, stealth, or shadowstep while in combat, and similarly emptying by itself outside of combat like adrenaline.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I still don’t see why anyone would invite a daredevil in a raid party? What is so special about daredevil? I still don’t see the motivation. What makes daredevil so special? Is it stealth? High dps? Please don’t tell me dodge!!!
Simply DrD does not get you into a raid. For a thief 4 things that I can see get you into a raid:
1) High Single Target DPS for boss Burns
2) Venom Share for support
3) Boon Steal trickery and CC
4) Stealth cloaking/rezzing/healingComes down to high ST DPS or Support. DrD directly does not get you into a raid but supports your current raid build. Physical skills add CC which maybe needed in Raid mechanics. Staff provides a little off Dodge tanking if geared/speced right. (Dodge tanking is more speculation at this point as it was never tried in Beta).
As for dodging… I can say yes if you want to place one word on on DrD and raiding. The biggest issue with raid groups is staying out of “red” aka kitten. If dodging keeps you out of red, than dodging it is. A high ST DPS that can burn and stay out of red is welcome in my raid party any day.
This. As I was testing the raid, I was doing it on a unicorn DD, and I was consistantly impressed by that build’s ability to specifically keep reliable DPS uptime while dodging everything. The people around me, largely ,were doing one of two things at all times. They were either mitigating damage (dodge/defensive skills/repositioning, etc.) or dealing it. The DD unicorn I was playing was effectively doing both of those things all the time. Deathblossom evasions were stacking bleeds. Dodges from on top of a target were dropping minitrops and firing condition daggers. Dodges toward the target were firing daggers.
Testing it all out I was just looking at it in terms of damage packets and going “I have not stopped dealing damage since the beginning of this fight”
It didn’t have the burst, but the sustained condition damage (which is actually buffed 10% in the live patch) tends to make up for it. It was a really stand-up build that didn’t need much healer babysitting and put out reliable and consistant damage.
When you’re going in to these raid fights, burst is no longer king. these guys have millions of HP you have to whack down with ten players, and as such sustained dps over long periods becomes the more important measure of damage. Conditions start to look really attractive in this circumstance, and you start to work out really interesting combo interactions that don’t usually get considered due to the greater viability of stacking condi users in the party.
All in all I think raid specs in general are very much like dungeon specs. You’re going to see a default PUG “normal” group, and a lot of group comps that build out to rely on esoteric interactions because people were determined to take classes X,Y,and Z and make them work in stead of shelving loved characters just to run the meta.
We have to see the rest of the wing, and further wings, but at least in what we tested there seemed to be plenty of wiggle room to invest in weird group comps that could still take the encounter down through slightly more complex combos or strange skill setups, even without top end clear speeds.
I wouldn’t comment on “meta” comps because, honestly, my group has never run them, as we haven’t had to PUG speedrun, and that’s probably not going to change as we work out our static raid comp. It’s highly likely that the vast majority of classes and builds will be excluded from the “meta” comp just as we see in dungeons today.
The meta is beyond anet’s control, however, as it is a wholly player driven expectation. Anet seems to be adjusting enrages and mechanics in a way that meta speed clear comps will still develop, but just as doing a L50 fractal, aren’t the only way to clear content.
Viewing content from a lens of completion rather than clear time tends to shed light on anet’s pve balance intentions. As it is currently (especially with the new buffs) I don’t see any class or decently considered/geared build being so useless that they can’t take a slot and still contribute to a win, and that includes daredevils. You might cut it a bit closer on the enrage, sure, but you’re not going to auto-fail the encounter if you don’t go full on meta.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I’m guessing that the portals for certain story steps need lowish levels in certain masteries to reach. e.g. early on you’ll need gliding, later you might discover you need to use an updraft, etc.
Probably nothing that would require maxed masteries given the huge xp requirement there, but being able to, say, actually enter Tarir seems like it could important to the plot, etc.
Isn’t crafting XP different from regular XP? I mean, using a Crafting Booster only boosts crafting XP, but does nothing for XP toward leveling.
Currently xp is xp, the boosts provide a bonus to the activity you are doing be it crafting, wvw, kill etc
No, crafting xp is a completely different system.
Crafting grants both XP and crafting XP. The orange numbers at the top of the window when crafting (with the little anvil icon) are crafting XP. Crafting XP is applied when gained to raise your crafting level. This is also the type of XP that crafting boosters actually boost.
Crafting XP only ever applies to leveling crafting, however any time you gain crafting levels, you generally also gain normal XP, which is denoted by the same yellow xp numbers you see when doing other tasks.
Is it just me, or does it bother anybody else that the whole intent of this suggestion is, basically, to copy outfits?
Like, what’s the point otherwise? If it only tells you the name of the skins, you’d still have to google or talk to someone to see how to obtain them, so I can’t see a use for this aside from becoming clones of one another. The wardrobe already does that expect in cases of skins that you can’t acquire anyway
I just don’t understand the desire to do that I suppose.
It’s not at all impossible. It’s just… hard to open the chest.
I know you may not be accustomed to things in GW2 that offer any challenge, but they do exist here and there.
As the other posters have stated, you don’t actually need to open it if you’re just after an achievement, you can use friends to help you cheat, and the loot isn’t any better than other jps.
Runes of the mad king for sPvP please. Any time I try to run signet of malice on thief builds without it I become super sad. Running my mad king build in stronghold would be great.
25mm scale prepainted plastic miniatures suitable for tabletop play or shelf display.
I’d love to use some of the GW2 beastiary in tabletop games, or just to have some sneaky skelk or harpies on a shelf.
Yeah, raid comps generally have a healer, and what we tested, the unavoidable damage was percentage based of max HP, so having more hp is actually less effective at mitigating that damage, as you end up taking more total damage while your healer is outputting the same amount of heals.
That damage also ignores armor, so, basically, if you have enough EHP to take normal damage, or enough evasion to avoid it you can run zerk. Thieves (especially daredevils) are unique in that they’re on a short list of characters that can successfully build full glass and stay alive in the raid mechanics we tested due to a combination of mobility and evades letting them get out of many of the smaller hits that most other classes had to facetank or mitigate.
no. You’ll notice that the caltrops from your trait don’t say “trick” on them. Thus they do not count as tricks, and do not remove a condition.
Heal Power isn’t the problem
The fact that healing, buffing, or even rezzing someone doesn’t count for event completion is the problem. There is no point in healing whatsoever if you send up with a bronze medal or less for an event since you didn’t dps. Raids and stuff is fine since it’s built for it but another problem is that the rest of the game is balanced around dodging and rally. Which pretty much kittens any real difficulty PVE since the target will always have skills that can be dodged usually the TKO and if you ever forget to dodge you simply rally.
Agreed that healing power should scale more but until it gets counted in events I don’t see the point.
That isn’t a problem at all. The way GW2 is built it’s impossible to play healer without also tagging more than enough mobs. You don’t really have builds that do nothing but targeted heals in GW2, every single healing build is also pumping damage in to mobs easily enough to get gold if you’re playing it properly. On top of that, if you’re playing support build you’re generally in a group, which means the amount of damage you do isn’t even important. as long as you hit the mob one time for any amount of damage, or land one condition on it, you get full credit in terms of loot as your party kills it.
Honestly they should just make WvW team selection randomized per season, stop calling them servers, and treating them like servers.
If you’re in a guild, the guild is assigned a team at the beginning of each season, if you’re in multiple guilds, the system asks you which guild you’d like to join for the wvw season (without telling you the team name the guild is going to) if you’re not in any guilds at all, it simply assigns you as an individual.
The system can then load balance it using collected wvw metrics like wvw ranks, average login times, etc. to ensure an even distribution across all teams at the start of each season, and thus each season would be competitive, with high ranking teams naturally rising to the top and low ranked teams naturally dropping to the bottom, and generally better and more competitive distribution overall.
You know, use matchmaking to make WvW more fun and competitive, and ditch the server model that causes so much stagnation and server hopping problems.
sounds good on paper… but they have struggled for 3 YEARS with matchmaking in sPvP… imagine how bad it would be with WvW and all the big guilds and even non guildies who run wvw ….
anet does not have a good history with matchmaking algorithim lol
Yeah, but WvW matchmaking is more about volume of players and easily trackable wvw ranks/login times than much harder to balance individual player skill.
WvW doesn’t really care about individual skill on a macro game level. What matters in wvw balance is more population numbers and coverage, which is far easier to get as “hard data” than attempting to build SpVp mmr rankings based on score and w/l ratios.
WvW can simply balance based on population and projected time slot avaliability, and it doesn’t have to be as good in a MMR sense as sPvP as outliers don’t really have the potential to disrupt matchmaking in such a big sense. If you mismatch one guy, or even one big guild in WvW, they can’t really roll over the game and break the match, wheras in sPvP if you, match even one really good player against five noobs it creates serious match imbalance.
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