Guild Wars 2

Zeliden.2014:

Didn’t know control and thief could be used in the same sentence. Thieves are amazing tanks, really? We have amazing evasion but not everything can be evaded.

I already tank trash in every instance my group does that requires trash tanking via a combination of evades, blinds, and life on hit. Necro support extra life on hit actually bumped it up a notch. It is highly effective against everything that ain’t dredge.

When you’re willing to sacrifice DPS, pretty much all classes have good control or tanking builds for pve, as mob attacks that hit hard enough to oneshot are always dodgeable and slow enough you can play around them, unlike players. The thing is that in the current content most players prefer to just pile on primarily damage for speed runs.

I seriously doubt they’re going to implement a custom character animation for five races for a single mundane skin unless they also seriously jack up the price. That’s a ton of extra work.

All weapons “pop” between their drawn and sheathed positions. The engine by default can read the two states and apply appropriate effects internally, but character animations are a big job generally reserved for skills. Not even legendaries have custom character animations, just custom visual effects and re-uses of existing ones.

You just mentioned two reasons. In addition, you have amazing potential D/D dps, amazing tanking potential once daredevil is released, and already amazing control potential via s/p for adds. You’ve also go great mobility for any content that requires a runner role.

Remember that dedicated roles are a thing in raids, and think less about who can do toolboxes and more about if you specialized to do just one thing that isn’t DPS, how good would you be at it?

We thieves are actually good at a lot of things in PvE, we’ve just not simultaneously halfway good at all of them at once as some other classes are. I doubt those halfway build/gear setups are going to be nearly as useful given what anet has said about raids.

Your character actually remains persistant and becomes self aware when you log out. He’s a horrible drunk though, so after a few hours of doing events and farming he blows it all on beer and then stumbles back to the logout point. He’s pretty hosed at that point so he can’t accurately remember the exact spot you logged out, but not so hosed that he can’t get it close.

That’s also where those random greens you find in the bottom of bags after you though you salvaged or sold everything come from, and why sometimes you swear you have less boosters in your bag than you thought you did.

my guess is that it’s to stop free account spamming in WvW. With free accounts it would be very easy to overload maps so that legit players can’t get in, drain supplies, etc. Also, spying in WvW was probably a concern, but realistically spying happens all day every day anyway so that one’s a moot point.

Considering WvW is the only game mode where your choice of server matters at all any more they should probably just rename them to “WvW team” for clarity.

Nah, they’ll just add a massively attractive karma sink just before HoT to drain hoarders, and then have appropriately balanced karma merchants with actually neat stuff in HoT so it has a proper gain/sink economy.

ReiCH.6273:

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Why wouldn’t you have exclusive rewards for specific content? Even Tequatl has exclusive rewards, and Fractals, and Dungeons, and Dry Top, and the Silverwastes… What would be the purpose of not having exclusive rewards?

Very correct, now all they have to do is implement legendary armour, skins, minis and titles for the top tier in pvp and wvw and the game will be able to offer something for everyone …

Agree actually. I love raids and getting unique and cool stuff from them, but I also really hope an alternate set of legendary armor, titles, etc. are added to the living world for its particular challenges, just like how SW had the luminescant armor, all of PvP needs serious love on the unique items front.

Heck, in a perfect world every single event would offer something unique, but that would be a crazy huge amount of unique items beyond the financial ability of any studio.

kiyana.4831:

I think it would be a good idea for the expansion for them to add a taunt specialization to tankier classes. By taunt I mean a way for them to attract the aggro from mobs. This would make becoming a tank much more useful to a party.

This is not how GW2 works. We’re not intended to have “tank classes”

If they want a specific encounter to use a “main tank” mechanic they’ll implement it via an environmental buff in stead as it doesn’t require them to design all content around the presence of an aggro magnet whos sole purpose in every engagement is to do the exact same thing.

Doing it at a class or build level means you have to build all the content around it. Doing it at an encounter level means you only have to build the content you specifically designed for that mechanic around it.

tobascodagama.2961:

myself.2143:

“You’re going to have a bad time. But don’t worry, as we’re leaving you a repair anvil at the entrance. You know—to collect your tears on.”

You know who else talked like that about their PvE content? Carbine.

^^^^^

I wonder how Carbine’s devs feel looking over at GW2 now with all this h4rdc0r3 nonsense over at the ANet offices. Always hard to see somebody else repeat your own mistakes.

The difference is that GW2 isn’t relying on raiding to be the primary content of the game. It’s optional, supplemental content in a game that has many more hours of open world content per pound, per release.

I predict they’ll be full of particle effects and thus something i will immediately reskin.

That does not make me want them any less.

chemiclord.3978:

PopeUrban.2578:

Then there’s the third camp. The majority of the player base that wants and is willing to participate in challenging content because it’s fun, and wants to be rewarded with cool shinies if they complete it because unique trophies are more meaningful loot than a handful of gold and rares they could have acquired elsewhere

The problem with WoW’s raids wasn’t the player base. It was the gear gate just to get started I advise you to in stead look at the GW1 elite instances, which were in fact very popular specifically because of their accessibility to attempt while maintaining a challenging piece of content to complete

Actually, your words prove you to be right in that second group. You don’t care about the challenge. You care about the rewards. If those same rewards were available in the open world, you’d MAYBE do the raid once just to say you did it, then never set foot inside again.

No, I care that I got the reward because of the challenge

The challenge is specifically what makes me want the reward and specifically why I don’t want the current legendaries or care about them

I still have a refgee child’s drawing from LS1 because I like what it represented despite the fact I could have eaten it for karma. I still have my map of southsun from the megakarka fight because it reminds me of how awesome that experience was, and it’s not stuck on only one of my characters like the 20 slot bag. that thing has literally no use whatever. I can’t even vendor it. These items are important and meaningful loot because they signify either a point in time or an accomplishment.

The reward would be actively less enticing to me if I could just pick up the same exact thing for 10s off a vendor, or grind nearly harmless mobs for half a year.

The value of a trophy isn’t the physical materials that the trophy is made out of. The value of an olympic gold metal isn’t that it’s made out of gold. The value of these objects is in what they represent.

If you could pick up an olympic gold medal at the corner store for ten bucks it would completely lose its meaning and significance.

I care about the challenge, and I care about having a trophy that signifies it. I’m not interested in whether or not I can lord it over others, or whether it makes me the only guy in the room with legendary armor. I honestly hope they add additional acquisition paths for different legendary skins to the open world and fractals and everything else.

See, I wouldn’t give a crap if raids awarded nothing but a white weapon with a unique skin. The point is that it’s a unique trophy that signifies a unique piece of content

The whole game needs more of these. Raids, open world zones, events even. It’s not about the loot at all. If that doesn’t explain it I don’t know what will.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

PopeUrban.2578:

Ascended was introduced through fractals and later acquirable through other methods. I expect legendary armor and backpacks to follow the same route, only with different skins since the skins rather than the stats are a much bigger part of legendaries.

I doubt they want to cut non-raiders off from the very option od acquiring the functionality of legendaries. Though I’m absolutely certain they want to cut non-raiders off from getting the specific look of raid legendaires (and in my opinion this is the right move)

Unfortunately ascended it still a bit of a kitten. Yes, it was introduced via fractals, and said we would have other ways to obtain it. When it comes to armor and weapons, the only way to obtain them beyond rng drops is to craft them. Not really much in the line of options now is it?

I am hoping that the “first” set and “only available from raids” does not remain the precedent going forward. IE, they add a second set, but its only available from raid set 2. Until they directly tell us, in no uncertain terms, that legendary armor set will be obtainable through other game play means, my concern shall remain. I’m perfectly fine with the raid having its own unique skin for it legendary set. I’m even ok if other sets are insanely grindy to achieve. Options are not a bad thing.

That is actually plenty of options, since crafting is a method that can be achieved by playing any content you like, and is thus the most fair way to give easy access to mechanical power. however, you’ll notice that they’ve made a point to roll out other avenues from time to time that are exclusive to other pieces of content as well.

Gimmicks are what separate unique encounters from mundane ones IMO. Even the molten bosses were only challenging due to their gimmicks, which largely consisted of jumping over shockwaves and the old GW2 standard of avoiding ground AoEs.

You list Mai trin as a badly designed fight. I disagree. That fight requires skills to complete. you need quick thinking and aoe dodging skills for the cannon phase, and group cooperation for the dps phase to successfully kite her through the lightning fields.

Both examples use a gimmick. Both examples punish your mistakes and require team coordination. They’re both well designed fights.

Gimmicks are what define bosses and make them different from one another, and to a larger extend different than run of the mill combat. Gimmicks are the mechanics that are unique to that particular boss that you need to learn and recognize in order to be successful.

Ticky.5831:

That actually supports my definition though.

Even though the discussion for the meta is taking place outside the game, the environment is completely dictated by the game rules(and therefore not metagaming, because there are no external factors), based entirely on in-game knowledge. Which is generally static.

Now, if the discussion were based say, on announcements of changes to the game, that would become metagaming, because data would be based on the perception of what the changes could be.

Simpler answer then:

because people don’t really care all that much about the technical definition of “metagaming” and “meta” is an easy to type 4 letter word that expresses a specific concept that everyone understands.

“meta” commonly references the optimal strategy for a given problem relative to its opposition. In competitive games the “meta” is an optimal strategy against other optimal “meta” strategies.

In a cooperative PvE environment “meta” is a commonly agreed upon optimal strategy against a static environment defined by the core math of player builds and the core behavior of the content.

meta shifts when its opposition shifts, so when talking about “a well designed meta” you have something designed to shift organically, which happens far easier when both sides of the meta-conflict are malleable.

In “meta” against pve content, only one side is malleable, the player side, wheras the static PvE content does not shift unless adjusted through a patch. In this case the “meta” does in fact shift, in the same manner as it would shift against a prevalent opposing player strategy in a competitive environment.

Iason Evan.3806:

If they wanted to make Raids really challenging ArenaNet could set the armor rating to “Blue Armor Stats” or “Green Armor Stats”. Make it a one size fits all raid gear set that automatically goes on your character. Put everyone on a level playing field. No gear check elitists. Block being able to look at AP. It boggles my mind that they would introduce something that is supposed to be hard(and should be! GW2 has needed this type of content forever)but then they don’t take the necessary steps to make raids all inclusive.

There’s PvP armor stats. There should be Raid armor stats as well. Use the PvP gear window and everything. It’s already baked into the game.

At no point did they state they wanted raids to be all inclusive. They said they didn’t want raids to create a gear treadmill that made raiders superior to people that choose not to.

They actually want people to have to worry about alternate equipment setups, spend money, and do out-of-raid work because it adds value to both the other content and the raid simultaneously, and indirectly adds value to the legendaries without actually making the legendaries superior in a mechanical sense.

This is content intended as something you invest time and probably gold in to because that’s kind of the point. They want to give you something to do that isn’t farming for currency and mats you have no other use for. If you have other uses for those mats, then you obviously still have non-raid content that’s more important to you than raiding.

Astralporing.1957:

So, the answer is “don’t be a small guild”? Whee, that’s definitely going to solve that problem…

Just like “Don’t solo” is the answer to “how will I do fractals and dungeons if I only solo?”

Group content of X size is obviously intended for a group of X size

If you guild does not have that many players, it’s a pretty logical assumption that you need to make other arrangements to fill those extra spots.

We’re not talking 40 people here. It’s ten people. That is not an excessive amount. If you’re already doing dungeons, then find five friends. If your guild is two people then you’re in a good place to fill someone else’s extra unfilled slots.

If you choose to have less people than required for content, and you choose not to make arrangements to team up with others, then you also choose not to do the content.

Unless your guild is so antisocial that they can’t stomach the presence of any other player ever it shouldn’t be difficult to make some friends to hang out with once a week, as I assure you there are many small guilds that would like to join you and would probably do so for only the asking.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

PopeUrban.2578:

They already provide far more hero points than necessary to unlock all of your skills and traits through the process of leveling and doing challenges.

The point of the OP is that the game currently does not make it easy to unlock all skills & traits for the elite specializations on day one. (I’m not saying I agree it’s a problem, just that the OP worries that we’ll need 175-250 points, a lot more than a lot of people have, especially those who stick to WvW and/or have a ton of alts.)

edit: clarity & grammar

Which is why I suggested offering a way to buy hero points for badges. Scroll up, I elaborated on that idea a little more.

The gambits were only functional because you couldn’t cheese them with outside assistance. This idea would have to be a zone-wide thing to be functional. For the record I think it could be functional with megaservers to condense zone populations around so that it wasn’t a case of permanent soloing since there would inevitable be less players on challenge maps compared to the normal ones.

Then there’s the third camp. The majority of the player base that wants and is willing to participate in challenging content because it’s fun, and wants to be rewarded with cool shinies if they complete it because unique trophies are more meaningful loot than a handful of gold and rares they could have acquired elsewhere

The problem with WoW’s raids wasn’t the player base. It was the gear gate just to get started I advise you to in stead look at the GW1 elite instances, which were in fact very popular specifically because of their accessibility to attempt while maintaining a challenging piece of content to complete

You’re basically asking for GW1 hard mode right?

Before megaservers I would have said it’s a bad idea due to play population. Now that megaservers are a thing I could see it working.

Do the LS2 challenge achievements for some nice loot that’ll save you a lot of gems and bandit crests.

Check out the collection achievements, many of which grant unique items that do cool stuff like turn karma in to loot or eat overflowing mats for loot bags or grant free cash shop stuff.

Spend some time in silverwastes to bank up money and mats so you have a leg up for crafting the HoT stuff.

Check out fractals if you haven’t. Fractal runs fit within your play schedule and give some cool bags and equipment.

I think the agreement here is that people don’t necessarily hate enrage timers. They just hate enrage timers so short that there’s no room in the party for anything other than “ALL MAX DAMAGE”

Considering they want roles to be important in this content, I doubt the timers and encounters will be tuned to encourage a lack of role diversity.

That’s a massive undertaking. Seems worthy of a title IMO. Sure why not.

Ascended was introduced through fractals and later acquirable through other methods. I expect legendary armor and backpacks to follow the same route, only with different skins since the skins rather than the stats are a much bigger part of legendaries.

I doubt they want to cut non-raiders off from the very option od acquiring the functionality of legendaries. Though I’m absolutely certain they want to cut non-raiders off from getting the specific look of raid legendaires (and in my opinion this is the right move)

Bucket maces.

Chicken daggers. (with chicken sound effects)

Shovel hammer.

Stick Rifle (with character voice “pew pew” sound effects)

Yes I’m serious. Especially about the rifle.

Nice catch actually. Makes sense, but it may be a matter of balance due to trait interactions?

For instance, adding an elite signet to my thief would allow more stacking from the signets trait. Conversely, I believe the reason they added a venom based heal on theives was specifically to buff venomshare (and avoid fixing venoms and venomshare in general, but that’s another subject entiresly)

Likely because it was more work to remove it completely, and it gives them the option of adding “gear damage lockout” to content like fractals and adventures where they need to.

And said content helps them sell repair boosters to people that are bad at it.

TheGrimm.5624:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, what they said was it’s the only way to obtain the Legendary Raid armor set.

Actually no, re-read the blog.

“Secondly, raids will introduce the very first ever set of legendary armor. This isn’t any ordinary armor set! Similarly to legendary weapons, you’ll be able to change the stats that the armor provides. When entering combat, you’ll become a beacon of your heroic deeds as the armor set comes to life, animating around you. Only the bravest of heroes will be able to collect and craft these legendary threads.”

Now granted this article isn’t covering other aspects of the release so we are working on limited information. The point stands though that if its the single source of the best gear then we do have a gear grind going on. And yes I am one of those saying this is superior gear since it includes any stat combo you could want without the price of mats, gold, karma, time and everything else that acquiring each of those stat sets separately would cost let alone require to store when not in use. And again, was planning on raiding anyway but since its not just a skin, that’s the issue if Legendaries’ materials can not be acquired elsewhere as well.

“Very first”

not

“only”

If your intent is support:

Yes, it’s effective. It gives your group a significant leg up initiating group fights, as you can SR stealth and venom buff them, then pain train the crap out of the other team.

However it makes you supremely ineffective if you get caught without your group, and during venom cooldowns.

It’s a very all or nothing spec. playing venomshare means being able to do almost nothing useful aside from throwing venoms. If you’re willing to sell your solo utility for group support, and spend most of your time out of combat or running from fights venomshare does what it says on the box.

Throw gunk is amazing combo field. No.

Make them situational and cosmetic buffs in stead of raw stat buffs.

For example:

Golden: When you sell to a vendor you make an audible “cha-ching” sound.

Honorary Skritt: Red skritt in the open world are now yellow to you. This ability does not effect event mobs.

Other mob collections: Similar effect, only works on ambient mobs and never in instances

Dungeon Master: Parties you list in dungeon LFG have a special icon.

etc. etc.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Let’s see….

Gear locked behind and only obtainable via raids….check
Raid lock out timers….check

Why hello WoW, nice to see you again….

Now, before someone blows up at me, let me clarify. I have no issue with raids having its own set of unique rewards, including a legendary gear set. I am; however, peeved that raiding is the only way to obtain a legendary gear set. Anet is essentially saying “Don’t like raiding? Too bad. Do it, or you’ll never finish your legendary collection.” This is very different than raids having a unique skin set locked to them.

Actually, what they said was it’s the only way to obtain the Legendary Raid armor set.

I wouldn’t be suprised to see an alternate set of non-raid legendary armor with a different skin, or a craftable “gift of legends” to upgrade an ascended to legendary status without any special skin changes.

Rauderi.8706:

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Hell, for all we know a boss could enrage if you do too much DPS. Start hammering at it with ten Zerk Elementalists, and it flies into an actual rage and rex everybody. Have to try and keep your damage against it beneath an acceptable level, while also dealing with the adds/traps/whatevers protecting the unusually touchy boss.

Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants for the Zerker Kings out there convinced that nothing but RAWRGHDEEPS is the way to play GW2?

Not quite related, but I did a fight design for a tabletop that pretty much did this. They AoE bombed the encounter, killed all the adds without ever finding out what they did, then realized they were debuffed severely and had to back out of the battle with their tails tucked.

A few of them may have been ticked.
/whistle o/’

More related, I suspect that the more defensive players may be assigned to holding points or securing objectives, while offensive players will handle murdering adds and doing boss damage.

“inversion” phases would be a thing I wouldn’t be suprised to see either. Boss starts immune to white and adds invulnverable to conditions, then during the fight they swtich invulns, requiring the white and condi DPS to swap roles, with perhaps some mender-style mobs control has to keep off the boss to prevent him from healing or something.

Valento.9852:

Zalavaaris.5329:

I really hope the raids are a lot like wow raids in that the speed at which you clear it is not inportant but the important part is actually clearing it.

Why not both? I remembered Crash Bandicoot 3 for some reason. There were speed trials, and the better you did the higher your score would be, awarding a platinum relic. Oh the feelings…

Sure, toss a leaderboard in there or something for speed runners. Heck, maybe even a LA plaque to commemorate world first clears.

MiniEquine.6014:

PopeUrban.2578:

I seriously doubt that hero points will remain a limited quantity going forward. They’re a leveling and unlocking mechanism. They separated them from shards so that the currency used to unlock skills and traits didn’t compete with the currency to get stuff from miyani.

Unless they have changed what they said, the intent of Hero Points was to be a limited resource because it didn’t need to be an unlimited one. As they released new expansions and elite specializations, they would release new Hero Points. By the time the final expansion is released you should, in theory, have exactly 0 Hero Points if you have everything unlocked.

That is, of course, if nothing changed since they revealed the update.

They currently have literally no purpose aside from unlocking your traits and skills, so Anet would need to provide a sink for them if they are unlimited.

They already provide far more hero points than necessary to unlock all of your skills and traits through the process of leveling and doing challenges.

As of right now my main character has 214 unspent hero points with nothing to spend them on.

Suggesting that unlocking everything would require going back and doing every piece of unrelated content is kind of silly. The “overflow” hero points exist so that players have choices about what they do to gain them, not to require them to do only specific content.

The overflow just serves as a leg up when new skills or specs are released.

Silicato.4603:

I also hope they reconsider that NON LFG ON RAIDS…

If they dont give me a nice tool to make raid parties, we will have to make our own (like at the begining with dungeons: External lfg’s webs, lfg in map chat…)
Anet can’t stop players to mingle if they want for raids, even if they are PUG.
They are just forcing us to do it ourselfs while they dont work on that feature for us…

They didn’t say no LFG. They said no raid finder. As in “click button get random party” the way a certain other game did it.

LFG and raid finder aren’t the same thing. One requires people to actually create a group and gives them an opportunity to synergise their builds before entering. The other just makes a best guess based upon a button click and seldom works out right unless you dumb down the content to cover up the flaws in the matchmaking system.

Suinz.5968:

Dashingsteel.3410:

Hardcore gamers asked for “hard content”, but really it is exclusivity they’re after. Well apparently they are getting that with legendary armor. I hope this shiny suit of legendary armor is enough to bolster their fragile egos. Your “awesomeness” will be apparent for everyone to see with that magnificent armor that is locked behind “hard content”. Lesser mortals will be left stunned in your wake. Sheesh!!! It’s really dumb to be seeking self-esteem through a video game……

Give raids exclusive skins but not a kitten legendary!!

p.s. If you were someone who wanted “hard content” without the exclusive carrot this message was not meant for you.

The entitlement on the forums is REAL right now. The elitists are a minority. The game needs challenging PvE content that isn’t faceroll autoattack and win loot. If you don’t want unique rewards, DON’T DO RAIDS.

I can virtually guarantee that I’ll be reskinning most if not all of my legendary armor. I really hate sparkly particle effects. It’s the same reason I reskinned all my ascended gear.

I don’t care who knows I have it. I care that I know I got it from doing raids because there wasn’t an easier option

I have a ton of skins that I objectively hate that I got because they’re internal badges of honor for doing stuff. I don’t wear a single piece of dungeon armor, but I did in fact to the dungeons specifically for those skins.

See, exclusivity isn’t about lording it over other people. It’s about knowing you have something that is a lasting mark of doing something difficult. It’s about knowing you earned something special not simply having something special

I don’t know any better way to explain it to people like DashingSteel

Dahkeus.8243:

With the increased focus on guilds, I definitely think this is a good idea.

I’d also like to see a greater variety of guild banner back pieces. I’ve wanted to use one of these for a while, but the current skins just look really awkward with my character’s armor.

Greater variety all around would be awesome.

Would also be awesome if there were some way for warriors (and possibly future elite specs from other classes) to display their guild logo on the banner skills, and play guild fanfares with warhorn skills, but that’s going a bit off topic.

I seriously doubt that hero points will remain a limited quantity going forward. They’re a leveling and unlocking mechanism. They separated them from shards so that the currency used to unlock skills and traits didn’t compete with the currency to get stuff from miyani.

Yeah, I remember it being said that the raids were an epic, but side story, kind of like the dungeons in vanilla (up to zhaitan anyway)

Like, their events are important and referenced by the main story, but not so crucial that missing those events leaves gaps that make it unintelligable.

Basically, think about doing the PS without doing any dungeons. You know DE had a falling out, then you lost touch with them, and then they were back together to fight zhaitan. It isn’t important to the overall story of you and the pact vs. zhaitan why they’re back together, but it is referenced by the main story.

Think of the main story an LS releases as the original series, and the raids as a spin off. Fills in some interesting plot information, but isn’t crucial to understanding or enjoying the main plot.

Diovid.9506:

PopeUrban.2578:

Diovid.9506:

PopeUrban.2578:

after the pact fleet being destroyed, and the lion’s arch rebuild, and before the events of HoT

Live events have always been in linear order in GW2, and in real (earth) time, with releases officially happening on the date they were released and stretching a questionable amount of time up until the next event or release which could be interpreted as a couple days or the entire stretch of time between events/releases.

The problem is that Anet has stated on the one hand that, as you say, time in tyria is synched with time in the real world, while Anet has stated on the other hand that HoT happens immediately after the destruction of the pact fleet. This creates a complicated situation, unless it took the pact fleet months to get from the Silverwastes to the jungle (i.e. the time between the ending of season 2 and the release of HoT) which seems highly unlikely. The events that are happening now, such as the rebuild of Lion’s Arch and the Modrem invasions are not even neccesary for creating a mess but they do make the mess even worse.

Good point

I suppose it’s possible that technically the destruction of the pact fleet hasn’t happenned yet though, right? As in the video that we got was a teaser which is technically the intro to HoT.

So I suppose this event takes place after the building of LA, but actually before the destruction of the fleet?

Right but the fleet left during Point of no Return, thus, as I said, the pact would’ve traveled for months to get from the Silverwastes to the jungle, which also seems unlikely.

As we know the time in between events/releases is intentionally muddy and open to interpretation. Another interpretation could be that point of no return actually took up until now to resolve.

Basically, it seems like when these things start seems a fixed point in time, but when these things are resolved is in a nebulous “some time after it started, and before the next thing started”

Like, it’s impossible to say exactly when Zhaitan was killed, we just know it was after he ros and the pact formed and set out, and before secrets of southsun.

Ohoni.6057:

Challenge is subjective. Therefor your facts are subjective. No matter how much you declare them absolute facts. There’s some merit to it, but it’s not fact.

No, my comments take that entirely into effect. Challenge is subjective, but in any reasonable spread of MMO players, if the content is designed so that the highest skilled portion subjectively finds the content challenging, then it is an objective fact that the middle portion will find it to be subjectively too challenging, and the lower group will find it completely out of their range. You can make factual arguments that are based on the opinions of populations, such as “47% of people voted for candidate X in the recent election.” They made a subjective choice, but it is an objective statement to say that they made that choice.

The third is sort of a fact, but then it is basically saying that only one can be the best, which is selfproving because that’s what “the best” means. It’s merit is totally leaning on the the first if to be true.
The fourth is unfounded. Many is an undefined number. Thus also not a fact.
Declaring them absolute facts is pretentious, because calling anything absolute and fact is just silly. A fact is always absolute.

So basically what it boils down to is that you can’t actually find anything to disagree with on a substance level, so you’re nitpicking into minor word choice issues? Fair enough, I’ll take it.

Of course it might not be enjoyable to be carried or be a burden. But that’s also subjective.

Yes, and I said as much. I flat out said that while the fact of the unskilled player being a burden is an objective reality, it is certainly subjective how much that may or may not bother you or them on an individual level.

But excluding rewards from other content doesn’t mean players can’t enoy themselves. I don’t think anyone who wants exclusive rewards is saying that other people shouldn’t enjoy themselves. And obviously the existence of rewards being out of reach doesn’t mean people enjoy themselves less.

This is an unreasonable conclusion. While it’s certainly true that exclusive rewards don’t mean that players can’t enjoy themselves, it is a fact that there is at least some portion of the playerbase who would enjoy their experience LESS if they felt that these rewards were permanently out of their reach, or if they had to engage in “unfun” content to pursue them. This is a subjective impression on their part, but it is an objective fact that they possess these opinions and they are not “wrong” for having them.

If you are arguing that these people should not have access to those exclusive rewards, or that they should have to pursue content that they do not enjoy in order to earn them, then you are, as a fact, stating that you would prefer them to be less happy. Whether that bothers you or not is the only subjective factor in that scenario.

I have actually played raids in multiple games, they are not impossible no matter how you slice it.

In these previous games, in how many cases would you consider the raid to be “impossible” (assuming a low level of skill and engagement) until such time as the meta moves on to one or two raids further along? I mean, my understanding is that in most games, they build a raid, and it’s hard for a bit, but then the majority of players get stronger armor from it, trivializing it, and/or it is nerfed as the new, even harder raid comes out.

My point here being that, whether true or not, ANet has promised that they intend to keep these raids equally hard forever, so that even once the first raid becomes “passe” to the front liners, it’ll be no easier for the back groups. Sure, they’ll be able to use guides to figure out the challenges easier, but they’ll still have to actually do it themselves, and with no gear-bloat to help them out.

Also, even if it is possible to carry a lower skill player through the content, is that really the same as them contributing on an equal level to it’s conclusion? If they are not helping their fellow players, making their jobs harder, not enjoying their time spent there, and would rather be doing something else, then who benefits from forcing them to be there? I don’t believe that groups should exclude people who genuinely want to attempt the raid, and want to improve their own skills, I just don’t see the benefit of forcing raids on those who genuinely have no interest in it.

the type of reward system you want is improbable to balance. It has never in the history of the world been done without large flaws. You basically want to create a monetary system that has no biases, imbalances, degenerative results. People have been trying to build that economy irl for as long as we have had civilizations. Its not going to happen.

It’s really not that hard in a game world, when you have less factors at play than real life. For example in the real world, some roles are more important than others, like doctors, so you want to incentivize people to take them up, whereas in games, no role is more important than any other, a hardcore front line raider is no more important than a Silverwastes chest farmer, so the game doesn’t have any reason to incentivize the former over the latter.

I’m not saying they can get it perfect, nothing can be perfect, and the current system is far from perfect too, that’s not the point. I do think that it can be made very good, however, and the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

And as for the TP, the problem with the TP is that players set the prices in their own interests. That never works out well.

you guys simplified understanding of peoples abilities. and analysis of who is in what category, leads to these false ideas.
first of all, who is being targeted for these raids? the top .05%? the top 5% the top 10%?

second how does those targeted translate in terms of the average players abilities?

For simplicity’s sake, let’s use a standard 20/60/20 model. If the raid is designed so that 20% of players will find it significantly challenging, then 60% of players are likely to find it uncomfortably difficult, and the bottom 20% practically impossible. That’s doesn’t mean that the bottom 20% could never clear it, mind you, it just means that a group of entirely this bottom 20% could never pass it, and that any 20%ers that do pass it would have to be carried by some upper 20%s in the party.

based on how you guys act, mario brothers would be impossible to beat ( and yet millions of kids did it at age 5+)

And millions more didn’t. I never beat Mario, I played it for a while, got bored, moved on to other games. I also never beat any of the original Megaman games.

They’re not out of your reach. You’re choosing not to do the required content. Some people didn’t bother with legendary weapons because they chose not to grind obscene amounts of clovers, or didn’t want to go to WvW for the gift of battle, or whatever.

Clovers? Clovers take like ten minutes to knock out at the mystic forge. I would have spent 1000 clovers to get a Precursor.

Masteries are the system that forces content for mechanical power. I don’t hear anyone complaining about those.

Because Masteries allow you to do ANY PvE content to progress them. That’s the sort of flexibility people are asking for. Why would anyone be complaining about that?

In fact they don’t, unless something changed you have to be on HoT maps to progress HoT masteries. They were unclear on the core masteries, and whether you can progress those anywhere or only on core maps (I suspect anywhere, as they’re “core” masteries)

Also, clovers don’t take just ten minutes to knock out at the mystic forge. They take as long as it takes the player to gain the skill points (now the shards) ectos, and coins. You can trade for some of that, but the crystals/stones/obsidian are absolutely an investment that you could have used on something else.

Just because you, as a player, have a massive built up stack of these (as do a lot of people) doesn’t mean they are without effort. You can not simply walk up to the forge and collect clovers. They do in fact require a significant amount of grinding for the materials to gamble for them.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

PopeUrban.2578:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

SkiTz.4590:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Look folks… normally I’m on your side on these types of discussions lol but to me Raiding SHOULD NOT be expansion only content. Anything that requires a group shouldn’t be. It’s exclusionary for a MYRIAD of reasons.

Your logic is flawed.

According to you, all HoT should be accessible to core players than right?? right??

I mean pfft, raids are a MAIN FEATURE to the xpac. One of the main attractions to this xpac….lets go ahead and make all the main attractions for core players than huh?

This is the way it is. If you want the new content that anet spent tons of time and resources on for free, you are going to be disappointed. Too bad if your guildies can’t shell out 50 bucks for the xpac. Their loss. Not Anets. Pony up and pay. Whining about it doesn’t help…

No… I never said that… I said Core players should have raids that do not require HoT mechanics… do you even read?

I’m curious why you think the core game deserves additional content after having been used to pay for three years of free content.

Simply put, the core game is “content complete” at this point. The buy to play model necessitates that every so often you have to buy to play additional content.

I’ve been playing for 3 years but not everyone has…

Yes, but they’re playing the completed content of core is the point.

(and they’re doing it for free at this point)

Diovid.9506:

PopeUrban.2578:

after the pact fleet being destroyed, and the lion’s arch rebuild, and before the events of HoT

Live events have always been in linear order in GW2, and in real (earth) time, with releases officially happening on the date they were released and stretching a questionable amount of time up until the next event or release which could be interpreted as a couple days or the entire stretch of time between events/releases.

The problem is that Anet has stated on the one hand that, as you say, time in tyria is synched with time in the real world, while Anet has stated on the other hand that HoT happens immediately after the destruction of the pact fleet. This creates a complicated situation, unless it took the pact fleet months to get from the Silverwastes to the jungle (i.e. the time between the ending of season 2 and the release of HoT) which seems highly unlikely. The events that are happening now, such as the rebuild of Lion’s Arch and the Modrem invasions are not even neccesary for creating a mess but they do make the mess even worse.

Good point

I suppose it’s possible that technically the destruction of the pact fleet hasn’t happenned yet though, right? As in the video that we got was a teaser which is technically the intro to HoT.

So I suppose this event takes place after the building of LA, but actually before the destruction of the fleet?

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

SkiTz.4590:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Look folks… normally I’m on your side on these types of discussions lol but to me Raiding SHOULD NOT be expansion only content. Anything that requires a group shouldn’t be. It’s exclusionary for a MYRIAD of reasons.

Your logic is flawed.

According to you, all HoT should be accessible to core players than right?? right??

I mean pfft, raids are a MAIN FEATURE to the xpac. One of the main attractions to this xpac….lets go ahead and make all the main attractions for core players than huh?

This is the way it is. If you want the new content that anet spent tons of time and resources on for free, you are going to be disappointed. Too bad if your guildies can’t shell out 50 bucks for the xpac. Their loss. Not Anets. Pony up and pay. Whining about it doesn’t help…

No… I never said that… I said Core players should have raids that do not require HoT mechanics… do you even read?

I’m curious why you think the core game deserves additional content after having been used to pay for three years of free content.

Simply put, the core game is “content complete” at this point. The buy to play model necessitates that every so often you have to buy to play additional content.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

PopeUrban.2578:

What’s important is that the design goal of GW2 is that every class can fill every role if they choose to build for it, and that class will have a unique flavor and playstyle for that support, dps, or control build.

That’s perfectly okay, as it allows sane people to go “okay, we need one more DPS, you there, you’re a what, engineer? what’s a good engineer DPS spec? Okay, can you run that today?” in stead of “Well, we need one more DPS and all we have online is five tanks. guess someone needs to reroll warrior”

Or someone has to craft/buy a whole set for the new role he might have to play, learn to do so and actually want to do so.

Raid leader: “Hey ranger, we are short of support which means you will heal today. Get your healing gear on.”

Ranger: “I got no healing gear sorry, but I am really good at dam——”

Raid leader: LF1M support

I don’t see a problem with that TBH. It’s the same as having gear/skill unlocks in GW1. People were assumed to have at least their main class skills unlocked, and sufficient gear was easy to get so there was little excuse not to have it.

That ranger can fulfill the role adequately in exotics, as the statistical gap between exotics and ascended gear isn’t enough to break a group.

This is the difference between rerolling, and just coming prepared. On my thief I have an exotic of every weapon, and ascended for the weapons I use in my “main build” in addition to some ascended and exotic “swap pieces”

That one character is pretty sufficiently ready for everything, and if you’re pugging the assumption should be you’re ready to fill whatever role is required of you. That’s the price you pay for pugging in stead of having a steady group where you know what one set is required for the role you play every run.

after the pact fleet being destroyed, and the lion’s arch rebuild, and before the events of HoT

Live events have always been in linear order in GW2, and in real (earth) time, with releases officially happening on the date they were released and stretching a questionable amount of time up until the next event or release which could be interpreted as a couple days or the entire stretch of time between events/releases.

What’s important is that the design goal of GW2 is that every class can fill every role if they choose to build for it, and that class will have a unique flavor and playstyle for that support, dps, or control build.

That’s perfectly okay, as it allows sane people to go “okay, we need one more DPS, you there, you’re a what, engineer? what’s a good engineer DPS spec? Okay, can you run that today?” in stead of “Well, we need one more DPS and all we have online is five tanks. guess someone needs to reroll warrior”

This is true, you can not complete raids without buying the expansion that lets you walk through the front door.

Filling my car’s gas tank is also locked behind the paywall of owning a car.

Sounds like another great reason to avoid PUGs

Every class has a fully functional tank, DPS, and control build if you gear for it, but as of now we’re not incentivized to gear for anything other than DPS with a splash of the above.

Especially with the new elite specs, I look forward to smashing raids in with so-called “sub optimal” setups. It’s what I loved about GW1 elite instances and I suppose it’ll be just as fun to problem solve around weird group comps in GW2.