guild halls should be done like GW1, have a sigil that anymone can buy, keep it at a normal price (like 50 gold or so).
now every single guild is able to get a guild hall, now no one can act like they are more superior. (like some guilds love to do)Nothing in this thread is about getting the hall. Every single guild can get a hal easily. it gosts 100 gold an a really easy mission you can just LFG five people to complete.
Getting the hall is the easy part.
It’s about the cost of making the hall do anything useful. The Upgrades. That’s what people are complaining about.
It’s also the same system used in the first game. Guild Hall upgrading makes players choose between themselves and supporting the guild. Same as the first game. A hall doesn’t do anything useful (except to use it as a GvG map). Upgrading the hall unlocks NPCs and services.
It’s literally the exact same system as the first game, only easier. The Price of a hall in the first game was’nt a flat rate. Those seals came exclusively from player that won the HoH. The NPC that sold them, like all GW1 trade NPCs could only resell what another player sold in the first place. In GW2, nobody needs to “win” the right to get a hall via a worldwide pvp tournament. They just need to kill a couple easy mobs.
100g is quite allot for me and it also needs some kind of guild coins that i have none of (150 to be exact).
last time the sigils were for sale they were 23k, that’s about 15 gold in GW2.
seriously, GH’s in GW1 were a cakewalk compared to GW2 GH’s, better yet, lately you can get a GH in GW1 by doing zaisen quests/missions/bounties. (takes just 3 gold zaisen coins and 100 gold, about 10 silver for GW2)
This is also not GW1. The Halls in GW2 are leaps and bounds more functionally useful, and in terms of actual earned income roughtly equivalent in effort to acquire.
The reason halls became so cheap in GW1 was due to an economic imbalance of production versus consumption. Every round of the HoH rewards a sigil. Most of those sigils are sold. This results in a much larger number of avaliable sigils than people who want to buy them. Furthermore, the primary purpose of halls in GW1 was GvG, which is vastly different than the primary purpose of halls in GW2, scribing and guild buffs.
The entire point of GW2 halls is that they require effort versus the point of halls in GW1 is that you can get one easily to participate in GvG
You can’t tidily compare the two systems as they have vastly different design goals and uses.
Or, you know, not adding heroes to the game at all because they are inappropriate additions to GW2.
“Cheese” is a complaint leveraged at players who successfully use weaknesses in a game’s design to win, and blame others for playing efficiently rather than blaming the developers for being bad at game design.
Certain players develop strict e-honor codes that they then expect all other players to adhere to, and become upset when they do not, despite the fact that the rules of the game are clearly laid out and it is the game, not the players, that is creating these frustrating experiences.
They are often viewed as being “not competitive” or “not skilled” builds despite succeeding at the one metric that the game rewards and winning encounters or matches.
Or, the TLDR version:
A cheese build is a build that is better than your build, that you refuse to adjust to.
You’re asking for a non-cosmetic advantage that expects not only the purhchase of, but a significant amount of time investment in another title.
You’re also asking for heroes, which aren’t present anywhere in GW2 for good reason. They’re a bad idea in a game built largely around organic grouping rather than GW1’s extremely rigid combat role system.
The way GWAMM integrates with GW2 already is fine. The cosmetics are the result of what could easily be considered “GW1 veteran” status, even if you weren’t a hardcore title junkie. The GWAMM title track grants the appropriate titles.
These are cosmetic unlocks, as cosmetics are the only appropriate rewards to carry from one title to the next.
Effort spent in GW1 does not and should not equate to mechanical power in GW2. That’s basically telling new players to uninstall and go play GW1, a game they may not even enjoy, or end up a second class citizen in GW2.
That’s just it though, doesn’t a system which doesn’t require people to roll perpetual alts seem to have broader and more long lasting utility?
It’s kind of like level caps. In GW2, we don’t have level cap increases or additional gear ranks as time goes on because the entire idea is that our characters are valuable, and that the work we put in to those levels and gear is valuable.
We got the mastry system, which is account wide, and is a great system. It respects the achievements of existing characters, and doesn’t specifically require people to roll alts to get to use the feature.
We also got the first round of elite specs, also a great system. It unilaterally rewards existing characters with new ways to progress, while also creating compelling reasons for players to roll (and insta-80 as you point out) new alts.
Then there’s revnant, which does the complete opposite. It doesn’t value existing effort or achievement, and it doesn’t add a lot to the game.
In a game like, say WoW, where leveling is a large part of the experience, the whole rerolling thing makes sense. The central experience of the game is power progression, not narrative progression. Seeing how a new race with new innate abilities plays out is much closer to the core design of the system.
In GW2, the focus is on ongoing, accessible content for the characters you already have. Seems to me that systems like masteries and elite specs just line up much more closely with that ethos than new races or classes.
It’s all opinions, of course, but I just can’t see how the game is made more fun in the long term by requiring rather than giving the option of rolling a never ending stable of disposable alts with expiration dates.
And as I’ve said several times now, multiplayer =/= forced multiplayer, so just because it’s an MMO doesn’t mean you can say we should have to group up.
Yes. Yes it does equal forced multiplayer. Being required to play with or against other players is what makes it a multiplayer game rather than a game with the option of multiplayer.
Basketball is a multiplayer game
I can walk outside with my basketball. The hoop is there. However I can not play basketball. Basketball requires other players. It is a multiplayer game.
Assuming I could create a bunch of robots, then I could play something very much like basketball. It isn’t basketball though. It’s me being an unimportant participant in a game mostly decided by robots pretending to play basketball because I programmed them to. I am now accounting for 1/10th of the game, while it is mostly playing itself.
There being ten people on the court is what makes it basketball as much as there being ten people is what defines a raid.
Again, there is nothing wrong with NPCs. I play a lot of games where I command around a lot of NPCS. They’re great fun. They’re also specifically tunes and designed around that concept.
You are attempting to fit a square peg in a round hole just because you refuse grind the square peg until it is round.
The argument that you can’t find other people to play with will be made even worse by adding NPC replacements for players. They’ll do what they’re supposed to. They will replace players and by doing so severely limit the pool of players, like yourself, actively seeking others to join them.
The argument that you won’t find other people to play with because you don’t want to isn’t a problem with the design of the game. It’s a personal desire to “finish” content without being willing to do what is clearly required of you to do so.
It’s not a matter of “can” we do this. It’s a matter of “should” we do this.
In my personal opinion, no, we should not.
Basketball is a multiplayer game with required multiplayer. Horse is a game with optional multiplayer. The basketball video games are games with optional multiplayer. GW1 was a game with optional multiplayer. If you can’t understand this basic concept that a multiplayer game doesn’t have to be an exclusively multiplayer game, then all I can say is I hope you never develop a video game.
I agree.
This is not GW1, and there’s no reason to attempt to shoehorn an unneccessary system in to it to turn the game in to something it is not
Sure, but I look at it like this.
I would rather be excited to roll a new character because of the sweet new warrior spec, or sweet new L80 sylvari story arc, knowing that people with sylvari warriors actually got a better payoff for investing in their characters that was up front, immediate, and fun, just like I got a better payoff on my human thief, because the effort was spread top down in stead of bottom up.
The alternative, that I am excited to roll an alt because everybody has to roll an alt to do this thing is simply less compelling. it means my existing characters, and everyone’s existing characters just don’t matter as much as brand new ones.
That new content comes at the expense of every established character while only benefiting rerolling. The alternative is that every established characte gets a little more, and more importantly respects rather than invalidates the effort and time spent with that character.
GW1 had this balance down really well. There was a little bit of lead up content for new characters, but the vast majority of each narrative was both profitable and narratively appropriate for existing characters, as well as allowing existing characters to flash back to that tiny chunk of content that served as the expansion’s “intro”
Additionally, a new class in GW1 meant new options for every existing character.
Elite specs are the new classes. Races are a concept only usable at the beginning of the story and for aesthetic purposes. Moving all the effort that would go in to a new racial story in to the real story, and moving all the work that would go in to a new race in to significantly more cosmetic options, armor, animations, and maps to explore for the existing ones really does benefit everyone more.
New players have no basis for comparison. GW2’s early game will still be stellar for them. Existing players will derive a _wealth of content whether they only ever play one character, have a full stable of alts, or are just looking for a reason to roll another one.
I just can’t see the value in adding “reroll required” content when the alternative results in a much grander experience that respects and builds upon the existing game rather than replacing parts of it, requiring players to retread other parts they’re already sick of, and results in yet another alt they’ll get bored of until the next expansion requires them to roll yet another alt, that’s they’ll then get bored of because not enough effort was put in to continuing content for the alts they already have.
And as I’ve said several times now, multiplayer =/= forced multiplayer, so just because it’s an MMO doesn’t mean you can say we should have to group up.
Yes. Yes it does equal forced multiplayer. Being required to play with or against other players is what makes it a multiplayer game rather than a game with the option of multiplayer.
Basketball is a multiplayer game
I can walk outside with my basketball. The hoop is there. However I can not play basketball. Basketball requires other players. It is a multiplayer game.
Assuming I could create a bunch of robots, then I could play something very much like basketball. It isn’t basketball though. It’s me being an unimportant participant in a game mostly decided by robots pretending to play basketball because I programmed them to. I am now accounting for 1/10th of the game, while it is mostly playing itself.
There being ten people on the court is what makes it basketball as much as there being ten people is what defines a raid.
Again, there is nothing wrong with NPCs. I play a lot of games where I command around a lot of NPCS. They’re great fun. They’re also specifically tunes and designed around that concept.
You are attempting to fit a square peg in a round hole just because you refuse grind the square peg until it is round.
The argument that you can’t find other people to play with will be made even worse by adding NPC replacements for players. They’ll do what they’re supposed to. They will replace players and by doing so severely limit the pool of players, like yourself, actively seeking others to join them.
The argument that you won’t find other people to play with because you don’t want to isn’t a problem with the design of the game. It’s a personal desire to “finish” content without being willing to do what is clearly required of you to do so.
It’s not a matter of “can” we do this. It’s a matter of “should” we do this.
In my personal opinion, no, we should not.
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless. There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.This.
However, when one plays an MMO, one should not expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. It is an MMO after all.
Some things in GW2 let you play solo and not group up. Some things are easier done in a group but can be done solo if you’ve got the skill. Some things require a group.
Yes, one should expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. You said you agreed with the comment who was saying that MMO doesn’t mean forced group play, but then you said not everything should be soloable because it’s an MMO. Which is it?
His first point:
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
I play solo. There’s something nice about playing with others, but not playing with others.
His second point:
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless.
This is true regardless of what percentage of the game is able to be done solo or not. I agree. So not sure how you would get that that means I’m being ambiguous on whether I want 100% ability to solo or not.
His third and final point:
There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.
Doesn’t mean that grouping with others is no longer a valid reason to play an MMO.
So I agreed with his post.
And then I went “However”. Which typically means that I’m about to give a counter argument.
Which was that just because what he said is true, doesn’t mean that the game should not have anything that requires group play.
And went on to say that GW2 has content for all types of players. Those that never want to group with others, those that sometimes want to group with others, and those who want to always group with others.
But you of course ignored the fast that most of the end game content is group only, and the majority of items related to progression are group only, so you can’t really viably play solo.
You absolutely can viably play solo if all you ever intent to play is the solo content. The “progression” you’re after is staged as group content because it is designed for groups
Nobody’s arguing that there shouldn’t be any solo content. What we’re saying is that it’s a really bad idea to embrace a philosophy in an MMO that all content is soloable.
At that point you are designing a very different game. You are limiting design choices based on the “solo potential” of content. You are functionally unable to design certain types of content, like raids and dungeons.
The entire design of the open world is the most soloable MMO in existiance and specifically designed to organically push players together in to mutually benefical temporary alliances to complete group events
GW2 does a fantastic job for solo players already, above and beyond any other game. The places where it doesn’t are a minority of the content, instanced raids, dungeons, and fractals. Furthermore _the rewards from that content are not in any way required for progression, and only reward in a cosmetic or monetary nature based upon the heightened difficulty of coordinating humans that are not perfectly tuned AI.
The fact is that GW1 henchmen and heroes had unintended consequences for the game. They made it more difficult to find groups, and eroded the social nature of the game. In structured group content that is explicitly designed as a social experience, and that is the minority of the content in the game this is a huge problem. We already saw it in fractals with the whole “lets roll swamps” situation before the latest patch.
Do you honestly think the game as a whole, not you personally, but the game as a whole would be better served by letting each player opt to walk in to what’s intended to be the most difficult content in the game with no expectation of teamwork, group strategy, or incentive to find new people to play with?
That’s the GW1 I remember at the end. It’s the same GW1 you’ll find if you log in today. A wasteland of content that doesn’t have the option of soloing, but the requirement to solo because there’s no need to find a group. No groupmates to later become good friends, and no socialization in a game designed primarily as a social experience.
Was able to find a group last week to do Urzog, and for some just casual conversations, which GW1 are you playing mate?
Of course you’re able to find people to do Urzog. Its one of the few areas in the game that you can’t fill the entire party with heroes and still get a fast clear because if you do you’re using a party of 8 rather than 12. You’re literally shooting youerself in the foot without at least one other player. You can limp to the finish line with your shot up foot, but it’s not an ideal experience there.
If anything you’re confirming my stance. The place you found a group was the place people aren’t allowed a full hero party.
But it’s still doable with heroes as you just said.
By that logic, dungeons are already soloable, fractals are already soloable, and the group events people complain aren’t soloable are, by and large, already soloable.
It’s just harder, requires specific characters, specific play patterns, and more effort and time for the same reward.
That’s actually false, because certain paths and fractals have mechanics that would require you to be in more than one place at once, and are therefore impossible to solo, no matter your skill level.
Exactly, its faulty logic. The reason one can still easily get a group for Urgoz but not pretty much any of the 8 man content in the game is that the game actively requires teaming up.
Can people solo dungeons and certain fractals/ sure. Are they less likely to do so because it offers a much reduced reward versus effort? Absolutely. Are fractals an overall better experience because of the higher number of players willing to join your group? Absolutely.
Should fractals be given NPC allies it necessitates those NPC allies, like GW1 heroes, be able to do the bulk of the work while you reap the same rewards for minimal effort. In that situation it massively erodes the player base for what is primarily designed as group content in a multiplayer game.
“But its an option!”
It’s only an option if you expect every player to completely ignore the basic reward mechanisms of the game, and you are willing to make the experience of people willing to do the content as designed worse for the benefit of of people who don’t want to do it in the first place
Basically, its the act of making your multiplayer game a worse multiplayer game so that people that don’t want to play multiplayer games can play it by themselves.
That is in no way better for the game, though it may serve the quite frankly selfish desires of people who feel they should be able to tackle any content at any time without interacting with any other players in a game that is designed around interacting with other players.
There are types of games designed around exactly this. Most action RPGs are designed from the ground up to provide a quality solo experience that scales with a group so that both ways are intended, viable, and appropriately balance risk and reward.
They’re also billed as being designed for between one and X number of players for this reason.
A game which calls itself a massively multiplayer game has no obligation to provide a solo option for every piece of content.
Not multiplayer auction house
Not multiplayer chat room
The term Massively Multiplayer Game has, right there in the term, the basic design goals. That the game parts of the game require more than one player, and that then number of players is generally very large so you have potential allies or enemies to interact with.
It’s a pretty simple concept, and I can’t for the life of me understand why people that want a mostly solo experiecne with the option of occasionally playing with other players don’t in stead choose to play games actually designed to do that thing
It’s like asking for handguns in a sports game. It’s just not appropriate for the overall design goals.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless. There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.This.
However, when one plays an MMO, one should not expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. It is an MMO after all.
Some things in GW2 let you play solo and not group up. Some things are easier done in a group but can be done solo if you’ve got the skill. Some things require a group.
Yes, one should expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. You said you agreed with the comment who was saying that MMO doesn’t mean forced group play, but then you said not everything should be soloable because it’s an MMO. Which is it?
His first point:
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
I play solo. There’s something nice about playing with others, but not playing with others.
His second point:
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless.
This is true regardless of what percentage of the game is able to be done solo or not. I agree. So not sure how you would get that that means I’m being ambiguous on whether I want 100% ability to solo or not.
His third and final point:
There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.
Doesn’t mean that grouping with others is no longer a valid reason to play an MMO.
So I agreed with his post.
And then I went “However”. Which typically means that I’m about to give a counter argument.
Which was that just because what he said is true, doesn’t mean that the game should not have anything that requires group play.
And went on to say that GW2 has content for all types of players. Those that never want to group with others, those that sometimes want to group with others, and those who want to always group with others.
But you of course ignored the fast that most of the end game content is group only, and the majority of items related to progression are group only, so you can’t really viably play solo.
You absolutely can viably play solo if all you ever intent to play is the solo content. The “progression” you’re after is staged as group content because it is designed for groups
Nobody’s arguing that there shouldn’t be any solo content. What we’re saying is that it’s a really bad idea to embrace a philosophy in an MMO that all content is soloable.
At that point you are designing a very different game. You are limiting design choices based on the “solo potential” of content. You are functionally unable to design certain types of content, like raids and dungeons.
The entire design of the open world is the most soloable MMO in existiance and specifically designed to organically push players together in to mutually benefical temporary alliances to complete group events
GW2 does a fantastic job for solo players already, above and beyond any other game. The places where it doesn’t are a minority of the content, instanced raids, dungeons, and fractals. Furthermore _the rewards from that content are not in any way required for progression, and only reward in a cosmetic or monetary nature based upon the heightened difficulty of coordinating humans that are not perfectly tuned AI.
The fact is that GW1 henchmen and heroes had unintended consequences for the game. They made it more difficult to find groups, and eroded the social nature of the game. In structured group content that is explicitly designed as a social experience, and that is the minority of the content in the game this is a huge problem. We already saw it in fractals with the whole “lets roll swamps” situation before the latest patch.
Do you honestly think the game as a whole, not you personally, but the game as a whole would be better served by letting each player opt to walk in to what’s intended to be the most difficult content in the game with no expectation of teamwork, group strategy, or incentive to find new people to play with?
That’s the GW1 I remember at the end. It’s the same GW1 you’ll find if you log in today. A wasteland of content that doesn’t have the option of soloing, but the requirement to solo because there’s no need to find a group. No groupmates to later become good friends, and no socialization in a game designed primarily as a social experience.
Was able to find a group last week to do Urzog, and for some just casual conversations, which GW1 are you playing mate?
Of course you’re able to find people to do Urzog. Its one of the few areas in the game that you can’t fill the entire party with heroes and still get a fast clear because if you do you’re using a party of 8 rather than 12. You’re literally shooting youerself in the foot without at least one other player. You can limp to the finish line with your shot up foot, but it’s not an ideal experience there.
If anything you’re confirming my stance. The place you found a group was the place people aren’t allowed a full hero party.
But it’s still doable with heroes as you just said.
By that logic, dungeons are already soloable, fractals are already soloable, and the group events people complain aren’t soloable are, by and large, already soloable.
It’s just harder, requires specific characters, specific play patterns, and more effort and time for the same reward.
Yes, but a good expansion doesn’t front load the experience to appeal disproportionately to new players at the expense of less content for existing ones.
Focusing on functionality aimed at existing characters creates the same impetus and reward for alts. You still have the opportunity for branching paths… that branch in a place that’s accessible for existing characters. You still have the incentive for people prone to roll alts to do so… because the new class specs offer a way to play a character they may not have otherwise rolled.
When you front load expansion features behind things that require shelving an existing experience to get any use out of at all rather than liberally leveraging existing characters you’re not creating more content in any way. You’re simply putting up barriers for an already invested population to enjoy your hard work, an in the end servicing new players much better that are statistically far less likely to stick around so you can reap the reward of your financial investiture in the game.
MMOs do not need to be built around “keep rolling more characters” moreso than “your character is an important participant in this world, with important things to do”
The effort put in to, say a whole racial storyline for a new race could be much better applied by creating a much more expansive story with more impactful branching paths for existing characters. The effort put in to designing a completely new class could be much better applied by adding new options to existing ones. New players will still derive all the value from it. People that roll alts to experience more branches or build options will still derive all the value from it. The difference is that it is not adding features to the game that literally require the player to step away from a beloved existing character to experience large parts of it.
If the Tengu join the fight, I shouldn’t have to roll a level 1 tengu to get that story, or understand its context. I should be able to have just as high quality an experience with just as much narrative depth by leveraging a character who already has extensive history in the world in the same way I as a player do, and derive benefit from it that fells valuable as progression of narrative or mechanics from it.
Sure, so long as you understand your perspective is merely an opinion not shared by the playerbase at large.
You say these terms such as “front load”, “barrier”, “impactful” and such which all rely on content additions conforming to a specific limitation you define. Ultimately, rolling an alt to experience more of the content introduced in an expansion should feel fun and interesting and not a burden or barrier.
You’re locked into an “or/else” mindset, which is the root of your issues here.
It’s not subjective. If you add a new race or class to the game it isn’t my mindset that creates the barrier. It is objectively a barrier. I literally can not experience that content without logging out of an existing character and creating a new one.
I don’t mind having to roll alts. However, given the choice of having the option or the requirement to experience large parts of expansion content I’d rather have the option.
New races and classes are not an option. They’re an imperative. If you want to experience one of a handfull of features on the list of that which are in the thing you just bought, log out of your character. There is in fact less content for your existing characters than if the same man hours were put in to fleshing out narrative and game play systems targeted at existing characters as a function of basic economics.
I’m sure people want to play as Tengu. What i’m saying is that when faced with the very real choice between arenanet spending time on a tengu story, or the same developers spending time on additional armor, voice work, narrative, and mechanics for existing characters, the existing characters seem to me a much higher priority.
MMOs are already by necessity repetitive. It seems foolish to go our of your way to make them more repetitive.
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless. There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.This.
However, when one plays an MMO, one should not expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. It is an MMO after all.
Some things in GW2 let you play solo and not group up. Some things are easier done in a group but can be done solo if you’ve got the skill. Some things require a group.
Yes, one should expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. You said you agreed with the comment who was saying that MMO doesn’t mean forced group play, but then you said not everything should be soloable because it’s an MMO. Which is it?
His first point:
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
I play solo. There’s something nice about playing with others, but not playing with others.
His second point:
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless.
This is true regardless of what percentage of the game is able to be done solo or not. I agree. So not sure how you would get that that means I’m being ambiguous on whether I want 100% ability to solo or not.
His third and final point:
There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.
Doesn’t mean that grouping with others is no longer a valid reason to play an MMO.
So I agreed with his post.
And then I went “However”. Which typically means that I’m about to give a counter argument.
Which was that just because what he said is true, doesn’t mean that the game should not have anything that requires group play.
And went on to say that GW2 has content for all types of players. Those that never want to group with others, those that sometimes want to group with others, and those who want to always group with others.
But you of course ignored the fast that most of the end game content is group only, and the majority of items related to progression are group only, so you can’t really viably play solo.
You absolutely can viably play solo if all you ever intent to play is the solo content. The “progression” you’re after is staged as group content because it is designed for groups
Nobody’s arguing that there shouldn’t be any solo content. What we’re saying is that it’s a really bad idea to embrace a philosophy in an MMO that all content is soloable.
At that point you are designing a very different game. You are limiting design choices based on the “solo potential” of content. You are functionally unable to design certain types of content, like raids and dungeons.
The entire design of the open world is the most soloable MMO in existiance and specifically designed to organically push players together in to mutually benefical temporary alliances to complete group events
GW2 does a fantastic job for solo players already, above and beyond any other game. The places where it doesn’t are a minority of the content, instanced raids, dungeons, and fractals. Furthermore _the rewards from that content are not in any way required for progression, and only reward in a cosmetic or monetary nature based upon the heightened difficulty of coordinating humans that are not perfectly tuned AI.
The fact is that GW1 henchmen and heroes had unintended consequences for the game. They made it more difficult to find groups, and eroded the social nature of the game. In structured group content that is explicitly designed as a social experience, and that is the minority of the content in the game this is a huge problem. We already saw it in fractals with the whole “lets roll swamps” situation before the latest patch.
Do you honestly think the game as a whole, not you personally, but the game as a whole would be better served by letting each player opt to walk in to what’s intended to be the most difficult content in the game with no expectation of teamwork, group strategy, or incentive to find new people to play with?
That’s the GW1 I remember at the end. It’s the same GW1 you’ll find if you log in today. A wasteland of content that doesn’t have the option of soloing, but the requirement to solo because there’s no need to find a group. No groupmates to later become good friends, and no socialization in a game designed primarily as a social experience.
Was able to find a group last week to do Urzog, and for some just casual conversations, which GW1 are you playing mate?
Of course you’re able to find people to do Urzog. Its one of the few areas in the game that you can’t fill the entire party with heroes and still get a fast clear because if you do you’re using a party of 8 rather than 12. You’re literally shooting youerself in the foot without at least one other player. You can limp to the finish line with your shot up foot, but it’s not an ideal experience there.
If anything you’re confirming my stance. The place you found a group was the place people aren’t allowed a full hero party.
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless. There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.This.
However, when one plays an MMO, one should not expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. It is an MMO after all.
Some things in GW2 let you play solo and not group up. Some things are easier done in a group but can be done solo if you’ve got the skill. Some things require a group.
Yes, one should expect everything in the game to be able to be done solo. You said you agreed with the comment who was saying that MMO doesn’t mean forced group play, but then you said not everything should be soloable because it’s an MMO. Which is it?
His first point:
The argument that not wanting to play in a group means you should just play a single player game drives me so nuts.
I play solo. There’s something nice about playing with others, but not playing with others.
His second point:
Not wanting to group to perform tasks doesn’t mean that the robust interactive world and economy of a MMO is worthless.
This is true regardless of what percentage of the game is able to be done solo or not. I agree. So not sure how you would get that that means I’m being ambiguous on whether I want 100% ability to solo or not.
His third and final point:
There is a great many reasons to play in a mmo other then to group with others.
Doesn’t mean that grouping with others is no longer a valid reason to play an MMO.
So I agreed with his post.
And then I went “However”. Which typically means that I’m about to give a counter argument.
Which was that just because what he said is true, doesn’t mean that the game should not have anything that requires group play.
And went on to say that GW2 has content for all types of players. Those that never want to group with others, those that sometimes want to group with others, and those who want to always group with others.
But you of course ignored the fast that most of the end game content is group only, and the majority of items related to progression are group only, so you can’t really viably play solo.
You absolutely can viably play solo if all you ever intent to play is the solo content. The “progression” you’re after is staged as group content because it is designed for groups
Nobody’s arguing that there shouldn’t be any solo content. What we’re saying is that it’s a really bad idea to embrace a philosophy in an MMO that all content is soloable.
At that point you are designing a very different game. You are limiting design choices based on the “solo potential” of content. You are functionally unable to design certain types of content, like raids and dungeons.
The entire design of the open world is the most soloable MMO in existiance and specifically designed to organically push players together in to mutually benefical temporary alliances to complete group events
GW2 does a fantastic job for solo players already, above and beyond any other game. The places where it doesn’t are a minority of the content, instanced raids, dungeons, and fractals. Furthermore _the rewards from that content are not in any way required for progression, and only reward in a cosmetic or monetary nature based upon the heightened difficulty of coordinating humans that are not perfectly tuned AI.
The fact is that GW1 henchmen and heroes had unintended consequences for the game. They made it more difficult to find groups, and eroded the social nature of the game. In structured group content that is explicitly designed as a social experience, and that is the minority of the content in the game this is a huge problem. We already saw it in fractals with the whole “lets roll swamps” situation before the latest patch.
Do you honestly think the game as a whole, not you personally, but the game as a whole would be better served by letting each player opt to walk in to what’s intended to be the most difficult content in the game with no expectation of teamwork, group strategy, or incentive to find new people to play with?
That’s the GW1 I remember at the end. It’s the same GW1 you’ll find if you log in today. A wasteland of content that doesn’t have the option of soloing, but the requirement to solo because there’s no need to find a group. No groupmates to later become good friends, and no socialization in a game designed primarily as a social experience.
And saying Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO is just silly. It did instance most of the content but it was an online game with persistent world areas and multiple players that allowed for organic socializing..
False. There were no persistant world areas. it didn’t instance most of the content. it instances all of the content and that is a very important distinction. The only places where one could encounter other players without being invited to do so were lobbies with no playable content outside of vendors.
Towns in GW1 would have functioned exactly the same if they were 2d user interfaces with lists of names.
The MMO idea that “expansion” literally means “start over” is ridiculous. When an expansion requires sheliving an existing character that the player is invested in as a prerequisite for benefitting from new content, the entire concept of “expansion” is diluted.
In the long run? Having activities, branches and choices that require starting over creates this little facet called “Alts” that, for a new player, gives them the feeling that not only do choices matter but that there is a real purpose to “starting over” or even if rolling up something they didn’t enjoy as much as they had planned there could still be options that they might love but just have to be discovered.
Yes, but a good expansion doesn’t front load the experience to appeal disproportionately to new players at the expense of less content for existing ones.
Focusing on functionality aimed at existing characters creates the same impetus and reward for alts. You still have the opportunity for branching paths… that branch in a place that’s accessible for existing characters. You still have the incentive for people prone to roll alts to do so… because the new class specs offer a way to play a character they may not have otherwise rolled.
When you front load expansion features behind things that require shelving an existing experience to get any use out of at all rather than liberally leveraging existing characters you’re not creating more content in any way. You’re simply putting up barriers for an already invested population to enjoy your hard work, an in the end servicing new players much better that are statistically far less likely to stick around so you can reap the reward of your financial investiture in the game.
MMOs do not need to be built around “keep rolling more characters” moreso than “your character is an important participant in this world, with important things to do”
The effort put in to, say a whole racial storyline for a new race could be much better applied by creating a much more expansive story with more impactful branching paths for existing characters. The effort put in to designing a completely new class could be much better applied by adding new options to existing ones. New players will still derive all the value from it. People that roll alts to experience more branches or build options will still derive all the value from it. The difference is that it is not adding features to the game that literally require the player to step away from a beloved existing character to experience large parts of it.
If the Tengu join the fight, I shouldn’t have to roll a level 1 tengu to get that story, or understand its context. I should be able to have just as high quality an experience with just as much narrative depth by leveraging a character who already has extensive history in the world in the same way I as a player do, and derive benefit from it that fells valuable as progression of narrative or mechanics from it.
However it is a narrative none the less, they want to tell a story and if things contradict too much or are too absurd, it crumbles. A child in a supposed highly dangerous area is such a thing.
Why?
When we take in to account that child is:
Why, all of a sudden does the appearance and success of one child seem so out of place? Do the Asura, as a race, seem out of place? They have the same advantages and disadvantages in the context of the world as Taimi does on a macroscopic scale. All of their military power is attributed to “Magitech” that allows them to leverage intellect in to offensive and defensive strength. Just like Taimi does. Taimi is simply the Asura ideal turned up to eleven, just like all of the other heroic main characters.
Marjory and Kasmeer are determined and tenacious despite bad circumstances. They’re humans.
Braham is headstrong and foolhardy, yet his impressive physical prowess covers for this weakness. He’s a Norn
Rox is a force of nature through a combination of physical ability and years of military discipline despite being emotionally stunted. She’s a Charr
In fact, the only character that really breaks form is Canach. The only reason he breaks form is to contrast Caithe, who is devoted to the mother tree, inquisitive, and holds dear the tenants of ventari. You know. A Sylvari.
In all that what defines these characters is how they cope with their weaknesses, not how they leverage their strengths. Braham learns to temper his pig-headedness. Rox learns to show emotional vulnerability and make friends. Canach and Caithe learn the value of independance and personal responsibility. Marjory and Kas… well the whole “we’re lesbians” thing took over their plot arc because it’s hard to write a race in a plot hook of ’we just get our butts kicked a lot" without literally making them just boring unstoppable kittenes.
Taimi IS asura. In fact she’s the MOST Asuran character in the game. That’s why she belongs, what makes her fun, and what makes her memorable.
It’s okay to not like a character because of what they represent, but making the “immersion” or “logic” argument in GW2 is just folly. It’s not because “It’s just magic so everything is OK” as much as it is that “It’s magic so the rules are extremely flexible.”
Taimi doesn’t even bend the rules all that much. Certainly far less than Canach, Eir’s fate, the convenient circumstances of the last HoT story mission, the central concept of Glint’s egg, and a host of other things more narratively problematic.
It’s all nonsense to one degree or another. It’s okay to not like some of the nonsense on a personal level. However, the idea that there’s some objective argument against Taimi rather than subjective dislike of the character doesn’t really hold any ground when you really look at the world and its story with a critical eye at this point in the franchise.
I don’t WANT Taimi to be “more reasonable” I wat her to live up to the hyper-asura she IS. I want her to design Scruffy 2.0 as a walking nuclear bomb that teabags dragons two at a time because it makes sense for the character, and more importantly, because the way she approaches these great inventions with a typical asuran disregard for safety and overestimation of her own capabilities creates entertaining stories and fun context for gameplay. That context makes her NEED our player character and other NPCs as much as we NEED her.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
You have it backward. GW1 was designed to be completely unsoloable. Henchmen were put there to fill gaps in a roster. They were never intended (until population dropped with GW2 and they added a cash shop option to field more than 3 heroes) to allow for solo play. They were there to allow you to fill a few spots in a group if you were only a couple players short.
Heroes were added later, largely as a narrative device. That’s why the player was limited to 3. They were never intended to enable solo play. They were intended to make a game designed completely around grouping easier to fill groups for in less than ideal conditions.
Wrong.
I did all of Proph with hench. Solo. Vanquished most of the world with Hero/hench, solo.
You were never forced to group with others if you did not choose to, beyond the noob rez sig quest or hiring a lever puller in Pre.
Also, Mercenary Heroes were added in 2011.
Off topic, how do you get away with using the name of an Historical Religious RL person/persons?
Yes. You did all of that with a group.
Of NPCs.
Designed to fill in for actual players.
The game was not designed as a solo experience. The NPCs were designed to make the game playable without strictly requiring you to fill a full party.
Is that clearer?
As for my name, I don’t find it remarkable. Plenty of historical/pop culture/mythology references are used as handles, character names, and other identifiers. It’s the internet. I’m certain if Anet feels its inappropriate they’ll ask me to change it.
Wasn’t your original point that Guild wars 1 was designed to be unsoloable when it’s primary selling slogan was “We let you play with your friends or Ours, join friends or play solo with a hand of skilled henchmen” and if you will note halfway through my post, there is a segment about using already pre exsisting NPC’s in lore to act functionally in said solo content. Solo in GW1 was harder than groups as it should be in 2
Solo in GW2 IS harder than groups. The only places where you require a group are parts specifically labeled as group content. That content is a minority of the available content.
What you fail to address, however, is the corrosive effect the hero system, and to a lesser extent the henchman system has on the multiplayer viability of a game explicitly designed for multiplayer PvE.
I’ll break it down for you. Lets say you add “heroes” for fractals. Are you under the impression that people will consider other players a viable option for grouping at that point? Fractals will go the way of GW1. A place where the only way for a new player to find others to play with is by doing only the most popular content of the month, or bringing existing friends with them.
That’s not a healthy design for a game where central selling point is that there’s a world of players t team up with, or a genre where the core of its design is that players play content with other players
Soloability in MMOs is a necessary evil to ensure that players have some activities to do in the absence of others. However, balancing the game so that the majority of it is completable solo is contrary to that basic design.
If you want to play a single player game, you are much better served in terms of story, player agency, and the way the world reacts to your actions by doing so. It’s just as bad to tack on cooperative multiplayer to a single player design as it is to tack on solo-enablers to a multiplayer design. Either way dilutes the intended experience by shoehorning something in to it that doesn’t mesh at beast and actively harms at worst the intended method of play.
Keep in mind GW1 was not an MMO, went out of its way to distance itself from the MMO genre, and was functionally a very lage co-op RPG with 3d lobbies.
GW2’s core design purpose was and is to be a “living world” that is persistant, full of players, and designed to make it painless and fun for those players to WANT to help one another through systems like personal XP, personal loot, lack of mob tagging, and so on. Soloability is as antithetical to the core design principles of MMOs as you can get. The only place where it’s appropriate is in your personal story, which is already instanced, and in routinely expanded by the s2 method of living story.
There is a minority of content that, yes, requires a player to assemble a group of players to complete in advance, just like there’s a minority of content specifically designed to discourage players from bringing any extra help. The vast majority, however, is designed to naturally push players in to organically helping one another without any first party requirements or adversarial relationships about who “owns” a mob, event, spawn, or ore node.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I’m guessing expansion 2 will be +1 profession heavy, medium, light, and +1 elite spec for each profession.
And no new race.
No new class either. Revnant was a completely unnecessary addition to the game. The mechanics of the Rev could have easily been second elite spec choices for existing classes with very few changes, and the game would have been better for it.
The entire design of elite specs was put in to place to limit the number of variables when balancing new build options. Continually adding new classes adds exponentially new balancing levers and harms rather than helps build diversity and class balance.
The game does not need new classes. It didn’t need five playable races for that matter, but in terms of actual content, a new race would be preferable to a new class, though the best option would be to do neither and in stead focus on more elite specs, armor, and other content.
The MMO idea that “expansion” literally means “start over” is ridiculous. When an expansion requires sheliving an existing character that the player is invested in as a prerequisite for benefitting from new content, the entire concept of “expansion” is diluted.
GW1 did this masterfully as new classes also added build options to existing characters. GW2’s model doesn’t have the same secondary class mechanism as it becomes unwieldy to balance after several releases. What we have in stead are elite specs, and going foward these should be the bulk of new player character options for expansions. Thus players are assured of a wealth of options on existing characters that are as valuable as choosing to roll new ones.
you have 5 slots for guilds. additionally, 1 of the 5 guilds im in switched from golden hollow to lost precipice. i dont know how they did it, but perhaps someone else is familiar with switching, other players or perhaps customer service.
You pay the 100 gold to the expedition NPC, and complete the expedition mission. When you switch halls this way, your guild hall is moved to the new one, and your guild retains all upgrades and guild inventory, though decorations are all placed in storage for obvious reasons.
This is the same system you’ll use to switch to new halls in the future as they are released in new expansions.
This makes no sense. You can only craft certain guild weapons with Shimmering Crystals and to have to MOVE your guild hall to have access to them is madness. Our guild hall is like level 50 (or more) and I have checked that second slot almost every day, but I often forget. Those things should be there EVERY day if you can’t mine them in Gilded Hollow.
That’s the general idea. Your choice of hall determines what is made there. Expect future halls to have their own special resources and armor skins. Guild halls are not aestheticall equal, and so it follows that what is constructed within them is not aesthetically equal either, as those skins are meant to be a reflection of the hall your guild has chosen.
Just like PvP skins come from PvP, the new WvW skins come from WvW, etc. Certain skins are limited to certain means of acquisition.
There is, however, nothing preventing you from establishing relationships with guilds that own other halls if you want the aesthetics that their hall provides. The system is designed to account for multiple guild membership.
You have it backward. GW1 was designed to be completely unsoloable. Henchmen were put there to fill gaps in a roster. They were never intended (until population dropped with GW2 and they added a cash shop option to field more than 3 heroes) to allow for solo play. They were there to allow you to fill a few spots in a group if you were only a couple players short.
Heroes were added later, largely as a narrative device. That’s why the player was limited to 3. They were never intended to enable solo play. They were intended to make a game designed completely around grouping easier to fill groups for in less than ideal conditions.
Wrong.
I did all of Proph with hench. Solo. Vanquished most of the world with Hero/hench, solo.
You were never forced to group with others if you did not choose to, beyond the noob rez sig quest or hiring a lever puller in Pre.
Also, Mercenary Heroes were added in 2011.
Off topic, how do you get away with using the name of an Historical Religious RL person/persons?
Yes. You did all of that with a group.
Of NPCs.
Designed to fill in for actual players.
The game was not designed as a solo experience. The NPCs were designed to make the game playable without strictly requiring you to fill a full party.
Is that clearer?
As for my name, I don’t find it remarkable. Plenty of historical/pop culture/mythology references are used as handles, character names, and other identifiers. It’s the internet. I’m certain if Anet feels its inappropriate they’ll ask me to change it.
The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible.
They’re learned their lesson eh? Does that mean they wont try charging $50 for a very content light xpack again?
The two things they learned were the cost/grind balance in HoT wasn’t in line with the expectations of their players. This is why they switched gears to bring it back in line with the April patch. They saw their established community voting with their wallets. That problem is solved now, and we shouldn’t see such a radical change in the grind versus income level in future expansions.
The second lesson they learned is that GW2 players expected a MUCH larger amount of core-like content for kitten price tag.
PvP and WvW players will not pick up an expansion that has very little content for them. You’ll need more than one elite spec and three armor skins. You’ll need to give WvW heads a way to use your new systems without requiring them to do other stuff.
PvE players will not be content with both a lack of new repeatable content to play AND a lack of new easily available skins. People would be fine with the content of HoT’s maps if it also came with a metric ton of new loot. In GW2, stats are not loot for PvE players. Sure, they added some new stat sets, runes, and sigils, but GW2’s design necessitates that stat adjustments are easy to get and require very little player effort. “Loot” in GW2 is skins. All skins. Despite weapon skins being faster to implement, weapon skins are less desirable than armor skins due to the mechanics of the game. It is far more likely an individual player can use an armor skin than a weapon skin. Thus, there’s less player satisfaction when you add a massive range of weapon skins than armor skins simply because players look at the pool of avaliable loot and can use a third of the armor, and a tenth or less of the weapons.
Players will not be willing to put up with repeating four maps, even if they’re very good maps, (and I personally think the HoT maps are fantastic) when they’ve acquired all of the loot in just a couple weeks, most of it as guaranteed drops or vendor purchases.
In future expansions I’d expect to see multiple elite specs (as these have mass appeal to every part of the player base, regardless of content type) a much larger number of armor skins (again, rewards that the entire player base can get behind and that can be rewarded to all three game modes through various means) less weapon skins (as Anet has learned people are perfectly happy to buy black lion skins for weapons, and that weapons aren’t as good a value proposition per man hour for player satisfaction as they though) and a larger focus on expanding content rather than systems (they did the heavy lifting with HoT, and while people are generally supporting of the systems they bemoan there’s not enough content for any of those systems)
As well i think they’re realizing that attempting to make everyone happy all at once is impossible. They’re beginning to take a page out of blizzard’s book here and hyper-focusing on part of the player base in major ways, then moving to a different part, and so on. All groups of players are minorities, and thus any feature or content will only ever serve a minority. In Anet’s drive to respond to player needs they fell in to a mire of feature creep trying to simultaneously please every minority.
We’ll see how it shakes out, but since Mo took over for Colin, Anet seems to have a much closer understanding of the compromise between developer vision and player expectation. I’d expect every patch to be a big focus on one area of the game, with a reasonable rotation between focuses, and Expansions to be the big content drops that have something for everyone, most of that something being things like elite specs and skins that are easier to design once and deploy across the entire game.
You have it backward. GW1 was designed to be completely unsoloable. Henchmen were put there to fill gaps in a roster. They were never intended (until population dropped with GW2 and they added a cash shop option to field more than 3 heroes) to allow for solo play. They were there to allow you to fill a few spots in a group if you were only a couple players short.
Heroes were added later, largely as a narrative device. That’s why the player was limited to 3. They were never intended to enable solo play. They were intended to make a game designed completely around grouping easier to fill groups for in less than ideal conditions.
Minis are collectables, like trading cards. The entire point of minis is that some are “out of print” some are “common” and some are “rare”
The only thing that really needs to change about minis is that some of them that aren’t obtainable ingame aren’t tradable, but then again, Anet has shown a willingness to bring items back in to rotation.
Though some players only acquire a few minis that they really like for personal use and display, that’s not the intention of miniatures as a system. It’s a system there to appeal to collectors. Unavailable and limited edition stuff is part and parcel of such a system.
I just want gods of Tyriato come down. I always wanted to meet Kormir ^^
I’ve met Kormir. It’s nothing special. She just shambled around a lot, bumped in to things, and told other people what to do like an even less useful version of Traherne.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the gods fleeing tyria in the face of the elder dragons was her idea in the first place.
Long ago, players were having fun by using temporary items in GW2. You know, things you buy from NPCs, like golem in a box, spike fruits, etc.
Despite these items being useful, Anet decided WvW should be “competitive” and removed them. Then players would find another temporary items with an interesting wvw use, then they’d have to nerf that, and so on.
After a while Anet just went with the nuclear option and disabled all inventory-clicky items from WvW because their player base was whiny.
Can teleport from the middle of any field to any waypoint.
Can’t use the expensive giant portal mechanism in your guild hall to do the same.
Dedicated hardware less useful than just, IDK, clicking your heels together?
You’re basically asking them to invest additional effort to give people reasons NOT to pay them for their work. That’s just dumb.
Or you just dumb down the trait system, introduce powercreept traitlines and lock them behind a paywall whilst watching your playerbase dwindle because of nonexistant balance.
The player base that is dwindling is the player base on non-paying customers. I doubt they care all that much about the needs of people that aren’t willing to be customers.
Meta in competitive games with paid expansion steps ALWAYS revolves around new content or options found in the expansions. Players that care enough about being competitive are the players they care about balancing around.
Players that expect to remain competitive whilst remaining non-customers in their new financial model that hinges around people choosing to buy expansions are never going to be a priority.
Also, PvP population balance in GW2 isn’t a function of balance. It’s a function of GW2s competitive PvP being hilariously poorly designed from the beginning.
They’ve built a low TTK system heavily focused around movement and made your core competitive game mode revolve around staying confined in small circles and not fighting on the move.
They’ve attempted to shoehorn meaningful pvp roles in to a combat system explicitly designed to remove the need for roles.
They’ve built a combat system heavily dependant on CC and active mitigation around high damage and low health pools so that the impact points of any given fight can be counted on one hand.
They’ve tried to create a spectator sport out of a system that is nearly impossible for a passive observer to understand.
They’ve created a ranked league system built around being “fair” to people that solo que.
There’s a long list of why PvP sucks in GW2, but expansion versus core balance is such a non-issue it has no place on it. If you care about being competitive, it stands to reason you care enough to buy an expansion. If you don’t care enough to buy the expansion, they don’t care if your interest dwindles and you stop playing. You’re not a paying customer in the first place, you’re not meaningfully creating content by being an adversary for the players that do, and generally they have no incentive to care what you think.
Player interest isn’t and has never been low as a result of expansion classes. It’s low because PvP in GW2 is badly designed from the ground up and the haphazard balance is a symptom of these core problems, not the cause.
Plenty of board games (most of which are, like WvW, all about territory control and PPT) don’t tally the score until the end.
Even in traditional sports, people have a tendancy to tune out if the game is already decided before the halfway mark if its obvious there’s no opening for a turnaround.
WvW is not a sport. It never will be. The number of players on the field varies by the minute, you have no control over the composition of the teams, and the participants can choose to leave the field at any time with no repurcussions.
Making sports analogies in relation to WvW is like comparing apples and oranges. It isn’t a sport, and it isn’t a competitive mode, and it never will be. It’s a casual, instant gratification interpretetion of open world siege pvp that only holds player interest as long as the moment to moment play remains interesting.
There are no instrinsic concept or benefits of ownership, no stakes, and literally nothing that makes “real” competition in a siege metagame work. It’s just a large population pvp map with objectives designed to shuffle players in to large group engagements. That’s all it will ever be. It is a meaningless war for no stakes that never ends, never benefits the victor, and never punishes the loser.
And that’s fine. That’s why the rewards revamp focused on personal reward rather than objective based reward. It’s the only logical reward structure for a system that has only ever been about personal gratification and playing war games in stead of attempting to simulate the decision making and tactical processes that go in to a more detailed and impactful actual war game.
If anything, the entire concept of matches and score could be removed from WvW and it would change nothing. The score doesn’t matter, winning or losing doesn’t matter, and there are so many variables inherant in its systems that ensuring “fair” or “competitive” match ups is an impossibility.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I really don’t find Taimi harms my immersion in a world with such haphazard lore as GW2 in the first place. In a world where lasers, black powder firearms, and bows and arrows all have the same military utility, the entire plot is built around a series of Deus Ex Machinas, and general nonsense is liberally inserted at every turn simply for visual impact.
What makes GW2 interesting is its characters and how they take the absolute nonsense insanity of the world around them in stride. Taimi is no more immersion breaking, for me, than “Rifle” and “Bow” being equivalent options for ranged warfare, or people in heavy armor dodging all over the place like monkeys on PCP. A world in which an asura with a hammer and a Norn with a hammer of are roughly equivalent combat capability. A world in which people literally bring knives to magical laser gun fights like its just another tuesday. And that’s not a disconnect between player mechanics and lore. That’s literally just NPCS, fully in world, making all these anachronisms.
In all that, it’s not at all unbelivable that some kid builds a hotrod golem and runs all over the jungle just fine, while also being the only special snowflake that can unravel all the science things.
It’s heroic fantasy in the most ridiculous setting. This is not GW1 lore, where ridiculous things were constrained and the the world made an attempt at being belivable in the first place. This is GW2, where giant steampunk tanks and magic-powered laser guns find catapults threatening, and a jungle that took down a fleet of airships in a matter of seconds doesn’t immediately crush everyone that sets foot inside it.
If your argument is immersion, you’re already playing the wrong game. GW2 requires ridiculous levels of suspension of disbelief to be in any way immersive in the first place. The only consistancy is that the people in the world actually treat its ridiculous internal logic like it makes sense and behave accordingly. If not for the characters, GW2’s world is a laughable funhouse mash of up fantasy and science fiction tropes for no other purpose than visual spectacle.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
Now if you would ask me for an improvement… get rid of the processing (Even though its only 30 sec now) as it no longer has a use with resonance also removed. Just auto complete the scribe recipe after you scribe them.
So much this. I don’t think anyone particularly cared about the time to craft and resonance system. If anything it helped spread out the crafting and made the costs feel more managable.
Now that its 30 seconds and the costs are reduced down to a point where you’re encourages to make 10-20 items at a time, running back and forth to the assembly feels like needless busywork in stead of the long term planning mechanism it was when stuff took hours/days to complete.
I’m fins with the time to craft removal, but at 30 seconds per item, for every item, the entire assembly step is just a vestige of the old system. That thing needs to be removed or repurposed in to something else.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
I think C. There should be a confirmation box when you buy basic decos if you don’t actually have the guild rank to use them.
People should have the ability to donate, but since it seems certain individuals can’t be bothered to actually research scribing or pay attention to Cullen’s warning about scribing when they learn it, we could use another step of idiot-proofing.
I’m sick of seeing posts about people complaining that they don’t actually understand how decorations work and then get mad that they can’t craft/use decorations. This could use a QOL step so we can just say “You got a warning box.”
That said, this isn’t a systemic issue. It’s a guild issue. The system works fine as is. Certain people just expect it to be something it isn’t. It’s not a personal crafting disc for personal use. It’s a guild discipline that requires guild permissions, guild space, and primarily crafts things usable and owned by guilds.
Get used to it.
Elite specs are the new balance target for the game. Their mistake wasn’t making daredevil better than base thief (or any elite spec petter than the base class) but rather releasing that system with only one elite spec option to begin with.
Core trait lines must be inferior on some level because they can be combined with all future elite specs. That’s just a reality of the system. Build diversity is never going to be “you can use an elite spec or core” going forward, it’s going to be “you have a choice of elite specs to use, and you can use some or all of the features of the one you pick”
Acrobatics CAN’T be a viable alternative to DD simply because it has the potential to stack with DD any more than some elite spec can be a worse version of ciritical strikes or shadow arts.
Also, you’re delusional if you think there’s any universe in which a company puts out an expansion and cares at all about fair balance toward people that refuse to financially support their game by buying the occasional expansion. It’s like expecting better service at a restaurant despite the fact you never tip the servers.
You’re basically asking them to invest additional effort to give people reasons NOT to pay them for their work. That’s just dumb.
Thieves will never have a max range weapon simply because of our innate core mobility. The reason we have lower range weapons is because we are already amazing at disengaging from fights via a large number of stealth and teleport options. Combining that wil fighting on the outer edge of weapon ranges would result in a thief that is literally uncounterable.
People need to stop pipe dreams of thief rifle being some sort of stealthy sniper kit. it is never going to happen. If thief gets rifle, it’s going to bet max a 1000 range weapon, and it’s not going to have great burst potential. Rifle will likely be in a ranged spec with lots of CC. Longbow will likely be in a ranged spec with condi damage.
guild halls should be done like GW1, have a sigil that anymone can buy, keep it at a normal price (like 50 gold or so).
now every single guild is able to get a guild hall, now no one can act like they are more superior. (like some guilds love to do)
Nothing in this thread is about getting the hall. Every single guild can get a hal easily. it gosts 100 gold an a really easy mission you can just LFG five people to complete.
Getting the hall is the easy part.
It’s about the cost of making the hall do anything useful. The Upgrades. That’s what people are complaining about.
It’s also the same system used in the first game. Guild Hall upgrading makes players choose between themselves and supporting the guild. Same as the first game. A hall doesn’t do anything useful (except to use it as a GvG map). Upgrading the hall unlocks NPCs and services.
It’s literally the exact same system as the first game, only easier. The Price of a hall in the first game was’nt a flat rate. Those seals came exclusively from player that won the HoH. The NPC that sold them, like all GW1 trade NPCs could only resell what another player sold in the first place. In GW2, nobody needs to “win” the right to get a hall via a worldwide pvp tournament. They just need to kill a couple easy mobs.
Alternately, come up with a name someone else didn’t altready come up with. You can use SPACES in GW2. It’s not that hard.
What is really annoying with this upgrade is that Cullen continues to sell everything at 50s even if after you get the upgrades. -_-
Agreed. I don’t understand why you need 2 NPCs who sell the same things at two different prices at all. It’s like they want you to mess up deliberately.
Yep. They should drop Cullen’s prices to concide with your upgrades just like they updatesd his list when you unlocked new basic decos before the patch.
HoT’s mobs, like the core game’s mobs each have one “main mechanic” that you have to learn.
Unlike the core game’s mobs, however, the HoT mob’s mechanics can actually kill you.
In Core tyria, Ettins smash for a stun. Fight some Ettins, you learn to dodge the stun. Wolves howl to summon more wolves. Fight some wolves, you learn to interrupt the howl so you don’t have to waste time killing mobs that don’t drop anything.
List goes on, but each mob has usually some basic attacks and one “trick”
However, most of the mechanics of the core mechanics aren’t lethal, and can often be safely ignored, even when playing solo. HoT follows the same design pattern, but each mob’s ‘trick’ is potentially lethal if not countered. Pocket raptors swarm attack all at once for a high spike from the pack. Hammer Mordrem have a big cone. Snipers have a sniper shot, frogs have the fan shot or the slow dagger chain, mushrroms have the explosion/damage pools, etc.
HoT’s mobs are only super lethal until youl earn how to fight them, but unlike core tyria, you don’t have the option of choosing to not learn how to fight them. In Core tyria, not countering mob mechanics just results in a less efficient fight. In HoT not countering mob mechanics can result in your death.
If you want to love HoT but find yourself dying a lot, start by learning your opponents. Every one of them has a simple to learn counter, and the beginning bits of each zone generally let you fight one or twoat a time individually to give you an opportunity to learn their patterns and how best to fight them.
Good luck!
T2 tavern gives the 15% waypoint discount though, which is why we bothered to upgrade the hall at all tbh lol
15% of 4 silver is 60 copper.
That’s two mobs killed, and that’s the rare occasion that you’re actually waypointing all the way across the map.
It’s nice that it’s a passive upgrade, but when we polled our guild everyone decided it wasn’t work 16 THOUSAND flax plus elonian wine etc. etc.
Upgrading the workshop’s and its harvesting nodes will surpass the savings from the waypoint discount much more cheaply, as will upgrading the market and its guild trader, allowing your guild members to turn their commendations in to 1+ gold, and new players to save significant amounts of money on ascended recipies. if you have people that want to scribe, halving the cost of basic decorations seriously reduces their cost to level scribing. (Even though its no longer a strictly necessary upgrade)
The war room and arena, even if you don’t WvW are extremely cheap sources of guild XP to unlock further upgrades for the market/workshop.
Its your guild, but if your primary complain is cost of upgrades, I’d suggest you do a bit more work on getting the biggest bang for your buck. T1 everything for the guild mission slots, and buffs (each buff bought upgrades all of your buffs) then focus onthe market so you can turn spare commendations in to gold on the tradepost, then focus on the workshop to prove easy passive harvesting income during down time.
Hold off on mine upgrades until they’re actually required to raise your aetherium cap. Ignore the mining rate upgrades since they’re useless if you don’t consistantly have enough resources to do multiple upgrades at a time. Abuse the cheap costs in the Arena/War Room to farm XP for guild levels.
For the money you’re putting in to a T2 bar, you could be making more money, have better buffs, and generally be getting more benefit from the expense of the upgrades.
15% waypoint discount is just a bad value proposition if your problem is that you find thins too expensive.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
I’d guess it has a lot to do with stat distribution and crafting costs. The larger pieces, like the chestpiece are by default more valuable drops, as they’re more expensive to craft, and are an overall bigger stat buff.
They likely avoided making a distinction between weapon boxes since choice of weapon is a major build choice, and one some classes one drop or the other would be useless for the build despite 2h weapons being generally more valuable.
Armor on the other hand, assuming you don’t have the piece, is always a useful drop since everyone uses the same armor slots.
It’s a great idea to keep the focus on owning maps. However, it would be a wasted gesture. WvW is simple enough to monitor that it would just force people in to using third party tools to tally the score.
In order for this sort of “endgame tally only” thing to work, the entire scoring system would need to change, the API would have to be truncated, and a whole lot of other stuff.
I like the sentiment of the idea, but it’s just impractical.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
This is a huge waste of mats to craft something before being able to preview it and then realizing it is crappy looking. Not everything is listed in the wiki yet.
The wiki does not have everything yet. Pirate flags being one of those things as well as some others not listed. I believe the wiki is player generated? but why couldn’t the dev’s list these pics here before launch?
You are correct, looks like the decorations that require the mast are also missing.
Why Tier 2 tavern? My guild is L39 and still hasn’t upgraded the tavern because it’s hands down the least useful structure.
The only benefits it confers are minor guild waypoint and run speed buffs and the ability to scribe guild world boss starters. All of the banners can be purchased in a cheaper and more useful version with commendations from the vendor in the Guild Initiative HQ.
Do yourself a favor and skip the T2 bar. Buy cheaper upgrades from the arena/war room to get enough guild XP to unlock whatever additional non-bar upgrades you’re after.
and things you buy with guild commendations should go into your inventory not the guilds. Especially when you are use to the items doing that then u puchase a lattice and dont read the fine print and get screwd. lol. Other guilds i’m in have a larger daily purchase , so i thought i’d hop on theirs and buy an extra things and bring it back to my other guild. NOPE I’m wrong. Guild commendations wasted!
I’s just odd that some things like “Tub of wood glue” and “bolts of embroidered silk” go into your inventory but “lattice” goes directly into guild inventory was the point here. And why aren’t all purchaseable things from these vendors available all the time? It’s annoying and an unnessecary complication. You would think more things become available if you unlock it and once maxed level it would not rotate through items daily, it would just list them all.
Decorations. All decorations are property of the guild. There is no concept of personal ownership for guild hall decorations, whos only purpose is to decorate the guild’s hall.
Perhaps in the future they’ll expand the system to some kind of decoratable personal housing, but for the time being there is no such thing.
It rotates the decorations to maintain a sense of rarity, and to further reward upgrading the trader for more purchases per day. Yes, it’s more difficult to acquire things this way, but that’s the entire point.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: PopeUrban.2578
Ingame preview option wouldn’t be a bad idea. However, the wiki has a gallery of every single decoration (many with pumpkins for scale)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decoration
Just click the links for the various categories and there’s a gallery.
The only omission is the large guild banner because, as far as anyone knows, it is impossible to obtain.
It sounds like what you enjoyed about the core game was that it was a really laid back experience that didn’t demand too much of you. That is true, but Anet’s metrics proved that very experience was leading to a lack of player retention.
The increased difficulty in HoT is intentional. It’s sad that you’re not excited to face a challenging map, but the majority of players find that challenge manageable and fun.
Posts like this often indicate a dissatisfaction with the content, but the content is the logical step forward GW2 needed after years of complaints from players about nothing to do, and simply pressing 1 in zerg events.
The change here is that the game has moved forward, and you are not willing to move forward with it. There’s nothing wrong with that. There are still thousands of players willing to play old, easier content with you every day.
Why the unrelenting pressure to do PvP? Or WvW? or World Bosses?
Why the unrelenting pressure to do fractals?
Why the unrelenting pressure to run all over every map clicking random things, and being led around by the whim of repetitive NPCS?
I mean if you look hard enough I’m sure everyone can find something they dislike about the game and call its reward system “unrelenting pressure” using the same logic.
Jumping puzzles are part of GW2. They’ve been part of GW2’s core content since launch. Your problem is that you’re unwilling to do something else, or that you feel you’re owed a daily for only doing thing you, personally want to do.
All people may not enjoy all of the content in the game. There’s nothing wrong with that. Either you want the daily bad enough to do something you may not enjoy, or you ignore it.
While I agree with others who have posted here saying “block, report and move on” it still makes me wonder how ANet hasn’t managed to shut down PvPBank on its own. God knows they could afford the lawyers to go after these gold spammers. It’s a malicious attack on ANet’s profits and customers, I can’t understand why they haven’t been able to get that site shut down. Perhaps it’s some kind of legal issue with where the spammers are located.
It is in fact a legal issue.
Most gold selling sites operate from locations in asia where it is completely legal to run such a business. Such is the case with pvpbank, and thus ANET has no legal grounds to raise a case. This is why virutally every online has spammers. For the spammers, it’s often the only job they can get (and it still doesn’t pay all that much) and socially they often don’t understand the hate directed at their profession, so there’s no ‘guilt factor’ to push people away from those jobs.
First, favor is an extremely easy resource to acquire, even in a solo guild.
The real limit on upgrades is resources. Resources which can be bought, like influence from the promoter, with gold.
Set your guild missions to PvE. Your favor income from soloing one easy trek in a week is enough to pay for an upgrade that week. If you pull a bounty or race, do it on reset day on mondey and you’re almost assured to find another guild doing it. You’ll get credit for it.
My guild has a lot of members, but there are rarely more than five members online at the same time, as our schedule is spread out throughout the day. After the first few upgrades to missions, we usually don’t event guild complete the soloable ones any more because we’re constantly capped on favor. One you hit the favor cap the first time, you’re unlikely to ever be short on favor to complete an upgrade again due to the timed nature of aetherium mining and the cost of upgrade materials.
In general, as long as you’re guild completing at least one, maybe two missions a week, you’re golden unless you have an abnormally high rate of material contribution for such a small guild, or have wasted your time and resources taking unnecessary mining speed upgrades that fill your aetherium faster than you can get resources/favor for upgrades.
In my experience the mining rate upgrades are a waste of time and money for guilds that don’t already have thousands of gold worth of resources ready to go for upgrades. Capacity is a waste until you literally require higher capacity to get higher tier upgrades.
Favor is the opposite of challenging to acquire for smaller guilds. The system you want to bring back already exists. If you’re willing to leverage gold in lieu of contributions, you can do that already, and it’s going to get you a lot farther than favor. After the first week HoT came out, favor became almost a non-resource.
Just do the missions you can actually achieve each week. Ignore “suggested player” counts and try them anyway. There is no cost for failing, and you’ll fuind that the “suggested” counts on many are gross overestimations.
(edited by PopeUrban.2578)
You’re approaching Taimi as if the Commander personally had a choice in the matter. You didn’t. In fact the Commander and the part did in fact tell her to ‘scram, kid’
She didn’t. And thus, because the Commander and by extension his party are just, decent, heroic people, the eye-rolled and took care of the stubborn kid. They found out she’s actually valuable.
She decided not to because, as in reality, being in command of the situation does not equate to being in control of the situation.
Of course she shouldn’t be on the front lines. However, Taimi, as a person, feels an intense need to do so. Would the plot be better served if you could just leave her on the side of the road somewhere? I mean, she’s a liability, it would make tactical sense. However, it wouldn’t be very heroic.
What’s a more interesting character, the able-bodied tank gunner that just goes and sits in the tank, or the crippled tank gunner that SHOULD let someone else sit in the tank, but refuses to because it’s his tank, that he designed, and he feels personally responsible for the war the tank is being used in?
You’re attempting to apply logic without accounting for the internal absence of logic in heroic storytelling. All heroes are heroic only because of a schism in logical storytelling. It’s never logical for the underdog to take on the giant monster. The logical thing to do would be to retreat, get a giant army, and come back.
In fact that’s what you did in the original living story.
In HoT, the story begins with that army being completely dissassembled, your close friends being captured, and you and your closest allies taking the shortest possible route to victory because there’s not time to take the most logical option.
Of course she shouldn’t be on the front lines. The fact that she is anyway is what makes her an interesting character. I really don’t want a plotline filled with nothing but Rytlocks. Boring Soldiery types with no apperant physical or psychological flaws. Flaws are what define interesting characters. Overcoming flaws is what defines heroic characters.
By default, The Commander is a legit kitten. Both because it’s the player character, and because ascribing detailed personality traits to what’s supposed to be a character of the player’s design and creation is a bad idea. Any good war story only has room for a very small number of legit kittenes. What makes those stories interesting are the people that aren’t ideal, aren’t sure of themselves, and fight anyway.
Nobody’s debating that Taimi is inappropriate for the role that she’s in. The fact that she’s inappropriate for it and is able to do it anyway is what makes her interesting. The idea you could look all over Rata Sum and not find one other Asuran Child (or adult) capable of that. That makes her the exception which creates a heroic narrative.
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