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Well, they likely have already read it – they state they read most threads, but rarely post due to time or tone of many threads. It’s likely any point will have been made already, although the impact will have been massively lessened by some of the posts in that thread.
As an interesting sociological experiment check out Marvel Heroes where the creative director (colin equiv) is one of the most active posters on the forums responding to all manner of player posts. The net effect is one of the most healthy player communities I have experienced, right up there with lotro. Marvel Heroes has actually had the opposite trajectory to GW2. MH’s launch was a disaster and the game was not even coherent. GW2, at launch was one of the best games I ever played. I understood the manifesto and that this was a very different game. MH though began getting seriously better over time while GW2 floundered and moved further and further from its founding philosophy.
And, with MH you even have none other than David Brevik streaming MH gameplay a couple nights a week with his wife. It’s hard to properly understand the importance of Brevik in gaming history. For those who know the history he didn’t exactly invent the ARPG but he did define it for a generation of gamers with Diablo. It’s pretty wild watching someone like Brevik, now CEO, streaming gameplay. The contrast with GW2’s culture is dramatic.
So the interest is in how the company relates to the players. And, the best way to get it is to simply check it out. It’s worth it for the gaming sociology if for nothing else.
Final Rest. :P
(I don’t mind them adding scythes at some point, though.)
Yeah, my necro already has a scythe in GW2 and it’s called Final Rest.
Tybalt is more pro, he’s not even dead- he just saw his way out by faking his death & is retired in southsun & I don’t blame him!
Definitely a better ending than Anet gave him. Cheers.
Yo, that’s about all those Deadpools, eh, nothing more, nothing less. (At least in Canada)
I believe both that increased difficulty can be a better teacher and that GW2 could do a better job of providing information about the game. This issue is not a dichotomy.
Thats something I dont know about. I like more difficulty but I make no assumptions that others do too.
It may teach better but that is under the assumption that most want to learn or want something more difficult. Dont confuse difficult with new
There most certainly is a dichotomy with regard to players who want greater difficulty and those who don’t. I used the word can rather than will for precisely that reason. Some people will react to difficulty by figuring out a better way to do things. Others post on forums about the game being “too hard.” Still others quit. Similarly, better conveyance of information about the game will not teach those who don’t want to learn, either.
And, others will realize that “difficulty” done right will meet the needs of the broad diversity of players in any modern MMO. If there are issues around “difficulty” it simply means the game has not been properly conceived.
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I don’t think they are trying to lose players. And the problem for me started with the lost souls (sic) patch in 11/12. People need to get the history right. This is the point where they were no longer driven by a vision and just began floundering around trying to produce a game that people didn’t complain about. The sad thing is that they did have the vision of what a great game should be. It was gone by 11/12. Just wanted to correct the history here.
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I’m not looking for any given roles. Only appropriate meaningful roles.
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1. Never suggested I spoke for every human. Just me and a very small group at that.
2. People grouping ad hoc in various ways is not what we are talking about. In combat we talk about major roles like infantry, artillery, air power, etc. This is obvious in our experience and doesn’t really need to be defended.
3. So no, I’m not wrong as you have not demonstrated any way in which I am wrong. But thank you for the opportunity to continue this conversation.
4. In a battle of elite soldiers? How about an actual battle as I described with the initiation of the battle with Iraq. It was a battle described by roles because that’s the way we conceptualize combat. Obviously.
Not sure exactly what your contribution to the discussion is, but thank you for it!
Ok, let me take it back to the OP because debating random wars, doesnt seem that relevant in this case
Not everyone likes, or needs a trinity system or a required role system to solve battle problems. Not everyone wants to play those types of games, or feels like combat should always be about that. There are many ways players can work together.
Guild wars battle system is actually pretty good, and they should expand on its strengths instead of turning it into something else. Enemy design and encounters are a different issue.
Who wants to debate a random war?=
I have no particular love for the trinity and obviously am not arguing for it. My issue is simply with the lack of meaningful combat roles.
And, if you were paying attention the GW2 battle “system” is pretty bad. That’s why we have all these threads. Debate a random war? Whatever does that mean?
Small group/large group is an utterly useless distinction. Do you remember when I said scavenger hunts were conducted in a role-based manner. All human group activity when pursuing an objective is role-based. The size of the group is irrelevant. If combat in GW2 ignores this facet of human nature, it will suffer to the degree it does.
What is relevant is the roles played by group members. A military ToO involving infantry, artillery and armor is not the same as an infantry squad. Yes, there are roles in both, but roles in an infantry squad are different from those across various branches of an army.
Your point is irrelevant because there are roles in GW2. They manifest differently from roles in trinity MMO’s. they are prepared for differently, and they are executed differently. Bottom line, some people just don’t like the way it’s been done. That’s their prerogative, but mid-identification of the problem is not going to help.
This is where you are wrong. There are no meaningful roles in GW2. This in true without contradistinction. All roles are window dressing. Control? Give me a break…what control. Support? Well portals were pretty cool but seriously there is no serious support. Nice try, but no, sorry. You are simply wrong in your assertion. And, anyone playing the game knows this.
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I see that people still don’t get that:
- Roles do not have be something you practice all the time, in every fight.
- Roles don’t have to be exclusive to a given player/character.
- Roles don’t have to be bound to professions.
- Roles don’t have to be bound to gear.
Have you ever noticed that all human activities around achieving objectives are roles-based? And, I mean everything from scavenger hunts to brain surgery. The important takeaway is that humans go about objectives through roles. And, of course, that you ignore human behaviour at your peril when designing a game.
Edit: But of course you are right in all your distinctions about the nature of roles. My point would simply be that roles are a human way of doing things.
Since there are roles in GW2 combat, it seems that the trinity controversy is bringing different human tendencies into play, such as resistance to change, desire to stand out, jumping on the bandwagon and failure to adapt.
Human endeavor is indeed moving towards greater specialization in a lot of fields. One factor that drives this is that many skills have become too complex to allow for a more generalized approach. However, the tendency towards specialization exclusivity is more pronounced the larger the group and/or the more training is required to prepare for a role.
Some small team endeavors often give individuals roles, but changes in situation may require that any of the members might be required to act in more than their primary role. Fire companies would be one example, especially as cost cuts have reduced company size. Everyone has a role but might have to perform different roles as needed — and is trained and equipped to do so. Soldiers in Special Forces A Teams are all cross-trained.
GW2 small group combat at its best can be like those examples. In that sense, GW2 small group mechanics are closer to what occurs in some real small group activities than are trinity mechanics. However, that does hold true across all small group activities. In a surgical team, the anesthesiologist does not step in to finish the surgery when the surgeon has a problem. Then again, MMO combat is hardly brain surgery, in either type of game.
Actually much simpler than that.Humans always prefer role-based solutions to objectives. Simply the way we are made. No more, no less.
And, if you watched Norman Schwarzkopf describing the the initiation of the battle in Iraq you would have seen graphics of infantry, armored units, air power, etc. as those are the major roles played on the battlefield. This is actually very simple and straightforward and everyone should understand this. No one talks about silly things like cross training, everyone talks about the big boxes you move around the battlefield—the major roles involved. Again, everyone should know this and understand this.
Except that MMO small group endeavors do not involve big boxes moved around the battlefield. At best, it mimics a squad, not an army, or even a platoon.
We are actually talking about combat and combat roles after all. That is precisely the deficiency with GW2.
OK, except we are talking about combat roles in a small group. While there are deficiencies in GW2 combat, lack of roles is not one of them — except insofar as the combats allow for flexible assumptions of roles and do not enforce static role assumption.
Small group/large group is an utterly useless distinction. Do you remember when I said scavenger hunts were conducted in a role-based manner. All human group activity when pursuing an objective is role-based. The size of the group is irrelevant. If combat in GW2 ignores this facet of human nature, it will suffer to the degree it does.
The title stands for itself
honestly I am tired of it
I am not someone who plays WvW content and when I do I find it severely annoying and entirely lacking in entertainmentim just not into PvP
WvW is treated more like PvE than PvP which makes no sense at all considering its PvP content
I am requesting that the Map Completion be removed from the WvW maps so that 100% map completion will be gained once all PvE maps are completedthere is no need to force everyone into WvW to play content we do not like or enjoy and those who do enjoy it are probably sick of us lesser equipped players taking up place on the map.. and nagging people in the chat to help us capture that last Poi or Vista..
its non beneficial for everyone and its annoying for everyone who enjoys WvW and for those of us who absolutely hate WvW
there is nothing fun about running accross a map alone and getting utterly destroyed by 50+ players
not to mention having to complete 3 maps that are pretty much identical..please just remove WvW maps from world completion
it will benefit everyone in the end whether you are a WvW fan or notWvW has maps, right? It is also part of the Guild Wars 2 world. So if you want your World Completion, you must do all WvW maps too.
Again, the distinction PvP vs PvE appears lost on you.
As it makes no sense whatsoever to have a PvP area in a largely PvE achievement, I don’t expect this to ever change. It would then be inconsistent with everything else that doesn’t make sense.
Requiring all portions of the map to be completed to have map completion makes perfect sense. If anything, HotM and dungeons should need to be charted as well.
You obviously don’t understand that pvp and pve define two often distinct populations. That’s OK, so did Anet.
Isaiah, just go to D3 ROS and explore stat combos and particularly stat combo changes brought about by ROS. There should be ample info on what people mean by relevant stat combos.
GW2 does not focus on horizontal progression. It was supposed to but that fell by the wayside. The new feature patch will help but it still focuses on vertical progression.
It’s not really vertical if you can jump from blues to ascendeds without having to go trough all the other tiers.
It’s only vertical if it’s vertical. And Chris W said that GW2 would have vertical progression going forward. So, it is vertical progression whether you care to realize it or not.
There is a great vid about D3 but it applies equally to GW2 with its RMT focus, enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kwmJ_FepQs
If you dislike the game so much that you pay money to skip content, I feel sorry for you.
Please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m enjoying the endgame, the forums, immensely.
It has been said before many time but I will say it again…
There are three ways to get good loot/rewards in GW2:
1. Get a job -> make money -> buy gems with real money -> convert to gold -> Buy what you want
2. Learn to flip the TP -> Make 10k-20k gold a month -> buy what you want
3. Farm black lion chest keys -> buy black lion chests -> RNG chance of weapon skin -> sell for gold -> buy what you want
….or you can go play Diablo 3 ( patch 2,0) for 30 minutes, get some legendaries awesome drops, and then come back play GW2….repeat everyday….
There is a great vid about D3 but it applies equally to GW2 with its RMT focus, enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kwmJ_FepQs
Also, vertical progression is awesome. Just because that, in most MMORPGs, it sucks and is a massive grindfest, it does not means that the concept itself is bad. Just look at every single-player rpg out there: it is driven by vertical progression, and no one is complaining about that.
People don’t hate vertical progression. They hate grind-driven vertical progression.
There’s a lot of truth to this. I maxed on Diablo 3 some days ago, looked at my character and went “Well, he’s done, no need to grind for gear anymore,” because the odds of me finding something better were really, really slim.
At least with GW2, I have the horizontal growth of lots of alts and crafting and plenty to zip around and do.
LOL, vertical progression defines a gear grind. Google it and learn.
Actually, I think Anet have become masters of the responsive. Not that they do it well, but that they do it only.
i want an iron-bound proto drake or GTFO.
Yeah, the art is really the only thing that makes sense. So, questions around this are relevant.
I was really hoping this thread would be about “Weird Al” Yankovic. But, I see I was wrong.
Berserker does not “require” all three stats. When you equip Berserker you are getting exponential stacking due to the relation between the stats.
Condition damage and similar stats do not have this relation. They are a linear attribute and can only be increased linearly. You are not sacrificing anything when you equip Berserker gear. You are trading off defensive stats for exponential damage.
On top of this, you don’t seem to realise Condition damage starts at 0. The only reason Condition damage is strong in PvP and WvW is because it ignores armor, which is the primary form of defense in those game modes, especially for low-HP classes like Elementalists and Guardians, who can be killed by only a few conditions very rapidly if they are not cleansed due to 10K HP.
And anyone who thinks conditions do damage anywhere near Berserker, you are horribly mistaken. In PvP, a Berserker Warrior can one shot someone else with Kill shot. In the past, this was even possible with certain Thief attacks.
In my opinion, Condition damage and Power need to have the same relation. Besides fixing the stack limit issues in PvE, make Precision and Ferocity apply to both Power and Condition damage to even the playing field.
Then weaken conditions if it is too much.
In my opinion, and that of every other game with the concepts, if you simply account for direct damage and condition damage by player, the problem will be solved. It’s so simple that most people tend to miss it.
I see that people still don’t get that:
- Roles do not have be something you practice all the time, in every fight.
- Roles don’t have to be exclusive to a given player/character.
- Roles don’t have to be bound to professions.
- Roles don’t have to be bound to gear.
Have you ever noticed that all human activities around achieving objectives are roles-based? And, I mean everything from scavenger hunts to brain surgery. The important takeaway is that humans go about objectives through roles. And, of course, that you ignore human behaviour at your peril when designing a game.
Edit: But of course you are right in all your distinctions about the nature of roles. My point would simply be that roles are a human way of doing things.
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@Raine I was told that the reason for bleed limits was to reduce strain on the servers. I think we can all agree that the 25 limit stack on bleeds was, and is, a horrible idea, I was just trying to work around the limitations. It would be easier to just remove the 25 bleed limit, so I agree that would be much better than implementing my shoddy attempt at reworking conditions, or reinventing the wheel.
Yes, Anet initially played the technical difficulties card on this issue. When reminded that all games with the concept of damage over time are able to do this they softened their position and admitted a problem. They have, however, not fixed a very straightforward problem, so I’m left suspecting they have painted themselves into a corner through bad architecture.
From what I’ve seen, the problem on bosses in the open world and in dungeons, is a lot of people do conditions. You’ll be lucky to get a stack or two on a world boss, resulting in low DPS all around. My solution for it is make conditions “combine”. Say an enemy gets 25 stacks of bleeding. Currently, that’s it. No more bleeds on him. I think that once he/she hits that 25 bleed stacks all 25 are removed and a new condition is applied. That condition could be called anything, “Double Bleeding”, “Bleeding Overflow”, etc. but it would have the average duration of all those bleed stacks with their damage output all added up.
See what I’m getting at here? If I’m confusing, I apologize. Conditions that stack duration would become “convert” to a new condition after so many seconds (probably a lot in PvP/WvW). For PvE I’d think about 30 seconds would be good. The current condition would be removed and a new condition would be applied. The new condition would deal 3 times the average damage of that stack of Poison/Burning/Torment for 1/3 the time.
These changes would make conditions deal damage a lot faster yes, but it would help raise the ceiling on condition damage without having to apply too many conditions and overload the server.
How do you think WoW manages the server load with thousands of affliction warlocks. All those warlocks are dealing damage per tick over a given number of ticks. And, when I left WoW afflocks were topping the raid parses for sustained damage though they seemed to fall in recent patches.
The point is that there is no inherent problem, architecturally, in managing damage by player. And, it is the only way to solve this problem. There is absolutely no need for further creativity on this as the problem has been solved. Simply manage damage for all damage types by player. Direct damage will be front-loaded and therein lies the trade-off, while condition damage will be over time (damage per tick X a number of ticks) but all damage will be by player-exactly as every other game who has these concepts does it. The problem has already been solved—there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
It’s best not to confuse the issue or you risk confusing anet. Condition damage doesn’t need to be “more” powerful it simply needs to be treated like direct damage. And, what I mean by that is that it needs to be managed by player. The problem is that condition damage is managed by stacks on a boss where it should be simply damage per tick over a certain number of ticks—i.e., all damage should be damage by player.
This is the reason why if you add a condition player to any given group you are only adding ‘white’ damage whereas if you add a berserker player you are adding real damage. This must change. And the only change necessary is to account for all kinds of damage by player. Anet initially played a technical difficulties card here, but hey, all games already can do this. Anet needs to fix condition damage—the fix to to account for it by player—problem solved.
Edit: Reading through the answers and suggestions above is rather discouraging. The actual problem is simple and straightforward. And, the actual solution is equally straightforward. This problem has already been solved in every game that has the damage over time concept.
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(look at how gw2 makes you farm to get skins).
It doesn’t – skins are completely optional. Gear with better stats is not. ^^
It is good to see the occasional player here that understands that vertical progression describes a non-optional system based on player coercion. Most people on the forums don’t understand the very simple gaming concept of vertical progression.
Their model is similar to the unworkable vanilla D3 model. They have conceived of GW2 as a circle trading game rather than a game where we experience the joy of actually finding loot. There is hope however as D3 ROS, with loot 2.0, rocks and is the game I am currently playing.
That said, Anet will need to become aware that there is a problem before any solution appears. I have no sense that they are aware of any problem with their loot system.
As it makes no sense whatsoever to have a PvP area in a largely PvE achievement, I don’t expect this to ever change. It would then be inconsistent with everything else that doesn’t make sense.
These boss changes are not what I was ready for.
Since bosses are becoming less accessible, are all enemies across the game receiving an upped chance of better loot (exotic drops) to compensate these drastic changes?
My amount of play time is short, & with the current setup the game provides, I can hit a good amount of bosses & have the feeling (& loot to show) my accomplishment of successfully taking down some big baddies.
This change now limits my time to just 2, maybe 3 bosses a day if I skip out on daily. This is not at all friendly to those that work with limited amount of time. For the first time, I am actually considering to not spend money on Gems/Anet.
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With waypoint change coming – I can now see mounts coming :\
This is some late April Fool’s sick joke……….right?
It would seem that you are confusing loot system with server architecture. The loot system will not improve until they fix the loot system.
What will this do to guesting to other servers or will there even be a need?
Guesting to another server will make you more likely to be placed on a map with people from that server as opposed to people from your own server.
At least that’s the interpretation I came to.
Guesting was actually a workaround to a problem that a single virtual server would solve. I expect there to be no need for it. However, they are, inexplicably, maintaining a distinction around ‘world’ so, hey, anything is possible. It’s at best a very poor conceptualization of a megaserver or single virtual server. I don’t understand at all what they were thinking as the actual problem and its solution is very straightforward.
I actually have no problem with a single virtual server. I think it fixes a lot of problems and has only one downside, the loss of any cultural distinctiveness of servers. However, guesting itself removed cultural distinctiveness. I wonder how many people realize that the initial existence of realms or servers simply reflected technical limitations of the time.
My only problem with this is that they are not actually moving to a single virtual server but some kind of Frankenstein that maintains a concept of home world, etc. It will undoubtedly be a hodgepodge that satisfies no one.
This means they’ve implemented the concept of a single virtual server wrong. There should be no concept of “home” world, there should be just one world on a single virtual server. Anything beyond that is just asking for trouble. WvW should be handled, if anything, by factions, the “world” should be left as “one” world, obviously, given that is what you are creating. This is so simple I marvel at the misconception around this.
A single virtual server should have no conception of different worlds. The easiest way to implement this would be factions. It is so sad to muddy the idea and concept of a megaserver around WvW. Just reconceive it in a manner that understands what a single virtual server entails.
“To address this, we’ve developed a new schedule for boss events so each boss event occurs at the same times every day and on every world”
This is an example of the problem with the current conception of the single virtual server. When properly implemented, on a single virtual server, you would have no conception of “every world”. Differences in worlds would simply go away. That’s what horizontal scaling means. The reference to “every world” indicates that the single virtual server concept has been misconceived in GW2.
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The problem ultimately stems from the games design philosiphy. Everyone is equal, everyone is special and everyone gets credit for everything.
In traditional MMO’s you have to compete for kills and resources and loot from bosses. This means you have a much higher overall rarity to items that drop because only 1 person gets it. In GW2 EVERYONE gets full rewards for everything. This means the items are significantly less rare and mostly seem like junk because everyone is getting them.
Getting a rare (blue) item in a traditional MMO is rewarding and makes you feel accomplished. In GW2 getting a rare (yellow) item seems like a waste of time because everyone is getting yellow items.
That is why loot seems like crap in GW2.
It’s actually simpler than that. Loot seems like crap in GW2 because it is crap. In other competitive games like WoW RNG is on your side. Good, exciting, loot will simply be yours over time—you are rewarded for playing the game, which is as it should be. In GW2, not so much. The experience here is crap, crap, and more crap over time. The simple answer is that this is because of a bad loot system. It’s actually that simple.
For a lesson in how to design a loot system, I would suggest trying D3 ROS. Vanilla D3 was the worst possible way to misunderstand the ARPG formula, but that is corrected, massively, with ROS. Just level a character in ROS and experience loot that is appropriate and rewarding. Most games get this fairly right, but GW2 and vanilla D3 are examples of games that are far off the mark.
Have you checked out D3 forums since ROS? I actually find them quite positive overall. And, this is reflective of the fact that forums generally reflect the state of the game.
And, agree with @cesmode, D3 ROS captures the essence of Diablo and I’m happily playing it. There is an example of a turnaround in gaming history that Anet would do well to study.
You’re very correct Nage, people have no patience. Many don’t even seem to know what it is anymore. They forget that Rome was not built in a day. The same goes for any form of entertainment, video games especially.
People must take into account that unlike more traditional MMO’s Gw2 does not rake in a colossal sum of cash every month thus allowed gigantic development teams to work the way the do
its simply a trade off that we have to live with
I much prefer to play Guildwars 2 and wait for these kind of improvements instead of being forced to pay a monthly subscription fee and get them sooner
at least I wont have my game rights removed when I can’t afford a monthly sub that one week
What the problem really is, is simply people feel too entitled and ask for too much in too short a time frame
Guild wars 2 gives you hell of a lot for a one time purchase MMOPart of it might be that people just don’t understand the effort involved for creating something as large as a game. Development is a long process by itself, for just simple programs. Now add in all the graphics, voice acting, all the tiny components that have to work fluidly together. It’s a huge complex machine to try to choreograph, but people just don’t understand the effort involved in that. Nor do they want to sadly. If more had a better understand, maybe they’d be less kitteny.
Except that the biggest problems with GW2 didn’t require time to fix as much they required better decisions up front and the simple willingness to learn from MMO’s that preceded it. ANet could and should have fixed issues and implemented things that were pointed out in forum posts within the first couple of months after launch … some even during beta. The problem here isn’t the time it took to address those shortcomings in various areas of the game … it’s the conscious decision by ANet to focus resources on other things, in many cases on things players repeatedly said they didn’t want.
GW2 could have been the 2,000 pound gorilla of the MMO world if ANet had managed it differently.
Yes, I’ve called it reality testing. If asked what GW2 could do to turn things around i would say add a chief reality testing office that all decisions must go through. With the right personnel all could be fixed.
Not much Anet can really do about it. It’s a maturity issue more than anything else. With GW2 being an MMO, you really rub shoulders with players from all walks of life, with different experiences, and in varying stages of maturity.
As an adult it can be quite shocking to run into someone with no grasp on tact and social behavior. This is quite common in young children though, and in game a 13 year old gamer is on an ‘even playing field’ with kitten year old gamer. There is also no requirement to be a mature adult to play either. The type of people that would have difficulty holding a job or staying in school can be found in game as well.
The good news for you is that you can block/ignore these people and that they are a minority in the game. There are many skilled players who don’t mind teaching and raising the skill level of the community.
That would be like saying on the positive side that non-competitve tagging or resource nodes had no effect on game culture. It was actually huge and most aspects of game culture are massively affected by game design. This area is no different. Don’t blame the victims (players), blame the ones with the power to affect the system, the developers.
I do making success dependent not just on the individual but on the community. But still enriching your community through constructive criticism and not just “You’re a useless moron” seems like the obvious choice to me. Why not help people grow and by doing so help the community around you grow and advance their skills. I just taught a whole group yesterday how to do AC and it only took me about 10-15 minutes longer than it normally would, and from now on 4 new people know how to run AC smoothly.
And not just dependent on the community, but dependent upon them coordinating in a manner unusual for open world PvE or pug dungeons. The world is full of a wide diversity of players. not in communication, and who are not playing from an interrupt list. Open World PvE and random dungeons must be designed for the player and situation you find there, kinda like form follows function.
Buying keys is similar to buying lottery tickets IRL. If you enjoy lotteries then go for the keys. However, there is a reason why financial consultants never recommend just buying more tickets as a means to increasing your wealth. If you have the capacity to think it through you probably will not be buying the keys.
This is actually created by game design. That is, Anet is creating this response in players in that same way they created a positive response through non-competitive tagging and resources. It all goes back to design. Do you understand the elements of design that create this negative response?
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Raine… Nothing cultural running around alone in an empty map!
No but some servers likely feel that they had a distinctive culture among servers—TC for example. This would represent a net loss in this sense. I don’t argue at all with going to a single virtual server—it solves a myriad of problems and is the current best practices in IT architecture.
[…] Because you, as an RPer, have an infinitely easier time adapting to changes. How? Discuss it with the community you RP in and suddenly everyone reaches the consensus that because these changes are ONLY IN CITIES AND WEENIE AREAS you can decide to move to SIMILAR areas, such as Ebonhawke, that is in essence a city that is not an instanced zone. Oh, there’s also a second benefit, it’s unaffected by the megaserver change.
This idea doesn’t work in the slightest. As RPers, our characters – that many of us have been playing as, fleshing out and developing since release – have homes, jobs, families and so on. One character might be a Noble who’s part of the Divinity’s Reach elite, another a guard in the Ministry, and another yet a member of the crime syndicate that lurks in the Ossan district. Whole areas of the city itself have developed personalities and histories – the Maiden’s Whisper is considered a reputable inn for well-to-do folk, the one in Ossan is more of a seedy Mos Eisley Cantina, and so on. Just upping and leaving to another zone and being told “well, go do your weird RP thing over there instead” makes zero sense for our characters, and zero sense for us as players.
And, this is most certainly why it will be so. The implementation of a single virtual server architecture requires, more than any technical aspect, an ability to reality test. What do you imagine will be the likely results, within GW2?
Yeah, the only potential problem with a single virtual server is the loss of whatever culture was able to emerge on the various servers. However, with guesting, that was problematic to begin with. A single virtual server simply reflects the capabilities of current IT architecture, the same way that realms reflected the then current limitations of IT architecture.
Edit: of course it’s always possible to do it wrong. you should never know you are on a megaserver or a realm. it should be completely transparent. you should just be playing the game.
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The problem, of course, is not the absence of the trinity, it’s the absence of meaningful combat roles. What we are left with is the most primitive form of combat imaginable, the berserker battlefield, where everyone just enrages and goes for it. That is the current state of combat in GW2.
We’ve been talking about these issues almost since launch, but it’s good to keep them in front of Anet.
Condition damage is actually much easier to fix. Condition damage is the same as direct damage in that it is damage, but delivered over time. And, the sustained damage should be broadly comparable when considered in any fight of significant duration. The trade-off lies in the front-loading with direct damage and it offers very interesting gameplay alternatives. The solution is to manage the damage by player (as with DD), but account for it as damage, by tick, over some number of ticks.
Anet played the technical difficulties card initially but softened their position when reminded that other games have no difficulties doing this. But, since no fix has been forthcoming, I’d wager they have painted themselves into a corner somewhere in their technical infrastructure. But, nothing short of fixing condition damage in this way will fix condition damage. You really must attribute all damage done by players to the players. It really should go without saying…but just saying. Otherwise you risk the untenable state where adding another condition build to a group with one only adds ‘white’ damage while adding another power build scales normally. This untenable state is actually untenable and it is only corrected by accounting for all damage by player. We do this already with direct damage and we must also do this for condition damage.
(edited by Raine.1394)