Considering I’ve had over a 100 Bags of gear so far (haven’t been playing in Silverwastes all that much either), and quite a few champ bags from looting chests, I’m not complaining. More than plenty fine/masterwork gear to salvage for Luck, and a few rares every now and then for Ectos.
Possible options for rewards:
Use the existing system of dungeons to give players a certain number of Raid tokens for completing a Raid. Guild Commendations work for this purpose as well, but Raid tokens specific to a Raid would mean having unique rewards per Raid similar to Dungeons. Gold rewards are also ideal depending on how far into the Raid the group managed to get.
At the end of the Raid, or during, players have a chance to receive an Ascended armor or weapon box with a choice to receive one armor or weapon. These armor skins should be unique to the Raid – each Raid gives a different skin. To combat RNG, a certain number of Raid tokens and gold* can be exchanged for the Ascended armor or weapon box – the number would need to be balanced to provide sufficient time-gating to ensure crafted Ascended armor isn’t obsolete (1-2 months of doing Raids to get a full set of Armor/weapons).
An additional way to time-gate the reward would be determining the stats of the Ascended armor or weapon. Using commendations/tokens, and item can be purchased, which can then be combined with the armor or weapon to get the desired stat combination. The cost of the upgrade item should be low enough that you can get 1-2 items per week.
The other option for determining stats is giving players a one-time option to select the stats on the armor or weapon reward. Once selected, the stats cannot be changed until the player gets a second armor or weapon set.
Ascended weapons/armor makes the most sense, as currently, the only way to get them is crafting (costly) or RNG (which doesn’t guarantee the stat combinations you want). This allows for an additional source of Ascended gear with different appearances, allowing players the choice of what they want their Ascended armor to look like (current crafted/dropped armor only has one skin with dyes as the only customization).
*Adding gold into the purchase cost would balance it out with spending gold on ascended crafting. Someone who crafts Ascended gear would end up spending a lot of time on time-gated ingredients and gold obtaining the materials for said time-gated ingredients.
(edited by Rashy.4165)
Raising the level cap usually means gear treadmill. Since they got into enough trouble with ascended, probably not.
Pretty much, but it wouldn’t add a new tier of armor. Instead, it will require new armor in the level 80-90 for each tier (including potentially Ascended armor) which will create an artificial treadmill for players to get level 90 equivalents of their equipment. The only way to avoid this would be to rebalance all armors for the new max level, automatically making all current level 80 gear into level 90 gear, then adding more armors to fill in the gaps.
A lot more work than simply sticking to horizontal progression. Add more content at different level ranges including level 80 and expand horizontally. Add more variety at each level instead.
While I see the merit of getting a full set of Radiant or Hellfire before even starting a second set, I think it’s important to note that by the time you have enough AP to get the chest piece, you’ll have both the Radiant and Hellfire version of all of the other pieces, since it’s a choice. At 3k AP, you choose either Radiant or Hellfire gloves, and at 9k AP, you choose the one you don’t have (no sense in picking 2 Radiant gloves).
The method you propose allows a player to get only the Radiant armor first, and then start working on the Hellfire armor. I guess this is the more focused approach if a player wants only one of the sets and not both. For someone who wants both, the current method works well as it allows the player to get almost both full sets by the time they complete the first set at 33k AP.
1. If you did all the trait quest up to level 36 for your first major trait slot, you should get 7 adept traits, not counting WvW traits. That is more than 1 trait.
2. It is excessive if you plan to buy all 65 traits, which people keep stressing 43g + 360 SP just to make a point. But, Not really that much when you plan to get 7 traits for a single build. If you want to experiment, you can always head to the heart of the mist to experiment if it is worth buying.
3. I think that the old system was fine and dandy until I actually tried the new system.
1. Effort to reward on some of the Adept traits are nonsense. Some of them actually require 100%-ing an entire zone. Few of them are unnecessarily level-gated (Complete TA Story mode for a II trait). It would make more sense if simply exploring unlocked all of your traits by the time you get to level 80, but that’s simply not true.
2. True freedom to experiment with builds comes with having all 65 traits. You can limit yourself to only the traits you need, but that only gives you a limited set of builds to play with and not much you can do to the build to tweak it. Experimenting in PvP is limited – you get your core traits unlocked only in sPvP, and PvP balance is completely different from PvE.
3. The old system wasn’t broken. Frankly, the only thing I see with the new system is it encourages/forces players to explore more and hunt for their traits similar to GW1 skill capturing. That’s fine – less explored content should have incentives to do them, but not by tying them to a core feature of the game.
Build experimentation should be accessible in all game modes (PvE, WvW and sPvP). Right now, it’s only truly available in sPvP; the trait unlock requirements for PvE and WvW are ridiculously painful limiting build experimentation (facts are facts, you can’t experiment with only 2-3 builds with very few variations to them, a proper experiment considers all possible builds with all possible variations to them – requiring all traits), and the purchase cost to avoid hunting for traits is insane (the gold is manageable, but the skill points simply aren’t – players will spend most of the skill points they get leveling up towards utility skills and elites – which is another source of experimentation and have little left over for traits. It’s personally taken me a while of leveling up after 80 and skill point scrolls to get up to 334 and I’ve been extremely frugal about spending my skill points).
This is the system I would be fine with:
- Sensible unlock requirements. Or no unlock requirements.*
- No skill point cost for trait guides, reduce total cost of traits to 20g.
*Find a different way to re-vitalize content that isn’t done frequently.
It was also not very secure i think.
Only because of the chroma hash, and only visible if a streamer decides to login to the game while streaming. Chroma hash + length of password visible from the stream makes it fairly easy to crack the password.
It would be nice if the current launcher was re-skinned to look like the old login screen, without the chroma hash. Plenty of space to add in news items as well.
It could potentially work that way.
Consider something like map_details API which tracks available megaserver IPs for that particular map. map_details for Dry Top contains all instance of Dry Top currently running. Use that same IP to access event_details API which contains a list of all events currently running, including an IP field which ties into the instance the event is running on.
If that makes any sense.
There’s no way to travel to a particular megaserver instance (unless you know someone on the instance), but at least the API will allow tracking of events in your current instance of whichever zone map you’re in, since not all of them appear on the map.
It’ll probably still be a problem of keeping track of multiple instances of every map and keeping track of the IP.
I normally get a party going with my guild, and if more people want in, we split into 2-3 groups and taxi everyone in. Usually in there for a few hours at a time during the daytime/afternoon hours. If I’m alone, I leave the map and re-enter through Lion’s arch – if there’s a commander, there’ll be a reasonably sized zerg already. If there’s no commander, I try a different map.
I’m sorry but this game is too amazing to not have any endgame content.
Fractals and playing dress up isnt end game content.
The game was great, until I hit 80….now its boring, nothing to do.
I love crafting in any mmo, I usually horde mats and such. GW2 theres no reason to, why waste my time when all crafting is for is the nicest gear, but there is no reason to have it unless you want to run a 5-man fractal (5 MAN!?, might as well call it an expert dungeon)
There are too many games out there that have everything gw2 has and much more.
Devs need to figure out a way to keep people engaged at 80, fractals and playing barbie dress up is not it.
WE NEED RAIDS!As long as Agony Resistance is the way you progress, I’m okay with it. I don’t want to be able to come back to Arah in Tier 76 gear and one shot all the enemies. IMO Agony Resistance is a good balance between grinding for stats and a lack of stat grind.
You only need 70 Agony resistance at 50. All u really need it a full ascended, I am sure alot of the true gamer already meet the requirement.
You could actually get it with trinkets and weapons alone:
10 AR on weapons (2x Simple infusions)
30 AR on trinket infusion slots. (6x Simple infusions from rings, amulet, accessories and backpiece)
3x +10 Agony infusions on Agony Infusion slots on infused rings/backpiece.
The only downside is, +10 Agony infusions are pricey, at 56-70g a piece, but still not as expensive as crafting a set of Ascended armor for the offensive/defensive infusion slots.
On Topic: There’s plenty of “end game” content, but player’s perception of “end game” needs to be changed. I personally don’t consider “end game” to be limited to raiding.
This is just silly because there are other places with almost as many ambient creatures in the world.
30+ in one small cluster?
Nope, but each maize balm only gives you 9 ambient to elemental conversions anyway, so the only benefit of a large cluster would be more bags per minute. You’d still be making the same amount of profit per balm anywhere else, just at a slower rate.
Until diminishing returns kicks in.
It gives players an alternative to running dungeons.
And to get the full dungeon armor set, you’d need to do the track a total of 6 times (all 8 tiers = 40000 points). Doing so will also give you 18 of the 19 weapons for the dungeon, and enough tokens to buy the last weapon or 5/6 pieces of another armor set (heavy/medium/light to unlock the skin).
To get all of the above from doing dungeons requires something like 7500 tokens (1 full armor set + 18-19 weapons); estimated based on knowing that all 19 weapons and all three armor sets cost 10,280 points and each armor set is 1380 points. Typically, you get 60 tokens per path, 3 paths per dungeon per day. That’s 180 tokens per day, or 39 days of running all paths of a particular dungeon every day, give or take a few days.
If you love to PvP, you get the dungeon skin in less time (even if you can only progress 2 tiers per day, that’d be 24 days for 6 reward tracks). You’d still need to run the dungeon story mode to unlock the track permanently, so it does involve a bit of PvE.
More options are always nice.
The old system was fine. The only two changes I would have made to it:
For Gold → Gems: Enter desired number of gems. Previous system only allowed for entering amount of gold and gems are calculated accordingly. If you don’t have enough gold, it won’t work.
For Gems → Gold: Enter desired amount of gold. If you don’t have enough gems to make the conversion work, it won’t let you convert.
If you must include a minimum+fixed buy in, start at 100 with 50/100 gem increments, but include the option for custom gem/gold amounts.
No, it isn’t trivial at level 80 and your method has got some flaws: There are 5? traits which are only obtainable by doing personal story quests, that takes time and one also gets a lot of exp, so powerleveling in EotM is a method but not the best method – combining it with personal story might be.
Also as I’ve stated somewhere in this thread: My mesmer for example is pure knights, she has got few traits unlocked and in any way nobody would really want me in their party when doing a dungeon. Same goes for my necro who is full zerker but.. necro. So even at level 80 not trivial, there are a lot of factors which make traithunting difficult – another of them is wvw – I do it all the time, so I don’t mind waiting for the dredge, frogs, ogres or grub, but I can imagine that it’s really exhausting for someone who doesn’t play wvw regularly.
The method is still flawed.
I already know it’s flawed. The method is bearable, and may be better combined with other methods, but it’s still flawed because the system is flawed.
The only real benefit of EOTM leveling is that you don’t need to worry about having traits while leveling. Normal PvE leveling would be slower without traits, and unlocking them as you go would be cumbersome.
Either way, I’m not suggesting it as a method that will work with the new trait system. I can’t really find any other method that makes the new trait system work (aside from forking over 43g and 360 skill points).
(edited by Rashy.4165)
So far, I’ve only found one way that makes the new Trait system … somewhat bearable.
> Speed level to 80 using EOTM, which saves up enough badges and gold for an exotic armour set; weapons can be gotten with excess gold.
> Systematically unlock traits based on their location.
At level 80, unlocking traits would be trivial (for the most part). Some of them will still take time, but at least it won’t be difficult when properly geared. The problem is, at level 80, you’ll have no traits unlocked, so you’ll be severely kitten until you start unlocking traits.
The method is still flawed.
If the intention was to give an incentive to do varied content for a specific purpose, there are much better ways of doing so than creating a trait unlock system. Having the alternative purchasable guide is also not a solution that improved upon the system, since it costs 43g and 360 skill points to unlock everything that way.
I would be fine if the total cost was 20g (attainable for any level 80), with the skill point requirement only needed for unlocking the ability to purchase particular tier of traits. For instance:
10 skill points – unlock ability to purchase adept trait guides
30 skill points – ditto for master trait guides.
50 skill points – ditto for grandmaster trait guides.
Grandmaster XIII – only unlocked through doing content in Orr – which is actually not that bad since there’s always a group doing the necessary temple events for 4 of the 5 GM traits, and the one sunken treasure only requires spotting the treasure.
Once you’ve unlocked the ability to purchase a tier of trait guides, the guides themselves should only cost gold.
90 skill points is attainable through normal gameplay and some level of map completion. Alternatively, remove the skill point requirement altogether and make the trait guides only require gold – reducing the total cost to less than half.
(edited by Rashy.4165)
Why is the maximum item stack 250? Specifically in the collections tab.
I’d be fine with it being 250 in the inventory, but the collections tab could use a higher starting value (the gem store item boosting it even more for those who really desire it). It gets filled up far too quickly.
An unsigned integer byte goes from 0 to 255. Rounded down that gets you 250.
If you don’t use partial bytes, any increase over that, even if it’s just 500 will require two bytes, effectively doubling the storage.
The greater the cap, the more storage space each item takes.
That extra storage is paid by those who the get the collection tab increases.
The logic doesn’t really work too well though.
Consider: You’ve maxed out your collections, forcing you to use bank/inventory slots for more stacks. Each stack would be 1 byte. 10 stacks = 10 bytes. 10 stacks is 2500 items. With a 2-byte integer, you can go up to 65000. You can easily set the limit to 10000, in which case, it will still take up 2 bytes, but leaves room for expanding the stack limit without taking extra memory.
While each individual stack might take more memory, it’ll reduce the overall number of stacks present (factoring in bank/inventory slots which also take up memory).
Why is the maximum item stack 250? Specifically in the collections tab.
I’d be fine with it being 250 in the inventory, but the collections tab could use a higher starting value (the gem store item boosting it even more for those who really desire it). It gets filled up far too quickly.
Old topic, but:
Valve released “togl” a while back, which I believe makes porting DirectX9 games to OpenGL pretty trivial.
Wine 1.8 should come with CSMT patches built-in (I believe), which works really well for GW2. Currently using Playonlinux with Wine 1.7.4-CSMT, and performance is pretty good: (30 fps in Lion’s Arch, same in zergs with best performance preset, and very playable fps in other open areas – I turn shadows to the lowest setting, and optionally, character model limit/quality to lowest). The one problem is the game crashes occasionally (usually at the end of a Tequatl run, but it hasn’t crashed at that point in a while). Memory leaks are also a problem.
Doesn’t really bother me – I approached personal story bit by bit until I was challenging missions 3-4 levels above me; I stopped, leveled up to 80, then went through all of the story missions in a long sitting.
If I were to start a new character, I’d do the same. Level up to 80, then begin personal story. Instead of 8 smaller chunks, I get the full story in one long stretch.
Hello. I’d like to join, and learn the ropes of all of the dungeon paths (as well as complete the story mode).
I’ve only really run CoF path 1 with a friend, and know that reasonably well (aside from dodging the rolling rocks).
Personally, I’d want an opportunity to get to replay the Living Story content, which I missed out on. Some of it, as instanced areas, if not all of the little details associated with each story portion.
Not everyone has the luxury of playing every day – personally was busy with school and work for the 2 years GW2 has been out, with very little time to play.
Achievements and rewards returning would also be nice, in addition to new content.