Things I’ve learned if you want to protect your psyche:
Don’t /death yourself. You’ll find out how much you suck.
Don’t /age yourself. You’ll find out how much of your life you spent on a game.
I do better not having those metrics.
What is wrong with having different resources being gathered by different means?
Not a whole lot.
Where it becomes a problem is the lack of consistency. The harder a material is to obtain, the less it should be used for recipes. ANet has taken the exact opposite stance. If anything, I object to the blatant manipulation of supply by inflicting the changes in how they were handled. It’s leading to this notion that setting huge material requirements is anywhere near enjoyable. And not just cloth/leather, because I’m looking at you, cactus recipes.
…and adjustments should be made slowly like they have been.
It hasn’t been slow, is the issue. It’s particularly heavy-handed, with crafting tweaks made on dual fronts, which makes an obnoxious cycle of price spikes and gradual, eventual decline.
So as not to be completely full of criticism, the changes from cloth-only insignia to cloth-leather patches was a good one, and one that players repeatedly highlighted. It used leather from the supply and helped drop the cost of silk. Good times. We need to use more leather, now. That one tweak could/should have been enough.
But then the 4-to-1 section-to-square ratio came with it, and we suddenly need to use multiplicatively more leather. Prices spiked, crafting got harder, and now it’s in roughly the same complaint-worthy place as silk is/was, because acquisition is in the same place, and its usage was artificially inflated.
Why change it?
It’s hard to argue in economic terms, certainly. It’s more game/play-related.
There are two play styles impacted by these kinds of manipulations: farmers and independent crafters.
As much as MMO communities fingerwag-shame on farmers, they help bring costs down. And all’s fine and good if they’re not automating the process. Some people like to zone out, watch TV, and farm. I guess that leaves them with iron, platinum, and various woods, because it’s certainly not cloth or leather.
Crafters get a sense of pride out of building things on their own, and GW2 is generally pretty good about that. Best-in-slot from hammering out some effort? Fantastic. This leads them to farm as well, but again, cloth/leather isn’t available that way. So, they either have to wait an excessively long time before they can craft a single piece of their greater projects, or they have to use the trading post. That rankles, especially as the money spent could be going toward vendor-sold materials.
I suppose I could add on the immersion-seekers and RPers, but at some point, the game has to be a game, and not every crafting system can take every detail from the ground up. :P
Economically, the system is certainly going as intended so far. We’ll see how leather supply holds up over time. And with dailies giving decent chunks of gold, it’s easier to commit funds to the marketplace. I keep a sort of 50% strategy when I’m TP-harvesting materials, so I can balance material acquisition with building up funds. Lately, I’ve been buying over 1g’s worth of silk per day (and selling roughly that much in quarts and iron :P).
And yet, the cunning thought occurs. Cloth/leather are most prevalent from drops (armor and trophies) and event rewards (bags, etc). Players must defeat enemies to obtain them. Players must engage the game for them. Participate instead of farming.
/sagenod
Very cunning, yes.
I love that healing in this game is a dynamic process; I get to experience the same ‘engaged’ sense that normally only dps-roles get to do.deeply enjoy.
I had to single this out, because there’s a special set of feelings I get that I wouldn’t from WoW and other similar old-school MMOs. Setting down that targeting field and:
the target moves out of AoE
“GARGBLARG, What the Q-bert are you doing?!”
See also: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/75/55/c5/7555c519a37639cacf73bad558d2c201.jpg
nailed it
“F’ing Sweet! Take that no-heal meta!”’
See also: http://24.media.tumblr.com/1bbab78a4203a89b3f5185d0b6c1f289/tumblr_msimst8KgY1shtg7lo1_400.gif
I don’t mind if healing requires some positioning and active damage (much less boring than stand and cast, spam 1 to heal tank), I just wish all classes were at least reasonably close in performance for it. But hey, that’s what elite specs are for, so here’s to hoping.
I can understand OP’s sentiments too. But they speak of a singular way to play the game, instead of adapting to circumstances. Life is the same way. If you refuse to adapt but instead do it the way you want it to, it won’t always succeed. HoT was a smack in the face first time I entered Verdant Brink. I adapted and now it’s a walk in the park (so to speak). If you are adamant about sticking to a certain way of playing the game and that no longer works, don’t blame the game. Blame your inflexibility. There are still a few dozen other maps for which this style of playing works perfectly.
And for good measure, I mostly avoid ranged weapons, even in HoT, because of the decreased dps. And somehow, I still managed to complete all 4 HoT on 2 rather squishy classes (Mesmer and Elementalist), I finished the HoT story on 7 or 8 classes. I adapted to it and it became a lot easier. I now know I shouldn’t deal with Mordrem the way I dealt with the enemies in core GW2 maps. Part of the game evolved, I evolved with it. It’s as simple as that.
Overall, yup.
I’m really wishing we had build templates, because of HoT’s demands. I run double-melee, and that shouldn’t be excluded just because, sometimes, I “need” a bow to handle a particular mob. Swapping weapons means swapping builds/talents, which is slightly troublesome right now, so I can see why players don’t want to bother.
Though, it does make the request for build templates very salient, so that players can be much more flexible in how they roam in open world. Would have to be handled differently in wvw/pvp, but that’s not a discussion for this thread.
Personally, If they are the types to log on in order to afk I’d prefer that they afk in an instance instead of cluttering up maps.
That’s a fair point.
And I’m certainly not against the idea of having actual home instances. Character-based with account-bound inventories, personal quests, etc. It’d be awesome.
Buuut, I’m sure ANet has examined other games like WildStar and realized it hasn’t quite worked out. And then there’s the Legendary cancellation that tells me it’s not gonna happen in the foreseeable future.
If there’s any sort of hope for it, it’s in the fact that guild halls exist, so the concept work and possible reusable code is in there somewhere. Definitely won’t see it until, bare minimum, the upcoming expansion.
Wish I knew. I also think it’s ridiculous to force players to go ranged just to properly deal with the new mobs. Sure, every class does have a ranged option, but that doesn’t mean every player wants to use it exclusively.
This has ticked my friend off to no end. There’s a number of critters, and bosses especially, that have [can’t melee me] zones. The wyverns have a bad habit of doing this, and the floor damage is excessive to where melee can’t even consider going in.
I realize that melee is higher-risk/higher-reward, and that’s fine, but HoT is especially guilty of skewing the risk/reward for melee completely out of value.
But the big wyverns like Matriarch are actually safer in melee. I stand under them with my mess and poke it in the belly. They don’t drop fire under themselves and with patriarch, it gives you more room to save yourself when he stars blowing you off the platform.
And the arrow frogs are easier in melee than ranged. They’re frozen on the spot when they fire. You just dodge behind them and they’re at your mercy.
But why stick with just melee anyway? I always have a melee and ranged option on my mes. Each has its place. You switch as needs change.
Thanks for the wyvern input. I’ll see if I can replicate your results. Science!
Shadowleapers are conditionally difficult. They’re annoying in melee if they have room to jump away, but if you can coax them into a wall or narrow area (and dodge the poison cloud), they get smacked down pretty easily. I don’t care for their always-on auto-dodge for ranged, and I think it should have an internal cost for better counterplay, but overall, I almost like their combat design.
I’ll be honest, if I could go Pistol/Warhorn on my warrior, I probably would. >.> But, my normal travel is Pistol/Warhorn with Hammer as a swap. (Granted, that’s one character out of 20+, so…) And I hated HoT for having way too many critters that didn’t work for. I’ve adjusted, of course, but I can very succinctly understand the OP’s salt about some of the mob designs.
A straight XP grind was never the point. You were supposed to do multiple forms of content instead of just farming whatever spot gives the most XP.
To be honest, XP was never my problem with the Mastery system. I’d go do exploration or map metas, and suddenly “oh, my bar capped, better do something about it.”
I don’t mind having to explore and poke at the zones to get the points, either. It’s driving me into content I might not have made time for otherwise. I even got a Triple Trouble kill out of it, and I finally got motivated to do the Sunbringer title.
I do mind the following:
I think that covered it all?
Anet, remove map completion from my legendary journey. I’ve done it once, I worked very hard for it, just create a NPC that sells more gifts. I deserve it.
Thank you.
The above is probably sarcasm, but I fully support this idea.
