A mistake that can easily be fixed by introducing an NPC later who can recap the story to those who don’t want to play this kind of content.
That would certainly cheapen the budget and cheapen the experience for those of us who like role playing their character through these stories in this role playing game. For me, it isn’t enough to get the Living Season 1 recap treatment for important story content. I’d rather they just add a story version of the raid with reduced rewards. Most MMOs do this for their story driven raid content and it’s surprising Arena Net hasn’t followed suit…. unless of course there is no story to be had here.
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I expect a throw away adventure, with some neat little references, which don`t go too deep, or in a bad scenario, will go against established lore.
I wouldn’t be so sure. A raid video released by Arena Net suggested there would be huge, mega reveals in the raid story being told. It was also said to bridge the gap between Heart of Thorns and the next big thing. Bobby confirmed the mega reveal part here:
I can’t talk about the “huge awesome mega reveals” other than to say that since the wings are essentially a multi-part story you will learn things along the way.
It could be marketing speak, but it could also be Arena Net making yet another mistake past MMOs have already learned.
Every MMO ever made systematically destroys rangers classes from day one, but forcing rangers to suddenly morph into raiding clerics is the cruellest and most short-sighted punishment I’ve ever encountered in any game toward any class. It’s borderline psychotic. Best of luck with that.
You aren’t forced to play druid and rangers are viable DPS options. Pets recently got a buff. More specializations are coming and will surely bring more tools for other raid requirements (e.g., control/DPS). The current specialization was clearly meant to fill the gaps in ranger’s healing support options. Spirits were okay, but they have many issues. Rangers had no support weapon option (outside of one warhorn skill) before the druid specialization.
Why do I have resurrection sphere’s then. That implies deaths do exist.
Why do you have experience boosters? Game play mechanics aren’t lore. Experience doesn’t exist in the lore, it is merely an RPG game play mechanic 1 introduced to approximate improving oneself through effort.
1 – One I feel that has run its course, but that’s an argument for another time.
“The mechanics don’t make sense”
They don’t have to. As long as we’re having a good, challenging raiding experience, realism doesn’t matter. Games are hardly designed to make sense anyways.
This assumes that raids should only have one goal (provide a challenge), which is a silly imposition to place on them as a medium for delivering content. They could offer challenging encounters, while also making logical sense within the lore and physics of the universe if that was what Arena Net wanted. Many games are actually designed with systems of rules about how their universe operates, and definitely strive for consistency (at the very least in story and presentation of that story). There is a reason Arena Net moved from quest chains to dynamic events, it presents a more realistic experience. From the Guild Wars 2 Manifesto:
You’ll get quest text that tells you ’I’m being attacked by these horrible things,’ and it’s not actually happening. In the game world, these horrible centaurs are standing around in a field, and you get a quest step that says ‘Go kill ten centaurs.’ We don’t think that’s OK. You see what’s happening. You see centaurs running to the trading post, knocking the walls down, burning and killing the merchants.
To say Arena Net (or any game designer) has no concern about realistic depictions of events within the rules and story of their game’s universe is incorrect. Arena Net clearly wants to move MMOs to more realistic portrayals of what’s supposed to be going on in the world at the very least.
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You wouldn’t last a minute at the Republican debate with that kind of anti-business attitude.
And look at how crushed I am.
I don’t know about pushing into certain roles since no one is making anyone utilize the specializations, but they definitely added a ton of new options for each profession as to how they play their role
Push is probably too strong of a word, provide more tools for one role over another would have been a better way of phrasing it.
Engie is like the iPhone 6s and Thief is like the iPhone 5. When both cost the same, which would you choose?
People aren’t products. I would choose my guild mates, who are also my friends.
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Chrono. You already do low damage and are primarily there for quickness/alacrity, which means your raid sacrifices less damage from you than from any other class. Additionally, boss control makes it easier to correctly place your well combo for team buffing.
I think Arena Net intended the specilizations to push professions into certian roles. It’s not that they can’t be used for other things, but it’s clear Chrono has upped mesmer control and durability options in a very mesmer-esque way (e.g., a mesmer doesn’t survive a hit by mitigating damage completely, they take it and warp time backwards to when they had full health). The gear you get as a chrono in collections also tends towards PvT stats.
Daredevil also seems to be along these lines, but I’m not sure how successful they were with that.
Since the party buffs are limited to only 5 people you can be fairly sure that not every class will make it for raids.
Can we really be so sure having not played the current version of the raid and it having a month to tune itself based on feedback? Can we really be so sure considering the first forays into the raid were plagued with disconnects, bugs, and players just learning the ropes?
Completing an encounter as fast as possible and being able to complete an encounter are two different things. There are so many variables in play that to boil an encounter down into what gets you 25 stacks of might on the UI trivializes things considerably, and doesn’t sound like the challenges they are mostly talking about when it comes to raids:
Expecting to be able to just watch the UI to beat a boss? Guess again! Raiding in Guild Wars 2 is an action-oriented, engaging experience. You’ll have to actively manage your position, dodge, coordinate on objectives, and much more.
And their goal was never that every class can play every role, they explicitly stated that during one of their panels concerning raids.
Since the very beginning they’ve been pretty up front about ensuring all professions would be welcome and have tools for performing each role in their version of the trinity. Remember the Healing and Death article?
You could say instead of DPS/heal/tank, we have our own trinity of damage, support, and control, but we prefer to think of them as the variety of elements that create a diverse and dynamic combat system that gives each player a toolbox to work with to solve any encounter we might throw their way.
More recent claims say much of the same:
Raids in Guild Wars 2 are not about waiting to have fun. You don’t need to wait for your healer to get online. Our build-customization and weapon-swapping systems allow anyone to change their build to meet a particular challenge. And while a warrior might support a group differently than an elementalist would in terms of playstyle, our systems allow you to adjust your team’s composition and strategy to overcome any challenge.
The entire Revenant design was done in a way to strictly follow this design goal:
So far we’ve discussed a legend and weapon set that are focused on defense and survivability , as well as a more condition-focused setup. Now we’ll be going over the healing-focused setup for the revenant. The new legend will offer a supportive playstyle and push the boundaries of healing through skillful play.
Here is a list of why I think Engie is just better.
“Better” does not mean “necessary” or “only choice”. The original question is about thieves having a place, not thieves being the best at one particular thing.
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What I don’t want.
1. Meaningful story content. I like the lore and I like challenges, but I like lore more. If meaningful story content is going to be in the super challenging content, there needs to be a story mode that allows players to experience their character’s exploits in that story without the huge rewardsgranted to those who complete challenge mode.
2. Timers as DPS checks. I dislike timers, they are immersion breaking and don’t make much sense. A boss has that power, but is just waiting to use it? Doesn’t make much sense. Take a cue from Vinewrath and Marionette. If you don’t DPS the enemies fast enough, they reach an objective and harm it. If that objective takes enough damage bad stuff happens. I prefer countering objectives to fighting a ticking clock. Both are DPS checks, one makes a bit more sense. There are all sorts of implementations of this that can be made that don’t rely on something as trivial as the boss becoming bored and then unleashing its full potential.
3. Raids to be the end game. Other content should not suffer because raids are Arena Net’s new bauble. I don’t want this game to be WoW where everyone shuffles into ten man instances only to appear in town later to show off their shinies. The open world becomes a hub and at that point you might as well not be playing an MMO, but a cooperative RPG.
snip
Why aren’t you on Anet’s team?
If you can beat Raids with anything but a highly optimized team comp, they might as well not have bothered making them in the first place
The question is what does the pool of highly-optimized teams look like? If none of them contain thieves, then Arena Net would not be meeting one of their many goals for the content they create. One of those goals is that each profession can perform in any role, just in their own unique way. Arena Net cannot have it both ways. They cannot have encounters that are so precise that only a group of eight engineers and two warriors can complete it, and meet their stated goals about professions. I also think few people really do want this level of precision (you may be an exception).
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it doesn’t look promising for the future of raids to include thieves when engies are better in every way.
Even if this is the case, and I find it quite difficult to measure “better” in this game when there is so much that can be done, this doesn’t mean there is no place for thieves in raids. It will be a rare group of friends or guild mates that wouldn’t bring one of their own along if the profession can contribute to raid success. Thieves would have to be in some miserable state not to bring anything to the table, but thankfully this isn’t the case. I have played many dungeons with thieves in my party and the content didn’t suddenly become impossible. I imagine raids will be much the same. An engi may be optimal, but a thief is viable. In the end, if you’re playing with friends, they will be fine with you playing the viable option. If you aren’t playing with friends I suggest you find a new guild where people will be welcoming to a non-meta, but viable, profession/build.
Do you really belive anet will change so much the encounter? It was the last month…. so, who knows?
I don’t know if they will or not, but they can certainly make lots of easy value changes in the name of re-balancing and making the encounter doable by a more diverse set of professions and builds. Off the top of my head:
- Base stats (e.g., toughness, vitality, damage)
- Timers (e.g., enrage timer, skill duration)
- Number of projectiles (e.g., how many ice shards fall in a ice storm)
- Animation speeds (e.g., how long the boss spends giving a “tell”)
- Which attacks are blockable
Whether they will or not no one knows, but it’s a possibility worth mentioning given the time frame and the worry that certain professions may be left out.
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The first boss was tested in the beta.
Quite frankly we don’t know what kind of support is viable as no one has played the raid in its current state.
If the raids required the meta to succeed that would be a pretty kitten design, as meta is by definition the most optimal. Optimal does not entail required. If Arena Net has made the encounters so precise as to require the meta they will be going back on their previous statements about making the new content interesting enough to be done by diverse groups of players taking on the different roles required. They would be going back on their commitment to balancing the professions such that they can be any one of those roles.
I have to ask, what kind of guild are you in that you fear being excluded for playing a particular profession? I suggest relocating if it is actually the case that your guild would not take you on as a Necromancer that does Direct DPS as a reaper, condition damage, or control through fear and other effects. I’m not familiar with necro support all that much, so I’m not sure if that is viable. Quite frankly we don’t know what kind of support is viable as no one has played the raid in its current state.
There is an internal cooldown per target for the blind. Perhaps it was on cooldown when you were expecting it to proc blind again?
No the blind is applying once, as I expect, it’s the confusion that I’m not getting on the blind application.
Hi, new-ish mesmer here. With the introduction of the shield I thought I’d check out this trait. The trait reads:
Cause confusion when you blind a foe. Blocking or evading an attack inflicts blind on your opponent.
When using this skill with scepter/shield the blocks from both weapons apply blind, but they do not apply confusion. Is this intended? Seems bugged to me. Blind from other sources (e.g., signet of midnight) work for me.
The trait reads:
Cause confusion when you blind a foe. Blocking or evading an attack inflicts blind on your opponent.
When using this skill with scepter/shield the blocks from both weapons apply blind, but they do not apply confusion. Is this intended? Seems bugged to me. Blind from other sources (e.g., signet of midnight) work.
Strictly speaking, it kinda needs to happen eventually. Afterall, there is that underwater dragon barring access to Cantha that we’ll have to put down at some point.
It doesn’t need to happen. We could fight ‘S’ on the shore, from a boat, or some other mechanic. It would be disappointing to me if Arena Net abandoned underwater combat, but they haven’t exactly dispelled the issue. It’s come up enough and they’ve have had plenty of opportunities to do so, but haven’t. If they were committed to revamping underwater combat we’d have heard something by now instead of the erosion of underwater content that we’ve seen. Keep in mind that one important biome in jungles is the fresh water biome, and Arena Net intentionally chose not to develop that biome in their jungle content.
Did they say in the current set or never again? Dulfy’s livestream notes are not clear on this point.
Lol the events aren’t what’s most rewarding in silverwastes… the chest farm is by far
Which require keys and shovels, which (primarily) come from doing the events.
Most of your suggestions would lead to people macro’ing the dialogue button or pressing space bar over and over again at a lip to pop glider in and out.
That’s a fair point on dialogue. How about unique dialogue and events for the rest? Or if that is too cumbersome to track remove the dialogue part (or have it be specific important NPCs). There could also be things like playing games with the species NPCs (e.g., belcher’s bluff, or species specific games).
I take it you never played an MMO where you leveled up individual skills like swimming, lore, etc. by doing that task over and over. In EVERY SINGLE CASE players just find a safe spot and afk macro to build xp.
First, macros are against the terms of use, so we shouldn’t have to forgo more interesting systems because people are abusing the system. Second, this problem exists in the current system. There are plenty of places for easy XP gain, and macros can exploit those. Have you seen some of the Orr events back when they were popular with players just afking with a button on repeat?
I remember building swimming in EQ1 by continuously swimming into a dock for like 12 hours overnight. Trust me when I say the gameplay was “thrilling”.
That you are an exploiter of that game’s systems suggests you didn’t find that particular track fun. That is fair. Perhaps swimming races, or other water adventures that gave big boosts to the track would have made this more interesting. As would lowering the amount required for progressing. The behavior you’re describing suggests to me that for you a careful balance wasn’t struck between the amount of time required to progress and the variety of interesting activities available to get you there.
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It really isn’t exciting and is truly an unimaginative way of handling progression for many of these tracks. While this method does open up many avenues for completing them, it does make me feel like it is a grind as opposed to something exciting to learn. My preferred method of unlocking/progressing these things would by doing relevant activities instead of any old activity:
- Hang gliding – After building your hang glider (unlocks track), you progress it by practicing with your glider (small amount of track progress every few seconds while gliding) and completing hang glider race courses and events (large amount of track progress).
- Lore tracks – After meeting the species (unlocks track). Interacting with them through dialogue (small progress) and completing events for them (large progress) unlock access to their stores and techniques. Using their techniques (e.g., mushrooms) also progresses you along the track a little bit each time.
- Fractals – Not enough information yet, but I’d say completing fractals should move you along.
- Pact commander – Killing the dragon minions around Tyria will progress this track a little. Events with dragon minions move the track along further. Specific goals could be created for large progress (e.g., specific events).
- Legendary – No good ideas. This doesn’t really seem like a good choice for the mastery system to me, and more of a collection activity. If it must remain a mastery, some combination of learning lore for the relevant legend, and crafting.
Of course, by making these more specific activities they should be easier to progress.
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Making an easy mode or raid finder type scene will deminish the purpose of this content, which is not story, it is about the other things I mentioned earlier in my response.
Since there is rarely one purpose for a piece of content, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the raids are also there to present a story with “Huge awesome mega reveal[s]”. 1 It is also going to bridge the gap between HoT and the next major threat. This was covered in the other thread (still on page 2), so this discussion should probably be moved there.
Let the game have 1 “hardcore” content, there is nothing wrong with that.
You misunderstood the suggestion. The OP isn’t asking for the hardcore content to be removed.
if the story is the only important thing in there, you can watch a youtube video that will sooner or later be uploaded by some dude beating the content.
True, there is more here than just knowing the story. There probably is experiencing it firs thand. As a roleplayer who invests in my character, I like to have my character be the one performing the actions. There is also just the fun of beating an epic fight, even if it is a less difficult fight. I do want the challenging content there, and put myself up tot he challenge, but should I fail in getting my guild into the raids or fail myself, I’d still like to be able to experience it.
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My simple question to ANET, why are you trying to create a grindfest in a game that simply does not need one? Why are you trying to do that every other MMO ends up doing — adding layers of grind to create pseudo-content?
Content requires capital to create, which requires money to pay employees. To generate money they need players playing the game and using the in game store/paying for a subscription. Properly gating players from content is a tried and true method of keeping players invested in the game longer while new content is under development. Masteries are a gating system. Gear acquisition is a gating system. Leveling is a gating system.
With infinite resources an MMO could offer enough that players wouldn’t feel the need to repeat content (unless they wanted to) and an MMO developer wouldn’t see any need to slow down player consumption of content with various gating mechanisms. However, we don’t live in a world where developers have access to infinite resources, so they must put mechanisms into prolong time in game before the new content can be released.
A careful balance must be achieved between the length of these gates and the introduction of new content. If the gates are too overbearing, you hemorrhage players due to feelings of futility and boredom. If they are too short, players that get through them faster start complaining there is nothing to do. We saw this crop up at GW 2’s release with ascended gear. You know you’re in a sweet spot when there is a minority of players complaining that there’s too little to do (i.e., your players that play a lot) and a minority of players complaining that there is too much stuff to grind to get through the gates (e.g., your players that play seldom).
I too enjoy the refreshing take on underwater exploration and combat. It’s be a shame if we will never return to the underwater content because it’s deemed too time consuming to balance underwater skills, or make alternatives to existing skills for underwater play.
Certainly. But if you have ever gone through a piece of code written by another person, you know that there are a lot of subtleties, and without the original person telling you why have certain things been done the way they have been done, it’s very hard to do more than simplest changes, and even those take fairly large time investment.
Since the departure of Robert Hrouda, ANet has lost the original dungeon designer. For new team it’s simply far easier to start from scratch. All the new ‘dungeons’ that have been created by the new team are ‘fractals’ and now ‘raids’. It is a simple matter of spending excessive development resources on maintaining what is now legacy content that ANet is not willing to do.
I see your point now, and it is a good one.
The dungeon team was fired years ago, they literally have no one with in-depth knowledge of the dungeons. Everyone who created the dungeons are gone, they’d have to spend dozens of hours going through a dungeon and figuring everything out again if they wanted to make large changes without breaking things.
I’m aware of these facts, my point eludes you. Dungeons are instanced, usually challenging, content meant for a group of people. Group is a vague term and not specified as different games have different group sizes when they design these encounters. Point is Crystal and her team are working on challenging, instanced content for a group. That group size happens to be ten. It could easily be five. It is incorrect to say they have no dungeon team when they clearly do.
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3) From maintenance standpoint I understand them as well – they no longer have a dungeon team, so it makes sense to switch players to the content they have people familiar with instead of trying to patch content they really have no in-depth knowledge on.
They have a dungeon team, they are just focusing on ten man dungeons (called “raids” in this game). I’m sure Crystal Reid’s abilities don’t suddenly become useless because you asked her to design a dungeon for five people instead of ten.
After auction house is back up I can start the sale, which I couldn’t before, but after confirming it I get “An error has occurred”. No error code.
Getting the same TP bug.
kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif
You can play how you want. If you like sword, go for it. Not following the meta doesn’t mean you still can’t do the encounter, it just means you’ll be taking extra time. Depending on group this may be anywhere from a kick to an attitude of “we’re here to have fun, and part of that is you using an awesome sword”. You should try to find more people like the latter IMHO.
He asked about sword/shield being useful so I guess he somewhat cares about being optimal.
That’s a good point, but useful doesn’t mean optimal. It’s not a well defined term in context either. I took it to mean will still allow him to complete dungeons with a team. Of course it will as other factors matter more to dungeon completion than one weapon choice.
kitten I just really want to make sword work for PVE. Love the way Jormag’s breath look on guardian. Any help making a build would be greatly appreciated.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/1/18/Jormags_breath_animated.gif
You can play how you want. If you like sword, go for it. Not following the meta doesn’t mean you still can’t do the encounter, it just means you’ll be taking extra time. Depending on group this may be anywhere from a kick to an attitude of “we’re here to have fun, and part of that is you using an awesome sword”. You should try to find more people like the latter.
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That dork claims daredevil will be a very good tank. I suppose… if by tank you mean guy-with-many-dodges-but-if-you-miss-one-you-die.
It’s ok tho, I healz.
I’m not “that dork”, but I don’t see a huge difference between a daredevil loaded up on toughness/vitality gear who also mitigates damage through blinds, blocks, and frequent dodges, and controls enemies with knockdowns, daze, and stuns; and a guardian who loads up on toughness/vitality gear who also mitigates damage through blocks, protection, and regen, and controls enemies through knockback and wards. A daredevil loaded up in tank gear is not going to pay for missing one dodge. Are they as optimal as the guardian who can better make use of healing power in the tanking role? No, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fill the role properly specced/geared for it. Much of this conversation pre-supposes that meta is the only thing that can win the day, when meta means optimal or the best, not what can achieve victory. If thieves cannot take on the tank/control role in the soft-trinity that is a problem for the profession Arena Net needs to address to meet their goals, 1 but I don’t think they are as bad as you make them seem.
1 – Recently they’ve re-committed to all professions being able of taking on all roles, but in their own unique way. This is a goal they’ve had since release. I remember pre-release dungeon articles mentioning how they were doing dungeons with full ranger teams. Of course, as we found out those dungeons didn’t make good use of the soft-trinity, but I digress, their intent is that professions have enough variety that they can build for a certain role and succeed at it.
or just take a sinister engineer which does way more condi dps?
We have to be careful about answering question about what thieves can do in raids with more optimal options for that task. The important question is are thieves good enough to provide the role in question, not if there is something better. If they aren’t good enough, then Arena Net has to be made aware as their stated goal is that all professions can find a role in the soft trinity, just in their unique way.
So make it so that the difficulty of the fight relies solely on performing the mechanics otherwise your group fails? Is that the gist of what you really want?
Yeah, but the mechanics I’m talking about covers a lot of ground. It covers positioning, using environmental objects at the right time, dodging, soaking damage for others, and literally anything that isn’t damage over time in a raid encounter. If you’ve raided in other games that laundry list is huge.
I also didn’t say they can’t have enrage timers, but they have to be careful how tight they make them, less we get raids where, for example, only 6 engineers in the DPS role can do the encounter. Any combination of classes in the DPS role should have the tools available to them to meet the check, less Anet backtrack on their previous claims about professions being able to do any role, just in their own unique way. We would also find ourselves in the unfortunate situation where players who want to raid no longer get to play the profession they main, because it’s locked out of the encounter by tight timing constraints their profession can’t simply meet. I don’t know about you, but the game would become less enjoyable for me if I needed to maintain multiple characters just so I could experience some content.
Edit: I think Lupi is a good example of an enrage feature based on skill mechanics (not stats). You need to avoid one of his attacks or kill the grubs, less he get a buff that makes him harder. Fail enough times and he becomes unbeatable (or nearly, I have no idea about his current state). Now, many people will say Lupi is easy, but I don’t think so. He’s practiced, not easy. I still run new people through Arah and grubs do spawn and some are consumed. I just run a tanky build, so it doesn’t bother me if he get s a stack or two. I can keep him busy if others are dying, giving them time to get themselves up. This is also a nice example of counter play to soft-enrage features. A pure DPS group would have difficulties with a partially empowered lupi, but one with a tank has an easier time managing it. Of course, even such a group would fail if he gains too many stacks.
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He never said to make it difficult by decreasing the enrage timer. It was just a generalized statement that he wants it to be harder.
The context is a discussion on boss HP/Damage in regards to the enrage mechanic. If he meant something else, I did not pick up on that.
Remove them and replace them with hard failure situations that occur based on failing the twitch/skill use mechanics. Either that or be really lenient on the DPS windows, less we find ourselves in a situation where professions are left out of certain roles because they cannot perform at that role in a fashion required by the encounter. You have stated multiple times that all professions are capable of every role in their own way, I don’t see that at the moment (e.g., support thief leaves a lot to be desired). However, if that is still your goal, you have to be careful about how precise these encounters are when it comes to the numbers game.
I do hope they make it harder so my team can have more fun figuring the most optimized group comp.
Increasing enrage timer difficulty has nothing to do with figuring out the most optimized group it only limits the pool of what is “good enough”. 1 I think Arena Net should focus on making it so players aren’t improving their “spreadsheet” skills, and actually improving their mobility, twitch, and skill use. They should also be encouraging build diversity and not discouraging it. Making the encounter difficult through enrage timers pushes it towards requiring more precision from players on their spreadsheet, it doesn’t ask that they become better in the mechanical skills (e.g., position, environmental objects, etc.). or the control/support options.
My biggest concern is that by making enrage timers more precise it is going to move Arena Net away from their stated goal of utilizing control/support and that every class should be capable of these things in their own way. If the precision is really tight, we may find ourselves in a situation, for example, where multiple DPS necromancers aren’t viable for the DPS slot in the raid. That would be a sad state as it forces guilds, especially small guilds, that want to raid to tell their players what they should play and what role they should take on. I’d rather my players want to play their profession as a support, rather than forcing them to play it as a support.
Raids should be challenging, but I don’t think it should be through spreadsheet calculations on who/what profession dishes out the most damage against the encounter. That’s not playing the game, it’s spending time preparing to play it.
1 – The optimal group remains the optimal group, no matter how small or large the window is before the boss enrages.
There is too much focus on what is “meta” (i.e., optimal) and not with what it “good enough”. There will always be a “meta” until that meta is upended by a different discovery. It does not mean that the raids will require the meta. The ideal situation is that the raid is balanced to be challenging enough, but not so challenging that it requires the precision of specific class combinations in specific gear. That would be horrible for Arena Net’s stated goals of bringing more attention to the soft-trinity and build diversity.
but the utilities(what I consider to be the backbone of a spec) are all melee, that is what makes the dragon hunter feel badly designed.
The utilities are not for melee strictly speaking. However, given the current state of PvE they are more suited for ranged play in PvP. They are a ward of sorts, letting knowledgeable players know that if they come into your territory they are going to be hurt, but if they don’t they are also going to be hurt from a far. The AI doesn’t come equipped with this, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it in PvE with proper kiting, it just means that you or your allies have to coordinate. In GW we had a trapper in our raids prep traps and the puller would always drag the mobs through them.
I agree that Dragon Hunter took the profession into a place it doesn’t normally go (ranged DPS) and it’s great that you like it. I think the goal for specializations should be to heavily push a class into a certain role in the soft-more-than-just-a-trinity. 1 The problem I feel is that Arena Net has made a blunder in releasing specializations before there are more than one option (and no “core” doesn’t count as a specialization). Because of this specializations that go too far into pushing into a role will naturally displease people who don’t want to take on that role. I for one am a melee, tanky-control build and thus ranged-DPS doesn’t interest me in the slightest (only the modifications to virtues do and those aren’t worth losing the trait lines that better support my interests). The other option is for Arena Net to make the specializations work with most players playstyles with the class, but this has the downside of making it generic and what will they do when another specialization comes along? Will it be equally generic? Will they have to do a specialization overhaul and push the existing specialization into a role?
I do like what Arena Net has done with the Dragon Hunter, Scrapper, Reaper, and Druid (especially this one). These provide significant pushes into a role, sometimes one the profession was never very good at. However, the dragon hunter role isn’t for me. I hope future specializations will focus more on my preferred play-style.
1 – Trinity is a bad term as things can go into so many directions; melee-/ranged- DPS, control, healing-/buffing-/damage prevention- support, condition-/direct- DPS,
What’s wrong with individual skill being a barrier to not even 1% of the content available in the game?
Many people play this game of a variety of skill levels. Some of them are roleplayers, some of them like the narrative arc and being part of it, some of them may honestly want a challenge and care about others experiences, and a few would like to think they are the crème de la crème and should have exclusive access to story content gated by skill (at the expense of everyone else enjoying that content). All have wants and desires, and some of those wants get thwarted by the decision to gate story content behind skilled content. Very few wants get thwarted by having easy access to story content, more wants get thwarted by gating it behind super challenging content. More people are happier and enjoy the game under the first.
This is a situation where we can have our cake and eat it too because story presentation is not a limited access good unless artificial barriers are placed on it. People who want challenging content get what they want. People who want to experience the story get what they want. People who want challenging content and exclusive access to cosmetic rewards get what they want. People who want exclusive access to story content do not get what they want, but those cries are few (if any). Really this is the first thread I’ve seen this defended. Prior to raids no one said a requirement was that they tell a story that no one else gets to experience, most discussion was about loot.
People “throw around the word entitled” because that’s what is happening here. .
Read about operational definitions, then come back to this point.
Making a story mode version is not FREE. It costs development time, it introduces new hurdles with reward structure, and it dilutes the point of raids – which are supposed to be content for endgame players.
No it’s not, but is it 8h @ 1FTE? One week @3FTE? Don’t have these numbers at this point, nor will we, and thus it’s not a point worth mulling over. What is, is your assumption that the content for “end game” players, by which I assume you mean “very skilled players”, no longer exists under the proposed solutions. It doesn’t go away and much of it remains exclusive, except the story and witnessing the battles.
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You are the one who seeks to deny a story experience to others…
It’s not clear where I’m doing this, and you only assert it without support..
Nothing is stopping you from going into the raid, getting better at the game, and eventually completing it and seeing the reward for yourself if you so choose.
Here’s a few potential barriers:
- Individual skill
- Limits on attainable personal skill
- Not enough skilled players to play with in my guild
- Pugs being unable to complete the content without voice comm
You aren’t interested in that however, because it might actually take some work, so you just want to go ahead and skip to the end pressing 1 because the game has always been that way.
Just because you can’t seem to wrap your head around my position does not mean you get to invent unstated reasons why I’m concerned, especially when I’ve explicitly stated the opposite up thread:
“Raids don’t have to be difficult, it’s great that they can be and that option be available for those who want a challenge (myself included).”
This suggests to me you think I’m lying (or you don’t actually read), and if that’s where this discussion is going it’s far from being productive and a waste of my time and yours. You think you’re talking to a liar, and what could be more unproductive than that?
Why do you feel entitled to this story content?
Was waiting for this. People throw this word around because it is supposed to carry moral shame, but don’t bother to define it in an operational way and then show how it applies to these circumstances and not their own. What makes someone entitled?
This ruins the raid for the people trying to do it as ‘intended’ as people naturally do the easy mode first making the actual fight boring and without surprise.
It sounds like these fictitious people really don’t care about the challenge, but getting the loot gated behind the challenge. As such, they are doing the smart thing and prepping for it. If they really do care about the challenge their behavior is nonsensical. They want challenge but they enter easy mode, thus defeating the challenge. Doesn’t add up.
There will be backlash from the endgame players the raids were actually meant to be developed for. FFXIV, as I already said, is already suffering from this.
I didn’t play this game and don’t know what form this backlash took. Can you elaborate?
What if at 30% life a boss does a reveal, changes form or sacrifices another NPC, and has new abilities / music? You’ve been working on that boss for two days and never saw that phase. All that magic is gone when you spoil everything about those fights to players in snoozefest encounters. The magic of raiding is in those moments, expecting challenge and seeing those kind of things for the first time and reacting to them.
Again the players that want a challenge, yet spoil it for themselves, only have themselves to blame. They CHOSE to enter easy mode before tying hard mode. No one forced them into it.
With no gear treadmill in Guild Wars 2, essentially one of the only real “rewards” to raiding outside of vanity minis and skins is that experience. Take that away and what do you have left?
A game of choices where people who want challenge have that choice, and people who want to experience the story can. More people are happy, except maybe a few elitists who seek to deny a story experience to others… because?
The problem is you seem to equate any semblance of story with “important”.
“Huge awesome mega reveal[s]” does not sound like unimportant stuff. I grant you it could be disappointing marketing speak, but that’s the point of the question to Bobby.
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Doing right by the player base IS providing a variety of content for new and old players.
I’m not sure where you think I’m against a variety of content. I am not. I’m against stuffing important story into content a small fraction of the player base will experience.
In case of veterans, challenging and meaningful content is the difference that sells expansions.
Reread my upthread I am not against there being challenging content. The rest of your post hinges on this false assumption.