Oh god, this again.
Guys, if you do not like actually playing the game, getting more rewards won’t help.
We all have things we do in life that we don’t like, but we do them anyway because we get a reward. We call those things JOBS.
This is meant to be your hobby. If the best thing you can think of to do with your hobby is to turn it into a job that gives you virtual rewards, then you might want to find another game to play, or another hobby entirely.
I got my main geared before ArenaNet decided making money by playing the game is bad. Right now I’m just trying to get my alt set up with basic gear but it’s almost hopeless.
If you have some amazing way to farm money that is more efficient than than dungeons, which again are supposed to be one of the best ways to get money according to Jon peters, please share it.
Oh god, I wouldn’t say I’m a prodigy when it comes to making money. I just kind of muck about with magic find food and money accrues. Do I make money at a breathtaking pace? Certainly not! Do I make enough money that getting a set of crafted exotics is pretty easily achievable? Yep.
Exotics have better stats than rares so they’re not cosmetic gear.
Right now a full set would cost around 50 gold which is about $220 in gems.
Jon Peters himself said dungeons are supposed to be one of the most efficient ways to get money. So if you found a way to make 50 gold with less of a time investment than running 500 dungeons you should probably report it as an exploit so that so they can fix it.
I’m aware that exotics have better stats than rares. I have about 1/3rd of the globes I need for my crafted exotics, but I’m short on the raw materials. I could buy the rest, but it would probably cost 5-10 gold, and I’ve only got about 2 at the moment. I average about 1 to 1.5 gold per evening, but I only play around 2-3 hours on week nights.
I’ve only been 80 since last Saturday.
There’s definitely a little hill to climb as far as exotics go, but it’s not nearly as ridiculous as you’re painting it. I guess if you absolutely cannot stand the crafted exotics for whatever reason then yeah, you’ve definitely got a longer road ahead of you.
Why can’t I quote these posts? Have you locked the thread or something?
“I’m saving exploration modes for when I hit level 80 and run out of normal PvE stuff to do.”
I kind of had the same idea, except when I’ve gone back to that waypoint each time, there’s hardly anyone there. I’ve waited weeks for the majority of players to level up, but no one seems interested.
Quote is really intermittent today. It’s there, it’s not there, it’s there, it’s not there.
It’s annoying.
It’s understandable, but obviously your definition of “grind” is one of the two that differs from mine. What I meant by grinding is just repeating the same set of actions mechanically in terms of gameplay. Such as clusterkitten Orr, or pre-nerf CoF speedclear. People may or may not like it. People may still do it even if they don’t like it for the sake of the rewards. People may do it maybe because they like it.
Why do you feel it’s “toxic and silly” to expect MMO that provide us with endless progression? Why do you feel anything from a game is “oppressive, life devouring”? It’s understandable that you don’t want to grind, but statement like that only seem to put yourself in the seat of a self-victimized addict to video games that should probably seek professional help.
Oh please. Please.
If I’m playing games in a multiplayer environment, it’s because I want to cooperate or compete with other players. In order to do that, a level playing field has to be established. Because a non-level playing field is, frankly, rubbish. Imagine a game of Starcraft where you leveled up your zerglings so they could one shot enemy units. No one would stand for it, and rightly so. Or how about a game of Chess where my level 80 Pawn can move 5 squares instead of just one. Fun stuff.
Unfortunately, this creates a perpetual state of “Keeping Up With Jones”, and “Jones” is always the guy with the least impulse control and the most time. If you don’t keep up with Jones, then you are meat for Jones in PvP, and if you game centers around raids and infinite progression, more and more development resources need to be funneled into providing Jones with content you will never see.
It’s terrible game design. I push a button, and numbers go up. I push it again, and numbers go up again. Whee!
You can certainly make the argument that people like it. Some people like consensual torture, for heavens sake. You can find an audience for anything. You cannot, however, make a cogent argument that it is an essential element of game design.
Wasn’t guild wars 2 supposed to break this curse? GW1 did, and GW2 was on track to doing so until they systematically eliminated all conventional methods to get crafting materials and/or money to get basic gear in a reasonable amount of time.
Define “basic gear” and “reasonable”? I had full rares 5 minutes after hitting 80, at the whopping cost of 1.5 gold for some extra mats I needed to craft them.
I won’t deny that there are some atrocious (and baffling) grinds in the game, but they’re all for cosmetic items, so they’re fairly irrelevant from a balance perspective. It’s more of a “why would anyone ever want to do that” situation.
Grinding has been an important aspect in all MMORPG. That includes EQ, to WoW, to GW1, and to GW2. GW2 so far has done an OK job to separate grinding from unique content, but unlike its predecessor, this game doesn’t provide a good grinding mechanic to those who want to grind.
Grinds are NOT an important aspect in MMOs. Grinds are a BY PRODUCT of the need to keep players running on a treadmill and paying their subscription fee. They have never been remotely desirable from a game play perspective. There is nothing less visceral or compelling than watching numbers slowly go up. That’s why they started calling it a grind, way back when. Because it was unpleasant. Now we’ve got people saying “I like grinding!” Buddy, if you like it, it’s not a grind.
We need to get rid of this toxic, silly expectation that MMOs are going to provide us with endless progression. It is an oppressive, life devouring, and ultimately extraordinarily unrewarding way to design a game. It was bad enough when they did it to keep people compulsively paying a sub fee. It’s even worse to demand it now that there is no sub fee. What on earth are you guys thinking?
Anet has stated that dynamic events (new ones on top of existing ones) will keep 80’s coming back to the lower level zones. The main flaw with this? DE’s are 1) designed poorly and 2) Karma reward system is broken.
Like I’ve said numerous times, there is PLENTY of content in GW2. The issue is not the lack of content. The issue is the poor design of said content and poor reward system (Karma seriously needs to be looked at). And like I’ve said before… you can make all the content you want, if it’s poorly designed I don’t want to do it.
I disagree that dynamic events are universally poorly done, but I’d generally agree that they do need some work. Particularly the scaling. Events do not deal with a critical mass of people very well at all, it just turns into sound and lights. Which can be fun, in a very simple “THINGS ARE HAPPENING” way, but it’s not going to scratch the challenge itch of hardcore gamers.
I think scaling of rewards needs to be looked at. If I’m level 80 in a level 6 zone, that level 6 mob needs at least a chance of dropping level 80 loot. Heck, give me level 80 karma and cash rewards for the events, too, while you’re at it. Or more than you’re giving now. And then, yes…I will migrate to other zones, just for a change of pace. As long as all the high end crafting materials and drops are in, say, Orr, people will sit in Orr and say “This is the end game!”.
Fortunately this is a pretty simple fix, IF they decide to fix it. It’s not wedded to the design of the game that “scaling is bad”.
lol really you’re such a patronizing troll. I guarantee, you would say the same crap in a few months when there is not enough people in low level zones to do group events.
Head to COF, try and get an explorer mode dungeon going with people and I guarantee people will choose the same route over and over or head to a lesser dungeon and see if you can even get a group.
My point flew right over your head, and you just bite because you’re a troll with nothing to dispute.
I see we’ve gone straight to personal attacks!
Your point didn’t “fly over my head” sir. I’m quite capable of recognizing bias when I see it. I appreciate your concern though.
This is exactly why people are upset, the game has turned from being different into yet another WoW clone sans the raids. The gear treadmill is absolutely horrendous and has to go. The only reason for it to even be there is to get people to spend real money on gems.
I agree that the current dungeon gear treadmill is appalling, but I don’t really see how it ties into gems in any meaningful way. Gems don’t short circuit or bypass that process at all.
(edited by SpectacularYak.6518)
I still think that Ultima Online (pre carebear land) was the greatest mmo to date. It had everything, great crafting treasure finding, pets, and lord britton. The dev’s would randomly pop into the game as player controlled dragons (sometimes the players won, most times the dev’s won) and just destroy towns. Allowing it to be over ran with lich lords and skeletons. I personally loved the chance of running into a PKer. I felt that it was a very level playing field. It’s not like they had some GFG mace of kitten-killing. They had a the same mace as the next guy but I was a wizard that had wrestling…. g’luck pk. People need to look at that game as a basis IMO. However, I am sure that 85% of the player base never heard of the game <shrug>.
It’s Lord British, you plebeian! =P
And yeah, UO was an incredibly ambitious game. Completely broken, really, on almost every single possible level, but wildly entertaining nonetheless.
Excuse. Everyone who buys those games knows up front that there is a price to pay Monthly. and yet they buy it anyway.
SWTOR was bad, its gameplay was worse than WoW’s, all it had was a good story mode and leveling (FAMILIAR PATTERN?) but the end-game was dreadful. and that is why it went down hill so much.
Oh so we’re just going to hand-wave the sub fee, then, are we? Much better if the game’s decline in subscribers occurred because of the specific narrative that exists inside your head, rather than the more obvious one that has been demonstrated repeatedly in the industry, regardless of what the end game contained.
I think it’s pretty hilarious you’re calling people out on their debating skills, btw. I’m reminded of an old truism about glass houses and the throwing of stones.
It’s easy to take a word out of context, my point was if it’s so much fun then why are people not even doing that content?
Do you know what a biased sample is? Or a confirmation bias?
Do you have any actual statistics to back up your assertion that “no one is doing that content”? Or is all 100% anecdotal as your point implies?
Hell I don’t even LIKE dungeons in their current incarnation. You and I can sit around all day insulting them if you want. But I’m quite certain there are, in fact, people who find things I don’t like fun. Incredible, I know.
They hit 80 and found the end-game content to be crap.
let me guess, wrong? then why don’t you tell me instead of making mindless spam.
Because one of those games has/had a $15 a month price tag to continue playing, and all subscription fee games post WoW have experienced a huge subscriber drop off after one month regardless of how good the game was?
The problem here is people find Grinds, Rewards, epic bosses (99% of them in this game are mindless) cool long dungeons that you can do with large groups (All other content in this game has large groups, why not clever dungeons) are all fun.
Grinding tokens and materials and be told to “slow down” and “do unrewarding older content that you have already done” fun.
You have no arguement… just mindless defence.
I’m sorry…you are debating the different things that people find fun, and your premise is that I “have no argument”? Because what you find fun is what’s actually fun, in an objective and quantifiable way? Is that what I am to understand?
Hell, you don’t even know which of those things I like and don’t like, and what things I do or do not find fun about the current model of GW2, because you’re too busy slamming your forehead off the “FANBOY” button and accusing me of “not having an argument” because I made fun of a guy who implied the concept of playing games for fun was pointless.
Careful not to jerk those knees too hard, champ, you might give yourself a hernia.
…all this “LET’S PLAY FOR FUN” crap is nonsense…
I agree! Has anything ever been so absurd as the concept of playing games for something as stupid and pointless as FUN?
Quality? You may have a point, but you can polish anything aswell but if it runs out that quick there is no difference.
BZZZT. Sorry, no, it’s not quality. Try again!
Think of a reason why a lot of people might’ve walked away from TOR after, I dunno, say…a month.
Am I the only one who doesn’t want a game I literally cannot stop playing?
Exactly,. this didn’t sell or have as many players as SWTOR did and look what happened to SWTOR , FOR HAVING A POOR END GAME BUT DECENT JOURNEY.
There’s a fairly critical distinction between the two games. I’ll give you a minute and see if you can figure out what it is.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
Hardcores keep your game running, they are more predictable and easier to retain than casual gamers.
Fundamentally untrue. It’s been stated time and time again that the ultra-casual player is the most desirable MMO participant. They don’t play a ton, so there’s less server load. They move through content slowly, so there isn’t a constant, piping demand for new content, new content, new content, I’m bored, I’m bored, feed me. And they’re more likely to partake of costly convenience items because they don’t have the time or inclination to get them through in-game means.
If being hardcore was really optimal, then EQ would’ve soared to 10 million users, and not World of Warcraft. Now that WoW is the new hardcore standard (and oh boy does that make my sides split) everyone is forgetting that it was casual central! WoW was the great casual revolution! It’s all a question of perspective.
EVE is an outlier in many respects, in large part because it might be the only AAA sandbox game on the market, so it gets to frolic in a meadow almost completely devoid of meaningful competition. That is not to say that EVE is not a good game or that it doesn’t deserve its success…I’d go so far as to say it’s a special game. I admire it greatly. But I don’t think every game needs to be EVE. There’s already an EVE. It’s pretty good!
Any way, long story short…no…hardcores are the WORST audience. They’re the quickest to blow through content, the first to complain, the first to insist they know better than the developers, the first to find and abuse exploits, and the first to move on because they’ve exhausted the game. You’re mistaking “hardcore” with “core audience”. The core audience for a game tends to be incredibly loyal, and shows tremendous recidivism. Like, say, the 7-9 million casual gamers that reflexively return to WoW every time Blizzard bangs the gong. The core audience, though, is not a unified demographic. All of them are core for highly individual reasons. I was a core WoW gamer for many years, although I hated raiding. A fellow core WoW gamer might’ve been there BECAUSE of the raids.
GW2 will find its core audience regardless of which direction it moves in. The size of that core audience will depend on how niche Arena Net decides to be with their design.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
The fact that the first post in this thread got flagged for an infraction says all you need to know about the GW2 community.
Some dude eloquently outlines his problems with the game and he gets reported.
Pathetic.
The OP has had his moments, and he certainly did not deserve an infraction for that post (what was THAT about?), but I’d not go so far as to call it “eloquent”, for heavens sake. I’m not sure how you can suggest that without dissolving into giggles.
Dynamic events were the worst implementation of a pitifully bad idea I can possibly imagine for a video game…essentially a boring, monotonous hackfest that begs to be ALT-TAB’ed…Scaling is pathetic…profoundly boring…It’s profoundly boring, every single time…This, of course, doesn’t even address the fact that dynamic events themselves are boring…I’d rather find a rusty fork and plunge it into my eye…"
The thing is, I actually SHARE some of his complaints about DE’s, but if this is how one frames their criticism, they are not being “eloquent”. They are being hyperbolic, and they are flame baiting.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
i am not sure how to say this to you but , YOU as a human being , is living in a skinner box in RL. Look around you, take a good look around you. Notice that there is always an urge to upgrade? to be better, stronger, faster, have more shinies, bigger shinies, more comfort , less hungry etc etc ? You DO realize that there is a built in instinct which has led humanity to where it is right now. The Skinner Box whech is used to condition and train animals , is built around us humans. We are compelled to buy things, compelled to behave in a certain manner etc
and btw there is plenty of research to suggest that the Skinner principle does not always apply to gaming . Also if we did not have the built in conditioning, the Skinner has less affect on us .
I hear what you’re saying, but the prevailing attitude in certain quarters that a game needs compulsive progression models to be successful or entertaining is profoundly silly and completely ignores the entire history of the medium. There are innumerable examples of games and forms of play that don’t have any “progression” at all, and yet somehow we have a small subsection of MMO grognards who are convinced if numbers aren’t perpetually going up then the whole exercise has been a waste of time.
Also, I’m not sure I philosophically agree with you that the urge for better/stronger/faster is inevitable, but I do understand we have certain biological drivers that keep us perpetually seeking more. What “more” is, though, can be defined on an individual basis. Alas, that whole discussion is WAY off topic, so we should probably keep it to a dull roar.
SpectacularYak that was inspired. I only wished you hadn’t raised the ghost of Ultima IX though.
Sorry about that. I should probably have included trigger warnings for Ultima fans. =D
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
I have absolutely railed against casual gamers, and here’s why: Every multiplayer game I’ve ever loved that has had a sequel —- or indeed a series —- has followed the same pattern, which is: Small developer makes a game that develops a niche following > game gets good reviews and gets more sales > Developer gets purchased by somebody larger > Developer makes sequel, only this time the larger, parent company is on their tail about shareholders and profit margins, and the game is dumbed way down > repeat. Eventually the small developer gets consolidated.
The gaming industry is absolutely saturated with this archetypal story, and since you seem half-educated yourself, you know this.
Certainly. I’m no stranger to niche games that I enjoyed getting a mass market makeover that changes the spirit of the title, with the result being that I enjoyed it less. I’ve seen some pretty atrocious adaptations of some pretty seminal works over the years.
Casual gamers mean a less complicated, shorter, and thus a less engrossing, less challenging game, because they don’t like to grind, they don’t like hard stuff, and they’d rather do other stuff most of the time anyway. But they do spend lots and lots of money, so they’re the cash cow.
This was the same argument used to hand-wave WoW and every evolution it brought to the genre back in 2004. Everything was coming too easy now, the talking heads said. You don’t really APPRECIATE anything unless you have to grind your head against a wall for 50 hours to get it. Legions of angry genre pundits stroked the crackers out of their beards and penned furious missives about the state of the genre and how everything was slumping into ruin. Here we are 8 years later, and now WoW is the template that must be followed, and it’s the WoW players who have suddenly become the hardcore grind enthusiasts, and they’re uttering the same grim fables about how any deviation from the master formula will mean an end to Proper Gaming. And it’s all rubbish, really, it’s so stupid it makes my head hurt. (And yes I know you’re not a WoW fan, but WoW fans are amongst your most ardent constituents in this, trust me).
If you want to see what happens when a company actually DOES betray a playerbase and take their series off the rails, go watch a retrospective on Ultima IX. Go see what the initial reaction to the transformation of XCOM into a FPS was, before Firaxis swooped in to save the day. Arena Net has not made a BAD game, not by any objective standard. They’ve made a very good game, but they’ve made a game that isn’t to your taste. Which is why I’ve repeatedly said that I sympathize with you, because I do. I like some pretty quirky games myself, and sometimes those games get iterated into something that I no longer enjoy, and when that happens I grouse on forums and pout and make declarative statement like “I HOPE YOU LIKE FAILURE, YOU STUPID STUPIDS”, and point to everyone who agrees with me as hard evidence that I Am Correct. But forums are a self-selecting population of people who came to discuss the game, and angry threads with angry titles lead to an even finer distillation of the population, and create an echo chamber in which the truly discontent can shout and feel like they’re standing in the middle of a mighty crowd.
This trend towards “casual gaming” is not going to stop. Gaming has gone mainstream. It doesn’t belong to you because you were gaming before them, just like it doesn’t belong to me because I was (likely) gaming before you. I don’t “know what makes a game good” because I’m good at games, or because I got here first.
It also isn’t a thread where we’re expecting there to be Venn Diagrams and logical proofs and Punnet Squares on the chromosomes you have if you like the game and the ones you have if you don’t. Even my original post is full of bias. That’s the nature of forums.
That’s a lazy defense of poor reasoning and poor argumentation. Of course every post has an element of bias, that doesn’t mean you embrace it fully and just throw all attempts at rationality and objectivity to the wind. MMO forums are bad enough without sane, sensible, well spoken people losing their minds and adding to the jungle noises.
Edited before Anet brings the banhammer again.
I haven’t gone back to see what got warned/deleted, but there was quite a bit of name calling going on at a couple of points. If I had to guess what got reported, it was probably those.
(edited by SpectacularYak.6518)
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
When WoW launched, blizzard basically dumbed down all of the popular MMORPGs, integrated the features from each that would mesh well together, but used their resources to make a very fluid game. Now while blizzard dumbed things down, things were so challenging before, that even the dumbed down wasn’t too newb friendly (yet).
Nice revisionist history. WoW has described by angry zealots as the Fisher Price of MMOs and a betrayal of the hardcore fans that had carried the genre for years. I don’t even need to go into the reams and reams and reams and reams of diatribes that have been written about how Blizzard poisoned the well by letting the dreaded “casuals” in through the gates, as though spending less than 20 minutes killing a mob meant you were essentially playing Farmville.
GW2 will entertain some people… unfortunately the type of people it entertains, will never grasp how things COULD be, because they just aren’t at that level of gaming. They like it easy… and they like the rose-tinted goggles.
Ho-ho-holy cow. Do you actually believe this stuff when you write it? Because that’s scary. “Aren’t at that level of gaming”. I don’t even know if this is worth the time to debate, because anyone who could write something like that non-ironically is not going to be receptive to logic or reasoned discussion, but I think it’s important you realize how ridiculous that sounds. Where did this preposterous notion come from that a game has to be HARD to be GOOD? Who gets to set that bar? You?
I’ve been gaming for almost 30 years. The fact anyone could consider GW1 or WoW “hardcore” on any level is LAUGHABLE. That doesn’t mean they weren’t good games. I defended them against the “kittenDERP WHERE IS MY HARDCORE” crowd then, and I’ll defend GW2 now.
my issue is that the casual players do not really realize how important it is to feel progression.
It’s not important at all, unless you set out to design a Skinner Box instead of a game. Believe it or not, game design has always allowed for models of play that do not involve the vaunted “progression”.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
Lot of fanboys in this thread
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HateDumb
People are quick to throw the word “fanboy” around. They forget that polarized thinking and bias run in both directions.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
I rail against crap whether it’s something I like or not, actually. And dishonesty in particular pisses me off, especially when every airhead on the interwebs can’t come up for air long enough to realise how deluded they are.
I’m sick of being told I’m playing a game with all this new great stuff in it, when I’m not. There’s nothing revolutionary about anything in this game, not the DEs, the boss fights, anything. Anybody who’s played anything else can attest to this (and really, if you’ve played anything else, the statement is laughable). And yeah, it angers me that players are repeating verbatim precisely what the developer has been spoon feeding them for the past 2 years.
(And hell, I LIKE ANet).
Well, again, I’ve been getting marketed at for many years, so maybe I’ve just learned to manage my expectations better, but I think you need to pick a better hill to die on. You will literally be paralyzed with rage if every single piece of marketing in existence throws you into a lather, and you’re suggesting it MUST, because they are all LIARS.
The game is actually revolutionary in one respect (barrier to entry socially), and semi-revolutionary in another (the somewhat effective, somewhat kitteny level scaling). In most cases, including the dynamic events you dislike so much, it is merely evolutionary. You are correct in that.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
Examples?
Saying DEs are a system that ‘works perfectly well’ is intellectually dishonest, and you’ve got a plethora of comments in just this thread that prove that.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/biased-sample.html
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/hasty-generalization.html
It’s intellectually dishonest to call something perfect when there’s a sizable portion of relevant users who think it’s severely flawed.
That is being intellectually dishonest. There’s not already a ‘perfectly good [system] in place’, because many users loathe it.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html
Although the fact this is appeal to popularity at all demonstrates a fairly significant confirmation bias on your part.
Now, who are the many users I mentioned? Of the 8 people I know personally who play (or have played) GW2, not one of them likes the Hearts + Dynamic Events way of leveling up.
Not one.
Now, you could accuse me of simply associating with people similar to me, but when those eight people span the spectrum of good friends to people at work to friends of friends, then I think you’ve got a sample size that outruns that accusation.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/biased-sample.html
And our good friend the confirmation bias again.
I certainly don’t think everyone hates the system, but heck, have you been reading for the past two pages? A good 30% of the posters here agree with me, at least to some extent. That’s a sizable portion, in case you’re too dull to figure it out.
Now we’re back to appeal to popularity, and you’re getting emotional, so the personal attacks have started.
Do you think the majority of the players who are playing right now will be playing in 6 months?
The answer is an absolute no.
Bit of fortune telling here. History would seem to suggest you have something to go on here, but GW2 is not a subscription based game, so it is not likely to be subject to the same vagaries as its cousins. While I’m generally inclined to agree with you that the population is unlikely to hold steady or grow, you really have no idea if what you’re saying here is true or not, and yet you present it as fact.
Thus, people like us are up against both the multitude of casuals who think the game is great as well as the devs themselves because they’d have to admit their ideas weren’t the greatest. That’s a pretty formidable opponent, when you combine the two.
Now you’re really losing it. You’ve gone off the rails with self-aggrandizement, you’re snidely attacking “casuals” as though this was 2003 and the idea of filthy casuals actually sticking around and playing a game was foreign to the imagination, and you’re casting the developers as mustache twirling villains. We covered the “No True Scotsman” earlier, I won’t bother linking it here. “People like us”. Seriously man.
And here’s the thing. You actually seem like a smart guy, and you were pretty calm and seemed to be well rooted in the fact that this was your opinion, your disappointment was your own, and that there was really nothing to be done about things. Then you started ARGUING with people, and…quite predictably…the more you argued, the more polarized you got, and now you’re just talking rubbish. When you go off on rants about ego and money and “players like us” and the evil casuals and yada yada yada you sound like a clown. And I don’t think you’re a clown. I think you’re a reasonable fellow who didn’t like a game, and you got slammed for it, and now you’re throwing wild punches.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
And, I should add, this game is very Jobsian in the sense that it’s taken aspects from a multiplicity of other games, reworked the artwork a bit, and then called itself revolutionary.
Are you really going to start a crusade against marketing hyperbole now?
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but marketing hyperbole is not a new concept, nor is it limited to companies that you dislike or products you hate.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a sequel, it was made by former WoW employees as a direct competitor to WoW.
I wouldn’t post these complaints on the Eve forums or the xxx MMO forums, but since GW2 is the sequel to a predecessor, I can be reasonably expected to assume it’s going to carry over many things from the first. And from those expectations I got… an incoherent storyline full of nauseatingly bad one liners. That’s it. That’s the carryover from GW1.
I didn’t have expectations for GW1, aside from conceptions about WoW, maybe, and that’s the difference.
Ultimately, they probably should have just named GW2 something else altogether.
Perhaps, but this is hardly the first time games of a different stripe have shared an IP. I find it hard to be overly sympathetic with the ardent cries of “It’s not at all like GW1” since you had many years of the developers telling you it wasn’t like GW1, and many months of beta demonstrating that it wasn’t like GW1, which I think constitutes fair warning. That you then bought the game anyway, played it to “completion”, and are now angrily storming the forums caterwauling that the game isn’t GW1 makes me wonder where the hell this expectation came from. You’d think 5+ years would have been ample time for you to adjust to the realities of the situation.
I’ve addressed this multiple times over the past 4 pages, and I can’t be bothered rehashing it again to some Tyrian Steve Jobs who can’t get rid of the past quickly enough.
Well, no, you haven’t “addressed” anything. You’ve offered up some opinions, and you’ve made some pretty hilarious and poorly reasoned arguments in an attempt to elevate those opinions to the status of fact.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
Right, I fail to see the light so I’m a Luddite stuck in the grasp of the past.
The only reason these changes were made is so the game could accommodate ‘the everyman’, and that’s because casual gamers spend money. They’re also not a niche demographic. So it is about money, and I guarantee you it’s about ego, too. You’ve got people like Mark Chen (or whatever his name is) tweeting crap like, ‘NO MORE QUEST HUBS YAY!’. You think he’s going to go on record in a few months when there’s nobody playing consistently and admit he screwed up? No way. He’ll tout the fact that it sold 2 million copies, slap that on his resume, and move on up the ladder.
But yeah, the Luddite argument has to be number 2 in the pro-Guild Wars 2 manual, after number 1 “You’re playing it too much get a life” and number three “Guild Wars 1 was too complicated and grindy”.
I don’t recall using the term “Luddite”, but you are suggesting the 2nd iteration of a game is a failure due to the fact it did not closely mimic the first. So yes, you are arguing that “change is bad”. And you’re using the extremely tiresome “No True Scotsman” fallacy about casual gamers and “the everyman” in order to support that argument.
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
The entire game has been dumbed down. The only complexity they added was crafting; everything else was cut off and left to die (see: direct trading, where you could haggle) or simplified beyond cognizance (see: the skill bar, elite skill acquisition, no class specialisation, multiple runes on an item, weapon upgrades, et al for a very long time).
It’s like ANet’s target audience went from being any of the major playable races to being the grawl or the skritt.
It’s all about money.
GW1 itself was a “massively dumbed down” version of some of the games that preceded it. Does this mean GW1 was itself a bad game and all about money?
Why I find the game uninteresting - From a longtime Guild Wars 1 player
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
Rifles, while I’m sympathetic to some of the issues you raise, and I can understand where you’re coming from, I fundamentally disagree with your premise that a failure to re-embrace the design philosophies of GW1 necessarily makes the sequel a waste of time. Are Dynamic Events particularly dynamic, or challenging? No. Is the skill system in its current incarnation as deep or intricate as the one you enjoyed for the bulk of your playing time in GW1? No. Do these changes automatically make the sequel a lesser game? No.
I’ve been hearing the “It’s lost it’s complexity, it’s lost it’s challenge, the genre is crap now” call to arms since Everquest. Too many casuals leaking in, theme parks, hand holding, welfare epics, face rolling, yada yada yada yada yada. Every day there’s a new jeremiad about why the terrifying new direction the developers have taken product X in spells doom for the game and the genre as a whole, and why can’t things be more like the good old days. Then we turn around on the other hand and enjoy post after post about how the genre has stagnated and no one is trying anything new.
This is the cost of experimentation and innovation, we leave behind systems that are more polished, more established, and have entrenched fans such as yourself. The same argument is made about raids, and the holy trinity, and the traditional questing model. The same arguments were made about death penalties, and leveling speed, and barrier to entry 8 years ago. The genre is going to continue to progress, and it’s not always going to progress in ways that sees it align with your particular tastes or your particular demands. That does not make the game an edifice to “ego and greed”, it does not automatically mean it is “boring and not fun”, and the fact you’ve found people that endorse your perspective on a message board…which is not terribly hard to do…does not mean you are a Bringer of Truth. Your perspective is 100% valid for you, it’s true, and it’s unfortunate you didn’t enjoy the game. I too wish I enjoyed everything, and occasionally I make loud demands that things be altered to fit my preferences, and much like your demands are going to be ignored, mine are always ignored too.
I find the game a lot of fun. Is it a panacea that solves all the ills of the genre? Certainly not. Is it a flawless gem? Certainly not. But there’s a lot to like about it, and I’m glad I’m able to recognize and enjoy those things, because hey…that’s another game I enjoy, right? That’s a win for me. It needs a lot of work still, but personally the last thing I want to do is see it take the retrogressive path of embracing 5, 10, 15 year old MMO design paradigms because an aging and phobic population of die hards doesn’t want to let go. I’ve played those games. I’ve been playing them for years. I’d like to see something new now, and I’m not prepared to throttle it in its infancy because things ain’t exactly the way they used to be.
I’m at lvl 80 and my auto attack with long bow crits for 2.6k…. I think it’s pretty good…
It’s the attack speed that hinders the longbow #1, not the damage.
Sky, could you post a couple examples? I’m going to try the one mentioned in this thread, Healing spring + Longbow shot….
Healing Spring is the only combo field you can reliably generate yourself. Freezing and Flame traps create fire and ice fields respectively, but they’re short lived and require a mob/player to trip them, so they’re not exactly “on demand” fields.
EDIT: Oh yeah. And Torch. My bad.
Ranger is dead profession, whereas i have high lvl ranger i dont play it
Often when I find something isn’t to my taste, I also rush to the internet to pronounce it “dead”. I suspect part of the reason is I enjoy sounding like an utter clown.
Thank you both for the information! I would like to dabble a bit in WVW as im leveling for something different, so the long bow appeals to me – If I did focus on my pets and want slower, more powerful hits I would do beast mastery + (Whatever the power one is), right?
If I did put some focus on my pets, are they decent tanks if I use a beefy pet like a bear? would I be able to stand there and shoot away (I was never much good at kiting)
Thanks again
15 points in BM and Signet of the Wild equipped and my bear can “tank” 98% of the solo content quite handsomely. The occasional hard hitting champion gives him fits. Against dungeon bosses and really nasty dungeon trash you’ll need to make ample use of pet swapping though.
Realistically, 15 points in BM will allow most pets to handle the solo content just fine unless you overwhelm them with multi-pulls. At higher levels, particularly with Risen, the pets will occasionally struggle to hold aggro/peel for you though, especially if you’re opening up and and you’re specced for damage. I highly recommend learning to move and kite, because while the Ranger is arguably the most forgiving class in this respect, there WILL be times that you need to move and kite unless you enjoy repair bills.
Spiders and Devourers, being ranged, have the easiest time keeping their DPS constant.
Wolves and dogs have some nice knockdown/control options, and cats and birds have the highest native DPS. Both require the target to occasionally stand still though.
Brown Bears can offer passive condition removal and Moas can offer passive buffs/heals while having a big enough HP pool to survive some light fire.
Down to preference, really.
I think the option to permanently stow your pet should indeed be available. If people want to run around with a 30-40% DPS hit, more power to them.
While we’re at it, I want to be able to play as an Illusionless Mesmer. The bloody Illusions are breaking my immersion. Why should I have to play the class the way they imagined it? In my mind, Mesmers are consummate jugglers. If I want to play my Mesmer as a juggling class with no offensive potential whatsoever that’s my right.
Poor game design IMO.
Longbow is a phenomenal weapon with 4 excellent skills and 1 completely naff skill that is, unfortunately, the auto attack, which leads to a lot of people losing their minds and pronouncing that Shortbow is OMGBBQ by comparison, as if all anyone ever did was sit around auto attacking from the flank. Realistically, with cooldown reduction, you will spend very little time auto-attacking with your longbow anyway.
I will say it’s primarily a PvE/WvWvW weapon though, that’s where it’s easiest to mitigate its weaknesses and capitalize on its strengths.
Just put the stacking buff on the Ranger instead of the pet, and apply it to the pet. That way it persists through pet swapping, pet death, pet swimming, and zoning, but not through Ranger death.
There’s already a sea turtle in the game, so that’s not really new artwork. I’d definitely like to see crabs, and have access to some of the currently untameable boars.
A Dolyak would be neat too, or a Stag.
Thoughts on Large Swords, Small Bows, and Questionable Utility
in Ranger
Posted by: SpectacularYak.6518
It might just be me, but I actually prefer having traps that aren’t ground targeted. They’re one of the few abilities I can “blind fire” on my Ranger without having to position my cursor or twist my torso to get a line on the target, which is helpful when kiting.
I guess you can do that with GT too, to some extent, but I find it results in the occasional wacky positioning.
Longbows should be better than shortbows when standing still at long range.
I think Longbows are just fine aside from the somewhat lackluster #1, which is rarely in effect anyway and really only suffers from attack speed.
Spearguns are underpowered.
They’re…really not. The 3 skill alone makes the Speargun worth it, and like most of underwater combat feels silly unbalanced sometimes.
Sometimes you can’t get out of the 1h Sword animation. A stop attack button would be great.
Attack chains tied to the #1 in general can be awkward, but this is indeed one of the worst offenders.
Third skill on Axe is a bit boring
What? Chill? Nonsense. Chill is a great status effect. In PvP, anyway.
Torch is a bit bad
Not for condition builds. Given your enthusiasm for the Shortbow, you should be running a condition build.
- Underwater damage should be a bit higher in general, more on par with land damage.*
I feel like it’s already TOO high. The Jellyfish F2 alone, my god. I’m curious how we could each have such vastly different experiences here. Again, I guess the Speargun autoattack is a bit meh, but SO many underwater abilities on SO many classes are really punchy.
Pets feel out of your control, making any skill/trait concerning them a no-go for me
While they do feel out of control, pets do enormous damage (or function as extremely effective damage spongers in PvE). Some of the traits affecting them are amongst our most potent/highest return traits. Even if you think of them as little more than a DoT, you should reconsider investing in them.
When doing jumping puzzles, pets block your vision. You can stow them, but when you take falling damage they come back up. There is no hotkey for stowing pets, so this is very annoying. Maybe it could only reactivate when you enter combat?
I’ve never had this issue, but the camera can do some wacky things during jumping puzzles, so I don’t doubt it.
Nearly all of the pet abilities are slow. Their cast times are about 2-5 seconds, during which the pet is standing still and does not attack. This seems silly in a game that is as mobile and fast paced as this. Especially with clutch skills like remove conditions (brown bear), it is important for the skills to be instant.
AGREED.
Even when you cast some of the F2 skills, they don’t always work. (Do go on cooldown.)
Generally agreed. They usually eventually fire off. I’ve never had one fail to fire off and just go on cooldown instead.
Most of the non-bear/moa pets are too easy to kill, and it’s impossible to dodge some aoe spells with them because there is no direct control over their movements. They could get some aoe resistance or immumity.
Master’s Bond, Beastmastery, talents that affect pets. Like every class, there are tools in your trait lines that improve your class mechanic. If you never improve your class mechanic, it will still work, but it will be a bit naff. Your flimsier pets, for instance, will die incredibly quickly under any sort of direct attack. All pets of all varieties can occasionally run into issues in dungeons, but that’s true of players as well. I do think it would be nice if we got the ability to choose alternate or extra talents/abilities for our pets, perhaps as a top tier BM ability (to replace the lackluster rubbish we have there now).
Let’s say your pet dies. You switch pets and this puts pet swap on a 30 second CD. After that 30 seconds, you can swap back to your other pet which is alive. If you can’t keep your second pet alive for 30 seconds, you’re not doing very well. Secondly, it takes about 10-15 seconds to revive a dead pet while in combat. So technically if you only keep your second pet alive for 15 seconds, you’re in the same position if you tried to ressurect, except you get to dps instead of stand their defenseless.
You sound like an idiot, defending your position on ressurecting a dead pet in the middle of combat.
Doesn’t it sound silly to stop all your dps for 10 seconds, just to have you pet alive for 20 seconds?
Lets say your pet does 5k damage in 20 seconds. You do 10k damage in 20 seconds.
That’s a total of 15k damage in 20 seconds. Then you spend 10 seconds ressurecting your pet. 30 seconds you do 25k damage.
Now lets say you leave your pet dead. 15k damage in 20 seconds. Pet dies. PET SWAP. you do another 7.5k damage with your next pet in the following 10 seconds.
22.5k damage vs. 15k damage over 30 seconds. Hrm…
Dude, it’s hopeless. I tried. You tried. Let him do his thing. You have to admit it’s pretty f’in funny.
Oh fighting a boss that two shot your pet? f4 in a new one. Oh… it was 3 shot? Ok wait out that 50 seconds left on the swap timer.
Oh swapped before it died? Ok oh no… your other pet just got 1 shot? Enjoy 15 more seconds of less damage while…. waiting to swap to a pet that will trigger a 1m swap cooldoown.
Stop talking until you learn more about the mechanic.
Oh we’re talking about BOSSES now, I see. A few seconds ago we were talking about the “8-9 mobs” you routinely pull, and apparently need to rez your pet during the middle of. I see now the conversation has switched to bosses. My bad.
Yeah having both pets dead in a boss fight is kind of annoying, but I’m not sure why you think taking your own DPS out of the fight instead of just waiting 20 seconds for the timer to come around is a worthwhile endeavor. Are you DPSing with a level 5 axe?
Because in this fantastical scenario you’ve presented us with in which your pet is routinely getting 1 shot before you can hotswap them out, you’re literally reviving your pet every 5-6 seconds. That’s fantastic man. I can totally see why you’d want that back.
I never once rezzed my pet in battle, and I feel like the pop up to rez was just annoying. If you are fighting a boss that kills your pet so quickly, how can you possibly think it’s worth it to spend 30 seconds rezzing so he can fight for 5 seconds?
He doesn’t. It’s an illusory scenario he’s moved on to after trying the “I routinely pull 8-9 mobs” tact and getting mocked for it. He just didn’t think it through before posting it.
And of course you have no idea what you are talking about. Being without a pet at all is better than taking less than 10 seconds mid fight to rez your pet? Just stop talking. You have no clue what you are talking about.
Uh…I’m not without a pet, guy. F4. Healthy pet. Pet hurt? F4. New healthy pet. Pet hurt? F4. Pet one is now recovered. Repeat ad infinitum.
Try pulling less than 10 mobs next time and see how that works for you. Or don’t, fill your boots. I have to admit this has been fairly hilarious though, so thank you.
Pets require too much micro-management, the pro players will tell you that you’re doing it wrong, but IMO they’re practically useless for anything other then solo PVE single-target leveling.
They don’t require any micromanagement at all. If there’s a problem with pets currently, it’s that their animations root them in PvP and their bloody F2 skills don’t respond to micromanagement. I’d LOVE to micromanage my pet. But they pretty fire and forget right now.
Anet is not telling us rezzing our pets is pointless in combat. They are telling us people whine to much trying to loot during combat. If rezzing our pets was pointless in combat we wouldn’t have to worry about it would we? They’d revive on swap like they used to in bwe1. But thats not the case is it?
ArenaNetThis is because you can either use F4 to swap pets which will bring that pet back alive or you can wait until you are out of combat at which point you pet will revive automatically.
We felt it was doing a disservice to Ranger players to incentivize them to spend a long time reviving their pet when it was a very inefficient thing to do and happened after combat anyway.
Anything else I can help you with today?
The extra 300 range on the LB doesn’t really make a difference for me in PVE. Maybe this will change when I move into more PVP.
WvWvW is where you’ll get the most returns from Eagle Eye. It can be handy in particularly hectic PvE encounters, where hanging back gives you the widest field of view possible and allows you the most reaction time to developing events, but for the most part you’re correct, 1200 range is more than adequate.
Pets do fall to quickly to many bosses and being forced to use two bears is not much of an option. The whole point of having more than one pet is for utility purposes, which are removed once you don’t really have a choice e.g two bears.
Um…
The utility of the bear is its durability.
So you use it in situations where durability is required.
You know, like…a boss fight.
And you are only looking at half of the problem. I solo alot. I usually end up fighting 8-9 mobs at once. By the time I kill them all they are rezzing. The inability to rez while i’m being attacked just means I’m losing damage and have no way to recover it without running away.
Oh for GODS sake, no I am NOT looking at “half the problem”. Admittedly, I did not take your fundamental inability to your control your aggro into account, but that’s not really relevant to the discussion at hand.
Just CYCLE YOUR PETS. The F4 button is part of your class mechanic, you’re meant to be using it. If you’re running two cats and have zero points in BM, and pulling 10 mobs at a time, and then coming in here and moaning that you can’t spend 20 seconds on your knees soothing your dead pet while said 10 mobs beat the hell out of you, then the change to pet resurrection is the LEAST of your problems.
I am telling you rezzing your pets was pointless. Others are telling you rezzing your pets was pointless. ARENA NET is telling you rezzing your pets was pointless. What will it take to convince you? Fiery letters in the sky?