If we get another adventuring group it will have all the same problem as with Trahearne, Kiel, and Destiny’s edge. Their story will advance when anything is done whilst the players start with no story and finish with no story (since anyone can join/skip/leave the living story at any point and re-enter later). Players don’t like that.
I’ve seen champs running into a group of about 6 people at the cannons with 66 stacks of defiant. Whatever is meant to be happening with defiant, I’m sure that’s not it.
Like the OP I want to be part of some difficult large scale events but whenever I enter Sparkfly I’m in an overflow that hardly ever scratches the boss. I want to find something to like, to learn tactics, to get any optimism about this dragon at all, but it hasn’t happened. It isn’t ever going to happen in overflows, especially European overflows with players using another language.
Also like the OP, I play a thief and all these adds coming to attack the cannons just make me want to never play thief again. Exploding plague bringers, ok, but surely not so many, not mixed in with mobs that pull and root, not champion plague bringers, not also krait that explode on low health with no warning animation. Adds can spawn behind you and instantly use their roots and pulls so that’s not fun either. All the explosions and damage fields make high hp classes the best cannon users too. Low hp classes (without invulnerability) might as well not bother.
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Adding new paths to each dungeons with the living story, along with a little bit of fixing to the old paths, would actually be a good idea.
“Pure warrior and guardian worship and warrior stacking etc. etc. is quite last year.”
It might be last year for the elite but it is very much of today for the PUG players. I frequently join PUGs and find that the other four spots are all guardians/warriors, probably more often than finding a group without either. If you get warriors in PUG groups without guardians they often don’t know what to do, they just stack under mobs and get killed by everything.
Trahearne is just one of a series of adventuring characters that players dislike. The adventuring characters have their stories advanced by going into dungeons and fighting alongside player characters. On the face of it, this is good since the players see key moments in the story first hand as the characters develop. It isn’t just told to the players but shown through events. The problem is that the players recognize the story isn’t about them but about the adventuring characters (even though the Pact Commander does indeed get all the credit and all the rewards). The living story in particular advances a global story and global characters whilst the player starts with no history and leaves with no history, since all players have full access to all living story content (by design).
This isn’t just about Trahearne. It also affects Kiel, Destiny’s Edge and could soon affect Braham and Rox.
“Nodes will also change locations if a map is completely empty of players. "
Which is probably why Southsun changes almost every day.
I got bumped from two PUG groups this week within a couple of seconds of joining, the first time that’s happened for a long while. Heavy classes are still in top demand. Just go onto the lfg site and look how many lfm requests have ‘need thief only’.
Guardians and Warriors are top tier. Every other class is second tier and might get declined/booted in favor of those two. Bad thieves die a lot and are not popular. Good thieves are fine and welcomed.
Players will go into dungeons for empyreal. Problem solved for now.
This was always going to be a problem with Orr split into 3 endgame zones with no communication across them. With two of the zones below level 80 it’s not surprising where the population went. I guess this isn’t going to get fixed since the personal story is heavily tied into Orr and the developers seem unwilling to make any changes to anything related to the personal story.
It would be good if there were herald type people in the pact camps and you could ask what was happening in Orr, with a ‘take me there’ option. That would of course mess up any new player’s exploration of Orr for the first time.
Jormag isn’t so bad right now, it seemed a bit better with the last patch, and they just need to remove any safe spots where people can auto. It’s then on a par with some of the temple events. Shatterer will surely be next on the revamp list.
Consider this. On land thieves have not got a block/parry skill. If we did we’d just repeat it again and again if we needed to. The initiative system denies us ever getting that skill unless it is put onto a utility (which makes little sense).
Underwater thieves have a decent block and riposte skill, plus a good evade skill. The rest of the skills are awful. Even so, those two good skills needed to be nerfed to the floor just because they could be repeated again and again.
I’ve got an orange tab in the upper right of my screen telling me about the Tequatl rising story event. If I click on it a message opens up saying that The Splintered Coast shores are calm. Unfortunately, whenever I do anything that message closes again. This means I am never able to see when Tequatl is starting since the message is closed. I have never seen any other game generated message or heard any game generated sound to alert me to the event.
In comparison, my personal story detail keeps opening again even if I close it. This is not updating yet the game feels I need to see the same information all the time.
That is a total failure of an alert message system.
“so crazy… legendaries cost 4x or 5xmore than at start of the game”
There is a crazy amount of money coming into the game. Everyone seems happy with that until they see inflation at the Trading Post.
For silver dubloons there could be a shortage of supply. A large chunk of the player base will have temporarily abandoned their low level alts in favor of jumping boxes, ascended material collection, and Tequatl.
“The issue is not the ease of acquisition; but rather the limited means to consume/manage the dust/bricks in a manner that is not incredibly wasteful past as certain initial threshold.”
Actually the ease of acquisition is the problem. That makes it a non currency. Any players who have 500 empyreal and 500 dragonite will almost inevitably have collected 500 dust. Any components in the brick recipe could just be part of the recipe that needs bricks instead. The only role in the game for bloodstone dust is storage until it is needed.
Stealth adds very little without traits. Add the shadow arts traits that cure conditions in stealth, heal in stealth, blind on stealth, might on stealth, etc. then it all adds up.
If you are using cloak and dagger for stealth it is best to be moving round your enemy as you strike so that you are naturally in position for a rear attack.
I don’t think you need to look at guild wars II to see loot put over fun. Way back in old Everquest I the marketing men knew exactly how to sell expansions. In each new expansion there were zones where you could get more xp and better loot. Players would spend their real life money to get these zones. Even the best designed and most interesting low level zones in the old world became deserted as all the players moved to the new dull zones at the same level in the new world. It was a shocking devaluation of game assets (old zones) by the designers but they got away with it for a long time because players put rewards (for time spent) ahead of fun and adventure.
I see in GW2 many attempts to break the failings of older MMOs. However the new design creates new problems and reward balancing is one of those problems.
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They broke karma by putting too much into the game (in bottles). Some players collected millions of karma. This needed to be fixed and they have done so by scaling down and removing those bottles.
There is an argument that your karma should be balanced with the karma of the players with the broken (millions) karma pool. It’s not valid. Rewards should be balanced across the game world and game content.
I mostly agree. A lot of problems are based on a lack of balance in the reward system. Rewards were not balanced at game launch. Many reward changes have been inappropriate for the content, a bit like putting square pegs in round holes. Many reward changes have balanced one aspect of rewards and broken others, so players migrate from one set of game content to another after each patch.
Having said that though, all MMOs have a reward system. Other factors are at work such as the style of end game content and lack of goals. There’s possibly an argument that the widespread accessibility of game content for lone players has created a selfish attitude, with little or no compromise for long term social benefits. Even the guild system promotes individual freedom within a loose collective.
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Players can be in both guilds and choose to represent only one during an alliance mission.
Tequatl headlined this months update. The update is living story so Rox was there with achievements. That’s it. It’s no better or worse in terms of lore than nobody being there and Tequatl just being different.
Having traits in strange places allows you to really specialize. If all the related traits were in one line then you would never be able to pick more than 3 of them. Diversity also allows you to find different styles of play within your build by changing the traits to something completely different.
At times it is possible to over analyze things. The techies have revamped big T. It was the headline for a living story update so Rox was put there on some pretext of no consequence. Some achievements were put there since living story has achievements. Some chat was put onto the other characters to round it off. There may be some hints about future living story updates but that’s about it.
Looking into this update for lore is likely to an underwhelming experience.
Do we need another thread going through all the problems with raiding? GW2 is specifically designed to that anyone can turn up and join anything in the open world if they have the time and inclination to do so. Instanced raids that need a commander type to select 20 people to join and then get them to understand tactics and turn up at an arranged time … no thank you.
No not a troll thread. Someone should have asked whether we were getting too much karma 6 months ago.
If you go down while reviving someone you can at least blame them!
(All you warriors and necros out there, when a thief tries to revive you in a shadow refuge you should not attack from down state. Attacking just reveals you and brings aoe down on you and your thief who should then probably leave you to die a well deserved death).
Ogden is the only dwarf we know about. Are we sure he’s the only dwarf who hasn’t transformed? It would be nice if Mrs Ogden was still around somewhere.
Everyone seems to think more loot is better for everyone all the time. In fact is isn’t. If Anet needs to keep introducing new currencies because the old ones are broken (millions of karma, thousand skill points) then it’s not good for players in the long run.
And no I’m not farming champions. Just trying to get some dragonite I’m still getting a lot of these scrolls.
These things are collecting up in my bank and it seems like far to many are dropping as loot. Anyone else think the drop rate should be significantly lowered so that skills points don’t become the next broken currency? (Next after karma, which was given away far too freely).
There do seem to be a lot of high damage attacks even around the the cannons. I have to keep looking at my log wondering just what hit each time as I’m going down, since it seems safe and then I’m down. There are in fact both ‘unknown explosions’ for 10+ that I don’t know much about (from that description) and explosions from some veteran krait (when they die?) that both seem overpowered.
When firing bows and axes at the fingers your shots can be out of range of the fingers, even when you are standing right next to them. Just like the old AC burrows. Isn’t it funny these how old problems keep on coming back.
This could be a sticky topic for the subforum. How thieves lose stealth!
- leave shadow refuge too early
- fire a missile, go into stealth, missile hits targets and breaks stealth
- something like stolen gunk applies damage on your behalf and breaks stealth
Sorry but you can’t move players without their consent. Griefers could dump players in bad places.
Fights can sometimes be a lot simpler if you have someone like a guardian to lead the line and hold mobs in a kill zone where you can apply your group dps. Rangers and thieves can dodge about to defend but then the mobs run about too, messing up your area dps and making everything more difficult. That’s another reason to pick guardian over mesmer.
I think someone would have play very strangely to get 500 dragonite and 500 empyreal without 500 bloodstone. That’s even considering jumping puzzles and guild missions. It just seems like a total waste of space to me.
I’m really disappointed that the original poster has got such a bad response from the forum community. The dungeons are primarily designed to be run on level for barter tokens. They are also designed to be repeatable content for game end rewards (like empyreal). The two communities should work together and enjoy the dungeon runs for shared rewards.
It makes me wonder why some people even play this game at all when any extra time spent doing anything is seen as a burden and chore. The low level characters should not be the ones going out of their way to make dungeons easier for high level characters with top gear. In a good MMO community the experienced players would be willing to set their time aside to help new players and make new online friends. The pervasive selfishness seen in this game is sometimes quite astounding.
The quality of a game not only comes from its freedoms but its limitations. Restricting players to 2 weapon sets probably does improve the game.
The OP made a thread entitled “Anet makes mechanics without counterplay”. Instead we see posts from players who does not know the counterplays that exists in the game. Go to the thief forum where other players have started polite threads asking how to play against a stealth thief. The thieves themselves have listed some of the simple counterplays commonly used against them.
The racial weapons and armor have their own pricing structures and they are not in line with other costs in the game. The rewards are all rare as well so the majority are bought as a cosmetic and transmuted into exotic. I don’t think it was ever intended for new players to buy sets of racial gear on level.
Thieves should really get a parry and quick riposte skill but has it has to be tucked into the initiative system somewhere that we can’t abuse it.
I’d personally like to see smokescreen give unblockable missiles a big miss chance.
The next time you want to make a dungeon group, stare at your screen for 30 minutes beforehand to remind yourself what it was like to wait for a healer class for your group.
“6 days for a top tier weapon. Thats all it took me, a humble non hardcore player to get an ascended weapon”
I’m sorry but getting 500 dragonite and 500 empyreal in 6 days is most people’s idea of hardcore.
Generally whenever you want to strip boons in PVE, stealing just 1 in insufficient. Dredge will laugh that off. The initiative cost needs to be halved if it is only having half the effect!
There are plenty of things to worry about in this game. Rangers looking for juvenile pets in WvW is not one of them.
Karma was a broken currency as players had too much. One thing that broke the currency was giving too much away on dungeons and dailies so that has been reversed. The humungous karma pools acquired by players haven’t gone away but Anet can’t fix that mistake so easily.
(And no, the game shouldn’t be balanced by giving new players the same amount of broken currency as the old players. That solves nothing.)
Level 80 players shouldn’t be running around low level zones harvesting newbie logs. End of story.
Check how fast you are collecting dragonite and elysium. You are going to need 500 of each for every ascended weapon. For many players this will be a limiting factor.
You should certainly get your exotics and jewelry before the ascended weapon. They will probably come while you are grinding out elysium in dungeons/fractals though.
PUGs can do dungeons because
- well tested common knowledge tactics are shared between all the PUG players
- they are designed so that on-level characters with master/rare items can complete them (not 80’s with ascended)
- a few good players can usually carry a group
- PUGs are often successful so good players still do them, perpetuating their quality