Fighting a mob in a single spot where it can never hit you is an exploit. These exploits are generally taken out of the game much faster than any bugs that work against players. Fights where you can move a little and use auto-attacks are badly designed (I’m thinking of you Jellyfish). Fights where players can huddle up and share defensive skills to mitigate damage are legal. That’s fine for trash but boss fights should require more active defense (dodge) or deeper tactics.
I did Lupi the other day on the ranger for the first time since the shortbow range was cut down to 900m. I did get a lot of his attacks, the tunnel, the life drain, and another throw, but he always has a favorite target for each attack and fortunately I was best dodger in the group. Anyway he can pick anyone for the attacks but generally does go for tanky types.
The designers seem to be investing a lot of storytelling into adventuring NPCs. This would be Braham, Rox, Kiel, Destiny’s Edge, and Trahearne. Does anyone agree with me that this now seems to be a mistake?
The adventurer NPCs are doing tasks like PCs but actually don’t do it very well. Reviving them after every dungeon fight is tiresome and doesn’t fit their story. Players can do dungeons without them and would generally prefer that. The stories of the adventurer NPCs will advance after an instance is completed, by design, and this leads to two common complaints. Players complain that the personal story isn’t about them and complain that NPCs steal the rewards (Kiel, Trahearne). The NPCs don’t actually take any rewards that a player may want, but players do see their work used to advance the storyline of the NPCs. This seems a particular failing for the living story where players get no personal story advancement or status (the design allows new players to join at any point).
Investing time in storytelling for the adventuring NPCs also seems to be leaving us short of storytelling for our enemies.
Previous content isn’t going to be changed now, but are the same problems going to be repeated again with Braham and Rox? These seem to be likeable characters with decent scripting and voice acting, but are they really going to be tagging along in all our dungeons and getting all the story advancement that the players want to see happen to their own characters?
If there is something to do when people log on then the living story is working. If there is too much to do then players have to pick and choose the bits they enjoy most. It is much better than there being nothing to do (other than the same old stuff) which is the endgame state of most MMOs.
“The Blood Witch in Kessex Hills (although occasionally the zerg there can be cajoled into taking her down)”
I’ve soloed it on my ranger and if I’m around I help newbies complete their quest. A tough boss for a low level group but doesn’t need a zerg.
It sounds attractive since you’ll be able to get your legendary. Everyone will get their legendary. In fact so many people will have a legendary we can rename it to common.
Everyone wants to shortcut the legendary process because they feel entitled to get one but really nobody should be entitled to a legendary weapon after doing a bit of crafting.
It is largely unexplained. We can only hope that it will be explained.
If you remove the leashing on mobs you just promote stealth mechanics so that enemies never notice you running past them. Players will find other tricks such as running to die in safe revival spots. Any solution needs to be well thought through.
The loot rewards across the whole game have never been balanced. You could remove half the game for the same reasons you are wanting Jormag removed. Jormag is one of the better designed events and it shouldn’t be removed just because someone isn’t getting enough loot.
If you want to play SPvP then you can dive right in even now, before level 80, and you will be given gear on a par with other players. You can customize it however you like and experiment with builds and play styles.
Get exotic weapons before exotic armor. Dungeons, WvW, Trading Post, Karma vendors, and crafting can all give exotics so use whatever you have at your disposal. Make sure that whatever you buy is consistent to your build though. You might want to use orbs in your first set of armor rather than superior runes. It’s cheap and you can put a couple of new ones in to rebalance your build later as needed.
Comparing magic find between players seems a bit pointless. You won’t be able to get magic find on armor so there’s no point worrying about what might have been. You will be able to make the same decisions about magic find consumables as you have in the past for the same rewards. I doubt that many people will get high enough magic find to see it scaled down.
I actually don’t have any problem with the initial game lore. I haven’t seen GW1 so I had to pick up some of the back story by going round zones, doing events, following through the personal story. That portrays the current game world quite well through events that players can participate in. However the events shows contemporary lore rather than a Tolkeinesque historical enyclopaedia, and historical lore has to be found with the F key. In my opinion, that’s good enough.
My problems are with a living story that seems entirely detached from the existing game world, in contrast to the personal stories that were integrated into the game world.
We were told in the Arah dungeon that the early Jotun were astrologers and those stones could be astrological markings.
I think the point is that whilst you can currently get exotic weapons from the trading post, crafting, event drops, WvW, dungeons, fractals, etc you will only get ascended weapons through crafting. You might need a huntsman, weaponsmith, and artificer for the capability to make the weapons you need on your character(s). You will need to get them up to level 500. Crafted items will still only be account bound.
For someone with no crafting at all, because crafting always seemed optional, this is a problem. A lot of players just see crafting it as a repetitive time sink with no fun in the crafting mechanics.
It’s the F key. It always makes you loot when you want to activate, talk when you want to loot, pick up some rubbish when you want to revive, and so on. It’s an interface that doesn’t let players do what they want to do, yet nobody else seems bothered by it.
We do see Jennah in Caudacus Manor story mode and that’s one of the least likely places for Anise to flawlessly maintain the illusion.
To all the people who have put hours into farming, just looking for the gold, the answer is clear. There is always someone who farms for longer than you. If you’re making a lot a money from a new events then someone else is making more money from that event. Precursors are not about having money, they are about having more money then everyone else (who wants a legendary) and the market rate is set by those with the most money. Legendaries are the most inaccessible items in the game and yet people still think they are entitled to them if they spend their limited game time chasing gold, when they could be doing something fun instead.
The people who lose out the most are actually people like me who have accumulated money through a year’s game play rather than farming. The farmers who have accumulated hundreds of gold over the queen’s jubilee have pushed the price of legendaries way out of my reach, again. Thankfully, I don’t care a great deal.
The balance for the high price of precursors is the mystic forge.
Gandara does complete some but it doesn’t happen if it’s in overflow, a bad map like bloodtide coast, an unsual time of day/night, and so on. A few commanders are very vocal in organizing farming and that can hurt too.
I think they’ve got a problem with the personal story locking down a lot of the game content, so that it can’t be changed with the living story. However that doesn’t explain the shallowness of some of the story lines. Perhaps the game is being designed with monsters and mechanics designed first and then stories written afterwards. Perhaps product planning for GW2 is uncertain and the writers don’t know what writing is needed. Perhaps the writers are creating good lore but managers are cutting parts out to concentrate on marketable events. Really however the story should be written and reviewed long in advance of an update reaching our game so that voice acting, art and animation, new game mechanics, etc can all be done in time.
As previous posters have said, don’t try to take this all too seriously. Comic book villains frequently tend to turn up from nowhere with superpowers gained after a freak accident, or as incredible mad scientists ignored by society who conquer the world with ridiculous inventions. Hopefully Scarlet will get a better back story but for now poor writing seems more likely than Sylvari supremity.
Even if you do look upon Scarlet as an example of a threatening species, other magical individuals have destroyed continents, raised massive undead armies, etc, and their races have not been wiped out either.
Karma is a broken currency. There is no way to reconcile the massive amounts hoarded by long term players and amounts available to new players.
I entirely agree. At least we have an asura jumping box for a fortnight. It might give time for the coins to fall away from people’s eyes.
I don’t think that dynamic events are suffering in isolation. End game players have picked gold as the only currency they want and select their end game content accordingly. Each patch changes the gold farm and the farmers move with it. The designers need to look at their other broken currencies, such a karma, and find a better rewards system across the whole game and get balance across dungeons, fractals, events, and everything else. Orrian events should be rewarding enough for end game players to keep a high population across those zones.
I’m having fun with it. Following the zergs is pretty dull but I generally head into the country and find some smaller fights. Technically, this month has delivered much bigger scale events and the performance is much better than anything with the Karka. The graphics, monsters, and voices are all good.
I’m not sure the event was that well put together though. There are just static spawns put onto the map at various locations, one after another. That’s it. It would be better if the enemies were building big turrets or landing strips, had unique leaders with their own mini events, or even moved to attack somewhere. Overflows, champion loots, some poor zerg fights, lack of story, these things all need sorting out before the next war event.
The good/bad news is that the melee sets are moderately well balanced and you can make any of them work. Sword +pistol is probably the simplest melee pairing to use. Shortbow is a multi purpose ranged weapon with aoe so you can switch between that and a melee set.
“First we had Mai Trin, who was working for Scarlet. It would be kind of lame if Scarlet in turn, is working for yet another villain.”
I think the whole molten-aetherblade storyline is short of named villains. There is no dredge/flame legion/molten leader. There’s no named inquest leader in the aetherblades. The only named pirate leaders are in jail and there was nice potential for a jail break as part of this invasion but it seems rather late now. There might be a traitor amongst the good characters but the best way to hide that in the story is to have more named villains. Canach, the consortium, and the hobo-tron might come back into it but the current invasion events would be better for having more named villains with their own dialogue.
“The problem is that the difficulty spike of the boss is unreasonable – especially in a in a level 55 dungeon.”
The spider queen in AC is more difficult than this boss and AC is the lowest level dungeon. The differences are that the spider queen adds do not respawn (neither fight resets to the start) and there are common knowledge AC tactics.
“Now that Legendaries will have an actual stat advantage, we need ways to make our own precursors more than ever.”
That’s only true is everyone is entitled to a legendary weapon. However if everyone had a legendary weapon they wouldn’t be legendary. So nobody should be entitled to a legendary weapon, not even you.
I think it’s an obvious predictable problem and there’s no reason to wait to discuss it. Ascended weapons seem like a big boost to characters dealing direct damage with weapons (using power/crit multipliers) and a small boost to characters using non-weapon damage such a pets. What could be put into the game design to maintain balance for pet classes?
I have the same concerns as the original poster. Ascended weapons seem like (1) a time sink (2) a treadmill (3) power creep. A big part of an MMO is the game content so if dungeons, events, fractals, etc become too easy due to power creep then game assets have become devalued. We all know that MMOs produce new content slower than the players can consume it, so it is important that old content is preserved in its best state.
There’s also already a problem that challenging content for experienced players will wipe the floor with beginners. Ascended weapons will only increase that divide.
I’m guessing the SAB is back since a lot of players thought it was fun. It hasn’t got any lore but it doesn’t need any lore. It’s all in Asura box and you can ignore it if you want to. It will be gone in a month’s time.
We can expect to see a lot of the games and festivals return annually with some new content alongside them, hopefully. There’s no point getting annoyed at their return since we know it is inevitable.
I got hit for 21k by a thug’s banner the other day in Frostgorge. I’m guessing he plants it just after he spawns so there’s not much you can do about it.
I don’t have that much trouble taking down the tunnels with my ranger. Some shots are ‘out of range’ but enough damage goes through.
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Isn’t TA one of the better dungeons at the moment? The bosses need to reset and there’s too much skipping but other dungeons have those sorts of problems and more besides. Why aren’t the other dungeons better targets for a revamp?
Going from LOTRO to GW2 you’ll be quite surprised at the lack of communication. There are common knowledge tactics used by many pick up groups and they will expect you to know them. Make sure you ask about them, even though people tend to explain tactics badly but still expect you to take care of yourself during a fight. Groups also tend to skip a lot of trash mobs by running past them. This can be really dangerous for inexperienced players so make sure you know what skills and traits will help you there.
You don’t need anything better than rare items to start dungeons. You can get your exotic gear with dungeon tokens. There is an anvil at the start of each dungeon for repairs. If you die you have to wait until your group is out of combat to revive. If you’re on an EU server, try to get your first groups with people who share your language. Avoid groups that want to fast runs or speed clears until you know the dungeons.
You don’t have to keep up with the players who put more time into the game than you. Keep your real life as top priority and limit your game time as you see fit. Make realistic goals for the time you can put in. Keeping up with hardcore players is not a realistic goal, and rather pointless when the only hard to get items are cosmetic.
Agree with the original poster. Female characters have the better writing. Male characters seem one dimensional and brainless. I like Braham but even he is made to look stupid beside Rox.
The point of the living story isn’t for every player to do everything each fortnight. The point of the living story is to have something fresh for players to do each time they log on. A weeks break in the living story does not achieve that. If you’re trying to do everything in each living story arc then it is up to you to check that your time commitments can support that, it’s not the responsibility of the game designers.
The twisted nightmares can be summoned by other mobs using the gears. Summoned mobs never have loot.
I don’t think Kiel is so bad. Perhaps in a fantasy game where most of the other characters are over the top, there does need to be one or two blander characters to hold the story together. Kiel’s success is based on player efforts, and players have a revive button when it goes wrong, so it’s not surprising she’s doing well. I wouldn’t call the Southsun security mission a perfect success for her and she did have a nice solution for the contracts at the end (even though most players probably didn’t care about the contracts anyway). It’s not her fault that adventurers and private detectives with technobabble asura boxes turn up to do all her work for her.
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Lowest Common Denominator design. Should all the living story content be completable by players who have nothing, have done nothing, have gone nowhere, and can do little? In some ways the living story is open to all. Any player can jump into the storyline at any point and level scaling lets players complete the stories. This invasion however gets more breadth, importance, and variety by going to zones all around Tyria and giving them new life for an hour.
They made need to keep the invasions going to keep the playhouse storyline active to let players get back into the Royal Pavilion.
“All jokes aside, Why do people make such a big problem about this? Except for the scarlett achievement (which pretty much everyone should have by now) there is absolutely no reason to actually ‘win’ the event. "
There’s no reason to win the event if the only thing that you care about is how fast you can fill your wallet.
Change your weapons and utilities around in each fractal. You know what the fights are going to be and it is worth a few seconds to prepare properly. This means that you’re better knowing the class and getting the most out of the skills rather than having one optimal build that works best for everything.
“The selfish ones are the people trying to make others play the game the way they don’t want to play it.”
I would be quite happy for farmers to go to their own overflow and kill champions as much as they want. Unfortunately when someone joins a zone they can’t choose the people they are playing with even though they are reliant on them to complete the event. They can’t kick the people who are only interested in their own loot bags and replace them with people who will work together to complete the event.
My loot bags are full every time I do these wars events and I’ve got more exotic items than I’ve ever seen in a week before. Nobody needs to become complicit in the failing of these events in order to get a decent reward for their time.
“You still get your event reward loots and achievements, yet people seem to be hell-bent on ordering people around in chat to split up and blame commanders for stacking in Aetherblade Events. I don’t understand…”
It’s because some people want to play the game rather than rationalize it down to a time for gold ratio. There’s no reason for them to sympathize with farmers who put their personal gold accumulation ahead of the community effort and community reward. Since however you started from view that only your wallet is important then you probably can’t appreciate that.
I have the feeling that Scarlet may, through her actions, bring on a new enemy even though she is not under it’s command. This could perhaps be awakening the jungle dragon, since that is overdue an appearance in any storyline.
That’s true but if you are going to use stealth for tactical strike then the shadow arts line is very strong for blind, heals, conditions cures. His build isn’t getting any of that.
If Anet were greedy the wallet would only have come from the gem shop. Other MMOs have put improvements like that into paid expansions to make sure that subscribers pay real life cash to solve game created problems.
I’ve found search and rescue very useful in dungeons. It’s frequently better for me to play my game, paying attention to my skills and dodges while the pet does a revive, than walk across to a red circle and kneel down to revive someone. It does work.
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