wasn’t the solution to everything difficult a Mesmer portal? cant this be utilized in some way?
(its not a bug its someones mini)
What are you on to? Gw2 is gorgeous and looks better than most MMOs in the market.
And it plays much much smoother than other games that look worse on my pc, so its not really badly optimized either.
I would argue its the best looking dx9 only game out here. However, its only 32bit client, I feel a lot of the issues people have with performance are because they are using outdated tech, such as a restrictive 32 bit design, and I’m sure there would be massive performance improvements if they migrated to a more modern graphics engine.
It would be really smart of them, and cement their future to start migrating to a 64 bit dx12 client. If they did this I’m sure the game would look exactly the same for the most part, but would give them a lot of possibilities moving forward, both with new content and adding higher resolution textures and effects while maintaining good performance for anyone with a system that isn’t old enough to get a drivers license.
For the few people who refuse to get rid of their pirated windows xp OS its been possible before to give the option to stick with the dated and old 32 bit / dx9 and have a 64 bit dx12 option.
I would really look into this, DX12 is suppose to be super dev friendly, might make future expansions a hell of a lot less “dev resource intensive” and save you money in the long run.
I think its very possible they could port the game into a DX12 game engine. There wont be a GW3 mmorpg. People are not investing major money into mmorpgs any more. they simply don’t draw the crowd they use to and every game that got major investment had one goal in mind, to out do another game, and no game came even close….so I think the big money is done trying to tap into that one mmorpg anomaly.
Basically I see a GW3 being more like skyrim, maybe with co-op…which would be a fantastic thing to make btw, get on steam and sell it for $50 and take that money to the bank.
The only two solutions for Gw2 however, as I see it, is to do the blizzard thing, double down on the games you do have, keep them modern, invest in them, continually develop them with no end in sight….or put the game into maintenance mode after HOT, do light upkeep on the code and bugs, and downscale resources put into it as people trickle out.
I really think they could keep this thing going with $50 expansions every 1.5 years for a very long time, however they’ll need a gimmick to keep people coming in, and I think being an early adopter of DX12 would draw in a lot of people.
It would make sense if they are determined to stick with this game blizzard style, to adopt dx12 relatively early, providing a foundation for a lot more expansions for a very long time, I think dx12 will be the dx9 moving forward, the go to DX where 10/11 failed to provide enough for their efforts.
I really think they need to look at taking the HOT money and putting some towards a DX12 client, invest in the future of the game, unless of course the goal is to slowly back down and put their efforts elsewhere.
Also I really think a GW3 single player/co-op skyrim-esque steam game would really be a big hit…if you get a solid writer and take the storyline up a few notches.
this is a good idea, I’m surprised it hasn’t been thought of before.
After a lot of reading, of everything people have said and related posts. I see 1 thing emerging.
That is that no matter where you live in the world (excluding America/Europe) you are forced to play with high latency, and It seems we all feel each “others pain”.
I see a lot of “your country doesn’t have the player base to support…” this makes me laugh every time. (and its not just Africa they are saying this to).. I feel if they did give out more servers the Americans and European people would get lonely xD, Half of their population on their servers would just up and leave (and yet this is an overlooked issue?). But its easy to tell someone that their country can not support a player base with out ever doing any census.Now please don’t get me wrong I’m not saying lets give every place in the whole world its own server (that wouldn’t make sense) lets just distribute the servers a little smarter. There are so many places playing with high latency. add 1 server to the mix, re-distribute, all of a sudden every1 has 150 and below <-In an idealized world
Thank you all for your feedback (realistically speaking we wont see anything happen with gw2, but I’m hoping for future games to learn from the struggles of past games, this topic being the most heated it seems).
The conclusion you have come to isn’t incorrect. Most countries in the west have spent considerable money on their internet infrastructure and are directly linked to eachother, which is why maybe its 100-150ms ping for most people between usa and eu but maybe a closer country to Europe might see 300+….
You have to remember that if there isn’t direct linkage between two nations its going to be slow. You really have to think like normal highways in this regard. If there is a multi lane highway connecting countries its going to be relatively easy to get there. If you need to take a side street and go around to another country, taking detours, its going to be slow.
The complaint your having has more to do with politics unfortunately.
Like I said in my other post, there is no way that the African continent has enough gw2 gamers to support 3 servers both with quality gameplay (enough players) as well as being financially profitable (its a business mind you)
The only other work around would be if there was a direct cable linkage to say, Amsterdam which I believe is a major internet hub in EU, which would provide you with a much better ping to EU servers.
Have you checked the traceroute to the GW2 server you play on? That would let you know just how many ping increasing router stops your signal is going through before it hits the server. It would also tell you which stop along the way was taking the longest.
But yeah, until most of the world decides to spend big money on global fiber optic connectivity….the side effect is that you deal with high latency. Just ask any Australian how they cope. Not sure a solid fiber optic line from Queensland to California is even feasible but that would certainly solve some of the issue…other than Australia having a couple million more gamers with money in hand to support servers.
Probably has to do with how much data is used per zone, where having to load two zones at the same time to facilitate a seamless transition might be too much for their puny and weak 32 bit client architecture.
I know…think it was AoC that had the same set up, but people whines so much they actually integrated a connected world that would load if you say, swam across a lake connecting two zones rather than going to the road portal between areas.
I will say, this game has the longest load screens of any modern game ive played. I really should stick the game on my SSD
Ok, lets say they do this. You are now on the African server with better ping but hardly anyone else playing.
How many, would you assume, people play this game from the African continent? Enough to support a 3 server set up?
Plus theres always issues like what Brazil deals with, basically their government is so unfriendly to foreign business that its too expensive to host a server there in most cases, and you cant just drop a server next door because their infrastructure is so awful their connection has to route through the USA to get to say…Chile, which is a location that is very business friendly and cheap to set a server up.
I know there are a couple of African countries that have a hard wire connection to Europe (I think its Ghana and the UK) and they get super good connection and pings to the EU because of this.
Guess it all depends on what country your from.
I would have to assume there isn’t much, if any, African gamer community, Theres plenty of countries I see in big guilds running around ive never seen a sizable “South African” or Botswana" guild (oh man the word play you could do on a Botswana guild XD"
Basically, things need to be profitable to be possible. There needs to be enough players in your region vs the cost of hosting a server there vs how much they are spending.
I think an SEA server would make more sense, as they could cover some huge gaming markets. maybe a Middle Eastern server but then they have to redo artwork or people will lose their heads.
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I really hope they think about how people will be unlocking specializations.
First of all, despite reality, these are suppose to be horizontal upgrades, as in a different way to play your class, not a linear upgrade, so I don’t see a reason to make anyone put in a ton of effort to access the specializations, really any effort to be frank.
Second of all, I feel like there is really no reason to do all the hero challenges other than completion, however I don’t want to be forced to hunt down every challenge, or even most, just to use a spec. I get their point, they are sort of fun things to do when I want to do map pve, I just don’t see their overall point given the multiple paths you can take to level a character up, hero challenges seem to be the only required reason to do map pve (not that I hate map pve just seems out of place as a requirement)
So I know they might add WvW hero points, that’s fine, I feel its needed for people who just don’t want to do map pve (I’m not sure I will after a few characters and don’t want to be hampered for that choice)
I feel like having a hero merchant selling hero skins for hero challenge points would be more in tune with how this game works.
In my very limited experience, being a burn guard in spvp, I feel like the guild banks on people not knowing what they are going while 1v1 (which is a good amount of the playerbase btw)
The second you encounter a player who know what they are doing, burn guard loses its “op-ness” I actually feel burn guards are best in a team fight being kind of side dish support and spreading damage, making it easier for the higher alpha character to take people down.
Vs a Mesmer, and ive dealt with a lot trying to ninja points, its a toss up. The Mesmer either has a clue and its a really close fight (typically I lose) or they drop super fast.
I have to say that I feel like the guards down state skills might be the worst in game, ive had a lot of “ties” vs a Mesmer, and its incredibly rare that a tie goes to me due to down state skills being less than awesome.
Basically if you can cleanse my burns after I pop all my cooldown skills theres not a whole lot I can do, damage is super slow and based almost entirely on stacking burns that don’t get cleansed.
I would say the only advantage a guard would have is his ability to stack burns then “wait it out” better than a Mesmer, with skills that add tankyness (even invulnerability) however they have long cooldowns and one cleanse can ruin it.
burn guard is really OP if you don’t know what a burn guard or condi is.
Trinity still exists, just there are no player roles to sufficiently deal with the existing trinity mechanics in game.
Someone needs to get attacked by the enemy. That person will lose health and die. People need to DPS down the enemy. Your trinity is in game, just not on the player side which is traditionally where the mechanic is dealt with via player coordination.
Removing trinity from the player side, and only having DPS as the reliable player mechanic just means instead of having someone deal with heals and tanking, you just need to DPS everything down before people start to die. Trinity is still here, just they removed players from reliably managing it.
I’m not really interested in the making tanks and healers with powerful skills to manage their role like in most games, just pointing out that simply removing two roles in the trinity doesn’t remove the NPC side of the equation, which still exists in every game that’s tried this.
IMO for the $50, anyone who bought the HOT, no matter what tier of purchase, should get at least one slot. Just seems like a common sense thing to do imo.
Solution: Keys for completing raids, create spvp reward where you grind for a key would operate just the same as normal gear boxes and progress bars only the last reward is a key. Do the same as in spvp only have it in wvw (hell add in all the gear/crafing boxes with the same progress mechanic as spvp)
Keys that you would be able to get per week: 3 (if you grind spvp,wvw, and do a raid which imo is a good way to keep all aspects of the game very active even if your not a huge pvper/pve’er)
more keys you can actually farm, more boxes you open, the more BLT’s and fragments you get. no need to adjust drop rates.
And no please don’t remove tomb of knowledge. those things are probably the most valuable thing I get in game right now given I’m new and saving them for a quick revenant progression.
I mean making an alt running the story the deleting and repeating….
they could make much better ways to get keys, and they should.
Maybe…raid rewards?
I’m all for taking out methods of cheesing game mechanics like this, but at least put in something to compensate.
Its the trade off for lack of progression grind. I think back to the first generation of mmorpgs. Getting to level cap was a serious time investment. It wasn’t really easy to get there, and well, endgame for a lot of these games was standing around town while people marveled at you in your high level gear. No one wanted that. GW2 is the evolution of people disliking strong progression and character building.
So this game cut out the gear grind, cut out the level grind, cut out character building ( can just respect any way I see fit any time ect) replaced the need to continually play with deco skins and whatnot.
I don’t dislike it, but I’m only a couple weeks into the game and ive already started working on a second character.
Game needs a definitive game mode for endgame, raids wont cut it, lack of trinity sort of dulls the pve endgame imo.
I’m a huge ARPG fan so I get what your saying with lack of shiny in this game. For me this is a nice change of pace I guess. Combat is fun, the game looks pretty decent and well made, just clearing pve map content is fun, the pvp isn’t half bad for a non full loot game.
Oh and I get that arpg loot tingle when I’m doing spvp, those gear box progression tracks…I love them…they need to put those in for all sorts of other activities. Id do a hell of a lot more wvw if I saw progress towards a unique skin box going up ect….not that wvw isn’t unfun, just that game modes been done to death in a lot of other games ive played.
I honestly read the patch as increasing key drops along with chest drops.
I really don’t know why they would increase chest drops. Chests on the trade post seem to be infinitely supplied at dirt cheap prices. Hell I use the trade post to buy one when I got a key for clearing the map, it was super affordable and I was only a few days old in game.
Honestly having some massive stack of personal BL chests isn’t going to make me buy a bunch of keys. However, getting one chest on a rare occasion, and not having infinite supply on had with the trade post, I’m definitely snagging a key if I get one chest and its a rare occasion. maybe that’s just me though
I cant imagine it being easy, I started a day before f2p, I had to ask a ton of questions. Figuring out how to sent crafting mats to depot, how to salvage garbage gear, the importance of luck essences, and a whole host of things not obvious to a new player but immensely helpful to know right off the bat was all learned via map chat for me.
The nice thing I guess is that you got to play the game for a bit free of charge, see that you liked it, then spend only $50 for it, which is much cheaper than most free to play games where kitten payment might get you a skill reset so your not kitten from nooby mistakes and a token deco item. That $50 goes a long way in this game I think, compared to how much you can spend in a free game. I actually should have gotten the collectors given how I spent about another $50 there after on stupid stuff I didn’t need but wanted.
Anyway. It cant be fun or easy as a new player that restricted. I think there should be a trial chat, voluntary for everyone else, mandatory for free players. You could still limit it to like 1 trial chat use per 5min, at least that way you could ask a question, or have someone whisper you ect.
Guy above me is right. Its not free to play. Its a glorified demo, with potentially unlimited access. Oh and for as much as it sucks, the game isn’t clogged with gold spammer crap.
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At least it saves your spvp and wvw build though, separate from your pve map. so its not end of the world type stuff not having one.
however it would be super nice to have two build templates per game mode, as well as the ability to manage said builds outside of their respective instance.
what I find more useful is a sort of gear swap/save system. I pretty much run around in gear meant for wvw in pve, just because I don’t want to get into a situation where my limited bag space is occupied by specific gear sets, running the risk that I accidentally salvage (say a piece gets removed from the invisible bag)
I think the main issue with the game is tied into how quickly you hit level cap, which is fine to have a casual player hit 80 in 5-12 days and all.
But most people have an expectation that once there the game will change sort of, and it really doesn’t. I hit 80 then I go back and clear low level for completion, do the same jump puzzles I could do at lv1, be the same power in spvp as I was at lv1, I could participate in endgame dungeons/raids (soon) but that’s a small aspect and the weakest part of the game mechanically.
To be fair I really like a lot of these “negative aspects” like being able to enjoy lv15 zones at 80 without it being 100% worthless snooze fest due to over power.
The definite thing that feels off…and almost lack luster. You hit level 80. Now you have access to endgame pve instances which isn’t this game strong suit…and otherwise…you just do the same stuff you did before only your 80 now.
They need to devise a mechanic, something to get really excited for, and something I can only do at lv80 that I really want to do between clearing old maps, jumping around stuff, and doing the same pvp ive been doing all game.
Not an easy thing to do mind you. But I think this is the missing ingredient of the game. Anet seems creative enough, and if bucking the trend with mmorpgs is their thing, this is something I think they need to look into. I don’t have an answer, maybe raids will help somewhat.
I think there needs to be something like Guild dungeons with guilds stocking their dungeons with mobs using special currency they farm. Then have other guilds able to raid said dungeons to steal currency if they make it to the end, while the owning guild can personally defend it too. Something with a metagame aspect and politics involved. “hey 10 guys form guild xyz just entered our dungeon we need 10 people asap to go defend” or “hey we need more guild tokens forming a party to raid guild xyz’s dungeon” or “thanks everyone we have enough currency to hire this fractial boss to guard our dungeon!”
The only thing I see this game lacking with is that endgame activity that gets me super excited to hit endgame and makes me want to play my lv80 non stop.
Leveling is great in this game. I like the grind for looks aspect. However theres really nothing super exciting about hitting 80.
Think part of the issue is that spvp has you the same power at lv1 as 80, the pve “endgame” is the weakest part of the game mechanically, and for wvw maybe for roaming theres some “cant wait to hit 80” but really you are just a number in the zerg.
I dunno, its like they need to create some sort of special “thing” for endgame (yeah yeah raids but I don’t see those as super exciting) something we all can look forward to and something we can comfortably participate in as a means to “progress” once level cap. hope that makes sense.
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“i don’t like dodging”
because I see the “dodge me” visuals as annoying and like to stand there and take high damage attacks face first.
I actually love the fact that lowbie areas are not “wasted” when I outlevel their intended range.
I was getting higher levels just as easy in starter zones as I was in the higher level maps.
The reward for clearing maps is worth it, though I’m not focusing on that its nice when I’m close to go “ill hit that vista and heart quest or two and get the reward”
Its nice I can kinda choose the environment of my choosing for leveling at any range. I can also go back at 80 and try to clear some areas for the map clear rewards.
Or I can ignore it all and farm pvp/wvw.
Its really easy to figure out. People who want super active wvw over all other things will gradually migrate to the full servers. So lets say the current batch of full servers has a guild leave or go inactive, it might go very high for a day, someone will notice, and youll see wvw’ers flood in while they can, then be very active in wvw, making it full again.
What will, or has happened is that there are now “wvw dream destinations” for no other reason really than they are full servers, meaning extremely high wvw participation. The block of full servers are the wvw servers. Not that other servers don’t have active wvw but anyone whos hardcore into wvw is going to want to go to the full servers whenever given the chance.
So I don’t see the full servers really changing much. I bet you could make a flow chart showing people moving from the low activity servers to the very high, then moving to the full when given the chance, if you followed hardcore wvw’ers server transfer history.
In some sense, at least to me, those full servers sort of have a legendary mystique when it comes to wvw. I would if I could transfer to them, knowing there is no downside to pve in doing so, or other aspects of the game, you only gain the chance to roll with some very active wvw’ers.
Their algorithm wont matter when the second a full server goes very high a bunch of people transfer into it.
I took the winauth option. Registered it, tied it to my game/computer. Havent had to use it since, I can log in like normal. Quite possibly the most unobtrusive verification process ive seen yet, and I hope more games make use of it.
*oh hes using AVG….theres your problem.
ive gotten a total of 3 whispers since i started playing. two the first day of free to play, one the day after, none since.
Hate to say it, but whatever they are doing to keep spammers out its working in my book.
The problem is that the purpose of Luck is to increase MF on an account.
If Anet gave Luck any other beneficial use, then players that have not maxed MF would always have to choose: Do I want to increase my MF? Or do I want to use this Luck for something else? And that would completely kill Luck’s original purpose.
So, if Anet decides to give Luck any other uses, they can only be ‘one time only things’, or uses that are far, far inferior to adding Luck to your account MF, so that people wouldn’t even consider keeping their luck as long as they can still increase their MF with it.
Not at all. Luck has a definite purpose. Giving player a choice only extends the usefulness of the luck items.
I mean even if there were several great ways to spend luck, using it to add MF only results in you finding more items that salvage into luck items…so its immensely useful, even more useful if there is a reason to use luck past MF cap….
So adding secondary uses only makes MF more useful, as well as providing extended need to salvage items for more than materials.
i can get a guild hall as a one man guild in GW1, why Anet is so stubborn to do the same in GW2…….makes it look more and more a downgrade rather then an upgrade…..
Because I think they want the game to be more social than that. As much as I can appreciate people who do this, make a tiny “party” guild with just their RL friends, then complain how theres no content aimed directly at them….im fairly certain they’ve done numerous studies and find that people who join the bigger, more active socially guilds tend to participate more in content provided, as well as stay longer in the game.
Whats stopping you and your buddies from joining a “normal” sized active guild, then just requesting they make a special channel for you and your buddies to use. Then you can go do your own stuff…and still have access to everything else…who know you might branch out and come out with a much better game experience.
Really I do get the whole anti-social aspect of joining a game with RL friends and no interest in anyone else, but these games really are so much better when you have a bunch of people to play with…along with your buddies in RL.
its more entertaining to use the forge than to simply destroy items you cant sell/salvage. that is all. other than the rare recipes.
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I dunno maybe for long time players this sale was lame. As a new player I picked up a lot of stuff during the sale. Yeah maybe it wasn’t uber rare stuff that a long term player would be interested in but considering the amount of new players coming in, a sale on what might be considered common and mundane stuff for vets seemed like quite a decent sale to new players like me who had really nothing to start with.
I don’t think it was that bad of a sale. Picked up a couple outfits which will help me look better while leveling characters, account booster thing and some storage space expansions was great, I picked up that stupid rock because it was cheap and looked super lame which I like…. the boosters are pretty good for a new account since I got some dyes that really helped customization…
Trying to think of what else I picked up. Oh, a finisher, was definitely necessary imo.
So yeah. Maybe this was a sale directed right at new accounts. If it wasn’t it turned out to be a pretty good sale for accounts that had nothing to begin with. I have to assume that was the main focus of the sale too…
Ill be honest, a lot of the stuff I see the long term players begging for…doesn’t appeal to me, maybe a few years of playing the game and all of a sudden ill want bunny ears (not likely)
The only thing I regret was not snagging any permanent salvager or resource tools, guess I didn’t realize how handy those are…Next time I will though.
I gave gw1 a try a few years ago. I just didn’t like it. Was very…strange. I know it existed as a game that didn’t have a uber popular trendy role model to piggy back off of, which is why that first generation of mmorpg games were full of classic games, many very unique from eachother…and that is exactly what made it such a popular game I think.
But for me, someone who got into mmorpgs with Anarchy Online….it felt too constrained, too much instancing, I wasn’t a huge fan of storyline content and it seemed gw1 was all about instanced story and arena style pvp.
If I can remember the biggest turn off was the restricted movement and having to do instanced story content. It lacked the ability for me to jump in game and run off looking for stuff to do.
I don’t remember it looking awful, which might be more related to how long ago I gave it a try than actually how good it looked.
I dunno like I said the best way to describe those first generation mmorpgs is that they didn’t have a popular trend to follow, they had to create something unique, and its why just about all the first gen mmorpgs were considered classics. Problem is, going back to them is hard, you either love them or hate them, and given the amount of time weve had conditioned to a certain exact style of mmorpg, its usually something very hard to get into unless you were there as your first mmo.
Look, making one mmorpg and sticking with it, is what everyone should have been doing with their games from the start. Porting older games into new game engines to keep up with the times, adding content on top of content….continually fixing them.
Warcraft has it right. They abandoned their big budget next gen mmorpg and started working kitten their only mmorpg. That’s how you do it. Think if Everquest never made a sequel but instead ported the first game into a modern engine and kept adding to it, same with ultima online….
I think a lot of mmorpgs would have fared far better ignoring the trending “gimmicks” of making a full sequel, that did worse than the original usually every time.
So what they should do with GW2 is start slowly working on a DX12 64 bit client. Keep doing expansions with new areas, classes, weapon types. Fixing old bugs. Polishing the game.
Then once the game starts to really show its age, and the new client has been worked on for a long time, and polished, and tested….port over to what would have otherwise been GW3 a game that fractured the GW audience, as GW2 did to 1…and instead pumped more life into a game everyone was already playing and liked.
Just keep piling on content and polishing. Work on the next gen engine for the game to keep it modern. That’s it. No need to keep pumping out new games every 5 years or whatever. I think of a lot of games that were major hits and their sequel more or less took an extremely successful company and made them near bankrupt.
I actually really like this games multi-combo auto attack. Few games have this, and usually its single target only. Its so rare in mmorpgs that I can actually watch my character fight rather than staring at hotbar cooldowns. Id like to see a pool of skills for first attack, second attack, finisher that I can swap out and sort of create my own auto attack. Really would have only use for casual mapping but still would be nice to change stuff up ect.
I would also like to see the addition of treasure hunting. I know silverwastes has those boxes ect…but I’m thinking more of a rare drop….if anyones played darkfall I’m thinking more like that. Get a map, try to figure out where exactly it is, grab a shovel go there and dig it up. Maybe make them spawn an epic boss and make them a guild event. So you get your guildies together and all go to dig up this chest and fight a boss who will appear to guard it.
Id sort of like to see a WvW iteration of the stronghold spvp feature. Create three bases one per server, a few lanes. Have the “creeps” spawn on their own and if left alone stalemate in the middle. Then you could have players getting stuff to spawn better creeps and helping the lanes out. I’m thinking something that will work and be fun if there isn’t a giant zerg vs zerg vs zerg participating. Something I can on a whim go there and participate in it, without having to flag down a wvw guild or find out where everyone is, or do the whole solo roam gank to get some wvw fun. I know its a really poorly thought out idea but maybe you get what I’m trying to suggest here, probably saying it all wrong and seems super lame.
And finally. Guild Dungeons. Have it cross server, doesn’t matter where the guild is located server wise. Have each guild given the option to create a dungeon. Have something guild members can farm for currency to hire things to guard said dungeon, traps, enemies, bosses the whole 9 yards. Then have a special currency. Guild gems I dunno something like that. Have the guild gems spawn in special battlegrounds that are open, make them tradable on the AH so guilds that don’t want to pvp for them can have a few. You use the gem or whatever to run the dungeon and give a slow tick of…whatever the currency or point system. So guilds will raid other guilds dungeon to take their dungeon gem. Any guild member can go into their own dungeon and guard it from others raiding it…figure no more can enter than the attacking guild brings to raid the dungeon. So youll get a warning “your dungeon is under assault by X number of guild XYZ” and you can send in equal numbers to help the dungeon. Points generated by gems active will add to a guild leaderboard. More gems equal more points per tick. So you could sit there and raid a guild and run them out of gems, they would need to buy more or raid them back from the assaulting guild. Make a reward shop for members, all memebers get their share of points at the end of the day ect.
There a coffee + nicotine infused wall of text as to what I would like to see. The guild dungeon thing would be my favorite. All ideas are poorly thought out and created during my morning coffee + nicotine buzz.
As a new player, for the most part people get how this game works. If not they will before they leave the starter zone. Yeah it was awkward getting use to free roaming for content.
My suggestion would be not to continually run what was a mechanically boring, and some what tedious event. I would gather to say that most people have played Rift before, and perhaps WAR (rest in peace) so dynamic events are nothing new to mmorpgs or something unique to GW2.
What I sort of expected was for GW2 to have some really top notch special dynamic events. I’m sure some exist that they rarely run, and rare is the key. In Rift they had absolutely awesome invasions (stuff actually invaded rather than having us run circles around a plant) Problem was, it happened way too frequently, the rewards were lame, and so people didn’t bother with them after the “wow whats going on here” factor wore off.
My suggestion would be to have maybe one invasion event per week until HOT launch. Make it an actual invasions with huge enemies with high health (so the mass of players are not burning down enemies and champs in seconds) actually moving towards a fixed location. For instance I would have loved to see masses of giant tree/vine people heading towards the gates into a racial city. We kill the enemies, then move to maybe some stationary siege equipment we need to destroy, then maybe like in silverwastes how you have that vine boss, go into an instance to kill a massive boss leading the invasion.
What was missing from this event was big enemies, bosses…and for a game that’s suppose to have dragons as the end all be all of bad guys…would it kill anet to have a finale event where maybe a vine covered plant dragon needs to be downed (he doesn’t die he flies off then comes back so you can fight him a few times over the weekend so everyone gets a shot) with the grand finale of him getting killed. After the last fight give anyone who participated a great reward, even if they didn’t farm the living daylights out of the event.
The mechanics of the current event…it was boring…the rewards were lame aside from a few really cool rewards that required far too much farming of said boring event to acquire. Given limited time to farm I had to give up, I’m sure I could have gotten the 500+ blooms but I didn’t want to go that hard at the event honestly.
Not the end of the world that this event was sort of all around lame. But a lot of people expected GW2 to get dynamic special events right…and be really good at them…given the games been out 3 years and it is sort of the games claim to fame.
My advice would be: if Anet has in stock past events they know people loved and work correctly toss one in this weekend. If its way harder than just taking an already made event and running it…I suggest massive enemies charging a location, do it like the plant event only without the plant as the goal. Kill the big guys a few events then have a massive boss appear a few times. Nothing special, no gimmicky mechanics, just kill the kitten mobs. Be more tolerant on low amounts of event participation for one cool reward but allow people who farm to get many…like maybe everyone who does something at the end of the event gets one weapon skin, then those who farmed get as many weapon skins as they farmed.
As someone who played both WAR and Rift at their launch. Dynamic content isn’t something you want to continually have in game. Its super cool at first but then it loses its cool factor and becomes annoying. Keep events like this to no more than once a month, and rewards need to be interesting. Toxic gear skins and those horn/halo potions were interesting but out of reach for most players time constraints. The rest of the rewards were lame. I got some silly mini ill never use and a bunch of boxes that added to my overflow stacks of dragonite and blood shards…yes I’m under two weeks old and have overflow stacks on high end rare mats I guess…
I’m not sure I get this…was the OP on a dead pve map instance? Running around tagging stuff…that’s all you could do…everything died in a millisecond, hell my projectile would often not make it to the mob in time.
As for the catapult…I avoided those. Standing there watching 3 people throw stone into the ground over and over and over…ok I get it…calibrate a few shots….but if you see your stone hitting the ground maybe realize its a charge up skill?
Other than that, repairing was a pain, it just wasn’t fun. The only other option is to run around and try to pull mobs from catapults for the talented individuals who took catapult and haven’t figured out they charge up to shoot farther. What ticked me off, the one time I get on the catapult everyone stands on me shooting enemies at range, which would draw them to me, I died and someone else got the after repair use of the cata, and was doing the whole rock into the ground thing, only this time people were pulling mobs off of him so he could sit there and chuck rocks into the ground. Drove me nuts and I stayed away from those.
Oh wait, I think I know what the OP means. The event where you get pods. Yeah we weren’t afk, we figured out where it throws the bubbles of mobs and just stood there while everyone else frantically played merry go vine running around. We stood in one spot and when it became out turn were the reason the pack couldn’t tag, we killed and then tossed the pods then waited again, while everyone else ran in circles.
I actually like they way they look in certain cases. what ruins it for me almost every time is their tail… Sticking straight out of armor usually.
At least give us the option to hide tail.
So I’m not even two weeks into the game and I have overflow stacks of dragonite and whatever those blood shard things are.
Id actually like for the crafting collection materials to stack higher, I mean I get there needs to be a point where it fills up I guess, but man…im so new, and its a really far grind still before I can even use it in crafting, and when I get there exactly how much stuff am I going to need to craft? Seems like these two special “rare” items are waaay to abundant.
I like the idea of a salvager item that consumes ore, maybe choose the ore for it to munch and you get a better salvage rate?
I don’t think its going to happen any time soon. If you ask me the golden age of mmorpgs is over. People expect too much, they cost too much to make, they cant charge to player much money. Really tough to make a AAA mmorpg these days.
I feel that most of the major investment into making these games was done in the hopes of achieving warcrafts level of success, none came even close. So were seeing a lot less, really none, of the past trend of seeing a major mmorpg launch every year.
I think this is why blizzard chose to double down on wow rather than continue development of their new game, that was a big sign that were going to see less, if any new big budget mmorpg games, which would include a gw3.
I could see them making a single player or co-op RPG that’s story driven for gw3, those tend to still make a lot of money.
I really don’t think they are going to go with another mmorpg after this, froma business stand point, mmorpgs are pretty risky to make. Before I came here I kicked around a few Korean free to play games, the newer ones. Had it been 2000-2008 these games would have been packed full of players, but they were all completely dead, scary dead. The demographic that these games use to cater to are instead playing MOBA games.
I would be very surprised if Anet had any play at all to make another AAA mmorpg. Would be a better investment to continue developing this game and hope maybe things change and mmorpgs start to become popular like they once were. I think there still is a big market for these games, just that there has been a flood of them made in the last 15 years. Like I said people expect too much and to pay almost nothing…yet expect the game to get incredible post launch support and development, which is very expensive to do, and its so easy for a mmorpg to start the downward spiral, and these games are not fun and not profitable to cater to small niche crowds.
- the only real chance of a resurgence of big budget mmorpgs is going to be console gaming systems. I know they saved a few games that saw huge interest with console gamers while their pc market was looking grim (see ESO and FFXIV)
(edited by StrangerDanger.3496)
As far as roles go, when you get rid of healer and tank, all that’s left is DPS. Skyforge did this very same thing, and the raids/hard dungeons there are all about focus fire dps, not a whole lot else. Yeah theres sort of tanks but with no heals its only a DPS race, you have to kill the enemies before your tank dies.
I get people hate the trinity system, but this is the end result. Balance issues where DPS is the only way to go. I think part of this issue is they never got rid of the trinity system, they only got rid of the roles within the system. You still need to heal when hurt, you still need someone to be the focus of the enemies (or else who are they attacking when you fight them?) those things still exist in this game with or without the role of healer or tank being feasible or possible.
So basically, the game never removed the trinity system, just the roles. Therefore the result is that DPS is the only tool you really have. Pending a total change in how mmorpgs work, all healer and tank do within the game is add dungeon/role diversity and depth, something that this game doesn’t really have when you boil it down to its basics, everyones a DPS of varying degrees, everyones able to take enemy focus to varying degrees, everyones able to do “damage mitigating heals” of varying degrees. The only sustainable and reliable aspect is DPS as such its the most important and the most influential in your build.
Condition damage might be out of control, but I think a few classes should have strong condition damage, When then only viable tool is DPS, people are going to die fast, be it by condition stacks or alpha damage…its not like you can have some healer keeping a tank up who distracts everyone (in pvp) and has a taunt forcing people to target him briefly. So its DPS and people die fast.
You would have to totally change how a mmorpg works to rid the trinity system, otherwise your just shifting role focus off healer and tank onto DPS, trinity will still exist…and it does exist in this game, only that you don’t have strong roles in the two “unfun” trinity roles.
(edited by StrangerDanger.3496)
First Silverwastes is not needed for map completion. Second that area under SW is Drytop – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dry_Top – and again that is not needed for map completion.
Gotcha. But do you see my point? How would I have known any of this in game? I would have had to alt tab and open a wiki or make a forum post to know that the area there is drytop (ill have to read the wiki to even figure out how to enter it I’m sure)
Again from the eyes of a seasoned vet I’m sure this is a silly complaint…but to a new player seeing spots on the world map that appear like places I can go, but are not, its pointlessly confusing and causes people to waste time….and lets be honest here, you shouldn’t have to alt tab then research an area to figure out if its a place I can go to or not…that’s what a world map is for….
I hate to say it, but Rift had the right idea with invasions. It felt epic, it felt like an invasion. Giant enemies moving towards a town, a mega boss at the end that was difficult for a large mass of players to down.
Problem was they were on a timer, it got old fast because it happened too often, and in the end, most of the areas that got invaded had little activity and were just ignored (becoming a nuisance for the small group of people doing content in that area)
But yeah…a bunch of spawning plants and small enemies standing around, then running to a new location for the same, then 5 catapults, ect…didn’t feel like an invasion.
Why not do something really cool like have a giant dragon fly in, have waves and waves or champ mobs (or enemies that don’t die in a nanosecond due to zerg damage) slamming up against a major city or important hub…then the mobs start to get bigger and more epic. Then the dragon lands and you deal with that. I’m now 80 levels into the game and the only dragon encounter ive had thus far was pressing F on a cannon then spamming it at a dragon that just stood there and took it (ok I had to press F again and dodge his aoe a few times)
For a game centered around dragons…maybe have (in the instance of this particular event) some plant based, vine covered, dragon come in at the end, start moving towards a heavily NPC populated area, then killing them all and having players fight it?
Running all over a zone to kill spawns of plants, and none of the enemies were in the least bit difficult, hell hardest part was tagging enemies before the were vaporized immediately.
Would it have killed them to have some giant tree vine “ents” or something big stuff that didn’t go down so fast that were actually moving towards a location aka invading?
As a new player it didn’t seem all that cool, it wasn’t all that fun, and didn’t at any point feel like anything was being properly invaded. Plus it was too kitten easy, not that I want to continually die but everything was dead so fast, and again, no epic boss appeared (at least I never saw one) was just “the invasion ended” no finale or anything.
(edited by StrangerDanger.3496)
If I remember some old threads I dug up correctly….
the reason season one isn’t available is because it was more like an active world event rather than a set of personal story instances. Meaning they cant just have season one active for anyone who buys it, since that would require public world events to make work, which wont work on a per player bases.
Season two is just a bunch of instances, like the personal story, so that is possible to forever stay active because anyone who buys it can just do it at will no need for public event management and coordination.
I don’t think they would ever have a reason to remove season two, and I bet they wish they hadn’t done season one in the same manner they did given how that content cannot be feasibly redone ever again (as I am to understand at least)
I actually like the allure of limited time cosmetics. Its more fun to have something that anyone cant just up and buy on a whim, and its more of a push for me to get something that’s “rare” when it is available.
However I do agree with the whole “not going to be able to do this” feeling. Looking over the rewards it seems pointless to do anything other than the potions or skins….which means I’m probably going to have to save up the blooms and if I’m still around finish up the rewards next time this event is active.
Sort of wish they made the blooms currency rather than items.
Like I said, I’m sure this makes no sense to people who have been playing for years and or are long time followers of guild wars. For new players its incredibly strange to have marked locations on the world map that appear as undiscovered spots that are not in game and not accessible. Especially considering theres not indication that these are areas that cannot be entered (grey them out would work)
For a game that has you wanting to explore and clear areas its sort of frustrating to need to alt tab to a wiki, ask in chat, or have to know someone only a veteran or long time follower of the game knows.
As for seeing a level range being the only indicator of an areas ability to be explored, that’s good to know. Does this mean there is an entire area to the south of silverwastes since it says “80” below it? Because this would lead to the other issue I have and that is teleports between zones are poorly marked, I have silverwastes fully explored and haven’t seen a route to get to that southern “80” area. Just an example.
Not the end of the world here just seems strange how this game handles the world map and zones, and I’m sure I wont be the last new player to spend hours trying to get into an area that doesn’t exist beyond being labeled on the world map.
Ugh this logic again. You bought a game three years ago, have had access to the game for the last 3 years, and still do for that one time purchase. You got what you paid for and still do.
I feel like the people who have been and are making this argument that they are owed money now have the mindset of a small child to not understand what is happening or why.
Even dumber is the expectation that they make the free players time in game less likely to encourage them to buy the game. Give them the core game, the restrictions on anti-gold spammers is just fine, let them play then decide to pay or not.
A game without fresh blood continually replacing those that need to leave or want to leave is vital if the game is to be something worth playing long term.
Its safe to say I think that the buy to play model as the main form of financing game development didn’t go as planned, I expected as much since its not cheap to continually develop a live mmorpg without constant money flowing in. I’m actually shocked it took them three years to get kitten (I typed fifty dollars in numbers with a dollar sign not sure the censorship on that is needed) expansion out, and not making the base game free to add more fresh blood when the expansion was open for preorder would have been a very stupid move.
I’m sorry so many people are ignorant to what a business is and how they work, I blame the school systems tbh that this thread actually exists. Don’t mean to sound condescending but there seems to be a growing trend in society to expect high compensation for work you do yet expect others to “not be greedy” and not try to make money when your benefitting from the service.
Yes, I would like EVERY area you need to explore on a map have a WP, POI, or heart in it. As it is now I can get all of those but still not have completed the map. So I need to open up the wiki to find the areas I missed.
WPs I am a bit meh on opening. A compromise is to have them available to your other characters (but the area around them not explored) if discovered once while still allowing them to be discovered (ie, that they could earn XP from them). Maybe use the undiscovered icon to signify a character (including the first one) has not discoveed them yet while still allowing them to use it.
Well, I’m more concerned with the fact that I cant look at the world map as a new player and know “i need to go here but I cant go there” Really strange ive never seen a mmorpg with a world map that has areas appear that seem like I can go there but need to ask someone or alt tab to a wiki to find out if that area is even in game. Maybe to a vet of gw1 and a vet of gw2 it makes sense, but to a new player it doesn’t.
Perhaps just having a mouse over outline on the areas that are in game.
I think having waypoints known even if not explored is a good idea, given how important they are to unlock. Ill be honest, the way they show unlocked areas, areas I cant go, and areas not in game, all with the same exact “artwork fog of war” covering, I have no idea if some areas are dead ends or if there is exploreable content just beyond.
All I’m saying is that to a new player, figuring out how to do this all differently would be a huge help. I’m sure I’m not the only new guy who has wasted hours of time combing edges of maps looking for a path, or a jump path, to try to get to undiscovered area that isn’t in game and isn’t possible to get to.
I also want to point out that the meaning of the word grind has changed from its original meaning, and its original mean was the reason why its such a negative word.
Grind use to be what people use to do in older games. See you would get like one quest per level or multiple quests per level that would give you XP at a portion of your XP required to level up. So you would then have to stand in a field of mobs, killing them one after another, for hours or days, getting fractional % gains, just to level up and repeat the process. Typically there were no drop loot mechanisms that were rewarding for doing this either.
You would move up the field once leveled.
This was how most Korean grinder games worked, and they were the biggest culprits of this.
People didn’t want grind, they wanted stuff to do that was beyond just standing there killing mob after mob for fractional gains.
Now grind is used to describe anything that requires effort and isn’t immediately handed to you….yet still carries the negative meaning that the real meaning of the word holds.
I remember, I think it was lineage 2, standing in the same place every day for something like 8-10 hours a day, for a week, before getting a level, and this was a process repeated for more than just a couple of levels. That was what grind means.
This game doesn’t have that. You have multiple game mechanics to progress, even for things that take longer than other things in game. I might consider crafting a grind, but then, I can get the materials while clearing maps, I can get the materials via buying them, I can get gold to buy them through multiple means, I don’t need to craft. So no that’s not really a grind imo, but its the closest thing I see in this game to anything remotely “painfully long and tedious” even then, I’m a like a week or two old in this game I have two crafting professions around 200 out of a what 500 max?
Go hop in an older Korean free to play game (hell most of those have added stuff to bypass the grind by now) and go try killing mobs to level to max level. Then come back to gw2 and see how “non grindy” it is.
Grind shouldn’t mean “doing repeatable stuff to be relevant” if this is a thing you hate, you my friend are playing the wrong genre of game. RPG games have always been about doing stuff over and over to get stronger (or relevant) that’s their nature. Many find this fun. Hell I love ARPG games (notice RPG in the name) like Diablo, where you slaughter mobs over and over and over for years to get good loot (granted loot mechanics need to be rewarding for this to work)
(edited by StrangerDanger.3496)
So I’m a new player, ive reached 80. A side goal of mine is to completely open up the game world, first through getting all the waypoints, then maybe later ill start clearing more maps (ive done a few but would prefer the option to go anywhere first)
So the issue I’m having is with the world map. There are lots of marked areas that ive ended up wasting a lot of time trying to figure out how to get there. Apparently there are some marked areas on the map that you just cant get to.
For instance I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get to the crystal desert. There are guard guarding what appears to be the only way in (spent a lot of time trying to find other routes in) ive gone to the queen to see maybe I need to talk to her. Find out later its not in game.
There has to be some way to let a new player know that certain marked areas of the game are not available, so people like me don’t spend hours and hours trying to figure out how to get somewhere I cant go.
On a side note, it would be nice to have waypoints visible even if the area isn’t explored. This would solve the issue, as if there are no waypoints I can assume the area isn’t a place I can go, would also make things like realizing theres some underground area or part of the map that looks like its not somewhere I can go that in fact has a waypoint and I need to start figuring out how to get there.
I feel like the world map is sort of throws a lot at you without telling you the bare basics, such as what on this map is part of the game, and what on this map is there just to have it on the map. For instance, I didn’t even know I could get to silverwastes until I realized I had items to be used in the area, so I had to go back and figured out there was a portal there I had no idea about, despite having been in the area with the portal there before.
So either make the waypoints visible despite uncovering the area, or make portals between maps visible..there are a lot of areas on the map that I don’t have unlocked at 80, after having tried to unlock all the areas with at least one waypoint, in fact I feel I have the edges of all maps fully discovered, or at least most. I really don’t like that I need to always ask people if I can even go to these areas or not. It should be something I know by looking at the map.
I don’t see why they cant just add a mystic forge recipe for essence stacks. Maybe an NPC where you can buy black lion keys for insane amounts of luck…maybe the npc vendor would convert the essence to currency based on how much luck it would have provided, then that currency could be used to buy a few things, including some rare dye boxes and keys…something someone who has it all but is still actively playing the character will find useful, and I don’t see this being of any use to anyone other than those few who have everything….it would be nice to know that in the future once I get all my weapons I want, my crafting to ascended, tons of materials to craft, and magic find maxed, that I could still farm on the character for something of use to my character.
I’m sure this will get lost in the sea of posts here but here is my feed back as a new player who has HOT.
First of all my issue is with enemy scaling. When there are huge numbers of players, which there were for the event here, even normal event mobs need to scale their HP. I spent the first wave of attacks running around frantically, having to equip a range weapon on my melee character, just so I could tag some mobs. I didn’t feel like there was some dangerous invasion, the feeling was like in the personal storyline part where I’m in the sewers and the “rats are running from something” and I’m walking down a corridor swinging my sword one shotting rats for the lulz.
Second, as was mentioned, I spent a good amount of time, and coins (I’m new so I’m very low on money) teleporting around, trying to follow the event. That’s fine but there was zero reward for this. No chests dropped, and when it was over I got to follow the horde of participants to this NPC only to find out that I wouldn’t be getting any reward if I hadn’t already received it.
So this led me to ignore all follow up events.
Enemies, all event enemies need to scale appropriately. Not saying to make them one shot large swaths of players but is it so hard to make it so that they are not dead in a second?
Also there needs to be some sort of UI pop up explaining the rewards per phase of the invasion. Might have made sense for veterans of the game but I had no idea if I was doing it right, if I was actually helping, or if I was being rewarded…which it turned out I wasn’t being rewarded.
As a new player all of this struck me as strange. This is a three year old game whos fame is events like these… Stuff like this invasion is suppose to be what GW2 is all about and its had three years to get it right…so I’m not sure what happened here. I remember Rift’s invasions worked better during launch week, and those actually had an epic feeling about them (granted they ended up being monotonous and pointless beyond the opening week of the game and the mechanic being new to mmorpgs) The current event didn’t really feel all that epic, just some slightly bigger mobs and a large plant at the end. It didn’t feel like the area was being invaded, just that now there are these mobs here, kill them, and hey look, just happens to be 5 catapults here for you 50 players to use.
I’m actually really surprised that all of this hasn’t been sorted out by now tbh.
(edited by StrangerDanger.3496)