Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Tank : My team actually use a Guardian as a tank there at VG. Either with Knight armor/Berserker Trinkets or Celestial gear for an easier time. It bring CC and protection with decent dps. We continue to use a guardian because we never had problem with it. VG is such an easy boss once you know how to fight it that really any tank can do it. That said, it’s really the only boss where tanking with a guardian is a good idea. There is other boss where the guardian can, but these are harder boss and people prefer a proper tank.
DPS Dragon Hunter : It’s the main build for Guardian. Usually using a Hammer for protection, less burst dps, but higher sustain dps. You can use this build at ALL raid bosses, but it’s better at some boss and less at others.
VG : Don’t bring anything special to the fight, but it’s an easy fight so who care.
Gorsveal : Again, don’t bring much. If you don’t have an engineer the guardian have good CC for the breakbar, but Gorseval move a lot during the fight getting out of your symbol and dropping your dps. It’s less an issues since they fixed the agro system, now he only move when the tank make a mistake or when moving to the wall.
Sabetha : One of the best fight for the Guardian. The boss doesn’t move so you can reach your highest dps, which is in the Top 3 of the game. And the protection help a lot in the last phase.
Slothazor : The reflect, CC, condi removal and stability of a Guardian here is really good. You can also use a GS to to pull grubs in the group to cleave them. It’s one of the best fight for the Guardian with Sabetha.
Trio : High surviability with good CC make it a good option for both saboteur and mortar, but other profession can do the same job. DPS wise the hammer won’t help you much here since the first two bosses are easy and mobs are all over the place. I prefer the GS to pull mobs together here. The Guardian bring several sources of burnign which is good for the last boss. This profession is decent at trio, but other profession can replace it easily here too.
Matthias : Reflect is important for this boss, but Mesmer do a WAY better job. No particular reason to bring a Guardian here.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
That may have been the original design but as a returning player after two years i’m finding i’ve been very much left behind, my fault i guess for leaving but still left behind..
It is good news that only fotm and raids are needed for ascended, i have a few trinkets but no agony resistance as i cannot just add it right? I must jump through hoops for that too if i remember correctly?
Well if they kept adding new gear level on a regular basis you would have a point. But they added ascended gear years ago. The first trinket were added to the game like 2-3 months after the game was release and we knew then that the full ascended gear will eventually become available. The armor, the last pieces of ascended gear was added to the game like 2 years ago.
Like other said, it’s only needed in fractal. Raid can be done with exotic and Frankly as long as you have ascended trinkets and weapons you will be ok for raid. That said, it will be harder to find pugs without a full ascended gear. Simply because why should pug take you there is 10 people with full ascended gear next to you.
As for the grind. The fact that you stopped to play for 2 years don’t really help you since you didn’t accumulated material in that time. Just to give you an idea. If you buy everything on the market crafting an ascended armor will cost you 550 gold. There is plenty of ways to gain about 10 gold per hours and you can even go up to 20 gold per hours. So it should take you about 55 hours at max to have enough gold and material to craft a full ascended armor.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
The drop rates should be higher since you can’t purchase anything other than what jewelcrafters would make. Which really stinks for that profession. Crafting being a viable alternative is good thing, but only as an alternative. I hate forced crafting to progress. Not everyone wants to craft in MMOs. I wish most RPGS single player or otherwise would do away with crafting. It’s artificial content, developer resources would be better spend expanding the game itself instead of putting in crafting recipes. I have most of my professions maxed or near maxed at this point. But it has been one of the least enjoyable parts of the game. If they need a money sink – let me buy the parts and craft in mystic forge.
On a positive note, I do like the fact that you can change the stats on ascended, and it’s not overly expensive. Especially if you have a high enough craft skill.
I agree that some content should have better ascended drop rate. Fractal used to have decent drop rate on level 20, 30, 40 and 50. Now we only have 1 daily with decent drop rate. PvP drop rate is decent, but WvW is horrible and there is almost no ways to drop ascended gear in open world except at two bosses and the drop rate are ridiculous. And there is no drop rate in the new HOT maps either. Not saying that they should all have super high drop rate. But if you have a drop rate of about 10% in fractal which take about 30min to complete you should have something similar to that in other content. Most world boss take about 10-15min to kill so some of the biggest boss like Teq and Karka Queen should have a drop rate of about 3-5% for exemple.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
When I have disagreements with raiders, it is not because they enjoy raiding, and it is not because they want loot, both are reasonable goals. If I have disagreements, it is because of some combination of:
- they feel entitled to better loot because they consider raids to be “superior” content.
- they feel that the “solution” to players who don’t enjoy raids is that they should just raid more until they do enjoy them.
- they feel that anyone is capable of raiding, therefore nobody has any good reason to not raid.
- they feel that having exclusive access to a piece of armor is of equal value to having any access to it, and that allowing someone else to have access to it is akin to stealing it away from the raider, even if he gets to keep his own.
You misrepresent the position of most raiders.
1) They want a good ratio of reward vs time vs challenge. Some that take more time and is more challenge should get more reward, otherwise there is no reason to play that content reward wise. There is something wrong in your design when pressing F to mine is more rewarding than to kill a world boss, complete a fractal or do a raid. What is wrong with that position?
2) I don’t think that most people are saying that. There is people that say they don’t like raid and in that category some of them just never even tried or tried once the encounter. The point is maybe some people should try them, maybe with a team they would have fun with. Maybe it’s organizing a raid team that they don’t like and that anet will fix their LFG to make that easier. I doubt that nobody even said to try raid until they like it to someone that tried 2-3 raid and just don’t like it, that would be just stupid.
3) They feel that anybody (or at least the vast majority) can raid and therefore saying that raid is exclusive to only a small portion of the player base is incorrect. That doesn’t mean that not a bunch of people dislike having to make that kind of effort (organizing a raid team, whipping several times as you learn to encounter, having a good build, etc).
4) It’s a basic fact of life that rarity give value to item. It’s no different in a game. If you put an item as a reward to a content that is less difficult (which is bound to happen since most content is easier than raid in GW2), by definition it will be easier to get and will decrease it’s value. Now of course other aspect exist in that situation, like the fact that it’s block a whole type of gear and not only a skin or the fact that no other legendary except the armour is block behind a challenging content or the fact that there is a trinkets with special stats that are block behind that content. But the fact remain, whether or not it’s a good idea, giving the reward from raid outside of raid will decrease the value of the current raid reward.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Ofc and they exist everywhere. Fail a Gerent, play a non-meta build in pvp (doesn’t even have to be ranked), inter-server WvW drama, etc etc… But hey, he wants to make generalizations then I can go there too. :P
Yes and he probably want to makes generalization become someone on the other sides did generalizations before. And someone will probably make generalization because you made generalization in that post. That doesn’t help the conversation to just use the worst exemple of the other side and paint all the other side with that.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Honestly, it’s been my experience that the most toxic people are the elitist, not the elite players, but the elitist players. Truth is, players that are highly skilled often have nothing to prove, so they are typically really great people, however, it’s the elitist players, those with something to prove that cause all the problems. In fact, if you look at any long running topic like this, you will see that almost all the initiation of hostilities come from Elitist and that is because being toxic is a byproduct of their base stand that they simply don’t want to share. They approach things with the adamant point that the only way they can have fun, is if they deny other people the ability to have fun as well, and I don’t believe that it is possible to have that stand, and not be inherently toxic, because that stand can only come from a greedy self serving motive.
It’s been my experience the most toxic players are on the other side of the spectrum. The nomad players who don’t want to alter their build, refuse to take any utilities that would benefit their team because they just loved their tanky WoW paladin and then talk all salty and hateful on the forums/reddit about these so-called “elitists” who dared asking to bring something that actually benefits the group.
And my experience is that toxic player exist on all sides of the spectrum. And it’s pointless to try to figure out which side is more toxic because that’s not quantifiable.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
True enough. But since it almost always causes the thread to derail from people picking that up to discuss it, it’s best to throw in the imo anyway.
You are right that’s the best thing to do, but since for most people it’s obvious that what people talk about in forums are opinions, especially on that specific subject, I won’t walk on eggshells and apologize each time I forget to put a IMO in there.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Because it’s not work? I have enough of this in RL already, don’t need to repeat it in a kitten game.
See there is different opinions on the subject. Some people like that a game push them to put effort. They find that rewarding. They have good feeling when it happen. The effort they put in earning those item, grant value to those item. It’s like that in life and it’s like that in video game too. So we ask that from our games.
Other people don’t like that and it’s their opinion and they can ask that from their games too. Both side ask mutually exclusive stuff and the company need to take a decision in which side they prefer to go.
There is no right or wrong answer there. Just different players having different taste.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
That said. The expansion isn’t worth 50$ so far.
Your opinion only. I paid $100 for the ultimate edition and have not been disappointed at all. I do not regret the $100 for it. So again it is your opinion, stop trying to push your opinion as the only correct version.
I’ll said whatever I want and you are free to disagree. I paid 100$ and I was higly disappointed for even 50$. It was my decision to put that cash into a game that I loved for the last 3 years, it was my mistake. I know some people like how the game go, but they seem in my opinion to be in the minority. Not saying that the game is bad now. But for me they took a direction and make me love the game less and it’s the same ting will most of the my friends. It’s ok, I’ll just continue to raid and i’ll be more skeptical and wait before purchasing the next expansion.
If you can’t understand that all everybody said in the forum is their own opinion even if they don’t specify that It’s their opinion, it’s not my problem.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
True enough, but if the fun of hard mode wears off as quickly as you say, maybe it shouldn’t even be a permanent thing?
Well first of all it’s not an hard more things. It’s a content thing. ANY content without a proper reward will wears off at some point. Whatever what level of difficulty it is. Who’s doing map even in Brisban Wildlands? Nobody. Why? Because the reward isn’t worth it. Who was doing Trek pre-hot? Nobody. Now? All player that are doing guild mission.
It’s simple dude. People get bored of anything and everything. Guys can get bored of their super sexy wife, so in which world would any video game content could not become boring without external incentive. Either you put variability or you put rewards. PvP and game like diablo bring variability. Either you play against other human meaning that the combat will always vary and you will always have to adapt, or you put some increasing difficulty, variable maps, etc. Or you give reward that people want so they will keep playing the content because of the reward.
And secondly, why are you saying ‘’as quickly as you say’‘. Did I said anything on the time that can take? I vary from people to people and again. If anything the harder the content it is, the longer the time it will take because it start. I completed aetherpath in like 1-2 hours the first time. After that, I started to do the achievement and maybe 3-4 hours. In raid, it took me about 30 hours to beat all 3 boss of the first wings. Longer than anything else in the game. But whatever the time, it will happen eventually, whatever content you do. It’s just human nature and you can’t fight it. Whatever the content, people will get bored of it. Any game designed need to give incentive to player to replay their content because it’s just impossible to create content faster than people can consume it.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
People ain’t afraid of raiding.
1) First not everybody is playing raid. Hard to estimate how much player are doing raid to be honest. It’s probably between 5 and 15%.
2) The LFG is a mess for raid. No sub section, LFG doesn’t work with squad, etc. It doesn’t push people to play in pugs.
3) Raid need a lot of pratice and it can be hard to find a group at the same level as you. So most players prefer to have their own guild to raid with people they know and have similar skill in the game then them.
4) Finding a good guild is always a problem whatever your game. It’s not different for raiding guild. There isn’t much place to advertise, some raid don,t like to advertise. In the end, it’s not because you didn’t find any guild recruiting that there isn’t any. Also, those guild eventually become full and new guild need to form to recruit more players.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
If easy mode gave the same rewards as hard even hardcore raiders will abandon it.
No one has asked for the same rewards.
Ohoni.6057 do ask for the same reward.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Why?
Because effort have value. Take for example tennis. I like playing tennis. If I beat someone that is better than me in a hard fought match, I will feel good, I will feel happy and proud of myself. If I beat a 5 year old that never played before, I don’t feel good, or happy or proud of me. I just feel normal.
It’s the same with the content. If I add to practice and improve myself to beat the content and that i got a unique skin from it, I will feel good, happy and proud of myself and that unique reward will represent for me that effort. It will add value to that item, it will be more valuable to me.
Let’s keep in mind that the strenght of the gear isn’t important in GW2. So the only 2 things that give value to items are rarity and looks. And by giving the same reward to an easier version, you remove the value from rarity and just keep the looks. Not all good looking item should be rare, but there is good reason to also have good looking rare items.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
If easy mode gave the same rewards as hard even hardcore raiders will abandon it.
Which means that the hardcore raiders, given the opportunity, would prefer to NOT have to do the challenge that they claim they want. They’ll only do it if their rewards are substantially higher.
Cmon don’t play naive. You know as much as anyone else that reward is always important. If the reward in both normal and easy mode is the same. Then player that want a challenge will beat the normal raid for a challenge, then play the easy mode for the reward. Normal raid will still have some traffic at least at the beginning while most people didn’t went thought it yet. At that point the fun of the challenge is fresh enough that rewards isn’t much of a problem. But as people start to beat the normal raid, then it will become a problem. Some people will continue to do the normal raid from time to time because of the challenge, but players will play the easy mode each day because that’s the best way to get their rewards.
Just take a look at aetherpath. Most players agree that’s is a good dungeon. More fun than most other dungeons. People went through it and it was great at the beginning because it was new. But it didn’t stay popular because the reward was the same as most other dungeon, while taking triple the time of a normal dungeon, especially in pugs. The same thing would have happen to SAB if they didn’t removed it. It’s a great content that you do 2-3 times on different difficulty, then more times for the achievement, but there is limited amount of rewards so you don’t keep playing that content forever.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Super old discussion. The answer is what you see is the price of the expansion and they give a core game to new players as a marketing tools because new player don’t want to pay 10$ for the core game + the 50$ of the expansion.
That said. The expansion isn’t worth 50$ so far. The HoT maps are good, the story is better than the original, but not great and super short, they made WvW worst than it was and fractal is kind of half a mess, they didn’t had enough time so they promised stuff for later and just cancelled new Legendary weapons, 5 months after the expansion, there is stuff that are still not in-game like fractal leaderboard (it’s a joke at this point) or the Fractal legendary back item. They plan on fixing some of that stuff, but it won’t be for soon. In april there will be some fixed to HoT maps and fractal, but there will only be a beta for the WvW patch. They won’t fix or complete the expansion for at least a year.
That said, they kind of scewed over the players wihtout HoT, so the expansion is a must have. It’s not all dark. Like I said, the HoT maps are really good, some of the elite spec are nice to play and the raid are great and so far keep their schedule.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
(edited by Thaddeus.4891)
Look at how it works already. People grind the raid multiple times just to hit the shard cap. If they raised that cap, people would grind more.
Sorry, but that’s a complete lie. I respect you dusk, but that’s just non sense.
The first wing give you exactly 50 Shards if you complete it in 1 try with zero retry. It,s even higher with the map bonus rate. So if you are in the perfect group you can reach the cap in 2 hours by completing the 2 first wings. If you don’t have the perfect group and wipe once or twice per boss like most group before completing them, you will hit the cap in the middle of the 2nd wing. They have a HUGE HUGE HUGE space to increase the cap before you start to see grind for shards.
With map bonus rate, you could complete all 3 wings only once with the perfect group and reach between 150 and 180 shards. The total will be more around 200 and 220 for most pug group.
If they don’t want people to grind shards, they could simply make a 50 shards per wing cap when the 3rd wing is introduced. That’s the bare minimum of shard you get from simply doing the content with zero repetition.
I would prefer that they put a 150 shard cap for the whole raid because that way a group can play 2-3 times the same wing to pratice one week without being punishing in term of shard.
Even better I would put a limit of 200 shard per week for the whole raid so that most group don’t hit the cap just by playing and wiping 1-2 times per boss like most group does. Yes in that case, the hardcore group might farm a little by doing 1 wing twice per week, but is it really farming at that point??
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
There are 3 ways to make something “Legendary”.
1) Put it behind horrible RNG/grind
2) Make is super expensive
3) Put it behind hard contentWe’ve tried 1 and 2 multiple times, now it’s time for 3
I agree that #3 is the best option. But that’s not GW2. There is nothing wrong with #2 and it fit a lot more with GW2. From the beginning it’s a casual game with little bit a hard content. I’ll still have my legendary armor, but it just don’t fit with the game.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I prefer the 1st option. I too don’t really need any ascended weapons or gear. But not everybody is in that situation. Some people do the raid with exotic armor or want to gear up a alt. Also, the 2nd option doesn’t fix the problem that it take only 2 wings to max out shards. Our reward for completing the 3rd wing will be ridiculously low.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Yes, you’ll need to get better. Is that too much to ask for a legendary item?
It is when the game never asked that for any of the Legendary items before except this one. It’s worst when the only legendary armor in the game is lock behind one specific content. Again nothing like any of the legendary before.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
LS3 is coming out in July. It was announced in the AMA a couple weeks ago, but it could still be delayed.
I interpreted the comments to mean the earliest it could come out was July. Perhaps as late as September.
Might want to temper yourself a bit. For your own personal sanity.
For sure, but I don’t expect anything from Anet anymore, they disappointed me way too much in the last year. I’m happy with other games and some raiding for now.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
The problem isn’t that they come to the realization that Legendary weapons cost too much resources better serve elsewhere, or that it’s the smart decision.
The problem is that announced new legendary weapons 3 years ago, they announced it again with HoT saying that they will add them on a regular schedule after the introduction of HoT and they are still announcing them on their HoT website. The problem is that they marketed on them and then realized that it was a bad idea. I’m sorry, but in my job and with most job I’m suppose to know what I can and can’t do and don’t promise thing that I can’t do. It happen sometime and in those situation I know that I kittened up and anet Kittened up in that case whether or not it’s the best decision to make right now.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
LS3 is coming out in July. It was announced in the AMA a couple weeks ago, but it could still be delayed.
But I seriously doubt that you completed the game in 1 months. I mean of course no everybody is in all those grind, reach max gear, achievement, skin, alts and stuff, but 1 month? There is at the very least a couple of hundred of content in the game even if you only do it once. A couple of thousands if you repeat the content. I can’t see if you did that in 1 months unless you play like 60 hours per weeks.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I see. I thought they’d want ANet to reset reward caps, not the playable content. If they don’t touch rewards then I agree with you yes.
No usually player ask that because they want to continue to practice a boss even if they killed it during the week and they can’t do that unless they find someone that didn’t kill the boss during the week. In the case of a team that mean leaving someone aside or asking for someone to start the raid, but not to participate. Which is not ideal in both case.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I really think that this is all coming from bad decision 2 years ago when they started to work on the new expansion.
They didn’t plan for an expansion when the game was first launched and with all the demand for an expansion, they changed their mind. They decided to put everybody on the expansion and announced it too soon, when not enough work was done.
That put a content drought that make people mad to begin with and put too much pressure on the expansion. At the same time with a deadline set so early and pressure from the community for content in that drought, the team just didn’t had enough time to complete everything. We clearly saw it with the elite specialization. If there had enough time, all elite spec would have had at least 2 or 3 beta testing.
They obviously also put small team with way too big large on some project. Fractal and WvW are the biggest example there. These team were there only to make filler to make the expansion look bigger, but their work was minimum, lacked polished and was just bad in several aspect. Mostly because of lack of time and resources.
What should they have done in my opinion? Well exactly what they are doing now. (they learned of their mistakes at least). They should have put a LS3 between LS2 and the expansion so there was no content drought. The expansion should have been pushed back of 6 to 12 months. Why 6 to 12 months? Well even with everybody on the team, they were still missing at least 1 or 2 months just to finish the expansion (elite spec). With a portion of the resources put on LS3, those 1-2 months would be more like 4-6 months.
Now that don’t fix the problem of filler content like Fractal and WvW. With a delay of 6 to 12 months they would had time to put a proper fractal update with maybe 2-3 new fractals and a solid system not like the Triple Swamp we see today. They would have time to add the Fractal legendary back item from day one. Probably would had time to put the WvW big update in it too and maybe a complete new legendary weapon set up. Or at least abandon the idea before announcing it.
This would have been a expansion worth 50$.
And like I said, they seem to be doing that right now for the 2nd expansion. But of course, this is all speculation on my part.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I would argue that if you have the time to commit over a year to a legendary, then you can learn how to do raids.
Take time to accumulate what you need isn’t the same as having a skill gate. For exemple, if it take about 200 hours to craft a legendary item. An hardcore player could do that in like 5 weeks by playing 40 hours per week. But a casual playing only 5 hours per week will be able to get it in 40 weeks. It’s not a big commitment really, he just play a bit each week, but he will still have a long term goal and frankly that represent most players in gw2 going after a Legendary. Either because you only play 5 hours per week in the game or because you only put 5 hours per week toward your legendary, while the rest of your time you play something else in the game that doesn’t really help you toward your legendary. You can’t do that with raid.
Again. IMO all legendary should need a heavy commitment. Either by asking to be good in several portion of the game or to master one specific portion of the game. PvP legendary should ask you to be Dragon in Diamon League, WvW should ask you to have more than 1 thousand kills or at least a rank of several hundreds, it should ask you to go through raid, etc.
But Anet didn’t do that for any of the Legendary item so far. Either you put legendary behind heavy commitment or you don’t. Either you ask for a skill gate or you don’t. If all of your Legendary don’t ask that, except one, that just weird design. Especially since it’s the only version of Legendary armor in the game. I wouldn’t be against it if that was just the skin that was lock behind raid.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Yes, that’s confirmed. The description is just a bit misleading on this.
Oh thanks. Than my point is reinforced. No legendary in the game have any skill gate to it except the Legendary Armor. A casual can slowly grind at his pace any of the legendary weapons or legendary back item, but can’t do the same with Legendary Armor.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Anybody can do most of it, it’s just the last collection that need you to reach diamond at least once.
Actually you don’t need to do that in one season. Instead of one diamond, you can do sapphire two times. Or emerald four times.
Are you sure? The achievement read ‘’Cross 4 league division thresholds during a PvP season.’’ You can do that achievement in more than 1 season? If so, then it’s even less limiting.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Ad Infinitum, The Ascension …. and various other unique rewards beg to differ.
There is 2 main differences.
1) There is different legendary back items from different sources. The specific skin are unique to a specific game mode, which is fine, but if you don’t PvP, you can still get an Legendary Back item from Fractal and we know that more will come over time to add more diversity. Ideally, all game mode will have their own Legendary Back Item.
Legendary don’t have that and won’t have that for a long long long time. If you don’t do raids, either because you don’t have the skill, you don’t have the organization, you don’t the time or you just don’t like them, well you just can’t have a legendary armor, even if you are an hardcore PvPers, or able to farm thousands of gold.
2) Legendary weapons need times, but there is not a hard skill cap on it. A casual can get one of them even if it take them 1 year of play to accumulate all the materials. The Ascension is pretty much in the same situation. Anyone can do it with enough time. Almost the same thing for Ad Infinitum. Anybody can do most of it, it’s just the last collection that need you to reach diamond at least once. Which is not that hard if you focus on that in 1 particular season. It’s a little bit more limiting than the other legendary in term of skill, but not by much.
Legendary armor on the other hand is limiting. We can’t deny that a good portion of the community just can’t get pass VG or Gorseval. They tried, and failed. This doesn’t happen with the other legendary. Which is fine if you ask me. In my ideal game, all legendary would be like that. But that’s not how gw2 worked up to this point, so why change that all of the sudden?
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
So yes, you can go in there … but you can’t expect other people to take you with them when they most likely will have to carry you.
Exactly that. People are as fee to bring you with them or not as you are free to play fractal as a low level or on a level 80. The liberty go both way.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I disagree with that video tbh. Well not all points.
Yes they have the right to change their mind. It’s all about trust between the community and Anet. The fact is the expansion wasn’t finish when they shipped it and we trusted them that they would be finishing it in a reasonable delay, which they won’t be able to do anyway.
What will player will do next expansion? Will as many peope pre-order after that? Will as many people will buy the expansion during the first few weeks? Will as many people will pre-order a big package at 75 or 100$.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Because five months in game development is forever. lol
Because the expansion was suppose to improve the current content, not cripple half of it because waiting 6 to 12 months to just fix it.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
But a thread that says the expansion is falling apart, particularly a few weeks before a big patch is coming out to answer some of the complaints is at least a bit premature.
premature?? It’s been 5 months. And what big patch is coming out to answer some of the complaints???
What will there be in that patch that will answer some of our complain?
- WvW patch? The beta of that will maybe be up after that patch, not with that patch. We are still months aways from that complaints being answered.
- LS3? Nope. That will be in july.
- The last 2 legendary weapons? The way they talked, they are not yet finished. My bet is that they will be in the game in July
- Fractal leaderboard? Suspended
- New Fractals. Nope, they said they are not ready.
- Reworking Fractal instability? They say, they are on an early stage so no.
- Reworking agony? No, early stage only.
So what will be this April Update? Profession balance, some change to HoT Maps, but so far we only know that they will add a HoT daily and make adventure more accessible. Maybe some change to fractal, but they will be minor, maybe a 4th daily and more ascended drop? Maybe we will have the legendary back item finally.
April Update will probably bring a lot of small improve, but most problem from HoT will still be there.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
- Completely destruction of WvW by releasing the new maps and adding PvE contents to WvW
I am genuinely beginning to believe WvW players have no idea what “PVE” even means, and just use it to mean “thing I don’t like”.
- Fractal is at its worst state ( Swamp of the Mist)
Unless you’re one of the people who gets mad that other players are Doing Fractals Wrong, fractals are the best and most rewarding they’ve ever been (not that this says very much). It’s really, really nice to only have to do Cliffside occasionally instead of 90% of the time like I used to.
1) The maps are too big, it’s just too hard for people to find and fight each other so the only thing you end up doing is fighting npc. That’s what he mean that just too much PvE. The only thing you do in those map is PvE. Now the problem in my opinion is more about the size and complexity of movement of those maps that pushed players out of them, making them PvE maps. The PvE side is a sideffect, not really the cause.
2) Now you gonna have to defend your position. You complain that you used to do cliffside 90%. I guess that mean that you used to play Swap, something, cliffside on most occasion right? And now it’s Swamp, Swamp, Swamp. What is the improvement?
The thing is, the older fractal had their issues and instead of fixing those issues, they created other problem.
- The gold reward is better, yup they got it right. They also have about the same ascended reward in level 51+ than it used to be at level 50. But we used to be able to get ascended reward in level 40, 30 and 20 in decent droprate. Which we don’t have anymore in level under 51.
- We used to have about 20 different instability. Some were good, some were bad. We now have less than 10 instability and they kept the worst one. The instability that you can’t counter, that are random or remove some mechanics out of the game.
- There is no reason to do anything else than triple swamp and there is no reason to do higher level than 80 outside of achievements.
- They added difficulty by increasing the defense of mobs, while keeping their damage stable or nerfing it. Making fight longer, not more challenging.
We can argue all day if pre-hot were better than post-hot fractal. For me, pre-hot were way better, for you they are better. The fact is, they didn’t improve them, they can modify them. The just changed the way they worked and it’s better for some people and worst for other (and so far it seem that more people prefer pre-hot and post hot, but I could be wrong).
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
(edited by Thaddeus.4891)
And your propositions about easy raid mechanisms seem realistic, but since you’re talking about keeping wipe mechanisms, some people won’t agree with you because, you know, it’s too stressfull to wipe…
To be honest I don’t really mind. This content isn’t targeting me, since I’ll continue to do normal raid anyway. So if more people want a no difficulty raid that you can’t wipe at all and you can ignore the mechanics or remove the mechanics all together, then fine. It’s will take more time to create those (changing a timer or the damage is faster than to remove a mechanics out of a fight). But if that’s the case, then I agree with people saying that there should be near zero reward. No legendary, no shards, no unique rewards, no ascended drop, just like 5-25% of the gold, some xp and some rare.
The problem is the shards. In my ideal reward distribution, Normal raid would have the exclusivity on Legendary armor (as long as other armor are in other mode) and unique skin rewards.
There’s not going to be a different legendary armor in other modes. Not when Anet’s suspending Legendary weapons. At this moment any ideas that are based on its existence are pointless.
You are right. I guess there was still some hope in me about gw2. In that case my opinion is simple. If the easy-mode keep most if not all mechanics from the current raid, just less punishing or less frequent then they could have legendary armor in them but it need to be longer to achieve. Maybe something like the legendary back item in fractal. You receive an item each time you kill a boss each week and you need to accumulate a certain quantity before advancing in the collection. Or they could just put this legendary armor elsewhere and not in easy mode. Like in PvP, WvW or Open World.
If the easy more is not wipable and super easy like dungeon, then they shouldn’t have Legendary as a reward, but they should still put them as a reward in PvP, WvW or Open World. (Ideally all 3 of them).
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
No it’s not. Near zero rewards are appropriate for near zero effort. Remember when some people are asking for an easy mode, in reality they are asking for free hand-outs. They are asking for the content to be balanced for non-min maxed Exotics with a couple of Rares, in total random compositions and builds. That’s even worse than zero effort, it’s a joke.
Want a real “easy mode”? Get some reduced rewards for it and all is fine.
Want to get them for completely free? Then you will get near zero rewards.It’s a really complicated issue which is becoming harder to “solve” when the ideas for what an easy mode would be, how it would work are completely different. One reward system is appropriate for easy mode A but a completely different one is appropriate for easy mode B.
I think the entire discussion was done completely backwards. Instead of discussing the potential rewards for an easy mode, we haven’t yet agreed upon, why not try to find a good “easy mode” that we can agree on, and then start discussing appropriate rewards for that specific easy mode.
We won’t get to figure out what is a good easy mode because nobody agree. Don’t get me wrong it’s a good discussion to have and it have been done before too, but nobody will agree on that either.
In my version, I would try to keep as much mechanics I could, but more easy to complete.
1) Remove all enrage timers
2) For VG. Remove the 4th Seeker, make them do only 75% of their normal damage. Instead of 5 blue teleport attack, there is only 4 of them. You only need 2 players in the green circle. The illuminated floor only does 75% of their normal damage.
2) For Gorseval. Spirits only buff Gorseval by 5% when he eat them instead of 10%. Gorseval have 75% of his normal hp. At first I wanted to add like 2 others updraft or maybe make all updraft be able to be used twice, but this started to be more work for the devs. Dropping his hp a bit is a cheaper ways to achieve the same thing. Make it easier to phase him.
3) Canons spawn each 60sec instead of each 30seconds. The Flamewall have a cooldown of 90sec instead of kitten , but still start each time Sabetha get back on the platform. Karde have now 75% of his normal hp. There is always only 1 timed bomb, not 2 at the end.
4) Slothazor. Tantrum does 33% of his normal damage. Volatile Poison spawn each 60sec instead of each 25sec. No evolve Slubling. Remove half of the condition on Wet dog.
5) Bandit Trio. I consider this fight to be an easy-mode by itself.
6) Matthias. I want to have more experience with this fight before pronouncing myself.
All of this can vary. The goal is to keep as much mechanics as possible (all mechanics if possible), but to make them a little bit less punishing or a bit less frequent, but they should still be raid wiper if you miss too much of them. That way, people will learn them in easy mode, not just ignore them and freak out when to try the normal raid. I also wanted to remove most dps check so that people in pugs with not good composition or people with none meta build could still complete it.
But I know that not everybody have the same opinion than me on that.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Shards is the easiest to deal with if Easy mode is done right. Just make it so easier difficulties require less phases to succeed, then give the same shards you would get as if you had failed at the next phase. For example: easy mode Vale Guardian contains just the first phase (before the first split), if you succeed you get the same amount of shards as if you failed at the split phase in normal mode. Problem solved.
It’s the same with achievements really. For achievements, if they require a specific phase, then if you do that specific phase you get the achievement (for example beating split phase within a time limit), there is no need to get them only in “normal mode”, since in this case it would be the exact same thing.
The boss kill achievements, and the legendary armor, are a lot trickier to deal with though. And so is the final boss chest RNG
You didn’t read my text right? Just like Sird said, if you give shards in easy-mode then people will
1) Have access to all the reward normal raid have.
2) Since the shards are capped there will be no incentive little incentive to do the normal raid.
The #2 can easily be fix. Just had a easy-mode cap of like 20 or 50 shard per week that is different from the 100 cap from the normal raid. That said, it still mean that easy-mode raider will have access to all unique skin reward, which I don’t think is a good idea. I think that the unique skins and minis should be exclusive to normal raid.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Here, help me help you what exactly do you have a problem with again given the solution above ?
Because the reward is non-existent meaning nobody will do it more than once to experiment the content. Just like almost nobody is doing the fractal level 1-10 or story mode dungeons.
See there is a spectrum of reward that easy-mode have. Obviously almost nobody want easy-mode to have the exact same reward as normal raid. At least nobody that is worst listening to.
But it’s equally dump to give near zero rewards.
There is a point in between those two extreme where you can satisfy both side. It need to be low enough reward that doing normal raid is more profitable. That if you have the skill and group, it’s worth practising the normal raid to get those reward. But at the same time, the reward for easy mode need to be high enough that they are worst doing every week.
Again, I repeated myself a lot on that. Just like pre-hot fractal. Everybody wanted to do the level 50 because it’s the best rewards. But some people could still have decent reward by doing level 20, 30 or 40. Either because they don’t have the gear, or the knowledge. And there was enough reward that people doing level 50 could want to do those low level after or help some friend in those lower level without feeling that they wasted their time.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
The problem is the shards. In my ideal reward distribution, Normal raid would have the exclusivity on Legendary armor (as long as other armor are in other mode) and unique skin rewards.
But if anet do that, they need to give zero shard in easy-mode else, people will be able to accumulate shard and buy those item in the vendor. But still, it would be important for easy-mode raider to be able to buy stuff with shard like Ascended armor and trinkets and we already have so much currency, do we really want another type of shard for easy mode?
The other option is to not give any shards in easy-mode so that people only get stuff there by RNG. But the RNG in raid currently is horrible. The normal raid reward isn’t that good right now. With the removal of the buff that double the gold, the fact that xp doesn’t matter for most players anymore, the fact that Ghostly Infusion are on a slow but steady drop in price (used to sell between 1000 and 600 gold and it’s now 300-400 gold). Add to that the fact that it only take 2 wings to max out shards and that the 100 shards limit seem to be raid wide, we won’t get any shards in the third wing.
They could add a weekly for killing all 9 bosses of the raid (when they add the 3rd wing). The reward from completing this weekly would be 1 item that you can choose from the list of reward that you can buy from shards. Of course, there would be limitation. For exemple, normal raid would only have items that cost 300 shards or less and easy mode could only get the stuff that is 200 shards or less.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
The point of this apples analogy is that if you give players two options to earn rewards- one slow and easy, one quick and hard- most of all players will never rise up to the challenge and tackle the hard mode. This is a trend that we can pretty universally plot across all MMOs.
Rewards are used to direct populations and provide incentives to participate in particular content and to encourage people to step out of their box, in multiple avenues. This includes going across game modes. This includes going up difficulty levels. But when you attach rewards behind a difficulty increase and then attach the same rewards behind an easy path, you’re undermining the previous point; the drive and incentive to push into higher difficulties is undermined by the lower difficulty. That’s why you need to not have identical rewards across different difficulties to engage the playerbase.
Look at Fractals. The rewards are the same across all the levels, only droprates are different. Yet still people do the highest tier fractals, even when they are more difficult than level 1-10 ones. Quantity does matter.
(don’t bring swamp up, here we have the problem with quantity being the same for different difficulty, which is not anything anyon argues here for)[/quote]
Completely agree here. Pre-HoT Fractal proved the concept work when you do it right and you can apply it to raid. I would still prefer to not have legendary armor in easy-mode raid as long as they add other legendary armor in other mode like PvP league, WvW, maybe Open World. If they don’t, then I have no problem with adding this legendary armor to easy mode. Just making it longer to do in that mode since it’s easier. For the unique skin reward of raid, I’m on the fence. Like in fractal, I would still want that some of the reward is unique to the higher difficulty mode.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
and the LFG purgatory is where they stay, if actually added this feature to the LFG they could instantly join your raid without any screen -just like dungeons. so no we don’t want this added
?? What?? Having a seperate LFG for raid and Open world doesn’t remove any screening, it just make the LFG more clear and usable without having to search through widely different LFG that have nothing in common.
Making the LFG compatible with Squad doesn’t remove the screening if you want. You will still be able to create a LFG for raid with a party to screen people if that’s what you want. Or you can simply screen people in the squad since the Commander can kick anybody, and don’t need a vote.
Anyway, they already announced that they will change the LFG in that direction.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Vayne you are right, but the Elite Spec are pretty close to pay to win if you ask me.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I understand the point being made by the analogy, its just that its wrong because
HoT changed NOTHING about how the old content worked, NOTHING.
Really? I mean REALLY
Fractal, Dungeon, Guild, WvW, ya nothing changed you are right lol
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
I’ve read quite a lot from this thread. There are bunch of ppl here that have a mindset “Raid’s are for me, go skritt urself if you can’t do them”. This is quite horrible to be honest. I don’t mind raids being hard, with exclusive loot and achievements. There are gamers that like hard content and they should be rewarded for their effort. What I don’t understand is why is there so much anger in them. Nobody wants to take this game mode from You. What a lot of “casuals” want is to experiance the STORY that is within this content.
Should I be on forums screaming at hardcore players to stop playing Core Game because it’s to easy for them and they should not be able to play the Personal Story because it has not Hard Mode"? Is that fair?
This game was “casual” from the start. It’s only natural it should build up from that.Let us at least play a “Story Mode”. Speaking for myself. I don’t need a Legendary Armor nor Achievements. What I want is to see the content, this new map, new NPC’s, their dialogues and what is the story behind it all. Story that connects to GW1.
So much hard work was put in all of this but there are plenty of ppl new and old, that play this game from beta, that can’t experiance it at all because they don’t or are unable to and can’t dedicate themselves to beat this content.
Look I’m all for an easy mode, but painting the ones that oppose it as if they only say : ’’Raid’s are for me, go skritt urself if you can’t do them’’ is dishonest. It only prove that you either don’t understand their reasons, you only read part of their post or only picked that one that are really saying what you say, which are in minority.
Most people that oppose it are against because they saw the exact same type of idea in other game and this screw up the raid there so they are anxious that anet (which have a huge record of behin the worst when it come to reward balance) will screw it up pretty good. Especially when you see company like Blizzard that screw it up, a company that most people view as bigger, with more experience and in general better at designing than Anet.
A couple of quick points on what you said.
1) You just want to see the story, but that’s not the point of most people that argue for an easy mode. You are one of the few that just want that. Some want to be able to do it in a group of 5, other in solo, other want to just have an easy raid but with still most mechanics, some want all the same reward, other want everything except Legendary armor, other want just Legendary armor.
2) There is no story in Raids. Well not true, there is a story, but it come in really really small dose. Better look at a video like those of Wooden Potatoes. I understood way more about the story with his video than doing the raid.
3) This game was was for everybody casual AND hardcore from that beginning. If you really want to push it, as a guild officer I see a lot more of hardcore players staying in the game, while most casual come and go.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
The way the post was phrased made it seem like a hypothetical problem, rather than a real one. I would also take someone in sinister. That said, it’s been 4 months since vipers came out, and the only barrier is gold.
The problem seem to be more about his runes than the gear swaping. But I don’t see which pre-hot runes would cost so much in a PvE condition build. Worst case scenario it’s 6 gold per runes for a total of 36 gold. That’s nothing if you are serious about raiding.
But again, we don’t have much info about his situation, but I don’t see much group kicking him out of raid because he have Sinister.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Again, it’s EIGHTEEN legendaries. GW2 had eighteen non-underwater legendaries for three years, and now same amount is going to be raid-exclusive? Is there words “World of Warcraft” appeared somewhere in game title?
Slow down there man. You switched your argument just there. You started by saying that skins and title exclusive to raid are ok, but not gear. So if they add other legendary skin outside of raid, then legendary skin exclusive to raid are ok. Do you agree with that or not?
You then swapped your argument to in 3 years we had 18 legendary skins and now 18 will be exclusive to raid. First of all we don’t know and I doubt that 3 Legendary armors will be equal in term of resources than 18 legendary weapons. They most probably will all be of the same theme with similar effect that they can use over most of the skins.
Again, it come back to will they put other legendary armor skin outside of raid or not. If the answer is yes and it’s not like 1 or 2 years after the final introduction of the Legendary armor of raid then I have no problem with a Legendary skin exclusive with raid. I actually love it. If on the side, they don’t plan on creating other legendary armor skins, then I agree with you that it shouldn’t be exclusive to raid. We should be able to get them in a similar manner than legendary weapons.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Well see, it’s a sinister set. Viper didn’t exist at the time, so it was the best for my condi damage build when I made it. Which sorta points out the problem with the “only having to do it once”, too, since what’s meta can and will change based on any new stat sets that get introduced, any balance patches that happen to buff or nerf whatever skill is doing the most or least damage at any given time, new elite specs, etc.
Somewhat OT but it would be a lot easier to gear appropriately for raids if we had a non cash shop option for getting our runes out of ascended stuff. I don’t have the gold to eat that cost every couple months and still work toward my other game goals.
Pugs really kick you for having Sinister gear instead of Viper?? WoW that’s a new level of stupid. But what profession are you using exactly, but it might be more about that then your gear. Just trying to help you out.
For example, if you say you are playing Reaper. It’s a popular profession in Wing 2, but not so much for wing 1. Engineer is popular in VG and a little at Slothazor and Gorsveval, but not really for Sabetha.
Each bosses vary by a lot, which is a good thing, but also mean that certain profession are better at some boss and less at other.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
Skins and titles are prestige event, not gear. Making 18 different legendary pieces locked behind raids is beyond stupid and contradicts whole GW2 ideology.
Depend. If the raid legendary armor is the only legendary armor available in the game then I agree. If by the time they launch the 3rd wing, they add other legendary armor with different skin in other game mode like PvP, Open World or WvW, then I disagree because then only this particular legendary armor skin is locked behind raids, not the legendary armor as a gear.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
as far as i know, A.net didn’t lie about the expansion… every single feature/content that i saw they announce made it into the game.
in the AngryJoe interview, they said loud and clear that “this is a feature focused expansion instead of a content focused one”, so everyone who bought HOT knew exactly what they were getting.
if you put it on your mind that there would be a thousand hours worth of content, a 50-hours story or 20 different maps, even though they never even hinted at anything like that, then you have nothing to complain about…
I wouldn’t say that I hate HoT, but here my complain.
1) Fractals were butchered. And even if the situation of dungeon were made pre-hot, they were made in preparation for HoT so they are linked together for pretty much everybody. In that sense HoT pretty much cripple all of the instanced content of the game, which was one of the main reason to play for a big portion of the community.
2) A lot of half done stuff were in the expansion. It’s been 5 months since HoT and we still can’t finish Legendary back items, still only have 3 new Legendary weapons (which anet announced would be in the game 3 years ago).
3) The new guild system and guild hall seem super interesting when they talked about it. The reality is that a big portion of the feature of guild were removed from the core game and put behind grind walls in HoT. Screwing up people without HoT and small guild. But it also remove all sense of community in guild by changing the main guild currency from influence to gold. No only they didn’t any new content for guild mission, they changed a working system to a broken system, which still have issues 5 months later. A system in which you could do 1 of each type of mission each week to a system were you can end up doing 3 Treks and no challenge or puzzle a particular week. Additional, they remove all sort of guild buffs and items (like banners) and put them behind the stupidly expansive new crafting profession. The end result is that the vast vast majority of guild don’t use banner anymore because nobody will pay 30-50 gold for an Heroes banner.
4) Elite Specialisation were suppose to be alternative ways to play. Not to bring one the biggest power creep of the history of the game. They are so powerful that they are part of pretty much all meta build in all game mode.
5) On the web page of HoT, WvW is one of the 8 main category of content that the expansion was suppose to work on. But not only did HoT did nothing to improve it, it replaced 3 perfectly functioning and loved map with 3 horrible maps that seem to prove that Anet are completely disconnected from their WvW community.
6) The PvP meta that the new Elite Spec brougth was one of the most horrible one since the start of this game. Some PvP tournament team simple quit over how horribly boring the new unkillable meta was. No fun in 3vs3 fight where nobody die for 3min. At least this was mostly fix with the first balance patch, but it was made after the first PvP season, which a lot of people view as a mistake.
7) GW2 always had constant content update. I remember at the beginning of the game, they launched the Karka invasion, halloween and christmas during the first 3 months of the game. Remember that those two holiday were brand new, not rehash old content at that time. We had 8 months without new content before HoT and in the 5 months since HoT we pretty much had no new content except a small reworking of the Shatterer, raids and PvP league, with no sign when we will see LS3, WvW update or any of those.
I don’t hate HoT, but I was a fan of the game since the beginning and I don’t feel the game is as good now as it was pre-hot. Too much of the content I used to have fun with Dungeon, Fractal and WvW are worst than they used to be. Right now only PvP and Raids are keeping me in game, but only a couple of hours per weeks.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD
ya i dunno what i was thinking
well i do kinda
figured the way GW2 was marketed to me raids would be a little i dunno more forgivingi guess if i wanted to get the best gear in a raid guild with a schedule and class guides
i woulda stayed in my old gamemaybe ill just do that
thanks for the info though guys, cheers
It’s not about how forgiving they are. People did the raid in full exotic, or with only 6 players so they are forgiving.
People used to ask for meta build in dungeon and they were forgiving as hell. The reason they ask for meta build is that they don’t know kitten about you. They don’t know if you are good, have experience, etc. The only thing they can kind of look is your build. So most people will be strict about that. Why would they take someone with a lesser build if there is 20 others players with meta build that could take your place?
Also, raid are relatively easy once you know the fight well and have a decent team, but take a lot of practice. Pugs don’t want to go through all the hard work of the first few weeks over and over again each time they want to pug, so of course they gonna be strict. If you don’t want strict requirement, either start your own LFG, try to find one of the few pug squad with none (usually training group that won’t kill the bosses) or find you a raiding guild that fit your need. The goal here is to find like-minded people.
Thaddeauz [xQCx]- QC GUILD