Guild Wars 2

Dante.1508:

I blame this whole thread on Anet bad mechanics, if Anet had made all classes and builds viable these threads wouldn’t exist.

So you’re saying you need specific classes to complete content? That some content is unavailable to some classes?

I don’t disagree that builds need to be brought up to scratch, but there’s a difference between ‘being optimal’ and ‘not viable at all’.

mizzlelol.6159:

TheDaiBish.9735:

What if I told you there are people outside of the EU and NA regions?

Like Australia for example.

You have your point. But i believe there must be a better solution. I just pick this topic up. I do hope there is a good way.

Short of giving every region a data center, I doubt it.

Even then, you can’t stop someone in, say, the UK from being on an NA server with their friends.

1. Why not just join a friendly guild who’d be willing to help out?

2. [Group Events] tend to be the ones that require large amounts of people for a reason. Can you imagine a single player being able to take The Shatterer down?

3. A solution to the underlying issue of underpopulated areas should be sought. Not sticking a band-aid by making the game into a single player game.

What if I told you there are people outside of the EU and NA regions?

Like Australia for example.

dcypher.2590:

stof.9341:

What? You want the dungeon to become much harder once there’s a healer in the group or something?

It’s kind of like making two games at once. Each dungeon has to be tuned for two different gameplays. It’s basically twice the work.

twice the work? essentially they do the same thing with fractals. I don’t think you understand much about scale of difficulty if you think it’s some crazy mad scientist idea. Plenty of games do it.

It’s not just a case of difficulty. You’d also need to rework mechanics to cater to that group composition.

ArchonWing.9480:

The final issue is of course, the game’s obsession with spike damage of which the dodge determines mitigation. I don’t know what to do with that.

Mechanics that can’t be brute-forced through dodge and spike damage.

Dodge

• Players get hexed and have to run to a corresponding combo field / to melee range / out of melee range / to another player who has a corresponding hex in order to clear it.
• Phases where terrain damages you if you dodge regularly, thus you need to use jump as a dodge mechanic

Spike Damage

Control

• Think the Lovers mechanic, but without the boulders.
• Grawl Shaman fractal, with the shield adjusted to be a countdown timer as opposed to charges (or maybe a mix of both?)
• A boss that continuously moves. For every x seconds they’re moving at normal speed, they build up a charge that increases the damage he does. This charge doesn’t get removed when he’s impaired. In addition, he’s only susceptible to one type of movement impairing effect at any one time (i.e., immune to immobilized and chilled, susceptible to cripple).

Support

• Certain combo fields prevent certain attacks (i.e. water prevents fire, dark prevents light ect)
• Mechanics that require Condition Removal, Damage Mitigation ect

Adding a bit of depth to spike damage

• Spike damage roles that require people to swap the role (think Cliffside hammer fractal with the hammer, but applied to two mechanics that require spike damage)
• Resistant to types of spike damage (alternates between reflective bubbles and stunning auras)

Eh, I dunno.

Araziel.7201:

If this isn’t a shout out begging for free stuff…I don’t know what is. Lmao!!

Cynicism, thy name is Araziel.

Was there any need for that?

Happy birthday, hope you had a good one

Yes and no.

Yes if it was good, well crafted content that never returns (although it isn’t a total waste if the devs learn from it to produce even higher quality permanent content in the future).

No if a) it was a total disaster that no-one would play again and they learn something from it or b) it makes a return every now and then.

Primernova.5791:

1. The roles don’t need to be dedicated but the roles do need to exist, just in a more fluid way, with specs and weapon swaps. A 1.2 second knockdown is not CC. A 3000+- heal over 7 seconds, for characters that have 15K+ health is not a heal. Having decent armor/toughness and vitality, but no threat/agro is not mob/boss control in PvE.

2. If we could just cast our heals on others and gave tanky classes some real threat, I think that would provide some real depth without breaking the current model too much and provide some really good development options.

1. A 2 second knockdown (which seems to be the standard time for KD) that interrupts a massive attack, or buys that little amount of time needed to get someone up is CC; you’ve controlled the mob in order to achieve a goal. And support (since that is the actual term) doesn’t just mean healing. If you view Regen as a damage mitigation boon, then you are supporting an ally. As above with the CC, just because you can’t shout and keep the attention of a mob indefinitely, doesn’t mean you can’t control them and their damage (Weakness) and movement (Cripple, Chilled, Immobilize).

2. If you gave tanky classes tools for aggro management, and allowed heals to be cast on them, they’d have to balance content not just around the current set-up, but also around the setup of having a Tanky class with the aggro management that can have 5 heals coming in on a cycle, potentially one after another depending on cooldown.

All in all, as I’ve said through this thread, I don’t think roles should be pre-established; I think roles should be dictated in the encounter mechanics.

AntiGw.9367:

Player Character.9467:

There is a trinity, dps-cc-support. You just don’t have a dps CLASS and a cc CLASS and a support CLASS. Just like anybody can build to tank (which is typically a cc/support build with heavy toughness/vitality).

That’s not a trinity.

Tri = three
Control / Damage / Support = Three aspects of combat.

It’s more of a soft, flexible trinity rather that the hard trinity of ‘If you’re this role, you have to stay this role’.

As for the original suggestion; no. Please no.

You’d have to design encounters to include this mechanic, thus making it a required role.

Bolthar.7192:

Esplen.3940:

It was in a video interview, if I recall correctly, [specifically a part] where Colin was talking about the future of how expansions and whatnot would be implemented. Colin was talking about how he wasn’t sure if they were going to release new content in batches like Living Story or just make a box expansion with new skills. He also wasn’t sure exactly how new skills were going to come out (same idea, box expansion or over time).

The closest quote I got was:

If we’re regularly adding a skill to each profession and a trait to each profession, as well as a weapon they can’t currently use and making those available for those professions or even new weapons entirely, all of those add into the mix of creating diverse gameplay while adding a lot of options to players. As for a new skill, I’m not going to throw any out yet as the skill team would kill me! But they will share stuff when they’re close to getting that content out there.

There was another video/interview/something where Colin said it’s more likely to expect to see the current weapons being handed across professions than getting new weapons entirely, at least in the near future.

Thanks for sharing that with me. I remember seeing that now, too. But I still don’t think that specifically refers to weapon skills. Just skills in general (utility).

as well as a weapon they can’t currently use and making those available for those professions or even new weapons entirely

If you make more weapons available to professions, that means more weapon skills.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/

Currently:

• Gold to Gems is 3g 14s 36c
• Gems to Gold is 2g 27s 12c

milo.6942:

i wanted to butt in and say those examples you’ve give are the sorts of things I’d like to see more of in this game. but they are not well supported by the game currently. reviving allies is a given and barely worth mentioning btw. something to think about however, is that if these aspects were made more viable, then would a trinity (or more plainly in English: an allocation of roles, whatever those roles may be) form? “you take some cc and be a dedicated resser/supporter/ccer” or whatever

As it is, the actual core combat system allows for someone to build heavily for Support (ressing, booning ect), Damage (direct, condition), Control (CC, slows, damage mitigation), or a hybrid of these. As such, this type of Trinity is already in the game.

However, encounter mechanics don’t require it (in fact, it’s less efficient in the majority of cases). If encounter mechanics did require this sort of thing, however, then yes, we’d have the whole required roles thing.

Galtrix.7369:

Umm, yeah, you can’t have a “soft trinity”. You either have the trinity, or you don’t. Ever tried to support your teammates with a heal in GW2? It doesn’t work well enough to be worth your while. They went straight for all DPS, and there is no doubt about it.

And I mean that GW2 lacks collaboration because there is no trinity. Sure, we can work together to kill the enemy by creating different strategies, but our characters don’t support each other. All we’re doing is finding a more efficient strategy to defeat the enemy together. I hope that makes sense.

By ‘soft trinity’ I mean roles that change in the flow of combat. That is, you don’t just stay as one role, and roles aren’t strict (Control and Support can easily blend into one on occasions, depending on the situation). A perfect example of this is going from damaging the enemy to reviving an ally that has been downed.

So you’re saying without hard, defined roles, there isn’t any way to have a system where you can support your allies? Because I can think of a number of different scenarios where you can support your allies without having the Trinity:

• CC’ing an enemy that is heading towards an ally in trouble (downed, low on health, heal on CD)
• Giving damage reduction boons (Protection, Regen, Vigor)
• Clearing conditions
• Reviving allies
• Taking my CoF example, swapping with an ally when stacks get too high.

How are these sorts of things not supporting your allies?

Galtrix.7369:

GW2 really lacks team collaboration in anything.

Have you seen the 4 vs 30 in WvW video? That was some good teamwork.

Galtrix.7369:

Anet basically said, “Screw the trinity”, and went straight for all dps.

Wrong.

Their intention was to have a soft trinity of control, support and damage.

However, it just doesn’t come out in a lot of situations, down to:

• Being able to ignore the majority of encounter mechanics
• Defiant dissuades Control builds (although I did have a Warrior build that was good at stacking Immobilize)

If you actually analyze some of the encounter mechanics, some of them would actually fit well with the whole ‘switching roles through the flow of combat’ aim they have:

Take the Lovers, with the main mechanic of keeping them separated. Completely negated by being able to throw boulders.

Now, remove the boulders, and you have an encounter where you need to switch between damage and control.

Not to mention if we expand the meaning of ‘role’ to mean ‘purpose during the fight’ outside of the control / damage / support triage, that opens a whole lot more to us.

Take CoF Effigy with the crystals. Able to brute-force it with Poison and high damage.

Now, if you alter it so:

• Having X amount of crystals causes the boss to become Invulnerable and put out increased damage, and;
• Destroying a crystal gives you a stacking debuff that ticks a % of your health to the point where you’ll die if you just keep breaking crystals without it wearing off.

Although it’s just Damage (with the potential for Support if the crystal breaker messes up), you’ve got the extra layer of teamwork in the form of the roles ‘crystal breaker’, ‘boss damage’ and ‘SHTF guy’, with these roles switching with the flow of combat.

These probably aren’t the best examples of how it could be done right, mind you.

Galtrix.7369:

No, I wasn’t implying anything. I was actually thinking about how anything I create would probably turn out crappy and unwanted, so I threw in that “a new game that people want to play”. And I missed a “hopefully” in there. It was supposed to be “a new game that people hopefully want to play”.

And as to your other point: Debatable. I’m sure programmers have to collaborate with other people that know how to balance the classes and then program it into the game themselves. (I think). I don’t really know how Anet does that anyway.

Ahh, it did sound like you were implying that.

From recollection, before launch I’m pretty sure they said they had tools that allowed them to make quick changes to skills and such. That to me seems it’s more likely to be a program created by the programmers to create and edit skills, as opposed to skills being hard-coded.

Galtrix.7369:

I’d take the good aspects from other mmorpg’s like items, materials, crafting, dungeons, armor, and weapons and put those into the game.

I’m struggling to see how straight-up copying is a good idea, as opposed to improving what we have now.

Galtrix.7369:

Then I’d hire some programmers that know what they’re doing to balance the classes, and voila, a new game that people want to play.

Implying people don’t want to play now?

Also, I’m pretty sure programmers aren’t the ones who balance the classes.

Galtrix.7369:

Buy Anet and make Guild Wars 2 just like World of Warcraft

They see him trollin’, they hatin’…

If anything, that picture is quite well done.

Yeah, the Mad King Memories quest was awesome.

I think there is room for more of these, providing they are quests, and not tasks that are just named ‘quests’. I also don’t think that quests should have any indicator that you’re on a quest.

As for the whole events and storytelling thing, eh.

I can see some difficulties in this, such as balancing immersion with providing the main source of XP, as well as workload into planning and crafting the event.

However, if you also take into account not just speech and text, but also the mechanics of the event, how the event progresses ect, you could use these parts of the event to also tell the story.

I’d say the pre-event for Dwayna temple is a good example of this.

danbuter.2314:

If the guy making content can’t fix bugs, he’s in the wrong profession.

Not necessarily.

Sometimes, the people who do programming create tools for content developers to use. If something goes wrong with the content, chances are that it’s a bug in the code which was introduced by the tool.

The people who create the content aren’t the ones who fix the bugs. They might not even have the knowledge to since being a content creator doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a programmer.

Surbrus.6942:

TheDaiBish.9735:

As for Ascended, as long as that’s the last tier, it’s more of a step, since a treadmill is continuous until you get off.

Ascended is a massive treadmill. Most people will never be able gear up your alts to max gear, especially if you have multiple builds you wish to play.

Ascended gear was only put in to appease these players who cannot fathom a video game without a useless gear treadmill. There are plenty of games that mask little content behind massive grinds and gear treadmills, those people should just go play those games.

Truth be told, I didn’t think of alts.

And yes, I agree on that point. There are far more inventive ways of having progression than simply numbers going higher.

Gehenna.3625:

It’s just slower or do you really think that when they raise the level cap (which is coming according to Anet last time I checked) your current gear will automatically be made level 90 or whatever? Also level cap raises are part of treadmills. Anet is going much slower so you can walk it at your leasure, but ascended gear is step 1 and the level cap raise is likely to be the next one and as you say ascended may not be the last tier. You think that once they’ve brought out armour with ascended stats and most people have it, it will all end there? I have a doubt…..yeh I think it’s just very slow but still a treadmill. And that’s not a bad thing necessarily, so don’t think I am against it per definition.

When the game came out I was against it because it was sold to me as a game without gear progression. Now that I know they never actually said it, well, then that’s what it is. I also play MMOs that do have gear progression and that’s fine as long as it doesn’t go too fast.

They haven’t given a definite answer on raising the level cap; they just haven’t ruled it out (as with you, this is from what I currently know from what they mentioned before launch). Again, this may have changed after the whole Ascended hubbub.

If Ascended truly is the final tier and they don’t raise the level cap, then at 80 it no longer becomes a treadmill (leveling, on the other hand, will always have a treadmill of gear), merely a step.

Again, this is all speculation. We can do the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, but until someone comes out and confirms something, we won’t know.

Galtrix.7369:

Obviously you haven’t played an Mmorpg besides Guild Wars 2, because there are slots, runestones, gems, any many other things that contribute to the depth of the armor. Saying, “the numbers get bigger” is too simplistic, but that’s what you have with GW2. Simplicity. The only thing you get with GW2 is “more numbers”. Sure, adding new skills adds depth, but Anet royally screwed that up in Guild Wars 1 because all classes were unbalanced to the point of extinction.

I played all 3 roles (as well as their sub roles) in WoW from TBC to the beginning of Cata. I’ve also played a Healer / DPS in TSW, and played an Elementalist (which swapped between being a Nuke and Control) and a Dervish in GW (semantics aside whether GW is an MMO or not). Whenever I’ve built my character, I’ve always done the min-maxing myself, and made my own builds.

They don’t add ‘depth’ simply because, depending on your class, there isn’t much in terms of viable choices. If there were 10 gems, there’d only be one or two that you can use in order to maximise your role, and that wasn’t some balance issue like it is in GW2. That was how the game was made. That isn’t depth.

As for GW, remember, they’d introduce stupid amounts of skills (something along the lines of 100’s), not to mention there was a dual-profession feature which didn’t help matters. It’d be much easier to balance in GW2, since all they have to do is add, say, 3 traits to each trait line, 1 heal, 3 utilities and an elite and, providing a) these skills are just as viable as other skills, b) aren’t more powerful and c) Anet work on encounter mechanics (which is a whole different discussion), I can’t see that upsetting the balance in any major, game-breaking way.

Gehenna.3625:

It actually does have a gear treadmill but it’s very shallow…..Anet’s good at shallow

Rolls eyes at dig

It has a treadmill when you level.

When you get to 80, the treadmill isn’t there (unless you’re in Greens, in which you can skip rares anyway).

As for Ascended, as long as that’s the last tier, it’s more of a step, since a treadmill is continuous until you get off.

Galtrix.7369:

Guild Wars 2 lacks this feeling of being heroic and becoming more powerful over a period of time.

Go to Orr at level 10, and come back and say that.

Galtrix.7369:

You don’t become more powerful over a period of time in GW2 once you hit 80. I mean, you can tweak your build, but that will only make you slightly better. Once you hit that point, you begin to wonder what the point of even playing was, and what the point of playing further is. Anet’s idea of purely cosmetic armor was nice, but it lacks depth and it doesn’t feel like you’re gaining more power, because you’re not.

Wait…you’re shocked that a game that advertised as having no continuous gear treadmill for endgame doesn’t have a continuous gear treadmill at endgame?

Getting higher and higher stats isn’t ‘deep’. It simply makes the numbers that pop up get bigger.

Now, adding things like new skills and such. That adds depth. Why? Because the player has more choices in order to alter and refine their build. Providing these choices are viable, more skills on the same power level as all other skills will add a whole lot more depth than numbers simply getting bigger.

Disclaimer: While I understand what procedural generation is, I don’t know the finer nuances of it, such as actually programming it

The suggestion is in the title: Create maps that are procedurally generated. This can be used for, but not limited to:

• WvW Borderlands
• Dungeons

What’s Procedural Generation?

Procedural Generation is the generating of content through an algorithm, rather than hand-crafting zones. This process creates content that is somewhat random (funnily enough, fractals (not the dungeon) are created through procedural generation).

What can this offer?

• Engagement – I feel two of the reasons that people aren’t as engaged with content nowadays is because a) walkthroughs remove the need to discover and think for yourself, and b) repeating the same content over and over causes the sense of discovery to wane. Procedurally-generated maps for WvW would bring an extra element in which players would have to discover forts and such (maybe even scrapping already constructed forts, and giving the players tools to create forts at places of power on the map), while procedurally-generated dungeons world help prevent the tedium of running the same dungeon over and over (engaging encounters being the same).

• Meaningful Interaction with the Environment – That is, smashing a fireball into a tree with set it alight, or cannons firing will actually indent the land. Because a different map is generated each time they are used, it doesn’t really matter if that map gets wrecked. Going back to a thought above, you could use this feature as a tool for player-created forts and such (taking stone from a cliff to create blocks to create a fort).

• Strategic Approach to Content – Tying in with the engagement point, if you have an unfamiliar landscape every time, you need to plan ahead. Scouts will need to find the most strategic points to make their forts, as well as discovering these places of power, as well as finding the best place to attack from.

What are the downsides?

• Potential for bugs / unfriendly User Experience – Since it is randomly generated, it’s entirely possible that the map could have areas inaccessible by some races (Norns really should cut down on the meat and ale…). However, this could potentially be turned into a positive; imagine, a crack team of Asuran’s finding a little tunnel which comes out on a cliff where they can safely enter an enemy’s keep. As for bugs, this is more in terms of dungeons, since the procedural generation would also have to apply things like pathing and mob creation and placement.

All in all, I feel this would lend itself very well to WvW in terms of adding depth to it, and potentially to dungeons to prevent them from becoming too repetitive.

A random thought: Do you think this could be applied to SPvP?

tolunart.2095:

There may be a market for a sandbox MMORPG where players can take on various non-combat roles like running a shop or being mayor of a town, and therefore support other kinds of gaming beyond “kill monsters and gather treasure, level up and kill bigger monsters.” But that kind of game is going to have a much, much smaller potential audience than the games chasing a piece of the WoW pie, and probably require an even bigger investment from the company that creates it, making the development of such a game unlikely.

Hmm, that sounds pretty cool actually.

In terms of audience though, I’d have said, if done right and each particular playstile given care when creating the content for them, it’d appeal to a wider audience, since you’re covering more playstyles.

Insignya.8625:

Simple- you go back to the drawing board and introduce support into the game. Simply scrapping the trinity without a new system in place is like taking the wheels off the AI in a racer and saying “we fixed rubberbanding”.

Guild Wars 2’s combat is shallow because you don’t make team-oriented strategy. Fine, you have “builds”, but you’re not building towards the success of your team – you just want to make sure that you don’t die and that you deal damage.

It ain’t gonna work by just nerfing numbers, the problem is deep. And for the people who are “using all their abilities tactically” – I press 3 buttons and I achieve the same result.

I don’t even think it’s the core mechanics when it comes to groups.

I’d say it’s more down to encounter mechanics don’t require the support and control.

Look at the Lover’s fight. If they didn’t have the boulders, the ‘closeness’ mechanic was tweaked a little, and you were required to keep them away from each other, that’d be a good example on how GW2 system can promote teamwork, since you got the roles of:

• Keeping them away from each other
• Clearing conditions and mitigating damage if you mess up
• Taking one down asap

I mean, why not have the encounter mechanics generate roles, instead of building encounter mechanics around predefined roles?

Insignya.8625:

No trinity doesn’t work in this game because there’s no support, everything is DPS which means that the higher the damage of a class, the more important that class is to PvE. Which, in turn, makes other classes obsolete.

No trinity doesn’t work in sPvP because there’s no synergy between classes. No synergy = no teamwork = no competitive play.

At the same time, the Trinity (1 Tank, 1 Healer, 3 DPS) has its flaws as well:

1) It lacks depth: Players aren’t given a choice how to tackle the content. You HAVE to take a Tank, Healer and 3 DPS. No choice = no depth. Not only that, when it comes to encounter mechanics, you’re restricted in what mechanics you can implement that require the Trinity. Tanks tend to be limited to “Face the boss away” or, if there are two tanks “Have a mechanic that requires tanks to swap at X stacks” or “Tank keeps the boss, other Tank gets the Adds”. DPS tends to be Target Priority and Healer heals. Mechanics such as Sindragosa’s trapping people in crystals isn’t limited to the Trinity (and could easily be implemented into GW2).

2) It isn’t truly teamwork: Subjective, but I don’t view having hard roles as true teamwork. If the Tank goes down, that’s it. There’s no ability for a DPS to stall for a bit while some players while some other players get the Tank back up (short of an in-battle res).

3) It’s still all essentially a DPS race: Tank needs to get as much Aggro as possible, Healers need to out-heal the damage being received (with the occasional condition removal), DPS…speaks for itself. They’re all just DPS races with different names.

Note: These comments are strictly about the Trinity; not encounter mechanics, where most of the depth and execution comes from

That lack of synergy is also present in the majority of MMO’s. Unless you craft abilities that combine for extra damage / additional effects, and spread them across different classes, or you give classes unique conditions, with other classes that can make use of them conditions, you aren’t going to get true synergy. The closest we have in GW2 is the Combo system.

Finally, there is nothing wrong with the soft-role system GW2 has. It’s not that the combat system lacks depth (although Defiant is flawed; I personally think it should a) be a timer, not a stack or b) be a countdown, where id doesn’t trigger if you interrupt an attack).

It’s that individual encounter mechanics generally don’t require players to make use of the depth.

For example, The Lovers in AC Story.

If them boulders weren’t there, players would need to have soft roles:

• To keep them apart
• To clear conditions and mitigate damage
• To wipe out adds

Players can look at the tools they have in order to do this, and choose how to do it. Maybe that Guardian will take a Hammer and trap him, or that Thief will use Scorpion Wire to pull him even further away, while that Necro puts down the convert Conditions to Boons AoE (can’t think of the name) to deal with all the conditions.

TL:DR – The Trinity isn’t what we need. Encounter mechanics that bring out what is already in place is.

http://amd-icbm.com/icbm/anet-blog-mmo-manifesto-reactions/

Partial interview

TL:DR – When they were talking about bosses not returning 10 mins later, they were referring to Personal Story bosses.

Can you blame him?n That stone is an invite.

Here he comes, wants to invite you in for a beer, and BAM!

Fireball to the face.

Pretty sure you’d be angry too.

There’s quite a few EC videos that could apply to this topic as a whole (Skinner Box, Achievements, Energy Systems [and their use to get people in a routine], Power Creep [if we’re talking about higher stats as a reward]).

In general though, I agree. Game-play mechanics should be the priority, with rewards an icing on the cake. Get people to play through the content for the content.

What I feel that game devs in general should do during beta’s is completely remove rewards (until such a time that rewards need to be introduced for testing). Why? Because the player is then required to play through the content, for the content. And yes, this can be easily done with rewards in place, but removing the rewards gets the player to seriously ask at the end ‘Was this a waste of my time?’ or ‘Did I find that thrilling / engaging?’ rather than ‘It was Ok, the rewards made up for it.’

Now, of course, this is all subjective, meaning 9 / 10 times, what is engaging to one, won’t be engaging to another (just look at all of the ‘OMG you’re making me PvP for PvE achievements?!’ threads, and visa versa).

For example, I mostly play PvE. I do so, not for rewards or achievement points, but for playing the content. I enjoyed searching for them Sky Crystals, for example. Why? Because I was required to look for them and think how to reach them. I was so invested in these that they didn’t feel like a grind. I’ve got all of my icons turned off on my map. Why? Because, for me, it gets rid of the checklist mentality when it comes to world completion.

However, someone who goes and uses a walkthrough guide, who is simply doing it for the reward, doesn’t have that level of engagement, they view it as a chore, thus come the complaints of ‘grind’.

I play WvW for WvW, not for some extrinsic reward (and I can imagine that most WvWer’s do), but for the fun of it. I don’t go around in zergs. I hang with around with a few of my mates, and we go taking supply camps, waylaying Dolyaks and scouting large forces. Sure, we don’t get much in the way of rewards, but we enjoy it.

I’ve probably gone right off-topic here, so I’ll just sum it up as: Rewards shouldn’t be a driving force to do content; engaging content should, with rewards as something to show you’ve done the content.

I should also add that it’s good that ANet recognises that a) there’s a disparity in content quality, b) there’s room for improvement and c) there’s irregularities when it comes to reward schedules.

Nuka Cola.8520:

cough FoW

that would be great and hopefully everything needed to build that legendary armor is a drop/reward from this dungeon. I don’t want to get a token needed to craft a legendary armor and then spend 800g for a precursor
[/quote]

Aren’t they changing the way you can get a precursor though?

Pretty sure we’ll be able to craft them soon.

Edit: Here we go.

We aren’t quite ready to go into all the details here, but what I can say is you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary. On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013. Building your precursor will require a large amount of the new crafting material rewards listed above, 500 in crafting, and likely a combination of other items earned for completing more specific content in the game.

If they did this for current precursors, and not for new ones, that’d be pretty dull of them.

SoLeciTO.3490:

Is like legendary items, they should at least have the stats of an asended item, it is toooo hard to make them just for a skin.

Legendary weapons will have Ascended stats when Ascended weapons get released. Not to mention you’ll be able to change the stat combinations (Berserker, Knight ect) outside of combat.

PvE just isn’t built for it, since it was built with co-operation in mind, not competition. Events that scale the more people there are; personal resource nodes; shared kill xp and loot. All these were put in place to prevent griefing. Adding WPvP in PvE would just undo all of that.

As for dedicating a server to it, they’d have to see how many people were interested in doing that, since servers cost money to run.

Is it that the actual combat system lacks depth, or the content doesn’t require you to utilise that depth?

I’d actually go with the problem mostly being associated with the latter.

However, the former could use improvements (swappable weapon skills [maybe just from a pool of 2 – 3 for each slot, with them skills tied to that slot to facilitate balancing], add more exciting traits [Tracking – pets aren’t fooled by stealth when their ability is on cooldown], removing the boring traits, reducing overall effectiveness of skills, and adding them to skill usage to make spamming unwise (this skill has reduced cool-down / more damage / more range / also does y if x requirement is met).

a) spend real money

b) Convert gold to gems

c) reduce this amount by doing Achievements to get a few gems and gold to help along the way (I think at 5k points, you’ll have around 25 – 30G and 400 gems.)

JustTrogdor.7892:

You can delete your characters and transfer for free. Just don’t forget to put everything in the bank first.

Adding to this, wait for the next patch. That way you don’t lose any of the Karma you got on your characters.

zallesz.1650:

exactly… back then you killed a god, made a new one from a mortal, the world was in danger and you saved it

now you just…linger… killing the troll/oak/wasp/boar, stopping flame legion in cof for the thousanth time…not heroic…

even (oh lord help me) WoW had an amazing heroic feeling, Illidan, Lich king, deathwing… we faced enemies and not just the festivals…
but yeah, everyone knows this

You may do them things, but I don’t.

As for the whole running things for the thousandth time thing, people also did was repeat the missions to fill out books, do farming runs for rep ect ect. Even in WoW, it’s stopping x threat in x dungeon / raid multiple times.

And in this game, we’ve also done heroic things; F+F, Southsun, Aetherblades, Personal Story (parts of it, anyway).

Now, I don’t necessarily disagree with the whole heroism thing.

• The final PS fight was, well, bad (Not to mention the pacing for half of the PS is just tooo rushed, and the lack of interaction between the world and the PS is pretty much non-existent). I could even forgive Traherne. Making the player The One in an MMO is, well, stupid. However, that’s kind of what they did; they made the player The One as a Second in Command.
• The process for Legendary weapons, weapons traditionally in fantasy wielded by heroes of great renown (King Arthur, Beowulf, Charlemagne, Thor) is poorly implemented IMO.
• The big events have no lasting effect on the area that they’re in, not to mention don’t require any cohesive effort.

IMO, what they need to work on is making the player feel like a driving force alongside other players. Not simply another pawn for an NPC to get their glory.

It’s just the way you phrased it made it seem like this is all people have available to them, while them two other games were epic moment to moment without any repetitiveness. After doing them things, it was repetitiveness to get x rep, this weapon skin ect.

Macros.6120:

Gasp! It’s so obvious now! I didn’t recognize her without her Ringwraith cosplay…

#KielForKemmler’sHeir

Dresden fans unite!

I’m probably wayyyyyy off base, but it was a fun thought :P

I was re-reading one of my favourite series of books the other night, which struck a thought.

We’ve had confirmation that all of these events (Canach, Aetherblades ect), while seemingly unrelated, do actually tie up together.

What’s this to do with them books I mentioned?

Well, the first few books are to do with a series of ‘unrelated’ events (small time warlocks, FBI agents with belts that turn them into Werewolves, ect), which later turns out that they’re the work of a larger organisation in the background. One of these events made a position on the council for one of the members of this shadowy organisation.

So, I ask this:

• Is Ellen Kiel really the hero for the people, or an ulterior motive? and;
• Were these events instigated by a background organisation to a) raise Ellen’s status for the running and b) make an opening for her to get on the council, putting her in the perfect place to leak info, and strike from where no-one suspects it?

/Tinfoilhatsaway!

ilr.9675:

TheDaiBish.9735:

{{ Attachment }}

And that’s EXACTLY what I’m saying… Is give the PLAYERS the ability to work around the bugs directly. That way it doesn’t matter so much when it takes them 2 weeks or 2 months to get around to fixing the Broken D.E.’s

Providing it’s done in a way that isn’t exploitable (continuously resetting the event / portion of the event for lootz), I agree.

ilr.9675:

Every major patch brings atleast a few of these bugs up when there’s no logical explanation for it and no evidence that their Live team even touched any of the triggers for those events.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Why not have deeper and more engaging DE’s that help tell the story of the LS? i.e. Telling the story through gameplay, not cut scenes.

They tried that at first, having one time events, but many people complained, myself included. I have to go to work so I have to miss this one time event so I can eat. Again, great idea of paper, doesnt work in execution.

It doesn’t need to be a one-time event. Look at the events that were specific to Flame and Frost. Sure, they weren’t all that difficult, but they still told the player something is happening; they complemented the overarching story through gameplay.

Why not have deeper and more engaging DE’s that help tell the story of the LS? i.e. Telling the story through gameplay, not cut scenes.

Nuka Cola.8520:

and adding new tiers with completely new traits wouldn’t? makes no sense.

It would.

It’d also open a whole new lot of balancing that would need to be done to existing traits, especially in the Adept tier, and probably for the first few weeks / months, you’d essentially be using the exact same build you are, just with an additional Major Trait. Not to mention 6+ months down the line, you’ll be bored of using the same build, so you’ll more tiers, and the cycle continues.

It’s a lot easier to add, remove and revamp traits, which essentially gives you the same effect without a) power-creep, and b) balancing becoming a handful.

Araziel.7201:

They can add another toolbar while they’re at it so we can use all our class skills. It’s time to take the training wheels off, ladies and gentlemen. Lol!

I really hope you’re being sarcastic…

Esplen.3940:

And it’s better that they fail miserably with free content than with paid content.

And better to trip and stumble with content that isn’t established with existing lore or what should be epic fights.

I mean, look how well Zhaitan was received.

wbfytw.4265:

Amadan.9451:

i really love how pvp works, the locker the stats and everything, and when you are tired of a build you can change it easily for free. and when you are sick of a class, in 1 second you can have a second class ready to go!

I don’t get rewarded the only way to get meaningful gear is to PvE :\

Ahhhh.

You want a stat advantage.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

So we will never face the other dragons and get new zones…

We had an entire story, several zones and much more for just one dragon: Zhaitan.
When we’re going to face the other dragons I expect nothing less. But they can’t fit 3 or more zones, a huge line of quests and all the content that comes with it in Living Story, there is just no way. Living Story content is just too small, insignificant and (mostly) temporary..

Why would it be impossible for the Living Story, but not for an expansion?

If they’ve got 4 teams, what’s to say that one of them teams aren’t working on a massive update they’ll be released in 6 months time?

People are too caught up on labels to see that LS and expansions are exactly the same thing; content updates.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Just want more, more of what’s available so im not forced to run same couple of builds (most of the times there’s one or two builds that significantly outshines the rest so you stick to them) the passed 10 months and years to come. Adding a weapon on which you can’t even swap skills or a new utilty/elite skill isn’t enough to diversify from what’s available.

I don’t see how adding other tiers would add diversity.

All it’d do is give you an additional trait to your current build.

Adding new viable traits, however, would add diversity.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Nuka Cola.8520:

And no i don’t know the game i bought it last week…

A little thought experiment for you: Consider the implications of commenting on mechanics you, by your own admission, do not understand.

He’s being sarcastic. He has comments from 9 months ago.

Nuka Cola.8520:

more tiers would be as awesome, don’t you people want more versatility? i sure do

You can have versatility without expanding the number of slots and by proxy, stats.

Expanding the number of slots over and over would just lead to power creep. Adding more interesting traits, and integrating the boring ones into skill usage has dual benefits:

• Skills become more effective when you don’t just spam them.
• Interesting traits = more valid choices = more depth.