(edited by Torolan.5816)
Why should I apply a scientific standard in my free time? Alternatives are there, and I enjoy them.
If you are such a fan of the scientific method, you surely can explain me why people still starve from hunger despiute distribution being scientifically possible, nuclear power plants still explode despite viable alternatives and solar cars have not replaced the regular car?
I tell you why: Money, power monopoly and convenience.
Add lazyness and nostalgia and you will have a large number or reasons and motiviations why people are content with their subpar stuff.
Your friends should l2p and then raid with you.
Lol. That´s a great idea.
I got another one: How about urinating against the Niagara falls to watch them turn yellow?
Or how about new extreme forms of playing GW2 in general?
Like the increasingly popular wolf pack baiting version of the game where you have to play GW2 while running over a plain to the only tree standing there to avoid getting brought down by wolves?
^^
Of course there are people that are as useful as a third nostril in a given situation. Almost any encounter in GW2 can be made by pugs if they cooperate with the leader.
Where did I dispute that?
But you are right, I don´t like instanced content like ls2 where everything is a reflex or mechanics test if you want the reward, although I comleted the ls2 in easy mode, aka just for the sake of doing it. I especially hate stuff where you have to never make a mistake or you will fail like with some of the ls2 rewards and invalidate anything you did up to until that point.
I like fractals because you can play them if you understand the mechanic and with most pugs. It has more room for error, which I like not only for me, but also my fellow players.
Don´t know if that makes me especially casual or a wuss.
What happens when more players want what you feel is harmful to the game? Where would Devs get the most accurate information on how players play the game? How long should players be able to express their opinions (albeit never having played said content) before the content is released? What should happen if some players feel upcoming content/patch/buff/nerf sounds good and other players feel it sounds boring/harmful/bad? What about changes that are good for the overall health of the game, but may not be popular in the short-term? What should be the practice of adding never-before-seen content, considering, as a species, humans are resistant to change? Etc., etc.
All thoughts to ponder….
This is quite an interesting post, really. But I would like to take the example of long time health out of this specifically. Mr Smith(that is the name of the economy guy of Anet, right?) is an economist. He probably has some impressive credibility from an university or economy school, and his mayor was hopefully also economy. I am also pretty sure he´s from the neo liberal school of economy because that is the thing to be in right now, although corporate identity and more relaxed economy is surely making bounds and leaps on that in creative industries.
So if my prediction is right, Mr Smith has no clue about(or even worse, he has a clue and does not use it) and also no interest in sustainability. And he is right in a certain way in thinking this way, that is the way modern economy works. Sadly this kind of economy will be the band on theTiitanic of modern capitalism so to speak if things continue to go down the drain like they did in the last 15 years.
But how do you probably ask does this stand against the credentials of officially business smart people?
*Obvious evidence like banks crashing, banks too big to fail, the real estate bubble, corporate buyouts with taxes.
*Other officially business smart people like Werner Sinn from the ifo institue who is resigning in march and does not have any more political restrains and now can honestly say how continual growth is an illusion and will have reached it´s limit soon.
tl:dr Hire a neoliberal economist and you get what you paid for.
So much this. I had to be efficient for so many years, I don’t need to do it on my down time. I play things I enjoy playing. Sometimes I get characters who like certain things. One of my rangers refuses to use a long bow. It’s just them. Short bow, no problem.
This is how most of my guild plays.
There are 3 different kinds of players:
Player A: this one has knowledge of the encounter, uses the appropriate skills/builds and makes the encounter go much smoother, faster, easier and in general helps everyone around them. They lower the difficulty of the given encounter based on how much they help.
Player B: this one plays what they want. For whatever reasons they don’t use what is the best for every encounter but they still help and contribute enough. This is the “normal” setting.
Player C: this one is just like Player B, only this time their skills and playstyle actively hinder everyone else. Although most of the time they don’t mean it, unless they are trolls, they do make events take longer, be much harder and even fail. In the end, they increase the difficulty of the encounter by a LOT.Examples of Player A:
Playing an egg-blocker at Triple Trouble can make the whole event really easy. Having enough Guardians to create a “box” of WoRs at Tequatl can allow everyone to go in melee range and burn him in a couple of minutes. The always wanted Fire Fields, Blast Finishers, might stacking etc can make any encounter go faster.Examples of Player C:
The Ranger Sword is “meta” because it deals high DPS, yet you’d be surprised at how many Rangers use it at events they shouldn’t be, for example the Chak Gerent. Because the Sword has a cripple on the Auto Attack, which means it will eat the Gerent break bar and make the event harder. Similar with Dragonhunter traps when you have the Daze trait, random Chill applications etc
Overwriting Fire Fields is another common “problem”, or not stacking, or using a Condition based Weapon with Berserker gear (or the opposite), I’ve seen my fair share of Warriors using Sword with zerker.You want to play how you want? Fine. But keep in mind that some times that playstyle might ruin the events for others and even cause failures. Ever thought of that?
Funnily, I am an A Type player in your scenario because I used to be in the egg block team with triple thread worm.^^
@Harper
I wrote scum in this question, not scum in general. I also missed to ress some people when I did not pay attention to the mini map. People who don´t rezz to make a point if they are not in events are people I call rude if the word scum is too harsh.
And no, people who want to succeed are not lemmings. I don´t really get the mindset of people who strive to be the best in what they do in the context of GW2, but to each his own I guess.
I´ll give you some examples of lemmings from the berserk is king meta era:
One lemming is a person that has not the reflexes to play an elementalist zerker. Still her armor was fully zerk and she had not enough HP to withstand a serious blast, so we had to scratch her from the floor more often than not. I like that person very much and even she agrees with me that it was a bad choice for her and she took it because she was advised to do it.
Another lemming I know had the reflexes to play a zerker axe warrior due to being pretty young. She had no idea what her class was able too and was coaxed from her uncle into playing zerker from the get go because he is a seasoned GW2 veteran. Countless wipes later, she finally figured how the problem was and replaced some of her gear with other stuff that accomodated better to her game.
And the third lemming I know is a young man that jumps on every hype train that comes into town.
I know that I have not hit any peak in GW2, I never wanted too. I am also not the ideal teammate in regard to damage output, but I can keep my mouth shut if someone is not that good or if we wipe, I don´t ragequit instantly. I am also not mad if we need some attempts and not succeed instantly. I could not care less if a minmaxed characters thinks that my build and approach to the game is garbage. Even if he thinks that is is my fault as a filthy pug, I expect him to shut up about it if he joins my casual groups. I don´t come into his group and lecture them either on this or that, that is the minimum of respect I expect from players of the opposite spectrum as you called it.
You´ll also probably just find me in raids when friends need a hand and ask me to play a role for this attempt to make the boss. A casual attempt with impatient or grumpy persons is just not worth that in my opinion.
I don´t use the builds people appreciate because I am not a lemming and don´t jump through hoops when the majority does. If I want to use the runes of the sunless for example, I´ll do it and don´t ask anyone´s permission. When pew pew rangers got more popular again, I stayed with my Wolf and Shortbow condition ranger. Why? Cause I can. I can only speak for myself here, but I don´t like min maxing in a game where I am looking for fun. If I want to be efficient, I go to work. If I want my character to work for me, I look for things I like and use them, not for things a youtube math geek gamer finds apropriate for my class.
So people like to play it safe, how disgusting. Let´s instantly call for a prison sentence for them?Okay, thinking about that:
So that 30+ Zerk people that rallied to build the melee troop with their identical to my damage output(Tequatl structure) and died with every wave knew better and were better prepared than me and were the reason Tequatl succeeded instead of the people who fired guns or killed fingers so that neither melee or distance damage groups perished under a frontload of conditions? Or those people that defended but did not stomp?
Ok.Luckily for the both of us, we´re not forced to play together. You would maybe be surprised that I can hold myself pretty well in the open world and can also live with losses or needing 7 seconds for an orr mob to beat instead of 5.
So now you call lemmings those who use appropriate builds and skills for encounters. I don’t know what you are saying now anymore, you are like that Guardian running the Uncategorized Fractal (Harpy) that refused to use Wall of Reflection because “that’s not my build”, you are like that Elementalist dropping Healing Rain on the Evolved Jungle Wurm overwriting the fire fields because “I wanted some health”.
You don’t like min-maxing? Fine. But ruining other people’s enjoyment of the game for your own pathetic reasons is just selfish, you are being a selfish entintled person and if raids or anything like that makes people like you quit the game (or eliminated as said earlier) it will be much MUCH better game for everyone else.
Next time you go to a big event, or you brainstorm your build or which skills to use, try to think about the others for a change and be a team player in multiplayer online game. Don’t be a selfish idiot.
No. I call those lemings who play something because the majority does so or because it does 2% more damage instead of playing the game with equipment they find funny or good.
I change my skills for encounters like the harpy fractal. If someone calls out a firefield, I don´t overwrite it. What are you talking about? I can and do play well with others. What I wanted to say is that I don´t change my equipment because people think it is not fitting to have vitality or toughness. My ranger runs Carrion because I like it, not Sinister because its chic to do it.
Maybe we have a misunderstanding here between Equipment and Skills?
I don´t use the builds people appreciate because I am not a lemming and don´t jump through hoops when the majority does. If I want to use the runes of the sunless for example, I´ll do it and don´t ask anyone´s permission. When pew pew rangers got more popular again, I stayed with my Wolf and Shortbow condition ranger. Why? Cause I can. I can only speak for myself here, but I don´t like min maxing in a game where I am looking for fun. If I want to be efficient, I go to work. If I want my character to work for me, I look for things I like and use them, not for things a youtube math geek gamer finds apropriate for my class.
So people like to play it safe, how disgusting. Let´s instantly call for a prison sentence for them?
Okay, thinking about that:
So that 30+ Zerk people that rallied to build the melee troop with their identical to my damage output(Tequatl structure) and died with every wave knew better and were better prepared than me and were the reason Tequatl succeeded instead of the people who fired guns or killed fingers so that neither melee or distance damage groups perished under a frontload of conditions? Or those people that defended but did not stomp?
Ok.
Luckily for the both of us, we´re not forced to play together. You would maybe be surprised that I can hold myself pretty well in the open world and can also live with losses or needing 7 seconds for an orr mob to beat instead of 5.
I am not even very much interested in the meta events for myself, I was just curious how taxiing could be seen as a vertiable solution by Anet and the players.
And in this case, I am more a kind of where is the glass? guy^^
Well, ok. If you go into the map of HoT to collect mats or masks, you can basically do nothing wrong. If you are not willing to do the job of the megaserver or Anet as a whole, you can be easily swept on an empty map?
What I find ridiculous myself is asking for commanders in SW. That map is so easy and self explaining that anyone who asks for commanders there should be ashamed of himself.
Yet the Indigo champion sometimes fails because people don’t know what to do.
Yet most of the events have those players that refuse to follow even the simplest orders.
It’s that guy who doesn’t stack on the commander during the Evolved Jungle Wurm fights and if the wurm charges them, it makes the event slightly more incovenient.
It’s that guy who refuses to use the appropriate skills even though it wouldn’t hurt them at all, like Warbanners for Warriors, Wall of Reflection for Guardians, conjured weapons for Elementalists etc, skills that can REALLY help in many encounters.
It’s that guy who still uses CC skills on the Chak Gerent, although map chat is full of “stop CC” because he doesn’t know how his own build work and applies random chill or cripple.
It’s that guy who destroyes the pustules during the Indigo boss of SW when the boss isn’t close.
It’s that guy who uses Light fields and covers Fire fields because it’s his cool rotation.
It’s that guy who uses full Nomad gear sits in a corner with maximum healing build always scared that they might die.
It’s that guy who fights the Legendary Wyvern and has no CC, or worse, use it before the breakbar is even active.
There are a bilion examples of bad players making events harder for no reason at all, and some times even causing failures. You are saying you don’t need a guide or special equipment, but if nobody read guides or had proper builds/equipement then those events would always fail. It might come as a surprise, but many players using the proper set-ups and builds allows those “casual” players to finish the events.
*A person that joins a TS server for worm and still does it is either inexperienced or a troll.
*Every skill is useful in every encounter. They are not as effective as you would like them, but the effect is there. Some are counterproductive, ok.
*Maybe he does not know what CC means and would play along when people said crowd control?
*Tequatl is a relatively sure win these days. I perished a few times against him, never read anything about how to beat him and finall understood how it works on my own. Which kind of character I put into that world boss is not important, there is a place for everyone. At the very least you can defend or if that is too crowded already, remove fingers.
I am not lobbying for people here that do not know their arms from their behinds, aka don´t know what that nice little snowflake symbol on their skill is. I am grounding my argument on the observation that common people can and will make smart decisions in these open world events and won´t find the dissapointment that they can´t participate because they are not agile, meta or good enough.
Paying attention to a given situation is a whole different story.
I am no fortuneteller so I can´t exactly say if raids wil have driven me out of GW2 in the next xear or so. I have no problem playing solo in HoT in general. It´s not so hard that you can´t survive if you know when to run and when to fight. Of course your results tend to be meager if you just swap along and do events here and there, but they will be there.
I have taken part in every world boss and the largest majority of world events anet offered. And yes, the large majority of them blow big time, even after they were renovated a little bit. I was also there when the taking of the temple of Balthasar was a much sought after and coveted event, Karka Queen appearing along a side of terrible settler chmapion events, when Marionette was online and Vinewrath returned as a strongly weakened Marionette clone.
Trust me when I say that you can go along fine after a while if you look in the map chat, follow orders or are on TS with the three headed worm and you just listen and know what to do. You don´t need a guide, special equipment, rotation or anything, anyone with half a brain will smell what Anet has cooked after a few tries. Nobody cares or asks for the HP of Tequatl or if he is a structure or not, this are questions that are irrelevant to a casual gamer most of the time, and that is where I like the game the most.
What I find ridiculous myself is asking for commanders in SW. That map is so easy and self explaining that anyone who asks for commanders there should be ashamed of himself.
I read it a lot in the latest posts, how players don’t like to group with others, and how grouping makes a game non-casual. I think for a lot of people (even on this thread) translate casual into “getting carried”. There is a reason they like the open world so much, because they can hide behind a tag and a mass of people and just auto attack and get the same rewards as those who actually put the effort. It’s sad really, because those are the kind of players who make events fail.
It’s hard to eliminate those players without using instanced content, but maybe Anet will find a way someday.
Anet give it´s best to eliminate players like me with raids if you mean that being carried equals not being meta and rotation skilled with any other class in GW2. Just give it time, I´ll probably disappear from GW2 if a suitable alternative appears and Anet is still bent on doing so.
I don´t agree with people that want to be automatically grouped for content. But I can understand if someone wants to be part of the tidal wave that is an open world event instead of being an only meta equipment is useful and means not getting carried person.
Sorry if that sounded a little bit cynical and rude, but the wording here rubbed me the wrong way. Eliminate players from a game, wow.
But how fix that problem? A meta event with a fixed time table is exactly that, a meta event with a fixed time table. Maybe they can screw a little bit around with the distribution of players or something, but that is either not very easy or does not sit high on the priorities.
So with all the information given, can we resume that the casual entering of a HoT map yields subpar results most of the time?^^
A little bit off topic, but in my mind anyone who refuses to revive a fallen player if there is no event areound where the dead upscale is scum in this question, plain and simple. It is not that it costs you something, and it saves the poor guy or girl lying there a few silvers.
And yes, low level fractals were always casual. Everyone can do a for example lvl 1 fractal if only one person in his group has ever done it and knows how it works.
legendary armor is superior to ascended,and the gear treadmill has started.anet lied and did infact invalidate all our hard worked for gear.
Legendary armor offers no stat increases over Ascended. That is what would denote a “superiority.” It does have a fringe benefit which you apparently value highly. However, Anet was referring to its stats, not the fact that it has a marginally useful prefix switch. They’re not lying, you’re taking them out of context.
The level of upgrade is irrelevant, the upgrade is there, so the armor is superior. You could argue that an upgrade is not a new tier by itself, and you would be right with it. But that still would not take away the fact that legendary armor is superior to ascended. If that update is in performance or just in versatility is of no consequence for the superiority.
To take something from RL, ask a tank commander what he would rather have:
A sturdy battle tank that can fire its gun and drive around(ascended). It fires standard shells(runes).
A sturdy battle tank that can fire its gun and equip another caliber instantly when he is not in immediate frontline action(legendary). The only setback here is that your shells are still standard and you have to load special shells for maximum performance (rune swap)
Lol.
I wonder why? The general consensus is, or at least I thought it is, that raids are both challenging and exciting, with a reward only being a side effect? Not so exciting and rewarding anymore?
The funny thing is, pretty much everyone who brought up this argument some months ago knew that he was spewing out garbage to build the tracks for the hype train for raids.
I always find it interesting how when I write something in generality, that players will take offense to very specific things. Anyway, I digress.
I’ve worked in customer service before. Everyone I know has. It is like a right of passage, really. And everyone I know has found it to be among the most soul crushing experience ever. Essentially you end up getting screwed from both ends: your company treats you like dirt because you’re a replaceable cog, and the customers treat you like dirt because you’re a replaceable face representing that same company. It is some kind of agoraphobic nightmare to have endless people you’ve never seen before run up and instantly hate you.
At least in real life you get the benefit of a face to face interaction, which will soften the rage. But here, this is basically being in perpetual argument with the youtube comment section.
I have the highest of regards for anyone who sits in a position like that. Whatever they get, they are without a doubt underpaid if they work in a company that gets complains very often. I would most certainly not want to work in the customer department.
Bt please tell me, how many customer service workers you know simply cross their arms with a pounting stance and say nothing until the complains hopefully go away? Some of course get a nervous breakdown at some point, but then people have to be on shift and do something else or don´t apply to such a job in the first place.
@Wanze
You probably know a lot more about accounting than me from all I have seen, but your scenario of a company having to fix a problem with good money to throw it after bad money is not so uncommon.
If a product has glaring problems, companies are expected to put money into it to make it profitable. Of course that looks bad on the CEO and the board of directors, so they all try to avoid such a scenario. I also don´t say that Anet and NCSoft made glaring mistakes, but you know the rule that anything that is not profitable is either axed or milked for taxes until it bursts up in flames.
As an example, take Volkswagen. It is the biggest car company in the world, Anet and NcSoft are dwarfs contrary to the titan that is VW. After the scandal involving polution, they bended over to their customers and the government, even letting their shareholders bite in the most sour of apples and not give out as much dividends as they wanted.
Or take Deutsche Bank. A major, global players in banking that figuratively had to bend over to the public because financing products they offered were not only garbage but basically Z ware, toxic papers.
Although I personally only have heard how much of a waste of time it is to make GW2 an ESport as it is both boring and complicated to watch, I know not enough about PvP or Esport to make a substantial prediction about it.
Having seen via screenshot how GW2 basically has viewers in a three digit reach and not even close to 1000 even with the game being 3 years old and there have already ben some shy efforts from Anet years ago, I can´t fight the probably unfounded impression that is all smoke and mirrors. But I may be wrong and simply not know all the details of any deals Anet has made.
I am not aqn accounting major, but my personal idea would be that Q3 dropped because the game got on a really low discount and Q4 will be swelled with the preorders. This effect is of course dropping over time, and my guess is that if it is rapidly and sharply dropping, HoT is by all means a failure while reaching the pre state of active players or a slight increase would make it sustainable but still not profitable for a longer period of time if you factor in development cost.
I want to start with the confession that I have no idea what a dev really does or if it his or her responsibility to talk with customers and how much power actually rests in his or her hands in GW2 to make things happen.
To be honest, I don´t even care about who is responsible for what, and it sounds to me rather a thing for the customer service if people are not satisfied and want to voice their complains.
At every place I worked, customer was king. Even if he was unreasonable, stupid, stubborn, immature, illogical or a “noble” mixture of all these attributes, customer was always king.
To further highlight how precarious that situation here is:
The german forum has some kind of comminucation officer or at least it had one when I last checked it. I don´t know if the guy got a paycheck, but if he did, his sole job should have been to present the company line to his kings, aka the customers. There were meeting with him, and he took the time to listen to staged questions which is a travesty itself if you ask me, a staged and massively preplaned meeting with a guy that was there to answer our questions and get feedback. And although he was a nice guy, he was brutally gaged from the upper management with everything that was halfway important as well. Mind you nobody asked for critical date in the like of “how much money did you make” “are gains up or down”. No, we discussed there about absolutely basic and in game questions. I don´t know what this is, but is not customer reply service.
And no, a “we are aware of the problem, thank you for caling us” email is not a viable customer service. It is a bot reply, and not even a very clever one.
Tl:Dr Customer service is crucial, even on the Internet, As long as someone receives a paycheck to listen to complains and bring them to the upper management, I expect him or her to do exactly that while he is on duty.
And the part that makes me the most unhappy about your post, baconofpigs, is that you are absolutely right with everything you say in it.
Efficiency is the key word here. But I make an educated guess here and say that the majority of people don´t want to play at the limit and be efficient. I want to be efficient in my job, not in my spare time. In my spare time, I want to have fun and relax.
I know this lifestyle probably is not modern when people in general are always available for their superiors, face book friends and live to work instead of working to live. But I like it my way.^^
Then don’t raid. This game shouldn’t be catered around the needs of Joe Casual’s lifestyle anyways.
Regardless of the “philosophy” Anet released that Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be, things change. HoT is a fine example of that philosophy change.
Says you. I say the other way, it should be catered around lazy gamers like me. I have nearly 10K hours played, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn´t afk for 1/2 or more of that time. Still I have five full sets of ascended armor and weaponry because it was not gated behind anything but time an I wanted to have it. So yes, I don´t have the will to play raids and the blame rests solely on me to not having legendary armor when it is finally released, but that does not mean for me that I ahve to bend over for it when things can swing back in my favor. I have the patience to wait.^^
Only the numbers of money Anet and NcSoft gained will ultimately show who is right and who is wrong here.
I guess we can take it as a hard fact that Wildstar took the majority of losses here. The lazy gamer in me hopes that this is due to the idea that hardcore players are just not the majority of gamers and you just can´t build a game on them. This would run contrary to people stating that this part of the gaming community is both large and buy trigger happy.
Sadly I can´t be sure of that, although I think it holds some merit. It could indeed also be that the business model did not fit or that the game is simply lacking in crucial departments.
Cost efficiency does sound good in the first moment as it at least suggest to me that NcSoft does not want to make straw giants who are all straw and have little substance. It could also mean that the budget they have or contribute to GW2 is rather small and they are forced to make only small stuff for a small price. This would add to my idea that minigames in HoT were just added to bloat and stretch it´s longlivety. Cost efficiency at it´s best.
I read in another thread no one offering ideas for making money so this thread is intended to offer an idea where the company and player meet halfway: optional subscription plans. They can be divided into gold, platinum, and diamond. A player with no subscription can use the trading post three times per day.
A gold membership could be $10 per month with these benefits:
-You’re given a certain amount of gold per day for logging in (not a fixed amount of gold but scales with gem/gold conversion prices to ensure an amount that will always maintain some value even in the face of inflation)
-Ranked PvP privileges
-Daily scratch for winning exclusive skins
-Can use tradeing post 10 times per day.
-Reduced waypoint and vendor cost by 25%
-Access to WvW for 15 times per month. To avoid abuse you’d get kicked from WvW after three hours to ensure each time you log in doesn’t count as just WvW’ing just once.
A platinum membership has all of the above but is $15 per month and even more gold per day.
-May WvW 25 times per month.
The diamond membership would be $25 per month and:
-In addition to the normal scratch will have an exclusive diamond scratch where you have better odds of winning rare stuff and diamond scratch only skins.
-Access to a farming area with unlimited respawns. For example in a Wintersday room could be an unlimited spawning supply of gingerbread men who drop presents. But the catch is such a room is only open for two hours per day.
-Unlimited tradepost postings.
-Reduced waypoint and vendor cost by 50%.
-Unlimited raiding runs.
-May enter WvW anytime they want.
1. As a non PvP player, I don´t even know what that is supposed to mean.
2. Daily scratch for winning a skin? So you get a scratch for a chance only to win something? Sounds a little bit like " Convert your ascended armor for a small chance you´ll get some dark energy" . Both things I would never do or pay for.
3. So the bank has a bouncer now and he only let´s you in the house for a limited number of days? Sounds strange.
4. Reduced waypoints. Ok.
5. WvW has a bouncer now too and only let´s you in a few times. Why not just kick wvw players straight from the servers, or even better, make this also for PvP?^^
6. An unlimited grinding spot is what this game needs so bad as I need my kneecaps to be bashed in by a sledgehammer.
I treadmilled, you treadmilled, everyone treadmilled in any MMO game they played. I don´t want to play a dictionary war with you. Maybe my definition is not what stands in websters or the duden or wherever, I glady give you that if you like.
Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.
Dictionary wars is unnecessary, just showing you have no idea what you’re talking about and so your conclusions and desires for the future should be ignored – cause listening to clueless people is bad policy ^^
You are speculating that ascended will stay the best, and that was already invalidated with legendary armor up to a certain point. As you are fond of unveiling my schemes, I will gladly tell you another idea of mine: Ascended will not stay top armor stats forever.
Sounds strange in your ears, right? Because Colin or some other guy said so in the past that it would stay that way and it sounds stupid for you to make another tier because GW2 does not work that way. Right?
As you obviously know so much more about semantics and the gaming industry as a whole than me, you should know that the word of a CEO is completely worthless in regard of design for the future of a game or even a product. Money talks.
And to lend you a hand with the first counterargument that will probably spring into mind:
Legendary armor is superior to ascended despite it having the same stats as ascended. It does not matter if the superior part, change stats, is of no concern for you because it does not work out for you because you also need meta runes to succeed. It is not so significant that you can´t live without it of course. But the upgrade is without a doubt there.
I never denied that I want legendary armor and that I am not interested in raid content itself, I already stated it much more than once(just ask maddoctor^^) .
As you lobbied for raids, I lobby against them. Isn´t that one of the points of an official discussion forum, lobbying? This thread here suggests that GW2 is not casual friendly anymore, and I agree with that position and fix it mainly on raids.
That my reasoning is not supportive of your own position is of no concern for my personal opinion. I am rather glad that my lobbying is so obvious that nobody can suggest that I have shady motives. I am not a secret agent or something and I hope that my opinion has so many supporters that Anet is changing it´s business strategy over time back to my prefered type of gameplay, and I see no point in denying that.
I treadmilled, you treadmilled, everyone treadmilled in any MMO game they played. I don´t want to play a dictionary war with you. Maybe my definition is not what stands in websters or the duden or wherever, I glady give you that if you like.
I don’t know who promoted that it will be SPECIFICALLY CASUAL.
And for me it was the worst game phase until now. Since GW1 core, the game was nothing but nightmare for a lot of us, game has purpose now, before it was meaningless “your actions doesn’t matter festival”.I agree some things are to grindy, but RAIDS are on SPOT, they should be repeatable, for 50% less reward then the first weekly kill. Other then that i don’t have a word to complain about, they are perfect challenging group content for my guild.
But i’m sad since we only have 3 hours of content per week, and then we are done.
Kind of disappointing.I don’t want anet to go back, i just want them to put in more effort and less GEM store junk content that ruins the game.
How it ruins it? Yes they get some extra money, matter of fact, way to much for the effort they put in. Expansions cover full expenses and even more, GW2 CAN run without extra GEM store content, think of it as.. unique rewards! This would make game soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more rewarding, so much more enjoyable, and so much more feeling acomplished when you go around the world gather things that you desire the most! but what we do now? We go around to get EXP, KARMA, greens, blues and junk
Thx for reading, face it, it’s a fact.
Your actions still don´t matter as long as there is no hall of fame . You´re now doing hard content with people you did less hard before, just on the next higher level or organization, difficulty and numbers. Nothing has changed, you would maybe not even realize a change when dungeons had not been broken and exploitable from the start.
Treadmill all you want, your the Eternal title is devalued a little bit more while I type this, and it is further devalued while you maybe read this as more people have probably beaten the raid on both instances. Your comment about 3 hours of content only further suggest that I am right when I think that your sense of accomplisment in GW2 fully depends on raids and it´s features while invalidating everything anyone has achieved in GW2 in the same breath and was proud of.
Happy treadmilling I guess?
there is no pvp communtiy left anymore , arenanet made quit all pvp players years ago with bad designed pvp content.
now to keep pvp alive they did change the pvp content with pve rewards to make pve players play pvp.
pve players dont like pvp , they refuse to train and get better , they just want to farm and exploit the system and they just want this stupid legendary backpack. this is pure toxic
we have the same few 2-3 teams with hardcore pvpers left since game release , rest are invalid pve monkeys.
Although he is as rude as a bouner of a shady club , this guy pretty much has smelled what Anet is cooking. You don´t want us mainly PvE players to be here, and we don´t want to be here either.
But someday when I am so bored of GW2 that I even do PvP, you will indeed have to endure me until I have made my 20 or so AP.^^
How much content was “Free” and how much content was gated in a way that could be considered difficult by your standards, Harper? 90% easy to 10% hard maybe? How is the ratio for HoT? If it´s 50-50, you´re pretty generous in my mind.
I read this bucket for tears comment too and had a pretty good laugh about it. As a former Eve online player, I know this stuff pretty well.
I disagree with the intention of Anet to make players better at the game. I am indeed very sure that Anet does not give a flying squirrel about your, my or anyones ability to play the game. My guess is that they kind of knew that many people fled other games for GW2 to avoid raiding without the consequences of exclusive content and time commitment and had to put such a big carrot on the stick that people at least had to give it a try to justify implementing it in the next shareholder meeting. I don´t know any better than you in this case, though.
I also don´t know about your personal skill level, but I have seen enough zerker pros(which was the thing to do not so long ago) falling left and right on faceroll content because they just plain sucked at GW2 and just played the gear because some internet math geek said so. These guys won´t turn into superheroes over night, and viper and sinister also won´t save them from being subpar players skillwise.
I am not a game designer, so I don´t know what would be a golden way for everyone. I was just trying to communicate why I think making abilities dependend from special gear and a set direction of numbers pressing(aka a rotation)is inherently wrong for me.
Why is it obvious that X, Y or Z should step up their game? Because you and some other people say so? Content was free for all until HoT, and in no instance you could earn anything substantial from a content that was restricted by the question if you had personal abilities and skills that was not accessible from other sources. Not in fractals, not in wvw or pvp, nowhere. Where is the logic in that if not just for the sake of forcing people to play raids? If the content was as challenging and rewarding by itself as you say, why put a reward behind it that is useful for anyone instead of massive amounts of gold, titles and skins? In my opinion, Anet knew that they would not get enough people to play them if they did not let any way point in that direction.
Please also note that I wrote free, not accessible. If I would put a single respirator inside a small rock patch in an active volcano that would force someone to walk through pyroclasmic smoke on te only bridge to the respirator, it would also be accessible for a chronical asthmatic, but still not free.
But maybe I am missing the logic here?
We are not at the olympics, and this is not even remotely a sport. There are no championships for raids either. Your reward would only be really unique if it would read something like that:
“This is the raid reward X. It was rewarded to Harper.4173 at the 22th december of 2015 after he finished the raid. He was the 27th person to beat it.”
If that is not the case, your reward is bound to be invalidated anyway as time goes on because more and more people will get an absolutely identical reward. so in my thinking, you´re not winning an olympic medal, but just a medal of good conduct that gets more common with every hour that passes. Aren´t we entering the treadmill here everyonew loathes, always on the hunt for the next unique gear?
Everything that protects your reward for now is that people will be getting it after you, until it is so common that nobody will notice it anymore. So your triumph is short lived.
I did not even buy it because I logged in at this time and I regret playing it, repeatedly sometimes. If a group of guild people had not dragged me kicking and screaming back into it, I would hardly have any success from it.
That content was a huge pile of garbage for me, nothing less, nothing more. Started weak, then fell off strongly…
With the Magnetite Shards being rewarded on tries, isn’t what you are asking for already ingame?
Total numbers of people trying don’t matter to be honest. You started with 30 people, and over half of them quit after 1-2 days? Those were never going to stick with raiding to begin with.
The problem with raiding here is the same as it is in every game:
- a lot of people just want to tag along for the reward, but don’t want to actually work towards clearing the encounter in the first place
- once you have a couple of bosses dead, suddenly every one is a raider and wants to help out
- player inability to face the fact that THEY might be the reason that their raid is failing. Once you accept that it might be you, you will try to improve (or quit)I’m not strictly against an easier form of raid for a more aasual approach, but that would cost a lot of developer ressources. Also if rewards are made freely available, what point is there to raiding? (and no, no matter how you spin it, making raid rewards easier to be had no matter in which form is devaluing them).
Again, tries reward Magnetite Shards which is essentially the token system youa re asking for. There is a lot of material on how to beat the raid bosses out now. It should not be to hard for a semi-dedicated group/guild to complete the fights.
Exactly. All of this except for devaluing rewards because other people make them in other ways. We´re talking about 100.000+active accounts of whom a majority will never meet each other and stay anoymus, not many people give a flying squirrel about raid rewards you may have anyway if they can´t earn them after vialantly trying. Most people are self reflected enough to know that they are not the 1%ers then.
On one side, you have people that want the shinies and invest as less as possible into it. Yes, they will change builds and hear you out when you say how it is done, but after they have done it and got from it what they wanted, they never return to it.
On the other side, you have the people that want ot beat it in record time and as soon and as often as possible.
Group 2 needs Group 1 to succeed because there probably are not enough group 2 types of people in the game. Group 1 people need group 2 people to show them how it is done, but for a much lesser timespan.
A healer guardian and warrior usually falls last and especially the warrior has a safety net to nullify mistakes made by squishy DpSers. I know that DpS players don´t like that argument very much because the usual reply is that they would not have fallen if the healer or tank would have made more damage. Although I hoped that this reasoning would finally stop with mobs who have millions over millions of HP, it still seems to be valid for some people.
My main argument is that a DpS build is not more fun or better than any other by default and there should be no mechanism that only favors a few types of builds. A DpS build is of course more effective and mandatory if you want to win the race of against the clock. But what if I don´t want to even have a race against the clock in my spare game time? Maybe I want a rich and detailed background story, or more time to do the raid on my own with my friends of 9 nomad buddies(exaragation here^^) to not feel left behind and like a second class customer without bowing down to the requirements?
And the most viable reason for me, why should someone care if people do a raid in tanky armor? Invalidated rewards? Please. Make it gold, silver and bronze depending on the time you needed like with adventures and give them a shiny title, everyone is satisfied. But no ,it is all or nothing.
That is probably the reason you can´t convince me of 4. I want to have fun, not a skill contest or a DpS festival. Although that can surely be fun for people, it is not fun for me.
The only reason I am arguing here is because Anet made the decision to gate legendary between raids, a decision I find unreasonable. If that were not the case, I would wish you a heartfelt best of luck with raid content and go my merry way.
Maybe this explains it better.
You have High DpS:
You win by bursting out damage and avoid damage with shielding abilities, dodges, movements and avoids of other kinds that prevent you from taking damage because you can not take it. Chronotank comes to mind.
You have high tank:
You win a war of attrition by tanking with armor, heals and HP while still doing damage on a lower level. It takes longer, but you can make a mistake without loosing automatically. Regeneration warrior and heal guardian come to mind.
The first variant requires more skill at actual playing. The second carries more responsibility for the survival of a team most of the time. We´re both on the same page with that I guess, expceptions are of course viable too.
But neither dependence on type I or II does make an encounter itself challenging. It rather makes an encounter difficult, exclusive for type II and rushed with the use of a timer, which is a difference in my opinion. An encounter is challenging when you need enviromental awareness with mechanics like things happening around the boss fight, like minions rushing in or happenings that groups must do to defeat a given boss.
Of course a timer is such an environmental happening too, but not an overly challenging one. It´s rather a test of your ability to do damage and if you have mastered your personal ability rotation, but it does not promote a good encounter itself most of the time.
My personal level of challenge would be an encounter where you have to defeat the dungeon with it´s denizens and guarding mechanics itself to defeat the boss, not the boss mob first and foremost. Where DpS and builds are not that important, that is only equipment gathering in my mind. It also needs a good story, not just a guy with 3 cronies that gates a valley.
Environmental awareness Skill for a mob or encounter mechanic, not skill as in performance. Should probably have been more clear with that.
A current meta build requires research, needs to be rare to get a place quickly, then reflexes first an foremost, then timing. And that is like searching a job for me. The first two attributes are also needed when you want to have any chances while looking for a job, the third is not available to everyone, and the last part is how you make a job. I don´t want to have another job when I am at home, sorry.
If you understand casual as someone who wants to perform at the best level but plays irregularly, then you are right in your approach to the game. If you understand casual as I do, play regular but without much commitment to a specific cause, you are wrong.
And yes, High DpS is more unforgiven and requires environmental awareness too when battling a mob, but it does not require environmental awareness within mechanics. And do I really want an attribute like unforgiven in a game that should appeal to many people? Of course raids are made for the 1%, but this should not be stretched to vast parts of open world HoT content like it is right now.
That´s all nice and fine Raizen, But do you realize that the way you describe how things are within raids organization are like organizing a meeting too?
You gather your paperwork while a secretary calls in the meeting. Then you present your stuff, it fails to win the CEO for some reason, you try again until it works and he shakes your hand just to forget who you are the next try with a new project. Of course you and your project team are a tight group because you have all the right tools and people together, but if you were a bowling team that plays once in a few weeks, you would be tight too.
If you want to make a job with a timetable out of GW2, fine. I don´t want to and surely don´t want Anet to give massive ressources to this kind of gameplay of my casual and lazy ways suffer from it.
[…]
Good list, although I would put Crystal desert on place 1. Why? Because of the egg and the legacy of Glint in that area.
And I have to insist on Ring of Fire, Anet!So I see it like this:
Crystal Desert
Northern Shiverpeaks
Janthir area
Blood legion homelands
Sea of Sorrows
Depths
Unending Ocean areaI think that after a dragon an interlude against another enemy: The White Mantle would make more sense, instead going straight against another dragon.
The White Mantle would take advantage of the pact, the 5 big cities and the orders being weakened to try and take over Kryta again.
That would indeed be very intriguing, but I doublt it will happen. Anet does seem to not like to be reminded of GW1 too much most of the time :/
So then how do you make content harder without it being harder?
If they tuned raids so that people didn’t need specific gear, builds and strats to beat them then raids would be dungeons 2.0.
What’s your proposed solution for difficult instanced content? How do you make fights hard without requiring specialized comps and tactics, skills and rotations?
I mean hell – even in PvP where the opponents are human( assuming Anet could massively buff up the AI) you have metas, rotations, roles and whatnot.
In a way – Raids brought the PvE encounters closer to PvP ones – with much stricter necessities in order to succeed.
How do you make the raid hard without forcing people to specialize? Do you balance around the fact that an unspecialized group must be able to succeed? And if that’s the case doesn’t this mean a highly specialized group will breeze through the content on easy mode?
Dungeons suffered because they were fundamentally broken from the start, not because they lacked in difficulty for a majority of players.
Lets look at Kholer from AC for example. For the first half of GW2s existence, Kholer was shunned and avoided because stacking against him was difficult and unrewarding for the garlic bread you got from him for your efforts. Then something happened and Kholer became farmable, every run made him.
Or take the undead spider from the same dungeon. That is a pretty tough encounter for a majority of people. Stacking in the corner or even better on the pillar was again the downfall of it until it was fixed.
My personal solution to this would be to punish people with massive agony like damage if they stack together the whole time. Or make the opponent invulnerable if the group camps at spots. To avoid speed clearers, make a number of mobs mandatory before you enter the room with the end boss.
My solution would be timing instead of DpS and the removal of enrage timers. Vale Guardian and his three merry men for example have some mechanisms I like in general like the small colored fields. When I entered for the frirst time in a raid I though: “Oh, nice! What a novel idea.” Then I was brought back into reality when I realized that the Guardian itself makes a massive reflexestest out of the idea and just forces you to kill him with DpS in a given time, giving builds the edge over skills. Let people use levers and mechnisms, not DpS.
The common objection against that:
“Oh no, don´t remove enrage timers! I don´t want a group of 10 nomad guardians do it in 5 hours like I did with my DpS hero in 20 minutes!”
Lol, wut? I hope everyone here looks at this and realizes how stupid this objection is.
What do you care if people you don´t know and probably will never meet beat something in hours you took only minutes for? Can´t you just be satisfied that you are so much better without having people fun or success too who are not as good as you? If that bugs people so much, make a list of who accomplished it how fast like with adventures.
Let´s say a mid way boss mob named supernova heats up and if he is hot enough, punishes players with an unblockable and undodgeable supernova that takes out 99% of health. To avoid that, he needs stacks of cold where damage is not important, but just the numbers of stacks he has. A given player can only give him 2 stacks at once to avoid specialization builds. Suddenly, average Joe with cold gets useful. Give him a pain aura or henchmen to make him more challenging if you want.
Award hardcores with the achievement “Supernova Killer” when not a single stack of cold was used against him to avoid them misusing tissue productions because it was much too easy.^^
It did indeed not get more challenging. But it´s rewards got nerfed in many ways, probably to keep players in HoT. And logically along with that, accomplishments were also nerfed because according to the logic of both pro gamers and average gamers effort = reward.
Letting personal preferences aside as good as i can here:
I agree with you when you say that there is indeed stuff to do for the casual veteran player in HoT. After entering HoT, I was showered with AP and made some very easy AP in the next hours. Of course i play since release and had some time to make AP and gather stuff, so I guess this is not the rule for an average gamer. But the content is there, no questions asked.
Do you on the other hand agree with me that a majority of the stuff of HoT is (partly heavily) guarded and walled behind actual walls, meta events, daytimes, mazes, raids, coordinated movements and grinds and this is very uncommon for GW2 expect for the grind part?
Emphasis on jumps was uncommon at best in GW2 up to HoT. Can you also understand that people are salty when the game they supported churns out an expansion that plays heavily with the remnants but lets them so intact that you can still touch it but it feels different?
My personal preference would be something with more pirates. Not steam powered pirates or airship pirates and not necessarily undead pirates. They are basically already everywhere but do not get much story still.
Would also be more than happy with Tengu Asian theme. I am not even much of a desert supporter, but it would be the next logical step I guess.
Elona would be ok too of course, although I am a little bit sated on the savannah theme.
Or Marionette, which took positve critiques all over the game and even in the whole industry because it was fresh and novel. Except of course by pro gamers, who were suddenly forced to play with average people if they wanted something. That was also the point where I finally realized that these people don´t want to have anything to do with common players who do not follow battleplans and metas. Either you meet their expectations, or you´re wortless to them.
That’s pretty much it – to very high-end players other players are generally a resource – your performance matters above everything else and that’s just how things are.
I liked the Marionette fight – but like you said I disliked it meant you had to organize all sorts of players that didn’t particularly want to be organized in order to succeed.
It is a necessity to follow a plan (a plan, neither a build or a meta) in an event like this, I am not even disagreeing with pro gamers in that question. That is a level of cooperation and environmental understanding I also expect from an average player in an open world event that has made the event a few times.
The magic of these events was that you could make mistakes because you were anonymus and there could be a guy or a girl on your plattform that was so pro that he managed to down it all by himself together with you so that you still managed to beat it in time when the three other people were dead.
You could just also just quit it without consequences to anyone if you ran out of time or motivation unlike a raid.
Marionette was in itself a pretty easy fight if you made it a few times. And yes, it was quite frustating when 4/5 plattforms downed their enemy and one with bearbows or zerker warriors could not. But it still was good for some laughs because of accusations in map chat nobody cared for because it was just in map chat and not on TS.
Things begin to turn wrong when you need equipment or a special skill to be useful. From there on a game turns into a specialist job, and I personally dislike that so much that I refuse to be part of a meta raid group despite having the necessary ascended equipment for it.
Platforming was peripheral in vanilla gw2. The change to make it integral to the game is why you are getting complaints. People bought an rpg not a platformer.
how exactly is it ‘integral’? People bought GW2 knowing that it had optional jumping puzzles in it from day 1, if i choose to not do a jumping puzzle it has 0 impact on my ability to play any other part of the game. If you dont like something, just ignore it, your not losing out.
Ok, let us take a look then what has changed over the years?
Things including JPs, other jumping shenanigans or excessive leveling in Core Tyria to complete stuff:
Jumping Puzzles in itself
Some ls1 open world stuff
Festivals
Princess and Mawdrew
Wallbreaker JP to finish a map
Mawdrew was the first to relly heavily on JPs. At a time when the game was 2+ years old.
You do not need the JP to complete southsun, the first major patch with new land.
JPs in festivals were optional, the ablity to grind festivals with dailies is gone too.
HoT:
JPs
Adventures
Mastery Points and actual XP
Map completion for Specialization collections
Stuff as Save the city of Gold
Of course this stuff is optional too, but you miss out on much more stuff than you did with Core Tyria if you don´t like to jump or explore. And would you personally like to play a game where you either miss out on much or endure to farm it and then never do again?
I agree with the idea that casual killers are probably the majority of online gamers, but a minority in MMOs like GW2. It takes time and effort to equip properly and kill in GW2, and if it is only to look up builds. Games with fixed classes throw them in, combat, win or loose, out. Extremely casual.
And I think that it indeed was not advertised as casual. But there is also something as obvious evidence with facepalm easy stuff all over core tyria. And people got quickly used to it. Temples were once considered challenging. Temples!
Or think back at how soutsun was introduced if you were already there and how people, especially zerkers, raged about how the mobs got retaliation, avoided much damage and were just hard to kill.
Or Marionette, which took positve critiques all over the game and even in the whole industry because it was fresh and novel. Except of course by pro gamers, who were suddenly forced to play with average people if they wanted something. That was also the point where I finally realized that these people don´t want to have anything to do with common players who do not follow battleplans and metas. Either you meet their expectations, or you´re wortless to them.
Like it or not, average Joe gamers are the majority of GW2 players. That does not say something about them being casual or not of course. A casual player can be extremly good at jumping plattforms in general and achieve puzzles in a time other people spend just looking at them.
+1 to Archon Wing, Andromeda and Pepsi. People like the OP are among the main reason that this game has lost what made it special and was turned into a plattformer with raids and a fancy story as topping.
Yes, you get it OP. I don´t give two turtle shells about the raid content including it´s difficulty, replayability or whatever you say to validate it. I indeed just want the armor better accessible and not modify my characters for it. As you now know that, does it invalidate my position? I don´t think so. It marks me as a person with an opinion and a habit. If enough people are sharing my position, the both of us will see the pendulum swing back in my favor some day again.
Of course I know that only money, lack of support and public outcry will extract it from the iron curtain that is a raid. And that will take time, so enjoy your victory for now.^^
What I see more likely is the following, in this order:
- Janthir region.
- Crystal Desert.
- Northern Shiverpeaks
- The Depths of Tyria.
- The Sea of Sorrows.
Good list, although I would put Crystal desert on place 1. Why? Because of the egg and the legacy of Glint in that area.
And I have to insist on Ring of Fire, Anet!
So I see it like this:
Crystal Desert
Northern Shiverpeaks
Janthir area
Blood legion homelands
Sea of Sorrows
Depths
Unending Ocean area