I’m relatively sure that might affects damage done only on new condition stacks, not the ones already cast. The insane cost of recalculating already existing ongoing damage, would be staggering and not worth the server time.
Aside from being a double key press instead of a single one, which should be marginally slower,. there is no advantage I can see in double clicking outside of jumping puzzles.
At the time, the Living Story Season 1 was the target of much negative commentary from the fan base.
At the time, I remember defending it, even though I agreed that having temporary content puts too much pressure on people and it’s not fair to people who can’t make it
I bet most of the complaints were about that, not about the story-telling itself.
And yes, I can imagine people hated Scarlet Briar (she was a sterotypical comic book lunatic villain after all), but all the story missions/events during the season per se must have been quite fun story-wise (at least that’s my impression from watching the three-hour video). Things including DR, LA, sudden occurances all over Tyria, the detective work during the investigation, Southsun Cove and the Consortium, the festivities, the election, etc. All that seems incredibly exciting and fun and much better story content than HoT and LWS3.
Edit: But regardless of whether one liked S1 or not, it is still vital content story-wise (I had so many “Ah!” moments watching that three-hour video), and not having it in the game right now for everyone to be able to fully access it as a whole is unacceptable as it ruins a lot of subsequent story content. A huge chunk of the GW2 campaign is simply missing!
People HATED Scarlet and a lot of it was about the story telling, though not all of it obviously.
LOL – same people saying the same thing “the maps aren’t dead”. Yet DIFFERENT people keep starting threads deploring that the HoT maps are dead! Hmmm, I see a pattern here.
Maybe the people who keep saying the maps aren’t dead know how to find full maps! Maybe the people who say the maps are dead don’t know how to find full maps because it isn’t told anywhere in-game. I see the OP being criticized because he doesn’t know how the DS meta works. Where is it explained in-game? And if you get kicked out of the DS map because you died and then can’t get into the main map because it’s full, “try again”.
Yes you are right HoT defenders, there is nothing wrong with the HoT maps. Everything is working perfectly. /sarcasm
One has to wonder if Anet fully thought out the consequences of their design. I certainly hope not because its pretty bad if they designed it this way on purpose.
I’ve told people time and time again to message me in game and I’ll prove it. They people saying they’re dead are people who don’t follow timers at all, log in randomly to a map and assume it’s dead without any awareness of how the zone works.
There are people who say the entire game is dead. I had one of them in Metrica Province the other day who said he saw no players. I walked him around the corner because the fire ele was starting. It was an eye opening experience for him.
The HoT maps are designed in such a way where they LOOK dead if you don’t know where to go and what to do.
But since I factually am in those maps almost every day and often all day I can say with 100% certainty they’re not dead.
And those who claim they are only need to contact me in game to be shown otherwise.
Vash is correct. The option the OP is asking for already exists in game.
Season 1 was not the best Living Story. In fact, DURING Season 1 I remember tons and tons of complaints about Scarlet, about the boring stuff you had to do, particularly in the beginning. Living story Season 1 probably had the best events, because it was in the open world as well as instances, and it was going away so there were no limitations and people complained.
There have been far more complaints about the Living Story Season 1 than there ever were about anything after, including the HoT story. At the time, the Living Story Season 1 was the target of much negative commentary from the fan base.
At the time, I remember defending it, even though I agreed that having temporary content puts too much pressure on people and it’s not fair to people who can’t make it,
But at the end of the day, Season 1 was not universally accepted or critically acclaimed by the playerbase. Some even called it a debacle.
I’m sorry but where does it say that chak are sentient? It was my understanding they were drawn to leyline energy, which isn’t indication of sentient. They don’t seem to have plans, or make strategy. If I missed something, I’d like to know.
I play 32 characters. After I get daily stuff done, I roll on random.org a random 1-32 number to decide who to play.
Many of them are specced differently or use different weapons which offers me a different experience. I don’t always do this, but I do it when I feel like a change.
I think that the biggest problem is people not breaking the defiance bar.
Aye. Basically, if the group doesn’t even break the defiance bar once, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll fail. Sometimes if there’s a big enough group with enough doing decent damage, they can take it down on sheer zerg power.
But breaking the defiance bar even once makes a huge difference.
It’s one of those things that should probably be nerfed when the new expansion comes out. The time you have to break the defiance bar doesn’t leave a lot of room for mistakes. And he tends to do a jump or run right at that part, making it all the harder for people to land their CC.
And I don’t think the defiance bar failure is just a matter of people not knowing what to do. You need to have good reaction time and not have wasted your CC already to hit him with it at the right time. Which for some classes, builds, and players, is just harder than for others.
I think people may be underestimating the general competence of the playerbase on this one. It’s not an easy fight for an uncoordinated pug environment (which is what most of GW2 open world is).
Why would they be using their cc skills when their CC wouldn’t do anything? That would indicate low level of understanding and lack of skill.
Some attacks are hybrids, meaning the application and usefulness of them goes beyond simply “this is CC — use it when you need to CC and never otherwise.” For example, Scrapper Hammer 5 skill is a minor CC, but it’s also a combo field.
Anyone doing Vinetooth should save their CC period though. I don’t care that it’s a combo field. It’s not worth missing the bar break…if you have a chance to break the bar, on that one encounter you do.
This is a solo instance. Do it like this and you won’t have this.
It’s an instance, not a solo instance. From the very beginning you could go with friends into personal stories without being penalized. There was precisely zero reason to change that.
I run a casual guild of a couple of hundred people, and I’ve had to do that mission about fifty times to help get people through it. I can’t tell you the number of times I soloed the end of it, because someone was in the penalty box.
You might love challenging content, but not everyone does and for the main story it’s probably a bad idea. It turns more people away from the game. Story is something casuals should be able to do with a relatively basic skill set.
But if story missions are “press A to win”- then where is the sense of thrill, the sense of achievement, the sense of survival. Oh look it’s mordremoth, the elder dragon. He’s been designed so 10 year old jimmy with slow reflexes can kill him with just auto-attacking.. I better brace myself for this epic figh- oh.. he died while I blinked
But in all seriousness, sometime during those 50 trips to the penalty box, a spark must’ve travelled through the brain to make a person think “hey, my strategy isn’t working, I need to use more CC, I need more dodges, I need more mobility, I need more X or Y”, and then adjust the traits and skills to get that. And I’m honestly curious, did they invest anything in the fight? are they wielding/wearing optimal equipment, or are they running some weird prefix not meant for combat at all?
They’re not all press A to win though, even in LS Season 2. That was the transitional stuff to HOT and a lot of people didn’t play them.
I don’t believe it actually splits the community. The community has always been split. Min/maxers and elitists (very different groups with some overlap) have always played this game. At best it gives those people tools to exclude people who don’t play like them. Which is fine for me, because I play differently and have little interest in playing with them.
This allows groups of people to find and play with like minded people. I don’t really love changes to the game like this because it takes it away from the game I play but you can’t really stop people from playing the game that they play.
I have 200 people in my guild and I don’t think many of them think that way at all. Maybe a couple. Less than a dozen for sure. I play the game to enjoy the game, and there are many casual people who do the same. We’re a whole lot less likely to post on the forums as a whole, but you know, that’s because we’re casual. lol
It doesn’t take many people to kill the Vinetooth as long as you’re coordinated and everyone breaks the bar. The more people the harder it is to break the bar. I’ve done it with five, six people before, but we were coordinated and everyone had CC on their bar to break it when it came up.
That’s how you do it. You don’t need 20 people. You need 5 good people.
The thing is, if they made HoT as easy as core maps, then all the people would just deplete core content and all the new players would have been leveling in empty maps with no veteran around to show them how the game operates.
No matter what style the expansion maps were, players would still be playing in those maps as well as core Tyria.
And in HoT there is no guarantee of a vet player showing anyone the ropes. I have been in several failed AB metas lately where after it failed many “vets” criticized people doing things wrong. My comment in Map Chat was “why didn’t you tell people what to do while the event was running instead of waiting until after it failed?”
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. As in for “showing the ropes” I wasn’t talking about HoT maps. I personally think that for any new player starting the game, it feels motivating to see players appearing as “vets” (due to their skin) still go back in core tyria. And that could only really happen if Anet devs, in the first place, did not make HoT content a carbon copy of how core maps operated.
I’m still not understanding – you think that vets wouldn’t go back to core Tyria no matter what style the expansion maps were? We still have dailies…
Didn’t ArenaNet kinda tell us they didn’t want the Vets in core when they killed the Champ Trains?
If memory serves me correctly folks were whining about the trains (Vocal Minority) so they killed it. Seems like the maps started losing population shortly afterwards.
And that’s a good thing. First of all they didn’t kill champ trains. They killed the Queendale champ train. They made zero changes to the Frostgorge champ train.
I think the Queendale champ train should have never existed at all. It was a bad thing for new players not a good thing.
I saw a guy once in Lornar’s Pass come into the zone and say where’s the train, because he leveled in Queensdale and didn’t know the game at all. That’s not the face to show new people.
The zone population was artificially increased by the champ train and it went back to normal. That’s a good thing. Still plenty of people roaming around Queensdale.
This is a solo instance. Do it like this and you won’t have this.
It’s an instance, not a solo instance. From the very beginning you could go with friends into personal stories without being penalized. There was precisely zero reason to change that.
I run a casual guild of a couple of hundred people, and I’ve had to do that mission about fifty times to help get people through it. I can’t tell you the number of times I soloed the end of it, because someone was in the penalty box.
You might love challenging content, but not everyone does and for the main story it’s probably a bad idea. It turns more people away from the game. Story is something casuals should be able to do with a relatively basic skill set.
My character is supposed to be involved in this “EPIC STORY” but Anet purposefully puts him on the sidelines like this is some kind of hockey game.
They’re trying to show you that you failed. It’s a fight of a mind, so you being defeated means Mordremoth took control. If they put more time into it, they likely would have used the blighted mechanic, where you’re replaced with a champion NPC that needs to be taken down in order to bring you back. Doing this however would have made it much harder for the people that actually needed to group up for this solo content.
I don’t usually agree with Djinn on much, but in this case, I think he’s spot on. The story really shouldn’t be hard, because it’s something that would appeal to casuals, unlike something like raids. And the step up in difficulty and complexity in Hearts and Minds is pretty heavy. People who can solo everything up to this point have trouble with Hearts and Minds.
For people who are into immersion but not really challenging content, it’s a big blow. They were able to do it all before and suddenly they’re not feeling like a hero anymore.
Not everyone loves repeatingly trying the same content until they finally defeat it. That’s okay for achievements. That’s okay for raids or dungeons…but story really shouldn’t be like that, in my opinion.
The thing is, if they made HoT as easy as core maps, then all the people would just deplete core content and all the new players would have been leveling in empty maps with no veteran around to show them how the game operates.
No matter what style the expansion maps were, players would still be playing in those maps as well as core Tyria.
And in HoT there is no guarantee of a vet player showing anyone the ropes. I have been in several failed AB metas lately where after it failed many “vets” criticized people doing things wrong. My comment in Map Chat was “why didn’t you tell people what to do while the event was running instead of waiting until after it failed?”
Because it’s older content and most vets probably assume most people do know what to do. When people come to an older game, if they have questions it benefits them to ask those questions. Or do some research, or join a guild, or make some friends. There’s a lot of ways to get info.
Depending on strangers in map chat is almost never the best way. It’s too random to be reliable.
Some of us LOVE the new movement abilities. I understand some people don’t. I think more people like or don’t care about them than don’t like them. They’re simply an interesting way to get around.
Lava tubes are just fun. Some of us play games to have fun. If you don’t find them fun, that’s okay but I’ve heard very very little complaints about lava tubes.
So if that’s the kind of thing you’re talking about, those things help make the game better for me. They add just a bit of interest. Finding different ways around zones is part of what makes this game fun for me.
Sounds to me like Living Story Chapters and current events are in fact quests like you describe. Events will never completely eliminate quests. However, I recently did a quest that was a current event to get a legendary weapon that included some of everything.
And of course, if you want puzzle solving, scavenger hunt type stuff, there’s stuff like collections, including the princess collection which is unlike any type of dynamic event.
Quests are already present in this game. Dynamic events are the other side of the equation.
There are some serious logistical problems about adding the story back in, since LS season 1 had few instances. Most of it was open world. Some of it required huge numbers of players. It was never designed to be brought back. And the amount of work required to do so would likely be prohibitive.
There’s no way Anet will take resources to make content many of us have done, when they can make new content that’s new for everyone. It’s a better use of resources.
I’m probably missing some variables, but it seems like the general takeaway is that “finding your way to a populated map” needs to be a more transparent and obvious process to the player.
For instance, a system where…. say you port to VB and then you hit a checkbox that says you want to do meta events. It does some behind-the-scenes checks and then prompts you to join a map that is built on other players having hit the same checkbox. This could even be set as the “default” checked option for maps like VB, since it’s probably the most common way one would want to play the map.
Then you’d have a couple other options as well, like map completion (for things like exploring or HP trains), story. And maybe a more generic option like “other” that players can use to match for unique circumstances, like special farm areas.
In addition to this, I think it’d be a good idea to tweak how squads are put together and have this queue system automatically put people into the same squad, for options where grouping is an expected part of it (ex: meta events).
In other words, mimick how taxiing works for getting people grouped together, in a way that is more transparent and automated. Taxiing and LFG could be left in still as a manual option, if players want to go that route for edge cases that go outside the automated system (or in cases where the automated system is borked for whatever reason).
My answer to all of this was to find a couple of friends. 90% plus of the hot maps can be done by a group of 3.
Oh and BTW, I did have a time frame a few days ago (I think it was like evening-ish on a weekday) where I was trying to do events in AB and could not find people, like at all. Taxiing was pretty much dead under that section. I tried multiple times telling people I was doing pylons in map chat… got maybe 3-4 people in total in the 20-30 minutes I tried for. Tried tagging up several times, including trying queuing up in LFG to try to get people to join me.
Was mind-boggingly dead. When I finally just gave up after it took a handful of us something like 20 minutes to activate one pylon, I peeked around in LFG and did notice that TD seemed to be at the height of its meta, so maybe that was pulling in most of the active players in HoT maps. I had no idea TD was nearing that stage when I started trying to find people for pylons though, and really no way to know, without tracking the meta somehow or going to TD myself. Plus I didn’t really want to be TD at that moment.
So I mean, dead zones are not bigfoot. They are certainly something that exists in some capacity. Granted, in the times I’ve played since I came back, that is the worst I’ve seen it when I was trying to do events.
Edit: Meant AB, not VB. Wrong initials.
The meta schedule is found on timer sights like gw2timer.com which is the one I use. It’s no different than tracking world boss events. I wouldn’t bother doing fire ele until it was going to be up. That’s just how it is.
Awfully quick to jump to “Screw Anet they suck” aren’t ya?
The consoles reset. According to Wiki they reset daily or with different instances / characters if you successfully answer a question, or after 10 minutes if you get a wrong answer.
The achievement is simply to answer 20 questions correctly. You could do it 20 times at the same console if you wanted to wait / instance hop. That’s why there’s no checklist, because its not a “find all the consoles” achievement, just answering 20 questions total.
Still, a checklist would be very helpfull.
It’s a repeatable quest, just learn where they are and do them. The checklist is for one time items that you get once. Since these reset every day, you’d need a daily checklist. Where would you put it, once you get the achievement? Because after the achievement you can keep doing them to open the chest.
If it only happened after the last patch, then it’s a bug and needs to be reported.
I don’t know if the leaks are real or not real, but I’d welcome mounts in the game. I’ve been pro mount for years, mostly because I see it as yet another way to customize my character, just as I see mini-pets, mail carriers and finishers.
I don’t really love the idea of raiding but I do love the idea of collecting, including collecting skins. I collect ranger pets. And I’d collect mounts as well.
Something else I can collect for my characters? I’m all in.
I would say under an hour. Depends how many times you fail during certain fights.
Also depends on whether you want to do achievements and figure them out for yourself, or if you’re using a guide. Because if you’re doing achievements and figuring it out on your own, there’s no way it’s an hour. Trust me on that.
I disagree with people who say the new zones are dead because you need LFG to get to them, because that’s how they were designed. It doesn’t make them dead, any mote than it makes any other form of content that needs coordination and people dead to use tools to find people to do it.
I don’t believe this to be the full story. The way mega server shards seem to propagate, and the number of people actually needed to complete zone metas says to me that ANet designed meta events to function independently of the LFG. If people stayed put, the mega server algorithms would likely result in most shards having enough people to advance a zone’s meta event. However, if people leave a zone to flock to fuller zones, this results in other shards being under-populated.
Throw in that there are (likely) a lot more followers than leaders. Even if there are enough people to complete an event, if the zone does not look organized, people will go to one that does. There is overwhelming evidence on these and other forums that as the MMO consumer base has aged, convenience has become of paramount importance.
I believe that the only way to ensure that mega shards don’t appear dead would be for convenience tools like the LFG and Join In to be removed. If that occurred, people might step up. I say might because while that’s what used to happen with dedicated servers, we also saw people guesting even back then. Guesting was a preview of the mega-server/LFG paradigm that’s in place now. I also say might because once a developer gives players convenience, at least some of them will rage and quit if that convenience is removed rather than reverting to a play-style where initiative and enterprise prevail.
Convenience, short attention spans and a desire for rapid gratification also cause at least some of the antipathy towards the LFG “solution” to “dead” zones. Once someone experiences the frustration of a “zone is full” notice when trying to Join In, the willingness to keep trying or come back later can get trumped by the myriad other forms of entertainment available on demand or other life concerns.
I really don’t think that there is a developer-side solution to the problem. ANet cannot remove the LFG or Join In without earning even more criticism than “dead” HoT maps bring. They cannot change peoples’ natures to make them choose a path of greater resistance. At best, they might be able to tweak the algorithms which open and close shards or change zone caps. I’m not convinced that either numerical manipulation would be better, though.
TL:DR: Mega-servers are designed so that most maps will have enough people to progress the meta. The “dead maps” issue’s primary cause is LFG/Join In, and there is little to nothing ANet can do to fix it. As seems to be par for the course in MMO’s these days, convenience is both the cause of complaints about the issue and the cause of the issue.
You may well be right, but the real take away from what I was saying should have been the zones are not dead, even though some people say they are. They’re not even close to dead. If they were, I couldn’t do the stuff I do pretty much every day or every other day.
@;Labjax.2465
The point is I’m not personally insulting people who disagree with me, and if people take it what way, I’m sorry.
I do personally have something to say people people saying the new zones are dead, because it’s factually untrue. I disagree with people who say the new zones are dead because you need LFG to get to them, because that’s how they were designed. It doesn’t make them dead, any mote than it makes any other form of content that needs coordination and people dead to use tools to find people to do it.
I’ve also said the core game doesn’t adequately prepare people for the expansion, unless they’ve played LS 2 all the way through, or possibly LS 1.
However, I’ve never said people are professional complainers because they don’t like the zone. I’m simply suggesting they may not exist in the same numbers as people assume they do. People saying there are so many complaints and not so much support are demonstably wrong,, by the 50/50 post count I pointed out before.
One person is saying it’s this way and I’m saying it’s not so cut and dried. I’m not sure those are the same things.
I never claimed to be part of any majority. I just don’t think those that are complaining, often using hyperbole or even actual misinformation, are helping their own position by doing so.
For example, anyone who spends as much time in HoT as I do will tell you for a fact it’s not dead.
A person who goes to DS and doesn’t use LFG and doesn’t know how to get to an active map might well think it is and may well post about it, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit silently and allow it to get by.
My argument is, and has always been, that the expansion was a mixed success. That some people really like it and some people don’t like it and no one group has any kind of majority.
Further, the people who don’t like it are very much divided on why they don’t like it. Some are saying the mobs are too hard, some are saying the maps are too complex, some don’t like the timer, or the mini-games. They’re all different complaints.
Furthermore, I’m saying that there were many other factors that affected sales of HoT including bad pricing, the character slot debacle, the choice to nerf dungeon gold completely, the way fractals were handled at first, and they WvW new map fiasco.
There’s lots wrong besides the new zone being hard or confusing to some people. Trying to use lacklustre sales as evidence of any one point of view is just a guess at best.
I’m not saying people aren’t entitled to dislike the expansion. I’m not saying that they’re professional complainers, and I don’t appreciate being called a professional defender myself.
But that’s no reason for me not to provide the other side of the coin.
Have you missed where I’ve said the core game really doesn’t prepare people adequately for HoT? Have you missed where I’ve said I don’t claim to be part of any majority?
But I will pipe up if people claim those zones are dead, because it’s factually untrue. Two weeks ago, I took a returning guildie through AB, TD and DS completion. Took us several hours. There were only two of us.
I’m pretty sure if it were dead, we couldn’t have managed thatg.
To that end, I’m willing to run zone completes of any HOT zone with any one on a US server to prove my point.
All along I’ve said I’ll show people how to do this. Some people have taken me up on it, but not many. Of those who have taken me up on it, most of them continue to play HOT content.
The “imposter” idea was only just revealed at the end of the last episode. It may be three months for us, but it’s not 3 months for the characters in the story.
We’re in the middle of a serial, not at the end of it. It wasn’t built up with foreshadowing because it’s not a mystery in the first place.
Far more important, I think, is the idea that we might not be able to safely kill any more elder dragons. That’s far more of a plot twist and it’s had plenty of foreshadowing.
No the game isn’t dying. It’s not close to dying. The team has been releasing new story and a new zone every 2-3 months, which pretty much proves it’s not dying. This is while working on an expansion.
As for the story, it’s not such an easy question to ask. The personal story takes you through to level 80. After that, you have the Living Story Season 1 which can’t be played. It was live and pretty much real time. There’s a recap in game and a much better video floating around, but it can’t be played.
Then you have the Living Story Season 2, which can be purchased with gems, followed by the story in HoT, which you get by purchasing HoT, followed by Living Story Season 3.
You buy those right now episode by episode with gems. If you’ve logged in while they were live, though you get them free. I have no idea which ones you have unlocked ,though you’ll certainly have chapter five, which is the most recent. You can check this in your story journal.
This game is very very different from Guild Wars 1. Those who came in expecting Guild Wars 1.5 were probably disappointed. However, I knew it would be different before launch just by reading what was said about the game, so even as a long time Guild Wars 1 player, I loved the game.
There’s plenty to be found here, lore and story wise, but it’s not in your face. You have to look for it.
I apologize for my negative disposition with HOT. I have posted on a few threads over the years about my dissatisfaction with HOT, and I see many familiar defenders of HOT on this thread. I do find resonance with this OP, and many others that have had similar experiences. It feels like the conversation hasn’t really evolved though. Many new players enjoy core Tyria, and run into a wall in HOT. They make their point on the forum, and there’s almost a professional team of posters ready to smack them down with honed arguments of why the OP’s experience isn’t valid. So I will retire for a few months again and see if things have changed. Good luck OP, there are people out there that understand your experience of HOT and support your point of view.
Even early on the support/I hate hot threads had about 50/50 on the posters. One side doesn’t have any kind of clear demograhic.
On top of that, the game did well for many many months, at least 3-4 quarters after HoT launched before it started to slip. HoT wasn’t as detrimental to the game as some people make it sound.
It lost some casual players, it picked up some raiders.
And since it’s been proven that more people will complain than compliment, I believe most people didn’t share the same complaints about HoT as the OP though undoubtedly some did. Also those complaints are split into two major groups, difficulty, of content and how confusing the map is. Not everyone who is confused by the map wants the easy content. Not everyone that wants the easy content necessarily wants simple maps. You don’t like it so strongly you’re assuming most people or a ton of people feel like you do. It’s probably not as high a percentage as you think.
All that said, if you post a negative post on something like Reddit, which is not moderator but fan moderated, you’ll find that they tend to get downvoted. That is to say the reddit audience has more people that like the new map complexity and difficulty than don’t.
Of course, that’s not really indicating anything since those people are in fact, more dedicated to the game and likely represent more skilled players.
Still its’ not as cut and dried as you seem to think.
Reading your response, I am compelled to ask what it has to do with the post you are replying to?
You don’t like it so strongly you’re assuming most people or a ton of people feel like you do. It’s probably not as high a percentage as you think.
And specifically, where does he say this?
Where does he say this? It’s implied by this series of statements.
“Many new players enjoy core Tyria, and run into a wall in HOT. They make their point on the forum, and there’s almost a professional team of posters ready to smack them down with honed arguments of why the OP’s experience isn’t valid.”
He’s using the word many, and calling those who disagree a “professional team of posters”. I know that you agree with him. That doesn’t change the implication of what he’s stating. We’re a professional team of posters, not just players who like the new zone and think it’s fine.
When people posted, originally, about how hard the zones were, I audited many of those threads for unique posts. It was always about 50/50 about difficulty.
But I could say the same. I see the same group of people complaining about difficulty and map complexity and platforming over and over. It doesn’t mean you guys don’t feel that way. It doesn’t mean there aren’t other people who feel this way.
But then again it doesn’t mean those who feel different are a professional group of people responding. We’re responding in the same way that you guys are complaining. You feel passionately and we feel passionately.
Many people no doubt feel both ways. The thing is, it is my belief, that if the game doesn’t progress in difficulty, we’ll lose more people than we’ll keep. Finding that sweet spot is hard. With HoT, Anet overtuned it a bit, and went back and made some changs. For some people it’s still overtuned, but not for everyone and I don’t even believe it’s overtuned for most people.
And again, complaints are broken into to major groups that don’t even necessarily have the same complaint. So this whole I see a lot of people posting this, well I see a lot of people posting against this.
Not just a “professional group of posters”.
I apologize for my negative disposition with HOT. I have posted on a few threads over the years about my dissatisfaction with HOT, and I see many familiar defenders of HOT on this thread. I do find resonance with this OP, and many others that have had similar experiences. It feels like the conversation hasn’t really evolved though. Many new players enjoy core Tyria, and run into a wall in HOT. They make their point on the forum, and there’s almost a professional team of posters ready to smack them down with honed arguments of why the OP’s experience isn’t valid. So I will retire for a few months again and see if things have changed. Good luck OP, there are people out there that understand your experience of HOT and support your point of view.
Even early on the support/I hate hot threads had about 50/50 on the posters. One side doesn’t have any kind of clear demograhic.
On top of that, the game did well for many many months, at least 3-4 quarters after HoT launched before it started to slip. HoT wasn’t as detrimental to the game as some people make it sound.
It lost some casual players, it picked up some raiders.
And since it’s been proven that more people will complain than compliment, I believe most people didn’t share the same complaints about HoT as the OP though undoubtedly some did. Also those complaints are split into two major groups, difficulty, of content and how confusing the map is. Not everyone who is confused by the map wants the easy content. Not everyone that wants the easy content necessarily wants simple maps. You don’t like it so strongly you’re assuming most people or a ton of people feel like you do. It’s probably not as high a percentage as you think.
All that said, if you post a negative post on something like Reddit, which is not moderator but fan moderated, you’ll find that they tend to get downvoted. That is to say the reddit audience has more people that like the new map complexity and difficulty than don’t.
Of course, that’s not really indicating anything since those people are in fact, more dedicated to the game and likely represent more skilled players.
Still its’ not as cut and dried as you seem to think.
Do guilds really do this? I’ve been missing out on an opportunity. I could be rich! Rich!
No guild should ever charge an admission price. It’s ridiculous.
I have yet to see a single argument that shows how adding a new race would make the game better in any way.
It would give casual people something else to level for one. So much of the new content is centered around hard content. That is it’s more geared for people with a higher skill set. A new race with a new starting area would change the game up for people who just want to level more alts and are tired of the five they have.
I’m an alt guy and I’d absolutely welcome a new race.
That said I don’t see us getting one either way.
It’s between Ember Bay and Draconis Mons.
I really like the design of Ember Bay and it’s a very nice place to go farm karma, particularly since I also get destroyer lodestones while doing it.
But the Oakheart’s Essence mastery is just so much fun, and I love the map design of Draconis Mons.
So for now I’d have to say Draconis Mons, but it’s also a new shiny toy. In another couple of months it might be Ember Bay again.
Is the stable player base increasing or decreasing?
I’m pretty sure it’s decreasing. However, I’m pretty sure the stable player base of every single themepark MMO decreases deeper into an expansion cycle. It’s like asking are you older now than you were a second ago? Well yeah, sure you are. This game is older now.
But then an expansion comes out and people come back to play it. Different people consume content at different rates. There are still people that are working on getting masteries and there are still new players.
If you think that a yearafter an expansion WoW or FFXIV or any AAA MMO maintains it’s player base, I’m not really sure what to tell you.
The real question isn’t whether the stable player base has decreased or not. The real question is how the game does over time compared to other similar games. Still plenty of people playing this long into an expansion cycle.
I don’t really get the problem. Enemies are only interesting if they’re stronger than we are. If they’;re the same or weaker, what’s the point. If they can do only what I can do, and they can’t adjust their builds but I can, then they’re dead and not worth my time.
You can’t adjust your build mid combat if I run up on you and engage in combat your build can’t be changed and your stuck the way you were prior. The whole build changing thing doesn’t even address the issue at all for instance no one is saying the npc’s can’t have different builds. Warrior NPC’s have different builds because they use different weapons. Running up on a hammer npc and one with a sword and shield is different because their builds are different but they still stay within the confines of their class.
We have non-humanoid and npc’s with legit lore reasons to surpass the limits but your basic mob/npc shouldn’t surpass that basic class limit.
If they kept Mesmers within their confines and used a preset scepter build with counters or a buff build for their allies they’d be much more difficult to deal with and provide some more depth with the combat. The complaints are mainly rooted in the immersion breaking nature of how things are done right now For instance would you rather have seen all those swords shooting out of the ground in Lake Doric or would you have preferred if those Mesmers were using glamours/wells/chaos storm instead? Also if those Mesmers with their health bars back to full were instead Necromancers using one of their many transformations and actual dbl health pool?
Yes but I can go back and try again with a different build and NPCs can’t do that.
Some people want to be able to beat everything on the first try with the build they have. I couldn’t do it in Guild Wars 1 and I can’t do it here…and that’s okay.
Not everything should fall to the same build. In fact, it was harder in some ways in Guild Wars 1, because undead were immune to bleeding, poison and disease, and if you had those you were screwed. You’d have to go back and try again.
An NPC is static. It can never change what it does. Your job as a player is to figure out how to beat it, not beat it automatically.
This is why HoT bothered so many people. They had to learn how to deal with things that they hadn’t had to deal with before. Some would say that’s what games are all about.
I think if my build and my skill set just kept killing different stuff over and over again, this game would be very boring.
Not to mention you don’t even have to die. If you try something and see it’s not working you can break off, the NPC can leash, and you can change your build and try again., I’ve done that many times.
two words, thermal tubes.
You can get from the submarine to Rata Arcanum in a few seconds if you’re willing to jump in them:so here you go, a map, please forward it to everyone who says the map is hard to navigate.
Thermal Tubes take you literally everywhereNo, there are places like Golemancer’s Tomb and Druid’s Grotto that are very difficult to find / get to. And when the events happen there, a lot of people don’t bother because of that fact.
It’s massively easy to get to Druid’s Grotto. Not sure why anyone has a problem with that. And there’s an easy shortcut to the Golemancer’s Tomb. Once people learn it, it’ll be fine. Just like it used to be hard to get to the Bat Guano hero point in VB and people finally learned how.
That’s because they are dead the very nature of forcing the use of lfg is something that only has to be done on the HoT maps. In addition even doing so during certain times of the day there isn’t even anything available for LFG whether your using a timer or not.
The answer is not to do them
Anet is obviously aware of this with the action they took with season 3 in regards to mastery. So TC this is what you should do get the mastery points you can get in HoT then move into the season 3 maps because while those maps all have masteries they provide more mastery points than the masteries they provide. They are also all possible to get playing solo without the need of LFG. We still have another S3 map to go and that means even more floating Mastery points and each floating mastery point in the new maps will replace one you can’t easily obtain anymore in the core maps.
All these people defending the use of LFG fail to see that the very fact that these maps are so heavily reliant on it is a problem. Core maps, S2, and S3 maps all have meta events and those events get done with the people actively engaging on those maps 24/7. The new map has two legendary destroyers and two groups of five people can easily kill both because they scale properly. HoT doesn’t scale like the rest of the game so there isn’t that constant presence of people soloing content who will band together on those maps.
Basic point better off getting the HoT points on the five S3 maps because its unlikely Anet will ever go back and adjust the HoT maps. Heck with HoT they made things harder for new players in core what with the leather and recipe changes with reduced drops so based on that they’ll probably make things harder in HoT related content too.
There were four full maps doing the TD meta last night. Not sure why you think that’s dead. but obviously you don’t spend that much time in HOT.
I spent most of my time in HOT and the new zones, and I can assure you none of them are dead. They’re simply more active at certain times BY DESIGN.
The use of the LFG tool to get to an active map also has to be done for Triple Trouble, and that’s not dead either. It’s just hard to do on a map with randoms because the content is harder.
NCsoft net plunges 74% on weak game sales.
http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3033273&cloc=etc%7Cjad%7Cgooglenews
Kind of says it all.
It says it all. It says mostly that people try to read headlines and don’t actually read the article. Guild Wars 2 has NEVER been NCsoftg’s big game. Lineage has always been the big bread winner for NcSoft and Lineage sales are way down and are expected to pick up next quarter anyway.
How are you equating Guild Wars 2’s progress with NcSoft’s progress. For a 4.5 year old game that hasn’t had an expansion in a year and a half, Guild Wars 2 is likely well within expectation.
It’s like saying WOW was dying because a year and a half after an expansion is brings in less money.
People should really read the article rather than just look at the headline. No one has said at NcSoft that Guild Wars 2 sales have been disappoint.
Wildstar, in the meantime, is no longer listed at all.
Reality check here. Guild Wars Prophecies had a total of 208 quests. That’s all it had. Guild Wars 2 launched with over 1500 dynamic events.
snip
Guild Wars 2 however, has scouts and scouts tell a completely voiced story about exactly what’s going on at all the hearts in an area. They’re pretty detailed. They give as much info as quests.
You mean the NPC’s telling you where to find certain heart quests? Let’s take a look at them:
Corporal Nim Callahan: “Best watch your step in this area. My Seraph brothers and sisters maintain an outpost just north of here, but we’re spread thin and constantly harassed by nearby bandits. The outlaws have three fortified camps to the west as well, so be careful. Anything you can do to secure this area would be appreciated.”
snip
Quest games are not only generally linear, but they’re also static. Here is a story handed to you on a silver platter. Okay, thanks. If I want a story I can read a book.
I already provided enough examples (Star Wars The Old Republic, The Elder Scrolls Online) to prove that you can have the chance to make your own decisions, let villains die or cooperate with them, lie to your allies, act corruptly and just care for the money. These types of quests are not linear and static. GW2 events however don’t provide any sort of decisions you can make (except for: do the event? yes/no).
In fact, the number of quests in all four original Guild Wars products is less than the number of dynamic events in this game at launch.
And that still doesn’t mean that those events contain more story than the quests in GW1. It doesn’t change anything if you mention the numbers twice.
In addition, some of those dynamic event chains tell quite complex stories, including the temples in Orr and the meta events in HoT.
But even stuff like the Visier’s Tower in Straits of Devestation has a lot of information there. Again, it’s just not handed to you. You have to work to get it.
Some of us, probably those who have played old adventure games, are more likely to go the extra mile, talk to NPCs and piece together stuff.
I’ve explored almost every inch of the core Tyria maps, even found the hidden sights like the cerebro jumping puzzle in Caledon Forest. GW2 doesn’t contain as much story as you’re claiming.
If you don’t believe that much story/lore is in the game, you should watch Wooden Potatoes lore videos. There’s a ton of story here. You don’t get it from an individual heart, or an individual dynamic event or an individual scout. You get pieces from all over and you have to build it up yourself.
I personally find that more rewarding.
I’ve watched many of them and most of the time he’s combining old Guild Wars 1 lore with new insights of Guild Wars 2. How things changed in Tyria, what old relicts could have an impact on the current Living Story,… just like I’m aware of that_shamans map which provides the exact position of some areas of GW1 in relation to the GW2 map. Most of the times, these old places are nothing more but ruins (sights on the map) in GW2. They don’t have any purpose anymore other than pointing out that there’s been something 250 years ago.
He directly said in his post that the old static quest style is superior for telling stories. I’m directly disagreeing with that. The numbers were brought into it to show that there’s a lot less going on in that game and it’s linear. It’s one way to tell a story but not necessarily the best way to tell the story.
The story here is more like a puzzle with a lot more pieces. I prefer this, but I’m just pointing out you can absolutely tell stories here as good as static quests in other games. You can’t use one bad dynamic event and an example of why old quests are superior.
Because I can do the same thing. Go and pick the worst quest in Guild Wars 1 and say that quests in Guild Wars 1 are inferior. I choose not to do that, because it’s misleading.
We’re talking about whether this particular quest is boring and I believe it is. But I also don’t believe that’s a barometer that can be used for dynamic events vs static quests.
It seems there’re now two parallel discussions :
On general content design, the GW1 quest system, as well as most other MMO, was far better in my opinion, because what you made as a character made sense. For immersion, it’s far better. GW1 had lots of text to explain the ins and outs of what you were doing. In more recent MMO’s, it’s voiced :p
Yet, in GW2, renown hearts have, say, 3 lines to justify that you 80% of the time just have to slaughter whatever appears red on your screen. Dynamic events may have more indepth (I’m thinking of Orr, or Hinterlands) but are summarized as “follow the tag and kill everything.”
I remember events were supposed to be better for replayability and immersion (“your action really have an effect on the world”) : I think it’s wrong. You don’t feel like you’ve got a purpose, and 10 minutes later, it’ll just start again as if nothing happened. I understand there’s no way to do better in an open system though.Specifically on Draconis map, that game design lack of quality leads to that kind of artificial replayability. Of course it’s not compulsory to get that backpack. But it’s content. Draconis Mont takes 2 hours to finish when you know it a bit, and the living story episode takes roughly the same. We waited 2 months for half a day of content, and we know we’ll have to wait 2 months for the next one. But there’re achievements to do, and collections to do. Content.
Living Story 2 achievements for glowing armor were far better designed in my opinion, precisely because they weren’t time gated. Of course, story achievements were really tedious, and now they’re better. But you didn’t have to redo the very same things every day, especially when those “things” match the flaws underlined in point 1.Reality check here. Guild Wars Prophecies had a total of 208 quests. That’s all it had. Guild Wars 2 launched with over 1500 dynamic events.
Some of those quests were move this honeycomb and bait the bees away. Some had story.
Guild Wars 2 however, has scouts and scouts tell a completely voiced story about exactly what’s going on at all the hearts in an area. They’re pretty detailed. They give as much info as quests.
Quest games are not only generally linear, but they’re also static. Here is a story handed to you on a silver platter. Okay, thanks. If I want a story I can read a book.
But the stories in Guild Wars 2 aren’t linear and they’re not told in a linear fashion, making them more like real life than like a game. That is to say NPCs do stuff, say stuff, you can follow them around and watch them interact. They even interact when no one else is there.
There were, before LA was rebuilt, two guards doing their rounds of LA. They talked at at least half a dozen locations, actually more, but I don’t have an exact number. They showed how some elements of the Lionguard had become corrupt. They told how the prejudice against Sylvari was spreading. They told a story about how the rebuilding was coming and how people dealt with it. There’s plenty of story telling in this game. It’s just not in your face storytelling handed to you on a silver platter. You have to dig for it, much like real life. I don’t go into new areas in real life and get a breadcrumb trail. I learn stuff by talking to people, listening to conversations around me. Watching what’s going on.
In fact, the number of quests in all four original Guild Wars products is less than the number of dynamic events in this game at launch. In addition, some of those dynamic event chains tell quite complex stories, including the temples in Orr and the meta events in HoT.
But even stuff like the Visier’s Tower in Straits of Devestation has a lot of information there. Again, it’s just not handed to you. You have to work to get it.
Some of us, probably those who have played old adventure games, are more likely to go the extra mile, talk to NPCs and piece together stuff.
If you don’t believe that much story/lore is in the game, you should watch Wooden Potatoes lore videos. There’s a ton of story here. You don’t get it from an individual heart, or an individual dynamic event or an individual scout. You get pieces from all over and you have to build it up yourself.
I personally find that more rewarding.
i can understand that and i have experienced that in the game but 10 days in and i dont feel that with draconis its ust another daily thing you do
I’ve already said twice now that I don’t like the event the way it’s handled. The person I quoted is saying static quests are somehow better/superior than what we have, particularly when involved in story telling. You can’t judge the whole system on one flawed collection is what I’m saying.
It seems there’re now two parallel discussions :
On general content design, the GW1 quest system, as well as most other MMO, was far better in my opinion, because what you made as a character made sense. For immersion, it’s far better. GW1 had lots of text to explain the ins and outs of what you were doing. In more recent MMO’s, it’s voiced :p
Yet, in GW2, renown hearts have, say, 3 lines to justify that you 80% of the time just have to slaughter whatever appears red on your screen. Dynamic events may have more indepth (I’m thinking of Orr, or Hinterlands) but are summarized as “follow the tag and kill everything.”
I remember events were supposed to be better for replayability and immersion (“your action really have an effect on the world”) : I think it’s wrong. You don’t feel like you’ve got a purpose, and 10 minutes later, it’ll just start again as if nothing happened. I understand there’s no way to do better in an open system though.Specifically on Draconis map, that game design lack of quality leads to that kind of artificial replayability. Of course it’s not compulsory to get that backpack. But it’s content. Draconis Mont takes 2 hours to finish when you know it a bit, and the living story episode takes roughly the same. We waited 2 months for half a day of content, and we know we’ll have to wait 2 months for the next one. But there’re achievements to do, and collections to do. Content.
Living Story 2 achievements for glowing armor were far better designed in my opinion, precisely because they weren’t time gated. Of course, story achievements were really tedious, and now they’re better. But you didn’t have to redo the very same things every day, especially when those “things” match the flaws underlined in point 1.
Reality check here. Guild Wars Prophecies had a total of 208 quests. That’s all it had. Guild Wars 2 launched with over 1500 dynamic events.
Some of those quests were move this honeycomb and bait the bees away. Some had story.
Guild Wars 2 however, has scouts and scouts tell a completely voiced story about exactly what’s going on at all the hearts in an area. They’re pretty detailed. They give as much info as quests.
Quest games are not only generally linear, but they’re also static. Here is a story handed to you on a silver platter. Okay, thanks. If I want a story I can read a book.
But the stories in Guild Wars 2 aren’t linear and they’re not told in a linear fashion, making them more like real life than like a game. That is to say NPCs do stuff, say stuff, you can follow them around and watch them interact. They even interact when no one else is there.
There were, before LA was rebuilt, two guards doing their rounds of LA. They talked at at least half a dozen locations, actually more, but I don’t have an exact number. They showed how some elements of the Lionguard had become corrupt. They told how the prejudice against Sylvari was spreading. They told a story about how the rebuilding was coming and how people dealt with it. There’s plenty of story telling in this game. It’s just not in your face storytelling handed to you on a silver platter. You have to dig for it, much like real life. I don’t go into new areas in real life and get a breadcrumb trail. I learn stuff by talking to people, listening to conversations around me. Watching what’s going on.
In fact, the number of quests in all four original Guild Wars products is less than the number of dynamic events in this game at launch. In addition, some of those dynamic event chains tell quite complex stories, including the temples in Orr and the meta events in HoT.
But even stuff like the Visier’s Tower in Straits of Devestation has a lot of information there. Again, it’s just not handed to you. You have to work to get it.
Some of us, probably those who have played old adventure games, are more likely to go the extra mile, talk to NPCs and piece together stuff.
If you don’t believe that much story/lore is in the game, you should watch Wooden Potatoes lore videos. There’s a ton of story here. You don’t get it from an individual heart, or an individual dynamic event or an individual scout. You get pieces from all over and you have to build it up yourself.
I personally find that more rewarding.
OP, you’re be right if this was a mystery or the end of the story, but I don’t believe Balthazar was the big reveal and I don’t believe that we know the whole story yet. This is written more like a serial than a novel and it follows completely different rules.
In a book, with a definitive ending, sure. But that’s a book like a mystery. This was never really supposed to be a mystery. Hell we didn’t even know he was an imposter for sure until the last episode.
That’s a very short build up for what you’re talking about. And after all, this came out immediately on the heels of that. To you it’s been 2-3 months. For the characters, very little time has passed, comparatively. So yeah, it was never meant to be a plot twist, in the sense that you’re talking about.
The biggest twist is that we may not be able to kill more dragons at all, but Balthazar doesn’t care if the world is destroyed or not in his personal quest for power. If that ends up being the case, that’s going to be bad.
I’m pretty sure the dragons aren’t going to stop doing damage. I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen the last of balthazar and I’m pretty sure that whatever comes next, will be the real ending.
Anet can’t change the method of achievement for Gift of Battle. How else would they get people to want to play WvW?
Plenty of people play WvW for all sorts of reasons. It’s not at all clear why they changed it. Originally, getting badges of honor was difficult and slow without WvW; later they made it easier. With this change, they turned it around to closer to how it was at launch: WvW required. Although I’d argue that it’s easier today.
Moreover, not everyone goes after legendaries. I’m not sure anyone things that it could possibly attract a lot of people.
So, no, it’s almost certain that they weren’t trying to drum up numbers for WvW; there are far easier, and less controversial ways to do that.
They changed it because originally WvW required completion. That meant there was a WvW component to the legendary. When they took that away it required badges of honor, which I had plenty of just from acheivement chests. So I could actually do very very very little WvW and still get my gift of battle (I’m aware you have a minimum level to do that, but that goes very fast.
Now you’re back to having to do WvW again, to get a legendary, which apparently was always the intention.
Jumping puzzles are some of my favorite content in the game. And they’re popular.
As a person who lived in Tombraider for a long time, I can tell you that other games don’t necesssarily do it better. There were plenty of jumps in tombraider and other games like Prince of Persia where it looks like you can’t make it and you can. Figuring it out is part of the game. Removing that uncertainty would make jumping puzzles less interesting for me.
You know, there has been ‘Do 4 Renown Hearts’ per day for some time now. Not a lot of complaints. Except now, there’s a special reward attached, after a couple of weeks of doing it; I’d say that’s an improvement.
Still, if it is so very onerous, the reward can’t be worth doing. Thus, just don’t do it. The metrics will be all that ArenaNet needs.
Not sure this works, any more than I"m sure it works for raids. I’m doing the collection and I’m not enjoying it. It doesn’t make me happy to play the game. It’s not interesting. So if I do it and like the game less, no big deal…unless that happens a lot.
When it starts happening more and more, people leave the game.
The metrics and show 80% of the players who play the zone are making the backpack. But it doesn’t mean it’s good for the game long term. In this case I don’t think it is.
I don’t really get the problem. Enemies are only interesting if they’re stronger than we are. If they’;re the same or weaker, what’s the point. If they can do only what I can do, and they can’t adjust their builds but I can, then they’re dead and not worth my time.
In case you didn’t realize it, the map is on a timer. You can find when it’s up by using a site like gw2timer.com .
Then as everyone else said, get to the map early and join a squad. It’s never deserted when the event is going on. Just get there early.
You will be killed and have to waypoint and join on a new map, so be aware of that.
I believe that part of the dissatisfaction with HoT was how poorly the core game prepared people for the increased difficulty.
(Some) Players didnt learn game mechanics because, simply put, they didnt really need to. If the game allowed you to complete events, etc, without doing more than pressing the 1 and 6 keys, and sometimes not doing even that much, then why do more?
I enjoyed the difficulty increase precisely because it rewarded actually paying attention, target prioritization, and knowing my class. But I had learned to play my character in spite of the core game telling me not to bother. Not to put in the effort.
This has been my argument all along. The core game didn’t prepare people, but the living story did. Both Living Story Seasons 1 and 2 did prepare people for harder content. If you did the marionette, the battle for lion’s arch, escape from lion’s arch, the nightmare tower, and many of the battles in season 2 (and particularly the achievements), you’d have gotten a lot better.
I did all that stuff, thus I was prepared for HOT. The jump from Orr to HOT without living story is vast. The jump from the Living Story Season 2 really isn’t.
The early stages of LS1 were so offputting that I took a break from the game. Came close to uninstalling.
But temporary events that werent available for everyone to experience shouldnt be counted on as training content for an expansion that came a couple of years later IMO.
Silverwastes was better for this IMO.
But Living Story Season 2 is not temporary content. It’s part of the content. The problem is not everyone got it free. Whether you missed Season 1 or not, you’re choosing not to play Season 2 if you don’t buy it.
It’s not just that you’re missing story which you can watch on youtube. You’re missing learning to play the game as it involves. And that’s a problem.
I think that S2 could have been marketed better for people who didnt necessarily even know it existed. If the company was counting on it to train people for HoT they needed to be more aggressive with it.
100% this. Most people just ask what are the rewards like without realizing that you really do need it to evolve with the game. I never really liked that it was a seperate purchase. It probably should have been sold as a mini expansion or something. It definitely needed better messaging.
There were so many fights in that that would have prepared people for HOT content. Or at least indicated the direction the game was moving in.
I did that content and so was not blindsided by HOT.