Guild Wars 2

You’re using the tool for an unintended purpose though. It’s not something that they’re interested in punishing, but it’s not a feature they’re supporting either.

It is a good point that the change to dungeon ownership directly hurts sellers, but it’s an interesting switch of the burden of trust. It used to be runners and buyers were both at the mercy of sellers, now the sellers have to be able to trust buyers.

Thats the misunderstanding then!

And I apologize, my writing style is kind of aggressive ><

Private small-group content is a very different beast than large group content, and a lot of the potential problems go away in that case.

I’m not a fan of private guild instances though, it’s very anti-community. That being said, I’m getting a stronger and stronger feeling that something related to this will be in the guild hall stuff, so maybe they will do it.

It seems a natural extension of the kind of chalenges they want to put into the halls, it’s just whether they’re wiling to break what reads to me as their stand on private instances (which seems to be ‘no for a multiple of technical and social reasons’) in order to make richer guild functionalty.

~~~

As to why I denigrate your positions, it’s an exercise in how I look at these things. I try my kitten dest to do it to myself too. In my case, I’m always trying to ask *"If I get out of my own shoes and look at it as a member of the development team, especially a high level designer or a producer, how is this going to look to me?"

Leaving aside raids, I’m definitely amongst those that would like to see a ton more small-group content. I make it a point to try to separate what I want from what the game needs, because they’re different.

Of course it causes trouble when I try to apply that kind of logic to other players, because it comes off as “Well your opinions don’t matter!” That’s not really my intent, I think the trick of stepping out of our own POV’s is key to making these discussions useful and interesting.

Honestly though, Spoj, I’m not sure why you think your (frankly rather unusual) needs are something Anet would possibly think are something worth any non-trivial amount of dev work.

I’m not trying to be nasty, and maybe I’m misunderstanding, but ‘extrmeely hard large group content that can be done privately with smaller groups’ doesn’t hit a very large demo.

Iris Ng.9845:

“[No level required] Let’s walk lightly in Up path” -> LFG was pending for 20 minutes, unfilled.
“[80 only] Experienced, Zerker meta, Up path” -> LFG was filled within 2 minutes.

The run still ended well though.

We’ve trained people well ><

The problem is that if anything at all goes wrong it goes to pure kitten.

All groups go well if the run goes well, build police are more likely to yell at people if a mistake was made — even if the mistake was their own.

And that’s why I avoid those groups. It’s just like the guy who’s yelling at everyone else for playing wrong if their unranked pvp is losing. It’s a calculation, and I’d rather have a less optimal run than some idiot screwing up a run section and then screaming at the group.

I don’t know the rules terribly well, is recreating a thread that the moderators closed a violation of the forum TOS?

I think its a sliding scale; The more people feel the need to enforce their build preferences the more likely they are to be problematic in the way discussed

The other side of the scale might be true as well, but most of the content is so kitten easy that the low end doesn’t matter much — well , unless you’re high enough on the scale to care about enforcing builds in some way.

I think I can tell what people advert in their LFG’s from the comments in this thread. :p

I dunno, I only advert frostbite.

I’m often left with the idea (and not just in MMO’s) that what players think they want and claim to want and what they actually will enjoy are very very different. This isn’t something you can safely say to any individual directly of course, but as a general rule I think it’s accurate to say there’s a gap there.

~~~

On the private instances, leaving technical and timer questions aside, in one sense it would be win-win, but I think that’s another philosophy thing, so I don’t expect to see it. It would still make it far to easy to go to ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, so I suspect they’ll skip it.

And again, it’s a system that benefits people in guilds that can make the private instances at the cost of those that can’t. It’s benefit to one group, at the cost to the other.

~~~

Still, I should apologize we’re going offtopic into an area of discussion that’s been seriously beaten like crazy over the course of the last several years. As far as the group content in HOT goes, I wouldn’t expect private instances or ‘make your own’ instances.

Although, gotta admit, there’s also guild hall functionality, maybe they’ll have a “Danger Room”/Boss arena. ><

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

TPMN.1483:

I don’t see how “zerkers” is relevant -I have seen the same behaviour in PHIW groups.

One thing I know for sure … People are inherently flawed and will make the worst decisions at the best of times .

Long live the rise of the machines and bow down to our new eternal overloads.

It’s not zerker per se, it’s people that put limits on their groups like that. It’s a sign of a particular mindset about play. “Heavy Only” or “No Rangers” are just as much a bad sign as ‘zerk only’.

Zerk runs have been fine for me. “Meta” “ping gear” or “heavy only” have been the bad signs for me.

To my experience, it’s more general than that… no specific message, but requirements (except for AR, which are weirdly necessary) are generally bad news.

TPMN.1483:

I don’t see how “zerkers” is relevant -I have seen the same behaviour in PHIW groups.

One thing I know for sure … People are inherently flawed and will make the worst decisions at the best of times .

Long live the rise of the machines and bow down to our new eternal overloads.

It’s not zerker per se, it’s people that put limits on their groups like that. It’s a sign of a particular mindset about play. “Heavy Only” or “No Rangers” are just as much a bad sign as ‘zerk only’.

spoj.9672:

Well it hardly requires much effort to implement methods for both sides to get what they want. I dont think this is an issue that should be us or them.

My argument would be that any instanced environment is a MUCH larger investment and has a natural exclusionary effect.

They have, to please the competitive/raid eager players, to build an entirely new environment, and substantially QA it so that exploits are at a minimum or nil.

Additionally, it can all be a bust. So few people run aetherpath that even with reusing elements of the TA map and only designing the encounters, they likely think of it as somewhat a bust.

The other thing I’d argue is that the goals are mutually exclusive. The difference between accessibility of instanced and non-instanced multi-group content is simply enormous, just due to the logistics of building a raid. Instancing off raid content is basically a huge barrier for most of the players, so unfortunately, I think that your needs and the needs of the players in the far situation are in fact mutually exclusive in this specific case.

~~~

Edit: I’d go back to the aether thing too, I’d bet money that that experience taught them not to listen to the ‘hardcore dungeon players’ words as compared to their actions. They gave them harder content with some exclusive achievements and skins and the participation is abysmal.

There are many reasons that people give for why nobody does it, but if I were their producer it would look like a pretty clear case to me.

Never ever ever join parties that advert ‘zerk only’, your chances of this kind of experience are multiplied tenfold in those groups.

There’s something about the mindset in those demands that also seems to correlate to the kind of “ITS ALL YOU GUYS FAULT” or “KICK FOR GODKNOWSWHY” attitudes.

Let them just stew with each other and run in other groups.

BilboBaggins.5620:

I think I’d really like to see a larger variety of content on the PvE experience rather than it always being about meaner, stronger, harder content. I too miss the days of long journeys where getting there was at least as rewarding as the content I traveled to. I too have gotten hooked on the easier, casual gameplay and nostalgia is making me miss those “days gone by”.

(bold mine)
If you think that’s the emphasis, I think you’re confused and playing a different game that’s not actually GW2.

I look at it as a ’what’s going to please the most people and alienate the most people?’ Trying to leave my own feelings out of it, I’m guessing that the desire to do this stuff without interference is going to be a lot less than the desire to get people into the content.

There’s also a population on these forums who’s primary purpose is to talk about how the game is doomed for any variety of reasons.

From that point of view, a negative opinion of vaguely announced upcoming plans is entirely in character.

spoj.9672:

I wouldnt say forcing everyone to play with people they dont know for challenging content is a good idea either. I dont play MMO’s to play with strangers. I play them to play with friends and guildmates. I really hope we have something which isnt more Wurm and Tequatl. Because there are a lot of players that like playing with just their small groups or guildmates.

Wildstar had good raids. It was the rest of the game which caused the game to fail.

I’ll absolutely admit I’m speculating, but their treatment/reaction with dungeons only reinforces my position I think.

Maybe as a copromise position, they’ll mastery-gate content with the lore masteries instead of the skill masteries. If there’s a world boss that you need to speak old High Hylek to get to, which is then made easier by the combat masteries, it’s a potentially great balancing point between the players needs.

You’re making content then that people need to specialize to get to, which gives early on exclusivity, and the increased difficulty of doing the content without the combat masteries should please the racing/hard private content types….

BUT It also means more and more people will have access as time goes on, and more and more people will have the skills that make it easier.

~~~

So, under that theory, they both keep the things that the raid people really want and make it so that as the encounter ages near-universal accessibility is maintained.

“I’d Like it” is in no way the same as “A good idea” (or admittedly a bad idea).

Every sign in every point of the development of GW2 has been pointing away from traditional instanced raids, and the failures of Wildstar probably aren’t making the concept any more attractive.

It’s not impossible of course, but I wouldn’t bet on it, and no amount of “What’s good for me is good for the community” projection will change their decision.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Sooo, perhaps you can explain to me how Heart of Thorns is “too small” to be an expansion? Everything I’ve seen on what has actually been announced points toward it being average or large for an MMO expansion.

If you point toward “fewer maps”, I remind you that it is fewer, but denser maps. That is, each map has a lot more going on in it than normal. Not all maps are created equal. Silverwastes is a small map, but is much, much better than Snowden Drifts.

late to the party aye? read some more of the thread.

The massive majority of the thread is dedicated to various disassemblies of your frankly unsupportable description.

Koviko.3248:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As for why it hasn’t progressed – welcome to one of the other hundred plots Anet has going on in the background with zero progress for many years.

That bothers me. While I understand that, at its core, the “story” is about us, our Living World should include more than just our personal bubble. It seems like the only continuing background story is Job-o-Tron.

They can’t use Logan as an adventurer if he’s the royal consort, either.

Morfedel.4165:

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

That city has a mursaat symbol on the door, by the way. Or at least the White Mantle symbol. If they’re not mursaat, then they’re white mantle who transformed themselves into what they thought the mursaat looked like.

But to be quite honest, I’m pretty sure they’re a mursaat redesign. They don’t look like Djinn, Margonites don’t look like that and wouldn’t make any sense, Seers have four arms, Forgotten are upright snakes with four arms that don’t wear armor or clothing, etc etc. Despite their new appearance I’m fairly certain they’re mursaat.

But they don’t resemble mursaat any more than they do those others.

They resemble mursaat a crapton more than they resemble Seers or Forgotten due to basic body types.

Matgonites and Djinn are fairly safely out too, being Elona stuff and having absolutely nothing to do with the meguuma area or the dragons (whereas the mursaat have to do with both).

It’s almost certain to be ‘points earned spent as chosen’, similar to traits for instance.

The idea is that you can direct your progression whatever you do to earn the points.

ammayhem.5962:

Windsagio.1340:

I didn’t want to massively reboot the caithe issue, beyond 1 specific difference.

Logan made mistakes, so did Caithe. The comparison is clear and almost certainly intentional.

Logan came clean, even from the beginning he had guilt, but when push came to shove he said “I did what I thought I had to do, maybe it was the wrong thing” and he has the good taste to feel guilty about it.

Caithe still has never chosen to face her mistakes, and shows no sign of doing so. She hides her guilt and makes excuses and says “YOU MUST TRUST ME!” all the time, but she’s unwilling to come to terms with her past (and present) mistakes.

~~~

The interaction between Logan and Rytlock is one of the most legitimately heroic things we see in the story of DE. Both of them had to admit their own mistakes and prejudices and come clean… and they both acknowledged that it was only a start. It was brave and noble on both of their parts.

Caithe has nothing like that, and probably can’t because nobody actually likes her anyways (as far as dialogue goes). Nobody likes her because she’s secretive and dodgy, because she can’t and won’t come to terms with her personal guilt..

One sounds like an adult, the other a child. Perhaps a play on the fact that the Sylvari are still a young race?

I know people who are still children in their 20s, not a big fan.

Quells.2498:

It sounds like fun but it negates a lot of the logic that Anet has built directly into the game, namely the lack of “trinity” and along with that the ability to break free of a “role” and be mostly self-sufficient. Also, there’s no raids.

Bold part emphasis

Crise.9401:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anything that wasn’t a collection however has not been retroactive… so not sure.

To be fair they could easily do it retroactively for anyone with at least 1 100% map completed character (since mastery points are account wide) but what if highest map complete is say 46% them scattered all around the place. It would be more complex to write an algorithm that would check eligibility for each available mastery point. This only for map exploration though.

It is likely some mastery points are through collections and those could easily be retroactive as you said, but the rest not as much.

It’s easy enough to do, they’ll do what they did for wardrobe unlocks;

You log in with each character, and it compares that characters’ completions with the list of granted mastery rewards for the account. It should be a pretty simple query for each character when you log them in, and it fits prior practice.

The other bit which I didn’t get to, which is probably actually a better example is the “X, which there are many many clear examples where the authorial intent is that they’re villains are actually good guys or even heroic”.

There’s a lot which we’re seeing with the Mursaat right now, but there’s also a concurrent thread doing the same thing with Scarlet.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jenna (telepathically): “Logan I need you”
Logan: “Sorry mate, duty calls.”
Rytlock: “WTF mate?!”

(Logan waypointed out)

Logan: “Oh, Jenna, I am here at your service.”
Jenna: “Sorry my bad, Logan baby, I figured out how to lure away the enemy. I didn’t need you after all.”
Logan: (silent – while one eye twitching)

Eir: “So…we wiped. Try again next week?”
Zojja: “You’re a horrible raid leader Eir. I’m never going to raid with you people again.”
Caithe: “Wait Zojja…”
Zojja: “Zip it!” (while gesturing the letter Z)
Rytlock: “Logan will hear this from me until I die and comes back from the Mist. Hahaha”
Snaff: “Rez plz? Anybody?”

best part bolded.

If she can’t trust the PC or DE, she’s incapable of trust. Logan trusts Rytlock who has been in the past fairly interested in seeing him BBQ’d.

This is part of the reason he’s heroic and worthy of liking and trust. He lays it all out, and there are few reservations.

There’s closure to the conflict, and both sides are left looking pretty good.

The logan hate I attribute to people being unwilling to give up the emotional satisfaction of the hate.

Gizmo.9178:

Pfft its all about them Mr.Sparkles

#asuraalldayeverydayembracetheeternalalchemybookahs

Except, if you haven’t saved frostbite I don’t trust you to know what a fractal is :p

Posted this in the HOT threads, but might get more takers here.

Standing bet to anyone on whether they’re mursaat or not (I’m pro).

It could be either yeah, but if it’s viable I’m willing to put down coin on it.

I didn’t want to massively reboot the caithe issue, beyond 1 specific difference.

Logan made mistakes, so did Caithe. The comparison is clear and almost certainly intentional.

Logan came clean, even from the beginning he had guilt, but when push came to shove he said “I did what I thought I had to do, maybe it was the wrong thing” and he has the good taste to feel guilty about it.

Caithe still has never chosen to face her mistakes, and shows no sign of doing so. She hides her guilt and makes excuses and says “YOU MUST TRUST ME!” all the time, but she’s unwilling to come to terms with her past (and present) mistakes.

~~~

The interaction between Logan and Rytlock is one of the most legitimately heroic things we see in the story of DE. Both of them had to admit their own mistakes and prejudices and come clean… and they both acknowledged that it was only a start. It was brave and noble on both of their parts.

Caithe has nothing like that, and probably can’t because nobody actually likes her anyways (as far as dialogue goes). Nobody likes her because she’s secretive and dodgy, because she can’t and won’t come to terms with her personal guilt.

~~~

We could say that’s the distinction between the paladin and the thief, but it’s still striking.

I’m very very pro-firearms guardian… either type

Slowpokeking.8720:

draxynnic.3719:

Want to name some so we can look at the specifics?

Being a hero, even being a hero on the “right” side, does not make someone good. A lot of the Greek heroes, for instance, are selfish kittens. And a lot of cases where a hero has the blood of innocents on their hands, it’s because it was unavoidable “collateral damage” in achieving some important goal, or they weren’t fully in control of themselves for one reason or another, or a case of “can’t save everyone”.

Not killing someone out of cold blood because you have the arrogance to believe they don’t deserve the honour of seeing you and living.

Cesar, Augustus, Alexander the Greater, Napoleon and a bunch more. Even if we look at the Greek heroes, Odysseus and a bunch of heroes caused a whole nation to be sacked, thousands of innocents became slaves or properties.

]Isolated instance, while he was not fully in control of his senses, which I have already acknowledged as a flaw in his personality and not having been the right thing to do… which he showed remorse for afterwards.

Stop trying to change the subject. To use a legal cliche: Balthazar is not on trial here.

It’s not an excuse, he’s a mature god with power, it is his responsibility to control his temper and not to use his power in the wrong way.

Kings and Emperors aren’t heroes, unless they’re Conan (who, tragically for us all, is fictional).

The Greek heroes are interesting comparison, but they’re both coming from a different cultural milieu and are often intentionally flawed. Odysseus and Agamemnon were both explicitly punished by the gods for the crap they pulled.

Shiren, I end up reading your post as "Anet hides their intent and many years of dedicated POV pushers (to use a wiki term) had a strong impact on the communities perception of the issues in question, to the point of having a strong codex of fanon.{

Lazaar.9123:

Don’t forget to put: NO ZERKERS

No, no, zerker-frostbite is just as valid as cavalier-frostbite.

Frostbite inclusion adds significantly to group cohesion and means all the players understand the concept of “love”.

Frostbite meta is love, and as such we don’t exclude any builds… except for no-frostbite, kitten those guys.

I’ll no longer be accepting anything else, this will be my new group message

Fractal 37. Frostbite users only, ping your frostbite on join.

I think this is gonna save everyone a lot of trouble.

The whole point of Logan’s conflict is that he was in an impossible conflict. If Jennah could have handled it she could have handled it, but she put him in with the Telepethy/mesmer crap, and left him with no choice, what with the binding oath and all.

The fact that he made the wrong choice in hindsight makes it even more tragic, but that’s the whole point.

Logan made a hard choice, and manned up to it. It’s not like he’s Caithe

It’s not really about negativity, it’s about specifically the response to a few big subjects:

1) The Sylvari/Minion thing. It’s to the degree of saying that ArenaNet writers are wrong or lying.

2) The Mursaat thing, which is to the degree that objections to model changes lead to countersuggestions that require larger model changes (eg seers and forgotten).

Maybe it’s the spotless thing, where as a community people have a very strong picture of the lore as it should be according to the lore community, and so there’s strong conflicts when people not in the lore community see what seem to be ‘obvious’ answers (as with both hte Sylvari and the putatitve Mursaat)

This is bugging me, and I don’t want to be offensive to people, but I still want to ask.

It seems like a major thrust of the lore discussions on the official forums is focused on how the common theory or, in many cases, Arenanets written elements are wrong. Is this common, or is there a general reason for this?

Letifer.4360:

Siphaed.9235:

As I suggested here (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Specialization-Trinity/first#post4738182)a few days ago, I think that they’re going to be introducing a Trinity system in HoT. Why? Because it would rid the game of the current Berserker standard as well as set up for more challenging fights.

What is the part about the problem not being the zerker equip don’t you guys understand?
The problem is the content, and lets say they add content that you cant do in zerker gear, the meta will change to lets imagine p/t/v, now everyone will use that, the problem is still the same.
1 set of gear will always be preferred over the others, unless each class has its own and unique set of gear like they have in other mmos like WoW for example.

This is almost right, and in fact is right that there will be a gear type that people pick as ‘best’.

It’s wrong in thinking that it has, or will matter much. The “Meta” problem is ultimately a ‘you can change games, but you can never fix people’ problem, and there’s nothing Anet can legitimately do to make it better.

The most unacceptable part is the phansasmal kidnapping incident.

Logan makes a VERY good point there, “How am I supposed to protect you if you don’t trust me and keep secrets?”

That, combined with the mind control/telepathy spell they put on him makes me think that he’s a huge victim and she’s just terrible.

Beam rifle.

Skill 5 is oldschool ray of judgment.

it’s explicitly not cold-blooded though. We can argue that the difference is false and harmful, but there’s a long legal precedence of a distinction.

Altair.5842:

I think that they are Seers coz of the following article:

http://www.guildmag.com/guildmag-issue-1-qa-with-ree-soesbee/

Ree Soesbee says that Seers still do exist in Tyria!

And who better to go to when u need help fighting an Elder Dragon! I believe they united the races earlier to combat Elder Dragons before the Mursaat betrayed them.

They do redesign, but chopping of arms is a pretty dramatic redesign.

FrizzFreston.5290:

The only thing the mursaat did was protecting themselves, at the costs of others. Mursaat never really cared. (Maybe until now)

This is the part of the idea that excites me though; they probably still don’t care, but Mordy is a pretty immediate and terrifying threat. Also, even though they got Kittened, the pact killed Zhaitan, which is already something the old races couldn’t do, so the Mursaat might be a bit more willing to commit (at least at first).

Treacherous kinda-allies that you dont’ quite trust are interesting

draxynnic.3719:

Nope. Partly because, to be clear, putting everything together I think the ‘balance of probabilities’ standard of evidence favours the mursaat hypothesis. However, there is certainly reasonable doubt.

Partly because, and I don’t mean any offense by this, I’m simply stating a fact, I don’t feel I know you well enough to trust that you will cover your bet if that does turn out to be the outcome.

That’s fair enough, not offended at all

Crudelis.5420:

I must say this thread is quite funny, many are willing to call the Mursaat “evil” due to their sacrifice of ~500 humans a year to seal the door of komalie. What would these same people call the American Drone strikes across the world which kill (estimates vary) thousands of innocent civilians every year. Oddly enough, I don’t think the same commentators would label every American “evil” or even President Obama “evil” for that action. In fact, I think it more likely that they would claim some sort of “we have to in order to save american lives” (as dubious as that is) while at the same time ignoring the fact that nearly the ENTIRE species of Mursaat were eradicated by the Titans.

Perhaps that is the point of the Mursaat? To provide a foil which lets americans view themselves as the rest of the world does. . .

Leaving politics out of it (you trying to torpedo the thread?) what do you think the authorial intent was with the Mursaat?

My guess would be selfish, dark enemies that were meant to be another piece in the ‘layered’ bad guys in Prophecies.

That’s a good alignment of posts. Wanna make a bet Drax? I’ll pm your account when when I’m online after work tonight and work out terms.

DeceiverX.8361:

Except as someone who’s leveled six characters through it, and eight more before it was implemented, it actually is just awful.

Not to mention over a dozen of RL friends who joined the game after the NPE/trait rework and quit on the basis that the progession felt too unrewarding, too slow, and simply didn’t give them the tools needed to fully experience and immerse themselves in what the game has to offer by being gated from content.

Glad to see they’re attempting to resolve the issue, though.

I played 5 classes through the new system, including the trait element which they’re reworking.

It made, for me, low levels interesting again, since there were better specific goals.

Taste is taste, but there was a definite moral panic about hte NPE stuff that we need to keep in mind.

No, don’t you know?

It’s similar but it doesn’t match perfectly, and even though there’s nothing that’s even remotely close to matching, it has to be <insert random other lore item here>!