I want to remove loot from NPC’s at the same time greatly increasing loot from killing players without the use of siege over objectives. My suggestion is to use loot strategically to encourage players to do more, not reward lazy game play.
Problem with this idea is basically that large groups are favored to winning fights and small groups are only able to compensate by taking objectives. If killing rewards are increased, it would further encourage forming very big groups to overpower smaller groups. One might even argue that big zergs are safety in numbers and thus “lazy” way of playing.
It would be easy enough to move all the camp guards closer to the center, so you’d always have to fight all of them to flip a camp. But to be clear, you guys are arguing that you want to do ‘more PvE’, which seems to go against the forum’s current agenda of ‘less PvE.’
- It would be refreshing to see a game where things work as intended before we start discussing which direction to move from there. So you’re saying that there’s guards on the camp with all the elaborate level upgrades and so, and some of them just happen to stand a little bit on the side that they don’t fight the camp invaders. Isn’t that kind of stupid?
What makes a person type essays like these on the forums?
This game has a grand total of 502 viewers on Twitch. It’s over.
There are a lot of classes that are powerful but can still be taken in a fair fight; necros, elementalists, rangers. But Mesmers have too many overpowered tools.
Please tell me a build on Mesmer that is overpowered like you say. I’ve been trying power greatsword and the damage is bad.
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups
European matchups for tiers 2 and 3 seem to be switched up. Seafarer’s Rest + Jade Sea + Gandara have total rating of 5375.918 and Elona Reach + Desolation + Augury Rock have combined rating of 5380.726. What’s up with that?
I don’t hear any good player complaining.
Oh course you won’t! If you’re a top player you’d love to have no matchmaking in game. You can stomp noobs all day long and win every game. There’s no frustration whatsoever for you. Reap the rewards while you’ve never matched against adequate challenge.
This is reversed for newbies. They won’t win any games, become frustrated and quit.
Purpose of matchmaking is to balance teams so that every game would be interesting. Matchmaking works when every player has 50% chance to win matches regardless of their skill level.
I know you don’t want GW2 to be too grindy. Still, players should, in my opinion, be rewarded with slightly better stats for their work. Like 1% on the weapons stats or even less. Something which is not noticable, but still the best. It would give an extra motivation aside from the skin and add an end game goal.
I remember when I got ascended shoulders to replace my exotic shoulders I had before. My armor went from 2293 to 2298, giving me a 0.2% better resistance against damage. I’ll always remember when that enemy Revenant crits me for 12k, that damage could have been 24 points more.
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Fighting is standing in one spot and exchanging hits, while your monk keeps you alive. No stafing as stafing breaks your attack animation and dodging isn’t in game. It feels incredibly static and counterintuitive now to stand there without moving, hitting the target while it hits you and your monk heals and buffs.
Was there no auto-attacks in the game? Ranger had Power Shot that you had to activate and it came with cooldown. I remember playing monk. I was running around and when I cast (short activation time) skill it stopped movement briefly. It didn’t feel that cumbersome. You can dodge attacks in both games by moving out of the way and projectiles in GW1 by quickly strafing.
Movement vs. skill use was important dynamic for GvGs. Whenever you stopped to cast you were vulnerable to warriors. You could reduce the amount of damage you take by constantly moving away. Skill activation time was also a function of this vulnerability.
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To compare power vs. ferocity write it out like this:
(2587+x) * (1-0.50714) + (2587 + x) * 0.50714 * 2.20667 > 2587 * (1-0.50714) + 2587 * 0.50714 * [1.50 + (1060+x)/15 * 0.01]Is this true for all values of x?
I just put this into WolframAlpha and got the result x > -0.006. The breakpoint is right here! If I had one less power and ferocity, then ferocity would be better than power? Maybe I made a mistake or I’m not understanding this correctly. I double-checked and power seems still better than ferocity with values 1 lower
-1 power, -1 ferocity
2586 * (1-0.50714) + 2586 * 0.50714 * 2.206 = 4167.63
add 1 ferocity:
2586 * (1-0.50714) + 2586 * 0.50714 * 2.20667 = 4168.50
add 1 power instead:
2587 * (1-0.50714) + 2587 * 0.50714 * 2.206 = 4169.24
To compare power vs. ferocity write it out like this:
(2587+x) * (1-0.50714) + (2587 + x) * 0.50714 * 2.20667 > 2587 * (1-0.50714) + 2587 * 0.50714 * [1.50 + (1060+x)/15 * 0.01]
Is this true for all values of x?
Really interesting question would be to find out if there’s any point at which the power/precision/ferocity dynamic changes and plot a graph of it. Based on my example we know only that at that specific point increasing power would be the best thing, but it may not be so depending on what critical chance we get.
Expected damage:
Damage of basic hit without critical * chance to have non-critical hit + damage of critical hit * chance to have critical hit.
Power is very likely better than critical damage, because it affects both critical and non-critical hits and scales with critical damage anyway. If you want to know the exact details, I’d check wiki for formulas.
Actually this calculation is rather simple. We can use Power in place of damage because damage is just some multiplication of Power. I’ll use my Ranger’s stats as an example.
2587 power,
1960 precision ((1960-895)/21 = 50.714% critical chance)
1060 ferocity (1.50 + 1060/15 * 0.01 = 220.667% critical damage)
Expected damage:
2587 * (1-0.50714) + 2587 * 0.50714 * 2.20667 = 4170.12
if we add one point of power we get:
2588 * (1-0.50714) + 2588 * 0.50714 * 2.20667 = 4171.73
if we add one point of ferocity instead we get:
2587 * (1-0.50714) + 2587 * 0.50714 * 2.20733 = 4170.98
adding one point of precision shifts the focus a bit:
2587 * (1-0.50762) + 2587 * 0.50762 * 2.20667 = 4171.61
So Power>Precision>Ferocity as far as DPS goes. There are traits that benefit from critical hits though so those have to be taken into account too.
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People still believe there is a 50% win rate? There is no 7-7 distribution.
Correctly working matchmaking should give each player 50% win rate.
Think long and hard on this. :p
I was thinking some kind of trade-off. Small health pool but big damage? Low armor but mobility? Thieves have low health but they get access to stealth. Eles have low health but they can tank indefinitely due to permanent buffs. It doesn’t make any sense.
Permanence is not very interesting. A skill can be powerful if it’s for limited duration or effect. Guardian puts down Test of Faith for 6 seconds. Enemies can’t exit. Then he puts a huge damage trap inside that ring. Enemy inside the ring dies. Duh! What’s the counterplay here? Stability or bust?
Problem is synergies that result in overloaded effects. You have necromancers that spam million conditions, or elementalists that have all the boons in the game on constant uptime.
I was one of those players, in full ascended gear. I can’t try it for myself because the elementalist had mastery that is only available in expansion, which I don’t have. The thing with “bunker” builds is that even if they hit for low damage, they will eventually win the fights because they can’t die. I’ve seen this happen many times now. My greatsword has the basic swing, the big hit, gap closer, block and daze. None of that affect the elementalist.
How can elementalist chain buffs endlessly while other professions have them under long cooldown skills? Just a moment ago I was watching 3 guys fight a single elementalist on WvW. The elementalist had 40 second vigor buff, 30 second protection buff, 60 second regeneration buff and 35 second might stacks and it just kept going on and on. The elementalist could also cause weakness and spam other conditions to enemies at will.
As a Ranger I have no boon removal whatsoever in my profession. Warriors have no boon removal either. What’s the point of having light armor professions with low health pools if they get permanent boons that ensure they never die?
I’m pretty sure the notes from the developers on how the match making system works are a better source than someone complaining about losing matches as a warrior.
When authors and experimental evidence disagree, I rely on the experimental evidence. That’s what’s great about the scientific method. Also me being mad about losing has no bearing on veracity of my claim. You’re committing ad hominem fallacy.
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There is no matchmaking in this game. Read this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Win-1-game-with-Warrior
10 min 20 sec, ranked arena, 500-429, defeat
7 min 50 sec, ranked arena, 501-196, defeat
8 min 51 sec, ranked arena, 500-355, defeat
13 min 43 sec, ranked arena, 580-270, defeat
5 min 10 sec, ranked arena, 502-100, defeat
6 min 23 sec, ranked arena, 182-500, defeat
9 min, 28 sec, ranked arena, 414-500, defeat
7 min, 54 sec, ranked arena, 576-94, defeat
7 min, 58 sec, ranked arena, 501-221, defeat
8 min, 53 sec, ranked arena, 414-500, defeat
9 min, 1 sec, ranked arena, 500-451, defeat
7 min, 11 sec, ranked arena, 132-501, defeat
5 min, 4 sec, ranked arena, 49-500, defeat
5 min, 49 sec, ranked arena, 60-607, defeat
Will you fix the godkitten matchmaking some day?
For statisticians out there, 0-14 distribution deviates from 7-7 distribution with p<0.001 confidence.The matchmaking is statistically speaking broken.
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I never realized WvW rewards were so bad either. I mean, look at PvP rewards for comparison: sub 10 minute matches reward average of flat 22.5 silver and you get all kinds of sellable loot from reward tracks. In addition to this there’s the usual PvP rank rewards.
You’d have to have consistent EB-style fights in WvW to get even close to what other game modes have. Solo roaming and small group capturing doesn’t come close.
You should try these things before hastily making judgments.
Have you played a Nintendo DS game called The World Ends With You? Credits list 7 creators and 14 voice actors for a game localized to Japan and western audience. The game isn’t too big, GameFAQs list the length as 43.6 hours. During that time you’ll be constantly immersed in the game world. There’s no unnecessary waiting and I feel that all the systems the game has are very well done – actually innovating the genre of story-focused RPG. That game is a great example of small team project that is perfectly scaled. Before you say it, no, it has nothing to do with MMOs.
I’m not sure anything you listed is even a bug. Sometimes it’s a measure of cost effectiveness. It’s far more cost effective to create a single animation for mining. You think it’s a bug because a real person would stop.
Well it doesn’t seem to be taking any artistic liberties so therefore I consider it a simple bug. It’s coded in a way that mining animation plays for 3 swings, because before there was any extra gathering strikes most nodes would be 3 units. Now when you get extra gathering strikes you have to pause after 3 swings and then animation plays for 3 swings even if you got only 1 extra gathering strike.
Optimal, common sense behavior would be this: once the player presses button the character mines for minerals until there is no more left to mine or player interrupts the action.
If I had to choose between having one swing animation repeating as many times as necessary versus a custom animation of slightly different 3 swings, I’d choose the former. I guess that’s just my personal preference to put functionality above aethetics.
Having worked on creative projects that have deadlines in the past, something far less intricate than coding, I can tell you that time and budget constraints will always produce a product that has some flaws. But the only other real option is to never publish.
Another option is to scale the project so that whatever you put out is quality stuff. Some of the best games I’ve played have actually been small team projects that had correct idea what they can and cannot do with the resources they have.
Most of the bugs I encounter could have been figured out by simply playing the game as it’s supposed to be played:
- Why does my character keep mining for minerals when there’s no more to mine?
- Why does my character spend 6, 4 supplies for wall repairs when I have ability that allows me to spend 10 supplies per tick?
- Why is the orange progress bar that appears on your character narrow in the beginning and wide at middle towards end?
- Why does Mesmer greatsword autoattack animation appear to hit targets way beyond its range?
- Why does captured shrine veteran monster appear hostile for split second after capturing and after that turn friendly?
- Why does another player’s pet appear charmable after that player has teleported to your location?
These are just the bugs off the top of my head. I shudder to think how bad the non-obvious bugs are.
That looks interesting. So it’s the point value of captured objectives 14th of February? Where did you get this information?
We are looking at adding a way for players to earn Quickloot in WvW as well. We wanted to keep PvE progression (Masteries) separate from WvW progression (Ability Lines). However this means when a new Mastery ability is created, that might also be useful in another gamemode, it doesn’t automatically crossover.
Earn it? Why would you make common sense game feature something to be earned?
Loot bags on the ground:
1. there’s a chance that you miss the reward you’ve earned.
2. uninteresting F-key spam when killing enemies in hectic fight.
3. there’s a chance that you press F to loot but instead activate another item (banner etc.) on your location, causing frustration to player.
4. when you get a kill using siege weapon you have to stop using the siege weapon to pick up lootbag.
5. sparkling loot bag on the ground is unnecessary drain on performance.
Loot bag on inventory:
1. convenient reward for kill that you’ve earned.
2. none of the above issues.
3. player can focus their attention fully to playing and not worrying about getting lootbags.
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What was done in GW1 was that, after population started to diminish, they made it so we could take allied NPCs around with us to do all of the content by ourselves if we wished to.
I believe GW1 was made from bottom up to be played in parties. Each class had a specific role they were good at. Henchmen were there from the start too.
Mesmers have traditionally played DPS for years. It’s only after recent patches that the play style fell out of favour. You guys already probably know this, so why are all being facetious?
Well, I was playing my longbow ranger and dealing some nice damage from range. With that opening strike and criticals, I was able to kill NPC monsters pretty quickly with one burst. Then I switched over to thief and played with dual pistols. Sure, thief is squishy as hell but the damage was acceptable.
Then I took my greatsword mesmer, traited and built for damage…. I couldn’t kill the same NPC monsters with one burst. Greatsword autoattacks are laughable. Slowly building might stacks and having that small packet damage dealing. Even condition builds usually hit harder.
Then I met d/d elementalist in WvW. You know what the elementalist does? It has all the buffs in the game and deals monstrous damage and heals too. I used all my abilities and I couldn’t bring that elementalist health below 50%. What’s the point of this class?
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It’s so nice to see that every profession and build is equally overpowered according to responses. The game seems to be in balance.
Does anyone see the problem here?
There is no problem because the target audience of black lion tickets are compulsive gamblers, the ones that bring the most income to company. It’s well known that in free-to-play games there’s huge portion of playerbase that never spends any real money on items, so games have to be designed to compensate for that.
A misunderstanding is not an accident or an eventuality in the same sense.
Parable of the broken window applies when it is said that soulbound items are good for economy. As the shopkeeper has to buy another window to replace the broken one, so must we buy another item because soulbinding makes them useless.
What’s the use of that item? You can have all the crafting stations and merchants at your disposal when you enter your homeland’s borderlands from PvE map, and when you exit you’ll be back where you left. Costs no money.
Yes, I was so sure it would be one of those useless “are you sure you want to apply this upgrade to this item” messages and indeed just clicked yes without reading it carefully.
I honestly wonder what went through the designer’s mind when they made this kind of system. If the item is not soulbound in the first place, why would applying upgrade to it make it soulbound?
Why is this game so ****ing bad? There’s not a single system that works correctly.
It’s like somebody took programming 101, barely passed it and went to work for ArenaNet. I know that MMOs aren’t exactly the crown jewels of gaming industry, but these companies should get a grip and fix bugs that have been there since release.
So – Magic Find – I am finding myself conflicted and wondering whether or not I should invest more into it or just let it go and ignore it altogether.
Ignore it altogether. We don’t know how it works and what the base values are. It could be coded wrong and not work like many of the other stuff in this game.
There was no warning. It’s just poor design anyway.
Is there some kind of daily limit to using Mystic Forge? When I put the first item in, the rest of my inventory turns grey. After putting 4 items to Mystic Forge the craft button is grey and clicking it doesn’t do anything.
Ah the good old broken window parable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Oh for the love of God why do you have to make equipment soulbound? I was crafting a harpoon gun for my second character using my first character. All went fine and I even bought a superior sigil of bloodlust. I put the harpoon gun to bank and logged in to my second character.
“Soulbound to another character”
10 gold down the drain.
What ****ing purpose does this serve?
When was the last time you actually felt thrilled playing PvE?
Let me tell you when I felt thrilled playing PvE. It was in the first Guild Wars. Post-searing event. Scorched land, burned villages. Alien world shrouded in grey cloud. Where am I? I can’t go there alone, can I? I recruited henchmen from city and set out to explore the dark world. Bit by bit I was uncovering the map that seemed it would take forever to fully explore. Everywhere I went there was something that I missed. What’s around that nook over there? Fights were fierce encounters where I had to take care of my party. After traveling quite a distance I would stumble upon an outpost and this filled me with joy. I’d unlock new skills and could design different builds to fit situations. I loved Guild Wars. Absolutely loved it.
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So to improve converting non-HoT owners to HoT owners, they are looking at ways to tease them with systems only available in HoT. (Core Tyria gliding anyone?) Another method they are looking into is more frequent content updates that only expansion owners can access.
That’s all very interesting to hear. For myself, I couldn’t justify paying 50 bucks just to have gliders. The whole progression system is a big mess. It seems like they’re trying very hard to provide all sorts of small perks (temporary +10% karma banner and whatever). I guess there are types of players who are really into doing every achievement and completing every story chapter, but I’m not one of those players. I like to play (WvW mainly) and I got the new borderlands map for free.
The expansion can’t work whenever it divides playing population. The new maps are just alternatives to core game world, I don’t miss them. It’s going to be very difficult task to convince players like me to fork over cash for HoT.
Explorable maps seem to have something called Map Bonuses when you hover your cursor over their names in world map view. I’m interested in how this system actually works, since wiki didn’t have details. Completing quests and such should give progressive rewards, but I don’t see any progress bar for them.
Frostgorge Sound has Shiny Bauble reward and after playing there for a while I noticed I have Shiny Bauble in my inventory (trash item worth 30 silver).
This would be a nice addition to the game, but I hardly think that everyone wants or needs it. Power players do. But there are people who set a build and never change it also, or almost never change it. I’m one of them. I agree it would be great for people who change builds.
This is how I see it also. For me the process starts with figuring out what kind of character I want to play. Then I select profession that offers that playstyle. After selecting profession I select weapons and armor that fit the role. Lastly I pick the traits that support my playstyle.
You can’t really change one thing without changing another and the trait system with its simplicity (3 decisions per specialization) is the least of my worries.
So basically I hope that legy armor looks worse than every armor ingame, so that there is no need vor wish to grind bad content (raids) instead of really playing the game.
- So far every new collectible armor has looked more and more over the top than the last one, so I would be confident that legendary armor is going to be just the kind of gloving spiky shapeless mess like the one in OP’s picture.
Pros:
- The new borderlands map is beautiful.
- More objectives to fight over.
- Commander squad improvements are fantastic for coordinating groups.
- Objective upgrade timers and tiers are now visible for players in map.
Cons:
- No players on borderlands.
The problem with defending is that it’s boring. You could stay and scout for tower and not see a single enemy for hours. During this week I played in the borderlands capturing camps, towers and keep and the enemy teams didn’t capture anything during that time. Anything!
I say it’s the lack of motivation of masses to play WvW that is the problem. Tier 3 matchups are literally about 3-man teams running around map and deciding which server is going to win.
1 player can capture any camp no matter if it’s upgraded or not.
2-3 players can capture any tower or keep given that enemies don’t defend it. If the objective is fortified then you have to sit at the catapult/ram for longer time. Champion lord difficulty is scaled so 3 players kill it as fast as 20 players.
The only question is: do you bother?
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Please note that ANet’s definition of grind is very specific. He even wrote, “…force you onto a grinding treadmill…” In an MMO, grinding treadmill only means one thing. It does not mean never repeating anything you don’t want to in order to get optional glitz, or even best stat gear — as long as that gear remains best stat. Even when Asc. replaced Exotic as BiS, it was not a treadmill, it was a one-time upgrade.
- Grinding is very simply engaging in repetitive tasks in the context of MMORPG games. I gave an example of GW2 quests that fit the definition of grinding and contrasted them with GW1 quests that do not fit the definition of grinding.
HoT reminds me more of old school gaming like Zelda and Metroid, where content is locked until you obtain the right skills or items to advance. It’s a very old school gaming concept in my opinion with a new twist in the mastery system.
- Right so this makes a good example. In Zelda games your progress through the game is locked behind items that you need to get. You travel to new locations to get those items and on the way you kill (x number of) enemies. That isn’t grind. If we changed the quest to say “you’re not powerful enough to pass. Kill (x number of) enemies to pass”, then that would be grinding. Why? Because killing respawning enemies for the sake of killing them is meaningless. Getting item that has tangible effect on the game is meaningful. Small but important difference.
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To suggest that you can make an MMO in good conscience that includes no grind is a spurious argument. There is no MMO that doesn’t include some form of grinding.
- I remember a trailer where one of their lead designers said something along the lines of “if you like MMOs you should check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs then you really should check out Guild Wars 2”. The same trailer also specifically addressed the problem of grinding and said that they don’t want grind in Guild Wars 2.
Actually that’s a side issue. The problem is that of game design. The first Guild Wars had actual quests that involved traveling to different locations, talking with different NPCs and had different phases. That to me looks like game made in good faith: you could reasonably say that such activity is interesting to player.
Guild Wars 2 quests are like this: you enter a new area and immediately notice the ground is littered with trinkets. Quest appears: collect these trinkets and bring them to quest NPC. So you collect some and bring them to NPC only to have the progress bar move slighly forward. You must collect more of them. That is the core of the game. Kill these monsters and collect these trinkets over and over again. I can’t imagine how anyone would consider such activity inspiring. Guild Wars 2 is a game made in bad faith.