Yeah… I can’t say I was terribly amazed by GW1’s cutscene cinematics. I mean, they weren’t bad, but they weren’t exactly amazing.
Not… that GW2’s have been awe-inspiring either, but they’ve had their moments.
Longbow’s not a BAD weapon. Even Bearbow rangers aren’t necessarily bad. It’s players who just spam skills or refuse to adapt their strategy where appropriate that gave them a bad name.
There are a couple problems with longbow rangers in dungeons.
1) A lot of the areas in dungeons are pretty tight places. It’s not always a guarantee that you can get the range necessary for Long Range Shot to deal it’s maximum damage potential. And if you can’t get that range, longbow dps doesn’t just drop off a cliff, it hits rock bottom and starts drilling for oil.
2) Even when you can, 1200-1500 range (depending on whether or not you’re dropping Spotter for Eagle Eye), puts you out of range of both buffs allies can give you, and buffs you can give allies. And when considering that Spotter and Frost Spirit are the big reasons why a group would WANT a Ranger in the party in the first place, running longbow means a very good chance you are providing neither to the party.
I know that Rangers will occasionally use Rabid in condition builds in WvW… Necros and Mesmers also… maybe?
Except that you weren’t ever married, and that the other person just considered you one of millions of people they paid attention to?
You can feel betrayed all you want… but you wouldn’t be justified to any compensation or sympathy.
It’s a different game, and frankly, they don’t “owe” you anything, no matter how many years you put into GW1 (and this is coming from a person whose played since Beta Weekend #1 of Prophecies).
For your very first character Warrior, Guardian, and Ranger are good options. All three are very sturdy and fairly forgiving of mistakes.
The problem however with Ranger and Warrior, is the gameplay that will get you to max level easiest is probably the WORST way to play the game at max level in group situations (bearbow for Ranger and the five-signet build for Warriors). So you may expect to hit ANOTHER learning curve once you hit 80.
Necro is another decent option for a first character… but be ready to be shunned at max level, as the survivability, minions, and condition damage that make them so unstoppable leveling up are near worthless at 80, and they really don’t have much of an alternative outside of support that doesn’t get much love either.
As long as Arena.net insists on an open world experience for all, don’t expect to see too much challenging content. The open world really has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
That’s WHY “raid” instances exist in most MMOs… because players who DON’T want that challenge tend to be very offended by its presence in the open world, and as much as you may hate it, that group represents a MUCH larger percentage of the player base… and it’s not even remotely somewhere even in the astronomical vicinity of close.
Arena.net would have to do a 180 on their design decisions made since launch, and start making instanced dungeons again at the very least.
My general feeling is any group that judges based on a largely arbitrary number isn’t a group I’m particularly keen on playing with anyway.
The big problem with Ranger damage is that maximum efficiency is dependent on a pet that is only slightly smarter than my desk lamp.
Okay, I lied. My desk lamp actually does something when I push the right button.
Arena.net’s improved the F2 reaction time and their survivability, but the pet still is awfully dumb, in ways that the Ranger can’t always correct easily (like ranged pets won’t always move if their attacks are obstructed or melee pets won’t always respond to an enemy’s movements, and any F2 attacks have a good chance of catching nothing but air).
On top of that, Ranger has issues in large group settings because much of their weapon damage is balanced around the conditions they cause… which in large open world play is often rendered useless due to the condition caps.
They are both problems that impact EVERY class, but due to the nature of the Ranger class, those problems both combine to hit them the hardest (though Necros would have a pretty strong claim as well).
As a result, there’s really only one or two very narrow builds that allow a Ranger to be effective in group and large scale play, unlike warriors who have a small handful of “viable” builds.
The damage for Ranger CAN be there, so in that sense they aren’t as “broken” as you might hear the cries claim… but it definitely needs a lot of help in order to break the stigma the class has (there is a small legion of bearbows out there that are perfectly capable of ruining the class reputation all by themselves, they don’t need assistance from the game itself).
Agree with lack of challenge. And no, you can’t dump that on the players as in make your own challenge. We need challenging content that rewards us accordingly. Soloing Arah p2 in under 20 minutes will make you famous on youtube and maybe you can get rewarded by receiving donations for your stream but no sane person can say that’s a valid replacement for actual ingame rewards.
We need more stuff like super high level fractals or maybe Arah, basically dungeons you can’t semi afk faceroll as a half decent player.
You know, you say “We need challenging content”… but the minute that ANY content of any significant difficulty appears in this game, these very forums are flooded with complaints that the new content is “too hard” and “not fun.”
So no, I would argue that the bulk of the player base DOESN’T want or need challenging content. YOU may want it (and honestly, I would too), but until Arena.net backs off their stance of instanced “raid” like content, I don’t think we’re gonna be seeing it any time soon.
Now, with that… I’m not sure I really have an “ugly”… but that’s really just a matter of scale, I think. If there’s something in a game I consider so bad that I would rate it an “ugly”, I just wouldn’t play that game.
There’s a good many things I’d call “bad”, I suppose. Underwater combat is a exercise in frustration for one (though I don’t think completely abandoning it is the answer). If I REALLY wanted to, I’d have a pretty decent essay on what I think are writing issues within the game (but I guess those would be more subjective than most).
The UI has never been particularly intuitive for me, and I would LOVE the ability to move a lot of the UI elements around (like you could in GW1).
WvW can be fun in short sessions, but extremely stagnant. I’m not sure what the holdup is, but the generic, copy and paste borderlands really don’t do it for me (odd that they are hanging onto it for the sake of “balance” when they claim repeatedly that “balance” is not a particularly high focus in WvW).
I’m not sure I’m particularly fond of the piecemeal approach of releasing map areas so far in LS Season 2. The theory of gating some progression for the sake of story is fine… but it still seems like the pieces getting unlocked are still pretty small.
Still not digging the whole “world bosses are the new raid” mechanic. I’m impressed that the player base seems to be getting the hang of them, but is it REALLY worth the months of anger, frustration, and whining from every corner as they learn? I really don’t think so.
I do not like the new trait acquisition method in the slightest. Absolutely loathe it. I hated the skill cap mechanic of GW1, and I like this even less. They’re better off changing it back to what it was before… like now, please.
On the other hand, despite the lack of developer acknowledgement, it IS clear that Arena.net IS listening to fan feedback (either that or it is the most bizarre confluence of coincidences that the game is starting to reflect a good many things that fans have complained about in the past).
I do like that the game remains one of “pick it up and go” outside of a few circumstances that you have to be ready a good hour before hand. As someone who really doesn’t have the time for three hour sessions anymore, I appreciate it.
I like that this second season of the LS so far doesn’t have that maddening urgency that “I have to get this done before it’s gone for good!” Especially useful since I am recovering from a back injury and am only now able to sit down for prolonged periods of time.
And for an MMO, GW2’s combat is quite engaging with not too steep of a learning curve. The level scaling mechanic is pretty good, though it could probably use a little bit more tweaking. Exploring is actually a good time waster, even if I’m terrible at jumping puzzles. This is a remarkably large world, even now, and I’m still finding little things I’ve never seen before even after 100% world completion.
This is the best MMO I’ve personally played, though that doesn’t mean there’s a lot that it could do better.
EDIT: Really? THAT is censored? Okay folks, take the “F” word, and replace the “U” with an “A”. THAT string of letters (like when “of” is followed by “acknowledgement” is replaced by “kitten.” I mean… what?
I suppose that’s one more “bad”; this forum has some REALLY bizarre and uneven applications of rules and policies.
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EotM “fails” because players decided to ignore the maps intent and use it as a farming zone.
That’s a player-side problem. It has nothing to do with a lack of communication for the devs.
On one hand, I like the idea… but I wonder if that’s really how the devs want to proceed from a lore perspective.
While you ARE a member of an order, I kinda got the feeling that by the time Zhaitan falls you were kinda “above” that, whatever order you chose understood you had a bigger responsibility.
It’s a great idea, don’t get me wrong, and I would LOVE for the orders to get more play beyond the background they are currently, I just don’t know if that’s a sort of direction Arena.net would entertain going.
But I suppose it doesn’t hurt to ask and find out. I’d support it for one.
Well, what you will generally find in cases where a company IS “communicating” with their players… guess what? It’s generally through community managers and not developers.
Developers in pretty much EVERY “AAA” game talk sparingly with the players. They don’t have the time to spend hours bouncing back and forth getting the okay from upper brass to talk about [x] and their plans for [y] so that the fans can be mollified. They have too many responsibilities and deadlines to meet to sit down with the fans more than once in a blue moon.
That’s what community managers DO. They do the legwork so that all a developer has to do is look at what is about to be said (what questions can be answered, what that answer will be, etc…) and give the thumbs up.
I do concur that Arena.net needs another CM for the expressed purpose of handling the forum community.
I’ve reached the conclusion that the players of this game are going to ball up and zerg rush, whether it is the most effective means of success or not. They don’t care.
I was honestly most annoyed by Nightfall’s story line.
They basically turned everything in GW1 up to that point into “Because Abaddon.”
Vizier Khilbron no longer made a tragic mistake that set him down a dark path. Nope, he knew all along what was going to happen… because Abaddon.
Shiro Tagachi no longer had some legitimately understandable reasons to think his Emperor was actually trying to have him killed. Nope, he was just a rube easily duped by some charlatan… because Abaddon.
Then to top it all off, Arena.net basically destroys everything that made those antagonists potentially compelling to… do absolutely nothing with them. They don’t impact Nightfall’s story at all. Nope, Arena.net ruined them so that we could get one more boss fight with the both of them.
Man, I’ll be honest, I didn’t finish Nightfall for two weeks after the Gate of Madness mission. It took me that long to get over that empty waste of characters.
What you have are two particular camps who have decided either A) the game is dying, or B) There’s absolutely nothing wrong.
A) is pretty much false by any metric you see. The game is making money, and what little data is released shows the game in very good shape.
B) is an entirely subjective opinion that can’t be right OR wrong, no matter how much they assert it as objective truth.
Welcome to the wonderful world of cognitive dissonance.
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Anyone who paid attention to the numbers of MMOs would already know that. The “hardcore player” has generally been OVER-represented in terms of game content, mostly because they are the ones who churn through content the fastest.
Blizzard knew they had a problem when the numbers came back from Sunwell Plateau, a raid instance they clearly put a lot of man hours and resources into.
2% of the entire player base got past the first two bosses. Blizzard hasn’t gone that far for the “hardcore player” since. And you’d think if any game would have the numbers to justify it… it would be them.
The MMO landscape is changing, and it’s not just GW2. Game developers are realizing that the “hardcore gamer” is more sunk cost than benefit as the market broadens and their word of mouth isn’t as important.
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The ranger CDI had PLENTY of constructive criticism and NONE of it was taken seriously by the devs as seen by the latest changes…. (hint, there were hardly any changes made).
Ranger class required a revamp, and that is something anet will simply not spend resources and time on. It means nothing to them in the long run, so they will just tweak a few numbers here and throw the small ranger community a bone.
They wanted feedback from the CDI, and the community responded HEAVILY. Of course there was a lot of hateful posts, but there was a bountiful amount of well written posts to fixing the class.
Unfortunately, the class is so badly broken because of the pets, anet can’t truely fix it unless they revamp the class completely, which ain’t happening because their resource allocation is tied by NCsoft (who could give a kitten about fair balancing).
Gemstore + LS is the focus for development, not class balancing.
Most rangers will just re-roll anyways, theres only a small, dedicated community of them left anyways.
I don’t want to turn this into a Ranger discussion (we aren’t nearly as “badly broken” as you claim), other than to say that the obvious problems (pet AI and the condition damage conundrum) isn’t something that can just be “tweaked.” They know this, we know this, it doesn’t need confirmation every month. Much of the other complaints are really player-side problems (we can’t agree if sword 1-chain is a problem at all, for example… or the bearbow cry of ‘we are called RANGEr!’).
But let’s not pretend there was “plenty” of constructive criticism in that CDI. It went for about three pages then the remaining thirty was nothing but bile, spite, venom and temper tantrums. You could have gotten the entire thrust of the useable discussion about three posts into page 4.
Does that mean it should have just disappeared? Nah. All I know is that moderators can completely delete entire threads and you won’t get a notice of it’s deletion (happened to me today in a thread about the Twice-Told Legend achievement).
But much like the Ranger class itself, the Ranger CDI thread really just happened to be the most gregarious example of a larger problem… the real thrust of the issues could have been gathered within the first handful of pages, and the rest was just was a positive feedback loop of noise.
When you have millions of voices that all expect to be heard and acknowledged, devs can’t be expected to keep up with that. I don’t care if they respond. I care if they listen. Have they listened? History says “yes”, though clearly not as much as a good many fans would like.
And for the record, I don’t plan to re-roll anything, much less my Ranger.
I THINK he was referring to a 5000k hours played milestone.
And the problem I have with “skill” based achievements for getting a precursor is that the process of getting a legendary already covers most of them. You already have to craft, fight through dungeons, jumping puzzles, kill certain creatures, etc…
I mean the only unique thing that a precursor could really require would be the hard world boss content (Teq, Triple Trouble, etc). Oh lordy, would the rage fly if THAT was required of the player base.
I do like that Arena.net expanded the legendary process to PvP tournament winners. But I do think there needs to be something outside of RNG for PvE content players. I’m not sold on craftable precursors, but SOMETHING like a set of achievements where a precursor is the end result.
I just got done searching for the Ranger-CDI thread that was started by a Dev/Mod and after looking at 32 pages in the Ranger forums it seems to have DISAPPEARED without a response from a Dev/Mod.
If it was the one I’m thinking of (that just turned into several long hateful, angry essays about how Ranger is the worst class ever and will never be fixed because devs don’t care and are too busy worrying about their warriors and that every Arena.net dev is a warrior and that Rangers are always kicked because the devs hate Ranger and are looking for the first change to remove them from the game… etc.) that might have been a moderator decision as it violated “forum etiquette.”
Hell, I’m not sure that would even be the strangest thing moderators here have done.
Lastly, if you haven’t noticed yet, the second anet says they are going to ‘try’ to implement something, it is taken as a promise.
And sometimes they state that they are going to do something, and then do not follow through.
Yeah .. they did that in the past and learned like all other MMO developers that its not good to say anything in the forums, since whatever they say .. some people will complain forever about anything that happens and they dislike , or about things that don’t happen because they don’t happen, even if they would dislike it if they happen.
So .. thats why devs are very active in Beta .. and still after release .. but the longer a game is running the less they talk.
I think it’s essential for the relationship between developers/players to have a functioning communication basis. For a healthy and satisfying developement of a game, developers should ask for feedback, organize surveys and interact with the community. I don’t want them to make big promises, I want to see that they actually care and that they noticed our opinions. It’s so depressing to get no reaction. I mean, what is wrong about a short “Hello Players, thank you for your feedback, team Anet will discuss over it.”? It is so easy.
They haven’t?
Lately not, best example: this thread/topic.
Yeah, because on the weekend they should jump into a thread with players having a grizzle.
I think what is being referred to here are the number of post started by devs asking for input/discussion on certain aspects of the game. I can think of 1 that pops immediately to mind:
Game Updates: Traits- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/first
3 months and the only post by a dev in that thread is the post to create the thread. If they’re gonna ask for input then they should at least post saying they’ve seen our complaints/suggestions.
Exactly.
If you’re going to assume that the Arena.net developers started a thread then turned around and never looked at it (even when several elements of the discussion appear in the game), then there’s probably NOTHING they can do to convince you they’re listening.
I honestly think the “relationship” between you and Arena.net (that really doesn’t exist, for the record), is toxic beyond repair.
I think it’s essential for the relationship between developers/players to have a functioning communication basis. For a healthy and satisfying developement of a game, developers should ask for feedback, organize surveys and interact with the community. I don’t want them to make big promises, I want to see that they actually care and that they noticed our opinions. It’s so depressing to get no reaction. I mean, what is wrong about a short “Hello Players, thank you for your feedback, team Anet will discuss over it.”? It is so easy.
Nah. They really don’t. In fact, it is often a BAD thing when developers start talking freely to players. Words from a red border become promises, even if no promise was ever uttered. A red post encourages piling on in the thread. Mistaken information from a red post becomes a “lie” or “laziness.”
You see it in every game of every genre. It’s why official statements are always neutered statements that say effectively nothing. The risk of saying something that fans will take and run with in terrible ways isn’t just a possibility, it’s a nigh CERTAINTY.
Then again, groups will often find something to run with anyway (see also any reference in game or out regarding Cantha)… so maybe that doesn’t even work too well.
Often the WORST thing a company can do is talk to their customers. Devs simply DON’T need to talk to you, and in most cases they SHOULDN’T. It’s far more important to listen, even if at the end of the day you decide to not implement what every fan desires.
You may not think they listen (I would disagree, though I don’t think it would hurt to implement more feedback), but one thing I’ll strongly insist is patently false is the idea that developers NEED to have a dialogue with their fans. It’s not true, in any way, shape or form.
That’s just customers making themselves feel far more important than they really are.
Actually, I really DON’T get what the “double legendary” side is grumping about.
NOTHING was taken away away from you. You are owed absolutely nothing, and anything you’ve gotten should have been received graciously. In fact, functionality was ADDED for you. You’re kittened because you feel someone else got MORE.
There’s a word for that. It starts with “e” and ends in “ntitled.”
I do remember as I played Guild Wars (along with other more traditional MMOs) that the vast number of “useless” skills and the clutter of them was considered a NEGATIVE by much of the MMO “community”, and not a positive like the GW1 veterans consider it.
No one considers it a positive. However, even with the large number of useless skills, GW1 had more useful skills than GW2.
Allow me to clarify (as I think I worded it poorly):
The build system in and of itself was not highly regarded by the MMO market (it was often likened to a trading card game, and not as a compliment, with all its useless skills and limited number of truly “effective” decks). While the system clearly had a niche, by my experience, it was not particularly well received by the larger MMO “community.”
It’s one of the things that was sacrificed to try and reach a larger audience base, in my opinion.
I do remember as I played Guild Wars (along with other more traditional MMOs) that the vast number of “useless” skills and the clutter of them was considered a NEGATIVE by much of the MMO “community”, and not a positive like the GW1 veterans consider it.
I suspect that dissonance is coming into play here. GW2 was (and still is) trying to hit a larger market than GW1, and for the rest of that market (by my experience), the glut of skills and builds was NOT well received.
The main reason IMO for GW1 having more diversity than GW2 is because given henchman and heroes, I didn’t need my build to be approved by others. I could just run with whatever I found fun and viable.
This is true.
It’s ALSO true that you can go out into the open world in GW2 however you want with any trait application and gear loadout without the approval of the community (and in fact, many such players do).
But in GW1, if you wanted to complete harder content, even with henchmen or heroes? Well… you were likely pigeonholed into a team build such as SABway.
Make no mistake, there’s more diversity in GW1 when it comes to open world doing whatever you want. But the amount of “effective” builds wasn’t all that much more. Is an ineffective build really “viable”? Some would say no, some would say yes. And that’s where the dissonance occurs when people talk about how the build diversity in GW1 wasn’t all that much (if at all) more than in GW2.
I think what we’re seeing is an example of two different schools of thought.
Yes, theoretically GW1 had an immense amount of build diversity; in fact the number of permutations were in the millions, if not higher. You COULD roll a warrior/monk with all healing skills, for example.
HOWEVER…
If you wanted to complete the most difficult content in the game, or play with people outside your own circle, you found that there was only a very small handful of acceptable builds, and that the overwhelming majority of skills in GW1 was deemed irrelevant by the playerbase, making the amount of effective diversity almost depressingly low indeed. Your warrior healer was NOT going to be accepted pretty much anywhere. Much of that diversity was an illusion if you weren’t playing by yourself.
So, in my mind, the answer is “yes… but no.” A nigh infinite number of choices boiled down to maybe 2 or 3 effective builds per class at any given time.
They have not said “yes” OR “no”, contrary to what Trixie says. Reports is that Cantha hasn’t been able to get the green light from NCSoft (claimed reason is they don’t want to offend Asian markets like China). Elona simply hasn’t been commented on at all other than general “we’d love to go to all the places in GW1 yadda yadda.”
Well, we know for a fact there is at least ONE other tree out there. So, it stands to reason that both those seeds (and perhaps more) came from SOMEWHERE, and that they existed before the time of GW1.
I can’t say I’ve ever went through a story in an MMO that made me go “Wow.”
And… I still haven’t. I can’t say I’m “blown away” or “amazed” or all that particularly immersed.
But ya know what… I’m also not rolling my eyes and reluctantly pushing through the story to play more of the game. It’s doing the job decently of keeping me logged in. I’m interested to hear more, but not to the point that I’m eagerly waiting at my computer for the update.
And ya know what else? It IS getting better. It IS getting more engaging (there were many points in Living Story Season 1 that I really didn’t give one tenth of one kitten about). And that’s okay. And I hope it continues.
At the very end of the episode, after the cinematic and your team starts planning their next move, Kasmeer expresses doubt that you would be able to talk directly to the Pale Tree.
Even if you AREN’T sylvari, your character will have already had a direct audience with the Pale Tree. Hell, that audience was expressly about an Elder Dragon. The Pale Tree knows you. She would know why you were calling.
Hell, the question should be, “Why WOULDN’T the Pale Tree talk to you?”
And instead of that assurance, your character kinda shrugs and effectively says that you’ll think of something, like you had never met before and otherwise wouldn’t have any business in The Grove at all.
I suppose it doesn’t necessarily mess up the story (yet), but it is an oddity to me.
I’m of two minds when it comes to RNG.
RNG “in game” is a fairly necessary evil in order to keep people invested, chasing that “one thing” they don’t have. Having everything a “guarantee” after X amount of hours kinda turns it into work rather than something spontaneous.
RNG in terms of “store” items is effectively gambling, and I have no taste for it. But I also know a ton of people do (casinos and state lotteries are some of the biggest money makers in the U.S.), so the only thing I can do is shake my head and not support it.
Simply put, yes, there are a LOT of people in this world who like the “gamble” aspect of RNG.
I do approve of much of that Gaix2 said about “good RNG” vs “bad RNG” though, even though the difference really in most cases is more psychological… it’s still a significant distinction.
This is really one area that I take people to task on the need for a “big massive expansion pack.” Because let’s be honest… that’s NOT how it works.
Traditional expansion packs tend to play out as, “Every eighteen months or so I get about 4 months of enjoyment, then I complain I’m bored for the rest of the year.” I am not particularly convinced it gives a more fulfilling experience for longer.
Does that make the living story better? Not particularly (especially since Arena.net has yet to prove they can deliver an “expansion” worth of content through the living story)… it’s just different.
But let’s not pretend expansions are steak. It’s just getting the bag of jellybeans at once.
You DO realize that the amount of real money needed to buy a legendary would be in the realm of hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars, right? The idea of just “buying” a legendary would be… impractical.
If someone wanted to hand me that sort of smack for some digital pixels… I’d take it, and I’m betting you would too.
Unless you were the spoiled son of an investment banker, you either ground out real life cash or in game gold to buy a legendary.
This is an argument that has been iterated quite a few times OP.
Arena.net doesn’t want to fragment their player base with boxed expansion sets. Apparently, they felt there were problems with how some people had Prophecies, Factions, or Nightfall, or any combination of the three.
I guess there were enough people who had one game, but couldn’t play the other because they didn’t have that campaign. They also don’t want a long line of expansions, and creating a barrier for new players. “You mean, I have to get this… then this… then this… then this… then I can play all the content?”
Those are their cited reasons. I don’t think they are entirely invalid (though I also think that it’s not nearly as big of a hurdle as they claim it is). My main suspicion however, is that it’s a matter of money.
It is FAR cheaper to develop digital only content than boxed expansions (I mean to the degree of for every dollar spent for physical disc content, it’s ten cents to do it digital only)… and if they were to sell a digital expansion, you better believe that players would be demanding a physical disc set.
So this is what they hope will maximize their profits. Gradually released digital content that serves the purpose of an expansion at a fraction of the cost. They likely feel they can suffer the loss of players who demand traditional expansion sets because the cost of developing that content is far less.
The current barrier I see is that their Living Story has yet to demonstrate it can deliver that expansion pack level of content that sticks. It can in theory, but until they demonstrate that theory in reality, they’re going to continue to face skepticism from a market that is NOTORIOUS for resisting changes to the traditionally accepted business model.
tl;dr version: I believe Arena.net thinks this will make them more $$$ at the end of the day.
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4. Raiding. Again, a feature ArenaNet consciously decided wasn’t a good idea (hint, they were wrong). The only content you’ll find for large groups of players are the open world bosses, which usually get downed in a matter of minutes. Tequatl is an exception to that.
I do want to comment on this.
Believe me, I enjoyed WoW’s raid endgame (actually spent time with a top 100 raiding guild during Burning Crusade), but I held no delusions whatsoever that the vast overwhelming majority of WoW’s player base thought it was worth their time. (I remember something like 2% of the players ever got past Kalecgos in Sunwell Plateau).
The main reason we saw the “Looking for Raid” difficulty in Cataclysm was for that very inclusiveness that you snidely demean Arena.net catering to. Raid instances are as a rule a lot of resources for very little player return… so I can understand why a developer wouldn’t want to focus on it.
Now, that said… I don’t think Arena.net’s open world bosses are the answer either for those who want larger-scale, complex experiences, but… I can understand why Arena.net is trying to avoid raid instances.
Probably because they figure they aren’t responsible for glitches that occur when the user tries to go outside the intended content (i.e. skipping mobs).
Those sort of games-within-the-game can be surprisingly difficult to get right… and lo will there be rage if you get it wrong, ESPECIALLY when it’s a game people remember from before.
To be honest, their attempts at such mini-games (like Costume Brawl, or Keg Brawl) don’t particularly instill me with much confidence they’d be able to do Polymock justice.
Ya know… Asgaeroth… that actually is a pretty good comparison. kitten it, now I wanna play Ultima Online again.
I think the only way that Arena.net would divert significant effort to fix this bug is if you could demonstrate it occurring while playing the dungeon the way it is “supposed” to be run. I don’t think they’ll have much sympathy for the dungeon bugging otherwise.
Well, my personal view on SAB is that I’m not particularly fond of it. Whether it’s temporary or permanent really doesn’t matter to me. I’m probably not going to like it much either way.
But I do have a pretty good idea about how MMO players are. They get bored of content very quickly. The easiest (not necessarily best, mind, but the easiest) way to keep them talking about a certain content is to make it not always available. It keeps them anticipating, rather than just shrugging, “Oh. They’re still doing stuff for that boring place?” after two years.
It’s a pretty cheap psychological trick, but it’s quite effective, especially if the content isn’t “essential” to game play.
I don’t think that color is from The Juggernaut. I believe it’s metal effect only happens if you’re actively wielding it (iirc).
Hey, I’m not totally against the idea of more “open” combat being more viable. I certainly like that idea more than 5 people standing on top of each other.
But at the same time, I also like the higher risk/higher reward that they have with melee and ranged balance. If things get too hot in melee, I like the idea of stepping out into range and not gimping the rest of the team’s buffs.
But finding that “sweet spot” in the game mechanics is the rub.
Well this thread is asking to lessen the gap between effecive and ineffective by pulling up the usefulness of the bottom. The gap between ranged and melee doesn’t need to be quite so huge as it is in PvE. I don’t even know why the meta crowd is so against it. Not like it’ll make is so they can’t stack anymore.
I guess it really depends on how far you want to pull up the “bottom.” You pull it too far up, then you’ve completely flipped the script and there will no reason to play in melee range.
Personally? My feeling is that the buff ranges are FAR too small. I’d have no problem with buff ranges being around 1500. Or something like your buffs will always apply to party members if they are in sight (if you’re not in party, the ranges are as they are now).
However, you still have the issue of in all but a couple classes, ranged damage is still significantly lower than melee. Would just buffs alone “pull up” the bottom enough to suit your tastes?
To me it would. I suspect many would disagree.
I think the counterpoint here is that it really doesn’t matter what you or other games consider “iconic.” Guild Wars 2’s mechanics defines a ranger as an inside/out fighter, melee first with ranged secondary. It’s your choice to ignore that… at the cost of not being as effective as the game allows.
and im AGAINST permanent sab
Howcome? If you don’t want to play it, then don’t play it. Why would you want others not to be able to?
I think because this person likes the idea of it being something fresh and new every time it appears. Permanent content gets boring quickly and abandoned by the player base.
The same would be true with SAB. Right now, it’s big news BECAUSE it’s not always around. Make it permanent and it just becomes another zone that people grew tired of.
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
I like it for the most part as well, though I do have a couple minor gripes about it.
1) I really, really dislike the RNG type items in the gem store. Personally, if I’m ponying up real life cash dollars for something, it should be a guarantee I get what I’m looking for. Unfortunately, I also know that a good many people like to gamble, so the chances of that going away any time soon are next to nil.
2) I would like to see a little more love shown to items and looks that you can get in-game without the gemstore. Right now, the vast majority of new armor sets or outfits are dropped into the BLTC, with just a small number of items (usually backpieces) to be earned in game. I get that the gemstore is currently Arena.net’s primary revenue stream, but surely it wouldn’t hurt the bottom line THAT much to give players a bone once in a while.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)