Guild Wars 2

What bothers me about legendary items is that there’s absolutely nothing “legendary” about them. Oh yes, they look shiny and have pretty effects….but the stats are identical to a typical exotic, and the only way to obtain them is an extremely massive level of grinding that puts any Korean MMO to shame.

I get the sense that the devs really dropped the ball on the concept of legendaries. If they were items that dropped extremely rarely in some sort of legendary Lvl 80 event, okay, that’s fair enough and that would actually FEEL legendary, because I had to kill some kind of great beast or perform some great task to earn them. Right now, legendaries are pretty much earned entirely by obtaining massive quantities of two things: gold and resources. There’s nothing “legendary” about that, I could potentially farm up all of those things without even once doing anything big or fancy. Hell, the ‘quest’ to obtain a precursor is far more legendary than the legendary item itself, and all that typically involves is farming up Lvl 80 exotics to gamble away into a glowing pit in the center of town. That’s the problem: it’s all grind and no substance. Legendaries are supposed to “show off your accomplishments and what you’ve been doing in the world”, but right now they only show off how many countless hours of grinding you’ve poured into this game.

When so much of the rest of the world revolves around building the world around you and creating this awesome flowing narrative of events, the fact that legendaries essentially throw this out and say “welp, fun’s over, time to grind like you’re playing a Korean MMO” is an extremely disappointing .

Are they worth it? No, not at all, but some will claim they are because they’ll do anything to rationalize their ridiculous time investments into this game. Pretty much the only way to go about getting legendaries right now that is sane and rational is to obtain the items slowly through natural play, which is what I’m doing. It’ll take 20-billion years but at least I’ll be able to say I didn’t waste weeks of time grinding materials mindlessly just for some shiny pixels.

Nurvus.2891:

critickitten, can you show the math that supports your overpowered theory?
No, you can’t.

Um, I just did prove it in my last post, which you obviously didn’t read very well.

It would only take five people running at 25 stacks of bleed to quintuple the amount of bleed damage a world boss is sustaining at a given time, which in turn means it will die at a SIGNIFICANTLY faster rate.

Supposing we have a world boss taking 10k damage per second from direct sources and only the 1062 from bleed that I previously mentioned, if you remove the hard cap and instead set things up so that each player can stack bleed up to 25 times, the boss just went from taking ~11062 DpS to about 15312 DpS. In case you’re not mathematically inclined, that means he’s taking damage at approximately 138% of the previous rate, meaning his health will be dropping MUCH faster per second than it was before. And that’s with only five players stacking 25 stacks of bleeding at once. What if it’s ten? Or twenty? You make it sound like there are “so many” players getting ripped off by this cap, but fail to realize that if indeed there are “so many” people being ripped off by this cap, its removal would exponentially increase the amount of damage a world boss is sustaining per second. That will undoubtably lead to a nerf to condition damage, because I rather doubt the ANet staff will be all that keen on seeing their giant world bosses go down that quickly.

You keep insisting it won’t be overpowered, but you have to know that the devs won’t just allow players to stack hundreds of bleeds onto a boss at once unless they decrease the power of those bleeds. They put the cap into the game to keep players from stacking bleeds that high, it’s simple logic that if they remove the cap, they’re probably going to reduce the damage at the same time. Because why would they have the cap at all if not to keep a hard limit on the power of conditions? A limit which is quickly exceeded by your idea to remove the cap?

As for your “arguments”, both of them are dismissed merely by reality:

1) It’s true that bleed stacks “fall off” after a given period of time, but that doesn’t mean they do LESS damage once a stack falls off because bleed damage is not calculated based on the number of stacks currently active. Each stack is calculated individually. Thus each stack will still inflict the full amount of damage before it falls off.

2) You assert that condition removal fixes the problem, but exactly how often do you see world bosses using condition removal in great enough quantities to get rid of the conditions inflicted on them? Because I’ll tell you how many times I’ve seen it happen: ZERO. Many world bosses don’t appear to have condition removal at all. So it’s safe to say that a condition, once inflicted, will stay for the entire duration. And if condition removal were added, you’d be among the first to complain that you’re being “nerfed” again.

I do so love that my opinion is “uninformed” simply because it disagrees with yours, though. Or maybe I have a pretty decent idea what I’m talking about, and you’re the one not comprehending. The only way you’ll convince them to remove the cap is to somehow convince them that there’s nothing overpowered about a world boss having hundreds of bleed stacks on it. And I think we both know that you’re not up to that task, since your core arguments revolve around things which don’t actually occur in the game.

So basically the consensus here seems to be “let’s remove the cap so that bleed becomes so grossly overpowered that the dev team will be FORCED to nerf it to keep world bosses from bleeding to death in less than a minute, and then we’ll complain about that nerf when it happens”.

Brilliant. >_<

I don’t think the cap is a great situation, but at least I’m smart enough to acknowledge that the proposal is an even worse model. Even if we just presume that it’s set up to a new cap of 25 bleeds per character (instead of total), that’s 25 stacks of at least 42.5 damage per second, assuming the individuals in question are Lvl 80, and that doesn’t even consider condition damage’s boost to those numbers. So with just five players stacking 25 bleeds, that world boss who was formerly bleeding out at the rate of 1062.5 HP per second is now bleeding out at 5 times that rate, 5312.5 HP per second. And that on top of the direct-damage it’s receiving from other sources. Bosses WILL die a hell of a lot faster in that situation, and the devs obviously aren’t going to let things stay that way. Cue the nerf bat being swung full force at condition damage, bleed in particular, and then you’ll complain how “useless” it’s become despite the fact that it was YOUR begging for the cap removal that necessitated this situation.

I don’t LIKE the cap, mind, I run a condition necro myself. But to pretend that the cap isn’t there for a good reason is just foolishness.

TravisTrout.6803:

Mounts just wouldn’t make sense in this game. It’s not like other games where you have to travel across half a continent to get somewhere. We don’t have enormous, sprawling outdoor areas. Such games are obviously designed with mounts in mind. But we don’t have that. We have little nooks that are saturated with instant waypoint teleporters. That is the travel system.

I have to ask: You guys insisting that you “need” mounts, have you even been to Orr yet? You might as well carve up your horse for rations because you won’t be riding it anyway. Saying “find me a zombie in Orr” is like saying “find me a crater on the Moon.” Close your eyes and point in a random direction. Oh look, zombie.

You (some of you, anyway) aren’t even concerned with the facts of the matter. You just want a horse. Or a goat. Or a lobotomized Centaur. Something. Ok, I get that. Mounts are cool — in games where they make sense. This is not such a game.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure we don’t need to be the Defenders of the Plan here because obviously the developers felt the same way. You don’t think they simply forgot to put horses in and accidentally dropped waypoints all over the world, did you?

Ding, correct! And herein lies the core problem with mounts in GW2.

So let’s assume for a moment that the speed boosts don’t go into the mount system. Okay, fine, so you have mounts with no speed boosts and therefore it doesn’t alter the game in any negative way, right?

Hold on a second. How do you address combat?

In Orr, there are monsters EVERYWHERE, and many are capable of pulling you or knocking you down. Devs would need to animate in some way the player’s mount, dismount, and how they respond to pulling attacks and such. Obviously it’s not really “adding to the game’s realism” if the player’s mount vanishes whenever they’re pulled by an enemy mob. So that alone pretty much throws out any “realism” argument you could make. It’d be harder to explain the disappearance of a mount in GW2 than to explain why mounts don’t exist.

And then there’s the argument for mounts having speed boosts, which is similarly easy to dismiss: the game is designed with some traits focusing purely on speed boosts, these traits subsequently become useless if mounts can just allow everybody to reach those speeds. You have the option of speccing yourself with greater speed, so if running speed bothers you THIS MUCH, then just do that instead.

Ah, I see.

Though that’s still a needlessly complicated system, and one that doesn’t fix the problems which led to the current model in the first place.

I agree. There are times when minions are just an obstacle and only some of necro’s minions can be killed on command. That needs to be extended to every minion type.

And I’d appreciate it if minions had appropriate out-of-combat regenerating health too. Can’t count the number of times I’ve had to waste my time micro-managing healing on all my minions because they don’t heal outside of combat. >_>

1 and 2 are ridiculous. The entire point of those higher tier items is that they should be rare drops, not common ones. I admit the loot tables need some work, but it’s not THAT simple. That’s way too much of a simplification. >_>

3) That was done originally and just resulted in people farming the first boss, quitting, and then re-entering for faster rewards. I think I’d rather have the system they’ve got now.

4) Not even sure what you mean.

5) So you want an item that literally drops entire units of gold? lol okay, enjoy the 0.01% chance of it dropping then. No way would they make gold THAT easy to obtain.

That’s the number the devs themselves gave during the Shadow of the Mad King release. It was never clarified if that was just a ballpark estimate, or if it was, in fact, roughly accurate.

Regardless of what it was, though, that rate would seem to suggest that the clock tower was indeed pretty difficult. It certainly took me longer than any other jumping puzzle in the game, though admittedly it was also by far the most fun I’d ever had with any jumping puzzle in the game.

And if, indeed, that figure is even close to accurate, what do you do? Ignore the 95% who failed to cater to the 5% who didn’t? Like I said, I hardly envy them the decision between catering to those of us who LOVE a good challenge, and those of us who struggle and get easily frustrated by them.

One thing that admittedly baffled me in regards to the game’s vast customization focus (with so many dyes and armor types) is this: why can’t I change the color on my weapons too?

I know how painful this could prove to be for the designers, especially with so many weapons having effects that would be difficult to color, but it would dramatically increase the amount of customization players can achieve. I’d absolutely adore the ability to make my shield’s colors match up with my red/gold armor design, it would help complete the set. And while I know it’s unlikely to happen on anything with flashy effects, I gotta say I’d find it really cool to be able to color my Fiery Dragon Sword’s flames a different color. (I know, I know….but a man can dream. ;-;)

I found it especially awkward considering that some weapons in GW1 allow for color customization to a limited degree, even, so it’s almost bizarre to me that weapons in GW2 wouldn’t expand on this concept. It feels like a step backwards.

Barborin.4721:

There have been a lot of newer MMO’s over the last few years that have ruined the only fun things about them because some people couldn’t complete them. If you think about it, its terrible for business.

It took me a good 4-5 hours of attempts to complete that clock tower. You know what that means? It means I played for 4-5 hours. When it comes to instances, that can be longer. People complain about things being hard, but the drive to beat them is what keeps them playing.

After I completed the tower, I felt great! I literally jumped out of my seat. And you know what I did then? I went back to it to try a few more times to make sure I could do it again!

Remember that there is a difference between the majority of players and the loudest players.

-Hawcinn/Barborin

While I agree with the sentiment that the clock tower is a great example of how content can be challenging in just the right way (it’s the first jumping puzzle in the game I’ve legitimately ENJOYED and had fun playing up until I finally beat it a little over 90 minutes in)….

It’s worth noting that the clock tower DID only have about a 5% completion rate according to the dev. So “the majority of players” in this case would be the ones complaining, NOT the folks like us who enjoyed the challenge.

And that being the case, what do you do now? Do you start disregarding the majority because they’re all a bunch of “girly men” or something? :P

This is the difficult decision that the devs face with regards to making up their minds how future content will be created. And I don’t envy them that.

Honestly this is like the folks who rushed through Skyrim’s bulk of content and then complained there wasn’t enough to do. >_>

Chances are good that if you’re already saying “there’s nothing to do”, then you were one of those folks who bashed your way through the content as quickly as possible. In which case yes, there will be nothing to do, because you’ve effectively farmed your way through all of it instead of taking the time to enjoy it. Whereas if you had taken it slowly, you’d still have plenty to do. I’m on my 520th hour right now and am nowhere near having a full five-man-roster of Lvl 80 characters. Why? Because I’m taking my time and enjoying the content, not rushing forward with the singular mentality of “get to Lvl 80 as fast as possible”.

So yeah, that complaint is right out.

That said, the market place complaints are fair enough. There needs to be more done about the botting situation. More than just asking us to report them and wait it out, that is.

I don’t know how people are claiming that longbows are completely ineffective. I’m often shredding PvE mobs long before they get to me and I’m not even set up as a full glass cannon, which makes me think anyone who is struggling with a longbow is obviously doing something wrong.

My personal complaint with the longbow is two-fold:
1) The trait that enables 1500 range does NOT enable continuous fire at 1500 range. If I target a mob, my 1 skill will not spam itself until I’ve closed the gap to 1200 range, which is sort of against the whole idea of the trait. Not sure if bug or just bad design on the trait, though.
2) Longbows and shortbows have generally been set up to fire at the same range. This makes no sense in an RP context (the very name, “shortbow” implies it’s a bow built for firing faster at shorter ranges), and since the shortbow fires at a faster rate, this can potentially lead to it being significantly superior to the longbow (in situations where condition damage isn’t scorned, that is).

But I’m very much against this mentality that the longbow is “teh sux”. Given how easily I can shred most mobs near me, I’m inclined to think you’re the one doing something wrong. Granted, I don’t kill things as fast as, say, a DPS warrior, but then I did admit I’m not fully glass cannon so that’s probably contributing.