For all those wishing for an ‘easy’ mode for Raids.
From the latest Patch Notes:
Raids
General
Infantile mode is now available for all raids. Bosses have 50% reduced health and outgoing damage. Loot from the boss chests consists of two blues and a green.
Enjoy. ; )
Yay!!! Can’t wait to participate in infantile mode XD
Fantastic, as long as My EXP bar can progress again!!!!! Too bad it’s APril fools and someone cant read a calendar.
For all those wishing for an ‘easy’ mode for Raids.
From the latest Patch Notes:
Raids
General
Infantile mode is now available for all raids. Bosses have 50% reduced health and outgoing damage. Loot from the boss chests consists of two blues and a green.
Enjoy. ; )
Yay!!! Can’t wait to participate in infantile mode XD
Tonight, I just got the elemental skin from opening a random black lion chest after completing ember bay with my necro. I am sad that I can not choose to sell it to other players who seem to like this skin because I never understood what was the fuss about it when playing guild wars and I still fail to understand the fuss about it now, even though the skin has clearly been updated. On a similar level I am sad that I cannot sell every mini skins as it is possible to automatically unlock one to your wardrobe through the guaranteed account bound skin unlock.
Alacrity was really powerful in PVP too, not just in Raids. All game modes provide opportunities for nerfs
It was a request to provide an example of skill nerfed due to raids. By adjusting Alacrity many skills were nerfed. And the only explanation we had from ANet team was the Alacrity should be nerfed because it is not desired (by the devs) in that form in raids. I think this is enough.
Miellyn.6847
So because the final decision about a nerf was from a raid perspective it also started the discussion about a nerf?
Well, the topic is about the GW2 loosing its identity. And one of the factors contributing to this seems to be the raid. We had always nerfs and adjustments to skills. Generated by the need to balance PvP and WwW. But in the raid case, the nerfs and changes seems to fix nothing in the (unbalanced) PvP and WwW world. These changes are done only for the raid sake. That means only for a minor segment of game with not so many players involved. And still the changes affects all the game modes.
Back to topic.
The game I found when I started to play was amazing. Not by graphics or lore or mechanics. For me the surprise was the attitude of the players. No competition. No KS. No abuse of the high lvl players against the low lvl. I found that the guy coming to fight against the veteran I fought is not trying to steal my drop. He in fact left for a few moments his business to help a newbie (me). WHAT? Is this real? This is happening in an online game? YES. This was GW2.
Today, by the intentional decision to segregate the playerbase into “dedicated, skilled players” (with a daily 8-10 hours to spend in game) and “other casual players” (filthy casuals! ) the atmosphere of the game changed. ANet further pushed the toxicity forward by allowing instruments to monitor other players.
ANet’s attitude towards players changed also. From “play how you want and enjoy the game” to “gid gud (remember the Anet worker spitting these words? ) dude. Learn the mechanics, the skills and builds, invest effort and time and then you will be able to play the game”. Nothing about the enjoyment :-((
Wow the way you envision the game to be feels soooo flawed to me. Even being a casual I see nothing wrong in adjusting builds to complete some specific content, since all it requires is to be out of combat. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong to see and experience (if you choose to do so) how deep the rabid hole goes in terms of skills and mechanics. It is an action based combat system and the game is like more than four years old. Such an amazing system deserves some content that players can’t just complete in one easy way. And that is the great thing about it: you are not required to travel through this rabid hole, you can just stay at the surface because you know, completing hearts in core maps or ls3 maps doesn’t ask to form a 10 party squad. As for toxic elitist players, I am sorry to say that these people already existed when dungeons were far more popular.
Well, no, because some of the things I started playing for aren’t there. The lack of raids is one of the reasons I started playing Guild Wars 2.
You see it always starts this way with raids. There’s only a couple, but we just want challenging content, we don’t want rewards. Then we want the best rewards, because we’re doing the most challenging content.
I can see how this would be harmful in the long run. IF this would become the mindset of the game it would mean that the “best” rewards can only be had by doing raids. But we are nowhere near that point.
Rewards are part of the reason people play MMOs. When the best rewards, which weren’t locked away, are now locked away, when content becomes more and more exclusive, the game changes identity.
Essentially I came to a game that was inclusive, the is becoming more and more exclusive. How can you possibly say that inclusion isn’t part of a game’s identity?
The exclusivity of an item is what makes it so desireable. If i can buy the same armor from every vendor and literally everyone can buy and wear it – it looses its appeal and value. This concept is not exclusive to games.
Even though you could buy legendaries from TP before – the grind to get the gold was the same.
Right so why not have a grind to get the legendary armor that’s equal? That would solve my issue. The point is when this game launched you could farm yourself to death and buy a legendary. You could gamble to get a precursor and make a legendary. You could buy a precursor and make a legendary. You could take out your credit card, buy gems, convert them to cash, and buy a legendary. That’s how the game WAS at launch.
It’s now different. I don’t like that difference.
You perfectly describe a core aspect of the game that I dislike the most about the game. I personally dislike your views about legendary armor because you introduce, according to me, the idea of a skin treadmill with legendary armor being at the top. The thing is, not everyone will have the time nor the energy to get into that long grind that could represent the legendary armor and besides there is also a matter of economic balance to take into account to not completely crash the market regarding the necessary materials to craft the different pieces of armor. And this is even more troublesome if one could take a credit, buy the gems to convert to gold and buy all materials needed.
I’m not talking about a skin treadmill at all. Not even a little. Legendaries were somethign I was interested in and I did. But nothing in this game has the same “overhead” as getting into raids. Not in time or dedication. If you don’t find raids fun, you’re out of that reward.
I’ve made 12 legendaries. I didn’t buy them (though I have bought precursors). I’ve also done precursor collections. I look forward to this sort of long adventure crafting process when it’s casual and I can work on it at my own pace.
I can’t work on raids at my own pace. If I wanted to raid for 15 minutes a week, I’d never really learn to raid. Do you know how I know I don’t like raids? I"ve been raiding, that’s how.
So basically do this high overhead content, or don’t get this reward. Okay but the new legendaries coming out have no real path associated with them, there’s nothing to do but craft them. I made Shooshadoo in like a couple of hours. I had most of the mats anyway.
So yeah a legendary journey for armor that didn’t include me spending a lot of time doing something I don’t like would have been something more for me to do in the game. As of now, I won’t be doing it, because I won’t spend that much time raiding. If I did, I’d end up hating the game.
That’s just not working for me.
But you introduce the idea into the the game nevertheless. If everyone is able to get one you devalue it completely and that is when feelings of “second class citizen” truly arises because most will get the armor and a minority of other players won’t still be able get it due to the fact that they don’t enough time to get it. What you find being a matter of hours for you to craft shooshadoo could be a matter of months for others because the majority of players is casual and they simply can’t dedicate the time you can. Besides, what will happen to other future skins released in the game if the legendary armor with unique effect is just a huge easy grind ?That is where the true identity of the game lies in imo: the ability to choose one’s true personal grind and skin to chase based on how much time you have to play. Not having the content being dumbed down for everyone so that everyone gets to the “end” easily.
Well, no, because some of the things I started playing for aren’t there. The lack of raids is one of the reasons I started playing Guild Wars 2.
You see it always starts this way with raids. There’s only a couple, but we just want challenging content, we don’t want rewards. Then we want the best rewards, because we’re doing the most challenging content.
I can see how this would be harmful in the long run. IF this would become the mindset of the game it would mean that the “best” rewards can only be had by doing raids. But we are nowhere near that point.
Rewards are part of the reason people play MMOs. When the best rewards, which weren’t locked away, are now locked away, when content becomes more and more exclusive, the game changes identity.
Essentially I came to a game that was inclusive, the is becoming more and more exclusive. How can you possibly say that inclusion isn’t part of a game’s identity?
The exclusivity of an item is what makes it so desireable. If i can buy the same armor from every vendor and literally everyone can buy and wear it – it looses its appeal and value. This concept is not exclusive to games.
Even though you could buy legendaries from TP before – the grind to get the gold was the same.
Right so why not have a grind to get the legendary armor that’s equal? That would solve my issue. The point is when this game launched you could farm yourself to death and buy a legendary. You could gamble to get a precursor and make a legendary. You could buy a precursor and make a legendary. You could take out your credit card, buy gems, convert them to cash, and buy a legendary. That’s how the game WAS at launch.
It’s now different. I don’t like that difference.
You perfectly describe a core aspect of the game that I dislike the most about the game. I personally dislike your views about legendary armor because you introduce, according to me, the idea of a skin treadmill with legendary armor being at the top. The thing is, not everyone will have the time nor the energy to get into that long grind that could represent the legendary armor and besides there is also a matter of economic balance to take into account to not completely crash the market regarding the necessary materials to craft the different pieces of armor. And this is even more troublesome if one could take a credit, buy the gems to convert to gold and buy all materials needed.
Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this is how gaming works. Raid loot is always much better than anything else and it should be. People dedicate a lot of time and effort to raiding and they should be rewarded for that.
So, at first people were asking for challenging content and rewards to show off. Now there is “I’m entitled not for just exclusive, but for the best rewards because I’m doing content I asked for”. And then some people are wondering why raid community have such reputation.
I don’t really understand what you are saying, but traditionally in MMOs Raiders get the best rewards because Raiding requires the most dedication / time investment in the game.
What I believe is being said is that the raid community said we want challenging content and in many of those threads, they weren’t talking about rewards and whenever someone who didn’t want to raid brought up rewards, the raiders didn’t come forward and say we want exclusive rewards only we can get. They often said things like they’d be happy with at title or a mini to show off.
Now, suddenly people who want an alternate path to legendary armor are slackers and beggars, because we don’t enjoy raiding but we still want access to those potential rewards.
It’s always been my argument that keeping rewards like legendary armor exclusive, after legendary weapons could be grinded out by almost anyone given enough time, wasn’t good for the game.
Raiders often want the best rewards, and they want the raids hard enough to keep that club exclusive. But there are less of them, and therefore, the devs start catering to a smaller user base.
People say only a small number of people are working on raids, but part of working on raids, at this point in time, is also people working on legendary armor. Unfortunately if we’re all waiting for more armor sets, and a set comes out that only raiders can get, it’s most likely not great for the game over all.
It will please the small number of people who can get it, while making everyone else feel like a second class citizen.
But why exactly will you feel like a second class citizen ? And how can you predict it ? Because you locked off of an armor offering stat swap while at the same time the game never required to actively change stats on a regular basis ? I personally don’t and frankly I don’t look like the fact that you consider everyone else not playing raid a second class citizen just like you said you will be. There is plenty of things that has been locked behind some content and it is not because all the other was content was easy to do or a straight up grind that all the players will go for it.
So it’s the stat swap everyone cares about, huh? Not the fact that this is the first (and likely also the last!) legendary armor set? You sure make a good case, bro! Nobody saw the sleight of hand at all!
Nice constructive comment bro!! Only expressing my views about the game. To get back on topic at hand, no I don’t believe the game identity has changed. At the same time, however I believe that the game true identity were not enough expressively implemented in the core game. And I would say that it mainly comes to the fact that I played the original guild wars. In my opinion, the spirit of the game that was developed in guild wars failed to be implemented in guild wars 2 because challenging group content was only recently achieved through raids and HoT in a lesser extent. And just as guild wars would lock fow armor behind the completion of fow multiple times, I accept that legendary armor will be blocked behind raids. My disagreement with Vayne is only a matter of perception to me: animated armor is only a skin while he thinks that an animated design offers more. Edit: adding some for thought. Would it be conceivable for Anet to create a single piece of animated armor that you can acquire through LS ?
Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this is how gaming works. Raid loot is always much better than anything else and it should be. People dedicate a lot of time and effort to raiding and they should be rewarded for that.
So, at first people were asking for challenging content and rewards to show off. Now there is “I’m entitled not for just exclusive, but for the best rewards because I’m doing content I asked for”. And then some people are wondering why raid community have such reputation.
I don’t really understand what you are saying, but traditionally in MMOs Raiders get the best rewards because Raiding requires the most dedication / time investment in the game.
What I believe is being said is that the raid community said we want challenging content and in many of those threads, they weren’t talking about rewards and whenever someone who didn’t want to raid brought up rewards, the raiders didn’t come forward and say we want exclusive rewards only we can get. They often said things like they’d be happy with at title or a mini to show off.
Now, suddenly people who want an alternate path to legendary armor are slackers and beggars, because we don’t enjoy raiding but we still want access to those potential rewards.
It’s always been my argument that keeping rewards like legendary armor exclusive, after legendary weapons could be grinded out by almost anyone given enough time, wasn’t good for the game.
Raiders often want the best rewards, and they want the raids hard enough to keep that club exclusive. But there are less of them, and therefore, the devs start catering to a smaller user base.
People say only a small number of people are working on raids, but part of working on raids, at this point in time, is also people working on legendary armor. Unfortunately if we’re all waiting for more armor sets, and a set comes out that only raiders can get, it’s most likely not great for the game over all.
It will please the small number of people who can get it, while making everyone else feel like a second class citizen.
But why exactly will you feel like a second class citizen ? And how can you predict it ? Because you locked off of an armor offering stat swap while at the same time the game never required to actively change stats on a regular basis ? I personally don’t and frankly I don’t look like the fact that you consider everyone else not playing raid a second class citizen just like you said you will be. There is plenty of things that has been locked behind some content and it is not because all the other was content was easy to do or a straight up grind that all the players will go for it.
To you it’s about stat swap. Seriously do you really believe most people get legendary weapons so they can stat swap? They do it because the skins are cool.
Legendary armor, from what we’ve seen so far, is the only armor in the game that animates when you go into combat. It’s very cool, to some people. And if those people can’t get it, and it’s really cool looking, yes, those people will feel like second class citizens. They’ll look at their armor, they’ll look at that armor and say wow, I wish I had that.
There are legendary backpacks, but there are two of them, one of them PvE and one of them PvP. There’s two ways to get them. There should be a WvW one too.
The problem is they’re taking time and energy to create this great animated skin and 10% of the population if that will have it. And compared to what else is out there, its’ a major upgrade.
Do you believe everyone is going to have a chance at armor that animates when you go into combat, cause I don’t.
This game has always been about skins, not stats. Top stats are not hard to get. Legendary weapons give you footprints, which are cool and set them apart from other weapons. It’s why people get legendaries. That and the cool skins/effects.
If we can’t get legendary armor without dedicating ourselves to something we don’t enjoy, yes, we’re going to feel disenfranchised.
That is the problem though. To you it feels cool but it won’t necessarily to others. I feel like getting skins has no real value because you can swap to any preferred or matching skin you want. Here is an example: it took me some time to get the reaper greatsword that comes with HoT and yet now I ended up straight up buying a greatsword from the TP that was worth 6g only because it was a better match to the ley line pieces of armor I was wearing. And yes I believe everyone has a chance of getting it because as you said the top stats are not hard to get.
Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this is how gaming works. Raid loot is always much better than anything else and it should be. People dedicate a lot of time and effort to raiding and they should be rewarded for that.
So, at first people were asking for challenging content and rewards to show off. Now there is “I’m entitled not for just exclusive, but for the best rewards because I’m doing content I asked for”. And then some people are wondering why raid community have such reputation.
I don’t really understand what you are saying, but traditionally in MMOs Raiders get the best rewards because Raiding requires the most dedication / time investment in the game.
What I believe is being said is that the raid community said we want challenging content and in many of those threads, they weren’t talking about rewards and whenever someone who didn’t want to raid brought up rewards, the raiders didn’t come forward and say we want exclusive rewards only we can get. They often said things like they’d be happy with at title or a mini to show off.
Now, suddenly people who want an alternate path to legendary armor are slackers and beggars, because we don’t enjoy raiding but we still want access to those potential rewards.
It’s always been my argument that keeping rewards like legendary armor exclusive, after legendary weapons could be grinded out by almost anyone given enough time, wasn’t good for the game.
Raiders often want the best rewards, and they want the raids hard enough to keep that club exclusive. But there are less of them, and therefore, the devs start catering to a smaller user base.
People say only a small number of people are working on raids, but part of working on raids, at this point in time, is also people working on legendary armor. Unfortunately if we’re all waiting for more armor sets, and a set comes out that only raiders can get, it’s most likely not great for the game over all.
It will please the small number of people who can get it, while making everyone else feel like a second class citizen.
But why exactly will you feel like a second class citizen ? And how can you predict it ? Because you locked off of an armor offering stat swap while at the same time the game never required to actively change stats on a regular basis ? I personally don’t and frankly I don’t look like the fact that you consider everyone else not playing raid a second class citizen just like you said you will be. There is plenty of things that has been locked behind some content and it is not because all the other was content was easy to do or a straight up grind that all the players will go for it.
I raided for years in another game when I was younger and had the time and energy for it. It got old…
Then I found GW2, which sadly became infected with raids after HoT.
I get it, it’s fun to be part of the exclusive club. But the rest of the community who doesn’t join it because they aren’t good enough, don’t have the time or just plain don’t want to, that part of the community feel left out.
No matter which way they try to spin it, they are using dev resources on these raids that could be spent in other areas of the game that a larger percentage of the game population can experience and enjoy. It’s wasted resources in our eyes.
I can let this slide and try to ignore raids as they currently stand, because they don’t really provide anything provocatively rewarding. But legendary armor is where I draw the line. That is flat out spitting in the face of every person who doesn’t enjoy raiding, I consider it being a personal insult to the non raiding community “haha, this is the fanciest armor in the game, and you will never have it!”.
The moment when I am standing in a city and see a player fully clad in the most intricately crafted, fantastic armor the devs have ever created and knowing it is gated behind RAIDS, this is probably where I’ll uninstall the game.
Could you please refrain yourself from speaking as the spokesman of the casual community. I am casual, I have no interest in raiding and yet I see no harm in it. Having played the original guild wars, legendary armor being gated behind raids is to me the same as fow armor gated behavior fow. It is there, you can get your group to complete the content multiple times and yet you will never feel compelled to do so. The game mode provides a fancy armor skin and yet you can’t say that everyone will want to get it because “fancy” is such a highly subjective word. Really I see no harm in it because stat swap is such a very optional feature. In the same way I don’t have a legendary backpiece because I just don’t enjoy fractals or PvP that much.
Hmm maybe the problem rather comes from the fact that you can see the enemy team in advance. Profession switch should be allowed to carry your team only based on what profession the players can play. Because the more balanced your team is the more chance your team will have the possibility to win. And in the worst case of scenario, if your team has players that can’t switch professions then they can play more tanky or more damage oriented setups depending on who can switch and who can not. The waiting before the match starts should also be raised to 2 minutes to account for my suggestion.
If anything, I kind of feel like the effect of armor being damaged due to death is not strong enough. Maybe it should go this way: one death equals one piece of armor being destroyed. So you basically play your character with one piece of armor less per death, not downstate ofc if you manage to rally.
It’s only a punishment if you die alone, though. More or less anyway. Pact Command mastery can raise someone from defeated status and repair broken armor. It’s cool that such a group-friendly feature exists, but it drives home the point that armor breakage is regarded as a nuisance rather than a pointed mechanic.
True. Totally forgot about the features of pact command mastery. But anyway aren’t most players playing solo ? I kinda expect that my proposed change would reinforce player cooperation on open world and put more pressure in solo play for personal story (at least in HoT).
If anything, I kind of feel like the effect of armor being damaged due to death is not strong enough. Maybe it should go this way: one death equals one piece of armor being destroyed. So you basically play your character with one piece of armor less per death, not downstate ofc if you manage to rally.
Yes and thats why people want easy mode 100% they dont want to stop after 50% and the raiders want harder 100% they dont want the boring first two bosses so easy mode/ your normal ,our hard mode is what everyone wants.
How can you not see it yet?
They see it, but they don’t want their slice of game to become more popular. And they just assume that casuals will just keep shelling out cash for them to have fun. Out of charity probably, because there’s no other reason for that.
Man you seem so salty and toxic. Chill out. They are popular enough because Anet staff is happy with the number of people raiding in the game. And that is what makes them popular, the fact that players can do content that require more than just following a Zerg in open world or other five man content that most have already mastered for a very long time. Besides, you don’t generate interest just by creating a toned down version of everything that is being deemed hard by players, what you do when toning down content is divide the playerbase even more. And when you do so, you make it harder for Anet to create content because they need to update and sustain the content for every subset of players, which then will diverte even more ressources to raids, a very optional content that isn’t required to be completed by all. Another point I would like to point out is that the playerbase is not black and white. You can’t assume that every casual in the game hates raids and all spend huge amount of money in the gemstore. In the same way, not all players that are casual will always be casual.
The most important thing I would personally advise you OP is to get LS2 in the gemstore. I will say that the game does a poor job at making the transition between core game to HoT if you only recently hit lvl 80. You should also take a look at doing fractals and dungeons to take a better look at what guardians can do. Try also a bit of PvP to have better reflexes in terms of mechanics. After that HoT will become way easier for you imo.
It could have been a revenant who used unrelenting assault when you portaled back ? Or simply a cheater ? I mean such an important balance change would have been announced if it was the case.
Bingo Anet has just made things worse and worse and worse in PvP its a non stop bleed they can’t fix. I was a avid ok PvPer till i got hooked on Stronghold and dominated the ranked SH. Then Anet poked me and my buddies in the eye and said we must play contrash. Hahahahaha i left that crap to play stronghold I’m not going back to deal with crud players i have no way of carrying. If I’m forced to play a teef just to win in contrash then I’m out. I pop on now n then but without a reason to pvp i don’t stay on long.
Btw Mutaatti Battlefield One is quite fun.
Sigh, how does it feel to be a slow kid on the short bus?
Cause you know the person you both are talking about is streaming s6. Kind of hard to do if you leave the game. Hell he even posted in this thread!
But don’t let the facts get in the way of your rise to be the best special kid you can be!
Sindrenerr (and every other legendary player) has already left this game. They might come back to check whats going on once in a while but they all moved to more rewarding games.
Same goes to me. Today was in a match, winning, random server disconnection, got back to match, we won, lost rating and got 1 hour dishonor. This season have had a lot of disconnections/server crashes. So I dont want to waste time anymore on this game that has no rewards whatsoever.
Should I chase for #1 leaderboard place? For what? A title? please… Who even reads those or cares about them? The moment you deleted teamQ, there hasn’t been any competitive playing in PvP. Why? Because it’s teambased game mode where teams are banned!
Same as you would play hockey with teams randomly picked from 5 different countries? First the idea seemed like fun, but then you realize that there’s no teamplay or strategic learning, because all you have to care about is yourself!
Human nature is selfish, but when put in to team or community, we need to get other peoples approval, so we tend to think about other people too.
Every legendary player knows, that if you want to climb up leaderboard, you have to have a good and reliable team. But what to do when you cant form a team? You pick whats allowed. DuoQ. So they duoQ with their friends, and nothing else.
So Anet you want to kill PvP? Make it pure soloQ and let the community to turn against each other.
Have fun all you still playing this game! Im out! o/
Buuut….on the last Monday stream, Sindrenner actually said that he was gone for the week and that he would stream again on friday…Did I miss something ?
Hmm I think you got it backwards. If I recall correctly, the game went F2P before the release of HoT.
The core game did go F2P shortly before launch. In the months prior to that however, they stopped selling the core game and replaced it with HoT, which included the core game for free.
To be clear, their plan is to include all past expansions with the current one so they’re only selling a single box. If that hasn’t changed, when the next expansion is available for purchase, HoT will no longer be available as it will be included with it. Unlike the core game however, HoT will not be F2P.
Their reasoning for bundling it was to make it easier to get into the game, but HoT isn’t actually required to play through the next expansion so there’s no need to include it.
The obvious downside is that it’s going to cause complaints, just as bundling the core game did. Why go through the trouble of offering compensation when they could simply move HoT to the side.
The benefit however is that it’ll bring in more people, which is desperately need since HoT was designed for active maps. Making it F2P however would not only make it far more active, it would also be more profitable, assuming people buy gliders, plus they could break it up, selling the story separately for example.
Thx for explaining your viewpoint. However they could make the next expansion require gliding (and by that I mean the more advanced version of gliding), which is only available by first getting into HoT storyline for new players, so I am not so sure I agree with you.
Hmm from what I understood it doesn’t work that way.
Free as in, buying the next expansion will give you access to HoT, just like how HoT included the core game for free, prior to it going F2P.
Their plan was to bundle all past expansions into a single box. I wouldn’t be surprised if that doesn’t happen however, as it’s simply a terrible idea. It doesn’t even make sense to include it, considering HoT isn’t actually required. It’d be more profitable to move it to the gem store or even make it F2P.
Hmm I think you got it backwards. If I recall correctly, the game went F2P before the release of HoT. Why is it such a terrible idea to you ?
The other question is: should I wait a bit longer, considering a new expansion is about to be released? Also, when is it coming out? Couldn’t find a date…
In 3 months, season 3 will likely end and reveal the next expansion. HoT will likely be replaced at that point due to their 1 box model. HoT could actually be free right now if they do 5 months of refunds again.
Hmm from what I understood it doesn’t work that way. The point was to make the core game free and then allow the new players that come into the game to pay once for all the new future expansions that come along.
Personally I don’t think an amulet that gives all stats should ever exist….Due to the mechanics of the game, it just snowballs wayyyyyyy too fast and makes balance impossible to be achieved. I am really not looking forward to a game where almost all classes take cele stats because HoT specs already brought enough powercreep.
Hmm, personally I just saw a stream of a guy playing rev solo in platinum and he won fights as well as the game. “Unplayable” might be a too much strong word.
Spectator mode raid for raid ? It feels underwhelming and too similar to watching a YouTube video. What would be cool be cool to have imo is in game guild features to replay the cinematics and read the notes tied to a wing. Similarly to how you obtain item when you defeat a worldboss for example, you could unlock a permanent npc that let you replay all of that. Any member of any guild represented that makes progress into the raid by killing a boss automatically update the availability of storywise content tied to the npc. But of course it wouldn’t be fair to require a guild level to be able to unlock this npc.
Your proposition screams Pay2win to me, OP. Besides, do you really think they have the resources, the time and the ideas to provide elite specs on a regular basis ? What about balance ?
You have to buy xpacs to play new elites anyway…
This idea is a win-win. Has been done before in other games, and in this game through HoT. It will help generate resources and provide players more profession gameplay options.
I don’t know about you, but the game gets pretty stale by only having decent profession updates every 2-3 years.
Yes we have to buy the next elite spec, let us not pay more just to play a completely unbalanced game become they would not think things through enough as to the design of next elite specs….Remember how specs were OP at the release ? Like slick shoes engineer, daze on guardian traps, chill necro, 66% alacrity mesmers with distortion well, etc….I certainly do not want to reiterate the same experience with elite specs that come out the gem store. If you are bored because the game is getting stale for you, may I suggest a little break ?
Your proposition screams Pay2win to me, OP. Besides, do you really think they have the resources, the time and the ideas to provide elite specs on a regular basis ? What about balance ?
Remember how immersive is the Zaithan fight on the story mode? No? So yeah thats how immersive an easy boss is.
Then don’t play the Easy Mode boss, play your normal mode Raid.
Thats the point. An easy mode boss has none of the immersion “story-mode”-advocates ask for, hence it is a waste of time to develop it.
That isn’t the point. The story people want to see/hear what happens AFTER THE BOSS IS DEAD. The fight itself isn’t relevant to the story, other than any potential dialogue that may happen during the fight.
Why not just watch a video if you just wanna see what happens after the death ? Besides, if the devs ever implement a story mode, here is what is gonna happen: players will look for LFG to do the easy fight, rush to the end because it is easy and then you will have toxic attitudes between those who really wants to see the cinematics and those who do not. Kind of like a dungeon story mode 2.0. Story is so much a one time thing, it has no replay value and by the time most of the players have completed and learned the story then you will have complaint about how story mode is not rewarding enough, unless of course you speed up the process of how many raids are released so that there is many story mode to complete. Which is really not the focus of this casual open world content where the BiS gear is available to the most casual because the game doesn’t force you to do hard instanced content to get ascended stuff.
I believe that for any new players that get into PvP, it is too much to learn to play their class because any free to play player will get turned off by the fact that the elite spec gives too much of an advantage. You might argue that core build can work against builds that include elite specs but that is only true because you have experience in the mechanics of the game, which any new player severely lacks off. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that the elite specs caused a bit too much imbalance within the game. At the time between July 2014 balance update and the release of HoT, there seems to be more variety than now. Wouldn’t the players get this variety back if a game mode cut the elite specs loose ?
I love it when everyone jumps on me. Usually means I am pushing the right buttons.
Sarcasm aside. Every attack was over the top, however every weapon should have an attack on it, somewhere, that effects that bar.
As for the person that goes “you choose not to use those utilities” everyone’s playstyle is different. Many people prefer tankier builds which means your utilities are all for self defense/cleanses/etc, not for attack purposes. As I’ve said before, forcing that change without recompense is bad design.
Yes I’ve beaten the story without any breakbar skills. Not what I would consider fun though heh.
There just has to be a better way to handle this.
If you completed it without breakbar skills why do you complain about needing one ?
I do not always take positions I personally feel in discussions. This is a forum, it’s purpose is for discussions, preferably with emotion removed from the equation and neither side feeling anything personal.
Breakbars are also a thing I see in mapchats that people complain about. The Patriarch meta boss I see a lot of complaining about the breakbar…or rather lack of people trying to break it to stun it.
Remove emotion, remove any personal attachment, feelings that ‘you can do it with this’, and simply look at the merits. Can this be changed to open up more builds, or to reduce the lack of non-involement with it?
You know I was asking a simple question. I founded weird that you complain about breakbars and yet state in your experience that you were able to complete your personal story without breakbar skills. Anyway back on your complain because I just can’t agree with you. Using skills that contribute to breaking the bars does not kill diversity. I mean you could play the tankiest warrior nomad build and still contribute to breaking the bar in a fight by using headbutt, and if your use shield for example, by pressing skill 4. Following your example I remember reading from, you could play rifle and 2 swords, and also contribute through rifle butt, aimed shot and gun flame for example. Furthermore, in case you haven’t noticed, some people also ask to not break the bar for some encounters like tangle depths meta and dragon stand.
I love it when everyone jumps on me. Usually means I am pushing the right buttons.
Sarcasm aside. Every attack was over the top, however every weapon should have an attack on it, somewhere, that effects that bar.
As for the person that goes “you choose not to use those utilities” everyone’s playstyle is different. Many people prefer tankier builds which means your utilities are all for self defense/cleanses/etc, not for attack purposes. As I’ve said before, forcing that change without recompense is bad design.
Yes I’ve beaten the story without any breakbar skills. Not what I would consider fun though heh.
There just has to be a better way to handle this.
If you completed it without breakbar skills why do you complain about needing one ?
Maybe we could have an item that eats minor sigils: when 250 sigils of each tier (except exotic tier) has been eaten by this item, we can then sell a new item called conglomerate sigils, that is worth 1g to the merchant.
You know what would be cool to tinker with in next elite spec: boon manipulation. The idea would be have an effect through active gameplay which would stack a variety of boons into one single boon equivalent to the number of boons that has been transformed. Let’s say an opponent is running around with 7 stacks of might, fury and regeneration. You could turn these three boons to 9 stacks of might. You could also apply this effect to yourself and use this effect for condies. Another concept I was thinking about is manipulation of aoes. The idea would be that now, all illusion are summoned with a little aoe at their feet. When you shatter, these aoes swoosh back to the caster and based on the F skill that has been used, they are shaped in different forms to give different benefits to the caster or the next to be summoned illusions
I loved the final battles. They were difficult but not terribly difficult. I beat all of them on my first try without researching them at all. Ran through them again with an alt and had the same results(aside from one bugged run). It comes down to understanding mechanics and responding to them more than anything. Also don’t go in with a 1 dimensional build. In general when soloing I tend to make sure I have good ranged and melee options as well as some solid cleansing/healing/mobility.
I don’t see an issue with them being hard…I mean it is essentially a boss of the game. Why should it be easy? The only issue I have with them is they are still relatively buggy. Going in to what can be a really lengthy boss fight and dying due to a bug can be really frustrating. If you are unable to beat it try adjusting your build/strategy or round up a bit of help.
I don’t understand why people think that if someone says that a fight is “too hard” that means they are asking for it to be “easy”. There IS an entire range of difficulty between those two extremes, FYI.
That is the thing though. The game provides the necessary tools to make the fight easy. We already are in this middle ground sort of situation.
I don’t understand why the same group of people in this thread and other difficulty threads insist over and over that HoT is not actually difficult and that it is solo-able.
Those of us who have trouble know whether we are able to solo the content and know whether or not we are having difficulty with it. BY DEFINITION if players are finding it difficult, it IS IN FACT difficult for those players. No amount of saying that it isn’t actually difficult will change how WE experience it.
Because all too often those claiming that it is not soloable claim to be speaking for “casual” players as a group rather than just themselves.
I dont doubt that some (casual) players cannot solo in HoT, but I also know for a fact that others can.
If someone says, “I cannot solo in HoT,” my inclination is to try to help them.
When someone says that casuals (of which I am one) cannot solo in HoT, I contest their position because they are making claims about me, my friends, and untold numbers of other people that they do not know. If one chooses to claim to speak for me, expect me to respond if the claims are inaccurate.
the fact, that you can, and will solo HoT makes you hardcore
if it was casual, you can bet , that more people would have liked it
HoT hurt this game , it polarized the playerbase, and caused many of the vets to leave
dont believe me? look at the numbers
“but its to be expected as the game gets older”..yea..but some older games have more players
they can still save it..new races, new level cap, new classes
but they have to work on the bread&butter content to do it
They put in a new level cap, they’ll have a war on their hands. You think that’ll save the game? I"m guessing you haven’t seen the popular reaction to that.
You have no real evidence why HOT didn’t do as well as expected, except your own perception of it’s difficulty.
There were other issues besides difficulty that could have weighed in a lot more, including launch problems with character slots, the way timers and LFG work and the lack of tutorial for using them, and mostly the PR and word of mouth by angry people who didn’t like the grind. No one can say definitively there would be more people if HOT were easier.
If HoT had been easier it would have been a ripoff (for me at least). Core tyria became way too easy at some point, which made me turn to PvP, even If I mostly enjoy pve maps and their associated events. Once HoT got released I played significantly less PvP. I mean we are talking about four maps. If the expansion was as easy as core tyria, it would simply not have worked well because the easy going levelling experience of core tyria only works because you have plenty of maps to discover imo. When they first spoke of the expansion, the first I heard was “we want to provide with HoT a challenging post 80 endgame content that core tyria lacks of”
Currently running Insp/Chaos/Chrono with Zerker/Assassin gear, Sw/Sh + Staff. Can’t explore the Tangled Depths to get waypoints without getting swarmed by Chak. Can’t outrun them. Can’t aoe them. Can’t take on more than 2-3 at a time (and they spawn in swarms, so).
I just keep dying, and the HotS maps are extremely frustating to navigate without nunoch wallows mastery.
Really, I’m thinking of just running a full soldier/clerics build. I know there used to be “immortal” roaming PvE builds pre-chrono. I’m not interested in contributing or doing high DPS in HoT content at this point, just tagging and staying alive. Everything else is much too frustrating.
Zerker/assassin with staff ? No I would say it is not a great combination. If you run staff, you need to go hybrid. When I want to get myself easy, I personally run Gs/staff in insp/chrono/chaos with a mix of berserker/rampager (is it really the name ? The stats that give precision/condi/power with precision in major) for trinkets and a rampager/aristocracy rune and armor set.
HoT was released 16 months ago and it took a few months for people to figure out the metas. Now that they have, it takes fewer people to complete them.
So, I can’t agree that they can’t be reliably done during NA or EU prime and therefore, no, I don’t think it’s time to nerf the difficulty.
So true. Personnally I achieved a T4 Verdant brink last night and it was well passed midnight on EU.
That’s excellent. I find T4 to be the most difficult to complete, despite it being inherently easier — the problem is getting people to scatter rather than zerg and relatively few veteran VBers seem willing to explain that to people before the meta starts.
Exactly the commander knew very very well how to get to T4 and he was a great leader
HoT was released 16 months ago and it took a few months for people to figure out the metas. Now that they have, it takes fewer people to complete them.
So, I can’t agree that they can’t be reliably done during NA or EU prime and therefore, no, I don’t think it’s time to nerf the difficulty.
So true. Personnally I achieved a T4 Verdant brink last night and it was well passed midnight on EU.
Yet another “good in concept, poor in execution” scavenger hunt.
What was “poor in execution” according to you?
The scavenger hunt, obviously. Oh, you want details…well…
- While most of the mote’s hints were well enough, two in particular (the “hinterlands” and “wild lands” motes) were so vague that I spent half an hour searching for the former before asking for help, and probably might have ended up doing the same for the latter if I hadn’t read a part of a thread referencing the area for it.
- The shards. Upon finding the collection tab and reading up on the hints, I quickly realize they’re spread throughout the HoT zones and dread trying to search for them blind in huge vertical zones with nearly everything wanting to kill me. After some time looking for the first one, I went “forget it” and decided to wiki that crap, because sure enough, they’re either tucked away in spots you’ll never figure out yourself, or get close to but not quite.
It seems like someone behind the making of these just assumes that since most people are probably going to just look it up anyways, they make parts of it so vague/tedious/frustrating that people end up looking it up anyways…
The sad thing is, the story parts were nice. I just wish that annoying scavenger hunt wasn’t in the way of getting to them…but at least I never have to do it again.
Thanks for sharing, I was genuinely asking out of pure curiosity. Anyway I will have to disagree with you personally. What you found frustrating to look for felt amazing to me. I personally had no trouble to find the items (except for 2 items but anyway people talked about it on map), had no trouble going into the maps and remembering what the description of the item referred to. Over all I found it excellent because it made me go back into places I had forgotten about.
I am a Pve’er and I got out of bronze quite easily. Thx a lot…..Here is the reality: it is all about competitivity and awareness of skill and there is no need to be a true a PvP’er for that. The only difference between them is this: “Oh shatterer is up…Quick I need to quit PvP to get into a good map for the achievements tied to the backpack”, whereas a Pvp’er will say: " I don’t care about shatterer, I will only queue up for the entire evening". I mean it has been some fun to play a bit of ranked but I won’t spend my entire playtime queuing up. As for the topic at hand, I really don’t mind the changes and I agree with OP, I would rather try PvP for exclusive skins than ascended pieces
No self respecting PvE’er is still on the shatterer backpack =P
On topic, has it occured to anyone else that maybe the intention wasn’t just to get PvE people into PvP but to also get PvP players into WvW and PvE by giving them easily obtainable any stay top end gear?
I am a Pve’er and I got out of bronze quite easily. Thx a lot…..Here is the reality: it is all about competitivity and awareness of skill and there is no need to be a true a PvP’er for that. The only difference between them is this: “Oh shatterer is up…Quick I need to quit PvP to get into a good map for the achievements tied to the backpack”, whereas a Pvp’er will say: " I don’t care about shatterer, I will only queue up for the entire evening". I mean it has been some fun to play a bit of ranked but I won’t spend my entire playtime queuing up. As for the topic at hand, I really don’t mind the changes and I agree with OP, I would rather try PvP for exclusive skins than ascended pieces
Hmmm What about going back to GW1 system ? Solo queue and teamqueue of 5. Players go solo and and they are paired with other solos from the same rating range. When such team wins, they stay together and are then put against a team of other solos which are new or which have already have won some game(s) as well. Once a team of random solos have won 5 games together they become eligible to face premades of 5 and gain additional pips if they win. The team of solos or premade that lose just goes back to PvP lobby
I don’t think it would be healthy for the game that the next mesmer elite specs use an f5. I personally feel like the next elite spec should give our f1-f4 new abilities.
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