Guild Wars 2

its upsetting that they did not yet roll back. they will have to have been working on some huge change otherwise.

And buy huge..all I mean is reducing token costs for gear, or increasing the amount rewarded for completing a dungeon. Not That Hard.

It a simple formula:

Time invested for a reward is dictated by the amount of new and engaging content you can give the player (and how long they can repeat it without it becoming a grind).

Example:

If players will invest 10 hours into repeated content before getting bored, you give them a suitable reward after 10 hours.

CoF required 30+ hours to get your reward, now it requires a significantly longer amount of time. Which is why people arekitten off.

Without changing anything else in the dungeons, they need to either : Increase the reward for completing the dungeon to roughing 30-50 tokens, or reduce the cost of dungeon rewards by 50%

Well, based on their original philosophy, why make us repeat the dungeon more than once at all?

I said this from the beginning…the a.net devs built a game based off WoW mechanics, and just removed what they didn’t like. The offspring was a distorted hybrid that just doesn’t do anything well.

See DEs, see dungeon strategies, see horrible token grind, see zergfest WvW.

I really thought the a.net devs were different. Their ‘philosophy’ however, seems to be a marketing pitch, while their game design is the same as all the others.

fixed*

We made this game, we love it, and now we must do everything in our power to ensure we get as many gem purchases as possible before players realize how completely trivial end game is, how poorly implemented DEs are and how incredibly unrewarding dungeons are.

Robert : "So we all thought the bomb planting event was challenging, and no one could beat it by killing mobs….

….and we doubled it."

Roger Smithee.4730:

I swear I played a game months ago in a similar vein..

Gear-grinds, gold grinds with similar carrot on a stick approaches. The developers for some god-known reason had a penchant for blasting anything deemed “exploitable” by them (i.e., activities that bypassed EXTREME gearchecks and allowed certain classes or player-types like white-collared night-time gamers and parents to have their share of casual enjoyment) to hello-kitty land.

They also had this little habit of not giving players any warnings, flat-out castrating certain stats like Haste by less than nominal amounts and throwing extreme curveballs such as giving out patch notes 20 minutes before downtimes.

Suffice to say the playerbase, as fervent as it was(mostly due to brand recog), eventually nosedived. That game’s developers were INITIALLY pompous in their assertions and justifications of course, that “they know better”, that their idea of “fun”(as easily bandied about nowadays by the uninitiated) should be universal. That certain things like opening TREASURE chests for TREASURES, or penalizing players for suicide-rushing as a means to efficient speed-running is heretical according to their bible of game design.

Fast forward 6 weeks, playerbase took another nosedive. Sanctimonious dev-kitties panicking. Out came the most melodramatic 2500-word essay in blue-tracker history.

Changes were reversed, and ACTUAL content added, and not unpleasant diversions meant to emulate some pseudo game design theory. Devs pleaded players for chances, and a second look.

But by that time the entirety of my friendslist on that game was either back in Azeroth, or here in Tyria.

I’m seeing the pattern again, really. And I don’t like it at all.

would love to know what game youre talking about so i can read the apology.

Ghostly.4162:

No one enjoyed running COF over and over and over. Plain and simple, anyone saying so is lieing out therekitten

You only chain ran COF for a few reasons:
Gold Per Hour
Tokens for Gear
Massive Exp

Mainly we chain ran it because it did all 3 of those things extremely well.

I’m so tired of hearing people complain about “the grind”. Every single MMO out there has a grind, the difference is… are you required to do X before you do Z?

There is really nothing to do in this game…

100% completion? WhoopEEEEE!

All the dungeons once? been there done that.

Complete story line? It was ok … End boss was stupidly disappointing.

Jumping puzzles? I can do them with one hand tied behind my back .. and i did! The rewards suck, why would i do it twice?

DEs? they are just quests. I can do daily quests in WoW that are the same thing, yet I actually get an improvement in gear that allows me to do it faster.

WvW? It is awful. Queues or no queues…the whole setup is just plain poorly designed. Its not fun, and having to rely on a hundred other players to accomplish anything is the EXACT nightmare they were moving away from in regards to WoW’s raid system.

This game is flop. More crappy game designers ruining more games. Its a horrible feeling knowing you can do a better job but not being in the position to do so.

I guess i’ll just quit games, because the industry is doomed.

Serin.3917:

so increase the rewards for completing it. what aren’t you understanding?

no one wants to work for 3 days player hitting their head on walls with horrible game breaking bugs to get armor they dont really need.

Sacrilegious.8317:

Reynfall.1547:

Sacrilegious.8317:

the idea is having no “carrot” in this game. its not like WoW, you just need to “enjoy” this game. run dungeons and get no loot, you just do it for fun.

If your running dungeons and expecting for loot you bought the wrong game.

Fun is supplemented by reward and desire.

There is no more reward. Therefore, no more desire for the expensive things.

Hopelessness. That’s what they bought us in this game. Then yes, this is a very wrong game.

Thats gw2 idea. being so called “innovative” and removing the typical “reach the carrot” premise.

Wheres all the fanboys at? im not really good explaining this.

You run it once for fun. You run it twice to see what you missed. The 10th time, or in this case, the 60th time(amount required for full set), is not fun. No sane person would think its fun.

Dr Ritter.1327:

Reduce the token cost of armor slightly and add in a gold cost so the grind isn’t so annoying with this dungeon run cap

I think the majority agree that the old ‘time required’ to grind the exotic set was about right.

It was roughly 62 (averaged 5 runs a day with +10 bonus added in) runs that ranged from 20-30 minutes a piece.

Assuming each run was essentially flawless, it would take roughly 26 hours of actually being INSIDE the dungeon playing (discounting forming groups, disbanding, finding replacement players).

This is a SERIOUS time commitment no matter how you swing it.

So, if it takes twice as long to complete the dungeon, the tokens required should be cut by half to compensate.

26 hours of running the SAME dungeon (whether its 1,2,or3 part), is the limit players are willing to repeat the same dungeon.

As a DEV, you need to understand that.

Daboris.6730:

This thread was completely unnecessary. If one dungeon being fine-tuned to be like the rest ruins it for you, I suggest you rethink what you like in games, and what value you hold in them. I understand every single person wants THEIR version of fun, but that can’t be possible.

So here’s where we stand:
I agree with their changes. You don’t. Who is right, and who is wrong? I’m not saying costs are high; they are. I’m not saying you’re completely wrong; you’re not. As it stands, I’m having a blast and hardly did any dungeons. If that’s where your fun is, then broaden your gameplay experience or gracefully bow out with a little class. Don’t make sarcastic topics that only serve to provoke.

The point is, they did not take the time to assess the actual problems. They applied a bandaid fix at the expense of players enjoyment.

This is TERRIBLE game design.

When designing a game, specifically these dungeon things, there are “general” concepts that need to be addressed which were not, for unknown reasons (poor game design?)

1) How long should obtaining dungeon sets take?

The ‘fix’ changed this drastically. Whereas it may have taken 30 hours before, it now takes much longer. This was NOT addressed by the content designer in the other thread. I can only assume he did not consider it.

2) How much time are players willing to invest.

This is where OUR feedback becomes important. Its CLEAR that people want nothing to do with dungeons now because the reward is unsubstantial. The devs crossed the line because they didn’t ‘test’ our flexibility. Well, they broke us. The time investment is too much for JUST good looking armor.

3) Do the other areas work?

So many bugged out parts of different paths. Even the fixes to COF are buggy, and a lot of it seems untested.

leading a dungeon? You mean, he was invited, and just clicked buttons like you said…i haven’t seen a single person ‘lead’ a dungeon. especially not CoF.

Kogasa Tatara.1409:

Changing a number from 100 to 200 and changes the mob spawn by a bit seems like lazy design tweak to me, sorry. If the solution is made within 5 minutes or so after gauging the event, I can’t say much since all designers do it, but if the number change is a deliberate decision, then there are some attention to detail that you are not paying.

Whats easier? Thinking creatively and doing something fun that requires going back to the drawing board and developing actual content?

Or going into the ‘code’ and changing a single value?

Hmmm…GREAT DEV there…GREAT DEV.

@ Robert

Listen, im no game designer…but i play a lot of games…many more than you (and i say that with confidence, not belittlement.).

If people are upset over this change, and you feel the dungeon was improved (and I personally agree with that sentiment), the problem lies elsewhere.

It is FAR too difficult to, well, do anything in this game. If youre going to make a change like this, lower the amount of tokens it takes to get armor.

Without doing that…you are artificially increasing the time it takes to get dungeon armor … when that wasn’t your goal to begin with.

People were happy with the amount of time it took to get CoF exotics (and honestly, it was STILL A LOT of time required). You effectively doubled it.

If I was a professional designer, id try and look at all angles when i made a change…

A.net knows what we as players want.

They will tell US how to have fun in THEIR game. Just like Jay Wilson did for all of us in D3.

Thanks A.net. MISSA STUPID. MISSA CAN’T THINK WITH MY OWN BRAIN.

Im sure what it comes down to is, “Our store isn’t doing enough business.”

Exotics were meant to be obtained through funneling gold out of the economy, thus driving up gem->gold purchases. CoF cut into it. And its important to keep in mind CoF still required a CRAP load of runs to get the gear. Any casual player would find it ludicrous.

More of, “WE know how YOU want to play OUR game”

aka: crappy devs

Pirhana.8935:

i know its not like DAOCs RVR but here is the fact. There are hours of ques and everyone an dtheir grandmother are trying to get into WvW. So this is oviously very popular and liked by alot of people….. So why would Arena net scrap this?

Did you read the topic?

Now, if orbs gave +25k points at the end of the game heres how it would go down:

Blue team sees that they will WIN if the game ends right now. So they make the conscious decision to take down the boss and start the end game counter. Blue thinks they can defend well enough to keep their orbs. Red team realizes this, so they seek to stop them from killing them until they can get an extra 10k points from holding keeps.

So they are duking it out most of the time around the end boss. Green team goes, “hey…lets take their orbs.” Blue team starts killing the boss, red goes in for the steal, green goes in for the REAL STEAL, and grabs all 3 orbs while red and blue take down the boss.

Green suddenly has 3 orbs, they defend successfully until the countdown is over, and they win +75k points, go to 125k and win.

That, in tandem with a much larger world, DEs integrated into the system that relates directly to the war effort, would make a much more complex, much more fun, and much more innovative genre than the hybrid we have now.

Solutions: (A lot of this is going to cross over, but to keep it organized, i’ll try and keep it in the same format as above)

1)Competitive
RvR is supposed to get lopsided. Thats the whole point. Otherwise, you get a large battleground, the effect is lost. This is what happened in this game. Now, the question is, did they do it this way for fairness? Or to reduce server load and cut costs. For sake of optimism, I will say they did it for fairness: To which I must reply…WHY does it matter??

Solution 1:

Separate PvE servers from PvP. You don’t connect them in any pertinent way anyway. Separating them would make the metric portion of this game a lot easier. I assume they did it this way at first for some reason that was eventually cut out or forgotten.

Solution 2:

Zone with zones. user area makers to limit the amount of players allowed in a specific ‘zone’ of WvW. This would allow a lot more players in WvW at any given time, and keeps them artificially away from each other to prevent ‘vanishing’ and lag. It also doesn’t mess with the ‘intended’ amount of players in any given area.

Solution 3:

Redo the whole thing. Expand the maps to a much larger size and put a lot less nodes in each.

This is the best solution. It allows for a lot more players because the size is much larger. Keeps SHOULD NOT be exchanging hands constantly. Zergs can run from one area to another in 5 minutes..thats absurd. The whole point of WvW is that things are huge. Youre playing in a world.

If I was designing this, I would have tried to position capture nodes throughout the actual world of Tyria. But alas, that won’t happen.

To succeed, the best opportunity is to completely avoid competition. Go to the keep with no enemies. Boo. There is no real incentive to keep players defending when no one is around. You benefit much more by running around offensively, because when you defend, you never know if enemies will show up.

GoTo to 5) Integration of GW2 Selling point: DE’s

This is where DEs come in. Why aren’t there DE’s integrated into WvW that relate directly to the war effort? Example….Rather than a dolyak quest, maybe a keep pops a DE where you need to run out into a forest and collect ‘timber’ and return it to an NPC.

So now players have to actively work, and disruption of supply generation comes in the form of PvP…. you know .. how it should be.

This also breaks the zerg up and 3) Gives small groups something to do.

Whether that is actively performing the DEs, or hiking into opponents, ‘woods,’ and participating in small scale PvP.

Or, allow for the construction of Siege blueprints, and make that a limited resource as well.

4) The Large Group

In a much larger world, large groups would focus more on one keep, rather than running in circles failing taking a keep, taking the keep, than retaking lost keeps.

If keeps were harder to get, there would be more organization. The feeling of taking a keep would be provide a lot more achievement.

With rarer siege weapons (perhaps at a larger cost to balance the gold sink aspect), taking a keep would become harder.

In addition, back to the competitive nature and being blown out of the water, Orbs should give a significant -end game- bonus to whoever controls them.

Heres the suggestion: After 2 weeks, with ~3 days left, spawn a TOUGH world boss that requires a lot of coordination to kill.

Whichever server kills it, they receive a point boost, AND set in motion ‘the end’ countdown, which in this example would be 12 hours. This randomizes the end of the game, meaning you can never count on when exactly the game is.

This creates a whole new end game metagame, which disrupts the humdrum activities of the previous 1week4days. After the boss is killed, its a fight for orbs, because they will significantly boost your score, allowing losing servers the chance to come back.

Example:
Red team: 100,000 (controls 1 orb)
Blue team: 80,000 (controls 2 orbs)
Green team: 50,000

In the game right now, come the end of the round, Green Team has no reason to play since they won’t win. Bad.

-see next post

Whoa Nelly! Get ready for the LONGEST post on this forum so far (3 posts long)

Theres a few things i recommend you do before reading this thread:

1) Come in with an open mind. If you can’t accept criticism, don’t bother reading.
2) Understand that this is by no means THE ANSWER. It is just discussion topics. Feel free to disagree, but offer reasons as to why the current system is better, or an alternative.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with the current system…except that it is not ‘RvR.’

If a.net was trying to create much larger WoW-battleground, then they succeeded, but in doing so, they lost most of the fundamental stand-out features that were in the original RvR system.

WvW necessities:

Competitive
Node based capture/defend system
Activities for large groups
Activities for small groups
Integration of GW2 Selling point: DE’s

Lets first talk about how the current implementation doesn’t live up to hype.

1) Competitive
The game should always be competitive. As it is now, there are huge blowouts. Some may argue that in time, servers will be matched up against others of their own caliber. Sure, this sounds great on paper, but in reality its a much different case. I have no facts to back this up (other than my amazing track record of calling out poorly implemented game design mechanics and always being right – See WAR, D3, SWTOR, CS:GO, just for a few examples), but blowouts will happen, and quite often.

This is due to how the game scores. I like that they are upping the time to 15 minutes per point, but still, this is a bit ridiculous due to how FAST you can capture, and recapture a keep.

The problem with blow outs is that it reduces player morale. Almost to the same degree as the current queue system. Getting locked in a keep just isn’t fun. There needs to be an alternate way to ‘come from behind.’ This currently doesn’t exist.

2) Node based capture/defend system
As alluded to above, keeps go back and forth way too easily. There is no achievement in taking a keep. Due to the massive amount of nodes, and limited amount of players, its difficult to keep defense up at all areas. This will get WORSE in time, not better. When coordination rolls out, finding the undefended keep and throwing down 3-4 siege rams instantly is going to throw the game out of sync.

Even if guilds happen to occupy keeps and have more ‘keep-pride’ they probably won’t be in the game due to queues to defend it.

3/4) Activities for Small / Large Groups
Well, we have a zerg currently, and it seems to work fairly well. Essentially, the more supply rolling around with your group, the more powerful you are.

This by itself is a bit of an overlook. To successfully build any kind of siege you need to have AT least ‘x’ amount of people carrying 10 supply.

5) Integration of GW2 Selling point: DE’s
And here is my biggest complaint. The horrible lack of DEs in WvW. Sure, you still see little orange circles, but they aren’t DEs…Escorting a dolyak has already been nerfed.

They need to up the ante here and really go all out making an experience no one has ever seen.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild this. We have the technology. A.net has the capability to do something revolutionary here, rather than give us some mutilated hybrid of WoW Battlegrounds and DAOC RvR.

So i had this same problem on my site.

It appears you have a child div set to 100% width, or something along that line.

So when you shrink the window, the white background shrinks to 100% of the current window size, but the min-width keeps the text from collapsing and causes the grey background to appear.

I often browse with my window at a smaller size, so its noticeable to me. Not that high priority, it just looks ugly.

there are events on timers..and there are events started by players.

Keep an eye out for NPCs who call you for help…If you talk to them, they will either point you to an active DE, or start one.

Voltar.8574:

the other thing is that a lot of de’s have plot and the best voice acting in the game…most people just don’t look for it. people see orange and run to it until they see gold reward then they immediately run from it. i find a lot more satisfaction when i’m not, “on my way to somewhere.”

This is the whole basis of the idea I presented.

The reason people run to and away from events is because players are drawn to efficiency and the path of least resistance. Its unfortunate, but true. The design of these DEs seem to completely ignore that mentality, and that in turn is a problem with game design.

You need to embrace that player mentality and build around it.

As such, chaining DEs is the best method. By keeping players on one continuous DE that spans across the zone, you not only ensure they see all the content, but you keep them busy, entertained, and grant them the appropriate rewards for their time.

Keep in mind, when I say ‘chain DEs’ I don’t mean linear.

Some steps should require players to spread throughout the zone to accomplish multiple events at once, which feed into the next. Similar to the current, and quite simple, mechanic where players ‘choose’ a path by making a selection in single player, different paths should open based on which objectives fail/succeed.

For instance, the zone DE reaches a point, The commander says, “We need to defend the south, and north bunkers…” And 2 new DEs open up at both areas.

Now there are 4 different paths that can occur

1) You save both bunkers
2) You lose both bunkers
3/4) You save the south or north bunker only

For each path, you’d move into a ‘different’ part of the DE. This is the embodiment of the dynamic event system that they touted but failed to deliver on.

Feywray.4351:

Ok so think of this. Most DE’s are designed with a certain amount of players in mind to be able to succeed at it. Lets say for your example above it needs about 7 or 8 players to be able to effectively succeed at repelling the attack on your gates. But what if there aren’t those 7 or 8 players in the zone willing to participate and it’s only a couple heroic defenders, or maybe even just you, that’s doing the event? Are you supposed to automatically fail because you’re the only one doing the event? Yeah getting those 8 players right now is easy, in fact, your probably seeing more than double of what’s needed for most events. But what about in a year or 2? When most characters are grouped at the top, and there’s very few players running around in low and mid level areas? They still have to balance the game for this in mind down the road as well. I just remember the ghost towns areas became in WoW that below or near the cap level. Trying to run a dungeonkittennear impossible, and in effect, that’s what these are, spur of the moment, open ended, free to join dungeons out in the world.

Are you talking about the last phase? Where players hold out on for multiple waves?

If thats the case, then yes, they would fail. The idea behind that example is that holding that position is SUPPOSED to inevitably fail. There is no way of stopping it. That kind of process allows for the DE to reset, allowing players to test themselves(see how far they can get or how long they can hold it), reap the appropriate rewards, then start over.

In short, its an incentive. If you reread the first post, you’ll notice that I threw in the idea of granting bonuses, like exp/karma banners or specialized vendors.

This is not just to jazz up the event, but to provide a strong incentive to get players to participate. If you ever played DAOC, one of the main incentives for capturing relics was so that your realm could gain access to Darkness Falls, the end game dungeon. It was an interesting idea because it was a double-edged sword. While you gained access, that means players left the relics less defended because they sought to gain the benefits of the newly opened dungeon.

Your point, however, isn’t without merit. All the waves should be scaled based on player participation….however, if holding that area doesn’t draw people in, then theres something wrong. As more waves come (and the difficulty ramps up) more and more people should arrive to help defend and to gain access to the ‘special vendors’ or whatnot that come based on wave.

Again, this is all in theory, and not so much meant for direct integration into the game..but more so as an example of what can be done, or a direction they should think to go to.

just based purely on programming logic i would guess it works like this:

1) Monster is killed:
2) Game checks for participation
3) Ranks players on participation
4) Provides EXP to those who participated enough
5) Looks at how much loot it can deliver for participation (Lets say for Risen normal mob kills, its 5 players)
6) Distributes loot roll(or medal) to 5 players based on rank

This would explain why some people don’t get loot from dragons either.
Where as normal mobs might have a participation limit of 5 players
Veteran = 15
Champion = 30
Dragon = 75

poot.5487:

Rainshine.5493:

What mechanics would you change to make grinding non-grinding?

Excellent question! I have a wide range of ideas. Some of them require fundamental infrastructure that simply does not exist in GW2, and probably doesn’t yet exist in any MMO except possibly EVE Online (not 100% sure, truth be told.) Others don’t require quite as much innovation, but those ideas are much less fun.

Some of the less fun ones:

-Make crafting require a wider range of materials per item that are less RNG-farming-related. Encourage the exploration of a wide variety of zones, killing particularly challenging enemies, putting relatively unique resources nodes at the end of jumping puzzles, etc. etc. In short, make crafting materials a reward for actually doing something beyond just killing a bunch of monsters over and over again plus stacking Magic Find while avoiding the anti-bot code.

Discoveries should either be more involved and mysterious – cooking comes closest so far – or they should be discarded. If they’re discarded, a new system should be instituted whereby there are multiple recipes to craft functionally identical basic weapons or subcomponents, possibly with the different recipes feeding into a formula for different appearances that people would still need to discover (with transmutation always serving as a partial release valve to change butt-ugly models that are easy to make, but not as a shortcut to the best looking custom crafted models.)

Of course, if crafting requires more components, it could get frustrating, unless…

2) Make crafting much more about upgrading and personalization, and less about making 6 Level 30 Greatswords and then making 6 Level 35 Greatswords (5 of which you always vendor or TP or salvage.) If you’re a weaponsmith, there’s no reason that the experience of progressing from level 1 to level 400 couldn’t be about creating a weapon – or set of weapons – that gave you some options about how to customize them (appearance, which stats, choose between more stats and fewer upgrade slots or vice/versa,) that could be augmented and tweaked as you went along. Would making just one of these weapons be enough to get you there? Well, maybe not, but most players are going to want a minimum of two weapons, and possibly 4 or even more.

Not enough smithing to justify such a long journey? Well, let me tell you about:

3) Give every player in GW2, regardless of crafting choices, the ability to possess one “special” crafting item made by another player. If you don’t want to deal with crafting at all, well, fine, there are other ways to get level 80 exotics. However, if you want the customization, you have two options: level up the craft yourself, or hire a crafter, who can then provide you with 1 and only 1 crafted item that would be upgradeable by that crafter and only that crafter all the way up to the level 80 exotic (or hell, even legendary, given competitive requirements) version.

<snip>

In regards to this suggestion:

I followed up until the 1 crafting piece per player thing? I think you need to refine that idea. For instance, what if that player stops playing the game? Are you screwed?

Anyway, in regards to your suggestion about spreading out nodes. I agree wholeheartedly.

Drastically improve crafting recipes. Allow you to make a base item (Example: exotic greatsword). Then allow you to use rarer ingrediants that change manipulate the base stats and the look.

Those ingredients, or the ingredients that make up those ingredients should be hard to find, or hard to earn.

It’s kind of like how WoW allowed specialization in professions. It reduces the amount of the ‘same’ items that are being made and allows the crafter to create a smaller supply of more demanded items, and thus make a profit.

i dont understand everyones complaining…

I got up to 375 armorsmith rather easily…

I sold ALL the mats i found as I was leveling. When I hit 80 ( i was at around 200 armorsmithing), I had close to 4 gold waiting for me. I spent about 2 of it getting up to 375.

I need about another 1g to get up to 400…but haven’t done it yet (trying to by silk insignias for half price).

Yesterday I farmed Citadel of Flame all day trying to earn the exotic GS…By the time I was done I made over 12 gold.

Guess what…thats MORE than enough to finish my armosmithing, and in addition, my weaponsmithing.

learn to play the game

Freyar.3254:

Then why don’t you hold on to it, or price it lower to begin with?

youre talking to big boys, and making yourself sound like a little kid. Its clear you don’t understand what kdragon is saying, though he is 100% correct.

holding onto it changes nothing. lowering the price changes nothing. someone will still undercut you because they can do so and lose only 1 copper.

Relisting costs money, its not fair to the first person who lists it. It should be fifo, and not reward the person who comes last.

The current system needs massive changes.

Laeir.5197:

It would be really cool if players could spawn a daily “story line” quest that targeted specific crafting needs. Defend a Mithril Mine, or Clear a Spider Lair, or Search for Lost Jewels. Stuff like that.

Certainly a cool idea.

I think its important to get players moving around. I am one to favor efficiency over flair. I’ll farm the same mobs for hours if it is the most efficient way of gaining crafting materials: of gold(which is then spent on crafting mats), in this case.

And thats what the current system promotes. By creating randomized quests that give me a chance of landing on what could be equivalent to 10 hours worth of farming, you could bet i’d be running around looking for them….and in turn, i’d get to experience DE’s in the process and see a whole lot more of the world.

I also bring up this example about a fog/mist taking over the zone which reduces visibility then spawns a NPC that walks a short path then vanishes when the mist does.

This event could happen in any zone. And would add a lot of excitement as people run around looking for him. Disable waypoints (all but 1?), and it gets even more exciting.

If you find him, you would give him an item (perhaps hes a ghost, and you give him his wife’s heirloom). This then activates a public portal that brings you else where.

Little things like that would make me happy to come across. Getting a rare crafting ingredient would make me more happy.

I disagree with your solutions (at least the core one). The reason crafting is pointless is because everyone can do it. You can’t get someone to pay you a profit when 1000’s of other people are offering the same service, AND when you can do it yourself.

There is absolutely zero barrier to entry for crafting, preventing any kind of unique feel between professions.

This can be fixed in a few ways:

1) You need specialization in disciplines. This splits up the amount of people who can do any one thing. But realistically due to the amount of people using the trading post, there would need to be a HUGE amount of specializations to accomplish anything. Upwards to the amount of servers.

2) Have many more ‘unique’ and ‘rare’ recipe drops. You said have more crafting options…youre on the right track, but they need to be rare drops.

This is fundamental game design which has been in WoW since the start. There is a REASON its there. The TP currently has nearly everything selling at cost because there are too many people(everyone) doing the same thing. No one offers anything customized or unique.

It most likely works the same way it does in all other games:

If you have a 1/100 chance at finding something, and you equip 100% MF, you now have a 100% increase to your percentage.
1.00+(1.0) = 2
.01 * (2) = .02 chance or 2/100

If you have 50%
1.00 + .5 = 1.5

.01 * (1.5) = .015 or 1.5/100

We don’t have drop rates, so its really had to know specifically.

In D2, we could mine the exact drop rates from the .dat file. Not here.

As far as finding rare gear, it is probably tiered. Roll for item (hit) → Roll for Exotic (miss) → Roll for rare (miss) → Roll for green (miss) → Roll for blue (miss) → give white

There’s an innate problem to having the trading post as global as it is. Due to the sheer volume of players, (which due to the game design/constraints all of which have the same ability to do everything) there is absolutely no ‘profits’ to be made through unique professions or trades.

In the real world, you have to dedicate time and effort towards learning a craft. You can then charge for this expertise because others simply can’t do it, or don’t have the time to do it.

In the game world, everyone has the ability to do everything and anything. You can see the trading post become fixed very quickly.

In short, crafting materials, or gold, is almost 1:1 related in terms of time invested. If youre not making gold, its because you are not investing enough time, or youre farming in areas that are already exceeding demand.

nerva.7940:

frOst.2198:

They need a strong overhaul, and it scares me that there are NO DEs similar to the one I described above.

relax. DE’s dont need any kind of overhaul. they need to scale better so theyre a lot harder for larger groups. this way, they can fail and we can see the other branches of the events.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe this. However, new DEs can be added and slowly replace the current set…I’m all for that.

But as it stands, the current crop of DEs are very plain. They aren’t really dynamic and are more like simple, “events.”

In their next zone release, itd be great if they could create a truly dynamic event system….where each failure or success resulted in a new part of the storyline and where all the events were dynamically linked with each other.

I assumed, like many others, that Zaitan would have been at the end of the lvl 80 Orr zone. Where players would push forward from the edge of the map, completing DEs, and eventually culminating in a huge zone wide boss fight with the dragon…lol…and you know how that turned out.

Instead we get the same old same old. Lazy DEs scattered around the map that are just on and off switches with no true relation to the zone at all. Locking us out of waypoints turns us OFF from that area, it doesn’t bring us over to it.

I would love to hear from a.net about future plans for DEs. About their limitations and expectations as to what they themselves expect to create. We’ve already heard exaggerations, and got our hopes crushed by a severely average quest system, so now lets get some facts as to how the core system (which …seems… flexible) is going to be ramped up.

im not blinded by fanboyism OP. their dungeon set up is horrid. no other word to describe. Seems like no thought went into it at all.

Midnight.9205:

Crica.1503:

which is why i said “trade” IE: sell what you get that you dont need so you can afford to buy what you do need…

you are acting like the trading post doesn’t exist AT ALL…

There is another side to this coin, though. Yes, you’re absolutely correct in saying that one could use the Trading Post to buy & sell materials they want or need.

There are some folks, though, that like or aim for the sense of achievement of having provided all their own materials to level. Whilst that may not be something all enjoy, or would aim for, the reality is some may choose to do that, and I don’t believe they could be labelled “wrong” for wanting to achieve this.

Lol .. no hes not right.

Hes making the assumption that you can find equally valuable items off every monster you kill. This just isn’t the case.

oh hey. . guess what. you arent required to use travel points.

I don’t believe they were intended to allow immediate travel anywhere. They are there to give you the choice to spend hard earned silver for convenience. And thats what they do.

There should always be a voice in the back of your head saying, “should i just run there?”

^ thats an interesting thought.

They could do a series of ‘if (this happens) {do this}’ statements that react to specific predefined outcomes.

For instance: if (mobwave dies in < 5 seconds) {do something that blocks aoe}

if (no one dies in 20 seconds) { cast aoe enemy wave that increases damage dramatically for a brief time period }

With set ups like this, you can ensure a proper challenge and it looks and feels like enemies are reacting to you.

“Make players split up to take down multiple objectives in a massive fight,”

would like to emphasize this line. Its the solution. A.net needs to acknowledge this immediately because i am a self proclaimed game design genius and i know its the best solution (at least without being able to coordinate with designers and discussing limitations and budget)

Findywen.1043:

Cameirus.8407:

I hope there are not real world equivalent events in GW2….

If they want to do Tyria ones fine, but I really hope they dont do xmas events or halloween or easter (an no, just changing the name is not good enough.)

I agree, Tyria has its own rich lore why should it celebrate some old man dropping gifts into strangers houses or a lamp that burned for 8 nights or whatever kwanza is a celebration of.

I can understand doing stuff around the holidays because that is when people are off of work/school and can enjoy the events the most. But why does it have to be winter in Tyria just because it is winter break in the Northern Hemisphere? I doubt the Tyrian day is on a real world 24 hour cycle, so why should its holidays/events follow the real world cycle?

For that matter, each of the races should have their own holidays/events. As I understand the lore they aren’t some big happy family that have been living as one for so long that their holidays/events should coincide entirely. Heck the Sylvari are such a young race they may not even have any official holidays yet, except maybe the birth of the firstborn. And I highly doubt some Charr is going to give a cog about when that happened.

I would applaud ANet actually having holiday events that made sense for their own lore, and as the quote above says, not just some renaming or slight changes to real world capitalistic holidays that have no meaning.

Xmas and Halloween work because they are relatable… How can you not understand that?

So, after mulling over a lot of the recipes for end game equipment, its clear that grinding for karma, gold, resource nodes and skill points is the main way of achieving the necessary ingredients.

I think this can change a little.

The Short of it—-
Crafting ingredients should obtained through a more randomized process. For instance, Rare ingredients should be found at the end of a complicated DE, or off randomly spawned rare-mobs, or randomly spawned DEs, in addition to the time commitment necessary to farm massive amounts of karma/exp/nodes.
—-

On the surface, what a.net is asking for in the current crafting system is a time commitment. There are benefits and negatives of the current system:

Lets break it down a bit more: The current system …

1) Allows all players to farm at the same time
2) Allows a.net to funnel farming into karma/exp/item. In general, the most efficient farming would be to farm repeatable events that have high chances at dropping high tier materials (bags), or world bosses to get high tier lvl 80 weapons/armor.

While this is well and good, and gives players a ‘quest’ or goal to shoot for each time they log on, it becomes extremely daunting due to the lack of randomization and exclusion of luck.

Gold translates into a lot of things in this game. Essentially, gold is a way to mark your time investment put into the game. The more you have, the more you played the game. ~Some drops allow you to boost this value a lot faster than others, but in the end it should even out.

You see, when big guilds get together to focus on completing a task quickly, they can pool their resources to effectively dump, ‘time invested’ into one players lap, excelling the process.

Now why am I bringing this up? Because gold can be farmed throughout every facet of the game. Looking at the crafting process in a different light, it is essentially a really LONNNG experience bar that very slowly increases based purely on time invested into playing the game.

The current crafting system, relative to how players obtain ingredients, focuses solely on that concept.

I don’t think thats right.

The lottery system, ala Diablo, and many other games, adds a lot of flair to the item grind. Utilizing DE’s and implementing a random rare-DE system would add even MORE flair to the system.

Rather than farm 250 rare ores, which might take 20 hours of played time, there should be a rare spawn that comes once every 10 hours (in a random location) that can reward an item of similar value.

This not only makes traveling in different zones more important, but is fun to discover, and mimics hitting the lottery, while providing unique content.

This kind of ingredient hunting still requires a time investment, but offers the reward in a different type of fashion. Systems can be put in place to ensure that not everyone that takes part in the rare spawn DE can receive the rare item, based on tiered prereq system. For instance, you stumble upon a rare DE, you get to the end, a vendor spawns for a short while. Everyone can buy some semi-rare ingredients…but only those with the pre-req item can start a unique conversation to purchase the REALLY rare item.

This kind of idea creates a more immersive and surreal experience in the game world. Players are simultaneously rewarded with both content and progression, which is what DE’s were originally intended to do.

Kyouhei.2341:

Bosses are way too weak…. I want a challenge! Buff them up, a lot of them just stand around taking damage while doing nothing (just shouting) for a lot of time.

It would be a bad move to buff them right now. The lag during these fights is atrocious and makes dodging and timing attacks very difficult.

They should fix this as best they can, then work on making the dragons move-set a bit more unique. (Again, pleaseeee do not just scale damage/# of enemies).

Make the encounters more complex. Complexity is key! Yes, i realize simplicity is also key….but don’t get confused. I realize a lot of game designers get focused on little details that eventually lead to a streamlined game thats boring and bad (D3). I don’t feel like the a.net designers do this.

The systems in place are already simple (yet deep). Overlaying a complex encounter where a player can sit and kill an individual monster the whole fight works. Its a simple as you want it to be, and becomes deep/complex when you finally do understand how to succeed.

your problem seems to be an underlying problem of the bigger one: DE’s are simply poorly designed at this point (relative to deviating from other MMO quests).

They need to grow into something more complex. I personally believe that a single ‘dynamic’ DE chain should encompass the entire zone and be active at all times (in different areas of the zone)….Thats the way I would have done it, and how I imagined Orr to be.

One DE should dynamically effect the success of another…thus forcing players into different areas and shrinking the overall amount of players in a particular event.

Typicalsloan.8603:

It honestly doesn’t feel like there is any scaling going on at all even though I can see the mobs increase in level till they hit level 84. This isn’t enough as with 50 people casting aoe things literally die in 3 seconds which results in me just standing there spamming an aoe in one spot to try and get credit.

Spawn points need to be random to avoid people spamming aoe in the one spot they know the mob is going to spawn.

Mobs need to increase in level far greater than what they do. Once they hit the level cap of what appears to be around 84 they should then get promoted to veteran status or maybe just continue to go up in level.

Bottom line giant zerg, no skill, spam fests that occur at just about all events aren’t fun and I avoid them as mindless button mashing to get karma is probably the most boring part of of the game. Sad part is that its also a large part of the game.

again, scaling power of enemies is not the answer.

What this leads to is 1 hit kills and undefeatable enemies, which is poor game design.

The answer is (in fact, I just read a thread about this, he called it ‘outscaling’) how to split up the zerg.

You need to incentive victory over failure. This can be done through the cyclical method of DEs, where failure results in a DE that takes more time and is less exciting (collecting supplies), but will eventually lead to the next, more exciting, stage.

Then you need to force multiple objectives/nodes on the zerg.

Splitting the zerg:

Defense –
As stated already, do multiple node protection where failure to hold one node drastically increases the difficulty of holding the others.

Escort -
Split up the escort.
A mob attacks, and one of the escort NPCs runs in terror and gets lost! Both need to make it back or your fail.

If you fail, you go on a rescue mission.

Destroy object -
Object can only be damaged for a brief time after another group disables another object.

~just some ideas on how to split the zerg using mechanics already in the game.

I personally really enjoyed WoW’s holiday events. Let me explain:

They had the achievement system for holiday event completion. You would receive a title and some items for participating.

Assuming there will be a DE chain (which could pop up in multiple zones?)…

I think it would be pretty neat to receive some kind of token/item for participating in each part of the event.

This could be done by spawning a vendor/chest after each fight who gives players a different part of the reward.

Then, lets say, for simplicity sake, you get 4 pieces, which can combine in the mystic forge to yield a holiday themed item.

Currently, the mystic forge and the rare recipes seem to be based on spending gold and farming a CRAP load of items. It would be a REALLY COOL system to use as a dynamic ‘rewarding’ device.

For instance, the items given in the above example could be used to forge a Halloween Helm (pumpkin helm). OR perhaps, for those who held onto the items, they could be combined with the Xmas items to produce an entirely different set of items.

I hope that mystic forge recipes come out a lot and utilize many different types of rare items. Keep in mind though, that rare items should be obtainable in many different ways. Through rare spawn vendors, through luck on the ground, through completing dynamic events, etc.

That also brings up the idea of ‘rare-spawn’ DEs, which doesn’t seem to be implemented in the game as of yet.

So many ideas revolving around DEs. I hope you guys have some better ideas in mind, it would be a lot of fun to see these things implemented.

nerva.7940:

thank you sir! loving DE’s btw, they just need to be a lot more challenging for larger groups.

<3

Ok, please let me address this.

I am a GAMER. I consider myself to be the top echelon of gamer. I play every type of game, and i play them a lot. I also have my MBA, design games in my spare time, and program. I’ve been hardcore, and casual, often times in the same game.

This gives me a very different perspective on games when I look at them.

Players do not want ‘difficult’ encounters. They want ‘challenging’ and ‘engaging’ encounters.

Do not make the same mistake as Jay Wilson and D3. The fight mechanics in this game (and in most games) leaves only a bit of leeway into how challenging an encounter can become without becoming frustrating.

Watch that line carefully!

Combat difficulty is NOT the answer to making DEs more engaging. Similar to WoW raids, the difficulty should come in organization and strategic positioning. That is the entire point of a group based quest system is it not?

Thus, when seeking to increase the ‘challenge’ of DEs, you need to:

1) Split the zerg
- This can be done by having multiple objectives within the same DE.
Something like, “You can only attack the boss when these 2 points are controlled.” Where 2 nodes act as ‘shield removers,’ and are continually blasted by waves of minions that need to be killed. This splits the zerg into 3 groups, 2 at each of the nodes, and 1 killing the boss.

2) Brute force isn’t the end all be all
- Failure does not indicate the end
So maybe the DE arena is sealed off. Players run into an area and the doors close on them. You die, and youre out. Maybe there are no enemies at all and only spikes/megalasers that try and impale/toast you. Maybe the floor crumbles over a lava pit. Maybe only 1 person needs to survive for you to succeed. In circumstances like this failure is expected, but the quest goes on, just in a different way.

Give players a chance to fight back and reclaim their honor. Keep events moving. I made the suggestion for cyclical DEs…that NEEDs to be implemented. Its just good game design.

3) Hold the fort
- Increase wave difficulty until defeated
One thing that I haven’t seen is a ‘hold out’ DE. Lets say you get to the end of the quest chain and you finally take over the enemies Keep.

Well, aside from whatever bonuses we get (perhaps access to a unique karma vendor, or some unique banner buffs that you can activate), you are constantly being attacked by wave after wave of minions. Thing is, the waves get tougher and tougher, to the point that you will inevitably be kicked out, and the chain goes back to the start.

All these things increase the difficulty of DEs without making them frustrating. Increasing health pools, minion # and attack power is THE WORST idea. Unfortunately, its the EASIEST method.

Do not take the easy way out. This is your game…be proud of it, and do something thats memorable with the awesome system you created.

itd be nice if spawn times were included

Vivisector.5680:

Don’t quote me on this, but I have a feeling it is already in place from some of the notes I have read. They might just be in suspended animation atm becuase they are having problems with the DE’s becuase of the population on the servers. The DE’s are being triggered far more often then they wanted then to. Once things start cooling down, I think we will start to see more things like this. It’s not like they don’t patch the game every night, when I am playing Grrr. But I have to say even though my game ends every night for 15 minutes to download the new patch it is WAY better then alot of other MMO’s I have played where patching only happens Tuesday Morning, and even if there is a known issue, it will be looked at next week.

(lawl, i quoted you)

I don’t think population has anything to do with it unfortunately. The DEs right now, as many others also seem to have noticed, are simply node based, recurring quests. They need a strong overhaul, and it scares me that there are NO DEs similar to the one I described above.

This makes me think it either can’t be done, or the a.net isn’t prioritizing it. IMO, they need to get something like this out ASAP to keep people engaged with the game. I just hit 80, and am currently having a good time farming mats and karma. But the end level zones are still new to me and I’m still exploring.

My drive to get a legendary and full exotics is strong…but I can’t imagine this will last long. Its no fun seeing a DE pop up while running around a zone and being forced to wait for others to show up before you can kill it.

I’ve soloed many a DE prior to reinforcements showing up, and its just a long winded process of kiting. (I usually die RIGHT when the group shows up..yeah).

Having an elaborate cyclical chain quest is vital to help funnel players into the same DEs, and by overlapping these DEs, you help spread out the zerg and force a bit of choice on players that impacts success or failure.

I don’t know if a.net just doesnt get it, or doesn’t care, but the current implementation of DEs are quite underwhelming…especially when they require you to farm them for well over 500k karma and ~150 or so more levels.

yes, unfortunately, dynamic events are nothing more than quests in disguise.

But the system can become something more….a.net has to do something fast, because they only have peoples attention for a little longer. If it doesnt get more interesting i know im out…

There are a few theories ..

1) its based on amount of contribution, and only a certain # of top contributors get the reward. Contribution equates to damage and healing.

2) perhaps only the first x amount of players to tag it can get an award

Firstly, I really enjoyed the leveling experience in this game. The Story really surprised me, was very engaging and I liked the tone.

DE’s in general though felt overly underwhelming. Current implementation of DE’s act predominantly like typical MMO quests. They are a rather huge let down (if you think about what they COULD have been).

My question is, are DE’s planned to become more engaging or complex?

To go into more detail, here are my thoughts on what I imagined the majority of end game DE’s to look like. In short, I imagined them to be yclical. Meaning, once a player becomes involved with a quest chain, it will continue throughout the players session and continue when they leave. Essentially, it would be a push and pull, tug of rope system.

<img src="https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/3567/DEexample.jpg" alt="" />

In the above image, each #) designates a new dynamic event that is occurring. The event begins in the keep (think Fort Trinity) and always falls back to that location to start again. However, there is ALWAYS something in regards to this quest going on. (I apologize for spelling mistakes…didn’t catch it, and really don’t want to reupload)
So in the above example you first start by defending the starting keep. Whether you succeed or fail, it will bring you into a different event. This will continue constantly throughout the entirety of the event. Yes, this already happens in the game! Which means its possible to implement without changing any of the inner workings of the program.

Lets imagine we succeed and push the enemies out of our keep. Well, the general doesn’t like that we were attacked and decides to go on the offensive. “Lets go!” So they storm out to the enemies nearest outpost.

You then seek to take this over. Again, whether you succeed or fail, the quest continues…its cyclical, and will always wrap back around to the beginning of the original quest (inside the starting keep, getting attacked).

So take a look at the pic again. The difference here is that it is always happening. Another interesting addition to the DE system is incentives and pride.

What is the incentive to win if you can continue to get karma/gold/exp from losing an retrying? Simple, just make losing a DE cause a longer DE event. For example, ‘Rebuild the keep’ after failing an attack could take 30 minutes. “Sigh” says the player, “I do NOT want to lose this again.”

Lets go to the other spectrum. Eventually you finally make it to the end of the DE. The new quest is something a little different. A “Hold out as long as you can” Quest. Waves will spawn on a timer and they attack your keep door. Once they break in, you ‘retreat to POI’ and start over.

A second DE will occur, and would require players to farm supply to repair the door in between waves. Now, while these waves are deflected, the world gains bonuses for holding this keep. +MF, +EXP, etc. The longer you hold it, the more bonuses you get. Eventually, it would be far too hard to hold and you’ll inevitably lose the keep.
With an idea like this, players would be much more committed to participating. In addition, you can always be sure something is going on. To make things even more fun, you can combine ideas like the above with other DEs in any specific zone.
For instance. Perhaps a DE will spawn ONLY during Wave 3 of holding that keep where you push forward to taking down a Dragon, and you would need the bonuses to achieve victory.

I would really like to see something a bit more engaging….less “finish it and wait around for the next one,” and more “Lets push all the way to the end!”