Guild Wars 2

Mastruq.2463:

You are vastly underselling CCP’s accomplisments here for the sake of simplicity. I wont go into all of it but the statement about WvW being a bigger technical achievement just needs a reply: Combat in EVE is not just a range check and boom damage.

Neither is it in GW2.

In a fleet fight of say 500 players they are calculating the chances for hits for every gun based on both ships flight behaviour and the flight path of every missile. That by far outclasses the entire WvW map tech.

Maps in WvWvW were originally supposed to hold 500, they’ve revised that down since then, but I’m not sure if we know how much. But zergs are huge in GW2, and the experience is much less laggy than big fleet battles in EVE (and I mean lag of course).

But anyway, that’s ALL CCP has to do in a given box – calculate the flight paths of several hundred un-customizable point-objects (not even hitboxes, note) which move based on baked-in fluid dynamics (i.e. they don’t have to deal with constant player steering), plus yes, missiles and drones. And maybe a few rocks.

And when have such big fleet battles ever gone smoothly in EVE? (At least before time dilation, which as I said, I think is a stroke of technical genius.)

(Come to think of it, when has any game ever been able to deliver on smooth gameplay in big battles? )

I’m not saying CCP are crap, obviously they’re brilliant at what they do, and I’m not an expert at all, just an interested amateur; but it’s over-hyped, and when it comes to dreaming about ideal sandboxes, it’s a poor comparison to games that actually have to a) design and implement, b) make work over the interent, and c) test, fully-realized actual environments and customizable characters with complex combat systems.

Incidentally, if you want a real example of technical wizardry with an MMO, consider City of Heroes: “mothership raids” had several hundred absurdly customizable players and mobs, about half of whom at any given time were flyers, and lots of super-leapers, super-speedstsers and teleporters too. And that was real 3-d combat-in-flight, not CCP’s fluid dynamics with occasional input from the player, but actual honest-to-goodness, moment-by-moment player-controlled, fully 3-d in-flight combat.

Hey Osi, fan of your stuff, I think your builds are very well thought out. Just to note that the info re. Heavy 3.0 in the Guide section of your website doesn’t seem to quite match up to the build that’s linked. e.g. you talk about shortened staff cooldowns (presumably X in Chaos?), but you have Bountiful Interruption VIII specced for might stacking. Also you talk about extra glamour fields, but there’s only portal in the build. Which is correct, the info or the linked build?

No, I’m Spartacus!

I agree with those who say the new challenge is great, but it’s not for the open world stuff. It’s really good to have something in the game that stretches better players a bit, but most players aren’t that good (I say that as a “bad” player myself).

However, in dungeons and fractals, I’d say we should see more of this kind of stuff (I also think that dungeons should change up frequently and have more random kitten in them, so they can’t be “learned”).

There’s nothing wrong in having an opinion about what the majority thinks, one is either right or wrong about it.

I think that Anet is probably changing its mind on how to treat farming, and basically giving in to the demand for it. They will have to gradually adjust the rest of the game, including the economy, to compensate, I guess.

They made a game which had a certain design manifesto, but I think they’ve realized that most players aren’t interested in the game they designed, they just want a game that gives shinies like every other MMO.

This is sad or exciting, depending on where you stand, I suppose.

As with your other thread, I have to sadly wonder whether you’re right.

If DE content takes a lot of work, but few people seem to appreciate it or bother with it, and prefer to farm, Anet aren’t going to bother so much with DEs, they’re just going to go with the flow (e.g. more stuff like CP coming, and a concomitant adjustment to the way the economy works).

I think the game must have been made with excitement and anticipation – here, as opposed to GW1, they made a fantastic virtual world for people to actually adventure in, and what do people do?

Pursue shinies.

It must be pretty disappointing for at least some of the devs that few people appreciate what they did.

HawkMeister.4758:

gurugeorge.9857:

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. A WvWvW sandbox within the themepark? Sign me up!

There’s a bit of a problem with comparisons with EVE though. CCP happened to be interested in making a space game, and a space game just happens to be much easier to make into a sandbox than, say, a fantasy game like this. I mean, basically, EVE is one of the most heavily instanced MMOs there is (the “boxes”) and all that vast space is totally illusory – they didn’t have to actually make much in the way of assets to realize the illusion apart from a few rocks and space stations.

Not sure why you say heavily instanced as pretty much nothing is really instanced in EVE, it´s the only single shard MMO I know of .
Even the NPC missions that do create what could loosely be called “an instance” can be broken into at any time.

EVE players interact with their spaceships in what are called “boxes”, which are basically ad-hoc instances (instances that others can enter). They are created when someone comes out of warp to a mission spot (an abstraction up till that point) or whatever, and they “disappear” a while after, say, a mission is done. Again, when you scan for a plex, nothing actually exists (in the way that a zone does) until someone first warps in, it’s all just abstract information until that point.

The closest thing to zones (permanent instances) in other MMOs are the areas in the vicinity of space stations, and gates.

Also, there is no actual solar system zone, as in a comparable place where large numbers of players have to play together, as in GW2; the only thing that people are “in” all together in a solar system is the solar system’s chat system (and of course the info accessibility for players).

Really, the “single shard” thing is basically PR. All that’s actually shared between all players in the game is some of the global chat systems (e.g. the Help channel) and info accessibility, the rest is pure illusion. It would be like saying that a global chat system shared between all the servers in GW2 is some special thing that actually puts players together in a shared virtual universe. Well it kind of does, but it’s misleading. You can have tens of thousands of people in a single chat system. Big whoop.

Not to diminish what CCP do, because it’s a fantastic game of its type, and some of those big space battles are something to see – and that time warp thing they introduced recently was a clever bit of technical wizardry.

But the WvWvW zones in GW2 are IMHO a far bigger technical achievement than anything in EVE Online, because so much more has to be kept track of.

(Notice how something so apparently simple as customization for ships in EVE Online has taken a long, long time for CCP to even consider, and in order to prepare for it they had to revamp their system entirely, and it’s still not in the game?)

Just to recall: the only reason I’m saying all this is because I see lots of players sort of wondering why other games can’t be as good as EVE in the sense of presenting a sandbox with humungous game world, empire struggles between players, etc. etc. The reason is because CCP were lucky enough or canny enough to pick a type of game, a space game, where that type of play is relatively easy to realize, because the virtual world being depicted consists mostly of empty space that doesn’t have to be rendered in any way, so long as nobody’s “in” a given portion of it.

Gmr Leon.1846:

…they’re farming enemies for virtual money for virtual loot that doesn’t matter that much in comparison to the fact that with that virtual loot they’re conjuring dark magics, illusions, elemental attacks or slashing, smashing, and blasting down all manner of crazy creatures and people? Or is that just me?

No it’s not just you, but I think players like us are in the minority. For better or worse, the era of subscription MMOs conditioned players to think that gear hamster wheels define MMOs, and the concept of roleplaying (not talking about heavy rp, just the “roleplaying” that’s in the term “MMORPG”) in a virtual world was almost forgotten.

GW2 is doing a good job of trying to pull back from the abyss of grindy design elements, but it’s difficult, because farming is still what most players enjoy doing, and they have to be satisfied because they bulk up the numbers.

And after all, everyone enjoys a bit of grind now and then – when you enjoy playing your toon, when you’ve built it sweet to suit your playstyle like a glove, and when you’re in love with the atmosphere of the game world, grind doesn’t feel like grind so much, it’s more of a pleasant trance state.

Don’t forget you can use Transmutation Stones/Gems to transfer a look from one armor to another. So you can have some fugly armor that has the right stats, and then find armor that has the look you want, and meld them.

I sympathise with the OP, I’m a fairly butterfingered player myself (also old).

But I can see the sense in it. I mean it’s true, most of the game is so easy even I can play it without too much difficulty. There’s got to be something in it for people who are really good players, to stretch them.

I think instancing or better camera would surely help though. If one is butterfingered, but the game is smooth, at least one has a chance of accidentally beating difficult content with enough goes. But with dodgy lag, camera, etc., you often get those situations where you almost beat it but some glitch stops you, and that is … kitten ed annoying.

A lot of excellent tweak ideas here. Great post!

HawkMeister.4758:

ANet could actually save WvW and make it a true LIVING Sandbox. But I´m afraid they neither have the balls nor the vision for it.

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. A WvWvW sandbox within the themepark? Sign me up!

There’s a bit of a problem with comparisons with EVE though. CCP happened to be interested in making a space game, and a space game just happens to be much easier to make into a sandbox than, say, a fantasy game like this. I mean, basically, EVE is one of the most heavily instanced MMOs there is (the “boxes”) and all that vast space is totally illusory – they didn’t have to actually make much in the way of assets to realize the illusion apart from a few rocks and space stations.

With any other type of game, making a sandbox that’s also an AAA class game must surely be exponentially more difficult, requiring tons more resources (there are some perfectly fine sandboxes out there – Mortal Online, Darkfall, but they’re not as massive as EVE because they just aren’t AAA games, the dev teams are tiny. CCP’s dev team was tiny when they started, but (by accident or design) they chose a type of game that was forgiving of small dev teams.

I don’t know what ArcheAge is going to be like, but if it’s a good game, it will be because an absolute kitten-ton of resources has been put into making it.

So yeah, I guess what I’m saying is, making MMOs is really, really, REALLY difficult By all accounts it’s one of the most difficult, monumental programming tasks human beings can yet do – it’s comparable to a big budget movie in the amount of resources and management of those resources it needs, and there are so many, many things that can go wrong.

So, knowing that, I’m usually quite forgiving of even things like MO or Darkfall. And sure, Anet are a far more massive and professional team – but GW2 even as it stands, for all its flaws (and you can’t please all the people all the time … ) is a miraculously good MMO even as a themepark MMO.

Anet are actually on the verge of actually doing what’s been a dream for some designers for a long time – having the tools to be able to change the world on the fly. If you think about what that requires in order for it to be something that’s updated as regularly as this game is and is as relatively bug-free and polished as this game is, you have to stand in awe.

So … patience, young padawans. GW1 took a while to get to where it became the “classic” it is today, even in terms of balancing, etc.

All I know is, I can now no longer play any other MMO, they all just seem so last-gen to me. GW2 isn’t totally innovative, but it’s moving the genre along nicely. The one thing that annoys me about GW2 is it’s so good, but it’s a kitten fantasy MMO. I so wish I was playing a superhero or s-f MMO of this quality! (Looking forward to Wildstar, judging by the hype, if it’s honest, then it might push innovation in some other directions nicely too.)

Leo G.4501:

gurugeorge.9857:

But once they’ve learned the dungeon and know the story, it just becomes a farm that, if you aren’t doing it as efficiently as possible, you are wasting your time on.

I guess this is why I haven’t played dungeons as hardcore as I used to back in Feb and March. I guess after everyone enjoyed the story and camaraderie, everyone else flipped the farm switch and I flipped the challenge switch.

Everyone else must be seeking how to make the game as easy and simple as possible while I try to see if I can accomplish what I did before but in this way or that way. When players start crying about not stacking all up in each other, that’s when I lost the nerve to ever step into dungeons again.

I mean, all the cheating and cheeze-kitten tactics were bad enough, but ‘speed runs’ are just boring :P

Yup. While I think most people enjoy most aspects of an MMO at some time, most players usually have a primary orientation, and because of the way MMOs have been for the past decade or so, PvE is mainly a gear-grind orientation, not a “fun is challenging myself even more” orientation. The latter is alive and well in PvP, but for PvE the paradigm is “learn, get efficient, and farm”.

It reminds me of MMO discussions about “what’s the best class” – for some people this means “which class pwns the quickest”, but for others it means “which class has some depth and headroom so that I can challenge myself”.

Or, again, say in EVE Online, the ships of the Gallente race were in the doldrums for a while as the “weakest” ships. For some people, that meant they had to be avoided (and why on earth would you play something weak, isn’t the game about winning at all costs? ), for others, the fun was in the challenge of making the “weakest” work.

Or again, in this game, I remember in the early days, some people would say “why roll anything else than a Guardian or Warrior?”, because you can do with one keypress what other classes (e.g. Mesmer) could only do with several keypresses. But me, I always immediately gravitate first to the “fiddliest” class, and only later play the “easiest” class for a relaxing variation.

I think even if one were to have the paradigm of dungeons being continually changing and therefore unlearnable (at least in the easy way they’re learnable usually in MMOs), one would still have to accommodate players who like to farm, with other aspects of the game.

But I do think dungeons should especially be the place where challenge is the number one thing. You’re closed off in an instance, just the mobs and you, and you have to figure it out as a team and actually communicate. That, to me, is heavenly, it’s what I got into MMOs for. But once I’ve learned a dungeon, it loses all interest for me, it just becomes a hamster wheel – but then, I’m not interested in gear grind or accumulating virtual resources. For those who are interested in that, static dungeons are ideal farms.

Later note: just thought of something else that’s in the same ballpark. When games were stupidly hard things you had to repeat levels again and again to “beat”, and there was no saving progress, I had no interest in them. But when they became more like stories with a long progression, in which you could save progress, I became interested.

That’s my thing, I’m just more into the “virtual world” aspect of these types of games than the “competitive game” aspect. You are interested in the “self challenge” aspect. Others are interested in the “accumulation of virtual stuff” aspect.

Why can’t we all just get along? The devs do try their best to keep us all happy, we should all recognize that and not kitten about things that are in the game to suit other peoples’ playstyles than our own. Plus also, going out of one’s comfort zone is nice sometimes.

Yaki.9563:

gurugeorge.9857:

Yaki.9563:

However, I’d like to reiterate that people who think toughness is bad because of diminishing returns are just ignorant. Power has far more diminishing returns. Oh no stop stacking power!

I don’t understand what you mean by “diminishing returns”, the game has no diminishing returns, as I understand it everything is linear.

Toughness and power are percent modifiers for incoming and outgoing damage, respectively. Power scales linearly because each point of power adds a fixed percent to the damage modifier regardless of what your current power is. While this seems like it doesn’t diminish, the relative effect of each point of power is not the same.

Toughness is not linear. It is also a percent modifier but it is in the denominator of the modifier which makes it an inverse function. Inverse functions behave differently than linear functions. This is good because if toughness were linear, there would be massive balancing issues. Each additional point of toughness would be worth more than the prior points. As an extreme example, lets say you reduced damage by 1% every X amount of toughness. Well going from 100% to 99% damage taken is not that big a deal. But going from 1% to 0% damage taken is massive. It allows you to take a 10 billion damage hit and not even have your health budge.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t diminishing returns as that’s ordinarily understood in theorycrafting. Check this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-legitimate-discussion-about-toughness

We’ve just had an event in which players directly decided what content would be. That’s pretty good for a themepark game.

The Living World is something the devs are still developing, give them time.

Also, does nobody read dev posts any more? They’ve stated numerous times that the temp content we’ve been seeing is a phase they’re having to go through to get used to the tools they’re using for updating content. They’ve also stated several times that, going forward, the Living World content will feature more permanent changes, and some permanent content left over even from temporary events.

It’s a little known fact that Everquest was called “Everquest” because it was initially designed to be something like what Anet are trying to do now. It’s been a kind of holy grail for developers for a long time to have a themepark game where the world changes and develops around the players.

I mean, sandboxes, yeah, they have some plus points, but let’s face it, the quality of the “stories” made by the players in EVE Online isn’t terribly entertaining to anyone but the participants themselves, and the big news that bleeds through to the media are usually about “wow, look, scamming in a game lol”. Stories written by people who are good at writing stories are generally more interesting than random kitten that people do to each other.

I don’t usually delete any of these sorts of things for a good while. You never know.

But I do think it’s a bit odd that people are being, in effect, punished for participating in the voting, and rewarded for not participating in the voting. The leftover candidate buttons ought to be sellable too, since they’re effectively just tokens that were used.

I’ve been really pleased at how much cheaper it is bopping around Tyria.

Given that both discounts were offered as temporary (1 month), and given I don’t open BL boxes unless a key drops (when, I admit, the anticipation is fun), it’s been a good deal for me, as I bop around Tyria a lot.

It’s a celebration, it’ll be over soon.

It’s true, for PvE at least, the difference between Rares and Exotics is fairly minimal except for the hardest content, where the slightest “edge” makes a difference. In fact, if you’re a spry player and like a challenge, you can do a lot of PvE buck naked just fine.

It’s mostly psychological – just the difference between Yellow and Orange, and “gotta get a slightly higher number”

Griefers are the main reason we can’t have nice things. Devs have to spend so much effort on circumventing them.

Same in life, really.

To have DEs too marked would lose the point of them, they’re supposed to be stories going on the world that you’re supposed to chance upon in your wanderings, and follow the chain, and accumulate players as you go. If they were marked, they would just be farmed like everything else. Calls in chat are sufficient to allow farmers to do their thing with the end bosses; to make the whole system marked would cheapen it immensely, IMHO.

shockwave.1764:

One of the main selling points of the game was no Holy Trinity. However this seems to make combat and dungeons a lot LESS fun to play than if there was a trinity in my opinion. The meta is stagnant, you either go full berserker and facebash the boss before he can do any real damage or you’re being detrimental to your team. I’m wondering how we can fix this.

Better mob AI and making dungeons “living” in the same way the world is (so you can’t learn them as something stagnant).

In my observation it’s been the same in every MMO. No doubt for economic reasons (cost effectiveness) devs stint on AI and varying things around, which means people learn dungeons, which means damage is king, which means all class variation dissolves into hybrid soup, where everyone can do everything, but there’s no need, since damage is king.

Trinity is not the solution, at least not in the sense of a “fixed” Trinity, but HAVING SOME USE FOR THE THINGS WE CAN ALL DO OTHER THAN DAMAGE is. That use can only come from more intelligent mob AI and a non-stagnant dungeon system that you can’t just learn once and be done with it.

The PvP and WvWvW metas are generally more dynamic and interesting because of this very reason – playing against people is always more challenging than playing against AIs, and “damage is king” seldom works (unless the devs break something, which sometimes happens).

Yaki.9563:

However, I’d like to reiterate that people who think toughness is bad because of diminishing returns are just ignorant. Power has far more diminishing returns. Oh no stop stacking power!

I don’t understand what you mean by “diminishing returns”, the game has no diminishing returns, as I understand it everything is linear.

Midnattsol.4503:

I’m sure what people want to hear from Anet are things like… “We’ve also got teams working on larger updates, giving you more PERMAMENT AREAS to explore, more PERMANENT Dungeons, more armour sets with actual VARIETY, more weapons and better designs, more dragons, more CHALLENGING World Bosses, and improved Dynamic Events that are actually DYNAMIC”

I’ve seen devs on the forums reassuring us that this is indeed what they are doing. There will be new permanent areas, etc.

Essentially, as I understand it, what they’ve been doing is sort of practicing how to use their tools effectively. No other MMO that I can recall has produced as much and as varied, and relatively bug-free content, in such a short space of time; they obviously have some really special content production tools at their disposal. Yes, there’s been a lot of “filler”, but lots of people do enjoy it, and meanwhile, the team is getting more and more in a position to deliver on the more long-term promises.

That’s the picture I’m getting from dev comments anyway. I hope it’s the case.

Just as a point of interest, I’ve noticed a difference in the CP events since they started, there are now a lot more heals, banners, Mesmer effects, etc., etc., floating around.

I partly agree with the OP, but I think the real problem in these games is almost always simplistic mob AI.

The whole concept of “learning” a dungeon really needs to go out the window.

There ought to be enough variation in any dungeon so that a more balanced team is necessary to balance against regular doses of surprise due to clever AI.

But I guess that’s too expensive, resource-wise, for devs to implement. Hence the inevitable decline of most MMOs into a hybrid soup where damage is king, and everyone can do it.

Vayne.8563:

Despite that some of the characters from previous living stories do show up in this one. Brahm and Rox are both present in this living story if you watched the instance.

But when I went up to talk to them in the CP, they didn’t know me!

People who are dismissing the zerker mentality are forgetting that there are plenty of competitive players who have probably enjoyed the “story” and camaraderie aspects of the dungeon on their first few playthroughs, just as much as a more smell-the-roses-oriented type of player.

But once they’ve learned the dungeon and know the story, it just becomes a farm that, if you aren’t doing it as efficiently as possible, you are wasting your time on.

That seems to me a perfectly legitimate point of view, even as a “bad”, smell-the-roses type of player myself.

Each to their own. Just associate with like-minded people, that’s all.

Sadly, I have to agree with you.

I sort of enjoy both aspects – zergfarming (e.g. the current CP) and the kind of quality DEs you mention. I really do like to do both, but I probably spend more time just wandering and nosing about, so more and better DEs are a higher priority for me personally than more CP-like stuff. The CP-like stuff is more like an enjoyable break, to me.

I guess when it comes to an economic decision of how the devs are going to spend their resources, if they know that they get more bang for the buck from satisfying the majority of the playerbase who just want to farm, I fear very much that they’ll just give up on the quality DE thing, and I won’t be able to enjoy much of that other, quality side, as the game matures.

In a way, that quote from the dev AnthonyOrdon.3926 is actually quite frightening to me (I mean, frightening in the context of worrying what happens to a videogame ).

Actually, to be honest, I don’t think they’re going to give up on the quality DE thing altogether, I think we’ll still get a few now and then, but it will be a trickle, and not the main emphasis.

Overall, what’s the lesson? The stupidity of the masses is one of the main reasons why we can’t have nice things

takatsu.9416:

gurugeorge.9857:

takatsu.9416:

idk, most people when talking about dps, are talking about burst damage.

Then they don’t understand what DPS means, which is “the average rate of damage inflicted over time”.

If you can do a huge burst (or volley, etc., sometimes different terms are used in different games), but if you can only do it once a minute, then your DPS could easily be lower than someone who does comparatively tiny hits, but every 3 seconds, for example.

This is why it’s sometimes the case that a powerful autoattack can do more DPS than any other combination of abilities, even if they put up big numbers. It’s also the reason why classes that put out DoTs (or in our game conditions) can sometimes top DPS charts over more flashy classes that do hits with big numbers.

That’s also why I mentioned the point that GW2’s fights are pretty short: if fights are short, then burst is (usually) more important than DPS, if fights are long, then DPS is (usually) more important than burst.

Mesmers can certainly have quite respectable burst damage, but the question is whether our DPS, our sustained damage, is low (which it kind of is, especially with weak autoattacks like staff and scepter, but it probably doesn’t matter because of the short fights).

Yes I agree, that it depends on the length of the fight. But my issue is when we’re talking about fights over a longer period of time, which mainly occurs in dungeons, against champions/legendary bosses, especially when looking at tough dungeons which requires skill, we’re looking at a lot more variables than just the numbers or damage over time.

For example, when you have a warrior who hits really hard auto attack or whatnot, or might even be a balanced build, with good heavy hits, auto attack or whatever, while having some survivability, once again, i’m saying all classes need their “set up”. The warrior (some warriors don’t build for range), would have to be in melee to do the most damage. While this is okay for a short period of time, eventually, they get hit pretty hard by the boss. They have to continually evade, dodge, run away to heal, and all sorts of stuff, which actually if you think about it, takes away also from their constant damage dealing. Same for a thief, you don’t see a thief up in a tough long boss fight’s face, all the time, tanking it like a guardian. When out of range, suddenly, the dps rates will change. A bunker guardian, while able to tank the boss, might not do as much damage either. That’s why we have a team of people working on one particular long fight objective. However, when we look at mesmer, we have a lot of versatiliy, utility, evasion, stun breaks, all sorts of stuff that keeps us alive, but we’re also dealing tons of damage consistently at range or jumping into melee. (that’s my opinion and personal experience) people want mesmers in dungeons, quoted not only for talking about utilities but that they want zerker mesmers for their dps while other members of the group can focus on tanking, holding the boss in place, attracting aggro, etc. Mesmers can deal sustained, consistent damage over time in long fights, even tho their autoattack isn’t that great, just as well as other classes, because other classes need their set up and need to survive as well. Mesmers might be one of the easiest classes to survive with, when played well, imo. Often times mesmers might be last one standing

I see what you mean now, and agree. Effective DPS can indeed be different from theoretical DPS, and in those terms it might well even out for a Mesmer.

kitten , it’s at times like this I wish there was a parser, it would probably put the cat among the pidgeons. But then, if there were a parser, there would be no mystery

Huh? I hardly noticed the 30-ness. Granted I had to take a breather around 20, but the whole process was so much fun, visiting some areas I’d never been before, and enjoying the Aetherblade stuff, the escorts, the Champion challenges, that it didn’t feel like a chore to me at all.

And I am now the proud owner of a beautifully-animated balloon

Just to put it into perspective, I’ve never done any of the temp content up until I did a bit of the Zephyr stuff, and now the Balloon Tourist. None of it ever quite grabbed me (although I did enjoy some of the Fire and Frost stuff when I happened to chance upon it in the course of my travels). This is the very first thing I’ve been “completionist” about in the game at all.

MrRuin.9740:

Kiel won because she gave a bit lower wp cost for a month. Its about the equivalent of voting in a President because he’s going to lower taxi fares for a month.
I dont even notice wp costs, what is the % reduction anyway?

Evon offered to cut key prices for a month, insofar as a discount was being offered by both candidates, both discounts were for a month.

It was definitely better last night than it was a couple of nights ago – I could see mobs last night, whereas a couple of nights ago I could only see red bars and mob titles.

Jeez, there are zillions. One of my favourites at the moment is the simple but deeply amusing interplay between the grumpy human merchant and the uninterested, laconic Asura in the TP in LA. Every time the human says “got any Charr iron?” and the Asura says “no”, I chuckle, great voice acting from both actors.

A few weeks ago I followed a messenger golem around in the Asura starting area – it was going on a fairly long round of delivering messages to various Asura dotted around, and each time it delivered the message it had been given with a twist or a garble, causing more and more confusion. It seemed like it was taking malicious pleasure in stirring up trouble between the Asura, and this was its little way of rebelling against its servitude.

Basically I just love the feel of the virtual world, it feels a bit like a real “place”, and I can goof off pretending I’m a magic-using demigod in a charming fantasy world for an hour or two.

Scoobaniec.9561:

gurugeorge.9857:

Scoobaniec.9561:

What Evon has to do with rng? …

Umm, the candidates offered (amongst other things) a choice between two discounts, Keil’s was waypoints, Evon’s was RNG keys.

So bc Evon had keys, its makes him a rng god? U dont have to buy any keys, and thats olny ur choice. If u got a problem with rng chests, tell that to AN. Its not Evon fault.

Not sure if serious.

Seems like a fairly bizarre gear introduction on Anet’s part. I’d love to hear their rationale.

Supertramp.5430:

I’m looking at buying gear since I’m recently 80 on my mesmer. Problem is I want to play confusion/condition build in WvW, but I don’t know if there is any viable build for PvE aka. dungeons/whatever with conditions. I don’t have enough assets to buy both power and condition as of now.

I’m going for the rabid gear if anyone wonders.

Rabid gear is great. Runes of Undead work great with Staff play too (they add even more Toughness, and also – with Superior – add a percentage of Toughness to Condi damage). Generally PvE in the game is easy enough that you can pretty much build whatever you fancy (e.g. according to RP theme) and it will usually work fine. It’s only really dungeons and pvp where you have to start thinking about your build seriously. But it’s fun to aim for something anyway, and to be efficient, even in PvE, and Rabid for condi Mesmer works great.

Confusion isn’t really something you can build around these days, it’s more a bit of icing on the cake if you are investing in the Illusions line.

If you’re aiming for dungeons, people might whine at you if you don’t have Berserker gear.

And this is why all you guys are virgins

I’m most fond of Shatter builds (Shattercat style) because they’re very active and fun, but I’ve been experimenting with the Blackwater style of build recently. Phantasm has just never suited me. Also, I love the Staff soooooo much, really makes me feel like a magic using class.

Up till now I’ve mostly done PvE but I’m starting to really enjoy sPvP and am also starting to get into WvW, and still trying to figure out what’s right for me in those areas.

takatsu.9416:

idk, most people when talking about dps, are talking about burst damage.

Then they don’t understand what DPS means, which is “the average rate of damage inflicted over time”.

If you can do a huge burst (or volley, etc., sometimes different terms are used in different games), but if you can only do it once a minute, then your DPS could easily be lower than someone who does comparatively tiny hits, but every 3 seconds, for example.

This is why it’s sometimes the case that a powerful autoattack can do more DPS than any other combination of abilities, even if they put up big numbers. It’s also the reason why classes that put out DoTs (or in our game conditions) can sometimes top DPS charts over more flashy classes that do hits with big numbers.

That’s also why I mentioned the point that GW2’s fights are pretty short: if fights are short, then burst is (usually) more important than DPS, if fights are long, then DPS is (usually) more important than burst.

Mesmers can certainly have quite respectable burst damage, but the question is whether our DPS, our sustained damage, is low (which it kind of is, especially with weak autoattacks like staff and scepter, but it probably doesn’t matter because of the short fights).

Scoobaniec.9561:

What Evon has to do with rng? …

Umm, the candidates offered (amongst other things) a choice between two discounts, Keil’s was waypoints, Evon’s was RNG keys.

pullnointer.1476:

long desired by whom exactly? are you suggesting an argumentum ad populum?

Since I wasn’t making an argument, but an observation, there can be no fallacy in what I said.

MMOs and their precursors have a long history, if you check out that history, I think you will see that the idea of players “making a difference” to the virtual world they play in has always been a desideratum from both players’ and developers’ perspectives (obviously not for everyone, and not all the time, but it’s been an idea that crops up often, in forums, in developers’ ruminations, etc.).

Trouble is, it’s hard to implement, especially in virtual worlds, which are always subject to the possibility of exploitation and griefing (i.e. developers have to guard against those possibilities).

Having something resembling an election in which players have actually collectively decided what content they’re going to experience, and have made a choice with a cost (i.e. permanent loss of one option), is one way of having players “make a difference” to the virtual world that they’re going to play in, and quite an innovative way too.

I dunno, does it matter? Most fights, both PvE and PvP are over pretty quickly in GW2, and burst generally is king, in which context we can do pretty well. OTOH, when it comes down to sustained damage on a boss, again, we can do pretty well with 3 iWarlocks up (which there’s plenty of time to get up and keep up, and they don’t usually die often if you’re positioned right) and a boss with a mess of conditions.

(See those noticeable little “steps” being taken out of the boss’s health fairly regularly? That’s your iWarlocks Under those specific conditions (heh) their damage is HUGE.)

I noticed an improvement in this last night in the CP, mobs were generally visible (only a few invisible for a bit, but appearing pretty quickly – this being in contrast to hardly any mobs being visible the day before, just names and red bars). Good work Anet!

holotype.1643:

regardless of whether you like dailies or not, or if you like GW2’s implementation of them (vs WoW’s for example), they are surely not required.

Sometimes when I log in I don’t get all of the requirements done for the daily, and I log out without worry.

Other times, the daily gives me something to do in addition to guild activity or dungeons or farming.

It’s a complimentary feature and I bet most players appreciate the option.

This, they’re entirely optional as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes I get inspired to do a daily, or complete a monthly if it’s close; most of the time I don’t even think about dailies or monthlies at all, and just play the game. When I play in that mode, the notification that I’ve gotten some daily or monthly is a pleasant reward.

On the other hand, if a player is a completionist, or wants to get gear fast, they are there as an option. But if they want to get gear fast, why would they complain about dailies, since they’d have to play a lot to get gear fast under any conceivable system.

Any perceived “pressure” is psychological, and depends on one’s desires.

I agree, I think if the vote had gone for Evon, Anet would have taken it as a green light to go in the “lockboxes for everything” direction that many other f2p MMOs go.

They have now been given a clear signal that RNG is fine as it is and we don’t want to go any further down that route, thank you very much.

Some people like gambling, no problem; but most people don’t. If I get a key drop I’ll open a box, it’s fun. But I’m kitten ed if I’m going to waste money on a stupid gamble. If content starts getting saturated with this kind of RNG (which has blighted some otherwise fine games, like Cryptic’s), it will put off many players – at least, too many for Anet to ignore.

Blix.8021:

… every single bit of damage in coe is dodgeable, why would you not want zerkers in your party?

Because lots of people hear that zerker is cool, so they wear it, but they’re not actually that great players, good at dodging, etc., so they die often, which means they are in effect being carried.

Obviously people who play zerker and are good at it (i.e. output massive DPS and don’t die) are extremely desirable in any group.

But there are plenty of players out there who are butterfingered but have a higher estimation of their abilities than their abilities actually warrant. For them to go zerker is a waste of time for them and for the group. But, herd mentality …

pullnointer.1476:

gurugeorge.9857:

pullnointer.1476:

gurugeorge.9857:

milo.6942:

i’m really surprised so many people support this voting-on-features system. they pick 2 good ideas and then make sure that 1 of them will never come to fruition? that’s a great system… thanks for making the best possible game for your players.

People have been whinging about not being able to “make a difference” in virtual worlds for ages. Now we the players were given a choice with real consequences (choose one thing, forego the other), and you think this is a problem?

is that not what he said?

I thought he was being sarcastic.

his post does contain sarcasm. this is relevant in what way exactly?

He doesn’t like it that one of the choices is now gone, I am pointing out that such “real” choice by players in terms of making permanent changes in the game world has been part of the design goals for MMOs since forever, and (implicitly) that he ought to consider looking at it from a different angle, and more positively, as a development which successfully realizes (in its own way) a long-desired feature for MMOs.