There are already people who point out those titles cause problems. 100% map completion, for example. Completing all jumping puzzles as another example.
@mcl: FYI: the “invisible” rendering or culling issue is a completely separate technical matter altogether.
Until I see it fixed, I will continue to consider any suggestion that we further burden the game engine as specious.
I support the addition of displayed titles. The rendering of a simple text string title takes no more additional processing time or power than rendering the “Enemy Invader” nameplate.
And yet, at the current time, the game has problems rendering the “Enemy Invader” nameplates, due to the 10/7 evening patch.
As has already been argued elsewhere, XFire use is not a representative sample of the GW2 customer population. The data is therefore irrelevant.
I go into overflow all the time. The fact that today’s average number of players logged in is lower than launch is NOT a surprise. It’s normal. it happens in every game. Go ask a game publisher for general players-per-day trends over time, from launch onwards.
And there were a small but significant number of people just biding time until Pandaland came out; nobody would deny that.
So, you have the typical-to-every-game post-launch drop, and an expected drop due to the new WoW expansion, and your support for “the game is dying” is XFire data, which is, again, not a representative sample (which is a statistical term and a polite way of saying, “that data is meaningless”).
And this is your basis for wanting post-cap progression in WvWvW, of whatever form. Because if not, OMGTTEHGAMEWILLDIE!
Forgive me if I don’t hop on your particular bandwagon.
“For the sake of the game”?
The game’s a month old. Either produce data to demonstrate the game is dying, or produce peer-reviewed research that demonstrates the need for and success of virtual participation-trophy systems to forestall eventual playerbase decline.
Also note that, “Game X does it!” is neither of the above. Claiming other people do something is not support for an argument. It’s mob mentality. “Hey, they’re smashing windows and stealing TVs! Must be okay! Let’s go!”
Just because a lot of games have this sort of thing in them, does not mean every game must. Just because you’ve grown accustomed to them or unable to play without them doesn’t mean every player has.
One of the longest-running games with sustained popularity is CounterStrike. There’s ZERO progression in that game. Everyone is on a level playing field.
If you want to grind for continued achievement, there’s this thing a lot of people do these days…it’s called “work”. You even get paid to do it! You might be interested.
(edited by mcl.9240)
This is a good point, but one that isn’t based on the idea of cosmetic rewards so much as very badly designed metrics.
As long as individual rewards contribute towards team success, this is not an issue.
Any reward can fail to contribute to team success at a particular time.
Grinding yak-killing? Team needs to focus on taking other objectives? You’re not working towards team success.
Grinding K/D? So you’re hiding on the walls, AoEing anything and everything with skills or a siege weapon or cannon? When you’re needed to help defend another location under attack and undermanned? You’re working against team success.
Grinding “build X siege weapons”? You keep building arrow carts in the keep, taking supplies from the keep when your team has repeatedly warned everyone not to take those supplies? Not working towards the team goals.
Grinding “Killed X mesmers”? So rather than deal with the most immediate threat in a fight, you spend all your time looking for mesmers, and because you weren’t focusing on the people killing your commander or the force by the door (or healing your team), you lost your team objective or didn’t achieve your team goal? Once more, not so much a team player.
It doesn’t matter how they’re designed. The fanatic “must grind to whatever shiny thing is dangled in front of me” crowd will ignore the greater good for the benefit of their own selfish wants. Because they not only want the titles and shinies, they want them all. They don’t just want them all, they want to have them first. Because that, somehow, makes them better than other people in their mind. Meanwhile, their team suffers because a WvWvW spot that could’ve been filled by someone willing to fight to win is instead filled by someone just in WvWvW to grind titles and shinies. And it’s not just one slot, it’s a bunch of them.
Why are you proposing this? By your argument, because people will become bored with the game without it.
Why would people grow bored? Because they are unable to feel fulfilled via internal motivation, i.e., personal goal-setting and subsequent attainment of those goals. By your argument, they need a virtual participation trophy for every aspect of WvWvW, lest they grow bored and wander off to greener pastures.
What constitutes internal motivation? Bettering oneself as a player. Learning all the intricacies of playing your profession of choice, maximizing your build, and becoming the best player you can be, without the need for external display of said achievement.
Why isn’t this sufficient? Beats me. Professor? Why isn’t that sufficient? Why will people grow bored and leave without something to grind? Why does everyone feel the burning urge to be treated like a special snowflake and a pretty pretty princess, to be told they are special and unique and that they deserve a reward just for trying?
Why is post-cap progression a bad idea, even if it’s just cosmetic? Even if there’s a way for people to opt-out of seeing it? Because rather than focusing on team objectives, they will become obsessed with the grind. They will forego team goals to focus on individual goals. They will stop trying to win for winning’s sake, and will instead start focusing on upping their K/D ratio (go ask FPS players how well that’s worked out for them; or just check the math and realize you can min-max K/D in ways other than being a superhuman killing machine that never dies, and those ways are much easier AND detrimental to team play), or whatever other stat they’re currently grinding for the sake of a shiny title or pretty dress. They will become more selfish and less focused on winning the match when the team’s goals conflict with their individual goals of achieving title X or shiny Y to demonstrate how good they are. Which is simply ridiculous, because — Western cultural norms aside — how good you are isn’t defined by your possessions, even when they’re virtual.
No, I’m quite fine with how the endgame is designed. The endgame is designed to put an end to any sort of progression whatsoever (outside of cosmetic, and the only really annoying cosmetic progression currently in game are a lot of the legendary models and effects) and to focus on getting better as a player, not “who has the most stuff/money/time on their hands”.
You’re indicating that you are not interested in bettering yourself as a player, and in fact the concept bores you and (by your argument) many others. You’re suggesting an annoying, visually-invasive, post-cap grind to gain all sorts of new visual effects and models as well as titles that everyone else will be forced to view, and which the game engine will be forced to deal with, when it’s been amply demonstrated it can’t even handle what’s currently in the game.
In sum: I’m not the one unhappy with the status quo here. You are.
That’s not argumentation inconsistency. That’s you going, “Hey, this one example of a bad idea is already in the game; let’s use that as an excuse to add a boatload more!”
You assume I am okay with and like the legendary weapon system currently in place. While it’s cute and good for a giggle or two (“Hey! A bow that shoots unicorns with rainbow trails!”), that gets old after about the first 10 seconds of seeing it in use, and becomes nothing more than an on-screen annoyance.
The fact that people are complaining about how hard they are to get (a month after release, when these are things that shouldn’t even be achievable in a year’s time, and yet several people already have them) is testament to the fact that people these days want everything and they want it right now.
Add cosmetic progression to WvWvW, and you’ll have people focused on grinding that progression, rather than the purpose of WvWvW: To win. Which means ignoring your personal goals to support the team effort.
(and if you were going to point out inconsistencies in my argument, that would be a perfect one to point out. Although it’s not an inconsistency per se; it’s just me actually finding another reason not to like cosmetic progression. This one just happens to be more substantial than, “I don’t particularly care to see your in-game overcompensation for some real-life lack on my screen”. This one actually highlights how in-game post-cap cosmetic progression would detract from WvWvW play.)
(edited by mcl.9240)
Those are completely separate issues. I know I can never change your mind. At least anyone who comes here to read this thread will be able to see you are not consistent in your arguments and subjectively choose what you accept and don’t.
Also, If you don’t think they are going to add a ton more “visual clutter” to this game in the future then, I don’t know how to break it to you other than say… they are!
Since you’ve yet to do so, please point out the inconsistencies in my argumentation.
NOTE: your incorrect definition of “post-cap progression” doesn’t count.
Perhaps what wee need are forum titles, showing all the diehard, tryhard DAoC fanatics who insist on DAoCizing GW2, or who are incapable of enjoying any game that doesn’t play just like DAoC.
That would, indeed, make identifying people easier, and allow us to act accordingly.
I’m not the one craving change to GW2 to prevent me from “getting bored”. I like GW2 just fine, thanks.
I’m just pointing out that you aren’t being intellectually consistent. How can you chastise people for wanting post cap progression in WvW when it exists elsewhere in the game already such as legendaries?
Legendaries are part of the cap. “post-cap progression” would mean a progression system on top of what currently exists as the power plateau in the game: max level, max stats, max armor and weapons.
And as I already stated, I have no problem with cosmetic progression, except that all it does is feed the egos of those who want it, because you don’t just want stats and titles: you want stats and titles to be visible by everyone, with no option to disable the viewing of those.
As I said before, you seem to need some constant external reward to keep you happy, and you need to be able to lord it over others by forcing them to be exposed to those rewards.
Legendaries add zero power. They are the definition of “post cap”. They are not needed to play the game and simply are eye candy. How do I disable seeing enemy Legendaries in WvW again? Afterall, it bothers me that they flaunt the fact took the time and spent hundreds of skillpoints/gold etc etc.
“Hey, there’s already visual clutter in the game. Let’s add tons more!”
Brilliant.
And need I point out you’re specifically suggesting adding them to a system that already had problems displaying what’s in the game now, prior to the 9/7 patch. After the 9/7 patch, almost everyone’s invisible and nameplates aren’t even displaying.
And you want to further burden that system with yet more customization, for the sake of your ego?
In what universe does that make sense, exactly?
I’m not the one craving change to GW2 to prevent me from “getting bored”. I like GW2 just fine, thanks.
I’m just pointing out that you aren’t being intellectually consistent. How can you chastise people for wanting post cap progression in WvW when it exists elsewhere in the game already such as legendaries?
Legendaries are part of the cap. “post-cap progression” would mean a progression system on top of what currently exists as the power plateau in the game: max level, max stats, max armor and weapons.
And as I already stated, I have no problem with cosmetic progression, except that all it does is feed the egos of those who want it, because you don’t just want stats and titles: you want stats and titles to be visible by everyone, with no option to disable the viewing of those.
As I said before, you seem to need some constant external reward to keep you happy, and you need to be able to lord it over others by forcing them to be exposed to those rewards.
I’m not the one craving change to GW2 to prevent me from “getting bored”. I like GW2 just fine, thanks.
Er. I think post-cap progression is silly for the precise reason that I do not need some external recognition system to constantly pat me on the back to keep me from getting bored. I agree with EasymodeX: you’re projecting.
Just out of curiosity, why do some of you feel the need to be rewarded for anything and everything you do? Are you that materialistic? Is it something about your upbringing? What is it about your internal makeup that makes it impossible for you to take satisfaction from accomplishments without some form of externalized recognition?
It would seem there are a growing number of people who claim to get ‘bored’ if they’re not constantly grinding something, or ringing some bell (in the form of titles, achievements, power progression, etc.)
What happened to, “I play more, I get better as a player”? Why does it have to be, “I play more, I want to shove that fact in other people’s faces”?
Success is supposed to be its own reward.
With that mentality all Guild Wars 2 should have is sPvP.
How does a Kill to death ratio giving you a title option and a skin to buy or an animation to use have anything to do with how much you play?
The idea with stats is that there are so many, depending on your play style you can target whatever ones you wish.
Your statement about sPvP makes no sense.
I have no problem with cosmetic progression, I just don’t understand some people’s need (yours included, apparently) to wave it in other people’s faces. If you achieve something, good for you. Don’t go cluttering up my screen with your lack of job, relationships, or sleep.
Just out of curiosity, why do some of you feel the need to be rewarded for anything and everything you do? Are you that materialistic? Is it something about your upbringing? What is it about your internal makeup that makes it impossible for you to take satisfaction from accomplishments without some form of externalized recognition?
It would seem there are a growing number of people who claim to get ‘bored’ if they’re not constantly grinding something, or ringing some bell (in the form of titles, achievements, power progression, etc.)
What happened to, “I play more, I get better as a player”? Why does it have to be, “I play more, I want to shove that fact in other people’s faces”?
Success is supposed to be its own reward.
GW2 WvWvW isn’t DAoC. It will not be made into DAoC. It won’t become “he who has the most time on his hands wins”.
You have a choice: learn how to have fun in WvWvW, or constantly be dissatisfied with a purchase you had ample opportunity to learn about prior to launch.
The problem is that your only definition of ‘fun’ is something GW2 doesn’t offer. It didn’t offer it before launch, and they made it quite plain that nothing of the sort would be offered.
So, one has to wonder: why did you buy the game when they made their philosophy on this very clear up front? This smacks of trolling.
We’re sorry you’re bored. Perhaps that’s why there are things other than WvWvW in the game.
No post-level-cap player progression. Thank you.
@epsilon: not “at the time”; over the entirety of the match. That’s exactly how it works now. I.e., that’s how the score is calculated. We’re just saying they should hide the score (any numerical info, actually).
You don’t need a score to know who’s ahead or what you have to do to win. Watch the pie chart. Look at the maps. Take and hold as much territory as you can, as long as you can. At the end of the match, the server who did that best wins. Just like now, except you don’t use some numerical value to determine whether or not you should queue.
I wholeheartedly support hiding any numerical score from players (it can be kept and used for matchmaking, as long as brackets aren’t presented in rank order, either).
Taking away the score introduces some uncertainty, and that’s GOOD. “I don’t see us with a lot of territory. We’re behind right now. I need to get in there and help, because all I know is we need to hold as much as possible as long as possible.”
See? That’s infinitely better than, “we’re down by 10,000 points. I won’t even bother to queue.”
I recommended removing the scoring system a week in and replacing it with….
Nothing.
I wholeheartedly support any proposal to remove the scoring system from player visibility (I’m fine with keeping it behind the scenes for use in matchmaking, as long as the brackets when presented to the players are not presented in ranked order).
Exactly, for example, this guy from CD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzjJNYWtkNU
Identified and reported.
he hacked altar ? more like a person impersonating as CD player by server transfer and getting himself killed in the process of “flying”….
Er…sure. Ok. I see you’re determined to be unreasonable.
Exactly, for example, this guy from CD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzjJNYWtkNU
Identified and reported.
the orb was hacked again just now, altar was broken… you just can’t play if you don’t cheat , right TC ?
That’s absurd. More than likely, it’s someone who transferred over from CD or DB to stir up trouble on TC.
(which is also absurd, but just as likely).
On behalf of Tarnished Coast I'd like to apologize to Crystal Desert in Dragonbrand Borderlands
in WvW
Posted by: mcl.9240
“Within sight of each other” is meaningless, since due to culling (and particularly after last night’s patch fiasco), what you think we can see and what we can actually see are two vastly different things.
Isn’t your server currently about to fall into third place, behind TC (the unofficial RP server) and CD in this week’s match?
I think the delta between best and worst when it comes to asset loading from disk vis a vis the invisible player problem in WvWvW is tiny.
So does the developer responsible for this stuff, per his last post.
I missed the vote as well. Calling a minority of the posters here, which are also a vast minority of the players of WvWvW, let alone GW2 in general, a ‘consensus’ is an abuse of the word.
I’ve been very patient, and quite supportive of ArenaNet in all of this, but even I have to admit that, with the way things stand post-last-evening’s-patch, this is the first time since launch I can actually say I’m not looking forward to playing WvWvW tonight.
It makes me thankful I have a social commitment this evening. Otherwise, I’d be rather bummed.
The next time I get any substantial time to play will be Friday evening (Training Tuesday and Thursday night, and an evening class on Wednesday). I sincerely hope this has been rectified by then.
Couldn’t see anyone in WvWvW tonight. Even after I had an enemy tab-targeted and 5 feet from me, they never rendered.
Using antipersonnel siege was a joke; the only thing I could use to target was the spell effects I’d occasionally see.
I’m afraid WvWvW is almost entirely broken at this point after this evening’s patch. You can’t see anyone, ever, save for a very small handful of players on either side.
Twinbros, please log out of WvWvW so TC players dedicated to winning can take your spot.
If there’s anyone on TC not willing to fight for first, kindly get out of WvWvW and let those of us who want to win play.
Best match up to date for TC.
And you don’t see the correlation between people checking the score and the number of people who queue on the losing servers?
I do. Others do.
When the game decides its matchups using a relative ranking system (meaning the servers that get put together are of similar ‘skill’), and yet one team ends the week-long matchup with 3, 4, 5 times as much score as both of the other teams COMBINED, the system is flawed.
Hence my proposal to eliminate the display of any scoring mechanics to the player base.
One thing all the old DAoC players seem to keep forgetting is this:
GW2 isn’t DAoC.
So — and I ask this as respectfully as possible — please stop trying to make it DAoC. To be frank, the WoW people have been better at restraining their “let’s make GW2 just like WoW!” requests than you lot have.
The game is a month old. You came in, for whatever reason, expecting this game to be DAoC2. You’re now reacting as though you’re surprised it isn’t, and you keep asking for modifications to make it more like DAoC.
There are reasons DAoC maxed out at 250,000 players. Can we please give this game a year or two before you insist we start implementing some of them?
(yes, yes…“the game will be dead long before then!” You’ve already made that plain. There’s no need to repeat it in response to me.)
Any post-level-cap, post-gear-max game-impacting character improvement in this game is, in my opinion, a horrible idea.
If people want to feel superior to others due to what they own, there are plenty of other games they can play. Or they can go max out a credit card at the mall.
The real problem here is invisible enemies. Give their algorithms time to match servers properly.
in WvW
Posted by: mcl.9240
Thank you again, Habib.
On the issue of the client-side asset loading, those of us with quite high-end systems (including both the OS and the game on separate high-performance SSDs) with more than enough GPU and RAM to handle anything you can throw at it, and a gigabit home network all the way to the router and modem (yes, there are cable modems with gigabit Ethernet ports these days) would argue that the delta between a system like that and a mid-to-low-end system just isn’t that great in terms of the overall issue.
Yes, the mid-to-low-end system may take half a second longer to render the player models once the cluster finally sends the information to the client. But the end result is almost identical (and I know, having done a literal side-by-side comparison between my high-end gaming rig and my spouse’s mid-range system, in the same map at the same time, in the same location, watching the same problem occur).
I’m glad you’ve got a fix to largely alleviate that, but let’s be honest, that was not only low-hanging fruit, but speeding up asset loading on the client side is only going to help those at the absolute bottom of the range of acceptable hardware. I.e., your minimum hardware specs. Nobody with even remotely decent machines will see a bit of difference with that change.
I don’t mean this as a criticism of your post, or your technical ability. I am deeply grateful you followed up on this issue, and were once again as forthcoming as you were.
But I fear that you’re going to leave people with the false impression that upgrading their hardware will make one bit of difference with this problem, or that responses along the lines of, “you need more memory/a better GPU/a faster hard drive or an SSD” are in any way going to help.
You yourself acknowledged that even the highest end systems suffer from this, and my only quibble is that you left the impression that the delta between the absolute top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art, complete overkill hand-built gaming rig and a 3-year-old Dell is quite large in terms of this issue, when in fact it’s rather small.
“I’ve been on a few servers over the past week”
…I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for that.
Remove the scoring. It can be hidden from the users and still used to match servers, but don’t show scores. Just show territory held.
Bingo, people stop using the score as a factor in deciding to queue or not.
What if each match was only 24 hours and the winner determined by total number of wins.
in WvW
Posted by: mcl.9240
What if each match was a week or two weeks, and the winner determined by who held the most territory over the entire period of time?
I.e., what if they completely eliminated the display of any numerical score in WvWvW? No overall team score, no per-tick increment display, just the pie chart and line chart and maps showing which servers own what?
What if they stopped publishing server brackets in rank order, and instead randomized the display order of the brackets?
What if they stopped publishing the servers in each bracket in rank order, and instead randomized the display order of the servers in the brackets?
I.e., instead of: bracket 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, they’d show us: bracket 5, 2, 4, 1, 3.
Instead of server #1, #2, #3 in bracket #4, they show us server #3, #1, #2 in bracket #4.
I.e., you’d be unable to look at the published brackets and figure out who was the top server in a bracket.
You’d be unable to look at the published brackets and figure out what the top brackets were.
You’d be unable to look at the WvWvW window in-game and see any sort of score. Just territory occupation. All you’d know is that if you wanted to win, you’d have to occupy as much territory as possible, as long as possible.
…which is exactly what happens now, except that everyone bases their decision on whether or not to queue on server score, and some people base transfer decisions on server ranking.
Stop showing players this information, and make WvWvW what it should be: a fight for territory and control, not a decision about whether or not a numerical value is too high or low to bother playing.
I definitely believe that quote if it was in the first week of long queue times.
Had they done what I suggested in a rollup thread, this post probably wouldn’t be here, instead, we all transferred off all of the low pop servers, and more transfer each day! yay!
Here’s a tip, many medium ranked servers have absolutely no queue anymore… and plenty of people.
He made that quote last night.
The real problem here is invisible enemies. Give their algorithms time to match servers properly.
in WvW
Posted by: mcl.9240
64bit would solve the disk access issue, as it could store a kitten load in physical memory, which everyone has plenty of. However, if you have a SSD this is a moot point. I find it hard to believe that it’s a networking issue with today’s high speed lines, look at your network throughput during the peak times, its not that.
I think this all comes down to we are in a PC world and not all PCs are the same, so the game developer has to weigh performance ratios. People who have real gaming machines could handle the higher volume load, but average joe can not.
Look at WoW, it’s designed to be medicore graphics to be ran on anything…. just the nature of MMOs unfortunately. DAoC had the same problem until PC hardware was commodities and everyone had powerful enough rigs.
But then there is also the server performance and here the issue is battle mechanics, the server has to process everything and with huge battles it simply is overwhelmed. Sure they can throw more hardware at it, but doubtful with this model (free to play).
There is no disk access issue. People with SSD’s have exactly the same problem as everyone else.
This was a change made to the servers. It has absolutely nothing to do with the client.
“The last data I saw had an overwhelming majority of transfers from servers with long queu times (generally from winning servers), to servers with short queu times (generally to losing servers). There are some people going to the winning servers, but the simple truth is the vast majority are not.”
— Colin Johansen, game director.
“The last data I saw had an overwhelming majority of transfers from servers with long queu times (generally from winning servers), to servers with short queu times (generally to losing servers). There are some people going to the winning servers, but the simple truth is the vast majority are not.”
— Colin Johansen, game director.
“The last data I saw had an overwhelming majority of transfers from servers with long queu times (generally from winning servers), to servers with short queu times (generally to losing servers). There are some people going to the winning servers, but the simple truth is the vast majority are not.”
— Colin Johansen, game director.
The real problem here is invisible enemies. Give their algorithms time to match servers properly.
in WvW
Posted by: mcl.9240
It has nothing to do with whether the client is 32-bit or 64-bit. It has nothing to do with the client. It was a change made on the servers. Read the dev post.