Putting max level at 80 was in my humble opinion completely unnecessary. Level 40 or 50 would have been more than enough. You would just have earned your trait points in a much faster way, making it less tedious. The added advantage would have been more max level zones. (I didn’t forget downscaling but that is not well done either, since with a fully geared level 80 you can basically just wtfroflstomp through any explorable.)
The game is boring. The skills are boring. The fights are boring. It’s expensive to change builds (armor). Even if you do change your build, it’s still boring. The reason there are 80 levels and ascended gear is because the game has no substance.
Seems like this is not the game for you, then, and faster leveling won’t solve your problem.
It isn’t, you’re right. My point was if you reduce the level cap, you will only arrive sooner at the “what do I do now” situation. Which I think anet anticipated, which is why there are 80 levels in the first place. There is no horizontal progression (and what little there used to be has been slowly strangled) and the combat for combat’s sake is unsatisfying. That is why they pour rewards into the living story stuff, so you will go there and be distracted by all the minigames and shallow story and not realize the core game is boring and simplistic.
imagine for a moment that there was a trinity in gw2 that is control/dps/support where dps deal damage, control keep enemy damage off your team, and support remove condition/control and distribute boons. imagine game was based on teamplay and reliance on teammates to win fights.
now look at gw2 and feel free to think dodge spam is “skill”
Putting max level at 80 was in my humble opinion completely unnecessary. Level 40 or 50 would have been more than enough. You would just have earned your trait points in a much faster way, making it less tedious. The added advantage would have been more max level zones. (I didn’t forget downscaling but that is not well done either, since with a fully geared level 80 you can basically just wtfroflstomp through any explorable.)
The game is boring. The skills are boring. The fights are boring. It’s expensive to change builds (armor). Even if you do change your build, it’s still boring. The reason there are 80 levels and ascended gear is because the game has no substance.
I will never play this game competitively. It wants to be an fps, but real fps games are better. What would make me play pvp even a little bit would be:
update all skills to do less damage but have conditional and unique bonus damage or effects.
more weapons & skills
stop with boring conquest
man every time i see these threads i get so depressed thinking about all the good times i had in gw1, and then remember what a mindless spamfest this game is.
In proper mmorpg combat, each class contributes to a team effort to win fights. When a particular class is nerfed a bit, it usually retains its role in the team, and relies more on teammates to compensate for whatever was nerfed.
Here, it is a dps race and the razor’s edge between viable and not is too thin.
One of the projects we’re working on in preparing the game to release in new regions is trying to make the game easier to learn. While a lot of that work is in the area of better tutorials, better level up messaging guides, and unique tutorials for specific mechanics we’re also evaluating UI complexity (and system complexity) to try and make information easier to see/consume.
Cleaning up the existing UI systems to make them less cluttered, more-stream lined, and better unified is part of this project and absolutely something you’ll see in the west as well, likely around or possibly even before we release the game in our next major world region.
And to get ahead of the next question: No, we have no solid dates! We’re still in beta in China and are testing and developing all of these new systems to make the game is easier to learn. We haven’t announced timelines for development any other major regions other than being in Beta in China at this time.
I notice he didn’t mention anything about the biggest issue being discussed in this thread: particle effects
Rewards are a sidenote, games easily get away with bad/un-notable rewards in PvP if their gameplay is fun… and having great rewards in a boring game won’t make it fun…
In terms of work->return, this should be near the bottom…
At best Anet should open up the real money market a bit by letting you buy higher tier gear (since revenue is a corner stone of keeping a game going)
Make the gameplay playable, then focus on rewards.
When more MMOs hit the market, rewards won’t do jack kitten for this game’s survivability.
I think the fundamental problem is they forgot how to make challenging and fun gameplay around 2010.
all anets pvp recent comments here on forums hint that big pvp changes will happen in early 2014, which is funny, because thats exactly what they said last year, that January/February would be the big pvp patches
also true, the “big pvp patch” will always be in X months, for various values of x. then comes player interest on release day.. followed shortly afterwards by bug reports, concerns of skill-less balance and questionable feature implementations.
Don’t get your hopes up. Balance every 2-4 weeks (as it should be) is not Anet’s current battle plan.
Do they even have a battle plan?
More living story.
This seems to be it, unfortunately. I don’t know what the particular reason is, but Anet doesn’t seem to understand that if they balance their system better (as a priority) and make more of their inferior skills/traits good, the rest of the game’s content gains a lot of longevity.
qft +1
someone took over anet and pumps all effort into new content instead of solidifying their (potentially awesome) combat system.
Absolutely incredible. I can’t speak to the “balance” of everything, but these are all VERY interesting mechanics changes. Absolutely, ABSOLUTELY a must read for arenanet and i strongly hope they immediately begin testing these ideas in development. The specific graphical changes as well are very detailed and very interesting. I don’t want to overreach but they should hire this guy as a consultant, I’m really not trying to exaggerate, this is a colossal amount of very very very good and detailed changes that would absolutely make me want to start playing again. really. the amount of counterplay that would be introduced is mindblowing.
i don’t say that every single change is a good one, but the volume of well thought-out suggestions and how many of them are good is just incredible.
Watch this is what anet is going to do:
“Oh players want more rewards!?!” Gives all skins to pvp players that take about a day to get get and done.
No real incentive nada. What needs to happen is for them to make certain skins only accessible by using a currency only obtainable by doing a real tournament that happens weekly.
All this game needs is a working weekly tournament system or a 3 times a week tournament system that awards skins/gems to players competing. This lets you show off how good of a player you are.
I like this a lot. However the pve hotjoin heroes will cry that they don’t want to do tournies to get existing skins so we already know anet won’t do this. But maybe they can still put these automated tournies in and create some interesting pvp-only skins that use this system.
anet got themselves into this mess in the first place by trying to be esprtz and wow-clone at the same time with the 2 separate gear availabilities. should have whole game baselined in pvp and then add optional “extras” for pve but whatever too late now gg anet. anyway they’re not going to add this to custom arenas because it would divert players en masse from “proper” pvp, so have fun wasting your time posting pvers.
Your rant has nothing to do with adding PvE gear to PvP.
Simple, change Cleansing Ire to require a hit + depleted adrenaline to remove conditions. If you miss with your burst you get depleted adrenaline + no condi clear. Sucks for bad players but that’s what you get for not making sure your target is locked down before you burst them. It wouldn’t even be a huge nerf, you can still charge adrenaline while Bursts are on recharge and 3 condis cleared every 8s is already a MUCH higher rate of condi clear than any other class can achieve.
I’d be fine with that.
yeah..never mind Hammer burst can randomly fire you in any direction and then rubber band you. Never mind that flurry over shots it mark, great sword is extremely prone to skill lag, evis is terrain sensitive and moves via flight of the crow..if your not good enough to lock them down on flat ground, without much going on round you on a low population map with an excellent ping..you deserve to miss and lose your adrenaline. Good thinking. We’ll add this one to if thieve’s get blocked in stealth they lose all initiative and if mesmer clones don’t shatter dead on, all their shatters go on recharge.
it’s not random! it’s automatic! it’s a feature. why don’t you like all the boons and conditions popping everywhere??? it makes the game feel fasted paced like call of duty. please don’t talk about things you don’t know, we are breaking new ground with gw2 ground breaking new combat action. energy was silly mechanic from arcade days, we are big-boy mmo pvp now, we have restricted skills and no energy like other esports games like call of duty. just let your mind detach from your body and let your fingers work magic. this is next level kitten
anet got themselves into this mess in the first place by trying to be esprtz and wow-clone at the same time with the 2 separate gear availabilities. should have whole game baselined in pvp and then add optional “extras” for pve but whatever too late now gg anet. anyway they’re not going to add this to custom arenas because it would divert players en masse from “proper” pvp, so have fun wasting your time posting pvers.
allowed 5 leaves in 3 days is too lax and is too long a time, no idea what drove you guys to use this dishonor system when gw1 system was simpler and proven to work
The problem actually is the spectator mode. Since you can just leave your team by going into spec. mode it’s really easy to switch to the winning team.
Example: 5:5 but one team is losing heavily than 2 people go into spec. mode which causes the auto balance system to switch one from the winning team to the loser side which results into one of the spec. mode players to join the winning team —> gg!
Solution: When joining spectator mode you have to stay there until the current map ends or at least only be able to join the same team you came from.
this discussion pertain to tpvp in case you didn’t pick that up
oh well justin, here is the whole problem in anets patch politic. i can understand somethings take longer to implement then others. but hold them back to release a full stack at once is stupid if u know how urgent it is.
In this case it’s because they are part of back-end server changes that can’t be released piecemeal.
You guys really are slow to patch things in general and you shouldn’t wait to release together so you can have longer marketing update page, but it’s nice we get more dev replies so thanks.
+1 million times this thread
need conditionals, ways to skillfully set up attacks to deal more damage, with ways to avoid these setups.
the devs are a bit lost in this respect, thinking about too many demographics and types of players, and “oh what about the casuals” and general lack of backbone. The problem is this company is too large, and they focus too much on pve. Now they have a solid pve base they don’t want to kitten it off by increasing skill-cap so much because they don’t want to split all the skills and traits for pvp because that would further alienate their pve cash cow. they’ll make a show of saying they want to support esports and they are watching the forums and taking into consideration our ideas, etc etc. but then when patch hits we will see small tweaks and watered down mechanics that are compatible with their main audience. if they had really wanted to esport from the start, the pve population would have adapted and even liked the pve combat the way it could have been, but I think too much time has passed and any inertia to change course is spent. /rant
By itself, I think this last patch was decent. Small steps (mostly) in the right direction. It reminds me of the monthly balancing patches we used to have before the big powercreep storm, except with more QoL changes this time. And to be honest, the game’s balance was getting slightly better before june’s/july’s (?) patch, and will pobably get slightly better with this one.
What I think was -and still is- Anet’s big mistake, is their extremely slow reaction to the other big patch before this one. The game went crazy with powercreep, and the pvp’s community pretty much broke. Anet should have hotfixed it with deeper changes, yet, for every single excuse, they’ve been delaying it, and delaying it, and now that a new patch is out, not enough was done because they only want to “shave” it.
Here’s the thing: I like Anet’s shaving approach, but if a single patch bursts the pvp down with negative consequences, Anet should fight fire with fire. Which they didn’t, they let – and are still letting – those negative consequences to exist out there and slowly tarnish the state of pvp.
Also, in a slightly unrelated way, I don’t think their shaving balance process works very well in a 3-month schedule, because it means too little for too long. I don’t mind bigger patches dealing with underpowered stuff and new build options, but serious balance problems should be “shaved” every two weeks and not every month and a half or more.
My recommendation to Anet: adding counters is cool, but unless you want to make this game a rock-paper-scissors game, seriously consider toning down or upping the skill floor/ ceiling of some of the current troublesome builds. Every two weeks. It can be little changes at a time, it doesn’t matters. But don’t make whatever remains of this community to wait three more months for a small shaving of a monstrous meta.
The scary thing, is it really seems like they have the game where they want it.
I don’t blame the pvp devs really. I have a feeling they are shackled by the rest of the company, and management puts down any opposing opinions. But who knows.
Thanks for the constructive post Django! Keep it coming! I will pass it on to the team. Just so you know, we discuss these things internally all the time! Then we decide to ignore it all and stay the cheezy course.
this is probably a pointless clarification, but you mean wvw-style and not gw1 style right. there’s no chance of you guys calling it something else is there
You could have it so the guilds participating could choose the style. Capture the flag or team death match, etc.
this is probably a pointless clarification, but you mean wvw-style and not gw1 style right. there’s no chance of you guys calling it something else is there
I loved gw1, but please for the love of god keep the stupid mana system there!! Elementalist was TOTALLY destroyed by this mechanism. 25 mana (and exhaustion!) costing skills that didn’t even have a big effect to begin with while others would spam strong no mana/only 5 mana skills and regain mana quickly. In the end, mana is also stupid cause the prof with best mana management skills wins most of time. Now at least you can keep attacking no matter what (and gw1 auto attack doesnt compare). The only place it might be good is pvp, but some profession were also not good there cause of the mana system.
I’m sorry about your poor memory, but, those 25 energy and exhaustion ele abilities hit like trucks and amazing effects to go with them. Elementalists also got up to 60+ energy without even trying. Each class had energy management mechanics to go with it, and instead of spamming exhaustion skills, they should be treated as though exhaustion is their cooldown. GW1 wasn’t just about choosing all the big skills you want and putting them on your bars and going spam happy, you had hundreds of choices and had to decide on just 8 skills that all worked together. For me, this usually ended up being 2-3 fairly spammable damage skills, 2-3 healing/buffing skills, 1-2 energy management skills, and 1-2 big cost skills. GW1 end game progression wasn’t designed around earning the highest stat armors or weapons, but about mastering your skills as a player, learning what your character can and can’t do, and customizing and playing around with all sorts of different build options.
The only place energy should have been a limiting factor was in pvp, where there was an abundance of energy denial builds, and controlling your opponents resource was one way to win a fight.
You really know nothing about it do you? Maelstrom etc while a 10 sec lasting skill where weak overall spamming a 5 mana skill (a good one) 5x (like discord) could do the same if not better. Secondly having base mana of 60-100 doesn’t mean a thing. You can burst a few more spells but that’s it, the MANA REGENERATION RATE was the same. And that hurted ele’s badly needing to cast 10-25 mana skills while professions like necro could get away with 5 mana skills.
yes… compare direct damage necromancer elite discord spell with a elementalist water spell that interrupts every second. you were looking for big damage and you thought 10 sec aoe interrupt was a good choice? why not compare meteor shower, or better yet rodgort’s invocation. both expensive massive damage skills that needed some build thought how to maintain and when to use, but if you built properly you could use them on recharge. it’s like all you looked at was damage numbers but you didn’t bother to look under fire magic. idk man.
small suggestion: the person who was downed last will rally first. adds some small amount of counterplay for attacking team if they can take out a high-priority target, then “cover” that rally with another kill. it is also slightly easier to understand this way I think, since the spectator focus naturally shifts to the newer downed player. i suggested something similar before but it was a bit more complicated.
Here is the thing about energy in gw1 vs long cool downs in gw2, gw2 takes energy out because some people have trouble understanding how to pace themselves, and now we have training wheels cooldowns to keep people at the lowest common denominator. Energy system said “hey, you might not want to use that expensive skill over and over, but it’s your choice and you deal with the consequences.” now anet just made decisions for us how often each skill can be used. among other things that were dumbed down, let’s not forget.
The GW2 system encourages me to use my other skills a lot more.
Except that most of utility skills have some ridiculus cooldowns like over 30s to even 90s.
I honestly would rather see those cooldowns cut to 5-15s but limited by fast rengerating energy (along with skills that manage energy).
The same with weapon. The cooldowns are just to long, and for me it just no longer feel action, and more like wait an 30s to have action ;/
No thanks! That was one thing i used to find most frustrating and annoying in gw1. You were forever running out of energy and then unable to use any of ur skills.
When u went to do DoA HM for eg, it was all about energy management and yes there was skill involved but not when you went to City of Torqua, where every enemy had 100% energy denial, which ended up in constant wipes coz monks couldn’t heal/rez you couldn’t use ur skills etc.
I would rather have long CD on some skills b/c it still means i have other skills available for use as opposed to none when u run out of energy.
This is an example of someone that was overwhelmed by challenging gameplay. If you are running out of energy constantly, then examine your playstyle and your build for excessive energy usage and change it. That’s exactly what energy is supposed to do: make you think and choose your build and strategy wisely.
It’s funny. I had my character set up to rarely have to worry about energy management in GW1. Ele/xxx. Very high energy pool – low energy-cost skills. So, GW2’s skill-management seems familiar to me.
Another case of some people want one of the ‘everything you loved from GW1’, and some people don’t. Lol.
K, mr. pve hero, would love to see your management in a GvG especially on monk.
I’m sure his Flare ele with Superior Energy Storage made the game quite exciting and challenging for him.
The removal of energy is an additional layer of depth that was stripped away leaving behind a more simplistic combat system that requires less attention from the player. Another “nail in the coffin” is the allowance of cast-and-move, which removes an element of bad-decision punishment.
These and other game design decisions create a game that is easy to get into, but restricts the skill ceiling. This is less of an issue in pve, but more important in pvp. If you are the type of person that wants to pass a few hours farming mobs, you will welcome these changes. If you were looking for challenging gameplay, you may feel restless and unsatisfied.
