I have been banned -accused of using a bot/third-party program
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: ounkeo.9138
A pattern is starting to form here.
You can see that Anet has put in, what looks like a lot of effort into tools and systems to combat bots and farmers when the simplest solution would have been to hire GM’s to roam the world and deal with bots.
Instead, they’ve developed these automated systems with some effort that not only doesn’t work properly, but is inconveniencing the player base quite a bit. the Gold sellers and bots and farmers, none of this matters one iota to them.
why not put that effort into fixing the game instead. Anet’s anti-farm system obviously doesn’t have anywhere near the effect it should and frankly, it’s barely better than those free mmos that don’t have this system.
Why don’t they get that yet??
What’s next? Will we now be limited to 1 ingame mail per day because gold sellers are sending us gold spam via mailbox?
sceptre and torch as set 1 is recommended as your default/backup . You can take hits but believe me, you aren’t going to be tanking anything; most of your time fighting bosses will be spent at range, so the sceptre is really useful – it’s crud for damage though its ranged aoe ability is nice and on low cooldown.
sword and torch is fantastic for DPS. Your single target DPS will be equal or better a greatsword, but you have a limited toolset.
Sword/mace and shield is really good for survivability vs 1 mob. 2+ and it doesn’t really make signifigant difference, you’ll still end up having to pop a heal. Also, you aren’t going to be tanking bosses/champs. the shield will allow you to maybe survive 1 extra hit.
Hammer for large events with multiple mobs. You can trait it so you can spam the AOE jump strike every 4 seconds. it has a range of 600 so you can clear quite a good distance between mobs very easily. In large zergs/fights, it’s THE best faceroll weapon you can be using – 2222222222. The DPS over time is equal to or better than a greatsword. For short, quick fights, the hammer will seem very slow.
Greatsword – can’t go wrong here, though the AOE potential of this is nowhere near as good as the hammer though it can finish fights quicker than the hammer. DPS over time is similar or slightly less than the hammer. It has a longer leap than the hammer but on a very long cooldown.
I’ve found the Hammer in Orr to be very effective due to the massive amount of mobs spawned during events. Simply speaking, you’ll hit more mobs for nice spikey numbers more often than with the other weapons. It’s a PITA to level with though.
SO I bought an Exotic 80 sword last night, but I’m generally unhappy about the look of all of them with the exception of one or 2. My exotic looks like a giant egyptian leaf. I don’t dislike it and it’s not ugly per say, but I want my swords to look like swords.
I know there are basic greatsword designs but I find the blades too thin. those look more like longswords, which are fine but I’m really looking for a 2handed broadsword design. Norn rare greatsword has one really gigantic anime-style broadsword, but it has feathers has clashes with my karma exotic set’s spikes.
is there a simple, broad bladed 2hand sword design you can point me to please.
thanks
it would also help if females did not have absurdly long legs in this game.
i don’t get video game designers’ contempt for female bodies, anyway.
why would you think they have a contempt for the female body? It’s stylised. Even the male toons are stylised such.
That’s like asking why the Masters never sculpted fat, short people… why are they all Adonis-like with 6 packs and muscle definition everywhere? Is it because they despise the human form? Or is it because they admire it or admire what that ideal represents, which is more important than the actual product.
They have short females in the game; they are called asura and they are really cute. REALLY CUTE
RaptorSpectre has a good list there and is probably close to the truth of it, but for all practical purposes, consider the system completely random.
I’ve fought and done the same champs/mobs well over a hundred times and the aggro is completely random in practical terms. I’ll take the shaman Champion boss in Wayfarer Foothills as an example since I have literally killed him close to 200 times now:
he targets me about 50% of the time. half the time he does target me, he will chase me and me alone the entire fight. the other half, he will target me then decide to focus entirely on a lowbie and I can just stand there and wand him to death. The rest of the time he doesn’t even bother with me.
If I use various melee
I usually only get hit by AOE and a lowbie is getting his attention. i can’t get his attention whatsoever. It’s rare at least; even with mace which has healing strikes.
Sometimes, I’m chasing the boss while it’s chasing a lowbie around. Most times he’s just standing there switching at random. It’s rare to see a range toon get aggro but it does happen from time to time.
There seems to be a system in place but in practical terms, it effectively is random. that is to say, from a player’s POV, it’s not a controllable element in combat. Maybe that was their point – not that I agree mind you.
Testing and verifying it is going to be very difficult and very time consuming. Players would have to switch to every permutation of builds and gear types and activities during combat to even do the test. It can be done but it isn’t practical to test.
On top of that, it could very well be that different mobs/bosses have different priority so testing against one mob could still end up only yielding correct answer for that mob and nothing else.
In Orr, some of the mob behavior seems to suggest a certain randomness not exhibited elswhere either. i’ve fought a normal risen mob and while engaged in melee combat with him, he’ll run away and chase another player sprinting by. Completely disengages me and just runs after the other guy…
I agree with you totally, I would love to have a female with meat on her bones. *I’m actually surprised people think these characters are “fat”. You have seen fat girls before, right? Even the largest option on the largest character is average weight. *
It’s all relative depending on where you live/culture.
In America, the largest human female model would be considered average (I haven’t looked at the male option) or even probably “small”. In Asia, the average is much closer to the default female model; which is to say, rather skinny (though shorter). They would view the large human female model as severely obese. i say this from the pov of an asian american working in Asia for the last 20 years.
The commonly accepted average for a European, American and Asian can be 100lbs in difference.
Usually, when I use the term “fat”, I am referring to the obviously visual extra padding built up around the frame, which is… well… fat. And most certainly, we could say the the largest female model in the game has a lot of extra padding – hence fat, which is very different from big/heavy boned (like the norn female default).
seems to happen more often underwater and in more drastic fashion. Like last night, doing an underwater event, several mobs spawned literally on top of us. When we brought them down to 20% life, they went invulnerable and regen to full. We couldn’t attack them until they started attacking us. It’s not like we moved anywhere – we were iin melee range fighting at their spawn point.
Soloing a krait, i managed to get it to 10% life in melee before he just suddenly turned and slowly sauntered away, regenning to full while my life was still stuck in combat 30%. i already knew he was going to turn around and 2 shot me so I tried to swim/flee… and you guessed it, he pulled me and 2 shot me.
going by Anet’s reputation, they will ban you even if the fault lies on their end. If you’re character is bugged and you play the character, it’s a bannable offense.
I don’t know where you come from but the largest human female body size is pretty bloated looking. She looks overweight by about 40 lbs, which is a lot. that is not skinny.
Maybe what you are asking is to have the option to make a severely obese woman.
equip a weapon set that can do mass aoe on short cooldown. For a guardian, sceptre & torch or hammer with 4 second cd aoe leap attack.
Go farm event chains in Cursed Shore. It’s mind numbing but is very lucrative. If you’re lucky with drops, it can be 1G+ per/hr. If not, you’ll still end up making 70 silver+ per/hr.
just spam the mobs with aoe. profit.
you can do just fine damage wise when kiting. The game was designed with kiting as a primary playstyle. Even my guardian using the slow ball of small death sceptre can dish out pretty good damage over time. it’s real crap for burst or spike of any kind though and those “slow death balls” have a tendency to miss movign mobs…. a lot.
on my first playthrough to 80, the vast majority of content was working but as the weeks passed by, that same content started bugging out and breaking. Skill challenges in human starter areas that were working are not not working. Same with some norn challenges. Both areas now have 1-2 broken DE that breaks the flow for new players. I find my alts having to replay old De’s over and over and can’t complete hearts.
On sat/sun, Orr (cursed shore) started to break. Mostly still working. Last night, Orr was nearly completely broken. The Arah Chain is broken (this is a major event line), Grenth event line (also major) broken. the other temples, well… noone does them on my server. But there are a whole host of issue right now so there are large swaths of the map are devoid of working events.
In 4 hours, I made just over 10k karma. in Orr. That’s peanuts. with long waits for events to start and running from one event to another to find they aren’t working. – also, why can I teleport to a contested waypoint (Arah)????
So I went to Timerline Falls because Orr was just getting depressing. You guessed it, what was once a nearly flawless zone now has at least 2 broken DE; one of which didn’t start the whole 2 hours I was there and one stuck 1/2 way. There was a third someone was complainging about in chat but I didn’t go verify.
If a new player starts now, even 2 events broken will hurt the image of the game moreso than other MMO’s simply because this is the main method of activity/levelling. The rest of the xp activities are incidentals. When an event breaks, the single method for directing players also breaks and they are left wandering aimlessly looking for a major event (read; quest).
If you want to grind for hours
Hi. I work. I don’t get to play the game, casually wandering around and enjoying the scenery, idling around and roleplaying, like the supposed developer’s vision. I log on in the weekends and play hard and fast. I shouldn’t get punished for that. I shouldn’t get my account put into some endlessly DR mode, making monsters entirely worthless to kill for god knows how long, simply because I have focused sessions when I actually get to sit down to play.
I work, go to college, and have a child to look after. Why turn this game into another job, logging on to rush to the end when you can just enjoy the ride; however long it takes? Again, why try to play a game in a manner it wasn’t meant to be played, then get upset because you can’t do it?
“I don’t get to play…” this just shows you stopped looking at this as a game.
removing impedements to game play won’t ever change how you play your game. It just won’t.
If they removed diminishing returns, how would this affect your ability to play the game you currently play? It wouldn’t. At all. And If I’m not mistaken, the greatest source of complaints is on level 80’s complaining about diminishing returns… Like I said above, i give Anet benefit of doubt that this is completely unintended for a legit player to start a large event chain and by the end, get penalised for it with diminshed returns.
How in the green earth are you or anyone else able to argue for a system as broken as that.
That is like going on a rollercoaster ride that slows down every 5 seconds and by the 15th second, it stops completely and you have to get off the carriage, wait 30 minutes (or however long) before it starts again.
You are arguing that this is the way it was intended by design. i would argue that this was not by design at all. In fact, it was designed counter to that. The slowdown and forcing you to get out of the carriage is an artificial rule enforced on a system designed to be run completely through in 1 minute instead of start/stop over the next 1 hour before you complete the ride.
Just look at the whoel design of the game. It is counter, completely counter, to your arguements. the rules they are enforcing are working against the actual design which is why we have broken diminishing returns on legit activities.
I give Anet the benefit of the doubt because there’s no way any rational developer would purposely give the legit player diminishing returns before he is actually able to complete an event chain. Just no way it’s intended.
At my current pace in Orr, unless they give us a panel that tells us specifically “you are about to hit DR, please stop playing” , I will continue to believe that this was entirely unintended. When they put the anti-farm code in, I think they had no idea how this would actually affect regular gameplay. If they did, and still made that choice, then that’s just horrible.
Even with the recent “This content has been disabled” spam, I’ll still give them benefit of the doubt but I’m not going to give them a clear green pass like OP; which is just burying head in sand.
OP, that’s fine. You want to be rewarded for doing more varied events. I’m perfectly happy with that. How about not punishing us for JUST PLAYING THE EVENTS AS INTENDED, much less farming it.
This weekend, From Penitent, i ran the the DE’s and started the Arah event chain. We failed one time before the final boss and had to restart. By that point, Diminishing had completely hit and I was getting effectively nothing. That was starting from near the top of the coast down to Arah. that is playing the game as per normal and “intended” by Anet.
We still get a bloody knee to the face for it. In fact, loot stopped dropping 3 or 4 events before the final fight already.
Maybe they should fix what is currently busted first before working on various types of rewards. With the way the code works right now anyway, even your system would hit diminishing returns, except faster…and we’re right back where we started; with a broken system that knees players’ in the face for playing the game.
they need to add much more style armor items. currently 1 set per armor type just doesn’t cut it.
So here’s my list and what I would willingly pay money for:
1. Cloak (back) designs. ~$2.
2. Various armor skins. ~$2 per piece/$12 whole set
3. Cultural T3. ~ ~$4 per piece/$24 whole set
4. Cultural Weapons skins. ~$4 per skin
5. Dungeon skins (only). ~$5 per piece/$30 whole set
6. Town clothing (a lot of Variety!). ~$5 per set
Those are reasonable prices. Currently, i don’t care what the excuses people give for it, but $500 real dollar conversion for a T3 set is ludicrous and clearly shows they are, as yet, completely insincere about their efforts in the item shop.
I’m surprised that a game as old as EQ2 has all of that and then some in their store. And I’ve spent well over $100 in it whereas I have spent ZERO in GW2’s store. right now, the store and gems are effectively saying “We want your money” and that’s it. It’s useless in its current form and the shop is essentially little more than a very expensive in-house gold seller.
Give us something to do and buy with the shop! And for the love of the motherland, can you please be more reasonable about your pricing!
sure wow was bugged. Most MMORPG are. the difference is in severity, abundance and where it is bugged.
In WoW, a bug here or there didn’t stop you from completing quests or zones. Generally swiftly patched (weekly).
My most recent game was Rift; lot of bugs also, bt generally never in such a way as to interfere with in game progress. And as far as I can remember, swiftly patched.
GW2? Skill point bugged.
that means you can’t complete the zone. GG.
that means you can’t get your skill point. GG.
Event bug?
that means you can’t complete the zone. GG.
that means you can’t open the vendor. GG.
that means you won’t get xp there. It’s a dead area. literally. GG.
move onto another event?
It’s also bugged. GG.
move into another similar level zone?
It’s also bugged GG.
Timerblines skill point is still bugged along with 1 or 2 events. Weeks now.
Human starter zone skill point and some DE are bugged. At least a week now.
Many of these things simply aren’t getting fixed. Sometimes they get fixed, work a few times then bug right out again. In the grand scheme o fthings, these aren’t major bugs but the number of them centered around the core areas of gameplay make it more frustrating than usual, even by mmo standards.
DR is just symptomatic of a bigger problem among Anet’s philosophy. Look at the latest round of changes. Look at the current “this content is disabled”. You don’t need to throw that in our faces, we already know that on top of not getting loot and karma and coin, that content was disabled. We already know. Who at 80 is expecting it to yield a drop?
Now, if you’re trying to capture Arah (for example), you may fail once (fair enough), but by the second time going, you get diminished returns on karma, coin and XP and loot drops off to, literally nothing. Let me just reiterate to someone who may not understand the gravity of that. You’ll end up killing hundreds upon hundreds of mobs and event bosses and get nothing over a period of hour(s) if you do the whole chain.
Then at the end, you loot the grandest, most epic looking loot chest in any game ever and it yields 1 green and 3 blues <- not enough to cover your death(s) if you failed once.
i spent 3-4 hours capturiing and holding Arah over the weekend for effectively nothing. It helped a few people who were doing dungeons. So I went to farm the normal events and in 30 minutes made more coin and karma than 3-4 hours than Arah event chain. It’s twisted broken the way it works now.
Tried for hours on Grenth only to find the chain is broken over consecutive days, which is just…. -_- There are so many issues, DR is soemthing they really need to rethink and put effort into fixing other areas of the game;
BTW Human starter zone and Norn starter have multiple broken DE and skill challenges—-still!
Many players (myself included) are used to their mmo experience being questing to cap, then having an entirely different gameplay format.
GW2 gives you that gameplay format, without the intention to change it at level cap. This gives players the feeling that there is nothing to do.
that and well, we only have 1 viable zone for level 80. I’m sure people like Op will argue due to scaling we have all zones. But until he hits 80 I’m fairly sure he has no idea what he’s talking about pretty much exactly like the original post he put up.
Half the fun of an MMO to me is mathing out which stats I want compared to what other stats to get my perfect min max build.
Numbercrunching, mathcrafting and min/maxing? I believe the game you’re looking for is called World of Pokepanda. This game here is meant for fun, exploring, teamwork and cooperation – not some elitist gearscore bullskitten.
This game seems like it was made for 5 year olds.
I’m just going to put this quote up here, so everyone kittenads your post can be reminded of what level of social responsibility that OP has.
and here you are sounding like those exact same elitists.
the info the OP is complaining about are valid bits of info we should have. for a game that supposedly tries to go away from the old school way of doing things, they are remarkably similar to old school in execution.
Ever play DAOC or such from the old days? You had to read a website first and research to even understand what your skill actually does, or how much mitigation is affected by armor. It’s a remarkly unfriendly system for a game designed to be “fun to just pick up and play for casuals”.
At the end of the day it doesn’t hurt to have those nuggets of basic info there. I played all the way to 80 and got half my exotic set before I even knew what a “field” was. Now I know, i still don’t care and I still don’t understand.
The way this game is set up now, you put on any armor you can wear, use any weapon and hammer your number keys because none of it actually matters anyway. As long as you understand 2 things: these do damage. These do CC. Everyting else is superfluous; you don’t need to know it or understand it.
The fields are a great example of how that works. No info. No detail. Noone knows. Noone cares. It doesn’t make a lick of difference. It might as well not even be there for all anyone really cares.
Killing enemies before they get close to you is generally > standing next to them while they beat you with a big stick. I can’t remember playing a game where the opposite is true.
For pvp, that idea is fine and preferable really.
In PVE, it’s really broken. There really isn’t a use for any class specification when the most effective way to handle PVE for 99% of the fights is to kite. I rolled a guardian in a whipering Exotic set (well balanced set) with exotic weapons of all types that I can use. I’ve tried all the different builds from Glass cannon to full tank to hybrid build and in all instances, the most effective playstyle was to kite for the majority of the fights.
That is to say melee isn’t useless, it’s just more situational than kiting is. To some people that is fine, but one does not play a heavy plate wearing tank and build him out to be a damage sponge only to have him kite mobs. There is a clear disconnect between class and playstyle in the current system. the only melee that I’m finding is somewhat suited for it is the Thief because of all the combat rolls he has tied with his weapon skills. Otherwise, there’s little difference in playstyle between ranger, warrior, guardian etc..
By in large, “tank” builds (or even just heavy armor builds) usually means you can survive 1 -3 more hits than if you were built any other way. In the case of elites+, it means you might survive 1 more hit…or not.
Kiting it is then. Jump in when there is an opening, sure, but the default is still to kite – hence melee is broadly, situational.
I’m so starved for melee combat that my guardian is now using a hammer because it allows me to attack, strafe kite and jump in again every 4 seconds. It’s melee sure, but meh… there’s a lot of kiting still.
OP, the level scaling was fully intended to make each and every zone “a level 80 zone”, not just to help us play with lower level friends. It works and I think it’s a brilliant idea but not scaling loot is a real problem that seems to have escaped that criteria of a “level 80 zone”.
We’re not going to the lower level zones to make shinies or to reap gold. If the intent is to make it a viable 80 content, then that is exactly what I expect. the risks in the lower level zones are still there. you can still die pretty easily.
for example, If you die in one event, you’re going to be farming the next 4 DE to make up for it. Compare that to the level 80 zone, if I die in one event there, ok fine, I pay out ~5 silver for waypoint res and repairs, but at least I still made 6+ silver from trash drops and such. Sometimes you just break even in the 80 zone with 1 event death.
One event death in the lower zone doesn’t even break even, you’re in debt by a factor of 4 while your friend is paying low copper for his death and breaking even or earning.
That is to say the idea is good but at present, it presents a practical problem for level 80’s to be playing these areas. They need to do one of 2 things (either/or):
1. Scale our costs down to the zone if the loot is to remain zone appropriate.
2. Scale the loot to our appropriate level if the cost is to remain fixed at 80.
Both are viable solutions and in both, neither are saying “I want shinies!”.
(edited by ounkeo.9138)
For me personally, it’s not a matter of skilled vs. not, but the fact that I utterly hate the weapons I’m given as a Ranger. I don’t enjoy melee in the first place, so spear is out, and the Harpoon gun is an exceptionally-weak bleed-heavy weapon that only has one skill that I’d consider particularly good (Feeding Frenzy).
Underwater is the only time I genuinely feel like my pets are an asset, simply because I’m so crippled.
I’d argue that your statement proves it’s a matter of skilled versus not. I wouldn’t necessarily word it that way.. I’d prefer to say an understanding and familiarity with the tools you have underwater, and a willingness to use them.
As a ranger I can simply annihilate normal mobs in a handful of seconds and rarely take any hits, even on harder fights that go on for an extended period. The tools are there, but if people are just randomly mashing buttons they shouldn’t expect miracles. Performing well underwater does require at least a little attention. I can kill a pack of mobs in seconds or I can make the same fight last ten times as long and be infinitely more painful just by being sloppy.
Many people do the latter all the time and then chalk it up to underwater combat being horrible.
I’m pretty familiar with underwater tools and know the basis on how underwater combat and survivability works.
In lower level zones, my guardian is able to solo everything except champions. It invovles a lot of kiting and using the weapon & class CC as well as, when timer is ready, creating curtains of damage for the mob to swim through.
Except by the time you hit the higher zones, there isn’t any room to kite and whatever CC you use, the mob will just chain CC you back. Orr underwater is horrific for this, especially in comparison to Frostgorge Sound, where underwater combat there is a lot more tolerable and doable.
I suppose the theme seems to be; if it’s in Orr, it’s going to be terrible.
I wish Orr (land and water) was more like Frostgorge Sound. I really like that zone (and it mostly works without bugs!!!). I would have been really happy if they had made that a proper 80 zone rather than only having a small silver of it really for 80 content.
Underwater combat is really easy once you figure it out, I really don’t even get hit anymore unless its a champion. Just takes practice like everything else.
unfortunately the OP is right about the problems.
Underwater combat has all the elements to make it quite fun and unique such as underwater weapons, however, in its current state, it’s nearly broken, or in the straits of Devastation and other higher level water zones, completely broken.
It’s worse than the Orr land mobs in terms of density and insane repop. they also don’t do insignifigant amount of damage. I have tried to kite them but I end up picking up more mobs… or… the mob just pulls me. None of my high level water skill points are completed. Made worse by the fact that on my server, there’s noone in the water. They are all on land farming karma.
Add to that, even with yellow weapons and the whispering exotic set armor, I do crap-all for damage underwater. We’re talking about hitting mobs for 150-ish damage while they hit me for 2,000 and on specials, hitting me for 8000+. It’s a monumental effort to kill just one mob down there.
What made me give up was on one of the shipwrecks, I spotted a rare occurrence: a lone krait. I checked for possible adds. There were about 4 total scattered very far apart – as in you could see them but they were far enough to be just a small blob. So I attacked the one mob and got pulled. The next thing I know, I have all 4 mobs on me instantly and all 4 special on me – intantly wiping my toon off the face of Tyria.
OP has it spot on about how the mobs also bug out and just walk away, turn around and then kill you. A lot of that happening for no darn good reason.
As it is, I’m just staying on land. Not until i can figure out why my damage is so poor underwater… I means it’s really poor even with 2600 power and 47% crit!
do you consider orange craft item drops in this question? Because I’ve gotten 3 orange from mobs before I hit 80. No actual equipment loot though.
Laughing at the people who speed level to 80 and then complain there is nothing to do. This isn’t WoW, the game is the adventure between 1-80, there’s tonnes of neat events, story, dialog etc.
Want end game, play WvW, sPVP, Dungeon runs, map completes, gear collecting, make use of the fact the game scales you and play around in low/mid level and help those leveling.
My advice, roll another toon, and take part in the story, read the lore bits, don’t skip the cut scenes.
You can easily hit 80 without even trying in this game. Saying people rushed is pretty ignorant of that fact.
I’m quite surprised they have no way to access accountr transactions and reverse the transaction. Every MMORPG I’ve played has this facility.
When I got my account hacked in WoW, they were able to restore all my gold, returned me all the equipment he vendored or sold off.
Same deal with Rift. Same deal with DAOC. Same deal with LOTRO etc…
It sounds more like they simply couldn’t be bothered because it’s not a subscription game. They already got your money; there just isn’t any reason for them to offer that level of support (it does take man hours to perform these tasks).
the more likely reason you aren’t getting loot is that you are hitting diminishing returns. As long as you haven’t hit DR, you can still get loot by AOE bombing the events. You only needs a few ticks of damage to ensure you get it.
I have a 2011 HP Envy 17. 2Ghz i7. Radeon HD 6850
It plays the game above 30fps with nearly full settings (post process off, AA on) at 1920×1080 resolution.
Your setup should handle it just fine.
The game is not made to be played by people standing in one spot aoeing the same mobs for hours upon end with 40 other people including bots
The CoF path should not have been made so ridiculously easy that people could do 10min sleep runs over and over again
The risen grubs should not have had loot or he shouldve thrown only one wave of them, and people should not have purposely just sat there and killed grubs for 30 min or so for drops (and even I did this 2x)
Sure there was some flaws in the designs of some things and they are taking steps to adjust those things.
Combatting bots is just a minor reason behind the DR
Fact is that alot of players will purposely look for ways to do things to get the most things possible in the shortest time regardless of what that means.
The DR will really only effect those that do the above mentioned thingsAnd that is why I asked specifically what is it you do that the DR directly effects you. Of the things you listed as our problems, dr affects none of those things
I play everyday, in fact I probably play too much, and I can tell you the DR does not effect my gameplay one bit
Now lets flip it around a little. Let’s say they add 100 mobs to the CoF path, or the grubs actually drop loot but they have 25x the amount of hitpoints. Or dynamic events only popped at a spot 1x an hour. What do you think the reaction would’ve been. Endless threads of complaining as well
It is not what I would consider and perfect and permanent solution, but it isn’t an iota of how people are reacting to it
you know why i don’t run anywhere further than a 20 -30 second distance in Orr? Because if I do, by the time I get there, I’ve already hit diminishing returns clearing the mobs along the way. and I hate trying to run past mobs with speed because they can still disable you and you’ll only get yourself killed. You kill as you go.
It’s easier and more useful for me to cycle through 2-3 DE’s back and forth because I can then manage my diminishing returns; which in Orr, can hit as soon as 30-60 minutes after logging in.
I hit DR all the time … all. the. time. How does this affect me? Because I’m playing on Anet’s programmed schedule; not my own. My only decision is to log in or not. If I log in, Anet decides when my downtime should be. They decide when I have to skip events even though it’s happening right in my face. If it’s not loot DR, it’s Events DR. either way, if you want to not hit DR, you end up standing around waiting and waiting while there’s action going on all around you. Or you fight to a location and stand around waiting on DR cooldown, or kill the annoying Orr mobs anyway knowing you won’t get anything for doing so.
that is some seriously disfunctional game design. It’s easily solved by removing DR and adding a GM to authenticate bots from humans. Those Free MMORPG do that all the time and they don’t even have 1 time box revenues. But then again, I’ve come to realise they won’t do this because it isn’t about controlling the bots. It’s abotu controlling legitimate players earnings so that they will be “forced” into the gem trade.
CC is excessive in this game. Still ok during the leveling (although Kraits have a very nasty tendency to chain CC you) but horrid at 80.
I don’t know how some people are getting by fighting multiple mobs in Orr when even as a guardian who has so many CC break skills, I don’t have enough to counter even 1 encounter. Certainly Anet can’t expect me to fill my whole bar completely with CC break abilities; that really defeats the purpose of giving us more than 1 ability.
On my guardian, If I’m fighting mobs in Orr, it’s just a chain of various types of CC that I will break when I can but something else will be applied or they’ll just pull me back when I try to kite them. Also, you can’t kite certain mobs (melee mobs mind you). they have permaspeed that is faster than your strafe/kite+speed. I’m pretty sure they can match my 33% speed in a straight line run. Not that they even need the speed because they can just pull you or root/stun you at will when more than 1 is present.
For the most part, I agree with OP.
A grindy MMORPG theme park by any other name and description is still a grindy MMORPG theme park.
Even the Dynamic events aren’t that much different or far removed from Warhammer’s Public Quests. In fact, they are the exact same thing except in WH you had a UI panel that tells you when the next event starts in case you want to redo it or want to do something else before it starts, rather than waiting around hoping something happens soon. You also got nice gear to help equip your character while leveling. You didn’t have to deal with special coins and such and each public quest was worth doing more than once.
Many public quests had low level set pieces that had unique skins. In many ways, WH achieved what GW does not. Instead, we play this meta with special currency collection. I have found myself rerunning the same Dynamic Events in GW2 more often than I did the WH public Quests despite WH clearly not having anti-farm codes and having clearly superior incentives as well as being just as fun.
They had public quests as well as regular presentation quests.
So clearly, not as innovative here as described while throwing the baby out with the bath water at the same time. They could still make up for it in the end game but instead, designed it around a massive grind where they also artificially cap your gains throughout the game.
Am I having fun? yes, for the time being. I’m working towards getting the 120G T3 skin, one of the most absrudly expensive cosmetic in an MMORPG.
I think that these players who continue to say that “Guild Wars 2” is about fun are missing the fact that people don’t repeat dungeons for fun. For most people leveling is not fun after the first go ’round.
This is exactly the kind of thing I meant. If you aren’t having fun with the gameplay, why in the world are you playing to begin with? I’m not saying quit, but have you seriously evaluated why you’re spending time on something you consider to be “not fun after the first go’round”?
Which I mean, that’s fine. Not everyone’s going to like the gameplay, but why would you want incentive to keep playing a game you aren’t having fun with? This makes no sense to me.
Anyway, a couple of the more recent posts mentioned that progression is an RPG staple, to which yes, I agree. And it’s very enjoyable to see one’s character grow stronger. I said this. I make no attempt to claim otherwise. My thing with this thread is that lately MMO players seem to play only for progression and not because they enjoy the actual playing part.
Now, you PnP roleplayers didn’t gather over a table for loot written in different-colored pens. You gathered over that table with your friends because it was a fun way to spend an evening, whether things went right or wrong, whether you progressed or didn’t. Don’t even pretend otherwise; I will call you a liar to your face if you tell me you were into PnP RPGs solely for gear upgrades and wouldn’t play without them. So, what happened to that mindset where having a fun time with your friends was good enough, for those of you that want to evoke your PnP experience? Where’d that go, and why is it no longer acceptable?
Speaking more on subject to the game, I would challenge each of you to ask yourself and answer honestly whether or not you are enjoying the gameplay of Guild Wars 2? And if the answer’s no, I’m wondering why people who aren’t having fun would think gear progression fixes the problem. Why not suggest changes to the gameplay and combat to make it fun instead?
And if you are having fun, well… isn’t that what’s important?
Corrian, I won’t say otherwise because we did huddle together for the fun of it. It wasn’t for the loot but for the experience , with friends.
However, neither would we run the same dungeon day in and day out. We’d move to new areas, dungeons, new threats. It was and still remains a more dynamic world in pen and paper than it is in a MMORPG and because of that, the experience is nearly always new. Also, a good GM could make mundane things really fun.
In an MMORPG and even computer (single player) RPG, the wall to that is the technical block. There is only so much that can be humanly built (physically and digitally) that simply cannot cater to that level. It’s a big technological constraint that is largely dealt with by designing the game to be more open (ala UO). Building theme parks play exactly to the very limitations that effectively force the game into a narrow focus.
Everyone has fun the first few times through, but as a perpetual world, it simply can’t be on par with pen and paper and Ultima Online. When the game is designed to be truly open world, we no longer feel the artificial funnel that the latest gen of MMORPG have moved into.
If you have a bunch of good friends, anything can be fun, but I’m not going to attribute that to Anet (or any single company). That’s because my friends are fun not because the game was designed that way. It wasn’t. If anything, GW2 was designed so we don’t even really benefit being with our friends much – If we’re having fun, it’s despite Anet’s design, not because of it.
If we have a bad GM that puts us in a rubbish, ill thought out encounter/world, it, too stops being fun. Even on pen and paper, you can have a group of happy people verykitten off when the GM starts making random, half-arst decisions… If that Gm continues to be a poor GM, we’ll just nominate or find another GM – preferably if he came with his own wizard robe and hat.
Even if they released mounts, people will still complain about the waypoint costs. They will complain it takes too much time zoning, or that the mounts aren’t fast enough, or that they can just run through hordes of enemies with no challenge. People will complain about something.
I would love if the waypoints were free, but I am ok with the way they are.
Just walk once in a while when it isn’t too far and the stuff you pick up on the way will pay for a few trips in the future.
In Guild Wars, waypoints are essentially public transport. It’s there for everyone to use. the issue is one of cost vs average income.
Playing normally as Anet wants us to play, we will make about 1.5G per day staying in 1 zone provided you do about 30 or 40 DE as well in the day. At level 80, a medium range port costs 2-3 silver. That is more than 15% of your daily revenue for a 1 way trip.
In real world terms, if you make $1500 a month, your bus travel to work will cost you ~$200 to go to work. Another $200 to go back. Your public transport cost is $400. You only earn $1500. that is assuming you port to a map and stay there the whole day and port back at the end of the day. Likely, you will port somewhere else at least once or twice so your travel cost can end up looking like $6000 $800 on travel per month out of 1500 pay.
it’s very expensive.
I was in the middle of a giant defence battle when I got that popup right in my face, several times! Way to just throw yoru players out of the world.
It’s like being on a hot date having a romatinc dinner and you think things are going great and then your date farts really loudly and repeatedly and decides to vomit on the table, looks up at you seductively and licks her lips.
Seriously, after that, I’m just not in the mood no matter how epic you lick your lips.
You just need to ask yourself
1. what is an RPG.
2. what is an MMO*RPG*If you can answer that, you will see why “progression” is intrinsic to the RPG genre. It’s not wrong to expect progression and customisation and personalisation and a storied world in which to play in.
There are already genre that cater to people who want to play with other people who don’t care about a perpetual world and your relation to it; games where players don’t care about stats and weapons and armor and looks – it’s called FPS (Modern Warfare etc…)
progression (and its linked attributes) is a major part of this genre. You wouldn’t label a biography of Bill Clinton as Sci-Fi would you? Likewise, if you take out the RPG elements of an MMORPG, it’s not an MMORPG is it?
An RPG can have a power cap. You’re making it sound like every single person starts out at level 80 touting exotics straight out of character creation.
I’m fine with power caps. I’m a big proponent of power caps. I came from DAOC where everything had a hard cap even years in and with many expansions. Only with Atlantis did the pwoer gap widen considerably, but that has been corrected and everythign since has been side-grades.
The difference between DAOC and GW2 is that DAOC is vastly more easily customisable and progression is easier in many respects than GW2. There, once you hit level cap, you craft a suit of 99% quality gear, go to a spellcrafter and have that player customise your equipment stats for you. Then you fill out the gaps with fluff or glitzy special items from, say, Atlantis. It takes a week or less to be competitive in pvp/RVR there. And while the PVE is still mainly old school in execution, you could spend as much time or as little time in PVE as you wanted. All of this advanced your character.
There isn’t a power cap in GW2. There is a complete game cap. It’s very limited. Compared to one of the oldest MMORPG and the grandfather of large PVP, GW2 is severely limited. The leveling is better in GW2. That is all. It’s not that the end game in DAOC is complete (it is), it’s that the end game in DAOC allows players to play how and when and where and in what manner they want.
the only cap they have there is your overall character level cap and your power level cap. If we want to talk about how GW2 doesn’t have carrots and progression, then we need to look at other similar games that likewise have little/few of such things yet still allow a free range in how the player decides what happens at end game. It’s not even a contest.
admittedly there was a period of Atlantis where they tried to go the Raid grind route, but by in large, that’s been neutered and you can now effectively do whatever you want without being penalised either way.
Don’t want to grind as max level? Great. Just buy the crafted armor from a crafter and have it customised by a spellcrafter. Buy everything you need from the market/other players. By the time you hit max, you have enough money to do that + change.
Want to grind? You can do that.
Want to dungeon grind? You can do that.
Want to loot grind? You can do that as well.
Want to PVP with little time investment and setup? You can do that.
Want to craft the whole day? Sure, go ahead.
Want to build your house and customise it? Go ahead.
Want to explore? go ahead.
Don’t like your armor? Easy, farm for a new look or buy it with the plat you already have from leveling.
In GW2, our option is artificially limited with the final option being, “you just hit 80, you win the game…” The breadth of "character progression here is shallow indeed with players argueing it should be even more shallow.
You can always redo them after everyone leaves the area. there are a lot of maps where it’s nearly devoid of people. I got most of my skill points solo (and nearly all my skills opened by level 40+) by going to other maps and soloing those unused zones. You won’t get ppl jumping in simply because there’s noone there.
this thread is going to be a magnet for account hackers.
You should just ask how much Gold per hour people can make.
that said, if you play the game till 80, you will end up with roughly 10++G even after repairs and waypoints.
If you gather along the way til 80 and use none of those material, you can sell it all in TP at current prices for roughly 15-18G.
You just need to ask yourself
1. what is an RPG.
2. what is an MMO*RPG*
If you can answer that, you will see why “progression” is intrinsic to the RPG genre. It’s not wrong to expect progression and customisation and personalisation and a storied world in which to play in.
There are already genre that cater to people who want to play with other people who don’t care about a perpetual world and your relation to it; games where players don’t care about stats and weapons and armor and looks – it’s called FPS (Modern Warfare etc…)
progression (and its linked attributes) is a major part of this genre. You wouldn’t label a biography of Bill Clinton as Sci-Fi would you? Likewise, if you take out the RPG elements of an MMORPG, it’s not an MMORPG is it?
Your points are mostly valid but you really need to get to 80 before makign any statements about end game.
1-80 is mostly fun. 80 can be fun but by in large, it’s quite different from what you are describing. If we’re being honest to players who haven;t hit 80 yet, apart from finishing the one-time activities (like exploring), be prepared for a massive grind and time sink even if all you want to do is just make your toon look better.
If you’re perfectly happy to be wearing the same items with the same look as you been wearing since level 30+, you don’t have to engage in the grind though.
The problem with Orr is that for solo, the mobs are too tough/high damage/too darn many gimmicky CC and perma sprint.
But for a group, most of it is too easy. It’s like the scaling you see in the lower level zones aren’t functioning properly in Orr.
I bring up the Shaman Raid in Timberline Falls; It scales perfectly… In fact, the more people there are, even zerging it takes a signifigant amount of effort.
The Shaman’s guards are easily soloable if there are only 1-3 players. As there are mor eplayers there, they get very, very powerful. the regular mobs become “veteran”- like and the Veteran scales to a full Champion that if you get caught in his AOE, takes 1/2 your life.
In Orr, relatively speaking, individually, it’s very tough. In a group, it’s way too easy (for the DE). Even defending/capturing Arah entrance, you, as a player, can just stand there and mass AOE the mobs and it’s likely the mobs won’t even attack you. They have artificially high HP of course, and speed… but they’ll attack everything else but the player unless you literally stand right on top of them.
Comparatively, the lower level zones may have simpler mechanics, but they are more fun, and offer more of a challenge than the Orr events. Even as an 80, I find some of the lowbie zones more challenging (in a fun way) than Orr; which is just either too easy or too difficult.
is this serious?
if you guys choose to run in circles all day in an endless “tag for karma” loop then you get what you get.
theres a whole game out there
Let me fix that for you:
“…There’s a whole game out there involving completely of tagging mobs in Dynamic Events to gain Karma.”
IMO the only issue is the lack of visual warnings on alot of abilities.
While it’s admirable trying to do away with cast bars and just having it be purely based on watching animations, they need to make sure they are obvious enough. Alot are but alot aren’t especially in cluster F situations where it’s harder to notice subtle animations.
If they can’t get to changing most of those skills it they can always try to give a stylized subtle warning like a particle effect on the mob’s head or something like that.
I actually found DC Universe mob special abilities better executed than GW2. As far as I can remember, when a mob winds up a big attack or a special, it does an animation as well as has a distinct particle effect.
I understand why Anet went this route but at the end of the day, it must be practical for the end user. When 1/2 the time player effects completely cover the mob, even with an animation, it’s not always easy to see. I see a lot of players (and I’m guilty as well) just randomly dodging just in case we missed the queue. the problem with this is, when it comes time to dodge (or sometimes, double dodge), you’re screwed.
The mob cast bars may not be elegant but functionally they served the purpose.
I find DC U to have done this well without using a cast bar.
Ancient Bones:
Compared to other T6 trophies, the ancient bones are dirt cheap. Kitten, they are even dirt cheap, when compared to T3-T5 bones. They drop too often.
It’s not that they drop too often. i see them drop less often than many other types of bones. What you’re seeing is oversupply as a result of the mass wave of 80’s farming non-stop to get their exotic karma sets (or to make coin/craft).
I’m sure if you do the actual math, you’ll see that ancient bone is in line with pretty much other bones on drop rate. the amount of mobs we kill in one or two Orr event is probably about how many a T1-T2 player kills in an entire map of leveling.
tbh I had well over 50 chests by the time I hit 80. I sold it all on TP. I found exactly 2 keys from mob drops and about 5 keys from the chests itself. The rest of keys were story rewards.
I have gotten nothing except useless tonics and maybe a few self repair canisters (single use). I wouldn’t spend real money to buy these things. The general value of what’s in the chest is very poor. Like the mystic forge, it’s a jackslot machine – designed to funnel more money into it than it will spit out – at least the mystic forge has a high and/or reliable chance of giving you some usable items. so i can see someone finding value in spending cash/coin on that.
The giant is a separate event started around that area. The timing of it usually doesn’t coincide so it’s extremely rare. I play that area alot, and it’s only happened twice and looks to be entirely unintended.
I think all they need to do is remove the CC and up the timer between ground target and its effect. The timing between the ground target being placed and the actual effect is way too short atm. that means if you’re playing with anything but perfect ping, it’s nearly impossible to roll out of it. If I compare with say the Frozen Maw shaman “raid event” in Timberline falls, there is about a 2-3 second time between placing ground target and effect. Well more than enough time to dodge out even with bad ping.
Then of course, there is the questionable decision to have the circle effectively 1-2 shot players. Frozen Maw is again a good example. If you stand in the circle, you will get hit by a DD, which won’t kill you outright but it hurts. Instead, it will punish you for being in the circle with a high damage DOT. But it gives the attentive player the opportunity to survive if he is on the ball (or his ping is bad). Thamnova ember ground targets are a death event by comparison.
“i can outrun a centaur!”
Yeah, everytime I hear a toon say that only to have the risen with artificially boosted perma speed catch up to them is rather funny.
You can’t kite some of them with speed either as they will just run right up to your face and force you into melee. That or they just CC you. And too many times, I’m finding that there are 1 or 2 mobs pelting me from behind that I can’t even see with my camera. How can they shoot that far? Or rather, why is their aggro radius so big??
I believe all mobs should put up a neon signboard saying they are about to use a combat mechanic, before they can make an attack, saying:
“I am about to make a very avoidable attack on you, I beg you to dodge away!”
Then again, people would just stand stock-still anyway because they are so deluded into thinking they are playing some WoW-clone instead of GW2. Can’t possibly fathom the need to kite around to avoid damage, I mean, pfftah, who needs that sort of sissy thing right? Just need to stand in one spot, dps as hard as possible and flex electricalegosausage comparing dps meters. Or in this case, how fast one drops dead compared to a smart player kiting and snaring mobs like he should.
yes because all mobs always show you what they are about to do right? /s
Don’t be ridiculous. Some mobs give no warning or the warning signs are so miniscule you can’t see it or it’s easily covered up by the player’s own abilities. In fact, you can’t even turn on player effects (I’ve tried) which do cover up some mobs animation before they do a special.
In my post above, those flame mobs. It’s just a blob of flame with wings. There is no animation before they knock you down and insta kill you. They just pop you even if you’re sprinting.