Guild Wars 2

Xenon.4537:

Hello, this is a topic I feel strongly about, and I believe my point of view will be tragically underrepresented. I don’t like the new orange circles. Let me explain, from an artistic perspective…

If you do not believe video games are art, I direct your attention to Exhibit A and submit that anything modified or affected by humans may be considered art.

The question then is what do we consider good art and what do we consider toilet art?

The orange circles accomplish a clear goal in regards to gameplay functionality. Their utilitarian purpose (as I see it) is to give players a very clear, immediate heads up to incoming threats under circumstances where there is an excess of gameplay information for the player to process. Basically, with the players concentrating on the regulators (Marionette) and all of the adds and wurm mechanics (Triple Trouble), it is unreasonable to expect players to notice certain boss animations and avoid them without the orange circles as a warning. I understand the need for this on a functional level, and I support their use in large chaotic boss fights with an excess of gameplay mechanics going on.

I’m currently a student of game design and character animation. Animation is one of the most difficult artistic rolls in the industry to master. The work that goes in to animations can mean hundreds of man hours for something as simple kitten seconds of a single character moving. Add to that the hard work that went in to the modeling, texturing, rigging, scripting, etc. A lot of hard work and amazing talent goes in to bringing things to life in a game. Anet has some of the greatest artists in the industry.

What I’m getting at is that I feel that animation should be the key to anticipating mechanics. If a boss is going to punch you, it should pull it’s fist back and you should clearly be able to understand what is about to happen. If you slap a brightly colored aoe sticker on top of it, the players attention is shifted from all the hard work and talent that went in to creating that fist-pull. The attention is instantly redirected to this simplified orange sticker.

If you are going to boil everything down to simple brightly colored geometric shapes, why bother animating at all? Is it the goal in the industry right now to phase out animators and utilize gimmicky visual effects to save money on development? Is Anet really willing to sacrifice artistic quality just because some other game is doing it? I would be appalled if indeed Anet has decided to emulate other MMOs “just because.” Anet always talks about pushing the envelope and pioneering ground that no one else is covering. If that’s true, then Anet should be sticking to their guns and remain true to the quality of art they have been putting forth thus far.

I write all of this because I desperately don’t want to see Guild Wars 2 devolve into a clusterfrakk of brightly colored stickers which amount to a gross oversimplification of visual information. The orange circles are, at best, a functional compromise to the fact that the Marionette is literally kicking people from off-screen and way above their heads. At worst, they destroy the quality of video games as art, and vastly diminish the efforts of every artist that touched the character(s) involved. They have no place in small-scale content such as spvp and dungeons. Please, Anet, keep these orange circles to a minimum. Use them only in extreme circumstances when combat mechanics simply wont work without them in these large-scale battles. Allow your talented animator’s work to shine through!

Edit: Again, I understand the need for them on the Marionette and Wurm fights. What I’m advocating against is the idea of slapping these stickers across the entire game. We don’t need them everywhere. There are better ways of doing things.

ehhh, im an artist, i get what you are saying, but its a game, it has to consider usability and the players ability to recognize queues. Not everyone is going to memorize enemy animations, not everyone can process and react that fast. Also, technically, some players have weaker systems that cant display effects/frame rate drops, to some degree its probably necessary

Delvoire.8930:

phys.7689:

Kilandros.2098:

What I’m saying is don’t knock the guy for airing legitimate complaints—particularly if he’s from an underpopulated server. Since we both agree that PvE isn’t really difficult, and that the barrier to these events tends to be a combination of numbers and coordination, you should empathize with players who want to attempt this content but don’t have the hours and hours this type of stuff tends to take.

Instead you unfairly targeted him for what you perceived as a lack of skill when in reality it could very well be a lack of play time. Many of us with jobs can empathize quite well with that.

Anyway, this is going nowhere, and a Mod should have deleted/locked/Re-titled this thread long ago. Cheers all.

these events take 15-30 minutes, failing the event doesnt count as it taking hours and hours, thats just not beating the game. As people get better, and used to the content, they will be able to show up and beat the event in like 20 minutes, much as I have with tequatl. You are not GUARANTEED a win though, that will depend on the performance of everyone there.

In fairness, the time he is speaking of is the time spent waiting on the event itself. I personally have spent over 4 hours waiting in an overflow to make just 2 attempts. That was my choice and I was happy to do it. Others don’t feel that same way. To me, that’s the nature of the beast. All I can do is try to persaude others that they may want to give this a shot. If they refuse to though, that’s their decision.

In the same token, I don’t feel that this event should just pop at an hour and hope that the people are there to take it on. I feel that waiting for this event to take place is all part of the challenge and event itself.

the overflow waiting dies down as the event becomes old hat, but i do agree the overflow/underflow issues is the main problem.

Not sure what you meant about the event popping, as i understand it, its actually supposed to be that way, the waiting is mostly for organization purposes, it will pop every 2 hours on the dot.

I think this is better than tequatl, which i believe had a window

TurtleofPower.5641:

Josh Foreman.8250:

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization.

The only trouble is it’s not really self-organizing. It’s Commanders leading and that puts HUGE pressure on the Commanders that most people aren’t really comfortable with.

So at least give Commanders more power and rewards.

Having a power like a local public chat channel that is broadcasted in by the Commanders only would be a start.

Trying to use /local on the wurms when it’s full of people spamming is annoying.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Thematically keeping everyone feeling like they are contributing to a common cause from multiple locations, and still feel heroic is an interesting challenge to balance.

I don’t think people need to feel heroic nearly as much as they need to feel like they’re doing something. You could give someone the simplest task possible of pushing a big red button every 5 seconds without fail, and if they’re doing it right and other people are bringing down the boss they’ll be happy.

The trouble with a lot of GW2 boss encounters so far to me, is you don’t really feel much of what’s going on. You mosh around a bit and there’s a lot of confusion with all the adds, but you don’t have that moment of feeling like “yep, I’m the guy doing something.” It would almost be better if you guys thought SIMPLER in terms of mechanics, simple but people need to be dedicated and do it right. And also, Commanders can throw someone doing it WRONG out of there. That’s important too and not really addressed.

commanders do it because they enjoy it. I think they could use more tools, but rewards/power will lead to elitism problems.

Good commanders will be able to lead without such tools. part of the point of GW2 open world development is to create the community epic level events, without the rigid entry policies and hard separation that instances bring. Its worth it for anet to refine this process than to go with the old instanced/commander kicks/rules etc that you find in other games.

Kilandros.2098:

What I’m saying is don’t knock the guy for airing legitimate complaints—particularly if he’s from an underpopulated server. Since we both agree that PvE isn’t really difficult, and that the barrier to these events tends to be a combination of numbers and coordination, you should empathize with players who want to attempt this content but don’t have the hours and hours this type of stuff tends to take.

Instead you unfairly targeted him for what you perceived as a lack of skill when in reality it could very well be a lack of play time. Many of us with jobs can empathize quite well with that.

Anyway, this is going nowhere, and a Mod should have deleted/locked/Re-titled this thread long ago. Cheers all.

these events take 15-30 minutes, failing the event doesnt count as it taking hours and hours, thats just not beating the game. As people get better, and used to the content, they will be able to show up and beat the event in like 20 minutes, much as I have with tequatl. You are not GUARANTEED a win though, that will depend on the performance of everyone there.

Blade Syphon.4325:

I’m sorry, but did I read the Anet dev’s post correct in that they intended to make it so that groups could help others out, but it didn’t make it into the release due to technical restraints?

So..the fight was designed with that in mind, but due to this ridiculous two week release schedule, the development team didn’t have time to fine tune the encounter and iron out the kinks to make sure this feature went live?

If this was intended to make us feel better, I would say it’s done the opposite. No we more or less know that content is rushed out, finished or not, to meet this ridiculous 2-week schedule.

Stop it. Just. Stop. It. If this is the result of the two week release cycle, it needs to end.

this patch didnt happen on a two week schedule, it was 6 weeks, and it was in development for like 4 months. It would be good if people could help after beating their zone though. However, when something isnt solved, it is sometimes because there isnt a good solution. thats development, dunno what to tell you.

UnDeadFun.5824:

Josh Foreman.8250:

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization. And I’m happy to see that in the aggregate, they ARE learning. I’m sure as this process continues we will find better ways to accommodate the communication structures that will emerge.

If we are moving to world events that require us to be organized, then why are we restricted to a party/ group of 5 ?

like i said before, he isnt talking about 5 man organization, hes talking broadly in terms of hey you 20 guys protect this while these other 40 guys attacks this, and these 6 guys defend this while these 10 guys use this item.

It might be nice if they gave commanders more functionality like, being able to write a mission parameter (might need larger squads) and draw arrows etc on the map of people with them, but we arent talking about small group type organization here.

Swagg.9236:

Josh Foreman.8250:

As far as I can tell there are a couple challenges we are trying to overcome. First, we are trying to teach the community a new skill: self organization.

This game was never made for well-defined combat roles.

First you make a game which (aside from a very few select cases) throws out the concept of well-defined combat roles (“Everyone can do anything!” “No healers!”). Now, I’m not arguing that that was a bad idea, but what you’ve done with encounters like Mai Trin, Tequatl, the TA path 2 boss, and now these new bosses is attempt to pretend that you didn’t design THE ENTIRE GAME around the fact that it effectively HAS NO COMBAT ROLES. So now that we have long since realized—2 years into it—that everything in PvE (and effectively PvP as well) is nothing but a big DPS spank while we do the maypole dance around a target, you want to rectify this. How? “Let’s give all of the bosses tedious invulnerability and team-timer mechanics to counter the fact that zerker is by far the most viable spec in PvE!”

You make a game without combat roles. Then you introduce a bunch of encounters that artificially define combat roles for players that they have to learn on the fly without any practice because their own DPS mechanics simply don’t work anymore. That’s not “teaching self-organization,” that’s lazily side-stepping your game’s core mechanics in an effort to make a boss that doesn’t die like an HP-sponge dog to people that know how to dodge and use damage mitigation skills.

Best of all, once completed, these bosses are touted as perfect inserts into overworld PvE despite, once again, breaking the core elements of a lot of players’ profession mechanics. If anything, these ridiculous bosses should have just been made into party instances given how tedious they can be in the overworld. In the end, GW2’s core fundamentals regarding “combat roles” undermine any attempt to make an interesting boss that can deal with damage.

If you want to make an interesting boss, give the boss several targeted weak points. Make opening a single weak point part of a separate event. When that separate event succeeds, a single weak point will randomly activate and be temporarily susceptible to damage. Getting to the weak point requires going through a brief jumping puzzle with obstacles to knock players off. None of that takes away from a player’s profession mechanics, but it also exploits the z-axis, the globally available act of jumping and a player’s sense of timing and situational awareness as a means to challenge encounter participants.

the game was designed that people survive, kill, control and keep their friends alive, how you go about doing this is up to you, however working together and learning mechanics has ALWAYS been a part of the game.
If you can kill, survive, keep friends alive and control the enemy, you will win. What he means by self organization is learning to work together as a large group, which isnt like a specialized role, its like. Hey attack this now, help this guy, teach this player what to do etc.

I think the big events are getting more refined, i do think they need to design for lower numbers than 80 people, im not saying 5 man, but at the very least scale down to be doable by 50 people.

I also think some events can have a starter event, where when you get say 60 people together some npc will start a pre event rather than be like 2 hrs or something. However, the very specific on odd or even hour works for now. Some solutions to the under/overflow issues should probably be considered.

I look forward to seeing how Anet can get even more creative with the large scale events, perhaps some not focused on One large boss, but say a massive army attack, or large dungeon like thing. Even a group of powerful enemies of different types spread out throughout the event.

Manuhell.2759:

phys.7689:

but they already have events that are extremely difficult to fail in the open world. The biggest thing i would change is have it scale down to like 25-40 people (but maybe be slightly harder at low scales)

the game needs challenges for those who have been playing for awhile, there is nothing gained from an easy event when we already have many easy events.

I have nothing against challenges. But they must be implemented properly.
Putting open world events without clear indications of what to do or that is supposed to be done and expecting experienced and well equipped players isn’t the way to do so – especially if devs want to avoid name callings in case of failures, as that will inevitably happen. There isn’t any control upon who will try said events – being open world events. It could be a good player, an average one or even just one that is leeching the whole event without putting an ounce of effort. Put ten of those, and they may weight down the others enough to make the event fail. And the other players can’t do anything about it. They can’t kick them. And neither report them for not having put enough effort.
Those are all things that would be avoided in private instances. And we have guilds that had to work around the open world nature of the event to make sort-of private instances to avoid those problems.
Thus, why weren’t they made as private instances to begin with?

because seeing epic hard to defeat monsters in the open world, and having people around doing stuff explaining the battle and working together is their aim.
Its really not possible to build challenging content that any random people can beat easily, then its not a challenge.

Now, the fact that people secret themsleves away in instances may be a problem, as well the fact that they make these events need like 60+ people. But the idea of what they want to achieve makes sense, and probably improves the game

tornadokicks.3845:

phys.7689:

im not really talking about a treadmill for gear, there is other types of rewards, things people need for ascended or legendaries, that are tedious to get other ways. New gear, more skill points or whatever.
As far as like progressive content where you have to beat other content, i dont think people mind that, they just dont want to have to tediously gear up for something. After all beating something once is just playing the game.

I think I got another idea as far as tedious/difficult end game content:

Make another map/region that’s purely for end game.
The levels of everything will be 80-90 possibly to 100.
Lots of the creatures will require party’s or some will even require large zergs to kill.

The new area will basically be like gw2 on ‘Hard’ or ‘Insane’ mode.
Like devil may cry, ninja gaiden black, dark souls ect ect
A new area designed for the hardcore players.

I myself like a challenge, especially for end game. This would take away some focus from the normal game but I think 1-79 is amazing already, why not make some hardcore content for the 80’s?

i think the game could benefit from a hard mode, though i think anet is opposed to it. They seem to be very concerned with people staying around low level areas. I think that trying to keep people playing the same low level areas over an over will not help keep things interesting though

TChalla.7146:

phys.7689:

TChalla.7146:

An idea I’d been throwing around in my head when the CDI: Horizontal Progression topic was in full swing was:

Area Notoriety:

Basically, a player would find a zone that they really liked and would spend a lot of time there doing events, group events and meta events. Each time one of these events was completed, that character (as I think it should be per character and not per account) would get a certain amount of notoriety around that zone.

Now you might be asking “why would I want notoriety in an area?”

The higher the notoriety that character had, the more the NPCs in that area would respond to you. The notoriety could be tiered, so someone with notoriety of zero in an area would be known by any given NPC as “stranger.” As you progress in notoriety, the NPCs would begin to recognize that character, and the text from the NPCs would change according to that fame. Tier 1 Notoriety would maybe say “You’re [insert name], aren’t you?” Tier 2 Notoriety would be “Ahh… [insert name]! Good to see you!” Tier 3 would be more personal. Once you reached Tier 4 Notoriety, you could get the title of “Champion of [insert area name here].”

Well that’s all well and good, Mr. TChalla, but is that really good enough?

On top of actually having the NPCs respond to you favorably with words, perhaps it could also affect any costs of NPC goods in that area.

Tier 0: Cost Reduction of 0%.
Tier 1: Cost Reduction of 2.5%
Tier 2: Cost Reduction of 5.0%
Tier 3: Cost Reduction of 7.5%
Tier 4: Cost Reduction of 10.0%

This would be the cost of all NPC goods in that area only. It could also affect repair costs and waypoint costs in that area as well. TP costs wouldn’t be adjusted (for obvious reasons.) It could also be that anything sold to NPCs in that area would be bumped up by the same margin.

In looking at the numbers above, I don’t see that this would be too game-changing overall. But it’s a little something extra for going into zones not often touch once a character becomes level 80.

Speaking of level 80, notoriety within an area shouldn’t begin in an area unless a character is already level 80. This would help eliminate certain area champ trains from accumulating notoriety from leveling. It would strictly be end-game content… a little something extra for putting in the time/money/whatever to reach level 80.

As I said up front, it was just an idea I’d come up with. Feel free to tear it apart. Hehe

this is an interesting aside, but its not something that someone who has reached max level and done most things would enjoy. Essentially endgame needs to be a little kittenallenging, fun, more epic, and have some type of rewards that high end players want to obtain. It can even be progressive. Say if you have to be one to have access to another, even if it isnt gear progressive.

Here’s the thing though…

Essentially what you’re saying is that people who have reached level 80 want vertical progression. However, in these forums, the opposite is being touted. My idea is horizontal progression really. It doesn’t affect the power of the character in question, apart from a slight monetary potential easement in that zone.

However, for the sake of argument, I suppose you could add in an “area skin” that you could apply to your weapon once you reached Tier 4 Notoriety. I don’t particularly care one way or another. I can hear the “grinding notoriety” cries already though, which is something I was trying to avoid with the idea.

im not really talking about a treadmill for gear, there is other types of rewards, things people need for ascended or legendaries, that are tedious to get other ways. New gear, more skill points or whatever.
As far as like progressive content where you have to beat other content, i dont think people mind that, they just dont want to have to tediously gear up for something. After all beating something once is just playing the game.

Manuhell.2759:

merforga.4731:

- On a related note, it is really frustrating when people feel like they can do whatever they want in an organised event. The only reason we move overflows is because people just want to do whatever the hell they want and not work together. If more players would be more willing to work with one another regardless of who is in the overflow, we wouldn’t need to find an empty overflow to fill up with people. We’re always open to working with anyone not in TTS, provided that they are willing to work with us. However if your guild of 10 is sitting around the campfire afking and not listening to commanders then we’re just going to have to move and get more willing people because we don’t want to waste the other 140 people’s time due to a small handful. It’s not fair.

Basically creating a private instance where you can invite only people well prepared, that know the fight, willing to follow suggestions and so on.
Like, the complete opposite of a normal server map, where you can’t do anything about the players you find there.
You have to find workarounds to avoid having what basically is the average player in an open world event – open to everyone by definition.
Good for you if you can succeed in the events…but that doesn’t mean they’re well designed open world events: it just means you’ve found a good workaround to circumvent their nature.

Apart from that, i praise the efforts.

but they already have events that are extremely difficult to fail in the open world. The biggest thing i would change is have it scale down to like 25-40 people (but maybe be slightly harder at low scales)

the game needs challenges for those who have been playing for awhile, there is nothing gained from an easy event when we already have many easy events.

TChalla.7146:

An idea I’d been throwing around in my head when the CDI: Horizontal Progression topic was in full swing was:

Area Notoriety:

Basically, a player would find a zone that they really liked and would spend a lot of time there doing events, group events and meta events. Each time one of these events was completed, that character (as I think it should be per character and not per account) would get a certain amount of notoriety around that zone.

Now you might be asking “why would I want notoriety in an area?”

The higher the notoriety that character had, the more the NPCs in that area would respond to you. The notoriety could be tiered, so someone with notoriety of zero in an area would be known by any given NPC as “stranger.” As you progress in notoriety, the NPCs would begin to recognize that character, and the text from the NPCs would change according to that fame. Tier 1 Notoriety would maybe say “You’re [insert name], aren’t you?” Tier 2 Notoriety would be “Ahh… [insert name]! Good to see you!” Tier 3 would be more personal. Once you reached Tier 4 Notoriety, you could get the title of “Champion of [insert area name here].”

Well that’s all well and good, Mr. TChalla, but is that really good enough?

On top of actually having the NPCs respond to you favorably with words, perhaps it could also affect any costs of NPC goods in that area.

Tier 0: Cost Reduction of 0%.
Tier 1: Cost Reduction of 2.5%
Tier 2: Cost Reduction of 5.0%
Tier 3: Cost Reduction of 7.5%
Tier 4: Cost Reduction of 10.0%

This would be the cost of all NPC goods in that area only. It could also affect repair costs and waypoint costs in that area as well. TP costs wouldn’t be adjusted (for obvious reasons.) It could also be that anything sold to NPCs in that area would be bumped up by the same margin.

In looking at the numbers above, I don’t see that this would be too game-changing overall. But it’s a little something extra for going into zones not often touch once a character becomes level 80.

Speaking of level 80, notoriety within an area shouldn’t begin in an area unless a character is already level 80. This would help eliminate certain area champ trains from accumulating notoriety from leveling. It would strictly be end-game content… a little something extra for putting in the time/money/whatever to reach level 80.

As I said up front, it was just an idea I’d come up with. Feel free to tear it apart. Hehe

this is an interesting aside, but its not something that someone who has reached max level and done most things would enjoy. Essentially endgame needs to be a little kittenallenging, fun, more epic, and have some type of rewards that high end players want to obtain. It can even be progressive. Say if you have to be one to have access to another, even if it isnt gear progressive.

I dont think the game needs wow type raids, but it does need a series of difficult content with rewards that players who reached max level would be interesting in obtaining. It can be a variety of dynamic events, difficult achievements, new missions(like gw1) or whatever, but it does need those type of things. The things we have been doing for the last year or so, tend not to be that challenging or interesting after the 1000th time

Lalangamena.3694:

Fenrir.3609:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

You are kidding right?

rjnemer.7816:

Lalangamena.3694:

they should nerf dodge.
but nerfing crit is the first step in the right direction.

Lol, sounds like you are playing the wrong mmo. The whole game is based around active combat.

no,

nerfing “in combat” endurance gain is the only way to save this failed game.
as long as you can dodge every 5 seconds, the only meta is berzerker meta and the only role is DPS role.
this game is bland , unimaginative and quickly getting bored.

nothing wrong with some ‘active combat’ but when MMORPG turns into ‘Prince of Persia’ 3D then it is no longer an MMORPG.

the only skill left is to quickly doubletap direction key.

Incorrect, dodging every 5 seconds should be a feasible way to play, for certain builds, your problem arises with the fact that most enemies only attack like once every 5 seconds.

If enemies used AA speed attacks, moved in and out of combat, using range at times, and werent immune to control, that alone would increase the need for support and control.
The main problem is that the game was designed to be active, but most fights that matter arent designed with active enemies.
The flow of combat is actually one of the better things about this game. making it more static will not improve anything.

Atherakhia.4086:

Atherakhia.4086:

Can you please try to devote a reasonable amount of time discussing classes? Especially with how you feel the class is right now, whether or not you feel they’re overpowered or underpowered, and, if they’re underpowered, WHY you think they’re underpowered?

And can you please try to make this a little more balanced when it comes to discussing classes? Warriors, Thieves, and Elementalists always get 10minutes or more each and Rangers for some reason get a half-hearted 30 second blurb of no-one-really-cares.

Rangers are fail from the ground up. Their pets don’t work (and aren’t on the radar for fixing), their traits make next to no sense, they don’t have the tools (burst/ae) to make a power build ever work, they have an entirely too passive/boring playstyle regardless of weapon chosen, etc etc.

I’d like to leave this SotG/Ready-Up with the impression someone actually plays the class, recognizes the problems it has, and actually cares enough to fix it.

Please?

What an interesting and insightful livestream we just had there. I would like to thank ANet for really going into detail on each class and not letting anyone down. I especially wanted to point out the highlights I most enjoyed!

Every class gets to know some change is coming with a reasonable mix of both justified nerfing and improvements to come their way. But not you Rangers, no. We have nothing of any importance even at the highest level for you except 3 nerfs. Enjoy!

I also liked all the talk of signets that went around. I like how ANet wants signets to be fun to use with strong passive but also powerful active abilities. But ho ho oh no, not you Rangers, no! We want you Rangers to have miserably useless signets with activated abilities that do nothing unless you first invest 30 points into them! Enjoy!

Oh and lets not forget the improvement to traps! They’ll ‘maybe’ have fields now! Lets all jump for joy because the Ranger can now throw around a fire field, but can’t blast it… a poison field, but can’t blast it… and a ice field, which again… you can’t blast. Enjoy!

And finally we have the 1h sword. On 12/10 it was working as intended, but now it’s bugged :.( But fear not, we’re looking into it! But instead of simply removing the leap until a reasonable solution is made, we’ve decided to leave it in tact so we can continue to scare all new players into using nothing but bearbow! Enjoy!

And then to cap it all off… the first patch of the new year where we knew going in that no much detail would be given and it would all be high level discussion.. CHANGE IS COMING MY FELLOW RANGERS! You’ve waited a year, and we’ve said it all before, but now we mean it! Greener pastures are a’comin’!

That about summarizes the entirety of the Ranger portion of our broadcast, thanks.

sorry but ranger has some of the best signets in the game. im assuming you just hate your pets.

the change wasnt really about support, it apparently was more about reducing maximum direct damage in pve, it will also end up effecting WvW, where it honestly probably isnt a good change.

Thedenofsin.7340:

For the past year, mesmers and elementalists have been kept out of the meta. This is due to nerfs to these classes as well as the buffs given to thieves. The recent changes brought down thieves a little, but they still retain their slot as alpha predator for roaming/spike damage.

Mesmers and elementalists can’t compete with that role. In the current meta, as highlighted by recent high-end pvp games, thieves basically just hunt down and kill their mesmer opponents with impunity. Elementalists simply cannot compete.

Are you planning on making changes to rectify this alpha predator situation? It’s been over a year since we’ve seen mesmers and/or elementalists in competitive play.

its not a one v one game. also, i havent heard that mesmers cant take theives, so not sure what you are talking about.

vigor’s value differs a lot depending on what class you are, and what other defenses you have. Anything across the board would be illogical.

Also dodge/reacting to enemies is fun. Having less reactive play is not.

frans.8092:

Palaryel.2463:

Increased monster armor to make up for the HP lost will directly lower the direct damage the monster receives (resulting in zerkers doing less damage than now). However, berserker geared people would still do the highest amount of direct damage possible. The change is that a condition + direct damage mixed group will kill things faster as opposed to a full zerker group.

That is basically what he said, lower health, increase armor to compensate so direct damage kills as fast, but condition gets a boost

Also, that change would open up certain new possibilities for monsters, as you could intruduce monster types that have really low HP but huge armor. Imagine a dungeon where 50% trash mobs have low hp high armor and the other 50% have it the same way like now (asuming no skipping is possible): a fullm zerker group would die to the high armored monsters since they wouldnt be able to kill it, a full condi group would die to the normal monsters since their raw HP would take to long to chew down via conditions, but a mixed group would do just fine since the conditioners could kill the high armor mobs in a few seconds, while the zerkers spike down the raw HP monster. Voila, build balance achieved

Anyways, yes thats one relatively simple change that wouldnt affect PVP at all, but would do a lot for PVE.

Interesting.

Changing PvE monsters without changing gear and mechanics would be best to change the build variety, but it requires an awful lot of playability testing and re-balancing of encounters.

yea, it would take more time, but its really the only solution, aside from making other stats effect more than just armor or max hp. I know the balance team likes to do things with numbers because its a lot easier, and cost effective, but sometimes the problem isnt about numbers.
Even if they make berserkers suck, it will just be replaced by whatever the next best gear is, then everyone will demand you wear that. The only way this doesnt happen is if stats reflect a real difference in the way you play.

Zenith.7301:

I’d just like for any other gear to be closer in performance to berzerker.

I can run berzerker gear everywhere to good effect, WvW included.

In fact, some classes like thief and mesmer and warrior lend themselves rather well to berzerker gear because they have defensives that allow them to stay offensive.

I just don’t get how a necromancer or thief autoattack dagger chain, limited to one target without cleave, can be doing less damage than a warrior and guardian’s cleaving weapons.

I don’t get who thought allowing D/P thieves and phantasm mesmers roam in WvW in zerker with 110%+ bonus crit damage was a good idea.

Berzerker just scales in a way that rampager does not.

berserker in WvW isnt really good. Its usable at times, but it has serious drawbacks, and limits your playstyle. This is fine, this is what berserker should be. However in PVE its a different story.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

phys.7689:

the problem is that the stats system isnt based around playstyles, but more, as you said by how much dmg you can avoid.

best CC gear? beserkers, support gear? berserkers or givers depending on if your support is boon heavy, and needs longer durations to be effective. even tanks are sometimes better off in berserker

also, AI is poor.

AI is a content problem.

And I don’t see the concept of playstyle and gear being separate as a problem at all. Traits determine your playstyle, gear determines you offense/defense spectrum. It could easily be argued the opposite, which many want, is worse. Let’s say you take “tanky” traits. Why would you want to be locked in to tanky gear? If you take supporty traits why would you want to be locked in to supporty gear?

If you value variety and open ended character creation you would actually prefer the current system. Linking gear to playstyle does nothing more than pidgeon hole builds and push us closer to a classic trinity.

If the only purpose in stats on gear is to say your ability to avoid dmg, then it should not exist. Just remove it totally and put somewhere you can set your difficulty level.

At least that wont require grinding, and cause their to be only one or 2 sets that have any value.

the point of stats is supposed to be deciding your playstyle, if they dont do that, then there is no purpose in having like 10-12 different armor sets.

You shouldnt get the same benefit from tanky skills, if you want to be a glass cannon., just like defensive built players dont get the same benefits from dmg skills.

Tank doesnt get the same benefit from a 10% more dmg trait, or damage on dodge roll, or next hit does critical dmg, so why do dps get the same benefits from aegis, vigor, blind, etc. why does dps get same value as a support build.

As long as this is the case, there will always only be a few viable sets at a time.

and gear isnt really accurately representing dmg/defense anyhow, because all dmg skills are effected, few defense skills are effected. a Bersker armor wearer has way more defensive potential than a tank armor wearer has dps potential.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Proven.2854:

But as it is the current meta for PvE is degenerative.

This is one of those statements that should require massive amounts of evidence before people accept it, but clearly you take it as somehow self-evident.

The current meta for PVE is working perfectly. Give a complete noob a set of zerker gear and send him into Arah p1 for the first time. See if he can even make it to the champ entities. Give him full tank gear, he might actually make it. The entire concept, as I have described elsewhere, is that in PvE you take as much defensive gear as you need to survive… and no more. This system is working exactly as intended.

The problem is that the content is old and on farm. There are good tactics for every dungeon and fractal and even bad players have done the content enough that they don’t need the tanky gear anymore. This isn’t because Zerker gear is magically turning them into good players. It’s because even bad players can learn content given a long enough amount of time.

If an xpac dropped tomorrow, with 5 new dungeons/elite zones with many bosses that had good and unique lupicus style mechanics, all the bad players who currently get away with zerker would go back to faceplanting regularly and nobody would argue that Zerker is too powerful.

It really does bother me that people are treating this as a gear problem when it’s so obviously a content problem. It really does bother me that the devs are treating it as a gear problem, most likely because it’s easier for them to deal with a gear problem and not a content problem.

If there is any problem now, its that there is a barrier of entry for new players who are expected to run zerker in pugs but haven’t had the year+ of time to learn the encounters. Those players do need time to learn and they should be using tanky gear if needed but they are put off because they are late to the game. If they were joining the game right at the release of a new xpac as I described it would be much less of a problem.

But again, that points to a content problem.

the problem is that the stats system isnt based around playstyles, but more, as you said by how much dmg you can avoid.

best CC gear? beserkers, support gear? berserkers or givers depending on if your support is boon heavy, and needs longer durations to be effective. even tanks are sometimes better off in berserker

also, AI is poor.

Blaeys.3102:

I wouldnt mind seeing them fully remove crit damage as a stat on gear and allow us to replace it with a defensive or support stat.

Currently, most dungeons and bosses are trivialized by the huge numbers going out. Wearing full zerker gear makes most fights WAY too easy – it requires almost no skill and isnt fun for many of us. Its hard to argue against that when there are videos of groups killing legendary dungeon bosses in just a few seconds (that shouldnt be mathematically possible, imo).

Balancing zerker (or even removing the concept of zerker gear from the game) with other sets will allow them to better balance fights around more than just health pools.

I also agree with many that I would like to see this be more than just a change to zerker – but also a change to the way fights work to encourage more build diversity. However, I think the first (and simplest) step needs to be bringing zerker in line with other gear sets in PVE.

what is skill? taking longer to do the same thing? stats have little to do with the content difficulty, its more about the encounters themselves.

Basically, if a team can take down a boss in 1 minute, halving the dmg, that team would still take down the boss in 2 minutes. The truth is what makes these speed clear groups clear fast isnt 1 stat, its knowing stacking, proper use of buffs/active defesnses, and dealing with poor enemy AI. Essentially knowing how to maximize their own dmg, and knowing how and what the enemy will do. The enemy falls for it everytime.

yes, this is imo, the only way to actually make stat combos useful. And actually makes playstyles more diverse and varied.

The also need to change AI behavior as well, but that needs to happen no matter what.

With the current set up, the stat distribution on gear is almost completely about just deciding how skilled you are. The more skilled/organized you are, the less vit, toughness and healing power you need.

gw1 actually had it right, by having the stats you can change effect different skills. I know they want to keep it simple, but if its simple, gear will be only about maximising dps.

Overkillengine.6084:

The base difficulty even for zerker players has to be upped because the current pve content gets faceroll easy after you learn it; which means anything other than pure damage is a waste.

Which means there may as well not BE non-zerk gear in PvE. Which is silly, and not a defensible position.

What should be happening is running higher damage setups grants an increase in completion speed in exchange for an increase in the plausible risk of failure/delays.

But that’s not what is happening even in halfway coordinated groups. The base difficulty is so low for everyone post learning a dungeon that even a couple points in survival stats are usually wasted because less damage almost always means slower completion.

This is not healthy for the long term future of a game. The ’zerker stat array itself does not inherently need to be changed, but rather the nature of the challenges a player faces in PvE. There is a reason glass cannons do not completely dominate in the other two main game modes (yet still have very good uses; and can function in non-favored environments given the right skill/mentality).

difficulty is an issue, but its not really the berserker issue. Once you get good, no matter how difficult, beserker will once again be best gear. All you would be doing is making the scale of what skill level you can be beserker without failing higher, not actually making other gear sets useful.

If they want stats to matter they have to effect how well you can perform other roles/playstyles be more effected by stats.

Silferas.3841:

I think we can all agree that increasing the difficulty of PVE content (generally, not selectively) is the answer.

Id say its more about increasing the monster response to players, which somewhat increases difficulty, but really, its more about lowering cheese.

Monsters should become more defensive when party is highly offensively buffed
Monsters should move more when dmg is being focused on 1 place
more offensive when players become extremely defensive, or get high HOT.
more control when players are moving

but while this makes combat more entertaining, it wont really solve the gear issue, because until other stats effect your ability to perform NEEDED/advantgeous roles, there is little reason not to use berserker even if your role is support control, and for many jobs even defensive.

I feel like a lot of people here are getting lost in some idea seperation here.
Berserker is not a way of life, it is a stat set up. The problem here is that one stat setup far outperforms most other stat set ups. This basically boils down to other stats not being valuable.
lets keep the discussion to PVE here, because pvp is a totally different beast.

One of the big issues is defensive/control/support skills are not effected that much by stats. This means a berserker is usually as good a support charachter as 95% of other armor sets. He is as good at active defense as 95% of other armor sets. He is as good at control as 85% of other armor sets.

as long as this is the case, berserker versus other sets will generally be a measure of how much dmg you can avoid, rather than what playstyle or role you prefer.

imo, the solution is not to make more guaranteed dmg, but make active defenses be effected by other stats. Berserker gives a bonus to active damage, but Toughness is doing nothing for and defensive skills.

They could make the game more passive, but its unlikely that will make it more entertaining.

Perhaps they could have been better off with no gear stats, but its too late now.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

We have bosses that move around a lot with annoying gimmicks. No one does them because more coordination = bad.

We need to think smarter, not harder. The content needs to be made so it’s most easily done by a team with a good build, not with whatever team has a voicechat server. Stuff like TA Aetherblade, Mai Trin, etc. are dumb because they rely on everyone in your group knowing what to do. How many pugs know what to do in a dungeon? I consider it a success if no one falls off the bridge in COF1.

i disagree, battles shouldnt be only a simulation. It should be about how well you can execute. I agree that the stats are not giving enough differences in playstyle, but i dont think autowin with the right build is a good idea for this game

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Since we have this handy forum I might as well dump some of the things that I’m sure a lot of us were already thinking, which is that holy kitten, this game promotes the hell out of just stacking DPS and blowing through everything. This is fine in some areas but it also creates problems in others because:

The less you contribute, the easier it is:
- Make the aggro system more transparent: the more health/armor/healing you have, the more aggro you take. The more damage you deal, the less aggro you incur.
- Give mobs in general more low-damage, unavoidable attacks (swipes for 1k per, etc.) that prioritize

Explanation: Right now, zerker/assassin gear are pretty much the only viable gear sets because the game heavily favors just hitting everything as hard as you can and dodging any one-shots. Reducing the frequency of these attacks and replacing them with faster, smaller hits that can be tanked, but not easily avoided, means that defensive stats actually make a difference. The more straightforward aggro mechanics means that these attacks will primarily be directed at the tankier players. This will have the effect of forcing low-DPS players to pull their weight more and also incentivize players to balance their stats a bit more.

Put DR on damage received:
- Implement DR on the amount of damage a mob can take at any given time, so that DPS scales down the more of it you have.
- Significantly reduce mob health across the board.

Explanation: Taking ten minutes to kill a boss is lame but so is one-shotting it. There is a ridiculous damage disparity between organized groups and pugs. The former SHOULD be incentivized to have good DPS but not to the extent they do currently. Reducing boss health pools makes ordinary pugging less tedious and organized speedrunning less faceroll, resulting in a more balanced gameplay experience.

More emphasis on boons, CC, and conditions:
- Rework condition-stacking issues and overall condition power. Not going to go into this as I’m sure Anet has plenty of ideas stewing about this.
- Rework Defiant to be a property on certain moves (i.e. cannot be interrupted) rather than a constant buff. Normal attacks without Defiant property can be CC’d normally. This includes blind.
- Rework the effectiveness of certain boons. For example, regen and weakness could stack in intensity.
- Give mobs more reliance on boons and conditions that aren’t straight-up boonspam. Adjust mob health and damage output to compensate, i.e. give a boss the ability to put protection on itself but also reduce its total health by 33%.

Explanation: Most fairly self-explanatory. Encouraging build diversity by making it so that straight DPS isn’t always the best option for every single fight. The regen/weakness change would also be a good way to allow players to deal with higher levels of unavoidable damage by giving more ways to mitigate it short of going full tank.

agro doesnt need to be transparent, being able to completely control agro will always lead to tank and spank senarios. I do think they need to totally rework defiant, it makes control worthless, and also makes lowers boss depth since they cant expect players to use control skills to get out of situations.

I am in favor of the play well style they have now, but they could make other stats have certain skills they improve. For example, say condition duration/dmg was effected by vitality. Toughness effected endure pain duration and dmg negated etc. problem is defensively a DPS player is very similar to a defensive player in terms of what they can actually do.
Id keep away from the type of pure stat driven defense play your talking about. the lack of a trinity is honestly something most of the players who still play like

EFWinters.5421:

phys.7689:

The OPs whole point is the reward systems dont really encourage actually trying to win. you essentially agree, but think thats a good idea. in a competive game winning or losing generally matters. Even in pick up basketball in a park, the winner gets to stay on the court, and the loser has to sit down.

Is pick-up basketball typically played with one team being twice the size of the other?

(Sorry I am not familiar with the sport)

nope, however a skilled pick up team can more than crush an unskilled team. Blowouts just as bad as top teir server versus low teir server. Im not saying that WvW doesnt need tweaks to deal with imbalances, but people are only working counter to improving the game mode by making winning less desired

azizul.8469:

reduce map cap and you can have balanced match up variance…… but of course ANET want large scale battle which favours stacked servers…

so, there you have it, unbalanced variance….

anet wants people to actually be able to participate, lowering caps = greater ques and less people able to play the mode

EFWinters.5421:

Mabuse.2879:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

the problem with that is that regardless of how motivated someone is, the vast majority of players have no impact on whether their server wins or not.

And yet high population in WvW has a significant effect on the outcome (a point you make yourself).

The situation is not helped by encouraging people to take actions that have little effect on winning, and not offering much motivation to try.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

otherwise, player A could spend an hour following a zerg from keep to keep and get end of week rewards because their server won, but player B who spent 20 hours defending towers, running supplies, etc.. they get nothing because their server just doesn’t have the coverage. neither of those situations would encourage a player to try harder for a win.

I’m sorry that I have not explained myself clearly enough.

Player B gets exactly what they get today, not “nothing”.

Player A gets what they get today plus bonus if their server wins.

The bonus will encourage both players to take actions that will increase the chances of their server winning.

Note that I believe this change should be made together with my other suggestion, that “flip” event rewards are only given out if the node is held at the tick. In order to get anything from WvW, people would have to contribute to their world’s score. This will discourage the mindless “follow the zerg” because it will be considerably less effective.

I agree that coverage is a serious (other) problem.

I’m always rather disappointed by the attitude that people should get prizes for losing. It’s a game. You have to be able to win or lose it. Otherwise it’s as much a game a knitting.

Then how is your system better than the one currently in place? Right now people are rewarded for what they actually contribute to. Killing players, taking supply camps, guarding keeps etc. Why would you give another reward based on factors which individual players have little to no effect on?

because the mode design is based around a server vs server vs server. Every player who plays WvW contributes to whatever placement they get. Many of the servers who win have more participation, that means all those individuals are actually adding up to wins.
the servers that win, want it more as a whole.
the mode that best works with the reward types you are talking about wouldnt suck, but they would need to change the paradigm from that of a war, to something more with objectives more based around individuals and their specific contributions. It wouldnt be WvW essentially.

The OPs whole point is the reward systems dont really encourage actually trying to win. you essentially agree, but think thats a good idea. in a competive game winning or losing generally matters. Even in pick up basketball in a park, the winner gets to stay on the court, and the loser has to sit down.

the truth is, the players have to decide, whether they would rather have close matches or varied matches. The 3 up 3 down rule still means blowouts will happen often.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

the problem with that is that regardless of how motivated someone is, the vast majority of players have no impact on whether their server wins or not.

If you want to reward players based on their performance, you have to evaluate their performance, not the global performance of their server.

otherwise, player A could spend an hour following a zerg from keep to keep and get end of week rewards because their server won, but player B who spent 20 hours defending towers, running supplies, etc.. they get nothing because their server just doesn’t have the coverage. neither of those situations would encourage a player to try harder for a win.

You are too focused on the individual
yes player B spent 20 hours and got less, but player B’s server didnt win the game. Just like having 1 all star wont win you championships. One of the problems with WvW is in fact that there is virtually no incentive to win. Also i dont think it should just be winner, they need to incentize coming second as well. It needs to be valuable to compete even for second place. Because while you cant always win, you can usually compete for second.

That said they probably need to solve server hopping. I think maybe… you should have to sign a contract with your server. The truth I really dont see why people need as much access to WvW server changes as we currently have.
lets say signing a contract increases, or adds new rewards, as well only long term contracted players can get special items for server placement. You can get out of your contract at greater cost, but you cant gain whatever contract/server placement bonuses until the contract you signed expires.

Evelynddra.9265:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Playing devil’s advocate again.

It’s not about doing them, it’s about the amount of doing them. It’s doing them past the point where it’s fun for them and more “gotta do it again or else…”

And it’s a case of a lot of people having different thresholds for how they feel about repeating things. For instance, I enjoy repeating certain events over again because they’re fun for me to do. And some other events I simply DO NOT enjoy and feel more like chores.

(Solo doing the water pump event chain, because nobody else does, for instance. JUST to shut up the NPCs complaining about the water.)

Devil’s advocate? Oh no. My opinion is very firmly in the “Ascended is not only not required, but it’s not that hard to get”.

Regular mats can be obtained many ways. The first way being regular old mob killing. But you also can get them from exploring maps, laurel crafting bags, dungeons, WvW, gathering, or simply using gold. Heck, just being able to buy the regular mats opens more doors. Instead of aiming for getting the mats off mobs, you can focus on getting gold instead.

How about the ascended mats then? Dragonite ore. World bosses, Karka and the temples. You can also get them in WvW, though I understand not as easily. There’s also guild missions. And lastly scarlet minions, even if failed. Bloodstone dust. Champion loot bags. So world bosses, champ trains, dungeons. Empyreal fragments. Any open world chests, including JP and min-dungeons. guild missions, fractals, WvW, and exp dungeons.

So I’m confused as to how exactly they are a grind when there are so many ways to get them. Unless you hate exploring, dungeons, WvW, JPs, world events/bosses, champions.

Are you going to get everything you need in one day? No, and you’re not supposed to. Is a month a long time to finish a full set of BiS gear, while still being able to do all content (besides what, 50+ fractals?), a long time?

That being said, I don’t think implementing other methods of getting them is a bad idea. I just don’t think the current way is a long, arduous task. Ascended didn’t suddenly turn GW into a Korean, treadmill grinder. I have played those, and having only certain groups of mobs to kill in order to level is a grind. Having multiple ways to get various mats isn’t.

Also, sorry. I type a lot sometimes.

yes gold is a way to obtain it, but what new interesting means of gold earning has the game added? How many ways of obtaing gold effeciently arent a grind?

The main point of the OP is that ascended is simply adding grind without adding content, its actually pretty accurate. In fact it tends to lower content by encouraging you to play in either the best material gathering way, or the best gold gathering way,

Essentially they are adding the carrot, without using it to lead you to the new interesting content. new shinies for doing the same things you have done 1000s of times is the problem.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

while its good that ascended is driving the economy, its not so great that bis is so heavily weighted toward the merchant/crafting playstyle. Going back to previous post in the other thread, i still believe it was a mistake to virtually require max crafting to be a player with bis armor.
short outline of my solution

Final recipe should be doable without max crafting by making it through content (special crafting npcs or stations in hard areas/jumping puzzles etc) for slightly more resources

account bound versions of materials that can drop/be obtained from new interesting content (the high end mats , this makes it not direct competition and works with the TP)
crafting retains its value and the main focus for ascended, but people who dont want to, can buy/hunt for mats and put it together by reaching some goal, like DE chains, jumping puzzles, beating dungeons.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Ethics.4519:

Yes, I agree people in this thread are blowing things way, way out of proportion. I think the amount of blowing is equal on both sides.

Pray tell how the people trying to explain how everything wasn’t guaranteed are blowing anything out of proportion?

because while it certainly isnt the end of the world, it is in fact failing to meet projections/expectations, and does need to be dealt with/planned for. It isnt simply a non issue. The fact that it isnt done, effects resources, new developments, time tables, etc.
Of course they didnt promise it, and development is liquid, but that doesnt just mean no one should comment/question/wonder about the things that fall behind.

lordkrall.7241:

So because of the fact that they revamped Fractals and added Ascended Armor (which had been known for a YEAR before it actually came btw) you can no longer enjoy the content you enjoyed before?

Are you sure you really enjoyed the content before then? Because none of that content have been changed in the slightest with any of those releases (unless you only wanted to do fractals, but they haven’t really seen much change either (other than adding some extra challenge)).

problem is they added new goals, without adding anything new to do in order to achieve these goals, so these goals end up looking mostly the same (though i will say fractals is a seperate issue). And just because you enjoyed something for a year, doesnt mean you will enjoy it as much after a year, especially if nothing has advanced/changed/become more challenging after a year.

I dont think people would hate ascended as much if it had new content modes/adventures/goals tied to obtaining it.

As far as losing interest due to ascended armor, i dont think it would make one lose interest if they are currently enjoying the game, but it does nothing to make the game much more fun/different/interesting/challenging. It just adds a goal.

ok, negativity or positivity aside. No the did not hit all of their public targets for 2013. These were not promises, but they were plans. It means they are still behind on these ideas. These things happen in development, however what each user decides is whether the overall product is valuable to them including not only the plans they didnt execute but the plans they did.

Personally i ll say GW2 is still a pretty good game, and a pretty good game service. However, i think it needs more new content. New stories, new adventures, new skills, mechanics, bosses, professions. While the living story hasnt really hit its stride yet. Up to now, i see very little that comes close to what one might get in an expansion. Even though we have had some fairly beefy upgrades, guild stuff, fractals, wvw progression, None of these have come anywhere close to the revitilization one feels when stepping into cantha, elona, or the eye of the north expansions.

Feels like anet is creating a bunch of features, but not the world/story/implementations that go with it and truely make it interesting. They need to integrate it better so that these things occur while exploring/fighting/uncovering story, progressing your character.

lordkrall.7241:

There is a rather major difference between “friendly” trash-talk and outright abuse however.
In many cases the threads on the forums have gotten way more into outright abuse rather than “friendly” trash-talk.

its not necessarilly supposed to be friendly. Its just the way it goes, i dunno if you ve ever competed really. You dont love all of your opponents, you dont feel uplifted every match. Have you ever heard what players are really saying to each other in the middle of the field/court? And even with all that when the seasons over, and they see each other in the street/at some meeting they nod heads, laugh or just shoot the breeze. Thats competition. Its not always harsh, but its not always nice. If people really got amped over seasons on the forums, thats good, it shows they cared, they were involved, it mattered to them.

Anet could remove it from their forums, but the problem i have with that is its probably actually better for the game mode itself to have that context and interaction for the people who want it. Some people want to know why there is a rivalry between TC and FA. Or SBI and Yaks bend. They want to know why their opponent ran at the last second in Ascension Bay. They want to call out the other server and say im gonna sit right here, come and get me, i will destroy you all.

You know why wrestling is a multi million dollar industry? its the story/context/smack talk. It makes a pretend fight interesting. WvW needs more of this in some fashion. Maybe it can be better created somewhere else, but its something the mode actually does benefit from. If i was the community team, and i couldnt moderate it, instead of trying to be the dissapointed parent, they should be the realist who says we cant do this here, but its part of the community, and try to promote and set up the place where it can be done, the game is rated T not G.

Hickeroar.9734:

style.6173:

…there is smack talk and sure there are a few trolls.

The problem is that it wasn’t a bit of smack talk and a few trolls. It was almost ENTIRELY smack talk and trolling. Constructive and friendly posts were/are few and far between. I’d bet the vast majority of bannings across these forums came directly out of those threads.

you are missing the point, the WvW matchup threads give you context to the story of the match, they give interaction and context to the match. WvW is a week long match up with hundreds of stories, drama etc. When you play you only get a tiny peice of that. Yea a lot of the story is trash talk and putting each other down, but its still information.

I never was in the yaks vs sbi vs ebay matchup, but i saw the story, First everybody thought everything was cool, a good old match up, then some reports of teaming up occured, it was hear we learned that ebay had decided weeks ahead of time to target SBI whether or not yaks agreed. Their goal to take down a hated giant that ran all over them and told them to l2p. You can even match the posts to times in the point differential.

You can learn why ebay was able to hold everything in their borderlands in the morning. You get insight into the mind of SBI. Yeah a lot of the pieces are you suck, 2 v1. Denials, demands for fights. But WvW needs a narrative, it needs a context. If more players in pve even knew what was going on in WvW they would enter the fight. Like what happened when Yaks went to LA telling people of information gathered in part through forums.

Now, i said before its not the end of the world. But even if something is unpleasant to see, or hear for some, doesnt mean it serves no purpose.

I think maybe the CC team doesnt really get the nature of competition. The match up threads provide the trash talking, calling out, drama, tears, cheers that competition brings. You hate your opponent then you love em.

I can see why they may want to offload the man hours of moderation, but ehhh it really is a big part of the entertainment factor in the match ups. Its not the end of the world, but i dunno kind of feels like they are out of touch with competitor’s mindstates. Interaction with the enemy is part of the process. Overall, i will agree that the team seems a bit over zealous and disconnected from the game/discussions/community. Some things they moderate do seem like a waste of time/not really interupting/effecting discussion.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

Yes please, or even better:
All pieces could be crafted and sold on the TP.
All pieces could change stats.
All pieces could be obtained outside crafting without relying on RNG.

Personally and note this is not the opinion of Arena but I like the idea of uniquely skinned BiS items dropping in challenging content. My opinion as a player is that the current drop rates could be tweaked.

Chris

That will not remove the RNG factor…. Look at it this way:
Say you increased the drop rate on Tequatl. That means a higher change to get a weapon. But it is still RNG.
Some people will get several drops, others will get nothing, most will get items with the wrong stat combination. Please, please, please: No more RNG!

What if you could sell them? Thus complimentary to other forms of acquisition?

Chris

selling ascended on TP kind of defeats their purpose. The TP and random aquisition is partially what killed exotics as progression, it also limited the amount of rewards you could give out.

Ascended itemization is actually fairly good, it just has a couple problems

Problems

A. crafting should be a choice, not the only way to gear up
1. crafting is niche playstyle, not something everyone enjoys
2. If everyones a master crafter, those that enjoy it dont have as much of a market
B. The amount of raw materials is too huge for the average player to want to deal with.
C. Is fairly prohibitive in terms of build diversity and charachter growth

Good points
Heres whats good with the itemisation
A. gives more valuable rewards to put into the world
B. gives more value to low level crafting items
C. requires actual personal effort (vision crystals) (*this makes it not a tp only task)
D. is a decent mid range term goal

A)one of the best things you can do for ascended aquisition is make the final recipe able to be performed by non crafters. this would eliminate the first problem. it would still allow people to sell the parts, which gives crafting a viable market.
1)the method of crafting could be in places that reward GW2 gameplay. Think ascended crafting stations, or npcs, in hard dungeons, at the end of difficult multi teird jumping puzzles, or guild content.
2)the non crafting recipe could use upgraded versions of the ingredients, which could use a secondary resource like karma/gold/obsidian shards/skillpoints (this makes it slightly less efficient than crafting, which requires leveling to 500, learning recipes etc)
3) as example, instead of needing vision crystal, inscription, handle, blade. it would use. soul inscription, vision crystal, 3 soul deldrimor steel, 3 soul spiritwood planks. The soul items can be made with say 1 deldrimor steel and 10 skillpoints or 1 deldrimor steel and 5 gold etc at the special ascended crafting station.

Also instead of increasing the drop rate of case ascended items, you can put account bound (upgraded)material drops(like the soul deldrimor steel) into harder content. This reduces the dependency on massive amounts of gathered materials, or at least cuts them down, it also means people can get some via drops, and go to market for the missing pieces. You can drop soul major inscriptions, which become specific when you click it. This reduces the amount of unwanted stat drops, but still allows some variety in drops but allows people to be more likely to get a usefull stat combo.
for example. you find soul power inscription, which you can select to become berserker, soldiers or valkyrie.
let the soul inscriptions be salavageable for decent amounts of mats (this way its always of value)

The advantages of this solution:

1)More ways to obtain ascended in various game modes
2)Still makes crafters relevant (they can provide the most stable predictable means of 3)getting ascended recipe parts)
4)Still makes gathering valuable
5)Still makes dragonite/empyreal/bloodstone serve a purpose
6)Adds new valuable drops(rewards for challenging content) that dont have to be insanely rare, since they are only a part of a whole, but wont glut the tp too much because they are soul bound
7)creates better incentives for certain content. For example lets say the obsidian ascended crafting station spawns after defeating incendio temple dungeon champion. This gives a reason to do the whole quest chain, and adds flavor to the world, makes ascended feel more like an adventure. Even if you bought deldrimor ingots, spiritwood planks an inscription and the shards, now its something to do in the world to get it.

robocafaz.9017:

This thread was moving so slow in the beginning of the week. Suddenly Maguuma takes first place and the post velocity almost triples!

well mag cant take all the credit, YB and SBI got a lot of hate. Its pretty fun reading the drama.

buy the finished silk off the trading post if you dont want to wait

they had a discussion on this i think, and one thing to consider, is they cant really regulate WvW population, they cant make people log into WvW, even if server populations are balanced, no guarantee those people will be WvWers, also some times Old WvWer quit, and new people start. I dont think that can solve things.

I suggest weight classes for average WvW population per week, if you start to get beefy, you fight beefier opponents.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Now THIS is a forum thread!

Obviously YB is more interested in beating SBI than playing the pveeees judging by the current ppt

yes filled with drama and tears, anger hatred the dark side. you guys dont dissapoint!

kinda miss it mattering whether we win or lose. this is what ehibition is eh?

warriorjrd.8695:

People say it was 7 weeks of hard work. If it took you seven weeks I think you should uninstall the game. The achievements were achievable within a week. Besides last I checked you go to PVE for the big rewards and wvw for wvw and killing players. Or am I playing the game wrong?

right now its the only way to play the game. However i think WvW should have some exclusive goals/items.
the seasons was the NBA, and yall barely got paid, top teams got nba rings that disappear after a week.