Guild Wars 2

Ursan.7846:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Ursan.7846:

Tallis.5607:

John Smith.4610:

Gambling would be fun for some people, but it has a lot of negatives to it, I think we’ll probably stay away from it.

The Mystic Forge is pure gambing, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_forge

Technically it is.

No it is not. “Purely gambling” would mean the mystic forge has no set recipes, and is completely random. Which is not the case. It has many many set recipes that have no element of randomness to it.

then betting on yourself in duel, or betting on your guild wouldnt be pure gambling either, which is where the whole question line originated from.

now i could see problems with betting like as in on football games, (people throwing matches) but betting on yourself, or you guild, and only being able to win the opposing peoples money/items/etc seems pretty entertaining to me.

condiments.8043:

I was the thief in that video, and we were able to stop their advance on the bridge with utilizing the chill fields and CC provided by ele staff with frozen ground and static field, while laying down heavy AOE on their advance. Plus, a lot of them initially got wrecked on the ascent up the hill with the supply drop and static field dropping on their force followed by intense AOE. Seriously the combination of constant pressure with trick shot+cluster bomb along with double meteor shower, the sustain of the water attunement and water fields of the staff ele, with the engineer pulling individual players with magnet for us to pick off was a deadly combination for that situation. Its surprising how effective smaller numbers are against large forces of uncoordinated players. Was fun stuff.

My thoughts on the subject at hand? I think AOE is generally too powerful in this game along with with some single target burst(backstab combo). While this issue I think is more pertinent to sPvP than WvW, lessening overall AOE damage will probably give new players a better chance to survive in AOE dead zones that often appear in larger engagements. In sPvP, AOE damage currently makes normally ressing teammates incredibly difficult/often suicidal, and forces point fighting to be restricted to the classes capable of sustaining the constant pressure(bunkers).

new players shouldnt get a better chance to survive coordinated attacks, they need to learn to play better. The only thing nerfing the damage of AOE would do is make it so instead of taking 4 people to kill 30, you would take 5 or 6. The fact remains that bad tactics will lead to defeat. That is PvP.

nerfing AOE would have too large an effect on many classes in normal regular play, and the game was designed with AOE in mind. I still think one of the reasons dunegeons seem long and dragged out is because from alpha till now, they have been consistently nerfing classes ability to damage.

Step one, changing projectiles to 20% chance to proc combo fields
step two removing a large amount of blast finishers
step three various smaller nerfs to specific skills damage (phantasms used to do more as well blurred frenzy, reduced damage on warrior drastically with nerfing crit damage line)
Now, im not saying they should never make nerfs, or that some of these nerfs didnt serve a purpose, but they still havent gone in and tuned the rest of the game to account for all these nerfs, now they want to nerf AOE damage.. what are the ramifications of that going to be on all the encounters they designed, expecting people to be able to handle waves upon waves of enemies?

Say they reduce enemy spawns, what effect will that have upon the amount of drops in the world and the cash earned.

because its better to use AOE on people so they are hard to ressurect?
UHHHH isnt that kind of the point? Didnt they nerf the ressurect skills/traits at some point so its easier to kill or deal with ressurectors? ISnt a ressurector supposed to have to choose, how much ressurection, and if they should ressurect?

What about you know, the advantage of having toughness, and endure pain/distortion/bubbles for when you are ressurecting?

Windwalker.2047:

I love the way they explained why they are changing it:
‘If your skil does 10 damage to a single target, if you have another skill that have the same opportunity cost but deals 8 damage to 5 targets, the AoE skill is better – we don’t want you to use AoE skills on single target mobs. ’
Pro tip-thats EXACTLY how aoe’s are supposed to work!
If you are fighting 1 mob what skill would you use?-well the single target one ofc since
10dmg > 8dmg,right?now say you are fighting 2 mobs which skill would you use now?
well the aoe skill since 10dmg < 2×8dmg.
However you will till be doing less damage to an individual mob than you do when you use your single target skill.
Its almost like they haven’t been developing mmo’s for the past 8 years

also, they are ignoring that you only get 5 skills per weapon, and since different weapons have different cool downs, you were probably using both the 8 and the 10, reducing the damage of the 8, just gives you less damage versus single targets, and less damage versus groups.

increase the effectiveness and use of non aoe skills, and most importantly increase mob AI.

As far as WvWvW, why did you make choke points if you didnt want people to be able to, you know, have a choke point.

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

A year to get obsidian armor?

Anyway, lets imagine for a moment that a similar scenario to this played out in GW1. You farmed all your shards and ecto, and bought all the other mats. but, before you could forge your armor you had to obtain a mini mallyx from a coffer of whispers (for example). See where this is heading? Yes: Kamadan spam listings for this item at mini vizu prices. So, unless you are already extremely wealthy the only thing to do is to continue to farm DoA for gems (for coffers), in the hope that you get lucky.
Welcome to the world of RNG precursors. :-)

this is essentially the situation. You could buy mats for ectos, or you could hunt them, or do a combination of both.
But legenadaries are not incremental, and there is no progress towards them. The only method of obtaining them that will work consistently for everyone is buying them on TP.

some people get precursors from random mob, or in mystic forge, some people never will, thats the nature of the lottery. Sure some one will win, but with odds like 1/1000 attempts, with replacement, the amount of times some one gets it on their first try, is just as likely as someone getting it on their 1000000 try, and we ve all heard about the people who got it on their first or second try have we not? for everyone of them, there is another guy who could never get it.
Rng with replacement is ok when you have large chances, but would you really enjoy paying one dollar per marble when you have to pick 1 marble out of a bag of 1 thousand, and you always put back the marble?

It not a good design for what is so far, the only endgame goal. people like to see progress towards a goal, or their chances of success going up as they become better at the game, precursors represents neither.

honestly, there arent enough skills to nerf aoe damage.

many skills in guild wars are doing double duty, or even triple duty, you may have an aoe, that is also a condition, that is also your best damage outside of the 1 button. If you nerf that skills damage, you end up losing your single target dps as well.

Also, in general i wouldnt want really weak aoe attacks.

As far as pve, AOE is great more because of simple monster behavior than anything.

make monsters smarter, pack melee mobs with ranged mobs, make more enemies that move.

Now if your going to add skills you can swap out for certain weapons, sure nerf aoe, then its a choice, but as of now
you basically got 5 skills, if 1 is basic decent damage, 2 is aoe decent damage 3 is defensive 4 is condition stacks and 5 is damage/movement, you basically simplified DD to only use 1, only use 2 if there is 4 mobs.

which makes play more likely to be 1 1 1 1 1 1 1, now if i could choose to swap out a weak aoe 2 for a useful single target damgage 2, i wouldnt have a problem with that, but with current system, i would go around nerfing too much, there is only 5 skills on a bar.

the whole legendary/precursor thing is dampening the game for me. They need some other goals that dont require mostly TP based gameplay. I play an adventure rpg to simulate you know, adventure, not the stock market. Or gold hunter X. And if we are going to make the game about gambling, at least jazz it up, give me a casino and dueling self bets, roulette wheels blackjack, poker, least you feel like you have some control in these games of chance.

mystic forge is basically slots, the least fun game in the casino.

Erasculio.2914:

Bad idea.

In a classic MMO, “levelling” is the process of grinding levels, which ends at the level cap and is then replaced by the gear grind. Those are two very different things – the level grind is solo-based so all classes have to do a bit of everything, while the gear grind is group based and focused on overespecialization focusing on the holy trinity roles.

In GW2, that kind of levelling doesn’t exist. The kind of content you will be doing at the end of the game is pretty much the same kind of content you will be doing in the middle of the game. Just like you can do dynamic events, hearts, explore, craft, do dungeons, and do WvW at level 40 – you will be doing exactly those same things at level 80.

Which means – if you are not enjoying playing the game at level 40, it won’t be reaching level 80 that will make you enjoy the game. If you think the road to the level cap is “tedious”, you will find the level cap tedious as well.

thing is, playing a GW2 charachter at 80, in challenging situations, versus playing at level 1-40 isnt really the same. i can understand why it isnt (progression), as well the endgame adjusted content is more challenging and entertaining partially because you have more options and better synergy, engineer takes awhile to get synergy, and mesmer also needs a number of traits to really be fun.

So essentially, nah playing at level 1 or 40 isnt really the same as playing 70-80, and even if it was, problem is the best way to get exp, also gets tedious after you do it the first time.

So the topic is to get an idea and discuss how people feel about leveling alts in this game, its strong points and its weak points, and how to improve those weak points.

Now, for me, i have done it a few times already i have 3 level 80s

The first time it was kind of cool, i followed the story, and did zone completion of the maps i was in, got two crafts to 100. I did feel like map completion was begining to feel forced, and hearts were not making the game that much better, but overall it was cool

Second time, i was trying to do it fast, i tried to do mostly dynamic events, but many times they disapear, and its back to hearts, which really sucked, because i didnt really want to do hearts at all in a conscious way, i like the ones i could do while doing dynamic events, but the ones when no events were going on, that required doing things outside of events sucked out my soul.
I ended up crafting just to get by levels fast, and because i wanted to get all crafts to 400, i was a bit short and didnt feel like leveling, so at some point i took up a third craft that i had no use for just to get exp. This was kind of lame.

Third char i got to 80 just out of share will to have a level 80 warrior and see how that plays and what its options were, but the process wasnt really that fun, the most fun was doing the story that was different, once it got up to the pact, i just stopped completely because the rest of the story is the same.

Oh yeah the whole pact/trahearne part of the story wasnt really very entertaining, in fact i would vote for trahearne to be assassinated at the beginning of the next expansion, or even sooner.

Ok so back to the point;

leveling in the same ways is kind of tedious after the first time (even started to show itself before that).

another factor i forgot to mention is;
PVE is way too easy, especially if say you had 3 people with you. You can literally use 1 through almost all the content. Now i understand some people prefer this, but it is still some of the best exp you can get, from the least skillfull play.

I know that at some point you get dungeons (not till 25) but im pretty sure that for a team of charachters the appropriate level, the experience you get compared to the time it takes to succeed is pretty low.

So point im saying? increase experience rewards from skillful(and preferably varied) play, at all levels. Thereby making leveling alts faster, and more entertaining. Thats my take anyhow, some of you other guys may have other opinions.

Writetyper.1985:

Kraggy.4169:

Writetyper.1985:

Why do people want the level cap to increase, btw? It’s just the same game with bigger numbers

Because for most people character progression stops at the level cap; forget phat lewt and gear, I’m talking about character abilities and skill, the continued evolution of playstyle for the class you’re playing, gear generally just makes you more ‘powerful’ without changing the way you play.

And I suggest most games players want more than arriving at the destination (ie. the level cap) then sit there forever running the same content.

True, some games manage this without actually increasing the level number (eg. FFXI with their ‘merit’ system, Rift with PAs. etc) but generally mobs also have to increase in strength to keep balance with increased character power; for that, and other reasons, it seems to me that non-level based character progression tends to be unsatisfactory.

I don’t understand MMO players. You just want something to aim for, and when you get there, you get nothing but slightly larger numbers than everyone else? But not really because then everyone else has the same numbers?

Why not make things to do instead of increasing the level cap so instead of a wild goose chase for meaningless rewards, you can actually have fun. Isn’t that what games are for, fun, right? Something with replay value in it apart from just exploiting past stuff to grind for meaningless kitten to look pretty in something where there’s nothing to do. I mean Wub and Fractals and getting Dungeon Master can only go so far.

Thing is, people want to get better and advance, its generally a really exciting feeling when you break through.
That said, for me gear isnt that exciting or the number crunch.
what is exciting is getting new abilities, skills, and refining your favorite skill setups. hence why people feel a desire for more skill points, although their solution would actually make each build less unique overall.

What they could do is have you unlock traits/skills through content. but leaving current limits, like 70 points, and your current amount of slots, so you still have to choose.

Another possibility is to have a lot of new and challenging content to do (if its not challenging it wont give the feeling of breaking through and achieving something great) But that would probably not be maintainable, and generally would need better rewards, which starts to make it the only way to do things.

John Smith.4610:

Gambling would be fun for some people, but it has a lot of negatives to it, I think we’ll probably stay away from it.

uhhh isnt speculating on the TP essentially the same thing as gambling. Mystic forge is gambling? Whats are the negatives here? Im seriously curious what negative effects gambling on pvp could have on the market?

actually i thought he meant personal betting, but yeah off track betting could cause people to throw matches for gold or somesuch.

I was more thinking like in duels or spvp, the team could add their own stakes

lisamee.2408:

Nike.2631:

Are you basing that disparity on the asking prices of all the ingredients or the offer prices?

Since you can generally buy anything for ~10% less than the asking price if you have 1 iota of patience, and you can sell Omnomberry bars for the asking price nearly instantly (which may not be true of all the ingredients), you might be reading the number wrong.

No, i am asking why there are always 1000+ Omnomberry Bars UNDER priced? Because i can’t believe real players would sell at such a loss every day for months. And could there be a auto-generated system in the TP (a non-player) that sells items so cheap, that real player crafted goods will never make a big profit over ingredient prices?

And even if a player did buy the ingredients for less then the average asking price, he could still sell the ingredients for more then the finished product. So why would a real player sell the bars for so low a price?

two reasons,
speed of sale,
while theoretcially the materials may be worth more, if they specific parts sell sluggishly or not at all, then it alters the value.
say it will take you two days to sell omnomberries, and 1 hour to sell bars, if you farmed the berries you may decide to lower your berry profit to increase your profit over time
because getting back money fast can sometimes lead to re investment which equals to more money.

another possibility is just player stupidity and lack of desire to do the math

but the most likely answer?

They bought the materials a lot cheaper through buy orders, but the materials sell very slowly. So they turn them into omnomberry bars rather than have them sit and have to possibly re list them or wait for like a day for one of them to sell.

you appear to prefer online rpgs, i can see why, there are definetly benefits to doing things how offline rpgs, but you have to consider somethings
offline rpgs dont need to be balanced, dark souls is not really balanced at all. Dark souls is mostly single player, so one player has access to most of the skills in the game. Youll find the GW2 probably has more skills/traits, and more skill trait combinations/builds across all 8 charachters than dark souls has. (could be wrong but id be willing to bet on it)

That said i hear its a great game, and i do wish that MMOs would be less willing to destroy fun and innovation in the name of balance, but i realize there will be a lot of differences between them just based on the fact that one is an orpg and one is an mmo

Ok, really i played gw a lot, i enjoyed it a lot. But GW had many problems that GW2 didnt want to take with it by having the same exact structure. While i think the mission system was good, because it essentially allowed you to just play the game, and by the time it was like half way finished (in prophecies) you were max level (it took a bit longer to get the gear you want, and close to the end to get all the skills you wanted)
However, until vanquishing arrived, AND a reason to vanquish, it was mostly a bunch of zones you never had a reason to come back to, the PVE world felt really small once you were done with the story, and the fact that it was instanced made it a very different experience.

ah the skill system of GW, you know it was pretty cool, but its design also made many things semi lame.
GW1 skills were required to be driven mostly by stats, to reduce the workload and make it easier to alter existing skills, and create new ones. Most of the skills looked the same, and had similar animations, you basically played the UI in terms of seeing what skills your opponent was using, many skills seemed virtually the same as one another. I think many GW1 players prefer this playstyle over all, but honestly imo its not even close to a superior playstyle.

As far as difficulty, ehhhhh gw1 was really easy, you could literally build a party that could play with you completely afk and defeat hard mode enemies. Some people love this about the game, it was a sort of simulation pet management style of play, but is that superior gameplay? not really its just different, and i think we should all note it was not part of the original vision for the game, and didnt come around till nightfall. (hench were a lot weaker, and a lot more limited).

Anyhow, i like gw, but i like the base of GW2 more, if they improve things it will be an awesome game.

quick rundown of what i think would take it to the next level

Better rewards
(not nec quanitity, but better, skills in GW1 was a good reward)

More expanding on the Quest aspect,
(dynamic quests need to be more involved, and go to interesting places, with interesting encounters) Also make personal story more robust, with actuall battles, and areas, drop Voice if it increases cost too much. Have a few more traditional quests for big things, like legendaries.

More skills, and skill selection
I think Weapons probably need a little bit of swappability like utility, even if its only one option per slot, you have two possibilities for the 1 for the 2 skill etc.
as well as some new enemies
more elites, more interesting elites.

less nerfing,
more synergy and effective sequences (that can be blocked or mitigated through reactionary play) This is a super heroic adventure game, dont make us feel like gimps after years of reducing effectiveness of anything that is effective, interesting or powerful when used properly with a good sequence of events.

So yeah the things that would make GW2 a better game are not, to me, the things that would make it more GW1 like

Iris.5918:

I also feel like the fights are generally boring.
I’m not against the dodge system because it’s actually the only thing preventing me from falling asleep while fighting… I like the reactivity that it implies.

The skills however… I swear thinking about them just made me yawn.
Except when I decide to make a combo (that my party will not even notice) I could easily press the keys randomly as it would make no real difference.
It is especially disappointing considering how much the combat system of GW1 was interesting.
I loved to adapt my play style depending of if the foes were melee fighters or casters. Keeping an eye on annoying foes (like the Wardens of Earth for example) while fighting others to make sure to interrupt their big damage dealing skill and saving my party a hard time. Putting a life drain on the foes that are likely to die the last to enhance my survivability during the whole fight.
In comparison GW2 make me feel like it was designed for 10 years old kids.

the game has such things, however, unless you are low manning or doing like high level fractals, or certain dungeons, you wont need to use this type of gameplay.

green items to rares isnt an exploit probably,

I mean i dont think they like the idea of karma having a money value, however, they introduce it having a money value with recipes that need karma.

I think they didnt like having to balance karma into the market so they took it away, it makes things complex. Truth is the economy was immature, and getting a pittance for your karma was valuable then, now, it really isnt.

i mean essentially for karma and a skill point you can gamble to get a teir 6 material or lodestone in the mystic forge.

As long as the payout is not crazy, i dont think the care that much if karma can be made into money, after all, karma doesnt really go on trees, and now, it actually has some value for most people 800 karma, or 1.4 silver, which is worth more to most people?
1 million karma for 17.5 gold? thats pretty cheap really.

Vol.5241:

It’s a gamble. What in the world were you expecting?

Those who get it within their first few tries are so happy and they’re lucky
Those who don’t get it whine and complain.

I’ve thrown 300g worth of rares since release in the forge. And I haven’t got any precursors. Yet I don’t whine because I understood the low probability.

except its not really random, and its not really probabability. Its a random number generator, which, depending on its implementation can be really bad. Going by anecdotal evidence, it seems like this random number generator is that way.

I have done mystic forge for for other items probably more than 3000 times across multiple charachters, i notice that one charachter got 7 of one item and another got zero, i also notice that if i roll one item in a sitting, its more likely that i will roll that item again than some other new item.

the whole issue is, its not really random, it seems random when you look at large pools, and look at the data a certain way, but you end up getting a distribution that isnt really random.

translation, some people are really going to be more or less lucky with Random number generators. Some people will have a pattern that is consitently better output than others. And some people will have consistently worse performance.

that aside, even the idea that precursors should be random is poor, because it makes it so that you have no good clear means to progress along a path. How much of a good idea would it be to make it so the main ingredient in becoming a doctor be picking 6 random numbers out of 2 million possibilities. How attractive is it to study hard, go to school for 6 years, do a residency, and then have to wait or hope you can get that ticket.

now those who say you can buy a precursor, lets say that the same was true; people who won can sell the ticket, but keeping in mind only say 4% of people win each year, it will probably be priced for what the top 4% of people make money wise. IE a lot of money.

Its a bad system for being the main goal of the game post 80

RollingBob.8502:

Your analysis is flawed because you can definitely make them without spending anything if you gather the resources.

Your assumed static link between the finished product and the components does not actually exist, you are missing the big picture by assuming it does. The relationship is coincidental.

That the componenets themselves cost more than the finished product is not unusual, as the components are not limited to only the finished product. Value is not necessarily added by irreversible assembly.

The fluctuation in this releationship shows a healthy economy actually.

your theory is incorrect, because even if you farmed all the parts, the fact remains you would still profit more by selling the materials, not only that but the materials all tend to sell faster due to having multiple uses.

most likely it happens on a regular basis due to the fact that some gears drop(or you get for map completion, and people are operating too close to cost on these items, so the guy who finds one has no reason to not undercut.
Another factor is mystic forge users, some people throw armor in with the other stuff, hoping to get a legendary, or a good rune (probably small amount though)

most likely its partially due to bad math, and panic, its better to get back 90% of your investment than just wait too long and price drops further.

really people who manufacture, should only manufacture if the profit is actually worthwhile, they should look at cost of materials versus profit, and time it takes to sell. if something is going to take a week to sell its probably not worth tying up that money, better investments can be made. However, many people dont do this, so you have some recipes that come up short on profit, which weirdly ends up being a lot of them.

endless.1376:

I can’t really get into this games underlying ARPG combat system. It feels too gimped and limited in terms of fun due to attempts to balance it for esports. I love seeing high damage and blasting my way through enemies in an arpg, but this MMO has nerfed that system to the point where you have to play dodge with enemies. Not to mention the veteran and champion mobs reward for taking them down is considerably disheartening. I really don’t know what these devs were thinking honestly.

Maybe they were attempting perfection in every way and the game as a whole suffered in attempts to bring balance to the whole game. I want to level another character, and I want to enjoy the leveling process and feel rewarded for doing so as well. Yet, leveling seems far too painful and annoying in many ways as well. I really hope that things change, but as they stand now I can’t really get into this game. The reason I feel its needed to bring this up is because honestly this game requires me to pay nothing monthly, and yet I would rather play another game monthly and feel powerful and enjoy lots of content then do what I can do in this game. This game needs a lot more fleshing out. Hopefully in time it will get there as it is still young. When that day comes I will likely play this game like crazy, but as it stands now it didn’t pull off what I had hoped it would.

I kind of agree with what the poster is saying here, but its not that the combat sucks or dodge is OP or you should 1 shot things,

I do feel like pvp and balancing tend to take the fun mechanics and minimize them.
Mesmer getting stacks of might for shatters, this is actually a fun mechanic, you build strength as you explode stuff, you try to maximize the amount shattering and use it more, you can pass stronger might to your party.

It was decided to be too OP in pvp, maybe it was, but the mechanic was fun and engaging.
The game use to have a lot more combo finishers, and it was 100% chance with projectiles,
this was OP or hard to balance or whatever
but its fun to do combos, so now we have less combos

point is, and this happens with many games, as far as PVE goes, balance, in the nerf style which is most games we have played, and so far appears to be this game as well, erodes the entertainment.

They need to remove the global cooldown on shatters, fix the bug, mesmers reactionary shatters are 2 3 and 4, they basically have nerfed the effectiveness of reactive play on 3/4th of our class mechanic.

No other class has global cooldowns, its not a global cooldown built game, dont start adding this now.

.25 seconds is too long to land a proper interupt 3 skill
.25 seconds is too long to evade a proper attack(or reflect an attack if you traited for that skill)
.25 seconds doesnt allow you to get some extra damage on before an enemy action, although thats only one stack so its not as bad, pretty bad for diversion and distortion though

Im ok with this being a quick interm fix for a short while, until they can really fix it, but nothing they have said leads us to believe this is the case.

1 stack per shatter, is pretty bad but maybe 2 would still have been too strong, maybe it would have been just right, still i think they need to incorporate some other boon traits, maybe for phantasm or clone generation

ok there is a bit of a misunderstanding here, the bug/exploit is not the fact that it uses less materials, or has less value than an ecto, its the fact that the salvage was loopable. this differs from every other recipe. no matter what you salvage from another item, you still will have to get a large portion of the materials back, with this recipe, you basically got back enough material to salvage again with the only cost being the basic materials.

now a perma ban seems kind of harsh, but rollback doesnt really say dont exploit(just says worst comes to worst you get a rollback), and a 3 day ban says make sure you profit more than you would in 3 days of normal play if you exploit.

basically the message is dont exploit

HOWEVER

the problem is, what consititutes an exploit, for some people who came to the loop late, the costs of materials made it no more profitable than regular market stuff. The real issue, is yeah it sends the message dont exploit, but it also sends the message that you can be permanantly banned for something you may not really understand to be an exploit.

truth is, most of the trading post business practices probably feel the same to most people its all mad money

Shuguard.7125:

Wait a minute you only got 7 exotics out of 200 rares? That seems like there might be a bug there, you should have somewhere around 15-20% chance of making an exotic from 4 rares (lvl80). But with 200 rares that’s a big enough sample size to tell something is wrong. But your original chances with lvl80 rares to get a precursor were slightly better than 1/1000.

its 15 to 20% chance per combine, hence, every 4 rares gives a 15-20% chance at exotics, so on average, at 15% every 26 rares gives you an exotic. Of course, thats if you have consistent performance with the average, if your unlucky it can be way worse.

Rhysati.4932:

VOLKON.1290:

Zeldain.5710:

VOLKON.1290:

Zeldain.5710:

Natural.7013:

Playing this game has really opened my eyes to how much I actually like the Trinity. I’ve went back to another game (Not THAT game) just as my main MMORPG now with this as a side game because of it. Anyone else feel the same way?

The trinity works very well for representing the real effects of combat, but more importantly offering varied playstyles and allowing for more defined roles that are essential for good team-based gameplay. That is missing entirely here on GW2.

Yeah… because every army has that one guy that all the enemies shoot at while the medics keep him healed and the infantry try not to stand in the fire…

Maybe you’ve never heard of tanks in the military, or their role… or the ground support troops that go with them, not to mention the MASH unit…. hmmm.

You mean the heavily armored and mobile high dps units, those tanks? Funny… don’t recall seeing medics healing the tanks in combat. Be kind of hard for them to keep up with an Abrams travelling at 50 mph while firing…

Seeing as how you started the bad analogy, it’s sort of silly for you to try and pick his apart in turn.

His original statement that the trinity represents real battle moreso than this system is dead on. While you don’t really have tanks/healers/cc/dps the exact same ways in the real world as we do in fantasy, you DO have similar concepts.

CC would be things like artillery barrages, suppressive fire with machine guns, digging trenches or putting up fences, roadblocks/tank traps, mines, etc.

Healing would be the medics, which the general laws of war have always respected as being invalid targets for attack.

Dps would be your standard grunts that fire rifles, machine guns, missles, etc.

Tanks would be…well…tanks. As his statement implied. They are heavy and armored and meant to serve as an imposing and distracting brute force machine. They aren’t really made to do the killing of normal DPS so much as they are there to intimidate them.

Or…did you just think that the term ‘tank’ in MMOs came out of thin air?

you theories are very wrong. No one targets something they will have difficulty killing in a fight, people do in fact target anything that is relatively weak and can somehow make other things tougher to destroy.

The whole medic to healer idea is also bull, combat medic doesnt magically make soldiers able to take more damage and fight longer in one engagement, they treat wounded people generally after a specific battle, and essentially reduce deaths due to complications and allow them to survive long enough to be treated later.

Tanks dont attract attention, or keep people from attacking other targets except through position, or through suppressive fire, or damage.

the truth is there is no trinity in real fights. Its basically Damage and damage avoidance. they try to hit you, you try not to get hit. Control is real, and mostly involves the try not to get hit aspect, supressive fire, jabs when you have reach, counterhits, parries, positioning.

This is actually closer to GW2 playstyle. What it boils down to, is some people dont like battles like that, they prefer the siege like battle style of trinity, they also want the game to enforce this playstyle on everyone.

Angelus.1042:

primuspilus.3856:

than catering to the minority who waant WoW mechanics with GW2 graphics

I hear a little company called Bethesda might be doing a small project like that

PP

Elder Scrolls online …IMO is going to take GW2 and Mash it with WoW to satisfy everyone who wants a piece of what they like.
A close friend tied to the gaming indusrty has played it behind closed doors and has said it may make an excellent mash up.
They seem to be taking what GW2 has done..fixing it and then adding elements for traditional MMO players as well… with real elder scrools combat (blocking, dodging, sneaking)…..not to mention you can join the dark brotherhood NPC guild!!!!…thats all the motivation I needed to try i out lol.

It will be worth keeping an eye out.

actually no one from bethesda has any thing to do with the development of the game, also honestly i feel part of teh good part about oblivion is the becoming overpoweredness, and being able to mix and match your charachters build to your liking, dunno how entertaining it will be with game balance (no one can be too powerful or have cool skills) and predefined classes as well as a trinity.

Vasham.2408:

phys.7689:

lothefallen.7081:

phys.7689:

Przemek.6835:

Osculim.2983:

No thank you no trinity otherwise i would play other mmos but im not.

couple of reasons :

1st you have healers and tanks thinking they are more important than everyone else in a group which in turns breeds a horrible community.

2nd There is no way in wow that a dps player get a quick group you always wait much longer than a tank or healer.

Also whats the point of standing still in a fight thats the most boring thing in other mmos for me doesnt matter what you do you always gets hit that is just not realistic its like standing still in front of a person with a gun and just wait for him to shoot you and hoping for the best.

It is not as if you didnt know that there is not gonna be a trinity either if that was your thing why switch to another mmo. If the wow type machanics is your thing then play wow that is the exact same reason i moved to guildwars the trinity is not my thing so i left wow and im happy.

Speaking about the realism… how realistic downstate is? You lay down and raise your hand so you can magically get back to fight endless times?

I won’t comment on finding party because I haven’t tried much yet. Looking at other posts tho it seems that finding one is easier with certain classes/specs. For me it doesn’t matter if I have to look longer because bleeds dont stack past 25 or because they already have 3 dpsers.

Looking at your post you are another one that thinks trinitiy=wow and thats the game on wnich you are basing your opinion. Well than I did every raid and dungeon in that crappy game and I hardly ever stood still during encounter, and I only stood still because I couldnt cast while moving and every second of not casting counts as dps loss.

On a side, in WoW after every encounter I knew I could have played better. I messed spell priority a bit, or I popped my cds a while too fast. I don’t have that feeling in gw2 there is no self improvement.

have you ever done any group content? or are you basing this soley off the open world events? If you did dungeons or fractals higher than 10, and didnt feel any teamwork, or see the importance of your build, playstyle and how well you execute, you were probably being carried by a team, because even ascalon catacombs can be pretty harsh without people who know what they are doing and how to effectively deal with situations, beyond a dps race.

I did a dungeon naked with my Guardian + Hammer and went AFK on bosses with 1 on auto and never died. Cleared the dungeon, got almost 70 silver, tokens, loot, and only had to move my character to the bossfights. Didn’t have to communicate with my team at all. Didn’t have a role, i just sat there, put down wards, and never died. I washed the dishes, watched a few youtube videos and made a bagel with cream cheese and capers all while auto-piloting.

Yeah, this is part of the reason why implementing a more solid trinity or direct healer class would improve this game socially, depth wise, and design wise. Then maybe the team could design an encounter in which the boss had real difficulty not just a health bar in scientific notation and 1HKO you had to dodge out of once ever 25 seconds.

Do people defending the game as it is not play it? Are they even lv 80 yet?

what you just talked about defines being carried, and you can carry people in every single MMO out there, so i dunno what your point is other than you take advantage of people/friends

So because his class is so unbalanced he can practically solo every dungeon ingame while afk that means, apparently, he was carried? If anything everyone else was carried since he was playing one of Arenanet’s three favored classes and brought enough power to the group solo, while afk, to kill everything and hold aggro.

You have an odd definition of carried.

actually he probably wasnt holding agro, because as a person who has done many dungeons, I cant really think of any dungeon where everyone could do what he claimed to do and succeed. Especially the wash the dishes with AA on business. Guardian isnt really that OP, and most of its defense comes from its gear, and active maintence of boons. and even with this, they can still get killed if they play like robots which is what he is describing.

He was carried. because he basically said he was carried. No dungeon can be beat with 5 people playing like he claims to have played.

CMF.5461:

What if the teamwork in combat revolved around “essentially the same attack” that everyone has for damage and survivability.

What I mean is, everyone has a group heal, but it is on long cooldown. In order to heal and live through the fight you have to time and rotate your group heals otherwise you die.

Everyone can break the bosses armor so that he takes damage, but it is on a long cooldown, and if you all blow it at the same time, then there will be long periods of no damage being done, resulting in the group dying because they couldn’t meet the damage needed.

Everyone can control the boss, but you have to space out controls between the group otherwise there will be periods where the boss is flailing about and hitting everyone for obscene damage, and the only way to prevent that is to immobilize/knock down/block at the right times, but for the group.

Take that self survivability and apply it to the group and the group becomes stronger for longer periods of damage and combat.

this kind of does exist, it really boils down to the fact that guild wars 2 is very forgiving right now, go play some higher level fractals and you start to see people really come together with team work to succeed.

The main reason people dont use teamwork, support, and properly use their defensive/team defensive skills, is not because this type of play isnt encouraged by the mechanics, its because the fights are designed so that people can win. (generally speaking)

lothefallen.7081:

phys.7689:

Przemek.6835:

Osculim.2983:

No thank you no trinity otherwise i would play other mmos but im not.

couple of reasons :

1st you have healers and tanks thinking they are more important than everyone else in a group which in turns breeds a horrible community.

2nd There is no way in wow that a dps player get a quick group you always wait much longer than a tank or healer.

Also whats the point of standing still in a fight thats the most boring thing in other mmos for me doesnt matter what you do you always gets hit that is just not realistic its like standing still in front of a person with a gun and just wait for him to shoot you and hoping for the best.

It is not as if you didnt know that there is not gonna be a trinity either if that was your thing why switch to another mmo. If the wow type machanics is your thing then play wow that is the exact same reason i moved to guildwars the trinity is not my thing so i left wow and im happy.

Speaking about the realism… how realistic downstate is? You lay down and raise your hand so you can magically get back to fight endless times?

I won’t comment on finding party because I haven’t tried much yet. Looking at other posts tho it seems that finding one is easier with certain classes/specs. For me it doesn’t matter if I have to look longer because bleeds dont stack past 25 or because they already have 3 dpsers.

Looking at your post you are another one that thinks trinitiy=wow and thats the game on wnich you are basing your opinion. Well than I did every raid and dungeon in that crappy game and I hardly ever stood still during encounter, and I only stood still because I couldnt cast while moving and every second of not casting counts as dps loss.

On a side, in WoW after every encounter I knew I could have played better. I messed spell priority a bit, or I popped my cds a while too fast. I don’t have that feeling in gw2 there is no self improvement.

have you ever done any group content? or are you basing this soley off the open world events? If you did dungeons or fractals higher than 10, and didnt feel any teamwork, or see the importance of your build, playstyle and how well you execute, you were probably being carried by a team, because even ascalon catacombs can be pretty harsh without people who know what they are doing and how to effectively deal with situations, beyond a dps race.

I did a dungeon naked with my Guardian + Hammer and went AFK on bosses with 1 on auto and never died. Cleared the dungeon, got almost 70 silver, tokens, loot, and only had to move my character to the bossfights. Didn’t have to communicate with my team at all. Didn’t have a role, i just sat there, put down wards, and never died. I washed the dishes, watched a few youtube videos and made a bagel with cream cheese and capers all while auto-piloting.

Yeah, this is part of the reason why implementing a more solid trinity or direct healer class would improve this game socially, depth wise, and design wise. Then maybe the team could design an encounter in which the boss had real difficulty not just a health bar in scientific notation and 1HKO you had to dodge out of once ever 25 seconds.

Do people defending the game as it is not play it? Are they even lv 80 yet?

what you just talked about defines being carried, and you can carry people in every single MMO out there, so i dunno what your point is other than you take advantage of people/friends

Tarvok.4206:

phys.7689:

good old fashion collusion, whereby a group of people conspire to manipulate prices or supply in their benefit, so as to control the market, mostly using in this game, their higher available capital to control things

Explain to me how this works in the context of Guild Wars 2.

In the real world, this can create a temporary benefit. The owners of high value capital goods agree to restrict production to create “monopoly prices” and reap greater products than if they produced competitively. There are two problems with this strategy:

1. It can only work if demand is sufficiently inelastic in the price zone above the “perfect competition” market price. If it’s not, their efforts to raise the price will actually result in losses, not profits.

2. In the absence of violence aimed at preserving the cartel (usually from the government, often disguised as consumer protection), the cartel will soon be undermined by a combination of cheating from within (members selling on the side above their agreed-upon quota) and competition from without (as the profits draw new competitors into the field supplying either the same or competing goods). This may take longer if the necessary capital goods require large investments, but it does ultimately happen.

tl;dr: in the real world, in the absence of violent enforcement, this strategy does not actually work for long. (And where it does, it’s not the result of the collusion, but rather the violence; ie. it’s cleverly disguised banditry.)

It can’t work at all in GW2. The only “production goods” in this game are character levels and quickly maxed-out craft skills. IF someone artificially manipulates the price upward, there is no limit on how quickly crafters and farmers can fill the gap. Take the recent potato spike, for example. It wasn’t long before people were logging on alts in quick succession to restore supply.

Even in the precursors market, holding prices high only causes people to look ever harder for precursors, and those who find them but don’t need them can make bank selling them to the speculators… and there’s no guarantee they’ll actually make any money on them when its time to sell to the consumer (particularly when compared to high volume flipping).

tl;dr: The attempt benefits farmers and crafters in the short run, and producers in the long run (as it stimulate additional production that will enable more to use it), but I honestly don’t see how it can actually benefit the speculator.

IRl its pretty easy to use collusion to control certain market values, In game its not as easy but it basically comes down to finding items which have a high barrier to entry and agreeing amongst those few who have access to those resources to control the output. Even if someone new enters the fray, it is most likely that they will join the syndicate, or at least price in the colluded range, because why would they not? Much like if precursors were being manipulated (hypothetically) the guy who finds one from a monster is most likely not going to price his at 100 gold lower just because he can, he will probably sell it at the market price.

Anyhow they main problem with your whole line of thinking is you are taking a debators stance rather than a scientific stance.

You have already decided what side you are on, and now want to see if you can argue a point on that side in any situation.
A scientist may make a hypothesis, but accepts that results may not turn out the way he plans, and if it does looks for a reason and a solution, instead of trying to argue the point.

Another flaw is that you are tying socially beneficial too closely with a possible benefit to a venture capitalist. These are not the same things.

For example most people would agree that relative peace is socially beneficial, however for a venture capitalist there definite benefits to war. You have to argue how these things help the game as a whole rather than just the ability to play the money game and win. Does how much of a luxury item precursors are actually make it more fun to fight large dragons? Does pumping and dumping increase how much people group up in the open world and how enjoyable it is?

truth is focusing on the economy in terms of making as much money as possible does not necessarily make the game/world better im not going to say it will always ruin it, but i dont think you can say its social benefits will outweigh its problems consistently, because what it boils down to, is its focus is not on social benefit.

Fox.3469:

here’s my worry, there is nothing challenging enough in the game yet to prevent this from being a “give everyone a precursor” hunt, and that’s a problem.

Not that i personally care but that would be a dick move to people who did buy it or have an actual hard time to get it. Regardless of you thinking they are nolives or not.

Predator.1398:

TBH, I just tired to wait for SH. So I decided to just buy gems, convert them to gold and buy my Dusk on TP. Sure it’s quite expensive way but again – I tired to wait I value my time and the price has been acceptable compared with waiting for weeks for SH and potential grind for weeks/months to get precursor via SH.

gz, enjoy twilight ^^

the game cannot be designed to live with their design mistakes and misteps forever. Its bad for the game in the long run if they have to meter every good change against how people played before that change. And its not really difficulty issue, the best way to get precursors right now is to play guild wars as a venture capitalist, and it isnt really so much difficult as much as requiring a certain mindset.

I dont think they should design the only endgame goals as mostly about generation of gold, that was a large miss step. Im not saying items like that shouldnt exist, but it shouldnt be what people are expected to do post 80. And most especially obtaining a weapon shouldnt be that.

Most likely what they will do is put a long somewhat grindy item gathering mystic forge recipe. Best hope is that it will involve getting items from glorious chests and jumping puzzles, or special dynamic events, so that at least it opens the world and exploration again, and makes it so you probably truely played and did a lot of things througout the world while hunting for your legendary.

Gorwe.9672:

If they do the following: PvE=Dungeons, it only means ANet we GW1 vets know and love is gone.

So no further dungeons!!! Leave that to other games(remember the time when there were none in GW1? It was so awesome). If you just look at Warriors n Guardians rock! PvE movement it is only caused by simple existence of dungeons…

this makes no sense to me at all, GW1 was basically dungeons. a dungeon being an instanced area for a small group with various bosses and enemies in it. Or do you just dislike gw2 dungeons specifically.

Kakeru.2873:

Fuz.5621:

Snowy.9580:

wildcode.5403:

The lack of the holy trinity(healer/dps/tank) in GW2 means we must change the playing style that we’ve grown lazy with by relying on the trinity in other games. GW2 is not “just” another MMO, GW2 redefines how we play MMOs and if we don’t change the lazy playing style that we have grown accustomed to, then we are left feeling like we don’t have a place in the game.

Because the tactics of “Die & run back” is sooo much fun, and only second to that all time favourite “Help! All 3 trash mobs are on me & I’ve no energy left to roll about like a Jedi with!”.

Yup, the game is fine without any kitten trinity or anything else… like fun!

Tactical tip of the day: “Ok, all drop combo fields and hope no one dies!”

I don’t “die and run back”. Not after my first runs on the dungeons.
Learn and adapt.
You just suck at this game and you’re blaming the game itself for your lack of skill.

It’s funny you say that, because there is a path in CoF which you MUST use the “die, revive and run back” tactic otherwise it is virtually impossible. And don’t even try to argue that, this is due to a players skill or build because it’s clearly bad game design.

White knights like you are going to be the downfall of this game, it’s the reason SWTOR just fell apart, it’s blind fanboy fanbase who don’t know the meaning of constructive critisim and think their game is perfect in every single way, then wonder why the game ends up dead within a year.

It is not the only way to win, simply the most easily executed, and yes it is basically due to them trying to close what they felt was an exploit, the encounter wasnt initially designed in that fashion

But what does this have to do with trinities anyhow? i remember numerous Die/sacrifice/etc mechanics in trinity games, I remember people requiring reraise items in FFXI, and many sacrificial pulls, etc. This comes down more to how they want to design encounters than the benefits or non benefits of trinity.

Im not a white knight or a black night, i evaluate each issue based on the relevevent data, and this game would gain nothing at all by becoming trinity based. The group mechanics and teamwork plays are already there, they really would just have to design the encounters to be harder if they wanted to force people to play with teamwork better.

However, people dont really like getting their kitten handed to them until they reach the pinnacle of teamwork and figure out every strategy. On groups i ve seen many people ask for trinities, and usually its when they are getting beat because they arent playing that well, or working well as a team.

The real advantage of the trinity is people know what they are supposed to be doing clearly, and how to evaluate themselves. They also know that everyone else needs them to be doing exactly what they are doing because the others cant do what they are doing. The greatest tank in the world will need a healer, the greatest healer needs a tank, the greatest dps needs a tank. They feel valuable.

But in reality this is a shallow game mechanic, while it is good to have specialities or strengths, and roles, these shouldnt be as rigid, also the healer mechanic is an invented one, they create more unavoidable damage so as to create the healer class, in a true skill based game, the more skilled you are, the less you would need a healer even should it exist.

The tank as it exists in many games is also invented, they give the class that is least likely to be targeted by any intelligent opponent, the ability to force enemies to attack them.

for you it is some the trinity is a fun mechanic, but i think if teh thread shows anything it is that, the trinity is not universally loved, and everyone doesnt hate GW2 combat, I generally enjoy teh combat mechanics, i think the biggest problems with GW2 combat is encounter design, and the things they do that limit the combats entertainingness for the sake of pvp class balance in PVE

Tarvok.4206:

For example: Pump and Dump.

Pump and Dump is the practice of buying a bunch of something, then releasing false information to the public about why it’s about to go up. If enough people believe it, it does go up, as lesser speculators drive the price up. The first buyer sells off to his marks and pockets his loot.

I put this one in the “not honest” category. Prices convey information, but in this case, the prices are simply conveying a lie. After the lie is exposed (ie. once the duped speculaters realize there’s nobody to sell to), they must take a loss.

There are a few third parties that potentially benefit. Producers who sold during this time accidentally get a piece of the manipulator’s action, so they git a bit of extra money. Buyers who get in after the market crashes get a lower price, as the higher price may have induced additional production, and the negative experience will definitely drive speculators away temporarily. However, this may also lower production for a time. So there’s both winners and losers… but I suspect the losses to be greater than the gains, overall.

Still, it would be impossible to consistently enforce a law against this practice. A widely known law against it would simply lull traders into a false sense of security, making them easier marks for those who are better at this tactic than the enforcers are at enforcing it. Further, it can be difficult to distinguish between a deliberate pump and an honest mistake, meaning the innocent are likely to be caught in the dragnet, discouraging the sharing of information generally.

Far better, IMO, to simply allow the practice, so that the less skilled pumpers can breed in traders generally a level of cynicism regarding “free information” that accurately reflects the dangers inherent in trading. Far better, of course, if we all simply behaved in an honest fashion (there are plenty of honest ways to make money, and the most skilled honest methods are, I believe, more effective than the most skilled dishonest ones)… but because that’s not going to happen, best not to pretend we can make it happen.

actually your reasoning why its good here is pretty weak, you merely try and say how it would be hard to enforce or try to say why it should be deregulated. What you are talking about here is basically called a con, whereby you trick people into believing something has value when you no it does not, and escaping with the money. It isnt social beneifical to anyone other than exploiters.

Tarvok.4206:

Though I suspect such a thread will degenerate quickly, I think it’s worth a try. I would like to host a debate (in its own thread, not as a derailment of another thread), between those who regard things like “market manipulation” and trade-based money making "schemes"as a dirty, unnecessary, if not downright criminal activity; and those of us (yes, I’m declaring my position at the outset) who believe any honestly made money as a just reward for something that is, ultimately, socially beneficial.

Basically, come in here and post some market tactic you consider socially irresponsible. I will then attempt either to explain who (beyond the trader himself) benefits from this activity, or to explain how it’s not an honest strategy, or how it’s not an effective strategy (though I will likely appeal to superior traders for that last part).

Assuming the thread does not become so flooded nobody can follow it, it could be fun.

good old fashion collusion, whereby a group of people conspire to manipulate prices or supply in their benefit, so as to control the market, mostly using in this game, their higher available capital to control things

Hendo.4671:

mrstealth.6701:

It’s been quite obvious that this is happening for a while now. And it’s not just precursors, there is quite a bit of it in minipets as well. A guildmate noticed a few weeks ago that some corrupted weapon prices had mysteriously shot up by over 20g, while the cost of the lodestones/precursor weapons had not changed. I believe prices have restabilizd since, but we assumed some market manipulation was invovled in the price jump.

The market setup in GW2 just makes it way too easy for a single person to control 100% of the supply of a rare item. With a few clicks, every available item is now yours. And any new listings put up are most likely going to match your price or undercut it by a tiny amount in order to be listed first.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/14923 — Corrupted Avenger.
There was in fact 2 spikes that I can see. If one looks at the curve as a whole however, it is remarkably smooth. That tells me that while it is possible to take advantage of short term supply issues to take advantage of impulse buyers, the price will rapidly drop to it’s expected level.

I find it interesting that there is some significant downward pressure on this item now.

Taking advantage of lowered supply to buy low and sell high is not manipulation. It’s smart business, no player has a monopoly on information or supply. Since no player can control supply, the price will approach the market value again.

good business for the individual does not equal good business for the world. Uncontrolled speculation can cause a lot of problems in an economy as a whole.

Mackdose.6504:

Horrorscope.7632:

Lucavern.6829:

I personally find myself torn regarding the Trinity.

Another option (not saying for this game) is for all classes be able to be anything at a click of a setting. A Tank Stance, Heal Stance, DPS Stance, Support Stance, Jack of All Trades Stance. That way any 5 people are still a viable group, sure you have to negotiate who’s taking what role. But I could see that a viable alternative to how the whole mechanic plays out. This would keep trinity and make everyone viable if they are willing.

I really dislike the concept that has shown in this thread that we need a mechanic to delegate roles, and if there is no mechanic, the roles don’t exist.

There’s already mechanics to support teamplay and combat “roles” in this game, and it has a lot more to do with how a player plays than how a class “tanks” or “heals.” It’s up to the player to decide which role suits the situation best, not the game’s job to tell the player what role to be at any given moment. That’s where this disconnect is. Players who are used to the rigid tank/healer/dps are used to having the class tell them what to do. GW2 sets that task at the player’s feet, no matter which class they’re playing.

The effect of this is that players who adapt playstyles and are flexible in their gameplay enjoy GW2 mechanics and see them for what the are: a toolkit.

Players who like to have a single assigned job feel left out and overwhelmed by the options, and so pick options that suit the one role they want to play…while forsaking every other situational ability. These players get frustrated because the design is against them.

and here, you are basically right. Different people tend to play differently and their role is basically what they like to do, and do well, i have partied with people who go out their way to give buffs, get people up, and supply key conditions/boons/heals. Others that go balls to the wall and try to mrder everything asap, Myself on mesmer, who ends up trying to provide dps, while countering specific skills and give breathing room.

People essentially start to mold the class into how they want to go at playing the game. The roles and their benefits exist, its basically the players who decide how to make the best use of them.

Snowy.9580:

projectcedric.6951:

Snowy.9580:

And to those shouting about how much they like having no roles, you really do want to play BF3 or Mario…

..or GW2?

It’s basically what is said there. On the box. Did I miss something?

Yeah, you left out the “RPG” part that is meant to be in it too.

where did this idea that rpg meant you needed a tank a healer and dps. I played many rpgs without this paradigm. Every play Secret of Mana? FF3-9 (they had healing, but you didnt require dedicated healers, and you had virtually no tanks) The concept of RPG is because you play a role. Warrior is a role, mesmer is a role, theif is role.

no one is discussing rpg here, they basically a discussing their prefered game mechanics, but if you really want trinity, probably shouldnt buy a game that was heavily promoted as not being that type of game.

Przemek.6835:

Osculim.2983:

No thank you no trinity otherwise i would play other mmos but im not.

couple of reasons :

1st you have healers and tanks thinking they are more important than everyone else in a group which in turns breeds a horrible community.

2nd There is no way in wow that a dps player get a quick group you always wait much longer than a tank or healer.

Also whats the point of standing still in a fight thats the most boring thing in other mmos for me doesnt matter what you do you always gets hit that is just not realistic its like standing still in front of a person with a gun and just wait for him to shoot you and hoping for the best.

It is not as if you didnt know that there is not gonna be a trinity either if that was your thing why switch to another mmo. If the wow type machanics is your thing then play wow that is the exact same reason i moved to guildwars the trinity is not my thing so i left wow and im happy.

Speaking about the realism… how realistic downstate is? You lay down and raise your hand so you can magically get back to fight endless times?

I won’t comment on finding party because I haven’t tried much yet. Looking at other posts tho it seems that finding one is easier with certain classes/specs. For me it doesn’t matter if I have to look longer because bleeds dont stack past 25 or because they already have 3 dpsers.

Looking at your post you are another one that thinks trinitiy=wow and thats the game on wnich you are basing your opinion. Well than I did every raid and dungeon in that crappy game and I hardly ever stood still during encounter, and I only stood still because I couldnt cast while moving and every second of not casting counts as dps loss.

On a side, in WoW after every encounter I knew I could have played better. I messed spell priority a bit, or I popped my cds a while too fast. I don’t have that feeling in gw2 there is no self improvement.

have you ever done any group content? or are you basing this soley off the open world events? If you did dungeons or fractals higher than 10, and didnt feel any teamwork, or see the importance of your build, playstyle and how well you execute, you were probably being carried by a team, because even ascalon catacombs can be pretty harsh without people who know what they are doing and how to effectively deal with situations, beyond a dps race.

Vasham.2408:

Coldtart.4785:

The trinity in other mmos takes absolutely zero skill. So long as you know what you have to do and when and your gear is up to par, you cannot fail. You may as well play DDR on your keyboard.

I find this statement funny. Anyone who makes this remark clearly has zero experience in true endgame content in other MMOs. Have you ever killed Algalon the Observer? Maybe Akylios? How about any boss from Final Fantasy 11? I would wager any player who says the trinity takes zero skill probably played WoW to level thirty and quit.

The most basic of endgame encounters in any other MMO you can mention put GW2 to shame in terms of challenge and skill requirement. This isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact.

I played most the bosses in FFXI, none of them really involved complex mechanics, FFXI simply hadthe room of error scaled higher than GW2 does right now. IE you couldnt screw up that much/needed gear.

But when you had the proper stuff and strats, stuff was pretty easy.

stun chains, melee burns, tank and spank, once you learned the encounter had the people it was actually pretty much going to go the same way every time, and required very little for most of the party, i mean essentially you if you could make simple bots you could beat any boss in the game easily. I know people who basically dual and triboxed bosses with two peoples, and while that was difficult, it was about the actual triboxing.
heal when X esuna when X Provoke every X flash every X wait 1 Sc blah blah , the whole macro game was basically a mini robot, with the windower you could basically play a whole team.

gw biggest problem is the long hp fights with no real change for most of that hp.

Firegoth.6427:

I stopped reading when you blamed the gold sellers.

Mate, it’s all the power traders, get it to your head.
Destroying the market for everyone else, but who cares? they sit on thousands of gold.

yeah essentially they are playing the legendary game amongst themselves. Im fine with having some things for these types of players but having the only long term goals be essentially for only the rich players who play the TP/buygold/grind like no tommorrow is a bad game design.

I think they should make precursors into a long quest chain, or involve doing specific DE chains over time. there is enough other reqs to still make it a legendary grind without the precursor part.

For the TP gold man types i think they should introduce some items specifically designed for rich types.

items designed specifically to show off your money, leaving gold footprints or dropping gold,
special suits made of sparkly matterials
money clip weapons
commander like token, except it shows a dolar sign, or bag of gold on the map.

killing someone like this in WvWvW should give you extra gold or loot chance.

etc, may sound like im joking, but i think this would be acceptable types of visual items to show you are a master of money/achieve that type of playstyle.

It is not appropriate for the only endgame content to be the sole baliwick of the extremely rich.

Izuna.5307:

sorry but they need to fix there game befoe introducing anything new just like have we have to wait till end of Janurary for a fix or fractals thats been out for 2 months now so yeah i say a scavenger should come second to them fixing their stuff first

true, but the precursor problem has been a problem since the game came out, that they have been yet to fix. So going in order, precursor should come before fotm, though, by all indications, i doubt it will.

i think they need to make some new endgame content, maybe extra skills and or traits or something, then again, they still have broken skills and traits…. sooo

guess not.

Kanthor.2094:

If only sellers dictate prices, explain why precursors are not thousands of gold or more.

buyers effect prices, however its a top heavy game only accessible to the extremely rich. Precursors prices are targeted only toward people who either, have a tremendous amount of time and miserlyness, not to spend on anything else, a tremendous amount of real life money to burn on a game item (via either cash shop or gold sellers) or a tremedous amount of money earned from the game, (most likely via TP, which is the best way to get rich, unless you are very lucky)

problem is this is not the average player, as long as precursors are marketed only towards the rich, most players will have no access to these long term goals, which are the sole goal of the game at 80, as it stands.

Being that it is the sole goal, it needs to seem attainable, and not lottery like, or not constantly going up in relation to the amount of money the extremely rich have at their disposal.

the only thing the controlled the price of legendaries was the fear that at any moment anet would fix the precursor problem, or release more precursors. Now that tix event has passed, and people are fairly certain they wont do anything with precursors for the next two months, you really see the market showing what they will do uncorrected.

The game is really friendly early on, but when it comes to long term goals and content, it is currently about gold wars, which im sure TP people love, but truth is that is not the average player.

JonathanSharp.7094:

@ Mesmer: We’ll be addressing the current Mesmer build that’s spiking for insane damage. Sorry that change got through – it is something we’ll be fixing.

@ Macros: Macros are against the user agreement. You can be banned for using them, so use them at your own risk. I would also advise against using them, because in live tournaments, you won’t be able to use macros. So it makes little sense to learn “bad habbits” you’ll just have to retrain later.

We adhere to the same “one keystroke = one action on one character/account”, which is used by a lot of MMO publishers when defining botting/macros.

Just wanted to clear that up – be careful w/ those macros, they can get you banned.

so im unsure here, because essentially people said there was a bug that was making mind wrack do a large amount of extra damage, so are you fixing that bug, or are you removing the boons from shatters? Its not clear if you are saying that your last round of mesmer changes were bad, or that you intend to fix the bug that allowed it to do additional damage.

It is pretty bad that you can get soulbind on aquire runes from the mystic forge, which is by its nature a random roll, which means it is fairly unlikely that whatever charachter is gambling will be able to use the rune. You end up getting what could be a valuable rune, but is essentially only worth npc cost.

I suggest you either make it account bound on aquire (so that at least you can stack them in inventory and give them to different charachters)
or make it bind on use/equip so that they can be sold/traded or given)

another possibility is to have some npc who collects them for higher profit.

this is mostly an issue with the superior runes, since you can at the very least place the others in the mystic forge.

Its kind of foolish that these runes are still soulbound on aquire, when the tokens are account bound.

You randomly get them from enemies and chests in the dungeon, but the chance that the charachter you happen to be on may have a use for them, is unlikely, so you have these supposedly elite runes, that would be excellent on a different charachter, and rarely drop, end up being only worth 2 silver to that charachter.

the fact that you can buy them with ACCOUNT bound tokens, invalidates any idea that you should have to play the dungeon with charachters who need a certain stat, it also makes it more likely that you will have people a one type in certain dungeons, like only the magic find hunters in Cadeuces manor, or condition damage types in ORR

im assuming its an oversight, regardless it needs to be changed

EvilSardine.9635:

I think it’s super funny to see people’s replies when it comes to confusion built mesmers (especially in WvW since confusion does double the damage than in PvP). They usually have no clue and say things like “Just bring condition removals to the fight and it won’t be a problem”

These people haven’t fought the broken build that exists right now.

We have a guild called DUEL where people from different servers get together on some corner of the map and practice fighting each other. We’ve all tried to beat these confusion builds and they just wreck everything without even breaking a sweat. I’ve experimented fighting them using my warrior and as many condition removals as I can have (mending, shake it off, signet of stamina, and auto shake it off as a trait). That’s 4 condition removals (shake it off and the auto trait on shares a cool down but you can pop the utility after the auto one and it still works).

Even with this many conditions removals, the mesmer can immediately stack confusion right back on immediately after you wipe it. You can’t keep up with how fast they can stack it no matter what.

My build is all exotic p/t/v/ with 2100 toughness, 2800 power during a fight, and 30,000 hp. The fight isn’t even close and I’m a pretty good warrior player.

I think at the very least confusion should do 50% less damage in WvW….just like in PvP.

In fact, it’s so powerful that if I have 8-10 stacks on me and I DODGE ROLL…..I do 5k in damage to myself. That’s 5k damage per dodge roll.

you just dont understand the limits of mesmer confusion too well. It is not infinite, and it is not even that damaging unless you have many stacks on, As a warrior with 30k hp and superior damage potential you can tear through it.

Most likely the mesmer is just a very good fighter, and mesmers excel at single enemy fights and countering opponents in general. They have a class that can build themselves around predicting and reacting to opponents. Confusion alone isnt what makes them defeat you.

Mesmer confusion is extremely bursty, and at low stacks does minimal damage, mesmer only has one skill that directly applies confusion, it is a channel which does 5 stacks over time, but if you dodge or interupt the skill, you will rarely get 5 stacks.
The main delivery method is shatters and cry of frustration, but that can be elimated through good AOE or damage

this means, mesmer can only get 2 good high stacks of confusion every 25-30 seconds, you remove the big stacks. dont let yourself get shgattered by 3 clones. use big powerful damage skills (which warrior has many of) and channels (which only count once)

now im not saying a mesmer with lots of condition damage, traits and skilled play cant be hard to beat, but to be honest, a necro or an engineer with condition damage would do a lot more damage to you.

As for the op, you are actually wrong confusion presents way more choice than any other condition.
I understand you dont like fighting the princesses, but your problem is with the princess skill set and how many of them you fight at once. Confusion on players is fairly well balanced.

But also, it does speak to a certain lazyness on peoples part, some say they want challenging content, and then others dont like mobs having annoying skills that they can avoid before it happens, and deal with after it happens, While i do agree that the princess confusion offer a different playstyle than you ususally see in PVE, it is by no means unbalanced, unavoidable, or impossible to deal with. And to be honest they have mobs that can giveyou 10 stacks of bleed instantly, which feels a lot worse especially fighting multiple of these guys at once, because with that you really DONT have a choice, remove condition, heal or die.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

the reason I had to increase his range was due to an exploit players could take advantage of to afk during the fight with auto attack on and easily win it.

As for his health, he already has half the normal health of other legendary creatures, and his toughness is scaled down as well. I don’t imagine I will lower his health down any further since I have watched groups kill him in just 2 tries.

your math isnt considering a lot of things as you describe it.

If he has half the health
but is invulnerable half the time

then you get he is like a normal legendary creature, but fact is that from successful shield removing to actually damaging him you, are bound to take more time, at minimum id say 5 seconds, for average skilled player id say 7 seconds

so essentially he has half the hp, but the average party can only damage him 1/4th the time.

The fact that a highly berserker best geared party could down him in two tries is not a good balancing point.

Now i probably wouldnt decrease his hp, but i would increase the window of attack, or change the activation mechanic to not start the countdown until someone actually hits him. Also i would make it clearer how long the countdown lasts ( i know you can kind of tell by the flickers or internal clocks but eh)

The fact is though this is a long run, and jumping is fairly dangerous, i dont know if the boss needs to take as long as other bosses, but in general i think other bosses already have way too much hp

LordNat.4963:

If farming is too easy then no one will buy gems, it is in AN’s best intrust to keep only a small fraction of players able to get good farm in game so that prices stay high and income low.

people really need to stop the whole gem buying angle, its really not accurate at all, by bringing it up as the answer to all development issues, you diminish its use when it actually really applies.

Lets get this out in the open, Gem buying is irrelevant to how easy farming is, and how easy it is to get things. The economy is by and large generated by players, The value of gems scales to economy, if gold is more common, it just means you will get more gold for a certain quanity of gems. It doesnt really change the amount of gold buying.

If you increase peoples ability to farm, you will only devalue what they farm, which essentially makes it pointless.
add more orichalcum nodes? decrease the value of orichalcum. give people more gold drops? decrease the buying power of said gold.
make materials more commonly dropped? decrease the value of materials.

in fact keeping the value of gold higher (money is more scarce) is better for the players, when it starts to take you 10 gold to get a black lion chest, is that better or worse? when everyone has an excess of gold, how much of that gold do you think they will have to give to get a charachter slot? How approachable do you think the game will be without using the cash shop to a new player when established players have built 1000s of gold each from simple farming? how about when 5 dollars can but him 200 gold?

the only way they could make farming better without inflating the ecomomy and all that means, is buy making farming not a trade profit, but a self profit only, that essentially means they would give you items that you couldnt sell, but could use only to benefit your charachter. Truth is most people wouldnt really love that anyway.

Im not trying to be mean, or overlly complain about bugs, that is not my purpose, but is becoming clear that there is a serious problem with whatever QA process you have. Each patch consistently introduces new bugs, which upon going live, are generally discovered withing hours to minutes. Some are of course understandable, and have to do with large scale issues, random events that are hard to simulate,
however others are crystal clear even with minutes of any real play;

delayed jump
skill fixes that dont, in fact fix the skill in question
fixes that introduce new bugs to the same content that someone testing should be able to identify imediately.

You have to change your QA/testing strategy, it is simply not effective. It is not an issue of time, because with the slower patches we see as many bugs if not more. It is something intrinsic to the testing process.

Some suggestions;

testing server
invite more testers to access the dev builds
streamline the bugfix and test reporting process

Do not go forward with changes that introduce new bugs, (fixes on mild exploits that create progress blocking issues (fotm cliffside fixes)

Not trying to be offensive here, but i have seen much smaller companies with less resources deal with bugs faster, and more effectively (bugs that disappear one patch, come back with another patch, *barl the rampager)

If QA simply cannot identify bugs fast enough, then you probably need to introduce bug fixes patches more frequently, QA for 3 weeks for a bugfix that is uncovered to be a problem in 2 minutes of being live is not effective, better to let it go live, and get the fix out as soon as its ready in that case

This is a serious issue, and its going to severely hamper game development if you dont get a handle on it. Honestly im not one of the guys that expects/desires a perfect game, i know that you will have bugs, i know that introducing new content, on a newish engine is tricky, But your ability to find, identify and solve these bugs in a timely fashion effectively is disproportionally low.
Overall the game should be getting more stable and less buggy with time, but this is not really proving to be the case (well i admit the trading post is much improved)

nachtnebel.9168:

In fact there currently are at least three simple gear checks in higher FotM scales:
- if you don’t take Old Tom down before you run out of Tears you can’t beat him unless you exploit him
- the seals on the colossals hands require you to be able to take a certain amount of damage or you won’t be able to fight off the increasing number of mobs spawning in front of them
- if you are too low on HP and DPS beating the grawl shaman is impossible

im pretty sure i can beat level 10 in greens, and most of the things you talk about here are actually skill checks, (its highly unlikely that anyone would be in all greens and get to level 10, because they give you rares and exotics while you are doing fotm)

Beating old tom using up all tears doesnt seem probable for a 5 man team, done fractals in randoms, with people under 60 and was able to succeed. he simply doesnt have that much hp, and only one person needs to soak the damage, also, the poison field can be mitigated by team mechanics such as regeneration, null field, blast combos on light fields, the damage can be soaked by one player, or mostly dodged.

the left right hands, requires killing small groups of novices , you dont need high armor hp or dps at all here, if you clear out the non veterans every time you fight a room, you wont have massive pops, and the novices die fast for anyone, Many people try to speed run this, by not killing enemies, and require lots of defense, but that is just the power through it way to win,

• none of these enemies are immune to control effects,
  *i once did a run with only pants and shoes after the first fractal(guild), difficulty 6 or 8

grawl shaman is not really a dps fight, id say its mostly an endurance fight. Its about how well you can handle and mitigate the burn damages since a lot of the damage is burn, armor isnt even the biggest issue, heals, condition removal, paying attention the shaman and dealing with spawns is.

Agony resistance is a pretty eh mechanic, but you can get rings never going past 10, the rings that are infused are EXACTLY the same statwise except for agony resistance, anywhere outside fotm

i hope that the next iteration of buffs arent about damage mitigation or resists, i would prefer special traits and skill for different playstyles, or possibly buffs that increase your speed of completition and versatility like, a bonus to damage after an agony attack is triggered in your area, or reduces recasts while in a FOTM zone, If you are going to introduce gating progression only in FOTM, make it at least a type of fun one, where you can feel like your are truely bad kitten and what would normally be overpowered since it is a self contained progression.

ascended rings are just about right for obtaining, you have to get to level 10, once, after that you just have to do it once a day and you can get as many rings as you want,

the back piece is needs 1 item from the dungeon only, while it sucks that its random drop for some people, for most people they will see one way before level 10

now the numbers of items were foolish, i cant even understand how someone would sign off on 250 teir 6 items for one piece. all i can think is they put those numbers in back when we had a wealth of bots, and 250 teir 6 items would run you anywhere from 50 silver, to 12.5 gold.
changing that should be as simple as altering the database.

the content in terms of actual content isnt gated, the only reason to get high level ascended gear is to get more high level ascended gear.

there is a ton of problems with implementation, but not so much with the concepts of FOTM

Now, in the GW2 system, the worst thing they can do is add new teirs, because in actuallity, teirs is a straight up boost that makes content easier, whereas levels alone(due to level caping zones) is not, but i guess they had to because they didnt have much room to improve rewards with the demand that exotics bring for high level items, the only reason anything before was valuable at 80 was for people trying to get legendaries, which is a pretty small percentage.

Exotics should be able to be upgraded through some means into ascended. if ascended is replacing them directly it makes exotics value essentially only valuable for salvage or gambling in the mystic forge

GW1 had checks, they just built it in so people didnt notice, go try to do hard mode domain of anguish with no lightbringer, (40% more damage and 8% less damage taken for you and your heroes), lightbinger skills, or Sunspear skills. These were essentially the same type of mechanics, though i will admit that lightbringer title/skills and sunspear title/skills were a better execution of the same idea

Conner.4702:

Sadly the AMA was far from relieving concerns for me. Saying they never intended ascended items to be such a grind yet implemented such a steep cost increase over exotics say otherwise. You do not increase the cost by a magnitude of at least 10 if you don’t want it to be a grind. No one can convince me they didn’t realize this when they put it in, because if true they will need to look for people with more forsight to start calling some of the shots.
Also it seems they think progression only comes from gears, levels and other stat related things.
To me they are just trying to rewrite history. Sure they never said it wouldn’t have vertical progression, but on the flip side they never said it would. If they truly had planned this they would have been upfront about it and all of this could have been avoided. He was severely downplaying the effect ascended gear had on the community in my opinion.

Actually they did say it would,

""Q: What of the level cap? Have you guys decided whether you’re going to be increasing the level cap in future expansions?

Colin: Yeah. The level cap will be 80 on the initial release of the game, and we absolutely would increase it further into the game, probably through expansions is the most likely place we would do that."

Episode 68 Time = 58:35"

this was said some time ago, i see it sited in other sites, from oct 2011.

So yeah, i understand a lot of people believed and assumed that they would have no progression as the game went on, but honestly Anet said they would long ago, they in fact designed the game to work with increasing levels. While ascended gear may have been a new, and maybe not well planned solution to percieved issues, the game was always meant to have progression and an increasing cap.

Did you know early on, they played with the idea of having no level caps at all? just diminishing returns on high level stats or something.

Anet always saw GW2 as being a game where the main reward was experience, and they created a fairly scalable game in regards to experience, sidekicking, etc.

That said, I dont think the game was designed with a gear progression in mind, while their level system is fairly scalable, and they make every facet of the game give experience, Their itemization is not really. The biggest differences in effectiveness with their current iterations come from having more stats at a specific level. (IE the best way to gain power is basically to have more stats, not to level up, and for some proffessions certain levels unlock new functionality, but not all)

going forward they should probably stay away from statistical item increases, and use mostly level cap buffs, ability and trait expansions. I also think they should work on more cosmetic upgrades, not in the terms of gear itself, but in the terms of skill visualization changes, new animations for skills, (this is not limited to effects but also how the charachter moves, yes its more expensive to develop, but its also the type of thing worth spending a lot of time on for a player.

for example, if a mesmer could get a rapier which changes the sword type animations/effects/visualisations from slashing to peircing skills, i think people would have little problem having to spend a lot of energy, or do a bunch of fairly difficult quests to achieve, actually many would, but they cant say its unfair.

Grav.4790:

Ditton.3149:

yeah nobody cares about that honestly man.

You cared enough to respond. Just wait till you get to 80 and the grind will hit you.

its a reward from doing the daily fractal at 20+, why would you do 200 more runs in less than 200 days if that is your goal?

lot of misinformation in the replies in this thread.

legendaries still have the same stats as exotics.

ascended gear is another power teir, but it is not the prestige item.
for example, rings are about 30% chance for completing a level 10 fractal dungeon. which requires
NO agony gear

getting level 10 in fractal is hardly a grind, and it isnt super rare to get the item required to make back pieces, my friend has 9 of them, and the recipe requires one, by level 10

now the rare items in the game?
infinite light
anomoly
volcanus
precursors
teir 3 armors

yes teir 3 armors are harder to get than ascended gear.

so yeah, while they need to do some balancing, place ascended gear through out the game, and make rewards better, the fact is they still arent making you have to excessively grind for stats.

there were two major offenders with ascended items, the infusions which used a ton of mats, and the cape which uses 250 teir 6 items, but they said in the AMA that that was a mistep, and they dont want things to be that grindy to obtain.

long story short
a lot of people decided that the manifesto meant they would have a flat stat cap, when it really had nothing to do with a flat stat cap, IN FACT
they said in interviews MONTHS before even beta, that they would probably have level cap increases in expansions.

no one lied to anyone in that respect. Hold them accountable for excessive grind, but to say that horizontal progression was promised is a complete lie.

you can have intense grind with horizontal progression just fine, i remember ffxi stayed at level 75 for years, but in order to get the best of these various stat set ups you had to grind for years at times, im not even opposed to that game, but the fact is grind and vertical progression are not one and the same.