(edited by phys.7689)
The crazy part is, people are complaining that they might have to play a charachter for a few hours before they fully unlock all of its potential. Think about that.
you may have to play a charachter for a few hours, in order to get every skill/trait available to it.
a few hours
It’s not about playing for a few hours in order to get every skill and trait. It’s about playing for a few hours for each character to get access to skills and traits to which I already have earned access.
the stuff the OP brought up in this thread wasnt as much about progress being taken away, he was more talking about the system itself being bad.
a lot of his information is not that accurate either.
Its entirely possible they have some type of plan for grandfathering, or to at least mitigate it. If they choose the wrong system for grandfathering though, they will be messing up the system before they even start.
essentially yes. The highest level of the game is not usually required for achieving a your base abilities, which makes sense because the most advanced content expects you to have fully mastered your abilities, which means you should already have them.
and thats why other than your friends, nobody wants a level 10 in a level 20+ fractal run, and why WvW people generally mock the up levels in chat that they kill en masse, and sadly, also why its fairly rare to find a dungeon run at the minimum level.
And thats also why its not great game design to encourage people who havent even gotten their basic abilities, to be doing endgame content in order to get their basic abilties.
to be honest, i dont really think most serious WvW people like having people who are there for any other reason than WvW. They hate on the people who used to be trying to map completion, they farm people trying to get skill points, they derided people there for achievements, they mock the karma trainers
Level 35 dungeons are not end game content.
You say most games don’t make you do ‘end game’ content to progress your character. But most games also allow you to get better gear through such content. So, most games do have progression associated with that content. But in gw2, you can get level 80 exotics from a level 35 dungeon, and lv 80 exotic berserkers from lv 75 dungeons. So then, where is the progression from doing lv 80 content? Because we aren’t getting it in gear, and after this update hits, we aren’t getting it in our alts/traits/skills either. And please don’t try to tell me the kitten poor ascended rings are our progression.
like i said, unfortunately, people dont want to run dungeons with level 35s. Its not impossible, but it is the exception rather than the rule. If you have a group of friends, or you are willing to wait around longer in a group finder, sure you can go do a dungeon at 35, but its not how the community generally chooses to play. Even casual dungeon lfgs will generally say lvl 80 all welcome.
the post level 80 progression is now masteries in pve, and WvW ranks for WvW. this is part of why you dont get skill points for leveling after 80, because you dont level any more. When you hit 80, and you have HoT your experience bar functions differently.
core skill progression is now designed to be something you generally do before 80. And the elite specializations are designed so that you can get them from the new content if you already used/have no hero points.
i will say this, with the new system, level 35s will have more skills/traits unlocked, so maybe people will be slightly less opposed to teaming up with them. Right now though? a level 35 charachter doesnt have the skills and hasnt even unlocked one selectable trait.
(edited by phys.7689)
I know this much- my credit card is staying in my wallet till I know more.
I’m a WvW player. “Thats what I like to do”. I invested in this game for that aspect alone.WvW players are talking about this, and as it stands now a single large guild transferring off server can be a wrecking ball to a servers wvw play. How many are going to be upset?
I want to be optimistic, but I’ve already experienced radical “game changes” in other MMO’s that ended up creating nothing but a mass exodus. I’m not going to put myself through that again by trying to stick it out if players start falling off.
to be completely honest, most wvw hardcore players dip into pve whenever its usefull to them. At the start of this game you either spent 35-75 additional hours unlocking your skills, or you dipped into PVE.
Likewise many WvW players jumped on the champion trains in frostgorge to get gold for runes/cosmetics/etc
even one of the detractors somewhere said they go to pve to farm linen.
WvW players arent as inflexible, and ineffecient as people are making them out to be. Most of them would rather spend an hour in pve, then 30 hours in WvW. Many of them dont like people who play WvW in styles that are motivated by charachter/account building.
they dont like karma train farmers
they dont like achievement focused play
they didnt like people there to get map complete.
i dont think they would be too happy with a mass of people karma training in order to get their specialization unlocks or their extra skill points for side builds they will never use in WvW.
Congratulations on taking just over a minute per skill challenge. That’s ten seconds communing, (including moving to it), 20-30 seconds to a minute to clear mobs away from some of them, and 2-3 minutes moving between them. Good speed boost you had going there, along with leaps etc on your warrior cooldowns. Oh wait, 2-3 minutes per would be 88-132 minutes, bit more than an hour and you’re rushing it, knowing exactly where they are and probably using waypoints too.
It’s the fact that it has to be done before you can use an alt that irks. ’I’ll play my ranger today’ Oh wait, first I need to redo the armor, change trinkets, work out a new build, calculate how many hero points I need (including elite line no doubt), then run through every map from LA to Orr, THEN I can start the ‘about an hour per character’ (read 4+ Hours). Then go to several other maps (running- no waypoints opened) and grab at least 21 more- and that 44 assumed no events in the way, no aggro, no champs/bosses/blocked points.
It won’t encourage build diversity, and it sure as hell won’t encourage people to try out more classes. we’ll be driven even more into ‘this zerk build only or gtfo lfg calls’.
Of course poeple who just play ‘spam 1’ zerk builds won’t even notice- a bit like wvw lag that kills casters but allows certain skills on heavy classes to continue without a porblem.
no it doesnt have to be done before you can use an alt.
every level 80 charachter will have 400 hero points automatically
there is no build that cannot be made with 400 hero points
with 400 points, you can unlock every single skill in the game, and 3 specializations. that means any build that exists, can be created just for being level 80. In fact, you will be like 5 points shy of completing the 4th specialization.
If you dont use two types of skills, you can unlock every other skill type and every traitline.
basically it is impossible that you cannot make your favorite build, for many people they wont even need to do any skill challenges for any of the builds that they use.
i think a lot of people complaining about their 20 alts, havent realized that all these alts will start off with way more abilities at their disposal than they have now.
but lets be honest, the right place for basic charachter progression should be soloable, not too difficult, and not linked to elite group activities which are not available to everyone. This is why it is the BASIC starter charachter progression that you only have to do once per charachter.
So unlocking ELITE specializations should be linked to “soloable, not too difficult” content? So MAXING a character should be linked to “soloable, not too difficult” content?
Also where is this content that is not available to everyone?
essentially yes. The highest level of the game is not usually required for achieving a your base abilities, which makes sense because the most advanced content expects you to have fully mastered your abilities, which means you should already have them.
and thats why other than your friends, nobody wants a level 10 in a level 20+ fractal run, and why WvW people generally mock the up levels in chat that they kill en masse, and sadly, also why its fairly rare to find a dungeon run at the minimum level.
And thats also why its not great game design to encourage people who havent even gotten their basic abilities, to be doing endgame content in order to get their basic abilties.
to be honest, i dont really think most serious WvW people like having people who are there for any other reason than WvW. They hate on the people who used to be trying to map completion, they farm people trying to get skill points, they derided people there for achievements, they mock the karma trainers
the new system is better for a new charachter that you actually want to play than any other system before it.
leveling to 80 alone gives you enough points to create any build, in fact you can create the majority of builds available with just leveling to 80.
If you were leveling how people normally level you would have enough skill challenges to unlock every skill by the time you were about 35
If you autoleveled to 80, it would take you about 1.5-3 hours.the main problems
how will they grandfather older charachters, having to spend any time at all to get back what you lost is a very negative feeling for many players.
the next big issue is versatility of aquisition.
i think the best solution would be a soul bound method of unlocking skill challenges that were previously unlocked on your account for doing various things. (for versatility)
this method would require you to play or do things on that charachterand then giving completely unlocked charachters access to 65 uses of that mechanic.
How can you say “actually want to play” and mean open world pve opposed to dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp. Do you consider open world pve to be more difficult than those 4 activities? Because I think it is fair to say, if you complete higher difficulty content, that is more deserving of progression than completing lower difficulty content.
You say “normally level”, is it so hard for you to believe people play differently than you? Anet introduced tomes of knowledge and writs of experience for a reason. They have pretty much said switching toons at the end of a dungeon is fine. They have made it clear buying dungeons is fine too. I mean, how much clearer can it get. There are a large variety of play styles.
Finally, I want to say, I think that a problem which really deserves to be brought up is, yes lv 80 will have 400/465 heros points. But elite specializations are going to require heros points too right? And again, we are forced to play open world pve 9 times just to try out that new content on all our toons. No alternative options, no progression through dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp. Its open world pve or nothing.
i say actually want to play that charachter, in relation to actually playing that charachter. IE if you intend to actually play a charachter, the new method is faster than any previous system for getting max unlock.
when i say normally level, im talking about how charachters are normally leveled, normal doesnt mean every single person ever, it means how it is generally done.
you do get progression through dungeon/fractals/wvw/pvp
you get 400 points from doing those things.
i can guarantee you that just doing skill challenges alone will not get you 80 levels of experience. Most of your skill points actually comes from doing the things you talked about.
as far as the future of specializations, hero challenges may in the future be found in dungeons, and in WvW, they can even put them in fractals. They can put them wherever they want to. In fact skill challenges are currently found in WvW.
but lets be honest, the right place for basic charachter progression should be soloable, not too difficult, and not linked to elite group activities which are not available to everyone. This is why it is the BASIC starter charachter progression that you only have to do once per charachter.
65 skill point places, let’s say it takes me ten minutes to map, locate them, do them as I have no clue where they are and will need a map program on my other comp to compare to find them on the map. That’s 650 minutes, or a little shy of 11 hours of game time, or maybe 4-5 days of playing per toon. let’s say I just do 20 of my toons before I die of boredom at running around pve maps, that’s around 80-100 days or around THREE MONTHS of doing something that doesn’t interest me just to have skills available should I wish (or my team want) to use them.
So glad there is no grind in this game- and that’s before having to grind out funds for new armors, weapons, find laurels for the revised trinkets to make the builds work, etc etc .
So the argument for removing applied fortitude in wvw is that it created an unlevel playing field between newer players and veterans..but what exactly does not having access to entire trait lines do? Take a break, come back and suddenly you’re faced with weeks in pve before you can access all the skills you want for your build…
Not everyone plays at breakneck pace of a few hours to do 65 skill points- more likely on average that ten minutes per is optimistic for most of us who will get distracted or more likely log off after 5 or ten in a couple hours or more as it’s boring, tedious and not at all what we want to be doing.
Will Anet change the system? Not a chance.
a slow player will take about 5 hours to get 65 skill challenges, i know this, i have tried it out. A fast player can probably do it in 1.5 hours.
by the way are you saying you currently have 20 charachters fully unlocked?
btw even 5 hours to get access to max level skills is not alot for an RPG at all. In fact i cant even think of one RPG, online or offline that allows you to do that.
heck even most adventure games dont let you do that.
(edited by phys.7689)
a few hours
A few hours per character doing something you don’t like.
I have 8 chars, let’s say it takes me 3 hours per char, I don’t want to spend 24 hours grinding skill points to try out different builds.
Anet’s “play how you want” philosophy is what got a LOT of people playing, they’re taking a crap on it by forcing everyone to do one specific activity to unlock everything a character has to offer.Stop ignoring the core problem, Anet promised progress by different means -level & skill points by WvW, PvE or sPvP – they’re not keeping their word in the expansion.
they never promised skill points in spvp, in fact spvp wasnt connected to anything at all for most of this games life.
they never promised you could get everything in the game in WvW either, (because you cant) they just promised you could go from 1-80 there.its not a few hours to get a functional charachter, or your favorite build, or you favorite 2-3 builds, its a few hours to get everything that currently exists that you may never even use.
if something isnt worth a few hours of effort to you, it really has almost no value at all.
24 hours seems like more than a “few” hours to me.
They promised you’d be free to progress in your own way, that’s the whole point of the “play how you want” philosophy. It didn’t include levels or skill points in sPVP originally, but they added’em with reward tracks.
Levels and skill points have always been obtainable thru WvW, in fact, they even said you could level a character there without ever setting a foot in PvE back in the closed beta days.
My characters are worth the 2k+ hours I put into’em, I want to continue playing the way I want.
If 2k+ hours ain’t crap to you then we got different standards.Btw another Anet promise
“We have a lot of fans who feel abused by the process of other MMOs. MMOs have the assumption that you’re supposed to dedicate your life to it. Each expansion pack is going to invalidate all the work you did before. It’s going to be a constantly moving goal post. Because we have a lot of people coming to Guild Wars 2 who have done that kind of thing before, they don’t want to be doing it again.”
How is forcing WvW players or any non-PvE explorer to grind out hero challenges (my case would be 65*8 = 520, sounds fun!) to reobtain what they already have not invalidating their progress?
By your logic my characters ain’t worth crap ‘coz I’m not willing to grind almost 3 times the total amount of skill points available in the game today.
first of all so far people in this thread arent talking about grandfathering or progress lost, they are talking about the design itself, so no, im not saying you should lose progress.
second of all, its 1.5-2 hours per CHARACHTER. thinking about things on the basis of how many charachters you have is incorrect thinking. Its like someone says spending an hour in transportation to go to a movie is too much, because i will see 1000 movies in my life, and that is 1000 hours driving to and from the movies.
now i think they could offer some other ways of obtaining skills that fit within the system, but no matter what its not going to fit do whatever you want. Right now in fact it doesnt fit do whatever you want. If you dont like mass killing champions, there really isnt much options for getting skills in PVE and WvW.
a few hours
A few hours per character doing something you don’t like.
I have 8 chars, let’s say it takes me 3 hours per char, I don’t want to spend 24 hours grinding skill points to try out different builds.
Anet’s “play how you want” philosophy is what got a LOT of people playing, they’re taking a crap on it by forcing everyone to do one specific activity to unlock everything a character has to offer.Stop ignoring the core problem, Anet promised progress by different means -level & skill points by WvW, PvE or sPvP – they’re not keeping their word in the expansion.
they never promised skill points in spvp, in fact spvp wasnt connected to anything at all for most of this games life.
they never promised you could get everything in the game in WvW either, (because you cant) they just promised you could go from 1-80 there.
its not a few hours to get a functional charachter, or your favorite build, or you favorite 2-3 builds, its a few hours to get everything that currently exists that you may never even use.
if something isnt worth a few hours of effort to you, it really has almost no value at all.
After all this time has passed, and looking back on the updates, tweaks, buffs, nerfs, and reworking of existing systems from day one of this game being released. I will never understand why they felt the need to rework traits in the game. What was so wrong about it? What was so difficult about buying three different books that unlocked all your traits in different tiers? Why fix something that isn’t broken, or hard to understand? I just don’t know.
Both anet and the playerbase wanted a scavenger hunt system tied to progression, kind of like GW1’s elite skill capturing, so anet added that into their trait system. The idea was good, but it was not well executed, and the game got worse for it. Now, they are changing traits to make them simpler to get again (in fact, simpler than the first system), while also making them easier to understand and that would make sense with the new specialization system.
I guess I can understand that then. I remember enjoying capturing elite skills in Guild Wars, but i mostly just used tomes for them. Maybe a few skills could have been locked in each tier instead of all of them? Regardless of that I agree with the poor exicution. It’s the main reason i stopped making alts. I just hope this new system isn’t too bad. Still uncertain how this progressive system for traits works, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
the new system is better for a new charachter that you actually want to play than any other system before it.
leveling to 80 alone gives you enough points to create any build, in fact you can create the majority of builds available with just leveling to 80.
If you were leveling how people normally level you would have enough skill challenges to unlock every skill by the time you were about 35
If you autoleveled to 80, it would take you about 1.5-3 hours.
the main problems
how will they grandfather older charachters, having to spend any time at all to get back what you lost is a very negative feeling for many players.
the next big issue is versatility of aquisition.
i think the best solution would be a soul bound method of unlocking skill challenges that were previously unlocked on your account for doing various things. (for versatility)
this method would require you to play or do things on that charachter
and then giving completely unlocked charachters access to 65 uses of that mechanic.
edited for space
TLDR; New skill/trait unlock will force everyone and their alts to map completion and limit our choice of unlocking skills by creating time and hero point sink, forcing us to unlock skills/traits that we don’t use to unlock those we want.
ok a lot of slightly off information here.
- you wont have to unlock every other skill, yes you will have to unlock some skills before others
THIS ALREADY EXISTS RIGHT NOW. you have to unlock two teirs of regular utilities before you can unlock the third teir, you have to unlock two elites before the last elite. right now, some traits require you to spend 50 points before you can get them, some 26, etc. - each skill type is separately packaged, this means if you dont use traps, you dont have to buy any traps, if you dont use manipulations, you dont have to buy any manipulations. Racial skills werent even one of the options, so i dont know whats going to happen to them. Specializations were separately packaged, so if you dont use healing/vitality line, dont get it.
- 400 hero points for leveling actually gives more skills/traits than you ever got just for leveling before (465 for max skills/traits). before you got 76 points, which is generally less than half of the points you need to unlock all skills.
- based on what i said before, and how people tend to build now, leveling to 80, most people will be able to recreate all the builds they actually use without getting a single skill point. Have a theif? never use traps or venoms? congrats you can unlock every other skill and trait available just from leveling. Have a mesmer? never use the healing traitline? you can access every almost every other skill and trait in the game.
- there is no skill or trait that you cant get with the base 400 points. There is no one build you cannot make with the base 400 points. In the past, there actually were a number of builds you could not make with 76 points, but not so now.
- you can have more than 465 hero points, you just currently only have use for 465 of them.
- doing skill challenges is still the fastest and most effecient way of obtaining skill points even now.
Any new charachter will spend less time unlocking skills than is currently spent in order to unlock skills. The difference is that some of that time will actually be spent on that charachter.
3 ORR maps alone gives 44 skill challenges, you can unlock all the traits you need, only doing the skill challenges on 6 maps.
- you dont have to do the same challenges 8 times. you only need 65, there are 220 in the world. you dont have to do the same ones.
The crazy part is, people are complaining that they might have to play a charachter for a few hours before they fully unlock all of its potential. Think about that.
you may have to play a charachter for a few hours, in order to get every skill/trait available to it.
a few hours
No, everyone could play how they wanted. If you want to run around in open world pve leveling up through events and doing skill challenges you could. IF you wanted to do more challenging content like dungeons/fractals/wvw/pvp you also could.
Look, open world pve is much easier than those other things. It should be slower, because its a low skill activity. It requires almost no mastery of the combat system, nor any synergy between classes/skills. Also, don’t forget, skill scrolls are a drop from lots of monsters, so you don’t need to get each one via leveling/skill challenges even in open world pve.
I am NOT an old player. My account is 13 months old. There has been no major changes to the system since i’ve joined. I have a plethora of skill points because I just play how I want, level up my alts when I am ready, and never worry about it.
As for the gold farming. Well it sounds to me like your using 1+ year old data. In which case, why do you think it still applies?
Instead of screwing over all the players who enjoy choice, here is something that seems like it would work. Keep the current system, make all skill challenges give a number of skill points equal to the level of their zone divided by ten. I.e challenges in a lv 76 zone give 8 skill points rather than 1.
Now, YOU can play how you want in open world pve without everyone who enjoys a different playstyle losing their options.
so wait a second, you are comparing the current system to the new system, and saying the current one is better?
i was comparing the initial one because it was substantially less grindy.
right now in order to get all your traits you need to spend
43 gold and 360 skill points, or do a specific task for each trait, each of these tasks is generally more time consuming than getting 1 trait point by far.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trait_guide
that doesnt account for the 150-160 skill points you need to unlock your skills.
you currently get about 76 from leveling.
this means you need 43 gold and 435 extra skill points after you hit level 80 to max your charchter
43 gold 435 extra skill points compared to 0 gold and 65 extra skill points.
thats not even a competition.
as for your solution, it solves none of the problems with the current system, it infact magnifies the problem.
you dont solve inflation by giving people more money, you just increase the inflation. Your system would have new players having to grind insane amounts of time just to get new skills/traits as they are released.
what is your ideal world method for unlocking skills on different proffessions?
WvW is pvp with the central premise being you take the charachter and everything you have earned with it, and pit against other players and everything they have earned.
this is why in WvW level gives you an advantage
gear earned gives you an advantage
player skill gives you an advantage
gold earned gives you advantage
how many players like you gives you an advantage.
having a guild with unlocks gives you an advantage.they created this mode essentially to be PVP with your main charachters/friends/server. Its essentially progression focused open world mass pvp. Sure you can level your low level charachter in WvW, but you will likely be repeatedly murderered fairly easily by fully progressed charachters, and you will likely have to try to blend into zergs and take pot shots in order to achieve anything.
The vast majority of WvW players play pve also.Yes they can seperate it and give out unlocks pretty easily, i wont mind, but is that actually what players want? im not so sure. Many WvW players seem to like the core systems being linked.
I know all that..
and effectively what it comes down to in the end is that people who only play WvW just have to accept that WvW is what it is.. and if they don’t want to play the PvE game then too bad for them.. and they just have to deal with it..
Perhaps Anet should look back at Gw1’s pvp only character mechanic and think about replicating that in Gw2 with WvW..
you can make a WvW only character.. starts at lvl 80 with all its skills unlocked and a free set of account bound choose stat rare gear but has all of its access to PvE utterly blocked off
maybe that will please them
they could do that, but in GW1 they didnt start with all skills unlocked.
it gave you a starter pack of skills, and for the others it used whatever you unlocked in pve on a charachter, or you had to buy the unlocks with points you got for winning in pvp.
Or you could buy an unlock pack from the ingame store.
not disagreeing with you overall, just pointing out the still made players work/pay for skill unlocks even on pvp only charachters. It wouldnt be a horrible idea i think.
On consideration of this argument, I have to confess I can see two sides to the issue. On one hand, I have to wonder if it was a mistake for ANet to make it too easy to level up and max out a character’s non-gear capabilities in GW2. On the other hand, I also have to wonder if it’s a mistake for ANet to continue to try to eke more mileage out of three-year-old content.
There’s also the issue of new players or new characters. Obviously, there needs to be some system for core spec and skill progression. For that purpose, the incoming system does not seem half bad. It’s certainly more likely that I will level a new character under it than under the current system.
That leaves the issue of existing maxed characters who avoided getting ~1/3rd of the existing skill challenges in PvP (less, if you include the 13 in WvW). If it was not a mistake for ANet to allow these characters to level up so “easily” (Tomes) or get maxed skill/trait progression without touching much of the game, why is it now necessary to make them do some of that “leveling” stuff — no matter how much or little relative effort is involved?
Once I pose that question, I wonder about the conversion system. Obviously there will have to be a routine to determine a character’s current level — otherwise 80’s would not get their 400 points. Also obviously, there needs to be a routine to detect how many challenges have been completed to correctly allocate points for those. How difficult would it be to add a routine to: (a) detect total skill points earned; and (b) assign Hero Points for 65 of them as if they were challenges completed. That does not even seem complicated.
Where the (possible) complication arises is if there is a cap on Hero Points of 202. If there is, the assignment of Hero Points in some sort of grandfathering — whether it be based on skill points or some other factor — would also have to somehow count those “grandfathered” points towards the cap. This might mean tagging 65 of the challenges as having been completed, even if they weren’t. How does that affect map completion, should the player ever decide to pursue it? Does that mean they get credit for not doing a challenge? Or does it mean that character cannot ever do map completion?
I don’t claim to know what’s going on in ANet meetings, but I’d not be surprised if the issues in the prior paragraph came up, and are at least in part responsible for the lack of an announcement about possible grandfathering.
problem conceptually is a hero point is more valuable than a skill point was, for example, in the new planned system
1 hero challenge is 1/5th of a skill and 1/60 of a traitline
in the current system
1 skill point is like 5/27th of skill OR 1/72 of a traitline. New specializations would be like 1/25th of a skill or 1/100th of traitline.
I will say that the old systems were in fact a mistake, however, even if it was mistake, i dont think anet can be to much in the habit of ex post facto changes.
they should grandfather players, as long as doing so does not mess up the system they are working with, or create these edge case errors. Providing it does not take an insane amount of time/development to do so.
WvW and PvE are the same thing, you cannot have 1 getting full unlock without affecting the other. PvP will have the option to buy the traits just as before no doubt.
WvW is just PvP in a PvE style environment… a hybrid of the game modes
it would not be difficult to seperate them entirely Anet simply have choosen not topeople can argue WvW is PvE but it isnt.. it just shares elements
and since the core focus of WvW is to fight other players that defaults it as PvP content
WvW is pvp with the central premise being you take the charachter and everything you have earned with it, and pit against other players and everything they have earned.
this is why in WvW level gives you an advantage
gear earned gives you an advantage
player skill gives you an advantage
gold earned gives you advantage
how many players like you gives you an advantage.
having a guild with unlocks gives you an advantage.
they created this mode essentially to be PVP with your main charachters/friends/server. Its essentially progression focused open world mass pvp. Sure you can level your low level charachter in WvW, but you will likely be repeatedly murderered fairly easily by fully progressed charachters, and you will likely have to try to blend into zergs and take pot shots in order to achieve anything.
The vast majority of WvW players play pve also.
Yes they can seperate it and give out unlocks pretty easily, i wont mind, but is that actually what players want? im not so sure. Many WvW players seem to like the core systems being linked.
actually you specifically were saying you think the system should be moving away from charachter progression. So if its a straw man, its the straw man you constructed.
and you havent done that content with that proffession.
So when you were quoting others you were repplying to me? Sounds totally honest and reasonable on your part. More straw please.
Since the content doesn’t change depending on the profession you’re using, there is no reason to repeat it with all your alts only to regain whatever progress you’ve already unlocked for your character. You’re not learning anything new here. You’re grinding.
Going by your logic, let’s force the pve crowd to “experience” the game. To unlock previously achieved progression you’d have to grind 10 lvls in spvp and another 20 wvw ranks. It’s only a few hours of play and it’s really really good for ya! Ammirite?
Bad design is bad design, and no amount of rationalization or white knighting can change that.
my quotes discussing the topic were in reply to what the posters said, when i quoted you, i was talking about what you said, like the quote FROM YOU that i showed you in the last post.
look at my posting history, i am far from a white knight. I analyze each situation based on the information present, many times that has been negative. However, the system itself is superior in design to the current, and even the original system.
Content does change based on the proffession you are using, thats the whole point of different proffessions.
I cant beat an encounter the same way on my theif, as i can on my guardian.
My logic has no connection to forcing pve players to do spvp, or previously earned progression or WvW ranks.
Spvp is completely self contained it has nothing to do with anything.
I have said repeatedly they should grandfather people who earned full unlocks as long as it doesnt create inconsistencies and problems within the system.
While i believe the old systems and the grandfathering were a mistake, i dont think anet can make players responsible for their design errors all the time.
The point is that in considering how they should go about grandfathering, you must consider what the new system is trying to achieve, and how said grandfathering effects players in the long run. Just creating any method of grandfathering that doesnt fit the design intent, or the system they created just creates more problems down the road.
Who cares if you use to need 25 skill points for heal skills? You could earn them playing how you want. If your enjoying yourself, its not much of a grind.
3 hours of gold farming? come on, the most expensive trait is only 3 g. I consistently pug cof1 in 8 mins. ac p123 in 45 mins total. Hell, ever arah runs are commonly 20-30 minutes.
Oh i know what the problem is. I’m clearly doing that content incorrectly because I never “learned to play” my profession by doing skill challenges.
no, you could play them by playing how YOU wanted without much of a grind(subjectively, not objective time spent). getting it via leveling is 25 levels, which is 12.5-25 hours in the open world 25-36 dungeon runs, which has a large variation of time required, from 4 hours to 400 hours, 6 hours+ in farming train depending on your luck. the minimum amount of effort wa sin the familly of 5 hours, for one skill. You just didnt realize this because you were always ahead in skill points, but an actual new player? it was horrible, and the future was it getting worse.
i notice you totally ignored that it took 360 skill points to unlock all your traits under the current system.
under the current system they would have started charging insane fees for endgame skills, further making the game have illogical prices in time for getting anything.
That is the flaw of a non scalable system, for old players it was fairly easy, for new players it was a huge hurdle.
the new system it will take you at the most 5 skill points per skill. You can expect something in that family for future skills, if they give hero points properly.
that takes 5 skill challenges.
lets see, under the old systems, even if they kept the same amounts
you would have needed 25×5 for the regular skills, and probably 50 at least for the elite. or 150 skill points just for the 5 new skills, and if specializations used the same amount as current skill trait lines, 72 skill points for the line. though since it is meant to be an endgame 80+ line it would probably have been more expensive.
so 222-300 skill points versus what will probably be anywhere from 60-100 under the new system. There isnt even enough skill points on the game map to account for that.
as an aside, the 3 hours of gold farming was based on the first few months when earning gold was a lot harder, when they corrected the system(based on inflation) the gold cost was 42 gold for all the traits. Which is probably why they removed gold from the equation, its value is ever shifting. back then one dungeon gave like 15 silver, or was it 28, and even the better teams took around 10 minutes (usually much more for most dungeon paths)per run. So you were looking a 2 hours-8 hours of dungeon paths to get the approx 2.5 gold you needed.
wow can’t wait to do boring skill challenges on all of my 9 geared 80s. love wasting my time and being bored. love repeating tasks to get traits I used to have back. love unlocking skills twice. love fighting brainless AI on 80s and pressing F. love walking through the same map that I walked through in beta almost 3 years ago. so much fun.
remember when traits used to free? remember the last revamp when everyone with everything unlocked got to keep their progression? yeah well I do. can’t say I would be thrilled to have all of my progress wiped.
you mean when traits costed the equivalent of 3 hours of gold farming? and it took more skill challenges to unlock your skills than it will now take to unlock your skills and traits?
or you mean when they grandfathered old level 1 charachters who never earned anything into the new system, while new players had to go crazy doing trials or spending 360 skill points to get their traits and another 150 to get their skills?
dont conflate wanting to be grandfathered with a superior system, neither of the old systems was any less grindy.
The old system allowed you the choice. If you made the decision to level new characters through old characters, that was your choice. You could play how you wanted, I could play how I wanted. Now we all have to play how you want.
yeah, accept making it play how you wanted created 25 skill point heals, and traits that needed 360 skill points to unlock traits. And made the dev team want to develop a new system before adding new traits/skills.
So yes, no matter what some one is going to be affected.
(edited by phys.7689)
your right picking up a skewer of meat on my warrior is so thrillingly different than on my gaurdian. Oh joy.
so dont do that skill challenge. You realize you dont have to do every skill challenge in the game to unlock specializations right?
How am i suppose to know which skill challenges are which when I run towards them on my map?
Look, whether you like open pve or not, I think we can both agree, before there were a large variety of ways to progress, and now there appear to be a lot less. So, do you like the removal of choice?
i prefer the removal of choice when that choice creates inflation and a non scalable system.
the reason the new skills used to cost 25 skill points? just because over glut of skill points. The reason they designed a trait system that would require 360 skill points if you didnt want to do the events? over glut.
A system where its more effecient to enter farm mode on my old charachter to level my new charachter? bad design.
you know how much it will cost to unlock all traits on your charachter in the new system? no gold, less skill points than it used to cost than at the start of the game to unlock just skills in order to unlock both skills AND traits
leveling 1-80 used to get you about 60% of the skill points to unlock all skills
leveling 1-80 now will get you 80% of skills and traits
I wont even compare it to the current trait system, because thats not even a contest in terms of grind.
its system is actually a smaller grind than either other system. It gives skill points a purpose, and sets up a scalable expandable system for proffesion expansion based on going out and going on adventures.
Could it be improved? yes
should they come up with some sort of grandfathering system? yes
is it better than either system that came before it? yes
your right picking up a skewer of meat on my warrior is so thrillingly different than on my gaurdian. Oh joy.
so dont do that skill challenge. You realize you dont have to do every skill challenge in the game to unlock specializations right?
you realize there will be all new skill challenges in the Hot area, as well as skill challenges in WvW.
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I DO want to go on new adventures. But doing the same skill challenges NINE times is not NEW.
Should i be able to see every charachter ending in street fighter because i beat the game with ryu?
the whole point of these different proffesions is the play and feel different, even if you are doing the same content. They have different skills/synergies/traits/limitations/strengths. This is why adding new classes/proffessions/jobs is seen as a major addition to the game, because the same content is different.
As someone who has leveled every proffession at least once, i will tell you these classes play fairly differently by an large, and handle the same content in different ways.
the way i fight an underwater largo on my theif, is not the same way i fight an underwater largo on my mesmer.
On my engineer soloing a hero challenge that has a champion babysitting it was doing smoke field invisible blast finisher chain for 3 invisible stacks
on my ranger it was actually soloing the champion via battle with swapping pets.
for my theif hitting a bunch of points faster was about using movement skills and teleports with dodges and steals on white creatures for swiftness, for my engineer it was about coming up with a trait set up that allowed me swiftness at all times for kit swapping combined with speed shoes and rocket boots jumps.
this experience of doing the same challenges is different depending on which class you are doing and how its built.
im not opposed to grandfathering, as long as it works well within the system, Im at this point more responding to the people who are saying that havin to play a charachter for a few hours to reach max progression is a bad idea.
really? a strawman? nobody said that having to play a character a few hours to reach max progression is a bad idea. everybody is saying that being forced to play all 8 alts for a few hours to REGAIN stuff we already had is a bad idea. everybody is saying that we’re not experiencing the content cause we’ve done it already, some of us multiple times. We’ve seen it, there’s nothing to be gained. NOTHING. Only time lost, gold lost and a huge sense of grind. That screams of bad design. I get it you like it. Allow others to not. And at the very least understand that not everyone plays like you. And don’t use strawman again. It points to a person whose intellectual honesty is low.
actually you specifically were saying you think the system should be moving away from charachter progression. So if its a straw man, its the straw man you constructed.
You -the player- progress, not the character you’re playing. So i don’t see any point in individual character progression.
and you havent done that content with that proffession.
i thought the point of pve was fun? I don’t think many players consider this fun, at the very least i think we can agree doing it 9 times would be pretty grindy. I want to experience all the classes. Doing skill challenges is not experiencing them. Its blocking them.
the point of pve is fun, but only if you enjoy pve.
If you just want to experience the classes, play spvp.
If you want to experience adventuring in the game world with those classes, part of that experience is game world progression.
you know how they keep saying that they want the game to focus on the journey? thats why they want you to want to earn at least some part of your charachters development by experiencing the game world.
essentially they want pve to be about going on adventures and becoming stronger, thats what the skill point progression system they are instituting is about, and they are trying to build a system that expands with that as a basis.
When they release new specializations? you will get them by going on new adventures (probably combined with some old adventures) If you have no desire to do that, why do you want a pve charachter with full unlocks?
Now WvW may have evolved into something else, but they can deal with that within the overall system.
there are some people who just like shooting the ball, but if thats all basketball was, it would be an inferior game for many more people
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Based in that, I doubt they would make it account wide.
its actually really alt friendly compared to almost any other gameGW2 the MMORPG
for those who hatethat’s not quite as bad as other MMORPGs.so what you are saying, is you really think its a good idea that you never have to play a charachter/proffession at all, and can full unlock all its abilities? You really think that is a winning strategy for PVE?
What I was saying is that a lot of the things that were going to make this different than other MMORPGs got modified to be only not as bad as other MMORPGs. Around launch there was a lot of defending of the game with “GW2 is different than other MMORPGs”. It seems like over the years it has become more common to see it defended with “Other MMORPGs are way worse!”
Personally, I don’t have a problem with unlocking new stuff (Revenant progression, Elite specializations) by doing
skillhero challenges. Then again, I’m not one of the WvW-only crowd originally promised complete character progression without leaving WvW.I do, however, have a problem with ArenaNet revamping the game in such a way that it required me to go out and re-earn unlocks I already had.
im not opposed to grandfathering, as long as it works well within the system, Im at this point more responding to the people who are saying that havin to play a charachter for a few hours to reach max progression is a bad idea.
As far as the WvW only players, they were promised they could go from 1-80 in wvw, not that they could achieve everything the game has to offer in WvW alone. Getting your last skill unlocks through WvW alone on release would take you about an additional 30 hours per charachter. Most early WvW people just went to pve and got some fast skill points if they wanted more options. They actually generally spent more time in PVE for gold purposes for new gear sets/runes/looks rather than for skills. They didnt really develop WvW as a closed system, it was always supposed to be a part of the whole, sure you could level 1-80 there, but you can also level 1-80 in kryta.
skill challenges are currently the only charachter specific growth left in the game. I dont think its a coincidence that they want that to be the thing on which each proffessions growth is ultimately based on past a basic level.
You want to get good at a proffesion(figuratively, this is a simulation)? you have to play that proffesion.
at least for a few hours.I thought the point of all the changes that’s been happening till now (mastery points common to all, skill point scrolls, tomes of knowledge, ability to switch characters in a dungeon, common wallet for all etc etc) was to move towards a more unified system that’s independent of character. You -the player- progress, not the character you’re playing. So i don’t see any point in individual character progression. And if I want to get good at a profession, i’ll play it on my own. I don’t need a baby sitter to force me to run around communing with places of power to become a better player. I’ll do it like folks who run dungeons, and wvw and pvp do it.
This is a poorly thought out system that punishes folks for alting when all this time the game has been encouraging alting. And it sends to the players mixed signals. I mean, is this game a casual friendly approach things as you see fit experience or are we moving away into a more “focused” and “hardcore” experience now. Are we to expect separate wallets to become a thing in the future too? They really need to decide and let us know. Are we getting more choice or less in the future? Is this a thing now? (the questions are rhetorical for the one person who’s gonna interpret them as literal questions and answers, you’re welcome).
skill challenges are not hardcore content. Making doing skill challenges out to be some sort of anti casual mechanic is very disengenous.
and just the main reason that progression exists in games is by and large as an incentive to play the game.
the reason they dont start you at the last boss in castlevania is because playing through the first few levels is part of the game design.
Do you really think that it is a good idea that you get a max level, fully unlocked revenant without ever touching the class at all? Does that really make the game a better game? Do you think the game is better off if you can completely ignore 95% of the content?
Would the game as a whole be better off if you could just hit a button and start as a max level fully unlocked charachter?
Heres the truth as i see it, a good game has limits, it has design, and it has intention. I cant run with the ball in basketball. you may have to beat 10 people before you win a tournament, you have to run 26 miles to complete a marathon. There are rules to any game, and generally they exist to make the game better.
if you dont like a charachter/proffession enough to do fairly simple tasks on that charachter in order to unlock extra functionalities/abilities then you dont really like the game that much.
If getting up an walking to the park is not worth the enjoyment of being at the park then you didnt really want to go to the park.We already get full level full unlocked character in SPvP and sometimes you are forced to play against players far more skilled required than anything in the whole game. So i no longer back that argument. If SPvP players can figure out a class without leveling it, anybody can. I will instantly level my revenant and doesnt seem difficult compared to what we currently have in Ele and kit engineer. …
let me put it another way.
would the megaman series have been better games if you could start the game with every bosses powers auto unlocked?
(in case you havent played megaman the premise of the game is that you get to use the bosses powers after you beat them)
skill challenges are currently the only charachter specific growth left in the game. I dont think its a coincidence that they want that to be the thing on which each proffessions growth is ultimately based on past a basic level.
You want to get good at a proffesion(figuratively, this is a simulation)? you have to play that proffesion.
at least for a few hours.I thought the point of all the changes that’s been happening till now (mastery points common to all, skill point scrolls, tomes of knowledge, ability to switch characters in a dungeon, common wallet for all etc etc) was to move towards a more unified system that’s independent of character. You -the player- progress, not the character you’re playing. So i don’t see any point in individual character progression. And if I want to get good at a profession, i’ll play it on my own. I don’t need a baby sitter to force me to run around communing with places of power to become a better player. I’ll do it like folks who run dungeons, and wvw and pvp do it.
This is a poorly thought out system that punishes folks for alting when all this time the game has been encouraging alting. And it sends to the players mixed signals. I mean, is this game a casual friendly approach things as you see fit experience or are we moving away into a more “focused” and “hardcore” experience now. Are we to expect separate wallets to become a thing in the future too? They really need to decide and let us know. Are we getting more choice or less in the future? Is this a thing now? (the questions are rhetorical for the one person who’s gonna interpret them as literal questions and answers, you’re welcome).
skill challenges are not hardcore content. Making doing skill challenges out to be some sort of anti casual mechanic is very disengenous.
and just the main reason that progression exists in games is by and large as an incentive to play the game.
the reason they dont start you at the last boss in castlevania is because playing through the first few levels is part of the game design.
Do you really think that it is a good idea that you get a max level, fully unlocked revenant without ever touching the class at all? Does that really make the game a better game? Do you think the game is better off if you can completely ignore 95% of the content?
Would the game as a whole be better off if you could just hit a button and start as a max level fully unlocked charachter?
Heres the truth as i see it, a good game has limits, it has design, and it has intention. I cant run with the ball in basketball. you may have to beat 10 people before you win a tournament, you have to run 26 miles to complete a marathon. There are rules to any game, and generally they exist to make the game better.
if you dont like a charachter/proffession enough to do fairly simple tasks on that charachter in order to unlock extra functionalities/abilities then you dont really like the game that much.
If getting up an walking to the park is not worth the enjoyment of being at the park then you didnt really want to go to the park.We already get full level full unlocked character in SPvP and sometimes you are forced to play against players far more skilled required than anything in the whole game. So i no longer back that argument. If SPvP players can figure out a class without leveling it, anybody can. I will instantly level my revenant and doesnt seem difficult compared to what we currently have in Ele and kit engineer. …
its not about figuring out the game
its about experiencing the game.
the whole point of PVE is to go around througout the game world doing different stuff to make your charachter stronger in various ways.
Doing skill challenges means you will be running around, throughout the world interacting with the PVE world, you will be figuring out how to get into that centaur camp, distracting that champion, Seeing the Balthazar temple. If you are not willing to this very small task in order to get MORE skills/traits than you need for any build, why do you want a fully unlocked revenant anyhow?
So what does skill challenges mattering allow anet to do? it allows them to give you a concrete reward for playing through the different areas of the game. It allows them to expose you to some minimal part of the world you are playing in. It allows them to incentivize the RPG element of the game.
If the WvW playing population really wants auto unlocked charachters and a less progression/resource/time focused WvW then seperate the modes, but it is for the best that something like skill challenges exist for pve.
skill challenges are currently the only charachter specific growth left in the game. I dont think its a coincidence that they want that to be the thing on which each proffessions growth is ultimately based on past a basic level.
You want to get good at a proffesion(figuratively, this is a simulation)? you have to play that proffesion.
at least for a few hours.I thought the point of all the changes that’s been happening till now (mastery points common to all, skill point scrolls, tomes of knowledge, ability to switch characters in a dungeon, common wallet for all etc etc) was to move towards a more unified system that’s independent of character. You -the player- progress, not the character you’re playing. So i don’t see any point in individual character progression. And if I want to get good at a profession, i’ll play it on my own. I don’t need a baby sitter to force me to run around communing with places of power to become a better player. I’ll do it like folks who run dungeons, and wvw and pvp do it.
This is a poorly thought out system that punishes folks for alting when all this time the game has been encouraging alting. And it sends to the players mixed signals. I mean, is this game a casual friendly approach things as you see fit experience or are we moving away into a more “focused” and “hardcore” experience now. Are we to expect separate wallets to become a thing in the future too? They really need to decide and let us know. Are we getting more choice or less in the future? Is this a thing now? (the questions are rhetorical for the one person who’s gonna interpret them as literal questions and answers, you’re welcome).
skill challenges are not hardcore content. Making doing skill challenges out to be some sort of anti casual mechanic is very disengenous.
and just the main reason that progression exists in games is by and large as an incentive to play the game.
the reason they dont start you at the last boss in castlevania is because playing through the first few levels is part of the game design.
Do you really think that it is a good idea that you get a max level, fully unlocked revenant without ever touching the class at all? Does that really make the game a better game? Do you think the game is better off if you can completely ignore 95% of the content?
Would the game as a whole be better off if you could just hit a button and start as a max level fully unlocked charachter?
Heres the truth as i see it, a good game has limits, it has design, and it has intention. I cant run with the ball in basketball. you may have to beat 10 people before you win a tournament, you have to run 26 miles to complete a marathon. There are rules to any game, and generally they exist to make the game better.
if you dont like a charachter/proffession enough to do fairly simple tasks on that charachter in order to unlock extra functionalities/abilities then you dont really like the game that much.
If getting up an walking to the park is not worth the enjoyment of being at the park then you didnt really want to go to the park.
What exactly is “alting” to you? where i was from, playing an alt was about replaying the game as another class/proffesion/charachter for a different perspective/playstyle. Is alting now something where you instantly create a max stat proffession based on your time playing a different charachter? Alting is essentially about skipping the entire game on new charachters?
And this whole idea of punishing alting is stupid, the new system is actually easier on alts than what the game launched with, its also easier BY FAR than the second system they instituted. The only system by which alts were easier to max unlock was taking a grandfathered charachter from the first system, and giving it the plethora of tomes/skill scrolls that evolved with the second system and due to balancing endgame skill point requirements for legendaries and other special skins.
(edited by phys.7689)
The best solution is this:
- Allow players a way to turn skill point scrolls into Hero Points
- Players that don’t want to do this don’t have to and therefore can take part in this new progression system
- Players that don’t want to have to go earn stuff they have already earned can use their skill points for hero points
This would allow everyone to play the game how they want to play it.
The new system is not optional xD Its the foundation of the whole specialisation progression.
And that is precisely why there are players that don’t agree with it. There are tons of us that want the progression to be as open-ended as possible. That’s the heart of this game to me. I used to be able to ask:
“How do I want to earn progress today out of the myriad options I have for earning progress in this awesome game?”
“PvP?” “WvW?” “Event Chains?” “Hearts?” “Dungeons?” “Personal Story?” “Living World Content?”Where are the options with the new system? Where’s the Guild Wars Twosy-ness in this progression? It’s being replaced by Mastery System gating and Hero Point gating. It’s watering down creativity in the traits. See that boss over there? You don’t have enough mastery points to kill it yet. Better go grind out some mastery points so you can actually do the thing you want to do.
You know what I say to that noise?
No thanks.
hero points is once per charachter.
mastery points are as open ended as getting experience, other than having to be in one zone, but that makes sense because its zone specific progression.
you wont be using mushrooms in WvW or a core zone.
now i dont like the simplistic need X to beat this boss type mechanics they added, or the 100000000 exp thing, but it is very much just play in this zone and get progress
how is running around do skill challenges more “play that profession” than dungeons,fractals,pvp,wvw?
Seriously, pvp and instanced pve is where the combat system actually matters. Are people going to be keeping blinds on a skill challenge fight? are they going to strip defiance and cc it? No they are just gonna spam dps. Skill challenges are not where you learn to play a character really.
its play the charachter at basic level, the things you talk about are high end things that you should really already have those skills unlocked before you do seriously.
notice i said figuratively.
The idea is this is you are building your charachter, so the challenges are low level, this is the basic experience for low level charachter growth.
(edited by phys.7689)
How about just make hero challenges same as mastery points. One character does it, they’ve all done it. There problem solved. And while you’re at it, make wps account wide also. That way the second time you go for the world completion you’ll only have to do vistas and pois. Less grindy and boring, very alt friendly, and you still get the experience of the world the first time. You don’t need it a second time imo.
skill challenges are currently the only charachter specific growth left in the game. I dont think its a coincidence that they want that to be the thing on which each proffessions growth is ultimately based on past a basic level.
You want to get good at a proffesion(figuratively, this is a simulation)? you have to play that proffesion.
at least for a few hours.
ugh, im a pve exclusive player pretty much? I have 1 of every class so I can step in and do any possible dungeon/fractal role my team needs.
This is bigger than just lost gold/sp. This is about a large design philosophy shift. Previously, players could play however they wanted to earn gold and skill points. They could then use that to buy traits/skills. Now players are forced to do open world pve to become better at other game modes. So do you just prefer everyone is forced to play game modes they don’t enjoy? I prefer the “play how you want” philosophy.
PVP is not affected at all, so they dont count, and they should have to play their character in PVE to use stuff in PVE. If they want to PVP then they can PVP with everything fully unlocked already.
WVW IS PVE. Anet has stated that many times, and so yes it makes sense to them that they want you to play both.
Now i agree that WVW should have at least enough hero challenges in WVW to get all 65 HP and unlock everything(That they have now). But after that, they will have to step foot in PVE to get more HP. My opinion of course, and im sure it wont be popular. I too am a pve exclusive player and all my characters, all 12 of them have at least 40 Skill points by the time they get to 80. The exception to that is my engineer, who i leveled via skill tomes. So someday ill run her through to get those 65 HP, someday.
I disagree. While Anet intended WvW to be a PvE game mode. WvW has taken on a life of its own. Having its own politics, its own community, its own 3rdparty forums, its own internally managed competitions that you cant find anywhere else in game, and its own salty attitude.
As a matter of fact, most WvW people are looking for a release from the strictly PvE players that ruin WvW server populations.
every facet of the game fits that same description.
they have City based RP communities who could say the same thing.
The best solution is this:
- Allow players a way to turn skill point scrolls into Hero Points
- Players that don’t want to do this don’t have to and therefore can take part in this new progression system
- Players that don’t want to have to go earn stuff they have already earned can use their skill points for hero points
This would allow everyone to play the game how they want to play it.
this is the type of non solution that creates systemic problems.
Are these players that you are talking about never going to get any elite specializations ever? because the core of the hero point system change isnt just about old skills, its about creating a method for growing the game progression in the future.
you also realize that most of those scrolls that were given were created mostly with its end game uses in mind? not base progression. They have out so many skill points, not so people could ignore skill challenge progression, but so they could get eldritch scrolls, turn t5 mats to to t6 mats, etc.
what you are suggesting is creating a super class within the system, which doesnt play by the systems rules.
It would be better to create a short term solution that uses the new systems base mechanics.
a less destructive idea would be to automatically unlock 65 specific challenges if they are not unlocked on every charachter who is currently completely unlocked.
the biggest problem with that solution would be, auto completing world completion, and how it would unfairly award progress that players never earned.
that and implementation may be rough
however, as for the purity of the new system as a whole, these old charachters wouldnt be special cases that could create problems in the future.
Grandfather=465 hero points with all skills unlocked if you had all your skills. The rest of the hero challenges can be done until reach max number of hero challenge points allowed.
max hero challenges – 465 = total number of hero challenges a grandfathered character can do before rest of hero challenges lock up.
there is no max number of hero challenge points.
its there is only so many sources in the game that give hero points. Thats a very important difference.
also there are not more than 465 hero challenges. you get 400 hero points from leveling your charachter to 80.
Best solution is simply to grandfather our skills over and lock us from gaining more than the max Hero points allowed in the game. Problem solved.
no, the system doesnt have a cap, it just has a limited amount of the resource.
its essentially as if your power is determined by the amount of hero points you can find. In the world there are currently only 220 places for them.
In the future, in order to get stronger, you will have to get hero points from new places.
grandfathering in the way you suggest creates a situation where you will already be at full strength without having to get any hero points. This means in the future you will not have to go to the new places to get hero points.
not only that but it means that for some players hero points will be wasted, some players wont want to get the hero points until they are uncapped, which then blocks them on world completion for those charachters.
So that solution is fairly non optimal one, you are creating a new system, but filling it with something that doesnt fit into the system architecture (hero points from no source) Its the type of solution that will keep biting you in the butt in the future.
(edited by phys.7689)
Better solution would be to just give all PvP and WvW players full access to all skills and lvl 80 upscale as soon as the enter the PvP and WvW areas
since many people who play WvW and PvP don’t give a crap about PvE then why should they be forced to play it.. nah just let them have it.. It wont effect us PvE players anyway and WvW is more a PvP area so should function more like it
this way everyones happy
PvE gets new system PvE players like
PvP and WvW doesnt get effected by it at alleveryone wins
this is a possible solution, that i dont disagree with, however from what i hear many WvWers actually like that WvW allows them to use their personally designed/progressed charahters. Some of these players dont like spvp as much because it is free, commitmentless, and progressionless. They basically want to use the charachter they built up though blood sweat and tears, against players who did the same.
but like i said, i specifically wouldnt mind
Ok new solution;
lets borrow from the elite tome system in GW1.
it will take a lot of UI/programming/data work, but it will allow some measure flexibility within the system.
- create a charachter based mission unlock system, that allows you to choose to unlock a random skill challenge that your account has already unlocked. At the achievement shaky the option is between small amount of silver, a random drop, or the skill challenge unlock.
- these mission like unlocks are charachter specific, and will generally happen only with intent. You choose a mission, then carry it out, on success you can choose the hero challenge unlock option if you wish.
- some missions might be repeatable, some might not
- for example in WvW you may have one mission revive 5 players while in combat without dying, Or capture stone mist, or kill 10 players without dying. Some PVE ones might be like, complete X jumping puzzle within X time limit. Defeat X dungeon with no team deaths. Kill X enemies while in one instance of ascalon tombs.
- for the sake of grandfathering they can give old charachters who have achieved full unlock(skills and traits) before the new system went into place 65 minus current skill point unlock for the charachter number of these unlock shaky interactions.
problems solved
- this would allow people to get hero points from various play with their charachters, though less effeciently than skill points are earned. keeping skill challenges in game valuable targets
- People would have to do a hero challenge at least once per account to be able to unlock it, so people cant skip content completely
- can use the same code for grandfathering, which would not pervert or damage the system in the long run.
- some small part of progression remains charachter specific, and has multiple paths for veterans (still chr specific, but you can do something harder on alts)
problems
- mostly, implementation
- requires data points based on account, and which skill challenges were completed
- requires UI for skill challenge account completion and comparison of charachter completion to account completion (probably looking like 65charachter/75account
- requires UI and design of various “missions” as well UI for selecting them
- is not that simple, player has to actively pursue missions, and understand account versus charachter unlocks.
- for grandfathering purposes, some charachters might have up to 65 “shaky” interactions to do before playing their charachters.
- biggest problem, probably already too late to build this kind of system on schedule.
so really peoples best hope is that they already have something built, that wont in the long run create a perverted system like the first grandfathering technique, combined with current skill point aquisition.
(optional)
- decouple hero challenges from world complete.
- give hero challenges its own reward track, a good place for proffesion themed armors/weapons
(edited by phys.7689)
Another massive shove from Anet to try and pigeonhole players into playing one or if your lucky, two toons.
I have around 30 level 80 toons, probably use ten of them on a fairly regular basis.
So that’s between 650 and 1950 times I need to hunt around pve maps doing stuff I don’t want to do to unlock build variance on my characters and have a chance at making either my existing build or a new one (as many builds are killed off by the new trait system/wvw changes).
Not to mention probably needing different armor sets on quite a few of them.
I’m glad this isn’t a grindy Korean MMO, I’d hate to see what they did then….
The more I read of this expansion the less enthusiastic I am about it. But I’ll probably still buy it, for whenever I come back to the game more regularly.
if you have 30 toons, so you dont have to change your builds around, then you will be able to do the same thing JUST with the 400 base skill points.
due to changes in builds, no build will use more than 3/5 specializations.
that means you will probably need at the most 340 hero points to unlock all skills and 3 specs.
Now, if you have 30 charachters just for looks, then nothing changes.
and are you saying these 30 charachters have completely unlocked all traits? unless you made these 30 charachters in the first system, then leveled them through the later systems method of getting tomes, it seems fairly unlikely.
and thats the interesting thing, a great deal of the problems, are due to a poor method of grandfathering into the second system, combined with the second systems need to give 100-1000s of skill points without any actual concerted effort.
If you leveled those charachters under the first system, and fully unlocked their abilities, there was a high chance you did at least 65 skill points, because getting them just from leveling meant you would be kitten for a long time, and take like 10-20 times longer to unlock all your skills.
Based in that, I doubt they would make it account wide.
its actually really alt friendly compared to almost any other gameGW2 the MMORPG
for those who hatethat’s not quite as bad as other MMORPGs.so what you are saying, is you really think its a good idea that you never have to play a charachter/proffession at all, and can full unlock all its abilities? You really think that is a winning strategy for PVE?
No incentives for playing pve other than the most effecient farm?
want to level a revenant? play staff guardian in silverwastes, then presto new level 80 revenant max power with an age of 10 minutes.you really think that is a good idea for pve?
they are being extremely alt friendly by allowing veterans to essentially skip the level 1-80 process while farming gold. to have to actually play the class for 3-5 hours is not an insane asking price.
keep in mind the initial system had no means of alt leveling transference, aside from maybe doing tons of crafting, which for 80 levels would take longer than it does to do skill challenges.
Well the problem is that for many what you consider and incentive doesnt incentivize anyone. There are many just like myself who could care less about legendary weapons because they dont feel like engaging the carebare PvE this game has. I mean come on, in Guild Wars, you either had to have a party or a runner just to get to the next city. In that game map completion was something interesting and extremely difficult.
The challenge in PvE is not there so its just mindless running around to do stupid things like pouring water on sleeping drunks.
Ill give to GW2 the creativity is there in full force even with complete revamps to maps to go along with new stories. Too bad the mechanics and idea of challenge were lost in it all.
So with that said, Its a rare thing that you even see me in a PvE environment at all. And well unless they plan on revamping PvE altogether to put in some challenge there, I dont want to have to bother with it at all.
so what mode do you want to play?
I play WvW and PvP. PvP its nto such a big concern but WvW yeah its a concern.
And I see many people discussing 65 hero points.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hero_point
This says there are 400 hero points from leveling and then another 220 hero points from challenges.
My assumption is that we will be seeing the 400 from leveling automatically and will have to go PvE to open our toons completely?
400 from leveling 65 more (roughly) to get all core skills. you will most likely have some from wvw maps, i assume the new borderlands will also have new skill challenges.
it is uncertain how many or if you will have to go to pve to unlock. However if you do, keep in mind WvW was initially designed to be a shared progression with PVE, ie it was not meant to be completely self contained.
its entirely possible they have a totally different eve plan
Based in that, I doubt they would make it account wide.
its actually really alt friendly compared to almost any other gameGW2 the MMORPG
for those who hatethat’s not quite as bad as other MMORPGs.so what you are saying, is you really think its a good idea that you never have to play a charachter/proffession at all, and can full unlock all its abilities? You really think that is a winning strategy for PVE?
No incentives for playing pve other than the most effecient farm?
want to level a revenant? play staff guardian in silverwastes, then presto new level 80 revenant max power with an age of 10 minutes.you really think that is a good idea for pve?
they are being extremely alt friendly by allowing veterans to essentially skip the level 1-80 process while farming gold. to have to actually play the class for 3-5 hours is not an insane asking price.
keep in mind the initial system had no means of alt leveling transference, aside from maybe doing tons of crafting, which for 80 levels would take longer than it does to do skill challenges.
Well the problem is that for many what you consider and incentive doesnt incentivize anyone. There are many just like myself who could care less about legendary weapons because they dont feel like engaging the carebare PvE this game has. I mean come on, in Guild Wars, you either had to have a party or a runner just to get to the next city. In that game map completion was something interesting and extremely difficult.
The challenge in PvE is not there so its just mindless running around to do stupid things like pouring water on sleeping drunks.
Ill give to GW2 the creativity is there in full force even with complete revamps to maps to go along with new stories. Too bad the mechanics and idea of challenge were lost in it all.
So with that said, Its a rare thing that you even see me in a PvE environment at all. And well unless they plan on revamping PvE altogether to put in some challenge there, I dont want to have to bother with it at all.
so what mode do you want to play?
Based in that, I doubt they would make it account wide.
its actually really alt friendly compared to almost any other gameGW2 the MMORPG
for those who hatethat’s not quite as bad as other MMORPGs.
so what you are saying, is you really think its a good idea that you never have to play a charachter/proffession at all, and can full unlock all its abilities? You really think that is a winning strategy for PVE?
No incentives for playing pve other than the most effecient farm?
want to level a revenant? play staff guardian in silverwastes, then presto new level 80 revenant max power with an age of 10 minutes.
you really think that is a good idea for pve?
they are being extremely alt friendly by allowing veterans to essentially skip the level 1-80 process while farming gold. to have to actually play the class for 3-5 hours is not an insane asking price.
keep in mind the initial system had no means of alt leveling transference, aside from maybe doing tons of crafting, which for 80 levels would take longer than it does to do skill challenges.
as someone who leveled initially, ill tell you were looking at anywhere from 40-80 hours to level a new charachter without crafting in the initial system, no matter how many other level 80s you had. and that didnt get you all your skills unlocked by far. now you can get both skills and traits unlocked in 3-5 hours if you are a veteran. Thats really aboout as alt friendly as you can get, without automatically giving veterans every proffession to max stat.
(edited by phys.7689)
Basically the primary things I think the new system wants to accomplish is:
They want some level of charachter specific progression in pve. (Basically you should have to play a proffession in order to reach maximum potential within that charachter)
And they want a limited system that won’t suffer from inflation. So they can better expand/add specs/skills in the future.
A side goal is creating a rewArd/goal/incentive that appeals to players for experiencing the world, that isnt economy focused, and consistently valuable.
Based in that, I doubt they would make it account wide.
its actually really alt friendly compared to almost any other game
“Nothing’s wrong / Nothing to fix / It’s fine / Leave it”
or
“More challenging content / Make it harder / Do something about it”Do not make the mistake of assuming that forcing players to kill trash will make anything harder than it already is. They’re called trash mobs for a reason; they’re essentially worthless cannon fodder. Truthfully, skipping the mobs instead of fighting them actually makes the clear itself tougher because being snared, CC’d, or even put in combat at all threatens to kill you.
People skip mobs because it’s faster, and speed is all that matters in a back-loaded rewards system. “Fixing” this, as someone noted before, makes the presumption that something is wrong in the first place, when in-fact it is functioning as designed. Someone earlier in this thread referenced GW1 elite runs as an example of good design, yet apparently they missed the speed clears of Urgoz and The Deep which performed just as much if not far more skipping than GW2 dungeons use. Back then you skipped absolutely everything except the one mob that, when killed, opened the door.
All that said, the argument that skipping is ‘bad’ in a dungeon or really any instanced content is one founded on the desire for more tedium. Literally all that removing skipping would do is make all paths take exponentially longer. If you truly want legitimately harder content, forcing players to kill every mob is not going to achieve that.
not all fights in the dungeon are that easy, not all fights were made to be skipped. They have some enemy encounters that are trickier than some bosses.
Some are however meant to be skipped.
A dungeon/instance as an overall experience, and not a collection of boss fights, includes the challenges on the way to the boss. If they have a good design, some of these battles are somewhat engaging. In other games, dungeons were partially a question of resource management, and attrition.
Anyhow point is, trash isnt made to be skipped all the time, and creating interesting content around non boss encounters or rewarding or encouraging people to explore/kill in an instance wouldnt be a bad idea.
however, i wouldnt require it, other than general dunegeon mechanics.
Phys is right.
This whole controversy is brought about because people are unwilling to look past the old-style MMO standbys of: (a) different roles are tied to different gear and (b) roles must be static, distinct and dedicated; and because ANet grafted a gear/stat system reminiscent of trinity MMO gear onto a system in which distinctions in what your “role” is varies from encounter to encounter and is based on your profession and trait/skill choices much more than your stats.
The situation is compounded by ANet’s failure with dungeons. Dungeons were intended to be “challenging content for coordinated groups of skilled players.” This was even true at the very start of the game. Dungeons were hard, and were especially unforgiving to (if not undoable by) uncoordinated groups of less-skilled players. However, once the dungeons were learned, the risk in running glass was lessened because everyone knew what to avoid. There have been other issues. The Ferocity change was essentially a nerf to dungeons in which 80’s are down-scaled. No dungeon updates (other than bug fixes and rewards) other than FotM have been seen in 2 years and ~5 months. This leads to a dungeon culture in which dungeon runners are doing the dungeons for the gold (and/or because they’re the only hardish content in the game).
Hopefully, ANet is going to be dealing with the real problems instead of the perceived problems, because dealing with the perceived problems involves selling out the game to the trinity-or-bust crowd — no matter how you slice it.
So how would you have changed the gear stats to work?
It’s too late for that ship, but I would have put very few stats on gear — basically an adaptation of the system from GW. Armor could have had defense and been a holder for runes. Weapons would have their damage plus a Sigil slot.
But how exactly would that have made multiple roles equally effective and not just dps? Because thats the problem here.
your role is not dps because you wear zerk.
if you are taking skills/traits to give teamates might, fury, protection. Your primary role isnt damage, its support
if you are taking skills/traits to give group invisibility, solo switch mechanics, provide swiftness, teleports your main role is not dps
if you are takin skills to clear conditions, block attacks, use reflects/projectile destruction provide protection and aegis your main role is not dps.
the highest dps proffessions from what i hear are staff ele and a certain build of theif. If the meta was really all about dps, why are the optimal parties not 5 staff eles, or 5 theives?
thats because the other roles are important inspite of not being the highest dps.
its like.
imagine a basketball game. you have roles based on how well you move the ball, being able to shoot open shots, being able to shake defenders, ability to rebound, ability to steal the ball, and ability to block shots.
now imagine you create a stat system for the game based on successful shot %, the amount of points you can be losing by before you quit, and the how much you can get the crowd behind you when you are down points.
two of those stats have little to do with the actual roles/winning the game. The fact that every one takes the shot% stats doesnt mean there are no roles, it means the stats dont reflect much about the roles.
the only way to make those roles important is by forcing you to go down points no matter how well you play.
Wow the logic of some people in this forum is actually on insane levels.
The challenge that Anet took up upon devloping this game was to kill off the holy trinity so that there was no forced roles.
After 2+ years, the zerker meta has shown Anet that no matter how hard a MMORPG tries, the player base will generally prefer optimal builds and ‘meta gameplay’, so actually by not forcing any roles, the playerbase in itself makes DPS centric builds completely mandatory for any PVE group, as the meta isnt about completion, but more about time taken… Whats ironic, is the realisation that it is almost impossible to make any build viable for any content, without expecting the players to take the path of least resistance and thus decrease the amount of challenging fun in the game.So now, its looking like more diversity is being pushed. THANK GOD. And yea, I am of the camp that raids (in some shape or form) will be also coming to gw2, so therefore I expect new content that demands certain role requirements. And yea, I am a little dissapointed that the initial no trinity dream of anet seems to be slowly and surely dying.
HOWEVER
You basically have a simple choice, let the zerk meta continue so it seems like NO OTHER build but zerk is particulary viable. Or try and develop a new and diverse meta in which players are actively challenged by its content, and a diverse set of builds and players options are not only viable, but almost required to complete the challenge.
Now the beauty of Gw2 is the adapable nature of each class in general, so if Anet do this right, most classes will be able to switch hard roles on the fly not just soft. This means you dont need to wait for specific players to do content, but a group communicating role options and adapting their build to suit the groups demands is actively encouraged.
I dunno maybe its just me… BUT when your trying to make a game FUN, this seriously seems like a no brainer to me.
zerk is not a role, its a gear choice. Most Meta builds are not based around max damage, they are based around utility/boon sharing/team support.
there is a large disconnect, because people wear zerk that they have only one role, that is false.
The zerk problem is a flaw in game design. They basically made a flawed gear stat system based on a classic trinity when the gameplay is not.
the roles are support damage and control, stats barely have any effect on control and support.
the current meta is basically about movement/avoidance support and dps. since no stats have much effect on anything but dps, people choose dps gear.
if you want to be support, you wear zerker, and bring skill with fields/finishers aoe aegis protects etc.
if you want to control (though its not that important) you wear zerk and bring CC skills traits
if you want to increase team utility, you wear zerk, and bring invis, reflects, swiftness
so no, its not that the game has no roles/diversity its that none of the diversity has anything to do with gear.
They should just cancel gear, but since they made people invest 100s of hours into ascended, thats fairly unlikely.
i really hope they dont trinity this game, but making ventari such a heal heavy specialization, when current content sees no benefit at all to healing, suggests the new content will need it.
i mean, pvp will likely become heal heavy just with the existence of such a high HPS class.
ok, ill weigh in a little differently than the other guys.
first before one can decided if zerker is a problem, you have to identify which problem are you talking about?
zerker is not the reason for boring fights, no.
the overall stat distribution/system however is a problem for balance. the range in dmg from lowest dps to highest dps is too great to create a compelling fight at highest dps, and a not 300 hour fight at low dps.
might stacking is a problem, kinda, but it actually helps the other problem, since might adds to your base power, it slightly normalizes damage. Might stacking is a problem because it creates an even greater disparity between organized players and non organized players in fight trivialization. And yes that organization usually encourages standing within a small radius of the enemies.
problem is, aside from like phalanx warrior, its fairly engaging play that rewards working together. Most of the current high skill ceiling teamplay revolves around taking advantage of combo fields. So nerfing it? is nerfing the games current skilled play benefit.
sooo, how could they fix that aspect?
they would need to add mechanics.
give ranged players an ability, maybe through a new combo finisher, to link your boon status to another players. Or perhaps when you have a certain formation.
there are still other reasons to stack, but the major two are boon sharing and enemy behavior control.
Enemies should be smarter about their behavior imo. though thats a point many here don’t agree with. some enemies should try to maintain mid range distances when they can, and most ranged enemies should not point blank you forever due to LOS. Some bosses should seek to use more aoe on melee stacks.
i was playing a different MMO today with some LOS, and it was interesting how they would seek to circle around, and recreate distance if you made it so circling wouldnt work, which made using LOS more like the your old gun slinger pop in pop out, go in to cover/out of cover. they even tried to use LOS slightly to minimize your dmg, they of course didnt use it perfectly, and dodge all of my attacks, but it was definately a more interesting version of npc LOS interactions.
oh yeah, more enemies should be able to move while attacking, just like players.
truth is the OP is correct.
The distribution of wealth makes rare items out of bounds for poor players.
thats just how the system works right now. Perhaps they should avoid rare items, instead opting for diffucult/time consuming/limited items. However they probably wont.
these gem store dye items are basically designed to create feelings of rarity, hence limited time offers.
It’s clear you didn’t watch the WvW map livestream events, or if you did, you’ve chosen to ignore lots of relevant details. The new map looks nothing like EotM – you’re not at constant risk of falling to your death; I’ve seen no jumping puzzles (I hate jumping puzzles but the air keep has platforms you merely walk on – no jumping skill required); and PvE elements have been included in every great RvR game to date. The people clamoring for a mob-less, flat WvW map have often been misguided GvG players who favor contrived, even-numbered fights that eliminate the excitement of unpredictability and the tactical use of terrain. No kitten thanks; I prefer my fights dynamic.
The new map has plenty of flat terrain to fight open field, away from NPCs and the ever-dreaded PvE events (which to me seem to clearly invite fights rather than discourage them). I do think there’s cause for some concern, but it isn’t your fabricated issues that bother me.
I exclusively WvW and, for me, the new map can’t come soon enough.
i have watched it and a lot of alarm bells went up when seeing events there. u know the event in the middle will give an outmanning zerg the upper hand over the whole map! u know the shrines give immunity to fire so u can walk over the fire in the lava area… well just saying so far it looks pretty bad. i have yet to see actual flat non ai infested area and i highly doubt there will be a lot of room for fights. i dont mind have ing mobs here and there, but having an entire map controlled mainly by npc and ai and then also a timer on events that take entire gates down….. sorry screams pve map to me= ill queue for eb only.
all i want is a longer testing phase for this map before it replaces the current maps.yes i wanted a new map, but not one that is so complex and filled with weird events! it jut takes a lot wvw is about away and replaces it with pve
the fire shrine isnt a pve event, its a pvp objective. Thats kind of the whole point.
when you are making a keep push in the fire area, you are going to want to have some groups taking the shrines. If you are trying to defend your keep, you will want to have some people trying to hold the shrines.
How well these PLAYERS do their jobs determines what you have to deal with. Keep in mind that they only get the big buff if they have all 3 shrines. AKA your server is failing at taking PVP objectives.
you see things like this already in organized seige servers. If you dont take certain key points, its a lot harder to attack/defend objectives due to getting smashed by seige in some far off location. (of course this only happens with servers who hold objectives and focus seige use)
And keep in mind, in WvW if the other server has substantially more players, that are more organized, you will always get smashed. Thats never going to change. It would be unfair if it did.