Guild Wars 2

people who say that death not mattering doesnt make things harder are lying to themselves.
Simply put, you have to play better, and work together better when death matters. In phantasy star online, they had a mode called challenge mode, they took the same game, and gave you predetermined levels and gear, you had an item called a scape doll, that gave you a free ressurection, and a limited amount per level.

This made the very same game, WAY harder. You actually had to learn enemy patterns, work together etc.

well the inverse method, is to reward living. Lets say, you get better, or unique rewards for doing things well.
lets say each dungeon tracks deaths, time, and non respawning enemy kills. The better you do, the better your chance at unique rewards, or perhaps more rewards.

I still think a failure condition like if everyone wipes you start again, or something of the sort wouldnt be bad though.

Tiresias.6473:

Define “rewarding”.

The reward in this game is in the gameplay. If you don’t like the game, adding in carrots and sticks won’t change that.

reward is tied to game design. You can have a great game, but if you create poor incentives and rewards it will suck.

Imagine if football gave points for distance traveled, rather than touchdowns, now you have totally changed the way the game is played. Or if basketball gave additional points for scoring while open, or less points for scoring from outside shots.

Thinking that reward design is not a big part of game design is a huge mistake.

Kitarpa.8143:

Nury.3062:

“Where is my high level end game rewarding content ive been waiting for so long?”
I don’t care,simple as that….go and search it…
I found my end game content.

This. I feel like GW2 is the type of game that just kinda doesn’t have a set standard of “here is all your exclusive end game content to do!” you get in other MMOs. You find and kinda “make” your own end game content, and if you can’t seem to find it, well GW2 just might not be for you.

The problem is not that it doesnt have a set standard, the problem is that it really doesnt much of it.
The game just doesnt have a lot of depth. It has a lot of the foundations for depth, but execution wise, its not there. How many of you have gotten better at playing since you beat you re 4th dungeon?

You shouldnt have included the poll, this thread has turned into a debate on statistical analysis and usefull polls, rather than a discussion of the premise.

This idea should be discussed as an idea, not really as poll.

Naevius.3185:

>>Without a difficult death system nothing is truly difficult in the game.

If I pose the problem “What is 2+2?”, it does not get harder just because I threaten to shoot you for a wrong answer. Your logic is flawed.

actually, it does.
lets not choose death, lets say you lose the game.
lets say winning the game gets you 10 dollars.

So now which is harder 2+2 with only one answer given?
Or 2+2 where you can guess infinitely.

i will tell you even a 2 or 3 year old given infinite guesses will beat the game that doesnt end when you guess incorrectly
But many will lose the game that only gives you one chance.

so yeah 2+2 is harder with harsh consequences than without, its just that its so easy you think the consequences are irrelevant.

For example, if everyone dying in a fractal reset that fractal, it would be more difficult. Whole strategies would change.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wizzey.7845:

The point is that players are willing to spend more money if they know that the money is going towards something that they want. There’ve only been 12 votes on the poll but 5 out of 12 are willing to spend 500 gems towards an item that doesn’t really give them anything because it goes towards a new class. I think that alone says something

5 people out of the 3 million+ accounts that have been sold says nothing, mate.

kickstarter says that it is definately a big market.
Its actually a pretty good idea because it incentizes spending, while providing a real feedback to the company.

Problem is tying it to a mini, thats something that has a limited contribution. only really reason for one, unless your intent is that their is no good reason to vote more than once per player?

I would think it would work better if it was something you could do many times if you wanted and still gave some benefit

Ouimette.5902:

The problem even with the so called end game that exist in GW2 right now is that when you are going for something you pretty much do it in the same way as everything else.

Legendary: Gold farm
Ascended Gear: Gold farm
Cultural armor: Gold farm
F****N MINI PETS:… gold farm.

Yeah sure there is other things to farm that’s not accesible through gold. Such as ascended trinkets, fractal skins and fractal backpiece and dungeon skins. But those skins have been in the game for quite some time now.

Yes, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have gear treadmills but the game is more focused on the cosmetics so why not add more grindable cosmetics to the game? Instead we get everything fed through the gem store.

And these little other things we get are depressing rng drops from teq and wurm. And how is that armor looking? It’s already existing armor with some particle effects.

More grind for new cosmetics and more account bound and less gem store armor and soulbound equipment. You will never feel prestigious when everything can be bought from the TP.

This is one of the key flaws, combined with the fact that the best way to earn money is not the best way to play the game.
While gw2 does have some challenging content out there, it rewards less than the mindless easy content.

I dont think its a good idea to build the entire games reward systems around gold, if you arent going to give more gold for content that is either:
harder
longer
requires more set up
etc

Clear.8512:

I would give the new achievements coming in LS2 a try and if they don’t meet your expectations I’m going to say that GW2 is not going to cater to what you need an end game.

I heard Wildstar has gw2 like fighting mechanics but with set roles so that might be more your direction. (pure rumors as I have never played)

Wildstar isnt challenging because of roles, its challenging because they built systems that are have a scalable challenge element.

For example, GW2 has a jumping puzzle, Beat it and win. Wildstar has a jumping puzzles, the faster you beat the jumping puzzle, the more you win. Just by adding a well planned reward scaling system, they take the same content, and encourage mastery.

Wildstar has interact with object quests, guild wars has interact with object quests.
GW2 the interact mecahnic is almost always just sit there for X amount of seconds
Wildstar the interact might be sitting there, might be time based, might be timing based, might be smash button, might be enemies that pop out when you do it. Might be a simon says light game. and sometimes you may get better rewards the faster you can do it, or different dialog based on your performance.

GW2 combat, has similar structure, but wildstar makes the rules a lot clearer with tells, therefore they can expect more from the playerbase. They actually build encounters and enemies to scale up with level in terms of gameplay! low level enemies are slower, with longer tells, and less variety of skills, as you get higher the time from tell to hit decreases, they have more skills at their disposal (more different tells that are best avoided/dealt with in different ways)

long story short, GW2 isnt less challenging because it doesnt have roles, its less challenging because they set their lowest level extremely low and their highest level at average. They then set up no systems that push people to play better or even notice when they do. GW2 could be one of the most team oriented personal skill based games out there with its current framework. But they just dont design it that way.

PacoXI.7690:

There is end game content, you just want raids…

What exactly is the endgame content? Tequatl and Wurm? thats it? two 20minute encounters?

Dont say PVP, because in order for player versus player games to have “endgame” they need to have competitions, tournaments, fairly good ranking systems.

as of right now, the tournaments are few, and only available to a comparitive handful, and the ranking systems need a bit of work, honestly im not sure they can make one, because they dont really have team rankings.

Essentially its pretty shallow in terms of how far you can take your skill/progression in anything. This makes it approachable, but it doesnt provide a consistent entertainment.

Its odd when you think about it, the item progression is probably the deepest progression the game has.

winterchillz.2564:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

A R W E N.6895:

Sartharina.3542:

There’s plenty of “Endgame” content:
1. Working for legendaries.
2. Making a name for yourself on your server through WvW and PvP (And now the game in general, with Megaservers)
3. Becoming a leader of PvE events or in WvW.
4. Keeping up with Living Story.
5. Making and running a guild.

The question was : where is High level end game rewarding content

Define “rewarding”?

This. My personal point of view might be a bit different here, but I myself personally enjoy commanding Tequatl events for example. Learning the strategy and then passing it on to the rest of the people who are there to learn. I swear, I’m far more happy when I get a whisper saying “thank you for the leadership” rather than when I get good loot.

Yes, my example might not be the best one, in fact it might even be far from a good one, but for me it is rewarding to be able to do it on daily basis with people who I already know from previous runs and people who get on my map every time just so that we can do it together.

It is satisfying therefore it is rewarding. c:

i agree thats probably pretty rewarding, but there are like 1-3 leaders for every 120 people?
that means they have a good endgame for 1/40 players.

and even with that, there is only 2-3 events for you to do that with.

Its a decent starting point, but its something they will need to expand, in creative and new ways. Im hoping their next attempt will have like 3-4 major obejectives of equal importance, in a mini dungeon like system, where people seperate, but how/what each team does effects the way each run goes differently. Pretty complex to design, but would offer a lot of replay, and excitement.

The main issue though, is while i might like it in theory, i wouldnt do it probably, im not into the 100 man + content (marrionette was good, but it was broken down into 20 man teams, and then 5 man teams for the boss) and the game needs so much expansion on other fronts for different player types.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Fafnir.5124:

Although Anet has reconfigured the foundation of the game. Currently no vertical nor horizontal progression has been added to the game. So in the long run is there any strategy at all to builds? Anything that makes one player unique from another? There is nothing to work towards other then legendarys and they honestly arn’t worth the time you put into them for they are but skins.

Depends on who you talk to. For me, skins make or break an item. In most games, if the BiS raid gear didn’t look cool, I didn’t bother with it because what’s the point of it? It’s BiS so you don’t need it to get anything else and seeing bigger numbers didn’t exactly blow my mind in a MMO.

In FFXI, they didnt go with a pure numbers gear value. They tried to limit power creep, so new items they gave, were generally strictly speaking not more powerful, but they offered new ways to hone your abilities.
One of the most desired stats was haste, which made you attack/recharge rate go down. But that is mostly useful for tearing up normal enemies.
Then you would have direct status increases which was better for overcoming bosses high innate defense stats.
There were special sets that enhanced job abilities, and others that gave weak versions of abilities you couldnt get elsewhere.

Essentially the stat system/item set possibilities were deep, so while something wasnt necessarily stronger overall, it had its specific uses.

For example a low manning monk (thing fighting boxer) might focus on counter boosting stats.

point is, there were still items i wanted, not because its stats made you mechanically more powerful, but because they made you way more versatile, and you could try interesting new modes of play you couldnt before.
There were some issues with people needing massive inventory, and the insane gear swapping that could occur, but if you know that going in you can build to avoid that. (simplest solution is to have a seperate armory like system for gear, and unbind appearance from gear)

GW2 kind of does this with runes, and traits, but neither is deep enough, nor tied to deeper content (yet)
runes will always be something that requires a massive investment, and cannot easily be changed, so no one can really experiment with runes except in spvp. My feeling is that they should make runes unlockable by some means, and swappable, but i doubt they would do that.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

A R W E N.6895:

I Will repeat my question again. where is my high level end game rewarding content

I will add that i am not talking about wow raid like stuff (never played wow fyi, only played gw1 since its begining)

I will also add that i am not talking about a gear grind.

Just to make thing clear and to make people understand that what i am looking for is something instanced to do with other player that is harder than fractal or arah. Something that you have to practice over and over again for awesome rewards. Ever heard of DOA in gw1? (Thats where your tormented skin come from fyi)

I did, boy was it a RNG slogfest to get Gemstones to trade up to Armbraces. Almost as much a slog as Obsidian Armor, which I still haven’t gotten.

It was fun when I did it with my guildies as an eight-person trip, so was Underworld and Fissure of Woe, and Slaver’s Exile. On the other hand . . . there are two fundamental things involved which make me hesitant to say they were excellent.

Firstly, most of the “Awesome Rewards” were behind RNG drops at the end chests, or from materials dropped RNG-like from enemies. I will note I did four trips through the Underworld and never saw Ectoplasm for me. (One time, it was all blue/purple canes. I am not kidding, or exaggerating.) Luckily for the rich, it was possible to buy any of the Awesome Rewards rather than do the content.

Secondly, due to the structure difference between the two games, the experience from UW, FoW, et cetera wouldn’t be perfectly replicated. To note, there’s no pressure to take down enemy healers fast, no need to specifically handle things like Smite Crawlers, and no “bring Frozen Soil else we’ll be here all day” anti-Res requirements.

Once more, the question you ask is only able to be responded with another question:

What do you find rewarding and worth being put through ‘end game content’?

DOA had guaranteed drops, and a system where you would probably get close to enough before you mastered the area. the first boss dropped 1 of the item, the second boss 2, third boss 3 and last boss 4

the boss quest gives 1 of each.

so each time you fully run the dungeon you get 15 of various gems
4-5 complete runs would get you the weapon IF you are skilled. it can be less with random drops.

If you play it on hard mode the gem reward is doubled, so you get like 26? (not sure if the last boss gives double rewards since its from the quest)

so yeah, its not random, though random luck could make it faster.

they also set it up, so you plan where you go first, which tends to make the fights go a little differently (because you enter from different areas, the mob pulls can be a little different)

All in all a pretty good reward design, it was hard enough that it took a while to master, it had variation in play style, and rewarded you better, the better you were able to beat it.
If you prefer the grind method, you could just target one area over and over again for random drops, if you prefer objectives, you go for the full clear. If you get really good at it, you go for hard mode, and earn twice the reward, taking less than twice the effort.

Vayne.8563:

Honing your skills is a progression. In most MMOs where you can’t move while casting, the skill is in the skill buildup.

Here the skill is much different. WvW roamers and people who play TPvP will tell you there’s more to skill than just builds and cookie cutter builds aren’t all that’s used.

Using a cookie cutter is a choice. Running with a zerg, that’s a choice.

Why depend on a company to give you artificial progression? Until you can solo the hardest stuff in the game, the progress is in the honing of your skill.

Everything else is window dressing.

soloing stuff is not really a thing, i mean essentially you are taking 5 times as long to do something. I dont hate it, but its not really a goal i would promote as many people have.
If one dude can beat 5 dudes at once, it implies he needs more challenging opponents.

as for the pvp, yeah pvp is as good as your opponents, generally, but not everyone wants to pvp.

Dusty Moon.4382:

A R W E N.6895:

Sartharina.3542:

There’s plenty of “Endgame” content:
1. Working for legendaries.
2. Making a name for yourself on your server through WvW and PvP (And now the game in general, with Megaservers)
3. Becoming a leader of PvE events or in WvW.
4. Keeping up with Living Story.
5. Making and running a guild.

The question was : where is High level end game rewarding content

If you want RAIDs – Tequatl, 3-headed WURM – that is server RAIND – Nothing as dumb as what WoW, Rift , etc. offer. If you are expecting that it will be a cold day in hell before that type of content is offered.

You are basically in the WRONG GAME.

Why is it when you say end game rewarding content people go RAIDS!?!? Are people that one track minded?

Heres what they want, something to do at high levels/refined builds, that you can improve at, is somewhat challenging, and get better or different rewards(whether it be skills, access to new areas, items, whatever) than what you would get grinding a champion train.

If this was basketball, it might be a tournament, or darksouls, new game + it doesnt have to be raids, it just has to be something with a bit more depth than the things you figured out when you were level 60

FenrirSlakt.3692:

phys.7689:

Sartharina.3542:

There’s plenty of “Endgame” content:
1. Working for legendaries.
2. Making a name for yourself on your server through WvW and PvP (And now the game in general, with Megaservers)
3. Becoming a leader of PvE events or in WvW.
4. Keeping up with Living Story.
5. Making and running a guild.

1. gold grind, which is an endgame goal, but not one i prefer to do.
2. ehhhh that really is only about what 4 people out of 400 who play WvW? and out of the pool of players, lets say half play WvW. And to be honest anet really messed up with the no match up threads, they really killed ease with which you can get to know your community. I dont know what the solution is, but WvW needs some type of community hub.
3. Becoming a leader of events in pve, honestly there is about 2 or 3 events which needs leaders. And there isnt that great an incentive to do them. They also with megaservers have made it harder to achieve this.
4.keeping up with LS, isnt really endgame, to this point. LS is often easy and i would say its probably low level content really, generally. This may change in the future, but LS doesnt push me to get better, or tighten up skills.
5.Guild making and running, this is probably the most endgamish activity, you can kind of build the guild, but i think they need to refine and expand the guild content.

That said of the things you have suggested, only 2 are not based around leading a group, and those two are pretty poor executions if those are the only options. Legendary is best achieved through extremely easy repetitive farms, or TP merchanting, and LS, well i mentioned that.

Then this may not be your type of game.

I dont know man, if thats how they had marketed the game, i dont think they would have sold many copies.
lead people!
to do 2-3 difficult events!
get massive gold, through merchant/farmville minigame, or spend cash for fat loot
that generally doesnt sell an MMORPG.

anyhow, you dont have to worry about me, im on haitus till they have some interesting new gameplay. havent logged in but a few hours or so in the last months. Neither have any of my friends who were super GW1 and GW2 fans, eh well, they still making money so its all good

Sartharina.3542:

There’s plenty of “Endgame” content:
1. Working for legendaries.
2. Making a name for yourself on your server through WvW and PvP (And now the game in general, with Megaservers)
3. Becoming a leader of PvE events or in WvW.
4. Keeping up with Living Story.
5. Making and running a guild.

1. gold grind, which is an endgame goal, but not one i prefer to do.
2. ehhhh that really is only about what 4 people out of 400 who play WvW? and out of the pool of players, lets say half play WvW. And to be honest anet really messed up with the no match up threads, they really killed ease with which you can get to know your community. I dont know what the solution is, but WvW needs some type of community hub.
3. Becoming a leader of events in pve, honestly there is about 2 or 3 events which needs leaders. And there isnt that great an incentive to do them. They also with megaservers have made it harder to achieve this.
4.keeping up with LS, isnt really endgame, to this point. LS is often easy and i would say its probably low level content really, generally. This may change in the future, but LS doesnt push me to get better, or tighten up skills.
5.Guild making and running, this is probably the most endgamish activity, you can kind of build the guild, but i think they need to refine and expand the guild content.

That said of the things you have suggested, only 2 are not based around leading a group, and those two are pretty poor executions if those are the only options. Legendary is best achieved through extremely easy repetitive farms, or TP merchanting, and LS, well i mentioned that.

RaGe.9834:

The Point of guildwars is that skill it IS working towards that skin, and not the kittening grindfest from wow progression feels like being on a hamster wheel
skins mean the the difference is player skill

there is still, no progression, and it doesnt have to be gear based, there is just, virtually no progression. Horizontal, vertical, sideways, nothin.

FFXI had max level at 75 for like umm 4-5 years? they had tons of progression even with that though. 3 or 4 different overarching progressive plotlines, massive amounts of gear specialization, many different end game contents of varying difficulty/types. New zones to work towards. A max level skill progression system, many many classes and abilities to master, i think like 24?

but lets not say progression, because people just think of leveling up, or getting statistically more powerful gear.
lets just say, depth.
It has virtually no depth, and its breadth, well you basically do all its breadth in about 1-2/3 weeks. well you can go slower, but lets say its basically around 80-99 hours of gameplay, as far as depth, i would say the depth stops around level 45, by level kitten, you have seen pretty close to the max difficulty, outside of arah dungeon.
item wise, stats basically provide the same things just in higher numbers from 3 stats onwards.

Some of this was intentional, so that everything had similar weight, but after about a year, you want to get better, or see more things, or uncover more of whats happening in the world. some type of depth..

tolunart.2095:

What if you play the game because, you know, you like playing it? Because you have fun or something, not because you get phat lootz or whatever.

then you would neither buy nor sell gold, because you have no interest in phat lootz or whatever.

the reply was in the context of motivations for buying and selling gold, and how it seems a bit odd. If you dont care about loot, you dont need gold, and you dont need gems so you wouldnt really enter into the equation.

Hackuuna.4085:

Lishtenbird.2814:

storiessave.3807:

Lol. Um. The Jungle Wurm was changed because it could be insta-killed with Feedback.

Would you have preferred letting mesmers who like trolling to ruin the boss every time for everyone else? I wouldn’t, and I main a mesmer. I’m guessing that if they flat-out nerfed the damage instead, it would have been a nerf to the skill itself – and that would affect us with every mob or boss with reflectable attacks. I much prefer the change they implemented.

Do people read?

Lishtenbird.2814:

Feedback insta-killing Jungle Wurm? Make attacks unreflectable instead of tweaking damage.

As a person dealing with code as well I find it rather amusing how people think that you can either nerf a class skill globally, or make a boss skill entirely unreflectable, with no solutions in between.

As a person dealing with code as well I find it extremely sad that ANet coders also think that you can either nerf a class skill globally, or make a boss skill entirely unreflectable, with no solutions in between.

“As a person dealing with code” you would also know that various different solutions have a different time to implement and test. You would also know that time spent means cost in terms of resource allocation and at some point someone has to make the call to either do a quick and dirty fix or dedicate the resources.

You can’t pretend to know “as a person dealing with code” what the situation is for each given feature or bug fix. You can certainly complain and say you don’t like the solution that was chosen as a gamer, but making statements that “as a person dealing with code” you have some insight into how things could be instead is laughable.

If this was a backend system, quick and dirty fixes are acceptable, but since this is a front end application, you have to start considering what effects your quick and dirty solutions are having on the players.
When you start building up a ton of quick and dirty fixes, you can make your applcation not user friendly, then you have to do 1000 tiny fixes which are not usually easy to track, because their solutions were implemented in a quick and dirty fashion. Its better to come up with a strong rule groundwork and be consistent.

the battle system is approaching spaggethi code levels, you got skills whose visual effects dont match their effective distances, you got unblockable skills with no tells, you got projectiles that dont reflect. Combat is murkier than ever, and on bosses almost all your skills, dont work.

Gibson.4036:

tolunart.2095:

Actually it’s a pretty elegant situation. The hardcore farmers are not going to pay real money unless you make them, I suspect most are disable, unemployed, or in school so they have more free time than money to spend in the first place. So if you make it too hard to get things through farming they will move on to a game that’s more to their liking.

Oh, I totally get it.

It’s just interesting that it’s one of the few businesses with “the more you consume, the less you have to pay” model.

actually ill put it like this, when you dont pay to play, you are working for other players. You spend your time doing the things they dont want to do. Basically you can be a wageslave. The problem i think is, once you buy gold, there isnt that much content of interest to aim for. They kind of are in a catch 22, because whatever is that endgame mode that people actually want to play, should probably give whatever they decide their top rewards are (special cosmetics) but if you give that away through play, then gold is less valuable.

So you end up with a system where you can spend gold to get things of value in game, and minimal reason to play the game, unless you arent buying gold.51

Sirendor.1394:

Harper.4173:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Harper.4173:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m in agreement with others that simply nerfing berserker gear is not the answer. I don’t agree that the change to ferocity ‘did nothing’ or is ‘useless’ though. It was simply the first step in a long list of things that needed to be done in order to balance the various available roles to make support and cc more desirable.

I think we’re starting to see some of the further changes, although I don’t think their implementations are perfect. The amount of things no longer reflect able might require a bit of tweaking, for example.

And how exactly is zerker interfering with CC?

One is a gear set. The other is a type of skill that is used to knock down or knock back or do mean stuff to a boss or enemy.

How does zerker work against CC?

I’m really sad when I see misinformed posts like this. People (like yourself) actually believe that zerker is the root of all problems in this game. However the truth is different.
A full zerker player can still CC to the best of his/her ability.
Defiant is the reason that CC is not used / not required / not viable.

And you shouldn’t forget that a full zerker player can still support his team through:
boon sharing
res mechanics
reflects
heals

In fact -the only thing a zerk player will do worse as a support than a full Cleric’s is maybe less healing and less boon uptime.

Thank you, you highlight the issue wonderfully. This is precisely what some of us are talking about. Because of the way support and cc currently works, there is no reason to wear anything other than zerker gear. That’s the issue (Not the gear itself) There is no point for many people to take anyone wearing any other gear type, because it makes them less effective at dps while having no effect on whether they can adaquately support or cc. As I stated in another post, if a group was looking for a mesmer they would take the one in zerk over the one in valk because the one is zerk will do more damage while still offering the same amount of support / cc as the other (assuming exact same builds, blah blah, only diff is armor). That is the issue.

I understand that GW2 intentionally walked away from the trinity, I applauded it. I’m not asking for the trinity back. However, they did state that the game still had roles, in the form of dps, support, etc. That you could play as you pleased; however, with the current set up that’s not true. Right now (in pve) its ‘run zerk dps or gfto’ There isn’t any incentive to run any other armor set up beyond wanting to, which isn’t how it should work. Different armors should have desirability for different functionality, but we lack that with the current set up.

And how is the fact that the amount of value you bring to your party as a player is not tied to your gear an issue?

Let’s put it another way – if one mesmer is wearing zerker and one is wearing valk, considering it is harder to survive as zerker then by rule of thumb the zerker mesmer should be a better player since he’s viable as zerker.

dude…

Monk in GW1 took considerably more skill than a lot of other classes, because it was healing based and had nearly no damage to make up for it.

Running clerics in dungeons here makes you weak, because bosses here are mostly dodge or die. Clerics vs. Berserkers won’t make nearly any difference in damage reduction, because toughness makes very little difference. On the other hand the kill speed of the player in Cleric’s is reduced AND the only thing he gets is badly scaled healing power.

I daresay Cleric is more challenging than Berserker in the stack and dps meta.

monk took skill not because it had no dmg, but moreso because it was not just about healing, monk had short term skills, and protection was as potent, if not more so than healing. Essentially monk had to actively defend the team, and actively recover based on reacting to what was going on.

The real deal is that in this game, gear is very rarely about what role/skills you are playing. the only stats that effect skills are
power, critical, ferocity, condi dmg, condi duration, boon duration

power critical and ferocity and condi dmg, are potent at effecting skills

condi duration on non damaging skills are generally not that usefull, due to mob resistances, extremely short durations, or the fact that team can put a lot of them out when coordinated.

all the other stats basically deal with dmg mitigation passively, and effect no skills at all.

so basically the disconnect here, is that usually you pick gear to enhance your chosen playstyle, in this game, only a few sets enhance your playstyle, and of those sets, ones that dont enhance dps, are pretty ineffective comparably at enhancing their playstyles.

maha.7902:

Line of sighting isn’t even a problem, if mobs didn’t LoS we would literally just pull them together.

Here’s what trivialises dungeons:

1. Fiery greatsword
2. Ice bow
3. Reflecting fully projectile-based bosses

#1, the fiery noobsword can literally be removed from the game and I would be jumping for joy, #2 needs to be nerfed because if #1 is removed people will just spam more #2, and #3 is simply a case of bosses having weak mechanics.

LOS is a simpler form a CC, that the npcs never account for. It doesnt require you to time your skill use, position it, or reapply it.

While i think using LOS to change the battlefield is a good mechanic, i think enemies shouldnt be as one dimensional about it, especially if they are at a distinct and complete disadvantage in doing so.

Fenrir.3609:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

There isn’t any incentive to run any other armor set up beyond wanting to, which isn’t how it should work.

Actually that is exactly how it should work. You can run whatever build you want and do the content i.e. “play how I want”. If though you want to partake in the niche that is speedrunning or setting records then amazingly enough you should have to build for that and understandably in an action combat game, bringing more dps to the fore and using active mitigation is optimal.

There is another reason for not going full glass, some simply can’t manage it.

Different armors should have desirability for different functionality, but we lack that with the current set up.

Well no, we don’t lack that and trying to tie stats to roles more would remove freedom not promote it. Are you face tanking in zerk? Are you bunkering down on point in zerk? Are you wvw roaming in clerics?

if the main purpose of gear is to be a difficulty/effeciency slider, id rather gear not existed, and they introduced a difficulty/effeciency slider. I have always prefered progression systems that are based on customization and creating interesting combinations over just messing with potency.

but its is kind of messed up, especially now with ascended to need gear for different builds. oh well

Weindrasi.3805:

I was considering transferring my gold to gems for a gemstore purchase today, but when I saw the exchange rate—over 10g for 100 gems—I realized it has gotten to the point that I will never be able to afford the gemstore.
I’m not wealthy—not in real life, and not in the game. I am not comfortable throwing my paycheck into a game to get game-items, when I need things like food, clothing, and the ability to pay my college tuition.
In the game, my goal is to have fun and relax. I don’t want to spend hours grinding to get gold for the gemstore. I don’t want to play the trading post. I want to enjoy myself. Yet, it seems that enjoying myself comes at a cost—all those neat-looking shiny items will be unobtainable for me. And I find that unfair.
I’m not asking for a legendary. I’m just asking that some nice things stay within my reach. Like making a gemstore purchase from time to time. I am not sure how, or if, arenanet will work to do something about this—but I think I’m not the only one who feels this way.

problem is, at the end of the day, things cost money. There is no way around it. You will have to pay some how, some way, no matter what. Now if you can come up with a better monetization system, that gives similar profits, but gives you more value, go for it, but you cant expect people to work for free, or less than their work is worth. They have to buy stuff too you know

Kumion.7580:

From the first paragraph of The Story Journal subheading:
Characters under level 80 will be able to see the available episodes, but will not be able to play them until they reach level 80.

Does this little tidbit bother anyone?

On the positive side, I’m cautiously in favor of the concept of the Story Journal. (Cautiously, because we’ve seen how good concepts can go horribly wrong.) I like the idea of being able to access Story content even if I wasn’t able to play at the time it was new. I don’t even mind the 200 gems much. The company should be able to see a modest profit for their work, IMO. Good content will be unlocked by more people and Anet will be able to see what percentage of players are willing to pay for it.

On the negative side, I haven’t seen one person in this thread mention this giant push to be L80. This game wasn’t supposed to be all about the endgame! What happened to the journey? Why should I bother with another alt, ever? Everything they’re building is for 80s. The new trait system is kitten-burgers for alts and noobs. Now alts and noobs can’t experience the Story? This is NOT a happy thing.

the game needed some goals for being level 80, the idea of trying to keep everything at the same level wasnt working out. In someways its sucks, but in other ways its probably for the best.

queensdale farm was an example of this. On one side its nice to be able to hang out in this cool level, on the other side, its really kind of crappy that a super easy farm in the first area of the game is competitive with level 80 zones in terms of rewards, and, in a zerg, difficulty.

That said, i dont really know how difficult episodes will be, they seem to be mostly solo, and are implied to be pretty easy, so i doubt they will really expand the level 80 elder game much, but we shall see

lordkrall.7241:

juno.1840:

I already explained how it’s different. Now it’s your turn to research P2P and B2P — the difference should become clear after you read up on it a bit.

I am aware of the difference.
But how is paying once every two weeks to access content really any different from paying once every month to access content?

You don’t HAVE to pay a subscription either, but if you don’t you won’t have access to the content.

he is right you are wrong.
p2p means you have to pay, to play, if you dont pay, you cannot do anything at all. In a subscription game, you cant event log in.
Buy to play means you buy something, and you own it, and can use it as much as you want, it does not entitle you to new free content later.

if they sold episodes, that would be buy to play, you would have access to everything you paid for, as much as you wanted, and everything that is open world.
Its not very different from gw1 expansions, just different in the size, and the costs. However you will still have access to all the open world parts

Now, i am not saying you have to approve of, or like such a system, but is objectively a buy to play system, just in smaller increments

haviz.1340:

How about making bosses and mobs like players in pvp? Like some people said, give them stability, stun breakers and dodges. But let’s not stop there. Give them boons, condition removals and, most importantly, self healing skills.

Give them also retaliation so you need some passive sustain. Now we have perfect balance – you can’t go with too much defense (not enough dps) and you can’t also go with too much offense (not enough sustain). You would need boon removals and cc. True balance achieved.

im guessing you are being faceous but honestly probably wouldnt be bad to have some real enemies to fight. the pvp training npcs are more entertaining to fight than your average veteran/champion anyhow

Aomine.5012:

phys.7689:

Harper.4173:

i dont think people quit because it was hard to farm gold, they quit because the game was not rewarding, and the few goals they had were grindy.

What i mean by this is they want to be able to feel like they are achieving something through play, but not neccesarily that they want gold. Many of these people wanted raids, and i think its not really because raid gameplay is awesome, but because you have this set of goals to work towards, and you feel like you are making progress by playing. You feel rewarded, even if you dont get much gold, you get the reward of moving to new interesting things.

Let me put your words into simple terms:
People want “vertical progression, the sense of being stronger with each accomplishment.”
Clearly GW2 doesn’t suit them so I don’t blame them for leaving, nor do I miss them.
Sadly the company does care about those people because they need money

no, its not vertical progression in terms of becoming stronger, its more like vertical progression in terms of difficulty/challenge and goals.
for example, the classic old game formula, you beat level 1, then you beat level 2, then you beat level 3. you may have had the same weapons/skills, but there was a sense of direction. Also they generally made the content harder slowly, so by the end you were a well trained bad kitten .

they use items to lead people, the items in and of themselves arent really that big a deal, its basically just a system that says, when you have proven mastery of this place, you will be ready for the next place.

You dont need to actually get any more statisical power.
GW2 has a very flat challenge curve, and doesnt have many teired goals. Every dungeon was basically around the same difficulty before the recent stat nerf, and every world boss was basically around the same difficulty. you also did work your way up to anything bad kitten , mount maelstrom is about the same as brisban wildlands.

anyhow all that aside, point is people didnt so much leave because they couldnt farm gold, its because the game isnt very deep, the biggest reward in most games is getting further and overcoming new challenges/getting better.

Harper.4173:

Aomine.5012:

Harper.4173:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

maha.7902:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m in agreement with others that simply nerfing berserker gear is not the answer. I don’t agree that the change to ferocity ‘did nothing’ or is ‘useless’ though. It was simply the first step in a long list of things that needed to be done in order to balance the various available roles to make support and cc more desirable.

I think we’re starting to see some of the further changes, although I don’t think their implementations are perfect. The amount of things no longer reflect able might require a bit of tweaking, for example.

support is already extremely desirable. CC has niche uses but when used, it can be used very effectively. what is the problem here?

support is only ‘extremely desirable’ in that you can provide it adequately while still running zerkers. that’s not precisely what im talking about.

one of the main issues with zerkers being the king of all sets is simply due to the fact that you can max your dps while still fulfilling the needs for support and cc without specing for it. thats not precisely how it should work, and what causes the majority of the issue at hand. in instances where you need support, you should need someone that is specced that way, or at least a couple of hybrids. the roles are not balanced in their need of having someone specced for it.

you can see it most obviously in dungeon runs. most groups want that person in zerker gear who can provide the better dps, but can still offer reflects or protection or w/e adequately. they are going to take that person over someone in anything else because the support that person offers is sufficient.

You seemed to ignore these things earlier, nice to see you’ve posted it now.

Fun fact :

GW2 went away from the traditional MMO trinity because they didn’t want people needing a certain type of player ( tank / healer) in order to complete content.

That’s why we don’t have tanks and healers.

…

Right now no role is required in almost 99% of the content which is * a good thing*. Why change that? Because a few players can’t enjoy the “superstar” status they had in WoW?

That’s exactly it. “No role is required in almost 99% of the contents”
That’s why zerker is the way to go for most people because if ANY SETS can complete 99% of the contents, why not choose the one that can complete it faster and safer? (Yes, killing boss fast is much safer than killing boss slow)

There’s no-way to fix this issue unless Anet start introducing mechanic that force you into certain roles (making the content “harder” that is) in order to succeed.

For example, enemies like Husk in triple trouble should infest all around the world or dungeons so people need condition specs more to succeed.
Some bosses need to reflect lots of damage to players so they need more healing to keep on damaging bosses.
Some bosses need to constantly chip a certain percent of HP from players no end, so healing will play a very important role to succeed the encounter.

But hey! People hate hard contents!
So let’s roll back to our zerker Meta

People don’t hate hard content – that’s false.

People hate hard and unrewarding content.
People don’t repeat hard content if it’s not worth it.
People hate being forced to play harder content when previously it was easier.

Hard mode for dungeons would be a good thing if it was implemented together with new titles, maybe unique skins and better loot.

People who would want the challenge and the thrill could do it. Pugs could still do regular dungeons.

But if you change all content to satisfy the few that want it hard you’re going to turn the game into a ghost town.

One of the most heard complaints at the start of this game was that it was too hard to farm gold. People, and a lot of them quit because they couldn’t get good enough rewards in a time frame that would keep them satisfied.

i dont think people quit because it was hard to farm gold, they quit because the game was not rewarding, and the few goals they had were grindy.

What i mean by this is they want to be able to feel like they are achieving something through play, but not neccesarily that they want gold. Many of these people wanted raids, and i think its not really because raid gameplay is awesome, but because you have this set of goals to work towards, and you feel like you are making progress by playing. You feel rewarded, even if you dont get much gold, you get the reward of moving to new interesting things.

Thaddeus.4891:

Aomine.5012:

phys.7689:

Many people talk about this, but the key is not really to nerf zerker,
all you are doing by nerfing zerker is making zerker more of a high skill cap weapon set, it will still be superior.

two major ways to deal with the idea that dps is the only thing that matters
1) more skills need to scale off other stats, including defensive and support skills (a berserker is just about the same at every non condition dmg skill as any other gear set, and close enough for pve at durations.
2) better enemy design and encounter design.
enemies need to have more attacks for less damage, and be more mobile/adaptive

any number tweaks will simply make it so its still the best, but you have to be really good to make good use of it.

I think your idea is brilliant.
Some classes should scale their damage base on other attributes that favor its play-style.

For example, a guardian may scale it’s attack power base on his healing power and power, that each of them contribute to half of it’s dps.
I know this will make the stat distribution more complicated, but that’s one of the few ways to balance out things.
(And for anyone who’ll argue that healing power could potential become OP because it does 2 things now, you can mostly choose from 3 main stats, so if you go for power and healing, you’ll then sacrifice either precision or ferocity, thus, losing slight damage. However, choosing healing will give you damage AND healing capability, making it a more supportive play-style while not losing too much damage.)

I totally disagree with that. I found that completely stupid in SWTOR and I think this would completely crush the identity of GW2.

You guys talk about its bad, its only zerker dude bah. But then you turn around and said, well Guardian = healing power. How this will give more diversity in gear? Each stats should give 1 advantage and only 1. If a stats is useless change the stats and what you can get from it, just don’t make him just another power with some healing in it.

just to be clear, i wasnt saying something like toughness should directly effect dmg, i am saying certain skills that correlate to playstyles could effect specific skills.
for example, if toughness might effect your defeneive skills, like how much dmg you could absorb with certain blocks, or how long they last.

the biggest problem with the stat system, is most stats dont effect the playstyle enough. its a no brainer to pick dps stats, when nothing effects any other skill.
you still block with zero toughness, your endure pain lasts just as long, your support skills do the same bonus.

think something closer to (but not exactly like) gw1.

long story short, as long as i have virtually the same active defense, support and CC (the 3 chosen roles) with a berserker set up, there is not much reason to pick a different stat spread, when played well.

area of effect hits everything within an area. having multiple projectiles doesnt make something aoe.

If they actually changed the attack to an aoe i wouldnt have a problem with it. Its about clarity, and consistency.

I see you are trying to take a loose interpretation to rules, which is bad. For rules to be effective they must be understood, and clear. If you choose a definition of projectile, that has everyone wondering if an attack is a projectile, then its a problem with your definition.

If you as a designer, dont want a monster skill to be subject to reflection, do not make it a projectile.
If you absolutely must make things that break the rules, you must make it really clear. And this is not just something that is happening with one skill, more and more skills are ignoring projectile rules. This appears to be their solution for projectiles/reflection.

Many people talk about this, but the key is not really to nerf zerker,
all you are doing by nerfing zerker is making zerker more of a high skill cap weapon set, it will still be superior.

two major ways to deal with the idea that dps is the only thing that matters
1) more skills need to scale off other stats, including defensive and support skills (a berserker is just about the same at every non condition dmg skill as any other gear set, and close enough for pve at durations.
2) better enemy design and encounter design.
enemies need to have more attacks for less damage, and be more mobile/adaptive

any number tweaks will simply make it so its still the best, but you have to be really good to make good use of it.

Djinn, serious question can you come up with some reference real or fabricated for what might be good high end armor, which is also practical? not saying it cant happen, but i think designers tend to struggle with trying to create something that feels like it is elite, without having lots of details, and ostentation.

Djinn.9245:

phys.7689:

Djinn.9245:

I think that the fact that this subject keeps occurring means that it is of concern to people. However, many people in this thread are caught-up in the word “skimpy”.

I think that all of the currently-available armor should stay because I don’t care if some people like to dress their characters in a more “social” rather than “practical” manner.

But just as characters should be able to dress socially, some people would like to dress their characters more practically. There are currently very few armor sets that are something you would actually wear into battle or adventuring. I’m not saying the armor should be dirty or banged-up. You can have chest and leg pieces that are nice-looking but also provide good coverage for adventuring. And don’t have a skirt (which is highly impractical)!

You will have to define what you mean by practical.

i mean light armor really has no part in practicality, they just call it light armor by convention, it is clothes, and is primarily defined by not being armor. I suppose one could say it should be like jeans and a tshirt, but thats only really more practical from a cleaning standpoint, skirts, or jeans, neither will stop a sword or a bullet or fire spell.

First, I said battle or adventuring. When I go hiking I don’t wear thigh-highs and a mini-skirt. I wear long pants and sleeves so I can go through brush without getting scratched-up and ticks. Etc.

Second, cloth “armor” was used in medieval times by the peasantry who could not afford leather or metal (lookup “padded” or “quilted” armor). Of course it wasn’t as protective but it was also more maneuverable. Look at Ninja costumes, etc.

medium armor, is basically “light armor” its clothes that considers some for of defense, but not necessarily uniform i its standard. just putting mettle plates onto clothes in key areas/chosen areas amounts to medium armor. Its main function would be to provide some protection with minimal effect on movement.

but how would you define a practical armor?

No, you think of “leather armor” as being the kind of soft leather that modern leather pants are made out of. In medieval times, leather armor was very hard and much thicker. So medium armor is definitely medium armor. And medium armor can also include a certain amount of metal.

So for “practical” medium and heavy armor, I would like to see armor that looks nice but doesn’t have frills or skirts, etc.

well i get that you think of things a certain way, because there is light armor irl, but in these games, it is not armor.
light armor is the class of clothing that people who dont wear armor use. Like mages. In other games its things like robes. Its not really meant to be armor really. While cloth armor did exist, it generally would fit into the idea of medium armor in these types of games.
like this
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Studded_armor

im not saying you are wrong in real life, im saying the semantics are different in these type of games,
think of light armor as no armor
think of medium armor as a range from light armor to what you think of as medium armor
and think of heavy armor as what you think of as high medium, to heavy.

and looking at the medium armor, while there is tons of trenchcoats and skirt like things, its pretty consistent between male and female, and not very frilly.

For heavy, by and large, not too many frills.

I will say there is a ton of inefficient gear, but it generally has little to do with skimpy. I think the problem is extremely practical gear is generally a lot more boring. A lot of the armor that you might be talking about is low level armor. High level stuff in games is usually tied to intricacy, and ostentation.

Ken DeBoer.9268:

Vol.7601:

I do agree that a decrease in precursor prices would surely increase the prices for other component prices, but it is hard to imagine if it would result in a higher overall cost for the legendary.

I’m too lazy and not the best at math, but you would have to calculate how much the prices of T6 mats and lodestones (or other specific components) would have to rise, on average, to cover the cost savings of the lower precursor price.

I don’t feel like turning my brain on this afternoon, so I am going with simple math. We can use the two gifts that are used by every legendary: Gift of Might and Magic. Those need 2000 items total. If the price of T6 increases by 1 silver, then we are talking about an extra 20 gold. I’m at work so I can’t check current prices, but let us say that the average T6 is 40s and the demand for said items will go up 10%, that would be an increase of ~80gold.

The question then becomes, will the increase in precursors rise or drop the price by ~80 gold (+legendary specific items).

Personally – I think that increasing options for T6 farming is a better option than increasing the precursor drop rate.

And to the OP, while Anet is not helping the price of the precursor, it is the consumer who ultimately drive the price of the precursors.

its a simplification to say consumers drive the price, anet controls all factors
they control supply
they decide how many classes can use a weapon
how useful a weapon is
what theme a legendary has
how much a player can earn over time
what type of content a player can do
what is the possible sources for said item.

when you consider these factors, the fact that the most popular weapon types, with the types of themes which are generally the most popular themes (darkness, fire, lightning) and have a small supply, which is primarily filled by spending a lot of money in the mystic forge and is marketed as a long term goal, has an extremely high price relative to other things.

In fact they could do any number of things that would have a drastic effect on the price of precursors.

Pibriamal.8719:

You guys are all missing the point. ANet is supporting the reflects. Just a slight nerf so that some projectiles go through. You STILL HAVE TO SLOT REFLECTS. You just also have to devote some people to clear the eggs that make it through.

You complain about it being too easy and just 1111 spam. Well, here you go. More strategy required.

you are missing the point,
it sucky to have things which break the rules inexplicably,
why did my attack fail?
oh attacks dont work here.
why?
uhh because.

they have ranged skills that cannot be reflected, ground based aoes, beams, and conal skills.
They could have made the acid spit into an attack where the ground breaks open and steam/lava/something shoots up. Same effect, but its clearly not a projectile, your training tells you this is an attack where you must move.
Instead you get an attack which looks like a projectile, hits like a projectile, but when you try to use your projectile specific countering skill, it doesnt work. Why? because …. its easier to just change a value to non projectile.

the balance team is very bad with this, they constantly make changes that are unclear, or break rules. many aoes have had their range altered, but not their visual cues, many skills have become unblockable, but they have no tells, now more and more projectiles are not considered projectiles with no tells.

And Bosses basically negate almost all mechanics and strategies used against them.

Xenon.4537:

IrishPotato.6327:

Considering the game was based around the solo player having their own personal story, they will not turn away from that after two years into it. By based around I mean advertised for years. Might happen in a future game though :/

They turned away from the personal story thing like… when the first patch hit. There’s been no continuation of the personal story. Living story has used some instances similar to personal story, but mostly content has been open world zerg zerg zerg, or temporary 5 man dungeons.

I would love to have missions in GW2. The fun was in how you could repeat them for higher rewards by accomplishing the special objectives, and how those objectives changed in hard mode. Finishing all of the special objectives for a campaign gave you a title.

yeah they have abandoned personal story, their numbers and feedback said it kind of sucked, which it kind of did.
But if it was like missions in GW2, then it would not have sucked. as bad, the story would probably still have been lame.

DaveGan.8065:

People can hedge against increased overall cost. It is more difficult for most players to hedge against price fluctuations on a single item.

(Simplified scenario) Assume Sunrise costs 2000 gold to make, and 1000 comes from the precursor. This means 1000 comes from everything else.

Let’s consider two cases: one where Dawn rises to 1200 gold (200 more) and another where everything else rises to 1300 gold (300 more)

• Suppose Dawn spikes up to 1200 gold and everything else stays constant. Player now has to come up with 200 more gold. (Except in the rare case that a player obtained Dawn first, but I would conjecture most players get the precursor last)

• Now suppose instead the other mats spike to 1300. This will not cost the player 300 more gold as he already will have some of the mats from normal playing. If he has 25% of the other stuff already it will cost him 225 more gold. If he has 50% of the other stuff it will cost him only 150 gold. With 75% completion it will only cost 75 more gold.

Players are able to hedge against fluctuations when volume is big but unit cost is (relatively) small

An increase in the costs of other mats to balance the lower cost of precursors would not be seen as discouraging to most (in fact the rise of T6 has increased the cost of “everything else” even more than the cost of precursors).

You don’t see nearly as many complaints about “everything else” because “normal gamplay” generates a mix of gold and other mats. Because of this an increase in the price of mats would effectively increase the “income” of these players as well

yep essentially the world would be better off with cheaper precursors and more expensive legendary parts, because people get those parts through normal play.

heavy priced precursors benefit the few, where as heavy priced general materials benefits the many.

Carighan.6758:

While I would prefer to be able to reflect everything, I can also understand the need to provide some mechanics which players cannot entirely avoid by stacking their group a certain way (read: bring more guardians!).

One common reply then is to say “But just make the reflected projectile do less damage to the boss!”. True, and that’s already done in most cases. But the issue is, you still 100% avoid the damage on the party.
And while this is consistent with how I’d expect my reflect to work, it’s not consistent with any sense of immediate danger in PvE. Because it’d imply that I need to spam those projectiles to prevent a party of Guardians and Mesmers and Engineers from simply spam-reflecting them. But then, a party without those is going to get completely torn apart.

The other way to fix it would be to nerf/remove more reflects from the game. Only, in PvP they work out really well and provide some much-needed destacking/dezerging mechanic.

So that can’t really be done either.

I do think there should be a more clear visual indicator of what is a projectile and what not. Maybe non-projectiles display an orange skillshot-like line on the ground when firing, like the current AE markers?

first of all you cant reflect everything, you can only reflect projectiles. Its a problem of consistency and understandability of rules.
Everything should follow the rules
things that dont follow the rules should have clear indication

they have long ranged attacks that you cannot reflect, they are beams, and ground targeted aoes/conal attacks.
If they wanted enemies to be long ranged and non reflectable they should have made the attacks be this type of attack.
Its lazy solutions, and destroying the ruleset design. These sort of rule breakers are building up and making combat into something where you dont know what skills will actually work and what skills will not.

You have unblockable skills with no tells
Skills whose attack range doesnt represent its animation
enemies immune to skills with no indicators

yall are basically building your combat ruleset into a spaghetti code. You need to stop doing this.

the people arguing about who has top DPS, its totally irrelvant.

Heres the point.
Arbitrarily creating things that break rules of the game IS BAD DESIGN. Especially on a skill like reflect.
The point is to defend and do damage, people need to know that reflect is going to actually reflect things.
Anything that breaks a rule needs a very clear tell that it breaks the rule.

If they want the npcs to have attacks that are long ranged and non reflectable, thats why they have beams.

They continue to do these bandaid bad fixes, and it begins to add up to a crappy ruleset.

Now im not saying you should be able to one shot bosses with reflect, but breaking the skill is lazy and foolish. Improve your monster design, or come up with consistent rules. The game is not helped by these type of solutions not just for reflect but all skills.

RedStar.4218:

It’s not that hard to dodge it. It’s rather predictable because she charges up her attack (or something like that).

But it does kind of annoy me how reflecting skills are getting hit more and more after each updates.

the problem is also that they are changing them in an unsaid way. You dont make rules, and then break them some times, and you wont know till you try. Its stupid. come up with a system/ruleset and stick to it.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

steviej.5768:

The problem isn’t “zerging” either, the problem is that the game hasn’t been optimized for a megaserver atmosphere. There should be over 100 players trying to take down world bosses! Bosses and events just need to be changed to accommodate this but that takes time to do and patience on our part.

“Optimized” is not the word to use here. The games has not been DESIGNED for a megaserver atmosphere. Hence why rushing out such a system that was undeniably incomplete into the game was not only a terrible idea, but also incredibly negligent of ArenaNet. Work should have been done to shift the game’s design to support megaservers BEFORE it was implemented, so that the transition could have been as smooth as possible. Instead, we have a system rushed out that thoroughly breaks many features of the game and causes drastic changes to the way that it’s played. And now we get to wait until they rebuild the game around it.

And I’m going to reiterate this as many times as a kittening have to, in as many threads as I have to. We were told to “wait and see” when we brought up major concerns about the megaservers at the very moment of the announcement. Players, who were not working on the system and likely are not familiar with game design were able to almost immediately identify the core issues that would arise from this system. But they were told to wait and see. And what happened? Every concern was validated. The players were right. But no acknowledgement from ArenaNet. Everything’s going smoothly says their Facebook. Full kittening steam ahead on converting those zones. Flat. Out. Ignored. They’ve worn out their player’s faith, so asking us to be patient now is a joke. How long until they admit their failures, own up to the system’s shortcomings, and give some kind of insight as to how they’ll fix it? It’s already been 2 months too long.

yeah it would be one thing if there were constant changes and reworks coming out with speedy iteration, but essentially they make a huge change without the background work it needs to mesh well with the game, and then we have to wait for them to figure out how to deal with it. Worst of all, they havent communicated which issues they intend to solve, and which issues are just lost for the “greater good”

Carighan.6758:

The smallscale stuff would be horrible. The combat in GW2 is not meant for smallscale combat.

In fact, I remember Ghostcrawler in WoW saying that 2v2 arena was one of the most damaging ideas they ever implemented, long-term. Only it was/is too deeply seated to flat out remove.

Why?

Because smallscale balancing in a RPG is a really bad idea. The underlying class/spec mechanic of RPGs, where your character specializes, and as a result gains upsides and downsides, is incompatible with the idea of balancing any engagement where each side doesn’t feature each effective class.

“Effective class” in this case doesn’t mean one of the 8 classes, but rather each distinct combat framework. I.e., Scepter Condi Necro, Power Dagger Necro, Well Support Necro, DS Necro, just as an example. Each class has a fair few of them, but on the other hand some specs on different classes are actually the same effective class as they bring no unique effects to a fight the other one doesn’t bring.

But anyhow, the point is: Smallscale PvP in RPGs cannot be balanced. Not without extensive underlying changes to the classes, the specs and the combat system.

this game doesnt actually have the type of systems you are talking about, with extremely specialized classes that cant do stuff, and while balance would not be perfect, it would probably better than balance in WvW and open world events.

i think the aoe change to spider is lame, not because its anti stacking, but because it is so poorly thought out. They need to go deeper instead of just throwing something out there, sigh.

Iason Evan.3806:

This is how they cull some of the gold from the more wealthy players in the game. Low drop rate for a few weeks on a very rare and exclusive item. People buy it as a prestige item for a thousand gold or more and then they slightly increase the drop rate for the next month and the price comes down a bit and more people get it.

they arent culling gold from the rich, because they were primarily trading with the rich. one guy beats another rich guy.

Vol.7601:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous? I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums and I just don’t know what to make of it? I started with nothing, and while I’ve been playing forever and a day I’ve kept my player wealth fairly low, distributed between new character after new character and what ever I happened to be enjoying at the moment. As soon as I start TRYING to make money again I seem to just rake it in.

Anyone else feel like your shift from poor to more was sudden? Or did you grind hard and long hours and sell your blood and soul on the TP till you got a break?

Here’s my take on this.

It’s called jealousy. We see it in the real world as well. Wake up on January 1 and read the news. Countless articles how a CEOs have already made your year’s salary in one day. Or how CEO pay is 400x larger on average compared to the minimum wage.

To which I say, who the kitten cares? They are getting paid that much because of their value to the company and their skills that the brought to the table. And of course, a little bit of luck.

Here in GW2, yes, I admit, this should be treated as a game, and not real life. I understand that.

But also understand that just because this is a game doesn’t mean that everything is handed upon log-in. If people want that, they should play a single player game and run some cheat codes.

People are jealous that there are others in game that are luckier and smarter than them, and they can’t stomach it. They want instant gratification at minimum loss/risk.

If you play 3 hours a day doing WvW or open world exploring, why in the world do you expect to earn as much as the person who farms 40 hours a week or does 3 hours of high intensive TP trading?

The only way you can ever have a situation where everyone earns the same amount of gold in the same amount of time is if there were fixed gold rewards for x hours dedicated across y activities. And if you miss those hours, they get banked like rest exp.

It’s a great concept – but at that point you are not playing an MMO that anyone enjoys. It would be a great game for those casual players who want all the nice bells and whistles upon log-in. But I’m afraid such a group of players is so small that any game tailored to them would be a loss before launch.

jealousy is a simplification, it is jealousy, but because you are jealous does not mean its not waranted. CEOs make 400X the money of someone else, because essentially they have convinced people to pay them that. Also note that this was usually decided by people who are also CEOs of some other company, and are given CEO jobs by the people they give CEO jobs too.

Basically a CEO is in a pretty good position to ask for/demand a lot of extra money, its not that he is 400x times more valuable/smart/unique/special than a software engineer, physicist, artist,teacher,MMA fighter, or any of many of the myriad other people out there.

And thats what people want in games, they want to be able to get good at something they enjoy. The big beef with TP style being the most profitable is that the game rewards having gold more than other activities. And that in a game about adventure, the best way of obtaining gold is the TP. any other good method is controlled, and nerfed. And many other types of play dont give much reward no matter how good you are at it.

If success was not primarily measured/rewarded by how much gold you have, tp being best at it wouldnt be as much of an issue. If other activities, at a high difficulty, or with a lot of effort paid better, people would not be as upset.
Problem is, you play the game one way, then when you get to the endgame, you basically have to become a gold grinder to achieve most high end goals. And gold is best earned through farms and TP playing

Vol.7601:

I gave that example because it seems the overwhelmingly majority of players who complain about the riches are those who sparringly play. I have great respect for those who are understanding, but they are very few.

Again, there is no way to balance this. This is because:
1.) TP players take advantage of the lack of patience/knowledge of the average playerbase. The only way to get rid of this is to change player tendencies, which is impossible.

2.) TP being the most profitable avenue is only available to a small group of players. If everyone tried to play the TP, profit would be reduced to the point that it is no longer viable

3.) You cannot balance different gameplay types and their rewards so that they are equal. It’s impossible to design such a system so that the rewards per hour are similar, unless you use the example I gave earlier. But no one would play that type of game, nor would any team design such a system and expect to have a playable game.

We’ve been through this discussion before. It’s not happening.

1) the way to change this would be to provide more knowledge to players based on available data they could present people with more information.
2)TP being most profitable is available to a lot of players(not necessarilly the majority, but a large number), enough that high end items are essentially marketed towards thier earning power. (And gem sellers)
3)I agree that you cant balance all gameplay types, but why would you make the TP the one that makes you most successful at the game in terms of most rewards.

Vol.7601:

TP isn’t high risk? Well I just completed the most high risk flip of all time.

OF ALL TIME

I bought a chaos recipe for 1500g (luck enough to get a buy order in the first place)
I then was able to flip it 10 hours later at 2550g.

That’s a grand profit of 668G.

It was risky because of Anet possibly hotfixing it (which I have been telling everyone to be careful of).

However seeing as we are heading into the weekend, the risk of this happening was pretty minimal.

In retrospect, I should have done this last Friday for the long weekend.
Buy orders have now gone up to 100g.

http://i.imgur.com/PsYvFJU.jpg

I’m not going to do this again, so feel free to fight over that recipe

grats on correctly guessing anets behavior and in a timely fashion

I think your post is too big, and talks about too many different things at once. i agree with some, but if all your points are central to your overall thesis, then the ones i disagree with may throw your conclusions off.
for example the most used traits on most classes arent dps focused. Id say the most used ones are generally resource boosting/managing ones, and special new effect ones. Most zerker builds dont have all dps traits, they focus on dps stats, and increase versatility through traits.

you need to be able to play as a healer or as a tank
sorry but you cant really do this. The ability to consistentlly focus attention on yourself would alter every encounter in terms of viable strategies
a strong healer would either make most content too easy, or require enemies that can do a lot more dmg.

i do agree that a major problem with dps builds is the fact that your stats for the most part only effect dps skills. All other skills get little to no benefit from stats, hence even if you are going control or support dps is probably your best set if you are skilled.